What they don't get.

Lafayette, Indiana 

St. Mary's Historic District

Why is it that I  feel like my neighborhood is always "at war" with the good people at St. Mary's Catholic Church and the Lafayette Diocese?  Good question because it's happening again so I'm taking a guess about the causes of the problem.   

Once upon a time, when the church on the hillside was new,  a neighborhood built up around the church.  A number of parishioners built homes in that neighborhood.  In the days before automobiles churches served a fairly small geographic area and people walked to church or used some form of horsepower.  That is part of the reason why there were so many little rural churches...people did not want to make long trips to church.  

In the beginning, the neighborhood around the church was full of parishioners.  The leadership of the church, both clerical and lay were neighbors.  There was a real connection to the place and to the people of that place.   The automobile changed everything including the relationship between churches and their neighbors. A neighborhood church became something different.  The automobile gave us the suburb.  People could now live miles from their church building and yet make the trip in the same amount of time...or maybe less time.  No longer were clergy looking at the same faces on Sunday that they could see every other day of the week while shopping at the neighborhood grocery store...   I believe the problems we have now between the church and the neighbors of the church are the result, at least in part, of that shift in dynamics resulting from changes in transportation.  I guess what I am saying in summary, is that the church is visited once or twice a week by strangers to the neighborhood.

The loss of a single building in a neighborhood might be something to regret, but in the big picture one building, with some exceptions,  is not particularly dramatic or meaningful or even harmful to a neighborhood. What they don't get, what has been lost sight of,  by the leaders of the church is that a neighborhood is the sum of its parts. Each tree, each stone wall, each fence,  house, doorway, and garden and each person living there are parts of a bigger picture.  Hacking away at one, and then another, and another individual part can only result in a less colorful,  less rich whole.

The Cathedral of St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception under the guidance of the Catholic Diocese of Lafayette now hold a permit to remove one more element from my neighborhood. In a mere 56 days the waiting period will expire and they will have the legal right to bulldoze 1014 South Street into a pile of dust. That will be the 5th period home they have removed.   The neighborhood will again get a little less colorful.  I fear my neighborhood is facing a drab, monotone existence if the church continues these attacks one at a time.

My Christmas wish is that St. Mary's Church and the leaders there would become a part of my neighborhood, and not remain apart from us.  

#save1014southstreet
#findanotherway
#stopthedestruction
#myChristmaswish

When Neighborhoods Go Awry

     Lafayette, Indiana

Saint Mary's Cathedral

It is a beautiful building, grand in both style and setting. Perched halfway up the hillside east of downtown the spire can be seen for a long distance.  When I moved to this neighborhood almost 30 years ago I thought of that cathedral as a positive feature.  Most of the homes in our neighborhood date from the period in which the church was built in the 1860's up to about 1900.  A number of the homes were built by parishioners of that church. 

Like most of the older neighborhoods near the city center,  many of the homes here had been converted to multiple unit apartments.  Big old houses cut up into anywhere from 2 to 7 or 8 smaller apartments,  but there were still some outstanding examples of homes that were single-family, and owner-occupied.  

I suppose you might say I was naive in my initial assessment of neighborhood dynamics. There were perfectly obvious examples of neighborhoods that proved my belief that this church was going to be a positive influence in our neighborhood was a Pollyanna daydream. 

I had grown up on a White County farm but most of my adult life has been spent in Lafayette. I had already been a beat cop in Lafayette for 12 years when we opted to purchase the old Shambaugh home on Columbia.  Had I only thought about other neighborhoods in my own town where large well-funded institutions sit at the heart of a neighborhood I would have realized my views were excessively optimistic.  The two local hospitals were perfect examples. Where those institutions once occupied perhaps a square block they eventually expanded to large multi-block campuses and neighborhoods lost dozens of homes as a result of that growth. It is a bit of sad irony that both hospitals eventually left the neighborhoods they had hollowed out.   Purdue University has devoured blocks of residential stock in West Lafayette through it's history.  Other downtown churches had expanded their footprints within their neighborhoods.  I had seen all of that. 

If I was looking for a long lasting stable neighborhood why had I ignored all the signs?  Why did I think the neighborhood around St. Mary's Cathedral was exempt from growth or change?  I simply can not answer that question. We loved the house and the location was excellent for a busy family, convenient to schools, work, shopping and to Purdue. The risk seemed outweighed by the advantages.  

