Category: My life

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What were you like when you were 50?

What were you like when you were 50? My Story Worth for this week.

Worst of times
My 50th year, 2005, was pivotal but not a good year. My career was stalled. Chrissy was just starting hers. We were looking at the prospect of three kids leaving home and going to college. Now it just looks like an ordinary time of transition. Then it looked like a revolution, and not a good revolution like our American revolution, more like the Bolsheviks or Jacobins were coming for us.

Expiration date in a few years
There were lots of challenges that year. As I recall, I was narcissistically most absorbed by my career woes. Foreign Service is totalitarian. It is more than the job you do; it is kinda who you are, so lack of success hits harder and much more personally. I was low ranked by the 2005 promotion panels. You must be pretty dismal to get low ranked, at least I thought so at the time, and I thought my career was dead, although I would continue zombie-like until they finally really kicked me out. My expiration date was 2009 in our up-or-out system. I would be 54 years old, a little too old to start over, but a little too young to give up working altogether.

More than money
Money was a consideration, but not the big one. I am the kind of guy who needs a purpose, an identity. I would not be content is someone just gave me money. I want to be working toward something. I reached way back to my roots and found forestry, but that is not something you can take up as a retirement hobby. You need a forest. Fortunately, that was a puzzle I could solve.

Forestry a good investment
I studied on the subject of investing in forest land. It consumed much of intellectual energy. In fact, sound advice for someone worried about career success would be to concentrate more on that problem, but I was fascinated by the forestry. Don’t get me wrong, I still worked very hard at my State job, but I concentrated on the job and not getting ahead in the career, which paradoxically turned out to be a good strategy, but that is a story for a different time.

I became convinced that I could make forestry pay for itself, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow but in the long run. This was crucial, a deal breaker if I could not do it. I am not rich like Ted Turner, who can buy land for pleasure. Mine needed to be an investment with a reasonable chance of producing positive results. This was important since the cash I needed to buy the land came from taking a second mortgage on the house. I always need to take the time here to thank Chrissy for having faith in my judgment. Had she said no, I would have no forest land today, and I would be a much poorer man today, maybe not in money but certainly in spirit. I was risking our future, but the way I figured (IF I did it right) it the risk was no greater than investing in mutual funds. In fact, it was better than having only a stock portfolio, since it provided diversification. It worked out well when the stock market crashed in 2008/9. Maybe the value of my land crashed too, but who could tell?
With my experience now of almost 15 years doing this, I can tell you that investing in the right forest land IS indeed a good investment with two important caveats. You must have a very long time horizon (patience is a virtue) and you must want to do a lot of the work yourself – physical, intellectual and managerial. And you must want to make it an investment. I love my forests and I live by the land ethic, but I also respect the triple bottom line in that the investment must make sense socially, ecologically AND economically. If you want to preserve untouched nature, you better either be rich or stay away from owing much forests land. Successful forest land owners are conservationists, not preservationists.

Until I become compost myself
My 50th year was the start of my forestry adventure, which I hope and believe will continue until I become compost myself. The career ended up working out alright too. The FS promoted me into the senior service and then once more (the low ranking did not matter at all), and I left on my own terms. They would have let me stay until mandatory retirement age of 65, but my forestry interest had become so great that I needed the time for that, so I retired from one passion to pursue another, a dozen years after my axial half century year.
In a very real sense, my decision to leave the FS in 2016 was made in 2005, but unlike my zombie fear, my FS career was also rejuvenated in that year. You can sometimes easily see looking back what you cannot even vaguely discern looking forward.

My first picture shows our “forest” in 2005. The little trees are there, but you mostly cannot see them. Next is that same place in 2018. They grew some. Picture # 3 is me next to a infestation of tree of heaven. It is a persistent invasive. That picture was taken before my first fight with it. I am still standing, but so is the tree of heaven, but I have controlled it. This fight will never end. The tree of heaven will outlast me, but I figure others will carry on. Also in that picture, you can see the little pine trees. They don’t look like much at that age, but they get better.        

