On this page you’ll find notes arising from American Futures project that Deborah and James Fallows have had underway, with some appearances on Marketplace radio, since 2013. Their full archive is here.
… please come to the first American Futures conference at the University of Redlands, on Friday evening, January 29, and Saturday during the day. You can find agenda and sign-up information here.
Glamour shot of the University of Redlands, where the conference will be held
At the conference, my wife Deb and I will be discussing what we have found in our past two-plus years of traveling around the country for our American Futures project — which will also be the subject of a cover-story package, with articles by both of us, in the forthcoming March issue of the magazine. (Subscribe!) One of the themes of that presentation is how much more functional American governance and civil-society seem at the city-by-city level than they do, at the moment, on the national scale.
At the conference, mayors whose strategies and records we’ve chronicled in this project will speak about what they’ve done, how they did it, and what lessons can be gleaned from, and applied more broadly, from the stories of their towns. They will include Rusty Bailey, mayor of Riverside, California; Don Ness, who recently completed two terms as mayor of Duluth, Minnesota; Ashley Swearengin, in her second term as mayor of Fresno, California; Nan Whaley, beginning her third year as mayor of Dayton, Ohio; and Knox White, who as mayor of Greenville, South Carolina, since 1995 is the longest-serving mayor in that city’s history.
Plus at least one and maybe more Bonus Mayors! And a session on GeoDesign at the Redlands-based software company Esri, one of our partners in this project.
I can tell you first-hand that these mayors all have very interesting personal and civic stories to tell. You’re likely to keep hearing about them (and not just from me) over the years. If you’ll be in the vicinity, please check out the site for more info and come by.
Craig Scharton (right) in 2014 at his Peeve’s Public House in downtown Fresno. With him is Oscar Fuentes, who was the beer buyer for Peeve’s then and now has started his own brewery.
During our visits to Fresno, in California’s Central Valley, over the past two years, my wife Deb and I have made regular stops at Peeve’s Public House, on the downtown Fulton Mall.
Initially this was because the proprietor, Fresno patriot and publican Craig Scharton, was the first person to argue to us (at a chance meeting elsewhere in California) that tattered-looking Fresno was worth serious attention as a city turning itself around. After heavy initial skepticism, we became convinced. You can read the summary version of why we changed our minds here, or the full chronicles here. On return trips to Fresno we kept going back to Peeve’s because we liked the beer, food, and atmosphere there. And increasingly we came to respect its role as a civic center, in a part of town very much in need of such a thing. Here was the event board on our first visit:
The Fulton Mall area where Peeve’s has been an anchor and outpost (it’s one of the few businesses now open at night) is in the middle of a mammoth construction project, whose details you can read about here. In the long run, the overhaul is meant to spur downtown Fresno’s revival. In the short run, it’s yet another challenge for the businesses already there.
Members of Fresno’s “Downtown Academy” at Peeve’s last year, courtesy of That Fresno Blog.
Last night Craig Scharton put up a long post on Peeve’s Facebook page, saying that conditions had darkened and he flat-out needed more customers if he was to stay open. Here’s the “action” section of his post:
This is an unusual plea to our community of customers. Transparency has been a core value of mine (and therefore Peeve’s Pub). I don’t know if this will work or not, but I know that we don’t have any chance unless we try.
We need about 2,500 extra customer visits in the next month or two. That means people who haven’t tried us yet, come on down. We need occasional customers to make one extra visit, or maybe people who had a bad experience to give us another try. Or it means bringing a friend or two with you or ordering boxed lunches for your next office meeting.
If one-fifth of the people who like us on Facebook do this, I think we’ll survive.
I have no connection to Scharton except as a recent friend, nor to Peeve’s except as a customer. But if I were in Fresno, I’d be voting with my dollars to help it survive. People of Fresno, over to you!
Update Here’s an informative account of menu and beer changes at Peeve’s, by Bethany Clough in the Fresno Bee.
Stuart and Emily Siegel, of Ajo, Arizona, at their wedding this month at the Sonoran Desert Conference Center in Ajo. Photo by Margaret Collins, from her flickr collection.
