Now we have cell phone stores. They combine the worst of Radio Shack with the very worst of automobile dealerships to produce perhaps the bleakest shopping experience anyone's ever devised. Shopping for a new kidney couldn't help but seem refreshing in comparison.
The modern cell phone 'provider' offers 'plans' comprised of various combinations of damned whatever you do choices, and an array of actual telephones which, by the way, sometimes even involve telephony, though they much more prominently feature MP3 player, camera, GPS, and web-accessing technologies. Even the lowliest offerings tout ring tones more than usability, and the highest-end feature a dizzying library of 'apps,' which seem to be little more than opportunities to turn the ...ahem... telephone into a terribly expensive video game unit. "Hello? I'd like to place a telephone call." Fergetaboutit!
Well, we all know these features of modern communication. We understand that if we want to play, we'll have to do more than simply pay, we'll have to agree to a technological indenture. Two years before this mast seems most common because, as the folksy CEO of Sprint explained in a recent interview, the modern cell phone is a six or seven hundred dollar investment, and no one wants to pay for these machines up-front, so the cell 'provider' needs the indenture of a two year contract, with heavy penalties for early cancellation, to even hope to turn a profit. In an industry that changes technology about as often as the average person changes socks, a two year commitment seems, well, rather onerous. Who could help but imagine that the day after I sign, the company will declare moot the technology I've just committed to carry for fourteen dog years.
Anyway, my wife continues to be after me to 'upgrade' my phone. She has two Blackberries: one for home and one for work, on two different networks, Verison and ATT; both pirates. She agrees that the ATT network sucks more than the Verison network, and we have our current 'family plan' (ohhhhhh!) with Verison. So I could have any phone I want as long as it works on Verison's network.
So I spent some time this week, attitude bucked up by a recent success, browsing through their 'offerings.' And reading the reviews associated with each. I concluded that none of the phones actually work, though some seem to suck a lot less than others. That new Palm phone features the 'best mobile OS,' but also a battery life of nearly ninety minutes. The Android phones are damned expensive, app-ridden, and require a $29.95 monthly 'data surcharge' on top of the regular toll. Blackberry? I've tried to pick up calls for Amy on hers; failed. Windows phones? A joke, right?
My research leads me to tentatively conclude that I might well hold the very best of telephone technology available. My Jazz is tiny, it easily fits in my pocket. It's way too complicated and seems to have been programmed by morons who's idea of usability came from early facility with chopsticks. It texts like the proverbial monkey's typewriter. The calendar requires only a few minutes and several retrys to 'encode,' and reliably beeps or burps at the expected time. True, the ringer's intermittent, sometimes mysteriously turning off seemingly all by itself, just before an important call comes in. I suspect that with more diligent study, I might resolve this small mystery.
I might try to try out some newer model, use it for a week to see how it treats me before agreeing to any renewed indenture, but then I might not. Amy will undoubtedly encourage me to shift technologies the next time I fail to get her urgent call, and we're both certain that this will happen again and again and again. I've grown accustomed to the stereo headset where only the right earphone actually works. ("It was designed that way," the salesman told me after I'd dropped in to complain just after I'd indentured myself to the phone.) Once the ink dries on that contract, every problem quite magically becomes a feature.
Who couldn't love technology like that?
My current phone is a bit more than two years old, a pocketknife-sized Samsung Jazz, so old now that Google can't find any evidence that it ever existed. Just as well. If I was Samsung, I'd deny any association to the damned thing, too.
I acquired it at the same time Amy got her first Blackberry, which is a machine so damned complicated that I still can't pick up an incoming call on it for her. She swims the breadth of the web on the little thing. For me, it has all the technological sophistication of an under-sized paperweight with a particularly crude and unusable user interface. Great for some but they forgot to provide access for the rest of us.
My littler phone is just marginally better, but only because I have figured out how to pick up incoming calls, usually. I got the thing because it was cheap and because it was by far the simplest phone offered. You gotta understand that I'm still grieving the demise of the black bakelite desktop model. The day that I was finally allowed (read: forced) by law to purchase my own phone and choose my own provider was a day that lives in infamy for me. Sure the Telephoney Industry complained about it with all the sincerity of any crocodile, but for me, this 'freedom' positioned me squarely in the crosshairs of an industrial machine bent on humiliating me. They've made good on the opportunity.
I made that first trip into a phone store to ... urp ... buy my own phone long after I could have. I stayed with the leased phone that came with my house until the phoney company threatened me. Somebody had launched a campaign to rid the network of perfectly usable dial phones, and I was their victim. So I took my newly found freedom and bought a phone that weighed a whole lot less and did pretty much the the same stuff as my dial phone, though much less reliably. And that phone only lasted barely ten years before I was trotting out to another 'phone store' again to be mystified by the multiple lack of choices offered me.
No, I did not want a phone with a brain, as I was still adjusting to the unvalidated assertion that I might possess a brain. And what was touted as telephone braininess didn't impress me. It required that I remember codes, sequences, and secret passwords. This was technology designed to leave me feeling dumb, not brainy technology. Like a schoolyard bully, it insisted that I feel really stupid so it could feel smarter than me. A hollow advance if I've ever experienced one.
It started with the budding Harris Organization incorrectly predicting that Thomas Dewey would beat Harry Truman in the 1948 Presidential Election. Lord knows where it will end. Americans love pollsters. It’s unthinkable to imagine a representative who does not query the community to determine what s/he should do. We’ve become a windsock nation.
This practice is not all bad, though it has significantly shifted the political climate. The original framers of the constitution envisioned a government run by elected representatives, people governing according to their own judgment. The electorate would choose based upon character, then, having chosen, let that character represent them.
Today’s elected representatives need not have character, but they must have a polling organization. They need not bring judgment, other than the judgment a windsock exhibits when it submits to the breeze.
So we see political directions shifting faster than a tango dancer’s. We see long-standing policies right-face or left-face or even pivot backwards, promoted by nothing more permanent than a slight shift in the wind.
When a Harvard University researcher interviewed some of the world’s most successful designers, the results were clear. None of them ask their customers what they want. Why? One responded, “Because they don’t know.” Nobody could know, that’s why the framers put their trust in character and judgment, not popular opinion.
I consider it to be my civic duty to lie to pollsters. I also try to keep them on the line as long as possible, to slow them up. When they ask a twisted question, I ask them what the question means, how others have answered, what use my response will be put to. When they use purposefully provocative terms, I question their meaning. I do whatever I can do to avoid becoming just another meaningless statistic. I’ve worked with statistical analysis long enough to understand just how unreliable it is.
Who do my representatives think they are, sniffing the wind instead of their judgment? Day-to-day, democracy should not be about voting to see which way the wind is blowing. The most important decisions are inevitably the most unpopular, and the most necessary. If my nose is out of joint about half the time, I figure it’s working.
A government trying to satisfy all the electorate all the time is no government at all.
This insight returned yesterday, when I attended a meeting with a bunch of Russell Ackoff Systems Thinking people. Since Systems Thinking has never hit the mainstream... most organizations still cling to reductionist dominion tactics when trying to resolve difficulties (or, as they say, 'solve problems'), ...the Systems Thinkers feel marginalized. Rather like feathers.
This was a meeting of the club of people who never join clubs, so many felt isolated, misunderstood, out of community. Yet within an hour, we were gabbing away in small groups, finishing each other's sentences, in intimate, intense conversations. We'd been charged with creating a list of bullet points and a visual, but MY table blew off the facilitator's direction, in favor of something more memorable. Besides, no one at OUR table could draw, so I volunteered.
I went to the front and explained that our dialogue had not yielded handy bullet points. You had to be there and experience it if you want to understand what we talked about. And there we were, mere feathers blown around by the wind, facing a fulcrum with the big hairy problems of the world on one side, a pin feather trying to counter-balance with critical mass to achieve some tipping point.
We decided that instead of trying to achieve critical mass to affect a tipping, it might be wiser to find that point along the fulcrum where the feather might achieve some tickle; the Tickle Point. BIG programs to combat BIG problems almost never succeed, because they are often BIG DUMB actions which raise no intelligent response from the offending system. But a tickle can wake up the system just enough so that it becomes just a little more aware of the stupid stuff it's doing, so more mindful adaptation, even evolution is possible.
(We also decided that if the tickle didn't work, we could always revert to the flipping point. That's always handy and easy to find.)
Here's the prior Tickle Point posting.
From Page S1844/45: The Congressional Record 3/23/2010
Mr. DODD. Mr. President, let me first of all thank my great friend from Montana, Senator Baucus. We arrived in the Congress of the United States together on the same day, back about 35 years ago. We have been friends for 35 years. We arrived in the Senate at different times. He got here a little before me. We have been in this institution for 30 years. I cannot describe in the limited time I have what a difference he has made--the fact we are here debating, finally, the last piece of this legislative effort to give the Americans what they have sought for more than a century, and that is the basic right to health care.
I always found it somewhat ironic in a way that we in this country provide for those accused of criminal offenses the right to a lawyer, the right to an attorney. I believe in that. I think it is correct. But isn't it somewhat ironic that the same country that would provide you with a right to a lawyer if you are charged with a criminal defense cannot provide you with a doctor if your child is sick? There is something fundamentally wrong with that, in my view.
For the first time, we are on a track that will correct that error. Henceforth, in the years to come, they can mark the calendar date of March 23, 2010, when for the first time in American history an American President signed into law a bill that will provide Americans the opportunity to live free from the fear that they or their loved ones will be
faced with a health care crisis and they will not have the capacity, without bankrupting themselves or watching a loved one lose their life or become chronically or permanently ill or sick because they could not afford it, to see a doctor.
I rise today on this very historic day to thank my friend from Montana, to thank the terrific staff of the Finance Committee, to thank the members of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, chaired by my great pal and friend Ted Kennedy for so many years. I was asked to take over last summer and to work through the efforts of that committee to participate and contribute to our part of this bill. On July 16 last summer, we completed our work.
I see my friend Mike Enzi here. We worked together on issues over the years. Lamar Alexander, my friend from Tennessee, as well is part of that committee. While we did not come together on final passage of that bill, I wish to express my gratitude to them and their staffs as well for the contributions they made to this product. Even though they might not be anxious to acknowledge the contributions, they made contributions. I am grateful to them and, of course, my staff as well--Tamar Magarik Haro and Jeremy Sharp, as well, who is with me on the floor today, along with many others who did a fabulous job in providing us with support and assistance.
We heard the word ``historic'' with regard to this legislation. Sometimes those words are thrown around a little too lightly, in a little too cavalier fashion to describe other events. Today truly is historic. I have been here 30 years, and I cannot think of another day quite like it in the annals of our Nation to provide, at long last, the ability to have a national health care plan. For tens of millions of ordinary citizens, the passage of this bill means more than just a page in history, of course. It means real security for older Americans who rely on Medicare and still need help paying for prescriptions. It means relief for small business owners who are forced to choose between cutting off benefits and laying off the workers they need so much in their operations. It means an end, more than anything else, to the sleepless nights when fathers and mothers worry about how to pay for a cancer treatment or a child's checkup.
My colleagues know I am a late bloomer in the father business. I have a 5-year-old and an 8-year-old. I started a little late in this business of parenthood.
Two weeks ago, my little 5-year-old was pretty sick. She got a stomach virus. She was throwing up quite a bit, about every 20 minutes or so. We called our family doctor. He said I should get her up to Children's Hospital emergency room, about 7 o'clock on a Saturday night. She was terribly dehydrated--not uncommon when this happens. She spent the next 18 hours in the hospital getting hydrated.
I wanted to share with my colleagues what that emergency room was like that evening. Again, I have a health plan. All of us do--8 million Federal workers. We have pretty good coverage. I am grateful for that. I walked in, put that card on the table, and things began to move. My daughter was going to get the kind of treatment she needed.
But that room was filled with a lot of people that night, people with no health care, people showing up well beyond a point you would want to see a physician because they did not have the resources to do it. That goes on every single night and day all across our country. If anybody has doubts about it, I urge you, in the break coming up, the 2 weeks, if you have a chance, to go by late in the evening to an emergency room in a hospital in your area. You will encounter what I did a few Saturday nights ago when I took my young daughter to receive the kind of help she needed.
I kept on thinking that night that my daughter was not unique in getting a stomach virus and getting dehydrated. How many other children in this city or across America that night had parents sitting around, sleepless, wondering whether that child was going to get better, knowing they were getting more dehydrated and putting them at great risk of spiraling down, putting them at greater and greater risks, not knowing what to do, not having the resources to do it, not having that kind of health care, not having the money and insurance to pay for it, and wondering when they were going to show up in the emergency room to take care of that child. That goes on every single day in America, in the United States of America, in the 21th century.
This bill does not solve all of those problems, but the idea that we can lift the burden of fear from those families, those people who work hard--remember, a majority of all the bankruptcies last year occurred because of a health care crisis in that family, and a majority of those people who went bankrupt because of a health care crisis had health insurance. These were not people without insurance; it is just the copays were so high, the deductible so high that they were going to get in financial trouble before the insurance would even kick in. We are not just talking about the uninsured. Even people with some insurance find themselves in that situation.
So my daughter is fine today and doing well because I didn't have to worry about the cost of her care. I have a good health care plan. But for other families across this country who don't have that security, that sense of confidence that if their loved ones end up ill or need attention or care, that unless they have the kind of coverage and the ability to pay for it, their child might not have had the same outcome that mine did. That shouldn't happen in this country.
So for us in Congress, the passing of this legislation represents more than just the culmination of a century-long movement for reform. It began with Teddy Roosevelt. I regret today that President Obama didn't mention Richard Nixon. He mentioned Roosevelt and Truman and Bill Clinton, but Richard Nixon tried as well to get national health care. He is not recognized often for it. People only talk about him in a negative sense. But Richard Nixon tried this. It was Democrats and Republicans who tried to get this done.
What this effort represents is proof that while progress is not easy, neither
is it impossible, and that, maybe more than anything else, is important about what we saw today.
As President Obama said, we didn't come here to the Senate, to the Congress of the United States to fear the future; we came here to try to shape it. And despite the complexity of the problems, the political power of those stubbornly defending the status quo, and even the refusal of many in this community to acknowledge the urgency of reform, that is exactly what we have done.
A broken health care system is not the last challenge we are going to face now as a nation or as a Congress. Far from it. Today, our Union became a little more perfect, but is still far from it. There is still much to do to help American families build better lives for themselves. But, Mr. President, I hope when we again find ourselves at moments of great national import--and we will and we are--we can look back not at the polls or the petty partisan fights that too often contaminate our debates and that always seem to stand in the way of progress, but rather at the fact we rose above them and we acted--and we acted, Mr. President.
