"A very Fortunate Life"

Although we have paid considerable tribute to the veterans of World War II in recent years, I think we still fall short of appreciating, much less "venerating" the elder members of society in this country.Two years ago when I was waiting for my car to be serviced at a garage in Estes Park, Colorado, an elderly man wandered in, dressed in somewhat shabby clothes, and after checking his car in for service looked for a place to sit. There were only a few chairs around and I cleared some newspapers from the chair next to mine to give him a place to sit. Instead of letting me read my book in peace, he was interested in chatting, so I closed my book and we had a very nice talk. It turns out he was a widely published physician who had established the neurology training program at UCLA many years ago. It was truly one of those "you can't tell a book by its cover" moments.

More recently, I was returning from work at the hospital in Vinton, Iowa, and saw a small sign for "railroad depot" which directed me a couple of blocks off the main road to a very nicely preserved/restored railroad depot sitting on the tracks. I stopped to take a quick picture before continuing back to Cedar Rapids, and as I was about to get back in my car, a gentleman pictured below pulled up in his car and rolled down the window and inquired of my interest in that particular building.

Keith Elwick

It turns out that this gentlemen, who is 96 years old (born in 1918 and about to celebrate his 75th wedding anniversary), was a significant part of the history of this old railroad depot. He was  not boastful, but neither was he reticent to answer my questions regarding his life, and I wish I could have taken more time to benefit from his stories over a long cup of coffee as he had suggested. As we talked, it became apparent that not only had this man been part of a successful farm family, but was quite an inventor and had built an agricultural machinery manufacturing business from scratch. He had been personally presented from Queen Elizabeth two awards for innovation and excellence in agricultural machinery manufacture, but he never mentioned this significant fact; I only learned it later by some internet research.

In 1964, Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip presented Keith Elwick (right) and the Howard Rotovator company, which manufactured his side-delivery manure spreader in England, with an award for British implement of the year.

 Keith's original manufacturing company was located in an old canning factory next to the railroad tracks in Vinton, but some years later they required some new administrative offices and it turned to the old railroad depot across the street which had been closed and was being offered by the railroad to a suitable caretaker. Keith's company purchased the depot for a nominal sum and then spent over $100,000, a considerable amount at the time, in complete restoration and renovation, preserving not only the exterior, but also all of the original benches, counters, and instruments in their original state. His company then donated the entire depot to the local historical society on a leaseback for his company use, thereby ensuring that it would remain in its state of historical preservation into the future.

Mr. Elwick a couple of times noted "I have had a very fortunate life" and during our discussion never mentioned his meeting with the Queen of England or many of his accomplishments I only read about online after our meeting.  Not everyone will have a story such as his, but I wonder how many equally fascinating lives we fail to share by not taking the time for conversation with those who have lived longer and may have seen far more than we can imagine.

Click here for a link that has some commentary about Keith's life from the award ceremony when he received a "Silos and Smokestacks" award.

Vinton RR Depot
Built in 1900

Passage way to the tracks

Opposite view

Old Motor Car Garage containing preserved
old hobo signs

photo5.jpg

A Sunday Walk

Early this Sunday morning I set out to take a walk around our new neighborhood for a light exercise and to see what's there. (click on any picture to enlarge it.)

Started my walk on the river walk below our window, and crossed the bridge.

Not much traffic on a Sunday morning.  Our Apt building on the left; Veterans' Auditorium (link) on the right. 

The river walk was uipgraded in the 90's, and survived the 2008 flood reasonably intact.

The footings for the current bridge were originally laid about 100 years ago.
The city was founded here because the riverbed was rocky, and could be crossed
on foot or wagon during times of low-normal flow.

The Vets Memorial reopened only recently (link), after extensive renovation after the flood (link)
Note the bridges that I walked this morning and the entire island
were totally underwater during the flood!

The old bank (the original part in the foreground) (link) was designed by Louis Sullivan
and is now an Italian Restaurant.  New Condos east of the bank and across from the
 new river amphitheater are almost finished.

The trees have just about finished their blossoming, but new flowers are appearing elsewhere.

This trail through Cedar Rapids connects with the Cedar Valley Trail (link)
Improvements in the landscaping are underway.

