Global Wandering

Now that we moved into the city limits, we can no longer burn our Christmas tree in the firepit. We have to be civilized and drag the tree out to the curb for the city workers to pick up. Some towns aren’t so lucky. Yesterday, our local paper published an investigative report on the tree disposal options available in this part of Idaho. One local mayor after being informed that a city to the south offered curb side Christmas tree pickup did not want appear insensitive to the tree disposal needs of his constituents. He said most residents take their trees to the landfill, but he had another option.

“There is a burn pile located by the YMCA that we have been piling a lot of brush at and they can drop their trees off there and we can burn them.” He said the road leading to the pile is closed but the residents can call him at 652-39xx and set up a time when he will open the road for them. Now that's a hands on mayor.

Our paper’s intrepid reporter tracked all angles of this breaking story. After another town’s city clerk stated she was unaware of any Christmas tree removal services, the reporter repeatedly attempted to contact the city’s street crew in order corroborate her assertion. He was unsuccessful. The street crew was probably out at the burn pile.

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

Dad's Pine Box
I spent the past few days taking end of year inventory, comparing what I accomplished versus what I had hoped to achieve. In doing so, I compiled my annual list of the books I read. I also recorded everywhere I stayed. This raises the obvious question. Who cares? I usually write this type of stuff in a paper journal. Why publish it online? Why write a blog?

Here’s why.

I have written previously about the plywood box in my office with my Dad’s 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. They are the only record I have of his life, other than memories. I have even less records for his parents. Tax returns is all; plus a few fading memories. For my great grandparents I have nothing but dates. Their birth, marriage and death.

My oldest son Camden remembers a little about my Dad. He was four when my father passed away. In fact, a few weeks before Dad died, Camden begged that we drive the hour to go visit him. It was if my son knew his Grandpa’s time was short, even though my father had said nothing about being sick, other than for a cold. He kept secrets that way. We made the drive and Dad saw my son Bret, who was only six weeks old, for the first and only time. My daughter Breanna never met her Grandpa Stein. She knows little of him. She occasionally teases me and says my Dad was an alcoholic. He was. But he was much more than that, and I must share with her more about him.

We live in an extraordinary time when the records of our lives might not be lost after a generation or two. When years from now, my kids and grandkids can pull up on the Internet my thoughts and musings, find out what I read and the places I visited, see the pictures I took.

Henry David Thoreau said, “The oldest Egyptian or Hindoo philosopher raised a corner of the veil from the statue of the divinity; and still the trembling robe remains raised, and I gaze upon as fresh a glory as he did, since it was I in him that was then so bold, and it is he in me that now reviews the vision. No dust has settled on that robe; no time has elapsed since that divinity was revealed.”

While my blog entries don’t reveal the divine, they do raise the corner of my life’s veil and reveal who I am.

Posted by jd at 7:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Bre and a Friend

My daughter Breanna asked me this morning to address an envelope she was mailing to a friend. I used my typical haphazard script that's not pretty but gets the job done. In other words, I made sure the zip code was legible and trusted the post office would figure out the rest. Bre then methodically corrected every one of my letters by tracing over them, asking for an interpretation of each as she went along.

"What's this mark? Is this suppose to be an R? Why are your U's pointed like V's?"

I was tempted to point out I use to get "A's" in penmanship, but I kept quiet. Because, the fact is my handwriting stinks. I write like I'm holding a log instead of a pen. Sometimes you just have to accept your weaknesses.

Posted by jd at 3:09 PM | Permalink

Stanley Rowe House, Indian Hill, Ohio
LaPriel and I just spent a lovely weekend in Cincinnati to attend my work’s holiday party. Time away from kids allows our conversation to stray into areas it typically wouldn’t go, because we would be interrupted long before we branched out to the more intriguing topics. So it was late on Saturday afternoon while taking a drive among the forests and estates of Indian Hill that we began to discuss blogging, and more specifically would my keeping this blog increase my chances of being tracked down and shot by a gang member.

