WGBH Journal; Bedford Weather Center

Good afternoon and welcome to the dbx Journal. I'm Bill kept. Another set of balloonists is attempting to cross the Atlantic just weeks after an unsuccessful balloon trip by two Britishers ended when bad weather and a ripped balloon forced them to land before they reached their mock. Interview with the person responsible for tracking the path of the bullet misses the first creature on today's show. We also have a series of interview with an MIT professor who feels that a decline in the population of major American cities would be beneficial. But the scientists recently returned from the People's Republic of China. After examining agricultural policies in that country. And with the bell ringer working at 100 year old bell tower in Stockbridge Massachusetts. The double eagle to the balloon with three men aboard passed the halfway mark last night in

another attempt to become the first balloon in history to cross the Atlantic. The three men from Albuquerque New Mexico were drifting at about 20 miles per hour at an altitude of fifteen hundred feet. During their fourth day over the ocean. There was some concern last night at the station in Bedford Massachusetts where the ground crew team has set up a control center. The balloon crew was reporting back to the base that they were drifting slowly northward off course. But this morning despite zero temperatures speed is picked up and all is reported well. Greg Fitzgerald spoke with Jim Mitchell a ground crew member who for the second time has traveled to Bedford to support the overseas expedition. Services Center here is to is to generate data which is relayed to the. Pilots as well as receive information generated by them and relayed here look at what kind of information. Well basically the kind of information that is

used to the pilots that's generated here is is information by the meteorologists from weather services. And we take this information it has a direct bearing on the altitude which we would like to the pilots to fly their certain altitude in which there are better winds and so you develop this data and relay it and the balloon can go to that altitude and you how important this whole center is here for the success of the mission. Well I would say that correct weather forecasting on a trip like this is at least 75 percent of the flight. 50 to 75 percent and I might just say that. The weather forecasting effort here is just an outstanding week. You couldn't do it without it it would be no flight without this facility. What's the mood here now. Well I've only gotten here in the last 20 minutes myself I was up

until about 4:00 o'clock. And. But when I went to bed I could tell that when we got up this morning people were were going to be feeling very optimistic. If something dramatic hadn't happened while I was asleep. We we don't have it in the bag by any means but. When you when you get out as far as we are now on. Sixteen hundred fifty miles from shore and you still have you have. Thousand miles or so to go. Why you you feel it. And you look at the weather and the track and the fact that the balloon is pretty much right in the groove. And we appear to have sufficient ballast and we appear to have sufficient helium. And we don't see any problems ahead. You've got at least be cautiously optimistic. How much communication do you have with the folks up in the balloon. Well we've had more and more in the last few hours

back and forth. We don't have direct communication as a rule. We have radio messages that we rate we relay thoughts for instance through Gander radio or aircraft passing in the area and they do the same. You have to feel frustrated all that you're not in constant verbal communication with them. Oh and that is a major problem and always is in balloon flights because you know. You don't have the capacity to carry extremely sophisticated equipment either for navigation or communication and you don't have the batteries and and so you're always working indirectly and it's you know it's sort of like conducting a boxing match through a third party. This is a flight that we have. We send men to the moon and done all kinds of other scientific endeavors which seem more complicated than this why do you think What's the urge to get it across the Atlantic. Well. I think as far as you're

it's it's one of the few remaining aerial records that and obstacles that hasn't been overcome. And I think this is. It's difficult because of the restrictions put on you. For instance in a fly to the moon at least you have you have propulsion. That you can count on and control. You have steerage that you can count on and controlling you know small retro rockets and one thing you know when you're flying a balloon like this you are strictly at the mercy of the weather and we all know how uncertain the the wind blows in this sort of thing so you're out there you have to do your preparation in advance. You have difficulty with communication and you have no way of controlling where you go. The technology of ballooning has not been fully developed since the year craft came into being. It's interesting to note that the first attempt to cross the Atlantic in a balloon came back in 1873 and there was another one

