Goodbye to All That...

No, I'm not saying goodbye to this blog. The title refers to illusions that are finally shattered. Read on (and if you get to the bottom, thanks--this is a long one).

I just finished reading a trio of books that have got me thinking (uh oh). Readers--those marvelous few of you--may remember my obsession last summer with a book by James Howard Kuntsler, The Long Emergency. In it, the WASP Kuntsler predicts the next fifty years of American history--not literal predictions, such as on March 1, 2027 Jenna Bush will be appointed Queen--but rather more general ones, such as: we're all going to freeze in the dark, and we won't have any water to drink (at least not out here in the West) because Colorado will become a lot more like El Paso due to global warming. And you faithful readers will remember that Kuntsler "had me," until I got to the xenophobic part: his surety that Mexicans will destroy American culture. After I read that bit, near the end of his book, I was forced to take another look at the entire work, and over several weeks and months I came to decide that he was too negative--that he had discounted human ingenuity too much, and had taken the opportunity at every turn to imagine the absolute worst case scenario. He fear-mongers, in other words--just like the GOP and Fox News (who have this week merged--that's Jon Stewart's joke, not mine).

This was, of course, a great disillusionment for me. I had loved his three earlier works on urbanism: The Geography of Nowhere, Home From Nowhere, and I can't remember the third--although now that I think of it, there were seeds of xenophobia even in that third book on urbanism. He explored several past and present cities in that book, including Tenochtitlan--modern Mexico City. The theme of that chapter was human sacrifice, and it's quite a grisly read.

But back to this trio. First, because there's a play opening soon (or maybe it's already open) in New York based on Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. The article I'd read in the Times made me want to read this most essential of sci-fi works, and good lord--what a book! Published in 1952 or 1953, Bradbury describes in this five-decade old work an America that is much like what we see today--or rather, the America we have now is much closer to the America depicted in 451 than any reader in the 1950s could have imagined. The society of 451 is made up of people completely devoid of empathy. Entertainment consists of watching (on a kind of 3-D television, coverering three out of four walls in a room) the authorities track down the book's hero after he has begun rebelling against the way things are (he's a fireman, whose job description it is to burn books--paper combusts at 451 F). How different is that, really, from Cops or Dog The Bounty Hunter? Do you feel empathy for the idiots they put behind bars on those shows, or do you sit there feeling superior? I know I do--because, although I don't lack empathy entirely, I do lack enough that I find those shows fun to watch when I just want mind candy.

Then I read a recent (perhaps still current) bestseller, Thomas L. Friedman's The World is Flat. Most people know Friedman from his syndicated Times column, and from his previous bestsellers like The Lexus and the Olive Tree. In this book, Friedman goes around the world in an effort to get an understanding of globalism. He loves globalism, of course--he's famous for his love for it. And the globalism that Friedman portrays looks like a pretty good system--because he mostly focuses on the changes happening to India, which is in the midst of a high-tech boom that is improving the lives of many, many Indians. Friedman's India is a place where the Muslims don't hate the west--because India's government, since its founding in the 1940s, has emphasized education--and this has paid off. He talks about Wal-Mart, he talks about Starbucks, and he rightly worries about the Bush "administration"'s hatred of facts and of science. He describes an America that is losing its edge while its citizens drive their kids to soccer practice and its leaders do nothing to shift the direction of the country back in a positive direction.

But ultimately, The World is Flat rings a little hollow for me. While I agree with Friedman that we desperately need to stop resting on our laurels, and also stop trying to change the world to fit our ideal picture through force of arms, I think he's been seduced by the speed of the changes that are happening. He's a reporter, and so he loves things that change and move--that provide a story. But he's no economist (as he admits), and he's certainly no historian. People who know me know my opinion of the state of American journalism--I was a history major in college, and every time a journalist tries his or her hand at history, the results are usually so off-base that they prove harmful. Boy, do I sound like a snob, or what?

Then I picked up Dark Ages America, by Morris Berman. Go to the Tattered Cover immediately and buy a copy: http://www.tatteredcover.com/NASApp/store/Search;jsessionid=aMD382snRTSh

I've already loaned my copy to Ron-n-Ellen, so I can't quote directly--which is a shame, since Berman is a marvelous writer, who doesn't waste a word, and delves so deeply into each point that the book is peppered with "a-ha!" moments--ideas that make you amazed that someone out there has been thinking the same thoughts as you.

