Preferred Pronouns

 Donald J. Trump

Preferred Pronouns: Me, Mine!

Decency

The two candidates have been compared in many ways but values and personality have taken precedence over policy.  The word "decent" has been bandied about.  Decency is a personal quality, albeit somewhat intangible.  Decency can also characterize policies and be very tangible.  Here are my suggestions:

My Vote

Without disclosing names, here's a recent e-mail response to some dear friends.  Ann suggested I share it with you all.  

I’ve been mulling over our short conversation the other night.  I know you’re steadfast in your intentions – you made clear your belief that xxxxxxx jobs are back (despite yyyyyy’s layoffs in December) and that you share his “values”. It would be disrespectful and condescending to argue your points of view. 

Instead, let me tell you why I will vote the other way.  The Democratic Platform holds promise of job growth in both numbers and quality through infrastructure and renewable energy projects, paid for by increasing upper bracket and corporate tax rates; of re-negotiation of Pacific Partnership trade agreements; of incentives for domestic investment and employment; and of expansion of access to health insurance and early education.  The Economist editors, inherently conservative, endorsed Biden’s economic plans this week though they wish him to be even more aggressive. 

The second reason for my vote is the Democrat’s recognition that our existential problems are trans-national and must be addressed with multi-national collaborations; I’m talking about nuclear arms control, climate change, and economically/environmentally-driven migration. 

The third reason is your word “values.”  As it happens, a few months ago I reflected on and wrote down what qualities I value. I posted the list above my desk alongside my mission statement.  The values list reads:

• Truth

• Freedom

• Accountability

• Empathy

• Compassion

• Community

• Equity

• Justice

• Action (when called for)

• Acceptance (when called for)

        (And I should go back and add "the wisdom to know the difference")

I will be voting for the candidate I feel best exemplifies these values. No disrespect for your intentions, just a different intention for me.  Love,

Fletch

Reflections on the DEI Education of an Old, White Guy

 

I am the son of Fletch Waller, Senior, who, as an eleven year old, watched the Klan burn a cross on his front yard in protest of and to intimidate my Grandad who, as YMCA Secretary and Chair of the Akron, Ohio School Board, championed the Americanization and education of immigrants, whether white or black, whether Protestant, Catholic or Jew.  Ever after, the only thing of which my father was intolerant was intolerance.  He oversaw desegregation of War Dept contractors and after the war, AEC contractors. I, Fletch II, grew up believing I obviously was tolerant, was not prejudiced against anybody, was certainly not a racist. Diversity, equity, inclusion – these are all good things, aren’t they? I went to college blithely unconcerned about discrimination that was there if one troubled to look.  I chose to live siloed in a Greek house with people like me, people with what Isabel Wilkerson has called “the visible assumption of centrality.” 

I got a book education; I needed a life education.

The first step on the ladder was when my in-laws told me my visiting Jewish friends from grad school could not join us to dine at Atlanta’s Capital City Club; what was I to do when their daughter, my wife, demanded we go? I went -- and have ever after regretted it and feel shamed when I think of David and Charlotte. Soon after came basic training, the first time I had lived with, worked with, and worked under direction of Blacks and Latinos. Our infantry company had a rich mix of Southies from Boston, Puerto Ricans, African-Americans from Newark and north Jersey, and east coast and mid-Atlantic whites; I was one of two college grads and the only one with a post-grad degree. (The army assigned me an auto mechanic MOS; so much for grad school.) For the first time, I was seeing suppressed prejudice between blacks, browns and whites. I got on OK with all, officers and em’s; of course I got on well: I was unprejudiced, educated, of  leadership quality, fully deserving – wasn’t I?

That bubble of superiority sprang a leak when, at age 29, I served as chairman of the jury on a nasty gang-rape case, in Minneapolis.  I found myself surprised and impressed by the diligence and good judgment of my fellow middle- and lower-class jurors who worked long hours to be thorough and responsible. My surprise made me recognize my unconscious assumption that the judgment and insight of ordinary folk were to be doubted.  Recognition that maybe I wasn’t so special after all: education step number two.      

Into the ‘60s: feminism and black civil rights.  Outspoken women making logical arguments.  Live TV coverage of non-violent, lunch-counter sit-ins; of Freedom Rides and burned busses; of bus boycotts and voter-registration drives (led by my college classmate Bob Moses, field director for SNCC); of the murder of Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman; of the March on Washington, my still segregated hometown, and MLK on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial; Malcom X and Mohammed Ali giving up his crown and becoming a hero to me. Then '68: worst year in America since 1860. MLK, Wallace, RFK, the Chicago convention at which Bob Moses led the Mississippi Freedom Delegation and state-sponsored violence was unleashed. Should I not be doing something? What? How? Ill wife, three kids, mortgage: what was the responsibility of an anguished, supposed liberal? 

