The Trench Take

Finding a Job: The Road Less Travelled and New Resources

2012-01-31T09:39:00.000-05:00

Two weeks ago, I had the pleasure of participating in an experiment in "career speed networking" with student athletes at the College of William and Mary.

The ingenious idea (a student athlete's) was to have alumni (Williamsburg Chapter) connect with two students (Career Center's implementation) for six minutes per round. (Regular speed-dating had not even been invented yet for my era.)

When you think about it, with all our experiences, stories, and tips, six minutes is a flash. For students, who are in the infancy of the development of their stories, six minutes with an older alum might be either terrifying or a recipe for cauliflower ear. Neither pleasant.

I decided it was impossible and I should try and ask my "dates" questions. Fire first. Get to know them. Talk faster than normal. What's your sport? Your major? Where do you want to work geographically? Lastly, what do you think you would like to do?

Each question would give me an opening to interject something. The reality is, When we are young, most of us have no idea. We're dreaming. We've been locked away in a book. The possibilities are endless. We could expire from an over-dose of opportunity. As with entrepreneurial ventures, the mantra is focus, focus, focus. Not too different from landing an entry-level spot. (That's the only objective!)

One of my favorite authors is Daniel Pink and he wrote Johnny Bunko to help you cultivate and hone your interests and focus on a passion. [Update 2/4/12: Let me add Richard Kirshenbaum's Madboy. A Syracuse University, Newhouse School graduate, he started as an unpaid receptionist for a PR firm in NYC. Very soon thereafter, he and a friend were running one of the hottest ad agencies in town. He demonstrates the needed humility required at the outset.]

Some are exceptional students: They know how to study, make presentations, do projects, take tests, earn grades and get a degree. A segment want to become teachers, doctors, lawyers, dentists, or perform basic and applied research, and will continue their education for many more consecutive years to drill down into a speciality. The school experience will be their lives. (Their future employment depends only on our generation stepping to the curb.)

In reality, we all learn for the rest of our lives. It never ends. The learning is different, sometimes it's expansive, other times, a narrow, bottomless crevasse. Always experiential. [Update 2/5/12: For some excellent advice from the wise, see The Legacy Project and Thirty Lessons for Living: Tried and True Advice from the Wisest Americans.]

The vast majority are anxious to get to work. After four years, their debt is unconscionable, when sidled up to the job prospect market. In all likelihood, further certification in a speciality will be required. We normally think Professional Engineer (PE) or Certified Public Accountant (CPA). Most major client computer and software systems require certifications to even qualify to do work on them for pay. Think of a truck diesel engine, fixing it: It's a computer and you do not want just anyone working on it.

[Update 2/4/12: I would not discount self-teaching, either, to master Avid for editors, for instance, you are going to log a lot of time on your own, and learn from interacting with experienced others.]

In the environmental profession, my former work, I wouldn't even know the requirements post-college. There are a myriad of possible professional certifications that one is expected to possess to practice. Here is just one, INSTEP, The International Society of Technical and Environmental Professionals. [Ed. 2/4/12: Where I get stuck is, I would still be interested in a project that you did, a story about it, that changed the status quo. But, hey, that's just me. We are all freelancers in this world and judged by the efficacies of our most recent gigs.]

Professional life has become quite sophisticated. Much more than, say, back in the day when there was 3.2 beer and the drinking age was 18.

What hasn't changed much is the way you get a job, in my humble experience.

1. Employers are still going to prefer hiring a referral from someone who they know and respect in the field. A family friend certainly helps, but college alumni may even be better, because they are so many more of them located around the country. And, the larger the network, the more potential doors there are to knock on.

[Update 2/2/12: In this day, the digital network, without question, is vital technology. Generation Y's very own network may be more likely to lead to a position in today's market. How is that? Example: You are working at a position. The boss likes your work. When he has a sudden need for employees, he turns to you and says, "Are there any more from your college like you, in the area, who could help us out?" This happened to my son in LA. He helped three unemployed college connections get jobs. And, he has received similar opportunities from college friends (and alumni) he has connected with at alumni social gatherings or through Face Book inquiries. In a skilled society, our friends, who have comparable abilities, combined with our own reputations and work ethic, may beat a path to our next door. Working in collaboration: What a concept!]

2. Yes, I believe in knocking on doors, gathering intelligence, in-person, and eventually landing in this dialogue, "That's a very interesting project you did. Can I ask you a question? Yes. "Are you working?" No. "When can you start?" Tomorrow.

After two and half months of knocking on doors during the week, working odd jobs at night and weekends, that is precisely what happened to me. I had virtually zero connections. In 1977, in a terrible job market, I gathered information and asked for referrals. The product was many leads and contacts, a network, so much practice interviewing, creating a story-line out of an empty one-page resume, that I was numb to rejection, and just focussed on identifying the next door, prospect of opportunity. (And, feeding myself!)

Today, I would imagine, you would meet many receptionists and assistants. With security, you might not even get in the door. There are always people, though, who will treat us in a friendly and kind manner. Again, think "practice" or rehearsal for the big game. Rejection and criticism are nothing more than reality and welcomed assistance. You have two choices: Quit or embrace the challenge.

By the time I was offered a position, it was almost anti-climatic. In a sense, the journey, which I had somehow come to love, was over. What replaced it, though, was even more joyous. Cashing a check for services rendered.

3. Athletes understand going on the offense. Responding to on-line advertising, which I have done myself, is defense. You're spending precious time filling out individual applications, waiting around for a lotto winner. The approach works particularly well for highly specialized, trained, maverick, or experienced people. Example, if you interned for Wikileaks or wrote the code for Napster.

Meeting someone in-person is offense. You walk away with something more than when you started the dialogue. Guaranteed. It will be a lead, name, contact, or simply intelligence to file away in your brain. You are in the process of building a story, and couldn't pay these connections enough for it.

4. I ask students where they want to be. Their response, "Well, I would go anywhere for a paying position." We all would. But, what if it was in Alaska, say, and you were laid off? (Okay, you are young and still might go. I suppose that's the reason many youth scamper to third world places. Also, they want to help in ernest. That would be a memorable experience and motivator.)

Instead, if we pick a place that we like, even if it is where our parents live, has many doors to knock on, particularly in our field of interest, we increase our chances of working in what we think is our interest and passion, with lots of fallback possibilities. Sounds like a city, doesn't it? (Check out The Rise of the Creative Class and The Great Reset by Richard Florida. You will find reasons to be more optimistic about the future and where innovation is likely going to happen in the country.)

Cities are made for youth. That's where they typically go. For one, you don't need a car. Although, LA would be difficult. But, you are young, you can walk, ride a bus, figure it out.

Believe me, life happens "in a blink of an eye," as Anthony Hopkins' character muses in the movie Meet Joe Black. It really does. But, the time you will spend trying to land the getting-started job, whether a month or year, will feel like eternity. You look back, as I do now, and think, "It was one the greatest accomplishments of my professional career. My personal Mt. Everest."

5. Live like a Russian. When I travelled overseas in 1992, after the Wall's fall, my eyes were opened. Wide-opened. Americans carry around a lot of baggage. (Portable computers, miniature printers, and a cell phone did come in handy.) On every flight, I was the American with all the luggage. When I stayed in Russian Apartments, guess who generated the most trash?

I don't know whether it is true or not, but one of my Sacramento translators, Russian-American-Russian, told me that Russians are cheap, very cheap. They know the value of hard currency and how to bargain. Point is, you don't need hardly anything to live and live well. Only your mind. Carry around the thoughts of the present, a vivid imagination and openness to the possible, and you will be fine. Almost everything else is accessible at a public library.

6. My best advice: Write or draw, with pen and paper.

If you don't have a personal journal, get one and start. You might happen to jot down some goal and look back years later and realize, it happened. If we simply ask it questions, our brain is our best friend. There is no better place to record the results than in a personal journal. (Some of my best friends are journals; I have made over 30.)

During the first year of concentrated journalling, your pages might appear trivial. Like, it is a sunny 49 degrees today. Your to-do list. Gradually, you'll find your true thoughts and emotions. When you re-read your past writings, you might think, "Hey, I was depressed." If you keep at it, though, you will notice joy and resilience surface. You will discover new approaches and their results. You are going to see who you really are or what you want to be. How to get there.

My journalling has been helped significantly by Byron Katie and The Work. I found her a mere month ago. You would think that an old dog couldn't learn anything new? Wrong. While you don't have to buy Loving What Is, it puts her four questions (about a stressful situation or relationship, ie, finding a job) and the turnaround in better context. Her web site provides her methodology and worksheets for FREE! The site also features videos of remarkable and complete turnarounds. (I liked this one. It concerns a son and her mother, who suffers from breast cancer. She doesn't listen to me.)

Your journal, along with poignant questions, will practically write itself.

No one writes letters. E-mail thank-you notes are wonderful, but not memorable. You typewrite or handwrite and mail a personal letter, you will be remembered. Why? No one does it. Your needle will be easily found because it is glowing in a haystack. The USPS will love you, too. (For people with more dough, use FedEx and you might connect with the likes of a Steve Jobs, as this CEO-writer did.)

I would do the same for cover letters and resumes. Only, I would hand deliver those. What is the worst that can happen? By the way, you do have a business card, right? If not, for far less than the cost of a very "cheap" textbook you can design something nifty on Vistaprint and they have all kinds of freebies, specials and add-ons. Who cares if it is tossed!! Again, it's finding your way into the single neuron of an employer.

Or, how about a prospective freelance client ("Do you have small task that I could do that would fill a need, solve a problem, save you time and money, and enable me to gain some experience?" A business development mentor once told me, "It takes 5 sales calls (in-person), at least, to make a sale." Finish one paid project and you supplement your advertising vehicles: the cover letter and resume, LinkedIn Summary.)

My first job was washing glassware and cleaning fish to be analyzed for Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs), the only toxic substances identified by name in the Toxic Substances Control Act. I made minimum wage, working in this highly secretive lab, well beneath ground level. I had taken four semesters of organic chemistry in college, not because I wanted to. No one asked my grade point average. I didn't offer it. But, I was the first one at work every day, followed instructions, and kept seeking opportunity.

Five years later, I was finishing breakfast at the Bonaventure Hotel, in downtown Los Angeles, where I was staying, looking at my new business card, smiling to myself, knowing how far I had come from living in a tiny room at the YMCA in Albany, NY, eating two meals a day (one was Jack's Diner, my daily breakfast-feel-good-networking stop), preparing for a meeting with the first client of my new consulting practice.

Anything can happen by taking a small amount of initiative.

Wave Good-Bye to Your Rights: The National Defense Authorization Act

2012-01-19T03:22:00.000-05:00

Congressman, if you voted for the NDAA, you have lost my support and faith.

One provision eliminates you as a contender, the right to detain, indefinitely, a US citizen for no reason. No crime must be proven. (Update 1/24/12: Witness Rand Paul's discussion of TSA detention. This is the Soviet era airport process, I experienced the sensation at Moscow's airports, firsthand, in 1992. It's faked issues to create an atmosphere of submission.)

Earlier this morning, Coast to Coast AM (Yes! The guys who address UFOs) carried an excellent show on this new law, which is barely 19 days old. While vacationing in Hawaii, President Obama signed this act into law on New Year's Eve.

Consider the care and timing with which our President and Congress put into enacting legislation which effects the liberty and judicial rights of American citizens. Once again, the parental central government acts in our best interests. Raising the question, Will we ever attain the level of wisdom to act for ourselves? (Update 1/19/12: Last night's debate moderater never broached the subject, preferring to lead us into the reality TV drama of candidate marriages, tax returns, and envy, gently touching the policing of web sites near the debate's end. And, the sheep wander on.)

Know your rights under this new law. Or, simply impose marshall law on yourself, lock your doors, cut your high speed line, and shroud your dwelling in copper to repel radio frequency traffic.

If you were looking for a basis to question your government, your representation, and the lack of a free press in America, keeping you informed, this law should rile EVERY American.

Passage of yet legal restriction, whose final discussion took place behind closed doors, and not transparently noticed for public comments, as Obama promised on his election. Yeah, that was a doozy. But then, we've been in perpetual crisis mode since September 2008.

What possible reason could there be for these institutional actions? The anticipation of an Arab Spring on holiday in America, an extraterrestrial invasion, Civil War II, or maybe WWIII, brought on by intolerable sanctions on trading partners?

If you have ever worked for a defense contractor in Washington, DC, as I have, you know that there are literally thousands of people, with top secret clearances and above, shunted into locked office suites to consider paranoia and propose solutions, legislative, and otherwise.

How about SOPA and PIPA?

How laughable is it that copyright infringement, patent infringement at the level of the individual can truly be protected. You would need to have a small fortunate in the bank to protect an idea or creation. (I have served inventors, who lost nearly everything to giant companies, trying.) Follow the money, my friend, and see whose pockets it winds up in. (Hint: It is not the lowly creative individual.)

We need to return to Napster to understand the significance and the power of the connection of billions of individuals and its extraordinary ramifications, a positive and negative cancer. Uncontrollable, nonetheless. (Update 1/20/12: See what I mean here.)

What's bringing on this penchant to legislate straight jackets on society? We cannot possibly operate freely. As if we could bottle it up and ration it. Not going to happen on this soil.

One lie we should be wary of: "Well, as President, I have the authority, but I don't intend to use on it on American citizens." Really. So, why did we grant it to you? This kind of irrational protection has been taking place for years and similar provisions can be found in countless regulations.

(Ed. 1/31/12: Three decades ago, while just beginning my environmental consulting practice, I would shock new client utility executives by informing them that real-time full compliance with, then, current environmental laws and regulations was not only impossible, but prohibitively expensive. The truth and reality are difficult to admit in an age fraught with legal liability. This is the reason I left DC in 1983, to try and figure out how to re-invent the practice public health and environmental protection at the day-to-day operations level.)

Each year, legislators and regulators write laws and rules that give government more and more authority of the people. These are specialists in their fields of interest. They know the public comment and judicial process is the their bottleneck. All they have to do is wait us out. We have lives to lead after all.

They simply wave their hands and ask us to grant them our trust. They're public servants, you know. They do this all for us, our own good, for America. And, what do you think happens when the crisis, manufactured or otherwise, occurs?

I don't know about you, but I trust me. I trust the people I know that they know how to behave in difficult circumstances. The error, the fatal error, we make is to turn over authority to central agencies in the name of defense and security to the point that we are not allowed to even think and act independently.

Then, we have to wait for instructions, from tthe Soviet airport security checkpoint guard (December 1992) to receive a call from central command to allow us to pass, board our plane, and return home to our families and America - land of the free and the brave.

Yeah, this happened twenty years ago, to me, and now it happens here.

Discounting Liberty: Media Marginalization of Paul and Generation Y

2012-01-11T08:32:00.000-05:00

The more I see of TV news – and it's not much, the less I like it. Canned, predictable, boring, hyperbole, biased.

Radio? The same. Print media lost its objectivity long ago or reads like an agenda of events and editorial complaints.

Blame it on competition for ad revenue. Say anything to attract a buck, an ear, an eyeball. Expose raw nerves. It's still a eutrophic lake. Carp eating carp.

For our generation, we have lapsed into a habit-forming doze. Pick a team who you identify with. Then, your preferred media menu appears. Assemble and regularly connect with your tribe, until you exhaust of repeating the same old stories to one another.

This is the recipe for a conversation to nowhere. No problem is ever solved, because our occupations depend upon it.

Isn't that where we are? Nowhere.

The social security system: We borrow money to pay current recipients and collect less revenue, because of withholding tax cuts, with millions soon entering the program.

We print monopoly money to pay people to pretend to work. (Reminds me of the Soviet era proverb, "The government pretends to pay workers, workers pretend to work.") How many people spend their day filling out forms, following procedure, and planning the highlight of their day, Where to go to lunch. Government manufactures laws and regulations, a system, the status quo. Too cynical?

Our largest manufacturing sector? The American legal system. Otherwise, we wouldn't know how to behave.

More truth.

From the generation that protested and ended the Viet Nam War, "War on, Garth." We might as well. We have been, unofficially, at it for over a half century. War creates jobs, funds technological innovation, is driven by fear, keeps healthcare busy, and helps to control world population, short of a rogue atomic bomb going off. The final coup de grais, the Patriot Act and the National Defense Authorization Act.

When it comes to Ron Paul TV coverage, I don't see any difference between CNN and Fox News (MSNBC has no relevance), despite their different slants. Radio talk show hosts show the same disdain. (Mark Levin is on a crusade to crush Paul. Rush imitate's him. Beck mocks supporters. Hmmm.) Literally, all media have gotten jollies from marginalizing this guy, just as we marginalize those who we gossip about others behind their backs to inflate our own self-importance and worthiness in desperate times. (Update 1/26/12: Latest Pew Poll on Paul news coverage. Viewers are shown what THEY want you to see. Sad.)

Perhaps this is why the youth of America (Updated Link 1/24/12) are so drawn to Ron Paul. He's fresh, energetic, unscripted, orally awkward, optimistic, fiercely independent, and tired of parental guidance. He speaks the truth. He is apparently the last man in America who has not given up on the sanctity of freedom, necessity of property rights, criticality of self-reliance; believes that individuals and states precede the federation; question fiat currency and modulation of business cycles; demonstrates natural charity. He is way too dangerous!!! His message heard, loud and clear.

The US Constitution and Bill of Rights: they are so old, aren't they? Don't you think we should update them? Even re-write them completely, using as much paper and ink as possible. Afterall, we would not want anyone to actually read them. (Update 1/17/12: Last night's FOX debate was comical, riddled with Washington-ese, with all candidates, but Paul, practically praying for a policy of video game-like assassination and war, as if Al Queda's boiling hatred would cool to a simmer.)

The media always lags the populous. Though they imagine themselves as thought leaders, they merely reflect the conventional wisdom they benefit from and, thus, seek to protect, at any cost. What room does this leave for the next generation: As if the Internet and computer access to knowledge did not exist, this generation has been lectured over-and-over that they MUST earn a 4-year degree or be poorer. Many are left riddled with student debt and no prospects, and saddled with arcane programs like social security and costly offensive defense?

What a racket! But, it's different than the housing, mortgage, toxic asset bail out debacles, right? We have righted the ship.

Only the digital economy saves youth. They have been using computers since they were born, learn quickly, and know more than their obsolete teachers. Conventional education ... it's required if you want to work. Makes complete nonsense.

I know why people join political parties, teams, fraternities, government agencies. Comfort and security. There is no club for pioneers. That's what we call an oxymoron.

However, our youth more closely resemble pioneers. They are members of each others not-so-exclusive clubs on Facebook. They see themselves as individuals who happen to support one another, not trained on beating each other to a pulp. That would be us. (Update 1/18/12: Newt Gingrich's historical reminder of President Jackson's view of our enemies, "Kill them." (Standing ovation.) And, what became of Mr. Jackson? Newt = Jackson. That should work for America.)

How is it that one of two men who has served in the military, who is a candidate for President, from either party, attracts scowls from the likes of Brit Hume (who I thought had retired for the three Gs ... God, Grandchildren, and Golf) who compare Ron Paul's viability to the likes of Rupaul? Some guys don't know when to leave the stage. Quit with dignity. Like Larry King, Brit sees a future in comedy, perhaps. Meanwhile, the minutemen, both young and old, support which candidate?

Time to pull out President Eisenhower's famed farewell address to the nation and his two warnings – one, the military-industrial complex and two, the scientific-technilogical elite's strangle hold on public policy. Maybe Generation Y will pay attention.

Last night, I heard a hollow, plastic automaton Romney speak, using the vaunted teleprompter that has made President Obama so famous. Prepare for either Obama I or II, more of the same. There was no message, no passion, nothing. Obama and Romney are one in the same person. Romney just says, "No candy for you," but his record speaks otherwise. He'll change, once in office. Aren't they all broken-in horses to status quo conventionalism. Neither CNN, nor Fox lose with either victor.

Then, there comes Paul.

Fox promises to cover his New Hampshire Primary celebratory and thank you speech. Naturally, they ignore the introduction by his campaign staff (coverage is reserved for Mrs. Romney to rehearse for the position of First Lady), and the first part of his speech. No one at Fox wants to cover Paul. Because our political experts have piercing insight into the America psyche. They know all.

I have looked in the mirror and seen a know-it-all. Smug, opinionated, arrogant, never wrong about anything. One day, you see that face, the real face, for the first time. And, you know change has come. You don't need to be that person anymore. Impressing people to attract approval, friends, contracts is not only unnecessary, addictive and unbecoming, it leads to an unfulfilling life. Casts peace to the wind, as if it were a luxury.

Our youth starve for models. They know the real deal when they see it. Obama was something different. A historic figure for them. An acknowledgement of a shame we could bear no longer. He did not win because of experience or ideas for the future. (He employed the same pathetic revolving door.) Paul represents something far more precious that Boomers and WWIIers have apparently grown to dread.

Freedom.

Freedom in its purest sense. Individuality. No, we prefer the certainty of retirement and healthcare that Government has promised us. I am sure we will all be living in sunnier climates.

Why do we despise liberty so? How is it that this man of years, over-animated in his presentation, is so capable of stirring the heart? Could it be that he speaks from the heart? Not a pre-recorded digital brain.

This man would be the death of America for simply suggesting that we bring our men and women, sons and daughters, wives and husbands home to live? Have you ever looked into the pervasiveness of PTSD and suicide in our military? We will have no defenders at this rate.

Is it a sign of weakness to build here, first? To demonstrate, rather than aggravate? (Ed. 1/18/12: Misconstrue isolationism? Free trade is wildly different than establishing unsustainable beachheads throughout the world.)

What an embarrassment it is to see every channel, even commercial talk radio station's airwaves demonize the next dictator in line, cheerlead for war and dismiss common sense. The free press barely acknowledged 9-12-09, a gnat to kick to the sideline. President Obama flew unaffected overhead, perhaps thinking about how much he would love to get good at golf. (Most of us would save this for retirement ambitions.)

Perhaps I, and throngs of Americans, have it all wrong and the media are right to ignore Ron Paul. But, in the final episode, I would rather be completely wrong and associate with youth and enthusiasm for freedom's future than wallow in the grave of convention. That's precisely what Romney and Obama will bring. More of the same, until it all collapses into the abyss, with an unwatched commentator mumbling, "How did this happen?"

Poem: Knowing Peace

2012-01-05T06:05:00.000-05:00

You could ...
Peek artfully around every corner.
Know every story.

Live every experience.
Traverse Earth's every destination.
Re-visit them.
Reflect, reflect, reflect.
Dig into life's grandest personalities.
Elevate, glorify, worship, slay.
Believe, "I am at the right place at the right time."
Buy into the myth of good fortune, self-import.
Think you were inept or privileged, a title.
Go deep to prove life's existence.
Judge and convict, not knowing truth.
Check and re-check your accounts.
Speculate and mine for answers.
Follow the road of constant emergency.
Dance to endless music.
Interrupt the daily madness with planned rests.
Thirst to record the making of history.
Give everything away.
Fill your essence with any and every emotion.
Live in a perpetual state of review.
Never lose contact with your species.
... and not know it.
Peace.
Until, it found you, effortlessly.

You’ve Read Them. Annual Holiday Letters.

2011-12-21T06:34:00.000-05:00

About an hour ago, Suzy askedme what I was writing about this week.
“Well, I don’t know.”

“How could you notknow? Don’t you feel passionateabout anything this week?”

“Not like I want to rushto the keyboard and type until my teeth ache from clenching thoughts. (Exasperated) No! But, something will happen when I sitdown and start to type.”

“I have a suggestion,”she says. “Why don’t you writeabout the Christmas letters that people send out? Telling us about their lives and families.”

She has a point. The Annual Holiday Letter is aphenomenon of our time.

"The Last Tree in LA"
January 15, 2009

Ever since the inventionof personal word processing, we boomers have been sharing our lives withyou. While we may have skippedover next door’s relationship, we are compelled to communicate with andre-connect to those we know and have known from the start.

