Southern Bookman

Biltmore Estate a bucolic counterpoint to nearby Asheville

The Biltmore Estate's fantasy of Southern gentility contrasts sharply with the gritty urban reality of downtown Asheville.

George Vanderbilit's gargantuan gilded-age palace, completed in 1895, crowns rolling pastures and walking trails leading to a commercial center of two hotels, a winery, restaurants and museums trumpeting the brief, dilettantish life of Cornelius Vanderbilt's grandson.

The Biltmore baron died in 1914 from complications of an appendectomy, leaving his widow and descendants to visualize his estate as a lucrative tourist venture.

The big house was the crowning achievement of now forgotten architect Richard Morris Hunt, who designed many of the long demolished Fifth Avenue mansions of New York City's robber barons.

Biltmore's lavish  gardens were the final masterpiece of Frederick Law Olmsted, the famed designer of Central Park, who also wrote perceptive accounts of his tours through the antebellum, slave-owning South.

Vanderbilt's fine art collection displayed at the house include two marvelous portraits of Hunt and Olmsted by John Singer Sargent, along with several other works by the artist. Three Belgian tapestries from the 16th century are also captivating.

The house, visited by Henry James, Edith Wharton and others, entertained guests with a billiards room, bowling alley, library and conversation enclaves. Roaring fireplaces heated the sumptuous parlors.

A short drive away, downtown Asheville presents a raucous scene of young hipsters, aging art tourists, young families and Jesus cheerleaders. Reclaimed buildings from the late 19th and early 20th centuries house music clubs, restaurants, craft shops and the excellent Malaprop's bookstore.

On the other side of downtown lies the sumptuous Grove Park Inn, another landmark of Southern elegance.

The municipal plaza at the center of downtown is a popular gathering spot close to the memorial angel sculpture honoring native son Thomas Wolfe. Wolfe, author of the once-lauded "Look Homeward Angel" and "You Can't Go Home Again," grew up in his family's boarding house, now a tourist attraction.

As we traveled down the estate's winding road leading to the exit for downtown Asheville, I heard the voice of F. Scott Fitzgerald whispering "I left my capacity for hoping on the little roads that led to Zelda's sanatorium."

Zelda Fitzgerald, the wife of Wolfe's fellow Scribner's author Fitzgerald, died in a fire at an Asheville hospital. At Malaprop's Bookstore, I paid silent homage to the doomed couple.

Visiting my filmmaker sister, who was completing a Hallmark Christmas movie shot at the big house, we stayed at the Biltmore Estate's charming Village Hotel amid a younger generation of wine-lovers and gilded age voyeurs.

On a walk, I passed meadow lands where goats and cattle grazed. Once the estate ran a dairy, but now the cows are beef cattle, raised to produce steaks and hamburgers for the estate's restaurants. The cattle are humanely raised, the estate assures visitors. Nearing the banks of the French Broad River, I heard volleys of gunfire from skeet shooters.

At the estate's Antler Hill Village Deerpark theater, a high-tech audiovisual show and exhibit explored Leonardo da Vinci's brilliant, erratic career.The exhibit features models of Leonardo's futuristic inventions and copies of some of his famous paintings.

The dramatic video show gave flashing psychedelic images of his work. For some reason, galloping horses were a recurrent motif, perhaps signifying the frequent wars of Leonardo's era.

Driving from Atlanta to Asheville along the booming I-85 corridor also revealed striking contrasts. Greenville, home of Furman and Bob Jones universities, and nearby Spartanburg flourish from the sprawling BMW plant between them. Signs announce nearby Clemson University's various automotive-engineering ventures.

After we passed through these successes of the new international economy, Donald Trump was launching his presidential campaign with a speech at Columbia, South Carolina's capital and home of the University of South Carolina. The anti-globalist Trump  appeared with the unctuous Lindsay Graham, the state's long-serving senator, once a fairly progressive ally of the late Sen. John McCain but now a Trump sycophant.

Seeing the young middle-class families at Biltmore, I wondered about their political leanings. They packed the Biltmore wine store, with its rows of vintage whites and reds, and the pretentious shops and restaurants. Republicans, I assumed. But perhaps not.