Early this year my wife Deb and I filed several reports from the genuinely startling and inspiring small town of Ajo, Arizona. Ajo is far away from pretty much everything except the spectacular Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. Also nearby, for warplane fans, is the Barry Goldwater bombing range just to the north, as described here. Just to the east is the large tribal land of the Tohono O’odham Nation, and there is a big Border Patrol station to the south of town.
A century ago, Ajo was the site of an enormous open-pit copper mine. Thirty years ago, the mine closed suddenly, leaving a gigantic (but interesting!) lunar-surface-scale crater as a landmark but removing most of the town’s economic reason for being.
Over the past ten years, indefatigable teams of activists, artists, entrepreneurs, dreamers, and volunteers and others have set about rebuilding and reviving the town. Deb told part of their story here and here, and I compared it with some other small-town, arts-based revival efforts in the United States and China here. Seriously, if you didn’t read this earlier report by Deb, please check it out.
The centerpiece of current efforts in Ajo is the new Sonoran Desert Conference Center, a combination resort / retreat / meeting place / educational center being built in a beautiful, architecturally striking former school, shown below.
Sonoran Desert Conference Center, photo by Emily Siegel
Around the same time Deb and I arrived in Ajo to see the center and the town, a young couple from the northeast, Emily Raine and Stuart Siegel, were also getting their first look at the area. Initially this was for them just one more “hmm, it could be interesting” stop on a see-America wanderjahr they were calling their Big-Ass American Adventure. You can see Stuart's Tumblr chronicle of their travels, and Emily’s essay on 10 Things to Love About Ajo after they had been there for a while. Here is a picture taken when they drove us to the airport in Gila Bend.
Although this had seemed merely an interesting possibility when we first met them, Emily and Stuart ended up signing on as at-least-for-now residents of Ajo and directors of the new conference center. And earlier this month, they were married right there. You can see one photo above, and many more at a flickr collection by their friend Margaret Collins. More than 100 friends and family made the trek from the rest of the country, and Emily and Stuart marshaled extensive support from local friends in Ajo, including the high school band. As Emily wrote after the ceremony,
The phenomenal food by the local postal worker and police dispatcher who moonlight as caterers...that gorgeous bouquet and boutonniere by the local flower shop/funeral home...the retirees that drove us to and from the ceremony in their classic cars...the saguaro cactus chuppah that the deputy sheriff who does woodworking helped us make...the dozen or so Ajoites who led activities for guests on Saturday morning (yoga! gardening! beer tasting! meditation! historic walking tour! hiking!)...the AJO HIGH SCHOOL BAND playing at the ceremony...it was a pretty amazing small-town desert wedding!
(In case you’re wondering: No, Ajo has not been a traditional center of Jewish weddings or Jewish life in southern Arizona. During its mining heyday, the working population was a mixture of Anglo, Latino, and Tohono O’odham and other tribal families, and the main religions were Catholic, various Protestant denominations, Mormon, etc. This ceremony was one more aspect of Ajo’s renaissance.)
Here is how Stuart and Emily looked earlier this year, as the conference center was still undergoing renovations and they were still making wedding plans:
(Rene Cloutier)
We were delighted to hear of the wedding and sorry not to be there ourselves. We send the bride and groom — and their community — our heartiest congratulations. We’ll look forward to congratulating them in person. If you’re looking for a place to stay in the southwest, consider the Sonoran Desert Conference Center — and say hello to the directors for us. People like them, deciding to give their best to a new place, often against the odds, have made us feel better, when there is a lot to feel bad about.
Here's the back story: In our American Futures reports from Down East Maine, my wife Deb and I wrote about the (obvious) importance of the seacoast in the region’s past and future, and John Tierney wrote specifically about the achievements of the Maine Maritime Academy in Castine.
Maine Maritime Academy seal (MMA)
Last week Maine Maritime was honored (again) as a leading “value added” institution, raising its graduates’ earnings. A reader wrote in to dissent, on two points. First, he said the high earnings were an artifact of unusual legal protections for the merchant-marine industry (summed up as “the Jones Act”), which sheltered it from world competition. Second, he said that when he was teaching at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, he thought the students were mediocre and under-motivated.
