28 April 2005
Tucson
How do some people sleep? Jack Nasser – who did a mediocre job of running Ford – and some cohorts have, apparently, ‘earned’ ten of millions of dollars in fees as Polaroid emerges from bankruptcy and is sold to a company in Minneapolis. Some 6000 retirees of the company who lost health benefits and their company retirement benefits each received $47.00. That’s right, $47.00. Let me write it out: forty-seven dollars.
What is going on here? What sort of a country do we live in when this kind of injustice is permitted? I saw an interview with one of the Polaroid retirees the other day, a gentleman of about 70. He was an electrical engineer. He retired with about $250,000 of his savings in Polaroid shares. His plan had been to play golf and, as he put it, have some fun. The value of the shares after the bankruptcy was nearly nothing.
He goes to the golf course every day now but, not to play; he has a job there, driving a mower. I hope that the golf course provides its employees health insurance but I doubt it!
28 April 2005
11 April 2005
10 April 2005 ...Haiku?
I.
There at the cove end,
Dreams rise, drift on smoke
A man sits idly
II.
Rusted, latched door
Corrugated metal wall
Grass grows on the stoop
III.
Air moves, leaf stirs
Thinly blossomed, buds break
Winter walks away.
In some woods near Lake of the Ozarks, I saw this nondescript corrugated metal building without a sign to indicate what it was for. On one end there was a door, infrequently used from the rust and grass that grew around it. A log lay just opposite the doorway. It was the sort of place that I'd have gone for a break to smoke, when I was a young man. I'd have sat there and puffed and reflected.
When I saw that door to that unmarked building today, it stirred the memory in me of working mornings in the south when my break would be a reflective smoke somewhere in a quiet piece of shade. I don't smoke any more and sometimes I wonder if I also don't do less of those other two things, sitting and thinking.
The memory gave birth to these three connected Haikus. Of course, I had to call my 14 year-old a couple of times with help on syllables and lines. She becomes a sort of co-author but is not responsible (and had better never even think about this sort of crutch for sitting and reflecting).
There at the cove end,
Dreams rise, drift on smoke
A man sits idly
II.
Rusted, latched door
Corrugated metal wall
Grass grows on the stoop
III.
Air moves, leaf stirs
Thinly blossomed, buds break
Winter walks away.
In some woods near Lake of the Ozarks, I saw this nondescript corrugated metal building without a sign to indicate what it was for. On one end there was a door, infrequently used from the rust and grass that grew around it. A log lay just opposite the doorway. It was the sort of place that I'd have gone for a break to smoke, when I was a young man. I'd have sat there and puffed and reflected.
When I saw that door to that unmarked building today, it stirred the memory in me of working mornings in the south when my break would be a reflective smoke somewhere in a quiet piece of shade. I don't smoke any more and sometimes I wonder if I also don't do less of those other two things, sitting and thinking.
The memory gave birth to these three connected Haikus. Of course, I had to call my 14 year-old a couple of times with help on syllables and lines. She becomes a sort of co-author but is not responsible (and had better never even think about this sort of crutch for sitting and reflecting).
10 April 2005 Sunday, Lake of the Ozarks
I’ve been reading this weird novel called ‘Dance Dance Dance’ by Haruki Murakami. Post modernist, I guess. Strangely imagined. He’s in such a hurry to spill it out that there are lapses. One of the reviews said that he takes risks. I think so. I also think his translator doesn’t quite do him justice but, then, what do I know? I can’t read the original. For me, I can only imagine what that’s about; maybe the original and the book I’m reading have no connection whatsoever? I once heard ‘translation’ described as ‘transcreation’ -- apt.
