Break the Ice on Travel

 

I only realized the momentousness of the journey as I rode the drizzly waves on the Cape May-Lewes Ferry between Delaware and New Jersey. It was my first trip outside Virginia or DC since March 2020. During the heart of the COVID-19 pandemic, I simply had no need to travel for work, and national guidance advised against leisure travel. Airline flights? Forget about it; I heard enough stories about 4-leg transcontinental flights on routes that had once been non-stop. Hotels that once provided scrumptious breakfasts resorted to handing out bagged muffins “because of COVID”. In fact, until the vaccine was widely available, my employer documented all personal travel out of town, which would start a two-week isolation period upon return to work. Why travel?

Like after 9/11/01, enough time has elapsed so that some of the imposed travails of travelling- perhaps familiar to horse-and-buggy trail warriors in the 19^th century- have been lifted. Last weekend was an opportune time to visit New York; not Manhattan, but the Alma Mater just east on Long Island. Reflective of the times, the Alumni event was scheduled in May after loosening of CDC guidance; then cancelled in August on account of the Delta Variant spike; then resurrected in a low-key format after it was revealed that people had bought non-refundable airline tickets to travel.

Among the several dozen attendees, I was the sole long-haul, work-from-home person. I listened intently to the stories of international quarantine, and promotions earned as a result of others’ early retirements. Onboard ship, in a shipyard, or even in the design shop, the maritime field is very hands-on and relationship-oriented. It felt great to break out of a period of professional isolation, a phenomenon studied in rural doctors, scientists, and sole proprietors; but which now applies to millions of white-collar professionals who ground out their work from laptops at home. While work-from-home has received favorable reviews from workers and some managers, I wondered how many more months of value could be added when professionals were running on autopilot, without conferences, training, and collaboration. In just a weekend, a switch was flipped in me. By Monday, I registered to attend an upcoming workboat show in New Orleans.

Forgotten Sustenance: Nutty Cheese Sandwich and New York's Greatest Era

 

New York of the 1950s could be categorized as a worker’s paradise. Liberalism of the era prioritized affordable housing, tuition and healthcare. Immigrants from war-torn Asia and Europe, penniless artists and thinkers from the heartlands came to build their American dream. This was the “Old New York” of the pre-Bloomberg era, a time before capital reigned supreme.  How did these strivers live, and how did they dine? Low-cost diners, public cafeterias, and lost recipes like Date Nut Bread were not glamorous, but sustaining for a day’s work.

The Nutty Cheese Sandwich comprised of Date – Nut Bread, lathered with cream cheese and served with “regular” coffee (cream and sugar, please). Served at Chock Full of Nuts cafes once ubiquitous in the city, it was a Depression-era favorite whose price mirrored that of subway fare: 5 cents in the early 1930’s, and 15 cents in the 1950s.

I made a loaf from a recipe posted by Politico: Lost Foods of New York City: Date-nut bread sandwiches at Chock Full o' Nuts (politico.com)

Everything I needed to make the loaf was in my pantry. I substituted dates for raisins, which I had on hand. The rich aroma of nuts and fruits filled my home as the loaf baked.  Taking a slice of this loaf and layering it with cream cheese made a creation that closely resembled a carrot cake, but with more wholesomeness than sugar. The outside of the slice was crusty, and the inside soft, but substantiated by the nuts and fruit. It was everything a hungry artist would want.

One might say that the fast-food dollar menu replaced the cheap restaurants of bygone decades. But what would your three dollars buy? Four slices of bread, two thin pucks of ground meat, and French fries. You would get your calories, but not a balanced meal. No fruits or vegetables would be served, other than ketchup; or a packet of jelly, if you ask nicely.

What did the cheap restaurants in? Foodservice wages have been fairly stable. Rents have gone up. Business overhead, to pay consultants and managers, has certainly increased in the restaurant sector. But the cheap restaurant relies on volume to stay afloat; I would argue that the critical mass of working-class and middle-class diners dissipated when it became too easy to put a “dining experience” on the credit card: Buy now, pay later versus pay-as-you-go. Yes, that rising standard of living.  In a more money-conscious era, diners would have prioritized nutrition and heartiness; while today, these gaps are filled by eating more.

Coronavirus: Vaccine is Here and Now

 

But how to get in into peoples’ arms?

On the administration of the vaccine, mathematicians and their game theories have surpassed credentialled public health professionals in predicting how to proceed. Health experts did not predict that a significant number of workers would decline the vaccine (up to 40%), because of immunity acquired from previous exposure, personal choice, or even the preference of an anti-vax supervisor. The “discouraging supervisor” has not been discussed in the media, but will come into greater view if vaccination clinics maintain limited hours which shift workers find difficult to access. There has been hesitance to release unused doses of vaccine, even as early expiration dates come near.

