If you drive I-5 in Northern California and Southern Oregon, you may notice some references to the State of Jefferson.  There’s a barn near Yreka with a giant sign and lots of cars on the road have “Resident of State of Jefferson” license plate holders.

photo credit Jill Fredrickson

What’s it all about?

In 1941, Port Orford, Oregon Mayor Gilbert Gable launched a semi-serious — but mostly symbolic — secession movement involving the counties of southern Oregon and northern California.

Frustrated residents felt like their voices and their issues weren’t being heard in the state Capitols of Salem and Sacramento.  The main beef was over state-maintained roads, namely how their lack of improvement and maintenance was hurting the local economies.

The new state would be called Jefferson, after President Thomas Jefferson.  In late November, 1941, armed citizens in “patriotic rebellion” distributed informational Proclamations of Independence to passing motorists.  The pamphlet explained their intention to secede “every Thursday until further notice.”

Days later, Pearl Harbor was attacked and the fledgling movement took a back seat to the war.

Today

Seventy years later, how much has really changed?  Like everyone else, would-be Jefferson residents are still disenchanted with their state governments.

Jefferson gives the sparsely populated area a sense of community.  They’re not quite Californians and not quite Oregonians, but maybe something different entirely.  Something independent.

Jefferson is a state of mind.  It’s a beautiful territory.  With Mt. Shasta and the Siskiyous and kind of this high plateau in between, it’s the most picturesque part of our annual journey.

Did You Know?

Two bears led a torchlight parade through Yreka in 1941.  They’re names?

Itchy and Scratchy.  Not even making that up.

“A little rebellion now and then is a good thing…” –TJ

-Nick

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You know how everyone looks like a goof riding a Segway?  Turns out they don’t care, because it’s awesome.  We played tourist in SF last weekend, thanks to Bryn and her savvy Groupon-ing.

Look, no hands!

Along the route we learned some interesting trivia, some of which was even new to semi-locals like us.

• In a period of 8 months in 1849, San Francisco’s population grew from 500 people to over 100,000.
• Upon arriving in port, ship captains could lose their entire crew to gold fever.  To recruit new crewmembers, they would go to the taverns and restaurants and look for big guys eating with their elbows on the table, which apparently was a habit of sailors to keep their meal in one place on a rough sea.  The captains would get these former sailors good and drunk and essentially kidnap them to work on the ship.  Eventually people caught on and mothers began to warn their children to keep their elbows off the table.
• Much of the Embarcadero and Fisherman’s Wharf area is built on fill and abandoned ships.
• Because of this, the name of the now-landlocked neighborhood of North Beach makes much more sense.
• Joe DiMaggio grew up and learned to play baseball in North Beach.  He and Marilyn Monroe got married at City Hall, just like us.
• Domingo Ghirardelli and Levi Strauss were buddies.
• In a time before OSHA and harnesses, several workers building the Golden Gate bridge fell to their deaths, so eventually they put up a safety net.  The net saved 17 more.
• No Great Whites have been spotted in San Francisco Bay in over 50 years.  They prefer the saltier water beyond the Golden Gate.
• Pier 39 is the 3rd most visited tourist attraction in the US, behind Disneyworld and Times Square.
• The seal lions didn’t start lounging there until after the 1989 earthquake.

I fact-checked none of this.

-Nick

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In the last 200 years, the human population on our planet has exploded.  In an amount of time that is a mere nanosecond of earth’s history, we’ve multiplied like rabbits.  We mastered our domain and became, in the grand scheme of things, an overnight sensation.  Yes, like a double rainbow, we went viral.

Now what?

(Image courtesy of wikipedia)

Will the growth continue along it’s current path?  There are huge tracts of earth that remain uninhabited, will new technologies allow us to expand to every last inch of soil?  Necessity breeds invention, right?

Or do we reach some sort of upper limit that our planet can viably sustain, and plateau there for millennia?  (If this is true, I don’t think we’ll know our upper limit until it’s in the rear-view mirror.)

Or are we a one-hit-wonder, a flash in the pan?  Do we blow ourselves up in nuclear warfare or trash our planet to the point it no longer sustains life?

