But it was another 26-year-old, Roger Tory Peterson, who produced the book that would change birding and, some say, kick-start the environmental movement. In 1934, Peterson’s A Field Guide to the Birds proved the perfect tool for both novice birders and their experienced brethren; it was inexpensive ($2.75), portable (just 7.5-by-5 inches), and useful, introducing what came to be known as the Peterson Identification System, which deploys arrows to point out the distinguishing field marks discussed in the text. Peterson’s book (now $26) is a must for any birder, and here are a few more:

The Sibley Guide to Birds
544 pages, $39.95

Pros: Sibley is extremely thorough and reliable, featuring illustrations of birds in flight as well as standing, perched, or afloat; 6,600 illustrations in all.

Cons: At roughly 6-by-10 inches, it’s not very portable—though it also comes in two smaller regional (east/west) versions.

Kaufman Field Guide to Birds Of North America
392 pages, $18.95

Pros: Digitally enhanced photography (though some birders don’t like this aspect) is helpful for beginners.

Cons: Some readers complain about blurry or pale images.

National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America,
Sixth Edition
576 pages, $27.95

Pros: It’s comprehensive and up-to-date, featuring all 990 species found in North America. It also has terrific maps, with major fall and spring migration routes.

Cons: Too large and heavy for practical field use; like Sibley, it comes in smaller eastern and western editions.

Bird Nerd Library Essentials The Saturday Evening Post

• Raven’s Bread, a newsletter for an international readership of self-declared hermits: ravensbreadministries.com/news.html
• Consider The Ravens: On Contemporary Hermit Life by Paul A. and Karen Karper Fredette (iUniverse Books)
• Sister Laurel O’Neal’s blog, Notes from Stillsong Hermitage: notesfromstillsong.blogspot.com
• Thoughts In Solitude by Thomas Merton (Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux)

Famous American Hermits

Want to know more about the hermits who have gone before you? Get to know these famous hermits who lived the simple life before it was en vogue.

• Robert Voorhis, a former slave, escaped bondage and chose to live in a small, secluded cave for nearly 14 years.
• Dorothy Molter, remembered fondly as “The Root Beer Lady,” has a museum dedicated to her life in the wilderness of Minnesota.
• Richard Proenneke, a woodworking genius, donated his hand-built log cabin to the Lake Clark National Park and Preserve in Alaska before his death in 2003.
• Daniel Suelo, who lives and travels entirely without money, writes a blog about his alternative lifestyle and updates it from libraries across the U.S. In 2012 Mark Sundeen wrote Suelo’s biography, The Man Who Quit Money (Riverhead Books).

Resources for Would-be Hermits The Saturday Evening Post

Hand in Hand for RA

Nearly 75 percent of people with RA are looking for ways to be more active and give back to their communities, according to a 2009 online survey of 501 men and women with the condition. In addition, about 30 percent of the respondents report volunteer work helps them better manage their RA symptoms.

Debbie McGrady, diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis about 10 years ago, knows from personal experience that helping others is good medicine for one’s own health challenges, too.

Having a serious illness prompted the Indiana resident to reassess her life goals and priorities. As a result of her personal “revolution,” the mother of two let go of self-imposed physical limitations and began to connect with others in new ways. Today she works part time, drives seniors to their doctor’s appointments, and remains committed to staying fit.

Click here http://www.handinhandforra.com/ to read more about McGrady and other inspiring volunteers who are living well with RA. The Web site, sponsored by advocacy group CreakyJoints http://www.creakyjoints.org/ and drug companies Genentech and Biogen Idec, also provides a list of suggested volunteer activities that are easy on the joints in addition to tips for managing the disease. 

New Way RA

Now in its second season, Deborah Norville’s online talk show, New Way RA, http://www.newwayra.com/ features panelists Amye Leong, RA advocate and spokesperson for the United Nations Bone and Joint Decade, and Sara Nash, author of the RA blog The Single Gal’s Guide to Rheumatoid Arthritis <http://singlegalsguidetora.typepad.com/>.  

Monthly episodes will offer information and advice about diagnosing RA, connecting with a rheumatologist, and easy-to-wear looks for everyday style. Registration is free, but required to view current and past episodes.

For more Post coverage on living with RA, including foods to reduce inflammation, click here.