Not long after we settled in and got to know some of our new neighbors I thought it might be a good idea if we had a neighborhood association like some of the other neighborhoods we were hearing about.  Ninth Street Hill and Perrine neighborhoods had formed groups and had tackled issues in an effort to make positive improvements to their respective neighborhoods.  They had some successes which encouraged us.   I remember walking from door to door meeting all the property owners who still lived in their homes and many of those who rented apartments too.  I remember approaching St. Mary's in an effort to get them involved in our new group.  A few of our very first meetings were actually hosted in a basement meeting room in St. Mary's school.  I say "hosted", they opened the room for us but did not attend any of the meetings we had there, neither priests, nor officers, nor any members made any effort to join our group although for the first year or so we tried to interest them in doing that.  Eventually, we decided it was more fun to take turns meeting in one another's homes for our monthly meetings. It seemed that St. Mary's wasn't really interested in getting to know their neighbors.  

When we arrived in the neighborhood there were 33 owner-occupied homes in our neighborhood.  The original boundaries of our district were from the old Wabash RR tracks to Five Points and from Main street to South Street.   Today there are a dozen fewer owner-occupied homes.  St. Mary's church has taken down two fine historic homes that were owner-occupied when we arrived, besides two other houses and one small business building.  Today they again want to tear down one of the true jewels of the neighborhood and one that retains its original exterior appearance including the original wrought iron fence, the original porch trim, & original carriage house. Unlike many old structures, this one looks just like it did in the 1880's when it was built. 

Those of us who own these old homes and value the neighborhoods understand that sometimes it just makes no practical sense to attempt to rehab and reuse a building.  A building uncared for many years eventually reaches a certain point of decay that makes preservation impossibly expensive to repair. The house at 1014 South Street now cleared for destruction after the waiting period ends does not appear to be one of those impossible cases.   From all appearances, this house is far from that point.  When the church bought the property several years ago neighbors were given the idea that their intention was to use the house as a Rectory.  Now we learn that what they want to do is wreck it and build a new Rectory from scratch on the lot.  

I can only speak for myself but what I've learned about living near St. Mary's that it is something like living in the near vicinity to a supermassive black hole and you never know what's going to be swallowed up next.  I might also use the analogy that the church is killing the neighborhood, not in a single dramatic fashion but...death by a thousand cuts. It's a slow way, but ultimately effective. Most frustrating of all is that church leaders refuse to talk to neighbors....not just now, but every time they have taken this sort of destructive action...there was never any talking until it was much too late to find alternate solutions. Clearly, the relationship between the Church and the neighborhood is broken, if it were a marriage it would qualify for a divorce.  Maybe it can be repaired, but it has taken 30 years to reach this state so I don't have a lot of hope.  #stopthedestruction #save1014southstreet #findanotherway

Ghosts from our recent past.

Is it just me, or is anyone else saddened by the great homogenization of our society which occurred primarily during the second half of the last century? The same big box stores from Bangor to Baja....the same chain restaurants from Atlanta to Anchorage....one place looks pretty much like any other place these days. Most of the talk about the great homogenization of American Culture over the past two generations applied to things like national retail and restaurant chains. Our children and grandchildren take this sameness for granted and the argument could be made that the sameness isn't bad at all and that it is more convenient. One can rely on finding the same sandwich of the same quality and flavor at the McDonald's in either San Diego or Syracuse. It wasn't always so easy to find reliable sources of food and beverage on the road. Some of us still remember a time when each town, or state, or region had a unique flavor. That flavor was evident in everything from architectural styles, to food, and even the landscape. 

A few summers ago we drove from Indiana to Yellowstone National Park. Much of the route covered the same ground I had traveled with my grandparents about 60 years ago. As we traveled west into southern Nebraska, roughly following the old Oregon Trail things didn't seem like I remembered them from the trip with my grandparents. At first I couldn't put my finger on it...maybe it was just a faulty memory.

