So Long Frank Lloyd Wright

I sit at my desk and stare across the hall into a darkened office. His desk is cleared and all his personal items have been placed in boxes and taken away, making it difficult to see any glimpse of personality that once defined the room. The Big Wednesday poster and surf magazines that tickled one area of his interests are gone along with a dog bed and dog toys. Books that were important and a stack of magazines that bestowed an award on him are no longer on his shelves and coffee table. Even his whiteboard is clean; a medium that once displayed his ideas –some big, some bold, some small. In its place is a statement of love to all who shared his workday. I like the thought that it’s meant just for me.

Ever since he floated the idea of leaving I thought there would be a last day to say goodbye. But it hasn’t worked out that way. He’s just slowly faded away up to his new office and ultimately his new home. In some way I’m glad about that. I think I envisioned him, the Ber, Livy and Lexi piling in the car. We’d all hug and say goodbye, hiding our tears. Maybe I’d tell him again it’s all for the best and try for a final hug that would mean more than the one I had just given him. And then I would watch the doors close and the car roll slowly down the street, the brake lights go on, and then it would disappear around the corner and they’d be on their way. I’m not sure I could have endured that.

For too long I’ve been wasting my time talking to him about business and not enough about his personal life and dreams and ambitions. He was the one I wanted to tangle intellectually the most with, but I burned up that time on the mundane instead of the meaningful. We’ll talk on the phone and have occasional visits, but it won’t be the same -- much as it is now with the Girl.

My mind drifts back to the day he was born and I remember taking him home from the hospital. I was wondering what I had just stumbled into. That was the first day nobody had to tell me that I mattered. That feeling only doubled when the Girl was born 16 months later. On his first night, he slept, we didn’t. I remember what it looked like the first time he smiled at me. I was cradling him on the couch when he was four or five weeks old and trying to get him to fall asleep. He looked up and smiled. It wasn’t just his mouth that smiled, it was in his eyes. He and I have known each other in this same unspoken way ever since.

I hope it doesn’t seem I am only sad to see him go. That’s the kick in the gut feeling that comes from the emotion of loss. The truer thought is pride. I couldn’t be happier for him that he has earned such an opportunity to grow personally and professionally. I remember what that world looked like for me when everything was new and exciting. Of course there are feelings of trepidation and unease as he and his family make this change – as there should be. At the same time, I know he will embrace the challenge and the tail off his comet will be the envy of all around.

For now, though, I just want to feel my loss. Not because I’m morose or a pathetic sad sack. It’s just how I feel. I know we’re different people and we come from different places and a different time. I was never integral to my parents the way he is integral to me and I think he knows that. Having the relationship I have with both my kids makes times like this much tougher. It can also make it that much more bittersweet when good changes occur.

At the end of the day, I go back into his office and look around a bit longer this time. I sit on the couch and know my life is changed forever. Opportunities like this don’t come around that often and, as a parent, we hope for our children to have a bucket full of them before they settle on what interests them the most. Having both my kids living in a different city now and starting new chapters in their lives gives me pride and hope. It’s the distance and lack of proximity that makes me sad.

What Happened In Benghazi?

For anyone who made a conscious decision to stare down the gun barrel of politics there was always one simple truth each knew before going on that adventure: It’s not the crime that gets you in trouble, it’s the cover-up.

President Nixon learned this by ordering an elaborate, but easily traceable, cover-up of a break-in at DNC headquarters. The more he proclaimed his innocence and brought in others to take shots at the messengers, the deeper hole he dug for himself. Had he not resigned in 1974 he would have been impeached, not for the crime, but for the cover-up.

President Reagan had his own troubles with Iran Contra, which essentially robbed him of any real influence in his final two years in office. It also dragged Bush 41 down for his first two years, prompting his awful domestic calculation to raise taxes even though his lips said otherwise.

Bill Clinton saw his entire second term fall apart by covering up for a number of sexual escapades. It wasn’t an affair with Monica Lewinsky that divided the country, it was his ill-conceived cover-up and the ensuing attempts to discredit anyone who suggested he wasn't anything other than a man of high fidelity. In fact most people don’t remember we would've never heard about Monica had she not been asked to swear false testimony to cover up his sexual advances on Paula Jones.

In each case – well, except for Nixon – the public would have likely given each president a pass had they been truthful and forceful in their defense at the start. Reagan figured out a way to get around the Boland Amendment by finding a clever way to arm the Contras in Nicaragua. Lost in the hubbub of several investigations was that Congress had voted to fund and defund aid to the Contras a half dozen times, leaving them to scratch their chins on whether or not the U.S. was with them or against them. Whatever you felt about the policy, had Reagan stood up and said, “Hell yeah I’m funding them. I’m the Commander In Chief and I want the Contras to have our support instead of getting the run-around,” there would have been dozens of editorials written about his imperial attitude and his lack of regard for the separate branches of power. But it never would have dogged him the way it did if he hadn’t given the “Who, me?” defense.

As for Clinton, was there anyone on the planet who didn’t know he was a skirt chaser? As we got to know more about Hillary, was there anyone who didn’t blame him? He should have given Paula Jones what she wanted; money and an open apology and thus the end of the Monica Lewinsky saga that sprang from it. Oddly, it was the open apology that both sides refused to budge on, not the money. Had they agreed, most of us would have quickly moved on. There would have been a month or two of a political firestorm as several people would have made references to his low moral character as the leader of the Free World, but it would have blown over soon enough everywhere but in the White House residence.

Which brings us to the current occupant of the White House. Defending our consulate in Benghazi could have been President Obama's finest hour. Now it will be his own special hell whether or not he wins the election in two weeks. The facts are dripping out and they are becoming indisputable that President Obama knew or should have known in real time what was going on in Libya. So far three e-mails have surfaced that were sent from Benghazi, urgently announcing the Benghazi consulate was under attack, including one e-mail naming the terrorist arm of al Queda that was claiming responsibility for the attack while it was happening. The e-mails were sent to the White House Situation Room, which happens to be in the White House, the Director of National Intelligence, who happens to report directly to the president, and the FBI who, well who knows who they report to? These e-mails directly refute the president and his administration’s 14-day storyline of an ignorant mob of angry Libyans protesting a video that had been online since June and nobody had seen. The White House story included several direct stares into TV cameras by the president and his administration retelling this narrative that likely they alone believed. The filmmaker must have been a big enough pain that he found himself in jail and won’t be let out, coincidentally, until three days after the election.

Now the entire Benghazi affair looks like either a cover-up or such a high level of incompetence that there will be a day of reckoning when the rest of the facts come to light. Already we know several things that point to a cover up. The e-mails suggest the White House knew there was an attack and it wasn’t a run of the mill attack. They knew their ambassador was there and in trouble, and they knew that this wasn’t an angry mob but a group of well-armed Jihadists hell-bent on taking down the consulate and later our embassy. We know there was a drone in the air catching, in real time, the melee on the ground. And we know there were Special Forces and several Viper gunships an hour away in Italy that are specifically used for crowd dispersion. Each of these assets could have been very helpful in what was a seven-hour battle, especially when you consider the last two Americans killed died in the final hour of the battle.

If the president had ordered the special forces to move on the terrorists (I have no problem calling them that) who had attacked our consulate – i.e. our sovereign territory – he would have been the hero of the hour and looked so presidential that he wouldn’t be thinking about retirement in Hawaii today. It’s possible the ambassador and his computer aid wouldn’t have been saved, but two others could have and, nearly equally important, we could have retaken our consulate and been able to secure thousands of highly sensitive documents that were looted from the consulate, including the names of Libyan nationals who were working for us and are now likely no longer among the living. There may have also been a bigger prize stashed in warehouses adjacent to the consulate that I'll get to in a moment.

Theories abound about why the president did nothing but keep to his schedule of fundraisers and campaign events. The most often cited is that terror groups attacking a consulate and killing a U.S. ambassador and three others doesn’t fit into the larger picture the campaign was selling the American people – bin Laden was dead and al Queda was in tatters. I have another theory and it’s culled together from a few conversations and information in the open press – although from the foreign press since the American protectors of the First Amendment have been too busy talking about “binders of women.”

The first thing that seemed out of place was the drone. Nobody has said a drone wasn’t there as if it’s a normal thing to have a drone flying over every city in the world. Contrary to popular fiction, we don’t have that many drones and they are infrequently flying. Drones need to be tasked by the U.S. Central Command out of Tampa. It can often take two weeks to 30 days to get such approval. This is in part because of the demand for drones, the fact they can only stay in the air for about 48 hours (most times fewer than two hours), and because the computer data required sending and receiving information takes up a huge amount of bandwidth. The fantasy that a drone just happened to be in the area at the time of the attack is ridiculous. Somebody knew it needed to be there that night, but nobody so far has given an answer as to why.

While asking about a drone in the area, we may as well ask the same question about Ambassador Stevens. Why was he in Benghazi, especially on the anniversary of 9/11 in a compound that had been threatened for months, in an insecure building guarded by a makeshift security team of Libyans who hadn’t been paid in a while and weren’t about to give their lives for any American in a fancy suit? Ambassador Stevens had just met with a Turkish diplomat a few hours before the attack and it has been an open secret that Turkey has been instrumental arming the rebels in Syria. Why was this meeting so important that the ambassador felt compelled to slip into Al Qaeda-held Benghazi on the anniversary of the original 9/11 attacks, knowing that Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri had called for revenge for the killing of his Libyan deputy, Abu Yahya al-Libi? Where was his concern that he might have been on an Al Qaeda hit list and fully aware that he was terribly exposed with completely inadequate security? Benghazi had been the epicenter of the civil war that President Obama had taken sides on and is still the hub of military leadership in a country in huge disarray. As the saying goes, “to the victors go the spoils,” and this includes the massive amount of arms left from the Qaddafi regime in Benghazi that is now under the control of the new military leadership. Many people believe the weapons were in the consulate warehouses that were nominally under U.S. control.

