Memorial Day Perfection

Days that gather in my mind most precious to me are those of Memorial Day many years ago in Tecumseh, Nebraska. I have most vivid memories of the small farm town in the southeastern part of the state among the rolling prairie hills, beneath a deep blue sky flavored with popcorn fair-weather clouds. The air was pure and my life was rich with emotion.

The weekend trip was a family journey from Tulsa to attend the Erwin Family Reunion that my Uncle Lawrence had worked to organize. He had spent years researching the Erwin family lineage and had traced our little group of the family from this small haven in the prairie. It had been less than a century since the family migrated southward to what would become Oklahoma.

Even further past he had revealed a family moving ever westward since the 18th century from the east coast to Illinois. I learned of an ancestor who was a soldier who died at the Battle of Chattanooga in the Civil War. I learned of family who lived and died in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and had crossed the sea from Northern Ireland. He had even traced the family name to 13th century Scotland. I understand that these people of history were only a part of my diverse family heritage, but they are more importantly the people to whom I can connect that reveal to me that place from which I came.

I cannot judge them for the lives they lived. Their time is past and I cannot undo or reward their actions or deeds since I do not know their souls. I can only stand upon the foundations they laid and look forward to do better as a man, and to honor all others with civility and compassion.

But it was that warm Spring weekend awash with history that has marked me to this day. I found family I had not known existed. I was a part of a brotherhood of people with a common past if not a shared future. It was a short period of time that in your memory you can only recollect as ‘perfection’ no matter that it was or wasn’t. It felt in my soul that the universe was in perfect sync. The small town inspired me to think of my grandfather (who I had never known), and his family, who walked those Nebraska soils. I remember the church where the family stood that Sunday morning to sing ‘Faith of our fathers’. I remember the deep red courthouse with white trim that towered over the town square. The memorial flags honoring lost sons ran down every block face and up the walks to the structure. Old memorial statues stood in memory of the soldiers of past wars. The sky was blue, the grass was green and patriotism and memory were cherished.

We ventured to the old farmstead a few miles northeast of Tecumseh where the patriarch Elihu Phillips and his, and my, family settled and grew following the Civil War. It was a warm and peaceful day where I walked along a gravel road to a tree covered patch and entered the one room white schoolhouse. A few miles away a train whistled its passing. I could look up the gentle hill to see the old farm and the ice shed and the location of the well that had never run dry. The surrounding farmland was fertile and lush. We visited the small and lonely Spring Creek cemetery at the crest of a hill. Tall prairie grasses flowed in the warm gentle breeze around the manicured grounds, and the weathered white monuments would barely give up the names of those who lay under them. They had long rested there having left the world for us to steward. It was with sadness I watched that short time of ‘perfection’ disappear with the miles in the rear window, but I still long remember and cherish that short window of time.

But the most inspiring part of all of this ‘perfection’ was something that was happening all the way back home in Tulsa. My nephew Dustin was born. The journey north had shown me our family’s past and in that time a new life was brought into the fold to carry on our honored name.

In a couple of weeks, Dustin will be wed to a most gracious young lady and the family tree will grow once more.

What can be more perfect?

'Flourishing both in sun and shade' - Irvine clan motto

Boondoggle: Biofuels And Other Schemes

The following excerpts are from an article by Jeff Hecht in the New Scientist of December 23, 1989.

"MOST OF us learn the hard way that research and development do not always succeed. Most doomed concepts die young, the victims of insufficient funding, or of clear signs of technical or economic impracticality. Others stagger onward, but soon lose the race for funding to better and brighter ideas. A few reach a critical mass, and survive to blunder on through bureaucratic jungles until economic reality or, more often, new management arrives to put them to death.

Americans call such doomed programmes 'boondoggles', a word coined by an American scoutmaster, a Mr R. H. Link, to describe futile and unnecessary projects. The typical boondoggle begins as a bright idea that strikes a resonant chord with management, funding agencies or politicians. It may promise to solve some problem, often a military one, or to yield great profits. Frequently, the early stages of the programme demonstrate some progress, or at least produce reports claiming to have made some progress. The people who control the purse strings hear what they want to hear, and gleefully throw money at the programme. The staff grows rapidly, and the people who originated the idea, or who seized upon it early, find themselves at the top of a budding bureaucratic empire that has sprouted virtually overnight.

