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Of Carbon and Consequences

By Posted in Uncategorized

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By Jared Stutzman

I am about to utter a heresy — a cringe-inducing, social embarrassment of a statement to those who consider themselves intelligent. Here it is: the level of carbon in the atmosphere is not a moral or religious issue. The use of fossil fuels is neither evil nor good, and it should not be preached about from your church pulpit. Gasoline does not deserve to be the primary focus of your duty as a Christian or even as a secular humanist. But wait — before you pull out your hockey-stick charts and accuse me flat-earthism, let me explain.

It is our moral duty to care about earth around us—the trees, the dirt, the water, the animals, the air, the Mississippi river, the Magnolia tree, and the Monarch butterfly. It is also our duty to care about the quality of life of the seven billion people on the earth, and these two duties are, to some extent, intertwined. The problem is that we have become obsessed with catastrophic global climate change as the face of all environmental concerns. It is a fallacy — a terrible, divisive distortion — that the duty of conserving the natural beauty of the earth is limited to concerns about climate change. Because of the near-insoluble nature of this problem, and because of the ignorance, impracticality, and ineffectiveness of the solutions proposed to it, this issue has alienated the segments of society who would normally be most concerned with environmental issues — farmers, ranchers, hunters, and others who live closest to the earth.

If impending climate change had a definite, clear cause and a definite, clear, practical solution with little or no human cost, then taking steps to avoid its consequences would be our moral duty. But that is not the situation in which we find ourselves. Instead, the solutions we see are driven by moralistic fervor, born out of first-world arrogance, are extremely unlikely to have any real impact, and would likely cause as much human pain and suffering as the problem they’re trying to solve.

Let’s be clear. It is entirely logically consistent to hate the idea of dead fish floating belly-up in a stream while also questioning the efficacy of the Kyoto treaty. It’s entirely possible to love being in the forest, to love Yosemite and the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Everglades, while also hating the idea of a carbon tax. There is no reason that someone who decries the use of artificial preservatives in prepackaged food must also decry the use of gasoline. No one supports factories dumping noxious chemicals into rivers. No one is celebrating overflowing landfills or littered roads. No one likes it when topsoil erodes. Farmers and environmentalists alike are opposed to suburban sprawl, and no one wants a side of pesticide with his salad. No one is happy about high mercury levels in streams that prevent us from eating the fish we catch.

But these kinds of conservation concerns no longer match our concept of “environmentalism” because that word now refers almost exclusively to catastrophic global climate change. The older term, “conservation,” fits better. Most of the people who are opposed to environmentalism feel differently about conservation. They can appreciate localized, common-sense solutions to known problems — they want to take care of the land we live on while appreciating and cultivating its long-term beauty and health. But they also want no part of the sweeping hubristic global predictions, the arrogant self-righteous fervor, and the futile, silly, thimble-in-the-ocean solutions of environmentalism.

In 1975, Newsweek magazine published an article about climate change — it was entitled, “The Cooling World.”

“There are ominous signs that the earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically … The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it … the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded. … To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world’s weather. The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth’s climate seems to be cooling down…they (meteorologists) are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century … satellite photos indicated a sudden, large increase in Northern Hemisphere snow cover in the winter of 1971-1972. … Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects. … The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become a grim reality.”

Sound familiar? The article even speculates about possibly melting the polar ice cap by covering it with black soot. It’s all there—the scientific consensus, the data, the satellite photos, the extreme weather, the dire consequences. The only item that doesn’t fit the climate-change discussions of 2013 is the detail—admittedly tiny and insignificant—of the direction of the thermometer’s imminent precipitous shift.

Thanks to climate-change deniers, it has become the single most-quoted article in Newsweek’s history. The fact that a single article has achieved such notoriety is evidence of its rarity, and contemporary environmentalists justifiably point out that the article’s claim of consensus was drastically overstated — that our current consensus on a warming planet is far more universal than what amounted to the collective educated guesswork of the 1970s. A single mistaken article in a popular news magazine 40 years ago in no way proves that global climate change isn’t occurring.

