Like a fading beauty of the silver screen, well past her prime but still proudly auditioning for the part of leading lady, the High Point Furniture Market has fallen prey to the inexorable march of change.
With the mid-century migration of furniture manufacturing to western North Carolina and Virginia, it was inevitable that the old-boy network of family-owned -- and cross-pollinated -- companies so engaged would seek to establish the equivalent of a neighborhood lemonade stand to hawk their extensive but derivative product lines. Thus, they transformed the sleepy backwater of High Point, North Carolina, into the twelve-million-square-foot mecca of the home furnishings industry, to which thousands of acolytes were compelled to make a semi-annual pilgrimmage and there pay homage to the high priests of the furniture industry.
Only a stone's throw from their factories, High Point was a convenient drop-ship for the myriad market samples with which they flooded their showrooms -- and a comfortable two-and-a-half hour drive from my home in Lynchburg, Virginia. But for those beyond the Pale -- say, a two-hundred-and-fifty-mile radius -- imagine the trials and tribulations of navigating the arcane flight schedules into and out of the Greensboro or Charlotte, N.C., airports, negotiating for rental cars while being held hostage to a limited supply in the face of a hyper-inflated demand, and having to pay similarly exorbitant rates for mediocre accomodations, usually months in advance and often for nights guaranteed even after one had gleefully headed home.
For fifty years High Point successfully vanquished all pretenders to its throne -- Atlanta, Dallas, San Francisco, and Tupelo -- which generally were too limited in design and too regional in scope to offer serious competition. Ambitious investors continued to build more square footage, operating under the misguided assumption that this fortress of concentrated buying power was impregnable.
Two developments undermined High Point's staunch defenses. First, most of those formerly vibrant manufacturing facilities shuttered their doors, and were either sold, abandoned, or relegated to the status of mere repositories or assembly points for home furnishings produced in China, Vietnam, or Malaysia. Globalization shattered the logical locus of High Point.
Once this fact of economic life became apparent, it didn't take long for a voracious predator -- one with deep pockets -- to surface and pounce. In the space of three short years, a Las Vegas mirage of six million square feet of furniture showroom solidified into concrete, steel, and glass. Disneyland in the desert -- with its accessibility, its five-star hotel and dining facilities, and its irresistible ancillary attractions -- became High Point's worst nightmare, luring furniture high-rollers from all over the world, most notably those west of the Mississippi River and beyond the continental borders.
I'm not sure High Point's market moguls realize that many of these folks just aren't coming back. In an egregious display of panic, desperation, or schizophrenia, they rolled their market's Spring and Fall dates back several weeks to coincide more closely with Las Vegas's dates, a ridiculous and impractical experiment which served principally to tarnish High Point's only treasure, its glorious April and October weather, and was wisely abandoned after a one-year interlude.
I have yet to attend the Las Vegas market; High Point's proximity coupled with my own habitual behavior has firmly grounded it in my consciousness as the almighty Furniture Market (and thou shalt have no other markets before it), although the blessings of a little competition are not to be denied. For the past fifteen or so years of our sojourn at the Park Lane Four Seasons Hotel on High Point Road in Greensboro, Schewel Furniture Company's room rate had risen steadily and geometrically, until by 2005 we paying upwards of $250 per night, this for a room which during the fifty non-market weeks of the year easily went for half that -- and, if one were available, would be rented for that price during market week to a drop-in truck driver. I know because I heard it happen one night while I was checking in. In 2006, apparently in response to declining attendance and the bully pulpit of the mysterious, influential, but ultimately powerless Market Authority, the hotel manager generously reduced our rate to $149, and, succumbing to the effusive charm of my two female buyers, even threw in spacious two-room suites for each of us.
The mini-refrigerater therein supplied is greatly appreciated. I use it to preserve my delectable (or detestable, depending on one's point of view) dinner ingredients -- carrots, cottage cheese, whole wheat bread, and blackberry jam, the latter two, of course, when plastered with extra-crunchy peanut butter (which even this stranger to the kitchen knows does not have to be kept in a chilled state), compose my main course. While the nightly adventures of other out-of-towners may confirm the public's perception that these markets continue from dusk to dawn at a variety of interesting venues, my cerebral, solitary, and compulsive personality dictates that evenings out be few and far between. The truth is, I have work to do. Because a ninety-minute perusal of the notes I have made in each of the showrooms I have visited that day is critical to the process I am about to describe.
We merchandise our fifty stores according to a line-up, the selection of items we display in our showrooms and stock in our distribution center at any given point in time; sixty sofas, loveseats, and chairs with occasional tables; thirty recliners; thirty glider rockers, swivel rockers, and accent chairs; fifteen desks; fifteen curios; twenty television stands and entertainment centers; thirty master and youth bedrooms; eight formal dining rooms; and twenty-five casual dining sets. Our goal, after six days of furniture shopping, usually from 9 AM to 7 PM, during which we visit sixty showrooms, is to leave the market with all these line-up slots filled. Of course, not every item is changed; many are too new or selling too well to replace. About one-third of our line-up turns over every six months, at the April and October markets.
My market regimen wasn't always so disciplined. In my younger days, I remember dining out with friends, manufacturer representatives (hereafter designated as "reps"), and colleagues; taking in numerous parties and special events; and frequenting bars, night clubs (featuring scantily-clad entertainment), a pool hall, and even a female mud-wrestling contest. Oh, I would diligently take notes during the day (sometimes overcoming a splitting headache), but leave the decision-making to the months or six weeks after the market, when legions of reps would traipse through my office, shuffle their pictures, refresh my memory, renew their pitches, and plead for placements -- and sooner or later a line-up would emerge.
I graduated from that time-consuming ordeal to studying my notes the last night (sometimes the last morning) of the market and frantically trying to organize them and my thoughts and produce a line-up. Finally, about ten years ago, when I was no longer interested in trolling night spots, I realized that a regular review of the notes I had made each day and a progressive construction of the line-up was almost as easy to digest as the peanut-butter sandwich I was holding in hand. And it gave me the opportunity to revisit showrooms for a second (or third) look at items under consideration.
I have found that, emotionally and intellectually, each market follows a familiar pattern. One approaches the first day or two with a heightened level of enthusiasm and excitement. As a dealer was once quoted in a trade journal, "If you don't look forward to the furniture market, you shouldn't be in the furniture business." After all, not only is one gratefully abandoning, at least temporarily, the barrage of phone calls (I don't carry a cell phone), problems, meetings, and day-to-day minutiae of the retail wars, he is invigorated by the thought of discovering fresh new merchandise with which to refurbish his stores and stimulate his sales.
After the second day, however, one's energy is sapped by ten-hour days spent pounding the pavement; by the incessant banter and the profuse flattery of hungry pitchmen; by an overabundant and bewildering array of sofas, bedrooms, dining sets, and television stands (a veritable sea of La-Z-Boys, as my wife felicitously declared on her first and last trip to the furniture market) which have run together like water colors in a thunderstorm; and by a queasy feeling in one's stomach which comes with the realization that time -- which two days ago seemed too plentiful -- is slipping away.
Then, on the next-to-last day, when all major vendors have been seen, when a few have even been reshopped, when the decision-making process is in full bloom, when the pieces of the puzzle are beginning to fit snugly and comfortably in place, one's step lightens; his pace quickens; his spirits rise almost to the point of euphoria. And on the last day, when final commitments are made, he thinks to oneself, with a smug, and ultimately false, confidence -- because the consumer is a cruel taskmaster -- another market attacked, and conquered.
Though much compressed, that pattern is replicated to some degree in each individual showroom: the anticipatory thrill of new product; the salesman's promise of outstanding value and retail success with almost every offering; the fog that descends over one's brain after he has completed his initial tour and must, at least out of courtesy, put pen to paper.
Generally speaking, I admit that my shopping method is hardly scientific. The price at this point -- other than the fact that we obviously have to know what it is, which sometimes involves an excruciating interchange with the salesperson, who clings to it like a child to his favorite toy -- is immaterial; now we're merely eyeballing the item, internally making a calculated wild guess as to its saleability, evaluating the salesman's unabashed admiration, and assessing its correlation, in price and design, with other merchandise in the same category.
The eternal conundrum of buying for a retail furniture store is that, at least with regard to a new item -- one shown to the retailer for the first time -- no one really knows what is going to strike the consumer's fancy. My perception is that domestic home furnishings suppliers (the preferred terminology these days, as their manufacturing is contracted to overseas entities) conduct little, if any, research. Most of their designs -- whether upholstery or case goods -- are thinly-disguised imitations of someone else's (and where those designs originate is a mystery to me), which may have some history of sales success, but not necessarily. More often than one would like to think, the universal popularity of a design is solely attributable to the talents of a silver-tongued salesperson who passed it off on several suppliers at the same time. And just because an item happens to sell well in another store or market area doesn't guarantee similar results in my store -- regardless of what so many reps are eager for one to believe. Consequently, buying becomes a balancing act between enthusiasm and skepticism.
In spite of what those musings may suggest, I respect and appreciate those road warriors who bear the oft-abused title of manufacturer's representative. Any one who can close the deal with a brooding, introspective, tight-lipped buyer like me deserves a celestial reward, although I am making a conscientious effort in my middle age (there's a euphemism) to greet pleasantly these putative partners, look them squarely in the bridge of the nose, smile like I am genuinely elated to see them, display some evidence of a sense of humor, and at least pretend to listen to their perfect pitches. But linger for small talk? No; never.
In truth, however, buying decisions are hardly ever objective, and rarely based on price alone. We are loyal to selected vendors and individuals. We would much prefer to buy from someone we know and trust. Some reps are indeed able to establish a rapport with me (or my associate buyers) that others can not. Some make a sale purely through persistence. In the final analysis, who can identify and isolate that intangible element that makes a customer say "yes"?
It might even be that one of the spate of tired platitudes tossed out like well-aimed darts by a loquacious salesperson finds the bull's-eye, in spite of its narcotic familiarity and ludicrous banality. As much as the listener tries to turn a "tin" (that is, deaf) ear in defense, is it not conceivable that one of these stingers should lodge itself in the subconscious and prick one's memory at the decisive moment?
As luck would have it, the first showroom we visit upon our arrival Saturday morning is manned by none other than John R., whom readers of this blog will remember as the brash prankster who sent me for Christmas a roll of toilet paper each panel of which was imprinted with a likeness of George Bush spouting some infamous malapropism. John's perverse approach to ingratiating himself with his customers is to insult (at least this one) rather than pander to them -- perhaps the residual effect of a concussion he suffered many years ago while centering punts for the N.C. State football team. True to form, he greets me with, "Hey, ugly. You just spoiled my weekend. You weren't supposed to be here until tomorrow." My upholstery buyer warns me that John will invariably declare at least once during our conversation, "For what it's worth," which he regurgitates as if on cue, followed by a time-worn pledge -- "If this doesn't sell, we'll pick it up" -- that is totally gratuitous, since Schewels has never sent any merchandise back to a supplier for that reason.
Later, we shop a new case goods resource where I encounter an old friend, Bob O., a round-faced jovial fellow with a perpetual cock-eyed grin and contagious chuckle, with whom I journeyed to Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China (for one day) twenty years ago. Bob cracks himself up with the long-since-forgotten tale of my amazement at the height of a youthful Chinese basketball player glimpsed from afar and subsequent rude awakening when, upon closer inspection, it was determined that he was only towering over some very short comrades.
From there, we transition to H . . . e, where we are escorted through the showroom by a bona fide Oriental gentleman (of average height) with the Anglicized name of Charles H., who, bravely speaking a brand of English more perfectly understood by him than by us, is "vewy pwoud" of his new youth bedroom with its different-colored interchangeable drawer panels, "twee," to be exact, a word, I am embarassed to record, I ask him to repeat "twee" times. Actually, we adore Charles, who took our buyer under his wing during her Far East trip a few years ago.
In L . . . y we enjoy the company of John H., master of the soft sell and an ad nauseum repetition of his customer's proper name, who surprises me with the forceful, out-of-character, and provocative pronouncement, "This suite's got Lynchburg written all over it," eliciting a whisper from my bedroom buyer: "But what about Winchester, Harrisonburg, and our other forty-seven stores?"
It's a short drive across town to our next destination, T. . . r, where we are welcomed by two contemporaries whose careers seem to have paralled our own over the past thirty years, as they have jumped -- with us usually in their wake -- from one furniture line to another, like bullfrogs on lily pads, always landing on their feet and never sinking below the water line -- David M., casual as always in a bulky blue sweater, forever relying on his perpetual boyishness to subdue the most hardened buyer; and the gentle, graying giant, Frank S., intense and polished, dressed both up and down, his twenty-something striped polo shirt beaming like his toothy grin through his tweed sport jacket.
Frank's composure is shaken by the sudden disclosure that we have reverted to our former bedroom pricing formula -- dresser, mirror, bed, and chest -- thereby foiling his memorized dresser, mirror, bed, and night stand combinations. Once past this inconvenience, price sheet in hand, he treats us to a virtuoso performance in pithy word-smithing: "This is a great-selling suite. This one's all-world, hard to beat. I love this suite. This one's red-hot. We can't keep it." And the piece de resistance: "Hot as a banshee" -- which leaves us mystified, until he explains just what a banshee is: a small rooster. Well, not exactly. According to my dictionary, that's a "bantam," while a "banshee" is a "female spirit whose wailing warns of a death in the family" -- a sobering revelation which considerably dampens Frank's fiery analogy.
The next morning, shopping an upholstery line, K . . . r, we are irritated but amused by Richie H.'s not-so-subtle ploy of running interference between us and a sofa which has already been "placed in our market," that is, sold to a competitor. He skirts by it as if it were a poisonous snake, lest its colorful and attractive camouflage catch our attention, which only piques our interest more, until he summarily dismisses it as already spoken for.
In L . . . e, Mike M. greets us with his Cheshire Cat grin and a mouthful of sugar. "I call that happiness," he says, whether in reference to a dresser, a leather sofa, or the buxom receptionist, I do not recall. "Our drawer construction stands tall," he exults, in admiration of an expensive bedroom suite copied (no surprise there) from a Bernhardt one selling for twice the price. A furniture legend in his own time, James R. -- whose frightening resume lists him as million-dollar producer for the defunct Pilliod Co., merchandiser extraordinaire for the dearly-departed Heilig-Meyers chain, and sales manager for the recently-entombed Natale Co. -- wanders by to model his scintillating tangerine sweater and beige docksiders.
Later that day I avoid serious injury in N . . . s when the small accent chair I am comfort-testing falls off the elevated platform on which it is perched (like a bantam!) -- not the best way to impress a buyer. Actually, I thought one of the rear legs had broken off -- and wouldn't have been surprised.
At H . . . l, million-dollar Million D., unctuous and mannerly, tries to corral us in the vicinity of one of his sofas with the innocent query, "Have you felt this fabric before?" "I believe we have, Million," I respond with uncontrolled glee and too much condescension. "It's a padded microfiber and it's been around about four years. Have I felt it? Only about ten times last week when I walked through one of my stores."
At E . . . e, we have to drag seventy-five-year-old Clyde O. into the showroom from out in the hall where's he falling all over himself talking to his new bride on his cell phone; he promptly disappears for ten minutes looking for a price.
In B . . . l, Rob A., brisk, crisp, concise, and taciturn, expertly guides us through the intimidating showroom, stopping only to highlight a few bedroom suites he thinks might be of interest to us, at one of which he proves his mettle, taking a back seat to no one when it comes to mind-numbing verbal dexterity. "This dog will hunt," he promises. (And, on the other hand, it may turn out to be one of those dogs we wish we had never seen.) "It has all the bells and whistles" -- like a mirror, drawers that work, and a brown finish, I mutter to myself.
In C . . . r, when I ask the windy Don B. which of two sofas he would rather sell me, I am immediately struck by buyer's remorse, because I know what's coming before it's out of his mouth: "Marc, these are two different animals" -- neither of which, rest assured, is a dog -- "It's like comparing apples and oranges" -- answers which imply, of course, that I should purchase both, and leave me dangling like a spun-out yo-yo.
In L . . . e, we are entertained by Scott K., Mitt Romney-esque in his chiseled handsomeness and mousse-perfect grooming. The consummate professional, he dances through his showroom, unencumbered by pricebook or notepad, his prices and stock numbers lodged in the steel trap of his memory, to be disgorged at the slightest pause over an item by his duly-impressed and quickly-exhausted customer. Scott never met a superlative he didn't like, as he sustains a running commentary: "Look at the size of that chair" -- pointing out just about every recliner we pass by. "This one has butt appeal." "There's a premium for leather like that" -- like a higher price. When he realizes I'm taking notes not just on merchandise but on his comments as well, he ramps up the hyperbole. "Every frame we come out with is our own design." (Show me one.) "This sofa has more wood than any other out there." (Well, the wood does wrap around the base, but that's not unique.) And, finally, "What does it take to push you over the edge?" (Probably looking at one more recliner will do it.)
The M . . . n showroom is a beehive of activity. This season the buzz is all about Flex-a-Boy, a contortionist performing in the lobby. Stretching like a rubber band, he effortlessly rotates both legs behind his head, slides his entire body through the stringless head of a tennis racket, and squeezes himself into a 20x16x16 clear plastic box, and then latches the top -- hardly taking a breath as he touts the benefits of purchasing from M . . . n: "We bend over backwards for customer service. We have the most flexible shipping program in the industry. We provide the lowest cost in the smallest package."
Our M . . . n rep, Jack B., rolls along behind us like Humpty-Dumpty as we skate through the showroom, a little off balance because of a bad hip, dictating notes into a recorder in his nasally Bawl-li-more accent, selling with a jocular sarcasm. He exclaims, "I couldn't sleep at all last night waiting to show you this suite," which we dismiss with hardly a glance. When we glide past another one, he pops out with, "Any reason you passed this one up?" "It's nothing personal," I reply as we exit the showroom and start down the stairs to the next floor, only to look back and see Jack in desperate pursuit.
In A . . . y, we are welcomed by the merry Marvin S., still spry at seventy plus, his rotund frame, shiny pate, sparkling eyes, and ear-to-ear grin exuding buckets of charm. He's always glad to see you and usually has a nasty little joke to tell, this one about Eliot Spitzer, whose rabbi said he was deeply disappointed in him. "Why?" asked Eliot. "Don't you know, " said the rabbi, "nobody pays retail." Marvin boasts that A . . . y has the best motion furniture in the industry (but not in the country, as it's manufactured overseas) and commands me, using the affectionate sobriquet "Honey," to sit my little butt down on a piece -- not as much of a test, of course, as his own sprawling butt would be.
