Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- ILLUSTRATIONS -- MAPS -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- INTRODUCTION -- HISTORY OF THE EDITION -- EDITORIAL PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICES -- TEXTUAL DEVICES -- SYMBOLS AND ABBREVIATIONS -- CHRONOLOGY -- 1921 -- ca. 6 August "100% Negro" to the Negro World -- ca. 6 August Article in the Negro World -- 7 August Henry O. Mattos to the Negro World -- 7 August Percival C. James, General Secretary, UNIA Céspedes Division, to the Negro World -- 8 August Arthur Geo. Burkley to Osiris de Bourg -- 10 August N. C. Frederick et al., UNIA Majuba La Brea Division, to J. R. Ralph Casimir -- 11 August Alonza Lynch, General Secretary, UNIA Cristóbal Division, to the Negro World -- 12 August Reprint of Dominica Guardian Article -- 12 August Jabez L. Clarke, General Secretary, UNIA Havana Division, to William H. Ferris, Literary Editor, Negro World -- 13 August Article in the Workman -- 15 August Circular Letter from Winston S. Churchill, Secretary of State, Colonial Office -- 18 August J. C. Wyke et al., UNIA Dominica División, to J. R. Ralph Casimir -- 18 August John H. Pilgrim, Secretary, UNIA Colón Division, to the Negro World -- 18 August James Fraser, Secretary, UNIA Santa Marta Division, to Fred A. Toote -- ca. 20 August I. S. Lahoodie to the Negro World -- ca. 20 August J. A. H. Thorpe to the Negro World -- 20 August Article in the Workman -- 26 August Gilbert E. A. Grindle, Assistant Under Secretary of State, Colonial Office, to the Under Secretary of State, Foreign Office -- 27 August "Iconoclast" to the Workman -- 31 August Richard A. Bennett to Wiliam H. Ferris, Literary Editor, Negro World -- 2 September F. A. Ogilvie to the Negro World -- 3 September "An Onlooker" to the Negro World -- 3 September Reverend Joseph U. Osborne, Executive Secretary, UNIA Puerto Padre Division, to the Negro World -- 3 September Editorial in the Workman -- 3 September Memorandum from Major G. M. Kincade, Provost Marshal, San Pedro de Macorís, to the Chief of Municipal Police, San Pedro de Macorís -- 5 September Thomas Duruo, et al., to Rear Admiral Samuel S. Robison, Military Governor, Dominican Republic -- 7 September UNIA and ACL Santo Domingo Division to the Crusader -- 9 September J. R. Ralph Casimir in the Negro World -- 10 September "Iconoclast" to the Workman -- ca. 10 September James Benjamin Yearwood, Assistant Secretary General, UNIA, to H. R. P. George in the Workman -- 15 September Fernando Escobar, Royal Consulate of the Netherlands, Dominican Republic, to Lieutenant-Colonel F. A. Ramsey, Officer in Charge, Department of Justice and Public Instruction -- 16 September J. R. Ralph Casimir in the Crusader -- 18 September E. Brice, British Consul, Santiago de Cuba, to the Municipal Mayor, Santiago de Cuba -- 19 September Fred A. Toote, Secretary General, UNIA, to J. R. Ralph Casimir -- 21 September C. A. Reid to the Workman -- 23 September Harold D. Clum, U.S. Consul, Santiago de Cuba, to John R. Putnam, U.S. Consul, Havana -- 24 September Luis G. Guzmán, Permanent Secretary, Industria Lodge No. 3551, to Rear Admiral Samuel S. Robison, Military Governor, Dominican Republic -- 24 September "A Genuine Friend of the Negro Race" to the Workman -- 26 September Alfred Dunbavin, et al., to Rear Admiral Samuel S. Robison, Military Governor, Dominican Republic -- 26 September P. Premdas, Acting Assistant Secretary, Black Star Line, to J. R. Ralph Casimir -- 28 September Robert S. F. Blake, Chaplain, UNIA Banes Division, to William H. Ferris, Literary Editor, Negro World -- 29 September Philander L. Cable, U.S. Chargé d'Affaires, Havana, to Guillermo Patterson, Subsecretary of State, Cuba -- 30 September Eduardo V. Morales, UNIA Commissioner to Cuba, to William H. Ferris, Literary Editor, Negro World -- 30 September Philander L. Cable, U.S. Chargé d'Affaires, Havana, to Charles Evans Hughes, U.S. Secretary of State -- 30 September Rowland Sperling, Assistant Secretary, Foreign Office, to Auckland C. Geddes, British Ambassador to the United States -- ca. 1 October Rachel E. Butler to the Negro World -- 1 October "Iconoclast" to the Workman -- 4 October Circular Letter by Winston S. Churchill, Secretary of State, Colonial Office -- ca. 8 October Article in the Negro World -- 8 October Philip Van Putten of UNIA San Pedro de Macorís Branch No. 26 to the Negro World -- 8 October R. H. Thompson to the Workman -- 9 October P. E. Plunkett to the Negro World -- ca. 10 October W. Stennett in the Negro World -- 11 October Cyril V. Briggs to J. R. Ralph Casimir -- 13 October W. Noel Robinson to William H. Ferris -- 17 October Lieutenant-Colonel William C. Harllee, District Commander, Eastern District, Dominican Republic, to Brigadier General Harry Lee, Commanding General, Second Brigade, U.S. Marine Corps -- 22 October Eduardo V. Morales to M. A. Figueroa, Spanish Section Editor, Negro World -- 24 October R. M. R. Nelson to the Negro World -- 25 October Ezel Vanderhorst, Secretary, UNIA Santo Domingo Division, to James Benjamin Yearwood, Assistant Secretary-General, UNIA -- 28 October Lieutenant-Colonel William. C. Harllee, District Commander, Eastern District, Dominican Republic, to Brigadier General Harry Lee, Commanding General, Second Brigade, U.S. Marine Corps -- ca. 29 October Charles S. McKenye [McKenzie] to the Negro World -- 31 October H. Leonard Ivey, Secretary, UNIA El Porvenir Division, to the Negro World -- 31 October Letter from UNIA Penal Division No. 260 to the Officers and Members of the UNIA Roseau Division -- 1 November C. K. Ledger, British Chargé d'Affaires, Santo Domingo, to Lieutenant-Colonel F. A. Ramsey, Officer in Charge, Department of Justice and Public Instruction -- 5 November J. L. Linwood in the Negro World -- 8 November Theodore Roosevelt Jr., Assistant Secretary, U.S. Navy, to Rear Admiral Samuel S. Robison, Military Governor, Dominican Republic -- 11 November Augustus Luis, President, UNIA St. Thomas Division, to the Negro World -- 12 November Rear Admiral Samuel S. Robison, Military Governor, Dominican Republic, to Ezel Vanderhorst, Secretary, UNIA Santo Domingo Division, et al. -- ca. 20 November M. A. Labega to the Negro World -- 23 November Article in the Panama Star and Herald -- ca. 26 November F. Gregoire to the Negro World -- 26 November Article in the Workman -- ca. 26 November J. Gilman Horsford, Acting President, UNIA San Juan Division, to the Negro World -- 1 December Samuel Percival Radway, et. al., to the District Attorney, Camagüey Provincial Court -- 3 December Article in the Workman -- ca. 10 December E. A. Scarlett, Third Vice-President, UNIA Morón Division, to the Negro World -- 12 December John Sydney de Bourg to the Senatorial Commission of Inquiry for the Dominican Republic -- 13 December Attlee Pomerene, U.S. Senator, to John Sydney de Bourg -- 16 December John Sydney de Bourg to Rear Admiral Samuel S. Robison, Military Governor, Dominican Republic -- 17 December Rear Admiral Samuel S. Robison, Military Governor, Dominican Republic, to Brigadier General Harry Lee, Commanding General, Second Brigade, U.S. Marine Corps -- 19 December John Sydney de Bourg to Lieutenant- Commander R. M. Warfield, Commissioner, Department of Agriculture and Immigration -- 20 December H. S. Blair, Division Manager, United Fruit Company, to Victor M. Cutter, Vice-President, United Fruit Company -- 20 December Edward H. Bouello to the Negro World -- 21 December J. R. Ralph Casimir to the Negro World -- 29 December Statement of Joseph Thomas -- 29 December Lieutenant-Colonel William C. Harllee, District Commander, Eastern District, Dominican Republic, to Brigadier General Harry Lee, Commanding General, Second Brigade, U.S. Marines Corps -- 30 December Second Lieutenant James E. Whitmire, U.S. Marine Corps, to Lieutenant-Colonel William C. Harllee, District Commander, Eastern District, Dominican Republic -- 31 December Telegram from Henry Clay von Struve, U.S. Consul, Antilla, to the Black Star Line -- 1922 -- 3 January Richard S. Dunbar to the Negro World -- 5 January "G. F. B." in the Clarion -- 5 January Eduardo V. Morales to the Negro World -- 5 January Brigadier General Harry Lee, Commanding General, Second Brigade, U.S. Marine Corps, to Rear Admiral Samuel S.
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In a 5-4 decision that will make history, the Roberts court upheld Obama's signature legislation on health care last week. Contrary to expectations, it was not Justice Anthony Kennedy's "swing" vote that determined the majority but Chief Justice John Roberts himself, who, for the first time in his tenure, joined the liberal wing in upholding the constitutionality of the Patient's Affordable Health Care Act, derisively called "Obamacare" by its opponents. This decision, which will most likely bolster Mr. Obama's re-election chances, was preceded by another victory for the president last week when the Court in a 5-3 vote, struck down all but one of the anti-immigration Arizona bill SB 1070 provisions. The latter ruling dovetailed nicely with Obama's executive order two days earlier to stop deportation of children of illegal immigrants brought to the United States before age 16, and to offer them a path to legal status. The eagerly anticipated ruling astounded conservatives and liberals alike. The same Roberts court had issued the 2010 Citizens United decision, which opened the floodgates for unlimited money to finance electoral campaigns and was much vilified by the populace, as well as the 2008 decision that struck down a Washington DC ban on hand guns. Both were major decisions made along ideological lines, which had led to accusations of crude partisan activism by the supreme tribunal. The new ruling is being interpreted as a compromise by a chief justice concerned with preserving the balance of the formal institutions of democratic governance at a time of deep divisions and extra-constitutional conflict in the polity itself. If this was his intention, then it would be in line with the Founders' concerns about the danger of political parties: a society deeply divided along partisan lines is anathema to law and public order, and consequently a threat to the Republic. Could Justice Roberts (who is only in his early 50s) be thinking about his legacy? Or was this a candid interpretation of the statute by a brilliant constitutional scholar? It was in these terms that the media framed the decision as the pundits set out looking for "clues". The Affordable Care Act is a complex piece of legislation and the ruling was bound to be anything but straightforward. The majority decision is so convoluted that there was some confusion in the first few minutes after it was announced. CNN news led with the banner "Individual Mandate found unconstitutional" and had to correct itself a few minutes later with "Health Care Law Upheld" 5-4. This can be explained by the way the decision was written, which is being touted as a brilliant stroke by Roberts. Reluctant to be seen as injecting himself in presidential politics four months before a presidential election, and conscious of Congress prerogatives as the branch of government directly elected by the people, he upheld a politically controversial law while at the same time creating some legal precedents that will in fact pose more limits to the legislative powers of Congress in the long-term. In that sense, many analysts are referring to it as both a political victory for Obama (he got his signature legislation passed, which will give him a general aura of success and thus energize the base) and also a constitutional victory for the Conservatives because it put serious constraints on the Commerce Clause interpretation. Because the so-called Commerce Clause of the Constitution allows Congress to regulate inter-state commerce, its broad interpretation by Chief Justice John Marshall in 1924 has been the single greatest source of expansion of Congressional authority. Roberts wrote that the Commerce Clause does not apply in this case because Congress cannot regulate "inactivity" (not buying health insurance). In this part of the ruling he was joined by the Conservative judges and the vote was 5-4. In a legal contortion that will be examined by constitutional scholars for decades to come, Roberts then pivoted and with the assent of Liberal wing (5-4), ruled that Congress does havethe power to fine individuals who do not buy insurance coverage under a its taxing authority. Failure to buy health insurance will result in a punitive measure which can be construed as a tax to influence behavior, just like taxes on cigarettes or alcohol. And since the exaction is modest, individuals still can exercise their freedom, not buy health insurance and pay the penalty instead. This exercise in semantics was viciously attacked by the dissenting judges (Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Kennedy) who wrote that the Chief Justice's logic "was not to interpret the statute but to re-write it". In fact, Roberts' reasoning hinges on his belief that in his capacity, he should find a "saving construction" to uphold laws passed by Congress, whose mandate is validated by regular elections. Though the Constitution gives Congress broad taxing powers, when the bill was being discussed, President Obama, aware of the spleen the word elicits in some constituencies, repeatedly refused to call the penalty a tax, insisting that it was a "shared responsibility", not a tax. This cautious choice of words will give further ammunition to his contender Mitt Romney, who is running on a platform of fewer and lower taxes and who, immediately after the ruling, promised once again to repeal the law "on his first day in office". Ironically, Governor Romney's own legislation for the state of Massachusetts in 2006 was the model for "Obamacare": it was built around the individual mandate and the principle of personal responsibility, which was "essential to bring down the costs of health care" (his own words). It was indeed a Republican idea that came out of the Heritage Foundation think tank and had the full support of the private sector (insurance companies, hospitals and pharmaceutical industry). It was only in 2006, when the idea migrated to the Left, that its constitutionality became suspect. But in the present national environment, politics trumps policy. Since 1942, the Commerce Clause has been used as the constitutional basis for modern government to regulate economic activity (much of which did not cross state lines). The health industry is one of the largest economic activities and it does clearly spill over state lines. Does the decision constitute a new jurisprudence restricting those legislative powers that made the New Deal possible? Or is this a narrow ruling that applies only to a sui generis, very specific activity and there probably won't be other issues that require a federal mandate as a solution? Is the individual mandate simply a "free-loader fee" and not an expansion of federal power? History will tell. For the time being, there is a sense that the institutional order prevailed over political divisions and the Founders' Republic is thus safe. However, in their "nullification by any means" strategy, Republicans are now pivoting to another major finding by the Court, in this instance on the expansion of Medicaid (public health care for the indigent that states administer with federal grants), which will now include those receiving an income of up to 133% above the poverty line. While the expansion itself was found constitutional (and it is wholly funded by federal money for the first three years of implementation), the federal government's coercive power to withdraw present funds from states that do not accept it was struck down by a 7-2 vote. This has opened a new political front for Republicans. In their determination to make it impossible for Democrats to govern, they have turned to state governors for help: at least seven Republican governors have already claimed they will not accept federal funding to expand Medicaid. This provides enough fodder for their immediate political interests: to portray the President as a big spender who has no interest in reducing the deficit. Their political calculation is based on the fact that the lower income groups that will receive or not those benefits are not their voters. In a tight race, this could be a winning strategy.
Статья посвящена анализу состояния и роли основных субъектов предстоящей российской модернизации, их взаимоотношениям между собой, а также структур и процессов, блокирующих переход нашей страны на путь цивилизованного развития. Проведенный критический разбор наличных социальных и политических практик, позволил автору выдвинуть ряд обоснованных, хотя и дискуссионных предложений, обеспечивающих названный переходIn this paper the author analyzes the state and the role of the major agents of Russia's eventual modernization, their inter-relationships as well as structures and processes, which prevent Russia from following the path of civilized development. Many agree that Russia's current underdevelopment with respect to developed countries creates a demand for its accelerated modernization, i.e. transition to a competitive, knowledge-driven and highly technological economy. Such strategic maneuver has become extremely necessary due to an obvious failure of the previous modernization project, i.e. 'westernization' that led to a criminalized privatization, and thus an emergence of an enormously unequal caste-like society. In spite of rather favourable initial conditions (an abundance of natural resources, high intellectual potential and the relatively low cost of labour) everything collapsed. According to many leading experts the scales of the country's economic downturn have been greater than those of the USA during its Great Depression. Its current economic growth already causes a lot of problems and lacks stability, since it is intensified purely through an inflow of petrodollars and foreign loans. This calls for a substantial change in the key spheres of public life, where the role of efficient state cannot be underestimated. The efficient state relies primarily on its people's trust, whose interests, rights and freedoms it carries out and secures. Does this apply to Russia's current authorities? The analysis of the data from a number of all-national surveys shows that Russian people more or less explicitly regard the Russian state as a protector and a mouthpiece of the rich, the administrating and business class, whose interests are not only interrelated but usually tightly soldered together through a corruption contract. The Russian state is regarded as a 'socially oriented state' only in 16% of cases, while only 21% of respondents see it as a 'democratic' state. However, it should be outlined that the people clearly distinguish between the supreme power: the president, the prime minister and their appointed officials, whom they trust, and the rest of power structures, whom they usually distrust. Neither the legislative bodies, nor the executive power are legitimate in Russia's public opinion. Moreover, precisely such identification of the latter with governmental bodies leads to a negative perception of power and its rejection as a whole. Thus there has once again formed an opposition between 'us' (common people) and 'them' the ruling class of the state bureaucracy and business, which has already been the cause of social cataclysms in the past. What lies at the core of this cleavage, which has to be overcome in order to make modernization possible? This article addresses the issue of the no. 1 enemy in any democratic state and any positive change in society namely corruption. The existence of a strong lobby of higher bureaucrats and large businessmen has led to the adoption of an emasculated version of the anti-corruption law. Precisely, it has been revised to exclude the internationally accepted clause, according to which illegal property is subject to confiscation. The analysis shows that this law, be it a purpose or a misunderstanding, has an absolutely opposite effect and only imitates the struggle against corruption. Unfortunately, the adopted law and the following practice create an impression that authorities (except for supreme power) clearly aim at reducing the scale of the public discussion and making the people conform to it as an inevitable evil, which can be overcome by through occasional disciplinary measures. As a result the problem remains completely unresolved. A thorough analysis of the nature and factors of corruption in Russia and other countries, who, at least, seriously try to solve this problem (China), or have recently fought it (Singapore, Turkmen, Japan) or have solved it long ago (Switzerland, Scandinavian countries, Germany, etc.), show that Russia completely lacks such strategy. Corruption in todays Russia is a multifold phenomenon of total lawlessness: the unbundling and stripping of budgets, bribery, criminal protection and crime suppression, money laundering, the lobbying of business interests via all branches of power, etc. Moreover, after the tragedies of Budenovsk, Dubrovka and Beslan corruption has apparently become one of the major causes for growing terrorism and extremism. Why do then authorities struggle so relentlessly against the consequences i.e. terrorism, and limit themselves to doubtfully efficient measures when fighting against its primary cause? The author is trying to answer this question. A struggle for Russia's new path development will not only be open to the public, the public itself will have to become one of its major actors. This is the motive, which was announced in the President's Address to the Federal Assembly. Unfortunately, since 1993 the vector of Russia's policy has been generally oriented towards a completely different future: the people were about to lose the status of a political actor and become a passive force of the state and societal change. This is not a casual turn, although it is only a declaration of Dmitry Medvedev. It seems to be the result of the previous modernization attempt, which has brought up a cynical, avaricious and consumption-oriented personality. It looks as though the state has finally realized that Russia come to a dead-end with market 'mutants' swarming in its structures, criminal and semi-criminal business. This dead-end can only be overcome through a multifold modernization and meritocratic mobilization of masses. The main obstacle, which prevents them from entering the process of modernization is lawlessness and insecurity that lead to a total irresponsibility. That is why successful modernization would only become possible when people regain trust in themselves as an active force of this process. The first step towards such change is a shift from imitative democracy to an authentic sovereignty of people, the supremacy of their power, which is a direct warranty of the Russian Constitution: i.e. the carrying out of referendums, which address the most vital issues of the country's being, including efficient measures against corruption, which the Russian Parliament has yet failed to develop. The people can provide a substantial support for power in working out clear and long-term goal as well as appropriate means for the fulfillment. The making of a free society for free people is a worthy goal after all. Although it requires a solid social, legal, moral and ethic basis, which would help moderate the people's social an economic instincts, its manners and habits, which were fostered by an inefficient and often anti-social use of private property over the means of production. In other words, a development of civil control over the state and business authorities is desperately needed. The results presented in this paper help distinguishing the core problem which has to be resolved by means of both, society and the state, to enhance the process of modernization: the creating of a new public solidarity between the state and its people, the people and business, since the previous models have already proved their inefficiency. First of all, this concerns the change in the character of power, which has to demonstrate its loyalty to the people rather than currency traders, corrupted officials and the semi-criminal business. Today, as never before, Russia requires a strong state, which would be able to overcome the total corruption, oligarchic and monopolistic structures, which harm its economy and postpone modernization. The critical review of existing social and political practices allows for a number of reasonable, as well as quite disputable suggestions, which could prove useful in stipulating the process of modernization in Russia.
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Yesterday, the U.S. Senate passed after extensive debate a bill greenlighting the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline. The final vote was 62-32 in favor, two votes more than the 60 vote threshold required to avoid a filibuster. The Senate version of the bill will either go back to the House where they can pass it as is, or the House can request a conference committee to hash out the differences. If the House goes the conference route, the committee will produce a report subject to a straight up-down vote in both chambers. In either case, everyone anticipates that some form of Keystone legislation will be sent to the president within the next week.
But, it really doesn't matter. Because President Obama has indicated he will veto any Keystone XL bill, as he believes that Congress is intruding on his presidential powers by authorizing an infrastructure project crossing an international boundary. And, as there are not enough votes in either chamber to override his veto, Keystone XL will be again delayed and remain unbuilt unless and until Obama gives the project his assent.
