Bill Zapcic - Unpaid Bill

A gray (matter) area

Back in college (waaay back), a friend had a poster tacked to her desk’s bulletin board, sort of encapsulating the typical student attitude.

When I works, I works hard.

When I sits, I sits loose.

When I thinks, I falls asleep.

Yup.

We could joke about it then, because we were doing all three at the same time, each of us at our dorm desks or in the Boyd Lee Spahr basement after hours or in some lounge somewhere.

For students, thinking was work, work we could be proud of, work that even now we look back on and wish we had done more of, or done differently, or done at all. For students, thinking was going to lead to action, and many, many of my contemporaries did indeed turn those thoughts away from Morpheus and instead toward Hermes or Ares.

Since then, Morpheus seems to be in favor again.

It’s difficult to listen to what passes for political-economic discourse these days and not sigh, let alone despair.

We’ve descended into sixth grade, where eggheads are mocked and the notions of academic achievement and intellectual work are belittled in favor of manual labor.

This is not a model for success in the 21st century. It certainly wasn’t in the latter half of the 20th.

To be clear: There is extraordinary dignity in manual labor, done by folks who bathe after their day’s assignment, and not beforehand.

There is a great sense of achievement in having something physical to show for eight hours or more of sweat and aching muscles.

But those opportunities are disappearing, disappearing fast. And they’re vanishing quicker than they can be replaced by something equivalent — unlikely — or something that requires retraining. One of those “when I thinks, I falls asleep” opportunities.

We do everyone a disservice when economic policies (see how I avoided mentioning “trade war” or “tariff” here) focus on manufacturing or manual labor and diss intellectual efforts.

Agent Gibbs may be building yet another boat in his basement, but he always dopes out a plan when he is chasing a murderer or terrorist. And, besides, there are plans for that boat, too, even if they’re up in his gray matter.

Skilled craftspeople can fashion a deck or a desk or a dock with a carpenter’s square and a tape measure, but that’s because they’ve worked with enough sets of diagrams and schematics that they can infer a new set for the current circumstances.

In short, there’s always a plan.

That plan qualifies as intellectual property. On paper, on a hard drive, in the human mind, that plan came from thoughts and calculations and formulas, and lives on as thoughts and calculations and formulas that can be duplicated and extrapolated and improved upon.

Thoughts and calculations and formulas that came from intellectual pursuits first, and actions second. Think, then act.

I don’t care if X, Y or Z is manufactured in America as much as I care whether or not it was conceived here, designed here, if the manufacturing process was fashioned here. That’s the value in this equation.

When I hear how these so-called trade policies are supposedly designed to bring jobs back, I scoff, because if more of these items are again made here, they’ll be made by machines. Assembled by automatons. Riveted and ratcheted by robots.

And that’s only if Americans design the processes, the automation to achieve this. Because no American in Wisconsin — native, native-born or immigrant — is going to work for the same pittance that Foxconn pays in Taiwan. And if Foxconn does indeed do any manufacturing here, they’ll want extreme efficiency.

The solution must be a greater reliance on the kind of intellectual growth that teaches critical thinking, not how to pass standardized tests.

Here’s another example:

Amazon is asking its workers to quit and start their own delivery services, to get work from Amazon. That’s in part because Amazon is rolling out machines that can pack delivery boxes 12 times faster than humans. There’s no arguing with efficiency.

It takes savvy to run your own business, and even one seemingly as simple as a delivery service has levels of complexity that call for brains.

The Luddites failed 200 years ago. They will fail even more spectacularly now, because these weaving machines are infused with artificial intelligence over and above their artificial brawn.

To love our workers, to deliver jobs, jobs, jobs, we must teach, teach, teach and teach some more.

And when we thinks, we needs to stays awake.

Manual labor

There’s a “Far Side” cartoon by Gary Larson in which some of his favorite subjects — cows — are sitting in the living room while a phone rings nearby.

They lament, “Well, there it goes again … and here we sit without opposable thumbs.”

Hey, cows:

Nyaa-nyaa!

The whole notion of human hands goes far beyond the biomechanical.

Hands figure heavily in relationships — holding hands, helping hands, hands that comfort, hands that caress, hands that clean up messes.

Hands given in marriage.

Hands that let go in death.