Why do we do it? Why do we write thesechapter-in-the-life letters to our poor friends?

Part of it is ajustification for buying a hundred million personal computers, printers, anddigital cameras. Sadly, we haveonly enough time to do it once. Our industrially trained consciousnesses will allow authorship of onehighly personal letter about the year’s events, a mass manufacture and mailingof it, personal note attached.

I, for one, enjoy themall. Not for the milestones, butfor knowing that you are okay. There is nothing worse than losing someone who we care about. Our memories are tied to some physicalcontent, which paper and ink satisfy.

The other thing is, ourquest for optimal productivity has made work and play Siamese Twins. Our friends are our partners. Quite naturally, if we bothered to makethe connection and it made a positive imprint, we want to keep the channelopen.

You never know? We could be living together in the sameretirement community, greeting our kids at WalMart, arranging tee times, orgiving blood at the same time.

Pictures arecritical. If I see you again, Iwant to recognize you. So far,it’s rare that I forget a face. But, you might not recognize me without my beard. Just to shake things up, which I liketo do, I shaved it nine years ago. Scared the poor dog to death. While Sparky’s gone, I have had darn few colds.

Your kids, by the way,are beautiful. Youth is. Some sleepy part of our brain reigniteswhen we see cuddly babies and athletic-looking youth. I wonder if we will send pictures of our forty year olds toeach other? They might look goodto us.

I like knowing people forwho they are or who they want to be. I am not sure which is which, but it doesn’t really matter. We know only a finite number of peoplein this world. And, whether it iswhere they traveled or plan to go, that their children have graduated and live(boo hoo, yippee) somewhere else, the point is, they’re okay.

In this miracle of connectivity, thereis one Holiday Letter that I am waiting to receive. All of us are. It is Xerox copy that would be Tiffany-immeasurably precious toget. The letter from beyond thegrave.

In a quiet corner of ourminds and our lives, these are the people we think about more and more as movealong. We miss seeing them thisChristmas, this Holiday Season. Wewant to know that they are okay.

I should feel guiltyabout my Christmas Letter. It’sstuck in RAM, ROM, FLASH, somewhere land. But, I don’t.

The year’s detour intothe writer’s world could be fairly described as a patent-pending Perpetual Christmas Letter. Without fail, each week an unsuspectingaudience has received “Coreyisms,” as one person called them. To the newly alarmed, “And, I thought I knew him! His poor family!” You have patiently endured thecommencement of a long lope into an unchartered mountain range. Arrival, I fear, is not expected.

So, by this ChristmasLetter, let me register, “Thank you for sharing your lives, loves, andjourneys. They areappreciated.” We’re okay. We will ALL be okay.

One final observation: Ofthe thousands, if not billions, of ways to live a life, if your family lettersand pictures are any indication, there is one unifying principle, onedefinition of Truth.

To have and to hold, totake part in nurturing the next generation is without question the mostprecious thing on Earth.

Let’s keep it up, andwell beyond the stages of hip and valve replacements. Okay?!

(Originally written on December 24, 2004 for The Box of Chocolates, 52 columns written one year. While slightly outdated for a few, the new penchant is to e-mail this sweet piece of music, with multiple photographs. Or, for the more adventuresome and Internet-savvy, to make a movie and post it on Facebook. For our children, it is not necessary; they are adults and already know everything about each other on a moment-to-moment basis. Communication comes naturally. Ours is a distillation process that we need to sit and think about. Neither is better or worse than the other. Just different, with the common link, "I am still here. I am still okay.")

Instant Gratification

2011-12-07T06:28:00.001-05:00

Our world is instant. For every need or problem, a fix or service may be found – when all works as expected and we command sufficient funds or credit.

Think of everything the day brings that satisfies. A cup of coffee, a cigarette, a spin on the bike, a striking profile, the morning paper's scandalous headline, a deadline, a text message, a light switch, a swig of alcohol, someone waiting for us, a stirring gaze, a hot shower, pleasant smells, the sight and touch of love, a familiar personality flickering on a screen, taste of a fine meal, a surge in the Dow Jones, a computer game that becomes reality's obsession. A drug that masks the truth.

Aren't we saturated with an emotional response when we don't get what we want and when we want it? For the powerful, and not always well-intentioned, a wonderful weakness and opportunity has arisen. Product and service purveyors first compete, then consolidate to monopolize our compulsion for instant gratification.

Human brains, once small, morphed and grew – quite shockingly at a stage of evolution – and then started to shrink. One theory is that we have become less aggressive and combative for scarse resources, more specialized in our skills, and therefore more dependent on each other for something more than survival. While being alone in the wilderness would require a heightened sense of awareness and almost infinite knowledge and, thus, a weightier brain.

It's just a theory, but what does it say about our times and circumstances when so much is demanded of us?

We have been trained to expect instant gratification. We have been trained to follow – even penalized and shunned for veering away from its path – the crowd. It is a wonder individuals find the courage to wander off into the wild to reflect, aggravate, create, improve life for all. Had conventional education consistently taught us to lead, individuality would have been heralded and many new possible directions spawned. Every so often, a spectacular light shines, captures our imagination, and steers herds into an expansive corral that acknowledges each of us. That form of leadership we laud and seek to magnify, only to later crucify and incorporate it into an even larger, questionable ring. Social justice: Gambling for education. Smoking for healthcare. All tax the weak to keep them weak and perpetuating funds for cocktail soirees in public institutions for good intention and history's recognition.

When we think with these smaller, more powerful brains, can we not see that our own desires for instant gratification subsume us? Large scale domestication, while its benefits are mutual cooperation for mutual benefit, surrenders us to power, control, and domination by the few. Perfectly legal monopolies. Alternatives: They are the enemy to smother.

If we were truly free, we would not seek to ruin the individual. But, we do. Think B.F. Skinner applied to the classroom. The secret formula? Instant gratification. A well sung song in unison, doesn't that appeal to everyone? Powers and influence simply allege, threaten panic, and then promise our satisfaction. We fall to our worn knees in praise, humming imperceptibly.

Not true? Count the promises and excuses that beckon throughout 2012. Will none call for the rebirth of the pure and true sovereign, and humble himself? Isn't it time to free the individual, stripped of all tethers, heavy obligations and guilt, that paralyze? Our patience shall be rewarded.

Resisting Black Holes

2011-11-21T08:25:00.001-05:00

Black holes are said to be the vacuum cleaners of the universe. Little galactic rubbish and even wavy material can escape their magnetism.

If we consider all that is taking place in society, and becoming increasingly pronounced by the moment, we might wonder: Where are the vacuum cleaners? Because, clearly, our room is a mess.

How about inertia? Prior to the Big Bang, all was order. Some trigger set inertia in motion: an evolving accident without apparent end.

MF Global and the Penn State debacles: the latest examples of all that ails and challenges our concept of morality and the outcome of concentrated power. We have had so many circumstances refinanced and blanketed-over in our lifetimes. How are these latest events even possible? An invisible, iron curtain must be drawn to disguise our motto: Victory, no matter the cost.

What new band aid will a virtuous administration enact to prevent "this from ever happening again"? What new complex equation will financial physicists construct and implement before retiring to a desert island to watch the fireworks show? Will history's tyranny, rational evil, prevail once more or are we open to attainable and indisputable truth?

In a corner, somewhere, humanity contorts in a chilled sweat over multiple issues of morality. She instinctively seeks to arise. Resilience her nutrition.

Maybe we should actively search for the nearest black hole and simply let go and allow ourselves to tumble into the next phase. Who knows, it could be the calm of order, not resisting.

Perhaps we simply ignore the bundlers and handlers, purveyors of loyalty and riches to a fault, go about our world with the spirit of liberty and individuality, join their natural friends – free assembly and mutual cooperation – and pretend that the bullies who beckon simply do not exist.

Poem: Peace and an American Farmer

2011-11-08T07:05:00.000-05:00

The Ted Carley Farm
One Fall Morning, 2009
(As seen from our farm's back field)

Finding peace is a daily ritual
Disguised in the cloak of purpose
Navigating the space between the disgruntled
An unsettling place for most
Gleaming silver accolades unclaimed
He sorts lightening rocks into piles
Expecting them to behave
Peace found between them, not next to them
An unending task and day defines tirelessness
Where sacrifice, as a word, does not exist
Options do not apply
Sound sleep a necessity
The farmer belongs to the land
Born there, he is its earth
God, friend and foe, always an ally
Prayer never leaves his mind
His spoken words friendly, observational, concise
A mental clock triggers the next chore
No thought required
How would we, the Others, exist without the farmer and his family?
We wouldn't.
Now, he travels new terrain, tilling higher ground
Leaving behind his example for the next generation.

- Dedicated to Theodore Wallace Carley (1920 - 2011). He never stopped.

From Republic to Ineptocracy

2011-11-03T11:48:00.000-04:00

Finally!! Bud Miller (I think) has brilliantly named and defined Ineptocracy: America's preferred system of government – at least until we hear further from the 21st century Silent Majority.

Ineptocracy, as posted on the Illinois Review:

"Ineptocracy (in-ep-toc’-ra-cy) - a system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers. H/T: Bud Miller"

Why would anyone start a business today in America? Conceive of themselves as a "producer"? That is the question that Atlas-Shrugged-greeted me this morning.

How appropriate that today's crisis, the fate of the Greek economy, would give rise to a commenter e-mailing Joe Kernen on CNBC's Squawk Box his interpretation of an entire nation's state of existence as ineptocractic. Kudos to Joe, he googled and confirmed humanity's expectation for Government.

Of course, when you have an idea that you are passionate about – and I mean you can't sleep at night because your mind races out-of-control with possibilities, people, plans ... the thought of self-reliance – you are very likely to proceed if your sleepless nights persist.

You find a way to ignore financial reality. For every dollar of revenue you earn for the product or service you provide, you part with social security and medicare tax equal to $0.153 of your gross pay and that of your employees. (Check out their history.)(Update 1-2-12: Yeah, I know that Government has halved that amount to give us a break, half as much. How long will that stick, knowing that Government is borrowing to make its social security obligation for the first time in US history.)

That's not right?! The employee pays half and the Company pays half. And, the Company is whom?

Yes. It is a federal tax, whose discussion is typically Lost in Translation (accurate portrayal of business travel) in mass media, because people focus on the net pay column of their pay stubs and ignore the rest. People have no patience to listen to the discussion of the tax costs of running a business. It's not their problem.

Taxes, proposed regulation, and protracted permitting account for high unemployment rates. Period.

Only an ineptocracy would aggressively promote annual increases in spending, higher tax rates, more regulation and inspection ... virtual zero growth policy, short of mass starvation ... and call them fair and protective of human health. And then, rationalize pollution's and labor's exportation as being ethical, humane, and beneficial for Mother Earth. Ignorance, hubris, and self-centeredness defined.

I am so glad I don't fly anymore. (Can you imagine the humility?! This is job creation?) Next, it will be living off-the-grid near EMF-RF-free Zone, where monitoring is impossible.

Sam Zell, appearing on CNBC this morning, all but said, There is no difference between Greece and America (my interpolation). (Update 11/4/11: Ah, but this morning's employment figures show mild private sector improvement, with local-state public sector declines. A clear trend that trillion dollar federal debt stimulation works. Yes!!! Really? (Update 11/9/11: Let's check the stats.)) (Update 11/27/11: Can we rely on Government to get the stats right? GDP was only off 0.5% on revision for the third quarter.)

And I thought we were still a Republic, run by moral men. Maybe we should hold a public referendum too. Read Throw Them All Out to see how you feel about Washington, DC, ethics, greed and public service. You won't leave with the impression morality converges on this sparkling place.

Living the Inner Game of LIfe

2011-10-29T10:31:00.000-04:00

Tim Gallwey wrote the Inner Game of Tennis in the mid-70s. It is one of my all-time favorite philosophy books. Philosophy? Yes.

An avid tennis player, my mother gave me a copy when it was first published. I don't remember how she discovered it. She certainly did not grow up learning to play by these principles. Her coach was former horse jockey, boxer, and admired tennis instructor Mike Dolan. He taught the classical method, the outer game, as Gallwey termed it.

Mike was well into his 80s by the time I took lessons from him. While he moved with a zest for life, not quickly, any ball that came within reach, he struck perfectly square in that pinhead of a sweet spot. We all played with Mike's recommendation, a TAD wooden racket.

It has been years since I played tennis regularly. Not until I entered my 30s – living and playing in Southern California at the Westlake Village Tennis and Swim Club – did I fully appreciate and enjoy the sport. There are few things in life that provide the exact feeling of perfectly striking a backhand shot up the line, over the high side of the net, and watching your shot skid in the corner of the court. Consider all that must be mastered to hit this shot.

Nothing in the Gallwey's book describes the mechanics of accomplishing this wonder. Nothing.

No, instead, he teaches us how to ask questions, drawing upon the ability to quietly observe with our senses, without dwelling on their answers. This may be life's most valuable gift, learning to ask questions, followed by permitting ourselves to naturally live the responses. Sounds so California, doesn't it?

Imagine a desired outcome. Dream, visualize, saturate yourself with it. What is so intriguing about it? And so begins the process of unwrapping your curiosity, drive, motivation and natural creativity.

Gallwey applied his Inner Game principles and practices to other sports, music, and work, publishing a number of books. [Friend, accountant, former golf pro (my golf teacher) at Westlake Golf Course, Bob Duclos told me that Gallwey worked on the inner game of golf at their range.] What Tim proves with these other projects is the personal meaning and value of pursing a philosophy which happens to exile the ego. Letting go of the ego. All judgement. Now, there is a philosophy for a lifetime.

Random AM Questions of Self Seeking Answers

2011-10-26T08:08:00.000-04:00

Why do we care what other people think about us over what we think about ourselves?

When did that thinking start?

Who am I? What is the definition of me? Why does it matter?

Why am I here?

What makes a friend versus someone you recognize or know or have worked/played/socialized with? An acquaintance?

A "true friend," how are they different? Who are yours?

What if we had not one single friend?

What is love? How would you describe it? Why is it important?

Does my life have a single purpose? Why? Do I know what it is? How do I know it is the right one for me? Was it assigned? By who? When? Why? What if I don't achieve it or them?

Must a life have a specific meaning that we know, embody, and live, or can we simply be?

What difference does it make?

Can we measure a human life? In what ways? Do those measures change? How? When? Why?

Eulogies: Aren't they just opinions, stories? How others see us, instead of who we might actually be? Should we write our eulogy and pass it out? Would everyone agree with our assessment of us or shake their heads in surprise?

Why is it important what other people think we could have been versus who we want to be or actually are?

What is the best way to figure out who, what, why we want to be?

Is life economic, social, ethereal, more identifiers, some mix? One, all, or none?

Why does it matter and to what or whom and how?

Are our respective perceptions of people, events, information ever the same? When?

How are we different when alone versus with others, and which others? Why?

When we think about what comes after this, what is this? What will that be?

More questions than answers to follow.

You love Pearl Jam?

2011-10-21T23:45:00.001-04:00

I do.

Loved the music, but always wondered why. Now, I know. They are Outliers and Weird.

Just finished watching Cameron Crowe's Pearl Jam 20 documentary on PBS. If you are a fan, you must see it. You want to model a group that makes their own unique art, without compromise? Model these guys. (Maybe not the antics.)

Son Corey and I always promised each other that if the band came anywhere near us, we were going. Our opportunity came on May 12, 2006. The band played the Pepsi Arena in Albany, NY.

We purchased the very last seats. Literally, we were seated behind the band. Honestly, both drummers, Corey and I did not mind. Our eyes and ears were trained on every movement of former Sound Garden drummer, Matt Cameron, by far the band's best drummer. He has lasted!

However, in the kind of human display that distinguishes people, band leader Eddie Vedder informs the audience that for one song the band will play for us, the rearseaters. Then, the band turns completely around and serenades the fans, raving fans of multiple generations, who had purchased the absolute worst seats in the house. (Pearl Jam actually recorded the event, and, according to Corey, Vedder talks about us in "Encore 2".)

Their action reminded me of tennis great, Stephan Edberg's striding to his seat, sitting down, and refusing to play after a bad line call, that went in his favor, until it was reversed, in the third and final set tie breaker at LA Open (summer 1985). The piece appearing in the LA Times the next day, addressing the epic, 3-set, triple tiebreak victory of Paul Annacone, never mentioned his action. No wonder he often won sportsman of the year honors over his career.

What actions can we take that make a difference, effectuate an outcome, without being necessary? These were the gifts Edberg and Vedder selflessly gave their audiences and observers, and the subject of Seth Godin's tour de force, Linchin.

In our concert-going years, we saw Live, Foo Fighters, Nickelback, Pearl Jam and their back-ups. Great fun. The documentary, which could describe any of these bands, is a true inspiration to art making, the pursuit of authenticity and individuality.

Son's Curiosity: Leaving Las Vegas

2011-10-18T06:43:00.002-04:00

"Dad, Why did you stop being an entrepreneur, leave the environmental profession, the electric utility industry?"

He has always been inquisitive, son Collin. Growing up, it can be tough to get a word in edgewise with two brothers, and a family that straddles multiple solutions to a problem.

In our solo car rides, back and forth between school, soccer, and football games, and, more recently, sitting out front, in uncomfortable wrought iron chairs, he has challenged my sense of direction.

Yes, they are finding their ways. I remember my 20s. Barely.

You tried to attach to older and wiser men in order to model them. You anxiously awaited the special delivery of your true passion and desires. Few would find it in college. Your interests were many, vague and ambiguous. The kind of red marked comments you would expect to see on an English paper, which, along with a letter grade, caused more consternation than critical encouragement, for most.

Aren't we all trying to answer the same old questions: Who are we? Why are we here? Our individual uniqueness demands that there be more than one answer.

How many books have been written on the topic of finding one's purpose in life? They sit in my shelf.

The reason for being is such a fluid question. It is no wonder life began with the amoeba. Things have not changed much for a being's quest.

This month (October 5, 2011), people were reminded of death on a grand scale. Apple Founder Steve Jobs. Now, everyone is googling his commencement address to Standford graduates for its profound observation about life, and what he identified as life's most significant invention. Death.

Death focuses life. As Jobs reminds us, death is necessary to clear debris for life to emerge. New life. Our demise frees living. In this way, changing my own direction opened life's lens.

Yes, it can be very unsettling at times. Starting over takes more time, in some respects, when you are more advanced in years. You have experiences, but the footing is just as unsure. Youth expects risk. Fear is unknown. Terror a different emotion.

I don't know how many times I have heard a golf commentator remark about the aging of a pro's putting approach. "When he was younger, he took a look, stepped up, and slammed it into the hole. I remember him as a very good putter in his youth." He suffers the yips. Otherwise known as thought.

We age. We look forward to it. We set a goal of early retirement, a less frazzled pace, one confined to the expression of our true gifts. Our chosen marketplace may not be so understanding or forgiving. Status quote of moment is always the order of the day.

No, it's not that. We change and the environment changes. We either adjust gracefully, without anyone noticing, or we self-fade in much the same away military leaders describe. Reality finds us or we find reality. Peace.

My only correction to this respectful and penetrating line of question is that Generals would not say that their approach to life changes on their decommissioning or retirement. That is exactly the same disposition of the entrepreneur.

Once we enter the arena of trade and commerce, create a business, no matter how microscopic or gigantic in the case of Apple, our taste buds never change. We aim forward. Inquire about what lurks beyond the next path's bend. What is it that stretches over a horizon?

So, I would say to my sons, I may have left a room, but I am still tinkering in the house or maybe gardening out back. It's still work or play. They are one in the same.

In pursuit of facts and truth

2011-10-12T08:44:00.001-04:00

Like many of you, I used to accept the media story, on the nightly news, and in popular newsprint, as factual. Pravda. Not anymore.

It has taken me many years to start to accept that the facts I am fed may not necessarily be the facts. Sure as shooting, though, the media have had my eyeballs and hearing attention and some measure of belief.

If you pay attention to the same news sources, day after day, for years, you become entranced by the pattern of presentation and start to accept all as true. Only your direction and personal life experience give you pause.

The Internet has changed everything. At first, it was access to studies and reports that you could read for free, and develop your opinions. You could easily find countervailing results. Then, it was web sites rendering judgement.

Now, we are all potential eyewitnesses, reporters, investigators, journalists, and editorialists. We outnumber the traditional media, writers, and pontificators. Numbers of readers equals numbers of reporters. And, I have read some very good stuff.

People that I read routinely dig much deeper than what the masses would be patient enough to comprehend and further check into. They leave words out, make typographical mistakes, and they correct their information when they find it inaccurate. Quickly. So, you have to wonder about the reasons behind sway. Finding the real motivation: That's not so easy.

Bottom-line: There is no longer a digital divide – not with everyone toting a smart phone, eating at MacDonalds – but there is a common sense divide. That was always the case and will endure time.

The Blog That's a Ticklish Journal

2011-10-11T10:34:00.000-04:00

Some days I tickle myself. With the new blog designs offered by blogger, one can see everything for the duration of your book, I mean, blog.

Why even write a book? It's a goal with a limited audience. A special audience, my sons and the future. But, it is hard. Much easier to do this. I don't know why? My life is already digitally and egocentrically present on The Trench Take.

Tickle myself? One can easily find and read older entries and see a thought process of two years ago. Boy, doesn't it seem that time is frozen?

On June 27, I wrote America's Future: A Scenario. Plain as day or night, there it is. Devising scenarios, what if's, was a fun part of my consulting practice. I am re-reading Eldon Taylor's What If? : His scenarios force you to flip your thinking.

It is amazing what you can come up with or confirm.

Blogging tricks you into editing, re-writing, or updating your works, on the oft chance your labels might appear in a "google search" and result in a "click." Only if I post on LinkedIn or Tweet are looks generated. Rarely is a comment posted, which does not affect me either way.

Otherwise, this is my brain. Some days I am my favorite writer. Simply by re-reading something I rediscover what I think and why, or remind myself of someone else's work or insight. That is one of the most useful reasons for everyone to try writing, in my view. You can learn a heck of lot more from yourself than you can anyone else.

All you have to do is ask yourself a question and then write. You would be amazed at where a question will take you.

This blog is a journal, like the song that never ends, and provides great comfort, education, entertainment and focus. I should provide my favorite ads on it to remind myself of my favorite products and services.

Plus, as I was telling my wife, the only time that I don't have a steady stream of drivel running through my brain is when I am writing. Seriously, it is empty up there. If only I could type faster and more accurately, I would not have a tendency to correct typographical errors as they appear and probably wind up further down the road. Backtracking does not achieve much.

Fact is, I hate editing. Published authors, I have read, write and re-write in constant search of brevity and clarity: Virtues that remain in my future.

So, I think I will stop now. Get another cup of coffee, stretch and get back to Book Chapter 4. It's about time I moved on to 5 or skipped ahead, which works, sometimes.

Walking Town

2011-10-10T04:08:00.000-04:00

Part of living small is acting small. Thinking in terms of necessity. Blending necessity with the joy of living.

Hard though it may be to believe, someone has actually studied death by boredom. One could only die this way, if there was no quest for food, shelter, companionship. Complete isolation. No thought of either the moment of living or yearning for tomorrow.

Goals are essential ingredients. Without some purpose, why endure. The idea of improvement, of getting better at something, is reason enough.

As a society, we have long dwelled on the conquest for more. A larger empire. Domination. Partly as a mechanism of self-preservation, partly as a compelling drive, competitive spirit.

Perhaps the shallowest form is the notion of Keeping up with the Jones's. You only have to look out your house or car window to make an evaluation of one's status. Life's foundation is on measures of possessions rather than tools for supplementing betterment.

Being in a small town offers one the opportunity to walk, as opposed to driving, to secure necessities. Was it an ambition to live in a Walking Town? Definitely. Leaving behind the ambition for accumulation? Yes.

Small. Short distances. Small but expansive spaces. Human connection, without the baggage of comparative analysis.

