Willamette River solutions, ver. 2009

There were two noteworthy pieces on efforts to restore the Willamette River in the Sunday Oregonian, both by Joe Whitworth.

The first is titled "Evolve or die: It's crunch time for the Willamette." This article begins by noting the rate of snow pack loss in the Cascades since 1955, which directly impacts the flow of the tributaries of the Willamette River and, therefore, the flow of the Willamette, which, in turn, degrades habitat and concentrates pollution. Whitworth concludes the article by describing a new system of managing and fast-tracking stream enhancement projects that could help us rectify stream quality issues in a wide-ranging and coordinated manner. He writes:

"the consequences of how we've used our watersheds and waterways have come into focus: Runoff of pollutants, erosion and overheated streams mean degraded water quality and impaired aquatic habitat. Because tributaries and rivers operate like veins and arteries, good spots here and there cannot correct accumulated negative impacts. We need contiguous, functioning stream zones that sweep across whole basins if we hope to correct current downward trajectories for fish, water quality and even economic prosperity."

Whitworth's second article is titled "An Oregon roadmap for healthier rivers." This shorter article outlines how new technologies and approaches introduced in Oregon to improve water quality can become a national model.

Whitworth describes a watershed-level approach to water quality that has its roots in the efforts of the New Deal National Resources Committee (NRC) from the 1930s.[1] After reviewing below highlights from some of these efforts between the 1930s and early 1960s, a cynic could say that the process that Whitworth outlines and advocates for is just another in a long line of efforts, and yet the river continues to degrade. An optimist might say that our approaches are getting increasingly more refined and, therefore, perhaps we're finally getting closer to a lasting solution; I'll let the reader decide . . .

President Franklin Roosevelt established the NRC in 1933 to coordinate all natural resources management efforts on a regional scale.[2] The NRC had a group focused on water quality issues, the Special Advisory Committee on Water Pollution, headed by leading sanitary engineer Abel Wolman. This committee was within a larger group overseeing water resources in general.

The work of this group is notable for at least a couple of reasons. This group was the first federal-level body to approach water quality as a water quantity issue. The second is that this sub-committee produced the first comprehensive national water quality report in 1939.[3] A notable finding if this report was that the Willamette and lower Columbia River watersheds were determined to have degraded water quality on par with the industrialized Great Lakes and Northeast regions of the country [see image above, from p. 41 of this report].

President Harry Truman established his National Water Pollution Control Advisory Board in early 1950. This group of experts toured the country to gather data on regional water resource issues to help realize the goals of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act of 1948. This advisory board included Carl D. Shoemaker, former Oregon State Game Warden, who represented wildlife conservation interests, and held sessions in Portland in Summer 1950.[4]

Spurred by the 1956 Federal Water Pollution Control Act, the federal government began to apply systems/ecological approaches to the water quality issue in the late 1950s. Viewing water quality through an ecological lens meant that scientists, engineers, and policy makers expanded their understanding beyond a regional water resource issue to include the Willamette and its tributaries as complex systems. For example, rather than perceiving the health of the river in terms of broad public health considerations or the need to sustain populations of salmon and trout for commercial and sports fisheries, scientists conducted research into the interrelationship of microscopic organisms negatively impacted by pollutants, and policy makers sought to coordinate metropolitan, industrial, public, and private abatement efforts.

The U.S. Public Health Service sponsored at least eleven regional water pollution research symposia about every six months between 1957 and 1963. The topics of these meetings included addressing the Sphaerotilus fungus ("slime") problem on the lower Columbia and funding municipal treatment facilities. The U.S. Public Health Service opened up a research station in Portland about 1960, headed by Edward Eldridge. In this capacity, Eldridge was engaged in a “constant soap-box campaign” pushing for more research at regional universities; he also sponsored the bi-annual regional symposia. He was finding the issue to be increasingly more complex, particularly because of the wide variety of new chemicals being developed. Reflecting a growing understanding of the lessons of ecological science to issues of water quality, Eldridge’s scientific and technological challenges included “discover[ing] means of permitting man to progress in his environment without destroying the natural organisms that make that environment possible.”[6]

The efforts to abate Willamette River water pollution at the regional level became more complex and comprehensive after the early 1960s, with the passage of amendments to the Water Pollution Control Act, the Clean Water Act of 1972, and other state and federal environmental legislation since this time. These changes will be addressed in subsequent posts.


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[1] The examples in this blog post are described in my MA thesis, "Working for the 'Working River': Willamette River Pollution, 1926-1962," Portland State University, 2009

[2] Roosevelt established this national planning approach soon after taking office. The NRC was first known as the National Planning Board, and Congress abolished this group entirely in 1943; see K. Dziewonski, "U.S. National Resources Planning Board, 1934-1943: A Bibliography of its Reports and Publications," The Town Planning Review, 19:2 (Spring 1946), 69-90, http://www.jstor.org/pss/40101877.

[3] National Resources Committee Special Advisory Committee on Water Pollution, Water Pollution in the United States (Washington, D.C., U.S. Government Printing Office, 1939).

[4] “National Pollution Control Meetings Slated in Portland,” Oregonian, May 23, 1950, sec. 1, p. 13; “Adviser Board to Tour Area,” Oregonian, July 7, 1950, sec. 2, p. 7; “State’s Water Draws Study,” Oregonian, April 28, 1950, sec. 3, p. 8; “Pollution Board May Ask Congress for Funds for Columbia Research,” Oregonian, July 12, 1950, sec. 2, p. 12; “Local, Federal Officials Discuss Northwest River Pollution Puzzle,” Oregon Journal, July 11, 1950, sec. 1, p. 7; Oregon State Sanitary Authority Meeting Minutes May 9, 1950, vol. 2, pp. 230-234, Oregon State Department of Environmental Quality, Portland, Oreg.

[5] Bob Boxberger, “Scientist Preaches Clean Stream Doctrine,” Oregon Journal, May 25, 1960, p. 7; Boxberger, “Pollutants Gradually Stifling Many Forms of Aquatic Life,” Oregon Journal, May 26, 1960, part 1, p. 6; Boxberger, “63 Research Projects Seek Key to Cause-Effect of Pollution,” Oregon Journal, May 17, 1960, part 1, p. 6.

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Museum of the Warsaw Rising

John Radzilowski has written a fascinating review of the Museum of the Warsaw Rising in the most recent issue of The Public Historian.[1]

Radzilowski's review provides an overview of the weaknesses and strengths of the museum. He finds that the primary weakness is that the museum requires a visitor to have some kind of prior knowledge of the event in order to make sense of displays that are often disjointed and that lack a clear spatial-chronological relationship. The strengths that he finds are that the museum reflects an important event in World War II that is under-appreciated outside of Poland but that served as an important prelude to the Cold War. Additionally, the museum serves an important role for Poles by serving as a site for commemoration and for foreigners by "attempting to rebuild a coherent historical memory of the darkest period in Polish history, marked by both trauma and heroism."

To learn more about the Warsaw Rising, see the museum's website, and this site.


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[1] John Radzilowski, "Remembrance and Recovery: The Museum of the Warsaw Rising and the Memory of World War II in Post-Communist Poland," The Public Historian 31: 4 (Nov. 2009), 143-158.

