Walker Elliott Rowe

Stephen Hawking on the Famous Proofs of Math

2010-04-01T00:22:00.000-07:00

This book gives the ancient theories and proofs of math. It is thrilling to read, for example, proofs by Descartes and Archimedes showing the area of a circle and how to use geometry to depict the product of two numbers or their square root long before the modern tools of calculus were developed. In so doing you can learn how the area of a circle is πr^2. (Archimedes said that a circle with radius r and circumference 2πr has the same area as a right triangle with height r and baseline 2πr. The area of this triangle is 1/2 * base * height = 1/2 * 2πr * r = πr^2). What I just clearly explained here is not so clearly explained by Stephen Hawking.

Hawking famously explained to the laymen in his book on the universe the theories of Einstein. But his editors in this book fell short perhaps unable to comprehend what they read. This book would be of better use to the laymen if Hawking proceeded as does David Foster Wallace in his own book on math to walk the reader through these proofs one small step at a time. Instead Hawkins tosses out these ideas in tersely worded passages that do not assist those who are less clever in understanding what it means.

This book could take one a lifetime (or even longer) to distill. Its ideas so important, clever, and yes God-like in its beauty that each time I am able to understand one proof completely I plan to post my own explanation on the Internet for other students to read. BTW this book is in it's nth edition. Each subsequent edition 1,2,3,..., n-1 must have been a revision made to correct logical and technical errors in the mathematics. Might I suggest that version n+1 include some improvement in the prose as well. Put some graduate students on the task and make wholesale revisions.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog

2010-01-26T10:01:00.001-08:00

Muriel Barbery's "The Elegance of the Hedgehog" is a novel about the aesthetic beauty of leading an intellectual life. Only someone who reads alot can understand this. The two principal characters in the novel lead their lives as cloistered aesthetes and mock those who do not.

I found this book at Borders where I circled around it for weeks contemplating whether to purchase it and reading part of it for free between visits to the coffee shop. The novel was piled high in a stack, so I assumed this must be just another one of those shallow, ephemeral, pulp fiction best-sellers. But quite the contrary this book is a not all all shallow nor ephemeral and is a critique of that to which those labels can be applied.

This book, translated from the French, is structured as a back and forth discussion between the two principal characters. One is the concierge in a highbrow Paris apartment and the other a 12 year old girl. The two characters are not talking to directly each other but to the reader. So one wonders if they will ever meet.

Renee, the concierge, is an autodidact who wants to keep her erudition hidden from the people who live in the apartment building. She characterizes herself as ugly and say people barely tolerate her. She plays the television loud so that people passing by her door will think she is inside watching television while actually she would be watching a foreign film or reading "Death inVenice" or "Remembrance of Things Past". Renee is such a fan of the arts that has named her cat after Leo Tolstoy.

Paloma is a 12 year old girl who calls herself "super smart" but is anguished by the philistines who surround her. She chastises her grammar teacher as being a pedantic boor and criticizes her mother and sister because they are so shallow. Being a nihilist she has vowed to check out from this world by committing suicide and setting fire to the 4,000 square foot apartment in which she lives. (Being human and a young girl she vows to do this when no one is home so that no one, except herself of course, is injured.)

I like this book mainly because of philospohical points of view and clever one-liners that Barbery tosses out after several paragraphs of careful reasoning. For example, here are a couple:

From Paloma, "...Only psychoanalysis can compete with Christians in their love of drawn out suffering."

From Renee, "Civilization is the mastery of violence, the triumph, constantly challenged, over the aggressive nature of the primate".

From Paloma, "...grammar is a way to attain beauty....when you are applying the rules of grammar skillfully, you ascend to another level of the beauty of language."

From Renee, "To be poor, ugly and, moreover, intelligent condemns one, to a dark and disillusioned life....Intelligence no longer seems an adequate compensation for things..."

From Renee, "...nothing is more despicable than a rich man's scorn for a poor man's longing."

If is obvious that Muriel Barbery is a deep thinker. Her message is that only the brooding and miserable intellectuals among us can appreciate the beauty of the arts. Those of us who live their lives with their books will find her words familiar, comfortable, and, yes, exhilarating.

Balentine Meat Packing Company

2010-01-20T17:18:00.000-08:00

This article is about my great-grandfather's slaughter house business. Above is a can of lard from the plant.

http://www.greenvilleonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=20101200320

Balentine Family Geneology

Walker and Nathaniel, My grandmother Haselwood (Nana's mother) was a Balentine. The Balentine's are from Scotland we are fairly sure since that is a Scottish name. But no one has been able to make the connection from South Carolina back to Scotland. There's a Balentyne castle in Scotland if you every go there.

Haselwood Family

Walker and Nathaniel, Lewis Worley Haselwood was Nana's father. I was 9 years old when he died. I remember my mother driving back from the beach at our house on Litchfield Beach crying when he died. She was driving so fast a policeman pulled us over for speeding. Of course the policeman let us go. When called Lewis "Papa". He always had a crew cut. He had a dental lab and a cattle farm and he also built houses. Below is a picture of him and Granny Haselwood.

Oral Histories from Walker E. Rowe, Sr.

2010-01-20T08:43:00.000-08:00

Carolina Industrial School, Shelter Neck, NC; Children, parents and staff pose in front of the school; Photograph taken 25 April 1912; Courtesy of North Carolina State Archives

Carolina Industrial School

There was a boarder school. Carolina industrial school they called it. It was on a farm out in the country and it was self supporting. They had a big farm and there was a man in charge of it. Every boy and every girl that went there had a job. They paid 60 dollars for 6 months school and that got you your laundry, your 3 meals a day, your books, pencils and everything. That’s where the ten dollars per month went. They started school at 8:00 sharp and they had to exercise in the yard rain or shine, sleet or snow and pledge allegiance to the flag. They don’t do that anymore. And then at 1:00 o’clock school closed when we went to the dormitory and ate. Then everybody went to do their work. The girls they’d pick beans and peas and vegetables. My job was to cut wood . See, my daddy was a sawmill man. Granddaddy gave them a piece of timberland to cut this wood out of. They said you cut it up in the right lengths and bring it up and put it in the yard and these other boys will split it and stack it. I would get on one end of a crosscut saw [with another boy]. We had enough wood to last and more.

And the girls, you would see them with these crocus bags tied on. They would pick peas, hang them up, and they would never shell them. They would beat that bag and the peas would fall out. The butter beans and everything. They would beat them and then they would give the other stuff to the cattle. They would put a tub down and shake it and the shaff would blow away. And then they would take them to the house. They had their own hogs, their own chickens, their own cows. Some of the boys had to milk the cows and some had to feed the horses and animals. Everybody had a job. Some had to gather the eggs and feed the chickens.

They shut the school down then they moved it here to Swansboro. When school closed up they hired me to take my daddy’s truck and stay there. I stayed there one month getting rid of everything and loading up the furniture and stuff and hauling it down here and I moved the library down here they had the best library and it is still up there. Everybody says that Swansboro town hall high school has got the best library in the country. Say these books come from Boston. I hauled it up there with my daddy’s truck and trailer that I hauled lumber on in the summer time. I finished the building. In 1927 I wired the building. There we’re no electricity in Swansboro. There weren’t a bathroom in Swansboro. I put in a bathroom and people said, “That boy’s crazy. Where you gonna get water.” I put down a well and I went to Newbern and bought a generator and I took the old water pump. Brought it down here and old man Tim Wooderhaul made me a wooden pulley. Put on that shaft and put a keyway in there. I put an idler over there and a generator that I bought and I bought a switchboard and all and I built that light plant and they said that thing ain’t gonna work. And it worked, the dormitories, the school house, it ran two picture machines. That homemade lightplant. I was 19 years old when I built that electric generator and I wired that building. That’s when I met Thelma (his wife). August 3, 1930 we got married. I met her December 1927. I married Thelma when she was 18. These boys around here and I operated the machines. It was silent movies you know. We had an orchestra pit and an orchestra down there. We had a pool house. 10 cents for a ticket. Now its $10. And the little boys I knew didn’t have nothing. They would come by there and I would reach down and pull ‘em up through the window. “Now when the picture gets dark you slip down them stairs and sit down.” Roy Stanley are the only ones that are living that I used to pull through there. The rest are dead.

Walker's Job After Marriage

I started not to marry here cause I come down here on the weekend from Hopewell, Virginia to see her [Thelma, his girlfriend]. And I been wanting to marry her. But I didn’t have a job and I couldn’t ask a gal to marry me unless I could take care of here. And I went to work in Charleston, WV for Dupont. I had to work 7 days a week I was a rigger in construction. Riggers put up all the heavy machinery and heavy work . We put up all the steel work. When I finished job they transferred me down to Hopewell. I learned it at the sawmill. My old man had a saw mill. I would splice ropes and weave cable. I figured it out.

I saw an ad in West Virginia said Dupont needs a rigger, so I went down to the gate got in my car and drove down there. Bought me a brand new pair of kakis coveralls. “Come here I want to see you." He come up there and looked me over. I said “You hiring riggers. He said how old are you boy. I was 20 and I said I am 21 years old and I’ll be 22 next birthday.” He said, “Come on in. And I am the only rigger they transferred. When that job was over I was the only one they sent to Hopewell (in Virginia). And the 1st weekend I had off I come and got Thelma. Riding down the road and I asked her to marry me and she said “I would have married you long ago if you asked me”. She didn’t give me any inkling. Made me madder than fire. Now that was something. So I didn’t even turn around. Went right on down to North Carolina and got married and went back got my bag and I went to work.

That’s the only thing I can say about my daddy he taught his youngins how to work and how to do it. Everybody thought he was hard on us. He was the hardest working man you ever seen. Never been a man work any harder than him. When he hollered at you to get out of the bed your feet better hit the floor right then.

We were living in Hopewell. They didn’t have any apartments. We were building this plant in Hopewell and I took her to a boarding house and she wouldn’t stay there. So we moved across the street with the preacher and his wife. She wouldn’t stay there. She said, “I am going home”. And I said if you going home I’m going with you and I quit my job. Working for Dupont during the Depression. And I couldn’t get a job anywhere else. I came home and got a job on the old Lehigh [dredge boat]. I had been working on dredges a long time and then I went to Charleston and worked on the Clinton. We moved down there and Buddy [their son] was a baby. And then when I left there I went on the Scrogg up in Ocean City, Maryland. We build the canals from the inland waterway out by the end of the boardwalk and built the inlet to Ocean City, Maryland.

I went to the work on the old Lehigh. One day old Captains Nelson the whistle blew for the dumpy when it had signals you know. He says the lever had cut this brand new cable and you got a man out there who can splice this cable. And he came out there and said, “Anyone can splice a cable.” And I said, “Yeh, I can do it.” “See this brand new 1 inch cable. I want a one inch splice put in it.” The marlin spike and the vice and the hammers and all were right down in that hole. Go down there and fix it and that’s all about the end of it. So I went down there and I spliced it and Nelson came back to see what it looked like. I didn’t work on the dump another day. I was the deck foreman. Didn’t get a raise but I got a promotion I got out of that mud. I was tickled to death. See the old man he taught me how to splice a cable and it’s easy to do if you know how you. Just take a burning touch. If it’s a steel core cut the center out of it. If it’s a rope core you open it up with a marlinspike, cut it out and stick your marlinspike in there, roll it round and around and it pushes the core out and pushes the first strand right back into the middle. So you got a center core whether its rope or steel. And I put him a 20 foot splice in that thing and he was tickled to death the old captain. When that job was up. AG&T hired me for mate to go down to Charleston on the old Clint. I never worked as a laborer long in all my life. I always got a promotion. Now if you don’t got that college degree they don’t even talk to you.

T-Model Ford

I was nothing but a kid but I had the fanciest convertible, they didn’t call them "convertibles". They called them “roadsters”. I went to Holland Motor Company and I told him I says Mr. Holland I want to buy a one seated roadster, the cheapest one you can get. I don’t want no extras on it whatsoever. I don’t even want no bumpers. I want to get just as cheap as I can and he says “OK”.

[To earn the money he worked at his father's lumber mill.] I had to load the truck and trailer and drive 25 miles and unload it every board by myself and get another one. For a dollar. I had to load it and unload it for a dollar and I had to buy my dinner out of that. [25 cents] So I had a $1,75 per days and I got $400 and I went and bought that Ford for $400. And I went to Mr. Holland and I said I want my Ford and he said I cannot sell you no car you got to get your daddy to come out herre. And I pulled out my money and I said I want this ford and he give it to me right quick.

I went to the junkyard and someone had bought them a Nash automobile and had broke it right half in two. I talked to the junk card man I said. "Why don't you sell me the bumpers off that old nash out there?" He looked at me. He said, "You want those things? I'll give them to you. Go get them." And I was tickled to death. It was different. Ford just had a flat thing up there, two bars you know. These here were nice pretty rounded ones had chromium caps on the end. On the back of it he had a spare tire on the back. I got that rack off of and there were two bumpers on the back one come out back here and turned around and went back that way. And I took that old Ford and I made them fit. I drilled hokes and half pieces and all and I put them on there, put that spare tire on there. And I ordered me some side shields from Sears and Roebuck. You just clamped them up there posts you know on the side of the windshield 1927 model ford. The first straight hood Ford T-model that they made. Right after that they made the A model. I had a fancy convertible. I had a spare tire on the back with a cover that said "Thelma" and I had a shooting star.

The Swansboro Hurricane of 1934

I built the Jean in Burgaw in 1934. Left there and went to Wrightsville beach and built the first yacht basin down there. The first boat I ever built I had no tools. I had a hatchet and a plane and a hand saw. If I wanted to bore a hole to I had to borrow a brace and bit. And he [the owner] wanted me to bring it right back. The Jean was 45 feet long and 8 feet wide. It was nine feet high. What happened I got caught in the September storm offshore with a blind man, his wife, and his daughter, and a secretary. There were 3 of us on the boat. Offshore catching trout to beat the dickens. I was back there in the back baiting the hooks and taking the fish off for the women. Neiman Council, the deckhand, says, “I don’t like the looks of that cloud.” Said we better get going. And we headed for home. I said pull in your line, were leaving here now. When I got to the inlet [at Swansboro] I couldn’t even find the inlet the seas was so rough. So we had to go to Moorhead City to come in where the jetty was. And we got down there and the tide was so high I couldn’t see the jetties. And I was out there and there was a coast guard truck running round with a horn hollering and I couldn’t understand him for nothing. Because I was half a mile offshore. How could you hear anybody?

Directly they had a coast guard boat there it headed out and then I saw where the inlet was. The first sea hit him it broke the glass out of the pilot house, cut up the pilot. They turned around and went back. And they had to take him to the hospital. I laid out there and I counted the seas and there would be a tremendous big one and then third one was the smallest one and they was running in sequence like that. I let the big one pass me, let the 2nd one pass me, and I took right out after that little one. Went in. Didn’t even spray come on the deck. Those girls were crazy said, “Woo! This was just like a roller coaster ride.” Up and down this thing you know zoom down 90 miles an hour couldn’t hardly make it over the top of the next one and you would get up on the top and it was fall. The seas was big and sharp it was terrible out there. One of the girls said, “I’m getting seasick.” Neiman Counsel said, “I know what I do when I get sea sick I pull my shirt off. “ Lord if she didn’t strip right down to her waist. Running around there and that old Neiman he about to go crazy. But I stood up there holding onto the steering wheel and there water was sloshing in my shoes. And I promised the lord if he would let me get home safe with that boat I would never use it again and I didn’t. I sold it . Told Thelma to sell it the first offer she got 600 hundred dollars and she did sell it. That was the end of my party fishing. I tied up right down there and got me a job on the dredge and went to Charleston.

Sambo Robinson

Sambo Robinson a colored fellow worked for my daddy for a while and he quit. Worked in the saw mill because he wanted some money to go to new york. He’d been talking to some of these colored folks who had been up there. He made a little bit of money but he couldn’t get enough so he stole a plow from Mr. Harolds hardware store in Burgaw and sold it, an oliver plow, for $11. Took the money went right down to the depot and bought him a ticket to Baltimore. That’s what it cost to go to Baltimore then: $11. Well to make a long story short when he got to Baltimore and got off the train the detective was waiting for him. The detective gets up on the platform and he hollers ‘heh Sambo Robinson’. And Sambo said, "Who ‘dat in this big city knows me?"

Thelma Cannady Rowe

I was born in Swansboro on July 10th, 1912. I never worked. I married at 18. We were married in 1920. When we got married my husband had a job in Virginia. And then after we got married, Walker, my husband’s family lived on a farm. So we never really felt the Depression. We were living with Walker’s mother and Walker was building a boat. And somebody was coming in all the time needing food.

Walker built a boat and finished it and brought it on the waterway to Swansboro. His father was a saw mill man and he kept right on working. So they didn’t have a hard time. The farm took care of all the food. We had a cousin who lived there and helped with the farm. The house was full of all kinds of people—people who didn’t have anywhere to go, didn’t have anything to eat.

The way we felt it it [the Depression] was my husband couldn’t get a job. It [the farm] was in Burgaw. We were back and forth here [At Aunt Daisy’s in Swanboro and the farm. Aunt Daisy raised Thelma after her mother was killed in a kitchen fire.]. We first went to Virginia when we were first married. We stayed up there not long, about 6 months. He was working for DuPont. We came back home and the Depression was so bad and my husband could not find a job. He would walk for days and days looking for something. He had no money. He would walk by a farm and pull up two or three turnips and wash them off and pull them up and that’s what he did. He was away from home and had no money. He daily went out and looked for a job. He would do anything he would get a dollar for, I don’t care how hard the work was. The next job he got out in the country. A man, his wife, and six children were living in the country in one room. The man said, "Walker I don’t have but $100." Could you build a six room house for $100?" And Walker built it. He started it at Thanksgiving and he had it finished by Christmas. So the man gave him $100, a 25 pound turkey, and lots of collards.

He went to Wilmington and sat there day after day until they gave him a job. When he got a job I moved down there. We stayed there until that job was finished and then he went. His father was a saw mill man. And we went up to Burgaw and he started building a boat. And we stayed there until he finished the boat and we brought it back around here to Swansboro and finished it up. He rans charters for it one summer. And a man in Morehead bouht that boat for a headboat. When we came back [moved to Swanboro from Georgretown] 10 years ago they were still using that boat—it was about 60 years old.