Recently, though, the act of Pontius Pilate washing his hands at the condemnation of Jesus, as retold leading up to Easter, made me think of how that looks.

We all know how to wash our hands, of course: one hand over, under, rubbing, soaping, fingers interlacing, squeezing, maybe making bubbles and definitely making suds.

So we may or may not go through the ritual at the sink when we wash our hands of something, but the action is there figuratively.

That same action, albeit usually without soap and water, is there when we wring our hands in frustration or helplessness. Ohmyohmyohmyohmy, what am I going to do? And often, if we’ve gotten to the hand-wringing stage, the answer is nothing, because we’re paralyzed by fear or insecurity or lack of belief in ourselves or the higher power’s ability to help us through.

Similar actions. Similar results.

All that’s different is the intentionality, and even that varies from one to the other only slightly.

Washing or wringing, our hands get us away from something annoying, something unpleasant, something difficult.

So why, then, do we need opposable thumbs? Or any of the other four fingers on each hand?

The index finger can point to the sunrise and the promise of a new day.

The ring finger can show the world we’ve bonded with a partner for life and continue to bare our souls in a way no one else can share.

The pinkie is a great place to tie a string as a reminder of something, even if we’re guaranteed to forget what it was. Hey, human, remember?

And that opposable thumb, which cooperates with the others so that we can get a grip? And heaven knows, we all need to get a grip.

On its own, the thumb is a perfect choice for blessing the forehead of people we meet, to remind them that whenever they want to wring or wash in times of trouble, they have a wellspring of Love to tap into.

Palette palate

For the 1963 automotive model year, the Ford Country Squire station wagon — resplendent with its fake wood paneling and fully functional roof rack — was offered in 26 colors, two of them specially blended for springtime.

For the 2019 model year, most manufacturers offer six, with minor variations: red, white, blue, black, gray, and silver.

Subaru has a burnt orange and there may be another quirky offering somewhere, but those are few and, well, quirky.

Of the limited palette, car buyers seem to further limit themselves to white, gray and silver. I know this because those are the folks who drive with their headlights off in dense fog and just before dusk, and those cars put Stealth jet fighters to shame.

You bought white because it hides the dirt better? Two words: WASH ME

From the 1950s into the early 1970s, motorists mostly ordered their cars, picking from a menu of options a Chinese restaurant would envy. They plunked down their down payment and waited a month to six weeks for the vehicle to arrive. Sometimes, if they had a friend at the dealership, they got updates on the progress of assembly and shipping.

People could order almost any combination of exterior and interior colors — some clashing pairs were verboten — and one favorite trick was to order blackwall tires on the passenger side but whitewalls on the driver’s side. That way, motorists got to show off the whitewalls, and it was no biggie if they scraped the blackwalls on the curb. Oh, yeah: curb feelers. Buyers even had their choice of rubber brand.

Then came the oil embargo and the shortages in the early 1970s that turned consumers’ heads toward smaller, fuel-saving cars, cars that came from Europe and the Far East, where fuel always had been expensive and in short supply. Those cars introduced the notions of trim levels and option packages and pre-selected exterior/interior combos. And, oh yeah, no more six shades of blue. You got VW Miami blue or dark blue, Datsun blue, Toyoda blue, with black or fawn leatherette or cloth interior.

The options packages did away with the odd combinations of power steering but manual brakes or vice versa; air conditioning and power door locks but manual windows; or power windows but a manual crank on the tailgate glass. Things that belonged together became standardized.

And for the most part, God was in Heaven and all was right with the world.

Soon, though, this sensible standardization turned in the Soylent Green direction. Food indistinguishable from its packaging. Overpackaging in itself.

I do not consider Ronald McDonald an adversary, but no matter how many ways Mickey D’s tweaks its burgers, nuggets, fries and, yes, salads, they are not serving haute cuisine. Neither is BK or Mom, er, Wendy’s.

Worldwide, the fare is fair, but it’s consistent. And that has advantages for travelers and fans of McMuffins.

Ditto for chain pizza restaurants. They cannot hold a candle to Jersey Shore pizza, New Jersey pizza, New York pizza, but they won’t totally leave you in the lurch, either, the way a Deep South “New York Style” place will.

Cheez Whiz and ketchup on a Ritz cracker. Jeez.

In other words, for consistency and predictability, we settle for the Gentleman’s C.

