October's Green Superstar: Professor James Spady and "Car Repair Philosophy"

Green Superstar

October 2013

Professor James Spady

Maybe you met Prof. Spady through your Amex class, or maybe you haven't met him at all yet. Either way, you might not have known that, in addition to being very knowledgeable about colonialism and early America, he's also a self-taught car mechanic and has eco-modified his 1998 Honda Civic.

In fact, as I sat in his office, I was surrounded by various car parts: a backseat cushion propped against the wall, rear view mirror on the desk, various oily gizmos and gadgets here and there... Shouldn't those be, you know, in the car? Maybe not. It might look a little strange, but there's a method to the madness.

What the 1998 Honda Civic was originally rated:

What Professor Spady's car actually gets: about 60 mpg

Plastic extensions below the doors and over the wheels

Plastic extensions below the doors and over the wheels

How did he do it?

-Streamlining with plastic: covers on top half of back wheels, extensions under doors and front of car, blocked of grills

-Weight reduction (translation: removal of parts)

-Some engine modifications

-Low-gas usage driving technique

As you can imagine, these modifications on the car saves Prof. Spady thousands of dollars a year (and reduces his fossil fuel usage!) However, that's not what makes it most valuable. This is more than a way to "beat the system" and save money--it's a hobby. It's an act of love. Prof. Spady spends at least a few hours a week working on the car, either running maintenance or fixing a problem. That's the part that's most important to him because it provides opportunities for methodical inquiry and meta-thinking. 

To show me what he meant, Prof. Spady told me a couple of car repair stories (while he held rejected parts of the car for me to look at):

Car Repair Story #1 - Methodical Inquiry

The symptom: the Honda began to stall out each time the engine had been running for a while, after the engine had a chance to get hot enough. So, Prof. Spady went hunting around under the hood to find the problem. He systematically came up with theories about what might be wrong and then tested that part. When he finally found a problem with the ignition coil, he purchased a new one--and he only purchased that part.

He could have replaced potential problem-parts with new parts until the car's issues went away. Most people would have...But he didn't. Instead of wasting money on parts without understanding what the problem actually was, he had the fun of deducing what the problem must be and (as a bonus) saved himself from money too.

This process, he said, is like doing good research. Rather than blindly grabbing books with no regard for what type of source it is or what time period it describes, you should find out what types of sources are most important and will give you the best information for the time you spend reading.

Car Repair Story #2 - "Encountering the Car as a Psycho-Spiritual Object"

...But all of us have experienced that moment when you hit the wall in your research. When, say, you find that your sources don't support your original thesis. Then what?

Imagine Prof. Spady stranded on the side of the road. (Insert smoke pouring out of the hood and other movie stereotypes here.) You might expect him to have been frustrated and angry, but he wasn't. He was...perplexed. Curious. 

He had the car towed home (free through AAA), diagnosed the problem methodically, bought the indicated part, installed it, and had the car running normally the next morning. "The key," Spady said, "is patience with the process, acceptance of external facts and their resistance to your desires, and methodical care and labor. The process is essentially the same as any formal inquiry."

The take home message here is that all things change. Change is not only natural but also inevitable. For Prof. Spady and his car, that means analyzing each problem or situation as a unique moment with a unique context.

"Car Repair Philosophy" as Applied in ES-like Capstones

Prof. Spady is not a policy scholar— he's a historian. (He added, “I’m a big fan of machines that burn stuff.”) However, history is concerned with the broad realities of the human experience, which can of course encompass human interactions with the environment. So even though you may know him from the Humanities Department, some of the capstones he has mentored have walked the line between Humanities and Environmental Studies.

One student was interested in the emergence of the organic movement. He encouraged her to look instead at the emergence of the “back to the land”/anti-industrial attitude about food. Like the Honda's slave cylinder and the surrounding parts that could only work together in a specific way, the organic movement was tied to the repercussions of the industrial revolution.

That's just a taste of "car repair philosophy" in action.

All in all, Prof. Spady is not a Save the Whales, hug a Tree! environmentalist or even an Environmental Studies professor, but he's still got his foot in the door. He's been involved with several Environmental Studies-like capstones, and his pet project reduces fossil fuel usage. More importantly, the attitude of lifelong learning that he advocates is exactly what is required to make progress with global environmental concerns we face today.

Prof. Spady loves to share stories, so if you want more of this I recommend sitting down for a chat with him. You can probably tell that he loves to use his car as a teaching tool, so don't be shy about asking if you have more questions about the specifics!

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 If you know someone who deserves recognition as a GREEN SUPERSTAR in the coming months, please message us below, on Facebook, or at SSU_EnvironmentalDepartment@soka.edu .