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Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site, Elverson, Pennsylvania

Posted in Pennsylvania, tagged , , , , , , on September 12, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Boring Built America

The National Park Service has a couple hundred small, unimposing, mundane historic sites spread all over the country. They don’t cover events of magnitude, like Pickett’s Charge or the Gold Rush or the battle of the Alamo, but they are loved by their local communities and tell important stories nonetheless. Hopewell Furnace, in rural south-central Pennsylvania, tells one such story: mundane, boring, but vital.

Hopewell was an early ironworks, a forging business operating in  the late 18th, early 19th centuries. There, you can learn how charcoal was made; how limestone was harvested; and how those two materials were combined in a blast furnace with raw ore to form iron, the metal that transformed the world. Mundane & boring? Sure. Hopewell is well-maintained, the people are pleasant, the visiting children seemed to like it, but it isn’t particularly exciting. But you know what? Boring isn’t so bad: it built and defended this nation for over 200 years now.

It shouldn’t be too great of a leap to understand that iron built America. We look at the musket-carriers of the Revolutionary War with great reverence, but if it wasn’t for places like Hopewell, there would be no iron or steel for the musket barrels, wagon wheels, and cannons. We were in the early days of being an industrial juggernaut, producing 30,000 tons a year at the beginning of hostilities. Iron built the weapons that fought off enemies, shot at brothers, and conquered new territory. But it didn’t stop there. Iron built the railroads, and the great engines that rode on them. Iron built the ocean liners that shipped our goods everywhere in the world. Iron built the buildings and skyscrapers that housed finance, engineering, science, and even religion.

Yes, it’s all very poetic. What’s not poetic is how mundane it all is. Hundreds of men crawled around in mines, breathing in noxious fumes and dust and working themselves to the bone to extract ore. Dozens more gathered wood and endured the laborious process of turning wood into charcoal. Others dug limestone from cliff faces. Then there were the oxcart drives and teamsters, hauling stuff to and fro. Awfully boring, awfully dangerous, awfully hard work, all necessary to the production of iron at Hopewell Furnace.

But that’s what built this country. Not politicians, not “captains of industry”, not wealthy elitists, nor Harvard graduates or published authors or generals or soldiers or even architects. All of those occupations are worthless without real people doing real boring, mundane, uninteresting, hard work. Even today, it’s the trades who continue to build stuff. Whether they live & work in Pennsylvania or Mexico or China, today the entire world is built by the hard working folks doing the most boring of tasks over and over and over.

Next time you’re bored, remember: boring built America. And if you’re going to do something boring & monotonous, at least make it worthwhile to someone.

[All pictures are mine and thusly copyrighted. A few more, in black & white, are here.]

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Links:

Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site

A Brief History of Iron & Steel

Pennsylvania Iron Furnace Sourcebook

Voluntary Simplicity

Google map to Hopewell Furnace

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Book Review: “FDR”, by Jean Edward Smith

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on July 17, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Compelling History

“Ugh, history is SOOOO boring!”

I hear ya, eighth grader! It’s not your fault. The fact is, most history writers suck. They may be brilliant historians but, by and large, they are lousy writers.

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I had my angle for my post on FDR plotted out before I wrote it. The site in question was FDR’s home, I felt the need to write about who he was rather than what he did. Yet most of my prior reading was on the latter: FDR and the Depression, FDR vs. the courts, FDR  at war, etc. There’s a lot of interesting reading there, but these isolated issues don’t give a full measure of the man. 

I knew what I needed. I needed to sit down & read a book spanning his whole life. Only that would let me understand FDR himself. But let’s be fair: writing a biography of one of history’s great figures is hard enough, but putting it in one volume while covering it well is damned near impossible. The stories of Lincoln, Eisenhower, Napolean, Gandhi, and FDR can’t adequately be covered in one volume. But I did some scrolling through Amazon’s reviews, and I found a book that had good recommendations. “FDR”, by Jean Edward Smith, might meet my need.

