Profile Response: Broom Family, Corydon, IN

Posted on October 28, 2016 by paulefallon

HWWLT Logo on yellowKatie and Nathan Broom lived in Oregon for several years, as did Katie’s sister Mims and her husband Dan. A few years ago they returned to their Southern Indiana roots to raise their children near their mother, their siblings, and their children’s cousins. The cost of living in Indiana is less than Oregon; they can live comfortably on Katie’s work as a case manager nurse; Nathan stays home with the children. Still, it was the pull of family that brought them home.

I joined them for chili and beer one evening: three couples (add longtime friends Heidi and Mike), mom, and five children ages three to eight who prepared an impromptu musical on piano, harmonica and accordion for us after the meal.

How will we live tomorrow?

screen-shot-2016-10-24-at-11-54-29-am“Jet packs and light sabers.” – Mike

“It’s the connectivity; staying ahead of technology but not letting it overrun you. Every company is charging ahead on the Internet of Things without really understanding it. Our institutions are not prepared to establish the parameters of big data, drones and technology.

“Our daughter needs to make smart choices about technology. The corporations will not do that. We need to direct it to be human-centered rather than corporate-centered. She is beginning to self-regulate her technology intake, just like she is learning to do with her food intake.” – Heidi

“I’ve seen Wall-e. It is my fear of the future. The humans cannot even stand up. Will we still want to walk? Will we take care of our bodies? I fear the end of pedestrian life. It also affects our community. In Wall-e the humans don’t even interact except with devices.

“I teach German. I was recently doing German translation and realized I was looking for the computer to give me prompts. It was beyond spell-check, it was thought prompt.” – Mims

“The more people connect to the Internet, the less they connect with nature.” – Mike

“I hope we will find community with others, with our neighbors. We need to promote community, neighborliness, and emphasis on church and family. And we can’t cut down all the trees! I saw an I-beam the other day made up of little pieces put together We don’t have any big trees left.” – Mom

“Two-thirds of the people in the United States have never seen the Milky Way. We have no more dark skies.” – Mims

“I recall seeing shooting stars. Will our children see shooting stars? We will lose the small things.” – Mom

“The question of how we will live tomorrow depends on where you ask it. In America, we want to preserve and keep. We want to maintain what’s good. Its human nature to keep what we think is good. One hundred years ago things weren’t better or worse; it was just different. One hundred years from now we will have a different life and it will be better and worse. No one could have imagined the Internet. It’s good and bad. You lose things. Time goes on. You gain a lot too.

screen-shot-2016-10-24-at-11-54-07-am“I feel hopeful that Americans will realize how much we have and we’ll want to share more. It won’t be a sacrifice; it will just be what we do.” – Katie

“We’ll live much as we do now. I’d like to have less fear. Our fear is related to what we have. The less one has, the less fear he feels to lose it. Our possessions, our education, are burdens we carry to the future.

“Cora asked us once if we were rich. When I thought about it, I replied ‘yes’. Not compared to all Americans, but compared to the rest of the world. If you define the rich as the one percent, we don’t make the cut, but I feel rich.” – Nathan

 

 

Posted in Responses | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Trip Log – Day 354 – Dallas TX

Posted on October 27, 2016 by paulefallon

to-dallasOctober 24, 2016 – Sun, 75 degrees

Miles Today: 16

Miles to Date: 18,437

States to Date: 45

Every presidential library reflects the nature of the man it portrays. Here is the letter I sent to the visitor email address after my visit to the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum:

imgres

Greetings –

I am a cyclist on a journey to visit the 48 contiguous states. Along the way I ask folks the question, “How will we live tomorrow?” So far, I have travelled over 18,000 miles, visited 45 states, asked thousands of people my question and profiled over 400 individuals and organizations about their view of our future. The adventure has revealed American’s innate generosity and trust.

I’ve also visited nine presidential libraries. On Monday October 24 I visited library number ten: The George W. Bush Presidential Library. I thought you might be interested in the reception I received.

