Happy Chinese New Year

So ends another decade, my 4th on this Earth. each one has had it’s own unique flavor. The 70′s to me were childhood. They lasted for an eternity, in all there Naugahyde glory. The 80′s were my adolescence, the Reagan decade of morning in America, and a continuing depression in Upstate New York. A good decade spent thinking about girls every 7 seconds. Any decade that begins in 6th grade, and ends with College graduation is tough to define. So much change in so little time. The 90′s were young adulthood. Having a job, starting a life on my own. Travel, friends, weddings, and marriage. By the 2000′s I was nested and starting a family. Fatherhood has defined the past decade.

Looking ahead to the 2010′s it’s hard to say what will define them. Some things I know for sure, are that the years will pass even faster, the kids will grow up and be ready to leave home by decade’s end. What exactly I will be doing besides parenting I have no idea. Getting older and fatter most likely. Maybe by then I will have passed beyond cynical and disillusioned about my career, and entered into resignation. Entering into the downside of my working years I will be hanging on until retirement. What will the world look like by then? What will our country look like? Our economy? A long twilight perhaps, or maybe a slow dawn. I doubt total darkness or bright sunshine will be in order. I can feel already that a certain economic stagnation has set in.

In my corporation the worst effects of the economic downturn are behind us. Now we are poised for some positive growth. But as our sales increase, and the workload threatens to overwhelm the survivors, my Dark Corporate Overlords are holding tight to the purse strings and resolving to use this opportunity to re-structure the corporation. They have decided that the elimination of 20% of our jobs in Minnesota is an opportunity to begin what they have decided is inevitable, the transfer of highly skilled engineering and technology development (the heart of our company) to Asia. China in fact. So as managers cry out for more help to keep up with demand, we are being told that no positions can be added in Minneapolis, but that we must put a plan together to start adding positions in China.

The reality of it all is only now beginning to dawn on middle management. I have seen this coming for at least 10 years, so I am not surprised by it. If anything, I wonder what has taken my Nefarious Liege’s this long to try it. For the past ten years they have been steadily moving production to Asia, with much success, if success can be determined by our stock price. So flush with pride over this achievement they have finally taken the next logical step. My advice to any shareholder that would ask me, would be to sell now. We have reached our peak. The CEO has begun drinking his own bathwater, and no one around the Senior Officers is either aware of it, or willing to tell him to stop. So sad, but so typical of baby boomers. They believe their own P.R., and nothing can be more dangerous than that sort of hubris.

So the next few years should be interesting. At first there will be confusion and dissension inside of the ranks. Some managers will stand up and say it cannot be done. They will be shouted down as pessimists and naysayers, and many examples of past triumphs will be used to show how the naysayers were wrong before, and therefore must be wrong now. After that the managers will either comply, or be replaced by others willing to comply with the directive. Then the strategy will be implemented, slowly and haltingly at first. Some business units will be chosen to lead the way, and their efforts will be watched closely. Regardless of the actual outcome, success will be declared, and the rest will be herded along behind them. The true effects of the move will not become apparent for several fiscal years. It takes time for a lack of product innovation to begin to show up in a market. We will keep producing the products we make today, only in derivative forms, well into the next 5 years, and our competitors will begin to gain market share. Management will then decide that the reason is that we are too slow in moving our business to Asia, and that our remaining overhead in the U.S. that is supporting the move and overseeing the training, and development of the China staff is too costly, and must be cut. So the cost cutting and job elimination in the U.S. will increase. This will only worsen the situation, as our experience base erodes more quickly, and our communication and relationships with Western customers begin to suffer. We will lose business even faster at this point, and the point of no return will have been passed. After this, a takeover, or the breakup of the business will most likely ensue. This failure will be blamed on many things, management, the economy, external factors, everything but the move to China. That will have already been decreed as a success, and the few left standing will know better than to dispute the Corporate Gospel.

Is this scenario a pessimistic one? Yes, I admit it. Is it inevitable? No, the future is never cast in stone. Can it be prevented? Of course it can, if true leaders stand up and are willing to lead others against the stream of group think. Will I be one of them? Hard to say at this point. I have always been a survivor, but I have been able to manage it not by drinking the Kool Aid and falling into step with the system. Instead I have survived by being recognized as someone who finds a way to get results by working around the system. I have been Ferris Bueller. Many times folks have praised my results, and been puzzled at my methods. “How does he do it? So strange. He does things differently, and you wouldn’t think it would work, and yet it does.”

