Life on the non-proverbial edge

I will have nightmares tonight.

There is nothing quite like taking your Jeep Grand Cherokee on its first no kidding 4-wheeling excursion along a road no wider than the Jeep itself and bordered on one side by rock and root and on the other by . . . air, and a long roll before the first tree might stop you, or might just cut the vehicle in half. "Oh, this is all pretty much just category 2," says my friend. "And they go to category what?" I ask. "Five." "[Deleted]! I don't ever want to see even a three."

I'm pretty sure my knuckles were white on the wheel, but I was just hoping my friend wouldn't notice and wasn't about to take my eyes off the road long enough to check. I kept going for two reasons. First, pride. Second, there was no where to turn around anyway. We gained a little over 2000 feet in three miles at just slightly more than a walking pace. It's the first, no kidding four-wheeling I've done in my Grand Cherokee. I had an Isuzu Trooper out on a similarly rough road that no two-wheel drive vehicle could have navigated, but that was up through a forest, not along the side of a fripping mountain.

I admitted to my friend later that I would never have even tried it without him along. He's got a couple decades of four-wheeling experience, so, I knew I could always just stop and put him behind the wheel. His presence gave me the courage to try something I'd never done before. All in all, the drive up to the radio towers at 11,200' on Mt Princeton is probably the thing I'll have flashbacks to for years.

There was so much more to this weekend--dinner at a Cantina on the way up, building a fire in the dark, shivering around it drinking 12-yr-old Dewars Special Reserve and smoking Fuente cigars, a full day on the Taylor River failing to outsmart the trout, but not caring too much thanks to the beauty of the scenery, and another day making a run at Mt Princeton before dark clouds over the summit made us turn back short (as the proverb goes in aviation, "It is always better to be down here wishing you were up there, than up there wishing you were down here").
But for now, I'm off to those old archetypal dreams of falling off a mountain. And because I skydive, people don't believe me when I tell them I'm afraid of heights.

Stay Tuned

Going fishing, mountain climbing, cigar smoking, and whiskey drinking with the guys this weekend. Check back on Monday.

Pass the Clairol

This post may lose me a few readers who have come to expect seriousness here. But . . . . My youngest daughter dyed her blond hair very dark brown last night. I now understand why.

Miss Teen USA 2007 - South Carolina answers a question

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War Lit

Rather than putting a hat tip at the end of this post, I need to say up front, I'd have missed this outstanding piece by Robert Kaplan in The Atlantic, if not for Chap.

It would ordinarily be enough to simply send you to it through Chap's Blog, but I want to capture a few quotes here before I send this post to friends of mine who are still doing the holy work of creating literate warriors and citizens. In particular, I think the man who taught an entire English department to think of what they do in that way would find himself nodding in agreement when Kaplan, speaking of Vice Admiral Stockdale's two books says:

When Stockdale writes about Epictetus, Socrates, Homer, Cervantes, Calvin, and other writers and philosophers, their work achieves a soaring reality because he relates them to his own, extraordinary experiences as a prisoner in one of the 20th century's most barbaric penal programs. Stockdale reminds us about something that much scholarship, with its obsession for textual subtleties, obscures: The real purpose of reading the classics is to develop courage and leadership.

Further, as half the cadet wing at that school (recently rated number one in its class in its region) where I spent eight years teaching, lives in a dorm named for Captain Lance Sijan, one or two of them might have some interest in reading another of the books Kaplan touches on:

The implications of "doing your duty" are spelled out further in Bury Us Upside Down: The Misty Pilots and the Secret Battle for the Ho Chi Minh Trail (Ballantine, 2006) by Rick Newman, a journalist at U.S. News & World Report, and Don Shepperd, a former Misty. They write that in November 1967, in order to rescue Captain Lance Sijan of Milwaukee, a smoke screen of cluster bombs was dropped near North Vietnamese anti-aircraft guns, so that the guns could be taken out by low-flying F-4 Phantoms, throwing enemy air defenses into enough chaos to allow a helicopter to pick up the downed pilot. The operation failed. Captain Sijan, injured worse than Bud Day during ejection, evaded the North Vietnamese for six weeks. After he was captured, he escaped again, then was recaptured, and died of torture and pneumonia. He was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously.

Finally, I was grateful to see that Kaplan devotes a full page of what emerged from my printer as a nine-page essay to an under-appreciated book by a good friend of mine: John Stryker Meyer's Across The Fence: The Secret War In Vietnam.

All in all, Kaplan's piece is worth reading, not solely as a review of some of the best pieces from a genre that receives too little attention, but also as a cogent exploration of some of the less obvious and arguably more important parallels between our current war in Iraq and the earlier war to which it is ever more frequently compared.

Jon Stewart

I've recently told a friend or two that if I need news on a disaster, I'll turn on one of the networks, but for politics, I prefer to get my news from sources that can deliver it with the hilarity it deserves. For that reason, my DVR records both Jon Stewart's The Daily Show, and Stephen Colbert's The Cobert Report every day of the week. I don't get to watch it every day (like my friend in the previous post, I don't watch much TV), but if I watch anything, they're it. Turns out, I'm probably in pretty good company. According to an article in Inside Higher Ed,

At a session on innovative teaching techniques, [Ryan Lee Teten, assistant professor of political science at Northern Kentucky University] described how he has replaced [the original textbook for his class] with Jon Stewart’s America the Book . . . .

If you compare the table of contents of America the Book with those of traditional texts, Teten noted that they cover much of the same ground, with chapters on the presidency, Congress, the courts, the media, the world outside the United States, and so forth. To be fair, Teten noted that traditional texts don’t have chapters like “Congress: Quagmire of Democracy” or “The Rest of the World: International House of Horrors,” but the content covered is similar. Teten also cited research finding that “The Daily Show” is as substantive these days as the traditional news shows that a traditional political science professor might encourage his students to watch.

Of course there is that little issue of factual accuracy. But Teten has given that investigation and thought, too. First, he said that a review he did of America the Book convinced him that it was 90 percent true, with the rest satire. He assigns his students to write short essays on each chapter identifying what is and isn’t true (it’s not always obvious, he said), so he’s drawing attention to places where things aren’t quite complete, and teaching them to question what they read.

This sort of turning the 10% falsehood into yet another useful exercise is not just innovative teaching; this is genius.

Convergence

I began a recent post with a very clear statement about my feelings on "coincidence: a striking occurrence of two or more events at one time apparently by mere chance: [e.g.] Our meeting in Venice was pure coincidence." Not a believer, I said.

I should qualify that. I think it's very rare. It's not possible, really, to rule out that some things do happen by mere chance. What then, is the word for the sort of events I have in mind that most people think of as "coincidence?" That's a real question. Perhaps there is a term for it. But, I'm unaware of what it is.

So, I'm going to propose one: "convergence." In particular here, I have in mind definition number 3 of the link: "the degree or point at which lines, objects, etc., converge" with a strong emphasis on the "etc." If you attribute such things to chance, then you call it coincidence. For me, I think the deciding factor may simply be the statistical probability, or lack thereof, of such a convergence occurring. The less the probability, the less likely it is coincidence.

Let me offer a few examples from recent days that illustrate what I mean. To begin with, there are those two instances of convergence that I mention in the "Like Minds" post.