An old warehouse under conversion to urban lofts.

Doors for exiting to the side street after the performance at the Paramount Theater

In addition to some mid-century ugly, there are some really nice preserved old buildings in the downtown.

Not that old, but attractive.

The Blue Strawberry - my favorite downtown coffee shop
- and only 1  1/2 blocks from our apartment building!

The Blue Strawberry

Turning Away from Medical Science

It has been a long seven months since I last posted on this blog. There are many reasons , but it basically comes down to the intensity of other things going on in my life and, to a lesser extent, a willingness to create short Facebook postings rather than take the time to create a meaningful blog post.  Selling a house, buying a house, un-buying a house, and medical issues have all been demanding attention, while I continue to work through New Year's Eve. Come New Year's Day, I will be officially retired!

Religious extremist, most recently the Taliban in Pakistan and the Sudan, have been threating, even killing, health workers trying to vaccinate the population.  There is now a resurgence of polio in these locals, not surprising as there is now a large, unprotected population.  There should be a lesson here for those concerned about (and preaching against) vaccinating their children or themselves.

I was spurred to return with a post on this blog by a recent visit to a building that at one time served as a hospital to indigents and to members of the old Poor Farm in Flagstaff Arizona.  It was the iron lung pictured below that struck something deep within me. The eradication of polio happened during my youth, but my children's generation has never known the fear of contracting polio, so perhaps a reminder is in order.

 "iron lung." 
The afficted patient lies on a "Cookie Tray" from which he/she is moved in and out from the top, with a seal around their neck; the bellows at the bottom (seen here) moves in and out, contracting and expanding the lungs with cyclic low/normal air pressure within the chamber, thus providing breathing for the patient.

Polio, or more correctly "poliomyelitis," is a virus that at one time was widespread throughout the world.  It is also called "infantile paralysis", since about one percent of people who contract the virus will have the form that affects the central nervous system and cause paralysis of one or more extremities, or even affect the nervous system to a degree that it will prevent the muscles of respiration working.  At this point, the only effective therapy was placement within an "iron lung."  This treatment would occasionally have to be long-term, even life-long.   (The last patient who was in an iron lung died in 2008, after living 56 years within the device.)

Because of the potential for paralysis, areas or locales with known polio infections were avoided by the rest of the population. I remember on one of our annual family drives from Texas to Virginia to visit relatives, my parents took a very long, inconvenient detour to avoid driving through a town with known polio cases.

Now, here is the point, the suffering and fear caused by polio has been mostly eradicated from the world by mass vaccination.  After Salk, et al developed the vaccine giving protection, there was no need for a publicity campaign to get people vaccinated, EVERYONE was demanding it.  My entire school was vaccinated in a single day.  The same thing happened around the world. Countries that could not afford the vaccine were provided sufficient amounts, for free, that allowed their entire population to be immunized, in a successful, worldwide effort and cooperation that rarely occurs. In the 90's elimination of polio from the world seemed at hand, but politics, and armed conflict have reversed that optimism, with a 2013 outbreak in Syria, and documented cases in several African countries. 

There is a critical point in the penetration of vaccination through a population at which the virus can no longer find sufficient host, and it will then disappear from that region or country. We have managed get a penetration of vaccination for the childhood diseases of measles, mumps, whooping cough, etc. to an extent that such infections had, until recently been quite rare. Unfortunately due to the easy spread if misinformation via the internet, a significant number of parents have been refusing to vaccinate their children, and this is threatening to allow one or more viruses to explode through an unvaccinated population, again causing fear and misery. Recent outbreaks of measles and whooping cough in affluent California are prime examples.  If you get into a discussion about this, remember to bring up polio and bring some practical history to the table.

Technological leapfrog

 

Education and Technology in Bangladesh

 

I was reading the other day that the 12th largest shopping mall in the world is in Bangladesh. Bangladesh!? With a little further research, it turns out that seven of the largest 10 shopping centers in the world are in developing Asia.  My picture of Bangladesh and other similar countries as dusty or flooded areas of rural occupants with scraps for clothing and emaciated from hunger obviously needed some updating.

