Close readings

"The value of a close reading of contemporary rhetorical tics and tricks is that one often finds a kind of hidden agenda embedded in the euphemisms and evasions."

To continue: ". . . once these words calcify into catchphrases, their influence, left unexamined, can make us stop thinking about what we're saying or say things we don't think about until we catch ourselves and catch on that we've become prisoners of our catchphrases."

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Oregon, history, & the Internet

Oregon Public Broadcasting's Think Out Loud program on May 8 2009 featured a discussion of the Oregon Encyclopedia in comparison to Wikipedia -- specifically WikiProject Oregon.

This program raised some fascinating questions and thoughts about the production and dissemination of knowledge, and the role of different publishing methods in this production and dissemination.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts after you've listened to this show and read some of the comments. Here's some of what I think about when comparing & contrasting the Oregon Encyclopedia (OE) and WikiProject Oregon (WO):

** The OE and WO can be -- and in this case are -- complementary publications: The OE is often cited in WO, and many of the topics in WO reflect the range of interests of the general public that, much of the time, should be (and often is) covered in the OE.

** The OE prides itself in maintaining a distinct authorial voice for all of its entries while publishing entries that achieve a fundamental level of readability, relevance, and veracity; the WO relies on a community to compose, edit, and modify the entries, without much regard for a distinct authorial voice.

** OE entries undergo a review process that includes double-blind review from established experts, fact checking, copy editing, proofreading, and two reviews by the Editors-in-Chief, before being published; WO relies upon input from a community of interested parties to add, subtract, and edit individual entries.

** The OE holds community meetings throughout the state to solicit local and regional topic ideas and identify writers; the WO relies predominately on the Internet to generate interest and input.

That's what I got, off the top of my head. I'll leave it up to the commentariat to rank and grade these according to the requisite moral, ideological, and philosophical points of view.

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Bicycle-mounted sensors & the future of democratic, low-cost sustainability

This is really cool. This is an example of how technology, properly diffused, can help us figure out ways to live more sustainably.

I really hope my mechanical engineering friend Seth posts a comment on this thread that points us in the direction of his ongoing work involving the design of buildings and urban areas to be more in accord with environmental processes. His work involves finding ways to measure both the indoor environments of multi-storied buildings and the local environments created as a result of urban infrastructure.

Seth: I encourage you to read this as a gauntlet thrown.

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Yucatán, December 2008

A year ago this month, I was in Mexico.

Here are the photos.

This was my first trip to Mexico, my first exposure to the Mayan culture. In grad school I read Charles C. Mann's 1491, and learned most of what little I know about the Mayan culture. As good as the book is, it was one thing for me to understand from an intellectual perspective the depth and breadth of historic Myan culture, and quite another actually to visit the historic sites -- Chichén Itzá, Uxmal, Ek Balam, etc. -- and gain an understanding of how technologically and socially developed* the culture was and how dense it was packed.

As with the vast majority of preserved historic sites of this kind (Ancient Egyptian, Roman, Greek, Persian, Chinese, Indian, etc.), what the present-day visitor sees is, largely, the monumental, public, and ruling-class architecture. It would be fascinating to see some of these sites restored to some degree with the color, vibrancy, and multi-class life that they once teemed with.

Nevertheless, to stand atop the main pyramind in Ek Balam and look across the dense, flat Yucatán landscape and see other pyramids way off in the distance was absolutely amazing.

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* "developed" is a problematic, value-laden word, but "advanced" even more so . . . what other word works here?

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A Bitter Fog

Has anyone reading this post yet read Carol van Strum's A Bitter Fog: Herbicides and Human Rights? If so, what did you learn from this book? This 1983 book details the effects of herbicides sprayed in the Coast Range of Oregon to facilitate the growth of Douglas Fir industrial tree farms (aka managed forests). I haven't read it yet myself but it's high up on my reading list. I'll post about it when I read it.

The image above is a screen shot of a 1991 article in the Eugene Register-Guard on van Strum and the topic of chemical warfare in Oregon's Coast Range[1].

Here's a link about herbicide and pesticide use in forestry.

Here's a review of van Strum's book from The Quarterly Review of Biology.

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[1] Joe Mosely, "Battling Through a Bitter Fog," Eugene Register-Guard, June 16 1991, pp. A1, A4. See this link.

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The Crusades (as relayed to us by Terry Jones)

Has anyone yet seen this documentary series on The Crusades narrated by Terry Jones?

If so, I'd like to hear what you think about it.

I'm not a historian of The Crusades, and I haven't seen this series in many years, but I was enthralled when I did watch it, as it provided a fascinating overview of the topic interspersed with Terry Jones' creativity, lightheartedness*, and reverence for the specific topic, for history in general, and for the desire to communicate complex topics to as wide an audience as possible.

I need to see this series again.

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* Seems almost blasphemous to say this about The Crusades.

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Time to channel the rage

Back in November, many observers of the health care legislation debate were rightly angered over measures in the proposal that would undermine a woman's right to access to the full range of reproductive choice -- Kate Harding, for example, wrote an article in Salon.com titled "Face it: The Democratic Party is not for women."

E. J. Dionne has written an interesting take on the health care legislation that just recently received support from the magic, filibuster-proof, 60 Democratic Senators:

For progressives, the question on the health care battle going forward is not whether they have a right to be angry but whether they can direct their fury toward constructive ends. The alternative is to pursue a temporarily satisfying and ultimately self-defeating politics of protest.

Of course what has happened on the health care bill is enraging. It's quite clear that substantial majorities in both houses of Congress favored either a public option or a Medicare buy-in.

In a normal democracy, such majorities would work their will, a law would pass, and champagne corks would pop. But everyone must get it through their heads that thanks to the now bizarre habits of the Senate, we are no longer a normal democracy.

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The Internet, this blog, & my delusional state

This audio segment from On the Media suggests that, as a blogger, I'm either part of the elite, self-selective group with advanced degrees that dominates the blogosphere and undermines the notion that the Internet facilitates a more open and democratic political process, or I'm deluding myself when I think that my blogging is a way to join the conversation.

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Portland River Plan

Here is the Portland River Plan.

It's large and ambitious. I'm learning more about it every day. I don't have anything specific to write about this plan yet, but I've started tracking developments of this project and will, undoubtedly, write about it in the weeks and months to come.

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Big Pipe milestone

From the KGW-TV segment on the progress of the Big Pipe project, it appears that things are on schedule!

Quite an amazing machine.

