Part 2: How Much is Too Much? Comparing Income Inequality and the Cost of Living in Hampton Roads to New York City

Incomes are distributed more equally in Hampton Roads than nationally and certainly more so than in New York City. At least 80 percent of households in Hampton Roads are better off in economic terms than the comparable 80 percent in New York City

John Muir Newsletter, Winter 1990/1991

John Muir Newsletter winter, 1990-1991 JOHN MUIR NEWSLETTER REVIVED The John Muir Center for Regional Studies at the University of thePacific is very pleased to begin republication of the John Muir Newsletter. The first newsletter under this title ran six years and ended with the publication of the John Muir Papers (microform edition) in 1986. The current quarterly Newsletter will be published in fall and spring of each year, starting with this fall 1990 issue. The Newsletter will serve as a clearing house of information on John Muir, publications and events concerning Muir and his legacy, news of the environment, appropriate book reviews and announcements, short features and other items of interest. Its pages will be open to anyone who wishes to share such news and information with the readers of the Newsletter. Its success will, therefore, very much depend on the support it receives from its readers. If readers send in their news and announcements, the Newsletter will allow Muir enthusiasts to keep in contact with each other and with events in which they have a mutual interest. The John Muir Center takes great pride in aiding the work which Muir undertook of enhancing awareness of the environment. In that spirit, the Center will be delighted to receive any appropriate news, notices, anecdotes, graphics and environment-related information. Deadlines for submissions are January 1, April 1, July 1 and October 1. The editor will make final decisions on acceptance of submissions.This first issue of the Newsletter is available free to interested parties, and will be sent to past participants of the California History Institute. Subsequent issues will be distributed to subscribers only. If you wish to continue receiving this publication, see subscription information on page five. CONTENTS Gold Rush Theme for CHI 1991 2 John Muir\u27s Trust in Wilderness 2 Another Muir Monograph Nears Publication 3 Yosemite Celebrates 4 John Muir Center One Year Later 4 new series, volume 1 number 1 YOSEMITE AND SEQUOIA PARKS FEATURED The Summer 1990 issue of California History, the quarterly journal of the California Historical Society, is devoted to the subject of Yosemite and Sequoia: A Century of California National Parks. Guest editor of the special issue is Alfred Runte, distinguished historian of the national parks and author of a recently-published history of Yosemite. The richly illustrated, expanded issue includes an introductory essay by Runte, an historical overview of preservation and resource management at Sequoia and King\u27s Canyon by Lary M. Dilsaver and Douglas H. Strong, a piece by Peter J. Blodgett on tourism in Yosemite, a study of 19th century Yosemite painters and photographers by Kate Nearpass Ogden, an article by Anne F. Hyde on early tourist travel, a biographical essay on Joseph Grinnell by Runte, a study of Yosemite\u27s built environment before 1940 by Robert C. Pavlik, and an article by Lary Dilsaver on the founding of Kings Canyon National Park. Copies of this special issue are available by mail for $7.95 (plus$2.50 postage) from the California Historical Society, 2090 Jackson Street, San Francisco, 94109. GOLD MINING THE THEME OF THE 1991 CALIFORNIA HISTORY INSTITUTE California\u27s Gold Rushes: Past and Present is the focus for the 1991 California History Institute. Sponsored by the John Muir Center for Regional Studies and scheduled for April 18-21, 1991 at the University of the Pacific, the event will feature two days of academic sessions, followed by a two-day field trip with an overnight stay at one of Northern California\u27s early railroad resorts, Feather River Inn. While the Gold Rush of 1848-1856 was California\u27s first and best-known mining excitement, CHI 91 program committee members invite suggestions for a program which moves beyond the popular stereotype to consider gold mining in broad perspective both in space and time. From the 1850s to the present day, successive rushes have dotted the map with boom towns or other sporadic signs of mineral excitement. The events themselves, the forces and personalities behind them, the short and long rang impacts of California\u27s economy, environment, culture, politics, people, and image at home and abroad—these are some of the topics that may be covered in sessions on the UOP campus. As with previous Institutes over the past 43 years, Conference organizers encourage participation from anyone interested in the theme regardless of academic background or point of view. Sessions are open to participants and presenters from all relevant disciplines, including those in humanities, social science, environmental studies, technology the arts and other fields. Non-academics from the mining industry, service organizations, related businesses, government, and the general public are also welcome to submit proposals or to register as participants and guests. Those interested in more information should contact Professor R.H. Limbaugh, Director, John Muir Center for Regional Studies, University of the Pacific, Stockton, CA 95211. TPDTT^nTi l\\ JOHN MUIR NEWSLETTER Vol. I, No. 1, (new series) Published quarterly by the John Muir Center for Regional Studies, University of the Pacific, 3601 Pacific Ave., Stockton, CA 95211. Staff Editor: Sally M. Miller Center Director: R. H. Limbaugh Graphic Artist Jane Sunter JOHN MUIR\u27S IN WILDERNESS By Terry Isles (excerpted by permission from The Countryman, (Western Australia), vol. 94 number 3) In 1984 the John Muir Trust was founded at Dunbar, Scotland, site of Muir\u27s birth in 1838. The Trust is ^ to conserve and protect wilderness, while respecting the needs of those living in such area.