"Roger Modjeski Has a Question," by Alpha Unit

Until the transistor came along, electronic amplification was produced by vacuum tubes.

These tubes were in TV sets, radios, hi-fi sysytems, and guitar amplifiers, and were also vital components of military applications like radar. In almost all these devices tubes have been replaced by solid state technology – that is, semiconductors – except in some guitar amplifiers. And that’s because to a lot of guitarists, there’s no replacement for the sound produced by tubes.

A tube is just a vacuum-sealed glass bottle with an electrode that emits electrons when heated (cathode) and an electrode that attracts electrons (anode). It also contains a grid, which modulates the flow of electrons, and a filament, or heater.

Dave Hunter tells us that when a guitarist plucks a string on his guitar, the pickup sends a small voltage to the input of his amplifier, where it’s passed along to the grid of the first preamp tube. The grid creates an increase in voltage by causing electrons to “boil off” the cathode, making the sound bigger. This bigger signal is passed along to the output tube, which makes it even bigger. This is then carried to the speaker via the output transformer.

Some listeners can’t really tell the difference between a solid state amp – or transistor amp – and a tube amp. But for many guitarists, tube amps are the only way to do it. Danny says that a solid state amp produces a clean, crisp, accurate sound and that it’s quick and responsive to your playing. It requires less maintenance and can emulate many different amplifiers at the push of a button.

The downside of a solid state amp is that the sound lacks “warmth” – it’s usually cold and sterile. Distortion is too sharp sounding. There’s no individuality to the tone and all amps will sound the same with almost any player.

Tube amps, on the other hand, are best known for their warmth, he says. They are pleasing to the ear. Scientists can’t measure the warmth, which is probably why they haven’t been able to duplicate it in a solid state amp. Also, each tube amp sounds different, with its unique tone. No two guitarists will sound the same through the same tube amp, as the amp will respond to each individual’s playing technique in a different way. Tube amps sound fat and thick, and will sound even fatter as the volume is turned up, creating that famous wall of sound.

Tubes distort sound, compressing the sound in a most pleasing way. The transformer can’t handle the signal peaks and softly rounds them off, causing even more distortion (a good thing, he insists).

There are disadvantages to having a tube amp, though. Danny says that it doesn’t sound good at low volumes; it’s best to play it loud. Tube amps also cost more than solid state amps. And you need a guitar pedal to create different sounds. They’re also very heavy.

Some features of tube sound can be produced in a digital filter. Engineers have developed transistor amps that emulate the sound of a tube amp. Tom Scholz, rock musician and mechanical engineer, introduced the Rockman, which used bipolar transistors but created a distorted sound that some musicians like. Rockman technology was used exclusively for Def Leppard’s album Hysteria. You can also hear it on Eliminator by ZZ Top.

And yet for many guitarists, nothing sounds like tube amps. Many of these purists are great fans of Roger Modjeski, who’s been designing tube amplifiers for almost his entire life. He says that his design career began at 11, but he gained his first knowledge of tube amps at the age of 5, watching his father build a Heathkit Mono hi-fi system. Modjeski himself built a dozen hi-fi sets from Heath kits while growing up. And then:

Around 1964, my interest and the industry’s turned to the new “miracle” transistors. I, in my basement shop, and the giants of the industry all did our best to design good-sounding amplifiers with these new devices, and we all failed.

But Modjeski continued experimenting with transistor circuits and invented a few of his own. In 1969 he went to the University of Virginia to get his degree in electrical engineering, learning that he was the only one in his program who had built his own amplifiers. After graduating he got a job at IBM but he saw it as a dead end. He opened an audio repair shop in his hometown of Richmond, Virginia.

In 1975 he went to Stanford to get a Master’s degree, but after a year he gave up on it and returned to Virginia. He got to know Harold Beveridge mainly by being his dealer in Virginia, even though he had met Beveridge at Stanford. Harold Beveridge was an electrical engineer who had attended McGill University and then worked for Raytheon before designing amplifiers.

In 1978 Modjeski went to work for Beveridge as a consultant and later as Chief Engineer. He designed tube amps there but left after 3 years, and by 1981 he decided to start his own company, Music Reference. On his website you’ll read that MR products are known for their ease of use, reliability, and longevity. His company Ram Tube Works was established in 1982 and was the first company to offer premium tubes tested by computer. You’ll learn that several other companies have tried to take their market and failed.

Roger Modjeski has a separate concern, however. He is asking, “Where is the next generation of audio engineers?”

He says that for 20 years he has put out the call for young people to come and work for him. A few have come, he says, but as the years go by, they are fewer and fewer. He has run ads in Stereophile to get the attention of young people interested in science and inventing, and done the same in his comments and on his website. He’s gotten little reply, he says.

He was an apprentice under Harold Beveridge and he has served as a mentor himself. But not enough people are showing interest in the field. “If you truly love audio, what else are you doing that is so much more important?” he wonders.

The industry needs new talent.

"At Risk and Still on the Line," by Alpha Unit

Three years ago a lineman was electrocuted while working in an underground electrical vault in Benicia, California. He was employed by Pacific Gas & Electric Company. Two state investigations have held PG&E at fault for not having a supervisor monitor the work, and for other reasons. In spite of the hazards of being a lineman, this 26-year-old man loved his job, according to his girlfriend. Since his death and two subsequent deaths, PG&E has expanded its apprenticeship requirements and required all existing linemen to take one or two weeks of refresher training. The work is indeed dangerous, so many linemen prefer to be with a union. Two popular unions are the Utility Workers Union of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Linemen can spend up to five years in an apprenticeship program learning the skills of their trade. They have to know electrical theory, transformer theory, pole climbing and setting, rigging techniques, wire stringing techniques, and safety on the job. The time they put in to learn the trade includes training in handling electrical lines barehanded. “Barehanded?” people must wonder. “You can’t touch a live power line barehanded.” Yes. The term “barehanded” is sort of misleading. A lineman doing barehand work actually wears a suit consisting of a hooded jacket, bib-overall-style pants, socks, and gloves. The suit is made of 7 The Faraday Cage principle is that no electrical charge can be present on the interior of a charged cage. While the lineman is wearing the suit, the static electrical field connected to the suit redistributes the charge around the outside of the suit and not through the lineman. Barehand work minimizes disruption to customers while companies work on the lines, which is why demand for it has grown over the years. A 15-year veteran lineman, Karl Townie, enjoys the challenge of doing live-line work. He gets a kick out of some aspects of it, telling one writer that on the higher voltages, they can often hear the electricity arcing between their fingers. “One time when it got dark before we could get off the wire,” he said, “we could actually see the arcing between the fingers, too.” As with so many other things, the thrill and the danger go hand in hand. Karl Townie’s company requires a stringent certification process, after which a lineman is assigned to a working crew for 60 hours of close supervision. He has to do at least 25 hours of barehand work a year to stay certified. Barehand work is highly specialized. Generally, a lineman’s work is building and maintaining electrical power systems. They do it all: set towers and poles, maintain and repair overhead transmission lines, work in underground vaults and trenches, and install and maintain insulators and transformers. On occasion they’ll be working on city lighting or traffic signals. A lot of linemen love what they do and say that it isn’t for everyone. There are the obvious dangers of working with high voltage. And if you’re afraid of heights, forget it. The job might require a fair amount of travel, which could mean a lot of nights away from home. And you’ll be doing a lot of work in unfriendly weather conditions. After thunderstorms, hurricanes, fires, ice storms, and the like, people want the power back on – and it can’t be done soon enough.

"Sailors Wanted," by Alpha Unit

You mustn’t call a member of the United States Merchant Marine a marine. You call him (or her) a sailor, seaman, seafarer, or mariner – preferably a mariner. The Merchant Marine is the fleet of civilian-owned ships that moves cargo and passengers not only between countries but within the United States. The fleet is privately owned but can be nationalized during wartime, when it becomes an auxiliary of the US Navy. During some other type of national emergency, the President can commandeer or seize a merchant vessel. The Merchant Marine was always an excellent source of opportunity for men in this country regardless of their backgrounds. The US Maritime Service started training officers and crew members for the Merchant Marine in 1938. What’s remarkable is that the Maritime Service had a non-discrimination policy at a time when the US armed forces were segregated. Black men served in all positions in the Merchant Marine, from the lowest levels all the way up to captain, on integrated ships. A 16-year-old can go to sea. That’s the minimum age to get a US Merchant Marine Credential (MMC), issued by the US Coast Guard in accordance with international standards. You’ll need a parent’s permission as long as you’re under 18, but the MMC allows you to work on a merchant vessel, whether it’s a cargo ship, an oil tanker, a ferry, or a passenger ship. You’ll work in either the deck, engineering, or steward’s departments. The deck department oversees proper watchstanding and maintains the hull and cargo gear. Here you’ll find apprentices, Ordinary Seamen (OS). An OS doesn’t have to stand watch but he gets tested on his watchstanding and helmsman skills. He spends much of his time working on metal structures – removing rust, refinishing, and painting. He also secures cargo, does rigging, splices wire and rope, and launches and recovers lifeboats. It’s the OS who gets swabbing duty – keeping excess water and salt off deck to prevent slipping and rust accumulation. It’s one reason an OS looks forwards to to working his way up to Able Seaman (AB). An AB stands watch and acts as helmsman. He also performs general maintenance and repair and operates deck machinery and cargo gear. Some of his duties involve chipping, scraping, cleaning, and painting metal structures. The senior unlicensed man in the deck department is the Bo’s’n (Boatswain). This is typically a senior AB. He’s in charge of of the able seamen and ordinary seamen, in a position between them and the ship’s chief mate. The bo’s’n is responsible for everything concerning maintenance of deck equipment and cargo. He also secures the ship for sea and oversees the loading and unloading of cargo. A new seaman might instead find himself in the engine department. Seamen there handle the propulsion systems and support systems for the crew, cargo, and passengers. They maintain the electric power plant, lighting, water distillation, air conditioning, refrigeration, and such. The entry level position here is wiper. A wiper performs manual labor – cleaning, painting, and assisting with repairs. An oiler’s main job is equipment maintenance, including oiling the bearings of the main engine and auxiliaries. His general duties also include pumping bilges. A watertender tends fires and maintains proper water levels in boilers. A fireman operates oil-burning systems to generate steam in boilers. In addition to these crew members, the engine department might employ machinists, electricians, refrigeration engineers, or pumpmen – pumpmen are always found on oil tankers, operating the liquid cargo transfer system. The other assignment is the steward’s department. Here sailors operate and maintain the ship’s galley and the eating and living quarters for the officers and crew. An entry-level position here is that of messman, also called a steward’s assistant (SA). The messman sets tables, serves food, and waits tables. He also cleans the galley, eating areas, and officers’ saloon. He might also have general housekeeping duties like cleaning living quarters. The chief cook (or, cook) directs the preparation and serving of meals. The department is headed by the chief steward. The US fleet of merchant vessels has been diminishing since the 1950’s. The pool of qualified mariners has been shrinking along with it. There is intense competition for skilled mariners, if you ask the operators of offshore supply vessels. But some mariners say that part of the problem is that companies don’t want to take on inexperienced sailors, creating a Catch-22: companies need qualified people but the trainees can’t get the experience they need to become qualified. Because of international treaties, higher standards, and more required training and security rules, it can be hard to qualify for even entry-level jobs on a merchant vessel. The Sailors’ Union of the Pacific, which has represented mariners since 1891, has had programs to make sure new union members have the proper training to find work. I found, in fact, that the ongoing claims of a mariner shortage are controversial. Some mariners say that cost-cutting measures in the industry are leading to increases in workload and fatigue; others point to industry shifting to non-union labor. Some say the work schedule, where you spend more time at sea than at home, isn’t acceptable to men with families. Other mariners say the workforce is aging, with veteran mariners retiring and fewer young people interested in going to sea. One vice-president of the Seafarers International Union thinks the industry and government should do a better job of recruiting high school kids. “We’re a strong alternative to joining the armed services,” he told the press.

