Will John Kerry Do For Barn Coats What Hillary Did For Pantsuits?

Looking good on the campaign trail

Actually, I'm not sure whether or not Hillary Clinton made the pantsuit popular with senior executives at the State Department or elsewhere. But I do know that our current SecState is my sartorial role model due to his frequent wear of the classic New England barn coat.

Do yourselves a favor this winter, gentlemen. Lose the stodgy wool topcoat and get a practical and stylishly masculine barn coat. Go ahead, wear it to the office on snowy days. You know you want to.

Looks like Pakistan

It will work over a suit and tie, as John Kerry has shown on many occasions. It works even better for business casual. With khakis, it is perfect for TDYs.

State fair in Iowa?

A word of caution: unless you're Prince Charles, don't do the Barbour-style English waxed cotton jacket. They seem to be gaining acceptance among Americans as alternatives to raincoats, but they don't work in cold weather.

Forget the country squire look, and go the full LL Bean: heavy canvas fabric, corduroy collar, big patch pockets, and a wool lining. For extra utility, a game pouch.  
 

You'll thank me. Or Kerry.

Black Ice, OPM, and Barn Coats

The outside air temperature is 23 degrees as I write this, at 7 PM Monday, but it will drop into the single digits overnight. My particular just-outside-the-Beltway neighborhood is forecast to hit zero degrees at 6 AM.

Given the certainty of hazardous driving conditions tomorrow, I predict a greater than 50 percent likelihood that the Office of Personnel Management will announce a delayed opening and unscheduled leave for government offices in Washington.

I put the likelihood of a government closure at no more than 10 percent, currently. But that would go up if area metro systems have any weather-related shutdowns - always a possibility - or if highway departments ask OPM to help alleviate traffic problems.

For me, the upside of these cold weather work days is that I can ditch the usual business clothes and go to the office in hiking boots and a manly barn coat. Makes it all worthwhile.
 

Frozen (the Weather, Not the Movie)

This one was an easy call for OPM: FEDERAL OFFICES in the Washington, DC, area are CLOSED tomorrow. The normal practice for OPM is to wait until about 4 AM on the day of before making an announcement, but they announced tomorrow's closure at 7 PM tonight.

With a forecast of freezing rain tonight, followed by 5 to 9 inches of snow tomorrow, and temperatures going down to the tens or maybe even single digits on Monday to keep it all frozen well into Tuesday morning, there was no suspense about what OPM would decide. The roads will be particularly bad tomorrow, since today's rain will have prevented highway departments from pretreating surfaces with de-icing salt.  

A bonus for me is that my BlackBerry died Friday night, which means that I haven't seen any of my office e-mail for two whole days. Now, I won't see any for maybe another two whole days.

Oh, nooooooooo .....

 

The Holiday Is "Washington's Birthday"

Monday is not / not 'President's Day'

It's my pet peeve.

As we approach the Federal holiday that we will celebrate on Monday, the History News Network asks the timely question, Is It Presidents Day or President's Day or Presidents' Day?

Of course, it is none of those.

According to some of the calendars and appointment books floating around the Internet, Monday, February 18, is Presidents’ Day. Others say it’s President’ Day. Still others opt for Presidents Day. Which is it?

-- snip --

Trick question. The answer, strictly speaking, is none of the above. Ever since 1968, when, in one of the last gasps of Great Society reformism, holidays were rejiggered to create more three-day weekends, federal law has decreed the third Monday in February to be Washington’s Birthday. And Presidents Day? According to Prologue, the magazine of the National Archives, it was a local department-store promotion that's responsible. Retailers discovered that a generic Presidents Day cleared more inventory than a holiday celebrating a particular one, even the Father of His Country. Now everybody thinks it’s official, but it’s not.