Berman's central thesis: we're fucked, and there's nothing we can do about it. But he's not like Kuntsler, who says we're all going to freeze in the dark because of our SUV and McMansion addictions (although Berman is no fan of SUVs and McMansions). For Berman, the point is that our American civilization has reached a twilight phase, and is bound to decline. All civilizations decline. Ours is like late Rome--which, besides not being built in a day, didn't fall in a day either (although of course modern technology provides the means to do just that, something the Huns and Avars and Visigoths and Ostrogoths never dreamed about).

America is, in Berman's view, essentially an invalid. We've hollowed out our industries--how much bigger now is Airbus than Boeing? Look at money-bleeding GM and Ford. We've gone from being responsible for 50% of the world's industrial output in 1945 to being a country that imports nearly everything. Friedman would say that's not a bad thing--outsourcing basic things like shoe production or the writing of software code (as opposed to the design of actual programs, which largely is still an American function) provides opportunities for American companies to invest the savings into new things that workers here can do. Except, of course, that's not what happens. The money saved goes to the shareholders, and to the CEOs.

Berman sees an American economy that runs for one major reason only: that foreign countries are currently willing to fund our excessive consumption. I'm typing this on a MacBook Pro that came from Shanghai (I tracked it on FedEx back in February), and I bought it using my Citi MasterCard (I've already paid down most of the cost of the computer, but I still have other debt). I may think that Citicorp is an American institution--it is, I suppose, legally one--but the reality is that Citi funds my debt with money they get from the Chinese, or from the Europeans, or from the Saudis. Who knows, actually, whence the money derives? The foreigners do this because America has been, for more than a century, the largest economy in the world, and everyone has wanted to business with us. But they won't much longer--our consumption (and war, as currently practiced as the primary instrument of our foreign policy, is a form of consumption too) is completely out of hand, and the well will run dry. It has to, because we are a net importer of capital, as well as being a net importer of oil and consumer goods.

I mention my relatively new computer because it points to the other central thesis of Berman's book: that (to probably mangle the famous Pogo quotation) we have seen the enemy, and he is us. This gets back to Bradbury: we, as a nation, have lost our ability to empathize with our fellow human beings. It's not just that we don't empathize with the relatives of Muslims killed by our wars 10,000 miles away--or that Abu Ghraib caused so little outrage, except amongst us few liberals who are paying some attention--or that Americans are being tortured every day in our massive criminal justice system, but no one worries about the incarerated, because somehow they're not like us. No, it's that we enter an alien world--of our own creation--every time we leave our home. We sort-of empathized with the Katrina victims, and the relatives of people killed on September 11th. But did we really? Berman would say no, and I think he's right. Any empathy people might have claimed they had for the Americans who died in the WTC, or the (mostly Black) Americans who lost their little wooden shacks in the lower 9th Ward last summer was a sort of false empathy--people might have done something to help, but if they gave a donation they made sure they got a receipt, so they could claim it on their 1040.

And giving a donation is all most people did--that's all I did. It was easy as pie to add $20 to a purchase at Costco. The Red Cross has figured out if it wants money, it has to get in with the retailers, you see, because retail is our religion (yes, even, and perhaps especially so, for the true believing Fundamentalist Christians). If we're going to feel guilt (not empathy, just good old guilt, like religious people used to feel when they sinned) for the $150 we're spending on stuff we don't need, putting up a barcode up at a register, so all that the cashier has to do is scan it like any other product, and ask you how much you want to contribute, is a sure fire way to raise money.

But back to the alien world: do you rush to beat that other person to the front door of the restaurant, so you can get in there first, and be seated and get your drinks before they do? Do you flip the bird at someone who cut you off, screaming "You stupid FUCK!" at the top of your lungs? What about that lady who was trampled at Wal-Mart the day after Thanksgiving a few years ago, because everyone was trying to get a $79 DVD player at five o'clock in the morning--because every W-M only had ten, and if you waited until 5:05 they'd be gone? (Berman points out that this particular case is complicated by the fact that the women who was trampled was a former employee who had been pulling similar stunts already--but the point was: no one in that crowd tried to help her, stunt or no). We are the aliens, and our ancestors wouldn't want to know us.

