Chapter 5: My Interview with the Vice President

Tribute to Dad: Chapter 5 of his journal. All I've posted starts here and is tagged here . It will be updated as I have time.

Upon returning from summer vacation to the fourth grade in Fishkill, N.Y. in 1948, the class was directed to write a description of the most significant event of their summer holidays. Since I had done very little of significance except weed my father's garden, mow the lawn, play a little baseball and hang out, I decided to create a visit to the White House, and a glimpse of and a few words from President Truman. My paper earned me an "A"; but later backfired on me when my teacher praised my mother at the next PTA meeting for taking her child on a trip to the nation's capital.

Mom kept mum; but scolded me later.

In 1981, however, I didn't have to be so creative. As part of a foreign policy seminar at the Federal Executive Institute, a small group of us spent several days in interviews and discussions with the foreign policy moguls of the government, including the staff Director of the National Security Council, the Deputy Director of the CIA, two senior career U.S. Ambassadors, the British Ambassador, and the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Because one of his Secret Service agents was one of our group, we were also able to schedule an interview with Vice President Bush.

I am pleased to report to you that with one exception, the people we interviewed were extremely capable, bright, experienced, hard working and knowledgeable. It is the exception that I want to tell you about.

Apparently, Vice Presidents have a lot of time on their hands; because Mr. Bush scheduled us for an hour. We were determined to make the most of this time, so the group got together ahead of time and formulated a list of foreign policy questions that we thought would be timely and of interest; and that the V.P. would be in a position to answer. The list was also designed to use all the available time. Poland's Marshal Jeruzowski had just declared the Solidarity trade union to be illegal, and El Salvador and Nicaragua were hot topics at the time.

Before we could get to our questions, however, the V.P. launched into a twenty minute diatribe against the inefficiencies and sheer laziness of Federal workers. It seems that as part of a renovation of his office in the Old Executive Office building, the Empire chandelier had been removed for cleaning and restoration by the General Services Administration, who maintains Federal buildings. GSA had given the chandelier task to the Smithsonian. The chandelier had been gone for six weeks, and a bare bulb hung in its place. This was clearly a prime example of the poor general attitude and work habits of Federal employees, according to the V.P. It never occurred to him that some restoration expert at the Smithsonian was probably spending full time trying to locate original period parts for the thing, or that they had better things to do than that.

The V.P. was seriously cutting into our interview time; but our group was very pleasant and well behaved, although the lecture was as welcome to a group of career civil servants as an impacted wisdom tooth. I later speculated that he mistakenly thought we were all political appointees from his party.

In any event, we were finally able to begin asking our questions. The specifics of each question did not bind the V.P. If he didn't like a question, or couldn't answer it, he simply changed the subject and answered a question which he had asked himself.

When asked about Central America, he spent a long time telling us what an expert he was on Central American affairs, because his daughter-in-law was a Mexican American. When asked about the apparent difference in Administration attitudes towards trade unions in this country, and the Solidarity trade union in Poland, we were treated to a description of the number of Polish Americans who lived in various U.S. cities, and how many of them were members of trade unions too. Each question launched the man into a series of loosely related anecdotes, all of them failing to answer the question; but all ending up reassuring the group that he was very well versed on the specific topic, and the Administration was taking the correct but undefined path.

I think it was Tip O'Neill who said that Mr. Bush was "born on third base, and thinks he hit a home run." When our hour was up, we quietly filed out of his office dazed and bewildered. The anticipated high point of our week in Washington had been converted to the low point. I consoled myself only in the knowledge that the Republic has survived in spite of Vice Presidents.

Chapter One: One Bureaucrat’s Washington

Tribute to Dad: Chapter 5 of his journal. All I've posted starts with this chapter and is tagged here. I will be updated as I have time.

James A. Chamblee

On a beautiful spring day in 1972, I glanced out of my closed office window on the ground floor of the Federal Trade Commission building on Pennsylvania Avenue. Beyond the heating grates and the high hedge that provide a warm and secluded winter sleeping spot for the winos of the neighborhood, on the sidewalk a few yards away, I bore silent witness to an encore performance of a Pennsylvania Avenue Rite of Spring.