In terms of our growth and impact on the earth, we are the most successful animals ever known.  Some considerations:

• The world has never seen a collective scientific brainpower so strong.  It is conceivable that working together we could solve whatever limitations or problems we come across.
• Although population is still increasing, growth rates are in decline.  In developed parts of the world, birth rates are at or below “replacement rate.”  As more of the world develops, this would seem to support a population plateau.
• Humans are inherently self-interested and don’t often consider environmental externalities in their decisions.  With everyone behaving rationally for themselves, we could collectively poison the planet beyond repair.
• We are petty, self-important, and violent.  We kill each other at rates no other known species does.  Even though we live in a time of relative peace by historical standards, it only takes one nut job to start a nuclear war and ruin it for everyone.
• What do the public debt crises across Europe and the US tell us about the future of progressivism? Is it just a bump in a road or is the old adage true, that it’s all well and good until you run out of other people’s money?
• Despite the huge population growth, average life expectancy and standards of living are higher than ever.
• How will allocation of resources impact future societies?  What about income inequality on a national and global level?

What’s next?  There’s a lot of talk about the next 50-100 years, but what about the next 1000 years or 100,000 years and beyond.  We’re a young and successful species, and we’re like a teenager in high school; we think we’ve got everything figured out.  But just like Edison said, “We don’t know a millionth of one percent about anything.”

Are we really “viral” — multiplying like crazy and then either dying off or moving on to a new host?

History is easy; the future is hard.  And most often we only think a generation or two down the line.  In the long run, we’re all dead anyway, right?

-Nick

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The latest manufactured controversy in California is over the assembly’s recent decision to pass a law mandating “gay history” be added to the curriculum in California public schools.

Predictably, some people think this is at best just another example of the nanny state pushing the “homosexual agenda” and at worst a sure sign of the apocalypse.  These people need to turn off their Fox News for one minute and consider the facts:

• School districts will decide on their own the specific material they present, and in what grade level.  That means unless your first grader just got done learning about Malcolm X during Black History Month, you probably don’t have to worry about them learning who Harvey Milk was just yet.
• Teaching a student about gay history will not “turn them gay” any more than teaching them about STDs will give them herpes.  Shocking, I know.
• The history and contributions of several other minority groups are already in the curriculum, including women, African Americans, Mexican Americans, entrepreneurs, Asian Americans, European Americans, American Indians and labor.
• At the root of it all, your religion is the basis of your opposition, and that’s fine.  Public schools are secular for a reason.  You can teach your kids whatever you want about homosexuals at home.
• In a well-rounded education, you don’t get to just pick the parts of history you like and skip the rest.  Human history is filled with ugly events we’d like to forget; learning from those is how we grow.
• This is a history lesson, not a sexuality or psychology lesson.  I imagine one topic could be Walt Whitman’s contribution to 19th Century American literature.  I also imagine a teacher who wanted to remain employed would omit anything about his famous late night gay orgies*.
• The aim of this measure is to promote tolerance and equality, similar to how kids are taught about the Civil Rights movement.  We didn’t learn that blacks are superior or that we should want to become black, only that they were treated unfairly and struggled to overcome centuries of prejudice.

I don’t understand what opponents of this are so afraid of.  That the next generation ends up more open and accepting than their own?

*Yeah, totally made that part up.

-Nick

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Is Valentine’s Day just a corporate-created “holiday” designed to part us from money?

No.  While Hallmark has certainly capitalized on the popular holiday, Valentine’s traditions long predate the company’s 1910 founding.

The origins of Valentine’s Day can be traced all the way back to the Roman empire, when two Christian priests named Valentine were martyred.  Both were apparently killed on or around February 14th.

Still, there was no connection between these martyrs and romantic love worthy of a holiday.  So people starting mixing their stories and traditions.  A thousand years after his death, Saint Valentine was a much more romantic figure than we was in real life.  According to wikipedia:

“Since Legenda Aurea still provided no connections whatsoever with sentimental love, appropriate lore has been embroidered in modern times to portray Valentine as a priest who refused an unattested law attributed to Roman Emperor Claudius II, allegedly ordering that young men remain single. The Emperor supposedly did this to grow his army, believing that married men did not make for good soldiers. The priest Valentine, however, secretly performed marriage ceremonies for young men. When Claudius found out about this, he had Valentine arrested and thrown in jail.