The '70s, back to Minneapolis.  General Mills adopted affirmative action.  Every department had to set numerical goals for blacks and women which were tallied alongside all the other objectives to determine one’s performance-based bonus.  My units were in pretty good shape except for the distribution center, 90% women but no Blacks, and the Betty Crocker Kitchens, all women, some blacks, no men.  We set goals in each of my departments.  VP Mercedes Bates claimed there were no male home economists to recruit to the Betty Crocker Kitchens but did hire a male steward who turned out to be flamingly gay, much to the delight of the girls in the kitchens and to the sophomoric amusement of my fellow execs. The first challenge to my aversion to homosexuals. Several departments met our goals, finding perfectly capable Blacks and women in market research, advertising, promotion, packaging, etc.; even a male nutritionist for that previously all-female dept.  The one exception was the BC Coupon and distribution center. When at year-end I dinged the director’s bonus half a percentage point (of salary) he left my office in a huff, hollering “why didn’t you tell me you were serious? Next year that center is going to look like a watermelon patch.”  I had to haul him back onto the carpet for that one.

In the meantime, our Medial Director asked if he could transfer me to the care of a woman physician he had hired. Sure. After my first exam with her, I proudly proclaimed to my wife that I had been to a woman doctor.  “Big fucking deal” she told me, maybe the first time I had heard her use the word, “I’ve been poked and prodded all my life by doctors of the opposite sex!”  Another unconscious attitude unceremoniously exposed and punctured.

I moved on, to Marriott. I had lots and lots of saleswomen; of a hundred directors of marketing, the females I could count on one hand; no women regional marketing directors; no black marketers at all. Marriott at that time, the early ‘80s, had but one Black and one woman GM but Bill Marriott was determined on change and was supportive of my efforts in marketing, reservations and sales.  We made considerable progress in four short years, particularly with women, less so with people of color, but leaving much still to be done. When I briefed Bill and Fred Malek, head of the hotel division, on my new marketing and reservations organization, I named my director for travel industry.  “Isn’t he” – former Green Beret Fred hesitated – “ah – uh -- a bit effeminate?” “Well” I replied, “he’s gay of course but I don’t find him effeminate”: gasps. To Bill’s credit, he soon would not go to a travel show or event without Ed by his side. Not sure Fred ever got comfortable – with Ed or with me.

Soon after joining Marriott, I got a call from a key woman on our team, our event manager – hotel openings, trade shows and so on, a vital part of the business.  She wanted me to deal with my VP for the insurance market, a pro-football hall of famer, who was hitting on her at many of these openings and events.  My predecessor had chosen to not deal with the issue; she was angry and testing the new boy. Our in-house football hero was a favorite of Bill’s, getting his family down onto the Redskin sidelines every home game, and so on. He emceed every hotel opening event. What was I to do?  Should I blow the whistle on him to HR? To Bill? I was brand new. I chickened out. I confronted the VP, who thought it was funny – he knew he was untouchable.  The events manager continued to do good work for us but had lost respect for me. But he did stop hitting on her.  Others? Never caught him at it. 

At Westin, history repeated: my VP Sales was hitting on his saleswomen, repeatedly. On his first offense after a warning, I moved to fire him but the Chairman would not let me; he and the VP’s father were vacation cabin buddies.  But I made it clear to all that I would no longer tolerate prejudicial, discriminatory, or harassment behavior and it pretty well stuck. 

 The hotel industry, I came to know, was and still is rife with sexual harassers and male chauvinists: too many attractive young men and women, too many available bedrooms, too easy access to booze and receptions. I fired second offender sexual harassers but put up with and worked around anti-gay and racist attitudes so long as they did not affect performance. But what of team? And what did I owe victims? I had climbed some of the rungs of the diversity, equity and inclusion ladder, but what about that “visible expectation of centrality” and what had I learned about the inner lives of Blacks and gays and working women? About how they saw working for Fletch.   

After retirement, as President of Horizon House, a Seattle retirement community, I encountered how difficult is inclusion, to get Blacks and Asians to consider communal living in predominately white community.  As a rowing coach I encountered the reality of impediments that kept black kids from coming and learning to row. As Trustee and later President of Pratt, Seattle’s leading art school, I was confronted full-on by a Black activist with a personal rather than an organizational agenda. He had once proclaimed me an ally but as soon as I was presiding, he became a disruptive challenger. Through that painful episode, I learned to what extent victimhood can be used for personal ends and that sometimes it takes being tough to keep the train on its tracks.  

In seven years of DEI effort at Pratt, in classes for all employees under guidance of expert consultants, in working with Trustees and employees on our Race Equity committee, I’ve come to realize that, as my classmate Professor Al Prettyman puts it, America doesn’t have a Black problem, America has a White problem. Al says, “colored people know all about white people; only those whites that seek to know, know anything about colored people.”

It took the murder of George Floyd to give me a peek into those unknown inner lives.  The anguish and trauma our Black associates felt, their passion, so evident, their brown associates’ empathy so genuine, it gave me a glimpse. The assumption of centrality crumbled as I realized that I was the “other, the stranger” seeking to be included and welcomed.

So, the education of an old white guy must continue.  How do we teach people to value and to seek diversity?  How do we teach people to act in spite of recognizing otherness, a person not of my family or clan or tribe?

