Arthur Miller's Life and Times

In reading “Death of a Salesman”, I became intrigued about the 20th century travelling salesman. I was moderately aware that hotels of the prewar era featured suites that doubled as showrooms, but had the feeling that the travelling salesman faded into obscurity. In the play, Willy Loman was at the peak of his career at the dawn of World War One (when he named the infant Howard, who would become his future boss). I found statistical evidence that there was a decrease in the number of salesmen over the 1920s. There was the use of telephone in business (as the 84-year old Singleton did in the play), which allowed making many virtual sales calls per day. There was also the centralization of business, where buying decisions were no longer made by individual store managers, but within the offices of a conglomerate. On the selling side, there was a flight to high performers; quality and performance over quantity of sales personnel. Who can forget Ben Loman’s cryptic proclamation that “When I was seventeen I walked into the jungle, and when I was twenty-one I walked out. And by God I was rich”. It’s not really clear if Ben, at the turn of the 20th century, had ventured to the Yukon Territory or colonial Africa. But to a contemporary student, this is an appealing prospect of winning the American dream. There are still many salesmen working on commission today. They don’t lug around heavy valises, but will ring you up to sell software or other services.

First Class Cabins for All

On the ships Titanic and Olympia, First class was not a monolith: while the titans of empires and businesses enjoyed a luxurious experience with multi-room suites and ocean views, many cabins could be assigned to either first- or second- class passengers, with the difference between the two classes being the public amenities available. Notably, the ship was constrained in both food refrigeration capacity and freshwater production. In terms of dining, adherence to the set menu was expected; and outside of top tier suites, bathtubs were supplied with saltwater, and tap water was rationed by cabin stewards. Third class accommodations, mainly occupied by working-class immigrants, were spartan, and meals predominately made of porridge, bread, and potato stew. In the postwar United States, the builders of the liner SS United States considered a two-class arrangement, breaking from the pre-war and European class divisions. Third class was retained, however, to allow economical transportation of enlisted military personnel. Today, on modern cruise ships, class distinctions have fallen away.

Two Slaveries and the Church

 

Waging the long spiritual fight against communism in Eastern Europe and Greater China left little room for self-reflection, which has now come to the forefront of Catholic consciousness. If the Church had the power to initiate an orderly transition from communism to democracy in Eastern Europe, what power did it have, and did not use, to end human slavery? From today’s lenses, the Catholic Churches’ role in 1800’s slavery appears to be participation and implicit approval. This must be reconciled.

Looking back to the 1890s, in the same papacy of Pope Leo XIII, the Church made a switch from being soft on chattel slavery to being tough on the mental slavery of Marxist communism. By this time, the Church had been stripped of its earthly powers, particularly the papal holdings in Italy (prompting the Leonine Prayers in the Traditional Latin Mass). The world changed greatly at the dawn of the 20^th century. France underwent secularization around 1905. Hereditary monarchy was discredited after WWI. For centuries and millennia, monarchs held a special place in state religions, setting the ‘tone’ for the population, and occasionally practicing intolerance towards religious minorities in their realm. For the Church, there was a real threat that monarchy across Europe would be replaced by communism, as happened in Russia. If monarchy was obsolete, and communism intolerable; then democracy, or transitional autocracy (as in Portugal, Spain or the Republic of China), had to be embraced. Unlike most events in world history, the people would decide, through ballot box or popular uprising, their self-determination.  

 In previous generations, the Church’s worldly concerns as landlord and investor had created a close intertwining of Church and the Spanish and French colonies, where chattel slavery was a common practice.  In theory, slaves in French and Spanish colonies had more rights than slaves in English and Islamic areas. In French practice, mixed-race children were born free; while this was not the case in the American South at large. In practice, life was harsh for all agricultural slaves. Work in the Caribbean sugar plantations was known to be a virtual death sentence. Would the Church have placated itself on false platitudes? Emphasis on pastoral care emerged in the late 1800s, with focus on various groups such as immigrants, Black Americans, and Pacific Islanders. In this context, a focus on human liberation became a natural outcrop of charitable work to feed, educate, and care for the disadvantaged. Leo XIII’s successor, the pauper-born Pope Pius X, would understand that proclamations of human dignity had to be backed by action.

