Herewith, a tale of two cities, for your perusal:
Youngstown, Ohio, was a steel-mill town of 165,000 souls. Then the mills shut down in the ’70s, and the town started shrinking, to the point where it’s now got less than half as many people. For years, they tried to regain their lost population with all sorts of schemes, the proposed blimp factory probably being the silliest.
Recently, the city’s leaders had a different idea: Why not, instead of trying to get bigger, figure out how to live sustainably with the city’s current population? Why not take out the old abandoned and wrecked properties and replace them with CSA-affiliated community gardens and playgrounds and the like? Why not take the opportunity to teach our children how to live a life at once urban and agarian? Why not back green websites? Why not, indeed?
Already, other Rust Belt cities like Flint in Michigan, Dayton in Ohio, and Wheeling in West Virginia, are studying Youngstown’s new approach, known as "Plan 2010". On their own, several East German cities with declining populations are making similar moves to embrace new smaller, greener versions of themselves.
Ah, but what about smaller cities, such as those under 10,000 population? Are they large enough to put out the resources needed for this transformation? The community of Greensburg, Kansas, suggests that the answer is a resounding "yes!"
On the night of May 4, 2007, 95% of our homes and businesses were destroyed by a massive EF5 tornado that was nearly 2 miles wide. Although this storm was devastating to our community, we are presented with an incredible opportunity to show the world our strength and to create a new future for those who will live here. We strongly believe that we will be back, better than ever, and will be a model for rural America.
"Incredible opportunity" indeed. Greensburg is well on its way to rebuilding itself as a modern green community, mixing urban amenities with a rural setting. All city-owned buildings will be built to meet LEED Platinum standards, and homeowners are being given big incentives to rebuild green — an opportunity that would not have existed, if not for the tornado.
Youngstown, Greensburg, and other like-minded communities in America and elsewhere are showing that adversity is opportunity in disguise, and that one can pivot nearly any adversity to become an opportunity.
Related posts:
- FDL Book Salon Welcomes David Owen, Green Metropolis: Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less are the Keys to Sustainability
- Come Saturday Morning: How Does Your Garden Grow?
- Come Saturday Morning: Right-Wing Corporate Lies about Water
- Come Saturday Morning: Oh My God, They’re TURKEYS!
- Come Saturday Morning: Recipes
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PW, eh?
Bravo to these communities. A tregedy is an opportunity.
Tragedy. Spell check is not my best friend*g*
Good morning PW. Very inspiring.
I grew up in Buffalo, whose story is much like Youngstown’s. I really liked it. It, like much of upstate, has wonderful natural environment, and Buffalo itself also has some good cultural institutions & schools. Yet it can’t get out of its own way. Should try to be what it is now, I agree.
this is inspiring. Thank you, PW.
PW -
What a wizard and inspiring post!
Had already read the article about Greensburg (fitting name, that *g*) and Youngstown is the icing on the cake. Lessons in how to come back better; bigger not necessarily being welcome to the party. It’s communities like these that will, hopefully, attract the kind of humans who care about leaving the planet in a more positive condition for their children.
Um, PW, could you forward this post to Pittsburgh, PA?
Great and timely post!!!
EGGSelent idea
Don’t miss the Discovery Channel special about Greensburg tonight. The show will air 8 p.m. and encores on May 4th, 12:00 am on the Discovery Channel.
they could be a tredgedy too,for all we know…”g”
Woohoo…. about Damn time…..
I have a picture from the balcony of my hotel in Crete where every building had one or more solar water heaters on their roofs…… homes, apartments, hotels, businesses all with locally made [Creta Sun] solar water heaters…..they had started putting them on new buildings 30 years ago….
Germany is providing subsidies to install solar power & water heating… this effort puts power back into the grid, creates jobs and living in Arizona where we throw away sunshine…… STILL we have no major power generation process from solar…
Now that’s an idea!
Pittsburghian Pups, you know what to do!
News from what Obama and Hillary term “The GOOD war”:
NEW YORK (Reuters) – The Pentagon is considering sending up to 7,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan next year to make up for a shortfall in contributions from NATO allies, the New York Times reported on Saturday.
The increase would likely result in “the re-Americanization” of the war, one U.S. official said, according to the Times. U.S. forces would then account for two-thirds of foreign troops in Afghanistan, it said.
The report appeared a day after Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the United States could consider taking over NATO’s command in southern Afghanistan, where some NATO allies have been reluctant to provide combat forces.
Southern Afghanistan, site of the worst in a surge of Taliban violence, is now under NATO command. Britain, Canada, the Netherlands and Australia all have forces in the region.
Exactly. Hell, a study is going on right now to see if we could develop a solar-cell material that could be used as road surfacing. Imagine all of America’s roads turned into solar collectors!
Ecahn – sigh, I think a lot of places in Upstate have the problem that we tend to look back all the time. The number of people here who talk about how we are the birthplace of IBM and look what they did to us drives me nuts. The same conditions: good people, good transport, education, etc. that made it a great place for IBM to start here (and Endicott Johnson and Link Simulation, etc. etc.) are still here. But it’s sometimes hard to move into the future when you keep looking behind you all the time.
Hi PW. What’s up with Al Franken’s campaign there in Minnesota?
We’ve got millions of people beginning to retire- who no longer have to be near employment centers. Many of em have little but social security and the equity in their house…
On the other hand, we have plenty of towns that are becoming deserted. The have amenities and low real estate prices….
Sounds to me as if the two were MADE for each other.
