Lost in the Black Forest

Okay, in the interests of full disclosure, I have to tell you that, as adventure stories go, this one is not the most thrilling you'll ever hear. The forest I was lost in was indeed in Germany, and it was "black" in that it consisted of a large amount of dense, dark fir trees which is what lends the authentic Black Forest its name. It was also black simply because the forest was foggy with mist that day.  But it was not really in the officially designated "Black Forest", which actually lies a little bit to the west and south of where I was lost.

And my being "lost", even, was a rather momentary thing, lacking in heart-pounding drama. From the low mountainside where I was hiking, walking downward would inevitably bring me to the Rhine River, and from there it would be pretty easy matter to walk downstream just a little, where the town of Heidelberg would be found, and where jumping a train at the haupfbohnhof, would very easily take me back to a warm hotel room in Frankfurt. This was not mortal danger I was in.

Still, this was the last adventure of a certain kind that I will have, and so it was worth savoring. There will be other adventures, to be sure, but this is the last one of  this particular ilk.

I was on my free day at the tail end of the enormous Frankfurt Book Fair—the most important trade fair of the entire publishing industry, in which tens of thousands of publishing professionals descend on the gigantic Messe convention center for a solid week of meetings and presentations. On the final free day of the trip, with the last of my scheduled meetings finished, I took the train down to Heidelberg to walk around a bit, first in the old town with its gingerbread architecture, then up onto the mountainside above the medieval castle there. Where I got momentarily lost. In a forest that was pretty black. Where I could indulge in a little mental exaggeration.

Over the years at various sales and publishing duties I've attended in representation of my company, I've frequently piggybacked a personal day, or several days,  to pursue some kind of mild adventure that otherwise would cost me my own out-of-pocket plane fare. I'm nothing if not careful with a buck, and if the job requires me to be some place in the world, dammit, I'm going to make sure to take the opportunity for some kind of little adventure, if possible.

Sometimes that adventure has been very, very modest indeed. Sometimes there's barely time for a drive around the countryside.  Some trips, it's no more than a short visit to some state park or museum I wouldn't otherwise see. Once, it was simply an afternoon hike in a stretch of old-growth forest in southern Kentucky, just after a book launch party for an author. But there have also been more impressive adventures.

I categorically hate Las Vegas and everything it stands for, but the unavoidable trade fairs that have brought me there over the years have allowed me to hike up Red Rock Canyon to Turtlehead peak, where the vistas over the shimmering desert give you sight-lines of 40 miles or so. Another Las Vegas trip saw me rent a car on the final day to drive a couple hundred miles around the desert, along the mysterious Area 51 Air Force test base, through Death Valley, and through the most beautiful prehistoric-looking desert I've ever seen, to the south of Vegas on the road to Henderson. On the best Vegas trip of all, I took three days before the trade show for a three day overnight backpack trip with one of our sales reps (the rare salesman who knows how to shut up) into Zion National Park, beginning in the beautiful sandstone canyons of the low park and ending up in the Ponderosa pines of the higher elevations, where fresh mountain lion tracks gave a certain thrill to camping that night. Fortunately, it was not until the last day that I barely avoided stepping on one of the plentiful rattlesnakes in the park, this one a six-footer with a body as thick as my bicep. Sleeping on the ground deep in the park would have been significantly more challenging if I'd been worried about snakes right from the beginning.

After the London Book Fair one year, I took a few days to head out to King Arthur country to hike, where I climbed the Tor at Glastonbury, wandered among prehistoric Celtic stone worship circles, drank cold water from sacred wells, and slept in a cottage where the owners had placed a large amethyst crystal under the bed for its "energetic properties"  (this was in a particularly "New Age" segment of my inner life).

Another year, I rented a car after the Frankfurt fair and raced down the autobahn and into Switzerland, where on a gorgeous autumn day I hiked well up the base of the Matterhorn from Zermatt, up to the point where I was thigh-high in snow and staring up at the peak itself lying 60 degrees or so above horizontal. The peak was so bright in the thin air that it was positively painful to look at. On the way back down, shaggy, brown-eyed cattle with large bells hanging around their necks stood patiently in high alpine meadows as I stroked their necks.