"Coal Miners and Company Scrip," by Alpha Unit

St. Peter, don’t you call me, ’cause I can’t go; I owe my soul to the company store.

Nobody’s sure who wrote “Sixteen Tons.” People usually attribute the song to Merle Travis, who recorded it in 1946. A singer-songwriter named George S. Davis claimed he wrote it during the Depression. I don’t know if there’s any way to settle that question. But the couplet above sums up what it felt like sometimes to be a coal miner in nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century America. Before labor reforms were enacted and enforced, the life of a coal miner, like that of sharecroppers and other laborers, was often just one step above slavery. Coal mining was vital for the widespread industrialization that got underway in the nineteenth century. Before then, there were two types of coal mines: drift mines and bell pits. They were small-scale operations that yielded coal for homes and local industry. But the growing demand for coal due to industrialization made coal mines deeper and mining more dangerous. And there was a lot of money in consideration. Mining operations were in remote, rugged areas, naturally, so mine owners had to provide housing for their workers. In fact they provided just about everything for their workers, typically. This was because paying the miners posed a problem. You have to remember that this was before there was a national currency in the United States. Neither was there a sufficient supply of coins. Mining operations were far from banks and stores. Mining companies saw great advantage in the closed economy that resulted from creating the company store and paying in scrip. Whatever a miner needed he could buy – and often had to buy – at the company store. The tools of his trade he bought there, along with whatever other goods he and his family needed. If the company store didn’t have it in stock, he had to do without it. The company store could charge whatever the mine owner wanted. If wages were increased, the company store could increase prices to make up for it. Some companies paid exclusively in scrip. Others used scrip as a form of credit that miners could use between paydays. In this case, the scrip amount would be charged against the miner’s payroll account and deducted from his next pay. Some companies let their workers trade scrip for cash, but not always at full value. Some paid as little as 50 cents on the dollar; others paid as much as 85 cents per dollar. Not only were the supplies for the miner and his family deducted from his pay, but so were his rent for company housing, utilities, fuel coal, and doctor’s fees. Mining companies were creative in withholding as much money as they could from workers. One practice they engaged in was cribbing. A coal miner was paid per ton of coal that he brought up. Each car brought from the mines was supposed to hold a specific amount of coal – 2,000 pounds, for instance. But companies would alter cars to hold more coal than the specified amount, so a miner could be paid for 2,000 pounds when he might have actually brought up 2,500. Workers were also docked pay for slate and rock mixed in with coal. How much to dock was left at the discretion of the checkweighman – a company man, of course. On payday, a miner was given a pay envelope with all the check-off deductions listed and any balance due him inside. Often the envelope contained a few pennies, or nothing at all. The United Mine Workers, a merger of two older labor groups, was founded in 1890. This organization – whose first convention barred discrimination based on race, religion, or national origin – set about to make mining safer, to gain miners’ independence from the company store, and to secure collective bargaining rights. Among its specific goals:

  • a salary commensurate with dangerous work conditions
  • an 8-hour workday
  • payment in legal tender, not company scrip
  • properly working scales: improper or outright dishonest weighing was a big concern for miners
  • enforcement of safety laws and better ventilation and drainage in mines
  • an end to child labor: “breaker boys” as young as 8 would remove impurities from coal by hand – hazardous work that led to accidental amputations and sometimes death
  • an unbiased police force: mine operators owned all the houses in a company town and controlled the police force, which would evict miners or arrest them without proper cause
  • the right to strike

The UMW was able to secure an 8-hour workday for coal miners in 1898. During its first ten years the UMW successfully organized coal miners in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. It finally achieved some recognition in West Virginia in 1902. It spent the next several decades organizing strikes – some of which ended up being deadly – and getting involved, controversially, in politics to further its goals. Labor contracts and legislation eventually outlawed the use of company scrip. World War II marked a turning point for scrip, and by the end of the 1950’s almost all coal mining operations were paying their workers in legal tender. What a long haul.

"Counterfeit Cash," by Alpha Unit

In Memphis, Tennessee, two early morning Black Friday shoppers were arrested for passing counterfeit bills. Police confiscated a total of about $1,600 in fake bills, computer equipment to make fake bills, and methamphetamine. The circumstances are similar to earlier cases, such as the case in Oklahoma City in which two people were arrested after a raid at their home. Police found large amounts of marijuana, cocaine, and methamphetamine, along with several sheets of counterfeit 20-dollar bills. Materials and equipment for making fake currency were found in a home in Santa Rosa, California, during a raid. In addition to counterfeit bills the police found drug paraphernalia and methamphetamine. Not that long ago counterfeiting was a difficult and expensive operation. The best counterfeiters were skilled printers who used heavy offset presses to turn out pretty convincing 20s, 50s, and 100s. Doing so required the ability to cut intricate designs by hand into metal plates. Not anymore. A lot of teenagers in this country can tell you that all you need to make fake money nowadays are a PC, a scanner, and color inkjet printer. (Of course, those teenagers are usually caught in no time, since it’s not easy to produce truly authentic-looking bills.) In case after case of counterfeiting you will see drug use implicated – particularly methamphetamine. Meth addicts often steal mail and commit other property crimes to get their hands on the money they need for their habit. They can stay awake and focused on repetitive tasks for days, making them good at such crimes as forgery, identity theft, altering checks, and trying to perfect counterfeit currency. Millions of dollars worth of counterfeit cash is supposed to be in circulation in the United States, and there’s usually an uptick in detection during the holidays. Counterfeiters see this as the ideal time to try to pass fake bills; that’s when they think they’re more likely to get away with it. A business that ends up with counterfeit bills doesn’t get compensated for the loss and usually raises prices to make up for it. If you end up with a counterfeit bill, the US Secret Service wants you to tell them. They say to notify your local police department or the nearest Secret Service field office. There’s no financial compensation for turning it in, though. Central banks say that to do so would subsidize counterfeiting, providing a financial reward for counterfeiters’ criminal behavior. Turning it in is just another civic duty.

"Oil Patch Blues," by Alpha Unit

The Williston Basin lies beneath parts of Montana, North Dakota, and Saskatchewan. A rock unit called the Bakken formation occupies about 200,000 square miles of it. Originally described in 1953, it’s named after Henry Bakken, a farmer in Williston, North Dakota. He owned the land where the first drilling rig revealed the rock layers in 1951. As you may have heard, there are significant oil reserves in the Bakken. The US Geological Survey has estimated that there are about 3.65 billion barrels of oil in the Bakken. More recent estimates suggest there could be up to 18 billion barrels. The oil is wrapped in layers of shale, which initially frustrated extraction attempts. But petroleum engineers devised a fracturing method that overcame this problem. What they do is drill down and then horizontally into the rock, then pump water, sand, and chemicals into the hole to crack the shale and allow the oil to flow up. It was first used in 2007, quite successfully. The result has been a population boom as people from neighboring areas, other parts of the country, and even overseas have rushed into North Dakota and Montana in pursuit of oil field jobs. John McChesney paints a picture of how life has changed for some residents of North Dakota.

Imagine you live in a small rural town worried for years about depopulation, and suddenly, overnight, the population doubles, and the newcomers are thousands of young men without families. Imagine that you live in a tiny town with one main street that doubles as a state highway. That’s the situation in New Town, N.D., population 1,500 – at least, it was a couple of years ago. Today it’s anybody’s guess how many people live here, and no one knows how many 18-wheelers roll through every day, either. They just know it never stops.

McChesney says that for the people of New Town, it seems that every big tank truck in America is on the road here, making tens of thousands of trips a day hauling water, fracking fluid, wastewater and crude oil – and tearing up the roads. It’s been described by one county official as the complete industrialization of western North Dakota. And it’s placing an incredible strain on the community there. Dan Kalil, chairman of the Williams County Commission, told McChesney:

They’re consuming all our resources. They’re consuming all our people looking for jobs. All the employee base is used up. Our roads system is being used up. All our water is being used up. All our sewage systems are being used up. They’re overwhelmed. All of our leadership time as local public officials is consumed with this.

And for the newcomers, life in the Bakken isn’t exactly what they had in mind, either. They often arrive with no money and nowhere to live. There’s not enough housing for them. Homeless shelters and churches are taking in some of the job-seekers but the need is overwhelming. Some of the men are sleeping in their cars. Some have sleeping bags they roll out in the woods or in abandoned buildings. There are camps where people park RV’s they’re living in. But the water pipes and waste tanks on standard RV’s can’t handle the freezing temperatures. Super-insulated campers and trailers are just as hard to find as actual housing. And let’s not forget: this is North Dakota, after all. One taste of winter in the Bakken sends some job-seekers back to where they came from. In the meantime, housing prices are higher than they’ve ever been. Some of the local residents can’t afford to pay rent anymore. And crime used to be nearly nonexistent. Now crime rates have spiked across western North Dakota and eastern Montana, with an increase in vagrancy, “drunken and disorderly” charges, burglary, assault, property crimes, and prostitution. “Men need servicing just as much as their machines,” one oil patch worker told Adam Luebke. There have even been a couple of violent crimes that have made headlines in the area. A hitchhiker was wounded in a drive-by shooting while on US Highway 2, a major route in and out of the oil patch. A teacher from the oil patch town of Sidney, Montana, was allegedly kidnapped and murdered by two Colorado men on their way to the Bakken. The oil industry is aware of what locals are going through and is making some PR efforts to keep people on their side, but their efforts aren’t as successful as they’d like. As John McChesney explained:

Back in New Town at a gathering of a few local residents, we met rancher Donnie Nelson, who had just paid $7 for a gallon of milk, one example of a price inflation here. He says patience here is wearing thin. “Just about anybody I talk to that’s a neighbor – and some of them are getting wealthy – are sick of it. It’s never going to be the same in this country, and they’re starting to realize that we had it kind of good, even though we weren’t No. 1 in oil and we weren’t the No. 1 state economically,” Nelson says. “We had a good life up here.”

"Praise and Criticism for National Tradesmen Day," by Alpha Unit

Originally published September 20, 2012. September 21 is National Tradesmen Day, a holiday most people have probably never heard of. It’s kind of new. It started last year and is set to be celebrated the third Friday in September every year. It’s not a government holiday. It was created by Irwin Tools, a subsidiary of Newell Rubbermaid. National Tradesmen Day is set aside to honor the skilled tradesmen in the country who do all the manual labor that many of us can’t do for ourselves. People like auto mechanics, plumbers, roofers, carpenters, drywall installers, electricians, HVAC technicians, and welders. There’s a shortage of such skilled workers, and “skilled trades” is the number one category of the hardest jobs to fill in the country. Some blame the decline of vocational and technical education on the steady focus we’ve had on 4-year university education. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says that over a third of skilled tradesmen are over 50. For every three tradesmen who retire, there’s only one person with the skills to do their kind of work. So a day set aside to recognize their talents and hard work sounds like something a lot of us could get behind. But not all of us. Here’s a sample of comments left on a forum in which people weighed in on the first National Tradesmen Day:

“Too bad they sold out American workers.” “I wonder how ‘Tradesmen Day’ is said in Mandarin.” “Oh man I feel for all the laid off workers who are out of a job and have to watch their old company do this shit pathetic.” “How about a ‘sellout day’ for companies like Irwin?”