But, while the Newsweek article hardly invalidates the entire field of climate science, it does give us some things to think about:
First, and most obviously, it illustrates that predicting a century’s worth of global weather is, to put it mildly, an inexact science with a high degree of uncertainty — and that localized severe weather events (tornadoes) have been used before as evidence for such predictions.

Second, it demonstrates that doomsday scenarios play well in magazines, newspapers, books, PowerPoint slides, and movies, but that their ubiquity or popularity does not necessarily correspond with their reliability — I’m looking at you, Mr. Gore.

Third, it raises questions about confirmation bias and group-think — there was at least some kind of consensus about a wrong-headed prediction in 1975 — how did that happen, and how should that affect our trust in current predictions produced by computer models created by climatologists, which use and produce data interpreted by climatologists, which is compiled into reports written by climatologists, which are peer-reviewed by climatologists?
Fourth, and most importantly, it shows that our proposed solutions to these types of scenarios—that is, sweeping global environmental catastrophes dependent on millions of variables forecasted decades into the future — are poorly understood and ineffectual at best and downright harmful at worst.

It is this fourth idea that brings us back to my original distinction between environmentalism and conservation. Conservation proposes simple, common-sense solutions to localized problems where there is a clear understanding of cause and effect. It takes into account both the human cost and the effectiveness of any proposed solution. Use zoning to protect farmland from suburban sprawl. Prohibit companies from dumping chemicals into rivers. Fine litterers. Encourage terrace farming to protect topsoil in hilly areas. Plant trees in riparian buffer zones next to streams as a haven for wildlife. These are common-sense local solutions, the outcomes of which are well-understood and predictable, and the human cost of which is low. Covering the polar ice-caps with soot, in contrast, is laughably wrong-headed and impossible, and we may well one day look back on current attempts at carbon restriction with the same feelings of mirth…if we aren’t crying. Environmentalism prescribes sweeping national and international policies which may or may not be effective in preventing a future catastrophe, but which often have an immediate and definite human cost in the present.

To make this point a little clearer, let’s take a detour and talk about DDT. It was one of the earliest pesticides created, and it was used in the U.S. to help eradicate malaria (by killing or repelling the mosquitoes that carried it). It was also used extensively as a farm pesticide. In 1962, Rachel Carson’s book, “Silent Spring,” pointed out that widespread DDT use was harming birds and insects and having a detrimental effect on the entire food chain. It was a watershed moment—in the U.S., where malaria was already gone, DDT was eventually outlawed. The environmental outrage in the U.S. affected its availability in developing countries in Africa where the battle against malaria was still ongoing. Though several countries had almost beaten the disease in the early 1960s, it came roaring back in the absence of DDT. Today, malaria still kills nearly a million people per year. The World Health Organization finally re-recommended the use of DDT against malaria in 2006—34 years after it was banned in the U.S.

DDT was a harmful residual chemical—it shouldn’t have been in widespread use on farms. But the knee-jerk, global condemnation of it had profound consequences, and probably cost millions of African men, women and children their lives. That’s serious stuff—it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to compare it to genocide.

It is our God-given responsibility to take care of the natural world around us. But our solutions need to take into account the human cost of any action. The earth may, in fact, be warming and the oceans rising. New York City and Florida might be under water in the year 2100. The burning of fossil fuels may, in fact, be a part of the reason. Nevertheless, environmentalism’s solution to this problem—some kind of world-wide carbon restriction—has a high human cost and an extremely low probability of making an actual real-world difference. Carbon restriction policies require costly global cooperation between countries that are not allies in an attempt to reduce one of the many variables scientists believe may affect climate change decades from now—can you see, perhaps, why a policy of that sort might be laughably ineffective? Even if a miracle occurred and the nations of the world cooperated with each other and burned less oil, has anyone proven that earth’s temperature wouldn’t rise anyway due to other factors, such as changes in land use? The world looks nothing like it did 150 years ago. This isn’t a controlled experiment in a science lab where we can change one variable at a time to see what the real culprit is.