I have found a way to float along in middle management, just visible enough to be acknowledged and rewarded for my performance, but just anonymous enough that I have not yet had to really stand up to my Dark Corporate Overlords, and openly oppose them, or their methods. I am more subtle in my resistance to things. I use non-being, and find ways to use the force of the system against itself to achieve my ends. In doing so I have carved out a little safe haven for myself, and those who work for me. A calm place where we can do our work in our own way, and maintain some bit of dignity and sanity. I wonder how much longer I can keep that up. The coming pressure to move the heart and soul of the business to China will be one that I cannot avoid. This will be the biggest challenge yet, to try to rally the organization to resist a decision that has already been made, and will likely doom the corporation for a generation. This battle cannot be fought entirely behind the scenes. I will need to find ways to enlist other, more powerful managers to fight a battle like this. Am I up to the challenge? Ask me again in 2020 and I’ll let you know.

Happy Chinese New Year

Goodbye to another decade, wah, wah, wah…

Baby Boomer

This being an Internet “blawg”, I would be remiss if I didn’t make one of those “end of the decade” best of / worst of lists.

I know it’s in vogue to bash the last ten years as “Worst Decade Ever” but I can’t help but feel this is just another sign of our self centered media culture. If you listened to the Baby Boomers the world only began in 1950, and the sixties were the pinnacle of civilization man… I mean like, Woodstock and shit…

Yeah, as this terrific photo tour of the past 10 years shows, it sure wasn’t the best of times, but I wouldn’t call it the decade from hell either. Like most of our media induced navel gazing, our opinions are formed from the 24/7 saturation of News! News! News! Since we see few images of life pre-1950′s, it’s easy to assume that it was idyllic. But as I’ve said before, I’d take the past decade over the 1930′s or 1940′s any day. Heck, I’d take them over any decade in the 20th century, pre-Baby Boomer. And that doesn’t even begin to address all the pre-modern history that we have no images of to remind us how wonderful life was. I’m sure the Black Death was a lovely time to be alive. If only CNN and Fox news had been around to comment on it, we’d be able to figure out if it was Bush’s or Obama’s fault.

No, as much as we hate to admit it, as bad as the past 10 years were, they were also pretty good. Of course, statements like that don’t sell Newspapers and Magazines. Luckily, it ain’t my job to sell either. The one thing most lacking these days seems to be some sense of perspective.

The changes that have occurred in the world during the last 100 years are staggering. But we seem to forget that, and assume that things will continue to advance at such speed towards a technological utopia delivered directly to our iPOD’s. When they show any sign of slowing, or God forbid, a decline, we throw up our hands like spoiled little children and cry for Mommy. Well folks, I’ve got a news flash you won’t find in Time, CNN, or the NY Times. Life ain’t fair and it never has been. The world is imperfect, and man is imperfect, and I don’t see either one of them changing in the next decade either. Does that mean we should despair? Hell no. It means we all need to cowboy up damn it, and quit whining.

So the world economy tanks, and folks are standing in bread lines. Heck, we still have folks that were around the last time that happened.

So the polar ice caps melt? It won’t be the first time.

So peak oil brings about the end of the automotive age? I think we have a few thousand years of history to show we don’t need cars to survive

So a global pandemic decreases the world population by 30%. Yawn, been there done that too.

So we take that big asteroid hit and… OK, ya got me there. That would definitely suck.

So, barring an Asteroid strike, here’s to the 2010′s and another wild, unpredictable ride through human history. Please fasten your seatbelts and keep your hands and feet in the vehicle at all times.

Canary Wanted

1908 - Photo by Lewis Hine - Library of Congress

Sorry for the lack of posting, but I have been at the bottom of the deep dark mine these past few days, and haven’t felt much like writing.

The photo above sums up the mood nicely. It’s a picture taken just 100 years ago, September 1908. The boy in the photo is Vance Palmer, he is 15 years old. He worked in a West Virginia Coal Mine as a trapper. What his job entailed was sitting on the bench by the door, and opening and closing it to let the mule driven carts through. This controlled the ventilation in the mine. That little alcove behind him is where he stood when the door was open, to let the team past. This photo, like so many that I have found in the Library of Congress archives, is a reminder of how much life in the United States has changed in a relatively short span of time. 100 years is not that long ago, but this photo seems to be from another Universe.

