A growing Boise meets the Limits of Growth series: Intro and a welcome to Californians

A new day, a new building popping up in downtown Boise

Boise’s growth has always required the movement of people from outside the state.  My first brush with, umm, I guess the tension this can bring dates back to the ‘80s.  Driving with my uncle down Emerald St., about where it turns into Americana, a car zipped past us.  Without losing a beat my uncle leaned out the driver side window and yelled, “Fucking Californian!”  And on we went.

This series of blogs won’t solely be about these minor tensions.  Instead I would like to see how Boise’s history and how its contemporary state intersect with larger trends.  I would like to hold the example of Boise, Idaho up to the critical light of various thinkers such as James Howard Kunstler, Derrick Jensen, etc.  This town needs to pay its pound of flesh when it comes to explaining its existence.  When does the conversation about acceptable levels of growth begin?  Is Boise immune from any concern over global warming/climate change?  As Boise exists in a liminal space – where the desert meets the mountains – the city also exist in a nexus where the local meets world events and trends.

So what of that Californian-in-migration flash point?  Let’s clear the air.  There does seem to be a perpetually nascent “Idaho native” movement.  In the constant low-level conversation that takes place via bumper stickers, I noticed maybe less “Idaho Native” stickers over the last 20 years.  You still see this sentiment represented on hats and in conversations, however the “Fucking Californian” sentiment has been replaced with a passive, non-critical acceptance.  Plus, if you lived in Boise for a spell, you probably know some California transplants and perhaps realize their non-insidious nature.  And I would say this is due at some level to people basically realizing what side their bread is buttered on: while Californians (specifically) bring some perceived negative qualities, they also bring a lot of money. 

Yes, money.  As a measure of influx, in 2014, 2,806 Californians exchanged their Cali drivers licenses for Idaho ones.  The year before it was 2,629.  These are tax payers whose existence in Boise means more money in the tax bucket.  Idaho state does not have a property tax but Boise sure does.  House prices have increased 10.5% within the past year with expectations of 4.9% increase in the following year.  Where a place like Flint, MI cannot provide drinking water for its citizens, Boise debates about which gentrified neighborhood will get a new sidewalk.

This first post in what is hopefully a series is just laying the basic framework: Boise currently and in the last few decades has relied on growth for its prosperity.  At some level all these posts will take to heart the dictum, “It’s the economy, stupid”.  And if, in some fanciful manner, in-migration was blocked, the shiny city amongst the trees would begin to stagnate.

The Lion of Idaho series: That time when Idaho quit drinking

An interesting chapter in Idaho’s history came 1915 when statewide Prohibition put into law.  As this article states, Idaho was never entirely dry during the Prohibition era.  Speakeasies and illegal stills sprung up immediately.  Liquor was verboten in name only.  Of Shoshone County in northern Idaho it was said that alcohol could be bought anywhere “but the post office and the Methodist Church”.  Cities relied on taxes from liquor licenses and the businesses catered to people’s need to go out and have a good time.  Eventually Prohibition failed.  From Syd Albright’s article:

One report said, “The criminal justice system was swamped although police forces and courts had expanded in recent years.  Prisons were jam-packed and court dockets were behind in trying to deal with the rapid surge in crimes.  Organized crime expanded to deal with the lucrative business, and there was widespread corruption among those charged with enforcing unpopular laws.”

Borah was pro-prohibition.  Idaho actually went dry four years before the nation did, the United States passing the 18^th Amendment in 1919.  Senator Borah willfully engaged in machinations to achieve this end, urging fellow Prohibitionist to wait for an amendment to the state constitution instead of simply having the legislature enact a law:

The change which comes from statewide Prohibition will in the very first instance almost exclusively prove unpopular.  The readjustment which has to take place and the rehabilitation of society, as it were, leads to criticism and objections and for a time almost invariably as a history of Prohibition shows weakens the Prohibition cause.  If you have statewide legislative Prohibition and undertake to secure an adoption of a constitutional amendment two years thereafter, you will weaken the Prohibition forces in your fight.

According to Johnson’s biography, Borah never touched a dropped of alcohol:

Although Borah has always hated liquor, he has not always advocated Prohibition.  His original position on liquor was purely personal.  He would have nothing to do with in himself, but if his friends and neighbors wanted to muddle their heads with it, that was no particular concern of his.

