Red-lining Systemic Racism - My Cities

One of my Welsh Professors, whom I have also hired as my estate-planning attorney, shared something on Facebook that I thought would be good to memorialize in a blog post. The links would be easier to find through my search box down on the lower right.

He linked some information and fascinating if disturbing resources on the practice of "red-lining" that came out of the New Deal in the 1930s. The Home Owners' Loan Corporation or HOLC was established to readjust home mortgages that were in default or needed refinancing. Major cities were mapped to indicate areas where loans were most at risk. The neighborhoods marked in red were the most risky based on economic conditions of the residents at the time and also expressly and explicitly by race and ethnicity. While the HOLC was abolished in 1947, these maps were used by banks and others interested in economic investment well into recent times. They helped to establish de facto racial segregation in all major cities not just the South where legal segregation flourished until the 1960s. The effects of red-lining are still with us today. You can read more here and here.

And, you can find the maps at the University of Richmond's "American Panorama: An Atlas of United States History."

My paternal line came to America in 1886. The first couple of generations lived in the lowest rated red-line districts of Ogden, Utah, classifications D-8 and D-9 for "Hazardous" with regard to investment.

Childhood Terror

It's no wonder my parents had to turn off the TV when I screamed.

And at 62 years of age, the space guy is still a bit disturbing. At age five, he was horrifying!

Brown's Iris Gardens, Kirkland, Washington

Family History can get real strange. I planted irises this Spring. It kept reminding me of a relative/friend of my Mom's that I remember from growing up on Finn Hill. We were far away from family, but mom found one, a descendant of Daniel & Peninah Cotten Wood and she shared some copies of Wood Family history that I still have.

Her name was Alta Brown. And remembering that she and her husband ran Brown's Iris Gardens, a rather beautiful place up there when Finn Hill was not all houses, I thought I would try to find her on Family Search to see how we were actually related. It was a frustrating search as I ultimately found that her name was Hazel Alta McCarty Brown (1909-2003), so she was very contemporary with my grandparents.

I remembered that they sold irises. The internet informed me that they hybridized irises. Her husband, Rex, registered 93 varieties. Alta registered a whopping 237 varieties!

A few of the varieties developed at Brown's Iris Gardens

Eagle Scout - The End of Childhood

Probably among the top-ten best days of my life was that Eagle Scout Court of Honor and LDS Ward Scout Dinner. That picture is full of joy and pride untainted in myself of the pains of adulthood. Oh, I'd been through some teenage angst, but my family and security were solid. And I was blissfully unprepared for the clouds of Wyoming coal-dust snow and mud-rain summer that were to descend upon us.

Note the Council patch on my dad's shoulder below. He had already been to Rock Springs, Wyoming, as the new Council Executive of the Jim Bridger Council, BSA. It was a great honor to get your own council even if such a small one in membership if not in size stretching for a hundred miles in any direction with few roads and fewer people in between.

West Coast Boy

James Island, La Push, Washington. (c) Larry K. Vaughn (my dad)

A friend at work complimented me yesterday saying that I was definitely of a West-Coast mentality. That matches well with a serendipitous discovery in family history materials recently obtained from my mom. In a sporadic journal she kept in the 1970s, she copied a poem I had written after my family moved from the Seattle suburbs to Wyoming. That was quite a culture shock for this West-Coast Boy in my junior year of high school.

I have no independent memory of this poem but I do remember I was writing some poetry in those days. (West-Coast Mentality). I share it here:

Into the Woods

Looking down my old street "into the woods." I'm pretty sure the trees were thicker back then.

The woods. We never called them anything else. Oh, sometimes we referred to the "sewer factory" (long story) or the frog ponds, and it was a great blessing to grow up where we could go into the woods.

In those days, parents let us wander the woods. Parents are different now. We did let our kids play in the arroyo behind our house in Santa Fe as it was not a dangerous concrete one like in Albuquerque. But I don't think kids play in the woods much on their own anymore.