What finally occurred to me as we traveled across Nebraska was that there was barely any difference in the amount of timber we saw between Indiana and Nebraska. Yet I remembered a Nebraska with considerably fewer trees than a typical Indiana landscape. I remembered my grandparents telling me about the pioneer houses built of sod because there were no trees for log cabins. I even remember stopping along the road and walking out into a pasture with my grandfather and looking at an old soddy. I wonder if my memory is faulty? I might have been only 9 the last time I crossed that state but I don’t remember it looking so much like home. I’m fairly certain emigrant travelers of 1849 would not have recognized much of the landscape we found in Nebraska that recent summer. Perhaps there are places in Nebraska that have not become so homogenized, but we did not see many of them on this trip. We did find a reproduction sod house and small museum along our route. I came away feeling somehow disappointed and looking back at the picture it took me a while to realize what was unsettling about the view....It was the trees there were a lot of them, the soddy was practically in a grove.....they were all wrong. There are still a few of the original sod houses that have survived since pioneer times, but they are very rare these days.

The Park and Eat, Woodies, The Downtowner, The Oaks, The Corner Cafe, Green Gables, The Flame, the Frost top....all unique place names from my childhood and youth that served good food to mostly local crowds. A hamburger and fries was uniquely different at each place. On my travels I still try to find some of those lost places...or to photograph their now empty shells. Below are a few ghosts from our past for your enjoyment. Gas Stations, Motels, and other gems from the road. Peggy Sue's 50's Diner in Barstow California has been in business that long, and still serves up a good burger and fries.  

Worst Indiana Book Ever

There it is, sitting on my desk, where it has been for about a month, right there on top of a growing pile of papers I never seem to get filed away.  It's mocking me.   I've been trying to decide what do about it.   If I do anything at all  I will hurt someone's feelings and I really hate doing that. The thing has given me, and several of my friends some laughs, so maybe I should just let it go.  It is quite probably the worlds worst written book on Indiana History.   

It is so poorly written that, at first, I wondered if it could have been written as a prank, ha ha ha the joke is on anyone who spent $18.00 to order it and the author is laughing all the way to the bank.  

It was never my intention to write book reviews here, but this book is so bad that I felt obligated to shout a warning to other unsuspecting readers of Indiana History who might be fooled by the book's cover.   

First, let me assure everyone that I've made plenty of writing faux pas, including spelling, and grammar and I would never try to pass myself off an expert in English Grammar. I do, however, know a little something about history and the grammatical errors in this book are things most of us learned to avoid in elementary and junior high school.    The book is "Indiana History, The Crossroads of America" by C.C. Straub.  

The author wrote, on what I believe is commonly called the Forward,  "This is a work of nonfiction. The events are real according to the author." and on another page called "Gratitudes" she writes "Historical Societies are help in their way of information wherever they are located." 

 The book is "richly illustrated".  Normally that would be a good thing, but in this case, not so much.   The author clearly does not understand that image files of a tiny size taken from the internet are very often too small to be used for print purposes.  Some were so small that the resulting print image was unrecognizable.   Illustrations on a page that have nothing to do with the text of the page or even of the chapter add little.  It would seem that in this case they are only included to take up space.   Sometimes the image fit the text, but frequently it did not.  It appears that if the author could not find an appropriate image for a page that the default choice was either a squirrel, a deer, or an elk.  

A summary some of the items that left me shaking my head from chapter 4 is as good as any other chapter for pointing out the reasons Ms. Straub might want to invest in hiring a good editor before she writes another book.  In chapter 4 we learn that the Mississippian culture was "hightly" developed. We also learn that the author failed to use or pay attention to "spell check" which would have spotted "Missisxippians".   The following sentence leaves the reader wondering if it is simply the result of poor grammar or if the author really does believe that "you cross the Falls of the Ohio and the Wabash River near Vincennes".   

Illustrations in chapter 4 have little or no direct connection to the surrounding text.  They included a bison, two bears, nine persons identified only as modern Cherokee people, the seal of the United States Supreme Court, portrait of Christopher Columbus, an unidentified stained glass window, The Great Seal of the United States, misidentified as the flag of the United States, portrait of George Washington "around in the 1700's" 

Odd choices for illustrations don't end with Chapter 4.  In the chapter concerning the French period in Indiana is a photo of "Wild Bill Cody and Sitting Bull".  In the chapter concerning the British control of the area is a photo of "Young Thomas Edison",  two additional images of Christopher Columbus, and one of "Benjamin Franklin, a great inventor of the past".  