There is an additional modern embellishment to The Golden Legend, provided by American Greetings to History.com, and widely repeated despite having no historical basis whatsoever. On the evening before Valentine was to be executed, he would have written the first “valentine” card himself, addressed to a young girl variously identified as his beloved, as the jailer’s daughter whom he had befriended and healed, or both. It was a note that read “From your Valentine.”

That story, combined with existing Greek and Roman February holidays dedicated to love and fertility, meshed together to form our Valentine’s Day tradition.

The earliest known Valentine’s “card” was a 15th century poem written by Charles, the Duke of Orleans, to his wife.  From then on, handwritten cards with romantic verses became very popular until the age of mass-production and the industrial revolution.

After that, companies like Hallmark were well-positioned to take advantage of the then-longstanding Valentine’s tradition.  But Hallmark’s relationship to the commercialization of Valentine’s Day is no different than the Christmas-tree farmer’s relationship to Christmas; they didn’t invent the holiday, but are happy to sell to those who celebrate it.

-Nick

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I brought a couple books with me to Mexico but didn’t crack open either one!  Fareed Zakaria’s The Post-American World has been on my list for a while but I haven’t gotten around to it until now.  I was afraid he was going to be a Negative Nancy and who wants to read such a downer in their free time.  What I found instead was a fairly optimistic outlook on global economics and politics looking forward to the first half of this century.

Zakaria argues that a “Post-American” world is inevitable, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing.  The cause of the shift is not a weakening of America, but rather a strengthening of everyone else, particularly developing nations like China, India, Turkey, and Brazil.  As more people and governments enter the global arena, the influence of any one superpower, by definition, will be diminished.

Like a good economist, Zakaria points out that free enterprise and free trade have together lifted more people out of poverty than the sum total of ALL international aid and welfare programs combined.  And these trends show no signs of stopping.  He mentions that people of developing nations often have a positive opinion of foreign corporations, because they signal jobs and opportunity and investment.  Meanwhile, Americans are increasingly distrustful of foreign companies.  It was interesting to read about how initially America sought to globalize trade and open markets, and now we seem to be retreating back toward protectionism and xenophobia.  Could other countries be beating us at our own game?

Zakaria is an eloquent author and a student of history.  He draws some interesting parallels of America’s position in the early 21st century to Britain’s in the early 20th.  When you’re at the top, there’s only one way you can go.  But you can slow the slide.

The book was released in 2008, before the recent financial crisis and recession.  I would be curious to learn what impact, if any, those events would have on The Post-American World.  The resiliency, diversity, and vitality of the American people, whose culture, innovations, and ideas, have dominated the world for 100 years are some characteristics Zakaria considers strongpoints for America going forward.

But the ineptitude of the government is America’s own worst enemy.  The country is bankrupt, but politicians are too concerned with fundraising, re-election, and holding the party-line to make educated policy decisions — decisions that could help maintain America’s interest and influence in an increasingly Post-American world.

-Nick

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If you’ve grown tired of the steady drumbeat of fear and pessimism that dominates our media and politics, Matt Ridley’s The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves is the book for you.  Ridley argues that humans are better off today than at any point in history, and that despite all the naysayers, the evidence points to advancing prosperity tomorrow.

The Rational Optimist takes a long look at human history that I found pretty in-depth and pretty academic.  Being a history nerd I thought it was interesting but it might be a little drawn out for others.  Robert Wright’s The Moral Animal would definitely be a helpful prerequisite.  Ridley’s basic theory is that free trade and open communication creates a “collective intelligence” that leads to an exponential increase in ideas, technology, and living standards.

The best government he argues, is one that regulates capital markets, but remains largely uninvolved in markets of goods and services.  Politicians should promote commerce by minimizing red tape, eliminating protective tariffs, investing in infrastructure, and then getting out of the way.

