Lately some friends have been asking about camping, and I thought I'd share some of my advice to them here in this blog.

Camping near Springfield

Lincoln's New Salem State Historic Site. About 21 miles away, it takes about 35 minutes to drive there, and nearly nine hours to walk there if you're taking your time. Huge campsite with about 200 spots.

Sangchris Lake State Park. About 21 miles away, it takes about 35 minutes to drive there.

Jim Edgar Panther Creek State Fish and Wildlife Area. 32 miles away. It takes about 50 minutes to drive there. There are a few rustic cabins that can be rented here.

Sand Ridge State Forest. There are two Class C campgrounds. 53 miles away. It takes about 1 hour and 23 minutes to drive there.

Beaver Dam State Park. About 58 miles away. It takes about 1 hour and 11 minutes to drive there. There is a cabin for rental.

Ramsey Lake State Park. About 64 miles away. It takes about 1 hour and 40 minutes to drive there. Woods, hills, and a lake.

Weldon Springs State Park has one of the best campgrounds in the nation, and it's only 67 miles away from Springfield (allow about 1 hour and 20 minutes drive time to get there.)

Clinton Lake State Recreation Area is 75 miles away and requires about 1 hour and 25 minutes drive time to get there. This is the closest nice beach if you want to go swimming at a beach.

The various parks and campgrounds around Lake Shelbyville are 75 to 85 miles away, and you'll need about 1 hour and 40 minutes to drive there. You can camp in Opossum Creek, Eagle Creek State Park, Coon Creek, Wolf Creek State Park, and many others.

Weinberg-King State Fish & Wildlife Area. There is a Class C campground. This park is mainly for people with horses. 84 miles away. It takes about 2 hours to drive there.

Moraine View State Recreation Area. 86 miles away. It takes about 1 hour and 35 minutes to get there.

Siloam Springs State Park. 89 miles away. It takes about 1 hour and 45 minutes to drive there. There are about 180 campsites, and no reservations are taken. Cabin for rental.

Pere Marquette State Park. 99 miles away. A drive there takes about 2 hours and 5 minutes.

Camping in the Midwest

Some other campgrounds I like, all within a day's drive of Springfield:

Stephen A. Forbes State Recreation Area. About 125 miles away, requiring about 3 hours of driving. Has a nice sandy beach.

Starved Rock State Park. About 135 miles away, requiring about 2 hours and 20 minutes of driving.

Fort Kaskaskia State Historic Site. About 145 miles away, requiring about 2 hours and 50 minutes of driving.

Meramec State Park in Missouri. About 155 miles away, requiring about 2 hours and 50 minutes of driving.

Nauvoo State Park (Illinois). About 156 miles away, requiring about 3 hours of driving .

Red Hills State Park (Illinois). About 165 miles away, requiring a drive of about 3 hours and 40 minutes.

Turkey Run State Park in Indiana. About 166 miles away. Driving time would be about 2 hours and 55 minutes.

Wildcat Den State Park in Iowa. About 191 miles away, requiring a drive of about 3 hours and 20 minutes. The bathroom facilities are rustic here, but you can drive six miles away to the Fairport Recreation Area to take showers in the modern shower houses. This is a good place to camp if you are visiting the Quad Cities (it's near Davenport, IA) or Muscatine, Iowa.

Geode State Park in Iowa. About 193 miles away, requiring a drive of about 3-and-a-half hours. This is a good base if you will be attending the Old Threshers Reunion on Labor Day weekend.

Ferne Clyffe State Park (Illinois). About 200 miles away, requiring a drive of about 3-and-a-half hours.

Giant City State Park (Illinois). About 206 miles away, requiring a drive of about 3 hours and 40 minutes.

Mississippi Pallisades State Park (Illinois). About 215 miles away. The drive there takes about 3 hours and 55 minutes.

Jason's Place Campground near Aker's Ferry, Missouri. About 221 miles away, requiring a drive of about 3 hours and 50 minutes.

Fort Massac State Park (Illinois). About 232 miles away, requiring a drive of about 4 hours. This is a good place to camp if you are visiting Paducah, Kentucky.

Boy Scout Camping

As a boy and as an adult I have been active in the Scouting movement. Here are some Scouting campgrounds where I have enjoyed camping as a Scout or Adult Scout Leader. These campgrounds are generally for the use of scout troops.

Camp Illinek on Lake Springfied, near Chatham, Illinois (It's just a few miles south of Springfield, about a 10-15 minute drive).

Camp Bunn, near Hettick, Illinois (It's about 50 miles from Springfield, about a 1 hour and 30 minute drive).

Beaumont Scout Reservation near Saint Louis. (It's about 122 miles from Springfield, about a 2 hour and 10 minute drive). I must have spent a month's worth of nights camping here as a boy.

Camp Wildwood near Terre Haute, Indiana. (It's about 153 miles from Springfield, about a 3 hour and 15 minute drive).

S - F ("S bar F") ranch in Missouri. (It's about 180 miles from Springfield, about a 3 hour and 10 minute drive). I went to summer camp here in 1984 and 1985.

Camp Lewallen and Wappapello Lake in Missouri. (It's about 212 miles from Springfield, about a 3 hour and 45 minute drive).

Camp Belzer in Indianapolis. (It's about 226 miles from Springfield, about a 3 hour and 45 minute drive).

Ransburg Scout Reservation near Bloomington, Indiana. (It's about 219 miles from Springfield, about a 4 hour and 30 minute drive). I went to summer camp here in 1980, 1981, 1982, and 1983.

Camping Vacation Plan

Sample 9-day (one week with two weekends) family vacation using camping.

Here is a plan for a 1-week summer camping travel trip from Springfield.

Day one (Saturday), drive to Quad Cities and visit the John Deere Pavilion in Moline, IL (about 175 miles away, it will take about 3 hours to drive here). Have lunch in Moline. Use the rest of the afternoon until 5:00 to see one of the other attractions in the Quad Cities (perhaps the Rock Island Arsenal, the Figge Art Museum, the Family Museum, the Putnam Museum, or the Quad City Botanical Center. Stop in a grocery store to pick up what you need for dinner unless you want to eat out, and then drive to Wildcat Den State Park or the Fairport Recreation Area in Iowa. Wildcat Den is about 25 miles and 45 minutes from the Quad Cities (Davenport, Rock Island, Bettendorf, and Moline).

Camp in Wildcat Den State Park (1 night). In the morning take a hike on the trails, and use the shower facilities in the Fairport Recreation Area as you are leaving (your camping fee for Wildcat Den covers use of the facilities at Fairport)

On Day two (Sunday) you should stop for a walk around Muscatine. Most everything in this town is closed on Sundays, but the Art Center and Musser Mansion is open at 1:00 p.m. This is about 11 miles from Wildcat Den (6 miles from Fairport Recreation Area). As you drive through Central and Eastern Iowa you might stop to see the Herbert Hoover Presidential Museum and birthplace. You might stop in Iowa City, which has a lot to see. Cedar Rapids is also on the route today. I'm a big fan of Grant Wood, so I would visit the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art. (but it closes at 4:00 on Sundays, so one would need leave Muscatine by 1:30 to arrive at the museum by 2:50 p.m. to allow time to see the art). It's about 70 miles from Muscatine to Cedar Rapids, and add 10 miles if you stop to drive around and see anything in Iowa City.
From Cedar Rapids
to Pine Lake State Park is about 97 miles (allow 1 hour and 45 minutes driving time).
Stay for the night in Pine Lake State Park.
There is a nature trail and some other trails in this park.
You can go swimming in Pine Lake; there is a beach in the park.

On the morning of the third day (a Monday) start off by enjoying the park, and then set out on your way to Fort Dodge. It's about 67 miles from Pine Lake State Park to Fort Dodge (allow 1 hour 20 minutes driving time). In Fort Dodge you can visit the Fort Museum and not much else in Fort Dodge. The Blandon Art Museum is closed on Mondays.

From Fort Dodge you continue on to West Bend, Iowa, where you must visit the Grotto of the Redemption. There is a campsite right by the Grotto with good facilities and a very low fee, so stay the night here and enjoy the Grotto at night. It's about 44 miles from Fort Dodge to West Bend, and you need about 1 hour and 15 minutes to cover the distance.

Day four of your trip (a Tuesday) you can continue to marvel at the Grotto of the Redemption before driving north to Minnesota. So far you've mainly been in small towns and rural areas, so today you'll head straight east, then north up to Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. Assuming you leave West Bend, Iowa by 9:30 a.m. you should be in Minneapolis by 1:00, in time for a late lunch (it's about a 200 mile drive, much of it on I-35 freeway).

In Minneapolis and St. Paul there are many things to see. I like the Cathedral and State Capitol in St. Paul. You can ask for information about Minneapolis or Saint Paul from the convention and visitor's bureaus. They'll send you glossy brochures and magazines if you call them or fill out forms on their websites.

