View from the Mountain

Survival is Future Focused

Great Egrets seem to spend all their time focused on catching a meal, grooming, or enjoying a sunny or perhaps at least a sheltered perch. They don't seem to mind wading around in cold water. They typically avoid confrontation but they can be very territorial and I have seen one or two stand up to the much more aggressive Great Blue Herons.  I don't know that Great Egrets think about the past, but I do know that they have a good memory for places. Our Great Egret buddy, Frank 29X, from Canada has flown down from his northern marshes to the Crystal Coast for eight straight years.

We, humans, live a much different life than Great Egrets but the ones of us who maintain relative mental balance have a streak of hopefulness in us.  It is easy to get weighed down by the news.  Climate change could bring the end of the world and a massive sea-level rise.  Our spineless GOP senate has just given the menace that is our leader a green light for whatever behavior he feels like between now and the next election. Far too many people are killed by far too many guns. The suicide rate among veterans and farmers is appalling.  Many people are just one medical incident away from bankruptcy. Corporations seemed to have rigged the tax system in their favor.  Birds are dying and our corporate-friendly government seems bent on doing away with all environmental regulations while attempting to dismantle protections for federal lands.

It would be easy to have a vision of the future that is flaming rivers, toxic drinking water, firestorms like Australia and an authoritarian government with miles of wall attempting to stave off the future.

The reality will likely be different. The demographics of our country are changing. The demographics are not changing in favor of the white nationalists and the party that sees them as "some very good people."  We know what a nearly scandal-free government looks like. We had eight years of it under our first black president.  The children growing up today are growing up in a much more diverse world much like Halifax, Nova Scotia where we lived for a few years.

I have told the story many times about moving to Columbia, Maryland where our young son heard someone refer to a lady as black and turned to ask us what did "black" mean?  We might not get there in America in my lifetime but I wouldn't write off the possibility.  I have grandchildren that will need guidance and help to succeed. I plan to be around for them.  I fully expect to help them develop their critical thinking skills.

I also hope to teach them to be unafraid to take the heat for their beliefs. We have far too many people who are unwilling to admit their mistakes much less shoulder the responsibility of what they did. Certainly, we should hold responsible those senators who refused to honor their oath of office and stuck their heads in the sand during the sham impeachment trial of our foul-mouthed leader.

I grew up during a time when we could debate opinions without getting personal. I sent a list of questions to a no-one-could-be-right-but-me opinion writer. I hoped to understand why he believed things that do not pass the test as facts. His comment was that I lived in a different reality. Certainly, I do not live in the fever-induced-conspiracy swamp of Fox News. I think this quote from Forbes about covers it.

There's a lot that goes on in the world that doesn't easily fit the Fox template. There are important stories that don't make anyone angry, prove liberals are evil or otherwise carry an emotional punch. Fox viewers get less of them. Fox News is like an all-you-can-eat buffet, serving up red meat. A more balanced diet might be healthier in the long run.

I try to eat a balanced diet of healthy food but I do fall off the wagon especially for bacon and potato chips.  Enjoying a balanced news diet is much easier and I never fall off that wagon and listen to the junk news that comes out of Fox.

Not all government is bad. That pretty much disqualifies me as a Fox viewer.  Not all taxes are bad and the government helping people who are less fortunate is a good thing that will benefit us all.  Those are the second and third strikes that make me an unlikely Fox News viewer.

The government is a giant pendulum. Likely our current difficulties are a result of the great progress we made under Barack Obama. There are people to whom the thought of a black president or a woman as president are as threatening as flaming rivers are to me. 

We have to hope that our current mess will energize people to vote.  Those of us who believe our future depends on a fair country that continues to build on the strength and intelligence of current and past immigrants instead of walling ourselves off from the world and the future cannot let fear, hatred, and xenophobia driven by the policies of the current administration define our future.

We have to build a world where everyone counts no matter how humble their backgrounds are. Each person, not just the rich and well-connected, deserves a chance to succeed and thrive. That has been the imperfect promise of America for hundreds of years.  We will continue to strive to get closer to that promise and we will never let it die.

We can still have a country that respects borders and the law without making life miserable for so many. We just need better people running our country.