Lest you are left, dear reader, with the impression that the above examples were the exception rather than the rule I can only say that spelling and or grammar errors can be found on nearly every page. Oddly hyphenated pairs of words and the misuse of quotation marks were so frequent that I finally had to read up on the subject to make sure I had not forgotten some basic rule of grammar.  Sadly I had not.  Reading this book has had one very positive result.  As bad as they are, I feel much better about my own writing skills. I want to also note that I feel lucky not to have purchased this book myself. It was loaned to me by an unlucky friend.  

    The above image illustrates what happens when you try to convert a very small size image file from the internet to print form.  

  

Remind me again, why anyone thought it was a great idea to have a businessman as the political leader of our nation?  That was it, wasn't it...it's what everyone was saying, he'll be great, he knows how to run a business therefore he will know how to run a government.  I also heard....he's rich, therefore he's successful,  and because he's good at being successful he'll know how to get the best deals for America.  Finally there was this gem, he's rich, and therefore he won't be able to be bought by special interests.

If what we have seen so far has not yet convinced you that the above arguments have more holes in them than a block of swiss cheese then I don't suppose my thoughts are going to sway your views. That said, let me rehash some of the most glaring problems with those arguments.

First, I don't think anyone gave any real thought to the idea that there are different types of business leaders because there are a lot of different types of businesses and the experiences those industry titans acquire and then put to use running various sorts of business enterprises are not necessarily interchangeable from business to business.   For example, business entrepreneurs who run their own business or company have no one else to answer to.  They do what they want, say what they want, they sink or swim based on their own actions.   The skills required to run your own show are not the same as the skills and responsibilities of the CEO of a large corporation.  That businessman has lots of others he answers to, especially a board of directors and shareholders of the company. None of the companies Mr. Trump has run required him to answer to anyone but himself. He has not ever known the responsibility and the give and take required of a CEO who has to work with a board of directors or to worry about shareholders.

Next there is the question of Mr Trump's wealth and the idea that because he is mega wealthy we should all assume he will be a great President.   The first and most obvious problem here is that we don't really have a good understanding of just what his wealth amounts to or how he got it.    We can guess, we can assume, but really we don't know if he is worth millions or billions and he clearly doesn't want to share that information with the rest of the country.  

Running a business is NOTHING like being President.  If you run a business you are not obligated to listen to anyone else, you can do your own thing, all the time, every day.  You don't have two other branches of your business telling you "no, you can't do that!' That is especially true of a private business which has no board of directors or share holders to answer to.  Donald Trump has never run a business where he had to answer to anyone other than his own inner voices.  No share holders, no board of directors....just him, so it's probably been a big shock to realize he doesn't always get the last word in his new job.

Successful, he's been magnificently successful they said....but did anyone stop and consider the obvious...a successful football player is not necessarily a successful baseball player, or ball room dancer, or doctor.  If you dentist was a great dentist who had built a large and successful dental clinic and had hundreds of patients who adored him would you then assume he'd be the guy who should do your orthopedic knee replacement?  Of course you wouldn't....so why on earth would you think that being a successful business tycoon translate to a great President?    

Will he make America great again?  That remains a question but I'm not hopeful....

What this Country Needs

We need to find some definitions that we can all agree on.  It is no wonder we can't solve problems in this country.  We can't even agree on what the problems are.  We all look at things from a different angle, some of us wearing rose colored glasses, others wearing magnifying glasses, and some wearing bifocals. Worse yet we can't even agree on simple definitions.  

For example, there is a lot of talk about the demise of the middle class in America.  But what is "middle class"?  Depending on what the definition of middle class happens to be I recently discovered that I am either poor, wealthy, right in the middle of middle class, or something even less descriptive called "thriving" which is, I suppose, something that is supposed to be good.  

Various academics and economists have argued that middle class should be defined by income,  others say consumption is a better yard stick, or wealth, or demographics or aspirations.  I fall at completely different places on each of those yardsticks.   So if we can't even agree on the definition of middle class, how can we know if we have a problem or know how to solve the problem if we have one?  I don't even know if I'm middle class or something else.  If I'm not middle class am I wealthy?  It most often doesn't feel that way, but some yardsticks say I am.  I guess it goes back to perspective, and if perspective is what makes the difference then I don't see a simple solution to the problem....or even if there is a problem.   