I had never considered this. Our little Idaho town is not known for its gang warfare⎯although I sit on our city’s Planning and Zoning commission, and given our town is in the midst of a heated land dispute with a neighboring village, there are times I’m sure that residents in the area wish I was shot. LaPriel’s point, though, was whether someone that came across this blog could hunt me down. I’m certain they could⎯even though I have not used my full name, posted a clear photograph of myself or mentioned the specific town where I live. One of the banes and benefits of the Internet is increased transparency. It is amazing what you can learn about people even if they don’t keep a blog.

Take the house pictured above, for example. I have always loved this home. It sits on a rise in Indian Hill at the edge of the Rowe Arboretum. Before we moved to Idaho, LaPriel and I spent hours walking with our kids among the catalpas, pines and oaks planted on the grounds. I would often wonder about the house and who resided there. I pictured an aging widow living alone with her Persian cat and attended to by faithful servants, who would serve tea and cookies to her and her three closest friends at their Thursday afternoon Bridge parties. With the Internet, I no longer have to wonder.

I now know the house was built in 1928 by Stanley Rowe. It has 5 bedrooms, 7 full bathrooms and 4 half-baths. It has one of the highest bathroom-to-bedroom ratios in the county. In 1924, Senator Robert Taft told Stanley about the forty-acre property for sale. Unfortunately, a gentleman named Cunningham purchased it first. Undaunted, Rowe visited Cunningham, who was feeling buyer’s remorse, chiefly because he bought the land without telling his wife. Rowe took it off Cunningham’s hands for $14,500; $500 less than what Cunningham paid.

Over the years, the Rowe’s bought more land and planted 1,800 tree species on their property. The 170-acre grounds became a grand experiment to see which species of trees could thrive in Ohio’s climate. Stanley was a business executive and among his many charitable activities, he was an affordable housing advocate, heading up the Cincinnati Metropolitan Housing Authority for ten years and leading the development of several housing projects, including English Woods in Western Cincinnati, where my mom lived as a girl after her dad passed away. Ironically, despite his affordable housing efforts, Rowe and Bob Taft formed the Redbud Realty Company to buy up most of the land near their homes in Indian Hill because, as Taft put it, they “realized that something had to be done to stop the dilapidated, substandard shacks that were being thrown together and lived in at the top of Indian Hill Road."

But that was the past. Thanks to the Internet, I know the house is currently worth $2.9 million. Taxes are $36,000 per year. It is owned by the Coletti family. Here is Mr. Coletti’s picture and bio. He seems quite successful. The family gave over $65,000 to the Republican party in 2003 and 2004, according to this site (see additional link). Here is a map to find the house and a recent satellite photo (note the house is just south of where the arrow points). Unfortunately, Mr. Coletti’s father passed away last month. You can read about it here.

All that information, even though the Rowe’s and Coletti’s don’t keep a blog.

So, to answer LaPriel’s question. A gang member can track me down and shoot me whether I keep a blog or not. But at least with a blog, my family, friends and strangers will know a little bit more about me before I die.

Posted by jd at 9:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

On my flight today I sat and read The New York Times Magazine Annual Ideas Issue. It makes for great plane reading. Not only because I’m exposed to new insights, but because the alphabetical nuggets of wisdom follow in such rapid succession that my brain quickly overloads, pushing me into a deep sleep. I made it to the letter N this year before drifting off.

The only time I made it all the way through the Ideas Issue without sleeping was on a Sunday afternoon flight from New York La Guardia to Salt Lake City. I sat in front of an obnoxious couple who had been drinking long before getting on the plane, and who continued to imbibe free gin and tonic the entire trip. They only put their glasses down long enough to shriek with laughter and kick the back of my seat. Thank heavens most people in first class are shy, exhausted and fly alone.

I like to rank the ideas in the NYT Magazine using my personal fascination index. Health stories rank the lowest. Any interest I had in medicine was doused by the ninth grade field trip I took to the cadaver lab at University of Cincinnati’s medical school. My angst over dissecting frogs was quickly dispelled in the presence of the unsightly humanoids with bags over their heads.

Business stories also rank low on my fascination index because most of them I’ve already heard. Business periodicals are renown for recycling each other’s stories. The most fascinating ideas are from fields I don’t follow closely, such as sociology, quantum physics, and life sciences.