Yesterday, I walked 5.5 miles. All the while I was reminded of life in Albany, NY in 1977. Without my feet, a bus, and a desire to be somewhere, I would have been stuck. I had forgotten how foul the air can smell, how awkward and hazardous walking can be.

The joy of walking and breathing are complicated by the need to be somewhere faster and more comfortably. To improve our chances of prevailing. Surviving. Prospering. Competing.

I can imagine that a private jet and driver further improve the use of one's time. Increase uninterrupted time, focussed attention.

No question in my mind that acquisition and manipulation of energy are vital to keeping boredom, expiration, at bay. Minimally, we survive until the next sunrise.

On the century's turning, those that had the least were largely unaffected by the globe's tick past a moment in time. Only those with the ability to congregate in masses, light up the air with colors, gaze in amazement at the artwork would know this sensation. So far, we have come.

Stranded in an African oasis. Nary an artificial torch in sight, we would only have the night and the stars bounded by the cries of our fellow inhabitants. What a shame.

What would I do without words. The sensation of seeing them emerge on a lit page at this hour of the new day? All a tribute to human enterprise, ingenuity, energy.

I want to take the good of what we have done and ask if we could not significantly improve on the human settlement. Not far from here, Jamestown, was a pathetic demonstration at a re-start. Motivated by the desire to escape. Flee. Prospect. Speculation on tomorrow. An extension of an Empire.

Fear of that experiment, which turned into a thriving country of innovation, has no concept of the threat that awaits.

You practically have to re-think. Re-do. If not now, soon.

We have arrived at point where we are so motivated by sameness that we can only make it worse. Air fouler. Cars more comfortable. Connectivity greater. All driven by energy, fuel, economy.

Confiscating the phantom wealth that we possess would seem the final straw for the majority.

Perspective: Why Occupy [Insert Any Big City]?

2011-10-09T10:25:00.001-04:00

Answer: YOU INSTINCTIVELY know SOMETHING is WRONG. (See what trends Gerald Celente forecast for 2011, in mid-January, and my own posts from 2010.)

"A Stirring Underfoot"
A Poem for the 99%

That simple. That complex.

Exactly what is wrong? You are not sure.

Your message is confused, according to the mass media.

[Update 10-20-11: Maybe because this is actually another leaderless movement, as was 912-09, or maybe not.]

By the way, who are you? And, why?

LET'S MAKE A LIST.

You work. You vote. This is not what you voted for. You're on the wrong crony's team, until the next election.

Or, you are ...

Unemployed, young and old. Formerly employed (a temporary 4 days or permanent 40 years, then laid off). Underemployed. A temporarily sidelined entrepreneur: You don't qualify for unemployment benefits. Sorry.

You are a student, maybe recent graduate. Financing your college education? WRONG DEGREE. Sorry.

You have gone to school for 2 - 8 years, have $20,000 - $200,000 in student loans, but cannot land an $8 per hour job in ANY PROFESSION (even horse grooming). Sorry.

Congratulations! You owe the federal government principal and compounding interest FOR LIFE! You cannot pay? Why not declare bankruptcy like Donald Trump, three times? Not easy. Sorry.

Experienced and skilled, but with the wrong skills and experience. Stuck in a geographic location, but wrong geographic location. Sorry.

No sorry.

[On December 13, 2010, I wrote: Humanity's Trudge Toward Wisdom, anticipating Occupy Wall Street. Fortunately, without the destruction. Update 11/3/11: Until now. One year ago, I wrote about College Student Debt, my experiences and concerns.]

Gerald Celente's Remarks (Click Pic)

912, 828, Occupy Wall Street ... Glenn Beck, Van Jones, Alex Jones, Michael Moore ... THEY DO NOT MATTER!

There is only one you. You matter. You do. You really do.

Let me go further. What you think and what you do is all that matters.

What a celebrity or politician or business leader or college president says is of NO CONSEQUENCE to YOU.

Start here. Buy We Are All Weird.

Or, go to any public library and read ANYTHING by Seth Godin. If you seek to occupy any big city, TRIBES would seem appropriate.

If you are young (even long in the tooth), adopt an entrepreneurial, rather than a victim, I mean, employee-mindset. PLEASE READ (I just finished and give my highest possible endorsement to) Michael Ellsberg's The Education of Millionaires: It's Not What You Think and It's Not Too Late. He's a KID, a damn perceptive kid.

Ladies and gentlemen, maybe you read The Trench Take, maybe you don't. Maybe you agree, maybe not, not even sometimes. It's okay.

We own our own insights, opinions. We tap our own noggins to see what's in there. We make art. We share because the barriers to entry are minimal, and WE CARE.

My son and a collaborator, self-unemployed filmmakers, went downtown to Occupy LA, partly triggered by NYPD's indiscriminate tear gassing and beating up of protestors on Wall Street. They could not believe it was America. That individuals had no right to freely assemble. No right to express themselves. Inconveniently disrupt traders and traffic. Smell bad.

While you might be squirming in your seats because you have a job, maybe at a bank or digital media company, live in a nice place in Silicon Valley, or are otherwise set (you have yours), whether you know it or not, you are the people occupying these streets. (Update 11-09-11: Read 15 Statistics Which Prove That The U.S. Economy Is In Much Worse Shape Than Americans Think.)

These are your friends, family, and countrymen. And, you know in your heart something is wrong. (I instantly knew it, as soon as I had arrived at Freedom Plaza on 9-12-09 and met throngs of ME. Now, my son has witnessed the same two years later.) Drastically wrong and for a VERY LONG TIME now. Sorry.

No sorry.

Now, what are YOU going to DO?

Today's Top Ten Things "To Do"

2011-10-07T09:49:00.001-04:00

Pray for the well being of others.

Draw, write, film, organize something.

SoCal Trip with My Three Sons
(January 2009)

Think not one negative thought.

Read something educational and inspirational.

Smile at a passerby.

Breath fresh air, take in sunshine, bike ride.

Remind myself that only people care.

Ignore mass communication

Care-give for this family.

Be and act kind.

Van Black's Army

2011-10-03T08:01:00.002-04:00

Rain, rain, rain. This September has been reminiscent of 1972, my freshman year at the College of William and Mary.

Van Black ('75) and I remembered. It rained to the point that brand new shoes were shortly worn out. Really, did you think anyone would wear rubbers over their Wallabees?!

We spent weeks, it seemed, walking around campus barefoot, in ponchos, long hairs dripping, awash in the Tidewater's warm waters. Professors barely noticed.

I have forgotten who, but one classmate had a professor who had managed chalk in one hand and eraser in another with a twist. Never looking at his audience, he had taught himself to write with one as he efficiently wiped away with other. Students scrambled to capture ever notation or never bothered to get wet. The N/C (no credit) was the lowest possible grade that year: The "F" or "D" grades sent away on vacation.

What is it about 40 years passed? Lately, I have bumped into people or relived events of that long ago, and found not a beat missed. You would have thought a college reconnection impossible with time's passage. Friendships of a semester or two would be lost. You would be forgotten, as you missed numerous reunions. All would be irrecoverable.

A multiple choice question's answer: None of the above. Beyond your imagination: A welcome mat awaits a single step taken.

When Van brought us together one weekend day, people you recognized by sight, shared experiences, or knew in name only, you were drawn to, separate from life's daily and personal drama. You recreated an old friendship, maybe out of thin air, had some laughs, shared sorrows. The reconnection built an instant world that was difficult to leave.

What did we know when we were in our 20s? Who were we? Life's road lay far ahead of us. Together, you revisited the same thoughts and memories, regrets and celebrations, and eased into common ground – life after college, professions, places, and family.

Suzy ('76) and my return to Williamsburg, her hometown, was an ill-defined known, conceived nearly 20 years ago. Who can know a timeline with certainty? What events will propel or challenge us? Our arrival was not straightforward. Moves affect family members. We left parts of ourselves in different geographies. Relocating and settling down each time knows trauma, particularly as we age and become less, shall we say, flexible, tolerant to change, open to possibilities.

Van makes his home in Dallas, Texas, but comforted our re-establishment. How? A connection: Drew Stellges, W&M's Director of Community Engagement and I had gotten to know each other through campus events. Van knew Drew. Drew mentioned my name in a conversation. As Van recounts it, he smiled back at Drew and slowly repeated my name, somehow recalling my passion for the environment. That's the guy. We renewed a connection that was always there, lingering in the background of our history.

Ever since, Van has visited our home, sometimes for my favorite meal, breakfast. Sometimes to dine with new W&M acquaintances. We have walked the town or had coffee at local W&M hangout, the Blue Talon. (Prince George's "Dirty Deli" is evidently long gone. My preference.) Made even more campus connections. Most importantly, he invited me to join him in a special fit of inspiration, brilliance, and pure altruism that his class has innovated.

Van, and a small merry band, co-founded a vision for amplifying upon reunions and class gift-giving. Amplify is too shallow a word for this brainchild, whose initial trigger may well have been Van's frustration in trying to locate fellow classmates at a Homecoming Parade. Discoveries happen in strange ways: 3M and sticky notes or Alexander Fleming and penicillin.

Later, when Van reached out to other classmates, friends, and current W&M students – including yours truly ('76) – to define, build out, and prioritize this vision at Barb Ramsey's Williamsburg home ('75). Word-of-mouth associated with the name "Van Black" began an epidemic and 50 people came together for a weekend afternoon of organized chaos at the fringes. Occupying every nook, cranny, and stairwell, expertly facilitated groups worked together to produce richly and extensively, as you would expect from former scholars, leaders and slight over-achievers. Poor Barb never had a chance to leave the kitchen.

Staying Connected, Together Serving Others (SC). Concise, definitive, inclusive, meaningful, purposeful .... and powerful.

I had been out-of-touch with classmates for a longtime. My graduation date was protracted by only a few months because of an exam scheduling problem. I had five difficult courses (two labs) that last semester (too many for me), but successfully passed that final the day before graduation. Too late to participate in the ceremonies. (An embedded college memory.) In the grand scheme of things, we later find out how little these gnatty annoyances really matter. Unfortunately, I had missed out on the process of wishing my classmates well (I was too embarrassed), in exchange for riding the flume at the still new Busch Gardens, a family alternative to graduation's ceremonies.

Back then, our studies bore some relevance to our futures. But, it was the initial coming together, deciding to attend W&M by choice or fallback, the natural affinity and connection, which we miss, I believe. Now, individually and together, we are desirous of coming back home, physically or communicatively, for a purpose that defies standard definition or expression. It is a creation, evolving organically, scarfing up energy, wherever it is found, with consequence for current and former students and their communities, no matter where they are.

A champion, a catalyst, a facilitator, a workshop designer, a strategist, prime mover, Van is all of these things and more, pushing, pulling, prodding. Don't mistake, however, that he is your friend first. Maybe one of W&M's best friends, from the Class of 1975, if it is even possible for the bricks and mortar of an institution to bond with a human being.

Perhaps while we were studying, taking tests, our scores blinded by the last four digits of our social security numbers, something else was happening that none of us noticed. Yes, we are summoned to annual events, chapter meetings, gift giving, which are all important to grow and sustain an institution, especially in these times. Part of the William and Mary family. It is much more than that and it has something to do with everyone who came here, whether they finished or not. A certain breed of directed person, pioneer, leader, public servant in pursuit of making some mark on a town, organization, family or broader society. Flocked together, these people made for an affable climate that surfaces in interesting ways.

After 40 years, we have all been overwhelmed by 2011's current residents, today's students. Sure, they are more talented, qualified than many of us. But, it is more. Much more.

In our day, there were only a few service organization on campus, Circle K one. Now, for an institution of similar student body number, there are 200! (And, we thought course selection was difficult.) For us, the idea of giving back was not fully expressed, even though it might have been implicit (or rewarded) in our future behaviors. Today, service enjoys front and center for many students. For alums, giving something back is part of the natural progression of life: Raise family, achieve pinnacle in profession, and then what's next? Quite naturally, each generation exists to support the next and what wonderful things they will be and do. We want to share our experiences: Life after W&M or provide humble guidance, be a sounding board.

The connection of alum-alum or alum-student, once begun, its value was obvious to all. Brilliant ideas often are. Obvious. ("I wish I had thought of that.") Action, though, distinguishes memorable ideas.

What does SC do? Why should you drop Van e-mail or go hunting on the W&M Alumni Page for the initiative?

Let me leave you with one small project that was the first, I believe: Digitizing the works of Pappy Fehr – a universally loved W&M choral director and music professor – binds former students and avid listeners to this place. The project contributes something of meaning and historical import well beyond the architectural beauty of the campus and its setting. It is both metaphoric and tangible for an act of contribution that preserves an art, beauty, and creates lasting value for all to enjoy.

Maybe you have an idea with merit. Know a classmate who lives nearby, who you have not seen for awhile. Perhaps writing a check is all that you can manage or maybe you cannot manage it. What is being created here is much bigger than silver.

You will know what I mean by e-mailing Van.

912-09: What really happened?

2011-09-12T09:50:00.003-04:00

As I had expected, if you watched and read the news this weekend, you would have learned absolutely nothing about the 912 March on Washington by your fellow countrymen. (Written and posted Sunday afternoon, September 13, 2009, following a 6-hour drive home to Central NY, where we lived at the time.)

A parade of signs appeared in front of us

It is no wonder that Congressmen and media of all stripes have long shared bottom-of-the-barrel ratings as the least trusted societal figures. And, I do mean ALL media, even Fox News (who offered silly coverage).

Late Friday afternoon on September 11th, good friend Chris Hughes, and I met at the Mayflower Hotel. We once worked two blocks away at Edison Electric Institute in the late 70s, early 80s and seized on the opportunity to walk around the old neighborhood ... reliving our mid-20s, the glory days as young professionals, doing important business.

To say that we knew what to expect over the next 24 hours would be akin to our knowing which college teams would prevail the day's football games and on a par with news agency reports that only a few thousand people came to Washington, DC. to stumble around Pennsylvania Avenue, angry and complaining.

Ridiculous. Absurd. Laughable.

Regardless of your party or non-party affiliation, offered here are some observations that you may not find or hear, especially from media outlets, which presently mystifies and concerns me. Are free press and free speech disappearing before our eyes? (Update 12/21/11: Answer. Yes. Intuitively, we all know this and can self-confirm.) Muffled by the fear of what is happening? (Update 12/21/11: Fear is the reason, but fear that their once secure jobs are being over-taken by amateurs.)

Sardine-packed
Capitol to Washington Monument

I can count. I have been seated amongst 30,000 people at a Syracuse University dome basketball game, against top ranked Connecticut or Georgetown, near a season's close. Been situated in the clouds with 80,000 attending an Alabama-Tennessee football game. These were events in which tens of thousands entered and exited a single venue.

There were not thousands, not tens of thousands at 912. At the very least, there were hundreds of thousands. All I can tell you is what we personally witnessed, and heard and learned from our fellow travelers. See what The London Mail reported (and their sources) that our American media would not.

Do you remember the scene in the movie Forrest Gump when we see the Mall filled with people, extending from the Capitol to the Washington Monument and beyond? I imagined this as a possibility. Only two helicopters hovered about us, ever-so briefly, and they might have taken the all-incriminating picture to serve as evidence. Such a photo has yet to appear on the net.

Wouldn't the Park Service do this analysis? Or, does the federal government reserve these occasions for only the preferred Democratic Presidential Inaugurations? (A typical DC political ego trip to remind you who is in control.)

When we arrived at Freedom Plaza for the beginning of our Saturday morning walk in the park, we had two thoughts: (1) We might be alone and this was a two-man march and (2) what was our exit strategy if things got rough.

We walked to The White House the previous evening and there was no hint of the next day. Only small groups of tourists and several manned outposts of protests that had obviously been there for years.

Only when three marines, decked out in their uniforms, arrived at the lobby bar later that night and a spontaneous applause erupted did it occur to us that something of significance might be afoot. The downtown hotels were completely sold out.

Upon our arrival at the plaza, what we saw was a crowd of people holding their homemade signs. We looked at each other and I am sure thought, OMG.

We had heard that there might be trouble from Acorn and unions, akin to the Healthcare Town Halls. There had been a bomb scare at Freedom Works on the eve of the march. A deep cheer forecast the next three hours of human traffic.

Honestly, we were uncertain. Neither of us had signs. On purpose. We were not there to attract attention. Get into rumbles, verbal or otherwise. Lose fingers. We were simply there to be counted in favor of the 912 project mission ... the national unity that followed 911. In general agreement with the 912 principles and values. The practice of limited government.

Despite the signs you read, this was not a referendum on healthcare, taxation, global warming or Obama ... it was a referendum on America. What it means. What it is. Has been. Will be.

To read the signs is to read frustration. Personal frustration. A tipping point, a point at which the addition of one more new government program will crash the entire system.

It is the personal stories behind their bearers, their knowledge of the US Constitution, and thoroughness of their book studies. They speak best to who was there and why.

You would never get this from a newscast. Possibly a carefully constructed documentary film.

Even better, the three-hour conversations we had with two couples, one from Cincinnati and the other Kansas City, at the Mayflower bar, post march. This is where one learns the real story, which requires patience, listening, and an abundance of questions. Again, not instant enough for a newscast looking for controversy with which to snatch eyeballs, and the reason all is already known by the producers and directors before questions are even directed by the on-camera talent.

The walk itself was quiet, incredibly orderly. Given the numbers who were there, this is what we call the benefits of American individualism, civility, self-determination, self-reliance, charity, working together.

No direction is required, we are Americans.

Not remotely nearby the behaviors one might see at a hotly contested Yankees-Boston baseball game or European football brawl.

In our slug, we figured the first quarter of the march, which began an hour early, probably because of the unexpected participation, one participant was good-naturedly admonished by his fellow walkers for overdoing his chant and attracting "an angry mob" designation.

We'd see volunteers with yellow tea shirts on either side of Pennsylvania Avenue, smiling and thanking us for coming. Rarer were police officers and their vehicles, clearly puzzled and nervous, never-the-less with sirens blaring and lights flashing to let us know they were there, I guess.

Periodically, the quiet order was interrupted by chants of "U.S.A." "Can you hear us now?" or spontaneous cheers, for what reason, who knows, softly sung versions of "My Country T'is of Thee." All would fade in-and-out, like scenes in a movie. People were walking, talking with one another, laughing, remarking about each others signs, taking pictures of them. We commented how creative so many Americans were.

Angry? Hardly. Passionate? Would you come from any one of the 50 states represented, spend your own hard-earned money and scarce free time, post Labor Day, just after school had started, if you were not passionate? Would you stand up for your country? Be counted.

It is startling to think how many people in America are thinking similar things and were moved to come to Washington with no advanced warning of what they would find. A whim of sorts. No idea that this gathering was no flash in the pan. Or, that a sea change was afoot.

Most of the people who came had no group affiliation whatsoever. That had made up their minds to come, just as we had, two weeks ago. A Field of Dreams or Close Encounters type compulsion ... for some reason I have to go, even though I don't like crowds, dislike political parties, etc. With the attendance, in spirit, of their closest friends and family. These are the so-called 912ers. Hungry for human connection, human touch, a merger with American spirit.

Why else would The National Parks Service, D.C. police be so caught off-guard? There was no way of knowing. Human spontaneity at its best.

One lady with three kids said that there was a 2-hour wait to use the Porta Potties. There was no point, she said. Route 50 was experiencing a 7-mile backup, we were told, by noon. How many could not get into the city?

It is all unverifiable, because there were no media of consequence present. We looked. Oh yeah, we saw one CNN bus. That was it.

A small test: Were you shown or told any of what I have described?

Of course not.

Now, the nagging question for me, right now, is Why?

If two million people showed up on your doorstep for lunch, unannounced, challenged your household expenses, your plans for the future, you might feel a little intimidated to. Add to this, this was an orderly, self-directed, civil crowd. Not to diminish their insistent questioning.

Did you know that most of the marchers were women?

More than 50%.

And, older women. Moms. Bet you did not know that? Nor did you know that many of the organized tea parties were run by women.

Aside from Sarah Palin and Hilary Clinton, society is generally loathe to criticize women. It is much easier to look for gunslinging, unshaven, tobacco-chewing, self-unemployed older white men and blame them for standing up for America.

A few months back, a medical intern clinically described me to her superior at my 5-year annual check-up as, " ... an unremarkable, 55 year old, Caucasian male." I would add to that, "... living one remarkable life."

There were people in wheel chairs, on scooters, young and old ... almost all carrying signs for a mile and half ... and standing for 3-4 hours listening and applauding the 25 or so speeches.

But, what of the crowd's complexion? My response would be this: If you cared about and shared the 912 convictions, and could, you came. What happened to the standard Martin Luther King set: Judge us by the content of our character?

So, to look for diversity of flesh, religion at an event or workplace has no place in free and civil society. Test yourself: Would you complain that we couldn't have 85% of blacks voting for a black presidential candidate because it violated the principles of diversity?

At the end of our walk, we arrived at the pool, where Forrest's childhood friend splashes. In front of the Capitol was a stage that already looked packed in. Again, we could see that a steady stream of people that kept coming and coming and we remained true to our exiting strategy.

It was never a worry.

Many people spoke. Not household names, with the exception of a Baldwin brother and Dick Army. Some were quite funny in their commentary and open-ended questions of the group. Others were dead serious about an amendment, a policy and its consequences for them personally, for us generally.

The overriding questions. "Are there any patriots here?" "Can you hear us now?" For me, these two questions were the oft repeated and memorable. At one point, there was absolute quiet for the singing of the national anthem. A reminder of why we are here. How fortunate we are to be here and know freedom, liberty, pursuit of happiness.

Over the loud speaker, "ABC is reporting 1.6 million in attendance, surpassing the Obama inauguration." A cheer from the crowd. "This is my Woodstock," as one sign put it. Later, the tally was upped to 2 million.

Regardless, I have never witnessed so many people with signs in one place in my life. Had we compiled and burned the signs we might have paid D.C's light bill. ... still a very beautiful city ... and one that many were coming to for the very first time in their lives.

Small business was represented, I am sure. I doubt seriously that many would characterize themselves as materially well off.

What do people want? Congress to follow the constitution. An end to ever-increasing government spending, bailouts, regulation. Though tired of it, they are far from worn out about America. They are not fleeing, not fighting. They are participating.

Unanswered e-mails to Congressmen. Encountering phone busy signals. Ears deaf to alternatives have exhausted the people's respect for their elected representatives; so, they applaud the Joe Wilson outburst at a special session of Congress, "You lie!' Though it may be inappropriate decorum, he is them.

Now, it is the peaceful congregation of numerous individual sound waves to create a thunderous, harmonious chord of a voice that echoes throughout the Lincoln Memorial.

When I was in Russia and would speak with Russians, who barely knew English, but still wanted to try without translators, they would complain that I spoke too loudly, at some point. This is what happens when people feel, that after vain attempts to speak slowly and clearly, and are still not being understood, They speak LOUDER.

This morning, I will bet my life that meetings are happening all over the city to try and figure out what to do. This was too big to ignore. Any debate over numbers would be silly and unwise. This was pure grassroots. Don't let anyone convince you otherwise.

Brush it under the rug or misinform and Washington could be over-run by 20 million next time. I am absolutely confident of this, based on our conversations with a small sampling of the attendees.

Chris and I worked in Washington, so we have a pretty good idea of how it works. You think your smarter because you're there. Realtime close to the action. Your work is the most important thing happening in the world. Everything said must be carefully scripted or a disaster will surely result. We know the drill.

It is the Center of the Universe complex. LA, NYC, Chicago ... all share it. It is hard to step outside of it. Many people did on Saturday. We heard their stories.

To say that leadership is called for is, once again, an under-statement of immense proportion. It is not as simple as announcing what you will do, repeating it, with increasing degrees of conviction, to numb the senses, until all are humbled and proceeding.

It sounds too much like torture, doesn't it?