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Maps as collective knowledge

I read a great article on map making in one of my classes in graduate school. The class was taught by a historian of science and was titled "Empires of Knowledge." One of the key books for this course was, of course, James Scott's Seeing Like a State. The article on map making was "Mapping Inuktut: Inuit Views of the Real World," by Renée Fossett.[1]

Fossett's article introduced me to a deeper understanding of how map making is a cultural practice that reflects a given worldview, how maps serve specific and important cultural roles, and how maps both reflect and help formulate an individual's perceptions within the context of a given time and place. As Robert Anton Wilson has written, "the map is not the territory"--but maps are fascinating windows into sociological, anthropological, and mental constructs.

Anyway, I came upon a fascinating article in the NY Times about some new directions that maps and map making are headed: user-refined interactive online maps.

Map making may have its earliest roots in a variant of processes such as Fossett outlines. Maps were tribe- and culture-specific and served practical and spiritual purposes, but did not necessarily correlate with the "real world," as conceived by approaches and technologies that enabled a more topographically and spatially "accurate" view of the lay of the land. As a tool of empire, maps became, in the West, cosmological and political extensions of an empire's sense of itself and sense of its extension of itself in relation to other lands and empires. As the Western imperial project evolved in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, this way of seeing the world became much more concerned with representing spatial and topographical "reality" as closely as possible.

As Helft describes in his NY Times piece, there's a fascinating new wrinkle to what maps can be. This new kind of map making benefits from what Scott articulates as an imperial view because it requires pinpoint detail, clear demarcation, and GPS-quality accuracy. However, it also contains a solid measure of the approach to mapping that Fossett shows in the Inuit approach, in that the maps are open to individual input and, therefore, reflect nuances and values that can only be provided by these macro-level experts of a given locale. This is an exciting development and opens up entire universes of possibilities.

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[1] Renée Fossett, "Mapping Inuktut: Inuit Views of the Real World," in Reading Beyond Words: Contexts for Native History, ed. Jennifer S. H. Brown and Elizabeth Vibert, Peterborough, Ont., Broadview Press, 1996, pp. 74-94.

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Happy Thanksgiving!!

The Christian Science Monitor published an article seven years ago on the history of Thanksgiving as Americans now practice it. This article shows clearly how a cultural observance has two distinct "histories" -- the history of what really happened, as best as can be discerned, and the history of the mythology that gets built up around the observance.

This basic pattern can be seen in a multitude of observances, historical sites, cultural narratives, etc., and I welcome additional references to other such examples.

When I see examples of this pattern, I ask myself, "what ends are served by creating and perpetuating this mythology?" In the case of Thanksgiving, the CSM article provides one reason:

"'In the 19th and 20th centuries, Thanksgiving was really a tool for Americanization amid the great influx of immigration. It was supposed to bind this diverse population into one union.'"

(Thanks to Becka for forwarding this along this morning.)

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Drugs and lies

This article in the NYT cites research suggesting that drug makers have been increasing their prices exorbitantly over the past year or so to establish a new ceiling so that they can then "lower" their prices to comply with new federal health care regulations. These prices have risen about 9% over the past year, compared to a decrease of 1.3% in the overall Consumer Price Index.

The pharmaceutical industry denies that what they're doing is nefarious, stating that the higher prices are so that they can "maintain the profits necessary to invest in research and development of new drugs." If this is the case, what are we to make of evidence (see here and here) that finds that the pharmaceutical industry spends over twice as much on promotion as they do on research and development?

On a related issue, what about the amount that pharmaceuticals spend on "lifestyle drugs?" I couldn't readily find statistics that would tell us the amount that pharmaceutical companies expend to research, develop, and promote lifestyle drugs compared to the amount they spend on livesaving drugs, but my impression from perusing some sources is that it may be fifty percent or more.

So, they spend twice as much to market their drugs as they do to research and develop them, and most of the drugs they do research, develop, and sell are drugs made for the affluent among us who are having a hard time getting hard. As it turns out, researchers have even found that the marketing that pharmaceutical companies produce is often inaccurate and misleading to the extreme.

In summary, I'm inclined to conclude that the pharmaceutical industry is telling lies and doing a pretty good job with their smoke screen.

(Here's another discussion of the topic from the New York Review of Books in July 2004.)

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Lies and the Lying Sarah Palin who Tells Them

Once Jennifer and I had time to settle in to our morning and drink a requisite amount of coffee, we discussed an article in the Oregonian about Sarah Palin's newly-release memoirs. The article is originally by Calvin Woodward at the Associated Press, and you can read it here.*

Woodward's article does an exceptional job of providing a clear and concise outline of the ways in which Palin's book is saturated with lies.

I fear that we're going to be hearing Palin's name for years to come. Perhaps by the 2012 election she'll be in the running for president. Woodward's article in-and-of-itself should be enough to derail a bid for the presidency, let alone a bid for membership on the local PTA. I fear, however, that clear and unambiguous examples of Palin's inability to be truthful--some (i.e., me) could also say propensity to lie pathologically--just won't register on a certain section of our population.

This "certain section" I define as the following:

1) People who are not devoted to uncovering facts but, instead, prefer to live in a world where the only information they receive supports whatever opinion they already have;

2) People who vote for the Republican party no matter what.

Illustrating these populations graphically wouldn't create a completely overlapping Venn diagram, but what percentage of the population is represented by these criteria, do you think? Oy yoy yoy, it scares the bejeebees out of me to consider these numbers and how close Palin 2012 could be to becoming president. At times I don't have a lot of faith in the current political system that we have. (I'm getting to the word count in this entry where I'm realizing that I need to write another few entries on all of the tangents I've brought up thus far, but, before I do, to return to the basic idea of the review of Palin's book that I cited above . . .)

The likelihood of me reading Palin's book is pretty close to zero, so the critiquers can critique away at me on that--I have a limited amount of time to devote to all of the things I absolutely have to read for my book project and my career and for fun, so I have to draw the line somewhere. So, in lieu, I rely on sources I can trust to summarize things for me. I readily recall Palin being proven to be a liar on the campaign trail, and I distinctly recall the farce that was her abdication of her governorship, and these things color my opinion of her veracity. So, reading a review of her book in which further lies and politically-motivated obfuscation are brought out, I can only shake my head in the manner of "my goodness, here we go again . . ."

If there's anyone out there with some actual facts to contradict Woodward, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, then I'm absolutely open to hearing it.


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* Before correcting this link, this sentence read: "The article is originally by Calvin Woodward at the Associated Press, so I'm linking it here."
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The repercussions of judicial appointments

The Oregonian published a short feature on the works of Justice William O. Douglas in their Nov. 15 issue.

I like hearing about Supreme Court Justices who spend their time working to help make this country a better place for us all, in contradistinction to justices such as Antonin Scalia who present arguments from the bench that are so myopic and logically flawed* that a C-student on the 7th grade debate team could refute them in four or five sentences.** (If Scalia is among the top echelon of Conservative thinkers in this country--based on his presence on the Supreme Court--then Conservatism and the entire country are in dire straits.)

If anyone wants to learn more about Justice Douglas, I recommend the Oregon Encyclopedia entry on him, and Adam Sowards new book, The Environmental Justice: William O. Douglas and American Conservation, Oregon State University Press, 2009.


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* Here's what I mean, from the excerpts of Lithwick's article:

"'The cross doesn't honor non-Christians who fought in the war?' Scalia asks, stunned.

"'A cross is the predominant symbol of Christianity, and it signifies that Jesus is the son of God and died to redeem mankind for our sins,' replies [Peter] Eliasberg, whose father and grandfather are both Jewish war veterans.

