Last week was for me an eventful time, including a four-hour trip to Dubuque, Iowa, on Thursday for the Growing Sustainable Communities conference, an event the city sponsors every year. I spoke in a session that afternoon, October 24, on community planning for drought, but mostly what I remember was the combination of keynote speeches that addressed the major issues of our time, notably including a luncheon talk on Friday by Dr. Katherine Hayhoe, of Texas Tech University, on communication about climate change. It was impressive and inspiring but underscored how much work lies ahead to reverse damaging trends affecting our planet.
But the week started out differently, with smaller actions
that I think are extremely important in setting the tone for the way all of us
relate to our fellow human beings.
My wife and I are members of Augustana Lutheran Church of Hyde Park,
in Chicago. Situated catacorner from the Lutheran
School of Theology in Chicago on E. 55 St., our church enjoys the benefit
of the knowledge that abounds among the LSTC faculty. I serve as coordinator of
the Adult Forum, an adult discussion group that meets during the Sunday School
hour. That makes me responsible for finding speakers, programming discussions,
and promoting the events. On Sunday, October 20, we discussed actions we could
take following a five-week series covering the World War II Nazi death camps,
visited by Dr.
Esther Menn and her husband, Bruce Tammen, in August
during a trip to Poland and Ukraine, which fed into considerations of how we
treat immigrants and minorities in our own time.
Our pastor, Rev. Nancy Goede, told me about an incident that occurred the prior Tuesday in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood, at Lincoln United Methodist Church. Lincoln has chosen to become a sanctuary church out of concern for the safety of undocumented immigrants, but a man shouting Nazi slogans came to the building in an angry confrontation with church staff. It was not the first time the church had been targeted for its actions. The man proceeded to smash the front window.
There is little we can do directly about an incident that is already past, but we decided that we could establish a supportive relationship with the congregation in the face of this hate crime, so we composed the following letter, eventually signed that day by at least 25 members of Augustana:
To the Members and Staff of Lincoln United Methodist Church:
We are very sorry to hear about the incident on October 15, in which a man shouting Nazi slogans smashed the glass window on the front door of Lincoln United Methodist Church. We have learned that you have been targeted by right-wing groups for your stance in establishing Lincoln UMC as a sanctuary church. We support your efforts and pray for your safety as you continue to follow your consciences in doing the Lord’s work.
Your Brothers and Sisters in Christ at Augustana Lutheran Church
Indeed, part of the purpose of this letter is to reassure
Lincoln United Methodist Church that its members are not being left to handle
this attack in isolation from the rest of the Christian community. We had learned
a great deal about the high cost of silence during the Holocaust, as well as
the need to forcefully address racial equality as we commemorated the 100th
anniversary of Chicago’s
race riots in 1919, a story detailed well in Claire Hartfield’s recent book, A Few Red
Drops.
But that is not all we chose to do. Esther Menn then noted the American Jewish community on this past weekend would be commemorating the first anniversary of a violent anti-Semitic attack at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, in which eleven members were killed, and seven others wounded, by a man apparently inspired by right-wing rhetoric. Robert Bowers, a truck driver from Baldwin, Pennsylvania, was arrested for the massacre, and authorities said he used social media beforehand to post criticism of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, which has been supportive of the human rights of immigrants to the U.S.
In solidarity, Augustana announced that members of the congregation, as well as people from LSTC and McCormick Seminary, would gather last Friday evening to walk to nearby KAM Isaiah Israel congregation in Hyde Park to join its Friday evening shabbat service. Once again, Augustana would make a simple statement in opposition to hate crimes and violence against religious and ethnic minorities and immigrants. Because traffic on the way back from Dubuque that afternoon obviated the possibility of my own participation, Esther related to me that 27 people from Augustana and the two seminaries joined the effort, plus others who met them at the synagogue, and that their presence was greatly appreciated.
Supportive visitors at the doors of KAM Isaiah Israel synagogue. Photo provided by Esther Menn.
Sometimes, it is worth remembering that the simple act of reaching
out to say we care and stand behind others is enough to establish lasting and
meaningful bonds between otherwise disparate groups of human beings. It
certainly is a place to start.
Some readers may have noticed that it has been seven weeks
since I last posted to this blog (May
13). That delay was not by design but resulted from circumstances. For two
weeks immediately after that last item, I was largely on the road, but that has
happened before without slowing my pace. What followed most certainly did.
In early April, after sensing some eye strain in late
winter, I responded to notices from Pearle Vision that it had been more than
two years since my last eye exam. My last prescription for glasses was in 2016.
I figured an updated prescription would cure the problem, as it had before.
This time, the optometrist noted some indications of cataracts,
though he stated that an ophthalmologist would have to determine whether they
were serious enough to require surgery. I took note and arranged for such an
exam. There was a little discussion of floaters, and I indicated they had not
been a problem. He ordered new lenses, and by late that week, they were
installed in my existing frames. I thought I was good to go.
I was dead wrong. Before the weekend was out, I returned to
complain that the new lenses had done nothing to cure some blurring, which I
attributed to a long-standing combination of astigmatism with my well-defined
myopia. I had been near-sighted since childhood and had
glasses since I was ten. I am now 69. Glasses have been part of my
existence for six decades. The optometrist conceded that he had not tested for
astigmatism, noting, to my surprise, that the 2016 exam had shown no sign of
it. Astigmatism,
which causes blurred vision, can wax and wane over one’s lifetime. In mine,
apparently, it had become much less pronounced than I had realized. But he
conducted a free second exam and made minor adjustments to the prescription to
solve the problem.
By then, there were only two days before I left for San
Francisco for the annual National
Planning Conference of the American
Planning Association. I had to leave with the existing lenses and wait for
the new ones to arrive. Pearle called while I was still in California to say that
they had arrived, and I visited their store the very evening I returned. I
tried on the new lenses. There was still no benefit in clarifying my vision. I
decided to be patient and see what would happen—but nothing. I began to realize
other factors might be at work.
In scheduling the ophthalmology exam, I contacted the highly regarded clinic at Northwestern Medical Center, part of the Northwestern University hospital system. They first offered an appointment for May 14 because they were booked for a few weeks, but I was already in their system because of a different issue a year before. I had to decline; I would be flying to Winnipeg that day to speak at the Manitoba Planning Conference. The following week, I would be in Cleveland for the annual conference of the Association of State Floodplain Managers. We finally settled on May 30. My own schedule produced the delays.
Dr. Pyatetsky and me during a post-op appointment.
At that appointment, I met Dr. Dmitry Pyatetsky, who conducted the exam. He quickly informed me that my right eye had a serious cataract that needed surgery. The left eye had a smaller cataract, and the wise approach would be to follow with surgery on the second eye. Cataract surgery basically involves breaking up the cataract, which clouds one’s vision, and then replacing the natural lens in the eye with an artificial lens that provides 20/20 vision. I would no longer need glasses, except for reading and computer work. For the first time in my adult life, I would spend most of my day seeing clearly without glasses. Moreover, Dr. Pyatetsky chose to waste no time. Surgery on the right eye was scheduled for June 20, just three weeks later, preceded by some preparatory appointments including a biometric exam to acquire precise eye measurements. That exam also determined that there was nowhere near enough astigmatism to justify Toric lenses, which can correct astigmatism but involve an out-of-pocket expense in the low four figures. I would have spent the money if there had been a problem to solve that insurance would not cover, but I was relieved to find out otherwise.