 

Fifteen Years of My Own Words

The Point, Emerald Isle, NC

The Point, located on the far western end of Bogue Banks in the town of Emerald Isle, has great significance to me. For over a decade it has been the local place where I feel the closest to nature. I have written about it many times and even specifically about going to the ends of the sand which is not far from where this picture was taken.  The Point is also where my love affair with the Crystal Coast began in 1969 when my uncle Austin and I had to drive down the beach in my old Bronco to reach the Point.

I do not have to look back nearly as far as 1969 to remember that I wrote my first post on Typepad in November 2004.  This is post number 1,445 on View from the Mountain.  It has been seven years since we left the Mountain, but the blog continues to be one of my favorite soapboxes.  It is something of a minor tradition that I write an anniversary post. I hold up the tenth-anniversary post and the fourteenth-anniversary post as examples.

Much like the moment of clarity that I wrote about in this post, I have come to a few conclusions about our world.

1. First, there are many people in the world whose actions either intentionally or unintentionally are hostile to the rest of us. Often we are little but roadblocks in their schemes which often have more to do about their insecurities than anything else.
2. If you are trying to do what is right for the majority of the people, you are going to run into people who will oppose you. There are people out there who care more about themselves than about anything. The concept of the greater good is foreign to them. I have seen these people, had to deal with them and felt the hurt long after they have disappeared.
3. I have also come to realize that there are people who really do not care for facts unless the "facts" happen to bolster their own opinion. It is hard to understand but they seem to love to cling to the worst stories about people. Even if the narrative has no factual basis, it lets them rationalize their dislike, distrust or divorced from reality thoughts.  They deal in lies and rumor.
4. Another fact of life is that many people have trouble admitting that they are wrong. They will try to shovel the blame over on you even when it requires unbelievable contortions.  It is never their fault mainly because they dress in Teflon and everything slides off of them.
5. It is incumbent on us in our thoughts, our writings and our actions to call out the people who are trying to destroy our world. If you are silent, you are complicit.
6. If it requires a struggle to demonstrate balance in your subject matter, maybe you need to see if you are having to manufacture the balance.  To equate the influence of evangelical right on our politics with that of the religious left is a stretch that I am not willing to make.

That is it for the fifteenth-anniversary post.  As another fall comes to a close on the Crystal Coast, we are settling into our winter routine here along Raymond's Gut and the White Oak River as we finish this adventure and look forward to the next one.

The real danger to our society

When you you look up the definition for society, you will find two.  I am alarmed that some people have trouble figuring out the difference between the two when they are tasked with governing a society.

noun

1. The aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community.
synonyms: the community, the public, the general public, the people, the population

2. An organization or club formed for a particular purpose or activity.
synonyms: association, club, group, band, circle, fellowship, body, guild, college, lodge, order, fraternity, confraternity, brotherhood, sisterhood, sorority, league, federation, union, alliance

We elect people to govern us - our society.  Our governments establish rules or laws and through the courts, police, fines and other mechanisms collect money (taxes, fees) and enforce rules and laws. As Americans, Canadians, or others, we often live multi-jurisdictional lives.  There are federal, state, county, city and sometimes even more local authorities who to a greater or lesser extent govern our lives.

The problem we face at many levels is the people providing our governance have lost sight of focusing benefits equitably towards the whole of the community that elected them.

What gnaws at my soul is the undeniable fact many of the people governing us are looking out more for the people in their circle of friends than they are for the good of the greater community. The first thought that comes to my mind is a bunch of rich politicians passing a tax cut which benefits almost exclusively corporate donors and people who make more money than they know how to spend.  The tax cut has blown up the deficit and fueled an orgy of stock buybacks but few others have gotten anything more than hollow words about a tax cut.

While you may or may not agree with my interpretation of the tax cuts, the same thought process leads us to two sets of rules- one for the insiders and another for the rest of us. A few years ago, I had the misfortune of watching a tainted HOA election that led to board operating behind closed doors for months. They had barely been elected when they started breaking by-laws. Within a month they had illegally given some lot owners passes on dues that were owed.  It took a lot of work to cleanse this board's behavior and establish new rules so that theoretically it would not happen again.

