Thoughts on 30 years since the Berlin Wall came down

November 9, 1989, the night the Berlin Wall was breached, I spent the evening with an incredibly interesting woman from Finland. I had met her at a book signing of my impossibly difficult attempt to explain why pollution was a function of design and that the only effective solutions for our over-polluted world would come from the efforts of environmentally responsible designers. She had a job in radio with a voice to match but assured me that she wanted to ask questions for the book review she was writing for a newspaper.

The book signing was in February but we were still an item nine months later. I was hopelessly smitten because not only did she have those physical characteristic that make Nordic women world famous—icy-blue eyes, true ash-blond hair, high cheekbones, and those impossibly-toned legs from a life-time of commuting by bicycle and cross-country skis—but she was also a walking advertisement for Finland's justly admired educational system. She spoke five languages, was astonishingly well-read, and had that remarkable Finnish ability to summarize complex arguments into a few profound and insightful sentences. (The Finns don't like to talk any more than they absolutely have to so coming to the point is a well-practiced cultural skill.)

When I met her, I had just spent almost 8 years researching, writing, and revising my thoughts on elegant technology. I emerged from this extended self-inflicted solitude into the sunlight to be met by someone who had not only read my book but had decided it was a work of historical genius. She offered those opinions in the dulcet tones of a professional radio personality. Her book review occupied two full newspaper pages. And that wouldn't have turned your head?

November found us hanging out in central Florida (long story) so the fall of the Berlin Wall came as a complete surprise (we were distracted). I was so excited I immediately went out to buy a bottle of champagne. On the way to the cash register, I said to myself—events like this are rare, why not buy two bottles?

And so the evening was set—sufficient champagne and interesting live TV. The pictures were mostly of very happy and deliriously drunk young Germans dancing on the wall that had divided their country, while simultaneously proving that hand-held hammers were no match for hardened concrete. And while I worried that the partying kids would hurt themselves, I also concluded that I had never been that happy about anything, ever. I found the sheer joy incredibly infectious.


I had managed to visit DDR (East Germany) for only one day in 1970. The experience was very grim. Just crossing the border at Checkpoint Charlie took an hour and a half—time mostly spent looking at amount of civil engineering that had been employed in order to stop the movement of humans. While I waited, I wondered at least a couple of dozen times whether I really wanted to get inside that wall.

But then I was in. The streets were mostly empty of both traffic and people. There were occasional piles of rubble to remind us that in 1945, Berlin had been one of history's most intense battlefields. It's easy to understand that recovery from such a battle would require serious time and effort...but 25 years? If there were WW II rubble piles in West Berlin, I certainly had not seen them.

And then I saw it. A Trabant. This ugly contraption was supposed to be DDR's "people's car" and it sported such features as a smoky-smelly 2-stroke engine, the build quality of a junior-high shop project, and performance you could measure with an hour-glass. And did I mention UGLY? I was utterly stunned. Less than three weeks earlier, I had spent three hours on an industrial tour of the Porsche works at Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen where they were constructing the world-famous 911s. The distance in industrial sophistication between the 911 and the Trabant could be measured in light-years. I wondered how on earth Germans! could build something so stupid.

Soon, I discovered that the Trabi had been manufactured in Zwickau. This city has a long history in automobile manufacturing beginning with the Horch factory in 1904 followed by Audi in 1909. Digging deeper, I discovered why the ugliness of Trabant was so personally disgusting. It's a long story but I'll try to make it short and sweet.

When I was only four years old, my father moved the family to a small town in Southwest Minnesota. It was largely populated by a tiny Protestant sect called Mennonites. These people had settled the area in the late 1870s and although they had emigrated from Russia, they were German speakers. They had gone to Russia at the invitation of Catherine the Great in the 1760s who needed expert farmers. She had promised them that they could keep their language, schools, and religious practices which included their pacifism. In 1874, the new Czar, Alexander II, reneged on those promises and started drafting Mennonite young men, closing their German-speaking schools, and confiscating their German Bibles. The last outrage included the invasion of German homes looking for those now-outlawed Bibles and arresting the heads of the household if any were found. Time to get out of Dodge. Most fled to North America and settled in places such as Kansas, Minnesota, the Dakotas and Saskatchewan. They brought with them their excellent farming practices, their beliefs, and hard Red Wheat.

Even though my father was a Swedish-Lutheran pastor, he joined the local Ministerial Association and was almost immediately elected its leader. He got on famously with the Mennonites and soon enrolled us children in their local Christian Day School. I attended K-6. We were taught in English but roughly 1/4 of my classmates spoke German at home and many of the rest used some German grammar in their English. My mother, who spoke Swedish at home until she was ten, found their Germanized English quite amusing. Even so, my parents kept sending us to the Mennonite school because they were such strict pacifists—no pledge of allegiance, no war-like hymns like Onward Christian Soldiers, no playground war games, etc. My grandfathers were quite different men but both had refused to cooperate with the draft when USA had entered WW I. Turns out, the Swedes have a strong anti-war tradition too. These descendants of Vikings stopped going to war in 1814 and have not gone since.

As I grew older, I learned a great deal about the traditions of the German speakers in a preserved form. The Mennonites I got to know were not opposed to modern technology as long as it was useful—they had telephones, and tractors, and cars. My father struck up a long-lasting friendship with a Mennonite evangelist who had an airplane—a Cessna 195. One neighbor had a ham radio he built himself that he used to communicate with a missionary brother in Brazil. The preserved-in-amber forms of Mennonite / German culture came in three basic flavors—their love of music, their memory of when their religious practices had led to real physical harm, and their incredible work habits.

Snowed in

When people ask me how anyone can put up with a Minnesota winter, my answer is pretty simple—stay indoors. I mean, even the snow plow drivers can stay inside a heated cab. Of course that means you have to have projects to keep sane—reading a stack of books, fiddling with a blog, or binge-watching TV or YouTube. I my case, I have been spending a bunch of time setting up a studio so I can explain my version of a Green New Deal as I wrote it in a book called Elegant Technology: economic prosperity from an environmental blueprint. It was published in 1992 and as you can see, this title is a LOT clunkier than GND. Building a video set-up involves making a bunch of decisions from whether I should wear a cap on camera to whether I am going to capture and edit 4k footage.