A campground that is only about 57 miles from the Science Museum of Minnesota is the Bob Dunn Recreation Area on Ann Lake. Allow about an hour and 10 minutes to get there, assuming you leave St. Paul or Minneapolis after rush hour (leave the city at 6:30 p.m. and you can arrive at the campground before 7:45 p.m., which gives you plenty of daylight left in the summer). This is where you could spend your fourth night of camping.

On your fifth day (Wednesday) you can start the day with a hike in the Sand Dunes State Forest (by Ann Lake, where you've been camping). Then, it's a long drive (175 miles, or 3 hours and 40 minutes) to your next camping destination. So, instead of driving straight there, you might enjoy a stop in St. Cloud, Minnesota where you could see the Munsinger Clemens Gardens and the Stearns History Museum.

Your final destination for today is Lake Itasca, MN. This is the source of the Mississippi River, and it's a lovely place to stay for a couple nights. You can play in the lake and in the Mississippi River, which is really just a delightful little stream at this point, and there are good hiking trails.

Your sixth day (Thursday) is a day to just rest and enjoy Lake Itasca State Park.

Your seventh day (Friday) takes you across northern Minnesota and Wisconsin to the Apostle Islands. Assuming you leave Lake Itasca by 9:00 a.m., you should arrive in Duluth, Minnesota by 1:30 p.m. (with a 40 minute stop for lunch along the way). That's a drive of about 180 miles. In Duluth, you might visit the Great Lakes Aquarium, the Great Lakes Floating Maritime Museum, or the Lake Superior Marine Museum. The Tweed Museum of Art and the Duluth Depot are also worth visiting.

Finally, in the afternoon before 5:30 p.m. (if you want to catch the 8:00 p.m. ferry), you should head east to Bayfield, Wisconsin and take the Madeline Island Ferry to Madeline Island, where you will find Big Bay State Park. This is where you will camp for the night. From Duluth you should expect a drive of nearly three hours to reach the campsite (it might take less time, depending on whether you catch the 7:00, 8:00, or 9:00 evening ferry departures for the island). It's about a 95 mile drive.

On your eighth day (Saturday), you should begin the morning hiking around Madeline Island. Leaving the island around 11:00 a.m., you head south from Bayfield, Wisconsin on your way to Ironwood, Michigan. After you've crossed the ferry from Madeline Island you have about 70 miles of driving ahead of you (1 hour and 40 minutes) before you arrive at Ironwood. After lunch, from Ironwood you can take the Black River National Forest Scenic Byway and see five waterfalls. After you've seen those, you go back into Wisconsin and continue south on US-51 highway, which becomes the I-39 freeway. It is about 183 miles from Ironwood to the Hartman Creek State Park in Wisconsin, and this should take about 3 hours and 45 minutes of driving time. So, if you leave Ironwood by 4:00 p.m., you should have plenty of time to set up your tent in the campground.

Your ninth and final day (Sunday) only requires you to drive the final 370 miles from Hartman Creek State Park to home in Springfield, Illinois. That will require about six hours of driving time, but you'll want to break it up with a few stops. If you leave the State Park at 9:30 a.m., and you want to get home by 9:00 p.m., that will leave you about 4 hours for doing things plus time for two 45-minute breaks for lunch and dinner.

You could go a little out of your way to visit the Wisconsin Dells, play some miniature golf there, or take a tour of the Dells. You'll be passing by Madison, which is the state capital. The State Capitol Building is especially lovely, and there is also a state museum across the street. You'll also pass by Rockford, Illinois, which is home to the Burpee Museum (which closes by 5:00 p.m. on Sundays). From Rockford you're about 200 miles (about 3 hours and 30 minutes of driving time) from home.

This trip has you camping eight nights in seven different campgrounds, and your total costs for camping will be around $120, or about the cost of a single night in a discounted room in a downtown hotel in Chicago. Your main cost will be gas. You will travel less than 2000 miles. If your car gets about 26 miles per gallon and you must pay about $4.50 per gallon, the cost of gas will be about $340. Admission to various parks and museums will also be a major cost. You may end up paying a couple hundred dollars for admission fees and park permits. So, considering everything, this trip might cost $700 more than you would spend if you just stayed at home. I'm assuming you buy most of your food in grocery stores and make sandwiches for picnic lunches or cook your own food in campgrounds or eat inexpensive fast-food meals, just as you might at home, and that you generally avoid eating in restaurants. If you want to try local restaurants and eat out more often, this might raise the cost another $100 or so over what you would spend on food if you remained at home. By my calculations, this trip would cost a bit less than a long (four-day and three night) weekend in Chicago if you drove and stayed at a good downtown hotel (parking, gas, and the hotel room alone would be about $530, and that's before you pay for food or museum admissions).

Here is more advice about what you need for camping.

For shelter: A tent.

You need a waterproof ground cloth (actually a plastic tarp) to put down on the ground before you put up the tent. This keeps the bottom of your tend dry when there is dew or rain. It also protects the bottom of your tent from sticks and stones that might tear it. You don’t want the ground cloth to stick out beyond your tent, except possibly for a little bit in front of the door to your tent where you can place your shoes. If the ground cover sticks out beyond the tent and it rains, then water that falls on the ground cloth (or falls on the tent and slides down onto the ground cloth) will flow under your tend and come up and make your sleeping bags damp.

You need stakes to keep your tent in one place. If there is wind, the tend will act like a sail on a sailboat, and it will move or fly away. The stakes keep it held in place. A typical tent may need six-eight stakes, plus another four-six tents for the rain fly.

Unless you know your camping spot has soft grass and soft soil, you’ll probably want either an insulating pad or air mattress or cot to put down between your sleeping bag and the floor of the tent.

Tents usually come with a thing called a “rain fly,” which is a second layer of tenting fabric (like a ground cloth or plastic tarp) that you can put over the tent to protect yourself in case of rain. I don’t use mine if the forecast is for dry weather, but when there is a chance of rain, I always put mine up.

So, for sleeping quarters:
1 ground cloth (plastic tarp)
1 Tent (with 1 rain fly)
14 tent stakes
4 insulating pads or else 4 air mattresses or else 4 cots, or some combination of these.

If the night temperatures are likely to go below 15 degrees Celsius (down below the mid-50s F) you will want to sleep in a sleeping bag. If the temperatures are likely to be in the 20s or upper teens (Celsius) at night (above 55 degrees), you’re probably fine with just wearing warm pajamas and using a light blanket. In the hottest days of the year you may only need a light blanket under you (so you aren’t sleeping directly on the mattress or pad or cot) and a sheet to cover you. Small pillows work well, although if you have room you can bring your normal-sized pillows from home. When backpacking I always just roll up my coat or sweater with some shirts and pants and use that as my pillow.

So, for sleeping you need:
4 sleeping bags.
4 pillows.

Ask yourself if you want to cook in the campground or else just buy your food in stores and make sandwiches or else carry fast food to the campground. If you want to cook at the campsite, you’ll need camp cooking gear, which takes up space and adds weight to your gear. If you’re just going to eat sandwiches and store-bought prepared foods at the campsite, you can save time and space and weight.

I typically do light cooking at the campsite, so I bring one large frying pan, a very small portable charcoal grill, some utensils for grilling, and a variety of plates and cutting boards and so forth. Sometimes I might also bring a sauce pan or stew pot. I like to grill steaks or sausages while camping, but I don’t like to deal with ground beef (too messy when you’re camping). A key to fun cooking while camping is to prepare your food in advance as much as possible. If you’re going to be camping for three days, go ahead and cook some of your dishes at home and bring them along in leftovers containers so all you’ll need to do is warm them. If you need to chop up vegetables or marinate meats, do that at home and bring along the pre-cut or marinating foods for easy quick cooking without much preparation at the campsite.
For each person, a private mess kit would include a plate, a bowl, a cup, and silverware.

It is possible to go camping and never use a fire, and still eat very well. You can purchase lunch meats, lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, raw fruits, and bread, and then eat sandwiches for most of your meals.

Many foods can be cooked right in a fire using aluminum foil. Just wrap up your food tightly in two layers of aluminum foil and throw the food packet into the hot coals of a fire after the flame has died down. This is similar to baking something in a very high heat oven. Potatoes cook well this way.

Certainly, when camping you must bring along a cooler and you must use ice in the cooler to keep your food (milk, meat, etc.) cool enough to retard the growth of bacteria.