To paraphrase Winston Churchill: so much to learn, so little time.

Out and About #3

Monday, I was promoted to Past-President of Pratt. To celebrate, yesterday Ann and I got out of the house for the third time since end of February and headed to Mt Rainier.  Perfect day-- mid-60's, bright sun, gentle breeze.  It was a bit of a test for me to see how well I could still hike what with long lay-off and a hernia awaiting surgery in October.  We chose one of our favorite (and easier) hikes: Sheep Lake and Sourdough Gap.  Trailhead is above Chinook Pass on the Northeast corner of the National Park. 

Sheep Lake

That's how I usually see my younger hiking partner, eating her dust in anti-social distancing. 

We paused for a breather, though it's pretty flat to here.

From Sheep, a mile up to Sourdough Gap, a 15% grade.  That's Mt Adams on the horizon, Sheep Lake below. About half-way up.

Sourdough Gap is @ 6,414'; trailhead a bit over 5,300'.

On the Gap, Ann wanted me to stop, but we went on for one can't see Rainier from here and I wanted again to get out to one of our favorite lunch spots in the Park.  Haven't done this hike in five years or so.

Through the Gap and down into a scree field and junction with Pacific Crest Trail.

Then through a saddle and down into the National Park and my old friend; looking a bit scruffy with lots of dust accumulating on her flanks, awaiting a new coat of snow.

Made it!  Mother hen-ing Ann proud of her old rooster.   (And made it down, too.)

The Impossible Dream -- The Great American Novel

 

This post grew out of a speech I gave to my luncheon club three weeks ago (by Webex.)

“To dream the impossible dream” – do American authors still dream of writing the Great American Novel?  

The phrase was coined in 1868 by John William De Forest in a review of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin.  It quickly became such a cliché that Henry James, in 1880, acronymed it (may Tom Johnston, my Hamilton English Prof, forgive me) to GAN.  19thC critics had it easier than today’s to catalog and nominate the GAN; the usual suspects back then:

• Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter
• Melville’s Moby Dick
• Twain’s Huckleberry Finn  (I gave my superb 2nd edition copy to a granddaughter who revered the book.) 
• Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage

 As some of you know, my usual reading is of non-fiction – history, biography, science, politics and civic affairs.  Thus far this year, I have read only seven such.  The Pandemic perhaps is to blame for my turn to fiction for escape and for a hunt for meaning rather than facts.  It started with diving again into Tudor England by re-reading Hillary Mantel’s Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies in preparation for The Mirror and the Light, finale of her trilogy of ambition, rise from humble beginnings, power, overreach and fall, Shakespearean in its universality.  Then came La Peste, naturally, (curious, the feminine) followed by more Camus and Celine; then more English and Canadian and Columbian, finally to re-reading and reading anew American fiction.  I’ve been lost in it for the last several weeks.

 The last time I was on a fiction binge was during my first wife’s illness – those periods of chaos and crises.  Perhaps that is what drives me into fiction, which has the power to expose and engage human meaning in a way non-fiction cannot.  You can read all the studies you want of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, but the truth of it is revealed by Tolstoy in War and Peace  just as is the truth of the revolution’s survival by Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago.

 Is any in what I’ve immersed myself the Great American Novel?  Not likely; not likely that there is any such thing. A GAN should have breadth of scale and scope; it should explore the American character and reveal truths about us, about what makes us uniquely American.  The problem for an author, of course, is that the essence of America is change; no novel can keep up.  One is a GAN only for a specific era, a passing through.   

 Here are possible 20^thC GAN’s:

• Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle
• Sinclair Lewis’ Main Street
• The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald
• Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath
• Dos Passos’ USA
• Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom
• Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye
• Steinbeck again: East of Eden
• Kerouac’s On the Road
• Heller’s Catch 22
• Ellison’s Invisible Man
• Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird
• McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove
• Baldwin’s Go Tell It On the Mountain
• Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian
• Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow
• Roth’s American Pastoral
• Malamud’s The Natural
• Updike’s The Rabbit Quartet                      
• Morrison’s Beloved 

In my humble estimation, those would make a Great American Library –especially if you add Hemingway’s Big Two-Hearted River collection of short stories.  But you, no doubt, would nominate many more.

My friend Roger, whose Dancing on Their Tails has a touch of greatness in it (a story of male bonding, of sensitivity and empathy hiding behind a facade of crude, chauvinist machismo) notes that Vonnegut, whose Slaughter House Five he favors, and Heller and Salinger really had only one good novel in them.  Is that PTSD of WWII? he asks.  Is the great Viet Nam novel yet to come? I ask.  

It’s impossible to encompass in any one book this ever-evolving, ever-changing country – America more in constant change than Britain or France or Russia from which great novels have come. The Great American Novel can only be the GAN for a period, an era, a passage of time – but the moral of each must be timeless.

