Standards of Public Behavior

Posted on August 25, 2018 by admin

Like John McCain’s assuredly final book, The Restless Wave, I read Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence, by James R. Clapper, in large part because my wife bought it for me. The usual pathway to my desk for books I discuss in this blog is that they get sent as review copies from a publisher.

Not so in this case. Jean follows much more news in her retirement, hears about books by current and former public officials, and occasionally chooses to bring one to my attention by buying it. She knows that I am likely to read it, though it may take a while if I get bogged down with other business. I am also unlikely to read the entire spate of such books in this age of Trump because I don’t have enough time. They seem to be multiplying like rabbits.

Clapper is quite clear that he never envisioned writing such a book until he retired, in large part because, as a largely nonpolitical intelligence officer, his accustomed role was to lie low and avoid publicity. At the peak of his career, as the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) under President Barack Obama, he says, he saw his mission as “speaking truth to power.” Like any other high-ranking administration official, Clapper had better and worse days, agreements and disagreements, with the President, but retained a deep respect for the occupant of the office both because of the importance of that office and the dignity of the individual performing the job. Any individual who has ever held a responsible position in business or in public life knows well the profound difference between disagreement and disrespect. In the end, the boss calls the shots. Moreover, Clapper makes clear that, as first a military officer, and then a civilian intelligence professional following his retirement from the Air Force, he served under successive administrations of both parties and retained the same respect for those above him.

He spends most of the book laying the groundwork for the final chapters about life at or near the top of the system. He details his childhood, in which he once managed inadvertently to hack through his family’s television into the communications system of the Philadelphia police, into college and the Air Force and training as a military intelligence officer. Like most public servants, he did not perform his job in his early years with any expectation of someday becoming the nation’s chief intelligence officer. He simply grew into a role that eventually put him repeatedly in front of congressional committees, testifying at hearings about everything from Benghazi to budgets to Russian meddling in the 2016 election. The time he invests in illuminating a background that has otherwise been largely out of the limelight helps us to understand the journey he has made from a lowly son of another itinerant military professional to someone with deep insights into where the nation has lately gone astray.

It is almost surely the unnerving experience of watching Donald Trump become president, even as the evidence of Russian meddling in the U.S. election system was mushrooming—much of which he was at times unable to discuss because the information was classified, or the investigation was underway and under the purview of the FBI, not the DNI—that seems to have dislodged any reservations he once had about sharing this story in a memoir. Like McCain, he uses the aid of a speechwriter, but neither man ever set out to be a professional writer. Still, it is perfectly clear that it is Clapper who assembled the facts for this intriguing book. The insights are clearly his own.

What troubles Clapper is hardly surprising, once one understands the philosophy that has guided his career, one commonly shared among lifelong public servants. There are certain expectations of loyalty to the nation, of the dignity of public service, and of public decency that seem to drive Clapper. No doubt, these motivations also affect many others on the growing list of critics whom President Donald Trump has recently targeted for loss of their security clearances. The sheer amateurishness of this dangerously autocratic move on Trump’s part, already applied to former CIA Director John Brennan, is apparent from the fact that several people on the announced list of those targeted for such scrutiny no longer have security clearances anyway. Would someone explain to Trump the Petulant that you can’t strip a security clearance that does not exist?

This appalling ignorance of history, law, and policy, and the consistent refusal to listen to advisers, certainly the refusal to accept the value of truth spoken to power, all appear to have played a role in driving Clapper, who is on Trump’s list, to construct his memoir and share his fears of the direction in which current events are leading the nation. There is a moment when respect for the office of the presidency is overshadowed by concerns about the abuse of power, as was the case under Richard Nixon. But this week’s events are beginning to suggest that even Watergate may not stand as the worst abuse of presidential power in American history. We cannot be afraid to say so. Clapper, who has made the round of news shows in recent months, states frankly near the end of his book:

I don’t believe our democracy can function for long on lies, particularly when inconvenient and difficult facts spoken by the practitioners of truth are dismissed as “fake news.” I know that the Intelligence Community cannot serve our nation if facts are negotiable. Just in the past few years, I’ve seen our country become polarized because people live in separate realities in which everyone has his or her own set of facts—some of which are lies knowingly distributed by a foreign adversary. This was not something I could idly stand by and watch happen to the country I love.

And so, he quotes General George Patton about how to move forward:

“The time to take counsel of your fears is before you make an important battle decision. That’s the time to listen to every fear you can imagine. When you have collected all the facts and fears and made your decision, turn off all your fears and go ahead.”

And hence the book’s title. It is an intelligent choice. Like Clapper with the presidents and superior officers he served in a five-decade career, I could probably question or object to some points he makes, but his larger points are impeccable. They are about honor and truth and service and honesty. Either you believe these ideals exist and matter, or you don’t. America must decide.

Jim Schwab

When Denial Is Not an Option

Posted on July 31, 2018 by admin

Wildlife in the Louisiana wetlands. All images in this post by and courtesy of Kristina Peterson.

It has always amazed me how much time and energy has been wasted, particularly in the U.S., on the denial of climate change in the face of so much scientific evidence. Sea level rise is a directly measurable phenomenon. So are changes in precipitation patterns over time. The fallback denial position, once the data are made clear, is that we do not know what is causing the change that we see, and therefore it is pointless to point to human influence on the environment. This, too, is of course nonsense because the theory behind the impact of greenhouse gases on warming temperatures has been with us for more than a century and has been validated for several decades. Yet, in the world of politics, the silliness goes on. And on.

One intriguing aspect of this denial is that distance from the problem seems to lend itself to a greater disposition toward denial. It is easier to ignore a problem that does not confront you visibly and directly. This distance need not be geographic; it can also be social and economic. Those near the seacoast with greater wealth and the ability to protect their property may not feel the pain of increased flooding and sea level rise nearly as much as poor homeowners who have fewer options to move or rebuild. For the same reason, if one can avoid loaded political language and discuss practicalities, it is possible to get many farmers to observe that growing seasons have grown longer, droughts have grown drier, and that something has surely changed in recent decades. As the saying goes, it is what it is.

Elizabeth Rush will not let us forget what is. In Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore, she gently but firmly seizes our attention to lead us through coastal communities that are already experiencing the ravages of sea level rise. She does not focus on projected damages or what may happen in three generations. She speaks powerfully, poetically, lyrically about what happens to people in communities that have depended on coastal ecosystems for generations but now must face the prospect of relocating or abandoning the places to which they belong, of which they have been an organic part. We visit communities in Florida, Louisiana, San Francisco Bay, and New England that are witnessing permanent change in their shorelines and the loss of neighborhoods and towns that are no longer viable. She takes us on hikes through forests and wetlands that are already changing or have changed permanently, where scientists are documenting the adaptation of plant and animal species to changing weather and higher water.

Albert Naquin (in Santa Claus pose)

Rush is not a scientist but a scientifically literate environmental journalist with poetry in her bones and empathy in her manner. She sits down with Isle de Jean Charles Indians in the Louisiana bayou to discuss their removal from a once robust island that has shrunk from 55 square miles to less than one square mile in the past century, a place where few can still live and many have left already. Albert Naquin talks in poignant terms about his tribe’s struggle to reassemble a homeland further inland on higher ground in the face of numerous bureaucratic obstacles at both the federal and state level. Rush allows many other actors, in places from Maine to Staten Island to Pensacola, to speak in their own voices and tell us firsthand of the wrenching experience of loss and relocation. This is not a book about those with the means to choose their homesite. This is about people who have known and adapted to one place for a long time and have no options left. The book reminds us vividly that the issue of climate change is as much about people as it is about abstract scientific concepts.

Members of the Isle de Jean Charles community.

Over the years, with the hurricanes and the land loss and flooding, many people have been displaced. It got to the point that if something wasn’t done eventually there would be no Native community, no more people of the Isle de Jean Charles. Many of those that left, it looks like they’re going to be included too, and I think for them especially this relocation can do some good. The island is already a skeleton of its former self and that’s what’s happening inside the community as well. When we relocate to higher ground we will at least be able to hold on to each other. I mean if we can stay together, then we haven’t lost as much.

. . . . I mean really we are talking about having to choose to move away from our ancestral home. I know a lot of people figure we would be celebrating, to be moving to firmer ground and all. But it’s not like I threw a party when I heard about the relocation. I’ll be leaving a place that has been home to my family for right under two hundred years.

Chris Brunet

Of course, many others have experienced the pain and mixed feelings of forced relocation. Coastal storms and inland flooding have led to the buyouts and relocations of thousands of Americans in recent decades, and the toll climbs with every Hurricane Katrina, Harvey, Irma, or Maria. The toll will continue and grow.

Nolia Naquin, Albert’s sister.

Still, Rush’s book is not the typical call to action of a climate change activist. Rush is engaged more clearly and subtly in attempting to adjust our mindset, showing us in real terms the impacts of a history of environmental racism in which the least fortunate live in the most vulnerable neighborhoods, less by choice than because of a historic lack of options. She is raising our awareness of our historic ignorance about the ecological value of wetlands, which has caused us to compromise their protective functions and make shorelines more vulnerable. She is introducing us to the powerful sense of place of traditional communities, a sense that is generally lacking in affluent vacation homes by the sea. She is sensitizing us to a sense of doom in some communities and the lost opportunity felt by the departing residents. In short, she wants us not just to know but to feel the immediate loss produced by sea level rise today.

