RunOnTheBank.net

Madison

2010-09-02T22:28:00Z

I had dinner with two local friends in Madison. They chose Smoky's Club, an icon of 1953. A dark room made darker by smoke stains on the dropped ceiling (restaurant smoking has been prohibited here since 2005). Football photos and tacky Christmas lights, whorehouse-red lighting and red naugahyde covering most surfaces; delightfully tacky.

The staff also appeared to date from the founding. Martini Bob ran the bar. Our octogenarian waitress remarked, "This martini sure is difficult to carry" as she tilted it toward our table.

Smoky's has a short menu: Beef or fish in a slab, fried or baked. Accompanied by baked potato with sour cream. No sauces, no garnishes. The appetizer was unusual: in six inch crock ware: scallions, radish, carrot on ice.

Joy

2010-06-27T17:20:00Z

We were to meet in midtown Manhattan at 10am on Saturday. No specific place? When she got off the MTA she would call me on her cellphone ("I've never used it, but this type of occasion is why I keep it"). As I waited, I remembered she didn't have my number saved. Perhaps the cellphone battery was not charged. This was a typical Joy Cousminer arrangement. I could see so many flaws in the plan, but, Joy lives with grace. I walked to a likely Orange Line exit (there are so many) and people-watched, thinking about how long I should wait before I gave up. And, just as if life is supposed to work this way, Joy walks up to me and tells how the stop she wanted was closed, so she took the next stop, where I happened to be standing.

"How was my day?" "Fine as usual - another day witnessing existence in bewilderment." La Gran Final

Celebrity

2010-06-26T01:48:00Z

At Ed's Chowder House across from the NY Met our waiter forgets our order. Twice. He writes nervously on his pad then forgets to bring the drinks. Still trembling he confesses that he is nervous because it's the first time he's seen me, the famous Raul de Molina, star of El Gordo y La Flaca. Now it might seem to be a giveaway that I can't speak Spanish, but I understand enough to wonder what kind of a compliment is paid by calling me "El Gordo." In apology, he showers us in 20% off lunch coupons. When he returns with dessert, he gives us more coupons, stunned when he sees we already have a supply.

As we're led out, the busboy passionately grasps my hand in both of his. And the Head Waiter leads us through a secret lounge and up to the front of a long nightclub line. He whispers to the bouncer to escort us upstairs to The Rooftop Bar. This is a fashionable watering hole. The waitress is used to working with celebrities like me. She's disturbingly gorgeous: Knee high boots, tight black dress that barely reaches her long thin legs. She deftly drops her pencil and waits while we hold our breaths wondering how she can pick it up without revealing the source of those long legs. She bends her knees and swivels her hips, back straight, and somehow reaches the pencil. I have seen gymnasts with less flexibility. She says, " My name is Annata; just say my name if you want anything."

So, that's what it's like being Raul de Molina.

Two other times I've been mistaken for a celebrity. At the first Starbucks in Manhattan the barista came to our table and said I looked like someone who stars with Clint Eastwood, who plays a Mexican. In The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. I'm Eli Wallach as Tuco, the Mexican Rat. I'm The Ugly!

The longest stretch was mistaking me for Harvey Fierstein in Mrs Doubtfire. How do I imagine myself? I think of myself as Captain Haddock, the apoplectic companion of TinTin.

I think my dad imitated the Rat Pack life style but his real ambition was Sean Connery's James Bond. Both like dry martinis. Both traveled internationally. Both liked technical gadgets. They dressed in a 50's style (including Bermuda shorts in Dr. No). Men of mystery. My dad taught me how to conceal a bill for bribery in my palm before I shook hands (I have never had the chance to use that trick). Dad sent me letters on 1/4" square graph paper in engineering draftsman font. I can not capture that precisions and confidence and lack of emotion. Both Bond and my dad died away from home.

Mom was a short Rita Hayworth, though only in one photo.

Who have I mistaken for a celebrity? I often think of the Greek tales of gods on mortal earth, gods disguised as beggars and homeless. Pay attention.

In Boston Joe took me to a performance of Tai Chi grandmaster William C. C. Chen. At first I saw a small stiff old man jerking disturbingly. Wait, he is discontinuous, not jerky. He is disappearing and reappearing. Those who have eyes, see.

Beauty in Attention

2010-04-22T13:03:00Z

Sunday mornings were special for my brother and me. Church started at 11am, so for this one time we were without supervision with only one rule: let the parents sleep.

One Sunday we prepared breakfast in bed for my parents. I was 12 years old. Tom was ten.

We spent about two hours in the kitchen, pretty much using every ingredient, every pot and pan. OJ, eggs, bacon, hash browns, pancakes, buttered toast, coffee. Wow! We took a serving tray and brought them all the food that was edible: two glasses of orange juice.

In front of our house was a 14 foot cedar tall hedge; my father's pride. Tom and I observed that it was hard to push through the thick foliage, and the fence was too long to walk around quickly. Our Sunday Improvement Project: cut a gateway through the hedge. We used saws, clippers, and a clawed hammer. We woke our parents and proudly showed our work. Even as a child I could see the conflict in their faces. DAD "Why couldn't you just walk to the end of the fence?" MOM "Your father WAS proud of the density of this hedge." We promised to water the hedge every Sunday to help it grow back.

Once, I asked my father how his wristwatch ran. He answered that you wound the stem and the hand moved. He should have understood that was an unsatisfactory explanation, the black box answer.

Next Sunday morning I decided to figure it out myself. I pried the back plate off his watch; I had to remove the plates and bridges to expose the workings. I saw gears on the end of the winding stem, ready to engage a plate gear connected to the minute or hours hand. The face movement had hour, minute and second columns nested, each with separate engagements. The coiled mainspring ran drive wheels connected to ... a ratchet escapement that moved one tooth at a time. I had found the magic center of the watch.

When my father passed away, his watch was passed on to me, the watch that replaced the watch I disassembled.

I kept two lessons from that experience.

1) Beauty is about paying attention. Anything I pay enough attention to is beautiful. If I don't love something, I'm not paying enough attention. "Beauty is the eye of the beholder" is an identical understanding, though often misinterpreted as "Beauty is different for each person."

2) It is always easier to take things apart than to put them together.

Strategies for Offering Safe Financial Products Targeted to Underserved LMI Consumers in a Competitive Market

2010-04-22T13:01:00Z

Washington was at the height of cherry blossom season. A light breeze and plenty of tourists. From the FDIC Headquarters we could watch the exterior repairs on the French Second Empire-style Old Executive Office Building across the street or look south to the Mall and Washington Monument. At meetings where credit unions visit banks, I start out as a visitor, maybe even a tourist. As this meeting progressed, I realized incrementally, “Credit Union are in front of banking the unbanked now. But we have to keep moving!”

People we see on TV (Sheila Bair, Chairman, FDIC and Martin J. Gruenberg, Vice Chairman, FDIC) were meeting with the FDIC Advisory Committee on Economic Inclusion. This is the group that produced FDIC’s important two-year pilot project to review affordable and responsible small-dollar loan programs in financial institutions. For two days, ComE-IN (nice acronym) was holding hearings on Safe Targeted Financial Products and Designing and Executing Broad-Based Financial Programs for Underserved LMI Consumers.

Michael S. Barr, Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions at the Department of the Treasury, reviewed various estimates of the size of the US underbanked market, ranging from 15-40 million consumers. He voiced the perception that prepaid cards might be the vehicle of choice for financial institutions to deliver services to the unbanked. These cards are cost-efficient (less breakage or friction, he said). They are a niche product and all about customization. Prepaid cards can be a multi-pocket budgeting tool. Barr quoted a recent study showing that adding a savings component adds 8% to demand for the cards. He acknowledged that there were hurdles regulators had to address: excessive ID requirements, potential for excessive ODP charges, and unnecessary expense caused by Reg E Statement requirements.

What role do credit unions play in reintegrating our financial markets? Lois Kitsch, REAL Solutions National Program Director, wowed them all with her presentation of credit unions’ leadership in innovation to underserved markets. She outlined the steps and mis-steps credit unions have taken. Lessons learned included starting with an offering your potential members already use (checking accounts won’t substitute for check cashing), building a continuous path, and keeping an eye on sustainability.

Paul Grinde, Executive Vice President of CoVantage Credit Union, followed up with his Load-n-go card, a stripped down debit card. Alan Branson, COO at the Hope Community Credit Union, represented the community development side of credit unions. William Myers, Field Coach at REAL Solutions, pitched in with a review of business models that drew from cost analysis to find sustainabilty in serving emerging markets.