We have a chance again to act this evening or tomorrow, as soon as this process comes to an end, by voting up or down on the legislation designed to make this good law even a better one. If you strip away the overheated rhetoric, the false claims that have become commonplace during this debate, this bill is nothing more than a set of commonsense fixes. Let me quickly remind my colleagues and others what they are.
The commonsense fixes will extend the solvency of Medicare. The bill will fill the so-called prescription drug doughnut hole and lower premiums for seniors. Another commonsense fix will extend to all insurance plans the consumer protections in the newly passed health care reform law. It will end the lifetime caps on benefits to people. It will also provide the guarantees that your coverage would not be taken away if you get sick and includes a prohibition on excessive waiting periods, and the extension of coverage to adult children up to the age of 26. It will ban discrimination against people with preexisting conditions. These commonsense fixes will increase the tax credits that help low- and middle-income families pay for insurance, boost funding for community health centers, strengthen provisions for cracking down on waste and fraud in the Medicare and Medicaid systems.
Mr. President, these commonsense fixes will improve the shared responsibility of policies, ensuring that employers and individuals do their part to keep the country healthy, both physically and economically. It includes valuable protections as well for hospitals and physicians, and more fairly distributes Federal funding among the States so that State governments aren't overburdened at a time when it is already rather difficult to balance those budgets. It revises revenue provisions in the law to take some of the burden off middle-class families and put it on the pharmaceutical industry, which can afford to bear those burdens.
On top of all these commonsense fixes, it includes a badly needed, fully-paid-for investment in Pell grants enabling more Americans to go to college and get the education they need to compete in the 21st-century world in which these children will face. The bill increases Pell grants, I know my colleagues know, up to $6,000 by 2017. Hardly enough, in many cases, to pay for the ever-growing cost of education, but it can make a difference. It links scholarship amounts to the cost of living so they never again have to fall behind, and all of us know how valuable that can be. Because the legislation switches to the far less expensive direct loan program, it will also reduce our deficit by more than $10 billion over 10 years.
Now, that is what is in this bill. Those are the commonsense fixes. If you don't like the health care bill, fine; but don't tell me what we are doing is a bad idea. I think it takes a good law and makes it a better law, and I hope we can get broad-based support for these provisions.
I know some of our friends have made plans to spend the rest of the week delaying passage of this bill. I would hope they not engage in that. I don't think it serves our interests. Vote against it, if you want, and let us get on with the other business we have before us. To go through some marathon voting for the sake of delaying the process I don't think does a great service to this great institution. That is not what we are sent here to do.
That is all you are going to witness, unfortunately, Mr. President, if this goes on for a protracted basis over the next couple of days--one cute little amendment after the other to see if it can embarrass colleagues to vote on something that may cause people to worry about their sense of sanity in all of this. Yet all it is designed to do, and nothing else, is but one thing: to delay voting for the provisions included in this commonsense fix.
Mr. President, I hope, again, that we can move on to other business; that the large issues in front of us require us all to work together. As the chairman of the Banking Committee, I have the responsibility of trying to bring to this floor some reforms in financial services. I am blessed with wonderful members on my committee--Democrats and Republicans. There is a growing desire in our committee, I think, to do just that. My intention is to try to do just that in the coming weeks, working with my friends on the Republican side as well as my colleagues on the Democratic side of the aisle. It is a big set of important issues, and that is what we ought to be doing.
That is what we did on this bill. Unfortunately, we were forced to do it as one party, not as a Senate acting together, and I am saddened by that fact. But my sadness is overwhelmed by the sense of joy that I have that this Congress, this President, was able to sign into law one of the most historic pieces of legislation ever adopted by any Congress in the 200-plus-year history of our Nation. I urge my colleagues to support this reconciliation bill.
I do not can asparagus. Or freeze it for later. After its short season leaves, I’m on to whatever’s in season next. This practice ensures variety, which I agree is the essential spice of the good life. Though I admit, by the end of any season, I’m fairly sick of whatever was in season. Until next year.
In the spring, I can find plenty of fresh morels. For a week or two in late May, the short sockeye salmon season intersects with the asparagus, morel, and the Walla Walla salad onion harvest. This is the season of Lemony Snicket breakfast omelets and simple grilled salmon suppers. Every day. Every day.
Later, the dog salmon will be in season. Zuchinni and meadow mushrooms will overwhelm the larder. Each fine in their own right, but none in the same class as sockeye, asparagus, morels, and baby sweet onion. Aside from eating to excess only whatever’s in season, I’m picky about what of whatever’s in season I’m going to gorge on.
I like my eat to excess rule because it’s a positive goal. Dieters are raised to be in endless denial of an essential human nature. Whatever else a dieter might do, he’s counseled to never eat to excess. To human nature, this amounts to an injunction to starve, and none of us do this well. We are feasting animals, prone to excess, aware in our DNA that the next meal is eternally uncertain. We’re surly when threatened with starvation. So we eat to excess.
By buffering this natural tendency with a little caveat, I’ve managed to avoid the common afflictions of the glutton so far. I could interpret this rule as carte blanche to eat Little Debbie Cakes until I burst, except Little Debbie Cakes don’t have a season. There’s the trick. I’m wary of anything non-seasonal. If I can get something 365/24/7, I won’t eat THAT to excess. That, I just eat. Or not.
I reserve my excesses for food worthy of excess: fresh harvest. The off-seasonals are expensive. I’m cheap enough to be unable to gorge those. The off-seasonals are also off in other ways. Color. Texture. Taste. My lust for asparagus in the dead of winter is just that, lust. One of the deadly sins. Should I try to satisfy this lust, I will not love the result. Almost exactly unlike asparagus, forced in some climate better suited to coca cultivation, a king’s ransom wasted. I leave that table still starving. It’s like dreaming of a white christmas in July. Neither merry nor bright.
In the summer, counter tops should be inaccessible by piles of eggplant and tomato. In the fall, apples: crisp and tart, and brussel sprouts. In the winter, citrus and squashes. I reserve my excesses for what would be, out of season, simply side dishes. In season, I can make a meal of fresh spinach. Off season, it’s a side salad.
Meat, bread, dry beans, and butter are not seasonals, and therefore excluded from my list of foods to eat to excess. At Thanksgiving at my table, the garnet yams get center stage for second helpings, not the turkey. At Christmas, chestnut stuffing. If we gather to celebrate, we might as well celebrate the harvest, and not the wonders of deep freezing technology.
Sure, I’m a pig. But a peculiar, rather picky one. Consider becoming a picky pig, too. Eat to excess only what’s in season. And eat an awfully lot of that.
I ordered the Woodfired Seafood Combo, breaking a personal rule to avoid ordering anything advertised as a combo, but it was late and it seemed the simplest alternative. The wedge salad was fine.
The sword, tuna, and Atlantic salmon came guarded by shrimp and scallops "grilled" employing a remarkable method which apparently infuses in lemon butter sauce on a wood grill. Absolutely infused. These babies drooled all over the fish, which itself seemed to have been wood-fired in lemon butter sauce, and were not simply well-done, but well past retirement age.
Finish the presentation with steamed broccoli in poochichi sauce (an old Filipino favorite I didn't know anyone in this country even knew how to make) and a thrice-baked potato that looked as if it had survived a bar fight and was on the lam from a restraining order.
Okay, I ate it anyway. (Except for the spud, which was just ... too... threatening to touch.) It was late. I was tired. And hungry.
My wife fared better. She had the lobster, which she reported as serviceable, served on a bed of cold, sandy clams and dehydrated mussels with a small hunk of 'not bad' corn on the cob and what looked like a wood fired weenie, also probably infused with Lemon Butter Sauce. (We know what THAT means.) The weenie went back with the sandy shellfish.
We will not go back.
I'd eaten at Legal Seafood in Boston before it was a chain, and liked it fine. But it's a chain now. Then, the ambience was wood and conversation. Now, it's naugahyde and noise. It's pretty clear that some efficiency experts have had their way with this operation. I am confident only that the food is now cost-effective, the operation profitable, and the small crimes committed with each course, Legal, though barely.
I am not a chef. I am a cook. And a pot wizard. And a cheap-assed shopper.
I do not wear a toque. I only occasionally wear an apron. My knives need sharpening. They were not imported from Germany.
My cookware does not match. I have way more Corningware than I will ever use, purchased for next to nothing at an old family friend’s estate sale. It holds more meaning than utility.
My favorite cast iron fry pan has a crack in the bottom of it, but I cannot bear to replace it. I found it in the oven of the old gas cookstove in that crummy apartment I moved into when my first wife and I separated. It, however, holds more utility than meaning, though it holds a lot of meaning, too.
I am a picky eater. I almost never eat bacon, which I consider to be illicit if only because it smells so much better than it ever tastes. Beef I can eat, but usually don’t. When I do eat it, I prefer it raw. Or rare. Or else exorcized of every molecule of bejesus it ever possessed.
I like poor people food. I love beans. Pasta’s next. Bread’s a necessity, but next to impossible to come by. Potato. Lamb! Chicken. Fish and shellfish. Rabbit on occasion. Dark colored veg. Milk. Beer. Decent red wine (decent: cheap but good). Dessert is somebody’s else’s idea of a reward, not mine.
I am not a chemist. I do not follow recipes well. I have no intuition about ratios. I reinvent a lot of wheels and discover many combinations previously unknown, at least to this man.
I do not bake. Ever.
I lived for a few months with a woman who had graduated from The Culinary Institute. She had worked at The Union Square Cafe in New York and Chez Panisse in Berkeley. From her I learned that I didn’t know how to use a knife, seed tomatoes, or properly sterilize a cutting board. I also learned that I didn’t want to learn those things. I also learned that I have a naturally decent palate and an eye for unusually yummy combinations.
She worked at fast forward speed, a skill she’d had drilled into her throughout her professional career. Me? I chop slowly, lugubriously by her standards, and I’m fine with that. My dinner guests aren’t going anywhere.
I do not like cookbooks. Cookbooks
are usually works of fiction. A professional ghostwriter tries to
represent what a master chef might create in commercial quantities,
and, in my experience, fails. Not through lack of diligence,
I’m sure, but because something important about the context
gets lost in this translation. If you’ve ever worked in a
professional kitchen, you’d recognize that it has about as
much in common with your kitchen as a cruise ship has with a toy
boat.
Most of what makes cooking work cannot be written about —-
or, indeed, spoken. Cooking, above all other human activities,
relies upon the cook’s tacit knowledge much more than his
explicit knowledge. The nose knows what no know-it-all could ever
explain. This nose started developing sensibilities before you were
born, and was set in his ways before you were old enough to handle
a rubber spatula. Should you submit to the brutal bootcamp of
professional training, you might of course counter-balance your
early imprinting with mindless repetition. But almost none of us
will do that. We don’t aspire to be chefs, but cooks. We
don’t want tuna with good taste, but are satisfied with tuna
that tastes good enough.
That said, I have a bookshelf filled with cookbooks, though I rarely even try to follow their instructions. They are reference books, meant to inspire. The proportions for cooking white rice need not amuse my creativity. Fanny Farmer figured that out a long time ago. She didn’t think to throw a hunk of fresh ginger in the pot. I did. That time. But her basic instructions contribute their part.
I usually check the formal recipe, then discard it, and for good reason. It often includes something I do not have on hand. I’m looking for a cue about how I “should”, which for a cook provides ample motivation to do it differently than that.
Our tastes are situational. Many of my culinary successes were utter failures when compared with my intentions. Jeez, I didn’t know spaetzel would do THAT. Hey, it tastes even better like THAT!
We cooks are accident-prone, thank goodness, assisted by short attention spans. Tradition belongs in someone else’s kitchen. We’re discovering in ours. I no more aspire to recreate that perfect grilled salmon than I want to re-live my junior high school years. Next time will probably be an adventure, too.
Or so I say. I do have my rituals, which differ from recipes in two important ways. Recipes delineate quantities and actions while rituals focus upon relationships. Recipes attempt to recreate while rituals seek to create a context within which novel results might manifest. No guarantees, of course. But with practice, no guarantees are really needed. After all, we’re not judging results against any theoretical ideal, but against situated taste. So what if I forgot to put beets into the Borscht? Taste it. It’s really lovely. Now, what shall we name this?
Cooks are the ultimate re-framers.
We routinely create out of seeming sow’s ears. But silk purse
is so ‘done!’ I frequently find myself trolling for a
name for what ends up on the plate. Hence, my first great culinary
success was called Electric Fred, named after a friend who provided
an important ingredient. Electric Fred had no recipe. It involved
barley (if I remember correctly), combined with whatever I found in
the refrigerator. It was never pretty, always nourishing, and above
all, really, really filling. EF was different every time, yet also
very much the same.
I like to think that every family must have its own personal
Electric Fred. Some casserole, some combination unique only to
their table, unknown everywhere else. I like to think this, but
I’m doubting that this is true. When I met my current (she
says “last”) wife, she’d for years
subsisted on a diet of what she called “bag meals.” I
had never heard of a bag meal, so she explained. A bag meal is
rather like a frozen, portion-packaged Electric Fred consisting of
various frostbitten bits of veg and meat, sometimes even pasta or
rice. These are zapped in a microwave, then served in lieu of food.
I missed the microwave revolution. I never until recently had one in any of the kitchens I’d ever used, and still have little idea how one might be productively employed. The few times I’ve dabbled with them, we both left the encounter limping. I have proven myself capable of melting the container around the food, yielding a melted plastic smell that hung around for a week or more. My experiment in reheating coffee left a steaming sludge that needed soaking to remove. Like I said, I’m not fast in the kitchen, and don’t aspire to be.
I believe that I should savor the cooking at least as much as the result. Part of my sacred responsibility in the kitchen involves making the whole house smell great. I simmer more than I sautee. I slow roast more than I broil. I distrust every shortcut scheme. I prefer the long way around.
Most of what makes great cooking does not involve heat. For me, heat serves more as punctuation than prose. The content starts in the larder, which in my current home hides in the basement. When the landlord remodeled the kitchen, he was thoughtful enough to reinstall the old cabinets and countertop in the basement, and this is where I keep most of my raw materials. These include a delightful variety of dry beans, rices and pasta shapes. These completely fill one cabinet, stored in quart mason jars and old Donald Duck orange juice containers. The other cabinet holds a few canned goods: tuna, tomatoes, and, yes, beans again. And a few odd bits: chiles, sun-dried tomatoes, anchovies. I think there’s an ancient can of hominey in there, too.
Most of my larder is fresh. I shop pretty much daily. I’m always out of some little thing. Yesterday, I was out of mushrooms, fresh tarragon, pears, and something beef-ish, and wine. The day before demanded fresh green chiles, beer, greens, and coffee. I try not to over plan these excursions, and rarely buy more than I can carry.
The shopping list is perpetual,
and pretty much always the same. I always use potatoes, so I keep
these around. Onions, ditto. Same with garlic and fresh ginger.
