Joe's Thoughts

When I first visited Disney World with my family, I was amazed by the monorails. I’ve never seen anything like it. A highway in the sky that could take me pretty much anywhere in the parks. I didn’t need a car, I didn’t need a license, I didn’t need mom or dad to bring me, and I didn’t need to ride my bike on the shoulder of a highway, a perilous journey. All I had to do was walk to a nearby station and get on the monorail. For a boy from south Louisiana, it was my first experience with a well thought out public transit system, and I loved it. It was freedom.

It made me think about my grandmother, who lived in New Orleans at the time, and how we once took the streetcar, something that you did because it was a novel thing to do and not for practical reasons. A crumbling piece of history. She’d tell me stories of her as a teenager taking the streetcars around the city with her friends. It made me angry, since from my perspective I was under house arrest as a kid without a car. The monorail and walkability of Disney’s parks are one piece in a larger system that makes Disney a magical place. Walt Disney had an even grander vision for EPCOT, specifically. The monorail was going to be one piece of a larger transit system, built for people, not cars. Cars would be used for longer, extended trips, and roads in the city would be underground, leaving the surface for people.

It was going to be the city of tomorrow. The strange thing was that hearing my grandmother’s stories, and sitting on the monorail, in a futuristic city for today’s standards built in the 1970s, made me wonder what the hell happened. What happened to the city of tomorrow, I asked myself. Why can’t I go anywhere safely without a car?

American cities were originally built for pedestrians, given the fact personal cars weren’t owned by everyone. Neighborhoods had corner stores, restaurants, bars, etc., owned by families who lived upstairs, and people went to those stores because they were easily accessible. You’d cross paths on the street with your neighbor on the way to work and chat. City streets were designed to make it easy for pedestrians to get from point A to B easily, and many cities developed street car systems when walking or biking wasn’t practical.

Everything about the city’s planning was centered around the idea that it was going to be inhabited by people going from place to place living their lives. To many urban Americans in the 1920s, the car and its driver were tyrants that deprived others of their freedom. Having the requirement for our cities and towns to be walkable and dense naturally made them conducive to people having a sense of community. You’d have interactions with all walks of life on the city streets. Something that is a rarity today. I’d argue having less of these types of interactions has led to the the divisions we have in our country. Having walkable cities also meant exercise was built into our daily lives. A gym membership wasn’t a requirement to safely walk. You didn’t need a treadmill or track to exercise, going nowhere. It was just part of daily life. The lower rates Americans walk relative to other countries, is one thing attributing to higher rates of obesity and other health risks.

I think most people forget how much our environment plays a part in our happiness and wellbeing (unless you’re like an architect). We see it as something that is out of our control and just how it is. When in fact most of our surroundings in modern society are man made. We were already on the path towards Walt’s dream city of tomorrow, but as time went on in America we started going down another path. One where the car was going to be at the center. I’d argue having this car centric view of our environment, towns and cities, is a determinate to our society. When we started to demolish our walkable cities and neighborhoods to build our suburbs, highways and interstates that cut through downtowns, we lost some of the pieces of daily life that made life more enjoyable. We started creating minimum parking laws, requiring each business to take up more land and be less compact. We zoned areas so only single family homes, with lawns, could be built. And by the 1950s, we removed most streetcars in favor of personal cars. Today, in most American cities the only way to get anywhere is with a car, irrespective of distance. Our once walkable cities are now urban sprawls. Source material for memes. Our towns and cities lost a piece of their humanity.

Most pedestrian routes are now dangerous, requiring people to walk on or near roads with fast moving cars. Everything in a modern American city revolves around the car, and cars are ingrained into our culture as much as guns are. It’s a status symbol of one’s wealth and something we’re constantly told we need. Not just a car, but a car that fits your needs and lifestyle. It’s not that cars are evil. They’re amazing pieces of engineering that let us travel great distances easily, but I’d argue in most scenarios a 4x4 truck or an SUV the size of a tank, is not the optimal form of transport for most trips we Americans take.