You might find it odd that I do most of these things solo—my wife, a textbook extravert, certainly does. But the fact is that I never feel so connected to something larger and more universal than myself than when alone with the natural world in some way. It is where I find the presence that some people call God.

Beyond the adventures where the job itself paid for the plane tickets, there were other adventures that the job itself and its modestly decent salary made possible: taking my young kids and wife to Paris and Rome, where my lasting memory is my eight-year old daughter with her head leaned back against my stomach as we both looked up at the Sistine Chapel ceiling in awe; trekking into the back country of Denali National Park with a friend Ive known since the age of four; taking a more sedate week-long whiskey-tasting tour of Scotland with that same friend many years later; having a most wonderful trip with my wife to southern France with another couple (yes, that same friend and his wife) to tour the deep caves where prehistoric humans created the first known art; taking the grown family again to London and Rome, this time with the kids as full adults and in company of their life partners.

Perhaps some of these things would have happened even if I'd worked in a garden center rather than as publisher, but certainly not all of them. It was the necessary work travel, along with a paycheck that exceeded the needs of mere survival, that made these things possible for me.

And so, finding myself quietly lost last week in a rather non-terrifying way on a mountainside 2,000 feet or so above the Rhine River Valley in central Germany was something to be savored. It took only 20 minutes or so of tromping down the hillside to pick up the trail, and shortly after that I came across direction arrows carved into a stone that told me where to go. And in a few weeks the business travel will be done and I'll be moving into doing part-time editorial work from the comfort of my home office rather than on airplanes and in hotel rooms. I'll be working half the hours and experiencing 10% of the stress, and the adventures then will be of a different type, requiring different planning and execution.

So I'm exceedingly thankful for the career I've had over the last 31 years, and for the relative good health that's allowed me to still do these things as the age of 60 approaches. Most Americans, especially those that enjoy a middle class life, are exceedingly lucky folks when stacked up against the rest of the world, and we really ought to reflect on that more often.

Today, I'm reflecting on precisely that.

Tales from Mid-level Management #1

When I first worked in a managerial role in the publishing industry, things were a lot more freewheeling. Political correctness had not yet been invented, and although I was quite on the proper side of how people in the business behaved back then,  it's almost certain that some of the things I did as a manager would haul me onto the carpet of today's HR directors.

It was about 1990, I think, when, Eva applied for a job I posted for a gardening editor in our small non-fiction publishing house. There were perhaps two dozen qualified applicants, and Eva was near the bottom of the list of  people I interviewed for the job.

"The first thing you should know about me," Eva said matter of factly as she entered my office that day, before she had even seated herself across from my desk, "is that I am HUGELY intelligent." She paused and studied me.  "Some people have trouble with that. I am far smarter than just about everyone, and they often resent me for it."

I studied her face. The confidence and arrogance was palpable and a little pathological, and it was already clear this interview would not lead anywhere. I've been known to end interviews within moments when it's clear that somebody doesn't fit, but I was a little fascinated by Eva. She was just  a little older than most of the candidates for this entry-level editing job, and while younger candidates are typically a little nervous and put on their best face by dressing up a little for an interview, Eva was dressed very plainly, almost defiantly so,  and exuded a confidence filled with a kind of pitying condescension.

 "I know you planned to give me a test on editing," she said.  "But this sample of my writing will explain who I am far better."  From a leather knapsack, Eva produced a  hand-bound volume, and held it up with both hands to show the title:  0 = 1.  She paused, leaned forward. "I've been working on this for seven years, so you must agree to nondisclosure. This is my copyrighted work, and it will very likely change the world some day. So you can expect legal action if you communicate any of this to anyone."

This was now getting distinctly interesting.

She then explained that this treatise did, in fact, prove that the numerical value "0" was exactly the same as the numerical value "1."  She had accomplished this feat of logic in a mere 380 pages. She handed the tome over.  "It will take you some time to understand this, so I won''t expect to hear from you for a week or so. You can give it back to me when I start work."

On the way out the door, she paused. "Supreme intelligence in a woman can be very hard for some people to deal with," she said. "Do you think you'll be able to manage me without.....resentment?"