Last summer, what may have began as democratic protests against the Qaddafi regime was quickly hijacked by militant Islamist who believed Qaddafi wasn’t down for the struggle against Zionism and was a little too secular in his belief in Sharia law. Knowing this, we still armed this group and gave them air support to take out a crazy dictator, but a crazy dictator who had agreed to be less of a rascal in exchange for him stealing from his own people to the tune of $88 billion. The group we armed and who is now in charge is highly influenced by al Qaeda in the Maghreb, which is connected in spirit to the Muslim Brotherhood and who both have an interest in removing Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Assad, like Saddam Hussein, is a Ba'athist and is considered impure to most Islamists. As a result, the more pure from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt and now Libya want to see him replaced with a more zealous follower of the Koran. Turkey just doesn’t want him there because he’s a bully in the neighborhood, an ally of Iran and there is disagreement where Turkey ends and Syria begins.

If you’re going to support a militant uprising against a well-armed, well-entrenched dictator, you better come to the fight with something more than pocket knives. With a kinship toward their Syrian brothers, the Libyans needed a way to get heavy arms into the fray and, based on reports by the Times of London, Ambassador Stevens was either the middleman of a shipment of 400 tons of arms to Syria or at least knew about it. This shipment included game-changing SA-7s that can take out Syrian helicopters and aircraft.

Through numerous presidents, we’ve never had clean hands in the Islamic world. We’ve backed an endless line of despots and ne’er-do-wells who have looted and tortured their people and bombed their neighbors and even their own citizens using weapons supplied by our thirsty defense industry. If the American public knew the secret dealings of our activities in the region, we’d all feel a bit dirtier today. Even if the cause was supposedly for the greater good, such as the arming of the mujahedeen in Afghanistan to fight the Soviets, we still had to get the Egyptians to agree to buy weapons from the Israelis to supply to the Pakistanis to hand over to the muj – who happened to include bin Laden. We even taught them how to make IEDs, something they learned very well and demonstrated their proficiency on us in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It’s not with naiveté that I look at the whole Benghazi affair. We were, after all, taking sides in a civil war and helping the rebels corner and kill Qaddafi. Therefore it’s not surprising our ambassador was involved to some degree in brokering an arms arrangement for the Libyans fighters who went to fight alongside their brothers against Assad. The questions that remain are, to what extent did Steven’s dealings lead to his death and the attack on our consulate, and is this the president’s larger cover-up that’s unraveling before him when a convenient second-rate video didn’t pass the smell test with the American people? There’s a lot of smoke in that area of the world, it shouldn’t surprise anyone there’s plenty of fire going around, too.

UPDATE: Since this is an every changing story, it's difficult to keep track of what's real and what's not. One thing is certain, there is a massive cover-up underway. Stories have been all over the news that CIA operators on the ground reported our consulate under attack and our ambassador in peril and/or missing. This would have been a huge flash in the White House Situation Room and would have necessitated the involvement of the president. Requests were made for security operators to get in the fray in Benghazi and bring the ambassador and his staff to safety. The requests were denied numerous times. In fact, several operators went against those orders and went to the aid of the ambassador even painting a laser on the site where terrorists were firing mortars that eventually killed two Americans. The target was painted and desperate pleas to take out the mortar site never happened.

The news is crashing down around the president now, leaving just two conclusions: he told the operators and the CIA to stand down, or he was never told about what was happening and there's simply no excuse for that. The choice of not protecting our consulate and ambassador for whatever reason or gross incompetence are not very flattering choices.

There has been a lot of chatter that the president was in the Situation Room, the very one he was so proud to be photographed in watching the killing of bin Laden. Why is he so bashful to talk about the very same room now? Because this was happening around 4 p.m. in Washington and the president was in the White House at the time, it's simply not believable he wouldn't have been brought down to watch what was going on and to make command decisions. An ambassador in a country gone missing is not news you keep from the president. To not inform him would be a twist on the famed Hilary ad about the 3 a.m. call. Only in this case, the president would be AWOL during regular business hours.

General David Petraeus is the head of the CIA and he had his spokesperson put out a very specific Tweet (as an aside, can we not write something longer than 144 characters anymore? Can you imagine Tolstoy writing War and Peace as a Tweet?). It said: "No one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate." Whether intentional or not, and I think it was written in such a crafty way it was intentional, Petraeus was pointing his finger at others and there aren't very many people in the direction of that finger other than the president. The word in the special ops community -- isn't community a nice sounding word for a bunch or trained killers? -- was that Obama himself gave a no response order at 5 p.m., less than an hour after the raid began. If that turns out to be true, especially in light of the stonewalling and the false narrative of the video, his second term, if there is one, will be mired in Congressional hearings until 2016.

For The Love Of The Game

The best I can think of is a Rolling Stones line; “I’m just standing in a doorway, I’m just trying to make some sense.” Isn’t that the way life often is? We’re waiting for something to happen; hopefully something good. Riches from the sky or love that falls our way is nice, but maybe it’s just as nice to know we have a friend and a smile to greet us. I think we often try too hard to hit the grand slam when bunching together singles is just as effective.

This will meander, but stick with me because this stream does head into a bigger river. All my working life has been aimed toward the center field walls with the bases loaded. I hit one out every now and again and maybe I drive in a run the hard way, being hit by tailing fastball. For 33 years now I’ve lived a life that’s ruled by the long ball, the big hit, the big-ticket sale. In some years, success is defined for my little company as doing three projects instead of only two. And one project? It puts us out on the street with a sign that reads, “Will consult for food.”

My company’s collective souls hoped for a relatively large project to come our way this week and we simply didn’t get it. My usual morose set in, but not for very long. Something struck me as not wanting to be defined that way any longer. I waited in that doorway for the call that didn’t come. Looking back, I altered my life for nearly a week, trying to stay awake the entire Thailand night just because it happened to be the American day. It also didn't look too pretty denying who I am in order to appear to be who they wanted just so I could get the job. And, in the end, it got me nothing. C’est la vie.

The consolation line goes, “All things happen for a reason.” I used to think this line was meant for people who lose often. But it had to come from somewhere and it has to have meant something or it wouldn’t be so ingrained into our lexicon. It also happens to be the way I felt when I heard the news. The fact is, I’m happy with my life and my little company playing small ball. I like that we’re hitting singles right now and, with each hit, we’re enjoying more of what we’re doing. The Boy is developing his own way to make the company grow – recasting it as a durable partner rather than a company left to the vagaries of others to come up with a harebrained idea and who likes us. Waiting is not a viable business model, but paving your own road by your gut and grit is. It’s how my business started and I’ve taken it off into the ditch far too often.

My contribution is also evolving. There is an old guard that exists in politics that’s almost near the top. It’s a group that’s petty and envious of those who are actually at the top. Among this group I’m looked upon as unworthy because I have nothing to contribute to their success and larger ambitions. Ironically, to those at the top, I’m well-liked and respected. It was the former group that rejected me yesterday. However, in the middle of that rejection I was getting grateful kudos from leaders of one of the largest corporations in the world. The payday from those at the top isn’t as good for now, but the trend line has more promise and longer-term stability. And it’s not lost on me that it’s much more intriguing and invigorating to work at this level. I never made as much money messing around with world leaders and their minders, but, oh, how I’ve learned.

What’s life about if all we do is toil for our paycheck? Surely it’s better to do the things that stir the soul. It makes us happier, more gratified and allows us to go back to those we love with a broader smile rather than a rampant restlessness. I didn’t learn this in the last 24 hours. Deep down I always knew it. It’s why I’ve pursued such offbeat opportunities for all of my life.

Don’t take me wrong, I won’t sit on a pitch that’s in my wheelhouse and turn down a big project. But I also refuse to play the game that’s gone on for far too long. That way is left to the dark ages, as far as I’m concerned. Lost in much of my grousing in the past several years – I call it the Sladed years because he’s been witness to so much uncertainty – is how I’ve been able to live. Yes, I was gone a lot, but I was there more often than most to watch my kids grow up and take part in their sports and watch them turn into the wonderful people they are today (yes, Em, I know I missed your birthday 12 times).

Watching a new child be born into the same cycle, I’m relieved by her father’s attitude that none of what we do at work is worthwhile unless we can be close to our children. Is there a better way to define success than to wake up in the morning and be able to tickle a little weasel for a few hours without the concern the boss is pacing the office because you’re an hour late for work? The takeaway from living life where you're not always swinging for the fences is best amplified by what Henry David Thoreau wrote: “Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify, simplify! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail.”

Stuck In Old Siam Again

Every now and again you have a moment when all seems right and yet you’re a million miles away from home. I had one of those moments this weekend. First, Mother Nature turned the wind around and a cooler, dryer air fell on Bangkok. Instead of the usual 90/90 – 90 degrees and 90% humidity – the temperature was in the low 80s and it was dry as a newly diapered baby. Comfortable is probably the best way to describe it without the metaphors on steroids.

