When I saw this item on the news wire this morning, I was amazed but not surprised.
I was amazed because I thought this sort of thing didn't happen any more. Then I thought about it for a moment, and I was not surprised because I know from experience that this sort of thing has been going on--at least here in Texas--since I was in high school.
In fact, I've been to several of these cage matches when I was attending junior high school in San Antonio. It's no excuse for the behavior, but there is a social context for it which bears some explanation. We lived in a very poor part of town and the school was, to say the least, a tough one.
Personally I never had a problem, but this is where I learned to keep my head down and stay out of the line of fire, so to speak. I passed quickly through the crowds in the parking lot on my way in and knew where to hang--or, more importantly, where not to hang--out during lunch. Gangs were a known quantity, not threatening but present. Conflicts were infrequent but unavoidable, and when a fight broke out during P.E. the coaches would 'settle it' with a cage match.
The first time this happened, I was appalled but, in a sort of typical male adolescent way, intrigued by the idea of seeing two thugs--whom I likely didn't like anyway--pound on each other, especially because they were not beating on me. So, after separating the two combatants on the dusty field, the coaches dragged them into the clubhouse and lined the rest of us up at the door for admittance to the spectacle. I lined up with everyone else. At first, I was uncertain as to why we had to line up and go in to the clubhouse one at a time, but as I got closer to the door I saw the reason.
The coaches were charging 'admission' to the fight of one 'lick' with the 'board of education'. Now, for those unfamiliar with it, this thing is a two and a half foot long 'paddle' that resembles nothing so much as a cricket bat with holes drilled into it to reduce the air resistance as it descends upon the ass of it's victim. The purpose of this 'tool' was ostensibly to enforce discipline, but in fact, no one that ever took a lick as punishment ever really minded it, while those of us who were mortified at the thought of being beaten with a bat would never place ourselves in harms way, so to speak, in the first place. I never did. That is, until that day.
Standing in line, watching the rest of the guys bend over and grab their ankles while the coach swatted their asses with the board, I was overcome with disgust and anxiety. It's not like the thought of being smacked with a wooden plank was so terrifying that I could not handle it, but the whole situation resembled nothing so much as a prison movie and as such had a surreal quality to it that I have never forgotten. I took the lick that day, and watched the fight with a still sore ass from on top of the lockers. Though they were given gloves, they two boys beat each other down pretty good. Both had bloody noses at the end. I wonder how they explained that to their parents, but then again, this was the sixties in Texas.
The next time a fight broke out, I set myself up for humiliation but comfort by refusing to take the lick and therefore entrance to the fight. Apparently no one had ever done this before, so at first, the coaches didn't know what to do with me. Eventually they settled on making me run laps around the track and sit in the bleachers while the rest of the class took their licks and presumably enjoyed the fight. In spite of the ridicule heaped upon me by my classmates at the end of class, I figured I'd made out alright.
After all, my intent then and there, as at other times and in other places in my life, was to avoid violence, whether given or received.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Bonuses, Contracts and Life. Oh My!
The current 'scandal' surrounding the multi-million dollar 'Retention Bonuses' paid to executives of the recently bailed-out insurance 'giant' AIG has drawn my attention not so much because it is the number one topic in the news for the past two days, but because it raises some interesting questions about ethics, obligations and the role of a contract in a relationship.
First of all, I think that the issue suffers from some tangible difficulties with semantics. The very name of these payments seems designed to inflame and anger everyone except those who actually received them. By calling them "bonuses" rather than simply "payments" implies that they were extra, over and beyond the actual compensation that these individuals received. Thus, when we discover that the compensation may not have been "deserved" because of the failure of the individuals to live up to their fiduciary "end of the bargain" hearing those payments described as "bonuses" only serves to infuriate us. After all, aren't bonuses supposed to be an incentive for good performance? Even if they had been called the more neutral and potentially accurate term, "payments" the fundamental issue of competence--or the lack of it--is still inescapable. Whom are we rewarding, and for what? hat if there had been penalties for poor performance instead? I'm thinking of a good flogging, but that's not the point of this essay.
The other word that gets in the way, though less so in the media because it is deliberately obfuscatory and therefore hard to understand is "retention". This is as in "to retain" the 'valuable' services of the individuals who are making the bonuses. This is presumably because in spite of these guys' talent, the company is still failing! In order to keep the rats from jumping ship before it crashes onto the rocks, other individuals--who are ironically receiving the very same retention incentives themselves--have asked the hard working but unlucky losers to stay on and 'almost' go down with the ship.
I have to say 'almost' because in fact many of these highly talented and therefore sought after executives actually bailed after being bailed out. That is, many simply left in spite of being paid hundreds of thousands--in some cases, millions-of dollars to stay. So much for incentives.
Aside from the semantic difficulties posed by the AIG 'bonuses', there are some real-world issues that are raised by this backward state of affairs, not the least of which has to do with the very nature of contracts, why we write them, sign them and how we break them.
Quite simply, contracts are written to be broken.
In this brief essay I will not have time to comment on the law surrounding contracts, but in fact it isn't time or space that constrains me on the topic but ignorance. I really know nothing of contract law, and have to cede to 'authorities' who say that contracts form the basis of our civilized society. What I will not concede to these same authorities is the notion that failing to live up to a contract--any contract--amounts to the disintegration of the laws underpinning society itself. The claim made all too frequently is that abandoning even a single contract sets a 'dangerous precedent' that will undermine all other contracts, past present and future.
This is just too dramatic a claim to be supported. Even if breaking a contract does seem, on the surface, to be at the very least unfair to one or more party in the contract, in fact, this is the very condition anticipated by the document and is one of the principal reason it would have been drawn up in the first place.
A principle element to the concept of a contractual obligation is the underlying assumption that one or more clauses in it will not in fact be honored. The expectation is that the contract will be broken. It isn't a case of if the contract will be broken; it's just a matter of when and how. It is why we draw them up and why we spend so much time in court resolving them. It's why there is whole section of the law devoted to it.
Consider another contractual obligation which is supposed to be sacred, so important that we not only sign a document, but enter into an oath with God and those around us to honor that contract. I am talking about marriage. Of course, more than half of all marriages end in divorce, so where is the sanctity of the marriage contract? It isn't on the paper or in the words, for the paper can be destroyed and the words, well, that's just a semantic challenge, avoided with such terms as "irreconcilable differences" or "unnecessary hardship." In other words, despite it's sanctity and it's importance to the moral structure of society, the marriage contract is not inviolate. It can be, often is, broken.
So too can the financial obligations 'we' taxpayers have to the shady and incompetent money managers at AIG (and the others like them) be broken. So sad, too bad. The walls of society will not come crumbling down as a result. The failure of say, General Motors (and there are other companies like this) to pay their rank-and-file workers the pensions and insurance that was in those workers'labor contract while they worked is a far greater failure--ethically and in human terms--of our legal and financial systems. In the end, the failure of these large companies to honor the obligations to pay their employees fairly is far more likely to engender the breakdown of societal fabric so publicly feared these days.
After all, it is the protectors of these outrageously undeserved payments to the white collar criminals who got us all into this mess in the first place. No wonder they are claiming that the sky is falling.
First of all, I think that the issue suffers from some tangible difficulties with semantics. The very name of these payments seems designed to inflame and anger everyone except those who actually received them. By calling them "bonuses" rather than simply "payments" implies that they were extra, over and beyond the actual compensation that these individuals received. Thus, when we discover that the compensation may not have been "deserved" because of the failure of the individuals to live up to their fiduciary "end of the bargain" hearing those payments described as "bonuses" only serves to infuriate us. After all, aren't bonuses supposed to be an incentive for good performance? Even if they had been called the more neutral and potentially accurate term, "payments" the fundamental issue of competence--or the lack of it--is still inescapable. Whom are we rewarding, and for what? hat if there had been penalties for poor performance instead? I'm thinking of a good flogging, but that's not the point of this essay.
The other word that gets in the way, though less so in the media because it is deliberately obfuscatory and therefore hard to understand is "retention". This is as in "to retain" the 'valuable' services of the individuals who are making the bonuses. This is presumably because in spite of these guys' talent, the company is still failing! In order to keep the rats from jumping ship before it crashes onto the rocks, other individuals--who are ironically receiving the very same retention incentives themselves--have asked the hard working but unlucky losers to stay on and 'almost' go down with the ship.
I have to say 'almost' because in fact many of these highly talented and therefore sought after executives actually bailed after being bailed out. That is, many simply left in spite of being paid hundreds of thousands--in some cases, millions-of dollars to stay. So much for incentives.
Aside from the semantic difficulties posed by the AIG 'bonuses', there are some real-world issues that are raised by this backward state of affairs, not the least of which has to do with the very nature of contracts, why we write them, sign them and how we break them.
Quite simply, contracts are written to be broken.
In this brief essay I will not have time to comment on the law surrounding contracts, but in fact it isn't time or space that constrains me on the topic but ignorance. I really know nothing of contract law, and have to cede to 'authorities' who say that contracts form the basis of our civilized society. What I will not concede to these same authorities is the notion that failing to live up to a contract--any contract--amounts to the disintegration of the laws underpinning society itself. The claim made all too frequently is that abandoning even a single contract sets a 'dangerous precedent' that will undermine all other contracts, past present and future.
This is just too dramatic a claim to be supported. Even if breaking a contract does seem, on the surface, to be at the very least unfair to one or more party in the contract, in fact, this is the very condition anticipated by the document and is one of the principal reason it would have been drawn up in the first place.
A principle element to the concept of a contractual obligation is the underlying assumption that one or more clauses in it will not in fact be honored. The expectation is that the contract will be broken. It isn't a case of if the contract will be broken; it's just a matter of when and how. It is why we draw them up and why we spend so much time in court resolving them. It's why there is whole section of the law devoted to it.
Consider another contractual obligation which is supposed to be sacred, so important that we not only sign a document, but enter into an oath with God and those around us to honor that contract. I am talking about marriage. Of course, more than half of all marriages end in divorce, so where is the sanctity of the marriage contract? It isn't on the paper or in the words, for the paper can be destroyed and the words, well, that's just a semantic challenge, avoided with such terms as "irreconcilable differences" or "unnecessary hardship." In other words, despite it's sanctity and it's importance to the moral structure of society, the marriage contract is not inviolate. It can be, often is, broken.
So too can the financial obligations 'we' taxpayers have to the shady and incompetent money managers at AIG (and the others like them) be broken. So sad, too bad. The walls of society will not come crumbling down as a result. The failure of say, General Motors (and there are other companies like this) to pay their rank-and-file workers the pensions and insurance that was in those workers'labor contract while they worked is a far greater failure--ethically and in human terms--of our legal and financial systems. In the end, the failure of these large companies to honor the obligations to pay their employees fairly is far more likely to engender the breakdown of societal fabric so publicly feared these days.
After all, it is the protectors of these outrageously undeserved payments to the white collar criminals who got us all into this mess in the first place. No wonder they are claiming that the sky is falling.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
The Joy of Coding
I love to write code.
Funny, saying that, for though I am thinking of 'current' code, like html, css and php, but the feeling goes a long way back into my childhood. I can recall 'inventing' a code by mixing up the letters in the alphabet when I was about six or seven. I painstakingly transcribed the code onto s series of index cards, then wrote two or three 'encrypted' messages to my dad before I realized how much effort it required for even the simplest of notes. Then, too, I had no information that required a secret transfer, though I don't think this would have been too serious an impediment given my imagination.
I first discovered useful code--and I never did count Morse Code in this category, nor did I ever learn it, Cub Scouts notwithstanding--as a senior in high school when I took what was a the time a very nerdy and rudimentary introduction to computer programming. Programmers and coders today are fond of recalling the 'old days' when they first started, engaging in a sort of one-upmanship game like that game called the "Dozens"...you know, where you say: 'yo mama is so ____'. Alas, I am no different, but I do think that it's more than a bragging game because it does give a sense of how far we--as individual coders and as a society of the same--have come since we started. It's like looking back at the trail you've just walked; a satisfying if not terribly useful exercise.
At the risk of sounding like one of those grumpy old men who claim to have walked ten miles to school uphill in the snow both ways, I did start out programming at what today seems like the most primitive level possible: punch cards.
Odd it is to think that some people actually managed to eke out a career as a 'punch card operator' even though such a career had a very narrow window in the sixties and seventies and is now gone the way, literally, of the buggy whip. Not only do we no longer use punch cards, no one but a historian could be expected to even know why. Goodness knows it was a very crude method for say, adding and averaging a set of integers, often requiring a set of several dozen--up to several hundred--carefully punched and even more carefully stacked paper cards. Get one card out of order and the 'program' no longer works. Drop that stack of cards on the floor and, well, just start over.
I went from punch cards to FORTRAN and BASIC in college, writing a 'Star Trek' program for my semester project that 'ran' on computer the size of a refrigerator with an 'interface' that was nothing more than a teletype machine. After that, I had no use for the 'skills' gained from that grand experiment, and my code brain went dormant.
I might have thought my desire to code was dead, but the day that someone mentioned that "html might be what you are looking for" in response to my query about how to build a BBS (Bulletin Board Systems: precursors to websites) was definitely a turning point for me, even though it was another three years before I was actually introduced to html and the www.
I like elegant code, like poetry and cuisine. To me elegance is a function of simplicity. Simple code is the most beautiful because like poetry or food, it gathers strength of meaning from all things necessary and nothing that is not.
To code well, beauty must be the muse of the present and skill the servant of the unseen eye of the future. Any good craftsman knows he will be eventually be judged by the eye of future just as he has judged the work of the past.
Funny, saying that, for though I am thinking of 'current' code, like html, css and php, but the feeling goes a long way back into my childhood. I can recall 'inventing' a code by mixing up the letters in the alphabet when I was about six or seven. I painstakingly transcribed the code onto s series of index cards, then wrote two or three 'encrypted' messages to my dad before I realized how much effort it required for even the simplest of notes. Then, too, I had no information that required a secret transfer, though I don't think this would have been too serious an impediment given my imagination.
I first discovered useful code--and I never did count Morse Code in this category, nor did I ever learn it, Cub Scouts notwithstanding--as a senior in high school when I took what was a the time a very nerdy and rudimentary introduction to computer programming. Programmers and coders today are fond of recalling the 'old days' when they first started, engaging in a sort of one-upmanship game like that game called the "Dozens"...you know, where you say: 'yo mama is so ____'. Alas, I am no different, but I do think that it's more than a bragging game because it does give a sense of how far we--as individual coders and as a society of the same--have come since we started. It's like looking back at the trail you've just walked; a satisfying if not terribly useful exercise.
At the risk of sounding like one of those grumpy old men who claim to have walked ten miles to school uphill in the snow both ways, I did start out programming at what today seems like the most primitive level possible: punch cards.
Odd it is to think that some people actually managed to eke out a career as a 'punch card operator' even though such a career had a very narrow window in the sixties and seventies and is now gone the way, literally, of the buggy whip. Not only do we no longer use punch cards, no one but a historian could be expected to even know why. Goodness knows it was a very crude method for say, adding and averaging a set of integers, often requiring a set of several dozen--up to several hundred--carefully punched and even more carefully stacked paper cards. Get one card out of order and the 'program' no longer works. Drop that stack of cards on the floor and, well, just start over.
I went from punch cards to FORTRAN and BASIC in college, writing a 'Star Trek' program for my semester project that 'ran' on computer the size of a refrigerator with an 'interface' that was nothing more than a teletype machine. After that, I had no use for the 'skills' gained from that grand experiment, and my code brain went dormant.
I might have thought my desire to code was dead, but the day that someone mentioned that "html might be what you are looking for" in response to my query about how to build a BBS (Bulletin Board Systems: precursors to websites) was definitely a turning point for me, even though it was another three years before I was actually introduced to html and the www.
I like elegant code, like poetry and cuisine. To me elegance is a function of simplicity. Simple code is the most beautiful because like poetry or food, it gathers strength of meaning from all things necessary and nothing that is not.