We pass by the tiny S . . . g showroom, tucked in a hallway, where the rep, Frank S., a courtly, white-haired gentleman, who has finally sold us a bedroom suite after five long years of persistent phone calls and road trips from New Jersey, waves us in to show another one. Our lengthy visit reminds me of Frank's tar-baby-like ability to keep a person engaged in a telephone or face-to-face conversation despite his most determined efforts to escape. When I half-seriously remark that, in the midst of deleterious business conditions, I'm still paying cash, Frank quickly retorts, "You buy this suite, and you'll be able to pay cash."
And so it goes, one mindless pitch after another, served up for our edification, indocrination, and intoxication, fastballs, curveballs, sliders, changeups: that's screaming; this one's a superstar; we sell the fire out of it; this has been well-received; can I suggest a home run; this is the bomb.
Finally, after five weary days of wall-to-wall furniture, sifting the wheat from the chaff, barely legible note-taking, and hard choices, the sixth dawns with a welcome serenity and an almost completed line-up. But our bedrooms seem stale, not quite right. While reshopping that last day, we actually decide on three suites, two of which we scope out for the first time: a white urban lifestyle and a bombay-influenced merlot contemporary. To employ the only cliche we haven't heard in a week replete with them: it's time to think outside the box.
Three days later, at home, when the final pristine sheets are produced, our re-engineered line-up of merchandise looks so perfect in conception and execution. The slow sellers have been quietly expurgated. We anxiously anticipate the arrival of our new selections, which, in price point, design, function, and color, are sure to enhance and complement our showrooms, appeal to our customers' tastes and pocketbooks, and confirm that the time, money, and energy expended at the High Point Furniture Market were productive and profitable.
Alas, there are two abiding fallacies inherent in this semi-annual ritual. The first is that, in the final analysis, the most exquisitely-merchandised store will fail without the operation to back it up: a diversified advertising program that generates credibility, urgency, and traffic; a professional sales staff that creates loyal customers by meeting their needs and satisfying their desires; and a service system that delivers customer purchases in a timely and efficient manner. In fact, of all these factors, the particular items of merchandise displayed in one's store may be the least critical for retail success.
Secondly, buying is an imperfect art, and, no matter one's experience or expertise, never error-free. A stunningly attractive chair or bed quickly loses its luster when it sits too long; a muddy brown sofa looks mighty nice on the back of a delivery truck. One would think that a buyer of thirty-five years would be able to tell the difference. But the cold, hard truth is that thirty per cent of new market selections are never re-ordered -- and one begins to reflect that he might be better off staying home, and abdicating the test-marketing to other eager beavers. But no, six months later, he packs up his suits and peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and stubbornly heads south, to assert his buying power all over again.
Friday, April 18, 2008
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Continuing Education
Having recently embraced a concentrated curriculum, I have concluded that professional self-improvement begets more disillusionment than enlightenment. In fact, I knew it before I strode purposely across the threshold of knowledge, yet I persevered.
Was it my obsessive-compulsive personality, my deep-rooted ethnic guilt, my inveterate admiration of scholarly mouthpieces, or a too sanguine assessment of the portability of some memorable prescription for personal or business invigoration that roused me from my luxurious accommodations at the Anatole Hilton in Dallas, Texas, propelled me through a chilly predawn six-mile run, and deposited me in class at 8:00 AM on three consecutive mornings for nine sleep-deprived hours of continuing education -- when, in truth, I suspected it would all be for naught?
After all, as one lecturer metaphorically remarked, good ideas are like slippery fish, and, once the hook is removed, they require aggressive measures to be retained and digested, which he graciously supplied: a to-do list, good intentions ambitiously recorded in the rarefied air of the laboratory, and a to-review list, notable objectives resolutely consummated in the real world of retail frenzy.
Even that formula for piscatorial containment was difficult to spear. Whether from stubbornness, perversity, egotism, or simply habit, ignoring the savant's advice, I took copious notes instead; I always do; otherwise, my attention falters and my diligent attendance is wasted. Consequently, I now have a to-do list that is so daunting I shudder at initiating even Task One and a to-review list that is as unblemished as the crystalline snowflakes that unexpectedly dotted the Dallas suburbs that morning. If only a written examination had been in the offing, I would have made the Honor Role, since my notes are exceedingly thorough. Alas, the only tests here are self-administered ones for performance, and in that regard, as my readers have no doubt already deduced, I hardly rate a passing grade.
Of course, there is another way to way to view this whole exercise. Once one has mastered the principles, promulgations, and best-practices of leadership, management, and motivation, and the ability to regurgitate them on cue, one would seem eminently qualified to don the mantle of consultant -- a line of work in which the responsibility for the actual execution of all these directives rests on the heavily-weighted shoulders of someone other than the preacher. Some of these putative experts are indeed veterans of the types of businesses for which they are professing wisdom; whether their disengagement and reinvention can be attributed to past success, failure, or mediocrity is a pregnant question. For surely there must be a modicum of truth in the adage that a consultant is a person who knows fifty ways to make love but can't get a date.
Not intending to be disrespectful, I am amused by the crowded -- and lucrative -- cottage industry of consultancy, in which each "suit" seems to be cut from the same bolt of cloth. Patient but anxious, he stands at the head of the class, smiling, adjusting his equipment, greeting a few of the eager, bleary-eyed, fifty-something students who stroll in, wondering if this is the man (or woman) who can deliver the magic bullet they have traveled some many miles in search of. He lays his jacket aside so it will not interfere with his energetic body movements; he wears a necktie subdued in color and design to minimize distractions. His voice is deep, resonant, and forceful, hardly needing the amplification provided by the tiny microphone attached to his shirt.
He talks smoothly, confidently, and often rapidly, trying to compress three hours of potent material into sixty or ninety minutes. His words gush forth like torrents from a fire hydrant, while his thirsty auditors sip the swirling waters like soda through a straw or sift for sparkling nuggets of golden edification before they can wash away. His delivery is polished, professional, familiar but not memorized, the product of countless hours of similar presentations, rehearsals, and recordings. He floats out a few half-hearted jokes or witticisms -- usually to emphasize a point -- but, in truth, he doesn't have much time for humor. He sporadically attempts to engage the audience, but unless a lucky guess surfaces quickly he answers his own question and races on. He enhances his message with a handout, in my view a poor substitute for listening, and power point slides, which can be helpful but also disconcerting.
While my companions often gravitate to the sides and rear of the meeting room, I always sit in the first or second of the five or six rows of parallel tables, and near the center, in order to see and hear better. Some speakers will ask the peripheral folks to move forward and fill up the front seats; others will roam down a center aisle to reach them, leaving me, who had the courtesy to sit up front, staring into space, justifiably irritated.
My first class, "Rewards that Produce Results," is taught by Sam A., a tall, lanky, rectangular-faced gentleman who warms up his audience by recounting the trials, tribulations, and frustrations of working in his family's carpet business -- still owned and operated by his eighty-year-old father, who, since Sam left, can't seem to find any good help -- and blaming the requisite long hours for the breakup of his first marriage. He made a nice recovery, however, as evidenced by the striking, black-haired beauty, fifteen years his junior, brightening up the rear of the rear of the room selling his books and CD's.
Sam erupts with a barrage of aphoristic statements and statistics which, at first pass, sound like revelations, but, on second thought, are hardly ingenious. Businesses succeed because people want them to. Satisfied customers go elsewhere; only loyal customers come back. Our employees should look like they want to be at work; tell them to tell their faces that they are having a good day. The sales force generates four times as much loyalty as advertising and marketing. Ninety per cent of customer loyalty is generated by twenty-five per cent of the sales force. The single most important determinant of an individual's performance is his relationship with his immediate superior. A people problem is a leadership problem. (I wonder if Sam ran that one by dear old Dad.)
You can see where we're heading. Sam transitions into a philosophical analysis of leadership, which he defines as the finessing of contraries. Using the Abraham Lincoln of Doris Kearns Goodwin's "Team of Rivals" as an example -- a man who was charismatic yet unassuming, consistent yet flexible, willing to take risks, yet patient -- Sam portrays the inspiring leader as one who can manage conflict between opposing forces, even initiate such conflict, because conflict has the power to generate creative tension and original thinking. After all, he announces profoundly, the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth. And the sign of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing views in the mind and still function.
Sam drifts from those profundities to the tactics of leadership -- hiring and firing, managing by walking around, measuring performance, setting goals, delegating, and coaching -- which he has little time for, because he is anxious to illuminate its most effective quality -- which inspiring leaders cultivate in themselves -- love. Yes, it turns out, all you need is love -- because you can buy employees' heads but not their hearts; managers have learned to love techniques and use people, when they should be doing just the opposite; and, in a truly felicitous play on words, love makes ordinary workers extraordinary.
Well, it is Sunday morning, so Sam's sermon isn't too far-fetched. The heart of love is the spirit of giving, and Sam, dripping with love for his congregants, bestows upon us the five love languages for success in business and personal relationships: quality time; acts of service; gifts; touch; and words of affirmation, encouraging words, kind words, humble words. He reminds us of what we innately know: the tongue has the power of life and death; the killer of motivation is criticism; a person needs eight praises for every criticism; inspiring leaders focus on strengths and manage around weaknesses.
I leave the room thinking that he certainly got that ratio right; my wife criticizes me once and I praise her eight times.
I enjoy Sam enough to risk a second class the next day -- on a different subject, of course, "Business is a Game of Margins," replete with a whole new assortment of insightful word-smithing, beginning with this groundbreaking formula for success: build a business; don't do business, that advice following hard upon the by-now-familiar saga of his carpet-store apprenticeship. Today's lesson is that a negotiated dollar adds or subtracts from the bottom line and to increase profitability, don't cut prices; raise them. (Apparently, Sam A. never heard of Sam W . . . alton.) Increase your prices ten percent, and you can make the same profit with thirty-four per cent fewer sales. (The problem with that calculation is that it's not so easy to raise prices ten per cent.)
As it turns out, pricing power is largely a function of positioning, your ability to differentiate yourself from your competitor. To put it bluntly, as Sam does, differentiate or die. Customers will never perceive you are the best unless they perceive you are different.
If your advertisements, store appearance, and customer service are no different (or no better) than your competitor's, then your customer, when confronted by similarity and reduced to commodity shopping, will make her buying decision on price, in which case, the lowest price wins. If a customer claims she can purchase your product at a lower price, tell her why you are worth more. Never admit sameness; if necessary, acknowledge the price differential, but convey your conviction that your product is better.
Add some love to your marketing mix -- the same kind of love Sam advocates for employees. Customers want our love, our empathy. The opposite of love is, not hate, but indifference, and indifference on the part of employees is why customer don't come back.
Sam tosses out a school of slippery fish, hoping his listeners can spear one or two more: shop your competition, not to copy him, but to surpass him; offer a diverse product and price mix; price every item on your floor; use printed price tags; price by perceived value rather than by a standard margin; highlight certain products for comparison with other products; and brand yourself -- with an identity, not a hot iron. That is an extensive to-do list; and I've got four other classes to attend.
Dave A. teaches the next one, entitled "Consumer Communications," a general treatment of communication skills applicable, in fact, to all kinds of interpersonal relationships.
Dave likes lists, beginning with seven rules for good communication: since communication is a dialogue, not a monologue, let the other person talk; listen with the mind, by developing better eye-contact skills, such as focusing on the bridge of the talker's nose (if nothing else, I have been honing in on noses lately); do not argue, which injects emotion into the dialogue; never interrupt, either verbally or non-verbally (such as by looking away); ask questions; minimize negatives; and deflect gossip, or negative talk about other people.
Fifty-five per cent of communication is transmitted by one's body language, thirty-eight per cent by voice, seven per cent in words (Now where did he come up with that one?) -- which means that, in a telephone conversation, one's tone of voice is five times more important than the words one speaks. Three barriers to communication are boredom (because one listens five times faster than the other person speaks, unless the speaker is a silver-tongued business consultant); voice inflection, which alters one's meaning; and the tendency of the listener to lock on to his own perception of what is happening and to lock out what is actually being said.
For effective communication, ask open-ended questions beginning with what, how, and why (like we did as children, until our parents started answering us, "Because I told you so, that's why"), not with closed-ended ones beginning with where, when, and who.
Dave concludes his remarks with a list which logically would have been more useful to his audience if shared earlier -- poor listening habits: pencil listening, or taking notes (and there I was, feverishly scribbling away, excusable, however, because this wasn't a one-on-one conversation, unless, of course, everyone else was asleep); pretending to listen; not listening and not even pretending; not caring about what is being said; completing another person's thought before he can; and displaying boredom -- by yawning, or similar body language, even during an 8:00 AM class, which this is. Fortunately, I can yawn, write, and listen simultaneously.
Who can resist a class with the scintillating title "Explode Your Sales," taught by Robert B.? Robert opens with a statistic that is not all that surprising but nevertheless embarrassing: fifteen per cent of weekly sales are made on Sunday, and our stores are closed on Sunday. Thus, I'm not sure if our company fits the alliterative model of the new Millenium Merchant, who operates during customer-friendly hours, understands the power of an exceptional staff, uses technology to benefit his business, and leverages other people's ideas.
Robert presents three ways to grow one's business, which, in retrospect, aren't that novel either: increase the average sale; increase the number of transactions per customer; and increase the number of customers. The first of these he dispenses with quickly: train your staff to sell more to each customer (which doesn't seem like much of a solution without some elaboration of the word "train") and raise your prices (which doesn't seem any easier to do just because I hear it a second time). At this point, I am tempted to tell Robert to go fly a kite, since furniture prices do not float up as effortlessly as the kites once manufactured by the company he co-founded with his brother in his youthful, entrepreneurial days.
Robert ramps up the originality when he addresses how to generate more transactions per customer: develop a frequent buyer program, rebating a customer after a specified number of purchases; market by e-mail, using short, interesting, and timely messages; and organize special events, such as parties, contests, and clubs.
Acquiring new customers is the most difficult of the three objectives. Robert proposes a new paradigm: give in order to get; lose on the first transaction to make money later; make a sale, regardless of cost, in order to get a customer (to which I would respond: since consumers don't purchase furniture that often, I'm not sure we can afford the initial losing transaction). Among the tactics one might employ in implementing this strategy are distributing gift cards, offering to share the proceeds from purchases with non-profits, and rewarding customers who refer others to your store -- all of which may yield benefits, but, even taken together, are hardly likely to create the critical mass furniture retailers are looking for.
I have to laugh out loud as I slide into my next class, "It's About Time," where the instructor, a professorial-looking fellow named George P., is extremely agitated. "What's wrong?" I inquire. "This has never happened to me in eight years of consulting work," he says. "The organizers of this program didn't give me enough time." Too bad, George, I think to myself, not wanting to engage in negative conversation, because, in your own words, time can't be saved, and, in a rather daring assertion for this Bible-belt territory, you might not have another life after this one. Actually, I believe that is a certainty.
Given a second chance this morning, George manages his time better, because my notes are brief and to the point. He lists ten principles of time efficiency. Zap distractions (by closing your office door, for example, when you do not wish to be disturbed -- and make sure your employees know why it is closed). Plan your day on the way to work. (Sorry, I'm listening to Mike and Mike sports talk.) Make a to-do list (another one). Delegate, because the person who rows the boat doesn't have time to rock it (as long as the crew is not up the creek without a paddle). Once you pass the baton -- give an assignment to an associate -- don't take it back. Make meetings about the future, not the past. Recruit rigorously and effectively, because eighty per cent of one's time is spent as the result of a bad hire. (And if you have wonderful employees, like I have, you can reduce your work time by eighty per cent.) Discipline effectively, following a brief verbal, formal warning, interview, and write-up process (which seems more time-consuming than time-efficient). Get your sleep (and remember to close your door). And finally, learn to multi-task, his best piece of advice, although I doubt any of the executives in this room would have made it this far if without already possessing that skill.
Taking to heart George's warning about bad hiring decisions, I rally for the closing day's serendipitous class on "Hiring and Firing." Attendance is embarrassingly sparse, as many of my colleagues, pressed for time, have headed home, leaving many empty seats in the rear of the room for the remaining dozen or so to choose from. Our instructor, Daniel A., is tall, well-groomed, nattily attired, and a fast talker who, it appears, can hire or fire with equal aplomb.
Daniel begins by identifying the hiring challenges employers face these days. By 2010 there will be ten million more jobs in our society than workers to fill them (unless, I reflect, we open up our borders or raise the retirement age, two simple, but politically suicidal, solutions). Whereas workers of my generation chose a job for life, today they opt for a life full of jobs, and change them eleven times before retirement (a number which seemed exaggerated to me, perhaps skewed by some who change monthly). Higher pay reduces turnover; Costco's average hourly pay is forty per cent higher than Sam's Club, and its turnover is six per cent compared to Sam's twenty-one per cent. Baby boomers like me (with a strong work ethic!) face a generational challenge; we are relegated to hiring Generation X'ers who, raised in a latch-key environment, may be defensive and angry, or Generation Y'ers who, operating in a universe of high-tech communications, desire working conditions suited to their lifestyle.
Daniel warns of several hiring traps. Seventy-two per cent of companies don't have a structured process. They hire under pressure and lower their standards. They focus on what prospective employees can do rather than on what they will do, when, in fact, they should hire on attitude and teach technique. Reference checks are worthless. Bad hires are costly: three times the employee's salary, lower company morale, retraining expenses, lost business opportunities, and poor customer service (not to mention, eighty per cent of the manager's time).
Who could argue with Daniel's next piece of advice? Look for people who possess integrity, intelligence, and common sense; who maintain eye contact (or at least bridge-of-the-nose contact); and who are organized, can multi-task, and are willing to change. (In other words, look for someone just like you!) Sadly, the best place to find such superhumans is in industries other than retail: customer service, hospitality, teaching, the military, and airlines. (I wonder which friendly skies he's been flying.)
Daniel suggests how such individuals might be recruited. Pay bonuses to current employees for referrals (as much as $1000 to be effective). Run advertisements, which are free, on the AARP web site. Ask manufacturer's representatives for assistance by posing such innocuous questions as "Who do you know who might be interested in this opportunity?"
Daniel goes into considerable detail on the interview process. He recommends three interviews: a telephone interview and one each by the prospective employee's supervisor and an associate. He screens applicants by having them respond to voice mail: "Welcome to Schewels. Please leave a brief message and five reasons why you would do well in the furniture industry." The best respondents are called back for a five-minute telephone interview, and those who pass this line of defense are invited for a personal forty-minute interview.