More to the point, however, think about the human costs if we succeeded in drastically reducing coal and gasoline use worldwide. Just as occurred with our DDT policy, those who suffer the most would be the poorest in their societies, who would suddenly find themselves priced out of basic heat, transportation, and home electricity. Carbon restrictions like “cap-and-trade” disproportionately hurt both the poorest in any given nation (i.e., the U.S.) and the poorest in the world, who tend to be most dependent on fossil fuels and have the least access to alternatives. Think about how dependent an industrial or developing society is on oil. Think about how environmentally and humanly devastating a pre-industrial society, with its low population density, extremely low crop yields, and archaic tillage methods would be with our current population. Would it really be worth it to return to a pre-industrial society if it drastically reduced the life expectancy of seven billion people? If it caused mass starvation? How is that ethical?

It is nice, if wildly optimistic, to think that alternative energy sources will one day provide the necessary electrical power for the world. But alternative sources aren’t pristine, either … witness the fight over solar farms in California that interfered with a desert habitat, or look at the gigantic armies of wind turbines clawing at the prairie skies of Illinois, with their vast concrete bases forever spoiling a patch of the richest farmland on earth. Nuclear power, which has the most potential as a long-term energy source, has its own, obvious set of objections. It is at least debatable that a world full of enough wind turbines, solar farms, and nuclear plants to meet our electricity needs would despoil the earth more in the long term than our continued use of fossil fuels—it is absolutely certain that it would cause more immediate damage and direct disruption in the short term. The solution — even if it is attainable — might be worse than the problem.

So please … do not preach sermons about global warming and the use of fossil fuels—or at least, if you must, then preach about the human cost of your proposed solutions and do not make it heresy to question the effectiveness of those solutions. Recognize that our moral duty is not to eliminate carbon from the atmosphere, but to care about people and the world God has created, and that decisions about how to carry out that duty involve tradeoffs and are never black-and-white. Do not accuse those who disagree with your particular interpretation of that duty of pillaging the earth, being ignorant, and hating science and God and humanity. They don’t — they just prefer to spend their energies where they can actually make a difference without making matters worse.

(No Longer) Scammed in the Bathroom

By Posted in Column

By Matt Swartz

Very little of the money I spend to fill my refrigerator goes to waste. If I spend an extra dollar here or there buying products with fewer (and more easily pronounceable) ingredients, I’m happy to do it. If anything spoils before I get to it, inevitably it will have been a vegetable, and those are cheap.

The same principle holds true in my closet (or, more accurately my laundry basket, where clothing stays after I wash it and before I toss it on my floor). Now that I’m over 25, I’ve stopped buying shirts with writing or graphics on them, and that’s helped me spend a good deal less. If anyone misses reading my shirts, they’ve been kind enough not to say so. More probably they, like me, enjoy having one less bit of pointless text in their lives. Two pairs of jeans is enough, dress clothing is needed rarely enough that there’s no point in having two sets, and everything else is purchasable in bulk.

Add in the living room where I split basic cable three ways, and the (hypothetical) garage, where I park a car that I expect to turn the odometer over on one or two more times, and my house is a veritable fortress of thrift.

And for a long time, that was the end of my thrift, until recently I was felled financially by the porcelain room. For it is there where the marketers do their worst work. Dentists only recommend a pea-sized spot of toothpaste, but those horrible commercials show it covering the whole brush.

Until recently, I shelled out for another preposterous paste called “shaving-cream.” I guess the idea was that I could scrape the hairs off my face more efficiently if I couldn’t see any of them? I always went too fast and cut myself, which hasn’t happened once since I stopped using it; the steam from a hot shower softens the skin enough, as it turns out.

Similarly, I discovered an old product that dates back to the years before body wash commercials. It cleans the skin at a much lower cost-per-application. This old home remedy, called “soap” is still used widely for cleaning hands, but it works for the whole body as well. It’s basically body wash without the water added. And thank goodness! I just happen to be using the soap in a place where there’s lots of water, and this water, unlike the first ingredient in the body wash, I’m buying wholesale and in bulk.

