True Ancestor

Same guy, different worlds

I've avoided Las Vegas all my life. I'm afraid of it. Afraid of the smoke and the greed and the lust.

And afraid I'd love it.

I'm going there for the first time today.

Fortunately, I'm going for a board meeting and will be busy the entire time.

Tonight, I'll go out with fellow board members for dinner. Two of those board members are my brothers-in-law. It's a board meeting of the family business in which I'm a partner -- a business that just laid off eight employees. A business that is going through the same tough times as most other businesses.

Aside from my brothers-in-law and me, the other board members hail from Atlanta and Los Angeles, so we occasionally meet in those cities, or other cities that are easy to fly into. This meeting was to have been a kind of board meeting/family funfest in Palm Springs, but the economy dimmed our appetite for fun, not to mention spending money.

I'll have been gazing at spreadsheets all day Monday; Tuesday will be devoted to Hebrew and to the giants of Medieval Jewish exegesis.

Oh, and to watching the inauguration.

This kind of world-hopping seems strangely appropriate on the eve of the inauguration of our first African American president. A guy who moved between academia and organizing, and moves now from speechifying to statecraft.

Wednesday I'll return to life as I once knew it: drink coffee. Read the paper. Go to work.

I'll also practice saying: "President Barack Obama."

--T.A.

How to Reject a Rejection Letter

Sent to me by a faithful reader who will remain anonymous, in case said reader is seeking employment and must employ the technique shared below.

Herbert A. Millington
Chair - Search Committee
412A Clarkson Hall
Whitson University
College Hill, MA  34109

Dear Professor Millington,

Thank you for your letter of March 16.  After careful consideration, I regret to inform you that I am unable to accept your refusal to offer me an assistant professor position in your department.

This year I have been particularly fortunate in receiving an unusually large number of rejection letters.  With such a varied and promising field of candidates, it is impossible for me to accept all refusals.

Despite Whitson's outstanding qualifications and previous experience in rejecting applicants, I find that your rejection does not meet my needs at this time. Therefore, I will assume the position of assistant professor in your department this August. I look forward to seeing you then.

Best of luck in rejecting future applicants.

Sincerely,
Chris L. Jensen

"We appreciate your contributions to our success."

One of my regular bureaucratic (and, frankly, few remaining) duties at work is the signing of birthday cards, and cards recognizing employment anniversaries, for the business I'm a part of. The title of this post is the message inside the card thanking and congratulating people on the anniversary of their employment with us.

Isn't that message kind of obnoxious? Like, "Thanks for letting us climb on your back and grab the brass ring"?

Or does the "our" include them? Y'know, a rising tide lifts all boats.

I dunno. I'm going to have to ask them to look for other cards.

--T.A.

Studying Like a Kid -- Treated Like a Chump

Well, the good news about being admitted to the U. of Chicago Divinity School has been tarnished somewhat by the fact (confirmed by the Dean) that I am not being offered any financial aid. For four years. This puts a damper on the whole idea of returning to school. More than a damper, actually; more like the Kiss of Death.

There are some scholarships and fellowships out there, but the overwhelming majority of them are for people right out of school and/or under age 40. I'm neither. The University claims that reduced funding and the way money is allocated mean that I'll have to tough it out or find funding elsewhere.

It's a good thing I'm older, I guess. I'm not taking this personally. I'm taking it as a challenge. I figure that universities are businesses, too, and this is a business decision. If a 48-year-old guy wants to go to school, make him pay his own way (at least at first). Universities make investments in graduates who go onto careers in academia. Any career I have in teaching and writing will be a decade and a half shorter than the average.

On the other hand: kinda diminishes the thrill of victory, you know? Throws the whole enterprise into question. With two kids in college next year, and a third about 6 years out, I need every penny I can lay my hands on.

Any suggestions? Any hidden pots of gold? Any scholarships for old people?

Or should I just bag it...?

--T.A.