The political realities of Keystone did not prevent political gamesmanship in the wake of the vote here in Montana though. Republicans have been chomping at the bit to get this legislation passed, giving it the designation of Senate Bill 1 to signal the importance of the issue. But the legislation has been debated for weeks now and subject to scores of amendments. To expedite the bill's passage earlier this week, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell filed a cloture motion to end debate on the bill and prevent additional amendments from being considered. As you all know, a cloture motion is used either to prevent or stop an ongoing filibuster, and if it passes, places strict limits on further discussion before moving to a vote on final passage.
This cloture motion failed 53 to 39 (again, the motion needed 60 votes), with Montana Senator Jon Tester voting against cloture. Montana's freshman senator, Steve Daines, supported McConnell and voted to end debate.
(Caption: Montana's congressional delegation, presumably before the vote on Keystone XL)
Freshman Congressman Ryan Zinke immediately took the opportunity to blast Tester. "To me, a vote against the Keystone is a vote against Montana," he said. "I'm a proud co-sponsor of the House bill to build the Keystone XL Pipeline because it is proven to be safe and in the best interest of Montana. I will always put Montana before raising money from special interests in Washington, D.C." (Full story here).
Zinke implied, of course, that Tester's a flip-flopper and in the pocket of special interests—special interests that are opposed to the construction of Keystone and the production of good paying Montana jobs.
Yesterday's press release from Montana's State Republican Party was much more hyperbolic than Zinke's statement. Here is what they sent via e-mail to those subscribing to their list:
"Last November, Tester voted to build the Keystone XL pipeline. On Monday, Tester joined Senator Democrats' delay tactics and voted against the Keystone XL pipeline.
Tester claimed he wanted more amendments and debate but last November- when Tester voted for the Keystone XL pipeline- there were no amendments allowed and just 6 hours of debate. Under the Republican-led Senate, there have already been "more amendment votes than in all of 2014 under Democratic control" on the Keystone bill alone. And, the Senate has spent 3 weeks debating the bill.
On Wednesday, Tester voted to support President Obama's latest land power grab, allowing Obama to declare land in Phillips County a national monument and immediately halt construction of the Keystone XL pipeline."
Both Congressman Zinke and the Montana Republican Party, in their eagerness to score political points, are pushing a narrative spun of cynicism and obfuscation instead of an honest consideration of the facts. And this, I find as a political scientist, quite disturbing.
Let's consider reality for a moment.
Tester supports construction of Keystone XL, but with some qualifications, and as he has since the project was proposed. I spoke with him about Keystone XL and energy development in the Bakken on Veteran's Day in 2011 as we flew between Billings and Helena—an interview I conducted as part of the research for my book, Battle for the Big Sky. Here is the transcript verbatim:
David: Do you have any problems with more development in the Balkan?
Sen. Tester: No.
David: No?
Sen. Tester: No. As long as it's done right. It's kind of like the Keystone pipeline, as long as it's done right, you can do it. Now, I'm going to tell you what. There's a lot of times that this stuff isn't done right and taxpayers for generations and generations to come have to fix the problem. Take a look at a lot of the abandoned mines around. Yeah, they create a bunch of jobs and then when they left, it becomes a Superfund site the taxpayers have to pick up. That isn't a false choice. That should have been -- the rules should have been dictated early and that's what I'm saying is make sure we get the playing field established so that it is done right so that it isn't a false choice.
David: Are you confident with the rules and regulations in place now that the Bakken can be drilled safely?
Sen. Tester: Yeah.
David: Well then let me ask the follow-up question to that. If we sit and put our eggs in the Bakken basket, don't we risk basically having Butte part 2 over again? All this development happens, big towns happen, oil's gone, it collapses. How do we, as a state, look beyond that?
Sen. Tester: I don't know that I say we put all our eggs in the Bakken basket. I think we've got incredible opportunities in wind and solar and renewable energies across the board, but we also need to do right because they can be done wrong, but do those right and expand upon those. I think the Bakken [play], if that's all we're going to look at for energy future, big mistake, big mistake. I think if we developed the Balkan right, there are going to jobs there for many, many years and there can be a level of energy security there for many, many years.
David: But what about the environmentalist movement? There's a number of folks that are really opposed to the pipeline, opposed to drilling the Bakken and ostensibly those people are going to be people who are probably going to want to vote for you and not Denny Rehberg [Tester's opponent in 2012], isn't there a risk that they're not going to show up and turn out to help you?
Sen. Tester: I always think common sense is going to be the deciding factor when it comes to elections and I think, if you develop in a common sense way, everybody can win. That's the basis of my Forest Jobs bill. And there's going to be people on the hard right and the hard left that want it all their way, but that's not practical and it's not common sense. So you've got to be thoughtful about it. You've got to make sure you do it right. You've got to make sure that folks follow the rules.
And if agency folks don't follow the rules, by the way, I don't care if you're talking about benefits for veterans or you're talking about drilling in the Bakken or whatever, that's an important part of the equation. So but no, I think enviros in the end can take a look at what I stand for. You know, it is a good choice, it is a clear choice for them because you've got, on the one hand, the guy [Rehberg] who built the Keystone pipeline, come hell or high water and I'm saying let's use our heads about this. Let's do it right if we're going to do it. And the same thing with drilling in the Balkan, let's do it right.
I searched Tester's Senate press releases, available on his Senate website, for the term "Keystone XL" to further understand his position on Keystone XL. The first mention of the project came in 2010, when Tester questioned TransCanada's request to operate the proposed pipeline at a higher than standard pressure—a request which TransCanada withdrew at Tester's urging. The press release aptly portrays Tester's position on Keystone XL: He wants it built, but with certain restrictions. Completely in step, mind you, with what he told me in fall of 2011 more than a year later.
That's the same pattern you see when reviewing Tester's votes on amendments to Senate Bill 1. Tester supported some amendments mandating that the pipeline to be built with American material and labor. He voted for an amendment clarifying that products produced from tar sands would be subject to federal petroleum excise taxes. He supported an amendment requiring a renewable standard for electricity production. He opposed an amendment requiring the federal home heating assistance program to be funded at a minimum level, and another restricting the transportation of petroleum coke.
Most of these amendments, including those Tester favored, failed. And despite the fact Tester has long supported amendments requiring the use of American labor and material in the construction of Keystone XL, he supported the bill on final passage. To be clear, Tester did not get his ideal Keystone XL bill. But he voted for it anyway—figuring, I suspect, that half a loaf was better than none.
You can see all the roll call votes on the Senate website here.
So, where's the alleged flip flop? As far as I can tell, in my review of previous pieces of legislation and Senate amendments concerning Keystone XL going back to 2011, Tester has always supported the construction of Keystone XL.
The "flip flop" is because Tester did not vote in favor of cutting off debate on Senate Bill 1 says the Montana Republican Party. He's not a Keystone XL "purist" because he favored more debate and more amendments.
Well, a funny thing happens when a party moves from the minority to the majority. Because all of the sudden, positions the party once took become, shall we say, inconvenient.
When Republicans served in the Senate minority in the last Congress, they expressed indignity when Senator Reid did not allow them the courtesy of considering Republican amendments to Democratic-crafted bills. Democrats did not allow the amendment process to run its full course, they said, and they felt debate was rushed and did not consider the minority party's point of view.
Here's Republican Senator Orrin Hatch in a National Journal piece on Harry Reid's ironclad control over the Senate floor agenda, achieved by filling the amendment tree (thereby shutting out the minority party in the amending of legislation): "When the Senate Democratic leadership decides to bring a bill to the floor, far more often than not we are blocked from offering any amendments," Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said on the floor last week." You can access the article here. Republicans, of course, vowed to allow more amendments and greater debate if only voters gave them a majority in the Senate.
Majority status means majority control, and it often means that in order to get things done, you have to shut down debate and control what can and cannot be discussed. It also means limiting the amending process. I'll bet you good money that we'll see far less amend-a-thons on future bills in the Republican-led Senate. The Republicans, while in the minority, doth protest too much.
On this point, the Republican Party's press release was disingenuous. But what followed next was either disturbing or laughable. Take your pick.
One of the amendments voted upon by the Senate AFTER cloture failed was Senator Steve Daines' Senate Amendment 132, which expressed the "sense of Congress" that restrictions should be placed on the president's ability to create National Monuments. You can read the text of the amendment here.
Tester voted no on that amendment—a vote which he never would have taken had the cloture petition succeeded—the same cloture petition that Tester was criticized for voting against in the same press release!
So Tester's faulted for voting against cloture, and then he is criticized for endorsing "President Obama's latest land power grab, allowing Obama to declare land in Phillips County a national monument and immediately halt construction of the Keystone XL pipeline." At least, that's what is spun in the press release. Don't believe it.
Facts are stubborn things. Had Daines' amendment passed, it would have done nothing to change existing statute.
There is no land grab in Phillips County—and even if there was or is, Senator Tester's vote on Senate Amendment 132 certainly didn't express his views on it. At best, Tester voting no suggests that he believes that the executive branch has and should have the power to protect land by declaring it a national monument under the Antiquities Act. Every president since has created at least one National Monument—including Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan. It does not mean he wants President Obama to drop a national monument in Phillips County and stop Keystone XL because HE WANTS KEYSTONE XL BUILT.
The process of legislating is messy, tortuous, and complicated. To truly understand it requires taking each and every vote and placing it into its proper context. To do otherwise represents a gross distortion of the how the Senate and House operate, and at its core, represents elevating a politically-driven narrative at the expense of what Stephen Colbert termed as "truthiness."
Perhaps more importantly, no piece of legislation is perfect. To expect our legislators to vote for the perfect bill asks the impossible. No legislator can or should be held to that standard. But the way in which political operatives abuse roll call records, they aim to make us think there is only one way—the true way—to represent a political position and the interests of a place or a people. Everything else is craven and suspect. I fundamentally object to this standard, and to this particular misrepresentation of legislating. We ought to expect better of civic discussion and discourse.
One final point. Using the logic of the Montana Republican Party as expressed in their press release, I guess Senator Mitch McConnell hates Keystone, too, because he voted against his own cloture motion! He flip-flopped!
Don't believe me? Go look it up here.
No, of course not. He voted against it as a procedural matter so that he could later introduce a possible motion to reconsider on the bill. But hey, context doesn't matter, right?
Regulatory reform has emerged as an important policy area in developing countries. For reforms to be beneficial, regulatory regimes need to be transparent, coherent, and comprehensive. They must establish appropriate institutional frameworks and liberalized business regulations; enforce competition policy and law; and open external and internal markets to trade and investment. This report examines the institutional set-up for and use of regulatory policy instruments in Kenya. It is one of five reports prepared on countries in East and Southern Africa (the others are on Zambia, Uganda, Rwanda, and Tanzania). The report is based on a review of public documents prepared by the government, donors, and the private sector, and on a limited number of interviews with key institutions and individuals.
Regulatory reform has emerged as an important policy area in developing countries. For reforms to be beneficial, regulatory regimes need to be transparent, coherent, and comprehensive. They must establish appropriate institutional frameworks and liberalized business regulations; enforce competition policy and law; and open external and internal markets to trade and investment. This report analyses the institutional set-up and use of regulatory policy instruments in Uganda. It is one of five reports prepared on countries in East and Southern Africa (the others are on Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda and Zambia), and represents an attempt to apply assessment tools and the framework developed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in its work on regulatory capacity and performance to developing countries.
The aim of this study is to convince national and multilateral policy makers of the importance of the public sphere concept for democratic governance and strategic post-conflict assistance planning with the objective of positive and sustainable change in current post-conflict assistance policy and practice. The study introduces the conceptual thinking underlying the public sphere framework and, citing evidence from different countries, highlights its relevance and calls for its application in post-conflict environments. For practitioners the study provides a public sphere assessment toolkit and a toolbox for interventions. It also offers concrete examples and recommendations on how to address the specific governance challenges identified through a public sphere analysis in three countries: Timor-Leste, Liberia and Burundi.
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NDI's Chris Fomunyoh is once again joined by Ambassador Johnnie Carson as they discuss the steps that can be taken to strengthen democracy. They continue their conversation with their thoughts on the key challenges and opportunities facing Africa this year. Find us on: SoundCloud | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | RSS | Google Play Johnnie Carson: When female voices are not heard, the conversation is crippled, the policy is crippled, the institutions are crippled and the results are crippled. Chris Fomunyoh: I'm Chris Fomunyoh, senior associate and regional director for Central and West Africa at the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, NDI. Welcome to this edition of DemWorks.
Again we're joined by Ambassador Johnnie Carson, a proud member of the board of directors of The National Democratic Institute, NDI with a 37 year career in the U.S. Foreign Service focus on Africa. In our previous episode, you spoke about the risk of back sliding. So for this episode, we will focus on the steps that can be taken to strengthen democracy in Africa.
I'd like us to pivot a little bit to the Sahel because in Tanzania we see the back sliding that's coming from political actors themselves, but there's something happening in the Sahel, which is a region in which we see a lot of political commitment to democratic governance, whether it's from the leaders and activists in Niger Republic, in Burkina Faso and in Mali, but at the same time these countries are coming under tremendous pressure from violent extremists who are coming across the desert and destabilizing what would be an emerging democracy and what concerns do you have and how do you think organizations like NDI, like USIP and others that have the self-power expertise, so to speak can contribute to the efforts to counter violent extremism like Sahel and also the whole of Africa?
JC: Chris you're absolutely right and we should all be concerned about outside forces that can come in and destabilize a country, its politics, its economy and its society and across the Sahel we in fact see this happening. The challenges to stability, to democracy to holding free and transparent and creditable elections and having democratic systems that work, are not only challenged by sometimes authoritarian leaders seeking to maintain power and control, we also can see this emerging as a result of exogenous forces coming in from outside, and here we see non-state actors undermining stability across the Sahel, which is creating tension for democracies and tensions for states.
I think one of the things that is absolutely critical in addressing the problems with the Sahel is for government to reconnect with their citizens, to put in place the kinds of services that citizens are looking for and are demanding and expecting. They need to be responsive to the needs that they, citizens believe are not there and they have to have these connections in order to build up resilience, to build up strength against the ideologies and to the negative forces that are brought in by extremist groups.
It is extremists groups across the Sahel are taking advantage of the absence of good services and good connectivity between government and citizens and one of the things that must accompany the security response is in fact a development and government response. Security alone cannot end the problems in the Sahel. It's an important ingredient but the most important ingredient is government going in and establishing responsible connections, providing services, education, healthcare, sanitation, water cattle feeding stations and services that citizens require and are being deprived of.
So one of the things that must be hand in hand and be out front is not the military response and the security response but the governance response, the social service response and if that is absent, the security response will be deficient and will not work.
CF: In fact, I'm so thankful you say that, because I know that you and other members of our board, Secretary Albright, in particular the chair of our board, you've been emphasizing reinforcing this message about democracy and development component as part of the toolkit in conquering violent extremism and in fact, that's the approach that NDI is taking to its work in the Sahel because we currently have ongoing programs in Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso, and our focus, the main focus of that piece of work is on people, processes and the politics and trying to create platforms where governments can reconnect with citizens at a grassroots level.
So in a number of cases we've set up platforms where civil society with legislatures and members of the executive branch, including representatives of the security services get together regularly to figure out what the challenges are in various communities and how to foster inter-communal dialogue and better relationships between the security services and the populations that they seek to serve, because you may remember there was a UN study that said that in many of the cases where violent extremism persist, that 70% of the people who join extremist organizations, are reacting to poor performance by security services and you have paid a lot of attention to Nigerian and the whole Boko Haram phenomenon.
I don't know how this would fit into our conversation with regards to the Sahel as well.
JC: I think it also very pertinent for Nigeria, and I too have seen studies of some very distinguished organizations, Mercy Corps and others that talk about why people are recruited and indeed, the authoritarian sometimes brutal nature of security forces towards communities that they should be protecting drives individuals away from the government and into the hands of Boko Haram.
Even the origin of the current violence in Northern Nigeria has its origins in the brutal extrajudicial killing of Boko Haram's first leader in 2009. His apprehension, his questioning, his interrogation, torture and mistreatment were all recorded on someone's cellphone and became widely seen throughout the country and throughout the north. Two years later, after that event in 2009 we saw and upsurge in 2011 and the activities of Boko Haram and indeed people continued to say that the brutal nature in which the security forces sought to root out Boko Haram, in fact generated more recruits for Boko Haram than it did for support for the government's efforts.
It is absolutely critical, it's absolutely critical that security forces recognize that they have a responsibility to protect the civil liberties and the human rights of the citizens of the state that they are protecting and that the way they treat the individuals in areas that they go into, may have an impact on their ability to ultimately win the conflict, but one thinks of Nigeria and particularly of the North East and there again weak institutions of corruption of lack of social services are all playing a major part in why the conflict in that region continues.
In the north east of Nigeria particularly and the three most affected states, Borno, Yobe and Adamawa. Those three states have the lowest social indicators of any of Nigeria's 36 states, less access to education, to healthcare, to water resources and to jobs and access and this all plays out as well. Governments needs to be responsive to their citizens and while a security response is important, governance and providing social services and the needs to citizens to build resilience is critical as well.
CF: This seems like a good place to take a short break. For well over 35 years NDI has been honored to work side by side with courageous and committed pro-democracy activists and leaders around the world to help contribute to develop the institutions practices and skills necessary for democracy's success.
I realize it's many countries to cover but in the few minutes that are left, I just see if you have any parting words for four countries that we haven't really focused that much on and those are Ethiopia, Kenya, The Democratic Republic of Congo and we'll exit with Cameroon. What are your thoughts?
JC: My thoughts on Ethiopia. It is absolutely essential that those of us who support a democracy and democratic progress lend all of our efforts to those of the Ethiopian government to ensure that the democratic experiment that is underway is successful. Prime Minister Abiy won the Nobel Prize for bringing about peace with Eritrea but the more important thing is that we, outside step up our effort to help him ensure that his legislative elections, this year, are successful and that we do what we can to strengthen his country's democratic progress.
He has appointed and outstanding leader, Birtukan, former opposition leader, spent many years in jail as his country's election commissioner. We need on the outside to provide the kind of technical and financial and advocacy support that she might need to put in place the architecture for running the country's elections. It will in fact be the first real serious elections in that country since the collapse of the Derg in the early 1990s. So it's important that we help do this.
Ethiopia is Africa's second most populous country behind Nigeria and it's important that we help democracy there. It's also a key and strategic state in the region bordering a number of other countries that will look to the success of what happens here. So we need to support.
Kenya, will have elections next year. It is important that there be a continuation in the improvement of the country's electoral agencies. The shadow of the flawed and failed and controversial and violent elections of 2007 and 2008 continue to be a shadow. The controversies associated with the last elections and court decisions there continue to hang over. It is important to continue to support civil society, support the electoral commission and work with the Kenyan government to ensure an outcome.
It appears very clearly that President Kenyatta wants to leave a positive legacy of progress, economically, politically and electorally. This will be a challenge but we should support the process moving forward. The features are still there.
CF: In fact, I should say before end up with the last two countries that for listeners, Ethiopia has got a parliamentary system of government. That's why the parliamentary elections are extremely important, the national elections for Ethiopia and also with regards to Kenya, as you say, President Uhuru Kenyatta would like to leave a good legacy. He's coming to the end of his second term and NDI working with partners on the continent has been very strong on the issue constitutionalism, respect for rule of law. In fact, we had a continent wide conference in Niamey, Niger Republic last October on the whole question of presidential term limits and we'll be having a second conference in Botswana in June to discuss term limits with former African heads of states and various other partners on the continent.
Just to say that, as leaders relinquish power when their terms come to an end, they help consolidate and strengthen democratic practices and institutions. So, with the two remaining countries-
JC: I applaud President Kenyatta for saying very early on that he would adhere to the constitution, he would serve two terms and step down. This is an important message for the most important country in East Africa, especially looking at the neighboring states, particularly Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda where leaders there have found ways to extend themselves in office. He recognizes the importance of transition at the top and allowing the citizens of the country to select new leadership on a constitutional basis rather than trying to alter the constitution to eliminate term limits, age limits and perpetuate themselves in power.
So I hope others in the region are in fact looking at Kenya's model. One jumps across to West Africa and looks at President Paul Biya who's been in power for three decades, plus shows no desire whatsoever to leave office. Here is a man who has lost touch with his citizens and the communities of his country and because he has lost touch with his citizens, because there have been structural deficiencies and weaknesses and the institutions that he is responsible for, we now see a country that is suffering from three or four major political crisis, crisis with the English speaking portion of this country in the south west, the emergence of Boko Haram and radicalism across the border from Nigeria in the north west and problems of herders and farmers driven by drought and climate conditions.
President Biya has lost touch with the needs of his citizens and his government has not been responsive to anyone but himself and a small political elite. I think it is important for the international community to point out the failures and the flaws of his governance, the corruption that underpins it and to support those internally who are pushing for a constitution and political policies that fundamentally change the nature and structure of society, political architecture in society.
CF: You're so right, because that's one country that it's got tremendous potential but that it's not pulling its weight at all and because of its strategic location, invariably weakens other countries in the central Africa sub region, as well as in West Africa too and it's now taking full advantage of what could be real opportunities to improve the wellbeing of its citizens.
We'll be right back after this quick message.
And let's end with the country right in the heart of the continent, The Democratic Republic of Congo. I was in Kinshasa in October and met with political leaders and opinion leaders across the board, civil society, religious leaders who are very powerful in the Congo, very influential and I came away, I should say, a little more optimistic than I was going in. I was quite apprehensive given what has transpired in the 2018 presidential elections but after talking to the Congolese, I got a sense that a genuine attachment to reform.
Everybody wants some reforms of the political process or the electoral process and the key question is whether they are going to be able to set aside their personal agendas and actually get together to help this country, which has got tremendous resources and tremendous potential get back on its feet. I was very impressed by the fact that most of the leaders in Congo are pretty young. I know that you and I have talked about Congo for many, many times and when you were still in the administration you had to deal with some of their crisis.
