Purity and Danger

As I walked home from a lovely Shabbat service hosted by friends on a bitterly cold January evening, my mind settled into a reverie connecting and resurrecting memories. It settled on "Purity and Danger" by Mary Douglas, a book I read as a freshman at UChicago. In it, she attempts to explain keeping Kosher as a protection against things that don't fit into easy categories. Pigs, as cloven-hooved animals that don't chew their cud, represented danger. She viewed the rules about Kosher eating as a metaphor for the "clarity of the boundaries around a group to which people belong." (from the same Times obituary linked above)

I wrestle these days with my own violation of boundaries. Two years ago, I embarked on a journey to leave my tribe of over twenty years to join a new group. The transition has been exciting and challenging. Yet I am beginning to experience the synaesthesia of being thisnotthat and notallthis or notallthat.

Weariness has started to creep into my explanations to people. Yes, I am a grad student, but I am also a consultant for a non-profit. Yes, it is hard to strike a balance. Yes, I am continually frustrated by the trade-offs I make, always feeling like I am not good enough or spending enough time in either realm. I don't regret the choices I have made, but this double life leaves me constantly in a state of thisnotthat. I fear becoming a boat moving in circles because the rudder is pinned to the side - an event with which I have some direct experience, on Lake Michigan, with my patient parents aboard. I kept seeing the beach, the pier, the lake, over and over, wondering if I was making any progress toward any of the landmarks, or was I just marking time.

This weariness has bled over into my personal life, where I am a married man who doesn't live with his wife. Friends have rushed to the breach, inviting me to roller derby, parties, dinners, cocktails and Shabbat services. My son has also made the effort to make the long trek from Hyde Park to Lakewood more than once on public transit. I treasure these friends and these times together. I love the cameraderie and the companionship. But I miss having Allyson beside me while I live through this.

On this Valentine's Day, Allyson is visiting Emily in New Hampshire, at a place without cell service. We communicate in snippets over email. I have plans tonight to be by myself. It is too awkward to be with the friends who are part of couples, as they celebrate this love holiday. It is doubly uncomfortable to hang with the single friends, all out looking for that next relationship. Valentine's Day brings these groups into stark relief, and I belong to neither of them. I represent Purity and Danger - the cloven-hooved pig who doesn't chew his cud. I am both sacred and profane. Ambivalent, but ultimately hopeful, that I am moving forward and not in circles.

My Little Corner of the World

I used to inwardly laugh at the old men aggressively sweeping their front steps of debris or snow. Now I feel solidarity with them.

At the first snowflake, I start obsessing about when to sweep the front steps. My goal is to keep the concrete steps completely clear of snow. I often go out several times during a storm to sweep and shovel. I also like to keep the sidewalk in front of our house and the homes on either side of us clear of the packed snow one gets when many people walk over the freshly fallen snow. Sometimes, though, I'm at work or school and don't get to the work until a hard pack has developed. At those times, I turn the shovel over and try to break up the pack with the sharp edge. I shovel to either end of my neighbors, and I shovel several paths to the street so that those unfortunates who have to park on the street have a clear path to get to the sidewalk. They are neighbors during the evening, but teachers from the local school and shopowners from the stores on Diversey during the day. I secretly hope they appreciate that someone has cleared a little path for them.

I also shovel the back - big, wide paths to both garage entrances, and a nice little dog run around the forsythia bush in the corner. I know the dogs appreciate it - it is one of the few places during the winter they go to the bathroom.

During snows deeper than four inches, I also shovel in back of the garage, a particularly onerous task. Mayor Daley gifted us last summer with big blue trashcans for recycling, and kept the same amount of old black cans. The new cans, combined with the influx of neighbors who keep cars in their garages on the other side of the alley, has drastically reduced the places where one can dump snow. Last year, sans cans and garages that required egress, there were numerous places to dump. One garage door, in particular, accumulated all of the 86 inches of alley snow last year. The little snow hill did not melt until May. This year, people with cars use the garage. The last big snow, my son and I carried the snow from the alley through our garage to dump it in our back yard.

Starting this past Friday, Chicago had one of those big storms. We received about four inches on Friday. I awoke Saturday morning to an additional eight inches on the ground, with 2-4 more inches forecasted by Saturday evening. I despaired.

I had planned to use the day productively reading for classes. My goal was to get ahead a week or two. I like the cushion reading ahead gives me. But my well-ordered school life crashed into my snow obsession. While the front and back were manageable, I knew the alley would be a nightmare. I felt control over my little corner of the world slipping. I've spent too many early mornings calling upon my wife or friendly neighbors to help push my car out of deep ice-covered ruts behind my garage. It would take an entire day to ferry all that snow from the alley into my back yard. The enormity of the task overwhelmed me, and I felt alone and desperate and out of control.

