Search for Blue

When we first came to Boone, the town in North Carolina where Pat and I raised our three young'uns, I had a job that lasted  a few years,  tieing steel rebar in the Linn Cove Viaduct.
It was a bridge that happened to be the final section--the Missing Link--of a 469-mile National Park road, the Blue Ridge Parkway. Why this missing link, which was located pretty much in the middle of the whole road project, took so long to get built is a long story.
That story will form part of the narrative of a new novel, which I have recently begun researching and writing. The working title is Search for Blue.

Back in the 1950's, '60's and 70's, a gaggle of disagreements had confounded any beginning of constructing that Missing Link. When they finally got the issues settled between owners of Grandfather Mountain and the National Park Service, construction of the final Blue Ridge Parkway section was begun in 1979.
And I helped. While the missing link was being built, it looked something like this:


Recently, I, being now in what used to be called old age (but only 68!), I began to wonder what the cessation of work might have been like for a workman who had labored on that Parkway project "back in the day."
This book will tell the tale that I uncover. Here's an excerpt from chapter 1 of "Search for Blue."

But in October of '29 the whole damn thing just stalled out, real sudden like,   stone-cold dead in its tracks.
            By that time, marauding manufacturing and rabid farming had stirred up a dust bowl in the wide prairies and a cloud of manifest debilitation over our formerly manifested destiny. Monetary manipulation absconded the bold thrust of old-fashioned capital-driven progress; frantic philandering pushed quaint front-porch watch-the-world-go-by domestic tranquility into a ragged soup line.
            1920's roaring jibber-jabber got lost in 1930's Depression regression.  The country had shifted from financed euphoria to unemployed stuporia, and so in the election of '32 we rolled Mr. Roosevelt into the White house on a Democrat wheelbase of socializing progressivism;  The new President, former governor of New York, wasted no time in arm-twisting the nation right on over into his New Deal.           
            As the dust of dystopia settled, some forlorn Americans pined for the good ole days. Ah, they said, those were the days. Wish we'd seen it coming!
            It didn't take them New Dealers too long to figure out that what was needed was to get  people working again, and fast.
            Congress, shell-shocked by the deadening thunder of an American business-industrial dynamo self-destructing,  got themselves hellbent on a string of programs to shorten--if not eliminate--the    lengthening unemployment lines. Their legislating fervor reached way, way far--even as far as somewhere over the rainbow--and so they laid hold of the pot of gold!
            But when the vessel was recovered, it turned out to be--not a pot of gold, but--a soup pot, and a damn-near empty one at that.  So they set themselves to re-filling it, although not with gold. There wasn't, by that time, much of the precious yellow stuff around. They had to  begin filling the empty rainbow pot with . . . soup!
            Out on the street, maybe while waitin' in line for the soup, Joe Blow--or maybe it was Jane Doe--came up with a name for the collection of work and improvement programs that Congress was dishing out: "alphabet soup." Take a gander at this list: FERA, FCA, NIRA, PWA,  FFMC, CWER, AAA, EBA, FDIC, FHA, NRA, NLRB, RA, REA, SEC, SSA, TVA, to name just a few, and we'll certainly not fail to mention the two work outfits destined to be the most productive in our present scouting-out-the-land, search for Blue expedition: CCC  and WPA, which is the easy way of sayin' Civilian Conservation Corps and Works Progress Administration.
            Since Mr. Roosevelt had proclaimed we had nothing to fear but fear itself, one of Congress' first assaults against the dreaded enemy actually took aim at that "fear itself."
            In an inspired idea to nullify the power of the enemy attitude, our  lawmakers scrambled the word "fear." They appropriated the letters. . . f, e, a, and r, reassigned them to a nobler cause, and came up with  the Federal Emergency Relief Act of 1933, which came to be known as: FERA!
            And that was one of the early servings of the alphabet soup; it got  ladled into the bowls and hands of millions of unemployed Americans.
Most of the work was cranked up in the urban districts; city folks were much more dependent on the system than country folk. Out on the farms, people might be broke, and they might be deprived of some of the so-called necessities of modern life, but at least they had some ground out back to scratch a few seeds into the good earth and thereby harvest unto themselves some corn, beans, or potatoes to serve at dinner time. They might even still have a hog or two or a cow or at least a few chickens peckin' around to have for some future supper time embellishment.
            All that said, the farm folks did have their share of the alphabetizing bonanza that Congress was serving: AAA, FCA, FFMC etcetera etcetera. One way or another, everybody got a little help.
            Back in that day and time, most men could still wield a shovel or a hoe. Even if they hadn't done much with such tools as that, they or their kin were probably close enough to the land to at least know something of how to handle an implement.
            As it turned out, a lot of them programs that the New Dealers came up with did involve shovels and hoes and rakes and such. By 'n by, some Republicans who were not so convinced about the efficacy of Mr. Roosevelt's wheelin' dealin' job programs--they hit upon the shovel as a symbol of the gaggle of "do nothing" alphabetized boondoggle make-work crews who spent more time leaning on their shovels than actually wielding them for the betterment of the country.
            But that's just politics. They'll never get all that mess straightened out.