I answered on the first, main point by saying: that’s not really a rap against Maine Maritime. Merchant shipping is a perilous activity — as it happens, five MMA alumni were among the 33 people lost recently on the El Faro — and if the earnings are “unnaturally” high, that’s not MMA’s fault. It would be like saying that medical schools didn’t really raise their graduates’ earnings, since under a different medical system doctors wouldn’t be paid as much.
Today I got a note from the president of the Maine Maritime Academy, William J. Brennan, in fuller response to the reader’s letter. Here it is, with a few explanatory notes inserted:
***
The reader’s view is unfortunate and contrary to my view of Kings Point [the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy] and its cadets, which in my experience, is a great college with wonderful students. But this federal academy, as you point out, is much different from Maine Maritime Academy, which is a state institution, attendance at which requires students to pay tuition, unlike their Kings Point counterparts.
His comments about the Jones Act are particularly misleading as cabotage laws of this nature have been used by countries around the globe for hundreds of years. [Cabotage laws restrict transportation activity within a country to that country’s own carriers.] Essentially the merchant marine is no more or less regulated than virtually all other industries in which graduates from the other colleges ranked highly by the Brookings Institute [the survey in which MMA got a top-tier score] pursue their careers.
His comments about the union are also incorrect as there is no union requirement that I’m aware of stipulating that a member must be a graduate of a maritime academy. Indeed, there are a number of union members who achieve their merchant mariners licenses through the so-called “hawse pipe” via which a mariner works his or her way up through the ranks based on time at sea and the development of the necessary skills required by the United States Coast Guard. He also implies that all graduates of these academies enter a union; however, Maine Maritime Academy’s placement data refutes that statement. Of our principal marine license track graduates over the past three years, less than one third joined a union.
And finally, the experience with unmotivated students the individual refers to does not reflect the experience at Maine Maritime Academy. Of all the public institutions of higher learning in the State of Maine, we have the highest persistence rate, the highest retention rate, the highest graduation rate and our average GPA of current seniors who will receive an unlimited license in marine engineering is 3.21. In my experience, these students are focused and driven to succeed. Our job at the Maine Maritime Academy is to help our students become successful here so that they can be successful in their careers and hopefully in their lives.
Dr. William J. Brennan
President
Maine Maritime Academy
Two days ago I mentioned that a “Fresno reborn” video had a similar tone and toughness to the famous “Imported From Detroit” Eminem/Chrysler ad from the 2011 Superbowl that was an early sign of rebound of the auto industry and its iconic home city.
A reader who knows both places writes to emphasize other connections. This reader is Rick Jones, who grew up in Detroit but now lives in one of the most fashionable parts of prospering California.
The first connection involves one of Fresno’s best-known contemporary figures. This was the late poet Philip Levine — son of assembly-line Detroit, former Poet Laureate of the United States, long-time teacher at Fresno State.
Philip Levine, at the time of his selection at U.S. Poet Laureate in 2011 (AP photo)
Jones says of Levine:
While most of his poems are staged in Detroit (this is an example), they evoke the Fresno of today equally well.
He goes on to spell out the link, playing off my earlier comment that “I realize I am becoming a sucker for places and cultures, like Fresno and Detroit, whose theme is: ‘OK, you want to look down on us? That’s just fine, go ahead and feel smug, because then you’ll be all the more surprised and unprepared when you see what we can do.’” Jones says:
I am a winemaker that lives in Napa but works with wineries in “the valley,” a label all of us in our profession use to name the big area between Sacramento and Bakersfield with Fresno at its center. [JF note: aka The Central Valley or the San Joaquin Valley.]
I also grew up and spent the first 18 years of my life in Detroit. While I live in the middle of glamorous Napa, every time I go to the valley I feel like I'm going home.
I think you're a bit hard on yourself, when you suggest your admiration for these formerly forlorn and neglected places is merely sentimental.
If the American idea or dream or project, or whatever we are calling it these days now is to have any meaning, that meaning resides in Fresno and in Detroit as much, if not more than in Cupertino or Boston.