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What cultural dysfunction can tell us about ourselves

We went shopping for holiday gifts the other night at WalTarDepot-R-Us, a store located across the Rhode Island-sized parking lot from TGISizzChiliBell and the T-VeriziQwest stores. We were there late in the evening on Friday to avoid the crowds and traffic of the weekend-before-Christmas rush. My mind wandered while on this trek, as I stared at the rows of I Love Lucy Barbie with chocolate in her mouth, variants of Anakin Skywalker legos, and other cheap plastic toys sold for exorbitant prices. I thought of two interrelated patterns in our culture that to me are clear examples of dysfunction.

The first is that 70% of our economy is based on consumer sales, and 20% of this amount comes during the months of November and December each year (source here).

The second is the cultural pathology of repetitive materialistic fixations on cheap, disposable toys. A quick list of these would include the following crazes: Cabbage Patch dolls, Beanie Babies, Furbies, Elmo, etc. etc. (see here for more).

Jonah Berger, Marketing Professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, wrote a commentary on this fad that was published in the Oregonian this morning. The key point of this article is that "Consumer behavior is interdependent, not independent; our behavior depends on the behavior of those around us. This dynamic affects both what people talk about and what they buy," with the result that "Social influence leads us to buy what other people buy." Berger cites a scientific study of this variant of herd mentality and concludes that "'it' gifts depend less on their innate qualities -- their furry, adorable nature, for example -- and more on human psychology."

So, please evaluate your decisions carefully before you allow yourself or your children to be so readily manipulated by publicity schemes, cross-marketing strategies, and manufactured consent: Is Object X what you really want and need, or are you being manipulated by the ruthless logic of the corporate bottom-line?

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The vast conspiracy to undermine Christmas

Here's another example of people getting spun-up about some vast conspiracy they've imagined in their own heads and then taking this mixed-up nonsense and projecting it into the world the rest of us inhabit. This kind of dynamic is merely laughable until these kinds of people begin to organize to change laws that impact the rest of us.

This argument from these alarmists illustrates a classic pattern: the majority group boasts of its majority status, then characterizes itself as a minority in need of special treatment because it's being besieged, and concludes with a solution that ignores complexity and multiculturalism in its efforts to make the other groups conform to its view -- and, of course, this is all couched in alarmist, end-of-the-world conflict-centered language.

First, Peter Sprigg, "a senior fellow for policy studies with the Family Research Council, which promotes Christian values," asserts that his view of the universe is, of course, the proper majority view: "it's important to defend the right of people to celebrate the holiday . . . December 25 is a federal holiday the government recognizes as Christmas." Then he asserts that this correct, majority view of the universe is under siege: "In some circles, he said, 'Political correctness is preventing people from even sayings Merry Christmas.'"

Then, Sprigg discounts the views of groups with differing viewpoints in an off-hand way by feigning appreciation for these differing views: "'If we want to be concerned about the fact that we are a multicultural nation, then the solution is to allow everyone the freedom to celebrate what they want rather than stifling the celebration of the majority because it might be offensive to the minority.'"

The solution, according to an ally of Sprigg, is to stifle the celebration of other groups by codifying the desires of the repressed majority in law: "Tea Party activist Merry Hyatt is trying to get support for a ballot initiative that would require that public schools give their students an opportunity to hear Christmas songs."

Of course, these advocates then conclude with the obligatory warfare terminology: "I think we are winning a lot of the battles in the war on Christmas, but I don't think the war is done, and I don't think it ever will be."

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On the history of gun ownership in the U.S.

Factcheck.org has produced an analysis debunking the assertion in a recent chain email claiming that "Obama Finds Legal Way Around The 2nd. Amendment and Uses It." You can read the full text of this chain email on numerous sites, including The Right Movement.

This topic opens a large rabbit hole into which we could all dive and spend much time swimming around; this rabbit hole is called "the controversy over gun ownership in the U.S." I only want to dip my toes in this hole right now . . .

There is, of course, widespread contemporary socio-political controversy on the topic of gun ownership. This controversy is characterized by the chain email cited above, and is also graphically represented by clips of attendees at presidential events over summer 2009 who came equipped with sidearms (laughable, silly actions that are also quite frightening).

Historians have weighed-in on the issue. Dr. Michael A. Bellesiles wrote a book back in 2000 that purported to undermine present-day arguments about the inviolate Second Amendment by showing that gun ownership in the U.S. during the late Colonial and early Republic period was much less important than gun advocates claim. However, once other scholars had the opportunity to investigate Bellesiles' claims, they found that his research contained an extraordinary amount of factual and interpretive errors, seemingly constructed to put forward a particular ideological agenda.(Here's an article on the History News Network about this case, and here's a Wikipedia synopsis.)

In 2003, H. Richard Uviller and William G. Merkel published a book on the topic, The Militia and the Right to Bear Arms, Or, How the Second Amendment Fell Silent. I haven't read this book yet but I have read some reviews. Daniel Smith's review of this book finds the following:

Smith calls this book "the definitive description of the militia in American history, culture and political theory. . . This book is top-notch constitutional history and masterful in its melding of history and legal argument. The authors go well beyond discussion of the founding documents into the republican roots of the citizen militia and the meaning of the right to 'keep and bear arms' in seventeenth century England. They meticulously avoid superimposing contemporary understandings of these terms in their analysis."

Smith identifies the book's thesis as composed of two parts. First, "although the 2nd Amendment did create a personal right to 'keep and bear arms,' it did so only insofar as private arms were needed to maintain a citizen militia. The basis for the right is the collective, republican concept of the citizen militia, and the primary objective of enshrining the militia in the Bill of Rights was to guard against the dangers of a standing professional army. Moreover, the phrase 'keep and bear arms' had distinctly military connotations leading up to and including the founding era, and there is remarkably little evidence of an individualist right to possess guns, even in the anti-federalist literature. However, the authors do not entirely eschew the individualist interpretation of the Amendment; the 'right of the people' was, they believe, intended to vest the ownership and possession of arms in the potential militia members—(white male) citizens.

Second, Smith writes that "because the citizen militia withered away as an institution long ago and has no contemporary successor, the conditions for the right to keep and bear arms, even as an individualist right, no longer exists. The local militia was already giving way to the . . . professional army at the time of the Revolution. . . . Today, the National Guard is equipped by the government and in virtually all respects serves as an adjunct to the professional army. Nor are there any other plausible substitutes for the extinct citizen militia that would serve to animate the 2nd Amendment. . . . Private citizen militias, according to the authors, are a threat to the founding era collectivist notion of the militia rather than a legacy of that tradition. Therefore, as a matter of constitutional law, the 2nd Amendment is irrelevant today. To the individualists, who read the Amendment as a personal right to possess firearms, rather than merely a collective right to organize into militias, the authors’ message is not quite the typical 'you are wrong,' but rather 'you were right, sort of, a long time ago, but today you’re wrong.'"