So for food, at most you need:
1 stew pot or soup pot
1 large frying pan
1 dutch oven (if you want to do any baking or slow cooking, but if not, leave this behind)
1 small charcoal grill
1 bag of charcoal
1 set of spoons, knives, spatulas, stirring spoons, serving spoons, and so forth for cooking.
1 set of tongs and long forks for handling the meats you will grill (if you’ll be doing this)
1 cutting board (if you haven’t already prepared everything before you left).
4 cups
4 sets of silverware
4 bowls
4 plates
paper towels
aluminum foil

Most campgrounds have areas where you can wash your cooking ware and personal gear. If you will need to clean everything without the use of a sink, you can carry along three large pots. One of these will bit of detergent added to it, one will be for rinsing, and one will have boiling water. Each pan or plate or dish must be carefully wiped and scraped to remove most food residue, and then scrubbed in the pot with soapy water. Then, after being again scraped to remove the soapy water, each dish can be swished around in the rinsing water. Finally, using long-handled tongs, each item should be dipped into the boiling water for disinfecting. If the campground has sinks or water spigots that are handy, you may be able to wash everything at the spigot or sink and leave behind the three large pots.

Clothing:
You need to wear long pants rather than shorts if you’ll be doing much walking in tall grass or bushy woods. The long pants will protect you from ticks and chiggers. Also, you should wear socks and shoes, rather than slippers and sandals. Again, this is for protection from arthropods and poison ivy. However, if you have a campsite in a area with short grass that has been mowed, you probably will want some comfortable slippers or sandals to wear around the campsite or when making a quick trip to the restrooms. Aside from this advisory about covering your legs, you can pack clothing for a camping trip just as you would if you weren’t camping.

Personal grooming:
I don’t think there is anything special about how you pack this stuff when you’re camping. Most campgrounds have nice bathrooms where you can take showers and so forth. Even the rustic campgrounds without showers usually have water spigots where you can brush your teeth or clean your contact lenses, if you wear those.

Camping fees vary. Extremely rustic campsites can still be free in National Forests, but usually you need to pay between $5 and $10 for such campsites, per night. Public campgrounds and campgrounds run by religious groups usually charge between $10 and $20 for a campsite. Facilities run from rustic to delux in such places. I’ve been in campgrounds with modern, clean, comfortable bathrooms and shower houses where I only had to pay $10 per night, and I’ve been in similar campgrounds that cost $20 per night. Private campgrounds that specialize in hosting families traveling in recreational vehicles (such as the KOA campgrounds) are very expensive, almost as much as staying in a cheap motel. I’ve paid over $30 per night to stay in a KOA campground. Facilities are usually very good, and there are extra things to do in such private campgrounds.

Best places to camp or camping trips from central Illinois.

Upstate Wisconsin and Michigan base their economies on tourism. A multitude of state parks and private campgrounds compete for campers, so prices are often reasonable and facilities are good. The scenery is beautiful, and temperatures are usually fine in the summer. There are many lakes, so swimming is common. The drawback is that these places are very crowded.
State Parks in Iowa and Illinois and Indiana may be easier to reach. Most people on a camping vacation don’t think of going to Illinois or Iowa, yet we have some very lovely state parks and the temperatures here aren’t usually bad. The advantage here is that most campgrounds won’t be very crowded.

State parks and private campgrounds in the Ozarks of Missouri, or the lakes areas of Kentucky and Tennessee. These areas have good rivers (in the Ozarks) or lakes (in Kentucky), and the woods and culture are quite different from Illinois.

Not too far away you can consider Ontario in Canada (if you have your passports up-to-date), Ohio, Minnesota, and Nebraska.

Some new photograph web pages

  It's been a busy weekend.  We celebrated father's day and honored Sebastian's birthday (which is actually June 16th, but since his grandparents were here, he opened many of his presents on Sunday the 15th).

   I've also put up a few new web pages full of photographs.  Two of these show Sebastian and Arthur with their cousins, my nephews and nieces.  A third page shares pictures from a boy scout trip we took last weekend when we went to Fort de Chartres. 

  Enjoy the pictures.

Vacation Plans

Jeri and I have finished some vacation plans. If anyone is interested in going to Spain this summer for Expo 2008, you might want to look at the vacation plan and budget I drew up (I started thinking about this about six years ago).

Of course, six years ago when I first started thinking about taking the family to Spain for Expo 2008, the dollar was worth about 1.03 Euros, and now it's worth only about 0.65 Euros. That adds significantly to the costs. Also, air fares have become about twice as expensive as they were (in inflation-adjusted dollars). In the plan I made, I used a spreadsheet to convert costs into percentages of the median full-time year-round male American worker's earnings. That way, in future years, people could always compare the cost of such a trip to a typical wage and see if the trip was taking a larger or smaller portion of a typical worker's income.

I'm mainly interested in seeing historical sites and art museums while in Spain, but the Expo 2008 will be a highlight. The theme of the Expo this year is water, and I'm quite interested in sustainable water use and issues of fresh water scarcity. The last time I went to a world's fair was in 1992 when I went to Seville. I loved it, and I'm looking forward to going to another one.

April is the cruelest month. There has been a lot of speculation about what T. S. Eliot intended with that line. Were he a professor at UIS (as I am), he would of course have been referring to the end-of-semester grading crunch. Having chaired one search committee, served on another (that is bringing candidates to campus next week?), helped draft a proposal to start an online master's degree program, and taught five courses (well, three of these were half-semester courses, so I only have four at the moment), I'm on a 14-hour work day schedule, and I haven't had a day off since two days back in March I took off. On weekends I cut back and work just eight hours per day.

So, the blogging has been a bit sparse. I promise to get back in action after grades get turned in.

Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr.

I see that there is some continuing furor about remarks said by Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr., the pastor for Barack Obama. (What does that mean that there is a "furor?" The word gives my imagination images of people red-faced and shouting.)

The minister said "God damn America" for its historical treatment of minorities.

That use of the phrase "God damn" may be a poor word choice, but the sentiment isn't all that wrong. Why, it's the same sentiment that Abraham Lincoln wondered about in his Second Inaugural Address.

...The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." ...

Abraham Lincoln was suggesting that perhaps we deserved our War Against the Rebellion of the Southern Slaveholders, a war that claimed the lives of tens of thousands of Americans, and involved hundreds of thousands of casualties (my Hadley ancestors fought for the Union and lost brothers, uncles, sons, and friends in the war). "The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." This sentiment that Providence was delivering to us something that indicated we were guilty, and both sides would suffer—should suffer, seems to have occurred to Lincoln shortly after visiting the still-bloodied fields of Antietam. That was a battle, fought on a single day, in which 23,000 soldiers were killed, wounded, or missing. All the death and much of the physical injury we've experienced in five years of war in Iraq was experienced in a matter of minutes in the Bloody Cornfield and the Sunken Road on that horrible September 17th.

If Abraham Lincoln could suggest to us during the last weeks of his life that perhaps we deserved a terrible and awful punishment for the injustice of slavery, I wonder if it is so bad for Rev. Wright to wish for God's terrible wrath ("God Damn America") to revisit us for our arrogance and all the mistreatment of minorities and non-Americans that has continued since 1865.

I think a poem by Kipling is worth considering here.

...Far-called, our navies melt away;
On dune and headland sinks the fire:
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet.
Lest we forget - lest we forget!

If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,
Such boastings as the Gentiles use,
Or lesser breeds without the Law -
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget - lest we forget!

For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard,
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And, guarding, calls not Thee to guard,
For frantic boast and foolish word
Thy Mercy on Thy People, Lord!

I think another bit of bitter art that Rev. Jeremiah Wright's sermon recalls to my mind is that Thanksgiving Prayer that William S. Burroughs recorded in 1986. Here's an excerpt:

...Thanks for a continent to despoil
and poison.

Thanks for Indians to provide a
modicum of challenge and
danger.

Thanks for vast herds of bison to
kill and skin leaving the
carcasses to rot.

Thanks for bounties on wolves
and coyotes.

Thanks for the American dream,
To vulgarize and to falsify until
the bare lies shine through.

Thanks for the KKK....

I think the point here is that sometimes people look at our history and our culture and the negative tendencies we Americans have, and they despair. That anger and bitterness can be a righteous anger that motivates action for progress and improvement. It can also be something people wallow in to no avail and for no benefit. I think it sounds as if Rev. Wright and Obama have harnessed the indignation at our nation's failures to motivate them toward helping us improve our culture and our country.

Politicians Are Sometimes Admirable.

I find in many of my students' papers a frequent dose of cynicism and disgust with politics and politicians. I remember one student, when we were discussing civic engagement and getting involved in the democratic processes, who told the class, "none of these people care about my issues or want to do what I think should be done." The student came from a poor family, and was African-American, but that sort of alienation from the political process seems strong even among my middle-class, European-American students. This is a problem.

I was thinking about politics over our Spring Break, and I thought I would create a list of some of my favorite politicians. I think if people would study the people I've listed here and considered their character and the sorts of policies they have advocated, they wouldn't be so cynical and alienated. Here are my favorite active politicians:

My favorite Democrat, Green, and Independent politicians on the left.

