This Boat Won't Float

How bizarre can a news item be? It’s hard to believe that Spain spent huge amounts of money on a new submarine that won’t float, but the Associated Press and other sources say it’s true.

Spanish engineers made a miscalculation in the design; it appears that way back in the early planning stages someone put a decimal point in the wrong place. As a result, the first of a new class of diesel-powered subs is 70 tons overweight. Officials fear if it goes to sea it will be able to dive but won’t be able to resurface.

To fix things, the Spanish Defense Ministry will pay our Electric Boat Company $14 million for a three-year study to determine how to reconfigure the submarine to make it useful. Spain already has

It dives, but doesn't surface!

invested about $2.9 billion in its new S-80 submarine program.

If it ever sails, Spain’s modern submarine armada will include four 233-foot-long boats. Each will carry a crew of 32, eight special forces personnel, and advanced weapons systems for surface and anti-submarine warfare.

When I finished guffawing about how a single misguided decimal point could create such havoc, I nearly cried thinking about this fiasco on another level. Spain has one of Europe’s weakest economies; unemployment stands near 25 percent. The banking system required huge bailouts to stay afloat, and substantial cuts in government pensions and social programs have gone into effect or are on the horizon. How could the Spanish government justify tossing big bucks into a new underwater adventure?

Exactly which foreign powers are threatening Spain?  None come to mind. Internal conflicts, however, are another matter. In the Pyrenees Mountains the Basque population occasionally launches various forms of violence against Spaniards they view as occupiers of their ancestral lands. To the east of the Basques, all of the Catalonia region is gearing up for a referendum next year on whether to secede from Spain. The Catalans think they are paying much more to the central government in taxes than they get back in services. Maybe the S-80 program is a factor; the new subs are being built in Cartagena, not Barcelona.

If the Basques and Catalans have developed navies to back their demands, it would be yet another bizarre news story. Both groups are fairly peaceful at the moment, so naval warfare involving them probably is not even a remote possibility.

We might wonder, then, why a cash-strapped Spanish government has blown $2.9 billion on four submarines whose only apparent reason for existence is to train for the day that some unknown enemy might attack Iberia from the sea.

If Spain, a land without serious external enemies, can’t curtail wasteful military weapons spending in the face of financial pressure from all sides, can we ever expect U.S. legislators to rein in the unnecessary weapons spending sponsored by our powerful military-industrial complex? 

Our Forest Favorite

We noticed a tree service employee consulting with a neighbor for several hours one recent morning. When beautiful wife Sandy walked over to learn what was going on, he tried to sell his services to “improve” our part of the wooded area that runs along the back of our properties.

It was no sale. His first suggestion was to remove a stately hickory growing six feet from one corner of our deck. It shades a good part of our house as well as about a third of the deck. It’s a nice cooling neighbor to have nearby on hot summer days, and a great place for birds to perch as they make sure all is safe on the way to Sandy’s feeders. The tree expert thought it was a hazard that might fall on our home. Sandy told him we’d take our chances.

Old stub well-dressed for summer

The next, and last, suggestion, Sandy said, was removal of “that ugly old stub of a dead oak,” which is clearly viewed through my office window. “What?” I shouted. “That’s the neatest thing in our woods.”

“I knew how you’d react to that plan,” Sandy said. “So I thanked him for sharing his ideas and told him we might get back to him sometime.”

That “ugly old stub” actually is quite lovely this time of year with a luxurious covering of vines. It may be dead but it is part of life for many lively critters. It’s great fun to watch gray squirrels chase each other in and out of the stub’s several cavities. Usually the participants in the games are their namesake color, but now and then a mutant “black” squirrel joins the party. A rarer thrill is watching a pileated woodpecker methodically developing a new cavity.

A variety of insects carry out less elegant, but perhaps more useful, activities in the hollowed-out base of the stub. They provide a good lesson in how Mom Nature replenishes her domain by converting dead residents to enriched soils where new generations will thrive.

The insect work and advancing decay eventually will fell our old stub. As long as I’m around to marvel at the forest life it enhances, nothing will be done to hurry that day.