I locked my bike to the rack at the bus stop along the main road. I entered the library courtyard, in my yellow cycling shirt, carrying a pair of yellow panniers. A gentleman in a blue blazer with numerous pins on his lapel approached me. “Are you delivering pizzas?” “No,” I replied. “Then what are you here for?” I told him I was here to visit the museum. He gave me a look of doubt. “I thought you were delivering pizzas.”

I proceeded to the security area. The first words from the guard were, “What are you delivering?” With little patience, I told her that I wasn’t delivering anything. “So what’s in your bags?” I told her I’m a long distance cyclist; these were my belongings. “I hope you know you’ll have to check them.” I said, “Of course I want to check them.”

In my cycling clothes I look no more like a delivery person than you do in your office attire. However, I do look very different from people wearing street clothes. The message that your staff conveys loud and clear is, ‘if you look different you will be treated with suspicion rather than respect.’

After visiting hundreds of public places and private businesses in my cycling uniform and being greeted with curiosity and good cheer by oil company executives, permaculture farmers, police officers, and homeless individuals, I am appalled by the unprofessional manner in which your staff addressed someone differently dressed. I hope you are as well.

The message of compassion expressed throughout the exhibits of the George W. Bush Presidential Library do not ring true after a person is so rudely treated by the museum’s staff.

 

Posted in Bicycle Trip Log | Tagged | 6 Comments

Profile Response: Saad Riaz, Louisville, KY

Posted on October 27, 2016 by paulefallon

HWWLT Logo on yellowSaad Riaz came from Islamabad Pakistan to study in the US on a F-1 student visa. He’s a fraternity guy who doesn’t drink, and a Muslim who champions women’s rights. He manifests that ideological openness that accompanies exposure to a wider world

Saad graduated from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts last December and joined a two-year rotational internship program at Saint-Gobain as an automation engineer. His first assignment is working in a plant in Carrollton, KY about 45 minutes from his apartment in East Louisville. “I like engineering. Actually, I like the technicals, in theory. What I really like is working with people.”

During college, Saad spent three months in Namibia on a field project working with the Department of Tourism as part of his education at WPI. He enjoyed the intersection of engineering and policy. He also gained a deeper appreciation for his home country. “When I went to Namibia it was the first time I really appreciated Pakistan.”

imgresSaad was a founding member of the WPI Chapter of Beta Theta Pi fraternity and has become very involved in the fraternity, which has a focus on leadership and differentiates itself from most fraternities in that all new chapters are dry. He hopes to mentor at the University of Louisville chapter.

imgresHe’s also involved in UN Women, a group with Emma Watson as its spokesperson that engages men in issues of gender equality. “America opened my eyes to it. Inequality exists in Pakistan, but it’s not in the open. Most countries are alike with similar problems. The U.S. is different; the problems here are different because it is so diverse and so open. I come from a country where culture is more coherent but less clear.” Saad sees that changing. “In Pakistan we never talked about gender equality, but now, very recently, we do.”

How will we live tomorrow?

img_7110“When I think of the question it’s more near than way in the future. I don’t see anything easy in the next two to three years for the U.S. and the world. The election is a mess. The next few years will establish our direction. Right now, it’s difficult for everyone.

“In the longer term we will move to more globalization. In the short term Brexit and Trump are counter to that. Now we know that there are people who still want their own country, their own values. When the election’s done, when Brexit is settled, we’ll see where we land. But eventually, globalization will win out. At least, that’s what I think.

“What matters is what people think of as ‘we’. For me, ‘we’ is all of us. I don’t think of myself as anything beyond the world community. I am Pakistani. It has its values and culture, but it is not my ‘we’. I’m a Muslim and could see the world through that perspective, but I don’t.”

“It will get a little harder for now, but in the long run, I think it will get better.”

