society – Page 13 – Vine Maple Farm

October 24, 2020October 26, 2020

The Radicalization of America: Whatcom County

I read an article in the New York Times this evening “The Radicalization of a Small American Town.” Brian Groh, the author of the Times article, describes a microcosm of the radicalization of America, a small town in Indiana that has been devastated by the economy of the 21^st century, wracked with pain and death of opioid addiction, crippled by the response to the covid-19 epidemic, and violently political.

Instead of the friendliness, lack of pretension, and sense of decency Groh remembers from his youth, he recounts the story of a former neighbor who was recently threatened when he expressed a political opinion.

Groh laments the change.

Opioid crisis and the radicalization of America

It’s a good story, but I wonder if many of his neighbors would agree with his view. I looked at opioid death statistics in Indiana where statewide deaths per thousand are above the national average. The county in the article has one of the lowest rates in the state. We in Whatcom County are fortunate: although opioid and other drug deaths are still far too prevalent, some statistics show a slight decline in the opioid death rate in Whatcom County between 2002 and 2018.

We have a problem, but not a raging crisis. Thank heavens. Covid-19 is bad enough.

Rural Indiana

I’ve visited Mr. Groh’s rural Indiana. I’ve never lived there, but it felt like home as I listened to conversations among farmers at the tractor dealership where I was installing software. Both my Dutch and German ancestors spent a few decades in the Midwest before they made their final jump west to the edge of the Pacific Ocean. In rural Indiana, I felt like I could have been in Lynden or Ferndale.

What’s changed?

Groh’s experience does not match my experience in Whatcom County. I agree that the rural America I see today is not the place I saw when I was growing up. But the question is what changed? Did Whatcom County change? Or did I?

Well. I changed. I know that. I went off to college and graduate school.

What I learned

There, calculus taught me that differentiation and integration are mathematically two aspects of the same operation. In chemistry and physics, I learned that science can measure and predict the changes around us with greater precision than muddled impressions of undisciplined observation, but it continually refines and deepens understanding rather than lays down immutable laws.

At the age of nineteen, a mathematical logic class forced me to plumb the mysteries of the proof of Gödel’s theorem, which asserts that no matter how much you know, there will always be things you can’t fully understand. By twenty-one, I had learned to read classical Chinese and was forced to notice that the Athens-Jerusalem axis of western civilization has not been the only foundation for successful societies.

Then I realized that a humble farm boy had best quit straining the seams of his underpants. I came back home to work that out, but I was no longer the kid I was growing up and already I saw Whatcom County through changed eyes. But I also realized that my eyes had become exotic. I fret over Gödel’s theorem. My neighbors don’t.

Fifty years later

Fifty years later, I’m still working on that project. I see that my neighbors and relatives have many virtues. They are tough, self-confident, often happy. Some are prosperous, some think the prosperity they deserve has been withheld by forces they should control but can’t. Some are accomplished, many are stylish. A significant number are convinced that they have right on their side. I’m still the lout with manure on my boots that I was fifty years ago.

My experience is in the software business, which is like most businesses, as far as I can tell. You don’t last long in the software if you can’t spot who is likely to get the work done and who is likely to screw things up. I learned to stay away from loudmouths who succeed by refusing to pay their help, stiff their creditors, shift blame, and counter reason with bluster. They may succeed for a while, but eventually business caves in around them and everyone loses. That’s about as far as my politics go.

Doubling down

I also know it is easier to double down on a bad choice than it is to switch to a better choice. Switching to a choice that you once rejected is a humiliating struggle. I’ve been wrong often enough to know the sick feeling and bad taste that fouls my gorge when I recognize a misjudgment. I’ve faced it often enough; I don’t wish it on anyone.

When a bad choice is not all bad, the struggle is more painful. If a segment of the population prospered for three years while others struggled, the segment that thrived will not readily give up their gains. They will be proud of their sagacity. Those who look up to prosperity often throw their lot in with the prosperous even though they have reaped few benefits. Humans are not good at balancing long and short-term gains.

2020 vs 1960

In pandemic 2020, everyone is overstressed and close to anger. Add an atmosphere that promotes strife and tension over calm, and you have a community inclined toward violence.

But is the Whatcom County community fundamentally different from the same place sixty years ago? I say no. It was not ideal then and it is not ideal now. McCarthyism was still a topic sixty years ago. Racism was casually accepted among my parents and grandparents. Abusing native Americans acceptable behavior. The Ku Klux Klan flourished for a while in Whatcom County. Dig into the local newspaper archives and you soon run into language and propositions that might make you flinch.

Given today’s conditions, I think the county of my youth would have been inclined toward violence, perhaps more so than today. Although gun enthusiasts are vocal and prominent today, guns and ammunition were more easily available fifty years ago. Most country people had weapons for dealing with varmints and were ready to use them. More so than I see today.

Racism was more overt, mistreating the tribes was usual.

