Category: My life

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How to get promoted

How to get promoted is a big question during this time when our FS reports are due. I think I can give some insights.

Let me “establish my cred”. I was on promotion panels twice, both times the career make or break transition panels to senior FS. I have also been on reconstituted panels twice. Beyond that, I retired at MC. Unpack that, since both factors are important. Getting to MC meant that I did okay in my own career and being retired means that I can speak more freely than if I worried about impressing or annoying the powers that be.

No old boys’ network
First let me say that the old boys or old girls network is not a factor on promotion panels, at least it was not in my experience. I did not know most of the people whose files I read, and nobody tried to exert any influence at all on me. Whether or not you get promoted, you cannot blame or credit a “fix,” at least it did not happen in my experience.
Related to that is that usually all that I knew about the candidates was what I read on the reports. If I knew the person well, I recused myself from the vote, as did others. I was pleased to note that in those cases, my panel colleagues came to the similar conclusions I would have.

The benefits of ignorance
We did not know in advance how many people would be promoted. Our job was to determine who should be promoted and put them in a rank list. This is good. It takes away the temptation to push someone over the line, if you do not know where the line will fall.

Paradox of skill
I was proud to be among good colleagues on the panel and of the FS colleagues whose reports I was reading. We really have a great group. There are more people who should be promoted than there are places for them. I think this leads to the “paradox of skill.” When everyone is really good, skilled at the highest level, random events play a bigger role. In our job, that tends to be something happening at post. Of course, the job you have matters a lot, but if there are no particular opportunities to shine, you cannot shine. These are unpredictable as international affairs. Consider officers who were in East Germany or Eastern Europe when the wall came down in 1989. They were likely assigned and went through language training a few years before. They looked forward to interesting jobs, but nothing like the chances they had. On the other hand, you might be assigned to a happening place that becomes suddenly sleepy after the crisis. There is nothing colder than ashes, after the fire is gone.

We all know careerist who try to get in on the action. They rarely do well, since they either arrive late to the party or show up after everybody has gone home.

So you have to be very good at your job and you have to be lucky. No surprise. The good news is that you have chances similar to everybody else.

You are not unique
One more macro consideration before I get into a few specifics. Almost ALL FSO think of themselves are unique or “a little bit of a rebel,” and most of us fear that “people like me” are not the kind to get promoted. I used to say that and I believed it, but the FS kept on messing with my worldview by giving me good assignments and promoting me. I had no connections coming in and there was/is nothing special about me. The system does not always choose the best and the brightest, but it is fair.

A few specifics
The things “they” tell you about EERs are mostly true. You have to be careful in how your write, emphasizing outcomes and explaining how you helped make it happen. You cannot be very modest, but don’t push it too hard. The best that any FSO can hope to be is necessary but not sufficient. You did not make anything happen, but you may have facilitated it. It is hard to balance you, them and the environment when talking about accomplishments.

Nobody much cares about the hard time you had or how hard you tried. Challenges met and overcome make a difference. Never complain about why you couldn’t do something. You would be surprised how many people waste valuable space telling panels about their troubles and what they would have done but did not. Those sorts do not get promoted.

Low ranking not the end
One serious criticism I have of the panels is the need to “low rank”. In each group, the panel needs to identify a certain percentage of low ranks. This might make sense except for the means. You have to find something specific in more than one EER. This is harder to find in EERs that you know are bad. Bad performers often know they are bad, so they fight hard to take out specific criticism and they never criticize themselves. You can tell that they are bad performers from the narrative, but you cannot find specific hooks. Otherwise good performers might let a criticism go or even include it in their own honest comments. Those are the ones we can find.

My point of view might be influenced by my own experience. Let me share it as a lesson. I was low ranked because they found that I was sometimes disrespectful of superiors. I made no secret of this, even wrote about it myself. I considered it a good thing in the right circumstances. I suspect that the panels did too, but they could find a specific criticism and they hung me on it.

Was my career in trouble? The NEXT year, the next panel promoted me to Senior Foreign Service. So, I was at the bottom one year and near the top on the next, with almost the same set of EERs and likely with some of the same competition. Be careful, maybe more careful than I was, but don’t worry too much.

BTW – if you are low ranked, don’t complain to colleagues. Nobody knows about it and it does not stay in your permanent record, but if you tell other people about it, they might think you are a loser. It becomes self-fulfilling. You can talk about it, as I did, when you are safely clear, but don’t insult the alligators until you have crossed the river.

Not always bad to be obtuse
Finally, just don’t take things too seriously. In the EER that got me promoted to MC, I wrote that the panel should promote me because “I increase the intelligence of any group I join. I like to think it is because I am so smart, but I suspect that it is because I am so obtuse that colleagues need to explain it several times and it makes them think it through again.” I got promoted. I don’t doubt that the panel members laughed a little, but it did stand out.

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Have you participated in any competitions? How did you do?