State Capitals and Railroads: A Historical Symbiosis

Where’s your state capital? If on the East Coast, look for the train station. Railroads and majestic state capitals were built in tandem. As reliable streetcars were not available until the 1890’s, state capitals had to be located near downtown hotel and restaurant districts, and to mainline railroads reaching across their respective states.   

Washington, DC’s Union Station was built in 1906 six blocks north from the US Capitol. Most of DC’s municipal offices are located six blocks west in Judiciary Square. Simultaneous projects included a tunnel for trains to pass underneath- instead of across- Capitol Hill, a streetcar terminal for service to the old downtown, and construction of the restricted-access US Senate subway.

Legislators and staff in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and Richmond, Virginia also walk six blocks to their respective state capitals. 

Even though all parts of the state can be reached in a day’s ride on horseback, Providence, Rhode Island’s train station is located at the back door of the state capital.

The capital in Trenton, New Jersey is a half-mile from the train station, which serves high-speed electric trains between Washington, DC and New York City via Philadelphia.

Although the station is located on the “wrong” side of the navigable Hudson River, train service operates frequently on the Empire Corridor between Buffalo; Albany, New York; and New York City.

The very historic state house in Annapolis, Maryland, dating to 1772, used to be located at the terminal of a rapid commuter rail line to much-larger Baltimore; but was stranded after the railroad was abandoned in the 1950s. Light rail service was restored over a portion of the corridor in 1992, but ends some 15 miles from Annapolis.

Then-Senator Joe Biden commuted from Wilmington, Delaware to the US Capitol by Amtrak; but passenger trains have not served his peninsular state capital of Dover, Delaware in decades.

Augusta, Maine sadly lost their train service, which used to run in front of the state house promenade. A similar fate befell Concord, New Hampshire, where buses have replaced trains since 1967. Nevertheless, there’s always talk of restoring commuter rail service to Boston.

Montpellier, Vermont still has Amtrak service; although the hilly topography put the station a mile from town.

Springfield, Massachusetts and Hartford, Connecticut are served by Amtrak Northeast Corridor’s “Inland Route”, as well as respective state commuter rails.

Although few trains operate here today, Raleigh, North Carolina’s capital is also within walking distance of the rail line.

West Virginia is a young state, born during the Civil War. Three passenger trains a week serve Charleston, West Virginia on Amtrak’s sleepy and mountainous Cardinal Line between Chicago and Washington, DC.

Medgar Evers' 30-Year Trial

If a defendant is wrongfully acquitted, he is still a free man. This is a pillar of the American judicial system, even when it opposes other ideals like equality and justice. Such values were tested during the trial of Byron De La Beckwith, who murdered civil rights activist Medgar Evers on June 12th, 1963.

Beckwith was brought to justice shortly after the killing. Due to the continued presence of Jim Crow racism, this case was designed to fail. In 1964, during the first trial against Beckwith, the local prosecutor pursued the death penalty, instead of a more probable term sentence. In the Deep South, it was not until the 1990s that white men were executed for killing black men. Predictably, the first trial deadlocked into a mistrial, and so did the second. 26 years elapsed between a second mistrial in 1964, and a third trial in 1990, in which Beckwith, then 73, was sentenced to life in prison. Was this a victor’s justice?

Contemporary writing suggested that Beckwith would walk as a free man on appeal. Beckwith believed that his right to a speedy trial had been violated, twice; and that he was facing double jeopardy.

Beckwith held that the 26 years between the second mistrial and arrest for a third trial was excessive; and that the 1,100 days between the 1990 arrest and his final trial was likewise excessive.

The State had to find that a Nolo Prosequi (Decline to Prosecute) issued in 1969 was not an acquittal; nor was it permanently binding, provided that in the State of Mississippi there is no statute of limitations for murder.

To the credit of the Mississippi Supreme Court in the appeal process, they were able to disregard the fact that Beckwith still held white supremacist views, and ignore the weight of social and political implications during the third trial and appeal in the early 1990’s.

By this time, the South had entered the “tough on crime” era. Racial favoritism gave way to a firm but outwardly fair hand. Any leeway given to Beckwith could be used by a future defendant brought to justice in a “cold case”. Beckwith, in poor health, spent the last seven years of his life in prison. His futile appeal, Beckwith vs. State of Mississippi, is often cited today in Fifth and Sixth amendment cases.