If my aftershave bottle gets low, I refill it with rubbing alcohol or liquor, both of which are much cheaper, and the Old Spice has more than enough smell to go around, even when diluted. Add in the bar shampoo I bought a year ago (same principle as the soap, and that $10 has lasted for a year of regular use), and I’m starting to get a handle on the thing. I estimate that doing the opposite of what I see on TV means that I now send only half as much money swirling down the drain as I once did. Now, if I can just find a way to trim the weekend budget…

The Encounter

By Posted in Fiction

By Jared Stutzman

Oh…pardon me…I didn’t mean to stare. It’s just that the stunning uniqueness and individuality of your wardrobe caught me off guard. Vintage flannel and suspenders over an ironic T-shirt with distressed skinny jeans and Converse Chuck Taylor All-Stars canvas-style tennis shoes? What’s that? Oh…you usually wear Tom’s for Men instead of Chuck Taylors…I see. Wow…it’s so fresh and original…and the hemp bracelet, too, and the shaggy hair peeking out from under your Castro hat, and your retro horn-rimmed spectacles, and—oh . my . goodness—is that really a tattoo I see on your ankle? That’s so tantalizingly rebellious…the ultimate act of self-expression. I’m really just in awe…it’s so rare to see someone dress like you. In fact, I admire your style so much that I’d like to learn everything about you—can we sit down and talk about it?

First off, I can’t help but notice your iPod—what music are listening to? What’s that? Ah. Some group I’ve never heard of, you say. Why are you so sure of that? Ah…because if I’ve heard of them, you would have to instantly stop liking them. I see. How would you describe them? Acoustic indie-folk-roots-rock-protest-punk with a touch of non-commercial jazz? And just a hint of authentic bluegrass. Ah…hum. And do you only listen to obscure music? What else is on your iPod? I see. Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, and Woody Guthrie. U2, naturally. The Beatles. Springsteen. Mmm-hmm. And a “graveyard” of groups you used to like until everyone else discovered them? I see. Say what? This isn’t your “real” music collection? Ah. Vinyl, you say. Really? You’ve actually dug out an old record player and begun collecting LPs? How stunningly unexpected and unlike everyone else in your peer group! You are so creatively retro! Wait—what’s this playlist I see on your iPod… “Mix list of Switchfoot/Toby Ma…” hey! Why’d you snatch it out of my hand? Why are you acting embarrassed?

Let’s change the subject…what’s your job? A non-profit organization raising awareness of climate change, hunger, racism, AIDS, and illiteracy. Uh—isn’t that a pretty widespread list of concerns? It must be a pretty large organization. How many people are employed there? Two. Two? Two employees, including you. I see. And…what is your role there? Social media consultant and fundraiser. Mmm-hmm. And the, uh, other employee? Social media manager and fundraiser. I see. So, I take it this organization decided to add a strong internet presence to its firmly established local…oh, it’s entirely internet-based? I see. Volunteer, you say. Well…then…if I may ask without seeming too crassly commercial…on what do you subsist? How do you earn enough money to buy food? Retail? At Target? Ah. And you have multiple applications in at independent coffee shops and restaurants all over the city and are just waiting for the right opportunity. Wow—that’s very conscientious of you, to work so hard as a volunteer while doing menial, purposeless commercial labor in real life—it must be difficult not to let it affect your soul.

And where have you chosen to live? A loft apartment in a mixed-used zone downtown in a renovated factory near the brewery district? How frighteningly authentic and gritty! You say it was either that or sharing a hundred-year-old house with five buddies in the historic neighborhood just off the square? Honestly, your living arrangement choices are shocking—I’ve never heard of such things—actually choosing to live downtown—living in the center of the action instead of abandoning the city for the suburbs. You were probably the first of your friends to decide that was a cool place to live, weren’t you? No one else had that idea first? You’ve really created a new paradigm for urban renewal—it’s such a novel concept.

