Global Wandering

San Diego after a Night of Thunderstorms.

Thunderstorms woke me at 2:00 AM the other night. That was rare for San Diego. Not the being woke up part, but the thunderstorms. So I lay in my hotel room and listened to the storm, wanting to fall back to sleep. But sleep didn't come. The words from the Ann Beattie story I had read on the plane kept running through my mind.

“You discovered people’s secret stashes when they died. The little, unknown things filled them in, as if they hadn’t had quite enough dimension in life. Or perhaps those discoveries took them farther away, dried-out cigarettes and half-pints reminding you that everyone was little known.”

My dad passed away ten years ago last month. I still have the dried-out cigarette pack I found on his desk. Camels. Turkish and Domestic Blend. I’m not sure why I keep it. A clue, perhaps, to a man who “was little known.” I also keep a plywood box filled with his papers. Not journals, which could amplify and provide meaning, but tax returns, resumes, trading sheets for his poker investment club and other documents he thought important enough to keep and to haul with him from apartment to house to apartment to hotel to hospital to half-way house and finally to the first floor of a two-story rental in Lower Price Hill. I could be more specific. For on one of his papers he wrote the addresses of every place he had ever lived. Eight places. All in and around Cincinnati.

I have his resume from August 1965 when at age 24, he was seeking a job in public accounting. He had just graduated from Xavier University’s evening program. I’m not sure what CPA firms were looking for in 1965, but my dad mentioned in his resume that he was 6 feet tall and weighed 190 pounds. His health was excellent (he had had a physical in 1963 according to the resume). He said he had been married for three years, and had two children, ages 18 months and 5 months. His finances were in good order. His hobbies were reading, participation in sports, especially tennis and basketball.

On August 30, 1965, John S. Schott, a partner at the L.H. Willig & Co, Certified Public Accountant responded to my dad’s application. Mr. Schott wanted more information before granting an interview. College transcript, a list of extra-curricular activities during my dad’s school days, references and a recent snapshot.

My dad’s reply, dated the next day is refreshingly honest. He declined to send the transcript because it would take too long to order an official copy, and he didn’t want to send the transcript he had (I’m not sure why he didn’t make a copy of it. I suppose there were no copy shops around.) Instead, he typed out a list of his grades. He carried a 2.3 grade point average. He said, “As you can see, I did not graduate at the top of my class, but worked hard for the grades I did receive and I am proud of them.” He went on to explain that his financial condition required him to work his way through college. This, coupled with the effort needed to maintain a 2.0 average precluded extracurricular activities. (In looking at his grades, Military Science, English Composition and Logic were his worst subjects ⎯ D’s across the board. Business Law was his best subject ⎯ all A’s). He also declined to send a snapshot. He said, “There is no recent snapshot of myself available. I have one which is three years old and shows me as a 150 lb. weakling. If I may say so myself, It does not do me justice and have not enclosed it.” Apparently, the lack of extracurricular activities had resulted in a three year, forty pound weight gain.

One month later, in a letter dated September 30, 1965, Mr. Schott wrote to confirm an offer for a job as a staff accountant. Compensation would be paid at a rate of $550.00 per month plus overtime for hours in excess of forty hours per week. That would be equivalent to an annual salary of $40,254 today. Not a bad starting wage. Although, my sense is he would have liked more. For my dad doodled extensively on John S. Schott’s letter from August 30, 1965. In addition to writing the figure $550.00 four times on the page, he wrote $600 twice and even dared to dream big and write $700 once. I suspect this scribbling occurred during a phone conversation with Mr. Schott. Most likely when the offer was first presented. My dad appears to have the same habit I do while speaking on the phone; marking notepads with inscrutable hieroglyphics accompanied by the occasional lucid thought or two.

Posted by jd at 10:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Pike Street Market

From this week’s visit to Seattle:

A young woman with shoulder-length hair the color of silt stands on Pine Street holding a cardboard sign scribbled with three words. She stares at the store window in front of her and watches the reflection of IPOD clad workers rushing to their cars after a late turn at the office. She sees tourists laughing their way to bars and restaurants where they will eat halibut flown in fresh that afternoon. A few of the passersby glance at her sign, but quickly look away with heads shaking as if the sign is emblazoned with a scarlet letter. No one stops. No one looks her in the eye. No one gives. Poor Ugly Girl reads the sign. Poor Ugly Girl.

From my recent trip to Seoul:

The purple-line train bounds toward central Seoul. It is midday so none of the passengers are standing. The seats are filled with students tapping out instant messages on cell phones, old men, heads tilted back, drifting off to sleep, and women guarding full shopping totes. The door at the end of the car opens and the sound of scratchy violins fills the subway. An old man, his feet bound with rags, drags his way across the floor. He pushes a plastic bucket with a worn cassette player inside. The violins whine from the bucket. No one looks him in the eye. No one gives.