This insider-outsider problem runs deep in our society. Most people who have worked in corporations know that how you are treated often depends more on who you know than how well you do your job. I have long argued for a new social contract between workers and corporations. In corporations this lack of understanding of the bigger picture often manifests itself in CEOs and their inside circle of friends walking away with most of the benefits and money.  It is little different from government giving tax breaks to their rich friends and denying health care benefits because they cannot imagine any of their friends not having work-provided health care benefits. Maybe they should talk to the ever increasing army of contractors who have no benefits because companies do not have to provide them.

The same stuff happens at the local level, it is just not as apparent. When stuff happens behind closed doors, it is usually happening because the benefits of actions taken are targeted to a group smaller than the true greater society that actually should be the real focus of the benefits. It is unfortunate that bad behavior is often cloaked in language that appears to make it look good at first glance.

Some companies and governments have actually taken the wolf in a sheep's clothing metaphor to a level that is almost an art form. Many might remember Apple's "Think Different" advertising campaign. I recently saw one of the old posters that celebrated people who thought different and made a difference. You would be excused from drawing the incorrect conclusion that Apple as a company celebrated employees who thought different. The irony was that nothing could have been farther from the truth.  Steve Jobs tolerated no dissent.  If an employee stepped across the sometimes invisible boundaries, they were quickly shown the door. Apple's excessive secrecy was not the only example of Steve's iron rule.  As a director, I was often tasked with presenting to high-level customers after Steve's product introductions. I also had to answer their questions even though the only information I had was what I had gleaned during the same presentation that Steve had just given to them. Sure there were boxes of literature with more information to be handed out but they were stamped with notices that you could be fired if they were opened before Steve's presentation was over. Then there was Steve's even more ridiculous policy of telling a few chosen customers (Friends of Steve) more information about unannounced products than Apple employees were ever told.

While you might argue that Apple has gone on to be a tremendously successful company, I would argue that Apple is a mere money machine today, mining the pockets of loyal customers who have seen prices rise precipitously and innovation drop off a cliff.  A whole generation of innovators and leaders were driven from Apple because of Steve's malignant management practices and excessive secrecy. You will find those employees at high levels in many companies.

From government and corporations to your local society, secrecy and the willingness to have two sets of rules, one for the insiders and another for the rest of us is the rot that eats away at the ties that bind us.

No one should be above the laws or the rules that have been established to keep our society more or less ordered. Favoritism, selective enforcement of rules and declaring the rules don't apply to me have no place in a society that is supposedly functioning for the good of everyone.  Claiming ignorance of the rules as justification for breaking them is the worst kind of self-delusion for government of any level. If you don't understand the rules and aren't willing to abide by them yourself, how can you expect anyone to have respect for you or abide by your rules.

Rules and laws were not developed to be convenient and optional for leaders. They were developed to help keep society functioning.  Rules and laws broken by leaders eat away at the credibility of the leaders. Surely it is apparent that leaders breaking rules makes it seem okay for others to ignore rules.

If we have learned nothing else in the last few years, it is that talk is cheap and more of a distraction than a promise that will be fulfilled. Transparency, government for the good of us all, and working to bring us all together are far too often hollow words that mask secret agendas designed more for the benefit of a group of buddies than to build a real community.  

What really matters is a deep abiding respect for all people, especially the ones you are tasked with governing or leading. The first step to good governance or leadership is following and respecting the rules.  Changing rules and traditions for a friend or colleague is a slippery slope than benefits few people and harms the greater good. Treating everyone fairly is the cornerstone of good governance and corporate life. Favoritism is a cancer that is hard to root out.  The personal agenda that comes with favoritism is at odds with the common good and will destroy a community or a company.

While you can leave a company, it is much harder to leave a community. If for no other reason than that, we should be ever vigilant to make sure government at all levels can be counted on to follow the rules and treat everyone fairly.

 

 

A Life Without A Recipe

The Marked Channel Up The White Oak River

I am a pretty good baker and one of things that I have learned is that real success comes when you start inventing your own recipes instead of following the ones in a cookbook.

One of the benefits of getting old is having time to reflect and maybe do things that you did not get to do earlier in your life.  I knew people in college who knew exactly what they wanted to do in life.  They had a plan and were sticking to it no matter what.  There was a time in my life that I might have envied them.