Then, a couple of days ago, I was writing to friend, female in this instance, and happened to make a comparison between said friend and Aphrodite. This is one of only two women whose absolutely classic form has driven me to make such a comparison in this lifetime--and the other, with whom I went to school, is, blissfully probably, unaware of the comparison. For a week or more, I've been walking around with crossed fingers as this friend has been attempting to buy a new home. Crossed fingers because there was a competing offer. Two days after the Aphrodite reference, my friend sent me the MLS number for the house, enabling me to find the agent's listing and to take a "virtual tour." This is not a small house, there are lots of rooms and lots of walls. But, there is only one wall (there's a ceiling with elements of the Sistine Chapel, but, at least in the virtual tour, only one wall), in a cast off room on the main level, with a mural (or possibly wallpaper). And what might it be? Why Botticelli's Birth of Venus of course. You can see the original at the link in that last sentence. (If your Greek/Latin mythology is rusty, Aphrodite would be the Greek name for the Latin Venus.) And the here is a screenshot from the virtual tour of the house my friend will buy (not believing in coincidence, I take this particular convergence as a sign):

Convergences, I've noticed, seem to come in waves. So it was no particular surprise when the next followed hot on the heels of this one. The day after I discovered the convergence above, I received the following brief note in my evening e-mail on 30 Aug:

Are you a Jon Stewart fan? I don't usually watch him (or any TV for that matter), but the TV is on (no one watching), I am doing the dishes and Jon Stewart is doing some funny thing with a recent debate. It is hysterical. I'll try to get the info and forward it to you so you can watch. I can't believe how funny this is.

Nothing particularly odd about that. I do watch Jon Stewart, but we'd never discussed him before. The real convergence came the very next day, as I was reading the headlines from an academic news service I subscribe to. Among the top three stories for that day, 31 Aug, in a publication where, honestly, I've never seen Stewart's name before, is this headline: Jon Stewart, Oral Exams and More.

What next? I can barely wait to find out. (I had thought, for a minute, that the example in the definition of coincidence, might, itself, be another convergence, but it turns out the Botticelli currently resides in Florence, not Venice. Damned close though.)

In Memory of Randall Combs

"O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again." Thomas Wolfe

I confessed recently to a close friend that, throughout my life, I've been blessed with better friends than I deserve, than I have ever deserved, than I am probably capable of deserving. That is still true. I open with that confession because I would never want the post which follows to lead any of those rare individuals without whose companionship my life would be simply barren to doubt for a moment their importance to me. "In Memory of" are words I pray never precede their names from my pen.

There are those for whom friendship is a zero-sum game. I am not one of them.

It has been seven years since The Friend of My Youth passed on. Judge Randall R. Combs shared nearly every formative adventure of my transition from boy to manhood. He was, in many, many ways, a better man than I will ever be. His obituary in the Salisbury Post couldn't begin to capture the man. The procession from church to graveyard was the longest most in our relatively small town had ever witnessed. To say that he was well known and respected stretches the limits of understatement. To say that he is missed, still, daily, is merely to acknowledge a void that can never really be filled.

I can at least say this. I did not have to regret, at the end, that I'd never told my friend what he meant to me. He knew. In memory of him, today, I want to offer here the text of the eulogy I offered at that service seven years ago, and to say, once more, I miss him. I miss him very much.

I’ve been to too many funerals for friends and acquaintances in the past few years and I’ve always wondered how someone who called the deceased his best friend managed to get through what I’m about to attempt. I’ve come up with a couple of answers. First, I’m going to keep in mind, that in all the years I knew Randall Combs, he never once felt sorry for himself, despite trials that would have defeated many of the best of the rest of us. And we, as Christians, all know where Randall is right now, so it’s not for him that we cry, but for ourselves, left here without him in our lives. So I’ll postpone self-pity for just a while yet. Secondly, I’m going to make the plea that the rowdy little boy in church made to the congregation as his daddy carried him down the aisle toward the back door. Ya’ll pray for me. Start now. Don’t wait until I get to the hard part, then if I make it through the little bit I want to say, we won’t have to wonder how.

Randall was my best friend. It’s that simple. I would have said Judge Randall R. Combs was my best friend, but that’s not the way I think of it, and that’s not the way it works. Randall, plain and simple, was my best friend. He was what Robert Penn Warren called The Friend of My Youth. “The Friend of Your Youth,” said Warren, “is the only friend you will every have, for he does not really see you. He sees in his mind a face which does not exist any more, speaks a name--Spike, Bud, Snip, Red, Rusty, Jack, Dave--which belongs to that now nonexistent face but which by some inane and doddering confusion of the universe is for the moment attached to a not too happily met and boring stranger. But he humors the drooling doddering confusion of the universe and continues to address politely that dull stranger by the name which properly belongs to the boy face and to the time when the boy voice called thinly across the late afternoon water or murmured by a campfire at night . . . the Friend of Your Youth is your friend because he does not see you any more.”

The only false part of that is that Randall and I never reached the point of being strangers to one another. We could pick up a conversation after months of silence. We never lost touch with one another’s voices. Our last phone conversation began with his “Hello” followed by simply, “Good evening your honor” from my voice in Colorado, then “Well hello Colonel” from his end. Who doesn’t recognize in those greetings the wonder of two little boys in grown up bodies, amazed and amused by their own grown up titles.

“The child is the father of the man” says Wordsworth. You’ll hear more about the man from Steve Hammonds in a few minutes, and you’ve read about the man in every paper that serves our community. I want to tell you a little about the boy behind the bench. Randall was the least selfish person I have ever known. He was my best friend, and I’ll admit openly that I won’t presume to say that I was his. Some things are destined to be lopsided. Most relationships are. And I only know one person who ever gave as much to Randall as he did to all of us. God willing, I’ll come to that part.

I met Randall in 1974 as a sophomore at South Rowan High School. Through some quirk of fate we both chose same girl to be the unfortunate object of our competing affections. For the record, Randall got the girl. I got the best friend anyone could ever wish for. In high school Randall and I spent time on the phone with each other like a pair of teenaged girls, usually talking about a pair of teenaged girls. There was very little we didn’t share. Both of us went through the divorce of our parents, Randall just enough ahead of me to be more of a help to me than I was to him.

And this is as good a time as any to tell you that Randall was what God meant sons to be. Those of you who knew him also know that he loved his parents, both of them, but especially his mother, with whom he made a conscious decision to live, . . . he loved them both with an unconditional love that most parents can only pray for and dream of without ever expecting to see. Randall simply lived that love for his parents. If St. Peter stops Randall at the gate and goes down the list and holds him accountable for each commandment in turn, I can promise you that there will be no quibbling over the score on “Honor thy father and thy mother.”

I like to believe I played a small role in Randall’s becoming a judge. In our senior year, Randall and I filled the roles of opposing counsel in a mock trial in Ms. James’s Social Studies class. I don’t remember who won the case. I simply assume that if he won, it whetted his appetite for more, and if he lost, he must have resolved to seek vindication in the real world. We dressed the part for that trial, wearing our best (and only) three piece suits all day. Thereafter, we would call one another about once a month and one of us would say, “What do you think? Suits tomorrow?” And the other would say, “Okay.” And so, for no reason other than to be different, we would wear our suits and vests to school.

In 1977, before I left for the Air Force Academy and he for Wake Forest, we managed to steal the whole top half of a page in the Daily Independent by canoeing Lake Norman from Lookout Shoals Dam down to Cowan’s Ford. That’s about 24 miles of rowing. In the center of the page was a photo of the two of us, sitting together on a cooler, looking as cool as we knew how.

