RePost: An American Story

Editor's Note: Arthur and Alex are in the midst of a busy time and haven't had the time to write much new.  This post was origonally published over a year ago, but it seemed particularly relevant to what is going on right now.  Until next week, Omnia Vincit Amor.

On April 24, 1876, 21 year old Felix Vincent stepped off of a ship named the Switzerland in a new land, leaving behind a homeland with basic customs and language he had known all his life, all in hopes that a better life was to be had in the United States.  He would be one of five million Germans who would make their way to the new world between 1850 and 1930, not the least insignificant to our story would be a Franz and a Maria Hildebrand, who in 1883 left Epterode Germany for the Midwest.  To our knowledge these two groups of people never met, yet through the wide lens history allows we can see providence playing out in their separate lives.

It was not an easy trip and in a real sense their presence represented a nation's struggle with the best and worst in itself.  Hard as it is to imagine, there was racism to overcome.  Benjamin Franklin, writing about immigrants in his own day, wrote:

"Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion."

The complexion seemed to me the most strange, but Franklin in a lengthy quote goes on to explain the German "swarthy complexion" was in great contrast to that of the Anglicans.

Along with racism, concerns about religion (yes, blood was shed between different Christian groups in this period), loss of jobs, and freeloading all was part of a nativist rhetoric meant to keep America from changing too drastically.

It was into that political backdrop our heroes set their feet in time.  It is likely that they did not adapt to the new culture quickly and easily; Franz would become a member of a church that spoke German in their services until the world wars made the practice too taboo.  There are Mennonite churches in the area who to this day speak German in special services.

Despite this, I think it would be hard to claim their presence negatively impacted their new country.  They worked hard, and the commerce they produced brought needed goods and services to their communities.  Their voices became sources of valued council, they contributed to public works and served in various capacities in their churches.  With time, children would come (Franz and Maria in particular had 11), children who, like their parents, would go on to do great things for their communities.  They would fight their country's wars, help their neighbors, and continue providing the goods and services that helped bring forth the most flourishing economy the world has ever seen.

More like them would come.  By 1910, 14.7% of the people living in the United States were born some place else.  Immigrants like Enrico Fermi, Werner von Braun, Nikolai Tesla, Albert Einstein, and the Oppenheimer brothers (who, full disclosure, were merely the children of immigrants) would make America the most technologically advanced country in the world.  Andrew Carnegie became an important captain of industry, Henry Kissinger and Madeline Albright would serve as important diplomats, and Arnold Schwarzenegger made awesome action moves.  Where would America be without Irving Berlin's White Christmas, or "God Bless America"?  Many of the people listed left their countries fleeing for their lives in the face of extreme tyranny. 

Immigration is a pretty hot topic at the moment, particularly what should be done with refugees.  In the midst of some of the things said about immigrants and what they will do to our country, it might behoove us to remember that in a not-too-distant past, the very same things were said about each of our ancestors (the exception being, of course, our loyal readership from the Native American community, and their was plenty of nasty things said about them).  Eastern Europeans in particular were accused of being anarchists and communists who posed a grave threat to national security, and embarrassing atrocities were committed in the noble name of defense.

Whatever else is said, Felix and Franz need not worry.  The branches of their family tree now incorporate people of even more diverse nationalities, including Korean, Chinese, Ethiopian, South African, Irish, English, and many others.  The great great great grandson of Felix would eventually fall in love with the great great great granddaughter of Franz and Maria, and together they hope to add to the contributions begun by the immigrants who started it all.  Omnia Vincit Amore.

Backflow

I work with environmental regulations at work, and it has opened all sorts of new worlds to me.  This week’s topic: backflow prevention.  

Fascinating stuff, right?  If you didn’t know (though I suspect many of our more practically minded readers are very well versed in the topic) backflow is a scenario where negative pressure in a city’s water line causes water from residential or commercials properties to be sucked back into the public water supply.  If that water has been exposed to some sort of chemical or contaminant, this can turn into a big deal in a hurry.  

This knowledge in mind, you start noticing a lot of things really fast.  I’m willing to bet that your dishwasher is set up so that fresh water is coming in from above instead of below; this means that in the case of backflow, that water line is sucking air rather than your dishwater.  Same goes for your washing machine.  After a quick examination, I can now with deep relief confirm that your toilet’s water inlet was designed with this same consideration.  