I nodded thoughtfully. "That's perceptive of you. I'll be perfectly honest. There was a time when extremely intelligent women were a problem for me. But I've had a lot of therapy, and these days I rarely get aroused anymore. And when it does happen, it subsides pretty quickly. It's almost never a problem. "

There was just a moment when Eva's eyes narrowed with a hint of suspicion, but it was replaced with quick nod of agreement and dismissal,  and then Eva was gone.

Exactly one week later, almost to the minute,  Eva called back.  "I haven't heard from you. Perhaps you had difficulty understanding my treatise?"

"Not at all," I said. "But I did find that it was necessary for me to read it at home, to avoid embarrassment. "

"Of course," she said. "When would you like me to start work?"

I do not know exactly what came over me next, but I instantly had a flash on how to respond to her—a choice that in the years since has made me slightly ashamed when I recall the unwitting meanness of it. It hints at a dark talent in my soul that I'm not entirely happy is there.

"I have a bit of a problem," I said. "I have two candidates of absolutely equal abilities and qualifications, and I simply cannot decide. I also can't NOT decide. You, of all people, know exactly what I'm talking about.  So I've decided to allow a degree of randomness into the equation, much as you argue in 0 = 1."

"Excellent decision," she said, pleased. "And how will we proceed?"

I leaned forward in my desk chair so as to speak very clearly.  "At 5:00 on this coming Friday, I'd like you to return to our offices. My other candidate will be there, too, and I'll be lining you both up in the parking lot for a foot race, from one side of the parking lot to the other. The job goes to whoever wins."

There was long silence on the phone. "A....foot race?"  Eva said uncertainly, the first time I'd heard anything but neurotic confidence out of her.  "I....well, I'm not very fast...."

"Well, so be it then, I said. "But remember, you have no idea of the other candidate, either. It could be a dwarf with a bum leg, for all you know.  But as argued in your book, we will let uncertainty and randomness decide this for us."

Disappointingly for me, Eva never showed up again and never called back.  On the following Friday,  I ended up hiring Julia, who had been on a Division 1 Nordic ski-racing team in college. It was a very good hiring decision that I never regretted, especially since Julia also had an MA in horticulture. And I'd been quite sure she would have kicked ass in a 40 yard dash.

Citizens of 4f, Oct. 8, 2015

When and early meeting requires me to ride into downtown Minneapolis on an earlier-than-usual 4F bus, Maria is almost always riding. As I pass by her on the way to my seat—she invariably sits on the left side near the front—I'm always struck by both the similarities to my own daughter, as well as some perceived differences.

My daughter is in her mid 20s, roughly the same age that Maria appears to be. Like my daughter, Maria chooses to commute by bus, and I rather imagine that the reason is the same as for my daughter—she is young and and may not be able to own a car yet.  And like my daughter, Maria is decidedly NOT a morning person. More often than not, she is semi-snoozing in her seat, with her head resting against the window glass and her eyes closed.

I'm also struck by differences between my daughter and Maria—some  of which are obvious, some perceived. My daughter's blonde paleness makes it rather easy to guess that she's of Scandinavian descent. Maria is of Hispanic heritage; my guess is that her parents are from southern central America or northern South America.  Though I don't know for sure, something about her coloring and facial features makes me think she might be from Columbia or Peru.

The other perceived differences are admittedly the product of my imagination. My daughter, second child from a solidly middle class family, commutes to work in the mornings via bus in order to afford tuition in an MA program she attends at night. Her need for low-cost commuting is, I believe, quite temporary, and it will not be long before there will be enough affluence to allow her to own her own car and to enjoy a more comfortable life.  Maria invariably wears a blue uniform dress under her coat, and wears sturdy shoes with thick resilient soles.  I take this to identify her as a service worker in one of the downtown establishments, possibly a housekeeper at one of the hotels. I automatically assume her options are a little more limited than they are for my daughter.

And then, despite myself, I jump to further conclusions. I imagine Maria's family to be very recent immigrants from central or South America. They could be recently naturalized citizens, or documented non-citizens, or non-documented immigrants. The economy of Minnesota, like most states, depends on all classes of this labor force. In Minneapolis, a heavy proportion of the manual service labor force is recent Hispanic immigrants, and in the rural areas, they dominate the food canneries of the big food giants Del Monte and Green Giant, or the meat packing industries.