It begins with some casual pleasantries and the interviewer providing basic information about himself and the company culture. Then the conversation flips, and the interviewer asks the applicant about his background, education, military service, and job experience. He asks him to rank in order one to five his reasons for wanting to make a job change: challenge, location, advancement, money, and security. (They are easy to remember; just think "clams.")
He searches deeper, trying to ascertain the applicant's motivations. He asks for three adjectives his former supervisor would use to describe him, and, if he receives a prepared answer, he probes for amplification with open-ended "why" questions. (Remember those?) He asks what his former supervisor would say are three areas in which he needs personal improvement.
If he likes the applicant, he closes the interview by asking him: on a scale of one to ten, how interested is he in this position, and then, how the gap between his response and number ten can be closed. He asks the applicant to call him a 10:15 the next morning -- a sly test of punctuality. A third interview is conducted by an associate, whose reaction must be positive for the applicant to be hired.
Daniel concludes with the last sound bite of my strenuous three-day rest, rehabilitation, and re-education adventure: a failure to hit the bull's eye is not the fault of the target.
I'll remember that one, along with a few other zingers. Love your employees (but don't get too close). Differentiate or die (unless a competitor has an idea too good not to copy). Focus on the bridge of the nose (when you can't bear to look the person whom you are about to fire in the eye). It's about time (to get home and back to work). Actually, the maxim not a single one of these garrulous authorities propounded among the thousands of words they fluidly disgorged is the one that by far seems the most appropriate: It's all easier said than done.
Was it my obsessive-compulsive personality, my deep-rooted ethnic guilt, my inveterate admiration of scholarly mouthpieces, or a too sanguine assessment of the portability of some memorable prescription for personal or business invigoration that roused me from my luxurious accommodations at the Anatole Hilton in Dallas, Texas, propelled me through a chilly predawn six-mile run, and deposited me in class at 8:00 AM on three consecutive mornings for nine sleep-deprived hours of continuing education -- when, in truth, I suspected it would all be for naught?
After all, as one lecturer metaphorically remarked, good ideas are like slippery fish, and, once the hook is removed, they require aggressive measures to be retained and digested, which he graciously supplied: a to-do list, good intentions ambitiously recorded in the rarefied air of the laboratory, and a to-review list, notable objectives resolutely consummated in the real world of retail frenzy.
Even that formula for piscatorial containment was difficult to spear. Whether from stubbornness, perversity, egotism, or simply habit, ignoring the savant's advice, I took copious notes instead; I always do; otherwise, my attention falters and my diligent attendance is wasted. Consequently, I now have a to-do list that is so daunting I shudder at initiating even Task One and a to-review list that is as unblemished as the crystalline snowflakes that unexpectedly dotted the Dallas suburbs that morning. If only a written examination had been in the offing, I would have made the Honor Role, since my notes are exceedingly thorough. Alas, the only tests here are self-administered ones for performance, and in that regard, as my readers have no doubt already deduced, I hardly rate a passing grade.
Of course, there is another way to way to view this whole exercise. Once one has mastered the principles, promulgations, and best-practices of leadership, management, and motivation, and the ability to regurgitate them on cue, one would seem eminently qualified to don the mantle of consultant -- a line of work in which the responsibility for the actual execution of all these directives rests on the heavily-weighted shoulders of someone other than the preacher. Some of these putative experts are indeed veterans of the types of businesses for which they are professing wisdom; whether their disengagement and reinvention can be attributed to past success, failure, or mediocrity is a pregnant question. For surely there must be a modicum of truth in the adage that a consultant is a person who knows fifty ways to make love but can't get a date.
Not intending to be disrespectful, I am amused by the crowded -- and lucrative -- cottage industry of consultancy, in which each "suit" seems to be cut from the same bolt of cloth. Patient but anxious, he stands at the head of the class, smiling, adjusting his equipment, greeting a few of the eager, bleary-eyed, fifty-something students who stroll in, wondering if this is the man (or woman) who can deliver the magic bullet they have traveled some many miles in search of. He lays his jacket aside so it will not interfere with his energetic body movements; he wears a necktie subdued in color and design to minimize distractions. His voice is deep, resonant, and forceful, hardly needing the amplification provided by the tiny microphone attached to his shirt.
He talks smoothly, confidently, and often rapidly, trying to compress three hours of potent material into sixty or ninety minutes. His words gush forth like torrents from a fire hydrant, while his thirsty auditors sip the swirling waters like soda through a straw or sift for sparkling nuggets of golden edification before they can wash away. His delivery is polished, professional, familiar but not memorized, the product of countless hours of similar presentations, rehearsals, and recordings. He floats out a few half-hearted jokes or witticisms -- usually to emphasize a point -- but, in truth, he doesn't have much time for humor. He sporadically attempts to engage the audience, but unless a lucky guess surfaces quickly he answers his own question and races on. He enhances his message with a handout, in my view a poor substitute for listening, and power point slides, which can be helpful but also disconcerting.
While my companions often gravitate to the sides and rear of the meeting room, I always sit in the first or second of the five or six rows of parallel tables, and near the center, in order to see and hear better. Some speakers will ask the peripheral folks to move forward and fill up the front seats; others will roam down a center aisle to reach them, leaving me, who had the courtesy to sit up front, staring into space, justifiably irritated.
My first class, "Rewards that Produce Results," is taught by Sam A., a tall, lanky, rectangular-faced gentleman who warms up his audience by recounting the trials, tribulations, and frustrations of working in his family's carpet business -- still owned and operated by his eighty-year-old father, who, since Sam left, can't seem to find any good help -- and blaming the requisite long hours for the breakup of his first marriage. He made a nice recovery, however, as evidenced by the striking, black-haired beauty, fifteen years his junior, brightening up the rear of the rear of the room selling his books and CD's.
Sam erupts with a barrage of aphoristic statements and statistics which, at first pass, sound like revelations, but, on second thought, are hardly ingenious. Businesses succeed because people want them to. Satisfied customers go elsewhere; only loyal customers come back. Our employees should look like they want to be at work; tell them to tell their faces that they are having a good day. The sales force generates four times as much loyalty as advertising and marketing. Ninety per cent of customer loyalty is generated by twenty-five per cent of the sales force. The single most important determinant of an individual's performance is his relationship with his immediate superior. A people problem is a leadership problem. (I wonder if Sam ran that one by dear old Dad.)
You can see where we're heading. Sam transitions into a philosophical analysis of leadership, which he defines as the finessing of contraries. Using the Abraham Lincoln of Doris Kearns Goodwin's "Team of Rivals" as an example -- a man who was charismatic yet unassuming, consistent yet flexible, willing to take risks, yet patient -- Sam portrays the inspiring leader as one who can manage conflict between opposing forces, even initiate such conflict, because conflict has the power to generate creative tension and original thinking. After all, he announces profoundly, the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth. And the sign of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing views in the mind and still function.
Sam drifts from those profundities to the tactics of leadership -- hiring and firing, managing by walking around, measuring performance, setting goals, delegating, and coaching -- which he has little time for, because he is anxious to illuminate its most effective quality -- which inspiring leaders cultivate in themselves -- love. Yes, it turns out, all you need is love -- because you can buy employees' heads but not their hearts; managers have learned to love techniques and use people, when they should be doing just the opposite; and, in a truly felicitous play on words, love makes ordinary workers extraordinary.
Well, it is Sunday morning, so Sam's sermon isn't too far-fetched. The heart of love is the spirit of giving, and Sam, dripping with love for his congregants, bestows upon us the five love languages for success in business and personal relationships: quality time; acts of service; gifts; touch; and words of affirmation, encouraging words, kind words, humble words. He reminds us of what we innately know: the tongue has the power of life and death; the killer of motivation is criticism; a person needs eight praises for every criticism; inspiring leaders focus on strengths and manage around weaknesses.
I leave the room thinking that he certainly got that ratio right; my wife criticizes me once and I praise her eight times.
I enjoy Sam enough to risk a second class the next day -- on a different subject, of course, "Business is a Game of Margins," replete with a whole new assortment of insightful word-smithing, beginning with this groundbreaking formula for success: build a business; don't do business, that advice following hard upon the by-now-familiar saga of his carpet-store apprenticeship. Today's lesson is that a negotiated dollar adds or subtracts from the bottom line and to increase profitability, don't cut prices; raise them. (Apparently, Sam A. never heard of Sam W . . . alton.) Increase your prices ten percent, and you can make the same profit with thirty-four per cent fewer sales. (The problem with that calculation is that it's not so easy to raise prices ten per cent.)
As it turns out, pricing power is largely a function of positioning, your ability to differentiate yourself from your competitor. To put it bluntly, as Sam does, differentiate or die. Customers will never perceive you are the best unless they perceive you are different.
If your advertisements, store appearance, and customer service are no different (or no better) than your competitor's, then your customer, when confronted by similarity and reduced to commodity shopping, will make her buying decision on price, in which case, the lowest price wins. If a customer claims she can purchase your product at a lower price, tell her why you are worth more. Never admit sameness; if necessary, acknowledge the price differential, but convey your conviction that your product is better.
Add some love to your marketing mix -- the same kind of love Sam advocates for employees. Customers want our love, our empathy. The opposite of love is, not hate, but indifference, and indifference on the part of employees is why customer don't come back.
Sam tosses out a school of slippery fish, hoping his listeners can spear one or two more: shop your competition, not to copy him, but to surpass him; offer a diverse product and price mix; price every item on your floor; use printed price tags; price by perceived value rather than by a standard margin; highlight certain products for comparison with other products; and brand yourself -- with an identity, not a hot iron. That is an extensive to-do list; and I've got four other classes to attend.
Dave A. teaches the next one, entitled "Consumer Communications," a general treatment of communication skills applicable, in fact, to all kinds of interpersonal relationships.
Dave likes lists, beginning with seven rules for good communication: since communication is a dialogue, not a monologue, let the other person talk; listen with the mind, by developing better eye-contact skills, such as focusing on the bridge of the talker's nose (if nothing else, I have been honing in on noses lately); do not argue, which injects emotion into the dialogue; never interrupt, either verbally or non-verbally (such as by looking away); ask questions; minimize negatives; and deflect gossip, or negative talk about other people.
Fifty-five per cent of communication is transmitted by one's body language, thirty-eight per cent by voice, seven per cent in words (Now where did he come up with that one?) -- which means that, in a telephone conversation, one's tone of voice is five times more important than the words one speaks. Three barriers to communication are boredom (because one listens five times faster than the other person speaks, unless the speaker is a silver-tongued business consultant); voice inflection, which alters one's meaning; and the tendency of the listener to lock on to his own perception of what is happening and to lock out what is actually being said.
For effective communication, ask open-ended questions beginning with what, how, and why (like we did as children, until our parents started answering us, "Because I told you so, that's why"), not with closed-ended ones beginning with where, when, and who.
Dave concludes his remarks with a list which logically would have been more useful to his audience if shared earlier -- poor listening habits: pencil listening, or taking notes (and there I was, feverishly scribbling away, excusable, however, because this wasn't a one-on-one conversation, unless, of course, everyone else was asleep); pretending to listen; not listening and not even pretending; not caring about what is being said; completing another person's thought before he can; and displaying boredom -- by yawning, or similar body language, even during an 8:00 AM class, which this is. Fortunately, I can yawn, write, and listen simultaneously.
Who can resist a class with the scintillating title "Explode Your Sales," taught by Robert B.? Robert opens with a statistic that is not all that surprising but nevertheless embarrassing: fifteen per cent of weekly sales are made on Sunday, and our stores are closed on Sunday. Thus, I'm not sure if our company fits the alliterative model of the new Millenium Merchant, who operates during customer-friendly hours, understands the power of an exceptional staff, uses technology to benefit his business, and leverages other people's ideas.
Robert presents three ways to grow one's business, which, in retrospect, aren't that novel either: increase the average sale; increase the number of transactions per customer; and increase the number of customers. The first of these he dispenses with quickly: train your staff to sell more to each customer (which doesn't seem like much of a solution without some elaboration of the word "train") and raise your prices (which doesn't seem any easier to do just because I hear it a second time). At this point, I am tempted to tell Robert to go fly a kite, since furniture prices do not float up as effortlessly as the kites once manufactured by the company he co-founded with his brother in his youthful, entrepreneurial days.
Robert ramps up the originality when he addresses how to generate more transactions per customer: develop a frequent buyer program, rebating a customer after a specified number of purchases; market by e-mail, using short, interesting, and timely messages; and organize special events, such as parties, contests, and clubs.
Acquiring new customers is the most difficult of the three objectives. Robert proposes a new paradigm: give in order to get; lose on the first transaction to make money later; make a sale, regardless of cost, in order to get a customer (to which I would respond: since consumers don't purchase furniture that often, I'm not sure we can afford the initial losing transaction). Among the tactics one might employ in implementing this strategy are distributing gift cards, offering to share the proceeds from purchases with non-profits, and rewarding customers who refer others to your store -- all of which may yield benefits, but, even taken together, are hardly likely to create the critical mass furniture retailers are looking for.
I have to laugh out loud as I slide into my next class, "It's About Time," where the instructor, a professorial-looking fellow named George P., is extremely agitated. "What's wrong?" I inquire. "This has never happened to me in eight years of consulting work," he says. "The organizers of this program didn't give me enough time." Too bad, George, I think to myself, not wanting to engage in negative conversation, because, in your own words, time can't be saved, and, in a rather daring assertion for this Bible-belt territory, you might not have another life after this one. Actually, I believe that is a certainty.
Given a second chance this morning, George manages his time better, because my notes are brief and to the point. He lists ten principles of time efficiency. Zap distractions (by closing your office door, for example, when you do not wish to be disturbed -- and make sure your employees know why it is closed). Plan your day on the way to work. (Sorry, I'm listening to Mike and Mike sports talk.) Make a to-do list (another one). Delegate, because the person who rows the boat doesn't have time to rock it (as long as the crew is not up the creek without a paddle). Once you pass the baton -- give an assignment to an associate -- don't take it back. Make meetings about the future, not the past. Recruit rigorously and effectively, because eighty per cent of one's time is spent as the result of a bad hire. (And if you have wonderful employees, like I have, you can reduce your work time by eighty per cent.) Discipline effectively, following a brief verbal, formal warning, interview, and write-up process (which seems more time-consuming than time-efficient). Get your sleep (and remember to close your door). And finally, learn to multi-task, his best piece of advice, although I doubt any of the executives in this room would have made it this far if without already possessing that skill.
Taking to heart George's warning about bad hiring decisions, I rally for the closing day's serendipitous class on "Hiring and Firing." Attendance is embarrassingly sparse, as many of my colleagues, pressed for time, have headed home, leaving many empty seats in the rear of the room for the remaining dozen or so to choose from. Our instructor, Daniel A., is tall, well-groomed, nattily attired, and a fast talker who, it appears, can hire or fire with equal aplomb.
Daniel begins by identifying the hiring challenges employers face these days. By 2010 there will be ten million more jobs in our society than workers to fill them (unless, I reflect, we open up our borders or raise the retirement age, two simple, but politically suicidal, solutions). Whereas workers of my generation chose a job for life, today they opt for a life full of jobs, and change them eleven times before retirement (a number which seemed exaggerated to me, perhaps skewed by some who change monthly). Higher pay reduces turnover; Costco's average hourly pay is forty per cent higher than Sam's Club, and its turnover is six per cent compared to Sam's twenty-one per cent. Baby boomers like me (with a strong work ethic!) face a generational challenge; we are relegated to hiring Generation X'ers who, raised in a latch-key environment, may be defensive and angry, or Generation Y'ers who, operating in a universe of high-tech communications, desire working conditions suited to their lifestyle.
Daniel warns of several hiring traps. Seventy-two per cent of companies don't have a structured process. They hire under pressure and lower their standards. They focus on what prospective employees can do rather than on what they will do, when, in fact, they should hire on attitude and teach technique. Reference checks are worthless. Bad hires are costly: three times the employee's salary, lower company morale, retraining expenses, lost business opportunities, and poor customer service (not to mention, eighty per cent of the manager's time).
Who could argue with Daniel's next piece of advice? Look for people who possess integrity, intelligence, and common sense; who maintain eye contact (or at least bridge-of-the-nose contact); and who are organized, can multi-task, and are willing to change. (In other words, look for someone just like you!) Sadly, the best place to find such superhumans is in industries other than retail: customer service, hospitality, teaching, the military, and airlines. (I wonder which friendly skies he's been flying.)
Daniel suggests how such individuals might be recruited. Pay bonuses to current employees for referrals (as much as $1000 to be effective). Run advertisements, which are free, on the AARP web site. Ask manufacturer's representatives for assistance by posing such innocuous questions as "Who do you know who might be interested in this opportunity?"
Daniel goes into considerable detail on the interview process. He recommends three interviews: a telephone interview and one each by the prospective employee's supervisor and an associate. He screens applicants by having them respond to voice mail: "Welcome to Schewels. Please leave a brief message and five reasons why you would do well in the furniture industry." The best respondents are called back for a five-minute telephone interview, and those who pass this line of defense are invited for a personal forty-minute interview.
It begins with some casual pleasantries and the interviewer providing basic information about himself and the company culture. Then the conversation flips, and the interviewer asks the applicant about his background, education, military service, and job experience. He asks him to rank in order one to five his reasons for wanting to make a job change: challenge, location, advancement, money, and security. (They are easy to remember; just think "clams.")
He searches deeper, trying to ascertain the applicant's motivations. He asks for three adjectives his former supervisor would use to describe him, and, if he receives a prepared answer, he probes for amplification with open-ended "why" questions. (Remember those?) He asks what his former supervisor would say are three areas in which he needs personal improvement.
If he likes the applicant, he closes the interview by asking him: on a scale of one to ten, how interested is he in this position, and then, how the gap between his response and number ten can be closed. He asks the applicant to call him a 10:15 the next morning -- a sly test of punctuality. A third interview is conducted by an associate, whose reaction must be positive for the applicant to be hired.
Daniel concludes with the last sound bite of my strenuous three-day rest, rehabilitation, and re-education adventure: a failure to hit the bull's eye is not the fault of the target.
I'll remember that one, along with a few other zingers. Love your employees (but don't get too close). Differentiate or die (unless a competitor has an idea too good not to copy). Focus on the bridge of the nose (when you can't bear to look the person whom you are about to fire in the eye). It's about time (to get home and back to work). Actually, the maxim not a single one of these garrulous authorities propounded among the thousands of words they fluidly disgorged is the one that by far seems the most appropriate: It's all easier said than done.