By making them a minimum requirement to participate in modern American society, we also greatly increase the barriers of entry for everyone. It creates a chicken and egg problem: one must have a car to do the things required to survive, like get a job, but to get a job one must have a car. I was lucky like many Americans and my parents got me my first car, but everyone isn’t as fortunate. Owning a car isn’t cheap, too. The current average price of a new car is around $49,000 to $50,000, they have steep depreciation curves, and more than 80% finance these machines today. This is all to say owning a car is a liability. Not an asset. But it’s a requirement we’ve made for everyone. One might think: America needs to be car centric because it’s so big and we travel great distances. Though this has some truth, and some trips do require a car, the data doesn’t support this. The majority of car trips are less than 6 miles.

You could also make the claim that most cities do in fact have some form of public transit (usually a bus system), but the majority are so underfunded they’re unusable, and since they’re unusable no one uses them unless they absolutely have to. So, no one wants to fund them. Another chicken and egg problem. I’d argue that having taxes or other Government revenue streams to fund a good public bus system is more cost effective and ends up being cheaper for the average citizen versus everyone owning their own car, a liability. What happens is American cities end up investing billions into things like widening roads or building more, which has been proven to not improve traffic. Investment in public transit like buses provide better returns of tax dollars. Sure, most of us would still own cars, but it shouldn’t be a requirement for everyone. It should be a luxury item, not a necessity. We Americans like to always think we’re the best at everything, but when it comes to urban development and public transit, we’re far behind the curve. All you have to do to realize this fact is take a trip to a place like the Netherlands to see for yourself.

The thing is: this is a solvable problem. There’s no law of nature that says modern society requires cars for transport. All we need to do is change the way we think about our towns and cities, demand our local politicians prioritize urban planning, and realize that making everyone own a car to function in society is a misguided view of the world, which negatively impacts our daily lives and quality of life. The city of tomorrow should be a city that, as Walt Disney put it, “caters to the people as a service function.”

A lot happened this past weekend, most of which we didn’t plan for. On Saturday morning, I went on a run with a buddy I met through my wife’s work and his friend. On our run along the Tennessee River, we talked about video games we’ve been playing lately and, when they asked me, I told them all about Kingdom Come Deliverance, a historically accurate game set in 15th century Bohemia where you play as a blacksmith’s son whose village is attacked by Cuman mercenaries who kill your parents and steal the last sword your father ever made. The rest of the game you are trying to find the lost sword and avenge your parents death but, it’s so much more. You also have to manage your character’s hunger and sleep, maintain your equipment and repair your armor, bathe at at bathhouses, sharpen your swords with a sharpening stone (doing it wrong dulls your sword) and lots of other things that make the game very real to life. Some people think it’s boring and cumbersome; I think it’s brilliant. Further on our run along the river we passed the BASF chemical plant and probably breathed in toxic chemicals. Jokingly, I said: “guys, we should hold our breath so we don’t get cancer.” I’m pretty sure my new friend didn’t breathe, an extraordinary feat while running if true, and we laughed about it. I, on the other hand, accepted that breathing these toxins would probably cut my life by a minute. That’s the price we pay for plastic I guess. Passing the chemical plant also reminded us of the chicken plant right in the heart of downtown Chattanooga and how there are these fancy condos literally right next to it. It’s basically on top of the chicken factory and it must smell horrid. Like, some people’s balconies just overlook a chicken factory. Imagine how insane it is to buy that for like 500k. It got me thinking about how there’s probably people out there who are really into chicken factories and daydream about having one of those condos. They walk outside with their copy of Food Manufacturing, take a sip of their coffee and a big deep breath, taking in the smells of American industry coming from the factory with a smile on their face. They tell everyone they meet how Chick-Fil-A isn’t possible without such places. They don’t buy room plugs at Bath and Body Works because the smell from that factory is free. Look, there’s 8 billion people. Some of them are bound to be obsessed with chicken factories. There’s a market for these condos after all. It’s more likely these buyers can’t smell or never go outside but, I believe the weird chicken factory lovers are out there. They’re walking our streets right now. Anyways, 2 miles past the BASF factory we eventually turned around and headed back (yes, we passed by the factory twice and now my life is now 2 minutes shorter). We ended up doing about 6 miles. It was a lot of fun and we talked about doing it again soon. They’re trying to get me to do a half marathon with them. Hopefully we pick a different route next time that doesn’t pass a chemical plant twice. Walking back to my car, I got a text from another friend of mine who wanted to go play soccer. I ended up meeting him after lunch. Talk about a regrettable idea after running 6 miles. When I was finally home for good around 3pm, I just collapsed on the floor. Every time I do that our cat Ginger is always so concerned. I can’t tell if she’s concerned for my well being or just worried if she’ll be able to get her next meal on time. It was an exhausting morning but I gelt very accomplished.