After graduation, we made the ritual trip to the beach together. We stayed at the Tryon Seville motel that year, and then returned there together like salmon every summer throughout our college years. Randall taught me to shag and we two taught our friend Dana to shag at Crazy Zacks in Ocean Drive. Dana, bless her heart, was another poor victim of our competing affections, but by that time we had learned, or mis-learned that the way to a woman’s heart was through disdain, and so we tried our hands for a day or two at who could appear most disinterested. When that failed, and having no inkwells handy in which to dip her hair, we took turns carrying her into the ocean, which terrified her, and dropping her there. We were college students by this time, but as the poet says, “the child is the father of the man”, and for the two of us, it was a long labor. Out of that summer was born a friendship that’s really hard to describe. Dana and I have decided that we now feel like a tripod with a leg missing, learning anew how to stand upright.

But there have been many times over the last few days that I’ve felt Randall still there and I’ve smiled. Last night, I knew that Randall was watching, sad, but immensely proud of Jessica as she stood by Donna and accepted the sympathy of so many people who were there because they admired him so much. Today, I felt him smiling and proud of Donna as she stood in his stead as witness to the swearing in of our newest district court judge.

And that brings me to one last story. Randall met Donna in 1984 while he was living in my townhome in Goldsboro where I was flying out of Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, and he was interning in a law firm there. By the time I finally got to meet Donna, to hear her tell it, she was more than a little worried about that meeting. I’m going to tell you what I’ve always told Donna, which is another story within this one. While we were still in college, Randall was dating a girl who didn’t want to come to some picnic we were having because she didn’t think I liked her. I told Randall, “You tell her that I like her in direct proportion to how happy she makes my best friend.” Randall grinned, shook his head and said, “Well right now, you don’t really care whether she lives or dies.” And the unspoken rule for judging one another’s girlfriends became a spoken rule. Having explained the rule, I can now tell you, that Donna has been one of my very favorite people since the moment Randall met her. Of all the people who’ve shared his life, I believe Donna is the only one who’s given as much to him as he did to her. Of all my friends and acquaintances, I know of no one who married better than my very best friend. He was blessed with a wife whom he loved with all his heart, and blessed with two beautiful daughters of whom no father could ever have been more proud. And he was blessed with friends who looked to him to bring out the best in them.

A lot of friendship is timing. “The Friend of Your Youth is your friend because he does not see you,” says the poet, “And perhaps he never saw you. What he saw was simply part of the furniture of the wonderful opening world. Friendship was something he suddenly discovered and had to give away as a recognition of and payment for the breathlessly opening world which momently divulged itself like a moonflower. It didn't matter . . . to whom he gave it, for the fact of giving was what mattered, and if you happened to be handy you were automatically endowed with all the appropriate attributes of a friend and forever after your reality is irrelevant. The Friend of Your Youth is the only friend you will ever have, for he hasn't the slightest concern with calculating his interest or your virtue.”

Randall had an amazing ability to look beyond the worst of each and every person he met and see the very best that person could be, whether it was a friend, a family member, or someone appearing before his bench. He simply always chose to see the best in people. Our Savior consecrated a memorial that’s performed thousands of times each day and hundreds of thousands of times each Sunday by saying “Do this in remembrance of me.” I ask you to do something in remembrance of Randall. When we look at one another, let’s look past faults and imperfections and see the very best we each can be. If we can do that, we’ll be looking at one another with Randall’s eyes, and Randall will live on in each of us.

Facebook and Identity Theft

Here's one more little rif on a recurring theme of mine. Recurring because some things need reiterating in order to keep folks (read: some of my very plugged-in, younger online friends in particular) on their toes. Hey, every frippin' year I have to accomplish the same half dozen computer-based training (CBT) modules on "Information Assurance" or the "Protection of Classified Information" or some such, so surely someone did a study that showed it was necessary. Surely they aren't making me repeat it because they think I might just hit the "Next Page" button as fast as the current page will load. Not me.

Anyway, long before I started seeing warnings pop up on the internet associating the risk of identity theft with the propensity of today's young to share everything about themselves on social networking sites, I was busy trying to convince some acquaintances that answering all hundred or more questions in three or four online surveys several times a week might be a fun way to explore the projection of one's various personae, but it was not a safe thing to do in terms of protecting one's future bank accounts. I've even sounded a few of those warnings here, as in my Independence Day post, for example.

Today, as I was catching up on some technology news, I came across an interesting article posted on CNet, titled, Facebook users open to cyberattacks, ID theft? Here's an excerpt that pretty much reiterates the message I've been trying to pass on, including a frightening example of exactly what I've been saying was possible:

However, Olson and Rick Howard, director of intelligence at VeriSign's iDefense Labs, said a longer-term problem is users' openness with personal information on public forums.

"They seem to have no sense of privacy," Howard said. "We think it could go two ways. In the future, they're either going to decide they're embarrassed by all the information they've put out there, or they may decide it's just the way it is and (that) it's OK to put information out there."

In a "thought experiment" the two conducted in the United States before visiting Australia, Howard said they managed to acquire enough information on one young user to steal her identity.

"We pulled down one person's name--in this instance, a female--and everything she put out there," Howard said.

"In 15 minutes of doing Google searches, we were able to collect enough information to steal her identity."

What makes the young particularly vunerable, as I've noted before, is that they have no idea, yet, which questions among the hundred or more in each survey reveal potentially compromising personal information. "Where were you born? What was your first car? What is your pet's name?" These sound like safe things to tell people who really want to know more about you. Problem is, they also function as security questions for online identification.

If you're the sort of person who reads blogs, you're probably not the sort of person who needs this warning. But how about your kids? Do you visit their MySpace and FaceBook profiles? Peruse the bulletins where so much about them is out there for all to see? It's worth your time. Educate them now and you may save them some pain later.

Umm . . . Like, check this out

As an English professor, you cannot help but love this:

The just announced “Umm Like All-Star” list includes Britney Spears, who was caught uttering 73 “likes” and “ya knows” in a five-minute video interview on YouTube.

Read the whole article here, to find out which celebs like, you know, um, can't string, like, five, you know, words, like, together in, like, you know, a row.

Or check out the whole Umm . . . Like website.

More Conroy

I'm two thirds of the way through The Lords of Discipline, and just needed to share the following quote, which is like much in McCarthy, and expressive of a concept around which Kevin McColley fashioned an entire novel, called Praying to a Laughing God. From Conroy:

"I have read too much history, Mr. McLean," he said, moving past Vanderhorst Row. "And it has depressed me about my fellow man."

"Why has it depressed you, sir?" I asked.

"Because the single theme of human existence is atrocity, sir. Even the most casual perusal of the subject would tell you that. Anything that man can do that will irreparably harm his fellow man, he will certainly do. I can close my eyes, Mr. McLean, close them this instant on this very pleasant walk, and my brain will come alive with horrendous, unspeakable images of heinous crimes men have performed against other men. Nothing surprisese me anymore. Nothing shocks me. I have reached the point in my life when I am seized with an utter hopelessness about the human race. And you, sir," he said, fixing his gaze on me, "how do you feel about the race that violates this lovely planet?"

"I like human beings all right, Colonel," I said, "better than wart hogs or sting rays, anyway."

"I assure you, cad, that you would receive far more justice and mercy from a wart hog than from one of the monstrous chimps who wears a black robe and sits in judgment against his fellow man. The God that created man in his own image, Mr. McLean, must be a vile, unconscionable being. Or he must be highly amused by depravity." --p. 395

Mother Teresa: Doubts of a Saint

If God meant to interfere in the degeneracy of mankind would he not have done so by now? --Cormac McCarthy's Judge Holden in Blood Meridian

I first came to Blood Meridian, at a time when the doubts in my own soul were at their darkest. Actually, I misspoke. I came to that book at a time when doubt had yielded to darker certainty. That, as much as anything, drew me to McCarthy. By the time I got to The Crossing, and the heretic of Caborca, it was as though I was reading about myself.