In an email that went around back in April regarding the Blair Holt Firearm Licensing & Record of Sales Act of 2009, I replied:

"I don't oppose all aspects of this bill, actually. I think it would be a positive thing if this country were to have an open conversation on these kinds of issues related to firearms, rather than continuing to have polarized reactions."

"I don't see it as a _flagrant_ violation of the constitution, either. When considered in the context of the times, the second amendment is not as clear-cut as some firearms advocates like to portray. Also, I don't buy the "strict constructionist" view of the Constitution that some firearms advocates like to use, because under such interpretations women don't get to vote at all, African Americans are only considered 3/5 of a person for voting purposes, voters don't get to vote for Senators, etc. etc."

"BUT, I don't think anything like this will ever pass. I think there are two subjects that a certain section of the population will always push and another segment always oppose, and these are sweeping gun control and restricting a woman's freedom to choose an abortion. Such measures will continue to serve to rile these segments of the population, but they'll never pass, because to do so would cause a shitfirestorm of activism from the other side that would significantly reconfigure the political balance in this country."

What are your thoughts & interpretations on this issue?

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Here's a review of Robert Churchill's article "Gun Ownership in Early America" from the William and Mary Quarterly (2003), written by William G. Merkel.

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"Toxic Waters" series in the NYT

Charles Duhigg has authored a series of articles for the NYT on the persistent problem of water pollution nationally: "Toxic Waters". He was on NPR's Fresh Air today.

Here's Duhigg's article on combined sewer overflows. (The comments to this article are generally much more intelligent and productive than anything I've yet seen in the Oregonian on this topic, and Duhigg responds to some of them.)

Fascinating stuff!

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Willamette River hydrologic & geographic changes over time

The image above came from p. 4 of Portland's Willamette River Atlas, and it shows a fascinating comparison of the lower Willamette River in 1888 (left) and 2001. This map shows the significant hydrologic and topographic changes to the river over the past 150 years.

Allow your eyes to go back-&-forth between these two images and you'll see how we have filled-in lakes, covered-over streams, and channelized the main stem of the river. Check out all of the former lakes at the northern limits of Portland and on the north Portland peninsula -- nowadays, most of these are gone!

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Mag-ma

There is a fascinating graphic to accompany the Oregonian article "Scientists say Yellowstone lava plume may have triggered Oregon basalt flows."

What I find fascinating about it is the three-dimensional representation of a vast region of molten rock (also known as mag-ma). It's incredible what one can see with the right kind of eyes!

What could they possibly think of next?

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Bad History

Matthew Reisz speaks to the issue of "lessons" to be learned from history in his piece titled "Past Mistakes" from the Times Higher Education. He quotes Miri Rubin, professor of medieval and early modern history at Queen Mary, University of London:

"Studying other times and places is not a search for 'rules' or 'formulae of historical dynamics' - although patterns can be discerned - but equips us with cases of human action that offer alternatives or critiques of the present ways of dealing with fundamentally similar challenges and aspirations: for safety, for support, for friendship, for order, for understanding beginnings and ends."

Reisz then quotes lecturer Ruth Harris from the University of Oxford:

"there is no direct application of historical research to the tasks of policymakers. Occasionally, a history of banking or recent foreign policy might provide easy, transparent lessons. But the 'big' lessons are harder to extract."

After featuring the perspectives of a few other historians on this question, Reisz writes:

"So history may (or may not) be useful in all these different and complex ways. But now we turn to an area where historians can certainly make a difference - exposing some of the daft arguments that government ministers and their critics constantly come up with." Further: "It is part of the historian's job to point out that things weren't quite as simple as is usually claimed."

Reisz's article is the first in a newly-revived series, Bad History.

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"When I can touch future Digital?"

[** This is x-posted to the NHN blog]

Whither* the printed page?

I got the title of this post from an interesting review of Robert Darnton's latest book, The Case for Books: Past, Present, and Future, which Andreas Hess reviewed in the Times Higher Education.

The conclusion of Hess' review is that

"We should not panic. There may even be some flip side to the tossed coin: digital technology and modern information systems can be used to support books and texts, tell us about their location and content, and thereby make it easier to reach the physical shelves in the shortest time possible - thus leaving more time for reading."

What dost thou thinketh?

p.s. read the comment thread for the source of this post's title.

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* I use this word to come across as appropriately academic; I hope the effort succeeds.

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On Historical Threads' labels

I'm still working on figuring out my label system with this blog. Any recommendations are welcome.

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Palin as "P" and/or "p" populist? How about "hypocritical theocratic authoritarian libertarian?"

Ralph Brauer at Progressive Historians has written a thought-provoking analysis of major media outlets characterizing Sarah Palin as a "Populist." Brauer provides a counter-argument to this characterization based upon historical evidence.

Brauer's analysis is noteworthy for a few reasons. First, it provides another clear example of the ways in which the mass media -- in this case the New York Times and the New Yorker -- misrepresent history. This case is important because many national, regional, and local media outlets take interpretive cues from the NYT -- so, if the NYT publishes inaccuracies, they're much more likely to be perpetuated throughout the nation than if, say, Portland's Mid-County Memo published such a story.

Second, Brauer's article also shows another example of how shallow mass media news reporting can be. This shallowness is likely due to the deadline-driven nature of the news reporting cycle, which doesn't allow reporters sufficient time to go in to any depth on most things. This, in turn, is due both to the fundamental nature of news reporting, which has a very short-lived expiration date, and the fact that media companies are profit-driven, and so scoop-driven, which then drives reporters to publish something -- anything! -- on a given topic before the competition.

Third, Brauer's article shows that many, many people operate by simplifying, categorizing, and mythologizing current events in the light of a simplified, labeled, and mythologized history that carries with it a clear-cut narrative structure that aides in interpretation by condensing complex ideas into easy, bite-sized bits of caricature. This is lamentable to we historians, but it seems like such a wide-spread and profound propensity among us (Americans? Westerners? Homo Sapiens?) that I'll be writing about this much more in the coming weeks and months.

Specific sections of Brauer's article that are apropos:

"If Sarah Palin is not a Populist, is she the heir of William Jennings Bryan as both the Times and the New Yorker imply? In word, no. Actually, this comparison is even more ridiculous and dangerous than the Populist one. In their defense the two mass media giants could fall back on the muddled and watered-down contemporary understanding of populism, but in the case of comparing Palin to Bryan, the historical record allows no such leeway."

--

". . . one of the implied factors in the media comparison of Palin and Bryan has to do with the perception both are/were not exactly the brightest people to run for higher office . . .

"To imply Bryan lacked intelligence is to show a total lack of knowledge of his career. To understand this, forget that he delivered all his speeches from memory or extemporaneously or that he was one of the most feared debaters of his era (contrary to the image in [Stanley Kramer's melodramatic] Inherit the Wind), and go back to Bryan's first Congressional speech, which ranks as one of the most auspicious debuts in Congressional history.