Heard something the other day about the weight and friction of trucks at a toll booth being used to generate electricity beneath the toll booth. Want me to ask for the link?
How amazing it would be to see a leader in the steel industry transformed to a leader in green living.
If we’d put half the troops into Afghanistan that we did in Iraq and skipped invading Iraq entirely, Osama would be caught or dead and we’d have had enough troops to set up a stable government.
As it is, Karzai’s just the mayor of Kabul. He is better off than al-Maliki, who doesn’t control anything.
Missouri and Kansas are two areas with lots of cities in population decline—take a look boomers!
Is that a picture of Youngstown? I think I want to live there…looks dreamy.
Yep. Very hard to live in the present, apparently, when it seems to compare unfavorably to the past. I now have family in Rochester are & love spending time there, the canal, other features. All of the state that I’ve visited seems wonderful to me.
Nice, very nice.
PW, I sure like the way you look at the world.
thanks for the insightspiration.
Not so dreamy in January perhaps.
Maybe- that’s what the soviets thought- where are they now?
Good Morning PW.
With apologies, I’d like to bring up an EPU’d comment because, somehow, it seems appropriate here too. Besides, it just makes me heart-sick, and I have to get it out fwiw.
I have been going through my deceased parents’ old papers, sorting, saving, filing and culling.
I came across something I do not know how to file, either physically or psychologically. It brings tears of frustration and loss every time I look at it.
The source: a 1960’s-era Air France travel brochure my parents had saved. I hope you will allow me a rather extensive quote, as follows:
…..
…..
well, you get my point by now.
Dumbya, what HAVE you done?! How DARE you!?!
Just imagine. This man-child started out simply blowing up frogs while his mom giggled at the harmless thrill of it all.
just….. unspeakably….. sickening…..
I’m waiting to see what will be done with the square miles of parking lots that stretch along our highways (the ones that are one step down from intersates), thanks to that second curse of the late 20th century, ‘roadside commercial zoning’. (The first and foremost curse, of course, being the internal compustion engine.)
The best and most accessible forests and arable lands have been suffocated underneath asphalt which is larded with salt in the winter (in parts of the Northeast, at least), traps no rainfall, and heats the air above in summer to such a degree that clouds are dissipated and the local weather changes.
Never mind that even at the peak of the commercial successes for the stores, not one-third of these parking lots have been utilized at any time, save maybe around Christmas — never mind that duplication of offerings from competing franchises ensures that about a third of the stores go out of business (the little stores off the main drag are killed by the local mega-hardware store, that mega-store is killed by Home Depot, Home Depot is killed by Lowe’s, ad nauseum).
I’ve been known to rant that all developers of such atrocities be required to put into escrow funds sufficient to restore the land to USDA-approved dairy farms when the utilization of the lots falls below one-quarter, or some such criterion.
What have these small cities found themselves able to do to reclaim their patrimony, their most valuable roadside area, where there could be local businesses of many kinds and trees and parks?
Huh. The Greenburg, KS story is on CNN right now.
Any word from AK recently?
Alternate energy sources that I can think of….
- Wind
- Solar
- Tidal Wave action
- Geo-thermal [hot springs]
Anyone have any others?
I live in Youngstown and while change is coming here, there is a lot more rubble than there is green construction. We do have one of the largest city parks in the US, and some very involved garden clubs, but the reason must of the city is turning green is that no one’s mowin the lawns or pulling the vines off the abandoned houses.
Yep – one of the interesting aspects of being in a place that considered itself the cutting edge of everything in the 19th and early 20th centuries is that most of the sprawl that you see in places like Virginia, Maryland, Georgia, and out west just … sort of missed us. Living conditions here are fantastic. I ride my bike to work in 30 min. on uncrowded roads. My husband’s commute is 15 min. People just need to get off the whole “what we need is a big employer to discover us” bandwagon and support smaller local businesses. In 1987, Singer Link laid off about half of their workforce. A lot of them got picked up by what was then Martin Marietta, but is now BAE(and they are doing hybrid commercial buses)right here. Other people went into their own businesses doing medical simulation and visual systems. Diamond Visionics is one of them and they have grown tremendously – I think they have over a hundred employees. But people get all nostalgic for the 15,000 IBM jobs that disappeared over the past twenty years. If we’d encouraged smaller development here, those 15,000 jobs might have been in 30 healthy companies instead of one big bloated one that decided that they did not want to be in the computer business any longer.
You’ve pretty well covered it.
In some sense, wind is a form of solar energy. So are biofuels.
Nuclear energy is alternative to fossile fuel, and there are some alternative among the forms of nuclear energy, e.g., using Thorium rather than Uranium.
Methane from digesting cow manure
Hmmm. Perhaps one of the reasons I like NYS so much is because I hate suburbs & sprawl. That exists near NYC, though even there much of it is older & has mellowed. I HATE new construction, of whatever ilk: residential, commercial, industrial. (Well, perhaps except for Manhattan.) Scars on the earth. NYS seems to have less of it.
Brief history of Iraq from Wiki:
Britain imposed a Hāshimite monarchy on Iraq and defined the territorial limits of Iraq without taking into account the politics of the different ethnic and religious groups in the country, in particular those of the Kurds and the Assyrians to the north. During the British occupation, the Shi’ites and Kurds fought for independence.
