sarah wildman

second word is Gracias which means she's either an incredibly polite girl or spending more time in Spanish than in English. Or both.

Departures

Download DEPd_UK_04_DCX_MADRID2 

A pdf of my Departures story

 

3 minutes to SOTU. Waiting on Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Michelle looks fabulous, of course.

Rust Belt Blues

I've owned this blog for years now, dormant and untended to.  I've decided to tentatively dip my toe back in the water of daily blogging, something I haven't done since blogging for the American Prospect in the middle of the last decade. 

Reading today's "This Land" column by Dan Barry - about the movement of the NCR corporation from Dayton,Ohio to Atlanta reminded me of this piece I wrote early on in my time at the New Republic.  I'll repost here, as TNR no longer has online archives.

My grandmother was still alive when I wrote this, though ailing, like her city.  Unlike her husband, who I've written about more extensively, my grandmother was raised in the Northeast, by immigrant parents, and, though she traveled extensively - from Morocco to Japan to Peru and beyond - it was Pittsfield, Ma and its neighboring, lakeshore community, Lanesboro, that she called home.

Pittsfield somehow has avoided the posh Berkshire summer hoards, though even Pittsfield is changing now. In truth, it's a beautiful city with stately turn-of-the-last century homes set against the Berkshire mountains.  But it struggles, still.

The New Republic

MARCH 6, 2000

City Limits

BYLINE: Sarah Wildman(Copyright 2000, The New Republic)

SECTION: Pg. 46

LENGTH: 1758 words

HIGHLIGHT: Pittsfield Diarist

During the sundaymorning talk shows, a barrage of General Electric commercials drive home the company's corporate message: "We're a good neighbor." G.E. employees and retirees, one ad tells us, will spend more than a million hours this year doing community service. But none of the glossy spots--invariably showing beautiful people, presumably G.E. employees, teaching disadvantaged children to read and dance--mention the countless hours the company will spend this year dredging up pollutants in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

growing up, i always thought it odd that my grandparents lived in Pittsfield. Technically, the city is in the Berkshires, a region renowned for gorgeous mountains, crystalline lakes, Tanglewood, the Williamstown Theater Festival, and Jacob's Pillow. But "summer in the Berkshires," as the tourist brochures read, doesn't come to Pittsfield. The downtown is dead, empty of pedestrians and consumer life. "Red Lobster comes to Pittsfield and closes," one local restaurateur observed to a trade magazine in 1998. "What does that tell you?"

it wasn't always this way. in 1903 G.E. purchased its first building in Pittsfield, and for the next 70 years the company--and the city--prospered. Pittsfield became a center for G.E.'s transformer, plastic, and defense industries. At its height, during World War II, the company's Pittsfield plant employed close to 14,000 people; in the '50s, three of every four town workers were employed by G.E. "Graduate from high school on Friday," the saying went, "start working at G.E. on Monday." And G.E.'s high wages made Pittsfield a prosperous place. Photographs from the '50s show North Street, today a desolate strip of boarded-up buildings, alive with activity: spanking new sedans cruise the streets, shoppers crowd the sidewalks, and merchandise fills every storefront window. A few blocks away was the train station--an architectural gem modeled after the old Pennsylvania Station in New York City- -through which hundreds of travelers passed each day. It has since been torn down.

but in the '70s g.e.'s eye began to wander. As foreign competition increased and prices for raw materials rose, the company began to shift its operations to the nonunion South, where production costs were lower. By the early '90s, G.E. had shuttered all but one plant in Pittsfield. The company now employs about 700 people, a mere five percent of its wartime high.

a pretty typical story, really. Over the past three decades, vast chunks of industry have moved from the Rust Belt to the Sun Belt. While G.E. may have shown a lack of loyalty, corporate willingness to shed unprofitable plants is at least part of the reason for America's recent manufacturing revival. What G.E. did to Pittsfield would have been sad but hardly criminal, except for one thing: pollutants. In 1977, the Environmental Protection Agency revealed that the Housatonic River (which runs through Pittsfield) and the town's groundwater were heavily contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs.  Fill contaminated with the chemicals was used by the city to build everything from schoolyards and playgrounds to backyards. PCBs were one of G. E.'s ultramodern tools: nonflammable fluids used as insulation in electric transformers. G.E. workers had been, quite literally, knee-deep in the stuff from the late '20s until 1977, when its use was outlawed. That year, the EPA declared that PCBs were probable carcinogens with definitive noncancer health effects that included liver and nervous-system damage. They were also thought to cause developmental abnormalities, including lower IQs, in fetuses and young children.