Random stuff I just wanted to share, all crammed into one post

• My brother has written a novel! And gotten it published! I've bought 15 copies -- one for me, 14 for the only people I know who aren't related to me and still speak to me. I'm sure that if they stop speaking to me, my brother's writing won't be at fault.
• I've had an essay published in this book. A pretty interesting book, if you're into that sort of thing.
• Charles Martin explores Buddhism (and some other things) in a revived blog that I'm sure will be worth reading. So I've added it to my Best of Blogolalia list.
• Rabbi Daniel Landes, co-founder and director of the PARDES Institute, a renowned multi-denominational center of Jewish study in Jerusalem, coined a phrase that I'm going to have made into bumper stickers: Jews for Exegesis.
• He also invoked the Talmud as proof that Jews of radically different backgrounds could speak to each other -- even across centuries and continents. So why are Jews of different backgrounds having so much trouble speaking to each other today?, he asked.
• Here's a doctor who says the only way to level the athletic playing field is to permit and regulate steroid use. He's been called "the loneliest man on the planet." And far worse.
• That Airborne stuff actually works.
• Hardest things I've ever done: 1) Meditate 2) Be a step-parent 3) Go onstage as Banquo's ghost, during a high-school matinee, drenched in chocolate syrup (it looks like blood under stage lights), and wearing only white body paint and a G-string. I think the director had it in for me. I looked like a sundae with legs.
• Funniest thing Gabe ever said: "Why is Uncle Dick named after a private part?"
• Middle Daughter is off on her journey to save the world again. She's the "World Traveler" on the family blog-roll.
• Oldest Daughter has an intimidating internship with the Federal District of this outfit.
• I haven't the slightest idea who I'm going to vote for in my state's primary. Tell me: who's fiscally conservative, understands the gravity and staying power of the threat from radical Islamic terror, recognizes that working men and women have their backs to the wall as never before, and knows what to do about it; has the guts, and the brains, to address health insurance, immigration, housing, and begin to revive our crappy reputation and foreign policy, without being beholden to special corporate or religious interests; and has the brains, the political capital and the respect necessary to assemble a top-flight Cabinet? And who isn't a TOTAL CREEP?!
• If I were Donovan McNabb, I wouldn't want to finish my career before I had the chance to flatten Terrell Owens before a national television audience.
• And if I saw Roger Clemens, I'd offer him this.

--T.A.

It's raining, it's pouring ...

When I come to Florida on business now, I like to fly in late on a Sunday, have two full days of work, and then hang out with the aged and revered parents on a Wednesday morning before flying home.

On this particular trip I couldn't swing the Sunday flight, but it's Wednesday morning, and instead of working, I'm sitting in this beach house, about 26 miles from my nonprofit's flagship property, and I'm looking out a window at the Gulf of Mexico, which seems to be thinking about tropical storms.

The beach is covered with mounds of scallop shells, which seem to have been killed off by some infestation or parasite or other emblem of the imbalanced ecosystem. It almost looks, from a distance, like the beach is covered with snowdrifts. When you get down onto the beach, you see that the snowdrifts are mounds of white shells.

Then the smell confirms what you're eyes had just begun to understand.

Even so, everything here is somehow reassuring: the asthmatic coffee pot, the sigh of traffic going by on the island's main road, giant, cockeyed propane tanks that stand beneath the stairs like tubby night-watchmen.

Last night, my Old Lady fell asleep in front of the Democratic debate (which was neither), while the Ancient Mariner chortled at Joe Biden's wit and marveled at the inanity of the "debate" format.

This morning, the Old Lady is on a walk. The Ancient Mariner sleeps in. The house is full of mnemonics that I take for granted.

Work is bruising. This place, after 48 years, is still comforting.

--T.A.

Middle Daughter Leaves High School, Joins the Firm

Today, having unoffically finished high school, Middle Daughter jumped into her summer job as my assistant, and joined me in my humble enterprise of trying to save the poor and disadvantaged from crappy housing, a handful at a time.