People in other countries--at least, other Western countries with the European Enlightenment as part of their cultural heritage, as it is part of ours--aren't like this. We're assholes. Berman talks about the sequence in Bowling for Columbine where Michael Moore explores the question: why don't Canadians kill each other the same way we do? They have easy access to guns--but they don't have anywhere near the same murder rate. Then there's our love of the death penalty--people here never think about it (or at least, the vast majority don't, otherwise they'd actually have to understand the moral problem of the state taking a life). Criminals get what they deserve, that's what Americans say. Criminals aren't people.

Berman also says we're probably too far gone down the path of decline to rescusitate our society. He points to the fact that we've been an imperial power--denying the whole time that we're not--for more than a century. In all of that time, there was only one US president who tried to change things, to make our foreign policy non-imperialistic. His name was Jimmy Carter, and look what happened to him when he dared speak the horrible truth about our society: JC was crucified. The Ray-gun Revolution swept away our brief moment of self-questioning, and it was Morning in America again (except that it was actually quarter of five on a December afternoon after Christmas). (Another book worth reading: Our Endangered Values, the most recent work by our 39th President).

Many commentators (and Berman isn't one of them, really--he uses other, less trite, metaphors) have said that we're a nation of juveniles. The idea, despite its overuse, rings true. Look at that mumbling buffoon in the White House--he's not qualified for a high school debate team. And that other guy, the one with the rifle--there's a great piece in the current American Prospect about how his staff are so adamant on having their way in every discussion that if it's not going their way they leave the room rather than listen to conflicting opinions. Then there's that big baby over at the Pentagon, who excuded Abu Ghraib as young people letting off steam (except that he ordered their crimes). But I slip off subject here a bit....

Groupthink has taken over. We have destroyed our legitimacy in the eyes of the other 95% of the world--Mexicans may still want to come here, but only because it's close and things are worse if they stay there. China is growing like a weed (Berman spends some time pointing out that the Chinese are no better than Americans in their addiction to consumerist values, and also that they lack that marvelous Enlightenment tradition that allows writers like him to say what he thinks, at least for now, in this country). India is as Friedman portrays it--also growing like a weed. Europe--its achilles heel being its rapidly aging population and related need to import foreigners to perform essential functions--is 450 million strong, doesn't feel the need to be the world's policeman, and is home to most of the world's largest banks. Japan has largely bounced back from its decade-long post-Bubble slump.

And then there's the theory I came across somewhere a couple of months ago that the real reason for the Iraq War was none that have been discussed among liberals or conservatives. The theory holds that it was Saddam's threat to stop accepting the American Dollar as payment for oil that caused the US to feel the need to destroy his regime. It's that old domino theory (and Berman talks about the modern "terrorism domino theory" as a substitute for the old Cold War communism domino theory, the supposed reason for Korea and Viet Nam--but that's another discussion)--that once one large oil producer switches to the Euro for oil, the Dollar is toast. Except that it's not a theory--it's a real threat to our economy. So if that was the Bushies' real reason for invading Iraq, so be it--but wouldn't it have been nice if they had been honest with the American public?

The thing is: honesty is something we can never again expect from Presidents (except the aging 39th)(although, when you come to think about it, even the "good" ones lied). Berman explores the question of whether a Kerry victory would have been any better for America (he makes no real mention of the stolen votes in Ohio--Kerry actually won, but it's un-provable, because the GOP did a better job of forcing things through than they did in 2000). In certain respects, yes--we wouldn't be bungling the Iran nuke mess the way we are now, and maybe we wouldn't be extending the tax cuts for the wealthiest 1%, etc. But in the main, no: Kerry, like WJ Clinton before him, would have been forced--despite whatever shred of Boomer idealism he had left in him--to accept the imperial project begun by the McKinley generation so many decades ago.

Ah, you're tired of reading at this point. I need to stop typing, because I'm getting a crick in my neck. Just go out and find a copy of Dark Ages America. Read it, and then think about what you can do to at least stem the tide of our decline just a little bit. Better yet, don't think, Just Do It!

This posting sponsored by Nike.