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Man's inhumanity

I was in Poland in the early-middle 1990s, which meant that I was there for the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II, of the liberation of Auschwitz (near where I lived), of various lesser known tragedies and of the Warsaw uprising.
I attended lots of commemorations, both in my official duties and as an individual interested in history. It was a very interesting time, although one that raised lots of questions about humanity.

Human capacity to do harm is usually matched by our capacity to endure. I came to wonder about the virtue of perseverance and even bravery, never resolved the issue. Existential struggles bring out the best and the worse in people, often in the same person.

In my discussions with young people (and I almost fit in that group back then), I would often hear harsh judgements of people of the past. “Had I been there, I would have …” was a common refrain.

What would I have done? I like to think I would have been always heroic and selfless, which probably would have meant I would not have survived the war. In fact, I think the best we can hope for is that we would be heroic and selfless in situations where it made a practical difference.

I was competitive swimmer, but nothing compared to a guy like Michael Phelps, winner of 28 Olympic gold metals, but there is a way that he is no better than me – neither of us can swim from California to Hawaii. This is not a trivial thing. There are things beyond human possibilities, but that does not let us off the hook for being better.

I learned a lot about tragedies and pondered human nature. I read Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning”, and I met dozens of people who had endured things I could not imagine. I felt very privileged to talk to many of them at length, including Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel, maybe the most impressive soul I have ever encountered.

The thing that impressed me most also surprised me profoundly. These people who had suffered so horribly were very often joyful and had transcended hatred and vengefulness. They did not minimize the suffering and evil; they had just (sorry to use the word again but I can think of none better) transcended it. This made them no less committed to fighting evil and in many ways made them much more effective.

People who fought in the Warsaw uprising were mostly civilians, some children. The Nazis were especially brutal in their suppression of the uprising. Of the combatants that survived, many did so my wading through filth in the sewer system.

There is a coda, a tragic one. For many Poles who fought the Nazis the war did not end in 1945. The communist government did not treat them as heroes. On the contrary, many were persecuted and some executed. The new communist order did not easily tolerate vestiges of the old and personal heroism was especially suspect in their world view.
Reference

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Beer belongs

Some of our usual beer pictures from yesterday and today. We are glad that the city grew around us and we now live in a walkable place.

We walked down to Gold’s Gym and did the proper workouts. After that, we needed to replace our energy and carbohydrates, so we walked over to Caboose brewery and had the proverbial couple of beers.

The other pictures are from Blackfinn, right across the street.

I was thinking about how walking and driving change drinking and living. People used to have a couple beers and then walk home. There is joy in walking home in the open air after a couple beers.Substitute the beer for the wine and you have it said.
The Grape that can with Logic absolute
The Two-and-Seventy jarring Sects confute:
The sovereign Alchemist that in a trice
Life’s leaden metal into Gold transmute:

But driving after a couple beers, in the confined space of a car, is dreadful and dangerous. Having a place where you can walk is great. As it should be for humanity.

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Steve Bullock

Went to a Steve Bullock event in Washington. I like him. He seems intelligent and moderate. What sold me was when he answered a question about climate change talking about cover crops and sequestration in soil.
Bullock got reelected governor in 2016 in a state that Trump won by 20%. He is a viable candidate. If he makes it as far as New Hampshire, I told him that I would deploy there at my own expense to help with the campaign. Don’t know if he will or if he will take me up on the offer, but it would be fun.

Anyway, I have an ask. I think it important that Bullock qualify for the next round of Democratic debates. He needs a larger number of individual donors. Please make a contribution. It can be as little as $1 and you need not support him for president. Just get him into the debates.

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Were your parents strict, or relaxed?

My Story Worth for this week.

My parents were very relaxed. They never spanked me, and I don’t recall them even raising their voices to discipline me. Of course, I was probably just a good kid. But my parents’ reactions to my behaviors was very different from the parental reactions experienced by my friends in similar situations. Some of my friends feared their fathers. I never did. But I think my parents had stronger influence over me than other parents had over their kids.