To code well, beauty must be the muse of the present and skill the servant of the unseen eye of the future. Any good craftsman knows he will be eventually be judged by the eye of future just as he has judged the work of the past.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Working for Tips
It is safe to say that Franco and I got along very well, right from the very first. As I consider this after not having seen him now for so many years I wonder how is that we have lost touch, but 'there it is' as he would say.
I broke the ice by asking him, shortly after he came down to interview me, if his father was the owner. This might have been annoying to him if it had not been so innocent. After all, Franco was only twenty-six or eight at the time, and he knew that his ownership of a restaurant at such a young age was a mark of considerable success.
As I said, he was an entrepreneur in what was then for all intents and purposes, a socialist country. This more than any thing else attracted him to me, for he saw in me the prototypical 'Yank', full of optimism and desire to work. In one regard he was correct, for I have, since the age of nine, been ready and willing to work. My first job was at fourteen and I've rarely had a period longer than six months of unemployment in the years since.
Getting work in England, however, was hard, as I've said, so I was indeed anxious to work, and my energy and willingness had more to do with my youth and my lack of money than my citizenship. Nonetheless, it suited Franco to think he had in me a potential protege, for at the time he had little hope for the future of his business if he had to rely solely on family as he had in the past.
I have not yet mentioned, though it might be obvious from the name, that this was an Italian restaurant and therefore, an Italian family. To say that they were a 'tight-knit' family is to employ a cliche that in this case has considerable merit, for the workers at Sorrentino's were Franco, his Mother (whom we called, quite naturally, Mama) who was the 'chef', his sister Anna, who was the 'sous-chef', his cousin Maria, who did the 'washing-up' and his younger brother Tony, who was ostensibly the waiter.
I say ostensibly for a reason; he was having serious difficulties with the job about the time I showed up, which turned out to be a blessing for me. For the first time since Franco had started serving Vitello Sorrentino from a roadside (lay-by) trailer (caravan) on the highway (motorway) outside Bedford, he was considering hiring someone from outside the family. Me.
All of the above was of course unknown to me when I entered the restaurant to apply for a job. Had it been, I might not have had the courage to apply, but youth and ignorance will get you a long way, I've come to find out, and in this case, my naivete paid off.
For starters, asking Franco when I could meet the owner was amusing to him, and the fact that I came with an unusual offer gave me his ear for the critical few minutes I needed to get hired. Oh, and it didn't hurt that Franco was really pissed off at his younger brother Tony that day. The prospect of having a waiter--any waiter--that would actually come to work was likely the most appealing aspect of my offer that day.
I knew going in that it was illegal for anyone to hire me. I knew also that I had no real experience as a waiter. The only advantage I felt I could offer therefore, was to work 'under the table' and for tips rather than a salary, which is how waiters are paid in the UK and Europe in general. I reasoned that since Sorrentino's was obviously a very busy and popular restaurant, they could use the help.
Being a small family owned business, I figured that they might be likely to hire a Yank to work if it didn't cost them anything, so I proposed to Franco that instead of paying me a weekly salary--as he did his brother--he could just pay me the difference between the salary and what I made in tips--above and beyond the ten percent that was automatically added to every check.
Franco thought this was a novel idea, but that it wouldn't work. I countered by saying that Brits just hadn't had the opportunity to get good service, and that if they knew that they were paying for my service directly, as opposed to creating a slush fund for the owner from which he is supposed to pay his workers, they would not only do it, but they would pay me more than a mere ten percent. I predicted I'd earn at least fifteen, if not twenty percent. This was in 1975, remember, when the 'standard' in the US was fifteen percent. So, I bluffed a bit, and Franco called me on it.
When can you start?
It's not the first time I've bluffed a bit when applying for a job, but I certainly say that it was the first time that it worked. No doubt Franco knew well that I was inexperienced, but he was intrigued enough by my offer and what he perceived to be my brash 'American spirit' to overlook my shortcomings. This was a good thing, of course, mostly because it kept me in a job even after I'd broken a few dozen wine glasses during a wedding party on my first day.
Franco's interest in my 'American-ness' extended beyond my skills and ambitions as a waiter, however. He and I spent a great deal of time talking about the differences between the American and British cultures. Being an Italian in England made him feel a kinship, I think, with the American ideal; as an expatriate, he just never felt comfortable with his adopted culture and would have, if given the choice back then, have emigrated to the US to give the same dreams and ambitions he felt were being suppressed in the semi-socialist British environment a good and proper chance.
As it was, he was quite successful in the UK. He opened a second restaurant while I worked for him, and even though he eventually visited me in the US many years later, it was just not in the cards for him to become an American. Nor was it in the cards for me to become a partner in Franco's business, though we often talked of it. Because I ended up going to to the American College in Paris in the fall of 1975, I only worked for Franco for about six months.
During that time I became a much better waiter, and Franco and I became good friends. I often went over to his house for dinner and when Valery and I were married in 1985 and took our honeymoon in Europe, one of our first stops was at Franco's house, where we had dinner with he and his wife Anne and their two daughters. Just young girls then, they must be by now beautiful women with families of their own.
And the experiment with the tips? Well, it worked out in my favor. I had to be careful about talking too much to my tables, for once my American accent was detected, I had to have a plausible explanation as to why I was working in a British restaurant. Not everyone resembled an immigration officer, though, and to some folks I could be honest about my origins and the deal I had made with Franco. Knowing this, customers often gave at least a twenty percent tip because they knew the money was going directly in my pocket. They were happy to pay for my service, and I am happy to say that the service they received was not simply better than they would have gotten from Tony, but better than the service they'd received in any restaurant, anywhere.
I'm not saying that my success at Sorrentino's was due to my remarkable, sunny disposition, but I do believe that is was a function of treating people with respect and courtesy while serving them. People like this and will pay for it.
Furthermore, I conclude that people who aren't willing to pay for good service perhaps haven't really had it. I'm just sayin...
I broke the ice by asking him, shortly after he came down to interview me, if his father was the owner. This might have been annoying to him if it had not been so innocent. After all, Franco was only twenty-six or eight at the time, and he knew that his ownership of a restaurant at such a young age was a mark of considerable success.
As I said, he was an entrepreneur in what was then for all intents and purposes, a socialist country. This more than any thing else attracted him to me, for he saw in me the prototypical 'Yank', full of optimism and desire to work. In one regard he was correct, for I have, since the age of nine, been ready and willing to work. My first job was at fourteen and I've rarely had a period longer than six months of unemployment in the years since.
Getting work in England, however, was hard, as I've said, so I was indeed anxious to work, and my energy and willingness had more to do with my youth and my lack of money than my citizenship. Nonetheless, it suited Franco to think he had in me a potential protege, for at the time he had little hope for the future of his business if he had to rely solely on family as he had in the past.
I have not yet mentioned, though it might be obvious from the name, that this was an Italian restaurant and therefore, an Italian family. To say that they were a 'tight-knit' family is to employ a cliche that in this case has considerable merit, for the workers at Sorrentino's were Franco, his Mother (whom we called, quite naturally, Mama) who was the 'chef', his sister Anna, who was the 'sous-chef', his cousin Maria, who did the 'washing-up' and his younger brother Tony, who was ostensibly the waiter.
I say ostensibly for a reason; he was having serious difficulties with the job about the time I showed up, which turned out to be a blessing for me. For the first time since Franco had started serving Vitello Sorrentino from a roadside (lay-by) trailer (caravan) on the highway (motorway) outside Bedford, he was considering hiring someone from outside the family. Me.
All of the above was of course unknown to me when I entered the restaurant to apply for a job. Had it been, I might not have had the courage to apply, but youth and ignorance will get you a long way, I've come to find out, and in this case, my naivete paid off.
For starters, asking Franco when I could meet the owner was amusing to him, and the fact that I came with an unusual offer gave me his ear for the critical few minutes I needed to get hired. Oh, and it didn't hurt that Franco was really pissed off at his younger brother Tony that day. The prospect of having a waiter--any waiter--that would actually come to work was likely the most appealing aspect of my offer that day.
I knew going in that it was illegal for anyone to hire me. I knew also that I had no real experience as a waiter. The only advantage I felt I could offer therefore, was to work 'under the table' and for tips rather than a salary, which is how waiters are paid in the UK and Europe in general. I reasoned that since Sorrentino's was obviously a very busy and popular restaurant, they could use the help.
Being a small family owned business, I figured that they might be likely to hire a Yank to work if it didn't cost them anything, so I proposed to Franco that instead of paying me a weekly salary--as he did his brother--he could just pay me the difference between the salary and what I made in tips--above and beyond the ten percent that was automatically added to every check.
Franco thought this was a novel idea, but that it wouldn't work. I countered by saying that Brits just hadn't had the opportunity to get good service, and that if they knew that they were paying for my service directly, as opposed to creating a slush fund for the owner from which he is supposed to pay his workers, they would not only do it, but they would pay me more than a mere ten percent. I predicted I'd earn at least fifteen, if not twenty percent. This was in 1975, remember, when the 'standard' in the US was fifteen percent. So, I bluffed a bit, and Franco called me on it.
When can you start?
It's not the first time I've bluffed a bit when applying for a job, but I certainly say that it was the first time that it worked. No doubt Franco knew well that I was inexperienced, but he was intrigued enough by my offer and what he perceived to be my brash 'American spirit' to overlook my shortcomings. This was a good thing, of course, mostly because it kept me in a job even after I'd broken a few dozen wine glasses during a wedding party on my first day.
Franco's interest in my 'American-ness' extended beyond my skills and ambitions as a waiter, however. He and I spent a great deal of time talking about the differences between the American and British cultures. Being an Italian in England made him feel a kinship, I think, with the American ideal; as an expatriate, he just never felt comfortable with his adopted culture and would have, if given the choice back then, have emigrated to the US to give the same dreams and ambitions he felt were being suppressed in the semi-socialist British environment a good and proper chance.
As it was, he was quite successful in the UK. He opened a second restaurant while I worked for him, and even though he eventually visited me in the US many years later, it was just not in the cards for him to become an American. Nor was it in the cards for me to become a partner in Franco's business, though we often talked of it. Because I ended up going to to the American College in Paris in the fall of 1975, I only worked for Franco for about six months.
During that time I became a much better waiter, and Franco and I became good friends. I often went over to his house for dinner and when Valery and I were married in 1985 and took our honeymoon in Europe, one of our first stops was at Franco's house, where we had dinner with he and his wife Anne and their two daughters. Just young girls then, they must be by now beautiful women with families of their own.
And the experiment with the tips? Well, it worked out in my favor. I had to be careful about talking too much to my tables, for once my American accent was detected, I had to have a plausible explanation as to why I was working in a British restaurant. Not everyone resembled an immigration officer, though, and to some folks I could be honest about my origins and the deal I had made with Franco. Knowing this, customers often gave at least a twenty percent tip because they knew the money was going directly in my pocket. They were happy to pay for my service, and I am happy to say that the service they received was not simply better than they would have gotten from Tony, but better than the service they'd received in any restaurant, anywhere.
I'm not saying that my success at Sorrentino's was due to my remarkable, sunny disposition, but I do believe that is was a function of treating people with respect and courtesy while serving them. People like this and will pay for it.
Furthermore, I conclude that people who aren't willing to pay for good service perhaps haven't really had it. I'm just sayin...
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Waiting Tables in England
I have to admit, dear reader, that I was rather snarky in my previous entry about the Mechanics of Tipping, and that this fact--as much as my convoluted prose--detracted from the message.
In fairness, my very best restaurant experiences were in Europe, though not in the UK, ever. And, though I can recall most if not all of them, these marvelous French, Italian, Vietnamese, Chinese and Greek meals, their accompanying service and the charming restaurants in which I had the great pleasure of dining were not the intentional subject of my petty diatribe. Alas, the collateral damage the from the tone of my explosive charge has rendered my original argument less effective than I’d hoped but I will nonetheless press on.
In spite of the deliberately irritated (and irritating) tone of my retort, I intended only to suggest that the relatively few superlative experiences notwithstanding, many if not most of my encounters with service in Europe and the UK were not only unsatisfactory but were often unpleasant, made so by a waiter either burned out or prejudiced against Americans. While the French have a somewhat deserved reputation for being, shall we say, short? with their patrons, they do not have a lock on the behavior. Not surprisingly, I had my share of rude waiters in every country, and the the UK easily tops the list.
Note that this is not to say that all my experiences were bad, just that enough to make me wonder why service in the US, even with all of its superficiality and false friendliness is so often better. This is in spite of the fact that in Europe, the waiter is considered to be a professional. Sadly, though, this makes sense. Like a doctor or lawyer, the waiter feels comfortable treating his customers with impunity because he knows they have no recourse. Don't like the service? Don't complain. It won't get you anything but worse service.
Rather than continue to bellow and complain in the manner of my most boorish customers, I will refrain from more insults but illustrate my point by relating a real story, for I have actually worked as a waiter in a restaurant in the UK. Though it has been a long time ago, I know whereof I speak, and can prove it here if you believe what I relate.
The year was 1975 and I was living with my parents and brother in Bedford, England. Lynda had taken a job selling insurance to American GIs on the Air Force bases in a region that is known in England as the Midlands. Circumstances--to be explained in another entry--had brought me to "back home" to live for a while before I went to college, and it wasn't long before I knew I had to have a job in order to maintain some independence and dignity.
The only skill I had at the time was welding, which I'd learned in the job just prior to moving to England, and this wasn't something I wanted to pursue. What I did want to do was work in a restaurant. I'd already gotten the bug, so to speak, when I worked as a busboy at the Barn in High School, but I really didn't have any experience waiting tables at the time. This didn't deter me, as I knew that I could do it. It was just a matter of convincing someone to hire me.
In England, this was not--still isn't--an easy, or, for that matter, legal thing to do. Labor laws are tight today but they were tight even back then. Hiring an undocumented worker--dare I say alien?--would have had serious consequences for the employer. No one could imagine hiring an American because we--yes, even I--stuck out like such sore thumbs that we could never effectively pass for a Brit. One word, especially 'tomato' or the like, would blow our cover, and there'd be no going back after that.
This meant that I could work in the kitchen, and I did, at first. I got a job on the overnight shift at the Golden Egg, a fast-omlette and chips (french fries) place that served more grease than actual food. We did virtually no business during the night, so three of us sat around and played cards. At first, I couldn't understand anything the others were saying, but after a month or so, I picked it up.
After a month or so of working nights and I was burned out, so to speak. I quit and went to work for a vending machine delivery driver on one of the American bases, Chicksands. This was about as boring as it sounds. I couldn't stand listening to the driver talk endlessly about the minutia of his life--for example, he expounded daily about the benefits he accrued from buying toilet paper, mayonnaise and peanut butter (American staples all) on the base, in bulk-- so I began to search, eagerly, for another job.
As it happens, my parents had already discovered the restaurant where I ended up working. Called Sorrentino's after the owner, it was a tiny little two-story affair tucked into a corner of a little "mall" (an open space with shops around) just off the High Street in Bedford. It was a superb Italian restaurant with a cozy feel and food that tasted like it came from Italy. The 'Vitello Sorrentino' was a delightful dish of cubed veal sauteed with marsala and cream and mushrooms; the invention of the owner, Franco Sorrentino.
The day I met Franco was the day he hired me. I went to the restaurant in the morning, around ten, as I recall. Inside it was warm and and delicious smelling already. A woman with two small girls was seated at one table near the kitchen and a large Italian woman was standing over them apparently yelling at them to eat, eat! When I told them that I'd come to apply for a job, they told me I needed to see the Franco and they sent someone to fetch him from upstairs.
When he came down, I thought he was the owner's son, because he looked so young. I don't recall how I began, but it was awkwardly, as I asked him who he was. To his eternal credit, Franco took this as a compliment and smiled. I told him I was looking for a job, and again, to his credit, he didn't reject me out of hand, but asked me to sit down and tell him why I wanted to work for him.