Have you participated in any competitions? How did you do?
It is not too much to say that swim team was what I cared most about at Bay View HS. It ordered my life.  I was a good natural swimmer and swam varsity my first year. This was unusual.  Not that good. I did not get a major letter my first year.  But I was good enough that I could cherish reasonable aspirations.

The reason I swam varsity was that we had a meet at an eight-lane pool.  That meant the junior varsity (me) got to be in the same pool as the varsity.  I swam 400-Freestyle for the first time. To my surprise and that of everybody else, I came I second.  One of the guys from the other team won the race, but I came in ahead of everybody else, including our two varsity swimmers.   This outcome did not delight my varsity teammates.  Our lead swimmer for the 400-Free was a guy called Rutowski.  He was good looking and extroverted, inordinately proud of his wash-board abs and incredulous that a skinny wimp like me could come in ahead.  The varsity coach, a guy called Czarapata (yes lots of odd names) had never much noticed me.

The consensus was that I was just lucky Swimming is not a sport where luck plays a big role, but every sport, every human activity, has a social dimension.  I stayed on the Junior Varsity for a couple more meets, but as my times were faster than those of the “starters” the coach finally displaced one of them and swam varsity but remained JV. That is why I did not get that major letter.

Rise of the Machine
In all fairness, it was easy to miss me in the crowded practice pool.  I was introverted, so I did not push myself forward. I had a clumsy and thrashing form while swimming.  We did not have swim-offs.  Rather the coaches assigned you to a race based on their judgement of your potential.  My first assignment had been the 100-butterfly.  I never learned to do that stroke well, so I usually came in 4th in a field of four.  I guess I had done so poorly that they stuck me into 400-free, which was not a popular distance.  In the meet mentioned above, I had never swum that fast before over that distance, but I just kept on going because I wanted to keep up with the faster guys.  My teammates gave me the nickname “the machine” because of my persistence.  I was proud of that.

The beauty of not knowing the challenges
My times were improving fast. Since I did not understand math very well and never heard of the law of diminishing returns, I determined that I should get the school record in 400-free.  It was an old record; as I recall from 1953.   I figured I could knock it off within a couple years.  Ignorance is bliss.

This would not happen w/o effort. This I did understand.  So I went to library and got a book called “The Science of Swimming” by a guy called James Counsilman. Coach Czarapata talked about this book.  The coach did not notice me, but I listened to him.  I read the book very carefully and made up a plan that included off-season swimming and weight lifting.   I lifted weights every day for the next three years, taking off only when I was preparing for a meet or seriously ill.  I did endurance even days, 300 reps, and strength on odd days.  It worked.  When I came back to swim practice the next year, I was much more muscular and much faster the first time out.  Coach Czarapata noticed me.

Tragedy
I woulda, coulda, shoulda got the school record that year, but I had a serious problem.  I coughed up blood and the doctor said it was an ulcer. He said I should not do so much as a pushup if I wanted to get better. I think it was a misdiagnosis, since I never had an incident since.  The diagnosis did, however, keep me from joining the Airforce ten years later and stopped me from swimming during the crucial time in my second year.  I recovered after a few weeks, too late to make a good season.  It was the biggest tragedy in my young life, I thought.

I worked out even harder after.  During that summer of 1972, I went swimming every non-raining morning at Kosciuszko Park swimming pool.  It would have been a perfect summer, followed by a winning season, but my mother died.  Now THAT was the biggest tragedy of my young life.  My mother had been very proud of my swimming success.  I thought I should carry on and I did.  Only in hindsight do I see the profound effect that had on me, but that is another story.

The best year ever
The swim season went well, the best Bay View had done for a long time, maybe forever. We won ALL our dual meets that year and I won all my dual meet races, except one, and this is ironic.  We had a meet with Marquette University HS, not one of our usual public-school competitors.  They had a really fast guy in the 200-free and 400-free.  They said I could not beat him, and they were right.  It was in my home pool and I tried hard to get ahead and then just keep up, but he was faster.  So, I was surprised when my teammates seemed happy and congratulated me when I – defeated – pulled myself out of the water.  I beat the Bay View school record, even if this guy now held the pool record.

I never did better.  In the Milwaukee city tournament, I missed my first flip turn and ended up in third place.  I have always referred to that as my “Freudian flip,” since it gave me an excuse to lose.  There was never question about doing well in Wisconsin state meets.  Milwaukee boys never won. We were not good enough.  Kids in the suburbs were on teams since they were little kids.  We started competition when we were in 10th grade. We never caught up.

There is small compensation that my swim record was never bested.  A few years later, the swim competition went to 500-free.  The first person to swim that won the record, but he did not beat me.

Sic transit gloria mundi
My swim team experience was a passing but very important part of my life.  It kept me out of trouble in HS. I was so concerned with my training that I never drank booze, smoked or took drugs.  I became interested in improving my diet and I learned how to set achievable goals. Nothing I learned in HS was as crucial to my future as was the swim team.   I got the record in the 400-free, shared the record in the 400-free relay and was co-captain.  Not too bad. But after a few years, it didn’t really matter if I won or lost.  Sic transit gloria mundi.

