Game over

New toys, new clothes and new hopes abound at this time of year. Old ones are discarded on purpose or accidentally cast off. Perhaps these were dropped by a careless trash collector or worse, as a result of someone not looking twice and listening.
Relationships and personal plans are sometimes like that too. They get cast off or accidentally lost.
It is a great time to appraise the past, live in the present and plan for the future. It's time to listen to other's views, listen to what your inner voices tell you about the past and then to act to make a better future.

Two inches or $2 million - passengers jump at choice

American Eagle have saved $2 million by lowering the landing gear on Embraer aircraft by 2 inches. This makes the escape door only 5 feet 10 inches from the ground instead of six feet, eliminating the need, at least in some peoples minds, for an escape slide on emergency exits.

I discovered this on the flight today when I read the escape instructions on the flight safety card. It shows a picture of a woman, sitting on the edge of the open exit door. In the next picture her fall appears to be arrested by the passenger in front on the tarmac standing in the way or perhaps offering her back for support 'piggyback fashion'.

"Looks painful doesn't it," the steward said when I asked if the picture was a warning to 'stand clear' or an instruction to 'make a back'. He went on to describe the savings mentioned above. I aim to get a picture of the card on the return jouney and let you be the judge.

Crowning achievement

‘African-American women wear hats to praise the lord’ is too simplistic to describe the Lyric Stage Company production of Regina Taylor’s ‘Crowns’. But in essence, that is the whole story for two hours as seven talented actors, six female and one male, pour out their souls in high energy gospel numbers and reminisce about family, fashion, faith and their African heritage. The performers are accompanied by the beat of percussion and electric piano and as usual set design is minimal, but effective.
Directed by Lois Reach, the show is adapted from the book Crowns: Portraits of Black Women in Church Hats.
The audience is the most racially diverse that I have ever seen at the Lyric in the past 20 or 30 productions I have attended, perhaps because of the subject and all black cast. The show is funny, sad, uplifting and at the same time exclusive, with ‘insider’ anecdotes that only half the audience can really be in tune with. This does not detract from the overall enjoyment; we laugh together.
There are several fine performances, from the moody New York gang member, Yolanda, played by Heather Fry, to the enigmatic Mother Shaw, played by Fukani Haynes, who by day is a Boston based pediatric nurse and by night a member of Equity, the actor union.
I can’t help thinking what an interesting mix it would be if the same audience, many wearing hats that matched and in some cases exceeded the style of the ones on stage, attended the next Lyric production.
I know I’ll be there.

Happy and sad...

Today 3000 miles feels like a million.
Christmas came early for my son and his wife with the arrival of their second child - a son, Lucas. I got a message to call my son on the answering machine at about 10:30am my time, seven and half hours after the birth and it took me another ninety minutes to track him down. Of course in tracking him down I heard the news from someone else. Distance does that. Time-shifts news.
So I am happy to have a second grandson, and my third grandchild and sad that I am so far away physically from them. My trip to England, which was planned for two weeks after the due date of 2nd January, now seems too distant and I'll have to find a means of bringing it forward.
Excitement is similar to a virus - contagious if you are within touching distance. For now virtual touching is what I have and that comes with the territory and my decision to be an Englisman in Boston.

Scene in Newbury Street

The last leg of our assault on Mount Christmas had started so well. Bright sunshine, temperatures of 18F and a clear run down Route 2, gave a false sense of calm as we elected to drive to our downtown base. This was going to be a breeze. Traffic on Storrow Drive ebbed and flowed easily, but then stopped as completely as the frozen Charles River. We bobbed and weaved our way around ice patches, cutting fresh tracks around slower trekkers and jeeps, slipping easily past the slower but more luxurious limousines that conveyed premium seekers of joy and gifts. We made for base camp under Boston Common and pitched the vehicle into the first vacant slot. Climbing from the darkness beneath the frozen ground, which was as hard as the concrete tomb we were leaving, the smell of the emergency latrines, conveniently located in the stairwell, bought an acrid awareness of our situation. We would be on foot from now on, but not alone.

We fought the conditions along Newbury Street, many times having to wait our turn as Sunday pedestrians, most well dressed but untrained for the conditions, impeded our determined progress to the top. Fierce biting wind gnawed through our outer survival gear, and sliced through inadequate layers of cotton and silk until it chilled the flesh and drained the warmth of fellowship from the soul.