Over the years I have come to the conclusion that not having your life planned out just might let you have a more interesting and richer life.  It might not be as financially rewarding, but I am pretty sure the memories are better.  Certainly the journey is filled with more surprises.

I feel fortunate to have grown up as one of the last generations who had some freedom in their childhood.  We could walk to school without our parents getting in trouble with the local officials.  We played hard after school, making up our own rules and mostly handling the ups and downs of childhood on our own. The summers were ours and there were no woods in our part of the county that we did not explore.  Our local creek was dammed many times and the forts we built withstood many challenges.

Childhood was not all play, school was serious business and then luckily some of us got to join Boy Scouts.  Scouting opened a whole new world, but before I got to finish it, I ended up in military school at McCallie in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

The guidance I had when growing up before Scouts and McCallie came mostly from my mother, church, and school.  There was never pressure towards any particular career, but there was the hope that I would be the first of the family to attend college.  Going to McCallie reinforced that since almost everyone in school at McCallie had college stamped on their foreheads.

Still there was no plan. Of the several colleges that I applied to, I had only been to UNC on a field trip when I was in the eighth grade. I ended up at Harvard because someone I respected very much went to Harvard the year before I graduated and he reached out to me.  I could have ended up at Davidson, Duke, or UNC.  Academic advising at Harvard was pretty well non-existent.  My mother never visited Harvard until graduation.  I was on my own.

Along the way some in the family had suggested I become a lawyer.  I was relieved senior year when I missed the law boards.  The late sixties and early seventies were an interesting time to be in college and if you want to read more of that try my book, A Taste For The Wild - Canada's Maritimes.  However, being a lawyer was not at the top of the list in careers in the early seventies.

The story is complicated but after graduating college, I got $6,000 from my mother and bought a farm along the shore of Nova Scotia.  For as long as I could remember, I had wanted to own land.  Somehow it did not seem like I could figure out what to do with my life until I went back to the land.  Certainly there were many doing something similar during the early seventies.

Maybe I started digging in the dirt because most of the people that I respected had dirt under their finger nails. The only other person that I knew who lived with a code that I could respect was a newspaper editor.  Even back in 1971, I could tell that writing for a newspaper would not pay many bills because the industry was already struggling.

As my new wife, Glenda, and I went off to Canada and eventually built a commercial cattle operation, there still was no pressure from anyone in our family to do something else. I am sure there were plenty of people shaking their heads, but our family had too many people not that far from the farm to question a career as a farmer.

The next fork in life came not from planning but from necessity. Interest rates went through the roof in the early eighties.  Because our farm was beef cattle and doing too well, we could not qualify for the 2% interest rates that the local dairy farmers were getting.  With 20% interest rates we could no longer afford our $100,000 operating loan so we decided to sell our cattle.  It took a year to accomplish and when it was over, we had a farm, a lot of equipment, and just a few thousand dollars in debts.

I had planned to take a year off after selling the cattle and I did.  I spent much of that year driving our older daughter the twenty miles to kindergarten in Fredericton, New Brunswick. With her class being over at noon, the drive was too long and rough to return home so I spent my time mostly window shopping.  I happened to find a new computer store which had just started to carry the revolutionary new personal computers.  That next summer my mother bought me one in the hopes that it would lead me somewhere besides farming.

That Apple II+ was a very first step on a road that eventually led to nearly twenty years at Apple.  Like almost everyone I know, I left Apple not because I wanted to but because Apple was done with me. Once again the road had forked with no directions.

Since Apple I have experienced a lot different companies.  I worked as a very successful consultant until we were faced with having no health insurance. Then I went with a startup and a young CEO who thought the only way to get performance out of sales people was to threaten them.  I tried another field where managers and employees were resistant to technology and determined to only listen to advice from outside self-declared experts. 

Finally I said enough is enough and went off to try to build my own career. That I have ended up where I am today says more about a good start in life, a strong work ethic, persistence and continuing as a lifelong learner than it does about where I graduated college.

As I look back on life and try to think of what might be the key to surviving all the twists and turns in life, my thoughts are drawn back to the little green manual typewriter that I got when I was in the third or fourth grade.  It would be a few years later in the summer of 1962 before I really learned to type in a special Forsyth County program.