Below is some video I captured out my office window of the nasty blizzard last weekend. I actually went out in that weather to move my car so they could plow our parking lot. -36°F wind chill. There was nearly 1/4" of ice under the snow—I scraped so hard, I broke my ice scraper. Plenty of reason to go back inside to work on my editing software.

Scientists Create Liquid Fuel That Can Store The Sun's Energy For Up to 18 Years

IF this works, it will truly be the game-changer. Storing energy has been the ultimate quest since forever. So far, the best we can do is lithium-ion batteries—good enough to give us Teslas but unlikely to provide us with base loads and eliminate coal plants.  But the idea that we could capture solar energy and store it in a liquid form means we could reuse a bunch of the petroleum infrastructure.

But this is a lab experiment. We do not know how the process scales. We don't know how much energy it requires to make nor do we know how many storage cycles this magic liquid can do before it loses its transformative powers.

But good luck! May the land of Linnaeus and Celsius and Nobel get it right one more time.

Oh those Vikings

One sparkling August morning in 1970, I awoke in the small town of Roskilde Denmark. I was hitchhiking to Copenhagen but had been warned that the youth hostels were full so I stopped short. So that morning I knew I was 30 km from downtown Copenhagen and absolutely nothing else about Denmark. By the end of the day I had become a serious fan of things Viking because of a 1962 find of five ships of various sizes in the mud near the main harbor. The good people of Roskilde had built a museum in 1969 to house these finds that from the looks of things, has grown in size and sophistication since then.

I have a sister who has compiled a thorough genealogy of our family. All eight of my great-grandparents came from the Viking "belt" that extends from Denmark in the south to Uppsala / Birka in the north. Because of geography, the explorations / raids / settlements of the Danes and Norwegians went west. These are the best known Vikings because of their importance to British history—William the Conqueror was a Norman (northman / Norwegian), after all. The Swedish Vikings went east and influenced the history of Russia and the Ukraine. Between a great-grandfather from Bergen Norway and two great-grandparents from Gotland, I have the range of Viking roots well covered.

In 1970, I knew none of this. In fact, the universe of Viking historians was pretty damn tiny. As my interest in the subject grew, I discovered I had latched onto a very obscure topic. For example: I found my way into a relationship with a woman who was half Norwegian. Since I was still a redhead, tall, and pretty good with a hammer, I thought that as a romantic gesture I would make her a Mjolnir (Thor's hammer) as a piece of costume jewelry / good luck charm. I made it of wood and leather and it turned out quite nice. It might have worked as romantic gift except that 1) She had never heard of Mjolnir. 2) She had never heard of the Viking pantheon of gods. 3) She had no idea what this gesture was supposed to mean. This was 1994. Amazingly, pop culture has caught up with my obscure hobby. I was watching an episode of Jeopardy not long ago (a guilty pleasure indeed) when they had a category on Viking mythology—all three contestants could have gotten them all right.

These are my people. I have lived in Scandinavia on two occasions. No one I know acts remotely like a Viking raider. So the question that has fascinated me for the last 48 years has been—how did the Vikings become Scandinavians? My Lutheran preacher father claimed that because the Viking Age mostly ended with the coming of Christianity to the north, this was the defining event. I always had a lot of problems with that explanation because goodness knows, there have been plenty of bloodthirsty Christians in history.

My pet explanation is those Viking boats. No longships, no Viking Age. These were amazing craft. Able to travel long distances over open and often stormy oceans at high speed, shallow enough to navigate narrow rivers, and light enough to be hauled over portages. At the height of the Viking Age, their influence stretched from North America to Constantinople because of those boats. The folks who went out in raiding parties could be violent thugs—the folks who built the boats had to be highly skilled, in love with precision, and supported by other skilled trades like steel making. It requires a sophisticated society to float a navy that can conduct overseas raids. The peaceable producing classes had to stay home and build boats. The young bucks went a-Viking—mostly to get a grubstake so they could buy a boat. None other than Thorstein Veblen thought Viking raiders were mostly young men out having fun with dad's boat.

A recent find in Ribe Denmark gives new evidence for what simply had to be true—that Viking settlements had to be communities of skilled people. Those boats did not emerge from thin air. A boat demands a boatbuilder. Anyone who has ever built or maintained a boat will emphatically explain just how difficult this is to do.

Going up the Country

Spent time in Edgar Wisconsin seeing Tony in action. I really like his customers. The majority are probably working farmers or were when they retired. These are the people of my childhood and it is fun to get back into that long-unused social milieu. Since I only interact with these folks rarely, I usually haul out the practices of the Non-Partisan League organizers. They were attempting to politically organize farmers who had a lot of other demands on their time. They were strangers selling a farmer agenda to people who generally agreed that all politicians were crooks. So these were the "rules" of engagement:

1) Realize the farmer you have just met has a bundle of problems—almost all economic. Prices for their products are too low, the cost of their inputs are too high, and the railroads are cleaning up on the traffic both ways. Ect. Discover his story and modify accordingly. Show some empathy.

2) Make sure you cover the social importance of farmers. They are most certainly NOT stupid peasants. If you can grow grain in North Dakota or run a dairy farm in Wisconsin, you can certainly run your own government. A government run by farmers in their own interests is not only possible, but highly desirable. Show genuine interest in how the farmer attempts to solve his particular set of production problems and file them away for future reference.

3) Have a well-thought-out agenda. Explain what a farmer-run government could do to better his economic lot. NPL had a laundry list of things they intended to accomplish including, most importantly, a state-run bank. Amazing how much farmers know about credit problems so this was always an idea that demonstrated daring. And since that bank is still being touted as the runaway success that it is by Ellen Brown to the point where California and LA among a host of others is considering one, the NPL can rightly be considered as this country's most successful progressive movement ever. EVAH!