But that should be a matter of necessity, not a lifestyle choice.

Those Gentleman’s C’s — they’re not just food, or car colors, or our politics (… not gonna go there right now).

They’re on display in our crazed-consumer disposable-goods economy. We buy subpar crap that can’t be repaired when, not if, it breaks.

They pollute our educational system, which teaches kids absolutely everything they need to know to pass a test, and absolutely nothing they need to know to make a difference in a pluralistic society.

They stifle ourselves. We sell ourselves short and say “good enough” or “that’s far enough,” when the real finish line is just a little way farther.

Yes, it’s a challenge to live life to the fullest, and often it takes work, hard work, a lot of hard work. But none of us has the curse of Sisyphus. We can push the boulder over the top. We can nourish ourselves with a bit of excitement.

We can demand — and get — Sahara Rose enamel glistening in the sun.

I never knew that

Have you ever wondered how a “thing” became a thing?

When you stop to think about it, we do a lot of things without really wondering where they came from, how they evolved, how they became embedded into culture.

Quite often, they “always were there,” likely as hand-me-downs from parents and grandparents before them.

And because those “things” always were there, we may not have delved into their origins.

Guilty.

This morning, our chapel had only a handful of empty seats for morning Mass. True: It’s Lent, and people are doing their best to pray, fast and give alms. But today also was First Friday, with Eucharistic adoration and coffee and bagels.

Starting in first grade back in 19(mumble-mumble), I and my classmates and all the rest of the uniformed pupils at St. Leo the Great parochial grammar school were marched into church for Mass the morning of the first Friday of the month, October through June.

Of course! First Friday!

Of course!

Confession time: Until an hour before I wrote this, I never bothered to look up what the big deal about First Friday was.

Not once in 55 years.

On First Fridays, Catholics recognize the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and through it offer reparations for sins.

In the visions of Christ reported by Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque in the 17th century, several promises were made to those people who observed First Fridays, one of which included sanctifying grace.

Originally the Fridays numbered nine, a la a traditional novena. Pope Leo XIII in 1869 expanded the practice to all First Fridays.

This literally and figuratively was a case of “when in Rome….”

Because, of course, First Friday. Everybody knew about First Friday.

Throughout those grammar school years, I never asked because I figured it was something I should already know (from where? from whom? by instinct??), and if I asked Sister St. Pius what the First Friday hubbub was all about, I might have to visit the corner of the room. Again.

When the morning Masses no longer were mandatory, I stopped thinking about First Friday, until I resumed the practice as an adult. But even then, even until just now, I didn’t dig deeper. I just participated.

Now, not everything we do in life needs to be questioned, though everything could be. In general, a lot more should be.

Some “things” are harmless, or mostly.

The cliché about men never stopping to ask directions … that’s a prime example.

Some “things” are dangerous.

Just count the number of measles cases the anti-vaxxers have caused.

Some “things” are hurtful, and worse, far worse.

We were taught to lock the car doors as the family car rolled into certain neighborhoods. It was years before we asked why.

By then, the racist fears and stereotypes had set the pot of hatred on a hotter flame.

Seemingly innocuous “things” fester.

Young children go through a couple of phases.

The Terrible Twos are punctuated by “No!”

Toddling Threes and Fours ask “Why?” as their response to almost any instruction or statement by adults.

Instead of shutting the children down, adults should ensure they answer with the best “This is why…” they possibly can. Then those toddlers will grow into critical thinkers who seek the best in everyone and for everyone.

And the hurtful things will wither and die.

Watching grass grow

A homily for the Third Sunday of Lent 2019. Luke 13:1-9

Just to the right of my home’s front door is a little patch where plants grow.

When I say “little,” I mean it’s just slightly bigger than a sheet of plywood, and, considering its history, you’d be hard-pressed to call it a garden.

When we moved in in the summer of 1988, there were two azaleas with green leaves, something else that was green or brown, a lot of wild onions, and weeds, weeds, weeds.

Full disclosure: I inherited my sainted mother’s blue eyes, but not her green thumbs (see?). With windows to clean and boxes to unpack, I figured the plants were fine by themselves if they hadn’t died yet. And this misbegotten notion was only reinforced the following spring when the azaleas sprouted beautiful pinkish-purplish flowers and daffodils and tulips popped up as well. Surprise!

This little piece of Creation was fine by itself. It needed no tending, right?

