Tag: Buffalo

Circle C Ranch, 1974

Circle C Ranch has received much publicity the past few months resulting from an abuse scandal. I was eleven when I spent a week at the camp in 1974. I did not witness anything as horrendous outlined in the reports as the abuse began a couple decades afterwards. However, I did witness a culture at the camp making it vulnerable to such an event. My stay there was the first step, of many, causing me to keep religion at arms length.

Most summer camps in Western New York are located near Lake Erie to enjoy the cool summer breezes as well as the water. Instead, Circle C is located in a rural area an hour drive from Buffalo. The camp is seated on a dead end road and is physically isolated from the surrounding community. The sign pointing to the camp, unlike the prominent sign today, was so small we missed it at first pass. In 1974, before the internet, the brochure on the camp emphasized horseback riding as the main activity. The camp is based on a frontier western town, not unlike Dodge City on the show Gunsmoke, which was very popular at the time.

My first day was filled with the usual summer camp activities such as swimming, arts and crafts, and horseback riding along the trails that wound their way among the woods encircling the camp. We ate dinner, and after the Sun had set behind the hills, we gathered around a fire and here the true purpose of the camp came to light.

The same brochure promoting horseback riding also disclosed the Christian nature of the camp. I didn’t think much of it at the time. I went to Catholic* school up to 5th grade and the church also has summer camps. Like the usual routine at a Catholic school, the morning starts out with mass and then you get on with the rest of the day.

Circle C had something different in mind.

As I sat looking into the campfire, a counselor asked me to name the specific moment I had accepted Christ into my life. A bit stumped at why I was being asked this, I explained I had gone to my parents church since I could remember and could not name a specific starting point. The counselor replied that the devil was inside of me, preventing me from expressing my acceptance of Christ. Quite a judgement from someone who had known me less than 24 hours. With the exception of two of the other campers, the rest around the campfire concurred.

The kids, no doubt, understood the expectations of the camp and were mimicking the adults. The average eleven year old mind does not have the ability to understand when an epistemic bubble is being constructed around them. They were also exhibiting signs of foreclosed self identities. That’s not unusual for children of this age, but it takes a broad life experience to grow out of and the camp leadership were guiding the children away from that.

An example is when one of the campers attempted to impress upon me that my height was a sign of the devil growing inside me. In hindsight, I doubt the kid concocted this himself. Most likely, he heard some variation of the theme from one of the adults in camp and decided this was how to ingratiate himself within the only community he probably knew.

While we were asked by the camp to turn ourselves over to Christ, it was apparent we were being asked to turn ourselves over to the adults at the camp. I was at an advantage as this was my first and only stay at the camp whereas many of the other campers spent time there every summer. Being tall for my age meant adults often talked to me differently. Their biases and flaws got laid bare pretty quickly. I learned at a young age to take adults with a grain of salt.

The physical isolation of the camp played a key role in its mission, but there was also an intellectual isolation. No books, newspapers, radios, or television. Nothing supporting an alternative view was at hand. There was no email or cell phones during this era so no contact with family or anyone outside the camp occurred during the stay. For me, this was a very disorientating situation.

This top-down enforcement of thinking is guaranteed to stunt intellectual growth. As one reads the bible, each individual will incorporate their own life experience into their interpretation of that passage.  And you’re going to require a well rounded education to interpret any source of information properly, meaning humanities, science, social sciences, and the proverbial hard knocks. Not allowing that encourages a foreclosed self-identity where the individual adopts the viewpoints of an authority figure. There may be an absolute truth in the universe, but you’re not going to find it in any single person.

What happens when foreclosed self-identity extends into adulthood?

In my experience, these were the people who frantically tried to discourage me from going to college, who thought I should take on dead on jobs, who play the numbers game online to drown out opposing voices, much like at those campfires so many years ago, and this year, called those who took the Covid vaccine “sheeple”. If I had followed the life path they wanted to impose, I have serious doubts I would be alive today. Perhaps that’s the point, when you are no longer useful, you are disposable.

As the week went on we fell into the routine of camp activity during the day and proselytization at night. The only free time was a half hour after dinner. Under the growing shadow of the lone tree near the center of the camp, me and two other campers would discuss how we would handle the night proceedings. On our state of isolation, the joke was World War III could start and we’d never know until the week was over.

One of my tree-mates decided to simply tell the counselors what they wanted to hear, thinking they would leave you alone for the remainder of the evening. For an eleven year old, that could be the most effective way of dealing with the situation. I kept quiet as much as I could or shrugged my shoulders when asked a question about my faith. Of course, that led to more lecturing on how the devil inside was holding me back, but whatever. I had the luxury of knowing when the week concluded I was done with the camp.

Saturday was the final day and we were to participate in a horse race at a camp rodeo. That seemed to be a good way to finish the week as the horses were the best company in the camp besides my two fellow resistors. As I was packing, a counselor cornered me for one last pitch for the cause to be put on some sort of mailing list, not unlike the final sales pitch at the car dealership for rust proofing extras. Sighing, I put down my belongings for another go round of shoulder shrugging and repeating no until he left to get ready for the closing festivities.

The rodeo went off without a hitch and I headed back home. We had lunch at a restaurant not too far from the camp and the memory of that is quite strong even after 47 years, the vinegar on the table and the taste of the fries especially. After the hour ride home, I consumed magazines and newspapers to see what had happened in the world that week. I headed off to the corner store to check out the book section to see if anything new arrived. On the way there, I had to pass a neighborhood store called The Cracked Pot where Nazi paraphernalia was displayed in the front window, leaving me to ponder how on Earth I was accused of consorting with the Devil the prior week. I was especially grateful to be back among friends not hanging that one on me.

Difficult to imagine in the internet era, I did not hear anything further about the camp until the late 90’s. The camp was outside of Erie County so it was not in the phone book. They did not advertise at all, and when I asked people if they ever heard of the camp no one ever said yes. It remained a surrealistic childhood memory until one day out of curiosity, I did an internet search and sure enough, the camp had a website. It has stayed in ownership of the same family till this day.

The camp got my attention again this year when the abuse situation was uncovered. The details can be read in the news reports. Many of the women who have made the allegations have been subjected to violent threats. Nobody wants to believe someone close to them can do such things, but I think the true source of the anger is the women decided to challenge the authority of the camp. In the culture of the camp, it’s just not something that is done, especially from the camper side.