When you’re in a new city and after you’ve visited all the Fodor’s recommended tourist sites, you begin to look for the things that feel more natural to you. Essentially, you look for California. I don’t care how you feel about low-calorie restaurants, but there are very few Americans that don’t eventually wander into a McDonalds or a Pizza Hut after too many weeks in a foreign place (although I can say that Peasey and I have yet to dine at either one, which is not to say we’re eating low-calorie meals either).

We decided a movie indoors was a good way to spend the best weather we’ve had yet in Bangkok. The movie theaters in the city center are attached to malls that are generally about three times bigger than the average mall in the U.S. Frankly I don’t know where all the people are who can afford Hugo Boss, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Armani and others, but those shops are everywhere you turn. The theater we went to was on the seventh floor of the mall and had 16 screens. The ticket price was about $17 and judging from the number of people in line to buy a seat, the price didn’t keep the crowds away.

We saw the Bourne Legacy and were told it was in 4D. Neither Peasey nor I knew what 4D was and so we expected to be handed glasses. Shoot, Peasey’s unsure what dimension she’s in now! 4D does not, as it turns out, involve glasses. It’s more like a ride at Universal Studios or a Disney theme park. The seats move with the movie. When there is a car chase, the seats roll back and forth to give the sensation you’re in the chase. When something splashes, water shoots in your face (I’m not kidding). When someone got shot in the head, our seats jolted back. I’m not sure it made us feel as though we were in the movie, but it did keep us involved. I was only hoping there would be a sex scene to see what 4D had to offer in that area.

Aside from the 4D, if I closed my eyes just enough, it was easy to believe I was in a theater in the U.S. Even in the mall, you feel more like you're home as long as the mall in your home was in Chinatown.

Eventually we had to go back to our hotel and, when it wants, a stark reality will always find its way to slap you upside your head. You’re not home. You’re still miles from your comfort zone and seemingly further from the people your heart aches for. The Boy launched a video site to share movies of LivyBear (that’s your Lazlo’s Lament name, Livy, get used to it). He blended beautiful images of his perfect family with music and creative editing and it had me crying from the first frame. The cry was equally from the scenes of the video and from the fact I’m not there in person to see the three of them growing as a young family.

Those of us on the Road always say it’s just for a few weeks or sometimes longer. What’s three weeks in a lifetime, right? But three weeks in the life of an eight-month-old is missing her saying a new word, missing her stand up on her own, missing her sliding around on the floor and threatening to crawl. It’s even missing her grow intellectually as she reasons her way around now. Ask any grandparent if it’s OK being away from a grandchild for three weeks and they may drop their Ensure and flip you the bird.

But does the three-week away rule apply only to grandchildren? For me it doesn’t. Three weeks missed is still three weeks you can’t get back. And my three weeks is really more like six weeks because I was only home a short while. So my feelings of being lost and lonely led me to stewing about being so far from home and blaming others for me being gone. And if that doesn’t make sense to you, you’re not alone.

I keep thinking I’m grown up, but I’m not. For all the bluster of insisting I don't want my head and heart in two different places, the alluring draw of economics and adventure have separated the two far too often. And no matter how much I hold my breath and stomp my feet and shout loudly about it, my life still tends to be lived from a distance. I think it was Shakespeare who said "Hey... life is pretty stupid; with lots of hubbub to keep you busy, but really not amounting to much." Of course I'm paraphrasing: "Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." I wonder sometimes if I’m that idiot.

Jeanne Collette

A few occasional readers (I don’t think I have any faithful readers) urged me to blog more. These readers didn’t take things a step further and tell me what to write about, so I’ve been rolling ideas around my head to see if I could get a tingle on the keyboard. It took a while and I passed up easier targets such as my return to Thailand, Middle East messiness, and the cult-like DNC convention, but I settled on a subject much closer to my heart.

In the seven years I’ve toyed around with this blog, I haven’t devoted a single post to my mom – or my dad, but I’ll fix that slight later. There have been so many posts covering Bill, my grandmother and my family, it is sort of strange my mom has two dozen fewer mentions than Diane Lane. Well, maybe not that strange.

She died on October 12, 1995 and had a hell of a life for 66 years prior to that. If one were to search for a single word to describe her, most would say she was a “character.” Now being a character puts her in the company of a lot of pesky people and there were times her behavior was a trifle maddening, but for most people she met she left a lasting impression with an irreverent remark and, some would say, a teenager’s view of life. Any way you looked at her, you were left with the impression she viewed life as nothing but an opportunity to have fun.

There are so many fond memories of her that it’s impossible to catalog them in any semblance of chronological order. So I’ll just throw them out in a random way.

She was an elementary school teacher and she couldn’t have loved the job more. I used to tell her that her students were her audience and that was the reason she liked teaching. She often bristled at my comment because, while I think I was partially being factual, she really took great pride in getting her kids to learn and be challenged to learn beyond their years. She was, in fact, a great teacher and had something of a Pied Piper appeal to her kids. I remember her first kindergarten class because I was only a few years older than her students. I heard stories about her kids at the dinner table so often I felt like I knew them myself. Over the years, she got dozens of letters from those students, letting her know they had graduated sixth grade, junior high, high school, what colleges they got into and even a letter later in her life that touted her former student’s success, giving her credit for much of it.

I attended a different elementary school than the one she taught in but was in the same school district. I cringed when I thought about the fact that all elementary schools would merge into the same junior high school and I would be outed as my mom’s kid. There were tales of her pulling older kids’ hair, hitting them with hangers, trying to make them cry when they did something wrong, and generally pestering them throughout grade school. When I got to junior high, I was shocked to have so many kids come up to me and tell me what a funny mom I had and how cool she was. They actually liked the idea of getting their hair pulled, mostly because they knew they deserved it.

She had three boys and it showed when she taught. She never took the girl’s side in any playground dispute. Girls would come up to her and cry and tell her sad tales of boys throwing dirt balls or calling them names. She would constantly frustrate them by asking what they had done to deserve it. Of course she realized the boys weren’t angels, but the group-think back in the Sixties was that little girls were pure and fluffy and boys were dirty and rough. She rejected this notion and blindly took the boys’ side.

Protecting boys didn’t stop with her students. Her three boys could do no wrong, either. If I had just shot someone and the body was lying down in front of me and I was holding a still smoldering gun, she would probably just say, “Nice shot!” And if the police were to come and see the same scene, she would tell them I couldn’t possibly be the shooter, they were just seeing things wrong.

My mom had a knack for embarrassing her boys. Truthfully, she had a knack for embarrassing her boys’ friends, too. I remember when we moved to California and I desperately wanted to play football and have an ounce of coolness before heading into the ninth grade. I got on a Pop Warner football team that was all about being rough and tough – not sensitive to the needs of my fellow teammates as was more my approach. A few weeks into the season she was driving me to practice dressed in a housecoat with her hair in curlers. She spotted two of my teammates in their uniforms hitching for a ride. With great glee, she pulled over to pick them up and take them to practice. Mind you, these were the two coolest guys on the team and I think they already didn’t like me much. I was cringing and hoping my mom wouldn’t talk to them and they wouldn’t notice how she was dressed. Not more than 30 seconds into the ride, she asked them, “Do you guys smoke pot?” My ninth grade coolness opportunity ended with that question.

My mom also had difficulty keeping her opinions to herself when it involved one of her sons. In keeping with the football theme, she hated the fact I was a benchwarmer. Naturally, to her thinking, her son should be the star. Since I was about four feet tall and weighed 90 pounds, it was just good coaching to keep me at the end of the bench. The coach of my team played a few downs in the NFL and had any career hope cut short by Chicago Bears linebacker Dick Butkus tackling him so brutally that he tore his knee up. So while I was riding the bench and my team was losing by the typical 30-40 points, my mom wanted me to get some playing time. She would yell, “Put Arno in!” and, when that didn’t work, she’d chant “Butkus, Butkus!” I had very few friends that year.

Now, back to pot smoking; and this has been a touchy subject with a few folks. With the statute of limitations far enough behind her, it can be told she smoked pot. She smoked it to “see what the big deal is.” She didn’t think it was much of a big deal, but then again she did have dinner ready at 3 p.m. on her first trial of my brother’s stash. Several years later she cooked up some pot-filled brownies and served them to her art group, all of whom were her best friends and completely unaware of her social experiment. She didn’t bother to tell anyone and I suppose just wanted to keep the inside joke inside. With Bill nodding in encouragement, I told the pot story at her funeral. With some of those victims in attendance, I heard one of them shout out, “I thought so!!!”

My mom’s desire to be one of her kids (does that make sense?) often caused rough moments, especially when I was a teenager. Whenever I had friends over, she wanted to join in at whatever we were doing. If we were playing a game, she wanted to be dealt in, if we were just chitchatting, she wanted to chitchat, too. And when it came to the love lives of her boys, she wanted to be fully informed, probably as much to make sure the girls we were dating were treating us like kings. I remember when my second girlfriend callously dumped me for not paying attention to her (or something like that, I wasn’t really listening), my mom found me in tears in my room. When I told her what happened, she said, “I never liked her!!” Of course two minutes earlier she would have said she loved her, but she had done her son wrong and that was a capital offense to her (sorry BB).

