A Change of Seasons

This week's newspaper column. Read it in the Hatteisburg American.

When it comes to understanding sustainability, Nature is our greatest teacher. And one of Nature’s fundamental lessons is that the cold dark gloom of winter is always followed by the bursting exuberance of spring.

Many times we look at the winter in the world around us and see only desolation. How often do we see a rundown neighborhood and count it out, or experience an economic downturn and pronounce it permanent?

Just as in Nature, the world we create is in a state of constant change. Here’s the difference: Nature always honors the natural cycles and creates systems that self-perpetuate; sometimes we humans do not.

But Nature has vision along with a fail-safe solution for dealing with death and blight. It’s called “spring.”

Spring is fresh. It is a time for new beginnings and new growth. With help from the birds and the winds, Nature relentlessly spreads the seeds of the next generation. A good number of those seeds find fertile ground and, under the nourishing warmth of the sun, grow heartily.

Spring is bold. It does not flinch at the deadness of winter. Spring is not deterred by the brown surface patina visible to the naked eye. In fact, the robustness of spring benefits from the nutrients of last season’s fallen remains. What Nature knows is that great potential lies underneath, and the fulfillment of that hidden potential lies just a season away. What we call “dead” could in fact be the genesis of a new beginning.

Spring fosters a collective forward momentum. In Nature, growth fosters growth. The sprouts of new life collectively create a synergy that attracts the pollinating forces necessary for the expansion of an even more robust life.

Spring is optimistic. Even after the harshest winter, spring arrives with great enthusiasm and confident of ultimate success. Spring acknowledges obstacles, but is not discouraged. Witness the shoots of green winding up through cracks in the sidewalk, or fast-growing vines taking over a brick wall, or trees growing through fences. In spring, growth inevitably softens the hard edges of winter.

Spring is diverse. Variety is everywhere. Nature understands that diversity is necessary for natural sustainability. Look at unattended patches of earth. Never does one see a single species growing in one place. Natural, healthy growth comes in as a chorus of sizes, shapes, and colors influenced by the local climate and soils. (Ironically, large pristine grass lawns are among the least diverse patches of spring; that’s why they take so much maintenance.)

So if you look around and see patches of winter in the world, now is not the time to write an obituary. On the contrary, it is the time to ferociously plant seeds. And with Nature as our guide, the beginning of the harvest can’t be far away.

The Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Photo: I Have a Dream Speech - Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Today's newspaper column. Read it in the Hattiesburg American.

Martin Luther King, Jr. had a dream. Not a complaint - a living dream.

The powerful and compelling vision he articulated was that someday, in America, people would not be “judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

We’ve come a long way since that late August in 1963 when Martin Luther King, Jr. uttered those very words from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. To the country and the world, the ideals those words embodied were a beacon of truth beaming from the shores of justice through a thick fog of prejudice, hate, and injustice.

Thomas Jefferson penned the words “all men are created equal” in the Declaration of Independence, but those words rang hollow when compared to the suffering of some at the hands of others hell-bent on ‘keeping Negros in their place.’ In the face of sneers, segregation and the all-too-common lynching, King preached the gospel of love and non-violence – but not acceptance of the status quo - as a path to equality. And for that, he was shot and killed.

So today we honor the ideal of racial equality and memorialize the actions of this civil rights martyr with a national holiday on the Monday closest to the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Lesser known was a version of Rev. King in Hattiesburg, Mississippi: Rev. J.C. Killingsworth. Killingsworth led the civil rights movement in Hattiesburg spearheading and organizing peaceful demonstrations during this volatile time in our nation’s history putting his own life at risk as well as those of his family and associates.

Today, a group of involved citizens in Hattiesburg – the J.C. Killingsworth Freedom Corner Committee - has a dream. The dream is to create a living interactive memorial and education center for the purpose of honoring pillars of the civil rights struggle in Hattiesburg, MS. Appropriately, the site is located at the intersection of Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive and the newly renamed J.C. Killingsworth Avenue.