Rheumatoid Arthritis The Saturday Evening Post

In boom times like these, oil companies had little time, and scant interest, in planning. As a Post writer observed in 1929,

“Authorities all agree that the United States has developed and produced its oil too rapidly… For ten years now, despite the increasing multiplicity of its uses, oil has been found faster than it could be consumed. All the time there has been more of it above ground than the market demanded. ["Taming Wild Oil Wells," Oct 19, 1929]

“The presence of too much of any commodity leads inevitably to its waste… The record of all time for the waste of a national resource has been broken in the past decade in the oil fields of the United States.

“In the state of California, for example, it is estimated that the loss of natural gas alone has been sufficient to have paid off the national debt.

“Of the oil that is in [the typical oil pool], it is believed that not more than 20 per cent is usually recovered before the flow ceases.

“In the interest of prolonging the life of the field, no gas should be allowed to blow off at random or before its full quota of work has been performed. Gas which cannot otherwise be used obviously should be pumped back into the ground so that the life of the field may be prolonged.

“Finding that they owned land over an oil dome, its possessors…  should have agreed to develop the field as a unit and split the returns in proportion to their holdings.”

They “should have” agreed, but they didn’t. Instead, the industry kept drilling for quick oil, taking the crude that natural gas pushed to the surface, left the more difficult oil, and natural gas, behind.

Oil companies showed no signs of moderating themselves, and critics were beginning to wonder how it would all end.

“In view of the now familiar oil over-production, with its unnecessary drain on the natural reserve, the question of future supply become increasingly acute. People are beginning to wonder if the carriage manufacturer is coming back to his former prestige, and whether the faded letters “L-i-v-e-r-y  S-t-a-b-l-e,” now supplanted by the more aesthetic “G-a-r-a-g-e,” on endless buildings, will have to be restored. Is a nation on wheels, as it were, going back to the hoof so far as daily transport is concerned?” ["After Petroleum — What?" Isaac F. Marcosson, March 3, 1928 (PDF)]

“There is more truth than idle speculation in this surmise. Although it may be postponed longer than we think, the time is inevitable when we shall be obliged to depend for motor fuel on imported crude or a synthetic liquid distilled from coal, lignite or shale.

“How much oil is left in the ground for our future needs? Like every other features of the business, this is uncertain. All predictions so far have been in error.

“As recently as 1921, statisticians maintained that our domestic output would be at its peak when 500,00,000 barrels were obtained. Yet last year… we produced 900,00,000 barrels. Despite the pessimism, the supply of oil proved greater than anyone could have predicted.

“The wells drilled during the last three years have already yielded considerably more than 1,000,000,000 barrels of oil and their productive life is still largely in the future. This makes the total reserve from all proved sources nearly 80,000,000,000 barrels. At the 1927 rate of production, this would last thirty-three years.”

They were off by a decade; as you can see from the graph below, domestic production began falling in 1970, while imported oil rose sharply to cover the difference.

Not knowing when the easy oil would give out, critics repeatedly called for conserving oil — long before there were any environmental considerations.

One of the strongest proponents for conservation was former governor and Director of the Forest Service, Gifford Pinchot. He fiercely opposed the unrestrained drilling for oil on federal lands. Conservation, he argued, was essential to the public interest. The restraint of one generation would be the inheritance of the next.

“The conservation policy grew out of the idea that public resources held in the public hands should not be wasted, but be made to serve the public to the utmost, both in the present and in the future. ["Ships, Oil and the Ten Commandments," May 17, 1924]

This chart shows how sharply oil imports rose as domestic production fell. (Wikipedia Commons)

“It was introduced to the people of the United States through the meeting of governors in the White House in 1908 — the first meeting of its kind in American history, and by far the greatest — and met with instant general approbation.

“This was the more remarkable because it was then commonly believed and openly asserted that, since posterity had done nothing for us, we had no reason to do aught for posterity. Let posterity paddle its own canoe. This theory conveniently forgot that our ancestors gave us the only canoe we have to paddle; that they discovered and conquered for us our continent; that they founded and preserved for us our nation; that we, who are their posterity, are living our safe and reasonably comfortable lives because of what they did for us who came after them; and that the only way we can pay our debt to them is to play fair in our turn with those who will come after us.

“From the beginning, conservation has meant wise use in the public interest, and it means wise use today. This generation has a right to all it needs, but no right whatever to waste what it does not need. Our children have their rights as well as we. If there was ever a policy since this world began that was simple, sound and filled with common sense, it is the policy of conservation.”