Over the years, we randomly transplanted hyacinths and tulips and daffodils we’d received as gifts at Easter – those potted plants with the yellow tin foil on them. But what started as amazing towers of bluish trumpets this year ended up looking like alien life forms in subsequent years.

Yeah, no green thumbs.

But every year, we’d impatiently watch the sturdy, almost juicy, perennial stems blast steadily through the recently frozen earth and reach higher and higher toward heaven, hoping against hope that this year they’d actually look like blooms from a flower shop.

Which is probably how the gardener in today’s Gospel felt. Except he had the good sense to till and weed and fertilize. Though Jesus’ parable doesn’t say it explicitly, and there’s no additional material about this in Luke’s Gospel, we can believe that the fig harvest was plentiful in years to come.

This parable offers us two interwoven themes and a cautionary tale oh-so relevant for the world today.

Faith – belief in God who creates, God who redeems, God who strengthens – needs continual tending, or it will wither and die.

Twice a year, in Advent and Lent, beautifully yet mysteriously linked to the cycles of the earth’s seasons, we receive the gift of quiet reflection and preparation for a magnificent feast.

In Lent, when we are urged to pray, fast and give alms, we can see – all around us – the renewal of life that spring brings. Bulbs awakening; seeds sprouting. Baby birds hatching, cheeping for food. Colts and foals and lambs and calves, wobbly legs and all.

There’s not a scintilla of doubt in any of our minds that all of those newborns need nourishment to grow and thrive. Nourishment and guidance and, of course, love, the love instinctively built into each parent.

We watch them grow: bigger, stronger, faster, everything they were born to be. We watch them mature into the next generation, be they plants or animals, and through their maturity, Creation continues.

Can we say that about our faith?

Can we say that about the faith that Lent challenges us to re-examine?

Is our faith pretty much where it was, how it was, when we learned enough catechism to receive First Communion or be Confirmed?

Or have we grown?

Our faith matures in two ways when we tend it as a master gardener would.

The personal aspects of our faith, our loving, interactive relationship with our Triune God, can grow as we spend time with Holy Scripture, with the lives of the saints and the writings of deep thinkers. When we pray.

Our faith, as we each understand it, grows when we look deeper into the teachings of the Church in an effort to see their significance not only 2,000 years ago but every year since. To see how they have remained significant, have matured, as our world has.

A mature faith knows that we have to work on our relationship with God in much the same way we continually work on our other relationships: spouses, partners, friends, co-workers, the neighbors we love as ourselves.

The personal aspects of faith blend and transform into a communal faith when we gather for the Eucharist, when we pray together, when we live the way Jesus showed us, asked us to, when in this season of Lent we give of ourselves to those on society’s margins, to the poor, to the scorned, to people deemed unlovable. When we donate the most precious gifts of all – time and talent – to those who need them most. When, after we’ve saved people from drowning – that’s charity – we go upstream to keep them from falling in – that’s justice.

Personal.

Communal.

A mature faith.

A mature faith in action.

Such a faith takes time, which the gardener knew 2,000 years ago, which every master gardener still knows, but which our stress-filled, Garden State Parkway daily lives conspire to block out of our minds and hearts.

The prayerful pauses of Lent serve to remind us.

The rebirth that is spring serves to remind us.

Watching the spring flowers grow – well, maybe not watching the grass grow – serves to remind us that all good things come to those who wait.

When it comes to Good Things, what’s better than a mature relationship with our loving God?

And – oh, yeah – except for a spot where either (a) I ran out of bulbs or (b) the squirrels ate them in September, our little patch now qualifies as a garden.

May that be said of all our lives in faith.

Makes the world go ’round

Save money?

Yes, please!

Everyone loves a bargain. Otherwise, there would be no Dollar General or Walmart or Target or Jersey Shore Premium Outlets.

There’d be no Costco or BJ’s, or highway mega-dealerships assuring us that there’s never a worry when you hurry to them for your next car.

The American economy — at least, post-World War II amid the flight to the suburbs — has been based on conspicuous consumption fueled by discounts and haggling.

The aforementioned car purchase always has been a competition between the buyer and the salesperson, with the invisible hand of I’ll Have To Ask My Manager determining the final price, regardless of what the sticker says. It’s a competition designed to make everyone feel as if they won. The only losers, as history has shown, have been those car companies — Saturn is the prime example — that chose to go with no-haggle pricing.