I explained that I wanted to be a waiter, and I'd chosen his restaurant because I'd eaten there and loved it. This sentiment appealed to him but he told me that it didn't work the same way it did in the States, that waiters here didn't get tips the way they did over there. Franco was clearly interested in America and I was a perfect person to tell him about it, so we talked for what must have been an hour or more about the differences in our two countries, especially about what he saw as the American spirit of entrepreneurship. As a small business owner, he'd had so many difficulties with the government that he imagined he would not have had to endure had he been in the US.
To be continued....
In fairness, my very best restaurant experiences were in Europe, though not in the UK, ever. And, though I can recall most if not all of them, these marvelous French, Italian, Vietnamese, Chinese and Greek meals, their accompanying service and the charming restaurants in which I had the great pleasure of dining were not the intentional subject of my petty diatribe. Alas, the collateral damage the from the tone of my explosive charge has rendered my original argument less effective than I’d hoped but I will nonetheless press on.
In spite of the deliberately irritated (and irritating) tone of my retort, I intended only to suggest that the relatively few superlative experiences notwithstanding, many if not most of my encounters with service in Europe and the UK were not only unsatisfactory but were often unpleasant, made so by a waiter either burned out or prejudiced against Americans. While the French have a somewhat deserved reputation for being, shall we say, short? with their patrons, they do not have a lock on the behavior. Not surprisingly, I had my share of rude waiters in every country, and the the UK easily tops the list.
Note that this is not to say that all my experiences were bad, just that enough to make me wonder why service in the US, even with all of its superficiality and false friendliness is so often better. This is in spite of the fact that in Europe, the waiter is considered to be a professional. Sadly, though, this makes sense. Like a doctor or lawyer, the waiter feels comfortable treating his customers with impunity because he knows they have no recourse. Don't like the service? Don't complain. It won't get you anything but worse service.
Rather than continue to bellow and complain in the manner of my most boorish customers, I will refrain from more insults but illustrate my point by relating a real story, for I have actually worked as a waiter in a restaurant in the UK. Though it has been a long time ago, I know whereof I speak, and can prove it here if you believe what I relate.
The year was 1975 and I was living with my parents and brother in Bedford, England. Lynda had taken a job selling insurance to American GIs on the Air Force bases in a region that is known in England as the Midlands. Circumstances--to be explained in another entry--had brought me to "back home" to live for a while before I went to college, and it wasn't long before I knew I had to have a job in order to maintain some independence and dignity.
The only skill I had at the time was welding, which I'd learned in the job just prior to moving to England, and this wasn't something I wanted to pursue. What I did want to do was work in a restaurant. I'd already gotten the bug, so to speak, when I worked as a busboy at the Barn in High School, but I really didn't have any experience waiting tables at the time. This didn't deter me, as I knew that I could do it. It was just a matter of convincing someone to hire me.
In England, this was not--still isn't--an easy, or, for that matter, legal thing to do. Labor laws are tight today but they were tight even back then. Hiring an undocumented worker--dare I say alien?--would have had serious consequences for the employer. No one could imagine hiring an American because we--yes, even I--stuck out like such sore thumbs that we could never effectively pass for a Brit. One word, especially 'tomato' or the like, would blow our cover, and there'd be no going back after that.
This meant that I could work in the kitchen, and I did, at first. I got a job on the overnight shift at the Golden Egg, a fast-omlette and chips (french fries) place that served more grease than actual food. We did virtually no business during the night, so three of us sat around and played cards. At first, I couldn't understand anything the others were saying, but after a month or so, I picked it up.
After a month or so of working nights and I was burned out, so to speak. I quit and went to work for a vending machine delivery driver on one of the American bases, Chicksands. This was about as boring as it sounds. I couldn't stand listening to the driver talk endlessly about the minutia of his life--for example, he expounded daily about the benefits he accrued from buying toilet paper, mayonnaise and peanut butter (American staples all) on the base, in bulk-- so I began to search, eagerly, for another job.
As it happens, my parents had already discovered the restaurant where I ended up working. Called Sorrentino's after the owner, it was a tiny little two-story affair tucked into a corner of a little "mall" (an open space with shops around) just off the High Street in Bedford. It was a superb Italian restaurant with a cozy feel and food that tasted like it came from Italy. The 'Vitello Sorrentino' was a delightful dish of cubed veal sauteed with marsala and cream and mushrooms; the invention of the owner, Franco Sorrentino.
The day I met Franco was the day he hired me. I went to the restaurant in the morning, around ten, as I recall. Inside it was warm and and delicious smelling already. A woman with two small girls was seated at one table near the kitchen and a large Italian woman was standing over them apparently yelling at them to eat, eat! When I told them that I'd come to apply for a job, they told me I needed to see the Franco and they sent someone to fetch him from upstairs.
When he came down, I thought he was the owner's son, because he looked so young. I don't recall how I began, but it was awkwardly, as I asked him who he was. To his eternal credit, Franco took this as a compliment and smiled. I told him I was looking for a job, and again, to his credit, he didn't reject me out of hand, but asked me to sit down and tell him why I wanted to work for him.
I explained that I wanted to be a waiter, and I'd chosen his restaurant because I'd eaten there and loved it. This sentiment appealed to him but he told me that it didn't work the same way it did in the States, that waiters here didn't get tips the way they did over there. Franco was clearly interested in America and I was a perfect person to tell him about it, so we talked for what must have been an hour or more about the differences in our two countries, especially about what he saw as the American spirit of entrepreneurship. As a small business owner, he'd had so many difficulties with the government that he imagined he would not have had to endure had he been in the US.
To be continued....
Sunday, March 8, 2009
The Mechanics of Tipping
I've just read an article from the BBC web about the "Mechanics of Tipping, American Style" which has me so charged up, so to speak, that I just can't refrain from responding.
Alas, there was no comment section as there often is at the bottom of BBC news stories because, I guess, this was a 'commentary' not 'news' and as such the content isn't supposed to be subjected to the scrutiny afforded facts. This makes sense, since much of what the correspondent writes is opinion which has at it's root many cliches and shopworn conventions, not just about tipping, but about the service for which it is supposed to pay.
At the heart of his essay is this premise: "...to me there is something un-American at the heart of the whole idea of tipping." What makes this laughable and worth the effort to refute is the fact that our correspondent is not only English, but proudly so, and the point of his essay is to prove that as a semi-detached 'European' he is both amused and appalled at the "moment of awkwardness" that sums up his experience of tipping in the U.S.
What is in some way frustrating to me about this is the fact that I am not convinced that the American style of tipping--that is, withholding payment for service rendered until satisfied--is all that "American" in practice either. Having experienced both the European style of service and tipping, I can say that the former is seldom better than the American style in speed, efficiency or courtesy (especially) and that the latter is just a cruel joke.
I can understand the writer's confusion about why he is might be expected to tip on an expensive bottle of wine that takes no more "effort or skill to serve" than a cheap one. Applying this logic, he might well conclude it's not worth eating out at all, since the food you eat could be purchased more cheaply at the supermarket, after all. His sense of appreciation for services rendered may be so low simply because he's never given any thought to how that food or bottle of wine got there and why they go so well together. Of course, being British, he's more likely to enjoy a five dollar cabernet--or is it warm beer?--with a packet of 'crisps' on the curb outside a convenience store than he is a nice bottle of wine served by a professional, in a clean glass, on a linen tablecloth, with fresh flowers for the eye and accompanied by good food.
What I cannot understand is the writer's notion that knowing that the waiter or waitress is dependent on us for their income makes the transaction some sort of robbery. Indeed, we pay a doctor and do not tip him or her, thankfully. But, we pay the doctor before we go in, first of all. And, even though you don't think you are giving him a "tip", consider that fact that from your "fee' and the hundreds of others he's collecting that day and the next, he's living in a house that is twice the size of yours, and the reason he's off next Wednesday afternoon while you are at work is because he's out playing golf on a private course with your money. There are no waiters on that course, believe me.
Yes, indeed, it would be a good world where the waiters and waitresses who don't just take your order, but also listen to your lame jokes, watch you as make a fool of yourself in front of your friends and/or family, and clean up you and your children's mess when you finally stumble out, get paid the same as the doctor who greets you coldly thirty minutes after you've been asked to strip down to your underwear and "wait right here". Or would it? Wouldn't you rather; don't you prefer, to be served?
Sure the American waiter greets you with potentially false enthusiasm and a lot of adjectives meant to enhance your experience as well as their tip, but would you really prefer to have your meal simply dropped on the table in front of you with no explanation or concern that your order is right? If you are British, apparently, you would, for that is the norm for service in the U.K.. Of course, this is where there is no expectation for actual taste in the food either. You get what you pay for.
I agree that it can indeed be a shameful experience watching a young waiter grovel for a few extra cents on your check, but it can be a downright frustrating experience having a waiter ignore you with impunity. However, if you are British, apparently you don't worry about the fact that you've just spent more on a meal than the waiter will earn in a day, since you consider payment for service to be "a kind of a private, self-imposed wealth tax, rather than a tip".
I won't go into the European economic caste system here, but consider the fact that a waiter in Europe has no expectation of doing anything but the absolute minimum required to serve your food. While he certainly will not be an aspiring actor bubbling over with false enthusiasm, more likely, your server will be a tired and burned out old man who could not care less about your experience and/or satisfaction. You will get what you pay for.
I will end this little rant by observing that I have had the displeasure of waiting on the correspondent in question. While I do believe that he gave me a wonderful lesson on American economic theory by leaving me just a little less than ten dollars for two hours of work, it's clear that I'd be better off waiting on Americans in Europe than the other way round.
Alas, there was no comment section as there often is at the bottom of BBC news stories because, I guess, this was a 'commentary' not 'news' and as such the content isn't supposed to be subjected to the scrutiny afforded facts. This makes sense, since much of what the correspondent writes is opinion which has at it's root many cliches and shopworn conventions, not just about tipping, but about the service for which it is supposed to pay.
At the heart of his essay is this premise: "...to me there is something un-American at the heart of the whole idea of tipping." What makes this laughable and worth the effort to refute is the fact that our correspondent is not only English, but proudly so, and the point of his essay is to prove that as a semi-detached 'European' he is both amused and appalled at the "moment of awkwardness" that sums up his experience of tipping in the U.S.
What is in some way frustrating to me about this is the fact that I am not convinced that the American style of tipping--that is, withholding payment for service rendered until satisfied--is all that "American" in practice either. Having experienced both the European style of service and tipping, I can say that the former is seldom better than the American style in speed, efficiency or courtesy (especially) and that the latter is just a cruel joke.
I can understand the writer's confusion about why he is might be expected to tip on an expensive bottle of wine that takes no more "effort or skill to serve" than a cheap one. Applying this logic, he might well conclude it's not worth eating out at all, since the food you eat could be purchased more cheaply at the supermarket, after all. His sense of appreciation for services rendered may be so low simply because he's never given any thought to how that food or bottle of wine got there and why they go so well together. Of course, being British, he's more likely to enjoy a five dollar cabernet--or is it warm beer?--with a packet of 'crisps' on the curb outside a convenience store than he is a nice bottle of wine served by a professional, in a clean glass, on a linen tablecloth, with fresh flowers for the eye and accompanied by good food.
What I cannot understand is the writer's notion that knowing that the waiter or waitress is dependent on us for their income makes the transaction some sort of robbery. Indeed, we pay a doctor and do not tip him or her, thankfully. But, we pay the doctor before we go in, first of all. And, even though you don't think you are giving him a "tip", consider that fact that from your "fee' and the hundreds of others he's collecting that day and the next, he's living in a house that is twice the size of yours, and the reason he's off next Wednesday afternoon while you are at work is because he's out playing golf on a private course with your money. There are no waiters on that course, believe me.
Yes, indeed, it would be a good world where the waiters and waitresses who don't just take your order, but also listen to your lame jokes, watch you as make a fool of yourself in front of your friends and/or family, and clean up you and your children's mess when you finally stumble out, get paid the same as the doctor who greets you coldly thirty minutes after you've been asked to strip down to your underwear and "wait right here". Or would it? Wouldn't you rather; don't you prefer, to be served?
Sure the American waiter greets you with potentially false enthusiasm and a lot of adjectives meant to enhance your experience as well as their tip, but would you really prefer to have your meal simply dropped on the table in front of you with no explanation or concern that your order is right? If you are British, apparently, you would, for that is the norm for service in the U.K.. Of course, this is where there is no expectation for actual taste in the food either. You get what you pay for.
I agree that it can indeed be a shameful experience watching a young waiter grovel for a few extra cents on your check, but it can be a downright frustrating experience having a waiter ignore you with impunity. However, if you are British, apparently you don't worry about the fact that you've just spent more on a meal than the waiter will earn in a day, since you consider payment for service to be "a kind of a private, self-imposed wealth tax, rather than a tip".
I won't go into the European economic caste system here, but consider the fact that a waiter in Europe has no expectation of doing anything but the absolute minimum required to serve your food. While he certainly will not be an aspiring actor bubbling over with false enthusiasm, more likely, your server will be a tired and burned out old man who could not care less about your experience and/or satisfaction. You will get what you pay for.
I will end this little rant by observing that I have had the displeasure of waiting on the correspondent in question. While I do believe that he gave me a wonderful lesson on American economic theory by leaving me just a little less than ten dollars for two hours of work, it's clear that I'd be better off waiting on Americans in Europe than the other way round.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
On the Use of Money
Since coming back from culinary school, Madelaine has been looking for work, but of course this may be, historically speaking, the worst time to be unemployed in at least two generations, if not more.
As I watch people lose their common sense along with their money, I can hear Lynda intoning softly, "I told you so" in the back of my mind. As a child of The Great Depression, she not only related (often) tales of the difficulties that even good, honest and willing-to-work individuals faced, but she, like so many of her generation, believed that such conditions could return--would return--because the whole economy, contrary to our belief that is based on solid principles and safe practices (thanks, in fact, to the Great Depression), is actually based on nothing more than peoples' collective consciousnesses. As such, the 'economy' is nothing more than a flimsy fiction that can be rent asunder by the slightest breeze of doubt and or the vagaries of the market.
So, she spent her life being cautious, saving money, saving paper towels, saving the soap from hotels and the sugar packets from cafeterias. She was careful about every dime. No, make that every penny, and never once did she feel secure, as if she had enough to weather the inevitable downturn. This was difficult for me to understand and, quite honestly, it drove me a bit crazy from time to time. Lynda and I could disagree about many things--art, religion, philosophy--but we fought about one thing only: money. The disagreement was so fundamental that, in spite of reaching a comfortable compromise when she came to Austin to live near us, we still sparred from time to time about the value and use of money, both in her life as well as ours.
Quite simply it came down to a difference in the perception of what money actually was to each of us, or, to be more precise, what it was to be used for and how often. Because of her conditioning during the bleak years of her childhood and early adulthood, Lynda was deeply inclined to save as much money as she could, in every way she could. But, because she was by nature a generous and caring woman, she also wanted to use her money to satisfy and make her family--specifically my father, Bill--happy. The contradiction between her innate desire to be generous and her conditioned response to money led to some considerable misunderstandings between my parents, and, even, me as I got older and, not surprisingly, to some rather unpleasant arguments and feelings of guilt all round.
On the other hand, in spite of Lynda's obvious inclination toward saving, I felt more inclined to emulate her desire to be generous, and use money as a means rather than an end. Consequently and ironically, I thus grew to adopt the notion that money was put here for us to spend, and that while we should be careful and certainly not spend more than we have, the basic role that money played in our lives was to improve them and make them more enjoyable.
Certainly, this is how I felt that Lynda was, in reality, using her money, though the inescapable conflict that she was undergoing made it seem often as if she was loathe to spend any of it, especially on herself. Indeed, she was loathe to spend it, but spend it she did. In a testament to her character and love for her family, her resolution to her internal conflict about the role of money was a good one for us, even if it did torment her. The fact of the matter was that she spent whatever money came her way on her family. It was as simple as a bag of groceries, she would often say.
