Between You and Me
A parking lot is a parking lot, even if it is in the ritzy Mayfaire shopping center in Wilmington. I was making my way to my car when a lovely Monarch butterfly floated gracefully by, darting first one way and then the other as if it had no particular destination in mind and, if it did, was in no hurry to get there. Monarchs are the large orange and black butterflies of our childhood — lovely, as I said, but common — and on any other day this one probably would not even have entered my consciousness.
At that moment, I had other things on my mind. I was in earnest pursuit of a pair of white bucks to wear to the upcoming Tanglewood Steeplechase and had just exhausted my last hope of finding them at Mayfaire’s upscale Belk. I was hot and exasperated — folks just don’t wear white bucks much anymore and, predictably, hardly anyone sells them. But I did notice the butterfly because on that day butterflies were on my mind.
I had just left Airlie Gardens, a virtual paradise of almost 70 acres owned and operated by New Hanover County and sited on the eastern edge of Wilmington on Bradley Creek. It boosts 100,000 azaleas and some 50,000 camellias in a bucolic setting that includes a lake with a pair of matched white swans, nature trails, spectacular wedding locations, pergola and bridal walks, on-going environmental projects, and awesome, centuries-old oaks draped in Spanish moss. Eighty thousand daffodils greet spring visitors, and the gardens are designed so there is year-round color.
There are many reasons for visiting Airlie, which I consider one of the premier destinations in North Carolina There are a dozen spots where I would love to spend the day with a good book, a jug of cold sweet tea and a picnic lunch. But on this day, it was butterflies and a promise that brought me to Airlie.
 A few years ago, Mary Lou McEachern, the unofficial, non-resident Ambassador Extraordinaire of Kelly, NC, told me that she had agreed to help build a butterfly house at Airlie in memory of her husband, Sandy, the Wilmington builder who was her soul mate and business partner. Mary Lou is a longtime member of the Cape Fear Garden Club and is devoted to Airlie, the site of many Garden Club and Azalea Festival activities. Mary Lou continues the tradition that she and Sandy started, entertaining the 100-plus Festival “Dixie Bells” in hoop skirts on the manicured grounds of their white stucco Mediterranean-style villa in Wilmington across from Masonboro Island.
I had seen handcrafted “butterfly houses” at the Saturday market — whimsical creations akin to birdhouses that purportedly allow butterflies to slip in with wings folded through thin vertical slots. I have never heard anyone take an oath that butterflies really do inhabit these butterfly houses, but I am willing to accept the assertion on faith and argue over more important things, in my way of thinking, like barbecue.
Mary Lou tried to explain to me what this special butterfly house at Airlie would be like, but honestly, I couldn’t grasp it. Regardless, I told her I wanted to be invited to the opening. She remembered, and I received an invitation from the folks at Airlie. And I won’t trade a speckled puppy for my trip to Wilmington and the dedication festivities I was privileged to share with Mary Lou, her daughter Mary Katherine, the Glamorous Greek and a host of Mary Lou’s other ever-faithful friends and family, including Henry and Roya Weyerhaeuser.
The Weyerhaeusers, including son Ian, whom Sandy loved like a son and taught to fish and boat, hosted a dinner party at the Olympia restaurant the evening of the dedication. There were a lot of stories about Sandy’s exuberant personality and his zest for life, including his love for fireworks and his spectacular Fourth of July waterfront displays in which Ian often was a co-conspirator.
Airlie estate was the home of Mr. and Mrs. Pembroke Jones. Jones was a railroad magnate with tremendous wealth. He and his wife Sarah entertained in the grandest style, allegedly inspiring the phrase, “Keeping up with the Joneses.” Mrs. Jones devoted tremendous resources and personal time to creating the perfect environment for entertaining and amusing guests, not only in the Jones’ Italianate hunting lodge, but also in venues she created throughout the grounds.
Today, when you enter Airlie by way of the Minnie Evans gate where the renowned naïve artist collected admission and created her mystical drawings, you travel a short way through the forest and then emerge to see a gazebo on the left. Behind the gazebo, discreetly sited among small “tranquility gardens” so as not to be intrusive, sits the new 2400-square-foot butterfly house dedicated to the memory of Hugh Alexander “Sandy” McEachern and in honor of Mary Lou McEachern.
The octagon-shaped facility of metal construction is enclosed with a screen that repels all but about 20 percent of rain water. Double entrances are designed to keep butterflies from hitching a ride out on visitors. Visitors are warned to watch their step because butterflies light at will on the walkway. Upon entering, excited school children immediately have photo ops with butterflies perched lightly in their hair and on their shoulders.
Besides enjoying the beauty of the butterflies and the vegetation, visitors, including school children, learn the life cycle of the butterfly and curious facts, including the fact that various butterflies have favorite plants on which they lay their eggs. The Monarch butterfly, for example, favors milkweed. The hatched caterpillars feast on them until mature enough to go in search of a quiet, dark place to enclose themselves in a crystalis (or cocoon). Weeks later they emerge as butterflies so delicate and of such intricate design and color that only heaven could have created them.
