Going to Alaska

(This is the answer to the question people keep asking: “Why are you going to Alaska in February?”)

I almost like the music better than the pictures!

And speaking of both, if SOPA were to pass, could the government shut down not only this modest blog, but all of WordPress? Ron Paul, I think I need you!

Frank Wild’s Funeral

When Mitt Romney came to town

Never thought I’d put up an ad paid for by a superPac, much less a Gingrich superPac, but this just says it all. I worked for a company where the new CEO and his consultants cut to the bone, leaving a house of cards and ruined lives behind as they walked away with millions. And that was just a Fortune 100 company. I can’t imagine what would be left of a whole country if a Bain consultant got put in charge.

So many penguins

On our way to Antarctica, we went to a funeral

Ernest Shackleton, in addition to rescuing his crew by sailing 800 miles across the Drake Passage and scaling mountains of glaciers on South Georgia Island, had a very wide part in his hair.

This, oddly, was the first thing I noticed when I met his granddaughter, Alexandra, on board our ship.

I could hardly believe it, that first night, when I found out what a historic voyage this was. We had on board not only Shackleton’s granddaughter, but the ashes of Frank Wild, his right-hand man; Angie Butler, the journalist who found the ashes in South Africa; Wild’s nieces and nephews from Australia; and a documentary crew from the BBC covering the whole event.

Some background: Frank Wild, who actually had more Antarctic experience than Shackleton, died obscurely in South Africa in 1939. According to his widow, he’d always wanted to be buried next to Shackleton in the Grytvicken whalers’ cemetery on South Georgia Island – but his ashes were lost.

Angie Butler found them, wrote a book about him, and planned this voyage to return him to “The Boss.” We picked up a minister and a tombstone in the Falkland Islands, and we all went to the funeral service in Grytiviken – the now-abandoned whaling town.

The ashes, the minister, and the BBC went too.

Then, flanked by growling seals, we all processed to the cemetery.

Now he’s there, in his proper place …

and we hadn’t even made it to Antarctica yet!

Why I am going to Antarctica

I have been thinking about courage. If I’d been on those airplanes, for example, would I have been among those who rushed the cockpit on Flight 93, or tackled the underpants and shoe bombers? If I’d been in that locker room, and saw a man raping a 10 year old boy, would I have intervened?

I can’t think of very many times when courage was called for in my life. Once, in my business partner’s private plane on our way to a meeting, we lost all electrical power, meaning we (he) could no longer navigate. The traffic controller guided us to the nearest airport for an emergency landing, and everything was fine. All I can say for myself is that I became preternaturally calm – but there was really nothing for me to do, other than not panic.

Sometimes in stores I see people yelling at their kids; I may have even seen a slap. I’ve never intervened.

But in that locker room? I have to think I would have done something. Screamed, at the very least. Not been calm. Not have called my father; not have gone home.

All of this is to explain why I am going to Antarctica tomorrow. I want to see the sites where, to my mind at least, one of the greatest acts of courage ever took place. Ernest Shackleton’s incredible voyage. I want to see the Weddell Sea, where the Endurance was stuck in the ice from January, 1915, until it sunk the following November. I want to see, if only for one night, what it’s like to camp on the ice, the ice that Shackleton’s crew camped on for two months after their ship was lost; then trudged over, dragging their three boats on sledges, till they could go no farther and had to camp again, at “Patience Camp,” for another four months.

I want to see Elephant Island, the first solid land for those 28 men in 17 months, where Shackleton left his crew and rowed and sailed, in a little wooden boat, 800 miles to seek rescue. I want to experience the Drake Passage, the roughest body of water in the world, which he and his little crew of five endured, coated with ice, for 17 days. I want to walk on South Georgia Island where they landed, where they marched for 36 hours, climbed the mountains and slid down the other side, finally reaching Stromness Whaling Station.

Four boats later (the first three got stuck in the ice), Shackleton arrived back at Elephant Island. All 22 men, who had lived there for five months, were rescued.

Shackleton died six years later at Grytviken, on South Georgia Island. I want to visit his grave.

The happy life of a majority inspector

There’s nothing like a 12 hour day sitting behind a table in a very hot small gym at my kids’ former elementary school to make me fall in love with my life. I’m thankful that, until next May’s primary, I don’t have to get up at 5:15 in the cold dark to open up voting machines and post sample ballots and move tables and chairs. I’m thankful that I no longer have to write down voters’ names and more voters’ names and yet more voters’ names in two little books, when 20 minutes’ passing seems like an hour. I’m thankful that the sad stories we heard from some people yesterday haven’t happened to me (though there are a few happy ones I wouldn’t mind having).

I’m thankful that the woman who says the same things every year, making bad puns on people’s names or asking the married guys if they’re brothers, wasn’t there; and I’m thankful as well for our supremely competent Judge of Elections, who likes things to move as fast as I do. But all in all, I’m just so pleased not to be still there. I can take a walk on a beautiful day, or rake leaves, or go to yoga, or do nothing at all.

But it also makes me feel as if (as if?) I’m getting old. For 20 years I sat at long tables in hot conference rooms in meetings about brands of toilet paper that don’t exist anymore (or that Kimberly Clark has downsized), and then for another 10 I sat in workshops in hot hotel conference rooms saying the same things week after week, watching people realize they could change their lives but not their organizations (because organizations have no more loyalty to their people than Kimberly Clark did to our brands).

At least, as Obama has famously told Republicans, “elections have consequences.” Meetings about ScotTissue, or personal mastery workshops … not so much.

So: two days a year? I think I can handle it – and be thankful for the perspective.

Fat Cats

I had a hard time finding a job only once in my life, but I still remember that feeling of desperation. We were living in Germany; Chip was making around $300 a month as an Army enlisted man, and we were living “on the economy,” as it was called.