In 2009, a naval supply ship, USNS Medgar Evers (T-AKE 13), was named by then-Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus. A social progressive, he was sitting governor of Mississippi at the beginning of Beckwith’s third trial.

Two West Coast Presidents

Did you know that just two of America’s 45 Presidents were born west of the Great Plains? Their names are Richard Nixon, born in 1913 in Yorba Linda, California; and Barack Obama, born in 1961 in Hawaii.

This trivia is less surprising if you remember that every President, except Obama, was born in 1946 or earlier.  In the summer of 1946, when Bill Clinton, Bush Jr., and Trump were born; Southern California still hummed on 50 hertz power instead of 60, television was a scientific experiment, transcontinental phone calls were expensive, and air travel in propeller aircraft was reserved for adventurous members of the 1%. The mean center of US population was at the Illinois-Indiana border; today it sits 350 miles southwest in Hartville, Missouri. As a foregone conclusion, a septuagenarian cut from this long-bygone era will be elected this November. The 2024 race will certainly represent "passing the torch" to a new generation.  

Greta Thunberg's Expedition

Greta Thunberg, 16, made Time Magazine’s Person of the Year. Good for her, and I mean it. While Time Magazine and most people, from Brazil to Israel, are focusing on her climate-change advocacy, I’m honing in on her recent maritime accomplishment.

Scandinavians have a good relationship with the oceans. Since Leif Eriksson and his Vikings made a transatlantic voyage, citizens of the Baltic Sea have dominated and improved the maritime arts. Norwegian-born Andrew Furuseth (1854-1938) spearheaded legislation for the benefit of American merchant mariners. Scandinavian merchant ship officers and crew were a common sight in ports around the world. Britain, France, and America had colonies and overseas territories as natural customers for their merchant fleets; Baltic ships sailed not for empire, but for trade. In 1947, Thor Heyerdahl crossed the Pacific Ocean onboard Kon-Tiki, a primitive raft.  Scandinavian mariners have disappeared in the past quarter-century, displaced by ship’s crews from the Philippines and India.

This summer, Greta Thunberg and her father sailed across the Atlantic Ocean in a solar-equipped sailboat. Modern navigation and life safety equipment made her voyage less perilous than her Swedish ancestors. Nevertheless, it is an uncommon feat, which puts her in the realm of modern explorers.  

In the age of low-cost jet travel, crossing the Atlantic Ocean by sea has become a lost art. During the “Atlantic cruising season”, the summer months of placid waves, Cunard Lines alone sails the once-renowned Southampton, UK to New York City route. As late as the 1960’s, a variety of passenger ships crossed the Atlantic, year-round: Pounding through Winter North Atlantic’s 40-foot waves is the exact definition of “buyer beware”, a trip for brave and hearty souls to endure. By sailing for the Mediterranean instead of the North Sea, I have not done a true Winter North Atlantic run. The experience, however, is what put “hair on the chest” of classmates who made container-ship runs to Belgium in the middle of winter.   

Scandinavians Built the Modern Maritime Industry

The Danish conglomerate AP Moller Maersk dominates sectors of shipping ranging from the offshore oil industry to massive container ships. This portfolio includes some American-crewed vessels under its subsidiary Maersk Lines Limited.  Kongsberg, based in Norway, builds training simulators for aspiring ship’s masters and harbor pilots. Norway’s Bergen Marine has built ship’s diesel engines since World War Two, decades before American shipbuilders transitioned from steam to diesel propulsion. Swedish company GAC, a ship husbandry firm, negotiates with beady-eyed port officials around the world on behalf of ship-owners. Germany’s Fassmer builds modern enclosed lifeboats: SS El Faro, an American steamship lost in 2015, did not have this lifesaving equipment. The International Maritime Organization, which has in essence propagated maritime safety regulations since 1913, is based in London. Not quite Scandinavia, but near the North Sea.

Got My Name Changed Back

One prominent road in Arlington, Virginia just lost its Confederate name; and no one is looking back. Transecting Crystal City, future home of Amazon’s HQ2, Jefferson Davis Highway reverted to its pre-1920’s name, Richmond Highway. Signed as US Route 1, the road still connects Washington DC to Richmond, Virginia; though parallel Interstate 95 is the preferred, and usually quicker, alternative.  Route 1 is the common, layman’s name; except for the hotels and major businesses whose stationery list the once-lengthy street address bearing the Confederate States of America president’s name.

