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).

All Are Welcome, Really

One article headline caught my attention several months ago in the Christian Science Monitor: "Church revival? More liberals are filling Protestant pews". It was a jarring headline because it countered what everyone knew: Mainline Protestant Churches like the Episcopal and the Presbyterians were once associated with the Protestant Work Ethic, the Republican Party at Prayer, and the WASP establishment. After the 1970's, those churches took a leftward turn in theology and outreach, religious non-affiliation increased, and church membership declined.

Coincidentally, church-goers were returning to tradition: Jews turning to orthodoxy, Evangelicals embracing sacraments, and Catholics saying old prayers. Church attendance has become correlated with conservative views, a Pew Research poll will tell you. This may be a result of decades of culture wars, with Evangelicalism as the loudspeaker and Catholicism as the library; the pastoral aspects of Christian life, though always present, falling to the background. Talk Radio and ballot boxes made being a "good" Christian easy; Pope Francis made a few Catholics uncomfortable when he reminded us about the importance of charitable work. It was not specifically a call to increase the 2.5% quarter-tithe American citizens give to charity, on average; but a call to open one's heart, showing a bit more compassion in the ruthless world.

So what is the appeal of a progressive, liberal church to the "Tax-Raising, Latte-Drinking, Sushi-Eating, Volvo-Driving, New York Times-Reading, Body-Piercing, Hollywood-Loving"(1)  demographic? You may have heard of the "Third Place" idea; a place you spend time away from home and work. Starbucks wants you to make their stores your "Third Place" and many people do.
But people need a sense of community in addition to a sense of belonging in a "Third Place", and this community is what draws some people to those churches that hang rainbow flags and "Black Lives Matter" signs.

While traditional churches tended to focus on spiritual matters over earthly ones; progressive churches talk to issues that matter to progressives. With the new administration in the White House, some fear a return to the politically alienating days of corporate welfare and moral Pharisees. There is a bit of racial strife, and this year there are geopolitical crises that force people out of effete complacency. North Korea's nuclear missile program. Human rights violations in Syria.
Inclement weather from fires in the Western States to hurricane flooding in the tax havens of Texas and Florida. The need for a feeling of togetherness in these times might compel some progressives to take their Sunday morning coffee in the parish hall instead of Starbucks.


(1) Credits to Geoffrey Nunberg

The Old Technology Review

Typewriters
Apparently still a favorite of police departments. Accosted by word processors, and the ease of sending emails. Wounded by the fillable PDF.

Desktop Computer
Preferred by the government, cash-flush companies, and extreme gamers. Also used by those with work-life balance, who leave the computer in the home office.

Laptop Computer
Digital natives adapt seamlessly to smartphones, leaving heavier Windows-operating machines to suit-and-tie professionals. Where's the USB port on the Apple iPad? There is none. Low-cost Netbooks fill gaps which smartphones are ill-adept, such as word processing.

Vinyl Record Players
They're coming back, right? You can get your favorite alt-rock hits on new vinyl.

Telegram
They have a bad rap for being associated with bad news, whether in 1928 (1) or in WWII. But they could also be used for good news as well.
It was more convenient to use a telex or fax machine than walking to the telegram office. Long-distance phone calls and later email displaced the messenger boy.

Telex
Reliable, lower cost international phone service and the internet banished the typewriter-resembling device from land. Still reigns with pilots and mariners in the air and at sea. 

Fax Machine
Dogbert from the Dilbert cartoon may have hated the fax machine, but I. Technophobes in some state legislatures have not allowed signed emails to hold the same legal status as faxed documents. For this reason, lawyers and doctors err on the side of conservative caution and continue to use fax. From my point of view it is a convenient way of sending medium-sized documents, as an alternative to priority mail. Fax machines work on the basis of dial-and-send. To email a document, you must fire up the computer, scan each page, create an email and attach the scanned files. Beware: smartphones, with snap-and-send features, are eliminating this advantage.

Kinkos
Forget putting dimes in the copy machine. The all-in-one machine meant that a family could get a full-color printer, a copier, scanner and fax machine for the price of one machine. 

Letters
As far as old technologies go, sending a letter is really easy. Stamp and envelope and go to a blue mailbox- or raise the flag on your own mailbox.  And for those dreaded bills, you can save a stamp and pay online. It also helps the business save on data entry staff.
Regular correspondence is cheaper and faster by email, unless it's the US Navy. From boot camp letters to family photos sent to sailors on ships, snail mail is slow but ultimately reliable.