Finally after he had finished the boat and sold it he got a job on a dredge boat in Ocean City, Maryland. I have a picture of it. And the baby [Jean] was a year old. So we went up there and stayed until that job was finished. And he started building boats here. And a man from Georgetown, South Carolina came up to Morehead City and Walker built a boat for him. And when he finished it he said, "Walker how would you like to go to Georgetown [South Carolina] and work for International Paper Company and build a marineway there and take care of all their barges and tugboats?" So he liked the idea and he went there and lived until 1975 and then we come back here and he retired.

[At the time they were married] We didn’t have any water, we didn’t even have electricity in Swansboro. So Walker brought back this big tank and put on the side of the house to catch rain water. Walker built Uncle Guy a fish house right down there on the water and we could catch all the fish that we wanted. Uncle Guy and Aunt Daisy blamed President Hoover for the Depression. He was a Republican but everybody in Swansboro was a Democrat. They thought they were going to get rich when Roosevelt came into office. He promised everything, all these programs. I wonder what he would think about the giveaway programs today.

The Depression was some of the best years of our married life because we were closer together we didn’t have distractions and other things. We had plenty to eat. I really didn’t feel it [the Depression] like so many did because my uncle had that government job [he worked on a dredge for the corp of engineers.]. You won’t believe the people they fed. I had an uncle in town who had no job and no way to make any money so she [Aunt Daisy] set up an account for them at the bakery store and told him to go there and get so many groceries per week. There were other people in the family who needed help and Guy helped them. It was just like after the Civil War. Everything was taken from the South. Even the factories. They freed the nxxxxrs but they didn’t stay there to take care of them. The people that lived there had to take care of them. It was just like the Depression. This town was small and there was somebody to take care of them, neighbors, and friends. We didn’t feel the Depression like other people did. So it wasn’t a big deal for us. Most of the men who lived here were fishermen. There was always something in the water to eat. The big boats would come here and get the fish. I think they got 10,000 pounds at a time. A lot of it went up North. My husband’s father had lots of money. He was a wealthy man. And he had all his money in the bank in Warsaw. And the bank went broke and he lost everything. I think it was the beginning of the Depression. They tried to take him to court and he pretended to be sick they never could get him into court. He was a saw mill man. He had a big hotel in Wilmington.

Slaves and the Walker Family

Even after I was married there were two of them [former slaves] living there [Walker is talking about his maternal grandfather's house.]. There were women still living and working in the old house. When the war was over they said, “No we aren’t going anywhere. We been treated too good here.” In fact they saved the cattle and the horses from the Yankees.

John Rowe, my granddaddy, didn’t believe in slavery. Didn’t own a slave. During the Civil War he and his two brothers went off and joined the army. Volunteered, wasn’t drafted. Old daddy told him if two of you get killed I want the other to surrender because I am getting too old to have any more kids. So my grandaddy’s two brother’s got killed and he surrendered and they took him to New York. But before he surrendered he was in this famous battle in Petersburg, Virginia and he was a reconnaissance sergeant and he had a little crew and his job was to crawl out in the woods and locate the enemy.

Well he realized he had gone too far and was right in the middle of it. So they laid right quiet till dark and then they took their little shovels and dug a little ditch. Perfectly square. They were in there and granddaddy said, “Now boys we don’t have much powder. I don’t want everybody shooting. I want half to load. The sharpshooters take the shot and don’t miss.” While they was shooting this gun they would be loading another. And they held them off for three or four days until the army come there and saved them. Well they didn’t have any food. Old Foster, an old nxxxxr man, he come straggling in there one afternoon and granddaddy spoke to them. “I come to bring you some food and water. I knew you was down here and in trouble.” Well granddaddy said, “Well listen we’re fighting to keep you a slave and here you are coming here to help up against the Yankees.” And he said, “These damned Yankees raped my sweetheart. And I am mad with them.” And when granddaddy got out of the pen granddaddy brought him home, built him a home, and took care of him the rest of his life. He lived to be 115 years old. Everybody called him "Uncle Foster". He tended Aunt Minnie’s garden. That was his job. He had to walk from his house 2 ½ miles and eat breakfast, work in the garden, eat dinner, work in the garden until supper, eat supper, and walk home. And he did that until he got old and feeble. And granddaddy still feeding him but wouldn’t let him work anymore. Poor fellow froze to death one night. He went out in his night clothes and leant up on the chimney where it was warm. He couldn’t get back in and he froze to death.

Finley Walker, my granddaddy, my mother’s father. The Walker’s believed in slavery, they had them. Finley was in charge of Fort Castleton during the war. Livingston Lee was the first baby that was born [to his wife]. When she got up out of the bed she took him by stagecoach down to Wilmington and Fort Castleton to see her husband and show him the newborn baby. And the minute he got there the Yankees started shelling the fort and he had to put her in a rowboat with a bunch of nxxxxr slaves and they rowed her back up to Wilmington so she could catch the stagecoach and he didn’t see her until after the war. That was a long time. They would get mail once a week or something like that.

When the war was over the scallywags, carpetbaggers was coming though. She had to take all the livestock back in the swamp and this old colored man stayed down there with them and not one slave left. Every one of them slaves stayed there until they died after the war was over. Didn’t one of them leave. Two of them I remember well. I was 11 years old before they died.

My daddy bought a Buick automobile. He couldn’t wait to show his in-laws his new car. And he got there right at dusk and it was cotton-picking time. And here come the nxxxrs with the cotton singing and walking up with the cotton bags. And they never seen a car. Some went to praying. Some run in the woods. And two of them ran in the kitchen and said, “Miss, the devil is a coming.” Imagine if you had never seen or heard a car. The horses ran away.

[During the Civil War] The Yankees would come by and [the slaves] would have to cook meals for them and everything else. The colored woman would come run saying, “The Yankees are coming.” Her hair all messed up and stuff all other her mouth and everything you know. She was a young woman. So she would scratch like she was itching and all trying to make them think the food wasn’t fit to eat but they would gobble it down. They were about starved to death.

She said the first thing they would do when they would come is search the house looking for guns. She had one. Every time they would come they would run and hide it in the toilet, put it down under the seat. When they would leave they would go and bring it back to the house. They would have never looked in there [or] thought to look in there. And all of her good silver she put it in the well and let it stay there until after the war was over. They would steal. They would take your horses, your chickens, your cattle,everything. They would take them down in the woods and keep them and they would come by and couldn’t find them. They would take your wagon your horse your mule and anything for transportation see. They put all that valuable silver in the well and when the war was over they bailed it out and got all their silver back.

If you didn’t have nothing but a cart they would take, that horse, and hook him to it. The hid the cattle and everything he couldn’t even have any chickens around the house.

First Airplane in Pender County

My daddy had the first airplane in Pender County. And he kept it out to the old savannah out in Burgaw. I was born and reared in Burgaw. He had this airplane around 1910 or 11. I don’t know where he bought it but he bought it. And he got him a pilot. And on Sundays that brought it out flew it around. But I don’t know if my daddy got in it or not. But he would laugh at the man flying around. And my daddy built an old wooden hangar out there and put the airplane it in. And what happened? The savannah caught afire and burn up his plane. The title of that old airplane my mother kept it in the top dresser drawer and I read it many a time. It was put in her old trunk when she moved to Georgetown to stay with us. And then that trunk got shipped to Georgetown to Mary Ward’s and she put it under the house and the bottom rotted out. And that’s where everything in the trunk was destroyed by the termites. So I don’t know what become of the deed. The charred part of that plane set out on that meadow for years and years. Everytime I would go to my grandmother’s there it would be sitting there on the side of the road. The old motor and the frame all the rest of the cloth burnt off. The old man never messed with it, let it sit right there. Now Betty and Marry Anna they are living. They knew all about it. And Hugo [walker’s brother] is living. He knew all about it. Old Foster, the slave, too.

Rowe Geneology

Walker and Nathaniel, here is some info on your grandfathers from Agnes Rowe written in 1944. We can say that your grandfathers fought in both the Revolutionary and Civil Wars. In Richmond you can look up John William Rowe's war history. His two brother's were killed in the war and he surrendered. My father and I went to Moors Creek Battleground in North Carolina and looked up where James Rowe participated in that Revolutionary war battle. It is near Wilmington, North Carolina if you want to visit. Our ancestors came from England we can be fairly sure except no one has been able to make the connection from North Carolina back to England but Rowe is definitely an English name.

James Rowe

Christopher Rowe’s father (my grandfather) was James Rowe, who volunteered at the age of sixteen to fight in the War of the Revolution, and because of his being tall and well-developed was pleasantly referred to by his comrades as the “over-grown gosling”. Don’t know what battles he may have been engaged other than Moore’s Creek in our home County of Pender, N. Carolina. I remember that he played fife in the army.

James Rowe’s second wife, father’s [Christopher Howard Rowe] mother, was Annie Howard, of Onslow County, North Carolina, and a member of the Primitive Baptist Church. Born to them were three children: Polly, James, and Christopher, my father. They lived in Onslow County, N. Carolina, at or near Richlands, on the large plantation of “Kit” Dudley, a wealthy slaveholder, whose son, Edward was once Governor of N. Carolina. I am not sure, but think that grandfather, James Rowe, was probably an overseer of the slaves.

Christopher Howard Rowe

He was of the Universalist faith, and I think he would have affiliated with that church, if thee had been one near him. He made no pretensions to being pious, in the commonly accepted meaning of the term, but believed in “Golden Rule” religion.

He was a man of talent, but back in his time opportunities for literary development were few. I think I heard him say that he learned the multiplication tables by having them written on a piece of cardboard, with a string out through it, to hang over his plow-handle, ready to refer to when puzzled.

He had a few excellent books, and made them a study. He almost wore out a dictionary, and I believe he knew the meaning and application of more words that anyone I ever knew, not to be a scholar. He was poetically turned, though not a poet, and was humorously inclined. He could always draw a crowd. He was sympathetic, very fond of children, and we loved him dearly.

James Alexander Rowe

John W. Rowe was widely known as a civil engineer and surveyor, having for many years been busily employed in surveying plantations large and small for the settlement of many estates and the correcting of land titles about which he was long considered a leading authority.

Suffice is to state that on the outbreak of our Civil War in 1861, John Rowe promptly enlisted for services when North Carolina decided to cast its lot with the Secession Movement. He enlisted June 10. 1861 returning home June 26, 1865, after being engaged in the intervening years in numerous battles including the famous battle of Gettysburg as a member of Company K, Third N.C. infantry. He was likewise present when Stonewall Jackson met his tragic death. After one of the battles in which his regiment was engaged, John Rowe, together with some of his comrades was captured and sent to a military prison in New York State where they were detained for no less than eighteen months.

Though still quite a young man at the close of the war, John Rowe after returning home soon established himself in his community as a civil engineer and surveyor, being assisted in his studies of preparation by his only brother.

In the course of years, by steady plodding and persistent effort, the property he had inherited from his father gradually expanded and grew until he found himself in possession of a plantation containing between 3,000 and 4,000 acres of farm and timber land.

Everything and More A Compact History of Infinity

2010-01-13T10:07:00.000-08:00

Everything and More

By David Foster Wallace

David Foster Wallace (DFW) writes in “Everything and More A Compact History of Infinity” that the mathematician Cantor peered at the problem of infinity until it drove him mad. Well, sort of. He explains that would be the romanticized view of what drove Cantor insane while explaining that in actual fact Cantor suffered from bipolar disorder. As the cliché reads there is a fine line between genius and madness. Certainly Nietzsche, to give another example of a deep thinker, went insane although modern doctors suggest that he had syphilis. And DFW himself in 2009 after having written this quite complex book on mathematics and his well-received novels and short stories wrapped a noose around his neck and hung himself from the patio of his house. This makes one wonder whether it is good for the mental health to spend too much time thinking about math, metaphysics, and philosophy. Be careful or you could upend the emotions.

I write that this book on mathematics is “complex” because I found it complicated to read even though I have a bachelors of science degree in math having earned a solid C for my efforts. What I learned in college is that there is a limit to one’s intelligence and that certain people will be better able hold aloft multiple notions at once which together comprise one idea and then be able to distill those into one elegant proof. But this is no reason to avoid the complex. One’s ability with math can increase with practice and one’s ability to think deeply will improve as well. Thus enlightened by DFW’s book and a little practice one can appreciate the subtle and complex and the beauty of the ideas found by the geniuses of the past.

Wallace was not a professional mathematician but an autodidact who read and the distilled the famous works of modern and ancient mathematics and compiled his findings of one aspect of math, the number ∞, into this book. We should be grateful that he has produced this anthology of sorts because it would probably take months if not years to do the same yourself if you can understand, for example, Aristotle’s “Physics”, Euclid’s “Elements”, and more complex works of the past few hundred years. Wallace says you don’t need much mathematical training to understand his book but no doubt it would help even while he provides you a glossary to help you along.

He starts by explaining how the Greek Pythagoreans (which he calls the DBP or “Divine Brotherhood of Pythagoras”) were stymied by the discovery that not all numbers could be expressed as a ratio of two numbers. The Greeks following the principles of Euclid translated all mathematical ideas to geometry and were thus were able to map out on paper the area of a triangle and more. But what were they to do when the Pythagorean Theorem showed that the hypotenuse of a right triangle whose opposite and adjacent sides had length 1 was equal to √2 which cannot be expressed as a rational number? (Recall from highschool the a^2 + b^2 = c^2 .) Aristotle looked at the decimal expansion of √2 and other irrational numbers dismissing as only “potentially” possible that this series of digits 1.421…. could run on forever, i.e. doubting that there was such a notion as an infinity. Wallace walks you through all these ideas.

Aristotle and others had contemplated such problems as Zeno’s paradox in the years BC without finding any solution. To wit, Zeno had said if you are standing n feet from a wall and then proceed half the distance to the wall, stop, then walk half of the remaining distance, stop, then do it again, you would never reach the wall as there would always be another ½ of the remaining distance to cover. That is, if the distance to the wall is n then the series 1/2 n, 1/(2 ) (1/2)n,… and so forth that expression would never sum to 1. The same type of thinking suggested that an arrow in flight never had any forward motion at any single instant of time t. Even Leibneitz and Newton had not solved these problems and written down solid proofs of ideas of real and irrational numbers and the limit of a function when they invented the calculus showing that the function lim(h→0)(f(x+h)- f(x))/h ) was the derivative of the function or the tangent to the curve thus making possible modern engineering and physics. These two 16th century mathematicians simultaneously suggested that when x grows large the ratio 1/x goes to zero but then x is close but not equal to zero they could dismiss it as nothing without encountering the nonsensical 1/0. Wallace found this contradictory and says that notion is not properly explained in freshman college math.

Mathematicians would have to wait until the 18th century for Cantor and Dedekind to explain away some of the paradoxes. Namely they learned how to deal with infinite sets and concluded that the general principles of equality and so forth do not apply when dealing with sets that are not infinite. Dedekind cleverly showed that he could cut the number line in half such that there is a maximum rational number in one section and a minimum in the other. Thus in between the two there are the numbers which are not rational, i.e. the irrational numbers. What Cantor did was to close the gaps in Dedkinds thinking with solid proofs and to explain that two infinite sets could be different. Wallace quotes Betrand Russell as saying that the ordinary mortal would have problems with these ideas of infinity when they can cannot be counted or contemplated in a manner which is easy to see. You think?

After reading this book I dove back into my college calculus book to explore some of the fascinating ideas that Wallace explained that I had either not studied in college or not understood the first time around. (Plus I needed to catch up with my son so I could help him with his AP Calculus that he studies in high school.) For example Dedkind showed that any continuous function can be expressed as a infinite series. This leads to such elegant looking constructs as, for example, sin x = x - x^3/3! + x^5/5!+ x^7/7! + … and π = 4/1 - 4/3 + 4/5 - 4/7 + 4/9 - 4/11 …That all these common expressions can be expressed as an infinite series of numbers and that, moreover, thanks to Cantor and Dedkind these series can be solved is fascinating to behold. Way cool.

A History of Virginia Wines from Grapes to Glass

2009-08-20T10:37:00.000-07:00

A History of Virginia Wines: From Grapes to Glass
ISBN: 978-1-59629-701-2 • Paperback • September 2009
By Walker Elliott Rowe

“A History of Virginia Wines: From Grapes to Glass” is a groundbreaking narrative of the burgeoning Virginia wine industry from an insider's point of view. Grape grower and winery investor Walker Elliott Rowe takes readers on a tour of some of the best vineyards and wineries in the state, and explores the minds of well-known winemakers like Jim Law, Stephen Barnard and grape grower Chris Hill. In addition, Mr. Rowe, who is fluent in Spanish, interviews Hispanic migrant workers who toil daily in Virginia’s vineyards. Mr. Rowe has gathered old photos and stitched together an account of the founding of the Virginia wine industry by researching and speaking directly with the founders of the trade, including an amusing look of the early days at Barboursville Vineyards. Through existing documents and new research, he uncovers proof that Charles Carter successfully planted European vines grapes at his Cleve Plantation in King George County ahead of Thomas Jefferson's failed efforts to do the same at Monticello. The book also includes 16 pages of brilliant color photographs by noted photographer Jonathan Timmes.”

Walker Elliott Rowe lives in Rappahannock County, where he farms goats and wine grapes. This is Mr. Rowe's third book on wine. To contact the author, visit his blog on local agriculture at rosewoodhillfarm.com.

If you would like to schedule an interview with the author, please contact Katie Parry at 843.577.5971, ext
113 or katie.parry@historypress.net
To place an order, please visit www.historypress.net, or call The History Press (866) 457-5971, or email salesteam@historypress.net.

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The Health Care Debate

2009-08-14T06:22:00.001-07:00

So I am flying home from Phoenix on Southwest airlines reading Christopher Buckley´s memoir of his father and mother and talking with the passengers seated beside me. I´ve been away from home three long weeks and am anxious to see my farm and kids. To my left is Beth Purdy M.D., an orthopedic surgeon, and her traveling companion named Kit. He is a hospital administrator and CEO of the Arizona Medical Association. She is the president of the Arizona Medical Association.

The doctor and administrator are off to Capitol Hill today to lobby for or against or just be a part of the health care bill discussion taking shape on Capitol Hill. We have had a spirited discussion. I told them I am paying COBRA coverage having been laid off from one employer and taken a contracting job without benefits. President Obama´s recovery plan is paying 65% of my premium. I will stick with that and await wait comes from the congress to see what insurance I might adopt next.