We saw evidence of far away travelers from the highlands of Rhode Island. Not for them a hike along icy paths on foot. With their Mountaineering vehicle's four wheel drive engaged, they shunted back and forth to squeeze into any available space as shown in the photo.

Patagonia proved a worthy destination, providing a colorful display of clothing made from wool and strange man made fiber. However, our real treat was the return leg and finding the aromatic Lush location on Newbury. The mix of smells will be us for days.

When one won't do hire two

What a strange irony it is that the Red Sox announce two General Managers to co-manage in place of one Theo Epstein. True Theo walks on water and the Kendall Square T shirt brigade is already replacing the line of shirts that say "What would Jonny do?" with "What did Theo do?", but seriously, is this the way of the future?

It got me thinking. What other jobs would two be better than one?

How about starting at the top. Why not two Presidents, one for the rich and one for the poor? One to take vacations at the ranch and one to run the country. We could have two Vice Presidents, one to go into hiding at the first sign of trouble, the other to be a visible leader. We could have two Secretary's of Defense, one to tell the truth, the other to... Well you get the picture.

We could extend it to baseball world. We could have two Manny's, one to sulk and demand a trade because he doesn't like the exposure in Boston and another to earn $20 million a year. No wait, we've already one person doing both.

What other jobs could we have 2 people do? Send comments on a $20 bill to pay for the heating oil this winter.

A lasting impression

Yesterday was a very long day, most of which I spent sitting on my rear. The morning was spent at Right Management Consultants, an outplacement company who are kindly helping me work out what to do next with my life, time and ambition.
Topic of the day was Power Networking. Nothing to do with the electricity grid, this is how do you make 300 contacts, to obtain 3 quality interviews to get 1 job that pays as well or better than the last one you held. Eric Ross, a business operations manager in transition himself, did a fine job of showing how someone "without a walks on water resume or personality and more introverted than the glue on the back of flowered wall paper" can obtain a succession of jobs that pay more than the last. Lest you think me unfair to Eric or ungrateful, I should point out that the text in quotes is just that. His quote.
Its about understanding and honoring the process, of "keeping the path trod, lest the weeds grow" and "being a persistent professional without becoming a perpetual pest". Eric has a way with words and very clear process steps, which I can't share here because it was a 2 hour lecture. But Eric does have a DVD on Amazon.com which he assures me is of him, presenting the same material. For those who may be reading this, and perhaps comfortably employed and thinking you don't need to network, my advice and Eric's is don't wait until you need to, because it takes time and is hard work.
The evening was spent at the Project Management Insitute Mass Bay Chapter meeting, where Frank Saladis, a gentleman with enough charisma and energy for 200 Erics, shared his view on the future of project management.

As great as Frank was with his insights and fine tuned observations, the highlight for me was sitting next to Santa, cunningly disguised in civvies as Mike Butler, who is the only certified project manager I know who in December sheds his fake business suit and reveals his true identity of Chief Santa at SantaCo. So how do I know he's the real deal? Man you should have seen his snowy white beard and let's just say he left a lasting impression.

Getting some practice

The Project Management Institute, Mass Bay Chapter, December Newsletter has just been published with 2 articles I wrote and another that I edited. This is my first excursion into this area of local volunteer work.
The first article is a member profile of Ellen DePaul, Leader of the chapter's Project Manager Career Connections and Big Sister Association of Boston, Big Sister of the Year 2005. It describes her work with both the chapter and her Little Sister. Writing the article involved, researching both organizations, interviewing Ellen, obtaining photos and permissions from the subject and Big Sisters. The whole thing was pulled together in 5 days.

The second article is a summary of a longer article by Robert Sommer, written to add punch and relevance. It asks the reader questions and proposes solutions as to how to get the most from networking on line and outside of chapter meetings.

The third article is a complete rewrite of chapter speaker report, which was unfocused as written. Note that I get no credit for editing and rewriting (but that's OK, I need the practice).

I spent a few conference calls, listening to the Project Manager Career Connections (PMCC) team trying to catch up with who was doing what and pulled together all the information, publishing it on collaboration wiki site.
General consensus is that this is a useful repository, but team members need help in using a wiki type tool and are unsure of the value of them sharing information in this way rather than by emails. I know from my experience that once they become accustomed to the fact that any signed up member can change, improve and add to any document they will wonder how they managed without it.