Leadership is more about listening, paying attention, remembering as some signs said ... "You work for us." You cannot announce yourselves as here from the federal government, here to help, and give us the programs that we need, and expect no response.

The participants in 912 know their history. Know their US Constitution. Are current on the events up until the moment.

When a carried signs reads, "Where are ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, PBS ...?" The reality is ... the media are decades behind the average person, they have become irrelevant, not worth the time. Perhaps media outlets are worried about their livelihoods too.

People are much more sophisticated and smarter than you would think .... and I mean MANY people. As observers, we were stunned, amazed, impressed, and proud.

There is something magical about America that at times you might erroneously think has disappeared into daily drudgery. But, it has not if 912 was any indication whatsoever.

There is much to digest here. Perhaps an incubation period is necessary. (Ed. 9-22-11: See Post 912: Is Something Wonderful Happening.)

If you were there, please send me your impressions. I would love to compare notes.

Irene Shoves Kindness

2011-08-29T11:16:00.000-04:00

Irene 6 days ago

We are the home dark without electricity during hurricanes and ice storms. Sometimes for days. Not this storm.

During Irene, we dodged a bullet, as my neighbor put it. We did. Others were not so fortunate and will never forget her.

Surrounded by an ancient and sky reaching Tulip Popular, silver maples, and pine trees, you would have bet at least one would have fallen with consequence. Other than some good size limbs, our homes escaped damage. Wires, transformers, and poles stayed up. Two explosions in earshot.

Near catastrophes have a way of suspending time, funneling emotion into a long narrowing straw.

Reaching out to neighbors after frequent snow storms in Central New York was rather common, especially where we lived, out in the country. There is something about frigid cold and six foot snow drifts that would cause us to stray beyond our driveways and mailboxes. Mythology would evolve at grocery store checkouts.

There is a neighborhood and a community down here in Williamsburg. It surfaces for extra oxygen during these rare events, much in the same way other communities open up their lungs. Acts of kindness, once begun, multiply without institutional prompting.

A large limb from our tree was precariously perched on our neighbor's property. With the eyes, brainpower, artifacts, and ingenuity of multiple adults, we figured out how to solve a problem that none could have handled alone. Young boys provided the backs required to finish the job. We did not have to wait for more sophisticated help.

Soon, extension cords were traversing the landscape to share the power. A dinner was begun. Neighbors trickled in from various corners to a central home.

If you could bottle up these acts of coming together, sharing, and natural kindness, you would have a product whose market was infinite. Pent up supply requests a trigger, every now and then.

A dam broke. Things will return to normal, without being the same. Barriers have forever fallen because of Irene. Reminder breezes circle in the remote Atlantic.

You stop and think about Nature. She is so much more powerful than anything Man could possibly conjure up. She shows up to remind us who we are at our core, just waiting for a little nudge.

Making dreams

2011-08-21T08:30:00.002-04:00

Most people have no time to read, think, write, and create something self-directed. For these people, creators are truly grateful.

For without their hard work and diligence, ours would not be possible. They are givers and true believers, who affix no strings.

For those who manage to both work and create, we stand in awe of their energy levels, need for no slumber. They provide some sense of what it means to be blessed, even for those who don't believe in the existence of a God. They inspire us.

Grassroots creativity and erector set construction are what make and re-make America, over and over. No matter how small, ill-defined, or insignificant the idea or dream, it does matter. And, it could come from anywhere, anyone, anytime. The network of free exchange continues to grow, making it all the more possible for many creators.

To the contributors to our small dream, A Fortunate Son, we extend our hand in gratitude. You are part of our making something original and our learning process. Thank you.

Paul Wins Over Iowa

2011-08-14T10:02:00.027-04:00

Does anyone believe Michele Bachmann is any different than Obama or Palin. Like we have not had enough inexperience in the Oval Office. Enough of the "fighting for you" language. It does not buy much.

Bachmann bought and distributed 6,000 tickets, $180,000 and won by only 151 votes. Paul won the online poll (44% of 6,000 votes).

My Republican and conservative friends will think that I am crazy to support Ron Paul, but I have and do. Rush Limbaugh thinks we are "kooks" and believes Paul will destroy the Republican Party. (Update 10/17/11: Rush claims many of Paul's necessary budget cut proposals are his. Hmmm.)

The Republic Party was destroyed long ago. We could start with George Herbert Walker Bush, who never believed in the Reagan Revolution. (Ed. 9/6/11: Paul was one of the first.) Bush reignited our move back into war, convincing us we had to beat back the Iraqi bullies we made. He fooled us into believing he would not raise taxes.

Every President since Reagan has gone on the military offensive (as opposed to winning by strategic defense), defying the warnings of an ailing Eisenhower in 1961. Both Reagan and Kennedy surprised the military establishment. They recognized, criticized, inspired, and lead future outcomes. Long after their departures. (Update 10/21/11: Contrast this level of humility with Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton's interview on Gaddafi's demise on her arrival.)

Turning away from the gold standard, under Nixon, had no influence on our ability to land a man on the moon or experience the largest market cap company in America, Apple.

No, we officially entered a Ponzi Scheme, because no one understood demographics, except bankers, who have been given a free ride at every turn by the Fed and the federal government. All a mirage, an endless dream that politicians, with exception of Paul, refuse to acknowledge.

So, if you want more of the same, vote for Obama or pick a Republican lightweight. Or worse, seek the panache of Romney or Perry, and more flowery speeches, more convention, more illusion.

Really! You would support an Al Gore Texas Campaign Manager? Or, sponsorer of state mandated healthcare insurance?

A vote for Paul is not a vote for shameless change. No, it is a vote for the era we have never, ever known. True liberty. People who self-demonstrate their principles and values.

Belief in the individual. Belief in private property. Belief in the hard value of money. Belief in States' Rights. Belief in each other and our natural charitable inclinations.

And, an end to our penchant to defend and police the world.

Seriously, do you know nothing of our country's origins and concerns for nosing into foreign lands that our Founders sent, as a bottled message, into America's future?

Let's look at the recent results: Korea, Cuba, Viet Nam, Iraq, South America, Serbia, Afganistan, and Libya? Please tell me about our contributions to self-interest, I mean, world stability?

Big, overconfident finds arrogance and eventual demise. Every generation of earthly resident. Over millions of years.

Did we really have to enter all of these wars or to figure out how to defend ourselves or develop technologies? Was the collateral damage really worth it?

We could not even protect ourselves on 9-11 despite the target painted on the Twin Towers. Consider the first attack by a foreigner, Man on Wire, and the next. How incompetent is our defense?! We enact the Patriot Act and add Homeland Security to our bureaucracy.

Please, Iran and nukes: Who the hell are we to direct Iran? Of course, only religion seeks the rule of all hearts, minds and property?

What does citizenship mean anymore? Not much, if we issue green cards to support our college educational system, farm our fields, and enroll high tech migrant workers in our largest corporations. We have no talent in residence? We are lazy?

Government has done nothing to foster a "growth mentality" in our citizenry. Instead, we employ fixed mindsets that take the easy way out. A Robin Hood approach which guarantees a complaisant crowd, for a time. Then, it becomes an unruly mob. Take note.

Who really won this little party in Iowa? We did, because people are discovering Ron Paul and his reminder of our roots.

The Tea Party-Ignorant Elite

2011-08-11T08:44:00.010-04:00

Curious about my SEP IRA, and America at-large, yesterday I caught this segment and exchange on CNBC's Squawk Box.

Every time I hear someone refer negatively to the Tea Party Movement, I cringe or want to leave the room. If they were not at 9-12-09 in Washington, DC or don't accept the renditions of those who were actually there, they have no idea what they are talking about.

One more time, folks, we are not scared of anything. Meredith shot off her mouth. This is a battle over who is calling the shots, the sovereign or the central government? It has nothing to do with employment status, sex, political party, skin color, sexual orientation, religious preference, or choice.

Please listen to us. Listen, not opine.

If you want to be a slave for the rest of your life, believe this drivel. America, as a social experiment and going concern, is in deep, deep trouble if it perpetuates the belief that we are entitled to anything other than freedom. That's our only birthright.

Fortunate Son Just Went Global

2011-08-03T08:23:00.020-04:00

It is a global economy, we are reminded. Yesterday, it showed up on our Fortunate Son Campaign with a contribution from a Norwegian.

Some days it seems that our national wealth and our jobs are sifting through our fingers like sand. We grasp at grains, longing for a solid mass of rock.

Many of us recognized the pending climate change. At the beckoning of the US Department Commerce, Foreign Service Attaches, we secured passports, started to attend seminars, joined international business groups, learned about the politics and bureaucracy of getting visas, ventured into the unknown Third World, made connections in Europe, Asia, South America.

As trained capitalists, we expected short-term economic results, only to find our economy at a different level than most of the world, at the time. Many, many small transactions would be required to afford our lives here. Multinationals, with seemingly inexhaustible reserves, received the bulk of the subsidies from USAID, Trade Development Program, but not every morsel.

I met some amazing small businessmen and women, who managed to lock on to one thing and make it work. One guy sold doors. Doors! He was a thriving one-person business.

Relationships. That's what business is ultimately about. Who can we count on, need on our team, want to work with. This is true for virtually everything.

At a time when you might wonder what America has to offer, you might miss the obvious. Art. A favorite topic of author Daniel Pink.

Maybe you thought: Military protection from all bad guys all the time: abundant in evidence, unachievable goal, and economic bottomless pit, save the political rhetoric.

A dentist, who supported my travels in Russia in the 90s, once asked me what I thought distinguished a civilization from all others. Made it shine. Memorable for the Ages.

Technology, I answered.

A native Californian, he countered with the Arts and made the case for American art and specifically moviemaking. A collaborative art. A native Easterner, I might have chuckled to myself, thinking how most people would see California, their art, and people as chimeric and empty of substance, despite Apple and Disney ... Google ...

At the time, I loved movies, but was not involved in making them. Was not sure about America as a leader in the broader category of art making. I had seen amazing pieces, made in the middle of Nowhere, Eurasia.

Now, we have Facebook, connected to YouTube, connected to VidCon – the second conference, attended by 2,500 people this year, with a waiting list of 2,500! Next year, the event will move from the Hyatt Regency Century City to Anaheim Convention Center.

To bring the world and pursuit of the arts closer to home: a Norwegian, who my son met at the first conference, watched his online films, and contributed twice our current contributions simply to see what he could create. Who we might support or might support us could come from anywhere?

It's a global economy, in practice, even for this small father-son project.

More than anything else, Americans are incredible collaborators. We can despise each other politically and then turn around and work together creatively. If you have traveled afar, you know how rare this condition is.

It is not all individual brainpower and scholastic achievement. Rather, an idea, connection, environment, encouragement, and something we take way too much for granted in this country.

Liberty.

The freedom to create. Maybe that is the art my dentist friend was really referring to: The freedom to assemble, collaborate and create.

Even on our worst days, American "art" attracts more than repels the world. One wonders about the remnants our civilization will leave behind.

Fortunate Son Documentary

2011-07-23T03:28:00.015-04:00

Iceskating with Dad @ 11 months
Syracuse, NY (1954)

In January, I curbed my blogging to work on memoirs for my sons and a documentary film with son Corey Trench.

The projects have the support of our entire family. And, as they become aware of it, we hope Goochland Courthouse, Virginia.

What you see is a picture of my father, William Corey Trench, and me, William Corey Trench, Jr. Pictured here, he was 30 years old. (I am 11 months old and an "expert skater," according to Dad's comments on the picture's back.) A WWII Vet, recent graduate of the University of Virginia Law School, a young attorney with Bond, Schoeneck and King, married for two years to my mother, Margaret Lewis Wood of Charlottesville, Virginia.

My dad rarely took a picture without smiling. (His parents, the same.) A gift passed on. He loved being behind a still camera or filming on Super 8. We have precious few pictures of him. Those we have, as we knew him, we cherish.

At the time of this snapshot, he did not know that he would have only 14 more years to grace the earthly plane. Yet, he lived a life that he might have imagined. I doubt that he would have changed how he spent limited time.

He was always there for us. He was a father, family man, true friend, and devout man, first, and a lawyer, second. He was skilled in a variety of sports, attracted and made friends easily, it seemed. However, when we were born, we became his top priorities. He supported my mother's passion for horses, creativity (in ground, above-ground pools; tents made from patio covers; step vans converted to campers), and ability to attract people of like mind. She was the kite, he the kite sting holder.

Yes, a son can romanticize the past. Be blissfully ignorant of the negative. Dream the impossible. As the years have screamed by, I have come to realize what a truly fortunate son I was, particularly for six months of 1969.

Perhaps he was relieved that I was finally becoming a responsible young man. I cared about my studies. Served willingly as a church acolyte. Started to focus more, less aloof, actually cared how my classmates perceived me scholastically, athletically, socially, and culturally (Became aware that I was a Yankee). His concern: I cared too much.

In our daily car drives to school, he talked about life's journey, where the most important thing was keeping it all in perspective. For years, he admonished me about life's extremities. Was the muddled middle where I belonged? I was too young to understand. His comforting, matter-of-fact voice, though, would surface at the toughest of times.

An over-achiever, I begged him to let me stay up late at night to study. I was mortified to face reading aloud in class, a requirement in English Class, and to recite passages in French. Ancient History nightly readings were impossible for me to comprehend, which earned me my first "D" grade. Only Algebra and Earth Science were within my grasp. A pending speech, in front of the entire Middle School, would be the final straw to threaten the complete destruction of a fragile ego and self-confidence. Only my performance on the track kept me standing among my 40 classmates freshman high school year, as only a teenager would perceive it.

To his credit, he was steadfast. Bedtime was 9 PM. Haircuts came every two weeks. He had always emphasized balance in life. Honesty. Truthfulness, regardless of consequence. He was strict.

Yet, we never became closer until we had moved from Upstate NY to Richmond, Virginia. My brother, sister and I were not happy about it. We were living the idyllic life. We had our friends. Knew the landscape. Had we been more mature, we would have known this was best for him. He deserved this move. A final, endless breath of fresh air and sunshine.

He had hit a professional wall. As our provider, he needed someone to believe in him, again. That was Lawyers Title Insurance. Far from the glamorous office he was had in the State Tower Building and later in Manlius, NY, with his own practice, he was never happier, working out on the floor in a cubicle. He invited his boss and wife to "Fun Farm." Nice people, who saw a family, plain and simple. No judgement of our cramped quarters. They were very sad when we saw them next. Dad touched people in that special way. It was his smile. An ability to listen. Appreciate others for who they were.

I was fortunate that year.

CCR's Fortunate Son was the last forty-five I ever bought. And, while a war protest song, the title spoke volumes. I survived the school year; gave a speech on the tragedy of war that shook up some faculty and would establish me as a public speaker. Discovered what I would be doing in professional life, years before a profession existed. Joined a band that summer. Lost the man who helped me arrive.

Today, the single parent is too normal. Being a man. What is that anymore? Balance is over-rated.

Part of my own memoir reflection and filmmaking excursion with my son is examining how a single tragic event can have a profound and reverberating effect for decades. You would think, Hey, just get over it. Move on. You would logically reason.

Try as we might, we are emotional beings and different. You think losing a child generations ago – when families were larger to ensure perpetuation – was any easier? Less grief stricken. My father's parents had that experience, losing their first child, Elizabeth Lawrence. How did that effect the way they saw the two who survived?

We do move forward. We must. But, we never forget. We are changed forever.

Balance? You are welcome anytime.

Idea Paint's Key Ingredient

2011-07-07T10:44:00.009-04:00

Idea Paint's Founders

For every entrepreneur, whether successful or not, there is a story and one key ingredient.

Once upon a time, it was thought that to become a self-sufficient entrepreneur took time and experience. Ray Kroc is held out as an example of a guy who tried and failed until years later he finally succeeded. HUGE.

The idea of being successful was thought not to occur until you were in your 60s. (Yes, there is still plenty of time for us old timers.)

What you accumulated was knowledge that comes from having experiences, which include a body of multiple failed experiments and lessons-learned. Let's also not forget the numerous connections required (e.g., a true believer to finance your dream, "mavens and connectors".)

Alas, time has run out. We live in a different age. An Era of Desperation. With opportunity cost as a guide, you can spend your time applying for on-line jobs, hopefully win the lottery and get one. Or, you can taken a different route and create something now. (I am begging you: Read Seth Godin's Poke the Box.) Access to free information, know-how, people and capital has never been greater. (Update 10/6/11: With my highest possible endorsement – especially if you are a young college student who worries about the future – order or download Michael Ellsberg's The Education of Millionaires: It's Not What You Think and It's Not Too Late (Portfolio) (2011). Unfortunately, you may not find a copy in the college bookstore or university town, for some obvious reasons. I did not. Learned about Ellsberg's tour de force on Coast-to-Coast AM Radio).

The story behind Idea Paint is typical of any entrepreneur, age independent. A single ingredient required. Passion for a single thing.

Where does it come from? What drives and fuels it?

One possible component. What is your reaction to someone how tells you that the thing you want to do cannot be done?

"Won't work. Been tried already." "You're being stupid." "Besides, government will not permit it."

Youth helps. You are too ignorant to know anything and have boundless energy. Federal Register, what's that?

If your favorite "friends" are those who say, "No." Ask numerous questions because they want to ... "help." And, your mind's on-off switch abruptly clicks to permanently "on," with an attitude.

You, my friend, I am sorry to say, are not only stubborn, not thinking about your career, and future, and all that you could lose by not pursuing a good "safe" (ha, ha) job working for the federal government or a multi-national, you have the key entrepreneurial ingredient.

But, the market? The risk? The competition? The 401(k), matched by the company (no more), which you don't even have, yet? Your college debt? You don't even have a "plan!"

Forget the frigging plan. What is the idea? (Fastest way to pour beer! Some University of Wisconsin students came up with this one. Now, 50% of all ball parks use the invention and save on customer wait-time, loss of product, and there's reasonable beer head!)

Fortunately, for all of us, not everyone wants to take a swan dive into a granite face. We need those who support us to keep plodding along. Let's not forget who is supporting us. But, this base cannot, nor will it, carry the future. Why? Because our base depends on economic growth, too, brought by fresh new and unencumbered ideas. Consider an asphalt road ... you can repair pot holes until, you know what, it's time to re-pave.

As your doctor, I am suggesting that you might have a serious disease. It is called burning desirous. Thank God, you do. We are counting on your ignorance and obstinacy to solve problems, maybe those of your own making. You are the resistance to a societal pre-occupation with the fear of contracting cancer and dying.

Now, let me suggest a recipe for a cure: You and your friends select a wall, get some idea paint and start drawing up a storm.

Walking Assateague Island's Beach

2011-07-02T16:14:00.010-04:00

Could there possibly be an emptier and longer beach walk than on Assateague Island?

This has to be the best kept secret on the beach-walking planet. Run by the National Park Service, you could take a tumble about an hour into your walk and have to wait a half-a-day for a ranger to find you on an ATV patrol. With it being summer, maybe the service travels the shores more often. Most people park their cars at the island's southern portion. Ours is more accessible by bike, which is why it is so vacant.

Clean of trash. You might find a few deposits of modern life after high tides. There are no trash cans, so that it is understood that what you ride in with, you leave with.

On this trip I noticed that the utility lines come to an end at Chincoteague's edge, possibly explaining why the barrier island is near black after sundown. A lone lighthouse light beams. Returned to its regular inhabitants. Surely, there must be electricity over there, to open and close the entrance gates. The thought of such an expanse devoid of power lines is exciting and terrifying at the same time.

Two elements of my Utopian intentional community would be bike paths and no utility lines. Off the grid. A throwback or push forward? You can tease your mind with such a life. Where does potable water come from? Sanitation could be rough. Disease inevitable. Fish, again?

What keeps so many from coming to neighboring Chincoteague? There are many population centers within a couple of hours driving distance. It is a modest oasis – seven miles long, one mile wide (pop. 4,316 (2009), same (2000)). Real estate, slightly glamorous in places, but generally small and unassuming, rentable (med. $226,000 (2009), med. $96,000 (2000). We ran across a school that might be for all ages. An annual island budget of six million and change. Raising taxes, for the first time in 11 years, on vehicles, this time, had been contemplated by the city council but abandoned. No one likes to force further drawdown on savings in tough times. Neither do they like to hurt the already hurt. Even here, in paradise, things are tough.

The local movie theater is among the most charming and well kept I have seen. Perhaps only 15 to 20 people attended Super 8, a theater that could have easily held 250 and not exceed occupancy restrictions. The manager greeted us with a "Welcome," as we arrived. A young girl handled the concession: She was nervous, probably new to her job. Another handled ticket sales. Moviegoers might complain about the $10 per ticket price, but probably not after sitting down in the historic place, artwork decorating the walls and ceiling, thinking about the cost of supplying its comforting AC. And, only one show per day, beginning at 7 PM, without previews.

Chincoteague had rain. Needed rain that took the "crunch" out of the grass. Even the residents were bothered by the mosquitoes. You wonder how our ancestors stood them at Jamestown Island, a similar geographic and environmental setting. Clothing must have covered their skin. The idea of getting a sun tan was a barbaric notion, I am sure.

The eagle has landed. On our walk, we would reach a fence line of posts. At the tallest, our eagle waited. Yes, we have seen him here for the past two years. This time he let us come within a 100 feet. As usual, not close enough to get a decent picture with our phone cameras. He flew here and there for a few to know his celebrity. So few that we were not a bother. On our last day, he lit on a dead tree, close enough that it was a joy to call his attention to our fellow beachcombers, whose eyes were apparently more trained on the sea and numerous Bottlenose Dophins, bobbing for feasts of fish. Fishing vessels would later arrive and validate the bounty. Grateful for our observation, one man told me, I have never seen an eagle before. Until the previous year, neither had I. Not one as free.

You go through life and you think of the places that attach to your heart and soul, embed in your imagination, and leave a retrievable mark on grey matter. This is one such place. I have read that the Chinese, aside from their numbers, on discovering the Internet, are the most prone culture to search on the question, Why am I here? A quiet early morning walk on Assateague Island prompts the same question, an idea spurred by walking alone with Nature. A kind of solitary confinement. If we were to scream at the top of our lungs, no other human would hear us. Exhilarating solitude with a voluntary escape hatch to civilization.

Once, I took up temporary residence in a old Victorian house on Little Deer Isle in Maine. Owned by my Godmother, a retired school teacher and camp counselor, I existed for a few days with practically no human contact. I wanted to know what it felt like. It was lonely up until the strangest of things happened, I heard a single voice, telepathically communicate, You are loved. There was absolutely no reason for it. In the same way, there is no accepted answer for why we are here. Or, is that the answer. We are here for love.

Perhaps our lonely, blue dot of a planet is here, just as we are, for love. Maybe this is not a conventional travel log piece. Or, maybe I am simply grateful for the excess mosquito traffic and its affects on would-be vacationers. But, if you had to escape to know something of Nature and maybe an increment of a reason why some preservation of limited space has incalculable value, I would suppose Assateague's stretch from Virginia into Maryland would be it.

Driving Me Crazy

2011-06-21T06:22:00.013-04:00

As my son and I sat in Virginia's DMV in Williamsburg for three hours, I remembered the last time that driving a car was fun.

It was 1985. A red-orange BMW 325e. Driving PCH through Santa Monica, Malibu, basically the back way home to Westlake Village, with the roof open and rock's icons, Rush or Yes playing on cassette. Sun always out. Shades on.

The Smart Car is fun, but I put more miles on my bike in an average week. Walking to the Post Office is possible, to a grocery store more treacherous. Once, Williamsburg was a pedestrian town. Then everyone moved here for the small town atmosphere and the atmosphere departed.

Walking to the DMV would have taken more than a hour, but parking would have been a breeze. Everyone has a DMV story. Clearly, Syracuse, NY, despite the mass exodus, is better at handling people in the order in which they arrive.

Evidently, that's not the system down here, I was told. Hmmm. We sat and watched the room capacity of 50, maybe, turnover twice until I could take no more.