This year in the Ideas Issue I learned why I’m a restless wanderer. I now have a logical explanation for what has compelled me in last fifteen years to fly over a million miles, live in nine different houses and own twelve cars. My ancestors. According to John D. Gartner and Peter C. Whybrow, the U.S. is filled with energetic risk takers because of genes. Immigrant genes. Only 2% of people leave their homeland when times get hard. Those that do emigrate tend to be a self-selecting group of adventure seekers with a hereditary predisposition to wander.

The Stein’s get this migration bug about every 100 years. They left Prussia for the Netherlands in 1790 and left the Netherlands for Cincinnati in 1883. My migration from Cincinnati to Idaho was less dramatic and a little behind schedule ⎯ we moved in 2001⎯but it still fits the pattern. I wonder where the Stein's will migrate to next.

Posted by jd at 7:50 PM | Permalink

Cincinnati Snowman
A snowstorm came through while I visited Cincinnati this week. Oh the delights of city traffic when the snow falls. Mile after mile of cars crawling along like snails. Delays caused not by accidents or snowy roads, but by inconsiderate drivers blocking intersections, attempting to get through before the signal lights change. This frustrates the cross traffic, who return the favor by also blocking the intersection, and within minutes the traffic is snarled in all directions.

Fortunately my rental car had an XM Radio so I had good music to listen to while sitting at a standstill. After making some phone calls and checking and answering email, I reflected on the advantages and disadvantages of living in a small Idaho town versus a big city. Of course, “big” is a relative term. A blogger friend of mine is planning a move from one big city (Dallas) to an even bigger city (New York) because, among other reasons, Dallas is not sufficiently diverse.

Which of course is one disadvantage of a small town; lack of diversity. This didn’t bother me when I first moved to Idaho. Living in the West was still novel, and although 90% of the citizens are the same religion, race and political persuasion, they seemed different to me. But after four years the newness has worn off, and while I still love my little Idaho town, if I can't escape it every few weeks to see how the rest of the world lives, I am an unhappy man.

Another disadvantage to small town living is the drycleaners are horrible. I cannot find a cleaners within a forty-mile radius of my house that can press a suit without leaving it creased in the wrong places. I now fly my dry cleaning with me back East where the cleaning professionals are more quality conscious.

I also can’t find a good barber. Actually, I found two good barbers in Idaho, but I can no longer go to them. My first good barber quit the profession because she got a better job as our town’s first female jailor. The women here have discovered crime pays⎯unless you get caught. And they do get caught. Hence, the need for female jailors.

My second good barber is business partners with a bad barber. Unfortunately, I went to the bad barber first. I gave him the benefit of the doubt and had him cut my hair several times to see if he was just having bad barbering days. He wasn’t. He’s just a bad barber. He kept parting my hair a half inch above my left ear as if I needed practice doing a comb over in case I lose my hair on top. Yet with my first good barber working the prison circuit, I had nowhere else to go, so I figured I would just have to live out my days with bad haircuts. But then bad barber got sick, and I accidentally had his partner cut my hair and found out there was another good barber in town.

This was awkward. Bad barber considered me his customer, but I really wanted good barber to cut my hair. I used stratagem. I called good barber during bad barber's mid morning break and scheduled appointments to have my hair cut during bad barber’s lunch hour. This worked for a year. But then one afternoon bad barber came back early from lunch, and when I showed up for my appointment with good barber, there was already someone in good barber’s chair. Bad barber smiled at me and said he and the good barber had swapped customers so that he could cut my hair. I wanted to flee. But I didn’t, because the other disadvantage of living in a small Idaho town is barbers talk and word spreads fast ⎯"Big-city boy runs from barber.” I took my bad haircut, but I haven’t been back. For the past three months, I’ve gotten my hair cut from my old barber in Ohio. I can’t keep this up though. My trips to the home office don’t always coincide with when I need haircuts.

If you know of any good barbers or good one-hour drycleaners in the following cities, please let me know. I regularly visit Seattle, San Antonio, San Diego, New Orleans and Denver, with occasional visits to San Francisco, New York and other major U.S. cities. I figure I can mitigate the disadvantages of small town Idaho life if I can establish a trusted national network of good barbers and good one-hour drycleaners.

