Eddie Carr's Music Writing Blog

I Liked How That Felt

2010-12-31T05:54:00.000-06:00

In the wee, small hours of the last morning of the year 2010, I stumbled upon some old music videos and watched the legendary rock group Chicago play through their anthem-like power ballad, "Stay The Night." The 70's vintage Dodge in it reminded me of the example of the muscle car era with which I was personally acquainted, the 1968 Chevrolet Malibu my parents bought new. I only got to drive the car once, nearly fifteen years later, as a teenager under the watchful eye of my father. No, my memories of that car and its 327 hp V-8 engine were as a small child in the days long before seatbelt laws, and apparently before parents truly loved their little ones, because I recall crawling all over the vehicle: lying with my ear pressed to the floor to listen to hear the gears shift, crawling up into the space behind the back seats and under the rear window, or sitting on the storage compartment between the front bucket seats, begging my dad to let me shift the gears.

But it isn't much of a leap to go from thoughts of the Malibu to the jet black 1977 Camaro LT Dad bought later. It had a great "modern" feature, a built in cassette player! No doubt this car heard all of Chicago's old tunes on its radio as they were newly released. It also heard its share of Duke Ellington and Count Basie and Maynard Ferguson and Doc Severinsen and the other jazz I was just getting into when the car was purchased, to be sure, but by the time I got to drive this little black car with its bright red interior and molded fin myself, I had expanded my tastes to include the popular music of the day, especially Chicago because they had a horn section.

I'm sorry to say that I destroyed this car by driving it off the side of the road one night during my senior year of high school. But before it's untimely demise, there were a few wonderful memories associated with the car, not the least of these are the ones that revolved around my first official girlfriend, a dear young lady who lived on my street, who rode with me to band practice every morning, and who I saw in church every Sunday.

And thinking of her leads me to a memory of a specific moment with her, of sitting in that Camaro outside Fred Morgan's music instrument repair shop, and joking with her that if I could eat an entire Snickers bar in one bite, she'd have to marry me. This little moment, terribly funny to a couple of lovelorn teenagers, was also romantic enough in our own innocent way that she turned it into a poem, which I later put to music. Funnily enough, this song was just recently rediscovered, and by that I mean the original piece of sheet music I wrote it on in pencil. I've been reorganizing, repacking, and removing old boxes of music, scores, notes, method books etc., that have been languishing in cardboard boxes since our move over three months ago.

And I had a funny thought when I discovered it, sang through it for the first time in, well, decades. It wasn't all that great a song, not very dynamic. More of a still life than a street scene. But what it represented was a number of near-firsts for me, all rolled into one. It was probably one of the first times I tried to write something like a pop ballad. One of the first times I'd written something specifically for another person. Oe of the first times I'd written lyrics!

And did I say it wasn't very good? No, not really. Sweet, maybe. Simple, definitely. But not that great a song. Nonetheless, and this is is a key "nonetheless," at the same time I realized that, I also remembered how I felt around the writing of that song. I felt wonderful, that wordless, indescribable wonderful that you feel when you happily do something for someone else, when you get out of your own interior life and dedicate yourself to someone else's.

And you know what? I miss that feeling. I am - hopefully - a better writer of music now. But in choosing not to do as much writing, I have made myself go without that feeling, that feeling of being dedicated to making something artistic, something personal, something I know how to do, something useful, and, probably most significantly, something for someone else.

Which leads me to the specific case in point: it is time to bring those feelings back. There's a lot more to it than that, most assuredly, but at the same time, every enacted plan begins with a thought. And so it goes.

A Reminder about The Rule of Three

2010-08-25T14:44:00.000-05:00

This is just a note so that the next time I write, I will write about a so-called Rule of Three in composing and arranging that might be useful in assuring that orchestrations sound full and one's ideas sound interesting. Sufficeth it for now to say that The Rule of Three simply points out that when three things are going on at once, the music sounds interesting, thought-out, complete, regenerative.

It also has visual analogies, but I would have to learn more about visual creativity before I could speak with any legitimate expertise on the subject (ha!). So when you think of point and counterpoint and then ensemble playing as two or three distinctive visual elements separating, returning, passing, chasing, blending, then perhaps coming together, then you have a chance of having both a way of hearing and "seeing" your structure at the same time.

Sorry I can't do more today. Today is dedicated to educating myself on the ins and outs of Social Science research for my "day job."

More later!

Writing Jazz

2010-07-29T19:08:00.001-05:00

Was up into the wee hours last night working on a new jazz chart. Actually, "new" might be a misnomer. The initial idea for this tune was written on a piece of staff paper that has been floating around since college. Really. A couple of years ago I committed it to Sibelius, scored out about the first 45 seconds, then left it. When I updated to Sibelius 6.1 this June, I used it as the experimental first file to be opened with the new version.

Surprisingly, it has been coming along pretty well. I am eagerly experimenting with not using the piano to write this one, but simply using the notation program. So far so good. I'm finding that I am exploring different changes than I would otherwise reach for at the piano. Sometimes force of habit sends me back to the same changes because they fall easily under the fingers. When looking at the written page, I tend to see a chord and think, "Well, what if we sharp that and raise the five?"

As for the tune, it's an easy swing, a lot of open 10ths at first. That was the original idea: to simplify. Nothing fancy, just swing. And while the harmonic language is a little more expansive now, I still want it to be a "toe-tapper." Also, I've come up with a new idea for a middle section at a slower tempo. I thought of doing this under a trumpet solo, and still will, but that solo will ultimately lead to a ballad section that reminds me a little of the third movement of "The Channel One Suite." Hmm. I should go back and listen to it again, to make sure it doesn't sound too much like Channel One. Anyhow, it sounded great last night.

I'll try to put up a screen shot, then maybe an audio file draft later. I've got lots of "Day Job" things to work on right now. We'll see what time allows. Bye.

Restart # ????

2010-07-13T21:39:00.000-05:00

Hey there, it's been a while. Not much. How 'bout you?

To save time, let's get to the point. The keyboard is up on the main floor, the laptop, the Yamaha 8-channel and the mic are all I need. A new schedule allows for a set amount of time everyday for writing and recording (two separate activities, by the way).

So all that's left is to actually DO it. The plan is simply this: There is a certain set of tunes that I refer to as the "Better Late" album. These include "Charlie Brown," "Unfinished Business," and a host of unfinished tunes. All of them share this sort of starting over, not too late theme. I will take the day's predetermined time to write, and when that time is up, I move to another task. This is mostly an attempt to overcome that dreaded habit of having to reach a "logical stopping point" before I can feel good about leaving the project. Furthermore, it's this worry about reaching the logical stopping point that often keeps me from starting, as in, "I'll barely have begun when I'll need to stop, so why start in the first place?"

Let's see how it goes.

STUPID GADGETS REMOVED

2010-03-15T04:20:00.001-05:00

I hate to be so terse, but the last post and the rotten little gadgets I uploaded are to be completely ignored. In fact, I removed the gadgets, as at least one of them had a bug that commandeers the browser window and involuntarily navigates you completely away from the blog and to a pointless and irrelevant pop up ad.

All my fault for thinking such a minor piece of distraction could stimulate any real insights into creativity whatsoever. Ha. What was I thinking?

(Give one to the pop up ad guys for being creative with their piecemeal attempts to take all the fun out of the web.)

The Simple Joy of Experimentation For All

2010-03-04T00:38:00.001-06:00

Nothing profound here. Most of my time recently has been absorbed by business school tasks, as this is Mid Terms week. Still, I did happen across a couple of mini apps - or Gadgets, as they are called here at Blogger - and I couldn't help but put them on the blog just to see if anyone is tempted to play with them.

They're simple, really. One is just an octave of the piano keyboard. A mouse click on ny of the black or white keys produces the corresponding tone. The other is a Mini Studio, where you can choose from a selection of a half dozen drum loops, bass loops, or effects (hey, all you math wizards who know what "n!" means, how many possible combinations does that allow you???).

I thought it might be fun to let visitors spend a few precious minutes of life in musical experimentation. By the way, you can use them in combination, by setting your groove accompaniment on the studio, then plucking out a melody on the keyboard.

Enjoy! If your computer has a built-in mic that can record your creations, let me know!

NOTE ON 3/15/10: please see the following post before searching for the above-referenced gadgets, as they have been removed.

The Secret To Rock Anthem Lyric Writing

2010-02-16T13:55:00.003-06:00

Dana Carvey has known this all along ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gO57XRDDodk

Charlie Brown (Why The Frown?)

2009-11-05T00:52:00.002-06:00

Well, I did it, sort of. I got this demo recording of Charlie Brown whipped into enough shape that I didn't feel mortified about sending it to someone, which I did just minutes ago.

This tune is part of a suite of tunes I've been thinking of as part of what I refer to as the "Better Late" collection, as in "better late than never," the "Vita Nova" attitude I've taken to writing songs these days. Interestingly, most of the Better Late tunes have themes akin to growing up (Charlie Brown), growing up late (The Best of Me), or not growing up at all (40 Going On 2o). The sub-theme is "starting over" (Unfinished Business).

Charlie Brown had a roundabout path to getting born. It started as just a snatch of melody intended to be sort of a fusion jazz instrumental. I was thinking maybe flute and piano (like some Chick Corea) because the melody seemed light and airy (lots of parallel sixths in the right hand of the piano). I started to call it "The Doogie Tune" because it reminded me of a TV theme that the incredible Mike Post wrote for a show that was on back then. Then sometime later - much later - I replaced the simple, two-chord bridge with a more, um, intriguing four-chord bridge.

Lyrics came next, I think. Since there was never supposed to be lyrics for the tune, there was never any inkling that the song would be about Charlie Brown, or anything else for that matter. The Charlie Brown connection most likely came from the left hand stuff, which was reminiscent of the immortal "Lucy and Linus" theme by Vince Guaraldi. So I was considering titling it something to do with Snoopy (remember, Snoopy plays stand up jazz bass!). Then "Charlie Brown, why the frown" seemed to fit really well with the first part of the first phrase. So then there is the question, isn't it? Why the frown, indeed? And there's the song.

There was another bridge coming now, as there was some story I still needed to include, plus it helped serve as a climax for a tune that really didn't have one. As a little jazz number with a groove, it didn't need one. As a song about Charlie Brown finally growing up, both the story and the tune needed somewhere to go.

By the way, my favorite line is the one about the blanket and the girl with a drink in her hand. That was one of those little moments where the lyric was just an isolated tidbit that laid great against the music, then ended up defining a lot of the rest of the story.

More later. We're off to our start!

Amsterdam: My Bass Playing Buddy In The Liedesplein

2009-08-11T04:04:00.002-05:00

Our hotel in Amsterdam was just south of a little plaza called The Liedesplein. I’ve mentioned the Leidesplein before in “World War Two Happened Here.” One of the historic plaques with scenes from the war on them is placed along a curb of the Liedesplein, showing a group of bicyclists commuting to work, including a man in a dark suit and a very distinct Star of David sewn onto it.

Today, the Liedesplein is a touristy place hard by a canal and a hotel once called the American. The Liedesplein is a congregation of restaurants with dozens of tables on both sides to accommodate the thousands of tourists that stroll there to eat every day. The American Hotel fills the southeast corner of the plaza– its most prominent feature an outdoor bar that seems to host some special event or gathering every night. There is a two-story Burger King on the northeast corner of the square. The other eateries include a sports restaurant with a collection of wide screen TVs set to all manner of sports events, Italian places with great pizzas at reasonable prices, and “Argentine Grills” serving barbequed meats.

In front of the Burger King and between the sports grill and the tram rails – every tramline stops at the Liedesplein – there is a clear area where the buskars (as street performers are formally known) perform a never ending variety of acts. It’s a little bit noisy, what with the trams running so close, a few buses and cars, and the constant buzz of hundreds of outside diners. But I saw some great acts there. There is a guy who bounces a soccer ball on various parts of his body for unbelievably long amounts of time, and in an endless variety of patterns. He can even climb a light post with it. There are hip-hop dancers. I saw jugglers using flaming torches and machetes. There is even a Mexican style mariachi band.

In fact, Amsterdam is a Mecca of street musicians, and I tried to film them all. There were saxophone and brass quartets. There was an accordion and clarinet duo up by the train station. A guy with a penny whistle would go from restaurant table to restaurant table until people would pay him to go away, most likely. One street was filled with the full throated voice of a female singer who I couldn’t see, until I laid eyes on this tiny little figure with a guitar, dressed in torn up jeans, a golf cap, and almost completely lost in the clutter of the parked bicycles that surrounded her. There was even an accordion trio playing Bach’s Toccata and Fugue (you know: the Halloween-like pipe organ piece made famous in the scary “Phantom of The Opera,” before Andre Lloyd Webber turned him into some sort of hunky, star-crossed lover).

But my favorite performer, by far, was a slight, little guy who was at the Liedesplein almost every evening, so often that I soon referred to him as “My Bass Playing Buddy.” He became a comforting sight for me, being so close to the hotel we called home base for the trip and so close to food. He would bring an old, beat up stand up string bass, a tambourine, and his voice. He would perform from on top of a wooden conductor’s podium, placing the tambourine between his foot and the wooden surface. He plucked hard at the bass’s worn strings and tapped the tambourine with his foot on the backbeats of every bar.

He sang a variety of old jazz standards and cocktail lounge hits, usually at a nice, relaxed medium tempo. His voice was not really powerful, and I always wanted him to turn up the little amp just a bit. But he always, always smiled. And every time someone came up to drop a few Euros into the little pail he put out in front of his set-up, he would stop playing, doff his hat to hold it over his heart, and say thank you. The younger and prettier the girl, the longer he would tip his hat.

I have no idea who he is, and I learned very little about him while I was there, not even from which direction he came, or from which part of town he hails. For some reason, he strikes me as Italian, not Dutch, yet there’s no reason for me to think that. Maybe it’s the dark hair and eyes. Also, I had an Italian friend many years ago, a wire-thin sax player, who wore dark baggy suits like this guy does. Perhaps that was it. I’d like to imagine he lives in a humble flat whose dull walls are decorated with famous jazzers. Something along the lines of black and white pictures of famous clubs and singers he dreamt of but never met: Sinatra, Martin, Tormé, Lady Day, Ella, etc. Dusty shelves of old vinyl would line the walls of the little apartment, a worn out phonograph needle filling the place with the sounds of yesteryear all the time. Sounds of a different time, a different era, the time when this guy should have been alive.

So, like the many of us who onsider ourselves born too late, instead he looks the part, dressed up in a white shirt and a skinny tie like Sammy, a hat with a little feather in the band like Frank, a suit coat that hangs on his thin frame like Deano. He packs up the same stuff in the same way for every gig: the amp inside the podium, which goes on the front rack of his black proper Dutch bike. The worn but sturdy tambourine, all the cords and a little-used drum machine (that I like to imagine he won in an illegal poker game, providing an explanation for the day three women cops showed up to discuss some sort of accusation made against him by some other street performers nearby) go in the saddlebags on the rear rack. The bass goes in its own giant gig bag, with a little red taillight attached on the outside. All this goes on his back. The bow, like Robins Hood’s quiver of arrows, slashes diagonally across the whole thing.

I watched him get started one evening when he was done. He pushes away from the curb, slow like an old train pulling out of the station with Glenn Miller’s band aboard. He wobbles, then finally gets up the momentum for the ride into the relative darkness of whatever side streets lead him home.

He usually plays every night until twelve midnight. He plays for anyone who will hear, who will stop a moment and get lost in the sound of a thumping bass from yesteryear. At times he is lost in the music, eyes closed, head bobbing, some sweat beading up on his forehead. But I’m sure as he plays, he has the incredible experience of watching the people that surround him. He might look into every one of their eyes. He might be the one person on the plaza with the chance to see their smiles, their tears, and their pain. He may even, from his vantage point a foot above the ground on his podium, see which one of us are legitimate with ourselves, and which are not, as if he could see our truths and our lies. It’s like the entire world has been brought to The Liedesplein so he can look deep in their souls to see how we run from hide from the lives when it seems that they are just making them old.

A few people may look down on him because of his hangdog face, and because his voice isn’t really all that strong. To be sure, the majority of the attention goes to the other, noisier performers on the square: a juggler juggling flaming swords on a unicycle, a magician making classless jokes about the tourist girls, a soccer ball expert scaling lampposts with a ball bouncing on his head are activities bound to get a certain amount of attention. Still, he humbly tips his hat to anyone who drops in a coin. and somehow, he keeps playing. And singing. And Smiling.