"You missed your number, sir. You must not have been listening or watching the monitor." Admonition. Put the cuffs on now and take me to jail. Are you kidding?! Two of us can't hear. What if we were handicapped? "Here is your new alpha-numberic. Now, pay attention this time."

I recalled that an agent threatened to kick me out for smiling, with my mouth open, for the license picture-taking in January of 2010. Another 9-11 consequence: The perpetrators got their licenses in ... Virginia. My picture looks like a mug shot, ready for print by the Daily Press. Who wouldn't prefer on-line transactions?

Alex Jones calls us cattle, being doped and prodded into submission for some future event. Michael Savage, "sheeple." George Ure would reference the use of vise grips on our skin. All worthy descriptions.

If I gave up driving, I would not miss the joy, because there is none and has not been any for long, long time. If I gave up flying, the same.

Still, I need an id and car insurance. Or, neither flying nor driving a car would be possible.

You wonder how bad a system can get? We sat in front of seven people, state employees, staring at them, and an information lady, who had a nice smile and sang to herself to get through the monotony. Can you spell E-N-N-U-I. The French have such elegant ways of describing life.

Not one person saw that something might be wrong. A little camera was trained on us. I pictured a group on break in the back room, laughing at the pale guy, changing colors by the 15-minute block.

We have cameras on us. Digital data on us. Now, in a cloud, but secure. And, no humanity to be found.

What a contrast from last week.

I am tired. Tired of state-driven obligations. Tired of the idea of driving. Tired of responding to electronic employment ads that amount to buying lottery tickets. After all the years of paying withholding taxes, as a business owner, there is no monetary relief for the self-unemployed, so let's tax endangered species some more, Geithner advises. I will take the Atlas Shrugged approach and sit it out.

"How do you feel about government?"

We are Soviets now. Most people don't know what that means because they never saw it. They saw the glamorous part. Marxism. Top-down egalitarianism leads to the Gulag. I would have found my way there. A family member would have turned me in. Generations will pass before we will able to trust one another, I was told at a 1992 recycling workshop.

When "The Wall" fell, I witnessed the official end of Stalinism. Walking up the crumbling steps of its remnants. Yet, for some, these were the Good Old Days.

In 24 hours, I have gone from a positive experience to a reminder of the way things are in America proper on a daily basis. Perhaps some of those working behind their counters at DMV would say, "Good. He should know life. Hard life."

I did. Was there. Not the place to be. Worked my way out.

I hope healthcare sticks. They make health insurance mandatory. Why not? I am ready for justice to be served.

See what three hours of wasted time, because of government incompetency, insensitivity, can do to a normally happy person?

The day will improve, I am sure.

Cohousing: America's Next Frontier

2011-06-20T09:06:00.017-04:00

Where are we going as a society?

As a family?

As a loosely knit group of people on a mission?

These questions do not always have obvious and predictable answers.

Open any newspaper, any news-aggregating web site or turn on your electronic audio-visual communication device to identify the events of the day and what you will find are headlines – ATTENTION GRABBERS!!!! which are not necessarily indicative of their content.

I have been away from you for awhile. This past week I learned that my absence from the Internet creates a kind of blog irrelevance. In fact, my headline might not find you!

Oh well. That's life. But, it is not as if I stopped thinking or I stopped interacting with this world. Yes, I have been sitting over here in the corner, drinking coffee and digging into my memory with my pen.

Next Conference in San Fran in 2011

In fact, I have just returned from the Annual Cohousing Conference in Washington, DC. It was the BEST conference I have ever attended. Over a career, one attends hundreds of technical, civic, and celebratory events at which speaker upon speaker settles into lecture mode. And, if I had not gone for the subject matter, I would have gone for the experience of being with and interacting with highly accessible and very smart speakers and participants. (Gasp!!! They understand housing loans, among many other subjects, universally!) This was a break I am truly grateful for.

What is cohousing?

Nevada City Cohousing (2004)
(19 public hearings and 3-2 City Council Vote Later)

This is the TNT-loaded question that even the originators (Kathryn McCamant and Charles Durrett) of the idea's name, and its realization in America, might pause and re-visit before they answer. And, I am a novice and completely unqualified to answer.

Beware attention grabber ...

It is the recycling of the small, purposive communities that we once knew but accidentally placed in a landfill.

Now, that 's not very nice. Nor have you acknowledged the considerable physical and social architecture. And, it is not my final, final answer. I am on a gigantic roller coaster learning curve. The intention is to resurrect a sense of community that was once much more in evidence, but somehow stepped into a soon forgotten hole. Please continue.

The conference was indicative of a group of familiar people. The first neighborhood. You knew them. They were the people who addressed you by your first name. Said hello when they saw you picking up the morning paper. Asked how you were. Included you in a conversation. There was some expectation that we would be respectful, civil, helpful, and accountable in some way. Road rage was an unknown, unknown.

"Could I please borrow some milk, a stick of butter?" Borrow. Could Billy accompany you into town? He wants to go to the five and dime. Protective gesture. That means that we expect to reciprocate and want to acknowledge a societal and serial practice.

Even though my name tag did not confess my lack of knowledge about cohousing, I was barely registered and I met Bill from Katywil who proceeded to connect me with people he had just met. And, like the Breck Shampoo Commercial, the situation repeated and the conversation grew richer and richer throughout the conference.

How many conferences do we go to, where a a small group assembles and talks quietly and secretively in a corner? How many speakers do we hear that are indignant to our questions, unless we have sufficient standing to even ask them? How often do we sit at a luncheon table where little communication takes place and we are glad that someone is speaking at a podium?

Imagine a conference where sessions run on time, because the speaker and audience are cognizant and respectful of each other's time. Volunteers, who might have been first-time attendees, are pre-organized and serving all. Where a participant raises their hand and succinctly asks a question or comments in way that takes the speaker's presentation and informativeness to another level of learning. Imagine a conference where all the attendees are well-schooled in the art of meeting facilitation and actually listen carefully to one another and make sure that no one is left out of the conversation. Amalgamate a perfect conversation and mutual learning and discovery, I dare you.

Our neighborhoods were inclusive communities, lively with interaction. And, then we grew and we moved geographically. Often. My own family, the Trench Family, moved often. Honestly, it was refreshing to move. I would not change these decisions.

What I would change is the way I interacted in the place I was. "Could I please borrow a cup of sugar?" I might have asked, whether I needed it or not. I would have asked and a conversation and a more meaningful relationship ensued.

It is with pleasure that I will soon start reading Creating Cohousing by McCamant and Durrett. What an incredible couple and family.

Imagine two young California architects travel to Denmark, for different reasons, perhaps meet and fall in love there (not sure), and bring home the seed of an idea, which germinates into a movement, against all odds, and 120 thriving cohousing communities in North America, in 30 years. All without a patent.

Whatever else we are, Americans are productive creatives. We know how to originate or adapt an idea and turn it into something that makes everyone want to come here. The freedom to live and fail, and get up, again and again, is our identity.

Could we live in a more risked-filled, uncertain, and adventuresome time? I don't think so. For the past 30 years, I have been wondering when America would be really be tested. We had not, in my opinion. And, maybe that test is still ahead.

Regardless, we can try with all our might to be individuals, living isolated, alone in the world, with our survival food, water and generators, but we wouldn't be around for very long, if you really thought about it.

So, for me, cohousing, as a form of intentionally organizing and living together, is a brilliant, and rehearsed, idea that has the capability of bringing out the absolute best in what it means to be American. We can fight it, live behind our walls, and quietly suffer the solution of our problems, or begin to embrace the idea that we are small neighborhoods. Small pockets of families that look after one another. We always were.

The three hot topic take-aways from the conference: (1) retrofitting existing communities, (2) affordability, and (3) financing through a national cohousing credit union.

Behind me are empty homes. Are they candidates for micro-cohousing communities? Generation Y will graduate with incredible student loan debt, patiently wait for us to step into different roles, and not make the mistake of living large and self-isolating lives. Banking. Isn't it time to rediscover the community bank, faith and trust in one another, and take back the reins?

My conservative and libertarian friends may think, uh-oh, he dove off the wrong end of the swimming pool. A possibility.

Here's the thing. Do we not care about community? Do we not care about personal and community responsibility and accountability? Money, are you kidding?! Of course, we care about its expenditure and management. Are we excited to exhaust natural wealth and expense our personal financial resources and our mutual world's health? And, do we hate bureaucracy? With a passion. Well, guess what?

Cohousing is a community of people actively getting things done. Cohousing is a small, intentionally organized, accountable community that is indistinguishable from an employee-owned enterprise, as one participant described it. Cohousing, or some facsimile of a small group, intentioned, with purposive living ... a radiant zone of sorts ... will be our future. Energy efficiency, proximate food sources, and environmental and personal health ... are embedded concepts.

I doubt there is a person in America who honestly believes that we need to await decisions emanating from a central source, Washington, DC., to breath. We need to act now and locally.

There is no doubt in my mind that 120 cohousing communities will appear to be a very small number in a few years. Whatever form communities take, they must re-find neighborhood, if for no other reason than a gloomy discussion of survival. But, for cohousers, based on my conference experience, they are having an entirely different conversation, as Chuck Durrett put it so well in Cohousing 101 and his closing comments, that looks ahead and not in the rearview mirror. Creates the next frontier in American living.

The Trench Take Goes on Hiatus

2011-01-26T05:44:00.068-05:00

Leo Carrillo Beach, LA
January 2009

There are 220 individual pieces of writing here. Some short, others chapter length. Two years worth (which I am ever so gradually editing into a book which is approaching 400 pages in length). Perhaps these inventions have lead to the point of this purposeful hiatus.

Rather frequently, I have strayed from my intended blog track – living small, off the grid, with voluntary simplicity and a resource conservation mentality – a process we have been on for some time and hope to fully realize in our lives. The nightmarish event? The first federal government bailout in September of 2008 (Ed. 6/6/11: The crime well-depicted in Inside Job), which signaled America's arrival at a crossroads, and abruptly reminded us to consider our concept and pursuit.

Today, I know that we are not alone. No fear in our hearts. Peace of mind. There is nothing more I can write, or say, about flagging institutions and systems or thinking collaboratively and inventively, living small with voluntary simplicity. We're reading from a pre-ordained book of history. What will happen, will happen. Make an effort or not, we are forever connected with each other and Nature. Our very survival depends on openness, the free and constant exchange of ideas. It always has.

To the few, with whom I am closest, my family, their turn has arrived. I am fully engaged on their behalf, writing up a life story – quite an amazing process.

As a college classmate recently told me, he has a method for accepting new consulting work: he does so on "conditions." A peripatetic organizational consultant, he has earned that prerogative and donates much of his time. I like his approach, as well as the paraphrased suggestions of high school alum, author Tom Wolfe: [When writing a book, write 2,500 words a day. No matter what. Wait for inspiration and procrastination will arrive.] How true. Or, decades of experiences will grow mountainous.

Adapted, I am voluntarily sequestered from mass media news, talk shows, sundry interruptions, gossip, or worthy projects to write an autobiographical work and help produce a father-son documentary. Near solitary confinement calls upon this fun-bunny of a distracted writer, especially for this kind of narrative recollection and text which arrives not so effortlessly as a Trench Take instinctive response to current events, research, thought, or personal conversation.

A dream, an idea, a promise can linger in a mind, be the topic of truant, redundant and boorish dialogue for over 25 years, and suddenly and automatically appear as passionate pursuit, perhaps owing to life's ultimate trigger. Limited time. Amid this seemingly mad world, all other priorities are gradually dissolving into stillness in order to honor wistful familial requests and writer intention.

So, for now, I bid you a fond farewell and begin an overdue, joyous sojourn of unknown space and time out here in the wilderness of imagination and invention. My prayers are with you and your families. May you be close.

Loss Triggers Fond Memories, Mr. Abeles

2011-01-13T12:47:00.004-05:00

Readers might start to think this blog is a perpetual memorial, my inclination to write about the dearly departed. Maybe I should have taken a different tour of professions.

The thing is, loss, and our sudden awareness of a soul's light, triggers memories. The best of memories, it seems.

I lost another friend. Fellow being. In truth, he lived a marvelous life, if our conversations are judge and jury. (Update 2/10/11: A more thorough tribute is here.)

He was a lawyer. I adopted him or he volunteered to be my corporate attorney. In either case, I was making the plunge into independence. Business. Starting one. Brought together a few people for a drink in downtown Washington, DC. To meet. Chick Abeles was there as my attorney.

I like advice. To give it, whether people, my sons, for example, want it or not. A gene, a hammered meme. You give it and you find joy in receiving it, especially when it comes from the wise.

You know the wise. They standout. Never seem to say anything stupid, crass, unkind. Their lips move and the well-edited, tried and true thoughts spill out in prose. How do we know? We just do.

Wisdom doesn't know age necessarily. Experiences are like layers of brick skillfully laid. As they multiply, their quality and strength further ascend. Tear down wisdom, because revolution or fashion is preferred, and we should stop ourselves. This is reason we're messing with.

When I don't know what I am doing, have doubts, first thing I do is assemble people that I know and trust for maybe different reasons. They might wonder why they are there. Together.

Chick was the easiest to invite. Kind. Thoughtful. Able to converse with himself about a matter before rendering a final opinion. Even then, he recognized competing and valid views exist in this world.

Don't we all want to be persuaded? To buy the car, make out the check. Decide. Life is full of confusing, redundant, and disparate information. Sometimes the answer is, No, we don't.

Here was a sage that would not necessarily be noticed, sitting around a conference table, except for his unease in sitting. Hands in constant motion. Twirling objects in his fingers. You might mistake such behavior for discomfort when it is actually thought. The process of thinking. Introspection. Possibilities, outcomes. An artist buried in his craft. He had the look of a newspaper journalist or editor, white sleeves rolled up and pencil at work. Only the ever present long, yellow pad giving away his profession. Was he pausing to think or recall exactly what was said in a meeting?

We have computers today. Jam packed with mathematical formulas, riding microscopic slivers of pure silicon. Will they ever think? Duplicate a human? Make a mistake? Delightfully unlikely.

Chick was not at my table for that particular moment, but a future moment. To meet other minds with whom he might engage. Not to mention, he had the experience of venturing out into the wilderness by himself. He knew solo.

A kind face and kind disposition hide a penetrating spirit. What we think is not present is glowingly so. Expressed by intellect that is minimally necessary.

Loss triggers our memory. Yes, it does. Combine it with the memories of others and it is amazing what you discover about the surface you share.

Our meeting was brief and overwhelming for this aspiring entrepreneur. Somehow, though, I found comfort in the mere gathering.

I'd see Chick from time-to-time when traveling from West to East, and Washington, DC. He was excited to put together my incorporation filings when I was ready. I enjoyed our conversations. His leg propped up and crossed over the other, rocking backward in his chair. Always paying attention, thinking, asking an unexpected question. He'd call out to his Secretary Roxanna and she would rush to the door, "Yes, Mr. Abeles."

He was a model for the disheveled. We needed one. The reason paper clips must twist without breaking. One who was honored, respected, wise, while being bendable. Whose eyes would disappear into slender creases when he smiled and laughed gently. A guffaw would not befit a Southern Gentleman. We took note.

You might not guess that this country lawyer belonged in Washington, DC. Oh, but he did. Reason, thought, wisdom always belong here, but may be well-buried beneath the piles and piles of flowers oft mistaken for meaningful words. He was our Chick. The last man we would ever let leave our sight. How does that speak to a man's existence?

Loss. We learn to give into it. Not willingly. But, we do for all the wonderful memories it conjures of the man.

He was "Pryor"

2011-01-05T09:06:00.015-05:00

We light the earth for a naked moment. One might think that no one noticed.

Perhaps a community of professional colleagues knew us within our trade. A neighborhood bar, club, block. We leave artwork and a generation behind to teach our history.

I live across the street from the College of William and Mary, but I have received the alumni magazine since 1972, regardless of residence. Northeast, Middle Atlantic, West Coast. Somehow the magazine, perhaps newsprint once, finds my mailbox.

Part of me is curious about my classmates. Where did they go? What are they doing? Once, I almost made a reunion. Next year, the 35th, I won't have much excuse for not ambling across the street. One who I would have enjoyed a laugh, a conversation, an indelible memory with won't be there.

R. Pryor Baird III. He introduced himself forthrightly as Pryor.

Maybe it's just me, but I would rather think that we run free through sections of golden fields, infinitely connected. We simply course one into another. Though, in this life passage, we open the pages of the alumni news in curiosity tempered by honorable trepidation.

Here was a guy I knew. Not well. But, my limited exposure was inspirational. Not just at W&M. I had previously witnessed him in action.

Many a talented student attends W&M. From our class of 1000, many have gone on to accomplish the wonderful. We're proud to say we knew them, even though our contact was brief and scarce.

Pryor was a runner on our 8-man mile relay team, The Tubes. He was excited when I asked him to join our team. My teammates might have been puzzled for a second. They wouldn't have guessed that he was a fast runner.

I knew better.

Our high schools in Richmond were rivals. In track and field, we were very competitive. Each team balanced in skill. My senior year, victory or defeat came down to a single point. And, while I could not testify that it was Pryor who contributed the numerical difference, I knew that his heart had.

On reading about him, I saw that he had started the first golf team at his school. I had a vague recollection that he played in college. He was athletic. A competitor. Direct. A very focussed individual.

He might have laughed and asked me why I wanted him to run. The truth was, We needed 8 guys who were fast. But, not just any 8 guys. They had to be able to sprint 220 yards between handoffs, without mishandling the baton, which can be difficult at the end of a leg when you are gasping for oxygen and legs full of sand. We wanted to win.

My memory of Pryor is as a guy throwing himself across the finish line in a 100-yard dash. Throwing, in a ferocious hurdle, himself ahead of a competitor, toward a string and on to a track. Made of asphalt! A statement about heart, competitive desire, leaving no unexpended joule.

I remember being frightened by the crash. That was my first reaction. Then, concern for his wellbeing. Even in the heat of battle, we find some way to care for and about each other. It seems fitting that, even after receiving a PhD in clinical psychology (I remember that was his goal), he would earn a medical degree from the University of Virginia, where he lived, practiced, and taught.

Heart. Effort. Determination. That's what I witnessed. For the possibility of gaining a single point, the difference, he sacrificed his body to the black top and his team.

My college team peers might have had questions about Pryor. Maybe they knew he played on the golf team and wondered if golfers knew how to run. He was a skinny kid to boot. Skinny legs.

Or, maybe it was the fact that he had one arm.

Human nature is the source of assumptions, hypotheses, and theories. Defiance, ignorant of all.

Pryor wore regular sneakers. Had I been running against him, stolen a glance at the starting blocks and his shoes, I would have chuckled with blatant inexperience. Today, a shiver would travel my spine. Uh-oh.

He did not practice much with us. I can hear him saying, Let me start it off, Corey. A guy with this kind of heart, you'd put in the front or at the end. I am sure we debated the order, but Ronnie Busic, our fastest guy, probably went first. In any case, Ronnie would get us a 10 - 20 yard lead that would only grow. If it was Pryor, we would have been in the hunt.

Because we were studying much of the time that freshman year, we never knew our comparative speeds, only our best high school times. In short, close sprint relays, it's the handoffs that determine the outcome. That's what we practiced, assuming we would all hold up between them.

The result was exciting. Record-smashing. Had it been closer, maybe I could have convinced Pryor to run with us in the succeeding years. This was a guy interested in mountain-climbing challenges.

Over the next few years, I saw him around campus. He would often have a pencil planted behind his ear, carrying an armful of books, moving as if he was always late. Smart, serious, and on to the next thing. We'd exchange pleasantries without pause.

What happened to Pryor after graduation was already there. Destined to happen.

We have a tendency to think that no one notices us, our actions. They do. Small, almost invisible earthly impressions expand into bigger footprints. Some small ways about us are difference makers for others, our teams, our schools. Our country.

Judgements, on the other hand, can be amazingly wrong. Reason for pause. Reflection.

In Pryor's case, we were graced with a wound healer, a teacher, an example, an inspiration. And, it did not take long for all to know it.

Reconnection: Filming History and Context in Goochland

2010-12-30T10:32:00.012-05:00

Image via Wikipedia

What would I expect to find 41 years later?

Coming from Upstate NY, we arrived abruptly in January of 1969. Snow on the ground then, as it was yesterday, when global cooling was not yet the anthem of a lone climatologist.

My Dad would needle my Mom, "Welcome to the Sunny South." She grew up in Charlottesville. Fewer cloudy days, less snow and no cold: These conditions were touted. Dad knew better. A native Upstate New Yorker, he graduated from UVA Law School, where they met. He was having fun. Feeling good about the change of residence, leaving his law practice behind, beginning anew with Lawyer's Title Insurance.

Change: You can't escape it. As sure as air will penetrate your lungs this moment and your heart lumbers to make another pump.

Even in Goochland, a little town outside of Richmond, Virginia, people weren't sure of the address of our first appointment. We drove by the sign three times before seeing it. We were looking for a street number.

Street numbers and road names go together out here. Residents know the roads and turns. Navigate unconsciously. With few visitors, directions are unnecessary.

On first impression: People in Goochland are friendly to strangers; we were familiar strangers, my son and I. We came here to visit the milestone of the most tragic event of my life, my family's life, when we were all young. Happy, then incredibly stunned, testing human resilience, changing directions.

Until July 20, 1969, I did not know the void. A black, empty, bottomless hole that has been tagging along with me ever since, like a distant relative. There. The hole is a place where memories descend with a force for which mortals are no match.

I sat and explained it all, in front of a perhaps mystified childhood friend, the leader of our rock band, JB Hodges, who I had not seen since our last, and best-paying, gig at a Christmas party in Charlottesville in December 1969. At my Godmother's place. Aunt Lucy. We were a hit. Ray, singing on the stairway to the second floor, to a girlfriend in the mirror, with JB and Mike somewhere below. I was back in the corner with a trimmed down drumkit, playing with brushes. We were mindful of an oxymoron, playing rock music quietly. Christmas songs interspersed.

We spoke fondly. We were friends, never argued, came from different worlds, connected for the purpose of playing music for appreciating fans. For 14-16 year olds, we played as if professionals. Always. The glimmer of an idea to make money at the American Legion Hall: A dingy, white-painted cinderblock, building. That was not to code, I am sure. No AC, no fan. Playing there on Thursday nights, in the summer, was a test of stamina. We kept our clothes on back then. It was rock music, but played with style and harmony; JB recalled that it was the singing which carried us. Still, we played loudly and with conviction, as far as our equipment would allow. The drummer, me, cautioned, on occasion, to keep it down. A ritualistic solo was granted to exhaust my excess energy.

We played weekly gigs, rehearsed together for all of two months, I figure. My mom and dad were chaperones for the maybe six weeks of dances. JB remembered him as polite, interested, and a nice man. That he dropped me and my small pile of drums off at the Hall for practice. Death brands an unforgettable impression on our beings when we are young, innocent, inexperienced.

The film will show a man, soon to be 58, eyes closed, lids flickering, as he looks slightly upward for the visuals, the sounds of a long ago time, to help his drummer and his drummer son film Goochland's past. As with all memories, they are nudged from crevasses in flashes from somewhere by a word. A sound. Something.

It's more amazing that the resident of the address we had trouble finding, our first interview, now 90 years old, and our family's real estate agent could dig that far back. Vigor must not leave us, if it was ever there. Mrs. Frances Truett. The Truetts. The sign was plainly visible from the road. The trees had grown around the sturdy brick house. Same house. The sign was the third one, she said.

Goochland County lies 40 miles deep. We were speaking with Goochland's first real estate agent and a businesswoman. Her practice, begun in 1945, give or take. She worked until 84.

We are filming a story about a father and son making a documentary movie together. Traversing life's landscape. But, we're really filming the stories of people from a small town in Virginia. That could be any town in America, where generations live. Tombstones, the reminders.