It is a far cry from Sarah Palin's stumbling press interviews, her scripted speeches, and her lack of knowledge of domestic and world affairs."

--

"The speech also highlights yet another important contrast between Bryan and Palin--their values and vision. If anyone out there can tell me what Palin's vision is for America please feel free to comment--and please when you do so cite something she has said, not a paragraph from a ghost-written book."

--

"If Palin's supporters seem to go tongue-tied when asked to name specific policies she advocates, few people at the turn of the nineteenth century did not know what William Jennings Bryan supported. A major reason for this is Bryan's tireless advocacy for those issues."

--

Follow the comment thread on Brauer's piece for some illuminating insights into the issues.

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Why is Christmas on December 25th?

Andrew McGowan discusses two possible reasons why the vast majority of Christians celebrate Christ's birth on Dec. 25. His conclusion:

"In the end we are left with a question: How did December 25 become Christmas? We cannot be entirely sure. Elements of the festival that developed from the fourth century until modern times may well derive from pagan traditions. Yet the actual date might really derive more from Judaism—from Jesus’ death at Passover, and from the rabbinic notion that great things might be expected, again and again, at the same time of the year—than from paganism. Then again, in this notion of cycles and the return of God’s redemption, we may perhaps also be touching upon something that the pagan Romans who celebrated Sol Invictus, and many other peoples since, would have understood and claimed for their own too."

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Vietnam veterans & the sputum myth

Jack Shafer wrote an interesting article in Slate.com about the topic of Vietnam War veterans being spat upon. This article provides an overview of Jerry Lembcke's 1998 book on the topic, in which Lembcke "doesn't prove that nobody ever expectorated on a serviceman--you can't prove a negative, after all--he reduces the claim to an urban myth."

Here are some relevant findings:

". . . the myth of the spitting protester predates the Rambo movies, but how many vets--many of whom didn't get the respect they thought they deserved after serving their country--retrofitted this memory after seeing the movie?"

"Lembcke uncovered a whole lot of spitting from the war years, but the published accounts always put the antiwar protester on the receiving side of a blast from a pro-Vietnam counterprotester."

Why does this false story get perpetuated, then? According to Shafer,

"The myth persists because: 1) Those who didn't go to Vietnam--that being most of us--don't dare contradict the "experience" of those who did; 2) the story helps maintain the perfect sense of shame many of us feel about the way we ignored our Vietvets; 3) the press keeps the story in play by uncritically repeating it, as the Times and U.S. News did; and 4) because any fool with 33 cents and the gumption to repeat the myth in his letter to the editor can keep it in circulation."

On The Media aired a segment on this topic as well, and interviewed Lembcke.

Here is a review of Lembcke's book on the website of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. The reviewer suggests another reason why the myth was perpetuated:

"Perhaps most important in producing the myth were political machinations. The image of the Vietnam vet in the early 1970s was strongly anti-war. There is no place in the American memory for the factually accurate image of vets throwing their medals back at Congress. This image had to be changed if the United States ever wanted to go to war again."

On the opposite side of these conclusions, here's a lengthy rebuttal of Lembcke's claims, based, in part, on Bob Greene's book Homecoming. I'm not sure what to make of this.

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Columbia Slough trek

On November 22, Seth and I took a bike trek on a cold day with the goal of following Columbia Slough as much as possible. We started at NE 33rd Ave. and went west to Kelly Point Park, thence south through St. Johns and back to my place in NE Portland.

There were may places where we couldn't follow the slough very closely, as you can see if you look this route up. The City of Portland does plan to purchase property to create an unbroken south-bank trail, but it doesn't exist yet.

I wanted to take this trip to get a feel for the area, since I cover this area in my thesis and plan to cover it in my book. I'll be writing about the topic of pollution in the slough; in the meanwhile, below are some images from the trek:

Above is an image from about where NE 14th Place dead-ends, looking west. Seth and I had to carry our bikes to the top of this dike. We then followed this path west as far as we could (to a few blocks east of MLK).

Below are two images of a concrete fabrication facility on the south bank of the slough E. of MLK, between the slough and Columbia Blvd.:


Below is an image of the slough looking east from the MLK Blvd./Hwy 99E bridge:


Below is an image looking west from the bike trail in Delta Park West:

Below is an image of geese in Heron Lakes Golf Course (this is where Vanport used to be, and now there doesn't appear to be any trace of it left at all):


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Healing Portland Harbor after the clean-up

I went to a Portland Harbor Community Advisory Group meeting last night at which was discussed the Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) process. Tonight there will be a forum for public commentary on the NRDA that was presented last night; I won't be able to attend this meeting due to prior commitments.

First, an overview of what I learned at this meeting; second, some thoughts spurred by what I learned.

The NRDA process is led by the Portland Harbor Natural Resource Trustee Council. Trustee Council members include representatives of five regional tribes, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Department of the Interior (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS)), and Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW).

The NRDA process will restore habitat and compensate the public for the loss of recreation, cultural resources, and other within the Willamette River Superfund site.

The NRDA process is not linked directly to the City of Portland's North Reach plan, but individual members of both groups are aware of one another's efforts. The NRDA process is being carried out at the same time as the EPA's Portland Harbor Superfund cleanup efforts, which may result in dredging, earth-moving, and/or capping of various areas along the riverbank. The NRDA will then provide habitat restoration to these cleaned-up areas.

The NRDA is working with a group of Potentially Responsible Parties (PRPs) who may be liable for varying amounts of funding to support these restoration/compensation efforts. However, the PRPs will only be responsible for compensating for loss of habitat beginning in 1980, when the NRDA law was passed.

One of the key difficulties of the NRDA process is delineating between NRDA-compensable damages caused by hazardous substances, and damages caused by channel dredging, development, and related changes.

Here are some thoughts . . .

** This process brings up an interesting question about the term "restoration" itself. The NRDA Trustee Council is well aware of the impossibility of attaining some kind of idealized, pre-contact restoration goal. The NRDA process they're contributing to seeks to restore biota impacted by hazardous wastes and does not include removal of existing structures (buildings, retaining walls, roads, pilings, etc.). Therefore, what they're trying to do is enhance the river environment so that it can better support salmon and other native plants and animals within the context of 150+ years of changes within Portland Harbor; one member of the Citizens Advisory Group said that he preferred the term "enhancement" to "restoration" because of this important point. This specific definition of what "restoration" means is in contrast to hands-in-the-air, too-complex-to-address perspectives that we so often hear from ideologically-driven people who do not take the time to understand the issue.