Thomas Wolfe Was Wrong

My Mom unintentionally started my grudge with Thomas Wolfe. I never was happy about moving from the Seattle Area. I made some good friends in Wyoming and there are many beautiful places in Wyoming. Rock Springs is not one of them. I once told my Mom that I intended to buy back the house on Finn Hill where I grew up. It was only a pipe-dream and she recognized it as nostalgia for our old home and some resentment in me for the move to Mos Eisely Spaceport, er, Rock Springs.

And I had my troubles at my first high school that I have chronicled here. Yes, I was kind of a dropout. There were the teenage turmoils and Quadrophenic angst going on as well. Maybe I do get Thomas Wolfe's point that if you write fiction based on your family and friends and are honest enough to the point of recognizable characters in your critiques, yeah, you can't go back home.

That Ol' Clown of Mine

My boy on a church mission in Japan sent me a special request:

Hey, could you send me via email a picture of JP Patches. I want to print it off for a member who loves clowns. It would make her way happy. Could you do that for me? Thanks!

So, of course I did.

Now, I've always tried to convince my family that J.P. is not just a clown. He is a real person with a real personality. People who grew up in Seattle from the late 50s to the 80s understand this. It simply can't be explained or experienced vicariously. You really "had to be there."

J.P. Patches and Gertrude
(AKA the late Chris Wedes and Bob Newman - my actual FB friend)

And my wife insists that the other one is a guy in a dress. And I say, "NO! That's Gertrude!" Nobody gets this. (Unless they're from Seattle).

The picture went by electronic 0's and 1's to Japan and I just got this response back this evening. (It's already tomorrow, Monday P-day or a sort of missionary day off, in Japan).

Young Boy of the Sea

My Mom and I, Cruising the San Juan Islands, Washington, about 1964

Another strong memory resurfaced going through old photos to scan. They let me sit out there on the bow as long as I had that orange life-preserver. I notice Mom close by but I could look out ahead seeing just water and I stayed the longest time. I can feel the rare warm sun, see the bright flashes on the water, and could be there still if life hadn't intervened.

There were some great opportunities we had with my Dad's work with the Boy Scouts. These were actual Sea Scouts and my little brother and I were treated like royalty, or at least mascots, as guests on their ship (fairly large cabin cruiser). I seem to recall that we were at Friday Harbor for the 4th of July. I'll have to check that with my Dad. And I have the vaguest memory of a campfire while watching a satellite go by overhead when it was still a big deal. 

Family Totems - Christmas Edition

When we were young, our dad would set out in December to design and paint his annual Christmas picture on our front window. This is the earliest one I can remember:

"I Need a Drink of Cool, Cool Rain"

Yes, I went the long way home. Well, not home yet. I've crashed in a Super 8 somewhere in Nevada. Reasons for that I'll blog later after more time for contemplation on my quest and a sort through my pics.

The thrill I had was a day cruising down the highway all on my own with no agenda, no time schedule, except to get there before dark, and The Who.

As it was raining from Beaverton on south, that gentle, soft, and beautiful Oregon rain, down through the green Douglas Fir each with its unique scraggle of branches, I went back to my youth in neighboring Washington State. I didn't quite get there this time, but it was beautiful across the Gorge. And I didn't get to the Ocean, but the rain was all I needed to revel in my nearly conquered teenage angst.

Rebel Rebel - The Juanita System

And though my lack of education hasn't hurt me none
I can read the writing on the wall

-Paul Simon, "Kodachrome"

Juanita High School, Kirkland, Washington about 1972 (photo credits below*)

The secret of life is to attend several high schools. At each transfer they give you the benefit of the doubt as to your credits and fulfillment of graduation requirements. You can graduate high school without learning much at all. Actually, I learned a great deal in this process. Just not much Math. An out-of-the-box experiment in two big boxes was my initial high school experience in which I began my career in not learning Math.