When I’m feeling flush, shallots. Celery, carrot, parsnip,
turnip, beets, and salad greens, the darker the better. Balsamic
vinegar, olive oil, course-ground pepper, and Kosher salt. A few
seasonal fruits. Limes (for Amy’s Gimlets), and a lemon or
three. Non-fat milk. Butter. Real cheese. Greek-style yoghurt. A
quart of cider. Breakfast juices. Bagels in the freezer. And bread,
real bread when I can get it, multi-grain when I cannot. A few
grains, too: steel-cut oats and old fashioned oatmeal. Farina.
Polenta.
The meat drawer is the least-used storage in the place. Meat gets
cooked within a day or two of purchase or it gets frozen.
What’s in the freezer? Some roasted tomatoes, roasted garlic,
ground turkey, and a couple of dozen little plastic bags of
vegetable peelings and poultry carcasses—the raw material for
stock—and a little sorbet and even less ice cream. I think
there’s a container of wheat germ in there, too.
One shelf in the refrigerator has mason jars of homemade stock, lemon juice (I am not picky about lemon juice), and various pickles. Amy loves pickles, but more for show than actual consumption. For her, it’s unthinkable not to have pickles in the fridge. There are some oil-cured olives, some bulk tahini, pickled herring (Amy’s again) there, too. The door holds the grand daughter’s (Grand Otter) ketchup, Worcestershire Sauce, mayo, and my beer. Ale’s good. Pilz, better.
The balance of the refer holds leftovers. I think that at least half of every refrigerator should be filled with leftovers. They are the secret larder, waiting retransformation.
Amy’s in charge of flour and lard and the other stuff she uses when baking. I have a remarkably disordered spice shelf, many of the residents way past mandatory retirement age. I rarely use them, anyway. I have no taste for salt. I let the eater spice their own damned food.
I conceive of my larder as my thesaurus. There are only about ten basic recipes in my world, each with a near infinite variety of adaptations, depending. Depending upon what? Yes, that IS the question. If I’m lousy with mushrooms, the sauce will have a different declarative than if I am out of them. Sauce, however, IS sauce. It’s runny. It’s usually hot. Beyond that, it’s no more than a base within which to combine stuff.
What shape of pasta seems to go with this concoction? A useful question, so I keep a wide (and narrow, and twisty, and curious) collection of pasta shapes on hand. Salad is always good. Universally useful. Salad with fruit is always interesting. I keep this stuff around.
When my parents still kept a kitchen, I found their larder disappointingly slim. But there’s was more of a baker’s larder, and one primed explicitly for convenience. Fine for them. Every time I visited, though, I found myself going out for the same stuff, stuff they never used but I literally could not get along without. Olive oil. Fresh onion. Garlic. Stock.
I present my larder not to encourage you to replicate it. I know what’s in there. You might consider knowing what’s in yours, too. For a few years, I had a job that forced me into ‘executive housing’ four days each week. Monday morning, I’d get on a plane, fly for ninety minutes, then after work that evening find myself wandering around a Safeway experiencing what I labeled anti-disestablishmentarianism of the refrigerator variety. Did I need milk here or there? I never became accustomed to having two or three gallons of milk there, and none (again) when I returned home on Thursday evening. I synch with my larder when I’m shopping. When I cannot do that, I’m buying blind.
My tastes are mine and you
can’t have them, no matter how much you drool and beg. I
don’t know how to give them to you, anyway. So if this volume
isn’t a cookbook, why am I writing it? It is a cook’s
book, a book about my take on the fine and sloppy art of cooking,
but it’s not an instruction book. Consider it inspiration. Or
curiosity. This book doesn’t even aspire to tell you how you
should cook. That’s way too personal and I am not a board
registered therapist. Hey, I just cook. I also write. You read.
Maybe we could cook up something together.
Okay?
"It would be hardly too much to say that modern science began when people became accustomed to the idea of changes changing, e.g. to the idea of acceleration as opposed to simple motion." Arthur N. Prior
Changing the whole idea of change has occurred a few times in the history of science. Transcendent moments where some quiet, previously undiscovered truth emerged from an unlikely place. Those who were trudging the straight and narrow were surprised, often angry. Several of these game-changing insights were not accepted or even recognized until their discoverer was long gone.
I just finished reading a remarkable book, Why Beauty Is Truth, A History of Symmetry by Ian Stewart (ISBN 978-0-465-08236-0, 2007 by Basic Books, NY). Stewart connects each transforming discovery with a simple concept: While beauty is no proof of truth, scientific truth is inevitably beautiful, at least so far.
The math he presents as beautiful doesn't make any sense to me, so I take his word that it is, indeed, beautiful. I'm no qualified judge. I am qualified, though, to pass judgment on the human stories he wraps his indecipherable ciphering with, and they are beautifully crafted.
But there's a battle raging within the sciences, and it has to do with elegance, which might or might not be an attribute of beauty, and so of truth. Several hundred years ago, for good social reasons, it was decided that science would henceforth be confined to those concepts provable with essentially a straightedge and compass or an algorithm. Following generations of religious warfare in Europe, it seemed only reasonable that rationality would at least improve the chances of agreement. In a startlingly short time, story-tellers and philosophers were escorted from the laboratory, where they had maintained well-respected places, replaced with a value-neutral perspective that was both internally consistent and quite elegant.
But this new science could not contain all truth. Relying narrowly upon material and efficient causation left out the stories that made the discoveries real for those of us not versed in the mathematics. When the social sciences came along, they quite naturally mimicked the physical sciences and started trying to prove stuff that didn't quite qualify as stuff.
Some of their discoveries were also beautiful, but beautiful in different ways. Darwin's theory was certainly not mathematically provable, but it did have a certain beauty about it. Paradox and contradiction have a beauty all their own. Ethics and morality are surprisingly beautiful, yet remain unprovable. In short, science stumbled into Yogi Berra's famous insight: In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. There's a lot of difference in practice.
Objectivity is the delusion that one could have an observation without an observer, and the observer is invariably human. Some human even designs the observant machines.
There is symmetry beyond the
elegance of mathematical proof, and we all know it when we see it.
Favoring the narrow symmetry provable only within a tautological
validation system does not mirror how we live life. There was hope
for the longest time that life could be explained by algorithm. Few
serious scientists believe this now. Now, schools of study are
blurring into consortiums, cross-disciplinary inquiry, yielding
new, richer symmetries. The science imagined centuries ago to
resolve a burning social need always was a myth:
"If we do think of ourselves myth-free, when we are not, that is (I am suggesting) largely because the material from which we construct our myths is taken from the sciences themselves. This situation is the one we meet in those trickiest of crime stories, in which the detective himself turns out to have done the deed: he is the last man we suspect. There are of course other reasons why we find it hard to spot our own myths. To begin with, they are hard to spot, as our own fallacies are hard to spot, just because they are our own fallacies, we are tempted to think are the faults on other people's arguments, and myths the queer ideas people used to have about the universe. Again, we are inclined to suppose that myths must necessarily be anthropomorphic, and that personification is the unique road to myth. But this assumption is baseless: the myths of the twentieth century ... are not so much anthropomorphic as mechanomorphic. And why, after all, should not the purposes of myth be served as effectively by picturing the world in terms of mythical machines as by invoking mythical personages? Still, in the main, it is because the contemporary myths are scientific ones that we fail to acknowledge them as being myths at all. The old picture of the world has been swept away; Poseidon and Waton have suffered death by ridicule, and people not unnaturally look to the scientist for a substitute." Stephen E. Toulmin Metaphysical Beliefs
"Aside from the demands of a system of dynamics meant to apply to the real world—as Newton's dynamics originally was—the only merit of rational mechanics was its mathematical elegance, regardless of factual correctness; and the abstract nature of rational choice theory puts it at risk in the same way and for the same reasons as rational mechanics. Elegance is not enough." Stephen E. Toulmin Return To Reason
It was a poet, not a scientist, who claimed that beauty was truth and truth beauty, but neither beauty nor truth are sufficient to sustain, let alone understand life as it is lived. There is a certain symmetry even to the bit of broken fence in my neighbor's yard which convinces me that it is both real and functional enough to not need any added elegance that might be found from fixing it.
Where does integration start? This is a mostly meaningless question, but rather than simply walk away from it, I'll expound a tiny bit. Integration isn't a step-wise, serial process. I know, I know, step-wise seriality has become the popular method for describing everything, and while I could slip into that worn groove, I'll choose not to. If only because that groove misrepresents integration. It just ain't like that.
I believe that we miss many opportunities to integrate because we don't see them. Primed for one or another 'first step,' when we don't see that step appearing, we get discouraged, even to the point of convincing ourselves that integration is obviously not possible here, at this time, with THEM! So I'll explicitly dismiss the serial, step-wise recipe for integration in favor of a less misrepresenting form.
Because integration is an organic phenomenon, it manifests in distinctly un-machine-guises. No gears. No springs. Cause-effect, rendered largely irrelevant.
I always know integration is lurking when I notice a certain queasiness in my gut. My normal routine, my sense-making is off balance. I am not, in that moment, purposefully pursuing, though I'm not lost. This is the unease familiar to anyone aimlessly milling around. You're early for that appointment. The meeting is getting started a half hour late. The line is MUCH longer than you'd anticipated. You and a bunch of strangers are just milling around, maybe waiting for someone to show up and make the experience work.
That someone is you. Or not. Your choice. But respect the 'essential milling around period.' While it might seem as though time's a-wasting, useful stuff is simmering there. The 'essential milling around period' holds great potential, unseen. Unsensed. For me, the surest route to disintegration passes right through the short-cut around milling around. That short-cut leads right into premature stability, where people agree to hold their breath before they even learn to breathe, on the mere anticipation of sour smells. This is not integration.
Fortunately, integration is a forgiving phenomenon. My point is only that the opportunities for integration are endless and not obvious. If it's all falling together as you expected, enjoy the flight. It's likely to be brief, and provide a dandy opportunity for you to reset your expectations. I am learning to respect the essential milling around period, which might well come at the beginning, but might appear at any time, swiping every sensation of forward momentum. No worries, then. Foundational stuff is laying itself down unseen. Maybe we could together almost learn to appreciate the sensation of milling around?
Disintegration is the father of integration, as well as its first born child.
Things fall apart—or seem to—then integrate again, then fall apart again. Different each time, and quite predictably so.
Stability is a myth; integration an active verb. Neither integration nor disintegration come with haunches to squat upon.
Living an integrative life depends upon punctuation. And you provide this. If you insert a hard stop period or a savoring semi-colon following an experience of integration, you will construct your history our of integrating experiences. Do the same with disintegration, and your history will be one damned thing after another or the same damned thing over and over again.
Because we believe in the Myth of Stability, we learn early to vilify our father and first-born child: disintegration. The Myth of Stability focuses our attention upon our self, as if we were somehow independent, viable, and not in inevitable relation with others. When things fall apart, we notice what's missing, and what's often missing is someone else.
Because we live in relation and people are unpredictable, disintegration is inevitable. Fortunately, disintegration is the father and first-born child of integration, and each integration becomes a father in his own right, siring his own child. Sandwiched between are those golden, glowing moments, creative, inspiring, integrating.
Appreciate the bitter flavors. Life is sweet, but also salty and savory, bitter and umami, sometimes tasteless. Altogether, tasty. This meal integrates disintegration.
The first principle of integration seems to be that the story I create to explain the integration might not make sense to anyone but me. You just had to be there at the 'point of integration' for the story to provide full impact, to experience that ah-ha instant. I got to experience it first hand. My story is inevitably used goods. What's well integrated for me might not seem very well combined to you.
Integration involves combining previously separated distinctions in such a way that their differences seem less important than their now obvious similarities.
There's always an Elephant Factor involved. What's an Elephant Factor? Drawing on my book, The Blind men and the Elephant, and the Hindu parable upon which I based it, the Elephant Factor is the degree to which the blind men are convinced that their differentiating experiences are definitive. "The elephant is obviously a Fan!" exclaimed the blind man touching the elephant's ear. This assertion alone is no barrier to integration. The certainty about what 'this fan' could not also be, or also be a part of, seems the real Elephant Factor at play.
Elephant Factors can be huge, such as the EF separating terrorist from pacifist, or tiny, such as the EF between me, myself, and I. But even small EFs can be troublesome, blinding, disintegrating.
We are fortunately integrative by nature. Gordon MacKenzie in his Orbiting The Giant Hairball recounts that when he asks a class of kindergardeners how many are artists, every single one of them raises their hand. By the time these same kids reach third grade, only one or two will admit to this, and they are chided by their fellows. Of course we are all artists, creators, and creative by our very nature. What could have convinced us otherwise?
Many things that are not things. There will be more, much more coming on this topic.
I entered the seventh grade a successful student. In grade school, I had lived among the top tier of students, participating in an array of extracurricular activities. I played a decent (though never distinguished) second chair clarinet, squaredanced, Cub Scouted, and ran my own paper route. I’d written and produced a play in my fifth grade class for scholastic achievers, and even conquered the dreaded long division. I left grade school college bound. By the end of my first term in junior high school, I was certain that college would be beyond my reach.
What happened? French happened. Try as I might, I could not make French behave. My ability to manipulate the English language gave me no leverage with La Francaise. The language labs left me sweaty, the homework left me despondent, and the classroom interaction left me feeling like the deaf mute in the choir. It would not figure out!
The teacher, watching my struggles, took a special interest in me, and offered to spend extra time helping me overcome this difficulty. I had never needed special tutoring, and felt uncomfortable taking him up on his offer.
A delicate balance was disrupted. My IQ plummeted in my other classes, too. This experience was sending me into an intellectual stone age. I was becoming a Neanderthal!
My stomach began giving me fits. Gurgling and aching, particularly when I would don my imaginary beret to begin my homework. Usually a confident intuitive, I began painstakingly transcribing each phrase ten and twenty times, sub-vocalizing each as I scribbled. My handwriting went to hell along with the rest of my faculties.
My doctor prescribed a healthy dose of failure. “Drop the class,” he advised. Reassured by my parents that there was, indeed, life after French, I dropped the class. I was assigned to shop class instead. Shop class was overseen by an unimaginative bull of a bullet-headed man who taught me one enduring life lesson. When my intuitive design for a shelf baffled him, he advised me to, “Just copy something from the back of the book.” I had gone in less than one semester from near the head of the class to crouching in the back of a wood shop, looking for something to copy out of the back of the book.
I was twenty five before I figured out a way to get into university without mastering a foreign language, and I did well there. Very well. How curious that I still tend to cope with the impossibles in my life by carefully transcribing, then sub-vocalizing them.