In fact, I was relieved by many things I learned about
modern eye surgery. We live in an age that has made routine many procedures
that used to be either problematic or downright dangerous for past generations.
I was aware of this already on an intellectual level, but this experience made
it personal.
Just a year ago, as an adult nonfiction book awards judge
for the Society of Midland Authors, I had read The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister’s Quest to Transform
the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine, a remarkable piece of medical history by Lindsey
Fitzharris, for which our Honorable
Mention was merely one of several prizes, topped by the 2018 PEN/E.O.
Wilson Prize for Literary Science Writing. This graphic, often gruesome
story made me acutely aware of the benefits we enjoy from medical advances, for
only two centuries ago, it was demonstrably dangerous to visit doctors or
hospitals, who understood nothing about germs and infections and seldom
bothered to clean the instruments with which they performed their surgeries.
The result was a high death rate but no grasp of their cause. The story details
Dr. Joseph Lister’s struggle to prove that sanitation was essential, in the
face of a medical profession in the Victorian era that preferred not to believe
that its own practices put patients at risk. One can, of course, read much more
about this monumental shift in medical thinking that put many benighted practices
behind us. Nearly 15 years ago, in reading Dark
Horse: The Surprise Election and Political Murder of President James A.
Garfield, by Kenneth D. Ackerman,
I learned that Garfield’s death in 1881 was more the result of medical
malpractice and the refusal of his doctor to accept modern bacterial science
than a direct result of the assassin’s bullet. Historically speaking, we are
not so far removed from the Dark Ages, yet the medical advances of recent
decades have been stunning.
As someone who will turn 70 late this year, I am experiencing a growing appreciation of all that is possible with modern medical practice. Old age no longer need be the cavalcade of horrors that it once was. What is true generally is certainly true of modern ophthalmology. The time is not long past when cataracts were simply a fact of advancing age. The Bible is replete with references to lost vision as a result of age, such as “Isaac was old, and his eyes were dim, so that he could not see” (Genesis 27:1). The situation was common well into the 20th century. Although medical history documents surgical procedures for cataracts dating back for many centuries, a close reading of the techniques mostly reveals what must seem a catalogue of horrors from the perspective of modern patients. Couching, in which the lens was pushed into the rear of the eye with a curved needle, was replaced in the 1700s, at least in Europe, by extraction, which broke up the cataract and sucked it out. Johann Sebastian Bach underwent couching but remained blind and, in his case, died four months later. Nothing about these procedures sounds pleasant or painless, or without profound side effects.
It was not until the 1940s that
British ophthalmologist Harold Ridley hit upon the use of polymethylmethacrylate
(PMMA), a type of plastic that lacks any inflammatory qualities (so long as it
does not touch the iris) as an artificial lens implant, now known as the intraocular lens
(IOL). Among the inspirations for this approach to restoring sight was the
observation that Royal
Air Force pilots in World War II showed no adverse impacts from absorbing
PMMA when their fighter plane shields were shot out by German planes, leaving
tiny shreds of PMMA shrapnel in their eyeballs. This biological tolerance for
PMMA paved the way for the first transplant of an IOL in 1949 in London.
Subsequent innovation introduced the use of phacoemulsification, which permits
the use of ultrasound to emulsify the natural lens and eliminate the need for
removal with an incision. In short, the past half century of medical
improvements in this field has made a world of difference for patients like me
in 2019. The surgical success rate is now somewhere around 99.5 percent.
Especially considering that I had almost no other health problems that might
interfere with recovery, I was happy to take those odds. In fact, by the time
the second surgery was conducted, on the left eye, on June 26, I was mostly
just anxious to get it all over with.
The reason was simple. Until April, I was not even aware I had a cataract and had never given the possibility of it much thought. However, by May, aware that new glasses had solved nothing but increasingly aware of my own blurred sight, I found myself increasingly limited in my ability to read or work efficiently. One turning point came while I was in Manitoba. My agreement with the Manitoba Planning Conference was both to lead a three-hour workshop on the opening day (Wednesday) and provide a keynote address on the closing day. The workshop posed little challenge because I had converted a lengthy article I had produced for the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Natural Hazard Science, on “Planning Systems for Natural Hazard Risk Reduction,” into a teaching format with substantial audience participation. It was a small group in a small room, I knew the material thoroughly, and my need to rely on the screen to see my PowerPoints was minimal. Nothing challenged my visual acuity. Then, on Thursday, I was introduced to the format in the ballroom for the next morning’s keynote, in front of 250 Canadian planners. Two large screens would be on either side of me, facing the audience, but speakers should face the audience and not be looking at those screens, so another, smaller screen was set at the base of the dais, away from audience view, but allowing me to see the slide on display.
Presenting the keynote at the Manitoba Planning Conference in Brandon, Manitoba.
I quickly realized there was one
problem: I could not see the slides clearly. I knew right then that I did not
want to be squinting at slides in the middle of a tightly timed, 45-minute
presentation. I simply had to know the slides intimately so that the broad
image reminded me of what I wanted to say even if I could not quickly or
clearly discern the details of a graph.
And so it was. I undertook the extra work of memorizing those details overnight because only rarely do I speak from a script. I prefer to be able to remember what I want to say about each slide, but under ordinary circumstances, I can also see that slide in front of me, on a laptop screen or, in this case, a screen sitting on the platform. In this case, I had to wing it. I did it, and all was well. The main lesson was that I realized I had a noticeable problem two weeks before the ophthalmological exam confirmed it. For some people, cataracts grow slowly and can remain small enough not to merit surgical attention for months or even years. In my case, the cataract grew quickly, and my life had to adjust accordingly.
Dr. Pyatestsky with his assistant (and sister) Julia, who plans to start nursing school.
All that said, the adjustment has
changed a significant aspect of my life permanently. I have reading glasses for
computer work and reading newspapers, books, and the like. But for all other
purposes, including driving and physical activities, I now benefit from 20/20
vision. I am grateful to the medical staff at Northwestern, including Dr.
Pyatetsky, for their outstanding care and patient services. They have been excellent.
I am also simply grateful for living in the 21st century. There was
a time when people like me had few options once they had grown old “and their
eyes grew dim.”
Instead, I can enjoy life, exercise
safely, and continue to contribute to the world and community around me. I
consider that the very essence of satisfaction with life.
In 2013, the board of education of the Chicago Public Schools succeeded in closing
50 neighborhood schools, an action fully supported by Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Of
these, 90 percent had a majority of African American students, who comprised 80
percent of students in the closed schools. These, in turn, comprised fully
one-fourth of the city’s schools with a majority of both African American
students and African American faculty.
Chicago is not a city where people take abuse and discrimination lightly. Predictably, many parents in the affected neighborhoods rose up in civic rebellion. At Dyett High School, they launched a hunger strike to make their feelings known. Protesters succeeded in keeping Dyett open, but overall, little of this had any effect because Chicago has the only unelected school board in the state of Illinois. Instead, courtesy of special state legislation, the mayor appoints the members, who respond to the mayor, not the voters. Recent mayors have liked it that way.