The doctor and the administrator listen to what I tell them and I ask them about the most pressing issues before the doctors lobby. What about the need for more primary health care physicians? They tell me about tort reform. What will you do when the president says he will not support a cap on malpractice lawsuit payments? The administrator tells me of a boy in Phoenix who climbed a cortina wire fence to vandalize an electric plant, lost his balance, sued, and the boy and his attorney pocketed thousands. This clearly flies in the face of common sense, but to an attorney does not matter. I ask, “Did you read DeTocqueville”? He says America´s attorneys are our aristocracy making the laws and passing judgment on the rest of us, complicating life with a patchwork of legislation that even the simple complex. Please face them down I implore as Edward R. Murrow did with Senator McArthy and let the air from their sails.

What about the AMA I ask who have, some say, erected barriers to entry by limiting enrollments in medical schools and not allowed immigrant doctors to practice medicine here? Beth says that state medical boards do allow doctors to come from Guadalajara and Grendada—recall Reagan´s Caribbean war where medical students who could not gain entrée to school in the USA were rescued from the clutches of the Cubans by US Marines. Thinking of the many Asian doctors I tell them that my own profession, IT, is overrun with Indian immigrants who are working here often on the cheap in violation of the spirit of the law by using loopholes that undercuts the American who cannot find work.

Reading policy papers from the Journal of American Medicine and The Heritage Foundation it is clear which point of view has the ear of these medical professionals. The administrator autographs my copy of The Wall Street Journal with the admonition “Don´t Get Sick”. I would say their position on this debate is preordained.

I myself have come full circle breaking with my conservative friends on this issue. When my COBRA runs out I plan to sign up for the government sponsored health insurance option assuming one makes it through the legislature. As I near 50 years of age I am preparing for old age and retirement, a bit prematurely say my kids, having married a girl 14 years my junior and thinking about medical costs. It would be better to spread the the liability and cost among all 330 million of us Americans than have only the gainfully employed burden the bill. Would it not? And ask for the specialization of medicine where one specialist hands off one patient to another in an endless string of referrals I am looking simply for a beating medical heart to attend to my pains, refill my lexapro, and hand me an aspirin.

A History of Virginia Wines: From Grapes to Glass

2009-06-09T09:35:00.000-07:00

A History of Virginia Wines: From Grapes to Glass
ISBN: 978-1-59629-701-2 • Paperback • Summer 2009
By Walker Elliott Rowe

Vaclav Havel’s “Disturbing the Peace”

2008-04-23T12:49:00.000-07:00

Whenever I need a moral boost I go back and reread Vaclav Havel’s “Disturbing the Peace”. This book is a series of essays by the dissident Vaclav Havel that were smuggled out of communist Czechoslovakia and translated by a Havel friend in the West. Vaclav Havel was a playwright who became a Czech dissident who became leader of the Velvet revolution (which ousted the communists) and who finally became president of the republic.

When Vaclav Havel stood next to President Bill Clinton in 1999 the moral contrast could not have been greater. Here was our own president—someone lacking any moral authority whatsoever—standing next to a man who had been repeatedly jailed for challenging the communist government and triumphing the cause of the people who suffer under totalitarianism. Not only was Havel a politician he was a playwright—i.e. someone with the keen eye of the novelist coupled with the political acumen of a statesman. Oh that our politicians would so well-rounded.

Haclav Havel was the foremost dissident under the communist regime. He openly challenged the ruling government with such essays as “Power to the Powerless” and “The Soul of Main under Communism”. (Actually I forgot the name of the latter essay. I think “The Soul of Man under Communism” is an essay written by Oscar Wilde. But Havel did address this theme in “Disturbing the Peace” and in essays he forwarded to the communist rulers.) Havel spent much time in jail. He was further persecuted because his family had been wealthy under capitalism. Such people were usually given menial jobs as punishment for belonging to the bourgeoisie. He challenged the regime when they threatened the rock-n-roll band The Plastik People. That was when he became friends with the American Rock Star Jethro Tull. As president he requested that Jethro Tull become Ambassador. That was derailed by the American Secretary of State James Baker under George Bush. What a prude—I wonder if Baker bothered to read recent Czech history before his knee jerk reaction. Actually I read somewhere that he did this out of retribution. Vaclav Havel eulogized Jethro Tull in The New Yorker magazine a few years ago.

One of the most exciting parts of the book is where Havel describes the dissident community’s efforts to publish a Havel essay advocating that the Czech government adhere to the terms of the Charter 77 human rights accord to which they were a signatory. The story is spine tingling thriller complete with car chases and obscure drop points. It reads like a John le Carre novel except it is real.

Havel’s dissident community operated out of the Praque theater the Magic Lantern. The artists and writers who gathered there were part of the cultural and intellectual community of which Havel was a leader. Some wrote for the government-sanctioned media. Other’s signed Havel’s Charter 77 essay and were consequently tossed out of their jobs and otherwise persecuted.

I have seen two of Havel’s plays performed in Praque. Both were quite good. In ore a rebellious intellectual, obviously Vaclac Havel himself, is forced to work in a brewery because of his recalcitrance. Obviously this well-read person is better suited to working as a editor, writer, or maybe even typing in an ordinary office.

One of Havel’s greatest essays in “The Soul of Man under Socialism” (again apologies for the incorrect title). It’s theme is that while the Czech’s might have not been brutalized like the Soviets under Stalin the Czech citizens lived under a constant psychological burden that slowly wore people down. There was that ever present fear that made people follow the regimen of flying the flag on the proper communist holidays. People’s spirits become dull as they are worn down by the monotony and arbsudity of it all.

Recently Vaclac Havel has been attacked in the press for his marriage to a young beautiful actress. She commited the ultimate Czech faux pas by leaving the family pet at home when they flew to the Canary Islands. This is in a nation of dog lovers. His wife has proven fertile fodder for the gossipy Czech press. The romantic liasions of an aging, great man who is living on one lung do nothing to diminish him in my eyes.

Havel’s first wife died a few years ago. She had helped him with his dissident activities. Their letters during the years he was in jail are published in the book “Letters to Olga”. These are deliberately written so that are difficult to understand. Consequently, Havel’s jailors and censors were too dimwitted to understand the subtle references to dissident activities and follow other secret messages in these notes. This is how Havel kept aprised of the situation outside during his time in jail. No doubt this secret communications with the outside world also gave him a spiritual comfort.

After you read “Disturbing to Peace” I also recommend “The Magic Lantern” by Timothy Garton Ash. This is a first hand account of the fall of the communism as the democratic revolution rolled across Czechoslovakia, East German, Hungary, and Romania. Garton Ash was privy to the inner circle of people who plotted and executed these bloodless coups. (Bloodless everywhere except, of course, in Romania.)

Girl with a Pearl Earring

2008-04-23T12:46:00.000-07:00

This novel is reminiscent of the equally popular “Memoirs of a Geisha”. The theme of both books is that beautiful women, especially of an earlier age, are not in control of their destiny with regards to men. Henry James said exactly that in “Portrait of a Lady”.

In the case of “The Girl with the Pearl Earring”, the maid Griet, her beauty attracts the interest of powerful men—in this case the painter Vermeer and his patron. Tracy Chevalier, the author, gives us clues that their interest is dangerous and could lead to tragedy. When a gentleman fondles a maid in 1665 the maid cannot offer much resistance owing to her low status in life. More likely than not, as with Fantine in “Les Miserables”, it is the maiden who is cast into trouble.

The beauty of this novel, for a male reader like myself, is that is draws you into the perilous existence inhabited by young women. Prior to this I always thought young women like Griet were just glittering beauties sailing easily through life on their good looks. It’s kind of like reading the diary of a teenage girl—highly guarded and something to which one would not normally be privvy.

This novel is erotic too, but in a 17th century demure sort of way. Griet, we learn, is loath to let her full head of hair be seen by any man and she would never been seen with her lips held open. When she is intruded upon with her long mane of hair freely unfurled the reader’s heart flutters and it must have for the young girl. And when she moistens her lips and holds them open at the request of the portrait painter Vermeer we are absolutely aghast and tingling with erotic excitement.

The other theme of this novel is the brutality of being poor and female in earlier ages. This is much like “Memoirs of a Geisha” where the two sisters are pushed into the business of entertaining men by their impoverished family. Griet is pushed into working as a maid because her family is poor as well. The women who work as maids of geishas have a brutal pecking order and are quite cruel to one another. An unattractive woman in the Geisha household is call “Pumpkin” because that is the shape of her head. Griet undergoes similar cruelty by Vermeer’s children and the other maids in the large house.

For me, the most thrilling parts of the novel are where the young maid Griet is allowed to go into Vermeer’s studio. This creates much jealously in the Vermeer household--not even the painter’s wife is allowed into the room where the master creates his masterpieces. This is what is meant by the book jacket blurb that she is “drawn into an artistic wakening”. Griet learns the subtlety of light, how to grind various potions from the apothecary into vivid blues and reds, and the way a painting is made. It is assembled not by drawing an initial outline as one would imagine. Rather layer upon layer of color blotches are laid down until the final form takes place.

Wine Communism and Volcanoes Introduction

2008-04-23T12:20:00.000-07:00

Isabelle Allende writes in her memoirs that one Chilean writer wondered if Chile could be sold and traded for something “closer to Paris”.

The writer no doubt wanted to be closer to the glittering salons of the 13th arrondissement than the isolation, which is Chile. Surrounded by the Atacama Desert to the North, the Polar Regions to the South, the towering Andes to the east, and the freezing Pacific Ocean to the west, this narrow ribbon of volcanoes, geysers, and towering mountains is a geographical oddity unlike no other. From the point of view of the North American, Chile is upside down. Winter is in June, July, and August. The Southern Cross constellation illuminates the night sky.

The entire region north of Valparaiso down to Concepción in the South appears carpeted with vineyards, orchards, and produce ranging from onions to oranges. The Chilean farmer is perhaps frustrated that it is not possible to plant each and every inch of ground here—so much space is taken up by all those annoying mountains that run from the coast to the center of the country, lay down for a few dozen miles, then resume their march to the border with Argentina.

With irrigation provided by rivers swollen with melting snow and a Mediterranean climate, Chile is an agricultural paradise. The weather is bone dry here which means roses and grapes are free of those molds and rots that are associated with humidity and rains. Cold breezes at night descend from the Andes mountain onto the ¼ million acres of grapes planted here. This cool air causes grapes to retain rather than cast off their acidity—acid is an important component of taste. In the daytime in Chile it is hot, but not so hot that the grapes turn to raisins and lose their flavor.

Chile might be the marketing and winemaking machine to displace the Australians who currently enjoy ½ of grocery store sales in the USA with their cheap wines with cute animals plastered on the label. The whole country of Chile is geared towards exports—drinking powdered orange drink at the winery where I worked for three months I wonders whether the Chileans keep anything for themselves. The country enjoys low costs that cannot be matched by Australian and European growers. California grape growers and winemakers are of course saddled with even higher prices for grapes, land, and labor plus heavy-handed local regulation. The take away message from Chile is you can buy excellent Chilean wine for a low price. But not all Chilean wines are excellent--like Italy, the USA, and Australia there are foul-tasting, sour wines here as well sold to unwitting consumers who perhaps cannot tell the difference.

Beyond grapes and geography, the politics of Chile make it a unique place. Chile is perhaps the only country in the world to have elected a Communist government. President Allende ruled for a few years in the early 1970’s until he was killed in a military coup aided in part by the United States. His successor, General Agusto Pinochet, left a brutal legacy that resonates today.

Today Chile is the most stable, least corrupt, and perhaps most prosperous country in Latin America. Some would say this is because of Pinochet and his policies. These Pinochet apologists would say, “Sure Pinochet killed 3,000 pointy headed intellectuals but look at the prosperity he foisted upon the nation.” Pinochet was such a believer in laissez faire capitalism that he even privatized the national social security pension system.

But the sentiment for Socialism runs strong in Chile. In the 1960s, President Eduardo Frei nationalized a source of great wealth, the copper industry by seizing it from American interests. The Marxist Allende continued this nationalization program seizing banks and taking land from the wealthy. Socialists outnumber conservatives here. In spite of heavy spending by the moneyed interests, in the presidential election of 2006 a Socialist woman, Michelle Bachelet, followed Ricardo Largos, the Socialist incumbent into office.

When Salvador Allende came to power the rich women of the wealthy barrio of Las Condes in Santiago turned out with their kitchenware in a noisy protest of pots and pans saying they would starve to death at the hands of the socialists. The United States at this time was busy fighting the Cold War with the Soviets. For many years the Monroe Doctrine said the USA would not allow a foreign government to gain a toehold in the Americas. President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State, worried at what was happening in Chile, got even more agitated when President Allende invited Fidel Castro to visit Chile. Castro, who is known to be a bit longwinded, stayed in Chile not a few days or a few weeks; for 8 long months he traveled the breath of this narrow country giving speeches to mine workers, students, and anyone who would listen.

To USA decided to act. It is well-documented in various books and declassified papers that the USA began a campaign of destabilization. The CIA funded money to journalists and politicians to upset the status quo. The oligarchs cast their lot with the Americans and persuaded a reluctant Agusto Pinochet to seize power in a military coup. When he came to power vengeance again the communists was swift and brutal. Writers, student activists, and intellectuals were rounded up and tossed into prison, tortured and exiled. Pablo Neruda, the Nobel Prize winning poet, fled over the border into Argentina. Isabelle Allende left with her family leaving behind memories of her uncle, the late president.

Chile is free of military dictatorship today, but the legacy of Pinochet still resonates around the nation. Many of the provincial cities have human rights judges to deal with the 3,000 desparecidos (disappeared persons). And Pinochet—who granted himself lifetime immunity--is finally being brought to justice. The British seized him under a Spanish extradition warrant when he went to England for medical care in 1998. But Home Secretary Jack Straw let him go after a months-long tug of war between Spanish jurisprudence, Scotland Yard, and Chilean supporters of Pinochet. Pinochet often has ducked trial and prison by saying he is too old and sick but today he has been prosecuted for tax evasion, has been placed under house arrest, and even has seen his children brought before judges in Chile on charges of corruption.

This book is a memoir of the three months that I spent working the harvest at VIA Wines in the Maule and Colchagua Valleys in Chile in 2005. Go with me as I take the reader for an inside look at how wine is made in an industrial sized winery. I talk about the people and the process. Beyond VIA Wines I take extended tours of the best wineries of Chile and talk to the most important winemakers there. Listen as the people I meet in Chile talk to me about politics and race; poverty and wealth; Pinochet and Allende. I made a lot of friends there and from them learned about the educational system, how the cell phone and transportation systems work, and the difficulties faced by single mothers. I take the reader into the homes of the poor agriculture workers, on a tour of the Villarica Volcano, and even a visit to one of the legal brothels here.

Wine Communism and Volcanoes Prologo

2008-04-23T12:19:00.000-07:00

Isabel Allende escribe en sus memorias que un escritor chileno se preguntaba si Chile podría ser vendido y cambiado por “algo más cercano a París”.

Sin duda, el escritor querría estar más cerca de los glamorosos salones de “arrondissement” que en el aislamiento que es Chile.

Rodeado por el desierto de Atacama al norte, las regiones polares en el sur, los gigantescos Andes al este y las gélidas aguas del Océano Pacífico al oeste, esta larga cinta de volcanes, géiseres, y monumentales montañas, es una rareza geológica sin igual.
Desde el punto de vista de un norteamericano, Chile es al revés: el invierno es en junio, julio y agosto y la Constelación de la Cruz del Sur ilumina su cielo nocturno.

Toda la región norte de Valparaíso hasta Concepción en el sur, aparece alfombrada de viñedos, orquidearios y productos variados, que van desde cebollas hasta naranjas. Probablemente es frustrante para los granjeros chilenos el no poder plantar algo en cada centímetro cuadrado de esta tierra – esas enojosas montañas que vienen desde la costa al centro del país y se tienden planas por unas cuantas docenas de millas para continuar su marcha hasta el borde con la Argentina, se toman demasiado terreno.

Con irrigación proveniente de ríos que se engrosan con deshielos y un clima mediterráneo, Chile es un paraíso para la agricultura. Su clima es muy seco lo cual significa que rosas y uvas crecen libres de moho y podredumbre, tan asociados con la humedad y las lluvias. Frías brisas de los Andes descienden por la noche sobre las aproximadamente 101.000 hectáreas de uva plantadas aquí. Este aire fresco hace que las uvas retengan su acidez en lugar de perderla – el grado de acidez es un importante componente del sabor. Durante el día, Chile es caliente, pero no tan caliente como para que las uvas se conviertan en pasas y pierdan su sabor.

Puede que Chile no sea una máquina comercializadora y productora de vinos como para desplazar a los australianos, los que actualmente disfrutan de la mitad de las ventas en los supermercados de los Estados Unidos con sus vinos de bajo precio que muestran graciosos animales en sus etiquetas. Todo Chile está encaminado a las exportaciones – me preguntaba si los chilenos retienen algo de su vino mientras tomaba un jugo de naranja en polvo en el lugar mismo donde trabajé por tres meses. Este país ostenta bajos costos, lo cual no puede ser igualado por los agricultores australianos o europeos. Por supuesto, los agricultores y productores de vinos de California, están atados de manos y pies con precios aún más altos por las uvas, tierras y mano de obra, además de fuertes gravámenes locales. El mensaje de los vinos chilenos es: puedes comprar excelentes vinos chilenos por bajos precios. Pero no todos los vinos chilenos son excelentes, como sucede en Italia, los Estados Unidos y Australia, aquí también puede haber vinos amargos y desagradables que son vendidos a consumidores desprevenidos que, posiblemente no se dan cuenta de la diferencia.

Más allá de las uvas y la geografía, la política de Chile lo hace un lugar único. Chile es talvez el único país del mundo que ha elegido a un gobierno comunista. El Presidente Allende gobernó el país por unos pocos años, al inicio del año 1970, hasta que fuera asesinado en un golpe militar en el cual tomó parte los Estados Unidos. Su sucesor, el General Augusto Pinochet dejó un legado tan brutal que resuena hasta el día de hoy.

Hoy en día, Chile es el país más estable, menos corrupto y posiblemente el más prospero de Latinoamérica. Algunos dicen que esto se debe a Pinochet y a su política. Estos defensores de Pinochet dicen: “Claro que Pinochet mató a 3.000 agudos pensadores pero mira la prosperidad que trajo a la nación”. Pinochet era tan fervoroso creyente del capitalismo “laissez faire” que inclusive privatizó el sistema de pensiones del seguro social.

