Framework

While spending some quality time in Michigan I had time to take in the following:

• Miles and miles of roads ranging from interstate to unpaved, toll road and public alike
• The Great Lakes and their natural waterways as well as freighters churning up man-made channels; I guess the channels were there before but they were dredged and widened so man-improved is more appropriate
• Railways for freight and commuters alike
• Airports
• Oil pipelines

Some of this was during the 1000 miles each way on the trip, but a surprising amount of this could be seen within perhaps 10 miles of the small farm we stayed at. This brought something to mind that is of great significance to me:

For all that we debate as to the role of government and how it should focus its limited resources, we are foolish to ever ignore our fundamental physical infrastructure.

This means that while we as a society debate foreign aid, defense, health care, and social policy, we still rely on immense public works to support our livelihoods. It is our nation's throbbing vascular network for people and services to travel that allows America to be awesome. It is seductively simple to hop in the car, run a few errands, and go home without thinking twice about the road we and our purchases traveled, literally and figuratively. So many products go from raw form in the United States or elsewhere on this infrastructure to places where they are processed in one or more ways, then redistributed to warehouses or wholesalers who in turn pass the products down to retailers. Which is where we drive to pick things up. Roads, rail, runways, ports, rivers, pipelines... all these critical elements have been built up to support our insatiable desire to consume, most within the last 50 years or so. Even those means of transit that have been around for over a century, like some highways or railroads, have been rebuilt much more recently.

If we didn't have reliable roads to drive from Chicago to San Antonio, or open sea lanes from Duluth to San Francisco, or (reasonably) reliable cargo and passenger flights from Orlando to Denver, much of what we take for granted in our daily lives would vanish or become unaffordable to all but the most obscenely rich. While our leaders wave flags and posture over things are primarily ideologically driven, let's hope they recognize this, as well.

The View From The Top

I have flown to Virginia a few times lately for work. Some great scenery, some disappointing cloudy days, lots of good time for thoughts, not enough time to collect them. One thing that is interesting to note is how much of our landscape is occupied by fields for athletics. All manner can be found, but primarily football, soccer, and baseball. One thing is clear, though: baseball is king.

Prior to making these flights, I would have hypothesized our nation's societal passion from a community investment standpoint would be soccer for our youth, with football holding reign for adult entertainment. Soccer draws in bazillions of youth whose parents want them to play a sport that requires virtually no training to get started, hardly anybody gets their self-esteem ruffled; while fields require grass, a few pipes, and not much seating because nobody watches the games. Football probably draws the biggest revenues and biggest crowds for its less frequent games, but not everybody can play, and few can play for long or beyond a certain age. Basketball is ubiquitous, as every city park, suburban driveway, and barn have a hoop hanging. But for number of sanctioned playing fields, where communities show where their hearts lie by slapping down funds, nothing comes close to baseball fields. Of course, from thousands of feet one cannot differentiate between baseball and softball fields, but since they are just gender-specific cousins of the same sport, I'm grouping them together. It is clear, as one surveys our countryside that for all our talk of other endeavors, from team-based battle simulators like football and basketball to the more recent, individual-is-king interlopers such as skate parks, that the position of baseball as our nation's pastime remains concrete.

Let's hope that some of baseball's virtues that develop patience, decisive-almost-reflexive response, and a respect for the archaic (oh, those rules are more perplexing than the English language!) can continue to develop our youth. It is a blessing in a society where our activities are timed to the nearest minute a game thrives that only acknowledges the number of 'outs', not the clock.

Fresh Produce

Our clan recently spent some time in northern Michigan, relaxing, spending time with extended family, and doing outdoors summer-type things. Saw a lot of farms; hay, corn, and fruit of all fashions. Spent a lot time watching tractors, patrolling acreage like sentinels, really more like drones, with their circuitous patterns, sometimes giving to the soil, sometimes taking away from it, always plodding and always wringing a crop from the land. This farming toil was not the slightest bit glamorous, is not likely to make one wealthy, and requires knowledge of the craft to be successful. And it is a classic example of the dwindling portion of our population that actually produce things.

So few of us now directly manufacture or otherwise produce things that people use. By "use", I'm excluding things such as food handed out at a drive-through, because that's just repackaging of food other people made; and things like newspapers, because that is the circulation of an idea that could come across through primitive means like face-to-face conversation. There is still a contingent of men & women in the United States with leathery skin, gnarled hands, stooped backs, bad knees, and all manner of scars and illnesses from the time they spent or are spending making things. I think this is an easy thing for many of us to forget if our days consist of writing traffic tickets, administering vaccinations, pumping gas, flipping burgers, tracking corporate accounts, writing legal documents, setting up computer networks... or any of the other trades the service-based economy we live in requires to keep growing, or even surviving. All of these service-based jobs function to improve the efficiency of fundamental production trades, like the corporate accountant who tracks expenditure on a factory floor or the computer ace who facilitates online ordering. But our lives, generally speaking, are growing more remote from the mining, farming, and building of things. There is a chicken and egg riddle about this and the outsourcing of so much of our nation's manufacturing capacity to other nations. Have we become the way we are as a society because we outsourced, or was outsourcing possible because we had already turned in the direction of not making things?

Consider the things we attend college for, or what the college students we know may be studying at this moment. How many college study disciplines can even remotely be considered to be involved in the production of things? I say this knowing that, as a mechanical engineer, I am surely near the top of that list, but I am still only tangentially a part of the manufacturing and installation of parts for ships. I make decisions about what is acceptable and what is not on the shop floor on on the boat, but I certainly cannot say I am making things.

If you get the chance, make something. Grow a garden. Make a bookshelf. Build a go-cart. Whatever it is, you have my applause.

Let Freedom Ring

Please spend a minute of your life to watch THIS. It is truly epic, and made me laugh out loud the first time I saw it. I think there are a couple of spin-offs that need to be made from this:

King Theoden at the Battle of Pelennor Fields

King Leonidas at Thermopylae

William Wallace (Braveheart) just about any time he unsheathed his sword

I'm sure there are some other good ones. Any suggestions?