To anyone who despairs at the rotten state of USA politics, these methods still work. My favorite encounter was with a soon-to-be-retired dairy farmer. He milked 80 cows and sold to, yes, a cheese factory. When I was a child, dairy herds were considered substantial at 40. So he has a lot of work twice a day. His wife is over being a dairy farmer's spouse and wants him to quit. But he claimed that both he and his father plowed back everything in upgrading his farm—lots more than money invested here like pride, effort, planning. This is what we imagine when we hear of the virtues of "family farming." Not many of these folks left. And they are getting old. And if there were still 40% of people farming instead of 2%, I could get elected to high office using the NPL methods exactly the way they used them 100 years ago.

Of course, these methods DO work outside of agriculture. Ask any student about the importance of debt reform. Ask anyone who was left to rot when some Wall Street scam artists bought the town's main factory, looted the pensions, and shipped the machinery to China. Ask someone who got a heart attack and for-profit medicine handed him a $100,000 bill to ensure his heart problems got worse. Ask anyone who despairs at meaningful progress on climate change. And have an agenda that makes sense.
(Pictures)

The hidden truth about Christmas

One of the peculiarities of my childhood was that I was raised in a home where we were taught that lying about Santa Claus to children was a sin. However, we were also coached not to tell our friends that Santa was just a hoax. In other words, we were taught that Santa was a lie but instructed to keep the lie alive in homes where it was taught. Considering how important "sin" was to our worldview, this contradiction was stunning.

Below, Lee Camp gives an absolutely hilarious explanation for this contradiction, and argues pretty persuasively that the Santa lies are FAR from harmless.



I loved this because it really did remind me of my childhood. And yes, massive lying to children is probably a serious drag on their mental and cultural development. However, in my case I tend to think the Santa lie was condemned by the religious types mostly because it distracted people from the stories they were telling. I won't even get into the debate of whether the flying toy-giver or the birth-by-virgin tale has caused more social damage.

Merry Christmas

See oil companies, it CAN be done—floating offshore wind turbines from Statoil

My brother insists that the world's smartest people are found in construction. No one is more innovative when it comes to solving crazy-difficult problems where the risk of doing it wrong can be, quite literally, deadly.

Today we examine the efforts of Statoil to build a wind farm so far offshore that the turbines must float and are anchored to the bottom. Doing something like this makes perfect sense because winds are far stronger and more reliable offshore with the added benefit that turbines in these locations are in no one's back yard. In some places like Japan, the ONLY serious offshore option is floating because their oceans get deep so quickly.

Except that crazy-difficult barely describes such a project. And yet Statoil took it on and it looks like it is working. Statoil has vast experience in offshore oil extraction and it looks like they have brought a LOT of that experience to offshore wind. The designs are very conservative relying on components with serious credentials in waters like the North Sea. These turbines were built by very serious people.

Oh, and one other thing. For years, Big Oil has been ducking the possibility that if they were going to remain energy companies as the Age of Oil runs out, they were going to need expertise in renewables. And yet Statoil seems to be leading the way. This is an oil company partly owned by the Norwegian people and seems to be as corruption-free as the rest of the Nordic societies. The key to making crazy-difficult projects a success is to keep the corrupting Predators out of the way of the master problem-solvers.

This ain't no new fight - The Nonpartisan League, 1919

1919 cover of the Nonpartisan League’s newspaper, The Nonpartisan Leader, portraying “organized farmers and workers” standing tall against big business interests. (Wikimedia Commons).

Something I can give thanks for is the many episodes of history Jon has brought to my attention. One of the most relevant for our time, with our desperate need to reform and revitalize the political system of the USA, is the Nonpartisan League of the upper plains states. The NPL gained political control of North Dakota in the 1910s, and created a lasting legacy which includes the only state owned bank in the country; the largest flour mill in the country, also state owned; and the best rate of internet access in the country.

This evening I found that some scans of the League's newspaper, The Nonpartisan Leader, on Google Books. I thought it would be a wonderful Thanksgiving post, which will hopefully encourage more people to read about the League. A number of pages of Robert Morlan's excellent book, Political Prairie Fire, are also available on Google Books. In July 2016, Bill Moyers' website featured the League in an article entitled, How to Make a Political Revolution, which includes an important description of how the League's legacy is still improving the lives of people today.

The League was heavily slandered, so be discerning as you research more.

Dylan's Nobel Lecture in Literature

"The speech is extraordinary and, as one might expect, eloquent. Now that the lecture has been delivered, the Dylan adventure is coming to a close," Sara Danius, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, which awards the prize, wrote in a blog post.

The very idea that the Nobel folks would award their literature prize to a songwriter has been, to put it mildly, controversial. I grew up the child of a Swedish-American mother who spent pretty much all her moral energy in life trying to be respectable. And as the wife of a Lutheran preacher, she had multiple daily opportunities to practice her art. So when I think of an august group like the Nobel Literature committee, I imagine my mother times oh, 100. A group that asks regularly, "What will people think?"

Given the outcome of this little experiment, the Nobel folks will probably retreat to some known safe haven of respectability for a long time to come. Because for the serious fans of respectability, the whole idea has been a fiasco. At first, Dylan didn't even respond to the announcement of a Nobel Prize. The Swedes found this hopelessly rude. The academic writers who would have been thrilled by the honor were quick to point out that the problem was that he wasn't a "real" writer anyway. Finally, Dylan accepted with some polite PR boilerplate but he didn't promise to actually make the awards ceremony. Patti Smith was sent to cover A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall and promptly botched the lyrics. She was immediately forgiven because her rendition was so moving but I am sure the pearl clutchers were left wondering, "what else could go wrong?" Still, Dylan could collect his nearly $1 million prize if he managed to deliver a lecture within 6 months. He just made it. And the speech is remarkable.