The book is about a lost character, a hack writer who shovels ‘cultural snow’, writes restaurant reviews; anything, really, that he can get. Wanders around, searching for a lost lover, meets a grade school buddy who has become a movie star and may, or may not, have murdered his lost lover. Falls in love with a hotel receptionist who has stumbled into his parallel world where a being dressed in a sheepskin head costume lives in a tawdry room at the end of a pitch black corridor and waits for our hero to drop in and have strange, Delphic conversations. Meantime, the hack writer meets a 13 year old girl, just moving onto the edges of womanhood, who has a sort of second sight, a huge amount of resentment towards the world and a fragile ego. They become friends, sharing a love of music and a need for companionship. It goes on. Like selecting the ‘visualizer’ for your computer’s music player, you get a set of images you can’t understand, that aren’t of anything but that draw you into them. I’m truly enjoying the contrast between the lapping waters of the morning lake, the rising sun, the heron that I startled when I first stepped onto the balcony, the squirrels bobbing up and down the oaks and this urban novel about a world where it is now evening. Did I mention that there’s also a minor character, a one-armed Vietnam veteran, fluent Japanese, writes poetry and is killed by a bus when he steps onto a road after going grocery shopping and looks the wrong way? Right book for this place, don’t know why.
And, now, I’ve finished it. Time to go for a walk – the morning sun is bright and the air is clear, later they say there is a chance of thunderstorms.
The book is about a lost character, a hack writer who shovels ‘cultural snow’, writes restaurant reviews; anything, really, that he can get. Wanders around, searching for a lost lover, meets a grade school buddy who has become a movie star and may, or may not, have murdered his lost lover. Falls in love with a hotel receptionist who has stumbled into his parallel world where a being dressed in a sheepskin head costume lives in a tawdry room at the end of a pitch black corridor and waits for our hero to drop in and have strange, Delphic conversations. Meantime, the hack writer meets a 13 year old girl, just moving onto the edges of womanhood, who has a sort of second sight, a huge amount of resentment towards the world and a fragile ego. They become friends, sharing a love of music and a need for companionship. It goes on. Like selecting the ‘visualizer’ for your computer’s music player, you get a set of images you can’t understand, that aren’t of anything but that draw you into them. I’m truly enjoying the contrast between the lapping waters of the morning lake, the rising sun, the heron that I startled when I first stepped onto the balcony, the squirrels bobbing up and down the oaks and this urban novel about a world where it is now evening. Did I mention that there’s also a minor character, a one-armed Vietnam veteran, fluent Japanese, writes poetry and is killed by a bus when he steps onto a road after going grocery shopping and looks the wrong way? Right book for this place, don’t know why.
And, now, I’ve finished it. Time to go for a walk – the morning sun is bright and the air is clear, later they say there is a chance of thunderstorms.
30 March 2005
I’m thinking back about 20 or 25 years now. Thailand.
This is not an anecdote about bar girls or the war. I was first there in Bangkok in the 1970’s, passing through on Pan Am 1 or 2 (whichever one it was that ran West from San Francisco and, so, actually ran from East to West, weird that!). The driver of the taxi-van into town bought some jasmine flowers from a kid at an intersection and gave them to the girl I was with. It was very late, Pan Am had a schedule that must have taken some time to develop. They managed to land at ungodly hours everywhere between Europe and Hong Kong. In a strange way I actually liked this: first meeting a new city at dawn. It’s always been a bit of a mess, Bangkok, but it makes progress and it’s people remain mostly graceful and tolerant, even through those sweaty nights and amidst those rank canals and polluted air and over-crowded streets,
Years later I was trying to manage a project to provide a flare for a distillery about 100 kilometers outside of Bangkok. I say I was ‘trying’ to manage it because I really didn’t have much of an idea about what we were really trying to do. You see, I’d never actually built what the customer wanted. In fact, I’d never really built anything. I was a Duke graduate with a degree in history, some foreign language fluency and a facility for bullshit. I was particularly adept at the latter because I had the capacity to believe my own bullshit. Years later I saw this talent at its most refined in former President Clinton – he simply believed completely in the ‘truth’ of what he was telling you at the moment he said it, even if it contradicted what he’d just said a few minutes before. I don’t think I ever got that good, perhaps if I had, I’d be in a different place.
Most of the time I stayed in Bangkok, the customer’s main offices were in the city as were those of the engineering company I hired to do the actual work of the installation. Also, my technical failings seemed less apparent – at least to me – the farther I actually was from the equipment we were supposed to be installing.