\u27 The trust now owns some 3,000 acres of superlative mountain country on the Knoydart peninsula in the west Highlands, accessible only by sea or on foot. Despite the remoteness, a small number of people live and work there, engaged in traditional activities such as sheep-farming and newer ones such as shellfish-farming. Rising from the shores of the fiord-like sea-loch to the highest point of Ladhar Bheinn at 3,350 ft., the land contains a wide range of habitats. However, it is classified as a degraded landscape, and it is the trust\u27s intention, after careful surveys, to bring it back to its full ecological potential. This will mean a lot of effort by volunteers, as well as considerable expense. For further information, write to Freepost, John Muir Trust, Edinburgh. ANOTHER JOHN MUIR MONOGRAPH NEARS PUBLICATION The John Muir Center for Regional Studies is currently preparing for publication a volume based on the proceedings of the 1990 California History Institute which was devoted to the life and work of John Muir. The Institute, one of the most successful in the forty-three years in which these annual conferences have been held, drew over two hundred participants. More than thirty presentations in a dozen sessions were conducted over a three-day period on the campus of the University of the Pacific. At the conclusion of that portion of the Institute, many of the participants went on a field trip to Yosemite National Park for the weekend, where they celebrated John Muir\u27s birthday and Earth Day. The monograph, John Muir and His Legacy, will include revised versions of many of the Institute presentations. It is anticipated that perhaps two-thirds of the original presentations will be represented in the monograph. The monograph will include chapters on Muir\u27s biography and on Muir and his various interests such as botany, geology, religion, literature and conservation. Several publishers are interested in reviewing the completed manuscript when it is ready. The monograph will be handsomely illustrated and is one which any reader of the Newsletter will be anxious to own. JOHN MUIR LIBRARY CONSERVED In 1987 the Holt-Atherton Library received $11,400 from the Skaggs Foundation to repair and conserve over a quarter of the 648 volumes in John Muir\u27s Library Collection. That project is now completed, thanks to the professional efforts of Ms. Gerrilee Hafvenstein, an Art and Book Conservator who was hired to undertake the project. Working part-time in her Sacramento studio, Gerrilee patiently and expertly restored 200 volumes—50 more than the original budget estimate—at an average cost of$55.07 per book. Scholars now have full access to this rich working library that contains perhaps the most extensive holographic notations within any collection of its kind. WE NEED NEWS! To keep abreast of research, publications, events, and ideas among Muir scholars and friends, we need input from our readers. Please send us information that we can share with others. Some specific items of interest: news of ongoing or new research; recent publications of interest; announcements of forthcoming events; environmental issue updates; letters of general interest or concern; book reviews; short essays. All copy for consideration should be mailed directly to Professor Sally M. Miller, Editor, John Muir Newsletter, Muir Center for Regional Studies, University of the Pacific, Stockton, CA 95211. Unsolicited material cannot be returned. Editorial policy and review remain the prerogative of the editorial staff. [R CONFERE] VIDEO PRODUCTION CONTEMPLATED At the Muir Conference in April a professional camera crew taped over half of the sessions and recorded a half- dozen interviews by participants from sessions not otherwise taped. Most of the slides from session programs were also taped separately, to be dubbed in later. That was Phase I of a project designed to yield eventually a series of video-cassettes for the academic market. Funding for Phase I, amounting to several thousand dollars, was provided by a grant from a private donor and from the Uni- versity\u27s Office of Life-long Learning. Phase II, the editing of the raw footage, is now in the planning stages. A new fund-raising effort will be required to complete the project. We will issue a progress report in our next issue. Any suggestions for obtaining the necessary funding will be appreciated. YOSEMITE CELEBRATES ITS TENNIAL \u27W. As is well known, the year 1990 marks the centennial of the law establishing Yosemite National Park. The centennial has been marked with many programs at the Park, some of which had to be canceled during the third week in July when the park was evacuated and closed for a week because of an enormous fire. Talks, concerts, and other events have been held in order to underline a century of increasing consciousness of the environment and the need for even more extensive recognition of the preservation ethic. Recent programs have included a portrayal by Thomas Smith of West Valley College in Saratoga, California, of Sgt. Carruthers whose military career included service in Tuolumne Meadows when the United States Cavalry was responsible for management of the national park in its earliest days. Reporter Gene Rose, who has covered both Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks for the Fresno Bee for many years, gave a talk on preservation and the role of the media. The Superintendent of Yosemite National Park, Mike Finley, spoke on the evolution of park management over the seventy-four years of the existence of the National Park Service. Concerts have included one by the United States Air Force Band of the Golden West. Another featured music inspired by Yosemite by musician Rick Erlien who back- packed with a keyboard, composing as he went. Over the summer, Lee Stetson performed his well- known one-man show as John Muir. He also presented a stage show entitled Stickeen in which Muir has a number of encounters with those he called his fellow mortals. The famous Muir story of the little dog named Stickeen with whom Muir was trapped on a glacier in Alaska was highlighted. A third show offered by Stetson was called \u27 \u27The Spirit of John Muir— A Centennial Celebration. As a special event, a time capsule was buried in front of the Yosemite Valley Visitor Center which is intended to be opened on the bicentennial of the park, October 1, 2090. THE JOHN MUIR CENTER ONE YEAR LATER Only a year ago the John Muir Center for Regional Studies was established to promote research into Muir\u27s life and legacy, to foster regional studies from a multi- disciplinary viewpoint, to build closer relationships between regional scholars and the lay community, to encourage out-of-classroom learning experiences, to provide opportunities for undergraduate research, and to publish the results of qualitative regional research. These general objectives were to be achieved through annual conferences with a regional thematic emphasis, a special publications program that would include a newsletter and a monograph series, periodic seminars and workshops for the UOP campus community, grant projects to raise special funds for regional research and publication, and course offerings with a regional component or emphasis. Looking back 12 months into the program is perhaps too early to assess its impact or accomplishments, yet we think we have earned a few high marks. The Muir Conference and Field Trip in April, by all accounts, was an outstanding event that underscored the educational value of bringing