Unfortunately, empire growth has no correlation with project feasibility. Typically the science works but the engineering doesn't, and this starts a long-running series of delays to the programme. (I think it should be noted that with biofuels, it seems the SCIENCE doesn't work and, in America, the ENGINEERING is inefficient and deadly. - PE) A weapon system may sound deadly on paper; but the prototype misses its target by a mile. Enthusiasts and hangers-on quickly reassure the boondoggle's sponsors that only a little more development is called for. Perhaps all that is needed is a new material, albeit one that is twice as strong and half as heavy as any known. But if by some miracle the engineer can make such stuff, it is bound to be impossible to cut with ordinary tools. That, in turn, sets off other research efforts. Nothing is impossible - and nothing works correctly. Timetables continue to slip and costs to soar, but progress reports always see an imminent breakthrough.

The longer a boondoggle survives, the harder management tries to keep it alive. After all, no one wants to admit to having wasted careers and a lot of government or corporate money. A boondoggle nurtured by government bureaucracy can often survive until a change of government or an attack of the dreaded 'reform' virus. Barring changes in top management or total exhaustion of corporate cash reserves, a private boondoggle may plod all the way to the marketplace, where potential customers greet its hype with a long, loud yawn.

Take, for instance, the nuclear-powered bomber, my very own favourite boondoggle: bred and nurtured by the Pentagon, it represented the American effort to build a long-range bomber powered by a nuclear reactor. Military programmes are fertile ground for boondoggles, with everything going for them. Governments have vast financial resources; national security is a convenient rationale; and secrecy can conceal misguided programmes.....

Doubtless big science will continue to yield important results, like our exploration of the Solar System. Yet I suspect that someday we will sit and reminisce about boondoggles we knew and loved, the overgrown megaprojects of the late 20th century (i.e., Boston's 'Big Dig' and our own 'Super-collidor program' - PE). Big science can outstrip the capabilities of management, leaving behind monuments like the $242 million Mirror Fusion Test Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. This test reactor was built to study an alternative approach to magnetically confined nuclear fusion. The facility was shut down as soon as it was completed in 1986, because the Department of Energy would not pay for its operation.

We need to continue ambitious research programmes, even if their success is not guaranteed. And we also need to learn how to stop boondoggles in their tracks, lest they consume the resources needed for more promising efforts."- Jeff Hecht, New Scientist, 1989



If we are going to depend solely on our old system of market-based solutions to sustain us through the ongoing Climate Change, it is likely this will be a long road ahead with very limited successes which ultimately will lead us to the same conclusions we would find even if we were without the effort. Biofuels is a product of misdirected political and economic minds thinking they could have an easy out (and a profitable one if they invested wisely) of an issue that is more complex than their limited vision could comprehend. If we believe that we can go about our merry lives as we always have, then we are nowhere closer to solutions than we were 10 years ago. We can either stand still, believe this 'climate change' is all a lie (and the world is a cube), or we can march forward with all of our resources for what is vital to all of us and our grandchildren. We can no longer afford the luxury of pursuing projects for the sake of a few people's economic gains or enlarged egos. There must be a direct purpose. There is too much at stake, if we choose to accept that or not. Our monies should be directed to what is urgent for the sustainability of our world and our communities. - P Erwin

'A Poetic Combination of Art and Nature'

Peace : Burial at Sea, 1842 JMW Turner www.ibiblio.org

I was finally able to trek down to the Dallas Museum of Art with my wife today to enjoy the J.M.W. Turner Exhibit. It was originally scheduled to end today but has been extended to May 25. I encourage you to take in this rare opportunity to enjoy the works of a great master before it leaves us. I was able to understand much of the evolution of the artist and how his works influenced the Impressionists that followed in his footsteps.

I suppose much of my admiration for his works is due to his approach to how he viewed the world with different intensities of light that could be warm or cold, stark or diffuse. This rang true in both his watercolors and oils. I admired his work before and I cherish it even more now. Congratulations, and thanks, to the DMA for a truly wonderful exhibit.

Our Town: MY American Dream

“I am trying to teach you that this alphabet of “natural objects” (soils and rivers, birds and beasts) spells out a story….
Once you learn how to read the land,
I have no fear of what you will do to it, or with it.
And I know many pleasant things it will do to you.”

“Wherefore Wildlife Ecology,”
The River of the Mother of God and Other Essays – A. Leopold

As I establish for you the framework of my ‘American dream’, let me inform you that I am fully aware that we shall never achieve the goals I set forward here, nor am I foolish enough to say that any great percentage of fellow citizens share my hopes and beliefs. The concepts I state here, as I have made in previous comments, are something that I, or we, can strive for in the coming years. Just as we may never fully obtain liberty or justice, we must strive every day and night of our mortal lives for them. Our Republic may never fully achieve its great potential, but we must always strive to believe in and reach for it. The same can be said of my dreams for our community.