Saturn, we hardly knew ye.

So when the values go up, up, up, and the prices go down, down, down, what actually could be happening?

Sellers may cut prices on “loss leaders,” items they can take little or no profit on, or even lose a little money, to bring in crowds who’ll buy more than the super-cheap advertised special.

Buyers may settle for a cheaply made item — tires designed to last a week, just long enough to pass inspection. A one-season overcoat, which will be out of style next year anyway.

Ah, disposability.

Not every money-saver has to be Cheap Crap from Canton, China.

House brands are a great way to save money, especially when it’s evident that the products are equal to or even better than their name-brand equivalents. House brands from warehouse-y sellers don’t have flashy packaging, and you may have to root through massive stacks to find your size or flavor, but those can be legit bargains.

And then there are coupons.

Major manufacturers have offered discounts via coupons for time immemorial. First, they had to be scissor-cut from newspapers and circulars. Then the circulars came perforated. Now, coupons are electronic. The Lorax is pleased.

One reason for coupons is new-product introduction. Yeah, I’ll try your new flavor of gruel if it’s half-price.

Usually, though, coupons for foodstuffs help the maker even out the seasons, keeping sales at a consistent level at times of the year when people might not buy that product. Look for Swiss Miss coupons in July. Coupons help makers unload excess inventory.

Then there are coupons to make you cringe.

The last time I looked, I have two eyes that I got from my parents and, as far as I know, they are the only two I’m going to have until Judgment Day. So I’m not thrilled by the notion of discount laser surgery.

I may pay less for brake pads, but I never skimp on technicians’ fees. The same goes for surgery. The AT&T ad about pretty good not being good enough is dead-on accurate.

Then there’s the Groupon for sildenafil, the ingredient in that “magic blue pill” sort-of named for the honeymooners’ favorite waterfall.

Generic drugs are a godsend in most cases — even this most intimate one — but a 40 percent-off offer on an intrusive medication with no specifics is dodgy. Something is just not right about bypassing a prescribing physician to save a buck.

Save money? Yes, please.

House brands and legit coupons.

Timing purchases to clearance periods.

And a counter-intuitive method: Spend more.

Buy quality and maintain it. Purchase products that last. Take care of your tires and shoes and mackintosh and vehicles, and you won’t need replacements quickly.

Take care of yourself, too. Spare parts for your body are hard to find, extremely costly, and never accompanied by coupons.

Abacus*

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson, in “Self Reliance”

In every quote, in every piece of advice, in every snippet of wisdom is a zinger word or phrase. A qualifier. Sometimes it’s context; sometimes it’s CYA for the author or speaker. An escape hatch, like the button-bottom flap on a union suit of underwear.

Buttoned up, the aphorism can be taken at face (or hiney) value, added to a bumper sticker or political button or a red trucker hat, and accepted as gospel.

But once the zinger is identified, we’re challenged to do a deeper dive into the kernel of the observation.

Parsing Emerson’s quote, we select “foolish” as the zinger here, and ponder what a wise consistency might mean.

Skilled laborers — in manufacturing, in handicrafts, in what we call “the trades” — demonstrate their talents by consistently delivering quality work.

Apprentice.

Journeyman.

Master.

Workers climb the ladder by learning, but mostly by producing at a consistently high level.

That sounds pretty wise.

At its core, though, a well-lived life is about relationships, ranging from soul- and flesh-baring intimacy to strangers passing on a street who casually-casually-casually acknowledge each other’s presence.

The thread is a consistent kindness born of respect.

No relationship can survive without consistency. In a relationship, consistency is not sameness, nor is it foolish. In a relationship, consistency is reliability.

You can count on me.*

To be sure, there are degrees of kindness, each appropriate to the relationship. Also, to be doubly sure, we are in relationship with every other human, every other fellow traveler, even those we’ve never met, and will never meet. The world is too small for us to think otherwise.

I believe that butterfly sneezes can cause hurricanes.

I believe that consistent kindness makes our elbows less sharp.

I believe that, if you know you can count on me* — and you can — then we all can sleep soundly.

And may perpetual light…

It’s been four years.

It’s been as long as a presidential term, or a stint in local government. It’s been longer than what we call four years of college, longer than the time we owned any of our Country Squire station wagons in the 1960s and ’70s.