Beyond a few patches of undeveloped forest, the I-85 corridor from Atlanta to Greenville and beyond is now one metro area. Too bad America turned to automobile transportation rather than the high-speed trains of other developed nations. Electric vehicles might take over one day, but the gasoline-powered SUVs, trucks and sedans will rule for the next several decades at least. Or until climate change brings societal collapse and the new dark ages.

Gilded age scions like George Vanderbilt have been overtaken by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. Vanderbilt's heirs claim he possessed a sense of noblesse oblige lacking today, but his monstrous house proves America's wealthy have always yearned for an American feudalism.

Conservative Republican Brian Kemp adds to alternative-energy stature

Ga. Gov. Brian Kemp runs the risk of being mistaken for a liberal.

A rising star of the climate change-denying Republican Party, Kemp landed yet another major alternative energy plant with Q Cells' $2.5 billion solar energy investment in Cartersville and Dalton.

The South Korean company owned by Hanwha Solutions will operate the United States' first complete solar panel supply chain, according to media reports. The corporation will assume a major presence in the state where Georgia Power has long sought to control solar power's growth. 

Generous tax incentives backed by Kemp and the Republican-controlled Georgia Legislature have sparked a boom in electrical vehicle and battery factories. Now, the state will lead the nation's solar panel economy in competition against China.

Kemp heralded Georgia's latest alternative energy plant, but the tax incentives in Democratic President Joe Biden's climate change and infrastructure law led to Q Cells' decision. Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff wrote the solar panel inducements included in the act, supported by Sen. Raphael Warnock.

But the state tax incentive were also a significant factor. Under Kemp, Georgia is the national leader in the economic transition from fossil fuels, with Rivian's electric-truck factory east of Atlanta, South Korean SK corporation's electric battery plants and South Korean automaker Hyundai's electric vehicle investment in Savannah.

Kemp also sounded progressive Wednesday in announcing support for affordable housing. In a speech at the Georgia Chamber of Commerce's Eggs and Issues Breakfast, Kemp promised affordable housing programs so that workers can find places to live near their workplaces.

In another progressive development, a Republican-led Georgia House committee will study the state's woeful health care system, which could lead to Medicaid expansion, according to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution article.

Kemp soundly defeated Democratic celebrity Stacey Abrams to win re-election in November after surviving former President Donald Trump's effort to defeat him in the Republican primary. Along with Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Kemp defied Trump's machinations to overturn Biden's presidential election victory in Georgia.

Many moderate Georgia voters supported both Kemp and Warnock in the general election. While Kemp reluctantly supported Republican Herschel Walker in the runoff won by Warnock, the governor has worked closely with the Democratic senators, bringing economic development to the state.

In contrast to his green-economy accomplishments, Kemp has drawn Democratic ire for his support of restrictive election laws, harsh antiabortion legislation and gun rights measures.

Yet in boosting Georgia's solar panel and electric vehicle industries, Kemp stands as one of the nation's most progressive governors. His affordable housing stance matches that of progressive Democrats.

Atlanta will benefit from the new factories, which will form a radius surrounding the city. But  it's regrettable that Atlanta itself hasn't landed such a massive operation, which would add another dimension to the city's economy. Worker training for high-paying factory jobs would alleviate the city's persistent poverty and social inequality.

 

 

Douglas Brinkley, author of "Silent Spring Revolution," inspires Atlanta History Center audience to keep environmental flame burning

Historian Douglas Brinkley appeared at the Atlanta History Center Monday night to promote his new book on America's environmental accomplishments, speaking before an audience mainly composed of those who remembered the first Earth Day in 1970.

Sadly, that national event was the high point of the environmental progress detailed in Brinkley's comprehensive "Silent Spring Revolution: John F. Kennedy, Rachel Carson, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and the Great Environmental Awakening."

A furious counterattack by American business, which saw environmental regulation as a socialistic threat to the free enterprise system, crushed the green movement.