Owing to the presence of a liquor store and a men's Christian mission across the street, the wino population density in the neighborhood stood far in excess of the national average. We called them winos then, because that's what they were. Except for an occasional bag lady, the downtown areas of Washington then had far fewer homeless people as we know them today, except near the mission and the liquor store. With the coming of Spring, Washington is also filled with tourist families and buses full of high school classes from all over America.

The street scene which I witnessed involved a conversation between one of the more disheveled and articulate members of the wino community, and a family of Washington tourists, including Dad, Mom, and the two kids, looking like they came from Wholesome Corners, Indiana. Since I had heard this particular wino's pitch previously in person in my office (in the off-season), I could afford to study his technique and speculate as to his probability of success.

His pitch unfolded as follows: "Excuse me folks; but I'm in a terrible situation, and I need some help." He went on to say that Congress is in session at the Capital, as they may know, and that he is scheduled to testify before Senator Proxmire's Committee this very afternoon on a matter of national importance (he is partial to Proxmire); but that he is running late and needs two bucks for cab fare to get him to Capital Hill in time for the hearing . If these kind people will only give him the two bucks, their nation will be forever in their debt for their contribution to ensuring that the government will continue to deal with the weighty matters that it must.

Never mind that this guy hasn't shaved in a week, badly needs several baths, and that his clothes haven't come off in a month. Never mind that the Capital is six short blocks away and could be walked in six minutes. Never mind that the cab fare is fifty cents and the chances that a cab would pick this guy up are nearly zero. With minimal hesitation, Dad forks over the loot, while they rest of the family watches with intense interest. The wino quickly scurries across the street with profuse thanks and the two bucks. After a few minutes of slight euphoria and animated conversation, with visions of their contribution being mentioned on the six o'clock news that night, the tourists resume their touristy pursuits.

The moral for me was that Americans want their government to work; but most don't have the foggiest notion as to how it works. They want to be a part of that working, yet few know how to or are able to participate effectively.

There have been several excellent books produced in the past several years on our government and how it isn't working. This book is not a deep analysis of the workings or failings of our national government. It is a practical guide to the Federal establishment, as told through a chronicle of the highlights of thirty-five years in the nation's capital by a single mid-level bureaucrat. It is not for tourists; but for civics classes with a sense of humor.

In the spring of 1963, I was uncomfortably ensconced as the head of the computer software systems group at the New York Stock Exchange, a new position that I had held for only three months. I was among several youthful senior computer professionals that the Exchange had hired to automate trade reporting at the hub of world finance.

In those heady days of the computer industry, very few people understood the concept of the stored program electronic computer, and even fewer had experience in programming these monsters. The transistorized computer was only then marketed widely, and was less than four years old. I was a senior person at age twenty-four, with four years of experience. My salary was $10,000 dollars per year, at that time in the top five percent of all U.S. incomes.

I was uncomfortable in this new position; because I was experiencing culture shock, and didn't know it. I had spent the previous four years in the IBM development labs, and even with the sometimes puritanical policies of that company, the development labs had been relatively informal. The NYSE, however, was perhaps the focal point for all conservative thought in the galaxy. In addition to these established attitudes, the exchange traders and staff were very suspicious of the new computer staff, and their welcome was less than warm. They correctly predicted that their modus operandi was about to be changed, and they didn't look forward to that prospect. It was a set of attitudes that a twenty-four year old senior computer programmer had little time to view understandingly.

The U.S. had three centers of computer concentration in 1963. Except for a few early research computers, most computers and computer people were concentrated in New York, Washington, and Los Angeles. To accept a position anywhere else was to isolate oneself from the computer mainstream. The computer skills in high demand at that time were so-called "real time" computing. I had three years of experience with these systems.

Despite the problems involved with working in New York and living sixty miles away, I love New York. One of the most appealing visions is midtown on a winter evening around 5:00. Soft lights illuminate the lobbies of office buildings and that light seeps out onto the sidewalk. The polished brass and glass of the entrances cannot fail to convey to the passer by that this is a polished city. Often, in my 27th floor office at the NYSE, the weather would be sunny at my level; but raining on the street level. Sometimes windows would be sucked out of their moldings by the strong winds which buffet lower Manhattan. I enjoyed watching the lunchtime “gallery” of Wall Street clerks which met daily at the intersection of Wall and Broad to heckle anti-capitalist speakers and to ogle good looking women who emerged from the subway.