Obviously I agree, and am trying to learn about, and tell the story of, how and whether that dispersed and less glamorous dream may take shape.
Over the weekend I mentioned the new video by our friends at the Bitwise tech incubator in Fresno, California, which exemplified the gritty spirit — “You think we’re losers? Well just watch” — that we’ve admired and described about the city.
I asked Jake Soberal, co-founder with Irma Olguin of Bitwise, how the video came to be. Here’s his answer, and after that two other notes about its tone and approach.
Jake Soberal writes:
As to the back story, it's a neat one. For some time we have been planning for a very grand opening. Our belief is that Bitwise South Stadium is a technology hub of global significance. Its opening demonstrates the credibility of our burgeoning technology industry--to locals and the world at large. With that, the grand opening had two aims: (1) celebrate how far tech has come in Fresno, and (2) inspire it to go even further.
The 1,200 people in black tie, wonderful food and drink, great live music, and fireworks certainly contributed to that. However, we wanted to make sure that there was something lasting; an anthem of sorts.
So we hired local filmmakers Gordon Howell and Pat Dill to create this video to serve exactly that role. They put together the storyboard, filmed everything you see, wrote the spoken word poetry and music playing behind it, and pieced it all together; they're a super talented duo.
The video was played on the big screen the night of the event, and then released online on Thursday. So far it's doing exactly what it was designed to do….
It's really amazing to be a part of what's happening in Fresno right now.
We're fond of saying that in Fresno Geeks are fixing America's most broken city.
***
Two extra notes. One reader noticed that the video was similar in tone to another I had said I’d loved. That was Eminem’s famous “Imported from Detroit” Superbowl ad four years ago, which I saw via online stream (over VPN) in our apartment in Beijing and then immediately felt homesick. Here that is, followed by Fresno’s.
Detroit:
Fresno:
***
Now, as a bonus, the Selected of God chorus of Detroit that both sang the background music for the Eminem video and sang for Ben Carson’s campaign announcement.
I realize that I am becoming a sucker for places and cultures, like Fresno and Detroit, whose theme is: OK, you want to look down on us? That’s just fine, go ahead and feel smug, because then you’ll be all the more surprised and unprepared when you see what we can do.
It’s an intellectual vulnerability on my part, but there could be worse ones.
Two days ago I mentioned the welcome news that the Maine Maritime Academy, which John Tierney had written about extensively as part of our ongoing American Futures coverage, had been recognized yet again for providing very high career-earnings value to its students, at a low cost.
The context for this was our also-ongoing discussion of the importance of “career technical education,” once sneered-at under the title of “trade schools” or “vocational ed,” as one of the promising steps we’ve seen around the country with potential to offset at least some of the relentless pressure toward a polarized rich-and-poor society.
Now, a reader who once taught at another maritime academy writes in to say, “Hey, wait a minute.” His point, as you’ll see, is not that there is anything wrong with Maine Maritime itself but rather that the “value added” in higher salaries comes from legislatively protected earnings for merchant seamen.
There are some obvious comebacks to this case, most of which I’ll save for later installments. One I’ll mention now is: this is a demanding and potentially perilous field, as demonstrated long ago by John McPhee in “Looking for a Ship” and very recently by the El Faro tragedy, in which 5 MMA alumni were among the 33 mariners who were lost. And again, the reader’s complaint is not with the school but regulatory regimes more broadly. It is sort of like saying that medical training doesn’t “add value” to graduates’ earnings, since under different payment systems doctors would make less money.
More on these fronts later. For now, the reader’s response on Maine Maritime. He begins by noting that the 15 schools that got perfect 100 scores in a recent “value added” study included several maritime academies:
Looking over the list, all the maritime academies are represented. Since they all seem to get the top score of 100, there is nothing special about the Maine academy. [JF note: actually, at least two state-run maritime academies did not get a top score. Still, the reader’s point is that this type of school seems over-represented.]
I used to teach at the US Merchant Marine Academy in King’s Point, NY. It is true that students who graduated did get good jobs. But I think this is really an exceptional industry, one in which the Federal Government has acted in several ways to improve the earnings of it’s graduates.