"'It's erected as a war memorial!' replies Scalia. 'I assume it is erected in honor of all of the war dead. The cross is the most common symbol of … of … of the resting place of the dead.'

"Eliasberg dares to correct him: 'The cross is the most common symbol of the resting place of Christians. I have been in Jewish cemeteries. There is never a cross on a tombstone of a Jew.'"

"'I don't think you can leap from that to the conclusion that the only war dead the cross honors are the Christian war dead,' thunders Scalia. 'I think that's an outrageous conclusion!'"


** It must have pained Eliasberg to have to point such a thing out to Scalia, but I imagine he was expecting it.

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What use is history, anyway?!

I followed a rabbit hole in response to an EotAW discussion about the philosophy of history that led me to learning a bit about the philosopher Walter Benjamin. Terry Eagleton published an article that provides an overview of his book on Benjamin, from which I draw the following snippets that provide an intriguing answer to the question that all non-historians ask: "What use is history, anyway?!"

The italics are mine:


"What Benjamin meant was that how we act in the present can change the meaning of the past. The past may not literally exist (any more than the future does), but it lives on in its consequences, which are a vital part of it. Benjamin also thought this about works of art. In his view, the meaning of a work of art is something that evolves over time. Great poems and novels are like slow-burning fuses. As they enter into new, unpredictable situations, they begin to release new meanings that the author himself could not have foreseen, any more than Goethe could have foreseen commercial television. For Benjamin, it is as though there are meanings secreted in works of art that only come to light in what one might call its future. Every great drama, sculpture or symphony, like every individual person, has a future that helps to define what it is, but which is beyond its power to determine.

"In one sense, we know more about the French Revolution or the Stalinist reign of terror than those who were involved in them, because we know what they led to. With the privilege of hindsight, we can inscribe these events in a broader narrative, making more sense of them than Robespierre or Trotsky were ever able to do. The price of this superior knowledge is impotence. There is no way we can use this knowledge to undo past catastrophes. We are like men and women frantically waving at history from a long way off, powerless to intervene in its crises and convulsions."



"[Benjamin] was aware that the past holds vital resources for the renewal of the present. Those who wipe out the past are in danger of abolishing the future as well. Nobody was more intent on eradicating the past than the Nazis, who would, like the Stalinists, simply scrub from historical record whatever they found inconvenient. The past was as much clay in their hands as the future. True power is sovereignty over what has already happened, not just the capacity to determine what will happen next.

"In one of his shrewdest sayings, Benjamin remarked that what drives men and women to revolt against injustice is not dreams of liberated grandchildren, but memories of enslaved ancestors. It is by turning our gaze to the horrors of the past, in the hope that we will not thereby be turned to stone, that we are impelled to move forward."


"Among the things that make up history are the things that did not happen, or did not need to happen, which often exert as profound an influence on the course of events as those that did."

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Portland's ca. 2009 sewer shortcomings echo Portland's ca. 1958-1961 sewer shortcomings

This Oregonian article from November 11, 2009, suggests that Portland's expenditures on infrastructure to keep sewage from the Willamette River and Columbia Slough may be insufficient to achieve environmental standards. To summarize the main points:

1) Portland's existing sewage infrastructure is insufficient to achieve environmental standards;

2) A government agency is pushing Portland to expend more money on the city's sewage infrastructure and will hold a hearing on the topic in a couple of weeks;

3) City officials assert that these stipulations are onerous and threaten to push citizen's sewage disposal costs to exorbitant levels;

4) This city official asks of the government agency pushing for these changes whether the agency will give Portland credit for the work they've already done, "or are you just going to pick up a different bat to hit us with?"


Hmmmm . . . let us enter the time machine now, and go back to the late 1950s (as documented in my MA thesis, "Working for the 'Working River': Willamette River Pollution, 1926-1962," Portland State University, 2009) . . .

[Image top right: Francis Storr, 2007, Creative Commons]

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In a comprehensive survey of river conditions in 1957, the Oregon State Sanitary Authority (OSSA) found the river “still polluted to such an extent that it is not safe for certain recreational uses and occasionally in certain sections it is unsuitable for propagation or maintenance of fish life.”[1] The authority’s research led it to two important conclusions: primary municipal waste treatment was no longer sufficient in the Willamette Valley; and the city of Portland still lagged behind other municipalities because it had yet to connect thirty-five raw sewage outfalls from Linnton, Tryon Creek, and other outlying neighborhoods to the city’s primary treatment plant. In reaction, the OSSA initiated another effort to compel compliance with Oregon’s water pollution laws at its January 1958 meeting.[2]

In response to pressure from the OSSA and citizen activists—including David Charlton and other members of the Izaak Walton League—Portland’s City Council prepared a measure for the November 1958 ballot. This measure bundled $5 million in capital improvements for Portland’s sewer system with other projects into a $39,555,000 package. The OSSA opposed this measure because it predicted that voters would be loathe to approve such a large amount. It reminded Portland mayor Terry Schrunk that city officials were under legal obligation to keep sewage from the Willamette River; therefore, if voters did not approve the package, the Sanitary Authority would be authorized to take legal action. As authority members feared, voters did not approve the measure. [3]

The Portland City Council offered a seven-point plan in the aftermath of the failed funding measure and in response to the authority’s ultimatum to develop fiscal and construction proposals by January 15, 1959.[4] Commissioner Bowes and other city officials asserted that they were willing to do what they could but only insofar as funds would allow. To correct system deficiencies, council members agreed to place yet another bond issue on the May 1960 ballot.[5] Notwithstanding city officials’ claim of insufficient funds, in early March 1959 the Sanitary Authority rejected the city’s seven-point proposal and filed suit against the City of Portland for failure to comply with pollution abatement orders in a timely manner.[6]

Newspapers sided with the OSSA and other abatement advocates against Portland officials. The Oregonian put it in clear terms: Because the OSSA was advocating for health and welfare, it was “on the side of the angels,” and Portland city leaders were clearly “aligned with the forces of evil.”[7] There had long been elements of morality in the approach of pollution abatement advocates, particularly in some Izaak Walton League members and in Oregon Journal and Oregonian editorials. However, this particular editorial expressed a level of unambiguous moralizing that reflected a growing ethical argument against water pollution within and beyond Oregon.[8]

Responding to the suit against Portland in early March 1959, Mayor Schrunk accused the authority of deliberately impinging upon the policy of home rule and not giving sufficient credit for the tens of millions of dollars the city had already spent. He also warned that the OSSA’s goal of completely eliminating water pollution within Portland city limits would signal an end to all manufacturing concerns and a corresponding loss of jobs.[9] Portland’s chief deputy city attorney said that city officials looked forward to the opportunity to challenge the validity of the state law empowering the OSSA.[10] On November 24, 1959, the authority refused Portland’s request to dismiss its legal action. Authority members did, however, follow the recommendation of Circuit Judge Frank Lonergan to seek mediation and subsequently postponed the scheduled court hearing.[11]

Debate between the OSSA and Portland city officials continued throughout 1960. Authority members received a letter from Commissioner Bowes on December 14 outlining the steps that Portland was then preparing to make to comply with the Sanitary Authority’s order to upgrade and expand its sewer infrastructure. These steps included treating wastes discharged into the Columbia River after primary treatment by installing a chlorine treatment facility no later than summer 1961. The city would also construct a secondary sewage system for the Tryon Creek area. The OSSA found these and other actions satisfactory and dismissed its lawsuit.[12]

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[1] Oregon State Sanitary Authority Meeting Minutes [hereafter OSSA Minutes] July 14, 1960, vol. 3, p. 381, Oregon State Department of Environmental Quality, Portland, Oreg.