I have to leave to legal experts how this will unfold for the camp. It is untenable in its current state. If you’ve made it this far, you’ve realize I found my experience there disagreeable. Still, I can respect the sweat equity put in the place, providing for the horses and from what I understand, the volunteer labor that built the camp facilities. However, it is time for the camp leadership to stand down, and their followers to stop making empty death threats. It is long past time to reconfigure the camp experience more towards the benefit of the campers and less towards the self-aggrandizement of the camp leaders. 

Otherwise, one way or another, the camp will need to be shut down.

If Circle C was ever “God’s Camp”, it was campers such as these women who have spoken out that made it so. The adults at the camp would have realized that if only they took the time and had the modesty to listen to them.

*The Catholic church obviously has its own abuse issues – the isolation of abuse victims in this instance tended to occur on an individual basis, while the church itself was embedded and protected in the community power structure rather than hidden from it. 

The Great Mirage of 1894

On the morning of August 16, 1894, the din of commerce, streetcars, and horse carts reverberated through the hot summer morning in downtown Buffalo where canals, railroads, and harbor converged. At 10 AM, the city started to quiet as some 20,000 gazed upwards to see a city in the air. That city was Toronto, which lies 59 miles away. The mirage was created by a temperature inversion over Lake Ontario.

Main St, Buffalo, 1894. Credit: Buffalo History Museum

Familiar for those who live in Western New York, the temperature of Lake Erie rises and falls seasonally like clockwork. Peaking in late summer in the upper 70’s, the lake eventually cools until mid-winter when it usually freezes at 32 degrees. Lake Ontario is a different animal. Much deeper than Lake Erie, Lake Ontario can be fairly cold in the summer while unfrozen in the winter. As I write this in July, Lake Ontario’s temperature in Rochester is 47 degrees. As warm air passes above cooler air over the lake, it can create a superior mirage.

Refraction of light as it passes through denser medium (water). Photo: NASA

A mirage is created by refraction (bending) of light as it passes through different mediums. The denser the medium, the greater the refraction. You have seen this before if you place a straw in a glass of water. Water is denser than air and gives the illusion of the straw being bent. You also see this every day when the Sun rises and sets. As sunlight travels from the vacuum of space through more and more dense layers of the atmosphere, it is bent. When the Sun is near the horizon, it is passing through more atmosphere than during midday. The result is we can see the Sun a few minutes before it physically rises above the horizon and few minutes after it physically sinks below the horizon.

The atmosphere bends sunlight allowing us to see the Sun even though it is below the horizon. Credit: Wiki Commons

A superior mirage is one where the image of an object lies above its location. The lower layer of cold, dense air bends light downwards along the curvature of the Earth. On average, Earth curves downward 16 feet every five miles. This bending of light enables an object below the horizon to be visible to distant observers. The image below demonstrates this effect.

Superior mirage. Credit: Wiki Commons

Today, Toronto has an impressive skyline including the CN Tower clocking in at 1,815 feet. In 1894, like most cities, church spirals dominated the skyline of Toronto. It was church spirals that were most prominent in the mirage along with ships navigating Toronto’s harbor, including the 175 foot steamer The Norseman. Below is an image of Toronto as it was in 1894.

St, James Cathedral and St. Lawrence Market. Credit: Josiah Bruce

The mirage ended after about an hour. Clouds moved in, and later that day, a cold front passed dropping temps into the 60’s terminating the conditions that produced the mirage. There are no photographs of the mirage, and reporting of the event seems muted by today’s standards. The Buffalo Courier had a brief article on page one with the same prominence as catching stray dogs, a husband and wife passing a forged check, and a Peeping Tom who was fined five dollars. The Buffalo Enquirer gave the mirage equal footing with a dog bites man story (dogs really seemed to be a problem back then). Scientific American would report on the mirage a few weeks later.

Mirage as reported by the Buffalo Courier.
Mirage as reported by the Buffalo Enquirer.

No doubt, such an event today would receive more coverage, along with YouTube videos. One could imagine thousands of people gazing at the mirage through their cell phones, instantly sending images around the world on social media. The mirage itself would be markedly different with Toronto boasting 57 buildings taller than 500 feet. Not too many steamers ply the lakes these days, but perhaps a modern mirage would feature planes taking off from Toronto Island Airport. As much as things change, the laws of physics remain the same. While a rare event, a future repeat of the 1894 mirage is not out of the question.

*Image atop post is no mirage but Toronto as it appears these days 30 miles away from Niagara-on-the-Lake. Photo: Gregory Pijanowski

Richard Feynman and the Alibi Room

During the late 1940’s, a Cornell physics professor was asked to give a series of lectures at the university’s aeronautics laboratory in Buffalo.  The professor would later recount his adventures four decades later in his autobiography, including some unusual (for a physics professor) adventures in a downtown bar called the Alibi Room.  That professor was Richard Feynman, who won the Nobel Prize in 1965.

Feynman begins his tale with the travel arrangements from Ithaca to Buffalo.  He was spared the three hour drive by flying Robinson Airlines, with the plane piloted by Mr. Robinson himself.  This regional airline was one of the many that began service after the war and would supplant train travel over the next few decades.  Robinson Airlines eventually became Mohawk Airlines which was bought out by Allegheny Airlines in 1970.  Allegheny changed its name to US Air in 1979 and was folded into American Airlines in 2015.  A picture of a Robinson airplane along with Mr. Robinson can be found here.

Cornell gave Feynmen a $35 ($350 in 2017) stipend each week for his trouble.  At first, Feynmen considered saving the money, but Feynman being Feynman, decided to use the funds to look for some adventures while in Buffalo after his lectures at the Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory.  The facility was originally operated by Curtiss-Wright, but as the war ended, the company downsized its production in Buffalo greatly and turned the lab over as a gift to Cornell.  During its run as a Cornell facility, the staff invented the crash test dummy, seat belts, and developed aircraft simulators.  Now privately operated, the facility is still located across the street from the airport and is known as Calspan.

Feynman was hired by Cornell after working at the Manhattan Project where he became known for his uncanny ability to quickly solve equations and for picking locks.  The latter was Feynman’s way of irking the powers that be at the project.  During the first atomic test at the Trinity site, Feynman threw off his eye protection gear so as to be one of the few to actually witness the blast.  However, Feynman eventually became melancholy over both the destructive nature of the atomic bomb and the death of his wife in June 1945 from tuberculosis.  This may have contributed to his slow career start at Cornell.