 

Posted in Responses | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Trip Log – Day 353 – Fort Worth TX to Dallas TX

Posted on October 26, 2016 by paulefallon

to-dallasOctober 23, 2016 – Sun, 75 degrees

Miles Today: 49

Miles to Date: 18,421

States to Date: 45

The United States is emptier than most people think. When we drive freeways at rush hour, fill up mall parking lots on weekends, load warehouse goods in the morning, or descend on baseball stadiums for a night game, we populate places for a particular activity. We associate them with bustle and crowds. But there are hours, days, entire seasons when these places sit unused. The inevitable result of an environment cordoned into specialized zones in a nation of excess, if ill maintained, infrastructure.

I spent a Sunday pedaling from Fort Worth through Arlington, Grand Prairie and Irving to Dallas, aka The Metroplex. What does the fourth largest SMSA (Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area) in our country (after New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago) look like on a mild autumn afternoon? It’s mostly empty.

img_8111 img_8115

Arlington is the sports and entertainment center of the Metroplex, home to Six Flags Over Texas, Ranger Stadium, and Cowboy Stadium. But the city’s main street is a former US Highway whose traffic has shifted to the nearby Interstate. What’s left are used car lots, repair garages, pawn shops, fried chicken in any shape, and budget motels.

img_8116 img_8117

The industrial zone is a no man’s land.

screen-shot-2016-10-24-at-4-36-56-pm

Houses in Grand Prairie have designer grates that hide any life within.

img_8120

On a perfect cycling afternoon, even the bike path in Irving is empty. Most Americans are watching their favorite football teams. The only humans I saw were Indians playing mad cricket.

img_8123 img_8125

Downtown Dallas is full of vacuous plazas where groups of poor people huddle in shade and a guy with a megaphone barks the Gospel. I.M Pei’s City Hall is brutal modern architecture with the subversive message that government could topple and crush us. Another example that just because we have the technical capacity to build something, doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. The First Baptist Church complex is also a hodgepodge of meaning. Yes, there’s a cross. But everything else looks mighty corporate to me.

img_8122

I really loved the cattle sculpture stampeding through Pioneer Square. There were more of them than humans. Actually, I rather liked the entire day. I got to pedal through every kind of landscape: residential, civic, industrial, retail, natural, without having to bother with any people.

 

 

 

Posted in Bicycle Trip Log | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Profile Response: Tatiana Fallon, Louisville, KY

Posted on October 26, 2016 by paulefallon

HWWLT Logo on yellowI never met Tatiana Fallon, my niece by marriage, or her two daughters, Sarah and Anna, before pedaling up to the house in Louisville that she shares with her sister’s family. Tatiana married my nephew Andrew five years ago. He was in Salt Lake City when I was in Kentucky, so I missed him on this visit.

Like so many Mormon women I’ve met, Tatiana is a full-time devoted mother with a strong educational bent for herself and her children. Tatiana ran a political campaign at age 19, worked as a lobbyist for Citizen Action, graduated from Southern Utah University in Cedar City Utah, and hopes to attend law school. But while her two girls are toddlers, Tatiana is a stay-at home mom.

img_7066 img_7067

Tatiana’s a voracious reader who savors books after the girls are in bed. Right now she is deep into Daron Acemoglu’s Why Nations Fail (which I reference in Architecture by Moonlight). “It’s an incredible book. He explains how, in the South, the political systems are still in effect even after the economic system that created them is finished. Its why we’re still fighting the Civil War.”

How will we live tomorrow?

img_7070“I’m a huge historian. I believe in Strauss and Howe’s approach. They are historians who put American History into four cycles:

  1. The Awakening
  2. The Unraveling
  3. The Crisis
  4. The Founding

Each cycle repeats every 80 to 100 years; each phase occupies about a generation. My generation is The Hero Generation, yours is The Prophets. There are also Nomads and Artists.

“Thomas Paine wrote, ‘You must suffer change or die.’ We are entering The Crisis phase. We will move from a focus on The Self to a focus on family and community. The rise of narcissism and addiction is a result of our lack of community.

“As far as the world is concerned, we need to see ourselves as more united. If we can do that, we can address the big issues of our time.”