There are many volumes of studies and reports where one can acquire detailed scientific data about climate change. I have cited many for readers of this blog, and they are important. But it is also important to understand this crisis on its most human level. Helping us do that is Rush’s forte. Rising is a great introduction to the human cost of our global environmental neglect.

Jim Schwab

We Must Be Gandalf

Posted on July 18, 2018 by admin

It is a dramatic and evocative scene. In The Two Towers, the second novel of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, Grima Wormtongue, a spy at the service of the evil wizard Saruman, has gained control of the mind of Théoden, the king of Rohan, which is on the verge of being attacked by the Orcs, Saruman’s army of vicious creatures. Just in time, Gandalf, the wizard who is aiding the hobbit Frodo in his quest to destroy the Ring, succeeds in freeing Théoden from the influence of Wormtongue, at which point he rallies his beleaguered people to relocate to Helm’s Deep to defend them from the oncoming attack.

The Lord of the Rings is, of course, a fantasy, but a literarily sophisticated one that mirrors many classic human moral and political dilemmas. Tolkien might never have anticipated anything like the current relationship between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, but he clearly understood how an aggressive enemy would seek to weaken its opponent from within by kneecapping its leadership. The Monday press conference in Helsinki of the Russian and U.S. presidents is as close an analogy in real life to the Rohan crisis as one can imagine.

Clearly, Trump’s pitiful performance has earned opprobrium from both Democrats and Republicans, though many of the latter are still cowering in the shadows and reluctant to speak out. The mere idea that a U.S. president would defend a Russian dictator while casting aspersions on the findings of his own intelligence agencies concerning a well-documented effort by Russia to subvert American elections would have been the stuff of wild fiction just a few years ago. Today, Trump is not only under the spell of the evil KGB wizard but is apparently a willing apologist, if not an accomplice. Robert Mueller is a skillful investigator but not a wizard. There is no Gandalf to free Trump from Putin’s influence, and he will not be rallying his people to defend our nation against further sabotage. Donald Trump is clearly more interested in defending what he perceives as his legitimacy in the presidency than in defending the interests of his nation. Call that what you will, but it is our current state of affairs.

Those still deluded enough to give Russian President Putin the benefit of the doubt could benefit, if they still have an open mind, from reading “Nyet” (Know Thine Enemy), a chapter of John McCain’s recent book, The Restless Wave, in which he delineates his two decades of experience with Putin and his dismal record of aggression and human rights violations. His 40 pages of documentation are probably more than enough for the average voter, but those willing to probe further could also benefit from Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen’s incisive exposé, The Man without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin. Want more proof? Try Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible by Peter Pomerantsev, an eerie tour of the surreal world of news production inside Putin’s Russia. There is more, but those books should constitute adequate persuasion. Putin is anything but a benign force in the world.

Like everyone else following the news, I am well aware of Trump’s lame attempt on Tuesday to walk back some of what he said, once he was safe in the White House again and not standing alongside Putin in Helsinki. He claimed he meant “wouldn’t” when he said he didn’t see “why it would be” Russia that had interfered in our 2016 election. Frankly, it reminds me of a skit from the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in 1968 that I have never forgotten. Comedian Pat Paulsen played the part of a candidate for the presidency, and Tom and Dick asked him about something he had said. He claimed he never said any such thing, so they rolled the videotape, which showed him saying verbatim exactly what they had just alleged. Paulsen’s curt but absurdly comic reaction: “I was misquoted.” It makes me wonder how the brothers and Paulsen captured the essence of Trump 50 years before his time. Some people are just prescient, I guess.

The situation affords two paths to American redemption, regardless of all the silly hearings Republican-led congressional committees may stage to divert our attention to hapless individuals like Peter Strzok, who had the misfortune of being exposed for the unwise use of his FBI phone to exchange political messages with his lover. The idea that this tempest in a teapot represents some vast conspiracy of bias in federal law enforcement is ludicrous. Congress should be spending its time on real issues, including Russian interference in U.S. elections, but Republican committee chairs would rather waste their credibility to protect Trump from further scrutiny.

So, what are those two paths? One is clearly legal and involves the ongoing, probing, extremely professional work of Mueller and his team of investigators, who have already brought dozens of indictments and several guilty pleas, as well as jail for Paul Manafort when it became clear to a judge that he was attempting to influence potential witnesses. That will move forward unless Trump proves rash enough to attempt to fire him. So far, that has been a bridge too far.

The other path is political and involves democracy at its best. Even long-time conservative George Will, referring to Trump as “this sad, embarrassing wreck of a man,” is now urging voters to put Democrats in charge of Congress in the November election. Will has not changed parties. Instead, he feels Republicans need a thorough electoral thrashing at the hands of voters in order to come to their senses. Democratic takeover of the U.S. House would mean a complete shift in committee leadership, with hearings on critical issues taking on real meaning, leaving the President with nowhere to hide. Voter activism need not be limited to voting, however. Rallies in the streets, knocking on doors, letters to the editor, and all the other tools of advocacy are available to the patriots who care about their country and are willing to demand better leadership.

This nation remains a democracy despite Trump’s dubious intentions. We have met Gandalf, and he is us. Gandalf in our dilemma is the collective power of our democratic resistance and our votes. It is up to us to protect our republic from the influence of Putin and his cyber-agents.

Jim Schwab

Stop the Madness

Posted on June 17, 2018 by admin

I am angry on Father’s Day. I am deeply disturbed by what I am seeing. I am a Christian who is insulted by the use of the Bible to justify the separation of children from parents who brought them to the U.S. border in search of safety and political asylum. First, it is a policy decision of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the Trump administration that the United States will not consider flight from violence and gang warfare a reasonable excuse for seeking asylum. The families now being torn apart with minimal ability even to find out where their parents or children are made a dangerous trek across hundreds of miles in the belief that this country would treat them with some sort of dignity once they surrendered at the border with a request for asylum. Few, if any, expected the treatment now being imposed upon them.

The news reports are now widespread and, however painful to read, I encourage readers of this blog to follow them. The tactics in practice by U.S. border authorities remind us of horrors long ago that we thought this nation had put to rest—slave fathers and mothers sold away from their children, never to see them again, while auctioneers were deaf to their pleas for mercy, American Indian children removed from reservations to be sent to distant “Indian schools” where they punished for speaking English. Are we still no better than that?

I have been a father for decades. My wife and I became foster and adoptive parents in the 1990s, and we know firsthand the difficulties of locating children in a new environment when the state has determined that the birth parents have failed in their duties through neglect or abuse. It is difficult even then but often necessary to protect children whose health, safety, and welfare are in jeopardy. That is and long has been a primary state responsibility. But even then, courts and social workers provide notice of what is expected and give parents an opportunity to improve before taking more drastic steps. And yes, it is true that convicted criminals are removed from their spouses and children when they are incarcerated, but if the convictions are just, we can at least say that the crime was a choice made by the parent, not the state. And despite all this, my heart aches when it becomes clear such intervention is necessary.

It aches even more in this situation because very young children are being pulled away from their parents with no idea why, no idea where they are going, and no idea when or whether they will ever see them again. Even in cases of convicted criminals, the family can visit the prisoner and knows where he or she is and the length of the sentence. In foster care, parents typically have visitation rights. None of that appears to be happening with these refugees.

I find myself all the angrier when I hear people justifying the current Trump administration policy by comparing asylum seekers to these situations by saying the parents at the border are breaking the law. International conventions on asylum do not at all contemplate that asylum seekers will be treated by democratic nations as criminals upon arrival. They need a fair hearing to demonstrate their claim for asylum. In the vast majority of cases, their clear motive for making the dangerous trip across Mexico to the U.S. border from nations in Central and South America and elsewhere is not to commit a crime but to protect their families from political and gang violence and, in some cases, sexual and physical abuse tolerated by a foreign government that is either unwilling or incapable of preventing it.

Quoting Bible verses about respecting the law is no defense of unjust laws and never was, even in Biblical times, when St. Peter once stated, “We must obey God rather than men.” His assertion was the very basis of the insistent rise of Christianity through what was effectively a form of civil disobedience because Christian faith was illegal in the Roman empire, which required primary fealty to the emperor. I do not wish to engage defenders of administration policy in a battle of Bible quotations because such battles generally involve short passages taken out of context amid a larger failure to understand the comprehensive message of Jewish and Christian scriptures, but if there is one passage that may highlight that larger message of Jesus, it is in Matthew 25, and for that reason I have used it before because it goes to the heart of Christian morality:

“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’”

Jim Schwab

Power, Perception, and Pilate

Posted on May 29, 2018 by admin

On May 10, my wife and I attended a matinee performance of Jesus Christ Superstar at the Lyric Opera in Chicago. Coming a month after the Easter evening (April 1) NBC broadcast of this ground-breaking rock opera by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber, it allowed some comparison of how the show is staged and presented, which was summed up by a woman behind us at the Lyric: “Never the same way twice.” Composed in 1970 and first presented on stage in 1971, the show’s lasting impact can, I think, be traced, like any other vintage composition, to its versatility, universality, and the way it probes deep themes in the human experience. In this case, that involves a search for the meaning of divinity and exactly where the Gospel stories fit into that experience. What could it possibly mean to be human and divine at the same time? How did those around Jesus relate to him in real life? Rice and Webber gained fame by packing a lightning bolt of musical interpretation into a two-hour show. Curiously, in the 47 years since the show’s debut in New York, this recent run, which ended May 20, was the first time the Lyric had chosen to stage Jesus Christ Superstar.