But serious violence never erupted. That’s important. Today, folks rant about antifa and the far right. As a kid, I overheard talk about threats from Bolsheviks, Wobblies, Fascists, Communists, and so forth, but it all turned out to be nervous fretting.

Is Whatcom County radicalized?

I don’t think so. No more today than fifty years ago. What I do see today, like fifty years ago, is a huge and quiet majority of concerned good people who want to live their lives in peace with their neighbors.

That hasn’t changed at all.

December 26, 2019October 11, 2020

For The Birds

It’s the day after Christmas and I am asking myself why I am so dumbfoundingly optimistic.

It is no longer illegal to negligently kill migratory birds. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act prohibits killing migratory birds without a license. Up until recently, the law was interpreted to mean that birds killed as a result of oil spills, destroying their habitat, or otherwise interfering, resulted in federal prosecution and fines.

No more. You can still be prosecuted if you intentionally kill a migratory bird without a license, but not if the bird happens to be killed in the pursuit of some other goal. For example, an eagle killed by a wind turbine used to be subject to a $15,000 fine, oil spills that killed thousands of shore birds resulted in massive fines, projects that destroyed nesting grounds were subject to fines and injunctions without some mitigation such as providing an alternative nesting environment. Today none of that applies if you are operating a wind turbine, shipping oil, or paving nesting grounds into parking lots but your goal is making money rather than killing birds. (Detail here.)

This saddens me because seeing eagles turning circles over Ferndale, snow and Canada geese in the fields of the Nooksack valley and flats, and ducks in almost any body of water in Whatcom County all remind me that the world we have all been given is magnificent.

I’m not squeamish about killing birds. My dad encouraged my cousins and me to shoot English sparrows and starlings when I was a kid. He was not sympathetic toward invasive species, although we immigrant Germans and Dutchmen were invasive tribes ourselves.

Duck and goose hunting were all part of the grand tradition when I was in junior high (middle school.) In the fall, a bloodthirsty knot of boys would gather before first period and talk about who shot what that morning out at Tennant Lake and the innumerable ponds that surround Ferndale. I wished I were among the guys who were out wading in the cold and wet while hunting game birds, but my dad wanted me helping with milking, not messing with exciting and dangerous weapons.

He hunted himself when he was young. The few times I saw him fire a gun, he hit his target accurately. He was not sentimental about animals, but he was always on the watch for signs of wildlife around the farm and I suspect that, all things equal, he was on the side of the ducks, geese, and pheasants.

Think about the law for a minute. Who kills birds intentionally? These days, almost entirely sport hunters. I have nothing against hunting. It’s no longer my choice for recreation, but sport hunters guard our wildlife more carefully than a lot of sentimental enthusiasts who only think about wildlife occasionally. Hunters cull herds and keep them healthy, unlike massive collateral damage from industrial ventures that destroy habitats and wipe out entire species. The law now only limits folks who care about birds and gives free reign to industries who destroy species pursuing profits.

There’s a pond close to our house in Ferndale. Albert, The Border Collie, and I walk around the pond every morning and evening. I don’t know the history of the pond, but I suspect that it didn’t exist in my junior high school days. It has the look of a bulldozer sculpture, built for runoff control rather than a naturally occurring resting place for migrating geese and ducks. Nevertheless, I am happy to see the number of birds, raccoons, possums, deer, rabbits, and squirrels that Albert and I encounter on our walks.

The pond would have been in Allen Gardiner’s backyard. I haven’t seen or heard from Allen since high school, but I owe him a debt. One day in the Frank Alexander Junior High library, he pointed me toward a shelf of books by Robert Heinlein, the science fiction author, and started me on a science fiction binge in the seventh or eighth grade that I haven’t quite shaken yet. I wouldn’t be who I am today without Allen’s prompting. Not that I’m anything special, but I just wouldn’t be who I am.

Getting back to the pond. A few days ago, night and morning, I counted twenty-three geese, maybe two dozen mallards, three drake mergansers and I’ll bet three female mergansers were lurking and diving, a blue heron perched in a tree, and a seagull bobbing on the water. The following afternoon, I saw maybe a dozen mallards, one merganser drake, and Albert spotted a squirrel. (He keeps an exact tally of squirrels.) The heron and geese were gone.

I haven’t seen as many geese as last year this fall; I miss those noisy honkers and prolific poopers. I am not about to say that the changes in migratory bird regulation has had immediate effect, but this temporary paucity reminds me of what I will miss as wildlife disappears.

Until the community takes a stand, wildlife of all forms will become rarer and harder to experience. When there is money to be made, there is always someone willing to grab a buck and trash what other people care about. Practically, sometimes a small sacrifice may be justified, but a balance must be struck. When something dies, money can’t buy it back or fix it. Lose too much and we all have nothing.

We once cared. Raptors were rare in the skies over Waschke Road when I was growing up, but after DDT and other pesticides were regulated, the hawks and eagles returned.

So. I am optimistic. If we once cared, we can care again.