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Civil Warrior
I have a new hero: Ulysses S. Grant.That's a surprising choice for a born-and-bred Southerner, a proud graduate of Washington and Lee University, and a man whose truncated armed forces career consisted of two weeks at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center in Chicago, Illinois, and two weeks aboard a destroyer that never left its berth in Jacksonville, Florida.
Not long after that stillborn voyage -- which marked the completion of a year-long reserve training course -- my Commanding Officer at the Naval Reserve Center in Lynchburg summoned me to his office, informed me that the Navy had a surfeit (my word, not his) of recruits, and offered me a voluntary discharge, ostensibly because my college degree overqualifed me for two year's active duty as an enlisted man, but most likely because my total ineptitude in all the requisite skills of seamanship (like swabbing the deck, painting the hull while suspended overboard on a scaffold, and swearing with unrelenting frequency) was painfully evident. By a stroke of good fortune, my original motive for enlisting -- to avoid the draft and a tour in Vietnam -- was no longer operative, the Selective Service having instituted in the intervening period a lottery system and consequently having assigned me a number which made the likelihood of induction extremely remote. After a pregnant moment of serious reflection, I thanked the Navy profusely and jumped ship.
That forgettable episode was a rude awakening to a fellow whose notion of military affairs was circumscribed by a youthful fascination with the Civil War -- an interest that was shared by several of my peers but which I have failed to observe in the current generation, at least in those in my family circle: sons, daughters, nieces, nephews. Granted, one's affinity for any particular subject is a matter of personal taste, but I suspect that historical studies as an avocation -- for all us non-athletes, that is, who had plenty of time for such diversions -- has fallen prey to stiff competition from a myriad of technological leisure time options -- like computers, cell phones, and Wii games. I would also argue, counterintuitively, that the popularity some years ago of Ken Burns's documentary was more an indication of a curiosity and lack of knowledge about the Civil War than a reflection of some widely-held, deep-seated enthusiasm.
In today's environment of political correctness, the classroom discussion of Southern Secession and the War is no doubt a sensitive subject. Intellectual honesty requires that teachers freely acknowledge slavery and its politics as their root causes and firmly reject the coded euphemisms of my segregated era, which defined the irrepressible conflict as a clash between industrial and agrarian societies, protectionists and free-traders, and federalist and states-rights advocates -- and minimized, if not ignored, slavery as the critical factor.
This benign neglect of the Peculiar Institution, coupled with a cavalier indifference towards the War's appalling devastation and loss of life (630,00 dead, 2% of the nation's population, equivalent to 6 million today), allowed students like me to invest it with a naive romanticism. With all the horror and inhumanity bleached out, the Civil War was reduced to an exercise of identifying obscure villages on a map (many of which were located in my own Virginia backyard), moving army units around like pieces on a chessboard, assigning politicians and generals their proper roles as heroes or villains, and imagining glorious might-have-beens in the service of a Lost Cause.
I remember a seventh-grade chronicle composed of handwritten text and cut-out illustrations painstakingly pasted on blue construction papers neatly tied together; one year later, a scholarly exposition of the crucial three-day struggle at Gettysburg, complete with my own crudely-traced maps, typed by my father's secretary, and bound in a green folder; a board game of the same name, its piece de resistance a large-scale rendering of the battlefield, on which my friends and I spent many hours maneuvering miniature brigades in imaginary contests of strategy and tactics; laboring over, at the insistence of another precocious military expert, the impenetrable but authoritative tome, "Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac," penned in 1866 by one William Swinton, a journalist who, I recently read, barely escaped execution after he was discovered eavesdropping outside General Grant's tent one night; and devouring the much more accessible "Stillness at Appomattox," by Bruce Catton, my youthful introduction to the joys of finely crafted narrative history.
Is there any doubt that the lens through which my fellow devotees and I peered into the past was clouded by a Southern (and Eastern) bias? Our demigods were the saintly patrician, Robert E. Lee, and his eccentric but brilliant lieutenant, Stonewall Jackson; their foils a series of incompetent Union commanders against whom the two teamed up to inflict one ignominious defeat after another: McClellan at Mechanicsville, Pope at Second Manassas, Burnside at Fredericksburg, Hooker at Chancellorsville, McDowell, Banks, and Fremont in the Valley. Even the draws -- Antietam and Gettysburg -- were moral victories; the Confederacy would not succumb until the brutal, remorseless Ulysses S. Grant, flush with his success in the western theater (although achieved against generals hardly comparable to Robert E. Lee) , came east in 1864, poured thousands of soldiers into the crucible of the Overland Campaign, and eventually subdued his invincible -- and more astute and humane -- opponent only through the sheer force of numbers. Or so went the myth.
A few years ago I picked up another book by Bruce Catton, this one entitled "Grant Moves South." After reading a few pages, in a sudden, apocalyptic correction of my juvenile myopia, I realized that, while I, a Virginian (like Robert E. Lee), had always thought of my home as the battleground state, upon whose sacred soil this War would be won or lost, there was another furious conflict raging 800 miles to the west, where the North was shredding the Confederacy with a number of stunning victories and where, inexorably, Ulysses S. Grant was moving South. I began to acquire a new respect for the man.
Grant was a man of the West -- he was born in Ohio and later moved to Illinois -- but he was also a man for the Union. His persona, fostered by those who knew and wrote about him and cultivated by himself in his "Memoirs," is that of an iconic Western (and, by extrapolation, American) hero (as described in Jean Edwards Smith's "Grant" and Catton's "Grant Moves South): quiet; careless of style, formality, and show; slouching, unmilitary, very ordinary; yet possessed of a good deal of common sense; and of whom it was said that, when he came around, things started to happen.
In some mysterious way, he embodied what Catton terms, dialectically, (in "U.S. Grant and the American Military Tradition") the lofty idealism and gross materialism of the Western pioneer, who saw his destiny as limitless, embracing the whole continent, and who was prepared to react with violence and energy against anything (read secession) which "threatened the unity and continuity of the American experiment."
Initially, Grant was not an Abolitionist, but he came to believe that the War was precipitated by the unwillingness of the "intelligent, well-to-do, and non-slave-holding free state population to secure, police, and protect the South's favorite institution." As John Keegan writes in "The Mask of Command," he understood that "American propriety required humility to the sovereignty of the people," that the majority must triumph over the minority for the two disparate Americas -- North and South -- to become one; afterward, he yearned for their citizens to commingle in peace and harmony.
A British journalist, quoted in Smith's biography, called Grant a "genuine commoner, a commander of a democratic army from a democratic people." According to Keegan, Grant grasped what many of his fellow generals did not: this was an ideological war fought by volunteers; men of "social standing, competence, wealth, and independence of character" were risking their lives for a principle. Instinctively, he came to employ the populist touch that made him master of the people's war, commanding by consent rather than by diktat -- "the great majority favored discipline," he later wrote -- and instilling the value of military routine by experience (marching, fighting) rather than by precept.
Grant's reputation as a "butcher" was initiated by early apologists for the "Lost Cause" and bolstered by Southern memoiralists and Northern historians disgusted by the scandals of his Presidency and angered by his Administration's efforts to protect the rights of freed blacks and to resolve ongoing hostilities with Native Americans. Recent scholarship has shown that Grant suffered no greater casualties -- proportionately or in real numbers -- than other generals on both sides, and, in many cases, fewer. For the entire war, Grant imposed 190,000 casualties on his foes while incurring 154,000. Grant had 18.1% of his men killed or wounded while killing or wounding 20.7% of the enemy; Lee had 20.2% of troops killed or wounded while killing or wounding 15.4% of the enemy. (Granted, Lee's forces were usually outnumbered.) Lee lost more soldiers than any other general in the war. "If a general could be called a butcher, Lee is probably more of one than Grant," says historian Gordon Rhea.
Major-General J.F.C. Fuller characterizes Grant as the "Master of Predicaments," and convincingly argues that therein lies his genius. When everything was right and orderly, in peacetime and prosperity, "he shrank into his shell of mediocrity," and managed to lose everything he had. When all was chaos, or when the occasion demanded desperate action, he emerged from anonymity, and "nothing would induce him to withdraw into it until normality had been re-established."
"He loved pitting his will against seeming impossibilities -- taming a buck-jumping circus pony, leaping over a battery of six guns in succession, fighting the bayous around Vicksburg, creating order out of confusion at Chattanooga, and pursuing Lee all over the bottomless road to Appomattox."
It was this theme I seized upon when I addressed my seven hundred employees at a company sales meeting on January 31st. In full regalia, of course.
It's not every one who gets to impersonate his hero -- and in front of an audience. Two years ago, on the same occasion, I had donned my all-white, all-bright Elvis Presley outfit and lip-synched "Blue Suede Shoes," but an encore performance seemed derivative and shallow.
I thought the story of Ulysses S. Grant's metamorphosis and unflinching resolve in moments of crisis could be a meaningful message in these uncertain economic times. The company had just suffered through its worst sales month since January 2001. It was the tenth consecutive month of sales declines on a comparable basis from the previous year. I was already engaged in a research project on Grant. And my corporate sales manger was insisting that I get out in front with some well-chosen words of motivation (or just make a fool of myself).
Although I have spoken many times before large groups and so no longer face them with fear, trembling, and perspiration, I believe that whatever lingering inhibitions one might secretly harbor magically evaporate beneath the transformative masque. Thus it was with a studied confidence that I strode out on the naked stage at the Roanoke Civic Center, in step with the patriotic beat of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," disguised in an authentic borrowed Union soldier's uniform, complete with gloves, boots, and sidearm belt, sporting a scruffy pasted-on black beard, cowboy hat, and unlit cigar, and spoke these memorized and mesmerizing (in my humble opinion) words:
"Mr. Schewel asked me to speak to you this morning because he believes that the lives of famous people can inspire us to excellence.
"My name is Ulysses S. Grant. Some say I was the greatest general of the Civil War. Some say I was the greatest general in U.S. military history. While others will have to judge the validity of those claims, certain facts speak for themselves: in four years, I never lost a battle, and I received the surrender of three Confederate armies.
"My childhood was unremarkable, although there were precursers of my future greatness.
"My father owned a tannery and a livery stable. I became an expert horseman and often drove horse-drawn wagons carrying trade and travelers to distant places. During these journeys, I developed a peculiar habit: if I accidentally went past my destination, I would take any kind of out-of-the-way detour to get back to it, even at a considerable inconvenience. I detested, even feared, retracing my steps; in other words, I hated to retreat.
"Because my father wanted me to get a good education, he secured an appointment for me to attend West Point. I doubted my ability to complete the course of study and couldn't bear the thought of failing. When I told my father that I wouldn't go, he said, after a brief pause, that he thought I would go, after which I said, after a brief pause, that I thought I would go, too. Which proves that, in order to be successful, a person must often do things he does not want to do or thinks himself incapable of doing.
"After graduating from West Point, I went off to war, the Mexican War, where I served under a general who made a lasting impression on me, Zachary Taylor. Known as Old Rough and Ready, he disliked military formality. He wore blue jeans, a linen duster, and a straw hat, and he lounged around headquarters like a backwoods farmer. But he was a fighter, and showed that, beneath all the glitter and brass, what really mattered was how you performed under pressure. And there must be some truth to that, because when Robert E. Lee surrendered to me at Appomattox, he was decked out in his finest dress grays, while I, swordless, was wearing a private's shirt and mud-stained boots and pants.
"When Taylor took his army on a 250-mile march through Central Mexico, I was appointed regimental quartermaster -- much to my disappointment, because I preferred to be on the front lines. I was responsible for collecting and organizing vast quantities of food, clothing, forage, and ammunition and transporting it by wagon train and pack mule -- a task which taught me that no matter how grand were the forces one had at hand and no matter how masterful was one's planning, success on the field depended on the logistics and equipment backing them up.
"After the Mexican War, I was sent to California. It was too far away. I missed my wife and sons so much that I resigned my commission and moved back to Ohio -- where, for seven lean years, I failed at one venture after another: farming, peddling, selling real estate, collecting rents, collecting taxes. If the Civil War had not broken out, I would have lived out my days as an unassuming clerk in my father's dry goods store. In 1861, the Governor of Illinois appointed me a colonel in charge of a regiment; a few months later, I was promoted to Brigadier General and given command of three divisions.
"Early on, I discovered that I possessed an unusual talent for reading maps and understanding topography. I perceived that the key to dominating the states of Kentucky and Tennessee was gaining control of two parallel rivers in northern Tennessee, the Tennessee River and the Cumberland River. In February 1862, with the help of a gunboat bombardment, I captured Fort Henry on the Tennessee River. I then marched my 15,000 men ten miles east and invested Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River.
"Those Confederates would not give up easily, however. They attacked the right end of our line and were near to breaking the siege and fleeing to safety, when, seven miles away, I mounted my horse and raced to the sound of gunfire. I saw that many Confederate soldiers had abandoned full knapsacks, and I realized that they were more demoralized than my own men and had fled the field in panic. 'The one who attacks now will be victorious,' I told General McClernand. Riding to the other end of the Union line, I informed General Smith: 'All has failed on the Union right; you must take Fort Donelson!' He led his men in a gallant bayonet charge; they drove the Confederates back into the fort -- and my terms of unconditional surrender were accepted two days later. We had turned a grievous defeat into the greatest Union victory in the war.
"Two months later I found myself in command of 35,000 troops encamped one hundred miles upriver at a place called Shiloh. I was overconfident and hardly expected what happened at daybreak on Sunday, April 6th: 40,000 Confederates launched a massive surprise attack. A savage battle ensued all morning; Union forces gave ground inch by inch, at a tremendous loss of life. I arrived on the scene at 8:30 and rode from one end of the line to the other, trying to stem the tide and maintain order in the midst of horrific destruction. In one area, known forever after as the Hornet's Nest, Union soldiers repulsed twelve separate attacks before giving way. By the close of the day, the Confederates had occupied our camps and driven us back almost into the river.
"At ten o'clock that night, General McClernand reported to me that one-third of our army was out of action and the rest downcast and disheartened. 'What do you propose to do?' he asked, 'Retreat?' 'No,' I responded, 'I propose to attack the enemy at daylight and whip them.'
"The next day was a mirror image of the previous one, only in reverse. Fortified by the timely arrival of reinforcements, we struck at dawn, caught the Confederates off guard, and fought them to exhaustion for six hours. This time they withdrew, and we reclaimed our former campsites. It was another victory snatched from the jaws of defeat but a costly one; both sides were learning that this war would be long and deadly.
"One year later I was again facing a daunting situation. My objective was the town of Vicksburg, perched high atop bluffs overlooking the Mississippi River, its gun batteries preventing free passage of the river from Ohio to New Orleans. Seven times I tried to master the defenses of Vicksburg and seven times I failed. I tried a head-on attack from the north up the face of the bluffs. I tried digging a canal to divert the Mississippi and bypass the town. I tried to create a circuitous waterway through the Louisiana swamps and emerge below the town. I tried riding the Yazoo River flood waters up close to the Confederate defenses but was blocked by a sunken steamer. I tried bringing troop-laden gunboats through the swollen ship channels but was driven off by sharpshooters.
"Finally, after studying my maps long and hard in the solitude of my tent, I devised a daring campaign that even my most trusted associates questioned but which would later be acknowledged as one of the most brilliant in military history. Twice, in the dead of night, I floated transports and steamers past the Vicksburg defenses. I marched my troops on a roundabout course fifty miles south of the town, used the transports to cross the river, cut loose from my supply base, and moved inland. During the next three weeks, my three corps fought and won five separate battles, defeated two enemy armies, occupied the capital of Mississippi, fed themselves from local farms, and eventually drove the remaining Confederates back into Vicksburg. After a one-month siege, that army became the second to accept my terms of unconditional surrender.
"In 1864, President Lincoln summoned me east to take command of all Union forces, but particularly the Army of the Potomac, which, after three years of combat against Robert E. Lee, was no further along than when it had first left the environs of Washington. We crossed the Rapidan River, stepped cautiously into the Virginia Wilderness, and on May 5th locked horns with the Army of Northern Virginia. It was a fierce two-day battle, fought amidst a dense, tangled undergrowth that impeded movement and visibility. At various times, each side appeared on the verge of a smashing victory (or disastrous defeat) only to be reversed by the arrival of reinforcements, a counterattack, or the missteps of a confused commander. Overnight fires burned alive hundreds of wounded soldiers lying helpless in the darkness. When the smoke dissipated, I had lost 17,000 men, Lee, 11,000.
"My soldiers were expecting retreat. After all, had not that been the all-too-familiar pattern of behavior in all their previous encounters with Robert E. Lee? That night I told a reporter on his way back to Washington to convey this message to President Lincoln: 'Whatever happens, there will be no turning back.' At 6:30 the next morning, I gave the order to march south. My men were astonished, then elated. They cheered, clapped, swung their arms, and tossed their hats into the air. They had been whipped to a draw -- yet they were moving forward, and would not rest until, eleven months later, Lee surrendered.
"In 1868, I was elected the eighteenth President of the United States. But I was no politician. Those qualities which had served me so well in wartime -- simplicity, candor, modesty, and magnanimity -- were of little value in the White House. I was undermined by greedy robber barons, jealous legislators, corrupt administrators, and the intractable problem of the freed slaves. When I retired eight years later, it was with a sense of relief.
"I had one more battle to fight. In 1880, I went into business with a man named Ferdinand Ward. I invested all my capital and encouraged others to follow suit, which many did, trusting in my reputation and good name. But Ward was a con artist and a swindler; the firm failed in 1884 and I was broke.
"My friend Mark Twain came to me and suggested that I write my Memoirs, my story of the great war in which I had risen to prominence and led the Union to victory. At first I was reluctant; who would want to read my writings, I thought. When Mr.Twain convinced me that it would be a way to make some money, I acquiesced.
"Late that summer I was sitting on my porch, making some notes, when I bit into a peach. I felt a sharp pain in my throat. When I rinsed my throat with water, it burned like liquid fire. My doctor diagnosed me with incurable throat cancer, and, suddenly, writing my Memoirs became a race against time and a last chance to leave something to my beloved wife and family.
"Only the courage, determination, and will power that had made me a great general enabled me to complete the task. I persisted through excruciating pain, debilitating weakness, and grogginess brought on by medication. Twice I almost died. When I became too weak to write, I would dictate to a secretary, and when it became too painful for me to speak, I would take up my pen again. Miraculously, I finished the work one week before my death on July 23rd, 1885. The sales of my Memoirs exceeded those of any previously-published book and earned a remarkable $450,000.