Jennifer Tescher, Director, Center for Financial Services Innovation, dug up some of the more surprising leading edge innovations:

From South Africa, a mobile communications with which a bank account is opened by cell phone (snap a photo of yourself, another of your ID, send them to the bank). “With Wizzit, you have a bank in your pocket.”
Trumpet Mobile is a pay-as-you-go phone which includes a prepaid card in the clamshell. The card and the phone are coordinated so that you can make debit card (PIN) purchases, ATM withdrawals and reload Trumpet Mobile airtime using money on the Trumpet CashCard. The package is sold at Walgreens and RadioShack and issued by The Bancorp Bank. In merchant sales the sale fees go to merchants (and if the card is reloaded at the merchant, that fee goes to the merchant).
Ms. Tescher noted that 90% of financial institutions use ChexSystems, which creates a blockage for new accounts. As with credit data, some institutions are reaching deeper into the data to improve the risk profile and designing products safer for the institution and the client. They are using transaction accounts to generate relationships.
A new type of savings is emerging, where customers build a savings target by buying savings at a retailer. For example, at Lowe’s a customer would buy a gift card as savings for a home improvement project. Financial institutions are excluded from this arena unless they can distribute cards outside the branch.
Mango Mastercard allows cards, phone internet, but no cash. it can be reloaded by phone, direct deposit or Paypal.

Tim Sloane, Vice President Client Services at Prepaid Advisory Service of Mercator Advisory Group illustrated that during 2004-2008, prepaid card openings grew 68%. Consumers are using several cards for budget or savings. Because to issuers, card costs are upfront, churn is the enemy. Extending the period consumers use the card (eg with direct deposit) makes the cards profitable. Many cards follow Reg E and have deposit insurance. Live internet, online bill pay and direct debit are popular features. A savings feature is up and coming. These cards look like bank accounts!

Why do financial institutions sit on the sidelines? The reluctance is based on the newness of the product, its turnover, and the necessity of scaling. Some don’t want to manage a channel which needs differentiation. Though prepaid has the same interchange rates as debit and credit, there is a suspicion that the fraud rate is related to the acquisition channel.

Why would consumers prefer prepaid over checking? Certainly for liquidity (no hold at CU, no check cashing fee), no Chexsystems checks, and less intrusive Know Your Customer requirements. But the primary interest is in avoiding overdraft fees. The legislation restricting ODP demonstrates consumer discontent around banks. Checking doesn’t meet the fundamental needs of the unbanked market.

Heidi Goldberg, for the BankON program of the National League of Cities, introduced their new resource website.

Kathleen Tullberg, Manager, Massachusetts Community & Banking Council, showed how her agency guided financial institutions into unbanked markets with product checklists and quick surveys.

Key Bank has been building a check cashing program in their bank for a decade. It’s now rolled out in 25% of their branches. The slow rollout has allowed the bank to bring the board along and integrate check cashing clients into a their vision of stepped customer demographics. The new account procedure de-emphasizes immediate cross sale and replaces it with a thirty day on-board campaign and a six month transition cross sale.

With the caliber of people attending this meeting, it isn't surprising that quite a few key points and observations were made:

"We know the ‘what’, let’s figure out the ‘how.’”

"Wells Fargo is built of 10,000 historical banks.”

“The average US household spends $500 per year on lottery.”

"We shouldn’t open accounts with ODP for low income people."

Notably missing was committee member Elizabeth Warren, likely now engaged in her role as the protector of consumer and taxpayer interests in the bailout.

Part of the hearing was on CSpan, and later the whole 480 minutes will be segmented into several videos on the FDIC ComeIN web site.

To view a video of this meeting in its entirety, click here.

Traduttore, tradittore

2010-03-22T22:25:00Z

Two translations of the same Saigyo poem. The second is treasonous to the original.

I thought I was free
of passions, so this melancholy
comes as a surprise;
a woodcock shoots up from marsh
where autumn's twilight falls.

Hermit though I be,
deep pathos comes o'er me,
as at the autumn nightfall
I behold a lone snipe starting from the swamp.

BEAUTY BY TECHNOLOGY

2010-03-18T22:56:00Z

During my first year at college, engineers still used slide rules from leather belt sheaths. My freshman year was the last slide rules were in regular use. I had brought my father's slide rule to campus. It was yellowed and looked like it was made out of ivory. The leather of the case was stiff. Maybe my grandfather had used this one too.

I never understood slide rules. They seemed so arcane, like an astrolabe or the crucible of the Delphic oracle. Slide rules didn't answer the question precisely: they were so analog. Pocket calculators came, though they seemed like cheating compared to long hand. Then computers.

I grew up on the cusp on the computer age. And as a result, I use and love these machines and stand in awe of them. When you use a hand tool like a hammer, as you use it, you understand how it works. When you use a mechanical machine, you can take it apart and see how it works. Computers' basic secrets are not revealed in their use or disassembly.

While in high school, a friend and I spent $200 to buy a Cadillac made in the year of our birth ('51). This car had enough room under to hood you could stand (inside the hood) next to the engine (the famous Chevy 351). It was an elegant and gracious machine. Every part yielded its secrets, and in fact was built to show itself. The manifold was cast with the firing plug order 1-5-4-8-2-7-3-6 imprinted.

In my first computer class, (the first given at Cornell university, 2 credits, offered by engineering) the professor explained the black box theorem. He drew an input arrow, an output arrow and in between a black box. The Black Box represents the process, the computer. All we had to know was what input was needed to achieve the output desired. The computer was already too complicated to understand each part. We could label the "Mother Board" we could schematically describe the flow of information. But we could not ever actually look at it work or make one ourselves. It was a black box inside a black box. The computer was unknowable. Worse yet, we weren't expected to know. We solipsistically skipped over this element.

When all was said and done, it a man behind the curtain (Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain), the Wizard of Oz again. Though Dorothy and crew cried "humbug", I was satisfied BECAUSE the tricks were tricks, and each trick was explained.

Our department had its own Digital Equipment PDP-11 VAX. I wasn't allowed to use it until I had run a survey through the mechanical card sorter on the agriculture campus. I had to cut all the data into IBM computer cards, band them, set the sorter, turn it on and record the number of cards falling into each bay. By contrast, the VAX running CUPL (Cornell University Programming Language) was a dream. The campus mainframe also accepted IBM cards, but mostly I used it to make huge Christmas cards like electronic needlepoint.

The first computer I owned was a Sinclair t-1000, bought for $99. I heard this computer speak into a Woolworth's cassette recorder (a higher quality stereo system wouldn't work) save a program. I now hear that skrreech all over the place.

I first met the next generation in an intern to my office. He put a floppy disk in the back pocket of his jeans. I knew about floppy disks. I had read the warning on the label. I knew that they carried an immense 360,000 bits of data. I knew that even one smoke particle could cause the read head to crash. I had (and still have) a magical reverence for these machines, magical because they can't be explained. The intern put a floppy disk in his back pocket. He didn't even use a protective sleeve. He was a hacker like I was a backyard mechanic.

Green Muse

2010-03-17T19:02:00Z

Business dinner at NYC's L'Absinthe Brassiere on 67th st. I wanted to order the Polle Troufee, but it was too expensive, so I got Duck Confit with Chestnuts. After all, it's the season. And Lucid Absinthe, the only American absinthe with wormwood. The waiter crowded our table with an eighteen inch tall glass carafe, silver and etched, with four spigots. I was given a triangular absinthe sugar spoon. This drink is as much ritual as a catholic mass, but no Latin! Strong anise taste, but I think the spinning room was caused by the big numbers talk.

My companions are risking tens of millions of dollars to try out some banking ideas. Well out of my comfort zone, but something I glad to watch, and even more interested in understanding. Posturing: genuine. Worry and risk: genuine. Pledges of friendship: insincere.

Forty years ago, starting on Common Council I had similar feeling of a lack of specific competency for the job. My expertise seems narrow, around a set of innovations in banking the underbanked.

When I was seven years old a couple of friends liked to play poker and bet with small change. I would agree to play, but I would not bet real money. They were disappointed and disbelieving that I wouldn't relent and take losses/gain.

I've only seriously gambled once in my life. I had left home one summer, intent of finding my way and decidin if college was right for me. Before I began hitchhiking, i bought a lottery ticket, sort of as a test to see if the universe had other plans for me. Things worked out well enough on the road that I never checked to see if I had a winning ticket!

