Leadership - Fall Equinox 2020

 

 

I started this year’s essays talking about leadership. As the year slowly loses light, we shift our focus to who we want to lead us and where we want to go.

 

Twice in my life, I’ve been put in the position to either rebuild an organization or oversee its dismantling. Both times I chose to attempt the former. And both times, while I was elected to the position, in reality, no one else wanted the responsibility. I am just the kind of special idiot who volunteers when no one else steps up.

 

The first time I was in Boy Scouts as a teenager. Unlike most of my peers, I’d come to the organization late. I’d never been a Cub Scout. I’d only lasted a few months as a Webelo as I’d gotten bored because we didn’t do anything except attend meetings without much else in sight. I’d been spoiled by the brief time my father and I had spent in an organization called Indian Guides where we actually did things like camping. But by then, my father was out of the picture. He still lived locally but had made it clear that his life and mine would only intersect every other weekend at best. Less after he left for Spain.

 

Of course, my lack of commitment to Webelos meant that by the time my middle school friends introduced me to Boy Scouts, my mother was reluctant to let me join. But once she learned that she wouldn’t be responsible for getting me to the meetings and that every few months I would disappear for a weekend, she was onboard.

 

Our Boy Scout troop was somewhat bipolar. Because it served a geographic area, its neighborhoods were half sleepy middle-class bedroom communities and half old-school Florida crackers. In my subdivision, Boy Scouts were seen as leading to a single goal: Eagle Scout. It was a box you checked. It was the American Dream writ small. If you studied hard, showed discipline, accumulated the right awards and leadership roles, you would eventually be rewarded with opportunities down the road. If nothing else, it looked great on a college application. Today, we would call that privilege.

 

Not so much on the other side of the boulevard. The rednecks in our troop were more interested in practical skills than academics. Our fathers were mostly white collar, theirs were blue-collar as well as hunters and boaters and fishermen. While we were interested in merit badges like Fingerprinting and Citizenship in the Community, they wanted to learn how to camp and cook and shoot, be it a bow or a gun. In general, it came down to us wanting to learn things and them wanting to do things.

 

All of which meant on our side, activities could get pretty academic and individual. While my friends were suburbanites, I found my interests aligned more with the rednecks. I quickly discovered their side had more fun.

 

Like the space program our city largely served, our troop went through boom and bust. Shortly after I joined, the troop expanded to six then eight patrols, our fundamental grouping similar to teams. We actively considered spitting the troop in two but ended up encouraging people to join the struggling troop just north of us to relieve the pressure. Which only cast it a short-term lifeline before it eventually folded and we inherited their remnants.

 

By then we’d fallen onto hard times of our own. In the time I had gone from a member to a patrol leader to troop librarian, our troop had begun struggling, too. Through new rounds of layoffs at the Cape and general disinterest, our numbers were more than cut in half. We barely had enough attendance to justify meetings. When annual elections for the youth leadership came up, our Senior Patrol leader could no longer dedicate the bandwidth. Like many other suburbanite boys, other activities and organizations, like band and baseball, placed greater demands on his time.

 

But for me, camping had become a sanctuary. I found more peace in nature than I ever could have at home. To avoid the chaos there, I often spent whole Saturdays or Sundays with a book and a BB gun in the woods. Full weekends away were much needed respites.

 

So, before a minimum quorum, I threw my hat in the ring and won easily. I encouraged a friend who was a year younger to run as my assistant. He picked that up with ease. I knew with him to help we could turn the troop around. At the time we had several existential issues facing us.

 

First, the church where we met had become a bit disenchanted with us. We usually met in one of their side rooms but our boisterous nature had begun to clash with their restrained Methodist sensibilities, especially with our proximity to their sanctuary. But we needed a sponsor, be it a church or a school or some other organization. I remembered when we’d gone camping, we’d often met outside a little plywood shack tucked in the back of the church lot. I asked who that belonged to. Well, it was on church property but our troop had built it sometime before any of the current members remembered. Nobody had been in there in years. No one had a key. But it’s ours, right? Checking with the church, we confirmed it was. If we met there, would the church still be willing to continue sponsoring us? Reluctantly, they agreed.

 

We met one Saturday to check it out. Someone brought bolt cutters for the padlock, which we cut then replaced. Inside, the space was larger than it appeared. It was divided into two areas, a larger room, equipped with folding chairs no one knew we had. Once we cleaned it up, we found it would easily meet our needs. We discovered a number of old merit badge booklets, enough to start a real troop library, along with miscellaneous camping supplies no one knew existed. We set most of that aside to distribute to the patrols as needed.

 

The second, smaller area was a small storage room, stuffed with tents and even surplus army cots. No one knew we owned any of that. Our leaders thought the canvas was likely all dry rotted so we left it for another day. But I didn’t forget about it.

 

Now that we had a place to meet, we faced a second existential problem: Adult leadership. In order to maintain our charter, we needed a minimum of three adult leaders to sign the paperwork. At the time I took over, that was a huge problem. The sons of two of our three adult leaders were no longer active in the troop. Naturally, they were no longer interested in donating their time. The third leader had hoped to step aside as well, although his youngest son had just come of age to join. We targeted him first. Reluctantly, he agreed to stay on if we could find two more leaders. Next we managed to convince my assistant’s father, a college history professor, to sign on, a role he never envisioned himself in but gamely tried on. Which still left us one short.

 

Problem was, this was the late 70s. Like most communities, the divorce rate in our city ran about 50%. Which meant a lot of our scouts didn’t have fathers around to volunteer. My own was in Spain or California by this point. Even if he’d been local, I doubt he would have volunteered. We targeted every father around could find. No luck. We even looked into trying to get a female leader. A one or two mothers were willing. National said absolutely no way. Women could lead a Cub Scout den not a Boy Scout troop. They’d rather let the troop fold than change, which given their more recent problems should surprise no one.

 

As the paperwork deadline loomed, we went the desperation route. We approached one of our former leaders with an arrangement. If he signed on to the paperwork, we would make sure he wouldn’t have to participate. We were confident given time we could find a replacement and swap him out. Reluctantly, he agreed. It was either that or watch the troop cease to exist. He had too much attachment from his son’s time with us, and his previous leadership, to let that happen. As it turned out, before the year was up, an old member of the troop who had been away in the military returned and stepped up.

 

Having cleared that hurdle, I turned to membership. Our troop had become a shell of its former self. As I mentioned, soon after I’d joined, we’d had to split patrols, the smallest level of our organization, just to keep things manageable for the boys leading them. But those eight patrols had dwindled to barely four, maybe three of which were functional with minimal membership. If we didn’t attract more members, adult leadership would no longer be a problem.

 

For that we needed something to draw them in. I had a pretty good idea of what that might be. Up to now, our leadership had been focused on creating Eagle Scouts as one of its primary goals. While that served half of our community, for the other half it just wasn’t a big concern. As I said, ours was somewhat of a redneck troop. They were more interested in doing than learning. Not that those two things were mutually exclusive. But the approach made all the difference.

 

So, I came up with a plan, something I could sell to both halves of our community. I sketched it in my mind then approached our leaders. I said I wanted one major activity each month in addition to our meetings. A camping trip, local or distant, a canoe trip, a hike, a camporee. Something, anything I could point to that was fun. While I had ideas, I needed help with the logistics, reservations, driving rotations, contacts, etc., which at the time were beyond my ken.

 

When I laid out my agenda to our leaders, they were skeptical and a bit daunted. I tried to ease their minds. There were two major camporees our troop attended every year. That left ten more events. Summer camp, either in FL or every few years in North Carolina, were annual activities, so I counted that as another. Nine more. For campouts, I reminded them of several locations I remembered we’d visited before, one in the far north of the county, one in the far south and several in between, plus the campground of our summer camp. Add in a few other full-day trips, and we were in business.

 

My enthusiasm must have been infectious. They started adding in their own ideas. One of our leaders had a boat, as did some other fathers. Previously, we’d camped out on islands in the Indian River, which were free. Someone threw in inner-tubing down any of Florida’s numerous spring-fed rivers.  In the end, the leaders said the plan was ambitious, yet agreed to give it a try. Why not. Even as they signed off, I think they thought there were enough obstacles that it might never happen. But they were willing to feed me some rope to see what I did with it.

 

The moment I got their buy-in, I started a recruitment campaign. I began with former members who’d fallen away, boys who were still the right age and might be interested. I talked to a dozen or so former members, some older, some younger. asking why they’d fallen out of the troop. Almost universally, I got the answer that the meetings were boring and we didn’t do anything fun. So, I laid my plan before them and told them the leadership had agreed. As a sweetener, I added that after each meeting, we would reimplement some sort of game like the ones we used to play. Capture the flag was always a favorite. I got the sense many of them didn’t believe me. Why not show up for a while and see?  