Seeing this performed twice in consecutive months prodded me to think a little more deeply about a question that has been roaming around in my brain for a while already. As a Christian, a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, I have maintained both an intellectual and spiritual curiosity over many years concerning the life of Jesus of Nazareth and the Bible generally. I am anything but a biblical literalist. I feel strongly that the route to some meaningful truth involves a healthy skepticism and a good deal of reading between the lines, so I have little patience with the fixed and sometimes even cartoonish scriptural interpretations that some people cling to. I do not believe that politics and faith are or even should be completely detached, but I am not an ideologue, either. I am a firm supporter of religious freedom and tolerance because I think Christian faith calls on us to be considerably humbler in our relationships with others than some people wearing the label have sometimes been. And that brings me to my topic.

One thing I noted in the Webber-Rice spectacle is that the narrative hews relatively closely to the core of the Gospel stories of the Passion, Christ’s last week of life on Earth—at least within the broad framework of artistic presentation. One question that has dogged Christianity for centuries concerns how Jesus was delivered into the hands of the Romans, which leads to the question of the nature of his startling interaction with Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea. It is clear enough, according to the Gospel accounts, that Jesus was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane by agents of the Jewish high priests, and clear enough that they were upset with his preaching because it challenged the established order in profound ways. After interrogation by both the high priests and King Herod, who ruled Galilee under Roman sovereignty, he was turned over to Pilate. The interactions at this point become much more powerful, given the fate that we all now know awaited Jesus. And this is the point that I wish to explore.

I am not a professional biblical scholar, but my perspective here does not depend on being one. It is rooted more in a lifetime of observing the behavior of the powerful, usually at a distance but occasionally up close. It is an analysis of power relationships in personal interactions. I am not sure most biblical scholars are any better at that, and I will certainly not assert that mine is necessarily the most accurate set of observations possible. I hope only to shed light and spur further thinking by those willing to join me in this search for deeper meaning in one of the more remarkable events in human history.

First, I must note that bad or oversimplified interpretation of these events has led to a good deal of bad blood between Jews and Christians over two millennia. Some of this continues, but none of it is appropriate or necessary. Anti-Semitism, like racism, contradicts the fundamental tenets of Christian morality and respect for others. The fact that Jews were involved in the arrest of Jesus does not change the fact that everyone else in the story is also Jewish, except for the Romans. On the eve of Christ’s crucifixion, Jerusalem was a dangerously divided community. Sympathies ran in all directions. Rome had maintained control for years with unrelenting brutality, including many other crucifixions of real and perceived rebels, and challenging Rome was no one’s route to survival. Jewish leadership was understandably concerned with national and institutional survival (deeply intertwined in their world view), and thus wary of the spiritual challenges this unconventional preacher presented. Christ’s message gained a following in this religious and political tinderbox and thus inevitably triggered a reaction by officials concerned about maintaining control. Ultimately, it was the Roman Empire that maintained control, and Rome was never very subtle in its methods. Crucifixion was a form of state-sanctioned terrorism to achieve such control. It was intended to be both demeaning and terrifying.

We should not be surprised. We need merely look around at the actions of dictators and oppressive regimes in our own time to see how this works. Much of the artistic achievement of Jesus Christ Superstar is to take a story from 2,000 years ago and reframe it with modern music and sensibilities that allow us to reassess its relevance in a modern context. That is the job of any good artist with such a story.

And that is precisely what makes the personal interaction between Pilate and Christ so powerfully intriguing. What I would deem naïve interpretations of Pilate’s reaction and response to Jesus have led over centuries to the unfortunate perception that this Roman governor believed Jesus was innocent but was afraid of the crowds that called for his crucifixion. As many scholars have noted, Pilate had already sent numerous others to their deaths by the time he encountered this itinerant preacher. Assigned to maintain control of a difficult province that most Romans viewed as a backwater, Pilate generally had little hesitation about sending to their doom anyone he saw as posing a threat to Roman hegemony, and such movements persisted for decades until the destruction of Jerusalem by Roman troops in 70 C.E. This history is very clear. As for the crowds and Pilate’s offer to free one criminal for the Passover to placate Jewish opinion, it is not hard to believe that a man like Pilate knew how to manipulate such crowds and play vicious mind games with his opponents. The overriding goal for anyone like Pilate was political survival. Just a generation later, in 66 C.E., notes John Dominic Crossan in Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, the Roman governor Florus sent no fewer than 3,600 of Judea’s leading citizens to crucifixion after mass arrests intended to forestall rebellion, which ultimately led to the Jewish diaspora. Empathy with the oppressed was no more part of the empire’s perspective than it is that of Kim Jong Un in North Korea or Vladimir Putin in Russia. Suppressing and destroying any following of any movement independent of the state is part of the standard playbook for modern totalitarian regimes.

Still, there is this haunting interaction between Pilate and Jesus. We must keep in mind that, in the end, Pilate sent Jesus and two other men to their deaths that day. If he was deeply troubled by his prisoner’s innocence, he could easily have spared him, but at most he went through the empty gesture of washing his hands. It is worth noting the conversation in the Gospel of John, which provides the most detailed report of the exchange between the two men:

Pilate: Are you the king of the Jews?

Jesus: Is that your own idea, of have others suggested it to you?

Pilate: What? Am I a Jew? Your own nation and their chief priests have brought you before me. What have you done?

Jesus: My kingdom does not belong to this world. If it did, my followers would be fighting to save me from arrest by the Jews. My kingly authority comes from elsewhere.

Pilate: You are a king, then?

Jesus: “King” is your word. My task is to bear witness to the truth. For this I was born; for this I came into the world, and all who are not deaf to the truth listen to my voice.

Pilate: What is truth?

Pilate then offers the release of Jesus to the crowd, which demands the release of Barabbas; Pilate then has Jesus flogged, the soldiers place a crown of thorns on his head, and he is mocked and belittled. A further exchange between Pilate and the crowd occurs in which the demand is that he be crucified. It seems obvious to me that Pilate knew how to use the crowd to advance his own ends. Then comes the final exchange:

Pilate: Where have you come from?

Jesus: (No answer.)

Pilate: Do you refuse to speak to me? Surely you know I have the authority to release you, and I have authority to crucify you? (Note that, at this point, Jesus has almost surely been beaten within an inch of his life.)

Jesus: You would have no authority at all over me if it had not been granted you from above; and therefore, the deeper guilt lies with the man who handed me over to you.

What I want to offer at this point is a question that, I think, is often missed or underemphasized in both scholarly accounts and religious interpretations of this powerful dialogue: Why did Pilate take pains to react in this particular manner? Aside from riling up the crowds, why not just sentence Christ and be done with the matter? Surely, Pilate did not take such pains with most prisoners.

But if we take seriously the nature of men like Pilate, we might realize that the horror of the means he would use to eliminate most perceived troublemakers would make most prisoners squirm in terror. He was probably used to, and even enjoyed, making subjects squirm in his presence, the high priests and prominent local citizens included. Absolute power tends to bestow on most human beings a perverse and even sadistic sense of superiority over others.

But at no point in this or any other New Testament accounts does Jesus squirm in the face of political power. He certainly knew what awaited him and was aware of the torture and physical agony involved. Yet here he is, still challenging authority to the point where Pilate may have thought him a madman. Zealots (Jewish rebels of the day) might simply have been defiant in such circumstances, knowing that all was lost once they were captured. They would not have engaged in any philosophical repartee. There is no indication of Jesus seeking mercy or anticipating a way out of his dilemma. Why does this matter?

Because Pilate’s reaction could very well indicate that such a fearless confrontation with his authority, which Jesus even effectively denies, leaves him utterly perplexed. Who does that?

Well, some people do, you may answer, and I suggest this: Jesus’s unflinching insistence on spiritual authority, combined with almost unflappable acceptance of the consequences of his stance, left Pilate temporarily flummoxed, groping for a means to reassert his accustomed sense of psychological dominance over those around him. One does not need even to be Christian to perceive the dynamics of the situation. But it does add some clarity because we know, as Pilate did not, that this nascent religious movement would survive three subsequent centuries of intermittent but vicious Roman persecution. Much of that would occur because of the courage people drew from the story of Christ’s confrontation with Pilate—and, of course, an abiding belief that Pilate did not have the last word.

I will also suggest that the serenity of Jesus in the face of a looming horrific end to his life has become a model that inspired numerous others to challenge unjust power by calling upon a higher morality. These included Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms, who faced potential burning at the stake; Nelson Mandela, who suffered years of imprisonment by the apartheid regime in South Africa; Martin Luther King Jr., who challenged racist violence with peaceful protest and was assassinated; or the Mirabal sisters, who were killed for challenging the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic (the subject of a novel by Julia Alvarez). And then, there is the powerful case of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, executed by the Nazis after challenging their authority. One can name many other examples.

However, honesty demands a recognition of other sources of such profound witness. Jews, for example, may point to a line of prophets who preceded Christ, some of whom faced dire crises of faith and provide inspiration. Mohandas Gandhi used pioneering methods of nonviolence to challenge British colonial rule in India, only to die at the hands of a fanatical Hindu assassin. His primary inspirations arose from Eastern traditions, although he seems to have blended what he considered the best of Christian spirituality into his Hindu practice, even as he expressed distaste for many of the barnacles that had attached themselves to organized religion. But he clearly faced persecution with an equanimity that put his adversaries to shame.