There was a really disappointing sort of altercation one day. A dirty fellow with a head full of uncombed hair and his hands full of sandwich and chips, passed by and made a rude thing or two. The bassist smiled and must have said something equally derogatory about the sandwich guy over the mic. To that, the guy turned around and tossed his sandwich at the ground by the pail into which the passers by drop their coins. The tourists smirked. Kids laughed. The tall, pretty Dutch girls never noticed.

But My Bass Playing Buddy plays on.

So why does he put up with it? The trams with their noise, the other acts, the way people get drunker and louder as the night goes on, the porta-potties without doors or walls put out on the weekends right next to his space?

I wonder if it’s because when he plays, he’s in another time and place, when things made a little more sense, where he fits in better with a nicely knotted tie and hat to add distinction to his sallow face, and where there were indoor gigs to be played, and trains to be ridden, and people appreciated his trying so hard for them. It wasn’t like it is now back then, and it will never be that way again. Too bad.

I imagine My Bass Playing Buddy doesn’t care about whether these kids and tourists and restaurateurs think this is heaven or hell, or if the whole world’s going to either one with them. He can live honestly, with integrity and great authenticity as long as he’s got the Liedesplein. And his bike. And the amp, which goes inside the podium, on the front rack. And a worn but sturdy tambourine, all the cords, and the drum machine he won in a poker game but hasn’t learned how to use, which go in the saddle bags on the rear rack. The bass goes in the gig bag with the little red light sewn on the outside. And the bow, like Robin Hood’s quiver of arrows, goes strapped across the back of the whole thing.

I got close to him on my last day, dropped some Euros into his little pail. As per custom, he took his hands of the strings, took his hat off. He looked right at me, said, “Dank u, with the tiniest little bow. And a real, true smile. He looked just like the music he played, and nothing like the silliness that surrounded him in the plaza.

Turns out he may be the only one there with any real integrity at all.

Revisiting The Jensen Seminar

2009-08-02T06:20:00.003-05:00

Forward

I originally wrote the following post after six weeks of reflection after attending the European Launch of the Jensen Seminar for Transformational Leadership, presented by the near legendary Finance academician Michael Jensen, The founder of EST and developer of concepts behind Landmark Education Werner Erhard, and an impression Air Force Academy graduate and Iraqi War veteran, Capt. Kari Granger. My initial assessment of the seminar was by and large positive, and I wrote here, before I left The Netherlands to make the journey home.

That was particularly difficult summer for me. While on the outside there was not a lot of notable turmoil, my inner dialogue had a little more sturm und drang. My two fabulous years teaching confirmed my desire to make a career of it, a path that requires as its first small step the giant leap of entering a doctoral program. Yet exploring a few PhD options led me to realize that would not be a simple task, that my perhaps unique perspective on combining creativity research and a business academic degree would be a tougher sell than I first thought. In addition, as much as I enjoyed the business school environment, I was not entirely comfortable with the lack of music work in my career, it would seem, if "not entirely comfortable" is read to mean "completely miserable." There were also non-career concerns around health and personal relationships.

In hindsight, I can see that the transition from the hyper-supportive environment of the seminar back to my regular life Stateside was not a smooth one. The purpose of revisiting my initial unrestrained optimism was meant as an example of rigorous personal analysis of the notion of transformational leadership in light of the world view and perspective of an individual with much to gain from transformational leadership. That such a transformational would come at a problematic or difficult time for an individual should only be part and parcel of the experience. After all, those without problems or questions would not see the need for transformation.

Well. It came to my attention early in 2010 that a principle involved with the Erasmus event had become concerned with my comments. It was not my intention to judge harshly, nor to make undue criticisms. I thought my comments might create a conversation about contingencies that may arise as the tenets of this brand of transformational leadership are applied. After all, it was a stated goal during the conference that these concepts should be introduced throughout higher education, and with the number of professors in attendance, they would surely come under analysis. If the concepts are solid, then they will stand up to scrutiny.

So as you read through the following entry, if my tone comes across at times as judgmental or critical, please please keep in mind that my intention was not to create a rift between the seminar leadership team and the participants, and I did not intend to tear down or minimize the value of what's taught there. I did have some concerns that the seminar format may not be the most effective delivery system. Beyond that, you will probably find a lot of critical analysis of my own thoughts and emotions. I try to put things in the context of my own life experiences.

All comments, ideas, and suggestions are welcome. It is, in my view, an ongoing conversation. I'll find it very useful as I progress with my creativity research and the Synthesis Leadership workshops that is in development.

- Eddie

# # #

Revisiting The Jensen Seminar

The Jensen Transformational Leadership Seminar is now over a month in the rearview mirror, and this has given me time to think, ponder, and analyze. With a little 20/20 hindsight, I wanted to revisit both the content and experience. After all, an experience that promises to be transformational deserves a certain amount of thoughtful analysis. I am very fortunate in that I have been able to return home to my wonderfully wise wife and family, and good friends and colleagues who have helped me put in perspective my experiences throughout my travels in general, but at the seminar in particular. Sharing the experiences I had there with others here has allowed me to add context to it, which in turn helps me express what I believe is immediately useful and what could stand a little criticism for the purpose of improving the practice and pedagogy of teaching leadership.

I continue to maintain that there is some great material there, real techniques and methods that deserve sincere consideration and real testing through sound research. But – and unfortunately this is a big “BUT” – I have some reservations about how this content is delivered in the seminar format. I hope that the following comments will explain and add clarity to the observations and circumstances behind those areas that have caused me concern.

Past Controversies

The Jensen Seminar derives a great deal of its content and structure from the workshops offered commercially by a group called Landmark Education, which in turn traces its roots to the 1970s movement known as Est, and Est’s founder, Werner Erhard. Erhard participated as an instructor in Rotterdam.

Landmark, some may know, has been a controversial organization in some quarters and has garnered a certain amount of criticism over the years (including in The Netherlands, I learned later). A cursory search of these criticisms will uncover a range of issues, some dating back to Est’s almost boot camp style self-discovery sessions headed by Erhard in the 1970s. More recent complaints touch on predatory marketing practices and “addictions” to the various flavors of Landmark Education products that keep attendees returning, even at great sacrifice to themselves and their resources.

It is not my purpose to address these past criticisms. I would not be able to do any justice to the issues raised at different points in the history of Werner Erhard’s work and influence. Those on both sides of the various arguments who would concern themselves with revisiting old controversies could spend – and probably have already spent – years teasing good and bad from this long history.

Rather, I would like to concentrate on my personal observations of the Jensen Seminar as presented at Erasmus University this summer. Surely, those who wish to will be able to find support for or opposition to their own views in my contemplations. But I would also like to invite those who were there to add their own observations to mine, as this will best lead to the kind of shared knowledge that produces the best kind of leadership to teach, and the best way to teach it.

I have said before that the greatest pleasure that I derived from the event came from the assembled group of attendees: educated, cordial, prepared, and pleasant. They were ready, willing, and able to go deeply into personal sharing. Truth be told, however, that was the first surprise: I was not expecting the depth that that sharing would take. We turned from analysis of data to deep forays into the internal search, the deeply personal search, and the dredging up of personal emotions. And inasmuch as this, more than anything else, ran counter to my expectations, this is a good starting place. So let me begin there: with the people.

“True Believers”

I’ve expressed before how impressed I was by the collection of bright people so willing to share. Not knowing much beforehand about who or how many people were coming, I made some assumptions based on this being the European launch and being held at one of Europe’s prestigious universities. Because of that, I imagined there would be a lot of CEO types and some high academics in attendance. You know the type: very buttoned down, a European sensibility toward rank and status, business casual clothes that are not all that casual, some posturing, etc.

I was wrong.

Instead, I found good-hearted, open, eager people, sharing and kind, lovers and huggers, eager to look inward, eager for self-discovery. We were a wonderfully diverse group with all manner of cultural, educational, and professional experience. Participants came from as for off as Sri Lanka and Los Angeles. But instead of people from my B-school world, I found people more like those from my music world: my theatre pals and artsy folks, the granola girls and the jazz philosophers (I love this set of friends, by the way, so no disrespect is meant to any of them).

As I look back now: this might have been a “what’s wrong with this picture” moment. Should not a leadership seminar headlined by a world-renown finance academic and including among its instructors an Air Force officer lend itself more to the aforementioned crowd of movers and shakers of industry rather than the deep thinkers? Shouldn’t there be extra curricular conversations set around the state of the financial markets, exchange rates, global politics, fiscal policy? Rather, there was an almost laser-like focus on internal topics. I remember being surprised when I stood to comment that one of my barriers to leadership was my inability to keep personally organized. This comment was met by an audible murmur of empathy in the assembly hall, an “aaah,” as if I had made some profoundly insightful statement, like, “The answer to life, the universe, and everything is 42.”

Now, being a composer ensconced in a B-school, I am used to being the one who sounds slightly out of the box, and I tend to find myself being a little more self-divulging than those immediately around me. I also enjoy playing the outsider, trying to approach on the sublime through expounding on the trivial. But here, The Box was about to be reassembled slightly to the left. I was about to be centered.

Sometime during the second day, there seemed to emerge a core of “true believers” here, a group ready and predisposed to make the voyage inward. There was certainly exposure to other personal development theories, ranging from Stephen Covey’s “7 Habits” to Ekhard Tolle’s “A New Earth.” Even the venerable L. Ron Hubbard got a nod. But far beyond a cursory knowledge of such Barnes & Noble Management Section titles, there was assuredly a group of participants that had been previously exposed to the seminar’s methods.

These turned out to be those who had participated in or developed an appreciation for the forums conducted by Landmark Education or Est. Whether this makes them better or worse participants is difficult to measure. For the purposes of the presenters, it probably helps, as there would be less of a need “climatize” the event if most people already have a feel for the flow of it. However, a colleague did point out the potential presence of “survivorship bias.” When those who consider attending opt out for whatever reason, the presence of these True Believers assures a disproportionate amount of participants who are already predisposed to agree with the methods or message.

Analyzing The Seminar Experience: Content And Delivery

To make sense of the experience, I have identified two components of the seminar that I have split into two halves, one of Academic Content and Pedagogy, and another of Seminar Methodology and the Emotional Experience. In general, they are as follows:

Academic Content and Pedagogy	Seminar Methods and The Emotional Experience
· Conceptualizing certain obstacles to the understanding and execution of leadership actions, make interrelations within an organization more efficient, enhance ability to implement principles to understand one another. · Creating a language with which to talk about the ontological and experiential perspective, to get them onto the table, and create some common understanding around them.	· Emotional Reinforcement: exposing deep-seeded emotions and tying those momentary emotions in order to sear in the principle taught with the emotional experience. · This follows Warren Bennis’ theory of the Crucible Moment. · Survivorship Bias: there were early opportunities to opt out if a would-be participant did not foresee a positive participatory bias.

Regarding Academic Content and Pedagogy

I commented in my previous post touching on the Jensen Seminar that there was information of great value to be learned here, and I continue to consider that to be true. There was little at first glance to make me uncomfortable with the topics addressed. The seminar presented in-depth content, presented useful information, and helpful models and techniques that can be proven or disproved through the scientific method.

Much of the information of the seminar – the content, topics, subject matter, call it what you like - was transmitted through the traditional pedagogical methods that we’re all familiar with: reading material, lectures, and slides. In fact, some importance was placed on the reading of the slides while hearing them read aloud, with evidence presented that the combination of reading and listening leads to better comprehension.

There were also “homework” assignments that were done individually and in teams of five. These were mostly completed during a morning and afternoon break, during lunch, or in small group sessions held in the early evening. The subject matter of the assignments was then addressed in a subsequent plenary session.

A Topic of Discomfort

Though I will discuss it more later, I will mention quickly that there was one particular topic that was generally uncomfortable for most attendees. One of our early tasks had us listing what we considered essential traits of leadership, and conversely, what traits must absolutely be excluded from leadership. The ensuing discussion was of particular note because many seemed to struggle with consideration of a wide-open “Realm of Opportunity” with regards to leadership behaviors. That is to say, if we wished to truly address leadership, we must abandon the idea that we can include or exclude leadership traits, whether or not we have a bias for or against them. Rather, we must maintain the view that a leader should avail himself (or herself, of course) of all manner of potential ways of acting.

This, in my thinking, required at least the consideration that long-held notions of right and wrong, moral or immoral, acceptable and unacceptable, or wanted or unwanted needed to be set aside. This was not easy for most. Perhaps if done in concept, say, as part of a philosophy class discussion. Perhaps. But in a discussion that was meant to lead to real life leadership experiences, this was a somewhat uncomfortable suggestion.

I did not consider it too controversial a concept, but later, thinking through the potential ramifications when the freedom to be any way becomes the freedom to act in any way, the practical application of the open realm of opportunity came to concern me.

As I said, more on this in a moment.

The Seminar Methods: Deep Introspection and Emotional Reinforcement

The Jensen Seminar begins with a powerful promise, that it will be a transformational experience. Well-worn systems of conveying information would not stand up to the challenge of such a promise, would it? Indeed, it seemed to me that what differentiated the Jensen Seminar from other leadership “classes” was this embrace of the emotional experience, and its usefulness as a way of confirming or reinforcing the lessons of the seminar.

For those taking a purely analytical bent toward the whole thing, this was less challenging to one’s personal frame of reference (a seminar term of art!); analysis implies an arms-length attitude. I certainly began with that attitude. Yet, as more and more of our time was spent in deep self-analysis (so welcomed by that group of True Believers), I must confess that this actually became enjoyable. Perhaps it was because it circumvented my expectations of a staid, corporate event, perhaps because learning personal details about my peers was simply entertaining. The instructors fielded our questions and comments and sought to guide us toward insights that would be touching and profound. Much of the sharing was deeply personal and intimate. We were asked to consider childhood experiences, earliest recollections. We touched on shortcomings and occasions when we acted without integrity, or had behaved “inauthentically.” Naturally, such observations are going to be revelatory, painful, and powerfully effective as reinforcement of the content of the seminar (particularly when an individual commits to make these revelations in front of a large group of peers, I might add).

The inclusion of such emotional touch points is certainly no accident. For instance, some of the homework assignments included reaching out to people with whom we had acted without integrity, confessing it, and committing to some sort of reparation with them. We listened as trembling voices spoke of the hurt of childhood traumas, or the guilt of recent betrayals committed by or to the participant. Throughout, we treated each other outwardly with empathy and respect, taking our cue from the instructors, who were downright encouraging of this intimate sharing.

While all four instructors participated in the presentation of different topics, Werner Erhard would play the major role in facilitating the analysis of these shared moments of emotion. At times, he would challenge any attempt to cover up, excuse, or otherwise obfuscate inconsistent behavior revealed by a participant. This was especially apparent if there was any resistance to a point of doctrine. His manner of showing “tough love” made me uncomfortable at first, thinking it might offend the stereotyped sensibilities of Europeans accustomed to resisting most things American. It seemed, though, that most folks seemed to go with it, or at least did not show their discomfort openly. I would imagine that the group of True Believers welcomed this. Indeed, they probably attended with the hopes of having this kind of experience.

But herein lies the danger. Or perhaps I should say potential danger, to be fair. The combination of a group of participants primed to share intimate details of their own shortcomings and emotional touch points, and instructors intentionally leading them to that place, could potentially be viewed as a welcoming environment for emotional manipulation.

Granted, learning in connection with a demonstration of emotion is all well and good when it happens organically. It is a “life lesson,” or, in the terms of one of the pre-seminar readings, a “crucible moment,” the types of intense emotional experience that typically accompany life-altering events such as the death of a loved one, a life-threatening situation, career interruption, or the like. Nonetheless, as used in the seminar, was this practice of seeking to extract emotion from the participants an artificial construct meant only to reinforce a learned point? That is to say, were poignant emotional moments being induced so as to “sear in” the seminar content?

If so, it would look like this: a key learning topic is presented as part of the seminar. Certain deeply personal revelations are brought to the conversation as part of the self-analysis that convinces the participant that he or she has acted without integrity in the past, thus leaving the participant feeling inadequate and culpable. The participant is then shown a clear path to redemption if – and usually only if – he or she follows the principles taught in the seminar. By taking that first difficult step during the seminar and in the presence of a large, intimate, and supportive group of peers, the participant experiences a peak emotional moment, or a number of peak emotional moments. These peak emotional moments then pass themselves off as crucible moments. And the intensity of these crucible moments reinforces the lessons learned – again, a “searing in” of the concepts - in the short amount of time available during a multi-day seminar.

It could be thought, then, that in order to fulfill the promise of the seminar, a crucible moment needed to be manufactured in a very brief time frame. There were only five days available to fulfill the promise of transformation. Most transformational periods – real crucible moments – may begin in a single moment (such as the moment one hears that a loved one has died), but usually last much longer. Marines are in boot camp for months. My church mission lasted a year and a half. These experiences stand a much greater chance of providing real insight that will stand the test of time.