She was frugal, yes, but she rarely denied us anything, and never anything that we needed, only those things we thought we wanted. Never did she let us go without good, fresh food or clean sheets or clothes. We were taught to restrain our urge to buy things we knew we didn't really need, and a result I have discovered that there are many things that I think I want and therefore somehow need, but eventually, there are only a few things that I really need or want, and there are even fewer that I actually need.
It's not just that I am older and wiser now, or even that as the economy gets worse I have less money, but I have way too many things in my life already, and spending money to get more makes less and less sense with each day and each purchase that fills the trash can with plastic and another drawer or counter top with something in or on it. I guess that eventually, we reache the point where, even if there is enough money to buy another thing, we simply no longer want it.
Quite simply, it's common sense. Money loses it's importance as we get older, and the things we own become far less precious than the moments we have left.
As I watch people lose their common sense along with their money, I can hear Lynda intoning softly, "I told you so" in the back of my mind. As a child of The Great Depression, she not only related (often) tales of the difficulties that even good, honest and willing-to-work individuals faced, but she, like so many of her generation, believed that such conditions could return--would return--because the whole economy, contrary to our belief that is based on solid principles and safe practices (thanks, in fact, to the Great Depression), is actually based on nothing more than peoples' collective consciousnesses. As such, the 'economy' is nothing more than a flimsy fiction that can be rent asunder by the slightest breeze of doubt and or the vagaries of the market.
So, she spent her life being cautious, saving money, saving paper towels, saving the soap from hotels and the sugar packets from cafeterias. She was careful about every dime. No, make that every penny, and never once did she feel secure, as if she had enough to weather the inevitable downturn. This was difficult for me to understand and, quite honestly, it drove me a bit crazy from time to time. Lynda and I could disagree about many things--art, religion, philosophy--but we fought about one thing only: money. The disagreement was so fundamental that, in spite of reaching a comfortable compromise when she came to Austin to live near us, we still sparred from time to time about the value and use of money, both in her life as well as ours.
Quite simply it came down to a difference in the perception of what money actually was to each of us, or, to be more precise, what it was to be used for and how often. Because of her conditioning during the bleak years of her childhood and early adulthood, Lynda was deeply inclined to save as much money as she could, in every way she could. But, because she was by nature a generous and caring woman, she also wanted to use her money to satisfy and make her family--specifically my father, Bill--happy. The contradiction between her innate desire to be generous and her conditioned response to money led to some considerable misunderstandings between my parents, and, even, me as I got older and, not surprisingly, to some rather unpleasant arguments and feelings of guilt all round.
On the other hand, in spite of Lynda's obvious inclination toward saving, I felt more inclined to emulate her desire to be generous, and use money as a means rather than an end. Consequently and ironically, I thus grew to adopt the notion that money was put here for us to spend, and that while we should be careful and certainly not spend more than we have, the basic role that money played in our lives was to improve them and make them more enjoyable.
Certainly, this is how I felt that Lynda was, in reality, using her money, though the inescapable conflict that she was undergoing made it seem often as if she was loathe to spend any of it, especially on herself. Indeed, she was loathe to spend it, but spend it she did. In a testament to her character and love for her family, her resolution to her internal conflict about the role of money was a good one for us, even if it did torment her. The fact of the matter was that she spent whatever money came her way on her family. It was as simple as a bag of groceries, she would often say.
She was frugal, yes, but she rarely denied us anything, and never anything that we needed, only those things we thought we wanted. Never did she let us go without good, fresh food or clean sheets or clothes. We were taught to restrain our urge to buy things we knew we didn't really need, and a result I have discovered that there are many things that I think I want and therefore somehow need, but eventually, there are only a few things that I really need or want, and there are even fewer that I actually need.
It's not just that I am older and wiser now, or even that as the economy gets worse I have less money, but I have way too many things in my life already, and spending money to get more makes less and less sense with each day and each purchase that fills the trash can with plastic and another drawer or counter top with something in or on it. I guess that eventually, we reache the point where, even if there is enough money to buy another thing, we simply no longer want it.
Quite simply, it's common sense. Money loses it's importance as we get older, and the things we own become far less precious than the moments we have left.
Monday, March 2, 2009
My Mistake at Moissac
In her most interesting and challenging book, On Beauty and Being Just, author Elaine Scarry asks her readers to contemplate a mistake they have made about beauty. This is mine.
What sort of mistake is this? Whether it be seeing something one thought was beautiful and now no longer finds so, or realizing that something was beautiful when one didn't think it was beautiful before, this mistake is not something most of us would ever think about, since it would seem to pass so fleetingly as not to be noticed. Nor would it be something to be noticed by thinkers other than those who have already taken up the difficult question of the nature of beauty. But for those of us who have long pondered this subject--and I count myself among them--Scarry argues that this mistake is both inevitable and key to our perceptions of what it beautiful and why.
To be sure, Scarry's question to her readers is not so specific as I've just cast it. She asks the much more general--and therefore, engaging--question: "What is an instance of an intellectual error you have made in you life?" She makes no mention of beauty here, but perhaps conditioned by the subject of the book in hand, as I naturally and immediately thought of an example of such an error, it had to do with my perceptions of beauty.
In keeping with her suggestion: "It may be helpful if, before proceeding, the reader stops and recalls--an as much detail as possible--an error he or she has made so that another instance can be placed on the page..." this short essay is an effort to record that moment and thus use it as she suggests as I seek elucidation of beauty in her dense and engaging prose.
It is in part because she was so prescient as to know that "Those who remember making such an error about beauty usually also recall the exact second when they first realized that they had made the error." The resonance I feel in reading these words is no coincidence. Scarry has hiot upon something important here.
In fact, I do recall that exact second, and it was the very second in which I began contemplating beauty; it was the beginning of a lifelong quest to understand. The real revelation was profound to me indeed: If, I reasoned, I had made this mistake, what others have I made? Will--can--learning illuminate this dark world?
My moment--my mistake--was at the Abbey Church of Moissac, located in south-central France on a cold and windy November day in 1976. We stepped out of the bus on which we'd been riding all day just as the sun was beginning to set and crowded around the elaborate carved stone portal that filled the arch over the broad double-doors to the church.
Sadly, my first thought as we arranged ourselves about the portal so as to both have a view of it and hear the words of the Professor as she lectured on the history, style and meaning of the sculpted relief we were finally gazing upon was this: "That's it?"
I didn't say this, of course, not just because I would have been embarrassed to admit my ignorance in front of my peers or worse, the Professor whom I so admired that I had changed my schedule mid-semester just to be in her--this-class, but because I really wasn't sure if I "got it." For that matter, I wasn't so sure I'd ever "get it." In my mind's eye, the scene is recalled in perfect clarity. I even have a sort of 'telescopic' vision of the very figure that I was staring at when I had the revelation, but I must first put it in some sort of context.
For one thing, I recall standing practically in the street. It didn't help that the church was undergoing renovations which left all but the very portal we had come so far to see covered with complicated scaffolding, but that wasn't why were were forced to stand on the curb and even in the street to get a good view of the 12th century carved stone portal. It seemed like the portal simply opened out onto the street. Actually, the doors opened onto a very narrow sidewalk which of course allowed access to the church, but did not offer entrants much opportunity to see the magnificent art array above their heads as they came in.
However, as students taking Art History Professor Francesca Weinmann's Introduction to Romanesque Art course, the thirty or so Americans from the American College in Paris arranged in a semi-circle about the portal that November day were likely the only ones to be interested in the portal enough to seek a good vantage point from which to see it.
This being my very first time to see a Romanesque church and even to really gaze upon the art from that period and place, I was just becoming accustomed to the way in which the very old is incorporated with the new and very new in European towns and cities. So, the sight of the important portal simply being ignored by the populace took some getting used to. Later, I realized that the art wasn't actually being ignored, it was simply being accepted as part of the ever-changing tapestry of urban life. The people who passed it by or used the Church knew it was there; they had often seen it and now simply didn't need to look at it the same way we did that day, as tourists and students of an art and a history not our own.
So, part of what I felt was surprise that, after all the buildup from class and from my fellow students and even the Professor herself during the eight hour bus ride down from Paris, the 'great' portal was neither as large nor as glorious as I'd expected it to be.
Of course, my expectations had to be tempered somewhat by the fact that I'd only just transferred into the class like a week earlier, and hadn't done any of the background reading and knew absolutely none of the terminology. Words like "lintel", "trumeau", "tympanum" and even "arch" were as foreign to me as the French I was struggling to speak outside of the safe haven of class and the American ghetto in which I lived. Naturally, this ignorance didn't keep me--much to the chagrin of my fellow classmates, who had done their reading and had studied prior to this trip--from asking plenty of predictably dumb questions.
It is to her credit--and a principal reason that I so admired her--that Professor Weinmann did not dismiss my ignorance but actually embraced it, using it as means to educate and inspire her class. At least that's what it did for me.
So, that moment came as professor Weinmann lectured almost to me directly it seemed and my eyes were locked on one of the cramped figures carved in the trumeau between the doors directly under the tympanum. It was the image of a man, carrying a book in one hand and bent over, his entire figure hunched and forced into the too-small space he'd been given inside the narrow pillar separating the two massive wooden doors.
At first, I was appalled by the 'primitive' nature of the carving. It seemed so crude, so forced at the hand of an amateur carver, that I couldn't imagine that this 'thing' was considered to by anyone to be beautiful. My first view held that the artist couldn't have 'known what he was doing' or that this figure was carved before artists 'knew' how to render the human figure with 'accuracy'. My quotes in the preceding sentence are meant to highlight the false notions that I held then and there quickly; to show them here and now for the naive mistakes about beauty that I made.
For, somehow, in a moment--that moment--that carved figure of a man in the trumeau at Moissac passed from the realm of the not-beautiful into the realm of the beautiful.
Suddenly, I could see that it was not for lack of artistic skill that the figure was so compact, so forcefully hunched into a supplicatory position. However, the feeling I was having; the resonance that I felt with that tiny, even distant figure was precisely because of the skill of the artist. He hadn't misunderstood the 'rules' for drawing and carving; I had misunderstood the means by which his art, such art--all art, really--must be apprehended. In an imaginary magnified view, in a never-to-be-forgotten moment, in that sculpture, I could truly feel and understand the artist's expression of the literal and spiritual subjugation of man to the higher force of his God.
Bam. Somehow, some way, just like that, seven hundred years later, an eighteen year-old kid from Texas gets "it". He hears the message from an anonymous stone carver in medieval France, and just like that, an intellectual mistake about beauty, one that might well have plagued me all my life was, in an instant, corrected.
The impact of that moment on my life and thoughts is not to be underestimated, since it was from there that I began my quest to know (here paraphrased from the Phaedrus thanks to Robert Pirsig):
"And what is good, Phædrus,
And what is not good...
Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?"
That quest is ongoing, as is my effort to read the rest of Scarry's illuminating little book.
What sort of mistake is this? Whether it be seeing something one thought was beautiful and now no longer finds so, or realizing that something was beautiful when one didn't think it was beautiful before, this mistake is not something most of us would ever think about, since it would seem to pass so fleetingly as not to be noticed. Nor would it be something to be noticed by thinkers other than those who have already taken up the difficult question of the nature of beauty. But for those of us who have long pondered this subject--and I count myself among them--Scarry argues that this mistake is both inevitable and key to our perceptions of what it beautiful and why.
To be sure, Scarry's question to her readers is not so specific as I've just cast it. She asks the much more general--and therefore, engaging--question: "What is an instance of an intellectual error you have made in you life?" She makes no mention of beauty here, but perhaps conditioned by the subject of the book in hand, as I naturally and immediately thought of an example of such an error, it had to do with my perceptions of beauty.
In keeping with her suggestion: "It may be helpful if, before proceeding, the reader stops and recalls--an as much detail as possible--an error he or she has made so that another instance can be placed on the page..." this short essay is an effort to record that moment and thus use it as she suggests as I seek elucidation of beauty in her dense and engaging prose.
It is in part because she was so prescient as to know that "Those who remember making such an error about beauty usually also recall the exact second when they first realized that they had made the error." The resonance I feel in reading these words is no coincidence. Scarry has hiot upon something important here.
In fact, I do recall that exact second, and it was the very second in which I began contemplating beauty; it was the beginning of a lifelong quest to understand. The real revelation was profound to me indeed: If, I reasoned, I had made this mistake, what others have I made? Will--can--learning illuminate this dark world?
My moment--my mistake--was at the Abbey Church of Moissac, located in south-central France on a cold and windy November day in 1976. We stepped out of the bus on which we'd been riding all day just as the sun was beginning to set and crowded around the elaborate carved stone portal that filled the arch over the broad double-doors to the church.
Sadly, my first thought as we arranged ourselves about the portal so as to both have a view of it and hear the words of the Professor as she lectured on the history, style and meaning of the sculpted relief we were finally gazing upon was this: "That's it?"
I didn't say this, of course, not just because I would have been embarrassed to admit my ignorance in front of my peers or worse, the Professor whom I so admired that I had changed my schedule mid-semester just to be in her--this-class, but because I really wasn't sure if I "got it." For that matter, I wasn't so sure I'd ever "get it." In my mind's eye, the scene is recalled in perfect clarity. I even have a sort of 'telescopic' vision of the very figure that I was staring at when I had the revelation, but I must first put it in some sort of context.
For one thing, I recall standing practically in the street. It didn't help that the church was undergoing renovations which left all but the very portal we had come so far to see covered with complicated scaffolding, but that wasn't why were were forced to stand on the curb and even in the street to get a good view of the 12th century carved stone portal. It seemed like the portal simply opened out onto the street. Actually, the doors opened onto a very narrow sidewalk which of course allowed access to the church, but did not offer entrants much opportunity to see the magnificent art array above their heads as they came in.
However, as students taking Art History Professor Francesca Weinmann's Introduction to Romanesque Art course, the thirty or so Americans from the American College in Paris arranged in a semi-circle about the portal that November day were likely the only ones to be interested in the portal enough to seek a good vantage point from which to see it.
This being my very first time to see a Romanesque church and even to really gaze upon the art from that period and place, I was just becoming accustomed to the way in which the very old is incorporated with the new and very new in European towns and cities. So, the sight of the important portal simply being ignored by the populace took some getting used to. Later, I realized that the art wasn't actually being ignored, it was simply being accepted as part of the ever-changing tapestry of urban life. The people who passed it by or used the Church knew it was there; they had often seen it and now simply didn't need to look at it the same way we did that day, as tourists and students of an art and a history not our own.
So, part of what I felt was surprise that, after all the buildup from class and from my fellow students and even the Professor herself during the eight hour bus ride down from Paris, the 'great' portal was neither as large nor as glorious as I'd expected it to be.
Of course, my expectations had to be tempered somewhat by the fact that I'd only just transferred into the class like a week earlier, and hadn't done any of the background reading and knew absolutely none of the terminology. Words like "lintel", "trumeau", "tympanum" and even "arch" were as foreign to me as the French I was struggling to speak outside of the safe haven of class and the American ghetto in which I lived. Naturally, this ignorance didn't keep me--much to the chagrin of my fellow classmates, who had done their reading and had studied prior to this trip--from asking plenty of predictably dumb questions.
It is to her credit--and a principal reason that I so admired her--that Professor Weinmann did not dismiss my ignorance but actually embraced it, using it as means to educate and inspire her class. At least that's what it did for me.
So, that moment came as professor Weinmann lectured almost to me directly it seemed and my eyes were locked on one of the cramped figures carved in the trumeau between the doors directly under the tympanum. It was the image of a man, carrying a book in one hand and bent over, his entire figure hunched and forced into the too-small space he'd been given inside the narrow pillar separating the two massive wooden doors.
At first, I was appalled by the 'primitive' nature of the carving. It seemed so crude, so forced at the hand of an amateur carver, that I couldn't imagine that this 'thing' was considered to by anyone to be beautiful. My first view held that the artist couldn't have 'known what he was doing' or that this figure was carved before artists 'knew' how to render the human figure with 'accuracy'. My quotes in the preceding sentence are meant to highlight the false notions that I held then and there quickly; to show them here and now for the naive mistakes about beauty that I made.