** The NRDA, Superfund, and North Reach projects are examples of a key argument of scholars studying environmental history: Here we have a golden example of how environmental values change over time, and how important it is to understand the historical contingencies that lead to these changes.

The general pattern of change in environmental values in the U.S. is that at some time in the mid-twentieth century, society shifted from valuing the environment solely from an extractive, producerist point of view to finding value in the environment itself -- this would be a consumerist point of view, valuing untrammeled nature itself as worthy of sustaining. Scholars find roots of this change in values as early as the mid-nineteenth century in the writings of Thoreau, Muir, etc. This shift became much more of a mainstream perspective at least by the 1920s, and in full-force by the 1960s. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, both of these value systems are in view, and continue to come in to conflict, but there is a fundamental difference in the ways in which Americans ca. 2009 approach the environment compared to Americans ca. 1939 -- one need look no further than the array of environmental laws passed since the 1940s to see evidence of this.

One conclusion that the general narrative above leads us to is that with this shift in values has come a change in legislation and regulation, and, with this, a shift in prioritizing financial resources. A producerist view of the environment finds the most financial value in extracting the highest amount of money from environmental resources with disregard for any detrimental externalities. The consumerist point of view, in contrast, finds value in limiting the financial returns of extraction (and processing, transport, etc.) to invest financial resources into preservation, conservation, restoration.

Therefore, viewed within the simplistic calculus that so many conservatives & libertarians would prefer we all view such things, what has happened is that society as a whole -- propelled by at least a small majority of its members -- has modified its relationship to money, which means that the all-powerful "market" has spoken from on high and finds value in channeling capital into other-than-capitalist-bottom-line areas of investment. No longer does the American system of capitalism favor a laissez-faire approach to the environment. This seems a profound historical shift to me that has enormous repercussions and should not go without realizing. I grant that there are plenty of qualifications, caveats, questions, etc., but the underlying pattern remains.

** Along the lines traced above, in the case of the Willamette River cleanup, what we have now is a case of the money invested during previous generations in extracting resources and building processing and transport systems to deliver and market these resources can be seen as a negative-investment that we have now taken upon ourselves to repay. Perhaps one could spin this a different way and find that last week's extraction and processing led to yesterday's pollution, which today we're trying to un-do by paying people tomorrow and in days to come to design and implement remediation solutions: finding positive opportunities even in seemingly negative situations! My question is, as hard as this might be to tabulate: I wonder if the original return-on-investment from these environmentally-destructive practices of yore are worth it, within the context of the investments that now must be paid to overcome these impacts? If we had been able to put all the profits from GASCO into the bank during its years of operation, would there be enough money to pay for necessary remediation in the years to come?

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Images of Portland Harbor's Superfund site

Region 10 of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has an online album of images of Portland Harbor's Superfund site, from where I got the images in this post (except the two Google Maps images).

In this post I've inserted some images to provide a clear idea of the location of the site. The EPA's site has additional images of petroleum sheen on the water and core strata showing petroleum tar deposits. Pretty nasty stuff.

The image above is a view of the tar body along the beach, looking generally North.

The three map images below are a USGS map of the Superfund site -- the former GASCO petroleum processing facility -- compared to ca. 2006 images from Google Maps:





The two images below are aerial photos taken in the 1950s some time of the GASCO facility in operation:


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Civic Ecology & EcoDistricts: The Future?

Below are some links to a new concept for urban development here in Portland: EcoDistricts. I'm posting about this here for the first time and will post more in the future as I learn more about it.

EcoDISTRICTS Framework Concept for Metro Portland defines EcoDistricts thusly:

"EcoDISTRICTS are 'triple bottom line' neighborhoods with the lowest possible environmental impact and highest long‐term economic and community returns. EcoDISTRICTS focuses on four core areas 1) carbon neutral buildings, 2) zero carbon transportation and 3) green infrastructure and 4) compact, complete neighborhoods (also known as '20 minute neighborhoods'). It starts with the fundamental tenant that 'what can be measured can be managed' thus introducing social, environmental and economic performance metrics to neighborhood development. The objective – to test and eventually codify the next generation of best practices and commercialization opportunities in green development and infrastructure that can be scaled to create neighborhoods with the lowest environmental impact and highest economic and social resiliency in the United States.

"The EcoDISTRICTS initiative focuses on developing strategies and tools within three core areas; Best Practices Development and Policies, Governance & Financing, and Civic Ecology (social networks and behavior change)."

The Portland State University Civic Engagement Workshop (Nov. 19, 2009) created a presentation titled "Civic Ecology: Living Community Systems for Sustainability. This document defines civic ecology as a "learning ecology" because "it adapts in response to culture, values and consciousness." The five principles of civic ecology are: 1) systems approach; 2) focus on place; 3) requires a new social contract; 4) matches needs and capacities; 5) is dynamic.

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What came first?

You may have seen the email pasted below, as it was another of those forward-forward-forward emails. A dear friend -- and fellow USN veteran -- sent me this email some time ago. In this post I want to analyze the email's content in the interest of bringing some of the complexity back to a subject that is often over-simplified.

The purpose of the email is to recognize the men and women of the armed services who have sacrificed their time, and sometimes their health or lives, in the name of the United States of America. In its attempt to achieve this end, however, the email does a disservice to truth by over-simplifying the issues. By "truth" I mean the attempt to represent as accurately as possible the full range of the complex social, cultural, and political threads of our collective history.

The email contains six over-simplified statements that set up false dilemmas. These six examples correlate to constitutional rights provided for in the Bill of Rights [I've identified the particular Amendments in brackets in the email text below]. These rights were not given to us by the military. Some of these rights were negotiated at the time that the Constitution was being drafted in 1787, and these are the original ten Bill of Rights. Other rights had to be won through conflict and struggle of one kind or another: Civil War in the case of the 13th, 14th, & 15th Amendments, ongoing social movements and political pressure in the case of all Amendments.

It is the case the military veterans played an important role in securing fundamental American rights. For example, the Army, Navy, and Marines helped win the Revolutionary War that provided the security in which politicians could gather to draft and debate the Constitution. However, military veterans were not present in large numbers during the Constitution-drafting process itself -- this delegation was also composed of politicians, doctors, brewers, newspapermen, farmers, slave owners, merchants, etc. etc.

The lesson here is that a military could have just as easily provided security for a group of men to come together to establish a dictatorship -- so, military contributions to this process are not in-and-of-themselves a requisite for securing freedoms of any kind. Thus, to say, for example, that "It is the VETERAN, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech," is to lose critical aspects of the story through over-simplification.

Another complication to the simplified storyline presented in the email below is that the same military that helped win the Revolutionary War and helped provide a secure space within which the Constitution could be drafted also provided a secure place within which the institution of slavery could continue. For the rest of the 18th and over half of the 19th century, dedicated groups of citizens organized themselves to abolish slavery. The majority of citizens of the United States during these long decades helped perpetuate slavery, however, either actively or passively, including the institutions of the U.S. military.