Brinkley in his talk cited former Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell's memo to the American Chamber of Commerce calling for right-wing capitalists to take action against a perceived liberal takeover of the media, academia, the judiciary and Congress.

That led to the rise of conservative think tanks like the Heritage Society and the Cato Institute and soaring campaign funding by the Koch Brothers and other wealthy business leaders.

Brinkley cited Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Delano Roosevelt for leading the first environmental wave, establishing national parks and preserving wilderness areas.

The movement gained momentum under the leadership of liberal Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, the major environmental mentor to the Kennedy family. Douglas influenced John F. Kennedy to author national seashore legislation when Kennedy was a U.S. senator.

Kennedy as president continued his environmental activism. After Kennedy's assassination, Lyndon Johnson stepped up the preservation of wilderness areas. Brinkley credited first lady Lady Bird Johnson for her environmental leadership during Johnson's administration, tragically ruined by his support of the Vietnam War.

President Richard Nixon, a reluctant environmentalist, compiled an impressive environmental record. After the devastating Santa Barbara oil spill pf 1969 in the early days of his presidency, Nixon signed the National Environmental Policy Act, which required environmental impact statements for construction projects, and established the Environmental Protection Agency, which banned the use of DDT.

Rachel Carson, whose monumental book "Silent Spring" in 1962 drew attention to the threat of DDT and other pesticides to animals and humans, was the main hero of Brinkley's talk.

Suffering from from the breast cancer that killed her in 1964, Carson was severely attacked by chemical companies until government scientists under President Kennedy confirmed the truth of her findings.

Before "Silent Spring," Carson wrote a pioneering trilogy of books on sea life. The books, recently republished in one volume by the Library of America,  predicted the current threats to the ocean from plastic pollution and rising acidification.

Most of those in the audience appeared in their 60s and 70s, members of a generation that witnessed the excitement of the environmental movement in the 1960s and 1970s, and its distressing demise after the massive corporate attacks, which are accelerating in today's Republican Party.

Brinkley, a professor at Rice University, expressed hope that a rising younger generation will launch a new environmental wave. He mentioned that his Generation Z students display an intense interest in combating climate change.

"Silent Spring Revolution" will  inform them about our generation accomplished, and let slip away. Its historical scope and optimism for the future will inspire them to not let it happen again.

 

Anticipating Noah Baumbach's "White Noise"

At last a movie I'm looking forward to seeing: Noah Baumbach's "White Noise."

Although I consider the comic novel one of Don DeLillo's lesser works, I expect it to translate well to film, especially in Baumbach's hands.

Beginning with "The Squid and the Whale" and continuing through "Marriage Story," Baumbach has fused visual imagery and character-defining dialogue for a distinctive narrative style. An ethereal light illuminates the darkest emotional moments.

The movie stars actors whose work I've admired in a number of films: Adam Driver, Greta Gerwig and Don Cheadle. I''ve especially come to enjoy the performances of Gerwig since her days in independent films. Driver has become for me the modern version of William Holden, perhaps my favorite Old Hollywood star.

DeLillo's book about a middle-aged professor who started the Department of Hitler Studies at a small college and whose blended family is threatened by a "toxic event" was for years considered un-filmable, largely because of DeLillo's cryptic, satiric dialogue.

Many of the pop cultural references are already dated. But Baumbauch has apparently employed much of DeLillo's speech in the film's script.

"White Noise" with its dread over environmental disaster has gained greater relevance as climate change worsens. I'm hoping Baumbach has turned the book into a cinematic classic.

Break out the cigars: World's population hits 8 billion

No wonder places seem so crowded these days: The world's population reached 8 billion Tuesday.

I remember when 3 billion was considered too many.

Although population growth has slowed somewhat in recent years, the number of people consuming the earth's finite resources will hit 8.5 billion in 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050 and 10.4 billion in the 2080s, according to the United Nations.

Growth has stalled in the industrialized world, which bears the most responsibility for climate change as carbon emissions keep rising.  The populations of Japan, China and European nations are aging. The U.S. population has also stalled.

