Water Under the Bridge: May 2020

Thursday, May 7, 2020

May Day, 1955. May 14, 2020

May 14, 2020

May Day, 1955

“On the first of May, it is moving day” is the beginning of the verse for Rodgers and Hart’s wonderful standard, “Mountain Greenery”. It typifies our general perception of May Day as a happy time, an opportunity to proceed to positive things. In the song a young couple is leaving the city for the joys of rural life, anticipating Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor in “Green Acres”.

This all changed with the onset of the Cold War with the worldwide Communist expansion following World War II. By 1955 the Iron Curtain had split Europe down the middle, and Communist sympathy was growing in France and Italy. The People’s Republic of China was firmly in control in Beijing and flexing its muscles in French Indo-China and threatening Taiwan. Fidel Castro was in exile in Mexico, anticipating his future takeover of Cuba.

May Day, 1955, found me in the 29^th Engineer Battalion, Base Topographic, in Oji, a neighborhood in northern Tokyo. I had just celebrated the first anniversary of my arrival in Japan; my countdown to freedom, on September 10, was 131 days.

Our battalion was responsible for providing mapping support for all of our military units in the Far East as well as for our allies. A major program supporting the French in their effort to quell the rebellion in French Indo-China had come to an abrupt halt the previous year when it failed.

In addition to this “day” job we also had to spend time on our primary reason for being there, defending democracy against its enemies. This included getting up at 5:30 each morning for roll call, calisthenics, and military drill; spending one weekend a month on maneuvers; and miscellaneous soldierly duties like guard duty.

When I reported for guard duty that particular morning, the fact that it was May Day didn’t register on me at all. Guard duty consisted of two hours on, followed by four off, manning a guard shack at one of the gates. I was assigned “second trick”, beginning at 10:00 am.

This put me on duty during a very slow time, with very few persons passing through the gate. I shared the shack with a Japanese national security guard whose primary function was to communicate to non-English speaking visitors. After my two-hour shift was over, I ate lunch, then stretched out on a bunk in the Guard House. A few minutes before 4:00 I got up and prepared to go on duty.

Changing the guard required the Officer of the Day to march us to our respective gates and pick up the guards going off-duty. When I reached the guard shack I noticed a small group of people milling around outside the gate. When I looked puzzled, my Japanese compatriot suddenly broke into English, “May Day”. Sure enough, some of them were waving red handkerchiefs.

For the next few minutes the mob grew slowly, but not enough to really worry me. At 5:00, when our Japanese workers left to come home, things began to get a little dicey. The crowd began to become much more active, shouting, stamping their feet, and waving their red flags.

I began to worry about the safety of our employees. Eventually I spotted Mr. Kono, whom i later noted we had categorized as “mild-mannered”. I was quite concerned about his ability to navigate his way through the mob.

Mild, courteous Mr. Kono was always immaculately dressed. I was surprised to see him pull off his necktie and jam it into his jacket pocket. By the time he had passed through the gate he had pulled out a red handkerchief and was waving it. His mien had changed from polite obedience to aggressive antagonism. Suddenly he looked exactly like the caricature of the evil enemy we faced in the Pacific ten years earlier.

I watched him merge into the mob and become indistinguishable from the rest of them. At this point I realized that my Japanese security guard had somehow disappeared. I was all alone, defending democracy against the Red Horde. I had my rifle but, like Barney Fife, I had no bullets. I did have a bayonet, but had been brainwashed to do nothing rash without being commanded. If only some sergeant had been there to shout, “Fix Bayonets”.

Panicked, I telephoned the Guard House and notified the Officer of the Day that I needed reinforcement. “Not to worry”, he replied. “I have called out the First Provisional Infantry Platoon”. In addition to being organized by our day job assignments, we also were organized into military fighting units.

Soon I saw the impressive sight of the platoon, led by Second Lieutenant Reynolds and Sergeant McCartney marching toward me. Thank Heavens there were some real soldiers in our battalion! Suddenly the Lieutenant stopped and gave the command, “Deploy as Skirmishers”. Soon there were three eight-man squads spread out across the parade ground. Especially impressive were the three Browning Automatic Rifles with their distinctive inverted-vee supports, aimed right at the mob.

Unimpressive, to me, was the fact that they were deployed about fifty yards behind me. I was, indeed, in “no-man’s-land”, poised to be the first American casualty in World War III. I felt like the hero in a Jerry Lewis movie. What would Jerry do? Probably scream and run for safety. I was too disciplined for that. Eventually things began to die down; nonetheless, I was quite happy to see Darrell Renzelman show up at 6:00 and relieve me.