Despite liking the city, when I was approached by a Washington, D.C. computer consulting firm with an offer of a twenty percent raise to $12,000 per year and a job developing a new "real time" system for the Navy, I accepted. Four years before, I had started at IBM at $3,800 per year. When my salary reached $6000 two years later, I had been able to purchase my first house, a new $15,000, three bedroom split level on half an acre. Truly I was headed for financial and professional greatness. I left my family in New York, and in May, 1963, arrived in the nation's capital for the first time.

Just to prove that the world is cyclical, twenty-nine years later, in 1992, my son, a computer scientist, (a microchip off the old block?) retraced this career move from New York to Washington. The world had changed both in Washington and New York in that period.

I had only a college textbook idea of what the national government was all about. The nearest I had come to dealing with the Federal establishment was a tax audit in 1961. My friend and schoolmate, Mike Landes, had an experience which confirmed our faith in the Feds. He had found what appeared to be an Indian artifact near his New Paltz, N.Y. home. Nothing unusual about that in the Hudson Valley. The artifact itself was a stone wheel with a stone shaft through the middle. We speculated that it might be an Indian child’s toy of some kind. He decided to send this find to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington for identification. He had no response for months, leading him to believe that his find was very significant, and that the Smithsonian probably had the item on display as we spoke. He therefore posted an inquiry to the Smithsonian, asking what they had found. A very nice letter was returned, informing Mike that his artifact had been examined by all the American Indian experts at the museum; but nobody could identify it. It was then examined by another museum staff which identified it as a coverless “D” cell battery for which only a portion of the insides remained. The museum offered to return or discard the find. We laughed about this “Indian artifact” for many years; but underlying our mirth was pride and gratitude that there were some real experts in our nation’s capital.

During my years in Washington, I worked in positions at the Federal Trade Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Defense Mapping Agency, and the U.S. Army. I also worked for several computer consulting firms, the University of Maryland, and the Mitre Corp., all organizations on the fringe of government.

Happy Fathers Day

James Anderson Chamblee, 66, a retired computer scientist who founded a company that built concrete sailboats, died Thursday, August 18, 2005 of heart disease at Howard County General Hospital in Columbia. He was a resident of Columbia and Jekyll Island, Ga.

Mr. Chamblee was born in Wilmington, N.C. In 1959, he went to work for IBM in New York, where he was part of a team that helped pioneer the American Airlines reservation system and the automation of the New York Stock Exchange. Going to school at night, he received his undergraduate degree in math from the State University of New York at New Paltz in 1963.

He moved to Savage in 1963 and joined the University of Maryland Computer Science Center, where he worked for a year.

From 1964 to 1972, he was a computer scientist for the Federal Trade Commission and from 1972 to 1983 for the Environmental Protection Agency. He worked for the Army Department from 1983 until his retirement in 1994.

He started building ferro-cement boats in 1972. Concrete hulls in the family's front yard, alongside Route 1 in Savage, became familiar sights to passersby.

A 1972 Mother Earth News article that featured Mr. Chamblee's boatyard, and Samson Marine, noted that a concrete boat offered some advantages over conventionally constructed boats: "It won't rust or rot, sharp rocks don't punch holes in it and the vessel just keeps on getting stronger for the next 30 years or so!" The article and photos of the boats in the yard, including a photo of Larry Chamblee as a law student working on his boat, is here.

Mr. Chamblee designed the first concrete skipjack and wrote a book on the subject. He also captained two Atlantic Ocean voyages in his 45-foot concrete ketch in the late 1970s, sailing from Baltimore to Portugal via the Azores on the voyage over and from northern Africa via Puerto Rico on the way back. His children were among the crew.

When the state bought his home and business property in Savage, MD for Route 32, he built the home in Clarksville, MD that his family moved into in 1975 until it was sold about 25 years later.
In recent years, he had worked as a golf course marshal on Jekyll Island, where he spent winters.

More here.