If you imagine that this might be a political issue, you are exactly right. In the mayoral election that just last month culminated with the election of Lori Lightfoot, both she and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle vowed support for creating an elected school board. These two had emerged as the leading vote-getters from a mayoral field of 17 in the nonpartisan primary after Emanuel declined to seek reelection. As with many such things, the details will matter greatly in negotiations with legislators in Springfield, but Lightfoot’s 73 percent mandate unquestionably gives her considerable elbow room in the discussion. But such an outcome of the often harsh and certainly vigorous debate was hardly on the horizon when the closings occurred. So, too, was the explosive controversy over the police murder of Laquan MacDonald in 2014 until court-ordered release of the video exposed the official police explanation of the 17-year-old’s death as highly inaccurate. That set the stage for Emanuel’s exit from City Hall.
But back to the story of the school closings. This set of
events helped to poison relations between Emanuel and much of the black
community in Chicago even before the MacDonald shooting became the linchpin for
relations with the Chicago Police
Department. Lightfoot’s claim to fame—and she rose to challenge Emanuel
even before he decided not to run—was her role in police administrative reform.
With permission from University of Chicago Press
In her new book released last year, Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago’s South Side(University of Chicago Press), Eve L. Ewing, assistant professor in the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration, tackles the 2013 events to share with us why this was not just a one-off mistake by some misguided board members and school administrators, but part of a long history of institutional racism in the Chicago system. The closings did not happen in a vacuum; there was no blank slate. There was, instead, a powerful legacy of devaluing black students and their neighborhoods that played a significant role in the clash of world views between the powerful and the disempowered.
History matters. Ewing takes time to elucidate the migrations
of southern blacks between the world wars to northern cities including Chicago.
This was the origin of what has become known as the Bronzeville
neighborhood on the South Side. Ewing notes that the black population in Chicago
grew 360 percent in just two decades. However, while many other ethnic groups
immigrating to Chicago developed enclaves by choice, blacks were forced to do so
through a segregation enforced not by law, but by bombings and violence. Blacks
attempting to move into white neighborhoods faced serious retribution. From
1917 to 1921, she notes, 58 bombs “struck the homes of black residents, of
bankers who gave the mortgages, or of real estate agents who sold them
property.” This was an average of one bombing every 20 days. It is not hard to imagine
how this produced an intimidating effect for all concerned. The result was a
ghetto in which blacks were confined in increasingly dense concentrations,
eventually culminating in the infamous housing projects that lined the major
corridors of the South Side. But we get ahead of ourselves here. In order to squeeze
growing numbers of the southern arrivals into the same housing stock in a
geographically confined area, landlords began to carve up existing units into
ever smaller ones that came to be known as “kitchenettes,” often violating
building codes and safety standards. Gwendolyn Brooks, the famous African-American
poet laureate of Illinois, memorialized these housing atrocities in her poem, “Kitchenette
Building.”
Ewing discusses her book in an April lecture at DePaul University.
That, in turn, led to overcrowded schools in the affected neighborhoods, accompanied by the morally constipated unwillingness of powerful school officials to consider integrating schools or allocating substantial resources to those neighborhoods to allow their schools to work. Instead, Superintendent Benjamin Willis took over in 1953, in an era when schools did not systematically collect racial data and he could somewhat disingenuously proclaim himself color-blind. As Ewing observes, “Local black leaders were not convinced.” This was, after all, also the time of the Brown v. Board of Education decision, in which the United States Supreme Court ordered desegregation of public schools and overturned the philosophy of “separate but equal.” In time, Willis implemented a policy that placed black students in overcrowded schools in temporary aluminum auxiliary trailers that were soon derided as “Willis wagons,” while students attended for half-days while the affected schools ran double shifts.
By 1961, Ewing states, “tensions were flaring,” and a coalition
of civil rights groups undertook efforts to enroll black students in white
schools, where they were turned away despite vacancies. Operation Transfer
served to expose the inherent discrimination in the system. Other forms of
direct action followed, including black mothers visiting white schools to document
open spaces (they were arrested for trespassing), and lying down in front of
bulldozers preparing the ground for more trailers. Finally, the stage was set
for a mass walkout on October 22, 1963, “Freedom Day,”
in which more than 220,000 students boycotted school.
In short, the protests of 2013 had plenty of precedent, and the closings struck black parents not as an attempt to improve the education of their children—in areas losing population largely as a result of the demolition of the same public housing that once confined them—but as the destruction of families and networks that had grown in those neighborhoods over time. The full story is more complex and richly textured, but you begin to get the idea. Yet, the denial of this impact of history, and the insistence that new policies under Emanuel were somehow part of a clean slate to give disadvantaged students a fresh start, even as many had to cross gang lines and lost their lives to gun violence as they attended newly assigned schools, persisted.
That brings us to Barbara Byrd-Bennett, a black school superintendent chosen by Emanuel, who led the school closings. The fact that she was later convicted and imprisoned for taking kickbacks from a former employer and CPS contractor, escapes only those who suffer from a deprived sense of irony. Confronted at a public meeting with accusations of racism that touched a raw nerve, she reacted: “What I cannot understand, and will not accept, is that the proposals I am offering are racist. That is an affront to me as a woman of color.”
Ewing goes on, after quoting Byrd-Bennett at greater length, not only to examine the personal umbrage that Byrd-Bennett expressed, but the larger context of institutional racism, and the underlying question of why the schools in question were “underutilized” and “under-resourced” in the first place. After all, someone had made critical decisions to reallocate resources to charter schools and away from the very schools that were now being criticized for underperforming despite the clear history of policies that had helped make them so. The feeling of betrayal among parents and students in the schools facing closure was palpable, and the emotional commitment that led to a hunger strike was real. The fact that, yet again, the system found a way to turn a deaf ear to those who pleaded with the board to reconsider its approach spoke volumes about where power resided. There were numerous factors that led to this year’s election outcome, which also produced a growing progressive caucus in the City Council, but these battles over schools were surely among them.
The richness of Ewing’s book is much deeper than I can portray here, so I urge those interested in the topic to read it. Chicago is not alone in facing serious issues concerning the future of its public schools and fairness in the distribution of educational resources, so this book is not just for Chicago. It is for America.
Now, time for full disclosure: First, I was on a panel of three judges for the Society of Midland Authors that chose this book for honorable mention in adult nonfiction in our annual book awards context. That award will be bestowed at a banquet on May 14. Second, my wife is a retired Chicago Public Schools teacher and Chicago Teachers Union activist who wrote about the Dyett hunger strike and other actions against the school closings at the time they were happening. Her concern for students is not abstract and policy-driven but visceral and personal after decades in the classroom. There are many opinions about education policy in Chicago, but after three decades in the classroom, she has earned a right to hers.
GRATITUDE ON PARADE #gratitudeonparade One of the finest assets of any city or region is its cultural organizations, particularly for the arts. I’ve long been a member and officer of the Society of Midland Authors, a Midwest home for authors that is based in Chicago. And I’ve learned that these organizations don’t just maintain themselves. Dedicated people do hard work to sustain them. In the case of SMA, such people have done this for nearly 105 years since the group’s founding in 1915 with the likes of Harriet Monroe, Sherwood Anderson, and others. What a legacy.