[2] “Water Clean-Up Order Aimed at Cities, Firms,” Oregonian, Jan. 25, 1958, sec. 1, p. 4. See also OSSA Minutes July 14, 1960, vol. 3, p. 381. For number of sewer outfalls, see “City Maps Pollution Campaign,” Oregonian, Jan. 15, 1959, sec. 1, p. 1.

[3] “River Waste Gets Study”; OSSA Minutes vol. 3, Aug. 8, 1958, p. 252. OSSA Minutes Feb. 6, 1959, vol. 3, pp. 263-279.

[4] OSSA Minutes Oct. 17, 1958, vol. 3, pp. 256-260. See also “City Faces State Demand to Explain Pollution,” Oregonian, Sept. 30, 1958, sec. 1, p. 1; “Pollution Ultimatum Given City,” Oregonian, Oct. 18, 1958, sec. 1, pp. 1, 6.

[5] “City Maps Pollution Campaign.”

[6] OSSA Minutes Feb. 6, 1959, vol. 3, pp. 267-269. See also “City Faces Pollution Court Suit,” Oregonian, Feb. 7, 1959, sec. 1, pp. 1, 6; “State Suit Asks City Stop ‘Filth,’” Oregonian, March 3, 1959, sec. 1, p. 1.

[7] “We Want Clean River,” Oregonian, Feb. 20, 1959, p. 30.

[8] For a detailed analysis of the explicit and implicit morality and religiosity in post-war environmentalism, see Thomas R. Dunlap, Faith in Nature: Environmentalism as Religious Quest (Seattle, Wash., University of Washington Press, 2004). For an interpretation of changes in Americans’ conception of the environment in the post-war era based on the experiences of suburban residents, see Adam W. Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and the Rise of American Environmentalism (Cambridge, U.K., Cambridge University Press, 2001).

[9] “Mayor Snaps at Oregon Air, Sanitary Units,” Oregonian, March 4, 1959, sec. 1, p. 1. The city was also being pressed by the State Air Pollution Authority.

[10] “Pollution Law to be Tested by City,” Oregonian, Aug. 7, 1959, sec. 1, p. 27.

[11] “Sanitary Authority Delays River Pollution Hearing,” Oregonian, Nov. 15, 1959, p. 15; see also OSSA Minutes Nov. 24, 1959, vol. 3, pp. 315-316.

[12] OSSA Minutes Dec. 15, 1960, vol. 4, pp. 33-35.

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On humanure and straw men

My friend Seth forwarded the URL for Joseph Jenkins' book The Humanure Handbook to a bunch of us on email over a year ago. He sent it in the midst of my work researching and preparing to write the first draft of my thesis on water pollution abatement efforts along the Willamette River, so my mind was filled with various historical treatments of the science, psychology, economics, politics, technology, and sociology involved in waste treatment systems and approaches in the 19th and 20th centuries.[1]

My reading prompted a great discussion between Seth and I, using the old-fashioned technology of actual speech, but no one among the ten or so recipients of Seth's email and my response bothered to contribute. Below is the text of my initial response to reading The Humanure Handbook:

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This is interesting: whereas I don't doubt the underlying science of composting that Jenkins provides, and though I do agree with his call for us to re-connect the natural cycle of things as it relates to human poo, the author definitely has an axe to grind and he lets his polemics carry himself away from any kind of accurate representation of history.

He's also got a fixation on Asian nations that are supposedly doing better at dealing with night soil without trying to get to the bottom of what might contribute to this difference between Western and Asian cultures as it relates to poo -- besides berating Western culture as being "fecophobic." It's far easier to decry and discount one approach to life over another than it is to try to determine the underlying reasons why such differences have come to be; it's far easier to ascribe difference to some amorphous, ephemeral "psychological" / sociological state-of-mind (and thereby create a straw man) than it is to really look at the complex intersections of science, technology, economic systems, cultural norms, and other such tangible things that actually constitute the reasons for the difference. The author has taken the easy road that avoids complexity and characterizes things in a simple -- yet false -- dichotomy.

Such an approach has the tendency to put me off, and then I question other things about the work.

My primary critique, then, is that the author lets his polemics guide his narrative, and he doesn't have to, because the real story is much more complex & interesting -- AND I support his call for a more responsible way of taking care of human poo.

Here's one element that I do know something about: the historical narrative of the science and technology related to the development of sanitation systems in England in the mid-19th century and beyond (Jenkins, pp. 79-80) is cursory to the point of being inaccurate, which is no surprise considering the polemical nature of this work. I see in his citations that he doesn't make use of ANY of the most recent scholarship on the topic of urban sanitation systems, such as Joel Tarr, The Search for the Ultimate Sink, Martin Melosi, The Sanitary City, and Andrew Hurly, ed., Common Fields: An Environmental History of St. Louis.[2] Another important source shows that France stopped using human waste as farm compost by 1939 because it was NOT economical[3]. This finding is echoed in Melosi's analysis of the topic in the U.S. in general and also in my analysis of options considered by Oregon cities in the 1920s and 1930s. This finding contradicts one of the Jenkins's primary contentions. So, my conclusion here is that when Jenkins finds a fact is inconvenient to his polemical narrative then it's easier for him to ignore it and continue his simplified narrative than it is for him to address it directly.

Here are an array of quotes that I find problematic for the reasons outlined above:

** "Fecophobia is a deeply rooted fear in the American, and perhaps even human, psyche" (p. 226). I find this to be overly simplistic pyscho-social mumbo-jumbo that obscures more than it illuminates.

** "I'm simply suggesting that we begin considering new approaches to the age-old problem of what to do with human excrement" (p. 227). Scholarship on the topic shows that the urban sanitation systems developed beginning in the mid-19th century were, at the time, revolutionary new approaches to the "age-old problem"; this is not to say that there aren't down-sides to the systems developed in the 19th century and beyond, but if Jenkins could stop stroking his own ego long enough to do some research he'd understand better the complexity of the issues involved; he's NOT the first genius to think about this stuff.

** "[humanure] could be collected regularly, emptied, its contents composted, and the compost sold to farmers and gardeners as a financially self-supporting service provided by independent businesses" (p. 233). Certainly it could, from the standpoint of logistics and technology. From the perspective of financial feasibility, however, it's not that easy. As much as I understand critiques of our current economic-focused culture, such considerations are, nonetheless, unavoidable. Until cultural priorities shift, of course.

** A big concern I have about humanure composting along the lines that Jenkins proposes aren't the pathogens -- which are relatively easily neutralized with thermophilic bacteria -- but all the concentrated chemicals from the foods we eat that won't be effected by thermophilic decomposition, i.e., ibuprofen, birth control hormones, caffeine, antibiotics, etc. How do we deal with this issue? Jenkins doesn't seem to have an answer to this question.

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Anyway, those were my thoughts last summer, and they're still valid, from my understanding of the history of this issue.


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[1] I can assure you that this was quite a lot of happy funness to have at the top of one's mind! I highly recommend it!!

[2] Another great source that I've come across since last summer on this topic is: Jamie Benedickson, The Culture of Flushing

[3] Sabine Barles and Laurence Lestel, "The Nitrogen Question: Urbanization, Industrialization, and Water Quality in Paris, 1830-1939," Journal of Urban History 33:5 (July 2007), 794-812.