And where do you shop? Farmer’s markets and thrift stores…organic, locally-and-sustainably-grown, fair-trade food only—yes, I can see the “Buy Local” bumper sticker on your Subaru.* I see. Never Wal-Mart or even the supermarket. Wal-Mart is the devil. You prefer artisanal craftsmanship in all of your purchases? Hmm…artisanal means…anything hand-made. Got it. For instance? Bread. OK, yes, I can see that— the local baker’s whole-grain oat-rye-flaxseed-honey loaf beats factory produced Wonder bread. What else can be called “artisanal?” Beer. Woodworking items. Coffee. Wait, coffee? But…it’s grown in South America and Africa—how is it artisanal or local?? Locally roasted. I see. You roast your own beans? Really? Wow! You’re something of a coffee connoisseur? How unusual and quirky! How totally unexpected and idiosyncratic! And you prefer light roasts and hate Starbucks? That’s very surprising, since Starbucks serves coffee and you seem to like coffee. I’d have thought…but no—they’re too commercial and they burn their coffee, you say? Wow. You certainly don’t fit into any predetermined social categories—I’m impressed with how boldly you defy social convention and expectation. I’m curious—does this preference for local, non-corporate goods extend to other areas of consumption … say, electronic devices? I only ask because I’ve heard that Apple products are manufactured in China, and…

Moving on then. Do you attend a church? Of course. Yes. You attended an “un-church” that cycled through several living rooms and strip-mall locations for a while, but now you go to a super-relevant, indie-liturgical, community-based, outreach-oriented fellowship that meets in a restaurant downtown? You value the inclusiveness, historical connection, and congregational participation. It effortlessly mixes timeless traditions with passing fads, you say? Plus, it’s cool to pretend you’re British? I see. So, that basically means standing and sitting at the appropriate times and saying creeds together and having communion. Say what? It’s called “Eucharist,” you say? Pardon me. The pastor/priest sprinkles his sermons liberally with references to popular culture? He doesn’t use a podium? How unconventional! Your church is truly a wonderful extension of your self-expression—it neatly fits in with the person you’ve chosen to be and the image you wish to cultivate.

Where did you attend before the “un-church?” You’ve matured since then, you say. You wouldn’t go there now. Right–I’m just curious, though. You say it was a large evangelical church with three services, a jammin’ worship band, and a happenin’ youth group and college-and-young-adults outreach? That was during your years at university? What’s that? You’re mumbling a bit now. You say you didn’t know any better at the time? They were so stodgy and suburban (I noticed how you spit that word out like it left a bad taste in your mouth) and Republican—they ran their church like a factory. I see. So very out-of-touch with the culture, indeed. What about before college, where you grew up—oh, I’m sorry. That seems to be a sensitive issue. Were you a…dare I ask…a Baptist? There, there—we won’t speak of it again.

Speaking of Baptists…how do you feel about alcohol consumption? You’re snickering—have I committed a faux pas? You say that by even asking the question I’m revealing my backwardness? I see. You prefer small-batch, artisanal craft beer or European imports. Or whiskey. Or Scotch. And you can’t believe how wrong-headed the American church is on this issue…I understand. It must be interesting, with your background, to delve into this new world of fine spirits after conscientiously skipping all the keggers in college. How does it feel to imbibe alcoholic drinks now after spending your childhood and early youth denouncing such consumption? Do you ever feel guilt—or feel that you need to compensate for your earlier … I’m sorry, is this making you uncomfortable? You don’t like to be reminded of your prior convictions about alcohol? I see…well, let’s move on then.

Do you enjoy art? Do you ever! Salvador Dalí. Picasso. Monet. Not Rembrandt, so much—cabbages are boring? Ah. Michelangelo. Pollock. You seem to be somewhat eclectic in terms of artistic style (huh? Oh, yes, of course you may take that as a compliment)—what shaped your artistic tastes? Where your parents art-lovers? No, not so much? You picked it up here and there, piecemeal. You have taught yourself enough to sound intelligent in conversations about works of art and stylistic approaches you’ve never actually seen yourself? Ah. Well, I’m just guessing here, based on your past, but how do you feel about Thomas Kincai…never say that name aloud in your presence again? Ah. OK.

Well…this has been an enlightening conversation. I will go back to my boring, irrelevant, backward existence, but I’m so happy to have had my world opened by exposure to someone as cool as you. I’m so taken with your originality, authenticity, grittiness and cultural relevance that I think I need to go find a quiet corner where I can be by myself and laugh.

Author’s note: A small portion of the humor and sarcasm in this piece is self-referential. Other portions poke fun at the tendencies of good friends of mine. It’s intended as a good-natured jab at the transitory nature of lifestyle and fashion trends—a reminder that cooler-than-thou snobbery isn’t cool, and that everyone’s hair looks ridiculous 15 years later.