After my senior year Sladed and the Wop, among others, decided to kidnap me, tie me up, dig a hole at the beach, place me in the hole and let the tide roll in around my head. I’m still unsure why this was necessary. The kidnapping ended up taking place about five feet from my parent’s bedroom window when I was jumped by a ski-mask-wearing Sladed. Lots of grumbling and whimpering occurred and my mom, now fully awake, thought there was something like a human sacrifice taking place. She yelled out if everything was OK and I suspect that ended the balance of my “friend’s” plan. Living at the beach at the time, our driveway became a convenient place to park for friends headed to the ocean. The next day, Sladed parked his car in our driveway and he, the Wop and others knocked on the door to see if I wanted to join them. I told them I would meet them at the beach while my mom scowled at them. Sladed was smart enough not to place his car keys in his usual spot on the windowsill next to the door. I waited for a bit and then went to where Sladed’s towel was stretched out on the beach. Rolled up at the corner were his car keys. I took them and went back to the house. My mom giggled as “our” plot unfolded to plan. I drove Sladed’s car about three miles from our house while my mom drove the getaway car behind me. After parking Sladed’s car, my mom picked me up and we drove back home. I brought the keys and put them back on Sladed’s towel. All that was left at that point was to wait for my kidnapping friends. We kneeled down at my window, occasionally popping our heads up to see if our prey was approaching. When they finally arrived, my mom began laughing as she watched Sladed curse about his missing car. The kidnap plotters walked around in circles trying to figure out the best place to look for the car and that only made my mom laugh harder. Eventually they found their car, but I think my mom enjoyed the act of revenge more than I did.

Both my kids felt a huge loss when she passed when they were 11 and 13. As much as she was a playmate to my friends and me she was the same to her grandchildren. She took them to toy stores, not so much because they needed toys, but because she was greatly entertained watching them carefully pick out their toys. She taught them how to use inappropriate words with her “Fifteen Minutes of Bad Words,” and even encouraged certain poses for photographs that would get most people arrested these days.

The good news is a part of her lives on. I have a lot of her in me (just ask my kids), The Girl was infected with a lot of her personality and playfulness, and it even got passed down to Peter’s granddaughter who, at almost two years old, demonstrates attributes that can only be described as “Jeanne-like.”

As for me, and why she’s never been given a post during the past seven years, I think I have the answer. My mom and I were always very close; a relationship that was more like best friends than a mother and son. When she died ever so young, I mourned her loss, but I felt there was nothing that needed to be settled between us. Everything that needed to be said had already been said, every issue that needed examining was examined and we both knew the last time we saw each other, we parted with friendship, mutual respect and unfaltering love. That was good enough for me and has made it easier to deal with her loss. The only thing that gives me continued pain is how much my family has missed her presence and the stories to come that were bound to make this post twice as long.

If cancer hadn’t gotten the better of her she’d be only 83 today, hardly an outrageously long life. I can imagine what a huge pest she’d be by now and, strangely, it’s that pesky nature I miss the most. I guess I need The Girl to step things up a few notches….

Slung In Singapore

Every country has its own laws dealing with foreigners and foreign travelers. In the U.S., for example, people enter the country for a two-week vacation, disappear and end up with a job, no taxes, their kids getting in-state tuition for college and everyone gets the right to vote. Thailand isn’t quite so accommodating. In fact a tough-to-get visa is needed for anyone who wants to stay more than 30 days. Rather than paying the price and going through the hassle, Pea-Z and I figured our way around the strict law was to exit the country and return, having the 30-day clock start over. And if it took us to someplace interesting, so be it.

Based on length of flight (an exit on a train gets you only 15 days), the cost of the flight, and available Hilton Hotels that allow payment with points, we chose Singapore. I would have preferred Hong Kong, but it’s nearly a four hour flight and much more expensive. Singapore was on my bucket list, so that’s where we decided to go.

Every place has its charm and its bothersome characteristics, but Singapore is so small of a City State that both ends of that spectrum are on full display. Singapore is an odd mixture of capitalism on steroids and a police state and everyone seems quite pleased with that incongruity. On the immigration form as you enter the country, there is a bold red statement that says, “Death to drug traffickers under Singapore law.” It made me nervous to jaywalk…

It’s a highly organized city with strict rules on traffic control, including high taxes on cars and a huge 10-year car ownership fee that bumps the price of a new Toyota Camry to about $175,000. It works, too, because there is really no traffic on the streets, with most people traveling on a very user-friendly metro system.

Being there you get the impression people are satisfied with the strict rules and tight restrictions on immigration. Singapore has the most millionaires per capita and the third highest per-capita income in the world. I suspect many of the people who live there like the idea of keeping it a tropical business and wealth paradise and are willing to give up a slice of their personal freedom to ensure it stays this way. In that respect, the government takes on a sort of out-of-control HOA that feels they have to tell homeowners the length of each blade of grass in their front yard. The yards end up looking nice, but it would be very irritating to watch a busybody neighbor in front of your house with a ruler every day.

Singapore is mostly a Buddhist country, but seems to be more secular than anything. Their real religion may be in earning money and building 80-story buildings. Singapore is surrounded by 240 million Muslims across one waterway in Indonesia and another 30 million Muslims in Malaysia across a river that I could still swim across, given a good set of goggles. But they all seem nonplussed by being an outpost of temperance, more than likely because they have everything they could ever wish for, which includes the third busiest port in the world. I’m guessing everything their neighbors want they need to get from the ports run by the nice Singaporeans so they’re left to accept a little miscegenation in the neighborhood if they can get cheap electronics.

The other noticeable thing is Singaporeans are bored – or so it would seem. There is no natural beauty to the island, save the orchids and natural fauna, so they have built up about five Disney-like resorts with everything from huge hotels and theme parks to a 6,000 room casino/hotel with three 55-story towers with what looks like a Viking cruise ship that landed on the roof of the three towers (see photo). By all appearance, the locals were just looking to make the place more interesting – in a way, like Las Vegas. So super structures for the amusement of both adults and children popped up like pimples on a junior high school student and permeate any space that isn’t already occupied by a skyscraper.

The culture in Singapore doesn’t have the centuries to provide the color that a place like Thailand does, but there are a few. Pea-Z and I sampled a few of Singapore’s contribution to Asian culture: chicken rice and the Singapore Sling monster alcohol drink. Both are good, but one of the two should be approached with great moderation. Chicken rice is a blend of rice simmered in chicken broth adjacent to very tender white or dark meat chicken and surrounded by very interesting spices. A Singapore Sling has a lot of gin and other libations and, if you have too many, you’re given the urge to take your pants off over your head. The good news is Singapore has such a high sin tax on alcohol one can only afford a single dose of the drink invented at the Raffles Hotel, where we were. At more than $20 a pop, drinking is done in moderation so the pants generally stay on.

We’re now in Thailand, having met our immigrational journey. It makes us legal here, we think. If not, we’ll have to cross another border or two. Any suggestions??

There Is Drudgery, Too

There is a bit of boredom that must be faced when you’re sitting in a hotel room and waiting for a round of excitement promised by an exotic foreign city. Bangkok is anything but boring, but a high rise Hilton is like any other in the world; fluffy towels neatly arranged in the bath, the sheets evenly placed on the bed and tucked in perfectly in all the right places, my receipts and other scattered debris cautiously ignored and left in place by the housekeeping staff and, for reasons that will always puzzle me, the roll of toilet paper has been pressed into a neat triangle shape at the last square.

The illusion that travel in a foreign land presents endless opportunity to embrace the dazzling sites and local culture is a myth I’ve long held to myself. Much more time than I’d care to admit is spent trying to avoid a nap to keep on the time zone, only to fail miserably at it.

The fact is, the duties of life are left unchanged even when given the chance to hide out beyond the reach of dissatisfied clients or believe in the unrealistic hope that all problems were left on the tarmac as the plane accelerated to a safe and distant altitude. I had a meeting today, delivered documents to our client here, and then did my laundry. With the exception of the fact the washing machine had a five-hour setting that I didn’t count on, all of the day’s events were basically unremarkable.

I can’t avoid any of the have to things required at home. I have to cook and shop and wash the dishes I don’t want housekeeping to have to scrape the barnacles off in the morning. I still have to shower and shave and brush my teeth twice daily. Which brings up an aside: Throughout the progress of man, and through all the amazing development of human traits, how is it that we haven’t evolved to the point where the hairs on our cheeks and chins don’t fall out on their own or our teeth don’t clean themselves? It’s all very disappointing that human progress has stopped as it has. It makes me realize there is only life and death and, in between, maintenance.

There have been exciting things since our arrival. I’ve been to some great restaurants, seen some wonderful ancient Buddhist temples and felt a growing kinship with the Thai people and my hosts. The temples didn’t surprise me; I’ve heard about them for years. Although the intricate beauty and detail given to every square inch of the temples demonstrates a unique devotion to individual craftsmanship developed over centuries and passed down to the monks who care for the temple grounds.

Each plaster wall of the dozens of buildings carries a masterpiece painting depicting a historic scene with gold inlay paint. The tiles on the roof are colorfully painted and everywhere are brilliant glass squares that shine in the light. The gold-painted Reclining Buddha, all one ton of him, has ornate mother of pearl tiles on the souls of his feet and the grounds are so expertly groomed it looks like Disney maintenance workers fly in each day.