A son’s need for his father’s approval
My father was less interested than my mother in my swimming. He thought sports were a little … dumb.  But he did come meets twice.  He came to the city relays and to the city championship.  I like to think he was proud of me, but his comment was interesting.  In the city relays, we swam against Boys’ Tech. They were the perpetual champions, since they literally had twice as many boys as anybody else – a bigger field to choose from.  I was the third leg in the 400-free relay.  We were behind when I jumped in. I caught up and passed the Boys’ Tech swimmer.  Although we lost in the last leg (they had a great guy), for a brief shining moment it looked like somebody would beat Boys’ Tech.  All the other teams were cheering for us.  As I got out of the water, I was mobbed by joyous teammates and members of other teams. I still recall the elation.  When I met my father after the meet, he said simply, “You did okay.  I didn’t know you could swim like that.”

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“Do you believe in a higher power?”

My story worth for this week. A deeper subject.

“Do you believe in a higher power?”
I had been living away from home for many years, had a family and life of my own. I was an adult far from childhood. But you are never prepared for the death of a parent, and my father’s death affected me profoundly. I was in Poland when he fell seriously ill. My sister called and I caught the first plane home. I think I was over Canada when he died. I admire his last words. As my sister reported, when asked how he was doing, he replied, “I can’t complain.”

For a long time after, I was out of balance – a kind of vague malaise. Then I had a remarkable dream. Words will not be adequate to convey the feeling, and the feeling was what made it remarkable. I felt that in the eternal present. Everybody was there, past, present & future. I don’t try to explain it. My malaise lifted and I have not felt it again. Well, almost never, which is remarkable since it has been more than two decades.

I firmly believe in a higher power, with the stipulation that I can never understand in any rational way what that means. The explanation lies with faith in … faith. That is not say we cannot know anything. Raw truth – the meaning OF life – is unavailable to the mortal man, but we can come to a likeness of truth by seeking meaning IN life. We humans are hardwired to seek meaning in life and to persist in the journey that we know will never be completed. All of us must find our own way.

Some people seek truth by meditating or studying ancient texts. I have great respect for those who do these things with rigor and commitment. I never got into meditation. I fall asleep. If that counts, I am adept at my daily meditations. And although I still sometimes enjoy parsing ancient texts, that is not where I find answers to profound questions. IMO, those answers cannot be found in the intellectual sense but can be perceived. I learn the parts by study and effort; I perceive how they fit together -the whole – only when in motion and engaged in some activity. Just don’t sit still. My favored way is to immerse in nature and try to recognize natural principles, accepting that the joy & connections come from searching, not finding. I welcome a new horizon opening after I summit each ridge.
I recognize that is my way and not the only way.

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You cannot make Bourbon w/o white oak

Bourbon is a gift of the oak tree. More than half of whiskey’s flavor & all of its color comes from the oak in the barrels. The whiskey is taken in and out of the wood as it ages and matures. The taste of Bourbon is the taste of the oak forest. I think that is beautiful.   We went to the Old Forester distillery in Louisville. Since it was a tree farmer convention, Old Forster seemed appropriate, although we would prefer something like “experienced but still energetic forester.”  

They make whiskey at their downtown location and also have a cooperage. The barrels need to be made of new white oak, so there is a big demand for that wood.    

We are a little worried about the future of white oak. It is common now, but most oak forests are middle aged to old growth.   The new generation is not coming up in sufficient numbers. A big reason is that maturing of forests of eastern North America. Oaks need light and disturbance to regenerate. It takes 30-80 years to grow a white oak tree, so we need to act now so that Bourbon drinkers of the future will benefit.

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The joy of being bullied

This week’s edition of “Story Worth”

Did you have any serious accidents as a child?
My regret about the many accidents I had as a kid was that the emergency hospital did not give out frequent flyer points, but I had only one accident serious enough to land me in the hospital for a long time. When I was eleven years old, I broke my leg. We were playing a silly game for bouncing a super ball against the house and then fighting over it. I fell on the ground with my leg propped up. Ricky Gebhardt fell on top of it and everybody else fell on top of him. It was a compound fracture on the upper leg. My father came out and thought I was faking. He told me to stand up. I tried. It didn’t work.

A broken leg alters destiny
They carried me into the house and laid me on the couch. A broken leg hurts in a kind of throbbing way, especially when there is vibration. My sister was watching “F-Troop”, one of her favorite shows and objected to my screaming. I was being kind of dramatic. My mother came home and called an ambulance. In those days, the cops ran a kind of station wagon. They came up, put a leather thing around my leg and carried me out. It was a big neighborhood event. The neighbors came to watch.