The gloom and doom bandwagon has been a popular one for centuries.  Each generation is armed with a new disaster-de-jour and the sensationalist media is happy to indulge it’s spokespeople.  Ridley tackles famine, disease, overpopulation, global warming, and other problems — doing his best to debunk each one.  It’s a sharp contrast to the alarmist calls of Thomas Friedman or Al Gore, and the sunshine-and-roses outlook is backed up by facts.  If not, it wouldn’t be rational optimism after all!

Ridley takes on the fair traders and organics by saying that free trade has raised living standards for everyone, including the poor, and that organic farming is an inefficient use of resources.  If everyone went 100% organic, we’d have to cut down every remaining rainforest to create enough new farmland.

To those afraid of devastating climate change, he argues eloquently that:

• The earth’s climate as changed constantly over its history, often at a pace greater than today.
• Our ability to produce food will likely increase if the earth warms slightly.
• Carbon emissions fuel economic growth, especially in poor nations, lifting them out of poverty.  As standards of living rise, people are better equipped to deal with changes in their world, including climate change.

The Rational Optimist is an interesting read and a welcome change of pace from all the negativity.  At least one academic has a well thought-out positive outlook on the future!  We can’t know what the next centuries bring, but we can learn from what’s worked and not worked in our past.

FTC Disclosure: If you buy The Rational Optimist through the above link, Amazon will pay me 4% of the purchase price.

-Nick

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In my next life as a history teacher, I already have one lesson plan figured out.  And with oral presentations from the students, it could probably be extended to take up a few weeks of class time.  The gameplan is to use We Didn’t Start the Fire as a 4-minute overview of 20th century history.

Billy Joel’s 1989 #1 hit song, We Didn’t Start the Fire, chronicles the major people and historical events between 1949 (when Joel was born) and 1989.  Despite it’s commercial success, We Didn’t Start the Fire was named one of the 50 worst songs ever by Blender magazine.  The song covers 119 items, presented in chronological order.

Assignment #1: Listening to the song, write down as many as you can.  Maybe listen a couple times before handing out the lyrics.

Assignment #2: Pick a topic and teach the class about why it’s important.

Here’s a video with captions for each person / event:

How many have you heard of?

We Didn’t Start the Fire Lyrics:

Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnnie Ray
South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio

Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, television
North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe

Rosenbergs, H-Bomb, Sugar Ray, Panmunjom
Brando, “The King and I”, and “The Catcher in the Rye”

Eisenhower, vaccine, England’s got a new queen
Marciano, Liberace, Santayana goodbye

CHORUS
We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
No we didn’t light it
But we tried to fight it

Josef Stalin, Malenkov, Nasser and Prokofiev
Rockefeller, Campanella, Communist Bloc

Roy Cohn, Juan Peron, Toscanini, Dacron
Dien Bien Phu Falls, Rock Around the Clock

Einstein, James Dean, Brooklyn’s got a winning team
Davy Crockett, Peter Pan, Elvis Presley, Disneyland

Bardot, Budapest, Alabama, Khrushchev
Princess Grace, Peyton Place, Trouble in the Suez

CHORUS

Little Rock, Pasternak, Mickey Mantle, Kerouac
Sputnik, Zhou Enlai, Bridge On The River Kwai

Lebanon, Charles de Gaulle, California Baseball,
Starkweather homicide, Children of Thalidomide

Buddy Holly, Ben Hur, Space Monkey, Mafia
Hula Hoops, Castro, Edsel is a no-go

U2, Syngman Rhee, payola and Kennedy
Chubby Checker, Psycho, Belgians in the Congo

CHORUS

Hemingway, Eichmann, Stranger in a Strange Land,
Dylan, Berlin, Bay of Pigs invasion

Lawrence of Arabia, British Beatlemania
Ole Miss, John Glenn, Liston beats Patterson

Pope Paul, Malcolm X, British Politician sex
J.F.K. blown away, what else do I have to say

CHORUS

Birth control, Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon back again
Moonshot, Woodstock, Watergate, punk rock

Begin, Reagan, Palestine, Terror on the airline
Ayatollah’s in Iran, Russians in Afghanistan

Wheel of Fortune, Sally Ride, heavy metal suicide
Foreign debts, homeless Vets, AIDS, Crack, Bernie Goetz

Hypodermics on the shores, China’s under martial law
Rock and Roller cola wars, I can’t take it anymore

We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning since the world’s been turning.
We didn’t start the fire
But when we are gone
It will still burn on, and on, and on, and on…

CHORUS x 2

We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire…

-Nick

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If you’re feeling patriotic this 4th of July weekend, you might be tempted to grab a case of Samuel Adams, arguably the most patriotic resident of the beer aisle.  Being a naive consumer, I assumed the beer company dated back to the American Revolution, or had some connection to the historical Sam Adams, or both.