In 2008 Irwin closed its plant in DeWitt, Nebraska. Vise-Grip locking pliers and other tools had been made there for 80 years. Employees were told that the parent company had to move production to China “to keep the Vise-Grip name competitive.” About 300 people lost their jobs at the plant that “anchored” DeWitt. One employee who had worked there for nearly 20 years told the media, “It’s a kick in the head.” Irwin Tools has been successful, though, at marketing National Tradesmen Day, with media outlets and small businesses all on board. Irwin wants more students to consider careers in the skilled trades and is urging each of us to go out of our way to thank the skilled tradesmen we know and hire. But in addition to the cynics, there are the doubters. One commenter on a forum posed the question: “Isn’t that what Labor Day is for?”

"You Can Do It in 23 States," by Alpha Unit

How would you like to spend some time with a Backwoods Bastard? Or a Dirty Bastard? The Backwoods Bastard doesn’t sound so bad:

Expect lovely, warm smells of simple malt scotch, oaky bourbon barrels, smoke, sweet caramel and roasted malts, a bit of earthy spice, and a scintilla of dark fruit. It’s a kick-back sipper made to excite the palate.

And the Dirty Bastard sounds pretty good:

So good it’s almost wrong. Dark ruby in color and brewed with seven varieties of imported malts. Complex in finish, with hints of smoke and peat, paired with a malty richness and a right hook of hop power to give it the bad attitude that a beer named Dirty Bastard has to live up to. Ain’t for the wee lads.

Backwoods Bastard and Dirty Bastard are made by Founders Brewing Company, a craft brewery in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The Brewers Association defines a craft brewer as:

  • small – annual production of 6 million barrels or less
  • independent – less than 2
  • traditional – either an all malt flagship or has at least 5

People also call craft breweries microbreweries. The term originated in the UK in the 1970s to describe a group of small breweries that were focused on making traditional cask ale. “Microbrewing” initially referred to the size of the breweries but came to reflect a different attitude and approach to brewing, summed up by Founders Brewing as “We brew beer for people like us” – passionate beer enthusiasts. By the 1980s the microbrewing trend had caught on in the US. This article touches on what had preceded it:

In the early 20th century, Prohibition drove many breweries in the US into bankruptcy because they could not all rely on selling near beer or “sacramental wine” as wineries of that era did. After several decades of consolidation of breweries, most American commercial beer was produced by a few large corporations, resulting in a very uniform, mild-tasting lager of which Budweiser and Miller are well-known examples. Consequently, some beer drinkers craving variety turned to homebrewing and eventually a few started doing so on a slightly larger scale. For inspiration, they turned to Britain, Germany, and Belgium, where a centuries-old tradition of artisan beer and cask ale production had never died out.

Some of these breweries were so successful that a new category had to be created for their product – craft beer. The largest of the craft beer brewers in America is the Boston Beer Company. They make Samuel Adams. Founders Brewing Company began in 1997 and has become one of the highest recognized breweries in the US, they tell us. They’re an award-winning company that has been ranked the second-best brewery in the world since 2011. The company made news earlier this summer when the Alabama Alcoholic Beverage Control Board lifted a ban on Backwoods Bastard and Dirty Bastard. The board’s licensing director rejected the names last spring because of a state law that says no ad for alcoholic beverages can show a person “posed in an immodest or sensuous manner” and that they can’t have any profanity or offensive language. In Alabama, grocery stores and convenience stores sell beer and wine where anyone can see them. Dirty Bastard beer got rejected over a concern that parents wouldn’t want their kids to see rough language on the shelves. Founders Brewing and craft beer lovers in Alabama raised a fuss over this decision. A committee that was set up to review the decision approved Dirty Bastard and Backwoods Bastard at the first meeting. A major reason? If they were going to deny Dirty Bastard and Backwoods Bastard, they’d have to reconsider a board decision years earlier to allow the sale of Fat Bastard. Fat Bastard is a French wine that had been sold in Alabama for years. No one wanted to pull it off the shelves. You can sit down with a Dirty Bastard or a Backwoods Bastard in 23 states now.

"It Ended With a '53 Buick," by Alpha Unit

My husband almost bought a Woodie. It was about 25 years ago. He had a neighbor who had one in storage, and she wanted to get rid of it. All he can recall about it is that it was a 1940-something Dodge and that the wood was badly warped. Even though she was going to give him a great deal on it, he passed. Way too much hassle, he decided. The hassle of maintaining these cars is one reason people stopped wanting them. They look beautiful, but they can be high-maintenance divas.

A Nash Suburban “woodie.”
Woodies weren’t “Woodies” until some time in the 1950s, I found out. Before then they were just station wagons. Station wagons were a way of transporting people and their luggage from train stations to their final destinations. They were directly descended from horse-drawn express wagons. Before the 1930s the passenger compartment of a vehicle was normally made of hardwood. A station wagon had the typical wooden body – built by a local carpenter, probably – and was used in a privately-run shuttle service. The 1923 Star was the first wooden paneled station wagon sold commercially (made by Durant Motors). But the Ford Motor Company sold more wood-bodied cars than any other manufacturer, according to Art Daily, building its own bodies in a plant in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

Ford Motor Company was vertically integrated; the wood – kiln-dried maple and ash framing, with mahogany panels – was harvested from the company’s expansive Iron Mountain first-growth timber tracts. It was harvested, kiln-dried, and aged, all in one facility. Skilled craftsmen hand-built, assembled, and trimmed each car’s wooden body as they would fine furniture. Then it was shipped to a local Ford assembly plant to be mated to its engine and chassis.

General Motors didn’t sell as many wood-bodied wagons as Ford. Since it wouldn’t have been efficient for GM to produce the cars in small numbers, says Art Daily, a few respected suppliers hand-crafted Chevrolet, Olds, Pontiac, and Buick woodies. Packard, De Soto, and Nash also offered wood-bodied wagons. Chrysler came out with its Town & Country wood-bodied wagon in 1941 and eventually began making wood-bodied 4-door sedans and convertibles. The Town & Country, with an all-steel roof and a white ash and mahogany body, is designated a Classic. People really want to see them. And get their hands on them. Wood-bodied cars were undoubtedly complex and expensive to build and required special care.

Many pieces were made of rare bird’s-eye maple, resplendent with natural whorls and unique flowing patterns. Woodies were beautiful, but they were weather-sensitive and subject to an early demise. Manufacturers issued instructions with each wood-bodied car that instructed owners how to sand and re-varnish the body every year. No one would tolerate that frequency of maintenance today, but it was a different era. And Woodies were fragile. A fender-bender that’d simply dent a metal car body could reduce a hapless Woodie to matchsticks. Brutal Northeast winters meant that these were essentially three-season cars, at best.

People who restore Woodies say that most of the ones they see are in bad condition. They commonly see both dry rot and termites. Eric Johnson, who rebuilds these cars, spoke to John Katz of Hot Rod and Restoration about the difficulty of restoring original wood.

I’d love to have a car with original wood. I’d love to keep it all original. But when you start taking an old wooden body apart, it’s like opening a can of worms. You may have seen only a few rotted areas when it was all together. But when you take it apart you’ll find tenons that are rotted out from where water got into it.

He says that sometimes you have to build a whole new reproduction body – something Rick Mack specializes in. He estimates that less than 1 percent of Woodies have good, original wood. He builds about a dozen woodsets a year and ships them all over North America. As Jeff Layton describes it:

The process is meticulous and time-consuming. There can be upwards of 64 wood pieces on a vehicle. Very few are straight or square; most bend in two directions, and some have a twist. Mack uses a hand-crank press to laminate and shape replacement wood. He then uses jigs, patterns, and templates to dictate where to drill holes, round corners, and router interlocking pieces.

Pieces are accurate to the originals within 1/64th of an inch, he says. (Once varnished and installed, even judges at car shows can’t tell if the wood is original.) Because many woodies were kept in storage during winter months, some of them can be found in pretty good condition. But to a lot of owners, proper maintenance was not a priority. Manufacturers understood this. Some people say that the last great year for the Woodie was 1949. Postwar auto production made handcrafting complicated and maintenance-intensive wood frames and panels hard to justify, according to David Traver Adolphus. During the 1950s, car design, along with the tastes of people who drove cars, underwent radical changes, he says, and woodies fell from favor. The Chrysler Town & Country was discontinued in 1951. The 1953 Buick wagons were the last of the real woodies from a major American manufacturer. Rick Mack drives a 1950 Ford Woodie wagon, even though it’s not a great idea in the Pacific Northwest. “Driving in the rain can make the wood swell,” he confesses to Layton. But he drives it anyway. He loves Woodie wagons.

"Don't Look at Me – Unless I Want You To," by Alpha Unit

In France, you could end up in trouble with the law if you look a woman up and down and she’s offended by it. “Looking someone up and down” is included in a list of behaviors that could be seen as sexual harassment in France. This list is in a preliminary report issued by the French Parliament back on July 18 – a report that will serve as a guide in implementing France’s brand new law against sexual harassment. Under the old law, the notion of sexual harassment was restricted to “obtaining favors of a sexual nature” and was punishable by a year in jail and a fine of approximately $18,000. The new law is more specific about defining sexual harassment, which is:

imposing on someone, in a repeated way, words or actions that have a sexual connotation and either affecting the person’s dignity because of their degrading or humiliating nature or putting him or her in an intimidating, hostile or offensive situation.

A perpetrator could serve 2 years in jail and be fined about $37,000. If the person you harass is under 15, under your authority, or disabled, you could be fined about $53,000 and serve up to 3 years in prison. Unacceptable behaviors in addition to reckless eyeballing might include:

  • blackmail
  • sexual jokes
  • neck massages
  • leaving a pornographic magazine on someone’s desk

The new law will cover interactions in the workplace, universities, housing, and job interviews.

"No Longer in Service," by Alpha Unit

When I was a kid I loved it when we were riding in the car and had to stop to let freight trains pass. We would lean across the front seat to watch the rail cars go by, chattering about them or just watching and getting that weird sensation that our car was moving…instead of the train. (I kind of liked that.) I still remember some of the names painted on the sides of the rail cars. COTTON BELT – the St. Louis Southwestern Railway, that is. SOUTHERN. That was the Southern Railway (“Serves the South”). FRISCO. Also known as the St. Louis – San Francisco Railway. But we were also waiting to see the caboose – that gave us something to look forward to, even though I was kind of sad to see it. That meant the show was over! The caboose is a thing of the past. Cabooses were once used on nearly all freight trains, by law. But advances in technology made the caboose unnecessary and undesirable, according to the railroads. The caboose was originally just a makeshift shack built over an empty flat car, assigned to the conductor for his exclusive use – a kind of home away from home. Over time it became the quarters for the train crew and took on a utilitarian role. Railroads found that the caboose offered a good vantage point to keep an eye on trains as they got longer; to improve the view they added a cupola, a lookout post on top of the car. For most of the 19th century and early 20th century, most cabooses carried a conductor, brakeman and a flagman. A second brakeman accompanied the engineer. (The conductor oversaw the safe operation of the train; the engineer oversaw operation of the locomotive.) Before the era of automatic air brakes, the engineer signaled by whistle when he needed to slow down or stop. This was when the rear-end and head-end brakemen went to work. Each car had its own brake wheel, and the two brakemen, having climbed on top of this moving train, would move from car to car, from opposite ends, applying hand brakes until the train stopped. Once the train stopped, the flagman would get off the train and walk back a prescribed distance to signal approaching trains that a stopped train was ahead. Once underway again, the caboose crew would sit in the cupola and watch for smoke from overheated axle bearings (this situation was called a hot box and was a serious fire and derailment hazard), smoke from stuck brakes, or other signs of trouble. In the 1880s the automatic air brake system invented by George Westinghouse eliminated the need for brakemen to set brakes manually. Eventually electric track circuits were implemented to activate signals, eliminating the need for flagmen. Friction bearings were replaced by roller bearings, reducing the likelihood of a hot box. Today the ends of freight trains are monitored by remote radio devices called End of Train devices, or EOTs. The EOT fits over the rear coupler and is also coupled into the air brake line. The EOT radios information to the engineer regarding the brake pressure at the rear of the train, whether or not the last car is moving and whether or not the flashing red light on the car is working. The EOT also allows the engineer to set the air brakes from the rear of the train in the event the train breaks in two. In such an emergency the engineer could set the brakes on both halves of the train. With the introduction of these devices, the conductor moved to the front of the train with the engineer. A lot of the cabooses were sold for their scrap value. But you can still see them in use in and around railyards sometimes. They are brought out for special events, too, such as historical tours. You’ll also find them in railroad museums across the country and in private use by individual owners. The United Transportation Union is the largest railroad operating union in North America, representing workers on every Class I railroad and many of the workers on regional and shortline railroads. The union initially protested the phasing out of cabooses. It pushed for legislation to require that trains have cabooses if they exceeded a certain length or if they were carrying hazardous materials. Several states did pass such laws, but as the railroads argued, the federal government no longer requires cabooses on trains. The caboose was obsolete as far as they were concerned. In 1982 the union signed an agreement with the rail carriers that permitted the elimination of the caboose. A freight train just isn’t what a freight train used to be.