Club Med Huatulco with Ben, 2000

2010-03-17T01:45:00Z

Day 1

The snow catches the headlights in fireworks patterns. I brought along my collection of great rockNroll guitarists on CD to make the midnight drive easier. In Voodoo Chile Hendrix works wonders. Stevie Ray Vaughn's version of the same song is a memorial, at first sounding note for note identical, but on closer listening, being quite different. Santana Live disappoints with a pop sound. BB King pulls salt tears from Lucille.

Four am At JFK the rental car lots are closed. We pull across the tire-destroying barrier and sleep for two hours.

North American Airlines. Four planes, 100 staff. A new Boeing 757 with "Lucy Caroline" on the bow. This is what an airline would be if they were not anal retentive. Whole families meet for vacation. The plane turns into a reunion lounge and the chat lasts until the plan lands five hours later.

The plane turns and I face a palm plantation for our stopover at Ixtapa. It's hot. I am wearing a wool shirt, not the best planning. Everyone else sheds their outer layer. Ben is excited and takes his first photo. Bougainville: a beautifully improbable flower, a most delicate origami of three paper thin triangles in sheer white, yellow, pink, red, or purple.

Customs is a go-through-the-motions sort of thing. Stand here. Sit there. Come over here. Show me some papers. Go back over there.

From the airport, we're put on a bus through the countryside, the foothills of the Sierra Madre. It's very dry. From November to May it doesn't rain. Then a wet season that is so wet that rain forests are native to the higher elevations. Here the rain forest is mixed in with Saguaro cactus.

A staff person on the bus gives us a hale and hearty hello and talks about what to expect. The Club is surrounded by a limited access gate. At the reception area we're greeted by a number of staff singing a welcome song and offering a fresh fruit drink.

It's a large club with a capacity of 1200. During our stay it's half full, but the following week is the school break, so it will be crowded. There are four residential areas, each on top of a hill, each with a color coded water tower. Beneath them are the three beaches, the flats for game fields, the three restaurants, and the main center with a bar and pools.

There are four kinds of staff.

- Mexicans who do all the service work (maids, waitresses, gardeners, handymen)

- Au Pairs who are young kids who sign on for two weeks, no pay

- GO, General Organizers, who contract for six month seasons. Most of the staff we see are in this category.

- Professional staff. I don't believe I ever saw one.

Au pairs and GO staff mingle and in general make themselves available to help GFS (guests).

Ben and I take a "Carrittos," (two cycle golf cart) to our room, which is called Nubes 157. The construction is all concrete, finished in stippled paint. The style is a combination of attached condo and Latin garden-in-the-middle architecture. It's better than a beach house, rustic with lots of privacy. Our room has a covered porch facing the ocean, a tile floor, two sinks, two beds, one shower, no carpet, no outlets (except for shaver in bathroom, in some arcane hookup), no TV, solid, no sounds. It's a small room that we wouldn't want to spend too much time in. Camping with maid service.

While I unpack, Ben goes off on a photo expedition. He comes back crying with a staff person following him. The fellow asked Ben, ?Esta usted perdida?" (Are you lost?) And Ben got frightened. Then, the staff person got frightened that his boss would think he mis-treated a guest.

Gian Luc, a ringmaster of sorts, is everywhere, greeting, smoozing. He sees my name somewhere and remembers it for the week. I don't catch his name until we're getting ready to leave and I can read his nametag.

All the meals are buffets, smorgasbords, Ben's favorite form of dining. Most of the tables seat eight, so sharing a meal is inevitable. Two restaurants have outdoor dining, my favorite.

Hard beds, but good sleep. We decide to leave the doors open to get fresh air and ocean sounds.

Day 2

- Mexican vulture swoop of white. Why do I attribute bad intentions to vultures? All those cartoons with them waiting for people to die?

- Zanate. Maybe these are the Mexican crows that Carlos Castandeda writes about. Black, brown, and skinnier that American crows. Tail like a magpie, long legs, thick beak, intelligent eyes. Caw sounds like a telephone, a microwave buzzer, a siren, a clock beeping.

- Frigate bird, a long distance floater with wide wings, sharp tail.

- Brown pelicans in bomber squadron. Even the stragglers execute the formation. Heavy, oversize beak.

- The local jay has a dewdrop crest, much more exotic than our Blue Jay's military cut.

I sit in the shade and read while Ben goes to Kids Club. In each age group they have supervised activities that change every 45 minutes. Ben color codes the list for the ones he plans to attend: sailing, water polo, circus, scavenger hunt, archery, water basketball, volley ball, ping pong, tennnis, Olympic games, and mission impossible.

I watch the ocean. HobieCats just moving along. Kayakers reserving enough energy to get back. Jet ski raking everyone with waves and noise, though they're not from our club. All morning I track the sun's path by marking shadows in the sand.

One older fellow talks about "The shock of water to his kidneys after each night of drinking." We never stay up late enough to see this side of the Club.

Before dinner Ben and I sat on the beach as the day gave way to evening. The waves reshaped the shore, the river of heaven opened above. A Heron landed in the tidal wash. Ben followed the leisurely hunt. The restaurant behind us turns on music. I am surprised to hear Mozart's "Magic Flute." As the Queen of the Night starts her complaint against Zarathustra, each note lights up a star.

For the first time in years, I begin to think about perfection. And while this is not it, it is certainly on the same scale.

Day 3

We feel like we're getting the hang of this. We plan our day in advance. Ben plays ping pong while I register for dinner. Then buffet breakfast. With the crows, who I've found are really related to grackles, a messy pest bird where we come from. Ben feeds the birds then the fish we gather in the shallow waters for the food the kids bring. We take a boat rides across the bay to snorkel. Ben gets frightened getting off the boat. The waves, the depth, the flippers. The boatman give him a few kinds words and pushes him in. Ben enjoys it until he swallows some water. There are lots of reef fish, but the coral is devastated, by hurricane Pauline, I hear.

Each evening there is a jeopardy style game show in the courtyard by the bar. We are each given white or blue yarn to indicate which team to play on. The questions are read in French, English and Spanish. Lots of Parisians. I hear one group singing "Auld Land Syne" in French as they prepare to leave. Canadians, Mexicans, and Argentinians too.

During lunch the wind picks up. Several windsurfers have to be rescued. One expert skimmed and flew, as fast as a human would hope to go.

The wind brings a mass of jelly fish. They're about two inches roundt, clear, gelatinous, with one black dot in the center. Ben thinks they look like big plant cells. I think they look like fish eggs. They don't seem to sting. By the next morning, the are gone. Those that made it to the beaches are raked away.

Day 4

Ben and I start to get on each other's nerves. He wants to be understood and he wants his freedom.

He gets blisters from sneakers (necessary for soccer, which he likes), strap rubs from his sandals, and the sand in his boxers causes him to waddle.

While Ben builds sand castles, I try out archery. I can't really see the target, but that's just as well I get a Zen moment as I watch the release, convincing the arrow not to dip before it seeks the target.

Ben likes sailing with me. We tried kayaking, but seat position caused my legs to cramp. The HobieCat Wave catamarans are optimized boats, what Erica Jong would call zipless. The boom is flexible, there is no keel, the rudders break away if you snag anything. The worst that can happen is that you get stuck in a doldrum and don't move.

Flora is quite familiar, what we call houseplants: crocus, palms, hibiscus, ficus, fig, papaya, coffee, aloe, cardamom, wandering jew. The Flamboyant trees car heavy seed pods we used to use for swords, but have no blossoms.

Day 5

Ben discovered the pool today. He played a water polo game that was semi-organized violence. Several of the boys wanted to compte like there was no tomorrow. As I've seen here before, the GOs get right into the fray. The counselor kept trying to even things up. But the boys would have none of it. They thought this was cheating. They took to ganging up and dunking opponents, putting four goalies in the net, splashing to impair shots, or impersonating opposing team members to get the ball. The one girl in the game grabbed the ball and yelled, "Don't touch it. I've got a right to this." The GO took the suggestion and made a new rule, "No touching girls." Some boys left the game not because it got too rough but because these were too many restrictions. Ben said it was a good fun game.

I saw one elderly lady in a rubber bathing cap, the only one on the site. Some are the Argentinian ladies adopt the South American topless style of bathing. A fellow swimming laps: a pace a stroke so smooth and correct.