Dylan's behavior in all this confusion needs a bit of context. Here's a guy who went to work after only one year of college. He was focused on writing short-form poetry meant to be sung, with the primary singer (himself) hamstrung by a limited range. Many considered his voice laughably unpleasant. He cobbled together a one-man-band kit consisting of a guitar and harmonica and bravely offered his wares to anyone who would listen. His words were so compelling, however, that soon A-list musicians would be covering his work. While all of this is pretty interesting, none of it sounds like the sort of thing that would be found in the CV of a Nobel winner in literature. In fact, I am certain that Dylan suspected it was all a hoax.

So when it came time to write a speech outlining the effects of literature on his work, Dylan looks like he was forced to fall back on material he learned in high school—Moby Dick, the Odyssey, and All Quiet on the Western Front. There are damn few high schools that teach such books anymore and the number of students who actually learn them is probably close to zero. Fortunately, Dylan's father had moved the family to the small mining town of Hibbing Minnesota where he was enrolled in arguably the nicest public high school on the planet. In 1918, the owners of the Hull-Rust-Mahoning mine discovered that downtown Hibbing was sitting on an extremely rich seam of high-grade iron ore. It would have to move. To grease the skids, the town was offered a large cash payment which the mostly immigrant miners decided to spend on a new high school. They would eventually spend over $4 million (an incredible number in the 1920s) on a magnificent structure that still inspires awe. But the high school was to be more than a beautiful building, it was supposed to be a place where even poor children from mining families could get an elite education if they just did their homework. So while Dylan got by on his high school education, what an education it was. (We even know the name of his high school literature teacher, B.J. Rolfzen)

What is noteworthy about Dylan's choices is that in many ways, they are category killers. He says of All Quiet on the Western Front, "After reading it, I never wanted to read another war novel. I never did." This partly explains why the Nobel Committee awarded their prize to a "mere" songwriter—much of what passes for literature these days is irrelevant tripe in the form of academic navel-gazing. Too many categories have been killed long ago. Sometimes I wonder if the same cannot be said for the subject of economics—guys like Veblen and Keynes did some serious category killing in their day. It's hard to point to anyone currently writing who has anything new to add.

The Nobel Prize for Literature is clearly an award Dylan did not need. Even the $million payoff is a rounding error for someone who has sold over 100 million records, and the honor pales next to the dozens of awards for his music. But even though this was probably all just annoying for him, he managed to put together a speech both meaningful and profound. He didn't have to do it but for those of us who appreciate his cultural contributions, I am glad he did.

'Doomsday’ seed vault meant to survive global disasters breached by climate change

Those of us who live in the frozen north tend, I believe, to understand more of the nuances and implications of climate change. We burn FAR more than our share of fuels, we are the folks who made industrialization happen, and even the slowest among us understand that without fuels, the cold will kill us very quickly. The overwhelming majority of the land on earth is found in the northern hemisphere so not surprisingly, most of the more dramatic manifestations of climate change happen where we cold-weather fire-starters set up our civilizations.

But even assuming that, the two stories below are amazing. One concerns how melting permafrost in Norway is threatening the seed vault that was supposed to protect the plant genetics of the planet for "eternity." The other concerns the likelihood that a failed Gulf Stream could leave Europe with the charming weather of North Dakota.

In all fairness, because we cold-weather denizens use an outsized share of carbon fuels, we should be threatened by most of the big climate-change disasters. Once upon a time, not so long ago, we would be just the folks to tackle a solution for such possible catastrophes. Unfortunately, the culture of the North is a shadow of what it was just two or three generations ago.

Has Putin driven Western politicians insane?

One of the sadder and more crazy outcomes of this fall's election is the Democratic Party's decision to blame their defeats on the Russians. That we are seeing McCarthyism II and Cold War: the next generation only this time perpetrated by so-called Liberals actually makes me feel sick at times.

I confess that I happen to feel a strong affinity for Russia and its people. Reason A is that as someone who grew up in arguably the coldest state in the continental USA, I have a highly developed sympathy for those who must cope with the nastiest of winters. Cold changes you.

After a short trip to Leningrad in 1972 where I learned a few of the incredible stories of what that city was willing to suffer to save itself during their Great Patriotic War (WW II), I determined to actually learn some of the history of this sprawling and nearly uninhabitable land populated by some of the most courageous humans to have ever walked the planet. Once you open that door, you have stumbled into an infinity of tales of heroic struggles against not only a harsh climate but murderous invaders, evil Tsars, serfdom, Marxist-Leninist crackpots, etc.

Fortunately, it isn't all tragedy. Perhaps my favorite story is about how Anatoly Tarasov figured out how to build an ice hockey program out of the ruins of WW II. Hockey is crazy difficult and very expensive yet out the ashes of near total national destruction, Tarasov invented a version of the game that even today is easily the most exciting to watch.

And these are the people we are supposed to hate. And lie about. And threaten with more warfare (as if the Russian people haven't suffered enough war at the hands of folks like Napoleon and Hitler.) This time though, the Russia-bashers have decided to make it personal. This time we are supposed hate Vladimir Putin above all. This is what makes Cold War II so surreal. The Russophobes would like to topple Putin but are confronted with the fact that he is wildly popular in Russia—mostly because he is arguably the best leader they have ever had (with the possible exception of Peter the Great.)

Hillary Clinton seems to hate Putin with the fire of 1000 suns. She is convinced he cost her the election. She has even called his election meddling an act of war. She is convinced that he hates her. And on that point, she might be right.

Putin has many reasons to detest Ms. Clinton. But in my mind, the one at the top must be her comparison of Putin to Hitler. Putin was the child of two people who actually survived the siege of Leningrad—a siege that killed his older brother.