 My nominees, for universality and relevance to us in this now of economic, health, and political angst:

Uncommon sense and the Presumption of White Superiority

Irreverence and Freedom of Youth

Piety and Hypocrisy

 

Blackness and Coming of Age

Relentless Search for Better

Idiocy In and Of War

Hardship of Migration

Indelible Legacy of Family

:

A Brief Political Announcement

BYEDON

Not original: saw this today during our four mile walk, followed by beer and fried onion rings at the Roanoke (effectively undoing all the good done.)

Ann and Fletch Got Away

After 112 days of very social isolation, despite Zooming and patio-apart cocktails with friends, we were ready to be out of this house. Inslee finally granted partial release: we took off Tuesday for five days on San Juan Island, as close to travelling to a different country as we were allowed – and those “foreigners” speak English.

Years back we’d sailed into Roche Harbor to check-in with customs on return from Canadian waters and had spent a couple of weekend get-aways in Friday Harbor, but today, the inland island was still terra incognito. What a revelation: San Juan’s is a rolling countryside rising to 1,000’, a mix of second growth forests and open meadows, lovely valleys dotted with freshwater lakes, ponds, barns, rugged cliffs above empty beaches, wild flowers abundant, all anchored by the two tidy albeit touristy harbor towns, Roche and Friday.  An altogether charming place.

We based ourselves in-between the two, at Lakedale Resort.   Swimming beach, fishing and all sorts of floating craft on offer plus lots of land activities – Ann and I played a mean, late afternoon Bocce match before adjourning to our private deck for cocktails.  Our lodge room was well furnished, a great king bed and roomy bath, a fireplace to toast off the morning chill.  Despite the masking and separation regimen, staff were pleasant, personable and proficient; they remembered our names and we theirs. 

Lakedale

Some eighty acres encompassing three private lakes, centered on a lovely, ten room lodge B&B, and offering a wide range of family vacation options – log home rentals, clusters of well-furnished yurts, and lakeside camp sites.

   

Twenty-five years ago, I had consulted with NBBJ on land use plans for development of Roche Harbor, the old ramshackle lime kiln port, and restoration of the turn of century Haro Hotel but it all fell apart when the would-be developer got into an expensive divorce. Rich Komen and Saltchuk picked up his vision.   It is a hip, special place.

A bit of the new Roche

I was astounded to see the restored hotel flanked by Craftsman-style homes, wonderful landscaping throughout the village, good restaurants and bars, expanded marina and maritime amenity and service businesses.

We dined one night on the deck shared by Madrona Bar and Grill and McMillan’s Dining Room (that’s Komen).  Delightful. An island specialty is fried calamari, of course, but these are mantle steak strips lightly battered, succulent and sweet.  We watched the sun set and were bemused at the kitschy flag lowering ceremony complete with recorded Sousa, a cornet Retreat, and Taps. Ann got dewey-eyed.  Trump would have loved it, except they honored the Canadian Maple Leaf alongside the Stars and Stripes which would have made him crazy (bad grammar: crazier.)

   

Roach Harbor boasts the San Juan Island Sculpture Garden.  Now any Northwesterner knows to be wary of "sculpture gardens" for most are populated by chain saw totem poles, chain saw patriotic eagles and chain saw bears sporting fishing poles.  Not so here. What a surprise!: twenty acres of lawn, meadow, forest trails, and ponds siting over 150 sculptures from the Northwest’s preeminent sculptors (including  my mentor, coach, teacher Sabah al Dhaher.) The sculptures are for sale, ranging from a couple thousand to over $60k, with the median, I estimate, somewhere around $9k. This is serious stuff.

Peppered among them are 57 epigrammatic, witty poems from Catching Thoughts by islander D M Jenkins, a retired Smithsonian zoologist with a soul. His insights make one pause, reflect and contemplate. The not-for-profit Sculpture Garden is a must-see; a voluntary contribution for entry; beautifully laid out and maintained; worth at least an hour if not two. We have visited the Hirshhorn, the Vigeland Park in Oslo, the Walker in Mpls, and of course, SAM’s sculpture park, and the San Juan is the best.

English Camp and American Camp National Historic Parks tell the tale of the Pig War and the amicably dual occupancy of the ownership-disputed island. 

English Camp: blockhouse and formal garden

In 1872, the dispute was arbitrated in US favor by Wilhelm the 1^st, of Germany. Too bad his grandson, Kaiser Willy, didn’t profit by the example of not-a-shot-fired arbitration when his turn came in 1914.   

Between English Camp and American Camp, we lunched at Westcott Oyster Farm, shucking our own on the lawn and watching the oysters frolicking in their tide-drenched bags. An employee explained they have to cycle in and out of the water regularly to exercise their muscle.  (Not mussel. Sorry; I couldn’t resist.)  We were shucking and slurping down three-year olds. (In a third-grade pet show, I won best in class with Frisky, a Chesapeake Bay oyster my mother helped me keep alive in a salt-water aquarium. With an eye dropper, you’d squirt a bit of red dye at one end of Frisky and a few minutes later, out he’d squirt it from his nether end.  Vastly amusing. Frisky didn’t survive three years.)