Of course, like all of us, each of these heroic figures had their human shortcomings. But in each case, their serene courage drew inspiration from a deep well of faith. That faith includes a resolute refusal to cede moral authority while acknowledging political authority. It includes the integrity of one’s belief system with a focus on love, mercy, and peace. And it always includes a recognition of the power of one’s conscience, but that conscience must be driven not just by passion, but by compassion, a clear recognition of the value of others. True conscience involves not just a personal set of beliefs but clarity about one’s moral commitments and their potential consequences, and the acceptance of those consequences. That anyone meets that test is a testament to the capacity of the human spirit to unite itself with divine wisdom. How that occurs is a story I will leave to saintlier souls than mine to tell.

Jim Schwab

Author’s note: The lack of images in this post is deliberate in order to maintain a focus on the ideas presented.

Norway’s Fjords: Up Close and Magnificent

Posted on January 29, 2018 by admin

There is something distinct about boarding a cruise ship. An airplane, after all, no matter how big, is essentially a long, metal tube that flies. You can dress it up for international flights, but when all is said and done, you are simply spending a few hours in the air in a seat, where you may be served half-way decent food (or not). You can talk to a few people around you, you can watch a movie on a small screen in front of you, but your options are limited.

My wife, Jean, and friend Carolyn Torma relax in the lounge on the MS Nordnorge.

Boarding a cruise ship is more like joining a small, floating city. Once aboard, you can wander the decks for fresh air, you can chat with hundreds of people, converse with crew members, and take in sights both near and far away. You can break out that camera you just bought. And you can visit coastal cities for a few minutes or a few hours, depending on the itinerary.

Welcome to my final blog post on our trip to Norway in July 2017. I have promised and teased, but I am delivering after three prior installments about our flight to Norway; our time in Oslo; and most recently, our train trip to Bergen and our visit to its intriguing and highly edfying art museums.

When the day visit of our gang of five to the center of Bergen ended, we gathered our bags at the Clarion Hotel Admiral and boarded a shuttle bus to the dock where we checked our bags with Hurtigruten, a wonderful cruise line dedicated to sustainable practices, watched an instructional video on cruise safety, and boarded the ship. Perhaps I am a bit romantic but crossing the gangplank into a ship stirs more ancient memories of human experience than flying ever will. Humans have been sailing for thousands of years, traversing seas and oceans, and the only serious difference is that the ships have grown larger and more mechanized and, these days, electronic as well. But you are still floating close to the water and the weather and nature.

You also know that you will be aboard this behemoth for several days. That makes accommodations important. In our case, in order to join the same cruise as our friends, my wife and I had to lose our inner cheapskate and splurge on a state room because the lower decks were sold out. Our friends were on Deck 3, but we were on Deck 6, in a room that had a nice television screen and a bed for two, plus a decent bathroom. Admittedly, things still seemed a little cramped, but how much time do you want to spend in your room? Especially as the ship moves north and the summer nights grow long above the Arctic Circle, the idea of sitting in a room seems almost absurd.

Wander the decks! There is a whole world of Norwegian fjords to see out there. There was a promenade on Deck 5, one level below us, and the stairs with their gold-colored railings seemed like a grand way to get there, far more inviting than the elevator. There was the entire lounge on Deck 7, with an outdoor viewing area at the front of the ship, where you could sit outside and monitor the ship’s progress through passages that offered stunning scenery on every side. More than once, I sat there in a deck chair with the movie function turned on for a new Sony camera I had bought in anticipation of this trip. At lower latitudes near the beginning of the trip, this was often great fun. Later, as temperatures grew cooler farther north, it sometimes became less comfortable—but no less impressive.

Inside, we soon also discovered an entire world of Scandinavian cuisine that was previously not part of our daily experience. It’s not that my wife and I have not tried a wide range of international food. We simply had not visited Norway, nor spent nearly a week investigating buffet options for breakfast and lunch in the remarkable dining room on Deck 4, which offered a range of Norwegian pastries, dark breads with savory cheeses, herring, salmon, ham and beef, and all manner of vegetable dishes and soups. Dinner was served at assigned tables and times but allowed us to get to know an interesting and intellectually curious family of educators from Seattle. The food was one of the bigger surprises for me because I had not previously learned to regard Norwegian cuisine highly. Never mind all the stories you may have heard about lutefisk. After this trip, I stand corrected. The best of Norwegian cuisine is a salivating safari for sophisticated palates.

View out the front window of the lounge.

Amidst it all, relaxing in the lounge with a view of the shore in the distance or nearby, I plowed through my tome. On a long vacation, I like to take a long book I have wanted to read but never found the spare time to immerse myself in. For this trip, I tackled Doris Kearns Goodwin’s magisterial Team of Rivals, a 750-page exploration of Abraham Lincoln’s political genius in managing a team of strong wills and egos through the shoals of the Civil War. It filled the hours when I wanted to take a break from sightseeing and just enter another world and time. I chose well.

Viewing the Fjords

It is difficult to do justice to the scenery in words alone, but the beauty of the blog is that I can insert photographs to enrich the story. I had a small, aging Fuji digital camera; my iPhone; and a newly acquired Sony digital with zoom lens enhancements and movie features, all of which I was still trying to master on the fly. It often offered more options than I intelligently knew how to manipulate or had time to learn, as breath-taking scenery was often just around the next bend in the fjord.

There is nothing subtle about the Norwegian coast, but there is much that is sublime. It is not hard to imagine the awe of nature and the gods that must have filled the hearts of Vikings sailing along the coast or returning from their overseas explorations. Islands dot the sea lanes; some are inhabited, and many are not, usually because the terrain does not offer much solace. Shoreline communities occupy modest niches of flat land below hills and towering cliffs.

No two fjords are ever the same. Each has its own unique topography, its own paths to sheltered ports, its own dramatic waterfalls crashing off mountainsides into the seas, its own snow-capped peaks above the humble human intrusions below. Norwegians at times are remarkable engineers, but there must still be a sense of our own puniness in the face of such lofty natural beauty. We could never replicate the work of millions of years of geological transformations of earth’s landscape. It is better to sit back, gaze in admiration, and appreciate it.

What is remarkable, nonetheless, is the mastery of coastal navigation, even if modern ships benefit from a range of electronic wizardry to avoid danger. In a part of the coast known as the Trollfjord in the Lofoten Islands, it is my recollection that we were told we were crossing a passage with only 450 meters between rocky outcrops hundreds of meters high. On a cruise ship housing nearly 500 passengers and crew members, that does not leave much room for error, but the passage, admittedly in calm seas, seemed effortless and very precise. Our ship approached the passage in the evening; I was captivated by the scenery for the entire time and filmed it for 12 minutes. I cannot recall anything I have seen that compares.

Passing through the Trollfjord.

Trondheim

Ports of call are a routine feature of cruises. In Norway, these are port cities along the coast, often away from the ocean itself within fjords, the long arms of the sea that often shelter such cities. On our second full day of the cruise, the MS Nordnorge docked in Trondheim for a 3 ½ hour visit. We disembarked and began a journey on foot to find Nidaros Cathedral, the oldest cathedral in Norway and the northernmost cathedral of its size in Europe. Trondheim was also at one time the capital; moving the capital south to Oslo, formerly known as Christiania, was a modern innovation. Nidaros Cathedral remains the scene of coronations for the nation’s constitutional monarchy.

The walk to Nidaros, which was under a half-hour, took us along the Nidelva River, lined by some colorful apartments on the far side, with some interesting urban architecture on our side as we moved into the heart of the city. The site of the cathedral became apparent as we drew near because the building is surrounded by impressive grounds and fencing. The soaring worship space was completed in 1300 but begun around 1070, with much of the construction occurring after 1190. Tours require tickets at a modest price, which visitors can obtain in the nearby gift shop, whose sales help support maintenance of this massive space. The cathedral sits above the grave of St. Olav, the nation’s patron saint, a tenth-century Viking king who converted his subjects—and himself—to Christianity after learning about the faith in England, which experienced numerous Norse raids in the Middle Ages. One must marvel at its height and size given the lack of modern tools, but a tour guide informed us that masons were in the habit of leaving their initials on the bricks that formed the foundation and walls. The building has both the sense of inner darkness typical of buildings lacking modern Illumination and a sense of spaciousness emanating from its massive ceilings and the size of its sanctuary. Originally, it was the seat of the archdiocese, but suffered a demotion to a huge parish church for Trondheim following Norway’s turn toward the Reformation, when Lutheranism became the state church.

Between its history and majestic architecture, my own judgment would be that, if one had time to visit only one thing in Trondheim, this would necessarily be the default choice. That said, we had a little time left after our tour. Jean and I, in touch with our friends by cell phone, wandered through a large, modern urban mall back toward the ship but stopped for a few minutes at a serendipitous discovery, a flowery pocket park inhabited by birds, where we simply imbibed the relaxing atmosphere in the middle of Norway’s third-largest city. Then we bought a couple of souvenirs at a shop atop the bridge we crossed as we made our way back to rejoin the cruise late in the afternoon. We still had a couple of hours to relax with our friends over drinks in the bar before dinner and another evening of scenery consumption.