I do not remember the day or the time, but at some point I learned how to think with my fingers. My thoughts go directly to the keyboard and they have for as long as I can remember. It is a wonderful skill and while my mother likely never guessed what spark came from that manual typewriter, what I learned at those keys certainly helped me make it through life with only some minor scars.

As I look at parents giving their children tablets, I have to wonder if they are a tool or just another form of entertainment.  I think that I am going to campaign for my grandchildren to get Chromebooks instead of iPads.  I think there is more of a chance they will learn to write with a Chromebook instead of an iPad. 

As I say that I know that I was lucky to have a mother willing to go the extra mile to put a typewriter in front of me in the hopes that it would be a spark.  There are a lot of kids today who get so much that nothing means anything to them and then there are others who get almost no help in making their steps into the world.

Of course our grandchildren might be children who know exactly what they want to do, but I hope not because they might miss a lot of fun.  Perhaps I could pretend that I turned my life upside down so I could do what I wanted when I was young, but I would have a hard time arguing that since  I am living my dream here. Fishing, boating, kayaking, gardening, and photography are all high on my list as I continue to work just enough to stay out of trouble and keep me on top of things here along the Crystal Coast.

On the road with shiny crocs

It was said of Willie Loman, the salesman, "he's a man way out... in the blue riding on a smile and a shoeshine." Recently I was on the road again as a salesperson for the first time in eight years.

It was a little different than the last time but how I interact with clients will likely never change.

When you are working with people helping them to understand products and services, the only way to differentiate yourself from someone else is your reputation, your knowledge of your product, and what you can understand of your potential customers' needs.

In our always on-line, Internet-driven world, sometimes in the heat of the moment, one's reputation can be ignored but only because few take the time to do any research before declaring their own knowledge superior to all those around them. In the real world when companies and organizations are making significant purchases, they will take the time to adequately research someone before counting on his or her advice.

However, it still amazes me that the Internet has created whole new opportunities for snake oil salespeople. Because too many of us refuse to really understand the technology that underlies our lives, these people selling sub-par services continue to thrive. It is really sad when customers do not see through these folks who can only pretend to know what they are talking about when asked a question.

There is a whole other level of experts who peddle advice to our governments and organizations around the country.  Unfortunately, governments often looking to make certain they make intelligent decisions end up hiring these folks whose only real experience is in convincing others to hire them.  Most can never come up with a single concrete example to demonstrate that they have a clue about what they profess to know.

It is easy to talk about products and services. Taking the next step is much harder.

Actually implementing solutions and making certain that they work as you asserted they would is an entirely different thing.  I will long remember the on-line Adobe salesperson who sold me an upgrade copy of Dreamweaver and assured me that it would upgrade my previous version.  As I downloaded the software, installed it, and discovered it would not work, the only comment she could muster was, "You will have to talk to support about that."

I have never sold anything in my life that I did understand or did not know how to use. To sell a product I have to personally believe it is the best product or service out there and one that I will use for my own needs if I am given the opportunity. I have never sold anything that I don't understand.

Like many salespeople, I have tried to always stand behind my recommendations even if they are for a product that I do not sell. If tell someone a product is wrong for them and it turns out that I made a good recommendation, I am likely to be consulted on the next purchase.

Perhaps of more interest to some is how being on the road has changed in eight years. After the hiatus in my twenty-plus years on the road, I can say far fewer people are traveling to do sales. That is no surprise since being on the road is a very expensive proposition these days especially as products have gotten less expensive.

The Marriott hotels which once seemed like a second home have changed little with the exception that the beds have more pillows and the soap is in a fancier shape. Fortunately I knew enough to bring my own bottles of water since the price of a bottle of water has doubled to $4 per bottle.

In today's world, if you are on the road, you are either working for a very large company or you are selling a very sophisticated product. The exception to the rule is those out there who are only peddling their knowledge.  With those folks, you just have to make certain their knowledge has some basis in reality. While Willie Loman lived on dreams, we have to be able to deliver our dreams if we want to stay in business in today's sophisticated world.

I did shine my leather crocs before leaving and I am riding on the dream that our company can make a difference in the availability of high quality broadband in the United States. If you are interested in the issue, you can read more at more my article, Just How Bad Is Your Internet Connection?

Traveling when you get to my age just makes you even happier to get home than I was in the days when I traveled each week instead of once a year or so.