Rising to the challenge

For many reasons we needed to get out today, to spend some time together doing what we enjoy. That's how we ended up at an elevation of 3156 feet, hiking in temperatures of 18F and being blown around by wind speeds of 20-30mph. At times, standing up on the summit became a difficult balancing act.
Mount Monadnock, is the world's most climbed mountain according to some accounts. There are several reasons for this. It is easily accessible, has great views and Japan's Mount Fuji, which has always been considered the most climbed, has seen a decline in hikers due to the availability of public transportation to the peak.
With visibility of approximately 100 miles on a clear day, it is possible to see all six New England States from the top of Mount Monadnock. Today, the skyline of Boston, seventy miles away, was the best we had ever seen.
But views come at a price. Conditions under foot were slippery, with leaves covering ice, and water frozen on some rock surfaces. The white dot path we took is only 31/2 miles long, but is steep, requiring as much scrambling as hiking, and it is all up. The white cross path is less steep and best for descending, but follows the path of a stream, which makes it very icy in winter.
It took 1.5 hours to drive the 62 miles there, 1.5 hours to climb 1700 feet from parking lot to summit, 2 hours to get down due to icy conditions and a stop for lunch and 1.5 hours to get home. Nice symmetry, and probably the last high hike this year, unless Santa brings crampons and an ice pick or two.

Acing the interview - a certain perspective

I can’t decide if I am unemployed or just not earning any money. Since unemployment benefit dried up after 26 weeks, the state has no mechanism for me to register weekly as unemployed. In theory then, I guess I dropped out of the system and off the non payroll of the largest band of brothers and sisters in the country. You’d think we could organize a union of non workers to look after our interests. “The National Union of Unemployed” has a nice ring to it. But, is an author unemployed if he or she is writing, but not selling their work yet? At what point is an author considered to be employed? These are difficult questions, but there are other difficult questions, the sort that are asked at interviews.

Because I can’t decide if I am unemployed technology worker or an unpaid author, I have been on interviews for ‘real jobs’, in cubicle world, making the top three candidates, if 2nd interviews are used as the criteria for that metric.

That’s how I found myself at the Career Place, which,

“since 1997, has served over 46,000 individuals and more than 3,000 local employers. Chartered by the Metro North Regional Employment Board, and managed by Middlesex Community College, The Career Place helps individuals to find current job openings, assess their skill levels and interests, and enter education and training programs.”

I clearly don’t have the skills to make it to #1, so I signed up for “Acing the Interview.” In fact this is such a popular course, that I waited a couple of months for a slot and so arrived early to ensure a seat in the small conference room used for training. This course normally costs $59, but you don’t have to be unemployed to take it or any of the courses offered. In a perverse way it helps to be unemployed and out of benefits, because then courses are free.

To my surprise and disappointment there were only three other people interested in “acing the interview”, all were female and our tutor, also female. I could feel the estrogen levels rising in the room as we went round the table, delivering our 30 or 60 second elevator introductions and practicing interview answers.

G, a paralegal with 2 masters’ degrees and 5 years experience, that appeared to consist of solving filing problems and butting heads with people unwilling to prioritize their work to suit her needs, I had met before. My heart sank; I knew G. wore her issues openly. At our last meeting during “behavioral interviewing” I suggested that she stop answering interview questions during our practice sessions with a 10 minute life story, which included why it was not fair. It is impossible to give meaningful, short answers in an interview, if you spend your practice time outside of them hashing and rehashing bad experiences. On several occasions I gently stopped her after 5 minutes or so and suggested a more positive positioning of her answer, until she began stopping herself, to do the same.

K. is a senior admin and is unlike the rest of us, currently employed. She works for a non profit organization and has no time to research companies as the instructor suggested, is unaware that libraries open in the evening (when she has to do the washing and cleaning), but has been on many fruitless interviews, where starting salary was below her current mid level salary. I suggest she look for the most inefficient non profit charity available, since they will be the ones spending most on administration. Later I show her how to find a prepaid cell phone (suce a Virgin or T-Mobile) for emergency use, such notifying the company if she running late for an interview (she relies on public transport) or to phone up the company she is interested in and ask about the salary range.

D. worked at a school, supporting teenaged children. I don’t recognize the job title, but it sounds like a school welfare worker and she has a degree in it. When asked the practice question, “what is your greatest accomplishment at work?” she is hesitant and needs prompting to think of one. Eventually D. tells us in a disorganized manner, of an occasion when she talked a troubled girl out of committing suicide on the school grounds. I am staggered and have to tell her that her greatest accomplishment is that “she saved a life”. Not many people could match that answer at a job interview. She brightens, smiles briefly and thanks me.