the neighborly thing to do, of course, would have been for G.E. to clean up the mess it made. After all, there was ample evidence of the damage PCBs had wrought in Pittsfield. One study revealed that children exposed for just one summer to a stretch of the Housatonic "face d noncancer risks 200 times higher than the hazard-index level EPA considers safe." G.E.'s industrial park, which the company had abandoned, was so contaminated that no other industry could move into it. And 130 residential properties were found to have alarming levels of PCBs. But G.E. didn't do the neighborly thing. Although the company stopped using PCBs when the EPA outlawed them, G.E. didn't take sufficient measures to prevent the pollutants underneath its plant from seeping into the groundwater and nearby river. When the EPA proposed designating Pittsfield a "Super Fund" cleanup site, the company threatened to close its one remaining local office. Officially, G.E. was just looking out for Pittsfield--Super Fund status, it claimed, would "saddle the city unnecessarily with the stigma." But, in reality, it was G.E. that didn't want to fork over hundreds of millions of dollars for cleanup, or the stigma an EPA designation would create. A company with one of the highest market capitalizations of any U.S. corporation was crying poverty.

g.e.'s hard line divided pittsfield. In 28 full-page ads in the local newspaper, The Berkshire Eagle, the company continued to deny its responsibility for decontamination.The city's business community, worried that publicity about the pollution might further damage Pittsfield's already depressed economy, warned community activists to keep quiet. Meanwhile, activists working to hold G.E. accountable for the PCBs split into two groups: one worried about making Pittsfield safe for homeowners, while the other was primarily concerned with cleaning up the river. Various attempts to remodel Pittsfield into a Berkshires tourist attraction--like the neighboring towns of Lenox and Great Barrington--foundered. Right now, Pittsfield's most promising redevelopment plan comes from folksinger Arlo Guthrie, who wants to open a nightclub and restaurant in the abandoned downtown.

last october, 22 years after the pollution was first revealed, G.E. signed what residents hope is the first of many cleanup deals. The company agreed to begin dredging the first two of the 55 miles of the Housatonic that are contaminated by PCBs; G.E. estimates this will take about $150 million, but some believe the cleanup may eventually reach $800 million. And the October environmental agreement only covers the pollution of east Pittsfield. In December the EPA announced that west Pittsfield, long thought to be free from pollutants, was similarly contaminated. "We're going to have to take a look at the findings," said one G.E. spokesman, "and review the data before we can draw any conclusions"--as if the pollutants could have come from any other source.

my grandfather died in 1990. but my grandmother still lives in Pittsfield. If you ask her, she'll happily recall the days when she went to the Pittsfield station to take the train to New York or fought the crowds on North Street to get into stores. But she doesn't venture out too much anymore.  She tells me, "I'm not the gal I used to be." Neither is Pittsfield.

LOAD-DATE: March 1, 2000

Rust Belt Blues

I've owned this blog for years now, dormant and untended to.  I've decided to tentatively dip my toe back in the water of daily blogging, something I haven't done since blogging for the American Prospect in the middle of the last decade. 

Reading today's "This Land" column by Dan Barry - about the movement of the NCR corporation from Dayton,Ohio to Atlanta reminded me of this piece I wrote early on in my time at the New Republic.  I'll repost here, as TNR no longer has online archives.

My grandmother was still alive when I wrote this, though ailing, like her city.  Unlike her husband, who I've written about more extensively, my grandmother was raised in the Northeast, by immigrant parents, and, though she traveled extensively - from Morocco to Japan to Peru and beyond - it was Pittsfield, Ma and its neighboring, lakeshore community, Lanesboro, that she called home.

Pittsfield somehow has avoided the posh Berkshire summer hoards, though even Pittsfield is changing now. In truth, it's a beautiful city with stately turn-of-the-last century homes set against the Berkshire mountatins.  But it struggles, still.

The New Republic

 

MARCH 6, 2000

 

City Limits

 

BYLINE: Sarah Wildman(Copyright 2000, The New Republic)

 

SECTION: Pg. 46

 

LENGTH: 1758 words

 

HIGHLIGHT: Pittsfield Diarist

 

 

During the sundaymorning talk shows, a barrage of General Electric commercials drive home the company's corporate message: "We're a good neighbor." G.E. employees and retirees, one ad tells us, will spend more than a million hours this year doing community service. But none of the glossy spots--invariably showing beautiful people, presumably G.E. employees, teaching disadvantaged children to read and dance--mention the countless hours the company will spend this year dredging up pollutants in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

growing up, i always thought it odd that my grandparents lived in Pittsfield. Technically, the city is in the Berkshires, a region renowned for gorgeous mountains, crystalline lakes, Tanglewood, the Williamstown Theater Festival, and Jacob's Pillow. But "summer in the Berkshires," as the tourist brochures read, doesn't come to Pittsfield. The downtown is dead, empty of pedestrians and consumer life. "Red Lobster comes to Pittsfield and closes," one local restaurateur observed to a trade magazine in 1998. "What does that tell you?"