Shuckin' and Slurpin'

South Beach out to Cattle Point

South Beach, Cattle Point, Lime Kiln Lighthouse, Mount Dallas – there are so many picturesque scenes and places, just what the house-bound Ann and I needed.  We saw no whales this time, saw deer and seals but no foxes, and right off our deck, watched a barred owl capture and chow down on a snake as long as he was.

Speaking of Eating . . .

. . ., “restaurants” – what a treat! Places where people actually bring food to your table – we’d forgotten.  And we hit four good ones.  Would highly recommend Duck Soup and Downriggers.  Avoid lunch at the Blue Waters unless your people-watcher gene is dominant over your epicurean one.  The highly rated Coho is just too precious for words.  They try so hard to impress: “mushroom dust”, za’atar spiced carrots”, “ancient grains risotto”, “almond dust”, “beet braised onion petals” and other such nonsense.  Really, the food is quite good, well prepared and artfully presented. If they would just relax and stop trying so hard, they might well live up to their hype.

San Juan Island: if I were 25 years younger, i.e., only 60 and Ann fifty-something, we’d buy a house at Roche and take summer and fall ferry-ride breaks from Mercer, one island swapped for another – if only.

57 Years Ago Today . . .

. . . George Wallace, then Governor of Alabama, in a publicity stunt to dramatize his inaugural promise of "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever" stood in a doorway on the campus of the University of Alabama to block two African American students from entering the sacredly white University. President John F. Kennedy federalized the Alabama National Guard. Guard General Henry Graham flanked Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach and the two commanded Wallace to step aside.  He did.

That evening of June 11th, President Kennedy addressed the nation in a "Report to the American People on Civil Rights." His words read today, fifty-seven years later, are still as pertinent, unfortunately, as they were then. What he said led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which but for his assassination might never have been passed. 

JFK: 
“. . . it ought to be possible for American citizens of any color to register and to vote in a free election without interference or fear of reprisal.

It ought to be possible, in short, for every American to enjoy the privileges of being American without regard to his race or his color.

In short, every American ought to have the right to be treated as he would wish to be treated, as one would wish his children to be treated. But this is not the case….

...This is not a sectional issue…Nor is this a partisan issue…This is not even a legal or legislative issue alone. It is better to settle these matters in the courts than on the streets, and new laws are needed at every level, but law alone cannot make men see right.

We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution.

The heart of the question is — whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities. Whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated. If an American, because his skin is dark, cannot eat lunch in a restaurant open to the public, if he cannot send his children to the best public school available, if he cannot vote for the public officials who represent him, if, in short, he cannot enjoy the full and free life which all of us want, then who among us would be content to have the color of his skin changed and stand in his place? Who among us would then be content with the counsels of patience and delay?

One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free….

...It is not enough to pin the blame on others, to say this is a problem of one section of the country or another, or deplore the facts that we face. A great change is at hand, and our task, our obligation, is to make that revolution, that change, peaceful and constructive for all.

Those who do nothing are inviting shame as well as violence. Those who act boldly are recognizing right as well as reality…”

(To relive Kennedy's address click here. https://www.com/watch?v=7BEhKgoA86U)

Today, in 2020, Kennedy’s words sting; too often, for half a century, too many of us have done nothing, "inviting shame as well as violence." 

This is not a police problem. This is not a voter suppression problem or an sentencing equity problem or a no-knock warrant problem. This is a moral problem "as old as the scriptures" and as "clear as the American Constitution."

I write to ask what will it take? Must we again suffer the trauma of seeing a leader's blood spilled to move the nation forward?  Is not the blood of George Floyd and JT Williams and Manuel Ellis and Ahmaud Arbery and tens of others more than enough to make us see, care, speak, and act? Let us stop being “those who do nothing”, those who, in the words of my daughter, stand "wringing their hands in dismay and clutching their pearls."  It is past time “to act boldly”, to “recognize right as well as reality” and to create lasting change.

Let us take President Kennedy's words into our marrow and begin anew, now.  

Defund? Dismantle? How About Mission and Zero-based Budgeting?

To stir up the base, shout memorable, action verbs: Defund!  Dismantle! Both sides do it: Hit'em Hard!  Send In The Troops! Trouble is, it also gives handy handles to the other side with which to arouse, parry and attack. 

Adrenaline pumps. Blood rushes to muscle. Brains empty. Conversations cease.

When it comes to setting priorities and restructuring, borrow a couple of management tools from for-profit and not-for-profit enterprises: mission-driven planning and zero-based budgeting.

What is the mission of a police department?  What long-term goals does that mission entail?  Given where we are, what strategies do we adopt to move us toward achievement of each goal? What are the short-term steps in each strategy, e.g., for this biennium or this fiscal year? What does each step cost? If too much, which steps do we downsize or set aside or shift to another department in whose mission it fits (like social services or school youth counsels?)

A board or perhaps a citizen's group or a council sets the goals. Staff, the pros, suggest the strategies, the steps for this period, and the costs and trade-offs.  Then back to the board or council for approval and authorization of resources (of which there are only four: time, money, data and wo/man power.) 

