Age of Optimisim.

Age of Optimisim.

Thick leathery leaves rubbed Grace’s cheek. She reached for the flowery cluster crowning the stalk of prairie dock. It was a mild winter day. Grace grasped the burst of yellow. A sparrow hawk circled above looking for grassy tunnels of shrews. Seeds caught wind as Grace rolled the cluster between her thumb and fingers.

She was not far from Huffman Prairie. There a century earlier, in secret, the Wright brothers compelled six hundred pounds of spruce wood, muslin and aluminum to bank and perform figure eights in the clouds. Above Ohio, flying machines were made to turn.

The wind swept dunes of Kitty Hawk captured public imagination. That was twelve seconds of straight ahead flight. Lessons from a succession of lofty setbacks were learned on the prairie. The brother’s secret of running wire cable from wing tip to rudder was plainly visible. Warped wings stood out in the claim on file in the patent office. The obvious and unnoticed cable provided lateral control for turning. The patent carved out hopes of lucrative war department contracts. The propeller was behind the engine. That position was unreliable and dangerous. The war department looked elsewhere. Nonetheless, their innovations hastened the end of the age of optimism. World war was at hand.

People had a predictable idea of Grace. She had a hard, grainy demeanor. Her eyes were round and hollow. Her limbs were narrow making her knees and elbows seem larger. These features made people underestimate her. People saw her outside of her habitat. Grace’s secrets took root long ago. She felt overshadowed around her sibblings. She quietly began to exploit everyday disturbances. She honed her skills. Grace learned to burn her bridges. She trusted her deep roots would renew her afterward. If not, she migrated elsewhere. She had lived a decade in southeast Ohio. People there thought she was Appalachian, like them.

Huffman Prairie was now an air force base. Many homes and businesses had grown and spread around its perimeter. To Grace, the base drained her prairie of its essential nutrients of space and light. Some years back she established a preserve of wild flowers here. Each spring, she waited until undesirable plants initiated spring growth before her ritual burn. The first opening of sugar maple buds signaled time had arrived. Last spring she had used a can of left over gas. The fumes had spread in the air. The ignited fireball badly singed her hair and eyebrows.

Each winter, like a hawk, Grace took census of the larks, sparrows, bobolinks, squirrels and meadow vole. She admired their resilience. Yearly, the counts confirmed her hopes that the perimeter had not tightened. In fact, the promised trajectory of the region had collapsed. Abandoned paper, cash register and auto assembly plants rusted away. Use of drones in warfare meant the strategic importance of the air force base for weapons systems testing was waning. Grace happily measured this decline. To her, if only the asphalt and concrete could be pulverized then a new equilibrium might take hold. This was cause for optimism. Just beyond her grasp was a split open milkweed pod. Its seeds hanging from silky threads floated away in the air.

Flambeau

Flambeau. Elwood shivered in his woolen coat inside the Standard Grocery on Alabama Street near Market. He looked at the cash register as he thumbed through his blotter. He glanced over at a forlorn looking group. Not long before, a thin man with a revolver had forced these folks to the rear of the store. The robber had grabbed about $80 from the register and then fled.

Each holiday season since 1909, downtown merchants had hired Elwood and eleven other police detectives and patrolmen to protect against shoplifters. In recent years, it had gotten worse. It was not much better in Fountain Square. He lived there above a shop with his wife and two children. He longed for the day they would not live along a street car route. His scowl lifted as he recalled last night’s flambeau display. That was something.

Thirty years earlier, vast deposits of natural gas and oil were discovered in east-central Indiana. The Trenton Field lay on the western edge of the largest deposits of oil and natural gas in the world. Wells were celebrated. A stub pipe was lit with a flame to show that gas was flowing. The constant flame was coined a flambeau.

The State of Indiana offered free gas for factories. Industry followed. The Ball Corporation made glass in Muncie. U.S. Steel chose northern Indiana. Automobile and glass manufacturing industries came to Indianapolis. Indianapolis, and other towns, installed free gas lights and piped gas to homes as heating fuel. Electricity produced from gas ran street cars. Cheap light, heat and transportation made urban living more desirable. Indianapolis prospered.