I have recently publicly stated my admiration for the volunteers who have set the welfare of their neighborhood above their personal lives. No matter the real purpose of their efforts, they do share the common gift of giving to others. They are providing for the future of their shared home. In this, many of us share a common interest for our shared, or common, home. The Common Home is the place that surrounds us and protects us. It is what is not outside of our place of comfort. It is familiarity and confidence. Our neighborhoods will qualify for many of us as a Common Home, while others may only regard their street with this trust. Others still will not move from their own front yard, or front door, to let the world reach out to them. For those people, we must honor their liberty to be stewards of their own home and respect their fears and the reasoning of their thinking. It is difficult to un-learn generations of hatred, fear and pain. There is bitterness found in lost hopes. We can only set forward an example to shine a light in their direction and hope they will join the neighborhood if, God willing, they wish it.

Our Town is a spirit of belonging to something greater than one self. It is a union of Common Homes joined together for common cause and common interest. It is a place where Trust is found and Unity brings Solidarity. The name ‘Our Town’ is, of course, derived from the play by Thornton Wilder, which spoke of life in a small New England town where life was simple and yet so perfectly complex. Our Town, in the context of our community, is not naïve to the realities of the world around us. Instead, it recognizes the harsh the cultural and social distinctions between us, but refuses to be consumed by the divisions that would separate us and that seek to overtake us. In Unity, our Common Homes decide together that we must protect Our Town from the outside negative influences that would weaken and divide us. Our Town raises as its primary interest the liberties that are due the individual. But those individuals also recognize that he or she is a part of a greater whole in their Common Home. The efforts of all who would join this 'Union of Peoples' will recognize that their Common Home is established beyond their front porch, or their property lines. They share a common neighborhood symbolized by the nature around them. The trees that reach both skyward and then penetrate deep through the soil and cross property lines, tie each of us together when we understand, recognize and accept the Wild as an equal part of our community. We are true stewards of this nature when we recognize and accept this duty to the whole community. We may then become caring and responsible for each other. It sounds of delusion, but it is merely a determination of choice. There are many who are believing in these concepts but have not yet forged them into a unified movement.

The beginning and center of this Common Home is the understanding of the Land Ethic. We understand that we are a part of the land and it is part of what protects us. When these separate neighborhoods unify in their efforts and form a Common Home, then they can come together under one banner as Our Town. The liberties that drive us are American and the spirit of giving and compromise is just as American. As a community, we protect our Common Home and build trust and friendship that is the only hope we have of being a solidified nation. It begins at the grassroots level with you.

Our world is changing, and the dynamics that have led us for the past century cannot be trusted to lead us to our future. Industry and technology has betrayed us to a false prosperity that is not sustainable, though many would continue to lead us on that track of personal financial enrichment today but with the potential for its ultimate disintegration tomorrow. The false prosperity can only endure as long as the resources are available to feed it. Those days will end sooner than you may have imagined and your children, and their children, will pay the ultimate price for our shortsightedness. In our nature we fail to plan for or foresee the future, but we as civilized people must learn to ‘grow up’ and stand on our own feet as intelligent beings and find the Truth of the world within ourselves. In order to find ourselves, we must also find each other. We must learn to boldly venture back to the land to unite us and help us grow in confidence with one another. We now need to learn what we have un-learned as we moved from an agrarian working culture to a pampered one.

We should establish partnerships in our Common Homes that build purpose. Community Gardens could be started as seeds to forge new friendships and partnerships. Neighbors work together to grow and sustain a land area for the good of the community bringing people together in one place with one objective: care for a parcel of land. From this small beginning, people gain confidence and re-learn how to read the land and go back home to grow their own garden; a ‘Victory’ Garden. In harsh times, this brings the person back to the land they have long forgotten. They find that in Nature, when they cannot find confidence in what they have always known, they find it in their care for the land that gives back in turn. They learn patience and strength and re-learn to value what they had forgotten is an important and valuable gift to themselves: the knowledge and faith that the land is a part of them.

With this start, we re-build communities and re-learn to believe in ourselves, in our communities, and in our nation. We must at some time forsake the crimes and failures of our past and look to the future for our survival. Volunteerism and a civic pride and patriotism can be re-established, re-built and re-learned. Our economy in the coming years will likely lead us to withdraw into our small communities, or our homes, and we must protect these Common Homes for the common good. We must re-learn that with all of our societal differences, what is common among all of us is the land. The land that you stand upon is the same land that touches your neighbor. Under this common land, we must re-learn that human brotherhood is found under the comfort of a shade tree.