Faced with spiralling costs and influenced by the public protestations of war hero T.E. Lawrence in The Times, Britain replaced Arnold Wilson in October 1920 with new Civil Commissioner Sir Percy Cox. Cox managed to quell the rebellion, yet was also responsible for implementing the fateful policy of close cooperation with Iraq’s Sunni minority.[2][3]
In the Mandate period and beyond, the British supported the traditional, Sunni leadership (such as the tribal shaykhs) over the growing, urban-based nationalist movement. The Land Settlement Act gave the tribal shaykhs the right to register the communal tribal lands in their own name. The Tribal Disputes Regulations gave them judiciary rights, whereas the Peasants’ Rights and Duties Act of 1933 severely reduced the tenants’, forbidding them to leave the land unless all their debts to the landlord had been settled. The British resorted to military force when their interests were threatened, as in the 1941 Rashīd `Alī al-Gaylānī coup. This coup led to a British invasion of Iraq using forces from the British Indian Army and the Arab Legion from Jordan.
[edit] Iraqi monarchy
Further information: List of Kings of Iraq
Emir Faisal, leader of the Arab revolt against the Ottoman sultān during the Great War, and member of the Sunni Hashimite family from Mecca, became the first king of the new state. He obtained the throne partly by the influence of T. E. Lawrence. Although the monarch was legitimized and proclaimed King by a plebiscite in 1921, nominal independence was only achieved in 1932, when the British Mandate officially ended.
In 1927, huge oil fields were discovered near Kirkuk and brought economic improvement. Exploration rights were granted to the Iraqi Petroleum Company, which despite the name, was a British oil company. King Faisal I was succeeded by his son Ghazi in December 1933. King Ghazi’s reign lasted five and a half years. He claimed Iraqi sovereignty over Kuwait. An avid amateur racer, the king drove his car into a lamppost and died 3 April 1939. His son Faisal followed him to the throne.
[Mod Note; truncate edit]
Oops- that turned out to be longer than I thought- sorry.
Dear Ghu, I’d like to see more ‘green’ in cities. We try, a lot of us, but it’s hard to do it all ourselves. I remember when my mother was looking for a house in town, we looked at some brand new ones that were being advertised as ‘energy efficient’, and found they were all-electric. That’s not what we considereed ‘energy-efficient’. (She bought one with a gas water heater so we could use our nearly-new gas dryer.)
OT, headline for ET:
Well, we have this reputation as a very expensive place – through from what my sister tells me she has to pay for in Virginia, I think it’s all about the same, really. But again, Upstate NY is a 18th and 19th Century phenomenon — we are pre-auto, so the cities and towns are liveable and walkable. I went down to the Eastern Shore last weekend and saw some of the most horrific transformations of agricultural land into sprawl, malls, and housing developments that I’ve ever seen. Beautiful land just stripped of the top soil, with either two mega-mansions in the middle of it, or a strip mall, or a hundred housing units with no side walks, no way to get to the grocery stores, schools and churches other than in the car. Just dreadful. And all, from appearances, put up in the last five years.
War criminals.
What a beautiful reminder of the Baghdad of old. I remember looking at online real estate in Baghdad at the beginning of W’s war. The homes were VERY expensive…
Looking forward to further rhapsodising with you about NYS in June. Like your characterization of it as 19thC. As I own an historic house, that probably explains why I don’t like anything new.
Off to errands. See y’all later.
Interesting comment about pre auto towns…..Towns of three to four square miles with a central “downtown” and fairly dense populations (say 40,000 or so) make a lot of sense.
Hey PW
Love the idea of greening older cities. I’m also from a declining steel town with a lot of vacant commercial properties [and now, unfortunately, vacant houses from foreclosures].
It could be a great place if some of these properties could be turned into parks or community gardens.
Well, we are pre-auto for sure. One of the things that hits me is that although a lot of emphasis has been placed on how the automobile and the interstate system changed the face of America in the 1950s, I’d like to put as much emphasis on air conditioning, which I think opened up the South and the Southwest to commercial and industrial development(it’s tough to hold meetings, work at a machine or a desk when it’s 100 degrees plus inside and outside). I’d also like to point out the work of the American Association of School Architects, which put out a set of guidelines in the 1950s, claiming that no school could possibly be built on less than 25 acres. If you want to know how we ended up with schools outside of towns, with kids being bused or driven to schools with no sidewalks near them…that is where THAT comes from.
It’s fine — though I see that the AP’s Patrick Condon did a puff piece on a local paid Republican operative blogger named Michael Brodkorb and got most of the key facts wrong, despite having been repeatedly informed of the truth.
Methane from landfills….. in Oregon City Oregon they power a factory with the methane gas from the old closed landfill that was there in the 80’s and earlier…
In some sense, methane from manure (aka “farts”) is a form of biofuel in the sense that animals turn biomass (food) into fuel (methane).
But, the energy in food comes from photosynthesis, which is powered by sunlight, and the major problem with solar energy is storing and transporting it. And, IMHO methane is the optimum way to do both, since we already have the infrastructure for storing and transporting methane. Also we have the infrastructure in place to use methane for cooking and heating homes. Also methane powered electric generators cost half as much per watt as coal-fueled generators, and a quater as much per watt as nuclear generators.
im a art history/history buff,shock and awe,totally disgusted me in human/and ARTISTIC cultural sense
IMHO, Franken would be an outstanding senator. If he knows all the stuff in his books he is a very well-informed person.
Somewhere I read that Coleman was vastly out-polling Franken, however.
Seems that Iraq has pretty much been a hell hole since the brits invented it following WW1.