These people don’t need help acing the interview, to be told to arrive early, wear clean shoes, and send thank you notes or any of the other process steps required. They need help to get rid of anger, to organize their thoughts and deliver them in a coherent and high impact manner and yes, to be shown how to manage their time and to buy a pre paid cell phone.

Me? I learned that my delivery of interview answers was too quiet, that it showed a lack of confidence (when it really showed disinterest). But today I was employed, at least for 4 hours as I listened to 3 people and helped them see themselves in a better way, in a way they really were. Of course, I didn’t get paid, but I wouldn’t have if I sat at home writing, not yet anyway.

A different kind of sting – anger warning

Something has been bothering me for a few days, since last Saturday night to be accurate. The question that’s been nagging at me is, “why do liberals spend so long arguing with their allies that they end up distancing them and fragmenting every effort to improve things?” They spend so long preaching change and moralizing to people who don’t need convincing in the first place, that they end up alienating the very group they could enlist in their cause.

Take this guy I met at party, we’ll call him Ed, because that was his name. Ed is nice, retired, Habitat for Humanity, Bush loathing (doesn’t matter which one to me either), volunteer type of person. He is a gregarious host, serves up a decent dark beer and is open to conversation. He is also a rabid fan of the European health care system, having spent several years in Germany. I am not sure he was there before or after unemployment hit 11.6% this year, having risen stubbornly for the past 10 years. No matter, he views the US medical system like the antichrist and 20 % of the population without basic medical cover, as sinful.

Well, I am no fan of fat care health insurance companies and funds that should be going to doctors, nurses and patient care being spent on billing systems. Being in transition or out of work as it used to be called, I am acutely aware of the flimsiness, cost and inadequacy of the state provided comfort blanket. So Ed and I agreed. Not according to him. No, he prescribes a strong dose of the European system, specifically the UK National Health system.

This is a system that was devised 60 years ago and is still wearing the same post war ration book clothing and his suggestion would be laughable if it did not make me feel so sick inside. We were allies no more in the fight for a better medical system for a needy John or Jane Doe.

I tell him that in my 45 year experience of it, the system is archaic and terrible, but he wants specific examples. This is difficult for me, not because I have none, but because I do. I know people that have died under its inadequate glance, instead of its alert and watchful eye. Heck, at eight years old, I was nearly one of them due to delays in diagnosing acute appendicitis that ruptured mixing poisonous fluids to the blood circulating inside me.

But it’s my dad I think of. He took out private health coverage for all of us to augment the inadequate health system and so that he could have a sinus operation and another for fusion of his vertebrae to fix a poorly treated work related accident, without waiting a painful 12 months. Even that did not help when he lost his job and could not afford premiums and reverted to National Health. He was not helped by a system, private or National Health that was content to treat only the effect of a disease, without consideration of the cause. He bounced from unemployment, to a stroke and then a heart attack that the National Health doctor told me was mild and meant that he would be home the next day.

That night I looked at him, lying in an open ward, with no heart monitor, an oxygen mask clamped to his face, unable to speak because of the dryness of his lips and throat. I removed his mask briefly and dribbled water on his lips. He was sad and frightened as he scratched at the skin under the metal strap of the wrist watch he had been given for 25 years service, just before they eliminated his job, and slowly pulled it off, passing it to me for safe keeping. When I left I carried it in my hand to the end of the ward not wanting to assume ownership, and turned to look back at him. He saw me and raised a hand, but only from the wrist and as it flopped down again, I slid the watch on my wrist and mouthed “I love you, see you tomorrow night.” I never did.

He died the next morning from a massive heart attack, alone except for my mother who was with him and ran frantically searching for medical staff to help the man she had been married to for 30 years and for whom she could do nothing to stem the pain.

My dad, dead at 52 years of age; that is the legacy of the UK National Health System. It wasn’t until I came to Boston, even after 2 years in Canada, that I even realized that there were health care screening options for men.

This year was a milestone for me, of a sort. This year, I passed the age that my dad was when he died 27 years ago. My doctor, at my now bi-annual check up, remarked on me “beating his mark”, but it was with great sadness, for I knew that he had now been missing from my life for more years than I new him in his.

Ed wanted to know specifics, I couldn’t tell him. I was angry, bloody angry, but not at the all inclusive National Health system, that works well if you are well, but at Ed and his liberal rhetoric and quick fix solutions that made me want to argue against him, instead of uniting and arguing with him.