Learning about the CCC

Today I'm back to my original plan to not post about our latest hell in a handbasket. 

Instead, I wanted to talk a little bit about a recent American Public Media radio documentary called Bridge to Somewhere. It's less than an hour long, and tells the story of the Civilian Conservation Corps and Works Progress Administration during the 1930s. I'm just realizing it was made some time early in the Obama administration because of the Great Recession, but it's relevant again now because of the Green New Deal and many other aspects of our economy. 

I didn't hear the whole thing, but the parts I heard were full of interviews with people (men, generally) who were teenagers or young adults who were part of the CCC. My paternal grandfather was in the CCC for a year or two when he was in his mid-20s — after he was married and when my dad was preschool-age, so that tells you how dire their financial straits must have been. I know he helped build some of the parks in the area around Oneonta, N.Y.

The fact I learned from the documentary that caught my attention the most was the part about Stowe, Vermont. Before the CCC, there was no downhill skiing in Vermont. The forester there in the 1930s had been an exchange student in Scandinavia, so when the CCC showed up to help build things in the forest and park, he had the idea to put in ski runs like the ones he had seen overseas. 

CCC men cut down trees to make the first downhill runs and built the buildings that became the first lodge and other facilities. That forester's son was still working at Stowe when the documentary was made, and he tells this story. There was no chairlift at first, so skiers had to hike the mountain for each run. Most people only got in no more than two runs in a day; even very athletic people could do only three.

The documentary goes on to tell about the Grand Coulee Dam, among other things. It was meant to create irrigation in the Northwest, and it did that, but it also created cheap electricity, which is still having an impact today.

I may have a post-hoc argument about whether these infrastructure items were a good idea in the long term, or were done in an equitable way, but you can't argue that they didn't have economic impact far beyond the jobs they created for the people they employed.

We need actions with similar levels of impact and imagination on climate generally and jobs in many areas of the country. Let's get this mafioso out of office and start to get it done.