It was never that this man ceased to believe in God. No. It was rather that he came to believe terrible things of Him. --The Crossing p. 149

It has been a long slow recovery from certainty to the more optimistic condition of mere doubt.

So it was with some sense of kinship (make no mistake--I'm well aware that I am no saint) that I read today's news about the darkness which haunted Mother Teresa.

It began, she said, soon after she set up her Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta in the late 1940s to succor India’s poor. And it lasted, with only a joyous five-week respite in 1959 when she refound God, until her death at age 87, a decade ago.

“There is such terrible darkness within me, as if everything was dead. It has been like this more or less from the time I started ‘the work,’” she wrote in 1953.

What is one to do, then, laboring under such a burden? Where find some solace? If we are to judge from the life of Mother Teresa, there is something to be said for doing what one can for others. I understand that drive too. In 1982, smarting from the disintegration of a marriage, the brevity of which set a standard that Britney Spears only barely surpassed, I decided that the best way to move my focus from my own pathetic self-pity was to volunteer for a community crisis hotline in the small town where I bought my first house. It worked. I heard things, and talked people through things, that pretty quickly reminded me that my life was pretty damned good, all-in-all.

Which brings me to my questions for today: how does one one-up a mere hotline? How resist the urge to call down the lightning as does Ahab, haunted by equally dark certainties? How strike through the mask, and at what? Where does one find answers to the questions Suttree asks? That McCarthy asks through Suttree?

It cracked and boomed about and he pointed out the darkened heart within him and cried for light. If there be any art in the weathers of this earth. Or char these bones to coal. If you can, if you can. A blackened rag in the rain.

He sat with his back to a tree and watched the storm move on over the city. Am I a monster, are there monsters in me? --Suttree, p. 366

Where seek the confidence to answer in the affirmative the boy's question in The Road, "Are we still the good guys?" Where?

And in the meantime, while we seek?

Hard weather, says the old man. So may it be. Wrap me in the weathers of the earth, I will be hard and hard. My face will turn rain like the stones. --Suttree, p. 29

What Kind of Sandwich Are You?

You Are a Ham Sandwich

You are quiet, understated, and a great comfort to all of your friends. Over time, you have proven yourself as loyal and steadfast. And you are by no means boring. You do well in any situation - from fancy to laid back. Your best friend: The Turkey Sandwich Your mortal enemy: The Grilled Cheese Sandwich

What Kind of Sandwich Are You?

Hat tip: Barry, a Tuna Fish Sandwich.

Southern Women

I've said before and I'll say again, more than for any other reason, we love authors according to their ability to put into words far better than our own, the philosophies we believe we hold, or the observations we believe we've made, but could never have captured so perfectly. To wit, as I began The Lords of Discipline, my first Pat Conroy novel (an admission that shames me), I was no further than 4 pages into the prologue before I knew I will likely have read the entire Conroy canon by this time next year:

My mother is a different case. As lovely a woman as I have ever seen, bread and nurtured like a gardenia, she has always seemed somehow odorless and sexless to me, yet viscerally seductive in the manner of Southern women, that taloned species who speak with restrained and self-effacing drawls, fill a room with elegance and vulnerability, move with the grace of wind-tilted cane, and rule their families with a secret pact of steel. The sweetness of Southern women often conceals the secret deadliness of snakes. It has helped them survive the impervious tyranny of Southern men more comfortable with a myth than a flesh-and-blood woman.

Crossroads

Here's a tip for couples: please talk to one another--often, always, and honestly. And be open to hearing what the other has to say. Unconditional love doesn't mean that we view someone as perfect. It means that we love them, imperfections and all. If either of you complains to the other of some quirk or mannerism or habit that is less than endearing, then thank one another for the honesty, consider whether it is ammendable without any argument over whether it should be ammended. If it can, it should be. If it can't, then the other will have to decide what they can live with and still love. True unconditional love seldom exists, except in a parent for a child.

Be careful, always though, not to confuse the recognition of imperfections with failing to love. It is a far dearer thing, and harder to find, to be loved for what we really are, and to find a mate whose vision of us includes and helps us attain the best that we can be in this lifetime. Nathaniel Branden pointed out years ago that we tend to fall in love with people for the way they see us. Inevitably sad for us if that vision is an illusion, then so will its love be. Infinitely happy for us if that vision is real, both of what is and what can be, for then, the love also is real, unchanging, empowering, sustaining, encompassing, ever-growing. It would be lucky for us if we were designed so as only to fall in love with someone whose love and vision were of the former variety, rather than the latter. But we are so designed that the most attractive thing of all is the illusion of our own perfection when we see it in someone else's eyes

I think it's a rare person who even gets a shot at that more honest, open-eyed love. That's the sort of love that will help us up a notch on the circle. That is a soul mate. And it's a lucky person who gets that shot at an age or a stage when they can recognize the difference, and recognizing it, seize the right ring. God's sense of humor in that regard is closely linked to the fun he has with our sex drives.

_____________
A closing quote from Cormac:

Nor is this life of yours by which you set such store your doing, however you may choose to tell it. Its shape was forced in the void at the onset and all talk of what might otherwise have been is senseless for there is no otherwise. Of what could it be made? Where be hid? Or how make its appearance? The probability of the actual is absolute. That we have no power to guess it out beforehand makes it no less certain. That we may imagine alternate histories means nothing at all. (Cities of the Plain, 285)

Are you a Feminist?

I don't think I'll say where I waffled. I'll just say that it was the one question that really had nothing to do with feminism, because the answer is really gender independent. The underlying assumption behind every question is that the desired condition is already true for men, and in one particular case, it's not even close. It's simply not an "injustice" or inequality that's gender motivated or determined.

You Are 93% Feminist

You are a total feminist. This doesn't mean you're a man hater (in fact, you may be a man). You just think that men and women should be treated equally. It's a simple idea but somehow complicated for the world to put into action.

Are You a Feminist?

(Hat tip: Enrevanche)

Like Minds?

I am so not a believer in coincidence.

All the way back across the country, I looked forward to penning a post about the superb new humidor I received during our visit to Wilmington, NC. In the last six months or more, I can think of not a single blog post, among the few I read with regularity, with cigars as a topic. Yet on my return, I find with some delight that the Mountain Philosopher is awake again, and among his recent posts, one about cigars. Coincidence?

I might have been willing to think so, but then . . . Two days ago, I finished Walter Isaacson's new biography of Einstein, having listened to it, from the Colorado/Kansas border to Tennessee before setting it aside to listen to The Road from Nashville to Wilmington (more on this in a later post), and then picking up Einstein again from Calabash through New Orleans and Dallas all the way back to Colorado. I highly recommend it, btw.

Because I'll be returning to Wilmington in less than two weeks, I decided to finish off my summer reading with a Southern author I've been way too long in coming to. Thus it was that, yesterday, I began The Lords of Discipline. Why is that remarkable? Because today's post on The Archer Pelican is about none other than, you guessed it, Pat Conroy. Coincidence? Give me a break.

Input/Output and Minority Report

Remember that awesome input/output interface in Minority Report? (If you don't, or didn't see the movie, then see the trailer at the bottom of this post.) It's not as far into the future as you may think.