In 1894, plans were envisioned to elevate the railroad tracks leading into Union Station over several city streets. In 1905, the Mayor met in secret with representatives of Illinois Central and reached an accord on how and when to elevate the Indianapolis Southern tracks. The Monon Railroad remained opposed to the plan.

During a 1904 dinner at the Commercial Club, fifty of the leading business and professional men of the city put on foot a movement to grow the population of Indianapolis to 300,000 by 1910.

Auto shows exhibited Studebakers, Buicks, Packards, Maxwells, Chevrolets, Nashes, Marmons, Stutzs, Pierce-Arrows, and Fords. Garages opened all over town to install tires, shock absorbers, head lamps, horns and other accessories on these autos.

And the flambeaus burned day and night. They attracted tourists. About ninety percent of Indiana’s natural gas was wasted in flambeau displays.

Wasteful practices rapidly depleted the fields as well. Producers did not realize the pressure provided by natural gas allowed them to pump oil from their wells. Scientists warned that that the supply of gas would run out. By 1902, gas yields began to decline. By 1910, gas production had slowed to a trickle. In some ways, the decline of the gas industry went unnoticed. Indiana had become a leading industrial state. Coal burning electric plants were built to power the factories and towns.

Other impacts were more subtle.

On the eve of the 1913 elections, street car workers called a strike. The strike prevented many people from voting. There was public outrage. The union held firm in its demands. Other unions and labor organizations joined in. Business leaders demanded that the governor end the strike. Governor Ralston called out the Indiana National Guard and put the city under martial law.

The strikers stormed the Statehouse. Ralston emerged from the capital and offered to withdraw the troops if the strikers would go back to work and negotiate peacefully. The concessions he made ended the strike that day. The strike led to several labor protection laws including a minimum wage, regular work weeks and improved working conditions.

In 1917, the Chamber of Commerce launched an investigation on the decision of the State Council of Defense to postpone completion of the Union Station railroad track elevation until after the war. The Monon Railroad was still a hold out.

And Elwood could moonlight in hopes of moving his family up in the world.

Longing

Longing. Growing up, Hank had a Winslow print of a father and three boys out for a sail in broad reach. His father had chosen it. One of the boys lay lashed to the fore deck in a reddened shroud. In the aft, a barefoot boy gripped the dark rope of the rudder.

The scene was unfathomable. That arrangement of human ballast was not on even keel. Hank longed to assume the rudder.

Hank’s family vacationed once on Block Island. Dangerous shoals and ledges surrounded the island. Dozens of sailing vessels sank in the sound before lighthouses were built on the island. Some called it the stumbling block of the New England coast. The island had steep hills and flower-covered moors. Hank’s first view of the island was of Mohegan Bluffs. These bluffs jaunted out to tourists approaching by ferry from Newport. They reminded Hank of the ‘Get A Piece of the Rock’ commercials during Bonanza on Sunday nights.

The island was formed by receding ice sheets. The first glacial retreat left compacted till impermeable to surface water. Rainwater collected in island aquifers like a fresh water tub within the salt water sound. Pauses during a second ice age retreat deposited two ridges of glacial moraine. The bluffs were a vestige. In 1590, the Manissean Indians drove a war party of forty Mohegans over the bluffs. For vacationers, there was not much to do on the island except ride bikes across open landscapes grazed by horses, cows and sheep.

Hank’s main memory of the island was the red mansard roof, distinctive cupola and wraparound porch of the Spring House Hotel. Ulysses S. Grant and Mark Twain had walked its veranda. Hank’s mom and aunt had worked at the hotel toward the end of its heyday; after the automobile relegated the island to a quaint local stop.

The first summer after college, Hank decided to find work at the Spring House Hotel. Backpack in tow, he rode trains to Providence, and then hitched his way to Newport. As he strode through gilded Newport, he felt unprepared. Thick, dark, low-level clouds blocked out the sun. He lingered hoping to catch a glimpse of yachtsmen. He then took a ferry over to the island. Rolling into view before him, beneath the clouds, were familiar dunes, ponds and thickets.

The sharpening profile of the bluffs and the mansard roof warmed him. The ferry reached Judith Point. He ascended a street toward the hotel. It was late in the day. He realized it would be a poor time to ask for work. Still, he did not want to waste money by checking in as a guest. He went to The Oar for a beer to think it over.