Mysteries Great and Small

This Sunday the Rev. Jill McAllister, minister at People’s Church in Kalamazoo, did what I thought was an outstanding job of addressing “The Great Mystery”—who are we, where did we come from, and what is the meaning of life?  Several times, she quoted statements by Forrest Church, a leading Unitarian-Universalist minister, author, and theologian.

Those references set me thinking about one of the minor mysteries in my life—did I or did I not, meet Forrest Church back in 1974?  I pondered the question briefly six years ago while writing a passage in 

Forrest's father, Sen. Frank Church (Wikipedia)

my memoir, “Days with the Dads: Recollections of a Small-Time Journalist.” Included was a story about encounters with the Church family. One was a fairly lengthy conversation with Forrest’s parents. Years later, beautiful wife Sandy and I stayed several nights in the Church family home in Boise, ID after it had been converted to a bed and breakfast.

Because my memory of the first encounter with the Churches was more concerned with a personal lesson in humility than precisely who all the characters in the story were, I spent no time researching the identity of the young man who was present. Here is an excerpt from the story in my book:

“Merely spotting or exchanging only a few words with a famous person is, of course, nothing like spending a little time talking with one. I've had only a handful of those opportunities. One momentarily inflated my ego, but then quickly took the excess wind out of my young sails.

“In 1974 (while serving as Public Information Officer for the Boise National Forest), I was directed to drive over to the Sawtooth National Forest from my duty station in Boise, hook up with my boss at Redfish Lake, and then attend a meeting with some other people at the lodge on the lakeshore. My boss was Forest Supervisor Ed Maw, a man with many years of service in Idaho and other places in the Intermountain West.

“I got there early, and was the only person around as I stood outside the lodge having a smoke and waiting for Maw. Out of the lodge came a handsome man dressed in western-style clothes. A lovely woman and a young man accompanied him. They came directly to me (I was in uniform), and started a conversation about what my job was, why I was there, and what my thoughts were about some of the National Forest management issues of the time . . . .

“The whole situation put me on cloud nine. Here was little old me exchanging chit chat with members of one of the most prominent families in the state, and Senator Frank Church was among the best-known politicians in the country. He served in the U.S. Senate for 24 years, leading many national initiatives. He was a prominent contender for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in 1976, losing out to Jimmy Carter. His wife Bethine, the lady in our little discussion group that day, was the daughter of a former Idaho governor and was engaged in many high-profile activities of her own.

“By the time Maw approached us, I was pretty pumped up about the prospect of introducing my boss to my famous newfound friends. It didn’t happen. Senator Church stuck out his hand and said, ‘Hi, ya, Eddie.’ He and my boss were well acquainted. I was treated to a good dose of instant humility.”

About 30 years later, I read “The Jefferson Bible,” a document the famous president spent years assembling. Forrest Church wrote a lengthy introduction to the work. That caused me to wonder if the young man I met at Redfish Lake was Forrest. I started doing some research to determine that, but other matters intervened and I never got back to it.

Rev. McAllister’s sermon on Sunday caused me to wonder once again. This time, I checked some dates. The research proved conclusively that I could not have met Forrest Church that day in 1974 at Redfish Lake. He would have been quite a few years older than the lad I talked with. It must have been his younger brother, Chase, who Wikipedia tells us still lives in Boise. Forrest Church died at age 61 in 2009.

Although I’m slightly disappointed at learning I cannot claim a personal encounter with the famous cleric, it is always a pleasure to ponder some of the inspirational words he left behind.

   

Inequality Isn't All Bad

The geezer reads several blogs devoted largely to bemoaning the evils of discrimination against older folks. One problem often addressed is lack of equal employment opportunities. Another involves cost-of-living adjustments that fail to recognize increased needs of seniors for expensive health services.

However, news from a nearby city, Portage, MI, shows the old caution, “be careful what you wish for,” might sometimes be good advice.

For many years, every Portage homeowner age 62 or older got a 10 percent discount on water and sewer bills. A rate study committee appointed by the City Council recently recommended eliminating

What? No discount!

the senior citizen discount program because it was “found to be noncompliant with current nondiscrimination requirements” by giving one age group a preference over another. The city attorney agreed, saying the program favoring oldsters probably was unconstitutional, and could cause problems for some city bond sales.