The other side considers differences of opinion to be departure points and refuses to get married to (or even go steady with) either the either or the or. This 'side' believes that domination eventually (often quickly) falls apart and compromise is just stupid (we'll be smarter by deciding to each be a bit dumber...). This side believes there is always a third way, one which integrates values and interests to invent a more satisfying resolution than either pole of the difference can anticipate. Let's call this the Insight (or 'In') side.
Okay, In-side proposes a resolution and invites DC to engage in an inquiry intended to develop a deeper understanding of the issue and stumble upon some insights that might serve as a really different resolution than the one he proposes. (It doesn't matter where he starts with his proposal, since that's just the medium for starting the conversation.) But DC mistakes this as a negotiating ploy intended to either threaten dominion or encourage compromise, and responds in kind, with threats or counter-compromises, never engaging in anything like a dialogue.
No matter how vehemently In-side insists that he's not cleverly pursuing dominion or compromise, DC just can't grok that there's other space possible. When In-side calls for bi-partisanship, he is not trying to weaken DC, but strengthen them. But DC interprets this as just another round of partisan gamesmanship, and responds in kind.
Any dispassionate consideration of this dilemma would conclude that if there was a way to integrate values and interests to create a resolution that would serve everyone better, this would be a great thing to pursue. But the game becomes one between an adult and an eight year old. The subtle potential imbedded in the invitation slips by unseen, and raw emotion at what's not there dominates play, when what's not there (yet) is the whole purpose of playing in the first place. The eight year old does not yet understand how to create in this world.
In the past, these sorts of conflicts have resulted in civil wars (a curious label for anything so uncivil), or, wait for it, even greater domination or compromise (Wilson in France negotiating the 'peace to end all peace' comes to mind, when the French and English swiped everything that wasn't nailed down in a desperate last gasp for dominion.) We're hopeful a third way might yet emerge from the debating society stuck in DC.
Most of medicare funding is spent 'plugging in grandma,' when grandma ain't going anywhere. While I can appreciate the pain and the trauma associated with unplugging her, I'm baffled at the mindset that decided to plug her in ... in the first place.
Our time here is short, and not improved by artificial extension. If life is sacred, so, then, should be death. The secular death caused by the eventual collapse of artificially-prolonged life is crueler. It does not lesson the grief, and poisons the memory.
Don't debate about unplugging grandma, consider not plugging her in ... in the first place.
The words or the music, melody or message?
And I always feel dismayed by their innocence,
embarrassed that I cannot coherently reply.
For neither come first, and neither come last
and how either come into being,
nothing but a persistent mystery, even to me.
And I know how to do this,
how to wrench coherence from chaos,
a pleasing melody from the deafening background noise.
But this is no skill, not knowledge-based ability,
but something I discovered I was born naturally able to do.
I did not do it well for the longest time.
(Thank God for the innocent ear of youth
and the tolerance of parents, and siblings, and friends.)
I was a nobody who merely imagined himself to be somebody
long before I ever learned the truth.
But that's not quite right, because I still don't know the
truth.
Writing a song is an act of permission rather than
commission;
permission to proceed precisely because I cannot know.
And an admission that no matter how clever I might become,
I will never manufacture a melody
or more than blindly iterate any lyric into being.
These damned things pass through me
like shit through a goose,
golden crap hardly worth mentioning had it not stuck to my
shoes.
Neither the words nor the music come first,
but the muse.
My complaint centers around the irrational way we presently choose the haves and the have-nots.
What would rationally-derived health care rationing look
like? Here are some ideas. Decide based upon:
Hair color
Race
Zip code
Gender
Religion
Political party
Taste in music
Underwear preference (Boxers/briefs...)
Legibility of handwriting
Credit score
These criteria might seem absurd, but each can be unambiguously, rationally determined. Equity determined by hard and surprisingly fast rules.
Playing this little game exposed for me the absurdity of the whole argument. If the irrational scheme fails and the rational schemes fail, might we question the rationing premise? Perhaps we're struggling to answer the wrong question.
One strategy for resolving this kind of dilemma involves assuming abundance, rather than scarcity. What if there were plenty, more than we could possibly imagine?
Feels different, doesn't it?
Father is the painting of a blue house green. Father lives on the other side of the sky. Father is a cloudy day with sun. Father is an email, a phone call. Father is paperwork and publishers. Father is books and drives in the country. Father is fireplaces and snow. Father is the ocean I swim in. Father is a cascades volcano, a skyscraper. Father is large and powerful. Father is a bold line across a blank page. Father is a bowl of pasta, an arugula salad, a Christmas goose. Father is a day in June. A long day, where the sun shines almost till midnight.
Love,
Heidi
©2009 by Heidi Astrid Schmaltz, all rights reserved
Perfect until it came time to store our wonderful finds. This little apartment doesn't have a root cellar or an auxiliary beer fridge in the garage, not even a garage. It was time to clean out the also-rans. Time to make stock.
Stock, properly made, makes the stuff sold as stock in grocery store seem like cat piss. Real stock is rich in color and flavor, but also in texture, the way no other liquid I know of can carry texture. The little fat in it shimmers enticingly. The color, ranging from a tawny tan to a rich amber, depends upon what was taken stock of in making it. What do I mean, taking stock of?
Stock is free if you make it yourself, or as nearly free as anything consumable might aspire to be. It sells for four buck a quart or more in the store, and isn't even real at that price. Made at home, it's leverage with no downside; trash utterly transformed.
Daily, I throw every veg peeling and odd stalk, every ugly leftover bit into a plastic bag and into the freezer. On stock day, which invariably arrives when too much great new stuff displaces the increasingly marginal stuff I have just not gotten around to trashing yet, the fridge gets a through cleaning. The crisper drawers get sorted through and anything not yet skanky gets set aside for the stock pot. The freezer, which by this time is filled with odd little plastic bags of asparagus butts, Brussel sprout trimmings, parsnip and carrot peelings, and rejected artichoke leaves, also gets a thorough going over, with ingredients selected as if in their prime to create a once-in-a-lifetime combination.
Today was a lucky day. I had a couple of pounds of veal bones, which I'd spotted a couple of weeks ago while cruising the Eastern Market. In other words, a couple of bucks worth of collagen-rich leftovers, bought for pocket change. The bones, which are worth more than anyone ever charges for them, are the only thing worth paying top-dollar for when making stock. The rest of the brew involves stuff you would have thrown to the worms in the composter or the garbage disposal if you weren't so damned wise.
The process starts with roasting the bones for an hour in a 500 degree F (260 C) oven. For young bones like veal, this will just start to crispen the exterior. After an hour, roughly chop that odd end of parsnip you found in the bottom of the veg crisper, the larger of the two wilting turnips, a carrot or two, and an onion, and take the garlic that's starting to sprout and wilt, no need to even take the paper off those. Throw the whole chopped mess into another pan, like a deep frying pan, that's been preheating in that hot oven for a while. Drizzle a little olive oil over the mess, then return it to the seemingly way-too hot oven. Turn dem bones while you're at it. Go read a novel for a half hour or so while this mess crazes.
At the end of the half hour, plop dem bones in right in on top of the glistening veg, then deglaze the pan they were roasting in. This is simple, just pour a bit of that leftover white wine you bought for someone who never showed at your last soiree, drizzle that into the hot pan the bones left behind, and swirl with a whisk until the stuck bits come loose. Pour the result into your deepest stock pot. Throw in all the odds and ends you selected from your frozen inventory---asparagus butts, etc---, put that pot on moderately high heat and add enough water to cover the mess. Then go back to reading that cliff-hanger, cat on lap optional, but appreciated.
About a half hour later, after two hours of roasting, the bones are ready for a bath. Transfer them into the now serenely bubbling nascent broth on the stove top and revel in the satisfying sizzle each yelps when dropped in. Nothing like a hot bath after a long sauna! Throw the roasted veg in, too. Add more water if you're greedy and want as much stock as possible from this mess, then go back to see what the villains are plotting in that novel.
Ninety minutes might be enough time. Certainly no less time, and the liquid will have reduced a little bit, but not too much, because you left the mess on moderately high heat before you disappeared back into fantasy land. When the time is right, and your nose will tell you that the veg is exhausted and won't give another drizzle to the performance, drain the mess and pour into your wide-mouth jars (perhaps with a little finely chopped leek to dress it up a bit.) Make this transfer when the liquid is HOT! seal the jars immediately, and they'll seal tight as they cool and last forever in the back of the fridge. I ran short of jars (as I knew I would in this little place), and stored the last liter and a half in empty olive oil bottles, sealing the tops with aluminum foil and rubber bands. (Yes, Amy threw out my left-over olive oil bottle lids as apparent garbage.)
There, you're almost done. Separate the bones from the veg, discard the veg, it's exhausted. It's given its all. Transfer the bones back into the stock pot, cover with fresh water, and boil them for another hour or more on high, high, high heat. You're extracting the final collagen to make something that will utterly transform anything it's added to. After an hour or so, when the liquid is almost gone, remove the bones and give them to Amy, who's always trolling for soft cartilage to chew, then boil down the remaining liquid until it's almost nothing. Sticky. Gooey. Chilled to room temperature it will look like shoe leather. A mere sliver added to anything will ennoble that thing. A pinch on an egg, a dollop into a sauce, you'll find yourself carving bits off to just pop into your mouth as you cruise the kitchen. It's knighthood on a knife. I don't have much variety for storage, so I poured this into an unused ashtray. I'll dress the garlic scapes and asparagus with it at dinner.
If you don't stop and take stock, and make stock every few weeks, we have to wonder about you. Do you usually eat out? You know, real stock is the only reason their sauce tastes so much better than yours (or better than the Lean Cuisine you innocently thought would be faster to make). If you make your own stock, though, you might never be satisfied with another restaurant meal again. Your stock will be so much better than even the celebrity chefs', you'll wish you'd just stayed at home.
Cheap but good is great. The best there is in this life. If you don't make your own stock (yet), take stock of your life. It's short and brutish, save for the small differences something like stock makes.
(Store the jars, leftover olive oil bottle, whatever ... of broth in the corner of the fridge that usually freezes stuff. Only fill the jars 7/8ths full, or the expanding frozen contents might (will definitely) break the container, and you'll lose the contents. ... how and when should you use the stock you've taken? Cripes, if you don't know the answer to that question, you're worthless. Move to freaking Virginia and eat ham!)
ps: notice how I didn't instruct you to salt or 'fresh ground pepper' this mess? Good. Don't even think of salting it. The goo will be perfectly seasoned. You can add salt to taste when you actually use this stuff. No one could know how much to add to satisfy taste before actually using...
Can you explain the scientific reason why?
Crash is mostly sociable. He seems pleased whenever either one of us returns, but also crying plaintively as if mourning. I've taken to offering a few kitty treats when I return, which, I know!, encourages infantile behavior. I scratch heads and switch out their water bowl for some cold water from the filter pitcher from the fridge. I don't expect them to drink the musty tap water here either.
Part of every afternoon involves the changing of the cat box ritual. The cat box, which I secreted in the bottom of the six-foot tall television cabinet in the corner of the living room next to the glass wall onto the balcony, lies behind two doors. The cats pass through the open back to do their business in private, but I swing open the front doors to sort out their leavings. I carry the kitchen garbage can into the living room and filter the bad stuff into it before adding the bathroom trash then tying off the liner and stepping out the door, down the hall one door to the right to the garbage chute room, and dropping the bag in for its six floor drop to the basement.
Easy ritual. The cats want more treats when I return. Hey, I was technically gone, if only for a half minute. ... No dice, guys.
I might pull the vacuum out and quickly de-fur the place. Both cats are shedding like Llamas, with Crash even making daily deposits of partially ingested fur around the place, punctuated with that emphatic retching that sounds like the end of the world coming up, but doesn't seem to bother him a bit.
Rose huddles under the too-big bed whenever thunder strikes, but she and Crash have no lingering fear of fire truck noises, which are far more fearsome to me. We try to keep the sliding glass door to the balcony open, so Rose has her perch, but the outside noise makes it next to impossible to watch TV (well, actually to hear the television) or even talk. The airplanes do not land between midnight and six am, but promptly at six, a steady line of them pass over, one every couple of minutes, so low I can read the lettering on their sides and so loud I can't hear myself stink. Several times each day, the fire brigade rushes out to blaring sirens and a startling kind of quacking. Deafening, but Rose just sits there placidly, twitching her ears. The first time they heard the fire trucks, they panicked and Rose wouldn't come out from under the bed for a day.
Rose is still that way with the thunder, shivering beneath the bed even the morning after. Crash has claimed the sole desk chair, which is so uncomfortable we rarely use it. It's upholstered in a thick mat of Crash hair, no matter how often we brush it clean.
Each evening, I pull out my ball of string with the feathery thingy attached to the end and play cat fishing. It's rather like fly fishing. I swing out an adequate length of line, then lazily pass the birdy in the direction of the cat, sharply pulling the string back to mimic a startled bird. Rose seems genuinely disinterested, groggy. And so does Crash until he just can't help respond to the killer inside. Suddenly, he'll sweep out a paw and tap the birdy, eyes gleaming. Further snaps bring more aggressive responses. He stands, crouches, moves to a more invisible position, batting, swatting, sometimes snagging his prey. When he does snag it, he chews briefly before letting loose, which prompts me to snap again and him to, instinctively I guess, swat and bat. He sometimes goes completely airborne in response, hungrily pawing the air.
Rose will play grace notes behind Crash's full concerto, slipping in the odd bat, the disinterested swat. I will sometimes land the bird on the glass-topped coffee table, where the cats can see it preening from the floor. They will slip into grooming or idle purring, disinterestedly eying the offender. Then, quite suddenly, one or the other or both will perform some gravity-defying pounce, moving from lounging to lunging without a clue that they had been winding up. Then the birdy gets chewed, and chewed good, before it mysteriously snaps back into frustrating flight. Swinging back into range, we get another couple of good leaps and catches before they relax and regain their distant disregard.
This can go on for quite a while, and they need the exercise. It's reassuring to see that they still have their reflexes, that apartment living hasn't eroded their instinct to kill feathery things. They mostly ignore the cat toys in favor of a good nap. Crash either on the chair by the desk or in the corner under the plastic tree, Rose on the balcony, on our side of the partition or on the neighbor's side. She slips between the two just as if she owned the place.
And maybe she does. She still pounces on Crash's head. Crash is still a ninny in response. Amy brushes the couch and Crash's chair as part of her morning ritual. I service their cat box and feed them the little kitty treat bribes they insist upon as the price of my every absence. Crash is restless in his long napping, jumping onto and back off of the too-big bed several times each night. He'll cosy in for a while, even manage some limited scream purring, but he paces through the night and dozes through the day, pacing in yowling frustration every morning (mourning?) around five. Rose refuses to be petted in the night, taking her accustomed corner at the bottom of Amy's side of the too-big bed, out of reach. Beyond consolation.