Once the zeitgeist dictated, Borah could follow personal guidelines that matched up with those of his constituents.  The Anti-Saloon League was putting politicians under its influence, so to speak, and was active in Idaho.  As already mentioned, the League would see Idaho become dry before the nation.  Those that sought Prohibition perhaps had their hearts in the right place.  But, as Albright discusses in his article, Prohibition was economically damaging and served to create a bureaucratic entity – the Bureau of Prohibition – which exists to this day as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.

Could we, today, same them back then?

Are we Rome?  Not exactly.  But we are cut from the same cloth . . .

A struggle for objectivity, a God’s-eye view.  We look at the past and think of ways to intervene, if given the chance.  To go back to ancient Rome and tell a leader here or there at different times in the republic or empire’s span ways to save the empire – yes, perhaps point out ways to remain a republic.  What exactly would we say and to who?

How to avoid the weight of history?  Was the empire doomed once it was on a certain track?  Inertia?  What have we learned that can aid us in escaping from the gravity of human nature?  How can greed be parsed out from the overall package of human nature that includes other (vices?) such as the inability to think ahead more than a few years?  We cannot help but compare ourselves with (against) our neighbors.  Someone in the US may be in the lowest financial quintile but globally be in the top quintile – but that doesn’t matter when you compare yourself to the “haves” here.  You can’t help but do it, it is human nature.

Are we Rome?  Cullen Murphy takes on this question.  Of course many factors are different.  But in these different situations we are all human, nonetheless.

The status quo versus human nature: a look at sleep

Bronze head of Hypnos, the god of sleep

There are so many cool things to do these days.  Places to go, things to experience, shows to watch (apparently).  Perhaps not as cool but we have to work to make money to sustain our quest for being entertained.  Just not enough time.  Sleep becomes an impediment: we are losing a third of the day to sack time.  At least with the eight-hours-of-sleep-a-night model.  Scrimping on sleep gains a few hours back each day but doing that can make us irritable and put a damper on those cool things we have to go out and experience.

I don’t like to marginalize sleep, however.  For better or for worse sleep is a component of who we are.  While I also don’t like to go back and valorize our evolution and use it to justify present graces and deficits, I think sleep falls into a benign range.  I’m not justifying war based on evolutionary evidence that war and strife were omnipresent.  But I will look at the evolved need for a certain amount of sleep to serve as an operational baseline for everything.

So, it is easy to consider sleep an impediment to doing stuff while awake.  But what if we look at the awake world as an impediment to sleep?  One recent news article made me consider the latter.  This article sites a (yes) sleep historian:

"The dominant pattern of sleep, arguably since time immemorial, was biphasic," Roger Ekirch, a sleep historian at Virginia Tech University and author of "At Day's Close: Night in Times Past" (Norton 2005), told Life's Little Mysteries, a sister site to LiveScience. "Humans slept in two four-hour blocks, which were separated by a period of wakefulness in the middle of the night lasting an hour or more. During this time some might stay in bed, pray, think about their dreams, or talk with their spouses. Others might get up and do tasks or even visit neighbors before going back to sleep."

References to "first sleep" or "deep sleep" and "second sleep" or "morning sleep" abound in legal depositions, literature and other archival documents from pre-Industrial European times. Gradually, though, during the 19th century, "language changed and references to segmented sleep fell away," said Ekirch. "Now people call it insomnia."

I think there is perhaps a reason that this pattern of sleep has developed.  I think there is some utility in accepting it if for no other reason to than to avoid introducing the concept of insomnia.  The same article mentioned that one third of Americans do regularly wake during the night.  How some of us adapted?  Are we seeing evolution at work and the final one third will figure it out or come around or die out?

But the big question is this: How much does society force us to conform even in cases where the demands of society run counter to our deep instincts?  We have our (roughly) eight hours of allotted time for sleep but if you are to still get your eight plus an hour or two of awake time you are looking at nine to ten hour period allotted to rest.

Have we as an industrialized world turned our backs on not only a sleep pattern but a way of life that has suited us historically?

Of course an individual doesn’t have to submit to these societal demands.  One might still be part of the workaday world but just give oneself that 10 hour rest period.  Or one might opt out of society.  But still I like to imagine a world with something like a 3 or 4 day workweek, working maybe six hours a day.  A world where health and relaxation are emphasized. 

Some folks are perhaps smarter and have this now, which makes you have to ask about each individual’s priorities and also make you (unfortunately) ask about how much government should play a part in regulating some modes of life.

Sometimes, “It’s just the way it is” isn’t really the way it is.

"That's just the way it is
Some things will never change
That's just the way it is
Ah, but don't you believe them"