An Architecture Geek's Paradise

Thanks to Denver City Councilman Doug Linkhart (he's everyone's councilman, as he holds one of two "at large" seats), who has a newsletter that gets sent to my email address, I have found the ultimate website for anyone interested in the built environment in Denver (primarily central Denver): http://www.denverinfill.com/index.htm. This is put together by a professional urban planner with what I have to admiringly say is the most incredible attention to detail I've ever seen on a website like this. There are interactive maps, photos of works in progress, and best of all, a blog. This blog isn't one where you can post replies, but he's much more religious about updating his than I am of this one--and as a professional urban planner affiliated with UCD, he gets all the goods on everything. Do visit.

Off the Road

Absurdly, this vintage 2005 residential structure next to the Burlington Northern Santa Fe rail lines on the northern edge of downtown Denver is known as the "Jack Kerouac Lofts." Poor Jack--known far and wide as the most beat of the Beat, in Denver he's now a form of yuppie housing. I tried to give this photo texture by including the broken pallet and the scooper part from some unknown piece of earthmoving equipment, but there's no escaping the fact that the purchasers of these lovely neo-Modern lofts (and I have to say, despite the unfortunate choice of name I actually do like the architecture) look out on industrial wasteland, and despite being only about 150 yards from the Platte River Bike Trail, residents here would have to go about a half mile (down to the other side of 20th Street where there's a sidewalk and underpass, then under the railroad tracks, and then past the skate park).

I took this photo this morning, on my second bike ride of the year (refer to last week's posting as to why I'm so lazy in the winter). After an easy ride north to Clear Creek (at Lowell), then a quick jaunt to its confluence with the South Platte, I faced a fairly strong head wind for most of the way home. This photo was just a good excuse to stop fighting the wind.

Architecture 101

First of all, my apologies to anyone on dial-up--more than one photo on this posting.

This morning I rode my bike around downtown, snapping pictures, and I want to share. Today's posting is probably what my co-worker and friend Jeffrey had in mind when he told me I should start a "Denver blog."

Every year about this time I finally start riding my bike after several months of staying indoors. I really don't like riding when it's cold out. Usually the first ride of the year isn't a long one--Ron and I do those 3-hour ones in the summer, going out to places like Cherry Creek State Park or Green Mountain. Instead, I just toodle around downtown.

Ever since I was a kid, I've always been fascinated by buildings under construction. I remember as a 5-year-old how interesting it was to watch the structural steel being assembled at the Catholic church down the block--I can't remember the name of the church, but it's at Federal and Vassar. All Saints, I think.

For several years there's been a massive new building under construction on the south side of downtown--a building designed by a big-name architect, a man with fancy glasses and a foreign accent. Not to mention pretensions--he's so sincere that not a few New Yorkers have grown tired of hearing about his plans for the World Trade Center site. The architect: Daniel Libeskind (and I don't know if I spelled that right). The Denver building: the new Hamilton Wing of the Denver Art Musuem:

They're finally removing the protective white wrapper to reveal the titanium underneath (I think that's what the cherry-picker is doing). The old Bach Wing is in the foreground, the original museum building constructed in the 1950s and remodelled in the mid-90s when they closed Acoma to traffic and built the plaza between the museum and the library.

People will either love or hate this thing. I won't decide until it's finally done.



Here's another view of it.

In this, you can see the glass bridge over 13th Avenue that connects the Hamilton Wing to what is now being referred to as the "North Building," the 1971 pile by Italian Modernist Gio Ponti. Say what you will about that building--I've always loved it, and always will. It's covered with several hundred thousand gray glass tiles that reflect sunsets beautifully.

Interestingly, on this site many decades ago was a Methodist church. Behind the church, facing 13th Avenue, was a separate building called the Evans Chapel. That's where my parents were married on August 31, 1942. Now it's a crazy titanium-covered art museum. The Evans Chapel was saved--it's now on the DU campus in southeast Denver.

And from this angle you can see all three parts of the museum, along with two scuptures--Lao Tsu by Mark di Suvero (the red steel thing), and on the roof of the Bach Wing, a work by Red Grooms, of which I don't remember the title. It's a cartoonish sculpture of cowboys and Indians, and it caused quite a stink when it was originally installed in Denver. Instead of an art museum roof, they had it on a little triangle of grass on Speer Boulevard--the little triangle next to the old Tramway Building at Arapahoe Street.


