The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California - 2011

 

The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California

Who was Ronald Reagan? My first recollection of him was as the host of the TV anthology series, “Death Valley Days”. In 1967, soon after I began my studies at UCLA, Reagan became governor of California and the de facto head of the University Of California Board Of Regents. Although few governors before or since played such an active role in the governing of the university, Reagan was determined to make his mark.

While the Vietnam War raged, the University of California at Berkeley became “Ground Zero” for opposition, protests and demonstrations. In response to what he perceived as spoiled and unprincipled students and faculty, Reagan forced budget cuts across the entire UC system. Around that time, some unprincipled and spoiled demonstrator threw a rock and broke a large window at UCLA's old English Building. Becoming an icon for both sides of the conflict, there were sufficient funds to board-up the hole, yet there was no replacement glass installed during my tenure at UCLA.

  Watch the video, "Air Force One Departs the Reagan Library"

In the years 1967 – 1970, the war raged higher and tensions increased on campuses all across the country. Ronald Reagan, to his great displeasure, hosted one of the last UC Regents’ meetings openly held on a UC Campus. There, at the UCLA Faculty Center in 1967, Reagan’s attendance brought out one of the largest political demonstrations ever at UCLA. At the time of the meeting, Reagan and the other regents sat behind a glass wall, obscured only by draperies. Outside, unruly students released the parking brakes on several cars and began pushing them around the adjacent parking lot. With only a few campus police on hand, it was all that they could do to prevent mayhem.

In the spirit of the day, someone in the crowd of several hundred started a chant. Knowing just how to rile the tradition-bound and conservative Ronald Reagan, the student demonstrators repeatedly chanted, “F*** Ronald Reagan. F*** Ronald Reagan”. The chant was so loud that it was impossible for the governor and the UC Board of Regents to conduct business. After it was evident that they had adjourned and left the building, campus police regained control and dispersed the crowd. Eventually, the events of that day began a spiral of budget cuts and UC fee increases that continues to this day.

Ronald Reagan, like Bob Hope, John Wayne and a host of other establishment actors came to epitomize the far side of the “generation gap” from the one that I represented. I opposed the Vietnam War, the UC faculty salary cuts and student fee increases. My parents were Eisenhower Republicans. They condoned no form of violence in our home. Out of respect for my upbringing and my parents, I observed the UCLA anti-Reagan protest, but other than joining in the chant, I did nothing more that day. With the perspective of time, I feel that Ronald Reagan represented in a courteous way, a set of political beliefs that were unlike my own. If we students had not breeched the decorum that Reagan expected in his life, would the budget cuts have been as deep and would the fee increases have been as steep?

Now that Ronald Reagan is gone from the scene of life, he lives on in many memories. Some ardent followers see him as the conservative messiah, while for others he was the bane of both the environmental and peace movements. Did Reagan’s funding of the “Peacekeeper”, the multiple-warhead, independently targeted intercontinental ballistic MX-Missile help end, or did it extend the Cold War?

At inception, I felt that the International Space Station (ISS) was yet another Reagan make-work project for the military industrial complex. Although that may have been its original impetus, I have come to believe that with its $160 billion+ in federal government funding, that the ISS was a good investment after all. Keeping an active manned space program keeps our engineering and planning skills sharp. In any event, Ronald Reagan’s funding of both the Peacekeeper and ISS projects takes him into the ranks of the biggest spending presidents in U.S. history. Who says that the government did not create jobs or stimulate the economy, even if it was for questionable purposes?

  Watch the video, "The White House in Miniature"

In December 2010, I made my first visit to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. Although I did not agree with many of his policies or decisions as either governor or president, I hold no ill feelings for the man. Under the circumstances of the times, he did the best he knew how to do. As I approached the library on foot, I let bygones be bygones. Regardless of my previous feelings about Ronald Reagan, there was enough attraction for me to visit his library, museum and final resting place.

With a traditional Spanish style courtyard at its entrance, and strong touches of California ranch architecture in both its finish and details, I found it a handsome building in a beautiful setting. Sitting at the brow of a hill the site has a commanding view of high chaparral in the Los Padres National Forest. On a clear day, one can also see the Pacific Ocean, near Ventura. Despite the close proximity of cities such as Simi Valley and Moorpark, the view is only slightly changed from what it must have been during the nineteenth century Spanish Rancho era. With Ronald Reagan's love of the ranching lifestyle, this site reflects the man in his most favorable light.

In a remote, yet picturesque corner of the grounds is the Ronald Reagan Crypt. Its inscribed comments are brief, mentioning little more than the bare facts of his life. The Presidential Seal, rendered as a brass plaque is its only adornment. With its spectacular view of Ventura County both around and below, who could stand on that spot and harbor hostility toward the man, or anything else, for that matter?