Her story was powerful. An opportunity to recall a splendid career that began on a different path. To laugh about "Fun Farm", the name of the place she found for our family to rent. The barn, she recalled, was much bigger than the house. Barns were scarce back then and with horses in tow, more important than people. That was all Mom.

After a two hour session, cookies and coffee, we made our way to Grace Church. Met the Rector there. Filmed the 130 year-old church. I well-remember the small doors, greeting the then Reverend Brietenbach on Sunday morning's exit. I was an acolyte, along with his son, Tim, and daughter, Amy. I showed Corey the secret place, the sanctuary, where we dressed and prepared for the 8 AM service. My boyhood rendition made the current Rector wince a bit. From 12 - 15, it was my honor to serve, but still it was like a hiding place. A small protected corner of the world.

Though we attended the church for a few weeks thereafter, it was the special service for him which I will always remember. I thanked the Reverend for bringing meaning to prayer that to a teenager would usually sound like an unintelligible, run-on sentence, Amen. Would rather be honest than not.

For me, that day, faith hit home, like the same thunderbolt that struck Dad. You have and feel it or you don't. No mortal man can give it to you. JB reflected on the reason "God took your Daddy." He did not know why. All he understood, accepted and believed was in the idea of destiny and a plan. Even on the worst of days, I never questioned the event's reason. Simply experienced the void for the first time.

As children we are accidentally taught to fear the dark. The Christian's child's prayer, Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep. Turns out that fear is a good thing. A human thing. Respecting it, we stay in-line. Recognize that we co-exist with each other.

The Trenches arrived in Goochland with fanfare, lived happily for less than a half-year, and departed minus one. Humbled. Dad was not buried at Grace Church. Several people asked. He was happiest here, I felt.

Our relationship was just beginning in many ways. Coming back, I wanted to pay my respects to what might have been. Acknowledge people. You live many places, you might repeat that phrase, Might have been. Could have been great, but maybe not.

In life, you create a character, an ideal, and then you live by it, I suppose. It becomes your guide until you grow into a person who moves less self-consciously. A moment must come when that transition occurs. I don't remember it, exactly. When you are part of your own family unit.

We returned to say good-bye, film a conclusion and say hello. Begin again, again.

Mrs. Truett did not miss a beat and researched Fun Farm. The news, she said, was not good. The house property was gated and locked. Sacred grounds were less friendly. The house thought to be gone, we confirmed, from a safe distance, was still there. The barn, a neighbor confirmed, was large and standing. He advised us to speak with the caretaker before embarking on any foolish adventures. Dogs were around. The neighborhood not connected positively to the property's owner.

We tried, but were turned away. What happens next will appear in the trailer.

The goal was to collect enough material to make a trailer for the documentary, then to see if anyone would sponsor a more involved project. In documentary filmmaking, the material takes you to a place. We definitely have characters. Now, we shall see what the filmmaker does.

Blind Arrow Flying: Questions for 2011

2010-12-28T06:01:00.004-05:00

Entering the New Year, predictions and forecasts abound, but none anticipate the unknown. Petty and pesque questions to tickle imagination's neurons must suffice.

Questions unanswered bring annual greetings:

What will happen to the price of undelivered natural gas fuel? Has it hit a floor?
Is our underground shale so rich that utilities will turn on the spigots to make electricity?
Will consumers continue to switch to energy efficient appliances, furnaces and lighting?
Housing, is it stuck?
Will the untethered continue to migrate to tax-free states? Freedom.
Will institutions continue to prune old branches, improve energy efficiency significantly?
Discontinuous flow of electrons and photons likely?
Will government add more subsidy to wind, sun, corn crops, but not rain?
Is coal really dead (48% US electricity) or generationally Y-faddish to hate?
How many climate scientists are there in the world v. coal miners?
Rail: What new positions will the Omaha Oracle take in the commodity price chain?
China's electricity? 80% from coal. China has 40 years of reserves. Will US mine owners sell out?
Has nuclear power development fully set like a relaxing ride on a commercial jet?
Will anything revolutionary happen here or are we now a "design only" country?
North America's energy dominance: Will it dissipate along with wealth?
Alms spread around the globe?
Dirty, soiled hands and knees, blood, sweat, and tears: Paper, plastic or neither?
History: What's that?
Work: Must we?
Are we smart enough to modify DNA or creating a miraculous nightmare?
What will become of abandoned space in American Rust?
Any alternatives to the gas pedal? Strung up wires?
If we could see wireless emissions, what would we think of data smog?
Servers: Digital operators that need no holiday, only electrons and FCC regulation?
Time-energy is more efficiently spent or a-wasting on travel and trivial texting?
The handwritten letter, Ready for a comeback or condemned along with critical thought?
Movement or curfew?
Business as usual or not even close?
Retirement, an interesting idea but irrelevant without mobility?
Insurance for all, but more unaffordable than ever?
The neighborhood, the village, the family: What are they?
Co-housing, small house developments: What is the future of the community?
Will anyone go to medical school? Open a practice?
New business: Law-medical-dental-insurance, Amalgamated?
Primary and secondary education: Is teaching to the standardized test yielding results?
How does college differ from high school? Or, is it expensive brain maturation?
What happens if our computers don't work?

Signs Across America: Build Here Now!

2010-12-20T08:53:00.005-05:00

Image via Wikipedia

I was gifted a great idea for a film documentary looking at NIMBY. A psychological look.

On hearing it, my wife, our home's idea factory, came up with, BHN, Build Here Now!

I always wondered why municipal trash made its way to Pennsylvania along Route 81, off the PA Turnpike. Land, easy transportation access? Maybe, they wanted it. They liked building new mountains, an extension of the Poconos. Lenient regulation.

How about jobs?

Here is one reality that is inescapable. I don't care what generation this is. People want to work. If for no other reason, than their personal dignity.

Yes, they need the funds to pay for heat, food, and shelter, but it is the reason for living, purpose, dignity that we shudder at offers of charity.

A guy loses his job after 30 years. It is explained to him that his company benefits will last for the next 12 months. When asked what he would like to do, after operating a forklift and similar equipment, his response is, "To help other people who find themselves in a similar predicament to mine."

This is what I heard a guy say on Rush's radio show last week. An avid listener to Rush for 23 years, the caller took issue with his stance on the extension of unemployment benefits. It was the first time he had an issue with him, he said.

Rush told of his woes of unemployment. Buried long in his past, but I am sure painful and self-motivating. He tried to relate and explain, but not well, in my opinion. And, I like Rush.

He's smart. Motivational. Conservative. Entrepreneurial. He knows the political battlefield better than anyone. While he has been slow to arrive at the Tea Party, and I am still not sure he really understands its non-political affiliation, he acknowledges its determination.

The problem Rush was raising is that, Under our current economic system, we can't extend unemployment benefits forever. The day of reckoning is here, but elected officials persist in postponing the inevitable, hoping all will demographically self-correct: Old people will die. Young will inherit their parents' jobs. Debts will be repaid. Besides, it's Christmas for God's sake!

The problem, as Ron Paul has been hammering on it for years, is monetary policy. How boring. Monetary system. Our approach is based on borrowing against an ever-brighter lightbulb. (Not cash, interest-free repayment terms.) Otherwise, how could we ever settle our debts?

Smart people. Mathematical formula types. Take a simple idea – I borrow from you, you agree to pay me back – and have turned that guarantee to repay into another way to make money. The layered movie Inception comes to mind. There is no way out.

Unless someone knows something, 2012, debt cannot grow infinitely without eroding a mighty Rocky Mountain of confidence into the tidal sands of complacency. That's the point at which we don't want to retain one grain of dignity.

Yes, as we age, fade from our desire to pursue the familiar, the routine, I think we should be allowed to sink into creation, critical thought. Read.

Pass on our piles of experiences, wisdom: Our gift to the next generation.

Here it is.

Productive work makes people happy.

If we do discourage the proposal of new developments, ideas, factories, and windup building nothing anywhere, eventually what kind of world will one have made?

Well, I think we retrofit existing premises, under the watchful eyes of building inspectors.

We extend an already elaborate transportation system that must operate on fossil fuels. The vary thing idealism claims to loathe.

We fill coffee shops, restaurants, and bars, giving people places to go, to connect, watch sports and business news, and spend their unemployment, disability, or social security checks. Ever been to Rhode Island? The US state that has the most experience vegetating in between sleep and sunrises.

Can we last in this condition? For how long?

As a thought experiment, wonder if Government taxed us to the point that we needed take out mortgages, home equity lines of credit to pay our taxes?

We course a path that will build unending subsistance. Sounds depressing. It is.

Funny, here in Williamsburg, the city taxes the service industry. Not the manufacturing industry or the nonprofit industry. And, what new enterprises are coming to town to make things?

They want to make electricity across the James River in Surrey. Around our town, you see signs in people's yards. "No Coal Plant." And, one sign, "No electricity."

It is as if we collectively believe, as reflected in citizen advocacy, government laws and regulations, that wealth and good times materialize out of thin air. Today's problems, if you are old enough, you do not own. That's the guy who replaces you.

What is a blog anyway? I have illegibly "written to think" for years. Self-analyzed, self-pumped myself up. What motivates me is one thing, We can do better. Not a little better, a LOT BETTER.

The obstacles, in any self-reflection, these are what kill desire. You can't dream possibilities, if there is some regulation, some pending lawsuit, insurance requirement that is equivocal. There is quite enough inertia.

How many brainstorming sessions have one naysayer that feels compelled to quash before the dream fully unfolds? Clearly, they're terrified for their circumstance. The linear life they know.

I don't understand what salvation we find running around the world "helping" when we have East St. Louis, Detroit, Buffalo ... keep going. Why are we saving the world, letting our own die?

Do we feel guilty over past prosperity? Because it has passed.

For every student, here in America, who drops out of school, for one reason or another, we extend the unemployment line, the educated and the uneducated, if there is nothing for them to make.

Are we going to build windmills, grow ethanol with hybrid seeds? Is this how we are going to grow our way out? And, only in those places where there is no NIMBY? Or, are we going to pass more controlling legislation that forces construction?

Our founders knew that a moral society is driven by moral people. Our representation.

Most of us have us have no confidence in the federal government. See it as more stifling than helpful. Yet, at 300 million plus people, somehow we have convinced ourselves that if we just stay the course, it will go away.

How?

No one wants to address this question. They'd rather watch a football game, go for a walk, call someone to commiserate. It's cold outside. That is someone else's responsibility to figure it out.

Business school students inquire, How do you start it, make the plunge?

Answer: You see and know the opportunity. You act on it. Sometimes, it takes a string of doors you pass through to realize the plunge.

That's no guarantee of success or success forever. That is a different occupation and more like Survivor, not to be confused with pioneering, exploration, entrepreneurship. It's lonely out there.

Build it here!

We need to come home. Stop chasing the Earth's rotation. Look inside. Deeply. Take the handcuffs and chains off and stop administrating our way out.

Is it all that serious?

Humanity's trudge toward wisdom

2010-12-13T09:59:00.015-05:00

Having exhaustively logged a life in the field of environment, since 15, I am shifting my emphasis –moving more toward creation and building something new and different. Less environmental advisory, advocacy, research.

Unfortunately, much of the scientific and engineering is being eclipsed by advertising. Mass licensing. Cleaning up old messes without much consideration for the creation of new ones. Mobilization: Linkage of a professional pursuit to a societal, economic and cultural revolution. Sustainability: A mass movement. That does not mean that there are not professionals laboring out there. There are.

This is not the world I grew up in, nor the people I worked with to make improvements in the way we did business, working together with mutual respect, as if we lived in a free society. I have seen fads before, and this is one giant fad with a faulty endpoint, carbon. The goal is a mystery. Not one of process, getting better, one of a new shade of blind ambition. A zebra with green stripes. Sales of new toys, exporting pollution.

Student protests, activism: They are an occasion to socialize and party. London, Paris ... is NYC next? (Study this picture carefully. See the pocketbook. The fashion statement. The social "I-experience": "See me, I was here for the destruction.") It's the picture of cool, entitlement, not stewardship. Destruction, not construction. And, vastly different from the civil disobedience and the environment left behind DC 9-12-09. (And, where were our commercial journalists then, warming the bench, seeking a larger, visible flame, with billowing black smoke, to record.)

My departure from the subject matter, not a belief system, is normal. We are part of Nature's ecology, a larger cosmos, whether we want to accept it or not. Besides, the individual freedom to create is something altogether different from Pavlovian training-style reform, habit-changing. We know better than you. Crashing the old system, as the new icons of the environmental movement, smiling, well-dressed – are inclined to espouse, but angry and divisive in their speech. When will the red warning flags spontaneously erupt?

I want no part of wanton economic destruction and centralization, the New World Order. No matter the commercial and industrial communities involved. Fakery is fakery. Or, is it sham with a purpose. Sales. Conformity. 1984. FEMA camps (What's that?) for the civilly disobedient.

My take is that there is no opportunity for a practitioners' view today. Common sense. An academic's approach, at the federal level, is dangerously compromising institutional memory and threatening our demise. Much more significant and consequential are the machinations of men taking place right now.

America needs to replace NIMBY with BHN - Build Here Now.

The basis of this movement to be Number 1 in sustainability makes no sense. There is no goal and a very weak process, filled with advertising and targeting marketing. I hear familiar refrain: Life is complex. There are a lot of people. It never sells with me that complex problems demand complex solutions. That's how bureaucracies are made. Power and control concentrated. Seems obvious that the ongoing centralization and management of all manner of things guarantees the loss of freedom, individuality, creativity.

What I have a sense of is people. Americans. What will work and won't work for them. This genetic legacy will not remain buried forever. It's embodied in the soil. Will feed the future.

Americans cannot escape a penchant for the unalienable: individual liberty, right to assemble, right to own property. We have been lingering around the precipice of open confiscation and wealth redistribution, as if it were returning us to a country-founding mindset. Not this USA.

On the election of the new President, I wrote a favorite aunt who was excited about The Change. She had been waiting her whole life for justice. Alas, finally, the elite, their wealth would finally be taxed and right-sized and proportional. Those with family heritage, compounds and cash advantage would face equal opportunity. As if the same result would not prevail.

Rhetoric is always rhetoric. Nothing could be further from reality. The chasm is stretching inordinately. Galaxies are moving faster and faster away from each other, so inflationary theories of the universe educate us. Will it all turnout to be a rubberband that reaches a limit and rushes back to a single point? Reverse "Big Bang."

A Billionaires' Club promise to give away half of their assets is not much of a promise. They give it to themselves and their direction. That's what some entrepreneurs do. Set up foundations to contain and protect their wealth. Serve on each others' boards of director. You can't dress up control. Power. If that were all true, anonymity, not branding opportunity, would rule action, example and altruism. What appears, in public and print, is a peer pressure and threats. Find me human progress in this reality.

You can test the claim rather easily: Study the boards of the largest and most successful non-profits (and their profits); their schooling; their families; the companies that they came from; and their politics. Our economic icons, lauded philanthropists should not be confused with those engaged in a daily grind. Even more so, with the spiritually-guided. Those who do what they can. Pray for all mankind. An intention released far exceeds material value. Mountain tops and desert valleys bear these souls.

It's not a race. Living. It is living. Love surrounds us, and knows no space or time. You can't find that chart on the pages of the Wall Street Journal or on CNBC. The meter that matters the most. The measurements which bring smiles, warmth, comfort could appear on billboards in Times Square as easily as outside Bismarck, North Dakota. But, you can't find it? We're in discovery mode, still.

Yet, as I listen to the societal hum, outside my morning window, I just can't imagine either change. A renewal of spirit, a Grand Awakening, or change in traffic patterns, decision to walk quietly, non-wirelessly. Yet, I know it will come.

Schadenfreude is the German word for the "pleasure derived from the suffering of others." It life's nasty word for a common expression of human emotion that we are wont to disclose: the glee and satisfaction at the misfortune of others. Every Sunday, though, someone is sipping the electrifying liquid of his team's victory, which tastes sweeter because his rival is crying somewhere. It is undeniably sick, but true.

People make a living off Schadenfreude. For some, it is their lives. If there was no human suffering, there would be no reason to live. Knowing that people can find happiness inside of themselves, without criss-crossing city streets, is disquieting. A disturbing disease requiring eradicative treatment by a licensed professional.

News is Schadenfreude's elixir. The spinning weekend roadster on an organized track right before it explodes into flames. A disaster in slow motion. We pretend to avert our eyes, we know and don't know that there is a live human being inside. The sensation is that it is not us. Proof that we're all human and inclined to read the newspaper and watch TV news for the episodic thrill.

How have we become so upside down in priorities? Become so connected and disconnected at the same time. I have been writing about this subject for six years now. Really, not very long. Although, it is a long reflective, tiresome-to-read, rant that is part of new construction. While I have appeared to waste precious time, I wonder if I really have or is my vision actually improving.

From the perspective of a parent and father, I have had the great fortune to examine professional ambition. Find perspective in the next generation. What is the measure of gratitude? This could not have been accomplished outside the family unit.

It's looking more and more like destiny. The possibility, the choice, most likely to succeed. Without taking that long step, what would have happened?

No matter how you slice the turkey, carving is a process. More art than science.

While it strikes us as a leaky faucet that we just can't seem to turn off, we learn to live with ourselves. Learn from our experiences. Recognize that we change ourselves. That we connect with some broader planetary adjustment of humanity is more a matter of societal variation by biological individuals than a contrivance by governance. Automatically learned by trial-and-error.

John Wooden was a process coach. A winning process coach. You can see him seated in his metal chair, arms folded, papers rolled in his hand, observing his team play a regular game ... planning for the next practice. Was he arguing with referees, throwing chairs, getting caught in recruitment violations? Or, was he concerning himself with the execution of the process of play.

Wooden was making a world, one repeatable process built on top of another. At present, I see neither a process, nor a goal. More of a mass-numbing mind control, shuddering in situ.

It's bricks and mortar. Mass revolution on a global scale. The smallest locale is still the individual. The personal mind.

We can get caught up in the fact that we are older. Not hip. We need a re-training in the new movement for sustainability. How to behave as a consumer. A reverse mentoring by youth in the ways of texting.

Wisdom sticks. Outlasts the faddish.

"Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are."

- John Wooden, UCLA Basketball Coach

Does God do math? Risk assessments?

2010-12-08T08:06:00.008-05:00

Risk envelopes us.

Ever seen a picture of earth, at a distance, a notch on a sun's ray? Look to your right. That's us.

We're a speck in the Milky Way, as seen by Voyage 1, 4 billion miles away (1990). (Today 10.97 B.) And, this week we learned that the number of stars is triple what we thought.

Perspective. We can view our planet and its predicaments differently and do. Any one of which is possible, even happened already, according to quantum theory, the routes verified by experimentation and summation to infinity.

How did the planet ever survive ... a few billion years ago? How?

Before man was a glimmer. The soup served.

Looking at us, this grain of dust in the cosmos, are we at any more (or less) risk now than when we were born? Does man on earth really matter? We're on the celestial clock, you know.

The egocentricity that envelopes us is self-evident at the street level. Seeing this photo, though, that we ever thought that the sun, planets and stars revolved around us is comical. Absurd. Our vary existence remote.

If the Ancients had seen this picture, would they have abandoned the notion of the gods?

Yesterday, I finished slogging through Hawking's latest book, The Grand Design. A publisher-touted observation is that God was not necessary for the universe, as we know it, to exist. That message peculiar, a pheromone advertisement?

I did learn that physics and math can be used to calculate everything. You should take these subjects. Certainly, God must have.

The problem is, No one equation reconciles Big Things (Newtonian physics, as modified by Einstein) with things we cannot take photographs of (quantum mechanics), but know they are there somehow. Quarks, bosons, etc. Feynman's "M" theory is offered to help connect the boundless with the spotless.

I love reading this stuff. Cannot comprehend a wit of it.

What I see is a morsel of plankton, enveloped in a tentacle, attached to something huge. It's scary. Lonely. Vulnerable. Insignificant. And, billions of us live here separated by vast spaces.Yet, we are all connected to the first blast through the ancestry of particles and Facebook.

Hard to fathom. Does not help you arrive at work today with any less risk of being in an accident. From the perspective of a cosmos, you'd think we would cower under our bed covers. Sneak quietly around so as not disturb the gods, anger them. Perhaps we did already. Unknowingly, we await the response, light years away through space-time and eleven, now, dimensions.

Or, the opposite, keep so busy that we have no time to think about our perilous predicament. Happiness is, after all, being in The Flow. I have most of Mihaly's books on my shelf.

Listen, we're a good speck. At least, as good as any other out there. We can speculate further about the age and inflation of the universe, but, by this photo, it would seem not worth dwelling on.

We're in a spacecraft. With no learner's permit to drive. We move in predictable patterns relative to everything else. And, we have our best newly arrived human brains laboring over the math behind The Theory of Everything, seeking the elegant (key criterion, no constants allowed) explanation. What more can be expected of us?

I'd like to see the photograph of us from the perspective of a Boson particle. Wonder if Hadron can produce that view? I'd like to see how they see us.

Country Living

2010-12-06T06:55:00.004-05:00

Living in the country, the northern quadrant, around latitude 43 00 N, has its painful as well as irreplaceable moments.

After a twenty-year stretch of neighborhood life, where flushing toilets and endearing yelling could be heard at the sides, I had forgotten the sounds of silent country.

Off Deck, Burke Road, Pompey, NY

I had forgotten that artificial light impeded the view of a star-filled universe. I had forgotten the panoramic view of empty earth on crystal clear days. And, the sights of earth-emanating clouds overflowing distant glacial valleys, reaching for blue sky. A huge orange ball of fire, shaded, ever so slightly, in the southern hemisphere, perched on the morning’s horizon.

Save the mind, where else can one experience such sights and solitude? A place where the humming motors of mechanized civilization are overwhelmed by Nature’s chirping, buzzing, hoots, and cackles.

Where a hand wave by a local farmer communicates more than words. “I am okay. You’re okay. While we don’t talk much, I am here for you if you need me.”

All of this lured us from the neighborhood to the country and secured a psychological tether.

Only the weather could possibly temper our enthusiasm. One plans for its 6-month-130-inches-of-snow duration. Sunless days soak up our Vitamin D, dampening our ambitions and dispositions. We become bears, sleeping more. When awake, we drink more coffee per capita than anyone else in the nation, even Seattle – making us appear normal and attentive.

No other state resident would express irritation at an infrequent Indian summer day, which teases our minds with tropical possibilities. A few might act on the instinct to fly south.

Perhaps it takes an interminable, frigid winter to welcome the warm breezes of spring to help us appreciate life out here. Once we have stored away our snow blowers, fired up our lawnmowers, we find ourselves ritualistically walking along Burke and Sweet Roads, searching out our fellow country-men to make sure they are alive, even though we know they are.

Yep, the winters can be rough. But, it is the biennial property taxes that I find the most oppressing part of New York State country living and a good cause for venting.

This year I might try on a different conversation with the town tax assessor. I was thinking of suggesting a demolition of the thirty-year-old structures on this land, replaced with an authentic Onondaga Indian Nation longhouse, and our tribal declaration of reservation status. It’s one escape route.

Taxes must have been birthed in this state around the time of creation. It’s native to our soils and more of an elixir than not.

No place is the greener pasture, of course. Just different. The phrase, Wherever you go, there you are comes to mind.

The delicious dilemma of country living is that if we ever did substantially reduce the tax burden here, free capital for self-directed investments, we would attract people in droves. Look at Nevada, Texas and Florida. The geniuses figured it out.

And, that lovely silence? Buh-bye.

The hand wave might well be replaced by the single digit wave.

A typical traffic jam, a line of a mere five cars parked behind a stop sign, would take on different meaning. Something cataclysmic must have happened!

My mom, who lived in the country most of her life, used to say, “I don’t mind if people keep leaving Central New York, the quality of life will only improve for those that remain behind.”

On one level, I would agree. A resourceful, self-reliant person, content with survival, manages all thrown her way. Every problem contains its solution.