“I would see people building a bridge and I would say “they don’t understand.” I really believed that it was senseless to make anything because it would all be destroyed very soon anyway, but they didn’t understand that and I had this very strange view of any construction that I would see, I would always think how foolish they are to try to make something. So I was really in a kind of depressive condition.” – Richard Feynman from the documentary The Pleasure of Finding Things Out.

Nonetheless, when Feynman got to Buffalo, he asked a local cab driver, a man named Marcuso, driving cab No. 169, to take him to a bar “with lots of interesting things going on.”  The cabbie drove Feynman to the Alibi Room located at 8 W. Chippewa near the corner of Main St.  The late 40’s, at the start of the post-war boom but before the exodus to the suburbs starting in the ’50’s, was when downtown was in its peak.  The Alibi Room was situated in the heart of the theater district and the scene would have looked like this as Feynman’s cab approached the bar.

Main Street one block north of Chippewa, 1950, from a postcard of the era.

The Alibi Room itself was new, first appearing in the Buffalo Register in 1946.  Feynman described it as a place where, “The women were dressed in furs, everybody was friendly, and the phones were ringing all the time.”  As Feynman would later find out, the phones were ringing all the time as it was a local bookie joint, and the women in furs were ladies of the night.  This is confirmed by my discussions with those familiar with the Alibi Room.  Eventually, Feynman settled into a routine where he would order shots of Black and White scotch with chaser of water and close the place down at 2 AM – Buffalo’s current 4 AM closing time did not go into effect until the 1970’s.

This went on for the duration of the semester.  Sometimes, Feynman would end up at an after hours speakeasy.  Following his last lecture of the semester, Feynman found himself in a fight in the restroom at the Alibi Room.  Once the situation calmed down, Feynman downed a shot of scotch, started talking loud, almost caused hostilities to resume at the bar with three friends of the original antagonist.  Another regular at the bar, whom an appreciative Feynman later described as a first-rate expert in diffusing bar fights, interceded by pretending to be a friend of Feynman, then convinced Feynman to leave.  Returning to Cornell with a black eye, Feynman went to teach his class, looked at his students, shiner and all, toughened up his tone of voice and asked…

“Any Questions?”

That was the end of Feynman’s adventures with Buffalo nightlife.  In 1951, Feynman moved on to Caltech where he developed a quantum theory of electromagnetism.  Referred to as quantum electrodynamics (QED), this theory incorporated relativity with quantum mechanics.  Merging the two fields is the holy grail of physics.  There are four basic forces of nature, electromagnetism, weak nuclear (released in radioactive decay), strong nuclear (released in nuclear explosions), and gravity.  The first three are explained by quantum mechanics, the physics of atomic scale.  Gravity is explained by relativity, the physics of large scale that we can see.  Finding a quantum theory of gravity would unify relativity and quantum mechanics into “the theory of everything.”

Interestingly enough, despite unifying electromagnetism into quantum mechanics, Feynman was ambivalent about finding the theory of everything…

“Are you looking for the ultimate laws of physics? No, I’m not, I’m just looking to find out more about the world and if it turns out there is a simple ultimate law which explains everything, so be it, that would be very nice to discover.  If it turns out it’s like an onion with millions of layers and we’re just sick and tired of looking at the layers, then that’s the way it is, but whatever way it comes out its nature is there and she’s going to come out the way she is, and therefore when we go to investigate it we shouldn’t pre-decide what it is we’re trying to do except to try to find out more about it.” – Richard Feynman from The Pleasure of Finding Things Out.

A decade later, around the time he was awarded the Nobel Prize, Feynman found himself in Buffalo once again and paid the Alibi Room a visit.  His former adversaries were nowhere to be found.  What would have happened if he had bumped into them again?  Knowing Buffalo, and that generation, they probably would have bought Feynman a beer (or a Black and White) and had a good laugh.

This time around Feynman found the scene different, describing the formally posh bar and neighborhood as seedy.  During the 1950’s, in Buffalo and across America, the middle-class fled the cities for the ranch houses and shopping malls in suburbia.  The downtown stores started to close and buildings became vacant.  Chippewa St. was on its way to becoming a red light district populated with flop houses, topless bars, and adult book stores.  The street reached its nadir in the 1970’s.

Oddly enough, there was an optical lab located on Chippewa during the ’70’s.  How do I know this?  Before the age of one hour glasses, a repair job for broken glasses could take a week or more.  After breaking my glasses in 6th grade, my eye doctor suggested I take them directly to the lab on Chippewa for a quick repair.  I hopped on the No. 24 bus, got off at the foot of Chippewa, and headed for the Root Building where the lab was located.  This was intriguing as Chippewa was the focal point for much of our middle school humor, but my trip was uneventful.  I walked by the Alibi Room without taking note, unaware a Noble Prize physicist once hung out there.  Got my glasses back, walked back past the forlorn Chippewa storefronts, noting how much the street resembled the ones television detective Baretta worked.

By the late ’70’s, the Alibi Room changed owners and was now operated as the New Alibi Lounge.  I was not able to find any images of the original Alibi Room, given the going ons inside, I imagine photography would have been frowned upon.  One image does survive from 1980 which shows the overall decline of the area Feynman commented on.

New Alibi Lounge is red building in center.  The brown building to the left was once a Gutman’s store.  Credit: Buffalo Department of Community Development/The Public.

Within a few years, all the buildings, including the former Alibi Room, would be gone.  Cleared out in an urban renewal project, this block was an empty lot for most of the ’80’s when Feynman wrote Surely Your Joking, Mr. Feynman!  The book was a best seller and Feynman became even more well known to the public as a member of the commission to investigate the Challenger disaster. It was Feynman who demonstrated to the public how the O-rings in the shuttle’s solid booster would have become brittle during the cold weather conditions the Challenger launched in.

Feynman passed away in 1988.  At the same time, Fountain Plaza was rising on the former site of the Alibi Room.  Once home to local banking operations, Fountain Plaza is now the site of IBM’s Buffalo Innovation Center as part of the continuing transition of the local economy.