It was the holiday season at the Reagan Library. Poinsettias adorned the courtyard. Inside, Christmas trees representing each decade of the republic were on display. The gift shop was abuzz, selling Ronald Reagan logo items along with other patriotic souvenirs. Except among the omnipresent security force, there was a festive mood throughout the museum.

Other than the spectacular view, the second most amazing feature at the Ronald Reagan Library is Air Force One. Trucked to the site in pieces, and then assembled to look like new, it stands on pedestals in a custom-designed pavilion. In front of the airplane is a picture window large enough for the plan to fly through, unimpeded. Of course, there is the issue of getting the plane up to speed in such a short distance. Through the wonders of stop-action video-capture, you can watch a YouTube video of Air Force One Departing the Ronald Reagan Library on a clear afternoon.

After watching Air Force One take off, we visited the Christmas tree display area. There, stood a series of trees, each decorated to represent a decade since 1776. Near the display of Christmas trees stood John and Jan Zweifel’s White House in miniature. At one-foot-to-one-inch scale, the model is sixty feet in length. The Zweifels and a select group of volunteers put over 500,000 hours of labor into creating their masterpiece. Our YouTube video, The White House in miniature starts with a gingerbread White House in the lobby of the Library and proceeds with a snowy-night Christmas tour of the presidential mansion.

The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library was dedicated in 1991. In 1994, as he felt the slow release of Alzheimer’s disease, Ronald Reagan wrote his public farewell message. Until near that time, he had been actively involved with the planning of the Reagan Library. According to the docent on our tour, he was especially keen to include a full-scale replica of his presidential Oval Office. With some difficulty, the architects accommodated what we might call Reagan’s last wish. Major construction at the library culminated with the opening of the Air Force One Pavilion in 2005. After his death in 2004, the remains of Ronald Reagan, the fortieth president of the United States found peace on the grounds of his presidential library. If you are near Simi Valley, California, I recommend that you make time for a visit. It is Cold War history at its finest.

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By James McGillis at 01:56 PM | Personal Articles | Comments (0) | Link

New Orleans - The Lessons of Atlantis Begin to Sink In - 2011

 

 

New Orleans - The Lessons of Atlantis Begin to Sink In

In the early 1980s, then President Ronald Reagan endorsed the idea of creating an International Space Station (ISS). At the time, it appeared to be a make-work project designed to keep the aerospace industry alive during a period of relative peace. As early as 1969, during the Apollo Program, Americans had walked on the Moon, 238,000 miles from Earth. With a planned orbit of only 173 miles above the Earth, the ISS had no such lofty goals. Instead, the solar-powered pressure-vessels of the ISS offered only slow and steady progress toward long-term human habitation in space. Commensurate with its low-key goals, was a bargain price, estimated at less than $10 billion. A lot has changed over the past thirty years. At a current running cost of $150+ billion, the ISS is now the most expensive human engineered structure, either on or above the Earth.

 

As it passes overhead 15.7 times each day, most Americans think little about the ISS mission or its cost. If they knew more about it, many would say, “Who needs an ISS?” All these years later, I now believe that the ISS program is worth its cost. Even though its useful life may be less than ten more years, the ISS serves us as a microcosmic reflection of Earth. There, on a human-created, Earth-orbiting satellite, the ever-rotating crew conducts experiments in biology, chemistry, human biology, astronomy and meteorology.

 

Back on Earth, we find the Mississippi River available for similar, if unplanned experiments. Looking 135 nautical miles upriver from New Orleans, Louisiana, we find the Old River Control Structure. Only the static backpressure of its levees and control gates maintains a precarious balance of life downstream in New Orleans. In allegorical fashion, joints and fasteners connect the various ISS modules. Stressed by the unrelenting vacuum of space, gas leaks on the ISS are potentially deadly to the crew. While the ISS relies on constant atmospheric pressure within its structure, the Old River Control Structure relies on gravity and friction to hold back the kinetic energy of the Mississippi River. Both structures experience unrelenting energy, while entropy assures their ultimate demise and destruction.

 

As Katrina approached the Louisiana coast in August 2005, the hasty evacuation of New Orleans was a debacle. At the time, each city, state and federal official assumed that someone else had called for buses to provide evacuation of a poor and vulnerable population. The public evacuation plan turned out to be a myth. Hundreds of unused school buses later sat ruined by the flood. As affluent and able citizens evacuated structures to the North, a monumental traffic jam ensued. If each bus had carried a full load that day, more people could have evacuated in far less time. As it was, no one remained to assist the most vulnerable and helpless residents. Leaving the sickest in their beds, a hospital physician may have ordered lethal injections for forty-five non-ambulatory patients, prior to abandonment of the hospital.