Erroneously assumed to be the computer
that ran our academic life

There is a good history online of the Juanita High experience. I even learned some things about my own experience such as- the computer was actually in Iowa and the big plastic box with the flashing lights and whirling tapes that we affectionately called "Hal" was only the audio/video source for the remote stations where we occasionally studied.

A Media Carrel. The push-buttons were new.
Remember, it's 1971.
This was that era's iPod along with the computer to the right

The concept was revolutionary. Hence, the Rebel mascot. (It was clearly a Revolutionary War Rebel, not Confederate. This was the Pacific Northwest even if oddly with a Spanish-named bay on Lake Washington.) And it was uniquely the "Juanita System" even if open-concept schools were the new thing in education making their way around the country.

Back When the Future Was Orange!

Call me old-fashioned, but I really liked the LDS Provo Temple when it had an orange spire.

In 1976 from my room in the LTM (MTC), the whole Temple seemed to glow orange at night. Yes, some had their architectural-critiquing  fun with the flaming candle in the center of the birthday cake. But it was cool! The reason I liked it was because of the architectural style known as Googie. Yes, Googie. Which is pretty odd especially since I only just discovered the term "Googling" around for "Orange Provo Temple" and, of course, "Space Needle." Googie style came out of (where else?) a drive-in restaurant in Southern California.

Passionately Moderate Suburban Seattleite

Olympic Mountains across Puget Sound on Elliott Bay
September 19, 2011

In Seattle for a work meeting brings me to a theme I have thought about a lot without any definitive answers. Seattle is a beautiful place, yes, even in the rain. And there is a calm, easy-going, positive personality to the place and the people. Having grown up in the suburbs of Seattle, I wonder how much a place can shape personality. Were my formative years in the Seattle area a factor in moderating me?

Seattle Kids' TV: A Rich Legacy

I had good parents. Yet, as a child of the 60s I watched a lot of TV. It helped shape my personality.  Some, like my wife, might even say it warped my personality. But that's from somebody who sees this picture:

. . . and thinks "clown." Any true child of Seattle will not see a "clown," rather a real person who had more influence, certainly more time with us, than any grade school teacher and maybe almost as much as our own parents. He was on for an hour in the morning and an hour after school. And then there was another hour on Saturday mornings. That's eleven hours a week. Certainly more time than I spent in Sunday School and Primary.

A Wood Badge Ticket for the Twelve-Year-Old Inner Scout

Boy Scouts of America Wood Badge is the best leadership training ever. And I've had a few during my professional career and church experience. In spite of some modern cultural controversies, the values of Scouting are timeless and invaluable.

I've had a life-time of experience in Scouting as my Dad was a professional Scout Executive. Yet it was only at my first Wood Badge course four years ago that I learned that a large part of Lord Baden-Powell's motivation in organizing the Scouting movement, war hero that he was from the Siege of Mafeking, was to create a world brotherhood that would help promote World Peace. He was devastated by the horror of the Great War, reinvigorated in the 20's by the enthusiasm of the boys in the Scouting movement he had initiated, but then finally dying with broken heart during the Second World War - his dreams for world peace seemingly lost. That same lost feeling has come upon me at times in Scouting when we humans fall short of our ideals.

Anti-Earthquake Tea Party Government

I hate hypotheticals. It was probably law school that did me in. I know the point was to create absolutely impossible factual situations to test our reasoning skills when there is no real solution. I just think that reality gives us clearer options in which to act. At least you can appropriately rely on the spirit or instinct when all else fails which is hard to do in a law-school hypothetical.

But I do ponder this question, and it's not entirely hypothetical. How does an anti-government philosophy deal with the real potential of a horrific earthquake? or tsunami? or nuclear reactor disaster? or all three?!! I don't think a free market emphasis, private property, and freedom from governmental intrusion have much relevance from what I see in those videos from Japan.