In the current day, Thomas Frisbie, like his father, Richard, before him, has invested years of his life and countless hours of time as president, newsletter editor, and membership secretary, among other posts, helping to sustain the success of the Midland Authors, which maintain a thriving annual book awards contest, hundreds of author members, and monthly programs to enrich the cultural scene of Chicago and the Midwest. The organization would not be the same without him.
Posted on Facebook 4/8/2019
GRATITUDE ON PARADE
#gratitudeonparade In the tribute last night to Thomas Frisbie, I mentioned that the Midland Authors sponsor an annual book awards contest. For the last two years, I have been an adult nonfiction judge, and I have served on both adult nonfiction and biography panels in many years past. And sure enough, someone has to coordinate that whole operation, with 18 judges in six categories, an annual banquet to bestow the awards, and other duties, such as getting timely notice to publishers, tracking entry fees, seeing that plaques are made, etc. It’s a complex operation.
Several years ago, Marlene Targ Brill stepped into those shoes, seeking to rationalize the program and put it on a sounder financial footing. As the saying goes, she keeps the train running on time. She stares down challenges in lining up judges who can work together amicably to produce good decisions about winners and honorable mentions. She follows up with winning authors and their publishers. And she keeps smiling through it all, every hour of it volunteer work. Winners or not, the competing authors owe her a debt of gratitude, as do all of us in the organization. This is a major literary event for Chicago, and Marlene makes it work.
Just today, Greg Borzo sent out a complete list of dates for which he had lined up venues for programs for the 2019-2020 season for the Midland Authors. He’s on top of his job as the program coordinator for the Society. For the last two or three years, at least, he has been the indefatigable, cheerleading organizer of one provocative or fascinating program after another by authors and civic leaders with something to say and stories to tell. This function is part of what keeps the Midland Authors alive and thriving. Greg’s creativity in arranging these programs has been remarkable. For that, he earns our gratitude.
Want to find out? Check the schedule at midlandauthors.com and attend a program or two. You’ll be pleasantly surprised. And those photos below? Just a few of the engaging faces of tonight’s honoree for Gratitude on Parade.
Posted on Facebook 4/18/2019
GRATITUDE ON PARADE #gratitudeonparade The capstone of this series of tributes to leaders of the Midland Authors concludes with someone who, unfortunately, is no longer here to read it. But who knows, maybe he can anyway. It would be fitting. Richard Frisbie certainly deserved to hear it.
Richard
Frisbie was twice president of the Society of Midland Authors, and in between
and beyond was a constant presence on the board of directors, at its awards
banquets, and at many of its programs and functions. His humor, long memory,
and perspective contributed greatly to the organizations’ progress and good
judgment as it renewed itself for a brighter future in serving the Chicago and
Midwestern literary community. He had successful careers in both journalism and
advertising.
Like the rest of us, since we are all authors in SMA, he also wrote books. His brought fun into people’s lives, such as “It’s a Wise Woodsman Who Knows What’s Biting Him,” a guide to practical outdoor adventures. Along the way, Richard raised several children, one of whom, Tom, remains a key figure among the Midland Authors, while others are key players in civic and environmental enterprises across the Chicago area, such as Friends of the Chicago River. He and his departed wife, Margery, must have known what they were doing. They left quite a legacy. So here’s to you, Richard, watching over the rest of us, hopefully with pride.
I grew up near the shores of Lake Erie, in suburban
Cleveland. After a seven-year stint in Iowa and Nebraska, I ended up in
Chicago, where I have lived since 1985. The Great Lakes have been part
of my ecological and geographic consciousness for essentially 90 percent of my
lifetime. As an urban planner, that means I am deeply aware of their
significance on many levels.
It is thus always encouraging to see others pick up the same
mantle. It was hardly surprising that the Environmental
Law & Policy Center (ELPC), a long-time Chicago-based staple of the
public interest community, would see fit to do so. On March 20, in concert with
the Chicago Council on Global
Affairs, ELPC released “An
Assessment of the Impact of Climate Change on the Great Lakes,” with 18
scientists contributing to the 74-page report. I spoke two weeks later with Howard Learner, the
long-time president and executive director of ELPC, about the rationale and
hopes for the report.
The impact of adding one more report to the parade is
cumulative but important. Learner explained that national studies, particularly
the National Climate Assessment,
mention regional impacts of climate change, but that drilling down to the
impacts on a specific region and making local and state decision makers aware
of the issues at those levels was the point. Thus, he asked Don
Wuebbles, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Illinois and a
science adviser to ELPC, to assemble a team of experts for the purpose.
Wuebbles recruited most of the team, with the goal not only of identifying
problems but of developing or pinpointing solutions. Repeatedly, Learner
emphasized the public policy role of ELPC as a “problem-solving” institution.
The intended audience was governors, provincial ministers, congressional
delegations from Great Lakes states, and other public officials, providing them
with an assessment of the state of the science concerning the Great Lakes.
I won’t even attempt to review all the data in the report,
but certain points are essential to an adequate public understanding. For one,
the Great Lakes are simply huge and constitute a very complex ecosystem in a
heavily populated region of more than 34 million people in the U.S. and Canada,
the vast majority of whom repeatedly express support for protection of the
Great Lakes in public opinion polls. It is the largest freshwater group of
lakes on the planet, and second largest in volume. It is a binational ecosystem
that demands cooperation across state, provincial, and national boundaries. It
is home to 170 species of fish and a $7 billion fisheries industry. It has long
been home to one of the most significant industrial regions of both nations.
What happens here matters.
The term “lake effect” is most often associated with the Great Lakes because their sheer mass has a measurable impact on local and regional weather patterns. Winds pick up considerable moisture that often lands downwind in the form of snowstorms and precipitation. For instance, any frequent visitor of farmers’ markets along the Great Lakes is likely to be aware of western Michigan’s “fruit belt” offerings of apples, cherries, pears, and other crops dependent on the lake effect.
Figure 3. Observed changes in annually-averaged temperature (°F) for the U.S. states bordering the Great Lakes for present-day (1986–2016) relative to 1901–1960. Derived from the NOAA nClimDiv dataset (Vose et al., 2014). Figure source: NOAA/NCEI (Both images reprinted from report courtesy ELPC.
Figure
4. Projected change in annually-averaged
temperature (°F)
for U.S. states bordering the Great Lakes from the (a) higher (RCP8.5) and (b)
lower (RCP4.5) scenarios for the 2085 (2070-2099) time period relative to
1976-2005. Figure source: NOAA/NCEI
The lake effect, of course, is a part of the natural system
in a region carved out of the landscape by melting glaciers at the end of the
last Ice Age. Recent
climate change is another matter. The region has already experienced a 1.6°
F. increase in average daily temperatures in the 1985-2016 period as compared
to the 1901-1960 average. Those increases are expected to accelerate over the
remainder of this century. It is not just temperatures that change, however,
because changing weather patterns as a result of long-term climate change
result in altered precipitation patterns. Summer precipitation is predicted to
decline by 5 to 15 percent, suggesting some increased propensity for drought,
while winter and spring precipitation will increase, producing an increased
regional propensity for spring flooding. Increased intensity of major
thunderstorm events will exacerbate the vulnerability of urban areas to
stormwater runoff, resulting in increased “urban flooding,” often a result of
inadequate stormwater drainage systems in highly developed urban areas. That,
in turn, has huge implications for municipal and regional investments in
stormwater and sewage treatment infrastructure. In addition, heat waves can
threaten lives and public health. Public decision makers ignore these
implications at the fiscal and physical peril of their affected communities.