Editor’s note about the author’s note: This is what we call a preemptive response to the angry Letters to the Editor.

Rewind

By Posted in Fiction

By Andrew Sharp

June, 1875
Tom Lee stood in front of his cabin and looked out over his homestead. The late morning sun took the chill out of the spring breeze, and the dandelions and clover soaked up the warmth. A couple of cows tore up new grass nearby, next to a carefully built, simple barn. A thick hedge of carefully planted wild roses kept the cows from venturing across the lane to try the short green corn spikes that poked out through the dark soil. At Tom’s feet, a small flock of hens pecked and scratched among the new green weeds.

He did not seem to be pleased with the view. He was frowning as he stared out his muddy lane. Out where it joined the main road, two black horses pulling a gleaming carriage were turning in. The driver was carefully navigating through the water-filled ruts. Tom waited with his hands on his hips as the carriage drew up to him and stopped. His banker did not come out this far from town for small talk.

The man in the carriage, dressed in a clean, carefully pressed suit, looked down at the barnyard and appeared to decide, on second thought, not to step down.

“Well, Tom, it’s a fine day,” he said, overdoing the joviality.

“Well Ed?” Tom said shortly. He did not play conversational games, and he waited for the banker to get to the point.

The banker looked around at the clearing distastefully. He saw a ramshackle barn made of scrap wood, a couple of skinny cows feeding on brambles, and muddy chickens making deposits that would give his shoes the wrong kind of shine. “You know why I’m here, Tom,” Ed Reese said.

“You said you would give me more time,” Tom said.

To Reese, time was a calculation on paper, part of a formula that factored in percentages, yields. Tom’s farm was a disappointing part of this equation. He knew the farm had just been forest a few years ago, of course, and he knew that Tom had needed a hefty loan to purchase it. For the banker the first harvests had been feeble failures that failed to pay anything toward his loan. But he could not remember the thousands of days of painfully sore shoulders and blistered palms, the countless ax strokes, hours nursing sick livestock. For Tom, those meager harvests had been proud first fruits.

The banker had probably forgotten, if he ever cared enough to know, that before all this labor, many months of meager salary as a hired hand for a local farmer had gained Tom enough to get a loan.

“I gave you more time than I should have,” Reese said, like a benevolent uncle regretfully realizing he has been spoiling his nephew.

Tom’s expressionless face reflected the numbness that now replaced weeks of desperate worry. What could he say? He bent and picked up a pebble and turned it mechanically in his fingers. It was a strange shape, and he looked at it more closely. A small stone arrowhead. He threw it away.

He swallowed hard. “My crop is just coming up. Can you give me a little more time?”

The banker scoffed. “That sounds familiar. Should I wait until you’ve lost even the wormy livestock you have? Even now I’m taking a big loss.”

“The next couple harvests will cover most of it,” Tom said stubbornly. If it rains, he did not add—unlike last year.

The banker smiled pityingly. “Of course, of course.” Then he coughed. “You have until Saturday.”

“If you think you are going to ruin everything I have done here…”Tom began angrily.

“Don’t be a fool, Tom,” the banker interrupted. “I don’t want this to get ugly, but you know I’ll bring as many lawmen as I need to. Don’t get yourself killed. What would your little woman do then?” Ed Reese drew heavily from dime novel dialogue when he needed to get tough.

Tom did not say anything, but the banker got the uneasy feeling that Tom was pondering smashing his head in with a nearby fence railing. He wasn’t far off; Tom was pondering doing it with just his fist. Instead he held it up and shook it at the banker. “This land is still mine. Get off it before I do something I regret.”

The banker shrugged. “Have it your way, Tom.” He paused. “I’ll be back tomorrow. With help.” He ordered his driver to head out.
“Go to hell,” Tom suggested earnestly to the disappearing carriage.

October, 1905
Stanley Harris gulped his lukewarm beer, leaning his elbows on the rough wood surface of the bar. His shoulders were hunched, not just because he was tired from a long day, but because he was so tall he had to lean down to the counter. The premature wrinkles on his face were darkened by coal grime that had defied his quick wash after work. He didn’t look strong enough to mine coal.