As a consequence, about 3,000 elderly Portage residents lost their rate benefit. Surely at least a few believed they deserved the break. How many appeared at a hearing to protest the change? Zero!

What’s next? Will Applebee’s cancel my 10 percent senior discount because some miscreant seeks a ruling that it is unconstitutional? Will Denny’s start charging full price for my morning coffee? Will all who favor seniors fall in line in a sort of discount domino effect? Carried to the extreme, this kind of stuff could put insurance goliath AARP out of business.

Clearly, demands for equality should be considered carefully. After all, anyone can see we geezers deserve to be more equal than others.

Don't Touch Our Tree

It almost seems that a ghostly hand reaches into the federal bureaucracy every now and then to resurrect an old, bad idea.

Back in the 1970s, Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz, a Nixon appointee, sought to diminish the stature of the U.S. Forest Service as he took a reactionary stance in the face of growing environmental concerns. Butz made it clear that one of his under secretaries would be running the show, not the Chief of the Forest Service who traditionally had operated rather independently. 

According to Char Miller, who directs the environmental analysis program at Pomona College in California and writes frequently on western resource management topics, Butz soon learned that Forest

Mr. Secretary, spare our tree.

Service people would put up a fight when their traditions and prerogatives were challenged. In a recent “High Country News” article, Miller said:

"Earl Butz . . . was a profane man known for his hair-trigger temper and rough handling of subordinates. So when the Chief of the Forest Service stood him up for a meeting, Butz unloaded in response: 'There are four branches of government,' he reportedly snarled, 'the executive, legislative, judicial and the Gawd-damn U.S. Forest Service.'”

Butz wasn’t the only Secretary of Agriculture, Republican or Democrat, who sought to tighten control over the Forest Service. Although agency chiefs gradually were forced to yield considerable decision-making power to the parent department, they succeeded in maintaining a degree of distance from politics at the top of the Forest Service. To this day every chief has been a career natural resource professional, not an inexperienced political appointee.

Agriculture asserted its predominance in another way. This idea was to change the way people referred to the Forest Service and the other 19 agencies USDA supervised. That was done after a “study” by department design specialists resulted in publication of a “USDA Design Manual.”

The design manual mandated use of “USDA Forest Service” instead of the traditional “U.S. Forest Service” in publications and news releases and on exhibits, letterheads, and elsewhere. There was no choice.

Those of us who headed Forest Service publishing and public information units were told clearly at a national meeting that the new identification specs were mandatory, not just guidelines. There were a few veiled references to the ability of the Department of Agriculture to cause withdrawal of our regional authorities to publish if we did not comply.

We complied, but we didn't like it. Old hands grumbled and continued to privately proclaim they worked for the “U.S. Forest Service.” They thought the change was akin to the U.S. Marines suddenly becoming known as the USDOD Marines. Upon retirement, no longer in the clutches of the Secretary of Agriculture, I and a great many others immediately dropped the USDA label in our writings and public statements. The U.S. Forest Service lived on, although unofficially.

In the big scheme of things, small matters like agency labeling tend to escape media attention. The general public, understandably and rightly so, is interested in what government does or doesn't do, and cares very little about the precise identity of its agents. To federal workers, however, the name of the outfit they work for is an important morale factor.  Most of those I've known share a desire to identify with a well-defined group known to do quality work, just as most private sector employees do.

Recently, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack dredged up the old name game as a pet project. Officials wasted gobs of time and money over three years developing “One Brand.” The idea was to cancel all traditional agency signs and symbols and replace them with one Department of Agriculture logo. Guess what? The change was made quietly by issuing a “Visual Standards Guide.” Sound familiar? Shades of the 70s!

The directive stripped the Forest Service of its pine tree emblem, in one form or another, the mark of the agency since 1910. Current employees had to gnash their teeth and quietly accept the order. Retirees didn’t have to conform, and they didn’t. They went on the attack, bombarding Vilsack, members of congress, and anyone else who would listen with objections. According to Char Miller:

“Their opposition took on the air of a revival meeting.  They talked about the emblematic power of the Pine Tree logo to bind them to one another and to the land they helped steward.  The evocative shield and the uniform to which it was pinned testified to their devoted public service, they said. Shedding these symbols, and the emotional attachments they held, seemed like a deliberate attack on their collective history. These defenders proved a potent collective, and so overwhelming was their opposition that it forced the Agriculture Department’s hand.”