Pero la idea del socialismo corre fuerte en Chile. En 1960, el Presidente Eduardo Frei nacionalizó una fuente de gran riqueza: la industria del cobre, al recuperarla de manos norteamericanas. El marxista Allende continuó este programa de nacionalización al reclamar los bancos y tomar la tierra de los ricos. Los socialistas aquí son más numerosos que los conservadores. A pesar de los abultados gastos por parte de los aristócratas, una mujer socialista, Michelle Bachelet, ganó en las elecciones del 2006, seguida por Ricardo Lagos, el actual titular socialista.

Cuando Salvador Allende subió al poder las mujeres ricas del barrio Las Condes en Santiago, salieron con sus utensilios de cocina en una protesta ruidosa de ollas y sartenes, diciendo que todos morirían de hambre en las manos de los socialistas en un momento en que los Estados Unidos se encontraban ocupados peleando la Guerra Fría con los soviéticos. Por muchos años, la Doctrina Monroe dijo que los Estados Unidos no permitirían que un movimiento extranjero tomara control de Las Americas. El Presidente Richard Nixon y su Secretario de Estado, se preocuparon por lo que estaba sucediendo en Chile y se preocuparon más aún cuando el Presidente Allende invitó a Fidel Castro para que visitara Chile. Como se sabe, Castro, que se permite ciertas libertades, se quedó, no por unos pocos días o pocas semanas, sino durante 1 largo mes durante el cual viajó por el angosto país dando discursos a mineros, estudiantes y a todo el que pudiera escuchar.

Los Estados Unidos decidieron actuar. Está bien documentado en varios libros y archivos desclasificados que los Estados Unidos empezaron una campaña de desestabilización. La CIA dio dinero a periodistas y políticos para que descontrolaran el sistema. Los oligarcas juntaron sus fuerzas con los norteamericanos y persuadieron al no muy convencido Augusto Pinochet de lanzarse a tomar el poder por las armas. Cuando él usurpó el poder, la venganza contra los comunistas fue veloz y brutal. Escritores, activistas estudiantes e intelectuales fueron rodeados y tomados prisioneros, torturados y exiliados. Pablo Neruda, poeta ganador del Premio Nóbel, voló a través de la frontera hasta Argentina. Isabel Allende salió con su familia, dejando atrás los recuerdos de su tío, el último presidente.
Chile está libre de dictaduras militares hoy en día, pero el legado de Pinochet todavía resuena en la nación. Muchas de las ciudades provinciales tienen jueces de derechos humanos para tramitar los casos de 3.000 desaparecidos. Y Pinochet, quien se aseguró a sí mismo inmunidad de por vida, está siendo traído a los tribunales para responder por sus actos finalmente. Los británicos lo agarraron bajo una orden española de extradición cuando fue a Inglaterra para cuidados médicos en 1998, pero el Ministro del Interior, Jack Straw le dejó en libertad después de un mes de guerra entre la jurisprudencia española, la Scotland Yard y los seguidores de Pinochet. El ex – dictador a menudo ha logrado evadir un enjuiciamiento y la prisión aduciendo que está muy viejo y enfermo, pero finalmente ha sido enjuiciado por evasión de impuestos y ha sido puesto bajo arresto domiciliario; incluso ha visto a sus hijos ser inculpados ante jueces chilenos por cargos de corrupción.

Este libro es un recuento de los tres meses que pasé trabajando en la cosecha en VIA Wines en los Valles Maula y Colchagua en Chile en el año 2005. Le invito a venir conmigo mientras llevo a mis lectores a echar un vistazo a la forma cómo se hace el vino en una viña de tamaño industrial. Hablo acerca de la gente y del proceso también. Además de VIA Wines, tomo tours extensos por las mejores viñas de Chile y hablo con los más importantes enólogos del lugar. Escucho a la gente chilena hablarme sobre política y raza; riqueza y pobreza; Pinochet y Allende. Hice muchos amigos allí y de ellos he aprendido acerca del sistema educativo, como funcionan los celulares, el sistema de transportación y sobre las dificultades que enfrentan las madres solas. Llevo a mis lectores a visitar las casas de trabajadores pobres, a un tour al Volcán Villarrica e inclusive a visitar uno de los burdeles que funcionan legalmente aquí.

Ben Yagoda’s "About Town : The New Yorker and The World It Made"

2008-04-22T20:33:00.001-07:00

Since the 1920's The New Yorker magazine has ebbed and flowed in and out of the nation's conscience. On occasion The New Yorker itself is splashed across the front page of major newspapers with stories either by or about the magazine. What other periodical is there whose change in editorship is chronicled with unfleeting attention as was recently the case when Editor Tina Brown was deposed.

The supposed demise of The New Yorker magazine has been chronicled many times and the subject is old hat. It interestingly parallels the decline of our culture brought on by the decline of reading lamented by Alan Bloom, Harold Bloom and other cultural critics. But The New Yorker still survives some 80 years after it was founded by Harold Ross. To appreciate it's place in the American psyche it is worth revisiting it's decades long history as Ben Yagoda has done in "About Town: The New Yorker and The World It Made".

Mr. Yagoda had free reign of the internal papers and correspondence of The New Yorker and willing participation from many of her former writers and editors. His meticulously researched book is replete with facts and anecdotes that makes for a wonderful read. Further he casts a critical eye at the magazine on it's literary merits and offers a well-read analysis of it's fiction in the manner of The New Yorker's own great literary critic Edmund Wilson.

It is difficult today to appreciate the impact that The New Yorker had on American culture in it's heydays of the 1930s through the 1950s. That a humor magazine lacking a table of contents or photographs and whose articles were often without byline could sweep past such stalwarts as "Life" and "The Saturday Evening Post" is prima facie difficult to understand. In recent years the magazine lost it's poignancy and fell apart with spiraling financial losses (which continue today) and a dull demeanor that was famously mocked by recent editor Tina Brown when she criticized the "50,000 word article on sapphires".

Some of us like to read 50,000 word magazine articles and The New Yorker appears to be the only mass circulation forum to find such lengthy works. Some of The New Yorker's long fact pieces-the distinction between "fact" and "fiction" is made clear in The New Yorker with an editor being assigned to head up each department-have been reprinted as famous books. My personal favorite is the spine tingling murder tale "In Cold Blood" related by Truman Capote. More famous is John Hershey's account of the atomic bomb dropped on Japan in "Hirsohima". These articles read with a breathless pace that is steady and lends itself to reading in a single setting. There is neither wasted adjective nor adverb. These were heavily edited by William Shawn and others and retold in the famous New Yorker voice which reads as if many of the works in the magazine had been written by one person. Some writers, such as Thomas Wolfe, have mocked that aspect of the magazine.

Some New Yorker writers did not appreciate such heavy-handed editing. Vladimir Nabokov, author of the novel of illicit love "Lolita", complained to the editor and founder Harold Ross about Katherine White who wanted to alter his fiction. Mrs. White was the patrician beauty and wife of the New Yorker writer E.B. White. She, James Thurber, Harold Ross, and E.B. White set the pace for the magazine in it's early years. White wrote the famous books "Charlotte's Web", "The Elements of Style", and "Stuart Little".

Brendan Gill in his 1975 book "Here at The New Yorker" openly disparages the fact side of the magazine while praising the fiction. This is quite odd and overboard since Gill as a writer of fiction, Talk of the Town reporter, and the magazine's theater critic no doubt would have appreciated such newsworthy, well-written articles as "The Massacre at El Mozote". This chronicled the massacre of hundreds of civilizians in El Salvador by the American-backed government. This article is not ordinary journalism but is literary journalism such as was written by Truman Capote. The article does not relate the facts in newspaper pyramid style fashion with short column inch paragraphs. Rather the prose is written like a novel and makes a more interesting read albeit a much longer one than would fit into the conventional daily press. Another great work of literary journalism described by Ben Yagoda is Lillian Ross's description of the making of the John Huston movie "The Red Badge of Courage". And it is quite amazing that Edmund Wilson, author of the Marxist History "To the Finland Station" and the book of Civil War literature "Patriotic Gore", learned Hebrew so that he could document the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The import of fiction to the New Yorker seems to have waned. Currently issues contain only one fiction piece while other works are relegated to-or perhaps made prominent in--a fiction-dominated version of the magazine which appears every few months. Gone are the days when eager readers poured over each new issue looking for a story by John O'Hara or J.D. Salinger. Not unfallable, The New Yorker has made some obvious gaffes when it turned down short stories by Flanner O'Connor and rejected a work by J.D. Salinger that would eventually become "The Catcher in the Rye".

Harold Ross was the magazine's founder and served as it's editor until 1951. He is by far a more colorful figure than William Shawn and his legacy is greater. Ross was something of a country redneck, sporting a crew cut, who hailed from what at that time was a rural village: Aspen, Colorado. His dislike of Black people is describe by Yagoda. Ross's gift was surrounding himself with talented writers and editors and giving then somewhat free reign to innovate. Yet even he engaged in wholesale editing. Brendan Gill recalls being called to the mat for using the word "indescribable". "Nothing is indescribable" Harold Ross roared.

Home Burial

2008-04-22T20:32:00.001-07:00

William Hodges Juvenal buried his son Julian today in the backyard of his house. Julian had died two days before at St. Judes Hospital after a protracted battle with Leukemia. After two years of chemotherapy and visits in and out of a dozen hospitals the little 11 year old boy finally let go of life and passed away quietly in his sleep.

William Hodges was not a religious man. He and his wife Katherine were bookish intellectuals who had subjected the existence of God to reason and had decided that they there is no God and that religion is a simply a man-made mechanism to keep society from sliding into anarchy. So being non-believers they did not go to a priest when their son died. Rather they held a simple civil service for family and friends at their farm on Long Island. When the guests left William went out into his garden, spent two days digging a hole, then lowered the body of his dead son into the ground and threw dirt over the grave.

Even though she was an atheist, Julian’s mother Katherine had grown despondent about burying her son in her own yard. Something began to stir in her soul—a longing for something spiritual to calm her anguished heart. She had begun to think that perhaps a proper burial with a minister or priest might have been better. As with many people who are confronting death, Katherine even began to think that there might just be some after life so shouldn’t her son go there rather than rot in the back yard.

Wiping away tears from her eyes, Katherine looked up at William as he came into the kitchen after having covered the grave. The way he calmly wiped the mud from his shoes—giving it no more thought than if he had been hoeing his tomatoes—seemed insufficiently reverent to Katherine. It was as if her husband had buried a dead canary or a cat and not his own flesh and blood. Her misery welled up in her eyes again and she began to sob.

“Would you like for me to fix you a Scotch?”, her husband asked. “Sure,” she said, “it will help dull the pain.” Even though he seemed rather nonchalant William was in deep grief as well. Both he and Katherine knew that when you lose a child it is as if a piece has been cut out of you. Where there once was the warmth of a little boy there is now an empty gulf, an ulcer writhing in pain, an oozing sore that would never heal no matter how many years would go by.

Katherine wanted to talk to her husband about their loss. William didn’t want to discuss anything. He preferred to brood over a book and try to reason away his loss by himself. So Katherine called her sister and they talked on the phone for hours.

As the days went by William returned to his study to work on his writing and Katherine returned to her studio to return to her painting. But neither parent could let loose of images of the young Julian at play. William, in particular, thought of how he and Julian would walk hand in hand in the forest of the farm looking for frogs. Julian would get frustrated with his father when he was 4 years old and go hunting for frogs all by himself. That Julian was bold enough to venture alone in the woods made his father proud. It also made him laugh the way the young boy said “it’s not fair” when William said he was too busy to go hunt frogs.

The loss of Julian tore at William’s heart, upended his emotions, and put him into a melancholy state. He tried to focus on his work but thoughts of his dead son cluttered his mind so he could not think clearly. Not all of William’s thoughts of Julian were sad. William reflected warmly on the cute way that William behaved. He laughed to himself when he recalled how Julian would fall down climbing through the brush of the family farm and then blame his fall on his father. He recalled how the boy would lie for hours on his bed talking to himself as all little boys do. “Who are you talking to?” William asked. “Nothing” the boy would answer not understanding the difference between a pronoun and a thing. And then there were the funny faces that Julian made. “Make a funny face for me Julian,” his father implored. Finally there was the way William could change his boy’s emotions from tears to laughter in seconds. If Julian was crying because he dropped his pancakes on the floor or if he had pinched his finger, William would hop around the room backwards on one foot, make funny faces himself and then Julian’s tears would stop instantly--he would then smile that wonderful cherubic child-like smile and burst out laughing. But all these pleasant thoughts dissolved into misery one morning when William walked into the basement and came across the pencil marks he had made on the wall to record the changes in his son’s height. It read “Julian 12/02/1999” and slightly higher up “Julian 10/14/2000”. William broke down and sobbed. He felt slightly ashamed of himself because he thought only women could experience such outward display of sadness. But then again he felt relieved because such outward displays of emotion were the way that one healed oneself.

For Katherine the way she thought of Julian was more, well, motherly. It tended to focus on not what the child did but how the child felt and how the mother felt about the child. Katherine’s her heart ached when she thought of Julian feeding at her breast for the first two years of his life. The life she had brought into the world began it’s first few minutes firmly clamped to its mother and hung tightly there for the first few years. Even as the toddler became a child and the child became a boy he would cling tightly to his mother’s skirts when strangers came to visit or when he was frightened by the dark. Katherine installed a nigh light in the young boys bedroom to keep the frightening dark at bay.

A few months after the home burial Katherine was sleeping in her bed while William read Robert Frost’s poetry while laying beside his wife. He reached up and switched off the lights and then fell fast sleep. Outside a full moon rose and a breeze picked up and the pines swayed in the darkness. From the window of their bedroom you could see the tiny marble headstone that marked the grave of the Juvenal baby.

Suddenly Katherine sat up in the darkness as she heard something or someone crying from the back yard. She listened closely again and thought she heard her dead son crying out “Mommie”. A chill ran across her body and she looked around the room at the moonlight spilling across the bed and the arm chair in the corner. “Wake up William” she prodder her husband. “Get up and look downstairs, I think I heard someone outside.” Groaning, William would not get up. “What? Huh? O.K.” William reached into his drawer and pulled out his pistol. Pulling on his slippers he climbed out of bed .

William heads out to the barn because he sees a shadow passing in the dark. On the way back to the house he stumbles across the grave of his son. With his flashlight he sees tiny footprints in the dirt around the grave. For some reason grass had not grown there.

The mother is not wakened anymore by the sound of Julian crying from the grave. But her mind begins to rethink its atheistic position. Perhaps she could think through the question of God again and either find Him or find spiritual solace. If she found a God then she might find a place for her son in Heaven. If she reaffirmed her atheism then she might at lest find solace from a spiritual awakening if in fact the two notions could coexist.

Katherine then recalls all that is wrong with religion in her mind. It’s a man made device she says and not something created by God. Think of all the wrongs that have been committed by the supposedly pious religious in the name of God. First there was the Insurrection where the Jews were expelled from Spain. Then there was the scandal of Lucretia Borgia, the daughter of the Pope who had an incestuous relationship with her father. The Vatican had been so corrupt for such a long time—selling tickets to heaven, maintaining an army--that Martin Luther grew fed up and started the Protestant faith. But the Protestant zealot John Calvin tossed heretical women into the river at Geneva. Then the Protestant faith splintered into the Anglican Church, the Pentecostal, Baptists, African Methodist Episcopalian, Seventh Day Adventists. All of these religions were just man made devices. There was nothing God like in their founding—only a differing interpretation of the Bible or a man made desire to make legal something with had been frowned upon by another church: divorce, polygamy, drinking.

She decides to reread Dante’s “Inferno”. While Dante’s poem is beautiful it highlights what she says is a flaw with Christianity. In the first circle of Hell Virgil meets Plato and Socrates. They are in a kind of limbo that might be purgatory. They are not subjected to the full wrath of Hell because they lived many years before Jesus appeared on earth and long before the Christian religion began. But what about all the babies and innocent mothers who were also born before Christ? Are they doomed to purgatory simply because of a fluke in the calendar? If God is benevolent why would he be so cruel?

C.S. Lewis’s “Mere Christianity” has more of a positive impact on Katherine. In this book length essay Lewis argues that there is a Law of Nature which all men know by instinct. This law says that there is a universal morality—what one culture agrees is bad, e.g. murder, is agreed by all cultures. So there must be a supreme being who put together this notion and implanted it in the minds of all Earth’s citizens. Lewis does an excellent job of arguing that there must be a God. Further he goes on to say that the Christian faith is the only correct faith. While Katherine is impressed by Lewis’s argument she is not yet converted to Christianity.

Then Katherine reads Cardinal John Newman’s “Apolgia Sua Vita”. She fancies herself a scholar but can barely understand this long boring book written in the 19th century. When it was published in England it supposedly caused many Protestants to switch to the Catholic faith. As we’ve already pointed out Katherine does not think much of the Catholic Church. She does however have great admiration for Pope John Paul II for he faced down the communists in Poland and help to bring about the collapse of the evil Soviet Empire.

Katherine’s belief in religion she often compared to that of Ivan Karamazov in the novel “The Brother’s Karamazov”. Ivan argues that logic would indicate that is no God. Moreover he says if there is no immortality then nothing is immoral. But the author of the novel Fyodor Dostoevsky is a devout Greek Orthodox Christian as was his contemporary Leo Tolstoy. So Dostoevsky’s own beliefs manifest themselves in the character of Father Zosima the elder monk at the monastery and in the way that Ivan is crushed by his atheism. Father Zosima says that you cannot reason your way to religion. Rather you must have faith. Yet another character in the novel, the Devil, who of course believes in God, says “Besides in matters of faith, proof, especially, material proof is pretty useless.”

Katherine puts aside this debate over religion long enough to motor over to the local mall to go shopping. She browses in and out of the Gap—the prices there are too high for a poorly paid artist. Looks in the window at Victoria’s Secret—her skinny frame and slight bosom would find no support there. And then runs into two young men dressed in black pants, white shirts, and ties who are giving out literature and talking to passersby. Katherine recognizes them as Mormon so she takes one of their brochures but politely declines their offer to talk at length. “I promise I’ll read this” she says as she walks away thinking “there is no way I will read this”.