The Wiki article said that there was a brief period of relative peace in the seventies.
figures……..dumbasses
Hydrogen
Coleman up by eight or so- but Franken HAS been in the lead recently…Too early to call I’d say.
Well you have to MAKE hydrogen- usually from electricity- so hydrogen becomes a way of STORING energy more than a SOURCE of energy.
my bad
Hydrogen may prove to be very useful- many of the new sources of energy are interittent- the wind doesn’t always blow nor does the sun always shine- so we may need a way of storing the power for times when we have no source.
Two major problems facing hydrogen. First is producing it in a way that the energy going in is roughly comparable to the energy coming out. Thermodynamics rears it’s ugly head. Second, it faces a chicken and the egg problem. Nobody wants to build large number of fuel cell cars until there is infrastucture to support them. On the other hand, no one wants to build the infrastructure until there are enough cars to make it profitable.
I lived in Rome for almost six years, Albany for roughly two years total, I worked in Manhattan for most of a year and have cousins in Syracuse.
I found the Albany area far and away the best part of the state (for me anyway). Large enough to have variety but small enough that I could get around easily. Far enough north to be out of the city but able to get there and back in a day if needed. And far enough east to get away from the snow belt, lake-effect (lake-effect on my sinuses as much as the snow).
Also convenient to get to the mountains if I wanted to do so as well.
It really is personal to the individual though.
Had dinner with him a few wks ago on my birthday. Doing well.
It would be, wouldn’t it?
We’ve already got Rock Port, Missouri, the first city that’s powered entirely by wind, and Kalamazoo, Michigan is working on a project to use algae to turn waste water and industrial and restaurant grease into clean energy.
Franken has recently been embarassed by tax problems. Apparently his bookkeepers failed to pay State taxes on profits from books/talks in several different States. One of the major problems now for “national” celebrities and sports figures is keeping track of this stuff. States are cracking down and expanding their tax systems since revenues are so tight. It used to be that you had to be a “resident” to be taxed in many places. But now, as long as you earn in the state, you can be taxed.
Actually, the polling’s fairly close. Most of it shows Franken behind, but not by much.
Sports players face the same issue
Oops!
The thing is, Franken’s account underpaid in some states, but overpaid in NYS and MN. So it’s a wash.
“I know it’s tough times, and I know you’re having to pay more at the fuel pump than you want,” Bush said. “But this economy is going to come on. I’m confident it will.”
In case you’ve missed it. This bit of blather is on Huffpo. Sadly it is accompanied by the W picture. I wish that garbage did not appear on my pc. Why doesn’t it say he took us to war for oil, acc. to McW. Get it out there. Sorry, OT.
So do TeeVee people who do moble television….. lets see Elmore has worked in MA, NY, DC, UT, PA in the last month….. so there are 5 state taxes PLUS he his home state….
Y’all remember the sordid tales of Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons (R-Nev) who supposedly brachiated all over a cocktail waitress just before the election in 2006? One of his big defenses was that he was happily married to a great woman, Dawn Gibbons…so “why would he do that!”
Well, apparently, Governor Gibbon’s is of the “Rudy Giuliani School” of philandering.
Gibbons seeks divorce for “incompatibility”
Oh. My Gawd.
Thanks for this, Cinnamonape!
I’m sure it’ll get sorted out. But it’s not a “wash” politically. But, in my opinion the Republicans are hauling this stuff out very early, just to stay in the game. In prior elections they’d wait until the last days before the election to drop such “bombs”…or at least until after the conventions. By doing it so early they allow their opponents to resolve the issue and rebound.
BTW That should be DAWN Gibbon, the wife of Jim Gibbon…not ANN. DUH!
I am so impressed you know and use that word that I have never heard.
Exactly. Considering that the local GOPers have their own, far more serious tax issues (case in point: Ron Ebensteiner), this is like Hitler accusing Churchill of war crimes.
It was Franken, himself, who hauled it out. So, the Republicans didn’t have a choice about timing. I’m sure you’re right in that they’d prefer a big non-sequitur distraction right before the election. The question of trust and capability with one’s own business matters would, ordinarily, be a big winner from the Republican perspective but when you compare and contrast against the biggest deficit spending on congressional record, which Normy Coleman was a happy participant in, then it doesn’t fly too fast too far.
I think Al was smart to bring it out now and if the Republican opposition can still make it an issue in November, good freakin’ luck with that. The fact that Normy is a stooge might be a bigger problem than coming up with enough bright, shiny distractions.
There is a lot to be said for this approach, but some things to watch out for as well. There is a small town in my province that did this – attracted many vigorous retirees who were interested in living in a northern environment. Now these retirees are getting older and needing more services – and are really stretching the community’s resources. And because these people moved away from their home communities and families to take advantage of the low house prices and low cost of living, they retirees don’t have a lot of family and other supports nearby.
So just something to be aware of and to plan for.
Link to the sad, sad picture of Clusterfuck’s second term. It looks a bit like the first term- but at a lower level:
http://www.pollster.com/presbushapproval.php
Good points
It’s so sad. Even the usual thrill of the, “I told you so,” has been robbed.
I still know some of the insane 28% for whom the rationale, “He needed to do what he did in order to keep America safe,” still holds water. What can you say to those folks? Just sad!
Great kos point about the “gas tax holiday”
It’s the Jobs Stupid: Gas Tax Holiday Jobs/$$ Lost by State, 150 Economists Write Letter Hotlist
Don’t worry, I just fixed it! ;-)
That’s the “well we’re better off without Saddam Insane and dems woulda raised our taxes” people….They will never move.