• U.S. Representative John Conyers, representing the 14th district of Michigan.
  
• U.S. Senator Bernard Sanders, representing Vermont.
  
• U.S. Senator Barack Obama, representing Illinois. (later President)
  
• U.S. Senator Richard Durbin, representing Illinois.
  
• U.S. Representative George Miller, representing the 7th district of California.
  
• U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton, representing New York. (later Secretary of State)
  
• Illinois State Representative Naomi Jakobsson, representing the 103rd district in the Illinois General Assembly.
  
• Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan.
  
• Missouri State Senator Joan Bray, representing the 24th district in the Missouri General Assembly.
  

My favorite Republican, Conservative, and Independent politicians on the right.

• U.S. Senator Richard Lugar, representing Indiana. (best Republican in national government since John Danforth retired in 1995)
  
• Illinois State Senator Christine Radogno, representing the 41st district in the Illinois General Assembly.
  
• Missouri State Representative Kathlyn Fares, representing the 91st district in the Missouri general Assembly
  

Making a list of my favorite politicians active now leads me to consider my favorite historical figures from the world of politics. Here are some more lists along these lines:

Top five favorite Republicans in history:

1. Abraham Lincoln
   
2. John B. Anderson (Republican congressman from the Rockford area of Illinois, ran as an independent in the 1980 election, and endorsed Barack Obama for president in January of 2008)
   
3. Herbert Hoover (not really such a bad president, and if you take his whole life and career into consideration he was one of the better men to serve as president)
   
4. Theodore Roosevelt (would have been much higher had he been less imperialistic and racist)
   
5. Dwight David Eisenhower (yeah, Adlai Stevenson certainly would have been a much better president, but I think Eisenhower did a reasonable job as president, and was an outstanding leader in many other ways. His farewell address is one of the best in the history of the American presidency.)
   

Worst five Republican Presidents (We’ve had many bad ones from this party. It’s difficult to narrow it down to five.)

1. George W Bush
   
2. William McKinley
   
3. Warren Harding
   
4. Calvin Coolidge
   
5. Ronald Reagan (a nice guy, who was quite likable as a person, but I think he was an awful president, certainly one of the worst).
   

My five most strongly disliked Democratic Presidents.

1. James Buchanan (A traitor) (note that John Tyler really was a rebel, who openly supported the Slaveholders Rebellion, but this was a fairly long time after his presidency, and his presidency wasn't especially horrible, whereas James Buchanan really was a failure. John Tyler also might be considered a "Whig" president since he was elected as William Henry Harrison's vice president, but Tyler was a Democrat).
   
2. Andrew Jackson (Betrayed the constitution. Not as evil as generally supposed, but still pretty rotten.)
   
3. Thomas Woodrow Wilson (He was very racist and had little respect for civil rights or human rights. These flaws outweigh his admirable idealism and his vision of a fair peace to end the Great War and his hopes for a League of Nation to end international conflict. In fact, most American statesmen would have proposed similarly fair peace treaties and rights for nations after the Great War; that was an American position more than a personal position of Wilson.)
   
4. Andrew Johnson
   
5. Martin Van Buren (Check out the Harrison-Tyler campaign song attacking Van Buren, A Miniature of Martin Van Buren. It has lyrics like these: Who like the wily serpent clings / Who like the pois'nous adder stings / Who is more base than basest Kings? / Van Buren! / Who rules us with an iron rod / Who moves and Satan's beck and nod / Who heeds not man who heeds not God? / Van Buren! ... and so forth.)
   

Top five favorite Democrats in history:

1. Henry A. Wallace, vice president to Franklin Delano Roosevelt during Roosevelt’s third term, and also a Secretary of Commerce and Secretary of Agriculture. I wish high school students would read his The Century of the Common Man (1942) speech as part of their American civics courses.
   
2. Harry Hopkins, the “deputy president” to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
   
3. Thomas Jefferson. Flawed in so many ways, and yet still a great president and one of my personal heroes since I was a boy. He led the Democratic Republicans faction against the Federalist Republicans faction, and it was Jefferson’s faction that evolved into the Democratic Party, a political party that represented much of what was worst in American society from the 1830s to the 1910s, but slowly reformed itself, especially during the 1930s and 1960s, to become a better party.
   
4. Paul Wellstone, Senator from Minnesota who served in the U.S. Senate from 1991 until his death in 2002.
   
5. Eugene McCarthy, U.S. Congressman and Senator from Minnesota and unsuccessful presidential candidate in 1968 Democratic Party primaries.

FDR doesn’t make my list because he didn’t do enough to save the Jews before World War II and during World War II. If he had done more to give refuge to Jews fleeing Europe or had ordered the bombing of concentration camps or the rail lines leading to concentration camps he would be on the list. LBJ doesn’t make the list because of his responsibility for the Vietnam War. Without that war he would be on here.

Best and worst things about each party:
Democrats: Best thing is their emphasis on equality and policies that help equalize opportunity, including taxing and spending policies that reduce poverty and redistribute wealth. Worst thing was their historic racism and antagonism against immigration, especially in the 19th century and continuing up to the 1960s. For generations the Democratic party was “the white man’s party,” the party of lynch mobs and unabashed racism.
Republicans: Best thing is their progressive wing which advocated for environmentalism way back in the 19th century, regulation of industry (food safety and sanitation), government reforms to eliminate corruption in local politics, and has generally stood for the essential equality of human beings, including the equality of African-Americans and other immigrants compared to the native-born European-Americans. This progressive tendency was strong in the early days of the party and during Reconstruction, and it was sometimes expressed through political leaders such as Theodore Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover, Robert M. LaFollette, Jr., and Fiorello LaGuardia, but this aspect of the Party has been in decline and weakening. Worst thing is their anti-labor prejudice in favor of capitalists and the wealthy. For many, the Republican Party is the “I’ve got mine!” party defending the preservation of privilege and wealth, and neglecting civic duties and responsibilities to the general welfare.

Other politicians and political leaders I admire:

• George Washington
  
• Alexander Hamilton (he pretty much ran things during Washington's presidential administration, and he's one of the authors of the Federalist Papers.)
  
• Clement Attlee (Prime Minister in the UK after Churchill)
  
• Robert M. LaFollette, Sr. of Wisconsin, Progressive Party candidate for president in 1924.
  
• Eugene V. Debs, one of the greatest socialists of all time.
  
• Jeannette Rankin, Republican from Montana, first woman to serve in Congress, and voted against entering World War I.
  
• William H. Seward, Whig governor of New York, Senator from New York, and Secretary of State under presidents Lincoln and Johnson.
  

In my family history there have been some who served in political positions. My distant ancestors in the Ives family served as mayors in Norwich, Norfolk, England in the 18th and early 19th centuries. They were conservative Whigs who seem to have opposed local radical and dissident political movements in the 1760s and 1770s, but as Whigs would have joined with the radicals in opposing the war against American Independence. I had a great grandfather (John "Jack" Turner) who served on the Yukon Territorial Council around the time that George Black and George Norris Williams were Yukon Territory Commissioners. Another great-grandfather, A. B. Hadley of Curlew, Washington ran (I think unsuccessfully) for a local office (County Clerk, I think) in Ferry County, Washington. I know that Great-Grandfather Hadley's father (William Taylor Hadley) voted for Douglas in the 1860 election (he was proud to have been a Democrat, although he was loyal to the Union and served two tours of duty in the Union Army), but all the rest of the Hadley family were strong Republicans in the 1860s. My Stephens ancestors were evidently active in local Republican politics in Oregon in the 19th century.

Hillary Clinton says Michigan Primaries Were Fair

I've just heard an interview with Hillary Clinton. I was so upset by what she said that I sent her campaign a letter. I had liked all the Democratic Party presidential candidates. I supported Barack Obama, but my support for him wasn't much stronger than my support of Clinton. I liked both of the candidates. On policy suggestions, I slightly favored Clinton, but Obama won my vote because I've known about him for about eight years and I've admired him since his days in the Illinois Senate and his work on some committees related to poverty and homelessness in Illinois. I don't have any personal connection to Hillary, but I have multiple personal connections to Obama, so I supported him. It was a case of my second-favorite senator running against my fifth-favorite senator, but I could see that both candidates had slightly different strengths and weaknesses, and I thought it was practically a toss-up between them as to which would make a better candidate. So, I let my personal connections and intuition guide me to favor Obama. Lately however, I was feeling a little upset at some of the attacks I was hearing against Clinton by Obama supporters, and I was beginning to wonder if perhaps I should support Clinton rather than Obama.

Now, after hearing Hillary Clinton on NPR, I no longer feel as supportive of her as I did. I no longer have any doubts or regrets about supporting Barack Obama. I'm ready to put a sign in my yard and contribute money to his campaign.

My letter to Hillary Clinton's campaign will explain why I now feel this way.

