You never know what we'll churn up in cleaning a stall
This was one of the big items that used to appear in the personals ads. The lady wanted a gentleman who was “financially secure.” But what did that mean in practice?
For some, I suppose, it was a seven-figure portfolio … or better.
For others, maybe someone who held a steady job or was supporting himself? Or maybe could simply pay his half of the rent?
Of course, it was ultimately a personal perspective.
So how would you have defined it?
Finding yourself single after the dissolution of a marriage or the death of a spouse is bewildering, at best.
The loneliness and grieving can be nearly unbearable, and emerging from that into some kind of social scene is, well, a lot worse than high school ever was.
Trying to find the right place to meet appropriate potential partners is no less challenging. You hear all kinds of suggestions, from health club to Laundromat, and all of that’s problematic. These days, as a male, I’d look at a yoga studio, just saying …
Another of the complications is the fact – well, it was a quarter-century ago – that the available women were concentrated within the bigger cities, while the corresponding men were an hour or more away, beyond the suburbs.
In the time since then, a number of online dating sites have appeared, and I’ll let others relate their adventures and successes or failures.
But when I was available, the personals ads began to flourish. Out of necessity, I suppose. They even had their own free booklets, like TV listings.
Coincidentally, around the time I remarried, there was a blowup at my newspaper when the publisher went livid over a personals ad where one hopeful had described himself in opposite terms to the usual cliches. (He touted himself as fat, lazy, unemployed, and the like, as I recall.) It was enough to get me and now-elder stepdaughter (and fellow writer) to start reading the Boston Sunday Globe’s more varied ads for insights in the ways people perceived themselves or tried to portray their desires. Usually, they churned out short resumes full of contradictions or things only others could adjudge. “Beautiful” or “handsome” was common, usually preceded by “very,” but that’s something purely for the viewer to decide, thank you.
At any rate, a few entries would stand above the crowd.
One, for instance, described herself as a “Land’s-End kind of gal,” and you really do get a good sense of her in those five words. (We gave her ad a B+ or A-.)
The all-time winner, though, was along these lines: “Happy blue-eyed plumber in search of articulate, well-poised woman to bring (something) into my life. Children a plus.”
He alone could say if he was happy, and “blue-eyed” certainly told the reader about looks. “Plumber,” meanwhile, indicated responsibility and economic status. As for children? Few novelists deliver as much with such economy.
The ad, we noticed, ran just once.
Leadership is a fascinating subject, not just the source of many intriguing biographies but also corporate case studies and political histories and military campaigns and religious movements and … well, feel free to add to the list. We’ve all been in places where we’ve worked with admirable leaders, as well as places where we’ve suffered – perhaps even leaving in despair.
Outstanding leadership is, of course, a rare and wonderful occurrence. Mediocre is, by definition, the norm. And then there’s the kind that worms itself into position and sets about doing destruction.
Lately, I’ve been reflecting (again) on the last one. Not just inept, but destructive. I can work around one, but the other one makes for an impossible situation. Think Moby Dick.
It doesn’t always start off as badly as I’ve portrayed. Sometimes the individual begins gangbusters, doing everything right, before something goes seriously wrong. The person may simply burn out or lose interest. Conditions may change, so that the fit no longer works to the organization’s advantage. (Corporate organizational consultants have elaborate charts of the qualities needed for a startup versus a maturing company, or one shifting from private ownership to a public stock offering or the reverse.) Sometimes the person is fine for when everything’s going smoothly but has no ability to adjust for necessary – and often painful – restructuring, especially when layoffs and shutdowns are involved. Or there may be a buried demon that is let loose somewhere along the way, perhaps triggered by a divorce or death or temptations such as greed or power-hunger or sheer arrogance or flawed leadership techniques such as bullying and abuse or deep-seated insecurity or an untamed ego or, well, again the list goes on. Feel free to add or amplify. This, too, is a source for many great works of literature, operas, plays, and movies. The dark side comes forth.
My big question is whether an organization reacts in time to save itself, and what steps can be taken before it’s too late.
One of the first signs of trouble is the departure of key personnel, often lower-level individuals on the front line – or at least a failure to hear their complaints without retaliation. Sometimes it’s flight at some of the highest levels. After all, their jobs are at stake.