Six weeks in traction changes your perspective
I spent the next six weeks in traction at St Luke’s Hospital. My parents, relatives and friends took turns visiting, and that was nice. My cousin Ray & my father always came on Sundays to watch the Packer Game, killed two birds with one stone. Ray was always very funny, and I enjoyed all the attention, but it was still usually lonely and unpleasant immobilized in the hospital.

Funny the little things you recall. I broke my leg on the first week of school. On the first day, I got in trouble for fighting with my friend Andrew Oren. Don’t recall how it started, but it ended with us putting gum in each other’s hair. I had short hair, so I suffered less than my friend who had nice long hair.  Anyway, this was our introduction to our 6th grade teacher.  She was not amused.  She made some comment about boys being trouble. I suffered karma from the gum incident with my broken leg, since some of the gum still sticking in the hair on the back of my head created minor but persistent discomfort as I lay on the pillow.

Short-term pain = long-term gain
This injury improved my life in the long run, however, at the cost of temporary suffering. The immediate result of my forced inactivity was that I got weaker physically but stronger mentally. I could not get out of bed, so I read & read. My mother was great about bringing books from the library and I went through lots of them. Ironically, learned a lot that was useful for the future even as I fell behind in my actual 6th Grade school work.

Before the long-term gain, let me explain the short-term pain. As I just said above, I fell behind in my school work, and I was behind when I went back to Dover Street School. My teacher was not very understanding. She often said that boys were lazy, and she thought I was a typical example. I read mostly history and geography in the hospital and did well in those subjects, but even there I gave my teacher reason to dislike me. We had a “geography bee”. You got eliminated when you got one wrong. I survived to the final round along with one of the teacher’s favorite girls. I won. But the teacher said that she had to use up all the question. I had to answer three more, otherwise it would be a tie. I recall the last question was obscure – the capital of Sudan. I think she thought she got me on that one, but one of the books I read in hospital was Winston Churchill’s “River War” where he talked about Gordon of Khartoum. I think I still recall the look of surprise on the teacher’s face, but that might be a synthetic memory.

Not smart enough to learn foreign language
I wanted to study language in 7th Grade, specifically I wanted to study German, but I was judged not smart enough. I think the teacher’s recommendation made a difference and she told me I was lazy. I was streamed into the less challenging classes.

My subsequent education and career implies that I am reasonably competent at language learning, so I think I would have done okay, but that is past. On the other hand, I got to be relatively smarter in a less competitive environment.

The real good in the long-run came from the real short-term bad of physical weakness and bullying. The hospital time and long convalescence made me weak. Bullies can smell that, and they gave me a lot of crap. The funny one I recall now related to the then popular series “Gunsmoke.” Reruns featured a character who limped the way I did soon after I got back to school. Some of the kids called me “Chester” after that character. I didn’t know what they meant until somebody explained. We got bad TV reception and maybe we did not get those reruns.

The joy of being bullied
Being bullied was something I did not enjoy, so I resolved not to stay weak, and started to work out – pushups and pullups first. I never stopped. Anyway, flowing from the ostensible bad event of breaking a leg, getting weak, being put into the “dumb” group and being bullied, came my live-long habit of physical exercise, love of reading and generally proactive outlook. How terrible would it have been if some guardian angel had prevented my injury, made my teacher more understanding or kept the bullies off me? You can’t always tell when you get good breaks, or bad ones.

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Have you lost any possessions that you really cared about? What were they?

Another “Story Worth” essay

Have you lost any possessions that you really cared about? What were they?

The short answer is “no”, but that would make a very short and not very interesting essay. Maybe the reason I cannot think of anything whose loss has greatly distressed me is because in today’s world you can replace most possessions. The irony is that things don’t much matter when you have lots of things.

Maybe some losses that were hard at the time, but funny now.

Pick pockets of Spain

I got pick pocketed in Spain back in 2002. I was upset at the time, but on reflection I admire the thieves’ skill. Chrissy and I were walking in Barcelona, when this old guy came up and told me there was dirt on my coat. He set about “helping” me brush it off. Soon another guy also came to help. I suspected these guys were dishonest, but I did not want to be rude. Crooks depend on that you don’t want to be rude. So, I kept my hand on my wallet and waited for them to go away. They did. I felt for my wallet and it was still there. I thought that maybe I was wrong about them. They were a couple of odd, but friendly guys. After all, I still had all my stuff and my coat did have a dirt stain on the back.

I was wrong. A while later we wanted to buy some pastries. I reached for my wallet. The wallet was still in my pocket, even the cash was still there, but the credit cards were gone. These guys were so skillful that they took my wallet – while I was aware of them – took out the credit cards and put the wallet back. It was a smart trick. Had they taken the wallet, I would have chased them, or at least immediately reported the cards stolen. At first, I thought that I maybe misplaced the cards, but when we called Visa, we learned that the cards had already been used to buy thousands of dollars’ worth of jewelry.