Now I am pretty sure that Putin understands that virtually no one in the United States of Amnesia has any idea of how horrific the siege of Leningrad really was. After all, MOST 'Merikuns have no idea that Russia even fought in the Second World War. But for those fools, please be reminded that more Russians died due to that siege than all the USA, Brit, and French casualties of WW II combined. Many are buried in St. Petersburg's Piskaryovskoye Memorial Cemetery. According to their official records, from September 4, 1941 to January 22, 1944, 107,158 air bombs were dropped on the city, 148,478 shells were fired, 16,744 men died, 33,782 were wounded and 641,803 died of starvation.

My guess is that as a son of St. Petersburg / Leningrad, Putin has a much clearer idea of the savage nature of Hitler's Nazis than a moronic twinkie like HRC. Apparently, one of the joys of being a Wellesley grad is that it entitles you to compare anyone you don't like to Hitler. Actually knowing some history is not required.

I believe MOST of this Putin-bashing is a nasty combination of fear and impotence. Putin is an amazing fellow. The Russians have PLENTY of experience with shit leadership so when someone like Putin comes along, they respond to the difference. He could win all elections until he dies. He has lavish approval ratings—he may be the most popular politician on earth. The people who think just a few more $ to the NED will bring down his government are quite insane. So not only can Putin thumb his nose at the neocon plotters, he drives them further insane because there is nothing they can do about it.

He is also an excellent example of what happens when someone in the old USSR educational system religiously did his homework. Compared to the dim bulbs we have in USA politics, he so outclasses them intellectually, he almost seems like he is from a different planet. And he sort of is. Bright guy, highly motivated, with a hyper-elite education.

In a saner world, we would have leadership that recognizes the opportunity to collaborate with such a gifted leader to solve some crazy-difficult problems. If we cannot get along with the best leadership Russia has to offer since Peter the Great, perhaps its our fault and not his.

On the cultural aspects of religious practice

Last Monday, I finally got to see the Martin Luther / Reformation exhibit that is currently on display at the Minneapolis Institute of Art.  We had tickets a few weeks back but we rescheduled due to weather concerns—something that just happens in Minnesota. In the meantime, the book describing the importance of the collection had arrived and I made a stab at reading it. There were few surprises as I have been seriously pursuing the question, since the 1980s, of how the various state (Lutheran) churches of the Nordic countries influenced their uniquely progressive political and social development. The motor for this passion is self-discovery—as the son of a Lutheran clergyman who was also an agrarian progressive, I was taking on two targets simultaneously. Besides, the question IS interesting—how and why did the Nordic nations become models of enlightened social and political organization? This question is especially interesting since the starting cultural / religious position was Viking.

The short answer is that for the most part, the state churches stayed out of the way. Lutherans never persecuted science—in fact, the reason Descartes died in Sweden is because he was offered shelter from religious persecution. When Sweden decided to get out of the war-making business in 1814, the Church of Sweden quite quickly fell into line. The Church was a supporter when Sweden decided to create their welfare state—although by the 1930s, the influence of the church was mainly confined to rural areas where the clergy taught the principles of petty piety.

But there were parts of Dr. Martin's cultural uprising that provided a solid base for social expansion. The most notable was his insistence that believers should be able to read and understand their sacred documents. In honor of the 500 anniversary of Protestantism, the Germans have recently published a new edition of Luther's translation of the Bible. Apparently, the "improvement" of the latest version is the inclusion of more 16th-century text. (Fans of the King James Bible will understand.) It is almost impossible to overstate the social transformation that came to a culture when reading became an act of the new faith and debating the finer theological points a demonstration of one's serious intent. The highlight of the show at MIA was the Luther Bible with Cranach woodcut illustrations. This Bible first appeared in 1534 but the one on display is from 1541—87 years after the publication of the Gutenberg Bible (1454).  Not surprisingly, the Luther Bible is absolutely gorgeous viewed simply as a printing project—by Luther's time printing was pretty well understood.

The MIA show is something of an odd duck.  Lutherans have not normally junked up their churches with paintings and statuary. That sort of art was put aside from the very beginning. Trust me, Cranach the Elder may have made clever woodcuts for printing, but no one will ever confuse him with Michelangelo (who was working at the same time.) Lutheran Churches can be stunningly innovative, very modern, and often beautiful. (Some favorites include the Rock Church in Helsinki, the Gruntvig Church in Copenhagen, the Christ Chapel at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter MN, and the Saarinen church in south Minneapolis.) If you follow the links, you will notice that most of these churches brag about their acoustics. Which leads to the subject of "Lutheran" art.

When the big churches of Northern Europe switched from Catholic to Protestant, the remodeling job followed a standard procedure. 1) Remove the painting and statuary, the stained glass windows, and bejeweled relics, 2) Paint the interiors white (mostly) because the new faithful would have to read during devout observances so bright interiors were important; 3) Build a fancy new pulpit because the sermon was now the centerpiece of the service; and 4) Install a gigantic pipe organ because music was now a highly approved practice of the faith. Luther himself wrote music. Besides, it's great fun to sing along to a big organ shaking the rafters.

The economic role of the pipe organ industry that sprouted in the wake of the Protestant Reformation cannot be overstated. The precision necessary to make those things work was phenomenal. Not surprisingly, any region that made pipe organs could easily understand the important parts of industrial technology. Other regions had other technological precursors of course, and the pipe organ shared the limelight with printing, but if the goal is precision manufacture, it's hard to beat pipe organs for a starting point.

If music and singing was Lutheran art form #1, printing was certainly #1A. Without printing, the Reformation was roughly as possible as Amazon.com without the internet. Printing runs second only to music because calling printing an art form is a bigger definition stretch. That said, most of the books on display at MIA were stunningly beautiful.

The third manifestation of Lutheran art didn't really surface until the 20th century. Scandinavian Modern was largely a social democratic movement that claimed everyone was entitled to have beautiful things. And that the best way to accomplish this goal was factories that mass-produced goods would hire artists to ensure that these goods were as beautiful as possible while still being inexpensive due to mass production. Beautiful things for everyday use. Luther would have so approved—he was very democratic. Industrial design may not have been a Lutheran invention, but Lutes seem to be especially good at it.