Katherine decides to go to the local Episcopal church that Sunday. She notes how the preachers are always smiling. She recalled that Oscar Wilde said that preachers are always smiling because they repeat the same think over and over as they read from the Book of Common prayer. So they are glib idiots. Katherine looks around the church and sees people from the village that she’s know for years. She recalls how she criticized her own parents. They didn’t believe in God she said; they simply went to church because in the rural area where they lived it was just another social club: a place to meet friends and get invited to parties. When Katherine went to her grandparents Baptist church as a teenager all she could think was how cynical these supposedly pious people were. They smiled meekly at one another and said “God is Great” and “Praise the Lord”. But they fornicated, committed adultery, stole from one another, lied, and behaved just like the rest of us. And the church’s dogma fit neatly into their scheme because God said you can be forgiven for your sins if you just ask. So for the petty thief or the abusive husband, the sanctuary was just one great big revolving door of amnesty. Katherine left church that day feeling that much more down on religion. But still she wouldn’t give up searching for the sake of her own soul and that of her dead child.

Katherine goes to her studio one morning in April to work on her painting. Her work is abstract. She dashes colors onto the canvas with her brush and sees what shat manifests itself. After a week of dabbing blue here, brushing red over there, and spreading yellow in bright swirls she steps back from the painting to look it over carefully. She gasps and drops her coffee to the floor when she can clearly see what appears to be the face of her son Julian. His hands are folded like Raphael’s painting of the praying hands and he is looking up at a church steeple. She then begins to think again of what the Mormons in the mall told her about Joseph Smith’s vision in the forest. Could she be having a religious vision? Could she be slipping into some kind of psychosis? Her emotions were beginning to unnerve her.

Katherine is looking about the den a few says later for something to read when she picks up “The New Yorker” magazine. She reads a scathing indictment of the Mormon Church in advance of the Salt Lake City Winter Olympic games. She feels vindicated in her mistrust of religion when she reads how Brigham Young had 57 wives. Polygamy it seems was not scripture but just a way to sanction the many marriages kept by the church’s founder Joseph Smith. But then Katherine’s schadenfreud turned to interest as she read of the Mormon’s belief in the Baptism for the Dead. The New Yorker explained that through prayer a living Christian could cause the soul of a dead person to go to heaven. Hence the Mormon’s interest in genealogy.

Katherine decided to read further. She went Amazon.com and ordered “The Book of Mormon”. Then she visited the Mormon Church and talked with the elders and they agreed to teach Katherine about the Church of Latter day Saints and help her pray for the soul of her dead child.

In the months thereafter Katherine is busy with her painting and her new-found faith in the Mormonism. She wouldn’t call herself a Mormon yet but she did hold out hope that the Baptism for the Dead could help her reconnect with her son or at least spirit her son off to Heaven. That night she crawls in bed, reaches up and snaps off the light, and falls asleep.

William is sleeping beside her when he abruptly sits straight up in a cold sweat. “Did you here that? I can hear Julian crying out from his grave.” He turns to his wife but she is not there. Her side of the bed has gone cold. Leaping up from his bed he throws open the window and looks in the backyard at his son’s grave which is well lit in the full moon. Across the grave he can see a shadow in the spot where grass refuses to grow. William tosses on his bathrobe and dashes down the stairs, pistol in hand, and runs out to the back yard. At the grave of his son William doesn’t find a trespasser or ghost. Rather Katherine is lying there an afghan wrapped around her shoulders and The Book of Mormon lying at her side. She too had heard Julian crying out so she went out to be with him and comfort him.

Job Interview at the WHO in Alexandria, Egypt

2008-04-22T20:29:00.002-07:00

In 1994, I answered an ad in "Computerworld" magazine looking for a computer programmer working for World Health Organization of the United Nation. The UN--moving at the usual glacial pace of governments the world over--sorted through their pile of résumés and eventually mine popped to the top. So, perhaps six months later someone from the WHO called my voice mail and left a message. I had long since found other work and had forgotten completely that I had applied for work there. So when the voice message asked that I ring them up in Alexandria I thought this meant Alexandria, Virginia. I puzzled over the 5 or 6 digit phone number so tossed it in the trash. I did not know then that the phone call had come from Alexandria, Egypt and not Alexandria, Virginia.

If you've ever read Frank Kafka's "The Trial" or even "The Castle", one of its many themes is that the wheels of government always move foreword if at a somewhat leisurely pace. So the bureaucrats at the WHO let another few weeks go by then they called their Washington, D.C. headquarters and asked if those people there would call me at my Maryland home. Finally I got the message and on Thanksgiving I went to Dulles Airport to pick up an airline ticket which had been paid for in advance in Egyptian Pounds.

I had been working for Andersen Consulting on a computer project in Greensboro, North Carolina. I did not want to tip off my current employer, so it was fortunate that the Egyptians do not celebrate the American Thanksgiving holiday. For on the Thanksgiving holiday I hopped on a plan at Kennedy Airport and flew nine hours to Cairo for an on-site interview at the WHO office in Alexandria. I would go and come back all in 5 days.

When I got on The Air Egypt 747 jumbo jet it was clear I had already left American even though we were still parked in New York. Because women wearing burkas and tchadors crowded into the plane while annoying Arabic music played non-stop. This non-stop music soon causes a non-stop ringing on my head.

I had flown to Europe a few times before so was used to the 6 hour hop across the pond, but as I looked down at the Pyrenees Mountains of Spain I was beginning to grow weary as we had 5 more hours to go. My arms were still aching from the many shots I had gotten to ward off diseases of the third world when I settled back in my seat for the remainder of the trip.

When we arrived over Cairo it was if we were circling a lunar landscape because there was not a bit of green grass in all that desert. The 747 landed and parked far away from any building. There was no gangplank nor jetway connecting the airport to the jet, so we simply climbed down from the airplane on a very tall ladder.

Most people queued up a immigration but I was met by the WHO travel agent who whisked be through security and into a waiting Mercedes. I certain felt like some kind of diplomat at my VIP treament. But this was just another bit of WHO largesse. For the Mercedes, which would have cost maybe $30 in the States, costs over $100,000 in Egypt because the import tax was more than 100%.

I wish that I had had time to do a proper bit of reading before I went to visit there. Fyodor and other travel guides do nothing to give you a proper perspective of a country. You would do better to read what learned men have had to say. For example, if one travels to Italy they should read the travelogues of D.H. Lawrence, Geothe, or Mark Twain. Likewise a traveler to Egypt would do well to dig into Gustave Flaubert's account of his trip.

Leaving the airport, we drove past dusty buildings and zipped down dusty highways cluttered with dusty cars. The highway had stripes painted on them but no one paid any attention. It was each man for himself as the drivers jockeyed with each other for a bit of open road.

It grew dark as we headed to the suburbs. I asked the driver to take me to Giza so I could see the famed pyramids. We turned left and right through the meandering streets which had grown increasingly dark. I had just read a Tom Clancy novel--I have since given up on that grocery store genre of literature in favor of belles lettres--where Clancy's character Jack Ryan had disguised himself as an Arab and infiltrated a neighborhood such as this one. So I was worried that I would be kidnapped or taken away as in a spy novel. But this was in the days before Al Qaeda, the Achille Lauro, or the increased militancy that has since taken root in Egypt. But I was not without my worries.

We pulled into a cul-de-sac and I hoped out and my driver hired a horse and tour guide to take me to the pyramids. A small boy was engaged to lead my horse by its rein. I was worried that I would be robbed as this surreal episode evolved around me, so I hoped on the horse clutching my briefcase in hand. We headed off into the desert night with my Bedouin-looking guides.

I should not have been worried because the trip was pleasant. A cool breeze stirred the night air while the pyramids loomed large in the distance. I could see where the Phoenix's nose has been blasted off by vandals. It is amazing that this--a national and irreplaceable Egyptian treasure-- was not guarded by a fence. One could simply ride up to the pyramids and then go inside.

We went back to the cul-de-sac and piled again into the Mercedes. Cairo is great because all one needs to do to get a beer is pull over the curb and some boy will sell it to you.

We set out on the road to Alexandria. It was quite a far trip and there is only one gas station en route. At that gas station we filled the tank with petrol while some boys played soccer in the parking lot and other boys washed car--not just the windshield but the entire car. I enjoyed my first puff of tobacco from a hooka and tea from a samovar. American pot smokers would call this a bong, but it more subtle and refined. The otherwise harsh back tobacco wafts pleasantly through the water which cools the same. It let one felling mellow and content.

I got to my hotel and a few Swiss but there were no Americans. I went to sleep and in the morning heading over to the World Health Organization headquarters.

One would have to visit the WHO on a job interview to realize how ridiculous it would be to work there. The pay package is generous: free housing and a generous salary. And you would be able to hire a driver, a maid, and a gardener all for pennies on the dollar. Further you could use your international status to import an automobile tax free and then sell it to an Egyptian at treble the price.

But to actually work at the WHO would require me to toss out all I believe regarding work ethics and work quality and settle into bureaucratic malaise. The man who I interviewed was a rude, haughty, condescending Burmese who treated his staff like peasant workers. I also interviewed with Africans whose only qualification for their post seemed to be that they had been royalty in their countries or had otherwise been cronies of the local despot. Most of the people in the computer department were Indian which was an odd forshadowing of the situation that reigns in the states today.

I was not offered the job largely because I knew more about computer software than computer networks and they wanted a network engineer. That would have been easily to assertion without me flying over the ocean but I was grateful for the trip nevertheless.

The one American I interviewed with tried to unnerve me with prying questions that pointed to supposed gaps in my curriculum vitae. I scarcely paid attention to what he said, because our meeting was interrupted by loudspeakers calling the faithful to prayer. I settled back and called downstairs for tea. At the WHO, when you want tea you just pick up the phone and a boy will bring it to you.

The next day I hired a cab for $20 for the full day and rode out to see the sites. The famed library at Alexandria--which had housed the Great Books--had burned some 1,000-plus years ago along with the lighthouse that stood over the harbor. A few important works by Greek philosophers, poets, and playwrights were lost forever. (According to Thomas Cahill, Catholic Monks saved the rest. Read "How the Catholics Saved Civilization".)

We traveled out to King Farouk's palace. He had built this boudoir on the beach so he could fornicate with his mistresses away from the prying eyes of the capitol. Everyone liked the late King and hated the current ruler. (I have since forgotten who that was. It was not the fellow who signed the Camp David Accords and thus paid with his life. Nor was it Nassar who had brought socialism and Soviet alliance to the Egyptian state. Nor was it Murbarak who is the current leader. So it was---the other guy whose name I cannot recall.)

Abandoning my cab I set out of foot. I tried to walk the beach but it was chock-a-block with high ride apartment buildings and not much sand. So I headed into a mosque. I took off my shoes and walked across the many carpets that stitched together comprised the floor. Muslims where bent over in prayer presumably pointing toward Mecca. No one seemed to mind this non-believer entering their midst.

I went to the market to shop and picked out some silk for my wife. I needed to exchange some currency but when I came back to pay for the silk the shop was buttoned up tight. It was 2:00 and the shop would not open again until 5:00.

In hindsight I wished I had bought Egyptian cotton, but instead I bought my wife a silk dress and my son something that looked like a snow suit. It never snows in Egypt so this garment was oddly out of place. I ducked into another shop to buy a scarf for my wife and a young girl modeless it for me at the behest of the shop owner. Egypt is and was more Westernized than the rest of the Middle East. Not all women wore the otherwise obligatory burkas nor tchadors. This girl wore nothing on her hair at all.

I was a bit annoyed that everywhere I went people flocked to me to ask money--I felt like a tourist attraction. The most embarrassing situation happened at a restaurant. I ordered red mullet and my waitress asked if I would buy her a beer. She did not want to share it with me--she just wanted a beer to quaff down by herself. Or maybe she was looking for a date. Anyway I was annoyed and confused all at the same time.

I stepped back out onto the street and was annoyed again by the way Egyptian drivers treat pedestrians. In the civilized west we yield to persons crossing the street. But in Egypt they try to run them over--literally. Cars would actually push up against pedestrians in the slow moving traffic to push them out of the way.

I went by the travel agency and picked up $700 from the WHO simply for traveling there. We went back to Cairo. On the way I bought pomegranates and pomegranate juice. At the airport Saudis were easily picked out because they wore very white garments. The Egyptians generally did not like the Saudis who generally traveled to Egypt to do what was not legal in their own countries.

Finally, I needed to call someone from Andersen Consulting who wanted to talk with me about working on their computer project in Denver. So I sought out a telephone. I found a room where a man wound up a crank telephone. He pointed me to a private booth and then connected my call. I did not tell the person I talked with in Denver where I was calling from because, as I said, this trip was made in secret. It was surreal to be phoning the states from this odd and ancient place.

Blaise Pascal

2008-04-22T20:29:00.001-07:00

A mathematician, religious zealot, and an eccentric, Blaise Pascal made contributions to mathematics at an early age when most boys' minds wander aimlessly. His laborious efforts were well appreciated by mathematicians who followed him. His theories formed the basis for modern probability and contributed significantly to the field of geometry.

Pascal was born in France in 1623. Throughout his life he was plagued by ill health and died at the early age of thirty-nine. Pascal suffered not only physically, he also tormented himself emotionally by leading a life of sexual repression and religious morbidity. In a series of letters, "Pensees", Pascal admitted his lusts for women. His off sexual behavior is well-documented.

Pascal studied incessantly. At the time he was sixteen, he proved one of the most beautiful theorems of geometry the result of which became known as the "mystic hexagram". He also invented a machine for calculating operations on numbers, the first of its kind.

The idea of a calculator came to Pascal and a means of helping his father perform tedious tax accounting. Pascal's father was the tax collector for the township of Rouen.

In 1642, news of Pascal's attempts spread through Rouen. A watchmaker had the insight to build a machine of his own. Blaise was infuriated and called the machine a fraud. His distressed father appealed to his friend and supervisor, Chancellor Seiguier. The Chancellor inspected Pascal's machine and responded with an exclusive privilege to Pascal to manufacture adding machines.

Blaise's calculated was a polished brass box, about fourteen by five by three inches. It was compact enough to carry. On the top was a row of eight movable dials. The right-hand dial represented deniers, the next dial represented sous, and the remainder were for livres, of modern francs. The machines could be used equally well for pence, shilling, and pounds.

The machine could add, subtract, multiply, and divide. Multiplication and division were somewhat difficult. These two operations were made possible if one considered multiplication as a form of addition and division a form of subtraction. For example, to multiply 1234 by 567 one would register 1234 seven times beginning with the dial on the right. The next dial would be used to register 1234 six times. Finally, the next dial would register 1234 five times. Pull the handle and the sum would appear. Division would be done is exactly the reverse order.

Blaise Pascal used the works of his predecessors, suggestions from peers, and correspondence with Rene Descartes and Pierre de Fermat to formulate theories about triangles, conic sections, cycloids, and other devices. With Fermat, Pascal founded the mathematical theory of probability. Chevalier De Mere, a professional gambler, initially presented the problem to Pascal. Mere was seeking an edge in betting on the outcome of dice and cards. The result was combinatorial analysis, numerous probability corollaries, and the Pascal triangle--all of which represent an ordered procedure for assigning numerical values to chance.

In 1654, Pascal sought out a friend of his father, Pierre de Fermat. He presented Fermat with the problem that Chevalier de Mere has posed to him. The problem appears in a book, The Mathematical Career of Pierre de Fermat, by Michael Sean Mahoney. Mahoney writes;

Suppose a player has wagered to cast a given number, say six, with a single die in eight throws, and supposed that after three unsuccessful throws, the game is interrupted. How are the stakes to be divided.

Fermat deduced that the probability of any success would remain constant for each of the eight throws. He further decided that the outcome of each throw is in no way dependant on the previous throws. These two assumptions were suggested to Pascal by Jacques Bernoulli, of the famed Bernoulli family. Bernoulli worked on Pascal's suggestions and derived the famous theory that all events will tend to occur with a relative frequency proportional to their objective possibilities, given the above assumptions. Bernoulli's theorem is known to modern mathematicians as Bernoulli trials. The central result for Bernoulli trials is given by Goodman and Rati in Finite Mathematics:

A sequence of Bernoulli trials is a sequence of independent repeated trials under identical conditions in which on each trial there are only two possible outcomes: S (success) and F (failure.) The probability of exactly k successes in a sequence of n Bernoulli trials with P(S)=p is denoted by b(k,n,p) and is given by: b(k,n,p)=C(n,k)pkqn-k (with p-probability of success and q-probability of failure.).

One of Pascal's most famous and useful works was the "Treatise of the Arithmetic Triangle". The triangle has the following appearance:

1
1 1
1 2 1
1 3 3 1
1 4 6 4 1
1 5 10 10 5 1
1 6 15 20 15 6 1

The border of the triangle is formed with 1's. Each number inside the triangle is the sum of the two numbers which appear in the live above to the right and to the left of the number. The triangle represents the expansion of (x + y)n. For example, the bottom line of the triangle is the coefficients of (x + y)6 = x6 + 6x5y + 15x4y2 + 20x3y3 + 15x2y4 + 6xy5 + y6. Pascal and Fermat decided they could predict the expansion of a binomial. The coefficient of any xy term was found to be the combination of n things taken k at a time. Modern mathematicians recognize this formula as a combination:

C(N,K) = n! .

k! (n-k)!

Much more can be said about the correspondence between Pascal and Fermat. Their letters outlined the basic principles of probability and combinatorial analysis. Pascal agreed entirely with Fermat that the chance of success in any situation is the ration between the number of favorable outcomes and the number of all possible outcomes (p/n). Pascal's investigation of the binomial expansion laid the groundwork for the most basic principles. Fermat's contribution seems to have been calculating the mathematics that Pascal provided. As it was, there was much ground left to cover. Bernoulli and others went on to develop the tools that probability would require.

Pascal's father was amazed by the ease with which his son could absorb the most complex literature. To him mathematics was taboo and his son was told to avoid it. Like any child would, Pascal was intrigued more by his father's negative response. Bell, in Men of Mathematics, writes, "One day when he was about twelve Pascal demanded to know what geometry was. His father gave him a clear description. This set Pascal off like a hare after his true vocation."

Pascal's works in geometry can be described as projective or descriptive geometry. In his "Essai pour les Coniques", he made almost four hundred propositions on conic sections. These are parabolas, hyperbolas, and ellipses. They are important in the fields on mathematics, engineering, architecture, space travel, and most exact sciences. The full essay was never published but it was read by Liebnitz and other scholars of the time.