Telephone Operators
Direct dialing of long distance calls began in the 1950's.  Local calls in big cities were automated even earlier. Large businesses and institutions kept telephone operators until relay electronics and computers became widespread, allowing extension lines to be dialed directly. If you are feeling nostalgic, call a friend in his or her hotel room. You will likely be connected through the front desk.

 Dial Up Internet
According to Time Magazine, about 3% of internet users in the US still use a dial up service. In the 1990's, dial-up was slow but awe-inspiring. Today, it's fairly slow, and the modern age has adapted to DSL and other high-speed services. You can't watch videos, but you can check basic email. Better than nothing.

Landlines and DSL
The younger generation wants their smartphones, and want it now. This increasing traffic has proven a challenge to wireless data providers on 3G and LTE networks. A sober approach would be to increase use of wired internet through seamless WiFi connections in public spaces; providers must adapt to the reality that "millenials" are choosing to forgo wired services like landlines and DSL internet. 

Overnight Letters
Fred Smith thought that the Dilbert-era 1990's fax machine (and later, email) would kill his Federal Express business. Instead, the need for overnight parcels kept increasing.  Overnight mail is my preferred method of transmitting large documents from overseas, since some fax machines reject international lines.

Camera Film
It used to come in rolls of 24 exposures.  You paid for the roll of film and you paid for the development at a photo lab. You made three trips to get a photo: one to buy the film, one to drop off the completed roll of film, and one to pick up the developed pictures. For this reason, places like convenience stores and groceries were 'in' on the photo business. Polaroid was a bit different; my family never had one but the photos would be ready after a few minutes.

CD Players and Walkmans
"Want to buy a Tower Records?" asks Sean Parker, the founder of Napster. Still used by my family's 2006 Volvo and durable home stereo. With a near-ban on USB sticks, Uncle Sam is propping up the decades-old CD-ROM industry. CDs were replaced by the MP3 player for music, notably the iPod and Zune, which were supplanted by smartphones. Files went to USB sticks and cloud services.

Floppy Disks, Cassette Tapes and VHS
Navy ships commissioned in the early 1990s used state-of-the art computer technology, including floppy disks that saved engine performance data. Comparison with today's readings would guide maintenance planners as the ships enter mid-life.

For tapes and VHS, remember to be kind and rewind.

Punch Cards
Unlike most of today's electronics, the machines were pretty durable, and some served into the computer age. I have come across these cards in the back of library books.

Carbon Copies
Today, making a copy of a saved document is as easy as Control+P.
Carbon copies are still used on handwritten forms like sales receipts of small businesses. 
Handheld tablets and the ubiquity of credit card use meant that  manual imprint machines gave way to point-of-sale receipt printers.

Rooms filled with Filing Cabinets
I like to keep paper records for the day we are hit by solar flares. Many people go full electronic, and for many businesses, retaining paper records means paying for storage space in the tunnels of Iron Mountain. You can sympathize with the secretary who was replaced by Control+F on the keyboard, with which you can find a long-lost e-file in a few seconds.

Flip Phones
Once a technological breakthrough. Today, they are relegated to 'late adapters' and business that hand out no-fun dumbphones to employees.

Blackberry
Creative destruction at its finest. Mobile internet became more widely available and ended need for proprietary services; but more importantly, seemed to fall behind learning curve.



(1) http://www.telegraph-office.com/pages/telegram.html

Two hours by train from Vienna

The main reason I chose to take R&R in Vienna, Austria is its proximity to its Central European neighbors. That it's a kandlocked nation, Danube river notwithstanding, was another draw. As such, there's a snowball's chance in Hades that I'd go there for work. I flew from the great maritime nation of Greece, via The Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, to the green fields of Austria. Now Vienna is an international city, not to just mean residents from across Europe, but from around the world. This distinguishment comes out late at evening, when it appears that the born citizens are at home, getting rested to conquer the world on the morrow. And the memory of the Hapsburg runs deep, with dedications of civic landmarks and learning to Franz Josef. The Hapsburgs are still around, though the British royalty get all the attention: 20 year old Ferdinand von Habsburg is better known as a Racecar driver.

