Archimedes’ Hot Tub

Over the last five weeks I published a five-part series on disaster preparedness, with CNHI Newspapers, a chain of about 140 dailies and weeklies in 23 states. I was waiting for the whole series to be done before linking to it (bad social media management, yes, but those five stories were a lot of work on top of the other work I’m doing).

Here they are:
Are we ready? Disasters prove more costly as people move into storm-prone areas

Disaster dollars: Money spent beforehand blunts the impact of disasters

Lessons learned: Tornado veterans balance preparedness, practicality

Warning signs: Technology speeds disaster alerts, response
The Big One: Preparing for a Mid-America earthquake
One of those stories, Disaster dollars, featured comments from Gayland Kitch, the head of emergency management in Moore, Oklahoma, talking about how the town had come back from the massive tornado that hit in 1999. It was stunning to hear that Moore had been hammered again by a major tornado. NPR’s OnPoint found one of my pieces and asked me to come on air as part of a show it was doing on preparedness.

So I went over to its studios today to watch Tom Ashbrook do his thing, and talk about preparedness. An F5 tornado like the ones that have hit Moore will do major damage no matter how much preparation you do, but there are steps we can take as individuals and communities to prepare. The OnPoint team covers a lot of ground in the 46-minute report at the link above; I was impressed (my segment starts at about 19:20).

Disaster preparedness is enormously complex. It involves getting dozens of government and private organizations to cooperate and collaborate, in challenging environments. Communities have pressing spending needs, from schools to public safety to infrastructure, all real and constant, versus the chance of a disaster.

My hope was and is that my articles can boost community attention to disaster preparedness, and help towns and cities make better-informed decisions about how to prepare.

My high school produced a Rhodes Scholar, Willie Bogan. At least one CEO of a well-known company, Robert Holland Jr. A prominent professional poker player, Kenna James. A lauded bass guitarist, Bill Laswell. A Nieman Fellow (that would be me).

It won’t be producing anymore. The high school will shut down in September.

They’re going to the high school that was our arch-rival when I was there, about ten miles away in Marshall (and bless them for taking in our student body). Marshall has held up better than Albion in Michigan’s long economic decline.

I’m in a kind of shock. My community’s population started dropping in the late 1960s, going from about 12,000 residents when we moved there in the 1960s to about 8000 now. The district has lost 800 students to other districts under a school choice program. The school district loses budge t money with each one of those students, weakening the school further. Market purists would argue that this is as it should be; people go where they can get the best opportunity. My family talked about sending me to a different high school when I was there, after a tax increase failed and classes were cut.

But schools are supposed to be about something other than markets. They reflect our larger community, our civic will. They also reflect our civic ills. Albion is the only community between Battle Creek and Jackson with a significant minority population, which some suggest is the reason for the flight to other schools. I haven’t been in my high school during the school year for probably 30 years, so I have no idea what the student body is like now, but I would guess it’s no longer 70 percent White. I can safely say that if school choice had been an option when I was there, friends of mine would have gone to other, whiter schools in the area.

Once clumps of students started leaving, network effects would naturally kick in. It was likely a combination of market forces, civic ill and network effects that drove the departure of those 800 children.

My high school was not a great school; it didn’t have Advanced Placement courses or a particular bent towards college prep. About 28 percent of the student body went on to some form of higher education. I went to the University of Chicago, a classmate got into Princeton, a number of others went to good small colleges in Michigan and elsewhere.

After this year, nevermore.

My brother passed away in February. He decided to be buried in a natural, ‘green’ ceremony. No embalming fluid, no casket, an eagle flying overhead while we shoveled the dirt. He was in a conservation cemetery, one of the few in the U.S. A reporter was there from Reuters, covering the event. It’s taken a while, but the story, Eco-friendly green burials catching on in U.S., is now available. I’m quoted in it, but I think perhaps not quite accurately. At least, I hope I didn’t say “From dust you were made, from dust you will return.”

I’ve been reading Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. That book, published in 1965, created a landmark in reported narrative, a novel-length book written from fact (or mostly from fact; it’s hard to tell how Capote knew some of the things in the book).

Because I happened to be reading it when the Boston Marathon bombings occurred, I can’t help but compare the senseless murders that took place in Kansas in 1959 and the senseless bombings carried out by the Tsarnaev brothers. There are other brutal and senseless murders that took place in Kansas in the 1950s and 1960s, stunning crimes carried out by Americans. In one case, one of the murderers says the motive was simply “We hate the world.” He made the anti-heroes of the book, Perry Smith and Dick Hickock, seem almost like nice guys.

Oddly, I feel less insecure after reading In Cold Blood. Those heinous random crimes in Kansas were happening in our glory days. It makes it harder to say the bombings are a sign of the times.