 

Posted in Responses | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Trip Log – Day 352 – Weatherford TX to Fort Worth TX

Posted on October 25, 2016 by paulefallon

to-fort-worthOctober 22, 2016 – Sun, 75 degrees

Miles Today: 45

Miles to Date: 18,372

States to Date: 45

Pete Parsons, a Texas gal of supersize personality, has put me in touch with fascinating people all across my journey. She outdid herself in setting up a meeting with Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price, a cycling enthusiast and health advocate. Mayor Price and I met at the Blue Zones Project Festival at Bluebonnet Circle near Texas Christian University.

img_8081A number of cities across the United States have initiated Blue Zone Projects to encourage people to make choices that extend life and health according to the precepts of the world’s Blue Zones. There are about thirty communities in the US with active projects supported by local non-profits and foundations. Fort Worth is the largest city to fund a Blue Zones Project. The city monitored its relative health by several parameters before the project started, funded the initiative through 2018, and will assess them at the completion. The project works with individuals to take the ‘Blue Zone 9 pledge’, employers to incorporate movement and mental release in the work place, and educational groups to spread the message. Fort Worth hopes to become a designated Blue Zone City, for improving Blue Zone attributes (which is not the same as being a Blue Zone; that represent generations of behavioral traits).

screen-shot-2016-10-23-at-4-49-05-pmSteve, my host for the night, took me to a feast of barbeque ribs, cheese biscuits and local beer with his Marine buddies. Not exactly Blue Zone food, but there was a pan of green beans for color and we passed around a salad, sort of like swilling the vermouth bottle over a martini. Patrick asked if I was Steve’s dad, so everyone called me dad all night. Ryan, who served with Steve in Iraq, is a founder of the Decentralized Dance Party movement. DDP orchestrates massive public dance parties; 63 cities around the world so far. Tonight we did something smaller but equally thrilling: banana pedaling through Fort Worth’s downtown.

img_8095 screen-shot-2016-10-23-at-4-50-46-pm

img_8093Three active duty marines, two retired jarheads, two girlfriends, and me slipped on banana suits, drove downtown, and rode our bikes through the city streets on a busy Saturday night. Dance tunes blared from the suitcase turned boom box strapped to Ryan’s bike. Fort Worthian’s high fived and fist pumped us as we slipped along the sidewalks, circled the convention center plaza, and sped down the ramps of Tarrant County College. We ran into a group of skateboarders in an empty parking garage, rode up to the top and careened down seven floors of concrete ramp. I was last in line when an elegant woman outside of Circle Theater asked if I was their chaperone.

img_8101Truth is, I did tire first. Despite the exhilaration of the night breeze and downtown lights, by midnight I was keen to hit the sack. The sound system broke down a half hour later. Ryan was bummed but I was ready to call it quits. We got to bed just before two. If the tunes kept flowing, who knows how long we would have cycled downtown Cowtown?

Posted in Bicycle Trip Log | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Profile Response: Tony Sciotti, Louisville Slugger, Louisville, KY

Posted on October 25, 2016 by paulefallon

HWWLT Logo on yellowBat day at Connie Mack Stadium, 1965: I got a Louisville Slugger engraved with Richie Allen’s signature. I slept with it that night, hoping some of his power would rub off on me.

Louisville Slugger Factory, 2016: Tony Sciotti toured me through the place that bat was made. Tony played baseball in high school in Rochester, NY and in college. After he interned at Louisville Slugger in 2013, he stayed on. “It’s a way to keep myself in the game.”

img_7076I am enthralled by factory tours, amazed at the complexity of fabricating everyday objects and the sheer volume of stuff we make. Louisville Slugger creates 1.8 million bats a year in a factory that occupies the first floor of an industrial building in downtown Louisville. The place seems small for such volume, especially since groups on factory tour wind through the workplace seven days a week.

Louisville Slugger bats fall into four main categories: custom bats made for professional baseball players, retail bats sold throughout the world, commemorative bats, and miniature souvenir bats.