Among those impacts highlighted in the report is the
increased danger of algal
blooms in the Great Lakes as a result of changing biological conditions.
The report notes that the largest
algal bloom in Lake Erie history occurred in 2011, offshore from Toledo, Ohio, affecting drinking water for a
metropolitan area of 500,000 people.
There is also danger to the stability of some shoreline
bluffs, an issue highlighted on the Great Lakes Coastal Resilience website, as
a result of reduced days of ice cover during the winter. While less ice cover
may seem a minor problem to some, in fact it means changes in water density and
seasonal mixing patterns in water columns, but it also means the loss of
protection from winter waves from storm patterns because the ice cover prevents
those waves from reaching the shore until the spring melt. The result is
increased shoreline erosion.
All of that harks back to the central question of my
interview with Learner: What do you hope to achieve? “The time for climate
action is now,” he insisted, noting that the Trump presidency has been “a step
back,” making it important for cities and states to “step up with their own
climate solutions.” Learner hopes the report at least provides a “road map” for
governors and Canadian premiers to focus their actions on the impact of climate
change on the Great Lakes, such as “extreme weather events.”
Curiously, one arena in which new action may be possible is
the city of Chicago itself, which on April 2 elected a new mayor, Lori
Lightfoot. Media attention has focused on the fact that she is both the first
gay mayor and the first African-American female mayor in the city’s history,
but equally significant is her history as a former federal prosecutor who
campaigned against corruption. Learner notes that outgoing Mayor Rahm Emanuel
convened a Chicago Climate Summit in November 2017, and that ELPC is now
“looking to Mayor Lightfoot to step up Chicago’s game” to benefit both the
local economy and environment with a stronger approach to climate change.
The same can be said, of course, for numerous other
municipalities choosing new leadership and for the new governors of the region,
including J.B. Pritzker in Illinois. They all have much work to do, but an
increasing amount of research and guidance with which to do it.
The size of the American Planning Association‘s loss when Stuart Meck departed can be measured easily by the size of Rutgers University‘s gain when he joined their staff, a fact immortalized by the Rutgers decision to name a lecture series after him. Marya Morris, who probably worked most closely with him at APA, got the opportunity recently to present the eulogy at the opening of that series. She shared some memorable stories, including his near death in the early 2000s when he was struck with an intestinal infection while they both were in Prague. It seems the Czech government felt it could learn a great deal about planning law reform by having Stuart Meck lead a 12-session workshop on the subject for high government officials. Pretty heady stuff.
I also worked with Stuart, though not as much as Marya. But we teamed up on hazard mitigation content for his pet project, funded by seven federal agencies and a few foundations, on statutory reform of state planning laws, known as Growing Smart. We also teamed up on a PAS Report, Planning for Wildfires. That may have been more in my wheelhouse, but trust me, Stuart was no slouch in mastering new topics and contributed very substantially to the final product.
Between all these major efforts, he found time incessantly to mentor the younger research staff at APA and was an indefatigable cheerleader for his profession. Did I mention he also co-authored a tome on Ohio Planning and Zoning Law? His productivity was a miracle to behold, as was his willingness to defend what he believed in. He died sooner than most of us who knew him would have liked, but he still deserves his day in the sun. The photos below, of various phases of his life, were provided by his daughter, Lindsay Meck. Thanks, Lindsay, for your help in this regard.
Stuart was also a jazz fan.
Posted to Facebook 2/10/2019
GRATITUDE ON PARADE #gratitudeonparade It’s been a couple of weeks, and I’ve been busy, but I have a great one today. I visited with Eugene Henry last Thursday and Friday while in Florida. On Friday, February 22, Gene’s dedication drove him across the state to West Palm Beach to hear my lecture for Florida Atlantic University on “Recovery and Resilience,” followed by a panel discussion and reception. Mind you, it’s a four-hour drive from Tampa.
But the day before, he hosted my wife and me on a personal day-long tour of Hillsborough County to show me the work they have done on hazard mitigation to reduce risks from hurricanes and floods. In a day or two, I plan to post a blog article on this subject, but Gene for some time has been the hazard mitigation program manager for Hillsborough County, a large urban area that includes Tampa. Gene is, as my friend Lincoln Walther, one of the panelists in West Palm Beach, said, “one of the best.” He has pushed the program forward, and he was a force behind the development of a very progressive Post-Disaster Redevelopment Plan that Hillsborough County pioneered several years ago. Gene is looking forward to retirement in a few years, but his contributions have been outstanding and deserve serious recognition. He is a true leader in the mitigation field. Let this tribute be a beginning, followed by the upcoming blog post.
Posted to Facebook 2/26/2019
GRATITUDE ON PARADE #gratitudeonparade Today, I’d like to thank my long-time friend and high school classmate, David Taylor, and his wife, Linda, for their hospitality in sharing their home and time with us during our recent visit to Florida. David is the person who spurred me to come to Sarasota in the first place. He is also a photographer who used his resources, time, and energy, to film the entire two-hour program that I keynoted in West Palm Beach for Florida Atlantic University on February 22.
A Purple Heart Vietnam veteran, Dave is passionate about some subjects, including respect for veterans, and shared his stories with me and others about fighting his way back from serious injuries. He’s generous to the core but wise in his years. He was the emcee for our 50-year reunion last June in Brecksville, Ohio, for the Class of 1968. There is a lot I can say. He is currently taking film and history classes at State College of Florida with both students and professors younger than us, and enjoying it thoroughly because he has so much to share.
Most importantly, perhaps, he has gotten so
excited about what he heard from listening to me that he wants to take all that
talent and use it to help document disasters photographically, even as he
gorges his brain on all that I have produced. Here’s to a good friend still
finding his energy and a new mission in life as he nears 70.
The photo below? I cropped it to show him and Linda more closely, but the larger version, well, they’re standing under the Kissing Sailor statue in downtown Sarasota, which replicates that iconic photo from the end of WWII.
Posted to Facebook 2/27/2019
GRATITUDE ON PARADE #gratitudeonparade In the year after Hurricane Katrina, I met a young professor at University of New Orleans who was teaching transportation planning–John Renne. Soon, he had invited me to provide a closing keynote at a conference with a distinct theme: Carless Evacuation. Using a federal DOT grant, John was focusing attention on the central question of emergency management in the Big Easy: How do we move those people to safety who are the most vulnerable and lack independent transportation to just get out of town?