This endeavor was my brainchild, but it's one facet of a larger agglomeration of real estate enterprises that comprise a family business (another oxymoron if ever there was one). And the current wisdom is that you involve the next generation early, but you make it clear to them that what you're doing is educating them, not providing them a tenured position for which they're nowhere near qualified.

She showed up, brightly made-up and nervous, after the last class of her high-school career, with an eager and somewhat terrified Marlo Thomas-like smile cemented to her face.

Seeing that smile, I recalled, instantly, my first job, as a reporter for the Hyde Park Herald, after my freshman year in high school. I was sent combing through wire service reports, and compiling a list of every single business in our community, which became part of a neighborhood guide book.

One day, though, I was sent to "cover" an informational seminar on home security for senior citizens, offered by the Chicago Police Department. I was not prepared for the ham-handed tactics of our city's finest, so young and naive was I. Two cops showed slides of heroin addicts freshly dead from overdoses, horrible torrents of mucous having clogged their mouths and noses; of the corpses of single women, stabbed and beaten in their beds, their blood still moist, their unlocked windows easily accessed; of helpless elderly dead on their floors, heads stove in with a lamp or a frying pan, bureaus ransacked.

I felt it necessary to query the policemen in some stern, reportorial fashion: they had clearly enjoyed the shock value of their slides but weren't quite making clear why we needed to see them. But how did a snot-nosed cub reporter for a community rag pose a tough question to a Chicago cop?

"I assume," I said, "that you'll tell us why we needed to see all this blood and gore?"

The cop sized me up for a moment and said, in his Chicago brogue, "Young mee-aaann, when you assume, you make an ee-ass of you and me."

This got a collective, coughing guffaw from the assembled seniors, and a crimson blush from me. And just like that, I understood: adults are playing the same games kids are playing; they've just added a few tricks to their bags.

I hope Middle Daughter will learn a lot this summer. I hope she'll add a few tricks to her bag. I hope she learns why I do what I do; I hope she'll take a good look at the family business.

And then move right along.

--T.A.

"That path that a person chooses, so he is led."

This a quotation from Talmud. It's been rattling around in my head all morning.

What the hell does it mean?

It seems to mean that first you choose your path, then you're led along that path that you've chosen. It's where the rubber of Free Will meets the road of Fate.

But then you turn your head a little, you look at it from another angle, and it means, "Your destiny lays out according to your predilections."

And you turn away from it, then quick turn back and look at it when it thinks you're not looking, and it means, "The way you choose determines the way in which you're led."

Or, "You choose it, you gotta live with the consequences."

Or: "God waits for you to choose. So really, it's you leading God, not the other way around."

I'm not all that old, but I've made a lot of stupid choices in my life -- non-choices, half-choices, passive acceptances of the agendas of others -- and it shows. And now Gabe, at 11, with braces being put on tomorrow, is beginning to understand this.

It all started over a pair of basketball shoes that he really wants. Dwayne Wades, $75. The One True Wife said, "Uh, no."

"Why not?," he asked.

"Because you're growing like a weed. And besides, you're going to wear these at camp and destroy them. Maybe after camp we can get them for you."

"But I play basketball at camp."

"You also do a lot of other things," The Wife said. "And all of them seem to involve mud. I'm not paying $75 for a pair of basketball shoes to get covered in mud. You can wear the basketball shoes you have now."

"They don't fit anymore."

"Plus, Gabe, we have to get you new baseball shoes before practice next week. Oh, and new soccer shoes. How much am I supposed to spend on your footwear?!"

Gabe has noticed that our house -- which I think is a pretty nice house -- is not as spacious or as opulent as the houses of most of his friends. He has noticed we don't have money waiting to be vacuumed out of our pockets. He has started to dream out loud about the large house he'll buy as an adult.

Gabe didn't get his shoes. He got a long talk about how we live surrounded by opulence, which is not always a good thing, and which, it turns out, does not equate with happiness. He took it in, didn't pitch a fit, or cry. Instead, he sunk into a sombre reverie about "the poopyheadedness of life." When he got up this morning, he still had that gray, sunken aura about him.