This principle is worked into the design of most water consuming appliances, but sometimes this air gap cannot be provided.  Changes in elevation can mean that a failure of a valve at a local swimming pool gives residents downhill some funky tasting tap water.  Fire sprinkler systems hold stagnant water for years, allowing bacteria to grow unhindered.  If drawn into the main supply, the health consequences can be dire.  Carbolic acid from soda fountains sucked back into copper pipes start degrading the metal. And if all these seem unlikely, you should Google “backflow incidents.”  A particularly disturbing story is a mother who found nematodes, a type of parasitic roundworm, wriggling around in her bathtub because of standing water sucked up from her neighbor’s lawn sprinkler system.

Engineering controls do a ton to mitigate this risk.  Special backflow prevention valves, fully functional, make it near impossible for a backflow incident to occur.  Unfortunately, stuff degrades over time, so many local ordinances mandate that homeowners or businesses with systems at risk of backflow (lawn sprinkler systems being the most common) have these special valves inspected annually, which costs the owner something in the $30 range.  

Anyway, the unseen world of civil engineering, all those systems we take for granted on which our very lives depend, is fascinating to me, and work has led me into an investigation of these issues.  It also was timely in another way: I have been thinking a lot about the idea of social responsibility.

Personal responsibility, the idea that an individual needs to bear the consequences of their actions and, as a corollary, that a society that shields the individual from those consequences will ultimately loose its moral integrity, has been a common theme I’ve heard expressed through recent conversations.  Personal responsibility is indeed essential to a society, but so often what I hear missing in people’s rhetoric is any concept of social responsibility, the idea that members of a society inherently impact each other and that a society that does not recognize and enforce social responsibility, either through social pressure or law, will ultimately succumb to moral decay as well.

There is a lot quibbling over how far a society should go in enforcing responsibility, both personal and social, or even where one ends and the other begins.  I am surprised at how comfortable people are with enforcing what I’d consider personal responsibility (opposing marijuana legalization, abolishing or strongly regulating pornography, etc. (two stances I agree with, by the way)) while opposing what I would consider social responsibility (EPA and OSHA regulations, backflow inspections, etc.)  There seems to be a fairly common mental model that both society and government is out to corrupt us; us being individuals, or the church, or whatever, and to protect against these corrupting forces we need laws to make society look more like us, or in the very least inhibit its largest excesses, and gets the government out of our darn business.  This mental model is at least partly right, but it is also incredibly convenient; our norms get placed on the society and involves little to no sacrifice on our part.

Surely, this mental models needs to be supplemented.  If I am benefiting from some activity that harms my neighbor without properly compensating him, I am in essence stealing from him.  No one thinks it would be right if I took someone’s couch, sold it, and kept all the money.  If only all cases were that straightforward.  What about activity that converts my neighbor’s security into risk? Neglecting my backflow prevention valves might be an example of this.  This mental model forces some sacrifice on our part; no wonder people hate the EPA.

So where’s the line and how should a society enforce its norms?  That is a hard question, and it requires us to view reality as close to what it really is as possible.  If the first model is not sufficiently close to reality, than its adherents, with the best intentions in the world, will actively promote policies that harm their fellow man.   As people called to love our neighbor, let us be sure than in our thinking, Omnia Vincit Amor.

Food

There is one topic that has been put off far too long on our blog: food.  We’ve had so many adventures with food over the course of 2016, its lack of coverage on this blog is nothing short of derelict.  Sure, our faithful readers know that we domesticated some wild yeasts to make sourdough bread and some bacteria to make yogurt.  We have spoken only in the most indirect of terms regarding our motivations and thoughts inspiring these activities. 

Our Netflix subscription had a tremendous impact on us.  Over the past year, “Cooked”, “The Chef’s Table”, “For Grace”, and other documentaries opened a previously unknown world to us.  In our sterilized world, the idea that humans have utilized microscopic organisms for millennia, organisms we had didn’t even know existed until about 300 years ago, for food preparation and preservation is simply astonishing.  

Food says so much about a region.  Colder climate dwellers had to figure out how to preserve food to last beyond the growing season; here comes sauerkraut, kimchi, and lutefisk.   Regions with ample grazing grounds developed techniques for open fire cooking and preserving milk; now we have cheese and yogurt.  Areas without the rich grazing where their animals were held on to much longer utilized brazing and pot cooking.  Warmer climates with food was available year round rely less on microbes for food preservation; they are more like to incorporate spicier mixes to help kill microbes.