These business owners and representatives were supportive of the change. Damnata Memoria (Banished history) aside, a succinct name like Richmond Highway works in the text-and-Siri age. “Jefferson Davis” is also a mouthful to business partners and visitors for whom English is a second language.

When, in contrast, a residential street changes names, private citizens bear the burden of informing state agencies, banks and acquaintances of their new yet geographically identical address. Such is the talk in Hollywood, Florida, where city leaders are discussing renaming two suburban streets. In recognition of this challenge, local Lee Highway and Beauregard Street; also named after prominent Confederates, will retain their nomenclature for the foreseeable future.   

Another, slightly more southern segment of US Route 1 changed names sometime earlier. It occurred as a recently-country road was being upgraded to a thoroughfare compatible for the burgeoning national security and defense industries surrounding Fort Belvoir and Quantico. Street names are dynamic in the exurbs, where old roads designed to serve agriculture (literally, Farm-to-Market roads in Texas) are repurposed for office parks and residential cul-de-sacs. Motorists most likely noticed shorter backups well before they noticed a sanitized road name.

* This is my second blog post about Crystal City. Several years ago, before Jeff Bezos put the close-in suburb on the map, I pondered new uses for the transit-accessible, yet fading, neighborhood.

Lasting Memory

Milestone of a new epoch

Our youngest soldiers and sailors weren’t even born on 9/11/2001, 18 years ago. But they learned about the unfathomable attacks from friends and family, experienced service members, and in the classroom.

While not well publicized, the threat of radicalism and non-state actors was recognized by the US government prior to 9/11/2001. There were attacks at US Embassies overseas, as well as damage inflicted upon USS Cole in 2000. Those attacks were “over there”.

The 9/11/2001 attacks brought the American public into a new national security mindset. The “Middle East” replaced the Soviet Bloc in the national conscious.

National unity and shared sacrifice
Banker and firefighter, secretary and executive, General and Private all faced mortality during the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon, and a field in Western Pennsylvania.
When air travel resumed, there were no fast-lanes at airport security, and first-class passengers gave up their metal cutlery for several years. Major, sweeping legislation such as the Patriot Act was passed with wide bipartisan support.

The experience and memories of a fateful day 18 years ago rests on geography and station of life. New Yorkers recall lost neighbors and family members, and the constant smoke cloud. Washingtonians changed their commuting routes in light of the national emergency. In other quarters there was righteous indignation. The US Coast Guard, then predominately a maritime safety organization, would be incorporated into the newly-created Department of Homeland Security with a new counterterrorism mandate.

Last Flight to Hong Kong

It takes 8 hours to fly from the territory of Guam to the State of Hawaii; and 13 hours to the Mainland United States. If on Guam and interested in travel, xenophobia is a disadvantage; for the experiences of Japan, Taiwan and Korea are but 4 hours away by air.


Hong Kong, which I had not visited yet, caught my fancy, being in similar proximity to Guam. Since 1997, when the British lease on Victoria Island and surrounding areas ended, the former British colony has undergone Sinification. The area would be remolded into Beijing’s image. Hong Kong’s hybrid culture palpably faded as its newfound status as a “Special Administrative Region” wore on. Reunification is scheduled for the year 2047, but many residents feel the end of special status is near. Hong Kong’s fish mongers resented overbearing law enforcement; this was prelude to a summer of discontent, spurred by an extradition agreement with Mainland China. In travelling to Hong Kong, I sought to capture a glimpse of a time past.    


The window of opportunity was quickly closing, and I was in a fortuitous position to make a trip. I had concerns: being unable to procure a transit visa through Mainland China, Hong Kong International Airport was my only way to depart Hong Kong. Through Alfred P. Chester’s A Sailor’s Odyssey and other works, I read about the many American expatriates desperate to leave war-drummed Europe in 1940 and 1941 on the few passenger liners still sailing. Failing that, they abandoned their belongings and assets, riding across the Atlantic as supercargo onboard derelict freighters. I realized it was possible for history to repeat.


Despite the widescale weekend protests, as of August 1^st, the US State Department had not issued a travel advisory on Hong Kong. I did make sure to book a hotel away from Victoria Square, epicenter of the protest activity, namely at Harbourview near Hong Kong station. I purchased airline tickets and researched Hong Kong’s MRT subway system.  The flights landed and departed uneventfully.