in 1881 and numerous. Promotions and talks about trying to cross. But then there was a gap. And from 1881 and no one attempted it until one thousand fifty eight when a crew went something like well more than a thousand miles and in a camp So there's a long gap in there and that undoubtedly was a result of the interest in mechanized flight and the fact that we're now we're now having a great increase in interest in this kind of project. There have been since that time 15 times or so. And these attempts are getting closer and closer so I think it reveals that not only are people more interested but the weather forecasting is greatly improved. The bloom building technology improves and the communications technology has improved. Somebody is going to make it if if these fellows don't do it someone will. What conditions are they flying Internet. Well it's been mostly cleared and their flight

that's in marked contrast to last year when they flew when Max and and flew to to Iceland they flew in and torrent throughout ice snow and and. Pelting rain. This year the flight has gone under clear skies excuse me under ski under clear skies most of the way. It appears that they might have their first rain today. A panel of urban scholars while testifying before a congressional subcommittee two months ago

made the claim that loss of population in America's older cities is not necessarily a bad thing. It's a fact that many urban areas are experiencing loss in population situation which is often given as a cause of the city's decline. Different school of thought maintains that cities can actually benefit from a decrease in population. PROFESSOR DAVID BIRCH of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was one of the people who testified in Washington. He spoke recently with commentator Louis lines. And I see you want your association testifying and said that rather than trying to revive a declining cities as the president is proposed to do the Congress should try to help your call gracefully. That sounded kind of interesting. Why would a city be a better place to live. It declined by half. Well if you take most of the people we interview and we've interviewed a lot of them in depth interviews say that they'd much rather have lower densities rather higher densities that rather have

more open space if they could get it that rather have cleaner air that rather have fewer vehicles less noise. They'd rather have fewer houses that were in good condition and a lot of houses that were some not in good condition and some in good condition that it could be made physically more attractive. When I can see where all of those are advantages we might say of the small town of the big one. But as to the declining city wouldn't it mean that the surviving population would be stuck with it. The extra task taxes for all the dead horses of excessive school space church space office space subway highways sidewalk water or so are every kind of facility. Well it turns out that that's more a question of management than a question of the subsidy. The managing decline can be done just as well as managing growth can be done. It's harder politically. You have to control your capital expenditures your streets and your sidewalks you have to be selective. You can't maintain everything so you have to you have to

scale your city to its size. But that's doable. And it seems to be manageable and cities have seem to be learning how to do it. It doesn't mean that you're going to go bankrupt at all. No but it doesn't mean some. Some laws such as the small town always has to the big city that the more ambitious and perhaps able young people are going to leave town and that there are going to be more poor and less companies to be supported. Interestingly enough it's going just the opposite way and in fact the major controversy seems to be surrounding the opposite Inus of that. It's the middle class in the blue collar person who has a lesser stake in the city given the diversity of jobs that are going on elsewhere now. So in fact what's happening is just the opposite. The people who are remaining as the overall level declines are the younger better educated people and one of the issues is involved is the substitution. How would you have younger

wealthier people buying houses from less wealthy people and maybe replacing 10 people with three and forcing those people to find housing elsewhere but the tensions are all the other sort of in cities now and the cities could reach the point where their mics look very much like the national mix rather than being having a large proportion of poor and a small proportion of wealthy. Well professor backed you wouldn't say that there are no problems and that they kind of say you know I think there are some groups that are going to get badly squeezed by it the elderly is one and minorities are another and I feel that our problem should focus not so much on rebuilding cities as on how and how to compensate these groups who are going to be squeezed by the transition in the most equitable fashion possible in some senses to ease their transition to the to the new configuration or otherwise to compensate them in some way for the pressures that they're going to feel as their environment becomes very much threatened by the change.