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Historical themes repeating themselves

I sent an email to KUOW's Steve Scherr this morning in response to his program featuring journalist Mark Danner. Danner was discussing his new book Stripping Bare the Body: Politics, Violence, War.

Danner spoke about the failure of the media to challenge the Bush II Administration's false pretenses for going to war in Iraq. He also critiqued support for the war by journalists such as Christopher Hitchens, who failed to challenge the duplicity of the Bush Administration. The prominent example of this duplicity was that key administration officials called Saddam Hussein a bloodthirsty criminal worthy of being deposed because of his attacks on his own people and his use of gas against Iranians in the 1980s. However, many of these same officials (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz) were members of the Reagan Administration who allowed such things to happen by, at the very least, not confronting the issue directly at the time.

Within this context, Danner stated that the falsehoods Bush II officials used to get us involved in this current war in Iraq show an unprecedented example of untruth used both to influence domestic politics and to achieve imperial goals. However, this isn't unprecedented at all in the history of the U.S.

The Mexican-American War of 1846-1848 and the Spanish American War of 1898-1899 were both pushed by presidents, were both debated hotly, and have both been shown to have been started under false pretenses for political and economic reasons.*

I would conclude that the U.S. has a long history in starting such wars. Sadly.

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* Other examples of U.S. military interventions for reasons of empire can be found here.

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40+ years later, paradise continues to be polluted

As the recent Frontline documentary "Poisoned Waters" shows, water pollution continues to worsen and grow more complex.

Tom McCall's groundbreaking documentary "Pollution in Paradise" first aired 47 years ago, on November 12, 1962.

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Thoughts about "the commons"

I continue to work on the topic of early water pollution abatement efforts along Oregon's Willamette River from the 1920s to the early 1960s. I have found the "waste sink" metaphor[1] to be quite useful in my analysis and draw upon the works of Joel Tarr, Martin Melosi, Arn Keeling, and others. One of my mentors suggested that I might find the "commons" concept useful as well, so I looked in to it before defending my MA thesis in late February 2009. What follows is the fruit of my research thus far.

In 1968, biologist Garrett Hardin published his article “The Tragedy of the Commons” in which he argued in favor of government controls on population growth as a way to find a non-technical solution to the overuse of earth’s finite resources. Unchecked population growth, Hardin argues, leads to the tragedy of an inevitable race among individuals, groups, and nations to exploit resources as quickly as possible, before others exhaust the resources first[2].

Since 1968, scholars have applied the concept of “the commons” to other ecological and political questions beyond the study of population growth. Some of these applications include calls for national and international governmental controls on energy consumption, resource extraction, and pollution to ensure that resources are not exhausted or despoiled. Scholars have also applied the idea of the commons to analyses of corporate governance, real estate law, intellectual property rights, telecommunications, and commerce[3].

Richard Andrews agrees with Hardin’s “tragedy of the commons” metaphor as well as with Hardin’s call for top-down mechanisms to counteract resource depletion through the cumulative impacts of individual choices. Andrews applies Hardin’s concept in an analysis of environmental policy in the U.S. and expands upon Hardin’s brief discussion of pollution issues as part of the commons. Andrews also focuses on economic incentives that spurred sharp increases in oil production, salmon harvest in Alaska, and agricultural production in the first decades of the twentieth century[4].

Historian Joseph Taylor, on the other hand, is critical of the use of “the commons” metaphor in his study of the Pacific Northwest salmon fisheries crisis of the twentieth century. Taylor finds that the story of the salmon industry does follow the basic outline of fishing interests spurred to harvest more fish before their competitors did. However, he asserts that the metaphor is overly simplistic in that it ignores the importance of social barriers and power relations in determining access to the resource. These factors provide more useful insights into the history of environmental management, Taylor concludes[5].

Hardin does apply his metaphor of the commons specifically to pollution. He finds the metaphor of the commons applicable to pollution in a “reverse way” in that it involves the exhaustion of the resources of land and clean air and water through the addition of sewage, chemicals, radioactive materials, and other pollutants, rather than through extraction. He ties this misuse of the commons directly to excessive population growth that overloads the ability of natural systems to assimilate and diffuse wastes[6].

To date, no scholar has systematically applied the concept of "the commons" to environmental history, let alone to an analysis of North American pollution management approaches in the twentieth century.

The primary issues I find with the commons metaphor as applied to twentieth-century water pollution in North America:

1) The concept had relevance to Medieval Europe, but does it have relevance to nineteenth and twentieth century North America? Andrews notes that Hardin’s example of shepherds overusing the commons is not an accurate representation of the process of historical change in Medieval England. Instead, Andrews finds that what really happened was the upper classes took over the commons for their own exploitative purposes during the early shift from a mercantile to a capitalist system. As part of this takeover and within the new capitalist system, these landowners then raced one another to exploit resources first. Therefore, "the commons" were no longer common by the time they became exploited.

2) If applicable at all, the idea of the commons applies only in the most general way to my study. Hardin’s 1968 article is from a conference talk, and seems useful as a thought experiment, but he approaches the topic from a rather broad philosophical perspective. Hardin doesn't seem to have followed this conference presentation with any further articles, chapters, or books, which means he didn't elaborate the idea at all. The metaphor has subsequently been applied by other scholars, but only in a general way. Those scholars who have applied it in specific instances have largely focused on economics, law, and communications, not on environmental management or pollution. Even Andrews, who does apply the metaphor in environmental management, applies it in four cases that show depletion of an extracted resource, rather than despoiling of air, water, or land.

3) After conducting research sufficient to produce a 175-page thesis and two conference presentations, I still have only found sporadic and general reference by the historical participants themselves to a sentiment that could be characterized as falling generally under the umbrella of "the commons," as Hardin presents it. [I am still keeping my eyes peeled, however. Many pollution abatement advocates in the Izaak Walton League and other sports organizations speak in terms of preserving untrammeled areas for sports and recreation, but I haven't found anything that suggests they correlated this with "the commons."]

4) It seems to me that perceiving rivers and streams as shared resources does not necessarily equate to the idea that the people themselves thought of it in terms of "the commons." I fear that applying Hardin's idea of the commons might be anachronistic.

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[1] One straightforward definition of this metaphor is that "there are few places that pollution can go: into the air, water, or land. Historically, the pollution "sink" was merely shifted from one place to another to solve a particular problem, but as Tarr points out the shift often caused other problems. Waste that was once put into the land was dumped into water bodies. Pollutants that were once pumped into the air are now put into the land. Industrial wastes that were once
dumped into waterways are now injected into the land. With each change of the "sink," a new population was affected by pollution." See Melissa G. Wiedenfeld's H-Net review of this book, March 4, 1998.

[2] Garrett Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Science 162: 3859 (Dec. 13, 1968), 1243-1248.

[3] R. S. Deese, “A Metaphor at Midlife: ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’ Turns 40,” Endeavour 32: 4 (Sept. 9, 2008), 152-155; Jacqueline Vaughn Switzer, Green Backlash: The History and Politics of Environmental Opposition in the U.S. (Boulder, Colo., Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc., 1997), esp. 39-41.

[4] Richard N. Andrews, Managing the Environment, Managing Ourselves: A History of American Environmental Policy (2nd ed.) (New Haven, Conn., Yale University Press, 2006), 3, 9, 158-161, 318.

