“The answer my friends is blowin’ in the wind…”

‘tis a cold December thus far in Santa Fe. Warm thoughts to those that have served in the military continued with “Wreaths Across America” on Monday- held in each state capital. On this Pearl Harbor 70^th anniversary & remembrance morning I hope to pause at 11:10AM (MST), the minute in Honolulu time that an armor-piercing shell hit & quickly sunk the USS Arizona.  I noticed my weather sensor read 10F (or -12.2C) at 6AM, up from yesterday’s 4F/-15.5C; birds have taken refuge in the woodpile, and Lucy prefers staying curled up in her daybed in the den (nearer the fire). Many of us do that: find a warmer locale out of the winds and hunker down. It is easier. Of course, I’m wondering about the political winds at present. Many of us have been clamoring for “change” for sometime. I have friends advocating everything from term limits to revolution and the return of the guillotine (and those are the conservative ones). How about you?

I recently read Wm. Leuchtenburg’s bio: Herbert Hoover. Far from being a Hoover apologist, best known for his works on Hoover’s successor President Franklin D. Roosevelt, he does explode a lot of myths about HH (some even made common by newspaper reporters of renown and a Pulitzer Prize. Can you imagine a professional news organization today trying to get away with reporting “eye witnessed” events that actually never took place? Hmmm…)

I’d always heard of a professional nexus between Hoover and my maternal grandfather (Henry Newlin- photo below); they were both engineers by training (and personality). Henry’s 1^st wife was a Mellon; after she died my grandmother (Ann- photo) and Henry had a family of four. While Hoover was a cabinet secretary (Commerce) in the 1920’s (before being elected President), a fellow cabinet member was Andrew Mellon (Treasury), and he kept Mellon as Secretary of the Treasury when elected President. So, it sounds like “family history” isn’t far off-base on this one. I mention this because Hoover has usually been represented and characterized as a heartless ogre, but as I read I found a much more complex individual that wasn’t “in bed with the bankers” and sometimes showed a humanistic streak.

Henry & Ann Newlin

Albright & Hoover
in Yellowstone NP

Having had a career in the National Park Service I found references to President Hoover’s conservation efforts most interesting: “augmented the national forest reserve by two million acres…rescue of sequoia groves on the Pacific Coast… edict restricting the gunning down of migratory birds… Nine days after taking office, Hoover announced that no more oil exploration would be permitted on public lands, within the next year more than twelve thousand leases were canceled. But his most important step on behalf of conservation was approving as director of the National Park Service the superbly qualified Horace Albright… Under Hoover and Albright, the government added three million acres to U.A. parks and monuments- a phenomenal 40 percent increase…opened preserves in the Grand Tetons and Carlsbad Caverns, and took steps toward creating the first national parks in the East, including the Great Smokies and the Florida Everglades.” I was lucky enough to get to know and assist Horace Albright years later, during my tenure as a District Ranger at Santa Monica Mountains.

Anyway, in the public eye and the media of the day President Hoover was seen as heartless, but one wonders what might have been… “if only?” If only, he hadn’t named the financial downturn a “depression” (trying to avoid the previously used term of “panic”); If only, it had been a shorter decline as most expected (including his political adversaries); If only, Europe’s economic situation went down-the-drain a couple years later and a worldwide “Great Depression” followed. History is filled with “if only.” However, as Meme’s family saying goes: “If wishes were fishes, we’d all be sardines.” We were, and are, faced with great challenges.

Maybe it is time to fly from the wood pile and see how we can help and serve (THANKS to those that have). After all it is the season… and giving & hope are good things…

USS Arizona Memorial

FYI, this was on front page of the Opinions section of the Santa Fe New Mexican on 04 Dec:

http://www.santafenewmexican.com/opinion/myview/Their-view--Phil-Young--and-William-Wiley-Don-t-let-Congress-gi

On page two was this editorial:

http://www.santafenewmexican.com/Opinion/Our-view-Giving-away--the-wilderness