No punishment
My parents’ influence on me was reason-based, not punishment-based. I could “get away” with almost anything w/o suffering the usual kid punishments. I never got grounded and I never suffered the physical punishment some of my friends did. What I really could not endure was for my mother to say, “you know what you did was wrong?” and know she was right.

First lesson at the corner store
I recall the one time I stole anything when I was a kid. I don’t recall how old I was, but it was maybe four or five. It is one of my earliest memories and I think it was before kindergarten. There was a grocery store at the corner of Howell & Rosedale run by an old couple, Cortez. They had those general bins with cookies. I just helped myself to one and was eating it as we left the store. My mother asked where I got that, and I told her. She gave me money and made me go back in and pay for the cookie. Mrs. Cortez was very nice and told me I could have it. When I got out there and triumphantly told that to my mother, she said no. I had to go back in and tell Mrs. Cortez that I really could not have the cookie and that I had to pay for it.

It was a protracted ordeal but consider the lesson. I had to acknowledge that what I did was wrong, even though I got away with it and even though a competent authority was willing to overlook my transgression. In addition, I was trusted to make it right. At any point, I could have ended my problem by simply lying about it, telling my mother that I had paid. I doubt my little mind figured this out, but of course my mother likely would have talked to Mrs. Cortez about it later. It does take a village.

Strict but loose
So, I guess we had a kind of strict morality, with a loose enforcement, or maybe a strict enforcement but one that depended on internal controls.

The simple rule was that I was not supposed to lie, cheat or steal, but I was spared some of the other strictures suffered by my friends. For example, my friends had a strict “respect your elders” rule that did not apply to me. We lived in a neighborhood of busybodies, who were always calling the cops or calling our parents to complain about our behaviors. Sometimes we deserved it, but mostly we were just hanging around or playing football in the streets or open fields.

Talking back to the elders
When the local nudnik would come out, we would usually run off, but I would sometimes “talk back.” I considered myself very eloquent, but my elders were not amused. I recall a few times when they called my parents or even came up to the house.

My mother’s reaction shaped my personality in that it was both moral and devious. She asked me the circumstance of my talking back. In the cases I recall (maybe selective memory) were mostly unjustified in their anger, and my mother did not castigate me. She generally knew the specifics to the nudnik in question and told me that I should just avoid antagonizing them, not as a matter of right or wrong but just a practical rule.

This attitude has been very useful to me in my life and especially my diplomatic life. I can detach myself from the action if it is not a matter of high principle. I can very easily “give in” w/o being defeated and often with no intention of being affected. I make a strong distinction with what is said and what is done, being concerned with the former as an aspiration and the latter as something that matters.

I also learned that some of the nudniks were content ONLY to talk. My mother explained that one of them, a Mrs. Connolly was just a lonely old lady and I should make a special effort with her, even though she was a pain in the rear. Next time it snowed, I shoveled her walk and she became my advocate. She told my mother that most kids were delinquents, but I was okay.

Figure out what they want
Consider that lesson. Had I been punished for talking back, I would have avoided getting caught talking back. Instead, I learned how to be more charitable and in the practical sense how to get along better with people. I still follow that lesson when faced with a difficult person. I try to figure out what they really want and what I can give them. Often, I can give them something w/o it causing me much, or any trouble.

My mother did most of the discipline. My father worked all the time. They were building the Interstate system in those days and my father got a lot of overtime at the cement factory. He was very tired after those 12-hour-days. He was mostly a benign presence. Comparing again to my friends, their mothers would sometimes say something like, “Wait till your father gets home.” This filled them with dread. I don’t recall my mother ever saying anything like that, with the possible exception that I sometimes had to go up to the store and get some bread before my father got home.

No deep philosophy
Neither of my parents were well-educated and I doubt they developed their parenting philosophy from any books or articles. They were involved deeply in my life, but not broadly. I had a lot of choices that I could make.

I have mixed feelings about criticizing their style, since I am very content with how my life turned out. Sometimes I think they might have pushed me harder. The one attitude they had that I think was pernicious was a self-limiting ethos. My father sometimes said that I should not try some things because they were “only of rich kids” or just were too much trouble. Life turned out okay, however, so I cannot complain. My parents parenting style was not perfect, but it was very, very good and it gave me life options for which I am grateful.