 

One major difference between the International Space Station and New Orleans is that NASA and the ISS crew cannot afford to employ mythical thinking. If they ran the ISS in similar fashion to pre-Katrina New Orleans, something as simple as a coolant-pump failure could result in loss of both the crew and their quarters. Effective engineering, planning and resupply are essential to maintaining human habitation in space. New Orleans, on the other hand, currently sits in a dry bowl, free from flooding. Since simulations do not work well on a grand scale, we cannot properly assess the efficacy of defenses at New Orleans. Instead, we must wait for the next great storm in order to find out. By then it might be too late for both New Orleans and the federal deficit. Yet today, we maintain the fiction that New Orleans can continue its long-term defiance of the laws of Nature.

 

NASA provided the ISS with spare coolant pumps beyond the number of anticipated failures. Will their planning be sufficient? I believe that the ISS has a better chance of surviving intact for the next ten years than does the City of New Orleans. If New Orleans, Louisiana were to flood again, the cost to revive the city would easily surpass the estimated $160 billion lifetime cost of the ISS.

 

This is not a personal prediction of death, doom and despair, but floods, fire an famine are not out of the question. Humankind has the ability use both its collective memory and its collective consciousness. If we allow a shift in consciousness, newly awakened humankind could change the future of Planet Earth. With both the profit motive and politics at play, it is hard to determine if our current plans are sound. If each stakeholder could reflect upon our overall relationship with the laws of Nature, they might see themselves as part of a larger whole. With a touch of gnost, we can understand Nature and help guide humanity’s relationship with Gaia, our Mother Earth.

 

Centuries ago, at a bend in the Mississippi River, settlers created New Orleans. From that time, forward, humans continued to build structures there with little regard for attendant environmental consequences. As hard and fast as many stakeholder positions seem to be, Nature can lift those stakes and carry them away like driftwood, to the Gulf of Mexico. Since Earth is the only permanent habitat known to humans, it behooves us to acknowledge and accommodate the laws of Nature as supreme to any laws of our own making.

 

Taking the laws of Nature into account, we should study alternate weather and flood scenarios for New Orleans and its environs. Without regard for corporate profits, property values or political gain, independent studies and their recommendations should again see the light of day. Once we understand the likelihood of various weather events, we can then proceed with plans to protect only that which is reasonable to protect. If the hubris and ignorance of our ancestors continues in New Orleans, we risk human-aided devastation and destruction unlike any seen on Earth since the last days of Atlantis.

 

 

 

 Read Chapter One

Read Chapter Two

Read Chapter Three

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By James McGillis at 11:38 PM | Environment | Comments (0) | Link

 

Two New Live Streaming Webcams in Simi Valley, California - 2010

 

We recently completed the installation of two new webcams, streaming from Simi Valley, California.

 

 
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Webcam Number One streams live from an RV storage lot in Simi Valley, California. The eight-acre storage and rental facility is located near the Simi Valley Animal Shelter. Two separate freeway off ramps provide easy access to and from Highway 118.

 

At at the storage yard, 33-foot wide aisles separate 400 well-marked parking spaces.

 

Our camera view includes the landscaped grounds and the 400-space storage facility. In the background, hills provide open space around the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. Behind the ridge line stands one of two original Air Force One jet airplanes. One of two nearly identical airplanes served each American president from John Kennedy to Ronald Reagan. Now on featured display at the presidential library, this venerable four-engine Boeing 707 began its career in 1972. 

 

With our live streaming webcam facing southwest, you can expect to see some spectacular Ventura County, California sunsets views. Please join us often for a unique and refreshing view of Southern California at its finest.

 

To view the Simi RV webcam, streaming live from Simi Valley, California, click on the webcam image above, or click HERE.

 

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Webcam Number Two is a street view, Live from Casa Carrie in Simi Valley, California. The Camera faces east, towards the rising Sun. In keeping with the ancient Navajo tribal tradition, each morning we face east and share with you our first rays of morning light. Framing the view is a residential street in the Texas Tract at Simi Valley. In the background is Rocky Peak, which separates Los Angeles County from Ventura County.

 

 
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With webcams streaming live from California, Oregon and Utah, the Moab Live group of websites is now the largest provider of low cost, streaming webcams in the Western United States.

To view the Casa Carrie webcam, streaming live from Simi Valley, California, click on the webcam image above, or click HERE.

By James McGillis at 11:26 AM | Technology | Comments (0) | Link