Right now the only thing Franken has to worry about is his delegates at State Convention, Convention first week in June. Most estimates I’ve seen have him close on First Ballot — but it could take a couple.
He called in his volunteers and called all the delegates and alternates before the news hit the papers, then sent out a mailing with all the data, and word is he hasn’t lost any delegates. Once he is officially endorsed, then the Campaign against Coleman can begin, and I think it will be tough. Expect the Summer to be a long round of small town parades and corn festivals — with limited advertising, and then nothing but political ads till next November on TV after Labor Day.
It appears once more that things are not all that they seem.
http://blog.washingtonpost.com……html#more
Never been to a corn festival- sounds exciting!
We lived in central Illinois for a while and went to sweet corn and broom corn festivals.
Went to a chili cookoff once- and I smelled a garlic festival while driving by.
Oh, and don’t forget the greatest hits of SNL that Normy’s goon squad is combing the archives for as we speak. Any allusion to drug use or the evil devil’s weed should get heavy air play. I’m looking forward to it for several reasons. One would be that it’s some of Franken’s best work. The second would be the opportunity to juxtapose that earlier Franken with the earlier dope smokin, anti-war, anti-administration, DEMOCRATIC, Normy Coleman on the U of M campus. Agh, it shall be glorious and silly in an extreme!
OOPS!
updated 47 minutes ago
BAGHDAD – The U.S. military on Saturday fired missiles at a target about 50 yards away from the general hospital in Baghdad’s Sadr City district, wounding more than 20 people and destroying ambulances, hospital officials said.
Dr. Ali Bustan al-Fartusee, director general of Baghdad’s health directorate, told The Associated Press that 23 civilians were injured.
He said no patients in the hospital were hurt, but that some of the wounded included civilians outside on their way to visit patients, and that around 17 ambulances were damaged.
RW — the big Corn Festival is in Mitchell South Dakota. They have a huge auditorium, and they cover the outside with designs in different colors or corn every fall. Feeds the birds all winter.
Fortunately- all of the dead and injured victims were Al Queda. Some of them were very YOUNG Al Queda.
I’ve never been to either a corn festival or to South Dakota- would you say it’s one of the better corn festivals for a person to start on?
Al Queda are like rattlesnakes- the little ones are often the most dangerous- beware especially of Al Queda BABIES- they are VISCIOUS!
Mitchel is NOT for the uninitiated. You gotta start slow man, and build up to the Everest. Try Cokato, MN:
http://www.cokato.mn.us/carnival/index.html
Very interesting interview about Wright on Salon. Non-hysterical and informative.
Thanks- I don’t want to subject myself to health risks.
“brachiated”? I’m an anthropologist…and “gibbons” are well known for having flexible arms that allow them to “arm swing”. I thought it was a cute juxtaposition of what “Mr. Swinger” Gibbons did with the waitress.
BTW The Gibbons are both a couple of fruitcakes. When Jim Gibbons was an Assemblyman he was called up to serve in Desert Storm. At that time http://firstlady.state.nv.us/ ">Dawn Gibbon, a Jane Fonda lookalike many years younger than Jim, was appointed to replace him (she was not yet married to him I think, he was married to another woman). While he served she insisted that every other legislator wear yellow ribbons daily, and would go ballistic if the didn’t.
A few years later she was caught up in a scandal where it was discovered that she was being “extorted” by an illegal alien that she had hired and had work for her for almost a decade. And she may be involved in that FBI investigation. Gibbons pulled strings for a military contractor while his wife was involved in a “consultant” role for that firm. Despite the denials it seems like a pretty clear case of where one, or the other, should have withdrawn from involvement.
So the divorce may have something to do with the stresses related to their criminal investigations. But it could be that Jimbo is just a horndog. Jim willingly lived alone in Washington D.C. when he was a Congressman while Dawn held sway back in Nevada. Given all the stuff about expensive call-girls during that period it may be that something has emerged about his “inside the Beltway” extracurricular recreation.
Kickbacks?
Mitchell is fine in the late summer – early fall. The place is called the Corn Palace.
Not all that far from the Badlands and the famous Wall Drug Store, and then another hundred miles or so, Mt. Rushmore. Then go on up to Deadwood and you can do old time gamblin’ and wander the hillside grave yard and look up the graves of your favorite western characters. A surprising number of them were murdered in Deadwood.
A-yep. It kills jobs, hurts Congressional Democrats, weakens our highway funds, and won’t lower the price of gas.
Obama’s opposition to the gas-tax holiday stems from having seen the results when it was tried at the state level in Illinois in 2000. He voted for it then, but it didn’t lower gas prices — the oil companies just pocketed the difference. Even worse, it was a camel’s nose under the tent to try and push through a permanent repeal of the state gas tax, which he helped vote down.
Bom dia, pups
To that post at Kos, did you do the gas tax saver calculator? You plug in some info and it will tell you ow much you would save over this 15 week period.
I found that I would save a whopping $15.03 while my state would lose over $660,000,000 in fed highway funds and over 23,000 jobs.
Here is a linky to see how much you would save and how much your state would lose.
Aces and eights, baby. Bill Hickock’s “dead man’s hand.” There’s a helluva reptile garden, too, as I recall.
Well, thanks for the background. Put it under the “can’t make this stuff up” file. And truly, had never heard that B word. I think your assumption is quite good; no tell what may appear.