“In a one-sentence release April 4, the department granted the Forest Service an exemption to its One Brand directive. You could hear the hosannas from agency retirees and staffers a mile off.”

Miller titled his commentary, “Don’t Mess with the Forest Service.”

Of course, the headline was designed merely as an attention getter. Miller ended his article with a more important statement:

“As the dustup with the Forest Service suggests, a proud institutional history is a sustaining source of workplace identity and individual satisfaction. That’s a core value even Earl Butz might have respected.” 

Taxing the Good Guys

That master of irony, Oscar Wilde, got off many good lines during his creative writing career. Perhaps best known is “No good deed goes unpunished.”

We are about to see good deeds by many Michiganders punished for no good reason if a bill now before the state legislature becomes law. The bill would raise registration fees for owners of hybrid and electric vehicles.

How crazy can our local law makers get? Apparently, some would ignore 40 years of national policy intended to replace gas-guzzling vehicles with more efficient models. The original idea was to reduce or eliminate our dependence on imported oil. A more important reason that has come into sharper focus

Less Woulld Be Better

recently is to reduce excessive consumption of fuels whose use contributes to air pollution and climate change.

Going to hybrid or electric vehicles has a big impact. Our family car gets relatively good gas mileage. However, we could do much better. I've done the math. If we replaced our aging sedan with a comparable Toyota Prius or Ford C-Max, we would double our gas mileage. 

Making that significant contribution to environmental quality would cost us about $5,000, the difference between the hybrid price and a gasoline-only auto with comparable features. People who own hybrids were willing to back their beliefs about environmental quality with cash, although they probably could recoup the investment with savings at the pump over the life of the vehicle.

I know several Prius owners (the C-Max wasn't sold in the U.S. until this year.) None bought their cars to save money. Every one of them made the purchase to help enhance the environment. Punishing them with higher taxes would be idiotic. 

A much better idea is to simply raise the tax on gasoline to get the increased road maintenance money we need. That would create a bigger incentive for millions of us to reduce our carbon footprints by “trading up” to one of the growing number of fuel-efficient vehicles on the market today. It also would reduce at least some unnecessary driving, and that would help, too.

Pothole Paranoia

This time of year we seem obsessed with potholes, often for good reason. I just returned from a short shopping trip, and spent most of the journey dodging about a dozen large cracks and crevasses in access roads and the state highway that covered most of the route.

Yes, we can fear them. I couldn't avoid one giant, deep pothole in a side street—cars were on either side of me as I turned onto the highway. Even at 20 m.p.h., the impact made me think both front wheels had separated from the car. Luckily, that didn't happen. However, a couple more jolts like that and the old family sedan will face a trip to a service station for an alignment, or worse, to straighten everything out. We had to do that last year following pothole season.

Local media are featuring potholes. Cartoonists are making fun of them in their creations. Potholes are very close (following comments about continuing bad “spring” weather) to being the No. 1 conversation starter when strangers meet.

The Governor of Michigan has proposed bold action. He wants to increase gasoline taxes and vehicle registration fees to raise more than a billion dollars earmarked for road and bridge reconstruction and repairs. At the rate the public is bitching about the condition of our highways and byways, one would think the Gov’s plan would carry the day with room to spare.  Not so.

Led by conservative legislators in the Gov. Snyder’s own Republican Party, opponents of the proposal so far have succeeded in blocking it.  Some version may yet pass, but anything that smells like a tax increase is going to face a rough road (pun intended).

Recent opinion polls show a big majority of voters wants the roads fixed, but many don’t want to pay one cent in increased taxes to do the job. A number of trite sayings might apply here. “There’s no such thing as a free lunch,” seems to fit as well as any.

Automate It and They Will Recycle

Previous posts (Sept. 3, 2009 and Oct. 2, 2011) discussed early recycling research at the U.S. Forest Service’s Forest Products Laboratory. I had a special assignment to do technical editing for project personnel, and also to handle public information tasks. Recycling was a hot topic in the early 1970s. Handling media inquiries and responding to requests for presentations at schools and civic organizations kept me hopping.