Fountain Plaza in 2016. The Alibi Room was on the corner where the North Tower sits in middle of picture. Credit: Gregory Pijanowski

Throughout the 1990’s, Chippewa and the surrounding Theater District experienced a renaissance.  Mark Goldman got the ball rolling with the Calumet Arts Cafe, also played a key role in the development of Canalside.  The Root Building is now home to Emerson Commons, part of Emerson High’s Culinary program.  Once again, Chippewa is an entertainment center in the city.

Beyond physics, Feynman’s legacy continues in education.  During a stint on California’s Curriculum Commission, Feynman was critical of common educational techniques.  For example, rather than emphasize memorization, Feynman pushed for comprehension of physical concepts.  Feynman also wanted children to understand there are a variety of ways to solve mathematical problems.  His reasoning is that scientists focus on getting the right answer, not a rote process.  This is the underpinning of common core curriculum.

Common core is part of an overhaul to move education away from being geared toward the old industrial economy to one more suited for the 21st Century.  During the early 1900’s, rural residents moved to cities as farming became mechanized, reducing the need for labor.  The educational system was geared to train students for life in the manufacturing economy.  Now, 100 years later, manufacturing is becoming more robotized, meaning labor has to switch over to a knowledge based economy.  Feynman’s insights from his stint evaluating textbooks in the 1960’s influences science education to this day.

Chippewa Street today. Credit: Gregory Pijanowski

Last summer, a friend visited Buffalo and arrived at a downtown hotel.  She asked the staff where was a good spot to eat.  Like Richard Feynman some 70 years earlier, was suggested to go to Chippewa St.  Upon arrival, she witnessed a bar brawl that had extended out onto the sidewalk.

The more things change…

*Image atop post is Richard Feynman giving a lecture on planetary orbits in 1964.  Credit:  United States Department of Energy/Wiki Commons.

Trump, Change, and the White Working Class

With some 60,000,000 votes tallied for Trump, I am aware there are among those votes diverse motivations.  Many voted for Trump in the hope he would focus on the revival of the manufacturing sector.  If I thought his policy team would prioritize pushing unemployment down to 4%, offer more access to trade school/college for retraining, and so on, I would not have written this post.  However, there is no denying the racist tone of the Trump campaign and its negative effect on the nation.  This post is specifically geared towards that aspect of the upcoming Trump presidency. 

With the election over and the surprise result in, the punditry is engaged in a fit of self-examination over the lack of understanding of the “forgotten” white working class.  This ongoing media tragicomedy includes proposed Marlin Perkins type forays into the heartland.  Like many disasters, this one has a confluence of causes.  The Northern racial aspect of the Trump campaign, as in the South, has its origins in labor history.  While in the South racial antipathy has its roots in slavery, in the North its roots are in market competition, or elimination thereof.

In 2016, when we apply for a job, we put together a resume with our job experience, education, and accomplishments.  In the old industrial economy, social/political machine connections played an oversized role.  In Buffalo, various ethnic groups lived in insular neighborhoods.  The Polish lived on the East Side, Irish on the South Side, and Italians on the West Side.  These ethnic groups would come to dominate certain industries such as the Irish on the waterfront.  How do you keep the other ethnic groups out?  You assign them inferior status using ethnic slurs and stereotypes are part of the enforcement mechanism.

While these various groups would bump up against each other from time to time, they formed an equilibrium in a region that was growing in jobs and population.  The great migration of African-Americans from the South during the 1950’s and 60’s was on a local scale, regarded as a competitive threat much like current immigration is viewed nationally among the white working class.  From 1940-70, Buffalo’s African-American population grew from 18,000 to 72,000.  Some found good paying jobs in manufacturing, but most were locked out of the job market and the housing market as well due to redlining.  I recall the reaction in my white working class neighborhood when the first black family moved in during the mid-70’s.  Pamphlets with, from what we would call today Alt-Right, were passed around with swastikas.

Swastikas, even in that difficult situation, were considered outside the norm. There were plenty of World War II veterans still alive at the time.  However, a strong and violent reaction ensued necessitating a police car stationed outside the house 24 hours a day.  About a year or so later, the family moved out.  This was around the same time the industrial economy began to falter intensifying the competition for jobs.

The public (but not catholic) educational system specialized in class replication.  That is, preparing us for a life employed in manufacturing.  One morning, delivering the old Courier-Express, the headlines announced 5,000 layoffs at Bethlehem Steel.  During the same day, I attended a shop class that presented a lecture on the basics of steel making.  Even though it was obvious the manufacturing ship was sinking, the inertia of the educational system kept moving forward like the Titanic until it hit the iceberg.

Class replication was also enforced outside the school system.  For some, who attended high school on the college track, could be met with an onslaught of slurs from both friends and family.  It was not uncommon for some who received offers to attend college prep high schools to turn it down for that reason.  I think of this often when I hear of working class rage against the educational elite.  How many working class kids from that era could have escaped the economic trap of the post-industrial age in a different setting?

As an adult, you realize the verbal abuse slung around was simply from people who had little control of their lives and this was one way for them to exercise power.  Real small-minded stuff.  However, for a teenager, it can difficult to navigate that storm.

When discussing the working class today, those cultural mechanisms are still in place.  While the ethnic neighborhoods have by and large dissipated and merged into a single white self-identity, the reflex to discriminate against African-Americans (the way Muslim is now used as an epitaph is an euphemism for the n-word)  and newer immigrants still exists.  And that includes many who have since exited the working class.   Even if one is not a racist, and many in the white working class are not, you still benefit economically within the confines of this system.  What the Trump campaign has done is expand the norms how such discrimination is discussed.

The first time I ventured into Queens during the mid-eighties, it bore a striking resemblance to Buffalo.  The biggest difference is Queens was more light manufacturing rather than heavy manufacturing based, but by and large, pretty much working class.  The Trump family had left the working class by then and Donald was operating in Manhattan, but as the campaign showed, he still understood the racial buttons to push.  However, unlike past candidates who used dog whistles (states rights, welfare, etc,) Trump, being Trump, used a bullhorn.