The weekend after my scheduled trip, 10-11^th of August, tensions reached a fever pitch. On Facebook, I came across a photo taken in an MRT station. Laser sights pierced the smoke-filled cavern. “This is not a sci-fi movie. This is Hong Kong”, read the caption. Hong Kong’s international airport was shut down.

Which Superpredator?

Firstly, I’d like to order a pair of Joe Biden flip-flops. From abortion to crime policy to death penalty, it’s impossible to tell where he stands today. But thanks to YouTube, we know where he and his allies stood 25 years ago.

 That was the era of The Superpredator, juvenile delinquents who lacked remorse as they committed strings of heinous crimes, with no fear of authority. The Superpredator died by 2000 in face of falling crime rates. Some say he was terminated by electric chair or lethal injection, others say he was starved by elimination of lead paint and gasoline. Another explanation was that he lived off the anger created by an unjust society.

During his gangbanging heyday, he was one of the “predators on the streets...beyond the pale”, in Joe Biden’s words. Hillary Clinton specifies, “ they are not just gangs of kids anymore. They are...super predators. No conscience. No empathy. We can talk about why they ended up that way, but first we have to bring them to heel”. How does one bring them to heel? I’d love to know.

As I read more into the criminal sociology behind the now-proclaimed-dead Superpredator, a news flash came across my phone: “Mass Shooting at WalMart in El Paso, Texas; 20 dead”.

Immigrants Took America to the Moon

Some Americans believe that the 1950s and 1960s represent a great and golden age. They believe that low crime rates and an unprecedented standard of living was achieved through a homogeneous society bonded by decades of assimilation and the shared sacrifice of the Second World War.  

This homogeneous society represented a record-low of foreign born residents; a result of restricted immigration after 1924. This was when an immigration quota based arbitrarily and prejudicially on the 1890 Census was implemented, and the gates were shut to new-coming groups.

Law, order, and prosperity supposedly disappeared when the “floodgates” opened up with the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965. These reactionaries lament the end of a “liberal consensus”, if there ever was one, and a new realpolitik which prefers a “mosaic” of cultures in lieu of the proverbial “melting pot”. They say: “Go back to where they came from”. We heard this crude phrase last week.

 That is not what America stands for. Not since 1945, when Tokyo and Berlin stood in shouldering ruins. Two decades of American isolationism, following the Great War, ended in an even bloodier global war. In Europe, America embraced the Marshall Plan to rebuild European social and economic institutions. At home, America began to turn a new leaf, allowing much greater immigration; first with piecemeal programs, then through a new immigration act in 1952.  

The White House’s horrible comment against four Congresswomen, and the silent approval of the President’s defenders, was overshadowed by more aspirational news: the 50^th Anniversary of the First Lunar Landing in July 1969. It was certainly an American accomplishment, but only possible with the knowledge and great assistance of then-recent immigrants:

·      -   Albert Einstein, renowned physicist who escaped the rabid antisemitism of post-World War One Europe.

·     -    German scientists and Nazi defectors who gave the United States invaluable information on rocket technology.

·    -     An Wang, computer hardware expert and pioneer of the CPU, who came to America from war-torn China in 1945.

·    -     Countless Russians and Eastern Europeans who escaped through the Iron Curtain and flourished in America, freed from the yoke of communism.

As Elon Musk and venture capitalists dream a near-future return to the Moon, America again faces a simple choice: Shoot for the stars, or “Send them back”.  

Alabama: Uncharted Territory

With passage of Alabama's new, strict abortion law; many are claiming that the Southern state is "turning back the clock" to the 1960's. Actually, Alabama is travelling into uncharted territory.

From 1919, Alabama, like other Southern states, led the way in racially-biased, pseudo-scientific eugenics programs, which often resulted in sterilizing poor woman of color deemed "mentally deficient". (University of Vermont)

In contrast to Midwestern and New England states, the South was more accepting of abortion, especially in cases of foul play. "Negrophobia", an unfounded fear of sexually-aggressive Black males, ensured that the strictest abortion laws belonged outside the south. 

Lee Atwater's 1988 Willie Horton ad, portraying an African-American rapist, played against Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis' presidential campaign, "especially in the South". Perhaps the soft-on-crime message would've been as effective without Willie Horton's menacing mugshot. Or would it? 

Alabama formally legalized interracial marriage in 2000, through referendum with 59% approval, according to Ballotpedia.