After a while, he decided to camp out at Harbor Pond and start fresh in the morning. He needed to stay hidden from beach patrols. So, he found a pocket of dunes obscured by maritime grasses. He climbed into the bowl and secured his poncho as a canopy. He could smell the basal rosettes and hear the rustle of purple needlegrass.

That night, high winds and heavy rains pounded the dunes. Lightning struck repeatedly. The lashing came loose. The poncho fluttered away as he held onto the limp cord. His enclave was now a cold sandy bath. He was awake and wet as a rat.

Morning light finally came. Hank felt in no condition to apply for work. He lost his balance as he gathered his gear and tore his pants. He stumbled out of the dunes and retreated to Judith Point to await the ferry. He hitchhiked back to Providence and took a train back home. He longed for the pull of college.

Blue painted vessels

Blue painted vessels. Manny reached for the tablet lying on the desk. He bumped his coffee cup. A dark wave surged over the rim. Beads of java drained down the side of the cup staining the tablet. In reflex, his head tilted back, eyes closed and jaw tightened.

Less than an hour to his speech at the county caucus. His remarks for the event were not flowing onto the tablet as he hoped. “I know this anyway,” he mused. “I’ve got the stomach to get up and do what needs to be done. Besides, Miller is backing me.” Still, Ginger was a formidable opponent: a school board member and retailer with a family name.

Manny had it mapped out. Except for schools, county and city government had been consolidated thirty years earlier. Republican voters in the surrounding ring of townships outnumbered Democrat voters in the old city limits. Each election cycle the margin narrowed. Manny was African American with religious right views. In the general election he would draw votes from both parties. He just had to get past the primary. Ginger stood in his way, in the moderate middle.

Slating allowed the party bosses to control the primary. Slated candidates had the backing of the party during the primary. Bucking the slate was disaster for a political career. Manny left his suite and walked toward the Sagamore Room at the Convention Center. His advance man joined him. Slating would give him the party brand. He would be a blue painted vessel.

Long ago in Egypt, Nile silt was hand rolled into coils, joined together with slurry and fashioned into pottery. Undecorated, siltware served every day purposes. Marl, a mixture of clay and lime found in Upper Egypt, had better qualities. Royalty valued marl ceramics. King Narmer used it to depict his parades. His pottery was a political poster. On it, Narmer holds a sceptre and the royal flagellum. He is followed by a Runner Forth bearing sandals and a pot. He is preceded by his high priest, the queen and four standard bearers. His battlefield pottery depicted the beheaded corpses of enemies laid out as if for inspection, their heads placed between their legs. These ceramics were distributed far and wide. King Narmer united Upper and Lower Egypt giving birth to Egypt and its pharaonic dynasties.

The New Kingdom was Egypt’s most prosperous time and marked the zenith of its power. The heavy cost of attaining Kingdom exhausted Egypt's treasury. Then, for twenty years, volcanic dust dimmed sunlight hindering agriculture. Egypt was beset by a series of droughts, below-normal flooding of the Nile, famine, civil unrest and official corruption. Food rationing favored Egypt's elite. Pharaohs’ deaths often led to endless bickering.

These plagues led to methods to keep trading markets open. Systems of trust were developed to manage trade. Reputations mattered.

During the New Kingdom, clay from Lower Egypt was fashioned into vessels with tokens sealed inside. The vessels were glazed with blue frit and then kiln fired. This pottery was mass produced. Sheep and goats were traded using this blue painted pottery. It was hard to know the health or number of sheep or goats until they arrived at their destination. The animals could be sick or already fleeced.

A seller's reputation for delivering healthy livestock could be backed by bankers. Bankers would take the risk of clearing the trade. Sealed blue painted vessels would be sent ahead to the buyer by the banker. The number of tokens inside could be verified by shaking the vessel or by breaking it. If broken, the number or terms written on the outside became subject to doubt. If the sheep or goats arrived as promised, then the blue painted vessels were returned to the banker. These vessels represented a promise to deliver. Over time, as trust was established, the need for the tokens inside disappeared. Eventually, contract terms were rendered on flat tablets. This branding of blue painted vessels was the first system of commodity accounting.