For, somehow, in a moment--that moment--that carved figure of a man in the trumeau at Moissac passed from the realm of the not-beautiful into the realm of the beautiful.
Suddenly, I could see that it was not for lack of artistic skill that the figure was so compact, so forcefully hunched into a supplicatory position. However, the feeling I was having; the resonance that I felt with that tiny, even distant figure was precisely because of the skill of the artist. He hadn't misunderstood the 'rules' for drawing and carving; I had misunderstood the means by which his art, such art--all art, really--must be apprehended. In an imaginary magnified view, in a never-to-be-forgotten moment, in that sculpture, I could truly feel and understand the artist's expression of the literal and spiritual subjugation of man to the higher force of his God.
Bam. Somehow, some way, just like that, seven hundred years later, an eighteen year-old kid from Texas gets "it". He hears the message from an anonymous stone carver in medieval France, and just like that, an intellectual mistake about beauty, one that might well have plagued me all my life was, in an instant, corrected.
The impact of that moment on my life and thoughts is not to be underestimated, since it was from there that I began my quest to know (here paraphrased from the Phaedrus thanks to Robert Pirsig):
"And what is good, Phædrus,
And what is not good...
Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?"
That quest is ongoing, as is my effort to read the rest of Scarry's illuminating little book.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
On the Responsibility of Doctors
There is a story getting a lot of attention in the media these days about a woman in California who gave birth to octuplets earlier this year. That in itself would be newsworthy enough, but the fact that the mother already had six children, two of whom are disabled and require special care, is unemployed, unmarried and living with her mother in a house that is about to be repossessed has made the story the subject of numerous dinner conversations, ours included.
In thinking about it more I have come to wonder not so much what the mother "was thinking," for I believe that the mother's right to choose means that the mother may choose to have her children. No, what I'm wondering is: what in fact were the doctors thinking? Now, this is not to say that I think the doctors should have counseled the mother to remove some of the embryos nor that they should have done so against her will as many have suggested.
What I do find hard to understand is what the doctors thought would happen after they delivered all eight babies. Naturally, they spent a great deal of time thinking about and planning for the deliveries, since that required so many coordinated efforts from so many professionals to actually accomplish safely. For them, it was a very 'cool' assignment; a challenge to their skills.
But I have to wonder, did any one of those skilled professional stop to consider--and therefore, plan for--the circumstances into which these eight babies would be delivered? I mean, did anyone give any thought to what would happen to them after they were released from the hospital?
Well, now the doctors are thinking about it. They say that they cannot in good conscience release the infants to the mother's care because they--rightly, alas--fear for the babies health and safety. Well, ok, why didn't we--erm, they, the docotrs--think of this before? Whose responsibility is it to think of such matters?
The mother, of course, had--and still does, by the way--a very key responsibility here. Not just to take care of her children, but to inform her caregivers of the environment into which she was obliged to take them. Perhaps she did this. However, even if she didn't, I still think it is incumbent on the doctors to do more than arrange for the safe delivery of the children.
Now it can be argued, that this--what happens when the patient goes home--is not the responsibility of doctors. Doctors cannot be held accountable for what their patients do after they leave their immediate presence and care.
Or can they? If, say, a patient who has received a heart transplant is not monitored closely after he leaves the hospital, he's very likely to have complications and die. So, the physician naturally takes responsibility to inform the patient of the special needs that the operation will impose on him and even help him to meet those needs. Things like medical equipment, nursing care and medicines are all administered at home or in a rehabilitation setting under the doctor's supervision.
Why has this multiple pregnancy failed to rise to the same level of attention as, say, the heart transplant patient? I suppose that it can be argued that both measures are extraordinary, but by the same token, it can be argued that those measures are justified as necessary; required by extraordinary circumstances.
This is my key point. Of all the people involved with this case, the doctors knew just how extraordinary this situation was. They were not only the best informed participants in the process, but they were also in the best position to make decisions that would have been the the patients best interest. They could have, and should have done this long before it became front page news and they had to announce measures that will effectively punish the mother instead of help her.
After all, with some planning and coordination, money could have been raised to pay the mother's mortgage, sponsors could have been lined up to renovate the house and provide the equipment and supplies necessary to raise eight--or right, fourteen--children at once, and caregivers could have been arranged; all this long ago, certainly well before the proverbial diaper hit the fan. Now the doctors are trapped--hoisted by their own petard, as it were--protecting the children at the expense of the mother, whom they previously 'helped'.
Makes me wonder what the doctors have in mind this time. Oh wait, I know. Nothing.
In thinking about it more I have come to wonder not so much what the mother "was thinking," for I believe that the mother's right to choose means that the mother may choose to have her children. No, what I'm wondering is: what in fact were the doctors thinking? Now, this is not to say that I think the doctors should have counseled the mother to remove some of the embryos nor that they should have done so against her will as many have suggested.
What I do find hard to understand is what the doctors thought would happen after they delivered all eight babies. Naturally, they spent a great deal of time thinking about and planning for the deliveries, since that required so many coordinated efforts from so many professionals to actually accomplish safely. For them, it was a very 'cool' assignment; a challenge to their skills.
But I have to wonder, did any one of those skilled professional stop to consider--and therefore, plan for--the circumstances into which these eight babies would be delivered? I mean, did anyone give any thought to what would happen to them after they were released from the hospital?
Well, now the doctors are thinking about it. They say that they cannot in good conscience release the infants to the mother's care because they--rightly, alas--fear for the babies health and safety. Well, ok, why didn't we--erm, they, the docotrs--think of this before? Whose responsibility is it to think of such matters?
The mother, of course, had--and still does, by the way--a very key responsibility here. Not just to take care of her children, but to inform her caregivers of the environment into which she was obliged to take them. Perhaps she did this. However, even if she didn't, I still think it is incumbent on the doctors to do more than arrange for the safe delivery of the children.
Now it can be argued, that this--what happens when the patient goes home--is not the responsibility of doctors. Doctors cannot be held accountable for what their patients do after they leave their immediate presence and care.
Or can they? If, say, a patient who has received a heart transplant is not monitored closely after he leaves the hospital, he's very likely to have complications and die. So, the physician naturally takes responsibility to inform the patient of the special needs that the operation will impose on him and even help him to meet those needs. Things like medical equipment, nursing care and medicines are all administered at home or in a rehabilitation setting under the doctor's supervision.
Why has this multiple pregnancy failed to rise to the same level of attention as, say, the heart transplant patient? I suppose that it can be argued that both measures are extraordinary, but by the same token, it can be argued that those measures are justified as necessary; required by extraordinary circumstances.
This is my key point. Of all the people involved with this case, the doctors knew just how extraordinary this situation was. They were not only the best informed participants in the process, but they were also in the best position to make decisions that would have been the the patients best interest. They could have, and should have done this long before it became front page news and they had to announce measures that will effectively punish the mother instead of help her.
After all, with some planning and coordination, money could have been raised to pay the mother's mortgage, sponsors could have been lined up to renovate the house and provide the equipment and supplies necessary to raise eight--or right, fourteen--children at once, and caregivers could have been arranged; all this long ago, certainly well before the proverbial diaper hit the fan. Now the doctors are trapped--hoisted by their own petard, as it were--protecting the children at the expense of the mother, whom they previously 'helped'.
Makes me wonder what the doctors have in mind this time. Oh wait, I know. Nothing.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Pride and Shame
It was a mixed bag today.
As I walked to work this morning, I thought about President's Obama's speech to the joint session of Congress that I watched on television last night. I recalled with a slight smile how he had once again moved me to tears with the power of his words and the skill with which he delivers them, wondering how long it would be before I could listen to him speak without becoming emotional. Perhaps never, but that would be no loss, certainly for I felt the power of his optimism and strength in my own stride across campus in the cool early morning sunlight. I was proud of him and of the people who call themselves Americans, because I believe, even as Gov. Jindal (author of the Republican response to the President's speech) does in his 'loyal' opposition, that we "Americans can do anything".
Then I turned the corner.
Down the street, no closer than a thousand feet away, I saw it. I couldn't help but see it. it was a graphic color image of a bloodied aborted fetus, at least four to six feet tall and two feet wide, not to be missed nor mistaken for anything else. Even though I've seen this before and I knew how hard it is to deal with it, I found myself stunned, blindsided and taken advantage of, all in the instant that I perceived that first, most painfully obvious image.
The photograph was mounted on a large framework, which towered over the street and was visible from two blocks away between the innocent and benevolent trees. It is part of a display that some anti-abortion group has brought to the campus for the past several years. The first time they came, they set up on the West Mall, and the event was marred by protests and a lot of angry shouting across a hastily constructed barrier. Subsequently, the display (though threatened with being banned, it was deemed protected speech) was moved to the street (Speedway) in front of Gregory Gym, surrounded by fence and given police protection. Today, they were back, this time still on Speedway, but now dominating the intersection with the East Mall.
I have two basic problems with the display. First of all, I find the graphic imagery to be unnecessarily offensive and insensitive to the people who were forced to see it. Make no mistake, these images were meant to ambush viewers with an inescapable presence. The very size and color of the pictures meant they were impossible to avoid seeing from as far as two blocks away. In response to past protests to this issue, they had put up tiny little signs that read "Warning! Graphic Images Ahead", but predictably, they came far too late for any passerby to avoid the sight of violence. Plus, the fact that the display (with barricades) took up the entire intersection meant that some of us were literally forced to pass by it in order to get to work or class.
I doubt that these same individuals would put up massive pictures of genitalia or graphic images of dead U.S. soldiers in Iraq, but somehow they feel that the impact of the images (which they readily acknowledge is drastic) is justified, and that the rules of common decency and respect for others therefore do not apply this bit of 'protected speech'.
Or, it would seem, these simple rules (do unto others; love thy neighbor) must be set aside in this admittedly extreme case. Either way, the unsuspecting sensibilities of good and decent people--even those, who, like me, are personally opposed abortion but respect the right to choose--were callously disregarded by the people who erected this egregiously offensive display.
Secondly, I find this type of behavior to be shameful. There is no other word for it. All day I thought about it and this is the best I can come up with for now. I believe it is shameful because the act of displaying disturbing imagery in this way is so very divisive.
I realize that this--abortion--may be one of those issues that people on either side feel so very deeply about that there may be no way nor, for that matter, no real need to agree upon it. Nevertheless, I am still optimistic enough to believe that even if we cannot agree on anything, we can at least agree to stop arguing about the things on which we know we will never agree. Oh! There it is, another one of those rules that are so simple they are now simply cliche: we must agree to disagree.
We must do more than that, though. We must agree to stop hurting and insulting each other unnecessarily. I mean really. This display made me feel as if I can't and shouldn't say anything, for fear of an irrational confrontation (likely on my part, unfortunately). I don't want to feel this way, but I am forced to, having been unexpectedly confronted by this display. It has me feeling bad even now, with no way to express it.
I couldn't bring myself to approach the display, let alone talk to the people who put it up. I guess that were I to have words with someone who felt it necessary to insult me in so brazen a manner without warning, I feel I would be only further legitimizing their position with a response. Simply said, I truly believe that there is no civilized response to this type of behavior other than shame.
So, as I walked away, I was ashamed for them, ashamed for people in general, ashamed of myself. After all, I did nothing, said nothing. Instead, I turned my head and sucked in my breath. I don't feel too good about that, for sure. Coming so close on the heels of my own personal re-examination, I guess still find it hard to bring myself to confront those whose behavior I think has crossed the line of decency and respect for others. Yet, why didn't I speak up?
This is something I need to change. I must not only find my voice, but I must use it. Somehow, some way, I need to find an outlet--a real outlet--for these feelings of pride and find work--real work--for my hands to erase these feelings of shame from my heart.
As I walked to work this morning, I thought about President's Obama's speech to the joint session of Congress that I watched on television last night. I recalled with a slight smile how he had once again moved me to tears with the power of his words and the skill with which he delivers them, wondering how long it would be before I could listen to him speak without becoming emotional. Perhaps never, but that would be no loss, certainly for I felt the power of his optimism and strength in my own stride across campus in the cool early morning sunlight. I was proud of him and of the people who call themselves Americans, because I believe, even as Gov. Jindal (author of the Republican response to the President's speech) does in his 'loyal' opposition, that we "Americans can do anything".
Then I turned the corner.
Down the street, no closer than a thousand feet away, I saw it. I couldn't help but see it. it was a graphic color image of a bloodied aborted fetus, at least four to six feet tall and two feet wide, not to be missed nor mistaken for anything else. Even though I've seen this before and I knew how hard it is to deal with it, I found myself stunned, blindsided and taken advantage of, all in the instant that I perceived that first, most painfully obvious image.
The photograph was mounted on a large framework, which towered over the street and was visible from two blocks away between the innocent and benevolent trees. It is part of a display that some anti-abortion group has brought to the campus for the past several years. The first time they came, they set up on the West Mall, and the event was marred by protests and a lot of angry shouting across a hastily constructed barrier. Subsequently, the display (though threatened with being banned, it was deemed protected speech) was moved to the street (Speedway) in front of Gregory Gym, surrounded by fence and given police protection. Today, they were back, this time still on Speedway, but now dominating the intersection with the East Mall.
I have two basic problems with the display. First of all, I find the graphic imagery to be unnecessarily offensive and insensitive to the people who were forced to see it. Make no mistake, these images were meant to ambush viewers with an inescapable presence. The very size and color of the pictures meant they were impossible to avoid seeing from as far as two blocks away. In response to past protests to this issue, they had put up tiny little signs that read "Warning! Graphic Images Ahead", but predictably, they came far too late for any passerby to avoid the sight of violence. Plus, the fact that the display (with barricades) took up the entire intersection meant that some of us were literally forced to pass by it in order to get to work or class.
I doubt that these same individuals would put up massive pictures of genitalia or graphic images of dead U.S. soldiers in Iraq, but somehow they feel that the impact of the images (which they readily acknowledge is drastic) is justified, and that the rules of common decency and respect for others therefore do not apply this bit of 'protected speech'.
Or, it would seem, these simple rules (do unto others; love thy neighbor) must be set aside in this admittedly extreme case. Either way, the unsuspecting sensibilities of good and decent people--even those, who, like me, are personally opposed abortion but respect the right to choose--were callously disregarded by the people who erected this egregiously offensive display.
Secondly, I find this type of behavior to be shameful. There is no other word for it. All day I thought about it and this is the best I can come up with for now. I believe it is shameful because the act of displaying disturbing imagery in this way is so very divisive.
I realize that this--abortion--may be one of those issues that people on either side feel so very deeply about that there may be no way nor, for that matter, no real need to agree upon it. Nevertheless, I am still optimistic enough to believe that even if we cannot agree on anything, we can at least agree to stop arguing about the things on which we know we will never agree. Oh! There it is, another one of those rules that are so simple they are now simply cliche: we must agree to disagree.
We must do more than that, though. We must agree to stop hurting and insulting each other unnecessarily. I mean really. This display made me feel as if I can't and shouldn't say anything, for fear of an irrational confrontation (likely on my part, unfortunately). I don't want to feel this way, but I am forced to, having been unexpectedly confronted by this display. It has me feeling bad even now, with no way to express it.
I couldn't bring myself to approach the display, let alone talk to the people who put it up. I guess that were I to have words with someone who felt it necessary to insult me in so brazen a manner without warning, I feel I would be only further legitimizing their position with a response. Simply said, I truly believe that there is no civilized response to this type of behavior other than shame.
So, as I walked away, I was ashamed for them, ashamed for people in general, ashamed of myself. After all, I did nothing, said nothing. Instead, I turned my head and sucked in my breath. I don't feel too good about that, for sure. Coming so close on the heels of my own personal re-examination, I guess still find it hard to bring myself to confront those whose behavior I think has crossed the line of decency and respect for others. Yet, why didn't I speak up?