If you want to read more about Vance’s story, go to this link. It’s a site called “Mornings on Maple Street” where Joe Manning, a writer, genealogist, historian, and poet, has been working through the 5,000 photo collection of Lewis Hine, the photographer who took the photo above, and many others of Child Laborers in the early 20th Century. On this wonderful site he researches the children named in the photos to find out about their stories, and what became of them. This is truly amazing work. I am awed by the depth, and the breadth of this undertaking.

Lights please.

⁸And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.

⁹And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.

¹⁰And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

¹¹For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.

¹²And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

¹³And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,

¹⁴Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

- Luke 2: 8-14

That is what Christmas is all about Charlie Brown.

Copenhagen – December 1996

Photo copyright Rodney Hsu @ http://www.flickr.com/photos/rodney_hsu/4203964369/in/pool-copenhagen

One of my fondest memories of a business trip, is my trip to Copenhagen in 1996. I was there to support some meetings between one of our Indian licensees and their customer NTPC (an Indian power company). The meetings were held at Haldor-Topsoe, a consulting engineering firm, in suburban Copenhagen. Apparently, even the Indians didn’t want to have a meeting in India. In my role as an application engineer, I was purely there for technical support of the specification review, between the Danish consulting engineers, our Indian licensee, and the turbine manufacturer EGT (European Gas Turbines) of Essen, Germany.

The meetings were held the week after Thanksgiving, and we flew out on a Monday. We arrived at our hotel in Copenhagen around 10:00 pm Tuesday night. The girl at the front desk gave us a message from the German’s at EGT, that they would be in a conference room on the 2nd floor, preparing for the meeting, and to stop by when we arrived. So we dropped our bags in the room, grabbed our laptops and headed to the meeting. There were six Germans, sitting around the table, with half liter glasses of Tuborg in front of them. After introductions, the first thing they did was order us a round of beer. The cute little blond waitress (and in Denmark they are all cute little blonds) arrived with a tray full of beer, and set us up. The Germans immediately ordered another round. That little blond got her exercise that night ferrying beers upstairs to our meeting, and taking empty glasses back down to the bar. By the time the meeting finally broke up around midnight, I was pretty much in the bag.

The days that followed were long, and painful negotiations between our Indian licensee and NTPC, over the most mundane and irrelevant portions of the technical spec. It drove the Germans crazy. As for me, it was entertainment. The Danes would read a section of specification, listing the 4 acceptable suppliers for a given component, and our Indian licensee would request the addition of 2 other suppliers to the list. The Indians from NTPC would object, and a 15 minute discussion would commence. At the end of 15 minutes, our Indian licensee would finally give in, and repeat, “OK, just to confirm the 4 acceptable suppliers are…” and then he would list 3 of the names from the spec, plus one of his own. If the Indians caught it, the argument would start up all over again. In this way, our licensee wore the customer down the way that a stream polishes a stone. Slowly. Excruciatingly slowly. I think the German’s nerves were frayed by the afternoon of the first day, and the meetings continued like this for 3 days. And so a week passed slowly by.

Photo copyright Rodney Hsu @ http://www.flickr.com/photos/rodney_hsu/4204721332/

Our hotel was out in the fringes of Copenhagen, and we never got much of a chance to go out until Friday evening. To save on airfare we had booked our return flight for Sunday, so we had 2 evenings, and a Saturday to spend in Copenhagen. For me and my colleague, an amiable salesman from Louisville, it was like a trip to Disneyland. Friday was the first Friday of Advent, which is a festive time in Copenhagen. The walking streets (Stroget) in the city center come alive with Christmas decorations, crowds, outdoor musicians, sausage stands, and vendors selling hot mulled wine. We wandered the streets for hours, eating hotdogs with horseradish mustard, and sampling all the Danish beer we could find. My personal favorite was the Tuborg Christmas Beer. I drank gallons of the stuff. Sigh… if only they imported it here.

I wish I could get this here in Minnesota

My colleague was a very outgoing guy, which compensated for my shyness, and he struck up a conversation with every bartender, and bar maid in Copenhagen that weekend. The bars were packed with people singing along to the music, and in very high spirits. I remember one particular bar where the bartender kept feeding us drinks for free, and insisting that we stay until bar time, which was hours past the last train back to our hotel. We only managed to escape through the crowd when he wasn’t looking to catch the last train home.

