Boots

A week or so ago a man named Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud died at an undisclosed location, most likely of colon cancer, and also most likely at a hospital in New York. His age was simply put as, “in his eighties.” His death made news because this man was heir to the throne of Saudi Arabia. He was the half-brother of the current ruler, King Abdullah. Now a new heir will need to be chosen by a group that King Abdullah created as part of his reforms called the Allegiance Council. Although I don’t know how much reformation this king can claim since this group is made up of his brothers, half-brothers, and nephews. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Picking a leader by birthright is as foreign and abhorrent to me as breathing ammonia or laughing during an Adam Sandler movie, so I couldn’t care less which of these disgustingly wealthy, ancient men is next to occupy that throne. In fact as I read the article of this man’s death, words like prince, heir, throne, crown, royal family, and kingdom jumped out at me as archaic and downright alien. But it got me thinking. How can people live without objection in a place where their next leader is chosen by their current one? I know that the religious leaders over there are in cahoots with the family Saud - one side washing the other side’s hands, and away their sins - but I find I have little respect for people who sit by at let someone run things, collect so much money they live in palaces and light their cigars with gold bars, because some guy says God wants them in charge. Then I realized, their not that much different than you and me.

Here we don’t have kings of course. But we do let people ascend to leadership of us simply because of who they are related to; either by blood or acquaintance. In Saudi Arabia it’s called a monarchy, over here its called cronyism. Actually ascend not a good word to use because it suggests they moved upward when I reality they just did a lateral.

Where I used to work, the VP of Sales and Marketing was a friend of the president of the corporation, that president being the grandson of the founder. See the similarity to those men in Riyadh? In the time I was working there the Sales and Marketing VP brought in a friend to run the Fresno office, another to run the IT department whose job later change to something like Manager of Advanced Services, whatever the hell that means, and a third guy who once tried to have me written up for failing to renew a web domain by faking an e-mail message. It was a good thing he was so inept with computers, so I could prove he never sent the message and exonerate myself. Unfortunately my boss was the IT Manager and his buddy, so my exposure of his weak and fraudulent attack when nowhere. Just before I left the Sales and Marketing VP’s wife started working there and yet another friend came onboard with an equally undecipherable title as the Advanced Services guy. While the one pal was IT Manager he took so many days off we started a spreadsheet to track them. It ended up being 62 days in one year, that’s a day a week plus 10 more. The man running the Fresno office once replied to a computer tech who asked him a question, “Don’t address me.” They might as well have just put on crowns and told us to eat cake.

I understand getting a job through a friend, and I wish I had one who could get me employment, but to be so blatantly lazy or aloof?

Today, Sunday, I took a morning walk. As I passed a bus stop around the corner I saw a pair of work boots neatly tucked under the bench. I snapped a photo with my cell phone. I envisioned some blue collar guy who might have changed out of his work clothes, including foot ware, for his commute home. Maybe he wanted to travel in clean clothes, or maybe it’s a requirement of his job. His coveralls perhaps in a grocery bag, maybe even a tool bag at one knee. Perhaps in his excitement about having the next two days off he neglected to bring his boots on the bus when it pulled up. I hope he notices before Monday morning so he can either replace them, or hunt them down. I’d hate to think he would have to take a day off, and/or lose pay, so he can replace those boots.

I doubt if either the cronies at my former workplace or the brothers, half-brothers, or nephews of the king of Saudi Arabia ever forgot their work boots under a bus stop bench. I doubt if the cronies ever rode a bus, if anyone in that royal family could identify either a bus stop or a bus, or if anyone from either group ever wore anything that could remotely be described as “work” boots.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe those people at my last place of employment are hardworking and intelligent. Maybe the men, it will always be men, who run Saudi Arabia are the best qualified to run that country. Maybe those boots were left by the president of a local company who rides the bus as an example to his employees and he has dozens of other pairs in his humble closet at home. Maybe, but I doubt it.

Calypso

“Everything that's not broken is rotten, and everything that's not rotten is broken."

- Patrick Schnepp, Director La Rochelle Maritime Museum

I remember seeing the surface of the sea from underneath. Looking up at the mercurial waves through a forest of kelp and shimmering schools of fish. I didn’t have a scuba suit or even need to hold my breath, although sometimes I still did. I could exist in this world because of a man whose love of the oceans and desire to share that fascination created a television show about exploring what hid under the waves from 1968 to 1975. Or from when I was seven until I was fourteen; prime explorer hero worship years for a boy.

The man was Jacques-Yves Cousteau, or just plain Jacques Cousteau to us Americans. Mr. Cousteau created a show called “The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau” which weekly took us beneath the waves to visit rivers of jellyfish, rolling foothills of seals, and mountains upon mountains of uncountable varieties of fish. Had men not landed on the moon in 1969, my all time boyhood dream job would have probably have stayed an oceanographer an not switched to astronaut.

Aside from the man with the eagle-beak nose and the red wool cap, the main thing I remember from these weekly sojourns into the briny main was his stout and faithful ship; the Calypso.