Racial attitudes have developed much over the past 20 years. Alabama's flag still portrays Saint Andrew's cross. Yet a more visible reminder of the past, the Confederate Flag, was removed from state capitol grounds in June 2015.

In the 1960's, Spiro Agnew, then governor of Maryland, suggested that new-built neighborhoods be subject to equal housing laws. He surmised that prejudice was a learned behavior, and that new neighbors had no inherent bias. Verifying this statement, commentators today look to the racially integrated "New South" sunbelt suburbs of Atlanta, Houston and other Southern cities; in contrast to ethnic-heavy suburbs in the Northeast (Staten Island and Ocean County, NJ as two examples). 

And this past week, racial fears did not prevent Alabama from passing a strict abortion law.
Unless "a serious health risk" (confer the Alabama law) includes giving birth to a mixed-race child.

May Day for Who?

"Their wages had gone down by a full third in the past two years, and a storm of discontent was brewing that was likely to break any day. Only a month after Marija had become a beef-trimmer the canning factory that she had left posted a cut that would divide the girls’ earnings almost squarely in half; and so great was the indignation at this that they marched out without even a parley, and organized in the street outside. One of the girls had read somewhere that a red flag was the proper symbol for oppressed workers, and so they mounted one, and paraded all about the yards, yelling with rage."

 (Upton Sinclair, The Jungle, 1906)

Today, working-class interests are back in the public sphere. New York State is clearly debating a progressive agenda, which covers the gamut from rent control, the minimum wage, transportation policy, and the gig economy. From what I've seen, the progressive approach is to put the agenda forward, and work the details later. I caution the zealous to tread steadily.

Rent control, for example, has populist appeal. But in New York City after World War Two, this led to disinvestment in older neighborhoods, ultimately ending in urban blight. (See a previous blog post on South Bronx decline and revival). Changes to rent control, beginning in 1974, provided a balanced approach that allowed new market development while preserving some affordable housing. Small, multifamily properties; found in places like Queens and Brooklyn; are the foundation of middle-class investment. Universal rent control, as proposed, would soak these working savers as much as it would "soak the rich". 

As we debate the path forward in the digital age, consider putting away the spite towards either side (owner and worker), and work towards creating upward mobility (which in many aspects has stalled) by "sharing the pie".

Notre Dame: Culture Worth Saving

“Britain is losing its culture”, cried no less than a few provocateurs. A necessarily open-ended statement, it leaves much to the individual imagination. I pondered this on the verge of Brexit- Britain leaving the European Union and going its own way, turning its collective psyche back to the 1970s, or earlier. Is it regret for relinquishing imperial units (miles, feet, pints and pounds), or the pre-decimal monetary units of shilling and pence? Is it the loss of pub culture that is being mourned? That’s a loaded theme: you could point to gentrification and rising rents, workaholism cutting into pub time, the prevalence of Continental wines, or abstemious immigrants moving into traditionally working class neighborhoods. Does one, rather, miss national solidarity and the stiff upper lip of surviving Nazi bombers during the Second World War?

During that trying time, Westminster and Saint Paul’s Cathedral stood as defiant symbols of national resolve. Even as surrounding central London was bombed flat, these national symbols had to be defended, at any cost. During air raids, Architecture students manned bucket brigades in the highest crevices of Saint Paul’s to preemptively extinguish incendiary flares dropped from the sky. One large bomb did drop into the Cathedral’s nave: miraculously, it was a dud.

This week in France, sorrow and resolve,  not apathy, came out of the conflagration at the 850-year old Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. In a secularizing Europe, Notre Dame held firm as a national symbol. The heart of France, as described by some journalists, in a nation that has long celebrated a hard separation of Church and State. Dominique Venner, then a 78-year old historian and reactionary, took his own life at the altar of Notre Dame in 2013, in a protest against same-sex marriage and other cultural changes. Notre Dame was front-and-center in the 1944 liberation of Paris from Nazi occupation. Notre Dame was present, and suffered some damage, in the 1790’s French Revolution. The damage from this week’s fire is still being totalized, but it includes the central spire and several rose windows dating to the 13th century. In America, Notre Dame Cathedral features prominently in Western Heritage and History courses- especially in Catholic school. Paris, namely its most famous Cathedral, is a must-see on most every college graduate’s list.