The political bosses packaged Manny to secure rights from government derived from the consent of the governed. He was positioned to gain an acceptably broad consensus by making promises to deliver. Ginger was a variation in the product. Bets were hedged at the caucus because of Ginger. A majority of the governed could be aligned with her on the first Tuesday in November.

Manny sent his advance man on ahead to distribute his campaign buttons. He arrived at the Sagamore Room. There was Ginger, straight ahead of him, at the entrance. Her arms extended out to him, palms upward. She beamed at him with her broad smile. He steeled his grin, opened wide his eyes and tilted into her in close embrace. In his caucus speech, Manny promised to deliver. His speech charted his vision of keeping government accountable. He spoke of how he would unite right and left. He received polite applause. Manny won the caucus.

Ginger bucked the slate. She won the primary. She lost the general election. Manny felt crushed. Two years later he would win the primary but lose the general election.

Owen looked for an outlet

Owen looked for an outlet. He was a stone’s throw from the bronze marker commemorating Lew Wallace’s choice of this area for the Indiana State Fairgrounds. He smelled the rank odor of broken silver maple twigs. His electric chainsaw would make the work go quick. He found an outlet at the corner of a faded Victorian. The painted lady rested where dirt floor exhibit halls and horse stables once stood in long rows. Owen slipped a leaf of gum out of its foil wrapper and popped it in his mouth.

Owen was unaware of the halls and stables, their re-use as a civil war recruiting and training center, or their re-purpose as a prison camp for captured confederates - just by placing a fence around the outside. He did not know that Camp Morton was one of the more uncomfortable and unhealthy civil war prison camps. Owen was not here to learn about its bad water, of its one heating stove for every two hundred fifty prisoners, or of the deaths of nearly two thousand prisoners during the three years it was open. He stood unsquinting where once a pleasant facade belied a grim inside.

Owen was happy to work in this beautiful autumn day. He glanced over at a mound of overgrown buckthorn. It masked a canopy of canvas arranged with sheet plastic and paired with cardboard. The shelter was tethered by speaker wire and blue spiraled cloth cord. Owen talked loudly outside the nest. To no one, Owen said that neighbors had seen the shanty in the brush. He announced that he would leave and then return to destroy it.

At sunrise, every man able to walk at Camp Morton would fall in line for roll call. The Yankee sergeants seldom had kind words. Many welded heavy sticks to strike starving prisoners. Tunnels were the most common means of escape from Camp Morton.

Buckthorn grew well here due to the alluvial soils. 16,000 years ago, a massive ice sheet surged southward from Canada to Indianapolis. Over many centuries it melted, leaving large deposits of glacial drift. Rich soils of rotted organics, wood and grasses then rose above the drift.

Owen returned. He approached the nest and kicked away several empty cans. He first made low cuts at the perimeter brush. His deeper cuts reached the tree trunks. The pungent maple failed to mask the odor of urine.

At Camp Morton, prisoners were packed in bunks like sardines in spoon fashion. Prisoners would pick up thrown out potato peelings, roll them up, and eat them with a relish. Crawfish from stagnant ditches were used for soups. Back then, buckthorn bark and fruit were used as a purgative. It had violent action and side effects.

Owen dragged off the canopy revealing ample quarters. He spotted a sleeping bag, a ruck sack, several blankets, shoes, socks, baggies of food and deodorant. Owen left the gear. He took the remnants of the canopy to a nearby dumpster. He tied the brush onto his trailer, coiled the electrical cord and cleaned the chain saw.

One bitter cold morning a pistol shot was heard while prisoners were standing in line stamping the earth. Cries wafted. For stepping out of line at roll call, a prisoner was shot.

A young couple leaving an apartment pulled up in their truck. They joked that everyone here should pay rent. They thanked Owen for his work. Owen drifted northward back home again.

The Local

The Local. Mark slid his phone shut and fumbled for the fare. He braced for the chill and left the cab. Not yet six, it was already dark. Community organization ran deep in his bones. His knack for it had faded as his waistline grew. He arrived on campus to preview presentations for an upcoming neighborhood conference. He felt entitled to this lighter duty. Lots had come between him and the man he had wanted to become. He accepted the travel as it kept him among the passionate.