Once Abraham Lincoln finally abolished slavery and the Union won the Civil War, it was another century of struggle and strife to overcome the most egregious examples of quasi-slavery in this country, including Jim Crow, segregation, lynching, unequal education, etc., etc. To be sure, at times the U.S. military played an important role in helping propel this agenda, but I would argue that the contributions of Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, Marcus Garvey, A. Philip Randolph, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, Medgar Evars, and countless other Civil Rights activists were in most ways more critical in overcoming these inequalities. Therefore, once again, to assert that "It is the VETERAN, not the politician, Who has given us the right to vote," is a gross over-simplification of the historical record.

Whenever I come upon an example of over-simplification such as is represented in the email below, my antennae perk up and I ask myself, "what interests are being served by this incomplete portrayal?"

If members of the U.S. military are sworn to protect the constitution, and the constitution has been drafted (and modified occasionally) to protect the rights of citizens in a democracy, and a democracy ostensibly thrives only when citizens are as informed and educated as possible about whatever it is they're voting on, then it stands to reason that members of the U.S. military are sworn to help ensure that citizens have access to accurate and complete information. Therefore, to misrepresent the complexities of history, politics, and society to construct simplified myths about a military that is supposedly dedicated to serving our complex nation is a disservice to our veterans.

If the military is mythologized in this way, we run the risk of perceiving it as fully outside of the rest of society. If the military is perceived as being outside of society, then it may be given undue deference and preferential treatment that further alienates the military from the society that creates and maintains it. Once this happens, a critical balance of power has shifted, with the possibility that the military then becomes its own center of power, and is no longer answerable to society. What we'd have in this case is a Frankenstein monster, a banana republic situation in which the military has a life of its own and begins to exert its power in non-democratic ways. This is reminiscent of the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned us of.

I'm not saying that X without fail will lead to Y which then necessarily brings about Z. I'm just saying that we need to be conscious about and careful of the ways in which we choose to simplify & mythologize our national narratives, because it's all fun and games until someone gets an eye out.


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Sent: Saturday, May 10, 2008 6:57 AM
Subject: Fw: ONE OF THE BEST EMAILS EVER

MEMORIAL DAY IS COMING-HERE IS WHAT IT IS ALL ABOUT.

Keep it moving, please, even if you've seen it before.

It is the VETERAN, not the preacher, who has given us freedom of religion. [1st Amendment]

It is the VETERAN, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of the press. [1st Amendment]

It is the VETERAN, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech. [1st Amendment]

It is the VETERAN, not the campus organizer, who has given us freedom to assemble. [1st Amendment]

It is the VETERAN, not the lawyer, who has given us the right to a fair trial. [5th, 6th, & 7th Amendments]

It is the VETERAN, not the politician, Who has given us the right to vote. [Not explicitly enumerated in Constitution because power given to the states, but the right to vote is extended by the 14th, 15th, 19th, and 26th Amendments]

It is the VETERAN who salutes the Flag,

It is the Veteran who serves under the Flag,

ETERNAL REST GRANT THEM O LORD, AND LET PERPETUAL LIGHT SHINE UPON THEM.

I'd be EXTREMELY proud if this email reached as many as possible. We can be very proud of our young men and women in the service no matter where they serve.

... God Bless them All ..

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An example of humanity's propensity (nay, need) to discern meaning out of patterns of any kind

Remember hearing about the direct correlation between Washington Redskins wins/losses in their game immediately preceding a presidential election, and the win/loss of the incumbent party? Fascinating!

Isn't it great how readily we discern meaning and portent from patterns we observe? Sometimes this meaning-making process can be fruitful, sometimes it can lead to delusion, and sometimes it can just be fun & entertaining. In any case, there is meaning to be found when we examine such cases of meaning-making -- unless, of course, I'm just creating my own meaning in all of this, which may, itself, provide us some meaning about the ways in which I create my own meaning, which may mean something.*

Here are some thought-provoking words from snopes.com that I couldn't have written more clearly and concisely:

"Our desire to understand and assert some control over the world around us is often manifested by our attempts to find predictive signs that enable us to prognosticate events -- even when there is no seeming connection between predictor and event. Sometimes one natural phenomenon supposedly forecasts another, as in the belief that a groundhog's seeing his shadow on February 2 portends another six weeks of winter. In other instances the linkage is between affairs of mankind, as in the superstition that the winners of football's Super Bowl augurs that year's stock market performance (or vice-versa)."

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* Or, maybe not.

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Half-cocked, perhaps?

An interesting thing happened to me on my way to posting the information below with the title "What can Palin's regurgitation of mythology tell us about contemporary conservatism?": I think I may have gotten all worked-up for nothing! Or, more accurately, I may have gotten all worked up about a topic that deserves discussing, but for the wrong reason.

There's a first time for everything, I suppose.*

What has happened is that I read a post on EotAW about yet another example of Sarah Palin playing loose with the facts in her new book. I'm definitely left-of-center (maybe even a bit left of that, at times), but I do hold as sacrosanct the Golden Rule, as well as the Golden Rule of History -- which is, of course, to let the evidence speak for itself -- so when I hear examples of people trying to manipulate other people through their words and actions, I get all bristly. The EotAW post seemed to me another example of Palin's lies.

However, if you read the comment thread, you'll find that the issue is still in question, but it does seem that the original post may very well be incorrect. I look forward to if and when this question is resolved, and I'll post again here as soon as I get some kind of confirmation, one way or the other.

(I do still find that Jay C's comment I quote below holds a lot of truth, but that's for another post.)

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* Wink-wink!

========

Here's a fascinating bit of information on Alaskan history that shows another example of how deeply incorrect Sarah Palin can be. I had heard that Alaska was called "Seward's Folly," but I didn't know that this characterization had been de-bunked, until I read the linked post -- then again, I've never been the governor of Alaska, so I need not have known.

As davenoon writes:

"since Sarah Palin’s entire schtick requires an audience that believes the myth — that believes, for example, that we can drill the shit out of the state without wrecking its ecology — I’m not surprised that she believes it as well. It’s certainly not the only bit of nonsense she’s peddling, but it’s a revealing bit at that."

Jay C responds in a comment:

"not only is clinging to the “Seward’s Folly” myth an easy way for Alaskans (of any political persuasion) to retroactively 'justify' their State, and/or residence there; but it is also an easy way for Gov. Palin to evoke one of the fundamental appeals of the modern conservative Movement: i.e., a sense of victimization. Or more precisely, a sense of being unjustifiably victimized for holding ideas that they feel should be mainstream norms (but are actually out on the fringes)."