I don't know what you take is on the present leadership and the present challenges but also the opportunities that present themselves in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
JC: Let me say that The Democratic Republic of the Congo has more unrealized potential than any other large state in Africa and that potential has continued to be in held in check and not realized because of the poor nature of the politics that have occurred there since the 1960s.
The 2018 elections were deeply flawed and irregular and not representative, I think, of the vote of the people. The one thing that one can say about the process that it did lead to President Kabila stepping down and a new younger president, Tshisekedi coming into power. There was immediately after the election a strong feeling that Tshisekedi was going to be instrument of Kabila going forward in that his leadership and his authority and his ability to do things would be substantially constrained. Tshisekedi has shown some degree of independence.
It is again important to recognize that there is little we can do to rerun that election or to reverse it but there is something that all of us can do going forward, and that to put pressure on President Tshisekedi to ensure that the electoral commission is strengthened, it has more independence, more technical capacity and more of an ability to deliver a more responsible, fair and transparent election going forward.
It is also important that he continue the fight against corruption, that he begin to put in place the kind of economic reforms that are going to unleash the potential of the Congo and to provide the people, The Democratic Republic of the Congo an opportunity to realize so many of the opportunities that they have been denied in the past. He has shown more independence than I thought but it is important that he not stop, that he continue to move forward, that he open up political space and continue to open it up for civil society, for the opposition, for the media, that he not constrain but unleash the country's potential and that he continue to show both in reality and fact his independence away from Kabila and those who were around him in the past.
He will be judged on the next four years very keenly, but it's important that the institutions of democracy to the extent that we can help civil society strengthen them, that they be nurtured and pushed forward. Elections and democracy...Democracy doesn't depend essentially, solely on elections. It is institutions that must be strengthened and we can help the DRC and civil society move those forward.
Again, working effectively with religions groups, Catholic Church, a very powerful instrument, working with women's groups, with working youth groups across the DRC and working with an emerging entrepreneurial class of young Congolese as well. We have to nurture and strengthen and push them forward. These next elections will be able to tell us whether there's been progress. President Tshisekedi needs to continue to move forward.
CF: Thank you very much Ambassador Johnnie Carson. It's really been an honor to have you do this tutor for us on the entire continent. Of course there still would always be ground to cover. As you were speaking, I thought about what late President John F Kennedy said about democracy as a never ending endeavor, and so NDI and similar organizations will continue to work side by side with our African partners to make sure that we can support them, give them the support and share experiences that they need so that we can all collectively, continue to work to strengthen and support democracy in countries like the DRC, Ethiopia, Sudan and across the entire continent.
Thank you also for being a member of our board of directors. We are extremely proud of that and extremely proud of the partnership that NDI has with USIP and hope that our two organizations would continue to work together to support the growth of democracy across Africa and to our listeners, can I just say thank you for sharing in this edition of DemWorks, to follow our next podcast. Please check us out on our website www.NDI.org.
Transcript of an oral history interview with Robert D. Forger conducted by Joseph Cates at Forger's home in Newtown, Connecticut, on 16 March 2016 as part of the Norwich Voices oral history project of the Sullivan Museum and History Center. Robert D. Forger was a member of the Norwich University Class of 1949. The bulk of his interview focuses on the history and development of his relationship with Norwich University, including as a student, alumnus, and trustee. ; 1 Robert Forger, NU '49, Oral History Interview March 16, 2016 At His Home in Newtown, Connecticut Interviewed by Joseph Cates, of the Norwich Oral History Project JOSEPH CATES: Mr. Forger, Bob, can you please state your full name and date and place of your birth? ROBERT FORGER: Robert D. Forger, May 24, 1928, in Norwalk, Connecticut. JC: Talk a little bit about growing up in Norwalk. RF: I grew up in Westport. Westport did not have a hospital. And for years we could get our birth certificates in Westport but then they stopped. If you were born in Norwalk, you can't do it. (Laughs) JC: (Laughs) RF: That was a wonderful place to grow up in. It was a town of about 5,000 people. I went to a high school that took in students from two other towns and had a graduating class of about 96, almost 100. And 11 were from one other town and 13 were from the other town, so the other 75 were from Westport. I got a wonderful preparation there. We had a very, very good faculty. If you can believe this, I learned all my English from the Latin teacher. I took four years of Latin. We had to diagram the sentences. Latin sentences. And I had an English teacher whom I had for three years who was hung up on the classics, so we learned very little English, but we sure know all of Shakespeare and everybody else. (Laughs) And I got a good preparation because when I went off to Norwich, the curriculum as a chemist, I had to take trigonometry. And I said, "But I've had trigonometry." Oh, no, you haven't had trigonometry like this. This is really …, so you have to take it. So, I took it and got a 98 and the instructor said to me when it was all over, he said, "You know, I think you've had this subject before." And I said, "I certainly have." (Laughs) JC: What made you decide to go to Norwich? RF: I went to the physical – I wanted to go to West Point and I have a military bend and nobody in the family knows from whence it came. And I wanted to go to West Point and as a junior in high school I flunked the physical because of astigmatism in one of the eyes in which they would not give a waiver. And it was very difficult to get into it at that time because the war was on and everybody wanted to get in and be protected for four years or maybe the three-year curriculum they were doing at the time. So, our local dentist said, "Why don't 2 you go up the Norwich?" I knew nothing about Norwich but his nephew, who practiced not very far from where we are now, had gone there, Class of '39, and had become a dentist and he said, "You ought to go there." So, I applied. We went up to take a look at the place and I got accepted. JC: Okay. This is a question for you. Tell me a little bit about your rook year, about being a rook. RF: I think it was pretty darn easy. JC: (Laughs) RF: I don't think it was bad. A lot of people complained about it but I had read some stories about what went on at West Point, I had a book West Point Today about what they had to go through. As long as you didn't try to think as an individual, and not do what they wanted you to do, you were fine. One of my experiences was, they came in, and I doubt they do this today, came into our room. My roommate, myself, they turned the heat up on high and said, "At 9:30 we're going to have everybody in here." And they had everybody in our room and you had to bring your blankets, you had to wear your mackinaw, wear your blanket – wrapped in a blanket and it was so darn hot in that room and then you had to jump up and down, singing "God Bless America." At 10:00 (inaudible) [0:05:08], everybody left. They left our room in shambles. And we had to get up at 4:30 in the morning to straighten it out for inspection. (Laughs) But that was – and that was not a bad experience, it wasn't bad at all. JC: You were also in a fraternity. Tell me about that. RF: Sigma Phi Epsilon, Sig Ep. In the building where the president now lives. That wasn't as plush as it is now. They've added to it since those days. And it was interesting because nobody was around fraternities in my freshman year and they rushed the new pledges in October of my sophomore year. And the house president got up, I understand, later. He said – now you have to remember, they were all civilians, because Norwich took in anyone who had been there before. To come back in civilian clothes and finish up his education. Didn't have to wear a uniform. Didn't have to participate in the military. Really a very good decision, I think. And, he said, told them, "You have to remember, we're a military school and our future is military. And you guys shouldn't be voting in people who are civilians now, just because they're your friends. You've got to stick with the military." Sig Ep took in five cadets and we were the most cadets, we were down there with cadets with 45 other civilians. (Laughs) And, we developed from there. But it was a really wise thing to say, because some of the fraternities took in only two and that was, I think, a mistake on their part. JC: Well, how did you feel about when they did away with the fraternities? 3 RF: Mixed emotions. It was sort of a second-class citizenship, particularly athletically because we had a troop league and when I left there were six troops. A headquarters troop, which was the band, and five line troops. And we had an athletic league with the troops and an athletic league with the fraternities. And it ended up that the guys who were left behind in the troops, they just felt like second class citizens. They didn't play with the big boys. And I think that was one divisive effect that the fraternities had. But it was a great place to go and to relax. When you went through the front door, why military was out the window. But when you went out the front door, your tie better be straight and your cap on right and in everything else, the military prevailed. JC: Now, you said there was an incident that happened that caused the fraternities to be done away with. RF: Yes, this was what – I left in June of '49 and early '50 when General Harmon came on board as the president. And I believe it was Winter Carnival that year and one of the fraternities, a guy in a drunken stupor went headlong down the stairs and did damage to his neck and his back and everything else and lost a semester of school because of the injuries. And that was the catalyst for Harmon getting rid of the fraternities. He – it took him a while, but he usually gets his way. (Laughs) JC: What is your – what do you remember most about your years at Norwich? RF: I think the camaraderie. I think it was a wonderful small school. I made so many friends. It was the type I liked and could live with and getting up at 6 or 6:15, that kind of thing, it – the rules and regulations never bothered me. I may have been an exception but I never walked a tour in my life. When it was O.D. (?) [0:10:05] my senior year, I can remember the temperature – 10 degrees in the middle of winter, starting a tour line with a hundred guys in it. (Laughs) JC: (Chuckles) RF: And they had a system, which I overlooked at the time, I knew what was happening. The first three guys in the line would peel off and go into Alumni Hall. Now when the line came around again, the next three or five or whatever number they had decided on, would peel off and the other ones would come back out, get at the end of the line. Because it was so darn cold. JC: (Laughs) Now, Homer Dodge was president when you were a student. RF: Yes. JC: Tell me about that. 4 RF: I don't think he was – in retrospect, I didn't have that much of an insight. I don't think he was a very effective president. He was – he wore a uniform, but that was about it. He didn't know how to wear it. He was an eminent physicist and – well we had Fuzzy Woodbury. We had a good physics department. He was the wrong guy for the job. And we finally got to him and he realized he wasn't doing anything. Fortunately, we had a guy, in fact two of them, that were commandants and assistant commandants that really kept the Norwich activity going. And some of the guys that returned, some of the veterans, I can remember the veterans getting after it. They got dressed up in their uniforms and they got all the sophomores together and they said, "We see that you're violating some of the traditions and these are what they are." And one of them was Jack O'Neil. "These are what they are and you've got to start living by them." JC: Tell me about when Eisenhower came to the commencement and gave the commencement address. RF: I don't remember anything about the commencement address, but it was allegedly his first or maybe only one of his first appearances in 1946. In my freshman year, we had three graduates. Who – how they did it – but finished up their last year and their last semester. And Eisenhower came, both senators were with him. JC: (Laughs) RF: As you might expect. And the one thing I do remember is the pushing match he got into with President Dodge. In the military, the lowest ranking guys get in the car first. And the highest ranking last, so he can be the first one out of the car. And Homer Dodge would not let – he would not precede Eisenhower. And Eisenhower solved the issue by putting the palm of his hand in the back of Dodge's back and propelling him into the car. And it worked pretty well. But that's the only thing I really remember about the commencement. JC: Tell me about some of the professors that really had an influence on your life. RF: Well, I think there were probably two. Both junior chemistry professors. They were probably only instructors at the time. And one was Bill Nichols, who taught most of the advanced organic and inorganic. He was only here the one year I was there, in my senior year. He taught most of the organic and inorganic advanced classes. Whereas, the other professors taught the physical chemistry, the more difficult courses. He was a great guy and the other was Jack O'Neil who was a senior when I was a junior and a senior only because he came back. He was the Class of '44 and returned after the war. He ran most of the labs down in the bottom of Dodge Hall. He was a true Norwich guy. And one of the things I think that proved it was when our son, Gary, went up to Norwich, he was the Class of '75. When he went up in '71, we were in the orientation line and Jack O'Neil comes up and said "hi" to me and shook hands with Gary and he said, "Things get pretty rough up there. If you need some relief any time, here's my telephone 5 number. I live right down the street. Give me a call and come on over and get away from it all." And that was really a very nice thing to do. JC: What does the idea of the citizen soldier mean to you? RF: This is a put-up question, because this is something I answered on the questionnaire that your predecessor sent out. JC: Yes. It's on the first page. RF: Read it. "Citizen soldier" by my definition is an individual with a strong interest in the military, who is willing to act in the secondary line of military preparedness, rather than full-time service. Now, that was true in my day. And up until the second Gulf War started. It really isn't true anymore because anyone who is in the national guard or the reserves is going to get called one way or another. JC: Now, you served in the reserves from 1949 to '72, correct? RF: '72, yes. JC: Can you talk a little bit about that? About being in the reserves. RF: It was a nice experience, a great experience. I got some fairly good jobs out of it. I was with a tank battalion in Stamford and the C.O. was a 1934 graduate from the University of Massachusetts. I went to my first meeting and a guy sidles up to me and he says, "You know, that isn't an army uniform. That's a Norwich uniform." I didn't have any uniforms. I graduated in June and this was a September meeting and who was this guy but Phil Marsilius. JC: Oh. (Laughs) RF: (Laughs) Who was the emeritus chairman of the board. He was the S2 of the battalion. And the next day when he brings up another guy and introduces him to me, he's the S3 and it's Tommy, they called him in those days, Andy I always knew him as, Andy Boggs, who was the Class of '44 and who was the S3. (Laughs) JC: (Laughs) RF: And I got this C.O. that I had, I got some good jobs out of it that proved to be good because I could do them. And, he went to summer camp with the Norwich guys. And he was ROTC, not military. ROTC such as Norwich. And he told me later, he gave me these jobs because those Norwich guys could do anything. And he observed it at camp, at his summer camp, they could do anything. And we had 6 two Norwich guys. We had a bunch of lieutenants who had just come in when I left the tank battalion. And he – so I got some pretty good jobs out of it. JC: Where did you go to summer camp? RF: Ft. Meade, Maryland. And we spent a week down at A.P. Hill in Virginia, living in tents in rain storms and everything, because they didn't have a range big enough. That was the closest range large enough to fire the tank guns. Now I guess they all go out to Washington some place, Ft. Lewis, I think. JC: Oh, yes. RF: And of course, we were at, in those days, I got a commission at Armored Cavalry Reserve. Now I think you get branch and material and you sort of get your branch when you graduate, but I'm not sure. JC: I know if they're in ROTC, they pick which branch for ROTC now. If they want to go navy ROTC – RF: Oh, yes. See, we didn't have any navy or any air force. And when our son was there a year and with us paying the money for him, he got offered an air force ROTC scholarship for the last three years. Which we spoke to him and said, "You've got to serve five or six years or whatever," and he turned it down. JC: Now, one thing I wanted to ask you was – you were at Norwich when they still had the horse cavalry, correct? RF: Correct. JC: Can you talk a little bit about that? RF: (Laughs) Well, I was a stellar horseman. They brought back the horses at the end of our sophomore year, the summer between sophomore and junior. As the graduate, you had to take equitation. So, I took equitation in my junior year and my claim to fame was I led the class in being thrown. JC: (Laughs) RF: (Laughs) My roommate at the time was about 5'4" and every day – every Thursday when we went down for equitation, he got assigned the biggest horse, Burma. And he couldn't get up on the darn horse, because he fixed the stirrups the way you had to and they watched over you and made sure you did this, and he couldn't get up on the horse. And they had to boost him up. It was an interesting experience and something I really didn't want to continue. And they took the horses away at the end of our junior year. So, it was over. 7 JC: They came and they went within about a year. RF: Yes. JC: Now, how did Norwich prepare you for life? RF: I think it brought out the – my leadership aspects. I think I had some during elementary and junior high school. I think perhaps they faded in high school but they sure brought them out in being willing to step in and do something and to take charge when you had to. And I'm really quite proud of – when the organization of Society of Plastics Engineers that I was executive director for the last 22 years of my civilian career, I had a president whom I was not close and some you get very close to and others you don't. At the annual meeting, after I retired, he asked me to make sure I was at the annual meeting, he had a poem that he did that went on and on and on, citing really my whole life. And at the end, he said he left us with many attributes. He represented us well in the plastics industry, he did this, he did that. But most of all, was his leadership that we value. And that was brought out later on by a couple of people that I was not particularly close to. (Laughs) They told my son, who ended up with the same organization, they told my son, "We really miss your father, because he always did what he said he would do and he did it on time and we knew exactly where we stood on every issue." JC: Another question that we ask everybody in these oral histories is what does the Norwich motto "I Will Try" mean to you? RF: I really don't know. I think it means you'll do the very best you can under any circumstances, whatever circumstances may confront you. And we use it here every day. I go out in the car and I leave Eleanor behind and she says to me, she says, "Drive safely," and I always reply with, "I will try." (Laughs) JC: So, what did you do after you left Norwich? RF: I only worked for two companies in my life. One was Dorr-Oliver, which was involved in the separation of liquids and solids, starting with ores but later got into sewage and water treatment and things such as that. And then for 33 years with the Society of Plastics Engineers. Which I got aimed into with the only two electives I ever had in my life at Norwich. I was ordered with 84 or 86 credits in chemistry and so much in math and physics and all this stuff and I took a course from Peter Dow Webster; a semester of advertising and a semester of public relations. And I enjoyed it. And I ended up doing this with Dorr-Oliver after I left the lab. And I applied for some way to do this kind of thing, with the Society of Plastics Engineers and got the job at SPE. And I did virtually every job – the meetings manager, and the local sections and divisions coordinator, the publisher of four magazines, associate executive director and then, finally, executive director. 8 JC: So, you didn't go to Korea right after – you ended up with deferment, correct? RF: Correct. (Laughs) JC: Now, how did that happen? RF: I was with Dorr-Oliver in the labs and I got called into active duty. And they said this kind of thing could happen and the personnel director put up a statement that if any of you are called to active duty, let us know immediately. And I got called to be a filler second lieutenant in a Tennessee tank battalion. And down south, your country. (Laughs) JC: (Laughs) RF: And so, they put in, or I had to put in for it but they backed it up through the Department of Mines or the Department of the Interior. And I got strictly a political deferment. And I was the first one to get the deferment and they never lost anybody in the Korean War. And interestingly enough, the deferment was signed by I.D. White, who was the chief of staff for the second army, a major general in Governors Island. And he put a handwritten note on it. "I certainly don't enjoy giving a deferment to a Norwich man." (Laughs) JC: (Laughs) I can understand that. Now, talk a little bit about what you did at Dorr-Oliver. RF: I was – as a result of the courses I took with advertising and public relations and getting back to my high school chemistry teacher, I wasn't – chemistry was not my bag and how he recognized it, I don't know. I said I would like to get into advertising or public relations and they discouraged me. They said, "Well, we just hired a second guy for the ad department. So, chances are you're not going to do it." And four years later when the deferment was no longer necessary, they had an opening and I went down there as the third person in the ad department. After a merger, I went with my boss who was the ad director, who became the ad director of public relations at the revised corporation, and got involved in being the liaison for the technical and engineering societies and the technical publications. And that's what I gravitated into and then applied to SPE for a somewhat similar type of job, and got that job. JC: And, so you continued doing that type of work for SPE and then became the executive director. RF: For a short time. And then with changes and everything, why I ended up doing meetings when the meetings manager left. I ended up doing division when they had nobody to do the technical divisions, only because I had a technical 9 background. And I ended up as an associate executive director and then when my boss got fired, I got the job. JC: Let me see – RF: Can I interject something here? JC: Yes. Absolutely. RF: I believe I was at Norwich in a very transitional time. In fact, as I look back on it, it was – you'd never know what was coming next. When I went there, we had one dormitory, Hawkins, filled with cadets. And we took in, in the summer of '49, about 50 cadets who started in July and then about 50 others who started in September. And, I made a count of this, as it might be of interest. The ones that came in July, only 16 graduated. And in my class, the September class, only 11 graduated. JC: Oh, really? RF: We were losing guys like crazy to the draft. And I was young enough so I didn't get drafted until the war was – I didn't get – I didn't have to sign up for the draft until after V.E. Day and then V.J. Day came and they were drafting people – they evidently didn't need me. The mistake the other guys made was going up to Montpelier to register for the draft. And in two weeks they might pick them off because they came from Long Island City or Aurora, New York or someplace they weren't locals. And seeing this, I went home to Westport to register for the draft. Where they knew me. (Laughs) JC: (Laughs) RF: For some reason, I never came up or they never had the quotas to fill or whatever. But, we had, at one dorm full of Norwich cadets. We had two dorms, I don't know what they call it now, it's Cabot, the one right next to it at the time. It might be Goodyear or something. With – in Alumni Hall, we had four companies of fast tracks, army reserves specialized training guys who they sent to college for a year or so and then when they needed infantry troops they pulled them right out. They were -- at the end of my first year, they were gone. And we had enough when the Class of '50 came in, to fill two dormitories, Cabot and Hawkins. And in Cabot – in Hawkins, pardon me, in Hawkins they had a veteran troop; some guys that wanted to take ROTC but came back – but they had to wear a uniform if they took ROTC. And we had the veterans living in Alumni and fill/Phil/Bill (?) [0:31:02] Jackman Hall. And in my third year, why the cadets took over Alumni Hall. And, we had the veterans just in Jackman. And my fourth year, we had a few of the overflow senior bucks living in Jackman with the veterans because we didn't have enough room with the three existing dormitories. But it was – I went 10 through my yearbook and made a count. I had a hundred thirty-six in the class. And we had 27 that started that went through for four years and graduated – JC: And graduated. RF: -- as you would normally expect. And it was very, very transitional and very unusual. You'd never know what was coming next. In my sophomore year, we were loaded with veterans. They could wear their uniforms if they wanted to, if they didn't have civilian clothes. We had five lieutenant colonels walking around the campus. (Laughs) JC: (Laughs) RF: Which was unusual. JC: You were also involved a lot in the Alumni Association. RF: Yes. JC: Can we talk about that a little bit? RF: Yes. I – somebody put my name in to run for the alumni board. This was like 1983. No, '81. And at that time, they had an election. They nominated three reasonably recent graduates and two were elected and two of the old timers, in which classification I fit in. And two of the three in both classes were elected. But, the problem was, the guy who was the oldest class, always lost, because nobody knew him. And, so, I was on the alumni board for three years and the system was, it may still be, that at the end of three years and four years, those eight guys were eligible and we have girls on there now, were eligible to be elected president of the alumni board. And we knew who was going to be elected. A fourth-year guy who had seemed to be in line forever. And, a third-year guy came up to me and asked me if he was going to run for alumni president and would I support him? And I made an immediate decision. He'd been on the board and never done a darn thing in my estimation and I had done a number of things. When I said, no, I couldn't support him because I was going to run. And, fortunately, we had every preponderance of Boston people and the rest from around the country, although not many outside New England. And I ended up splitting the Boston vote and I had three people in the Boston group whom I knew, who were my contemporaries, and I'm sure they voted for me. And it ended up we had 19 that voted and I got 10 so I got the majority in the first ballot. That was it. I also got hell from my wife when I told her. She said, "You never mentioned it." I said, "No, not until last night was I even thinking about running for office." (Laughs) And she didn't have the right clothes. (Laughs) JC: (Laughs) 11 RF: And then from there, usually the outgoing alumni president is elected the alumni trustee for that year. And in the other year, when there's an outgoing president, it's somebody else who the alumni board recognizes is worth being an alumni trustee. JC: So, you were on the board of trustees? RF: For a five-year term. JC: Five-year term. RF: Yes. JC: And what was that like being on the board of trustees? RF: Oh, it was very interesting. There had to be the five alumni trustees but of the 30 of them, even the board, there were 22 of them that were alumni to begin with. And they supported the president very fairly, particularly when you had a take charge guy like Russ Todd, and I would guess, Harmon and Hart, President Hart. He was there between Harmon and Russ Todd. But it was interesting and I think this is where we were interrupted, that I tangled with Russ three times when I was on the board of trustees. I look upon it as I won one, I lost one and we tied one. (Laughs) JC: (Laughs) RF: The first was when he had the bright idea that we should form a Norwich University savings and loan association. And it could be a bank and put out loans to parents who wanted to bankroll their kids to go to Norwich. And I think I tied that one. Fred Haynes and myself of the Haynes Stadium were the only two that voted against it. But, within a year, they had the savings and loan association in crisis and they ended up selling of -- giving the very infantile savings and loan association they had to the bank which is now ensconced down there by – was down there by the alumni center. I think that one I won decisively. When I was chairman of the alumni board we did a survey of eight colleges that we had considered our equals, our size, Middlebury, Babson, I can't think of any of the others, St. Lawrence. We had two people on the board go to each school and ask certain questions as to how what they did – (break in audio) RF: We did this survey and compared how we stacked up with other schools in a number of different things that the Alumni Association did. And I was only on the board for one year. I was only a trustee for one year. And Russ came up with the idea that we would get a – we would subscribe to some kind of alumni magazine where we had a four page insert, all the rest would be "pat" material. 