Ben and I take a taxi into Crucicita. Three bucks, including tip. The town is built around a plaza, with a handsome mission style church at one end. Stores line the rest of the plaza and side streets. The town and resorts were planned developments, a twenty year project to inject economic activity into Oaxaca, the poorest of Mexican states.

Traveling is disorienting in the same way when as I child I struggled to plant my feet and find direction after I was spun in circles for "pin the tail on the donkey" or Pinata.

The taxi driver lets us off in front of his cousin's store. The store owner steps up and open the cab door. As I step out, he hands me a card. I look at the card, "Gabriel, the Owl. We won't,cheat you too bad." I check to make sure my son is getting out. I make sure nothing is left in the cab. I find the money to pay the driver. I protect my wallet. I look for the curb so I don't stumble. I want to stand on the sidewalk and get my bearings. I shake off the store owner, but before I can take two steps, another has caught me and shepherded me into his store, and closed the door. I don't see what I want and he escorts us to his uncle's store. I get out, but Gabriel, the Owl is sitting there, waiting for me. I acquiesce. I do find the sandals Ben wants, and with a little haggling (reweighing the item, talking about its quality compared to other fakes he points out in his store) move from Ask $136 to Bid $80. We walk and find some Huaraches for Ben. Then a couple of carved, painted fantasy animals. Ben also gets two penguins, made of "barra", clay. I can carry on a reasonable Spanish conversation for these transactions. In Spanish, "penquin" is "penguin."

Day 6

We're at the volley ball pool. The GO divides the kids into teams, somehow 12 vs 6. The kids cluster together, chasing the shot rather than playing their zone. They show a lot of spirit, cheering each point, which is basically every toss.

When Macarena comes onto the stereo, the four girls and two GOs are lost to dancing. Two kids find a basketball and play their own game amidst the other. Creatively, one girl dribbles the basketball by bobbing.

Kids Club allows kids eight and older to sign themselves in and out or activities. This is a unique responsibility for them: veto power over adults! When, during the beach Olympics, the GO is a little overbearing, the kids sign out and go swimming.

And then revert to sand castle building. They take seriously the urgency of keeping the ocean back. They build escape routes for the people in their cities. They're building it across a language barrier.

I try windsurfing. With my balance, it's like dancing on ice. I give up. I enjoy swimming laps. I couldn't see going into a fitness room in this environment, especially one less well equipped than the one I avoid at home.

One woman says she was here for a 7.2 Richter earthquake two years ago. Everything shook, things spilled, glass broke. Some people slept outside that evening, for aftershocks. Nothing else happened.

Tonight is pool party for the kids club. First we go the to lobster dinner. Spiny lobster were hard to find when I was a kid, so they were always a treat. Ben notes, "they have an exoskeleton" and that's enough reason the him to stick with ribs and chicken. The lobster is gorgeous, boiled and then griddle fried, split down the middle with salsa in the body cavity.

Anyway, we're late to the pool party. It's lit only from under water. The kids are dark shadows. They recognize Ben - he is the biggest by far. The all call him "Big Man", his nickname which evolved from Big Ben, a reference that most didn't catch and soon forgot.

Day 7

Ben is watching four French brothers and sisters play pool. He takes a wide footed stance, cocked at the hip and splayed, leaning on the edge of the table. The course of play pushes one of the sisters next to Ben, her hand inside his stance. The follow the play, once squeezed together, then apart, then overlapping. They never look at each other.

Ben and I play squash twice. He likes it and it's a good workout for us both.

Ben tries to convince me to stay another week. The last evening he develops a little fever, but sleeps well on the trip home.

This trip happened because Nancy was in a month long yoga training, and after a week, I was tired of take-out food. Allan Warshawsky gave the lead to a late sign-up Club Med discount. A year later Club Med Huatulco closed.

Two Weeks in Poland

2010-03-15T17:49:00Z

I have a two week consultancy in Poland to figure out what could go wrong in the brand new Polish Credit Union movement.

Five years ago, a CU law had been enacted, 175 Credit Unions since opened, and a trade association organized. Though 15 million people belonged to Cus between the wars, the communists merged all the CUs into coop banks. The new movement had NO experienced people, and only international models. Local markets were already being dominated by McDonald's, Adidas, Lee Jeans, and Coke. The national banks were soon to be sold (Citicorp is an early presence). Poland is primarily a cash society. All this will be changing rapidly. In fact, the thing the Poles seem most proud of is the rate at which they have resolved the problems in their previous society. The challenge for Credit Unions will be to ride the wave without wiping out.

I don't know how my airline tickets were written up, but somehow I was first candidate for standby, and I got bumped. Well, actually, there was one guy in front of me, but he was bitching about needing to get to his mother's funeral on time. Someone else said they had a $30 million deal. A student had a test.

Anyway US Airways gave me a night in Philadelphia, three meals, $600 and bumped my flight to business class (I like that term so much better than first class. Heck I'm flying on business, so I don't mind being in the business class section, but I would never want to be above others in first class. I should check the price. They really did offer lots of amenities and services.)

Philadelphia.
skateboard gangs, roller blade exercisers, bike commuters. Atop City hall, William Penn is dressed in a Flyer Hockey Jersey. A boy on the train says, "They just didn't want the Stanley cup bad enough."

Paris
From the air France is beautiful. Rays of sun through clouds in a misty key. The fields are odd shapes, neatly cultivated and the houses stay in the towns. France must have good zoning to prevent sprawl. On the ground, I can see they also preserve architecture and have limited the size and type of sign advertising. This burg is seriously stuck in the 19th century.

Life in this city is seriously compromised by automobiles. Wide avenues, which might have seemed like foresight, invite speeding traffic. Maniac motorbikes and cycles drive on the street as traffic flows, and move onto the sidewalks at red lights (or just ignore the lights).

They're fixing up everything. This City thinks grandly of itself. Actually, though I've never been here before, I've seen lots of the sites here. It's like a movie set, which also means that I can never get as grand a view as what I've come to expect.

Cleopatra's obelisk is in a huge plaza (Place de pyramides). It looks a little like a plant in the wrong soil: droopy and battered. Up close, the hieroglyphs are written in bold strokes. At the top someone kneeling before the Pharaoh, which is about all you have to know about how and why it was built.

A pan handler in the plaza told me to try out the Coke here, it's made with different water. I try. Tastes like it's made with Perrier. The residents tend to think of themselves grandly too. Even the toilet attendant wanted a tip, and barely looked up from eating her lunch when she received one.

Warsaw
Further away from the centers of empire. At the local airport (next to the international airport, but to which I had to carry my luggage since they wouldn't make the transfer to destination). When I pass through passport control security, the operator is sleeping. We each pass our handbags through the bomb scanner anyway. A woman passes through with her child in a stroller, which sets the metal detector screaming. The guard awakens and waves her through. I thought of offering to turn off the alarm for him.

I found a taxi driver who knew a few words of English and was willing to sell me a couple hours of time. to show me Warsaw. Warsaw was destroyed during WWII and subsequently rebuilt completely, the 'old city" in its own image, from photographs, from memories, to the best of the ability with what remained of the old craftsmen.

Several of the facades looked older and were pocked, I wondered aloud if these were originals, with bullet holes.   My driver, "Pow, pow? No." I've tried as a mental exercises, to map my own neighborhood and my childhood territory. So much of it is "this is what happened here" I also wonder if the Poles re-built those elements that plainly didn't work (the corner that's just too obstructed, where pedestrians always get hit). The answer is that reconstructing the past (be it a building or a relationship) is a dubious exercise. The Poles couldn't afford the frieze sculpture so they painted it on (trompe l'oeil).

Nearby was the Ministry of Culture, a building which Stalin "donated' to every city. As they say, "It has the best view in town, because from the Ministry, you don't look out on the Ministry." I heard someone say the same thing about the Eiffel Tower.

Communist architecture is easy to pick out. Government buildings are large (the main center is jokingly called the White House). Communist era apartments are small, in huge buildings with no character. Absolutely no color but cement grey-brown. Maybe the people have picked up colorless dressing from the buildings. When they do dress up, they often over-color.

My driver says there is 20% unemployment, 30% very wealthy. I've looked at the national profile and I know unemployment is less than 10% and real wealth 2%, but his is an telling perception.

Lithuanian, Latvian, Ukranian CU programmers are at my first visit to the Polish CU central, coming to see the software being developed for emerging Eastern CUs.