Usually, however, the awareness comes later.
The New York City Opera, for instance, appointed a new CEO whose brief tenure was disastrous. His flamboyant, extravagant vision for the company sent it straight for the cliffs, and the trustees’ decision to terminate his reign ultimately came too late to prevent the train wreck. This was a company, we should note, founded by visionary leadership that continued through several administrations. RIP.
I’m thinking, too, of situations where one of the top leaders engages in clandestine conflict – often backstage, one-on-one building alliances – that’s ego-based to the detriment of the organization. Commonly, the player lacks an appreciation for the culture and values of the organization and seek to turn it toward his or her own goals, including self-power enhancement, regardless of the trustees’ projections. Removing such a toxic manager, however necessary, produces ill feelings and misunderstanding all around, especially when the others are prevented by legal constraints from speaking openly of their underlying reasons.
Sometimes I think it’s a miracle organizations get anything done, top to bottom or, more accurately, bottom to top. There’s far more to leadership than barking orders, for sure, or undue frugality. I’d put mutual understanding high on my list of leadership qualities.
How about others?
~*~
I looked at something similar – good bosses and bad – back on June 28, 2013. To take a look, just click here.
It had been ages since I’d gone to the cinema multiplex – you know, the kind in the vast parking lot beside the mall. Usually, when we go out for a movie, it’s an art house in Concord or a volunteer-run series at the Music Hall in downtown Portsmouth.
But Wes Anderson’s latest, The Grand Budapest Hotel, was showing, and we figured we’d better make it there fast. No telling how quickly anything that quirky, formalistic, and savvy would be playing. (As we juggled our schedules, we realized it would have to be Monday night, overriding another activity on my itinerary – as we discovered, if you’re going to hit the big-box of showrooms, that’s the night to do it. We practically had the rectangular cavern to ourselves.)
I’ll leave it to others to lavish praise on the witty plotting that continually turned in unpredictable yet seemingly inevitable developments; the impressive casting and stylized acting; the precise cinematography; or the marvelous interweaving of actual sites in Germany (the hotel interior was actually the atrium of a defunct department store), miniature models of varied scales, and special effects to create a sense of fantastic and delightful artificiality. Anderson, as his fans know, is a moviemaking genius with a voice and vision all his own. (For one engaging detailed look at the roots of the story, click here.)
For me, though, the outing also invoked a series of culture shocks. Now that I’m “retired,” income’s tight, I’ll admit. I’m spending much less than I did before, and gasoline’s toward the top of my out-of-pocket budget. So the current ticket price (go ahead and laugh, you debonair rounders, when I tell you it was $11 apiece for three) made me gasp silently. (I know a good Greek restaurant where we could have dined out for that.) (I’m I really turning into this?)
From my end, it’s hard to take the very interior and decor of consumer society reflected in these big-chain outlets. It all feels plastic, cake-frosted, impermanent, unnatural. No one would want to linger in the vast lobby (what’s the point, anyway?), and no matter how plush, the showing rooms are – well, showing room sounds like something you’d find in a funeral home, which may be a good parallel, except that in much of the country, the mortuaries are usually in some amazing Victorian mansions. Nothing cookie-cutter about them, unlike these concealed warrens. None of this matches what I consider a theater or concert hall or even a house of worship, the kinds of places I prefer to assemble with others.
The third shock came in viewing the trailers and commercials. I’m still offended to be bombarded with big-screen ads after paying what I consider to be inflated ticket prices, after all, but to be hit twice with a promotion for a new computer game was especially egregious, especially with its pseudo-documentary interviews with its “creators,” a handful of pretentious nerds claiming social value for violent nihilism. I’m sorry, their world vision leads nowhere but destruction.
Actually, it was the amplified violence repeated in the trailers as well that most aggravates me. What in the American psyche so fosters terrorism of this scale? What justifies the reveling in gore for so many (and at such a price, even before we get to the price on our psyche)? Here’s the road that deserves a sermon of hellfire and brimstone, indeed. Wake up, folks, will you?
No wonder I prefer intimate, small-scale, gentle, playful, European or indie productions! They, in contrast, have soul and reality.