The hackberry tree, that is often forsaken and reviled as a nuisance, or 'trash' tree, and becomes a sign of abandonment and disregard, stands along many fence rows through our city, sitting on property lines that are a natural bridge between two neighbors. The tree itself knows no boundary but the extent to where it can obtain resources for survival. Nor does the bird that landed on a fence row years earlier, and had deposited the seed that became that tree, know anything of human obsession for title. But the tree shades two human neighbors, and nests many birds and wildlife, and produces life sustainability as part of a greater forest.

Re-learning a land ethic will bring people in Our Town to understand that we must protect what is most valuable for the survival of our future generations. We can grow new life in old neighborhoods, that have forgotten how to be confident and strong, by uniting together to bring positive energy to their homes by planting trees, building gardens, and just caring for one's neighbor. We should charge our community leaders to protect Our Town, not only by ordinance or deed, but by a shared land ethic that states that cherishing a harmony with the land is the only way that Our Town will endure the generations.

We continue to build monuments to ourselves and our greed, disregarding the signs of eventual societal collapse that may be looming in our future. After all, such demise seems impossible. The economic and environmental stability we have known all our lives is fading away and we ignore this to our peril. It is only by reaching within ourselves, and our familial pasts, and by re-learning a land ethic, that we learn to reach out to each other with Trust, Unity, Solidarity and a Vision of Our Town. You need only to imagine and believe.

Why Protect Trees?

Hidden Lake Gardens, Michigan

I received a note from a student in Zaire the other day that made me start thinking. Yeah, I know. Nothing good can ever come from that. The young person asked me why we protect trees. I responded with the usual known and common answers regarding soil erosion, clean air, etc. But I felt that the answer should have been much deeper and perhaps the question should have been looked at in a much different light.

Protecting trees in some places comes down to political expediency or economic inconvenience. In Dallas, we actually only protect trees that aren't in the way of development simply because it's more of a nuisance, or cost burden, to remove it than to keep it. (I don't equate escarpment or floodplain ordinances as tree protection because I know that even these areas are open to eventual development if costs don't overburden the effort...or sometimes, even if they do.) Only in one portion of town are certain 'majestic' trees somewhat protected, but this only means that it costs you double to remove it. Again, economics dictates protection. Ultimately, tree protection is up to people making up their minds that they want to cause no harm to a tree. Some will do all they can to protect their trees. Others will relinquish the trees to the economics of development. It's the developer (or property owner) who dictates tree protection, not the community.

The effort of protecting trees is an empty endeavor if the will and the passion is not behind it. But at least an effort is made. If we hold that our 'tree protection' is merely adding greater costs to removing a tree, or forest, then we only deceive ourselves into calling this a 'tree preservation' ordinance. Instead, you subsist on a 'tree replacement' ordinance geared to only building trees for the future. If the intent was to actually protect the giants of your community, then new efforts would be needed. But the efforts to improve a system must come within each of you to inspire one another to a different way of thinking. The land ethic, of which I often speak (probably too often), is where you look upon all of the land, the trees, the water, the air, the animals...everything...as part of your community. You either rule over them, as is our common tendency, or you share in the common interest of co-existence with all other facets of your community. You either continue with the superficial aspects of our economic dogma that all things are there for our expense ('Jerry Jones'-ing the neighborhood) , or you begin to learn that all other things, including people, have equal value to you. You share respect, and honor your neighbor, and value your cherished community.

Your community trees are protected only so far that development has not yet touched them. As it stands now, the removed trees are replaced in some fashion to compensate for their loss, unless determined otherwise by council. Trees are protected by laws which national history has shown us always fall short if not supported by conscience. There's always someone ready to make a buck and always the political will to help them along.

Why protect a tree? Because it's there. Because you honor its existence and the forest around it and the land community it serves. If not? Then I too ask, 'why?' It's the law. But for myself, it's so much more. For more than 9 years, it's been to strive to make our city a better place. I'm needing the patience of an oak.

The Key Word for Today Is....

PREDICTABLE.

Agonizingly, inevitably, and extremely.

I swear I can usually see stuff coming from a thousand miles away and I'm recognizing it easier as I get older. I just can't decide if that's called wisdom or sarcasm.

People, money and politics are TOO predictable when you consolidate them.

'Threatened' polar bears were inevitable. You can't drill on an 'endangered' one.