The point is the monks’ monumental pride in the beauty of their surroundings and their desire to labor on behalf of a higher source is rare in a world where most people work for the holy dollar, a vacation home or a new car. I’m not saying I’m ready to trade in my Italian suit for an orange felt robe, but I can’t help but admire the piety they share to their god and teachings.

So long as we’re on the subject of piety, I suppose it’s worth making a few admissions/apologies to my earlier post on Thailand. The missing IPhone saga, as it turns out, was a bit of conclusion-jumping. I’m sure you’ll all see the humor in this, but it turns out a baggage worker didn’t take my unlocked IPhone. This is pretty funny, but I left it at home instead of putting it in my bag. It’s a mistake that could happen to anyone – just not sure why it’s the kind of mistake that’s often made by me. Anyway, when I get around to it, I’ll send an apology note to the not so friendly Delta customer service representative. I’m sure a good laugh will be had by all.

Something I learned about the IPhone is you can plug in a message that e-mails you whenever your phone is located or turned on. My phone must have been turned on a few days later, because it tracked it to my home. Now here’s the funny part, you can play a really annoying tone that lets anyone in the house know you’ve located the phone. While I didn’t actually hear the tone, I was assured it is similar to a cat being strangled. All is forgiven now and I just as soon move on to bigger and better things.

In the interim, I did buy another phone and now I have three extra phones. This is probably a good idea as I tend to leave them here and there, so I probably can’t have enough of them. By the way, LJ, send money for the phone purchases. I’m pretty sure it’s in the budget…..

Instant Karma

The wonderful Buddhist law of moral causation – or karma – played out on my third day in Thailand. Peasey and I were headed to a meeting and hailed a taxi from our hotel. It was a rare metered taxi and the meter runs very slow in Bangkok. The 20-minute ride cost the equivalent of $1.70. Having just been to the ATM to get some local cash, both Peasey and I discovered we didn’t have any small bills and the driver didn’t have change for our large bills. I figured we were in for an argument or I would have to run into a shop or bank and get some change while Peasey was held as collateral. Instead, he just waved us off and said not to worry, there would be no charge.

For this to be the position of any cabbie in any city in the world is remarkable and about as rare as a Bigfoot siting or a Kardashian saying anything of interest. I asked the driver for his card – Mr. Sayan – and said we would call him in the future and make up for the missing fare. It’s doubtful he believed us, but he smiled anyway.

After we left, Peasey and I talked about how pleasant the Mr. Sayan was, how he was happy to point things out and how well he spoke English. We called him the next day and he remembered me, but it was a Buddhist holiday and he said he would prefer to drive us the next day. We kept our word and called him to take us around town at some sort of fixed price. We left it in his hands on places to take us and where to meet as he dropped us off at each beautiful temple and made sure we knew where to meet him. The temples are a big tourist area in town and there are a lot of street hustlers who will try to sell you a hubcap or harvest your organs, it was difficult to tell which, so it was comforting to see Mr. Sayan waiting for us as planned.

Mr. Sayan called me Boss (I have that look about me) and talked about Thai history, the monarchy, some politics, corrupt police, places to eat, photos of his two “monkeys” (his 11 and 7-year-old kids), and, at every opportunity, taught us a few words in Thai that could come in handy. Peasey retained the words better than I did; I only remember the phrase: That’s too much….

For the day, we paid Mr. Sayan $34 and offered him a job for to be our driver for the remainder of the month for $500. He honestly blushed because I think I offered a bit higher amount than he had in mind. I tried to ask him how much would be fair for a month, but I could tell he didn’t want to negotiate against himself. At first I thought $300 would be about right, but decided on the higher amount because the extra $200 wouldn’t break our budget and I wanted to make sure that we could always count on him. And during the times Peasey will be in Bangkok alone, I wanted to make sure she had a familiar and safe person to drive her around.

So, for the sake of him waving off a $1.70 ride, he earned $500 and a place in our hearts. It wasn’t exactly instant karma, but it came around for him within 48 hours. I’m happy to be a part of that story. LJ, send money, we need to cover this expense plus Peasey keeps boozing it up and going through the meal budget.

Thailand, Part Deux

Well, I’m back in Thailand. Again. This time for about three weeks, then a quick return to California to visit the office and loved ones, and then back again for three weeks. To be truthful, I’m not as enamored with the “life of adventure” as much as I used to be. Perhaps it’s because I’m getting to an age where I expect things to happen the way they’re supposed to, or maybe I’m just tired of being away from my friends and loved ones.

The things not happening as they’re supposed to has been the theme of the first 24 hours of travel. Peasey, my personal, private, executive assistant who is on this trip tells me, in one of those “you’re a curmudgeon but it’s ok” way, that the few times she’s traveled with me, I’ve had “high expectations.” Now, you be the judge: I was told the hotel we’re staying at was a certain rate and it’s about $20 per night higher – and $20 for two rooms for 21 days does add up. I was also told our rate included breakfast, but it doesn’t and that’s another $22 per day – although I wouldn’t fit through the door if I ate the breakfast buffet every day. And when I unpacked, I noticed my unlocked IPhone was missing from my suitcase. A new IPhone is about $750, although a 3G is about $300, which I suppose I will have to settle for. Either way, I need an unlocked phone so I can have a Thai phone number and I hate having to buy IPhone number 16.

So, I think you would agree I’ve been screwed.

On top of things, I left the office with a number of messes that will fall to The Boy and LJ to clean up. I hate leaving messes behind because it becomes difficult to focus on what I’m here to do instead of dealing with the pull that comes from back home. With the time difference limiting the window to talk, it puts an even greater burden on working through things and gives me more “quiet” time to worry about it all.

As for just being away from those I care about, it’s always been a bit of a trade off. It’s been fun to work and visit new cultures and make friends around the world, but it also takes its toll on my relationships back home. One of the things I’ve noticed when I’m gone for a long period of time is how time marches on. I’m here doing my thing and people back home are doing their thing. But we’re not doing our things together, so when I return, I don’t return to the exact same place to any of my relationships. It takes time to rebuild what was lost while I was away and I think I’m just getting too old to keep going through this. Phone calls and e-mails and text messages are no substitute for any kind of personal relationship.

Anyway, it’s still hot and humid in Thailand. This is the rainy season and I had to fly through a typhoon or two to get here. Bangkok doesn’t get drenched the way it does in the north and northeast where flooding this time of year is common. I won’t go up there on this trip, but I will when I come back. I’m looking forward to that for a few reasons. I’m very interested to be more in the middle of ancient Buddhist temples and will be not too far from the Cambodian border where hopefully I can take a train to Angkor Kat, the huge 12th Century temple that should be included in the Seven Wonders Of The World.

Peasey got sick on airplane food and I tried to watch a movie for the 15th time and stare at my Van Gogh Lilies screen saver. Such is our first day in Thailand. Basically it can be said I’m bored, so you get this post if you’re at all interested. I hope I will have tales of beauty and my immersion into the Thai culture in the near future. For now, it’s mostly Lazlo lamenting, as is my want.

Hankie Pankie

I got a message from my good friend Phil on Monday that my dad died again. At least that’s how it felt in the gut when I learned the news. For a whole lot of people my age, Sladed’s father Hank was a surrogate father when we were in high school and beyond. He was always near with a story, a pep talk, a joke (dirty and clean), or a demonstration of a bodily function. On Sunday night, Hank passed away after a long battle with a number of ailments and it’s a difficult thought to get my head around. He was a loving husband, father, grandfather, father-in-law and friend to so many people that I’m sure there are a lot of people feeling the same way this week.

While some of Hank’s jokes and stories were done for personal attention, most of it wasn’t. It always came at a time when one teenager or another was full of anxiety about a swim event or even trying to figure out life. Hank’s approach always hit the spot and made everyone feel better about themselves and their situation.

I was more fortunate. The surrogate fatherhood from Hank lasted for several decades beyond my teen years. I can’t say the jokes got any better over the years, but his expressions of caring about how my life was going and his general interest in all the good and often stupid things I did increased.

The memories of Hank are endless and I’d like to share a few. The first comes from his nominating himself as team dad for my high school swim team. Not only did this make him one of the few dads at every swim meet cheering for his own son and anyone else who wore those silly black and red Speedos, it also made him the most popular dad because at the end of every swim meet, he brought out a brown paper bag of nearly every kind of candy bar. I became addicted to Butterfingers and Clark Bars because of him and would likely blame him for my current girth if I weren’t so damn happy to be eating those candy bars today. As an aside – and there is usually the aside – his son went for the O’Henry bars. I wonder why.

Anyone who knew Hank knew he was one of the greatest supporters of UCLA football. OK, it was USC. And that’s the point. If you ever wanted to get your thumbs pulled off, you merely had to say something negative about his beloved Trojans. While I was attending UCLA (on paper, at least), it was very enjoyable to get in a few digs by wearing a UCLA shirt on a visit to see Sladed, hoping Hank would be around to jab you with his toothpick that was incessantly resting on the side of his mouth.

Gail and I went to UCLA together and I always managed to get her into the act. We once tee-peed his house in Bruin blue and gold and later, despite the fact I was wetting my pants thinking we would be discovered and shot, Gail and I removed his USC Trojan license plate rim and replaced it with a UCLA rim. Fortunately for our prank, it wasn’t noticed until a friend and fellow Trojan fan was helping him put things in his trunk after the UCLA/USC football game and said, “Hank, when did you become a Bruin fan?”