Visa & Master Card were good about it. We suffered no losses, but it was hard, since we no longer could use the cards. Chrissy had her cards, but they were the same ones that I had and were compromised. Fortunately, we always build in some redundancy and we had a third unrelated card in the hotel safe. The lesson I learned was that you never should carry two credit cards with you. One suffices, although in our defense in those “old” days in Europe, some shops took Visa and others Master Card. Many did not take both.

Reporting the incident to the police was a challenge. They did not have English speakers and we do not speak Spanish. Our old Portuguese worked more or less, mostly less, but all we really needed was the police report for the credit card companies and we got one. There was no chance of catching the crooks. I later learned that Barcelona was well-known for the skill of local pick pockets. In all my travels, this is the only time it has ever happened to me. I really suffered no loss, but it was a lot of paperwork to get it resolved. For months after, we got bills from tunnels and toll roads. Visa told us that this was one of the scams. They had a confederate working at the toll booth and they just ran the card over and over. We did not have to pay, but we did have to inform Visa each month. Master Card did not have that problem.

We were victims of crime on three other occasions: in Brazil, in Poland and right here in Washington.

Burglars in Brazil

Thieves broke into our house in Porto Alegre when we were traveling. They were stupid thieves. They broke down one door going in, and another one going out. I think they thought it was another room. Anyway, they stole only a couple bottles of Bourbon, some costume jewelry and my leather coat. A lot of trouble for not much gain. Our neighbors were also robbed in this petty way. They did not even know a robbery had taken place until our friend could not find a favorite suit. What he did find was a pair of old shorts with one of his belts attached. Evidently the thieves tried on the clothes until they found what they wanted and walked out better attired than when they walked in.

Car thieves in Poland (Russian mafia?)

We had a car stolen in Poland. Chrissy was driving in Warsaw, in an area w/o much parking, when she found a great spot. She was not gone long, but when she came back, the spot was open again, but our car was gone. The police figured that it was the Russian mafia, but they blamed the Russians for most things. They said that it was a sort of made to order robbery. The crooks would keep a parking place open until their colleague saw the type of car they wanted. I don’t know about that.

Stupid crooks in Washington

In Washington, a thief broke into our car and took a couple tapes and a glow stick, not much of a haul. The tapes were not of general interest. We were studying Norwegian at the time and one of the tapes was a Norwegian language lesson. The other tape was “Secrets of Power Negotiating,” so we searched for a Norwegian speaking negotiator in SW Washington, but never found him. Replacing the broken window was the big expense. Many of the cars in the lots were attacked. We figure that it was kids or druggies looking for a fast grab.

Shoeless

Anyway, besides these, maybe my most inconvenient loss was when I left my dress shoes on the train from Krakow to Warsaw. I had to go to meetings with my running shoes and nice suit. It turned out a good thing, an ice breaker.

No narrative of loss

I guess I don’t have a narrative of loss to share. I cannot think of many things I would feel really terrible about if I lost them, although I prefer not. I would be very sad if my house burned down and devastated if I “lost” my forest land, but I don’t think that was the sort of possession they meant. Possessions can be replaced or maybe you didn’t need them in the first place. Loss is not a problem but an expense.

My pictures are from our trip to Barcelona, a wonderful place to visit, pick pockets notwithstanding. The picture of Alex and Espen is outside our house in Warsaw. There was a mean dog there. They were afraid of him, but had to look.

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Young men are stupid

Next note in my story. This one asked about my first big trip alone.   It was not a good idea, but did it anyway. I had planned to hitchhike to Arizona over spring break with a couple of young women I knew. I don’t remember both, but I do recall that one was called Sandy, a beautiful blond-haired girl. I had a crush on her and thought the trip would be a good opportunity to get to know her better. Turned out they got a better deal, i.e. a guy who had a car, so I was left forlorn with no place to go for spring break, but an intense desire to go somewhere warm, to escape what passes for spring in northern Wisconsin, winter most other places. I decided to hitchhike to Florida.  

You cannot memorize all the details of the map  

Lack of planning is a general affliction of 18-year-old boys.I like to think I was just more adventurous, but more likely just less circumspect. I didn’t have much money, only $15 cash, which I did not want to waste on a map, so I went to the library, memorized the road map of the Eastern USA (more on that later) and headed south on US 51 out of Stevens Point with what I thought would be supplies enough for the sojourn.   Planning was not one of my skills at that time, but I had already developed the insouciance that would later characterize me.   You meet a lot of interesting people hitchhiking. They tend not to be average people. Almost always male, usually generous but iconoclastic. I wanted to avoid Chicago, so I went toward Urbana and then east, ending up the first day in Louisville, KY. Well … not really in the city. It got dark, so I passed the night under a juniper bush near the highway. At first light, I hit the road again.  