 

I didn’t stop there. I knew we couldn’t survive on returning former members alone. So, I knocked on a few doors of a few friends and acquaintances who I thought might be interested but had never joined. Guys who used to run around in the same woods I did. Guys in ROTC. I talked up our proposed activities along with the current and likely returning former members they might know.  Again, I told them, give it a try. If you like it, sign on. If not, what do you lose but a little time?

 

Within a month, our meeting room was full with boys who wanted to see if I was for real. I was. We immediately started planning our first camping trip. That’s when one of our leaders pulled me aside. He counselled me on another aspect of our troop I hadn’t had to think about before. A number of our newly reconstituted patrols were filled with boys who came from neighborhoods where there wasn’t a lot of money. Unlike boys from my neighborhood, they didn’t have the fundamental supplies for camping, especially tents. And they couldn’t just tap their parents to buy them. Those were big purchases, mostly reserved for Christmas and then on layaway. Some of these kids didn’t have sleeping bags. Some used blankets, or quilts their mothers made. He advised I might need to modify my plans.

 

I didn’t. Remember when I said there was a store room in our meeting house? I said, ok, I understand. But before we scale back and lose the kids we just got, let’s check out what’s in there and see if it’s of any use. So, the first troop activity we scheduled was go through that store room. This leader tried his best to temper my expectations. As I mentioned, the tents we’d seen were canvas. He’d been in the Army. He knew dry rot was a real issue, especially in Florida, especially if any of them had been put away damp however long ago.

 

That Saturday we started pulling out tents, unrolling them and setting them up. Four-man frames, two-man pups, and one really interesting three-man version. They had some stains and smelled a little musty, but amazingly, all of them had poles and stakes. The first one we set up had dry rot in a corner at one stake loop where a pole rested. We set that one aside, forging on, now preparing for disappointment. In fact, while I directed others to keep going, I examined that one to see if there was anything to be salvaged. I spent the next half hour hand-stitching a repair with canvas thread and a needle-point needle I pressed into service, fashioning an adequate and durable if not elegant repair. As I did, report after report got called over my way. “This one’s good.” “This one, too.” “No problem here.” “Here, either.”

 

In the end, all but a couple tents we pulled out were either fine, or, like the one I nursed, needed just minor repair. A few didn’t have all the right poles or stakes but we cannibalized those from the others. By the end of the morning, we had enough tents to outfit two to three patrols as long as some didn’t mind sharing a four-man tent. All we had to do was divvy them up.

 

That led to a bit of conflict as every patrol thought they should get at least one of the big ones. I shook my head and explained. Those were going to the patrols that needed them, the ones without, not the ones that thought they would be cool but already had their own. We dedicated the pup tents to any patrol that ended up needing them on an ad hoc basis. A few kids didn’t like it, but everyone pretty much agreed it was fair.

 

But I did claim the three-man pup tent as a leadership tent for my assistant and me, which no one had a problem with, especially when I stressed the next set of leaders would get it, too. It became a kind of status symbol, exactly as I’d hoped.

 

So how did my first experiment in leadership work out? Well, that first year, we had events in ten out of twelve months, including a three-day canoe trip down almost the entirety of the St. John’s River, and a ten-mile hike into a local ranch. Not quite my goal but easily double the highest number of events we’d ever pulled off before. As well, we used each trip as an opportunity to earn merit badges and other awards that helped with our advancement.

 

At the end of that year, I said I would step aside as leader, which had always been my plan. I encouraged my assistant to take it for himself with my support. He was more than capable and ready. To assuage any fears, I said I would stay on as his assistant if he wanted, so he could rely on me if he needed to. Basically, switching positions so our overall leadership team remained intact. We were both re-elected without serious opposition. And the troop rolled on. The next year, we might have slipped to nine events. But we still had a lot of advancement in rank. Everyone was happy or at least content.

 

I score that as a win.

 

Five or so years later, I had an opportunity to put those skills to work again. At college, I’d become an off and on member of the campus Society for Science Fiction and Fantasy (FITSSFF). I’d encountered them at some point in my first couple years, and was attending meetings somewhat regularly by my sophomore year. Much like my old Boy Scout troop, I could see they were struggling. Membership hemorrhaged as the year progressed. There was a core group who were a somewhat boisterous lot that tended to put new members off. Mostly, again, as a club, we didn’t really do anything but meet and cut up. No real events, no real discussions or activities. Just kind of hanging out. Given we were all in college with science and engineering majors, most people had better places to dedicate their time.

 

By the end of spring semester, that apathy and ambivalence had begun to show. We’d started the year with maybe fifteen people showing up to meetings, including some seniors who would be graduating. We ended with five. Barely enough to qualify as a club. And even getting that many to the final meeting had been a struggle. What I didn’t know at the time was that the club president had already written a very creative club obituary to post in the campus newsletter if our final meeting came out as he expected.

 

To keep our status, we had to hold elections for club president and vice president for the next year so we could submit their names along with our current membership with our renewal forms. The problem was, of the five of us there, three refused to run, which our president knew in advance, hence the obit. Of the remaining two, which included me, this was the other guy’s first meeting. When the president opened up nominations for the next year, I looked around and said, if no one else wants it, I’ll take it. Our president looked surprised, stunned even. Done. Unanimous. The other guy took Veep. We’d survive another year. Or at least the summer.

 

This time around, I better knew what needed to be done. But unlike with Boy Scouts, I didn’t have adult leadership (I was the adult now), or a reliable second to help me (the guy we elected Veep didn’t return after the summer). But that didn’t matter. I did have our former president, now a senior, offering his help, which I gladly accepted.

 

That summer, because I was local, I crafted a plan. The first thing I wanted to do was start the year off with a bang. Every year, FITSSFF like most clubs, manned a table during freshman orientation to recruit new members. I knew it was a somewhat ineffective process. I’d skipped my freshmen orientation (much to several people’s consternation). Even if I hadn’t, I wasn’t the type of person to cruise tables looking for activities. I wanted deeds not words.

 

So, I talked to a few working engineers I knew who could put me in touch with a liaison at NASA (we were twenty miles from Cape Canaveral). I told them who I was and that I was hoping to get a speaker for my college. Ok, exactly what are you looking for? I was hoping for a subject along the lines of science fiction to science fact, which I sketched out. Let me look into it was the official reply. Eventually, they put me in touch with an engineer who said he’d be happy to speak. He just needed a projector, a microphone and a screen.

 

I scheduled the main auditorium, which seated around 300 plus (on a campus of 7000), not knowing how many people would show up. Me and the former president drew up flyers that the school activities department printed. Who knew as a club we had a standing budget with them for that? Not us until we talked to them. We crafted and hung a banner across the main thoroughfare from the dorms to the classrooms advertising it.

 

I didn’t have much hope for turnout. So I was more than astounded when I met our speaker backstage to agree on his introduction. The auditorium was well over half full. A hundred and fifty people, only a dozen of whom were former club members. Wow. That exceeded my expectations. Sadly, the speaker did not. It became apparent after he went through his first few slides that there had been a grave miscommunication somewhere. He was talking about the art on the covers of his classic pulp science fiction magazine collection. Not at all what we’d advertised. Which showed as the audience began to slowly hemorrhage as the evening wore on. By the time he’d finished, one fifty had dwindled down to fifty.

 

As he closed his talk, I stepped back to the microphone and asked people to hang out for a couple minutes. I put on a good face to hide my disappointment (and annoyance), thanking our speaker and seeing him off. Instead of returning to the microphone, I sat on the edge of the stage and addressed people directly. I am not a great public speaker, but I can do it. Somewhere in introducing myself, I stumbled over something I said, which drew a laugh, but one that I got the sense put people at ease. Laughing with me not at me. I told them who we were, gave a brief pitch off the cuff and said if they were interested to come check us out at our first meeting, giving them a time and place.

 

Again, after what I thought was a debacle of an event, I didn’t have much hope for turnout for that first meeting of the year. Once again, I was surprised when I arrived just a little early and it was standing room only. Our regular crew had ensconced themselves in the back row and began chanting my nickname as I walked in. Generalissimo! Generalissimo! Generalissimo! Our first meeting was when campus activities insisted that we take club photos, so I’d dressed the part in a fatigue jacket and a foreign legion cap with a revolutionary beard. I know I made an impression on at least one redhead in the room. But not enough of one to be first or even second in line. Dammit.