That Prologue article tells us how and why Washington's Birthday was established as a Federal holiday, and explains why most people think there is such as thing as Presidents Day:

Local advertisers morphed both "Abraham Lincoln's Birthday" and "George Washington's Birthday" into the sales sound bite "President's Day," expanding the traditional three-day sales to begin before Lincoln's birth date and end after Washington's February 22 birth. In some instances, advertisers promoted the sales campaign through the entire month of February. To the unsuspecting public, the term linking both presidential birthdays seemed to explain the repositioning of the holiday between two high-profile presidential birthdays.

So we see that Washington's Birthday, an observance begun for the purpose of fighting the erosion of historical memory, was twisted into an excuse to advertise department store sales during February.

And, it turns out the main culprit in this misinforming of the American public for commercial purposes was none other than the Washington Post:

By the mid-1980s, the term was appearing in a few Washington Post holiday advertisements and an occasional newspaper editorial. Three "spellings" of the advertising holiday ensued—one without an apostrophe and two promoting a floating apostrophe. The Associated Press stylebook placed the apostrophe between the "t" and "s" ("President's Day"), while grammatical purists positioned the apostrophe after the "s" believing Presidents' deferred the day to the "many" rather than one singular "President."

Well, there you have it. Believe the WaPo at your own risk.

Please Don't Look At This Fortress Embassy In Guayaquil

Photo from U.S. Consulate Guayaquil's website 

The U.S. Consulate in Guayaquil, Ecuador, has moved to a new location, and apparently that's it in the photo above.

In case you are wondering about that small "c" in parentheses in the image, it's merely a copyright mark and not a classification marking. Of course it isn't a classification marking, because the building's exterior is in the public view and not classifiable.

But on second thought, maybe that photo and any others like it should be classified, because I can't believe the Consulate wants anybody to see that monstrosity of a building. I'm partial to fortresses and all, but really, that one is making me get in touch with the architect within me, and he thinks the Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations (OBO) should tear that thing down and start over.

Honest to Jane Loeffler, that is a strange and ugly building!

Here's OBO's press release:

In an important symbol of our commitment and enduring relationship with Ecuador, U.S. Ambassador to Ecuador, Adam E. Namm, presided over the dedication of the new U.S. Consulate General in Guayaquil today.

The new multi-building complex provides employees with a safe, secure, and modern workplace. Situated on an 11.25-acre site in the San Eduardo neighborhood, the new Consulate General includes a new office building, two access pavilions, a service/utility building, and parking.

The $66.5 million project incorporates numerous sustainable features to conserve resources and reduce operating costs, including an energy recovery unit that reduces the need for heating and cooling, water-conserving plumbing fixtures, and the use of regional and recycled materials.

The facility was designed by Page Southerland Page, LLC of Arlington, Virginia and constructed by Contracting Consulting and Engineering, LLC of Annapolis, Maryland.

Since 1999, as part of the Department’s Capital Security Construction Program, the Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations (OBO) has completed 109 new diplomatic facilities and has an additional 36 projects in design or under construction.

OBO’s mission is to provide safe, secure, and functional facilities that represent the U.S. government to the host nation and support our staff in the achievement of U.S. foreign policy objectives. These facilities should represent American values and the best in American architecture [sic, believe it or not], engineering, technology, sustainability, art, culture, and construction execution.

OBO's press kit for the project is currently mixed up, and the link for New Consulate Guayaquil's fact sheet takes you to New Embassy Benin.

That's too bad, because I'd like to find out how much OBO paid to Page Southerland Page, LLC of Arlington, Virginia to design that place. Considering that the total project cost was only $66.5 million, or less than half of what a typical new embassy or consulate costs, I'm guessing the design end was practically an afterthought.

Now I'll spend the rest of the day shaking off the inanity of that image.
 

Betting Big On London's Crystal Fortress

Architect's model of the New London Embassy (NLE)

Consumer Notice: This post is certified 100% free of Matters of Official Concern that are not referenced from publicly available sources of information.