So how does one fit a momentous life into one volume? Well, this is my first complaint about Smith’s effort. He took a monumental, perhaps impossible, writing challenge, and wasted the entire first chapter on FDR’s family ancestry: Roosevelt’s wealthy forebears and Dutch family tree. Right off the bat, the book is as boring as the Book of Numbers! Who begat who, from wence did they come. Madness! Why bother with that stuff? It’s not really relevant. Sure, his upbringing is important (his relationship with his mother, Sarah, is crucial), but all that farfle about how his family emigrated to the U.S. and continually married their cousins? Who cares? It’s eating up valuable pages, and by doing it right up front, it’s setting a horrid tone for the book.

Then there’s Smith’s penchant to retroactively drop in characters. Out of nowhere, Smith will bring in a character who, it turns out, knew FDR since college! But wait, he already wrote about those college years.  Why didn’t he mention this person then? No, he drops him in and talks again about the past to bring us up to speed about this one guy and then gets moving along the main path again. This rubber-banding doesn’t happen too frequently (thank goodness) but when it does, it’s certainly annoying.

But here’s the worst part. Smith ends the book abruptly. “FDR died. The end.” No denouement, no nothing. Just “he’s dead.” Not even a wrap-up, or a summation, or an epilogue. Nothing but bibliography. It’s like, in the end, FDR’s life didn’t have any meaning. In reality he got a tombstone and a monument in Washington, but Jean Smith couldn’t be bothered to write another couple of paragraphs about his funeral train or the eulogy delivered by Winston Churchill. Perhaps he was as tired of writing the book as I was of reading it.

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History is A STORY. I love history, and historians love history, because it’s a fascinating story. Tell it like one! FDR’s life had all the hallmarks of a great novel: a man of privilege and bearing with a fairy-tale existence, suddenly struck with adversity. A man who learned, from that adversity, to become a leader of a troubled nation. A man who formed a powerful alliance of capitalists, monarchs, tyrants, egotists and soldiers that would go on to defeat the greatest evil of the 20th century and, when all was said and done,  would still remain as perplexed as the rest of us by that elusive thing known as love. What a story! But, sadly, told rather poorly in this case.

In this day and age, no one can go through their professional life with only one set of skills and hope for success. Doctors are learning to be business managers to succeed in their practices. Business managers are learning about databases in order to target their customers. Computer programmers are learning how to be salespeople so they can garner their next consulting gig. And historians need to learn, too. They need to learn how to write, how to craft a narrative. They need to learn about plot, and dialogue, and character development, and how to engender empathy through prose.

This is not to say historians should fabricate or embellish the story. I’m not suggesting they create Twilight: The Yalta Conference. I am suggesting they learn through their studies what narrative exists in the history that’s real, and use good writing to bring it out and make it interesting.

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Home of Franklin D. Roosevelt National Historic Site, Hyde Park, New York

Posted in New York, tagged , , , , , , , , , on June 13, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Charisma is My Dump Stat

Ever since I was a young pup, growing up in the Western Massachusetts confluence of mill towns and dairy farms, people routinely sang the praises of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. “He saved the country and the people” was the mantra. If you were a blue-collar worker, FDR was a hero. If you were a farmer, FDR was a hero. If you held degrees in the arts or sciences, FDR was a hero. His name was always spoken with reverence. “He got us out of the Great Depression”. As a kid, I never understood it, but it was taught to me from a very early age. Actually, “taught” may not even be the operative word here, it was almost genetic.

This reverent view was especially held by those who actually lived through the Depression. My grandparents – disinterested in politics otherwise – loved FDR, as did their brothers & sisters, family friends, and others of the same generation. My parents’ generation, mere tweens during the 30’s & 40’s, also spoke lovingly of the man. It’s only now, with my grandparents’ generation is 20 years dead and my parents’ rapidly disappearing, that FDR is receiving critical attention by the general public.

I find this utterly fascinating. Sure, pundits & partisans would complain about the economics of the New Deal and the court packing scandal, but FDR had to be dead 60 years before the common man started questioning his Presidency and leadership. That’s almost three generations! I can’t think of anyone short of George Washington and perhaps Thomas Jefferson who escaped such criticism for so long. The people of FDR’s time had to basically die before public opinion turned against him. Today, we decry the previous loser the day after Election Day.

How in the world does this happen? How is it even remotely possible that any leader can earn such true devotion amongst his people? His wasn’t based on fear, nor was it based on indoctrination (contrary to right-wing conspiracy theorists). The devotion FDR enjoyed was real, and true, and long-lasting. This is the real story of FDR: not the impact of his policies but the power of his charisma. Utterly fascinating!