The Calypso was born a wooden minesweeper, made from Oregon pine and handed off to England during World War II, mines being much cozier with iron than the soft woods of the Pacific Northwest. After the war she made some coin as a ferry, but her true calling, and claim to fame, was on television opposite Get Smart and I Dream of Jeannie. You had to be something special to draw a preteen boy away from the Barbaras Feldon and Eden. She was.

Years later when I did go to sea is it any wonder that it was on a white ship, like the Calypso?

Jacques is long gone. He passed in 1997 at 87. But the Calypso is still around, although barely. Legal wrangling between his widow and the grandson of the original purchaser, who leased it to Mr. Cousteau for one franc a year, has left the once proud ship in a state of limbo. At this point, she sits in a warehouse, in pieces, waiting for one side or the other to quit picking at the corpse.

There is a saying that goes something like, “A ship in port is safe, but that's not what ships are built for.” I don’t know who said that but maybe we should apply it to the Calypso. A ship like the Calypso should neither rot nor reside indoors on dry land. I say let’s sink her and make her a habitat for the sea life that was brought into our childhood homes once a week.

Mud

“We were all at once terribly alone; and alone we must see it through.”

-Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front.

A friend told me that in the context of my job hunting, I have a fight in front of me. I feel like it. I feel like I’ve been dropped in a no man’s land between the lines, but I don’t know which line is friend and which is foe. I don’t even know if there is a friendly side. I stumble across pickets who throw me back into the mud and barbed wire, confused, and angry, and depressed. I can’t keep my head down and wait for the shooting to stop because only by fighting to one side or the other will I ever again provide for my family and myself. But it’s a fight I am ill prepared for. I don’t know the weapons that win these kinds of battles today, and I have few resources from which to draw. I’m afraid that by the time I gain veteran status in this war, we’ll be living in the poor house, or worse; Los Angeles.

I keep getting ambushed by an enemy I can neither see nor hear, whose weapons are unfamiliar to me, and against which I have only the thin defense of 30 years of showing up, doing my job, and keeping my nose clean. So I stagger and throw blind punches but never land one. When these ambushes are over I’m left wondering why they felt the need to attack me when all I did was ask for a job.

This week, and it’s only Tuesday as I write this, I was ambushed twice. On Monday I got a call from a man who worked at a cloud computing company in San Francisco where I applied for a job building virtual networks and maintaining network connectivity. I can do this in my sleep. I had written in my cover letter that my experience looked like a great fit to the job description and that I could start right away. He agreed, even using the term, “Hit the ground running.” He said he would pass my resume to the hiring manager right away and I should expect a call within the hour. The company was in what he called the old Hills Brothers building, standing in the very shadow of the Bay Bridge. He went on to talk about $10 membership to the gym downstairs, Free Lunch Fridays, free fruit and drinks every day, and commuter assistance. Throw in Giants tickets and I’d work there for free. I quickly wrote a bunch of notes on the specific protocols and devices where experience was required in the ad, and waited by the phone for that call. I was going to kick ass. Instead I got an e-mail after about a half an hour saying I didn’t fit the job and they were going with someone else. Back in the mud for you.

Today I got a call from a recruiter for a flat screen monitor manufacturer where I’d applied for a job providing technician support. They wanted someone with a lot of experience with Cisco CLI (I have 12 years), Linux (I have 3 years), and customer technical support (16 years). Then he asked me about my experience with VMWARE, something that wasn’t on the job description. I have almost none. He said something about deal killer and hung up. Up into the barbed wire for you.

I was tired after the recruiter call. I decided to drive up to Shaver Lake. Get some windshield time, listen to some music, grab some fresh air, and see some blue water. They are working on the dam at Shaver so the lake is the lowest it’s been since, well since they built it. I looked at the rocky moonscape, the stumps of long ago cut down trees, and the puddle that was all that could be called a lake today. I feel like that lake. Not too long ago I was full and I was strong. Now I am far weaker than I ever thought I could be, the stumps of my unfinished accomplishments are exposed; no college degree, no technical certifications, no equity, and little retirement. But the good news is they will begin refilling Shaver in January. Maybe I’ll be refilled soon too. Then those recruiters, those hiring managers, and those pickets better watch out.

Heaven Can Wait

Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.
Peter Tosh

I saw a bumper sticker that posed the question, “Are you going to heaven?” Under the quote was the address of a web site. I suppose the idea was to get people to go to the web site to find out if their lifestyle is going to send them north or south after they die. My guess is also somewhere on the web site there is some information on the steps one need to take to make it to the Pearly Gates, should the question be answered in the negative.

The bumper sticker does not mention if it is a Christian web site you’d be visiting, but judging by where I live and my experience on the religion of my fellow community members, I think it probably was. I’d bet real money that John 14:6 (I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me:) comes up at some point. Maybe a pop up ad.