U.S. Embassy London is so pleased with its new chancery office building, which has been in construction since November, that it is posting regular project updates and panoramic photos on its website. They invite you to share their excitement:

The United States is building a new Embassy in London! Beginning in 2008 when we announced the purchase of a site in the Nine Elms area of Wandsworth, and ending in 2017 when we are scheduled to move into a new facility, this is a process that will produce a modern, welcoming, safe and energy efficient embassy for the 21st century. On this page you will learn about each step of this process, and have a chance to tell us what you think about it.

I fully agree that this is a really big deal, and maybe even more so for the Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations than for U.S. Embassy London.

First, it's been reported that OBO is going to spend, in the words of its former Acting Director Adam Namm, "in the ballpark" of one billion dollars on this new embassy, or about four times the cost of a typical Fortress Embassy. If that billion dollar figure is correct, then London will be easily the most expensive project that OBO has ever attempted. 

Second, OBO has made this building the centerpiece of its Design Excellence Program, which is its shot at reestablishing architectural legitimacy after more than a decade of doing uninspiring standard embassy design diplokitsch buildings. OBO Director Lydia Muniz stated that intention very clearly in an interview with a British architecture journal:

"[T]he choice of a brownfield site [meaning a site previously used for an industrial or other purpose, not a rural or undeveloped 'greenfield'] marks a significant move on the part of the State Department away from suburban sites with cookie cutter embassies churned out in response to security concerns which have prevailed in recent years."

The key words in that quote are "cookie-cutter", "churned out," and "security concerns." They succinctly  describe how your more artistic types see what OBO has been compelled to do ever since the East Africa embassy bombings of 1998, which is to produce the greatest possible number of functional office buildings that meet security standards but do little more.

The London project is to be a break from all that dreary scut work, and a return to a much finer time when top-tier modernist architects designed signature embassy buildings that expressed democratic values, and exuded openness, and conveyed good will, and ... ah ... other stuff that I really don't get, so just read this and see for yourself.

It is an indication of how much OBO stresses the singular nature of this project that it made up a unique official term for it, calling it the "New London Embassy" (NLE) rather than using the established term "New Embassy Compound" (NEC), by which it refers to every other such project.

Pardon my crassness in the face of so much Art, but I have to wonder whether even one billion dollars will be enough money to build a new embassy of such unprecedented design excellence. It had better be, because the U.S. Congress has made it crystal clear that it will provide no funds for this project beyond the proceeds of sale from the old embassy property.

Nevertheless, it makes me curious that Congress requires regular reporting on the progress and cost of this project. Is that just a prudent precaution for a job of this size, or do they suspect a cost overrun is likely?

I'm also curious about how this building design will work, security-wise. KieranTimberlake, OBO's design firm for London, has a depiction on its website of the New London Embassy's transparent facade. This is what it looks like:

Where's the concrete wall? There is none. The building's facade is all glass and plastic.

Weidlinger Associates, the blast engineering services company that worked on this project for KieranTimberlake, states on its website that "the new embassy meets all the required security standards" via a "blast-resistant glazing" that is installed behind the external solar shading and collection system. You can see the glazing on the right side of the illustration above.

So, the staff of U.S. Embassy London will be relying on an all-glass building to stay intact in the event of a bomb blast. I hope Weidlinger knows what it's doing.

With so many doubts, I am enormously reassured to see that Representative Jason Chaffetz is already on top of the situation. The WaPo reported today that he is going to drop in to London for a whole six hours during his latest junket. Six hours isn't a lot of time, but Chaffetz seems to work fast; he spent only eight hours on the ground in Tripoli last year to learn all about the Benghazi incident. If there are any problems with the Crystal Fortress, I'm sure he'll sniff them out before it's time to board his next flight.

Who Cares About Flowers, Where Have All The Stalinists Gone?

Tom Lehrer pays a richly deserved tribute to all those battlers against injustice who enter combat armed only with banjos and camouflaged with nothing but broken grammar and plaid shirts. Good stuff.