With a little research, it has become obvious to me that economic development in the emerging Asian economies is going to occur at a much faster pace than what we have seen in Western economies over the last 50 to 100 years. Among the major advantages that the developing economies have is the ability to take advantage of recent scientific and technological advancements and “leapfrog” over the existing developed societies.

For example, it would take many years and billions of dollars to trench and lay cable to every home in India or Bangladesh to provide phone and Internet services (and of course cable TV so they can watch MTV.) But they do not have to do that; they are jumping straight to wireless services for communication, Internet access, and televised entertainment and education.

Cell phone penetration in the top 20 countries includes of course the United States and China, but also includes India, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Vietnam, and Thailand. Of the 6 billion mobile phone subscriptions around the world, 5 billion are in developing countries.

Back to the shopping center. Though it is true that large megamalls are appearing in developing Asian cities, there is certainly nothing like the scale of retail shopping establishments we see in the US, Western Europe, or Japan, and that will likely never happen because e-commerce will spread far more rapidly in these regions than will brick-and-mortar retail shops (maybe I should invest in the Indian and Indonesia equivalents of UPS and FedEx?) Similarly, rather than large banks with satellite stores scattered throughout the cities and countryside, these areas will continue to expand the use of smart phones for banking and to purchase everything from a vending machine drinks to groceries, clothes, and perhaps even cars.

The government will also take advantage of new technologies and science to provide better services to their citizens, with increased security compared to that in the Western economies. Avoiding all the problems that hazards the US Social Security system, which is plagued with identity theft and fraud, India is creating a national online identity database for the entire country based on biometrics (fingerprints, iris scans, & facial photographs) which will make it possible to verify every individual's identity, instantly, with a smart phone or other device. This ambitious program plans to include more than half the population by 2014.  In this country there is rampant paranoia of the 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 variety when it comes to government having the ability to verify your identity. However, this is the coming world standard, and to refuse it will continue to allow economic fraud of every type, and make it easier for known criminals and terrorist to operate within our society.  I personally find the latter possibilities a much greater threat than giving the government the ability to biometrically confirm who I am.

Meanwhile, federal and state legislatures have passed and continue to renew laws and policies entrenching existing legacy corporations and their outdated technology, and they resist new expenditures that would actually help maintain our lead as a technologically advanced citizenry. Whether it be satellite or cable television, our subscriptions are the most expensive in the world. Whether it be land lines or cell phones, our subscriptions are the most expensive in the world. Whether it be wireless or hardwired, our Internet access is the most expensive in the world (and among the slowest and most limited in the world.)  It's time to move forward before we are left behind.

Post-Religious Jesus

My reading is generally divided into what I term my "daytime" reading and my "nighttime" reading. The first is material that require some thought and the ability to stay awake, and might be scientific, philosophical, or theological in content. The second genre of books are generally about some seriously flawed detective or agent who despite of his flaws is able to solve the crime and save the day.  If I fall asleep a few pages into the book, then there's no harm done. No scientific details require recall the next day either.

The most recently read "daytime" books are all theological/philosophical, Two of them are written by an Episcopalian bishop whom I have previously read and listened through online podcast, and a third from a relatively new writer who has a newly released book on the bestseller list addressing the historical Jesus.  This is one of those occasions that I periodically observe in which I read several books that are seemingly disconnected in arthurship and orientation, but when read simultaneously deeply interrelate.

The first of these books is "Zealot: the life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth" by Reza Aslan.   I have read several books addressing the "historical Jesus," and this certainly rates among the best. It is authoritative, compactly complete, and imminently readable. I am not a biblical scholar and certainly not any sort of knowledgeable person regarding ancient Palestinian history, and I feel considerably more educated having finished this book. The introduction  establishes the basis for the existence of an historical person, Jesus of Nazareth, who lived in first century Palestine. The prologue paints a sociological and political and religious background into which Jesus of Nazareth was born. Following this are three major sections, the first giving the background for Jesus the person, very difficult since there is virtually no written record from his actual life. The second has to do with his life and those with whom he interacted including family, John the Baptist, and the politicians and Jewish priest, and the circumstances of his execution by crucifixion. The final section is a review of the theology of Jesus of Nazareth, and its evolution through the Council of Nicaea. The final third of the book, provided as an appendix, is an extensive discussion of his source material and explanation for the conclusions that he reached, material that would have interrupted the flow of the book if inserted within each chapter, but which is at least as interesting as the main text itself.  A note about the author; he comes from an Iranian family that left for the United States with the fall of the Sha. He as a young man had a fundamentalist Christian experience, but it is very difficult to pin him down as to his current theologic perspective, except that he is definitely not a biblical literalist. For me personally, the value in this book was an education in the sociologic and political history of first century Palestine, and a view of the life of Jesus of Nazareth, his religious preaching, the rejection of Pauline theology by the Jerusalem Jewish hierarchy (James, etc.), the turn to the Gentile population for conversion, and the early evolution of Gentile Christian theology. 