This is something I need to change. I must not only find my voice, but I must use it. Somehow, some way, I need to find an outlet--a real outlet--for these feelings of pride and find work--real work--for my hands to erase these feelings of shame from my heart.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
On the Day
It's odd. I've been thinking about Pierre a lot this week, of course, as it has finally--or should it be already--been a year since he died. In a previous post I wondered how this would play out; what we would do; how to mark the day without being morose about it. After all, this moment really marks a sense of accomplishment in my life, having made it back to the world after being laid low.
The answer, it seems, is not to choose between the sorrow of our loss and the joy of our recovery, but to do a little of both. It is fitting, I think, that we actually get out of the house, not because it's where 'it' happened, so to speak, but because we want to think of him in a way that is more universal, connected to the larger whole and not the particular place.
So, we are off to spend a couple of days at Enchanted Rock. To those who have been there, I need say little more, but to those who do not know of the place and have not felt the intense spiritual energy that is focused there, I need to explain that this is one of the places--perhaps even the last--where we went, as a family when we felt the need to re-connect to the earth. Physically, Enchanted Rock is an enormous dome-shaped granite outcrop about an hour from Austin. Spiritually, it has been a place of healing and regeneration for people from the very earliest times till today. It is hard to describe the calming energy that this place resonates. You simply have to go there and feel it.
So we will. At the top of the warm granite dome on a late February morning, we will raise our eyes to the open sky and allow its free expanse to lift our hearts as we remember Pierre. I have, in a year, come to this conclusion: He is gone but not lost; I have him here in my hands and heart forever.
The answer, it seems, is not to choose between the sorrow of our loss and the joy of our recovery, but to do a little of both. It is fitting, I think, that we actually get out of the house, not because it's where 'it' happened, so to speak, but because we want to think of him in a way that is more universal, connected to the larger whole and not the particular place.
So, we are off to spend a couple of days at Enchanted Rock. To those who have been there, I need say little more, but to those who do not know of the place and have not felt the intense spiritual energy that is focused there, I need to explain that this is one of the places--perhaps even the last--where we went, as a family when we felt the need to re-connect to the earth. Physically, Enchanted Rock is an enormous dome-shaped granite outcrop about an hour from Austin. Spiritually, it has been a place of healing and regeneration for people from the very earliest times till today. It is hard to describe the calming energy that this place resonates. You simply have to go there and feel it.
So we will. At the top of the warm granite dome on a late February morning, we will raise our eyes to the open sky and allow its free expanse to lift our hearts as we remember Pierre. I have, in a year, come to this conclusion: He is gone but not lost; I have him here in my hands and heart forever.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
The Day Elvis Died, or How I Learned to Speak French: Part I
I remember the day that Elvis died. Although I have nothing against his music, I am not now, nor was I then a fan of the King, but I remember that day--August 16, 1977--very well indeed.
That summer, I was working in Toulon, in the south of France, at the S.T.E.F.--the Societe de Transports et Entrepots Frigoriques--as a manual laborer, trying to learn how to speak French and earn a little money for the fall when I returned to school in Paris. I was attending the American College in Paris during the years 1976 and 1977, and this was the summer between the two years.
During my first year in Paris, I lived in an American ghetto. My girlfriend was American, as was my roommate and were all of my friends. This narrow cultural affiliation was considered to be acceptable by me despite the fact that I was living with a French family ostensibly to increase my contact with French people and culture, but even as I made excuses for it I knew this state of affairs had to change if I was ever going to learn French.
Now, when I came to France, and Paris specifically, I didn't come with the intent of learning the language or even, to be honest, with a desire to become a francophile, even though that was the outcome. I came for more mundane reasons, though to give my Mother credit, those were but excuses for me to take advantage of being twenty years old and living in Paris.
It is safe to say that this is something she would have done herself, given the chance, and it was, in a way, a vicariously lived dream for her to send me to school in Paris. I thought I was getting away from home and starting to get the college degree I'd abandoned just two years earlier, but in fact I was setting out on one of those sea-changes I was to shortly read about in my freshman literature class with Dr. Pelen.
My desire to become more integrated with French culture, started, ironically enough, in Pelen's class, which was, appropriately enough, "Expatriate Writers in Paris". This meant that I was reading "The Sun Also Rises" in the Cafe Select, which was just down the street from where I lived. Of course, it was no accident that I should be reading that book in that place, since it was Dr. Pelen's intent to impress upon us the long tradition to which were just being introduced in our early youth. Impressed I was, not just with being an ex-pat, but gradually, slowly, with the French language and culture.
If it was to Pelen that I owed gaining a sense of my time in this place, it was to another professor at ACP--now called, quite pretentiously, the American University in Paris--that I owed my interest in French culture and in learning the language: M. Delagis. We called him the Dancing Bear, because he reminded some of us Baby Boomers of that character on Captain Kangaroo. Mr Delagis would come literally dancing into the room each day, singing a song and trying from the very first moment of class to engage us in learning to speak French.
For some of us, this technique had some positive effect. I for one had so little ability to speak or understand that I was in the very category of student he preferred most. Like a baby, I did what he did, said what he said, and moved my mouth the way he told us to, all without shame or embarrassment.
Not so for the students who had been French majors at home in high school. They came with the preconception that they already knew how to speak French, even though when it came down to it, they were the ones who froze up when asked a question by the produce vendor or a waiter in the cafe. They were the ones who cried in class when Mr. Delagis refused, on point of principle, to speak English even for a moment just to explain something that they were not understanding in French.
This gave rise to the rumor that he couldn't actually speak English, a rumor which I found to be untrue when I met him once on a ferry from England to France. While in England he told me in perfect English, he preferred to speak the language of the land. It was his principle at home as well as away, and it served me well in the classroom.
I learned to speak with a very good accent--something confirmed when I went south to live in Toulon--and I developed a habit of asking for help when I didn't understand or couldn't express myself fully.
Neither of these behaviors were of much use, it turned out, however, when I found myself in an environment where everyone spoke only French all the time. True, I could fool some people for a minute with a well practiced speech and my passable accent, and I could and would ask for clarification when the words came too fast, but the chances to use a pre-planned speech were few and far between, and asking for a repetition just meant that I didn't understand twice in a row. Fortunately for me, people are very generous when you are trying to learn their language, and I had plenty of opportunities to reverse my first-year tendency to speak French only under duress.
I didn't have much choice really. In a place where, when an Irish truck driver broke down outside the S.T.E.F., no one could communicate with him so the fetched me, asking only if I could also speak Irlandaise (Irish), every day daily conversation was by its very nature forced upon me. I couldn't back away or mumble. I had to speak up to do my job and get along with my co-workers.
It was very stressful at first, especially because even the forced -full French' environment was requiring me to speak the language, I just wasn't fluent. I still had to translate every word, every sentence to and from English every time in my head. If you've ever done this, you know it is very exhausting and a little frightening, since each encounter is a new one in a way, and the chance of screwing it up and embarrassing myself were very high at every turn.
All that changed the day that Elvis died.
Next: Part II: August 16, 1977
That summer, I was working in Toulon, in the south of France, at the S.T.E.F.--the Societe de Transports et Entrepots Frigoriques--as a manual laborer, trying to learn how to speak French and earn a little money for the fall when I returned to school in Paris. I was attending the American College in Paris during the years 1976 and 1977, and this was the summer between the two years.
During my first year in Paris, I lived in an American ghetto. My girlfriend was American, as was my roommate and were all of my friends. This narrow cultural affiliation was considered to be acceptable by me despite the fact that I was living with a French family ostensibly to increase my contact with French people and culture, but even as I made excuses for it I knew this state of affairs had to change if I was ever going to learn French.
Now, when I came to France, and Paris specifically, I didn't come with the intent of learning the language or even, to be honest, with a desire to become a francophile, even though that was the outcome. I came for more mundane reasons, though to give my Mother credit, those were but excuses for me to take advantage of being twenty years old and living in Paris.
It is safe to say that this is something she would have done herself, given the chance, and it was, in a way, a vicariously lived dream for her to send me to school in Paris. I thought I was getting away from home and starting to get the college degree I'd abandoned just two years earlier, but in fact I was setting out on one of those sea-changes I was to shortly read about in my freshman literature class with Dr. Pelen.
My desire to become more integrated with French culture, started, ironically enough, in Pelen's class, which was, appropriately enough, "Expatriate Writers in Paris". This meant that I was reading "The Sun Also Rises" in the Cafe Select, which was just down the street from where I lived. Of course, it was no accident that I should be reading that book in that place, since it was Dr. Pelen's intent to impress upon us the long tradition to which were just being introduced in our early youth. Impressed I was, not just with being an ex-pat, but gradually, slowly, with the French language and culture.
If it was to Pelen that I owed gaining a sense of my time in this place, it was to another professor at ACP--now called, quite pretentiously, the American University in Paris--that I owed my interest in French culture and in learning the language: M. Delagis. We called him the Dancing Bear, because he reminded some of us Baby Boomers of that character on Captain Kangaroo. Mr Delagis would come literally dancing into the room each day, singing a song and trying from the very first moment of class to engage us in learning to speak French.
For some of us, this technique had some positive effect. I for one had so little ability to speak or understand that I was in the very category of student he preferred most. Like a baby, I did what he did, said what he said, and moved my mouth the way he told us to, all without shame or embarrassment.
Not so for the students who had been French majors at home in high school. They came with the preconception that they already knew how to speak French, even though when it came down to it, they were the ones who froze up when asked a question by the produce vendor or a waiter in the cafe. They were the ones who cried in class when Mr. Delagis refused, on point of principle, to speak English even for a moment just to explain something that they were not understanding in French.
This gave rise to the rumor that he couldn't actually speak English, a rumor which I found to be untrue when I met him once on a ferry from England to France. While in England he told me in perfect English, he preferred to speak the language of the land. It was his principle at home as well as away, and it served me well in the classroom.
I learned to speak with a very good accent--something confirmed when I went south to live in Toulon--and I developed a habit of asking for help when I didn't understand or couldn't express myself fully.
Neither of these behaviors were of much use, it turned out, however, when I found myself in an environment where everyone spoke only French all the time. True, I could fool some people for a minute with a well practiced speech and my passable accent, and I could and would ask for clarification when the words came too fast, but the chances to use a pre-planned speech were few and far between, and asking for a repetition just meant that I didn't understand twice in a row. Fortunately for me, people are very generous when you are trying to learn their language, and I had plenty of opportunities to reverse my first-year tendency to speak French only under duress.
I didn't have much choice really. In a place where, when an Irish truck driver broke down outside the S.T.E.F., no one could communicate with him so the fetched me, asking only if I could also speak Irlandaise (Irish), every day daily conversation was by its very nature forced upon me. I couldn't back away or mumble. I had to speak up to do my job and get along with my co-workers.
It was very stressful at first, especially because even the forced -full French' environment was requiring me to speak the language, I just wasn't fluent. I still had to translate every word, every sentence to and from English every time in my head. If you've ever done this, you know it is very exhausting and a little frightening, since each encounter is a new one in a way, and the chance of screwing it up and embarrassing myself were very high at every turn.
All that changed the day that Elvis died.
Next: Part II: August 16, 1977
Sunday, February 8, 2009
I Don't Have the Strength
It was just a year ago today
When I first heard someone say
'I'm sorry for your loss.'
Then I didn't realize the cost
That I'd still have to pay.
I have the strength
To bear the load
To feel the pain
To tread the road
Of life again.
I have the strength to hold my ground.
I just don't have the strength to break down.
When he died I just lost my way
Till in a dream I heard him say
I want to come back now
I just don't know how
Until you say I may.
I have the strength
To stay the rage
To now forgive
And act my age
while I still live.
I have the strength to dig six feet down
I just don't have the strength to break down.
It was just a month ago today
When I first heard someone say
We no longer have to choose
No Freedom will we lose
When we lead the way.
I have the strength
To serve the cause
To save our house
And this because
I have the strength to turn my life around
I just don't have the strength to break down.
When I first heard someone say
'I'm sorry for your loss.'
Then I didn't realize the cost
That I'd still have to pay.
I have the strength
To bear the load
To feel the pain
To tread the road
Of life again.
I have the strength to hold my ground.
I just don't have the strength to break down.
When he died I just lost my way
Till in a dream I heard him say
I want to come back now
I just don't know how
Until you say I may.
I have the strength
To stay the rage
To now forgive
And act my age
while I still live.
I have the strength to dig six feet down
I just don't have the strength to break down.
It was just a month ago today
When I first heard someone say
We no longer have to choose
No Freedom will we lose
When we lead the way.
I have the strength
To serve the cause
To save our house
And this because
I have the strength to turn my life around
I just don't have the strength to break down.
Friday, February 6, 2009
I See Dead People
Well, from my previous post you may have discerned that I am--for the time being anyway--a still-inquisitive 'newbie' in the world of Facebook. I am still too new to it to have formulated anything like a comprehensive review, but I have had mixed feelings that I will here attempt to explore.
First of all, here is the positive part. I like the fact that it allows for another level--at another speed, if you will--of communication. It is on another level because it allows connections that were otherwise rather weak, like with my friends at work and old school friends and friends of the family to flourish without an elaborate 're-connection' process. I find that I like the way that the flow of communication moves at what might be described as a languid pace, quite a bit slower than the phone, texting or IM but not so slow as email or a blog. I like the fact that I can tell everyone what I'm doing without having to tell them; I can find out what they are doing without having to ask. It's paradoxically personal and impersonal all at the same time.
This brings me to the downside. In what I assume to be an attempt to make the experience more personal, in the same way that Amazon will recommend books that I 'might like', Facebook helpfully suggests 'friends' that I might like to make. Ok, so that might work except that one of the first suggestions that it made was, in fact, Pierre.
Bang! There was his picture and a link to his page. Ironically, because I've just joined, Pierre and I are not officially 'friends', and because he is dead, although I can send him a 'Friend Request', he is not likely to approve it any time soon.
So in this place, we find ourselves in an electronic purgatory, where the dead are not quite gone and we--the living--cannot be sure if the people we see still alive. Perhaps they are yet shades or just our overactive imaginations and the incarnation of our secret desire to have them with us forever?
Thus it is that I wonder: How many dead people are there in this place? And how can you tell? Who takes down the sites for the dead, and at whose request? Like the county whose ballot box set LBJ on the path to the Presidency, Facebook may not be as populated as it seems.
First of all, here is the positive part. I like the fact that it allows for another level--at another speed, if you will--of communication. It is on another level because it allows connections that were otherwise rather weak, like with my friends at work and old school friends and friends of the family to flourish without an elaborate 're-connection' process. I find that I like the way that the flow of communication moves at what might be described as a languid pace, quite a bit slower than the phone, texting or IM but not so slow as email or a blog. I like the fact that I can tell everyone what I'm doing without having to tell them; I can find out what they are doing without having to ask. It's paradoxically personal and impersonal all at the same time.
This brings me to the downside. In what I assume to be an attempt to make the experience more personal, in the same way that Amazon will recommend books that I 'might like', Facebook helpfully suggests 'friends' that I might like to make. Ok, so that might work except that one of the first suggestions that it made was, in fact, Pierre.
Bang! There was his picture and a link to his page. Ironically, because I've just joined, Pierre and I are not officially 'friends', and because he is dead, although I can send him a 'Friend Request', he is not likely to approve it any time soon.
So in this place, we find ourselves in an electronic purgatory, where the dead are not quite gone and we--the living--cannot be sure if the people we see still alive. Perhaps they are yet shades or just our overactive imaginations and the incarnation of our secret desire to have them with us forever?
Thus it is that I wonder: How many dead people are there in this place? And how can you tell? Who takes down the sites for the dead, and at whose request? Like the county whose ballot box set LBJ on the path to the Presidency, Facebook may not be as populated as it seems.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Almost a Year
In a Facebook group that Dan set up last year to share thoughts about Pierre, Sonja started a thread to observe that it has been almost a year since Pierre died. In response to that, Valery then posed the question: What to do on the day of?
Here is what I posted in reply:
It's safe to say that no day has passed since last February 20th when I have not thought of Pierre, but at least as that anniversary approaches, I know that the pain of losing him has lessened and the joy of living has returned.