In retrospect I remember this as a humorous incident; I didn’t think it was funny at the time. Farris Farha thought I should be considered for at least a Bronze Star in recognition of my bravery. I suspect my friends and neighbors back home who were responsible for my being there would have been a little uneasy had they known I was the Dutch Boy with his finger in the dike holding back the spread of international Communism.

The Trillium Recurvatum. May 7, 2020

May 7, 2020

The Trillium Recurvatum

When my children were small we enjoyed participating in the YMCA parent-child programs, Indian Guides and Indian Princesses. I particularly enjoyed “playing Indian” and soon found my niche as story teller. Most of the traditional Indian stories for children were of the “Why the ….” Genre, such as “Why the chipmunk’s back is striped”, etc.

Typically in these stories some animal performs some beneficial action which is rewarded by the Great Spirit by being awarded some admirable feature or characteristic. Once my daughter Elizabeth and I got into the routine of telling such tales, we began to write our own.

The great Spirit rewarded the deer for alerting a peaceful tribe of Indians of the approach of an enemy by being granted a flag (its white tail) that it displays vividly each time it runs away. The redbird (cardinal) was awarded its distinctive crown in recognition of its helping a group of thirsty Indians find a spring of fresh water.

Our pride and joy was the story of the trillium. One spring we found a meadow full of trilliums (or is it trillia, or simply trillium?) while on a short hike at the Y camp at Deer Valley. The trillium is a distinctive spring flower, displaying three leaves, three sepals, and three petals in a very attractive arrangement. The common variety in this area is trillium grandiflorum.

Technically the three leaves aren’t leaves at all; their proper designation is bract. The bract is a leaf-like component which is associated with the reproductive function of the plant, rather than its vegetative function. It still looks like a leaf to me.

The typical common trillium has a sturdy stalk perhaps six inches long on which are symmetrically arranged three large green bracts. From the center of the bracts a stem several inches long then supports three attractive petals (white in this case), with three small leaf-like green sepals, spaced between the petals.

The combination of three bracts, three sepals, and three petals suggested a story that practically composed itself. It seems there were three Indian boys who were best friends. Each boy had a loyal dog, and each dog had a flea. One day the three boys disobeyed their parents and went wandering in the forest, accompanied by the three faithful dogs and their three fleas.

Sure enough a thunderstorm, a lightning strike, and the resulting forest fire trapped the wanderers, leading to their sad demise. When the Great Spirit learned of this tragedy He (She?) created the trillium in their memory. Consequently today whenever we encounter a trillium with its three petals, three sepals, and three bracts, we are reminded of the three Indian boys, their three dogs, and their three fleas.

Being a parent with young children at the time the story was composed, it seemed appropriate for it to be a gentle sermon on children listening to their parents. In retrospect I wonder if it would have been better if the creation of the trillium had been a reward for some positive action instead. Perhaps the three triplets gave their lives to save a larger group of their tribe.

Once we had learned about the trillium it was a real treat to find several colonies of them in the woods in our neighborhood. There is a portion of a south-facing hill, about fifty yards long, in which there are several dozen clumps of trillium that bloom in mid-April every year, an event that we anticipate eage.

About ten years ago, in the midst of one of the clumps we were surprised to see an interloper, potentially an undocumented alien! It was definitely a trillium, but one with significantly different characteristics. Instead of being solid green, the bracts were mottled with two contrasting shades. The petals grew right out of the bracts, without a separate stem. And they were maroon-colored, and curled inward rather than outward.

After considerable research I concluded that we were favored with a rare (for this area) variety, trillium sessile. It turns out that the term sessile refers to the absence of the stem between the bracts and petals. Several years later I learned that were other varieties with this characteristic and ours that probably was a trillium recurvatum, distinctive for the curling-in of its petals.

We followed this straggler for a number of years until a large tree fell right where the recurvatum usually showed up each April. Since then we have been able to find it. This Spring I found a note in my mailbox, informing me that the trillium were blooming but that she could not find “the maroon one”.

Being an octogenarian I am automatically “at risk”, and consequentially have been quarantined to my house and neighborhood, depending upon my daughter to do my grocery shopping for me. On the days she brings my groceries, she and I enjoy walking in our woods.

On such a walk two weeks ago we decided to make one final effort to locate the straggler. Elizabeth very quickly announced that she had found it. Sure enough, hidden behind a branch of a downed tree, is a small colony of our beloved recurvatum. I can’t imagine its having been there in previous years, although that is certainly possible.

I prefer, instead, to believe that the Great Spirit is aware of our current travails and that He/She has led us to this colony and provided us with a sign that better days are ahead. If indeed this undocumented alien has found a way to come back after all this time, surely we can survive today’s problems.

Senior Design Projects April 30, 2020

April 30, 2020

Senior Design Projects

This past week has been particularly busy for me. Despite losing a full week of school and being forced to function remotely, the graduating Seniors in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at Pitt were required to complete all their final assignments this week and take their final exams next week.