He was not enjoying his beer as much as he should have been after an exhausting day. He stared out the dirty window. He reflected, not for the first time, that he had been here at the bar too much these last few months. And when his wife had confronted him about it, he had scowled at her and withdrawn into silence. That hadn’t been their only point of friction either. As a husband, he had the uneasy feeling, he had been weighed in the balances and found wanting. He tilted his mug back and swallowed the beer quickly, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, paid his tab, and hurried out onto the street.
He leapt up onto his sagging porch, but did not cross the forbidden threshold. He took a seat on a battered bench instead. He breathed in deeply, then out slowly. The thin walls of the house, insulated only with flaking paint, let the sound of his wife’s moans out clearly. He also heard the midwife’s urgent voice. Stanley sat looking out at the quiet street, unconsciously rocking back and forth.

Eliza had wanted to leave this little coal town a long time ago. But Stanley was afraid they would go hungry, would end up without a home, or…something would happen. He had no skills, really, except drinking beer and wearing himself out harvesting coal for the use of others, and he made enough at that to keep them alive. They had to save some money first, and then they could think about going. Now that the little one was coming, Eliza would be more unhappy here than ever. He began to rehearse the whole fight in his head—she accusing him of lacking backbone, he protesting her unfairness, then…he shook his head. No point arguing ahead of time.

Stanley really did badly want to give her—them—a better life. He shivered in his thin cotton shirt as the chilly fall light dimmed. From the sounds of the shouts in the distance, the baseball game was racing against the twilight out on the field on the edge of town. Children ran around the ramshackle houses and shacks playing their own games.

A scream came out of the house and Stanley jumped an inch off the bench.

October, 1929
Eddie Stewart coughed. It was his 45th cough in 20 minutes, according to his mother. Unwilling to be overprotective, she had waited to start counting after the fourth cough. She blamed this sudden mysterious ailment on their recent visit to “that filthy farm” where his cousins lived, well outside town on a rutted dirt road. Eddie strenuously denied this, as repeating the visit in the near future was high on his list of goals. When it came time to leave he and his cousins had been desperately defending their covered wagons against a vicious Indian attack, when their mothers came up and insisted that the attack was over. Also, Eddie suspected that the dam they had built across the creek would need some maintenance soon.

His mother was not opposed to farms at all, as long as they were the kind that featured thoroughbred horses grazing in clean pastures, with servants trimming the grass and bringing cold tea when needed. She therefore had firm opinions about her husband’s family’s farm, defaced as it was with dirty animals, their leavings, and worse, being very much lacking in servants with cold tea. She had been opposed to ever repeating their week at the farm, even before the Eddie’s coughing spree began, and now Eddie’s hope was at a low ebb. He had a slight advantage in that his father had warm memories of escaping town life as a boy for farm visits. But his father was very busy, and this trip had been the first time he had taken a week off since Eddie had been very small.

Eddie had only a very faint idea of what kept his father so busy, although his father had tried to explain in that adult way that assumes children won’t understand technical terms like “commute” or “wages.” It appeared his father owned a lot of companies, or parts of them, but not content with this, was always selling and buying more.

He did make enough money to afford the best doctors. After the infamous 45th cough Eddie’s mother insisted on taking him to one of these, despite Eddie’s intricately argued case that would have done a veteran lawyer credit. The judge was not paying attention and hauled him off to Dr. Stover. As it happened, Eddie wished very much he had won the debate because the doctor looked very serious and whispered in another room with his mother, who started crying. That was troubling enough, but the worst was that Eddie, to his horror, was restricted to little activity, lots of bed rest, and hardly any time outside. For someone who had only recently been carrying his rifle west with a covered wagon, this was galling.

He suspected his mother of constructing an elaborate scheme to keep him away from farms, a scheme all the more outrageous because it also prevented him from going outside on these wonderful summer nights when there were fireflies to catch and games of Kick the Can and tag with the neighborhood kids.