December 18, 2019October 11, 2020

Short Days—Long Nights

Mid-December days in Ferndale, stranded on the northern edge of the continental U.S., sunlight is in short supply. When Albert, the border collie, takes me out around the Gardiner pond in the morning, the sun is barely risen, and he has trouble herding me out there before sunset in the afternoon. In all this gloom, I was looking for adventure last week, so I drove to Montana and back again.

Our daughter completed her first semester of law school in Missoula last Friday. She and her sons could have traveled by train or airplane, but I was in adventure mode, so at 5:30 am Friday the 13^th, I fired up my wife’s SUV that wouldn’t make it up the little hill to our house in the snow last winter and went off in the darkness to pick them up and bring them back for Christmas. December isn’t the most interesting month to drive I-90, but it gets close.

In these short days, the trip began and ended in the dark, both coming and going. That’s about how I feel in 2019 in general, so there was nothing special there.

The path from Ferndale to Missoula threads over three mountain passes: Snoqualmie, Fourth of July, and Look Out. Our house on Vista Drive in Ferndale is 154 feet above sea level; downtown Ferndale is only 36 feet. Snoqualmie summit is 3,022 feet, Fourth of July pass in Idaho is 3,081, and Lookout Pass on the Idaho-Montana border is 4,711 feet. Missoula is higher than the Snoqualmie at 3,209 feet. In other words, I had my ups and downs last weekend.

The adventure was tame, as befits an arthritic geezer. Both Snoqualmie and Fourth of July were bare wet pavement both coming and going. Mid-morning Friday, the sunshine revealed two beached and dug in semis that must have slid off the road on ice around Cle Elum, but that happened hours before I sailed through. Lookout Pass eastbound was slushy and busy. No real danger. Coming down Lookout, boxed in by big trucks front and back, squeezed between the concrete jersey barrier and another truck, and dirty slush flying everywhere, barely evoked philosophical thoughts on the fragility of these carcasses we carry around. It was snowing hard when we left Missoula, but Montana snowplow crews know their business. Maybe next time will have more adventure.

I like the freshwater flyover country, as the vast tract of the U.S. that is not on a seacoast is called by disrespectful coastervators. I’ve always liked it, and I like it better now. My Dutch and German ancestors established themselves in Michigan and Minnesota before coming to Whatcom County. When I was growing up, I heard stories about “Back East,” which referred to the Midwest rather than the east coast. When neighbors got together to talk, the east coast, New York, New England, the southern eastern seaboard were seldom mentioned, but the conversation often drifted into reminiscing on life in the Midwest. People occasionally took trips to see relatives back east, but seldom did that mean seeing the Atlantic Ocean. I’ve been on the east coast many times because I worked for a New York company, but I still get north and south confused when the ocean is to the east.

Fifty years ago, I went to college and graduate school in the Midwest and I soon noticed that Midwesterners were behind the west coast, even dear old Ferndale. The fonts on street signs were not as modern. The buildings were older, stores were laid out like throwbacks from decades in the past. I knew nothing of New York then, but a lot of New Yorkers were among my fellow students, and they all said Chicago was way out of step. Of course, there never has been and never will be anything as in step as New York, in the opinion of a New Yorker.

I think it’s the internet.

I poked around Missoula during my one day there. I discovered that Missoula has more local breweries than Bellingham or hop city Yakima. I sampled several Missoula IPAs that proved that their brewers know distinctive hop flavors and how to blend them. A far cry from the watery “fire brewed for the flamin’ a—” Stroh’s and Iron City Pittsburgh beer that I remember from college.

I visited the University of Montana Law Library and the Missoula Public Library. The law library was sleek and new; the public library was nice, but crowded, the carpets had seen better days, and the furniture was worn. However, the staff pointed across the street to a large new library under construction. Missoula’s computer network is fast. I was told that they are almost entirely fiber. A city on the move as fast as New York or San Francisco.

I am getting old, but I think something is happening in this country that has not been noticed. Computer networks and the social media, other new forms of communication, have been excoriated for causing divisiveness and polarization, but I have begun to suspect that these vicious trends are being whittled away from the ground up by the very means of communication that are condemned as the cause.

I remember how isolated I felt before computer networks connected everyone. Today, no one has to wonder what is going on with the hipsters of Brooklyn— you can easily find out firsthand by following them on Twitter, Instagram, reading their blogs, or friending them on Facebook. (And see how silly they can be.) Like the proverbial canine, on the internet, no one knows you’re from Ferndale, Missoula, Austin, New Orleans, or NYC. In Missoula, people on the street, the streets themselves, could have been in New York, or the Bay Area, Boston, or Austin. I discussed hops with bartenders and library trends with Missoula’s library staff; we shared a base of knowledge that would have been impossible even ten years ago. This was not bland leveling, more like everyone being their best selves.

The days are short now and the nights are long. But winter solstice is close. The days will get longer; we will see more sunshine. Winter won’t be over, but spring is on the horizon.