At long last, I'd like to announce my latest project. I've been commissioned by International Marine/McGraw-Hill to write a book about the evacuation of half a million people from Manhattan by boat on September 11, 2001. Within minutes after thick gray smoke started...
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Ten Years Later: Closure is a myth
Over these past few weeks, I've struggled to prepare for four separate September 11th-related projects and events: writing a story about mariners' crucial role in the aftermath of the towers' collapse (I'll post the link shortly), a private commemoration aboard...
Fireboat John J. Harvey faces Hurricane Irene
The news about the impact of Hurricane Irene on the Manhattan waterfront was grim so we fired up engines aboard fireboat John J. Harvey at 0500 on Saturday morning and headed upriver with a skeleton crew (Huntley Gill, Karl Schuman, John Browne, Tommy Whyte, and I),...
Onshoring Trend Spurs “Made in USA” Comeback
Call it what you will—reshoring, insourcing, repatriating, onshoring—the movement toward manufacturers expanding production on U.S. soil has established itself as a trend, according to a survey by MFG.com and Reuters. MOJO, the MFG.com blog, reported: Forty percent of...
German Giant Says Skills Gap Results from Education Weaknesses
On Monday, the Financial Times ran a story about the skills gap, provocatively titled "German Giant Says US Workers Lack Skills." Eric Spiegel, chief executive in the US for Siemens, the German engineering group, said the problem exposed weaknesses in education and...
Outsourcing the Law to India
Check out Brandi Moore's op-ed "Outsourcing the Law to India" from "Need to Know" on PBS. She begins: Memo to this year’s graduating law students: Your first job is already gone — to India. The law firms of America, and their clients, have quietly decided that the...
Energy and skill we can “ill afford to lose”
At nine o'clock on Sunday morning, I was dashing down a hallway at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Home in Hyde Park, NY on my way to deliver a lecture for SUNY's Empire State College when a painting on the wall stopped me in my tracks. "Art of the New Deal" celebrates the...
Looks like we caught another one
What a pleasure to stumble across this post, "If It Were Easy, Everyone Would Do It," by Ry M. Sal on her For the Birds blog. Sal writes: "I haven’t had the pleasure of riding on a tugboat yet… but after reading My River Chronicles, by Jessica DuLong — I have a...
Change Is a Group Sport: Growing Manufacturing in the US
Did you catch Howard Wial's recent piece in The Atlantic? In it he outlines "four things [beyond trade policy] federal and state governments should do to encourage more U.S. manufacturing that is innovative and provides good jobs for less educated workers." In...
What We Invent and What We Build
Finally, some new attention paid to the crucial role that making things and hands-on work have played, and must continue to play, in a sustainable U.S. economy... On Friday, President Obama spoke from a G.E. plant in Schenectady, NY. “Our challenge,” he said, “is to...