Photo copyright Claus Kunkel @ http://www.flickr.com/photos/clauskunckel/4182718780/in/pool-copenhagen

I fell in love with Copenhagen that weekend. On Saturday, we spent the whole day strolling the sights, and shopping. The slanting winter sun was achingly beautiful as it hung so low in the sky that afternoon, and the nighttime was a repeat of the evening before. By the time I left I was convinced that the Danes were the happiest people in the world. Apparently, they still are. And in a country full of warm blonds and cold beer, who can blame them?

Photo copyright Alex Sven @ http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexsven/2541811968/in/pool-copenhagen

Self Serve Christmas Card

We were a little late in putting together the family Christmas card this year, and with the holiday fast approaching, we thought we’d try something a little different this year…

Father Christmas visits 20 Prospect

Dear (insert your name here)

It has been a wonderful and momentous year here at 20 Prospect. We hope that the season finds you all doing well, and that you are having a _____

a.) Merry Christmas

b. ) Happy Hanukkah

c.) Jolly Kwanzaa

It is so hard to believe that 2009 is almost over and that the first decade of the 21st century is coming to an end. Why is seems like only yesterday that ____.

a.) ‘lil Miss 20 Prospect was born.

b.) 20 Prospect Jr. bagged his first squirrel with the .22.

c.) I finished rehab.

Great memories to be sure, but we’re excited about what new adventures await in 2010. Mrs. 20 Prospect and I are so looking forward to ____.

a.) ‘lil Miss 20 Prospect’s next swim meet.

b.)20 Prospect Jr.’s first game misconduct penalty.

c.) Receiving our stimulus check, and government cheese in the mail.

But the end of another year is also a good time to pause and reflect on the past year, and all of the wonderful times that we shared like ___

a.) our family vacation to see the World’s Largest Ball of Twine in Darwin, MN.

b.) Mrs. 20 Prospect being acquitted on all counts.

c.) The amazing success of our Ponzi scheme direct marketing business.

And then there was the time that the Indomitable Moxie ____

a.) ate the Guinea pig.

b.) bit the mailman.

c.)  made an amazing 2,000 mile journey with a cat, and a rabbit, to be re-united with us after we forgot and left her behind on vacation.

We are still laughing about that one! After all of that excitement, I think the whole family agrees that we are looking forward to relaxing over the winter break.

Wishing you a Happy New Year, and looking forward to seeing you ___

a.) on our next trip to Batavia.

b.) at the family re-union next summer.

c.) in hell.

Peace,

The 20 Prospect Family

The Center Cannot Hold

Came across this article over the weekend, on the study of dark matter by Physicists at the U. It was hard to resist the headline “Key to the Universe found on the Iron Range”. It seems one of the enduring mysteries of physics is what holds the universe together. A calculation of the mass of planets and stars in the galaxies reveals that there is not enough mass to create the gravity necessary to hold galaxies together, and prevent stars from spinning off into space. That is where the theory of “dark matter” comes from. Dark matter is theorized to be a substance invisible to the eye that contains enough mass to generate the necessary gravity necessary to hold the universe together.

Cool.

The article doesn’t do a very good job ‘splaining to non-physicists what exactly they found at the bottom of an old iron mine up on “da range”. I’m speculating on a loaf of Potica, or perhaps a Cornish Pasty left behind by a miner.

Cornish Pasty - Key to the universe?

It also brings to mind this poem by William Butler Yeats. I was never a big fan of Yeats, but this one has always given me chills.

The Second Coming  – W.B. Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

If you had to pick one poem to be the theme for the 20th Century, this one would get my vote. A century when the hand of man, in an effort to achieve heaven on earth, unleashed forces upon the world that created living hells. You could make a strong case that modernity is the rough beast slouching towards Bethlehem.

Nekoosa, Wisconsin – Winter 90′-91′

As I’ve talked about before, my first few months on the job were a bit of a struggle for me. Working down in the Birmingham, Alabama district office did not help with my transition from college life. Other than my education in Paducah under Denny’s tutelage, my time working in Mobile, and other Alabama Power plants was miserable. The district was full of middle age engineers who had no interest in training, or helping out some kid from New York, and my days in the deep South were lonely. I struggled with the Southern culture, and never really felt at ease out on my own in the Deep South. I just stuck out too much. I used to just dread hearing someone say in that slow drawl “You ain’t from around here, are ya boy?”