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Afternoon at Tysons Mall

Chrissy & I spent the whole afternoon at Tysons Mall. Went to see “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” I recommend it. More on that below. If you don’t want to know the ending, don’t read to the end.

We had lunch and beer at Gordon Biersch (first couple of pictures), went to the movie and then drinks at La Sandia, across from Gordon Biersch. Chrissy wanted a margarita because the Leonardo DiCaprio had one in the movie. (I don’t drink tequila since January 4, 1974, when I drank a whole bottle and still feel sick at the reminder of the taste) Sandia also featured a good caipirinha, uncommon in the USA. You can see our respective Gordon Biersch and La Sandia photos below.

“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” is a good movie, especially if you were a fan of 1960s TV. There are lots of references and it is fun to find the allusions sometimes not plain.
The plot centers around a declining cowboy actor (DiCaprio) and his best friend and stuntman (Brad Pitt). They live next door to Sharon Tate and the Manson family figures prominently. This is the spoiler. The movie leads up to what you think is going to be the Manson family killing Sharon Tate and the others in that infamous crime. But that is not what happens. It is a “once upon a time” and it is Quentin Tarantino. It is what we wish would have happened to the Mansons.

Three of the Mansons, Tex, Squeaky Fromm and one other, show up that house of the old actor, where they find the stuntman and his dog. They plan to kill everybody in the house and are holding a gun on the stuntman, but he gets the drop on them. His dog attacks the gunman, mauling his arms and biting him in the scrotum. One of the girls runs at the stuntman with a knife. He throws a can of dog food and hits her in the head, killing her in a nasty way. The other woman tried to kills the actor’s wife, but then is hit. She falls into a poll where the actor was floating with earphones, oblivious to the events. She starts shooting randomly. He goes into his garage and gets a flame thrower (yes Tarantino) and burns her to a crisp.

The cops show up and the mood is almost jovial. The stuntman & actor are joking how they had to kill the hippies, who BTW needed killing. They are portrayed as very bad. The actor goes next door and meets Tate et al, who in this version of events are not killed and they play the title “once upon a time …” showing that this is a fantasy of a better way it could have turned out.

BTW – as I mentioned Brad Pitt was one of the stars of the movie. I know that there might be some confusion in the photos. That is indeed me and not a picture of Brad Pitt.

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Has an unexpected health problem changed your life?

My Story Worth for this week.

Has an unexpected health problem changed your life?

Twice this happened. I turned out very positive when I broke my leg when I was 11 years old, as I have written before. No good has come from the second one, when I got aneurysms behind my right and then my left knee. The first one happened on February 6, 2012. I still have not made a full recovery.

I was running along Paranoá Lake & suddenly came up lame. Pain is nothing extraordinary for runners, but this hurt much more than usual. In fact, I had to get a stick to help me walk the couple miles home. But it was a strange pain. It didn’t hurt so much as create extreme fatigue. If I rested for about 30 seconds, it got better, only to get bad again when I walked again. I could walk only around 100 yards before the pain would get too big. February 6, 2012 was the last time I ran on trails.

Running had been a big part of my life for nearly 40 years. I started off on the trails along Lake Mendota in Madison. At first it was mostly for exercise, but it quickly evolved into something almost spiritual. I loved to run. I loved to listen to the sound of the gravel under foot and feel the rhythm of my heart with the pace of my feet, all the while drinking in the nature around me. I felt a relationship with the trees, the topography and even the dust rising from the ground. I understand that it was just my delusion, but it was a beautiful delusion – meditation in motion. I ran everywhere I went, and I went lots of places. I found all sorts of natural areas. Even in Iraq I found the joy of running. Then it was finished.
I probably should have had it checked out, but I just figured it was a really bad tendon pull. I could still ride a bike. The pain was not great when I rode the bike. I could not walk normally, but gradually I could walk farther and farther. It got better after a couple years, but not like before. Then it happened again in the other leg. I was driving down to Georgia for a Longleaf Alliance meeting. I though maybe it was just a leg cramp from driving, but it didn’t get better.