End of Month Report

March marks my third month on Guam. I've now figured out what I like on this island: the swimming, the sunsets, the community-oriented local culture. I've rented a car during my stay, but I'm ready to try transit: the Navy has now started (or restarted?) a shuttle service between the piers and its hospital, located near the island's capital. It operates with precision, and on a schedule; compared to the "island time" casualness of the existing, barebones, local bus service.

Shoutout to the end of USNS Supply's 25th anniversary month. Commissioned in 1994 as "AOE 6", she was the lead ship of the last class of supply ships to sail with uniformed Navy sailors. She was ordered by the government during the Reagan administration, when funding for new Navy ships was ample. This class of ship was intended to replace the four original AOE 'fast combat support ships', whose propulsion plants were built during WWII for battleship use, and which were commissioned in the 1960s to support a nuclear navy. All later-built classes of supply ships (the T-AKE and T-AO ships) would sail with civilian mariners. USS Supply, as she was known at the time, transferred to Military Sealift Command's civilian mariners in 2001, and by 2005, all underway replenishment ships were operated by civilians.

A Decade Ago: Sullenberger Sets the Flying Standard

In January 2009, America was still embroiled in the Global Financial Crisis and Great Recession. Even in Washington DC, the effects were felt through fiscal austerity, especially at the local level in repose to falling property tax revenue; and through downsizing at Fannie Mae. I had become accustomed to the radio being bearer of bad news. But on the afternoon of January 15, 2009, the radio reported a strangest thing- an airplane landed in the middle of New York City's Hudson River with no loss of life.

I first heard this as I rode our school's shuttle bus to the train station. Back then, cellphones didn't have internet, so I learned more on the TV when I got home. While some passengers of US Airways Flight 1549 immersed in the icy water, many of the passengers and crew transferred from the wing of the downed aircraft to rescuing ferryboats, as if walking down a pier.

US Airways Flight 1549 was captained by US Air Force Veteran Chesley Sullenberger, then 57 and approaching the pilots' retirement age of 60-65. After spectacular performance in the Hudson River landing, his memoir, "Highest Duty", came out in 2010. It quietly demonstrated a middle-class guy trying to do better for his family. He had a real estate investment; and was paying the expenses after the commercial tenant had moved out. He worked in commercial aviation, a field where downward wage pressures are prevailing; and corporate restructuring, mergers and acquisition threaten the earned status of seniority and experience.

Less than a month later, and also in New York State, Colgan Air 3407 crashed outside of Buffalo. Colgan Air was a regional carrier, the kind where new pilots, fresh from school, start their careers at working-class wages. This accident uncovered ongoing pilot fatigue, and shortcomings in training and performance assessments. Compared to 'legacy carriers' like US Airways, regional airlines complied with federal regulations but did not embrace a safety culture. As Sullenberger's performance shows, experience and buy-in to excellence matters, when critical skills are put to a real-life test.

Since February 2009, though, American commercial passenger aviation has had a spotless safety record. A decade later, US Airways and Colgan are no more.

Armistice Remembered

France does a good military parade, all the more poignant as the world commemorated Armistice Day at the end of World War One, the Great War. While the Western Front cut through trenches in France, the Eastern front was fluid, and quite deadly for military and civilians. As Americans we might have learned much about the Western Front, trench foot, and shellshock from books like "All Quiet on the Western Front". France victorious and Germany defeated. But the Eastern Front, whose stories were muted by the Iron Curtain, resulted in real geopolitical consequences.
 They include the collapse of Franz Joseph's Austro-Hungarian empire, Bolshevism in Russia, Turmoil in the Balkans, and the end of the Ottoman Empire. Washington, DC commemorated the Eastern Front in various ways, this past month. The Emperor Karl League of Prayer sponsored a Solemn Mass, followed by discussion on the exiled Austrian emperor's geopolitical worldview in 1918. A concert at the National Gallery of Art remembered the wartime struggles of Serbs and the genocide in Armenia.