I know: I make it sound easy.  It ain't.  But it works better than shouting meaningless action verbs, waving fists in the air, tweeting on end and cancelling out thought.  And it forces conversation -- the universal solvent.

Enough already; time to go to work.

A Prediction

To predict is to run the risk of ridicule should it not come to pass.  To revert to an "I should not be surprised if . . ." earns no medal of honor but only a ribbon of participation.  And to hedge with an "odds are against it, but it could happen that . . ." is gutless; after all anything can happen in politics.

So, go for it, Fletch; what do you predict?

I predict that between now and October, He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named (for he so loves to see his name in print [as if this impudent gesture were to be seen: you wish, you dope]) will start a war, i.e., a small-scale military adventure despite the War Powers Resolution.  After all, everybody else has gotten away with one.

Here's why he will start a "war:"

• He is falling behind in the polls and needs a patriotic rallying cry to divert attention from slow economic recovery, faltering coronavirus response, and religious leaders' expressions of doubt after watching their Bible being waved upside down in front of a church in which he has not prayed.
• His love of military stuff: if they won't give me a parade, how about an invasion?  Granada worked for Ronald Reagan.
• His need to quiet the chorus of retired Admirals and Generals; what better way than to rouse their automatic support of troops put at risk?
• His need for an act to quell rising questions about whether his tough guy talk is just tough guy talk.
• His need to cow foreign leaders who have begun to see him (and the US) as a toothless tiger.

Pity the poor little country the bully selects to pick upon.

Anyway, there it is; stay tuned.

Skin to Skin

Bed is my refuge.

My buddy a comfort.

Skin to skin is key;

she reaches for my hand,

I spoon into her warmth,

flank to flank we lie,

sometimes quiet, 

sometimes talking,

sometime giggling

imagining what our children

would think of us

withered teens cuddling in the night.

Fletch, you are blessed

to have such a chum

and such a place -- 

your hideout from the world.

Mothers: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Let's start with the Bad.  Our Spring in the Balkans last year (see July 24th, below) introduced me to Rebecca West; I had never before read her.  I found Black Lamb, Grey Dove mesmerizing: what wonderful writing and engaging story-telling.  What a critical, discerning and prescient eye for the lives around her as she traveled Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia in 1938 and '39.

I had become an acolyte.  Until yesterday -- when came in the NY Review of Books Mother's Day reprints, Anthony West's diatribe against her, his mother, Rebecca West, of whom he documented a life-long crusade to destroy his career, his marriage and his reputation.  Goodness! What a mother/son relationship!  She must have been a tumultuous personality, indeed -- Nieztschean feminist; mistress to H G Wells and and, according to her son (H G Wells' bastard),the Journalist, John Gunther. Rebecca it turns out was vengeful, volatile and manipulative despite being a gifted journalist, critic, and novelist whose last book was published at age 89. I'm still a fan of her writing, but . . . .What trauma Anthony West dealt with!

Mothers leave legacies; what did mine leave?  The Good. Eleanor Taylor would have disdained a Rebecca West-type as a self-centered shrew. Eleanor Taylor was anything but.



Eleanor Taylor Waller was forever in love with Fletcher C. Waller.  He passed on at age 72 in 1983; she, 28 years later at age 98, in 2011.  Her purpose was to make him -- and the rest of us -- whole.  She was the rock our family is built upon.

Fletch: struggling to support a family during the '30s; all in, answering the call to public service during WWII and the early Cold War; corporate maverick in the later '50s and '60s; adult drop-out and scrambling entrepreneur in the '70's. 

Eleanor made it work, supporting him though frustrations, sharing the pressures, encouraging him to dream.  As a kid, I was jealous, classically Oedipal.

They ventured together: Door County Sailing, then Beaver Flags. She was his sea anchor -- and our
foundation.

Eleanor Waller personifies loyalty, tolerance, patience, strength, compassion, self-reliance (especially after Dad died,) and humor.  She is my Mom -- still.                   













And the Ugly? There are no ugly mothers.

Memo from Lucifer

MEMORANDUM

To: Donald 

       at Mar-a-Lago

From: Lucifer

Subject: Role Model

Donald, my friend: pay close attention to the work Viktor Orban and I have been doing in Hungary.  It might be a model for the rest of your year.

Viktor and I have cooked a fragrant stew of nationalism, populism, xenophobia and resentment of globalization.  It has allowed him to razor wire his borders, neuter the courts, emasculate parliamentary oversight, stiff the EU, declare a state of national emergency and suspend elections.

You and I are nicely along on this path.  You've successfully misappropriated funds for your border bluster, stiffed House subpoenas, cowed Inspectors General, emasculated the Senate, packed the courts, and wounded the WHO.  Our latest ploy, blaming Chinese -- Chinese-Americans are already feeling the heat.

For the next step: I guarantee that in October and November I will stir up a COVID 19 outbreak again giving you the cover to suspend elections in the name of public safety.  To those states that vote by mail, tell them that unless all can do so, it would be unfair.  By timing it right, you can make it impossible for states to set up an all-mail system by November 3rd.  After that, you will be able to set the date for voting again by Executive Order, at your whim. 