12 And a number of previously prepared and published that a number of schools did. And I called to his attention that we had done this survey and he had seen it and we stacked up very well with our alumni communications, in other areas we did not. But the communications – and they like the Alumni Record the way it was. And I said, "I think we're going to do this." His only comment was, "I hear you," and he dropped it. We never had anymore – Of course, the third thing I tangled with him on was when President Schneider came. And what they did was, they kept Russ on the board of trustees. And the Alumni Affairs Committee of the board the trustees felt this was wrong. The alumni association thought this was wrong. And that he should not be on the board when the new president arrived. I guess I didn't do a very good job with my point earlier with remaining Norwich graduates around, Russ insisted on leaving the room and I said, "I don't want you to because I'm not going to say anything I wouldn't say to your face." We ended up starting to discuss it and somebody made a motion that we elect him to the board of trustees and have somebody resign so it would be a vacancy. I said, "I resign everything." And I said, "This is the wrong way to do it." And I moved to table the motion until the next meeting. And the chairman at the time didn't even hear my motion. And I said, "This is a parliamentary motion and it supersedes all others." Which is does. And he just didn't even listen to me and he called for the vote and he was elected to the board of trustees. (Laughs) And he was on it until he was 70. And it was interesting because shortly thereafter we played our last game with Middlebury, football game, which was a very disappointing thing that we should give up or have to give up that rivalry which was over one hundred years and only because the conference that Middlebury was in, the Little Ivy League, said that you can only play within your own conference. And, my gosh, we get a call from Carol Todd – were we coming up for the game. And we said, "Yes." And she said, "Will you stay with us." (Laughs) JC: (Laughs) RF: And this was a month after my tangling with him. (Laughs) JC: (Laughs) RF: And all my son could say was, "Who is going to taste your food." (Laughs) JC: (Laughs) RF: But we've come along very, very well with the Todds. And he was, he was a good president, a very good president. JC: Now, you were also a proponent of merging with Vermont College, correct? RF: Yes. 13 JC: Can you talk about that a little bit? RF: (Laughs) It was very difficult to enact. I ended up, and I kept my secretary at SPE busy for a week, writing letters. And I wrote to the class agent of all the five-year classes and we substituted the name of VC class agent in the Norwich letters and the Norwich class agent in the VC letters trying to get them to coalesce. And this was, I think my last year on the alumni board. The only person I was successful in getting to march with our class was my lady. (Laughs) JC: (Laughs) RF: And she marched with the Class of '50. And some guy says, "Where did you come from? I never knew any girls in my class." JC: (Laughs) RF: And we got to our reunion and he wasn't having a reunion and he got there and at the start, he got up before we started the program, and he said, "Bob, I would" -- in front of everybody, -- he said, "Bob, I wouldn't have said what I did if I realized she was your wife." And he says, "I apologize." And Eleanor jumped up and she said, "You don't apologize to him, you apologize to me!" (Laughs) JC: (Laughs) RF: His wife got up and laughed at him and said, "That's wonderful!" (Laughs) JC: (Laughs) Let me think, what else do I want to ask you about. Life milestones. What are your major milestones in life? Can you talk about those? RF: Well, (Laughs) I was among the first to advocate a VC/Norwich union. And did so by marrying a gal who was the Class of 1950 from Vermont College. If I got the wrong year there, she'd kill me for that. (Laughs) JC: I'll fix it on mine. RF: And we had – a number of other people did. And I think it was just very natural that you had a boy's school and essentially a girl's school 10 miles away. And it worked out very well. And the girl's school were willing to relax their rules whenever we had a dance or a big weekend or something such as that. But, let me tell you, it was difficult enough having to ring a quarter of ten every Saturday night. (Laughs) JC: (Laughs) RF: Of course, I dated her only during her freshman year. During her second year, I was gone. (Laughs) 14 I think another milestone was having our son, Gary go to Norwich. Although he was not necessarily in accord with us. (Laughs) JC: (Laughs) RF: He was, unfortunately, he was a very good student, but he tested poorly in the SATs. And he applied for college when they were integrating some of the men's colleges, such as Bowden or Middlebury where he wanted to go. And they were also – with females and they were also integrating them with as far as the Afro-Americans go and diverse Americans. So, he said, when a gal got accepted to Middlebury, he ranked something like eighth in his class out of 250. And a gal who was way down in the ratings got accepted at Middlebury and all he could say was, "She took my place." And it was probably true. And Norwich was a safety school. And he went there and went through. Unfortunately, he doesn't have the love for the place that I do. And I think part of that is because of his wife. And she just doesn't have anything to do with the military and that kind of thing. And the reunion, when I was at his reunion. It falls the same five years as Eleanor's and it was – he was up there for a reunion and it was when I was the alumni president and placed the wreathes on the graves and gave some of the awards and everything. And it was Eleanor's reunion year. And he was there and he drifts in after the alumni parade was over and after everything is over, with his buddy. And said, "We just didn't get up early enough." Which to me was crazy. And I don't think he's ever been back. I think that's the only reunion he was ever back for. And Dave Whaley, he's having a hell of a job getting any money out of him! (Laughs) JC: (Laughs) I'm sure. And you have another son, Jeffrey, correct? RF: Another son, Jeffrey and he said, "You don't think I'm going to go to Norwich and be a rook, when my brother is the regimental supply officer." (Laughs) JC: (Laughs) RF: He said, "It's just not going to happen." He loved Norwich. He went four years to the summer camp so he says that's his alumni. And he loved the athletic department. He learned to play soccer there and he was a star of the Wilton High School soccer team, as the goalie. He – Joe Sable and Wally Baines were just his ideals. They were the ones that ran the summer camp. And another thing that I could mention, the Norwich camaraderie. This flyer came for summer camp and I said, "Well, maybe the boys would like to go." And at the dinner table, I brought it up. I said, "There's a camp at Norwich. You may like to go. I'll drop it on your bed." And they said, "No way." And a week later, they came to me and said, "You know, we think we'd like to do it." So, they did it. And the first week they were up there, it shows how soft-hearted they are, the first week they were up there, they called home on Sunday and reversed the charges, of course. Called home on Sunday and they 15 were both in tears. First time they'd ever been away from home, and (inaudible) [0:11:14], and who walks by but (inaudible) Wally Baines. He says, "What's your problem?" And they said, "Well, we're talking to him at home." He took the phone, he says, "They're finished talking with you. We're going to put them to work." (Laughs) JC: (Laughs) RF: My son, Gary went back another year and Jeffrey went back three years they enjoyed it so much. And Gary called at the start of his sophomore year, and he said, "I can't believe what they're doing to these rooks." He was almost in tears. He said, "They shouldn't be doing this." I said, "Well, Gary, you went through this and it makes them better people." He said, "Yes, but I don't like to see them do it." He was just soft-hearted. (Laughs) JC: (Laughs) Now, he graduated in '75. RF: '75, yes. JC: And Bob Hope was the commencement speaker. RF: Yes. JC: Do you want to talk about that a little bit? RF: Well, that was – Gary told us, for almost a year in advance, Hope was going to be their commencement speaker. And I said, "That's crazy. Bob Hope is not going to Norwich-- (Laughs) JC: (Laughs) RF: -- to be the commencement speaker." And, sure enough, he was. And came strutting in, typical Bob Hope. (Laughs) Making remarks to the audience and everything and it was just a wonderful occasion. The great disappointment was you could get up front and take a picture of your graduate getting their diploma from Hope. Which I did. And the development company that took – we had them developed – lost the negative. So, he doesn't have that. JC: Oh, goodness! Tell me about some of the places that you've traveled. You said you traveled to England, France, Switzerland, Germany, Portugal, Ireland, Canada and Mexico. RF: Some of these were vacation. Some were business. And all of them, Eleanor went along. I think the greatest trip we ever had, I was involved in an organization, The Council of Engineering and Scientific Society Executives – who were guys who were executive directors like myself. About 130 in the U.S. 16 and Canada. I ended up as president of the organization in about 1987, I guess it was. And, they had their annual meeting in San Francisco. And it was the year I came in a vice president. And we left home and went out to San Francisco for the annual meeting on Monday. We went out and it was over on Thursday night. And on Friday, we flew home. On Saturday – it takes all day to get back from the West coast. On Saturday, Eleanor did the laundry, I did the lawn. And on Sunday, we left for my counterpart in Great Britain, the British Isles, his retirement party. We went over on the Concorde. Went to his retirement party and came back on the QE2. So, that was the most eventful two weeks we ever had. JC: I bet it was something flying on the Concorde. RF: Yes. Well, we left at noon from Kennedy and we got over there in time to have dinner. Which, otherwise, it's an overnight flight. JC: Oh, yes. I've done that one a couple of times. RF: And, the other countries -- we were bitten on cruises, both with our close friends and our closest friends over the years, have always been (inaudible) [0:15:24] alumni, the guys that I was associated with and their wives. One time, there were 18 of us, there are only four of us left now. And well two others that moved a long distance away. And we went on a cruise with them. And then we went on a cruise with Bro Park who used to be the alumni – used to be the PR director at Norwich. Organized after he left Norwich. And there was the Mediterranean and we went to Alaska. And for our 50th anniversary, we took a cruise from the Hawaii Islands through the Hawaiian Islands and up to Victoria, British Columbia. And that's the way we got to a lot of these places. Mexico, we went to because we had two sections down there that we visited. And never were we so glad to get back to this country and be able to have a salad and some good water in New Orleans. (Laughs) JC: (Laughs) Well, there's always good food in New Orleans. RF: Oh, yes. JC: What is your favorite memory of Norwich? RF: I don't think I could pick it out. JC: (Laughs) RF: I have – no really, I have so many good memories that I couldn't have one above the other. JC: Well, is there one of those memories that we haven't talked about? 17 RF: I don't know. No, I don't think so. I think maybe this time we didn't – well, it's not a favorite memory, it's a humorous memory. I don't think we talked about it. Some of the veterans, in either – I think it was the beginning of my junior year, pulled out by the roots, the parking meter in Montpelier. And they came and installed it in President Dodge's private parking spot. Dug it into the ground and everything. And we got up in the morning for reveille and here's the parking meter. (Laughs) JC: (Laughs) RF: Which the Montpelier Police came over and traded it at a later date. JC: Well, let me ask you this. What was it like being a teenager during World War II? RF: Well, (Laughs) I was too young to get my driver's license until my senior year. But I think the biggest thing was the lack of transportation. And I was on the football team in my senior year, and we had to take a common carrier, a bus that -- had to get dressed, walk up to the bus route, then get on the bus, common carrier, to go to Fairfield. And get off the bus and walk to their field because you couldn't get enough parents that had enough gas coupons and or you couldn't hire a bus because they couldn't get the gas for a football game. So, -- (Laughs) JC: Was there anything else that you'd like to add, that we haven't talked about? RF: I'll think of all of them after you leave. JC: (Laughs) RF: That will happen you know. JC: That will happen. Let me see if there's anything I haven't – we haven't discussed. RF: I enjoyed my days in the Army Reserve. The tank battalion I was in, we had a great bunch of officers. But the enlisted men we had were out of the bowels of Bridgeport. And these guys, you never knew what kind of a scrape they were going to get into or anything, but they were the best damn enlisted men. I was a supply officer for the battalion. We got ready to turn in our equipment and (Laughs) we were short something like 40 gas cans. Where would 40 gas cans go? The resupply sergeant said, "Don't worry. Me and the boys will have them by morning." And I go over at 6:30 in the morning and here's the 40 gas cans. Lined up. And you know where they got them. (Laughs) JC: (Laughs) 18 RF: I've seen them – I've seen them stop a jeep, two of them, stop a jeep and ask directions. And in the confusion and everything, the first one is talking to the driver and the other one unhitches that gas tank off the back and that's the way they got them. (Laughs) JC: (Laughs) RF: They could do anything, really. And the battalion commander thought I could get anything done. (Laughs) And it was only because of these guys – JC: Yes. RF: -- that did it. JC: Well, can you think of anything else? RF: No. I'm very pleased of graduating from the general's staff school. After I'd been in the reserves maybe two or three years. I said, "I'm going to do 20 years." I said, "I'm going to go to the command and general staff school, and, I'm going to make lieutenant colonel." And I made all three of those. JC: So, you retired a lieutenant colonel. RF: And, as you might say, I'm on the dole now, because I did 20 years and it wasn't until about 19 – no 2002 that Senator Warner from Virginia said, "You have to treat retired reservists the same as the regular army reservists." And up until that time, I was on my own for health care and everything else. That action by the congress -- I got Tricare and prescriptions paid for and every other darn thing. So, what was so – and I think, now deceased Senator Warner, who was Elizabeth Taylor's last husband I think. (Laughs) JC: (Laughs) RF: I think that's about it. JC: Okay. Well, I thank you very much for this interview. It will be a great addition to our collection. And I will --
Stvaranje Evropske unije bespovratno je narušilo tradicionalno ustrojstvo drţava, pa i samog meĊunarodnog poretka. Uspostavljanje strukture koja obuhvata više centara moći u okviru kojih se (ne)ravnopravno donose odluke od znaĉaja za ţivot graĊana, uticalo je na slabljenje nacionalnih, a nedovoljnu samostalnost nadnacionalnog nivoa unutar nje. Stalno pregovaranje i lobiranje na kojima poĉiva Unija pruţa mogućnost za ostvarivanje ciljeva pojedinih interesnih grupa i drţava. Koncept demokratije je ovakvim stanjem najviše izgubio. Pojаm demokrаtije je teško definisаti, isto koliko je komplikovаno pronаći kriterijume za njeno identifikovanje a koji su primjenljivi nа sve politiĉke sisteme. Situаcijа se dodаtno usloţnjаvа kаdа je ove kriterijume neophodno prepoznati u okviru nedovršenog politiĉkog sistema kаkаv je onаj u Evropskoj uniji. Problemi u demokrаtskoj legitimizаciji Unije, koji se jаvljаju uporedo sа uspjesimа u integrаciji, otvаrаju pitаnje primjenljivosti "stаndаrdnog" modelа demokrаtije nа ovu tvorevinu. Prirodа funkcionisаnjа Evropske unije, u kojoj je na snazi uprаvljаnje nа više nivoа, zаhtijevа prilаgoĊаvаnje demokrаtskih principа njenom specifiĉnom politiĉkom sistemu. Mada ne postoji konsenzus meĊu teoretiĉаrima koji su dali doprinos objašnjavanju pojma demokratije u Evropskoj uniji dа li postoji demokratski deficit unutar nje, kаo ni koji su nаjbolji uslovi zа rаzvoj аutentiĉne demokrаtije u EU, moguće je identifikovati brojne strukturne probleme demokratije u politiĉkom sistemu Evropske unije. U okviru postojećeg institucionаlnog mehаnizmа Evropske unije problemi nastaju usljed isprepletenih nаdleţnosti izmeĊu institucijа i osjetnog jаĉаnjа izvršne u odnosu nа zаkonodаvnu grаnu vlаsti. Centrаlnu ulogu od institucija imа Sаvjet koji funkcioniše po principu meĊuvlаdine sаrаdnje. Prаktiĉno nijednа evropskа politikа ne moţe se usvojiti bez djelovаnjа ove institucije i uplitаnjа drţаvа ĉlаnicа, što Savjet ĉini glavnim zakonodavnim tijelom Unije. Evropski parlament, sa druge strane, iako neposredno izabran, zbog svojih još uvijek ogrаniĉenih nаdleţnosti, i dаlje je glаvni uzroĉnik demokrаtskog deficitа u Uniji. Stoga bi talas demokratizacije institucija Unije trebalo da obuhvati "prelivаnje" moći sа Sаvjetа nа Evropski pаrlаment i jаĉаnje meĊuinstitucionаlne sаrаdnje izmeĊu Evropskog pаrlаmentа i Evropske komisije. Evropskа unijа nemа ureĊenje poput trаdicionаlne nаcionаlne drţаve. Ne postoji ni demos nа evropskom nivou, te, stoga, nemа ko dа obezbijedi neophodni legitimitet evropskim politikama. Iako je nesumnjivo da politike Evropske unije proizvode velike koristi zа njene grаĊаne, ovа reаlnost, zаjedno sа rаzvijenim mehаnizmimа konsultovаnjа sа grаĊаnimа, ipаk ne umаnjuje kljuĉni problem u komunikаciji Unija – graĎani: mаnjаk аdekvаtnog predstаvljаnjа grаĊаnа, što je zа zаjednicu kojа se u svojim osnivаĉkim dokumentimа deklаriše kаo predstavniĉka ipak nedostаtаk. Ni sаmi grаĊаni ne pokreću politiĉku debаtu o specifiĉnim evropskim pitаnjimа nа nivou koji bi bio izаzov zа nаcionаlne vlаde. Demokrаtskа legitimizаcijа evropskih institucijа zаhtijevа i veću ulogu politiĉkih pаrtijа i njihovu revitаlizаciju nа evropskom nivou, kao i otvoreno politiĉko takmiĉenje koje ukljuĉuje grаĊаne. Proces integrisаnjа zemаljа Evropske unije prouzrokovаo je ozbiljne demokrаtske probleme ne sаmo nа nivou Unije, već i u drţаvаmа ĉlаnicаmа. "Problemi demokratije" u drţavama ĉlanicama koji proizilaze iz funkcionisanja Unije drugаĉije se reflektuju u rаzliĉitim nаcionаlnim politiĉkim sistemimа. Pritisku koji dolаzi od integrisаnjа unutar Evropske unije bolje se prilagoĊavaju drţаve koje imаju federаlno od onih koje imаju unitаrno ureĊenje. Federаlni kаrаkter ureĊenjа u drţаvi već podrаzumijevа više nivoа odluĉivаnjа i decentrаlizаciju vlasti, pа se ovаj sistem lаkše prilаgoĊаvа uprаvljаnju nа više nivoа unutаr Evropske unije. To ne moţe biti sluĉаj sа zemljаmа koje su trаdicionаlno centrаlizovаne. Dalji razvoj Evropske unije moţe ići u pravcu zadrţavanja trenutnih principa integrisanja uz obrazloţenje da su demokratske drţave ĉlanice garant legitimiteta Unije. Na taj naĉin bi i dalje meĊuvladin princip imao primat u odnosu na nadnacionalni. Model koji bi trаnsformisаo Evropsku uniju u zаjednicu demokrаtskog kаrаkterа jeste federаlni. Evropskа unijа posjeduje elemente federalizma, a toj konstrukciji nedostaje kаpаcitet zа oporezivаnje i mogućnost predlaganja izmjena osnivаĉkih, konstitutivnih, ugovora. Trenutno postojanje federalnih elemenata u funkcionisanju Unije ukazuje da njihovo dodatno osnaţivanje neće neminovno dovesti do njene trаnsformаcije u zajednicu federalnog karaktera, ali će svakako uticati na smanjivanje postojećeg demokratskog deficita.Nauĉno-istraţivaĉki pristup korišćen u ovom radu odreĊen je predmetom i ciljevima istraţivanja. Znaĉajnu primjenu imale su metodologija svojstvena politiĉkim naukama, komparativna metoda, analiza sadrţaja dokumenata, kao i specijalizacija. U dokazivanju postavljenih hipoteza primjenu su našle i sinteza, generalizacija, indukcija i dedukcija. ; The creation of the European Union has irreversibly undermined the traditional establishment of states, including the international order thereof. The establishment of a structure encompassing multiple power centers entailing (un)equal decision making relevant to the lives of citizens, has triggered the downturn in national, subsequently weakening the supranational level of autonomy within it. Constant negotiations and lobbying representing the cornerstones of the Union, provides for an opportunity for achieving the objectives of individual groups and states. In the light of the above, the democracy concept has suffered the most. The democracy concept is difficult to define, being leveraged by the complication in finding criteria for its identification which are applicable to all political systems. The situation is further complicated in case of a need to identify these criteria within an unfinished political system like the one in the European Union. The problems behind democratic legitimization of the Union, arising along with the integration success, are opening up the question of the applicability of "standard" democracy model to this creation. The nature of the European Union functioning governed by the multiple levels management, requires adjustment of the democratic principles to its specific political system. Although there is no consensus among theorists who have contributed to clarifying the democracy concept in the European Union on neither whether there is a democratic deficit within it, nor what are the best conditions for the development of a genuine democracy in the EU, nevertheless it is possible to identify a number of structural problems of democracy in the political system of the European Union. In the framework of existing institutional mechanism of the European Union, the problems arise because of overlapping responsibilities between the institutions and the appreciable strengthening of the executive over the legislative branch of government. The Council plays the central role, operating on the principle of intergovernmental cooperation. Practically not a single European policy may be adopted without the operation of this institution and the interference of the member states, making the Council the leading legislative authority of the Union. The European Parliament, on the other hand, although directly elected, due to its still limited competences, being the main trigger of the democratic deficit in the Union. Thus, the wave of democratization of the EU institutions should include the "spillover" of power from the Council to the European Parliament and strengthening the inter-institutional cooperation between the European Parliament and European Commission. The European Union has not been grounded as the traditional national state. Demos don"t exist at the European level and, therefore, there is no one to provide the necessary legitimacy of the European policies. Although undoubtedly, the European Union policies are generating great benefits for its citizens, this reality, along with developed mechanisms of consultation with citizens, however, does not reduce the key problem in communication between the Union - citizens: lack of adequate representation of citizens, representing a deficiency having in mind that its founding documents are declaring it as a representative Community. Even the citizens themselves are failing to launch political debate on specific issues at the European level that would be a challenge for the national governments. Democratic legitimization of European institutions requires a greater role of political parties and their revitalization at the European level, as well as open political competition involving the citizens The integration process of the European Union counties has caused serious democratic problems not only at the level of the Union, but also in the member states. "Democracy problems" in the member states deriving from the functioning of the Union are reflected differently in different national political systems. Unlike unitary governments, federal ones are better adapting to the pressure deriving form the integration within the European Union. Federal feature of organization in the state already implies the multiple levels of decision making and decentralization of powers, thus the system is easily adapting to the multiple levels of management within the European Union. This is not the case with countries that are traditionally centralized. The further EU development may be directed in retaining the current integration principles with the rationale that the democratic member states represent legitimacy guarantor of the Union. In the light of the above, the intergovernmental principle should supersede the supranational. However, a model that would transform the EU into a democratic community is federal. The European Union has elements of federalism and this structure lacks the capacity for taxation and possibility of proposing amendments to founding, constitutional contracts. Currently the existence of federal elements in the functioning of the Union is pinpointing that its further strengthening will not inevitably lead to the transformation of the Union into the community with federal character, but will most likely impact on reducing the existing democratic deficit However, the model that would transform the European Union into the Community with democratic feature is the federal one. The European Union has the federalism features, and this structure suffers the lack of taxation capacity and the option of proposing amendments to the founding and constitutional treaties. The current existence of federal elements within the functioning of the Union is implying that its additional strengthening will not inevitably generate the transformation of the Union into the Community of federal feature, yet it will affect the decline in the current democratic deficit. Scientific methods used in this thesis are based on specific topic and research objective. Therefore, the methodology inherent in political science, comparative method, content analysis of documents, as well as specialization are used to a large extent. In proving the hypotheses a great usage has found the synthesis, generalization, induction and deduction.