Then, I received a call from Marie, our neighbor. She had negotiated the use of a snow blower and was calling upon all of the neighbors to shovel out the alley. By 12:30, there were ten of us shoveling and blowing. Neighbors opened their garages, and there were many back yards into which we could dump snow. We worked together, feeling ownership not just to clear our own path, but the entire alley.

I met some of my neighbors for the first time along with renewing old acquaintances. Jim and the guy with the funny hat and Courtney and Haim and Marie and Brian. We worked so hard that at the end I could not lift my arms and I just wanted to stand under a hot shower for an hour. But our alley was clear. Everyone lingered, tired, but not wanting this - whatever it was - community? team? shared purpose? to end. Eventually we said our good-byes. We didn't pledge to get to know each other better, or to begin socializing. We all felt the glow, however, of learning that we were not in this by ourselves, and that when called upon, there were neighbors who would give up a Saturday to pitch in and bring control to all of our little corners of the world.

Pilot

Chip Allen is an Accenture manager who wrote a nifty application he called Pilot. In the face of Accenture's massive size and complexity, Chip managed to deliver a searchable, customizable directory than enabled you to find the email address and phone number of any one of the 180,000 employees in the company with ease. It was fast, simple, and extremely useful. It probably saved me over 200 hours of time since its initial roll-out. As I have moved to different institutions, it is the one tool I miss more than any other.

Along with each month's Pilot update, Chip would publish an email talking about whatever was on his mind. His posts were always funny and often inspirational and instructive. Chip was kind enough to keep sending me the posts after my ability to use the application passed.

I post Chip's latest email here. Thanks, Chip, for ten great years of entertainment and wisdom.
__________________________

…it’s with some sadness that I’m writing what may be my last Accenture pilot release note…seems I’ve been at my level in consulting too long and my inability to travel because of my kids situation leaves me in the weird position of having to take “the package”, one of those times when you have to decide if you want to keep trying to start the engine in the airplane or to jump while you still have time for the parachute to come out…I won’t say goodbye till I know it’s for sure, but that’s how it’s looking right now…

…there are two things that have made my 10 year stay here truly meaningful, first and foremost, it’s the people I’ve worked with, counseled and mentored…the second it this silly application and this “blog” that we call pilot…but how mushy can you get about an application that my friend ken called “the most…successful rogue application of all time” in a celebrating performance card he sent me…

…so I’ll focus on the people part and I will share some thoughts and advice to those close to me…over the 10 years that I’ve been doing that, I think the themes have been somewhat the same…

…don’t drop a turd on my desk and then just walk away…ok, that one may need a bit of explanation…never go to your supervisor with just a problem, always have some type of solution to propose…even if he/she doesn’t totally agree with your recommendation, you have at least given yourself the opportunity to be a part of the answer and you have proactively moved the situation from the “problem” phase to the “solution” phase…

…pull more load than your ‘role’ defines…when I came to Accenture back in 1998, I came from a company of 30 people…I was the IT department for that company, I built and supported all of servers, workstations, networks, applications that we used to buy and sell half a billion dollars worth of oil and gas…it was during the height of the dot com boom that one day, I found myself laying on the floor screwing a keyboard drawer onto the receptionist desk that I decided that there must be something better to do than what I was doing…when I left, they hired two guys, then eventually a third, to become their IT department…I never thought I was doing anything all that amazing, but looking back, we did some pretty cool stuff for a little bitty company with next to zero IT budget…the advice I give to my people has always been to do more than you are asked, but to be smart about it…

…know how what you are doing fits in the big picture… this one follows that last one for a reason…pulling more load does demands that you be effective, not “busy”…it’s easy to focus so much on making sure that your own “deliverables” are so perfect that you forget that we all contribute to something that’s much bigger than our own work…on a team, in your community, to your counselees, to people you mentor or those you support…I remember one project in particular where we said over and over, “nobody here is successful until the project is successful”…the culture there was different, everyone helped everyone, we all had had primary responsibility for our own area, but everyone had ultimate responsibility for a successful delivery...

…follow leaders, endure managers…I’ll make some of you mad at me for giving away the secret manager handshake and decoder ring…we talked about this a couple of years ago, but you will work with people in management that are going to try to keep you in the dark, THEY can only meet with the client, THEY take requirements, THEY hear feedback and issues, THEY (try to) micro manage their teams, they spend more time asking about status than they do trying to clear a path to successful delivery…they aren’t bad people, in most cases, they have been the ones who knew the least and the whole hyper management and information funnel was only a way to allow themselves to appear to be running the project…understand, the difference between these people and real leaders, leaders set direction, provide insight and clear obstacles so their teams can excel, managers spend more time with their plans and paperwork than they do with their teams.