Developing countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Mideast are experiencing huge population increases, as their resources disappear. Non-industrial nations are suffering the most from climate change, although they've registered the least amount of carbon emissions. Industrial nations at the recent climate change conference in Egypt pledged to contribute billions to those countries, but even greater aid will be needed.

Getting past the gloomy forecasts for the future, those children being born at a rapid pace offer hope for humanity. The laws of probability suggest that  generations to come will include geniuses who will develop technological solutions to the earth's problems. Our future descendants will invent now un-imagined wonders, discover cures for diseases, create new works of art.

On the other hand, perhaps humanity will die like the dinosaurs, and a new cycle of life  begin. Or the Earth will turn into a lifeless rock spinning around a dying sun. Humanity might say goodbye to our ancient home and find a new beginning far far away in the universe.

For now, I need to buy some batteries for the TV remote.

 

 

Democratic Party lurches toward disaster

It's been a beautiful autumn, heading to the political apocalypse.

The Democratic Party's panicking, scrambling to hold on to formerly safe House districts and governorships as the Republican tide rises, even after Jan. 6. GOP candidates who deny Joe Biden won the presidency aim to seize power over elections.

As time runs out before Tuesday's election, Bernie Sanders and others bemoan the Democrats' muddled messaging on the economy, abortion and climate change. Barack Obama, Sanders and Biden rush to bolster faltering Democratic campaigns after early voting has been going on for weeks.

Why didn't they take action months ago?  As Democrats launch their belated fire drill, the Republicans have convinced voters that the economy is horrible and crime rampant.

New York Times economics columnist Paul Krugman keeps assuring his readers that inflation is under control, employment stable, crime rates falling.

For many voters, reality doesn't match Krugman's ivory tower views.

Krugman has admitted he was wrong on inflation's rise. Further damaging Krugman's credibility, he claimed this week that inflation is under control just a day before the Fed further raised interest rates to cool rising prices.

It's not surprising that conservative Washington Post columnist George Will has turned against  Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, appealing to them this week not to seek re-election in 2024. Will in his column exposed Harris' alarming incoherence, citing several devastating quotes from public events. The Democratic Party needs a new generation of leaders.

Biden has even lost liberal Post columnist Eugene Robinson. In his Friday column, Robinson cited Biden's speech this week in which the president warned that the GOP threatens American democracy. While agreeing with Biden's assessment, Robinson pointed out that voters are more concerned with the economy, and suggested that Biden would have been more effective pushing his economic accomplishments.

As global carbon emissions soar unabated, the climate change-denying GOP surges. They plan to cut Social Security and Medicare, and cause political turmoil. They plan to cut aid for Ukraine, giving Putin the victory he yearns for. They wish to end American democracy.

The days are beautiful in the last days of the republic.

 

 

 

Mississippi River sinking to perilously low water levels

Mark Twain wouldn't recognize the Mississippi these days.

Twain's beloved river has fallen to its lowest water levels in years.

Huck and Jim now couldn't find enough water to float their raft. The river known for the devastating 1927 flood has turned docile.

A severe drought has brought the river's water levels so low that people can walk over dry land to an island in Illinois previously accessible only by boat. In Baton Rouge, a 19th century ship was discovered in the river's dried-up channel.

Shipping is imperiled from Minneapolis to St. Louis, Memphis, Vicksburg, Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Riverboat cruises are being delayed.

The U.S. Corps of Engineers keeps the river flowing to the ports of Baton Rouge and New Orleans. The river wants to cut a new channel to the west, which would abandon the port cities. Now Baton Rouge and New Orleans might see the river disappear anyway.

T.S. Eliot in "The Four Quartets" called the river a fierce brown god. It was serenaded as "Old Man River" by Paul Robeson in "Showboat." Jimmie Rodgers expressed the deep emotional ties to the river in "Miss the Mississippi and You." In the Civil War, the Confederacy's loss of the river signaled the Union's victory. Lewis and Clarke crossing the river opened the way to the American West. It was the backbone of the Louisiana Purchase.

Lake Mead, Salt Lake and western rivers are other essential American waterways that are disappearing. They can''t be replaced.