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Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga and I Saw the TV GlowWhen one looks out at another summer of sequels, reboots, and prequels it is possible to resort to the cliche that "they are out of ideas"--to pose the problem as a crisis of originality. It is for this reason, among many others that it is worth reading Daniel Bessner's piece for Harpers, "The Life and Death of Hollywood: Film and Television Writers Face an Existential Threat" One of the merits of Bessner's piece is that he makes it clear that the crisis Hollywood is facing is not one of ideas, of the imagination, but of capital, of profits. As Bessner writes,"But the business of Hollywood had undergone a foundational change. The new effective bosses of the industry—colossal conglomerates, asset-management companies, and private-equity firms—had not been simply pushing workers too hard and grabbing more than their fair share of the profits. They had been stripping value from the production system like copper pipes from a house—threatening the sustainability of the studios themselves. Today's business side does not have a necessary vested interest in "the business"—in the health of what we think of as Hollywood, a place and system in which creativity is exchanged for capital. The union wins did not begin to address this fundamental problem. Currently, the machine is sputtering, running on fumes. According to research by Bloomberg, in 2013 the largest companies in film and television were more than $20 billion in the black; by 2022, that number had fallen by roughly half. From 2021 to 2022, revenue growth for the industry dropped by almost 50 percent. At U.S. box offices, by the end of last year, revenue was down 22 percent from 2019. Experts estimate that cable-television revenue has fallen 40 percent since 2015. Streaming has rarely been profitable at all. Until very recently, Netflix was the sole platform to make money; among the other companies with streaming services, only Warner Bros. Discovery's platforms may have eked out a profit last year. And now the streaming gold rush...is over. In the spring of 2022, the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates after years of nearly free credit, and at roughly the same time, Wall Street began calling in the streamers' bets. The stock prices of nearly all the major companies with streaming platforms took precipitous falls, and none have rebounded to their prior valuation."It is from this perspective that we could view what could be called the decline of the rate of originality. It is not a lack of new ideas that drives sequels and reboots, but the way in which an existing property, a comic book, movie, or television show appears, as the metaphor goes, as a house to be stripped for parts. It is an asset that already exists, and it is cheaper, easier, and supposedly less risky to mine these intellectual properties for whatever last bit of nostalgia they might contain than to develop new products. As Bessner writes,"Executives, meanwhile, increasingly believed that they'd found their best bet in "IP": preexisting intellectual property—familiar stories, characters, and products—that could be milled for scripts. As an associate producer of a successful Aughts IP-driven franchise told me, IP is "sort of a hedge." There's some knowledge of the consumer's interest, he said. "There's a sort of dry run for the story." Screenwriter Zack Stentz, who co-wrote the 2011 movies Thor and X-Men: First Class, told me, "It's a way to take risk out of the equation as much as possible."Here we can see how the experience of the audience and the executives both converge and diverge. In some way what the audience wants and what the studio, or its backers, want is the same thing and that is to eliminate risk, which is to say the guaranteed repetition of the same. This repetition is defined differently, what the audience wants is a repetition of the pleasures that they remember from certain movies; what the studio wants is a predictable return on investment, a repetition of the box office returns. These two repetitions diverge. The audience wants to feel like they did when they first saw Star Wars, Alien, or whatever, which is interpreted by the studio as making another film in the series of Star Wars, Aliens, or whatever particular franchise. The audience wants to feel they way that they first felt when a movie entertained them, but the only way that can become standardized or commodified is to remake, reboot, or requel of that movie. Instead of a repetition of that original experience we get another entry in its expanded universe. Repetition of an original experience is replaced by its serialization into a franchise. We can also think of these two different repetitions according to the formulas that Marx sketches out in Capital as the basic contours of commodity exchange. For the audience it is a matter of C-M-C; they have exchanged their labor power (C) for wages, money (M), and are now buying a ticket to a movie C. This exchange is driven by use value, although what the use of a movie is open to a myriad of different possibilities, some want to laugh, some to cry, some just want to pass a few hours in air conditioning, and some want to just be able to say that they have seen it. Repetition of this formula is an attempt to get the same use, the same value of an experience again. The studio, or its financial backers, are engaged in a different process M-C-M; they have invested money (M) in a commodity, or rather commodities, that include the labor power of writers, directors, actors, gaffers, set designers, makeup artists, and, increasingly CGI programmers, with the hope of making a profit. It is exchange predicated on exchange value, not use, all that matters is that more money comes in then went out, M-C-M'. Studios do not care about why you see a movie, what you get out of it, just that you pay to see it. If a movie fails as a serious film it can be marketed as kitsch, as studios did with Showgirls years ago, but there has been a tendency for even irony to exhaust itself as a marketing tool. People made many jokes about "Morbin' Time" and Madam Web, but the online jokes did not translate into real world tickets. Sometimes the two repetitions coincide. A studio puts out movies that people like, or at least want to see, and the audience is happy and the studios make a profit. The history of the marketing or selling of movies is an attempt to focus on a different way of understanding, or presenting this overlap. Movies can be marketed by genre, by star, by director, or, as is increasingly the case by Intellectual Property. These are different ways for the audience to be promised a repetition, see another western, another Cary Grant film, another Steven Spielberg film, or another entry in the MCU, after all you liked the last one. There is of course difference in these repetitions, not all westerns are the same, actors make different films, and even directors have a tendency to branch out and diverge. Intellectual property is an attempt to predicate the repetition on something the studio owns, the intellectual property, and is more controllable, more of a guaranteed repetition, in terms of pleasure and profits, than the same genre, actor, or director. Actors and directors come and go, but Spider-Man is eternal. I was thinking about all of this when I saw two movies in the last week. One of the films was Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. I should say that I have a particular attachment to the Mad Max films. I saw The Road Warrior (Mad Max 2) when I was far too young and it blew my mind. I am not really alone in this, although at the time I was the only one in my grade who was allowed to see such an R rated film, the movie effectively produced the image of the post-apocalyptic wasteland that is now taken for granted. The Mad Max films are also unique in the current realm of franchises in that they are still driven by the same writer and director, George Miller. In that sense they are not a franchise at all. Furiosa is a bit of a departure in that it is the first film to dispense with the central character, Max Rockatansky. It is also a prequel, even though I read somewhere that Miller wrote it first as part of one big story, but made Fury Road first due to studio pressures. They wanted the film with Mad Max in it. Miller's filmmaking is fundamentally at odds with the prequel function. The Mad Max films excel at creating a world and dropping you into it. The audience gets fragments of this new world, figuring out how these odd things, mohawks and muscle cars, Bartertowns, Bullet Farms, and War Boys, make a world. Don't worry, the film does not go into the kind of excesses of over explaining that the Star Wars films are known for, we do not meet Immortan Joe as a little boy, or find out why Max was ever called Mad in the first place. The story is focused on Furiosa, and the events that led up to her stealing a "war rig" and trying to rescue Immortan Joe's wives in Fury Road. In Furiosa we meet the titular character first as a young girl, who is captured from her small community, the closest thing we get to a utopia in this series. She is hell bent first on getting back to her community, then later on revenge.The prequel puts her decision to focus on collective liberation in a new light. In some sense it is an anti-revenge story. In this way it goes full circle. Mad Max the first of the film series, was a revenge film. Max Rockantansky went after the bikers that killed his family. Furiosa makes the point that revenge is no way to live. In doing so it touches on the central philosophical question of these films known more for their car crashes and crossbow fights. How can one live in a world defined by loss, by death. Is it possible to not go mad in such a world. The film opens with the question, "As the world falls around us. How must we brave it's cruelties?" Furiosa (Anya Taylor-Joy) gets her moment of revenge, is face to face with the man who killed her mother and took her from her utopia, Dementus (Chris Hemsworth). It is at that moment that she realizes that she needs to live for more than just revenge, she needs hope, or at least be a source of hope for others. In a strange way the film provides the emotional core for Fury Road's kinetic chaos. It also offers a different way to think about the compulsion to repeat that defines contemporary film making. If you have to go back to the past, to return to the wasteland, to the idea of revenge that started the whole series, then it perhaps makes sense to transform it, to acknowledge that one can never go back to the beginning. The film opens with the question of how to live as the world dies and ends with Furiosa's answer, we do so by trying to create a new world, with hope. In Furiosa the Mad Max films shift from anti-hero, from Max who reluctantly makes it possible for the compound to escape Humungus (in The Road Warrior), and the children to escape the Wasteland (in Thunderdome), to hero. Furiosa does not save the wives in trying to save herself, but saves the wives in order to save herself. Furiosa is the first hero, the first one to make it epic.As much as I appreciated this point, and the relevance of the question of living with loss and anger as we live through our own slow apocalypse, I found myself caught in that fundamental problem of all franchises and series. You can build a bigger war rig but you cannot reproduce the feeling when you first see one of Miller's meticulously choreographed chase scenes, even as this film has a few excellent ones.This brings me to the second film I saw this week, I Saw the TV Glow. This film is not a franchise. It is, however, about the nostalgia that drives our fascination with past popular culture. The film is about two teenagers who bound over a television show called The Pink Opaque. The film is set in the nineties and the show they bound over bears a striking resemblance to a popular show with supernatural themes, teenage angst, and quippy dialogue. (The show is clearly Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, or at least meant to invoke it, right down to a cameo by Amber Benson who played Tara in the series). I am not going to go over the whole film here, and honestly suggest that you just go see it. There is one scene that sticks with me, actually one of many. One of the teenagers, Owen (Justice Smith) tries to revisit the show as a young adult, years later when it is available on streaming. One of the many admirable things about the film is how it conveys the fundamental different experience of watching television from the old days of broadcast in which you had to be in front of the television at a particular time, or have some one tape it for you, and the contemporary age of streaming. Everything, well almost everything, is more accessible, but the experience of stumbling on some program, or rushing home to watch some program is a fundamentally different investment than having everything at one's fingertips. The movie connects the history of media technology, from broadcast to video tapes, and, later streaming with the more intimate history of the experience of media. In doing so it also illustrate the gap that separates memory from the attempt to relive it. When Owen watches the show years later it looks fundamentally different. It is no longer the smart and scary show that he remembers. It is cheesier, cheaper, and more childish. It is nothing that he remembers because he is not the same person. This is the fundamental problem with the compulsion to repeat that defines contemporary film. It is not just that the repetition cannot recreate the original experience. That the sequel is not as good as the original. It is that the original is not as good as the original. What we remember is not the original, but also in part who we were when we first saw it. We will never be the the person we were then, especially when many of this sequels and reboots try to recapture our childhood memories and experiences, times when we were more impressionable and more likely be impressed by space battles or giant trucks. This is why a Hollywood that is stripping the past for parts will never give us what we want. Its compulsion to repeat is fundamentally misguided. To take risk out of the equation is to lose everything we go to movies for.
Transcript of an oral history interview with Dr. Carlos F. A. Pinkham, conducted by Jennifer Payne at Norwich University in Northfield, Vermont, on 9 January 2014, as part of the Norwich Voices oral history project of the Sullivan Museum and History Center. Carlos Frank Armory Pinkham graduated from Norwich University in 1965 and later returned to the campus to teach in the College of Math and Sciences. His interview includes many details of his academic career as well as recollections from his military service and family history. ; 1 Carlos Frank Amory Pinkham, NU '65, Oral History Interview January 9, 2014 Interviewed by Jennifer Payne CARL PINKHAM: Vermont. JENNIFER PAYNE: And your (inaudible) [00:00:02] class? CP: Nineteen sixty-five. JP: Ah, did you have a nickname at Norwich? CP: Not really, no. JP: No? The yearbook has you as Pink, but I imagine -- CP: Oh, yeah, Pink is -- Pink is -- if anybody used a nickname it was Pink. Yeah, mm-hmm. JP: Oh, what made you decide to choose Norwich? CP: It was very easy. My father taught here, and so as a poor university professor this is the only place he could afford to send me (laughs) because I got tuition free. JP: What was his name and what did he do? CP: Vernon Curtis David Pinkham. So, again, four names. It's a tradition in our family. JP: What did he teach? CP: He taught economics. JP: So, you came to Norwich pretty much straight out of high school. CP: Yes. JP: And were you interested in science then? CP: I have been interested in biology ever since I was able to think. So, I knew when I came here what I wanted to do. I knew what I wanted to do when I was a kid. JP: Really? CP: Yeah. I wanted to get a doctorate in biology. At the time that I came here I wasn't sure what field in biology. It was really a choice between evolution and marine biology, but I knew that I wanted to do that.2 JP: Wow. So who was your roommate when you got here? CP: Oh, boy, when I got here -- I don't remember. I do know that he never finished and I don't remember his name. JP: Do you remember any of your roommates? CP: Sure, Joe [Koons?] [00:01:50] was my sophomore year roommate and he never finished, and then Don Graves was my roommate in my junior year; he did finish. And Bob Priestly was my roommate in my senior year. JP: No kidding? CP: Yeah. JP: That's great. Now I know you've looked at these questions. Is there anything in particular that you want to focus on or start with? CP: No, not really. Just go ahead and fire away and we'll progress as ever we can. JP: Yes, OK. Your activities when you were here were humongous. You were in everything. You were corporal, master sergeant, correct? Major biology -- you were in the biology club, one, two, three, four president -- president twice; geology club, one, two, three, four; honor tank platoon, three and four; German club one, three, and four Vice President; AUSA three and four; mountain and cold weather; winter carnival committee; regimental ball committee; Epsilon Tau Sigma Vice President. CP: That's the honorary society -- the academic honorary society. JP: And you were in Who's Who, also, I noticed in the yearbook. You were on that page, but the list doesn't stop. You were in the varsity club two, three, four; class honor committee to cadet cadre two, three, four; dean's list one, two, three, four; DMS, which is -- CP: Distinguished military student. JP: Wow. What was your GPA? What was your -- CP: I was second in my class -- JP: Wow! CP: -- and the person that was first in my class, Harry Short, and I competed for that position all four years and his is a sad story because he beat me and legitimately so; he was a very smart person. He went on to med school, got his MD and in my fifth year of graduate school, I found out that he had just been killed in an airplane crash that he was flying himself. So that was probably one of the saddest things that had ever happened and has 3 ever happened in my life -- to lose this very dear friend who was my arch competitor, but still a person that I had a lot of respect for. And really it was -- another aspect of that is that I -- up to that point I kind of thought of those of us who were in this top echelon as being untouchable. In other words, somehow we were just -- our lives were special and therefore they would not be expendable and that woke me up to the fact that in fact that was a very incorrect assumption to proceed with. JP: So what do you remember most about Norwich? CP: Oh, (laughs) there's so many things. I remember, and this is going to go on to one of the other questions, William Countryman, my favorite professor, and it's hard to pick a favorite professor because there were certainly three that I had -- William Countryman, Bert Wagenknecht, who was the botany professor at the time in biology, and of course, the ever traditional and ever present Fred Larson, who played a major role in my interest in geology. So, these are the three people that vied for my preferences as the favorite professors, and Bill -- but Bill because I had him more often than all of the others. I think he won out, but he was a very special professor anyway. He was smart, knew how to teach, and knew how to keep his classroom in stitches, which is something that is very important for a good teacher to have. It's something that I never developed as a teacher, I have to admit. JP: How did he keep you in stitches? CP: Oh, he just had great stories that were always able -- that always fit in to whatever lesson he was talking about and he had a great sense of humor. He was a very wonderful fellow. I ended up working for him, actually, when I came back here for a number of years because he went into private consulting and I worked for him. That's the story we can get into a little bit later. JP: Yeah. Because you went to the military after, but what was the hardest part? It seems like you probably did very well. Were you ever disciplined? CP: No, no. Should I have been? Yes. (laughter) JP: For what? CP: Oh, there were a couple of times I think when -- well, the one time that I remember specifically is when I was the executive officer of the third battalion my senior year. I think I had a soccer game. I think that's what it was, and so I went on the soccer game without thinking about the fact that I had to make sure there was somebody who took my place in formation because the battalion commander I knew was not going to be there. And so one of our class cut ups, who was just -- went on to become a great guy -- probably because he was a class cut-up, took over the battalion at the time and he made a pretty good farce out of it from what I understand, and I was about ready to get some demerits and I think my dad stepped in and prevented that from happening. I don't know, but I know I never got them.4 JP: What did he do? CP: Well -- JP: The farcical -- CP: Oh, what did he do? Oh, he just got up and mocked the protocol, the commands and everything. I don't know. I don't know exactly what happened. I just heard that it was pretty farcical, so -- JP: Norwich cadets cutting up? CP: Right, right. JP: No, say it isn't so! So what was your least favorite? Did you have a least favorite class here? CP: Well, I suppose it had to be English. And the reason for that was that I hated writing; I didn't know how to write. And, again, there's a story about how that can be -- how that turned around, but after I got out of grad school, and so I'll hold that until later. But at the time I hated the writing aspect of English. I didn't mind the reading aspect, the reading of the different literary assignments, that was fine, but, boy, I just did not like writing. JP: OK. What was the most important thing that Norwich taught you? CP: There are several things, but the first thing I learned, I guess, is that nothing ever lasts forever, and that was a lesson I learned in rook school, and it was a lesson that I think a lot of people learned in rook school because if you didn't learn that lesson, you couldn't get through rook school. That's a valuable lesson to learn if you're really being confronted by things that are difficult at the time. It's good to know that it can't last forever. The second lesson, and I think this is one that has probably, Norwich teaches more than anything else, and I have not seen it as something that is grasped by the powers that be as something that they need to promote, and that is that done properly, if you allow it to do it to you, allow Norwich to do this to you, you discover that your limits are way beyond where you thought they were, way beyond spiritually, way beyond physically, way beyond mentally because Norwich has a tendency to push people. It was pushing people when I was a cadet here and it still does push people and in ways that many other universities don't. And one good proof of that happened my sophomore year. In the eighth grade -- I've got to go back a little bit -- in the eighth grade is when we moved to Northfield because dad took the teaching position that year, and in my homeroom I went into the first day, and of course being an eighth grader boy, I was very interested in girls, and I saw silhouetted against the window this very pretty, cute blonde and I said, "Well, that's kind of a neat girl." And so I asked about her and found out that she was going with somebody else and so being an honorable person I decided I probably 5 better not interfere. But a little while later I heard that someone had said that she was interested in me, which of course was all I needed to do. So I approached her and we struck up a relationship that lasted through the sophomore year of high school and she eventually broke off with me about that time -- at that time because she thought I was pretty much so a namby-pamby, which I was, and then -- but I always had a crush for her and the sophomore year, New Year's Eve, I had a date that didn't come through and so on just a whim I called her up because she was a townie as well, obviously, and asked her out to New Year's Eve and she didn't have a date that night, so she accepted. And from that point on we were a couple and she has now been my wife for almost 50 years. JP: Awww, that's so sweet. CP: Yeah, so basically she just liked what she had seen -- the change in me that was -- that Norwich had brought about. JP: What's her name? CP: Christine. JP: Christine. CP: Yeah. JP: Wow, so Norwich helped her fall in love -- CP: That's exactly correct. And she'll admit that, too. I'm not making this up. (laughs) JP: Did the words "I will try" mean anything to you as a student? CP: It means -- it's hard for me to kind of express because I think I always felt that way, and I always was a little bit disappointed with it because I want to do more than try; I want to succeed. And I think that probably of all of the things that Norwich did for me, its motto was not one of the things that I carried with me throughout my career. I mean, I just knew I would try. Maybe that's why Norwich and I were such a good fit, I don't know, but in any event. JP: Well, you were obviously successful from an early time. Do you have any funny stories about life or people at Norwich? CP: (laughs) I don't know whether I want to tell one of them. Well, I guess probably the story I will tell is that the infamous panty raid -- JP: Oh, yes. CP: Roy [Bear?] [00:14:58], Dick Herbert, and myself had heard about this thing happening but we were at my house that night. And we finally decided after the news had come that 6 it was probably interesting enough that we ought to go over and take a look. So we went over after it had been done and interestingly enough we were watching -- after most of it had been done -- just to watch and at this point I have mixed emotions about whether I should have been involved or not, but at any event, one of things we noticed is that the police and the fire -- well, the fire department was using a lot of fire hoses on the few that were left and they were doing most of the damage with their fire hose that was finally attributed to Norwich cadets. They were breaking windows with the water and everything. And so we were standing around, and of course we looked like Norwich cadets because we had short hair, and one of the policemen came up to us and said, "Are you guys from Norwich," and I said, "No, not me, I'm from Northfield. I'm a townie," and that wasn't a lie because I was, but at that point in time we recognized maybe we better get out of there. So we got out and came back to my house and eventually got back into school. You know, they were checking everybody coming back in at that point in time and we had not been involved in the raid and so we -- this is our junior year -- so we were let back in, and again, I think it was partly because my dad vouched for me and said yes, they were at home at our house, and that was true. So, that's one of the episodes that I think is kind of humorous. JP: So you were questioned along with everybody else that had gone? CP: Yeah, sure, sure. JP: Interesting. Were there other panty raids? I had heard there might have been annual -- CP: I wasn't aware of it and certainly nothing as big as that. I know that one made national headlines and (laughs) -- JP: Yes, yes it did. What did you do after graduation? CP: Well, I was commissioned in armor, but because of my grades and because of other good