Sometimes I went out to the site. It was a liquor plant, about 60 miles away. There was a nearby town, small but, in the way of Asian towns, it probably had a population of 100,000.
I stayed at a hotel in the town. It was very cheap – about $12 for a room. Mine was air-conditioned. The bathroom was as big as the bedroom. It was only fitted with a shower; there was no curtain. After you washed you simply opened the door to the bedroom and let the cooler, less humid air-conditioning flow into dry the bathroom.
The first time I stayed there I dried myself with a large cotton towel I found folded on the bed. Later that evening, when I got back from a roadside dinner of rice, prawn curry and beer, I learned that the towel was actually the bed cover. There was only a bottom sheet. You were supposed to use the towel if you needed a cover. Hell, the place only cost $12 so you couldn’t complain.
About 7 next day I wandered around the early morning streets, me and the monks with begging bowls. I found a stall that was selling coffee that was sticky with sweetened, condensed milk. By clever use of sign languages I persuaded them to make me a black coffee – not much better, it was instant, but good enough. They had multiple uses for the condensed milk. Some of the thick, syrupy stuff was put onto a slice of bread and handed to me. I liked it and had two more. That was breakfast.
The Thais who worked on the project with me – I was the only foreigner – were exceedingly polite and discrete. It was clear to everyone very early on that I didn’t have the foggiest notion what we should be doing. I’d never built a flare in my life; certainly couldn’t recall a single of the many humanities and economics courses I’d taken at Duke that ever even mentioned flares or combustion. Still, with good will, smiles and patience, we got something erected. I would read the instructions that were sent with various technical pieces from our factory in Tulsa. The Thais would ask me to explain some of the words, I felt useful. They never got around to making fun of my ignorance. They just worked around me to get the job done. Neat.
One evening we finished the job and it was time to see if the flare worked. The role of the thing was clear, even to me. Some special bugs had been introduced into several tanks of mash (grain, sugar, other stuff). They little guys farted pretty frequently and a lot of methane gas was produced. The gas was piped from the tanks of mash to fire various burners that fueled the distilling process. When there was no need to fire the burners and there was too much methane to store, the excess was piped over to the flare, which was supposed to burn it off. Simple.
I have no idea what persuaded me to arrogate unto myself the honor of firing off the flare – which was to be done manually the first time. I guess I thought I should demonstrate some responsibility for the technology; I’ve thought about it and, whatever the reasons, they are buried in the mists of time. Anyway, it was early evening. The moon was already out. I went over to the ignition button at the base of the stack. Five or six of my Thai friends were crowded around me. I grabbed the wheel to open the valve that let gas into the stack. I opened it and, staring intently at the igniter about 3 or 4 feet below the top lip of the flare, began a quick countdown from the number 10.
I pressed the button, there was a tremendous, scary whoosh and then a beautiful, pure blue flame bloomed out of the top of the stack. Satisfied that I’d done something to restore myself in the eyes of the Thais, I turned around with a smile. There was no one there. As soon as I began the countdown, every faithless one of them had silently sprinted a safe distance away. And there they were, grinning and waving at me from about a hundred yards.
We had prawn curry, rice and way too much beer for dinner that night.
This is not an anecdote about bar girls or the war. I was first there in Bangkok in the 1970’s, passing through on Pan Am 1 or 2 (whichever one it was that ran West from San Francisco and, so, actually ran from East to West, weird that!). The driver of the taxi-van into town bought some jasmine flowers from a kid at an intersection and gave them to the girl I was with. It was very late, Pan Am had a schedule that must have taken some time to develop. They managed to land at ungodly hours everywhere between Europe and Hong Kong. In a strange way I actually liked this: first meeting a new city at dawn. It’s always been a bit of a mess, Bangkok, but it makes progress and it’s people remain mostly graceful and tolerant, even through those sweaty nights and amidst those rank canals and polluted air and over-crowded streets,
Years later I was trying to manage a project to provide a flare for a distillery about 100 kilometers outside of Bangkok. I say I was ‘trying’ to manage it because I really didn’t have much of an idea about what we were really trying to do. You see, I’d never actually built what the customer wanted. In fact, I’d never really built anything. I was a Duke graduate with a degree in history, some foreign language fluency and a facility for bullshit. I was particularly adept at the latter because I had the capacity to believe my own bullshit. Years later I saw this talent at its most refined in former President Clinton – he simply believed completely in the ‘truth’ of what he was telling you at the moment he said it, even if it contradicted what he’d just said a few minutes before. I don’t think I ever got that good, perhaps if I had, I’d be in a different place.
