Remember Jane Swift?

Remember Jane Swift? You would have to be from Massachusetts.

She came to my mind when I saw John McCain choose Sarah Palin to be his vice president.

Jane Swift’s story should be one of caution for Sarah.

You have to go back to William Floyd Weld our Republican Governor who chose Paul Cellucci to be his running mate.

After a couple of years in the Governors Office Weld grew bored and decided he would like it better as American Ambassador in Mexico City.

Now Jessie Helms was the gatekeeper for Ambassadorial Appointments and he did not like William Weld. Weld spent some time sitting in Jessie’s outer office waiting to be interviewed and appointed. It must have been very demeaning and embarrassing for Weld. After and extended period cooling his heals and being ignored he went off to join a law firm in New York City.

Meanwhile back in Massachusetts, Paul Cellucci stepped into the Governorship. When he ran for election on his own merits he felt he needed to carry the western part of the state to win office.

Enter Jane Swift, the unknown mayor of North Adams? Or was it Pittsfield. Jane welcomed the opportunity to take the stage on Beacon Hill.

All went well. She and her husband conceived and bore twins!

Then Paul Cellucci was appointed Ambassador to Canada and there was Jane, Governor! There were the twins still in the Berkshires. She was criticized for taking the State Police helicopter home on the weekends.

Jane was willing to run again on her own merits. I liked her because, by executive decree she shut down the “Filthy Five” power plants that were poisoning coastal Massachusetts, especially Salem.

However along comes Mitt Romney who decided he wanted to be the Governor of Massachusetts. What he and his machine did to Jane was not pretty. I don’t know the details but you could see it in her face that she had, like Daniel, been in the lion’s den.

I recount this as a cautionary tale for Sarah Palin. She doesn’t even know WHAT SHE DOESN’T KNOW!

Twilight at Montecello

by Alan Pell Crawford

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Being retired and elderly my self I am interested to see how others reach closure on their lives.

What interested me is the consistency of Jefferson's response to the ebb and flow of his life. Denial was his main ego defense and he honed its use till there was barely a pause between the event and his response.

You realize you are dealing with a good man beset by what he wanted and his ability to deliver for himself and his family. You are saddened by the life he dealt his grandson Jefferson Randolph, then self protectively blaming Jeff for not finishing his education.

Reading about his son in law and his grand daughters husband, Charles Bankhead one wishes that AA had been created 200 years earlier. Jefferson was remarkably insightful in his realization that Alcoholism was a medical illness.

Jefferson spoke to me when he wrote,

"When you and I look back on the country over which we have passed, what a field of slaughter does it exhibit! Where are all the friends who entered it with us, under all the inspiring energies of health and hope? As if pursued by the havoc of war, they are strewed by the way, some earlier, some later, and scarce a few stragglers remain to count the numbers fallen, and to mark yet, by their own fall, the last footsteps of their party. Is it a desirable thing to bear up through the heat of action, to witness the death of all our companions, and merely be the last victim?

I recommend this thoughtful book to you.

Agriculture for Profit

By a circuitous route I arrived at Vicksburg: a People at War, 1860 to 1865, by Peter R Walker.

This little book is a very interesting read. It presents the experience of a city under siege from the view of the inhabitants. It is a romantic book and glosses over the reality of the pain and suffering with the veneer of heroics. You get the feeling and idea that this was a people of a different era, immune to the suffering depicted in the modern press and literature.

There is no discussion that would lead to a diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, though there must have been such symptoms under a different name.

The city endures daily shelling from both the river and Grant’s siege from the surrounding land. People starve and people hoard. They dig into the ground and live in caves.

What caught my attention was the account of the continued production of cotton, in the face of the extreme need for food crops. Plantations continued to plant cotton because of the high price they would get for the crop if they could successfully run the blockade.

Corn for ethanol? Poppies for Opium? This is capitalism as applied to Agriculture. Where is agriculture policy? It is the modern day equivalent to cotton on the national and international scale.

Granted, Afghanistan is a failed state in the hands of drug lords. Afghanistan is headed for a big hunger, addiction and HIV morass. It is spilling over into Iran and all along the delivery routes. Opium is more toxic than cotton.

Should I be surprised about the New York Times Home Section slobbering over Australian Outback Architecture?
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/03/garden/03australia.html

Some lady who “divorced well” has spared no expense to borrow features and transport them to Sonoma California.
“The interiors of the main house are a shrine to Australian art and craft.”

Now I lived in two out back houses in Alice Springs in 1959 and 1966. I found nothing redeeming about their architecture. Mostly they were tin roofed ovens surrounded by a louvered porch.

One had its septic tank outside the back door between the bathroom and the laundry house. It was covered with sheets of tin for easy access.

Our family roasted in the summer and froze in the winter. I made kangaroo skin inserts for our shoes after getting frostbite standing on the interior floors during the winter.

Our thoughts about how one might improve on “bush” housing revolved around starting a company that built bermed houses.