My wife always asks why I even bother to check out TV in hotels. We don't have tv our home because there's rarely anything worth watching. Actually there are some good American reruns on, though they are voiced over in Polish. I can still hear the American soundtrack . There are five channels, one of which is MTV. Cultural imperialism. About one third of the stores carry name brands I recognize.

I can't get the hang of this language. I don't even use what I know, can't pick out any individual words. There were doors with signs on them. Even the toilet had a message "desynfekowano". It could mean, "don't flush, overflows" or "danger" or perhaps just "disinfected". Buying a soda from a stand, the attendant, struggling with English, asks if I want small or big. I answer "large", which Gerald points out is not productive and really annoying. Of course Gerald was disappointed when he ordered what clearly said in English "Banana Split" and he got three ice cream balls with pineapple.

We drove to Gdansk for the Grand opening of a new parish CU. While we asked questions of the Manager, his four year old son wandered in and jumped onto Dad's lap. We're getting "how things are supposed to be" answers instead of "what really happens." I ask if members report their entire income to the tax authority. Everyone laughs roundly because it would be to blatant to take the party line on this issue.

The CU is in the parish house of the Largest Church in this area (22nd largest in World) Huge vaulted ceilings. Nun walking around, readying objects of sacrament. The roof and one wall were knocked off during the war.

Gerald and I walk through old town. Hard to believe it was restored. Along the canal, cars are limited. There are 19 hours of sunshine a day and though sleeping hasn't been a problem (I think Melatonin helped), and the pace is slow, I manage to tire myself out every day.

Solidarity shipyard
A monument to solidarity: three HUGE iron crosses with anchors nailed to them. Friezes at bottom of crosses. The bases of each cross is covered in crumpled metal, as if the crosses were sprouting out like daffodils. Representing the strikes of 1956, 1970, 198. Reportedly, this monument was built in three days during the 1980 strike. On a wall, the list of 21 demands The first, restore telephone service, which seems like they knew organizing. Within three days 13 more factories were on strike.

Solidarity was started AFTER the last strike (outlawed one year later in 1981). The revolution was started with great personal and collective risk, without a central organization. A truly indigenous effort. Lech Walesa was an electrician at the yard.    When the communists returned briefly, they dared not tear the monument down. Pope John Pawel II has his footprints at the base of the monument.

After the weekend, Workers were shot as they returned to work. Monuments were erected (at worker's expense) honoring the 19 Gdynia and 21 Gdansk dead. As one worker describes it, at one time the intelligentsia want to resist communism, the workers strike at another time. There are many disorganized efforts. Solidarnosc is the joining together of those efforts. Now, Solidarity is considered a conservative union, heavily linked to the church.

The shipyard employees 7500. Darek has to call the plant to secure a pass for us. When we arrived at the gatehouse, he used the phone to call a friend. We walked back outside, got in the friend's car and drove through the gate in the car. When we were coming out through the same gate, the guard started asking me questions. I kept my mouth shut. Darek calls this "Bad Communism". What he means is that still many thinks are done that make no sense. Everything was this way "before". At a restaurant, Darek asks for
a receipt. He must give the waiter his company name, address, and telephone number. They call his company to confirm, and finally won't give the receipt because he has gotten the zip code wrong. Bad Communism.

innovations
1) heated towel racks
2) Cars that absolutely, without fail, every time, even in traffic, stop for pedestrians in crosswalks, even pedestrians approaching crosswalks.

Three things to watch out for
1) Ground floor, the lobby, is floor 0, not the first floor
2) Wear your seat belt. I don't think there are speed limits, or at least the taxis haven't heard of them.
3) Leave your key at the desk in the lobby

I think five hours is about all these programmers can take of me. They send me off to 2 PM lunch (which they generally skip themselves. And tell me to come back in the morning. Darek, who's the most recent hire, and knows a little English is in charge of being my escort.

We drive around in his SHODA micro car, product of Hungary. Think small and tinny. I ask him to take me to a good Polish restaurant. He says none of the local places with give me the taste of Polish food so we're going to eat Chinese. I haven't seen an oriental since I left home.   I thought the waiter asked if I wanted egg-drop soup, I said no. Darek says he asks if I liked the meal. I realize that I'm doing a lot of 'sounds like" which doesn't work very well here.

Darek and I talk about our lives. He reminded me of the Scandinavian teen I met when my mother took my brother and me on a freighter trip. He was tall, too and lonely, though dedicated in his search far away from home.

I'm glad when Darek points out two new large buildings and says they are the first beautiful buildings in Poland. I know what he means about communist architecture. Utilitarian is the watchword. Unadorned cement exteriors, no color and no decoration.

Gerald and I took a walk to dinner, sort of got lost, and bumped into a Catholic parade of quite some size. First the little boys in white
vestments, ringing bells. Then 100 groups of five, the center person holding a banner with an engraved portrait of a saint or a scene from the life of Jesus, the four outside group members holding streamers. Girls throwing flowers from baskets. Followed by novitiates of increasing rank. Then priests in their finery. The centerpiece an elder official under a canopy, with boys swinging censors on either side. Everyone bowed when he went by. A band followed, then a singer. Finally 2000 people on foot.

Polish is 98% Catholic. They wear their religion easily. There's no one to convert, protect, or convince. It seems like a cultural tradition, a medieval leftover.

Hel
Saturday we took the ferry to Hel, just across the bay in the Baltic Sea.

Seven boys are engaged in a beach game with a Volleyball. We try to figure out the rules. Stand in a circle and pas the ball. Whoever misses the ball has to sit in the center of the circle. Thereafter the ball is passed around, someone spikes the ball at the guy in the center. If the ball misses, the spiker joins the center. If the center catches the ball, everyone at the center gets to stand up. Male bonding ritual. But they spike the ball quite hard so I think dominance/submission routine.

Dress on the beach varies. Males are evenly divided between American style baggies and European bikinis. Some places won't let you swim with American suits, which are regarded as shorts. Women seem comfortable in bikinis or underwear. One girl tries to change into her suit under her t-shirt. Gerald's French mom says a good French girl can discretely and gracefully change clothes on a beach behind a towel she herself is holding. This Polish girl needs more practice.

Behind the tourist area, next to the beach we run into another parade. At the front, young girls laughing and singing. They wear bathing suits covered by fishing nets. Followed by a court of sea royals. Then older boys in black, black face, tails. Followed by lots of young kids, some in costumes.

They all stop at a stage when the young mermaids (?) dance a synchronized step to rock music. The court sits in a group on the stage. A mother gets a photo. The boys in black (devils?) get buckets of salt water and chase the mermaids and little kids, splashing them. They run in glee. When one of the court is splashed, she very seriously rebukes the devil. The local rock band plays electric rock from somewhere off the stage.

Next to the hotel is a performing arts center, an amusement park, a war machine museum, and a large square. Today, in the square, they were having a FILA basketball elimination tournament. Funny, the backboards were about one-fifth the size of ours. there's no referee, but FILA donates a scorekeeper.

On the water of the Baltic sea: white swans in a large flock, riding the waves, flying with arched necks.

I did see a minority in Poland: Uncle Ben on a package of instant rice.

So I've eaten twice at Italian restaurants, Twice in Chinese, once in British, once at the hotel, once at a cocktail party. The best meal was a "traditional Polish meat" at the Bar Ameryka. The accepted level of tipping is giving the change up to one Zloty ($.31). Magda says that's OK because service is so bad in Poland. I'm uncomfortable with this so I tip more, which Gerald says could distort the local economy. I don't care: at dinner for two, I left 4 zlotls, or about $1.25. The waitress was obviously very pleased.

Sopot
On Sunday we take the train to Gdansk and stop at Sopot on the way back.

Monday I'm back at the Gdynia shipyards. We have a new translator, Magda, a student of Economics at Gdansk university. She has an English boyfriend and wants to live in London. Her general sense is that she needs her education, but that she will have to make her job for herself. Darek has also expressed disillusionment that being a good student isn't well appreciated and rewarded. As a young person, she adopts plans the way I try on shoes. This reinforces that I'm the oldest person in all these meetings, an increasingly annoying and common experience.

During the morning, we meet with each of the Credit Union department managers who explain their program to me.   I'm not sure why we're doing this. I share a couple of ideas, one of which they pick up on. We lunch at the administrators cafeteria in the shipyard.   Apparently most of the CU workers start at 7am (they pick me up at 9), they bring a bag lunch (yet they take me out for lunch each day) and they call it quits around 4 (usually they let me off after lunch, around 3). All in all, its not a challenging work schedule. This afternoon, we go to a branch opening, there's a ribbon cutting, some press, and later champagne and h'oderves.