Throughout the campaign nebulous ties were established with the Alt-Right.  During the aforementioned Buffalo neighborhood incident, the hate groups spewing swastika laced pamphlets were considered cranks with just a single neighborhood bookstore operation.  Even in a racial situation that was pretty tense.  Now those same type of groups have a link to the Oval Office.  And the effect is rippling down to the ground level with increased attacks on minority/immigrant communities.  Certainly, many in the white working class do not embrace this, but it’s undeniable racism permeates our society and those who do embrace/ignore this drove the rise of Trump to the presidency.

However, what succeeded decades ago within the confines of insular neighborhoods for the white working class to secure employment and resources by eliminating competition will fail on a national level.  The opposition is too great (Hillary Clinton drew 2 million more votes than Trump).  In a flip-flop of historical trends, resistance to discrimination on the ground level will blunt the federal government.  Trump’s trade policy, as outlined in another post, will not bring 1955 back.  At any rate, with telecommuting, neighborhoods do not geographically tie down jobs as they once did.  Paul Ryan, public university graduate/Ayn Rand fanboy, wants to scale back Medicare which strikes at the core of the Trump base.  While manufacturing jobs have actually increased by 800,000 nationally since 2010 and are expected to rise 17,000 locally the next five years, will the Trump administration address age discrimination or skill training required for older whites to be hired for these jobs?  Does not seem likely.  Meanwhile, America will continue its inexorable change into a more diverse society.

Personally, I find this change refreshing.  Why would I want to be locked in the social norms of a particular ethnic group?  I’d rather choose my own destiny. There is a cliche that the white working class votes against its own interest.  On a macro scale that can be true.  On a micro scale, some individuals view the ability to discriminate (or to be non-PC) as protecting their economic safe space.  What has happened is that space is growing smaller by the day and will continue to do so.

This election was not about inducing change but avoiding it.  And avoiding that change, regardless who is president, is not possible.   A common comeback from the most strident Trump supporters is “F*** you, we won.”  It’s the same yelp I heard decades ago from those who had little power in their lives.  The reality is, by insulating one’s self to change, you risk being left behind.  And that’s not the direction to go, either personally or the nation as a whole.

Trump, Trade, & Buffalo

During my days as an Econ major, one of my professors used to admonish us that even if an economic doctrine was outdated, if it had any staying power, some part of it most likely was insightful.  That is, don’t be so quick to put it up on a shelf and label as 100% toxic.  In this spirit, I am going to take a look at Donald Trump’s (And taking Trump in this spirit becomes more difficult with each passing day) ideas on trade and how it would apply to my hometown of Buffalo.  While visiting us this summer, Trump promised to bring tons of jobs back to Buffalo by renegotiating international trade treaties.  While most of Trump’s speech was a meandering stream of consciousness, this line resonated with the crowd in a city that is finally starting to turn things around after decades of manufacturing job losses.  Could such a policy bring back jobs to the working class in Buffalo?

It is said that success has many parents while failure is an orphan.  Actually, as we’ll find out, economic successes and failures both have many parents.  Both are a result of several factors coalescing together and it is unlikely a policy fixating on a single issue can change the momentum of one or the other.

In 1954, Buffalo had 152,000 manufacturing jobs.  Prior to the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway, Great Lakes freighters unloaded in Buffalo to transfer goods into canal boats and later trains for shipment to the East Coast.  This made Buffalo a strategic spot for manufactures to locate.  In the 1800’s, grain came from the Midwest and was milled into various food products in Buffalo.  To process the large amounts of grain pouring into Buffalo Harbor, Joseph Dart invented the grain elevator.  These large structures remain a prominent feature on the city’s waterfront.

Grain elevators at foot of Main Street in 1900. These first generation wood elevators have been replaced by the modern cement cylindrical elevators. Credit: Detroit Publishing Co./Library of Congress

After the Erie Canal, trains, and grain, came electricity.  Nikola Tesla, leaving the employ of Thomas Edison, built with George Westinghouse the first hydroelectric plant in Niagara Falls.  Using alternating current which, unlike Edison’s direct current, did not require power plants every mile, this electricity could be delivered 20 miles south to Buffalo.  Buffalo became the “City of Light” and this new technology was featured prominently in the 1901 Pan-American Exposition.

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The Pan-American Expo Electric Tower, 1901. Credit: Buffalo History Museum.

At the same time of the Pan-American Exposition, land was being acquired south of Buffalo by the Lackawanna Steel Corp.  Buffalo was close to ore fields that supplied raw material and with cheap hydroelectricity along with access to Great Lakes shipping and Buffalo’s extensive rail network, this was an ideal spot for steel production.  By World War II, then known as Bethlehem Steel, the plant employed over 20,000 people.  The local steel production capabilities attracted the auto industry.  Some, like Pierce-Arrow did not last past the 1930’s, but Chevrolet and Ford became mainstays and employed thousands in several plants across the region.  In 1916, Glenn Curtiss moved his aviation production plant from Hammondsport in the Finger Lakes to Buffalo.  During the first half of the 20th Century, Buffalo was major hub for aircraft production with employment hitting 70,000 (about the same number Apple employs in the U.S.) during World War II.  Buffalo’s industrial development was a classic case of economic geographical clustering.

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Republic Steel, Mobil Oil refinery, Donner Hanna Coke, railroad network all intertwined in Buffalo’s Inner Harbor, 1958. Credit: Wiki Commons.

Geographic clustering of economic activity was addressed by Alfred Marshall in 1890 and as a theory, was dormant for another century until economists, especially Paul Krugman, gave it another look.  In particular, it was found the manufacturing sector benefits greatly from clustering while for the post-industrial economy the effects are more diffuse.  In the case of Buffalo, clustering was caused by access to transportation via canal, trains, and the Great Lakes connecting the Midwest and East Coast.  In 1950, half the population of the United States lived in a 500 mile radius from Buffalo providing a ready market for goods.  Niagara Falls presented a bottleneck that forced shipments to funnel through Buffalo  Being first also counts and the invention of the grain elevator, generation of AC current, and aviation production at the birth of the industry gave Buffalo a jump start.  Labor poured into the region both in the form of immigration and internal migration from rural areas.  The concentration of experienced labor also produces high productivity from knowledge spillovers as less experienced labor benefits from close proximity to more skilled workers.  This in turn can generate high wages when the labor market is competitive and in good bargaining position.

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Curtiss-Wright plant P-40 production in 1941. Photo: Dmitri Kessel, Life Magazine

In 1951, Fortune featured a cover story titled Made in Buffalo which described a dynamic and diverse manufacturing center.