Now, the argument could be made that emotional reinforcement of learning is okay, permitted, encouraged, even. In the language of the seminar, it should not be excluded from the “Realm of Possibilities” as a leadership tool (or learning) tool). It is part of any complete “opportunity set.” Indeed, as I coached drum& bugle corps, marching bands and music educators, I found great value in challenging student leaders and professional educators alike to openly address their emotional motivations for participating in music.

But transformation is a strong and intense experience. Naturally, it’s going to open you – quite unexpectedly, perhaps – to new ideas and novel ways of thinking, new options that perhaps you’ve never considered before – never allowed yourself to consider before. Creating a wide-open Realm of Possibilities, in particular, could leave you too open in some ways. It’s exhilarating, yes; liberating. But it may leave you vulnerable to the temptation to let potentially harmful options flow in with these new ideas, thus opening a Pandora’s box of individual personal emotional issues, and injects them into your leadership decision-making process. Emotions might then be confused with insight and true understanding.

Emotion-Based Decision-Making

Beware decision-making based on your emotions of the moment. Making big decisions or committing to significant transformation based on emotion, or during times of emotional flux, creates the potential for disorienting vulnerability: after learning liberating methods of thinking, one reaches a peak emotional state quickly, and then attempts meaningful decision-making based more on the emotion than the analysis. It’s probably obvious to most, but for some people – or perhaps for everyone at some time or another, depending on their ever-changing circumstances – too much introspection leaves one feeling obligated to have some sort of breakthrough, a sort of mandatory “A-ha moment.” And if it is to qualify as truly transformational, it must rock your world, and must do so during the compressed timeframe in which you are feeling thusly motivated. Say, during the few days of a seminar or conference. If not, you didn’t “get it,” or you “wasted your time,” and nobody wants to admit to that.

A brilliantly clear example of successful non-emotional decision-making occurred earlier this year when U.S Airways Captain “Sully” Sullenberger and his co-pilot decided to land their powerless Airbus airliner in New York’s Hudson River. Even when pressed by wide-eyed journalists, Captain Sullenberger was able to describe in cold detail the raw, hard data available to them and the logical basis for making a difficult decision that ultimately saved 155 lives. What to do when the power goes off is something pilots prepare for long before taking to the air for the day. It is something that they train for specifically. On that January day, Capt. Sullenberger was able to tune out emotions, and allowed himself to combine specific emergency training, piloting skills gained from years of experience, and the options offered him by the immediate circumstance – altitude, speed, location, distance from alternate runways, etc. – into a decision that led to the action he ultimately took.

Revisiting “Tears of Passion”

In retrospect, I’ve come to revise my position on a particular moment of the seminar that, in the moment, I considered an especially personally illuminating experience. We all struggled with a certain proposed precept (that no behavior should be excluded as an optional method of exercising leadership. For example, while most people stated initially that cruelty, bullying, or aggression should be excluded from the proper exercise of leadership, there may be situations when those characteristics might be of the utmost necessity, such as during war, when aggression might be the perfectly proper lever to pull on the battlefield). Emotions were elevated, because most of us were being asked to consider ideas that we have always considered anathema to good leadership, or to reject ideas we had always held to be staples of good leadership. Now, in a logical sense, there was no reason to take too much issue with the ideas presented. They were, after all, hypothetical, broad, and – at least as part of an open discussion – harmlessly mostly in their consideration.

But as we all struggled to liberate ourselves from such preconceived notions, one of my seminar peers stood up and asked for clarification. This colleague was faced by the more outspoken of the instructors who challenged somewhat aggressively, really, the idea that a certain qualities were absolutely necessary for leadership. Quickly the moment became charged with emotion.

As the instructor challenged my colleague to look within, to analyze more deeply on the spot, this young person struggled some with the ideas being put forth. There were long pauses, and more than a few stammered, “I don’t knows.” At the end, there were moist eyes and soft tears. An A-ha moment in miniature, surely. The now suddenly kind, empathetic instructor reigned himself in and receded with satisfaction, my colleague sat down. Obviously moved, the group felt this shared emotion: we have faced a difficult point “together” and disabused ourselves of a self-erected barrier to understanding.

But I’m not so sure now.

I, too, was very moved by my colleague’s show of emotion, and later expressed in private my admiration of the courage that was shown, although I also shared my personal agreement on the point of resistance that the instructor sought so diligently to dislodge. But as I look back, it seems to me that the actual point was dealt with for the most part by the time my colleague stood up, and could have been handled with a simple reiteration of the key learning topic still at hand. Instead, what I think I saw was a moment that became artificially charged with emotion. Whether it was the intent of the instructor to gin up an emotion reaction I cannot say, but I think the end result might have been, not an emotional expression of self-realization or discovery, but one of frustration. There was simply no “there” there in the instructor’s point. The emotion, then, was simply the product of being put on the spot and asked to push back against an ephemeral argument. Nothing more.

And therein lies a real problem when anyone is asked to discard their bedrock principles, even in theory: you can’t create values out of a vacuum. Newtonian physics states that for every action there must be an equal and positive reaction. One of the great tenants of my religion states, “there needs be opposition in all things.” To leave your entire values set in a “judgment free” zone is a little like trying to propel oneself forward in zero gravity without anything to push off of.

Please forgive me a music analogy. In jazz improvisation, there is a thing called “playing outside.” This is when a soloist begins using chords and scales that are technically outside of the basic tonality, or “key,” of a given piece. When done skillfully, it can have a great effect, like an adventurous journey off the beaten path that ends joyfully when the improviser brings you safely back to the path in the end. But playing outside successfully requires a solid knowledge of what inside is, a true bearing on where the journey begins. Without that, it just sounds like you’re wandering, like you’re oblivious to what’s going on around you in the song. Or worse, that you don’t care what’s going on, what key you’re in, what your bandmates might be doing, or even what it might sound like to the audience.

The Almost Always Fatal Flaw In Deep Introspection

Herein lies the almost always fatal flaw in these deep internal probes for meaning. You demonstrate your obliviousness to the world around you. You disconnect from the world around you. You may even demonstrate a cruel regard for the world and the people in it with you.

Eventually, you will find your newfound enlightened state failing you when you return to stand under the bright glare of the reality you so hoped to change in the first place. This only leads to even deeper frustration and disappointment.

But worse: in the interim, somewhere between the lofty heights reached during your initial personal exhilaration and the crashing back down to earth that inevitably follows, you may find yourself engaging in some seriously flawed decision-making. You may hurt other people. You might burn a bridge or two. You might build a bridge or two that you shouldn’t. You might disconnect from support systems you previously relied on, never realizing how vital they were to your being able to function until they are gone and you are left to somehow tether yourself without them.

So why does this happen? How? Well, in the simplest of terms, it starts when you make decisions at the height of an emotional peak. I am reminded of a scene in the film (and stage play before that) “A Few Good Men,” in which a young military lawyer (played by Tom Cruise in the movie) is able to goad a belligerent and proud superior officer (Jack Nicholson’s Colonel Jessup) into an emotion-filled outburst that included a courtroom confession to a serious breech of justice, consequences be damned. Likewise, we may find ourselves letting our own emotions talk us into a self-expression that we would otherwise control, take a breath, and reexamine with more calm.

My Issue With Emotional Decision-Making

So why am I suddenly so aware of the role of emotion in decision-making? Why so much attention to the matter in this instance?

Because I wonder if I might have fallen prey to this recently.

No, that is not the right way to put it.

A colleague asked me when I returned whether I found the experience useful, transformational, up to my expectations. I paused, then answered cheekily, “The question is whether I plan now to use my new superpowers for good or evil.” It truly was liberating to be able to think outside my own box, to include in my Realm of Possibilities eye-opening options that I had never really allowed my self to take seriously before. The problem is, I wonder if I didn’t open the barn door too wide. So it’s not a matter of becoming the victim of some nefarious influence, it’s more along the lines of having gone out of bounds, voluntarily suspending the use of my own guiding principles.

Granted, I had front-loaded this trip to Holland with emotional opportunities: a seminar in transformation, a journey in the footsteps of my grandfather, even the week spent on the beaches of my old mission country (for which I still hold immense affection) with my family immediately prior to heading for Europe helped soften me up.

On top of this, the last year or two have not been the easiest for me and mine as I’ve pondered new and exciting career opportunities while at the same time dispatched old or dying ones. I had already determined this summer would be one of renewal, of rethinking certain professional and research goals, yet without a complete idea of what that might mean for the future. In short, I arrived in Rotterdam with every door and window wide open to the winds of change.

The result was experiencing of a little bit of this artificial emotional euphoria that I’ve discussed. Perhaps I should have noticed this, that I found too much charm in an industrial city like Rotterdam, that I was too enamoured of the people I had just met, that my comparisons of the emotional expressions during the seminar sessions to my mission and other experiences with my religious beliefs always left the seminar session lacking, yet I allowed for that lack of meaning without alarm. Yet, with my emotional guard down, I may have mistaken this temporary euphoria as some sort of epiphany, and I found myself ready to embrace some radical change. I was ready to take “responsibility” for the consequences simply because they were of my own creation. The end result was, my being open to certain life options I had never considered seriously before because they simply did not fit into my values system.

What decisions I made or tried to make while in this state is, frankly, beside the point. But the reaction from those people around me is relevant. The True Believers’ sincere reaction was celebratory: “Good for you! You have achieved the breakthrough. You are now free to act however you please!”

The reaction from those people closest to me was much different. It seems that, to a person, each one with whom I shared my new ideas quickly pointed out flaws in my thinking that would have lead to personal and perhaps professional catastrophe. It would have meant almost immediately pain for those around me while leaving myself vulnerable to great potential pain in the future. I was about to create some life-altering consequences that would take me away from what I’ve always held to be the foundation of my decision-making, the foundation of my values, the foundation of my happiness. And I was considering these options not only possible, but logical, permissible, and exciting. Something truly to be hoped for.

Now, have I crashed and burned in the last six weeks? No, not totally, but only because I have that cadre of close intimates who showed me the right mixture of understanding and incredulity, patience and intolerance. I was very fortunate to come home to good people: my beautiful, exceptional, and wise wife; my Dad; my best friend in St. Louis, Mike; my best friend anywhere, Darin; colleagues like Todd, Tom, and Brian; students like Kaitlin and Jimmy.

Those closest to me saw something amiss. And this while I perceived myself as feeling high on myself, enjoying clarity of thought, better health, energy and drive. I say I am fortunate to have come back to them because as I shared with them these new feelings, they, each in their own way, brought observations of this difference in me to my attention. I pushed back on them, played devil’s advocate, tried to make sure theirs were not knee-jerk reactions to an invigorated and empowered me. They weren’t. None of them had any stake in “blowing sunshine up my rear,” as my buddy Darin so poetically put it.

I shudder to think what I would be doing right now had I had the “courage” to turn some of those thoughts into action.

As The Talking Heads Sang, “This Is Not My Beautiful House, This Is Not My Beautiful Wife: How Did I Get Here?”

So how did I get to that point? How did I walk so far out on a limb without noticing the leaves getting thin around me? Where did I go wrong? Well, I’m certainly not laying all this at the feet of the Jensen Seminar on Transformational Leadership; and it’s beyond the scope of this writing to provide empirical evidence that directly ties the concerns that I raise to the observations I’ve made regarding the seminar teaching techniques used here or elsewhere.

But I can point to a number of things that, if I had my druthers, would have gone differently.

Firstly, I’ve already mentioned that I came with a certain amount of emotional baggage I was ready to toss out the door, and that I had preloaded this trip to be personally significant to me. Thus, I started wide-open emotionally, and brought all that emotion into an intensively self-analytical environment that encouraged peak emotions. Pleasantly surprised by the intimacy of the assembled participants and their similarity to my music buddies, I did not maintain sufficient reservations about the deep introspection that seemed incongruent with the idea of a methodic analysis of leadership of a formal organization.

Secondly, I was, indeed, turning life into a song, and contemplating some important decision-making based only on temporary emotional highs.

And thirdly, I thought only of myself. I was looking so deeply inside that I forgot that, perhaps like the analogy of an iceberg being mostly below water, most of our lives are lived outside of ourselves. Truth of the matter is, I had given myself over to some self-centered and ultimately risky thinking. This was selfishness in the highest order. This was blindness to the roles and needs of those around me. This was the ultimate in being “out of integrity.”

Taking Into Account My Own Worldview And Frames Of Reference

As I revisit these points, I cannot deny that my worldview is influenced by two highly significant frames of reference to which I subscribe, and which have become relevant to the situation. They are, as a composer and songwriter, and as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

The Songwriter/Composer Framework As Related To Emotional Decision-Making

Simple as this may sound, there are great lessons to be learned from songwriting about emotions and decision-making. Every song is written with emotion at the center of it. Songs delve into the lowest of lows, or the highest of highs, great pain or great exhilaration. Even the old jazz standards and their “June, Swoon, Moon, Croon” lyrics were all about love at first sight, visions of polka dots and moonbeams, or perfect, endless evenings in Berkeley Square and the like.

But here’s the deal, folks: songs are NOT representative of reality. Would you like to live a life based on – or trapped in – a song?

Consider Berlioz’s opium-fueled nightmare, “Simfonie Fantastique.” Complete with hallucinatory visions of a disappearing and reappearing lust interest at a dance, witches cauldrons, and hell itself. Not to mention a tale of tossing blame for one’s overwrought passions onto another, and fantasies of seeing that other brought low in punishment for one’s own mischief. That’s not fair to the other, or to one’s self. In the language of the Jensen Seminar, it’s not authentic at all.

Or ponder for a moment Sting’s “Every Breath You Take.” A song of undying devotion, or a stalker’s anthem?

If you are adamant about building a future on a song’s gossamer foundation, chances are you’re going to find that life does not fall neatly into place like so many stanzas of lyrics. Emotion-fueled decisions usually fall back down to earth after the particular emotion that breathed life into them fades.

The LDS Framework As Related To Searching Oneself

I do recognize that some of my new European friends might take me to task for my devotion to something so antiquated and unenlightened as “religious dogma” in the first place, or for defending the statutes of organized religion when it has been one of the great closers of minds in all history. Well, you’re right, mankind’s flawed application of eternal principles and godly values as inviolate absolutes – and thus putting us imperfect beings into place as arbitrators of right and wrong – has caused nearly unlimited pain and anguish over the centuries, and has done more than any other force in this world to actually turn people away from the discovery and appreciation of plain and precious truths.

But one of God’s greatest gifts - perhaps, indeed, the greatest gift – is what the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints refers to as free agency: the ability and right to choose and act for ourselves. In point of fact, the LDS church encourages its members to study, ponder, and ask for further enlightenment so as to come to one’s own personal decisions, even on spiritual matters.

For those not familiar with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, other than www.lds.org or www.mormon.org, there are few reliable online resources that will give you an honest representation of what the church is about. That is to say, I would caution you that a Google search will raise more illegitimate questions than all the legitimate answers could possibly contest. But I can assuage the majority of the most common misconceptions by saying just this: if you’ve ever assumed or been told that the Mormon church is like any other particular denomination, that’s not correct. The LDS church is a restoration of organized religion that is at once the most ancient and most modern of belief systems. While we believe that God is the same God of miracles of both the Old and New Testaments, the distinctly “latter day” aspects of the our beliefs include that communication between heaven and earth continues, and that we now have access to everything we need to understand the meaning and purpose of our existence, live it to the fullest, and be a people of humble spirit and great joy.

LDS people tend to be practical, modern, and contemporary. It is true that we don’t drink alcohol, and we don’t smoke. But we do dance and we do date. LDS women do not wear prairie dresses, and the men do not look like 19^th century farmers. We ride in cars, fly in airplanes, and take all sorts of medicine. There is no handling of snakes in our meetings, and the “gift of tongues” is typically interpreted as a young missionary being able to learn a difficult foreign language, say, Dutch, in a short enough time to be an effective missionary for two short years.

As an LDS person, it is my belief that the real answers to what we are and what we’re capable of lies in understanding our eternal nature, and any searching of oneself is typically done in the context of the search for certain eternal truths (or, to quote Indiana Jones’ Last Crusade again, “the search for the divine in all of us.”)Where did we come from? Why are we here? Where do we go next? Is there a plan? These are the questions that ultimately lead us to understand who we are, what we are, and why we are as individuals.

On The Value Of Looking Out, Not In

You’ll never find yourself by looking inward.