So much from this year fascinated me.  Fivethirtyeight, a news/statistics website I frequent, had a series of stories regarding the growing science of probiotics.  The symbiotic relationship thriving between myself and the bacteria wriggling around in my gut just fascinates me, and inspires me to eat differently.  While I still drink far too much soda, the destruction such food perpetrates on my microbiome is the most effective mental image I have to quell the urge.  Understanding the microbes that make certain foods sour has expanded my palate; I now enjoy pickles on my hamburger and sauerkraut with corned beef. 

I was always an adventurous eater, at least relative to the rest of my family; these documentaries have only made me more inquisitive.  Alex and I have gone to a sushi bar before but neither of us were adventurous enough to try the actual raw fish.  That changed this past year; the spicy red snapper was particularly delicious.  I look forward to trying some of the more interesting restaurants and dishes going into the future.

Food brings with it many political, economic, and moral considerations.  As a citizen of a state where agriculture is the major driving force of the economy, what will be the outcome of the legal, cultural, and market driven forces all determining what, where, and how our food will be grown in the future?  How do we best distribute food to a world where so we have such easy access and others starve?  May our love for our fellow man compel us to find just solutions, so that in this world it may be said, that Omnai Vincit Amor.

Our "Pulitzers"

As we were compiling our end of the years posts I am always amazed by the different areas we write about-- fashion, cooking, travel, sports, politics, and entertainment.  A lot of our posts are about specific events in our lives.  However, Arthur also has a knack of writing commentary and editorial posts.  By far, Arthur's favorite topic to write about is politics, however the editor may not publish each one since Arthur is allowed a quota of 1 or 2 political rants per year.  Here are our "pulitzers" for the year:

Best Commentary-- "I thought all presidents were giants"

Best Editorial-- Don't Forget the Tiny People

Best Photography--  The first 10 miles were great...

Best Religion Piece-- Remembrance

Best Feature-- The March of Time

Best Humor-- Random Awesomeness

Top 16 of 2016

Each year we have put together a Top X of 20X list.  As the years go by we have to think of more and more highlights from the year.  Here is our compilation for this year.

In 2016 we checked off a few bucket list items:

1. Sea Kayaking-- We went on a sea kayaking trip along the Apostle Island National Lakeshore through sea caves, towering cliffs, and the crystal clear water of Lake Superior.  We both hope more kayaking is in our future.

2.  Attending a performance of Wicked-- We went on a double date for Valentines Day with my brother and sister-in-law to Springfield to watch the Broadway musical Wicked.  This has been on Arthur's bucket list for several years.  The music, costumes, stage, and production were amazing.

3.  Donating hair--  It's been on my bucket list (not Arthur's) to grow my hair out and donate it to an organization that makes wigs for cancer patients or others who have lost their hair.  After about 2 or 3 years my hair had finally gotten long enough and I donated about 10 inches.

Besides accomplishing some bucket list items we also learned several new skills:

4.  Watercolor painting-- I have taken up watercolors and also talked a few friends into painting as well.  My big projects this year were a set of forest animals for our nieces' nursery and then about 50 Christmas cards.  I have really enjoyed a hobby that allows for me to be more creative.

5. Sourdough Bread-- Arthur cultivated his own wild yeasts to make a sour dough starter.  Throughout the year we had wonderful sourdough bread.  We even forget that you can make bread with yeast since we hadn't used any yeast in bread baking for so long.

6. Dairy items-- Arthur has learned to make some basic butter and cheeses.  He is hankering for a cheese press so he can branch out into harder cheeses.  I have started making homemade yogurt by the gallon.  I would like to think eating my jar of homemade yogurt with fresh fruit makes me the envy of the lunch crowd at work.

7.  Skiing--  Arthur had the opportunity to go with several men from church on a ski trip this year.  He graduated from ski school and was able to ski without falling down and was promoted onto the blue slopes.

8.  Italian--  We have both been learning to speak Italian.  Actually at this point we can't speak it very well but are able to read it.  We are dreaming about taking a trip to Italian next year so thought we would get a head start on learning the language.  Additionally we think it would be really neat to be able to speak a language that only we know  (Or at least we think the number of people speaking Italian in central Kansas in very limited) so we can have secret conversations.

While learning new skills and hobbies has been fun we have also gone to our 9-5 jobs most days:

9.  Changes at work-- I survived several pretty big changes at work from doubling our staff to switching to completely electronic documentation and scheduling.  At times it was mass chaos and other times I wasn't sure who would show up in our office or if I would still have my own desk.  I am happy to say that over the past month things have settled into a sense of normalcy.