I have just heard you on NPR. I feel emotionally crushed, and defeated, and betrayed. I had, until this morning, felt equally happy about you and Obama. You are two of my favorite politicians. I remember back in 1992 wishing you had been nominated rather than your husband, and I still happen to think your husband was an outstanding president. Yet, this morning I heard you say that the Michigan primary was "fair" and that your decision to keep your name on the Michigan primary ballot was "wise." It was wise only in some Machiavellian sense. I remember reading in the newspaper that the Democratic National Committee had asked candidates to withdraw from Michigan's primary, and I remember thinking at the time that it was odd that you were the only candidate who left your name on the ballot. On NPR I believe you just told us that nobody told Obama to take his name off the ballot. Well, no one told him, but he was asked to do so.

I still think you would be a good president, and I still think your policy suggestions are generally better than Obama's, but after hearing you on NPR this morning I can no longer support your candidacy in the primaries, and I am going to stop speaking up for you around here until (if) you win the Democratic Party nomination. You really need to reconsider your approach to the Michigan Primary issue. It's one thing to ask for a new primary there, but quite a different thing to say the primary there was "fair" and your victory, as the only candidate on the ballot, was partly a result of your "wisdom" in keeping your name on the ballot, despite the request of the DNC that you remove your name from the ballot, a request every other candidate honored.

No doubt many other neutral Democrats, or those who slightly favored you, will turn on you if you continue to press this issue as you just did on NPR. Your position on the Michigan primaries is disturbing. I feel horrible, like I've just been punched in the gut by a friend. I wish you had said something more reasonable and true, like, "Well, I won 55% of that Michigan primary, and I think if there was another primary in Michigan I'd win even more than that, but it's true that a primary where only one candidate's name is on the ballot is hardly fair, and I agree with the Obama campaign that we need to find some way to give the people of Michigan a voice in the process of determining the Democratic candidate. So, I'm looking for some way to allow Michigan to seat delegates at our convention, and I don't think that a 50-50 split of those delegates would be fair to me, since my support in Michigan is well above 50%." Saying something like that would be honest, true, and fair, and by showing your fairness and honesty would help you win the hearts of your supporters. Instead of doing that, you have alienated us by saying "the Michigan primaries were fair."

The Iraq War

I’ve always had mixed feelings about the Iraq War. I was against it as we were going to wage it, and I participated in demonstrations against the war before it even started. In St. Louis I made signs and brought other people to an anti-war demonstration, and in Urbana (Illinois) I joined with hundreds of other students and faculty in a noisy march around campus.

I remember at that demonstration one of the signs I made said, “terrorist bombs and American bombs both kill innocent people. Intentional or unintentional, does it matter to the victims?” I was trying to recognize that there was a moral difference between the monsters like the Taliban and the Iraqi Baath Party versus the American-led coalition, but that our invasion of Iraq was likely to kill far more innocent people than the approximately 3,000 innocent people killed on September 11th.

In fact, American bombs and bullets may have killed or terribly wounded tens of thousands of people in Iraq, many of them innocent. The best scientific estimates I’ve seen lead me to believe something like half-a-million extra deaths have been inflicted on Iraqi civilians and non-combatants because of the Iraqi war and our mishandling of the aftermath. Probably a few hundred thousands of deaths might be attributed to terrorism, communal violence and vendettas, and the work of “bad guys,” but I still think there would be over a quarter-of-a-million deaths for which America could take the blame. Innocent people who were blown to bits by our bombs or shot to pieces by our bullets, people who died because we failed to establish law and order, or because we failed to provide adequate medical care, or because we failed to protect doctors and hospitals, or because we failed to get drugs to the people who needed them. Our failure to secure law and order means that America should share the blame along with the thugs and terrorists who flourished in the conditions we created.
I find this all very horrifying, and so I’ve been eager to see one of two results: 1) for America to get its act together and act responsibly in Iraq, restoring order and getting people’s lives back to something like normality, or 2) for America to leave the scene and let the Iraqis deal with their own problems. Once certain Iraqi towns or provinces settled down into law and order with some form of democracy we can flood those particular areas of Iraq with funds, reconstruction work, and military protection.

I haven’t paid much attention to what the media report about the conditions in Iraq. I mainly read blogs to keep up with the situation. The best Middle East blog is Juan Cole’s Informed Comment, but I also try to keep up with some other blogs such as Riverbend, Healing Iraq, and Iraqi Pictures.

I still think we ought to get our military out of most of Iraq as soon as possible. I think most Iraqis didn’t like America or Americans before we went over there, and most of them aren’t pleased with us now while we’re there, and most are going to continue hating us after we’ve left. I do think we should help protect the Kurds, who seem to have a pretty nice thing going in their corner of Iraq. We should continue training and supplying material aid to the elected government of Iraq and the army and police that are loyal to that elected government.

It seems that there are some leaders in the Republican Party who think we ought to remain in Iraq, build and keep permanent bases there, and make treaty agreements with the government so that our soldiers and contractors over there will be immune to local Iraqi law and not subject to Iraqi courts. I don’t think permanent bases and extraterritoriality treaties are going to be sensible policies leading to good long-term relationships between Iraq and the USA, and I’m amazed that there are people in the American government who think we can or should secure these sorts of concessions and agreements with the Iraqi government.

I mentioned that I have mixed feelings about the Iraq War. Well, I do like the idea of international coalitions of governments working together to overthrow the worst tyrannical governments. I’d like the world to be organized in such a way that all the major powers would unite to smite and destroy governments like those currently inflicted on the people of North Korea, Burma, Zimbabwe, and some other places. Perhaps the war against the Baath regime in Iraq was a deeply flawed precursor to such wars against militaristic despots. So, I wasn’t entirely against the idea. However, the whole planning and occupation after the military victory was so terribly botched, and it was clear it was going to be a disaster right from the start, so I knew the Bush administration would screw this up. And anyway, if we are going to have international coalitions destroying the worst authoritarian and totalitarian regimes in this world, it will be better if such things are done more carefully and diplomatically. Aerial bombing campaigns against cities are hardly what I have in mind.

It seems to me that both of the leading Democratic candidates for president have some reasonably sensible ideas about getting American troops out of Iraq as swiftly as practicable. I remember feeling betrayed and angry when Hillary Clinton voted to give Bush certain war powers back in October of 2002, but I don’t think that’s why I slightly prefer Obama to Clinton in the current election. I’ve read Obama’s books, and I’ve corresponded directly with him, and I just like him a little more than I like Hillary. I do remember back in 1992 wishing it was Hillary rather than Bill Clinton who was running for president. I always thought she would be a better president than Bill, and I still think if she wins the election instead of Obama, she will be a great president. Yet, I’m more enthusiastic about Barack Obama. I think in the long-run he’ll stand up to the military-industrial complex, and cut military spending. We’re spending about twice what we should be spending on our defense here in the United States, and I hope Americans will examine the budget problems and realize how much we’re wasting on military spending.

World War One Story

A week or two ago one of the last living veterans of World War I passed away. I think there is one American veteran left alive in a nursing home in Florida, and one Canadian veteran living in Spokane, Washington. When I was little, my great-grandfather Mac (Proctor M. McClure) told me some stories about what he did in 1918. Here is a transcript of a tape recording of one of those times when he told us stories: Once upon a time there was a little soldier who went to war, across the water, to France. That's Eric and Jennell's Great-Grampa. And this was in 1918. And when we neared the coast of France we had to have a convoy to take us through the submarine zone, in order to land in France. But there were three great big ships, and Grampa Mac was on the flagship, called The Northern Pacific. On the next ship was a man who later became the president of the United States, President Truman. And with him on the battery, from Kansas City, Missouri, was Grampa's brother-in-law, who married my sister in Chicago. 

Every day about 4:30 we had what was called, "abandon ship drill." And then we'd go down, we sat by our bunks-we stood by our bunks at attention until they blew recall on the bugle, and we could go up above again. We didn't know. We'd go up to the lifeboats first, and stand at the lifeboats. Until they blew the bugle recall, meaning, that's all. Now one afternoon, they had the signal at 2:30, not 4:30. We wondered, “what on earth?” And just as Grampa went down below, the rest of us noticed a great big hulk of something coming right towards us in the front, in the forward part of the ship, our ship. We thought it must be a German submarine. And it was rather frightening. So, we went down, and stood by our bunks, and then we had to go up, above, and get by our lifeboats. Then they had a recall, and we went to our bunks, went anyplace, and guess what it was? It was our convoy, had arrived. Which we had missed, to take us into port. In the front was an American destroyer camouflaged in green and black. There were two of them, going back and forth criss-cross forward so that the submarine could not get under it, and in the back were two more, and on the side was two more. It was the most thrilling thing. We were all just thrilled. And that was the six American destroyers, all camouflaged in green and black to take us through the submarine zone to land in France. That is the story of the convoy to get us there. 

