Whitcomb: History Markers; Redundancy Needed! Oyster Farmers in a Warming World
Robert Whitcomb, Columnist
Whitcomb: History Markers; Redundancy Needed! Oyster Farmers in a Warming World
"Life conceals no depths, no mysteries, the sky is everywhere,
The leaves are all ablaze with light, the blond light
Of a summer afternoon that made me think again of Sally's hair.'
-- From "Sally's Hair,'' by John Roethe (born 1945), American poet and philosophy professor
"Emigration is easy, but immigration is something else. To flee, yes; but to be accepted?''
-- Victoria Wolff (1903-1992), German-American writer
You can hear the concert of crickets now, in the full maturity of summer, and the golden rod proliferates as the crops reach their crescendo and the tree swallows flock. Sweet corn smothered in butter!
Invasive lantern flies are on the move. Enjoy their colors, and then squash them. The invasive plants from the south are a tougher challenge as they strangle native vegetation.
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An article in the very useful Governing magazine about the social and economic advantages and disadvantages, depending on the location, of historic preservation got me thinking about the need to do more to tell Americans about their own history. Tens of millions of Americans are woefully ignorant of history, both about the nation’s history as a whole and about the past of their localities, let alone the world's
This ignorance makes them more vulnerable to the outrageous lies of demagogic crooks like Trump and his entourage.
Jill Lepore’s book These Truths: A History of the United States represents an admirable attempt to deconstruct the myths about our history that poor public education allows many to believe and some pols to use.
Obviously, local economics and politics will sometimes lead to old buildings of historic interest being torn down, despite the howls of preservationists. This is an intensely capitalist country, and money usually wins in disputes. But then, the buildings that replace the torn-down ones might, decades later, be beloved by preservationists. Think of Mid-Century Modern.
One thing that could help educate people about the history of their surroundings would be if public and private organizations had the resources to put up far more plaques and other signs explaining briefly what happened at this or that site. This is much more widely done in Western Europe than here. And some of these historical signs are about horrific events. For example, you’ll find buildings with plaques that say: “The people who lived in this building were taken by Nazis and murdered.’’
As for such historical features as statues in public parks of Confederate generals (who fought for the preservation and expansion of slavery) they’d best be in museums. Or if left in a park, an honest description of these “heroes’’ can be put up at the base of the statues.
The recent airline and other computer system chaos caused by the CrowdStrike “bug” late last week, whose effects were still being felt in the middle of last week, is a reminder of the danger of inadequate backups (often called “redundancy”) in some systems. Backups cost money, of course, to bottom-line obsessed companies but not having enough redundancy can do damage that will cost much more. Even small households need redundancy, say in the form of having both a landline for your phones as well as cell phone service.
After all, nothing is 100 percent secure.
Recent airline service breakdowns make one hope against hope for more and faster trains. I thought of that last Tuesday night as my wife faced the possibility of being trapped at the Detroit airport for days as she was trying to get back to Providence from meeting a new grandchild in Portland, Ore. She finally escaped Motown and arrived at Green Airport, in Warwick at about 3 a.m.
It sometimes seems, as in the line from the state with the “other Portland,’’ “you can’t get there from here.’’
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Small entrepreneurs have to respond quickly to changing circumstances, in this case out of enlightened self-interest.
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Perhaps inevitably, arson attacks on rail lines going into Paris have paralyzed much of the city since the Games began last week. As of this writing it was unclear who was behind them, but remember that Russian agents have been engaged in sabotage in various places in Europe for the past few months.
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Rather than just oppose wind turbines and solar farms, which is easy, foes would do well to say what they do support to address accelerating global warming from burning natural gas, oil and coal. Nuclear energy? Green hydrogen? Tidal power? Massive conversion of buildings to geothermal? Huge increase in heat pumps? Suggestions needed.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi last week with the hope that China might press Russia to agree to a diplomatic end to the war launched by Vladimir Putin in his obsession with reconstituting a version of the tyrannical Czarist and Soviet empires, with him, of course, as the bloodthirsty dictator for life.
“I am convinced that a just peace in Ukraine is in China’s strategic interests,” Dmytro Kuleba said after the meeting in the Chinese city of Guangzhou. “China’s role as a global force for peace is important.”
Since when are dictatorships like China’s interested in a “just’’ anything? They’re interested in the expansion of their power, which Xi Jinping’s regime includes with its alliance with junior partner Putin, a relationship that recalls in some ways the Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939-1941.
Transactional Politics
As you hear/read Trump’s daily lie-thick attacks on Kamala Harris, you might want to know that he and his daughter Ivanka gave thousands of dollars to Ms. Harris's campaigns for California attorney general, in which job she served from 2011-2017. Of course, the donations weren't for ideological reasons but rather to try to garner any future help that Trump might have sought for directly for himself and/or his businesses.
In a 2004 interview, Trump told CNN: "In many cases, I probably identify more as Democrat,'' explaining: "It just seems that the economy does better under the Democrats than the Republicans. Now, it shouldn't be that way. But if you go back, I mean it just seems that the economy does better under the Democrats...''
In 2015, Harris donated all the Trump money to a nonprofit promoting civil and human rights for Central Americans.
As in business, there's a lot of cold transactional stuff in politics. Consider Bill and Hillary Clinton, that oft-cynical couple, attended Trump’s wedding to his third wife, Slovenian immigrant Melania Knauss, in 2005, when Trump’s assorted depravities were long well known. After all, the Clintons probably saw Trump as a possible future supporter of Mrs. Clinton's presidential ambitions.
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Meanwhile, here’s some exciting summer reading:
From The Guardian:
“Donald Trump told his nephew he should let his disabled son die, then ‘move down to Florida,’ the nephew writes in a new book, calling the comment ‘appalling.’
“’Wait!’ Fred C Trump III writes. ‘What did he just say? That my son doesn’t recognize me? That I should just let him die?
“Did he really just say that?”
“The shocking exchange is described in All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got This Way, which will soon be published.
“The book also includes a description of Trump using the N-word, news that drops into a presidential election in which Trump faces Kamala Harris, the first woman of color to be vice-president.’’
A Cultural Force
My friend of many years Lewis H. Lapham, the long-time editor of Harper's Magazine and founder of Lapham's Quarterly, which was dedicated to furthering the knowledge and appreciation of history. He died last week at 89.
Lewis was a force in American culture for decades and great company.