So when I was sitting in the district office in Autumn, and the Area Manager came up to me and asked if I would be willing to head up to the Chicago district to help staff an outage inspection I responded “I can be packed noon.” By nightfall I had crossed the river into Illinois, and I felt like getting out of the car and kissing the ground. The Chicago district manager had a young female engineer that he correctly had deduced wasn’t long for the lifestyle of a field service engineer, and had talked the Birmingham office into a swap. I was the player to be named later. They took me sight unseen, willing to take a chance on me only because I was a guy.

The Chicago district was a big change from Birmingham. The field service staff was larger, and split almost equally between veterans, and young engineers in their first few years of work. After a few short weeks in Central Illinois, they sent me up to Wisconsin to be the 5^th person on a startup. The project was the construction of a new recovery boiler in Nekoosa, at the Georgia Pacific paper mill. GP had just recently taken over the 100 year old Nekoosa mill, in a hostile takeover that was all too common at the time. The Paper business was struggling through the recession, and the bigger fish were out gobbling up the little Mom and Pop mills all over. This was my first project at the Paper Mill, and the difference between it and working at a coal plant was striking.

Nekoosa Mill - photo copyright Shane Rucker @ http://woodcountywisconsin.blogspot.com/

The mill was close to 100 years old, and had been added onto over the years, giving it a real cobbled together look. Nekoosa was a small mill town, with only about 2,500 residents. The as you can see in the postcard above, the city consisted of a Paper Mill on one side of main street, and a row of businesses on the other side of the street. The paper mill expansion was a huge boom time for the town. There were several hundred Union laborers working on the project, and the city was always swarming with guys in Carharts coming and going in their pickups.

I showed up at the plant, and began asking around for our construction trailer. It was across the street from the plant, in a parking lot across from the Jack ‘n Jill supermarket. I had not been on a start-up project yet, just outage work, and the buzz of activity going on around the place was a bit disorienting. Walking into the trailer I was surprised to see that the field service crew was as young as I was. There were four of them on the project, and during the next 6 months, I would come and go as the workload ebbed and flowed, helping out as the 5^th guy whenever things got busy. The project lead was a quiet bearded guy, who seldom spoke more than 2 words. He was in his late 20’s or early 30’s, and had been working startups in the Paper Valley of central Wisconsin for about 5 years. The rest of the crew consisted of Mike, a 3^rd year field guy from Massachusetts, Cathy, a 2^nd year engineer from Worschester, Mass, and Joe, another 2^nd year guy from Aurora, Illinois. We also shared out trailer with the team from ABB Impel, who were the control system contractors, and had 3-4 young 20-something electrical engineers on the project.

Nekoosa Mill - Photo copyright Shane Rucker @ http://woodcountywisconsin.blogspot.com/

It did not take long to fit into the crew. Mike and Cathy were classic extroverted Easterner’s, quick to laugh, or swear like sailors. Joe, or “Jumpin’ Joe” as we called him, was a quiet Midwestern guy that made Eeyore seem like an optimist. As for the boss, the “Quiet Man” tried to fade into the background, and pretty much left Mike to communicate with us kids and give us our daily assignments. Being older, he had a wife and kids, and had been in Central Wisconsin long enough to buy a house and settle down. A rarity in our line of work. The rest of us had overrun the Chalet Motel in Wisconsin Rapids, a town of about 10,000, about 15 miles up river.

It was late Autumn when I arrived on the project, and deer hunting season in Wisconsin was another new cultural experience. In Packerland, just about everybody hunts, and if the talk isn’t about the Packers, it’s about hunting. For a bunch of college kids from towns and cities, the Up North accent, and blaze orange cammo’ amused us to no end. I discovered that folks in Wisconsin are some of the friendliest, and most welcoming people you will ever meet. It wasn’t long before I knew the names of all the old Ladies working the front desk at the motel, or in the deli at the Jack and Jill.

Winter came quickly, and the weather reminded me of my days in Potsdam. But unlike school, I was now working outside in it. I was not set up for working in the cold, and I soon had to get to the Shopko, and Fleet Farm to get outfitted in Carhardt, wool socks, and long johns. Dad also helped out when I was home for Thanksgiving, by setting me up with some helmet liners for my hardhat. Those “Rocky the Squirrel” liners looked absolutely ridiculous, but were a life saver. I doubt I’d have made it through the winter without them.