…start, progress and finish with the end in mind…”start with the end in mind” is the common phrase, but it’s a bit misguided to just “start” with the end in mind…you have to focus on the end every step of the way…always ask “how does what you are doing help deliver the ultimate solution?”…it’s easier to ask this question of others than of myself on this one…there are times I’ve done things that were ‘cool’ or interesting or whatever on a project that really, didn’t have anything to do with speeding delivery or increasing the quality of whatever it was that we were trying to produce…

…don’t know if any of this makes sense…normally, I try to be funny but “funny” is somewhat hard to come by today…I’ll end by saying “make a difference”, in your work, to the people you touch, most importantly, to those you love…

Thunderbolts and Madness

There is a scene in The Godfather when Michael Corleone, hiding out in Sicily after killing Sollozzo at Louis' Italian American restaurant, first sees his future wife. He is overcome. The guys with him start to give him a hard time, telling him that he has been struck by the thunderbolt. The thunderbolt hits when a man is struck dumb and weak in the knees at the sight of a woman.

Over Thanksgiving this year, I was struck by the thunderbolt. It had been over three weeks since I had seen my wife. This was the longest separation in our marriage. She came home for the holiday from serving our country and our new president. She walked in the house and the family rushed to the front door to greet her. When I saw her, I went weak in the knees and felt like someone had punched me in the gut. I could not believe how incredibly beautiful she was. Strangely, I was also hit by regret and longing. It was the longing you feel when you look at an incredibly blue sky or perfectly still lake and want that moment to last forever, to embrace and own and devour it so that you can keep it and recall it whenever you want so that this intense feeling is yours to control. But you can't.

One of the lines from A Winter's Tale that has always stuck with me is that "To be mad is to feel with sadness and joy the intensity of a time which has already been or has not yet arrived." I looked at my wife, was struck by the thunderbolt, and felt I must be mad, lost in emotions and feelings and thoughts I had not experienced in over twenty years.

Maybe these are the feelings I felt when I was in Detroit in 1985 and saw her for the first time. Too much time has passed for me to remember. I hope they are - but if they are, they must mean I am losing my mind. Feeling with intensity a time which has already been. Lost in the feelings of the past and feeling them with intensity now, hoping now as an older man that I can bring these feelings back at will, but also knowing they come at unexpected unplanned moments over which I have no control. Happy to have felt them again, so painful, so exquisite, so unbidden, so intense. And fleeting, uncontrollable. Madness.

Dope

Jon Stewart made a public service announcement last night. After Rod goes to jail, we will have seen 50% of the last eight Illinois governors go to jail. 48% of murderers end up doing any time.

So kids, if you are trying to choose between becoming Governor or Illinois or a murderer, please keep the above statistics in mind.

Happy Together

“I’ve got this thing,” Mr. Blagojevich said on one tape, according to the affidavit, “and it’s [expletive] golden. And I’m just not giving it up for [expletive] nothing. I’m not going to do it. And I can always use it. I can parachute me there.”

Mr. Blagojevich (pronounced bluh-GOY-uh-vich), a Democrat, was arrested at his home at dawn Tuesday on charges of conspiracy and soliciting bribes. A lawyer for the governor said he denied any wrongdoing.

People who live outside of Chicago, or Illinois, probably have a hard time appreciating the anger and joy we feel at this development. Blago (as we affectionately call him) has been under investigation for three years. Everyone knew he was a scumbag. What we didn't know is how incredibly stupid and/or narcissistic he is.

Would you, knowing the feds have been after you for three years, then go on to try to sell the President-elect's Senate seat to one of his closest friends? One of my colleagues said that Blago regularly walked around the office talking about how he would be the next President of the U.S. This is how we define narcissism. Blago was so taken with himself that he could not see how any of us would view his behavior as anything other than corrupt.

I have a hard time deciding whether he embodies pure stupidity or evil. Hannah Arendt had the right term for him - "The Banality of Evil."

I suppose we in Illinois are fortunate that the worst this Governor did is line his own pockets. Our last Governor's actions, in selling licenses to unqualified truckdrivers, led directly to the deaths of six children of a minister. An unqualified driver using a license Ryan allowed him to buy ran into a minivan and killed 6 of 8 children of a pastor and his wife. Truly evil. Blago was just selling favors. But it gives you an appreciation of the banal behavior that can lead to truly evil outcomes.

Ryan and Blagojevich let the people of Illinois down, they have taken actions which have led to the deaths of innocents, and they have shown themselves to be beneath pity and sympathy. Hell was invented for men like them. I hope they are happy together. In Hell.

And for the six children killed by Ryan's greed, and the countless of other Illinois citizens who have suffered for their banality, please know that in electing Barack Obama Senator four years ago, we showed America we are not stupid. We want to believe in Hope, and Greatness, and the best of what this country has to offer. But we have been deceived, twice in six years. Let us hope we have the wisdom to take the higher road when next given the chance.

The Advent Conspiracy

A good friend of mine had this video posted on her blog. It is so compelling, I have to share it.

I hope to spend my Christmas taking lots of long walks with my family and making lots of yummy food in a toasty warm kitchen surrounded by the smells of cookies baking and turkeys roasting and coffee brewing.