And searching for the right clip from Minority Report, I came across this further demo of the technology that either led to or sprung from what Microsoft is showing off above:



Finally, here's the trailer, the search for which thoroughly demonstrated to me that I'm far from the first to connect the movie and this technology. That said though, what should be more amazing is that a greater number of futuristic films haven't showcased it. I see the stuff above and I think it'll be pretty amazing if my grandchildren are using keyboards and mice. Hammers and chisels seem more likely than that.

Your memory or your life?

An interesting article appeared in the news last week. One which got my attention more than most.

Elderly black people who are chronic users of acid-inhibiting drugs in the family that includes Zantac, Pepcid and Tagamet have 2½ times the normal risk of developing dementia, Indiana researchers reported Friday.

The drugs block production of stomach acid by inhibiting histamine-2 receptors; the stomach releases hydrochloric acid when stimulated by histamines. But they also inhibit the brain’s cholinergic system, which is involved in memory and cognition. Low levels of cholinergic activity have been linked to dementia.

Now I am neither elderly nor black, but I hope to be one someday, and I'm pretty sure that the biochemistry we're talking about here isn't race-related. The study subjects were black, driving the wording above.

Why did this get my attention? Because, like many married men my age who, forced to take pleasure where they can find it, long ago installed a mirror over the kitchen table, I was also long ago diagnosed with a hiatal hernia and GERD. Of more concern, a recent EGD (The fog of anesthesia of which I emerged from alternating a recitation of the "Prologue" of The Canterbury Tales in Middle English and my favorite line of "jive" from Airplane. That the portions of my brain governing memory and language awakened well before those responsible for discretion did not amuse my spouse . . . but that's another story.) brought with it the news that the bottom five centimeters of my esophagus is being assimilated by my Borg-like stomach. The technical name for this is Barrett's Esophagus. It is a precursor condition to cancer, which, doesn't so much run in my family as sprint. But, Picard escaped the Borg, so resistance is never wholly futile.

While opinions seem to differ on whether esophageal tissue that has become stomach tissue can ever really become esophagus again, there is at least agreement that treating the GERD (with both lifestyle changes and drugs) can at least stop the damage.

My drug is Aciphex. Which, I am happy to report, is not in the class listed above, but is instead, a proton pump inhibitor. That's good news:

The study did not look at Caucasians and there was not enough data to suggest a risk from a different family of drugs called “proton pump inhibitors,” which includes Prilosec, Nexium and Prevacid.

It would be a wicked irony indeed that asked a person to choose between risking an early end to life by leaving one condition unchecked and prolonging life, but not being able to remember why you wanted to in the first place. Which is why, in the end, lifestyle changes, when possible, are always a superior, if more difficult, option than drugs.

Blog Roll Catch Up

One of the things I like about IE7 is the ability to open a slew of websites with a single click from the favorites menu. Accordingly, I have a "Blog Maintenance" folder, and a "Blog Reads" folder. Part of catching up since vacation has been to peruse some of the posts on the Blogroll since I left. A few are worth recommending.

This from Indexed made me laugh out loud.

This shifting map of the Middle East on Acute Politics is worth watching.

Bad time to pick up a new vice?

Ten years ago, I couldn't explain what a single-malt Scotch was, let alone name a favorite. But I can now.

Cigars, though, I'm still learning about. I've added a cigar blog to my list of occasional reads, and for father's day this year, my daughters gave me a beautiful Don Salvatore Cuban Wheel humidor that I'm working on stocking with some good smokes as I discover them. That is, if I can afford to. A recent post over at Mountain Philosopher has me a little concerned:

The State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) Bill, co-sponsored by Senators Hatch and Kennedy, and which passed the Senate last week by a veto-proof majority but which has yet to pass the House, would extend health insurance to millions of uninsured American children. The bulk of the program's costs would be financed by an additional 61 cent tax on a pack of cigarettes. Doesn't sound unreasonable to me.

The bill also calls for HUGE increases on premium cigars which yours truly does relish upon occasion. How much of an increase? The current stoogie federal tax is a 5 cents. The House version of the bill calls for about a one dollar tax. Again, I can live with that 2000% increase.

But the Senate version goes crazy, setting up to a TEN DOLLAR TAX per stick! The formula calls for an approximately 53% tax on the wholesale cost. I typically smoke four to seven dollar cigars. A seven dollar cigar runs about $3.50 wholesale, making it $5.25 before markup, and about ten bucks to me if the retailer is going to maintain his margin and stay in business. The fifteen dollar sticks, and believe me, these are more popular than you might think, will start to go for 24 bucks.

I now understand why the humidor came with a little flyer urging me to visit the Legislative Action Center of the Retail Tobacco Dealers of America and get involved.

Seafood Capital of the World

First, a hearty thanks to Barry over at Enrevanche for the occasional post to They Rode On while I was busy enjoying a Saturday night stock car race, NC beaches, barbeque, and too much deep-fried seafood and hand-dipped Mayfield ice cream in "the seafood capital of the world."

Since this blog purports to claim food as an occasional topic, let me offer a few suggestions to anyone lucky enough to visit Calabash, NC, in the near future. After years of spending a week at Sunset Beach, about five miles up the coast from Calabash, I've tried most of the restaurants in town at least once. Every regular visitor to Calabash has a personal favorite. Dad's is The Seafood Hut, on the left after you make the turn at the light and head toward the dock. They have great seafood there, but last time I went (admittedly a few years ago), they only took cash, and I don't tend to travel with a lot of that, so we opt for Dockside instead.

Everyone has his or her own standard to judge a seafood house by, so here's what my family likes about Dockside, and you can judge from there. First, great service. (As our waitress came by the table the first time, carrying a tray of food to another table, she smilingly said, "I'll be right with ya'll." I could write a paragraph about why that mattered, but if you need the paragraph, you won't get it anyway.) Awesome, hot, plentiful hushpuppies. One family member's favorite is the deviled crab and another's is the shrimp and fish and clam chowder. My wife and I split the deluxe platter because we love all of the above and oysters and scallops, and we still have more food than we can eat. All hot, all fresh, all great.

Need a break from seafood, or allergic to it? Then try Tony's Pizza, on the right, just past The Seafood Hut, but before you get to Dockside. If we're down for the week, we'll hit Tony's at least once.

After dinner, there's only one place in Calabash that people in the know go for ice cream: The Back Porch. Once upon a time, it was in a tiny little building that really was more porch than building. But a few years ago, it moved to a location just across Beach Drive from Callahan's. For at least the decade that we've been visiting, Vivian has been hand-dipping Mayfield ice cream (my new personal favorite is Extreme Moose Tracks), and making true southern sundaes complete with wet nuts. If you don't know what wet nuts are, you are not a NC native. (Hint: to make some for yourself, take a mason jar, fill it with walnuts, then pour in Aunt Jemima Pancake Syrup to the top, put a lid on, let it sit for a week, then try that as a topping for your favorite ice cream.) A few years ago, a rival "creamery" moved in within spitting distance of the old porch. I can't comment on that other place except second-hand, and none of that has been good, bless their hearts. Go to the Back Porch.

Before you do though, you'll need to let that hefty helping of artery-hardening, deep-fried seafood settle, so if you're like our family, you'll need to spend an hour or so wandering around in Callahan's, across the street. Buy a t-shirt, pick up some new beach jewelry. If you leave with less than a pound of fudge, you're not trying. But, for heaven's sake, do not buy a hermit crab, unless your plan is to name it Willy and take it back to the ocean and set it free the very next day. You get lots of Karma points for that.

...and the women aren't all that attractive, either

From the "This would be funny, only it's happening to me" department:

A private e-mail address, linked to a pseudonym that I use for occasional print and Web articles, has been helpfully subscribed to an "online dating" site.