I’ve always thought that getting a membership to the country club as a reason to behave was a little shallow, if not materialistic. Speaking of the Book of John, in it Jesus said, “In my Father's house are many mansions.” Why mansions? Why not a nice bungalow, or even just a small room with a comfortable bed and a nice view? Maybe mansion meant something different 2,000 years ago, but today, when I think of a mansion I think of a large house, probably too large for just one family, with ostentatious furniture, plenty gold fixtures, servants, and a large grounds. Mansions? This is the same guy that threw the money changers out of the temple?

Heaven, or paradise, is not exclusive to Christianity. Neither are saints as it turns out. Islam has them too, but they’re called Wali in that religion. I read about an Islamic saint named Rabia Basri. She was seen one night running through the streets of Basra, Iraq with a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. Some of her neighbors asked, “What gives?” She answered that she wanted to use the torch to burn down the gates of Paradise and use the water to put out the fires of Hell. Further inquiries produced the idea from Miss Basri that she wanted to worship not in fear of punishment or hope of a reward, but simply for the love of God. She thought those ideas block the way to God. You kind of have to respect someone who won’t take a paycheck.

I wonder if in today’s churches, if the guy at the front, whatever he is called, suggested the flock forget about Heaven and Hell and just show up, how may would? My guess is that man being man, went confronted with a behavior, asks what’s in it for me? If he were told that nothing was promised other than someone you’ll never see or hear from while on Earth will love them, I think most would look elsewhere for something to do on Sunday mornings.

Nothing

 FATHER:  One day, lad, all this will be yours.
 ERBERT:  What, the curtains?
 FATHER:  No, not the curtains, lad.  All that you can see!
          Stretched out over the hills and valleys of this land!
          This'll be your kingdom,lad!

-Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

I used to work for a painting contractor, back there was music on AM radio and social media was a hand-written letter. He drove a 1972 Oldsmobile Delta 88; light yellow, two door, leather seats, nice. But once, when his car was in the shop, he spent the day driving around in his son’s, my friend’s, Datsun 260Z. He had me ride along with him that day as he drove from job to job because he wanted to talk to me. The Olds was an automatic but the Datsun was a standard so he mistakenly watched the tachometer in the Datsun thinking he was looking at the speedometer. We spent most of the morning driving around at 30MPH and 5,000 RPMs in second gear, with him thinking he was going 50 MPH and wondering what that loud whine from the engine was. When I showed him the real speedometer he pulled over and allowed me to drive.

The reason he wanted to talk to me was to show me how what he did, what his company did, would be around for years to come. We went to a bank that was being constructed near the freeway where he checked on the status of the work and I sat in the car listening to Paul Harvey; he wouldn’t let me change the channel so there would be no AM music that day.

After the bank we went by St. Paul Armenian Church in the center of town, which was also under construction. After talking to the foreman he got back in the car and pointing at the cross on the very top of the church, he said, “That’s real gold leaf on that cross. It will shine for years.”

Our third stop for the day was and apartment building that was probably 20 years old and getting a sort of facelift paint job. My boss brought the painting crew some sodas and a watermelon to cut up. It was pretty hot outside.

At the end of the day, he said, “Years from now, I can drive by these places, point at them and say ‘I helped build that, or I helped paint that.’” Then he said, “A man should have something to show for his time here. He should have something he can point at, or hold when he’s an old man and say he made it, or fixed it.”

I spent the last 25 years working at two places; a ceramic paint manufacturing plant and a phone company. There is absolutely nothing that can be held up, touched, climbed, entered, seen, tasted, or even remembered as proof I was ever even there. No buildings I can drive by and certainly no crosses, golden or otherwise. I suppose I could drive out and point at neighborhoods and say, “You see those houses? There were people in those houses years ago who had faster access to the Internet because of me.” Maybe I could find a ceramic bunny in a thrift store and say, “There’s a 50% chance I tested the pink paint used on his nose.”

There is no legacy. What I have to show at one job is day after day of testing paint to see if the color matched the last batch, and the one before that, and the one before that. At the other job I have countless hours worrying that some other man’s systems or networks would go down, hours both at work and at home, while sleeping, while on vacation, while watching the Super Bowl, and while at Thanksgiving dinner. I remember driving out to the office during the 2002 World Series (Giants/Angels) to babysit a router. No manager, supervisor, boss, vice president, foreman, or any other management personage so much as called, much less showed up.

But every hour I gave to those two men who ran those two companies, one who I left to go to work for the other, are simply gone. They amount to absolutely nothing. I might as well have been sleeping (Like my Vice President at the paint company often did, pretending to read Sunset Magazine).

I don’t know how I can work at my next job, whatever that turns out to be, and still pretend to have any investment in it. How I can pretend to care? How can smile when my next manager brings in yet another unqualified friend or family member to sit in an office, attend meetings, and collect a large paycheck? How do you do it?

My painting contractor boss is till around, although retired. If he wants to he can drive by that bank building, which is now a comic book store but still as clean and as shinny as the day his men laid down the last brush stroke, or he can drive by that church and see the cross is still as bright as the day the paint, with actual gold in it, was put on it. I envy him, even if he is still driving that Olds.