John has continued to raise vital questions like that ever since, even after moving in recent years to Florida Atlantic University. Florida faces plenty of its own questions concerning hurricane safety, and at 44, it would seem we can expect his contributions to keep coming. Recently, he and FAU hosted me to keynote a program on “Resilience and Recovery: Facing Disasters of the Future,” and I appreciated the chance to interact with planning professionals on what is known in Florida as the Treasure Coast. Bringing a hazards focus to transportation planning has been John’s unique and valuable asset not only regionally but nationally. FAU should be, and probably is, glad to have him.
In the photo below: Hank Savitch, Alka Sapat, myself, Lincoln Walther, John Renne. Hank, Alka, and Link joined me on the discussion panel that followed my talk in West Palm Beach a week ago. John was the moderator.
GRATITUDE ON PARADE #gratitudeonparade Along with John Erickson, Maryanne Salcetti played a key role in my early journalistic development. As the co-editor with her husband of the weekly news, a regional newspaper in Iowa City, she took me on as a part-time cub reporter while I was still in graduate school. That gave me some valuable early experience in local news reporting, mostly about small town government in the area. But she also knew and could see I had larger ambitions, and she encouraged them.
Later, after she had moved on to become an instructor in journalism at John Carroll University in east suburban Cleveland, she remained supportive when Raising Less Corn and More Hell came out from University of Illinois Press, and at one point had me speak to her class. A few years later, after my second book, Deeper Shades of Green, was released by Sierra Club Books, she secured a lecture invitation for me at John Carroll, supported by a team of three female students whom she engaged for promotion of the visit.
Unfortunately,
I have not heard from him and have not been able to locate information, but
heard at one point that she was very ill. I do not appear to have any photos
from back then, at least any that I can access. But that does not reduce her
impact. She was a fierce advocate of journalism as a profession and helped
instill that and high standards. I treasure the memory as a result.
One person who was remarkably influential in helping shape my perspective on the way through graduate school at the University of Iowa in the early 1980s was not even at the university, though he worked nearby. The Rev. Roy Wingate at Gloria Dei Lutheran Church in Iowa City, just blocks from the campus, provided a welcome mat for unorthodox, creative thinkers like me who needed to reestablish their relationship with the church. This was not new for him. In the late 1960s, he had at one point, when seeing students arrested for protesting the Vietnam War, insisted that he be arrested too in order to support their right to free speech.
When
I heard that, I knew he was my kind of preacher. Having grown up in a more
conservative, suburban Lutheran congregation in Cleveland, I was not sure where
I fit into the Lutheran tradition until I met people in Iowa who felt that
challenging war and injustice was a part of their faith. It’s not that I
thought everyone had to agree, but that they at least should allow space for
that perspective–which allowed space for me too. That was Roy’s approach. He
was a Big Tent Lutheran. That allowed me to find a home at a crucial turning
point in my life.
Unfortunately, not long after I had married my wife in Omaha and
we decamped for my new job in Chicago, Roy Wingate had a huge retirement
celebration at which he announced that doctors had given him a diagnosis of
prostate cancer. A year and a half later, he died. Just a few years ago, after
a fusion biopsy detected a minute amount of cancerous prostate tissue, I could
feel some solidarity. But fortunately for me, subsequent biopsies have never
found it again. I guess I’m luckier. But I still appreciate Roy’s role in
helping me find a new place in the church that I had not perceived earlier. And
we will meet again.
Posted on Facebook 1/30/2019
GRATITUDE ON PARADE
#gratitudeonparade
I do not have a photo at this distance in years, but I have discovered that Richard Wentworth is still in Illinois, though he retired as director of the University of Illinois Press in 2004. The path of a first-time book author into print is generally a challenging one, and I was busy making my way through this briar patch when Dick learned of my manuscript and agreed that it should find a home at the University of Illinois Press. Like books of most new authors, mine required some nurturing, but his editorial staff stuck with me until we saw a book into print and into reviews, including the New York Times, in the fall of 1988. They hosted me in Champaign at the beginning of a promotional tour that took me through Illinois, Missouri, Nebraska, and Iowa and taught me a great deal about relationships with broadcast and print media for a new author. Until you take this journey, you don’t’ know how valuable an ally a publisher can be. I trust he is enjoying his well-earned retirement.
GRATITUDE ON PARADE #gratitudeonparade I am devoting much of this week to people who contributed in significant ways to my early publishing career. For the last 35 years or more, I have mixed journalism and writing skills with technical and professional knowledge to fulfill my aspirations. Many people helped make that possible.
One of them was my advisor for the master’s program in journalism
at the University of Iowa, John Erickson. I have no photo to offer from way
back then or more recently. He is now emeritus
professor, and I hope enjoying a well-earned retirement, but I have not heard
from him in a long while.
Nonetheless,
way back in early 1984, when I needed to decide on a master’s project to
complete my degree requirements, I met with him to state that I wanted to turn
my project into a published book when I was through. We had the choice of a
practical journalistic project or an academic investigation on some subject
related to mass communications. I chose the former, in the form of an oral
history project concerning a major issue in Iowa at the time–the growing farm
credit crisis.
Completely unfazed by my audacity, John quickly wrote out two
titles of books he thought would help me think through my strategy. Both
concerned oral history and interviewing techniques. I ordered the books, went
to work, and began networking across the Midwest to find farmers to interview
on the subject, eventually taping interviews with more than 70. When I had
about 140 pages of a book completed, John insisted that was enough for the
project and I should turn them in–and complete the book later. Three years
after earning my degree, Raising Less Corn and More Hell was released by
University of Illinois Press. Only after that, for fear of jinxing success, did
he tell me it was the first master’s project in the school’s history, at least
to his knowledge, to achieve commercial publication. But he provided steady
encouragement all along the way and always seemed to know I could pull it off.
Call him my chief enabler. I never gave him nearly enough credit, so this is my
feeble partial payment. Thanks, John, wherever you are.
Posted
on Facebook 1/22/19
GRATITUDE ON PARADE #gratitudeonparade Two days ago, I noted the important role played by Professor John Erickson in the development of my first book. As i roamed the Midwest collecting the interviews that were at the core of Raising Less Corn and More Hell, there were many people who were helpful, but some were especially supportive of my project from the moment we first met.
Among
those people were Gary and Mary Beth Janssen. Gary went through tough times as
a farmer in northern Iowa, and he and Mary Beth eventually moved to Emporia,
Kansas, after she studied to become a teacher. In Kansas, Gary began to grow
organic vegetables and provided fresh produce to local schools for school
lunches.
But in the 1980s, while I was researching and
writing my book, Gary provided numerous contacts and referrals within the
farming community to make my work possible. We grew close enough that he and
Mary Beth drove to Omaha for our wedding in June 1985. After the book was
published, Gary was an enthusiastic grass roots promoter. Without him, much of
it might never have happened.
Unfortunately,
Gary died of complications from colon and liver cancer in September 2013. Mary
Beth has survived him, and I am still grateful to both of them.