The word "dating," in this case, seems to have the same euphemistic meaning that the transsexual hookers in New York City's Meatpacking District always understood: "...honey, want a date?" (a line not infrequently delivered in a disconcerting basso profundo.)

Even better: Having logged in with the credentials provided by the semi-literate prankster who set this up (since he or she used my e-mail address, I got all the notifications of account creation, as well as the many "special offers" that begin pouring into my inbox this morning)... there is no way to delete the account from the site via the web interface.

Okay. Scratch one e-mail account, set up another, add some random characters into the name.

Good thing they're disposable these days.

(crossposted from enrevanche)

Sack up

I've gone hiking in bear country before, and a standard practice there is to hang your food (and the clothes you wore while cooking!) up in a tree, some distance from your camp, so that you don't invite bears into your tent.

(The reason that you hang the clothes you've cooked in, and don't sleep in them, is that if a bear wanders into your camp at night, you, smelling of food, in your sleeping bag, will appear to be something that was packaged by Kraft.)

Anyway... meet Ursack.


(crossposted from enrevanche)

"The cat's here; call in the family"

When Oscar the Cat visits residents of the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence, Rhode Island, the staff jumps into action -- Oscar can sense within hours when someone is about to die.

In his two years living in Steere's end-stage dementia unit, Oscar has been at the bedside of more than 25 residents shortly before they died, according to Dr. David Dosa of Brown University in Providence.

He wrote about Oscar in the New England Journal of Medicine.

"It's not that the cat is consistently there first," Dr. Joan Teno, a professor of community health at Brown University, who sees patients in the unit. "But the cat always does manage to make an appearance, and it always seems to be in the last two hours."

Nursing home cat can sense death, ease passing (Reuters via Yahoo News)

The staff don't believe that anything supernatural is going on; rather, they posit that Oscar is sensitive to some kind of biochemical change that is taking place in the unit's patients as death approaches.

However, definitely check out Oscar's picture in the Yahoo News article cited above. He appears to be a very wise cat, with a great deal of Buddha-nature. You can just tell that the little guy has quite a bedside manner.

Related: Dosa, David M. A Day in the Life of Oscar the Cat N Engl J Med 2007 357: 328-329

(crossposted from enrevanche)

How Find Good Barbeque

"One place is sort of expensive."
"Tell me how to get to the other one. Good barbeque is never expensive."

That's how I knew which one of three barbeque restaurants was the real thing in Cookeville, Tennessee. The other clue was, "Well, that place only does pork."

You have to understand, though, I was getting these directions from my innkeepers, both of whom were from Michigan. They had all the right information; they just didn't know it.

The real reason I logged on here tonight was so that I could print the blog from a couple days ago, and the Gazette article it links to. That should help them make some sense of all my babbling about "real" barbeque.

And this is likely to be my last post for a while. I'm glad to see Barry's keeping the keyboard warm though. Thanks cuz. Hope to see you in NC soon.

Spot of trouble on the commute

(Hi. Barry here. While Doc is on travel, I will be posting here occasionally. I'm kin to him, but please don't hold that against me.)

As I'm sure anyone within reach of the Intertubes already knows, there was a teensy spot of trouble near Grand Central Station last night... a massive steam pipe exploded, sending a geyser of live steam, "mud" (more on that in a second), rocks and miscellaneous debris twenty stories into the air and blasting a huge hole in Lexington Avenue.

I can't hope to add anything to the voluminous coverage of this incident, except to relate another incident that took place in my office last night. The explosion occurred just before 6PM, at the height of the evening rush hour, and shortly thereafter a number of us gathered in the Network Operations Center, where a local news channel was tuned in and patched through to the overhead projector.

The initial images were really startling - the steam-geyser was achieving some incredible heights, and it was evident that the steam pipes had taken out quite a bit of additional infrastructure with them when they blew, as there was an enormous amount of debris in the mix.

"Damn," one of our senior engineers observed. "Looks like it took out a sewer line, too."

One of the new guys objected.

"The news says that's mud."

The senior guy said, "Dude, I've worked in IT for over 20 years now. Don't you think I can recognize a fountain of shit when I see one?"

NC BBQ in Colorado

Damn. Damn. Damn. I picked a helluva weekend to actually be in NC. Probably the one weekend there'll be something resembling a real NC pig pickin' (the last of which I attended was thrown by our Association of Graduate Students in the English Department at UNC-CH, back in 1989) here at the base of the Rockies.

“My wife thinks I’m slightly obsessed about barbecue,” says Smith, who lives in Monument. “I love to smoke meat and make it like I grew up eating in North Carolina.”

That’s why he often throws parties for friends, especially for a gathering of hard-core North Carolina transplants — most with ties to the University of North Carolina — who are nuts about his barbecue.

13 Ways of Looking at a BlackBerry: Number 4, BlackBerry Smoothie

Over at Enrevanche, (okay, so you can tell what blogs I visit regularly), Barry posted a link you have to see to believe (unless you know about this site).

So, after visiting, I made a suggestion:

We'll see what comes of it. Either way, I think this will stand as #4.

13 Ways of Looking at a BlackBerry: Number Three: "Outmoded"

Also from Barry, at Enrevanche:

Here's my entry.

I call this piece “Outmoded.”

Pictured, left to right: Research In Motion’s new BlackBerry Curve, generously provided by my employer, adjacent to Apple’s new iPhone, generously provided by me, both displaying a favorite blog.

And again, if you haven't been there already, here's the photo that started this.

13 Ways of Looking at a BlackBerry, Number Two

First up with a contribution to the series was Barry, over at Enrevanche, with a comment that, while not a photo, I'm going to count nonetheless. Certainly, "through poetry" is a valid way of looking, given where I pilfered the title of the series. So, moving from the comment box, where it was prefaced by, "I'll see your Wallace Stevens and raise you a William Carlos Williams," to front page, here's number 2:

so much depends

upon

a blackberry

buzzing

vibrating in its

holster

like a way-too-expensive

marital aid

Touche! Frankly, I think that's going to be hard to beat.

He also posted a photo, but I'm off to a picnic, so I'll post that when I return, or you can pay it a visit over at his place in the meantime.

And if you haven't been there already, check out the photo that started this.

BlackBerry Coaster

Confession: When I was younger, I never really knew how to enjoy the company of other men. Perhaps it was insecurity, and a sense of every situation being a competition of sorts. But I'm inclined to think that wasn't it, given that in many respects, that's an aspect of male relationships that never wholly goes away. Or perhaps it was a surplus of testosterone that drove me always to be looking for a person of the opposite gender with whom to spend time. God knows that's less of a problem as we age. Or maybe the problem was that I used to care, overmuch, what others thought. Heaven knows I still care, but sooooo much less.

Whatever the reason, in the last five years or so, I've finally begun to enjoy the company of my fellow alpha males. I say alpha males, because, for the most part, they are. You'd think we'd clash. But for whatever reason, age, nothing-left-to-prove confidence, manageable hormone levels, whatever, we get along. We all have wives or significant others. We enjoy their company, most of us. But we also enjoy one another's, and take pains to find time for it. Breakfast, runs, bike rides, horseshoes, skydiving, lunch, or, to use last night as an example: a couple glasses of St Remy in snifters, a couple of great cigars, a pair of Adirondack chairs on top of a hill overlooking the city with the sun setting behind Pike's Peak, and stories of snakebites, almost snakebites, switchbacks, and the trout that got away, until sunset and the rapid Colorado chill sent us in. Now that is the kind of evening that will get you through the week. If you spend part of it planning a weekend guy getaway to a cabin on a trout stream with cigars and reserve whiskey for sustenance, it's the kind of evening that will get you through the month.