Eddie made somewhat of a commotion about his house arrest, with the
result that his parents had to promise to take him to see the moving picture that had come out a few months ago, In Old Arizona. Some of the kids had already seen it and everyone else wanted to. There was talking in it! Eddie couldn’t imagine what this would be like.
He was too excited to sleep that day, and also it was only four in the afternoon. The late day sun moved across the wallpaper, washing out the blue flowers in yellow-orange light, blazing across the photo of his parents after their wedding, then over a calendar with a picture of an old mill. A fly zipped up to the sun patch, crawled around, then flew down to the bed. Out in the living room, the grandfather clock chimed the half hour. Eddie groaned.

He tried to distract himself by imagining the talkie, with the sounds of voices and horses and gunshots instead of tinny piano music. It would be like being there! And there would be no need to guess what the people were saying, and then argue about it later with his friends.

He was almost afraid that he would feel better before the night the moving picture was showing, which was Friday. That was two days away. If he felt better, his parents might reconsider; it was after all, mostly a picture for adults. And his father might get too busy again, like usual. He had to cough just then, but it seemed a trifle weak to his anxious ears, so he added another more hearty one on purpose in case anyone were listening.

August, 1953
Earl F. Lee leaned on the rail of the troop transport ship and stared down at the choppy gray Pacific waves. Honolulu was somewhere out there, slowly getting closer. After that would be New York City, and then somehow he needed to get home. Getting home finally seemed somewhat likely, after months of tiptoeing through mine fields in Korea in air that was a little too dense with exploding shells to breath very freely. The Korean War was history now and no one would remember all the small events that happened because of it, like this ocean voyage—or the theft of two years of his life, Earl reflected bitterly. He was 20 when the war started and was working his way up quickly in management at the steel mill in town when he lost the draft lottery. For some, that career would have been a soul-killing dead end. But it was all Earl had asked out of life. His world was his small town, and in that reality, upper management at the steel mill was an elite position. He was on his way to riches in that small world.

They had promised to keep his job for him, but he had just found out that a recent economic slump had eliminated any available jobs. The company was regretful. Most of his friends who had stayed home had managed to hang on to their positions and were doing well for themselves. But there was nothing left for Earl. Thanks to the government’s obsession with keeping the Korean peninsula out of the hands of the commies, he was returning to nothing, to life in the unemployment line.

At least he was coming back. His best friend from the army, a guy from Chicago, wasn’t. But Earl didn’t have some heartrending tale about how one second Richard was standing there, and the next second he was gone. He was still standing there, back in Korea, refusing to come home. He had sent Earl word from the prison camp, after the end of the war, that he had decided to stay with the commies. He claimed there were dozens of other men doing the same thing. Earl would have rather Richard had stepped on a mine. Anger at having to go fight was one thing, but going over to the enemy was something else entirely. Earl was no traitor.

He was going to show Richard he was wrong. He was going to take back everything the government had stolen from him, and then some more.

***

It was almost lunchtime and I was crunching through crispy leaves back to my car. I had parked it in the frosty dark that morning and made my way into the woods to see if I could intercept a deer cruising back to a thicket to bed down. Probably there had been dozens of deer going to such thickets, but I had never been in this woods before and had selected the wrong thicket. Now I was in a hurry to get back into town and comfort myself with some hot lunch.

Ahead of me was a grassy hilltop crowned with two solitary spruce trees that towered high up over the surrounding landscape like signal towers. They could be seen for miles. As I walked up over the top of the hill I found myself standing suddenly among a small group of grave stones, some leaning over and stained with moss. The daylight prevented the cold prickling I would have felt on my neck if I had stumbled through here in the dark and caught the stones in the cold white flashlight beam. Under the warm sun, I was curious and knelt down to peer at the eroded script on one of the stones.

In Loving Memory
Eddie Stewart
Born September 1919
Died December 1929

I wandered around looking at the inscriptions. There were a few other Stewarts here, some Smiths, Lees, and Harris’, with a smattering of others. Unknown loved ones had rationed only a few sentences to tell me about the people whose last traces lay a few feet under my feet, a lifetime condensed into the most important facts: the day they started breathing, the day they stopped breathing, and sometimes extravagant additions like whether they were married or had children.

My stomach reminded me that exploring old cemeteries had its charms, but was no competition for the chili at Mama Gina’s Café. I went to get some lunch.