Halfway through a presentation, Mark suggested that a local presenter use a grocery item as a prop. He received a blank look. “They need to see that you are a food coop.” urged Mark. “The food is a channel,” responded the local. “The coop is really a gathering place. Lots of different types of folks share in our coop.” “Just share your success story,” urged Mark. “You’ll lose the audience otherwise. But, I am interested in how you plan to sustain it.” “We have met our goal of coop members.” the local rejoined. “That’s allowed us to fully shelf our suppliers.” “Grocery wars can be brutal,” Mark countered. “Can you weather one?” “Our members understand they are supporting the quality of our supplier’s produce,” said the local. “In this era, will people pay extra for a food staple wrapped in sharing?” Mark questioned.

“Listen, commerce revolves around the experience,” said the local. “Its always been the package. You are what you eat.” “True,” agreed Mark. “But, this is a tale of the coin. The bigs have adopted your banner.” The local countered, “Maybe the bigs are worried that the economics have changed. Take a sport like football. It used to be an outside game. We all shared memories of classic moments in games. Indoor stadiums now want you to experience what you watch on your couch. Why go to the game? National sporting events are relics. Even the greatest spectacle in racing has lost its identity. As a nation we consume conflict and tragedy. Its like the cold war. We are held together by what divides us. Even golfers must come to disappoint us.”

“But, we are hard wired to share individual moments. We now can create our own pixels to share with others. The bigs don’t like this. What the bigs can’t capture as a revenue stream they label as doom. Its really not. Their marketing departments just have less say. Era upon era, the keys of our identity were held by shaman, elders and chancellors. No longer. Today, people will spend a buck for a song - not fifteen for an album. This was trouble for the handlers that needed part of the fifteen to exist. But, its nostalgia to think that music is no longer great with the handlers gone. You just have to know where to look for it. The moaning you hear is the handlers.”

“Which brings me back to the food channel. Food is local. True, spice sent explorers around the world. But, the chain of growing, gathering and distributing of food begins and ends at the local level. Going to market is basic to us all. Notions of the market change. There are countless variations on convenience, freshness, selection, abundance and price. It is still the market. It is a most natural place to build community.

Mark was a handler. He was stunned. The passion of this local was outside of him. His years of organizing had kept his interests on the dole. He subsidized. He did not sustain. Over time, his subsidies became institutions for the bigs. He was weary. His phone vibrated. Mark realized he had to head for the airport for the next preview of conference presentations. As he got into the cab, the chill did not leave his bones.

The nurse left work at five o’clock

The nurse left work at five o’clock. She patted the pocket of her tunic for the clink of the health center keys. Segments of light from the clouded October sun floated across the high school parking lot now harvested of cars. Spotting her Mini, Helen soon was on route to meet Sarah for the middle school show choir performance. Her wide set green eyes peered back from the Mini’s mirror. She looked at her drop earrings and noted how the corners of her eyes crinkled and narrowed as she examined her pale lips. “Off duty,” she mused. “An evening to enjoy Betsey’s production.”

Mark was in the middle school parking lot waiting for cross country practice to end. His daughter had been in the health center earlier today. Now, he was picking up his son. Helen could see tired runners circled and stretching under a tree. Book bags and water bottles flanked the team. Helen beamed a flat greeting at Mark. Then, she went into the performance hall to look for Sarah.

“There you are,” said Sarah. “Seats are up front. We can spot Betsey in the wings from there.” “Hi,” replied Helen. “Hope it goes well for Betsey.” As they walked up front, Helen glanced over her shoulder. This audience had the familiar captive mix of students, parents, administrators and teachers. The lights dimmed.

On risers, elevated with smiles, the students stepped and sang. They wore shimmery costumes, lilted melodies and performed their routines. The craft of staging this production flowed unnoticed. It soothed Helen to enjoy her future kids in this non-troubled way. The next years would see these same kids at her health center, their visits a confessional of adolescence. There were regular patterns of flu, or lack of sleep, or no breakfast which brought them there.