The deep, internal search for personal meaning is best executed by looking without. An individual may be profound and mysterious, mostly unlocked secrets. But in the end, an individual is also finite. At some point, you will recognize patterns, attitudes, and structures that are touched on over and again. Even given that we are constantly changing, constantly learning beings, there’s just so much you can learn about whatever state you are in at the very moment you are making your inspection. After that, the needle on the old-fashioned vinyl album rubs up against the label and simply clicks softly; there is no more no more sound to reproduce, no more data to read.

Lose yourself, and you will find yourself.

Christ said, “whosoever shall ^{lose his}^{life for my sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it.”}

The same idea is restated elsewhere thusly:

Let no man be afraid to lay down his ^{life for my sake; for whoso}^{layeth down his life for my sake shall find it again.}

This is not an oath of personal blind devotion to a mystical guru who walked the earth briefly two thousand years ago, but rather a hint that real understanding of self comes with an understanding of the “grand scheme of things,” the “big picture,” the “plan of salvation,” the great eternal round,” whatever you might want to call it, even “being at one with the universe.” It is by nature external to oneself, yet connective, and a synthesizing force as much as it could possibly be introspective. It’s about how we connect to one another, how we combine, how we’re related.

By being part of something else, you use yourself. To use a baseball analogy, nothing happens until someone swings the bat to put the ball in play. At that point, all sorts of things can happen. You need to put yourself in play. As you put yourself in play, you will discover things about yourself - your attitudes, your capabilities – that would otherwise be impossible to awaken without interaction with the world around you, especially without interactions with others.

Even Werner talked of the need to be part of something larger than oneself. I saw this in Japanese culture, where being a member of a music ensemble like a drum & bugle corps or company orchestra filled a cultural need to be part of something.

Service to others is the highest level of interaction with the world around you.

It is productive and meaningful. It uplifts others, and like compound interest, it is a multiplying factor in terms of both your abilities and your usefulness to others. The more you do it, the more useful and capable you become.

This, now that I come to think about it again, is why I yearned to do music in the first regard. From as far back as I can remember seriously considering studies of music and a career in the arts, the root reason was because it would give people a chance to check their troubles at the door for a couple of hours, get lost in the music, and hopefully leave with a refreshed attitude towards whatever it was that was bothering them on the way in.

The joyful byproduct is that I derive immense satisfaction from creating music for others. If people enjoy whatever performance I’m involved in, I sleep very well that night, even if that means sleeping while crammed into a bus seat on another middle of the night crossing of the country (see www.dci.org to see how I spent my summers as a college student). Conversely, if it’s just another background music gig where no one cares what they’re listening to because they’ve come to a bar just to get drunk and hit on each other, then no matter how well I may play individually, I usually leave feeling empty.

On Recognizing Right and Wrong, Good and Evil, and Possessing a Moral Compass

Before leaving the framework of my religious beliefs, I think it is also valuable to point out that I, for a time, also forgot how to recognize what is truly good and useful in life. My religion has always provided me a sensible, calm way of assisting me in making decisions.

I am suddenly mindful of my Paul of Tarsus:

“But the ^{fruit of the}^{Spirit is}^love,^joy,^peace,^{longsuffering,}^{gentleness, goodness,}^faith,^meekness,^{temperance …”}

And my Joseph Smith as well:

“But, behold, I say unto you, that you must ^{study it out in your}^{mind; then you must}^{ask … if it be right, and if it is right [The Lord] will cause that your}^{bosom shall}^{burn within you; therefore, you shall}^{feel that it is right.”}

We are provided ways to recognize right and wrong, good and bad, useful and not. Unfortunately, instead of applying that to what I was learning in Rotterdam, I chose to consider only what would make me feel good, and quickly.

Here is Joseph Smith, referring to Paul in one of my church’s Articles of Faith:

“We believe in being ^{honest, true,}^chaste,^{benevolent, virtuous, and in doing}^{good to all men; indeed, we may say that we follow the admonition of Paul—We believe all things, we}^{hope all things, we have endured many things, and hope to be able to}^{endure all things. If there is anything}^virtuous,^{lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.”}

I saw and experienced so much that was of good report and praiseworthy in my two short weeks in The Netherlands, including at the Jensen Seminar. It is unfortunate that a few things got past the filter, but this was due to my own shortcomings, and not the fault of my religious beliefs or the Jensen Seminar in Transformational Leadership. Is not life a long probationary period during which we attempt to expand out knowledge, stretch our capabilities? “The journey is the thing,” said Homer, and aviation writer Richard Bach (Jonathan Livingston Seagull) reminded us that “nothing is by chance.” If so, then everything that happens to us gives us experience from which we learn. Some of that learning comes at a great cost, yet other lessons end in great joy.

But it cannot be ignored or glossed over that even the act of learning through our experiences imply that there is right and wrong, good and evil, proper and improper. A child burns his hand on the stove and learns something: it hurts, and damages your body. It’s “bad” to touch a hot stove. A teenage violinist practices long hours and is rewarded with a solo in a concert, after which a dozen friends tell her how much they enjoyed it. She learns that the “sacrificing” her time by practicing meant gaining the respect of her friends and peers. Practice and preparation are good. Getting burned pains us, garnering praise makes us feel good.

When others ask me how I feel about being a person of faith, what is it that makes me believe even when there are so many doubts and distractions in the world, I always break it down to one thing: when I’ve lived my life in harmony with what my belief system teaches me, I tend to feel good about myself and the world, even when the circumstances that surround me are not perfect. On the other hand, at those times in my life when I’ve lived outside of the norms to which I typically adhere, things tend not to go so well for me internally, no matter what amount of worldly good fortune I may experience. I feel doubtful, insecure, not right.

Conclusions And Recommendations

In a nutshell, here is what is good or even great about the Jensen Seminar.

The Seminar techniques and content, where they touch on leadership, consideration of others during leadership, and analysis of the experience of leadership, are great.

In another nutshell, here are my concerns with the seminar:

On Jettisoning The Moral Compass

I remain impressed by the content except for consideration of a wide-open Opportunity Set or Realm of Possibility without a caveat that supports the necessity of some sort of grounding.

After providing this wonderful toolkit for dealing with diverse leadership opportunities and the others in your organization, the seminar intimates that in order to use that toolkit one must throw away previous conceptions of right and wrong, moral and immoral, good and bad. This is encouraged by the position that holding onto such preconceptions means that one would opt to not include them into the possible options for one’s behavior as a leader. This then keeps in place barriers that prevent the natural expression of one’s true self, and hence, true leadership.

I also suspect there is a fundamental flaw in the following statute from the method:

“You can maintain your integrity even when you need to break your word as long as you say you’re going to break your word when you come to realize you are going to break your word.

What kind of integrity is that? Even if you accept that you will need to “deal with the consequences,” as the method requires, when you are free to choose your own moral boundaries, the possible ways of dealing with them range from personal paralysis to an unconcerned, “I did it. So What?”

Everyone getting to choose their own individual moral boundaries does not lead to cohesive social rules within a group.

I hope you’ll forgive another baseball analogy, but this notion of a boundary-free criteria set conjures up images of trying to play the game with all eighteen players using their own individual sets of rules. This would be a chaotic free for all, and I fear that the idea of open opportunity sets with no common fundamental guidelines for preserving your integrity would look the same in any organized activity.

The Artificiality of Induced Crucible Moments

The Seminar appears to attempt to induce artificial crucible moments by creating heightened emotional moments – peak emotional moments – meant to sear in the lessons of the seminar with affective reinforcement.

Some people will find this manipulative. Others, who perhaps lack the opportunity to express their sincere emotions through other outlets, may find this to be welcome, even pleasurable.

Decision-Making Based on Peak Emotional Moments

Seminar techniques include emotional reinforcement, and try to get you to feel an emotional peak moment in a compressed timeframe. I suspect such emotional button-pushing leads to the injection of emotion into decision-making. Coupled with of a wide-open Opportunity Set without a support structure that includes moral boundaries, this may lead to bad decision-making based on artificially-induced emotional highs.

There is real danger in attempting to make important and potentially life-changing decisions while still “under the influence” of these peak emotions, especially if the decision maker has bought into the idea of throwing off previously relied-on concepts of right and wrong. That combination can result in decisions both based on emotions, and made without guiding principles that the decision-maker might use as a “moral compass” to help determine whether this decision is a good one or not.

My Recommendations

Teach the Jensen Seminar content complete, but without the deep self-analysis, emotional reinforcement piece.

Continue to include the concept of a limitless opportunity set, but then teach the necessity of a “moral compass” of some sort. There are a number of options to choose from. In a Jesuit school such as Saint Louis University, religion-based moral compasses, such as a Christ-centered life, should be permissible. “For Others” is a moral compass included in the SLU Mission Statement. Even the Communist Manifesto’s “to each according to his needs, from each according to his means” is one, as is Mein Kampf. (Personally, I would have a tough time adhering to either, but they can be considered!) Duty-bound or patriotism – God, Family, Country – is one. Also, look at the integrity research done by academic institutions such as the University of Michigan’s Positive Organizational Scholarship (POS) folks for support.

Remove the deep personal introspection from the teaching of content. Do this by not focusing on internal personal issues. No confessions, no analyzing your own intimate defects/out of authenticity issues. Keep self-inspection in the context of leadership situations. This is even more to the point of answering the question of what it is like to be a leader.

This helps eliminate the deep emotional element from the seminar. This helps eliminate decision-making at Peak Emotional moments.

My Recommendation For Individuals Considering Participation

Whether you go for leadership insights or for personal development, go into this already well grounded. In spite of the soul-searching being an attractive feature of these kinds of endeavors, if you are one of those feeling lost, disoriented, or not in possession of a firm moral compass, an event like this one might not be for you just now. Don’t look for morality, right or wrong, good or evil, or anything you might want to call “The Truth” in any seminar.

But do start on your own personal solid ground so that, once the seminar has disabused you of the notion that your old belief system can be counted on and has left you delirious and floating in an open sky of consequence-less choices, you’ll have somewhere solid to land.

That’s it. As I said before, I mean no malice toward anyone with these comments. I have reviewed them and tried to moderate the language so that you will understand my appreciation for the seminar content while at the same time voicing my concerns. I hope you will leave comments for me, and others, to encourage proper study of a fitting subject.

Walking In a Grandfather’s Footsteps

2009-07-12T01:02:00.005-05:00

One of the things that I learned from my father’s career as an airline pilot has nothing to do with the flying or discipline or the commerce of the actual job. What I learned is that the best way to make the acquaintance of a new city is to

walk it. My Dad has had the extraordinary good fortune to have seen the world and many of its great capitals. And in each one he has spent great amounts of time walking their streets. London, Paris, Rome, Tel Aviv, New York, and the list goes on. While still a young teen, he took me to Boston and walked me all over the city: along the Freedom Trail from Paul Revere’s house, through the open markets of Haymarket, from the Commons and Back Bay to the Fens. Because of that early experience, I fell in love with that city, and got into the proper habit of being comfortable using my feet as my primary transportation, where I can hear

the noises of the place I’m in, smell the food, hear the voices of the people around me.

As a young Mormon missionary, I continued to appreciate these kinds of experiences. While it is typical to see missionaries on bicycles or in cars in varying parts of the world, in Venezuela we were on foot, taking public transportation when necessary. My father’s experiences in Peru in the 1960s were the sam

e, and it looks like my grandfather’s in Holland were similar, though he and his companions certainly used the fietsen (bikes) like the natives.

Amsterdam and the other cities of The Netherlands offer as beautiful a walking experience as any other country in the world. At times I would consciously consider what the streets I followed might have been like over seventy years ago. What did Holland’s Elder Carr, as missionaries are titled, see, smell, hear, and take note of? Did he feel the same sort of comfort that I did while I was there? Yeah, I really felt good there, some sort of peace that defies logic a little bit, maybe, connected me to the place like few other places I’ve been.

In the 1930s, the missionaries used a journal with formatted pages provided by the mission to track their work: how many contacts? How many lessons taught? How much territory covered? By the 1980s, we used a yellow cardstock sheet and reported in by phone at the end of every week. We put a premium on being productive and kept these stats meticulously. So did Boice. But Boice, to his credit, also filled this journal with personal notes, pictures, concert ticket stubs, train passes, and a whole host of other things that added so much more context to an otherwise cut and dried numerical

accounting of his two-plus years in The Netherlands.

I loved his personal notes. At the end of every day, he would add a single sentence, or just a few words. I suppose a person of today’s generation would compare this to a “tweet” on Twitter, or one’s Facebook status. Boice used them to boil down his thoughts on the day’s accomplishments or challenges. They are at times humorous, pensive, intensely personal, or circumspect, and always very honest. If he had a bad day, he would say so. If he felt unproductive, he noted it. And the opposite, of course. In those comments one gets a glimpse of the

totality of experience, of how a single life is part of something so grand and so encompassing as the passing of history. In one simple comment in 1936, Boice commented, “There is going to be war.” On later pages he kept track of the number of English lessons he taught in Germany in 1938. No names, no addresses, only a simple number in a tiny box in the rows for each day, in a column marked “Eng. Lessons.” There are unknown and unrecoverable stories behind each of those numbers, families and individuals facing challenges that make my present day life seem worry-free and idyllic.

Through these little notes, I know my grandfather struggled with some of the same personal dedication and productivity issues that I experienced in Venezuela fifty years later. One of my problems in the mission was separating my fascination with the country, the culture, and the people from my work as a representative of the church and the gospel. He made mention of Dutch girls once, which I could really appreciate now that I’ve met a few and seen them on their bikes. It seems he liked dancing, or at least dances, as he noted many of them in his notes. He swam to stay in shape, and he noted whenever they would bicycle for fun. (I wonder if the Dutch see biking as fun, or is it simply their primary source of conveyance, sans romanticism?)

My grandfather kept track of his performing and the concerts that he attended. There is one note that made me burst out in tears the first time I saw it. He said, “Made the violin sing today.” This type of comment goes right down to a musician’s soul. That is, after all, the great achievement that every instrumentalist strives for: to command your chosen instrument so that it expresses itself as naturally as you would express yourself with your own voice. And he got there, and experienced a moment special enough that he wanted to record it for posterity. Then, over sixty years later, someone read it and got it. It was just wonderful.

So walking about Holland became something like that for me every day of the trip. I was slowly but surely “getting” Holland. If the people of Holland in the 1930s were anything like the people of Holland today, this was probably not difficult for my grandfather. He seemed to be a legitimately social person, likable and willing to like others. We enjoyed both Delft and Haarlem. The charms these places still possess are not lost on those who have made them slightly touristy today. But how much more fascinating they must have seemed in 1936 to a young boy from California, even one from such sophisticated places as San Francisco and Berkeley.

There is a great advantage to being able to walk up close to something like a church begun in the 13th century, a canal so filled with Lilly pads you imagine being able to step off of the banks and walk across the water. The walking experience is so superior to whizzing past in a car, as it allows you to slowly see one neighborhood fade into the next, and it gives your eye time to capture what the place is now, and gives your mind time to imagine what it may have been. Thus it was with the Beesten Maarkt in Delft, a small plaza used for centuries as a market for selling animals. It is filled with outdoor cafes now, and in both iterations it was a central gathering point for business in Delft. Surely my grandfather passed by the Beesten Maarkt as he criss-crossed the town doing the Lord’s work.

I came across a violin shop there, with a window display of raw materials and parts of violins in progress. I know that Boice bought a violin in Utrecht. The receipt is in his journal. I imagine at some point he stood in front of a shop window just like that one, analyzing the craftsmanship, reading the descriptions of where the best wood comes from and how it is used in the instrument. I wonder if the price – in Guilders – was a lot back then.

Recently, my sister put a note under my earlier post about Holland during World War II, noting what a remarkable story our grandfather is if, more than seventy years on,

we are still fascinated by and pursuing even the minutiae of his life. I couldn’t agree more. Yet, as much as we consider him special and unique and cherished, every family, every member of every family, may leave such fascination in his or her wake. My grandmother did graduate work at Cal Berkeley in the 1940s, no easy accomplishment for a woman and single mom in those days. She remarried to a man who played baseball against guys like DiMaggio and Musial during the war. My grandmother on my mother’s side was from Madrid, and fled to South America during the Spanish Civil War. My Peruvian grandfather – my step-grandfather – was a prototype Indiana Jones, guiding archeologists through the Andes Mountains on horseback with a rifle strapped to his saddle.