How much is such decline as. As New York particularly is severed is the M.E. dispersal to further suburbs which means longer commuting rather then shift to population to what we call the Sun Belt. The faster growing southwest actually the shift to the suburbs is not the predominant phenomenon that's going on right now the shift to suburbs was during the 50s and early 60s. Now the interstates the jet airplanes the telecommunication radio television. The job base is growing predominately outside of metropolitan areas all together in fact a very large percentage of the say 40 or 50 largest metropolitan areas lost population in aggregate. There is the the metropolitan areas including the suburbs lost population and in fact the more remote area is today the most rapidly it's growing. So the shift now is into southern New Hampshire Maine New Hampshire and Vermont for example are growing very rapidly at this point. The spike Connecticut Rhode Island Massachusetts is the quad in the case of

New Hampshire Vermont is the growth white lines they have retired people who are. Seeking places are lower taxes because they no longer have children in school not interested anymore in Governor Thompson in New Hampshire isn't high taxes are maintained schools used to be it isn't anymore. I've been looking at the demography of that area quite quite a lot lately. At present it's young companies starting up new businesses starting up young managers that don't want to pay personal income tax. Older managers that don't want to pay personal income tax because there is no New Hampshire people want to buy cars without paying a sales tax. It's a very general move. No longer retirement move at all into an area which is lower taxes and greater physical amenities and I think this is the key. Without any particular penalty overs there's almost nothing you can't get in New Hampshire that you can get in Framingham or a suburb of Boston

or Boston itself with some excitement as to what you can get when there's New Hampshire somewhere out there it's always been at least a notion that the city's four day cultural environment that everything music theater arts and so more that it takes a large population and accumulation of wealth and and institutions to support. Do you lose some of this right now. Well it's. I've done a fair amount of work with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and with the museum I've looked at their finances and so forth. No more than three or four percent of the population in fact has anything to do with either of those two institutions if you look at it statistically speaking. So it's not a massive attraction to those institutions it's a very elitist limited attraction to those institutions. Well in short you see no reason to mourn for the decline density population decline and so the population not at all.

I fact I think it's a healthy thing. Well that said That's very interesting and something I'm going to have a chance to bring out here. Thank you very much present very much. Thank you. During the Great Leap Forward in China in the 1950s multitool. Developed a policy of walking on two legs. The nation's resources with respect to agriculture and industry could be developed simultaneously to increase productivity. Last July a group of American Scientists visited China to study the outcome of Mars walking on two legs policy. The scientists all belong to science for the people. A political scientific organization. Reporter link spoke with one of the members

Eric Adams about his observations on agricultural production in China. We read in China there over the whole spectrum from very primitive through word war with Iraq into Iraq that they will keep everything. They don't forsake the order for the liver they keep the organ developing the same so the productivity will not increase because technology comes in there maybe by that or something and they have to be ironed out so that everything is kept going at home. Mechanization in China is a very complicated letter because of the intensity of that of agriculture there. Are obviously with things like like right where you have a lot of terrorists and that's never practical to have very large machinery being used because you know just the transfer of the machinery from one party to another would be a big operation. So it's really marginal in a lot of rot of this war that it's whether it's worthwhile using machinery at all.

And everything related to the intensity of the Agriculture is that in many places in our cropping is use where you'd have rather run crop and something else being grown in the middle to take advantage of like the square foot of space and that's an incredibly impressive thing in China as you look around and you see no land being wasted every square foot of arable land almost literally is being used. They feel it's very important that areas. Are self-reliant so that they can also work on supplying their own food for themselves so they wouldn't have to be dependent on an agricultural regions which might be quite a distant to read. That's such a marked difference between China the United States where we in New England for instance during the wintertime when they get our vegetables from Mexico or from California. Think nothing of it but that if you think about that through wasteful I mean just the amount of energy that it takes to transport