What wasn't predicted? The horror that I felt when I listened to President Bush on the radio from the Middle East today call the United States a nation of 'peace',... and I laughed. This was from the man who, this past week, said his time in office has been 'glorious'. It's not the word I was looking for, George.

Tomorrow's word: IRONIC.

Form Based Codes

A council committee was given a presentation on the Form Based Codes provisions this week that have been worked on for over a year now. Take a look at this information and learn a little about the concepts behind this Article XIII ordinance. This is one of a group of development issues that have been in the works (including the Green Building ordinance) that I believe will have the potential to have profound effects on how the city is re-developed in the coming century. It is essentially a tool for building a sustainable Dallas. Well, we hope...maybe.

I still remember the Dallas Beautification Policy.

We'll talk later.

Open Space: An Introduction

The term 'open space' is being batted around City Hall lately in reference to applications in the new Form Based Codes provisions. I'll talk about Form Based Codes soon, but I'm not up to it right now. 'Open space' is also an issue in how it is applied under standard city ordinance and where it is applied to new planned developments. I thought I should pursue this matter a little further and then I'll give you some personal opinion on the subject.

Please remember that this is MY personal opinion only and not to be regarded as any official city position on the topic. This will only be a brief introduction to the subject and I'll pick up more on this during the week.

Open Space is defined in one location in the Dallas city ordinance as 'an area that is unobstructed to the sky and contains no structures except for ordinary projections or cornices and eaves.' This definition is limited and has been modified in various special ordinances in the city to broaden its scope, but still remains generally the same. It speaks nothing of paved surfaces or uses within the open space. This has to be defined elsewhere and any use of the term needs to be given a specific meaning.

Some places across the country may give a different scope to refer to a 'passive ecological area' or an 'active recreational area'. I have in mind an area that is 'mostly' permeable and open to public or private use. However, the term is so vague that it can apply to almost anything if you get down to the matter. Vagueness is the scourge of many city ordinances and precision in terminology becomes mandated to avoid possible legal contests.

One of the concerns about open space is how to regulate it, or how a city can require a developer to maintain an open space. Case law across the country solidly supports municipal governments in their efforts to maintain open spaces for the good of the public interest if they provide the substantial purpose to demand it. The courts are generally supportive of restricting development to a point if the municipality has determined in clear and defined terms the conditions for the open space and don't leave the application open to vague terms that require deciphering by committee.

In parts of Texas, this is not fully understood and municipal governments in general tend to stand off in challenges by development to any regulation or threat of regulation that they feel might hit their bottom dollar. The protection of 'open space' is critical for various reasons, not the least of which is water quality and stormwater control. Case law clearly supports community protection on these issues and can, and must, be enforced in spite of the kicking and screaming of the industry. It goes back to the sustainability of our communities for the long term - and I'm not talking your life time.

Open space has many meanings and I will address this more in coming days, especially in regards to the Form Based Codes questions. I will also discuss general case law and how it applies across the country. This is no longer J.R.'s Dallas (or is it?) and the laws are evolving to the benefit of the communities as the sustainability of them become paramount to the personal landowner's interests. The developer's interests are important and need to be regarded. But in turn, the developer must also bear in mind that his is an industry that serves the community in all its many aspects. It is not there to serve him and his partners to make him a buck. If they can be successful in their endeavors, it's all the better for everyone (and everything), but only if they are willing to place the needs of the community above themselves. I believe this is generally understood to a degree, but perceptions easily get clouded.

There are more and more builders who have taken sustainable development to heart and recognize they can build for the benefit of 'people, planet and profit.' It's their drive and imagination that needs to drive the re-emerging developments in the coming years.

Homeowner Conflicts California Style, Part II

You may recall (as if you've really been reading this blog) from an April 7, 2008 article concerning some civil suits over an issue of some tall redwood trees shading a neighbor's newer solar panels. The Sunnyvale, California cases were forcing the owner's of the redwoods to cut down or prune back their trees to not obstruct the solar panels.

Update: According to the Cupertino Courier, California state senator Joe Simitian of Palo Alto introduced a new bill (SB 1399) to 'strike a balance' between solar panels and trees. It is unclear the full range of the bill, but it would alter the affect of the Solar Shade Control Act which Simitian called 'well-intended, but overreaching.' The Senate passed the bill 38-0 and is to go to the Assembly hearing in June or July.

I don't know why I'm pursuing this other than the interest of conflict between legal issues pertaining to nature versus technology; particularly 'green' technology. I'll keep you updated.