So, how indeed to mark the day? Do we mark it at all? I have to work that night, so it's not like we can leave town and I don't think we even desire to. There's no sense that we need to escape the house on that day, even though we know that the time is coming that we will leave this place behind.
There is, on my part anyway, a desire to remember what was good and joyful about Pierre. It is my resolution to enjoy the memory of our son. He was a good person and I am glad to have had him in my life.
Although I must perforce acknowledge that the rest of my life is now shaped by his death, it is not to my detriment, but quite the opposite. Because of his life and death, I am who I am, now stronger, wiser and hopefully more compassionate. I am resolved because I wish to recover, to forgive and hopefully be forgiven.
In this way I know I will forever think of Pierre as my beautiful and radiant son, one whose flame perhaps burned brighter than my own, and from whom certainly my own flame now burns more intensely. I lost him in one sense; but in another, most real way, I still have him with me always. His essence is in my hands, my visage, my voice.
So, a year has mattered, but how to say so?
Here is what I posted in reply:
It's safe to say that no day has passed since last February 20th when I have not thought of Pierre, but at least as that anniversary approaches, I know that the pain of losing him has lessened and the joy of living has returned.
So, how indeed to mark the day? Do we mark it at all? I have to work that night, so it's not like we can leave town and I don't think we even desire to. There's no sense that we need to escape the house on that day, even though we know that the time is coming that we will leave this place behind.
There is, on my part anyway, a desire to remember what was good and joyful about Pierre. It is my resolution to enjoy the memory of our son. He was a good person and I am glad to have had him in my life.
Although I must perforce acknowledge that the rest of my life is now shaped by his death, it is not to my detriment, but quite the opposite. Because of his life and death, I am who I am, now stronger, wiser and hopefully more compassionate. I am resolved because I wish to recover, to forgive and hopefully be forgiven.
In this way I know I will forever think of Pierre as my beautiful and radiant son, one whose flame perhaps burned brighter than my own, and from whom certainly my own flame now burns more intensely. I lost him in one sense; but in another, most real way, I still have him with me always. His essence is in my hands, my visage, my voice.
So, a year has mattered, but how to say so?
Monday, February 2, 2009
St. Valentine's Day Massacre, Part II: They Start Coming!
It is not often-this is the first time actually-that the other reader of this journal will request, let alone demand I write even more words. Given the rarity of this event and my eager ego, it should not surprise either one of you that I would accede to the other's earnest request. Should it prove too lengthy I suggest simply reading every other word. ed.
I've said it many times before: There is no easier way to crush a budding romance than to go out to a restaurant for a romantic meal on Valentine's Day. There are two reasons for this, neither of which is directly related to my personal distaste for the Day as a function of my profession.
The first way that a Valentine's Day date can extinguish an emerging love affair is if it goes well. This is because, if it does indeed go well, then there will now be an expectation on both parties to forever after have a romantic Valentine's Day. Of course, this is no accident. This is precisely the evil plan upon which Hallmark and it's spawn have loosed upon the world. It is like a virus. It's not alive, but it replicates. It invades the host and infects it, bending it physically to submit to it's will. And a 'good' Valentine's Day is like the Vampire's Bite. Once Bitten you cannot go back. At least most people know better than to invite them in!
Of course, the other way that Valentine's Day can and will most often wreck a romance before it can even get messy is when it doesn't go well. Now, notice that the fist way was an 'if' and the second was a 'when'. This means that although you may or may not get the first--a nice romantic evening--but if you persist--as Hallmark so desires--you will surely get the second, which is, quite naturally going to be a disaster.
Now, it won't make a bit of difference if the disaster is of your making or your partner's. It also won't make any difference at all if the disaster is created by the restaurant. It certainly didn't that night, for those romance-seeking couples whose first Valentine's Day Date was ruined that fateful February eve in 1999.
Now, in part one of this cautionary tale, I observed that it, given the date, Valentine's Day is often cold, but to observe the attire of the couple in attendance that day--may I say, particularly, the ladies--you might never have know that they were expecting to walk about in what, for Texas anyway, were fairly low temperatures: the 50's. Wearing strapless gowns and short dresses, high heels and in the absence of coats or wraps to hide their finery, these ladies no doubt expected to be whisked from their warm chariots into the equally warm and cozy restaurant--how about that table in front of the fire?
They were not expecting to wait in line, and most certainly not planning on queuing up outside, but that is exactly what happened. In order to seat as many two-tops in the restaurant as possible, we had converted all four-tops to twos and re-arranged the tables to accommodate as many more tables as would fit into the space. We had also converted the lobby and the patio, with it's plastic drop-down walls meant to ameliorate but not prevent the cold, converted into a dining room, and had consequently moved the hostess stand just outside the patio door.
This meant that we are able to seat the first wave of diners, but alas, the overbooking rendered this first little 'victory' moot. As soon as the restaurant was filled to capacity, there was still a line of couples out the door and into the garden and parking lot. It reminded me of one of those children's Bible illustrations of Noah's Ark, with the line of animals, two-by-two, snaking off into the distance for miles. Except that these pairs were shivering and getting progressively angrier by the minute.
Sadly, even those who were seated, immediately or after a long wait, were in for a(nother) rude surprise. The effect of adding tables without increasing the number of waiters leads to the very situation that waiters dread so much that they have nightmares about it. This was no nightmare, unfortunately, as we pinched ourselves repeatedly to no avail and kept on living it.
I personally was assigned to a section in the back of the restaurant. It has since been walled in, but at the time, it was like the front patio, with drop-down plastic walls and a flagstone floor. In this section, where normally at most six table would be placed--one of them a large, 6-12 top--there were now fewer than ten tables, all of them two-tops. Now, that would be ok, except for how they were seated. Recall that we were able to 'absorb' most of the first wave in our first seating, but note that they were all seated pretty much at once.
That single fact, more than any other, is what made the nightmare for me. It was, "Excuse me," and "O waiter!" over and over and over again as I literally ran between tables and winced each time another one was sat. It's a simple math problem, really, and there is no disputing the numbers. Ten tables times a two-minute greeting/order taking session adds up to twenty minutes, and that turns out to be just beyond the physical capacity of even the best waiter, which I naturally consider myself to be.
I just could not get the job done, and believe me, the patrons knew it. Those customers who did not leave waited for what seemed like hours. They waited for a table, then they waited for their food. There was not enough alcohol in the world to cover the bad feelings that evening, and, unfortunately, I had none to at least mellow me out until much later, much too late.
I was certainly not alone in this. Each player in this macabre little drama had his or her own personal nightmare. The hostess, for example, could hardly stand at podium without being attacked by impatient, and justifiably angry and cold customers. The kitchen was inundated by a flood of orders as each waiter struggled to turn in multiple tickets before running back to get more. The bartender was flooded with drink orders not just from the tables, but from all the people waiting in line.
In short, on this night, everyone waited for everything and no one was happy. It was a complex, interlocking and devastatingly difficult few hours for us all, and I'm not forgetting the patrons, either. Some of them actually came back, some of them even for Valentine's Day. One couple who was there even got married and came back to show me the ring one night. Go figure.
To this day, those of us who were there cannot recall it without a shudder. We take a definite pleasure in recounting it to the 'new' staff, those who were not there, but believe me, none of us would ever want to repeat it in real life.
After all, we still have the 'waiter dream'.
I've said it many times before: There is no easier way to crush a budding romance than to go out to a restaurant for a romantic meal on Valentine's Day. There are two reasons for this, neither of which is directly related to my personal distaste for the Day as a function of my profession.
The first way that a Valentine's Day date can extinguish an emerging love affair is if it goes well. This is because, if it does indeed go well, then there will now be an expectation on both parties to forever after have a romantic Valentine's Day. Of course, this is no accident. This is precisely the evil plan upon which Hallmark and it's spawn have loosed upon the world. It is like a virus. It's not alive, but it replicates. It invades the host and infects it, bending it physically to submit to it's will. And a 'good' Valentine's Day is like the Vampire's Bite. Once Bitten you cannot go back. At least most people know better than to invite them in!
Of course, the other way that Valentine's Day can and will most often wreck a romance before it can even get messy is when it doesn't go well. Now, notice that the fist way was an 'if' and the second was a 'when'. This means that although you may or may not get the first--a nice romantic evening--but if you persist--as Hallmark so desires--you will surely get the second, which is, quite naturally going to be a disaster.
Now, it won't make a bit of difference if the disaster is of your making or your partner's. It also won't make any difference at all if the disaster is created by the restaurant. It certainly didn't that night, for those romance-seeking couples whose first Valentine's Day Date was ruined that fateful February eve in 1999.
Now, in part one of this cautionary tale, I observed that it, given the date, Valentine's Day is often cold, but to observe the attire of the couple in attendance that day--may I say, particularly, the ladies--you might never have know that they were expecting to walk about in what, for Texas anyway, were fairly low temperatures: the 50's. Wearing strapless gowns and short dresses, high heels and in the absence of coats or wraps to hide their finery, these ladies no doubt expected to be whisked from their warm chariots into the equally warm and cozy restaurant--how about that table in front of the fire?
They were not expecting to wait in line, and most certainly not planning on queuing up outside, but that is exactly what happened. In order to seat as many two-tops in the restaurant as possible, we had converted all four-tops to twos and re-arranged the tables to accommodate as many more tables as would fit into the space. We had also converted the lobby and the patio, with it's plastic drop-down walls meant to ameliorate but not prevent the cold, converted into a dining room, and had consequently moved the hostess stand just outside the patio door.
This meant that we are able to seat the first wave of diners, but alas, the overbooking rendered this first little 'victory' moot. As soon as the restaurant was filled to capacity, there was still a line of couples out the door and into the garden and parking lot. It reminded me of one of those children's Bible illustrations of Noah's Ark, with the line of animals, two-by-two, snaking off into the distance for miles. Except that these pairs were shivering and getting progressively angrier by the minute.
Sadly, even those who were seated, immediately or after a long wait, were in for a(nother) rude surprise. The effect of adding tables without increasing the number of waiters leads to the very situation that waiters dread so much that they have nightmares about it. This was no nightmare, unfortunately, as we pinched ourselves repeatedly to no avail and kept on living it.
I personally was assigned to a section in the back of the restaurant. It has since been walled in, but at the time, it was like the front patio, with drop-down plastic walls and a flagstone floor. In this section, where normally at most six table would be placed--one of them a large, 6-12 top--there were now fewer than ten tables, all of them two-tops. Now, that would be ok, except for how they were seated. Recall that we were able to 'absorb' most of the first wave in our first seating, but note that they were all seated pretty much at once.
That single fact, more than any other, is what made the nightmare for me. It was, "Excuse me," and "O waiter!" over and over and over again as I literally ran between tables and winced each time another one was sat. It's a simple math problem, really, and there is no disputing the numbers. Ten tables times a two-minute greeting/order taking session adds up to twenty minutes, and that turns out to be just beyond the physical capacity of even the best waiter, which I naturally consider myself to be.
I just could not get the job done, and believe me, the patrons knew it. Those customers who did not leave waited for what seemed like hours. They waited for a table, then they waited for their food. There was not enough alcohol in the world to cover the bad feelings that evening, and, unfortunately, I had none to at least mellow me out until much later, much too late.
I was certainly not alone in this. Each player in this macabre little drama had his or her own personal nightmare. The hostess, for example, could hardly stand at podium without being attacked by impatient, and justifiably angry and cold customers. The kitchen was inundated by a flood of orders as each waiter struggled to turn in multiple tickets before running back to get more. The bartender was flooded with drink orders not just from the tables, but from all the people waiting in line.
In short, on this night, everyone waited for everything and no one was happy. It was a complex, interlocking and devastatingly difficult few hours for us all, and I'm not forgetting the patrons, either. Some of them actually came back, some of them even for Valentine's Day. One couple who was there even got married and came back to show me the ring one night. Go figure.
To this day, those of us who were there cannot recall it without a shudder. We take a definite pleasure in recounting it to the 'new' staff, those who were not there, but believe me, none of us would ever want to repeat it in real life.
After all, we still have the 'waiter dream'.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Inauguration: The Video
Well, I had to do something with all those photos I took during our trip to D.C. to see David & David and attend the Inauguration that I did not include in the photo gallery, so here is a little video that I hope sums up what we saw and did!
Thursday, January 29, 2009
He's Not the Change: We Are
 |
| From D.C. The Inauguration |
It's been a while since I've written here, but not for lack of desire. I've actually managed to curb my compulsion, mostly because I've simply been too busy to indulge myself as I have so often in the past weeks. Both Gentle Readers will appreciate the silence, I am sure, knowing that a flood of words is to follow any extended--more than a day--absence from this journal.
I have been thinking a lot about the experience of being in Washington D.C., of being with my brother, and most of all, of the personal consequences of the changes we are seeing in the government on an almost daily basis, it seems.
Being in the Nation's Capital, with all the museums, monuments and memorials literally overflowing with unique and precious objects around us had a significant influence on me, though I didn't realize it at first. Touring the Air & Space Museum, it hit me, though. I came to regard this place and these things as part of my inheritance. In the National Gallery, I was surprised to see someone take a photograph of a painting, so I asked if it was all right and sure enough, not only is the entrance to the museum--almost all D.C. museums, in fact--free, but we are also allowed to take as many photographs as we like. Not that I have any desire to actually take pictures of the art itself, but it was interesting to photograph the people and the art together. If you haven't already seen the photo gallery, here is the link.
Being with my brother, David, added another unexpected dimension to our experience. I've already written about his performance in the play and how I saw therein another side to his personality, but what I haven't mentioned is how well he took care of us during our visit. It's the unfortunate duty of people who live in big cities to act as tour guides to their guests. This obligation is compounded by the fact that a free place to stay in a popular destination is an understandably big factor in the way those guests make their plans. Consequently, those 'big-city' folks who can and do pull off being tour guides time and time again make it look easy, as if this was a natural part of their daily lives. And, in a way, it is. For some folks, anyway, and I am pleased and proud to count David and David among them. They really, genuinely enjoyed touring us around, explaining the Metro, turning the map right side up (again) and giving us good advice on everything from where to eat, what to see and what to save till next time. Ironically, they were such good hosts, there will definitely be a next time!
It was, however, the experience of being on the street as President Obama took his Oath, being with all the people from all over the country at the very moment when we were reborn, called out to commit again to the promises and ideals that made this country great and have for so long been suppressed in the name of 'National Security'. Hey, we Americans are big kids now. We can have both security and ideals. Neither will be perfect, but please, let's promise each other not to let this choice be presented to us again. Now that we have again acknowledged that we can be free and fair at the same time, let us here commit ourselves to keeping it this way.
One of the most frequent things I've heard said since the Inauguration is something like, "Well, I just hope he can do X% of what he's promising." To a certain extent, I agree with this sentiment. I too hope he can accomplish a lot, and I too hope it will happen sooner, rather than later. However, even though it is simply common sense to acknowledge that he, Mr. Obama, cannot "do it alone", I think it here worth saying that we--as a collective people--have yet to understand what he is and has been saying to us all along.
He is not the change. We are. It is up to each one of us, as individuals, to look around us, find something that needs doing, something that needs fixing, someone who needs help, and do it. The burden is not only not exclusively on Mr. Obama, it is not even exclusively any single one of our burdens. How easy it is to lift a heavy load when many hands are present is something we need to recall in a moment when a great deal of heavy lifting is called for.
To all readers of this journal, therefore, I issue the challenge personally. In this new year, this year of change, find something you can help with, find someone who needs your help and do it. In the restaurant business, when something happens that requires the staff to make a big change (see Dinner for Fifty, Please) this is eaxctly what we do. Each person looks around, see what needs doing, and if no one else is doing it, then that is what they do. In this way, everything gets done and no one has to do it all. In fact, we can't do it any other way.