Read “After Petroleum — What?” Isaac F. Marcosson, March 3, 1928 [PDF]
Next: Teapot Dome

The Common Wealth of Oil The Saturday Evening Post

Naturally the event prompted me to look through the archives for past reports about the oil industry. I found scores of stories on the subject spanning the past century. Taken altogether, these articles present a story of America’s troubled relationship with oil and its producers.

As early as 1908, for example, the Post was criticizing Standard Oil, particularly its Vice President John D. Archbold who announced his company would be more vocal in defending its reputation.

“It was entirely unnecessary for Mr. Archbold to urge upon his readers that the Standard Oil trust is a powerful and successful commercial organization, or that it has adopted many useful and important economies in the conduct of its extensive and diversified business.

“But his denial of the often repeated charge that the business success of the Standard Oil Trust has been largely contributed to by unlawful special favors from railroad companies can hardly be accepted as conclusive, contradicted as it is by testimony in numerous cases and investigations. And when the amount and frequency of these special privileges, which have been conclusively proven to exist, are considered, the statement is clearly justified that the ability of the Standard Oil trust to defeat competition and achieve its remarkable success has been due to illegal privileges from railroad companies more than to any other one cause.

“It has been proven that during the early period of its existence it had contracts with railroad companies by which it secured a rebate of from 10% to 68% on the published tariffs of the roads on all oil that it shipped. This would have been an advantage over competitors that would have satisfied the avarice of most people. But not the geniuses of the Standard Oil Trust. They demanded and received the same amount as a rebate upon the shipments of their competitors, who were compelled to pay the full tariff rate by the railroads.”

Historically, the Post was a tireless cheerleader for development and business success. Throughout the 1920s, it  heaped praise on every prospering American industry. But it never lost an ambivalence toward the oil industry.

For example, Post writer Samuel G. Blythe rhapsodized over the oil industry’s accomplishments in 1930. He proudly announced America’s oil production:

“The daily average oil output in the United States in 1929 was 3,196,000 barrels. Multiply that by 36, for oil wells, when they work, work every day. Thus we find that our total oil output in 1929 was 1,166,540,000 barrels. Almost one and one-sixth billions.”

“Oil is the giant of our national products… Oil is indispensible to our progress and prosperity. The use of it ramifies in nearly every commercial, manufacturing, distributing, motor, lubricative, heating and transport direction. It warms us and lights us. It runs our tractors and trucks and automobiles, pulls our passenger and freight trains on great railroad systems, propels our ships, whirls countless factory wheels, generates much of our power, fights our wars and flies our airplanes. The by-products of it are used in hundreds of utilitarian ways.”

Yet, at article’s end, Blythe drops his worshipful tone for one of stern warning against “the business idiocy of producing more than can be sold.” He encourages major oil-producing states to voluntarily curtail “wasteful and unneeded oil production.”

“the benefits have been clearly demonstrated. Oil can be conserved. Oil should be conserved, not because there isn’t plenty of oil but because it is sheer business lunacy not to recognize the imperative economic law of supply and demand.

“There is hope. Conservation will continue unless the oil producers are the biggest and greediest business jackasses the world has ever known.”

In a 1933 article, Harold Ickes, FDR’s new Secretary of the Interior, provided details about the wastefulness of oil exploration.

“One billion dollars is not an insignificant fortune even for the country that holds within its treasury most of the gold of the world. Yet the same people who would avidly scan tales of such a theft have permitted, practically unheeded, a loss in their oil resources amounting to much more than one billion dollars.

“We have suffered and are continuing to suffer stupendous losses in the exploitation of our oil resources. We are just as indifferent about oil as our forefather were about our forests, our plains and our streams. What if oil is being wasted? There will always be more oil; and even if it should, in time, give out, there will be plenty for our own needs in our own day. ‘May the devil take the hindmost’ is still sound American doctrine.

“I challenge any other present-day industry in the United States to show greater waste, inefficiency and mismanagement than seem to be inherent in the oil industry, whether of its own making or because of inadequate laws. These are grave charges, but they are less grave than the situation to which they relate.

The oil-drilling practices of the time, Ickes relates, encouraged drillers to grab up the easy oil, close to the surface, and leave behind the most costly oil.

“A quantity of oil on top can readily be skimmed off, and below, there is more oil clinging to rocklike sand, while still farther down in the lank there are coal and shale from which oil might be manufactured.