And of course, the highest flowering of Lutheran "art" are the successful societies. Any movement that starts with the sentence, "Out of love for the truth and the desire to bring it to light" should logically end with societies where corruption is almost unheard of. The top three countries in the Transparency International's corruption index are Denmark, Finland, and Sweden—countries that have been constitutionally Lutheran for centuries. Technological sophistication is utterly dependent on honesty measured in Ångstroms. Turns out honesty has measurable economic value. And the best form of honesty comes not from people who feel forced to be honest, it comes from people who have fallen in love with the truth—and the methods for finding truth.

I am happy I got to see the collection of early Lutheran artifacts at MIA. I am not sure an art museum is an appropriate venue for these items because of the frosty relationship Protestants had with art in general, but whatever. I still believe if you really want to see Lutheran art in all its glory, watch a Christmas concert from St. Olaf College (or Luther, or Concordia.) These things are run every year on PBS.

Of course, the real reason why any of this is still important is that the same value set (universal literacy, honesty, precision, and a love of beauty) that made the Lutheran nations so successful will be necessary to create the sustainable future. Not surprisingly, those nations already lead the way in implementing a Green agenda.

Remembering Olof Palme

The first book I ever read that I deemed "serious" was Markings by Dag Hammarskjöld—the UN Secretary-General from 1953 until his death / murder.  His airplane had crashed under suspicious circumstances in 1961.  Markings was published in 1963.  I read it in 1965.  I was 16.

I am almost certain I would have never heard about Markings had not my father returned from some Swedish-Lutheran liturgical get-together with tales of the buzz the book had caused in the church colleges.  I am pretty certain my father did not read it.  My mother may have.  The copy I read belonged to my mother's cousin.

Hammarskjöld is an old Viking name—as compared to a peasant name like Larson.  The family has been loyally keeping the Swedish royals out of trouble for several centuries—his father served as Swedish Prime Minister during World War I and was considered a world-class expert in international law.  Dag grew up in Uppsala—Sweden's premiere university town.  He was a smart young man who had every possible educational door opened for him.  The result was spectacular as Hammarskjöld grew into a thoughtful, wise man with profound insights into the human condition.  I reread Markings a few years back and found parts that were still breath-taking.

But even reading Markings did not prepare me for my first exposure to Olaf Palme's Sweden in 1970.  Except for his well publicized criticisms of the USA invasion of Vietnam, I actually knew very little about him at all.  But as I toured that country humming with world-class industry and no slums, I started to get clues of just what it required to become the leader of the Social Democrats of Sweden.  It turned out that Palme was another of those hyper-educated, thoughtful, and brilliant public servants that Sweden could cough up on a regular basis in those days.  Not only did he make great decisions about the operation of his country, he had a sound theoretical basis for his ideas.  The result was that Palme's Sweden became arguably the most imitated and admired country on earth.

Unfortunately, his belief in the intrinsic goodness of human nature did him in.  On a cold February night, Palme and his wife went to the movies unescorted by guards.  He hated the whole security business and ditched it regularly.  It made him an easy target for an assassin.  The crime has never been solved and the list of bad guys with bad motives is long.  But whoever they were, they really took out the right guy.  The Left in Europe has really never recovered.  Sweden has lost much of its unusual character.

A Charlie Brown Christmas turns 50

When Charlie Brown Christmas premiered in 1965, I was a high school junior living in northwestern North Dakota—an exceptionally harsh place to be in December.  I wasn't much of a "Peanuts" fan.  Real life offers enough examples of incompetence—I am not sure why I should be entertained by cartoonish versions of disasters.  Besides, in 1965 my father had become embroiled in another utterly pointless church fight so I was feeling pretty "bah humbug" about the very idea of Christmas.  So I missed the premiere.

I didn't see Charlie Brown Christmas until the 1970s when I had moved to St. Paul.  Charlie Brown's creator, Charles Schultz, had grown up in St. Paul—something the locals liked to remind whoever asked.  His father had owned a barber shop about three blocks from where I once lived.  So out of curiosity, I spent a half hour watching a network program designed to entertain children and found it artistically complex and surprisingly profound.  Like many things that are unexpectedly good, this little masterpiece almost didn't get made and only took it's final shape at the insistence of Schultz.

The 50th showing of Charlie Brown Christmas inspired some interesting remembrances. Scott Collins of the LA Times wrote:

"But two other major creative decisions led to disagreement — and also helped ensure that "Charlie Brown Christmas" remained unique in its approach to the holiday.

Schulz insisted that no laugh track be used. At the time, canned laughter was a virtual requirement for TV comedy. Lee Mendelson pleaded that without it, the special would plod along. But Schulz detested laugh tracks and would not budge, according to the Michaelis biography.

The other standoff involved religion. The script included a climactic speech in which Linus delivered an onstage explanation of the "true meaning of Christmas" by reciting the story of Jesus' birth according to St. Luke. Mendelson argued that religion had to be kept out of prime-time entertainment. Again, Schulz — who according to his biographer was engaged in a lifelong internal struggle over his own Christian beliefs — was insistent: "We can't avoid it."

Now that I have mostly gotten over the absurdities of my overly religious childhood, I try to think about that trauma as a subset of a much larger cultural experience.  After all, stripped of the mystical mumbo-jumbo, religion is mostly just cultural anthropology.  And viewed in that light, the amazing success of Charlie Brown Christmas makes perfect sense.  Let me explain.

As a culture, Christianity has been phenomenally successful.  Yes it has had its tragedies from the Inquisition to the 30-Years War to Jerry Falwell and the rest of the list too long to recount here.  But no other culture was so ready to embrace the scientific revolution—both Newton and Darwin were devout Christians.  No other culture went through such upheavals to rid themselves from slavery.  This was the culture that figured out the Industrial Revolution and its economics just towered over all alternatives.  The social advances did not come in a straight line but in most of the versions of Protestant Christianity women are fully integrated throughout the clergy.  Etc.!