In New York, Governor Cuomo ordered that healthcare providers who circumvented state-mandated priority groups for vaccination would be fined $1 million, and their license revoked. This is not a general statement about maintaining fair distribution of the vaccine, but a substantiated threat as ParCare Community Health Network, a New York State provider, was sanctioned for “fraud” in vaccinating over 800 high-risk adults ahead of schedule before New Year’s Day. This action has had a chilling effect on providers in the state, who have since allowed unused doses to go to waste, instead of administering them to the general public.

As the vaccine is becoming available to greater populations, bureaucracy and appointment-based systems are hampering the effective distribution of the vaccine. At some hospital systems, there is an hour of administrative work for each dose of the vaccine given. As a result, it is not uncommon for a hospital to vaccinate only 20 of its staff in a day. A well-planned clinic, such as the military Branch Health Clinics, should deliver at least 400 doses per day. A Pfizer vial contains five doses, and must be used within six hours of its opening. Emergencies and medical deferrals can cause planned recipients to miss their doses, and in the interest of public health, another recipient must be found. In rural areas, it will be necessary to relax priority groups to ensure that vaccine does not go to waste. I know a ship’s officer who drove 8 hours to get his vaccine in Norfolk, Virginia; this is not a viable option for senior citizens or low-income individuals. Centralized vaccination centers, as Florida and other southern states have set up, have shown great effectiveness in reaching target groups. Nobody likes to wait in line, but practical evidence shows that a queue is necessary to administer the vaccine without waste.

Nuances of Law and Order

This year, urban protests and general unrest in society created a mixed reaction in the electorate. In some parts of the country, Trump’s rhetoric of liberal politicians “destroying the suburbs” fell on deaf ears. Elsewhere, it was a resounding success. I have a theory why: as we near the middle of the Suburban Century (summed up by Mark Clapson in 1992), what happens in the inner-city does not physically or vicariously affect the lives of citizens in diverse, self-contained and far-flung suburbs.

Virginia Beach, VA

The Virginia Beach Oceanfront serves as the quintessential, walkable downtown for a military-heavy suburb. This spring and summer, tensions were high as protestors called attention to longstanding law-and-order policing on the beach. Over the Labor Day weekend, local group BLM 757 held its “Shut Down the Oceanfront 3.0” protest. True to form, the police gave citations to protestors who drifted from the sidewalk into the street. As a result of afternoon and night-time activity, families chose alternative locations for rest and relaxation; combined with COVID, this proved harmful to the ecosystem of local beachfront businesses.

At election time, Virginia Beach voted for Joe Biden and Representative Elaine Luria, a Democrat. On the same ticket, incumbent mayor Bobby Dyer, a Republican, was re-elected with 57% of the vote; and “RK” Kowalewitch, a conservative whose campaign signs read: “Law and Order”, won another 5% of the electorate.     

 

Suburban Richmond, VA

The Virginia State Capitol and Supreme Court building in Richmond were targeted by protestors as symbols of conservative political leadership. With much of downtown boarded up, the city provided a backdrop for political advertising. The jarring images did not ‘tip the needle’ in nearby Henrico and Chesterfield counties, who chose Biden and Representative Abigail Spanberger (D) by large margins. Both counties are home to a mix of employment options; heavy industry, light industry, service and some professional work. Freeways criss-cross these suburbs, linking towards northern and southern markets, and the international airport and deep-sea port of Hampton roads. Richmond, home to state government, several universities, and museums, is somewhat irrelevant to new suburbanites. Overall, there was no partisan change in Virginia’s congressional representation this year.    

 

Suburban Atlanta, GA

The land that served as a springboard for one-time House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and other conservative Republicans, helped to tip Georgia for Joe Biden. For 20 years, the Greater Atlanta area has been the nexus of a New Great Migration of African-Americans from the North to the South; the impact in politics, seen by the flipping of congressional seats, is very recent. Atlanta is a city of the New South; sprawling development centers on its record-breaking international airport and its freeways. The firewall between city and suburbs may be crumbling: while decades ago, suburban Gwinnett County blocked subway construction, a referendum for a transit tax may have passed, pending recount.

 

Los Angeles, CA

California is no friend of Donald Trump. But recent years of excessive solicitude given to drug pushers, car thieves and vandals struck a nerve in working and middle-class communities across racial lines. Since the Rodney King riots of 1992, Asian-American small business owners have been concerned about inadequate police protection offered to their communities. Legislation to “defund the police” dug up old pain. Voters in the state narrowly reaffirmed limits on affirmative action in the state, which were first put into effect in 1996; and sent new Republican representatives to Congress.  

 

Long Island, NY

During the George W. Bush years, as war deaths mounted, these traditionalist, conservative-of-the-gut counties questioned its allegiance to the GOP. But this year, as in 2016, their hometown son, Donald J. Trump of Queens, NY, did not produce the electoral revulsion seen in other suburbs of similar educational and demographic profiles.