 

After a group picture, somehow, I got the meeting under control. First order of business was the remainder of our deferred elections, the results of which we had to submit with our membership list along with the club picture. By then we knew we needed a VP as well as a treasurer and secretary. A rather chaotic election ensued. Our new VP wanted to be called Il Duce. Our treasurer got elected unanimously when he came in late wearing a suit because he’d just gotten off work. He turned out to be more reliable, with more of a can-do attitude than our Veep, which worked out. I honestly don’t remember our secretary.

 

Even with all the weirdness and miscues, by the end of the night fifty people had signed the attendance list. Better than any of us had a right to expect. But I didn’t rely on sheer numbers to hold the club together. We needed to keep people coming back.

 

My first goal was to organize a mini-gaming convention once each quarter, roleplaying and wargames. When I glanced through the club’s scant archives, I found we had hosted similar ten years before. I knew we had a lot of gamers on campus and in the club so it seemed a perfect fit. Each time I never ran a game, and only managed to sit in on one due to learning crisis management, schedule adaptation and game promo on the fly. Despite none of us ever having done anything like it before, we pulled off all three, mostly based on my experience attending a couple Gen Con Souths in Jacksonville and organizing some small, informal events for my high school gaming group. All three were wildly successful judging by attendance and enthusiasm, as well as the decent attendance of our meetings. That served as a foundation.

 

We also invited members to give reviews for whatever science fiction/fantasy books they were reading after meetings. We informally discussed books and movies, and gave each other recommendations. We ended up consulting with the club’s adviser, who taught a course on science fiction, on restructuring her reading list, which necessitated a research trip to the local public library for ideas after we’d worked through very limited options in the college library. We got together informally and watched science fiction/fantasy movies that we (usually I and other officers) rented. We organized trips to the theater when new science fiction/fantasy films came around. When one of my dormmates had a meltdown and handed me all his gaming books, wargames and science fiction books because his Christian faith suddenly told him they were an evil influence on him, I accepted them and started a club library, asking for other donations, and donating every science fiction/fantasy book I read. And of course, we continued our annual ritual of showing the short film the club owned a copy of outright although no one knew how. Hand of Death. 1960s science fiction at its very best (or arguably worst).

 

In short, we did things. Things other students apparently wanted to do. We even managed to attract consistent female membership, no small trick in a genre that isn’t always welcoming or accessible to women on a campus with a 7:1 male to female ratio.

 

All of which meant that by the end of that spring quarter when we had to hold elections for the following year, we had twenty-five members show up, a week before finals.  Quite an improvement from a year earlier. Once again, I stepped aside and convinced a friend to take over. He kept things moving forward for my senior year. After I graduated, I learned the club library I’d started had grown to a point where two presidents after him got it allocated its own storeroom on campus. From humble beginnings.

 

When I looked up both organizations twenty plus years later, both had not only survived but thrived. I am sure in the intervening years each faced other crises forcing someone new to step up. I fundamentally believe that without good leadership in that critical moment, whether mine or someone else’s, either organization easily could have failed. I know in my heart that my stepping up gave them that opportunity to flourish. Because I valued them.

 

Like I currently value science, evidence, facts and truth.

 

Now, in the previous paragraphs, you read a lot of “I”. The truth is in both cases this was all a major group effort. In the first, without our adult leaders, who handled most of the logistics, without an eager, more than competent assistant, without the other patrol leaders, older mentors and rank-and-file boys willing to put in the effort, it never would have worked. FITSSFF was much the same. A lot of people chipped in with their time and effort. Without the other people in the club and one other solid officer, things wouldn’t have gotten done.

 

I don’t claim full credit for either outcome, just for having the imagination, motivation and problem-solving tenacity to convince others we could get it done. Together. And get it done we did. Sometimes people just need to be shown the way. In fact, there are a number of things I don’t remember exactly how they got done, likely because I didn’t do them. At times, things happen around me. People take up tasks that need doing, contribute contacts, attend to details I’ve missed, put out fires I never see.

 

All of which helped me when I reluctantly took on a leadership role in my engineering career. But once I did, I quickly rose from a team lead to being slated to lead multiple teams with over two dozen members and oversee a multi-million-dollar budget. And still helps me today, when I organize something as simple as a Kitten*Con.

 

Which is a long way of saying, I know a little bit about leadership and rebuilding.

 

When you lead an organization or a team, you first seek to preserve and protect it. You look out for all its members, not just the ones you like or the ones who agree with you. Not just your family, friends or base.

 

And yet, right now, we as a nation are entering a struggle for the kind of leadership we wish to see. I don’t mean that in the normal sense of a quadrennial election.

 

Although perhaps our current struggle isn’t really over leadership per se. On one side, we have someone who, while not likely to be a great leader, still wants to protect and serve the overarching organization he seeks to lead. On the other side, we have someone who, while charismatic, is a disrupter and destroyer. His record on those points is clear, at least to anyone without motes and scales obscuring their vision, purposefully or otherwise.

 

Most of my point here seems obvious, at least to me. So obvious that it’s difficult to put into words without belaboring it or sounding pedantic. By the nature of our current Orwellian environment where black is white and up down, anything I say is likely to be twisted and turned as a weapon against the idea itself by apologists and propagandists. I use those words advisedly.

 

Imagine for a moment that I had adopted that second style with either of the organizations I’d led. Now imagine I’d made it plain that I didn’t value either of those organizations at all. Imagine if instead of putting up ideas for how they could change and improve to benefit more people, all I had done was rely on pandering to a vocal few. Or imagine I’d treated the people around me the same way I’d experience in “Switching Sides”. Imagine working in that environment, with leadership who embraced it. Would either organization have survived?

 

That question might seem rhetorical or hyperbolic. And yet, I can point to interviews from decades ago outlining that this is where someone wanted us to be, with a group or party actively exploiting low voter turnout, or suppressing it, to gain a series of positions to build resumes so they could get elected to the highest offices with the expressed purpose of dismantling huge portions of the organizations they purported to lead, from local school boards to state legislatures to the federal Executive branch.

 

It was a brilliant and effective, if deeply cynical and anti-democratic, strategy. But that roadmap led to exactly where we are.

 

Back when I was a systems engineer, we tested the secure communication system our project had designed. We found that the most potent threat to its operation didn’t come from an external jammer, it was another unit in the network acting erratically. Which made sense. That errant terminal used all the same frequencies and all the same timing for its signals, it shared all the same resources and algorithms. That inside knowledge allowed it to disrupt an established, functioning communications network superbly, if in our case inadvertently, by spewing nonsense data that interfered with the otherwise orderly distribution of information.

 

The easiest way to destroy and dismantle an organization is from the inside. Which is to a large extent what we are seeing. People in power purposefully using every resource and lever within government agencies to suppress and distort the dissemination of vital information to the public, as they slowly, perhaps irrevocably, undermine and damage valued institutions central to our nation’s democratic principles, things like national security, the nonpolitical independence of scientific research, civil rights, justice, and the rule of law.

 

This is not leadership. And leadership, even merely competent leadership, is what we need to rebuild the public trust in those valued institutions and change the course we are on. And if we choose not to, may the gods of history have mercy on our souls.

 

  

© 2020 Edward P. Morgan III

Belief - Lughnasa 2020

When I was young, I desperately wanted to believe in something. I wanted to belong to something, perhaps because I didn’t get that feeling of belonging at home.

My early religious instruction was pretty normal. A pastoral church out in the country, an acceptable substitute denomination when my parents couldn’t find their own, macaroni iconography spray-painted gold, feeding carrots or apples to the neighboring horses after services. I still remember the excitement of the first day I was allowed to sit with my parents and sister rather than in the daycare center the church had for younger kids.

These bucolic outings were curtailed when the Congregationalist church opened a mile from our house. But we still attended as a family off and on when my father wasn’t traveling for his job, which meant less and less often.

That changed again after my parents got divorced. My mother declared she no longer benefited from going to church, though my sister and I still would. That never quite made sense to me, though I suspect now she was looking for a once a week break from us. The hypocrisy wasn’t lost on my sister, who started ditching church like school then stopped going altogether. I wasn’t far behind. Church was a family activity. My family had disappeared.

That didn’t mean I stopped searching, even in a back-burner kind of way. Or perhaps I felt a not so subtle need to conform. But none of that was pressing.