"I stand before you this morning as an ordinary man who performed extraordinary deeds -- by never giving up. Remember: when you are perplexed by an insurmountable predicament, when failure is staring you in the face, when all your efforts seem futile -- this is when true heroes rise to the occasion, and turn adversity into prosperity, defeat into triumph.
"But it's not easy. It requires the proper application of courage, determination, and will power, planning, preparation, and execution.
"Now, is the Schewel army ready to reverse the tide of ill fortune that has plagued it these past few months? Is the Schewel army ready to claim victory in the furniture and mattress wars? Is the Schewel army ready for its biggest HCP contest and biggest three-day sale ever?
"As I depart this stage to return forever to Grant's Tomb, let me leave with you one final message -- my formula for success. Like me, it's simple and straightforward. If you're a Civil Warrior, you take these words literally. But if you're a Pseudo-Warrior like Mr. Schewel here -- who has never fired a weapon -- you are to take these words metaphorically and apply them to the appropriate personal or business situation.
"Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can and as often as you can and keep moving on."
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Team of Rivals
Since it would be disingenuous at this point to proclaim a disinterest in television viewing, this being my third consecutive blog inspired by that activity, let me begin with the frank admission that, like the proverbial couch potato, for past two weeks I have found myself fixated on the silver screen for extended periods of time, entranced by all manner of sound bites, speechmaking, interviews, commentary, and analysis relative to America's quadrennial exercise in presidential selection.
Is this season's circus any more intriguing and seductive than others of recent memory -- or is it just the fact that, like a championship sporting event, it's this week's game of the century? I will not be the first -- nor last -- putative pundit to point out two obvious reasons for a heightened level of interest: (1) This is the first presidential election year since Eisenhower ran against Stevenson in 1952 in which neither party is offering up a natural successor, that is, a sitting president or vice-president; (2) The number of viable candidates is unusually large, nine at this writing, although some may fallen from favor by the time I post -- or you read -- this article.
Nine is a number which should resonate with my faithful readers, at least those perspicacious enough to recall my past and present reverence for the game of baseball. Yes, nine players constitute a traditional baseball team -- minus the anomalous designated hitter -- a conceit I propose to expand upon in this political meditation. Since, of course, these contenders are rivals rather than teammates, I seized upon the title noted above, fully aware that I might be justifiably castigated for plagiarizing it from Doris Kearns Goodwin's best-selling history of Lincoln's Administration, among the members of which were, at Mr. Lincoln's invitation, three men whom he had bested for the Presidency: William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, and Edward Bates.
The sight of these players rushing to their assigned positions prompts me to reflect on just what this game is all about: the quest to become the President of the United States, the most powerful man on earth, leader of three hundred million diverse souls, commander-in-chief of 1.5 million uniformed men and women scattered throughout the globe, administrator of a $2.8 trillion budget, manager of two million civil service employees (and 10.5 million more when federal contractors and grantees are included). Baited by the press, we, his constituents, yearn for a Chief Executive invested in the shimmering aura of royalty and endowed with the superhuman powers each candidate claims to possess, only to be cruelly disillusioned when Shakespearian flaws erupt like ugly boils, the most painful of which is a stubborn inability to forecast the consequences of one's actions, whether personal, as in the case of Bill Clinton, or geopolitical, as in the case of George Bush.
While striving to lead, each candidate presents himself as a servant of the people. Speaking as a cynic or a realist, I submit, however, that what drives these seekers of our highest office is a synergistic combination of a will-to-power and the desire to promote a particular -- though often fluid -- agenda. And while these forces are actively informing the psyches of each individual, they are just as vigorously propelling two influence groups surfing in their wake: party functionaries and a tangled potpourri of special interests. For with victory come the spoils of war: appointments to be made, contributors to be rewarded, platform-driven legislation to be proposed, executive orders to be promulgated.
The imposing figures of Ronald Reagan -- actor as politician -- and Bill Clinton -- politician as actor -- and unrelenting media attention have transformed presidential campaigns into stage shows where performance trumps solidity. Through the unfiltered camera lens and the unforgiving microphone every grin, grimace, voice inflection, pause, body movement, and spoken word is amplified, scrutinized, and analyzed ad infinitum. Viewers are challenged to choose between authenticity and plasticity, experience and novelty, competence and likeability, humor and gravitas. Some rare stars -- like Reagan and Clinton -- are charming enough to project these contradictory traits simultaneously, setting lofty standards for their aspiring successors to emulate.
I used to believe that Presidents could not make a significant difference in my own -- or anyone's -- life, until the advent of George Bush. Now, seven years later, I am compelled to admit that his tax cuts -- passed at his behest by a malleable Republican Congress -- saved me money, lots of money, by reducing my earned income and capital gains rates. Whether economic growth and the stock market's meteoric rise during the same period -- which benefited my retail furniture business and increased my personal wealth -- can be attributed to these policies, experts wiser than I will have to determine. And whether these same policies have laid the groundwork for severe negative long-term results, manifestations of which may already be upon us, those experts also will have to judge.
At least one thinks they have. Writing in the December issue of "Vanity Fair," Joseph Steglitz slams the Bush Administration's economic policies and catalogues a litany of missteps and their consequences: passing the aforementioned tax cuts, which, skewed towards the wealthy, have deepened the gulf between rich and poor; enacting the Medicare prescription drug benefit, the largest increase in entitlements in four decades, which, in a sop to pharmaceutical companies, has prevented subscribers from purchasing cheap foreign-sourced medications and the government from negotiating with those same companies for lower prices; launching a preemptive war in Iraq, which has destabilized the region, driven up oil prices, and cost our government almost $1 trillion; failing to diversify America's energy resources, to invest adequately in a decaying infrastructure, and (this one is mine) to address our massive unfunded future Social Security and Medicare obligations; and fostering, by example and lack of oversight, a fiscal irresponsibility that has encouraged lenders and borrowers to accumulate unsustainable levels of home mortgage debt.
I believe a divided government -- a Democratic Congress and a Republican President, or vice versa -- where one branch checks the excesses of the other -- reflecting the brilliant design of the Founding Fathers -- causes the least harm, and offers the opportunity for the greatest good for the American citizenry. Whether voters, in their ultimate wisdom, will produce that outcome remains to be seen. In any event, I now believe our next president will have as great an impact on our individual lives as the current one. And he (or she) will be one of the following members of our baseball team.
Standing on the pitcher's mound is Mitt Romney, a surprising choice, since, given his catchy proper name, one would expect to find him ensconced behind home plate. But how callous would it be to veil that handsome visage -- the nobly chiseled features, the sparkling black eyes, the blindingly pearlescent smile, the luxuriously coiffed hair -- beneath leather and iron. (Of course, he poses capless.) The mystique enveloping Mitt -- flanked by his wife, sons, and daughters-in-law, all gorgeously stamped from the same mold as he -- is that he's too perfect; one speculates whether the delicately struck blow of a jeweler's hammer might not shatter him like a diamond. As one satirist remarked, when he goes into his windup to deliver a pitch, he's like Robocop eating paste.
Voters are not yet convinced that his positions are any more durable than the fragile shell that encases him. Anyone who has slipped so smoothly from moderate (or liberal) positions on social issues like abortion and gay rights can just as easily blow back -- which might make him more appealing to me, except for the confusion and shoddiness of his flip-flopping. And although Washington may indeed be broken and in dire need of a fixer -- the newest of his themes, which change colors like a chameleon -- does anyone believe bureaucracies and legislatures can be re-engineered like the companies Mitt's venture capitalist firm bought and sold? And, more to the point, does the man on the street really care?
Crouched behind the plate, giving Mitt the finger, is the scrappy, pugnacious, bulldog of a catcher and, by virtue of his seniority, the designated team captain, John McCain, whose scarred mug, crooked arm, and uneven gait are not only the vestiges of prison camp torture but the symbolic wounds of political warfare, including the battle he lost in 2000, when the Republican establishment and religious right, weary of his independence (read, liberalism) and fearful he might derail George Bush's coronation, threw him under the bus. Ironically, he turned out to be one of Bush's strongest war and immigration reform supporters, and is now riding the surge to a renewed primary popularity.
Of all the candidates, McCain seems less driven by naked ambition than by a genuine desire to serve and lead his countrymen, or, as he refers to them, ad nauseum, "My friends." When attacked by his opponents on issues like the Bush tax cuts and immigration and forced to compromise and qualify his convictions, his pain and disgust are palpable. Smiling doesn't come easily to him, another reminder of his life story -- but no one can doubt his sincerity, courage, or gentlemanly conduct; except on rare occasions, he is too kind to his rivals.
I fear, however, that his time has passed. At age 72, McCain would take office as our oldest first-term president. His advisers, apprehensive about what the unleashed "Straight Talker" might say, prefer that he avoid speaking extemporaneously; he read a ten-minute prepared acceptance speech after winning the New Hampshire primary. While I applaud his hawkish crusade against out-of-control government spending, I thought he passed the ball when he used a question about a possible recession to reassert his reputation as the congressional "Sheriff" and to congratulate himself for sinking a $6 billion tanker expenditure.
Anchoring first base is the tall, lean, craggy-faced, Tennessee-drawling, former actor, Fred Thompson. This position requires less mobility, less pure athletic skill, than the others and is ideal for the player whose engagement and commitment have disappointed his supporters ever since he bubbled up from the underground and his immediate name recognition boosted him into the thick of the race. I believe that the Republican establishment was desperate for a candidate whose conservative credentials were untarnished and consistent and that his hungry trophy wife persuaded him to throw his hat in the ring.
As one pundit remarked, Thompson has played many roles well, except the one he must play now: himself. (He reminds me of Henry Fonda -- the President -- in the 1964 movie "Fail-Safe.") He stumbled early, appearing lackadaisical and uninformed. He was articulate enough and serious-looking -- which only served to deepen his wrinkled brow; he just didn't seem to know, or care, what he was talking about. He's been a quick study, though, and performed well in the Republican South Carolina debate (one focus group pegged him the winner), pouncing on his direct opponent in that primary, Mike Huckabee, as too liberal for Reagan Republicans. I was surprised to hear him express concern over the looming insolvency of Social Security and Medicare, an issue on which all other candidates and the media have been resoundingly silent. I expect Fred's flare-up is ephemeral and will expire soon from lack of energy and oxygen.
The man with two first names, Ron Paul, holds down second base, where limited range and a weak throwing arm will do minimum damage. Paul's libertarian philosophy has mobilized a sympathetic base, generated millions of internet dollars, and garnered a tolerable number of primary votes. In public appearances he has criticized both parties for enlarging the federal government, pursuing unnecessary and expensive foreign missions, and weakening the dollar and endangering our economy through uncontrolled deficit spending -- valid arguments, to be sure. Yet, in my view, his rambling, unfocused, isolationist, whining diatribes have sadly undermined his own and his disciples' credibility. Reduced violence in Iraq and the success of the surge have also negated his cause. Libertarians deserve a better spokesperson; it's time for Ron (or Paul) to retire.
The hot corner, third base, is capably defended by former New York mayor, Rudi Giuliani, the Italian stallion (or stud, according to some reports), Sylvester Stallone without the hair, who spears line drives as deftly as he deflects terrorist attacks. Based on his expertise in national security and his perceived edge in a mano-a-mano contest with Hillary, and in spite of his un-Republican pro-abortion and pro-gun-control leanings, before any votes were cast, Rudi was the front-runner -- that is, until Hillary squandered her inevitability, a revived McCain co-opted national security, and Huckabee made social issues relevant.
Rudi is struggling mightily to recover from this flurry of hard-hit balls as well as a strategy that has him banking on a victory in the Florida primary -- which has left him out of sight, out of mind, out of the conversation, and out of the running in Iowa, New Hampshire (where his poor showing has made his staff downplay the considerable time he actually spent there), Michigan, and South Carolina. Rudi is shrewd, well-spoken (even with rocks in his mouth, which he sometimes evinces), and sure-footed, but at the same time passive, in that he never challenges an opponent; maybe he fears a counterattack against his vulnerable left. His latest proposals (they may not be new) smack of panic: a one-page income tax return, featuring three simplified levels of taxation, 10%, 15%, and 30%, with about as much chance of adoption as Rudi's being named father of the year; and an impractical and intrusive national ID card to register illegal immigrants and, I assume, legal citizens (which sounds to me like just another identification to be stolen). I doubt Rudi can regain traction.
Meanwhile, he's been overtaken by our slick-fielding, nimble, witty shortstop, Mike Huckabee. I am embarrassed to admit it, but, in the words of the slogan plastered all over his bumper stickers, signs, and lapel pins, "I like Mike." Who can resist his hucksterish country-boy charm, self-deprecating humor, and crooked, congenial grin, all of which remind me of a cross (no pun intended) between Gomer Pyle and Ronald Reagan? Who cares if he's an Evangelical Christian and former Baptist preacher? I've always felt that the Republican Party of recent vintage was the product of an unholy coalition between big business and socially conscious middle-class churchgoers who would one day find themselves at odds. It takes tax dollars to build better roads and schools -- and often to provide food, shelter, and health care to the impoverished -- and if Mike Huckabee raised taxes in Arkansas for those ends -- which I have no doubt he did, in spite of his equivocations -- more power to him. He's preaching an economic populism and compassionate conservatism that is luring audiences, contributions, and votes.
I won't deny that Mike has his problems, and they won't be easily salved with snake-oil. Ghosts of corruption haunt him from his days in the governor's mansion. His lack of knowledge and experience in foreign affairs and security matters is painfully evident -- but so was Reagan's at a similar time in his career. Running constitutional amendments banning abortion and gay marriages up a Confederate flagpole will win him few friends and lots of enemies. His Fair Tax Plan is unfair, flawed, going nowhere, and mostly a carrot dangled in front of economic conservatives. But wouldn't it be refreshing to have a president who took his job seriously but not always himself; who hadn't sworn allegiance to multinational corporations and special interest groups; and who espoused a brand of warmhearted Christianity that even a Jew like me can appreciate?
Although my readers will no doubt argue that all three Democratic contenders belong in left field, proper defense dictates an occupant for each outfield position. And of the three, furthest to the left is the boyishly handsome, toothy, silver-tongued son of a . . . mill worker, John Edwards, former trial lawyer, former Senator, former nominee for Vice-President -- to review his laundry list of qualifications for our Highest Office. By all accounts, Mr. Edwards's Senate record wasn't all that remarkable (he voted to authorize military action in Iraq, and for other measures which he now apologizes for) and he ran for President in 2004 because he knew his Senate re-election chances were slim. Along the way he appropriated the role of spokesperson -- or defender, as in a courtroom -- for all the underrepresented, uninsured, dispossessed, disadvantaged, and forgotten elements in our society (the Other America, to recoin a phrase), and embarked on a crusade in their behalf, in 2004 and, deja vu, in 2008.
At the risk of offending those whom Mr. Edwards (it just doesn't sound right to call him John) is championing, I find his tone and invective so strident, belligerent, and repetitive that they distort him into a caricature of himself. While I acknowledge that the great divide between rich and poor in this country has widened in the last twenty years -- a condition exacerbated by the current administration's fiscal policies -- I submit that assailing corporate America and health insurance companies as cold-blooded sinners and staking a presidential campaign on a handful of victims tragically underserved by our health care system is futile rhetoric at best and demagoguery at worst. Mr. Edwards's railings may indeed be the only way to draw attention to some fundamental inequities, but, if I may take a cheap shot, their authenticity and purity are blemished by exorbitant hairstylings, lavish residences, and cozy hedge fund relationships.
Patrolling center field is the graceful, lithe, charismatic upstart, Barack Obama, only last year an unknown minor leaguer but now, suddenly, a major player. I must admit that my conceptualization of Mr. Obama is as vague as, well, some of his policies. Maybe I've been watching too much Fox News, but I haven't seen that much of him on television. I did catch a snippet of his and Oprah's revival -- where the size, excitement, and enthusiasm of the crowd clearly eclipsed comparable events. On a superficial level, I find it amusing that, as his poll numbers have risen, Mr. Obama has largely abandoned his much-discussed, trend-setting, suit-with-no-tie attire and is sighted now usually sporting a blue appendage. Is it possible that, having won over the dress-down constituency, he has been advised to expand his base?
My younger readers (and some older Democrats, too) may cringe at my opinion that Mr. Obama's credentials are of even lighter weight than Mr. Edwards's -- a speech at the Democratic National Convention and three years in the Senate. (At least the latter completed a full term before running for President.) So what, I am sure they will respond; where we're headed, no experience is necessary, conjuring up images of John Kennedy, although, since Kennedy served fourteen years in Congress, I believe a more apt comparison would be Abraham Lincoln, except for the incongruity that Mr. Lincoln started a war and Mr. Obama wants to end one. This movement is all about the future, hope, change (you can believe in), vision, leadership, unity, and, quite frankly, a powerful voice, and so historic that its herald, in a rather peculiar declaration of independence, has even invoked the name of hallowed Hall of Famer Ronald Reagan as an inspiration. A testament to Mr. Obama's durability is the fact that the spark that ignited his campaign -- his initial opposition to the War in Iraq -- has in recent months lost its luster. Meanwhile, he has ridden his own surge to equality with the presumed front-runner, courageously kept to the high road, and, in his own inimitable style, successfully projected his personality as the message.
Which leaves only right field, manned (!) by Hillary Rodham Clinton, HRC in blogspeak, because, as the only female on the team, it's where her suspect defense will do the least harm, even though she may ultimately turn out to be the best player.
MSNBC brought our three outfielders together a few nights ago in Nevada in what was billed as a debate, but which, with Obama pulling his punches, Hillary sheathing her fangs, and Edwards dancing around the edges, quickly evaporated into a mild-mannered coffee klatch. YouTube voters said Obama won, but I thought Hillary, seated royally in the center of the semi-circular table, a magnet for the camera, clothed in red and black, emerged as dominatrix, calm, controlled, commanding. She spoke more authoritatively and specifically on the issues -- executive management, economics, and energy -- than either of her opponents. I winced at her proposals to ban home foreclosures for ninety days and to freeze interest rates on adjustable mortgages for five years -- problematic disruptions of free markets -- but, in reality, her pandering is no worse than Obama's or Edwards's.
The Clintons as a team, however, disturb me. I liked Bill as president, although, after a while, I had to tune out his gravelly voice, interminable speeches, and slippery rationalizations. I never thought sexual misbehavior and its attendant lies (who's going to admit to adultery?) were grounds for impeachment. Early in the campaign, when Hillary looked unstoppable, I grudgingly accepted her as the Democratic nominee and the person I would be voting for if I were to remain true to my Democratic roots. But lately, the more I see of her and the more I see of him, I've come to realize that George Washington had the right idea when he walked away from a third term in 1797. I know that Hillary and Bill are two different people and that I'm probably guilty of some sexist, anti-feminist prejudice when I reject a spouse simply because she's a spouse, but the facts are that these two are inextricably and permanently linked, and that when she goes into the White House, he comes along. That doesn't sound like change to me.