Bodø

The next day, our long stop was at Bodø, a smaller city whose second syllable is pronounced somewhat like the “oo” sound in the English word “foot.” (Pronouncing that will give English speakers a vague sense of that distinctive sound of Scandinavian languages.) A slightly longer stay in a smaller city gave us ample opportunity to explore, but without the obvious choice of anything like Nidaros. One intriguing aspect of the day was passing beneath a tall bridge lined with spectators observing the passing of our ship beneath. Norway has plenty of bridges, no surprise, but this sort of welcome was a pleasant surprise.

In Bodø, one indicator of the changing cosmopolitan nature of Norwegian cities was the sign that greeted us not long after we became urban pedestrians again—Istanbul Kebab. Like other European nations, Norway has acquired its share of Middle Eastern immigrants, and restaurant options have diversified. No doubt, these newer options have also thrived as Norwegians seek a change of pace, just as Americans, Brits, and others have done. Still, even the shopping district near the shore affords an unhurried, uncrowded atmosphere that let us soak up the afternoon sun in peace and quiet.

Tromsø

Tromso Cathedral

Our fourth full day took us ever farther north with a four-hour stop at Tromsø. This is the last major city on the journey north, and not hard to wander. With my interest piqued by Nidaros, I sought out the Tromsø Cathedral, just a few blocks from the shore, only to find that it was closed and undergoing renovations—signs of which abounded with construction equipment parked just outside on the somewhat spacious Kirkeparken that surrounds the building itself. Reduced to simply looking at the building from the street, we instead joined our friends in a visit to the nearby Tromsø Gift and Souvenir shop, which sported a stuffed bear outside that was a magnet for tourist selfies. It was a great place to look at gifts that someone back home might want, as well as those souvenir mugs and hot pads that line one’s cupboards.

Once that novelty had worn off, however, we quickly discovered the Northern Norway Art Museum, which had a wonderful display of indigenous Sami clothing and handicrafts, with some explanation of the Sami culture that produced them. Here, I should note that one of the more moving lectures aboard ship, amid other daily offerings, was a presentation by a young Sami woman who was part of the Nordnorge crew. She shared stories of the discrimination suffered by Sami people at the hands of Norwegians, including herself in school and elsewhere. Things are looking up, and the king and queen offered an apology to the Sami on behalf of the nation, but racial and ethnic prejudice takes many forms and is not easily or quickly rooted out from any society.

The Sami number perhaps a modest 50,000 in modern Norway, a number larger than in any other Scandinavian nation or in Russia, where a small number also live. One of their traditional occupations has been herding reindeer, which are produced for their lean and nutritious meat, a result of consuming native grasses and herbs. The Sami, however, faced a serious public health crisis after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power accident in what is now Ukraine, as the released radiation dispersed westward over northern Scandinavia and contaminated the ground and the reindeer who roamed it. Many Sami, including the speaker, suffered some degree of radiation poisoning, which in her case produced red blotches across her back and shoulders. Her story offered a dramatic example of the environmental jeopardy facing indigenous populations around the world. To call it sobering is to understate the case. She indicated that, over three decades, those radiation levels have receded significantly but were not always regarded as a matter of concern by the Norwegian government. The Sami relied on their reindeer and suffered with them. Not everything in Norway involves love and kisses, and history must be accounted for. I had to respect Hurtigruten for offering such a heart-felt, sobering presentation amid a cruise meant largely for entertainment. If people did not hear this story here, when might they ever hear it?

Jean’s birthday dinner, complete with reindeer steak entree and cloudberry dessert.

On the last night of our voyage, our gang of five enjoyed a complimentary upgrade to a private three-course meal on Jean’s birthday. One of the entrée options was reindeer steak, which Jean and I chose. It is a dark red, very lean meat, but very tasty and tender. I may never have it again, the supply in places like Chicago being almost nonexistent. But it was well worth finding out. I also recall that Jean tried a dessert involving cloudberries, a species unique to northern Norway, mostly grown above the Arctic Circle. Hurtigruten is very good at local sourcing of agricultural produce for passenger consumption. They have identified small, sustainable producers along their route from whom they can obtain these products during the numerous short stops at ports of call, a practice that also supports the many small, struggling farmers in rural Norway.

Honningsvag

Our last full day involved a stop at Honningsvag, a small city in the North Cape area above the Arctic Circle as the shoreline bends east along the Arctic Ocean toward the Russian border. Honningsvag is at the southeastern edge of Nordkapp, translated as North Cape in English, actually a rugged island off the northern coast of Norway. By now, I was getting used to the possibility of waking up at 3 a.m. and peeking out our cabin window to see sunlight diffused across the seascape. Summer above the Arctic Circle can be disconcerting in that respect. It upsets your normal biological rhythms.

We visited the North Cape Museum, a small but key attraction in the city that sits at the water’s edge near the Hurtigruten dock.

Honningsvag destroyed by German troops in the autumn of 1944. Photo taken in the museum exhibit.

There is one extremely sobering exhibit in the museum. To understand it, one must realize that all of Norway was occupied by the German army during World War II, after the country was betrayed by its own Vidkun Quisling, whose surname has become a synonym for “traitor.” Hundreds of thousands of German troops were pinned down in Norway because of fears of an Allied counterinvasion. As the war neared its end, Adolf Hitler also feared an invasion across the northern end of Scandinavia by the Red Army moving from Russia. Russia and Norway share the Arctic Ocean coast; Sweden and Finland reach only to the southern bounds of those two countries above the Article Circle. Hitler, to prevent such an incursion, ordered a scorched-earth policy for the German army in retreat.

Honningsvag in 2017.

Several hundred soldiers had been stationed in Honningsvag. Very late in the war, they were ordered to torch the city, which they did. More than 20,000 citizens were evacuated to the mainland before that happened. When the war was over, and the residents of Honningsvag wanted to return home, a small contingent was sent to evaluate the state of their city. The museum’s photographs document the heartbreak they saw. With one notable exception, which was Kirkegata, the main Lutheran church south of the bay where the museum is located, everything in the city had been burned to the ground. My guess is that the church survived not because the Nazis spared it, but because the flames simply did not leap across the surrounding cemetery to the building. That church became the temporary home for the initial volunteers who helped rebuild until, step by step, the people of Honningsvag were able, with support from the national government, to rebuild their city and provide new, modern homes for thousands of displaced persons. It is a stunning reminder of the high cost of war and hatred but also offered insights into the heroism of the persistent and courageous Norwegian resistance, to which several museums throughout the nation have been dedicated.

Going Home

The next morning, at 9 a.m., our ship docked in Kirkenes, a small town that abuts the Russian border to the east. It was the end of our cruise, punctuated with a short bus ride to the local airport for a flight later that day to Oslo. On that flight, we had the chance to converse with a retired Norwegian airline pilot and his wife, who told us about an occasion on which the Russian government, seeking to dispose of Syrian refugees, had put them all on bicycles and sent them across the border into Kirkenes to let the Norwegian government deal with them. With a hint of sarcasm, he noted that the bicycles had to be destroyed once the refugees were taken into custody because the Russian vehicles did not meet Norwegian bicycle safety standards. I will let the reader make of this curious story what you will. I have no reason to doubt its veracity, but if true it certainly smacks of cynicism on the part of Russian officials.

Our three friends caught an earlier flight back to Bergen, where they chose to spend two more days. Jean and I stayed overnight at the Radisson Blu Airport Hotel, awoke for an early breakfast the next morning, and walked back across the pathway for a flight to London’s Heathrow Airport. There, with only a 75-minute layover to dash through the long halls of a monstrous facility, we made our way to a United flight back to Chicago. Our lives were about to return to normal.

Jim Schwab

Donald Trump’s Racism Diminishes America

Posted on January 13, 2018 by admin

Depiction of Du Sable taken from A.T. Andreas’ book History of Chicago (1884). Reprinted from Wikipedia

Greetings from the U.S. city founded by a Haitian immigrant.

Sometime in the 1780s, Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, reportedly born of a French father and an African slave mother, who had gained some education in France and made his way from New Orleans to the Midwest, settled with his Potawatomi wife on the north shore of the Chicago River. He developed what became a prosperous trading post before eventually selling it for $1,200 (no small sum in the early 1800s) before relocating to St. Charles, in what is now Missouri, where he died in 1818. According to the best-known assumption about his date of birth (1845), he would by then have been 73, a ripe age on the early American frontier. You can learn more about the admittedly sketchy details of his life here as well as through the link above. However, Chicago has long claimed him as part of its heritage, and his origins speak volumes about not only Chicago but the diversity of the American frontier despite the attempts in some quarters to continue to paint a much whiter portrait of the nation’s history than the truth affords. His story, and those of many others, can be viewed at the Du Sable Museum of African American History on Chicago’s South Side.

Du Sable Museum of African American History, photo from Wikipedia

What does this have to do with President Donald Trump? As almost anyone not living in a cave knows by now, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) has said that Trump, while Durbin was at the White House for a meeting with the President and several Republican members of Congress to discuss a possible compromise on legislation concerning immigration and border security, began a verbal tirade asking why the nation was allowing so many immigrants from “shithole countries” such as Africa and Haiti. Yes, Trump now denies saying it, but there were other witnesses, and even Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) acknowledges it and reports confronting Trump personally about his remarks. Moreover, the sad fact is that such remarks are consistent with a much broader pattern of similar comments ranging from his initial campaign announcement decrying Mexican “rapists” to provably untrue tweets to his infamous praise of “truly fine” people among the neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and Ku Klux Klan members protesting the pending removal of Confederate statues in downtown Charlottesville, Virginia, last summer. Since those comments last August, Trump has continued to lacerate the Twitterscape with new gems of disingenuous absurdity.