I talked with “MJ” Cooper who was visiting the butterfly house. She raises butterflies by planting parsley and fennel that attract the exotic black swallowtail butterfly. They lay their eggs and after tiny caterpillars appear, Ms. Cooper takes them in the house, puts them in an aquarium and provides their favorite veggies. When the caterpillars are mature, they climb out of the aquarium, find a place to create a crystalis and then emerge in about 30 days as a butterfly. She photographs them and then releases them into the wild.
Kids will appreciate the fact that butterflies enjoy snacks. They like to drink from wet sand and enjoy a treat of fresh fruit which they find in “pudding stations” in the butterfly house.
A brilliant stainless steel sculpture, by Chapel Hill artist Gary Caldwell, fills the ceiling of the butterfly house, featuring, of course, lots of huge butterflies in flight. Caldwell earlier created a butterfly arbor for the adjacent tranquility garden.
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I cannot mention the butterfly house without noting that at the other end of the meadow is the Minnie Evans bottle chapel, designed by Virginia Wright-Frierson, that memorializes Evans and delights with its design and fancy. Some 3000 colored bottles held together by cement catch the light and create a stunning effect. Motifs favored by Evans are incorporated, and for those who love her work, as I do, a visit to the chapel must be viewed as a pilgrimage. It is a prime example of exciting public art.
I don’t know who coined the phrase, “butterflies are forever,” but between you and me, a butterfly house seems like a fitting, lasting memorial for a loved one. One source said butterflies represent freedom. Another said love. Those who visit the Sandy and Mary Lou McEachern Butterfly House at Airlie Gardens can decide for themselves. I might say they represent the mystery of life, continuity or even immortality. Where else in nature or living-kind is there a creature that does an annual migration — but goes through several life cycles in the process so that the butterfly that leaves on a trip of several thousand miles is not the butterfly that returns? Yet it does return.
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My Usual Charming Self
Running for Congress is a learning experience for sure. I was defeated in a run-off for the nomination and that’s that — or is it? To state my key issue in the campaign succinctly, the interest payments on the national debt equal the entire defense budget. The US deficit is projected to exceed 120% of GDP in 2020 — or earlier. Deficit spending on an acceptable level is a reality in good times, but at this rate the “good faith and credit of the United State”, the perceived asset value that stands behind our debt, is in serious danger. Buyers of US Treasury Bills — the main instrument we use to finance government services — assume we have the resources, even in bad times, to make good on the money we borrow to cover the cost of government.
But what if that faith is shattered as borrowing increases exponentially and tax collections decline due to the increasingly shaky economy? To sell our debt in these conditions will require a large increase in the interest we must pay to attract buyers. That rate will translate into the amount Americans must pay to borrow for personal and business loans (if indeed banks will loan). The already sick economy will decline further, meaning tax collections will continue to decrease.
Then the other foot will fall: massive tax increases on top of the burden already suffocating the alleged “recovery”. High interest rates and excessive taxation will transform the vaunted American economy into Third World levels of inflation and debt. To put this in perspective, the former Comptroller of the Currency estimated it will require an 80% increase in the federal income tax to put our financial house in order.
Yet the United States possesses vast resources and, most importantly, gutty citizens who are willing to face the challenges. This quality resides largely in the small business sector that comprises nearly 90% of the economy, the keystone of economic structure ignored by the Obama recovery plan. Sadly, my campaign plank that “Obama bailed out Wall Street and left Main Street holding the bag” is becoming truer every day.
Obama and the majority in Congress are in the sway of theoretical economists who missed the point that the US economy is a small business construct. And start-ups create the only new jobs in the entire economy. But today the majority of the small business sector, from which tax collections and jobs depend, is moribund and teetering on collapse. And home values, the paramount asset of most Americans, remain 40% lower than in 2008. This extraordinary reality is indicative of how bad things really are, especially when you consider home values in Raleigh — until 2008 — had risen 10 to 20% every year since World War II.
The recovery has to start with small business vitalization and increased real estate values — and now. But banks are under orders by regulators to increase their assets on hand, restricting the percentage of capital they can lend. Home and second home prices continue to tank as foreclosed properties flood the market driving down values. High property tax valuations are an anchor retarding the sales of existing homes priced over $400,000. No wonder consumer confidence continues to fall.
What to do? The best hope is to change Congress in November and install representatives who understand the true nature of the economy. The first step is to reduce spending as much as feasible and cut taxes drastically, even if the deficit increases temporarily. This will simulate the consumer sector (80% of economic activity in the US), increase revenues and profits and create more taxable wealth that obviates the need for high tax rates. It’s called the Laffer Curve and it works. However, if conditions remain as they are, government will increase taxation on ailing businesses and households to finance ever increasing spending. Productivity and investment will decline, suffocating wealth creation. That in turn reduces significantly the amount of taxable income and wealth.
A new strategy by fresh faces in Washington could turn the economy around and offer hope for the future. But that hope is diminishing as Tea Party activists are more interested in nominating candidates who emphasize religion and abolishing abortion over high taxes and run-away spending — therefore ensuring the nomination of Congressional candidates who will probably lose in November. This new style of conservative politics is anarchic and self-destructive just at the point the Democrat left is vulnerable and primed for defeat.