Give my best to Melania; I know, she detests me, but she made her bed and has to lie in it. (Or is it lay?)

Regards,


PS What do you want your handicap to become next season?

May Day (and maybe mayday?)

Last evening, first of May, we found on our doorstep a bouquet of fragrant Wisteria blooms and homemade decorated cookie birds -- or maybe bees?  A May Basket in effect.  From a neighbor.  Wonderful!

"What's a May Basket" Ann asked.

When I was a kid in Ohio, in the late thirties, I made paper May Baskets with Mom, filled them with some blossoms and left them anonymously on neighbor's porches.  We had real porches in our neighborhood in Akron.  Porches seem to be going the way May Baskets have.

Our first grade class in 1941 made May Baskets out of construction paper and mucilage (anyone remember mucilage? You know -- in the brown, squat bottle with the rubber nipple that got all sticky and yucky?  Yes?: welcome ag'ed person.) We took the baskets home and gave them to our mothers.  I picked flowers from a neighbor's garden to put in my basket on the way home; my Mom, asking where I got them, made me go back and apologize to the neighbor.  Always a lesson, even in a May Basket.

By May 1st of '42, it was a different world.  We lived in a rented crackerbox of a house in St. Pete, on an unpaved road in the middle of a palmetto lot. The War Dept. had assigned Dad to the construction project turning Tampa's MacDill Field into a US Army Air Force base. May Baskets a thing of the past.

They never came back after the war, probably because of the nations' bug-a-boos about socialism and communism.  May 1st, after all, was International Labor Day, adopted in the 1890's as a day commemorating Haymarket Square and celebrated throughout Europe, especially in the USSR, as a day of international socialist and unionist anti-capitalist solidarity. You weren't supposed to be dancing but singing  L'Internationale.

(Ann knew about Haymarket Square from her labor history courses in UW's Access Program. She knows the important stuff; I know the frivolous. )

May Day celebrations were common throughout Europe -- maypoles, May Queens -- post-Easter celebrations of Spring. 1930's Akron was a salad bowl of foreign-born and first generation European Americans from nearly every country; their homeland traditions on display at any opportunity. I wonder if maypoles are still danced around and baskets delivered anonymously and May Queens blushing on the village greens of Europe? Probably not.

Here in Seattle yesterday, the annual May Day parade of anti-WTO'ers, socialists, unionists, solidarity- ists against something or other was turned into a motorcade, everyone in their auto-bubble.  The novel-virus triumphs at a time we need international solidarity for somethings more than ever. Mayday! mayday! mayday!*

The virus-induced social isolation certainly gave Jen and her kids time to bake, pick and deliver May welcomes to their neighbors.  We were delighted to have one.  Thanks -- for the gesture of solidarity, for the goodies, for the memories.

Happy Spring, everyone!  Stay safe; stay well; we'll be able to dance around a maypole together one day.



* About mayday, the international call for help: it comes from the air transport days of the early 1920's (Wikipedia tells me), an Anglicized version of the French m'aider.

Corporations Are Not "Blood-sucking", "Corrupt" "Criminals" -- They're Not Even People Are They?

It bothers me no end to hear Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Tom Steyer, AOC and other Democrats castigating corporations as "blood-suckers", "criminals", "corrupt", and "greedy". These are the same people who rail against the legal fiction that corporations are persons yet they attack corporations as if persons -- personal misbehavior, personal crime, personal sins.  Amoral? Sure, corporations are amoral because corporations are not persons, neither moral nor immoral; neither ethical nor unethical.  Corporate ethics is an oxymoron.

In my adulthood (some of my friends challenge that), I have worked for four employers: three large corporations and myself. The corporations -- General Mills, Marriott, and Westin Hotels -- were and are not criminals, not bloodsuckers, not corrupt. They are enterprises that unabashedly pursue self-interest as they define it, taking advantage of every law and loophole they can.  They protect their self-interest with lobbying and lawyering.  But that does not make them criminal; they are, in a sense, law-abiding. 

Yes, they were/are often misguided in their definition of interest and priorities, their values and goals sometimes warped by the personal interests of management vis-a-vis customers, employees, community, and shareholders.  It is not corporations but the rules under which they play on which we need to focus.  Change the rules and you will change their behavior.  

To reform corporate behavior and our economy, focus on six subjects and set up the rules and regulations to achieve our goals:

1. Clarify Corporations’ Rights and Responsibilities

Strategy: deny to corporations the rights of "personhood." This is especially important in First Amendment matters. Corporate officers, in person, as individuals, enjoy all the rights specified in the Bill of Rights.  But corporations have long outgrown the pattern of the 17thC when English Common Law protected them, most of which were not-for-profit churches and colleges, and granted them, as if private persons, the protection of privacy from government takings.  From that grew the illogical extension to all private persons' rights to all corporations -- for-profit or whatever. Congress needs to spell out what corporations are in the eyes of law, what accountabilities we demand and what protections we accord them. (Not a Constitutional Convention, that would be dangerously open-ended; do it by Act of Congress.) Citizens United cannot be overturned until the status of corporations is defined by Congress.