[5] Joseph E. Taylor, Making Salmon: An Environmental History of the Northwest Fisheries Crisis (Seattle, Wash., University of Washington Press, 1999), esp. 10-12.

[6] Garrett Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Science 162: 3859 (Dec. 13, 1968), 1245.

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Quantitative data can be so much fun and illuminating!

This is fascinating.

I got the link above from a comment related to this EotAW post. The interactive graph of recent unemployment numbers that Ari points us to is fun in-and-of itself, for sure, but jazzbumpa provided the link to presidential election results (from exit polling) by demographic from 1972 to 2008. The visual narratives suggested by an analysis of these results spurred the following thoughts:

** To follow jazzbumpa, "If only white people voted, McCain would be in the white house." Yes, this is scary.

** Except for the Regan elections of 1980 and 1984, the majority of Liberals and moderates vote for the Democratic presidential candidate, suggesting that the country tends to be more "liberal" than the religious right and Fox News care to admit.

** Since the 1988 election, Democratic presidential candidates have earned the majority of votes in the Northeast and West, and the Midwest has gone back-&-forth, but the South has gone almost exclusively Republican.

** The most religious among us tend to vote Republican.

** Those who make more money tend to vote Republican. You're thinking to yourself right now, "duh!!!" which is fine, but after this initial reaction, think about it again. What such information is telling us is that the Republican party tends to be the party of the rich. To those reading this post who are among the working class and members of unions, this should be a red-flag to you that the Republican you may be thinking about voting for because she or he is "pro-gun" may, in fact, be using this issue to sell you out to the very class of people who undermine unions and ship your jobs overseas.

Some things to think about.

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The Late Cretaceous led to cotton, cotton led to voting districts

This series of maps is absolutely fascinating to me. Here we have an intriguing interrelationship between large-scale geology, economics, and human geography that influences current social and political realities. Who would have thought that geophysical processes from the Late Cretaceous period (99.6 – 65.5 million years ago) could be shown to have such a direct human connection in contemporary society?

This is another example* of the value of representing complex, interconnected issues in simplified visual formats. Not every complex issue is effectively represented visually, but when it works, it really aids in understanding.

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* See this post for another example

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It's disheartening to realize that these sentiments are out there, pt. 2

And then there's the following racist email below that I've excerpted for your entertainment. (If you want the whole text, just run an Internet search on "I have been wondering about why Whites are racists, and no other race" and you'll find all kinds of wonderful links.):

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"WHITE" Pride"

This is great. I have been wondering about why Whites are racists, and no other race is...

Proud to be White. Michael Richards makes his point...

---

When I got this forward-forward-forward, I replied to all with:

I disagree completely with the substance and tenor of this email because it ignores the full and complex historical context within which people of color in the U.S. have had to differentiate themselves from the dominant white culture in order merely to survive. If slavery, Jim Crow, racism, segregation, ghettoization, real estate restrictions, inadequate education, lynching, unequal employment opportunities, internment, etc., had not been ingrained within or at least facilitated by the white-dominated legal and social structures of this country in the first place, peoples of color would not have had to organize and identify themselves in quite the ways that they have had to. For starters, see:

Slavery
Jim Crow
Segregation
Lynching
Japanese American internment during WWII
Racial restrictive real estate covenants
Trail of Tears
Anti-Chinese laws
Anti-"Hindu" riots
Migrant farmworker struggles for equal rights
Segregated military units
Suffrage movement

Rights, being a social construct, are potentially infinitely inclusive. Therefore, there is no necessary inverse relationship when extending equal rights to groups of citizens formerly denied these rights: the increase of rights for one group does not, by definition, mean the decrease of rights for other groups. Granting women the right to vote with the 19th Amendment in 1920 did not disenfranchise white and non-white men, it merely increased the overall number of voters in this country. Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 did not take away the rights of white children to an education, it granted to peoples of color the right to an education equal to the white majority. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not take employment, housing, and education rights away from white men, it guaranteed equal employment, housing, and education rights to women and peoples of color.

I would argue that more rights are abridged in more egregious ways by the following factors: first, the FCC's media ownership rules that allow monopolization of local and regional public airwaves by for-profit corporations; second, the so-called PATRIOT Act enacted in 2001 by the Bush II administration that suspends fundamental constitutional rights such as habeas corpus and due process; third, undermining the effectiveness of labor unions, initiated by Reagan when he broke the Air Traffic Controllers strike in 1981; fourth, the de facto granting of "personhood" and, therefore, constitutional rights to corporations in the 19th century. I could go on. These are much more subtle, yet much more pervasive, erosional factors on our basic American constitutional rights than ever would be the case in helping ensure that my African American next-door neighbor's children would be able to dream of becoming a lawyer or businessperson or to own their own home in whatever neighborhood they wanted when they grew up, just like my children would be able to dream.

Like George Carlin said, there's no reason to be "proud" for something one doesn't have any power over -- such as the color of one's skin or the location of one's birth. One can be HAPPY to be white, to be American, etc., but PRIDE should be reserved for something one has accomplished, achieved, attained, etc.

I can sort-of, vaguely, understand the type of fear and frustration that would motivate a person to write such an email as below, but I believe strongly that if anyone would take the time to step back, think rationally, educate themselves, and admit to the less-than-rosey history of race relations in this country that the borderline white supremacist tone of the email would be more than apparent.

Warmly,

Whitey Cracker,

James

p.s., Here's an interesting commentary on this same email.

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It's disheartening to realize that these sentiments are out there

I received one of those forward-forward-forward email a few months back; I've excerpted the key points below, for your benefit.

This is one of those scary emails that is patently false. As snopes.com details, this email originated by xenophobes in Canada when the Canadian national anthem was supposedly going to be sung in Hindi, and then some enterprising citizens of the U.S.A. changed a few words so it would be culturally appropriate. Even thought it is false, the reactionary among us forward such things along without consideration. It seems to me that this indicates a deep-seated racism, xenophobia, and anti-intellectualism, in the same vein as many of those stellar citizens at Fox News.

How can we help overcome the rampant fear, lack of empathy, and lack of intellectual curiosity that leads to such sentiment?

---

No apology for sending this! ! !

After hearing they want to sing the National Anthem in Spanish
-- enough is enough. Nowhere did they sing it in . . . any other
language because of immigration. It . . . should be sung word
for word the way it was written. The news broadcasts even gave
the translation -- not even close.

NOT sorry if this offends anyone because this is is MY COUNTRY
-- IF IT IS YOUR COUNTRY SPEAK UP -- please pass this along.

I am not against immigration -- just come through like everyone
else. . . . live by the rules AND LEARN THE LANGUAGE as all other
immigrants have in the past -- and GOD BLESS AMERICA!

. . . If you don't want to forward this for fear of offending
someone -- YOU'RE PART OF THE PROBLEM!

It is Time for America to Speak up

-----

Whenever I get such things I reply to all on the email list with stuff like:

I don't fear offending anyone and I definitely don't want to be
part of the problem, so I thought I'd alert everyone to the following
link:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/immigration/canadaanthem.asp

A couple deep breaths and just a couple minutes' worth of Internet
research can go a long way.

Paz, carino, y comprension,

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Finding a way to make conferences more accessible to grad students and everyone else

Thanks to Making History Podcast: The Blog for this post. I agree with the comments #3 & #4, and want to follow-up with another idea.

Why do conferences need to be held at some kind of a large, corporate hotel? I understand the logistical ease of having one company host the event, provide coffee & continental breakfast, etc. However, within the context of trying to be sustainable,* why can't we try the following?