Maybe the definition of Middle Class is like the definition of hard core pornography, we can't easily define it, but like Justice Potter Stewart famously said in his 1964 opinion in Jacobellis v Ohio,  "I know it when I see it".  

For the record, I do see the demise of the middle class as a problem.  Regardless of how you define middle class when you remove a person from the middle he has to go somewhere else, either on the poorer side or the wealthier side of middle. Actually it isn't the person who moves, it is his money.  For the last 20 or 30 years more who might have once been considered middle class have moved toward the poorer side of the middle. At the same time vast amounts of wealth has flowed out of the middle toward the wealthy at much higher rates than wealth has moved the other direction.  Like Potter Stewart, I may not be able to describe all the ways this is bad for our country, but still, I know it's not a good thing. There are just some things that you know without the need for deep and involved definition. Our economy is like an engine, and just like an engine, when things get out of balance bad things almost always result.     

ACROSS AMERICA

I Like to travel, in fact you could say I love to travel. The destination isn’t particularly important to me. Granted, I do have some preferred destinations, but my enjoyment derives as much from “the trip” as the final destination. I like driving. Aside from the physical aspect of “driving” my car, thrill of discovery is invigorating and I have learned that little discoveries are just as rewarding as big ones.

During the summer of 2008 Camilla and I put about 5000 miles under the wheels of our 11 year old car. Along with our grandson Cole we explored a lengthy swath of the Heartland…from Indiana we crossed the prairie state of Illinois, pausing at the Mississippi then onward through Iowa, and Nebraska. Through Nebraska we followed the general route of the Oregon Trail trying to imagine what those crossing the great plains in 1849 must have seen and felt.

This would be the place to pause for a brief editorial. Where we crossed the Prairie state of Illinois there was little evidence of the lush tall grass prairies that once extended from the Wabash River bottoms of western Indiana to the Mississippi and beyond. Where emigrants of 1849 crossed a vast grassland beyond the Mississippi that extended all the way to the Rocky Mountains there is little evidence of that once treeless landscape.  Nebraska is today less of a treeless landscape than it was when I passed through in 1959 as a child with my Grandparents. Today one has to drive well into western Nebraska before the trees fade away.

There is a lot of talk about the homogenization of American Culture over the past couple of generations. Most of that talk applies to things like national retail and restaurant chains. A shopping mall in Boise looks much like a shopping mall in Baton Rouge or Boston.  From what I have seen it should also apply to what we have done to our landscape. In our drive across Nebraska there was barely any difference in the amount of timber we saw between western Indiana where I live and the eastern 2/3 of Nebraska. Yet I remembered a Nebraska with considerably fewer trees than a typical Indiana landscape. I wonder if my memory is faulty? I might have been only about 10 the last time I crossed that state but I don’t remember it looking so much like home. I’m fairly certain emigrant travelers of 1849 would not have recognized much of the landscape we found in Nebraska this summer. Perhaps there are places in Nebraska that have not become so homogenized, but we did not see many of them on this trip.

As amazing as it sounds, there are a few places where you can still see traces of the old Oregon Trail. Scars, yet unhealed, in the land caused by thousands of iron clad wooden wagon wheels. Another small example of ways in which we have put our mark upon this land. 

Chimney Rock, Scotts Bluff, Windlass Hill, and Ash Hollow  are still easily spotted landmarks along the old Oregon Trail and the Platte River which much of the trail followed through Nebraska still winds it's way toward the sea as it did when the first settlers headed west in 1849. Although echos and reminders remain, the Great Plains have been long tamed. Fenced, plowed, and grazed and populated by towns large and small.  The vast grassland full of millions of bison are but a memory today, something we can only read about and imagine.

This is the history of America, we have changed the landscape from coast to coast, we have taken vast wealth from the lands with little thought of the future.  There are still public lands, and still wild places and some of those we have preserved, but it is always a fight and often preservation does not win.  Not long before he left office President Obama granted National Monument status to some public lands in Utah,  Bears Ears National Monument.  Mining, drilling and cattle interests are hopping mad and hope that the current administration will reverse that Monument status which would allow them access to take yet more wealth from those lands and forever change the landscape there as we have allowed in so many other places.  I hope those who value what we leave our grandchildren will prevail in the fight that is sure to come to Bears Ears National Monument in the near future.