In my liberal, pro-labor stereotyping, I am naturally sympathetic to these workers. I see almost all of them as incredibly industrious, hard-working souls, who courageously have left their homes to seek work and a better future as strangers in a strange land. Progress toward the American dream will take generational time. Only three generations ago, my daughter's great-grandfather was a Norwegian immigrant farming a dirt-poor little dairy and pig farm in far northern Minnesota, and upward mobility for the clan was a step-by-step thing. The large influx of Vietnamese immigrants that came to Minnesota in the 1970s are only now making themselves felt in government and business.  It will be much the same for Maria, I imagine, though perhaps it will take even longer, given the current xenophobia of American culture. Will she be forced to follow the same labor pattern as her parents? In my mind I wonder if this will be her life—endlessly cleaning hotel rooms after pro athletes and visiting business people leave town.

But even while thinking this, I'm aware this is lazy liberal stereotyping on my part. I have utterly no way of knowing what Maria's life really is. She could be working a menial downtown job to pay for college. Or she might be changing buses in downtown to continue on to the University, where her uniform is the garb of her part-time food service job. At a gathering of family friends recently, the teenage daughter of  some close friend introduced us to a girlfriend of native American heritage. Having grown up near the big tribal reservations in southern Minnesota, I had an instant image of who this girl might be...and then learned that her father was an extremely successful businessman and that she was interviewing for admittance to Princeton and Columbia on the basis of SAT scores that bordered on perfection.

I can be quite guilty of liberal stereotyping, and although my hunch about Maria probably has a better chance of accuracy than Donald Trump's assumption that her family consists of rapists and thieves, my view is still a stereotype, and as such has no guarantee of being accurate in one particular case.

Today, things looked different on the early 4F bus. Maria was wide awake, and dressed much differently, with hair slightly curled, wearing makeup, dressed in smart business-like attire. And she was not in the least bit sleepy, but instead seemed a little nervous and jumpy. Perhaps headed for a job interview this morning.

I was tempted to talk to her, but I imagine that intrusion by a stranger would rather alarm her.  I do hope, though, that she soon gets to abandon the housekeeper's uniform and starts commuting in business attire every day.

Citizens of 4F, 9/28/15

In recent days I've found myself studying my fellow passengers on the 4F commuter bus even more closely. I'm a short-timer now, and my pattern of daily commutes into downtown Minneapolis will be done in a mere 12 weeks now. My view of my fellow commuters has become fond to a degree bordering on the sentimental, now that my time is finite. Of course, that time always was finite, but over the past few years I forgot that some of the time.

Taylor is a new passenger—or at least is one that I'm not familiar with. It's possible that she normally rides a later 4F bus; her jittery, nervous demeanor suggests that perhaps she's riding an earlier bus today because of some important work deadline. Taylor is in her late 20s, perhaps early 30s, and like most of her demographic she spends most of the bus trip twitting on her smart phone. But she's not fully engaged with her electronic security blanket today, because she frequently glances up to the sky or out the window, and has a clearly worried expression on her face.

She is dressed in a long white garment, kind of a shirt-dress, worn over black leggings, and has very high platform-shoes with thick heels. She wears a short tunic-like jacket made from patches of colorful, ragged cloth of different types; it's  jacket made entirely for style, not practical comfort or warmth, and I'm reminded of the costume jackets Michael Jackson once wore back in those videos.  Taylor's hair is oiled; deliberately and carefully tousled to look unkempt,  and the presentation as a whole was, I'm sure, very time-consuming to achieve.

Once upon a time, the look Taylor presents would have been judged haphazard and disheveled, but now, of course, this is a very stylish and sought-after look in some businesses, and I peg her as probably belonging to one of the downtown ad agencies or perhaps some kind of .com business, though these are much less common than ad agencies in our region.  In these businesses, such a personal style is just as much "uniform" as pin stripes and Oxford shoes are on Wall Street. Failing to look a little eccentric would earn these young professionals criticism in these environments. Young adults in these modern businesses don't have it easy. It must be very hard for them to all look completely unique in exactly the same way.