It also betrays a disturbing lack of depth of any historical knowledge that might ground Trump in the truth. There is surely little question that Haiti is one of the poorest and most environmentally beleaguered nations in the Western Hemisphere. But it helps to know how it got there, which takes us back to what was happening in Du Sable’s lifetime. Emulating the ideals of both the American and French revolutions, including the Declaration of Independence and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, deeply oppressed African slaves rebelled in 1791. An ill-advised expedition sent by Napoleon Bonaparte to suppress the revolution—Napoleon was more interested in financing his European wars with Haitian revenue than in honoring liberty among Africans—failed miserably when nearly 80 percent of 57,000 French troops first fell victim to yellow fever before being pounced upon by Haitian revolutionaries in their weakened state. Only a small contingent ever made it back to France alive. As time went on, however, Haiti found itself isolated in the New World. The United States, under presidents from Thomas Jefferson onward until the Civil War, refused to recognize the new republic, fearing a similar uprising among its own growing population of slaves in the South. Recognition finally happened in 1862, with the Confederacy in full rebellion against the Union and with Abraham Lincoln in the White House. The story gets much, much worse, including Haiti’s long-time mistreatment by France, its former colonial overseer, but those with more intellectual curiosity than our current U.S. president can read about it in a variety of books including Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution by Laurent Dubois; the fictionalized but brutally vivid and historically accurate trilogy (starting with All Souls’ Rising) by Madison Smartt Bell, whom I met 20 years ago at the Bread Loaf Writers Conference; and the more modern history of exploitation, The Uses of Haiti by Paul Farmer. There is much more; just search Amazon or your local library. It is all there for the learning. We are at least partly responsible for helping to create the historical pattern of misery and poverty in Haiti. Its people have suffered through vicious, greedy dictators like the Duvaliers and yet bravely insisted on creating a democracy despite all obstacles.

Why do I review all this? Because, especially as we celebrate the Martin Luther King, Jr., holiday and the ideals of the civil rights movement, history matters. For the President of the United States, at least a respectable knowledge of history matters, as do an open mind and a willingness to learn what matters. Little of that has been in evidence over the past year. And that remains a tragic loss for the nation.

Instead, we have a President who, before taking office, spent five years helping to peddle the canard that President Barack Obama was born in Kenya, and thus not a native-born U.S. citizen as required by the U.S. Constitution. Based on his recent comments, one might suspect that, all along, he regarded Kenya as among the “shithole countries.” It is small wonder, then, that he holds Obama’s legacy in such low regard. (Several years ago, while in Oahu, my wife and I met a Punahou School high school classmate of Obama, working as a tour guide, who said he knew Obama’s grandparents. “I was not in the delivery room,” he mused, but “I think I would have known” if Obama had not been born in Honolulu.)

The problem, as millions of Americans seem to understand, is that, despite Trump’s claim that these nations “do not send us their best,” our nation has a history of watching greatness arise from humble origins. Abraham Lincoln, in fact, arose from starker poverty in Kentucky and southern Illinois than many immigrants even from African nations have ever seen. Major League Baseball might be considerably diminished without the many Dominicans who have striven mightily to escape poverty and succeed, more than a few making it to the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. (I worked in the Dominican Republic in 2000-2001, organizing HUD-funded Spanish-language training on site planning for design professionals working on reconstruction after Hurricane Georges, and can attest first-hand to the national pride Dominicans feel about their achievements in the U.S.) How many Americans visit doctors who emanated from India, Nigeria, and other countries who saw opportunity here to expand their talents and contribute to this nation’s welfare? And, lest we forget, Steve Jobs, who created more and better American jobs through Apple than Trump ever dreamed of creating, was the son of Syrian immigrants.

Only willful ignorance and prejudice can blind us to these contributions and lead us to accept the validity of Trump’s vile observations. As adjunct assistant professor, I teach a graduate-level seminar (Planning for Disaster Mitigation and Recovery) each year at the University of Iowa School of Urban and Regional Planning. Since this began in 2008, I have taught not only Americans but high-quality students—in a few cases, Fulbright scholars—from places like Zambia, Haiti, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam. They do not see themselves as coming from “shithole countries,” but they do perceive that they are availing themselves of excellent educational opportunities in a nation they have typically seen as a paragon of democratic ideals. Now we are undermining that perception at a breakneck pace. These students, whose full tuition helps undergird the finances of American universities, know there are viable alternatives for a modern education in Britain, France, Germany, and Canada, but until now they have believed in the promise of America.

Meanwhile, Europeans—the very people whom Trump apparently would like to see more of among our immigrant ranks—are watching this charade with alarm and dismay. I know this evidence is anecdotal, but my wife and I, as noted in recent blog posts, traveled to Norway last July. We encountered New Zealand, South African, Danish, Dutch, Swedish, German, British, and Norwegian citizens, among others, as we traveled. Almost no one we met was impressed with Trump. This is a new development in European perception of American leadership. Moreover, our perceptions then are supported by reporting in the last few days on reaction to Trump’s comments. Despite Trump asking why we cannot have more immigrants from Norway, NBC News reports that Norwegians are largely rejecting this call as “backhanded praise.” If we want more European immigration to the U.S., we would do far better impressing them with our sophistication and our commitment to the democratic ideals we have all shared since World War II.

Beyond all this, it must be noted that thousands of dedicated Americans serve overseas in the nations Trump has insulted, wearing the uniforms of the Armed Services, staffing diplomatic missions, and representing their nation in other ways. No true patriot would thoughtlessly place them in jeopardy and make their jobs more awkward than they need to be. It is one thing to face the hostility of Islamic State or other terrorist-oriented entities because of U.S. policy. Those who enlist or take overseas jobs with the U.S. government understand those risks. It is another to engender needless fear and hostility among nations that historically have been open to American influence and leadership. How do we mend fences once they perceive the U.S. President as an unapologetic bigot?

That question leads to another, more troubling one. Silence effectively becomes complicity, but far too few Republican members of Congress have found the moral backbone to confront the reality that both their party’s and their nation’s reputation will suffer lasting damage if they remain too timid to stand up to the schoolyard bully they helped elect. A few, like Ohio Gov. John Kasich, Mitt Romney, and members of the Bush family, have demonstrated such integrity, but most have not. It is one thing to recognize that you badly misjudged the character of the man you nominated and helped elect. It is another entirely to refuse to speak up once it is obvious. Admittedly, Democrats right now have the easier job. But this problem transcends partisan boundaries. It is about America’s badly damaged license to lead in the world. We either reclaim it, or we begin the long, slow torture of forfeiting it.

Jim Schwab

Touching Sky and Sea in Norway

Posted on January 1, 2018 by admin

For three months, I have been intermittently aware that, back in August, I shared two phases of a trip to Norway that my wife and I took in July—and that I promised to complete the story with two more. At the same time, I was laying the groundwork for an entirely new phase of my career. Having left the American Planning Association (APA) at the end of May, I was planning book projects, establishing a one-person consulting firm, preparing to teach my fall course at the University of Iowa, and undertaking periodic speaking engagements. This was all part of my “five-point retirement plan,” of which the remaining piece is this blog.

Soon enough, however, given my professional focus on planning for disasters, real life overwhelmed my intentions. Even as I was laying the groundwork for Jim Schwab Consulting LLC, my consulting operation, Hurricane Harvey was blasting the Texas coast. Harvey was soon followed by Irma in Florida, then Maria in Puerto Rico, then wildfires in California. Though I have not been involved in recovery from Irma and Maria, people in Texas solicited my attention, and later I spoke at conferences in North Carolina and Utah. I am participating in a planning group for Harvey recovery, and I have undertaken some other work as well. Before I realized it, the semester was over, the holidays were upon us, and I had utterly failed to write about the rest of the Norway venture. And I do like to inject some travelogues into this blog. All disasters and policy disquisitions and no fun can make for a dull blog. (Some readers may disagree, but my mixture of subject matter seems to have broad appeal.)

Railway station in Oslo (Jean in foreground)

So. About four months ago, I left our story in Oslo after a busy Monday. Jean and I stayed overnight, packed our bags again, and got ready to travel to Bergen. The trip between those two cities is one I would recommend to anyone with the slightest appetite for dramatic scenery. But first we had to move from our hotel, the Radisson Blu Scandinavia, to the railway station. One truly neat feature of Oslo is the tram, which was included in our Oslo Pass, as was all other public transit including the subway system. The tram stopped right behind the hotel, and the railway station was only a few stops away. We had a pleasant early morning ride down the middle of the street, then crossed the street with our luggage and entered a very modern-looking station that would put us on our train to Bergen. It all seemed very convenient and well organized.

The train from Oslo to Bergen, however, is more than just well organized. Norway in a Nutshell notes that the Bergen Railway is “Northern Europe’s highest-altitude railway line.” The passenger cars indicate the altitude at each stop, so you can track your progress upward as well as across the country and downward again to the sea. The highest reading I recall was 1,224 meters, roughly 4,000 feet, but a glance out the window made clear the mountains around us touched the clouds at a slightly more rarefied level.