References

Phillips, J. A. October 1998. A Caboose of Our Own. White River Journal. TrainWeb. The History of the Caboose.

"The Golden Gate Bridge: Beautiful Under All Light Conditions," by Alpha Unit

This year is the 75th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge, the technical and artistic marvel that is one of this country’s most famous landmarks. It’s been declared one of the modern Wonders of the World by the American Society of Civil Engineers – and seen by some as possibly the most beautiful bridge in the world. Before the bridge was built, the only practical way to get from San Francisco to Marin County was by ferry. This began in the 1800s. Southern Pacific Railroad came to operate the ferries – a profitable and vital operation for the regional economy. People had long considered building a bridge to connect San Francisco and Marin County. The first proposal to really take hold was made in 1916. An engineer named Joseph Strauss made a pitch to local authorities, designs and all. A suspension-bridge design was considered most practical. Strauss actually spent over 10 years trying to gain support for a bridge. The Department of War was afraid it would interfere with ship traffic. Southern Pacific Railroad didn’t want any competition for its ferry fleet and filed a lawsuit. But among allies was the automobile industry, which supported the development of roads and bridges for clear reasons. The state legislature passed the Golden Gate Bridge and Highway District Act in 1923. Construction began in January of 1933, with Strauss as chief engineer. The contractor was the McClintic-Marshall Construction Company, a subsidiary of Bethlehem Steel. The call went out for workers. Since the Great Depression was well underway by then, there was no shortage of men seeking work on the bridge. All hiring had to be done through the Ironworkers Union Local 377 in San Francisco. There weren’t enough ironworkers in the city, so men were recruited from all over. But before any construction could actually begin on the bridge, they needed divers to begin the crucial underwater construction process. This would be especially difficult. As one author described it:

The narrow strait between Marin County and San Francisco is one of the world’s most tumultuous bodies of water. Up to 335 feet deep and only a mile and a quarter wide, the Golden Gate is the largest California coastal opening – a portal into which the Pacific Ocean surges. Powerful currents also flow in the opposite direction as water from many of Northern California’s freshwater rivers and streams rushes into San Francisco Bay. The freshwater flow collides with the incoming Pacific, creating complex and violent currents.

Workers would have to erect a pier more than 1,000 feet out in the middle of the Gate – the first bridge support ever constructed in the open ocean. Divers had to begin by blasting away rock for the south tower’s supports. This involved placing blasting tubes into position and securing them while trying not to be swept away in the current. They had to go as deep as 90 feet below the surface to remove detonation debris using underwater hoses that exerted 500 pounds of hydraulic pressure.

The Gate’s changing currents afforded workers only a narrow window of dive time. The men were restricted to submerging for four 20-minute periods per day. With the construction team’s tight schedule, divers were often forced to surface before having sufficient time to decompress, increasing the likelihood that they would develop caisson disease… also known as “the bends.”

The divers guided beams, panels, and 40-ton steel forms into position, often having to feel their way due to murky water and fast-changing currents, and while wearing bulky diving suits. Yet the danger didn’t deter men from this underwater work. It was a steady, well-paying job – not easy to come by during the Depression. When construction started on the bridge itself, the first workers excavated three and a quarter million cubic feet of dirt and poured enormous amounts of concrete for the bridge’s two anchorages. The 12-story high anchorages were designed to secure 63 million pounds – twice the pull of the bridge’s main cables, we are told. In November of 1933 the first tower began to go up. Prefabricated sections were fit into place and riveted together by 4-man rivet gangs. After both towers were complete in June of 1935, workers built catwalks and started spinning the cables for the bridge. The engineering company John Roebling and Sons oversaw cable construction. This firm had built many of the world’s longest bridges, including the Brooklyn Bridge 52 years earlier. It had developed a technique of spinning cables on site.

To spin the cables, 80,000 miles of steel wire…were bound in 1,600-pound spools and attached to the bridge’s anchorage. A fixture within the anchorage called a strand shoe was used to secure a “dead wire” while a spinning wheel, or sheave, pulled a “live wire” across the bridge. Once it reached the opposite shore of the Gate, the live wire was secured onto the strand shoe, and the wheel returned with another loop of wire to begin the process again.

Hundreds of wires, each roughly the diameter of a pencil, were bound together into strands. Hydraulic jacks then bundled and compressed 61 strands to make a cable. Each of the main cables is just over 3 feet in diameter. The work was laborious and had to be done to ensure the correct tension and balance in the cables. As for the deck, or roadway, of the bridge, traveling cranes working from each tower laid down the steel decking that would undergird the roadway. The first concrete was poured for the roadway in January of 1937. Opening day for the Golden Gate Bridge was May 27, 1937. An estimated 200,000 people came for the celebration. As one of them later recalled:

The weather at the Golden Gate was typical for San Francisco in May: foggy, windy, and cold, but that didn’t bother anyone. They would always remember they had walked across the Golden Gate Bridge on opening day. You were encouraged to wear a costume or the Official Hat with its tassels. But it was the Depression. If you couldn’t afford the hat, a bandana would do just fine.

The workers who constructed the bridge were executing the design of what The San Francisco Chronicle calls an engineering dream team. Although Joseph Strauss was chief engineer, he had little understanding or experience with cable-suspension designs, so other experts were given responsibility for much of the engineering and architecture. Charles Alton Ellis was the structural engineer and mathematician responsible for the structural design of the bridge. He did all the mathematical calculations that made the bridge possible. Leon Moisseiff was a leading suspension bridge engineer in the 1920s and 1930s. He was known for his work on deflection theory, which held that the longer bridges were, the more flexible they could be. Ellis applied Moisseiff’s theories in the design of the bridge. Othmar Ammann was a structural engineer who had designed the George Washington Bridge in New York City. He served on the board of engineers for the Golden Gate Bridge. Charles Derleth was the dean of the college of engineering at UC Berkeley. He served on the advisory board with Moisseiff and Ammann. Andrew Lawson was a professor of geology at UC Berkeley. He was the first person to identify and name the San Andreas Fault. He was a consulting geologist and seismic expert for the construction of the bridge. Irving Morrow was the consulting architect for the bridge. Morrow graduated from the newly founded UC Berkeley architectural program in 1906. Joseph Strauss hired him to design the architectural treatment of the bridge. He was influenced by Art Deco design, but his most famous contribution to the Golden Gate Bridge is its distinctive burnt red-orange hue called International Orange. “The tone is beautiful under all light conditions,” one observer admitted.

"Obedience, Drunkenness, and Rape at West Point and Annapolis," by Alpha Unit

Last Friday, Karley Marquet and Anne Kendzior filed a lawsuit in federal court claiming that the US Military Academy in West Point, New York, and the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, ignored rampant sexual harassment and rapes at the academies. Named as defendants are former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, former superintendents of the two academies, and the current Secretaries of the Army and Navy. The lawsuit states:

Although Defendants and other military leadership repeatedly claim they have “zero tolerance” for such misconduct, the evidence shows otherwise: they have a high tolerance for sexual predators in their ranks, and “zero tolerance” for those who report rape, sexual assault and harassment.

There are three rapes discussed in the lawsuit; one of the women was raped twice. Karley Marquet is 20. She began attending West Point boot camp in June of 2010. Before describing the events in question, she says that she was taught to follow all directions given by upperclassmen – shining shoes, making beds, emptying trash, and otherwise doing whatever they told her to do. During the second semester of her freshman year, she stayed on campus over the Martin Luther King holiday weekend; her roommate didn’t. A female friend visited her on the evening in question but left by curfew. Shortly after, her roommate’s boyfriend, an upperclassman, stopped by to visit. According to the lawsuit:

The male upperclassman stayed for quite some time, and then gave Ms. Marquet a sports drink that had alcohol in it. Peer pressure by upperclassmen to consume alcohol is pervasive at West Point. Ms. Marquet drank about one-fourth of the liquid in the bottle, and soon became intoxicated. Disoriented, Ms. Marquet was convinced by the upperclassman to go to his room, where he raped her.

So you have peer pressure, alcohol, and a disoriented freshman. It all sounds familiar. Ms. Marquet told her sister and a friend what happened. They told her to go to the Sexual Assault Response Coordinator (“SARC”). But she was hesitant. The perpetrator stopped by her room several times, she says, pressuring her not to report the rape. In addition, she was well aware that women who did report rapes were called “sluts” and were accused of having “asked for it.” But she decided to report it, not that it did her any good. West Point didn’t provide her with what she calls adequate assistance. She was forced to remain in contact with the guy, and West Point didn’t alter her duties, which meant she had to empty his trash every day. As a result of the rape and the hostile environment, she became depressed and suicidal. The final straw was being forced to do “walking hours” with this guy as punishment for a minor infraction. She resigned from West Point. The guy still hasn’t been brought to justice. In the case of Anne Kendzior, both perpetrators went on to graduate and become Naval officers. Ms. Kendzior is 22, and joined the Naval Academy in the summer of 2008. She, too, was taught to follow all directions given by upperclassmen. That fall she went to a party given at “Lacrosse House,” attended mainly by Naval Academy students. There was a lot of alcohol. They played some drinking games and had lots of fun getting drunk. Ms. Kendzior went to one of the back bedrooms to sleep it off. Everybody can guess what happened next: she woke up to find a male student on top of her doing the deed. She says he then rolled over and went to sleep. She didn’t tell anyone what had happened except her roommate. Nothing was made of the whole incident. A few months went by. Ms. Kendzior and two male students were granted Saturday liberty. They bought some alcohol and went to a hotel room to drink it. She passed out drunk. She woke up to find herself being raped by one of the guys. She told her roommates, but no one else. Eventually – the lawsuit doesn’t specify exactly when – she reported both rapes to her Academy counselor, but the counselor didn’t encourage her to report them to either civilian or military police. She says she spiraled downhill, becoming suicidal. She finally did report the rapes to the Naval Academy. But the lawsuit states:

Although Ms. Kendzior was only one year from completing her degree, the Naval Academy decided that Ms. Kendzior’s mental health issues caused by the rapes precluded her from becoming a commissioned officer. Only the intervention of Ms. Kendzior’s parents and Congressman prevented the Academy from wrongly incarcerating her at a mental health facility.