Over the years, Helen had developed the health center protocol for treatment of these everyday concerns, as well as for the overdoses, the morning sicknesses, the disorders and for the safekeeping of the noon doses of various types of medicines. Planted in the promised soil of family, transplanted by curriculum, these kids were now in the years of fast growth. The slowed and withered gathered in the health center.

Toward the end of the second act the leading boys and girls sang "Ain't Misbehavin'” acapella. Sarah nudged Helen and nodded. Then, all the kids joined together for the finale. A fluttering green scarf toppled a purple bowler hat and tripped up a boy. His shin fell hard against an aluminum riser as the deflated scarf dropped to the stage. The boy winced, then popped back up with broad gesturing motions. The show went on. Helen could see the tear in his pants and the red beneath.

Helen and Sarah waited off stage after the show as Betsey received the warm regards of parents. She seemed to have a satisfying story for each parent. Finally, they greeted, hugged and smiled. Each then headed into darkened skies onward to their homes and family to set about preparing for the business of tomorrow.

The nurse arrived at work at seven o’clock.

Gaps and Crevices

Gaps and crevices. A rock climber roomed down the hall from me in my freshman dorm. His talents and passion are relentless. He made several expeditions up Mount Everest in the 1980’s. One route up the 12,000 foot vertical Kangshung Face of Everest is named after him. He undertook that ascent with no supplemental oxygen bottles, no sherpas, no radios and three other climbers. About an hour from the top, 28,700 feet above sea level, he saw prayer flags strung between rocks and purple-robed Buddhist monks chanting a blessing ceremony. He took off the outer layer of his gloves to take a photograph. The temperature was 40 below. Not realizing he was hallucinating, he simply watched the monks before passing out. When he awoke he realized the perilous place he was in if he continued on to the summit. Ed Webster turned around and started down. Life was more important than the summit. A fellow climber continued solo to the summit. Ed lost eight fingertips and three toes to frostbite.

I wasn’t there. But, those events play like a movie in my mind. I can almost hear the film score.

Fifty years ago Marshall McLuhan wrote about hot and cold media. The medium was the message. His notion was that different media invite different levels of participation on the part of the viewer. Movies were hot. They enhanced a single sense. The viewer did not need to exert much effort in filling in the details of a movie image. TV was cool. TV required more effort by the viewer to determine meaning. Comics were very cool. Due to their minimal visual detail, comics required a high degree of effort to fill in what the cartoonist may have intended to portray.

For six seasons I enjoyed the TV show Lost. I devoted a lot of effort to determine its meaning. I will miss it.

Authors often want to evoke a particular emotion in an audience. T.S. Eliot strove to express emotion in art. He expressed particular emotions by a formula of words, objects, situations or chain of events. His objective correlative expressed a character’s emotions by showing rather than describing feelings. When that formula was shown the emotion was evoked.

McLuhan popularized the notion that new media exerts a gravitational effect on how we reason and in turn on social organization. He suggested that print made possible individualism, democracy, capitalism and nationalism.

Text messages are like knitting someone a holiday sweater. How it is accepted may not overlap with how it is given. There are gaps or crevices. Gaps may be filled in with a smiley face. Crevices, maybe not. The human voice carries information about the speaker's identity and affect. A lot of new media does not.

New media effects how we reason. This may be good. We like voices. But, McLuhan wrote, oral societies were tribes ruled by fear. Humans are hard wired to connect with emotions before we reflect. We first fill in communication gaps with emotion. In the long run, the high degree of effort need to fill in the gaps and crevices of social media may be a blessing and not a curse. It makes us think about what we are missing.

A friend in college introduced me to semiotics. We talked about the significance of symbols. She had a tattoo of a tornado on her hip. She told me that symbols are classified by the way they are transmitted. To coin a word or a symbol, a community must agree on a simple meaning. How a community codes symbols represent the values of that culture. New shades of connotation of symbols are drawn every day in every aspect of life. To coin T.S. Eliot, my friend's tattoo still mixes memory and desire.

I devotedly followed the recent Presidential campaign; especially the primaries. Seems like a long time ago. I was captivated as the talking heads capsulated the daily back and forth of the various campaigns. I was spoon fed politically charged emotions in real time. It was relentless. It felt tribal. I’ve turned off the talking heads. I have not tuned out social media. I just try to be aware of its gaps and crevices.