Anderson, I must confess, goes well beyond the small-scale criterion, but he earns the right to do so. And he’s generous to those who contribute to the effort, from the visual artists to the payroll accountants. One of the things that kept going through my mind as we were watching, actually, was an awareness of the lavish investment he was expending in the process and the question of whether he’d ever make it back. Well, maybe it wasn’t any greater than those of the futuristic trailers we’d watched beforehand, but still … Hollywood and Las Vegas have more in common than I’d like.
Maybe their biggest gamble is in making works that demand to be seen on the big screens rather than on our laptops or TVs via Netflix.
If you were a moviemaker or investor, what would you do? Or, as a film buff, what are you doing now?
Every time we undertake another repair or remodeling project with our old house, I’m reminded why I don’t do it myself. Yes, I’ll assist our carpenter/electrician or even keep an eyeball on the plumbers, but the earlier work we encounter always presents something inexplicable.
When we were stripping the walls and ceiling of the kitchen, for instance, Rick looked up and said, “I don’t like that.”
“Don’t like what?” I replied, looking at the weird angles of the two-by-fours running to the ridgeline. I could have as easily said, “Now what?”
“The roof’s not attached to the walls,” he replied. Oh? We both calculated it had been that way eighty years or so, however miraculously. “I’ll do what I can to strap it down.”
It’s a long list, actually, of guys who thought they knew how to fix things. But they weren’t pros or even skilled. Makes me wonder about a lot of the construction guys at work today. So I’ve become ever so grateful to turn to people who are truly capable. The best ones are worth every penny.
Continuing this month’s survey of Books Read, here are a few more entries:
Continuing this month’s survey of Books Read, here are a few more entries:
Continuing this month’s survey of Books Read, here are a few more entries. OK, the first one’s not a book, apart from the liner notes. But it’s still a major undertaking:
This is New Hampshire, after all. So the tourism officials like to tout it as a place “to be free” to do this or that.
If they were really honest, they’d admit our skinflint ways and caution: “Don’t spend liberally.”
But we really do exist at the expense of our neighbors. This is New Hampshire, after all. For now, we’re all hoping for great skiing weather “up north,” with all of the economic consequences.
My wife is a great cook. And so are the kids. This means that when we dine out, the meal often fails to live up to what we can have at home. The chain restaurants strike us as formulaic or bland. In many, there’s much that’s mostly show with little substance, or pretentious and pricy, or simply uninspired. It’s easy to feel we wasted our money.
On the other hand, we’ve also found some marvelous meals at bargain prices in humble places. including some that folks might describe as sketchy. At least until you take the first bite. I could mention my favorite Vietnamese restaurants in Worcester, Massachusetts, and Hartford, Connecticut, for starters. Or my regular Greek restaurant in Watertown, Massachusetts. Or our favorite summer hangout for seafood and live oldies in York, Maine. Or dim sum in Boston’s Chinatown. Or Latin American highlighting different countries on different days in Dayton, Ohio.
Of course, when we find a truly authoritative operation – one that sets standards for presentation, skill, creativity, and downright pleasure – we treasure the experience. Our favorite is run by two women in South Berwick, Maine. Whenever we’re ready to spring for a great celebration, that’s our first choice and we’re always delighted.
Once my wife and I got away for a weekend stay in Portland, Maine, and the centerpiece of the trip was a dinner at the famed Fore Street Restaurant, which is set in a kind of William Morris former foundry a couple of blocks from the harbor. She can tell you every glowing detail of our meal, including the local sourcing of ingredients. The wait staff was attentive without being overwhelming or stuffy. And most impressive, a sauvignon blanc was suggested to pair with that evening’s selections – and management priced it close to retail, rather than charging the industry standard of three or four times that figure. It was incredible – the word “stony” fits perfectly – and we’ve never found another that approaches this bottle, not even from the same South African winery.
Well, Fore Street was named No. 16 in Gourmet magazine’s list of top 50 restaurants in the U.S. in 2002.
More recently, I’m so glad one of our regular mechanics and his wife were impressed with their big celebration dinner there a few months ago. And we’re so happy to hear the tradition continues.
Jnana's Red Barn 