Then came the worst year of my life. Sixth grade arrived with a new school, new friends, and new expectations, all of which was normal enough. But those changes were combined with my sister’s now full-steam rebelliousness layered with my mother struggling to find a job then working nights. Most of what I remember from that year was them fighting Texas Cage Match style, knowing that at any moment it could spill over to me and often did. I remember feeling constantly terrified and exhausted. I often wished I would go to sleep and never wake up, that God would claim me. I didn’t have some vision of unearthly fantasy paradise filled with streets of gold and choirs of angels. That’s not what Congregationalists teach. I just knew heaven couldn’t be any worse than earth. All I wanted was some peace.

About that time a new church opened across the street from my middle school. The Evangel Temple. I don’t know what denomination it was. I suspect it didn’t have one at all. No one knew what to make of them. They were new and didn’t seem to play by the existing rules. I mean who named their church a temple? Not the Lutherans, the Methodists, the Presbyterians, the Catholics or even the Southern Baptists, never mind the Congregationalists. Not in the 70s, not in sleepy Rockledge, Florida. It sounded kind of Old Testament. Perhaps that should have been a clue. Yet here they were, all exciting, shiny and white.

But that’s not what grabbed my attention. Soon after opening, they started trolling the neighborhood in a brightly made up van like an ice cream truck, gathering an audience of kids with free candy, then enticing us with little Biblical puppet shows to say was how much fun their church could be. They were definitely progressive in spreading their Word, at least to our generation. They had a dedicated children’s church with its own rock band. They had a refurbished school bus that would pick us up if our parents didn’t want to attend. It was the perfect disaffected suburban setup, remarkably similar to other 70s cultural temptations. Remember, kids, samples are free.

Somewhere in my head I decided this might be a better way to spend my Sunday mornings than at home. All my friends were in church and television was a wasteland. Just Face the Nation, the 700 Club and the Bobby Bowden Show. And it wasn’t like there were any family activities in the offing, not even Sunday dinner. So, I signed up.

My mother was initially less than enthusiastic. But once the bus came around and honked its horn, she seemed onboard with my once again disappearing for several hours each week. In fact, as the shine wore off because I didn’t really make any friends in the children’s congregation or find it particularly entertaining or as comforting as I’d thought, she was the one who insisted I continue to attend.

The place was weird to me. The first thing they did each week was ask if anyone was new then drag them up on stage to be “saved.” Which I know now is a pretty standard scenario in most evangelical, charismatic and sometimes fundamentalist American Christian churches. Which, aside from making me uncomfortable, struck me as completely alien. No other church I’d been in did anything like this, especially with kids, especially without their parents around. Besides, it seemed unnecessary and redundant. I mean, I knew I’d been baptized. At least I’d seen the pictures though I couldn’t swear my parents weren’t beaming over some other random infant in a white christening dress near a font with a minister.

Plus, none of the sermons, if you could call them that, spoke to me or made much sense. None of the Bible stories were the way I remembered them. It all felt like a huge bait and switch. But as with any boring class in school, I tolerated it as I checked out and daydreamed the time away.

Then came the fateful day someone asked how old I was. I don’t remember if it was around my birthday or just a random question. Either way, thirteen was the answer. Oh, well, that’s a problem. Children’s church is for children only, meaning twelve and under. You now need to attend the regular church in the regular sanctuary. I didn’t like this idea very much. But being a rule follower, I did as I was asked. Not that it was a request. They’d given me one final week in children’s church as a courtesy. After that, the nice lady who ran the place drew a hard, red line.

The next Sunday, I went into the main sanctuary alone, which was as large and sterile as any other church I’d been in. The service was as dry and meaningless to me as any other I’d sat through, either in my previous churches or attending some of my friends’ churches as a guest. Hell, the last Congregationalist sermon I remember revolved around baseball. I’m not sure I followed the metaphor but I do vividly remember the minster examining the ball, tossing it up and down, and setting it on the podium. This was all Old Testament stories and sin as I remember. Definitely perplexing and adult, without a Virgil or Beatrice to guide me through.

But I couldn’t find a way out of it. My mother remained insistent I attend. I’d signed up so wasn’t allowed to quit. I did manage to get off the bus by saying I could ride my bike. My sister briefly went with me, but really that was just a cover for her to ditch and do something with her friends without my mother knowing. She swore me to secrecy and threatened me if I blew her in. That lasted until the day she wasn’t at the assigned meeting spot when I got out. I waited but knew when she didn’t show that I had to get home or risk my mother’s wrath. By this point, we were fighting over the lifeboats: it was every child for themselves.

I don’t remember how long I attended regular services before a family sitting down the pew from me said they’d noticed me attending alone and asked me where my family was. I told them my parents were divorced and neither my mother or sister wanted to come. They invited me to sit with them each week. I think the words “you can be part of our family” were uttered.

I may have only been thirteen but my stranger danger radar blared away full blast, red lights, sirens and everything. I went home that afternoon and told my mother I wasn’t going back. I didn’t tell her why or what had happened. She thought about trying to force me, but something in my stance and hardened eyes must have convinced her it would have been a futile effort. I was done.

So, after eighteen months, I was once again a confirmed heathen with my Sunday mornings free. That little experiment in freewill had definitely cured my itch to belong and believe, at least for a time.

That lasted until I was in high school and had a steady girlfriend. Which surprised even me. Somewhere in the time we were dating, she’d been born again outside the denomination of her birth. She was going to some nondenominational, fundamentalist church out in the sticks of Cocoa. She would tell me about her Bible study class, how great and educational it was. How we really should go together. As a couple. She’d told them all about me, which struck more than a little fear into my heart. After my earlier experience, I wasn’t particularly interested. But in the spirit of compromise and cooperation and a continuing relationship, I eventually, reluctantly agreed.

First problem. Bible study came with homework, which I wasn’t particularly inclined or interested in doing. I had a Bible. But sitting down to read it to discuss with a group of strangers wasn’t high on my list of things to do over a weekend. Second problem, the study group met before the first of two regularly scheduled services. So early, at least for me at the time, which meant setting an alarm on a day I might normally sleep in, especially after a late night on Saturday, or if I had to be at work at noon. Again, not high on my agenda.

But like a dutiful boyfriend, I did my best. For about eight weeks, I did (most) of the assigned reading and contributed to the discussion, though usually only when asked. My opinions weren’t what I’d call the standard interpretation at the table. But the group was at least different from what I’d seen before. The people seemed mostly ok. Though I had my doubts about the guy who would show up bright and early in a tie one week, late in a t-shirt and perhaps hungover the next, miss the next two or three meetings completely, then rinse and repeat. And the group treated it like nothing ever happened. Which struck me as pretty odd.

After the study group, my girlfriend and I attended the main service together. She seemed quite happy with the whole arrangement. At some point I realized she was showing me off, which I wasn’t sure I minded. While it wasn’t my favorite couple’s activity, the congregation was too conservative and literal for my taste, I could generally deal with it. Or so I thought.

Which lasted until a particular Sunday morning. We were sitting in the center of a long row of pews, about mid-distance front to back. Hard, polished wood pews as I remember. No pad or carpet like the Evangel Temple, which seems opulent by comparison. We had gone through the ritual of turning forward, back, and side to side to shake all our neighbors’ hands. It was springtime in Reagan’s newly minted America. Which cast us, I suppose, as the shining city on the hill.

The minister immediately launched a fiery sermon on the perils of premarital sex as a wage of sin. Living in the era of Just Say No, this rolled right off me. It was pretty standard rhetoric. I’d heard it all before. As far as that sin went, there were bigger worries in the world in my mind. In fact, I wasn’t really paying much attention at all.

Right up to the moment he added, “any woman who has sex before marriage is damaged goods in God’s eyes.” That caught my full and undivided attention. Had I just dropped back fifty years and landed in a church Pleasantville? Had my technicolor world just changed to black and white?

At first, I didn’t take his statement seriously. A smile might have tried to curl the corners of my mouth. I thought it was a provocative setup line for a twist that would lead to the real sermon. That had to be it. As I glance around, that nascent smile emerged stillborn. Everyone in front of me was nodding. These people were dead serious.

“Damaged goods.” The minister repeated that phrase for emphasis, with a pause for contemplation. Like women were precious cargo in their God’s eyes. Possessions not people.

I glanced at my girlfriend to check her reaction. She had a rapt expression fixed on the pastor as she nodded gravely, too. I quickly refocused forward, stunned, surrounded, my stranger danger blasting a red alert again. Understand that in our relationship, that ship was no longer tied up at the pier. It’s not like she and I had embarked on a different journey in that regard. Neither of us had sailed alone. Except I wasn’t damaged in her God’s eyes. She was. Not me. Just her.