In 1658, Pascal meditated on the problem of the cycloid. A cycloid can be imagined to be the result of a picture drawn from affixing a pencil on the circumference of a revolving circle. The problem was calculating internal areas of the cycloid. After having found a method he published an offer to the scholars of Europe in the papers. His offer was a reward of sixty pistoles, or six hundred francs, to anyone who could solve this problem of area. If no answer was presented within the time limit, Pascal would publish his own. The contest ended under tainted circumstances, but nevertheless Pascal's contribution was made.

Pascal's theorem in itself is exemplary of what is meant by projective or descriptive geometry. There are no quanities in Pascal's geometry, only methods of devising those quanities.

Pascal did not make mathematics his undertaking throughout his entire life. He was also known as a noted physicist, philosopher, and religious author. His achievements in mathematics come from three distinct periods. In 1640 through 1648, he was occupied with the geometry of conic sections. In 1654, he was business with the theory of numbers and similar subjects. In 1658, he was involved with the problems of the cycloid.

E.T. Bell, in Men of Mathematics, writes:

On of the mathematical side, Pascal is perhaps the greatest might-have-been in history. He had the misfortune to proceed Newton by only a few years and to be a contemporary of Descartes and Fermat, both more stable men than himself. His most novel work, the creation of the mathematical theory of probability, was shared by Fermat, who could have easily done it alone. In geometry, for which he is famous as sort of an infant prodigy, the creative idea was supplied by a man--Desargues--of much lesser celebrity.

In sum, much can be written about Pascal's contributions to the various fields of mathematics. His greatest achievements were in the fields of geometry and probability. Blaise Pascal was not a well-adjusted man. He suffered through fits of insomnia and delirium as he made various discoveries. He was tormented by near insanity throughout his life. His life and his works are of historical importance and modern significance.

Bibliography

E.T. Bell, Men of Mathematics (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1937).

Morris Bishop, Pascal, The Life of Genius. (New York: Reynal and Hitchcock, 1936).

Michael Sean Mahoney, The Mathematical Career of Pierre de Fermat (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973).

A.W. Goodman, J.W. Ratti Finite Mathematics with Applications (New York: MacMillan Publishing Co., Inc., London: Collier MacMillan Publishers, 1979).

Oil and Gas Exploration off the Carolina Coast

2008-04-22T20:28:00.001-07:00

WASHINGTON. 27 February 1991. President Bush's National Energy Strategy calls for increased exploration for oil and natural gas in certain areas of the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) including the coast of South Carolina.

The National Energy Strategy, a 2l4-page Department of Energy document outlining energy policy for the next five years, claims the OCS, the ocean floor from the coast to the 200-mile limit may contain as much as 26 percent of undiscovered U.S. oil resources.

Large portions of the OCS are currently protected from exploration by a presidential order that will expire in the year 2000. Protected areas include much of California, the Alaskan North Aleutian Basin, portions of the mid-Atlantic, and some parts of the eastern Gulf of Mexico.

On February 21, the Department of the Interior released a draft copy of a 5-year plan outlining the department's strategy for the sale of offshore leases for the years 1992 to 1997. The plan proposes to open thousands of square miles of the OCS to oil and gas exploration.

The Department of the Interior plans two lease sales off the South Carolina coast: one in 1994 and one in 1997. The areas under consideration include roughly 2,000 square miles running from 140 to 180 miles offshore.

In August of 1990, the Senate passed House resolution number 1465, the Oil Pollution Act of 1990. An amendment to this legislation, sponsored by Congressman Walter Jones D-NC, is aimed at delaying Mobil Oil from drilling exploratory wells off the Outer Banks of North Carolina. The law prohibits oil and gas drilling off the coast of North Carolina until October 1, 1991.

Mobil Exploration and Producing U.S. Inc., based in New Orleans, plans to drill an exploratory well 36 miles off the Outer Banks due east of Dare County in 3,100 feet of water. Mobil estimates that 5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas might be found.

Any efforts to explore for oil or natural gas off the South Carolina coast could depend on the fate of Mobil Oil's plans.

Mobil is currently battling with North Carolina state officials, including Governor Jim Martin, who objects to offshore drilling. Governor Martin asked President Bush--.without success--to include North Carolina in the 10-year drilling moratorium.

Environmental groups, including Greenpeace and the Sierra Club, have objected to Mobil's plans because of the chance of an oil spill. Mobil Project Manager James C. Martin said, "The risk of an oil spill from this type of operation is very low." The Department of the Interior carries this statement further saying there is no risk at all associated with drilling for natural gas."

Exploratory wells are drilled from an anchored ship and not from an oil drilling platform. When drilling is complete, the ship can simply raise the anchor and sail away. To alleviate the contamination from a possible spill, Mobil plans to have an oil skimmer on hand 24 hours a day and another emergency vessel standing by in nearby Morehead City.

Offshore oil wells cause fewer oil spills than oil tankers. Nevertheless, the presence of oil wells can cause an increase in the volume of tanker traffic. Mobil says that if they find significant amounts of natural gas or oil they will build a pipeline to carry the product ashore. This will eliminate the need for barges and tankers.

This will not be the first oil well drilled in the waters of North Carolina. In 1965, Mobil drilled three wells in the environmentally sensitive Pamlico and Albermarle sounds. Exxon drilled at Cape Hatteras in 1950.

In 1984, The United Press International reported that Shell Oil Company planned to drill exploratory wells 45 miles southeast of Hilton Head, South Carolina. Shell spokesmen deny any drilling occurred and say that Shell Oil does not currently hold any leases for tracts off the South Carolina coast. Shell Oil does hold leases off North Carolina and Virginia.

According to the American Petroleum Institute, no commercially feasible amounts of oil or natural gas have been found along the Atlantic coast while at least $2 billion has been spent on exploration.

Environmental concerns prompted the Bush administration to block the planned drilling of tracts around the southern tip of Florida. A fight has developed over who will pay back the $100 million spent by oil companies on tracts than cannot be explored.

Companies wishing to drill off South Carolina must submit plans to the Department of the Interior and the South Carolina Coastal Council.

The Minerals Management Service of the Department of the Interior conducts sales of offshore oil leases. The agency provides revenue to the federal government in amounts second only to the Internal Revenue Service. 100 billion dollars has been earned--most of this in the last 10 years.

Revenues from leases of tracts more than six miles offshore go to the federal government. South Carolina can collect 27 percent of leases from tracts from 3 to 6 miles offshore and 100 percent of leases within 3 miles. Because the areas under consideration for lease in the new Interior Department plan are more than 6 miles offshore, no lease monies would be given to South Carolina.

Last June, the Bush administration announced that it would develop a legislative initiative that will provide coastal communities with a larger portion of lease revenue.

The National Energy Strategy seeks to "increase the use [and exploration] of natural gas." The document says that the OCS supplies about 1/4 of the U.S. production of natural gas. Total gas reserves--those that would be feasible to drill given economic considerations--are estimated to be between 44 and 114 trillion cubic feet. The government projects that some of these reserves might be found under the continental shelf off South Carolina.

The Department of the Interior suggests that natural gas is a cheap, abundant, and clean-burning source of energy. Amazingly, natural gas consumption has actually declined over the past two decades while oil imports have increased. This decline is blamed on a variety of factors including the mass of regulations that make exploration and production difficult.

The President's National Energy Strategy has been criticized by some for an emphasis on increased production rather than increased conservation. Certain critics would like to see an increase in the so-called CAFE standards, Car Fuel Efficiency, which require a certain minimum average miles per gallon for automobiles.

The United Press International reports that in the 1940's the chairman of Clemson University's Geology department once promised "to drink all the oil found in South Carolina." To date, that certainly has been possible, but future exploration might make that a lot to swallow.

The Office. A fictional account of the Absurdity of government IT Contracting.

2008-04-22T20:26:00.000-07:00

For more than a dozen years I have worked as a computer contractor. All of this work was at Fortune 500 companies in various cities. But having grown weary of commuting each week through the airport I decided to cast my lot with the hundreds of thousands of men and women who work around the Beltway on government projects. I knew that working for the government would be different from working in the private sector. I imagined I would have to bite my lip and withhold my criticism and tendency toward sarcasm as I descended into the lunacy which is government contracting.

The film "Office Space" is a satire of office life and the novel "Microserfs" mocks the cult of IT Geeks who worship Bill Gates. But what is lacking from the literature is a parody that illuminates the quiet desperation faced by so many souls who toil day in and out at corporate IT departments. Burdened with paperwork, battling their peers in conference rooms, worried about layoffs, lacking the pensions awarded their grandfathers; today's office worker is an expendable pawn who, knowing he can be outsourced or downsized, owes no allegiance to his employer. His allegiance is to himself. His only hope of hanging on to that fat contract is to attempt to outshine his peers.

My first day on the job at my new contract with the Federal Reserve Bank was pretty much the same as any other day four months later. It took that long for me to get my government security clearance, so I was officially told to do nothing. I passed the days surfing the web and watching the absurdity of what was going on outside my cubicle.

Some have said that the government is the employer of last resort. The private sector is brutal and tends to toss out those who cannot keep pace. Government is more tolerant of the weak, the ignorant, and the lazy. You cannot come to work for three weeks because your back hurts? No problem. They have a charge code for that.

As long as you can find a charge code for what you are doing no one cares what you are doing or if you are doing nothing at all. This is cost accounting run amok. You spend 5 hours each week simply filling out your timesheet because you have to charge so many charge codes for the work that you did during week. Because you are working as a subcontractor to yet another subcontractor who is also working as a subcontractor to someone else, you have to translate this myriad of cryptic charge codes into various formats. Some systems are computerized and others are manual. Some vendors let you type in your time sheet into a web page, others use the telephone keypad, and some require written timesheets that must be filled in on blue paper with a black pen. So much transcription results in the inevitable errors that reconciling all these documents takes even more time. Of course there are people who thrive in this paperwork blizzard and even excel at it. One such fellow was Irving who we called "Spaceman".

Irving's job was to reconcile status reports with timesheets to make sure that each hour worked was properly document and summed correctly with the hours that were billed. To do this kind of work requires a mindset that is uncluttered with creative thinking, daydreaming, insight, or deviation from the status quo. Those who like to think as they work would quickly be crushed by the mind numbing tedium and absurdity of shuffling papers and forms from one stack to another.

Irving was ideally suited for this kid of work. Tall and bald he appeared to the rest of us at least 150 years older and maybe older. With dull unblinking eyes, a snarl permanently edged on his face, bad breath, and unkempt clothes he was the perfect automaton plodding away at early hours of the day and even on weekends to make sure that form A equaled form B and form C was done in blue and not black ink.

Spaceman lived to please his boss Mr. Smith. Mr. Smith had risen through the ranks of the organization because of his unvarying ability to avoid all accountability, to never raise his voice, to never fight on behalf of his troops, and above all to fan and cajole the egos of those who ranked above him.

That there is a difference between the old and the young is readily apparent in the office. The old have had the benefit of experience so know when someone is a fool, unless of course we are talking about an old fool who cannot identify even himself. The wizened gentleman or lady knows who is lazy, who cannot assume responsibility, who is posturing, who is pandering. But more than knowledge of people, the old know that the most important thing about work is to leave the job behind you at the end of the day. This is not true for the young-for them work and life are inseparable. Our manifestation of this phenomenon was Rey whom we called "greenbean" because he was a newly-minted MBA straight out of training at Deloitte and Touche's program of consultant indoctrination.

Rey came bouncing into the office in the morning buoyed by caffeine filled soda and slightly hung over from the previous night's carousing. He leapt with abandon at the chance to plug in his laptop and begin tackling the various issues of the day. Rey was carefully trained by Deloitte and Touch in their methodology of project management and problem solving. So he would not entertain other points of view that ran counter to his training.

Rey was the kind of person who woke up each morning thinking about work and went to bed with work on his mind. I needed an hour or two of reading the newspaper at the office before I started thinking about work. But Rey would come in at 6:00 AM speaking loudly about the Federal Reserve's ACHWIRE system. He would start talking as he rounded the corner to my office and finish his first sentence even before he landed in my cubicle. He was brimming with the enthusiasm of someone in their mid thirties who has not yet had that inevitable clash with mortality that jars most of us awake and frees us from the delusion that work matters at all.

Rey was wizened by his 25 years so naturally all of us senior citizens listened closely to what he said. We knew that he and his peers mocked the older people in our department believing that they moved too slowly. The processes and procedures put in place in our department over the years were simply obstacles designed to slow the deft and the nimble. Rey's attitude would invariably run afoul of the bureaucratic machinery, which was the Federal Reserve Bank, FRB.

On the third of February it was bitterly cold as Rey drove to the FRB computing center in Pennsylvania. The Senator from Pennsylvania had succeeded in relocating this facility along with an office of the FBI to his rural constituents over howls of protest from the District of Colombia who was giving up an equal number of jobs. On this snowy night with a stiff breeze, Rey had driven out to install some changes to the ACHWIRE financial system during the so-called "build window". This was that 5-hour period of time on Sunday morning when the system could be taken down and changes made to the software that ran the nation's wire transfer system for banks.

At 11:30 all the consultants in the Washington office got on the conference call and joined the Pennsylvania team. It was a team effort to install a relatively minor. Yet ACHWIRE would be restarted so all the peripheral parties had to be present to run tests to make sure that their own piece of the puzzle still functioned when the system came back up. If not then on Monday morning the chairman of Chase Bank would be on the phone to the FRB Board of Governors complaining loudly that they could not wire billions of dollars to their account. All of this ire would fall down around Rey and his coworkers. No one wanted that unpleasant possibility.

It was Rey's job to remove one of the thousands of small files that ran the ACHWIRE system and replace it with an upgrade. This small change was to fix what programmers called a "memory leak" issue-the offending software would consume even larger chunks of memory until the computer was exhausted and all its machinations would come to a halt.

Normally to process a change to the ACHWIRE system at the IRS required months of paperwork and a rehearsal process of pushing this code change through systems that were test copies of the real thing. The FRB computers were so well-guarded that Rey nor anyone else in the Washington office was allowed to actually touch the computers. Rather they pushed their changes through a proxy system called "Installer" that could reach into the most secure FRB computers in faraway Pennsylvania and install software changes unattended. Rey likened this process to trying to push a thread through a needle from 10 feet away with a bit of bamboo and a pair of binoculars to guide the way.

But what the Installer system brought was accountability and control. No one could bypass the system and clumsily clobber the status quo by trial and error, experimentation, or just following a hunch. Rather an idea was tested and retested and then delivered as a package to the target environment. The IRS computers were walled off in the network so that no even the most brazen rule breaker could gain direct access. People who tried to do so would have an uncomfortable discussion with the security people-crew-cut wearing FRB inspectors who were only slightly brighter that those dimwitted security guards who accompanied them wearing loaded guns on their hip.

The roles for this engagement were strict. Under no circumstances was Rey to touch the Fed's computers. Ken, the system administrator on duty, would monitor the automatic installation of the software upgrade and perhaps type a couple of well-scripted commands into the computer should something need verification. Changing anything not under the control of the Installer was strictly forbidden. Ken could be counted on to do as he was told for he was too dim witted to solve any problem himself and with 30 years tenure at the Federal Reserve Bank any initiative and foresight had been drummed out of him many years ago. Hence he did as he was expected-nothing, unless told do to so. So in a small part he was an important cog in the machinery of accountability and control.

But Rey was something of a cowboy. The installation that night did not go as planned. So the procedure was to back out the changes then replace them on the following Sunday night when the computers again would be taken down. But this was problematic because any failure would cause a 4-week delay since the Fed had stipulated that no change could be made during this, the business month of the year. Rey did not want to go back to office in Washington and sit upon his creation having pushed it for months through the bureaucratic operation. So he decided to act.

A computer is unforgiving and merciless. Like a wild animal with unblinking eyes it looks at you without a trace of compassion or understanding. Make one small mistake and the compute will respond without regard for possible disastrous consequences.

So Rey hopped onto the computer and nudged Ken taking away from the keyboard. The speakerphone crackled as the people at the other end of the line expecting that the evening's work would be cancelled and wondered what Bob was doing. He told them "Don't worry. I can fix this in a minute. I will copy over the change, delete the old software, then we can backfill the paperwork requirement when I get back to the office".

Rey logged into the super secret account used to transfer monies from one bank to another. As the super user he had full privileges to the system. Any careless mistake would be permanent and irreversible-there would be no security apparatus to challenge the user should he accidentally erase an important file.

Rey typed a command to navigate to the file folder where the transmission software was stored. He typed a command to copy the new version of the software into place overwriting the older one. Then he typed the command "rm *" to delete the temporary files that had been created.

The "rm" command is notorious among users of the UNIX operating system. It is unforgiving. When you type it in does its job of deleting files without asking "Are you sure?" Quick and convenient unlike clumsy Windows commands with their silly mice, in the black and white world of UNIX terminal emulation the teletype like interface is cryptic yet convenient. But for Rey this was a disaster for he was in the wrong file folder. Instead of the temporary file folder he was sitting atop the transmission software itself.

When Rey typed "rm *" he immediately got a sinking feeling in his stomach for the command took several seconds instead of the split second he expected. 10 seconds later he tried desperately to stop the command by typing "(-control-)(-c)" but the computer kept grinding away deleting files without regard for the anxious emotions of the hapless human. Lights began to flash in control rooms around the country as computer operators watched the financial transmission system for the entirety of the United States banking system cascade and fall apart as the computer erased itself.

The telephone fell silent as people wondered what Rey and Ken were doing. Rey was now crying. He took off his ID badge and handed it to Ken and then walked out of the office. Stunned and afraid he walked past the security guards, pass the Xray machines, past the stone faced security guards, and drove to his house.

A few weeks later we heard that Ray had lost his security clearance and was being prosecuted for security violations.

President's Day Blizzard

2008-04-22T20:25:00.000-07:00

Just a six months ago the weathermen were measuring the drought by a gauge they called "the rainfall deficit". That drought was abruptly washed away this fall as one weather system after another rolled across our region. I did not even have time to rake my leaves when the hot, dry summer turned into a cold, wet fall which turned into a freezing, wet and snowy winter. Last weekend it snowed yet again. But this time it was a big one--the one the evening news called "The President’s Day Blizzard".