That is “no telling”
Interesting that the lowest polls are those that are automated. ARG has “Our Village Idiot” down about 20%…which suggests that people are far more likely to respond to an automated machine how the feel than to a living, breathing human being…where they are a bit (but only a bit) less angry. It’s the degree of anonymity that allows them to be more expressive. If you have to say it to another person you hold back (just as one might in a work situation, bar, or restaurant).
Isn’t that the boot hill with the headstone for Les Moore?
It supposedly reads:
Here Lies Les Moore
One Shot From a Forty-Four
No Les, No More
Yea, one of the bars there has the chair he was sitting in when he was shot hanging over the door. There also apparently is an old time whore house museum. Was closed for renovations last time I was in Deadwood.
My savings would be in pennies….. I work from home…. probably fill up my 2x explorer about once a month which causes me heart failure each time…. there are times I do not drive more than 200 miles a month… as I work from home or travel via airlines to clients…. that car sits either at my house or at the airport garage ….. my highest expense is keeping it dirt free from just sitting….
Opps, sorry that was Tombstone.
I posted a quote from a General involved in the Sadr City operation last week that said that the US would continue to target civilian sitesas long as the militias “hid” themselves in them. He blamed the militias for not fighting out in the open where the US could just mow them down.
The statement was essentially admitting that Sadr City had been made a “free fire” zone where the US would not evaluate the risks to civilians when attacking militias.
I always thought such acts were war crimes.
Expect more slaughter.
Another Fallujah.
i was being generous with mine (including mr wobbs in the calculation). I’ve been using peddle power more lately. I’m hoping that I don’t develop Hulk legs *g*
Thanks for this post, PW.
A parallel kind of thing happened in Loveland, Colorado years ago.
A regional shopping center opened in nearby Ft. Collins and devastated the downtown businesses in Loveland. At the same time, the local foundary closed for lack of support—except for a couple of sculptors from Denver. Those sculptors rounded up more sculptors who kept the foundary open part-time. They also began to buy up vacant storefronts and installed galleries downstairs and living quarters upstairs. The new settlement of sculptors and galleries attracted painters, art photographers and, eventually, packer/shippers to send purchases off to other places.
A vibrant artistic community grew out of Loveland’s one-time collapse and the City Council began a “1% (of taxes) for the Arts” program and provided sculpture gardens and gallery space in public buildings. Loveland puts on an annual sculpture show that draws art lovers from around the world and is otherwise a magnet for “art tourists”.
This is just a snapshot of all that happened in Loveland. The last I heard, they had three full time foundaries operating (more jobs) and art became the much loved main-topic of the town.
Have a sign on my fridge about “Reptile Gardens”
” It ain’t no pettin Zoo”
bronze age :)
What a good report. Maybe when America draws its last corporate, polluted breath, most of us will become artists. Peace.
The “B” word is one reason many biologists realized that apes were not simply “just a bunch of monkeys” and led to Darwin and others to accepting evolution. The details of the anatomy of the upper body of the Apes and humans is quite uncanny, and extends to the shapes of the bones, the muscle attachments, nerves that supply them, positions and shapes of the internal organs and how they are supported internally, and even the development of special cartilagenous cups at the joints. In a sense, humans ARE simply apes in the torso, arms and hands. Our main differences from the apes are in the legs (for bipedality) and the brain size (which actually is simply the fact that certain neuronal cells divide one or two more additional times). We have lots of fossil evidence showing the latter change over time…it’s not any more controversial than magnetism would be to a physicist.
Still about half of my students in my Introductory class on Biological Anthropology come into it disbelieving evolution occurs or thinking that it is somehow atheistic. It’s tough to avoid discussions of religion in such circumstances. As a scientist one is trained to avoid religious or other preconceptions in dealing with the data and theory testing. One doesn’t want to step on students personal matters of faith…but one doesn’t want to mislead them either. I just try to tell them that many religions have rectified issues of theology with Science (like the Catholics, Anglicans, etc.) by separating process from “ultimate cause” and pointing out that Scripture is metaphorical and about faith…not a Science text. Still that doesn’t satisfy literalists.
Thank you. Of course, nothing satisfies literalist; there is simply no way to make sense. My favorite example, usually, is the story of a woman in adultery. In the Old Test. it is something like she has to eat some combination of dirt/ash as a test. If she gets sick, she is indeed guilty of adultery. If the Bible is truly infallible, why are we not still using that test today (not a suggestion here), let alone that the mess would make anyone sick. All that part of the church/theology makes me very sad; it is the root of the Hagee/Revelation/all out war stuff. One would think some good Science courses could refute the literalism of all of this. Very troublesome.
Make it up by moving $9 billion from the next supplemental.
I know that’s not really a solution but it’s the best I can think of at the moment. I know people who drive 120 round trip to work ever day and they need lower gas prices to keep their jobs. We’re a rural or semi-rural area.
Relgious folks have all the excuse they could want. Many important religious figures and philospohers have believed that science respresents the discovery of the the way that God made the world. Don’t know why the rest don’t just go with that. Seems so simple and appealing.
My favorite is slavery, which was quite A-OK in the Bible.
About half …
Of that number, approximately what percentage may be encouraged, successfully, to open their minds?
At what level in the educational ‘chain’ do you teach?
Do you see ‘this’ as improving or is it still ‘nip and tuck’?
Scary isn’t it? Your point of God/science is well said. The view of mystery/maker, all that unknown stuff has become a point of reconciliation. Of course, that view does not satisfy the Creationists who are quite convinced onf 7 days, that’s it.