Which made me wonder what kind of self-hating, hypocritical relationship I was in. If I had been alone, I would have walked out on the spot. I was that repulsed. As my anger curdled, I almost did. Instead, I donned a mask, not wanting to make a scene, working through the rest of the service from the safety of its disguise. On the drive home, I told her I would never go back. If she was comfortable accepting that kind of judgment knowing she didn’t conform to their God’s expectations and never could, that was her choice. Personally, I thought treating women like that was bullshit, albeit an ironic, artistic exclamation point in the statuary garden of the golden calf.

I am pretty sure that’s where our relationship began to founder, though it took another year or so to break up on the rocks. Looking back, that was for the best.

This time, I only kept free and clear from religious entanglements for another couple years. Once again, my return had to do with a girl. Two girls in fact.

The first was a friend who was two thousand miles away when she told me she’d attempted suicide. The second was in the campus Christian group my born-again roommate introduced me to for solace when I told him. She, and they, seemed different from the Christians I’d been around up to then. More caring and honest. Though still on the strange side of metaphysics in my mind, especially as an aspiring engineer.

Long story short, this girl was generous, kind and pretty. I liked her. I thought she liked me. I wanted to see where it might lead. That yellow brick road is paved with good intentions.

Where it ended up was in a tent revival, which is like a southern rite of passage as I understand it. I’d never been to one. Given what I’d seen and heard in the past several years, I figured I could handle it without a problem. How bad could it be? Once again, my estimation and reality didn’t quite intersect.

A tent revival is a lot like a circus sideshow. There’s a striped canvas tent setup in an empty lot on the outskirts of town. Inside there are row upon row of white folding chairs with an aisle down the center facing a platform stage. There are ushers, men, in long-sleeved button-up shirts who look a little like bouncers at a strip club. There is a local barker to warm up crowd and draw them in before the headline talent hits the stage. All this happens after dark.

Revivals are itinerant and somewhat mendicant. They travel from place to place, often in an established circuit, advertising their arrival at various evangelical and charismatic churches. Sometimes the headliners end up as a guest ministers or speakers in a local church, but more often not. Theirs is a particular talent more suited to Saturday night than Sunday morning. Some bill themselves as healers or miracle workers, others as speaking in tongues or any variant of being inhabited by the Spirit. Most are just fiery, inspired speakers who know how to work an audience, which ranges from small and intimate to local carnival large. It is a very strange ecosystem that inhabits the margins of society like a tidal pool.

It’s important to remember these speakers are old-school religious showmen. People turn up to be entertained as well as to be saved or renew their faith. While all are welcome, most know what they’re in for and exactly what to expect.

I didn’t. But I quickly learned. The dialog and narrative structure were novel to me, although as the night progressed, I found the plot points very familiar.

The first trick to showmanship is anticipation. You always make your audience wait. So, a 9 o’clock kickoff time drifts closer to 9:15-9:30. Bearing in mind this is springtime in Florida, so while not Amazonia hot, definitely not what you’d call cool. Pack a hundred or so bodies into a plasticized canvas tent and draw the flaps and it gets downright warm. Not quite uncomfortable, just bordering on giddy.

I don’t remember all the particulars of the how the evening unfolded. The lights were low to set the mood. There wasn’t a microphone, though it wasn’t a big space. An usher guarded the entrance with another at the stage entrance to outside and maybe a third stationed somewhere in front of the stage. There was a local warm-up act who gave the introduction. There was some sort of fiery sermon with allusions to the devil walking among us with his temptations and the punishment that awaited us should we yield. Like every religious service I’d been to, at some point they passed a plate. All of which built toward the highlight of the evening: the call for salvation.

At some point the speaker asked a series of questions. Who had never been here before? Who had a problem the Holy Spirit could address? Who needed to renew their faith? Who had never been saved?

For me, these were all rhetorical questions I had no intentions of answering, or even stirring for as they were asked. I knew what was coming from the Evangel Temple. While I was in the audience voluntarily, I had no desire to make it more than a spectator sport. I didn’t remember hearing a portion of my grade would be based on participation. So, I sat impassively with my arms tucked across my chest watching the spectacle unfold.

Unfortunately, the girl I was with didn’t get the memo. She must have raised a hand and pointed at me behind my back. Suddenly, there was an usher at the head of our row, beckoning to me.

I should have shaken my head and refused. But again, there was a girl involved, one currently encouraging me to accompany this guy. Against my better instincts, I went along.

He guided me up on stage, to the end of a line of half a dozen others. The preacher made a show of more build-up, dragging a last couple stragglers up to join us. At this point, I wasn’t really paying attention because I really didn’t want to be there.

Once he was done with the preliminaries, the preacher started at the head of line. He stood before the first individual, looked them in the eye, then raised a hand and pressed it hard against their forehead, pushing back quickly with a loud, “Be healed” at the moment he made contact. That individual fell back as if they’d fainted into the waiting arms of one of the burly ushers who helped them to their feet and guided them shakily offstage.

The preacher moved down the line, bam, bam, bam, felling individuals one after another like a row of yellow pines. Like a trust exercise at a team-building seminar, each was caught by an usher who assisted them back to their seats. You could see the preacher’s performance was gathering steam. This was why the audience was here.

When he came to me, he gave me that same long, meaningful look into my eyes but didn’t say a word. I assume he thought I knew the script from those who came before. Maybe the first person in line was a ringer to show us the way. Except I’d been through similar before. While I had no intention of disrupting his performance, I also had no desire to participate unless I felt so moved.

“Be healed.” When his palm connected with my brow, my head rocked back. But I felt no spark, no spirit, no knee-buckling euphoria. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to feel something, maybe even hoped to. But there was nothing. So, my head just snapped back forward.

The preacher’s eyes narrowed as his expression flashed between annoyance and outright anger. I just met his gaze levelly before I was grabbed firmly by the arm from behind and hustled back to my folding chair, now more than a little scared. These guys were truly upset that I had ruined their show.

The whole affair wound down quickly after that. As we spilled out into the night, I did feel somewhat reborn, not in spirit but in clarity. After seven years, I’d finally peered behind the curtain and seen the show for what it was. Needless to say, my performance didn’t make a good impression. I didn’t get the girl. Again, likely for the best.

I can’t say that was the last time I was in a church, though I am pretty sure it was the last time I went voluntarily for anything other than a wedding or a funeral. Within a few years, I stopped calling myself a Christian entirely, which was a harder transition than some might think. From what I’d seen, it was no longer who I was or who I wanted to be.

Some people might have been embarrassed by this episode. I know a few people reading it might be embarrassed for me. I am not. I value this experience. If nothing else, it taught me about indoctrination, insular communities, critical thinking, and to see the world as it is, not as I think it should be.

I see similar events played out again and again on social media right now, the same concepts, the same tactics, the same manipulation, if not always surrounding the same belief. The arguments unfold in the same way, uncritically. They rely on blanket acceptance of dogmatic axioms and postulates. Such beliefs are one small step away from prejudice. They are easily manipulated and weaponized by unscrupulous leaders who claim that you are either with us or against us. It doesn’t really matter whether it’s about religion or gun control or capitalism or civil rights, once people self-segregate and divide into isolated camps, once the dialogue is distilled down to memes or clever turns of phrases, coherence and understanding is lost. Everything is reduced to black or white.

Except this world is painted shades of grey. Most sin is simply shame in disguise.

That doesn’t mean I no longer have beliefs. I do. Most are nuanced and require some exploration to untangle. Some border on religious though I rarely discuss them. More are philosophical. A few just bring me comfort even if they only have an internal consistency to me. But I continually renew them or discard them based on my current understanding of the world, refusing to take them solely as articles of faith.

Everyone has beliefs, not all of which are religious. They are often irrational. Most are harmless. Some aren’t. The thing is, the vast majority of people are born into them. Most never have much reason to question them outside of a little adolescent rebellion which often only serves as a test.

That is not inherently bad. Beliefs serve an important psychological and sociological function. They are a shortcut to make the world understandable and relatable. They quantify the world into easily digested categories so we can make simple decisions without expending an inordinate amount of energy and move on. In that they are an evolutionary advantage. But like any inherited, instinctive trait, in modern society they can easily short-circuit and run amok.

On the other side, so can unbridled, undisciplined skepticism. When someone claims you have to verify everything for yourself rather than accept the findings of people with experience and expertise, they are sending you on a fool’s errand. They are trying to wear you down into apathy and exhaustion. It’s only meant to erode trust and damage societal institutions. In that, it has become little more than its own corrupt belief system, secular not religious, though many refuse to see it.

Thinking critically is more than just validating other people’s evidence (that’s called peer review, the operative word being “peer”). It’s about hearing what is and isn’t said. It’s about understanding rhetorical arguments and cognitive biases, our own not someone else’s. It’s more about self-reflection than cross-examination.