Are we of my generation going to be as fascinating to our descendants? Sometimes my Contemporary American Life seems dull and pedestrian in comparison to those of my ancestors. I drive to work with hundreds of thousands of others, one to a car, clogging the highways and burning gas. I work in an air-conditioned building with a cafeteria just across the atrium. I go to meetings, I have lunch a lot. I lament the past usefulness of my so-called music career, and sometimes I downright paralyze myself over trivial decisions, such as whether or not I should look at ratemyprofessors.com. I wonder if my descendants will see me as the ultimate navel-gazer, self-absorbed, self-obsessed, oblivious to my real human potential, analyzing every new wrinkle on my own face, standing with my back to the world while it twists and spins out of control.

It doesn’t have to be that way, you know. Sometimes we get discouraged: the world is a big place. What can one person do? But there is a simplistic answer to that question:

Do SOMETHING.

The world is indeed a big place, and that means there is virtually limitless opportunity to have an effect. Most of us will never have our hands on the kinds of levers of power that would allow us to change the world in one fell swoop, but can anybody wield that power? Should anybody? Still, each one of us is capable of doing SOMETHING, and we see the needs all around us.

Of course, as we delve deeper into the ramifications of accepting that we are capable of doing something, then we have to choose what. First, accept that our individual contributions are valuable, even if they may not appear to alter the course of history. My grandfather did not set off for Holland with the intention of changing the world wholesale, and in the grand scheme of things, he really didn’t. But for himself, his future family, for all those with whom he came in contact, sharing the gospel or teaching English, he did alter paths. He changed THEIR world, and his.

So if I’ve learned anything from this trip, it would be that it is high time to get out of myself and stop replaying my alleged tales of woe, that there are things to do, actions to be taken. In Rudyard Kipling’s “If,” he states,

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;

If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;

This is the yoke that I would like to throw off of my shoulders. I would like to move more readily from thought to action. And though I have no idea whether my contributions are to be large or small, useful or ignored, or venerated by the many, that is not the point. The purpose of action is to serve others without regard to any self-aggrandizement caused by what we choose to do to affect the world around us. We must simply put one more oar in the water and pull toward that better place.

Amsterdam: The Red Light District

2009-06-28T21:43:00.001-05:00

I promise you, I have a very unique tale to tell about my experience with the world-infamous Red Light District of Amsterdam!

It starts with my Dad and I looking for the Oude Kerke, an ancient cathedral that was somewhere at the north end of the area designated broadly as the Red Light District on our tourist map. My Dad says, “Well, your mother said we should go by here just for cultural reasons, so we might as well so we can say we did it.” Seeing as how it was only about four or five in the afternoon, and it stays light until after ten, I figured this might be a low traffic, low excitement visit. And indeed it was.

Here is the sum total of what I saw in the Red Light District: a sex toys shop or two, a video “cinema” or two, and four prostitutes behind the famous glass doors. Two of them were at best mildly (and I stress the word “mildly”) attractive, and two were downright ugly (and I stress the word “ugly”). Like the details of a bad car wreck, I may never shake the image of the one dark, hair dyed multicolored, overweight older woman blowing kisses and waving at a blushing, short, round, bald passerby with an embarrassed elfin grin.

Yeah, I suppose that’s what you get on the early, early shift. But that’s not why the story is unique. Later that night, back at the hotel, I wrote an email to my wife mentioning casually that we had been to the Red Light District and that there was nothing there worth, well, writing home about. So the next day I get a reply, not from my wife, but from our nine year old, Sofi, WRITTEN MOSTLY IN CAPITALS! Uh-oh, I thought already. Seems that Sofi read the email before my wife did. And, not knowing what the Amsterdam “Red Light District” is, she did what any clever, computer-literate nine year old would do.

She Googled it.

Hence, the REPLY IN MOSTLY CAPITALS.

It began with “HOW COULD YOU GO TO A PLACE LIKE THAT??!!” and ended with, “No wonder Mommy BLOWS UP at you sometimes!!!”

After getting over the shock, and mumbling something to myself about mothers and daughters, I was proud to reply back honestly that I hadn’t gone back that way since, had no plans to go back that way, and furthermore, I promised Sofi that I would NEVER, EVER go to a place like that again, on this trip or any other. I know, everyone is saying, “Sure, Professor.” And it’s true, I must admit, that I’m as human as the next guy. But there is something about promising your daughters that is like no other oath you could ever take. And since keeping this promise will ultimately benefit me more than anyone else, I think I shall take great pride in honoring this one.

So there. That’s a fairly different Red Light District experience, don’t you think?

World War II Happened Here

2009-06-28T21:40:00.003-05:00

This was a very moving part of my trip here. My grandfather’s story is inextricably linked to the war because although he left Holland in 1938 to study music in Munich,

his English tutoring activities in Germany speak very quietly to the facts of the times: a rising power was beginning to classify and judge entire peoples whole cloth: first Jews and behavioral “deviants”, then entire countries and cultures. When Germany invaded The Netherlands in May of 1940, it took them just days to take it all. Then incredible cruelty was enacted here, as in other places. Of the 140,000 Jews who lived in Amsterdam before the invasion, fully 107,000 did not survive the war. Jews were prohibited from working, then offered wartime work in Germany. Those who opted to move ended up going directly to concentration camps.

A visit to the Anne Frank House in the Jordaan district of the city really brings these things home in simple pictures and a tour through the tight quarters of the family’s hiding place over a small warehouse. So moving for me was a piece of preserved wallpaper, where pencil marks measured the kids’ growth while they lived in silence, unable to even walk around while the workers in the warehouse below were present. Then to know their fate – death for all but the father in concentration camps – and to know their story was by no means unique.

As per Otto Frank’s wishes, the rooms are bare now, not at all reconstructed or dramatized. There were a very few pictures of the interior of the rooms during their hiding, including one in particular, Peter’s Room, in which you can see very clearly the ladder to the attic that exists right in front of you. But you can also see how the furniture was positioned around it, and it’s obvious that a young boy lived there. Now, stripped of the bed, the decks, and the paper clippings and photos pinned on the walls, the empty room with its aging walls and the silence spoke in volumes about the eternal absence of the little boy who lived there.

Also around the city you’ll find large plaques featuring a black and white photo taken from that spot during the war. They would show something like a German army fortification in Rembrantsplein, for example, or a Nazi rally in the mueseumsplein. After looking down at the photo and then looking up, you can see clearly the same buildings before you that existed in the picture. The spookiest ones for me were in the Museumsplein - depicting the rally “celebrating” Germany’s opening the Russian Front – with the long red banners and ranks of German soldiers and uniformed “dignitaries” on a large stage. Another showed Heinrich Himmler himself, reviewing a new, Nazi-controlled police force, with his arm out in the Nazi salute. There in the background is the perfectly clear image of the Concertgebouw, where I had just spent that magical evening listening to the Netherlands Philharmonic. It just made the hairs on my arms stand up. Here, truly evil people existed, did their dirty work, walked right where I was standing.

One of my favorite lines from any movie is in the third Indiana Jones film, when Indy mutters to himself, “Nazis. I hate these guys.” A visit to Holland reminds you that “these guys” were not invented by Steven Spielberg to move a plotline forward. The U.S. did indeed make great sacrifices to rid the planet of the Nazis, but the war was not fought in the U.S. We were spared the horror of what happens when people like them live among you, control you, send you to concentration camps in another country just because you hid a radio, spilt the blood of your neighbors to send you a message: behave, or else.

The Dutch Resistance Museum

Just in front of the main entrance to the Amsterdam Zoo (USD$27 to get in, all you St. Louisans spoiled by having a world class zoo that we can get into for free), is a non-descript building that houses the Dutch Resistance Museum, which categorizes the ways in which the citizens of The Netherlands survived the Nazi occupation from May of 1940 to the war’s end in May of 1945, a full five years of oppression that began with a five day blitzkrieg and the complete leveling of center of Rotterdam by the Luftwaffe. Certainly, Rotterdam’s status as Europe’s largest industrial port gave it strategic importance, but the flattening of the city itself also helped to serve as a message to the newly vanquished Dutch: more of this can come.

The museum offers an interesting look at life in Holland during the world wide great depression of the Thirties, which was of great interest to me as that was when my grandfather was here. An older Dutch person I met at church said my grandfather was lucky to leave when he did, as he was here for bad times, but they would have been much worse for him in Europe doing the war. I suppose that goes without saying, except that his leaving Europe meant that his life would not last five years more.

The Resistance Museum also helped us put in context some amazing details from a letter written in 1946 to my grandmother by a friend of my grandfather’s in Utrecht. This must have been so trying a personal time for this man, a father whose family had felt the brunt of the occupation, yet somehow survived. He mentioned hiding his radio in the floorboards of the house, and when Germans discovered it, they put him in prison, then sent him to a labor camp in Germany. For hiding a radio! The museum put that in context by explaining that the mass confiscation of radios occurred after something called the Milk Strike, when Dutch farmers and market people succeeded in freezing the distribution of food products. The Germans, fearing the Dutch were coordinating these actions through secret codes in their radio broadcasts, decided to simply take all the radios. So anyone who hid a radio was considered a member of the underground and arrested.

One thing you get from the museum is that the Dutch Resistance was not really all that organized. There were different factions that grew from pre-war social factions: Protestant, Catholic, those faithful to the crown, and Communists who were already trying to gain a political foothold after the economic turmoil of the depression. Still, they created some clever chaos by blowing up the records offices, for example, so that they could use their forged identity papers to move about the city more easily. But there were so many examples of Dutch who resisted for years, with Hollywood blockbuster-like close calls, only to be caught in the later years of the war and be sent to their deaths in concentration camps.

Interestingly, this friend of my grandfather escaped Germany and walked back to Holland after the city he was in, Kissell, was devastated by Allied bombers. 40,000 dead in one and a half hours. He mentions “800 bombers,” so this surely sounds like one of the infamous “millennial raids,” so called because it meant over 1,000 Allied aircraft were used to execute the mission with escorts and other support aircraft included.

His letter also described black market food price and women having to walk all the way out to the farms to get the food because it was too dangerous for men to be caught on the streets. He spoke of enduring the winter with no heat of wood, giving their only scraps of bread to their children and going without themselves.

I wonder how, in just half a century, these experiences translated into the Dutch being some of the friendliest, most open people I’ve ever met in my travels. One would think there would be bitterness and suspicion built up to last a thousand lifetimes. But perhaps the opposite occurred. Maybe the lesson is that life is too short to get overly concerned with simple differences or minor disagreements when much, much worse is a proven possibility. And just as survivors of tragedies create lifelong bonds between them, the Dutch have decided to greet each other with the hand of friendship and a triple kiss on the cheeks.

What the Composer Has Learned From Van Gogh

2009-06-28T21:38:00.001-05:00

1. Vincent Van Gogh didn’t begin his art career until he was twenty-seven years old! It’ never too late to start.

2. “I find it ready-made in nature,” said Van Gogh about the composition of his paintings. Is there an analogy for music I can follow? A chord is a sound of nature, or a natural sound. Perhaps it is to not delve too deeply into the theory and simply use the chords as they sound.

3. I say I love my work, yet the physical keeping of that work is in disarray. If I truly love it, I would care for it better, organize it, and keep it in order.

4. Van Gogh was adept in various styles, not just “his” style. He allowed himself to be influenced by other styles and schools, e.g., Paris’s Impressionists (he totally changed his color pallet, allowing for so many new colors, and brightness and lightness), the Pointillists and other Minimalists. Step back and take quick glance around the gallery walls and you will see how he abandoned his earlier, darker, backlit style for the bright, almost unbounded pallet of his Paris. Could this be in part because he did start his career later, that he was never locked into one style or school he was good at early, and therefore stuck with it because it was inculcated into his earliest “language” of art?

5. Van Gogh only had a ten-year career. Ten Years! Yet everywhere you look in the gallery, there are many, many masterworks. I could labor my whole life and not successfully reproduce just one of these. There are also countless drawings, sketches, and even little illustrated additions in his letters to his brother showing how he envisioned the finished works to look and be displayed. Such an enormous amount of work he got done. Like Mozart, Da Vinci, and Michelangelo, Van Gogh’s output was stunningly large. He was so productive. And while it may possibly be that some of his work was not exceptional (in his eyes perhaps; we will find any Van Gogh exceptional in retrospect), he did so much of it that there were many more “greatest hits” as well.

6. Connections. Boats are flowers, he dreamt of working side by side with friends in Arles, with whom he would swap paintings, portraits of one another (with Gauguin, in particular). Van Gogh sought to link his works to others, and link his images to yet other images you would see only if your mind made the connection.

7. Deliberate, practiced study. Stepwise goals.

8. Synthesis. Van Gogh put it all together: styles, schools, different brush strokes and techniques on a single canvas, colors, people, and places. There doesn’t seem to be anything in his life or his experience of life that he didn’t include in his art and vice versa. Note in particular some of the larger strokes of his 1889-1890 works, right at the end of his life: are some of these signs of impatience? Are the unevenesses a sign of his losing focus?

The Details

I spent an afternoon in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam’s musemsplein (with Michael Franks’ song, “In The Yellow House,” lilting softly in the background of my thoughts). When in Holland, one cannot escape the fact that over the centuries this country has inspired such wonderful schools of painting. The Dutch Maters, Vermeer in Delft, The Netherlands appreciates its artistic heritage. This includes the wonderful collection of Van Goghs at the Van Gogh museum on the musemsplein, just southeast of our hotel, and a short walk from the Concertgebouw.

There are two buildings with Van Gogh Museum emblazoned on them here. One is a modern curve of stainless steel that looks like an Eero Saarinen design, though I never verified that it was (Americans would recognize his work from the St. Louis Arch and the venerated TWA Terminal 5 at JFK). This building is under renovation, so for now, the entire collection is housed in the newer building closer to the street. Someone told me along the way that currently there are a number of Van Gogh’s works that are on loan from other museums across the world, thus making this a special time in which more of his work is on display in one place than ever before.

It was worth the look. It’s nice that the display is mostly chronological, and the commentary on the placards is enough to add some perspective without overwhelming the visitor with arcane detail.

I was really thrilled by it. No matter where you stood on the floor, the great works surround you. At times I would stop, pull out a pen and try to capture some of my thoughts of the whole experience.. I wonder if anyone thought that odd, this American scribbling notes onto the back of his admission ticket (my “eintrittskarte”). Probably not. I’m sure the display inspires many, from the next generation of Van Goghs to the arts wannabes like myself, who sit there in awe for spell.

Amsterdam: First Impressions

2009-06-28T21:34:00.001-05:00

Toto, we’re not in Rotterdam anymore!

Amazing, the change from one city to another. Amsterdam is a bustling, sprawling beautiful European metropolis. Separate mazes of canals and narrow streets criss-crossing one another. So many people on the weekend. We have enjoyed the crowds surging up and down busy shopping and walking streets.

But ever more so than in Rotterdam, beware the bicycles! They seem to go faster here, and there are so many of them! The trams ply the narrow streets at moderate speed, with a single bell to chime their presence and scare tourists off of the tracks. There are also buses, and a few cars. I filmed a UPS truck parked at the top of one of the little bridges over the canal. Would’ve made a good advertisement.

What a wonderful city. It’s as if it were built all those centuries ago just to be beautiful. Everywhere you look, something interesting: a canal, a bridge, a boat, a building facade that looks like it’s falling forward, a tweedehande (second hand) shop in a basement. There is a street of antiques, another of boutiques. There are lawyer’s offices with polished, engraved brass plaques on the doors, just yards from graffiti-splashed delivery doors. The distinctly non-coffee shop aroma of the coffee shops spills into the streets.

Most of the avenues leading out away from the Centraal Station like spokes are heavily touristy. But it’s easy to cut back and forth along the smaller perpendicular streets to find a calmer taste of the city. There is little pollution; any city with so many bicycles should be this way. Besides, the trams are electric.

A visit to Amsterdam can be a sort of pilgrimage. For art lovers, there is Van Gogh, Rembrandt, the Dutch Masters School. For boaters, there are all manner of floating vehicles, from dinghies to yachts, moored along the canals. For those seeking an embarrassing wealth of personal freedom, there’s always the Red Light District (more on my unique experience with the Red Light District in another note). And I’ve already talked plenty about all the music there in the city.

But the thing that really touched me the most, the thing that draws me the strongest to this city, is it is a complete pleasure to walk it. It is in turns crowded and quiet, winding and direct, boisterous and bucolic. I loved scooting along one of the tourist-oriented shopping streets, such as the Liedestraat, swarming with the shopping bag-toting women, dodging the trams, peering into the windows of the endless line of designer boutiques. But then, take a quick left or right onto a street that follows a canal, and you’re in a whole different world. You find yourself walking in the shadows of the 18^th century mansions, along tree lined streets, hearing the water lapping against the boats tied alongside, and the occasional swish and rattle of a proper Dutch bicycle passing by.