Returning to the subject of Pete Seeger, I looked through many of the essays and tributes to him trying to learn when, or whether, he ever regretted his years as a loyal Communist during the era of Stalin. Did he break with his old comrades after the Budapest Uprising, or the Berlin Wall, or the Prague Spring?  Or anything at all?

No such luck.

According to a New York Times article from 2007, the best Seeger ever did in the way of a denunciation was this:

But in fact, Mr. Seeger, 87, made such statements [denunciations of Stalin] years ago, at least as early as his 1993 book, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” In the book, he said in a 1995 interview with The New York Times Magazine, he had apologized “for following the party line so slavishly, for not seeing that Stalin was a supremely cruel misleader.”

His 1993 book? Stalin died in 1953. Couldn't Seeger have come to a conclusion a little sooner than 1993?

I've read that Seeger joined the Communist Youth League in 1936, and the main Communist Party USA in 1941. So, he spent up to 17 years of his Party career under the leadership of Stalin. (I say ‘up to’ because Seeger never made clear exactly when he left the Party.) That should have been enough time to develop an opinion of the man.

What was Stalin up to in those days? Well, he was sponsoring the great purges and show trials in which the Party, government, and Red Army leaderships, plus the peasants, the intellectuals, and foreign minorities were terrorized and decimated. That news made the papers, even the New Masses, so I assume Seeger was well aware of it all.

What else? Leon Trotsky, the Russian revolutionary and Marxist theorist, original member of the Soviet Politburo and founder of the Red Army, who had been exiled by Stalin in the 1902s, was assassinated in Mexico City on Stalin's orders.

Then there was World War II and Stalin’s pact with Hitler (1939 to 1941), followed by his invasion and annexation of Poland and Lithuania.

Right after the war there was the hostile take-over by the Soviet Union of Eastern European states, followed by the violent suppression of the East German uprising of 1953, which started with labor strikes. In Poland, there was the Poznań uprising in 1956, also a labor strike. Also in 1956, there was the huge uprising in Hungary which ended in the abolition of the Hungarian Communist Party, the calling of multi-party elections, and withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact – in fact, a counter revolution - which was brutally suppressed by a Russian military invasion. I know Seeger must have heard about that.

To be fair, since Stalin died in 1953, it was his successors who were directly to blame for everything that happened in 1956. Of course, also in 1956, came the famous denunciation of Stalin by Nikita Khrushchev to the Twentieth Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. His speech "On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences" was published in the West, including in the New York Times. It made quite a splash.

Surely Seeger read about Khrushchev's speech. Didn’t the crimes of the Stalin era make an impression on him? I guess not, if it was only in 1993 that Seeger expressed some small criticism of Stalin.

A supremely cruel misleader. That’s it? After spending thirteen years as a loyal Communist while Stalin was alive, and with the benefit of another forty years of hindsight after Stalin’s death, that’s all Seeger had to say about the man?

So tell me … if Leni Riefenstahl, sometime around 1984, had told an interviewer that Hitler was “a supremely cruel misleader,” would she have then been welcomed back to the human race, and become a fit subject for film criticism or, say, an NPR profile about all her fascinating artistic pursuits since WWII? At the least, would Jodie Foster finally be able to make the Riefenstahl biographical film she is rumored to be developing? I don't think so.

I mean, 1993? Really? Why even bother making such a ridiculously mild ‘denunciation’ at such a comically late date? Not only had Stalin been dead for forty years, but the Soviet Union itself had ceased to exist by the time Seeger wrote his book.

It’s like Seeger waited until he was the last Communist still standing before he let rip with that tiny diss.

Where have all the commies gone, long time passing?
Where have all the commies gone, long time ago?
Where have all the commies gone?
Gone to grave yards every one

I hesitate to speak ill of the dead. But given that we've talking about the last unrepentant follower of Stalin, I ask myself, when will we ever learn to shun the propagandists of left-totalitarianism the same as we do their counterparts on the right and elsewhere?