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Another empty pint for the holidays

This weekend is the 14th annual Holiday Ale Festival. This weekend also marks the 4th consecutive year that I've neglected to go to the festival because I just didn't plan ahead and have many other things to do. However, winter beers are among my favorites (so malty and hoppy and warming!), so I'll have to try to make this a priority for next year. Perhaps making this blog note to myself will help me remember to do so?

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Historical contingency: Health care in Canada and the U.S.A.

An article in Sunday's Oregonian comparing the Canadian and U.S. health care systems asserts "Lessons for Us: More Equity and Efficiency." Among these lessons are that

"most Canadians have a basic belief in equality and, more importantly, their government and social support systems reflect that belief. On the other hand, Americans are more concerned about individual rights. In the United States, government and social support systems are often seen as necessary evils."

These identifiable national beliefs about health care in the U.S. and Canada were not handed-down from an omnipotent being, and are not immutable. They are the result of particular historical events. The article cited above outlines the history of the passage of The Canada Health Act (1984). In brief outline, Canada's current system evolved from a province-level initiative spurred by social justice concerns.

The current U.S. health care system happened by accident: "the Great Depression inadvertently inspired the spread of employer-based health insurance, World War II accidentally spread the idea everywhere."

According to the Oregonian article authors, the lessons to be gained from Canada's health care system are: 1) Spend less on administrative costs; 2) Negotiate lower prices for health services; 3) Cover everyone, all the time; 4) Ration health care based on need, not income.

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Complex problems require multiple and coordinated approaches

As Willamette River Keepers' Travis Williams writes in Sunday's Oregonian, "in order to make the Willamette function more naturally and to make it cleaner, multiple actions, involving a variety of approaches, must be taken." These include the restoration efforts outlined in Whitworth's recent article.

Additionally, Williams observes that "Given enough teamwork, patience and persistence, we can help create a healthy, naturally functioning and clean river for people and wildlife." I appreciate this positive attitude. David Charlton, Tom McCall, Ed Averill, William Joy Smith, and many other clean streams advocates held this same view as they worked toward alleviating Willamette River pollution beginning in the 1920s.

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"Historians have the ability to control our minds"

My cousin (on my mom's side) Nancy wrote this back in 1976 on the first of five index cards that I assume were prompts for some kind of oral presentation she was to give in school on the topic of a class paper she wrote on Michael Hillegas.

Michael Hillegas -- as you all know -- was the first Treasurer of the United States of America, as we're all taught in school.

When my cousin wrote her paper, she didn't have the luxury of going to the Internets to learn about Hillegas, so she and my aunt Grace sent away to the National Archives in D.C. for photocopies of relevant materials. My aunt recently sent me these materials, and Nancy's school paper.

In her index cards, Nancy continued: "Some of the writers who have prepared our history text books have been biased by their own religious and cultural backgrounds, thus depriving the readers of important facts of our nation's history."

Thanks, Cuz, for representin' back in the day for your newest little cousins James and Kristina, and for puttin' a shout out for the need for a more inclusive and representative historical narrative!* You must have known that little cousin Jimmy would grow up to be a historian! Also, I commend your deep understanding of some of the key factors that influence the practice of history (and all other cultural endeavors), particularly considering you were about 14 at the time. Bravo!

Below are images of a key once owned (I think?) by Michael Hillegas, or one of his descendants (not me). City of Portland Archivist (and fellow Northwest History Network member) Brian Johnson sent these images to me the other day.



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* I know, I don't do this kind of slangy-talk very well.

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Believing in God(s)

Philosophy Talk, one of my favorite radio shows, aired a segment titled "Believing in God" a few years ago (that one can listen to online here). Ken Taylor, one of the show's hosts, prefaced the show with the following on the Philosophy Talk Blog:

"Today's show will be about the question whether it's still possible for smart, reflective people, fully cognizant with 21st century science, fully aware of the horrors of modernity, to believe in god."

Taylor then expresses a clear and concise sentiment that echoes my thoughts exactly:

"As a philosopher, I tend to want my beliefs to be based on either direct experience or reasoned arguments. Even if some belief of mine is not in fact so based, I like to flatter myself that all my current beliefs are capable of being, as it were, ratified by either some reasoned argument or by the testimony of direct experience. And I'd like to think that if it were to be decisively settled that some belief of mine could not be so , I would more or less spontaneously surrender that belief, more or less without regret or remorse or wishful thinking of any kind. It seems to me one could and should have much the same attitude toward religious belief. One should want to believe in the existence of god only if one is confident that such belief is capable of being ratified by either reasoned argument or direct experience."

Philip Clayton, Ken & John's guest on this show, replied:

"What we didn’t get to talk about . . . is exactly how one goes about reasoning about one’s 'worldview-level beliefs.' Surely we have to admit that the hold of reason is rather less firm at this level than at the level of our more specific beliefs. And yet philosophers – and indeed all rational persons – are compelled to at least attempt to reason about their worldview-level beliefs.

"Reflection at this sort of level is what the tradition has called metaphysics. It comes in many flavors: theistic, of course, but also naturalistic, physicalist, humanist, etc. Unfortunately, metaphysics – at least in the "grand tradition" that once played a central role in Western philosophy – has sort of fallen out of fashion. It’s too bad, in a sense, because human reflection does tend to move outward to these broadest of all questions."

I'm fascinated by this question of belief: How is it that people come to one belief or another, and how do they maintain their beliefs in light of contrary evidence? I see historical contingency in all religious beliefs that compel me to conclude that there's no such thing as one true religion. For example, a fundamentalist Church of Christ Christian in the American West today might imagine that her or his religion is the one true faith and that her or his interpretation of the Bible is the one true interpretation, but the Church of Christ didn't exist until the 1840s, the King James version of the Bible didn't exist until 1611, and Protestantism wasn't around until the 16th century. If this person were born in late 6th century Persia or in India in 1272 instead of mid-20th century U.S., he or she would likely have been a Zoroastrian, in the first case, or Hindu, in the second, etc.

As a result, I see all spiritual beliefs and religious practices as hues and fragments of some profound archetypal process rooted in the hazy mists of time immemorial and continuing on into the unforeseeable future. I agree with Joseph Campbell's conclusion that religion & mythology have an importance and relevance to individuals and cultures, but I also see clearly that religion can easily morph into the anti-intellectual, reactionary "opiate of the masses" that Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and others write about.

I'm keen to get people's perspectives on this installment of Philosophy Talk and the related blog posts.

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The comments are appalling!

I was discussing this issue with friends the other day and we were all lamenting the base level of commentary that online news articles often receive. I'm not sure how to take this: Does the anonymity of the Internet bring out the most vile opinions in our community, or is the aggregate perspective of our community less educated and more mean-spirited than many of us like to think? Or, is it something else?