On three recent occasions, the Labor Day Storm (1998), The Black Out of 2003, and this summer’s road flooding episodes challenge our imaginations to continue. We locate those people we know, the ones behind the smiles and hand waves, for information exchange, assistance, and earnest, face-to-face communication. While life might not be as productive, by economic standards, it does feel better.

At the very least, I can be sure that my sons, Corey, Phil, and Collin won’t forget playing ball in the backfield, the cat and dog chasing each other about, staring into the night, imbibing and recording our every moment together. Somewhere, out here in the country.

(Ed. From The Box of Chocolates, 2004. My goal: Write a column every week for 52 straight weeks, on a full range of topics and interests, send them to my friends, family and associates. Achieved. Sometimes, rather than write fresh words here, I read from the past. Want to remember and re-post. An observation, though: A Colonial Parkway biker's wave is comparable to a "country wave.")

Readying for New Father-Son Documentary

2010-12-02T07:19:00.002-05:00

Reality TV and documentary films belong to the same genre. They are both stranger and infinitely more mind-suspending than fiction.

A friend observed, a few years back, that our generation would be reaching back in time, as we aged, and reconnecting with our childhood, college and first job friends. Our demographics are compelling, our future predictable. We have discovered "The Face Book" along with other social networks. A consternation to our progeny.

Maybe I prefer LinkedIn because of its aura of professionalism. One stitches new clothing together with cats-and-dogs of the past.

It could have been a smile. A guffaw. As we age, it seems the past re-lights our brains in bold and dramatic scenery that is more vivid than yesterday's Drudge Report of an empire's sinking into the muck.

Granted that I am reaching out, but still, there is an openness to receive, a swimming pool being filled.

It has been ongoing, as I have been long gone from the fray of trivial necessity. The world must turn, labor accomplished. Does a mind ever rest. Go on vacation. Or, is that more of a fantasy than reality?

A college resident assistant from my sophomore year found my door last week. Think of it, 36 years have passed. We might have seen each other at a reunion for a brief moment. We were connected by a conversation, across the street, which led to a small flurry of e-mails, and a great evening of acknowledgement. We are and were here. Thinking and doing. Walking life's road.

We developed friendships that last, though thousands of hours disintegrate between meetings.

My son, prompted by a college classmate, is considering how to build on a college documentary, Father's Son. Made with various scholarly restrictions on editing technique. He and I have wondered about our lives, their unfolding. Pre-destiny of DNA.

With each son, I have some subject matter that we intellectualize over. There is well-founded doubt that some ideas will actually be pursued. Uprooting the USA for Belize, for instance. That was one conversation. At least, there were ideas. Neurons fired. An imagination disturbed.

In one week's time, I connected with my internationally-inclined entrepreneurial colleagues bent on building settlements, environments, and educational systems of the future( 90s); life on campus in the 1970s and possibilities for giving something back; and the leader of a rock band from my youth, who I have not seen since 1969 and leaving the contrasts of ecstasy and tragedy to hold hands in some corner. His son, a musician in Farm Vegas.

Our documentary relates to a one-sided perspective, for now, but will evolve, no doubt. Of course, these things are made, just not printed for all to see, bounded by words, sounds, music to galvanize the images to select neurons. Life extension for the mind. Gifts to our future selves.

While not something in which I have schooled experience, I love the performing arts. Most people do. They guide media moguls to their preferences. Reality that we want to see, not necessarily share. That's what makes the documentary so compelling.

We will move ourselves. Ask good questions. Answer few. That's life. Choices we make from the doors which appear. The unexpected. It's always there, feigning a rattlesnake's strike.

Ambling around, searching for currency, the mind is a treasure trove of events connected to people, the ultimate social and historical network. Maybe it is simply the commonalities we enjoy discovering. Less than a temperature degree of difference.

We'll see what the lens uncovers. Know a storyteller's art. I'll post the trailer that results.

Mr. Christmas

2010-11-29T06:09:00.012-05:00

We know him as Mr. Christmas – the embodiment of all that is pure and good. (See his account here, A True Christmas Miracle, which made FreshlyPressed!)

I can’t remember when we first bestowed this title upon him. While he deserves its ownership, his brothers and I share in the holiday wonder. It’s a way about him, though, that earns him the extra pocketful of distinction. His bright red Christmas hat hanging on for dear life to his perfectly round head.

Santa Claus is but a step in our innocence. Afterwards, there is always a Mr. Christmas to keep his memory alive.

Few of us are comfortable, as he, in our imaginations. Living within a real time motion picture, wagon wheels of film stock whirring through his head. His world is a split screen. Cognizant of both, he quietly shifts between them, but if he had his way, he would project the beauty of these views.

Curled beneath the Christmas tree that we had cut down together, a family tradition, just the day before, he waits. His hat’s white furry band rests below his brow, completely obscuring his eyes. Unbothered, he holds a sculpted wooded train engine in his hands.

He soft fingers twirl the wheels. What does he see? Though I want to know, if I inquire, he will startle, acting as if he had done something wrong. His only sin: he dreams. He dreams the way we once did with long suspended pauses, saturated by fantasy’s oblivion. Peaceful observation can be the better part of fatherly valor.

Bending to the floor, he aligns his gaze to the engine wheels and track grooves. Train, hand, drooping Santa hat, swaying fluff ball crawl in unison. Where are they going? Outside, through a patchwork of windows, the sun is streaming through waving oak trees into the living room. The ground is bare green; the color of a California winter. But, as Mr. Christmas trundles in a circle beneath the tree arms, a giggly smile overcomes his face, eyes twinkle, snowflakes of all colors surround him in a gentile vortex.

He’s warm. He’s cold. Goosebumps pop from his naked little arms. Please do not disturb, I remind myself.

All of sudden, he stops, quickly twists toward me, pivoting onto the feet of his cuddly soft red pajamas. I wish I had a pair. He’s known I was standing there, in the other screen, all along. Is this a commercial break? And, begins his monologue, “You know, Santa and his elves are packing the sleigh with all the toys for the boys and girls.” I nod in the affirmative.

Nearly grown up, it is no surprise that he has mesmerized his peers. On the playground. Speaking about Greek Gods in 6^th grade, then it was civil rights. Acting in Shakespeare. Now, it is all about making films and just as enrapturing. While cradled in my arms, who knew that he came equipped with many a picture show.

Mr. Christmas teaches the purity of love. He holds nothing back. He shares all. When not sharing, he listens intently to others. He is blessed to freefall into their worlds. He touches their knowing and so reveals his secret ingredient. He knows our minds better than we do.

Unbundled joy, that’s how I would describe him. It’s not just for this day, this season, it is for all time, even out of bleeding despair.

Always, there is one Brutus out there. A once crushed little one who enjoys turning up the volume on reality -- manhandling the crowd’s adulation in their direction. Prematurely forcing this dad’s hand, producing one of my saddest moments, one that only this elusive, sleigh-bell-ringing, awkwardly dancing idiot could deliver.

“Mr. Christmas, can you come into the bedroom with me?”

“Sure!” He jumps. He thinks it’s a game. A mere lamb, so trusting … Is there a single tear not raining down on my insides, as I close the door behind us.

“Son, you know Santa Claus …”

“Yes, Dad.”

“Well, he is a spirit in her hearts.”

“Yes, and he also lives at the North Pole.”

“In the most important place, son. Our imaginations. Our beings.”

“He’s not a real person is he, dad?”

He lands an unanticipated first blow, I react with the final one, “No, he’s not.”

If a child, so young, could release a flood and suck it back into its reservoir, in one barely audible choke, only Mr. Christmas could have accomplished the heroic, the impossible.

I reach to envelop him, squeeze out our mutual pain. Somehow I had managed to figure out the Santa mystery and was unsurprised when my dad told us. I had avoided the only mortal injury of Christmas until that grasp. Of unfortunate freewill, I tore both our hearts to pieces.

Courage surfaces at the oddest times, though. In true fashion, Mr. Christmas, a mere eight-year old lad, looked deep into my eyes, “It will be okay, Dad.”

And, so it has. The wooden train, stitched to its tracks, beneath the freshly cut spruce, still. Mr. Christmas and his brethren Messieurs, dressing the tree, recounting seasons gone by, the day they learned about Santa Claus, searching longingly for the frosty sprinkles of New York. Smiling and laughing at each other, with me, off in the corner, thinking, “How wise and right he was.”

(Ed. From The Box of Chocolates, 2006. My goal: Write a column every week for 52 straight weeks, on a full range of topics and interests, send them to my friends, family and associates. Achieved. (A prelude to this blog and today's hiatus.) Sometimes, rather than write fresh words here, I read from the past. Want to remember and re-post. Very soon, Mr. Christmas arrives.)

Revisiting a Settlement Mentality: Thinking on Life Cycle of Cities/Suburbia

2010-11-16T06:31:00.018-05:00

Explore the wasteland of abandoned cities and find the suburbs that grew around them. The value shift is visible.

No one would have believed, in the 1940s and early 50s, that distant towns and villages would become the hubs of the incredible surge of American prosperity. Places that were once referred to as "cow towns."

What drove the move? It's always more complex that we think.

First, they were reachable by mass transit. An affordable house with a small parcel of land was possible. City-based homes were limited in number and too expensive for the budding new middle class. The fact that you could catch a bus to downtown made living "in the country", with one car, possible. I know because we drove my dad to the bus stop for his ride to-and-from work downtown at the State Tower Building.

Then, there was cheap energy. Gas was less than $1 a gallon. Electricity was so cheap that most employed it for baseboard heat. Central air was not necessary.

After two cars in the garage, they started multiplying asexually. The car became more than a luxury. We were becoming a highly mobile society, even within our own borders.

"Keeping up with the Joneses," was an oft repeated slogan throughout the 1960s that morphed into a lifestyle, a goal, an expectation that fueled an economy that we know as consumer society. So powerful was this predilection that we had no difficulty whatsoever with the idea of sharing it with the rest of the world, less than a generation later. A really short time when you think about it.

NAFTA, while fought by labor, who was a large influential force of the middle class, was the beginning of the world's flattening, as Thomas Friedman would popularize it.

To keep pace with each other and worship at the alter of consumerism, which is entangled with capitalism, we had to outsource to the least cost producer. We had to automate. We had to invent more leisure, entertainment, education. Students would have to aspire to the Peter Principle in great numbers. Everyone was slated to become an inventer, researcher, or service provider. That's still the goal, right?

Computerization and communications were like steroids to our pursuit of the quantum leap out of the dingy factory. Stiff environmental, health, and safety standards would further distance us from physical labor of an assembly-line work. (Zero emissions, zero accidents, zero lawsuits.) Of course, it still goes on, but not work youth would aspire to do.

Even the American farmer would have trouble convincing his progeny that farming was the life. Wander around America and study those who operate farm machinery and you will see 70, 80, and even 90 year old men still doing what they know.

The change has been swift, but not irreversible. The youth are starting to figure it out. The same hands that play on computer-generated battlefields, desire to make something physical. Something that they can see, enjoy with a pride of workmanship. That's a trade. Tradesmen are necessary in this world, where building and repair are required. Nothing lasts forever. Generation Y is figuring that out. Looking at the training and education offered and wondering about its value, where it is taking them.

In the same way they decide which game is the best form of entertainment, perhaps the right education is only a single turn away on the channel dial.

We tend to judge this crowd, our kids, too harshly for the path that we walk on. That they don't work as safe in risky environments or as diligently or as hard as we do. They notice and tend to health ailments sooner. Their phones are locked to their consciousnesses and they pretend that multi-tasking is better than focus. These refrains can be heard.

We have forgotten what it was like to have boundless raw and sexual energy, trying to keep it in check, but sometimes failing miserably. Caffeine, while the drug of focus, and overused drink can reek havoc with calm.

We have forgotten idealism because reality came quickly to our world. Their reality, their expectations are the same, for their age. And, theirs will change, as did ours.

Our world has seemingly turned inside-out in a mere two years.

With the recent crash of home values in the suburbs, city living and its benefits are getting a second look. Youth are flocking to NYC and Boston, I am told. The only thing saving us right now is relatively cheap energy ... gas prices.

How much longer can we keep de-valuing our dollar, with current Fed policy, before we need counteracting price growth? We can't look at gold for any particular reason, other than it has lagged economic prosperity, according to Jim Rogers, and should be around $2,000 an ounce, at least.

With the advent of the big box store, successful chains and franchises, so went my hometown of Manlius, NY's hardware store.

The 5-and-10 store, also gone, had cheap bazooka bubblegum and the movie theatre (still there) was next door. Mom felt it was a safe place to leave for us an hour or so.

If you look at the town today, it is close to what it was. Only the two stores are missing from its center. Somehow the barber shop manages to hang on nearby Dad's old law office, which is an insurance company. The fire station was converted into the home of an architect.

There is more of an emphasis on coffee, donuts, and fast food, though. Manlius is a pass-through place. Not a spot to stop, park and socialize or visit. Hub towns for suburbs became drive through feeding troughs outside homes, neighborhoods, gated communities.

The setup requires change, if we are to become a more personally connected society. Same goes for our neighborhoods. A return to settlement concepts.

I favor a more pedestrian town. That would be the heart of Trench Town's (Yes, we arrived in America through Jamaica) settlement design. The place I would want to live out my days.

In the 1960s there were traffic jams in Manlius around the several lights, ingress and egress for Cazenovia and Syracuse. Some things don't change.

One of my new friends here made a similar comment about Williamsburg. It is not structurally arranged for high interactivity, community. I suggested that the college extend and open its grounds up to the DOG street weekend farmer's market. Create a welcome mat to the community, which is, quite frankly, old, crotchety, stuffy, traditional ... in contrast to youth!

Somehow Ithaca manages with its Commons and extensive bartering system. To make a community, you have to foster connection, personal connection.

Co-housing, a mall, a retirement village, an amusement park, a college campus dance around the concept, which will happen as our economic ecology evolves.

We should give some attention to imagining self-contained and pedestrian towns. Scooters and Segways, okay. Bikes ... even they can speed recklessly. Maybe, single gear bikes and riders without helmets. Risk is tolerable.

Why couldn't we design a town that kept traffic on the outskirts. Think of Disneyland (Anaheim, CA). Busch Gardens (Williamsburg, VA). The only traffic should come from stocking stores. Or, a completely different idea for logistics.

A town as a mall.

For some reason, we designed towns to be entered and departed with horses, buggies and then cars. We over-designed them for copious shopping and under-designed them for traffic and its technical advancement and societal progress.

Now no one is happy and probably not safe.

Drivers hate the interruption of crosswalks. People scurry to avoid collisions with cars, trucks and buses.

It has been a while since I ventured into the science of ekistics, and I can see how city and regional planning have returned to a haphazard state, where we place band-aids on problems and states and communities compete for scarce economic activity. Think of a eutrophic lake, nutrients overtaking oxygen, living things starving for life. A bounded ecosystem must turnover to flourish.

C. A. Doxiadis, the father of ekistics, came up with the idea, partly from his studies of Aristotle, who believed that cities should be happy and safe, and partly because of his concern for the inevitability of George Orwell's Dytopia. Loss of humanity. We observe signs of it.

The police state. Policemen and emergency vehicles speeding up and down town streets. Or the more symptomatic: An opportunity for crime (speeding), the design of road networks and paving that catalyze its fever.

The x-ray monitoring and physical inspection of children, senior citizens, and the handicapped for explosives in airports. We're naturally uncomfortable. Something is wrong.

This is not freedom. An inalienable right. Nor is it humane or civil. These actions are justified by the institutions of power and control as means to encapsulate the minimal risk of loss of life during rare events. How does this make any sense? It doesn't.

Think of high school students caught cheating with their cell phones. You take them away. You think they won't find another avenue. Yet, how much time and energy will be invested in policing? When the core problem is cheating. Why do they do it? What is a test?

We are experts at school administration and in-school police control; encouraging dropout rates; teaching to standardized tests to standardize teacher performance. Making a better "average."

America, as corporation, is a bureaucracy. A ripe lake. All great bureaucracies eventually crash of their own weight. They are unsustainable. You can name many. No faddish process will save them, though we never tire of trying.

Invention is the harder work. It has no precedent.

Been a long time since I waded broad field of planning. Kind of a misnomer, really. Yes, it is about order. Order with purpose. Mindfulness. Of what mind is America now operating under?

As our economy resets and our government teeters on revolution by the people, and the ruling class parks their wealth offshore while calling for more taxation and government control of the people beneath them – Are we ready for a new settlement?

Flying: It is no longer fun and frivolity

2010-11-14T09:48:00.020-05:00

Mary Schiavo, former Inspector General of the Department of Transportation, once predicted that there would be two forms of air travel.

The endless cattle car or bus-type transportation for the majority of us and then the express line, private jet for the wealthy and privileged. Perhaps a business opportunity is out there for a gamely libertarian alternative.

With the 9-11 caused scrutiny, a good call by Mary.

When computerization was barely a glimmer, I recall the days, during the "Luxury Era" (60s,70s, 80s), that you could easily switch airlines and tickets. Get to the airport at the last minute. Slip through a closing hatch. Despite the heart pounding, perspiring, and air gulping, all you needed was ... a ticket!

Flying was glamorous. A Braniff 727 came standard with leather seats. Flight attendants were fashionably dressed, passenger-friendly, and served decent food. A drink was extra? That was always extra, but they took cash.

At random, I was once upgraded to First Class. (Airlines would surprise us back-in-the-day.) First thing I did was work with a fight attendant to send a note and drinks to some business friends sitting in coach. She cheerfully participated in the pass-it-on gesture. The flight duration, maybe 2-hours.

Fast forward. We are being driven from the skyways to the highways by the discomfort and over-the-top scrutiny of our faces, ids, tickets – being either felt-up by strangers dressed in policeman's attire or herded through x-ray body scanners. The incredible waste of time, the immobility of it. Not such a friendly experience, nor energy conservation mechanism.

Some would say it is the price of freedom, keeping people safe and happy? An Aristotelian concept of city design and planning. Or, an antique phrase, "Those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither ..." - Ben Franklin (in a letter to his father, April 13, 1738)

Do you see anyone smiling, joking and laughing in an airport atmosphere? Maybe at a bar, well ahead or behind TSA surveillance.

No, we are shrinking further and further into the shells of our bodies, becoming more suspicious of everything and everyone, especially so-called authority figures.

You'd have to have traveled in a communist country to know that it is all fluff ... show and control, and little substance. You wait by a telephone booth-like structure as a uniformed guy pretends to study your visa and passport. He taps some fake worn, metal box, as if that means anything. It doesn't. The idea is to make you squirm, feel fearful, uncertain about whether you will be going home.

Creating a sense of personal discomfort is the first step toward manipulating millions of people to cooperate. Do what a few want you to do. (Update 11/24/10: Here is how you know that this is true.)

We're a stone's throw away from having to bribe our way around the landscape.

Wonder what's next? Curfews.

We're well past 9-11, isn't it about time to start accepting some risk, personal responsibility for each other, and getting back to being free again?

While we're repealing acts, how about we repeal the Patriot Act (extended, by the way, by this President who roundly criticized it). It's useful life was maybe 90 days.

Let's let the free market decide what's best for its customers. Because, if this is the best we can do, radiate people, without 100% effectiveness, the deterrent is fatal.

Midnight flash: Being less is more.

2010-11-13T04:02:00.003-05:00

Image via Wikipedia

Most writers are touched on their shoulders late at night, early in the morn. I am sure of it.

Maybe they were thinking hard on a subject during the day, but nothing was coming of it.

Or, were we visited in our sleep and provided insights from the great beyond?

My flash was of an extraction, a fading from the landscape, a change from over-expectation. A memory that carries on the wind.

The translated revelation: Letting go of some long-held goals and ambitions. Simplifying.

Picking up life's paint brush.

Mountains

2010-11-04T07:18:00.002-04:00

Cover via Amazon

This week (April 23, 2004) I took a short vacation from watching TV and listening to the radio, particularly Talk Radio, so that I could read Mountains Beyond Mountains by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Tracy Kidder (a gift from some new friends). Have yet to come back.

For those willing to escape the Good Life of America for the reality of the Other Side of the World, you will be greeted by a fast-paced read about a bootstrapped, Tier 1-educated, American MD-Sociologist and his quest to save Haitians from infectious diseases and their co-conspirator, poverty despite voodoo and political upheaval. A single person inspires the formation of a merry band of planetary saviors, Boston-based Partners in Health (PIH).

This true story is the anecdote to mindless TV shows, political background noise, and thinking about your future. It will change your perspective and open your mind. It’s also cheaper, safer and less difficult than traveling to places that we would otherwise not go, because of State Department warnings and common sense, for the same experience.

Ever follow a doctor around for a day? Their pace is frenetic. Author Kidder does his best to keep up with the good Dr. Paul Farmer for about a month. Might as well have been a year.

The two shuttle back and forth between Boston, MA and Port of Prince, Haiti and all but hike to a remote place called Cange, Haiti, carting drugs and samples, and serving patients out of PIH’s medical clinic, Zanami Lasante. Side excursions to Peru, Cuba, and Siberia address still more patients and inspire debates over the methods of stopping the spread of tuberculosis (TB) and a disturbing new mutation called Multi-Drug Resistant (MDR) TB.

Farmer and his associates, including a philanthropist bent on Dying Broke and other bright and driven types – pit the studiousness of approach and resourcefulness of a few against the all-to-familiar, politically-charged and just bureaucratic debate of the many.

The book causes me to wonder if we shouldn’t be dividing the world into millions of spheres of attack, so that we solve, at the point of address, problems, but allow small, well-rounded teams to retain an ability to test and adjust to circumstances. Of course, this is not the real world of nations, the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations, USAID and the implementation of a mother ship distribution strategy.

WHO’s purpose and mission to help are evidenced, but the methods and means, according to Farmer, are of the cleared desktop-varietal, not the skuzzy field-originated. One gets the nagging feeling that WHO must address TB proliferation in a politically correct manner, and quite naturally miss the obvious, dangerous birth of a new infection that resists known TB drugs (MDR), but persist under the banner of program cost-effectiveness.

While burning up cash as fast as they acquire it and identify patients, PIH is the prototypical new venture, but instead of proving and patenting concepts before the competition appears, they are pitching tents, establishing beachheads as fast as they can, all the while knowing that microbes may be the meek that eventually inherit our earth: the same ones that we are working hard to find on Mars.

If you love problem solving, as I do, you will find yourself laying this book down and stimulated to reconsider approaches and strategies to problems that you can do something about. You may not find answers, but certainly more problems.

In fact, the book’s title is taken from a Haitian proverb -- behind every problem (mountain) is another problem (mountain). Poverty is such a mountain and a challenge to the imagination. It’s not one that we like to think about, but are both parallel to and connected with.

Dr. Paul makes the case, in his own writings, that infectious diseases arise from poverty. If we replace poverty with hope (education, food, shelter, clean water, sanitation), the belief in future possibilities, will TB, MDR, AIDS die off or simply transform into new mountains?

This is the beauty, tragedy, and mystery of life rolled into one insignificant and elusive little foothill.

If you do decide to pick this book up, get ready for the paradoxical long distance sprint. On a single coast-to-coast flight, you will race through the pages to keep from exhausting on the shear magnitude of these international problems.

And, at your journey’s end, you will think differently about Haiti. You will see your own problems differently. And, for a little money, you will travel somewhere that you need to go.

First Tuesday's Take Away: A Tsunami (?), That Depends on Deeds Done

2010-11-03T07:01:00.004-04:00

Uncertainty. Yep, it looms large in dark closets.

The national debt, rising healthcare costs, unrelenting unemployment, the specter of new tax tables, and skepticism did not evaporate last night.

Folks, we live in a 50/50 world (Updated link11/23/10 ) currently owned by the White House. If there was an expectation for a sweeping, dominant shift in political power, it did not come. If it had, the unregistered Tea Party, not R or D, would be calling the shots.