She was forced to leave the Academy without being permitted to graduate. The lawsuit maintains that Robert Gates and his co-defendants are directly responsible for the atmosphere in the US military and at the academies that allows these assaults and rapes to flourish and go unpunished. You know what I wonder, though? Why didn’t these two fairly intelligent, capable women understand that they were putting themselves at risk of being raped? It’s not okay to rape people. Furthermore, you can’t make anyone rape you. Rapists are responsible for the crimes they commit. But assuming you can take them at their word, why the Hell do so many women walk blindly into these rape scenarios? Nobody has a right to rape you. But you are responsible for your own safety and well-being. Not the Secretary of Defense. Not the head of the military academy. Not your Academy counselor. You are. If you can’t tell when you’re being set up for a possible sexual assault, then maybe there are certain environments you don’t need to be in, period.

"How Martin Guitars Changed Music," by Alpha Unit

Buddy Guy and Keb’ Mo’ play Martin guitars. So did Lester Flatt, Brownie McGhee, and Kurt Cobain. Lindsey Buckingham, Shawn Colvin, and Beck play them. What guitar player hasn’t? The Martin Guitar Company has been making acoustic guitars for over 150 years. Some consider them the finest in the world.

Christian Frederick Martin is the man who brought Martin guitars to America in 1833. He came from a family of German cabinetmakers, and not long after establishing his own business in Markneukirchen, he got caught up in a dispute between the Cabinetmakers Guild and the Violin Makers Guild.

The Violin Guild didn’t want cabinetmakers making musical instruments. The Cabinetmakers said that violin makers had no vested right in making guitars, and that Martin’s guitars marked him as every bit the craftsman as any violin maker.

The Cabinetmakers prevailed in this legal dispute, but C. F. Martin had had enough. He left Germany for New York City. In 1838 he sold his retail store to another music dealer and bought 8 acres outside Nazareth, Pennsylvania, where he produced totally hand-crafted guitars made on a one-by-one basis. However:

There were a few features commonly incorporated in most of C. F. Martin’s instruments. Until the mid-1840s, Martin guitars were characterized by a headstock that had all the tuning keys on one side. Martin acquired this design from his teacher in Vienna, Johann Stauffer.

The headstock design with all the tuning keys on one side was discontinued by Martin and went unused until Leo Fender resurrected the design in 1948 with his Telecaster guitar.

During the 1850s, Martin made a major innovation to guitar design – the “X” bracing system for the guitar top. Guitar bracing, I learned, refers to the system of wooden struts that support and reinforce the soundboard and back of the guitar. According to Rich Simmons and Jeff Griffy:

Guitar bracing performs two wildly different functions: strengthen the top of the guitar while allowing it to sufficiently vibrate to produce a warm and resonant tone. In a standard scale guitar with medium gauge strings, the guitar’s top withstands approximately 185 lbs. of constant tension.

A thin top without bracing would buckle or warp in very little time. A top thick enough to withstand the pressure could not sufficiently vibrate and would result in a thin tone with little volume. Bracing a thin top then finds the best of both worlds.

The “X” pattern developed by Martin features the two main braces running in an “X” from the upper bouts – where the body widens out from the “waist” of the guitar – to the lower bouts. The “X” crosses between the soundhole and the bridge, with several auxiliary braces. This pattern creates the strength and well-balanced tones that most builders find ideal.

Martin innovations didn’t end with “X” bracing. During the Great Depression, Martin, like thousands of other businesses, suffered seriously depressed sales. The company explored all kinds of features with the hope of finding something that would bolster sales. They came up with the 14-fret neck.

Before this era, guitars were typically equipped with a 12-fret neck. The story Martin tells is that a renowned banjo player, Perry Bechtel, suggested to F. H. Martin – grandson of C. F. Martin – that he make a guitar with a 14-fret neck; the longer neck would increase the guitar’s range and make it more versatile.

Martin took Bechtel’s advice and introduced a guitar with the longer neck. It was so popular that Martin made it a feature on all its models. It became the standard design for the industry in America.

Another innovation was the Dreadnought guitar, which has become a Martin trademark. The original Dreadnought – named after a type of World War I British battleship – was designed by F. H. Martin and Harry Hunt. Hunt figured that a Dreadnought guitar, with its large body and booming bass, would be ideal for accompanying vocals. It was introduced in 1916 but wasn’t well-received because there weren’t that many singers using guitars; solo players considered the bass overbearing.

But as folk singing became more and more popular, so did the Dreadnought. In 1931 Martin incorporated the Dreadnought into its line. It dominates the Martin line today, and almost all acoustic guitar makers are said to have their own versions of it.

Of course, as with other manufacturers, you can have a Martin guitar made to order. Each size and shape produces a unique tone. The wood you choose has a distinct influence on sound, too. You determine the right “playability” as well. According to Martin:

You need to choose the most comfortable neck that is easy to play in terms of action (height of the string above the fret), string tension, and neck width. If you’re accustomed to playing electric, you’ll probably want low action on an acoustic. Acoustic rhythm players or slide players generally want higher action.

Flatpickers and rhythm players prefer narrow necks. Fingerpickers, with their need for greater string spacing, prefer wide necks.

It may seem obvious, but the fit of the neck of a guitar has to be close to perfect.

As anyone who has built a guitar can tell you, the fit of the neck can be one of the most crucial and challenging parts of a guitar build – particularly if the guitar sports a dovetail neck joint. It involves a long process of carefully carving off excess wood, fitting, refitting, and sheer strength to ensure that the fit is absolutely flawless. Otherwise, a guitar can end up with tuning issues, problems with the action.

Diane, who works as a neck fitter for Martin, says that her job not only requires physical strength but mental agility, “because each and every neck is different.” This means no two sets of problems to solve are alike – just as no two Martin guitars are alike.

"Where Have All the Blacksmiths and Boilermakers Gone?" by Alpha Unit

Here is some self-evident truth: the steam engine was critical to the Industrial Revolution. So were the men called boilermakers. Steam engines ran factory machines, trains, and ships; none of them would have run without a boiler. The men who constructed and maintained those boilers were a kind of engine themselves for commerce and manufacturing. There are still boilermakers, of course, doing essential work all over the world, although they sometimes go by other names these days. Historically these tradesmen (they are still overwhelmingly male) were known as “boilersmiths.” Their trade is actually an extension of blacksmithing, and came about largely due to the advent of iron as a primary construction material. Boilermakers would be in the shipyards making the iron boilers for steamships, and employers found it easier and cheaper to use boilermakers to build the ships, too. Because of their skills as general metalworkers – rolling, shearing, welding, and riveting – boilermakers built trains and metal bridges in addition to steel ships. And just about everything operated by steam was in their purview. Boilermakers are still out there working in industrial construction, shipbuilding, railroads, and mining. When companies need metal structures like process towers and smokestacks fabricated and installed, it’s boilermakers that get it done. They also do rigging, signaling, and hoisting of materials and equipment. Fossil and nuclear power plants are practically run by boilermakers. Boilers supply steam to drive the turbines that generate electricity in these power plants. Because these places often operate at very high steam pressure, boilermaking, welding, and tube-fitting are an ongoing project for them. And what of blacksmithing, the mother of boilermaking? There are still working blacksmiths doing what blacksmiths of long ago did – heating pieces of wrought iron or steel until they’re soft enough to be shaped. Back then, a blacksmith out in the country was mostly sought after for horseshoes, plowshares, and farming tools. In towns they would make such things as parts for carriage wheels and canal barges. Once the Industrial Revolution got underway, you’d find blacksmiths making railway axles and other parts for trains. They also worked in shipbuilding and in the engineering and textile industries, building and repairing machines. Nowadays blacksmiths sometimes work with computer programs and specialized cutters that use lasers or water jets to cut the metal they’ll be forging. But you can still find blacksmiths working in some of the same industries they have traditionally, such as the railroad industry, where they build and repair the metal components and parts on equipment. One thing blacksmiths will sometimes tell you is that architects, in particular, keep them in business. Blacksmiths get commissioned to create gates, ornate fences and furniture, and balustrades for staircases and balconies. Because there is so much overlap in the different metalworking trades, these workers have organized together throughout the years. The International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Iron Ship Builders, Blacksmiths, Forgers and Helpers says that anyone who works in any of these trades may call himself or herself a Boilermaker. As to why whiskey with a beer chaser is called a boilermaker, they say, nobody knows. At least nobody they can find.

"Football vs. Rugby," by Alpha Unit

Which is tougher – American football or rugby? Author Alistair Bland, who has been on the South Island of New Zealand, put the question to some bar patrons in a couple of towns. He began by asking people if they’d seen the Super Bowl on TV, calling it “the world’s biggest game.”

In the seaside town of Kaikoura, one bartender told me he didn’t air the game and said I probably was the only person in town looking to watch the Super Bowl. The bar manager at Strawberry Tree, a worn and salty old watering hole on Kaikoura’s main and only drag, said that American football is too slow-paced to watch on TV.

Bland then asked Stephen Horton, a rugby player on Kaikoura’s regional team, if American football players were padded, coddled softies. Were they less durable than rugby players?

“Oh, yeah!” he laughed. “Those guys wouldn’t last 80 minutes in a rugby match!”

Bland mentioned that NFL linemen who by some stroke of chance found the ball in their hands and ran it for an 80-yard touchdown could require oxygen masks to recover. This got Stephen and another Kiwi at the bar laughing, he states. NFL players are said to be bigger, stronger, and faster than rugby players, says Bland, quoting a commenter on an online discussion who says that the average NFL player could “pick up the average Super 14 player, turn him upside down, and shake him like a piggy bank.” Stephen’s response:

“I definitely think rugby is harder,” he said, “but football looks more fun. You wear all that padding and can hit each other as hard as you want. You get hurt in rugby. I’ve had three broken collar bones and been knocked out three times.”

Bland adds:

Rugby players are trained gentlemen, too. In New Zealand, they start playing it as young as four years of age, and even in adult leagues, swearing is forbidden during practice, and “joking around,” Stephen explained, is curtailed by the coaches.

And none of those classless celebrations after scores or victories, says Bland. Later in the week, he stopped at the Moa Brewing Company for a beer and to egg on more conversation, as he puts it. There he met Michael Miller, an American who had been living in New Zealand for eight months and who had picked up on “the subtleties of rugby that American football lacks.”

“I don’t mean to be derogatory toward anyone, but rugby is more intellectual,” he said, explaining that, since they lack protective gear, the players must combat each other with exceptional technique. He likens the sport to “guerrilla warfare,” whereas the face-off-and-charge approach of the NFL is more like “Civil War” battle style. “Rugby can also be quite brutal,” Michael said, “but it’s also more beautiful and elegant.” He noted that rugby players must be skilled in tackling, running, and handling the ball – all aspects of the game – whereas football players are specialized to certain techniques, making them less rounded as tactical athletes.

Michael tells him that American football, much more than rugby, “has been evolved for commercialization and television.” Bland concludes:

Which explains the three-hour games, endless breaks and timeouts, and the huge advertising campaigns that climax on Super Bowl day.

References

Bland, Alistair. February 8, 2012. “Football or Rugby: Who’s Tougher?” The Anderson Valley Advertiser.