Though there is some element of the privileges of rank, I don't feel they regard labor as a serious cost. Everybody seems to spend most of their time sitting around. But I start to get angry. I don't want to be babysat, and I don't want play work. The core assignment is vague, and WOK didn't take the time to orient me. After work, I get discouraged and lonely, frustrated. There are people and places I would rather be (that's homesickness, isn't it?). I return to the hotel room and take a nap. A lightning storm starts, and rested, I feel better.

Gerald knocks on my door and we have dinner in a Chinese restaurant he's found. From the Uncle Ben's rice onward, it's decidedly mediocre.

Tuesday, work goes better. And, because we have a translator, we manage to have lunch at a Polish restaurant.

Wednesday Henrik took us on a tour of the Gdynia Shipyard. He has worked here for 37 years and feels quite proud of the facility, it's a part of his life. He works providing utilities, primarily Oxygen and Acetylene. The changes from the communist system bring personal freedom but in addition uncertainty. The shipyard has become more efficient (it takes 10 months to make a ship which would have taken three years). During WWII the shipyard was 90% destroyed, giving the advantage of up to date facilities during the
1950s. Capital investments have not been made since. Henrik remarks that the shipyard has good trained workers, but the managers are overpaid and don't take their concerns into account.

The shipyard provides a high quality (handmade) product, though Korea and Vietnam have lower costs. Gdynia has been certified ISO 9001, which includes a two year guarantee. Andrzejc says when Russians buy their ships, they mistreat them and return them for guarantee repairs within the two years. He showed me a photo of a rusted fishing trawler that looked like it had seen 20 rough years. The Russians had returned it after 18 months of abuse.

Right in front of the CU there is a mast made into a flagpole, made into a cross, made into a monument commemorating the 1980 strike. In this courtyard, the workers camped for 10 days. Helicopters flew overhead shouting for the workers to go home. A strong camaraderie was developed. At this time, the unions were controlled by the government and this movement was generated, according to Henrik, by a worker who stood up and yelled that they were getting a bad deal.

The largest crane says Stocznia Komuny Paryskiej, which means Shipyard of the Paris Commune. An interesting historical reference, but this name was imposed by the communists, so everyone uses Stocznia Gdynia. The crane is not re-painted, to preserve the memory and to remind workers not to repeat the past. There is a lot of returning to former pre-war names.

The shipyard is huge, 18 square kilometers. Ships are built like giant steel legos, each section being built in a specialized building, the parts are assembled, and finally, in a drydock, the sections are joined. The process and facilities and ships are huge beyond belief. The yard is filled with noise: welding, banging, riveting, five story cranes clanging bells as they move along railroad tracks. The nearby Nauta shipyard specializes in lengthening ships by cutting across the ship and adding a leaf.

On one of the walls in the machine shop, purple irises are printed. Henrik said this flower was painted to cover communist slogans (work hard to keep NATO out of Poland). Karolina, our new translator, is aware of the history. From her Grandfather, WWII, from her mother, life in the shipyard. But she and her brother are clearly less political. The want to be left alone and allowed to develop there own secure life. She is resentful that her teachers school training is not accepted for a degree in the new system. She's a
teacher and disappointed that she is poorly paid, and that she has to teach privately to earn more money.

Graveyard

2010-03-15T17:48:00Z

Just east of Cortland, on Route 13, on the second farm after the city ends, on a hill overlooking the road, a mile distant, there is a stand of beech trees that attracted my attention. They were uniformly slender with no lower branches. They were tall. There was no brush under or around them. The division between field and forest was sharp. It looked like they grew as a part of a larger forest, maybe 80-100 years ago.

Something prevented these trees from being cleared for farmland. It wasn't the slope: below it a steeper site was farmed for hay. It was closer to the house than the main pasture.

One day, having time, I parked and walked to the trees. The low lying pasture was mush, too early in spring for the ground to be turned over. The slope leading to the trees was filled with brambles, mostly marsh rose and blackberry.

Inside the grove, a graveyard.

Runway

2010-03-15T17:46:00Z

At the airport, through the Friday afternoon crowd, I heard a child screaming, "No, I don't want to go with you." I never see the child.

At airports the style is always glitzy, the construction always shoddy and the size is wrong: the hallways are too big, and everything personal too small. Maybe it's preparation for being on a plane.

Flying into Ithaca last night, we could see Toronto off to the North. Buffalo and Syracuse closer in. And, as we drop lower, Ithaca. Coming in over the City. On East Hill, the unistakable line of runway blue lights. The front dozen blinking in sequence. Here. Here. Here.

Rooster

2010-03-15T17:35:00Z

At my mother's parent's home in Oklahoma, my brother and I eat watermelon hearts on the front porch of their red farmhouse. Watermelons were in season so we gave generous rinds to the pigs.

A rooster chased my brother and me: big, proud, mean. On the last full day of our visit GrandPa caught the rooster, cut its head off and gave it to GrandMa for soup. The punishment seemed extreme and dishonorable to us kids. We weren't fighting fair.

We drove home through Indianapolis in a rented olds 98 in 63, the road was rain slick. Dad swerved around a stopped truck, and into an intersection against the light. Jam and chick soup in canning jars was everywhere. That rooster got us back!

The car took a while to be fixed. We kids asked for a hotel with a pool, and a sleep-walking bear or a navajo thunderbird, the last time I remember being compelled by corporate logos.

The police come to the hotel, mom's knee was hurt, but to us it was just a vacation extension.

The Effort Showed Promise

2010-03-09T02:47:00Z

I think I just earned a vendor pushcart permit for New York City! Why? I have the same answer when Nancy asks me why I continue watching past the first few minutes of ill-starred movies. She can make a no-go decision based on previews, theme music or opening titles. My approach is that I continue because almost any effort shows promise.

In high school I was on the wrestling team and did quite well, going to the state tournament in my senior year. At Cornell registration, I went to the wrestling/fencing table and signed up. At my first practice I found out that when I signed up the wrestling coach had taken a break and I was on the fencing team. I continued, because the effort showed promise.

Visiting Cathie Mahon, a colleague gone good, now Deputy Commissioner of the Office of Financial Empowerment at the NYC Department of Consumer Affairs.

As soon as I got off the City office elevator, I was wordlessly handed a 3x5 card numbered "5" and hustled to a seating area. At my protest, the attendant said "consumer affairs doesn't open until 9am, please take a seat. "

Number Six is wearing a robe and Kaffeya, reading a small arabic script text (scripture?) over and over again. Number One is a portly older fellow, excited because he has $3000 in his pocket, which no official will accept. Staff scurry in and out of doors that lead to bullet proof glass enclosed booths.

At one before nine, our numbers are called and we arrange ourselves along a corded line. In turn, they take my fingerprints and hand me an exam. I'm wondering, "Aren't fingerprints excessive for a coffee visit, and are these regulatory questions relevant to financial services?" I answer myself, "This effort shows promise" and wonder where I can locate a pushcart.

CARMEN at the Metropolitan Opera, Jan 2010

2010-02-08T18:43:00Z

The role is tough. She has to be a singer, dancer, seductress. I imagine Carmen as beautiful and magnetic: a gypsy, a factory girl, a sorceress. Get it right: sluttiness is not her appeal.

Costumes
First, Carmen isn't wearing red! What's Dat? All of the women wear schmatas: long skirts and shawls in earth tone colors. Carmen does carry a nice black lace, but come on. The soldiers are in Franco green with the awkward tricorneo hat. Not at all dashing. Still, Escamillo is the glittering ego wearing tights and short beaded vests that would make a drag queen blush.

The scenery is uniform in tall blocky brick facades that rotate for changes. A Decaying guard station at cigarette factory. A Decaying Tavern. A Decaying mountain retreat. A Decaying bull ring.

The logo of the show is a black screen with a red slash across, a little Hollywod.

Scene 1 is an idyllic village scene, with soldiers commenting on the passers-by. Except the scenery pushes the players to the front of stage, leaving no room for any passers-by. One of the appeals of the Met is this people watching aspect, so I'm satisfied to watch the audience when the director forgets to put extras on the stage.

I always love the crowd of children urchins, first following the changing guard, then in a mocked bull fight during Escamillo's visit.

Don Jose is a confused guy, with out-of-control emotions. I prescribe Zanax.

My seat is orchestra, three rows under the mezzanine. A mistake. Even that small overhang takes the crispness out of the bells and trumpets. I feel like I'm listening through a layer of cloth.