How did it all unwind?

Again, many factors coalesced to produce Buffalo’s downward spiral.  In 1938, when the local auto industry began shifting from auto to component assembly, Bethlehem Steel would stop investing in its flat rolling capacity due to lack of demand.  After World War II, Curtiss-Wright laid off 35,000 workers and then left Buffalo for good in 1946 for Ohio.  Bell Aircraft also greatly downsized but stuck around long enough to build Chuck Yeager’s X-1 and the Apollo program’s lunar module simulator.  Eventually, Bell left for Texas in the 1960’s.  Other industries, for example, Westinghouse and Western Electric picked up the slack.  That was something Alfred Marshall would have predicted fifty years prior:

“A district which is dependent chiefly on one industry is liable to extreme depression, in case of a falling-off in the demand for its produce, or of a failure in the supply of the raw material which it uses. This evil again is in a great measure avoided by those large towns or large industrial districts in which several distinct industries are strongly developed.”

However, an infrastructure project in the 1950’s removed Buffalo strategic bottleneck location for transportation.

The completion of the St. Lawrence Seaway enabled shipping to bypass Buffalo and head directly to the East Coast or overseas.  Grain shipments dropped dramatically and many of the waterfront elevators were abandoned.  Still, the steel and auto industries were going strong.  Buffalo continued to grow and prosper along with the rest of the nation into the 1960’s, but the reduced diversity of the economy left the region increasingly vulnerable to economic shocks.

Buffalo’s winter grain fleet anchored in outer harbor during winter to supply wheat for milling. This annual sight vanished in the early 1970’s. Credit: https://www.wnyheritagepress.org/content/lake_ice_and_lake_commerce/index.html

The energy crisis during the 1970’s sparked a demand for smaller cars which Japanese auto-makers specialized in.  This reduced demand for products made in Buffalo’s auto plants and in turn, its steel mills.  Bethlehem Steel poured investments into its Indiana plant which was closer to the expanding population westward.  Poor labor relations, outdated production methods, and questionable management practices dropped Bethlehem’s employment from 22,000 in 1969 to 5,000 when finally closed in 1983.  Republic Steel, once home to 5,000 employees followed suit in 1984.  In 1985, Trico moved 1,000 jobs from Buffalo to Mexico where workers made less than $1 an hour.  As manufacturing de-clustered from Buffalo, the region became less and less attractive to locate.

And what is the point of this history?

This all happened before NAFTA went into effect in 1994.  Renegotiating NAFTA will not undo all the factors that drove manufacturing jobs from Buffalo.  This isn’t to say the matter should not be open to debate.  Personally, I do not believe nations with widespread child labor and lax environmental regulation should have unfettered access to American markets.  But a reworking of NAFTA will not magically bring jobs back to Buffalo.  In fact, it would likely hamper access to the 9 million Toronto-Niagara Peninsula market just across the border.  Given that Canada is America’s top trading partner in terms of exports, renegotiating NAFTA would definitely cost jobs in Buffalo while the benefits are at best, uncertain.

Allied Chemical discharging dyes into Buffalo River. Buffalo’s manufacturing legacy did not come without a price. Credit: New York Department of Environmental Conservation.

And this brings up the greatest flaw in the Trump plan, fixating on a single issue as an economic cure.  Typically, you’ll see this with taxes, most recently in Kansas.  Gov. Sam Brownback’s tax cuts were intended to entice business into the state.  Whatever enticement the tax cuts were to bring business in the state have been offset by cuts to education and infrastructure spending.  The latter reduces incentive for business to locate to Kansas.  Or take a look at New York City where residents have had to pay a city income tax in addition to state taxes since 1966.  During this period New York City has experienced a decade (1970’s) where it lost 800,000 residents but also has gained 1.1 million residents since 1990.  Taxes should be considered as a factor in economic policy, but it is not a sole determinant of economic growth.  And neither is trade.

Conversely, economic models tend to smooth over the rocky transition from employment in one economic sector to another.  What is happening to manufacturing in America is to some extent the same thing that happened to farming in the first half of the 20th Century.  In 1920, farmers were 30% of the American population.  Today, that figure is two percent.  Mechanization of farming has reduced the need for labor.  The same is true of manufacturing.  The days when a steel mill required tens of thousands of employees are over, leading to a migration of labor to low paying service sector jobs.  In academia or policy think tanks, this transition is often reduced to a mathematical abstraction.  Hopefully, the work of Angus Deaton, whose research has revealed a decline in life expectancy of working class white Americans, will provide some “ground truth” for economic models.

The cause of that decline in life expectancy is mostly related to alcohol and drug abuse.  For those of us on the ground level have certainly seen this in the struggle of economic transition.  Other parts of the equation are foreclosures, divorce, social isolation, and in the worst case scenario, suicide.  So what is the proper policy response?  You have to try a lot of things across several fronts.  And going into this, an understanding this will be a trial and error process.  Not everything tried will succeed.  Like any sort of forecasting, we are looking at probabilities of success.

On a national level, a fiscal/monetary policy goal of driving unemployment down to 4% should have highest priority.  This will make local efforts more manageable.  Pragmatism should have a priority over ideology in policy making.  The private and public sector are like air and gas in an auto engine.  An optimal mixture provides best performance.  On a state level, stop the starvation of public funding for state universities.  For those who do not go to college, open up access to skilled trade/technical training.  While the labor market has improved significantly since 2008, those who were ejected from the workforce have had difficulty with re-entry and unemployment duration remains at post-war highs.  Individuals who have lost jobs due to a financial crisis not of their making should not be treated as pariahs in the job market.  This will not remove from the political process the more unseemly aspects of the Trump campaign, but will ideally push it off to the sidelines where it belongs.

Over the past few years, Buffalo has undergone something of a renaissance.  The University of Buffalo’s new medical campus is spurring development in the city.  Immigrants and refugees are infusing new life to old neighborhoods while Elon Musk’s SolarCity is building the Western Hemisphere’s largest solar panel plant on the site where Republic Steel once resided.  Hopefully, this can give the region a jump start in an emergent industry and begin a clustering effect anew.  Although manufacturing has declined to 50,000 jobs in the area, ghosts of Buffalo’s past can still be seen.  The steel mills are gone but Chevy and Ford still employ thousands, if you hang out in Canalside long enough, eventually you’ll see a 700-foot lake freighter making a visit to one of the grain elevators still in operation, no longer the second largest rail center in the nation, on a quiet weekend morning I can still hear train activity in the Frontier Yard.  Powerful reminders of Buffalo’s past, but as an individuals, we need to look towards the future.  To quote an old Clint Eastwood character:

“You improvise, you adapt, you overcome.”