In his defense at his trial for heresy, Socrates said to his accusers, “An unexamined life is not worth living”. By which he meant any unexamined belief. Wise words. For which he was condemned to death.

In the end, people believe what they want to believe, regardless of the contradictions, regardless of the hypocrisy, regardless of the evidence right before their eyes. No one can change them. No one can force them to see the truth. Unless you seek, you shall not find.

In that, the last of my Congregationalist indoctrination springs to mind: God helps those who help themselves. And if we lose our ability to do even that in these troubling and contentious times, may s/he have mercy on our souls.

© 2020 Edward P. Morgan III

Wildcard - Summer Solstice 2020

I am a big believer in participatory democracy. I always have been. Over the years, I’ve run into a lot of cynicism, which perpetually says that you can’t fight city hall. Politicians won’t listen to you anyway. Often that’s true. Except when you can and when they do. You just have to know how to approach it, and maybe get a little lucky.

In general, I am a crotchety old wizard. I live in my cave and like to be left alone. But when I emerge to engage the world, there’s often a well-timed spell involved. Usually nothing flashy but sometimes it inadvertently ends in pyrotechnics.

In previous essays, I’ve mentioned that one of the main reasons we bought this house was location. The property bordered on 400-600 undeveloped acres destined to become a county park. Just north of it was another large piece of property also optioned by the county that they were trying to figure out what to do with.

Everyone in the county wanted a piece of both of those tracts of land to use as recreational parks, a botanical garden, an art museum with studio space, sports fields, a wildlife preserve, locations for various county agencies, etc. The oddest request for space came from Pinellas County Utilities, the organization that supplies the county’s drinking water.

A short history lesson. This would have been in the late 90s. At the time Florida was involved in a water war with Georgia and Alabama, specifically over control and use of cross-border rivers. Because of an ongoing drought and increased development, as well as a diminishing aquifer, water was in short supply. Due to the shortage, that interstate infighting had spilled into internecine rivalries as counties around Tampa Bay struggled to secure water sources to quench the thirst of their growing populations. Our county, the most densely populated in the state, owned land in an adjoining county and proceeded to pump water out of the underlying aquifer, leading to a series of recriminations and lawsuits about who controlled what.

The overarching entity in charge of settling that conflict was Swiftmud (SW Florida Water Management District). Through their charter from the legislature, they have great power to mediate disputes. As a part of a tri-county settlement, our county agreed to several mandated actions so the state didn’t enter into a rob Peter to pay Paul scenario. That meant initiatives like conservation and constructing new reservoirs to capture rainwater as well as finding new sources of water if they existed.

The problem was, they really didn’t. The Florida Aquifer, one of the most productive in the world, was already strained to near capacity in trying to support the state’s agricultural base as well as major and expanding population centers such as Tampa/St. Pete, Orlando and Jacksonville. Over-pumping had already led to accusations of increased sinkhole development, a long-running issue in the state.

Without getting too mired in the technical details, there are several layers to the aquifer, each generally separated from the next by layers of partially isolating rock or ideally by isolating clay. Each layer rises and falls in an underground topography that often mimics but doesn’t completely follow the aboveground terrain. In some places, freshwater rises to the surface in the form of springs or rivers. In others, like beneath this county, it dives deep below, making water more expensive to extract.

To give you an idea, our well, which we use to water the lawn, taps a layer of non-potable fresh water near the surface (about 30 feet down) that gets replenished by rainwater and proximity to the ditch and the lake. It is considered a groundwater layer. Isolated below that is a brackish water layer, basically saltwater intrusion from the Gulf. Below that lies a freshwater layer that needs very little treatment because it is purified by the very slow percolation through the surrounding limestone. Beneath that is a second saline layer.

Each layer has a transmissivity, how fast you can draw water from without it running dry. Think of it like a water filter or a series of small pipes. You can only draw so much so fast no matter how hard you try. If you exceed that, you come up empty. Or sometimes you deplete the resource, weakening surrounding underground structures. Picture burying a balloon full of water beneath the sand at the beach. Then picture puncturing or draining it through a tube. If the balloon is close enough to the surface, the sand above can’t support its own weight. Like a poorly built dome, it collapses. You have just created a sinkhole.

In reality there is a lot more complexity to aquifers, water wars, and sinkholes but you get the idea. Sinkholes specifically only occur in very specific underground geologic terrain, not just anywhere. That fact becomes important in a minute.

So back to the county land where we started.

Because of the water wars, the county needed to show they were making a good faith effort to either conserve water or tap new water sources. On the conservation end, they began to design and implement a reclaimed water system that essentially cleaned water already available from the waste water treatment process and make it available for watering lawns, landscape and golf courses, the low-hanging fruit of county water consumption. The problem was that would take years to implement and even then, with the projected population growth rate, wouldn’t be enough.

That meant finding new sources of water within the county. The problem there was that the Florida Aquifer was pretty much already tapped to its maximum by our and the surrounding counties. Leaving aside that it would be expensive to drill deep enough to extract from it, it was the kind of zero-sum game scenario that Swiftmud didn’t really like. So, the county had to look elsewhere.

At the time, both Saudi Arabia and California, each short on water for different reasons, had developed and deployed innovative desalination plants. In both cases, their source water was an ocean or a saltwater gulf. One big problem with desalination plants is that even with the new technologies, creating drinking water from the ocean is a multistage process usually involving reverse osmosis. You may or may not recognize that term from a high school science class, but if you don’t it doesn’t matter. It’s just a process. But an expensive process.

Another problem with desalination has to do with the environmental impact of what to do with the super-salty waste water that is an inevitable byproduct. Typically, that has to be pipelined miles offshore into deep water where it won’t impact local fisheries. The outlets can’t be close to your intakes or you create a self-defeating feedback loop, which again makes for expensive engineering and infrastructure. With all that, at the time, you really had to have no other options before you went down the full desalination road.

Now because we live in Florida, which has seen a major population explosion in my lifetime and has long been short on water, there have been numerous groundwater surveys done over the course of decades. The gold standard are still the ones conducted and maintained by the federal government, specifically by the US Geological Survey. That name should ring a bell with many readers as where my wife worked for the vast majority of her career. But again, more on that in a minute.

Somewhere along the line, someone very clever looked at one of those surveys and noticed that briny layer we talked about wedged below the surface water layer of our well but above the freshwater Florida Aquifer. Brine is basically salty water, so not useful on its own, but not nearly as salty as the Gulf of Mexico where it seeped in from. Which means it wouldn’t cost as much to desalinate. And then this clever individual noticed that salt water layer deep below the freshwater of the Florida Aquifer, which also wasn’t clean or useful on its own. So, this clever individual, really a clever company, approached the county with a proposal.

They had developed an experimental technology that extracted freshwater from briny water at a fraction of the cost of extracting it from ocean water. How large a fraction I don’t remember but appealing enough for the county to consider. All they had to do was pump it out, which wouldn’t be too expensive because it wasn’t that deep, shallower in fact than the Florida Aquifer. But what to do with the waste water I mentioned? Well, why not just pump it back into the ground, into that already unusable layer below the Florida Aquifer? That would eliminate almost all the expensive logistical and environmental concerns.

The county really liked this idea. Mainly because they were under enormous pressure from Swiftmud, and by then the courts to find new water sources. Any perceived progress would do to buy them time for negotiations with the adjacent counties. Actual progress was somewhat less important.

But where to put such a project? I’ve mentioned this is a densely populated county. Land is just as scarce as water, and just as expensive to acquire without a developer’s deep pockets. But remember way back when you started reading that I mentioned the park land that had just opened up that everyone wanted a piece of? Sounds perfect right? The county already owned it. As it turns out, it wasn’t badly sited for what the company proposed. So, the county authorized some adjacent test wells and thought it was clear sailing. Done, done, and done. Problem solved as long as those wells panned out.

They did, at least according to the company operating them. So, they formally submitted their proposal. Because they had approached the county and not the other way around, there would be no competition. And because they knew the county was desperate, they crafted a sweetheart deal. The contract basically said they would construct and run the desal plant on land the county would lease to them for something like $1. The plant which would provide a minimum of 1 million gallons of drinking water a day, which the county would buy back from them at cost of extraction plus profit.

Now a million gallons sounds like a lot of water, but in a county with nearly a million people, it really isn’t all that much. But this company said, don’t worry. Based on the surveys, we can scale it up to extract at least ten times that amount without a problem. As it turns out, 10 million gallons a day was a magic number. It was nearly the exact good faith progress the courts and Swiftmud wanted the county to show. Once you threw in the reclaimed water system, that gave them a buffer. Almost sounded too good to be true.