10.  Flip Charts-- Creating a hundred plus page document showing where individual components was a tedious task consuming large amounts of drafting time.  I (Arthur) realized that I could use data from a couple of different documents to entirely automate the process.  It was  a big job, and to date is the most advanced programming I've been able to apply at work.

Even though we are both introverts several of our highlights were related to our relationships with others:

11.  Social organizer--  I have some how taken on the role of social organizer for my group of friends.  This included a few weekend get-together and camp-outs.  It was fun to reconnect with old friends and I have even met a few new friends too.

12.  Nieces-- We love being an aunt and uncle and we increased our number of nieces by 300% this year when my brother and sister-in-law had twins.  I would venture to say that our favorite people in the world under that age of 5 are our nieces.  Whether it is playing My Little Pony or wrestling with Harper or holding one of the twins we get a kick out of them.

13.  1000 days-- We celebrated 1000 days of wonderful marriage earlier this spring.  We really enjoy this being married thing.

One of the best parts of being married is getting to go on adventures together:

14.  St Louis weekend-- We took a long weekend to go to a wedding in St. Louis.  We went to a Shakespeare play, Truman's Presidential library, the art museum and zoo in St. Louis, along with some hiking and a bike ride that turned out to be a little more than we bargained.

15.  Camping-- It is hard to believe but we hadn't gone camping until this year.  Our first camping trip ended in pouring rain and a trip to IHOP for breakfast.  Camping on our St. Louis trip might have not been my best idea since it is hard to get a good night sleep when it is still 90F at 3 am.  Sleeping in a tent has allowed us to see some beautiful areas that aren't accessible without a tent.

16.  Our first backpacking trip--  We hiked for 4 days through the wild forests of Isle Royale- an area that is more of a wilderness today than it was 100 years ago.  We carried everything on our backs and there was blood, sweat, and blisters.  However there was stretches of beaches to ourselves, listening to loons at night, and the solitude of exploring together.

A wonderful birthday

For about the past decade my birthday has fallen in the middle of finals exams during college and grad school.  People would ask what I was doing to celebrate and my response was usually taking a chemistry final, finishing writing a philosophy paper, or studying specimens for an organismic biology class.  Finally I am finished with school and finals week no longer looms over my head.  This year for my birthday my husband took me hiking.  It is extremely rare—as in never has happened before, or possibly again—to go hiking on my birthday.  December isn’t prime hiking weather and since it gets dark early a good hike is only possible on the weekend. 

We got our chores done early on Saturday morning.  After lunch and a quick nap (another of my favorite activities) we headed to the River Trail in Junction City.  We were blessed with a great afternoon of about 45F weather making hiking comfortable in the right clothing.  Hiking in the winter is a little bit different from other times of the year.  Everything is shades of brown and beige.  However without leaves on the trees it is easier to see wildlife.  We stood on the edge of the river and watched two bald eagles in a tree on the opposite bank.  Later there was a flock of geese that settled onto the river for the evening.  They broke the silence of the late afternoon with a cacophony on honking. 

The three hours of the hike also gave us a lot of quality time together.  We have been missing our evening walks since it has gotten cold since this rituals allows us to catch on the day.  While we do talk over dinner or doing the dishes we can add distractions such as music or something on YouTube.  We have great conversations in the car too but you can always turn on the radio.  With hiking you are stuck with the other person.  For several hours.  We can run the gamut of topics.  I will even listen to Arthur talk about topics that don’t interest me at all in normal situations but while hiking even Excel graphs predicting economic principles fills some of the time. 

It was dusk towards the end of our walk and it was a brilliant sunset reflecting on the surface of the river—the pinks, purples, and oranges of a winter sunset.  Over the last few miles of the walk we discussed what we were going to order at Cracker Barrel for dinner.  A benefit of a ten mile hike is that you can eat whatever you want at the end.  You have also thought about dinner and how delicious it will be for several miles and the anticipation builds which increases the enjoyment of eating even more.  It was almost dark as we reached the car and starting to get colder.  But at Cracker Barrel there was a roaring fire in the fireplace and it was decked out with candles and old-fashioned lamps for the holidays.  We had both been salivating over the prospect of fried cinnamon apples and chicken and dumplings.   Dinner was just as wonderful as we had imagined.  Hunger after a hike is a sauce that makes all food scrumptious.  Once we got home we settled in for a cozy evening of watching White Christmas.