While it appears that North Shore Rep. Tom Suozzi (D) will retain his long-time seat, his Republican opponent led in early counting. On the blue-collared South Shore, Andrew Garbarino (R) is expected to succeed retiring Rep. Peter King. Lee Zeldin (R) holds his seat in affluent Suffolk County. Nichole Malliotakis (R) has unseated Max Rose (D) in representing Staten Island and part of Brooklyn. These latter three seats were considered toss-ups going into the election. The Long Island suburbs are home to well-paid public servants and tradespeople of a vibrant New York City; COVID shutdowns and Bill de Blasio’s social permissiveness cast a malaise across white-ethnic New York. Upward mobility of strivers, from immigrant grandparents to civil service to Wall Street, created an unwavering patriotism and belief in the institutions of America. This legacy was challenged in 2020 by politicians on the left, who maintain that this upward mobility was not fueled by grit, but by systemic racism and unchecked privilege.     

Party Before People

A young man from Westchester sails the seas, slowly but determinate in rising the deck officer ranks. His high school classmate is a news-garnering Congresswoman representing Queens, New York.

If there was a congressional district that resembled the neglect of “plantation politics”, the 14^th district of New York, located in the borough of Queens, is a sure bet. Much attention is paid to the competitive congressional races in the suburbs of Long Island and Staten Island. Names of White-Ethnic pols like Max Rose, Dan Donovan, Anthony Wiener, Peter King, and Lee Zeldin permeate the national airwaves. But politically speaking, vast swaths of low-rise, diverse urban neighborhoods go unheard. This is flyover country in New York; elevated subway lines and commuter trains from the economic behemoth of Lower Manhattan squeak brake dust as they speed through the street life of immigrant and low-income Queens, en-route to the suburbs.

It was here that Joe Crowley, a Queens Democratic Machine insider, was elected every two years to Congress without facing a serious primary challenge. In this district and many other inner cities, the general election is a “mole hill”, to quote the 2014 words of failed Maryland gubernatorial candidate Lt Gov. Anthony Brown. That “mole hill” is surmounting nominal Republican and independent challengers in the November elections.

Crowley, a politically run-of-the-mill Democrat without clear convictions, harvested votes that afforded him and his family a comfortable life in Northern Virginia. He and his family rarely spend time in the New York neighborhoods which he was elected to represent.

His district was low-hanging fruit ready for disruption. A young women with a Twitter account ended Western Queens’ political malaise. Her name is Alexandra Occasio-Cortez, or AOC for short, raised in the high-expectations suburbs of Westchester. According to my shipmate, Westchester was a cauldron of high performers, who’d use their talents and guts to forge a path in the world. He became a merchant ship’s officer, she moved to inner-city Queens to become a waitress. 

Though politically immature, AOC was able to see opportunity. Parts of the 14^th district had become gentrified by upwardly mobile, mostly White newcomers. It was in this economically privileged (though student-debt-laden) sphere that hyper-progressive AOC secured her majority in the 2018 democratic primary.

Under New York law, Crowley’s name still appeared on the general election ballot under the Working People Party line. He had cruised for decades under the precept that disengaged voters would instinctively “vote for the democrat”. Running on the Democratic line, Joe Crowley regularly secured 40-point victories against the opposition parties. But Joe Crowley had no brand; and this was not nearby Connecticut where Senator Joe Lieberman avenged a primary loss by running, and being elected as, an independent. Joe Crowley decided not to campaign, and on election night, he garnered a mere 7% of the vote, despite his decades in office and his name still appearing on the ballot. This was not a story of progressive versus moderate, but a question of passion and attention to the voters.

“My crazy classmate”, utters our merchant ship officer from the helm.

Good riddance, Mr. Cuomo?

Television personality Sean Hannity moved out of New York in 2014; President Donald Trump , a lifelong New Yorker who grew up straphanging on the city’s subway, moved out this year. Between these two poles, Governor Andrew Cuomo has presided over an exodus of residents. This is an exodus of talent, treasure and potential.

This struck a chord with me, because I watched my peers, born and raised on New York’s Long Island, Staten Island, and in Westchester County leave the Empire State by the handful. They graduated college and set out for the South, particularly Florida. With home purchases and families started, they aren’t coming back soon.  Weather was not the issue. It was housing costs, traffic delays, career prospects, and taxes; overall cost and quality of living.

Immigration from around the world masks the effect of this exodus; it is the difference between New York’s resilient dynamism and Rust Belt decay. But New York has made large investments in its youth; to include college tuition in recent years. Why is the Governor so willing to see the future disappear? I would point to entrenched constituencies who believe that things are “good enough” under current leadership. The critical mass demanding better, the citizen voters who put Andrew Cuomo’s father out of office in 1994, have decamped for other states, taking their New York educations, pensions and real estate proceeds with them.

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.

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".

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.

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).