The most significant of these challenges is the completion of their Senior Design Projects. In their final semester our students are required to participate in a significant “near-real-world” team design project. Before my retirement it was my responsibility to coordinate this program. This term I volunteered to mentor one team; I greatly enjoyed my involvement with them.

Normally the program ends with an impressive, day-long colloquium before a large audience in the O’Hara Student Center Ballroom. It indeed is a “big deal”, the culmination of our students’ academic career. Once it became obvious this could not occur, we decided to have each team make its presentation remotely via teleconference with a handful of interested faculty members as its audience.

Consequently I participated in seven one-hour-long teleconferences last week, plus a handful of preliminary dry-runs. I was not surprised to see this group of students make the transition to remote communication so flawlessly. I was, however,

pleasantly surprised that the quality of their design work was not compromised.

Three of the seven projects this term were based on actual projects in the University’s Master Campus Plan. Part of the Plan for the sports complex on the Upper Campus is the design and construction of a 3,500 seat arena for wrestling, volleyball, and gymnastics, to be located adjacent to the Peterson Event Center.

This location is at the east end of the bowl left when Pitt Stadium was demolished. The team I mentored was given the assignment of performing a preliminary design for such a facility, accompanied by an estimate of its cost and a construction plan to confirm its constructability. This was an ambitious challenge, even for one of the strongest teams in the program.

Before the disruption I was sure the team was capable of meeting this challenge; my confidence was confirmed by their presentation. Even though each student was communicating remotely from a different location, their explanation of the results of their work went seamlessly, just as if they were all together in O’Hara Student Center.

Another Master Plan project is the renovation of Crawford Hall, a five-story building that is the home of the University’s neuroscience department. Filled with laboratories, it is imperative that this work be done in logical stages, without significantly disrupting the department’s operations.

This project was particularly interesting to me, as I had experienced a similar staged renovation in Benedum Hall about ten years ago. The team implementing this Senior Design Project was made up of Construction Management students; the plan they produced was highly professional and completely credible.

Stormwater management and Allegheny County’s combined sewer overflow problems are major infrastructure subjects for Civil and Environmental Engineers. One of our teams, composed of Environmental Engineering students, elected to evaluate stormwater mitigation efforts for two projects in the Master Plan – the Redevelopment of Bouquet Gardens and the conversion of O’Hara Street into a pedestrian-friendly “Complete Street”.

A combination of ‘green roofs” and underground storage was shown to significantly reduce peak stormwater runoff at Bouquet Gardens. A similar effect was found for the addition of infiltration planters between sidewalks and bike lanes on O’Hara Street. Though both are relatively small projects, they clearly quantify the effectiveness of “green solutions” to the combined sewer overflow problem.

In the same vein, another team studied the frequent flash flooding problem in downtown Springdale. Their solution is to capture stormwater before it enters the combined sewer system and store it in large underground containers, to be released after the peak of the storm has passed. In this case, a “grey” solution turned out to be more effective than the alternative “green solution”, an extensive rain garden.

When the new terminal is constructed at the Pittsburgh International Airport, the existing landside terminal is scheduled for demolition. Some folks at the Allegheny County Airport Authority are interested in alternative uses for the facility. One of our teams elected to take on this challenge; they came up with a credible recommendation.

Their plan is to convert the landside terminal into a transportation hub linking busy corridors in all four directions. This they would do by retaining the central core of the existing building while demolishing its wings. Attractive glass curtain walls would be installed at both ends. This is a clever solution, including a pair of environmentally friendly alternatives --rain gardens to handle stormwater runoff, and a geothermal heating system as an energy source.

Another innovative project is the development of an urban agriculture system in an empty industrial building in Sharpsburg. A team composed of Environmental Engineers conceived an impressive facility including fish tanks, hydroponics, and a conventional greenhouse. Collecting rainwater for process water, generating electricity with solar panels, and capturing nutrients from waste in a closed system produce a cost-effective solution while providing the community with fresh food.

The final project is an excellent solution to the problem of providing rapidly deployable multi-family housing units for communities hit by natural disasters. This team designed a three-story modular housing unit that could be constructed in large assemblies in a manufacturing facility environment, transported to the construction site by trucks, and final-assembled in a minimum of time. Their design utilizes engineered forest products – Glulam columns and girders, and cross-laminated timber floors and ceilings.

The combination of the use of sophisticated technology, the social relevance of each of these projects, and the professionalism shown by the presentations is extremely impressive. When you realize that this was achieved despite the biggest disruption any academic program has seen in years, you realize that this group of students is indeed “the cream of the crop”. And kudos to program coordinator John Sebastian!