My neighbor on Bessie Bell mountain is Bob Ryan, the channel 4 weatherman and former weatherman on NBC’s Today Show. His snow-covered drive was unsullied by tire tracks this weekend for Bob was busy broadcasting the weather down in The District. When it snows heavily here the television coverage switches from sports and Jerry Springer to wall-to-wall snow coverage. It’s comical to watch the reporters out in the weather measuring the snow as it falls with a measuring stick. Such important news warrants veteran newscasters. So the usual, second string weekend broadcasters were shunted aside by the snow-fall celebrities Bob Ryan on NBC and Doug Hill on ABC. Doug Hill I like best for his WTOP radio forecasts are tempered by doubt. But even this weekend Doug Hill said there was no doubting the wrath of this mammoth snowstorm. Still he said it would be folly to predict exact snow totals until the weather was nigh upon us. Only then would we know.

Last weekend’s snow storm was a big enough event to sweep news of Iraq, Korea, and our relations with France right off the front page. There hasn’t been such breaking news since, well, Monica Lewinsky stole the limelight from her paramour Bill Clinton.

But how did this snow in far-away Washington affect us in Rappahannock County? I decided to venture out and see for myself. Sunday I got into my pickup truck and drove into Sperryville. Burger and Things was buttoned up tight even though it’s sign said "open"—so I could not enjoy a hot dog or some Carolina barbecue. Nothing was open. There was no place to buy food nor drink. So we drove around instead and snapped pictures of the frozen Thornton River.

The only other vehicle we saw on the road was a snow plow from Partlow trucking. I pulled up next to the driver and chatted with him for a few minutes. Then we drove up highway 211 and parked the car right in the middle of the vacant highway to take pictures of some cows all covered in snow. Poor, dump creatures. Perhaps they are too stupid to brush away the snow from their heads. Or maybe we should pity them for they lack fingers and arms to brush themselves off. Even the normally pampered horses, with their winter jackets, looked like tundra-dwelling caribou all decked out in ice.

Saturday as it began to snow I drove up to Linden Vineyards in Warren County. The wine-tasting patrons there wanted to know whether I had driven a four-wheel-drive vehicle up the steep driveway. "Yes", I assured them and they all burst out laughing. I wondered why they laughed until I saw two other cars come sputtering up the drive. One got stuck 1/3 the way up. Another did not make it even that far. It gave up, turned around, and skidded back to the bottom of the hill. That winter scene was prescient for that spot, Linden, Virginia, officially got 35 inches of snowfall this weekend. That was the highest snowfall total in the area.

Soon this snow will be but a memory as the winds of March usher in the Halcyon days of April and May. Ernest Hemingway said in "A Moveable Feast" that in the fall a piece of you dies and in the spring it awakens again. Such is nature. For the dormant grape vine and apples tree buds will soon burst forth in flowers in the warmth of the spring sunshine. The weathermen will surely be bored for they will only have blue bird days to sing about. What is boring for the weatherman is bliss for the rest of us.

Copyright 2003 Rappahannock News. Reprinted with Permission.

Development, Sustainable Agriculture, and the Virginia Wine Business

2008-04-22T20:24:00.001-07:00

As Virginia’s burgeoning population expands outward, cul-de-sac neighborhoods increasingly find themselves thrust in the middle of what was formerly open space farmland. People, whose only prior experience with farming has been perusing the aisles of Safeway, suddenly find themselves awakened in the middle of the night by the howl of a frost-dispelling wind machine. Or they grow concerned when the vineyard tractor next door draws perilously close to their house with an airblast sprayer spewing the noxious aroma of sulfur into the air.

Farmers cannot grow grapes, apples, or peaches without spraying them against mildew, rot, and Japanese beetles that would otherwise decimate their valuable fruit and defoliate their vines and trees. But the layman does not understand this and is alarmed at the site of the agriculture apparatus in full-blown operation. He assumes the farmer pollutes the groundwater and streams with agriculture runoff.

Perceived notions are difficult to dispel. The son of the late owner of the Washington Redskins learned this lesson first-hand when he built his vineyard next to a school in tony Middleburg. Parents alarmed at the prospect of pesticide drift asked for a meeting. Mr. Cooke dispatched his viticulturist to explain to a frosty crowd that the vineyard and winery would be a model of organic farming and would in no way cause harm to people, plants, nor fauna.

Consumers assume that farming would be absolutely benign if all farming were simply “organic”. This clever phrase wrapped in nostalgia and whimsy is a bit disingenuous for it’s not the absolute panacea for an environmental Garden of Eden. For example, composted chicken manure is organic but it can flow into the Chesapeake Bay and cause algae blooms.

For an herbicide, pesticide, or fungicide to be considered organic it must be sanctioned as such by the OMRI (Organic Materials Review Institute). That staid body of bureaucrats listens closely to leaders of the organic movement. They say that a product can only be considered organic if it comes naturally from the soil. Yet products that are byproducts of naturally occurring compounds generally cannot gain this classification. The rigidity of this rule frustrates the wine grape farmer who does not see the reasoning behind this logic. Thus sulfur, with its foul swell, and copper, which is a metal, are labeled organic but phosphoric acid is not.

Virginia vineyards do not want to wrestle over what is the definition of organic. Rather a movement is underway in Virginia to define sustainable agriculture practices for the Virginia vineyards modeled on Oregon’s LIVE (Low Input Viticulture and Enology) program. Jason Murray, a cooperative extension agent in Loudon County, is working with a handful of the most experienced Virginia wine grape growers to define what are environmentally-friendly farming practices. Vineyards wanting to adhere to LIVE standards will be directed what they can and cannot do.

Beyond the LIVE program there are other ways that vineyards strive to leave the smallest footprint possible on the surrounding terrain. For example, there is the notion of “integrated pest management” or IPM. IPM means to use environmentally friendly means to rid the vineyard of pests. For the grape berry moth and Japanese beetle, this means applying sexual lures (pheremones) to confuse the copulating creatures rather than dose them with Danitol. The moths are free to have their dalliance elsewhere, but this keeps the larvae and bugs from eating the grape leaves or punching holes in the berries.

To reduce agriculture runoff, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Ducks Unlimited, and others have funded the CREP (Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program) program to pay farmers to plant bushes and trees to maintain riparian buffer zones along streams. The farmer is paid to erect fences to keep cattle from wading into and defecating in streams and the government picks up the tab to drill wells and build ponds for their cattle.

In Orange County, next to the sprawling Horton Vineyards Berry Hill vineyard is a business dedicated to developing organic and environmentally friendly pesticides. This is Saint Gabriel Laboratories whose web site, milkyspore.com, refers to the name of a naturally occurring bacteria that attacks Japanese beetles in the soil before they can become airborne. Saint Gabriel Laboratories also produces Burnout, which is a mixture of lemon juice and vinegar that is a replacement for the widely-used herbicide Roundup (glysophate).

Beyond integrated pest management and the LIVE program, vineyards with large acreage in counties with heavy development pressure are granting conservation easements. This prevents the sprawling farm from being divided into neighborhoods and carved up by the bulldozer. The farmer gets a capital loss for their tax return and the environmentalist gets the preservation of green space. Farmers often are land rich and cash poor, so many have no taxable income. Consequently, in Virginia a business has emerged to broker these Virginia tax losses to wealthy individuals.

In sum, it is possible and is in fact happening that the burgeoning Virginia wine business can expand and at the same time foster the goal of preventing pesticides from fouling the air, groundwater, and stream. As the industry grows, perhaps farmers in the Southeast corner of the state, who have seen their federal peanut subsidies cut off, could plant some grapes, protect the environment from development and pollution, and increase the acres under vine in Virginia.

(This article was published on the op-ed page of the Richmond Times Dispatch.)

Biodyamic wine grape farming in Maryland

2008-04-22T20:23:00.001-07:00

Monty Waldin in his book “Biodynamic Wines” quotes the French soil scientist Claude Bourguignon who said he found more microbiological life in the soils of the Sahara Desert than those found in the vineyards of Burgundy. Mr. Waldin writes, “ Decades of weed killers and potassium-rich fertilizers had turned Burgundy’s soils from being as friable as couscous and rich in microbial life into sterile hard-pans resembling concrete.”

Ed Boyce and his wife Sarah O'Herron had this in mind when they decided to plant 22 acres of grapes on their Black Ankle Vineyards just east of Frederick, Maryland. They envisioned that their vineyard would be a paragon of organic and biodynamic farming. But Japanese Beetles and black rot fungus have waylaid their plans to grow grapes organically. As for biodynamics—that is still a possibility.

Lots of people are familiar with the term “organic”. As it relates to farming it means that vegetables, fruit, and even livestock are raised without the use of chemical fungicides, herbicides, and pesticides; genetically-engineered plant material; or growth hormones. But fewer people are familiar with the concept of “biodynamic” farming. As Ed Boyce points out his vineyard could still be labeled “organic” under the law but he could erect a chemical factory on his property. Not so with biodynamic farming because the entire farm is supposed to be viewed as one living organism and not just the crops.

Biodynamic farming is a bit difficult to grasp to the uninitiated. Mr. Waldin says empirical evidence suggests that biodynamic farming does indeed produce superior wine grapes. Still, skeptics might tend to dismiss this blend of agriculture and philosophy as some kind of mysticism.

Monty Waldin explains that biodynamic farming grew out of the work of the Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner. Steiner lived among the peasants “whose feudal way of life had remained unchanged for centuries”. Steiner, “felt a connection with the natural world around him but also with an unseen spiritual world that lay behind it, which he felt he a need to explain or codify in some way.”

In 1924 Austrian farmers were complaining “seed fertility and crop and animal health were rapidly declining due to the destructive effects of ‘scientific farming’.” Steiner’s organized a series of lectures that presented the farmers with a specific list of compost and teas with which they could spray onto their plants and spread onto the soil. This promised to reinvigorate the soils with bacteria and earth worms, reign in fungal problems, and control excess vigor. Further Steiner and his subsequent followers set forth a schedule based upon the movements of the planets, moon, and stars that would promote deep growing roots and healthy flowers and fruit.

For those who mock the notion that the planets could have anything to do with growing wine grapes, the author Monty Waldin cites that the ancient Greek poet Hesiod “stipulated that wine be made according to a sign from the sky”. Further Johannes Kepler, who discovered that the sun’s orbit was elliptical, published an agricultural almanac. Waldin cites these examples as proof that the celestial calendar can indeed affect plant growth.

In Virginia there is an organization called The Josephine Porter Institute that is wholly devoted to biodynamic farming and makes the compost and plant preparations called for Rudolf Steiner and his followers. The grow and then process the stinging nettle, chamomile, dandelion, and silica preparations called for by biodynamics.

What makes Biodynamics a bit difficult to believe is these formulations are applied to compost in such tiny proportions that you would think they could not make any difference. Standing at the Black Ankle Vineyards--where hundreds of tons of cow and horse manure lie decomposing--Ed Boyce says the situation is analogous to yeast. Only a few grams of yeast can ferment thousand of gallons of wine—but yeast of course reproduce while, say, silica does not. So how could 1 gram of oak bark—which is supposed to add calcium to the soil—added to 15 tonnes of metric compost possible make any difference? And how exactly does silica, which is buried in a cow’s horn for the winter, channel the suns energy into plants?

The situation with teas is more plausible. A “tea” is made by boiling a plant and then spraying the resulting solution onto the growing plants. Horsetail, for one, is a plant that is supposed to contain 70% silica. Sprayed onto the vines it is supposed to control fungus when applied at the rate of 100 grams per hectare. Ed says those critics who cast a spurious eye at this formulation would not even question the application rate of the systemic chemical fungicide Pristine, which is applied at the rate of 10.5 ounces per acre. Of course even that small amount is many times the rate of application of biodynamic horsetail.

Prior to planting their large vineyard, Ed and Sarah sought out the advice of the viticulturists Wayne Wilcox of Cornell and Tony Wolf of Virginia Tech. Both men said that Black Ankle Vineyards might be able to grow grapes organically but that the black rot fungus would be a problem since there is no organic formulation to stop that problem.

Organic farming works in rain-free farming regions like California and Chile where downy mildew and black rot funguses are not a problem. But in Europe and the Eastern USA there is downy mildew and black rot. Downy mildew is controlled by copper sulphate and copper hydroxide —which are classified as “organic” under European and American law. But there is no organic formulation that controls black rot. Those of you who grow roses are familiar with this, because it makes the leaves on roses turn yellow and covers them with black spots. For grape vines brown lesions appear on the leaves. For the fruit the results are worse—the grapes dry out completely and turn rock hard. Several winemakers told me that you might be able to make drinkable white wine from black-rot infected grapes since the juice is simple gone. But red wine would be more problematic since the skins are used in the wine making process so it might make the wine bitter. As for Ed and Sarah, their vineyard is 60% infected with this malady so in order to avoid a total loss they had to abandon organic farming and spray conventional sprays until some solution can be found. Still they will continue to use biodynamic formulations while using the organic compounds sulfur to control powdery mildew (a problem the world over) and copper.

Japanese Beetles were another problem for Black Ankle Vineyards. Ed says some of vines had been completely defoliated. Again, for those of you who grow roses you know what these creatures do to lovely rose petals—they devour them wholesale. The problem in the vineyard is they descend on the leaves by the millions. A grapevine without leaves cannot ripen fruit nor can it survive the winter. Ed and Sarah tried various organic treatments but nothing worked so they used the non-organic chemical Sevin, which is widely used by vineyards and home gardeners.

Ed and Sarah do not mind that this article singles out problems in their vineyard. They want to highlight this concern for other farmers no doubt are looking for ways to farm organically here in the East. Meanwhile Ed and Sarah will continue to spray stinging nettle, cow manure buried in cow horns, chamomile aged in cow intestines, silica, and horsetail. They will also plant new vines and prune old ones according to the celestial calendar on what Ed calls “fruit and flower” days. Look for their winery and tasting room to open in 2007.

Historical Significance

In 1853, Commodore Matthew Perry sailed his fleet to Japan. In an effort that continues today, Perry’s trip was America’s initial attempt to pry open the Japanese market. Perry negotiated the first commerce treaty between Japan and the Untied States. In 1860, a Japanese delegation came to Washington and the Willard Hotel to sign the new treaty. One member of the delegation wrote, “The house of the Secretary of State is not as fine as the hotel.”

These foreign guests caused great excitement in the District of Columbia. Great throngs of tourists, journalists, and the curious lined the street to watch the sword-carrying Japanese delegation in their brightly colored costumes and close-cropped hair. It was the first trip aboard by an official group of Japanese to a foreign destination.

The Japanese did not use pillows but preferred a block of wood. One Japanese official could not find his block of wood, so he used a white ceramic bowl instead. In the morning, the stewards were shocked to see the Japanese sleeping with his head on a chamber pot.

The Willard has also witnessed war. In 1859, Jefferson Davis, soon-to-be president of the Confederacy, attended a party at the hotel with 1,800 guests. Garnett Laidlaw Eskew, in his book Willard’s of Washington, writes this was the last party attended by Northern and Southern leaders before the American Civil War broke out. Later the hotel was the site of the Peace Conference from February 4 to 27, 1861. Delegates from 21 of the 34 states met in a last desperate attempt to avoid the Civil War. A plaque from the Virginia Civil War Commission, on the Pennsylvania Avenue façade of the hotel, pays tribute to this courageous effort.

Most American children know by hear the lines, “mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord,” from “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” In 1861, Julia Ward Howe, playwright, poet, and essayist, wrote the words to this anthem on Willard Hotel stationary. Ward wrote as she looked down from her window upon marching union troops who were singing a tune upon which this anthem is based. Julia sold the anthem text to the Atlantic Monthly magazine for ten dollars.

Notable Guests

When Charles Dickens made a voyage to the Untied States in 1842, he stayed at the Willard Hotel. This Englishman thought little of American culture and even less of the capitol city. He mockingly called Washington “The City of Magnificent Intentions” instead of its renowned title, “The City of Magnificent Distances.” From his hotel window, he could see dogs frolicking in the dirt, pigs rolling about the courtyard, and the Capitol and the Washington monument both halfway finished.

According to Smithsonian magazine, when Mark Twain stayed there he promenaded about, accompanied “by a horde of twittering females.” Statesman and orator Henry Clay mixed the first mint julep in Washington in the Willard’s Round Robin Bar.

The Willard also played host to these famous guests: Emily Dickinson, Jenny Lind, P.T. Barnum, Walt Whitman, Tom Thumb, Samuel Morse, the Duke of Windsor, Flo Ziegfield, Harry Houdini, the Barrymores, Mae West, Gloria Swanson and Gypsy Rose Lee.

The Willard family sold their interest in the hotel in 1946. The hotel continued to operate until July 1968 when its doors were closed. The renovated Willard Inter-Continental Hotel opened in 1986 after the building lay empty for 18 years.

This article originally appeared in Pest Management magazine.

The Willard Hotel

2008-04-22T20:22:00.000-07:00

The Willard – originally built in `1815 and rebuilt twice since – sits like an anchor on one end of Pennsylvania Avenue. At the other end sits the U.S. Capitol.

When Henry Willard bought the property in 1850, the hotel's history as a major force in the social and political life of Washington began. “This hotel, in fact, may be much more justly called the center of Washington and the Union than the Capital, the White House or the State Department,” wrote Nathaniel Hawthorne while covering the Civil War for The Atlantic Monthly.

The Residence of Presidents

Called “The Residence of Presidents,” the hotel has hosted every president, as a sleeping guest or a guest at a social function, from Franklin Pierce in 1853 to Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s.

In 1861, rumors of assassination prompted the Pinkerton detectives to hide President Abraham Lincoln at the Willard. Lincoln held staff meetings in the lobby and borrowed slippers belonging to the Willard family during his stay. He stayed until his inauguration on March 4 and returned to the Willard to watch his inaugural parade. When Lincoln received his first paycheck as president, he paid his Willard bill of $773.75.

Time magazine reports that the Willard placed a leather chair in a secluded part of the lobby for President Ulysses Grant. Grant often used the Willard lobby as a refuge from the daily pressures of the White House. Still Grant, while enjoying his brandy and cigars, was pestered by people seeking the president’s ear. President Grant coined a word that endures today when he labeled this uninvited entourage of would-be power brokers “lobbyists.”

The Willard became the official presidential residence for nearly a month in 1923. Calvin Coolidge took up residence at the hotel while he was vice-president and remained there while the newly widowed Mrs. Warren Harding packed her belongings. The presidential flag flew in front of the hotel during that time. That same flag was flown when President Reagan was a dinner guest at the Willard Inter-Continental in September 1986.

In 1916, Woodrow Wilson held the meetings of the League to Enforce Peace, the predecessor to the League of Nations, at the e Willard. Wilson’s vice-president, Thomas Marshall, in criticizing the price of cigars at the hotel new stand, said, “What this country needs is a good five-cents cigar.”