It's possible I've been listening to too much right-wing talk radio, but I am also no longer willing to turn a blind eye to the Clintons' unscrupulous lust for power. Politics is a ruthless business, and maybe it's just more Clinton fatigue on my part, but their brand seems egregiously hypocritical and mean-spirited. Slyly-leaked insinuations about Obama's drug use, dredging up old abstention votes on abortion rights in the Illinois Senate, clumsy back-handed attempts to inject race into the race -- followed by patronizing protestations of innocence -- are typical of the nasty tactics and behavior that will shadow another Clinton Administration. It may well be beneficial for the country -- and an improvement over the current one -- but, in my view, will suffer mightily from the burden of too much baggage.
We are now in the fifth inning of our imaginary game, with players singling, doubling, tripling, and striking out. Sooner or later, somebody on this team is going to hit a walk-off home run in the bottom of the ninth. My guess is that the opposing parties will rally around Mitt and Hillary, and, with the 2008 election a referendum on the economy and George Bush, HRC will prevail.
Is this season's circus any more intriguing and seductive than others of recent memory -- or is it just the fact that, like a championship sporting event, it's this week's game of the century? I will not be the first -- nor last -- putative pundit to point out two obvious reasons for a heightened level of interest: (1) This is the first presidential election year since Eisenhower ran against Stevenson in 1952 in which neither party is offering up a natural successor, that is, a sitting president or vice-president; (2) The number of viable candidates is unusually large, nine at this writing, although some may fallen from favor by the time I post -- or you read -- this article.
Nine is a number which should resonate with my faithful readers, at least those perspicacious enough to recall my past and present reverence for the game of baseball. Yes, nine players constitute a traditional baseball team -- minus the anomalous designated hitter -- a conceit I propose to expand upon in this political meditation. Since, of course, these contenders are rivals rather than teammates, I seized upon the title noted above, fully aware that I might be justifiably castigated for plagiarizing it from Doris Kearns Goodwin's best-selling history of Lincoln's Administration, among the members of which were, at Mr. Lincoln's invitation, three men whom he had bested for the Presidency: William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, and Edward Bates.
The sight of these players rushing to their assigned positions prompts me to reflect on just what this game is all about: the quest to become the President of the United States, the most powerful man on earth, leader of three hundred million diverse souls, commander-in-chief of 1.5 million uniformed men and women scattered throughout the globe, administrator of a $2.8 trillion budget, manager of two million civil service employees (and 10.5 million more when federal contractors and grantees are included). Baited by the press, we, his constituents, yearn for a Chief Executive invested in the shimmering aura of royalty and endowed with the superhuman powers each candidate claims to possess, only to be cruelly disillusioned when Shakespearian flaws erupt like ugly boils, the most painful of which is a stubborn inability to forecast the consequences of one's actions, whether personal, as in the case of Bill Clinton, or geopolitical, as in the case of George Bush.
While striving to lead, each candidate presents himself as a servant of the people. Speaking as a cynic or a realist, I submit, however, that what drives these seekers of our highest office is a synergistic combination of a will-to-power and the desire to promote a particular -- though often fluid -- agenda. And while these forces are actively informing the psyches of each individual, they are just as vigorously propelling two influence groups surfing in their wake: party functionaries and a tangled potpourri of special interests. For with victory come the spoils of war: appointments to be made, contributors to be rewarded, platform-driven legislation to be proposed, executive orders to be promulgated.
The imposing figures of Ronald Reagan -- actor as politician -- and Bill Clinton -- politician as actor -- and unrelenting media attention have transformed presidential campaigns into stage shows where performance trumps solidity. Through the unfiltered camera lens and the unforgiving microphone every grin, grimace, voice inflection, pause, body movement, and spoken word is amplified, scrutinized, and analyzed ad infinitum. Viewers are challenged to choose between authenticity and plasticity, experience and novelty, competence and likeability, humor and gravitas. Some rare stars -- like Reagan and Clinton -- are charming enough to project these contradictory traits simultaneously, setting lofty standards for their aspiring successors to emulate.
I used to believe that Presidents could not make a significant difference in my own -- or anyone's -- life, until the advent of George Bush. Now, seven years later, I am compelled to admit that his tax cuts -- passed at his behest by a malleable Republican Congress -- saved me money, lots of money, by reducing my earned income and capital gains rates. Whether economic growth and the stock market's meteoric rise during the same period -- which benefited my retail furniture business and increased my personal wealth -- can be attributed to these policies, experts wiser than I will have to determine. And whether these same policies have laid the groundwork for severe negative long-term results, manifestations of which may already be upon us, those experts also will have to judge.
At least one thinks they have. Writing in the December issue of "Vanity Fair," Joseph Steglitz slams the Bush Administration's economic policies and catalogues a litany of missteps and their consequences: passing the aforementioned tax cuts, which, skewed towards the wealthy, have deepened the gulf between rich and poor; enacting the Medicare prescription drug benefit, the largest increase in entitlements in four decades, which, in a sop to pharmaceutical companies, has prevented subscribers from purchasing cheap foreign-sourced medications and the government from negotiating with those same companies for lower prices; launching a preemptive war in Iraq, which has destabilized the region, driven up oil prices, and cost our government almost $1 trillion; failing to diversify America's energy resources, to invest adequately in a decaying infrastructure, and (this one is mine) to address our massive unfunded future Social Security and Medicare obligations; and fostering, by example and lack of oversight, a fiscal irresponsibility that has encouraged lenders and borrowers to accumulate unsustainable levels of home mortgage debt.
I believe a divided government -- a Democratic Congress and a Republican President, or vice versa -- where one branch checks the excesses of the other -- reflecting the brilliant design of the Founding Fathers -- causes the least harm, and offers the opportunity for the greatest good for the American citizenry. Whether voters, in their ultimate wisdom, will produce that outcome remains to be seen. In any event, I now believe our next president will have as great an impact on our individual lives as the current one. And he (or she) will be one of the following members of our baseball team.
Standing on the pitcher's mound is Mitt Romney, a surprising choice, since, given his catchy proper name, one would expect to find him ensconced behind home plate. But how callous would it be to veil that handsome visage -- the nobly chiseled features, the sparkling black eyes, the blindingly pearlescent smile, the luxuriously coiffed hair -- beneath leather and iron. (Of course, he poses capless.) The mystique enveloping Mitt -- flanked by his wife, sons, and daughters-in-law, all gorgeously stamped from the same mold as he -- is that he's too perfect; one speculates whether the delicately struck blow of a jeweler's hammer might not shatter him like a diamond. As one satirist remarked, when he goes into his windup to deliver a pitch, he's like Robocop eating paste.
Voters are not yet convinced that his positions are any more durable than the fragile shell that encases him. Anyone who has slipped so smoothly from moderate (or liberal) positions on social issues like abortion and gay rights can just as easily blow back -- which might make him more appealing to me, except for the confusion and shoddiness of his flip-flopping. And although Washington may indeed be broken and in dire need of a fixer -- the newest of his themes, which change colors like a chameleon -- does anyone believe bureaucracies and legislatures can be re-engineered like the companies Mitt's venture capitalist firm bought and sold? And, more to the point, does the man on the street really care?
Crouched behind the plate, giving Mitt the finger, is the scrappy, pugnacious, bulldog of a catcher and, by virtue of his seniority, the designated team captain, John McCain, whose scarred mug, crooked arm, and uneven gait are not only the vestiges of prison camp torture but the symbolic wounds of political warfare, including the battle he lost in 2000, when the Republican establishment and religious right, weary of his independence (read, liberalism) and fearful he might derail George Bush's coronation, threw him under the bus. Ironically, he turned out to be one of Bush's strongest war and immigration reform supporters, and is now riding the surge to a renewed primary popularity.
Of all the candidates, McCain seems less driven by naked ambition than by a genuine desire to serve and lead his countrymen, or, as he refers to them, ad nauseum, "My friends." When attacked by his opponents on issues like the Bush tax cuts and immigration and forced to compromise and qualify his convictions, his pain and disgust are palpable. Smiling doesn't come easily to him, another reminder of his life story -- but no one can doubt his sincerity, courage, or gentlemanly conduct; except on rare occasions, he is too kind to his rivals.
I fear, however, that his time has passed. At age 72, McCain would take office as our oldest first-term president. His advisers, apprehensive about what the unleashed "Straight Talker" might say, prefer that he avoid speaking extemporaneously; he read a ten-minute prepared acceptance speech after winning the New Hampshire primary. While I applaud his hawkish crusade against out-of-control government spending, I thought he passed the ball when he used a question about a possible recession to reassert his reputation as the congressional "Sheriff" and to congratulate himself for sinking a $6 billion tanker expenditure.
Anchoring first base is the tall, lean, craggy-faced, Tennessee-drawling, former actor, Fred Thompson. This position requires less mobility, less pure athletic skill, than the others and is ideal for the player whose engagement and commitment have disappointed his supporters ever since he bubbled up from the underground and his immediate name recognition boosted him into the thick of the race. I believe that the Republican establishment was desperate for a candidate whose conservative credentials were untarnished and consistent and that his hungry trophy wife persuaded him to throw his hat in the ring.
As one pundit remarked, Thompson has played many roles well, except the one he must play now: himself. (He reminds me of Henry Fonda -- the President -- in the 1964 movie "Fail-Safe.") He stumbled early, appearing lackadaisical and uninformed. He was articulate enough and serious-looking -- which only served to deepen his wrinkled brow; he just didn't seem to know, or care, what he was talking about. He's been a quick study, though, and performed well in the Republican South Carolina debate (one focus group pegged him the winner), pouncing on his direct opponent in that primary, Mike Huckabee, as too liberal for Reagan Republicans. I was surprised to hear him express concern over the looming insolvency of Social Security and Medicare, an issue on which all other candidates and the media have been resoundingly silent. I expect Fred's flare-up is ephemeral and will expire soon from lack of energy and oxygen.
The man with two first names, Ron Paul, holds down second base, where limited range and a weak throwing arm will do minimum damage. Paul's libertarian philosophy has mobilized a sympathetic base, generated millions of internet dollars, and garnered a tolerable number of primary votes. In public appearances he has criticized both parties for enlarging the federal government, pursuing unnecessary and expensive foreign missions, and weakening the dollar and endangering our economy through uncontrolled deficit spending -- valid arguments, to be sure. Yet, in my view, his rambling, unfocused, isolationist, whining diatribes have sadly undermined his own and his disciples' credibility. Reduced violence in Iraq and the success of the surge have also negated his cause. Libertarians deserve a better spokesperson; it's time for Ron (or Paul) to retire.
The hot corner, third base, is capably defended by former New York mayor, Rudi Giuliani, the Italian stallion (or stud, according to some reports), Sylvester Stallone without the hair, who spears line drives as deftly as he deflects terrorist attacks. Based on his expertise in national security and his perceived edge in a mano-a-mano contest with Hillary, and in spite of his un-Republican pro-abortion and pro-gun-control leanings, before any votes were cast, Rudi was the front-runner -- that is, until Hillary squandered her inevitability, a revived McCain co-opted national security, and Huckabee made social issues relevant.
Rudi is struggling mightily to recover from this flurry of hard-hit balls as well as a strategy that has him banking on a victory in the Florida primary -- which has left him out of sight, out of mind, out of the conversation, and out of the running in Iowa, New Hampshire (where his poor showing has made his staff downplay the considerable time he actually spent there), Michigan, and South Carolina. Rudi is shrewd, well-spoken (even with rocks in his mouth, which he sometimes evinces), and sure-footed, but at the same time passive, in that he never challenges an opponent; maybe he fears a counterattack against his vulnerable left. His latest proposals (they may not be new) smack of panic: a one-page income tax return, featuring three simplified levels of taxation, 10%, 15%, and 30%, with about as much chance of adoption as Rudi's being named father of the year; and an impractical and intrusive national ID card to register illegal immigrants and, I assume, legal citizens (which sounds to me like just another identification to be stolen). I doubt Rudi can regain traction.
Meanwhile, he's been overtaken by our slick-fielding, nimble, witty shortstop, Mike Huckabee. I am embarrassed to admit it, but, in the words of the slogan plastered all over his bumper stickers, signs, and lapel pins, "I like Mike." Who can resist his hucksterish country-boy charm, self-deprecating humor, and crooked, congenial grin, all of which remind me of a cross (no pun intended) between Gomer Pyle and Ronald Reagan? Who cares if he's an Evangelical Christian and former Baptist preacher? I've always felt that the Republican Party of recent vintage was the product of an unholy coalition between big business and socially conscious middle-class churchgoers who would one day find themselves at odds. It takes tax dollars to build better roads and schools -- and often to provide food, shelter, and health care to the impoverished -- and if Mike Huckabee raised taxes in Arkansas for those ends -- which I have no doubt he did, in spite of his equivocations -- more power to him. He's preaching an economic populism and compassionate conservatism that is luring audiences, contributions, and votes.
I won't deny that Mike has his problems, and they won't be easily salved with snake-oil. Ghosts of corruption haunt him from his days in the governor's mansion. His lack of knowledge and experience in foreign affairs and security matters is painfully evident -- but so was Reagan's at a similar time in his career. Running constitutional amendments banning abortion and gay marriages up a Confederate flagpole will win him few friends and lots of enemies. His Fair Tax Plan is unfair, flawed, going nowhere, and mostly a carrot dangled in front of economic conservatives. But wouldn't it be refreshing to have a president who took his job seriously but not always himself; who hadn't sworn allegiance to multinational corporations and special interest groups; and who espoused a brand of warmhearted Christianity that even a Jew like me can appreciate?
Although my readers will no doubt argue that all three Democratic contenders belong in left field, proper defense dictates an occupant for each outfield position. And of the three, furthest to the left is the boyishly handsome, toothy, silver-tongued son of a . . . mill worker, John Edwards, former trial lawyer, former Senator, former nominee for Vice-President -- to review his laundry list of qualifications for our Highest Office. By all accounts, Mr. Edwards's Senate record wasn't all that remarkable (he voted to authorize military action in Iraq, and for other measures which he now apologizes for) and he ran for President in 2004 because he knew his Senate re-election chances were slim. Along the way he appropriated the role of spokesperson -- or defender, as in a courtroom -- for all the underrepresented, uninsured, dispossessed, disadvantaged, and forgotten elements in our society (the Other America, to recoin a phrase), and embarked on a crusade in their behalf, in 2004 and, deja vu, in 2008.
At the risk of offending those whom Mr. Edwards (it just doesn't sound right to call him John) is championing, I find his tone and invective so strident, belligerent, and repetitive that they distort him into a caricature of himself. While I acknowledge that the great divide between rich and poor in this country has widened in the last twenty years -- a condition exacerbated by the current administration's fiscal policies -- I submit that assailing corporate America and health insurance companies as cold-blooded sinners and staking a presidential campaign on a handful of victims tragically underserved by our health care system is futile rhetoric at best and demagoguery at worst. Mr. Edwards's railings may indeed be the only way to draw attention to some fundamental inequities, but, if I may take a cheap shot, their authenticity and purity are blemished by exorbitant hairstylings, lavish residences, and cozy hedge fund relationships.
Patrolling center field is the graceful, lithe, charismatic upstart, Barack Obama, only last year an unknown minor leaguer but now, suddenly, a major player. I must admit that my conceptualization of Mr. Obama is as vague as, well, some of his policies. Maybe I've been watching too much Fox News, but I haven't seen that much of him on television. I did catch a snippet of his and Oprah's revival -- where the size, excitement, and enthusiasm of the crowd clearly eclipsed comparable events. On a superficial level, I find it amusing that, as his poll numbers have risen, Mr. Obama has largely abandoned his much-discussed, trend-setting, suit-with-no-tie attire and is sighted now usually sporting a blue appendage. Is it possible that, having won over the dress-down constituency, he has been advised to expand his base?
My younger readers (and some older Democrats, too) may cringe at my opinion that Mr. Obama's credentials are of even lighter weight than Mr. Edwards's -- a speech at the Democratic National Convention and three years in the Senate. (At least the latter completed a full term before running for President.) So what, I am sure they will respond; where we're headed, no experience is necessary, conjuring up images of John Kennedy, although, since Kennedy served fourteen years in Congress, I believe a more apt comparison would be Abraham Lincoln, except for the incongruity that Mr. Lincoln started a war and Mr. Obama wants to end one. This movement is all about the future, hope, change (you can believe in), vision, leadership, unity, and, quite frankly, a powerful voice, and so historic that its herald, in a rather peculiar declaration of independence, has even invoked the name of hallowed Hall of Famer Ronald Reagan as an inspiration. A testament to Mr. Obama's durability is the fact that the spark that ignited his campaign -- his initial opposition to the War in Iraq -- has in recent months lost its luster. Meanwhile, he has ridden his own surge to equality with the presumed front-runner, courageously kept to the high road, and, in his own inimitable style, successfully projected his personality as the message.
Which leaves only right field, manned (!) by Hillary Rodham Clinton, HRC in blogspeak, because, as the only female on the team, it's where her suspect defense will do the least harm, even though she may ultimately turn out to be the best player.
MSNBC brought our three outfielders together a few nights ago in Nevada in what was billed as a debate, but which, with Obama pulling his punches, Hillary sheathing her fangs, and Edwards dancing around the edges, quickly evaporated into a mild-mannered coffee klatch. YouTube voters said Obama won, but I thought Hillary, seated royally in the center of the semi-circular table, a magnet for the camera, clothed in red and black, emerged as dominatrix, calm, controlled, commanding. She spoke more authoritatively and specifically on the issues -- executive management, economics, and energy -- than either of her opponents. I winced at her proposals to ban home foreclosures for ninety days and to freeze interest rates on adjustable mortgages for five years -- problematic disruptions of free markets -- but, in reality, her pandering is no worse than Obama's or Edwards's.