Micaela has the best voice in the crew. Instead of the blue peasant dress, she's wearing a 50's wool skirt.

This was a dark take on Carmen. The libretto justifies that darkness: no one is a bit better off at the end of the action. But the music is irresistibly uplifting and even in a bleak presentation, undeniable.

Fall Haiku

2009-10-25T21:19:00Z

Yellow leaves fall upwards
Back to the bare tree branches
Oh, late autumn breeze.

Leonard Cohen at Madison Square Garden

2009-10-25T21:15:00Z

I'm likely to bail at intermission of ANYTHING. With trepidation I signed up for the Leonard Cohen concert at Madison Square Garden, home of slap back echoes from the upper tier sport boxes. Nancy had decided to go to this concert when she was seventeen. There was much to anticipate.

Now, I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played and it pleased the Lord

I worry about dross overpowering beauty, but soon relax.

There is no perfect offering
Let the bells ring that can still ring
There is a crack in everything
that's how the light gets in

The light did get in, despite the acoustics, despite the inevitable physical discomfort, despite the Manhattan traffic. The voice was muffled, though deeper and confident with humorous asides.

There's a blaze of light in every word
It doesn't matter what you heard

Skipping off the stage, musical but no body rhythm, like John Lennon,.
Three encores, full of respect for the band and us.

I tried to leave you, I don't deny
I closed the book on us, at least a hundred times.

I swear it happened just like this:
a sigh, a cry, a hungry kiss
the Gates of Love they budged an inch

Die Zauberflote at Met Opera

2009-10-04T21:17:00Z

I'm doing a board meeting in NYC, and had the evening free so I signed up for the Die Zauberflote at Metropolitan Opera

From the lobby, I feel a thrill run through the gathering crowd as the first orchestral sounds drift into the lobby. I walk up the sweeping staircases, then into circular hallways stairs all in red velvet, including the handrails, to get to my sixth floor Balcony stage right front row seat. I always worry about pitching over the rails. It's a Grand room, tall with gold inlay on the ceiling and fluted balconies and boxes on each floor. Shakespeare's groundlings have moved upstairs to a standing section which goes for a remarkable $20.It's a full house audience of 3800.

Lots of languages and dress: certainly six degrees of separation though I casually wonder if I know anyone attending tonight.Overhead, a pin star chandelier and in front a reflective triangle Mandala curtain. This production mixes Egyptian, Masonic, Japanese and modern styles indiscriminately. The stage is square with a tunnel through the middle, rotating for different scenes.

The Overture begins, with powerful strings and sweeping compelling rhythms.Tamino enters in kabuki dress, noticably short and he has a weak voice. We're all delighted by puppet dragon on poles (I count 18 puppeteers in the production), Papageno is catching puppet birds fluttering about the stage. Later, his Glockenspiel turns into a boom box. The Three Ladies have puppet masks over their heads, though sometimes puppeteers manipulate the masks, which float like ghosts across the space.

The first act is light with several comedic elements.The Queen of the Night (the titles name her Shimmering Star Queen), appears with three puppeteers building butterfly wings around her star dress. In the second act, she wears a very traditional red satin opera dress. Pamina has a wonderful voice that fill the space, and surpasses her mother, the Queen.The three cherubs are dressed in diapers (like Cherubs) with spiky hair and pale skin. They ride across the stage on a huge puppet bird.I love the deep bass of Zarastro, though in some phrases, it is a bit too small for the space. Monostatos sports bat wings and an S&M leather bustier over his huge paunch.

All experience is personal and small things can mar a big event, like the reflection from conductors big music stand. I'm not looking forward to second half. I haven't had dinner. I hate the libretto and especially the second half in the dungeon / temple. There's no emotion in the plot. Pamina alternatively feels loved and left. Tamino loves as a fact. The Queen and Monostatos plot a takeover, but then disappear.

Violence: attempted suicides of Papageno and Pamina, attempted rape, the cruelty of the brotherhood test. Certainly misogynist, and maybe racist with Monostaos, and more annoying meaningless ritual. Zarastro and the Queen have marriage issues, unresolved.I step outside and see the moon over manhattan and decide to stick with the music and return, just for the glorious ending Pa-Pa-Pa

Bill's Mom writes about her parents and family.

2009-06-17T21:09:00Z

Mona and Clyde Johnson

l895-l976 l887-l962

By Lou Groves (nee Johnson)

Both the members of this union had a common background in Tennessee: Clyde L. Johnson and Mona Hazel Maynard. Their families lived in the Tennessee river valley and its companion Cumberland river valley. Both of these rivers flowed vast amounts of water that was harnessed to become the famed Tennessee Valley Authority, a massive federal project at the vanguard of a relentless demand for electric power in the 20th century.

The TVA, controversial at its start in the early l930s, provided much of the electric power for work on the atomic bomb project of World War II. Lakes created by a series of dams on the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers ultimately covered land on which members of both families had lived for generations.

But while the technology advances of electricity were largely in the future, the Maynard and Johnson families separately looked to a new frontier, the virgin land of Oklahoma Territory, well west of the Mississippi river.

The Tom Johnson family, into which Clyde L. was born on November 8, l887, migrated to the Oklahoma Territory about the turn of the l900s, attracted---as were many Tennesseans---by availability of low cost fertile land in southwestern Oklahoma. Although the Johnson and Maynard families lived in neighboring counties, Clay and Overton, in Tennessee, they were not acquainted until both arrived in Oklahoma, settling in the neighborhood of Granite, in Greer county.

Mona Hazel Maynard was born into the family of Allen and Joanna Howard Maynard on June l6, l895; the family moved to Oklahoma Territory in l906, and Mother recalled marching in a celebration parade when Oklahoma became a state on November 7, l907. Granite became a geographic center for both the Maynard and Johnson families. The Clyde L. Johnson family, with ultimately six children, was to live within 30 crow-flight miles of Granite for all the couple's married life: on the North Fork of the Red River, some eight miles northeast of Granite, and in the neighboring communities of Lone Wolf, Willow, Carter and Hobart.

On graduation from a community school near Granite, no record exists of the number of grades, Daddy went to a regionally well known business school at Chillicothe, Missouri; and on return went to work for a bank in Granite. He and Mother were married in l9l5 and their first child was born on December 2l, l9l6 in Granite: Edward Gillis Johnson.

A family picture of around l9l0-l2 shows Daddy on a Harley-Davidson motorcycle, wearing knickers apparently designed for motorcycle travel, a "sport" of the day. He was also a baseball player of some local renown, developing a lifelong love for the game. Somewhere in his youth he developed an enlarged or "athletic" heart that was not detected until his late sixties. When he died in l962, at age 74, heart failure was blamed. If so, he never let this be a problem, working at raising cattle and clearing trees from a cherished tract of pasture land, some 200 acres on the west bank of the North Fork of the Red River in southwest Oklahoma, well past retirement from his professional career.

Grandpa Tom Johnson had provided farms for his several children in Greer and neighboring Kiowa counties; the one Daddy got had the 200 acres on the North Fork---at the east countyline for Greer, and l60 acres of cultivated land a few hundred yards east in Kiowa county. When Gillis was an infant the family moved to this l60 acres, on which there was a residence. Clifton Kathleen Reavis (there is no accounting for that first name) was born there on August 24, l9l8.

The North Fork of the Red River roughly parallels the Greer and Kiowa county line, intersecting it at a point between Daddy's pasture land and the cultivated acreage. For some years near the turn of the nineteenth century the North Fork was judged the boundary between Oklahoma and Texas---rather than the Red River to the south, that was ultimately settled on as the boundary. Old Greer County, Texas, existed for years because of this mistake. This interesting geography today places the 200 acres of pasture land in present Greer county and the cultivated land in Kiowa.

Daddy had been recruited to teach in a school in the community near the farms, and here he found his life's work. Houston Gayle Johnson also was born on the "farm" on September 23, l920. Few school teachers in rural areas had college training in the l920s, but Daddy felt that if he was going to teach he should be properly qualified. In this purpose, the family moved to Weatherford shortly after Houston was born and Daddy gained enough college hours to be issued a lifetime Oklahoma teaching certificate in May, l923. Weatherford was, and is, the home of Southwestern (Oklahoma) Teachers College, today Southwestern State University.