1) Local organizers set up local people to house attendees from afar, á la exchange students?

2) Local organizers find a range of nearby, local venues to house people and conference events?

3) Local organizers make a point of connecting with local organizations--historical societies, subject-specific organizations, etc.--to help with #1 and #2 above?

4) As a result of #3 above, it seems to me that if more local and non-local people attend a given conference, the more amenities and less expense there will be for everyone involved (which also may help to erode the town-gown barrier).

The above suggestions would, I'm confident, help lower the overall costs of attending a conference, for grad students and anyone else.

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* Which is a goal espoused by the ASEH, UHA, and SACRPH, in my experience.

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We're related in some way

The benefit of being descended from parents with relatively unique last names is that when I see one of those names out there and it's not me or someone I know I'm related to, it generally means I'm related to them in ways I don't know.

Like this, and this.

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On Hannah Arendt

I was impressed by Hannah Arendt's work after reading two of her books as an undergraduate, The Origins of Totalitarianism and Eichmann in Jerusalem. In the former work I learned about the underlying anti-Semitism of late 19th century Europe that formed the foundation of Nazism, how this was related to European imperialism, and how an accurate understanding of totalitarianism transcends the so-called political right and left (i.e., Fascism and Communism). The latter work influenced my thought by helping me understand that average members of society could unwittingly participate in reprehensible acts simply by trying to make a career for themselves--the "banality of evil," as Arendt calls it.

I don't know anything about Hannah Arendt outside of these books, but her other works have been on my "to read" list for years now.

So, considering all this, I'm not in any way qualified to contribute to ongoing debates about her work along this line, from Ron Rosenbaum at Slate. I do, however, have a couple of issues spurred by this Slate.com article:

First, it astounds me that any Jewish person could be capable of internalizing "the values of the anti-Semitic literature," as Rosenbaum observes. Perhaps it was the case that Arendt did so more out of considerations of class, but it still astounds me.

Second, is there not an element of "banality" to "evil?" To respond to this, I imagine one must hold that there is such a thing as "evil" in the first place.[1] Some people consider evil to be inherent in the universe. My perspective is that evil is a social construct. There's also a question of evil being absolute or relative.

If evil is inherent and absolute, then all evil is imbued with the essence of evilness and ,therefore, cannot be banal. is no more or less banal than non-evilness (which I'm assuming must also be as inherent and absolute as non-evil, implied by this construct).[2]

If evil is a social construct and absolute, then one society may gauge the actions of another society as evil, or call the other society's definition of evil "banal" because it doesn't rate very high on the scale of the first society's definition of evil.

If evil is inherent and relative, or if it is a social construct and relative, then we're looking at a spectrum of evil. People can be more or less evil, or engage in acts that could be deemed by society-at-large to exhibit shades of evil. This, in turn, suggests that there would be a variable scale of banality associated with varying shades of evil.[3]

Within the context of my simplified treatment of the topic above, I take issue with Rosenbaum's critique of viewing "evil" in the way Arendt framed it. Arendt asserted that any of us are capable of doing evil just by doing our jobs, and this seems to me a useful lens of interpretation at times.

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[1] There is also much to be said about "evil" being one of those words loaded heavily with all kinds of temporal, moral, and social baggage, a word that many times drives wedges between us more than it helps illuminate anything, because when we use such words without coming to a consensus about what the word means first, we so often end up at odds before we even begin to attempt to communicate.

[2] Strikeout and words after added June 8, 2010. I'm not sure what I originally intended here, but I don't think it came across as clearly as first thought.

[3] This sentence added June 8, 2010.

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Why deviate so obviously from historical truth?

Ok. Joy Division is one of my favorite bands of all time, so I was excited when Control came out in 2007. I like the movie a lot, too, because I'm part of a "small circle."

I have three critiques, however. The first is that the movie cast didn't record an entire sound track -- they sounded so good together when they played in the movie, why not record an entire covers soundtrack?!?! Second, why didn't New Order record a couple more songs, in the same vein and in tribute? It seems like this would have been a fitting thing to do.

Finally--and more in-line with the purpose of this blog--why did director Anton Corbijn record the cast doing the song "Transmission" for Tony Wilson's Granada Reports television show, when, in reality, they performed "Shadowplay" on that pivotal day in September 1978?

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1/2 of my genetic mixture . . .

. . . comes from my mom, of course. According to the dominant cultural practice of the day, when she was born she received the last name of "Elting," the name of her father's clan.

My mom's sister--my Auntie Grace--has recently birthed a blog dedicated to the Elting clan and all of it's many constituent branches, oxbows, and filigree.

Grace is the family genealogist & historian, a position of much value and honor in any clan. I'm indebted to her work preserving and making available our family's history, and for her involvement in the Bevier-Elting Family Association (BEFA). The BEFA is headquartered in New Paltz, New York. The Eltings and Beviers go back to the 17th century Dutch and Huguenot settlement in this and other communities up the Hudson from NYC. A fascinating chunk of this history is preserved at Historic Huguenot Street in New Paltz.




For example, the Bevier-Elting house, above, built in 1698, well before I was born.

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Pretty close to being the most shallow treatment of this complex topic one might find

Jennifer and I have been on a few cleanses, and we have gotten many happy results from them. We've felt centered and cleaned-out and re-set. We also get to share intimate details about our gastrointestinal systems, which is important in building a strong partnership.* Even though we go through ups-and-downs during the 30-day cleansing period, in the end we find it highly valuable in some important physical and spiritual ways. Together, she and I have done two cellular cleanses.**

The other day, I came upon this treatment of one type of cleanse through slate.com. This short video is just about the most shallow treatment of the complex topic of cleanses that one could possibly imagine. Why? Because:

1) She doesn't talk to anyone who's had positive experiences with the cleanse.

2) She talks to a doctor who doesn't seem to know what he's talking about -- if she was really interested in this topic, she'd get a range of opinions on this issue.

3) She sets up the "black snake" as the great mystery of the master cleanse, yet she never makes any attempt to talk to anyone who might know what that phenomenon actually is.

4) Because of her lack of research, she falsely perceives the only motivation of a cleanse to be weight loss.

5) Her desire to cash in on the fad of the Beyoncé-style master cleanse leads her to look at the cleansing in general through the false frame of pop culture, which then leads her to the false conclusion that no cleanse is worth doing.

6) She doesn't set up any kind of quantitative measurement to attempt to gauge the degree to which she is or isn't getting any benefits from the cleanse.

7) She doesn't even have the journalistic curiosity to carry the cleanse out to its end, as she ostensibly set out to do in the beginning.

Essentially, the way I read this video, she was trying to do a Morgan Spurlock 30 Days-style thing, but lacked the intellectual curiosity, journalistic credentials, empathy, and personal discipline to do it. The result is that now there is a shallow, silly video out there in the world that will serve as the primary--and possibly only--perspective on the issue for, what, 1,000, 10,000 people? This result seems to fit into this observation of a lack of intellectual curiosity in our society these days.

-----------
* : )

** I make no claim in support of the capitalist empire that Mr. Ohlgren is building in connection with his cleanse -- I claim here only that we've had great results using the fundamentals of his cleanse techniques. I've only paid about $5 for a used copy of this book.

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Asphalt = Joy & Freedom! Yippee!!

Here is a synopsis of an article I wrote in 2004 for the Journal of the Whatcom County Historical Society on the construction of Interstate 5 through Bellingham, Washington.