On these streets I found the second hand record store with the shopkeeper who knew – actually knew – something about French film composer Michel Colombier. I discovered boutique of designer clothes by a woman from the Czech Republic, with that country’s peasant tradition romanticized beautified into gossamer creations, worn, by the way, by the shop girl, a personal friend of the designer, and a most beautiful example of why peasant chic is absolutely adorable. There were kids lunching at a platform over the water, tossing bread crumbs to ducks.

Then, when you’re ready, back to the streams of people. I loved it all.

The European Launch of the Jensen Leadership Seminar At Erasmus University, Rotterdam

2009-06-27T17:48:00.003-05:00

(A NOTE: Please make sure to read the later post, "Revisiting The Jensen Seminar," for further discussion of the seminar and its methods, including some in-depth analysis of the pros and the cons of the seminar content and methods.)

The original justification for this trip was to attend the European Launch of the Jensen Leadership Seminar, presented by Michael Jensen, Werner Erhard, Steve Zaffron and Kari Granger, 8 – 12 June 2009, at Erasmus University in Rotterdam. The topic for the occasion: “Being A Leader and The Effective Exercise of Leadership: An Ontological Model.”

About 100 people from all over the world attended to explore a new approach to teaching leadership, from cabinet-level government leaders to undergraduate students, for five days of analysis of how one makes the transformation into being capable of meaningful and effective leadership, both personal and organizational. I could go into so much detail – after all, this is all we did from 9am to 6:30pm each day, plus outside assignments. Before the seminar I joked good-naturedly that I was about to embark on one of my favorite activities, navel-gazing ad nauseum, and at the highest –levels I’ve experienced yet.

I must confess that I entered this seminar experience perhaps a bit of an over-analytical attitude: I wanted to sit back and observe, to see if a single week of instruction could lead anywhere near the promises made of an innovative way of addressing the “being of leadership.” IN the end, I found the methods learned to be insightful and very useful in creating a sincere, circumspect, and even ethical leadership model, as well as a valuable way of looking at life for any person truly interested in making their interaction with the world around them more understandable and more productive. It was not a sprinkling of pixie dust, nor was it any sort of “self-help” event in which one leaves with an artificially inflated sense of self. No cheerleading, but a useful experience. I came away with the idea that any individual who wishes to lead or an organization that hopes to benefit from true, authentic leadership should embrace the concepts learned here.

The added benefit for me, personally, was absolutely falling in love with the people with whom I shared the week: My study group, Raymond, Javier, George, and tall blonde Judith. There was also her boyfriend Marc from London, the dark-haired Judith, Judith from the school in Switzerland, Toos, Marijn from Bulgaria, Johanna from Finland, Barbara from the U.S., Bill the Australian from Ireland, Bart the attorney, and so many others that I should probably not write more lest I forget to name someone who specifically was a great influence on me.

I know I’ve said this before and will no doubt say it again, but the Dutch people are such friendly, incredible people. I told blonde Judith recently that I truly felt welcomed into their circle, and I will always feel this way. As a group, they really reached out to those of us who were from other parts of the world and made us feel comfortable and welcome.

Svetlana The Musicologist, And Other Artists

2009-06-24T10:52:00.000-05:00

Perhaps it is simply being in one of the cosmopolitan capitals of the world, or just a city of some size. Perhaps it is the fact that people are outside – out of doors, in the trams, riding their bicycles where they have access to one another. But somehow, I find myself coming across the most incredibly interesting people with musical and artistic talent and interest. Case in point, the train ride up from The Hague today, in rapt conversation with the woman who sat next to us. Her name was Svetlana, a pianist originally from Bulgaria, who had become a musicologist, with a specialty in contemporary classical composition! And when John Cage is the first composer’s name she drops, you know it’s someone in the know.

So we had this wonderful conversation about contemporary composition and the differing American and European schools, and why the Netherlands has become a focal point for a new sort of “Dutch School” (due mostly to people coming intentionally to escape certain strict conventions in their home countries). We discussed the role of improvisation as a starting point for composition, and its place in modern classical performance.

Just a wonderful thing!

After the concert last night, I walked up to two of the violinists after the concert and we spoke for a while. I mentioned I was from St. Louis, and the one said, “Ah, Hans Vonk,” the late conductor of the SLSO after Leonard Slatkin. But how incredible to have a conversation with such people outside the concert hall!

One sees guitars, violins, indeed instruments of all kinds being carried around town. Even cellists ride their bikes with the cello case strapped to their backs. There is also an incredible collection of street musicians around the tourist areas. Everything from pennywhistle to mariachi-style bands, to – my personal favorite – a string bass player who stands on a podium and taps his foot on a tambourine every backbeat (beats 2 and 4 for you non jazzers), and sings and plucks old jazz standards. All this while wearing a white shirt and tie, and loose fitting lightweight suit, and a fedora or straw boater.

But there is also a melancholy side to it. Last night, as I was walking back from a late night watching the goings on in the Liedesplein (more on this in a second), a young fellow stopped me and asked if I speak English. He said he was from New Zealand and asked if I could spare just a Euro or two because he was saving up for a plane ticket home. He had come to Amsterdam, so his story continued, because he was a songwriter and wanted to find a place more open to his music. Now, after a couple of months, he found it as impossible to progress here as he had at home, and was giving up.

Now, it seemed pretty clear to me that he had more challenging personal issues other than simply being a frustrated songwriter, but he went on at length to describe those frustrations: how to network into community where professionals will listen to his music, how a partnership with a singer turned out great for her, but not for him, whether he should buy an expensive hard disc recorder to record demos, how to get his demos in the hands of the correct decision-makers. In essence, all of the issues that “serious” musicians face every day of their careers.

A cynical, self-defeating thought occurred to me as he spoke: this is exactly what I must sound like when I pontificated to my wife about the travails of the music business. She has very sincerely told me that when one of these spells overcomes me, she no longer listens to a word I say. No wonder; whether on the streets of Amsterdam or over the kitchen table, it sounds like crazy talk.

Hence the melancholy. I often relate a story about an acquaintance who claimed to have the ears of a world-renown celebrity’s staff with regards to his proposal that the celebrity lead the entire world in the simultaneous chanting of a mantra for world peace of his invention. I use this to illustrate how hard it is to tell the truly able and gifted artists from the crackpots: put yourself in the place of that celebrity staffer who has to listen to and sort out which are the serious proposals and which are the ranting of someone breathing too much of their own pixie dust. At first blush, Normal People, as I like to call them, have a tough time sorting this out. So do we Abnormal People, as well!

Still, it is a real joy to be in a place where art and music still feel generally loved and appreciated, that a little knowledge of such is a nice thing to have, and valued. Even my business-minded seminar-mates seemed to have amazingly advanced experience with performing, studying, and ultimately enjoying music.

Here’s to more of that, everywhere!

The Netherlands Philharmonic and Beethoven’s 9th, A Life-Altering Experience

2009-06-24T10:51:00.000-05:00

I attended a concert of the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra along with the Amsterdam Toonkunstkoor, a performance of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, The Ode To Joy, at the famous Concertgebouw concert hall. What an incredible experience. I sat behind the orchestra in seats that are part of the “choir loft.” Those who are LDS or otherwise fans of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir would recognize this set up: the choir sits facing the audience in seats that climb stadium-like high above the stage below and in front of them. In this case, the choir, about 125 people, were all gathered on stage right (the left as you look at it from the audience), and the right side of the choir loft was sold for 41 Euros a piece.

There are some slight disadvantages to these seats, such as not being able to see the trumpet section (!). Furthermore, brass instruments being very directional, you get a full sound, but not that “chrome burn” sound of having the bells face you.

But the advantages! You feel like your part of the double bass section, you get to look out at the entirety of one of the most beautiful concert halls in the world, and, best of all, you are seeing the conductor how an orchestra member would see him.

The symphonic form is made up of four distinct movements, and The Ninth is a unique symphony. The first three movements of Beethoven’s 9th take about 45 minutes, during which the choir and four soloists take no part. The famous Fourth Movement takes a whopping 25 - in itself is as long as most symphonies of the day – and is in essence a grand cantata. It’s also a freight train at times: the ground rumbles when the full choir and orchestra are giving their all. And this choir was so powerful, so deep. It just amazes you how they change dynamics, how they respond to every nuance of the conductor. This is especially after the whispering reverence of the strings section in the first and third movements.

I almost cried in the first movement, seriously. But in the fourth, all I could do was sit there with this silly grin on my face. I wanted to jump up and cheer, as if I were at a drum corps show.

One of the great challenges of the 9th, in my humble opinion, is the very end. It has a short, fast coda that just rushes up to the very last stinger, and in the recording that I most often listen to, the ending seems to come as if it were a surprise that no one is ready for. So as we came near the end tonight, I was consciously waiting to see how the Netherlands Philharmonic would handle it. Well, how does utter perfection sound? It sounds like tonight’s ending. Everyone was there for it tonight. And the last note just rang through the Great Hall!

Then comes the very symphonic, very classical music, very European ceremony that comes at concert’s end: the applause, the departure of the maestro and soloists, the multiple returns for bows, the inviting of the choir master for a bow, the orchestra and choir members rising and sitting in response to the graceful, sweeping gestures of acknowledgement from the conductor, the bringing of flowers onto the stage for the principles.

So, a beautiful night, but how was this a life altering experience? Well, simply this. For a moment I thought of my grandfather, who had done the same thing I was doing tonight. We know so because he kept a list of concerts he attended and performances he participated in. And then it occurred to me that, having died at just 25 or 26 years old, there was a lot of music that he never got to hear, a lot of music he did not get to make. And I thought of all the time that I simply waste in my modern life, watching TV or the news, surfing the web, talk radio, in useless conversations on the trivial and banal. With all the great music out there - past and present, masterworks, or just a few of my own little pieces – it’s just immoral that I should continue to waste that time thusly and leave such great music unheard. What would Boice Carr think of so much great music time going to waste?

It further occurred to me that the use of my own time is my own decision, for the most part. Sure, there are classes to prepare and give, and research to do, and that is an essential and highly enjoyable part of my would-be career as an academic. But there is no excuse for time simply wasted. What would most greatly alter my life would be the rededication to pursuits that are, as the Apostle Paul put it, praiseworthy and of good report. Now, having learned what I did from the Rotterdam seminar, I can reflect and recognize some of the personal barriers that I have erected to my own progress on this account. There are rackets that I have run that have convinced me that my sloppy way of approaching the management of my time are a instead a useful and desirable disposal of that time. Yet all it really produces is massive frustration over hitting a dead end with regards to any sort of meaningful achievement, plus the regret that goes with wasted time, wasted energy, wasted potential.

Gone should be those times, those activities that prevent me from filling my soul with this better thing, this feeling that is, well, a feeling I suppose to be love.

So my most sincere gratitude goes to the Netherlands Phil and the Amsterdam chorus that so ably put the musical exclamation mark on the evening tonight. If I can but take just this lesson home with me from Amsterdam, I will be ahead of the game.

Getting to The Netherlands

2009-06-24T10:50:00.000-05:00

Finally made it to The Netherlands, and have so far just loved the trip. Coming into London was really special. Were in a holding pattern for a few minutes, but we were near enough to Heathrow Airport itself that I had a good chance to orient myself. So when we were finally cleared to land I knew we were going downwind to the east over south London, turning north, then flying westward back to Heathrow. Both times, I got a wonderful view of the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club (yes, Wimbledon). Caught a glimpse of the London Eye on the banks of the Thames.

England is so neat and orderly looking from the air. Funny how much it looks in real life like it does on Google Earth.

I flew into Amsterdam’s Schipol Airport (and learned that Schipol rhymes with “ski pole” ). As we left (on KLM, hands down the best looking flight attendants on the trip), the skies above London were filled with the broken up cotton balls of spent thunderstorms, but we made it pretty easily. It’s a very short trip, perhaps an hour. Oh, but did I mention that I disconnected with my bag again? Yeah, go figure. Of course, when that happens it’s a little bit of a blessing in disguise, because it meant I could catch the train to Rotterdam without having to lug my wheelies around, and that the airline would deliver the bag later directly to my hotel. Okay!

Arriving in Rotterdam

So after a very smooth hour through very flat, rural landscape, I arrived in Rotterdam in the mid afternoon. I’ve studied central Rotterdam and the path to my hotel on maps and even Google Earth, so I set out on foot straight out of the Station Centraal. Naturally, I was soon completely lost. But not to worry, the city is not that big, and I had plenty of time, so I stopped at Wok To Go, got some nice hot noodles, and continued walking from there with new directions from the Wok To Go staff.

I did discover Rotterdam’s own Red Light district, on the same street as my hotel just a few blocks from my hotel more or less. Not much to it, fortunately, with one of the most prominent features being the “Massage Salon #93.”

Fortunately, the Hotel Milano was very comfortable, and very friendly. Also, the breakfasts were incredible. Especially after hardly eating at all after traveling the entire day and night before, I was so ready to see the spread of breads and rolls, meats and cheeses, and bowls of cereal. Mmmmm: Cocoa Krispies!

Rotterdam is a nice city. Easy to get around in the Trams. It was completely flattened by the Nazis in 1940, a terrible demonstration of the efficiency of the Luftwaffe during the scant five days it took for Germany to overtake the whole of the Netherlands. This means that Central Rotterdam is completely new as of the postwar period.

The people of Rotterdam seem to be very, very friendly. Everyone is pleasantly cordial, absolutely everyone speaks English, and all are willing to help when one has questions or needs. Of course, I have had the chance now to get to know some Netherlanders in depth, thanks to the conference, and they are such truly wonderful people. Proud, intelligent, impressive. I suppose I can write more of these more personal reactions in my journal, or later when I touch on the Seminar itself. Suffice it to say that I have been so touched by their intimacy and acceptance of myself and others not completely like them.

Oh, and one observation: Dutch women are so tall! 5’10”, 5’11”. The men are tall also, but not overly so. But the women! Perhaps “going Dutch” became a phenomenon simply because the men and women look at each other eye to eye here, literally.

Bicycles

I have become enamoured of the culture of the bicycle, and hope to rent one for a day when I plan to return to Rotterdam at the end of the trip. Here, the bicyclist has his own red brick-coloured lanes, separated from car traffic by curbs virtually everywhere. Bikes have the right of way, and then pedestrians have the right of way over cars (in designated walkways, of course). It’s hard to get used to being able to simply waltz out in front of an automobile, yet still having to be very careful not to disturb a bicyclist.

Next (or soon): The Jensen Seminar in Transformational Leadership.
Then: Amsterdam
• Water
• Red Light, not so much
• Going to Church
• Extreme Bikes
• Anne Frank House

TALKING VENEZUELAN POLITICS

2009-06-24T10:48:00.002-05:00

(Note: this note was written last weekend as I was traveling between Venezuela and Holland. I'm just now getting time to post it. The Jensen Seminar on Transformational Leadership here in Rotterdam has been outstanding, and very busy. More on that later. )

I sit in Miami's wonderful yet freezing airport, waiting for British Airways to bring my 747 over from Ft. Lauderdale, where they landed earlier today when thunderstorms prevented it from landing in Miami. That's fine; particularly recently, thunderstorms and crossing the Atlantic do not go well together in any passenger's mind. So we'll take a two hour delay. This gives me time to reflect on my ten days "in country" and share the unmistakable conclusion that I still really dig the place.

Yes, it's older, more tired, and at present beset by that silliest of Latin American ideas, that of a socialist revolution. In fact, that should be an anachronism by now: what is revolutionary anymore about trying to impose a form of government that has failed in all of its forms and in every corner of the planet that it's been tried? Before anyone trots out China as a counterexample, let's remember that they have completely abandoned the purely communal economic model to embrace capitalism (heck, they're more capitalist than the Obama Administration so far), leaving only their strict control of thought and opposition as the legacy of traditional socialism (you know: "cultural revolution".

I know that in Cuba the people ("of the revolution") are so fearful of internal spies and informants that they check the windows before telling jokes about Castro, who they call La Barba: The Beard. So in deference to my friends who feel that Venezuela is on the same path, I will refer to conversations I've had with so many Venezuelans in composite. What they say, they say from the heart. Venezuelans have always been that way. They are proud, but not obstinent, and are usually the first to temper their pride with some reflection or self-critique. For example, I was discussing seeing the coastline from the air with a woman as we rode together in an airport van, and she followed her boast that Venezuela has some of the most beautiful coasts in the world with, "Of course, we have no idea how to take care of them."