I try to explain that we've found them a wonderful new territory, even counting down the days remaining, but my promises can't bridge the present chasm. The tall glass wall between them and the outside world and the screaming noise of this strange place could convince anyone that they've moved to somewhere altogether too settled for any wild thing to thrive. The catnip banana is small consolidation, and seems like a kid's toy offered to console a thoroughly discouraged adult.
The world turns in fitful bursts, slowing terribly through the most difficult times and slipping almost silently through the sweet ones. This is a bitter time for these cats accustomed to sweetness. Their little crying pleads, which I try to mollify with soft smelly treats, might cease when they have some wild territory to roam again. Until then, they have only the silent dance of two inept apartment dwellers who speak in indecipherable dialect, dispose of the stuff they've already buried out of sight, and tap on the covers, calling them to come dream in a way too-big bed.
If only every map-maker was this thoughtful. It seems to me that every map suffers from the same shortcoming as Prague's. Whether it's a hastily-drawn scribble intended to guide someone to the neighborhood deli or some laminated intended-to-be permanent portrait of a city's streets, it's wrong, and wrong in some indefinable but none-the-less situationally significant aspect. The value of each incorrect projection ultimately depends upon the perspective of the user, not the accuracy of the map.
And there's no better perspective for any map user than the one reminding themselves that the guide they are following is wrong in some indefinable way. This to avoid over-dependence and to help each remain open to accepting the unavoidable misunderstandings encountered when following any map.
Mercator's Projection still says more about Mercator than it says about the world it projected. It extended more metaphor than accuracy, allowing relatively easy understanding and even easier misunderstanding. Bucky Fuller noted that on a sphere, there is no up and down, only over, yet we speak of North just as if it was up, and South, as if it was down, subtly classifying everyone who falls beneath us in a metaphor we created in the first place. How likely are we to catch on that our projection created the world we imagine we inhabit?
I've been reflecting on my relationship with maps as I learn to get around in a new city. Fortunately for me, my primary map is explicitly limited; it's missing significant parts of the territory I traverse. Traveling beyond the mapped area, I notice myself unplugging from my dependence on presumed predictability and relying upon my own senses and sensibilities, which prove remarkably reliable. There are no mountains here to provide permanent position for triangulation, and the sky hangs low over this pancake terrain. The sun is no reliable assistant, either. And, so far, I have no felt-sense jist of this place, making me a frequent fool to my intentions. I don't, for instance, know whether an on-ramp will be to the right or the left, so I stay in the middle until I can visually verify which, then squeeze into the proper lane, looking every bit like I'm taking cuts in line. Next time, if I remember, I'll know what my map could never disclose.
I am learning when I can depend upon my printed map and when I cannot. But there's no way that I can imagine to slip-stream this frustrating process. I am developing a relationship with this place, both hindered and helped by the kind assistance of McGraw-Hill, Google Maps, and the Metropolitan Transit Authority. I can only blame myself for the many misunderstandings, but there's really no blame to assign. I suffer from another case of the normals, hopeless-feeling at times, but not terribly serious.
I was wondering how any map-maker might more accurately represent how the street grid is actually used. There are eight-lane freeways here that have less utility than the two-lane side streets paralleling them. Where are the secret passages, the chutes in this Chutes and Ladders game? These, I realize, could never be represented on any but my own personal map. If the secret short-cuts were well known, they would provide no more respite than any eight-lane moving parking lot.
So we live and we learn, hoping to take advantage of what others have learned before us. And we will and we do learn from our living. We learn that our maps are wrong and, if we are very fortunate, that this little feature of life couldn't matter less. Yes, you'll find yourself going way out of your way at first, when your map demonstrates another limit to its reliability. You might notice yourself redrawing that part to replace line and color with cloud. Try again and maybe you'll resolve the disparity between what you expected and what you experienced. Or not. Just don't give up too soon. One or two or three or four experiences might well convince you that you cannot get there from here, but you probably can. Whether you feel stupid or smart when you finally figure out what the map-maker intended you to figure out in the first place is entirely in your hands.
Just remember, that map, that process, those instructions, even these directions are wrong in ways that no one could possibly predict beforehand. Keep trying.
And we know when it's present and when it isn't.
This has nothing much to do with following the score and everything to do with satisfying, even exceeding the audience's highest expectations. This is not schlock improv, nor is it simply showing off. It's more like really showing up.
Anyone experiencing an ensemble with chops holds the memory very, very, very close to their heart. It gets under their skin, and stays there.
Chops cannot be prescribed. It takes a lot of personal work to achieve it, but in ensemble performing, personal mastery isn't nearly enough. We've all heard ensembles where one performer out-performs every other, and this ain't chops. Ensemble chops requires balancing, and balancing at a higher level than any individual could achieve alone. Wynton Marsalis claims that chops emerges from each individual finding permission to be no more (or less) than who they truly are, and then finding or forging or fomenting an honest identity together.
This seems like it would be easy, but it's not. Chops is as informed by shortcomings as successes, both feed the context necessary to realize it. We too easily discount our stumbles as unrepresentative of our true potential, when they are solid representations of who we are and what we do at a particular time.
It Don't Mean A Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing is more than a Duke Ellington song. It's a fundamental fact of life.
Last night, I attended The Washington DC premier showing of the documentary Chops, which tells the story of a high school jazz band's success in the annual Essentially Ellington competition at Lincoln Center. Their teacher was the least inspiring of those profiled. Their story was not one of unending success from inception, but one of a surprising success. One no one in the audience expected them to win until they pulled off that great, moving, memorable performance on stage. Chops! They deserved to win, but anyone would had to have been delusional to think that this group would actually rise to the occasion. But rise they did.
Pivotal to their success was a brief visit from a consultant working with the Essentially Ellington foundation. He stopped in for a day and utterly transformed each member's relationship with their music, talent, and each other. When he left, those kids had soul. Before his visit, they were mere talented posers.
How does a project community get chops? Where does their soul come from? Where do they get permission, the ultimatum, to expose their true selves to achieve great things? Some claim this can't be done, except by accident. And that it almost never occurs accidently, that we need to guide and control to achieve even modest results. Interestingly, at the winning performance, the uninspiring band teacher introduced the band, then left the stage, understanding that the group's potential was far greater than he could imagine or direct.
They would succeed or fail on their own chops, which, if they could not produce themselves, could not otherwise be produced.
I'm thinking about chops. Thinking they are well within the reach of anyone, any team, any community. This has certainly been my experience as a brief consultant. Much like the Essentially Ellington consultant, after the brief intervention, people started stumbling upon their own chops. Some even accused me of inducing the result, but I fooled them. They really did it themselves after being reminded of what they could actually achieve if they really showed up, and receiving no more than small permission to do what they already knew full well how to do.
We could be better than we are, we could be swingin' on a star! (Thank you, Jimmy and Johnny!)
Paper, Scissors, Stone
by
Tom Wayman
An executive's
salary for working with paper
beats the wage in a metal shop operating shears
which beats what a gardener earns arranging stone.
But the pay for
a surgeon's use of scissors
is larger than that of a heavy equipment driver removing
stone
which in turn beats a secretary's cheque for handling
paper.
Completed over here: Link
The whole
series now resides here. (original summary)Over the following seven issues, another installment appeared on each front page.
I fashioned the series using Jeannie McLendon's Seven A-s, an outline intended to help individuals, families, and groups work through catastrophic change: Awareness, Acceptance, Authorship, Articulation, Application, Activism, and Altruism. (I added in an eighth A, Adventure, later, to explain what I'd learned and where I think I'm going next.)
The series has received overwhelming response, including an upcoming mention in Laura Rowley's Yahoo! Finance Column. This column receives 42 million unique hits per week.
When I say the series has received overwhelming response, I do not mean 'overwhelmingly positive response,' but simply overwhelming. Bi-polar overwhelming, very positive along with some excruciatingly negative.
Musta worked.
I could ruin your experience of simply reading the columns by explaining them, but I guess I won't (this time)! Instead, I'll just list 'em in order and wait for your contribution to the pile of bi-polar feedback.
Part two,
Acceptance: The Panhandler’s Paradox, where I bum for change
in Vienna and end up changing myself.
Part three, Authorship: My Own Self-Help Book, where I learn enough
to be cynical but choose not to become cynical.
Part four, Articulation: Finding My Voice Again, where I channel my
tough-skinned, tight-lipped ancestors.
Part five, Application: Working Anyway, where the cost of idleness
outweighs the price of work.
Part six, Activism: Can You Hear Me Now?, where I explain how my
business managed to make over four billion dollars more than
General Motors.
Part seven, Altruism: Greater Gifts, (Amy likes this one best),
where I start chipping my new self from solid stone.
And the final installment, Adventure: Neighborly Naked, where I
rediscover the transformative power of tighty whiteys.
I will comment further on the experience in a later post.
I take a break from the Covenant series today to reflect on change. I know, I know, change has been so done, we're sick to death of it. The endless strategies for inducing it, for enforcing it, for managing it. But today, I want to reflect on a different kind of change. Second Order Change.
Some background: Google Second Order Change and you'll get something like 132 million hits, most of the resulting links guide you to indecipherable pages. (One notable exception here.) Bergquist knows his stuff, but few seem to be able to explain, describe, or coherently define second order change.
Let me add to that body of obfuscation!
First order change, Bergquist explains, is rather like a pendulum, moving, sure, but always within rather predictable patterns. Back then forth. Change intending to recover a lost status quo falls into the realm of first order change, which is sometimes referred to as "rearranging deck chairs." Changing salary ranges is a common first order change within organizations, so, curiously enough, are reorganizations. These switch one order for another order, typically without questioning the underlying concept of order. In project work, an organization can embrace Agile project management without ever questioning what it might *really* mean to manage and without shifting its underlying notions of project.
Changing the meaning steps into Second Order Change. Instead of rearranging deck chairs, we fashion life rafts out of them. Instead of replacing one management system with another, we do away with management. Second Order Changes are irreversible. Once initiated, like fire, they cannot be undone. We cannot simply flop back, pendulum-like, toward the familiar status quo.
Second Order Changes shift paradigms, another over-used word failing to describe a poorly understood phenomenon. We see with first order eyes, we reason with first order logic, we can dream and imagine in second order space, but never reduce it to method or technique.
Never is a strong word. How then, if no cookbook could be devised, could a group ever achieve second order change? One imagination at a time.
Bergquist claims, and I couldn't agree more, that such shifts emerge from stories, and very special kinds of stories: parables. These, as I explained in The Blind Men (see Buy My Book tab above), are stories that might mean something quite different things to different people, and even different meanings to the same person upon different readings or different hearings. These shift perception from the preconscious status quo toward a more conscious status quo or sometimes toward a different preconscious perspective. Whatever, perspective shifts and cannot return. Prior perspective might seem naive from this new perspective, or irrelevant, or simply unseeable. Out of sight, following insight, out of mind.
I have spoken before here about the normal human response to change, to attempt to flee backward toward the comforting illusion of the old status quo. Bank failing? Prop it up! Corruption corroding? Punish it back into line. These are first order responses to invitations for second order change. The way we manage change projects, for instance, guarantees first order responses. Identify intended result, enumerate the steps to achieving that result, assess and mediate risks to satisfying the steps, ... . Deck chairs.
The way we contract for change also encourages first-order responses. We want certainty, not transformation. We want familiarity, not change.
Second Order Change is transformative, irreversible, and permanent. One cannot undo fire. Nor does extinguishing it recover what was consumed.
Our society teeters now on the edge of transformation. The conservatives complain about the lack of specific details in the emerging plans, wondering what pattern the deck chairs will display afterward. Notice how the administration uses stories to describe how it is and how it might become, two principles of Second Order Change. Changing the story changes everything, so change the story first. Acknowledge how it is and how it has been, as painful and demotivating as this might seem, rather than sugar coating the "good old" status quo. Envision how it might be, what it might become, deflecting the details for how it must occur. Forgetabout the freaking deck chairs for a while, and focus instead on what really matters now.
In this reflected light, heading backwards to the old status quo feels like underachieving. Irrelevant. Why would we choose to go backwards, when backwards left us where we are today, when we can see (now, finally) that even better outcomes might well emerge in the future? Heck, the warm anticipation, the very promise can consume (FIRE-LIKE) the seduction of the old useda be.
What's the highest best use of our familiar deck chairs now?
Certain something’s not the matter!
Still, lethargic, dragging heels,
Don’t dare ask how this one feels!
Me,
I’ve tried—maybe not THAT hard—
to build my tenuous house of cards
with rains and winds, my chief assistants,
confused if this defines what isn’t.
Me,
I’m dangling from bare threads,
turning on nonexistent treads,
hatless here on weathered ground,
mere threadbare glove without a hand.
Not too many can
flip my switch,
fewer care to scratch my itch,
fingers folding upon themselves,
whispered, silent, stifled yells.
Such is the
stuff of inspiration,
sparking from no clear revelation.
Who could imagine their redemption
arriving on THAT fool contraption?
A
black dog slips in through the gate
surveying our space inviolate.
He sniffs shrubs and noses roses
with careless, thoughtful three-legged poses.
The cats, of
course, beyond distressed,
flee to the safety of their nests,
Cowering courageously
until that pup will take her leave.
If life were
smooth and soft and warm,
if trivial things could do no harm,
If we knew for sure no sky would fall
What would we do ‘tween short and tall?
Short, the
obvious underling,
And Tall, outgrown most everything;
Between the start and the tippy top
lies pretty much everything we’ve sought.
And in that
swirl of clear privation
lies the solace, inspiration,
wearing ragged, useless clothes
He comes as capriciously as he goes.
No need to set
the visitor’s table
or change the linen, he is able
to slip in and out without a rustle,
timing clearly short of hustle.
But you can
depend upon his step,
appearing many times, mid-schlep,
stumbling already humbling hobble
bringing some bright and beautiful bobble.
No one will ever
understand
when you try your best to explain the plan.
They’ll insist upon some explanation,
when inspiration refused to leave one.
Take the credit
with the blame,
nothing could ever be the same.
You can depend upon this friend.
No one could ever comprehend.
Never interested in football, I've never once watched a Superbowl game, and Superbowl Sunday seems like an alien religious holiday. Me, I reframed it. This one Sunday of the year, the toodling back roads have no traffic. It's the first Sunday of the year that anyone's reliably likely to see newborn lambs gamboling in the fields. In my families since, we call it Lamb Lookin' Sunday.
The rules are simple. First, start driving in the general direction of lambs. While it is illegal to pre-determine the exact location of any lambs, and it's strongly preferred that a new lamb pasture be discovered each year, it's perfectly appropriate to plot a course that seems likely to pass past lambs. They must be discovered, not simply revisited.