letters of recommendation from my profs and performances on the GREs, et cetera, I was allowed to defer to active duty to go to grad school. And this is during Viet Nam so I was very happy with that. I wasn't going to argue that and so I had applied to the three -- by then I knew that I wanted to do evolution -- I had applied to the three universities in the nation at the time that were giving doctorates in evolution -- Harvard, University of Illinois and UCLA. Was accepted to all three with scholarships and decided I needed to get far away but not too far away. So I chose the middle of the two, University of Illinois, to go to grad school, and went to grad school there and had a great experience and learned and awful lot. And had -- in those days you had four years of total deferment to active duty to get your doctorate -- and four years to get a doctorate in biology is really difficult if not, you know, you have to really be smart, even smarter than -- I shouldn't say even smarter -- I worked hard, I wasn't smart, I just worked hard -- and smarter than me. So at the end of the fourth year I still hadn't had my degree, but what I did -- there were two things that happened. I found out that if I had a doctorate I could switch from armor to medical service corp., which is what I had originally put in for anyway, and so there was caveat on that, though. I had a two-year obligation, active duty obligation, in 7 armor. If I switched my branch then I would have to have another two years, in other words, a total of four year obligation. So this is where I think my Norwich training came in really, really helpful in about two tenths of a second I had the decision. You know, two years of which one would have to be in Viet Nam in a tank versus four years of which I would be applying what I had learned state-side in a research institution. It was a pretty easy decision to make and so I accepted the caveated offer to go to medical service corp. The other thing I did is we got in that fourth year you had an option on when to be put on active duty, and so I took the furthest one away from when I applied, which actually gave me almost five years of graduate study in grad school, and I cut it so close that on Wednesday night I defended my thesis, Thursday morning I boarded the plane for Fort Sam, officers basic course. JP: Wow! CP: Yeah, it was close. JP: Wow. CP: So, that was a very fortunate thing for me because getting into medical service corp. was fundamental to a lot of what happened to me from that point on. JP: In what way? CP: Well, because after officer's basic which is, you know, a three month assignment, I was assigned to Edgewood Arsenal and to the biomedical research lab there and my first assignment was to do research on a nerve agent poisoning -- the mechanism of a nerve agent poisoning, organophosphorus, the nerve agents, and to do that I had to kill cats. They were anesthetized and then we exposed them to nerve agents and monitored what was happening to them with some fairly sophisticated equipment and deduced from the responses what was going on. Well, you know, I'm not opposed to research of that sort but it was not something that I was really comfortable with and it turned out that the guy across the hall from me had just -- we were living in apartment houses at the time and so this is for married couples -- and so the guy across the hall from me had just gotten out of being the executive officer for the human experiment platoon. These were humans that had volunteered to undergo various kinds of experiments, most of which were with psychedelic kind of drugs. So it was kind of a difficult job to be in charge of them. And because he still had some active duty time, he was offered a position with the newly formed ecological research branch. Now his specialty was aquatics. He was a fisheries guy, marine and fresh water fisheries, and so he kind of fit right in and I'll explain why that was newly formed here in a moment. But he told me about this, and he said that they were looking for a person who had specialty in land and my, in addition to a doctorate in evolution, one of the -- the major area in evolution that I had worked on was mammals, mammalogy, and so I had a lot of experience with mammals as well as with reptiles and amphibians because one of my major mentors was Doctor Hobart Smith, who was probably the world's leading herpetologist at the time. So I had a lot of good experience that would put me into that position. So the next day I went over and talked to the newly 8 assigned director of the ecological research branch, Scott Ward, and told him what I was interested in and what my qualifications were and the next day I was reassigned to his branch. He had a lot of pull at the time. Why did he have a lot of pull? Here's why. He was a very sophisticated politician for one thing, but what he was heading up was a really dynamic and important endeavor at the time. Basically, Nixon, who has been maligned for a number of different -- well, for one thing, and that's Watergate, but really did an awful lot of good stuff during his presidency. National Environmental Policy Act, Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, diplomacy with China, et cetera. The list goes on. One of the things he did was he signed an executive order that unilaterally ended the open air testing of offensive, active -- of offensive and defensive biological and chemical weapons, and restricted any further research to just defensive research on biological and chemical weapons in labs. So, there were two places -- a number of places around the world where this research had been going on, two in the United States. One was in Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, the southern end of the Great Salt Lake desert, out in the middle of nowhere, which you would expect to be a place where this would be conducted. And there's some stories about that that I'll get into in the future, and then the other one was 17 miles northeast of Baltimore on Carroll Island, which is part of Edgewood Arsenal, an island -- a peninsula that jutted into the Chesapeake Bay. It was called an island because it was separated from the mainland by a channel of water, cooling channel from a power plant that was right there. And because they had stopped the open air testing the question was logically raised, was there any impact of the testing on the environment? Now Carroll Island it turned out -- well, both Dugway Proving Ground and Carroll Island formed these two groups to research this. On Carroll Island it turned out there were two parts to it. There was one part next to the mainland, and then there was an intervening large saltwater marsh, and then another part where all of the jutting out into the bay where all the testing had been done. And the two parts were fairly comparable to one another, so we had a very good control and a very good experimental area to do our studies on. So we started the study of that and that was the foundation of the Army's environmental ecological research effort, and so I was in on the ground floor of that, and that played a major role in my military career because -- well, one of the things that happened while we were there is as a result of the National Environmental Policy Act, we started getting into environmental assessments and environmental impact statements, one of the first groups to start doing that. And so, again, the procedures we developed and techniques and everything were eventually implemented -- became implemented into a lot of the Army approaches and regulations. To get a little ahead of myself I think it's important at this point to explain what happened at the end of the four years. I'm going to come back to Edgewood. At the end of the four years I was -- obviously my obligation, active duty obligation, was over and I thought, OK, this is it, I'm going to get out of the service. And I wanted to come back to Norwich and teach, quite honestly, and so I applied here but there wasn't a position available, and I really didn't know much about applying anywhere else, and I tried but I wasn't successful. But I had been offered a job at the sister organization out at Dugway Proving Ground as a civilian working, doing the same thing, extending what I had done at Edgewood. And I loved the job, I loved the people that I was working with both at Dugway, and by then we had formed this extended team where Dugway and Edgewood worked together, but I hated the environment of Baltimore, just didn't like the humidity in the summer, as a Vermonter I 9 couldn't handle it. So we took the job out at Dugway, and again, I'm going to come back to Edgewood, but I've got to finish this entry into Dugway because it's kind of a fascinating story. So, I had been out there many times and new I would love it, and so in order to make the final decision I had to take my wife and my two children out, then I had two boys, I now have three. So we left Baltimore when it was about 98 degrees and 150 percent humidity, not really, I mean, the air was just soaking. And we got on the plane and flew out to Utah and about 30 minutes out of Salt Lake City the pilot came on board and said the temperature in Salt Lake City is 110 degrees at which point my wife turned to me, she said, "As soon as we get off the plane we're turning around," because she was thinking 110 degrees with all of that humidity that we had just left behind, and I knew better. So I let her get off the plane and she looked around and she felt the air and she says, "I love it!" So I knew that we were sold on going out to Dugway. So, returning back to Edgewood, because we had these two wonderful control and experimental areas, we had a lot of wonderful data comparing two different community structures, those of let's say a species of trees on both places, fishes on both places, snakes on both places, amphibians on both places, mammals on both places, et cetera. And we had these wonderful databases. But at the time there was no way to really compare them because all of the mechanisms that were out there at the time, all of the methods that were out there at the time, were focusing on diversity, on measures of diversity, and we weren't interested in measures of diversity. We were interested in how alike are these two communities or how different are these two communities. So, the guy across the hall who introduced me to Scott, his name is Gareth Pearson. He eventually went on to become one of the directors in one of the labs of EPA, very successful career. JP: EPA is? CP: The Environmental Protection Agency. So Gareth and I sat down one night with this problem and a bunch of paper with some of our data on it spread out on the floor in his apartment and a six-pack of beer. And by the end of the six-pack, we had solved the problem, and we had developed an index that would compare these two communities in a very -- I've got to say clever way -- and in a very effective way and started applying that our data and then of course published it and this index, the Pinkham Pearson Index, is now regarded as the primary way to compare community structure. So we were very fortunate to be at the right place at the right time. I'm sure if we hadn't come up with it, somebody else would have. It's one of those things that's fairly obvious once you look at it, but, you know, we were there at the right time. JP: That's wonderful. I was hoping you would talk about that. CP: So we had a lot of fun. We did some great things. Great in the sense of they were fun things and wonderful to do. We started the -- we were the -- we, Edgewood, actually, the team that I was part of at Edgewood, really established the concept of the installation environmental impact assessment or statement where basically you go in to an installation, an Army installation, and you identify all of the resources on and around that installation and all of the activities on that installation that could impact these resources, and identified ways to mitigate the impact so that the installation could continue its 10 mission. And eventually out at Dugway as we continued the effort, because by the time I was at Dugway it was such a large effort that we needed to have both camps involved in this process. Another colleague of mine that I met at Dugway, David Gauthier, whom I also kind of took on as a person that I would work with the rest of my life, David and I were the co-editors of a seven volume -- became the co-editors of a seven volume treatise on doing ecological surveys at military installations, and one of the volumes was doing all of the procedures involved in doing an environmental assessment of an installation. All of the different topics you've got to cover and all of the ways you can cover them, it was a fairly extensive document. And still is -- its descendants are still being used in the environmental program in the military. So, I really enjoyed that part of my life. We got to go and I got to see lots of different parts of the United States. Never got away from the United States, but some of the really interesting installations where testing was going on of one form or another, whether it was vehicle testing or artillery testing or whatever, we got to go to because they were part of testing evaluation command at the time, which Edgewood Arsenal was part of, and that's where most of the environmental documentation was happening. One of the things -- and again, it's a matter of being at the right place at the right time, very quickly or very soon after we started our effort at Edgewood there was an operation at Edgewood that had been going on for years and their procedures, their environmental procedures, were just terrible, and we told them that they were just awful and that they would have to do something about them and they snubbed their noses at us. About six months later EPA caught up with them, newly formed EPA caught up with them, and the directors, whom we had said you better do something about this, ended up going to jail. JP: Really? CP: Yeah. So that all of a sudden gave us the notoriety or the fame that we needed to have to get everybody's attention and from that point on we got to do some pretty neat stuff. And going from coast to coast and seeing things, you know, I saw my first rattlesnake, I saw my first copperhead and things of this sort which were fun. In the wild, you know, turning things over and finding them there, which is part of our technique, and developed further techniques for looking at -- finding whether or not a military operation had impacts. I think one of the fun ones was Redstone Arsenal where a government operated -- a government owned, civilian operated (GOCO) facility had been operating during the Second World War manufacturing DDT. Every time they had a bad batch they just threw it out the back door. So although the facility had been destroyed, long gone, this batch was still there. Now what happened is that Redstone Arsenal called us there because they knew that there was this stream that was entering a bayou or a backwater of the Mississippi that didn't have any life in it and they wanted us to find out what was going on. So what we did is we used a technique which, I don't know whether we developed or had been used by others, but in any event, you go up and every time you find a branch in the river, or in the stream, you sample both sides and when you do that, you know, one, every time we went there, one branch was fine, the other branch was dead. And we kept following it back up until we found this huge area, a two or three football field size area of old DDT, and it became one of the nation's hazardous waste facility -- sites -- that had to be cleaned up. So it was, you know, it wasn't anything that the people there were 11 trying to cover up or had been responsible for, it had been done a long time ago and we were able to find that. Another program that I think was a lot of fun is that my boss, Scott Ward, was a falconer and this was in a time when falconers were -- he was a falconer when it was legit to be, OK to be, a falconer. But then the Endangered Species Act came along, which again, was another Nixon thing, and that prevented falconers from being -- you know, without having a license. You had to be licensed to be a falconer and had to have a legitimate reason. Well, he was a veterinarian and so he got his license. He was a wheeler-dealer and he made sure that he got his license and then he started working with peregrine falcons and their recovery. As you may know, about that time DDT, again, here's this DDT rearing its ugly head, had been bioaccumulating in predator species, the peregrine falcon being one of them, so that to a level that the eggs were thinning, the shells were thinning and the parents were breaking them in the nest as they were trying to sit on them. So, there was a real decline in peregrine falcons. In fact, the peregrine falcon south of the Arctic had gone extinct. So, Scott was involved in studying their recovery and to do so he became the coordinator of the North American peregrine falcon banding program, and he would go to a number of different places, Greenland, Hudson Bay, I think Alaska, and band fledglings in the nest, and then we would go to Assateague Island in the fall and in the spring and trap peregrine falcons to see if any of them had been banded to find out where they were coming from because at that point in time we really didn't know very much of any -- the peregrine falcons that are now south of the Arctic are all derived from peregrine falcons that were in the Arctic. It's a different subspecies but basically it was the only opportunity is to take these fledglings and bring them back here, and that was a Cornell program, did a wonderful job, and breed them in a captive breeding program and then reintroduce them to the wild. But knowing we just didn't have any information on what their flight pathways were, where their migration routes were, and so Scott was instrumental in coming up with that information. And so I was able to go with him and, you know, this is a military assignment. (laughs) JP: It's a great job. CP: Somebody had to do it, right. And spend a week or two weeks in the fall and in the spring on Assateague Island trapping peregrine falcons and birding and all sorts of stuff. So that was a lot of fun. We got to know a lot of interesting people because Scott made his way through the people who had influence at the time. I think one of the more interesting things is that, for example, we would often capture peregrine falcons with -- peregrine falcons -- he would also do it on Carroll Island -- capture either hawks or accipiters or falcons and they would have feathers in their beak or we would find kills in the woods, and part of our study was, you know, what had they killed? And so he would take these feathers and sometimes just one or two feathers they pulled out of the corner of their bill and send them off to a gal at the Smithsonian Institution, I can't remember -- I think her name was Roxy or something -- and she would identify it just from a single feather what the bird was. So that was part of our ability to get some additional data. What are they preying on when they're at different places in their migratory pathway, et cetera. So, that was another, you know, it was just a lot of fun things that we got to do and we would seine for fish. 12 JP: And we're back. CP: OK, so I'm trying to think of -- in the back of my mind there's one more story I want to tell and I can't come up with it right now. So those were fun days. We really had a great time doing all that sort of stuff. Oh, I know what it was. Another story was with Chandler Robins. Now, Chandler Robins is, I think he's still alive, one of the greatest ornithologists in the country. He wrote a book on birds of North America and Scott knew him well, and so I remember one night we had been out doing some night surveys and he had a recording of a bird that he couldn't -- all he had was the song and so we got on the phone the next morning and called up Chan and said, "Chan, I want to play something for you. Can you tell me what it is?" So we just played it for him over the phone. Chan says, "OK, so let me see. It was probably about nine o'clock at night, it was raining slightly and the sound is coming from the middle of a marsh, am I right?" And Scott says, "Yes," and so he says, "Well, it's a Black Rail," which fits all of those things. JP: Wow! CP: So this guy really knew his stuff. (laughs) That's the kind of stuff that we were exposed to for all of this. It was a lot of fun. JP: Did you photograph it? CP: Oh, no, no because it was at night. But I photographed a lot of birds. In fact, because I spent so much time going around doing this sort of stuff, my life list of North America north of the Mexican border is about 420 birds, 420 species. That's not anywhere nearly as many as it could be if I were a serious birder, but just because I have travelled so much, it's a lot larger than a lot of birders do have. JP: That's a lot of birds. CP: It is. JP: And you were outside and making the world a safer place. CP: Hopefully so. JP: That's pretty amazing. CP: Yeah. JP: Wow. I'm always amazed by you guys. CP: Yeah, it's fun what we get to do.13 JP: What about the Oxford Round Table? I know I'm jumping ahead, but I want to make sure we get that. CP: All right, so the reason -- I want to also hit my military career because I think that's important and, oh, we're doing fine. So let's hit the military career and then we'll come back to the Oxford Round Table. JP: Absolutely. CP: After I got out of Edgewood, I told you I was thinking about getting out of the service, my brother, my oldest brother, who at the time was a colonel in the Reserves, said, "No, you've got to stay in," and he explained to me why I needed to stay in. He said, "The benefits that you would accrue for retirement and for Space-A travel and medical coverage, et cetera, are just fantastic. You've got to stay in." So I did, I decided to stay in. And to get to the end of that story before I come back I stayed in for 47 years or whatever it was, I mean, 37 years. I retired at 60 from the Reserves and when I retired it was in '06 and I was the senior, maybe we should say old man of preventive medicine science officers and as such I was the mentor for about 700 preventive medicine science officers in the Reserves, the National Guard around the world. And from Norwich, this is when I was doing this, I sent out a weekly newsletter. Every Saturday I would come down early in the morning and I would work until one or two o'clock in the afternoon putting together this newsletter of all of the events that were important to preventive medicine science officers that had happened in that week and sent it out to them. And it got to be such a big thing that many of the active duty preventive medicine science officers were subscribing to it as well. JP: What was it called? CP: The Preventive Medicine's -- Reserves Component Preventive Medicine Science Officers' Newsletter, very imaginative title for it. JP: But very useful. CP: But it was very useful. JP: Extremely useful. CP: Yeah, it was during the Iraq war and during Pakistan as well. The beginning parts of -- I mean, Afghanistan. JP: So what kinds of things would be in it, for example? CP: Oh, there would be health reports from around the world, alerts about outbreaks of different things. There would be announcements of upcoming conferences that -- one of the things that preventive medicine science officers -- most preventive medicine science officers are in the Reserves are not assigned to a unit. They are what is known as 14 individual mobilization augmentees. They're on their own basically and they have to get their 50 points a year on their own. Because all of us have advanced degrees, we don't fit into most units and if there is a unit, it's probably across the country that we could fit into, and some of the people fit into those units, they just had to travel and they did their two weeks of active duty. And so it was very important to be able to get these people, all of these people for retention purposes if nothing else, to recognize all of the opportunities they had to get points and part of my role in this was to provide these opportunities -- show them the opportunities that they had and make sure they were taking advantage of them. JP: That's terrific. CP: So that was another side of it. And unfortunately, I think after I left I found a successor and I think he, after a year or so, found that the job was so demanding that he had to back out and I don't think anybody else took over. But it happened during a time when it was really important too because we were so widespread and some us of involved in conflicts around the world that it was important for us to have that at that particular time. I'm sure it would still be valuable today, but I don't think anybody has followed up on it. But then that's another thing where Norwich guys have a tendency to see a need and fill it. Another thing, which also is a Norwich story, I think, is to get my points, one of the ways you can get points is to be a liaison to West Point, and what that means is basically that you are helping to guide the applicants for West Point from Vermont or from whatever state you're in, through the process so that they either are successful or not. Well, it turns out in Vermont I think we have a higher percentage of people that get in for reasons which are not worth going into here than most states. But you still, one out of ten, one out of 20 would make it. So, one of the advantages of that is it gave me an opportunity to direct the nine or 18 failures to Norwich which many of them did come here as a result. So that was a good recruiting opportunity as well. And Norwich -- West Point preferred to have of all of those senior military academies, they preferred to have either West Point or Norwich personnel fill those positions because they knew that they would do a good job and a serious job. So, let's see, what else is here? All right, we can go on to the Oxford thing. So, I, as I've stated earlier, had always been interested in evolution and ever since I was able to remember, I recognized that the beauty around me that I was fascinated with in nature, the butterflies, the flowers, the trees, the frogs, whatever I was attracted to at the time, was just not by chance but brought about by a creator. Now I grew up in a family with a Christian influence and background, but I myself, I personally never understood who Jesus Christ was and his importance to me, and just recently I kind of figured out a good way to explain that. As a kid I had understood that Christmas was all about me. And Easter somehow had something to do with this person called Jesus Christ but I wasn't sure what it was. And quite honestly I really went through childhood, school, here, graduate school, and well into my military career until early into Dugway assuming that. I now know that I got it totally backwards and in fact Christmas is all about Jesus and Easter is all about me and you and all of us, the rest of us who need to have the salvation of Jesus. Now the story, I mean, I'm not going to go there because I'm not sure that's appropriate for this but I just want to set the stage for this. So I had always felt that this creator must be really awesome, but because early on, and I don't know why, 15 I understood because I'd been reading well enough, you know, extensively enough, I understood the evidence for evolution and the fact that evolution was a mechanism. So, I began to become convinced that that God used evolution, we'll call this creator God, used evolution to bring about