So here what I propose: Commit a certain part of each week--perhaps the same day, perhaps just a certain number of hours per week, no matter--to a cause, hopefully one that benefits someone, somewhere as directly as possible. If each one of us finds a place and time to volunteer even a small part of our time and energy in this year, and the next and every year after, we will see change.
Let's commit to each other, to a new year, a new life: You there! Be the change.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Where We Were: 1.20.2009
Well, it is very hard to tell from this little photo, but if you click on it, you'll see it full size. Those are not coffee grounds, mind you, but people!
Now, if you find us, you get a prize!
Two million people were there.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Inauguration Notes
First of all, it was cold. I think I've mentioned this a few times, but yesterday it was especially relevant, as, by the time we were done, we were very very nearly frozen solid. At the very very least, I know that our collective forty toes and some of the same number of fingers were absent any warmth. This is mostly because we had such a very long time to wait, on the street, with little else to do but pace back and forth, stamp the ground and kick our feet together in hopes of staying alive long enough to see the new President pass by our spot.
The day began at 6:45 when we got up. We left the house at 7:30 and when we boarded the train here in Forest Glen, it was already about half full. Four stops later and it was so packed that no one was getting on or off till we reached Union Station. This is where we entered the city, and by this time, which was only 8:30, the throngs were massive. We were swept up into the flow of people out onto the street, where the crowds could open up. Cars of course, were at a minimum, so people were simply walking everywhere. There was a wonderful sense of enthusiasm and camaraderie as we made our way toward the Mall. People were laughing and smiling, carrying signs and of course everyone had a camera of some kind.
It's hard to judge these things, but I have no hesitation in observing that many, if not actually most of the people were black. There was a pervasive, underlying joy in everyone's demeanor as we thronged together, funneled by pedestrian barriers and the unseen will of the crowd toward the tent that was the primary security checkpoint. We had each taken a bottle of water, but were forced to abandon it at the checkpoint for reasons I did not understand. The guard who removed my bottle insisted that I "return to the end of the line" but I was in no mood to try that after being forced through the gauntlet once, so I simply threw it into the massive pile that was accumulating at that spot and moved on. They checked my coat, patted me down, inspected my little bag-o-goodies that David had so thoughtfully provided and bang, I was in!
Now, that would have been wonderful, and in some ways it certainly was, but in fact this simply signified the beginning, not the end, of our ordeal. We quickly walked up Constitution Avenue and found a spot hear the rail next to some people huddled on a blanket on the ground. It turns out they had been there since 3am! Needless to say, it was obviously not necessary to have subjected themselves to all that for such a spot, but it did appear to be an ideal place to see the parade go by.
From this spot, we could see the Capitol, though no details of the ceremony were visible, even had we had binoculars, I believe, but we could hear the ceremony from loudspeakers placed on the light poles all down the street. It was cold, of course, but sunny, so it made the three hours till the ceremony began more tolerable than you might expect. We chatted with those around us, speculated about the timing and generally expressed the relief and excitement that so possessed us all while slowly and inexorably getting colder and colder.
When the ceremony began, it was blissfully short, as seemed Mr. Obama's speech. Doubtless it was longer than it seemed, for as we huddled around a radio to catch every word, each word, each phrase caught up in our ears and hearts. Many around us, including me, cried. There were high fives and cheers and more than a few "Amens". I said a few myself. It felt like a fabulous preacher was at the pulpit, and instead of empty promises about the Kingdom of Heaven, we were instead offered solid assurances that Mr. Obama had indeed come to Washington to make a difference in the way we live our lives henceforth.
His speech was justly critical of the past yet focused on the optimism for the future. I certainly felt it and I know many others did, here, on the Mall, where more than a million had gathered, and in may other places around the world. That includes China, where Jeff and Sara could see the speech on the internet in English even as their hosts were censoring the speech in Chinese for their own people. And, almost as soon as it was over, we were treated to the wonderful and long time coming sight of Mr. Bush departing in his Air Force helicopter for the last time. I've read that the people on the Mall chanted "Hey hey hey, goodbye" but we simply cheered and thanked the powers that be that we'd lived to see the day.
I don't want to focus too much on the negative, but it is clear that we have endured too much for too long, those of us who stand for both peace and safety, for whom, as Mr. Obama said, the choice between security and ideals is a false one. I am thrilled to know that my friends in other countries will no longer ask me what the hell we think we are doing over here, to know that in a very short time, relations between our nations will recover, and we can again go out without fear and with pride in our nation and the way it upholds its principles and ideals.
Alas, after this wonderful moment came a long and very cold interlude. We moved further down the street to get a better spot for viewing the parade and hunkered down while the President ate lunch and Ted Kennedy--bless his 'Lion' heart and soul--collapsed and thus delayed the start of the parade for more than an hour. The expectation had been that we would see the President and his wife begin walking up the parade route a few blocks from us around 2pm, but it wasn't until nearly 3:30 that the event actually got underway and by that time, the cold had rendered us numb. We were even prepared to call it off and head out in another 15 minutes but fortunately it began before we gave up. At that moment, David and I climbed up on a large iron gate behind us to get a better view and angle for photographs. I watched and took pictures of the motorcycle police, the color guard, the Army band and the Fife and Drum Corps before the Presidential motorcade finally appeared.
That's right, the motorcade. It turns out that he and Michelle got out to walk but not until they'd passed by our spot by several blocks! David managed to get a photograph of him smiling through the darkened window of his limousine, but it wasn't till it had passed and he said, "Well, that's it!" that I realized I'd missed the very thing I'd hoped to see after enduring the numbing cold for eight hours. O well.
I did say from the outset that I did not come to see Mr. Obama but to see the people who had put him there, and this is exactly what I got. I felt the emotion, I saw the faces and I lived the moment. This and nothing more did I hope for and, as I expect it will be in the coming years, hope will lift and carry us to a new level of freedom and prosperity.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
We did it!
Frozen but happy. Bush just left town and we are waiting for the parade. Spirits are high. Toes are cold!
Monday, January 19, 2009
Citronelle
Tonite we ate at Michel Richard's Citronelle. Because it is late and we have a big day tomorrow, I will have to save my review for another post. But because it was so good, I have to let those readers who care about such things know that it was highly anticipated and did not disappoint. the word superlative comes easily to mind, along with many others.
For now, though, in spite of my tendency to use too many of them, that will have to be the only word. You can wait. We did!
For now, though, in spite of my tendency to use too many of them, that will have to be the only word. You can wait. We did!
Memorials Monuments and Markers
Today was an especially delightful day here in D.C. Each day so far has brought us a different pleasure, in forms that I would never have expected.
For example, the monuments and memorials. Of course here there is a memorial or monument or stautue of, to and for just about everyone and everything that has been even remotely associated with U.S. history, and many hundreds of plaques, markers and signs that are not so related, but which serve to illustrate the vital function that a place like this serves. It is in fact a very complex and many facted testament to the American achievement. I have no shame in saying that I have great pride in this country and the progress that Americans have brought to the world. It is a better place for our little social experiment, despite the wounds our culture has inflicted on other cultures, peoples--often it's own-- and the planet.
The foregoing, then, is evidence of my fundamental belief that progress--social, intellectual, yes, even political--is not only possible, but is a innate function of humanity. That assertion I will defend in another esaay, but here I present it as defense for the pride I feel so deeply in this place and the people here assembling with such open joy and goodwill it's hard not to believe that this is indeed the beginning of something new and the continuation of something old. The newness may in fact be one of the oldest traditions in this still growing Republic. Each generation brings something new and invigorating to the place and the process of practicing human liberty.
I actually wept today in the Jefferson Memorial, reading the words, "We hold these truths to be self-evident..." for on this day it is made evident, manifest in the world that even if the ideal has yet to be reached, the principle upon which this Republic was founded, that all men are equal and possessed of basic, inaliable rights is not out of sight nor has it been rendered false because we have yet failed to achieve it for our own citizens and the people of the world.
This new President, like so many other great leaders, has that vision clearly before him. His gift has been to help us catch sight of it again at last. I can see it. Can you?
For example, the monuments and memorials. Of course here there is a memorial or monument or stautue of, to and for just about everyone and everything that has been even remotely associated with U.S. history, and many hundreds of plaques, markers and signs that are not so related, but which serve to illustrate the vital function that a place like this serves. It is in fact a very complex and many facted testament to the American achievement. I have no shame in saying that I have great pride in this country and the progress that Americans have brought to the world. It is a better place for our little social experiment, despite the wounds our culture has inflicted on other cultures, peoples--often it's own-- and the planet.
The foregoing, then, is evidence of my fundamental belief that progress--social, intellectual, yes, even political--is not only possible, but is a innate function of humanity. That assertion I will defend in another esaay, but here I present it as defense for the pride I feel so deeply in this place and the people here assembling with such open joy and goodwill it's hard not to believe that this is indeed the beginning of something new and the continuation of something old. The newness may in fact be one of the oldest traditions in this still growing Republic. Each generation brings something new and invigorating to the place and the process of practicing human liberty.
I actually wept today in the Jefferson Memorial, reading the words, "We hold these truths to be self-evident..." for on this day it is made evident, manifest in the world that even if the ideal has yet to be reached, the principle upon which this Republic was founded, that all men are equal and possessed of basic, inaliable rights is not out of sight nor has it been rendered false because we have yet failed to achieve it for our own citizens and the people of the world.
This new President, like so many other great leaders, has that vision clearly before him. His gift has been to help us catch sight of it again at last. I can see it. Can you?
Photos!
Well, I posted up at length yesterday but failed to include a link to the photo gallery that will serve to illustrate some of the account. I have taken many hundreds of pictures, but fortunately, I'll not subject you, gentle readers to them all. Here is, then, a couple dozen of the beast so far:
http://picasaweb.google.com/phillip.dubov/DCTheInauguration#
Today we have the Lincoln Memorial and its environs. I'll have the camera with me of course and like every other tourist, I'll be blazing away on the shutter button! Stay tuned, kids!
http://picasaweb.google.com/phillip.dubov/DCTheInauguration#
Today we have the Lincoln Memorial and its environs. I'll have the camera with me of course and like every other tourist, I'll be blazing away on the shutter button! Stay tuned, kids!
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Inauguration Stage is Set
So, today we ventured out into D.C. again to see a museum or two and get a feel for where we might best go and stand for the Inaugural parade on Tuesday.
Of course, nothing is 'normal' right now here in the Capitol. It is most interesting for me to see how the security for the event is being put in place. In a city where high security has been the norm since 2001, there is the sense that they really know what they are doing. In spite of the massive re-arrangment of streets and sidewalks; in spite of the thousands of feet of fences and people-railings; in spite of the police, who seem to be everywhere at once, standing, driving, watching us as we and they go by, there is no sense of fear or oppression. Cold though it was, there was a lively crowd out on the Mall even on a Sunday.
We had planned to visit the Spy Museum, but it was closed due to a water leak (?) so, taking advantage of Washington's cultural abundance, we simply crossed the street and went to the National Portrait Gallery. Here we saw, among other things, the famous 'unfinished' Gilbert Stuart paintings of GW (the original, thank you very much) and his wife; plus the portraits of all the Presidents up through GW (yes, the second one). This was a delightful and in many ways an unexpected exercise in patriotism, for I found proud to consider the accomplishments and to take in the images of all the most famous and even the not-so-famous men and women who have helped make this country what it is today.
Next, we walked up to the Capitol, where I was thrilled to see all the people smiling, laughing and taking pictures of each other in front of the Inauguration stand. We did our share of the same. They've set up perimeters so that we will not be able to pass through the same area two days hence, but for now it was possible to get up close and explore. They must have ten thousand chairs set up in front of the stand itself, and if you looked back you could see where the other 230,000 ticket holders will get to stand. They will have a good view, but come Tuesday, if you are at the back, you might as well watch on one of the 'jumbotrons' they are setting up all down the Mall.
It is obvious that they are familiar with how to deal with large crowds securely here in D.C, for there is no shortage of evidence that this is going to be a special week. The first thing you'll notice is an army of port-o-potties lining almost every street leading up to the Mall, and many more thousands on the Mall itself. Concrete barriers are ubitquitous as well, on every corner near a Federal building, so you have to walk around them. The police are everywhere as well, in key positions and in what seems like every other car on the street. Every ten minutes or so, sirens erupt and lights flash as another VIP is escorted to his oh-so-very-important event, and those citizens follish enough to bring in their cars are slowly being pushed out of the city center, an action which will leave naught but the police and taxis on the streets come Tuesday.
The souvenir stands, which no doubt are present in even the slowest of times here, are also everywhere, and there are even more storefronts that have opened up just to sell as many mugs, keychains, t-shirts, caps, plates, shoes, shot glasses and many more products that I can't even recall. I haven't bought my Obama stuff yet, but I certainly plan to. I mean, why not? Is there ever a better time to buy a souvenir than when you are a tourist? We found a comic shop in Union Station that will have some of the new Spiderman comicbook on Wednesday, so that may be the souvenir I get. A shirt or hat wouldn't be out of the question either.
Now, we don't plan to go to the ceremony but hope to get a good view to see the new President anyway. If we play our cards right, we might get to see him as he joins the Inaugural parade up Pennsylvania Avenue. It's a little hard to tell, right now, just where we will stand and what we will see. One thing seems certain, though. The people at home will defintely get the best view and remain the warmest, but the people here will share and excitement and energy that none of us will soon forget. Already I can feel it building, I can see it on every face and hear it in our voices. It's like Graduation. Everyone in attendance is proud and happy to be there in celebration of a shared accomplishment.
Of course, nothing is 'normal' right now here in the Capitol. It is most interesting for me to see how the security for the event is being put in place. In a city where high security has been the norm since 2001, there is the sense that they really know what they are doing. In spite of the massive re-arrangment of streets and sidewalks; in spite of the thousands of feet of fences and people-railings; in spite of the police, who seem to be everywhere at once, standing, driving, watching us as we and they go by, there is no sense of fear or oppression. Cold though it was, there was a lively crowd out on the Mall even on a Sunday.
We had planned to visit the Spy Museum, but it was closed due to a water leak (?) so, taking advantage of Washington's cultural abundance, we simply crossed the street and went to the National Portrait Gallery. Here we saw, among other things, the famous 'unfinished' Gilbert Stuart paintings of GW (the original, thank you very much) and his wife; plus the portraits of all the Presidents up through GW (yes, the second one). This was a delightful and in many ways an unexpected exercise in patriotism, for I found proud to consider the accomplishments and to take in the images of all the most famous and even the not-so-famous men and women who have helped make this country what it is today.
Next, we walked up to the Capitol, where I was thrilled to see all the people smiling, laughing and taking pictures of each other in front of the Inauguration stand. We did our share of the same. They've set up perimeters so that we will not be able to pass through the same area two days hence, but for now it was possible to get up close and explore. They must have ten thousand chairs set up in front of the stand itself, and if you looked back you could see where the other 230,000 ticket holders will get to stand. They will have a good view, but come Tuesday, if you are at the back, you might as well watch on one of the 'jumbotrons' they are setting up all down the Mall.
The souvenir stands, which no doubt are present in even the slowest of times here, are also everywhere, and there are even more storefronts that have opened up just to sell as many mugs, keychains, t-shirts, caps, plates, shoes, shot glasses and many more products that I can't even recall. I haven't bought my Obama stuff yet, but I certainly plan to. I mean, why not? Is there ever a better time to buy a souvenir than when you are a tourist? We found a comic shop in Union Station that will have some of the new Spiderman comicbook on Wednesday, so that may be the souvenir I get. A shirt or hat wouldn't be out of the question either.
Now, we don't plan to go to the ceremony but hope to get a good view to see the new President anyway. If we play our cards right, we might get to see him as he joins the Inaugural parade up Pennsylvania Avenue. It's a little hard to tell, right now, just where we will stand and what we will see. One thing seems certain, though. The people at home will defintely get the best view and remain the warmest, but the people here will share and excitement and energy that none of us will soon forget. Already I can feel it building, I can see it on every face and hear it in our voices. It's like Graduation. Everyone in attendance is proud and happy to be there in celebration of a shared accomplishment.
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