together specialists and the general public in a critical mass of interested people focused on a single subject. The combination of two days of concentrated seminar study, followed by a two-day field trip, demonstrated how well experiential learning can supplement and enliven the passive mode of teaching by lectures and slide- shows. Feedback was so enthusiastic that we have adopted this four-day campus-field format for at least the 1991 California History Institute, if not for the indefinate future. Readers may look forward to another holistic experience in 1991 as the gold rush theme is pursued from a variety of academic dimensions and field observations. During the spring semester of 1990 Professor Ron Limbaugh directed a special undergraduate team research project centering on the Chinese community that occupied Knight\u27s Ferry, California, from the early Gold Rush to the 1920s. Statistical data from court records, tax assessment rolls, manuscript census records and other quantitative resources were directly entered on computer and analyzed with SPSS software to produce a statistical profile of the Chinese community and its economic status. At the same time standard literary sources were combed for corroborative evidence of Chinese social and cultural developments, and students built upon those written records with raw data from oral interviews, photographs and on-site inspection. Although still in the drafting stage, the final result should be a modest but substantive monograph that will be published by the John Muir Center. Very recently the Center concluded an agreement with the Bank of Stockton to inventory and catalog some 30,000 photographs in two significant collections, one of •URCHASERS: THE JOHN MUIR PAPERS ON MICROFILM Anchorage Municipal Library Brigham Young University California State Library Colorado State Library Denver State University Ohio State University Oregon State University Princeton University Schofield, Mr. Edmund Southern Methodist University Texas Tech University University of Arizona University of California, Berkeley (Reels 23-33, 35-50) University of California, Los Angeles (UC System Joint Purchase) University of Minnesota, Minneapolis University of Nevada, Reno University of Oklahoma University of Oregon University of Texas, Ausitin University of the Pacific University of Utah University of Wisconsin, Madison University of Wyoming Yale which was recently acquired by the Bank to supplement its own historic photo resources. This $50,000 contract, extending over two years, will utilize the latest computer technology to input data directly on laser disk for permanent storage and ready access. The Muir Center staff will supervise and administer the project, including the hiring of a photo catalog specialist and a student assistant, while the Bank will provide the financial resources, the computer hardware and software, and the physical space. In conjunction with the UOP Summer School program, Professors Curt Kramer and Ron Limbaugh have teamed up to offer a two-course combination that next summer, hopefully, will attract students from around the country. The pair of courses, tentatively entitled California Geology and California History , will offer a combination of classroom study and joint field trips over a five-week period to three distinctive geologic and historic regions in Northern California: the North Bay and Coastal areas in Napa and Sonoma Counties, the Mother Lode area and the Southern Mines in Calaveras and Tuolumne Counties, and the High Sierra area in and around Nevada, Plumas and Butte Counties. Abrochure describing the offerings is being distributed to all major academic institutions across the U.S. Other projects are contemplated for the near future, including regular faculty/student campus seminars and workshops, grant projects involving a consortium of regional historians, and contract research projects in conjunction with the staff of the Sociology Department. All in all, despite our relatively low profile and our need to piggyback on the support staff of the History Department and the UOP administration, we have been as active as the extent of our resources allow, and we have a vision of the future that includes the development of a full- fledged center for regional research, publication and teaching. BE A MEMBER OF THE JOHN MUIR CENTER FOR REGIONAL STUDIES Costs are a problem everywhere, especially in academia today. We can only continue publishing and distributing this modest newsletter through support from our readers. By becoming a member of the John Muir Center, you will be assured of receiving the Newsletter for a full year. You will also be kept on our mailing list to receive information on the annual California History Institute and other events and opportunities sponsored by the John Muir Center. Please join us by completing the following form and returning it, along with a$15. check made payable to The John Muir Center for Regional Studies, University of the Pacific, 3601 Pacific Ave., Stockton, CA 95211. Yes, I want to join the John Muir Center and continue to receive theJohn Muir Newsletter.. Enclosed is $15 for a one-year membership . Name Institution/Affiliation Mailing address & zip_ NEWS OF OUR READERS Sherry Hanna, John Muir\u27s granddaughter-in-law, writes that Shell Oil Company is erecting a statue of John Muir in Martinez, on the corner of Alhambra Valley Road and Alhambra Avenue. Rather than lose the lot to developers who wanted to construct an office building, the City of Martinez purchased the lot and will maintain it as landscaped open space. S. Michael Hall of the Department of Tourism Management of the School of Resource Science and Management of the University of New England, Australia, reports that his Australian Research Council grant has been renewed. This will enable him to continue work on his project on the significance of John Muir\u27s travels in Australasia in 1903-04 and their role in developing conservation thought. Dr. Hall was a presenter at the California History Institute in April, 1991. He promises to send the Newsletter reports on news of interest from the South Pacific from time to time. Ron Limbaugh recently presented a paper, John Muir as Environmental Educator, at a meeting of the Association of Environmental and Outdoor Educators, held in Yosemite National Park in an outdoor ampitheater with the temperature hovering at a brisk 35 degrees. Muir might have considered it a fine test for any outdoor enthusiast. John Muir Newsletter The John Muir Center For Regional Studies University of the Pacific, Stockton CA, 95211 Non-Profit Org. U.S. Postage PAID Permit No. 363 Stockton, CA RETURN ADDRESS REQUESTED TIME -DATED MATERIALhttps://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmn/1023/thumbnail.jp