To do my work well, I had to have a good understanding of the goals of the research and what was involved. To provide that understanding, Project Leader Wayne Carr spent many hours with me explaining his philosophy and why and how the Forest Products Lab group was working in the area they had chosen. Carr was a chemical engineer with experience in

Good words to live by

the pulp and paper industry. He also was a dedicated environmentalist. He taught me a lot.

Carr’s basic thesis was that despite all the good intentions of many people, recycling systems requiring much work by household members would never solve landfill problems.  Carr firmly believed that although some Americans could be motivated to clean and separate their household trash for recycling, at least as many would not participate even in the best-designed and publicized programs.

Carr saw the need for a new automated industry where homeowners could continue to toss all their garbage and trash into single containers for collection. The waste then would be transported to processing centers for separation and shipment to various manufacturing facilities to be remade into products.

We’re not there yet, but many American cities and towns are well on the way. In San Francisco, a city with serious landfill shortages, the mayor recently announced a goal of 100 percent recycling, with composting the garbage part of household waste as the final step.

Was Carr right about individuals making an effort to recycle? He was if recent history where we live is a good indicator.

Our home is in a rural township. When we moved here five years ago the recycling system in place was cumbersome.  We had to separate trash into cardboard (only small, flat pieces), paper, food cans, and very few plastic items, and then carry it in individual tubs to the curb for monthly pick-up. The majority of township residents ignored the program, and just continued to toss everything into one container for pickup and transport to a landfill.

At the start of 2012, the township changed the recycling program and the residents’ part in it became a whole lot easier. Each home got one 96-gallon container (more for an extra $20 each per year). We could toss all types of paper, cardboard, and metal cans plus many kinds of plastic containers into it and wheel it to the roadside for pickup and transport to a separation center. Weekly pickups of all else went on as before. Our typical “all else” now fills one very small bag, much less than half of what it was under the old system even though we had been conscientious recyclers.

What happened to participation? Under the old “tubs sort-and-carry” program only 35 percent of homes in the township recycled. After six months of the new single-container operation, 51 percent of households were recycling and the tonnage of material collected had increased by 108 percent.  By the end of the year, program growth forced the township to add a whole new collection route for recycling pickups.

Let’s hope the good recycling news keeps coming, where we live and across the nation. Unless immigration (legal and illegal) is drastically reduced or the reproduction rate drops dramatically, the population of the U.S. is projected to double in the next 70 to 80 years. Where will we find landfill space then? 

Rolling Out Those Barrels . . . Again

Sometimes what goes around really does come around.

When I was a teenager quite a few small Wisconsin cities had their own breweries. That wasn’t surprising. German-Americans who enjoyed their lagers and pilsners were the largest ethnic group in the state. They still are—in the 2010 Census 42.6 percent of Wisconsinites claimed German heritage.

German-Americans founded big Milwaukee brewers—Pabst, Schlitz, and Miller.  German immigrants also brought their brew meister skills to the smaller cities. I recall some local brands--Oconto, Chief Oshkosh, Point, North Star, Old Style, Marathon, Feuerbach, Lithia, Leinenkugel, and Rhinelander. Of the small brewers I remember, only the makers of Point and Leinenkugel survived as independents whose products now can be found on supermarket shelves in Wisconsin and some nearby states

A recent University of Wisconsin history note says the state had 85 breweries in the 1930s. By the 1980s, only 10 remained. None of the 10 was considered “small.”

Local breweries gradually disappeared because the large operators mechanized operations

Nowadays, name it, and someone is brewing it.

and exercised superior advertising muscle. As elsewhere in corporate America, mergers and buyouts reduced the number of big breweries. Miller is the only national brewery operating in Milwaukee today.

I remember when the Chicago Tribune, our family newspaper, published tabulations on the business page reporting the competition (in millions of barrels) between Schlitz and Budweiser for the honor of being the biggest beer producer in the world. Schlitz, which at the time proudly proclaiming it was “the beer that made Milwaukee famous,” dropped out of that competition in the late 1950s and declined until it finally ceased to exist as an independent.