Ms. Dodwell’s “Art Studio and Massage Room” triggered my memories of the “meat house” at Brunette Downs Station on the Barkley Tablelands, 1960. The shadows and the slats took me back to the time we were offered fresh meat. “Go to the meat house and help your selves. We just butchered a beef.”

We stepped inside the simple structure to see a large table in the middle of the concrete floored room. The table was heaped with pieces of red meat. We took a small piece and cooked it on a shovel over a campfire that night.

What can I say? Money corrupts? Money allows one to indulge whatever crazy enthusiasms one entertains? Waste not. Want not.

Where the Oil Hits the Tank

My final oil bill for the season arrived today. I had been paying $140.00 a month for 10 months so I was surprised to see that I still owed $458.67.

The office of my Oil Company, Arlington Fuel Oil Co, Inc. is at the end of my street. I thought I would go and get their help understanding my rate of use, success at conserving, in short find out how they think I am doing.

We reviewed my house, new windows, heavy insulation in the ceiling and walls and a programmable thermostat.

After an intra-office struggle with their computers, the Campbells, Father, Mother, and Son got me a print out that showed everything in black and white.

I’ve gotten four deliveries this heating season. Starting with a full tank and ending with a full tank, I used 442 gallons this season for heat and hot water. The first delivery was $2.82 a gallon. The second was $3.45 a gallon. The third was $3.62 and the fourth was $4.69.

“You did very well.” “Most of our customers living on the ground floor of two family homes used about 900 gallons.“

Mrs. Campbell held up a three-inch stack of order slips.
“These are the people who didn’t want us to top them off at the end of the season. Some of them haven’t paid their bill.”

As I went out the door, Mr. Campbell said, “Don’t sell that house.”

Conversations in Retirement

I have been talking with Kazue Campbell. She is a Scholar of Japanese, now retired from BU. She is busy translating a book from Japanese. The Book is an account of William Wheeler, of Concord Massachusetts and his efforts to improve the Agriculture in the North part of Japan beginning in 1876. Kazue was complaining about loosing steam on the work of translation. I said, “Please keep going. I want to read the book.”

I told her about my Grandfather’s visits to Japan about this time with the U S Navy and sent her pictures of his ship, at the time, the USS Kearsarge. She replied;

“Do you have any idea why did this ship went to Japan in 1874? It was 2 years before William Wheeler went to Japan together with William Clark and David Penhallow to start the first agricultural college in Japan, perhaps in Asia. ( Japan and the U.S.A. had the first commercial treaty in 1858, opening a number of ports. ) I look forward to talking with you on the subject.”

The Kearsarge was a US Navy war ship. If you look closely at the pictures you can imagine being underway at sea, the sails spread, a minimum of smoke from the stack. They would keep the boilers going to enable them to quickly "fire up" and increase speed with the steam driven engine, which was a new innovation in a war ship, increasing maneuverability in a battle encounter. My Grandfather was an "Engineer" in charge of the steam boiler. They probably burned coal which would have dirtied the sails and drifted over the deck. Quarters must have been tight below deck where you shared space with the steam engine, coal, canon balls and black powder, guns, sailors, galley, infirmary. The Officers would have tiny private quarters. My grandfather had a "sea" chest made out of Camphorwood in China. I still have it. It would be loaded on board when he reported to a ship for duty. The mementos he brought back, mostly from China, were small things, buttons, the wood cut print from Hiogo Harbor small pictures, a fan, a couple of daggers, things that wouldn't take up much space in his chest.

Looking at the pictures of the Kearsarge I am filled with awe and nostalgia. The beauty of the ship's lines, the craftsmanship the idea of a self contained community crossing the Pacific to Japan, under sail. It was all wood, with brass and iron fittings, built in Maine. It was the top of technology in its day.

I look forward to reading William Wheeler’s account of his multiple trips to Japan to establish a College of Agriculture. I must say I am more in sympathy with the purpose of his trips though my Grandfather’s mission may have helped William to accomplish his.

Loss of Power

Virginia and I returned to my house in the midst of a “blackout”. There was no electricity from 12 pm till 8 pm. It was a shock after the air-conditioned coolness of the Museum of Fine Arts and then the secluded, quiet, cool car interior on the way home.

We kept the house closed and it stayed fairly cool inside. There is a lot of insulation. It really makes me understand how dependent I am on our electricity supply. We had no lights, cooking, cooling, refrigerator; telephone, computer, TV, radio, hot water. The house was "dead".

It was such a relief when the power returned at 8pm and the electric clock started flashing. The fan in the kitchen ceiling started turning, the furnace came on to heat up the water. It is all well and good to say we must save oil and gas but how are we to generate the power we have all become dependent on? The scary thing is, that we will be even more dependent on electricity as the earth warms and the summers become hotter. It is a vicious circle.

What happened to the swing in the shade of the front porch? Where is the hand held fan? How long since I’ve seen a pitcher of lemon aid with its sweating glass and floating ice cubes?