I’d worked every summer since I was 17. When I graduated from college I got a job doing research for a psychoanalyst, which I held till Chip (who’d been forced to enlist or be drafted) got orders for Heidelberg. I’d saved up some money, but in Germany it was disappearing fast. Finally, I found one job answering a very shady so-called travel agent’s phone (for a dollar an hour), and then another transcribing grades for the University of Maryland’s Overseas Division.

Back in the States, I worked again for the psychoanalyst while Chip was in Vietnam, and then found a much higher-paying job through a friend at Scott Paper (even though I had to look up the definition of the job I’d be doing – marketing research – in a book). Eventually I migrated into Marketing, and then (after a 20-year career at Scott) started my organizational change consulting firm, which brought in a lot of business even though it didn’t change many organizations.

All of which is to say, we Baby Boomers had it easy. Our demographic bulge shaped society in our own interest. Our sixties protests seemed to work: the war ended; Nixon resigned; colleges reformed their curricula. Jobs just weren’t that hard to find – the “silent generation” cohort wasn’t all that large, and its women tended to stay home. Retirement accounts were invented, the stock market boomed, and arcane financial instruments were devised to make us even richer. And now? Guess what – we’re retiring, and everyone’s afraid to take our Medicare and Social Security away.

What happened to our idealistic generation? We lost our way, maybe because we got everything we wanted. We forgot about everyone but ourselves. We became fat cats.

As I look back upon my lucky life I’m glad I had that experience in Germany. I can understand what those ragtag Occupiers are feeling; understand their anger at us. Let’s just hope they’re more successful in their idealism than we were.

First we take Manhattan

I’d forgotten all about this prescient song till it was the first up on my iPod today(thanks again, Steve). I could listen to Leonard Cohen all day long – I heard him at the Academy of Music a few years ago where he performed just after this London concert (on tour to pay off his debts, appropriately enough). Best concert I’ve ever been to.

My son lives on Wall Street, right near the bull, and so I first heard about the Occupy Wall Street protests about a month ago when, he told me, a policeman stopped him and asked for proof he really lived there. (He only lives there; doesn’t work there – he’s not that kind of guy.) His license has his old Brooklyn address, so ever since then he’s had to carry his lease around in his pocket to get back in his building.

They want to occupy Wall Street, he said, but they weren’t getting very far. And the drums were scaring the horses and the horses were pooping all in front of his building and generally it was a real pain. Lots of weird characters and homeless people and drunks and demands that weren’t all that clear; and he was getting really sick of carrying his lease around.

I think it’s great, I told him. I’ve been wondering (ever since 2000, actually) where all the outrage is. I missed the protest movements of the sixties – graduating from college just a year too early; living overseas in the military while kids here demonstrated against the war my husband was forced to join (or cut off a toe or go to Canada, options we actually considered).

When Bush invaded Iraq people protested, but no one paid much attention – or maybe the media just didn’t cover it, with all the flags and flag pins and preening patriotism we were subjected to.

Now, all of a sudden, people seem to be listening to this guy with the sign. And it’s spreading – to here in Philadelphia, and even to Berlin! But what’s it all about?

Money. The protesters don’t have enough of it because they don’t have jobs. Our political system is broken because there’s too much of it – and this goes for Democrats as well as Republicans, Obama just as much as all the Republican ciphers yelling at each other on stage last night. Everyone is beholden to someone: the more money, the more beholden.

How to fix this? It’s a lot harder than withdrawing from Vietnam. It’s as impenetrable to me as the lyrics of Leonard’s song:

They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
For trying to change the system from within
I’m coming now, I’m coming to reward them
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin

I’m guided by a signal in the heavens
I’m guided by this birthmark on my skin
I’m guided by the beauty of our weapons
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin

I’d really like to live beside you, baby
I love your body and your spirit and your clothes
But you see that line there moving through the station?
I told you, I told you, told you, I was one of those

Ah you loved me as a loser, but now you’re worried that I just might win
You know the way to stop me, but you don’t have the discipline
How many nights I prayed for this, to let my work begin
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin

I don’t like your fashion business mister
And I don’t like these drugs that keep you thin
I don’t like what happened to my sister
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin

I’d really like to live beside you, baby …

And I thank you for those items that you sent me
The monkey and the plywood violin
I’ve practiced every night, now I’m ready
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin

I am guided

Ah remember me, I used to live for music
Remember me, I brought your groceries in
Well it’s Father’s Day and everybody’s wounded
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin

But at least we’re done with the twenty years of boredom.

 

 

He lives on in our lives

Way too many things going on, and it’s weird how this shot conflates two of the big ones.

I always wanted to pronounce Steve Jobs’ name as in the Book of Job, which now seems fitting: it just doesn’t seem fair he’s not around anymore. Think of it: unless you’re a baby or a very old person, your life is different because of him. We hardly think about record players or even CD’s anymore; we walk around staring into little black screens that can also make calls and take pictures and find answers on the internet; we carry our whole computer world around in a slim black tablet. And it seems so strange that all these things live on, while he is gone.

I edit our hospice newsletter, and this month, just by serendipity, I included an excerpt from the commencement address Jobs gave at Stanford in 2005 – it’s the one, if you’ve listened to NPR today, you’ve heard them quote. I wonder if he thought about this part yesterday, when he was dying:

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

Lying there, maybe naked, at least he knew he’d followed his heart, made the big choices, and changed our lives.

Jobs said once that taking LSD was “one of the two or three most important things [he had] done in [his] life.” I’d like to think it helped him transition to wherever he is now; I’d actually really like to think he’s still here, still inventing and creating jobs; just invisible, behind the cloak.