IMHO, perhaps Christianity's greatest single teaching is told at every Christmas service.  It is the story from Luke of the annunciation of the birth of Jesus to the shepherds. This one—the one that Linus speaks in the cartoon.

Luke 2:

[8] And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.
[9] And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.
[10] And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.
[11] For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.
[12] And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.
[13] And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,
[14] Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

Yes this tale of angels talking to the shepherds has a high mumbo-jumbo content.  But strip out the magical tale and there is an amazing sociological principle on display.  Because according to the story, when god came to earth as a human baby, the FIRST people who got the news were some poor guys working outside at night.  This foundation story means that Christianity would be a religion that was supposed to respect the people who found themselves at the very bottom of the socio-economic ladder.  Not surprisingly, Christianity was first the religion of slaves in the Roman Empire.  This did not always work—see feudalism—but the principle is restated at least once a year on the one occasion when everyone goes to church.

Turns out folks LIKE the idea that the people at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder deserve respect.  Even better, this belief leads directly to successful and prosperous societies.  And by highlighting this message in Charlie Brown Christmas, Charles Schultz pretty much made sure his Christmas special would be a hit for decades.

I have a personal reason for approving the inclusion of the Luke tale in a cartoon show.  Linus, the character who stands on an empty stage to recite those lines, appears to be about seven years old.  That was the age when I memorized the Luke Christmas story (all 20 verses).  Not surprisingly, my parents much approved and soon incorporated this act into the family traveling salvation show.  I stood up in front of folks in nursing homes and shut-ins who could not get to church and recited it—often many times each Christmas.  I was still doing this act in high school.  And yes, I can still do it.

Merry Christmas!

Växjö Sweden—Europe's greenest city?

Växjö Sweden decided in 1991 to become a fossil-fuel-free city.  I shouldn't even speculate why a small city of 100,000 in one of the historically poorer parts of Sweden decided to do what few other municipalities would even try because I wasn't there.  But since my maternal grandmother grew up near there, I am going to guess it had something to do with the desire to stay warm without going broke doing it.

Växjö is located in the rocky state of Småland in SE Sweden.  The farmland is so miserable that most of the Smålanders who left for North America were just hoping for a better diet.  But because the farmland is poor, the folks who stayed behind survived and prospered by becoming unusually inventive in a country where inventors are treated with respect.  The Swedish crystal business was in Småland as is the headquarters of IKEA.  These are people who can organize clever building projects.

Even so, they decided to chase the fossil-free goal 25 years ago and they are not done.  They have had to cope with the headaches of prototype-level technology.  There are probably already decisions they would have made differently with 25 years of hindsight.

This is HARD to do.  Anyone who seriously believes that merely signing some glorious statement of good intentions is all that is necessary for good outcomes should go look at those who have actually tried to pull it off.  Notice that these difficulties surfaced in a political environment that is essentially corruption-free.  And this target was agreed to by all the political parties (8).  And it was STILL hard!

Russia defends Christianity

Anyone who believes that religion is just a cushy set-up that allows some corrupt charlatans the opportunity to fleece the rubes, has a valid point because this is often true—especially here in USA.  Yet as disgusting as may be to watch a televangelist take money from widows who are living on Social Security, this is, believe it or not, a VAST improvement over some of the social arrangements that have historically included religious practices.

My background is Lutheran and the realization that religious people like my parents had a long history of messing with government was very slow in coming.  I remember the first time I really looked at a chess set and wondered what the bishop was doing on the back row next to the king and queen because my parents didn't hang out with anyone who was in any way royalty.  And then I spent some time in Scandinavia and realized that even though these were countries where only a tiny number attended devout observances, the Lutheran Church still had considerable clout.  Lutherans with political power—amazing.

One of the perks of having a state church is that it is possible to hire scholars to explain its actions to the outside world.  And since these positions pay fairly well, the scholars tend to be first rate.  Today's piece was written by a Danish scholar who spends her time telling the tales of woe that have befallen Christians in the middle east.  This is also an eye-opener because you could probably count on the fingers of one hand the citizens of USA who even KNOW that there are Christians in places like Iraq.  (Of course, thanks to our bungling, there aren't all that many Christians left in Iraq.)

And so, Putin of Russia, who seems to be a devout Orthodox Christian, has made the rescue of ME Christians part of his mission in Syria.  This is confusing the heck out of the dime-store "Christians" like Mike Huckabee or Ted Cruz.  After all, the USA state propaganda long demonized the USSR for their godlessness.  Now Russia has become too religious for their meager abilities to understand.

Thoughts on immigration

A few weeks back, I was hosting an old college roommate who has Swedish roots like I do.  It was a beautiful early fall day so we elected to drive up the St.Croix valley.  When we got to Taylors Falls, we turned inland on the road to Lindström in Chisago County  This area figured prominently in the Swedish immigration to Minnesota and was immortalized by the legendary writer, Vilhelm Moberg, who wrote what many consider the definitive books on the immigrant experience. His emigrants series of four novels was written between 1949 and 1959 and describes one Swedish family's migration from Småland to Chisago County, Minnesota in the mid-19th century. This was a destiny shared by almost one million Swedish people, including several of the author's relatives. These novels have been translated into English: The Emigrants (1951), Unto a Good Land (1954), The Settlers (1961), The Last Letter Home (1961).  These books were turned into two absolutely stunning films by Jan Troell starring Max von Sydow and Liv Ullmann (The Emigrants and The New Land.)

Tiny Lindström is especially proud of its Swedish heritage.  They have erected a statue to Moberg, they have agreed that the signs along main street will be in both English and Swedish, and perhaps most whimsically, they painted their water tower to look like a Swedish coffee pot.  The highlight of their efforts to remember their heritage is the copy of the statue raised to the emigrants in Karlshamn Sweden. It portrays a couple—the man looking resolutely to the new land while his wife is looking over her shoulder at the home and family she is leaving behind.