The Clintons as a team, however, disturb me. I liked Bill as president, although, after a while, I had to tune out his gravelly voice, interminable speeches, and slippery rationalizations. I never thought sexual misbehavior and its attendant lies (who's going to admit to adultery?) were grounds for impeachment. Early in the campaign, when Hillary looked unstoppable, I grudgingly accepted her as the Democratic nominee and the person I would be voting for if I were to remain true to my Democratic roots. But lately, the more I see of her and the more I see of him, I've come to realize that George Washington had the right idea when he walked away from a third term in 1797. I know that Hillary and Bill are two different people and that I'm probably guilty of some sexist, anti-feminist prejudice when I reject a spouse simply because she's a spouse, but the facts are that these two are inextricably and permanently linked, and that when she goes into the White House, he comes along. That doesn't sound like change to me.
It's possible I've been listening to too much right-wing talk radio, but I am also no longer willing to turn a blind eye to the Clintons' unscrupulous lust for power. Politics is a ruthless business, and maybe it's just more Clinton fatigue on my part, but their brand seems egregiously hypocritical and mean-spirited. Slyly-leaked insinuations about Obama's drug use, dredging up old abstention votes on abortion rights in the Illinois Senate, clumsy back-handed attempts to inject race into the race -- followed by patronizing protestations of innocence -- are typical of the nasty tactics and behavior that will shadow another Clinton Administration. It may well be beneficial for the country -- and an improvement over the current one -- but, in my view, will suffer mightily from the burden of too much baggage.
We are now in the fifth inning of our imaginary game, with players singling, doubling, tripling, and striking out. Sooner or later, somebody on this team is going to hit a walk-off home run in the bottom of the ninth. My guess is that the opposing parties will rally around Mitt and Hillary, and, with the 2008 election a referendum on the economy and George Bush, HRC will prevail.
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Scrooge
'Tis the season, and so, while engaging in one of my favorite -- and most useless -- pastimes, which readers of this blog are already aware of, surfing the television airwaves, I chanced upon George C. Scott's masterful portrayal of the penurious curmudgeon, in what is surely the most famous -- and most often performed -- Christmas tale of all time, excepting, of course, the Biblical one. So entrenched is this fable in our consciousness and so familiar is its ill-tempered protagonist that his name no longer requires capitalization but has assumed a singular status in the English lexicon as a noun and verb signifying, well, a decidedly un-Christmas-like spirit.
While his creator, Mr. Dickens, is rightfully recognized as one of literature's most artful and engaging notables, what greater accolade can accrue to him -- or any other writer -- than having a fictional character's name be incorporated into everyday language? One wonders whether some other moniker from the Dickens anthology -- Heep, Fagin, Pickwick, or Haversham, for example -- if substituted for Scrooge, would have been similarly popularized. To me, "Scrooge" sounds a lot like "screw," which, aside from its prurient connotation, conjures up an image of a person unfairly losing out or being taken advantage of in a contest or negotiation -- a predicament which Mr. Scrooge might well be able to facilitate -- as well as a tightening up, as a screw is tightened, synonymous with stinginess. The fact that these word associations are both slang and contemporary makes it unlikely that they contributed to Dickens's thought process, but does prompt the curious speculation as to whether the usages themselves became some iteration of the "Scrooge" name, which would make its invention even more historic.
My first cognizant encounter with the Scrooge personality came in the third grade, when I was invited to play the part of Tiny Tim in a sixth grade production of "A Christmas Carol." It's difficult enough to be one of the smartest kids in the class -- it never compensates for one's athletic deficiencies -- but even more embarrassing to be transplanted summarily into a class three levels above one's own. I assume I was selected for this role because (1) my diminutive stature suitably contrasted to that of my sixth-grade costars; (2) my memorization skills were sufficiently developed to regurgitate on cue the climactic line "God bless us every one"; and (3) I could easily afford to miss a few third-grade classes to attend rehearsals. I suppose I could have declined the honor, but, really, what nine-year-old could have resisted the glare of the spotlight and the insistent prodding of proud parents and enlightened teachers?
What made this episode even more anomalous and ironic was the fact that I was Jewish -- probably, I don't remember, the only Jew in the class. So there I was, up on the stage, or whatever served for a stage, at the old Garland-Rodes School, in front of an audience of hundreds, the sole non-Christian in the crowd (other than my beaming parents and grandparents), a veritable Christmas icon, resurrected from certain death (as revealed to Scrooge by the Ghost of Christmas Future) by the former's transformation, whose only line was a prayerful entreaty to a merciful deity to bless the Cratchit family and, by extension, the entire assemblage.
Although the political correctness of religious impartiality was not as pronounced fifty years ago as it is today, it was common knowledge among my peers that, while Jews did not celebrate Christmas and its gifting rituals, they did observe an alternate seasonal holiday, Hanukkah, which, serendipitously, offered its own opportunities for receiving gifts, eight nights of it, as a matter of fact, a glorious phenomenon which evoked half-serious declarations of envy from some friends, mindful of their own holiday's one-day limitation. My two siblings and I were especially fortunate since our parents, in an egregious demonstration of Jewish guilt and not wanting us to feel deprived, nurtured our blind faith in an ecumenical Santa Claus by surprising us on Christmas morning with a spate of presents -- bicycles, sleds, electric trains -- all in addition to those we had already received for Hanukkah. They did spare themselves the aggravation of erecting (and decorating!) a Christmas tree, correctly deducing that the presents were what really mattered.
I always had a trough of toys to wallow in. For as long as I can remember, the flagship Schewel store on Main Street in Downtown Lynchburg operated a toy department in its basement during the months of November and December -- and, in the days before Wal-Mart and Toys-R-Us cornered the market, did a brisk business in bicycles, tricycles, pedal cars, board games, dolls, coloring books, erector sets, cap guns, costumes, and other 1950's and 1960's kiddie paraphernalia.
Legend has it that my grandfather, Ben Schewel, whose own father immigrated to this country from Russia in the 1890's and who grew up in a household markedly devoid of playthings (whatever kind may have existed at the turn of the century), other than those of a severely primitive nature, pledged to himself that, if it were up to him, no child would be left behind. Consequently, he established Schewels Toyland, where he didn't exactly hand out toys for free but did offer cash-strapped parents the option of stuffing their childrens stockings on credit, which otherwise might go empty. Mr. Ben gave away toys, too, lots of them, to mentally ill patients at the Lynchburg Training School and Hospital at a Christmas Party he hosted every year and to every Agudath Sholom Religious School student at an annual Hanukkah Party.
Is it possible that my own Scrooge-like proclivities are somehow a perverted reflection of Mr. Ben's profligate munificence? After all, the image persists of my merry grandfather perched up on a stage lavishly doling out Toyland treats to one hundred Jewish youngsters -- who were certainly not destitute -- like a Santa Claus in dark suit and skullcap, until he arrived at the grand prizes -- a boy's and girl's bicycle -- for the final lucky pair chosen by lottery, a lengthy, excruciating production which never failed to leave me quivering and ashen-faced. Surely all my envious compatriots were staring at me and thinking to themselves: "You could have all these toys yourself, couldn't you? If your grandfather can give them away to us, why couldn't he do the same for you? You could make a clean sweep of Schewels Toyland any time you wanted to."
Sixty years later, I find the giving and receiving of holiday gifts troubling, even painful.
Comparatively speaking, I am sure I have little to complain about, especially on the giving side. I don't give that many gifts -- and of those it is necessary for me to select only a few.
After several years of foolishly believing that I could divine my wife's taste in clothing -- even with the confident advice of her favorite salesladies -- and of trying to decipher her quizzical expressions as she perused a pink blouse or lavender sweater as if it were covered with grease, I smoothly transitioned to jewelry as less trendy, less subject to error, universally prized and, naturally, more expensive. I declared victory -- prematurely. A series of surreptitious exchanges and closet confinements finally convinced me to take my wife along on my shopping excursions -- with the result that, although my beautifully wrapped package retains a semblance of mystery and, when opened, prompts (faked?) orgasmic exclamations of joy, its contents are no surprise.
When I described my current and much-improved method of spousal gift selection to an acquaintance, she smiled pleasantly before offering the blunt opinion that she wanted to know that her husband had employed some effort in the activity and thus preferred to abandon him to his own hapless resources. To which my silent (even I wasn't so brash as to blurt it out) response was: "Well, effort is certainly a noble aspiration. But what's the value in expending precious time, money, and energy to produce a dubious outcome of blatant disappointment or feigned glee?"
In truth, I did exert some effort this season, with mixed results.
Other than his accompanying me occasionally to a men's store, I never saw my father do any shopping. Yet every Christmas he would bestow gifts -- what they were or how he collected them remains obscure -- on all the female employees at the Schewel corporate and downtown offices, a practice I thought admirable (while cynically questioning whether his motive was altruistic or obligatory) and came to emulate after his death. For a number of years I purchased poinsettias to support a local non-profit fundraiser -- which, I was told more than once, could be had at Wal-Mart for half the price -- before switching this season to a mixed assortment of Florida grapefruit and oranges. Although the poinsettias were always gratefully accepted and lauded for their blood-red beauty (I discarded yellow as less popular after the first go-round) -- and after all, what other response could be accorded a beneficent boss -- I believe the fruit was a refreshing change.
I also send a gift to Schewels fifty store managers, usually a small tin of cookies or toffee, selected, wrapped, and shipped by the proprietress of a downtown sundries emporium in a turnkey job that spares me all the work and decision-making. Alas, she shuttered her doors a year ago, casting me hopelessly adrift, waiting for the inevitable panic to set in when Thanksgiving should appear in the rear-view mirror. As time was winding down, like a hungry pigeon I finally lighted on a Hickory Farms packaged nut assortment, fifty of which I ordered, picked up at the Mall, and transported to Schewels Central Warehouse (only a mile away) for distribution by tractor-trailer (along with furniture) to each store, thus avoiding an outrageous seven-dollar-per shipping charge.
Since my wife was going to be out of town for our family's annual Hanukkah dinner at my mother's home, I implored her to share her considerable shopping expertise and assist me in choosing gifts for son, brother, brother-in-law, mother, nieces, and nephews, a task I am pleased to report we completed in a one-hour whirlwind tour of J.C. Penney. "Why Penny's?" I innocently inquired of her on the way home. "Because," she replied, applying a peculiar but typical logic to the query, "it's where I always park whenever I visit out-of-town malls."
The purchase I was most proud of was the one for my mother -- a friend of every merchant in town, for whom trying to find an item she doesn't already possess is a futile exercise, unless it be of the living, breathing variety, which of course she would never allow to cross the threshold of her immaculate domicile. She warmly embraced my surrogate, however, a battery-operated, walking, talking white poodle that required no feeding or house training.
A riskier proposition was a shirt for my younger son, Matthew. (I wasn't worried about my older son and daughter, whose New York and Philadelphia abodes were too distant for return visits so soon after their Thanksgiving homecomings; I effortlessly mailed each cash in a card.) How does a fifty-nine-year-old ultra-traditional dresser -- that is, one who wears old clothes -- pick suitable attire for a twenty-something? Only by sheer luck. I liked the shirt -- under normal circumstances, a certain guarantee that its recipient would not -- for its soft cotton hand, bold burgundy coloration, and narrow white striping, and it was on sale, only $24.99.
Matthew is a healthy six-foot-three, an extra-large I thought, for sure, but, as he later explained to me, contemporary fashion now dictates a snugger fit -- a clever ruse on the part of apparel purveyors, I submit -- which meant that, after he tried on the shirt, he and I would visit Penney's for a reshopping adventure, an accidental opportunity for me to ascertain if he really liked it: would he simply trade sizes or would he reselect altogether? Much to my suppressed delight, he chose the same shirt, in a large, a development that so intoxicated me I bought one too, size small (opting for the fashionable fit). Our pleasurable experience was further enhanced by our discovery, upon check-out, that the shirts were now reduced an additional six dollars each. We consummated our transaction and jauntily emerged from the store with enough savings pocketed to pay for our Panera Bread lunches.
Sometimes, though, it doesn't pay to try to save money. The day I was cruising the Mall looking for Hickory Farms, I stopped in the lobby to examine a display of interesting board games, thinking one might make a suitable gift for an employee and his family. Since my antiquated knowledge of such games is limited to Scrabble, Monopoly, and Trivial Pursuit (for all three of which, by the way, there are now innumerable variations), I stood wide-eyed and confused by the mind-boggling choices, until a woman nearby, in an eruption of enthusiasm, pointed out her favorite, "Sequence," which, she explained, her friends never failed to purchase for themselves after she introduced them to it.
"You can buy it at Target for $16.99," she added, a savings of half the Mall price. I started to grab the one I was looking at, reluctant to attack the snarl of traffic between River Ridge and Target. It wasn't the $20 so much as the idea of unnecessarily overpaying that finally lured me to my car, Ward's Road, and the bright orange bull's eye. Of course, Target was sold out of "Sequence," and by the time I got back to the Mall to buy the game, I had wasted a good forty minutes, and saved nothing.
I confess that I did use that side trip to slide into Barnes and Noble to search out a particular book for my sister, Donna; she had read and raved about another work by the same author. Here was a popular novel, published six months ago, well-reviewed in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, available only in hardcover -- and Barnes and Noble didn't have a copy. I wasn't surprised; the Lynchburg branch is decidedly substandard, in my humble opinion, testimony to the company's bleak but telling assessment of the local market. As it turned out, Givens had one copy, which I greedily snatched up and took to Schewels for my able assistant to wrap. (Remember, my wife was out of town, and gift-wrapping presents for me the same manual dexterity challenges of DVD programming, furniture assembly, golf, tennis, and Wii.)
When my sister handed me my own Hanukkah gift a few nights later, a festively-disguised book, it had a suspiciously familiar heft and thickness. Like a skilled surgeon at work, I patiently removed ribbon and bow, delicately separated tape from paper, and carefully began to peel back the protective tissue, when a distinctive teal and orange jacket design brazenly peeked from concealment and confirmed my dolorous premonition. Yes, it was indeed "The Yiddish Policeman's Union," the same book my sister was simultaneously unwrapping, the Holy Grail of my determined quest. What made this O. Henryesque development even more revolting was her now predictable admission that she already owned a well-thumbed copy. I was too dispirited to even think about returning the book, and thus passed it on to my brother, upon whose bookcase it is fated to rest, forever pristine.
While I will undoubtedly read the book -- affirming my compulsive eccentricity that no tome shall be left unturned -- and eagerly await the proper time and place to don the tee shirt given me by my children -- muted gray bearing the provocative insignia "Ask me about my blog" (Now that took some effort!) -- my innate uneasiness in the face of such favors remains intact.
Perhaps this anxiety is some remnant of low self-esteem lingering from childhood, which would deem me an unworthy recipient of largess, or simply evidence that the aforementioned ethnic trait (guilt) has been passed to another generation. I also need to be clear that these musings should in no way be interpreted as disrespectful of the pervasive Christian mythology, according to which man's Creator gifted to him His Only Begotten Son, at whose birth there appeared three Wise Men bearing from afar gold, frankincense, and myrrh, and who, years later, sacrificed his own life so that his disciples might be saved.
That's enough on those subjects. In my view, much of the joy of the event stems from the mystery of the unknown.
Does not the anticipatory thrill of contemplating a seductively adorned future possession often exceed the satisfaction reaped from its unveiling? Is not the revelation of the putative object of our desire usually anticlimactic to our admiration of its glamorous packaging? Like eager children, we rip away the glitzy camouflage, only to come hard up against a pitiless disillusionment.
Why should we be surprised? How often do the contents of our own overstuffed shopping bags, once stashed away in closets or drawers, suffer an inglorious demise, their formerly delicious attributes suddenly as sour and disposable as spoiled milk? Unless we have informed our donors of our specific wants and needs -- the substance and permanence of which, I maintain, are problematic -- how can we expect them to make judicious and pleasing choices?
Nevertheless, we smile graciously and proffer the appropriate declarations of appreciation -- not only for effort and thoughtfulness, but also, I suspect, for gift receipts and liberal return policies. Isn't the day after Christmas one of the busiest in the retail universe?
Food, however, can not be returned -- except in a most unbecoming manner. And I receive a lot of edibles over the holidays, in the form of business gifts, all sinfully gratuitous, including the most recent to arrive, which instigated this whole diatribe. (Astute readers may already be salivating at the self-contradiction contained in my condemnation of this common practice while resorting to it myself, to which my feeble retort would be: Such is life, or Do as I say, not as I do.)
My idealistic wife would contend that the friendly folks who send these delicacies are performing genuine acts of kindness in keeping with the spirit of the season. I suggest that they are expressing gratitude for business past and not-so-subtly enticing me to keep our relationship ongoing.
There may be an cadre of customers who anxiously await the arrival of holiday gifts from their vendors, but I am not one of them. I once wrote my business associates and asked them to donate the equivalent cost of their gift to me to charity, a suggestion that was unanimously ignored, probably because of that cost's relative immateriality. I imagine, however, that the combined expenditures of one vendor's total gifting would make some non-profit's Christmas very merry.
One objection I have to these business gifts mailed from distant places is admittedly frivolous yet nonetheless valid: the sheer nuisance of unpacking and transporting them. One vendor is sensible enough to ship his super-sized box of Florida grapefruit and oranges (ah yes, how ironic) to my home; yet I still shudder when I read the chilling words: "Contents perishable; open immediately." There are at least three dozen of each fruit stacked inside on cardboard trays which have to be removed and carried to my downstairs refrigerator (it takes about five exhausting trips), where they will enter hibernation and trickle out slowly over the course of the next three months, unless I should be so fortunate as to be able to pawn some off on children or friends. (As I write this, I'm thinking that, instead of whining, I should just take them to the food kitchen or the Salvation Army.)
My second objection is that, except for the fruit and a box of Christmas wrap (we now have ten of them, each half-empty, gathering dust in our attic), most of what I receive is quite frankly not very nutritious, loaded with empty calories, and at my age best avoided. Oh, it all looks wonderful, and one small bite will leave your taste buds begging for more; the problem is that the generous provisioners never consider that not everyone eats this stuff.
I'm speaking of moist, tender homemade cookies speckled with oversized chocolate chunks; crispy, flaked wafers rolled around chocolate and vanilla filling; Godiva chocolates laced with rum, fruit, caramel, or darker chocolate; mouthfuls of sweet Hershey kisses dressed in shiny red, green, gold, and silver foil; handfuls of popcorn -- caramel, buttered, and cheese -- overflowing a large, seasonally decorated, cylindrical container; Harry-and-David gift boxes (each one of which has to be pried open) offering delicate pastries, assorted cheeses, fancy crackers, smoked beef, choice preserves, and juicy pears and apples; a gorgeous pre-sliced cheesecake, complete with freezing plate, featuring natural, chocolate silk, raspberry, and peanut butter flavors; several Virginia Diner tins of gourmet peanuts, pistachios, and salted almonds; homemade blackberry jam (tasty and useful); a pungent, honey-smoked, spiral ham-and-a-half (my family will enjoy it, even if I won't); a luxurious Montana Plains raisin and honey bread loaf (appreciated by all); and the outrageous piece de resistance, a huge basket filled with boxes and containers of chocolate peppermint smoothies, Ghiradelli peppermint squares, Lindt cappuccino sweets, chocolate-covered graham crackers, more Godiva chocolates, Walker chocolate fruit, King Leo mint puffs, Brown and Haley butternut toffee, Old Dominion peanut brittle, chocolate cream-puff cookies . . . well, you get the idea.