Dad died in the early-early hours of Feb. 11, 2015. He was 85⅔. He had been sick, really sick, though none of us knew it until nearly the end.

His illness was not the only unknown.

As we came to realize that Dad’s time was almost at hand, my brothers and sisters-in-law and Andrea and I recalled things about Dad — things we did, things we said, character quirks. It became obvious quite quickly, quite startlingly, that each of us seemed to know someone a bit different from the person the others knew.

Each of us had a different story to tell, and some of us were hearing them for the first time.

To be clear: This was no multiple-personality situation, not in a clinical sense. Dad was many things to many people. Many, many, many people. He gave of himself generously, and could mingle with titans of industry (his favorite) as easily as he did with row-house ladies who reminded him of the residents of the steel-mill town he left behind in 1947.

It just was a shock to learn things about our father on his deathbed. Finding out that some things we recalled as funny or cute had a slightly darker edge … but which always led to redemption, resurrection, renewal, lessons learned.

Just. Finding. Out.

Beyond unexpected.

In my four years in college, longer ago than I prefer to note, I did learn a lot, terrible GPA notwithstanding.

In the last four years, though, what I’ve learned is that I knew just a few facets of this not-fully-polished diamond, and that’s all I ever will know. And I’ve learned that I’m not alone in having a parent shrouded in mystery.

I also learned that other people had fathers and mothers whose lives were open books, family albums in the flesh, and of them I’m jealous.

I’m savvy enough to understand why Dad pulled on his cloak of invisibility, even when it led to his under-communicating with my brothers and me. Understanding helps dull the sting, a little.

Because he had given so much of himself to so many people for nearly half a century, and because he feared — or at least suspected — that his people would want just a little more, Dad essentially dropped off the face of the Earth when he retired to Florida. He huddled with his core friends, played golf and cooked, traveled internationally with a sand wedge in hand, and when golf slipped out of his life, he slid into a chair in front of a huge flat-screen TV.

“This! Is! Jeopardy!”

His retreat from the wider world pulled him back from us, and in that retreat, as his memory faded and dementia took his edge, his secrets were sealed in the vault that eventually would become his tomb.

It’s been four years since the night we sat in chairs around his bed, hearing him tug for each breath, pressing ourselves to stay awake while he transitioned into his final rest. Our memories are the ones fading now.

I’ll never know everything about him that I want to; I won’t even know what I don’t know. But I do know that I can’t and won’t be as much a cipher to my family when it’s my time.

That’s Dad’s final lesson.

… and blues

Mention rituals — capital R Rituals — and most folks think of chants, robes, candles and scented smoke. Dead languages, maybe, or at least peculiar usages, phrasing and vocabulary.

Beads, rattles, drums, chimes and bells. Shamans, healers, mystics, seers … or some sort of clergy, anyway.

Ancient history that may or may not be relevant today.

Capital R stuff.

And it’s easy to see how, in a super-interconnected electronified world, the buzzy repetition of a mantra might not compare well with flossing in Fortnite.

What’s eluding notice, though, is how many small-R rituals we’ve begun to develop over and above the ones we’ve always had.

Let’s start with those, the ones we’ve always had.

Rituals, which give our lives their rhythm and organization, stop being noticed as we integrate them, the same way we stop thinking about pedals and merely drive our cars. The rituals are automatic, or damned near.

Yes, if we get overly ritualized, we can be judged obsessive, but as long as we can defy rituals’ control from time to time, we’re fine.

Sock-sock-shoe-shoe or sock-shoe-sock-shoe? Left first, or right? Shirt then pants, or pants first? Floss-brush or brush-floss-gargle?

The correct answer is always whatever’s right for us.

The list goes on for each of us. On and on and on. Mundane things, though important in themselves.

The lists comprise our unique comfort zones.

And all would be well if hypno-technology hadn’t started interfering.

For longer than I can calculate, my daily routine, my morning and evening and nighttime rituals included checking my email and other related posts and missives. Desktop, laptop and mobile. If there were fewer than 100 messages in a batch, I felt cheated. More than 400 — not often but far from rare — and I stressed.

Like Capital R Rituals, these rituals took on mythic proportions, assumed significance that, viewed objectively, they did not deserve the way true Capital Rs do.