Historical Significance

In 1853, Commodore Matthew Perry sailed his fleet to Japan. In an effort that continues today, Perry’s trip was America’s initial attempt to pry open the Japanese market. Perry negotiated the first commerce treaty between Japan and the Untied States. In 1860, a Japanese delegation came to Washington and the Willard Hotel to sign the new treaty. One member of the delegation wrote, “The house of the Secretary of State is not as fine as the hotel.”

These foreign guests caused great excitement in the District of Columbia. Great throngs of tourists, journalists, and the curious lined the street to watch the sword-carrying Japanese delegation in their brightly colored costumes and close-cropped hair. It was the first trip aboard by an official group of Japanese to a foreign destination.

The Japanese did not use pillows but preferred a block of wood. One Japanese official could not find his block of wood, so he used a white ceramic bowl instead. In the morning, the stewards were shocked to see the Japanese sleeping with his head on a chamber pot.

The Willard has also witnessed war. In 1859, Jefferson Davis, soon-to-be president of the Confederacy, attended a party at the hotel with 1,800 guests. Garnett Laidlaw Eskew, in his book Willard’s of Washington, writes this was the last party attended by Northern and Southern leaders before the American Civil War broke out. Later the hotel was the site of the Peace Conference from February 4 to 27, 1861. Delegates from 21 of the 34 states met in a last desperate attempt to avoid the Civil War. A plaque from the Virginia Civil War Commission, on the Pennsylvania Avenue façade of the hotel, pays tribute to this courageous effort.

Most American children know by hear the lines, “mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord,” from “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” In 1861, Julia Ward Howe, playwright, poet, and essayist, wrote the words to this anthem on Willard Hotel stationary. Ward wrote as she looked down from her window upon marching union troops who were singing a tune upon which this anthem is based. Julia sold the anthem text to the Atlantic Monthly magazine for ten dollars.

Notable Guests

When Charles Dickens made a voyage to the Untied States in 1842, he stayed at the Willard Hotel. This Englishman thought little of American culture and even less of the capitol city. He mockingly called Washington “The City of Magnificent Intentions” instead of its renowned title, “The City of Magnificent Distances.” From his hotel window, he could see dogs frolicking in the dirt, pigs rolling about the courtyard, and the Capitol and the Washington monument both halfway finished.

According to Smithsonian magazine, when Mark Twain stayed there he promenaded about, accompanied “by a horde of twittering females.” Statesman and orator Henry Clay mixed the first mint julep in Washington in the Willard’s Round Robin Bar.

The Willard also played host to these famous guests: Emily Dickinson, Jenny Lind, P.T. Barnum, Walt Whitman, Tom Thumb, Samuel Morse, the Duke of Windsor, Flo Ziegfield, Harry Houdini, the Barrymores, Mae West, Gloria Swanson and Gypsy Rose Lee.

The Willard family sold their interest in the hotel in 1946. The hotel continued to operate until July 1968 when its doors were closed. The renovated Willard Inter-Continental Hotel opened in 1986 after the building lay empty for 18 years.

This article originally appeared in Pest Management magazine.

The Aesthetic Debate Behind the Microsoft Trial

2008-04-22T20:18:00.000-07:00

Newspapers have reported the news that the government wants to divide Microsoft in two because the government contends it has been a bad corporate citizen. But computer programmers understand that there is more to this issue than corporate greed and monopolistic practices. There is a larger debate here—this is the argument whether to use Microsoft tools or tools from anyone else when writing programs for the Internet. More is at stake here than whether Microsoft should remain in tact or be divided up wholesale. There is an artistic and aesthetic argument about whose software is more elegant and, consequently, what software should be used to write programs for the Internet. Finally there is the issue of whether we should import foreign workers who understand all this stuff.

On one side of this debate are the Microsoft devotées and their practitioners. Sounding like Microsoft public relations folk, these Microsoft proponents worship all that emanates from Seattle, Washington. Chant: Microsoft, Amen, Microsoft, Amen. Unwavering in their enthusiasm for the all-Microsoft solution they are like the IBM proponents of the 1980’s. Are you old enough to remember those days? Back then most information technology workers used Big Blue mainframe hardware and tape-drive software and would not consider anything else. If Tom Watson’s IBM had not fallen apart we might still have punch cards and monochrome screens. Those wonders of yesterday seem positively silly today. Imagine what the computing world would look like without the Microsoft monopoly.

Lined up in opposition to Bill Gates and crowd are the advocates of the Java programming language and the UNIX operating system. This opposition is usually led by it’s most vociferous spokesmen Scott McNeally of Sun Microsystems and Larry Ellison of Oracle Corporation. They are allied in their argument that Microsoft should be chopped up into competing software companies.

Microsoft’s main programming language for Internet programming is Visual Basic. This computer language in it’s simplest form is quite easy to understand and is thus suitable for the masses. It’s popular appeal lies in it’s ease of use. Visual Basic today is like COBOL was in the IBM heyday—it is a programming language that can readily understood by the run-of-the-mill programmer. Likewise, ease of use is supposed to be the raison d’être for the Windows operating system. Borrowing ideas created by Xerox and perfected by Apple, Microsoft Windows is easy to use because it is a point-and-click operating system.

At the other end of the programming spectrum in the non-Microsoft diaspora are those programmers who embrace Sun’s Java programming language, AT&T’s C++, and AT&T’s UNIX operating system. Yes, this is true. Scientists at Ma Bell developed the C++ language and the UNIX operating system, two widely used tools in today’s Internet economy.

Java, C++, and UNIX are much different from Visual Basic and Microsoft Windows mainly because they are complex and subtle as opposed to dull and brutish. Yet this complexity is not simply a barrier which is erected to keep the unenlightened at bay. Rather it includes an elegance that is sublime the mastery of which produces software that works quite well for very large-scale systems and has a rich array of capabilities. You can develop a web site using Visual Basic and Windows NT or you can use Java, C++, and UNIX. The end product might be nearly the same. But the distinction is the difference between, say, the distributive property of addition a+b=b+a and Fermat’s last theorem. Both assertions are equally important but the latter has been the subject of greater intellectual scrutiny.

That software engineers could attach an artistic appeal to highly technical programming languages runs counter to popular convention. These pocket-protector-clad scientists are supposed to be devoid of literary or artistic interests. The 1’s and 0’s of their arcane minutiae are supposed to be hopelessly dull. But there is great beauty in a tightly written algorithm. Something clumsy and dull written in Visual Basic— for example “for i = 1 to 3…next i”—can be expressed as a compact single statement in C++ “while *a++ != ‘\0’”. While this syntax is cryptic it gets the job done albeit with much more elegance and style.

The prevalence of Java, C++, and UNIX might explain why there are so many foreign computer programmers in the United States. It might be true that the typical H1B visa programmer is paid less than his American-born peers and that it why corporations prefer them. But it might also be true that only the Indians, Filipinos, and Chinese have been schooled since high school in the rigorous math, philosophy, and abstract reasoning that is required to understand complex computer concepts associated with Java, C++, and UNIX. These school systems tend to stress the basics while our schools experiment with cultural relativism and all that entails. Consequently, the less well-educated American is more comfortable with Microsoft’s Visual Basic and it’s brute force approach to problem solving. Of course there are plenty of domestic software engineers who understand Java, C++, and UNIX. But the computer industry itself says we don’t have enough of them and wants to lift immigration caps.

The debate rages on. Should corporate information technology departments embrace the clumsy Microsoft software monopoly and staff their teams with graduates of technical schools like The Computer Learning Center? Or should we use Java, C++, and UNIX and continue to import legions of well-educated foreigners who can understand the more heuristic approach. Standing juxtaposed we have the Microsoft fans—the great unwashed masses—versus the Sun and AT&T programmers—the intelligentsia.

Vintage New York

2008-04-22T20:17:00.000-07:00

How can Virginia wineries do a better job of selling their products beyond the boundaries of the Virginia wine country? One way to do that is to open retail establishments dedicated to selling Virginia wines in the heavily populated Washington, D.C. suburbs of Northern Virginia. Another is to look north to New York State to see how the wineries there are able to sell their wines to the busy New York City market. There, a chain of wine shops, Vintage New York (www.vintagenewyork.com), is dedicated to selling New York wines to New Yorkers.

The farming and marketing situation in New York State is similar to that in Virginia. Virginia has around 100 wineries. New York has 175. Virginia has 2,500 acres of grapes. Not including Concord grapes, used to make juice and cheap wine, New York is somewhat larger with their largest grape-growing region, Long Island, growing 4,000 acres. While both states produce excellent wines from both small and medium-sized wineries, both states have yet to find a wide national and international following.

Robert Ransom and his partner Susan Wine operate two Vintage New York farm winery shops in Manhattan. While Virginia wines are sold through distributors in New York City--Horton, Barboursville, Kluge, and Williamsburg wines are all sold there--only New York wines may be sold in New York under the New York farm winery law. This means Vintage New York is able to operate as a distributor for the smaller wineries. The reason for this is Robert holds a winery license for his Rivendell Winery in the Hudson Valley.

New York City is, of course, unlike another other city in America. While Robert Ransom does not exactly dismiss Washington as a provincial backwater, he does say that New York is the "most important wine market in the world." Certainly at first glance the situation vis-à-vis retail sales is different there. Senator Hillary Clinton has visited New York's Finger Lakes and Long Island grape growing regions with both her star-quality appeal and New York City sommeliers in tow. The result is that some prominent New York restaurants now include New York wines on their wine list. Regarding legislation, currently the wineries and distributors are fighting each other in court over the legality of direct shipment. Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan's failed nominee to the Supreme Court, represents the distributors while Kenneth Starr, Bill Clinton's prosecutor, represents the wineries. (That lawsuit includes one Virginia plaintiff, Swedenburg Winery.)

Robert Ransom calls himself a full-time "proselytizer" who is constantly trying to sell New Yorkers on the merits of New York wine. Almost every day he is conducting tasting at either one of his two Manhattan locations or giving lectures at such venues as the famed lecture hall, the 92^nd Street Y.

About selling New York wines to New Yorkers Robert says, "It's not difficult to get them to enjoy and appreciate the wines once we get it into their mouths. The whole reason that we opened this store was to expose New Yorkers to their own local product that they probably didn't have an exposure to before."

Robert Ransom says that New Yorkers are sometimes loath to drink what is grown in their own backyard. He says that some of his best customers are tourists. They amble into his wine shops in Soho and the Upper West Side and are somewhat incredulous that wines are made in New York. They ask, "Where do you grow grapes? In Central Park?"

Robert's experience in New York bodes well for Virginia wineries were a similar chain of wine shops to open in Northern Virginia. For Robert Ransom says, "We are probably every one of our suppliers biggest customers." (Granted there is a wine shop, Ye Olde Wine Shoppe, devoted to Virginia wines in Occoquan. But that is outside the heavily populated D.C. suburbs.)

The wine retail business is a tough one with lots of competition for both Virginia and New York wines coming from heavily-marketed, emerging wine regions in Australia and New Zealand and low cost regions like Chile. And California is currently suffering a so-called "grape glut" that has seen prices drop to as little at $1.99 for Charles Swan's wines, better known by the short-hand notation "Two Buck Chuck". Commenting on all the competition, particularly in New York, Robert Ransom says, "New York City is a very loud place. There's a lot of advertising. It's very hard to get heard among all that noise. "

Robert's answer to all this clutter is to make New York wines his niche. He says, "This day and age everyone, with the exception of Walmart, is a focused niche retailer. We took that [NY wine] and made that our niche."

Continuing, "We have chosen 200 wines from maybe 65 of so different wineries and that's all we sell. But they key is everything that we sell is open for the tasting. So people can come in and taste these wines. It's a tasting room environment."

There are several possibilities for Virginia wineries to broaden their reach beyond customers who travel to their tasting rooms, small wine shops in small towns, and Giant and Safeway grocery stores, which sell but do not promote their products. Shawn Walker is special agent in charge of the Virginia ABC. He says that a Virginia farm winery can operate up to 5 remote locations. Prince Michael Vineyards has one such location at Fashion Square Mall in Charlottesville.

Another possibility is American Wine Country (www.americanwinecountry.com) which will be opening a 75,000 square foot retail establishment that in Northern Virginia. One of the San Francisco partners in this firm, Terry Marasco, says, "American is an important distinction as we will be emphasizing American agricultural products--both wine and food." He adds that while a gourmet wine shop selling both American and imported wines will anchor the mall, Virginia wineries will be able to rent floor space on a temporary basis to peddle their wares. Terry says Virginia wineries can, "Rent long term space and set up retail cooperatives." He says the mall staff can help man the booths when the wineries own personnel are not available. Terry adds that, "This is a trend in the California wine business now as is opening retail shops for a specific winery."

Agent Walker says that Virginia wineries are also able to act as their own distributor. So they could sell their wines directly to a wine shop that, like Vintage New York, operate under a farm winery license. But Terry Marasco and Robert Ransom point out that the larger wineries perhaps would not want to make an end-run around their distributors. In the case of Vintage New York, Robert Ransom buys some wines directly from wineries and other wines he buys from the winery's distributors.

Chris Pearmund, of Pearmund Cellars, commenting on the prospects of a Vintage New York style wine shop in Northern Virginia says, "I and few other wineries have thrown this idea around for 2 years, knowing it is a good idea and should do very well." He adds that, "Customers have been proving themselves by coming to where wine it made; [it's] time to bring a dedicated wine shop to them."

Bruce Zoecklin, enologist of Virginia Tech says, "We are making world-class products and could do a better job of marketing them."

Archibald Rutledge's "Home by the River"

2008-04-22T20:14:00.000-07:00

“Home by the River” refers to Archibald Rutledge’s home on Hampton Plantation near the Santee River near the coast of South Carolina. The river here is the Santee. (When Mr. Rutledge was young the Santee was a greater river than today, because in the 1930’s much of it’s flow was diverted to the Cooper River and Charleston when dams were built upstream in Berkley County.)

Hampton is no longer a plantation—the Civil War put and end to that—but when Archibald lived there it still had all the requisite amenities: a Greco-style mansion with porticos and widows walk, rice fields with floodgates and dikes, and acres of pines and hardwoods forest. Some of the blacks who lived on or near Hampton and who worked there had been Hampton slaves in their youth.

Hamton Plantation fell into disrepair during the 30 plus years that Archibald Rutledge lived in Pennsylvania where he worked as a school teacher. Much of this book describes his efforts to restore Hampton to its former splendor.

One can imagine Hampton in it’s heyday when the mover and shakers of Colonial and ante-bellum society frequented the plantation. Great piles of ham, turkey, and duck greeted George Washington, the Marquis de Lafeyette, and other visitors. It seems General George Washington and his French military peer stayed in every notable house along the Carolina coast. There are signs all over reading “George Washington” slept here. I read about a Lafayette visit in a history of Edisto Island. South Carolinians are guilty of ostentatious name dropping when it comes to the father of our country. It is a point of which we are obviously proud.

Archibald Rutledge didn’t have a lot of money to rebuild Hampton. (I wonder how he paid the taxes on several thousand acres of land on a teacher’s pension and meager book royalties. The tax bill handed over to his heirs must be one reason the land now belongs to the state.) Yet archibald restored each dusty room of Hampton with the help of local carpenters and back-breaking work. We see the old history of the mansion revealed to us layer by layer as he peels away plaster and paint.

I found most enjoyable the sections of the book on hunting and gardening. Archibald Rutledge was a writer and poet whose hunting stories were printed in Field and Stream magazine. He also wrote for Harpers and the Saturday Evening Post. That hunting remains popular while poetry does not must account for the longevity of his printed material. Had he only written poetry his work might have fallen into obscurity—this is not to say it is not good. Rather, people simply don’t revere poets like the used to. (Quick: name two poems by Robert Frost. How about Wallace Stevens?)

I read carefully as Archibald Rutledge describes how he carefully transplanted live oak trees, myrtle bushes, and planted azaleas and camellias around Hampton. He describes the tricks he discovered for making these plants thrive and survive relocation. Botanists take note. Live oaks adorned with Spanish Moss, myrtle bushes, azaleas, and camellias are the foliage that defined the Carolina coast. Their great beauty was much appreciated at Hampton.

Of course hunting was Archibald Rutledge’s passion and this is where the sports enthusiast will enjoy “Home by the River” most. I read with envy his description of great clouds of ducks as they flew up out of his rice fields. (These great clouds are still there albeit diminished by market hunting which has since been outlawed and wetlands destruction which has been outlawed as well. Most of the ducks still on the Santee River flock to the government-owned Santee Gun club where they are relatively safe from the average hunter who is without political connections. There is much to be said about this government hoarding of ducks I believe.)

Archibald Rutledge hunted turkeys in the fall. Now we hunt turkeys in the spring because that is when the old toms gobble seeking to mate. Such relatively easy prey seemed unsporting in Archibald’s day. Then you could only hunt them in the fall. Archibald would sleep in the swamp and crawl on his belly just to get close to one. For the whitetail deer hunter there is plenty of narrative on that sport too. Mr. Rutledge not only hunted deer he observed them as a naturalist to learn their habits. He would sit in a tree all night long to watch when they came out to feed.

It is too bad that Rutledge’s book “God’s Children” is out-of-print and not listed in the Amazon.com index. No doubt it has been purged from certain card catalogues because the modern reader might find it racist. In it Archibald Rutledge paints portraits of the blacks who worked at Hampton. He talks of one man’s great skill with an ax. Of another he marvels at the grace with which he flings a castnet to catch fish. Of others he talks about their propensity to drink, sleep to excess, beat their wives, or fornicate. His greatest reverence is reserved for Old Tom, the man with whom Mr. Rutledge spent countless hours hunting deer, duck, and turkey. (There is a book on Old Tom listed in the amazon.com index.) Some might be aghast at his glowing admiration for the supposedly simple tasks of cutting wood, netting fish, or calling turkey--maybe that is all these simple people can do? That benevolent, paternal manner harkens back to the plantation days when the negroes look admirably on their masters with upturned eyes and cherub faces. But I find “God’s Children” a heartfelt memoir and a glowing testimonial to people who Mr. Rutledge considered true friends and skilled workers. And anyone who has fell a tree, tossed a cast net, or hunted turkey will tell you that it is not simple.

In the amazon.com index I also don’t see “Old Flintlock” the biography of Archibald Rutledge written by his son.