To understand how Chavez has gained such a strong base of true believers, it helps me to recall a situation that always befuddled me as I worked in Caracas as a missionary in the mid 80s. I remember one particular day taking a Jeep taxi into one area in the western part of the city because the dirt roads would get so muddy after the rains that no other type of vehicle could serve those areas. We would plunge down into these ravines to visit people who lived in bare cinderblock, one-room homes with no glass in the windows and a corrugated tin roof. Plumbing was usually non-existent, the stove was a two burner portable unit connected to a propane tank, and water was hiked in by hand. On the way out, a woman got into the back of the Jeep, where we faced each other on benches, wearing a beautiful blue outfit, spotlessly clean and pressed. I recognized it as the typical professional office dress of the city, and it struck me. Everyone I knew, no matter how poor, always had two things: a TV and aerial, and a few very nice looking sets of clothes for work.

They would take these jarring Jeep rides, then hop on teeming buses, then elbow their way through the streets to work in offices for bosses and managers who most likely came from the far richer, east side of Caracas, nice neighborhoods with names like El Marques and Prados Del Este, with swimming pools, country clubs, and gated neighborhoods. Now, from looking at these sets of people in their offices, you couldn't really see any difference between them. In fact, that's the joy of being tasked with sharing the gospel: you realize that in truth, there ISN'T any difference between us. Still, it always amazed me that there could be so much disparity between the Haves and the Have Nots in such close proximity. I wondered how they kept it from exploding in frustration, if not rage.

Apparently, they didn't, really. I just didn't know enough to see the surging problem. Between a banking crisis fueled by greed and corruption, soaring food prices that most people could never keep up with, and a coup d'etat led by an extremely ambitious colonel, the mistrust burst between the tears in Venezuela's social fabric like water bursting through the cracks in a weakened dam. Chavez, biding his time in jail for leading the coup, peppered his commentary with scripture-like references to delivering the people of Venezuela from the corruption of the failed politicians whose evil designs had sacked the country of its wealth and resources. He promised a new new beginning, a revolution. This brought two groups together: the old, embedded poor who always felt this way, and the recently poor, who thought they had a stake in the wealthy Venezuela, but who saw it disappear to inflation and institutional collapse.

This gave Chavez what he needed: a majority vote! As soon as he was out of jail, he was on the campaign trail. And he won. Helping his cause soon thereafter was the natural disaster of 1999, barely a year into his presidency, when landslides wiped out nearly 30,000 people, cutting off entire cities from relief. He put on his army fatigues again and said in with great pomp that he would not take them off until Venezuela was whole again, and then there were reports that he had parachuted out of a plane with his troops to reach one cut off city. He promised and built housing for the displaced.

What he has done since has been reported in many ways in the media, but in essence, he went from simply criticizing homegrown, corrupt capitalists to a full blown love affair with Socialism, Fidel Castro, and the ideals of the Cuban Revolution. Internally, he has slowly but surely consolidated power. The legislature is ruled by his party. He has cowed every TV station except one to show every word he says live, and that last one is under all sorts of pressure all of a sudden. He has a weekend TV show where he rants and raves, dances and sings for up to 5 hours, live. This by the way, has led to rumors that he is a regular cocaine user. As one person put it to me, "No normal person can keep up that crap for five hours like that. He's gotta be high on something."

I listened in on this great argument between two immediate family members:

"Oh, you believe all that crap because all you watch is Globovision. It's all lies."
"Oh really? More lies than the TV stations controlled by the government? If THAT'S all true, then why do they have to control what's said?" You even KNOW it's controlled and you STILL believe it."

He also has this nasty habit of "nationalizing" companies, a long Latin American tradition in which the interests of foreign companies are simply taken over by the local government to keep the profits in-country. Pretty cool idea, except that it usually ends up that the local government has no idea how to run it, then it fails, then you have to bring in the foreigners to put it back together again. So you can nationalize again later, I guess.

Hugo has one company that is easily under his political control and do this for him: PDVSA, the oil company, which now runs the steel industry and soon natural gas. Oh, and I forgot: food. PDVAL is a government food distributor, run by the oil company. There are plenty of private sector competitors, but PDVAL keeps the big open market on Margarita at Los Conejeros in Empanada and arepa flour. This came about because, after Chavez controlled food prices, he found Venezuelan company exporting all their food because if they sold it within, at the controlled prices, they'd lose money. So they sold it abroad at a fair market price (oooh, I'm getting business-professor-y here!). Chavez called this illegal and so put it under government control. Okay, actually he threatened to have the army hijack food trucks at the boarder and throw open the rear doors for the people, but someone came along later and came up with this cleaner plan.

He has also found a valuable straw man in the Great Satan to the north. When all else fails, he claim that the CIA is out to assassinate him. To vex that Great Satan, Chavez has befriended tyrants in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. With oil prices over $100, he had plenty of money to throw at their causes. Seeing international banks as simply tentacles of U.S. control of the hemisphere, he has put up his own money from Venezuela's rich oil revenues to take on his own neighbors' debt. He meddled in elections in Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Peru. Venezuela, even if in annoying way, was suddenly a world player.

(I have to board now. I've just rambled on. Sorry. I think I had a more clear idea of what to say when I started. I think. )

So now what? Ironically, the U.S. economic crisis has hit Venezuela hard in that the slacking world price for oil has reeled Chavez in some (they also call it "La Crisis" here). What little he did spend on infrastructure here and subsidies is all but dried up. Many resent the amount of money he has spent abroad, which has committed him to debt that he can no longer pay. And he is no longer universally loved. His pictures are omnipresent in the Metro stations and trains, usually hugging small children or old people, ALWAYS smiling kindly. But some of these posters have been vandalized by someone with a sharp object, X-ing out the President's face. Also, remember the pro-Chavez images in airport international arrivals? Well, none of that is to be seen on the domestic terminal. Not even a snapshot.

Also, of the 17 states of Venezuela, four are now governed by politicians from outside his ruling party, the United Socialist Party. They are the state of the capital, caracas, the oil producing state in the southern jungles, a border state with Colombia. and the free port state that includes Margarita Island. That is to say, all the states that have seen up close and personal the negative effects of his policies.

Whether this will lead to a loss of power, counter revolution or coup, I certainly can't say. I can say that it seems like no one outside of of Chavez's own chattering class really buys into the hatred for America stuff. Truly, there are no anti-American demonstrations, no flag burning, none of that silly stuff. Just a guy who liked to call President Bush silly names. And we have plenty of those in our own country.

The Venezuelan people are no enemy of the United States, and have no desire to be an enemy of the United States. Most of them love their country, and can recall happier days in the relationship with the US.

Remember, the real Bolivarian Dream was that Bolivar would be able to unite all of the nations of South America into a "Great Columbia" similar to the alliance of states that made up the United Sates. Bolivar was an admirer of the early US, probably in part because of his love for a woman from Philadelphia. He gave his life to freeing the upper and western parts of the continent (note some time the similarities in the flags of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, and Bolivia; Peru also owes a debt for their liberty from Spain to Bolivar). For a brief time. Venezuela even printed coinage emblazoned with "Los Estados Unidos De Venezuela": the United States of Venezuela.

Sadly, Bolivar's death came in sorrow as he saw others betray this dream of unity, and never again was Latin America able to dream of such unity.

So will this new character, with his own talk of a Bolivarian Dream - albeit a socialist one - be able to unite Venezuelans behind a cause, even an angry, misdirected one? Only the future will tell. But from what I saw in Venezuela, the strongman wants to go one way, but many, many more conscientious citizens want to go another.

My one worry is this: seemed to notice a change in the people I was in the street, in the places of work, in the stores. Venezuela's people were always a rambunctious lot: lots of loud music on the buses, people singing along; lots of yelling and joking and cajoling and being boisterous. I didn't see that this time. There seemed to be a, oh, I don't know, a quieter aspect to them. Almost an American calm, a seriousness, a quietness in public that I don't remember being part of their nature before. There is only one other time I can recall feeling this sort of resigned public quiet, among a people who were warm and open when in private. That was in the Soviet Union in 1990, less than a year before its disintegration.

It made me wonder. And worry a little.

Third Note From Venezuela: Beaches, Dogs, Tough Questions At The Super Market

2009-06-24T10:46:00.002-05:00

Went back to the beach at Pampatar today. Took a picture at the same pier wall where Norka and I first took a picture together in 1987, five years before getting married. There is another version of the picture from 1994, then in 2000 with Gina and Sofi as babies on our laps. This time, Norka and I are separated by two very grown up, beautiful girls.

We practically had the beach to ourselves this time, as it was mid-afternoon on a weekday, and kids are still in school. I got in the water with the girls. It was beautifully cool. The few fishing boats just a bit further north of us were anchored maybe only 40 feet out. The beach is a sweeping crescent at the farthest inland edge of the bay. The palm trees that sit back from the surf grow by sweeping outward toward the water, then upward toward the sun. Most of the little cafes, closed for the day, are built right around the tree trunks. One, where we ate last visit all those years ago, built its thatched awning over the dining area with strategic holes to allow the plams to grow through it. You dine with the beach sand beween your toes.

The town of Pampatar hides behind its ancient stone fortress, just a bit south of the beach, where once upon a time Spanish soldiers watched for pirate ships, and later Venezuelan patriots watched for Spanish war ships. It's a small fortress, but its turrets are lovingly restored, and the battlement walls still give you a sweeping view of the green and blue sea to the east.

The hills above the beach and the pier we took the picture on are now lined with six and seven story resort hotels, but looking up from the beach, it doesn't look so bad. They are fairy new and nicely colored to blend with nature.

DOGS

We had the company of three stray dogs along the beach. Not that they were very keen to join us, and rather looked pleased just to have some space to be left alone. Strays down here are all too common, usually mid sized dogs who at some point probably got slightly too be to be cute and slightly too big for the food budget, and were let loose somewhere. The girls are dog lovers, so they noticed the presence of the strays right away, in the ferry terinal in Puerto La Cruz. A stray had taken to following one of the luggage carts back and forth, and was promptly booted out of a doorway from another man with a swift kick. Now, I don't know if one gets used to stray dogs, but I've certainly become accostumed to them in traveling South America - I still remember the bizarre street scene in Perú when men threw buckets of water on two strays who had "amorously connected" and could not unconnect. But at this rough dispatchment of the stray from the ferry terminal door, Sofi recoiled.

"Why did he DO that?!" she pleaded, to which I answered with one of those politically correct, babble-speak answers that make me cringe when I hear them coming out of my own mouth: "Well, in some parts of the world, people don't respect animals the way they do in other countires such as ours ..."

What does that mean to a nine year old?

Fortunately, she remembered the question for when she met up with her grandfather in Porlamar. His answer was more direct: some irresponsible people get dogs when they're cute and cheap and then they get tired of them. So they dump them somewhere and they become strays. Now they are dirty and sick and nobody wants them. End of story.

Our neighborhood is filled with dogs, but not strays, save for the 15 rescued strays that belong to the woman who lives next door. The rest are guard dogs whose deep, gravely barks can be heard late at night, and small pets like Mara's miniature poodle, whose yappings can be heard from all points of the street at all hours. Actually, I exaggerate. Most of the pets are cute and sweet, and not all that noisy. The guard dogs are hidden in the back of most houses, and they scare me, frankly, so I don't know much about them!

THE SUPER MARKET

There was a stray dog in front of the supermarket we visited last night, too, a very tired one because he curled up right in the main exit and nothing woke him for quite a while. This was at one of the island's large chain supermarkets, of which there are two in Venezueala, such as Schnuck's and Dierberg's in St. Louis, or Safeway and Albertsons elsewhere. This particular location is huge, with an enormous cheese counter right in the middle and an equally large meat counter at the back. The girls pointed out some of the interesting differences between this market and the Schnuck's back home, such as there being no Parrot food at Schnuck's. They also didn't have the huge piles of raw meat, whole sections of cow, in the meat department at home. Nor were the cheeses as fragrant. Warm air doesn't seep into the store and create condensation on every glass-fronted cooling cabinet. Also, there is no such thing as "long duration milk" at home, (but it's delicious here, if you can forgive a slightly yellow tinge to it).

We did manage to find Heinz Ketchup, however, and bought four bottles (yes, glass bottles) because Mara said they don't see it that often. Whatsmore, Sofi uses ketchup like I used Tobasco sauce in Japan: any food you're unsure of can be made palatable with an overgenerous dousing ofthe condiment of your choice. I'm glad that Heinz ketchup is so precious to we Americans that we have designated a senator to protect it specifically.

As I sat outside with the girls sipping soda while we waited for Norka and Mara to finish, a few hard questions came, and I'm still not exactly sure how to answer them, politically correct or not. Why is the supermarket so dirty? What about hygiene? Why does it look so disorganized? Why were all the milk and cheese products left out and not refrigerated? Why so many security guards at the door?

We talked a lot about coastal and desert climes, petty crime, a smattering of reasons and causes. I think my parents will remember me asking the same questions when I was the age of Gina and Sofi and traveling in Perú. Not only did it seem unfair in the universal sense (why do people suffer at all? Why do we let them? Why do we let ourselves?), but in another way it seemed personally insulting, really. I mean, we can do better than THAT, can't we, hermanos? If I'm going to call myself Peruvian or Colombian or Venezuelan, then I'm going to have some expectations of my cultural fellows, you know?

The disparities between the haves and have-nots display themselves in sharp relief in Latin America, and even a young traveler (or any traveler with a heart) raised in our Land of Plenty to the North will notice them quickly. Gina and Sofi have both been very accepting of the existence of these differences, have noted them, and have brought them up in sincere conversation. I am eternally surprised by their curiosity and insight.

The answers - the real answers - will come only as the girls grow to understand both their cultures and how these cultures have developed over a long time. Then they will come to their own conclusions.

So seven days into the trip, Margarita is striking me just as Caracas did: older, dustier, a little more tired in places, but still showing flashes of paradise when viewed through the right lense.

Second Note from Venezuela: Church, Beach, Food, and Music

2009-06-24T10:43:00.002-05:00

I can't say I forgot how hot it gets here on the island, but it's hard to conjure up what it feels like when you're eight years removed from the dripping wet humidity, the energy sapping sun, and the just plain oppressive caribbean atmosphere. It makes you appreciate one thing, for sure: the breeze!

It's 7pm on a Sunday night. Now, I don't want to sound like I'm complaining, just making the observation: I AM BEAT! The excitement and non-stop motion of getting here has gotten me feeling like I need a rest from this "vacation" so far. But it's been a great visit so far, so I can't complain.

CHURCH

Today I saw the little chapel where I served as a missionary in 1986. There were only two branches then, one here in Prolamar, the Island's largest city, and one in La Asuncion, the state capitol, but a much smaller inland community under the cooler canopy of tropical palms. (For non-LDS readers, a branch is the smallest type of Mormon congregation, and can be quite small. My father opened a branch in Peru in the 1960s of only two members. Porlamar in my time probably had twenty adults, and La Asuncion, 15.) Our chapel then was a small "sacrament hall," where all members meet together to take the sacrament every Sunday, and a few small classrooms, a kitchen, and a baptismal font that was just at the back of the small sacrament hall. When we had baptisms, we simply opened a sliding partition, turned the folding chairs around to face the other way, and there it was. This was the chapel that my wife was baptized in, and the entire structure would have fit very neatly in just the sacrament hall of a typical American chapel. I have two - make that three - very positive recollections of that little chapel: firstly, it was the constantly moving oscilating fans that blew from the tops of the walls. As they blew toward you, you could hear anyone speaking fine. As they blew away, the breeze would take with it the speaker's voice as well. Secondly, it was the sound of the Tio Rico Ice Cream vendor who would pedal by every Sunday. Hia little music would fill the sacrament hall with the temptation to run and buy some relieving cool ice cream right in the middle of the meeting. I never did it, though. And thirdly, the Yamaha piano, miraculously, was always in tune. Maybe it's because it got very little use; in my time, I was the only one around who new how to play. I was always careful to replace the red felt running cloth that covered the keys to protect them from the closing lid after I played.

Well, the little chapel still stands, but right next to it, the church built a gorgeous new building about seven years ago. The new sacrament hall is now full size, with padded pews, two aisles, and a real dias for church leaders and a choir. The sacrament table is purpose-built, not just a nice little table that fits in the corner, and there is a board with changeable numbers for the hymns, not just a chalk board. And - get ready for this all you missionaries who served here in the 70s, 80s, and 90s: IT'S AIR CONDITIONED.