While I was in Divinity school we had only a very few Fundamentalist students; they knew they did not really fit well. Oddly, when it came to tolerance or not, they were the most contentious, intolerant of all. Often they left to find a better “fit”.
TexBetsy,
Broomcorn festival Arcola, Illinois by chance?
Fallujah “had” a population about half that of Sadr City. IIRC it took us two turns to “pacify” Fallujah…the second after the idea of turning it over to Iraqis (former Baathists) proved a failure. Eventually we had to undertake hand-to-hand combat on a block-by-block basis…sort of a Stalingrad episode. Reports of summary executions, thousands of civilian deaths, and about a half million displaced…most which still are refugees.
Then we had to sit down in Fallujah for two years with almost a full division, before we ONCE AGAIN turned it over to Iraqi militias (many of whom were survivors of our original assaults). Many of those supposed Iranian-supplied shaped IED’s were used in Fallujah, where no sane Shiite would ever dare venture to set up a booby-trap.
Sadr City is going to be a whole lot worse. It’s far more vast, more populous, the militias are more integrated with the population as “resistance”…plus it fully abuts the rest of the urban area. Fallujah you could isolate. There’s no way that they can effectively wall-in Sadr City. Build a ten foot wall…they make an eleven foot ladder…or build a twenty foot tunnel. They can try to create a “death zone” by razing football pitch wide areas of peoples homes…but these acts will only create more support for the resistance outside the “ghetto”. The problem here (unlike the Warsaw ghetto) is that the folks outside have family and friends INSIDE. There isn’t the ability to use ethnic hatred like the Nazis did in Poland to fragment the resistance.
Sadly this is the most foolish thing the US has ever done yet in Iraq. It places the US military smack dab in the middle of a CIVIL WAR. It’s no longer about Saddam or al Qaida….it’s about maintaining a puppet-state against an indigenous challenge to its power.
DW did you get my email through gmail… if so I didn’t get a reply…. seems the email GODS are conspiring against us :>)
It’s called “total warfare,” meaning the willingness to mow down every man, woman, child, building, etc. that gets in your way. It’s one time-honored ways of “winning” against an insurgency (what the Brits did to the Boers, for example), but even that is not guaranteed. For example, the Soviets did it in large parts of Afghanistan, and look where it got them.
Sadr City, if that’s what the U.S. has in mind, will be a lot more difficult than Fallujah–for all the reasons you give, and because it is surrounded by the rest of Baghdad, which, BTW, happens to be the capital of the country.
Is this the 100 Year War McW wants? If folks are not depressed these days, it is because they are not paying attention. We have created on calamity after another.
A difficult tactic in an age of awareness.
Actually, I think to a large extent, total war has pretty much always been around. Think sieges of cities.
The concept of trying to avoid civilian casualties is a fairly recent phenomenon of warfare.
And we have certainly learned avoiding civilians is a very elusive, if not impossible, goal. When did these United States morphed into being the agent of total war? I am afraid the answer goes farther back than we would like to think.
Yes, it has always been around, but when I studied up on counterinsurgency strategies, which is what we are dealing with in Iraq, it featured prominently.
And it’s interesting that many intelligent religious figures, from the Dalai Lama to the last two Popes (I’m still ambivalent about the current one) accepted this. There are Islamic and Hindu scholars that do, as well.
And, in fact, the Creationists (or Intelligent Design advocates) and most fundamentalists accept the power of scientific explanations in swaying public opinion. That’s why they try to co-opt it and argue that they “ARE Scientists”. They couldn’t argue that “the facts are all against our position, but this is a test of your true faith”. Maybe 1:1000 would accept that view.
BTW Many people think that “Intelligent Design” is what you are talking about…but in actuality it’s just the opposite. Rather than applying our scientific knowledge generally, the ID’ers want to continue to apply “anything but” Scientific explanations when it comes to other events. Any reading of the Discovery Institute’s “Wedge Manifesto” demonstrates just how intent they are in removing rationalism from all aspects of our society…they want Judaeo-Christian based law, history (prophetic and moral…disasters are the result of sin or curses), medicine (ditto), politics, art, literature, media, educational systems, etc.
Late to thread, but thanks for the inspiring post, PW.
Good point. I haven’t heard it made in exactly that way.
Instead of a military industrial complex, this country needs an “environment friendly” industrial complex or a “green” industrial complex if you will.
Well … I can receive you, lima charley, but nothing appears to successfully get through to you from my end … as yet.
Very strange, I’m being told (repeatedly) that you simply don’t exist …
But I don’t believe them (Hey! You. out. there. stop. messin’. around.).
I believe!!
;~D
Here in TX our schools are having ongoing and ugly discussions about all of this for courses and text books, board members, etc. I used to think it would “blow over.” Yep, wrong.
The Ws and his ilk will support that in another hundred years or so, when it has become “old-economy.” One of the most dramatic differences between the Clinton transition to W was the giant leap backwards from new-economy orientation to old-economy fixation.
Im off to work for some of this lovely day; hope I can make it back for some of Huffington. G’bye
I have to skip Huffington. I hear she’s a harridan about Hillary. If I were to be here, I’d not be able to be polite.
Within 15 Years of the Boer War the Brits had actually lost the South African “government”. The Boers outbred the Brits, who were relunctant colonialists. And when South Africa granted women the right to vote (the first nation to do so BTW) they went right ahead and supported Afrikaaner politicians. Soon the “liberal” coalition of Brits, business-oriented Afrikaaners from DeBeers, and the handful of mixed-race Coloreds allowed to vote was in the minority and slowly each group was marinalized or co-opted.