Wrong.  Samuel Adams beer was founded in 1984.  Clever marketing though.

Turns out it’s a familiar strategy for companies to play to our fond recollections of our founding fathers.

• John Hancock Insurance – founded in 1862, with no connection to John Hancock.
• The Paul Revere Corporation – founded in 1895, with no connection to Paul Revere.
• Ben Franklin stores – founded in 1877, with no connection to Ben Franklin.
• Ben Franklin Technology Partners – founded in the 1980s
• Franklin Templeton Investments – founded in 1947
• Jefferson Insurance Company – founded in 2007
• Nathan Hale Gardens – founded 1991
• Lincoln (car company) – founded in 1917

There are probably a lot more examples.  Patronize these companies and get in the American spirit!

I did find one company still in operation, Revere Copper Products, that was founded by Mr. Revere himself way back in 1801.  And apparently there is a George Washington Coffee company, founded by a George C. Washington, a distant relative of the first president who wanted to capitalize on the famous name.  And why not?  Not like he’s using it anymore.

In other news, I was really surprised during my time in Costa Rica to see the Jorge Washington elementary school in the small town of San Ramon.  I don’t believe Washington ever visited Costa Rica.  The world’s first international celebrity?

-Nick

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I recently spotted this car at our local Costco.

“Whoa!” I said, “Four Jesus fish on one car.  I’ve never seen that before.”

“One for everyone in the family?” Bryn postulated.

“If Jesus is all-powerful, shouldn’t one be enough to protect the whole car?”

Let’s discuss.

First, a history lesson for those who, like me, have only a loose understanding of the fish symbolism.  The Jesus fish is officially known as an Ichthys, or ΙΧΘΥΣ, the Greek word for “fish.”  The word is also an acrostic:

• I – iota – Iēsous – Greek for “Jesus”
• X – chi – Christos – Greek for “anointed”
• Θ – theta – Theos – Greek for “God”
• Y – upsilon – yios – Greek for “son”
• Σ – sigma – sōtēr – Greek for “savior”

Beyond that, there are plenty of fish stories in the Bible so it seemed like a good fit.  The modern Jesus fish traces its origins to a remarkable guerrilla marketing effort from some Australian college students during the Vietnam War.  Today, the Jesus fish is a pervasive symbol of Christianity and a popular car-decoration, letting the world know the driver is Christian.

But typically one fish is enough to cover the whole car.  Our friends at Costco weren’t taking any chances though; they want everyone to know that the driver’s spouse and 2 kids are also Christian.  Since Jesus, being all-knowing, presumably already knows the family believes, the fish only serve the purpose of alerting other drivers.  On the road and in life, is it important and/or necessary to advertise your beliefs?  Or is it an insecurity?

Or do the parents believe the 4 Jesus fish will serve as a supernatural forcefield and protect the car and family on the road?  I think the makers and sellers of Jesus fish should propagate this belief to sell more fish.  It’s a small investment in safety, and better safe than sorry right?  And it appears to be a 5 or possibly 7-passenger car.  What about the non-family-members who might be riding along?  They could probably benefit from some Jesus protection too.

I think all this adds up to a huge business opportunity for the Jesus fish companies.  I mean why sell just one?  It’s the easiest upsell ever: Don’t you want everyone else in the car to go to heaven too?  They could literally triple or quadruple their business overnight if they could convince customers to abide by the 1-Jesus fish per passenger rule instead of the prevalent 1-Jesus fish per car rule.

Personally, I’m a fan of the Flying Spaghetti Monster car emblem.

-Nick

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