The old building is still in use - the kitchen, Relief Society Room, and some classrooms. And the basketball court has been moved from the side of the walled-in property to the back. By the way, I was there to help raise the first backboards to be put up there in 1986.This was much to the joy of my companion, Elder Palmer, who was an all-state Arizona athelete who loved to go down to the Plaza Bolivar and challenge guys to 2 on 2 games on the courts behind the Catholic cathedral. The Venezuelans would take one look at the two of us (Dan was 6'2") and say, no way. Then he would say, I'll give you my friend, and point to me. Then they would accept. Little did the Venezuelans know, though, that I STUNK at basketball, so it guaranteed Palmer a win every time. Once, and only once, I was able to stuff one of his turn-around jump shots, and he burst out laughing right there on the court.

Oh, and that little Yamaha piano? It's the same one. And it's still in tune! Looks as good as new. The little red felt runner, stained and with holes worn through it, was still lovingly spread over the keys by whoever played it last this morning!

BEACH.

In this case, Pampatar, a small, crescent-shaped beach in a nearby town. Gina is blown away by the fact that, even at four feet deep, you can see right through the water, and the only stuff floating in it are little clumps of sea weed. No garbage, no junk. Norka took me there when I went to visit her after the mission, and we took apicture there sitting along the pier. We took another one in the same spot after we were married, and yet another with Gina and Sofia as babies in 2000. We'll take another one this trip. In the 1987 picture, there was only one building on the hill in the background. Now, that same hill looks like one in the Cote d'Azure, or St. Moritz. Some spots have progressed.

I also bought the most DE-licious cachito de jamón at the Pandería Del Castillo today, which brings me to

FOOD

I tend to eat less when I am traveling, I suppose for a number of reasons, including cost, schedule, and just plain excitemen. But today, about four in the afternoon, I realized that all I had eaten was a patacón pisado and an egg about ten this morning. I was starting to feel faint. So I suggested at our table under the thatched shade roof on the beach that I go get something to eat, and suddenly everyone decided it was time to go find a restaurant. Ugh. So up the stairs I went to the boulevard that runs along the beach, and into a very typical panadería, where I found the cachito and a Diet Coke (Coca Cola Light, as it's called here). There is no more heaven-on-earth experience than standing with a panoramic view of a caribbean beach, biting into a warmed Ham cachito, and slurping a Coke so cold the can burns your hand!!!

And then cam dinner at La Conga, a road-stop restaurant with heavy wooden tables and chairs under a a churuata. It's basically a large, pointed wooden roof with no walls such as the natives would have made. We ordered large platters of various meats for all of us, all barbequed "a la parilla" on the outdoors pits. The steak was incredible! And the water cold! Although, the cap on my bottled water was loose, making me wonder if they hadn't just refilled it with the tap out back! how would the Gringo know?

MUSIC

And at La Conga, we were treated to some live música criolla! Venezuela's native music is called joropo, and it features the harp. Now, before you go thinking of angels in heaven or uptight classical spinstresses, go listen to "Alma Llanera" athttp://www.movingon1.com/bill/perez prado - alma llanera (1).mp3. Joropo is written in 3-4 time, or "waltz time." But it's also built on a paso doble, which means it's like there are two distinct speeds going on at once. This might be hard to explain in words, but in essance you have the quick three-four waltz going on:

ONE-two-three, ONE-two-three, ONE-two-three, ONE-two-three, ...

And at the same time a second. slower rhthym in three on top:

ONE-two-THREE, one-TWO-three, ONE-two-THREE, one-TWO-three, ...

It's a great effect, and fun to hear live. The harpist was great. I couldn't help but notice that it seems like it's tough to find a good bass player ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD; right, Ben, Garrett and Katie? And what the main singer lacked in tuning he more than made up for in energy. It takes a lot of guts to walk around a half empty venue during the first set and sing to the tables and still make it look like you're not phoning it in! Been there, done that. Fortunately, we restaurant patrons really enjoyed the spirit of it. I mean, I'm in an outdoor restaurant on a tropical island, eating parilla and listening to legit joropo. Who am I to complain? For my purposes, they sang their hearts out.

Anyhow, we found the camera charger tonight, so hopefully we'll add some photos soon.

I'll save the political discussion for tomorrow.

Travels, Summer of 09: Venzuela, Holland, UK

2009-06-24T10:35:00.002-05:00

5-27-09: Adventure begins.

Between Delta and American, they only lost two of five checked bags. I suppose a 60% completion rate isn't bad ... for a mediocre high school quarterback! But to their credit, both airlines forwarded the bags to Margarita Island, where we are staying now.

Yes, there IS such a place as "Margarita Island." It is also known as Nueva Esparta, one of the 17 states of Venezuela. It is a Free Port, and a destination for Latin and Eurpoean tourists. Grea beaches on the east and north, an everglade to explore on the west, and a giant rain forest mountain in the middle. It is one of the earliest european-inhabited sites on the Old Spanish Main, with colonists dating back over 450 years.

I met my beautiful wife here, in a toy store by the supermarket where I used to treat myself to an imported 3 Musketeers bar every Monday when I was a missionary here in 1986. I saw the woman who introduced us last night, the store manager at the time. The toy store closed seven years ago when the owner died.

It's really hot here. Humid as all get out. But at night the sea breezes brush over the island and it is paradise under a half moon.

Trains, Planes, Automobiles, and Ships: How To Get To Margarita

Planes

First, planes. After our friend Julie dropped us off at Lambert Field (thanks Julie!), we did the check-in and security gauntlet. What a process. If the goal was to make air travel as unpleasant as possible, the U.S. government and the airlines have succeeded.At least at the beginning. Once you get on the plane, it is not terrible. Norka and the girls stopped once, in Atlanta, and I stopped twice, in Atlanta and Miami. Ate half of the worst Chicken Ceasar wrap in the world in the MIA airport. Should have just waited for the meal on American. not bad at all! Okay, it is small, but let us remember we are hurtling through the sky in a hollow aluminum tube five miles above the surface of the Earth at 82% of the speed of sound and watching a movie while eating, so let's not complain too bitterly about the miracle of flight, okay? (Although something better than Jim Carrey in Yes Man might have been okay).

The airport in Caracas is beautiful. Spotless, really, but the welcome is a little off-putting because our plane was met by two people in full medical scrubs, latex gloves and white surgical masks to hand out little questionnaires asking whether we had any of the following symptoms of "La Infuenza Porcina." You guessed it: The Swine Flu follows Americans around like a bad reputation. Now, I had picked this week to catch a hellacious cold - most likely from getting caught in the rain after a Memorial Day Flag Retirement ceremony - so I had every symptom on the list: fever, congestion, headache, etc. Naturally, I checked the NO box for everything (how much of my trip do I want to spend in quarantine? Anyhow, I feel completely better now).

There's a great big banner that towers over the cavernous hall where we form the lines for customs. It features a benevolent, smiling Hugo Chavez, and says "Venezuela ¡De verdad!" whch can be translated as either "The True Venezuela" or "Venezuela. Really!" I thought I'd reserve judgment on that one, but it was nice to see Chavez's arms open wide in welcome, even for us Americans.

Trains

We stayed a night with friends of in-laws in Caracas, then took and adventurous train ride in the Caracs Metro, west toward the older part of the city, to exchange money. The official exchange rate is - well, let me start at the begining. One of the Chavez government{s many changes has been a change in currency. Instead of Bolivares, the country now uses Bolivares Fuertes, or Strong Bolivares. You can still use old Bolivares, but they are 1,000 old Bolivares to each Bolivar Fuerte. To make things more confusing, the banks refer to the Fuertes using a decimal point. But as many of you may know from Latin or European countries, our comma is their decimal point and vice versa. So while the bank will tell you the exchange rate is 2.144 Bolivares Fuertes to the dollar, the people on the street will call it 2,144 (old) Bolivares to the dollar. And anyhow, that's the official rate. Everyone from the guy offering you a taxi at the airport to family friends (if ya got 'em!) will offer you between 5,000 and 6,000 to the dollar.

So it was precisely the search for this kind of deal that took us to La Hoyada, the very subway stop that I used during my four months in downtown Caracas as a missionary. Back then, the Metro was only a few years old and still had that new subway car smell. It was also never crowded, as only the one east-west line was in use. That has all changed now! I can only compare our ride to taking the trains inTokyo: wall to wall people. And if you are not able to grag a rail or handhold, no problem. The pressure of the bodies around you will hold you up. It was during one of these full-contact moments when Norka had a laughing fit. The loudspeaker announed "Strong Delays" as stood on the motionless train, and Norka joked loudly that there is no such thing as a "strong" delay, only short ones and long ones. To which some guy on the train joked back that this is "strong love," which could also mean tough love. So they riffed on "strong" things, such as the strong exit method of getting off the train, and then a final "strong" good bye when we got off. Norka almost laughed herself silly. Gina was hoping that if running doesn't keep you trim, maybe being smashed by a ton of strangers will.

The reward was standing at a corner where I had surely stood many times before back in 1985, with no clue as to the relationship I would have with these people and their culture for the rest of my life. Or did I? From there we could see the building where we lived, worn and older, streaked black in places with age. That was the apartment with the mural of the New York skyline, on the thirteenth floor. Where we were robbed while at church one Sunday morning. This was just around the corner from the knife fight we saw one night that ended in gunfire from a nearby apartment. This was where I never had to set my alarm because the noise from the bus station below was loud enough to wake me every day at sunrise. Here was that magnificent view of the then ultra-modern Parque Central complex. This is the building where I had to carry Elder Febres in my arms, nearly passed out because of the pain in his legs after coming back from surgery, when Quiroz answered my kicking the door with a perfectly ennunciated English, "What is the password?" To which I yelled back an equally inelegant, "Just open the stupid door!"

Automobiles

Venezuela is very much a culture of the car, much like we United Statesians. A great part of this is due to its wealth of oil. When we visited before in the Nineties, gas was a minimal 40 cents a gallon. Now, thanks to heavy subsidies from the Chavez government, you can fill a twenty gallon tank for about a dollar. Really ... A dollar! There is an eclectic mix of models - how long since you've seen a Pugeot dealer? - and ages. There are brand new Chevy SUVs, little Kias, and every kind of Smart car (meaning, "tiny bubble" car) sharing the roads with ancient rust buckets. Naturally, the ancient rust buckets are American. My father in law drives a 1984 Ford that he repairs himself (he showed my the weld points).

But on the whole, Venezuelan drive rather well. They are neither overly uncourteous, nor do they drive too fast. OUr taxi to the bus terminal, in fact, was a newer Chevy Blazer, and the driver was very smooth, very professional. This is new: it seems like a lot of taxi drivers have either joined taxi companies, or the companies have gone to clean, pressed uniforms lately. I don't remember so much
decorum in the 80s. But it is a professional look.

In fact, the bus that we took from Caracas to Puerto La Cruz - about a third of the way across the country in six hours - was clean, curtained and air conditioned, and was a comfortable ride across the mostly two-laned Pan American highway. Oh, and it was a Volvo. The only drawback is that the driver{s movies selection wasn't very good: "7 Pounds" and "Anacoda 5: Trail of Blood". We made one stop, at an estandia with a restaurant, bathroom, a parrilla, and a guy who washed the bus windows with a bucket of suds and a mop. Norka chose this place to get a little sick She's been nervous with excitement all this time, and went Thursday without eating, probably without realizing it. So now, with the motion of the busride and the sudden smell of food, here came the migraine. She almost threw up just as we were leaving, but a pill and a nap on my shoulder had her feeling better by the time we got to Pto. La Cruz. A new experience for Sofi was seeing an oil refinery. Especially at night, with the flames shooting brightly into the black sky, it's pretty impressive.

Ships

Puerto La Cruz is a coastal city somewhat east of Caracas and still west of the island. It's where the ferry leaves for Margarita. Conveniently, the bus terminal shares a building with the Conferry S.A. office and terminal. So you just walk from one side to the other to buy tickets for the ride on the car ferry to Margarita. Our bus arried at midnight, the ferry left at 2am. Norka bought is First Class Tickets, which meant we sat amidships in leather reclined seats. Coach tickets, further aft, meant wooden benches. I once bought a Coach ticket when I had to ferry from a mission zone conference in Barcelona back to the island. Ironically, I was pretty sick that trip to begin with, so I sat outside nearly the entire trip on a cabinet full of life vests. I still remember the sea spray hitting me in the face and how that actually made me feel better.

As we loaded, I noticed off the port side of the ferry I could see the entire stretch of beach along Pto. La Cruz. Pto. has a beautiful main drag that goes along the beach like the highway along Miami Beach, with a hotels and shops and very light waves. It was on this central stretch of beach that I baptized my first person into the church of my mission. He was a young fellow who the sister missionaries had taught, and we were supposed to do the baptism in the chapel's small cement font. But the water went out that day, so after scrambling to find a place wwith water without sucess, we opted for the ocean. By now it was dark, and the beach was deserted except for a few strolling couples. So we waded out to waist depth and did the baptism there. It was romantically beautiful, really, with the lights of the city on one side, and a the running lights of fishing boats and yachts anchored off shore on the other. I{ll never forget it. (A note: When my father was a missionary in Peru in the 60s, he, too, baptized people in the ocean, but the colder, rougher, Pacific Ocean.)

Unlike the bus service, there was no checking in of luggage. You carried your own stuff. Now, Norka said, thank heavens the airline lost two of the bags. We had barely enough energy to get them out to the fery, walking down the same road the cars use to board, then hike them up the ladders ourselves onto the first class deck. No wonder it was easy to sleep after that.

The ride was smooth, and with large portals open on both sides of the first class cabin, the sea breeze and the sound of the hull cutting softly through the ink black ocean made for a peaceful, peacful night. The girls slept on top of the suitcases, laid out like mattresses. In a near first, I was the first one to wake to realize that we had slept all the way through sunrise, and land was visible out the port windows. La Isla Margarita!

A Note on Caracas and Her People

Well, I hate to admit it, but I was actually expecting worse of Caracas. I've heard so many stories about how it has decayed, become a criminal's playground, how a socialist regime has surely let it go to pot. To my pleasant surprise, my pessimistic expectations were not met. Yes, the city is older now, dustier and dirtier. I know that more brazen crimes such as kidnaping of the rich and powerful are a new level of criminal scourge that was unknown to Venezuela in my time. But, like New York, Detroit, Pittsburgh, or even St. Louis, crime has always been part of the landscape, and does not make the whole city unlivable. And I still love it. The weather, how the breeze dissipates the heat almost instantly. The mountains to the north tower majestically over the city, and the view of the long valley that is Caracas always inspires me. Maybe it's the coolly combined colors of the lush green mountains, the blue of the sky, and the white of the clouds.

As for the People, they are as beautiful as ever. There are many in the United States who must view Venezuela as an enemy of sorts these days because the prevailing political winds here blow from the left, but let this be known: the people of Venezuela are no kind of enemy. They are in so many ways, so much like us. The men put on slacks and pressed white shirts for work. They wear ID cards that hang around their necks on a lanyard. They work for a living and hope for the best for their country in the face of crises that seem so much bigger than any one individual, even a confident, eloquent president.
They take subway delays in stride and tend to use their sense of humor as survival tool.

And the women of Venezuela! Someone asked me recently for something that is special and unique to Venezuela, and I forgot about women. It seems that every few years the winner of the Miss Universe or Miss World pageants are Venezuelans. They are blessed with raven-black hair, sun'drenched skin, and long thin noses. Their hips are the hips of the classic age of Hollywood beauties. Surely it was the Venezuelan woman who inspired both the literary descriptions of "full" and "pouting" breasts. (Another note, here: while my wife was born in Colombia, she was born in Barranquilla, the same town as Shakira, and so shares la costeña's full-blown sensual appearance.)

More to Come: talking commerce and leadership with a large chain store manager. Talking politics with a taxi driver and a father in-law. Pictures if a President. Potholes. Dogs.

Traveling the Summer of 2009

2009-06-24T10:29:00.002-05:00

This summer is proving to be an exciting one in terms of getting to see the world. Not gigging or touring, but a combination of family vacations and an academic seminar. Nonetheless, it has turned out to be a surprisingly musical adventure so far.

I left for Venezuela on May 27th (Margarita Island, to be specific), and then to Rotterdam Holland for the seminar at Erasmus University. I stayed an extra week in Holland with my Dad. We visited Amsterdam, Haarlem, Delft, and the environs.

I wrote some reflections along the way, so here they are.

Enjoy!

The First Entry ("Testing, 1, 2, 3 ...")

2009-03-24T02:41:00.000-05:00

This is a test. This is only a test. If this were an actual blog entry, you would have been directed to listen to some new music, download some new compositions, or buy some scores at http://www.jazzwithoutborders.com.

Please stay tuned for official announcements in the future.