Invaders

I was struck by today's Photo of the Day by Stuart Delman of a bizarre tree fungus along the Pilot Knob Mountain trail near Lake George. It looks like a coral learned to climb a tree, or like some horror movie alien about to leap off onto a screaming face. It's nothing I've seen in my local woods walks, and it gets me to thinking about what else I don't see: chestnuts, elms, healthy beech, or much of anything living that's older than me.

Lovely as the North Country is this time of year, it's also true that it is not what it once was, and never will be again. Aliens have been at work, though not the kind you see in movies. The chestnuts were mostly gone before I was born, fallen to an invasive import, though I witnessed the recent decline and death of one of the last survivors on the St. Lawrence University campus. The elms went when I was a child. The beeches around my house are all on the way out due to scale and insect predation. Pine, spruce and maple all contend with their own ills, and the ash blight moves closer each season.

All pests brought in by human activity. We are also an invasive species in the North Country. Just try surviving a winter naked outdoors if you believe otherwise. And we had at the forests with the rabid greed of Dutch elm beetles, cutting in less than a century virtually 100% of the forest, that had developed undisturbed since the retreat of the glaciers 10,000 years ago. Second-growth forest and old-growth forest are apples and oranges. It will take a few more centuries before the Forever Wild lands begin to resemble a climax ecosystem.

The price of progress is not only steep, it is ruinous. We have smashed the watch so we could play with the gears. What'll we tell Mom when she gets home?

Partisan feelings

My brother was in town last weekend, so we took a leaf-viewing drive up into the mountains, first walking the Boreal Life Trail at the Paul Smiths VIC, then meandering up above Lake Placid on John Brown's Road. The day was sunny and cool, and the views all one could hope for, up behind the ski jumps looking east toward the Cascade Pass. As I had never visited the John Brown Farm, I took the chance to stop in for a moment.

The bearded abolitionist of my high school civics book (in life-size bronze) greeted me by the entryway--one arm sheltering an African American child, and looking out over the many-colored hills. His eyes hold a terrible purpose; you can see in them the bloody partisan night raids of "Bleeding Kansas," the armed insurrectionist, captured and brought to trial for treason by then US Army Colonel Robert E. Lee at Harpers Ferry.

Brown inspires in me very mixed feelings. One must admire those who are willing to give their life in a cause. But the willingness to take life for a cause? That gives me pause. Particularly at a time when political temperatures are rising to a boil.

Brian Mann, in the In Box blog, has been tracking some of the hotter end of politics, noting a column this week by John L. Perry, suggesting that a military coup may be the only way to preserve the nation. And in reply to my Listening Post entry about the "American character," an old friend maintained that "As an issue, abortion is the slavery of the 21st century." Even shaving a few points off for hyperbole, when I look at the statue of John Brown, and remember the legacy of slaughter and ruin it took to resolve the issue of slavery, I have to hope my friend is wrong about that.

Laboring

I have labored full- or part-time pretty much continuously since I was 14 years old. Over the decades I have worked for under-the-table cash mowing lawns, shoveling coal and at very odd jobs, such as funk band roadie. I have worked on commission, delivering newspapers and pizzas. I worked for peanuts and tips in a variety of food service operations. And as a small businessman and employer, proprietor of a commercial print shop. And as a union employee of the state, managing a college print shop. And as a solo free-lance, doing publication and web design. And as a non-union employee, working in the online-mines here at North Country Public Radio. Except for military service and indentured servitude, I have worked under just about all the available conditions of employment.

Though I have only had Labor Day off a handful of times over the years, I appreciate it when it rolls around on the calendar. It is increasingly popular these days to minimize the contributions of the labor movement to American life. Union membership is at an historic low in terms of percentage of workers enrolled, and labor's political influence is correspondingly on the wane, even within the once "party of the working man," the Democrats. But the list of accomplishments is too long to ignore: the weekend, the forty-hour work week, pension benefits, workman's compensation, widespread health insurance, workplace safety regulations, child labor laws, the minimum wage, and on and on. The post-World War II heyday of the labor movement saw the creation of the mass middle-class, and the smallest gap in our history between rich and poor.

Despite its waning influence today, anyone who works under any circumstances is the beneficiary of the more than century-long struggle of organized labor. It defined our expectations for the good life, and created a benchmark for the American standard of living. Any working person who aspires to own a home and educate a family and enjoy the occasional vacation, or who looks forward to a secure retirement, is dreaming their dream. And without their long struggle, those aspirations would be nothing more than a dream for the vast majority. So, happy Labor Day this Monday. Hope you get a chance to put your feet up. Me--I'll be at my desk as usual.

Interesting times

Last year was the fortieth anniversary of NCPR, among many other notable events, but it's hard to beat 1969 for portentous happenings. The moon landing on July 16 sticks in most minds. Less well-known is that on July 17, The New York Times publicly retracted its 1920 article ridiculing rocket pioneer Robert Goddard for asserting the possibility of spaceflight. Close behind Apollo 11 comes Woodstock, which beamed down onto Max Yasgur's farm in Bethel NY, forty years ago this week. Also in 1969, on January 30, the last public concert of The Beatles was held on the roof of Apple Records, until broken up by the police.

Nixon was inaugurated January 20; on March 13, the secret bombing of Cambodia began. On February 20, the Boeing 747 was test-flown, and on March 2, the Concorde. On June 2, John and Yoko began a "bed-in" for world peace in Montreal. On June 28, the Stonewall Riots launched the modern gay rights movement. On August 8 (a week before Woodstock), members of the Manson cult murdered Sharon Tate and friends.