The result of old-line far right activists high-jacking the authentic Tea Party Movement means the Obama administration will be able to rely on a continued Democrat majority to drive the economy and our well-being as a nation right over the cliff.
Notes From La-La Land
Bashing BP while they are the only ones who can cap the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is self-destructive and sadly typical of the vindictive political environment in the US. The time for recrimination and revenge is after the incident is over, not while the company could throw up its hands and walk of the job. The Obama strategy to bring criminal charges against BP personifies the irrational state of affairs in Washington.
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My first thought when the rig blew was the enormous bill to be paid out by BP’s insurance companies. Then it emerged that the company is self-insured. Talk about penny-wise and pound foolish. Some geeky financial whiz-kid ran the numbers and said why pay premiums since we are so big and rich we can do it ourselves. Now that decision is keeping BP executives up all night as the spill decimates the company. But the other angle the accounting geek missed is that all the malice heaped on the oil company about payouts to victims would be directed against insurance companies and not BP, thus salvaging a large portion of the company’s reputation and asset value.
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Editor-at-Large
What a difference a day or a week or a month makes. In my case it was the difference between the day we finished the report to the General Assembly by the Legislative Commission on Offshore Energy Exploration and the day the Deepwater Horizon burned and collapsed in the Gulf of Mexico. The Commission, which I co-chaired with Dr. Doug Rader, had been gathering information and hearing testimony for 12 months and was prepared to submit its report on May 1. Then all hell broke loose. Eleven people dead, a burning oil rig and a spill of unknown size bubbling up 5000 feet under water.
Our report included lots of information and raised numerous questions. For instance:
How much oil was actually off our coast? What financial share would North Carolina get from the lease sales? (The federal government has to be ordered by Congress to share the revenues.)
Once you drilled, where would the oil come on shore — Morehead City or Wilmington or maybe Norfolk, VA?
How much oil and natural gas was out there?
Then there were things we were quite certain about. For instance — there is plenty of wind energy to be harvested.
However, the important factor that the Deepwater Horizon situation brought into focus was that we’d been given a lot of false, or at least newly questionable, information. The Minerals Management Service had assured us that offshore drilling was safe. The representatives of the Petroleum Institute had told us that deep water drilling was as sophisticated as space exploration. We were shown diagrams of undersea drilling techniques that allowed precise direction and control. Our fears of a spill were calmed by assurances, almost patronizing, that the oil companies knew what they were doing. All North Carolina needed to do was get out of the way and watch the oil and the money flow in. (In hindsight, that final assurance should have given us real pause.)
That was then — now it was time to submit our support and “something else” had happened in the Gulf of Mexico. Doug and I consulted and decided to put a cover letter on the report. The letter said, in part:
This event, the full consequences of which are still unknown, immediately rendered outdated important elements of this report. Some of the factual information we were provided — the technological sophistication of drilling, the fail safe functions built in, etc. — proved unduly optimistic…
One incident does not, of course, undermine the whole concept of offshore drilling, but it is certainly a wake-up call and a reminder of the risks involved. It also re-emphasizes the importance of incorporating offshore drilling into a state energy policy. The risks and the rewards are hard to balance, absent a comprehensive understanding of the state’s energy needs and plans to meet them.
That last sentence was important. The state has no energy plan. In fact, a couple of weeks before we concluded our report, John Morrison, assistant secretary of commerce for energy, had abruptly left his post. Morrison had also testified before our Commission and had delivered, in my mind, one of our most thoughtful and reassuring reports. He implied that North Carolina was actively developing an energy plan and an energy policy that would help guide the state’s decisions over the coming years. His report was fact-filled and encouraging because of the vision he was clearly bringing to the task. Obviously, he was pointing toward a future in which North Carolina would increasingly seek to utilize renewable energy.
Morrison’s departure highlights the fact that North Carolina is heading down the energy road without a map. How can we decide whether we want to take the risk of offshore drilling if we don’t know how much oil we’ll be needing in 2030 (which is when the oil off our shore would be added to the national, not North Carolina, supply)? What energy sources, oil, gas, coal, nuclear, solar, wind, battery, etc., and in which proportions will we need? And let me quickly say that the right answer is not “as much of everything we can get.” Conservation should play a very big role. So, in order to plan nationally (no pun intended) we need to have estimates of how much of what kind of energy, combined with what conservation measures can be put in place to meet the state’s needs 20, 30 and 50 years from now. And by the way, in 50 years most experts estimate that the world will be almost out of oil, so we better be thinking about it.
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Quick notes on the Gulf spill reaching us:
Experts with whom I’ve talked think that it is unlikely that North Carolina will get a large amount of oil drifting up from the Gulf. Conversely, I and others think we will see some. Next, when the concern over the Gulf spill fades — and it will — we will see a renewed push to have drilling off North Carolina. When that happens, bear in mind that the oil off North Carolina is in 5000-plus feet of water, close to the potentially unstable edge of the Continental Shelf. Finally, on June 17, the governor appointed Jennifer Bumgarner as Morrison’s replacement. Her primary task, I hope, will be to pull together our best minds, and those with practical experience, to begin fashioning a state energy policy.
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