 Okay, this is a continuation about the little soldier, Grampa Mac, in the war. And it's September, 1918, and Grampa got a leave, a little pass, to go up to the Northern part of France. And I took the train up to this little town called Gerby Ve Lay. [I think Mac meant Gerbeviller, or perhaps Luneville.] I got off the train, "Conductor," I said, "where is the station?" He said, "right there." A pile of rocks was all that was left of it, blown to pieces four years before. I went into a restaurant to get something to eat. Five francs for the meal, French francs. And they apologized for me and said, "The Germans shelled this other half of the dining room and there are big holes in the roof, great big holes, oh, about six or eight inches wide, and it rains through there. 

So, I got my meal. Then I decided to go. They said, they told me, "if you go down to that house down there, there's a grandmother and a little boy about thirteen, lives with his grandmother, and if he's not at mass, at Sunday church, the Catholic church, he would take you out, three miles out, to the battlefield proper, where the men and boys defended the village. Forty-eight of them. I wasn't going to tell you this. The Germans killed them all, but they held the village so long that the Germans didn't get to go to the port of Nancy, and on in to the port of Paris. They didn't get to conquer Paris that early, the capital of France, because of that. So the place was bombarded and shelled to nothing. 

Grampa Mac went down, the little soldier, to the house, and the old grandma said, he's at church. So she said, if you go down there, there are the ruins of the castle of the Duke of Lorraine, the chateau it's called, and the chapel, he's at a private church. So Grampa wandered all around. There were only four houses rebuilt during that four years. Just four houses. I went down one street and down the other, up and down. Just a pile of ruble. Everything blown to pieces. 

So I wandered up to the castle of the Duke of Lorraine. I go through the center, through the front, and where there had been pillars, rows of marble, and white marble. Grampa picked up a piece of the white marble to take as a souvenir. I went through the front. There were only the walls, the side walls and the front wall left standing. I went through the front, and all this, open out onto the forest and the woods there. There was a little stream going along to one side called the Mortagne River. You see I can remember even the name of the river and spell it. I shouldn't tell you that. And, there was a little abandoned fountain of the four seasons. It was empty, dry. As I stood there in the woods I heard BOOM!, our big naval 16-inch guns from America had just arrived to bombard the town north of us in the hands of the Germans, Metz, M-E-T-Z. [If Mac was along the Mortagne River, he was at least 35 miles south of Metz.] 

Well, I decided to examine the ruins of the wall, so I came back, I came back to the wing on the side here, from that side, on my right. And I saw, the place where there had been steps going down below. But there were no steps, they had been blown to pieces. But there was mud. It had been raining, and it was open. So Grampa slid down the steps. 

 As I did, I went past one wing. It was over here, and as I had a French flashlight the little French boy had given me, I hadn't examined the battery to see if it was any good, it's important to the story, and I climbed. There were four big cells where he had put his servants when they were unruly and there were padlocks on all of them, and I clanged all of them, you know, to make a funny noise. It was spooky because it was down in a dungeon now, with only a flashlight going. Then I went on this side. Now, my part of the story means this is where they were. Now I go back on this side quickly. And there were four rusty ovens where they baked their bread and things, and the stream is on this side, and the water's dripping, drip… drip… drip… 

Grampa yelled, "Mac" my nickname. My voice echoed seven times in this dungeon. It was very eerie, very scary. So I thought I'd better get outta here. I retraced my steps back where I'd come, I said, oh, where does this place go? So kept going this direction. All of a sudden dub-glub-glub-glub. I stopped in front of a big, oh like a well. Just big enough for me, that if I'd taken another step I wouldn't be able to tell you the story because I'd have been in the well. My bones would be there yet. What did I do? Silly little soldier. I jumped across. Kept going! 

 I was getting lower all the time. The walls, they were getting lower. All of a sudden, I heard, Grrrrg! And my flashlight battery burned out. Here were two big orange eyes coming toward me. I measured my steps. I didn't dare run. I side-stepped ten steps so I thought I was near that well, whatever it was, and I jumped, hoping the animal would not come toward me. And I walked sideways fast way up to the light and was glad to get out of the place. The French people told me that was a wolf, and that was a mother wolf, and probably her babies. Had I taken another step I'd have been torn to pieces. And again, another narrow escape from death, in the dungeon of the Duke of Lorraine.

Troop 3 at Klondike Derby

This weekend, with temperatures down between -11 and -19 Celsius, most people remained indoors. Yet, over a hundred of us from all over Central Illinois were camping at Camp Illinek. The boys had a lot of fun trying to demonstrate their skills and solve various problems at stations around the camp. From troop three we had four boys participating: Jack, Johnny, Matt, and Mike. Here are some photographs of the guys enjoying the day.

The key to having fun and staying comfortable in such temperatures is to dress appropriately. If you're wearing enough warm clothing and wearing it correctly you can feel quite good in such temperatures. Sleeping in such weather is another matters. It's not as easy to stay comfortable when you're not moving.

The first image shows Jack mashing up the pancake the boys prepared at one station. They started a fire with sparks from a flint and quickly had a little flame they fed with tiny sticks until the fire was large enough to cook a pancake.

The second images shows all four boys making it across an imaginary river using a couple boards and some logs.

The third image shows Matt, Johnny, and Mike as they start to take down a little tower they built to keep themselves above the ground where an imaginary flood was threatening.

The fourth image shows Jack guiding Johnny through a maze. Johnny is blindfolded, and must rely on Jack's oral commands.

The fifth image shows Mike starting out across a rope bridge the boys made.

Klondike Derby

My Great-Grandfather Jack Turner was a gold miner in the Klondike. He also served on the Yukon Executive Council or Legislative Council for a few years before it was temporarily disbanded by Ottawa in 1919. So, this weekend I went out to a local campground here in Springfield where scores of boy scouts were enjoying the Klondike Derby.

Here are some photographs I took. Well, the first photograph is from the Yukon Territory, and you can see my Grandma Nel in the arms of her father, my great-grandfather Jack Turner. That's the summer. In the winter in the Klondike the temperatures bounce around between -40 Celsius and -10 Celsius.

There is a photograph of myself studying for the course I teach on social welfare policy. This was on Friday evening when it was still pretty warm, about -7 Celsius. The other picture of me shows me early on Saturday morning, when it was about -18 Celsius. If you dress warmly (as I did), it's not a problem when the temperatures get down to such low temperatures, but it can be difficult to sleep in a tent. One problem is that the condensation from one's breath can form an ice crust on whatever blanket one has over one's face, and if one doesn't use a blanket or mask over one's face, then one's skin (nose and cheeks) get cold. Another problem is that water bottles freeze up solid, so it can be difficult to get a drink.

Anyway, that photo of me on Saturday morning shows that my skin is rather pink. It becomes so in cold, as blood seems to rush to the skin surface, perhaps to bring warmth to the skin cells and to prevent them from being destroyed by feezing.

The fourth image shows Matt, Mike, and Jack, three boy scouts who were camping for the Klondike derby.

Old doodles

I was cleaning up my office area at home, which had been threatened by a recent flood here in the basement, and I found a folder with some old scraps of art and clippings of interesting designs. This was stuff I made or collected between 1974 and 1989.

The first image is from 1974 (or 1973?), and I drew it when I was six years old. It's not really a doodle. It's a fairly serious drawing of a fish in an aquarium. The second image is an abstract doodle from 1981. I liked placing contrasting shadings and shapes around in a scene.

There are two doodles I did in 1987 and 1988. I remember drawing the one about love being true and eternal when I was in East Germany back in the summer of 1988.

The last image is an abstract I made on a Macintosh Plus back in 1986. I've added the color now. I always intended it to have color, but back when I made it you really couldn't do much color on a Macintosh Plus.

How many of each Religion?

I was recently looking for some stuff at the Census Bureau when the Top 5 Data Links there caught my attention in the Statistical Abstract. Table 74, Self-Described Religious Identification of Adult Population: 1990 and 2001, was the fifth most popular data link. You can examine the table in PDF if you like.

The results come from the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS). The researchers called 50,000+ random phone numbers in the 48 continental United States. This survey tapped subjective self-identification, asking people to what religion they saw themselves belonging

How many Baha'is did the survey find? Well, in 1990 the survey estimated 28,000 Adult Baha'is, and in 2001 that figure was up to 84,000. The figure of 84,000 sounds more plausible than the 28,000 figure for 1990. I've worked in organizing voting meetings for my area of Baha'is, so I was able to examine the list of all enrolled Baha'is in my area of Illinois. Knowing that the voting areas have approximately the same number of Baha'is in them, and knowing how many voting areas there are, allowed me to estimate how many Baha'is were on the rolls (and how many of those were active). I also reached a conclusion that there would be slightly over 100,000 Baha'is, of whom the majority (about four-fifths) were adults, and so the 84,000 figure for adult Baha'is fits with that. But, I don't think the Baha'i community has grown dramatically between 1990 and 2001. So, this calls into doubt all the figures from this survey. Of course in a study like this the measurement errors are much higher for the little groups, so the confidence interval for a group like the Baha'is who make up 0.05% of the adult population must be fairly large relative to the bigger denominations. You can read more about the study at this website about the ARIS study.