Don't get me wrong. I love my wife. I love my daughters. I love my two big female dogs (Husky and Newfoundland). I even love our one completely uncatlike female cat. But I love not having to explain myself. Guys understand guys things, guy likes, guy angst and guy anger. With guys, you can simply describe a situation--note, that's describe, not explain--then wrap up the matter in three short sentences (okay, one sentence, one phrase, and one word):

"Dude, that's f___ed up."
"Damn straight."
"S__t."

That's it. No need for explaining, hugs, tears, 13 ways of looking at a blackbird. It's taken nearly half a century, but I'm finally able to really appreciate that.

All that said, this blog opens with a guy photo from a guy friend taken on his guy vacation. With apologies to Wallace Stevens, I'm going to issue an invitation to my readers to contribute to a series, with this as entry number one. We'll call the series, "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a BlackBerry." E-mail me your photographic entries and I'll post them here with appropriate credits. Entry number one comes courtesy of Robert. The e-mail that brought it to me came with the following note: "Please see my recent vacation photos for detailed proper usage of a Blackberry and Corona." We'll call it "BlackBerry Coaster."

Yeah baby . . .

We all know this sounds just like something I would do . . .

BEND, Ore. — Last weekend, Bend gas station owner Kent Couch settled down in his lawn chair with some drinks and snacks — and a parachute.

Attached to the lawn chair were 105 balloons of various colors, each 4 feet around. Bundled together, the balloons rise three stories high.

Couch carried a global positioning system device, a two-way radio, a digital camcorder and a cell phone. He also had instruments to measure his altitude and speed and about four plastic bags holding five gallons of water each to act as a ballast — he could turn a spigot, release water and rise.

Destination: Idaho.

My favorite line:

Even at two miles high, Couch said, he could hear cattle lowing and children talking. He heard gunshots, which worried him.

Who knew you needed to prep the route with a SEAD mission? :-)

Source: Yesterday's Seattle Times.

The Survey Generation

Things survive on the internet. Nothing really ever goes away. Sometimes, it gets harder to find, but your best bet is to assume that, once there, it'll stay there. Forever.

Surveys are a good example. They can be fun. They can be revealing. They can be dangerous. They can be dangerously revealing.

Got kids? No, this is not a survey question. Well, actually, it is, but not in this instance. In this instance, it's rhetorical. In a survey, it would likely be followed by "How many?" "What are their names?" "Birthdays?" Now, next to each other those questions look pretty suspicious. But a survey will get you to drop your guard by interspersing innocuous questions like, "Do they ever eat macaroni?" "What was their last injury that required a bandaid?" "Are they walking yet?" etc.

In this instance, it's prelude to saying, Get online and watch what they're posting on their personal sites, like MySpace and FaceBook, and the like. They may not have bank accounts yet, but one day they will. And when the bank asks security questions like "What's your mother's maiden name?" "What town were you born in?" "What was your first pet's name?" "What was your first car?" "What's your favorite color?" (all of which I've seen as security questions at one time or another), do you think they'll remember that they've answered all of those questions for the world to see (or at least all of their "friends"--who for most kids, number well into the hundreds) on MySpace or FaceBook.

I took the title of this post from one of the hits I got when I typed "myspace surveys security" on Google. Ethan Kaplan, had an interesting blog post about the same tendency, but less from a security perspective than a psychological one. It's worth reading though.

Meanwhile, our children are likely to be challenged, when the time comes for them to set up security questions for online financial accounts; that is, if they're web-savvy enough to remember that the purpose of those questions is to ask them things that only they would know the answers to, and then to remember that, oh yeah, several hundred of my "friends" and by means of "extended networks" their "friends" and so on, know those answers too. Because, as I said at the beginning, nothing on the web ever dies, and just because you can't find it anymore, doesn't mean that even a poorly skilled hacker can't.

So, think twice about answering all those survey questions, or try to get your kids to, or at least try to school them in which ones are best answered, "None of your beeswax." And then, after you've schooled them, plan to remind them, and remind them, and remind them. Nothing on the web dies, but good advice has a half-life shorter than most man-made elements. Good luck.

Move over Stanley Kubrick

Even Eyes Wide Shut was only rated R.

This is not an adult blog, by any means. But an online rating site seems to think differently. This is pretty funny.


Mingle² - Online Dating

Here's why:

Engaged vs Disengaged

I had the good fortune to sit in on a briefing this morning from a representative of The Gallup Organization. Central question: Can character be measured? Answer from the speaker: Yes.

It is, of course, more complicated than that. But that's it in a nutshell. Most importantly, I came away convinced.

More importantly still, I came away wanting to work for the company that said they could do it. I came away convinced that they get it. That, for all their inexperience with military culture, they can translate. I came away thinking that the most cogent quote of the day might have been, from John C. Maxwell, translated and paraphrased, "There's no such thing as military ethics. There's just ethics." In other words, for the most part, there's no need for translation.

I also came away a little saddened, and clearer than ever in my mind that, for my good, and for the good of an organization I've loved for a long time, and given 26 years of my life, it's time for me to leave. I am anything but disengaged, but I share too many characteristics at the moment with the disengaged. At some point, when I have time to pull from the web the characteristics I mean, I will explain them one by one. Disturbed, I asked whether possession of the characteristics was what classified a person as disengaged, or if some other test determined that, and then the disengaged could simply be expected to exhibit those characteristics? I was told that the measuring of engagement was independent of these factors.

Let me offer a few examples. The engaged and the disengaged tend to have opposite answers to questions like, "Would you recommend this company to a friend?" or "Do you want to still be working here in a year?" Engaged workers are happier and more productive. I'll buy all of that, but there is still that chicken/egg question: disengaged, therefore unhappy; or, unhappy, therefore disengaged. More importantly, can you still be engaged, yet share answers with the disengaged. These are questions I'm pondering, but questions I'm sure Gallup has the answer to.

Probing my own situation, I found some consolation in one more point. The quote went something like this: "People join organizations; they leave individuals." You can love your job, love your organization, and reach a point where you can no longer watch it driven into the ground by one or many in positions of authority. The longer you watch that occur, the more you may find yourself in the "disengaged" camp in answering certain questions. The more you love your work, your mission, your teammates, the more devastating the impact of poor leadership on your morale. Does that make you disengaged or too engaged? This is more than semantics. There is something very basic at stake here.

There is a book answer, I'm sure. But I'd love to hear any comments. Bookish or otherwise.

Don't complexify things

My prolific record of posts since my return from spring break should speak volumes regarding my failure to heed the title's advice. And yet, though I've written little here, my fingers have been no stranger to the keyboard.

I'm attempting to draw one long career to a close and set out on another. Just which other is yet to be determined. But the exploration of possible others has kept me rather busy lately.

The other thing that's kept me busy has been reconnecting with some old friends. Back in May, I stood beneath the center of the new Air Force Memorial, staring up at the stars, with only even an occasional passing car as a distraction. I recommend visiting that monument--in fact, I recommend visiting all of them--well after midnight in the middle of the week. I don't like crowds. But I do like individuals. And those I call friends, I tend to like intensely, and for a lifetime. One of those friends gave me that midnight tour of DC. The monuments were nice, the government buildings were nice, the empty streets were like something from The Twilight Zone, but the best thing of all was reconnecting with a friend I'd not seen in a quarter of a century.