us, to bring about the universe, to bring about everything, and so I spent a lot of my time, in fact, I thought when I get out of grad school that that's what I would focus on but the military took me in different places. And I wanted to see if I could understand more about how evolution worked and how a creator might have brought this about. So when I got out of Edgewood, went to Dugway out there, there was -- obviously this is Mormon country and Mormons proselytize and they tried to proselytize Chris and I, and Mormons are wonderful people and my boss is a Mormon and I have an awful lot of respect for them, but we were invited to a Mormon gathering and treated wonderfully and they were a very friendly group of people and as we were going home, my wife and I were talking to one another -- no, we weren't talking to one -- we were very silent and one of us, and we don't remember to this day who said, "What did you think of that," and the other one said, "Well, my spirit was troubled," and the other one agreed that that was the case. And so we began looking at our roots and it turned out that at that point in time the chapel at Dugway -- now, let me explain something about Dugway. Even though I was a civilian because it was a remote post civilians were allowed to live on the installation, so we were living on the installation. So the chapel had just undergone a change in chaplains and my wife had started going -- after this incident she started going -- and she came home after one Sunday service fairly early in the process and said, "You got to listen, you've got to come and listen to this guy because he's talking about the evidence for God and for belief and, you know, the science of it all," and I said, oh, come on, this guy can't know what he's talking about. So, I went and come to find out he did. He had some very good compelling evidence. And so that started me on a year and a half of questioning, of investigation, of seriously considering the possibility that, in fact, this God that's talked about in the bible is, in fact, the same God, creator -- Lord God creator of the universe that I had been thinking about all along and worshipping myself. And after a year and a half of reading the bible, of seriously going to church, of going to adult Sunday school, of talking with people, et cetera, I was finally convinced and turned my life over to Jesus. So, from that point on I thought, well, OK, from here on I'm going to get back on to the track of this thing and it didn't happen, it didn't happen. I still continue the environmental movement and then about -- well, six years, six and a half years into being at Dugway my -- oh, I got to do the science fair. Don't let me forget to do the science fair. My wife's mom started showing symptoms of Alzheimer's and her dad began to try to deal with it. He was retired at the time. She never did work. And he was having some difficulty and as time went on it became increasingly obvious to us that Chris needed to go back and help her dad take care of her mom and it was a good time because at that particular point in time we had progressed enough in our understanding of what the Word says, the bible says, we felt that we had an obligation to honor our parents and come back here and so at the same time I had been working with a colleague of mine that we rode to work with. By then we had moved off the installation and we were living in a small town called Terra, Utah, which was ten miles east, roughly east, of the main gate Dugway Proving Ground, and it was across -- the ten miles were mostly across Skull Valley and the road was ten miles of absolutely arrow-straight road. So you got in your car, if you were awake it didn't matter because 16 you just aim, lock the steering wheel in, and ten miles later you were at the front gate. And so we had a lot of time for discussion as we were doing this and we had come up with an idea for -- we were both avid gardeners -- we come up with an idea for preserving, allowing us to start our garden early using some -- he was a chemist and I'm a biologist -- using some very well known, well established properties of water and when it freezes it gives off heat called the heat of fusion and that heat could protect your plants from freezing. They do it in orchards, for example, by spraying water. So we came up with a device and it took us a little while to come up with it, but we came up with a device called the Wall O' Water Plant Protector. And so I figured, alright, this is going to give me my key, we can go back here and this is going to provide enough income, but it became obvious to me that this was going to take awhile for this to grow and so I had been going to officers advance course with three people. One of them was a chaplain that had been involved with my coming to the Lord. Another one was a person that I met in Salt Lake City in Utah. This is Salt Lake where the course was, who was a business major and so the business major heard about what we were doing because one of the nights we had to talk about something we were doing and I talked about it and he said, "Oh, this is a great idea. I want to help you make this happen." So he became the president of the company and he got things rolling as far as the business side is concerned. And so I was convinced that this was going to be my key to being able to come back here. Well, as I said, it very quickly became obvious it was not. It takes, like any new idea, almost any new idea, it takes a long time to get going and I decided well I better consider trying to find a job back here. Well, it turned out that Chris had been flying back to help her dad for just a little while and on the same flight she ran into Roy Bear who was flying out Midwest for something, I can't remember what it was, and they got talking, of course they knew each other from here, and he said, "Well, you know, I have been teaching anatomy and physiology in summer school, and I just don't want to do it anymore. So there's an opportunity for Carl to teach that." Well, I had never, you know, my major was at the population level or above. I mean, my focus, and I had not really had much in the way of physiology. But I, you know, this is an opportunity, I couldn't refuse this. So I put in for it and I got the job and that was important because it filled in a part of my education that was lacking because I started focusing not at the population level and above in the levels of complexity, but at the species level and below in levels of complexity. So, it really rounded out my education by forcing me to learn the material. You know, if you want to learn something, teach it. And so all of that played a role in -- as I was going through and teaching I was seeing things that played into very nicely into this idea that, you know, there really is a creator behind all of this. And so in the middle of all of this I suddenly get a letter out of nowhere. I have no idea, and I've asked them and they won't tell me where they got my name, but I got a letter saying that the Oxford Round Table is having a session on faith and science, the great matter, and would I like to be involved in it. And my initial reaction was I'd like to be and I've been thinking about this a lot and I've got a lot of thoughts on it, but, boy, do I have time to put something together and my three sons said, yes, you've got to do this, Dad. And so I said yes and I put the paperwork through Norwich and they said yes and so I was invited to go to the Oxford Round Table and make a presentation. And that's when I had to formally put down all of my thoughts. Since that time, and that was published online and since that time I've had a chance to present it elsewhere and to develop the thoughts a lot more 17 and the evidence now is even more compelling in my mind than it was even when I did it at Oxford. The primary thing that we have to recognize is that -- and this is something that makes sense if there is a creator behind all of this, is that science now fully recognizes, there are very few scientists who don't agree with this, that the universe began with an event called the Big Bang, 13.82 billion years ago and that accompanying that event the universe was imbued with about 20 fundamental forces constants and masses whose values are such that if they weren't exactly what they were we wouldn't be having this recording and that does two things. It says A, there's a beginning, so if you've got a beginning logically you've got to have something who begins it. An uncaused cause as it's sometimes referred to, and, also, that that beginning was accompanied with some very suspicious characteristics. Now, science by definition, and properly so, eliminates -- it doesn't eliminate. It admits it cannot investigate miracles. It is just not designed to follow miracles. Science can give us insights that I think can help us to understand whether or not miracles are possible, whether or not there is a God. And the point that this revealed at the time was that we have enough information, science has enough information about that moment of creation or of coming into existence of the universe, let's not call it creation at this point, that it has to be explained or it can be explained only by invoking infinity because only with infinity can you get all of these 20 or so values coming together with their precise values. Presumably they're independent coming together and having a situation where you would have a universe come into existence because the probability of this happening is so, so very, very tiny, all of them with their values. So, there are about eight ways of the sciences come up with explaining this and all eight of them can be reduced to this use of infinity and I say there are three ways that we invoke infinity. Science embraces two. One is that the universe is infinite and we're in the part that works with these constants, these values, or the other is that there's an infinity of universes and we're in the one that works, or that the universe is created by an infinite mind. And quite honestly, at this point anyway, we cannot distinguish among those three. Each of them is arguably just as logical as the other. There are many scientists who would say that the third one is not acceptable and I would challenge them the way Ravi Zacharias and other people challenge them in that maybe they have some personal biases that they need to look at seriously. But be that as it may, I, in looking at this and accepting this, discovered that there are eight phenomena that keep recurring again and again at what I call essential conditions that in the evolution, in the progress, the evolution from the Big Bang to us whether it's cosmological or chemical or biological evolution, there are requisite conditions that have to occur and every time you find a requisite condition, you identify a requisite condition, there are eight phenomena that are associated with it that happen, that are met, and so it makes me wonder if there's this pattern, is there something behind the pattern? And that's where all this comes in and obviously I believe there is, there is a creator God behind this. JP: So this paper generated quite a bit of -- CP: Quite a bit of thought and discussion and continues to. Yeah, absolutely. So, one of the other reasons we wanted to come back to Norwich, to continue on in this vein, was that I had as part of the coming to a belief and a faith in Christ, and being at a military installation, it was logical that I would find Officers Christian Fellowship. Officers 18 Christian Fellowship is a fellowship, as it states, of officers in the military and this is the Army -- the US branch of it, but there's worldwide groups called by different names, who embrace Christian faith and use it, try to use it, in their life and in their leadership roles. And so I encountered it and became convinced that was something that Norwich could benefit from. And so one of the reasons we came back was to form a Christian fellowship at Norwich using Officers Christian Fellowship as our basic model. So we came back in 1982. Chris preceded me by about four months and so we -- I arrived here in March -- permanently arrived here in March of 1982, getting ready to teach that summer school course, and I began immediately looking for a student that would be interested in forming a Christian fellowship and I couldn't find any. I looked and went to the chapel, asked around, I was having no luck. And one day I was walking on the upper parade ground, I don't remember why, but I was walking on the upper parade ground towards Jackman on the western side and I saw a cadet coming toward me and the Holy Spirit said to me, "You see that cadet? He's the one I want you to talk to about starting a Christian fellowship." And of course my reaction, my immediate reaction, was yeah, sure. I'm so concerned about this that I just created that thought in my mind, and I said I'm not going to pay any attention to it. But the closer I got to this cadet, we were walking towards one another, the more I felt the Holy Spirit saying, "Do it, do it," and it got to the point where I knew that if I hadn't done it I would be in disobedience to God. I would be disobeying the Holy Spirit and so I stopped him. I said, "Young man, you probably are not going to understand what I'm about to tell you and you're going to think I'm nuts, but the Holy Spirit just told me that I'm supposed to talk to you about starting a Christian fellowship at Norwich," at which point he stopped, I mean, he was stopped. He kind of went, "You're kidding me," and kind of fell back, took a step back, and he said, "As I was coming towards you, the Holy Spirit was telling me that I've got to talk to you about starting a Christian fellowship at Norwich." So, that started the Norwich Christian Fellowship. The cadet's name was John Pitrowiski and we started a fellowship that was in 1982, and that must have been -- I'm gathering, I'm thinking it might have been in April, I didn't put the date down. And so that was still in the days when I think Norwich went further beyond May. I think they went to late May or beginning of June, and so it wasn't very long but he had a couple of friends from classes beneath him, Joe Saltsman being one of them, who wanted to be part of this. And so it continued from that year on. And so last year we celebrated our 30 th year together and it's been a great trip helping Norwich students who are inclined to follow the Lord and find out about Officers Christian Fellowship, et cetera. So John Pitrowski, I lost track of him because he was a senior and he graduated a month or two after we formed the fellowship. And I had assumed that I must have done this in the fall of '83 because, you know, I had to have had a longer year. I had almost a year with him before he left that was my assumption. So I went through all of the year books from '80 -- let's see, '82, it would be '83 on. I couldn't find his name so I -- you know, did I somehow get his name wrong? But I asked Joe Saltsman and he says, "Yeah, I remember John." So I knew I had it right and one day -- actually, about a year before our 30th, it all of a sudden dawned on me. I said, "Do you know what? Is it possible that he was in the class of '82?" So I got out the '82 yearbook and sure enough there he was. Come to find out he goes to a church in Waterbury very close to the church I go to.19 JP: You're kidding. CP: He's been around all of this time. JP: Oh, no kidding. CP: So, on the 30th, which was his 30th reunion of course, we got together and had a big celebration. JP: That's wonderful. Do you have time for STEM? CP: Sure, sure. What happened is as I -- when I was in the eighth grade at Northfield I entered the state science fair with my shell collection. Now, in this day and age you couldn't do that and that's not really important to understand, but one of the things that I had really gotten involved with as a kid, and why I was considering marine biology, is I loved shells. I loved the animals that made shells and I loved shells themselves because I'm kind of artistic and I kind of like art stuff as well. And shells are very beautiful, they're geometric, they're colorful, they're wonderful things. So I was naturally attracted to them. So I entered that in eighth grade, won first place in the state science and math fair, and then again in my senior year I did the same thing, only I did some research and did some dissections and had some studies that I had done. Again, not the kind of stuff that we now do in the science fairs, but at the time it was. And again I won first place. So I was kind of sold on science fairs. So from that time on I offered to judge in science fairs. So at the University of Illinois, in Utah I judged, in Maryland I judged, I think, and I'm not 100 percent sure whether I did or not, but I know at the University of Illinois I did and in Utah I did. In Utah, because I was coming in from Dugway Proving Ground I was coming in as an Army judge and it was part of my assignment, my military points to do this as a military judge. So I did it for a year or two and one of the guys that I was doing it with had been working with the Army Research Office and their program of judging the International Science and Engineering Fair. So he'd been part of the Army judges for them. And he said, "I'm going to have to get out of this. Would you like to take my place?" So I said, "Well, yeah." So that year the international fair was in San Antonio and I went there and became a member of the Army judging team, generally about 30 judges every year from the Army would judge the International Science and Engineering Fair and give wonderful prizes. We sent students to the Plum Blossom Festival in Japan or the Fortnight in England, in London. You know, when the Army judges came around the students took notice. So it was a great assignment and a great opportunity and they treat the judges really well. Afterwards they have a big shindig for them with lots of cheese and lots of hors d'oeuvres and lots of wine and stuff, and I said, boy, this is a deal! So I became sold on that and did for the next 25 years served in that capacity almost every year. A couple years I didn't make it and in the last five I was the Chief Army Judge in charge in all of those 30 judges and also got some other assignments related to that. I became the Army judge for the National Junior Science and Humanities Symposium, which is a similar kind of thing done at about the same time of year, but rather than having a poster session, which is what the International Science and Engineering Fair poster presentation judges. The National Junior Science and 20 Humanities Symposium has a platform presentation. So it's a different -- you can, you know, sometimes the same projects can be in both but there are different ways of presenting the information. So, that convinced me that, I mean, I was already convinced, but that certainly drove the nail home that I was very much still interested in STEM and then I came to Norwich and of course the science fair was being held here and so I immediately became a judge in the science fair and recognized that Vermont State Science and Math Fair was not, it was one of the two or three states not involved in ISEF, and said, you know, I've got to get it involved but I just do not have the time to teach and to do the Vermont State Science and Math Fair component that would get us involved with ISEF. But I made a pledge that I would, to myself, I guess, that once I retired from the military in 2003 because that was when I turned 60, that I would make an effort to get us involved with ISEF. And at that point I had been working with Mary Hoppe and, oh, come on, I'm drawing a blank here. We'll have to get that back up. What's her name? [Martha McBride] Anyway, who had been the two directors, working with them to kind of be an understudy. And so the next year I said I'm going to continue this process as an understudy and I'm going to link us up with ISEF. Now, the main thing about ISEF is you send, at that time, one winner on to international -- from your state fair, on to the International Science and Engineering Fair to compete there, but that requires money and of course the science fair had no money. I mean, it had very little money that they were -- the major initiative that I saw I had to do with come up with a way of getting money and that has become a really time consuming operation. We raise in terms of actual awards and prizes and trip money, we raise about $25,000 a year now and it takes a lot of time to do that even though I have -- almost all of that is coming from established partners, as we call them, because every year you have to renew it, you have to send out emails, you have to send out letters, you have to follow up on them. Some of them follow up themselves, some of them you have to follow up on. You have to record all of this so you know what you did because we have over 120 partners. It's trying to keep all of them straight. You know, what conversation you had with which one three weeks ago is just, you know, you've got to keep accurate records of that. So it's a very time consuming process. But we are really making progress, we are making headway. We are getting more and more students involved in science fair projects and of course the problem with our country -- one of the problems with our country today -- is that many of our students look at Science Technology Engineering and Math, STEM, as being over their heads, over their ability, and we want to make sure that students understand that in many cases that's not the case. It's that they haven't had the opportunities to get excited by it. For example, when I was in the science fair as a senior, that was during the space race and I remember going from the state science fair to the New England science fair and that was during the New England science fair was the -- we heard over the speakers an announcement that the US had successfully sent our first astronaut into orbit. And so those were exciting times and those are the kinds of things that get people's kids' imagination going. Well, we needed something like that because let's face it, if we're going to retain our position as strategically as number one in the world, we have got to have a good Science Technology Engineering, and Math. I had recognized, having been travelling a few other places in the world that the US, high school STEM scores were very woefully low and yet, here we are number one in the world. How can that be? Well, there's a number of reasons, but one of the reasons is, what I had discovered was happening at Norwich, is that between 21 high school and graduating from college the role of the university in this country is to push our kids. It's really important that we push our kids and make them learn the stuff that other kids were learning in high school elsewhere around the world. And, for example, in Japan they're pushed hard, they do well in high school and they score well, but my oldest son, English as a second language teacher in Japan, so we went over to visit him and it turns out that their college over there is almost a lark. And so we can catch up with them and we do catch up with them and we pass them. Certainly other reasons for this is we get a lot of influx from the best of the foreign countries as well, too. I'm not trying to downplay that. But it became obvious to me that we really needed to do something positive and we need to do something positive to encourage our young kids to discover that science, technology, engineering, and math are wonderful and they're exciting and they're full of all kinds of challenges and opportunities and experiences that you're not going to get any other way and I think we're beginning to get that. JP: That's wonderful. You have done so much and you have been -- CP: I've been blessed. I haven't really tried to do this or do that. It's just that things have fallen in my path and I think because of Norwich I don't hesitate, I don't pull back from taking advantage of them, but I really have been blessed with lots of opportunities, lots of fun stuff. JP: You have done a lot of really amazing things. The Pinkham Pearson Index alone, notwithstanding the other stuff. Do you have any relatives at Norwich besides your dad? CP: My oldest brother, the one who said that I should stay in the military, in the reserves, David, who lives in Montpelier, he's still around. He's 87 I think. He was in the Second World War and after the war he came to Norwich for two years in engineering. He actually showed me a paper he wrote on nuclear power (laughs) that at the time of the Second World War was still a concept, and then he transferred to Cornell to finish his degree in engineering. So he's part of Norwich. I have two of my three sons attended Norwich and youngest, well, the middle son went to Vermont, VC, Vermont College, when it was part of Norwich and my youngest son came here and majored in psychology and actually has gotten a masters from Norwich in the masters degree, online degree program in criminal justice management or administration. JP: What's his name? CP: Kristian Pinkham. JP: Kristian Pinkham. Amazing. The Pinkhams at Norwich. CP: And the middle one is Kreig Pinkham. JP: With a C or K?22 CP: K. All my three sons are with K's. Kevin is my oldest. He's an English professor carrying on the family tradition of teaching down at Nyack College in New York, and Kreig is the director of the Washington County Youth Service Bureau, which is really responsible for homeless and run away youth in the state of Vermont. And my youngest son is a DEA agent in El Paso, Texas. JP: Wow, that's amazing! Gosh, I want to ask you a little bit about what advice would you give a rook today about how to survive and thrive the way that you did? CP: Well, the first thing is, again, remember -- and I still tell them this -- the two things that I think are important. One is that nothing lasts forever and so you can get through the rook school, the rook experience. If you keep this in mind it will keep you sane. And secondly, that if you allow it to, Norwich will push you and will help you to develop as an individual, but you've got to go along with the flow. You can't resist the flow. You've got to take advantage of the opportunities that it provides. I think that's really important. And of course, obviously, the students that I come into contact with through Norwich Christian Fellowship, I say to continue to develop your spiritual understanding, your spiritual walk, your spiritual self. And as a teacher I think I made it clear in my courses. On the first day of course I said, first day of class I said, "You've got to understand that I am a Christian and my worldview is formed by that -- is informed by that. I will not mention anymore about it in class. You will hear an awful lot about evolution in class because I'm an evolutionary biologist and if you feel that there is a problem between the two, I'm more than happy to talk with you about how that problem is not real, but that's got to be done outside of class." And so I made it clear in all of my classes that that was something that I -- that they needed to know about me in order to be fair and open. JP: Wow. How do you define leadership or have you already, do you think? CP: Well, to be honest with you, I've not given a whole lot of thought to what leadership really is, but on the spot I would have to say that leadership is a willingness to lead and a willingness to -- openness to see opportunities and to think creatively about these opportunities and how you might use them. And that's a good question because it brings up another story that I think I would like to