Returning to Mountain Way

I returned to Mountain Way Wednesday for the longest walk I've taken since undergoing knee surgery in early summer.

On a gorgeous autumn afternoon, my wife and I headed back to one of our favorite walking paths near our home.

Mountain Way, which runs off Wieuca Road, is a quiet street that has registered many changes in Buckhead through the years: housing construction booms and busts, politics, neighborhood preservation and improvements.

Bordered by Little Nancy Creek, Mountain Way passes through a valley between two ridges. When we first moved into the neighborhood, the road as its name suggested was a rustic preserve of trees and wildflowers in the middle of Atlanta. Then after years of neighborhood opposition, Ga. 400 tore through the area, desecrating Mountain Way's beauty with a towering overpass, massive supporting columns and a sloping concrete embankment.

In recent years, civic leaders have sought to heal the wound by developing Mountain Way Common. The not yet completed park offers sidewalks and decorative planters, a walking trail along Little Nancy Creek leading to a pedestrian bridge and a sculptured swing beneath the overpass.

Decorative picnic tables have been set up in a vacant lot across from the park, and Livable Buckhead installed beehives and flowers.

Mountain contains an interesting mix of futuristic homes, 1950s ranches and one remaining rustic cabin from the days when the area was a weekend getaway for wealthy Atlantans. At a huge LA-styled home where construction was halted for years, joyful workers completed a driveway. We wondered if the huge home would at last be finished for someone to live there.

Sitting on the bright red swing designed by artist Robert Proctor, we heard MARTA trains and cars pass by high above us. New beauty rises from the ruins of the past. After a few reflective moments, we headed for home.

 

Pop superstar Carole King calls for Biden to ban logging in national forests

Superstar singer and songwriter Carole King has used her rock and roll fame to fight for environmental action.

In a passionate op-ed article in The New York Times Friday, King called for President Biden to stop logging in the nation's national forests. Dispelling the myth of rock-star self-indulgence, King wrote with the emotive power of her long string of hits.

The Inflation Reduction Act's programs to promote the growth of trees and protect private and public forests include a survey of the country's old-growth forests, to be completed by next April.

King argued that the country can't wait that long, calling for Biden to immediately ban logging on national forests. Decrying the  loss of trees and the environmental damage from logging operations, she pointed out that forests in storing carbon are a natural defense against climate change.

Such an exective order would undoubtedly bring Biden condemnation from the GOP.  But King makes a convincing case that preservation of the national forests is urgent.

King in the article recalls how she fled the hedonistic Los Angeles lifestyle to live in rural Idaho. At age 80, with a deep reverence for the environment, she's fighting to preserve the national forests for future generations. 

 

 

 

 

Republicans' climate change denial threatens humanity

Not one Republican senator voted for the United States' first significant climate change legislation.

If anyone's left to write history, the GOP senators will be remembered like the good Germans who ignored Hitler and the Holocaust.

I thought at least Utah Sen. Mitt Romney would vote for the Democratic bill that seeks to reduce carbon emissions by boosting solar energy and electric vehicles. But Romney joined with Mitch McConnell's Republican goose-steppers.

While liberal pundits and progressives cheer the legislation, which is expected to pass the House this week and go to President Biden, environmentalists are criticizing the bill for concessions to the fossil-fuel industry, such as allowing the completion of a pipeline in Sen. Joe Manchin's West Virginia.

The legislation, two or three decades too late, will do too little to cut emissions and keep temperatures from soaring to unsustainable levels.

While environmentalists have long called for a carbon tax, the legislation instead calls for solar-power and electric vehicle incentives. The fossil fuel industry has reluctantly come to support a carbon tax, which wouldn't cost American families, but it remains political poison, especially to the GOP.

Once, Republicans recognized the threat of climate change. In George W Bush's administration, Lindsay Graham and John McCain were proponents of carbon offset credit swaps. But the GOP succumbed to oil industry money, and now Graham is among the senators who deny climate change.

The United States must take more immediate and extensive climate change action. The planet's future depends on the Democratic Party increasing its control over the House and Senate in the midterm elections.  A Republican Congress will sound the death knell for human civilization.