John Muir Newsletter, Spring 1993

John Muir Newsletter spring 1993 university of the pacific volume 3, number 2 1993 EARTH DAY CELEBRATES TH MUIR IMAGE by Janene Ford On a clear, sunny spring day the Earth Day Conservation Fair in Sacramento attracted thousands of people including large groups of school children. Sponsored by the California Department of Conservation, many organizations were invited to participate by setting up booths in front of the Capitol showing various aspects of recycling, alternative energy, conservation, and other reflections on The Muir Image. The University of the Pacific, the John Muir National Historical Site, the Sierra Club and a number of government agencies such as the California Conservation Corps and Cal Trans were represented. Two staff members of the UOP Library, this author and Rachel Fenske, set up a display on The John Muir Papers and answered questions for visitors and distributed a handout. Their interaction with the younger students revealed that several children thought that John Muir invented Earth Day. Many visitors expressed great interest in the photographs of pages from Muir\u27s journals, sketches, and correspondence, People seemed fascinated with the photographs of two of Muir\u27s inventions, the bed and study desk. Many of John Muir\u27s great-grandchildren and a few of the great-great-grandchildren were present and received framed proclamations and attended a family picnic. Allison Lincoln, thirteen year old daughter of Lynne Hanna Lincoln of Dixon, wrote a poem about her grandfather and how he might feel about the earth today; it was read by Bill Hanna of Napa during the mid-day ceremony. Some of the crowd wore T-shirts with the words The Muir Image emblazoned on their backs. Entertainment, music, jugglers, and happy children carrying give-away shoe strings, pencils, tree seedlings, business cards, pamphlets, bags, and key rings marked the day. It is heartening to know that the Muir Message is not only still relevant, but is especially thriving in California. Those of us who work intimately with Muir\u27s original journals, books and other papers on a daily basis see serious scholars, authors, and students undertaking research, but seldom see young children or have the opportunity to show them the wealth of materials that are in our keeping. Extra copies of the handout are available. If readers would like one, please send a stamped self-addressed envelope to the Holt-Atherton Department of Special Collections, University of the Pacific Libraries, Stockton, CA 95211. CONTRIBUTIONS WANTED FOR THE NEWSLETTER As in earlier issues of this Newsletter, the staff wishes to invite its subscribers and readers to submit news, announcements, reviews and information to the Newsletter for consideration for publication. It is the goal of this Newsletter to keep its readers informed of all environmental news so that we can be as aware of relevant activities as possible. Please share your information with us so that we can spread the word. The editor welcomes your submissions and will determine whether they may be published in a forthcoming issue. Nature\u27s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West, by William Cronon. New York: W. W. Norton, 1991, xxiii + 530 pp., maps, illus., bibl., index. Reviewed by Roderick Frazier Nash, [Editor\u27s note: With this issue, we inaugurate a policy of occasionally reprinting book reviews of noteworthy books dealing with the environment. The following review is reprinted from the American Historical Review with the kind permission of the Review and of the book reviewer. It appeared in the AHR 97 (June 1992): 939.] In Nature\u27s Metropolis William Cronon continues a scholarly career dedicated to demonstrating what history can learn from ecology. Cronon\u27s first major book, the celebrated Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists and the Ecology of New England (1983), examined environmental modification immediately before and after the initial contact of European settlers with the northeastern coast. Here, and in the present volume, Cronon points out that what we call nature is a complex mosaic of original and constructed, people-caused conditions. Obviously original or, in Cronon\u27s terms, first nature (p. 264), determined the pre-human environment. But thereafter, the most powerful force shaping the ecosystem derived from human ambition and human ingenuity. Cronon\u27s goal for environmental history is very close to that of ecology: understanding the interrelationships between mankind and the natural world. In the book at hand. Cronon shifts his focus several centuries later and several thousand miles westward from colonial New England. His narrative revolves around the city of Chicago, but his thesis is neither this metropolis nor any city can be understood apart from its environmental and economic hinterland,. In the case of Chicago, that region was nothing less than a huge slice of North America extending from the Great Lakes to the Rocky Mountains - the Great West. Cronon takes pains to tell the city-country story as a unified narrative (p. xiv). Ecology-like, he integrates rather than separates. Constantly he emphasizes that urban and rural areas are parts of an interconnected landscape and share an interconnected history. The environment, Cronon argues, is not jut nature. Environmental historians must study urban and economic developments as well. History, like