Taylor gets off at my stop at Hennepin and 5th St. in downtown, and walks just ahead of me on the same route I take to the office. She walks frantically fast, but her tall shoes dictate very short little steps, so the result is that she barely outpaces me at all, and loses all advantage when hitting the "don't walk" sign at the intersections. Waiting for the light to change, she fidgets nervously, moving her feet the way a pro quarterback does in the pocket when fearing defensive linemen about to smash into them.

For just a moment, I'm infected by her nervousness, beginning to feel agitated myself over what the work-day will bring in the form of contentious, pressure-filled meetings and phone calls and frantic emails asking me to decide things. Then I relax, remembering that in just a few weeks now, the stress of being a VP, albeit in a relatively small company, will be over. At the end of the year, I am voluntarily stepping down into a different role that will put me back in more immediate contact with book editing itself, a role that will allow me to work from home and avoid most of the tension and stress that in recent years has lifted my blood pressure and made for many nights where 3 or 4 hours of sleep were the norm.

Taylor anticipates the "walk" light and darts across the street ahead of me, again sacrificing speed and efficiency of movement to the style of her shoe wear. She walk with humming-bird frenzy up the street ahead of me, only barely gaining on my own now-leisurely pace. She darts into my own building, and I now have a pretty good idea of where she works.

 I reflect now on how work stress that I felt in months and years past, that Taylor clearly feels now, was always of self-created origin. The work world is one in which we're encouraged, even mandated, to take ourselves and our job duties with far more self-importance than they deserve. That's relatively easy to see now, in what is quickly becoming hind-sight for me. But I feel sorry for Taylor, as it's likely she faces decades of work at the same pace and level of stress she's showing now, barring some revelation on her part.

I turn the corner in the hallway of my building, and there's Taylor with the shuffling, dancing feet, impatiently waiting for the elevator to take her to the ad agency on the 6th and 7th floors of my building. I join her, punch the button for floor # 4, and upon leaving the elevator reflect on the irony that frantic living does not, in the final measure, put you any further ahead than a calm, reflective life.

A Punk is a Punk is a Punk

Today's multiple choice news quiz question:

Who is this guy?

A:  The student teacher for your granddaughter's high-school English literature class. In his comments on her written papers, he misspelled the words "foreshadow" and "ensure."

B. The guy who just registered in your neighborhood as a level-one sex offender, who now works at the Starbucks four blocks from your house. The fact that he memorized your name the very first time you ordered an iced coffee with skim, and now greets you by name every morning, is exceedingly disconcerting.

C. Martin Shkreli, hedge fund shark and CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals. After raising the price of the drug Daraprim (used to treat certain infections) from $13.00 to $750.00 per tablet, Shkreli backed away under criticism, then peevishly said his company would no longer be doing critical research into new medications. So there. Immediately afterwards, he grabbed his soccer ball and announced he wasn't playing with the other kids anymore.

Weekly News for Cynics

It's been rough couple of weeks for cynical greed in this country. Not that you can be shocked by this, ever—not if you're a citizen with even minimal consciousness—but the prominent stories in the last fortnight are enough to sober even the most hardened realist.

• A quiet side-bar story in the NYT observed that Nestle corporation, among others, has been flagged as a company that maintains a fishing fleet in Pacific waters in which slaves—SLAVES!—man the nets on many of the boats that produce sardines and other food fish for canning. Some of these people have apparently landed on these fishing fleets through purchase from human traffickers, and have been enslaved for years, while Nestle looked the other way. Nestle, for those of you who don't recall, cooly weathered a scandal some years back in which they sold off defective infant-feeding formula to third world countries, arguing that although the formula was a health risk to American infants, it was just fine for the third world, where the predominant standard of living was already so bad that they'd barely be affected by their awful product. The corporation continues to thrive.

• The corporate cynicism was not just American. VW corporation, it turns out, has created automobiles which lie about their emissions output. Initially when this story broke, I thought it might be one of those things where test results during product development were overlooked or slightly doctored—the kind of thing that happens so often now that you can barely blink an eye when it occurs.  But it turns out to be much, much more conniving than that. VW installed software in their automobiles that correctly identifies when an emission test is underway, as is still often conducted in places like California, and for that moment alone changes the fuel burning procedure so as to give low emissions results that will become 40 times larger the moment the car drives out of the test bay and into the real world.  It is almost impossible to imagine the greedy duplicity that goes into a corporate decision to do something like this—until you remember Ford Motor company's handling of the Exploding Pinto era.

