Month: August 2014

Starting our trip across the U.S. we made it to Lafayette, Indiana on the first day. Lafayette is where I had my first job after graduating with my MBA. I worked at a place called Microdatabasesystems (MDBS) . I was a market researcher and since I was the only one in the department, I was the director of marketing research (never trust a title.)

I worked there only five weeks. I was working there two weeks when the owners/founders called me. They asked me what I thought of the product. I told them the truth. I told them that their software was wonderful, but it was too hard to use. One of the guys told me that if customers were too stupid to use the product, perhaps they should not buy it. That day I called the Foreign Service. I had taken and passed both written and oral tests and they were doing the security clearance. They told me that they had finished the clearance and offered me a job. I was supposed to have responded a week before. I guess that the notice went to my old address in Minneapolis. I asked for an extra day and they gave it to me. The next day, I put in my notice at MDBS and a couple weeks later went to Washington to start the career I have had ever since.
Sometimes I have wondered how life might have been had I not made the call. A few years after I was in the FS, I went back to Minneapolis to talk to MBA friends. Everybody made more money than I did. Even new MBA graduates made more on average. But the jobs were not as much fun. My most successful friend was a brand manager at Green Giant. He was in charge of frozen peas – not all peas, not all frozen products, just frozen peas. He seemed to like his job and he made the big bucks, but I thought the FS was perhaps a better choice for me.
Lafayette is a pleasant place, the home of Perdue University. But there is not much more. We went to the Tippecanoe Battlefield, where William Henry Harrison defeated the forces of Tecumseh’s alliance. It is interesting to see the old trees and the nature succession that happened since, more on that in the next post.
My picture up top is the gate to the Tippecanoe battlefield. Below it are some of the windmills in the farm fields north of Lafayette.

It has not been hard to re-adapt.  I filled up my bike tires, tightened up all the bolts and I was good to go.  Yesterday, I went down to State Department to check in. I also talked to my predecessor about my Smithsonian job that I will start in September.  It will be fun.

The biking is a little harder because I am doing the round trip of 34 miles.  When I get to my actual work, I will do as I did before, i.e. ride to work in the morning and take the Metro back in the evening.  It is mostly downhill on the way to Washington.  Coming back is not as much fun.  It gets a little worse now, since they have closed the gate at Fort Meyer and I have to go all the way around.
The weather has been very good, not too hot.  It seems like summer is cooler. I was thinking about whether this was really the weather or if it was just my perception, having spent some time in Iraq and Brazil, where it gets hot.  I think that might be true, but it is also true that summers have been a little cooler.  We bought the house in 1997.  It turns out that our first full summer in Washington, summer of 1998, was especially hot. That was my “base year” and since then conditions have been better, so it feels better to me.
Today I went over to the Nature Conservancy.  I have been a donor for more than twenty-five years and the person in charge of donor relations invited me over for coffee.  TNC is my favorite environmental organization because they are actually involved with improving nature instead of just complaining.   I hope to visit the TNC tallgrass prairie station in Oklahoma during out upcoming trip across the U.S.  The donor relations woman told me that she would make some calls and we could get a guided tour.  Hope it works out, so I can learn more.
The top picture is my new workplace.  Not bad.  I am way underground, but still in a nice place.  The middle picture is my bike trail and on the bottom is the Nature Conservancy headquarters.

I went down to FSI today to do a couple of talks.  I spoke first at the Portuguese Department about Brazil.  This is probably that last time I will give a full-out lecture in Portuguese.  My audience was colleagues almost done with their Portuguese language studies and about to go on their assignments.  The other talk I gave was to PAOs headed out to their first posts as PAOs.  I tried to give realistic advice, with the caveat that my experience should be taken in the context of Brazil, which is special.

FSI has changed and improved.  They have created nice environmental spots you can see in the photos with lots of tall grass and natural looking rain gardens. I liked the cedar meadow.  This would be typical of an old farm field in Northern or Central Virginia in the early stages of natural succession.  This is one of my favorite stages, so full of dynamism and potential.  I really don’t much like manicured lawns and I am pleased – maybe a little surprised that State Department has adopted the more raggedly natural approach.
I rode my old bike down to FSI. It feels off balance, but I will get used to it again.  It is faster than my bike in Brazil and comfortable.  In fact, of all the bikes I have ever owned, this one remains my favorite.  I bought it back in 1997 and put more miles on this bike than any other, mostly on the same W&OD bike trail.  I look forward to many more miles.
BTW – W&OD has also improved.  They now have signs on the road and cars are stopping at the crosswalks.

This is a little late. I did my last visit to my erstwhile post in Recife last week. I visited Recife only three times. It was not like São Paulo or Rio that constantly called for attention.

One of my goals in Brazil was to get away from the big cities of Rio, São Paulo and Brasília into the rest of Brazil. I will not say the “real” Brazil, since there is no such thing. Each section is real in its own way. São Paulo probably has the biggest claim to be called “real,” since it has so many people and is so productive. But there is a lot more.

And there are big changes. Brazil used to be the land of Samba and coastal cities; it is now more a country of sertaneja and interior growth.
Before going to Brazil, I wanted to see all that, put my feet on the ground. I succeeded to some extent. I visited a total of eighteen out of the twenty-six states, including the extreme ones like Acre, Rondônia and Roraima. The ones I missed were mostly near Recife. There are lots of smaller states up in the Northeast and I didn’t get there. I thought of making a last run in my last few weeks. I could have hit all of them by driving in a circle from Recife and then just setting a toe into Tocantins & Mato Grosso, the other two I managed to miss. But I thought that was just a false way to do it. So I did not succeed in visiting all the states of Brazil, but I got around a lot.
My picture up top is the beach in Recife.  It is nice that they have grass and trees near the water.  There is less a beach than Rio.  Maybe one of the reasons is those sharks.  Look at that sign. Recife has some kind of special conditions with the reef. Sharks evidently  are kind of herded toward the beach and they come very shallow. They eat a few people and it kind of puts a damper on people’s enthusiasm for swimming.