This time I went to the doctor. The first doctor told me that it was peripheral artery disease. Scary. I had none of the indicators. The doctors told me that I should walk more. They did not believe me when I told them that I commonly walked 3-5 miles on a typical day and rode a bike for many more. I had two options: I could have surgery or try to walk it off. Naturally, I chose the latter.

They also prescribed some blood thinners. It worked to a large extent. I walked as far as I could and then let my leg rest. Then I walked again. It took more than a year to get reasonably better. I remember this because I remember when we did our first burning on our longleaf. The DoF guys let me start part of the fire. I remember that my leg hurt not very much, but I was a little worried that I could not sprint away if the fire started to get over hand.

Today, I can walk for a few miles w/o too much trouble. My feet sometimes hurt, but I figure that is normal for a guy my age, any age. I run on the ellipse machine at Gold’s Gym, but I still have not tried to run on trails. When I have tried, my legs have hurt. I am not sure how I should handle this. Should I push through? I feel that I may have become too timid. This was not one of my characteristics and should not be. I can run on the machines. I can ride my bike and I can walk long distances. I think I can run again and as I write this I am resolved to do it again. I sure cannot hurt to try.

Anyway, this health problem made an impression on me. I guess before that malady I felt invincible, that I could just use will power to overcome anything. I was mistaken.

My first picture shows my the burning I was talking about above. Others are from the Mall. I worked a couple hours at State Department this morning and then walked along the Mall, stopping at Natural History Museum. First you see the bald cypress outside the museum. They have been there a long time, evidently able to overcome the constant traffic. Next is the museum itself. Picture #4 is a dinosaur exhibit, a tyrannosaurus rex skeleton eating a triceratops skeleton – nature red in tooth and claw.

Last is McDonald’s at SW. A couple of speculative observations. First shows people using the automatic ordering. Some people order on those machines; others go to the counter. I wonder if there is a demographic difference. I use the auto order.

This McDonald’s used to be a Roy Rogers. I used to eat there when USIA was in that building. When McDonald’s opened, they hired mostly local people. They were not very well prepared for work. Many tried hard, but it was sloppy. Shortly the local were replaced by immigrants from Ethiopia and Somalia. Today, most of the help seems to be from Central America. There is a kind of ecological succession of worker groups. It might be interesting to study, but I am not sure what use the information would be.

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Some pictures on various themes.

Some pictures on various themes.

Chrissy and me at Uno
Chrissy and me at Uno Pizza. I like the place better than she does, but indulged me there.

Too much beer

Next is me with Willy Morgan. I took the opportunity to buy him a couple beers to celebrate his imminent retirement. Funny thing, I drank three beers. That’s all. That is more than my usual one or two, but not that much. But I stumbled home. Lucky I took the Metro and did not drive. Maybe the alcohol content was higher. One problem with craft beer is that the alcohol content varies, so you cannot just count.

State Department’s birthday
State Department celebrated its 230th birthday yesterday. I went to part of the festivities. Mike Pompeo made an excellent speech talking about public service at State.

Makes you proud to be part of this tradition.

Henry Kissinger did a live interview with Niall Ferguson. His advice was to take the steps you can and do not demand more than can be done at the time. 

State key principles and do not deal in absolutes. And don’t make anything zero-sum, win or lose.

Both Pompeo and Kissinger emphasized that U.S. diplomacy was and is generally a force for good and that U.S. principles have made the world a better place. That I also believe.

Greatest American diplomats
An interesting tidbit – He was asked about the greatest American diplomats. Kissinger said that through the first part of our history, diplomacy in the European sense was not necessary, since we lived with the protection of the oceans. After WWII, visionaries like Dean Acheson developed the system that still works today.

He singled our Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt as key diplomatic presidents, praising TR’s handling of the Russo-Japanese war and speculated that had TR been president in 1914, he may have helped avoid World War I, or at least mitigate it. He did not go into detail and I don’t know if it was a developed idea, but it is interesting to think of the counter factual.
The pictures from the event are Pompeo and Kissinger cutting the birthday cake and the cupcake that all the participants got.