Merchant Marine jobs are highly protected by the Jones Act from any foreign competition. Their college tuition and all expenses are covered by the government. [JF note: This is true at the US Merchant Marine Academy but not at Maine Maritime, whose students are responsible for their own tuition and costs.] The maritime jobs the students fill are highly unionized, and there is limited competition since only the graduates of the maritime academies are allowed to fill them by federal law. There are several laws which protect those jobs from automation. For example, all ships must take on a certified pilot when entering a harbor.
Frankly, my students [at USMMA] struck me as particularly unambitious. The school’s unwritten motto was “2.0 and go”. That is, the students just needed to eke out a C average to graduate, secure in the knowledge that there would be a decent-paying union job waiting for them at the back end. I did not see more value added at the school than at the several other schools I have taught at or attended.
The high income of these students upon graduation is the direct result of federal intervention and regulation on their behalf. If anything, it suggests that the solution to inequality might be from more federal intervention and regulation. Of course, the economy as a whole pays for this regulation. As a small example, the Jones act has helped destroy the economy of Puerto Rico. and forced shipment of oil by rail by making coastal transit so expensive.
I’ve asked our friends at Maine Maritime Academy, and other involved parties, for their reply.
For previous installments in the Fresno saga, please check here. Early last year, in our American Futures saga, we reported on Bitwise, a tech incubator, training school, entrepreneur center, and overall social force in one of California’s least-fashionable cities.
The video below shows the way Bitwise has announced its opening of a big, new center in Fresno’s long-bedraggled, now-recovering downtown. People in San Francisco or New York can be smugly confident in their coolness. We like, better, the Fresno kick-ass spirit.
I've asked Jake Soberal, of Bitwise, for the back story about the script and dramatic presentation of this video. Will report when I know. For now, congratulations to Soberal, his co-founder of Bitwise Irma Olguin, and all others involved.
These were early entries in what has become one of our central themes. That is the importance of what used to be dismissively known as “vocational education” or even “trade schools,” and now might be called “career technical education” or go by other names—but which, by any name, has a newly crucial economic and social-mobility role.
The caricature view of today’s economy, which is uncomfortably close to the truth, is that it is separating into financiers and rentiers at the top end, and on the other end the people who feed, care for, drive, clean, teach them yoga, and otherwise attend them. The large-scale factory-based jobs that broadened the middle class of the 20th century are obviously not coming back.
The main “good middle-class jobs” that are increasing are in the skilled trades. Welders, high-end repair technicians, engineering-type jobs in health care and logistics and agriculture and aerospace, and on down a long list. That’s where “career technical education” — in K-12 schools, at community colleges, at local tech centers, wherever — comes in.
Sea-borne shipping is one of these areas of rapid growth of high-wage technical jobs. This week Jonathan Rothwell of Brookings released a survey of colleges ranked not on snob appeal, endowment, or other pernicious measures but rather by “value added.” As Rothwell put it:
Value-added measures attempt to isolate the contribution of the college to student outcomes, as distinct from what one might predict based on student characteristics or the level of degree offered. It is .. a way to compare colleges on a more equal footing, by adjusting for the relative advantages or disadvantages faced by diverse students pursuing different levels of study across different local economies.
Of the 1600+ four-year colleges in the ranking, 15 got a perfect 100 score. Those 15 ranged from the most usual of usual-suspects, Harvard, to some schools I had never heard of, and one I knew well: Maine Maritime Academy. You can search and see the whole list if you check the Brookings report. Here is a screenshot of the top group.
The news for Maine Maritime is particularly welcome, coming after a great tragedy earlier this month. As explained in a series of releases on the Academy’s site, of the 33 mariners who were lost when the cargo ship El Faro sank on October 1 during Hurricane Joaquin, five were Maine Maritime alumni. According to the school, they were: Mike Davidson, Class of 1988; Danielle Randolph, Class of 2005; Mitchell Kuflik, Class of 2011; Mike Holland, Class of 2012; and Dylan Meklin, Class of 2015. Our best wishes, respect, and sympathies to their friends and families.
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