ecology, should strive for seamlessness. So, Cronon writes, The history of the Great West is a long dialogue between the place we call the city and the place we call the country (p. 54). Today, as the centennial of his controversial essay on the American frontier approaches in 1993, Frederick Jackson Turner has apparently become the whipping boy of every Western historian. Cronon is gracious about it, but he follows suit. His principal complaint is that Turner persuaded several generations of Americans that the frontier, way out there, had nothing to do with the urban civilization thousands of miles to the east. The frontier was the new world, and by the time cities appeared it had vanished. Cronon does not see it this way. The frontier, or as he calls it the country, is linked commercially and, in a real sense ecologically, to the city. For Turner, in other words, the isolation of the frontier explained American development. For Cronon the frontier was never isolated. The West was not a wilderness but part of an urban empire. Nature\u27s Metropolis sweeps from the 1830s, when Chicago (the place of wild garlic) took shape as a white community, to 1893 when the city on the lake hosted the World\u27s Fair (at which, parenthetically, Turner delivered his famous frontier address). As might be expected in this kind of integrative book, Cronon writes about a wide range of subjects. Most of them have been treated in more detail by others, but Cronon\u27s forte is synthesis. We learn in his book about railroads, reapers, refrigerated meat cars, grain elevators, credit and bankruptcy networks, and futures market. These chapters are organized around specific resources: grain, lumber and beef. In each case Cronon shows how the chains of causation that altered, and he is frank to point out, devastated some environments, extend from the frontier through Chicago to Eastern European markets. The buffalo gave way to cows, the native prairie grasses to wheat, and the majestic white pine to the desolate Cutover Lands. Cronon is sensitive to the liabilities as well as the (continued on page 6) JOHN MUIR NEWSLETTER. VOL. Ill, #2 (NEW SERIES) SPRING, 1993 Published quarterly by the John Muir Center for Regional Studies, University of the Pacific, Stockton, CA 95211 Editor Center Director Staff © Sally M. Miller R.H. Limbaugh This Newsletter is printed on recycled paper. A Green History of the World: The Environment and the Collapse of Great Civilizations, by Clive Ponting. New York: St. Martin\u27s Press, 1991, i-xiv + 432 pp., maps, graphs, bib., index. Reviewed by Dan Flores, Hammond Professor of History, University of Montana Clive Ponting\u27s A Green History of the World sets a challenging task for itself — to tell in a single 400 page volume the environmental history of our planet from the spread of gathering-hunting societies across the globe 25,000 years ago through the pressing environmental issues of the late twentieth century. John Muir, were he alive today, would find this book valuable but perhaps too utilitarian in focus, too short on values and soaring inspirational language. Aldo Leopold, I suspect, would react very favorably to Ponting\u27s effort at a global and holistic treatment including his heavy reliance on statistical data — but like Muir might wonder what role an environmental ethic (particularly the Land Ethic) plays in Ponting\u27s story. The answer is: not much. Looking at the sweep of human history, Ponting sees the accelerating press of human population and major technological ratchet- effects like the Neolithic Revolution and the Industrial Revolution as far more central to the real story of environmental history. In sharp contrast to books like Clarence Glacken\u27s Traces on the Rhodian Shore, Roderick Nash\u27s The Rights of Nature, Max Oelschlaeger\u27s The Idea of Wilderness, or J. Baird Callicott\u27s various articles exploring comparative environmental ethics and values, Ponting appears to believe that the various ways humans have thought about nature have really made previous little practical difference on the long-term story of environmental history. After digesting the mass of data in this book, I think that he may well be right. Without being preachy or heavy-handed about it, A Green History of the World takes readers into the heart of the historical debate about humans and the planet. Is there an evolving environmental crisis? The trends of history suggest that, while many of the specific issues we face are nothing new, there is a long-term, unfolding crisis. Viewing the arguments of scholars like Lynn White, Jr., who suggests that the values of the Judeo-Christian tradition are the cause, Barry Commoner\u27s idea that the new technology is the culprit, and Paul Erhlich\u27s belief that the swelling human population is the problem, Ponting seems to rank White\u27s causation a distant third. about nature — the animism of primary cultures, the various Far Eastern religions, Judeo-Christian traditions, the Scientific Revolution, capitalism, or Marxism — have not influenced the nuances of the human/environment relationships. They have, and in ways that are important to the quality of both the environment and of human life. But the fact is that despite the wide range of values and beliefs that these ways of thinking represent, history provides examples of societies adhering to all of them that have destroyed nature and undermined themselves. Animistic beliefs did not prevent