As was often the case, Hank got me back. He along with Jayne took out some cardinal red nail polish and painted in the UCLA rim with Trojan colors, drove to our house, dragged me out by my thumbs (what was it with Hank and thumbs?), and made me stare at his and Jayne’s handiwork.

Besides being a Bruin fan (and a closet Trojan fan), I was also a University of Michigan fan. That meant that every so often the two teams would meet in the Rose Bowl and Michigan would do one of its usual failures to show up for the big game. Of course that didn’t stop me from carrying on the pranks and it led to one of my finest moments. I placed an ad in the sports sections of the San Diego newspaper addressed to all Wolverine fans. It announced there would be a pre-game party at the home of Michigan Alum Hank’s house and to call his number to share in the festivities. The ad didn’t draw the numbers I hoped for, but I think there were enough calls to irritate him because he started giving out my number as the party’s “social secretary.”

Sadly I never did two pranks I hoped to do. One was to write a fictional piece about Hank as the world’s biggest Bruin supporter with fake quotes about how he lives and dies for the Bruins. My idea included getting the wives of his fellow Trojan teammates and classmates to put the fictional story around the morning newspaper so they would all wake up thinking the world had shifted in a strange way and Hank had turned to the dark side. My other plan that never played out was to hire the UCLA marching band and have them march down his street playing the Bruin fight song and generally annoying him and his neighbors with displays of Bruin spirit.

Hank also knew that a prankster at heart could be used for his own fun and he often put me up to things. Among my favorite memory was calling a San Diego sports radio show at Hank’s urging. His old teammate and good friend Ernie Zampese was a defensive backfield coach for the San Diego Chargers and was the guest on the show that night. Ernie and Hank had been friends at that time for more than 25 years and had a lot of nicknames for each other. For the sake of keeping this post clean, I can write one of those nicknames was Zampoosie. So I called the station and said I had a question for Mr. Zampoosie. The host immediately corrects my pronunciation while Hank suppressed a laugh. Hank pushes me to continue. “So, Mr. Zampoosie, do you intend to utilize a nickel formation or make better use of a strong safety?” The host again corrects my pronunciation and now Hank is giggling and even Ernie is laughing because he knows I’ve been put up to this. I mention Zampoosie several more times, each time corrected by the host, and Ernie can barely answer the question and I think Hank wet his pants laughing.

Hank had so many life-long friends and it’s such a testament to who he was that he and Jayne could continue those friendships up until the last days of his life.

Despite all the fun and back and forth we had, none of these stories touch who Hank really was and what he meant to his two boys, their wives and kids and especially to Jayne. I’ll never forget when Sladed was so sick and in the hospital for a very long time. Things weren’t going as well as any of us had hoped and there were even thoughts we were in for a long recovery at best. I came to visit Sladed in the hospital and when I turned the corner, Hank was sitting in a chair and quietly crying. For all his toughness and roughhouse ways, deep down Hank was a loving and emotional guy who was so worried about his son he couldn’t contain the tears.

The greatest story of Hank, however, was the 55 plus year love story he had with Jayne. She was his everything and, man, he often needed her to be his everything if only to keep him out of trouble. From the early days of dancing to the Tennessee Waltz to Jayne’s endless vigil by his side as his health declined, they were both the apple of each other’s eye. There is no better way to sum up a man’s life than to witness how he loved and how he was loved by others. His relationship with Jayne and her with him beats anything you would find in a romance novel and tells you all you need to know about the both of them.

I didn’t get to see Hank in his later stages. He wouldn’t have recognized me anyway. But I was able to keep tabs on how he was doing by Jayne having the courage and willingness to open up such a private moment to write in many forums on the journey she and Hank were on. Not only was it comforting for those who knew them to read, but I know it helped others – often strangers – find solace as they went through their own journeys. And so now Jayne will continue without her Hankie, as we all will, and I wish nothing but love and happy memories for the joy that came from just knowing the man. Peace be with you, Hank. You will be sorely missed.

I Pad Thai

Most of you know I’m more comfortable traveling in European cultures (I count New Zealand as such) and I haven’t traveled outside that comfort zone as much, particularly for business. But I am writing this from Bangkok, Thailand where I will be working – and for the most part living – for the next three months. It will take some getting used to, but I haven’t had a challenge to stretch the cultural boundaries in a while so this may be good for me. The distance and time difference will be one big pain in the patoot. For example, it’s 326,000 miles from San Diego and the time is – well, add two hours and replace the PM with an AM and vice versa. It’s also half again as warm as San Diego and with air conditioning units dominating the billboard space, I think I have an idea what’s in store for me. As an added bonus, monsoon season is quickly approaching so maybe less needs for showers in the morning. To put your mind in the proper perspective as to my level of nearly alive, think of Bill Murray at the beginning of the movie Lost In Translation when he is arriving in Tokyo half asleep, half dead. Put it to the music of Death In Vegas’ Girls, Girls, Girls for more enjoyment. His constant complaints of not being able to fall asleep seem oddly familiar. My body tells me to wake up and get on with it, but the local hour recommends sleep. This is a short trip so I have no real expectation of making any adjustment. My unmade bed looks mighty inviting at the moment. So far I like it, but I haven’t really ventured into the maze of the city much. I’m in Sumkavit, which is the financial district where I am surrounded by modern high-rise buildings, flashing lights, motor cycles, Tuk Tuks (have to dodge them), colorful pink and yellow taxis with plenty of dents so I know I need to be prepared for action at all times. There are also plenty of people with identical t-shirts advertising something with bullhorns. They may just like bullhorns here. When I was picking up my bags at the airport, there was a solitary bullhorn in a gray bin circling the baggage belt with a recorded message likely announcing something about the bags; probably that they all look alike and be sure not to grab the ones with bio-hazard signs on them. Maybe it said there is no parking in the White Zone. Among the first thing you’ll notice is the Thai people are quite small. Bill was here years ago and took an elephant ride. When the handlers helped him off his private elephant, one said, “Thank you, giant.” Bill was a big guy, but hardly a giant. Still, I look big to them, although I wouldn’t want to have to wrestle these wiry little bastards. As one of my usual asides, Bill was having his very own Lost In Translation seven years ago today as he was in Japan for his final days. I know he was immensely happy at that time, so it makes it a bit easier to think about. Thai people are very polite and the little thing they do with the partial bow with their hands together in a praying position is a nice touch. I don’t know if it’s kosher to pray or bow back to them and just continue past them with an air of superiority. For now, I’m bowing. I’m told they do this instead of shaking hands as we do. No touching, just bowing with hands pressed together. A woman working at the hotel said they appreciate when a foreigner does it back. I like to be popular, so I do it… My first stop on this epic voyage to Thailand was Korea. There’s not too much of a connection between the two countries other than they so badly mangle English terms to make whatever product they’re selling sound, well, American. Their descriptor of anything is happy, such as Happy Food, or Happy Foot Massage. I think it’s meant to suggest use of their products will make you happy. When I arrived in Thailand, I saw a coffee shop called Hey! Coffee. I imagined the franchise possibilities such as Hey! Pizza, Hey! Can Of Tuna, Hey! Dogmeat. Well, it got my attention if that was the goal. Today I went around Bangkok looking for a long-term place to stay. I had a nice driver in a 1922 bright pink Toyota. Seatbelts had to be a suggestion because the latches for the seatbelts were stuffed so far down the back seat they were probably in the trunk. I’m not sure it mattered since traffic doesn’t allow speeds in excess of 3 mph. I was capably driven by Bob, or Mr. Bob when there was a need for more formality. Bob’s English is quite good and he told me a great deal about the country from his perspective. He’s older and still a very devout follower of the King, but it’s the younger generation who aren’t as enamored and can’t find much in the way of suitable employment. It’s a country in transition in a section of the world undergoing strains in its old social fabric. For example, my hotel uses a metal detector for any car dropping off guests; something that was also done four years ago when my family traveled to Phuket. I asked Bob how often bombs were under taxis to necessitate such an additional security measure. Bob just said, “Often.” Next on my to do list is to find a metal detector of my own, which will give me the added benefit of using it on the beach back home. I’ll bet I can find many interesting items while wearing shorts and black socks and a funny hat. I’m sure there’s more to tell and bore you all with. I’ll write more when the mood strikes. I didn’t zero in on a longer-term place to stay, but I ruled out some places. They may be only a few miles from my client, but Bob estimates the drive time to be about an hour in the morning and the same for rush hour in the early evening. Plus there’s no Pizza Hut nearby!

Why I Love The Irish

A few months back I was visiting my Old Drunk Irish Partner who now works with the EU Commission in Brussels. Naturally we met for lunch at an Irish pub in this very French area of the country. The restaurant served some of the most ghoulish dishes one associates with Irish cuisine: meat pie, meat with fries, Guinness soaked meat, meat stew and some kind of a meat drink to wash it all down. Wait, that was more Guinness, not meat.

I used to introduce my ODIP with the phrase, “This is my ODIP, there is really no excuse for him." And, or course there’s not, other than he’s a delightful and bright guy with little to no social skills. Some days you’d say he looks like Drew Carey, other days you’d insist he’s a dead ringer for Shrek. He was dieting that day so he decided to skip the salad to avoid the extra calories and to give him more room for a hunk of meat piled high on fries, which, in Belgium, come with mayonnaise. I had a sense of pride when he fought off requests for dessert.

For all the lousy things I say about my ODIP, the larger truth is he is one of my best friends and one of the biggest reasons I learned to love the Irish and Ireland.