Sweet Alabama  

I was lucky to get a very long ride. They were going someplace in Alabama. My first mistake with my memory map was to confuse I-65 (Alabama) for I-75 (Florida). When I discovered the mistake, I thought I would go east on I-10, as I recalled went to Panama City, Florida. They let me off on Hwy 10, but it was State 10 in Alabama, for reasons never clear to me called the Pineapple Highway. Maybe it is a busy road today, but back in 1974 it was rural and secluded.   I stood out for a while until a guy in a pickup truck stopped. I could not understand much of what he said. The accent was impenetrable, but he seemed harmless and seemed to be going my way, so I hopped in. He went only a few miles. I worried. I could not understand the accent. Alabama was a foreign country. A farmer was working the field where I got off. He came by to talk. He had a “Gone with the Wind” accent, but I understood him well and said so. He seemed a little taken-aback. I explained that I had understood nothing from the guy in the truck. He just laughed and said.

“You talked to old James. He’s the town drunk. Ain’t nobody understands old James.”  

He told me that the next town was Luverne and from there I should turn south toward Opp. A name like Opp, I could remember. Florida was more of less that way. I got a ride all the way to Brantley when it got dark. I was talking to some old boys at a gas station. They could tell I was not from around there and they were having some fun telling me about the prevalence of rattle snakes in the tall grass. I left town at dark looking for a place to sleep. It was all tall grass, no doubt full of snakes, until I saw some short grass and neat trees. A roadside park, so I slept there.  

Sleeping in the graveyard  

When the sun came up the next day, I could see I was not IN the graveyard but next to it. Had I known, I believe I would have had some trouble sleeping. As it was, it was nice and quiet. No snakes and no spectral visitors. But I figured I had adventure enough. I was running out of food and I wanted to go home, so I backtracked.  

In the words of the old country song  

I easily got back to I-65 and then got a ride with a guy on his way from Panama City to Nashville, he said to kill his wife and her no good boyfriend, an erstwhile best friend of his. Evidently, they ran off together. He was not so much concerned about the running off as that they took some cash he kept in an old coffee jar. He did not have a plan on how to do the deed. What he did have was a bottle of bourbon between his legs and he gulped it down the way I drink Coke Zero. His story sounded a little too much like a Hank Williams, Jr song. I also recalled the words of the old Roy Acuff song, “Whiskey and Blood on the Highway” (There was whiskey and blood all together; mixed with glass where they lay; I heard the moans of the dyin’; but I didn’t hear nobody pray). I tried to pay attention to the news the next day and didn’t hear about any spectacular murders, so I figure he was just talking … and drinking.   People who picked up hitchhikers sometimes were just looking for someone to talk at and they often are not serious. But guns, booze, anger and cars are not things you should mix or mess with if you can avoid it. Not wanting to be there if he encountered the pair and considering that it is not great to drive with an angry drunk, I told him I needed to meet someone and bailed in Decatur.  

A special providence  

My next ride was good. Got all the way to Nashville. I figured I would deploy some of my $15 to take the Greyhound Bus as far as I could get, hoping to sleep during the night trip. It was getting cold. I did not know where the bus station was, and neither did the driver, but trusting luck and the benevolence of the good Lord, who protects drunks, children the United States of America and fools like me, I guessed the correct downtown exit. I was in no rush to leave the bus station, where it was warm and reasonably comfortable, so I got a ticket for a late bus. $7, about half my fortune, got me to Evansville. $15 was more in those days than it is today, but it was not that much. From Evansville I thought I could get to Hwy 41, which I recalled went thorough Milwaukee as 27th Street.  

Clear & bright and icy cold  

Got off the bus just as the sun was coming up. It was a bright and clear day but otherwise not a good day to be out. A winter storm has passed through the night before, leaving that wonderful clear sky, an early morning temperature of -5, ice on the roads and not much traffic. Nevertheless, I got picked up quickly by a nice old guy. He told me that he usually did not pick up hitchhikers but that he thought I looked pathetic in the cold. He drove me to Terra Haute and bought me breakfast. I was hungry, and hunger is the best cook, so I still remember fondly the ham and eggs I had at Waffle House.   My next ride seemed a nice guy but was a four-lane a-hole. He drove me not far and then told me to get out in the middle of nowhere. He laughed as he drove off. I looked up to see a sign saving, “Rockville Prison. Do not pick up hitchhikers.” I later found out that it was a woman’s prison, but the sign didn’t specify. I walked back until the sign was no longer casting its dark shadow and got picked up by a couple of young women (maybe from the prison 😊). This is uncommon. They were very nice. I do not recall where they dropped me. Somewhere in the Chicago area, but still Indiana. It was near enough that I saw the signs to I 94 and so I knew which way to go. I didn’t need my memorized map to tell me that I-94 went right past my father’s house in Milwaukee. I got a few short rides though Chicago.Chicago scared me. It was the big and dangerous city.  