the Paleolithic hunters, the residents of Easter Island, the Maya or the Sumerians from bringing their worlds crashing down on them. Nor have Taoism or Buddhism prevented large-scale environmental devastation in China or India, any more than Christianity, capitalism, or Marxism have in the modern West. What Ponting\u27s examination of la longue duree demonstrates instead is that since gathering-hunting societies filled up the available space on the planet by about 10,000 years ago, the press of human population has fostered an efflorescence of ethnological fixes to enable more and more of us to survive. It took roughly two million years to build up a planetary population of four million of us at the climax of our lives as gatherer-hunters. Agriculture boosted that population to 200 million within just 8,000 years. For 1500 years after Christ, the exchange of epidemic diseases between formerly isolated human gene pools kept the world\u27s population from mushrooming. But as populations genetically resistant to those diseases have evolved, and as the Industrial Revolution and a global economy have accelerated the pace of technological innovation, the human population has inundated the Earth like a spreading mold, fouling water, air, and land in a process that 10,000 years of history has long since internalized. The human population reached the one billion mark in 1825. Within a century there were two billion; by 1960, three billion; by 1975, four billion. We humans surged to more than five billion by the later 1980s. Faced with such a scenario, Ponting asserts, modern environmental legislation has been little more than cosmetic (p. 400). While this book provides us with no reason to be optimistic, it does seem to clarify a few important issues. One is that our nostalgia for an environmental Golden Age is misplaced unless we are willing to reach 10,000 years into the past for a global model. The second is that reducing the human population by the 99 % that the model would require is, frankly, an ecological and certainly a moral impossibility. It seems to me that Ponting is suggesting that the technology that ratcheted us here is now probably our only hope for saving our skins. It is not that the diverse range of human belief systems JOHN MUIR IN NEW ENGLAND by Ron Limbaugh (Editor\u27s Note: Following the death of his father-in- law, John Strentzel, and the reorganization of the family orchard business in the Alhambra Valley of California, John Muir made plans for a European trip that would revive his creative energies. His wife Louie encouraged him; she would stay home with the two children while he and his Scottish friend William Keith, the San Franciso landscape painter, would revisit the Scottish moors they had last seen nearly a half-century before. In the spring of 1893 they made plans to travel separately to New York, then rendezvous there and sail jointly to Liverpool. The plans went awry, however, when Muir reached the East Coast. Robert Underwood Johnson, associate editor of Century and Muir\u27s acting literaiy agent, wanted to introduce him to the eastern literary establishment. The result was a whirlwind tour that dazzled Muir but delayed his departure for Europe. Tire following is an excerpt from a forthcoming book entitled John Muir and Stickeen: the Evolution of a Dog Story. It is used by permission of the author.) Muir\u27s eastern visit was intended as a brief stop en route to Europe. But Johnson converted it into a six- weeks celebrity tour, with Muir as the reluctant debutante. With Johnson opening doors and directing the agenda, Muir found himself the center of attention, a backwoods rustic with a repertoire of colorful anecdotes. He performed dutifully, meeting the social and intellectual elite, stuffing himself at banquets, and telling stories. A visit with John Burroughs was one of the first items on Muir\u27s agenda. Only a year older, yet in 1983 much better known than Muir, Burroughs was late- nineteenth century America\u27s most popular nature writer.1 He was a hesitant host, but at Johnson\u27s insistance he agreed to meet the visiting naturalist at Slabsides, Burroughs\u27 rustic home near Esopus, New York. Later known by their mutual acquaintances as The Two Johns, Burroughs and Muir became fond friends despite their contrasting personalities. Muir was an incessant talker whose wiry frame seemed to thrive on nervous energy in contrast to the portly Sage of Slabsides, who had acquired more conventional sleeping and eating habits.2 At their first meeting Burroughs was condescending, describing Muir as an interesting man with the Western look upon him, but a tiring conversationalist. You must not be in a hurry, he wrote, or have any pressing duty, when you start his stream of talk and adventure. Ask him to tell you his famous dog story ... and you get the whole theory of glaciation thrown in. 3 Moving north to Brahmin country, Johnson and Muir spent several days in and around Boston. They had a delightful day in the company of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, famed Civil War colonel of a black regiment, author and advocate of women\u27s rights. He escorted them on a Cambridge cultural tour which included the homes of James Russell Lowell and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, both poets Muir knew well from the books in his personal library. At Harvard Muir was introduced to a number of prominent faculty, including Josiah Royce, the California philosopher, and Francis Parkman, prominent American historian whose books Muir read avidly. But the writer whose work he knew best was Charles S. Sargent, Director of the Arnold Arboretum and author of the multi-volume Silva of North America. At his home in nearby Brookline Sargent hosted a banquet with Muir the honored guest. Writing his family later, Muir said he had to repeat the dog story I don\u27t know how often .4 More banquets and story-telling followed. At a dinner party in Manchester, New Hampshire, wrote Muir, Sarah Orne Jewett was there, and all was delightful. Here, of course, Johnson made me tell that dog story as if that were the main result of glacial action and all my studies, but I got in a good deal of ice-work ... and never had better listeners. 