The hours were long, and often required us to pull night shifts, or weekend shifts to keep the project on track. I had no idea what to do, but Cathy and Joe were great about taking me under their wing, and helping show me the ropes. Most of our work at the point in time was checking out the electrical system, and doing wire tests with multimeters to make sure things were wired properly before we fired them up. A recovery boiler is smaller than a large coal fired boiler. The boiler building was only about 8 stories tall, and much tighter inside due to the amount of process piping involved. A recovery boiler provides steam to run the paper machines, and co-generate some electricity through a small steam turbine. The fuel is actually a byproduct of the paper making process.

“Black Liquor” as it is called, is a byproduct slurry of wood pulp, and chemicals that comes off of the digester tanks. It is sprayed into the furnace through oscillating liquor guns that look like fire hose nozzles, and as it burns it forms a pool in the bottom of the furnace. That pool of burning liquid, then pours out through a tap into another tank, having now been transformed into green liquor, which is then fed back into the digester. This allows the mill to recover the inorganic chemicals used in the Kraft process for making paper. The Kraft process is as foul, and smelly as they come, and is responsible for much of the rotting eggs mixed with flowers smell that hovers in every Paper Mill town. The whole process is quite involved, and results in a lot of humidity being vented into the atmosphere, which in the winter time means that a paper mill is always surrounded in fog.

Nekoosa Mill copyright Shane Rucker @ http://woodcountywisconsin.blogspot.com/

We’d arrive in the morning, and that smell would hit us as soon as we crossed the bridge into Nekoosa. By the time we left to go home at night, the town would glow in a yellow cloud, and the smell would have permeated our clothes. On Friday’s we’d stop for Happy Hour in one of the bars in Nekoosa before heading back to Rapids, and getting cleaned up. One Wednesday night in March, Cathy (a good Irish Catholic girl) and I were sitting at the bar feeling guilty about being out drinking on Ash Wednesday, when our guilt got the better of us and we left the bar after 2 beers to go to Mass in our work clothes and receive ashes. I think the priest’s thumb actually left a clean spot on my forehead.

Nekoosa Mill copyright Shane Rucker @ http://woodcountywisconsin.blogspot.com/

As I said before, Main Street in Nekoosa consisted of a Paper Mill on one side of the street and a row of bars on the other. The bars were making a killing off of the craft laborers that year. Every night at quitting time the guys would pour across the street from the construction site to the bars. Each Union had their own bar. Being college grads, we  usually drank with the Electrician’s, who are like the intelligentsia of craft laborers. Meaning they can read. Mike was the only one of us crazy enough to hit the bars next door with the Pipefitters, and Millwrights. But only on rare occasions would he go into the Boilermaker or Ironworker bars though. Those two were the places the fights broke out.

Winter in Wisconsin is a 6 month long reason to drink. Not that Wisconsinites need a reason. I remember one Saturday we all piled into the car and headed up to Rib Mountain in Wausau to go skiing. Afterwards we stopped in the lounge at the Holiday Inn to have a few drinks. There was a band playing, and things quickly got out of hand. I remember being out on the dance floor with some girls that we had met, and looking up to see Cathy on stage playing drums in the band. When the bar closed at 2 am, the waitresses came around with plastic “to go” cups for everyone to take their drinks home with them. I can remember thinking “What a country!” Wasting a drink was a bigger concern than drunk driving.

There were many nights like that during the Winter of 90-91. We’d drink on weeknights in town, and on weekends we’d sometimes road trip to Madison to drink and sleep 4 to a room in some dive hotel within walking distance of State Street. The funny part about it, is that it wasn’t that out of the norm. By Wisconsin standards we were all tea-totalers.

Winter passed slowly, and I came and went several times while the project churned slowly on. By summer 1991, most of the systems were operational, and the staff was greatly reduced. We each went our different ways. I was transferred again, this time to the Denver district office. Joe went back to Chicago, and worked the ComEd plants. Mike stayed on in the Paper Valley for awhile, before finding work back in the HQ in Connecticut. Cathy switched to the performance testing group based out of Connecticut as well. You can take the kids out of Massachusetts, but you won’t take the Massechusetts out of the kid.

Those were some great days though. I’d never have known that I would end up in Minnesota, married to a good Wisconsin girl, but it wasn’t that hard to imagine. I’ve never felt more at home, than I did working in Nekoosa that winter. We’ve all grown up now. I have lost touch with both Cathy and Joe, as they have their own families and have moved on like me. Wherever they may be, I’m sure they remember those great times as much as I do.