Kissinger is 96 years old. His looks clearly show his age, but his mind sharp. We should all wish for that productive old age.

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Peace of mind

My Story Worth for this week. “What gives you peace of mind?”

The glib reply is that beer gives me peace of mind. That answer is not wrong, but it is incomplete and not an explanation w/o the deeper dig of asking why and what else is similar?

Having a beer is a joy when & because it helps you be in the moment. It certainly does not happen each time when past, present & future merge. The ambiance is more important than the beverage, so let’s explore that.

I will recall three episodes of absolute peace of mind. Two don’t involve beer. Let me share them, since the illustration may be easier than the explanation.

Finding peace in trees and nature.
A few months ago, in January, I was planting longleaf. I was by myself with 400 seedlings that I wanted to get them into the ground before sunset. The day was seasonally warm, but with enough of a cold tinge in the air to remind you it was winter. When I was mostly done, I looked back at my little pine trees and felt a profound connection with everything. The events of this day, however, were not sufficient to explain the peaceful feeling. The kids had recently come down to plant trees. That connection with their work and my hopes for future on the land was a strong contributing factor.

Even in Iraq (in Iraq there is no beer)
Iraq was not a place where you would expect to find peaceful thoughts, but there was a couple of occasions when they forced themselves in. Once as during a short walk from my office to a recently completed the bathroom complex. I was grateful for the luxury of a bathroom, but what really set off the peaceful feeling was a cool wind. It was October, the first cool wind I felt since I landed. Summers in Iraq are furnace hot and the winds of summer bring no relief. Sometimes they pick up hot sand and give you a hot sand blasting. This one was different, a harbinger of cooler and maybe better times. And it got get better. Winter in the western desert is pleasant, with cool nights and sometimes cool days warmed by the sun usually unobscured by clouds. I found peace in the warm sun, waiting for helicopters, taking time between transports or just taking a few minutes break.
I had the feeling yesterday, BTW, in Boise. I took the opportunity of the early morning to walk along the Boise River. It was simply wonderful. Wonder is simple.

And finally with the beer
Let me close with the beer. It is more than just drinking the golden liquid or the good feeling it brings. I almost never enjoy beer when I am alone. I would likely stop drinking it if I always had to drink by myself. It is the fellowship that counts. There were good times drinking beer with lifelong friends in Wisconsin and a couple with short time acquaintances all around the world. It is the ritual that brings back the feelings and the memories. Those of you who know my Facebook page haves seen scores of pictures of Chrissy & me. People we know seem to enjoy seeing them, and I like sharing. If we are considering a feeling of peace that I can have, I can have it almost any time. With Chrissy I get that feeling of pat present and future, that peaceful feeling.

This is the wonderful thing about life for all of us, or at least most of us, have nearly instant access to that peaceful feeling. There are many roads. It is found simply in nature, if you know how to look. It is easily found in the moment if you take time to appreciate it. But I think the way easiest for most people in to look for it in other people. It is all around us all the time, as easy to find as the air we breathe. Too often, however, we just refuse to take the deep breath.

Illustrations
My pictures are from my time in Iraq. It was not an easy place to find that peaceful easy feeling, but it was there.

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Mayor Pete (again)

Mayor Pete
Went to Denizens in Riverdale Park, MD to see Pete Buttigieg. This was a bigger crowd event than the one I attended in Washington a couple weeks ago. I did not get to talk to him as I did the first time. I guess that is not surprising and probably a good sign that he is becoming more popular.

This was more in the nature of a political event too. He made the required affirmations. His keen intellect comes through when he answers questions. The first questioner was a troll (I think). He asked about Puerto Rico and phrased his question something like (as I best recall) “How can you help people who won’t work?” Buttigieg did not fall for it. He just talked about the need to help and respect American citizens.

Denizens is a nice place, a brew pub. I had a very good rye IPA. It was a nice atmosphere. Riverdale Park is a pleasant new development. I got there on Metro, Green line to College Park and then 20 minute walk.