Seventy percent of MLB players use Louisville Slugger bats. The company makes 100 to 120 bats per season for each of them. A player typically uses a bat for four to six games. Louisville Slugger will turn a custom bat for any player, modifying the weight, length, profile and wood to his preferences, but most select from the over 3,000 unique bat designs that Louisville Sluggers has created over the years.

img_7084The tour begins with a demonstration of old-fashioned hand turning with caliper measurements to replicate a particular profile. Hand-turned bats made between 1880 and 1980 took thirty minutes to shape. Today, retail bats are shaped on a turning lathe in 25 seconds. They produce 2,000 a day. As I have observed on other factory tours, the more precise work is the most automated, Bats for specific major league players are made in small batches on a CNC Lathe (Computerized Numerically Controlled) that fabricate identical bats within 1/1000 of an inch even faster.

img_7088 img_7087

Once the wood is turned, bats are stained and finished. Although Louisville Slugger can make a bat any color, there are specific MLB approved colors and stains, and three label options. “Don’t hit the ball on the logo. It is placed purposefully in the area of weakest grain.” Every MLB player also gets ten pink bats on Mother’s Day, which are auctioned off after the games to raise money for Breast Cancer.

img_7091The factory has overhead misters to keep the relative humidity at 40%. It generates 35,000 pounds of sawdust per week, which a chicken-farming cooperative in Indiana collects for roosting.

Almost half of the bats Louisville Slugger makes are commemorative or souvenir. Coca-Cola orders 25,000 personalized bats a year. Louisville Slugger makes bats for all-star games, for the President. Everyone loves a Louisville Slugger.

img_7095Tony took me inside the Bat Vault, where they preserve more than 3,000 custom designs created over one hundred years: the bats of all the greats in the game. “Wow!” I exclaimed the moment I entered. Tony smiled, “everyone says that.” Each unique design is categorized by the player’s last initial and a chronological number. Tony took down R43, a bat created for Babe Ruth. Several players have multiple bat designs to their credit. They change bats throughout their career or use different bats for different game conditions. Tony showed me Ted Williams’ hand drawing of the exact dimensions he required on his bats. So much of our culture is crammed into this narrow space.

screen-shot-2016-10-24-at-11-06-51-amAfter the tour Tony showed me around the adjacent museum. Over 300,000 people visit the complex every year. The exhibits are interesting, but what struck me was how the factory and museum reflect the evolution of our economy and society. A hundred years ago, few people would have visited Bud Hillerich to watch him turn bats, let along pay for the privilege. Today Louisville Slugger makes many more bats, but they also make a great experience for people with time on their hands and money to spend. More people work in the museum than on the factory floor. We don’t need as many people to create bats; we employ more to tell the story.

How will we live tomorrow?

screen-shot-2016-10-24-at-11-07-12-am“Simply. If we want to live tomorrow, we have to improve the way we treat people today.”

 

Posted in Responses | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Trip Log – Day 351 – Breckenridge TX to Weatherford TX

Posted on October 24, 2016 by paulefallon

to-weatherfordOctober 21, 2016 – Sun, 75 degrees

Miles Today: 86

Miles to Date: 18,327

States to Date: 45

screen-shot-2016-10-23-at-3-50-21-pmThe wind took a vacation day, and so I got one as well. Rare in this part of the world to have no wind, but incredibly easy to ride when the sky is calm.

Texas has perhaps the least bike-friendly drivers in our country. Riding in any city, from Port Arthur to El Paso to Muleshoe, is precarious as Texas streets paved concrete with integral curbs. There’s no place for me to be except in the traffic lane, which annoys the pickups. Fortunately, the highways are another story. Texas has wonderful highways, with wide shoulders and rumble strips. There’s plenty of space. Everyone gets along because we don’t have to interact. Robert Frost wrote that good fences make good neighbors. In Texas, distance makes good neighbors.

img_8053

img_8058Mineral Wells is a peculiar place. The massive abandoned hotel from its early 20th century days of healing waters hovers over the near deserted downtown like a mirage from The Shining. East of town I came upon the National Vietnam War Museum, which is seriously less official than it sounds. Not a soul at the place, no staff, nothing. There’s a plywood replica of the Vietnam Memorial in DC, a stucco replica of a Vietnam camp’s honor wall, a helicopter with propellers fabricated in Mineral Wells, and well tended gardens. The big picture eluded me.