First Ice

Wednesday Night Lights

We watch and we wait all December for the telltale glow in the sky. Off to the West, above the rooftops, over the Lake, the white shine of light on the belly of the Water Tower tells the tale. Like the star of Bethlehem appearing in the sky, the lights appeared last night. Like wise men, 20 Prospect Jr. and I followed them to the rink.

It was 9 Degrees outside, but the winds were calm so we warmed up quickly enough. To be honest, the ice still needs some work, but I’m not complaining. It was wonderful to get out and stretch the legs. Now it feels like winter has arrived. Good to see so many boys out there playing shinny too. Close to 30 of them by the time we headed home. Not bad for a school night in December. As for the boy, well, I must admit I had trouble keeping up. We skated the oval a few times and holy cow did he get some jets since last year. It took all I had to hang with him. Thankfully, I’m still wily enough with the puck to beat him in one on one.

Who is that shadowy blur with the puck?

O’ Little Town of Bethlehem

Bethlehem, PA - Photo by Walker Evans - Nov 1935 from the Library of Congress FSA collection

The pictures in this post were taken by the Farm Security Administration / Office of War Information, between 1935 and 1945. This landmark government program sent photographers out into rural America to document the lives of American’s and the effects of the Great Depression and increasing farm mechanization. In it’s later years the focus of the program turned to America’s industrial mobilization for the Second World War. I stumbled across this treasure trove of historical images via the Shorpy.com photo-blog. They are part of the digitized archives of the Library of Congress.

Bethlehem, PA - Photo by Walker Evans - Nov 1935 from the Library of Congress FSA collection

I find myself drawn to them for reasons that are hard to explain. Since I was a child, I have been fascinated by what came before. In the summer I would ride my bike to the Richmond library, and look through the century old maps of Batavia, and the historical sketches of the late Don Carmichael. (Another long time resident of Prospect Avenue, and the father of childhood friends). I would find places that intrigued me on the map, and then ride my bike to the location to see how they looked today, and if I could find any traces of the past. I guess I should have pursued industrial archeology instead of engineering, as it really was my passion.

Bethlehem, PA - Photo by Walker Evans - Nov 1935 from the Library of Congress FSA Collection

That explains much about my current fascination with these old photographs. I’m still a hopeless dreamer, endlessly fascinated by the look of the pre-suburban world. These photos document a certain turning point in American life. A zenith in 20^th Century Industry. The final days of the Industrial Revolution that began after the Civil War. These snapshots document life as it was before the great post war boom of consumerism, suburbanization, de-industrialization, and the rise of the middle class.

Street Scene- Aliquippa, PA - Photo by Jack Delano - Jan 1941 from the Library of Congress

I find it hard to imagine this world, when refrigerators, and other modern appliances were still out of reach of most American’s. We love to eulogize this world, and project idyllic images of community and agrarian life onto the past, but looking closely at these pictures I am struck by the grittiness of the world at the time. If you look beyond the iconic migrant & dust bowl photographs of Dorothea Lange, and dig deep into the catalog you’ll find many portraits taken of Urban and Rural American’s of the day. Reading the captions and looking at the faces, and these people seem old beyond their years. Weather it’s the 14 year old mill workers, the 20 year old miner’s, or the industrial working women of the War years, the faces betray the ages. We can romanticize the past all we want, and complain about the present, but I feel safe saying that most of the folks in these photos would gladly trade places with us.

Woman and Child - Bridgewater, PA - Husband is a steelworker ; Photo by Jack Delano - Jan 1940 from the Library of Congress

I’m not naive enough to think that these photo’s did not carry a political agenda. The FSA photo program was enacted to show both the need, and the success of FDR’s New Deal initiatives. And if you only had these photos to go by, you’d think every American was a Miner, Migrant Farmer, or a Mill Worker. But I do believe that the pictures are honest depictions of the life of the subjects, and illustrate what their world looked like at the time.

Steelworkers in Aliquippa - Photo by Arthur Rothstein - July 1938; from the Library of Congress

For better, or worse, the world shown in these photographs would disappear within another 50 years. Think about that for a moment. Like the population statistics I showed yesterday, this world of Indsutrial America rose up in the valley’s of Pennsylvania in the 80 years before these photos were taken, and would disappear even faster. Now go to the window and look out at the world that surrounds us. The post war suburbs, the suburban office parks, the Strip Malls and box stores, the downtown Condiminium’s. What will it look like in another 50 years? Will the changes be as stark as they were in the 20th Century, or is this post-industrial age fundamentally different? These are the things that occupy my mind. Yes, I think too much.