Thus, when I lost two company email accounts and access to a myriad of networks, and surrendered my second phone, I went through withdrawal. Fellow travelers in the land of unexpected retirement told me similar stories. And all of us confess to seeking some sort of replacement activity.

Like the frog being boiled in water that was slowly heated around it, we’ve been surrendering to this for decades. Asimov and Heinlein hinted at it in short stories and novels. Rod Serling routinely used the tool that was addicting us to warn us about the tool that was addicting us. Marie Winn wrote “The Plug-In Drug” in 1977 and could document then how electrons and phosphors and scanning lines on snowy screens could hold us in thrall.

Our screens are not going away. Our need for rituals is hard-wired into our human psyches, so that’s definitely not going away.

What is fading? Our ability to control the rhythms of our days, the places where we use rituals to regulate and comfort, and not to be controlled by a stressful overlord.

I guess sometimes you do have to think about what pedals to step on.

The dog star

It’s been a few months since the media giant decided it could succeed without me in its ranks, and since then there have been buyouts, layoffs, talks of mergers, hints of hostile takeover attempts, and now a suggestion that the takeover attempt may instead have been a surrendering of assets.

Agatha Christie must be writing this. Kenneth Branagh, please direct the cinema version.

From a corporate standpoint, the biggest wrinkle was the announced retirement of the CEO, a man just into his 60s who’s leaving with a slightly larger buyout than other employees in their 60s who left (or were thanked for their hard work and loyalty).

The Egon Zehnder executive recruiting firm is conducting a worldwide search for RD’s successor. They say their marching orders are to find somebody outside the newspaper industry.

As of Oct. 23, 2018, I’ve been outside the newspaper industry. That’s why, last week, I added my CV to the Ghostbusters’ … um, scratch that; it’s Zehnder and not Spengler … to the headhunter’s database.

The whole CEO thing needs serious re-examination these days, which is why I (a) applied, even though I likely won’t be considered or even taken seriously, and (b) know that, without an MBA or PhD or Brooks Brothers suit, I’m the best candidate.

I’m not going to get into income inequality or golden parachutes or the like here. Let’s just think about what makes a good leader.

First, a leader must embrace the credo that everyone in the organization has the same job — to ensure the success and continued viability of the enterprise. What differentiates custodians from publishers are their tasks. A good leader knows the value of each, knows where those tasks fit in the overall machine (sorry, but let’s be real), knows the scope and ideally the mechanics of every one of those tasks, could perform any and all (or most) of those tasks, and makes sure enough of the right people are performing those tasks.

Second, a leader must know the people performing those tasks. Not in a “That was Eric Stratton, pledge chairman, and he was damned glad to meet ya” way, but the way classmates at a small residential college get to know each other. Shared experiences: work, play, joy, heartache, hangovers and indigestion. A leader accompanies an ad rep on a sales call. A leader takes a police report and bangs out three paragraphs for the website, app and in-print briefs column. A leader knows where the coffee grounds are stored and brews a fresh pot. Not as a fake show of solidarity but as a matter of simple humility.

Third, a leader listens to the people doing the heavy lifting. A leader learns from the efficiencies discovered and honed by the staff in the trenches, and then evangelizes them, giving credit where it’s due. Years ago, when Ford built Escorts in Central Jersey, the upholstery fabric snagged as it was pulled over the foam rubber on the seat frames, slowing the assembly line and/or leading to recalls and warranty work. A creative genius on the line brought in a few cents’ worth of angel hair — the Christmas decoration — and draped it over the foam. The upholstery slid on quickly and fit without wrinkles. Ford adopted it as SOP.

CBS TV made a big show out of a company president or CEO supposedly getting on-the-job training at the bottom of the food chain. “Undercover Boss”; yeah, right. All true leaders already do this, because their sleeves are rolled up. Maybe only figuratively, but always.

A leader makes decisions based on the good of the company but with a human face, because s/he knows those people any decision most affects. Jenn in Texas, Scott in Wisconsin, Steve in California, Nina in New York. People whose loyalty and hard work are for the good of the company and for the benefit of the customers, the readers.

A leader follows that Scout camping maxim: Leave it better than you found it.

Egon Zehnder, I am that leader. My application is a serious one. No one will work harder or care more. No one.

Too bad you almost assuredly won’t consider me.