The first day I met him was as interesting a day as one could have. He was asked to work with me by a Danish company and I don’t think he really wanted the help, although he was too interested in meeting this git from the U.S. to say anything about it. He met me at my hotel and said he wanted to show me around town. Indirectly we were working for the Taoiseach (prime minister). At the time, that was Bertie Ahern.

We walked down Merrion Street toward the government buildings when we ran across a short, mostly bald man whose remaining hair was white as snow and flapping about in the wind. My ODIP began to chat it up with the nice fellow. I was introduced, although when sober my ODIP talks like he has marbles in his mouth so I didn’t catch the name of the person we were meeting. When he’s drunk, he’s much easier to understand. After we left the nice man I told my ODIP I didn’t know who we had just met. “Bullocks, that's the Taoiseach, you pelican,” he said.

Because I was more interested in going to Ireland than catching up on local politics, I figured Bertie Ahern was a motherly leader of the island nation. She wasn’t a she but the guy I had just met walking alone down a busy street.

So I said to my ODIP, “Why is the Taoiseach walking around without bodyguards"

“Why on earth would he need one of them?” he asked.

“Never mind,” I said, and began to like Ireland and the Irish even more.

While Bill Clinton was president, one of his first official visits was with the Taoiseach at the time, Charles Haughey. Clinton, wanting to show his determination for peace in other countries and act like he had the international stuff down, decided to lecture Haughey on the runaway violence in his country. Haughey simply told Clinton that Ireland registered only 38 murders the year before and asked the new, brash president, how many murders were committed in Washington, DC the year before. Clinton responded, “Let me introduce you to George Mitchell.” More reason to love the Irish and Ireland.

Later that night, my ODIP met me at the beautiful and historic Merrion Hotel where I was staying. It may be old and historic, but it’s not exactly the heart of where all the fun is happening in Dublin. Just the same, he suggested we have a drink in the hotel bar – not the last such offer I’d have that night by a long shot. My ODIP ordered a gin and tonic, and then another and another still while I nursed a pint of Guinness. He looked around and said, “For fuck sake, nobody’s in the bar, let’s go get us to a proper bar.”

I pointed to an old drunk man, face down on his table in the back of the bar and told my ODIP were weren’t exactly alone. My ODIP explained, “Oh, him. He always comes around here on the weekend to pick a fight with the tourists. That’s Van Morrison and he’s a terrible fighter, especially when he’s pissed. I’ll finish your beer and let’s go." More reason to love Ireland and the Irish.

We went to a wine bar where we met up with a colleague. I think he and his friend believed I would find a wine bar more up to my prissy American standards. They ordered three bottles of wine, not exactly meant to be doled out proportionately. I may have had one and a half glasses before the bottles were empty and it was time to head to the local political hangout on the Temple Bar. On the way there I noticed guardrails along the sidewalk. “What are these for?” I asked. My ODIP said, “It’s for the drunks to keep from falling in the streets and into the drunk drivers. Mind the vomit…” Another reason to love Ireland and the Irish.

When we got to the political hangout, I was quickly introduced to 1,000 Irish politicos packed into space for 35 Irish politicos. My back was slapped a lot and I heard, “So you’re from America, you are,” a few thousand times. I also was asked if I wanted another beer equally as often, as it was puzzling to the locals that I was still on my first beer.

I decided to try my hand at some humor to my new 1,000 well-quenched friends. I mentioned I was a direct descendent of Oliver Cromwell. “Oh, no, don’t say that, mate,” one of my occupiers of the same square inch warned. “Not a good idea to say that here, you may get a good talking too,” another said. So I guess an admission that one of my relatives brutally reigned over the Irish on behalf of the British Crown some 350 years earlier was in bad taste. Despite the fact I brought up a name of a man who attempted to cleanse the Irish Island of the Irish, I was just told to think of a better way to open a conversation. By now I’m sure you love the Irish, too.

While I was there the country was consumed with the Gaelic Football championship, more super than our Super Bowl. As a consequence there was no available hotel space in the entire country for that weekend. I decided to take advantage of the lodging shortage and take a train up to Northern Ireland whose inhabitants could care less about Gaelic Football Championships.

The first thing you note heading north is the plush landscape, so tiresomely pretty, so unrelentingly restful to the eyes that it may be the most beautiful place on the planet. It’s so lush and trim, you’d swear it was plotted out in fairways by Robert Trent Jones. I went through areas that my travel book warned me were too dangerous to venture outside the train stations. During the long, winding trip on tracks that were not designed for jotting notes on a pad of paper and pencil less you were designing Rorschah Tests, I read up on how the British came to claim this land.

It turns out that Diaruid MacMurrough, King of Leinster, ran off with the comely wife of Tighernan O’Rourke, Prince of Breffni in 1152. O’Rourke raised such a stink (and an army) that MacMurrough had to call King Henry II of England for help. The Brits arrived, somewhat tardily, in 1169 and proceeded to commit unforgiveable sins on the Irish. For the next 830 years (and still counting) the English stole land, crushed rebellions, exploited the populace, persecuted Catholics, dragged a bunch of Scottish settlers into Ulster, crushed rebellions of the Scottish settlers, held potato famines, hanged patriots, stamped out the language, taxed everybody’s pig and generally behaved in a manner much different than the Irish would have if it had been the Irish who invaded England and the shoe was on the other foot (assuming the Irish could afford shoes).

By the time I arrived at the main train station in Belfast I had read enough that I figured I would be pointed out as a Brit and taken to a nearby bucolic field and beaten with a blunt object, such as my captors' sense of humor. I decided to have a stiff drink to get the right wobble down so the natives would think I was one of them.

I hailed a taxi to take me around town. My dirvier's name was Dickie and I’ll never know if he was Catholic or Protestant or somewhere in between. I just know he was able to safely drive a taxi around the Falls Road ghetto and down Shankhill Road. Dickie first pointed out Cave Hill, which rises above Belfast like Sugar Loaf Mountain above Ipanema Beach. “Some say Belfast is an Hibernian Rio.” Maybe so, but I don’t think I’d want to see an Irish woman walking around in a string bikini. He drove me by tall Flats, high rise housing built in the Sixties when city planners hadn’t yet learned it’s a bad idea to stack poor people who drink.

As in all the world’s poor places, there were plenty of idle young men with tattoos and beer. Dickie informed me the unemployment rate was “125 percent.” But there was still a pleasantness about these slums. Young boys were out playing soccer, all the windows had freshly picked flowers in the neatly attached flower boxes above the perfectly maintained brick buildings. “You Irish have a lot to learn about slums,” I said. “Where’s your incoherent rage? Your homeless living in Hefty bags? In the slums in America you could be mugged a dozen times before lunch on a good day.”

“Well you wouldn’t want to leave your car unlocked around here,” Dickie said defensively. “Not with your suitcase and computer in here, I can tell you."

Dickie took me to the famous Avenue Bar, which had been the scene of numerous partisan attacks, including a Protestant walking in and wildly firing an AK-47 into the crowded bar a few years earlier. “A spray job,” Dickie called it. He told me to go in and he’d wait for me. “It’s a big tourist stop,” he added in a comforting manner. The moment I walked in I was identified as an American. The bar, I found out, had also been bombed in 1976 and 1983 along with the 1988 attack. I was surprised it was still open and barely a seat could be found. I was told the day after the 1988 shooting the bar was jammed.

As soon as I sat down a man moved to my side and said, “You’re American, you are,” and handed me a pint of beer. He was friendly and wanted to talk to me about political economy, international law and theoretical analysis of Irish history since the Battle of the Boyne. I just wanted to know if the food was any good. “It’s shit, it is,” he said, “But the talk is what you come in here for.”

I asked him about the shootings and if he was there or would tell me about it. “No, no, it was too dreadful to speak about. The way the Protestant animals came in the front door just there,” he pointed. “They were looking normal as the day and one pulls out an AK-47 from beneath his long coat and shoots up this corner here where Damien Devlin and Paul McBride died, and then he shoots down the length of the bar this way, killing poor Stephen McGaghan and bullets going right into the women’s loo – if there had been anyone there, they’d have died certain."

I guess he really didn't mind talking about it and the conversation drew a bit of a crowd, all with huge glass mugs of beer. They all nodded their heads in agreement with my new friend. “You were there that day?”

“I’m always here on Friday. I thought I was dead, I did. I said a Hail Mary and jumped over the bar for my life.”

We talked further about the reasons for the years of partisan battle. He referred to the 300-year-old civil war in the country as the “Troubles” and said it was all the fault of unemployment and the “boyos” out shooting and bombing each other. The Troubles. An interesting and pleasant way to call a three-century bloody war.

Do you see why I like Ireland and the Irish?

She Put A Little Love In Our Hearts

The idea of family has always been an interesting subject. From the family you come from, to the family you bring into the world, to the family that that family builds, you get a pretty big tree with pretty big branches and a mess of twigs. With each of those branches come a number of different personalities, temperaments, talents, goals, and the occasional arrest warrant. Though we’re all stuck in this grand grouping through what can only be assumed is a science experiment conducted by God, we find a way to make it all work and get along.

I’ve been blessed with the greatest of extended families I could have ever hoped for. From my grandparents, to my parents, to their siblings, to my siblings, to my cousins, to my children and, now, to their children, I couldn’t have drawn up a nicer looking tree. Sure, there has been the odd outlier among my broader brood, but even they have their charms.