It’s as good advice as any.

*Photo atop post is 2010 aerial view of Buffalo.  Credit:  Doc Searls/Wiki Commons.

(Slight) Changes in Latitude

At first glance, Buffalo and New York City would appear as different as two cities can be.  However, over the past two centuries both have been connected by the Erie Canal, the Empire State Express that linked Buffalo’s Central Terminal with Grand Central Terminal, and the New York State Thruway.  Infrastructure joining two cities not only moves people and goods, but ideas.  During the late 1800’s, Buffalo was a proving ground for many innovative architects who transferred their ideas to the big city.  A two-block area in downtown Buffalo has very significant architectural ties to New York City.

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Ellicott Square Building, Photo: Gregory Pijanowski

Above is the Ellicott Square Building. You may recognize it as the Ellicott Hotel from the movie The Natural. Built in 1896, it was the largest office building in the world at the time. In its basement was the Vitascope Theater, possibly the first movie theater in the United States.

Advertisement for Vitascope Theater.  Ten cents in 1897 is $2.75 in 2016 dollars. November 7, 1897. Credit: Wiki Commons.

On the marble floor of the Ellicott Square Building are several swastikas.  Before Nazi Germany, the swastika symbolized good fortune and is still used for that purpose in India and Indonesia.  The architect for the Ellicott Square Building was Daniel Burnham who six years later designed this building:

Flatiron Building, 1990, Photo: Gregory Pijanowski
Flatiron Building, 1990, Photo: Gregory Pijanowski

That, of course, is the classic Flatiron Building.  The shapes of the respective buildings were both determined by the street layout.  While most of Manhattan is laid out as a grid, the Flatiron Building lies where Broadway diagonally cuts across 5th Avenue necessitating its distinctive shape.  Daniel Burnham’s architecture firm still survives in the form of Graham, Anderson, Probst and White in Chicago.

Next door to the Ellicott Square Building is M&T Plaza:

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M&T Plaza, Photo: Gregory Pijanowski

Does the exterior steel tubing and resultant narrow windows look familiar? The buildings below had the same type of framework:

World Trade Center, 2001. Credit: Jeff Mock, Wiki Commons.

Both M&T Plaza and the World Trade Center were designed by Minoru Yamasaki during the  mid-1960’s. In each building, the exterior steel columns were intended to carry the load of the building’s weight.  This precludes the need for interior columns maximizing floor space.  A century before M&T Plaza was built, Abraham Lincoln’s funeral train stopped in Buffalo and his body laid in state on the site as some 100,000 filed by to pay their respects.

April 27, 1865 – Lincoln’s funeral cortege. Credit: Buffalo & Erie County Public Library.

Minoru Yamasaki passed away in 1986 and his firm Yamasaki & Associates ceased operations in 2010, a victim of the Great Recession.  Of course, we are no longer able to appreciate the World Trade Center in person, but their architect’s legacy lives on in Buffalo which set the stage for his most prominent work.

War of the Worlds, Buffalo Style


Above is the Halloween radio adaptation of the War of the Worlds by WKBW in Buffalo.  WKBW originally broadcasted War of the Worlds in 1968 and updated versions throughout the 1970’s.  For myself, it was a Halloween tradition to sit on the front steps, chow down some Halloween candy, and listen to the broadcast.  Although the program would start at 11 PM, I had no worries, as going to a Catholic school, the following morning was All Saints Day and that meant an off day.  It wasn’t only Western New Yorkers who listened to the dramatization of their city being destroyed by Martians, WKBW’s 50,000 watt transmitter would reach as far into the Carolinas once the Sun set.

The 1968 broadcast was an homage to Orson Wells legendary 1938 radio version.  The events were transplanted to the Buffalo region.  In 1968, KB DJ Danny Neaverth opens up the proceedings with a brief introduction.  If you lived in Buffalo during that era, Neaverth’s presence around town seemed ubiquitous.  I can remember watching Neaverth’s noon weather report on WKBW-TV, hearing him at an evening’s Braves game handling the PA duties (two for McAdoo!), then being woken up by Neaverth’s morning show at 6 AM so I could deliver the Courier-Express.

The 1971 version has an updated introduction by Jeff Kaye.  That intro describes various events caused by the 1968 program.  Much like the myth of the 1938 panic, there is some hyperbole involved.  The local newspapers did not report anything unusual the following day except for a few calls made into the station. After the intro,  the broadcast commences with the real newscast from that day.   The first sign of something different is when the news ends with a report from Mt. Palomar Observatory that nuclear sized explosions had been observed on Mars.

The real director of the Mt. Palomar Observatory at the time was Horace Babcock (the broadcast used the name Benjamin Spencer).  In 1953, Babcock first proposed the use of adaptive optics to reduce atmospheric interference for astronomical imaging.  This technique, which utilizes a laser created guide star and deformable mirrors in a telescope’s instrument package, is standard on all modern observatories.  From 1947-93, Mt. Palomar was the largest telescope in the world.

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The 200-inch Hale Telescope at Mt. Palomar. Photo: Gregory Pijanowski.

Were the nuclear sized explosions on Mars a realistic plot point?  At first glance that might not seem to be the case.  However, keep in mind the Martians made it to Earth in a 24-48 hour period.  Standard chemical rockets take about 8-10 months to complete a voyage to Mars.  What could have propelled the Martians so fast to Earth?  One possibility is nuclear pulse propulsion.  The concept is targeted nuclear explosions are used to provide impulse to spacecraft.  From 1958-63, Project Orion worked on such a propulsion method.  Eventually, the project was shut down by the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty which, obviously, would not apply to invading Martians.