From Beneath the Altar, my recently finished novel:

Outside the bus station in a dusty Mexican border town, Antonio sits propped against the wall. His towel, now a dingy gray, lays underneath him, and his bare legs poke out from his Kiwanis skirt. His water gourd rests by his side. After coming here every day for a week and a half, he has memorized every crack in the sidewalk in front of him, every struggling weed. Even the individual ants seem familiar. He knows which merchants to lift his tin can to and which merchants will scowl and ignore him. He knows when the buses come and when they leave, when the postman makes his rounds, and when the workers at the breaded-chicken store with the picture of the old gringo out front toss yesterday’s leftover chicken. The only thing he doesn’t know, or at least refuses to think about, is how long it will take him to save enough pesos to buy a bus ticket home.

A young woman with long black hair and bright red lipstick walks toward the terminal carrying a shopping tote with a kilo of tortillas showing through its mesh sides. She reminds Antonio of Lety, his daughter. He lifts his can.

“Caridad, mi hija, en el nombre de Nuestra Señora, caridad.” The woman looks the other way and hurries past. Antonio watches her swaying hips disappear down the street and shakes his head.

When he first started begging, he would roll his eyes backward and pretend he was an invalid, or crazy, but then he found he collected more change if he stared at the passersby and pleaded in a low voice, just loud enough to prick their hearts. Yet even with the improved technique, only about one in ten gives. Most, like the woman, look across the street and ignore him. They pretend he isn’t there as if he is just a weed or piece of trash. Often throughout the day, he rubs his hand over the water gourd and fingers the rough henequen rope, just to remind himself he is really there, that he isn’t garbage. He is a fieldworker with a wife, son and daughter. He has built his own cinder block house complete with a sink and running water. He owns a caseta with hammocks strung between wood beams he’s cut by hand, and he owns the bicycle he rides to his cornfield.

Mike Krzyzewski, head basketball coach at Duke, spoke at the hedge fund conference I attended earlier this week. He related five team rules that have allowed him to lead his team to three national championships. Rule number one: Look people in the eye.

Such a simple thing. Look people in the eye. It affirms their humanity. It inspires hope. It communicates trust, belief, love. Look people in the eye and connect with them.

Posted by jd at 8:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Don't mind me, I'm just getting set up on feedster.

No Need to Click Here - I'm just claiming my feed at Feedster

Posted by jd at 9:33 PM | Permalink

Claiming Blog

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Posted by jd at 6:26 AM | Permalink

Today I was rejected. I was sitting in my office reading e-mail and watching the golden cat who controls the turf where we have built our house. This cat has driven our cat away to who knows where. So with pleasure I observed this alpha cat continually miss the birds it tried to catch in the grasslands outside my window.

I glanced at my laptop and noticed an e-mail from Jose, a Mexican friend who lives in Cancun. When I looked closer, I realized the e-mail was actually from Tickle.com, informing me I had been invited to join my friend’s internet social network.

This was great news, because I hadn’t seen this friend in a couple of years, and perhaps he had uploaded recent pictures of his family on his Tickle page. I clicked on the link and was directed to Tickle’s site where they asked me to answer a few questions so they could tailor Tickle to my needs. I like customization so I eagerly answered the questions. They were simple. My last name, gender, birth date and my interests.

I sent my responses, and that’s when Tickle told me I couldn’t join. I didn’t qualify.

I was crushed. What could this mean? Am I not cool enough? They didn’t even say being denied was a possibility. If I had known I was being judged, I would have tried harder. Been more specific. Put on my marketing hat.

I pondered my responses to their questions, trying to discern what disqualified me.

My gender? They only offered two choices. I chose male. Because I am. This response couldn’t have knocked me out of the running. Jose is male, and he’s a Tickle member.

My age? This clearly worked against me. All the cool people pictured on the Tickle home page are much younger than me. But I’m not a stodgy baby boomer. I’m Generation X (albeit in the first wave). Besides, I have a very young maximum heart rate. According to the basic formula for MHR (i.e., 220 minus your age), my heart beats like a twenty-four year old. That should count for something.

My interests? This is where I think I stumbled. It was trick question. They listed out examples, such as bike riding, Harry Potter, and music videos. These were to throw people off. They must have really wanted cutting edge interests like alligator wrestling, parasailing, or American Idol aficionados. I fell for it and listed out humdrum hobbies like bike riding and reading. I should have been more specific. Instead of bike riding, I should have said competitive downhill mountain biking (I have mountain biked downhill and then off the hill entirely before crashing into the creek bed). Instead of skiing, I should have said helio-skiing in Kamchatka, Russia. Instead of reading, I should have said…. well I guess I should have left reading out entirely.

What I don’t understand is how Jose got in? I met him years ago in the Yucatan. He lived near me in a small Mayan village in a cinderblock house with a tarpaper roof. He moved to Cancun with his family as a teenager, and now is married with children, working as an accountant. He’s a cool guy, but he’s an accountant for heaven’s sake.

Anyway, not one to be kept out when I don’t want to be, I resubmitted my questionnaire to Tickle this evening, and included this recent photo of the golden cat that kicked our kitty out of the neighborhood.
Golden Cat That’s our new porch the cat is relaxing on. He must have had a tiring day of chasing birds.

Tickle let me in. But now I have zero friends in my internet social network. I can’t even find my friend, Jose. There are seven pages of Mexican Jose’s on Tickle, most without pictures.

Posted by jd at 10:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)