This brings me to the biggest news and is something of a buried lead. The Boy and The Ber made a grandfather out of me on December 29 at 9:38 a.m. Little Livy added a bud to the Laz family tree and it’s already so easy to see she will bloom into the prettiest of flowers. Theologians and other weighty thinkers have long wondered if babies float in some kind of heaven and wait to be plucked down and given to the next family in line, or if the baby’s soul makes a conscious decision to join the family of its choice. I lean toward the latter; even more so since Livy decided to join the clan.

It’s difficult to explain, but one gets the feeling that we’ve met before and there’s an instantaneous and wonderful connection. When the boy looked into her eyes -- not for the first time, but for the first time following the stress of birth -- the two paired and they both understood this was a lifelong deal they had just made. Together, with no strings attached. How blessed I was to be able to see that. When she decided she had enough stimulation in her first hours of life, she nestled into The Ber’s arms, put her head on her tiny hands and looked as comfortable and safe as one could imagine. The Ber was born to give comfort to such a small thing that already had jumped in a big way into all our hearts.

When The Boy was born, I had this instant connection and knew the world would forever revolve around him. When The Girl made headlines she was going to turn a three-person family into four, I was really worried. It was impossible for me to believe I had any room left in my heart for a new arrival. I honestly thought The Boy had soaked up all the love I had to give. However, the moment The Girl made her arrival I knew. Love is not a finite thing. If you have more to love, your capacity to love grows equally. What a great gift from the manufacturer of the human body! If we need more love, we get an extra tank in our heart to love even more.

And so it comes to Livy. She doesn’t take an ounce of love away from anyone. Besides the special gift she brings all bundled up in her onesie, she added an extra tank in the hearts of the new papa and momma, Rexi, Grandma GG, Auntie Em, Nonna Jo, Grandpa Dan, a few dozen other twigs on the branch and, especially, to the one who puts his words and his heart out on this blog from time to time. Thank you Livy for blessing us all with your arrival and, no, you can’t borrow my car when you turn 16.

Arab Spring, Russian Winter and The Politics of Revolution

Whenever journalists and activists for democratic change get together to name a movement, it’s time to hunker down in the tall grass. In 2004 we had the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, which had been preceded by the Rose Revolution in Georgia, the Bulldozer Revolution in Serbia, and even the Yellow Revolution in the Philippines and later the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon.

While the U.S. had a dirty hand in all of the above, none worked out well for our foreign policy. In Ukraine, more than $160 million of your taxes was spent to overturn a flawed, but accurate, election only to produce a lazy, incompetent leader for the sole reason of tweaking the Russians. In Georgia, it was much the same thing. Foreign policy leaders and the NGO community pushed out an old Soviet foreign minister who had been very helpful in reaching Détente with the U.S. at the height of the Cold War in order to install an American-educated, but deeply-imperfect leader. Our man in Georgia ended up being more autocratic than any Soviet leader and nearly caused WWIII in 2008 when he decided to take bazooka shots at the Russians.

In Lebanon, following the assassination of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, U.S. policy wonks were giddy because of public uprisings aimed at pushing out the Syrian army and removing the influence Syria had on Lebanese affairs. Free elections and the removal of Syrian troops were called for during months of protests. Ultimately, the troops left and Lebanon got the free elections they demanded. For all their trouble, Syrians, through their surrogates in Hezbollah, killed a bunch of people (targeting Christians) and Hezbollah became the leading elected force which now controls Lebanon with the (ironic) military support of Syria and Iran. This hasn’t been a good thing for America, Israel and least of all the Lebanese people.

Early in the year, protests that began in Tunisia to oust an unpopular leadership led to what was been dubbed the Arab Spring. Uprisings moved to Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Syria. Three of the uprisings, Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, have led to a change in government from either an ally of the U.S. or at least a benign leader, to countries now run by the Muslim Brotherhood, one of the oldest anti-West, pro Sharia Law movements in the Middle East. As awful as the dictators ousted during the uprisings were (including the murder of one leader), they will seem like Laissez-Faire governments compared to the rules that will be laid down once Sharia Law goes into full affect. As for the stability of the region, Egypt was the only country sharing a border with Israel that demonstrated a modicum of respect for its simple existence. Lebanon once did before Hezbollah took control and now it’s a launching pad for hundreds of mortar rockets into Israel.

The Syrian army has butchered Syria’s revolutionaries and organizers have been rounded up by Syrian intelligence services, never to be heard from again. Despite strongly worded demands by the U.S., Europe and the New York Times, Syrian President al-Assad has opted to stay in power. I guess strongly worded statements don’t carry the same clout they once did.

And now to Russia and, with this, the pissing off of many of my friends who either live there or work there. Rallies have been held around the country to protest the obviously fixed elections by the Putin-led government. It’s been dubbed the Russian Winter since any revolutionary movement needs a name.

Most insiders think Putin’s United Russia party received just 30% of the vote instead of the offically reported 50%. But the same insiders, along with the pundits and reporters, never mention whom the votes were stolen from. Most would assume votes were siphoned from well-intentioned, democratic-minded candidates. That side of the fence wasn’t even on the ballot due to earlier election fraud and there’s no telling how they would have done had they been represented on the ballot.

The true losers due to vote theft were socialists, Communists and hardline nationalists. This group represents voters who believe Putin doesn’t show enough Stalinist traits, to others who want him to head to the Caucuses and purge a million or so minorities, and still more who just feel Russia needs to move back to Five Year Plans and the Workers’ Paradise. As much as official U.S. policy wants to continue sticking a thumb in Putin’s eye, I think most would agree his government of kleptomaniacs is preferable to the government programs that impoverished nearly a million people at the height of the Cold War.

I know the true democrats in Russia well and I would have been out protesting at their side if I thought it would do any good. These guys are modern thinkers; practical and not into being elected for the purpose of taking 5% off the top for every barrel of oil Russia sells. But they are a true minority who often find difficulty agreeing on a coherent message among themselves. And, in order to march in the protests, I would need to brush shoulders with Bolsheviks (carrying Bolshevik flags that the eagle eyes in the media don’t seem to notice) and ultra-nationalists (carrying three-legged Nazi flags that the eagle eyes in the media don’t seem to notice) and I’d be standing with very few of the democrats because most of them were already in jail.

Don’t get me wrong (especially you Russians). There is need for a change in Russia. But it is change of the organic type that happens over years of disappointment with the current regime and even a change in generations. History hasn’t produced happy results through brute force for change, particularly recent history as I adroitly point out in the magnificent piece. And it certainly hasn’t produced good results that have been helpful for American interests around the world.

It’s far better for our policy makers to keep an eye on the mess that’s stinking up our own country, support our allies as best we can, continue to trade with countries that may not be friendly, but there is a strategic value engaging in trade (or we owe them trillions of dollars). It would be far more prudent to end the foreign policy that an enemy of my enemy is a friend of mine and stay directly and indirectly out of the radical change that this year has brought. Although if the Tea Party wants to start something over here, well ……

Back At It?

It’s been quite a while since I posted something on this blog and perhaps longer since I wanted to write about anything in particular. It’s not so much a writer’s block or even a lack of material; just more a lack of inertia in searching for the right words to go whirling off my keyboard until they slam into the correct punctuation marks.

Better still, I’m just stuck.

Oh, I have half written posts about a travel incident in Ireland nearly 10 years ago, a few rants about our overwhelmed president doing an underwhelming job, and even a post about finding liberation through speaking the truth. None of them gave me the willingness to share them with what I’m sure is a dwindling audience (maybe this one will never see the light of day either).

The driving force behind this post has less to do about an interesting subject and more to do with attempting to get my groove back so I can sit down and finally finish my damn novel. Along the lines of Seinfeld and the modern-day version of the show, It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, you could say, without contradiction, this post is about nothing. Now I just need to make nothing look interesting.

More than a year ago, I spent a few hours with one of the best book editors in the business. A novelist herself with a half dozen books published, she is taking time away from a hectic travel schedule promoting her novels in favor of an editing job and a steady paycheck. The purpose of the meeting was to see if she could find an editor to help me finish my book. In the end, she agreed to be that editor. I was surprised and honored she would be willing to do so and I set about to get her my jumbled mess of 420 loosely intertwined pages.

Before I packaged them up, I began to read portions of my novel and thought to myself, Well, I can’t send her this page or this page or this chapter and this chapter. In the end, I talked myself out of sending her a single page and told her my novel needed more work before it was ready for her. I’m sure she knew what that meant in writer-speak – I wasn’t about to let go of an imperfect manuscript, especially to someone who knew a thing or two about not letting go of imperfect manuscripts. I told her I would work out a few kinks and get it to her shortly. Well, that didn’t happen, as I’m sure she knew.

I don’t know what event caused me to pick up my novel again, or even when it was. Maybe it was an unseen force putting my fingers back on the keyboard and my mind back on track or a bit more time on my hands, but I’ve been re-working my novel and hope to have it ready for her to edit by the end of the year (if she’ll take it). I never set out to write a top-selling novel. I merely wanted to write a beginning, middle and end that I could be happy with and maybe share it with people close to me. If it made them happy, that would be enough.

Throughout my life I’ve had a completion problem, so this slog of finishing my novel has become, paradoxically, my epic Old Man And The Sea battle. Finishing it is the only goal now. Yeah, finishing it would make me happy….