“If we drive a hole… a certain amount of the very cheapest oil will flow out naturally from the top. When the natural flow has ceased, it becomes necessary to install pumps in order to draw out the oil that remains stubbornly sticking to the rocklike sand. This makes the crude oil cost more. When this is gone it is now customary to abandon an oil field.

“But it may become necessary, expensive though the process will be, to go down and dig out the oil-saturated rock to wring from it oil which no pumps will bring up. It may even become necessary, at a still greater cost, to go to the bottom of our tank and dig out our coal and shale, from which, if the consumer will pay enough, it is possible to process motor fuels. “Already in many areas in the United States the cream from the top of the tank has been skimmed. The former great flush oil fields of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia, New York and Indiana are gone.

“Millions upon millions of barrels of oil have been allowed to become bogged in the earth’s reaches, beyond cheap recovery, because of the loss of the driving pressure of the gas.

Natural gas, rich in caloric energy, was the force that pushed oil to the earth’s surface. But the oil companies were little interested in natural gas at first. Once they realized it could be just as valuable as oil, they made efforts to capture it at the well head, instead of letting it escape into the atmosphere. However many get-rich-quick operations didn’t spare the time and money to capture this gas, but just grabbed the easy oil. The energy-rich gas was simply discarded.

“In the Panhandle of Texas, 1,000,000,000 cubic feet of gas a day go utterly to waste. Expert engineers estimate that the loss of this gas means that from 400,000,000 to 500,000,000 barrels of easily recoverable crude oil will stick in the sands. This is a direct loss of crude oil sufficient to supply the entire nation for approximately six months.

“From 200,000,000 to 250,000,000 barrels of gasoline could have been made from that crude oil. Enough is being lost in that one field to fill up every car in the country more than forty times.

“A year’s output of that wasted gas — 365,000,000,000 cubic feet — represents as much heat energy as 62,634,000 barrels of fuel oil—enough to heat the average home 1,252,680 years, or, to turn it around, to heat 1,252,680 homes a year. The staggering total of 62,634,000 barrels of fuel oil is difficult for most of us to grasp. But it would heat every home in Cleveland for three years. Dallas, Texas has 83,000 homes, every one of which could be heated for 132 months. Likewise every home in Atlanta, Minneapolis, Portland, Oregon, Providence, Erie, Lansing, Topeka and Racine could be kept warm for a whole twelve months’ year, not just the winter season.

“Some of the early wells in Michigan were allowed to spew 18,000,000 cubic feet of gas a day, each, into the air. Visualize the worth of that gas if piped into Detroit or Lansing to make automobiles, or into Chicago for use as fuel. Just as a measuring rod, consider that our capital city of Washington consumes for domestic and industrial purposes approximately 7,000,000,000 cubic feet of gas a year.

“My own opinion is that if the oil industry cannot control its affairs in the public interest, then the Federal Government, of necessity and to protect all the people, must take a hand. This business of oil is so important to all of us that private control must promptly and drastically mend its ways. We must, as a people, have oil, and plenty of it, at reasonable prices from our own wells. We cannot continue recklessly to pour this precious resource over the whole world. One can almost hear the sardonic laughter of nations, jealous of our prestige and covetous of our wealth, as they watch our headlong course toward national bankruptcy in oil while they count every drop of their own hoarded stores of this precious mineral.”

Over the next forty years, critics kept up their demands that oil companies use less wasteful methods. The companies had little interest in the arguments until the 1970s. To be fair, the oil companies would have had little incentive to reduce waste in the early 20th Century. As far as they could see, there was a nearly unlimited wealth of inexpensive oil in the 1930s — far more than would ever be needed by America’s 26 Million cars and trucks. (The number of vehicles has grown 1,000% since then.)

In 1970, though, America’s supply of cheap oil began to disappear, and we became more reliant on foreign oil. Suddenly the industry was working hard to extract every bit of oil and gas at every well head. And, as the oil executives, critics, and politicians had expected, energy prices rose.

I’ll close the first part of this Retrospective with a nostalgic glimpse at historic gasoline prices.

Oh, those happy days.

Read “This Billion Barrel Oil Country” by Samuel G. Blythe [PDF].

Read “After the Oil Deluge, What Price Gasoline?” by Harold Ickes [PDF].

Next:

America’s Common Wealth of Energy: The Long Battle for Oil Conservation

America’s Century of Oil Problems The Saturday Evening Post