The big groups are Catholics with about 51 million adult believers in 2001, the Baptists with 34 million adults, and the Methodists with 14 million adults. About 160 million adults, about 77% of American adults, self-identified as Christian. About 1.4% of adults were self-identifying as Jewish, and about half of one percent self-identified as Muslim. What about Atheists and agnostics? If you combine those two and add "humanist" and "secular" and "no religion" you get about 29.5 million, or slightly over 14% of American adults. The number in that category more than doubled between 1990 and 2001.

I wish the Baha'is had as many believers as the other minority religions like the Jewish, Muslim, or Buddhists. You can get some really interesting dynamics and activities in a community of over a million believers. You just can't get the same style of community life in a national community with maybe 60,000 active believers and another 50,000 fairly inactive ones. Hey, reader, have you examined the Baha'i Faith? Despite it's faults (the same sort of faults you'll find in any organized religion or association of humans) I'm a believer and quite satisfied with identification with it. Maybe you would like to know more?

Shopping for God

I've been reading Shopping for God by James B. Twitchell over the past few weeks. It's sort of a bedside book I've been enjoying. As many people know, the Southern Baptists, the Church of God in Christ, and the Mormons have been enjoying some growth over the past years, while the United Methodists, Presbyterians, and Episcopals have been losing members.

A few points stick in my mind. One, the most powerful way to get people to make an initial visit to a church is to use a word-of-mouth invitation. Second, much of the long-term trend in growth among evangelicals and decline among mainline Protestants comes from the different birth rates. The mainline Protestants have been having fewer children. I wonder if this also would partly explain the 30-year trend toward conservative ideology in the United States. Providing members opportunities to bond together is another key attribute that determines whether people come and stay, or drift away.

The tone of the book is not too flippant. It's not especially respectful either, but I wasn't offended, and I think most liberally-minded religous folks who are interested in social science or marketing would enjoy the book.

As a Baha'i, I found the book had some interesting ideas about marketing a religion that seem to be partly understood by the elected leadership in the Baha'i Faith. The current emphasis on Baha'is getting out and being friendly and caring with people around them is certain a good step, both in terms of ethics and in term of marketing. We need to work more on giving people a good experience when they start to participate in the Baha'i community. I think we probably drive people away sometimes with the quality of our community life. But, there are bright spots, and in the long run, I think Baha'u'llah gave humanity some suggestions that will lead to very satisfying communities of Faith, whether those communities call themselves "Baha'i" or are merely influenced by the Word Baha'u'llah revealed.

Tax fairness and income inequality

Lately I've noticed letters to the editors of newspapers and blog essays where people complain that the tax system in the United States is really set up to soak the rich. People complain that liberals like John Edwards are lying when they say the wealthy take advantage of the tax system. In fact, the conservative say, the wealthiest households in the United States pay most of the taxes, and the lowest half of the population pays very little in the way of taxes.

First of all, if you accept (as I do) the proposition that the free market tends to exaggerate the rewards given to people near the top of reward distributions and tends to undervalue and underpay people near the bottom of reward distributions, then one sees a certain unfairness in the way people earn income. People near the top of the pay scale (the rich) tend to be overpaid. They get more than they need, and they usually get a bit more than they deserve.

Partly as a means to rectifying this injustice, taxes and government policies can take some money from the wealthy and redistribute it to people who are less wealthy. The poorest people, who can afford very little, can pay very low taxes, or even no taxes at all, while the wealthiest people, who can afford to part with some of their money, can pay higher taxes, and give up a greater share of their wealth. This can be done with a progressive income tax, and it can be done through policies that give more to the poor and give less to the wealthy.

If one accepts this, then there is no moral objection to conditions such as having a group of 5% of the taxpayers, who might take a quarter of the national income, pay more than a quarter of the national taxes. And, if the poorest half of the nation's taxpayers take in 5% of the national income, then they may pay less than 5% of the nation's taxes.

One mistake conservatives make when they talk about taxes is to only count certain types of taxes. Most people, even poor people, pay sales taxes. Many pay property taxes. Many pay registration fees and processing fees and court costs and fines and other forms of revenue to the public purse. People tend to pay taxes to local, state, and federal governments. And, along with the income tax, there are also taxes for social security, workers compensation insurance, and these sorts of things that are taxes on earnings that supposedly differ from the federal income tax. When I've read conservative letters or essays about taxes, they never explain exactly what taxes they are describing, and I have yet to see good references to where they find their data.

I thought I should do my part to investigate the matter of the federal income tax, and how much the wealthy actually pay, and how this compares to people at the middle class. In this blog entry I'm giving references to the documents I'm using, and I'm only talking about the federal income tax.

I began my search at the Census Bureau. My first question was, "what share of aggregate income (all income received in the nation) do the wealthy actually take?" I found the answer when I examined table 675 from the Census Bureau's publication, the Share of Aggregate Income Received by Each Fifth and the Top 5 Percent of Households: 1967 to 2005. It’s available at this page.

According to Census Bureau, the top 5% of American households received about 22.1% of aggregate income in 2000, and about 22.2% of aggregate income in 2005. In 1993, the year Clinton was inaugurated, the wealthiest 5% received 21.0% of aggregate income. In 1981, the year Reagan was inaugurated, the wealthiest 5% received 16.5% of aggregate income. So, the wealthiest have seen their incomes rise from 16.5% of our nation's aggregate income to 21% during the Republican era of the 1980s, then rise one percentage point to 22% by the time Bush was given power by the Republican Supreme Court (Constitutionally, we should have waited for the Republican Senate and House to give him power), and since Bush has been in power the top 5% first lost their percentage and more recently have gained their percentage back to about where it was in 2001. That's the story the numbers tell.

What about the working class, the poor, and the lower middle class? The bottom 40% earned 14.2% of income when Reagan became president (in 1981), they earned 12.6% when Clinton became president (in 1993), and they earned 12.2% when Bush became president (in 2001). In 2005, the most recent year for which there is information, the bottom 40% of households earned 12% of aggregate income. The working class and poor are earning a smaller fraction of national aggregate income, but the trend has been slowing down since the 1990s.

So, it appears that the 1980s and early 1990s were a time of growing inequality, while inequality did not grow much in the Clinton era of the 1990s or in the Bush era of the past six years. At least, this is the story one can take from the Census Bureau report, and this is true of you only look at inequality by comparing the top 5% and the bottom 40%. Is that a good way to compare trends and learn about inequality? It's good, but it's also fallible, and it's wise to use multiple fallible indicators to get teh whole picture. This particular indicators is a reasonable type of comparison, and when you use this comparison, the inequality trend is bad, but nothing is changing rapidly or radically in recent years.

Some conservatives, such as a guy from Naperville, Illinois, named Tom Rand (who wrote a letter to the Illinois Times, a newspaper here in Springfield, where I live) claim that the tax burden for the wealthiest Americans (as a percentage of all taxes paid) has increased relative to their (trivial) increase in earnings (“earnings” as a percent of aggregate income). In other words, if you know that the wealthiest top 5% of the nation has been earning 21% to 22% of all income, and this hasn't changed much at all in the past six years, but you know that the same wealthiest 5% has been paying a higher percentage of the total national income tax, then you can make a claim that the wealthy are paying a greater share of national taxes while their share of national income has been stagnant. Their taxes are going up relative to their incomes at a rate that is faster than the increase for everyone who isn't wealthy. If this is true, then it appears that the wealthy aren't getting a great deal with the Bush tax system, and in fact the economy and taxes we have had since the Bush administration tax cuts of 2001 tend to favor people in the bottom 95%.

That's a story based on this one chart from the Census Bureau, but let's consult another fallible indicators of the situation. Let's see what data we may find at the IRS.

If one goes to the www.IRS.gov website it’s fairly easy to find a detailed analysis of the 2005 taxes paid by various income groups. I found most of what I needed in: this pdf Fall 2007 report on the 2005 taxes (collected in 2006). The best page is page 40 (of 64), where you find Table 2. All Returns: Tax Liability, Tax Credits, and Tax Payments by Size of Adjusted Income, Tax Year 2005. It's also important to look at page 16, at Table 1. All Returns: Sources of Income, Adjustments, Deductions, and Exemptions, by Size of Adjusted Gross Income, Tax Year 2005.