In the afternoon's presidential assessment I would not hold my breath, waiting to hear that the Executive agenda will change. A red veto pen, if it requires use, which is dubious, sits on the Oval Office desk. Expect quiet defiance, not Bill Clinton.

He's leaving the country. You would have taken that trip, right? After watching months of polls which weren't headed in your agenda's direction. Houses representatives and Senators who voted for healthcare, with few exceptions, lost. Hmmm.

Had California, New York, Delaware, and Nevada tilted, my enthusiasm would be different. They did not. We await George Washington-scale candidates to calm our nerves.

Heavy weight states' New York and California went safe with with Democratic, traditional light weights, the politically known quantities. Their citizenry succumbed to their paternalistic tendencies and a pesky poverty mentality.

No debt ceiling is too high. No tax or fee off the table. But, really, there was no surprise. Nor was there in Nevada or Delaware. Both Pauls are there, though. They will make sure a closed box is opened, so that we can see what the heck is going on. I hope.

The real world will stare down giants. Soaring rhetoric may see airtime, but without audience. All that will matter when we wake up in the coming days are ... results. Deeds. Quantifiable results. They had better come soon.

What is significant, is that the feared cap-and-trade legislation will not see the light of day. Maybe ever. An ill-conceived idea that might work in periods of soaring inflation and economic growth, but not now. Besides, who was going to make the money? Yep, bankers.

That does not mean EPA will not do some damage as they continue on their merciless march, which I fully expect them to do: carbon dioxide is a pollutant; coal ash is a hazardous waste; coal is bad.

The largest, oldest and most successful utilization program in the US is headed for the ash heap of history. Short of a miracle. No CEO will risk tort litigation over fly ash utilization. How will the US highway system manage? LEED building certification overcome the loss of fly ash as a building resource? And, wallboard? Done. (I am finished following it. Not writing about it. Looking for new subjects, where I can have more of an impact.)

Perhaps the most important guy to watch is a Democrat. He's West Virginia's popular Governor Joe Manchin III who heads to Washington as a US Senator. A popular leader in his state.

West Virginia, yes, we should see if Manchin's proclamations on energy and realizations about healthcare law turn into something more. Will he bring reason out of the mountains into the streets of reality? Byrd's ghost is what kind of ghost?

We are not islands in this world, especially on the hollowed grounds of Capitol Hill. An interesting dynamic duo would be Joe Manchin and Pat Toomey, a Republican and 51% victor in the US Senate race from neighbor-state Pennsylvania. Two heavy coal energy states.

A great signal to reason and common sense would be a Manchin-Toomey press conference that wrestled the national energy-and-environment policy agenda from the White House. Unity of thought, deed, and action. Americans gravitate to uplifting, unified resolve.

The theory of our country is government speaks for the people. An inescapable challenge is granite-edged political, philosophical division. How we handle the differences between the urban megapolis and the rural fields that nurture our country's promise, polar opposites, this will define us.

My view of the world is as it was before last night. People have to work together, inclusively. If they don't, stay locked away behind their doors, girded to their preferential shapes of society and their mutually adoring choirs, the earth may rotate, but not much more than that.

So, what defining problems need our joint attention right now? How can we work on them ... outside our windows, in our neighborhoods, without direction, from a central point? Today.

Top 10 Reasons NOT to Vote Today

2010-11-02T06:35:00.012-04:00

While our instinct is to encourage our fundamental American responsibility – to VOTE – by passionate writing, calling, and otherwise cattle prodding people to the polls, there are good reasons to go to work, stay home and eat, exercise, rake the leaves, watch TV, or shuttle between our favorite web sites.

10. The New World Order, world government – the goal of the Trilateral Commission – is not on the ballot.

9. You don't think it matters who is in office and runs the federal government. It will be bad anyway.

8. You don't want to send a message to President Obama about his agenda: For, against, or modified.

7. You don't know the topic sentence of voting: Who, what, when, where, how, why.

6. You are in the military and no one sent you a ballot.

5. You are not an American citizen.

4. You are in prison.

3. You did not register to vote.

2. You already voted once.

1. You are not old enough to vote.

A few more questions and thoughts.

Do we live in 50/50 world, where half of us disagree with the other half and we are unwilling to compromise or work together? In which case, the election will not be all that overwhelming, the Republicans will simply retake the House Majority position. That's all. No change.

Was 9-12-09 real? People ... many, many people ... well read and informed people ... care and their vote today is the only way to get the attention of their representatives, who obviously didn't read their mail or listen to the vast majority of us, public opinion (hmmm). In which case, the vote will be a bone-crushing call to cut red tape, lower taxes, cut government (drastically), return to the US Constitution and Bill of Rights and renew mankind's only successful experiment of self-governance ... by, for, and of the people.

We'll know shortly.

My Kind of CEO: Bootstraps and Up

2010-10-29T09:14:00.012-04:00

Yesterday, Dick Thorsell (83), longtime friend and environmental affairs mentor, and I re-hashed an old conversation about the CEO makeover that occurred in the electric utility industry, beginning in the 1990s, when the de-regulation climate took hold.

We talked about the likes of William Gerstner, the late, former Executive Vice President of Illinois Power Company, who never graduated from college. He started at the bottom and rose to the top, and exposed 60 minutes, in spectacular and historic fashion, for the hack organization it is.

The news magazine, through its mass public appeal, contributed to the destruction of the nation's nuclear industry. Gerstner, anticipating the hit piece, agreed to the "reporting" only if the company was allowed to tape, simultaneously, reporter interviews. With reluctance, the show agreed (but has never again).

The Illinois Power video, later distributed, shows how easily footage, answers to questions, expressions can be edited and manipulated to tell a story and change history. Harvard Business School employs the video as one of its infamous case studies. Now we know why CEO interviews are as dull and deliberate as dirt.

I say executive changeover because these are not the same guys who run mega-utilities anymore. Check out their biographies. If the "Old Guard," from the ground up, were still around, not muzzled by mega-institutional investors, they would have been out there fighting carbon tax and the viscous and inexplicable attacks on coal and talking openly and often about national energy and environmental policy.

These executives are endangered species until brand new energy purveyors emerge.

What prompted today's entry? The CNNMoney.com story of Ivan Seidenberg, CEO of Verizon (a holding of mine) and the iPhone deal, etc. The story reminded me of the value of a bootstrapping CEO. They are still out there in the wilderness. A partial quote from the article appears below. (Note: He could have gone to work for ConEd (another holding)).

"Seidenberg, 63, is the longest-serving CEO in the Dow 30. But he wasn't groomed for the corner office. He started working for New York Telephone straight out of high school. "At 19, I was draft status 1-A," or eligible for military service, Seidenberg said in a recent interview at Verizon's corporate offices in Basking Ridge, N.J. "Only two companies in all of New York would hire me: Con Ed or a telephone company." Shortly after accepting a job as a cable splicer's assistant, the Bronx native was drafted and sent to Vietnam, where he served in the Army for two years before being wounded at the battle of Khe Sanh. He returned home, started at the phone company, and began night school; over the course of 16 years he got his bachelor's degree from the City University of New York and his MBA from Manhattan's Pace University."

The Mailman Who Took Risks (Updated from 2004)

2010-10-27T07:42:00.006-04:00

Image via Wikipedia

MY MAILBOX had been empty for 14 straight days.

Rejoice! No bills. An absence of hype literature.

For 9 years, Norb had been my mailman. Prior to that, he delivered his good cheer, a twinkle of the eye, and withstood my mother's occasional rant against government for perhaps 18 years.

Sadly, some things change that shouldn’t.

According to the USPS, the local branch, my box was inaccessible and residential mail service would resume when the new mailman determined that my box was accessible. Sound like policy-speak?

I can remember meeting Norb within the first few weeks of our arrival in 1995. He made the first move. Conveying his condolences for my mother’s passing.

This small effort led to many a good conversation. Living out in the country, quasi-rural Upstate New York.

For me, Norb not only lived the mailman’s creed, “neither rain, nor sleet, nor gloom of night” would deter him from completing his quest, he brought the neighborhood news (it may be the only way to know that someone was taken to the hospital the night before), engaged his clients by asking safe, noninvasive questions like, “How’s your golf game? Mine stinks. I’m taking lessons.”

He knew about my writing and introduced me to the work of a former member of his route, Harry Mazer, where I discovered a formula for becoming a writer ... 10 years of daily practice.

For some of us, mail, like a business deal, is a transaction to be accomplished in less and less time. All that matters is that the product or service was delivered. Not how it was done.

For monopolies, like the USPS, and publicly-provided utilities (electric, gas, water and sewer), we expect something more for the sole source privilege.

Up until the mass retirement and exodus of many of my business friends, teachers and associates, beginning in 1993 – we had it. People were customer service.

Come to find out that the reason Norb never missed a day on his watch was because he took risks. This according to the postmaster – six miles down the hill.

Norb did two things very well, if I was asked to write a performance appraisal, he provided exceptional customer service and apparently took risks.

Let me speculate and amplify on the postmaster’s comments.

Norb took unnecessary, potentially hazardous and costly risks.

Now, Norb drove a large, white truck. He did not ride a large, white pony, as in the Pony Express, as in providing a valuable service at enormous risk.

For these 14 days, however, Norb would have accessed my mailbox by taking a risk – either driving over a bump of snow or taking one step out of his vehicle onto dry pavement and reaching for the mailbox door.

Moves that I was able to execute flawlessly from my little Subaru when I wasn’t making extra trips down the hill to pick up my mail at the Post Office Building!

If the snow pack was really bad, we had a bad winter, and they all were (!), Norb would have walked the mail to my door.

While he never said anything about it, I can imagine the reason Norb retired early.

Paychecks are necessary but pale in significance to the love of one’s work and its appreciation.

We know when our work, and the unique way in which we do it, is unappreciated. When we are no different than any other slug.

Our generation is failing to recognize Good People. Good People are those who travel the extra miles for their customers.

A business mentor once told me that the secret of developing a great company was finding Good People. “Good People could always be trained,” he would say.

No, we are enamored with productivity, speed, and the transaction. What is desired?

Young, inexpensive, low-to-no benefit, safe, compliant workers. Those who do exactly as they are told.

We, the People prefer holding the mail – keeping it safe and sound – to delivering it, where it brings the greatest value.

At the moment, we have lost our way. We don’t want Good People working for our companies (micro-businesses excepted).

Yet, what we need is precisely the opposite. People who serve the customer first. Who, like Norb, take risks. Perhaps not large fatal risks, but the kind that explain our residence in America.

By the way, Norm began a second career. Maybe his finest. He opened a clock repair business in Jamesville, NY. How about that for an anachronism!?

Our Teacher, Mr. Ball

2010-10-25T10:04:00.002-04:00

Image via Wikipedia

IINSIDE OF EVERY moment of loss, we can find future joy. Yet, when someone dies young, we feel overwhelmed. (From: Box of Chocolates, March 18, 2004).

This week, Central New York lost a gifted young man, a 29-year old high school teacher. He died of a disease that we despise, but have learned to respect for the people who endure it with such grace.

Students loved Mr. Marc L. Ball. He was a one-of-kind teacher. Kids loved going to his classes. That bears repeating. Kids loved going to his classes.

He made learning fun. Something learning can and should be for the duration.

While I did not know Mr. Ball, my son had him for 9^th grade global studies and again, this year, for economics. We met on Parent’s Night freshman year.

Certainly, we should know more about the teachers of our sons and daughters, but we don’t. It’s not because we don’t care. It’s more a condition of high speed living. We are all in a giant race to the finish.

We’re busy, they’re busy. We encourage our kids to study, get good grades, graduate, progress to the next learning level, and hopefully land a good job. A teacher’s day is never really over. There is always preparation for another class and an endless supply of young minds.

I looked forward to meeting Mr. Ball that evening, three years ago, for one reason. To thank him for making high school fun for my son and bringing a smile to his face. Freshmen require a special kind of preparation.

We dread this the first high school year. According to guidance counselors, students are looking for one thing to go right in the freshman year. Just one. Something to build upon for next year.

Despite his brief tenure, Mr. Ball was the kind of teacher who would make things go right for many students at F-M High School (Manlius, New York).

Without fanfare, he endured his cancer, while going about his work, teaching his students and our kids. He taught up until the last week of his own untimely graduation from this life.

We admire this kind of courage and perseverance from afar.

It is not hard to imagine that this teacher needed his craft, needed his students as much as they and, for that matter, all of us, needed him. We could say that this is the stuff that stretches time.

Perhaps selfishly, we wish some people would linger for just a moment longer, especially this teacher.

He was a member of a class of unsung heroes, who show up every day doing what they love. Teaching.

Set an example. A good example. A familiar lesson that our parents tried to instill in us.

While I didn’t know Mr. Ball personally, I know enough to know that he lived a fine example.

Last fall, though probably not feeling well, he appeared with a group of seniors in a humorous F-M TV skit about a library book prank. In the spot, we see a man well cast, a good sport who effortlessly plays his part.

Eventually, the walk from classroom to car would turn into a challenging and perhaps reflective journey. Speaks volumes of a man’s will and life, doesn’t it?

Perhaps I can’t testify to his teaching prowess, but as a parent I recognize the real outcome, not just the grades.

Driving home one day, my son, unsolicited, launched into a description of economic concepts and how cool this class was. We long to witness these expressions of enthusiasm for learning by our youth. It is the beginning.

Today, we feel a profound sense of loss and should permit time to work its healing magic. For tomorrow, Mr. Ball will forever be our teacher, the one who will inspire a story, smiles, and a few laughs, and the joy from having known him.

Under a Black Swan Event: Top Ten Ways to Save America (a work in progress)

2010-10-21T08:21:00.018-04:00

After November's First Tuesday, a serious re-dedication to the peoples' sovereignty will be the order of the day.

The only message to Washington, DC – which will be finally and definitively received, as if an echo from 1783 – is to get out of the way. Locales, across this land, are now in charge. States' rights will soon be returned to where they belong.

Here are my top ten ways to save America (a work in progress): our families, our neighborhoods, our communities, our states, and the federal government in that order.

1. First and foremost: Think, focus, and act locally on every single front.

2. End a terrible idea, the Federal Reserve. For the third time in US history.

3. Sell all bank foreclosures to publicly-traded REITs, which will rent these properties.

4. Outlaw all landfills. (Ed. (6/6/11): Seems draconian, but frees land space, demands Clean Tech.)

5. Cut all federal, state and local government salaries and benefits by 50%.

6. Do not compensate elected officials, at any level, for public service.

7. End all government-required insurance of any kind.

8. Close every single federal military base around the world.

9. Allow the Executive Branch only three agencies: Environment, Military, and Treasury.

10. Return to the currency-backed gold standard. (Update 12/7/10: Re-thinking, See Secret of Oz.)

This is a work in progress. I have limited myself to ten things and provided no reasons. If you had only ten, which would you choose and why?

Before you think this list is completely off-the-wall. Unjust. Imagine an unthinkable, significantly impact-ful event happens, a Black Swan Event. A single solar flare disrupts all electronic communications and electricity transmission and distribution for an unknown time period. What would happen? What would we do first?

Does a system REALLY care? Does a company REALLY care?

How about a person?

I believe that most of us do, are willing to do our part. I observed many on 9-12-09. They are us.

We're the leaders of ourselves.

If we don't think and act responsibly, as caring individuals, without provocation, our evolution may have hit a wall.

Think about it. An organization is ephemeral, nothing more than a shell. It may grow, evolve, die, but it is not biological. Transfers no DNA.

Only the people can pass on their inheritance.

Addicted to our Emotions: Penchant for a Flat Rare Earth

2010-10-20T08:33:00.015-04:00

This morning's news: China halting commerce of rare earth metals to the USA, whether fact, fiction or threat, does not bode well for US energy policy, energy conservation and sustainability.

The Trench Take is reserved for a rant (or two). A personal wakeup call. Search for the better alternative. So it is going to meander today with only one answer.

Vote Tuesday, November 2, 2010 as if your life, your family's and neighbor's lives depended upon it. Because I want to wake up and know where we stand, the majority of us, and where we are planning to go. You vote, I will know.

In Power Hungry (2010), Robert Bryce cautioned us that China held sway over hybrid cars and electronics like iPods. He established the empirical linkage between materials and energy, and national wealth and prosperity. He fingered a fatal flaw. What lies under our noses.

China first exercised its materials muscle over Japan on September 25, 2010. Leverage the technology and where do you think future energy efficient vehicles will be made?

Let's stop and think. Toyota Prius. Moving away from gasoline-powered transportation.

Maybe you don't care.

Why do you think Saudia Arabia is not making the finished product over there? Too complex?

In a flat world, it would be less expensive making finished fuel products overseas and shipping them to the US. Everything a product manufacturer needs is there. Isn't it? If not, it could have been easily imported. How about the neighbors? Camels are not going to complain.

Doesn't Chindia do this every day for our manufactured goods and services? Why not for oil?

Answer. How about control. Oil companies were not going to allow it to happen.

Fortunate for us, and maybe our economically crumbling West Coast economy, Australia indicated, in quick response fashion, its readiness to serve this unique commodities market.

I say, Let's embrace our blokes in the Pacific, get out of the Middle East and Europe, and prepare to support another continent, friendlier place, where our partnership defines our mutual destinies, in part, I will suggest. Our cultures, values, languages are certainly more comparable. Isn't that what makes for a successful merger of companies, compatible cultures?

It is an alternative. A better alternative.

We've been just treading water and losing American lives in Iraq, Afghanistan, Southeast Asia, and where else, going on 50 years now, and for what purpose? What undefined mission? World stability? US safety?

Well, we're still here. We have only been attacked once. Effectively. Very effectively. Freedom-altering effectively. Our raison d'etre.

Wouldn't we have been better off commissioning skilled assassins or holstering our guns and defending our borders? Preparing for other unseen, unknown eventualities? A great defense wins Super Bowls, does it not?

Weren't the Founding Fathers adamant about the toll of taking sides in international affairs? Creating enemies by showing preference. Exercising a foreign policy of exclusion over inclusion. We should take a look back at our most reserved Presidents, Washington and Eisenhower, and examine their fears about border external aggression.

Regardless, whether you are an ideologue environmentalist, closet communist, or libertarian-leaner, like me, we are not making the important connection between materials management (sounds so boring), energy, and environment. They are connected by unbreakable bonds. We could start our relationship here. Today.

This buzz on sustainability means absolutely nothing if we do not think and act holistically on our own stewardship. This is our land, right? We're responsible for it. Ours to mold a clay creation, and then remold, while not change the fundamentals of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Years ago, when the utility industry was flipped on its head over tort liability, joint-and-several-liability, and suffered extra-ordinary costs remediating the sins of the past (asbestos, PCBs, used oil, town gas), I suggested that we stop viewing waste as a liability and start considering it an economic asset and environmental opportunity.

I had only one client that saw the opportunity, Public Service Enterprise Group. One.

While it sounded off-the-wall crazy and contrarian to them, and probably had no influence on their day-to-day risk management and legal liability stance, they embraced the idea in a TQM-kind of way – measurable goals, strategy, organization, action plan, responsibilities, and resource alignment.

While it was coincidental and certainly serendipitous, another consultant had separately and independently factored waste management into their thinking about a revamping of materials management.

The idea was to end fear. Not paralyze, but not overeat either. Go on a sustainable diet. Self-regulate materials (wealth) management.

Materials and wastes are no different. They simply are made up of variable constituencies that demand our attention. The results: The company exceeded their wildest expectations by altering a mindset. A repeatable process, if we allow it to happen.

You buy right. You use right.

The idea that we cleanup one landfill and re-bury it in another, or combust it in an incinerator, wipe our hands together, and walk away orgasmically satisfied is ... absurd. What an incredible waste of resources! And, what happens to rare earth metal embedded in iPods? Where do they go?

At best, on a boat back to China for kids to break and separate by hand, and sell back into the life cycle.

Some people are obsessed with the splendor of Europe, even though Paris is now ablaze. It is the idea they love. Cleanliness. Value placed on art and free time.

Here is where they are correct. Europe understands resource conservation. Open space stewardship. Why?

They have limited natural resource wealth and treat it as such. They have automated logistics and resource recovery into manufacturing. We've built landfills because we're sacred of toxic materials. Paranoid about our ability to protect our health. Don't want factories that employ people in our neighborhoods and towns. We'd rather it all be in ... China. So, we can buy cheap. Extend our backless greenbacks.

We don't get it. We start and then stop. Each time believing we have found the silver bullet.

For the past few years, it has been carbon dioxide, greenhouse gases, climate change, disruption, whatever ... as the driver.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

This endpoint is hopelessly flawed. We stopped searching for Black Swans – the more unpredictable, impactful possibilities for climate variance, a sun flicker, for instance – when political and financial power brokers took over the debate and started the abuse of young children in the classroom. Motivating them by guilt.

Pathetic fear mongering and hijacking of scientific debate. Complete loss of common sense.

And, Friedman's contention that it does not matter whether Man influences climate or not, we are getting flatter, hotter, and more crowded and we should do something.

This hollow statement – fascination with the development of emerging world cities and their ambitious youth – shows such unqualified ignorance of nature and environment. It is dumfounding to me why people read this drivel.

What are we going to do?

Population control. We're going to mandate sterilization. Selectively exterminate female babies! China.

Wake up, America.

Our world is engaged in a battle of world resources. Plain and simple. We need food, fire, and water.

They are all connected by one extra-ordinarily simple concept. Conservation of matter. Bounded with a web of constantly adjusting ecology over millennia. Not a nanosecond of one hundred years.

We do not have to ship materials back and forth – even the RARE ones we are now becoming addicted to – across seas to prosper. We have to employ our incredible ability to work together and to self-educate. Manage our material wealth.

We have kids running around America banging on doors, screaming the sky is falling, selling environmental religion. Donate NOW before it is TOO LATE. What a waste of time, talent, and human mobility.

Take these same kids and have them focussed on technologies for wisely utilizing, conserving, and sensibly exhausting materials to their ultimate fate ... their destiny .... ENERGY ... and we are onto something.

What the heck is this guy ranting about ... if you made it this far and have an open mind ... we're spending all of our money on plaintive lawsuits ... hoping to strike the lottery, go on disability for life.

Tobacco. Addictive. Caffeine. Addictive. Gambling. Addictive. So sue me! To fund public education?

We are addicted to our emotions and our emotions are strangling our country.

Image. Strangle yourself with your bare hands.

There are days that I can't believe how political, ideological we have made this archetypal American journey.

I don't know about you, but I am unwilling to accept or resign myself to the likelihood of the Chinese Empire. A friend lamented once that the only jobs for manufacturing engineers were overseas. He and his family re-located. On his return, he told me how tiring the Asian mind became. It's a mentality. Plain different. Narrowly focussed. Accomplished. Hardly diverse. Want to work for them? They hold the paper.

We value life much more than most in this world, but we have a weird way of expressing it. We have fist fights over the unborn and put people to sleep because they are bad or dying with a needle.

We take materials that benefit our quality of life, turn around and demonize and ban them, and find ourselves back at the drawing board.

Intelligent? Not so much.

Yeah, this China thing has gotten in my craw this morning. And, it really ticks me off at how the solution will be a more powerful and new United Nations. Sometimes called Henry Kissinger's World Government. More central control. Over everything and everyone.

I don't think so.

We're not economically sustainable. The more money we print, the more we dilute our faith. Maybe that's a good thing, because paper is not faith. Is not God. And, if it is, we deserve what's coming.

If you take nothing from this piece. Think about Saudia Arabian oil. Our salvation. Prosperity. Cheap energy. How easily their embargo stranded us at gas stations in the 1970s. How quickly things reversed when the flow was re-started.

Think we did not pay some cost? Maybe the one we are now bearing.

After this election is over, we're going to have a powerful opportunity to study ourselves. See what drives us.

I don't think the solution is food stamps, unemployment compensation.

We got to get back to work. Start working for ourselves. Using the resources we have here and concentrate on being round again. Because we are. We're not flat on our backs.