The Wife said to him, "It was never Daddy's or my dream to make tons of money."

"What is Daddy's dream?," Gabe asked.

Daddy don't know, son.

When you think about depression in the context of "As a person chooses, so he is led," it reveals itself as fixation on something negative whose dark energy leads you deeper into negativity. When I'm very depressed, I don't even see in color. And I don't want to be comforted. On some level, desperate as I am for help and companionship, I revel in my misery and reject as Machiavellian and self-centered all attempts at "help." And so, having chosen not to fight depression, I'm led down the depressive path.

The Wife has no navigation aids for this emotional landscape. None. She has no idea what to make of me when I'm depressed. To her credit, she thinks, "OK, you have a problem. Let's figure out a solution. Then you'll feel better."

And of course, when I see Gabe acting depressed, I think: "Oh, crap. What's better: leave him alone, or offer him solutions?" Then I have to wait for all the stupid things that people ever said to me to clear out of my cranium. By then, he's usually left the room.

Even though I know depression, I don't know how to help someone else who's depressed. Every depressive has a unique depressive "print." Of course, I don't know if Gabe is depressed. He might just be sulking.

I have to help lead him out of his funk, but he has to choose not to stay in it. After all, as a person chooses, so is he led.

I think.

--T.A.

An Office Is a Little World

An office is a world -- its own world. Or maybe a community. Or an ecosystem. But whatever it is, an office is unique in the kind of human relationships it creates.

I remember when I was an actor -- kept in close and sweaty quarters with compulsive liars and exhibitionists, swamped by the smell of spirit gum and witch hazel -- I remember thinking, "Wouldn't it be nice, just to go to an office? To have an actual workspace I could call my own? And to work alongside people that weren't trying to make me look or feel like crap all the time?"

Silly me.

I've now been working in the same job for over a decade. There are five others who've been here that entire time. Contemporaries. We've slouched into middle age together, the six of us. It seems to me we've hardly changed at all, but our relationships have changed enormously. There's a kind of empathic communication, an extrasensory, no-nonsense Morse code that delivers little packets of information without fluff or obfuscation.

The relationships couldn't exist outside of work -- not as they are. And in fact, when I run into these people outside the office, I'm almost embarrassed, as if I've been caught leading a double life. As if they know something about me they shouldn't.

When I leave this place -- if I leave this place -- I will be a little sad about this one strange fact of working life: these are people who understand me, who help me and whom I enjoy helping, and who, when the day is over, leave me alone. We have a history, and we have space between us that is full but doesn't collapse or catch fire.

What a blessing.

--T.A.

Bill, Number One and Me: Kingpins of Philanthropy

Brother-In-Law Number One, the CEO of our for-profit company, runs with a pretty high-falutin crowd.

This past weekend, he was taken by a friend, via private jet, to a members-only resort in Big Sky, Montana. The place currently has 300 members, and any one of these people probably has greater net worth than most African nations.

Number One was skiing with his 9-year-old daughter on Saturday, when a fellow skiied up and joined them on the lift. Number One introduced himself to the stranger.

"Hi," the stranger said. "I'm Bill."

Bill, Number One thought. Why does this "Bill" guy look familiar?

Oh, he said to himself. It's Bill. As in Gates.

And then Number One did a really cool thing. He could've told his daughter that she was riding the lift with the richest man on the planet, or the greatest businessman alive, or the guy who made her computer games possible.

But instead, Number One turned to his daughter and said: "Claire, you should be very honored to be in this man's presence. He's done more to save and improve the lives of children in Africa than anybody in the world."

Claire smiled up at Bill Gates and said, cheerily: "Thank you!"

On their ride up the mountain, Bill and Number One talked some about business, but mostly about philanthropy. Number One allowed as how he's involved in philanthropy, too.

And what philanthropy did he tell Bill Gates about?

Why, my Little Non-Profit That Could!

It's kind of cool that Bill Gates knows about Full Circle Communities, Inc. I wonder if Bill's people will be calling...?

--T.A.