The Boer War created resentments as deep as the victory in WWI did, or the Civil War did. I can’t think of what Iraqis will think of the US 25 years on…but I doubt we will be even thought of by Shiites or Kurds as expelling a distasteful dictator.
What I have taken from religion is the meaning behind the words… The actual word was just a way to convey the true meaning of what Christ was/is telling us. That is why he spoke in parables to make the meaning easy for those who had little or no schooling. I have tried to use these parable as a guide to how to live life and not a road map that must be followed to the letter. By the way who wrote the Bibles any way??? So for them to say what they say to me is just foolish… use His words as a guide to your behavior and learn to love as many as you can regardless of what they may look like or how they live their religious life. It has certainly worked for me as I grown older… Well thats my two cents… I have little tolerance for those who think that they are RIGHT, religion is the ONLY one and Any other Way is WRONG… They are missing out on some of the most wonderful parts of life!!
Yes, and likewise shortly after winning the “Battle of Algiers,” the French lost Algeria.
The lessons are pretty obvious.
Now wait a minute I am not some fictitious being or something :>) We can keep trying. I need to get to the garden and finish up as the ground is all tilled and I just have to attend to the planting…. Can’t wait to reap that which I have sown …. no pun intended on this religious leaning thread…:>)
Try setting up G-mail and trying from there…. Besides they give you 6684 MB of mail space and has many neat features that I am still learning about.
Well on that note I am off to the garden and will check back later with all of you :>)
It’s interesting that there isn’t a single Aramaic gospel known from the time (there’s debate about whether the Syriac Bible is a translation of a Greek Scripture…but it does have some interesting differences from the Western Gospels). I think most scholars have realized that early Christianity was pretty much a set of different oral traditions that only later were set down. In the region of Judaea and Samaria followers likely had some actual experience of what Jesus said when he preached in the area and they went by that. There’s no evidence in any of the surviving Gospels that Jesus or any of his followers wrote down anything. And if you read the Gospels carefully there are events told by the “witnesses” which could not have been witnessed by that writer, who was elsewhere. In fact, even if the gospel writer was not the original “Matthew” or “Mark”, but a tradition attributed to that Disciple…90% of the events in them had to have been outside the actual experience of that original “teller” (IOW second, third or fourth-hand). For example, Samaritan Woman at the well? Who actually witnessed that discussion…only Jesus and the woman. One of my favorite Jesus stories…that you also cite (the Woman Caught in Adultery) is probably a 3rd century inclusion of a Greek story according to most authors. A similar story about a “Solomonaic” prince who judged a woman caught in an affair was prevalent in Greek folklore about that time. It was likely a monk’s marginal reference that then got included as part of the Gospel. In fact, look at the text before and after without that tale. It flows on the same topic…but the story breaks up that.
Some of the disciples were likely marginally literate (the tax collectors for example) but there is not a single reference of a letter or anything written down. Even the idea that Jesus was literate since he was so adept at the Scripture ignores the fact that most religious learning required memorization of verses taught orally. That Jesus was able to recite or paraphrase Torah (and didn’t whip out a scroll as a memory aid) actually supports this.
But even by the time of Paul (who was literate and wrote many letters) Christianity had diversified to such widely diverging faith-systems that he was mainly intent on “correcting” others interpretations of it. Paul wasn’t the “first evangelist” – he was the first to try and standardize it- and it’s not clear that his views of what Jesus meant, or wanted, went over very well with the Jerusalem Church. Paul wants people to think so…but even here he’s ambivalent.
But the diversity that Paul ENCOUNTERED also implies that Christianity (or perhaps we should call it the “Jesus Faith”) spread mainly through oral means rather than through gospels. It’s unclear if Paul even carried a written gospel around. He nowhere refers to having one….though he does cite verses. The first known snippet of an actual book of the Bible dates from @125 AD, and even it is about the size of a torn-up mailing label. One wouldn’t even guess it was a Bible passage unless it contained a few key words.
I actually argue that this diversity and spread before Paul actually argues for an authentic, flesh-and-blood Jesus that was out there preaching…thus many people actually saw and met him. But it means that every little hamlet got a different version of Jesus (rabbi, messiah, martyr, apocalyptic vs. new-age prophet, magician-healer, etc.). At some point someone who was literate may have written down these local experiences and the fundamentals of what their local clerics taught. Thus one got a proliferation of gospels, one per group…plus perhaps some letters, poetry, and other documents that related to the church. An oral tradition would have been much stronger in the Jewish homeland where a) people were used to oral tradition, and b) they had direct experience of Jesus. Outside of those areas (in the Greek and Roman evangelized areas) written documentation would have been more likely, given the Greeks greater literacy and need to have textual proof.
I was born & raised in a suburb of Youngstown on the Rusty River . The last time I visited my Mom all I saw was downtown decay and way too many retail outlets in the burbs . I hope this new plan works but I’m not holding my breath . City leadership has for too long had corruption problems in a faded Y-town still controlled by the Mob thru their political flunkies .
Of course W and his ilk will be 100 years too late. “Backwards” describes them well.
The earliest part of the new testament is from Paul. There are disputes as to which of the books attributed to him were actually written by him- but the noncontroversial ones are placed about 67 AD if I am remembering correctly…
While Paul does not claim to have seen Jesus- he was affiliated with several of the original disciples including James the brother of Jesus. (see Acts).