Probably about three years from now, I'll have the rest of it done so you can read about how it all came together over fifty years of time.
Meanwhile, find a good book to read, today! You can find one here:


careyrowland.com

the Tower of Signals

Thousands of years ago, we built a legendary tower, the shadow of which has seemed to darken our human history even unto today.

According to a certain well-known historical source, the Bible . . . the tower of Babel was erected in some location east of the Euphrates River. The region therein has been known since that ancient time by various names:  Chaldea, Shinar, Babylon, and a few other identities, such as the current one, Iraq.

So an ancient tale about the tower of Babel, especially its fall, has been passed down to us through the ages.   The biblical account says that The Tower of Babel’s undoing happened because the people were unable to communicate. So they were not able to get the thing built.

In our modern reflection upon that archaic project, I think what Will Rogers or Mark Twain or Yogi Berra, or some such sage  said, applies:

“What we have here is a failure to communicate.”

It’s an old story, but true.

Nevertheless, I’m here to tell ya that in spite of ourselves we people of the earth have managed to erect some pretty impressive towers here and there throughout the ages.

For instance, notice this  classic religious tower in San Francisco, which happens to be a double.

This structure represents that spirit of religion that dominated our Western culture for a couple of thousand years.

Here’s a Spanish project representing a more contemporary creative impulse toward the divine.

Very impressive. But the era of God-inspired basilica-building has been overtaken by more humanistic projects. Since the so-called Enlightenment in the 18th-century, people have aspired to ideals even loftier than mere religion. This modern emphasis has wrought even higher and higher feats of skyscraping.

The long epoch of God-inspired tower-building has been overtaken by a New Age of Man.

And yet, our rising human spirit has morphed itself beyond mere commercial, citified projections. Check out an Olympic objet d’art that the Barcelonans fashioned for the 1992 Olympics:

This fluidic rising structure embodies a humanic zeitgeist; it aspires to inspire ascension to world peace—a peace wrought through zealous sports competition instead of bloody wars fought with destructive weapons on muddy battlefields.

Pretty damned impresseve, huh?!

Higher and higher we strive; higher and higher we arrive.

Now in 21st-century AI, We find ourselves in the upper regions of human accomplishment.

Physical upbuilding has now taken a back seat to the loftiness of our ideals.

So we’ve built a stupendous net of ideas, an electronic network that ceaselessly transmits gigabytes of presciently important data around the world. It is a web as ethereal as the sun itself . . . as surreal as a Dali . . .  as real as a Warhol.

And towards this end, we’ve built towers of a different—a new and different—kind:

Towers such as this one--structures of ascending human perfectibility-- are slavishly repeating signals all day and all night for the benefit of all mankind!

For the benefit of Mr. Kite, ever and ever onward to greater heights!

We hold these spires to be self-evident—that our updated tower-driven secretions will project a worldwide web of human achievement to rise higher than  the Tower of Babel ever did!

Good luck with that.

Glass Chimera

The Ongoing Project: Greece

Discover



Recover



Reclaim



Renew



Rebuild



Restore and Shore up



Reinforce and Support



Repair



Reconstruct



Religion.



Remain.




Glass half-Full

Chicago

I say

America moved, I say, back in the day.

She just came bustin' out from the East.

She came rolling in on wheels, gliding through ship-tossed spray.

She was blowing past some old dearth, yearning some new feast.

We heard her skimming' o'er Erie, Michigan, and along the deep blue sky,

plucking plunder low, grabbing gusto high.

And when the dust had settled,

after Illinois mud had dried,

when ore'd been changed to metal,

while papa sweated and mama cried,

the new was born; the old had died.

Where dreamers come and workers go,

't'was there arose:

Chicago.


Born of rivers and the Lake,

she was cast in iron, forged in steel,

bolted fast as rails n' timbers quake,

careening then on some big steely Wheel

making here a whippersnappin' deal,

and there a factory, a pump, a field,

o'er swamp and stump and prairie

tending farm and flock and dairy

in blood and sweat and rust

through boom and blust and bust.

They carved out block, laid brick and stone;

our groundwork for America Midwest they honed

with blade and trowel and and pick and shovel.

They swung hammers through dust as thick as trouble.

They dug a canal there that changed

the whole dam world; they arranged

to have goods shipped in, and products go.

Reminds me of Sandburg, and Michelangelo.

Many a man put meat on the table;

many a woman toiled, skillful and able.

Thousands of sites got developed, selected,

while many a factory got planned and erected.

Many a Chicagoan had a good run,

caught lots of ball games, had a whole lotta fun,

while working, playing, praying and such

with friends and families, keeping in touch.

In all that we do, the plans we make,

there's forever more going down than we think is at stake.

When people wear out, they sit around and play cards.

When widgets wear out, we pile them in scrap yards.

If we're lucky, or resourceful, or blessed,

we'll end up with a little something at the end of our test,

a hole in the wall, or a piece of the pie,

maybe a nice little place, by n' by.

While Democrats convened in Chicago in '68,

antiwar protesters got stopped at the gate.

Mayor Daley sent his men out to poke 'em in the slammer.

'T'was Chicago style justice: no sickle, just hammer.

Today in downtown, Chicago Mayor Daley's name is all over the place,

though about those radical protesters you'll find not a trace.

So what does that tell ya about Chicago, or America, today?

We're like the Cubs' in the Series; that's all that I'll say.

Glass half-Full