Second, before returning to home base, a new tune must be added to Dadbo's Terrible Top Fifty Traveling Tunes. These are songs, composed during the ride, which feature some aspect of lambiness. After twenty eight successful excursions, we have quite a portfolio of past melodies and a raft of sparking lyrics, each of which first bring warm reminiscence before finally morphing into distraction. The new one's just gotta be, well, new.
Three: If you see lambs, you gotta stop. It is an obligation, a responsibility, a matter of character and ethics. When sheep are spotted, it's traditional to simply shout out, "Sheep!" as a warning to all in the car. Should there be no evident lambs, the all-clear sign is, "Sheep, no lambs." This returns the watch to watchfulness and halts the search for someplace to pull off the road without ending up in the ditch.
What do we do when we find lambs? We park the car, get out next to the fence, and revel in the innocence of a Spring who's promise can finally be confirmed, though her presence might not yet be felt. The wet, cold winds bother the lambs not even a little as they butt their mother's udder between playing hide and seek, umbilicals brushing the wet grass.
This is the Sunday marking the acknowledgment that we have survived another winter, that another in a truly endless stream of Springs is stalking us, and that right here, unlikely as it seemed just yesterday, hope thrives.
I won't comment on anyone elses' taste in Buffalo wings and half-time extravaganzas. We each receive our reassuring succor from our preferred cup. For me, it's family toodling down a country lane dedicated to a foolish mission, making up another memorably ridiculous tune.
Little tiny baby saying, "Who I am?
Who I am? Who I am?"
Little tiny baby saying, "Who I am?
I'm a lamb!"
I remember most warmly an Updike story the New Yorker published in the eighties. In it, he described a New England weekend trip. Several apparently successful couples sharing a large country house. In the morning, he captured the tenuous space between the professional and the deeply personal by describing how, in spite of every doctor's best advice (at least one of these vacationers was, I seem to remember, a doctor), the house was filled with the illicit smell of bacon.
I love the image. My life, probably yours too, is punctuated with the illicit smell of bacon. We don't smoke except sometimes. We are, like the couples in Updike's story, generally faithful. We are kind, usually. Nothing unconditionally.
Life is conditional. Our balance beam is altogether too narrow, our feet occasionally insubstantial. We live until we die.
Bye, John. Delightful knowing you.
Yesterday's New York Times carried the following fitting requiem.
Requiem
It came to me the other day:
Were I to die, no one would say,
“Oh, what a shame! So young, so full
Of promise — depths unplumbable!”
Instead, a shrug and tearless eyes
Will greet my overdue demise;
The wide response will be, I know,
“I thought he died a while ago.”
For life’s a shabby subterfuge,
And death is real, and dark, and huge.
The shock of it will register
Nowhere but where it will occur.
— JOHN UPDIKE
August 29, 2003, Dulles International Airport
Washington DC was a swamp before the federals built our nation’s capital city here. It remains a swamp today. In the last week of August, thunder punctuates the end of each steaming day and the torrential rains recharge the source of tomorrow’s mugginess. No one escapes the humidity or the counter measures put up to thwart it. Either sweat or surrender, captive within the soft hum of artificially de-humidified isolation. Choose one.
A walk down the block nearly guarantees that I’ll sweat through whatever I’m wearing. Shirt, Pants, Socks. Shoes. Knap-sack shoulder straps. Monte Christo fedora. The natives seem better able to move through this semi-solid atmosphere. Some wear suits without appearing to sweat. Their sweat glands must have long ago shut down from over-use, having produced their allotted lifetime’s volume. Nothing else explains it.
The city has changed since my last visit. 9/11 happened and, while the district was heavily secured on that last stop, it was wide open compared to the present state. Large cement planters ring every government building, and most of the buildings are government buildings. Homeland Security's response to terrorist threats created a delightful unintended outcome- flowers. Each planter holds a well-tended little garden, brightly blooming within the constant humidification. The planters are there, I suppose, to prevent attack from car bombings, but they, encroaching into the District's wide boulevards, silently disrupt the traffic flow. The sidewalks narrow and access to the usual vistas strictly limited, when entry is allowed at all. The Capitol building looks like it’s under siege, the once open parking lot surrounded by a seven foot metal wall, which fails to hide the cement plant behind it. Someone’s building something’s behind that wall; probably not planters.
Gardens and sculptures are obscured by traffic baffles. Walking is detour-ridden. I was surprised to find access to the two large fountains on either side of the National Gallery of Art open and empty at seven on a Thursday evening. A semi-cool, bubbling respite spot. There are few such spots left in DC. Most of the Capitol grounds, an arboretum with trees from every state, is cordoned off. Barricades block off access to that wonderful view overlooking the Mall from the front of the Capitol building on the 40th anniversary of Dr. King’s I Have A Dream speech.
The White House has annexed another block on its Eastern side. The Stonewall Jackson memorial now stands behind crime scene tape. Planters block Pennsylvania Avenue at 15th. Only the street to the North of Layfayette Park carries traffic. Where planters and guard boxes do not limit access, small wire and cedar-slat fences and crime scene tape do.
Crime scene tape.
Most of downtown has been gentrified. New construction continues at a blazing rate, further narrowing many streets and creating moments of unbearable noise. The homeless are present in greater numbers than in San Francisco. The small parks L’Enfant designed as places for a moment out of the sun have become hobo camps. Enter these only if your heart is cold enough to deny a flurry of plaintive requests for money or food. The benches beneath the signs declaring sleeping illegal are homes for the homeless. Some still sleep.
Another crime scene.
The afternoon storms were extraordinary. On Tuesday afternoon, I took a wrong turn coming out of the Metro and found myself walking a few extra blocks. As I passed by Lafayette Park, I noticed a strange electricity in the air and a sudden puff of unanticipated wind. I had time to cross the street and take refuge in the doorway of St. John’s church [ editor’s note: the so-called Presidents’ Church, where this morning President-elect Obama attended services before his inaguration...] before a torrent of wind-driven rain arrived.
A small community huddled there; some homeless, some tourists, some natives on their way home from government jobs. The wind blew from the North, the wrong way down 16th street across Layfayette Park and into the face of the White House, while huge rain drops Kamikazes crashed into a swirling flood. Trees bent and broke under the assault. Lightening struck the buildings surrounding us. Thunder crashed terrifyingly. Still, some continued their hikes. A young mother pushing a stroller with two small children rushed by, kids soaked through and holding their hands over their faces. Some held futile umbrellas before them while the wind-driven rain soaked them anyway Every few minutes another group would wash up drenched under the church's overhang to huddle and stay or continue their upstream migration. I stayed put, watching, dry except for the unavoidable splash from the door jam above me.
The church’s doors were locked, though someone inside peeked out through the glass and nodded, acknowledging our presence. I imagined that he would invite us in out of the fury, but he sauntered back into the sanctuary, leaving the doors unopened. I imagined the storm to be retribution, an angry front pounding on the increasingly unreasonable administration, but the President was not home to answer the onslaught. We huddled, the homeless among us wondering whether their usual bedding spot would be habitable that night, the rest of us considering cabs. Some managed to flag taxis down. One group of six over-sized tourists crammed themselves into a single cab, soaking themselves while impossibly squeezing in like desperate clowns. Two young lovers stopped for a moment, shivering, saturated, before continuing their light jog into the maw.
I had met earlier with a colleague, retired Army, who delicately introduced the subject of the present administration. He fussed over the disrespect shown the departing head of the Army, who was co-opted by tenacious ideologues. The whole city, he explained, is hunkered down, afraid to do what they know is right, their leaders directing them toward irresponsible objectives. Fear and loathing reign. The government has become the exclusive property of a few. The day before, Amy called to report on her visit to a Howard Dean rally in Spokane, where a thousand people appeared to hear an eloquent speaker tell it like it is. Fifteen thousand showed up the night before in Seattle. While the President travels in closed circles, inviting a few wealthy supporters to gather and congratulate themselves, Howard Dean invites everyone and responds to their questions and concerns not with hollow promises but with open explanations and honest disagreement when he honestly disagrees.
Half of the present Federal workforce will be eligible for retirement in the next five years, and many can't wait to leave. The cost of service has become too high. The price of fulfilling policies they cannot in good conscience support has become too great. I suppose many of these jobs will be outsourced to third world countries where someone with fewer scruples than needs will gladly accept them. And the government of, by, and for the people will take another step away from its center, toward a government that simply exploits and oppresses while ignoring the legitimate interests of those who were supposed to be employing it as a means for owning their own destinies.
The homeless man huddled in that doorway with me looks like an honest citizen. The homeless woman next to him complains about having to walk across town to her storage locker to get dry clothes so she can go to work. None of us despaired within the storm. We huddled together, otherwise inappropriately close, staying as dry as we could, hoping for an early secession of hostilities. And the storm cleared, albeit begrudgingly. Pedestrians reappeared. Some soaked. Others dry. Office buildings emptied and the commute continued. The oppressive heat humbled for a few hours. The sky distantly grumbling like a stomach recovering from an over-rich meal.
I was here to research. Here to access the greatest store of knowledge in the world. To sit humbly in the Library of Congress’ Art-Deco reading rooms, fingering books. Gathering data. Considering deeply. The visit included more considering than research. There are only so many external sources of one’s own wisdom. Was I looking for confirmation more than information? I was seeking patterns, which arrived in their usual, well-performed forms. The cordoned walkways and flower-edged buildings were there expressly for my consideration. The long walks past parks cordoned with crime scene tape brought enough of the movie to life before my eyes. As always, plotline and purpose open to my own interpretation.
I leave with a pack filled with notes which I might not refer to again. I will most certainly not carefully reconstruct the facts I collected in my long library hours. I took notes and carefully captured sources, but such precision could not have been the purpose of my investigation. Such material can be at best the medium within which some understanding emerges. What understanding is that? Not an important question. Like the traveler who’s journey is more purposeful than his destination, the time spent huddled in a doorway considering this storm will become the real purpose of my research. The day spent visiting my book in bookstores reminded me what a very small world this continues to be- and how very well connected we are. I walked down K Street, sweating from my hike from Georgetown, and spotting a bookstore, enter to find that my book had been there, sold out, and is on re-order. The book buyer was delighted to order a few extra copies and take some promotional cards. All this reassures me.
We might imagine ourselves strangers, separated by unfathomable distances, or family, isolated only by the illusion of separation. Our choice. When the storm comes none of us will get to choose which doorway we take refuge in. We will take the one most convenient at the time. And that stranger beside us then will not seem so strange once you’ve survived together a close lightening strike or two, and successfully out-witted a determined wind. Class differences dissolve in these torrents, and every meaningful distinction that should collapse- does. The St. Regis hotel stood solidly across the street from my protecting doorway. It’s broad portico sheltering the taxis and their passengers as they arrived and departed untouched by the storm. I thought for a while that, had I been smart, I would have stepped into that glittering lobby and sat out the trouble in a brass and marble bar, but my feelings switched to deep gratitude for having avoided that indifferent isolation.
The storm burped back into being as I hurried back to my hotel, so I stepped into what I mistook for a neighborhood bar for a quick beer to avoid a drenching. The bartender wondered how I could be so dry. “I walked between the raindrops,” I replied, noticing only then that the small stage in the back held a naked young woman dancing by herself. In the soft, reddish light, her body looked featureless. Some men sat rapt before her, projecting details and soaking up something that no storm could provide them. I gulped the flat Guinness and left before I discovered the secret attracting them there.
Back into my tiny hotel room, I showered away the residue from my day's three full sweat drenchings. I had successfully avoided the external dousing, but had three times soaked myself from the inside out that day. I'd found much to consider. Sitting on top of my cool, dry bed, temporarily isolated within a dehumidifying hum and three stories above any crime scene, my considering continued.
david
First: Shovel your neighbor’s walk. If his car’s stuck, stop to help. If you’re neighbor’s out of town on garbage day, get his trash can to the curb and back.
Second: Return that grocery cart to the place provided for returning carts, never leaving it in the handicapped stall or half jacked up on the curb of the planter with a nearly-finished Big Gulp in the cup holder. When you see a lost cart, guide it to where it belongs.
Third: Whenever you see a kid selling lemonade from a sidewalk stand, stop and buy a glass. Even if you hate lemonade. Especially if you’re running late. Your quarter means nothing to you and everything to her.
Fourth: Give cuts in line. Hold doors for everyone, not just for women. Life is not a race. Never was. First one through the door should be saying, “Thank you.”
Fifth: Move your lips when you read. Spend some time every week reading out loud to someone you love. We each need story time.
Civil society requires personal civility. It might seem silly that our way of life relies more upon you returning an empty grocery cart than your willingness to bear arms, but consider the number of opportunities you have to defend our way of life. Few of them involve much more than shoveling your neighbor’s walk. So do that. Zealously, if you prefer.
Instead of waving a flag, wave your behavior. Together, with tiny generous acts, good citizens create and sustain a truly civil society.
A man who had a place for everything,
literally everything.
Who never 86ed a thing in his 85 year-long life.
Never gave up on nothing. And nobody.
I still haven't figured out the key
But maybe my difficulty could be that
There never was a key.
But if there was, it's escaped me.
I found the bits to that beautiful drill brace
Not near by, but in another room
Inside that heavy green tool box,
wrapped in a bit of old shirt fabric,
well-disguised.
Finding them was just a simple matter
of having sorted through everything there
and remembering exactly where
I'd seen what I was looking for before.
I found a partially petrified squirrel in the driveway there
this week.
Black and leathery, with little hand-like feet bones
protruding.
No fur, no fuzzy tail.
Either a squirrel or a small bat-like demon.
Dreaming headless in the leaves.
I also found a walnut,
one perhaps left by that same demon squirrel
who died trying to retrieve it
from that dusty, too-secure sanctuary.
Or, more probably, just forgot
where he'd stashed it.
That would explain why that walnut sat
unmolested for decades on that shelf.
I'd thought many times,
passing it through the years,
that the squirrel had out-smarted himself,
finding the perfect storage spot,
neglecting retrieval.
But now I think there's something there,
perhaps in the water,
in the well-spring silently seeping beneath the place,
That sticks stuff there.
The past has needed chiseling out of there
And the present remains awfully thick.
After sorting through every god-damned walnut
I'm sure and likely to kick another one
out from the baseboard today,
or in yet another impossibly over-looked cupboard,
stashed rather than trashed,
a cache of the past eternal.
How would you organize the place,
Other than how it just naturally
seemed to organize itself?
With fruit in the fruit room, sure,
But also Chlordane and curtain rods in there too.
And paint.
And simple repetition would eventually seize the fate.
With a certain place for everything
and each thing in that place.
A store ignoring organization
in favor of routine
Where every thing would have a place
but no one knew the scheme.
And here was a man who made his living
sorting like with kind,
little cards into Coke case chords,
memory versus time.
Who's home was a game of Husker Du,
As if organized by a squirrel's brain,
Walnuts remembered from year to year
But rarely retrieved again.