Once the train departs the urban environment of Oslo, the scenery changes rapidly, passing lakes and rivers and entering the interior of Norway to reveal small lowland farms in the shadows of green, often forested hills. Over a 6 ½ hour journey, the train finds its way into numerous small communities along winding valleys and into the mountains until you begin to witness snow on the peaks, even in July, where the combination of altitude and latitude make clear that Norway is never entirely green. Knowing the long history of this nation, one can only imagine how the challenges of traversing this landscape influenced first the Viking, then the medieval, Reformation, and even Enlightenment Norwegian mindset, and why the law of primogeniture combined with meager prospects for agricultural prosperity to send waves of young people to America in search of a better life. Of course, in modern times, Norwegians have found prosperity through other means, including energy development and a highly educated work force, but for many centuries most people endured a hardscrabble life in a relatively unyielding environment. That gorgeous landscape did not make life easy for those trying to survive by breeding livestock and growing crops. Even though we did not leave the train until we reached Bergen, one could feel the chilly air when the doors opened at small town stations, and knowing it was July made one wonder how cold it might be in January.

And yet there was no question that the views were strikingly beautiful–unless you were passing through one of several tunnels beneath the mountains. We were not there in the right season to attest to this, but I have read repeatedly that winds and snow in the winter make this mountainous terrain a challenging environment in which to maintain year-round train service. The Norwegians, however, are as prepared for such challenges as anyone. They keep the train moving.

In due course, of course, one reaches the peak of the journey, and the downhill ride begins, ending near the sea in Bergen, the second-largest city in Norway behind Oslo. Because of prior arrangements by Bill Mitchell at Conlin Travel, we were greeted upon our exit from the train by a local driver who turned out to be a retired police officer, a fact he revealed in the process of insisting that we buckle up before he took us to our hotel, about 15 minutes away along the harbor. From him, we learned that Bergen is a city of nearly 300,000 people, with half as many more living in the entire metropolitan area. As first-time visitors, we were about to learn just how much Bergen has to offer.

Our modest but well-appointed Clarion Hotel Admiral offered a marvelously serene waterfront setting, supported by a flotilla of sail boats, fishing boats, and larger commercial craft. Somewhere further along the coast were the large cruise ships, such as the Nordnorge, on which we would be sailing by the next evening. Bergen is largely defined by its status as a seaport on a fjord near the Atlantic Ocean, but that location makes it as scenic as any city would want to be. From a crowded waterfront, homes and other buildings seem to radiate up the slopes until they thin out and the insistent lush forest takes over. We were also lucky. We were told it had been raining for most of the month before our arrival, but that, with the emergent sunshine after some initial misty cloudiness, we had “won the weather lottery.” We were grateful for the photogenic result.

For Jean and me, after checking in and relaxing in our room, our first order of business was to meet up with personal friends who would join us on the cruise. Two of my colleagues at APA had also retired within the last few months. Carolyn Torma, formerly education director, left at the end of November 2016 and had already been traveling on her own since then. Deene Alongi, the meetings and conferences director, retired on July 12, just a few days before our trip. She and I had met over dinner about some business matters back in January, and in discussing our plans, discovered we both intended to cruise the fjords of Norway during the summer. She and Carolyn had already been making arrangements for a cruise with Hurtigruten, a Norwegian cruise company, through Mitchell, an acquaintance of Carolyn’s cousin, Carol Wargelin. Why not join forces, we decided, and book the same cruise? Using the same travel agent allowed us to connect at the same hotel, even though our three friends were arriving separately after flying straight to Bergen, letting us visit Oslo first on our own, something I wanted to do so that Jean and I could ride the train to Bergen.

In front of the downtown mall in Bergen. From left, Deene, Carolyn, Carol, and Jean.

By late afternoon, I met Deene in the lobby as she entered the hotel. Later we met Carolyn and Carol, and the five of us enjoyed dinner in Admiral’s very pleasant restaurant. Our conversation revolved around plans for the following day, for we would have until 4 p.m. to wander the city before boarding a bus to the dock to enter the cruise ship.

Although our plans evolved, Bergen made it easy to enjoy the day. We discovered the Kode museums, which line one edge of a charmingly picturesque public park anchored by a pond with a fountain but also including a gazebo and lush lawns. Using a single pass, we visited all four museums by late afternoon, punctuated by lunch at a reasonably classy diner adjoining one of them. The museums offer five daily tours in English, in addition to Norwegian. Kode 1 offers the Singer collection, a combination of Chinese porcelain, period furniture from the 16^th and 17^th centuries, and classic paintings, among other art, plus a splendid display of silver and gold artifacts created in the city over the past half-millennium, and the H.M. Queen Sonja “Underway,” displaying graphic and ceramic artworks sponsored by a royal who seemed to relish the chance to sponsor sculpture and craft works.

The silverwork section of Kode 1.

Kode 2 was not then open, preparing a new exhibition that opened in October. Kode 3 featured the Rasmus Meyer collection, an assortment of Norwegian paintings from 1880-1905, which is surely the golden age, with works from landscape and other

Part of the Rasmus Meyer collection.

painters like J.C. Dahl, Harriet Backer, and Theodor Kittelsen. I will not claim to be any sort of expert on the subject; in fact, I learned about some of the artists for the first time in this visit. But viewing these works up close filled me with admiration for their skills and the cultural perspectives they conveyed. There can be little doubt that Norway experienced a remarkable flowering of artistic talent in the late 19^th century. And that is before we even mention the substantial display of work by Edvard Munch. The iconic The Scream, for which he is best known (and of which there are four versions), is only the beginning of Munch’s lifetime of productivity, punctuated by some tragic interludes that no doubt profoundly influenced some of his artistic idiosyncrasies. However, it would be a mistake to think that all, or even most, of his work is affected by the mental illness that ran through the family, including his father, or was dark and depressed. Indeed, there is an entire strain of cheerful nature painting within his oeuvre. Munch was clearly Norway’s artistic genius.

Finally, Kode 4 branches out beyond Norway to include numerous modern European and other artists, including Pablo Picasso, Paul Klee, Diego Rivera, and Joan Miró. But as one might expect, time ran out, and we all had to stroll back to the Admiral Hotel, retrieve our stored luggage, and await transport to the Hurtigruten dock to embark on our cruise, which will be the focus of the final installment in this series.

Jim Schwab

Resilience in Utah

Posted on December 13, 2017 by admin

Amid all the necessary attention to current disasters, small community conferences across the country are steadily training and educating local government staff, emergency volunteers, and local stakeholders in hazard-related issues to become more resilient. Because hazards vary widely with geography and climate, the specific focus of these meetings varies widely as well. The quiet but important fact is that they are happening, and people are learning. This is one particularly salient reason why, in my new post-APA career, I have made myself available as a public speaker. These conferences provide an excellent opportunity to feel the pulse of America regarding hazard mitigation and disaster recovery.

All is far from perfect, as one might expect, but the progress can be encouraging. My latest presentation was on December 6 in Salt Lake City, at the Resilient Salt Lake County Conference in the Salt Palace Convention Center. About 240 people had registered, I was told, for this one-day event.

While, for many people outside Utah, the word “Mormon” comes to mind quickly in connection with the state, one important fact to know is that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS) is itself active in encouraging members, congregations, and communities to become more resilient and aware of the disaster threats around them. One interesting feature of the conference was that it focused as much on individual attitudes and resilience as it did on community planning. Given my background, I tend to focus on the latter as a public speaker, but I do not underestimate the value of personal emotions and outlook in handling stressful situations. In fact, for me, the most valuable takeaways from my visit dealt with those issues, even though many people attending may have felt the opposite after listening to me. Sometimes, the issue is simply what you need to learn at a given moment. But communities are composed of individuals, and whole-community resilience depends on the sum of its parts.

My own after-lunch presentation certainly started with a personal element, as I walked people through what I called “an emotional journey” through Sri Lanka and New Orleans in 2005, and events beyond, to regain a human perspective on why our community-level planning for hazard mitigation and disaster recovery remains important. I then highlighted many of the tools we had developed during my tenure at the American Planning Association to advance such planning, and concluded with a primer on the most practical aspects of adaptation for climate change. But I want to focus instead on what others said that I found important.

Utah’s Threatscape

First, I might note that a presentation early in the day by Matt Beaudry, from the Utah Division of Emergency Management, provided an effective handle on the state’s approach to resilience, which seems to involve a serious effort to take a holistic approach. Beaudry used the term “threatscape,” not one I have heard much before, to talk about the comprehensive array of hazards facing Utah communities. This threatscape, he noted, is “evolving daily,’ and that we are “planning daily for things unimaginable 10 or 20 years ago.” Most of these new threats are not natural but involve the critical infrastructure we have built in our communities and include cybercrime as well as active violence such as vehicle rammings.

Nonetheless, the natural hazards remain. Utah has fault zones and is subject to seismic disturbances, but are communities prepared for earthquakes? It is easy enough to understand when the wildfire season starts, but earthquakes provide no warning. The best preparation is seismically resistant construction, but what about older buildings? Beaudry discussed numerous acronym-laden state programs to address these needs, many of which can be found on the Utah Department of Public Safety website, but one was refreshingly non-acronymic and easy to understand—“Fix the Bricks,” a Salt Lake City program offering grants for seismic retrofitting of older buildings.