Chicago  

My father told me that Chicago was the friendliest place in the world, an insight as based on his experience after WWII. My old man was among the first GIs to be discharged back to America after the war. They dropped him in Chicago still wearing his Army-Air-Corps uniform. So soon after victory in Europe, his uniform may have influenced people’s generosity and account for the drinks and meals they bought for him. I could not count on that. It was getting dark and it never stopped being cold. I was not optimistic.   My special providence stepped in again. Some guy picked me up headed for Kenosha. I had been to Kenosha once for a swim meet. I didn’t know exactly where it was, but I knew that you could get there from Milwaukee in about an hour, and it was Wisconsin, so I was content. It got better. They guy asked where he should let me off. I told him any ramp would do since I was just going north. He told me that it was very cold, as I was aware, and asked me if I had any money. I told him that I had around $7. And he told me that he could not drop me off into that dark emptiness. He drove me instead all the way home to my father’s house.  

Life lessons  

It is probably not a good idea to depend on the kindness of strangers, but I was glad that I ran into good people. Besides the Rockville Prison guy and the homicidal boozer, everybody I met was okay, some were very friendly and shared lunches with me. I would have been a lot hungrier if not for that.   The whole adventure lasted only four days, but it made a deep impression, so much that a half a lifetime later I can still recall details. This was the first time I was really alone and unconnected. I realized that a guy could just disappear. The most disturbing part about wandering is looking around for a place to bed down at dusk, hoping that it doesn’t rain, or you don’t get rolled. It is nice to be able to come & go when you want, but in the words of that great country philosopher Kris Kristopherson, “freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose.”   The old man was surprised to see me when I showed up home. He was unaware that we were on spring break. When I told him, he asked me where I’d been. When I told him Alabama, he said that I was stupid. Hard to disagree. But he allowed that he had hopped trains when he was a young man and once ended up in Montana. Young men are stupid. He told me that I should have stayed in Chicago overnight, since people there were so friendly that they would probably buy me drinks and give me a free meal, although he imagined things might have changed since 1945.   There is a coda. I went down to the Air War College in Montgomery in 2009 to do some talks about U.S. foreign policy. I took an extra day to drive around. This time I had my own rental car and a hotel for the night. It was better. I wrote a note re at the time.

Freedom’s Just Another Word for Nothin’ Left to Lose
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Availability bias

The price of gas is dropping like a rock. Some people say that it goes up faster than it comes down. That is not the experience of the past few days. The price has been dropping as I have been driving. Of course, I try to get gas at the cheapest places, so my pictures are biased.

All day today the sun and the clouds fought for dominance of the sky. When the clouds came in, it poured rain and then the sun came out, only to be followed again by clouds and rain.

It was also an interesting study in availability bias. I describe the sun-cloud-rain sequence, but I have pictures of the sun because it was too hard and uncomfortable to take pictures in the rain. Given time, the sunny-day/cheap gas narrative would come to dominate, since pictures seem more authentic than words.

This bias is often used offensively by manipulative media. You tell the story accurately, but show the picture of one part of the story.

I first recall this during the Reagan years, when economic news was good you would get a factual report that included lots of people still suffering. The pictures you remembered.
There is an informative case of this working the other way. Leslie Stahl wanted to do a hit piece on Reagan, contrasting his positive upbeat style with the suffering that remained. The words were negative, but the story was illustrated with a positive, smiling Ronald Reagan. Reagan praised the piece, which annoyed Stahl. He pointed out to her that nobody really heard her words, but they did see his pictures.

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Seeking Meaning In Life

I am invited to address a Department of State Public Affairs Officer conference to provide insights from someone who had crossed the bar from active diplomat to retired Foreign Service Officer. Some people in that audience might be reading this. I don’t mind tipping you off to think of questions or counter arguments. I may not get to all the points and may introduce others. It has always been hard for me to stick to a script, even one I wrote myself.

Life in and After the Foreign Service
“I improve the intelligence of any group I join. I like to think this is because I am so smart, but I suspect it more likely that I am so obtuse that others need to explain things to me. In doing so they question assumptions and come up with new solutions.” This is what I wrote in the EER that got me promoted to MC. You wouldn’t think that kind of insouciance would be career enhancing, but then you never know.

I am here to talk about work-life balance. This implies that work and life are separate. But they are no more independent than your heart from the lungs while you are living and breathing. Making work meaningful is key to balanced life. As a retired FSO, I am also here to talk about life after the Foreign Service. It exists, and it is glorious, BTW. I will make brief comments – tell my story -and be ready to respond to your questions and comments.

“Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Or what’s a heaven for?”
Lighten up. You know I am right, and I know it is much easier for me to say than for you to do. Career is important. Promotions have consequences. They are a judgement on us. I still recall the dread of promotion lists. My wife had a friend who got advance copies. She helpfully called my wife and told her when I was not on the list. We take promotions personally, but they are less about you than you think. I served twice on promotion panels. They were big ones: career ending or saving transition panels that promote FS-01 to FE-OC. Promotions are statistical. You don’t always get what you deserve. Good people tend to get promoted faster, but not always. And we all end up in about the same place anyway. The day after you retire is the day you are a former FSO. So, lighten up.