I had the opportunity to visit Bratlislava in Slovakia and Brno in the Czech Republic.  Once subjected to communism, the old winding medieval streets are filled with life. I could only notice the preponderance of streetcars. Once shunned in North America, the quaint mode of transport has been a feature of Central European life since the Romantic age. Several new-builds have been exported to Washington,DC to restart streetcar service recently. The cathedrals in Bratislava and Brno are filled with choirs, organ music, and a congregation. On the street, the older men still wear hats. Named after Dvorak and Chopin, the eastbound trains to Prague pass a dystopia border town. One stop further, and my eyes were fixed on the old city of Brno. At the post office in Brno, I took my first ride in a paternoster. It's really a fancier version of a man lift, but the German invention has been abandoned in Western Europe for safety reasons. Two years ago, I had bought a quick phrase book for Central Europe. It was kind of prophetic that I would have the opportunity to visit. When it was time to fly home to D.C., I was in awe of the lands that once consisted an empire. My pockets had Euros, and coins from Turkey,  Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Denmark, where I had a layover on my return trip. The European hopper flight on Air Berlin was nothing to write home about, but the Scandinavian-accommodating legroom on the long-haul SAS flight was much appreciated. Meal service was the best I've had on a plane. Coffee, tea and water were abundant and available on demand; I like to think the charge for soda was a health incentive. Anyhow, I got my kroner's worth from the flight lounge in Copenhagen.

Someday, I will take the grand tour of Europe- London, Paris and Rome. But those pint-size cities of Central Europe have touched my heart.

When a Vacation Gets Busy

While I was at work, it was easy to say "I don't have enough time" to be worried about activism and protesting. Now on vacation, 'not having enough time' is my own problem, not one I could attribute to my boss or shortened days caused by time advances. At the same time, while at work I could shout as loud as I could off the gunwale of the ship, and no one would hear me. It was an eye-opening experience to trade a weak satellite connection for wifi and broadband; to use internet configured for me rather than one optimized for sending simple text emails. Yes, I did some of my recent blog posts through a satellite connection. I'd write ahead of time, and then wait for early morning to access blogger.com, when the absence of "higher priority" traffic allowed me a connection to the host website. I will be the first to tell you MSNBC clickbait, used as my ship's internet homepage, does not an informed citizen make.

When I was traveling for work, I sectioned attention to friends and family into a 20-minute phone call or a paragraph email, and a twice-weekly Facebook check. Otherwise, my afterhours were my own to plan and divvy. So when I got home at the beginning of the four-day Independence Day weekend, I was surprised by how much time went to 'family time'. A devotee to an art would tell his or her associated to "leave me alone". A dilettante like myself seeks to appease, placing others' desire for attention above attention to the craft.

For me, the 'staycation' does not work. I created, and am working through a punchlist of items that I couldn't readily complete overseas like tax adjustments, ordering books and videos, and making appointments, visiting Mr. Liedman, my coin dealer. Things I guess people do over lunch break, or late afternoon at work, for the lucky ones. So to get away, I take a 'real' vacation, like my week tramping around the old Austro-Hungarian empire of Central Europe (material for another blog post). I left the US on Inauguration Day (faster than a talking head celebrity), and arrived back after five months away. I was quickly reintroduced to American culture: upon arrival in the US, it appeared that half the border control agents took Friday afternoon off! This was only unusual to me since six full days of work a week is the norm on my ship, and seven days is normal too. Instead of "getting ready for the weekend" on Fridays, the anticipation was "getting ready for the overtime".

I feel like a have just a handgrip keeping me from obsolescence. Tinder, where women sort through virtual binders of men, and men do likewise, was the butt of jokes when I was in college just three years ago. Now I've read that online dating had replaced the 'bar scene' as a matchup forum. I landed at the airport alone in one's own city: In Washington, DC, the summer social calendar is light; and none more so than the week of July 4th. As the weeks away from the US turned to months, I needed to take the time reconnecting with friends. They said Mitt Romney was stuck in the 1950's; he missed the 1960's and ensuing cultural changes as a husband and a Mormon missionary. If I wanted to, I could become a virtual hermit on the ships, with a W2 wage statement and a portfolio ledger as my sole concerns in life. That is not the life for me.  To know that I will go out again, I vow to have all matters better organized for my next vacation!