• Europe is in the throes of what can be argued to be the worst human refugee disaster since WW2. By most estimates, at least 8 million, and perhaps as many as 10 million, Syrians have been displaced from their homeland and are desperately seeking a place to live. Virtually half the entire population. The vast majority are still in camps in the nations immediately adjoining Syria. There are some people in Turkish refugee camps that have already been living in squalor for 2 years or more, with no end in sight. Other nations are attempting to help in lukewarm ways, but with efforts that are in no way commensurate with the size of the horror. The UK, it's estimated, will take as many as 20,000 by end of year; France, 24,000; Sweden, 50,000; Germany, 100,000 (though to be accurate this is because they admit to needing the cheap labor). Any way you look at it, these are paltry numbers from wealthy counties, akin to emptying a bathtub with spoonfuls of water.

From the Western hemisphere, Venezuela will accept 20,000 refugees by the end of the year. Mexico has agreed to accept 10,000.

The US?  Thus far,  fewer than 1500 Syrian refugees have landed in our open arms, though the Obama administration, in the face of heated opposition from the fear-mongering faction, wants next year to allow as many as a whopping 10,000 victims of the Syrian civil war into what was once the land of opportunity. That means that the most affluent nation on earth, which has built its wealth upon the efforts of those taking us up on  "give us your homeless" offer, will help about 1/10 of 1% of the Syrian homeless. By way of comparison, remember that more than 1 million Irish refugees landed in America around the turn of the century. Following WW2, we accepted 95,000 Germans. It's estimated that we have 1.2 million Vietnamese immigrants living here quite successfully. In Minnesota alone, we have 30,000 African refugees already.

I am just slightly ashamed. 10,000 Syrian refugees? Surely we could do better than this.

If Donald Trump is considered a serious candidate, then why not?

––Welcome back to these pages our most recent guest Geezer, "Since George Shaw".  The editors are not at all sure that George is not serious about the following suggestion. Stranger things have happened.  ––

Except for the haircut, as a presidential candidate, this is no more
preposterous than four or five of the current hopefuls. 

As the list of "serious" presidential candidates surpasses 20, I would like to be the first to formally endorse Tom Hanks as a third-party candidate for President. Yes, that Tom Hanks. His credentials? He is not a politician, and to my knowledge* is not associated with major parties or major political issues. 

People instinctively, and justifiably, hate politicians. Hilary and Jeb already have high, well-deserved, disapproval ratings, and by Nov 2016, every American with a TV, a radio, a newspaper or access to the internet will hate them both. A well-known and likable (sorry Donald Trump) non-politician running as a third-party candidate in all 50 states, could easily win.

And if you don't believe me, remember Jesse Ventura. Jesse did not get elected Governor of MN because people loved Jesse; we elected him because we hated Republicans and Democrats. And speaking of Jesse, he was a much under-rated Governor. Sure, he was a thin-skinned, blow-hard, but tri-partisan government actually worked better than bi-partisan government ever has. And besides cutting ribbons and touring tornado-sites, the Chief Executive's real role is to appoint a cabinet to run the government.

Playing a slightly different role, Hanks might well
be a better choice than the hacks offered by
either party. 

Mostly, Governors and Presidents appoint their unemployed cronies, and not only are these guys politicians, they are generally out of office because they aren't even good at that. Jesse, not having any friends, appointed a commission who hired cabinet officers based on actual merit. What a concept? So aside from being the butt of jokes, MN under Jesse was the best government we ever had. No reason Tom Hanks couldn't achieve the same success on a national level. He was a war hero, he understands the Chinese (from all that ping pong), piracy, the prison system - the list goes on.

But if I am mistaken about Hanks' political history, then somebody like Tom Hanks. Anybody with max name-recogniton and likability and no known political connections. Peyton Manning, maybe, or Garth Brooks. I've got no problem with a woman, but I don't think Lindsey Whalen is well-known outside of MN, and I don't think Katy Perry is old enough. Other suggestions?