Most of the time I stayed in Bangkok, the customer’s main offices were in the city as were those of the engineering company I hired to do the actual work of the installation. Also, my technical failings seemed less apparent – at least to me – the farther I actually was from the equipment we were supposed to be installing.
Sometimes I went out to the site. It was a liquor plant, about 60 miles away. There was a nearby town, small but, in the way of Asian towns, it probably had a population of 100,000.
I stayed at a hotel in the town. It was very cheap – about $12 for a room. Mine was air-conditioned. The bathroom was as big as the bedroom. It was only fitted with a shower; there was no curtain. After you washed you simply opened the door to the bedroom and let the cooler, less humid air-conditioning flow into dry the bathroom.
The first time I stayed there I dried myself with a large cotton towel I found folded on the bed. Later that evening, when I got back from a roadside dinner of rice, prawn curry and beer, I learned that the towel was actually the bed cover. There was only a bottom sheet. You were supposed to use the towel if you needed a cover. Hell, the place only cost $12 so you couldn’t complain.
About 7 next day I wandered around the early morning streets, me and the monks with begging bowls. I found a stall that was selling coffee that was sticky with sweetened, condensed milk. By clever use of sign languages I persuaded them to make me a black coffee – not much better, it was instant, but good enough. They had multiple uses for the condensed milk. Some of the thick, syrupy stuff was put onto a slice of bread and handed to me. I liked it and had two more. That was breakfast.
The Thais who worked on the project with me – I was the only foreigner – were exceedingly polite and discrete. It was clear to everyone very early on that I didn’t have the foggiest notion what we should be doing. I’d never built a flare in my life; certainly couldn’t recall a single of the many humanities and economics courses I’d taken at Duke that ever even mentioned flares or combustion. Still, with good will, smiles and patience, we got something erected. I would read the instructions that were sent with various technical pieces from our factory in Tulsa. The Thais would ask me to explain some of the words, I felt useful. They never got around to making fun of my ignorance. They just worked around me to get the job done. Neat.
One evening we finished the job and it was time to see if the flare worked. The role of the thing was clear, even to me. Some special bugs had been introduced into several tanks of mash (grain, sugar, other stuff). They little guys farted pretty frequently and a lot of methane gas was produced. The gas was piped from the tanks of mash to fire various burners that fueled the distilling process. When there was no need to fire the burners and there was too much methane to store, the excess was piped over to the flare, which was supposed to burn it off. Simple.
I have no idea what persuaded me to arrogate unto myself the honor of firing off the flare – which was to be done manually the first time. I guess I thought I should demonstrate some responsibility for the technology; I’ve thought about it and, whatever the reasons, they are buried in the mists of time. Anyway, it was early evening. The moon was already out. I went over to the ignition button at the base of the stack. Five or six of my Thai friends were crowded around me. I grabbed the wheel to open the valve that let gas into the stack. I opened it and, staring intently at the igniter about 3 or 4 feet below the top lip of the flare, began a quick countdown from the number 10.
I pressed the button, there was a tremendous, scary whoosh and then a beautiful, pure blue flame bloomed out of the top of the stack. Satisfied that I’d done something to restore myself in the eyes of the Thais, I turned around with a smile. There was no one there. As soon as I began the countdown, every faithless one of them had silently sprinted a safe distance away. And there they were, grinning and waving at me from about a hundred yards.
We had prawn curry, rice and way too much beer for dinner that night.
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