Who but us, who were born to this,
could possibly unwind
the tentacles tightly tethering
all those ties that bind?
Some days I feel like the prince
chopping Rose Red free
lip-deep in a thick thorn patch
that's out to puncture me.
Other times I'm almost eight
rediscovering mine
or yours or theirs or ours still there
from another time.
What am I to make of this?
Or do with this? Or do without?
The archive pile possesses far too many
pictures from the past
Still unlabeled, precious, specious,
Certain to outlast
The stories recalling who was whom
and what was certainly what.
Was that your grandmother's brother's wife
Or your grandpa's maiden aunt?
"We used to drive over to Bend back then
to visit Ed's brother there.
I remember that one of the daughters was Emily,
She's still alive somewhere."
The pencils didn't come to attention
when the old man would hold forth,
His memories were semi-unreliable
sharing stories more than truth.
We are a part of that mythos now
Each true to our roles
Weavers raveling, knotting, nattering
worried to our souls.
Unworthy, unable, incapable of
remembering what they entrusted to us.
Dusty, trending toward more dust,
Ashes to ashes, eighty-six the fuss.
There's probably no better way to undermine the present than to stick your head far into the future. Time spent focusing upon there is necessarily time spent not being present here. We live only in the present.
Yesterday, I was negotiating with a potential client and discovered (again): the notion that we somehow manifest our future based upon how well we envision it is nothing like a universal law. The engineering class of manifesting might be enabled by accurate, attractive envisioning, but other classes are undermined by it. In a work context, insisting upon clear requirements and measurable completion criteria as a prerequisite for approving pursuit causes at least as much harm as good, and probably more. Anyone satisfied receiving just what they expected often finds their partner dissatisfied by the very same thing. Sometimes, in retrospect, we discover that our insistence on pursuing what we believe we must achieve causes no end of suffering all along the way. So much suffering that even fully achieving the objective can't extinguish the awfulness of the experience.
We are always creating our present while we chase our future. The great tragedy at the end of a pursuit, the end of a project, happens when we realize that while we achieved or even exceeded what we said we wanted, at the end, none of us want to do another one anything like that one together again. Our success destroys our ability to succeed together again because we ignored our present, not because we failed to achieve our future.
One of the Tarot cards advises to consider how you want it to feel, not just what you want to achieve, to avoid hollow victories. This counsel also might help avoid hollow failures.
Last week, I took a short trip to visit some in my community. As a possible sign of our times writ small, no one I visited with expected to be employed full time a year from now. Most are currently unemployed or underemployed, but even those employed full time were facing the certainty or high likelihood of layoff, slowdown, or shutdown in the near future.
One friend owns a twenty year old rare book business. Volume fell 50% this year. His wife, who has held the stabile, non-entrepreneurial job in the family, works for Washington Mutual and will be made redundant by next September. Another, the Chief Technology Officer for an e-business, will be laid-off this month. His wife has been unemployed the past year and has so-far experienced several bait-and-switch job offers, where the advertised position was downgraded between offer and acceptance.
Yet another, an experienced event planner, can't find any but volunteer work. Her new husband, a successful contract data architect, learned last week that his contracting firm was downsizing him out the door. An attorney admitted he was helping a friend structure a buy-out, but beyond that, no work looms on the horizon. Another couple, world-class consultants, have no idea what they will be doing after the first of the year.
Just this morning I learn that a friend with decades of executive experience in the Pharma industry, who transferred to a spin-off start-up, will lose his job this month.
None of these folks predicted --- or could have predicted --- any of this. None of these people can or could collect unemployment or pass muster to receive food stamps. Most of them have some equity in their homes, and some are already trying to maintain their lifestyles by bleeding value from underneath the roof over their family's heads. Each understand that this strategy is even less sustainable than they believed their former success was.
So, we can live in dread of the future, it seems, or hold on tight through these troubles. To the extent that we focus upon the apparently certain future, we might miss the gifts our present brings and disable the value our presence might bring. The rules change. When the paycheck no longer appears, do we stop doing our work? Our work is complicated by the absence of the familiar financial reinforcement, but not---unless we insist---eliminated by it.
This posting is the first in a series focusing upon a new phenomenon in our culture, where systemic unemployment is not centered on the industrial working class, the under-educated, or the traditionally disenfranchised. The new bread line cannot be satisfied by bread alone. Our national empathy might increase as a result. We might find reason to hold on even tighter to each other than we ever found reason to hold on tight before. Our choice?
Forty-some years ago, I wrote my first song. It seems kinda silly now, but it was enough to infect me pretty thoroughly.
Thirty-some years ago, I recorded some tracks in a barn studio in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, just about a year after that I decided to drop out of the music business and finally, after a seven year delay, enroll in university.
Well, I've done a few different things since then, but I've always gravitated back into writing songs. Last weekend some friends stayed with us and, as usual, I performed a few of my songs for them. In the course of that evening rediscovered this ditty I started an awfully long time ago, but never finished. I decided this week to finish it, and managed to complete that today. Here's the first recording of Paint Me A Picture, and my first musical recording in a very, very long time. (Just click the "Podcast" link below.) I hope you enjoy it.
Paint Me A Picture
I’m workin’ my way through
Only two more sets to go and I’ll be gone.
The spotlight sees right through me,
But I don’t think it shows,
I mean I’m holdin’ on.
‘Cause I’ve been deceiving myself through the worst of
it
Just hopin’ to make the best of it someday
Hey, hey.
I’ve been feelin’ way past due,
and smelling your smile in every other song.
I thought these spotlights ought to free me,
how was I to know
that they would hold so strong?
Here I am living my dream of the best of it,
while dreaming of the rest I left behind to play.
Hey hey!
Paint me a picture of the world as it should be
The world as it could be with all of her charms.
and write me a letter on old motel paper,
Just anything handy could brighten my day.
You’re so far away
I know you’ll trundle off to bed
Thinkin’, “He’s out there somewhere,
Singin’ his heart out to a room full of recent
strangers,
While the one he really cares about sleeps soundly.”
Is life ever what it seems?
Does my voice betray what I dare not say in song?
Before this spotlight ever caught me,
We’d managed to survive
by simply holdin’ on.
we held on tight through the thick of it,
Though I’ve been losing my grip when I slip onto this
stage.
hey, hey!!
So paint me a picture of the world as it should be
The world as it could be with all of her charms
And write me a letter on old motel paper
Just anything handy could brighten my day
You’re so far away
I know you hate to go to bed
Thinkin’ I’m out there somewhere,
Singin’ My Heart Out to a room full of empty strangers
While the one I really care about sleeps lonely.
I’m workin’ my way through
Only two more sets to go and I’ll be gone.
The spotlight sees right through me,
But I don’t think it shows,
I mean I’m holdin’ on.
‘Cause I’ve been deceiving myself through the worst of
it
Just hopin’ to make the best of it someday
Still hopin’ to make the best of it someday,
Hopin’ to make the best of this someday.
11/29/2008
©2008 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved
It's pretty clear to me that no one, much less economists, understand our present economy. Those who might really understand are so distrusted by those who don't, they can't explain a thing to anyone else's satisfaction. Many who don't understand, believe they do understand. As Laing said, "What you don't know you don't know, you think you know." Ever was thus. Dismal again.
Fact might be that none of us have any personal experience with 'an economy,' which doesn't exist anywhere but as a network of figments. But then figments have always taken most of our first row seating. We thrive on 'em. Until they do us in.
Our certainty is the most curious part of our relationship with figments. We, for instance, hedge our risks, believing that we have mediated risk as a result. Ceteris Paribus, all other things remaining equal, is small defense against a credit crunch or a full-tilt meltdown. All other things do not, as a general rule, remain equal, just especially uncountable and unpredictable. Small insurance this, against the first person experience of loss.
Now comes the bailout. And I've been thinking about the leverage one has - or doesn't have - when bailing out. Ever been in a boat that's sprung a leak? The size of the boat relative to the size of the body of water that formerly floated it puts the bailer in a weak position. Even should the leak get fixed, the effort required to remove the accumulated water is great. And the bucket remarkably small in comparison.
I read this week that the value of hedged instruments was estimated at perhaps ten times the annual gross world product. That's a big pond. How big is the leak? No one knows how to value what's left. Well, few understood how to value what was there before, either, but it's easier to float on a positive figment than a negative one. We love positive figments and fear the negative ones.
Maybe we only ever come close to experience the real power of collective figment certainty when the bottom falls out from under our confidently maintained fantasy because we experience real hunger then. Perhaps even genuine privation.
"The M&M or Motherhood and Mismatch Strategy was conceived by the American strategist, Col. John R. Boyd. The basic goal of an M&M strategy is to build support for and attract the uncommitted to your cause by framing a "motherhood" position -- i.e., a position no one can object to, like the mythical "motherhood, apple pie, and the American way" -- and then inviting your opponent in to repeatedly attack it and, in so doing, smash himself to pieces at the mental and the even more decisive moral level of conflict. Self-destruction will happen inevitably, if you can successfully induce your adversary into attacking your motherhood position in a way that exposes mismatches among the three poles of his moral triangle, defined by (1) What your opponent says he is; (2) What he really is as defined by his actions; and (3) the World he has to deal with. Whether consciously or not, I believe Obama has an intuitive feel for the moral leverage inherent in the M&M strategy and this enabled him to outmaneuver McCain and his campaign and bring them to the verge of mental and moral collapse. That Obama also did this to Hillary Clinton suggests it is no accident."
I have inadvertently employed something like this strategy when introducing companies to the practice of ProjectCommunity. I claim that while teamwork is nice and even useful, it cannot meaningfully influence outcome without using it with a broader, ProjectCommunity mindset that considers everyone who can effect and everyone effected by the effort on equal us-ness with the core team. Those who deny this obvious (to me, anyway) fact, inevitably find their cordoned effort under the influence of some unconsidered, discounted constituency. And while this outcome might, from within the team trance, seem like evidence of bad luck, this bad luck and trouble becomes pretty much their only friend. Even those who concede, but continue to consider the community to be comprised of 'stakeholders', over time grow to appreciate what it feels like to be considered a vampire with stakeholders stalking them.
I'm also seeing this strategy used in what feels to me to be a destructive way, though I guess any strategy that succeeds in producing an outcome I don't support might be fairly characterized as destructive. The burgeoning 'sustainability movement,' which is rapidly creating a cadre of ideologues worthy of any mass movement, has taken the same motherhood and apple pie position that the Zero Growth movement occupied thirty years ago. Locally, the City has agreed to convene a sustainability committee. Who could oppose such a thing? Their first objective: To define what sustainability means here.
As near as I can tell, anyone successfully defining sustainability would say that it means continuing surprising change, since that's how the world seems to actually work. Instead, it seems to be widely interpreted as meaning 'retain what we like' and 'eliminate what we don't.' Since when has anyone successfully sustained an agenda like this? Further, I personally have survived long periods of conditions that should have done away with me, my teen-aged years not excepted. Yet here I am. Mysteriously. Even surprisingly.
Not to be cynical, but I keep running into anti-progressive attitudes traveling under the sustainability label. But that does sound cynical, doesn't it? I'm arguing against motherhood and apple pie, even though sustainability remains, as Spinney says, an empty vessel. I'm just beating myself to bits railing about it.
I was re-reading Jay Haley's remarkable essay The Power Tactics of Jesus Christ, and concluded that maybe he knew something about this strategy centuries before the candy ever appeared. He didn't challenge the orthodoxy, but claimed instead to represent a truer instantiation of it. He commanded no one to follow, but invited followers instead. How could anyone successfully challenge such high ground?
Once? You tried it once? Then concluded that it never would work?
Well, it wasn't just them saying this, I've said it myself.
What happened to "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again?"
Not in the modern corporation, thank yew. Not in my backyard, either. There, the phrase is , "if at first you don't succeed, you've failed." Utterly. Supported by, "We tried that once and it didn't work."
We live in a society poised to throw some bum out on his ... bum. Not terribly generous when money, time, or public reputation gets involved. Fail for me once and you're outta here!
What sort of practices get reinforced under this regime? Nothing bold or innovative (aka, likely to fail.) Whatever can keep its head furthest down, shadow most secret, and profile thinnest.
How wise are our 'throw out da bum' choices? How much difference does it make what we choose? (I know, I know, it's supposed to matter a lot who we vote off the island, and who gets to stay. Does it, really?)
The first eXtreme programming project utterly failed. The sponsor threw out da bums! Not even I want to read my first few hundred essays. I cringe when someone requests one of my earlier songs. Looking back (and then projecting forward), I can't see a single situation, other than that time when I decided to jump out of that tree onto a steep slope and cracked a metatarsal bone where, "We tried that once and it didn't work" actually worked. What worked, or seems to have worked so far, involved a lot of "We kept trying, even though it didn't work at first." Some stubborn someone wasting time, money, and reputation on what they (and perhaps no other at first) were convinced held some potential merit, until it did. Best born from one hell of a lot worse.
But none of this might really matter. Maybe change itself catalyzes improvements, like the long ago-discovered Hawthorne Effect. Maybe (cringe) we have no influence on outcome at all.
Interesting piece about the rationality of voters in the current Wilson Quarterly. Maybe these findings are appropriate metaphors for how we choose our methods, maybe not. What if they are?
"It’s not only in the United States that the Depression-era tendency to “throw the bums out” looks like something less than a rational policy judgment. In the United States, voters replaced Republicans with Democrats in 1932 and the economy improved. In Britain and Australia, voters replaced Labor governments with conservatives and the economy improved. In Sweden, voters replaced Conservatives with Liberals, then with Social Democrats, and the economy improved. In the Canadian agricultural province of Saskatchewan, voters replaced Conservatives with Socialists and the economy improved. In the adjacent agricultural province of Alberta, voters replaced a socialist party with a right-leaning party created from scratch by a charismatic radio preacher peddling a flighty share-the-wealth scheme, and the economy improved. In Weimar Germany, where economic distress was deeper and longer lasting, voters rejected all of the mainstream parties, the Nazis seized power, and the economy improved. In every case, the party that happened to be in power when the Depression eased went on to dominate politics for a decade or more thereafter. It seems far-fetched to imagine that all these contradictory shifts represented well-considered ideological conversions. A more parsimonious interpretation is that voters simply—and simple-mindedly—rewarded whoever happened to be in power when things got better."
We were doing an extended engagement in NYC a few years ago and, as we often do when working there, we played what we call Broadway Roulette. Show up at Duffy Square a half hour before curtain time and see what tickets are left, buy a couple and head off to a show. We happened one evening on the revival of Kiss Me, Kate, and were delighted. This one piece (in the above YouTube video), where two hoodlums, backstage to shakedown the male lead for gambling debts "accidently" wander on stage during a performance, was the highlight of the show for me, because it reminded me that whatever truth we might nudge out at the client's shop, we needed to respect their traditions, or, more to the point, Brush Up Our Shakespeare.