This was a daunting time for Mother: three small children and a fourth on the way. Helen Jo was born in Weatherford on March l7, l923. But the family coped, the teaching certificate was earned and the family moved back to Granite; Daddy taught in the Liberty and Ozark schools near Granite until l928, assuming administrative duties along with his teaching chores, that sometimes included coaching sports. For a short time the family lived in teachers quarters at Liberty, but most of the time lived in Granite. Daddy continued taking college courses in the free time he could manage, and in July, l926, received his bachelor's degree from SWTC.

This was the Roaring Twenties, of a wide open economy. This business climate caught the family up in a mercantile venture that was to color its life for the next l5 years. In partnership with Ed Ellis, another teacher and the husband of mother's younger sister, Hallie, Daddy bought a hardware and farm implement business in Granite in about l926. Uncle Ed ran the business while Daddy continued to teach school. Thelma Louola Johnson was born in Granite June 2l, l925.

The Johnson-Ellis firm ran a substantial credit business that included sales and financing of big-ticket farm implements.

Then Daddy was offered the superintendency of the Lone Wolf schools, some eight miles east of Granite and in Kiowa county, in l928. Clyde L. Johnson, Jr., was born in Lone Wolf shortly after the move there, on December l3, l928, completing the 6-children family. Providentially, all six children are alive and well at this writing, early in 200l.

The Great Depression hit in the fall of l929, heralded by the crash of the New York Stock Exchange. Suddenly there was no available money, anywhere in the country, nor abroad. The Johnson-Ellis firm inevitably was caught up, owing more money to suppliers than it could gather in from its credit rolls. After some traumatic months, maybe as long as two years, the company became insolvent; but still heavily in debt, with its principals liable for the firm's obligations.

The family's assets became encumbered: a nice family home in Lone Wolf, their automobile and, to an extent, the Greer/ Kiowa land. Daddy and Mother bought the house and car back at creditor's sale and mortgaged the farms heavily. This debt was not to be paid off until World War II; the Depression's crippling grip held on for ten terrible years. Daddy had a good salary as superintendent, but meeting the new debt schedules was a trying challenge, especially with the two older children, Gillis and Kathleen, nearing college age.

The family budget was sharply, even cruelly, curtailed further, but things were kept current. And there was much cruelty in The Depression. A Lone Wolf banker, and neighbor, distressed at growing problems in his bank, committed suicide. The paralyzing crunch was exacerbated by a school finance crisis. The State of Oklahoma was unable to meet checks---warrants---issued teachers, in current fiscal years and school people could get cash on these instruments only by discounting them to a bank, which could hold them until state funds were available. A teacher with a paycheck for $l00, in l934, could get cash for it by taking perhaps $90 from a bank. It seems that Daddy and Mother escaped this added money crisis, by squeezing their household budget even tighter; they kept these problems pretty much to themselves and their children today have only fragmentary knowledge of just how tough things were in the l930s.

Lone Wolf had a farm economy, a thriving one before the l930s, but farmers were hit perhaps even harder that decade, by poor or no markets for farm commodities. Inevitably problems of families came to school with students, an added burden for a kindly and concerned superintendent. But, we all remember proudly, the Lone Wolf schools operated fully, with quality personnel who became closeknit in the problems they shared. Friendships from that period lasted through the lives of our parents.

Inevitably, as it does for all school heads, church pastors and others in public life, Daddy's tenure with the Lone Wolf schools ran out, in l936, near the bottom of the Depression. Gillis was in school at Oklahoma A&M and Kathleen was graduating at Lone Wolf and looking to Southwestern State. Daddy and Mother focused on keeping them in college somehow. The Willow schools, a dozen or so miles away and smaller, offered Daddy their superintendency in l936. Probably the salary was less but this fact was not relayed to the children. We moved into a school-owned house in Willow and were there for six pleasant years, until the onset of World Was II prompted the closing of that school in l942. Houston and Helen Jo finished high school in Willow and both attended Mangum Junior College for a time.

In the fall of l942 the Carter schools, a dozen miles north, came looking for a superintendent. Daddy was to complete his school career at Carter l0 years later, in l952. Louola and Clyde L. graduated from Carter High School.

World War II covered the Carter years, with Gillis in Europe and North Africa flying fighter plane protection for bombers; he was credited with shooting down two German planes, and was decorated several times. Houston was in the army in Europe, wounded in Italy in the campaign that led to Germany and to that country's surrender in l945, followed a few months later by Japan's surrender and the end of WWII. The was was a trying time for us all, but we all survived, and gratefully.

As retirement neared, Mother and Daddy were preparing for it on the Greer/Kiowa farms building a large house on the Kiowa place, which they occupied on retirement. Daddy especially enjoyed being able to establish a cattle herd on the pasture land; he spent several years clearing and improving the acres while Mother fretted in the house, fearful that Daddy would overdo his heart.

In the immediate post-war period, Houston and Clyde L. entered and graduated from Oklahoma University, Clyde L. taking naval reserve officer's training; commissioned on graduation, he served a tour during the Korean War. Gillis and Kate finished college before WWII, Gillis at Oklahoma A&M (now Oklahoma State Univerwity) and Kate at SWSC.

Late in the l950s, urged by their children, Mother and Daddy had the house moved to Hobart, a few miles away and handier to medical care. As always, they entered wholeheartedly into church work and Daddy taught an adult Sunday School class, as he did in other places. His preparation of lessons was a family ritual, these bringing a historian's perspective to the story of Christianity.

Daddy maintained a lively interest in baseball, through the television in his den, often keeping a box score of games. And there were growing interests in their several grandchildren, some nearing their teens. Then, in his typically quiet way, Daddy died in his den on February 7, l962: the heart which had so splendidly served him, his extended family, the education profession and his Lord for 74 good years, just stopped. The family gathered for his services, and burial in the Hobart cemetery.

Mother continued to live in Hobart for several years, staying active in her church, driving her car as she needed, although she had not learned until well into adulthood. And visiting her children occasionally, in Denver, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Irvington, New York, and in Dumas, Texas. She developed some health worries, and about l970 moved to Dumas and into an apartment complex a short distance from Kate and her Dick Reavis family.

Happily, this complex was home also to several other widows and they formed their own social circle. Mother continued to be faithful in her church, even fervent. In one political campaign she met a candidate for Congress who was a staunch Baptist; asked, on election day, if she planned to vote, she declared stoutly: "I'm going to vote for that Baptist!" It was a better yardstick than most voters applied.

Her Health faded more as she aged, but she retained the positive outlook that had marked her life. The family was exploring retirement homes in the area, over her protests late in l976 when at Christmas she was teased about opening some gifts early. She said, mater-of-factly and uncomplainingly, "I wasn't sure I would be here." Maybe it was a premonition: a few days later she suffered a stroke and was hospitalized, as all the family gathered. She died on December 3l, l976; and after services at Lone Wolf, with two of her grandsons as pall bearers, she was buried in the Hobart cenetery alongside her beloved husband of 47 years.

Theirs was not an unusual life, but notable for their devotion to each other, their family and to their religion. Their loving family could find solace in the words of one of Mother's and Daddy's favorite hymns: "When the Roll is Called Up Yonder I'll be there . . ."

Grandkids Reception

2009-06-16T02:25:00Z

Nancy couldn't bear being separated from the Gkids for a month, so we drove to Baltimore for her fix. Once there, I was so impressed by my wife's love and skills with our grandkids. She has a gentleness and engagement that I tend to miss in our day-to-day interactions. She throws herself into engagement with the kids, playing on the floor or repeating some endless mnemonic they chant. She is emotionally available to them. Why didn't I know? When we were child rearing, I had two jobs during (she had the kids and one PT job). I took the kids at lunch. When I got home from work, if it wasn't too late, I played with them.

Now Nancy is planning the much awaited visit, going absolutely purely overboard. Every moment in the house is a chance to clean. Trips outside are interrupted by yard sales looking for toys and quick visits to toy stores. Our mantle has fish shaped holiday lights. Our front door has party balloons. The breakfast table is loaded with party napkins, plates and utensils. There's a ridable tractor in the entryway and wrapped presents on several tables.

10 minutes of grandkids
dervishes of chaos, higher energy level, take dog's toy, fall off couch, tap keyboard, touch oven door, water down front of shirt, food over face and chair, stuff food in mouth
questions: can I, see, touch, eat, go, have. fall down, decide (cry on not), get up. dance, display, headstand, walk down stairs, take of pants,

After the Festival parade, during dinner, I asked the kids what was their favorite part of the parade. Telisho gave me a food sated glazed gaze and said, "Avocado."