When I was a young man, I thought this statue was a message that without male determination, not much would have ever been accomplished.  Yet as I came to know the history of my immigrant grandparents, the statue became more poignant.  My grandfather came to USA in 1899 and found work in the Chicago steel industry.  The work was astonishingly hard and dangerous and by 1921, he was weary enough to try his hand at farming in Minnesota.  His timing could not have been worse.  The Great Depression may have started in 1929 but the depression in agriculture started in 1921 as commodity prices crashed.  So there he was stuck with a near-zero income in a tiny house without electricity or central heating in an area of the world with brutal winters.  Things went from bad to worse in 1929 and my poor grandmother was so miserable that she would often cry herself to sleep from homesickness.  In 1935, she entered hospital for treatment of a gall bladder condition.  She died of a botched surgery but she could have also died of a broken heart.  If she looked back when leaving Sweden, she was probably wise.

By all accounts, my grandfather was a superb foundry man and an excellent farmer.  He quickly learned English and was soon a citizen.  He was very politically active and helped organize several cooperatives and the Farmer-Labor Party.  And he worked himself to death.

original statue in Sweden

In many ways, my tribe were perfect immigrants.  We believe God wants us to work hard.  We believe in education.  We are honest to a fault.  And our politics are so admirable, Sweden was by FAR the most emulated country of the 20th century.  Our societies are essentially corruption-free.  Why even now, Bernie Sanders claims his ideas come from Scandinavian social democracy.  And while it is nice that Bernie thinks we are to be admired, I would be shocked if he knows anything about the evolution of Nordic social democracy.

But the biggest problem we face is that there are not many of us.  Even in good old Protestant USA, our version of Protestantism is different.  Our definition of a good public-private division is far from the dominant culture.  We have radically different ideas about war and peace.  We are not the people who believe in for-profit medicine, etc.  So there many days when I know I am a stranger in a strange land.  A second generation (mother's side) and third generation (father's side) American and I am not even close to being assimilated and the chance my tribe will ever have serious cultural influence is essentially zero.

The drive back from Lindström was quiet as the reality of our cultural irrelevance sank in.  We have struggled so hard and accomplished quite a lot yet for both of us, we are the end of the line—neither of us have children.  USA is not a good place for people like us.  I was really quite sad for at least a week.

Compared to the problems of Syrians now staggering into Germany or Iraqis landing in Northern Sweden, my problems are trivial.  Those people will not have assimilated in 10 generations.  The multiculturalists assure us that this poses no problems—especially if the dominant culture will only be tolerant and accepting.  My experience is that it is almost impossible to get the dominant culture to accept even excellent ideas like net-zero energy-efficient housing.  So I have reached the conclusion that rather than accept or encourage mass migrations of desperate people, it is much preferable to create the conditions so they can thrive where they are.

New austerity measures come to Finland

Finland's economic woes these days are very nasty considering how much she has done to avoid them.  Her work force is incredibly hard-working and skilled, her education system is renown throughout the world as arguably the best, and her political culture is one of the least corrupt. That's the good news. The bad news is that she barely has enough agricultural land to feed herself, she has spent her history trying to maintain a culture while sandwiched between two powerful neighbors that love to rip her off, her complicated language is unlike almost anyone else's on earth, while her remote geographic location make most trade relationships difficult and expensive.

Because of Finland's historical isolation, she leapt at the chance to join the EU.  On paper, this looked like the obvious thing to do.  In reality, this has caused most of her current economic woes.  First, she got put on the hook for the Greek debts and then she was forced into an economic boycott with Russia—her biggest and most important trading partner by far.  If that were not bad enough, her two most important industries have been slammed by forces that were not at all easy to prepare for.  Not so lang ago, Nokia was one of the big global players in the mobile phone market.  That was before smartphones made folks believe that reliable call quality was not nearly so important as having a portable computer that could shoot high-def movies.  Finland's innovative and clever paper industry managed to become the top player on the planet just in time for the promise of the "paperless" society to finally come true.

Yes indeed, no one in their right mind would want the economic problems of Finland these days.  So no one should be especially surprised that the political response to these massive problems are especially lame.  In the article below, we see that some "bright" minds think the solution to her economic woes is to increase the working day by 15 minutes.  That's going to fix things...NOT!

Denmark and windpower

As someone who lives in a little town that has three Danish wind turbines turning against the horizon, I am not a bit surprised that the Danes have now built enough of these graceful giants to actually meet their total electricity demands on days with ideal conditions.  Denmark is a tiny country with a small population.  Not surprisingly their economy doesn't overwhelm very many categories.  But because of an interesting combination of historical forces, wind power is one of them.  They are still a ways from becoming a fully "decarbonized" society but they seem to be far enough along to actually see such a goal on their horizon.

I personally find it very encouraging that someone is actually forging ahead with real solutions.  Yes there are scaling problems between Denmark and a USA or even England.  But someone has to iron out the kinks in powering a society by renewables and so when a small country assigns itself the task, it is good for the rest of us.  And as someone who lives in an area with so much wind that it actually drove some of the early settlers insane, I am especially glad to see someone working on the problems of powering a society with something as fickle as the wind.

Denmark and energy

Those of us who have been preaching that economic growth is not dependent on increased energy use have been ridiculed as idle dreamers for decades.    Of course, it doesn't help that most of the folks who would encourage less fossil fuel consumption usually prescribe policy positions that rely on increasing energy prices.  Anyone who is just scraping by doesn't want to hear anything like that.  So rich and poor in USA believe that it is in everyone's best interest to do what it takes to keep energy cheap and plentiful.

And then there are the Danes who have been taking energy seriously since forever (and certainly since the oil disruptions of the 1970s.)  Now comes the news that their energy consumption is at a 42-year low, even though they have had more or less continuous economic growth in that time frame.

How they actually accomplished that feat is a long story but suffice it to say, they have delinked economic growth from increased energy consumption.  So it can be done.  Folks like me are technological pragmatists—NOT idle dreamers.  And hopefully this lesson will spread—the survival of human life on earth depends on it.