Of course, it's silly that merely reciting the Bard would make the difference our clients sought, but not knowing the Bard might well prevent the change we all aspired to.
We've all been subjected to the next best thing, delivered by someone clueless about the present history supporting everything. We can't really ditch what we've always been. Change, whatever its intent, needs to be melded with the familiar status quo if it is to be meaningful and successful.
So, the next time I (even you) intend to make something different, remember to brush up on whatever amounts to Shakespeare there first. As Virginia Satir said a very long time ago, "Change rests upon the full, albeit temporary acknowledgment of the way things are." And always have been.
Remember when a new company couldn’t float stock until they’d been profitable for three of the prior five years? Oh dear, how arcane that all seems today!
Forcing people into defined contribution pension plans was as easy as promising the moon. Why settle for a modest defined benefit amount when you could become Daddy Warbucks on steroids managing your own retirement account?
Why, indeed.
That set the stage for every mom and pop to speculate to live. It’s better to bleat than bleed. To avoid those non-deductible credit charges, why not open a fully-deductible credit line secured by your home? Monthly payments optional. In the long run, we’ll all be ahead.
In the long run, actually, everyone’s just dead.
When the hedge funds went bust, we snickered, “Suckers!” When Wall Street hit the wall, we secretly smiled, “Schmucks!” When our local banks bottomed out we thanked God for the FDIC.
(It couldn’t possibly happen to me.)
Then margin calls came to Main Street. No, you didn’t speculate on stocks or buy sub-prime, you just supplemented your shrinking income, tapping the only asset you could ever call “mine.” When Wall Street stumbled, your good old reliable home value slipped.
Your collateral became your collateral damage.
The Feds were pre-emptively bailing out the Big Boys, the ones who’d pitched the sale, who’d grown through acquisitions ‘till they were just too big to fail. While you and I were working hard to weather wind and hail, the Feds were just too busy to help the little guys bail.
Swamped and sinking, homeless now, we’ve finally found the cure for unaffordable housing here: Can I make you a deal?
Unless you were a hedge fund jockey or a golden parachute-wearing CFO, the bankruptcy judge will order you to submit to credit counseling. Submit as serenely as you speculated. Remember fondly, friends, the good old days, when all we fussed about was the price of gas?
Rain had slipped in overnight, soaking the half-scraped wall
But I still tacked the tarpaulins over the coldframe and
climbed that clammy scaffolding to stand and scrape and sand.
It was Easter when we'd moved
the poles and bracing down the wall
and all through May I watched each day usher in the fall.
For I was working some other walls while this one stood
half-scraped
Though I hoped I could get back to here before this summer
escaped
Into June each afternoon found me
blocks away
engaged in chores meant to adore my Father's final days.
I'd decided to try to say goodbye by hovering close to him
Reviving that weed-choked lawn of his and catering to his
whims:
Watermelon was the only meal that
sorta seemed like food
So I delivered more than he would ever eat, uncued.
For I was chipping away at paint, laid down long before
When he was still all-powerful and I could still ignore
The walls that came between us and the paint we'd slathered
on
When time was still so young and fresh it never would be
gone.
But this summer our old hourglass
began to spit,
hinting that remaining sand would surely, shortly stick.
Inexorably inflexible, our time together came
with me the much more powerful player in the game.
And all this time I worked behind the scaffolding standing
there
More than aware I'd not prepared for primer or despair.
July saundered in with almost
nothing changed
and slipped right through the lines we drew, leaving none the
same.
And then we tried to satisfy his ever expanding needs
while layers of sticky surface scab resisted every plead
The well went dry on August first and and the yard went back to
weed
while we began to count the days, unwilling to concede.
Through August I never spent a
thought on my untouched wall,
I spent my time climbing his and mine, hoping to ease his
fall.
And in the end that dear old friend was pretty thoroughly
scraped
and ready for whatever paint might tempt the taste of
fate.
And I, exhausted from the time,
emotionally drained
decided it was well-past time for me to finally paint.
And so, a few days following his final, labored gasp
It being Indian Summer, and my obligations past,
I placed the soggy planking on the rusting steel shell
And set about to scraping down to bare wood on MY wall.
Ten days later, with September
slowing down
the first marine intrusion turned the temperature around.
Though Thursday felt like ninety, Friday felt much less,
Saturday rained all morning, but the afternoon digressed.
And here I stand on the morning of the last day before fall
Still in preparation to prepare my weathered wall.
I delivered this eulogy for my father today:
My father was a gentleman,
A gentle man.
A Republican.
He didn’t have a mean bone in his body.
He was a soft touch;
He loaned much but borrowed little.
My father was a noble man,
A nobleman,
An able man.
He wasn’t handy, but he
was
persistent!
He persevered much
And gave so freely, he seemed rich.
He
leaves behind a family,
Familiarity,
Hilarity.
He came from what today is called a ‘blended
family,’
But during the Great Depression was just a busted home.
He swore that his kids wouldn’t grow up like that
And we did not.
He
insisted upon eating the chicken backs
At Sunday chicken dinner
I was grown before I understood that
No one prefers to eat back meat,
Not even him!
He preferred for others to be satisfied
And could absorb more personal misery in pursuit of other’s
happiness
Than anyone I’ve known.
My
father hated infirmity
and growing older
was hard for him
A bungled surgery left his foot drooping,
and he walked with a cane after that.
He’d walk almost down to Sturm and back
at a turtle’s pace. But he walked.
My
father was a working man,
A hard-working man,
Never a hard man.
He held his own convictions,
forgiving others their’s.
He seemed to know someone everywhere he went.
He
was a gentle spirit
Who just couldn’t get
Why we couldn’t get along.
He loved songs. Country songs and crooner’s songs
Charlie Pride and Nat King Cole,
And old familiar melodies we’d never heard before
back-lit him like sheet lightening.
He
stood up for his kin.
He believed in them,
Even when others’ faith was thin.
He’d shake his head and remember when
They were younger, I guess, and clueless,
And he seemed to understand.
He
leaves behind a closet filled with free umbrellas
Blind Native Americans sent
Pleading for his pennies for their programs.
They got their annual check. An obligation he fulfilled
Even though he had no use for those umbrellas.
He
read voraciously
Deliciously
Endlessly.
When he’d read every book in the house,
and started in reading them twice,
it pained him to give those friends away
He filled those shelves again before he left.
He
loved baseball
tolerated football
hated basketball.
He coached but hated competition.
Sportsmanship was more important—
That everyone could play.
Winning or losing meant less to him than how he played the
game.
And
he played well.
He also played when he wasn’t well.
He had some down days in his life:
Sick sometimes, but never unshaven.
No time off without grooming.
His mornings smelled of Aqua Velva,
after he’d shaved until his face shone with
satisfaction.
He
had a lead palate
preferring veal cutlet
to any fancier cut.
He despised mayonnaise,
revered anything with gravy,
He let his beans melt his cheese,
and he counted his cholesterol.
This
is the part I cannot say
It’s above my pay grade
He and my mother were bound by something
Few have found
I’m not qualified to expound on it other than to say
His dedication drove me crazy
Inspiring me. A rock. A bickering mountain.
He
protected her.
More than a care-giver,
It was as if her fate was on his soul,
and he couldn’t let go.
We couldn’t know the depth of this devotion
“This is just a part of the deal,” he disclosed
Heaven might know what he meant by that.
I know I don’t.
I’ve
been trying on
different songs,
unseen ways of seeing
But have not yet found the sort of tune
that might replace this being.
“I can’t complain,” he would explain
It’s all part of the deal.
He’d take his cane and his good name
and make it almost down to Sturm and back
at the speed of a screaming turtle.
note:
Sturm is the name of a street about two blocksfrommy father’s
home.
The evening before my dad died, a praying Mantis landed on the front screen door. Mother recalled that a mantis takes up temporary residence on that porch this time every year.
All that evening and into that long, long night, while family came and went, and we stepped out for soothing night air, that screen door opened and closed again and again and again. Through it all, that solitary Mantis held vigil, much as we inside held loving vigil over his final night.
Morning light found our mantis devotional still. As Nancy the hospice nurse came and went, and his loving CNA Kathy came to bathe and massage him, that mantis remained. Silent. Still.
He drew his last labored breath mid-morning, and as we stepped outside to find consoling air, we noticed our mantis still in prayer. As family flocked together to share numb prayers, opening and closing his door another few dozen times, our monkish mantis never moved.
And later, as the mortician arrived, minister mantis stood steadfast. Only after his sons helped guide him one last time through that door—into eternity—did our freakish friar fly away.
The Ancients believed the mantis had divine and magical powers. May a divine and magical mantis sing kaddish for each of us in our time. Amen
Bob was born January 15, 1923 in Mt. Angel, Oregon, to Nicholas D. Schmaltz and Caroline P. Bounds. He was raised in Mt. Angel, Scotts Mills, Yachats and Waldport, Oregon, attending Waldport High School. He married Bonnie M. Wallace on October 28, 1945 in Condon, Oregon, where he served with the volunteer fire department, played on the town baseball team, worked with the county road crew, and began his long career with the US Postal Service. Bob moved his family to Walla Walla in 1952, continuing his Postal Service career, retiring in 1978 after 30 years service. Bob and Bonnie raised five children in their Pleasant Street home. After retirement, Bob and Bonnie traveled the country in their motor home, visiting family and friends until ill health intervened.
Bob was an avid reader, enthusiastic baseball fan, resonant singer, and quiet-spoken storyteller. Bob was a member of the Central Christian Church and the local Parkinson's Support Group. He was the primary caregiver for Bonnie for the last fifteen years.
He is survived by his wife, Bonnie, his half-brother Darwin Stewart of Downey, Idaho, half sisters Leta Dibble of Corvalis, OR, and Victoria Nelson of Walla Walla, step-sister Vanessa Clemons of LaGrande, OR, children R. Carol Smith of Walla Walla, Robert A. Schmaltz and wife Lana of College Place, David A. Schmaltz and wife Amy Schwab of Walla Walla, and Kathy (Schmaltz) Carey and husband Greg of Tulsa, OK, 12 grandchildren, and 25 great grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his parents, his brother, his step-brothers and sister, one daughter, Susan McCormack, one son-in-law, and one great grand-daughter.
The family requests memorial donations be made in Bob's name to Walla Walla Community Hospice.
This will be a brief, peg-legged posting. I have been peg-legging for some time, working around a curious feature. A few weeks ago, my space bar and delete key started working intermittently. Just here and there would I noticethatwhatIhadjusttypedcameoutasonevery,verylongword. Wait a minute or two, and the problem would fix itself.
I finally replaced the keyboard, something I procrastinated on because it is a 140 mile round trip to the nearest Mac shop, and because, actually, I was enjoying the increased consciousness this little frustration brought.
Along about Friday, though, the novelty wore off. I was trying to write something and thespacebar(thenewone!)refusedtoclickbacktoworkingmode.
The technician suggested I repair permissions, which I did to no effect. Next, she suggestedreloading the operating system, which, with help from Amy, got done. Again, to no effect. I finally figured out that I could copy a space and type-paste my way through a document. Sort of. This procedure so jangles flow as to render me functionally primitive. (I know, how would anyone ever know?)
I am including a link to an entertaining piece about unlearning: Unlearning-Obsolete-Technologies. My peg-legging brings unearning into sharp relief, where I cannot freely exercise my same-old usta be. Painful.
After the holiday, I will go get another keyboard installed. Until then, I am taking an extended break. Cheers!
This past weekend, I received a notice from my friends at the International Society for Systems Sciences about a new field of study they're promoting called Relational Science. Smelled interesting.
Here's a link to the wiki they're put up to outline the basic idea: Link Here.
Feels like I stumbled upon an old friend. The material points out at least one powerful idea for me: that present investigations assume that the future can be some kind of derivative of the present. That, for instance, the present causes the future. This perspective can't quite explain discontinous change, however. And this omission seems material.
The models we create influence the future we experience, and this modeling behavior---how we characterize what we're in and what we expect to come next---needs to be included in our consideration to achieve a full understanding of what we're in and what we expect next, creating a recursive, self-referential relationship with ourselves, others, and our context. And also, seems to me, with our future, too. This relationship seems fundamental to understanding most everything.
Got me thinking. Considering some more. ...
To expand a bit on the earlier The Multi-tasking Myth, we might call this the Explicit Direction Myth. The Explicit Direction Myth claims that providing explicit direction improves performance. How that direction is provided might matter more than anything. If I must refer to an ink-blot of a plan or unfold a passenger compartment-sized map---or, take my eyes off the road --- to access the information, explicit direction might well undermine my performance.
One final short video which better explains the Explicit Direction Myth. There's always something more than we expect!
He seems small and scared when I arrive. Dressed in his bathrobe, not breakfasted yet. I found the tubing and extra connectors and plugged him in. Stayed to assemble breakfast. Coerced my mom into calling hospice ("They don't work weekends," she insisted!), and the nurse returned the call in five minutes. She called back an hour later. Stopped by to check vital signs an hour after that, and called every hour into early afternoon, when the morphine and the attention had lulled him into sleep in his chair.
Back later, made them some lunch. Back later to make some dinner.
He, embarrassed that he slept the day away while I puttered in the yard, plotting sprinkler positioning and well pump capacities. The huge yard half watered by day's end, I came home to my own dinner, my own life.
My own life is melding back into theirs now. I'm on call. I've been lurking, waiting for the moment when I might make a difference. They only call when they are really scared, and who am I to make a difference then? No one special. Able to move across the room as if their special gravity didn't affect me. As if I were immune. For now.
I can warm leftovers. Prepare the green beans so they are more than just a color contrast on the plate. Properly sauce the strawberries so they taste right, even to someone who's taste discolors every flavor. Small contributions. Just about the best anyone can do.
These are long days. The longest days of this year, and the longest days of any I remember experiencing in my own short life. Neighbors are disappearing. Old age is reaping her harvest. Across the street. Down the block this week. He sends cards for every occasion, especially the final ones. These he takes special care to acknowledge.
Now that he knows he's on the final approach, his temper is sharper. His patience thin. He submits to the help he needs, but complains about having to accept it, and, truth told, doesn't fully accept any of this.
So, a publisher's interested in my new book. I spent the morning until the phone call shuffling chapters and fine-tuning the stories. I left my marker, $$&&, at the point in the manuscript I was interrupted. I'll get back to my work early tomorrow, before the sun comes up. And I'll work until the phone rings or until my curiosity gets the better of me, then I'll go do that other work that consumes my days these days.
This is what's really going on. If I seem distracted, it's only because I'm distracted. I moved here, close, seven years ago, in preparation for these long days, but I'm no better prepared than I ever was to live them. I live them anyway.