"Occupy Wall Street: Longview Port Fight Isn't Over," by Alpha Unit

Occupy Portland, Occupy Oakland, and Occupy Longview aren’t giving up that easily. They’ve been gearing up for a fight and they’re not ready to call it off just yet – in spite of the tentative agreement that’s been reached between the union they’re supporting and the corporation they’ve been condemning. The long, drawn-out dispute between the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and Export Grain Terminal appears to be coming to an end, on the heels of the inflammatory news that the US Coast Guard was to escort a ship owned by EGT from the mouth of the Columbia River to Longview, Washington, to be loaded with grain bound for Asian ports. Occupy and the union are outraged not only by US military intervention in the dispute but also by the fact that the loading would be done with non-ILWU workers. The Governor of Washington has stepped in to broker a temporary truce, satisfying those who were hoping to avert a confrontation in Longview when the ship calls at the EGT facility. The involvement of the Coast Guard wasn’t the first federal intervention in the dispute; last year the National Labor Relations Board filed a complaint against the ILWU, alleging that some of its protest tactics were illegal. The union ended up being fined $300,000 for labor violations. The fight between the ILWU and EGT centers around an agreement the union has with the Port of Longview that only ILWU workers would be hired at the port. EGT – a joint venture among Japan-based Itochu; St. Louis-based Bunge North America; and South Korean shipper STX Pan Ocean – signed a lease with the Port of Longview, but didn’t particularly want to hire ILWU workers. A dispute was born. EGT is said to have begun using non-union labor during construction and during the testing phase of its new $200 million facility. In July of 2011 it announced plans to hire an outside contractor that would employ members of Operating Engineers Local 701. The ILWU had been shut out. EGT filed a lawsuit contending that their contract permitted them to hire non-ILWU labor. Dockworkers responded, “Oh, hell, no.” They picketed. They protested at EGT headquarters. They tried to block a train heading for the terminal. They engaged in vandalism, including dumping grain from train cars, cutting brake lines, and smashing windows. There were arrests, along with intervention by the NLRB. Then came the news that the Coast Guard was going to assist EGT in getting its new ship to port. Other unions drafted resolutions protesting military intervention and supporting the ILWU. Occupy Wall Street started getting ready to block the port, vowing to do everything it could to keep the ship from being loaded. The news of the tentative deal hasn’t stopped Occupy’s mobilization efforts. Their plan is on until rank-and-file Longshore workers reach an agreement. Occupy calls Coast Guard intervention union-busting, pure and simple, saying that under the authority of the Department of Homeland Security the Coast Guard has created a security zone around the port to ensure the loading can progress unhindered. Union supporters insist that this is a crucial battle for all workers. They don’t want to see EGT succeed in this effort, because if it does, other employers will see a green light to bust unions.

"It's the Year of the Peach," by Alpha Unit

It’s been 40 years since the Allman Brothers Band released their album Eat a Peach. In celebration the band has named 2012 “The Year of the Peach.” This is also the year they’re going to be given the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, which, according to the Recording Academy, “honors performers who have made contributions of outstanding artistic significance to the field of recording.” (I know some people are cynical about the Grammys, but I can’t be cynical about the Allman Brothers Band – and there are too many people who are the same.) Eat a Peach is a double album that was recorded after what critics call the group’s “breakthrough” album, At Fillmore East, and contains live tracks that didn’t make it onto that album, including “One Way Out,” a blues song that the Allman Brothers made popular with rock audiences. The Allmans knew blues music, and had been playing it from the time they began forming bands in the early 1960s. After making it to Southern California where they opened for acts like The Doors and Buffalo Springfield, the Allmans moved back South, to Macon, Georgia. That’s where they began to put together the group of players who would join them in forming the Allman Brothers Band: guitarist Dickey Betts, bassist Berry Oakley, and drummers Butch Trucks and Jai Johanny Johanson – a Black drummer who had started out in R&B and had toured with such acts as Otis Redding and Sam & Dave. According to one chronicler:

At the same time, Duane Allman began doing session work at the Muscle Shoals studio in Alabama, where this skinny White hippie quickly earned a reputation as a stinging, soulful accompanist. Duane and Gregg both exhibited a natural feel for Black music that the much-hyped British “blues masters” of the period couldn’t begin to match. Growing up in the South, they absorbed gutbucket R&B and sanctified gospel along with the more common influences of soul and freedom jazz and came up with an unprecedented sound…

It was a sound that combined “deeply Southern” strains of music – blues, country, and gospel – with rock and roll. Some called it New South. Critics and fans love Eat a Peach, but the album cover art is famous, too. The album cover includes a gatefold mural featuring a “fantasy landscape of mushrooms and fairies and folklore,” as described by one writer. It is the work of brothers James Flournoy Holmes and David Powell, from Spartanburg, South Carolina. The brothers were in their early twenties when they went into the graphic design business. James had a fine arts degree from the University of Georgia; David was a photographer and businessman who had a degree in sociology from Limestone College in Gaffney, South Carolina. Their association with the Allman Brothers began, according to a Billboard piece written back in May of 1974, after the band played in Spartanburg, noted the brothers’ talents, and asked them to do an album cover for their Capricorn release. Eat a Peach was among the album covers displayed in an exhibit of J. F. Holmes’ cover art that ran a couple of years ago at Spruill Gallery in Atlanta. Bo Emerson wrote about Holmes and some of the bands he did work for (like the very first cover he did, for Wet Willie), groups on the Capricorn label and elsewhere – like Charlie Daniels and the Marshall Tucker Band.

“He would maybe take the feeling that the band gave you musically and develop it into something that you could get by looking at the album cover,” says Dick Wooley, who was vice president of promotion at Capricorn during the 1970s. “A lot of the bands didn’t have an identity, and he’d come up with something.”

Holmes was talented in watercolor, airbrush, and ink and pen, said Emerson, and his style depended on the music inside.

The clear, spare rendering of the postcard joke on the front of Eat a Peach ( a flatbed hauling a house-sized piece of fruit) contrasts with the crowded, trippy landscape on the gatefold interior, with its mushrooms, dragons, and grotesque figures that he says, “I stole, sorry, ‘borrowed,’ from [Hieronymus] Bosch.”

All of Eat a Peach – the music and the cover art – came from the imagination, skill, and artistry of Southerners. David Quantick calls this album the work of “Southern rock” pioneers at their creative peak. But Gregg Allman has often been quoted as saying:

Well, to say “Southern rock” is kind of redundant, isn’t it? It’s like saying “Rock Rock.”

This is because, as Swampland puts it, rock and roll and all of its precedents – blues, gospel, jazz, country, bluegrass – are products of the American South.

"West Coast Ports Are the New Target for Occupy Wall Street," by Alpha Unit

On Monday, December 12, Occupy Wall Street protests will center around a West Coast Port Blockade, in which protesters plan to “shut down Wall Street on the Waterfront.” According to the organization’s website:

The goal is to disrupt commerce to make the 1 percent, who own the shipping, business, and goods going through the ports, pay for their global austerity attack on working people.

Occupy Oakland is seeking a repeat of the “general strike” it achieved back on November 2. On Monday, Occupy Oakland seeks to create a greater “port blockade” with more than a dozen occupations all along the West Coast. As Gavin Aronsen explains:

Occupy Oakland’s renewed call to shut down “Wall Street on the Waterfront” was sparked in large part by the October firing of 26 port truckers in Los Angeles and Long Beach who wore Teamster T-shirts to work in defiance of their anti-union employer, the Australia-based Toll Group. Monday’s protests are also being billed as a protest against port terminals run by the Goldman Sachs-owned Stevedoring Services of America (SSA) and a show of solidarity with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union’s rank-and-file – particularly in Longview, Washington, where the union is engaged in a contract fight with Export Grain Terminal, a subsidiary of the agribusiness giant Bunge.

Union leaders sent this San Francisco Chronicle:

I’ll be losing about $700 for the day, and I have to use that to pay for my fuel and truck and all my expenses, but I’m glad they’re going to shut the port down. They need to make a statement. We truckers need better treatment.

"How You Might Get Hurt During a Protest," by Alpha Unit

One of the messages from Occupy Wall Street is that civil disobedience can hurt. Protesters are getting a helping of what police dish out when you fail to obey their orders. It’s not pretty, either. Riot control is not only ugly; it can actually be lethal. If while protesting you decide to confront or disobey police, there are some things in store for you. The aim of law enforcement in riot control is to use non-lethal methods of getting crowds to disperse or rioters to obey orders. They have come up with a number of ways to get you to comply. 1. One of the oldest and most familiar riot control implements is the baton – also called a truncheon, nightstick, billy club, or blackjack. Police use it to block, strike, or jab people. When using a firearm is deemed inappropriate or unjustified, the baton is the instrument of choice. In the old days police would “brain” people with batons to stun them or knock them unconscious, but as you might imagine this is frowned upon in modern law enforcement – especially since it can be deadly. Generally police are trained not to hit the skull, sternum, spine, or groin unless they can’t avoid it. One way police try to disable someone is to aim for the common peroneal nerve, located roughly a hand span above the knee, toward the back of the leg. This will cause your legs to give way, and you’ll experience numbness and tingling down your leg. This can last up to 5 minutes. Recently campus police at UC Berkeley were seen jabbing a group of armlocked protesters in the sides with batons. It caused outrage. Police generally do not jab protesters in this way unless the protesters are being physically aggressive or actively resisting arrest, according to police training guidelines I read. (UC is revisiting the issue of training methods.) 2. Police will sometimes fire bean bag rounds into a crowd. A bean-bag round is a small “pillow” filled with lead shot, weighing about 40 grams. It’s fired from a normal 12-gauge shotgun. The intent is to deliver a blow that won’t cause you any long-term damage but will render you immobile. Bean-bag rounds can be quite dangerous or even lethal, depending on where they strike. If one hits you in the chest, it can break ribs, supposedly, sending broken ribs into the heart. A strike to the head can break your nose, crush your larynx, or break your neck or skull. If one gets you in the abdomen, it could cause internal bleeding or breathing difficulties. Police are taught to aim for the extremities when using these rounds. 3. Rubber bullets are another option for police. They can be fired from standard firearms. These are meant to hurt you but not cause serious injury. People struck with rubber bullets can expect contusions, abrasions, or hematomas – although they can cause bone fractures or injury to internal organs. They have notably caused eye injuries to people, and are reported to have caused deaths. 4.Tear gas works by irritating the mucus membranes of the eyes, nose, mouth, and lungs. In the eyes it will cause burning, redness, and blurred vision. You’ll experience burning and irritation in your mouth, along with drooling and difficulty swallowing. You might experience chest tightness and shortness of breath. You might get a skin rash or burn. You might also experience nausea and vomiting. 5. One of the dispersal methods that’s been in the news lately is pepper spray. This inflammatory agent is said to cause immediate closing of the eyes (no kidding) along with difficulty breathing, runny nose, and coughing. You get an almost instant restriction of your airways and feel sudden, intense pain in the face, nose, and throat. Subsequent breaths can cause you to ingest more of the spray, which can cause choking. The burning reaction can last for hours. If you have asthma or other pre-existing respiratory problems, pepper spray can be fatal. Numerous people have died in police custody after inhaling pepper spray. These are what most protesters here in the US would encounter. Recently the Oakland Police were accused of using an M84 stun grenade – or “flashbang” – during a protest. There is an intensely loud “bang” and a blinding flash, which can cause temporary blindness, deafness, tinnitus, or inner ear disturbance. Their use has made headlines in Greece, South Africa, and Israel, among other places.

"Things I Never Knew About Surfers," by Alpha Unit

The Banzai Pipeline, or simply Pipeline, is a surf reef break in Hawaii, on Oahu’s North Shore. At Pipeline, open-ocean swells meet a patch of lava rock just offshore that slows the base of the waves, creating a wall of water with a hollow curl that’s great for tube riding: surfers can ride inside the barrel or curve of these breaking waves. During the winter, swells from storms off the Alaskan coast travel across the Pacific toward Hawaii. With no continental shelf around the Hawaiian islands, ocean swells are unimpeded as they approach the shore. At Pipeline, these waves meet a flat tabletop coral reef about 500 yards from land – and this reef, with its caverns and underwater lava spires, is what creates those barreling, powerful waves that surfers can’t resist. It’s also what makes Pipeline one of the most dangerous reef breaks in the world. A number of surfers have died at Pipeline, and numerous others have suffered injuries – sometimes catastrophic injuries. Laird Hamilton, once described as the world’s preeminent big-wave surfer, calls Pipeline a “bone crusher.” He explains:

I saw guys carried out of Pipeline daily. I saw one guy who had the top of his scalp torn off like a boiled egg after it’s been cut with a knife. I’ve seen guys with broken arms, broken backs, and even broken necks. I once went over [the falls] and landed on my board and split my head open like it was tomahawked.