This memorial is not an attempt to rehash the past, but to put history in context for the next generation, and to play a vital part in racial reconciliation.

Wander through the “Pillars of the Movement” and hear oral histories of 12 Hattiesburg civil rights leaders. Break through the “Wall of Injustice” and be serenaded by jubilant gospel anthems as you gaze into a central sphere reflecting a kaleidoscope of colorful murals of Hattiesburg’s civil rights pillars in the background while seeing the most important person in the ongoing quest for racial equality - yourself.

To find out how you can help turn this Freedom Corner dream into reality, send an email to msfreedomcorner@gmail.com or write to Freedom Corner, c/o James Ray Polk Architect, P.O. Box 1253, Hattiesburg, MS 39403. Or donate online by going to jckfreedomcorner.com.

Let’s join together to bring about a vibrant and sustainable culture of true racial equality in the community in which we live.

Take a tour of the J.C. Killingsworth Freedom Corner here.

The Uh-Oh Decade

This week's newspaper column - read it in the Hattiesburg American:


Out with the old; in with the new!

After stumbling through a decade that started with a millennial bang and ended with a whimper, the calendrical odometer benevolently flips over to give us – at least metaphorically – a new start.

It may be telling that we never really knew what to call this unsettling era. Naming every decade in living memory has been obvious with references to the 50’s, the 60’s, and even the more recent 90’s rolling off the tongue with poetic ease. Give us a little more time, and the past ten years may put oldies stations out of business for lack of a tag line.

Most disappointing may be the economics of the uh-oh’s. You may remember that the United States entered the decade with a fiscal surplus. But by late 2008 we found ourselves in an economic situation that most economists referred to as “freefall.” Though the national economy has stabilized and has even started to grow a bit in the past few months, unemployment is still rampant and a record number of people are on food stamps.

What happened?

Well, sustainably speaking, we lost our balance.

Years of hearing bloviating pundits and so-called political leaders telling us that “greed is good” and “taxes are bad” gave momentum to an ethic hostile to the good of the whole. In the uh-oh’s, we as a society failed in our responsibility to promote our common interests. We starved our schools, we neglected our infrastructure, and we told the weakest and least fortunate members of our citizenry to get lost.

Yes, a strong sense of individuality and personal responsibility is essential to maintain a functional society, but so too is healthy investment and carful nurturing of the common good. When the good of the individual is out of balance with the good of the whole, sooner or later society reaches a tipping point, and the economic system comes crashing down.

The truth is, no single individual is completely self-made. Everyone, to some extent, depends upon the hard work and good will of others for their success. So when those nameless faceless “others” suffer, so in turn does the famous self-made man.

Creating and maintaining sustainable systems - whether in community planning, building design, or economic blueprint - requires a strong focus on community responsibility in addition to personal responsibility. That means stepping up as a society and paying to fix the things that are broken. It also means investing in what’s important for the betterment of us all, like education, community infrastructure, and healthcare.

What good is another wide-screen TV when the world is crumbling around you?

Why not change our “me-first” attitude and make the twenty-tens a “we-first” decade? With 2020 vision, we have the opportunity to fashion a decade where all prosper.

Where's Our Modern Day CCC?

This week's newspaper column. Read it in the Hattiesburg American.

Over the years, I, along with millions of fellow Americans, have enjoyed the fruits of an initiative born the better part of a century ago.

In 1933, the United States was mired in the midst of the Great Depression, and legions of Americans were unemployed and starving. As part of president Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal, the Civilian Conservation Corps came into being for the purpose of putting able-bodied men to work.

The Civilian Conservation Corps, better known as the CCC, went about constructing park facilities including campgrounds, vacation cabins, recreational trails, mountain lookouts, picnic areas, and a host of other amenities throughout the United States. CCC crews planted over 3 billion trees, took part in extensive erosion control projects, built roads, and erected fire towers. Much of that infrastructure still graces our national landscape.