5 A quick pilgrimage to Concord highlighted Muir\u27s New England visit. Johnson took him to all the shrines: Concord Bridge, Hawthorne\u27s Old Manse, the Alcott residence, the graves of Emerson and Thoreau on Author\u27s Hill in Sleepy Hollow Cemetary, and, of course, Walden Pond, an easy saunter from town. After a delightful P.M. with Emerson\u27s son Edward Waldo and his father-in-law Judge John S. Keyes, where the dog story doubtless surfaced again, the two visitors caught the night train back to Boston.6 The New England tour concluded, Muir and Johnson returned to New York, where a final round of parties and story-telling delayed his departure for Europe. At Gramercy Park Muir dined at the family estate of Gifford Pinchot. In a letter home he described the scene: Here and at many other places I had to tell the story of the minister\u27s dog. Everybody seems to think it wonderful for the views it gives of the terrible crevasses of the glaciers as well as for the recognition of danger and the fear and joy of the dog. I must have told it at least twelve times at the request of Johnson or others who had previously heard it.... When I am telling it at the dinner-tables, it is curious to see how eagerly the liveried servants listen from behind screens, half-closed doors, etc. 7 The six weeks Muir spent in the East ended with his departure for Europe late in June, 1893—without William Keith, who had tired of waiting and sailed alone. But Muir could look back with no small satisfaction: he had mingled with some of the best minds of the continent; he had come as a stranger and had been (continued on page 7) JAPANESE JOURNALIST RESEARCHES MUIR\u27S LIFE AND WORK Shigeyuki Okajima, Deputy Directory of the Commentary Department for The Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan\u27s (and the world\u27s) largest daily newspaper, was in the United States recently on an Eisenhower Fellowship as special correspondent for global environmental issues. This was a return trip to this country; in the early 1980s he spent a year in the U.S. as visiting scholar at the University of Washington. On his latest trip he toured American archival institutions and visited environmental organizations to learn about this country\u27s green movement, and in particular, to study the life and work of John Muir. A recipient of the Global 500 Award from a United Nations agency in 1988, he is a counselor for the Nature Conservation and Wild Bird Societies of Japan, and a committee member of the Japanese Alpine Club. In 1990 he published a Japanese-language history of the American environmental movement, and a year later wrote Only One Earth, an English-language textbook for Japanese high school students. His recent tour included a visit to the Holt-Atherton Library at UOP, where he discussed Japan\u27s environmental movement and his special interest in Muir\u27s contributions to the concept of a global environmental ethics. He presented the library with a copy of his book and with copies of several environmental articles he has published in American- language newspapers. The green movement in Japan, though still in its formative stages, is gathering momentum and will soon be a major force on the international environmental scene. NEWS NOTES Richard F. Fleck, well-known for his work on Thoreau and Muir, has recently edited a book on Native American writings, soon to be published by Three Continents Press. Entitled Critical Perspectives on Native American Fiction, it presents essays on six Native American novelists who have emerged as internationally acclaimed writers. The editor, formerly with Teikyo Loretto Heights University in Denver, in July will become Dean of Denver\u27s Community College. Oxford University Press is publishing a reference book for young adults, Earthkeepers: Observers and Protectors of Nature. Scheduled for publication in the fall of 1993, it will include an article on Muir and a photo from the Holt-Atherton Library. John Muir T-Shirts are available from the John Muir Memorial Association. Depicting Muir leaning on a hiking stick, the T-shirt project is a fund-raiser to support the work of the John Muir National Historic Site. A shirt can be purchased with a check for $14,00, made out and sent to the John Muir Memorial Association, c/o Dianna Ceballos, 2220 Spring Lake Drive, Martinez, CA 94553, (510) 680-7561. Another movement is afoot to Save Mount Shasta. This has long been a goal of environmental activists who recognize the need for saving Shasta\u27s biodiverse habitat from further urban-industrial encroachment. John Muir was one of the first to publicize Shasta\u27s natural treasures, a