2. Broaden Charters and Constituent Representation

Strategy: give voice to multiple constituents and build representation of them into corporate mission and governance structure. At least four constituents are common to every corporation: customers, owners, non-executive employees and community.  A corporate mission statement should reflect accountability to these four and to whatever other is appropriate to the company.  At least one representative of these four constituent groups belong on the Board and on the Corporate Executive Committee.  In the case of "owner", distinction should be made between investor persons and impersonal funds driven by algorithms; investor persons are what is needed for input to corporate directors and officers.  An Act of Congress should mandate such structure in every State Corporate Charter under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution? 

3. Constrain Political Influence

Strategy: make political lobbying costly.  To explain corporate interests to lawmakers is important, but today when lobbyists overwhelm lawmakers in sheer numbers and have better access to lawmakers in capitals than do constituents, some constraints need to be imposed. Suggestion: remove lobbying from deductible business expenses, making the expense of offices and lobbyists, whether employee or contractor or consultant, a non-deductible, after-tax expense taken out of retained earnings and earnings per share. 

4. Deter Concentration and Congregate Mergers

Strategy: renew and invigorate anti-trust enforcement. Anti-trust enforcement has been lax since the Ford Administration.  A meme has taken hold: so long as consumer prices are lowered, or not raised, competitors can merge with or acquire competitors no matter how large the resultant corporation becomes. Few players in a game are an oligopoly.  I was at General Mills when the FTC attempted to find the cereal industry an oligopoly not in the public interest. I and many of my associates thought they were right: pricing in concert did not need illegal collusion.  One or another of the big three, Kellogg, GMI, and Post, could announce a price increase confident, from history and experience, that the others would follow. In industry after industry, the number of players is reduced and the cost of entry for new competitors increased. Conglomeration yields leverage on distributors and suppliers. Witness Disney allowed to acquire Marvel, Pixar, The Muppets, 20th Century Fox and others. In social media, witness Facebook's acquisition of Instagram, What's App and 50 others. In the airline industry, a boiling down through gobbling up competitors to five national competitors. 

A second meme is that congregate mergers, i.e., horizontal mergers into a new industry, are OK because they do not increase market share in a given market.  The idea is that size alone is not a problem. Wrong: with size comes barriers to entry, concentration of systems and research that provides each division an advantage in its industry, leverage that can change an industry in ways that harm the economy even while bringing lower prices.  Witness how Amazon and Walmart have brought benefits of price and accessibility while creating problems in labor, environmental impacts, and community values.  Behemoths need to be examined on multiple metrics, not just on efficiency.   

5. Deny Tax Havens 

Strategy: collect tax revenues where a corporation truly makes its profits.  Corporations take full advantage of the opportunities to lower their taxes -- as they should. But false realities are created. Is Carnival really a Panamanian company when its physical headquarters are in Florida; its officers and owners US Citizens who work and live in the US, its board of Directors dominated by US Citizens, whose administrative employees are Americans, and whose customers of their various cruise lines are predominately Americans? Why do we tolerate Carnival paying its corporate taxes to Panama instead of to the US?  Transfer pricing is another way to create a false reality.  Transfer a component at cost to a subsidiary operating in a low-tax country, like Luxembourg or Ireland, which then adds a large margin, books the profit and pays the tax there rather than here.  Transfer prices rightfully should include value added by labor and capital at its source with a profit margin included. How best to mandate this? Congressional action re accounting rules and IRS regulation is required.  

6. Break Up Hoards of Cash

Strategy: make dividends deductible and tax recipients at ordinary income rates. Cash is useful only when in motion. During WWII, the US imposed "excess profits" taxes on corporations to get them to share war profits with shareholders and labor.  Today, trillions are locked away in corporate treasuries. A structural change is needed to unlock those treasuries and get that money moving -- as dividends, wage and hourly raises, investments in new businesses and so on. Hand-in-hand with anti-trust constraints on mergers and acquisitions, corporations could be encouraged to take on risk of  researching and investing in new ideas and opportunities.  Sitting on cash helps neither owners nor employees, and dulls creativity.  A hoard of cash reflects a scarcity of imagination. How to encourage movement of that money?  Make dividends a deductible business outlay just as is employee compensation, thus reducing a corporation's taxable income. Dividends are in a sense double-taxed, first as part of taxable corporate profits, from which they are paid; second, as income of their recipients. Stop the first by considering dividends a deductible business expense and continue to tax recipients of dividends as if earned income.  Even more radical might be mandating a ceiling on cash as a percent of capital assets.  (Earnings on capital and earnings on one's labor ought to be taxed alike, but that's a different story than reforming our corporations.) 

I have now amply demonstrated that I am neither lawyer nor accountant. But I do know corporations and how they adapt to their environments.  Change the laws, tax rules, and regulations that describe the playing field and you will create responsible corporations overnight.