Utah has also experienced floods, wildfires, and landslides. Beaudry noted that catastrophic disruptions to water supplies threaten life itself. Hospitals cannot stay open without water. What happens when that lifeline is cut off?

Michael Barrett, resilience program manager for Salt Lake County Emergency Services, followed up by noting that Salt Lake County wants “to ensure that all plans include resilience.”

The ComeBACK Formula

The last morning speaker, Sandra Millers Younger, whom I had never met before this trip, provided the most powerful perspective of the day on individual resilience. Her story began from personal experience, which is not surprising, nor is the fact that she converted that personal experience into a book, The Fire Outside My Window. That fire, the largest in modern California history and known as the Cedar Fire, consumed 280,000 acres near San Diego in 2003.

It also destroyed the house she and her husband had built on a hill they called Terra Nova, which, she says, afforded lofty views “all the way to Mexico.” I must confess that I might have hesitated to build in that location, but what matters for her story is what happened after she awoke to see fire outside, “grabbed our pets and belongings,” including many of her photographer husband’s images, and jammed everything into an Acura Coupe. They headed downhill along a steep route, lost visibility amid the smoke, and feared going off the road and over a cliff until a bobcat leaped in front of her headlights. She followed the bobcat into the smoke to safety. But twelve neighbors died. It was Younger’s struggle with the aftermath that ultimately yielded her story and her approach, which she now calls the ComeBACK formula. At the core of that approach is a quote she uses from Victor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor who wrote a highly regarded book, Man’s Search for Meaning, in which he writes, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

That underlay the simple statement that, confronted with crisis or disaster, we can choose to be victims or survivors. Younger noted that a current subset of psychological research deals with “post-traumatic growth,” ways in which we grow our personal resilience as a result of our experience with disaster. This is not to gainsay the reality of post-traumatic stress, which has gained far more attention, but to acknowledge that we do have choices about the ways in which we respond. To give reality to her approach, Younger stepped the audience through an exercise, pairing up at their tables to share answers to questions based on her approach.

Younger’s five points in the ComeBACK Formula are straightforward enough, but not always easy for people to internalize:

Come to a place of gratitude.
Be patient; believe you can.
Accept help; be tough enough to ask.
Choose your story.
Keep moving forward.

I found it interesting that a female speaker and counselor would use the phrase, “be tough enough to ask,” in reference to accepting help from others. As a man, I wonder how many men would even think of framing the question of accepting help in those terms; yet it feels instinctively true. Asking for help, especially when you are a professional helper, means having the courage to expose your own vulnerability, but also your willingness to learn and grow by doing so. As she notes, it is “hard to call 911 when you are 911.” On the other hand, it is hard to be a hero without understanding what it means to be rescued. To become a better giver, learn how to receive.

The Extreme Example

All this may well have set the stage for the closing keynote, 93-year-old Edgar Harrell, a World War II Marine Corps veteran who survived the sinking of the USS Indianapolis on July 30, 1945, as it was returning to the Philippines from Guam. A lurking Japanese submarine had spotted the ship and launched six torpedoes, two of which struck and literally cut the vessel in half.

Unbeknownst to its crew, the ship had delivered to Tinian Island the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima a few days later. Most of the crew, 880 men, perished while a shrinking contingent that included Harrell, then 21, struggled in tropical seas for five days to survive without food and drinkable water. Finally, a U.S. airplane spotted them, and a seaplane rescue was underway. Here was an example in which the only route to survival was to accept help because no one would have lived otherwise. Harrell lived and retold his story in Out of the Depths.

Younger had earlier noted that she met a man who had lost only his garage in the wildfire, yet was bitter about the outcome, while others who had lost relatives or suffered grievous burns had far more positive attitudes about the future. When any of us think we have seen the worst, it is these stories that remind us of the truth of Victor Frankl’s observation. We do indeed choose how to respond.

Jim Schwab

Park that Transformed Downtown Chicago

Posted on November 24, 2017 by admin

Ed Uhlir died Wednesday, not living long enough to enjoy another Thanksgiving because multiple myeloma overtook him at 73. But the entire Chicago region can be thankful for his quiet service to the city and for his major accomplishment as both an architect and a public servant.

In a world of “starchitects,” those designers with rock-star name recognition in their highly visible profession, his creativity was of a different and far less flamboyant sort. He succeeded in orchestrating the contributions of numerous rich, powerful, and sometimes difficult personalities to produce an outcome that changes people’s perceptions of what a major public space can be. He spent six years, starting in 1998, as the project director for Millennium Park. Mayor Richard M. Daley persuaded him to take on the role shortly after he had retired from the Chicago Park District, with plans to enter the private sector. Daley told him the job would last a couple of years. It ended up being six, but Uhlir stuck with the task until the 26-acre Millennium Park opened in 2004, completely transforming the lake side of Michigan Avenue for several blocks south from Randolph St. to Monroe St. In the process, it also transformed everyone’s sense of downtown Chicago.

During those six years, I watched from a bird’s-nest view of what is now the park because the American Planning Association (APA) was situated across Michigan Avenue from the Art Institute of Chicago and catacorner from the park’s edge. I have regretted to this day not having had the foresight to start shooting daily photos from that 12^th-floor vantage point to create a record of its progress toward completion. I had the corner office closest to the action. But who knew?

Well, some did. In late June of this year, I attended, on an intermittently rainy day, a tour of Millennium Park, co-sponsored by the APA Illinois chapter and the American Society of Landscape Architects Illinois chapter. The program began in a meeting room behind the park’s amphitheater with a series of short presentations led by Uhlir, who was remarkably candid about the process of creating the park. But retirement can do that to you.

What Uhlir began with was a park design by the firm Skidmore Owings and Merrill (SOM) that he found unsatisfactory, he said, in part because it was not completely accessible, though it was based on “an extension of details from the Burnham plan.” Exactly what that meant historically was laid out by Benet Haller, who had been with the Chicago Department of Planning and Development, but now is a transit manager for Cook County. He followed Uhlir’s presentation with a discussion of the history of the downtown lakefront area that Grant and Millennium Parks now occupy, which more than a century ago grew from landfill, much of it derived from subway tunneling as the city’s transit system was built. Haller noted that the Chicago lakefront has been evolving for decades, with features like Grant Park’s iconic Buckingham Fountain emerging in the 1950s. Evolution is, of course, precisely what one would expect of a dynamic urban area. Michigan Avenue, now several blocks from the lake, gained its name from originally being along the lake. Also along that lakefront was a stretch of railroad that still provides passage for many riders into downtown along Metra’s Electric Line, now ending below ground in a station under Millennium Park.

Terry Guen explains nature in the park to those in the APA/ASLA tour.

As Terry Guen, a local landscape architect who also spoke, noted, city lawyers discovered by 1998 that the city owned in fee simple the land between Randolph and Michigan, easing the task of leveraging use of the land from railroads that opposed its use for a park. In addition to the Metra station, the space below the park also contains a parking garage, making the park above, as Guen observed, “the world’s largest publicly accessible green roof.”

Achieving that status required a discreet but confident man with a sense of humor who could patiently weather the tug of war between wealthy donors (such as Penny Pritzker), who underwrote many of the most significant improvements to the park; world-famous architects like Frank Gehry; Maggie Daley, the mayor’s wife; who insisted on accessibility for the entire park; and civic and business leaders. After the initial design failed, Uhlir shifted the approach to a design competition that attracted some of the best ideas that found their way into the final scheme, including the proposal from Anish Kapoor for “Cloud Gate,” aka “the Bean,” one of the most popular aspects of the park since its opening because it allows visitors to see both themselves and the city skyline in the reflections on the perfectly buffed metal. Despite early criticism about cost overruns, the park has become the leading tourist attraction in Illinois, outpacing even Navy Pier with approximately 13 million visitors annually. It is a dynamic combination of features—the water fountain, the amphitheater, a winter skating rink, the “Bean,” and gardens that blend into an effective whole that seems always to be greater than the sum of its parts.

Part of the magic, according to Guen, came from tapping the local wisdom of “plant people, contractors, and others who knew so much about Chicago,” bringing wildflowers and prairie plants that bring an explosive mix of colors while allowing “little weed growth because the ground is so packed full of roots.” The botanical features of Millennium Park can keep a native plant enthusiast busy all summer long, even as the built features attract audiences seeking cultural experiences. For instance, the Harris Theater, on the northeast corner, attracted my wife and me on our anniversary one year to hear Roberto Bernigni perform a comic monologue followed by a recitation in Italian from Dante’s “Il Inferno.” We returned on my birthday to join a “do-it-yourself Messiah,” in which audience members participate in singing assigned parts of Georg Friedrich Handel’s famous work.

All Ed Uhlir did to make this happen was keep all the egos in check, harness them toward a common goal, and leave Chicago with a lasting civic treasure where people can rest, recreate, and relish the best the city’s culture has to offer. If that is the only legacy for which he is remembered, it is far more than most of us will ever claim. Millennium Park is now an indelible part of Chicago’s identity.

Jim Schwab

Home of the Brave

Book Reviews and Discussion with Jim Schwab

Category Archives: History

Standards of Public Behavior

When Denial Is Not an Option

We Must Be Gandalf

Stop the Madness

Power, Perception, and Pilate

Norway’s Fjords: Up Close and Magnificent

Donald Trump’s Racism Diminishes America

Touching Sky and Sea in Norway

Resilience in Utah