Part 5: Affordable Housing in Hampton Roads: Facts and Issues

The rapid increase in regional housing prices in recent years (97 percent between 1997 and 2006) has made it much more difficult for some people to own their own home. Between these years, the annual interest and principal payments required for a typical home purchase rose from only 21.5 percent of the median income of our region’s households to 32 percent. Economically viable solutions to affordable housing challenges nearly always include increased housing density in order to make more moderately priced housing profitable to builders

Part 1: The Regional Economy Downshifts

The spectacular first half of this decade is fading into the background as our regional economic growth rate has fallen back to the Commonwealth and national averages. Defense spending continues to rise in importance and now is responsible for more than 40 percent of our regional income generation

Part 3: Private Social Services in Hampton Roads: Problems and Prospects

These services, the funds for which are routed primarily through our United Way organizations, are part of the “social safety net” of which many regional citizens are ignorant. We detail these programs and their challenges

Part 7: Ranking Hampton Roads: Hot or Not?

The two most respected rankings of the livability of metropolitan areas are David Savigeau’s Places Rated Almanac (PRA) and Bert Sperling’s and Peter Sander’s Cities Ranked and Rated (CRR). In their most recent editions, PRA ranked Hampton Roads 20th in the nation among 370-plus metro areas, while CRR ranked our region 137th. We analyze where these ratings come from and how we compare to other areas

Part 6: Consolidation of Public Services in Hampton Roads: Would We Save Money and Enhance the Service We Receive?

Numerous individuals have suggested that the consolidation of some public services (police, fire, libraries, etc.) in Hampton Roads would save money. The evidence on this score is mixed, but very interesting, and should challenge some public officials

Front Matter: The State of the Region: Hampton Roads 2006

Cover, front matter, table of contents, and other materials for the 2006 The State of the Region report authored by the Regional Studies Institute at Old Dominion Universit