The ATM machine was born September 2 and the last Looney Toon cartoon was released September 20. Monty Python first aired October 5, and on October 29, the first message was sent via ARPANET, the forerunner of the Internet. Sesame Street premiered on November 10; the first Wendy's opened November 15. On December 6, the disastrous Altamont Free Concert formed the other bookend to Woodstock. And sometime in 1969, AIDS is thought to have first come to the US via Haiti.

If you're too young to remember 1969, the benediction/curse "May you live in interesting times" may not be fully appreciated. But then again, 2009 is not without its "features of interest." Check back in 40 years.

Supersize

The fiftieth anniversary of the St. Lawrence Seaway provides an opportunity to reflect on the respective costs and benefits of thinking big. As a cooperative human endeavor, the Seaway ranks up with the pyramids, the Great Wall of China, or Machu Picchu. And it required a certain unstopability of purpose to accomplish such a task--a ruthless warlord, a demigod pharoah, or in the case of the Seaway, that creative/destructive genius Robert Moses who, in addition to his redrawing of the map of the North Country, invented the modern metropolis and its suburbs by mercilessly carving up the network of New York City neighborhoods.

One can't imagine the people of New York and Ontario ceding 64 square miles to be sunk for the bass, were it put to a referendum. To lose not only your home, but your town, is not a result to be had by local democratic process. Fifty years on, the feelings of the displaced are still raw, and yet the benefits are real as well: cheap power, new manufacturing, the opening of the Midwest to ocean trade, recreation and tourism destinations. And the cost, too, still rolls in--lost habitat, invasive species, erosion and water pollution.

At a time when we are facing big problems in the economy and the environment, thinking big is again in vogue. Whether small or big, the consequences will always include loss as well as gain. When you think big, they are just bigger.

Round numbers

A big day--the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth, and Darwin's, two of the most influential minds of the 19th century. Kit Carson was also born in 1809, as was Nikolai Gogol, Edgar Allen Poe, Alfred Tennyson and 562 other notables and excrebles listed in the Wikipedia category:1809 births. How we love round numbers--50, 100, 200, 1000.

This is the centennial of the NAACP, started on the centennial of Lincoln's birth. Also, the Lincoln penny was introduced in 1909 to honor The Great Emancipator. According to the inflation calculator, that 1909 coin was worth 22 times the value of its 2009 descendant. I have a 1909 Lincoln penny collected in my numismatic youth, bearing the mark VDB, the initials of its designer. Wouldn't trade it for a quarter. Also in 1909, Mahler conducted the NY Philharmonic for the first time, Perry reached the North Pole, Orville Wright tested the first military aircraft, and the first ship at sea was rescued due to radio.

Celebrating fifty (tomorrow) is Barbie, whose freakish anatomy cannot be accounted for by Darwin's theories. 1959 saw Castro chuck Fulgencio Batista out of Cuba; Alaska joined the Union as the 49th state, Bozo the Clown and Rawhide premiered on TV, Pope John XXIII proclaimed the Second Vatican Council, and the Presbyterian Church OKed the ordination of women.

Church of the Holy Sepulchre before Al-Hakim.

Those who take the longer view might note the coronation of Henry VIII in 1509, the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem by Caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, who hacked the church's foundations down to bedrock in 1009 AD, or the birth of Roman Emperor Vespasian in 9 AD. You have to wonder, looking at a 2009 infant, what they might do to get themselves onto the 2209 list. We can hope it's not the hacking down to bedrock thing.

History in company

When I was a child in the 1950s, you would sometimes still see a newsreel in the theater, wedged between the previews and the cartoon. Television was still a baby, and video news was something consumed in company. Today, it is only the truly dire, or the truly monumental, that brings unrelated people together around a TV. I can count the occasions on my fingers: 1963, at school, as the events in Dallas unfolded; 1969, in the lounge of a South Dakota dude ranch, to watch the moon landing; 1974, at the commune, watching Nixon resign; 1986, at work, as the Challenger exploded; 2001, in the Satellite Room of the NCPR studio, as the World Trade Center fell; and Tuesday, back in the Sat Room, to watch an African American take the oath of office as president.

It is the last two that keep coming back to mind--maybe because I was in the same place with the same people. The occasions seem to be bookends, bracketing an era. After each, I found it necessary to walk by myself--after 9-11, to walk off the evil, and after the Inauguration, to savor relief and gratitude. As political happenings, they also bookend the spectrum--suicidal and murderous intimidation contrasted with peaceful transformation, one appealing to the tribal divide, and one to the common impulse toward mutual progress.

While each of the occasions listed above mark history for good or ill, I have to believe the most momentous is the most recent. An America that can embrace its diversity, rather than merely tolerate it, is a nation not only new to itself, but something new in the history of nations. And such a rebuke to the politics of fear.

Sipping from the firehose

My friend Jim continues an old tradition of printing small inspirational broadsides from handset lead type. The one on my bulletin board is from T.S. Eliot's The Rock, and reads:

"Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?"

Written in 1934, it could have been a challenge to today's media, particularly online media. Today we may swim in the plunge pool of a Niagara of information, but without a lot of effort, we don't "know" squat. For example, I've been talking about the origins of local placenames with Gregory Warner and we had a listener ask about Negro Creek. I can give you GPS coordinates for its location in Lewis County; I can point you toward the DOT survey of culvert locations on the creek; I can tell you that there are five Negro Brooks in New York, but only one Negro Creek. What I can't tell you is the story of how it got its name. And don't get me started on how hard it has been to find out who the candidates are in each of the NY Assembly and Senate races in the region. I can point you toward endless bloviation about the political landscape, but haven't been able to complete a simple list of the most basic of voter resources. For wisdom you are probably on your own, but adding to knowledge should be, at a bare minimum, somewhere in the media tool kit.