Posted by jd at 6:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

My sons lost at the airport
I’ve shared about getting lost on the way to the airport, but once at the airport, things can also sour. These stupid travel mistakes go beyond getting on the wrong plane⎯something I’ve done repeatedly when flying out of the E Terminal in Salt Lake City⎯or leaving things behind when disembarking⎯for me its jackets and cameras. I won’t mention losing luggage because that is the airlines’ fault. Unless you know better. Like the time I checked my roller bag on a London to Zurich flight because my friend was checking his luggage and my arm was tired. Never check luggage unless you are fluent in the language spoken at your final destination. I’ve learned most luggage agents are not bilingual.

My stupid travel mistakes at the airport fall under two broad headings:
A. Don’t watch your flight board and depart while standing thirty yards away, thus stranding yourself.
B. Don’t check your luggage to a city you have no intention of going to.

Travel Tip Number Two: Get on the Plane when it’s Boarding

My flight was from Houston Intercontinental (IAH) to Cincinnati. It was delayed so I decided to check my email. Before WIFI was widespread, the only way to get e-mail at the airport was to stand at a payphone and use your laptop’s modem. I found a phone where I could keep an eye on the gate. I read my email and watched to see if seats were clearing or people were walking on to the jetway. I heard no announcements, and I didn’t see any movement. Until the gate agent shut the door. I panicked, ripped the phone cord from the laptop and ran to the gate just as the jetway was pulling away from the plane. I begged and pleaded to get on since it was the last flight to Cincinnati that night. The agent narrowed her eyes and smirked.

“Why didn’t you board when I called the flight?” she said.
“Because I didn’t hear you call the flight. I was just standing over there.” I pointed to the phone bank. “I didn’t hear anything.”
She looked at the side of my head to make sure I had ears. “Well, you should have at least seen the people boarding.”

I didn’t say anything. I grabbed my luggage and walked off. I hadn’t seen anyone board, nor had the seats emptied. I got the “I think I’m mentally losing it” sensation. The same feeling I get when LaPriel swears she has told me something, and I don’t remember anything about the conversation.

Later, I decided there must have only been a handful of people on the plane, and because I was in one of IAH’s circular gate areas, which tend to be crowded and have numerous jetways, I just didn’t notice when all three passengers boarded the plane and others took their seats in the terminal.

Travel Tip Number Three: Check your Luggage to Your Final Destination

I’ve previously related that to save money I used to fly out of cities near Cincinnati. I would park my car at the Cincy airport, rent a vehicle and drive to Lexington or Louisville, and assuming I didn’t get lost, I’d fly twenty minutes back to Cincinnati and then on to my final destination. I rented a car because the return flights would connect through Cincinnati so I would just get off there and throw away the final leg of my ticket. This worked fine as long as I didn’t check my luggage, which I never do when traveling on business. Except for the time in Dallas when I went shopping, and I didn’t feel like repacking my bags so I checked my roller bag, and kept my briefcase and the shopping tote full of purchases with me. I was sitting at my gate when I realized I had just checked my roller bag to Lexington, and I was going to Cincinnati.

I had two options:
1. Drive to Lexington and get my bag.
2. Confess to Delta I was gaming their system.

I confessed. And surprisingly, the gate agent acted like people check their bags to the wrong city all the time. She said she would have my bag rerouted to Cincinnati. Which of course didn’t happen. One of the lessons you quickly learn when traveling is airlines have no way of rerouting bags once they have been tagged and sent on their merry way. In theory they do, but it requires a luggage specialist finding the black roller bag among the thousand of other look-a-like bags and retagging it. If you have ever seen how airport workers load and unload bags and drive their luggage trains around the tarmac like they are late for their own weddings, you will know they are never going to take time to find and retag a piece of luggage.

So when I arrived at Cincinnati, my bag, of course, was not there. But since I had confessed, and the Delta agent did say my bag would be rerouted, I could with a clear conscious go to the Delta’s Lost Luggage Room and tell them my roller bag was lost.

They brought it to my house the next day.

Posted by jd at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)