It was a fun project.

Not many comments to Jared's blog post, however.

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FYI: Plastic is not digestible

This isn't really happening -- and neither, of course, is global climate change.

After viewing this, don't fret: Of course we can all blithely go back to the way things are in our own individual fantasy-lands . . .

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Inner sadness & conflict

I was born in Arlington, VA, and lived in Alexandria until the ripe old age of six. Some of my earliest memories were watching Redskins football games with my parents, in the glory days of QB Billy Kilmer and coach George Allen. I also remember owning back then a white sweatshirt with the classic Redskins "R" helmet logo, a shirt that might be worth a buck or two these days, even if it did have adolescent drool all over it.

I grew up in coastal Oregon and was the only fan of the Redskins I knew. I clung to my identity as a Redskins fan living on a former Native American reservation surrounded by fans of the 49ers, Steelers, Chargers, Broncos, Raiders.

I didn't think about the fundamentally offensive name of my favorite team until about five years ago. Now I'm a bit sad that the push to get the team to change its name seems to be highly improbable.

My inner conflict is: Will my team still be my team even with a different name?

Washington Post sportswriter Mike Wise got it right in September when he wrote that the "Last Word on 'Redskins' Is Not Ours". I interpret "Ours" to mean "Americans of European descent."

Alas, I'll get over a name change, if it ever were to happen. It's only a game.

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The Oregon Encyclopedia

I recommend checking out the Oregon Encyclopedia, an online resource of history and culture.

I work for the OE so some may consider me biased,* but I also believe in the goals of Encyclopedia, which include representing the full diversity of the state. We hold community meetings to solicit entry ideas and authors, and we have a place on our website for people to make these suggestions. The OE is ongoing, and we publish more entries and images nearly every day.

Some of my favorite sets of photos are to be found with the following entries:

** Japanese Americans in Oregon

** Erickson Air-Crane

** Douglas fir

** Housing Authority of Portland

There's much more on the way!!

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* I don't, however, get any commissions for directing traffic to the site

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Sewage, dead rats, and blood -- oh my!

This is just an amazing film, and I have to tell everyone about it!

William Joy Smith produced this color film in summer 1940 showing the lamentable conditions of the Willamette River. Smith was a member of the Portland Chamber of Commerce, state manager of the National Life Insurance Company, and president of the Oregon Wildlife Federation. His film showed municipal and industrial waste discharges from Springfield north to Portland Harbor, providing graphic evidence of the thick, discoloring discharges and mats of detritus in the river from raw sewage outfalls and pulp and paper, meat processing, canning, textile, and other industries. Smith’s film also echoed tactics used in the 1938 media campaign in support of water quality initiatives: Men were shown immersing hatchery fingerlings in river water where, in most cases, the fingerlings died within forty-five seconds because of extremely low levels of dissolved oxygen.

Smith produced his film as part of efforts by citizen’s groups to convince the City of Portland to commence its proposed sewage disposal project by preparing for post-war sewer construction. Nearly two years after Portland’s sewage funding measure had passed, city officials still had not taken any substantive steps. Smith contributed to the efforts of the state Izaak Walton League of America and others increasingly frustrated with this lack of progress. Members of the Oregon State Sanitary Authority viewed Smith’s film at its December 13, 1940, meeting, as the authority continued to pressure Portland officials.

Praise be to the dedicated archivists and librarians (such as those at Oregon State University) who commit themselves to preserving, cataloging, and making available invaluable resources such as these for all of us to enjoy!

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Willamette River Portland Harbor Superfund Site

I get two common replies when I tell people that I recently completed my M.A. thesis on the topic of water pollution abatement efforts within the Willamette watershed from the 1920s into the early 1960s.

One reply is: "I didn't think people were trying to do anything about the issue until the late 1960s."

Another reply I get is: "Wow, the river is still really filthy."

The short answers to these sentiments are, in turn: "Yes, they did, actually," and "Yes, it is, actually." Depending upon how interested the person looks after one of these replies, I may then start to give them details of my findings. It's a complex story that's hard to tell in a few words, but I try.

This is the first of many posts on the topic of Willamette River pollution, and it's in response to the online comments from an October 25 article in the Oregonian on the topic of the Superfund Site in Portland's harbor.

The reader comments to this article give me both frustration and satisfaction: I'm frustrated that so many people seem to have such a tenuous grip on history, complexity, and historical complexity; I'm satisfied in the realization that my job as a historian is secure, at least in terms of society's need for some of its members to commit themselves to the task of representing history in clear, concise, inclusive, and accurate ways. I consider this a kind of job security.*

A few notable reader comments:

-- "Before and during WWII we were not sensitive at all towards the environment [italics mine]"

Well, no. Many people were sensitive to a whole range of environmental concerns. John Reiger shows that sports fishers were lobbying for clean streams in the mid-nineteenth century, and David Stradling writes about the important role that women played in abating industrial air pollution from the 1870s, to name just two examples. Additionally, my thesis, "Working for the 'Working River': Willamette River Pollution, 1926-1962," details the efforts of a diverse array of clean streams advocates in Oregon well before WWII.


-- "If the environment is reason enough to to shut down commerce in the timber country and farming in the Klamath Basin, then it's damn sure reason enough to shut down commerce to save the rivers."

This is over-simplified. Restrictions on logging and water use are often linked to specific environmental consequences--i.e., endangered species such as the spotted owl and the sucker fish. However, these consequences are also intimately linked to equity considerations among the people and groups involved, as well as to scientific data that are constantly being revised and refined.


-- "$74 million and years beyond the original schedule to figure out that the contamination and cleanup methods are just like other industrial cleanup sites? Nice job reinventing the wheel, guys!"

Without seeing the invoices that detail expenditures for the research conducted and based upon my research into the many water quality studies conducted between 1926 and 1962, my reply to this is that water pollution is a complex issue in and of itself. It's contingent upon pollutant concentrations, dispersal patterns, persistence, etc. Further, having to determine exactly where highly polluted river banks and river beds are, in relation to property lines, carries with it important financial repercussions.


-- ". . . we all know that metro has clean green latte sippers on their bikes and they have nothing to do with pollution, it is all the fault of rural Oregon not the businesses of the valley."

That quote is just spiteful.



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* This is not to be confused with the other kind of job security--the ability to earn a living wage and benefits consistently, but that's for another day.

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The Inagural Post

I resisted this for a while now but after thinking about it for a few months I finally convinced myself last night that I needed to birth a blog.

I am inspired, in part, by Eric Rauchway's answer to the question "Why Blog?" on the fun and lively Edge of the American West. Back in October 2007, Eric wrote, in part, that a blog can help one remember the jewels of one's reading, research, and late-night surfing.

He also suggested that blogging can be a way to join the conversation, and this is a goal I can get behind. We'll find out, I suppose, the extent to which mine is a voice that does more than add to the white noise that's already out there in InternetLand.

I am also inspired by a deep resistance to joining Facebook, in spite of the flurry of auto-generated emails from the Frankenstein Facebook accounts of my friends, and friends' friends, and former-ex-husband's-sister's-second-cousin's-childhood-companion -- that wacky, intrusive little Facebook, isn't it just so cuuuuute?!?!

As far as guidance for the purpose and content of my newborn baby blog, the blurb under the title says it all. I cribbed the fancy Latin phrase from Geoff Wexler, fellow member of the Northwest History Network who designed our logo, featured upper right.

Full speed ahead!

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