Looking at the IRS data I wanted to see where my household fits in the big picture. How are we doing, relative to others in the economy, and how does our income and tax responsibility compare with that of the wealthy? It turns out I'm in the middle of the middle class. My wife and I file jointly, and our gross income before adjustments is usually in the bracket between $40,000 and $50,000, although some years (when I work through the summers or get a nice grant) we have gross incomes between $50,000 and $75,000 (actually, not much over the lower threshold of that bracket). Our incomes are close to the state median income in Illinois for a male full-time year-round worker. Also, with the 2006 median U.S. household income of $48,201, our income clearly represents the middle class. Anyone with an income in the $40 thousands or $50 thousands is middle class (at least in terms of income). My labor effort is also close to the average for American full-time year-round workers, as I work about 1900 hours per year for my paying job and my wife works about 250 hours per year in her paying job (we have two school-aged children, and my wife's work as a mother and homemaker is ignored in all these official statistics, although tax cuts we get for having children considerably reduces our federal income tax responsibility).

There were in fact 26.8 million returns by persons or households earning, like us, between $40 thousand and $75 thousand. That's almost 9% of our total national population, right in the middle of the middle class. In terms of all the tax returns that were filed, that's about 32% that fall between $40K and $75K. Those 26.8 million tax returns filed with the IRS showed a total income of $1.60 trillion, and these middle class filers paid a total of $179 billion in federal income tax. You can sum up and divde the figures to arrive at a picture of an average middle-of-the-middle-class household earning $55,000 per year, and paying about $6,700 in federal income taxes. That's about 12.07% of adjusted gross income paid to the IRS by people in this range.

Let's compare this typical and middle-class group to the wealthy.

Who are the wealthy? I think households with incomes over $200,000 are affluent or wealthy. According to the IRS, 3.9% of all 2005 filed tax returns indicated incomes over $200,000. So, I suppose the top 4% of the households, or population, or the top 4% of families are what I’d call “the affluent” or “wealthy.” (Actually, I’m not clear on how closely a “percent of all tax returns filed” represents percents of individuals or households or families. I assume households would be the closest approximation. The wealthy must certainly have larger household sizes. For one thing, they are more likely to have at least two income-earners. On the other hand, people’s earnings peak in their 50s or 60s, a time when many taxpayers' children are going off to college or have already reached adulthood and independence. But this is a digression, let’s go back to comparing the wealthy to the middle class.)

If you add up all the incomes of the 3.6 million filed tax returns in which individuals or households reported over $200 thousand income, you get a figure of 2.17 trillion, and these tax returns came with payments of a total of $467.8 billion in taxes. By the way, the IRS reported total adjusted gross income for all returns at $7.422 trillion, and total tax returns of $1.084 trillion. That means the people earning over $200,000 earned about 29.2% of all income reported to the IRS and paid about 44.9% of all taxes (much higher than the Census Bureau's report!). That works out to an average of $608 thousand in annual income for an average affluent person in the top 4% of the American income distribution. But what do these 3.6 million taxpayers pay in federal income taxes? In total, they paid a total of $468 billion. That works out to an average of $131 thousand per tax return.

In other words, the average middle class person is getting about 9% of what an average affluent person is getting, but is paying in federal income taxes only about 5% of what an affluent person pays. To put it another way, a typical person in the middle class is paying about 12% of income in federal income tax, while a typical affluent person is paying just under 22%. This affluent top 4% that gets over $200 thousand per year is paying 45% of all federal income taxes paid to our government, while the middle 32% of all taxpayers (those earning between $40 thousand and $75 thousand) are paying only about 17% of all taxes.

I mentioned above that the average affluent person is paying under 22% of income in federal taxes. This is a slightly misleading. The 2.7 million returns showing incomes between $200 thousand and $500 thousand pay on average 19.35%, while the rest of the affluent making over $500 thousand per year tend to pay 22.6% up to 23.7% (the average for persons getting between 2 and 5 million). So, really, the super-rich are paying between a fifth to a quarter of their incomes in federal income tax, while the merely affluent, who earn between $200 thousand and half-a-million are paying, on average, slightly less than a fifth of their incomes in federal income taxes.

Personally, I'm not alarmed by this in either direction. I don't think the rich are getting a raw deal, nor do I think they're getting a grossly unfair advantage. I do think the rich are paying less than their fair share as it is, but not a dramatically unfair share. I wouldn't mind if a household earning over $1 million paid 30% or 35% of their income in federal income taxes (instead of the 23.7% to 22.1% that such wealthy people currently pay). As for the middle class, I think paying about 12% of one's income to the federal government through federal income taxes is about right for the middle third of the income earners in a nation. Really, anywhere between 10% and 15% seems fair to me for the middle group.

If the middle class was paying 10% instead of 12% of their income to the federal government, the federal government would lose about 19 billion in federal income tax revenue (and put that much money into the hands of the 32% of the taxpayers in the middle incomes). To balance the revenue loss from this massive tax cut for the middle class we could increases taxes on the wealthy. If we increased taxes on the wealthiest 4% so they, on average, paid 28% of their incomes in federal income taxes instead of what they pay now (about 22%), it appears to me, from the IRS data, that the federal government would gain about 140 billion from the tax increase. This 140 billion increase makes up for the 19 billion loss from the middle-class tax cut, and would give our government about $121 billion more revenue. I'd like to see such additional revenue used to balance the budget and pay down the national debt. More public money should be spent on medical research, alternative energy research, and pure science research. I think we also need a more generous government program to make higher education generally more affordable. Nationalized health care would be a great thing, and we could scrap Medicaid and Medicare, replacing those with a new National Health Insurance. A gain of $121 billion in government revenue, combined with sharp decreases in military spending (down to 3% or 2% of current GDP, as opposed to the 4% to 4.5% of GDP our nation currently allocates to defense and defense-related expenses), really could make a national health insurance scheme quite feasible, and if the government paid for billions of dollars in medical and energy research, and then let American taxpayers enjoy the resulting benefits without paying royalties to private companies or universities who used the money to do the research, that would also give us a more efficient economy and health care system.

I don't think raising taxes for people earning over $200 thousand per year up to a point where they pay, on average, 28% of their income in federal income taxes rather than 20% or 23.5% (as they do now, on average) is "class warfare" or a "soak the rich" scheme. I also don't buy the conservative argument that this would ruin incentives for good corporate executives and inventors and risk-taking investors. Would the highest paid executives make more stupid decisions or become less creative because 28% of their compensation and reward was going to the federal government rather than 22%? I don't think the wealthiest and most talented people would start goofing off and ruining their companies. Maybe if the federal income taxes were up at 50% or 60% rather than the 27% to 35% that I think fair, then rich people would flee or become demoralized. But an increase to 28% isn't going to encourage wealthy fair-weather-patriots to give up their American citizenship and move to tax havens and take up citizenship in the Cayman Islands.

Bowling

Ever since we received a Wii last year, we've been playing Wii sports. I have become pretty good at Wii bowling, but this week we finally went to a real bowling alley to check out our skills with real balls and pins. It was a let-down. I started my second game well with a couple strikes in the first two frames, but I never topped 100 points in either of my games, and on the Wii I hardly ever score under 200.

Oh well, at least it was fun, until some guy sitting behind us and waiting to use our lanes started smoking a very stinky cigarette. Yuck.

You can see from these images that our form isn't very good. There was some excitement when Jason bowled three strikes in a row, but that was about as good as it got.

Bowling reminds me of Robert Putnam and his concern that Americans aren't spending enough time socializing or doing group activities. I hope in the new year 2008 we can do more more family activities and have more fun with our friends.

A Walk in the Park

We had a few days in late December where the weather was warm, up around 14 to 18 degrees Celsius, so we went out for some walks. The woods are pretty bare this time of year, although the buds are nice to observe. In St. Louis there are more hills than in central Illinois, which makes a stroll more interesting.

We took a hike at the Laumeier Sculpture Park on the south side of St. Louis County. I remember that Jeri and I went for a walk there within a few weeks of our wedding in 1992, so it was probably one of the first places she went for a walk in the woods in America. It had been several years since we last came here, and many of the sculptures were gone.

We stopped at a toy store on the way to the park, and Arthur and I played catch with an orange ball as we interacted with the installations and sculptures.

Last Week of the Year

This year has not been a good one for our family. I think a highlight was our long visit with relatives in Taiwan. I attended another social work research conference (in San Francisco, in January) and an inspiring conference on social development (in Hong Kong, in July). I turned 40 years-old last week, and that feels good, especially since my dad gave me a call from Florida. Arthur and Sebastian continued to grow and develop. Sadly, my last grandparent died in February. Our third son died before even being born when Jeri miscarried in the 12th week of her pregnancy.

The year is coming to an end as I evaluate essays in a "this I believe" essay contest for Sangamon County and prepare my syllabus for a social work class on social welfare. I'm getting breaks to play with my family here in St. Louis.

In this final week we are spending time with family here in Saint Louis. I'm having a good time.