it wasn't always this way. in 1903 G.E. purchased its first building in Pittsfield, and for the next 70 years the company--and the city--prospered. Pittsfield became a center for G.E.'s transformer, plastic, and defense industries. At its height, during World War II, the company's Pittsfield plant employed close to 14,000 people; in the '50s, three of every four town workers were employed by G.E. "Graduate from high school on Friday," the saying went, "start working at G.E. on Monday." And G.E.'s high wages made Pittsfield a prosperous place. Photographs from the '50s show North Street, today a desolate strip of boarded-up buildings, alive with activity: spanking new sedans cruise the streets, shoppers crowd the sidewalks, and merchandise fills every storefront window. A few blocks away was the train station--an architectural gem modeled after the old Pennsylvania Station in New York City- -through which hundreds of travelers passed each day. It has since been torn down.

but in the '70s g.e.'s eye began to wander. As foreign competition increased and prices for raw materials rose, the company began to shift its operations to the nonunion South, where production costs were lower. By the early '90s, G.E. had shuttered all but one plant in Pittsfield. The company now employs about 700 people, a mere five percent of its wartime high.

a pretty typical story, really. Over the past three decades, vast chunks of industry have moved from the Rust Belt to the Sun Belt. While G.E. may have shown a lack of loyalty, corporate willingness to shed unprofitable plants is at least part of the reason for America's recent manufacturing revival. What G.E. did to Pittsfield would have been sad but hardly criminal, except for one thing: pollutants. In 1977, the Environmental Protection Agency revealed that the Housatonic River (which runs through Pittsfield) and the town's groundwater were heavily contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs.  Fill contaminated with the chemicals was used by the city to build everything from schoolyards and playgrounds to backyards. PCBs were one of G. E.'s ultramodern tools: nonflammable fluids used as insulation in electric transformers. G.E. workers had been, quite literally, knee-deep in the stuff from the late '20s until 1977, when its use was outlawed. That year, the EPA declared that PCBs were probable carcinogens with definitive noncancer health effects that included liver and nervous-system damage. They were also thought to cause developmental abnormalities, including lower IQs, in fetuses and young children.

the neighborly thing to do, of course, would have been for G.E. to clean up the mess it made. After all, there was ample evidence of the damage PCBs had wrought in Pittsfield. One study revealed that children exposed for just one summer to a stretch of the Housatonic "face d noncancer risks 200 times higher than the hazard-index level EPA considers safe." G.E.'s industrial park, which the company had abandoned, was so contaminated that no other industry could move into it. And 130 residential properties were found to have alarming levels of PCBs. But G.E. didn't do the neighborly thing. Although the company stopped using PCBs when the EPA outlawed them, G.E. didn't take sufficient measures to prevent the pollutants underneath its plant from seeping into the groundwater and nearby river. When the EPA proposed designating Pittsfield a "Super Fund" cleanup site, the company threatened to close its one remaining local office. Officially, G.E. was just looking out for Pittsfield--Super Fund status, it claimed, would "saddle the city unnecessarily with the stigma." But, in reality, it was G.E. that didn't want to fork over hundreds of millions of dollars for cleanup, or the stigma an EPA designation would create. A company with one of the highest market capitalizations of any U.S. corporation was crying poverty.

g.e.'s hard line divided pittsfield. In 28 full-page ads in the local newspaper, The Berkshire Eagle, the company continued to deny its responsibility for decontamination.The city's business community, worried that publicity about the pollution might further damage Pittsfield's already depressed economy, warned community activists to keep quiet. Meanwhile, activists working to hold G.E. accountable for the PCBs split into two groups: one worried about making Pittsfield safe for homeowners, while the other was primarily concerned with cleaning up the river. Various attempts to remodel Pittsfield into a Berkshires tourist attraction--like the neighboring towns of Lenox and Great Barrington--foundered. Right now, Pittsfield's most promising redevelopment plan comes from folksinger Arlo Guthrie, who wants to open a nightclub and restaurant in the abandoned downtown.

last october, 22 years after the pollution was first revealed, G.E. signed what residents hope is the first of many cleanup deals. The company agreed to begin dredging the first two of the 55 miles of the Housatonic that are contaminated by PCBs; G.E. estimates this will take about $150 million, but some believe the cleanup may eventually reach $800 million. And the October environmental agreement only covers the pollution of east Pittsfield. In December the EPA announced that west Pittsfield, long thought to be free from pollutants, was similarly contaminated. "We're going to have to take a look at the findings," said one G.E. spokesman, "and review the data before we can draw any conclusions"--as if the pollutants could have come from any other source.

my grandfather died in 1990. but my grandmother still lives in Pittsfield. If you ask her, she'll happily recall the days when she went to the Pittsfield station to take the train to New York or fought the crowds on North Street to get into stores. But she doesn't venture out too much anymore.  She tells me, "I'm not the gal I used to be." Neither is Pittsfield.

 

LOAD-DATE: March 1, 2000