Posted on Facebook 1/24/2019
GRATITUDE ON PARADE #gratitudeonparade I have discovered that my biggest obstacle to completing one of these tributes every day is not writing; that part is very easy for me. I barely know what writer’s block is. It is the fact that, Facebook being what it is, I prefer to find photos of the people for whom I am expressing thanks, and when, as I did this week, I reach into the more distant past, sometimes finding those photos is a challenge. For many people involved in helping me see my first book to completion, it just takes a while. Many photos I had in the 1980s preceded my ownership of a computer and have never been digitized, if I even had a photo in the first place. It is turning out to be a major undertaking with major competition for my time. I have had to compromise. Some photos are still on their way from sources I had to track down.
While I figure that out, I want to honor someone else of more recent vintage. At the end of 2013, a year in which I took 23 trips on APA business, five more teaching at the University of Iowa, and some personal trips, I realized I needed to do something serious to stay resilient. I enrolled in a new health club (X Sport Fitness) and arranged for a trainer just before New Years’ Day. I was about to undertake the new routine when I had to delay it because of a pinched nerve in my shoulder that occurred on that holiday. A few weeks later, I began my new routine with a good trainer, but he left abruptly a year later.
Then
came Mike Caldwell, one of the most talented, thoughtful, creative, and
dedicated personal trainers I am likely to encounter in that business. He pays
very close attention to my development and ensures the routines are well
attuned to my current situation. I have learned a great deal about fitness
techniques and achieved things, now at 69, that I never did when I was much
younger. I could not ask for more and have no regrets. Particularly at my age,
fitness matters, and good advice in that arena matters even more. So here’s to
Mike, a true pro at what he does.
It is hard to know where to start in describing why the privatization
of prisons is a terrible idea. The effective abandonment of public responsibility
for the fate and welfare of people sentenced to incarceration after being convicted
of various crimes—some of whom, in recent years, have been exonerated because of
revelations of sloppy or corrupt police work—should speak deeply to the
conscience. Apparently, in some legislative circles, however, money counts for more.
The lobby for private prisons has made headway over time at both the federal
and state levels.
To find out whether and how private prisons are particularly
dysfunctional, Shane Bauer, a senior
reporter for Mother Jones, went undercover at Winn
Prison in Louisiana, an operation of Corrections Corporation of America (CCA)
under contract with the state. Not totally undercover, mind you. He used his own
name, and had CCA checked him out as he applied for a $9-per-hour job as a
corrections officer, they might have wondered why someone with his background would
want to work there. But CCA has a problem. Guards working just above minimum
wage tend not to last long, and CCA needs bodies in uniforms, so the hiring process
appears less than diligent. He was hired easily and worked at Winn for four
months before it was time to leave. But more on that later.
For the record: Guards at public prisons in Louisiana, Bauer
reports, started at $12.50 an hour. Not a lot, but almost 40 percent more than
CCA was paying. Undoubtedly with better benefits.
Let me state at the outset that the resulting book, American Prison (Penguin Press, 2018), which follows his reporting in Mother Jones, is not my normal reading. Regular followers of this blog can figure out what I like to read, for the most part. But I am currently a judge in adult nonfiction for a book awards contest for the Society of Midland Authors, so this and many others arrived at my doorstep, day after day, until the deadline arrived earlier this month. Prisons, correctional policy, and the business of punishment are well outside my areas of expertise, and I am glad of that, but I know a book that demands public attention when I see one. This one will be an eye-opening experience even for some cynics. It will also be heart-wrenching for anyone with a moral core or a sense of human decency.
Before I delve into the details, I must express my admiration
for Bauer’s courage in even undertaking this project. For one thing, he had
prior experience with prisons—as an inmate. Several years ago, while Bauer was covering
the Middle East, he and two friends, Josh Fattal and Sarah Shourd, went hiking and wandered
too close to the Iranian border in Kurdish Iraq. All
three were arrested. He was taken to the notorious Evin
prison, where he spent considerable time in isolation before his eventual
release. Shourd was released after about a year in a separate prison. That
experience might very justifiably have kept most other people from even considering
working in a prison, but Bauer has instead developed a commitment to prison
reform. Meanwhile, the CEO of CCA, Damon
Hininger, earned $4 million in 2018, according to Bauer, 20 times the
salary of the director of the Federal Bureau of
Prisons. Just sayin’.
Bauer does not simply relate his experiences at Winn Prison.
He has done his homework on the history of making money from prisons and prison
labor. He points out that many immigrants to the American colonies were convicts
exported from England as indentured servants.
Many fortunes in the United States, sometimes vast fortunes, have been built on
free (meaning forced) labor from slaves and convicts. But the business of
prison labor being used for profit took wing mostly after the Civil War, when
the 13th
Amendment abolished slavery with one loophole: “except as punishment for a
crime.” The opportunity to convict multitudes of African-Americans, as well as
a fair number of hapless poor whites, for even minor crimes, opened the door
for leasing convict labor. That, in turn, led to horrific conditions as
legislatures, especially in the South, sought ways to reduce the costs of penitentiaries
by making them profitable—thus, the institution of the prison farm, and later,
chain gangs.
That conditions were often horrid on plantations and chain
gangs is beyond dispute. Bauer provides ample statistics and documentation including
large percentages of deaths in places like Alabama. But individual stories sometimes
often serve better to illustrate the moral degradation of prisons for profit.
Bauer supplies us with the once infamous case of Martin Tabert, a white,
22-year-old middle-class kid from North Dakota who in 1921 set out to tour the
country as a personal adventure. He ran out of money in Florida, between odd
jobs along the way, and was arrested and pulled off a train by the sheriff for
not having a ticket. Tabert wired his family for money, but before it arrived,
he was sold off to the Putnam Lumber Company for three months of work in a
turpentine camp. He worked all day in swamp water in “tattered shoes that didn’t
fit.” When he had an aching groin and lagged behind other convicts, the “whipping
boss” made him lie on the ground for thirty lashes in front of the other
convicts. After additional beating and being hit over the head with a strap, he
died the following night. The company sent a note to his family saying he died
of fever. Not satisfied with the explanation, the family convinced the North
Dakota state attorney to go to Florida to investigate. His findings, including the
company’s agreement to pay the sheriff $20 for each prisoner he sent to them,
produced a major scandal, a lawsuit, and an investigation by the Florida
legislature.
All of that highlights the fact that, for decades, some
states wavered between episodes of investigation and reform and a desire to limit
the prison budget and make the penal system earn money. One might think that,
in more enlightened times, we might get past that sort of moral cowardice and
come to terms with public responsibilities to provide opportunities for at
least the less violent or nonviolent prisoners to make amends, acquire skills,
and rehabilitate themselves for participation in what we might hope would
become a less dangerous society.
But private prisons, and major problems even at public
prisons, persist because America has not yet moved beyond moral indifference
and hard-nosed, but short-sighted notions like “throw away the key.” I do not
say that to minimize the very real challenges involved in incarcerating felons
in the first place. Bauer himself, as he details his experiences as a
corrections officer at Winn, confronts much of the moral ambivalence of handling
such responsibilities, including the head games and manipulation in which prisoners
often engaged at his expense. The moral turmoil of maintaining control of a
potentially violent setting is significant, but it also serves to underscore
the moral turpitude of trying to do so in a private prison staffed by guards
who are earning barely above the minimum wage. That, of course, cuts costs, as
does minimizing medical care for inmates and many other short cuts. Bauer plies
us with statistics including comparisons of suicide rates between public and
private prisons. But again, a personal story highlights a major problem. Bauer
tells of one inmate, Damien Coestly, who hangs himself. His suicide is not
reported by CCA, he tells us, because he died in the hospital, not at the
prison. Never mind that the scenario played out at the prison. Just get the guy out of our prison before he
dies on our watch. Good grief.