To be fair, the folks at WKBW were concerned with providing programming that had a Halloween ambiance rather than scientific rigor.  And they accomplished this by letting the invasion gradually slide into the program.  It is 20 minutes in until the invasion occupies the show completely.  During that first 20 minutes, listeners are treated to a time capsule of 1968 radio.  The news of the day opens with the Vietnam War and ongoing peace talks (the 1971 version also would open with news from Vietnam, which gives you an idea how well those talks went), Governor Rockefellar breaking ground on the new UB Amherst campus, and various local police busts.  The video removed the music interludes for copyright purposes.  Ads include an 8-track stereo player for $49.95 ($345 today) and shoes for $13.00 ($90 today).  The broadcast takes a dramatic turn with the announcement of a meteor strike on Grand Island.

When that announcement was made, it could be heard throughout the East Coast.  WKBW transmitted with a 50,000 watt tower, the maximum allowed for AM stations.  At night, the range of AM stations expand greatly.  I can remember listening to Sabre-Bruins hockey games and switching back and forth between the Buffalo and Boston broadcasts.  Also, I have tuned into St. Louis’ KMOX in both Buffalo and Houston during the late 70’s when Bob Costas worked there.  While FM has advantages in sound quality over AM, it cannot match the range of AM radio.  And that is due to the nature of the Earth’s ionosphere.

Credit: NASA
Credit: NASA

During the day, ultraviolet and x-ray radiation strike atoms in the upper atmosphere.  This energy ejects electrons, which carry a negative electric charge and forms the various ionosphere layers.  During the day, the lower D and E layers absorb AM radio waves.  Here, the atmosphere is still thick enough so electrons that absorb radio waves collide into air molecules dampening the radio signal.  At night, these lower layers dissipate as there is no sunlight to continue the ionization process.  This leaves radio waves free to reflect off the higher F ionosphere layer.  Here, the atmosphere is tenuous enough so collisions with air molecules are rare.  As a result, AM radio waves are reflected back to the ground enhancing the station’s range.  FM stations do not enjoy this effect as their transmissions are at shorter wavelengths, reducing the collision rate with free ions in the F layer.

For those who heard the original broadcast outside of the Buffalo area, and those listening to it now, here is a map to give you a framework of the events:

WOWmapNominally a sleepy rural area outside of Buffalo, Grand Island has had an interesting history.  Navy Island, adjacent to NW Grand Island, was once considered a potential site for the United Nations.   In 1825, a city on the island called Ararat was proposed as a site for Jewish refugees which never came to fruition.  The Niagara River current, as mentioned in the broadcast, is swift at 3 feet per second and would pull anyone trying to swim across away and over the Falls eventually.  That, of course, happens when the Grand Island bridges are blown in a vain attempt to trap the Martians on the island.

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Grand Island Bridges. Credit: amandabanana87 https://flic.kr/p/6PVNVR

The invading Martians make their way downtown to Niagara Square where Irv Weinstein is stationed atop City Hall.  Weinstein started on the radio side of WKBW in the late 50’s, moving over to television in the mid 60’s.  For the next next three decades, Weinstein was the most prominent news figure in the Buffalo area.  Weinstein did refrain from using his trademark “pistol packing punks” (heat ray packing punks?) in the War of the Worlds.  I do not know if there was actually a communications center on top of City Hall back then, but there is an observation platform.  You can see Niagara Falls from up there, and on the clearest of clear days, the CN Tower in Toronto.

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On top of City Hall. Credit: Gregory Pijanowski

The dramatization concludes where it began, at the WKBW radio station which was at 1430 Main St. a block north of Utica St.  The voice of the last surviving news reporter belongs to Jeff Kaye.  You may find that voice familiar.  During the 1980’s, Jeff Kaye did an admirable job filling the large shoes of John Facenda at NFL Films.  Kaye also produced the War of the Worlds broadcast.  After the Martian’s poison gas takes out the last of the WKBW team, Dan Neaverth returns to  conclude the broadcast noting that H.G. Wells ended the War of the Worlds with the Martians dying off, unable to resist Earth’s microbes.  Wrote Wells:

“But there are no bacteria in Mars, and directly these invaders arrived, directly they drank and fed, our microscopic allies began to work their overthrow.  Already when I watched them (the Martians) they were irrevocably doomed, dying and rotting even as they went to and fro.”

And more than likely, Wells was right about the lack of microbes on Mars, at least on the surface anyway.  Unlike Earth, Mars does not have an ozone layer to block out ultraviolet radiation from the Sun.  Also, Mars lacks a magnetic field.  The Earth’s magnetic field shields life from harmful cosmic rays  Unabated, this radiation is highly harmful to any life on the Martian surface, whether it be microbes or astronauts in the future.  However, the subsurface of Mars may be another story.

One of the key discoveries on Mars the past few decades has been the existence of water below the surface.  On the surface, the lack of atmospheric pressure reduces the boiling point of water so that if it does not freeze it will evaporate quickly.  However, the subsurface of Mars has been found to have significant amounts of water.  Planning for future human exploration of Mars entails utilizing this water for long duration stays on the red planet.  Moreover, where there is water, there may be life.  And this leads to the issue of planetary protection.

NASA has an Office of Planetary Protection.  The goal is to prevent Earth microbes from contaminating Mars and vise versa.  This will become a growing concern for the space program when attempts are made to land humans on Mars or if a Mars sample return mission is sent.  Drilling for water on Mars may expose an ancient subsurface biosphere, and certainly humans could carry Earth microbes to Mars.  While the risks involved are still a matter of scientific debate, Wells was very prescient to include this factor in the War of the Worlds.

Regardless of what we discover about Mars in the next few decades, there was a deeper lesson in the original novel that tends to get lost in modern versions.  The WKBW broadcast capped a night of Halloween themed programming and the primary goal was, as Orson Wells said to conclude his 1938 version, “Dressing up in a sheet, jumping out of a bush and saying, ‘Boo!”.  H.G Wells had intended War of the Worlds as a critique of colonialism.  Wells makes this clear on page three of the novel:

“And before we judge of them (Martians) too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its inferior races.  The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years.  Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?”

At the close of WKBW’s The War of the Worlds, Dan Neaverth asks the audience to think about what they would have done if the invasion was real.  An equally important question to ask is what you would do if you were on the invading side.  Would you join the invasion as the social forces of war coalesced around you, or would you resist the tide, as Bertrand Russell did in World War I:

“I knew it was my business to protest, however futile that protest might be.  I felt that for the honour of human nature those who were not swept off their feet should show that they stood firm.”

Think about it.