I have many flaws. Perhaps the most striking one is my near-total lack of charisma. I’m not particularly likable, and have virtually no leadership skills. I couldn’t convince people to escape from a burning building. If I was at a picnic and implored people to not eat the botulism-tainted potato salad, a score of ambulances would be needed to cart away the doubled-over masses. To me, strong & genuine leadership qualities are as alien as an iPhone to Neanderthals. That is why I find FDR so fascinating. His charisma is akin to string theory: practically unknowable.

Here’s my own take on why Roosevelt inspired such devotion: he had the “perfect storm” of confidence, communication, competence, and empathy. His family, especially his mother, Sara, gave him a good education and instilled in him a measure of self-confidence absolutely required of a good leader. FDR was a great communicator. His speeches are the stuff of legend and they were delivered, not as oratory, but as conversation, meaning they were genuine. Was FDR competent? Sure, you could say his policies weren’t necessarily wise, but he got them done. People respect people who get things done, action is rewarded far greater than thought or bearing. And FDR did accomplish an awful lot in his 12 years as President.

So that leaves empathy. Empathy is the capacity to care about your fellow human being: to see, understand and relate to other people and their troubles. In the beginning, FDR (like most bluebloods) didn’t have much in the way of empathy. He was “upper crust”, raised in the bubble of Hudson Valley prestige and private school. He was not fit to lead the U.S., at least not in a manner to receive such a tremendous amount of public adulation. But something happened that gave him the empathy he needed to be one of the top five Presidents in history. That something? Polio. To alleviate the pain of polio (or perhaps Guillain-Barre syndrome), FDR would visit Warm Springs, Georgia. There he’d meet poor farmers and others trying to live in impoverished conditions. It’s there he learned to empathize with the common man, and where he gained the final skill required to be a strong leader.

It’s both sad and relieving that presidents like FDR are far and few between. On the one hand, we could certainly use more competence in our nation’s capitol. We are certainly sick and tired of politico-speak (the near opposite of  good communication). And empathy? If there’s a skill that’s dead in Washington, it’s empathy. That’s why our government is failing us, that’s why Congress has minute approval ratings, why our President — like the one before him — barely holds 50%, why no one trusts the courts and dissatisfaction rules the land.

But on the other hand, imagine what leaders like FDR can do. He inspired such huge devotion, devotion that lasted for decades, can you imagine what would have happened if he wasn’t an honorable man? Well, carnage, that’s what. If history has taught us anything, it’s “beware the charismatic man.” It’s the people who inspire loyalty and devotion in others who are the most dangerous.

We got lucky with FDR. We may not be so lucky with the next one.

[I did not own a camera when I visited Hyde Park. All photos are in the public domain and pulled from various sources, including those links given below].

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Links:

Home of Franklin Delano Roosevelt National Historic Site

FDR Presidential Library and Museum

FDR’s Ties to Georgia (University of Georgia site)

American Rhetoric: Top 100 Speeches

Google map to FDR’s home

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An American Hero

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on February 6, 2012| Leave a Comment »

The Death of Technology

In 1985, a group of engineers discovered a flaw in a design. Using engineer’s diligence, this team collected data, performed tests, ran some models, and came to a very scientific conclusion: under certain conditions, the most complex machinery in existence on Earth had a fatal flaw, and something needed to be done. They followed the chain of command, and told the appropriate management team.

That team ignored the report.

On January 28, 1986, the exact conditions specified in that report came to be, and the well-formulated set of conclusions derived by those same engineers six months prior came to pass.

Due to unusually cold conditions on the ground, the o-ring seals on two solid rocket boosters gave way. High-intensity flames erupted from the casing in the wrong place, forcing the booster into the main liquid fuel tank, rupturing the entire assembly. The resulting explosion and erratic expulsion of the two solid rocket boosters left a cloud of smoke whose shape has indelibly etched itself on the minds of all Americans (and especially all engineers). The passenger compartment of the vessel continued on its ascent until, at 65,000 feet elevation, gravity finally beat inertia. The compartment, and the seven brave souls still strapped inside, plummeted horrifically into the Atlantic Ocean. The vehicle known as the Space Shuttle Challenger ceased to exist.