Mother's Day: Birth Control is Healthy for Mom and Baby

Standing tall for Pregnant Women: Against Gag rules and Guns.

I had learned through work that bleeding is a common cause of death in pregnancy. It is endemic in the third world, such as Afghanistan. It is a problem that may get worse depending on the youth of the mother. In poor countries, the loss of small amounts of blood are especially dangerous due to the high rate of malaria and anemia that already weakens the moms. The lack of refrigeration makes blood transfusions almost impossible. The AIDS rate means a transfusion cure can be worse than the disease, anyway.

Without birth control and health care, these moms may die, sometimes during their fourth or fifth pregnancy, malnourished and exhausted from multiple, closely-spaced births. Often they are still nursing the previous child. This means most moms that die in childbirth leave orphans behind. If only they could space their pregnancies, they would have more strength, a better chance at life and at mothering their existing children. In cultures where men are not active in child rearing, these children are often left to suffer, starve, and die.

In the US, prior to the prevalence of handwashing and other aseptic techniques, rates of deaths from abortions and pregnancies were about the same. Midwives had better survivial rates, probably because doctors increasingly performed their work in dirty cities. As doctors tried to corner the market on obstetrics, in 1951 they formed the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists, and to reduce the influence of midwives they successfully lobbied to outlaw abortions, which till then had been undistrurbed in most states.

More recently, in the US, sepsis is not so much a problem any more. Bleeding death rates have also reduced. Curious of what pregnancy-associated issue may have taken its place, some scientists have followed pregnant women for a year to see what their health issues are today.

The most common cause of death was injury. The most common cause of injury was homicide. The most common cause of homicide was guns. The moms were shot, usually by the father of her baby.

In North Carolina 1992-94. In New York City 1987-1991.

In Chicago 1986-89. In young mothers

Back to the third world, I see a story on NOVA tonight with another cautionary tale about the effect of the lack of birth control. It involved a Turkish woman who had 19 children. The first 7 children were born within 5 years. As a young mother, overcome with the burden of raising them all, she never had time to teach the children to walk upright. They still walk on all fours, stuck in a baby's crawl. The daughters dispair of never dancing, never being able to marry. Their sons are angry they can never support a family or work. Their bone structure now may never be able to support them to walk upright.

Hiding behind "pro-family" rhetoric, neo-conservatives continue their deathly policies. With inadequate background checks and waiting periods for gun purchases, pregnancy can be a death sentence in the US. In poor countries, refusing to acknowlege the desperate need for birth control is ending lives of women and their children.

Maternal mortality remains the leading cause of death for women of childbearing age—an estimated 500,000 women die each year from pregnancy related causes, with 78,000 deaths resulting from unsafe abortion. Having access to safe, appropriate family planning methods and safe abortion when needed, can make the difference in women’s lives. It can prevent dangers from pregnancies ...

Save lives with your vote. Check out the politicians on these issues at the portal at Planned Parenthood.

Farewell Molly

WaPo on Molly Ivins: Both her parents were Republicans, but she rejected Republican politics for the same reasons that inspire most Southern liberals: race. "Once you figure out they are lying to you about race, you start to question everything," she wrote.

Molly Ivins has died at 62.
Molly's columns at the Texas Star Telegram
Molly at Wiki

Happy Roe Day

PhriendlyJamie has an eloquent blog here.

Angela Carder was a neighbor of mine who got pregnant at 26+ years old. She had been told since she was 13 that her cancer gave her 6 months to live. She and her husband were determined to keep the baby and she stopped taking her medicine. Her remission ended and when her cancer returned she was hospitalized during the 2d trimester for her high-risk pregnancy. George Washington Hospital in DC appointed a guardian for her fetus - not for her - and he sued the mother to end the pregancy. He said it was for good of the child, since Mom was as good as dead, he said, to give the fetus a "better chance" in Neonatal ICU rather than in her declining body. The wacked-out judge weighed the value of her life and the unborn baby's and agreed. The fetus was removed over the objections of her, her husband, and her doctor. The anesthesia killed Mom, AND the baby. The ACLU continued the case to settle the law, even though the outcome couldn't help Angie. They won because the lower court should have honored her freedom of choice and right to privacy.