relate to. And that is the story of the Russian scientist. Shortly after I left Edgewood as my individual mobilization designee assignment, I was assigned back to Edgewood from Dugway. And the two weeks that I was at Edgewood, my boss had -- because he was a North American peregrine falcon banding program coordinator, had gone to Russia, not during that two weeks, but he had earlier gone to Russia and met with and formed a working relationship with his Russian corresponding -- his Russian equivalent, and he and another Russian scientist were scheduled to come to the US during this two weeks that I was going to be assigned to Edgewood Arsenal, to Scott's group. And so this was during the Cold War, but there was some efforts at detent and this being something where there was no weapon system involved or anything like that. It was something as regarded by the government as being worthwhile. So I was invited by Scott to help him get his -- he had just bought a dilapidated Southern mansion in Maryland to get it up kind of a little bit in shape for this 23 meeting. And so I helped him do it and the Russians came and we spent an evening toasting one another and going through bottles after bottles of vodka and, again, my Norwich training came through because I was able to drink two Russians under the table. I'm not overly -- well, yes, I'm proud of that. Let's face it. I don't drink that way anymore, but at the time there was a value to it because when I was at Norwich, I drank like a Norwich student. So, anyway, in the process of that evening, we had a conversation and it was very obvious to me in this conversation that something was wrong, and I'm going to explain what was wrong, but I've got to go back just a little bit. In grad school finished all my courses except for one, population genetics. Population genetics was taught by a newly minted post-doc who had the audacity to expect his students to think. Well, I was a good student because I was fantastic at rote memory, I wish I still were, but at that time I was really good at it. And I wasn't used to a course where they said think and I got a 48 on the final exam and he was good enough to give me a D in the course. I had been essentially a straight A student and that shook me up as you can well imagine. And so I had to ask myself, is thinking a skill that I don't have? Is it something I'll never have or is it a skill that can be acquired? So I started researching thinking, creative thinking, and discovered that it is a skill that can be learned that every human being is born with it but quite often the school system teaches us out of it. In my case it was perhaps the school system, but more important, understand I love my father and he was a wonderful person, but he was an old guard, old school military guy. It was his way or not. So very quickly I learned it didn't do any good to think, it didn't do any good to explain things to him, my side of the story, because there was only his side of the story, so I stopped learning how to think. And so I got to this moment in grad school, this crisis moment, and discovered that I didn't know how to think. From the studies, however, from taking courses and everything I learned how to think and that's why I've got several patents and I've been able to come up with the Pinkham Pearson Index, et cetera. But as I was talking with these Russians, it became very obvious to me they were suffering from the same problem I had been suffering from. It was dangerous for them to think. So the only way they could come up with any thought whatsoever was to just randomly go all over the place and hope that somewhere sooner or later they would stumble across something that was useful and relevant. At that instant I knew we had won the Cold War. It was clear to me that they were fighting an impediment that would just prevent them from doing anything that we had to worry about. And, in fact, that's the way it turned out. JP: That's a nice -- that's a good story, big picture, little picture. Is there anything else that you would like to say? Anything about the Citizen Soldier or -- CP: The Citizen Soldier is a very, very important concept and I'd like to think that I embody it. The reason I feel that way is because I think I embody it, but the soldier doesn't always have to be, obviously, a fighting individual in the sense of a combat. Combat service and combat service support are two very, very important aspects of the military and you can be in combat, and my hat is off to everyone who is in that position, whose life is at risk, willingly puts their life at risk for their country and for their comrades, but there's also a role for those of us who are a little bit less brave, like myself, who want to serve and have a gift to give to the country but can give it in a way where the risk to life 24 and limb is not anywhere nearly as great as it is in the combat arms. So, I think the Citizen Soldier is a very important aspect that we need to be aware of and promote. And I'm proud to say I'm a part of Norwich which founded the concept. And I generally don't miss opportunities when I'm talking with youngsters to point that out to them. JP: Is there anything else you'd like to add? CP: Probably, but I can't think of it right now. I think that's about it. JP: That's about it. Thank you. CP: Oh, you're welcome. Thank you for the opportunity, I enjoyed this. This is fun. JP: This has been fascinating and I think it's going to be fascinating for people to hear. I think it's going to be very interesting for people who are interested in the different things you've spoken about and to hear you say them. So thank you. I'm going to hit stop. I need to do a little intro. And we're back with Carl Pinkham. CP: So the parting Norwich story while I was a student has to do with three events that happened my last three days at Norwich. On Friday I was commissioned a second lieutenant in armor. On Saturday I was married to Christine Waite who has been my wife for almost 50 years and on Sunday I graduated. JP: That's a busy -- CP: That's a very busy time. (laughter) JP: That's good. CP: That's it. JP: Thank you. END OF AUDIO FILE
Inhaltsangabe: Abstract: The US subprime-crisis became a headline in the global media starting in February 2007 after the US housing market had already shown first signs of a slowdown in late 2006. Previously, the US housing market had enjoyed a favorable environment, especially from 2002 to 2005, which was characterized by low interest rates, rising house values, and increasing home financing possibilities through subprime mortgages. However, more and more events were published during the year by US mortgage brokers, international investment banks, and central banks around the world that presented a picture which caused today's perception of the subprime-crisis. What's more, the subprime-crisis is far from being over: an end to the crisis is not yet in sight. One rather unique characteristic of this crisis is that its actual basis is the delinquencies and defaults of subprime single-family home mortgages in the US which is commonly not regarded to be of great relevance for the international capital markets. However, taking into account the originate and distribute business model of US mortgage brokers in connection with the securitization of these mortgages into various types of securities that are traded on a global basis, it is not surprising to observe that banks and investment funds around the world were invested into these securities. Before the crisis started, only a few banks or funds considered the liquidity of these securities when investing significant amounts of money in them because they focused on maximizing their returns. But, when larger problems in the US subprime mortgage market became evident, liquidity became the major concern for investors and investor preferences significantly shifted to safer assets such as government bonds. This caused severe problems in the money market, which ultimately brought the crisis across the Atlantic to Europe. Moreover, funding problems emerged and caused the first bank run in Europe in decades when depositors in Britain started to queue outside Northern Rock branches for hours to withdraw their deposits in light of fears that the bank might have to file for bankruptcy. In addition, another British bank had been in the spotlight earlier that year because HSBC was the first European bank to announce a billion dollar write-off linked to its exposure to subprime mortgages. Taking into consideration the subprime-crisis-related events in Europe, the British banking market can be characterized as the only banking market in Europe where the subprime crisis caused banks to substantially write down subprime-related assets on the one hand but where severe funding problems even led to a bank run that had to be bailed out by the central bank and the government on the other hand. Consequently, the British banking market can be considered to be the European banking market with the highest impact of the subprime-crisis and is, therefore, worth analyzing in detail. The objective of this thesis is to discuss the reasons for the emergence of the subprime-crisis and to empirically examine whether the subprime-crisis had an impact on the British Banking sector. The empirical analysis consists of two different approaches whereas an event study measures the short-term impact of certain news. The performance of the British banking sector in the full year 2007 is analyzed in a second approach that focuses on the long-term impact of the subprime-crisis. In addition, the paper provides an overview on the development of the subprime-crisis in 2007 based on a detailed description of the underlying fundamental market characteristics. In order to empirically measure the impact of the subprime-crisis on British banks, an event study will be conducted. Event studies are a widely-used empirical methodology in economics and finance to examine the impact of certain events: they are considered to be the standard method to measure security price reactions. An event study is an empirical study that measures if specific events have a significant impact on certain stock prices by calculating abnormal stock returns around predefined events. In this regard, an abnormal return is the difference between the actual return in the market and the expected return according to a return generating model. A common assumption in this regard is that positive events lead to positive abnormal returns whereas negative events cause the abnormal returns to be negative. Consequently, important news relating to the subprime-crisis will be categorized as positive or negative and its impact on stock returns will be determined. The event study, as well as the timeline of the subprime-crisis, include events from January 1, 2007 to December 31, 2007. The analysis of the year-round performance of the British banking sector in 2007 is conducted in addition to the event study and follows a different methodology. In contrast to the analysis of the impact of individual events, this approach deals with the performance of British banks and compares this to the performance of an alternative non-bank portfolio. Key to this analysis is that both portfolios have the same risk and return characteristics at the beginning of 2007 that have been determined through a backtesting of the portfolios' performance in 2006. Course of the Investigation: In the second chapter, important fundamentals of the subprime-crisis will be examined. These fundamentals explain how an environment was able to develop in the last decades that lay the foundation for today's crisis. In Chapter 2.1, an overview about the development and the structure of the US subprime mortgage market will be presented before specific characteristics of subprime mortgages will be outlined in 2.2. The unique business model of mortgage brokers is depicted subsequently. The last segments of Chapter 2 specify complex financial instruments that enabled the subprime-crisis to spread around the world and explain why the securitization process leads to high-risk securities. Chapter 3 specifically describes the development of the subprime-crisis in 2007. After presenting an overview about the situation of the US housing market up to 2007 in 3.1, a timeline about last year's subprime-crisis is outlined in 3.2, and the impact on international capital markets is discussed in 3.3. Chapter 3.4 focuses on the consequences for British banks and the actions of the British financial regulatory environment. An empirical analysis of the subprime-crisis is conducted in Chapter 4. A general overview about event studies and their historic development is presented in 4.1. After deducing the typical framework of an event study in 4.2, the relevant British banks in line with its market index as well as relevant news for the event study are determined in Chapter 4.3. The actual event study that analyzes the impact of the subprime-crisis on British banks will be presented in Chapter 4.4. Additionally, a comparison of the performance of a bank portfolio with an alternative non-bank portfolio is given in 4.5. Finally, Chapter 5 contains a summary of the theoretical concepts and the empirical results and gives an outlook about a potential development of the subprime-crisis, capital markets, and specifically the British banking market. Ideas for further research are also presented.Inhaltsverzeichnis:Table of Contents: LIST OF FIGURESI LIST OF TABLESII LIST OF ABBREVIATIONSIII 1.INTRODUCTION1 1.1Motivation and Objective1 1.2Course of the Investigation3 2.FUNDAMENTALS OF THE SUBPRIME-CRISIS4 2.1The US Housing and Subprime Mortgage Market4 2.2Characteristics ofSubprime Mortgages7 2.3Business Model of US Mortgage Brokers9 2.4Financial Instruments Underlying the Subprime-Crisis10 2.5Consequences of the Fragmented Securitization Process14 3.THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SUBPRIME-CRISIS15 3.1Situation of the US Housing Market up to200715 3.2Timeline of the Subprime-Crisis in 200717 3.3Spillover Effects from the Mortgage Market to the Global Capital Markets21 3.4Consequences for the British Banking Market22 4.EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS ABOUT THE SUBPRIME-CRISIS27 4.1History and Overview of Event Studies27 4.2Framework of an Event Study28 4.3Selection of Relevant Data31 4.3.1British Banks and Market Index31 4.3.2News about Private Financial Institutions and Central Banks32 4.4Event Study About the Subprime-Crisis34 4.4.1Event Study Methodology34 4.4.2Formulation and Testing of Hypotheses36 4.4.3Interpretation of Results37 4.5Year-round Performance of the British Banking Sector in 200740 5.SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION43 REFERENCES45 APPENDIXES51Textprobe:Text Sample: Chapter 3.2,Timeline of the Subprime-Crisis in 2007: In February 2007, the first signs appeared that subprime mortgage brokers were in trouble as ResMae Mortgage filed for bankruptcy and Nova Star Financial reported a loss that was not expected by analysts. It was also the beginning of European banks having to announce losses that were caused by the subprime-crisis. HSBC reported losses of Dollar 10.5bn in its mortgage finance subsidiary in the US and, consequently, fired the head of that particular division. Problems of US mortgage brokers became more and more evident in March 2007 as People's Choice was the next mortgage broker that had to declare bankruptcy. Moreover, the brokers Fremont General and New Century Financial stopped making new subprime mortgages. Two weeks later, rumors appeared that New Century Financial may have to file for bankruptcy as well and these rumors became true in the beginning of April when the company had to file for Chapter 11. In May, the next European bank announced an involvement in the subprime-crisis when UBS had to close its US hedge fund operation Dillon Read Capital Management. In June 2007, rating agencies began appearing in the crisis. Moody's downgraded 131 subprime MBSs and announced to review the rating of an additional 260 securities. Moreover, two Bear Stearns hedge funds that heavily invested in subprime-backed securities lost a significant part of their value and Bear Stearns had to bail-out the hedge funds and provide them with Dollar3.2bn to cover their subprime exposure. As a result, they fired their head of asset management who was responsible for the hedge fund business. July 2007 is considered the first month when the subprime-crisis had a significant impact on the stock market. After closing above 14,000 points for the first time in history, the Dow Jones lost about seven percent until the end of September. UBS brought the crisis back to Europe once more when they suddenly fired their chief executive officer (CEO) Peter Wuffli, mentioning problems relating to the subprime crisis as the cause of this decision. Ration agencies also played a major role in July when Standard Poor's (SP) and Moody's downgraded the ratings of subprime MBSs with values of Dollar 7.3bn and Dollar 5.0bn, respectively. On July 7, SP announced a review of the ratings of numerous CDOs with investments in subprime structured products; Moody's was said to review 184 mortgage-backed CDO tranches. Mortgage brokers were in the spotlight again when American Home Mortgage had difficulties in the refinancing of loans. Countrywide, another major mortgage broker announced a drop in earnings as more and more of their subprime loans defaulted. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke also mentioned rising defaults in the subprime market and estimated that total losses caused by the subprime crisis could add up to Dollar 100bn. Suddenly, on July 30, the German bank IKB Deutsche Industriebank (IKB) had to announce that one of its ABCP conduits that invested in subprime structured products had troubles refinancing itself. As a consequence, IKB's main shareholder, state-owned KfW, had to bail-out IKB and guaranteed liquidity lines for the conduit Rhineland Funding. One day later, on August 1, 2007, the whole picture of IBK was presented to the public. Total losses due the Rhineland Funding conduit were Euro 3.5bn and a rescue fund by KfW and other German private banks was installed. The mortgage broker American Home Mortgage finally declared bankruptcy and extended the terms on ABCP that were issued by one of its funding conduits. Liquidity problems in the markets for structured products became obvious when BNP Paribas stopped the redemption of three of its funds with a total value of Euro 2bn because they were not able to calculate a fair price for the funds due to the illiquid subprime MBS market. This announcement triggered concerns about market prices of structured credit products in general and interbank lending rates such as LIBOR strongly increased as banks sought liquidity. ABCPs were also priced with higher premiums. This closure of BNP Paribas funds can be regarded as one of the key events in the subprime-crisis because it caused central banks to heavily intervene in the money markets. One day later, the European Central Bank (ECB) injected Euro 95bn of short-term liquidity into the European money market and, subsequently, the Fed as well as the Bank of Japan provided liquidity to their respective money markets. These central banks continued to provide hundreds of billions of dollars of short-term liquidity to the global money markets in the following weeks. The Fed intervened again, by reducing the discount rate in order to provide liquidity to the markets. Goldman Sachs was the next company that had to inject money into a hedge fund in mid-August. The investment bank injected Dollar3bn into one of its hedge funds that suffered from losses in subprime structured products. Citigroup closed seven SIVs with a value of Dollar49bn and took the SIVs' subprime debt on its balance sheet as the SIVs were not able to receive funding due to the illiquidity in the money markets. Morgan Stanley announced to a write-off of Dollar 9.4bn due to investments in the subprime market and sold a 9.9 percent stake to a Chinese investment company in order to strengthen its equity base later that month. Countrywide also suffered from the illiquid markets and had to draw down Dollar 11.5bn from the company's credit lines before receiving a Dollar2bn cash injection from Bank of America. Similar to the losses of IKB, SachsenLB, another German bank, reported refinancing problems in one of its conduits that invested into subprime mortgage products and was, consequently, sold to LBBW after receiving a Euro17.3bn credit line. Looking at the British Banking market, Barclays received a Pounds1.6bn short-term loan from the Bank of England. In the beginning of September 2007, it became evident that the subprime-crisis was a truly global crisis when Bank of China revealed that they made losses of Dollar 9bn that can be attributed to subprime investments. The major event of the subprime-crisis in Britain started on September 13, when the BBC announced that Northern Rock received an emergency loan from the Bank of England in order to solve its refinancing problems. As a consequence, a bank run started that could only be stopped when the British government guaranteed all savings. A more detailed analysis of Northern Rock is presented in Chapter 3.4. A number of investment banks announced their quarterly results in September. Goldman Sachs reports net earnings of Dollar 2.8bn, which were mainly due to short positions in structured subprime mortgage products, whereas Deutsche Bank announced losses of Euro1.7bn. HSBC had losses of Dollar 880m in the third quarter and announced the closure of its US subprime mortgage unit. International banks continued to announce quarterly results in October. UBS reveled an unexpectedly high loss, wrote down Dollar3.4bn in its fixed income division, and fired its Chief Financial Officer and its investment banking head. Moreover, Citigroup had to write-off Dollar 5.9bn in addition to its earlier write-offs. Merrill Lynch's write-offs accounted for Dollar 7.9bn and caused total losses of Dollar 2.3bn. As a result, CEO Stan O'Neil resigned from his position. The Japanese Bank Nomura also announced a substantial loss and closed its US MBS department. The US government initiated the Hope Now initiative that was set up in order to support homeowners to avoid defaults on their mortgage. The US Treasury Department also made major US banks install the Master Liquidity Enhancement Conduit that was supposed to buy illiquid structured products to reestablish liquidity in the market. SP downgraded another Dollar23bn worth of structured products that were backed by mortgage loans and unlike the downgrades in August, SP also downgraded securities that had an AAA rating before. On October 31, the Fed announced the expected reduction of the federal funds target rate by another 25 basis points to 4.5 percent. Investment banks continued to report their subprime exposure in November 2007. Citigroup started with admitting an additional write-down requirement between Dollar8bn and Dollar11bn after already having to write-off Dollar5.9bn in October. As a consequence of these substantial losses, CEO Charles Prince resigned. Morgan Stanley reported a Dollar3.7bn loss in its subprime mortgage investments, whereas Wachovia announced a total loss of Dollar1.7bn. Bank of America wrote off Dollar3bn due to investments in the subprime market and the GSE Freddie Mac reported a loss of Dollar2bn. Besides US banks, UK banks were also again affected by the subprime-crisis. Barclays and HSBC had to write down Dollar2.7bn and Dollar3.4bn, respectively. At the end of November, Citigroup announced an increase in its equity base and sold additional shares to an investment fund based in Abu Dhabi in order to raise Dollar7.5bn. Moreover, Freddie Mac increased its equity by issuing Dollar6bn worth of new shares. In line with Freddie Mac's capital increase, Fannie Mae also issued new shares worth Dollar7bn in the beginning of December 2007. On December 3, Moody's announced a review of additional subprime debt. The British banks Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds TSB reported subprime write-offs with a value of Pounds1.25bn and Pounds200m, respectively. On December 6, the Bank of England lowered the interest rate by 25 basis points while the ECB left the interest rates at a constant level following its regular meeting on the same day. In the US, the Fed lowered the discount rate by 25 basis points one week later although some directors were in favor of a 50 basis points interest rate cut. UBS announced that the bank had to write-down another Dollar10bn due to its subprime mortgage market investments. In addition, the company received an Dollar11.5bn capital infusion by investors from Singapore and the Middle East. The last banks that reported substantial losses in 2007 were Washington Mutual, who reported fourth quarter losses of Dollar1.6bn and Morgan Stanley, who wrote off an additional 9.4 Dollar bn and also sold new equity to a foreign investor. In order to provide European banks with sufficient liquidity at the end of the year, the ECB provided banks with 500 Dollar bn at the end of December. This timeline of the development of the subprime-crisis in 2007 shows the huge impact on the international financial markets and global financial institutions that the problems in the US subprime mortgage market have caused. The next chapter will highlight how the crisis in the subprime mortgage market was able to spill over to other asset classes on a global basis. In order to understand the consequences of the subprime-crisis and especially the need for central bank interventions in the money markets, it is necessary to understand the emergence of the liquidity crisis that appeared in the second half of 2007. Many economists such as Buiter define August 9, 2007 as the day when the subprime-crisis was evidently the trigger for the global capital markets crisis. The closure of the BNP Paribas funds due to its inability to value ABS had a spill-over effect on many asset classes and also forced the central banks to massively intervene in the money markets. In economic theory, these spill-over effects are called contagion, which is defined as the spread of a crisis from one specific market into different countries or asset classes. One major consequence was the widening in credit spreads in the global money markets that were caused by the liquidity shortage in the interbank market. Banks across the globe were more and more uncertain about other banks' involvement in subprime MBSs and CDOs and the financial health of their counterparties in money market transactions and became reluctant to lend money, even on a short-time basis. As a result, a liquidity crisis occurred that forced the central banks to provide enormous amounts of liquidity to the interbank markets. One characteristic of the liquidity crisis was a so-called flight to quality which means that banks and fund managers sell riskier assets such as subprime MBSs and CDOs and invest in safe assets such as government bonds. A flight to quality is generally regarded to be based on uncertainty in the markets or uncertainty about counterparties rather than on the risk of specific assets itself. This also seems to hold true for the subprime-crisis. Due to the large supply in these risky asset classes, the markets for MBSs, CDOs, and ABCPs became very illiquid because many sellers were opposing few buyers. As a result, credit spreads in these asset classes significantly increased. As a reaction to the liquidity crisis in the interbank market, central banks intervened several times and provided liquidity to the market.