And the military parade? While countries big and small, authoritarian and democratic, affluent and troubled, host annual military parades, such a tradition was never established in America. The Founding Father's resistance against large standing armies, and historically strong pacifist factions, certainly contribute to avoidance of outward military displays. Another aspect is practical for servicemembers, their families, and their units. Outside of training commands and small elite groups, drill and ceremony is an afterthought to the larger goal of operations, tactics, and military readiness. Servicemembers enjoy weekends and holidays when they can get them. Routine watchstanding and officer rotations make full weekends a well-earned and cherished rarity. Securing liberty for a mid-weekend parade is something NCOs and concerned officers would rather avoid. In contrast, Service Academies and ROTC units, located near population centers, are accustomed to marching drill. Shine those leathers again, and adjust your cover.

Judicial Activism not on Supreme Court Agenda

It’s Déjà vu; another Supreme Court Nominee battleWith the prospect of a conservative Supreme Court, you may wonder, How far can they go?

If you watch TV during campaign season, you should be familiar with liberal activist judges, who create rights (such as privacy and dignity) and supporting affirmative action; and interpret the Constitution. Looking at 20^th century history, conservatives can also be judicial activists:

Child Labor Shall Not Be Infringed

In the 1910’s, Congress passed Federal child labor laws applying to products and services sold across state lines (sounds constitutionally sound). But, according to the Lochner-era Supreme Court, those laws violated the due process rights of corporations.

Creating the Asian Race

Why were Asians not included in the 13-15^th amendments as suitable for citizenship? Three possible answers:

Willful action to let Africans become citizens, but keep out the Orientals?

An oversight or ignorance on the part of President Lincoln and his fellow abolitionists?

The Founding Fathers meant Free White Men as a contrast to the enslaved population of Sub-Saharan African-Americans?

Conservative activists of the day believed that the abolitionists really didn’t like Asians. The Supreme Court had to create the Asian race as a legal entity. Otherwise, those Asians would have the Right to attend white schools and live in white neighborhoods. A right, and not a privilege, at that. During the Jim Crow era, white privilege was worth suing for. In cases involving Indian, Japanese and Chinese plaintiffs, the Supreme Court conceded that, on a scientific basis, the fair-skinned Asians had claims to the White Race. Socially, they were distinct. The racist mob, not impartial intellectuals, gets final say in Whiteness. As European Ethnics established their whiteness, a boundary “had” to be drawn at the Caucasus Mountains, creating the Yellow Other.  

Isn’t it better that modern-day conservative judiciaries are constitutionalists rather than activists?

City on Fire, 1977

While flipping through property records of Norfolk, Virginia’s most desirable neighborhood, I discovered that a Dubai investment firm had purchased, at full price, a fixer-upper in this small city at the eastern end of flyover country. 

When a Dubai investor puts money into the future of a fairly provincial shipbuilding town with few international flights, it makes me wonder if the globalists have used up all the potential of New York, San Francisco, Miami and Los Angeles. Not too far from their favorite depositories for wealth are cities down on their luck- Johnstown, PA; East Baltimore, MD.  Several million dollars, less than the cost of a New York apartment, would transform these places, but to no avail. 

Subway and streetcar neighborhoods of 1950’s urban white America, can be seen in the films “Brooklyn” (2016) and “Avalon” (1991). At the same time of parish-centric neighborhoods, there were suburban ambitions. Part of this was practical: urban neighborhoods were overcrowded at the end of WWII. Depopulation of white ethnic neighborhoods continued with the Civil Rights Movement.

 

Further hurting the cities were job creators following their employees to the suburbs. Government programs created in the 1960’s became politically impossible to defund. By 1975, New York City was bankrupt. President Gerald Ford, a favorite of suburbanites, told the city government to “drop dead”.  This brought 1980’s footage of abandoned houses and vacant lots which younger generations can watch on Youtube. Dating from this era, I came across a book in the aptly-named “Urban Literature” section of DC library, titled “Young Landlords”, and read stories of college- educated squatters on the Lower East Side.

Those dark days are two decades past, so nostalgia for wild days, individuality, and a “blank slate” takes hold. The South Bronx is not wrapped in hypergentrification seen in rezoned industrial districts of lower Manhattan, or of that in Harlem. Although many of the same underlying social problems remain, the physical environment is improved, with new affordable housing and parks. How did this happen, without the unstoppable displacing force of gentrification?

“During the past three decades, this extraordinary partnership between state and local governments, for-profit and nonprofit builders, and private investors and lenders has resulted in the construction and rehabilitation of more than 2.9 million rental homes for the most vulnerable members of our society”.

(Granger MacDonald, Chairman, National Association of Home Builders; letter in Wall Street Journal).