(To see examples of a few CCC structures, go to my blog – the New American Village – at newamericanvillage.blogspot.com.)

CCC crews also pitched in as a ready national resource fighting fires throughout the country, and providing relief and rebuilding services after a major hurricane in New England, blizzards in Utah, and several major floods.

But far from being a “make-work” program, the men of the CCC were taught literacy and construction skills. Their hand-crafted park buildings of indigenous materials – a very green method of building - stand out today as some of the most beautiful structures in our park system, and the durability of their work is self-evident by virtue of the vast and diverse inventory of CCC facilities still in use today. As the depression waned, and jobs returned to the private sector, the men of the CCC were in great demand because they possessed practical, demonstrated trade skills, and as one employer put it, “they knew how to put in a good day’s work.”

The CCC was an immensely popular program. A Gallup poll in 1936 indicated that 82 percent of the general public was in favor of the program, including overwhelming majorities from both Democrat and Republican respondents.

With recent reports that one in eight Americans currently rely on food stamps for some or all of their food, and with millions unemployed or underemployed, where is our modern day Civilian Conservation Corps?

Look around you; there’s plenty of work to be done. Instead of us, as a society, doling out unemployment benefits, why not fashion a renewed version of this wildly successful employment and training program?

It has been popular group-think of late to say “government programs are never the answer.” But after a decade of political momentum on the side of demonizing the government and casting our economic fortunes solely with the private sector, why are so many people now suffering?

Knee-jerk platitudes and ideological clichés do not help build a country or put food on the table. The Civilian Conservation Corps, in fact, did just that.

No Man is an Island

This week's newspaper column:

Sustainability – essentially – is about connections.

Take the human body for example. Life is sustained as the heart pumps blood through a connected system of veins and arteries distributed throughout the entirety of our bodies. This system works by degree in that the more those connections are disrupted, the more quality of life is degraded. Terminate the veins in the wrist and you lose a hand; block the main arteries close to the heart and you’re dead.

Translate this metaphor to all physical and social connections and you’ve got a pretty good working understanding of sustainability.

Almost four centuries ago, English writer and clergyman John Donne articulated the concept well:

No man is an Island, entire of itself;

Every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main.

Now how many times have we heard the word “deserted” preceding the word “island”? Ever stop to wonder why some islands are deserted? At the risk of stating the self-evident, islands tend to be deserted when they have no clear connection to the mainland and are not big enough to maintain an ecosystem hospitable to human life.

So in considering sustainable design, it’s always important to think in terms of connections. Physical connections, social connections, cultural connections, environmental connections – all are important in the manifestation of a built environment that sustains and enhances a healthy human existence.

For example, when planning and developing alternative modes of transportation in a community (meaning other ways to get around besides the automobile), the success of those systems hinges on how comprehensively everything is connected with everything else. When sidewalks are intermittent and leave some areas of heavy human activity completely unserved, or when bike lanes are planned for some neighborhoods and not others – sustainably speaking – those are destined to be dead or ailing systems and will only be utilized to a small fraction of their potential.

Conversely (and fossil fuel issues aside), automobile transportation has the very sustainable quality of having roads connecting every home with every possible service and work opportunity. In fact, it’s the only fully connected system of transportation we have in America – that’s why so many people use it.

Naysayers to sustainable development are quick to say, “Why build sidewalks? Nobody wants to walk.”

But there was a time when people made the same arguments against the automobile. I bet you didn’t know that Henry Ford fielded universal cries of “Who would ever want to ride in a horseless carriage? Where would you go?” That, obviously, was before the universal connection of our roadways.

The more connections we make, the more sustainable we become and the more options we have. And in a sustainable world, each individual’s fate is connected to the viability of everybody else.

Donne famously concludes his profound treatise on sustainability saying:

Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind;

And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;

It tolls for thee.