Every FSO needs TWO types of examples. The first one is obvious. We need to think of the best FSOs and try to be like them. I thought of guys like Tom Shannon & Brian Carlson. These are the best. We can be excellent but still not reach a Tom Shannon level, and this is demoralizing. So, we need a second sort of example – high-ranking FSOs who are – shall we say – less competent. I will not name names, but there are a few. The good example makes us reach farther; the other sort is solace when our reach exceeds our grasp. “If that guy can do it, I can too.” This is maybe not a logical or noble sentiment, but it can keep you going during the lean times.

We few, we happy few
We (now you) have the best jobs. We meet great people, learn languages, dive deeply into societies worldwide, explore myriad topics, and they pay us for this. We have remarkable access and opportunity for meaningful work. The FS let me pursue an encompassing passionate interest in learning about one country, its language, society and history, to make it an obsession, and then disengage to move to something completely different. FSOs enjoy an unusual blend of remarkable continuity and radical change. Some of us refer to posts as “incarnations,” because it sometimes seems like we are different people living different lives. On the other hand, we stay in the same career, in the same State Department, in a society of long-term colleagues, subject to the strong gravity of Foggy Bottom. This peculiar combination suited me just fine. It is a unique life. I am sure most of you feel similarly.

I got a lot of status and personal identity from being a Foreign Service Officer – a diplomat. And when I thought about leaving this simultaneously challenging and comfortable environment, about retiring, I was terrified that I would be lost if separated from the Foreign Service. No more incarnations in a system that dominated my life for more than three decades. What was I w/o that?

Becoming a “Gentleman of Leisure”
In each of my Foreign Service assignments I learned things that I could apply in the next. They were new beginnings, but I began with a head start, with more tools to use and more skill in using them. Of course, I could not choose the circumstances where I would deploy them. It is the paradox of skill. The better you get, the more consistent your skill, the bigger role luck plays in the outcomes. I was extraordinarily lucky as PAO in Brazil. Colleagues were so good and so many things went my way that I figured that was the best I could ever do. After that, was senior international advisor at Smithsonian and then I did think tanks and NGOs. I did all I could do, and it was time to go and do something else.

It was also important to me to go out on my own timetable. I didn’t want them to kick me out. That seems less important to me now. Always leave when they still want you to stay.  Don’t hang around like a fart in a phone booth.

I decided to become a Gentleman of Leisure, even wrote a job description. The Foreign Service gave me a lifetime of diverse experience, maybe many lifetimes, the incarnations I spoke of above. It also gave me a taste of variety. AND – this is important – the pension and the TSP can support the moderate lifestyle of a Gentleman of Leisure. I have an additional permutation of forest ownership.

My Gentleman of Leisure job makes me a sometime diplomat (WAE), forest owner & land manager, conservationist, and member of a couple boards of directors. I attend lectures and have leisure to read broadly. My life now is like my life in the Foreign Service, with the big difference in that I get to choose where, when and how I work, and I no longer live in dread of those promotion lists.

I have been pleasantly surprised at the easy transition from Foreign Service Officer to Gentleman of Leisure. I am very lucky to have a supportive wife, reasonably good health & a lifestyle within my means, but I think that a big reason for the smooth transition is that it was not so much a transition as a reordering, as I mentioned above, a new incarnation with more freedom.

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

Becoming a successful Gentleman of Leisure means that you proactively manage your life and learning, including research & reflection to decide what among many possible interests to follow and mustering self-discipline to pursue them, minimize those wasted days and wasted nights drinking beer and watching reruns on TV. I want to use my freedom to seek meaning in life. Not the meaning OF life. That is unknowable, but finding meaning in life is possible by thinking, doing, reflecting and doing again, each iteration coming closer to excellence, sort of like we should be doing in our diplomatic enterprises.

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Last flowers of summer

The last flowers of summer are still hanging on a bit forlornly. A melancholy time – too late for the glory of fall, too early for the promise of spring, and still no winter snow to turn the drabness shining white, too close to the end and not close enough to the rebirth. Not sure if my mood matches the times or if my times match my mood. Melancholy is not one of my habitual emotions, but when I experience it usually it is this time of the year so let me blame the times.

First pictures are from the Botanical Gardens. After that shows some plantings along the bike trail, followed by the Capitol and a shot of the Brookings lecture.

The gardens are indeed still beautiful, but a little melancholy these times. I rode my bike down to Brookings for a talk on the economics of renewable energy. I only do the one-way, i.e. I take the Metro back. You cannot take your bike on the Metro after 3pm and before 7pm. The talk ended at 3:15, so I had to wait and read my book until 7 and found a bench in the garden. When it got too dark with these short days (another source of melancholy), I had to go over to the bar at the Holiday Inn and have a beer while reading, probably an odd sight I made.