something like that for one of the very important things of the people convience is the simultaneous development of industry in the countryside at a commune. And one of the reasons this is very important is that as agriculture becomes more highly mechanized obviously it will take fewer people to actually produce the food. So rather than have something. Happen like happens in the United States and other capitalist countries the agricultural people get displaced from the land and go and migrate into the cities were urban congestion and higher to unemployment result in China to these people to get disposed of Agriculture just who knows they're living at the same commun but just enter into the in the developing industry. That's right at the commune. What sorts of industries I think about upping some of this more. History of the Commune are the handicraft factories which actually had a fairly large scale but it's not what you call heavy industry. And there's

also the manufacture of what they call rocking tractors which are roughly equivalent to what we would call a rototiller for that the important thing with that we gain from our trip are learning about social things in China not about scientific things that people participate in planning our planning goes from the top down and from the bottom up so that everybody has input into things and how innovations take place in industry from the workers themselves. So it was more of the social aspect that I think. Current obviously the culture or the whole history of the arts that is totally different from that in China we're not trying to so that that the even the social aspects that we gain knowledge about in China can be transferred to you know it's that that's just our Ruth we're not sure but we think it's important that people learn about the revolution in China. I mean I grew up one of these. I was just normally very very deeply aware that there had even been a

revolution in China. Everything was so suppressed in the and when I would hear about China's You know finish the food on your plate there are millions of people starving in China that type of thing which I think is being said somewhat less often nowadays that people are finally learning that people are not starving in China the people are starving in Appalachian in this country. So I think it's important that Americans learn more about what happened in China and what what the revolution has meant to the people in China so that it's that people don't have the socialized fear of socialism. Silver Bells Liberty Bells Alexander Graham Bell Bella Abzug bells for me and my gal for the hundred year old field teller in Stockbridge peels forth with a medley of songs

once a day. It's even a hands on experience with visitors getting a chance to help the town's bell ringers. Reporter Vivian Dukat spoke with Sherman hall a bell ringer at field teller about his work. Well we're going to meet everybody but only for five years now. Chairman Hall is one of four Stockbridge citizens whose job is to ring bells at the field tower on Main Street every evening between 5:30 and 6:00 o'clock. Hall says he's rarely lonely in his work since the doors are always open for adults and

especially children to come in and join him. He encourages his guest to take a turn at playing the chimes which are still operated manually by depressing heavy wooden levers mounted parallel with the floor. And no visitor ever gets away without having stayed to hear the story of the tower from the Famous Five famous brothers one of whom the Atlantic cable. He wanted something for the memory of his grandchildren and he proposed to build a tower for the town with four bells in it to be rung three times a day morning noon and night. The town without thinking accepted this gift but upon thinking it over they decided that it would be too much of an expense to maintain it and besides who was going to pay for someone to ring it. So they met three hundred to nothing vote turned the offer down. Mr. Feal proposed once more this tone developed with nine bells in it

and said that they could be wrung from apple blossom time to Frost once a day. In the evening at sunset in the town voted three hundred to nothing to accept it and it was built and opened within a year. And this year's AI 100 were three. We all choose our own and for some remarkable reason we do not duplicate each other. We transpose all wrong music into the key of F or before and live it and must be limited to 11 notes. I like them all play national tunes folk tunes hymn tunes. A few pops but

I enjoy it very much I get a big kick out of doing it gives us an opportunity to meet people especially children. Anybody else want to help the first help and for some a long time ashore so I will work together and just hang just by staying. Right here. Get it right here.

When they leave. Hall gives all the children a balloon with a picture of the tower on it and is a more permanent memento he insists that they sign the guestbook so that some day when they return to the tower as adults with their own children they can refer back to the mark of their first visit. This is Vivian do cat in Stockbridge Massachusetts. For Tuesday the 15th day of August 1978 that's GBH Journal regional news magazine read Monday through Friday 4:30. Marcia Hood says producer editor for The Journal Garrison today's engineer and I built up a totally Terrific Tuesday afternoon. Mm.

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