On the floor in my living room, I got an emergency alert. It said we were under a severe thunderstorm warning for like 15 minutes with winds up to 80 miles per hour. I usually pay attention to these alerts and I’m always checking the radar, keeping my wife informed. I’m basically her personal weather man, but I was tired this afternoon. Also, why would I get off the floor and pick up things on the porch if it’ll be over in 15 minutes? I need my rest. Well, this time the extreme weather alert wasn’t an exaggeration. We did in fact get 80 mile per hour winds and it blew everything I failed to pick up on the porch in our yard. The shelf outside with all the heavy things we never use blew over. It was like a tropical storm passed through. The alert was surprisingly spot on. Perhaps the Government was testing their weather control machine. Towards the end, we lost power and when my wife got home from work, she told me she saw some downed trees. We decided to go on a walk to assess the extent of the damage in our neighborhood, something we always enjoy doing after a storm. On our walk, we realized the damage was worse than we thought. We saw more downed trees, some of which were very large. We didn’t see any that fell on a house but quite a few fell on power lines. Someone sent us the power outage map. That’s when we realized we might be out of power for a while.

Realizing we probably weren’t cooking tonight, unless we wanted to cook with our camping stove, we decided to see if our neighborhood pub, Tremont Tavern, still had power. It was a treacherous journey where we encountered another downed tree in the road but we eventually made it to Tremont and, to our amazement, they had power. Our refuge from the storm where we met another couple, on a date night, who were also from Louisiana, moving to Chattanooga a year ago. It’s always nice meeting fellow Louisianians in Chattanooga.

Disclaimer: This is Ashlynn at Tremont a few months back

After our dinner, we walked back home. It was dark by then and the sound of chainsaws cutting downed trees could be heard in the distance. We joked about all the exited men who bought a chainsaw against their wives wishes could now put it to use. The night sky and moon clearer than usual since there wasn’t much light pollution and the storm cooled the air some. It was a pleasant walk back to the house. Back at home, we decided we didn’t want to sleep with no A/C, so we called up our good friends Laura and Jon who had power, packed a few things and evacuated to their house. We thought for sure we’d have power back by Sunday. The linemen were already out working. We were wrong. After it was all said and down we didn’t get our power back till Monday morning. On Sunday, we put some of our food in an ice chest to try and save it but we still lost some food that I’m still grieving (I’m so sorry I didn’t save you chicken thighs). Thankfully, the whole ordeal wasn’t nearly that bad since we have good friends who let us stay with. I’m glad we have them. I also want to thank all the emergency workers that responded after the storm and hard working linemen who got our power back on. It was a unique weekend we’ll never forget.

Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.

– George Bernard Shaw

The more people of a democracy value knowledge, prudence, humility, and most importantly, kindness, the happier they’ll be. Society’s happiness, as John Adam’s put it in his “Thoughts on Government”, is the end of government. America being a democracy, our government, in part, is a reflection of the people; thus, If we desire higher quality representation and leaders, ones that embody these qualities and act with our collective best interest in mind, we must first start with ourselves. By instilling the qualities we desire in our government, we set the bar high, as it should be. America has many complex challenges facing it. We can’t all be experts and no one is perfect; nevertheless, we should hunger for knowledge and know where our own ignorance’s lye. We must search for truth, wherever it leads. We must be kind to one another, even though it seems impossible at times. We must be willing to challenge others beliefs, having candid, respectful, debates. And as always, we must be wary of those who possess great power for even the best of us can abuse it. An individual’s goal in a democratic society is to embody all of these traits as best they can. Just as the captain of a ship navigating a stormy sea can only hope to find calmer waters with the help of good, knowledgeable, officers and crew, we cannot hope to help steer our democracy to calmer waters and a sandy shore without the help of each and every one of us. A better tomorrow is out there for America, even as perilous as the waters may seem today.