Today, I reconnected with another, after nearly a decade. Over an hour on the phone wasn't really long enough. Our kids were in grade school the last time we talked. This fall, we'll each drop one off at different colleges on the east coast. The last time we connected was his birthday, a decade ago, and he was about halfway through a year-long deployment to Korea. For his birthday, I sent him a copy of Cormac McCarthy's The Crossing and one of two Costa Rican cigars from a little shop in Fredericksburg, Virginia, picked up on a visit to a battlefield there as part of a graduate course on the literature of the Civil War (good luck untangling those modifiers). Then, through e-mail, we coordinated so that, at the same time, half a world apart, he smoked his cigar on a morning walk in Korea, and I smoked mine, on an evening walk, in gently falling snow, near Charlottesville, Virginia. The walk itself, a long-range version of something we did rarely, but with intense consciousness of each precious moment, sporting cigars on the starlit terrazzo of our shared alma mater, not quite two decades earlier still. A world apart, a shared, smoke-haloed perambulation--and then, the long drift. I hadn't the heart to tell him today that I'd driven by his house once, or, at least a house that was once his, some four years ago. On a road trip from North Carolina to a conference in Florida, I'd detoured through Alabama with an associate to look at a house he was arranging to live in with his family for a year of school there. At my request, we detoured by another as well. There wasn't time to stop for a real visit anyway, we had somewhere we had to be, "miles to go." But even more than that, there was, has been for years, for me, an unexplainable conflict between yearning and foreboding, more like than unlike that of Frost's most famous traveler. Still, I wanted to see the house, to have an idea in what surroundings to picture the closest friend I made in the four-year crucible we called a college, should one or the other of us bridge that drift again.

So, today, I did. Only I could really. I've moved three times since that December walk; he only once that I know of.

Funny thing about both those reconnections, the one spanning a quarter century and the other a decade: both are doctors. Well, technically, I suppose we all three are, but they're the kind who can cure you; whereas, I . . . well as I've told more than one jumper who's approached me for medical care, "I can describe that injury in colorful iambic pentameter and analyze the subtext within the plot turns of your life leading inevitably to it, but I'm not going to be much help to you, medically--not that sort of 'Doc' . . . sorry."

And both are artists, of one sort or another, so naturally, I'm coming to believe that all surgeons have this alter ego as a feature of their personalities. One gardens and cooks on a level well above my head, and the other draws and paints. Both have a gift for words as well, and it is to today's reconnection that I owe the lovely coinage that titles this post. As we both laughed at our growing collection of reading glasses (I find I'm not the only person with a pair in every room, pocket, vehicle, and end-table) and lamented the utter complexity of our lives, I mentioned a yearning "to simplify" my life. He responded, rightly I think, that we were probably past that point, the better strategy would have been "not to complexify them in the first place."

So, this post is a tribute to simpler times and to one of the simplest and most fundamental of life's pleasures: friendship. Quite honestly, I probably don't deserve the caliber of friends I have, and my gratitude that God has seen fit to bless me so abundantly nonetheless is probably all the explanation I ever need seek for my affinity for expressions of friendship in art. Some people saw Serendipity as a chick flick; I saw it as a buddy movie. I've never seen a better scripted or acted portrayal of that mysterious way in which male friendships materialize than the first few episodes of Deadwood, from Bullock's and Hickok's first meeting to the latter's murder. And you already know that I think Reign Over Me the finest movie to come out thus far this year, in any category. But I digress.

To my friends, thank you for putting up with me. You're really the only readers I have anyway. And to any of the latter who haven't been or aren't yet the former, I hope for you that you are or will be at least half so blessed as I in that arena, for were I only even half so blessed, I would still consider myself a very, very lucky man.

Now I've seen everything

The author of the words taken for title of this blog appeared on Oprah today. My phone and e-mail have been hopping ever since. More to follow.

Two movies

My beautiful eldest daugther and her mother and her mother's mother took off for a week in Hawaii following my daughter's high school graduation last week. For me, it was a rare opportunity to spend some time with my younger daughter. We shopped, we cooked, we saw a couple of movies.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End--Good movie to see with your daughter. Good movie to see, period. Entertaining. Great special effects. Minimum of stupidity. Good story. The critics--what do they know.

We also saw Knocked Up--For God's sake don't go see this with your 15-yr-old. Great reviews: "poignant," "hilarious," etc. Reality: mildly funny. Poignant, in a "this is the sort of real life I go to movies to escape from" sort of way.

Lastly, there is Spiderman III--SAVE YOUR MONEY. When I saw Mission Impossible II with my wife, she took all the fun out of it by laughing out loud at some of John Woo's more over-the-top directorial moments. At Spiderman, we both laughed. To begin with, Tobey Maguire is no great shakes as an actor. But really, when said 15-yr-old comes home and says it's the worst movie she's seen in a while (and this from someone who thinks Will Farrell can act), you know you're probably going to want that three hours of your life back.

Want to know what you shouldn't miss? Reign Over Me. So far, for 2007, the best movie I've seen, and I saw most of the Academy Award Winners. First, Adam Sandler can act. If you didn't know that after Spanglish, you weren't paying attention. Second, there is not an emotion that Reign Over Me leaves untapped: anger, love, humor, happiness, passion, friendship, grief, and every other corner of your heart that I've not named. If there is a don't miss movie for this year, this is it. Critics gave it a C+. They gave Spiderman a B; same grade they gave Talladega Nights. See a pattern yet?

Yin and Yang

A brief three days back in Colorado and then off to jump into the Preakness in Baltimore this Friday and Saturday. Stealing just a second to mention a pair of books that really should be read as a pair.

A few months ago, a friend recommended Thomas L. Friedman's, The Lexus and the Olive Tree. Beyond being dated by having been right about much, the effect of which is that the late-coming reader is constantly thinking, "Well, duh," the book is a good study of globalization. To condense the point (a lot), globalization is inevitable, and largely good.

About the same time, an equally respected friend was touting the work of Michael Pollan, coincidentally at the same time that Pollan was scheduled to speak at a private college near my home. [The power of blogging is that you can link to all these things--books, other blogs, people, the college; the power of having a job is that I don't have time to add links tonight. Sorry. Maybe later.] I went to hear Pollan speak. I bought his book and am now about three-quarters through it. To condense the point (again, a lot), globalization/industrialization of the food chain into a monoculture based largely on a single plant, corn, is not inevitable, but is happening, and is bad. Bad on so many levels that all I can say is READ THE BOOK. Friedman, not so much.

Here's why I say read one, read it, read it, read it, but just read the other if you have some time to kill. Friedman will explain some things about the world today and how it came to be as it is. Cool to know, but it won't really drive you to change anything about your life. Pollan will tell you things you'll never learn otherwise, and that will change the way you see many things, and probably, the way you live and, most particularly, shop for and eat food.

And that is all I have time for today. Peace. Out.

What Next?

I am finally far enough behind on the posting to no longer feel obligated to catch up, and instead feel empowered to start anew. So . . .

Greetings from our nation's capital. Tomorrow, maybe a review of tonight's restaurant, but today, a quick recommendation on touring the capital: consider doing it after midnight. Unconventional, I'll admit, but standing directly beneath the apex and staring up through the center of the new Air Force Memorial at about 0130 the other night was waaay cool. And driving by the other memorials and viewing them in pristine unpopulated isolation, even from the car, was something impossible to experience during the day. And the absence of traffic was a blessed contrast to what I've experienced since. So, consider it. If you can combine it with an evening of catching up with an old friend you've not seen in 25 years, even better!

Gotta run. Doc.