The other two books are by a retired Episcopalian bishop, John Shelby Spong, a priest that has been somewhat of a thorn in the side of Episcopalian/Christian orthodoxy.

In his recent book "Jesus for the nonreligious" he of course overlaps substantially with the time and events covered by Aslen in "Zealot" but differs in  emphasis and direction, going into less detail about first century sociology and politics, and more extensively into the development of the canonical Gospels of modern Christian religion.  In his early personal growth, he began to find he could only accept the synoptic Gospels as extensively symbolic and allegorical  and difficult to accept literally. At the same time, he found the Gospel of John somewhat "offputting."  With his own personal maturity, however, he thinks that Matthew, Mark, and Luke were written within the framework of historical Judaism, and tried to overcome the limitations of narrative language by using extensive symbolism while trying to make sense of Jesus's life within the Jewish context, while it was the writer(s) of John,  breaking from the Jesus constrained by historic Judaism, who finally got it right. Thus, Bishops Spong extends beyond historic narrative, and superimposes his theological interpretation, producing a text about the historical Jesus that is considerably different from Aslan's. For this reason, I found reading "Zealot" and "Jesus for the Nonreligious" complementary, and worthwhile individually and jointly.  

Spong, though having lived his life almost entirely within the Episcopalian faith, has for some time been advocating a maturing of modern religion that accepts the Bible For what it truly is in the light of modern biblical scholarship, and the growrh beyond Fundamentalism and literal interpretation of the Bible; not only for the individual, but for Christianity as a whole.  In his own words "we do not need to be born again, we just need to grow up."  He does not ask the Christian to deny their religious past but that they simply mature beyond it in order to recognize the fulfillment of their own humanness.  Much of this writing could easily be that of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, or others who have criticized organized religion for either outright dening modern science, or making theological arguments that attempt (but without success) to reconcile the literal interpretation of the Bible with current scientific knowledge.  Spong is different only in that while he accepts all of modern science, he still finds value in his understanding of the life of Jesus.

Spong's final book, "eternal life: a new vision" overlaps substantially with "Jesus for the non-religious", but has a different direction.  Spong, as is common in the aging individual, has in this text tried to address the issue of the possibility, or absence of  a possibility, of a conscious afterlife; in other words the survival of the individual consciousness beyond physical death.  To arrive at his answer, he reviews the history of humans, starting with the Big Bang, extending through the formation of Earth and the appearance of life, and the appearance of a conscious animal, human, who has to deal with the problem of conscious awareness of their mortality and ultimate death.  The last book addressing this issue in depth which I read was sometime ago, Ernst Beckers "Denial of Death." Spong addresses this topic in a substantially different manner, probably because of his life as a theologian, but the two men are not incompatible in their thoughts.  

His ultimate conclusion is to me a little difficult to condense into a sentence or two, so I will let you read  (and interpret) his thoughts on this matter for yourself. I do find considerable similarity in Buddhist philosophy to his conclusions, and while Spong made no such comparison, I do Find that Spong's Jesus, as I read Spong, is not totally distant from the Buddha or other Eastern Religious godheads that do not include in their philosoply/theology a physical rebirth into an eternal, blissful, heavenly existence.

These are among the books that I wish I could have read 50 years ago, as they might have changed my life. On the other hand, now that I read them with that additional 50 years of life, they are likely more meaningful, and will perhaps have a greater impact. If these books sound interesting to you, they probably will be, and, if not, they probably will not be.