Now, at some point, you know this whole undercover operation
must end. I will not spoil the story for you, nor even share how he got so much
information out of the prison on a daily basis. But the epilogue details how and
when he decided the time had come to pack up and leave, reporting his resignation
by phone from the safety of neighboring Texas. Just read it. It is high drama, making
Bauer’s subsequent arrival at the annual shareholders meeting of CCA in
Nashville almost anticlimactic, but revealing, nonetheless. If this book does
not affect your outlook on the whole subject of incarceration for profit, I
swear, there is something wrong with you.
Summarizing the major points from a densely factual book like Firestorm: How Wildfire Will Shape Our Future, by Edward Struzik (Island Press, 2018), is about as challenging as understanding precisely what is happening in the midst of a rapidly moving massive wildfire. While California is not the focus of Struzik’s book, I might note that confronting such fires in November, such as we have seen on the news in recent weeks, ought to prod more interest in the recent National Climate Assessment and similar climate change science. The wildfire season most decidedly used to be shorter in California, a point Gov. Jerry Brown has made repeatedly. Put more bluntly, it is time to drop the political knee-jerk reactions and study the findings.
Horse Fire at Fort McMurray, Alberta, 2016. Photo from Wikipedia
In Firestorm, Struzik takes us north, much farther north. He starts his story by focusing on the utterly hellish nightmare of the May 2016 scene surrounding Fort McMurray, Alberta, during what became known as the Horse Fire, or among firefighters simply as “The Beast.” People with moderately long news memories may recall following this fire for several days and nights on television, as the fire swept through an area dominated by oil sands development, the heart of Canada’s energy sector. As Struzik notes, megafires (defined as exceeding 100,000 acres in size) are nothing new or unusual in the boreal forests of Canada and Alaska. Three fires bigger than The Beast had occurred in Canada since 1950.
Not so long ago in human history, however, the consequences would have seemed less catastrophic because of the lack of large human settlements in the area, which is not to say that such fires would not have affected native villages and smaller towns. But energy development has brought urban development, and Fort McMurray in 2016 was a city of 88,000 people. As the wildfire attacked and surged through the area, generating massive confusion, it destroyed an estimated 2,800 homes and buildings, burned nearly 1.5 million acres, and produced nearly $9 billion in total losses, including predicted insurance losses of $3.77 billion. The book does not state whether these are U.S. or Canadian dollars (worth about 10 percent less), but I am assuming U.S. given its publication in the states. Either way, it is a massive impact. It is certainly a staggering economic impact on a province like Alberta, home to such facilities as the Imperial Oil plant, which according to Struzik produces 220,000 barrels per day of the bitumen that helps fuel Canadian energy exports.
Much of Struzik’s book, which often starts chapters with quotes from Dante’s Inferno, tours us through the ground-level experience of the fire in and around Fort McMurray in early May 2016. We follow police who worry about family members evacuating, police who work door to door warning people to evacuate, hospital workers preparing for incoming casualties, and highways filled with bumper-to-bumper traffic including people in SUVs abandoning their vehicles in ditches after running out of gas, with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) ensuring that such people found alternative rides to safe destinations. Air tankers fly low over the fire to drop their loads of retardant, and helicopters scoop water from nearby lakes in 180-gallon buckets to disperse as strategically as possible. Wildfire response is no less sophisticated or expensive than in the U.S., although Struzik notes some Canadian pride in protecting firefighter safety and eschewing the “hotshot” approach that can lead to heroic but tragic deaths. He paints a realistic but deeply troubling portrait of the human elements of confronting a massive wildfire.
RCMP responding to wildfire in northern British Columbia. Photo from RCMP website
If such fires in the far north are not new, then what, if anything, is the impact of climate change? As has been pointed out many times, it is folly to link any one event directly to climate change, tempting though it may be for many people. The reality is more profound and concerning. Since the 1970s, in Canada, the area burned has doubled, with the prediction that it may double again by mid-century and possibly triple by 2100. In short, the connection to climate change is not any one fire, a natural phenomenon in a fire-adapted environment, but in increased frequency.
Ashes and devastation after the fire at Fort McMurray. From RCMP website
As California has learned, that frequency can also be abetted by a longer fire season, itself a product of climate change. Struzik explains the fire triangle, a combination of heat, dryness or low humidity, and oxygen. On May 3, 2016, the temperature around Fort McMurray was 91°F. The humidity was only 13 percent. For those unfamiliar with the boreal forest, it may be surprising to learn that such temperatures are not entirely unusual in the summer, even in Alaska, with much longer days than in southern latitudes, just as winter brings deeper freezes and very short days. It is a climate of extremes. But climate change is warming the far north faster than almost anywhere else, producing the loss of polar ice caps and the melting of glaciers. Montana, Struzik says, may see average temperatures rise by 5° F., and Montana has major wildfire issues already. Melting ice caps and glaciers are factors in sea level rise, which in turn affects major cities like New York and Miami much farther south, but Struzik notes that we are all connected in other ways to the fate of the northern forest. In a major wildfire like that in Alberta, air quality has been shown to suffer in places like Chicago because of the upper atmospheric drift of ashes and pollution. Northern Alberta may seem a world away, but it will never be distant enough to have no impact below the border.
Personally, I find the science behind all this intriguing, at all levels. Most people, for instance, may not know the origin of the term “firestorm,” which grew out of the cataclysmic 1871 wildfire in Peshtigo, Wisconsin, which took more than 1,500 lives, the deadliest in American history. The term refers to the behavior of lightning storms in pyrocumulonimbus clouds (aka pyroCBs), which involve an updraft “that sucks smoke, ash, burning materials, and water vapor” high into the sky. As these cool, they perform like classic thunder clouds. But a chemical reaction forestalls any rainfall, allowing the lightning strikes to stoke and expand the fire. The phenomenon remains a mystery and subject of intense study for meteorologists. It is also obviously terrifying and deadly for those beneath it.
Ultimately, in such a book, the question is what we are going to do about the problem. Both the U.S. and Canada have struggled to find appropriate ways to fund wildfire response and suppression, although it is clear also that more money needs to be directed to mitigation and preparation. Firefighting by itself is a completely futile approach. Struzik emphasizes a need in both nations to invest more in scientific research and in developing a “holistic plan” to deal with wildfires when they occur. The price of not developing a better approach, he says, includes the loss of clean water, of birds and animals who will lose their habitat as the problem intensifies, and the loss of jobs afforded by the forest environment. That research must inevitably account for the impacts of humanly generated climate change in coming decades, a task that should never be underestimated because, as one scientist notes in Struzik’s last chapter, keeping up with climate literature is like “drinking from a fire hose,” a curious metaphor in light of the problem. We must also be realistic. Nature has always provided for natural recovery because fire is a natural phenomenon, but it is the pattern of recovery that may change significantly in a changing natural environment.