As most of you know, with all contracts the devil is in the details. And as I remember it, this contract said that the company would build the plant on its own dime. But that the county was obligated to buy a million gallons of water a day, whether the plant could produce it or not. The technology, after all, was clearly labeled as experimental. Which meant that the company had never implemented it in the field at least at this scale. There was a clause in there about the county covering the cost of the plant if it backed out of the contract later. Basically, all the risk was on the county and all the reward went to the company.

None of that seemed to matter. The county commission had stars in their eyes and was ready to sign up for about anything. Just hand them the pen.

Now there’s a tricky thing about county government in Florida. It’s subject to the Sunshine Law which at the time was one of the strongest government transparency laws in the United States. Which meant any contract, any project, any money authorized and spent had to be part of the public record, with time for public comment.

When this item was first floated at a commission meeting, buried as it was in all the various business the county does, the public didn’t take much notice. But a reporter from the regionally recognized local paper did. The paper had covered the water wars and knew there was a story here, especially with the proposed use of park land, which everyone was already talking about. So, s/he did his/her job, talked to the right people, chased down the details, and published the story. The commission again didn’t seem to care because they thought they were solving a problem, despite the shakiness of the proposed contract.

The general public did not agree. The story quickly blew up. People started scrounging up pitchforks and torches as they ripped their bodices in preparation for storming the barricades. Within days we had received fliers from a NIMBY organization that had just formed to oppose the project. They flooded the commissioners with angry letters and phone calls the point where the commission was forced to delay voting on the proposal in the routinely scheduled general meeting.

But the commission hadn’t given up. Being career politicians, they had seen this kind of reaction before. They understood the fervor often quickly died down as the public shifted its focus to the next daily outrage. So, they went on a bit of a charm offensive, scheduling three separate public hearings to pitch the proposal where the company and their consulting team would present their plans and be available to answer questions. And like any commission meeting, public comment would be accepted in the form of time blocks for any citizen to speak. They slated three of these informational meetings over the course of a couple weeks, one in the north of the county, one in the south and one central maybe half a mile from where the proposed plant would be built. That one was assigned to a room in a cooperative extension that we’ve since learned is the largest conference room the county owns.

The north and south meetings went off without a hitch. A few dozen people showed up and generally expressed their lack of support but in no numbers that might blunt the effort. You could sense the commission felt like things were back on track. All they had to do was survive the final meeting, vote the project through and deflect a little fallout. No significant problem.

Especially since the NIMBY organization I mentioned wasn’t exactly helping the opposition’s cause. Full disclosure, I am no fan of NIMBY organizations because in general they are more interested in killing projects because of their homes’ resale value rather than because they are not in the best interest of the community. The name says it all. Not In My Back Yard. Doesn’t matter whether it’s a desal plant, a Walmart or a fire station. In general, they dislike change.

Then again, I was no fan of this experimental desal plant either. Mainly because it didn’t pass the smell test. I also didn’t think the proposed location was the proper use of park land. But in the end, I believe in democracy. If it passed muster and the county voted it in, I would have to deal with it. A couple big ifs.

Anyway, the first issue this newly fledged NIMBY organization focused on in its literature was sinkholes. They painted a grim and inaccurate picture of our houses being swallowed up when the plant over-pumped the aquifer, as everyone rightly expected they might. Now remember somewhere near the dawn of this essay that I mentioned sinkholes depend on the underlying geology? Yeah, this part of the county doesn’t have that structure. Karen knew that from glancing at a couple bedrock maps. Not really a problem.

Which she told a couple neighbors who were semi-organizers when we were talking to them one day. Initially they didn’t want to believe her, even though she said she was a geologist, because they thought she might support the project. We cleared that up pretty quickly, and I added that as an engineer, I was more concerned with the plant’s proximity to the water. The lake in the park the county proposed putting right beside is a 100-acre reservoir that drains through a series of creeks and canals both north and south before meandering its way to the Gulf. Any saltwater intrusion would be devastating to the surrounding ecosystem, never mind out subsurface wells.

While they remained skeptical about the likely lack of sinkholes, they added environmental impacts to their list of grievances. Their continued skepticism meant we couldn’t sign on to their movement directly as it struck us as not just NIMBY but anti-science. Even back then, neither of us was comfortable with the kind of science denial we heard, and that was before it was fully in vogue.

At the same time, we weren’t ready to completely shut them down either. While their facts might have been wrong, their instincts were right. The county seemed to be trying to pull one over on the public. And without a public outcry, it was unlikely to be stopped. They were mostly harmless, anyway, in that Douglas Adams kind of way. But without them, there would be no way to stop this project if stopping it was warranted. So, we were stuck with somewhat unreliable allies. But allies nonetheless.

Now the key words in the above paragraph are “if it was warranted.” From my point of view, if the science supported the project, I was willing to begrudgingly accept it because I recognized the problem. Or at least fight it only on the grounds of inappropriate siting alone. As I said, I am definitely not NIMBY and am not focused on winning at any cost.

But when I do enter the lists, it’s always with an eye on the prize. I figured these allies might have a part to play before this drama ended. So, we left them to it while we investigated other avenues, neither joining nor disclaiming them.

The first step was determining whether the project would actually be feasible. When I asked my resident staff geologist, she promptly answered, “Dammit, I’m a sedimentologist, not a hydrologist.” Well, do you know any hydrologists, I prodded innocently. Narrow eyes, a light bulb sparking. May-be. Let me look into it.

Karen did a search of relevant research in her office, which came up empty. Not surprising since they were a coastal research center. But there was a hydrology office located across the bay. She dug up a contact and wrote them, asking for information, as a private citizen not a federal geologist. I’m a little foggy on exactly what happened next, but I assume it involved trench coats and a dead-drop in a dark alley near the airport somewhere around midnight with an admonishment that, “Should you or any of your team be caught or killed, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions." Or words to that effect.

What Karen came up with was two official USGS research reports on the underlying hydrology of this area near our lake. Turns out, they had been studying it for at least a decade. As a private citizen, Karen neither asked for nor received any interpretation of the data, just the reports as written. But one thing a master’s degree teaches you is how to read an official government research study, even if it’s not in your particular field of specialty.

Both reports said pretty much the same thing. The underlying geology would only support pulling about a million gallons a day at most from the brine layer. Which translated to less than a million gallons of fresh water once it went through the desalination process. Anything more was unsustainable, though the specific impacts of attempting it went unaddressed. As did the level of isolation between the proposed wastewater injection layer and the freshwater Florida Aquifer should that be attempted.

And the commission had requested and received copies of both reports. They might even have been involved in commissioning the second one.

Being extra cautious to make sure that she wasn’t missing something, Karen approached a hydrologist colleague in her office to confirm what she thought she’d read. Yup, that is exactly what those reports were saying. And no, the underlying geology hadn’t magically transformed in the decade between the two reports, despite anyone’s wishful thinking.

When she told me what she’d found, I knew we had all the ammunition we needed. Locked and loaded, it was now just a matter of how to play it out. I knew exactly how to work it for maximum impact, but that required Karen playing an active role. While I could be the front man myself, and had absolutely no problem doing so, I knew she would be better for multiple reasons.

That prompted a second discussion on ethics and conflict of interest. Because they were USGS reports, and she was a USGS employee, she had to be very careful not to even hint that she was speaking in any official capacity. Which I absolutely knew wasn’t a problem as long as she didn’t mention who she worked for. I’d done my due diligence. Government employees maintain their right to free speech as long as they don’t overtly invoke their agency. The reports were in the public record, freely available to anyone who asked. Karen interpreted them based on her education, not her position with the agency. It’s a tricky balance but a pathway existed as long as she was careful.

To help convince her, I outlined my plan. Reluctantly, she agreed.

By now, we were just a few days away from the public meeting. Which worked out perfectly. With her onboard, I knew exactly how to set this up. First rule: Don’t talk about Project Mayhem. Second rule: Don’t. Talk. About. Project. Mayhem.

At this point, operational security meant strictly need to know basis only. Never trust especially sketchy allies with sensitive information if you want to maintain the element of surprise. If your enemy doesn’t have time to prepare, they can simply react. Use that.

So, when the public meeting rolled around, we stayed in our work clothes, shirt and tie for me, business casual for her, and drove to the meeting. We wanted to arrive a little early to make sure we could get Karen a time slot to speak.