Of course, as interesting as I find the new museum wing, I don't think the museum necessarily did the right thing by not buying up the strip of buildings along Bannock Street between 13th and 12th. These are a motley lot of miscellaneous structures, and I think you'll agree they look rather odd juxtaposed with the Libeskind building, especially this earnest late 1970s passive-solar construction housing the Colorado Episcopal Foundation (note that they haven't finished peeling away the protective wrap on this side).

Already the new museum wing is causing property values in this neighborhood--given the name "The Golden Triangle" by city planners some time in the 1980s--to rise. I have a good feeling for the history of this area, bounded by Speer on the west, Colfax on the north, and Broadway on the east (I don't accept the Lincoln Street boundary put forth by the neighborhood association--for me, it's Broadway). I wrote a research paper on the history of the neighborhood when I was in Dr. Tom Noel's Colorado history class at UCD in the fall 1995 semester.

I won't repeat all of it here, except to summarize. The parts closer to downtown and furthest from Cherry Creek (the creek, not the neighborhood) were densely built-up in the 19th century. The creek, before walled-in by Mayor Speer in the early part of the last century, tended to have a fairly wide floodplain, so the areas closer to the creek were filled with housing for the working class. From about 1920 onward, the area declined, with most of the houses giving way to one-story commercial buildings devoted to either the sale or repair of the automobile. This was Denver's "garage," and at every intersection with Speer there was a gas station. Broadway was Denver's original automobile row.

There wasn't much left by the 1980s when city planners were trying to figure out a place to put a new convention center (in the 1960s the area was briefly considered for complete reconstruction as a home for Metro State College and what later became UCD--a fate that befell nearby Auraria instead). The 1990 Census showed something like 500 residents, and most of them were living in poverty (Broadway had a few transient hotels, and there were a few homes and row-houses left). After the city decided to put the new convention center in "The Silver Triangle" instead (a stupid designation--it's just part of downtown), the Golden Triangle became a new area of focus for redevelopment. The old Public Service Company (now Xcel Energy) bought up most of the southern end of the neighborhood, and made plans for a high density office/living complex. This never panned out--Denver's economy went into the toilet for several years, only coming back when massive public works projects like the new Convention Center and DIA injected billions of dollars of federal money into the regional economy.

So for most of the past 10 years the area has been redeveloping on its own, as a bedroom community. Some of this new development has been good--handsome neo-modernist structures--and some has been very bad indeed. Particularly egregious have been developer Craig Nassi's massive stucco-glop "Neo Central Park West" highrises, the Prado and the Belvedere, but there have been minor sins committed as well. I particularly detest the late-90s Mediterranean POS in the center of this photo, and while I would never wish anything bad to happen to anyone tasteless enough to buy one of the units in that building, I do have to laugh at what I see happening now: a series of six rowhouses going up next door, blocking the view from the southern windows on the first three or four floors.

In case you're unfamiliar with this vista, it's Cherokee Street between 11th and 12th. The building to the left of the ugly Mediterranean stucco mess is a Modern-Retro pile called "Century Lofts," one of the earliest new developments in the neighborhood.

Finally, I give you this:


It does something I particularly dislike: it fills up the entire block between Acoma, Bannock, 8th and 9th. It not only fills up the block, but thanks to a change in the route of Bannock Street that the city made in order to improve traffic, it bulges out into what used to be Bannock. It's a luxury apartment complex called "The Boulevard." Anyone who ever lived in Denver in the 1980s or 90s will remember this block as the former home of Racine's, a restaurant with so-so food and mediocre service that nevertheless was beloved by many. I myself had eaten at the old Racine's (they have since moved to Sherman Street, across from the KMGH-7 parking lot) many hundreds of times. In the late 80s and early 90s I spent every Monday night with a bunch of gay men at a support group, and we would invade Racine's en masse after 1o:00 for either nachos or desert (their nachos were massive, gut-busting monstrosities--I almost always went for the mocha ice cream pie).

But I have to say: I really, really hate this building, and not just because it destroyed a bit of Denver history (and I'd also point out that the old Racine's building had been built in the 1920s as a Ford dealership, and had lovely Spanish Colonial architecture). I can't stand the way it completely engulfs the block and I abhor the way the architect tried to break up its mass by using different kinds of brick in sections. And then there's the gimmicky faux-historicism, but this post is already too long.

More on new ugly architecture in a later post.....