I have found that the comments on the vast majority of news articles that I have read online are appalling, and fall in to one or another of the categories enumerated below. These categories are not necessarily mutually exclusive:

1) Mean and spiteful
1a)Outright racist/bigoted/homophobic/sexist
1b) Mean in some other way

2) Politically reactionary
2a) Right-wing reactionary
2b) Left-wing reactionary

3) Illustrating the intellectual shortcomings of the commenter to a level that is embarrassing
3a) Ignorant of historical context
3b) Logically inconsistent and/or fallacious
3c) Ignorant of the substance of the article being commented upon
3d) Grammatically incorrect

I made direct reference to comments with some of these characteristics in an earlier post on the Superfund site in Portland's harbor, and I welcome hearing of examples of other lamentable comments and possible reasons for why this is phenomenon is so common.

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"Rivers and streams are nature's sewer systems"

Below you'll find the text of an interesting Letter to the Editor from John Beau in response to the Oregonian article "Evolve or die? It's crunch time for the Willamette" (that I posted an entry about a few days ago), and a response to Mr. Beau by "dtroutma."

Considering this Letter to the Editor and the comment to it, I want to discuss four points:

First, Beau's letter is a knee-jerk reaction against taking steps to address Willamette River water quality based predominately on considerations of finances: "as a taxpayer, I can't support the program," Beau writes. To support this position, Beau creates a "straw-man" by misrepresenting Whitworth's position as advocating for restoration to some kind of pastoral, pre-human (or pre-Euroamerican settlement) ideal: "Restoration to what condition?" Beau asks, "A condition that existed at the end of the last ice age or in 1858?" In setting up this inaccurate false comparison that, by definition, would be impossible to achieve, Beau is then able to support implicitly his finance-centered point of view -- because, based on his logic, of course it would be foolish to expend millions of dollars in taxpayer money in an attempt to achieve something impossible!

Second, Beau does raise a good point when he states that it might be wise not to move forward "without a clear written statement of the problem(s)." However, the ideological filter[1] through which he is viewing the topic keeps him from reading clearly Whitworth's article: Whitworth identifies specific ways in which accurate information is being gathered and actionable plans developed through the use of an open-source software solution and collaborative efforts among government and citizens.

Third, Beau writes that "rivers and streams are nature's sewer systems" because they "carry everything that is swept into them." Through this fallacious appeal to natural law, Beau then wants us to take no action so as to "not try to undo what nature does best." However, as Whitworth writes regarding this supposed "natural" state of affairs, "we have dramatically altered how the Willamette River functions. We removed streamside vegetation . . . built dams and dikes to drain fields and change flood patterns . . . cut roads and cut slope-stabilizing trees to build houses." Commenter dtroutma echoes this point, and there have been hundreds of books and thousands of academic articles written on various aspects of such changes and the impacts they have had on watersheds.[2]

Finally, to return again to the notion that "rivers and streams are nature's sewer systems," Beau articulates here an idea that has roots well into the hazy mists of time immemorial. The scholars I cite in note 2 below have written on this idea extensively. Jamie Benidickson, in particular, has written an aptly-named book on the subject, The Culture of Flushing. This is precisely the mentality that clean waters advocates have been struggling against since at least the 19th century.

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[1] Which I would characterize as conservative or libertarian, based on the evidence from this one letter.

[2] My goodness, there are so many that I'll give just a few names of scholars working in this area: Adam Rome, Joel Tarr, Martin V. Melosi, Philip Scarpino, Linda Nash, Arn Keeling, Jamie Benidickson, Gregory Summers, Terence Kehoe.


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December 04, 2009, 4:00AM

Don't undo nature's sewers

The Joe Whitworth columns regarding the Willamette River were informative, but as a taxpayer, I can't support the program (most recently, "Evolve or die? It's crunch time for the Willamette," Nov. 29).

Specifically, what is the problem that requires restoration of the river? Silting, toxins, trash fish, invasive species, etc.? Restoration to what condition? A condition that existed at the end of the last ice age or in 1858?

I am not enamored with the expenditure of "tens of millions of dollars" by a number of "watershed councils and conservation districts" -- all well meaning folks, I'm sure, but without a clear written statement of the problem(s), it is all for naught as the column admits.

Rivers and streams are nature's sewer systems. They carry everything that is swept into them. Let's not try to undo what nature does best.

JOHN BEAU
Lake Oswego


"dtroutma" posted the following in reply:

We HAVE treated our rivers and waterways as sewers, for centuries around the world. But it is important to realize that riparian zones and wetlands are not "sewers" they are the SEPTIC SYSTEMS natural process uses, and millions of acres of these valuable resource lands have been eliminated, just since 1900. These areas once purified and cleansed water systems for us, (though our population growth has overtaxed even these "natural" systems alone) now the "effluent" is channelled to run straight through to our over-polluted oceans, and threaten existence of many species, including us.

Restoring these acres to functioning systems is not only essential, but "cheap" when considering the long term penalty if we do not.

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"Tragedy of the Commons"

NPR had a segment on "the tragedy of the commons" in late November that applies this model to the global climate change debate. This NPR segment relates to my interest in examining the idea of "the commons" within the framework of urban environmental history, which I wrote about a few weeks ago.[1]

The NPR segment applies the idea of the commons in the way that I find not entirely applicable to the urban environmental issues I am researching. The comment thread is fixated on debating the extent to which global climate change is or is not anthropogenic, but one commenter addressed the idea of "the commons" itself:

"Declaring this situation a tragedy of the commons is misleading. A commons, traditionally, is a communally managed property with regulations on how it is used. Air and water are what Patricia Marchack called 'free goods.'[2] No one can lay claim to them or readily control their use. The threat to free goods is the externalization of costs by private industry. We cannot begin to address this situation until we are willing to charge private industry for the destruction of free goods." (from Julie VanBlokland)

This statement supports my hunch that to apply Hardin's "tragedy of the commons" metaphor to contemporary urban environmental issues in North America would be anachronistic.

One of the people in the NPR interview is Richard J. Smith. He served as a diplomat and negotiator for environmental and scientific treaties in the 1980s and 1990s, and has recently written a book, Negotiating Environment and Science: An Insider's View of International Agreements, From Driftnets to the Space Station. I need to get a copy of this book to see if there's anything explicit in it regarding "the commons."

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[1] Here is a link to Garrett Hardin's article that I did not have in my previous post on this topic.

[2] I think the book this comment refers to is M. Patricia Marchak, The Integrated Circus: The New Right and the Restructuring of Global Markets (Montreal, McGill-Queen's University Press, 1991), reviewed here.

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