No matter. Another surfer, Phil Edwards, in talking about his days surfing the Pipeline, describes it this way:

The Pipeline is a geographic anomaly. It’s a spectacle of nature. That reef is radical. Those waves haven’t seen a thing shallower than a mile deep for 2,000 miles, and they come blasting into that coral wall and the top of the ocean just flops off. The result is a beautiful, beautiful wave. If God designed a wave for surfers, he couldn’t do any better than the Pipeline.

And so the surfers come. Every year. Things began to change after Edwards quit surfing Pipeline, though. By one account:

In the late 70s Australians, New Zealanders, and South Africans arrived and went crazy at the Pipeline, surfing with an aggressiveness some regulars resented. And with the trepidation barrier broken, the Pipeline was being surfed in droves. Because there isn’t room for two surfers on any one pipe, competition for the waves was intense and often unfriendly. Intimidation, both psychological and physical, became a part of surfing the Pipeline.

As a New York Times article put it:

In 1975, a brash group of surfers from South Africa and Australia swept the North Shore contests and monopolized news media coverage. The Australians even boasted of their superiority to their Hawaiian counterparts. Some Hawaiians, feeling disrespected at home in a sport their ancestors invented, threatened and thrashed the outsiders when they returned the next winter.

Local surfers banded together to enforce a code of respect. In 1976 there were the Da Hui, or the Black Shorts (for their uniform surf trunks). And then there is the Wolfpak, also known as “the boys.” Wolfpak is said to use fear and their fists to command respect on Oahu’s North Shore. They determine which waves go to whom and punish outsiders who cross the line with locals. Zev Borow explains.

During winter months, when the waves are biggest, Pipeline is likely the most crowded break in the world, and the most dangerous. In ideal conditions, the waves roll off a shallow coral reef to form perfect barrels. And because these barrels break close to shore, they somehow seem less intimidating, enticing many surfers who aren’t prepared for reality. As a result, on a good day, as many as 80 surfers will paddle into a lineup that can be safely surfed by maybe 20. The combination of huge waves, shallow reef and an aggressive and jammed lineup creates a surfing environment that can be treacherous.

Kala Alexander, leader of Wolfpak, says that’s where they step in.

We make sure there’s order, that people aren’t taking off on top of each other. On a wave like Pipe, something stupid isn’t just not having surfing etiquette. It’s attempted murder. Getting dropped in on at Pipe is like pointing a gun at your head. And you know, if you point a gun at one of us, well, there are gonna be consequences.

Such as?

I wouldn’t say much. Maybe I’d paddle up to you, tell you to go in, or take off your leash [a cord used to keep the board from being washed away from the surfer]. But later I’d find you, or a few of the other guys would, and you’d be taught a lesson.

Localism – surfers making sure their home break’s waves go to them, as Borow puts it – exists on some level on all beaches. Good surf spots are rare and a good surf break will become a coveted commodity. Regular surfers who live near the surf break will take over, proclaiming “locals only.” Verbal and occasional physical threats are used to deter outsiders from surfing at certain spots. Some of the tactics used:

  • posting warning signs for outsiders or blocking access to the beach
  • insults and shouting, bullying tactics to intimidate surfers they don’t recognize
  • aggressive behavior toward non-locals, including disrupting surfing maneuvers
  • vandalism, such as damaging surfboards and vehicles
  • in extreme cases, physical attack, including a few that have resulted in death

Some veteran surfers downplay the aggression and violence that sometimes get picked up by media outlets. Doug Ancey, who’s been surfing for about twelve years now, objects to the term “surf gangs” to describe groups of locals, saying there is no comparison between these “cliques” and criminal gangs. He says that at issue is the notion of respect.

The thing that we are really looking for on the water is respect. There is etiquette to surfing that few people outside of the surfing crowd understand. The aggression on the water comes out when someone exhibits a lack of respect to the other surfers around them…As far as the etiquette between surfers goes, I’ll try not to drown you in surfing terminology, but it’s about waiting your turn in the lineup and respecting other surfers’ waves. In all actuality, we are all out there for the same experience and the same passion.

He goes on to talk about how surfers get stereotyped negatively.

Usually the more you say about surfing to someone who doesn’t surf, the worse off you are. Surfing is something that is very personal and deep, and it’s hard for an outsider to fully grasp that concept. That is why surfers can talk about surfing for hours, especially with other surfers.

And once you become immersed in surfing culture, he says, you’re in for good.

"The Latest Cause for the National Lawyers Guild: Occupy Wall Street," by Alpha Unit

A lot of the Occupy Wall Street protesters have been arrested on various charges, such as trespassing, failure to disperse, disorderly conduct, and obstruction of government administration. And almost from the beginning, the National Lawyers Guild has been there to get them out of trouble. In what has been called “the largest mobilization of pro bono lawyers in 40 years,” the National Lawyers Guild has been providing counsel to Occupy Wall Street protesters – by drafting and filing motions, monitoring as legal observers, advising the protesters in negotiations with city officials, setting up legal hotlines, and showing up on short notice to represent those in custody. They go about identifying each person who is arrested, recording the badge numbers of arresting officers, and getting contact information for potential witnesses. The Guild has been engaging in this kind of activism on behalf of liberal and Left causes for decades now. The lawyers who founded the National Lawyers Guild in 1937 were what we now call progressives – New Deal supporters, union lawyers, and civil libertarians. It was the first racially integrated bar association in the country. President Franklin D. Roosevelt sent a written endorsement to the founding convention. Beginning in the late 1940s, the US government started to view the National Lawyers Guild as subversive. The FBI targeted the organization during the “Red Scare” of the 1950s. According to a lawsuit that wasn’t filed until 1977, the FBI learned through wiretaps and informants that Yale Law School professor Thomas Emerson had discussed with the National Lawyers Guild the publication of an exposé of unconstitutional investigative methods in the FBI. According to Publiceye.org:

The FBI passed this information on to Richard Nixon, then a congressman on the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), and persuaded him to hold a press conference announcing a HUAC probe of the National Lawyers Guild as a communist front.

The FBI publicly launched an investigation of the organization. Leaders in the American Bar Association worked with the FBI to discredit the National Lawyers Guild.

Hoover had the FBI write a report (which HUAC issued under the Committee’s name) without hearings or an investigation. The report was titled “Report on the National Lawyers Guild: Legal Bulwark of the Communist Party.”

The HUAC report called upon the Attorney General to designate the Guild a “subversive” organization. He actually did in 1953, but when the evidence to support the designation wasn’t forthcoming, he dropped it in 1958. It didn’t matter to the FBI. It kept the National Lawyers Guild under surveillance for roughly 30 years, keeping extensive files on the organization. It wiretapped phones, burglarized Guild offices, sifted through the garbage of Guild members, sent informants to meetings, and provided information on members to panels that reviewed lawyers for admission to practice law. It wasn’t until 1989 that the FBI admitted the government engaged in a broad effort to investigate and disrupt the National Lawyers Guild – despite the absence of any finding that the group was subversive. The government didn’t admit to any wrongdoing, of course. The US attorney did manage to say, “Obviously under today’s standards, a lot of that activity would be illegal.” Yes – under today’s standards. Were warrantless searches legal under yesterday’s standards? There are still people on the Right that disparage the National Lawyers Guild. It’s been called anti-capitalist and pro-terrorist. Totalitarian. A Legal Fifth Column. And the worst thing anything can be called in America: Marxist-inspired.

"PETA to SeaWorld: Let My People Go," by Alpha Unit

Don’t believe for a minute that slavery isn’t an ongoing scourge in America. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California on behalf of five slaves being held in California and Florida. The slaves in San Diego are Corky, Kasatka, and Ulises. The slaves in Orlando are Tilikum and Katina. All five are members of Orcinus orca, the largest species of the dolphin family – also known as killer whales. PETA says that all five are being held at SeaWorld parks in violation of the 13th Amendment, which prohibits involuntary servitude and abolished slavery. According to PETA general counsel Jeffrey Kerr:

Slavery is slavery, and it does not depend on the species of the slave any more than it depends on gender, race, or religion.

The lawsuit maintains that the orcas were taken from their families and denied their natural environment. The males have their sperm collected, while the females are artificially inseminated and forced to bear young, which are sometimes shipped away. In addition:

Deprived of the opportunity to make conscious choices and to practice their cultural vocal, social, and foraging traditions, they are compelled to perform meaningless tricks for a reward of dead fish.

Animal law experts say that the court must first agree that PETA has the ability and right to represent the whales. Then PETA would have to persuade the court that the 13th Amendment applies to whales.

"Occupy Wall Street Inspiring Workers and Organizers," by Alpha Unit

Working America is the affiliate of the AFL-CIO that organizes workers from non-union workplaces. The group is now reporting that they’ve signed up about 25,000 new recruits in the last week alone, largely due to the Occupy Wall Street protests. The protests have been taking place all over the country, of course. This is more people than they recruited in a month during labor protests in Wisconsin earlier this year, according to the executive director of Working America, Karen Nussbaum. Occupy Wall Street seems to be inspiring a lot of people who are said to have little in common with those out protesting. “Beltway wisdom would have it that Occupy Wall Street protesters are pierced, pot-smoking hippies reviled by heartland Americans,” says Greg Sargent, who blogs at the Washington Post. (It’s actually not just inside the Beltway where you’ll hear people saying this.) But many of those signing up for Working America express support for the protests. Working America reports that among the people who join:

  • 8
  • 1
  • 3
  • 3
  • 6

“Our members are often not part of the progressive movement until they join Working America,” as they put it. And according to Greg Sargent:

The cultural fault line and tensions between blue collar Whites and liberal activists is a well established storyline in American history. But Working America – which organizes in industrial battlegrounds like Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania and other swing states – is having a new burst of success among precisely the sort of working class voters who are supposed to be culturally alienated by the excesses of the Occupy Wall Street protesters.

Laura Clawson, who writes for Working America, says that Occupy Wall Street is just expressing anger the majority of Americans share at how unequal and imbalanced our economy is – and how our economy and politics seem to work for Wall Street no matter what damage Wall Street inflicts on the rest of us.

"Three Million Shipwrecks, Billions of Dollars," by Alpha Unit

In February of 1941, the SS Gairsoppa, a British steamer, was returning from a voyage to India. It left its convoy to sail for the Bay of Galway, on the west coast of Ireland, according to author C. Michael Hogan. Unarmed and unescorted, the Gairsoppa was fired upon by the German U-101 boat commanded by Korvettenkapitän Ernst Mengersen, now known for sinking over 67,000 tons of Allied shipping during the War. The last reported position of the Gairsoppa was slightly to the west of the Celtic Sea shelf, southwest of the Irish coast. Last month the shipwreck was found by Odyssey Marine Exploration, based in Tampa, Florida. There were about 240 tons of silver aboard the Gairsoppa, worth $200 million in today’s prices. Contracted by the British government to recover the wreckage, Odyssey will get 8 According to a news report:

In recent years, cash-strapped governments have started looking to lost cargoes as a way to raise money. They do so because the latest generation of robots, lights, cameras, and claws can withstand the deep sea’s crushing pressure and have opened up a new world of shipwreck recovery.