As Wisconsin natives, beautiful wife Sandy and I occasionally enjoyed the benefits of having breweries close at hand. When we lived in the Milwaukee area, we took advantage of public tours offered by Schlitz, Pabst, and Blatz. Blatz was the smallest of the three, but many Milwaukeeans thought it brewed the best beer.

All Milwaukee brewers provided free beers and snacks at the conclusion of tours. At Pabst, tourists could guzzle four glasses of the company’s products. That certainly gave visitors a happy feeling about their hosts. Nowadays, it might get you a DUI citation on the way home!

Although each brewery had something unique in its operation or history, the most unusual brewery feature we learned about was not found in Milwaukee. It was 18 miles from my hometown in Rhinelander, then a city of about 9,000. When we visited The Rhinelander Brewing Company, it had not produced beer for many years and the name was changed. A prosperous doctor had acquired the property and converted it into a winery.

The original owner was a German-American who incorporated several old-world features into his operation. One was a little park behind the brewery where employees could sip the company’s product on breaks, at lunch, or after work. The park was still there when we visited, but small samples of cherry wine were served elsewhere. Other breweries were known to provide free beer to employees, so the Rhinelander “beer garden” probably was not unique. The one-of-a-kind feature of the Rhinelander brewery-winery was an archway entrance to a large tunnel in the basement of the main building. Our tour guide explained:

“The original brewery owner loved his beer, and he wanted it handy anytime he was thirsty. He had the tunnel dug from the basement of his house across the street to the basement of the brewery so he could quickly make a trip to get a fresh beer even if he woke up thirsty in the middle of the night.”

Ah, the privileges of an old-time brewery owner. The beer tunnel long ago fell into disuse, but “Rhinelander” beer is back. The brand now is produced by one of 30 microbreweries in Wisconsin. The micros sell less than 15,000 barrels each per year. The big Milwaukee brewer, Miller, has annual production exceeding six million barrels.  Between those extremes are seven Wisconsin breweries classified as “regional.”

In addition to the 30 micros, my old home state now has 31 brewpubs. There was no such thing as a brewpub when I was a young man living in Wisconsin. As do the micros, they produce an array of “craft” beers and ales.

Small breweries have been opening everywhere in the U.S. since a brewing comeback started in the 1990s. The Brewers Association, which represents 2,400 breweries and brewpubs, said craft beer set production and sales records last year, and the number of locations continues to grow.

My new home state of Michigan now has 120 breweries, 19 of them added last year. California, the growth leader, gained 56 new brewers in 2012. The national growth rate was 12 percent.

You can’t walk through a tunnel in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, to get your favorite brew, but you can find one to suit your taste just about everywhere else.

Mechanically Challenged Motorist Gets a Break

The geezer knows how to check the oil in a car and change a flat tire. And that’s about it. For all else I seek out good service places. They can be hard to find.

A couple of weeks ago the battery in our aging, but still reliable, Pontiac entered the sixth year of its projected five-year life. That told even me a replacement was in order. I mentioned it to our son, and he recommended a course of action that savvy members of his generation would follow.

“Check the owner’s manual to see what kind of battery you need,” he said. “Then spend a little time searching the internet to find out a fair price for a good product and who in your area sells and installs

the better brands. Make a few phone calls and find the best deal.”

That sounded like a lot of trouble, but the computer search wasn’t. I quickly determined that a reasonable price for a good-quality battery and installation would be $100 to $110. The car needed an oil change, so I took it in for that at a familiar full-service garage. It was a chance to confirm my need for a new unit and get one local price at the same time. I asked them to test the battery. They did that for free.

The service manager appeared a few minutes after I settled in at the waiting room. “You sure do need a battery." he said. "We’ve got one in stock, and can fix you right up.”

“What’s the cost?” 

“$150.” 

“Go ahead with the oil change, but I’ll pass on the battery for now."

I waited longer than usual for the oil change.

The manager returned, looking a bit sheepish. His question surprised me: “What would you say if we get that new battery in your car for $81?”

“I’d say, put it in,” I said.

“I’m glad, because our mechanic screwed up and already has it installed. Your old battery has been trashed.”

The savings was nice, but I’m still probably far in the red from paying exorbitant charges that creative mechanics have foisted on me over the years. But it was good to win one for the mechanically challenged for a change.