 

img_8061 img_8059

img_8067Weatherford may possess the most attractive courthouse in a state whose 248 counties include many contenders. It sits on the axis of the city’s main streets and commands attention from all directions.

 

 

Posted in Bicycle Trip Log | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

Profile Response: Rick Redman, Louisville Slugger, Louisville, KY

Posted on October 24, 2016 by paulefallon

HWWLT Logo on yellowBack in the day, the 1880’s, the Louisville Eclipse were a major league baseball team with a powerful hitter: Pete Browning, aka the Louisville Slugger. Browning’s .341 batting average stands as the 12th highest in baseball history.

Fortunately, Pete had an off day, going 0 for 3 on an afternoon when a seventeen-year-old boy ducked out of his family’s woodworking shop to watch him play. After the game, Bud Hillerich invited Pete to his family’s shop where the two worked together to shape Pete’s ideal bat. Next day, Pete went 3 for 3. Other players, who often turned their own bats, wanted a Hillerich bat and the Louisville Slugger was born. The first mass produced baseball bat is now the most famous sports product in the world.

images-1Like all great American success stories, the Louisville Slugger marries a great product with great marketing. In 1905 the company invented a concept that’s ubiquitous today: they signed Honus Wagner to endorse their product. Other players followed, including Babe Ruth in 1918. Today, more than half of all MLB players use Louisville Slugger bats, which the company produces to their unique specifications.

Rick Redman, a former Louisville sportscaster who left TV for a job that enables him more family time, has been Louisville Slugger’s spokesman for thirteen years. He explained how the material Louisville Slugger uses has changed over time. “Early bats were shaped in hickory or walnut. By the 1930’s, the standard became white ash harvested from forests in New York and Pennsylvania where the growing season is short and growth rings tight. A dozen years ago Barry Boimagesnds changed to maple, which is a harder wood.” About that time a beetle infestation began to kill off the ash forests; that material will become scarce. Today, players use both ash and maple, and about 5% use birch, which is stringer than ash and less brittle than maple.

 

Louisville Slugger also makes lighter aluminum and composite bats for younger players that have bigger sweet spots and less sting. However, “wood bats are the heart of the brand.” Louisville Slugger remains the world’s largest manufacturer of wooden bats by a wide margin: 1.8 million per year.

How will we live tomorrow?

imgres“In the terms of baseball bats and Louisville Slugger, we are going to see an increase in birch and maple. We may see the end of ash. We will see changes in the game to make it faster paced. We’ve already seen the pitch clock and instant replay. Teams are all looking for ways to keep fans more interested. MLB has initiated the ‘Play Ball’ program to encourage activity and learning baseball.

“But the fundamental love of sport will not change. Sports have always been an important part of our culture. They bring together people from all parts of life. It’s great to see everyone sitting together and cheering.”

 

Posted in Responses | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Trip Log – Day 350 – Abilene TX to Breckenridge TX

Posted on October 23, 2016 by paulefallon

to-breckenridgeOctober 20, 2016 – Sun, 75 degrees

Miles Today: 61

Miles to Date: 18,241

States to Date: 45

img_8021Grinding against the wind! The only constant is change. That applies to the wind as much as anything. It took me more hours to grind out fewer miles today, thanks to a wind shift that brought steady gales from the northeast. Still, it was a gorgeous autumn day and I had lots of time to savor the saving grass and golden sage flowing against me.

img_8045

I am no longer in West Texas. The high plains gave way to brush and then creeks and finally across the causeway of a big reservoir; more water than I’ve seen in a month. I was happy to pedal up the last long hill and see my motel. A bucket of fresh ice, a hot shower, can almost make a body forget about the wind. Almost.

Posted in Bicycle Trip Log | Tagged | 1 Comment