That management team was wrong, dead wrong. I hope they’ve led miserable lives since the day they put facts aside for the sake of a government contract.

The engineering team, however, was right on the money. They did their best to avoid this tragedy, but were ignored. The lead man of that team, Roger Boisjoly, quit Morton-Thiokol and toured the country, speaking to engineering conferences about the value of quality; the failure of arrogance, ambition, and haste; and the ugly reality of corporate malfeasance. Roger died on January 6th, 2012. In my view, Roger and that entire team of engineers were American heroes.

I was working in the college computer lab on that day, trying to turn a Motorola 68000 processor into something other than a hotplate. We had the launch on the small TV, but were barely paying attention. By this time, shuttle launches were so routine the countdowns and announcements were as mundane as elevator music. But there is something special about the droning of repetitive launch instructions: the minute something is amiss, you know it. The tone changes: the monotone becomes the emotional, the drone of hard facts becomes the stuttering of uncertainty. Something was wrong. We turned, and saw the corkscrew plumes of death through that tiny screen.

My heart sank that day. Here I was, studying fervently to become a skilled technician. Technology was always my dream job, from the first time I saw Scotty fret over his dilithium chamber. I took apart my Pong game, my radios, the family TV. I taught people how to work their VCRs and had to constantly clean the gunk out of my stepbrother’s Nintendo. I was programming in assembly and machine language and BASIC, but was really a hardware weenie. Circuit boards, op-amps, laser diodes, these were the shiz-nit. I loved physics, excelled at mathematics, and, plain and simply, loved making things work.

Yet there I was, watching technology die.

It’s not that technology ceased to exist. Au contraire, we were at the very beginning of the greatest technological revolution ever. It would simplify our lives, improve our productivity, extend our life, and connect the world. One cannot even compare the technology of 1986 with today. Touch screens? Optical chips? Dense wavelength digital multiplexing? Microminiature cameras? Still highly theoretical, if that, back then. We’ve made tremendous advancements, that 16-bit processor I would soon turn to slag is now a mere wafer in the I/O chip of that crappy PC your grandma uses to play Scrabble.

But technology is still dead.

I say it’s dead because we don’t care for it. We don’t respect it. We don’t cherish it. We don’t put our heart and soul into it. We throw something together, slap a fancy label on it, shove it in an appliance, and then hope — not for it to work, but to make us a big, hefty profit. And if it doesn’t, oh well, right into the scrap heap. Look, a newer, shinier bauble just got released at E3!!!

The Challenger tragedy was my first experience with poor quality and the disinterest that leads to it. And look around you, what do we have today? Microsoft, the foremost manufacturer of operating systems since the early 80’s, still can’t make an operating system worth a shit.  American car companies suffered from decades of quality neglect, only recently turning themselves around (whether this trend continues remains to be seen), and some of the murmurings coming from airplane mechanics make your head spin. Union Carbide failed to properly maintain one of their facilities and kills thousands. BP and its shoddy suppliers dumped millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico (the environmental effects of which are still undeterminable); and the Japanese, once paragons of quality, can’t even apply their own earthquake remediation science to their own nuclear reactors! Technology, as bright-and-shiny as it is, fails us on a daily basis, often with disastrous results. Why is that?

It fails us because we don’t care about it. We don’t want to care for it, nurture it, respect it. We want to use it and abuse it and toss it away. Do people want that hand-crafted North Carolina furniture that will live longer than you? No, they flock to IKEA to buy that cheap-ass particle-board shit that’ll degenerate to it’s natural elements within 18 months (and exude toxic gasses the whole way). Cheapcheapcheap, and tosstosstoss. And God forbid if you want to apply quality to your  job. If you want to take the time to fine-tune that dilithium chamber for optimal performance, safety, and long life, you’ll be fired for wasting your time and energy that could be better spent polishing Powerpoint presentations that prove just how smart your executives are.

Quality is dead. And therefore technology is dead. And therefore, people are dead and will continue to die. God bless you, Roger Boisjoly, and any other engineer who has risked his career in the name of quality and safety.

[Photo of Roger Boisjoly is copyrighted to the New York Times.]

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