When we pulled up, the county cooperative extension was already mobbed. Hundreds of people were streaming into the building. Two different individuals with clipboards tried to stop us and get us to sign a petition opposing the proposal. By then, I had my game face on. I simply waved them off and kept walking, my dress shoes hitting the concrete with a heavy heel. A third canvasser in support of the measure took one look, got my best “bring it” stare, and didn’t even try.

We got a lot of sidelong glances on our approach. No one was sure exactly who we were. Everyone suspected we were players by the way we were dressed and moving with a purpose, along with the papers Karen carried, but they had no idea on whose side. Exactly as I wanted it.

Inside, we found row upon row of chairs set out with aisles separating them. At the top of the center aisle was a microphone facing the table where the Commissioners would sit. To one side, near the entrance was a large table with a conceptual diagram of the proposed desal plant and where it would be situated. The consulting team hired by the company making the proposal hovered around in their suits, ready to answer questions. We only glanced at them on the way by.

Instead, we headed for the signup sheet for public comment. Karen entered her name. We sat toward the back near the center of the room where we could survey the crowd. Then we settled in and waited. I engaged the eyes that look right through you to ensure people kept their distance, seeing but not making eye contact or acknowledging anyone.

Eventually, the meeting was called to order. By then, every seat was filled with SRO in the back. Only three Commissioners had bothered to show up, the Chairperson and two others. Only one of them was interesting. He had been appointed by the governor to finish a vacated term. Not only was he the only Democrat on the commission in a decade, he was also the only, and perhaps first, person of color. All of which put him in a somewhat awkward position in this county at the time if he intended to stand for an elected term.

The desal plant was the one item on the agenda that night. The consulting firm for the company gave a brief introductory presentation of the proposal. A polished, professional presentation. Nothing new or earth-shattering. We didn’t pay much attention other than to note the overall contours of the plan remained unchanged.

Next, the Chairperson opened the floor for public comment. An official called the first name on the list. Each person had three minutes to speak. Karen had at least a dozen people ahead of her. By convention, the Commission did not address public comments, they typically just sat and listened. A few speakers in we could sense they were only there to make a good-faith showing, absorb any damage, and move on to a vote the next week. All they had to do was survive the meeting just like they had the other two.

Two of the commissioners sat stone-faced as citizen after citizen stood at the microphone to object to this proposal. The Democrat looked more sympathetic but only slightly. Most of the speakers were impassioned though not always eloquent, which is the way a democracy is supposed to work. Their facts were all over the board as we knew they would be. But we could see there were no new arguments. The Commissioners had heard it all before. Sometimes from the exact same speakers. A quiet boredom evolved behind their Easter Island expressions. They just wanted to get this over with. Even the crowd and speakers began to sense theirs was a futile rearguard action. When the clock ran out on the evening, it would be all over but the crying.

I was taking in the room again when Karen’s name was called. Specifically, I was watching the consulting team sitting up front, facing the commissioners. When Karen rose after the official called her name, I saw the only woman on the team snap her head around to look. Turned out, she recognized Karen from them both being members of the local Association of Women Geologists chapter. For an instant, this woman looked like she’d been poleaxed. Her expression quickly transformed back to neutral as she turned to face forward, staring at nothing in particular. That told me everything I needed to know. We had the initiative and had maintained the element of surprise.

The hall quieted as Karen strode up the aisle, papers in hand. All eyes traced her progress as she approached the microphone. After introducing herself by name and city of residence, she launched into her very brief geological review. As she did, the expression of two of the commissioners transformed from bored to apprehensive. The Democrat leaned in to listen more intently. Less than three minutes later, Karen concluded by holding up the pair of reports in her hand, slightly splayed so the Commissioners could see them both, as she pointedly asked her final question “Why are you even considering this proposal when you have two US Geological Survey reports that say it won’t work?”

There was a moment of stunned silence as Karen turned away from the microphone and headed back toward her seat. Less than a second later, the room erupted. A woman from the neighborhood, a member of the opposition, raised a hand in a high-five as Karen passed. She slapped it as she strode by.

The remaining speakers on the list spoke, but you could tell their remarks were pro forma. Everyone knew the argument had already been won.

The commissioners looked dismayed. Our ambush had been perfectly executed.

So perfectly, in fact, that the moment the Chairperson gaveled the meeting to a close, he and his comrade bolted from the room, not even pausing to shake a hand or acknowledge any constituents. Only the Democrat remained, and he sought Karen out. He only had one question for her.

“Are you a geologist?”

She smiled sweetly back at him and answered, “As a matter of fact, I am,” neglecting her affiliation. He nodded sagely before continuing to circulate through the room, obviously calculating how to exploit this newfound knowledge. We left right after, before anyone else could seek us out. Mission accomplished.

The following week, the Commission pulled the proposal from the next commission meeting’s agenda, awaiting further study. Karen was afraid that meant they’d try to bring it back. I shook my head. They were just saving face until no one else was looking. Sure enough, a few months later, they quietly strangled the proposal in its sleep with a formal vote and buried it in an unmarked drainage ditch behind the house.

By then, Karen had been transformed into a local folk hero, somewhat because of her high recognition factor. People we didn’t know and had never really met would wave and introduce themselves whenever we were in the park. They’d thank her for what she’d done. The neighbor couple we’d talked to early on smiled and reminisced every time they saw us walking literally for years after. No one would forget Karen’s fateful encounter with the Commission that night, charging like Uxbridge at Waterloo from behind the concealment of the crest to spike battery after battery of exposed French guns. By the time she rode back to the safety of her lines, unscathed in her case, the Grand Battery would fire no more.

So, what is the lesson in all this? Come now, if you’ve read the previous essays this year, you know there has to be one.

The first and simplest is the most obvious. You absolutely can fight city hall and win, but only if you know how to seize a moment and have all your facts in line and a little expertise with a little guts behind it. It helps immensely if your opposition is unprepared. Politicians often are.

But that’s not the one I wanted to focus on. The real lesson to me is more subtle. And that lesson concerns allies.

In recent years, I’ve heard a lot of talk about what it means to be an ally, whether regarding LGBT rights, women’s rights or civil rights, or even ordinary politics. Mostly from people who have little idea what they are talking about or what that word truly means.

An ally is not a subordinate, even though they fight beside you. They do not blindly follow your orders or slavishly defend your position. Those are people who have already enlisted in your army, who fight and die beneath your banner because they choose to for one reason or another. With them, you are all one unit, one organization. They are you in a sociological sense.

An ally is not.

An ally is someone whose goals and objectives overlap with your own. They fight for their own reasons, for their own causes, some of which you may or may not agree with or fully understand. Some are allies of convenience, others are more deep-rooted and dependable. But either way, they choose their own ground and make their own decisions, right or wrong. If your interests align, especially if you are outnumbered and outgunned, it is best to welcome them, even if you cast a wary eye toward a future where circumstances may change.

If all that sounds a bit Machiavellian, it absolutely is. It also happens to be the way the sausage gets made, to misquote Bismarck. For any of his faults, he was a man who fundamentally understood how politics and allies work.

Without the NIMBY crowd of opposition, we were unlikely to succeed. They did the hard work of crystallizing the opposition and getting people to turn out. Without an audience, without a pitchfork and torch wielding mob behind her, Karen’s facts would likely have fallen upon deaf ears. Just another bit of information to spin. Politicians are good at that and do it all the time. They usually only listen when you threaten them with votes.

In fact, this opposition’s efforts may have led to the slow transformation of the County Commission which had been dominated by a single political party for three decades at that time. In that, the Commission had become more than a bit arrogant in thinking they could do whatever they wanted without consequence. They eventually paid for that, one by one.

This opposition had the numbers and emotion on their side, two things we could never conjure up. We had facts, a strategy and a sense of timing. They knew where to strike, we knew how and when to direct the blow.

Each side didn’t want this project, each for different reasons. Our interests aligned. Which is why we neither joined them nor disparaged them early on. We needed them. Just as they needed us, though they didn’t know it until the end. We didn’t share an outlook and didn’t share tactics, or even information, just a common goal. When it was won, it was done and the alliance dissolved. But we both walked away happy.

And if our interests had aligned once more in the future, perhaps we could have worked together again.

So, as we talk about BLM, or LBGT, or renewed interest in ERA, please remember that while not everyone who stands beside you is black or gay or female, they still might be dying beside you for their own heartfelt reasons. Sure, you can attempt to educate and enlighten them if you are able, and likely should. But it’s better to honor them than disparage them, especially if you want them to continue to fight.

Or in Karen’s case, to pull the sword from the stone and unite the disparate tribes of Pinellas in an epic quest for good governance.

© 2020 Edward P. Morgan III