The United Nations estimates that there are about 3 million shipwrecks on the ocean floor. There are billions and billions of dollars worth of treasure that have yet to be hauled up. Odyssey Marine is the company that just found the shipwreck of another British steamer, the SS Mantola. It was sunk off the coast of Ireland in 1917 by a German submarine. The Mantola had been carrying 20 tons of silver. Like the Gairsoppa, the Mantola had been owned by the British Indian Steam Navigation Company. In 1917, the British Ministry of War Transport paid a War Risk Insurance Claim for £110,000 (in 1917 value). Today we are looking at approximately $18 million, most of which will go to Odyssey. Private companies like Odyssey put their own money at risk to recover these treasures. But what they do is controversial. They’ve come in for some heavy criticism from archaeological societies and charities, and are accused of “ransacking” these shipwrecks for their own gain while pretending to be engaged in archaeological research. The case of the famous “Black Swan” discovery back in 2007 illustrates the controversy. Odyssey Marine found the wreck of a ship which sank in the North Atlantic. Which ship and its exact location have been in dispute, though. The company discovered an estimated $500 million worth of silver and gold coins, along with worked gold and other artifacts. Some say this particular shipwreck may be that of the British merchant ship Merchant Royal, which sank while returning to England in 1641. The Spanish government filed a claim that the silver and gold came from a Spanish vessel, the Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes, a frigate that sank off the coast of Portugal in 1804. The government of Peru laid claim to the treasure since some of the coins were minted in Lima. (That claim was later dismissed; Peru was a Spanish territory when the coins were minted.) Descendants of some of the people onboard the different ships have filed claims, as well. Spain ratified the UNESCO 2001 Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage, and asserts that these ancient shipwrecks should be protected and placed in museums, not bartered or sold. In a case that made it to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, a lower court ruling was affirmed that the U.S. federal court lacked jurisdiction over property recovered in the Black Swan Project. The court found that the recovery was the sovereign immune shipwreck Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes and ordered Odyssey to turn everything over to the Spanish government. Nothing has to be handed over, though, until all appeals have been exhausted. And you know they will be.

"No Rainwater in Tokelau," by Alpha Unit

There’s not enough water in Texas. There’s not enough in East Africa and some other places, too. Climate change is being blamed for some of it. La Niña, specifically, is being blamed for what’s happening in Texas – and for what’s happening in the South Pacific. Several island nations in the region are having water shortages and trying to fend off a crisis. Tuvalu and parts of Samoa have begun water rationing. And the tiny nation of Tokelau, a territory of New Zealand, has only a week’s worth of fresh drinking water left. The people who live there collect rainwater for drinking, but because of La Niña, there hasn’t been much rain. New Zealand is now in a joint humanitarian effort with the US government. A US Coast Guard vessel stationed in Honolulu met up with a New Zealand Defence Force aircraft on American Samoa to get water to Tokelau. The US Coast Guard cutter Walnut has used its onboard desalination plant to produce 136,000 liters of drinking water. International seagoing vessels typically have onboard desalination plants. Naval vessels, cruise ships, and privately owned vessels have them. Most US Navy ships use reverse osmosis (RO) desalination plants. In the RO process, pressurized seawater is filtered through a specialized semi-permeable membrane, which can remove about 9 By the way, governments and private concerns have been examining the prospect of offshore desalination vessels for years. (Everything’s on the table. There’s a lot of people – and people use a lot of water.) There’s much to consider, cost (including energy costs) and what to do with that brine you get from desalination being major questions. But there are people figuring it out.

"Starbucks Wants Your Help," by Alpha Unit

Starbucks wants to add jobs to the economy, and help a lot of other people hold on to their jobs, they say. Today they launched their Jobs for USA program, an alliance with the Opportunity Finance Network. Opportunity Finance Network is a non-profit that works with banks, credit unions, loan funds, and venture capital funds to lend money to small businesses and community groups. Starbucks will ask each customer for a $5 donation to contribute to the program, beginning November 1. In exchange, you get a red, white, and blue wristband that says, “Indivisible.” Howard Schultz is the CEO of Starbucks. He has been outspoken on behalf of small businesses during this economic downturn, even asking his fellow CEOs to stop contributing to all political campaigns until our representatives in Washington find a way to get us out of this recession – the Great Recession, as some people call it. A lot of people aren’t buying it. Some think it’s some kind of publicity stunt. Others are raking Starbucks over the coals for the way it deals with its employees. Or for their high prices. Others are completely cynical about Schultz’s motives, seeing it as a self-serving move on his part. Someone wondered if the wristbands were made in America. One commenter’s response, however, was, “I would like a job anywhere.”

"Wall Street Under Siege," by Alpha Unit

If you know about the protests staged in New York City by Occupy Wall Street, you might have heard of the numerous arrests and the allegations of police brutality – what you always hear about during large demonstrations. You might know that famous activists have shown up during the protests – Michael Moore, Susan Sarandon, and Cornel West, for example. You probably haven’t heard anything about who’s leading these protests. The one thing media outlets are able to agree on about Occupy Wall Street is that there are no leaders. What they do have now is a powerful icon throwing his support behind them. Noam Chomsky released this statement:

Anyone with eyes open knows the gangsterism of Wall Street – financial institutions generally – has caused severe damage to the people of the United States (and the world). And should know also know that it has been doing so increasingly for over 30 years, as their power in the economy has radically increased, and with it their political power. That has set in motion a vicious cycle that has concentrated immense wealth, and with it political power, in a tiny sector of the population, a fraction of

So there are the financial oligarchs (“banksters”) and then there are all the rest of us – the 99 percent. Occupy Wall Street is supposed to represent the rest of us. As for leaders, the group calls itself “a leaderless resistance movement.”

Leaders are the everyday people participating in the occupation. We use a tool called the “General Assembly” to facilitate open, participatory, and horizontal organizing between members of the public.

That means anybody can be a leader of Occupy Wall Street. If you want to learn about organizing protests in your city, you can go to Occupy Together, a hub for “all the events springing up across the country in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street.” But what is all this really about? A website has been set up to inform you. “Allow us to introduce ourselves,” it says.

Who are we? Well, who are you? If you’re reading this, there’s a 99 percent chance that you’re one of us. You’re someone who doesn’t know whether there’s going to be enough money to make this month’s rent. You’re someone who gets sick and toughs it out because you’ll never afford the hospital bills. You’re someone who’s trying to move a mountain of debt that never seems to get any smaller no matter how hard you try.

You do all the things you’re supposed to do – take classes, get a second job, buy store brands. But it’s never enough. Why? Because you’re lazy and undisciplined, according to the banksters.

They say it’s because you make poor choices. They say it’s because you’re spoiled. If you’d only apply yourself a little more, worked a little harder, planned a little better, things would go well for you… They are the 1 percent. They are the banks, the mortgage industry, the insurance industry. They are the important ones. They need help and get bailed out and are praised as job creators. We need help and get nothing and are called entitled. We live in a society made for them, not us.

Sounds pretty familiar. They say they are converging on Wall Street – and on other financial districts throughout the country – to let the 1 percent know just how frustrated they are with living in a world made for someone else. I wonder if anyone on Wall Street is listening. I read that Occupy Wall Street was inspired, in part, by events in Tahrir Square in Cairo earlier this year.

"The Noise in Their Heads," by Alpha Unit

It’s one of the most common disabilities among returning war veterans. Construction and factory workers often end up with it. KT Tunstall got it in 2008 by sitting too close to the speakers at a concert. Will.i.am of The Black Eyed Peas has it. He says he doesn’t know what silence sounds like any more, and that music is the only thing that eases it. Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich developed it early in his career, when the loud noise from his shows would follow him offstage. It worsened over time. He’d get up in the middle of the night to turn off the TV, only to realize that the TV wasn’t on. Other musicians reported to suffer from it include Al Di Meola, Jeff Beck, Danny Elfman, and Andy Partridge. All of these people and millions more suffer from tinnitus, a constant ringing or buzzing sound in the ear. There is really no way to treat it so far. Different people describe it different ways: ringing, hissing, whooshing, roaring, buzzing, crickets, screeching – even music. It can be intermittent or constant. In one ear, or both ears – or even throughout the entire head. From soft to extremely loud. Some people suffer from it so badly they can’t work. One retired firefighter told The San Francisco Chronicle that his tinnitus made him suicidal at one point. He says it’s like hearing a “high-voltage electrical buzzing” in his head all the time. Erin Allday, reporting on findings by UC Berkeley scientists, writes:

Doctors have known for several years that the cause of tinnitus is not in the ear alone, but in the brain. In research released last week, the UC Berkeley team found that tinnitus may be similar to the “phantom limb” syndrome that amputees sometimes experience – neurons continue firing in parts of the brain associated with hearing, even though they’re getting no input from the ear.

Shaowen Bao of UC Berkeley’s Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute suggests that exposing tinnitus patients to frequencies near the ones they are no longer able to hear might coax neurons to accept input from frequencies similar to ones they lost – remapping the brain, so to speak, and providing relief. Drugs might also be helpful in preventing the neurons from constantly firing, but it doesn’t appear to be a good idea so far, since the drugs have serious side effects, including blindness. But these research findings out of UC Berkeley are some of the most promising to date for effective treatment of tinnitus, which can be debilitating for some of the people suffering from it. Michael Merzenich, professor of otolaryngology at UC San Francisco, has been studying brain remapping for years, and says that several patients reported improvement for tinnitus after their brains were retrained – and this was even before Bao and his colleagues reported their findings.

“The Noise in Their Heads,” by Alpha Unit

It’s one of the most common disabilities among returning war veterans. Construction and factory workers often end up with it.

KT Tunstall got it in 2008 by sitting too close to the speakers at a concert.

Will.i.am of The Black Eyed Peas has it. He says he doesn’t know what silence sounds like any more, and that music is the only thing that eases it.

Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich developed it early in his career, when the loud noise from his shows would follow him offstage. It worsened over time. He’d get up in the middle of the night to turn off the TV, only to realize that the TV wasn’t on.

Other musicians reported to suffer from it include Al Di Meola, Jeff Beck, Danny Elfman, and Andy Partridge.

All of these people and millions more suffer from tinnitus, a constant ringing or buzzing sound in the ear. There is really no way to treat it so far. Different people describe it different ways: ringing, hissing, whooshing, roaring, buzzing, crickets, screeching – even music. It can be intermittent or constant. In one ear, or both ears – or even throughout the entire head. From soft to extremely loud.

Some people suffer from it so badly they can’t work. One retired firefighter told The San Francisco Chronicle that his tinnitus made him suicidal at one point. He says it’s like hearing a “high-voltage electrical buzzing” in his head all the time. Erin Allday, reporting on findings by UC Berkeley scientists, writes:

Doctors have known for several years that the cause of tinnitus is not in the ear alone, but in the brain. In research released last week, the UC Berkeley team found that tinnitus may be similar to the “phantom limb” syndrome that amputees sometimes experience – neurons continue firing in parts of the brain associated with hearing, even though they’re getting no input from the ear.

Shaowen Bao of UC Berkeley’s Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute suggests that exposing tinnitus patients to frequencies near the ones they are no longer able to hear might coax neurons to accept input from frequencies similar to ones they lost – remapping the brain, so to speak, and providing relief.

Drugs might also be helpful in preventing the neurons from constantly firing, but it doesn’t appear to be a good idea so far, since the drugs have serious side effects, including blindness.

But these research findings out of UC Berkeley are some of the most promising to date for effective treatment of tinnitus, which can be debilitating for some of the people suffering from it. Michael Merzenich, professor of otolaryngology at UC San Francisco, has been studying brain remapping for years, and says that several patients reported improvement for tinnitus after their brains were retrained – and this was even before Bao and his colleagues reported their findings.

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