This ultimate cornucopia wasn't even sent by a vendor, but rather by a non-profit furniture buying group, whose other members would certainly be justified in protesting its president's holiday perquisite if they ever found out about it.
All the cookies, candy, nuts, and cake I laid out for my employees to dispose of, which they did in short order (I even ate half a piece of cheesecake myself), except for that last monstrosity, which, having been sent to the house, my wife decided to keep, more as a display of ostentatious indulgence than something one really wants to ingest.
I did receive one handy gift from a manufacturer's representative, a stubborn Republican who, after seven years in the wilderness, may be seeing the error of his ways. This inveterate prankster sent me a roll of toilet paper, on each panel of which is imprinted a likeness of George Bush mouthing some infamous malapropism. Since I haven't opened it yet, intending to regift it (perhaps to the sender!), I am only able to reveal the first three (I doubt my readers will mind, after 3000 words): "Bring 'em on" (Bush on Iraqi militant attacks, July 3, 2003); "They misunderestimated me " (Bush on Bush, November 6, 2000); and "We need an energy bill that encourages consumption" (Bush on the environment, September 23, 2002). Although you can't eat it, you can still use it to wipe the crumbs off your . . . smiley face.
Sometimes, though, even a Scrooge receives a gift he cannot spurn. This morning, Christmas Day, when I went to my mailbox, I found a mysterious white envelope, its stomach bulging like a pregnant woman's, its flap and ends so meticulously sealed and wrapped in protective tape that no loose edge was visible. As I struggled to open it, cursing its security, I noticed the return address: Macey R., a high school friend, now living in Berkeley, whose only recent contact with me was one e-mail six weeks ago, to which I had responded by sending this blog link. Finally, I was able to dislodge the letter inside, on which was typed a brief message: Natalia (Macey's significant other) and I thought you might like these. "These" fell out into my hand: twenty-two baseball cards, the 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates, World Series champions, surprising victors over the invincible Yankees in the Greatest Game Ever Played, which I witnessed sitting beside my father in Forbes Field forty-seven years ago.
They were all there -- Gino Cimoli, Hal Smith, Rocky Nelson, Harvey Haddix, Roy Face, Bill Virdon, Vern Law, Bob Skinner, Don Hoak -- and now they rest on my dresser beside the signed photograph of their teammate Bill Mazeroski crossing home plate after hitting his unforgettable home run, simple but magnificent reminders of youthful avocations, baseball lore, enduring friendships, and the power and poignancy of an ingenious gift. Bah Humbug!
While his creator, Mr. Dickens, is rightfully recognized as one of literature's most artful and engaging notables, what greater accolade can accrue to him -- or any other writer -- than having a fictional character's name be incorporated into everyday language? One wonders whether some other moniker from the Dickens anthology -- Heep, Fagin, Pickwick, or Haversham, for example -- if substituted for Scrooge, would have been similarly popularized. To me, "Scrooge" sounds a lot like "screw," which, aside from its prurient connotation, conjures up an image of a person unfairly losing out or being taken advantage of in a contest or negotiation -- a predicament which Mr. Scrooge might well be able to facilitate -- as well as a tightening up, as a screw is tightened, synonymous with stinginess. The fact that these word associations are both slang and contemporary makes it unlikely that they contributed to Dickens's thought process, but does prompt the curious speculation as to whether the usages themselves became some iteration of the "Scrooge" name, which would make its invention even more historic.
My first cognizant encounter with the Scrooge personality came in the third grade, when I was invited to play the part of Tiny Tim in a sixth grade production of "A Christmas Carol." It's difficult enough to be one of the smartest kids in the class -- it never compensates for one's athletic deficiencies -- but even more embarrassing to be transplanted summarily into a class three levels above one's own. I assume I was selected for this role because (1) my diminutive stature suitably contrasted to that of my sixth-grade costars; (2) my memorization skills were sufficiently developed to regurgitate on cue the climactic line "God bless us every one"; and (3) I could easily afford to miss a few third-grade classes to attend rehearsals. I suppose I could have declined the honor, but, really, what nine-year-old could have resisted the glare of the spotlight and the insistent prodding of proud parents and enlightened teachers?
What made this episode even more anomalous and ironic was the fact that I was Jewish -- probably, I don't remember, the only Jew in the class. So there I was, up on the stage, or whatever served for a stage, at the old Garland-Rodes School, in front of an audience of hundreds, the sole non-Christian in the crowd (other than my beaming parents and grandparents), a veritable Christmas icon, resurrected from certain death (as revealed to Scrooge by the Ghost of Christmas Future) by the former's transformation, whose only line was a prayerful entreaty to a merciful deity to bless the Cratchit family and, by extension, the entire assemblage.
Although the political correctness of religious impartiality was not as pronounced fifty years ago as it is today, it was common knowledge among my peers that, while Jews did not celebrate Christmas and its gifting rituals, they did observe an alternate seasonal holiday, Hanukkah, which, serendipitously, offered its own opportunities for receiving gifts, eight nights of it, as a matter of fact, a glorious phenomenon which evoked half-serious declarations of envy from some friends, mindful of their own holiday's one-day limitation. My two siblings and I were especially fortunate since our parents, in an egregious demonstration of Jewish guilt and not wanting us to feel deprived, nurtured our blind faith in an ecumenical Santa Claus by surprising us on Christmas morning with a spate of presents -- bicycles, sleds, electric trains -- all in addition to those we had already received for Hanukkah. They did spare themselves the aggravation of erecting (and decorating!) a Christmas tree, correctly deducing that the presents were what really mattered.
I always had a trough of toys to wallow in. For as long as I can remember, the flagship Schewel store on Main Street in Downtown Lynchburg operated a toy department in its basement during the months of November and December -- and, in the days before Wal-Mart and Toys-R-Us cornered the market, did a brisk business in bicycles, tricycles, pedal cars, board games, dolls, coloring books, erector sets, cap guns, costumes, and other 1950's and 1960's kiddie paraphernalia.
Legend has it that my grandfather, Ben Schewel, whose own father immigrated to this country from Russia in the 1890's and who grew up in a household markedly devoid of playthings (whatever kind may have existed at the turn of the century), other than those of a severely primitive nature, pledged to himself that, if it were up to him, no child would be left behind. Consequently, he established Schewels Toyland, where he didn't exactly hand out toys for free but did offer cash-strapped parents the option of stuffing their childrens stockings on credit, which otherwise might go empty. Mr. Ben gave away toys, too, lots of them, to mentally ill patients at the Lynchburg Training School and Hospital at a Christmas Party he hosted every year and to every Agudath Sholom Religious School student at an annual Hanukkah Party.
Is it possible that my own Scrooge-like proclivities are somehow a perverted reflection of Mr. Ben's profligate munificence? After all, the image persists of my merry grandfather perched up on a stage lavishly doling out Toyland treats to one hundred Jewish youngsters -- who were certainly not destitute -- like a Santa Claus in dark suit and skullcap, until he arrived at the grand prizes -- a boy's and girl's bicycle -- for the final lucky pair chosen by lottery, a lengthy, excruciating production which never failed to leave me quivering and ashen-faced. Surely all my envious compatriots were staring at me and thinking to themselves: "You could have all these toys yourself, couldn't you? If your grandfather can give them away to us, why couldn't he do the same for you? You could make a clean sweep of Schewels Toyland any time you wanted to."
Sixty years later, I find the giving and receiving of holiday gifts troubling, even painful.
Comparatively speaking, I am sure I have little to complain about, especially on the giving side. I don't give that many gifts -- and of those it is necessary for me to select only a few.
After several years of foolishly believing that I could divine my wife's taste in clothing -- even with the confident advice of her favorite salesladies -- and of trying to decipher her quizzical expressions as she perused a pink blouse or lavender sweater as if it were covered with grease, I smoothly transitioned to jewelry as less trendy, less subject to error, universally prized and, naturally, more expensive. I declared victory -- prematurely. A series of surreptitious exchanges and closet confinements finally convinced me to take my wife along on my shopping excursions -- with the result that, although my beautifully wrapped package retains a semblance of mystery and, when opened, prompts (faked?) orgasmic exclamations of joy, its contents are no surprise.
When I described my current and much-improved method of spousal gift selection to an acquaintance, she smiled pleasantly before offering the blunt opinion that she wanted to know that her husband had employed some effort in the activity and thus preferred to abandon him to his own hapless resources. To which my silent (even I wasn't so brash as to blurt it out) response was: "Well, effort is certainly a noble aspiration. But what's the value in expending precious time, money, and energy to produce a dubious outcome of blatant disappointment or feigned glee?"
In truth, I did exert some effort this season, with mixed results.
Other than his accompanying me occasionally to a men's store, I never saw my father do any shopping. Yet every Christmas he would bestow gifts -- what they were or how he collected them remains obscure -- on all the female employees at the Schewel corporate and downtown offices, a practice I thought admirable (while cynically questioning whether his motive was altruistic or obligatory) and came to emulate after his death. For a number of years I purchased poinsettias to support a local non-profit fundraiser -- which, I was told more than once, could be had at Wal-Mart for half the price -- before switching this season to a mixed assortment of Florida grapefruit and oranges. Although the poinsettias were always gratefully accepted and lauded for their blood-red beauty (I discarded yellow as less popular after the first go-round) -- and after all, what other response could be accorded a beneficent boss -- I believe the fruit was a refreshing change.
I also send a gift to Schewels fifty store managers, usually a small tin of cookies or toffee, selected, wrapped, and shipped by the proprietress of a downtown sundries emporium in a turnkey job that spares me all the work and decision-making. Alas, she shuttered her doors a year ago, casting me hopelessly adrift, waiting for the inevitable panic to set in when Thanksgiving should appear in the rear-view mirror. As time was winding down, like a hungry pigeon I finally lighted on a Hickory Farms packaged nut assortment, fifty of which I ordered, picked up at the Mall, and transported to Schewels Central Warehouse (only a mile away) for distribution by tractor-trailer (along with furniture) to each store, thus avoiding an outrageous seven-dollar-per shipping charge.
Since my wife was going to be out of town for our family's annual Hanukkah dinner at my mother's home, I implored her to share her considerable shopping expertise and assist me in choosing gifts for son, brother, brother-in-law, mother, nieces, and nephews, a task I am pleased to report we completed in a one-hour whirlwind tour of J.C. Penney. "Why Penny's?" I innocently inquired of her on the way home. "Because," she replied, applying a peculiar but typical logic to the query, "it's where I always park whenever I visit out-of-town malls."
The purchase I was most proud of was the one for my mother -- a friend of every merchant in town, for whom trying to find an item she doesn't already possess is a futile exercise, unless it be of the living, breathing variety, which of course she would never allow to cross the threshold of her immaculate domicile. She warmly embraced my surrogate, however, a battery-operated, walking, talking white poodle that required no feeding or house training.
A riskier proposition was a shirt for my younger son, Matthew. (I wasn't worried about my older son and daughter, whose New York and Philadelphia abodes were too distant for return visits so soon after their Thanksgiving homecomings; I effortlessly mailed each cash in a card.) How does a fifty-nine-year-old ultra-traditional dresser -- that is, one who wears old clothes -- pick suitable attire for a twenty-something? Only by sheer luck. I liked the shirt -- under normal circumstances, a certain guarantee that its recipient would not -- for its soft cotton hand, bold burgundy coloration, and narrow white striping, and it was on sale, only $24.99.
Matthew is a healthy six-foot-three, an extra-large I thought, for sure, but, as he later explained to me, contemporary fashion now dictates a snugger fit -- a clever ruse on the part of apparel purveyors, I submit -- which meant that, after he tried on the shirt, he and I would visit Penney's for a reshopping adventure, an accidental opportunity for me to ascertain if he really liked it: would he simply trade sizes or would he reselect altogether? Much to my suppressed delight, he chose the same shirt, in a large, a development that so intoxicated me I bought one too, size small (opting for the fashionable fit). Our pleasurable experience was further enhanced by our discovery, upon check-out, that the shirts were now reduced an additional six dollars each. We consummated our transaction and jauntily emerged from the store with enough savings pocketed to pay for our Panera Bread lunches.
Sometimes, though, it doesn't pay to try to save money. The day I was cruising the Mall looking for Hickory Farms, I stopped in the lobby to examine a display of interesting board games, thinking one might make a suitable gift for an employee and his family. Since my antiquated knowledge of such games is limited to Scrabble, Monopoly, and Trivial Pursuit (for all three of which, by the way, there are now innumerable variations), I stood wide-eyed and confused by the mind-boggling choices, until a woman nearby, in an eruption of enthusiasm, pointed out her favorite, "Sequence," which, she explained, her friends never failed to purchase for themselves after she introduced them to it.
"You can buy it at Target for $16.99," she added, a savings of half the Mall price. I started to grab the one I was looking at, reluctant to attack the snarl of traffic between River Ridge and Target. It wasn't the $20 so much as the idea of unnecessarily overpaying that finally lured me to my car, Ward's Road, and the bright orange bull's eye. Of course, Target was sold out of "Sequence," and by the time I got back to the Mall to buy the game, I had wasted a good forty minutes, and saved nothing.
I confess that I did use that side trip to slide into Barnes and Noble to search out a particular book for my sister, Donna; she had read and raved about another work by the same author. Here was a popular novel, published six months ago, well-reviewed in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, available only in hardcover -- and Barnes and Noble didn't have a copy. I wasn't surprised; the Lynchburg branch is decidedly substandard, in my humble opinion, testimony to the company's bleak but telling assessment of the local market. As it turned out, Givens had one copy, which I greedily snatched up and took to Schewels for my able assistant to wrap. (Remember, my wife was out of town, and gift-wrapping presents for me the same manual dexterity challenges of DVD programming, furniture assembly, golf, tennis, and Wii.)
When my sister handed me my own Hanukkah gift a few nights later, a festively-disguised book, it had a suspiciously familiar heft and thickness. Like a skilled surgeon at work, I patiently removed ribbon and bow, delicately separated tape from paper, and carefully began to peel back the protective tissue, when a distinctive teal and orange jacket design brazenly peeked from concealment and confirmed my dolorous premonition. Yes, it was indeed "The Yiddish Policeman's Union," the same book my sister was simultaneously unwrapping, the Holy Grail of my determined quest. What made this O. Henryesque development even more revolting was her now predictable admission that she already owned a well-thumbed copy. I was too dispirited to even think about returning the book, and thus passed it on to my brother, upon whose bookcase it is fated to rest, forever pristine.
While I will undoubtedly read the book -- affirming my compulsive eccentricity that no tome shall be left unturned -- and eagerly await the proper time and place to don the tee shirt given me by my children -- muted gray bearing the provocative insignia "Ask me about my blog" (Now that took some effort!) -- my innate uneasiness in the face of such favors remains intact.
Perhaps this anxiety is some remnant of low self-esteem lingering from childhood, which would deem me an unworthy recipient of largess, or simply evidence that the aforementioned ethnic trait (guilt) has been passed to another generation. I also need to be clear that these musings should in no way be interpreted as disrespectful of the pervasive Christian mythology, according to which man's Creator gifted to him His Only Begotten Son, at whose birth there appeared three Wise Men bearing from afar gold, frankincense, and myrrh, and who, years later, sacrificed his own life so that his disciples might be saved.
That's enough on those subjects. In my view, much of the joy of the event stems from the mystery of the unknown.
Does not the anticipatory thrill of contemplating a seductively adorned future possession often exceed the satisfaction reaped from its unveiling? Is not the revelation of the putative object of our desire usually anticlimactic to our admiration of its glamorous packaging? Like eager children, we rip away the glitzy camouflage, only to come hard up against a pitiless disillusionment.
Why should we be surprised? How often do the contents of our own overstuffed shopping bags, once stashed away in closets or drawers, suffer an inglorious demise, their formerly delicious attributes suddenly as sour and disposable as spoiled milk? Unless we have informed our donors of our specific wants and needs -- the substance and permanence of which, I maintain, are problematic -- how can we expect them to make judicious and pleasing choices?
Nevertheless, we smile graciously and proffer the appropriate declarations of appreciation -- not only for effort and thoughtfulness, but also, I suspect, for gift receipts and liberal return policies. Isn't the day after Christmas one of the busiest in the retail universe?
Food, however, can not be returned -- except in a most unbecoming manner. And I receive a lot of edibles over the holidays, in the form of business gifts, all sinfully gratuitous, including the most recent to arrive, which instigated this whole diatribe. (Astute readers may already be salivating at the self-contradiction contained in my condemnation of this common practice while resorting to it myself, to which my feeble retort would be: Such is life, or Do as I say, not as I do.)
My idealistic wife would contend that the friendly folks who send these delicacies are performing genuine acts of kindness in keeping with the spirit of the season. I suggest that they are expressing gratitude for business past and not-so-subtly enticing me to keep our relationship ongoing.
There may be an cadre of customers who anxiously await the arrival of holiday gifts from their vendors, but I am not one of them. I once wrote my business associates and asked them to donate the equivalent cost of their gift to me to charity, a suggestion that was unanimously ignored, probably because of that cost's relative immateriality. I imagine, however, that the combined expenditures of one vendor's total gifting would make some non-profit's Christmas very merry.
One objection I have to these business gifts mailed from distant places is admittedly frivolous yet nonetheless valid: the sheer nuisance of unpacking and transporting them. One vendor is sensible enough to ship his super-sized box of Florida grapefruit and oranges (ah yes, how ironic) to my home; yet I still shudder when I read the chilling words: "Contents perishable; open immediately." There are at least three dozen of each fruit stacked inside on cardboard trays which have to be removed and carried to my downstairs refrigerator (it takes about five exhausting trips), where they will enter hibernation and trickle out slowly over the course of the next three months, unless I should be so fortunate as to be able to pawn some off on children or friends. (As I write this, I'm thinking that, instead of whining, I should just take them to the food kitchen or the Salvation Army.)
My second objection is that, except for the fruit and a box of Christmas wrap (we now have ten of them, each half-empty, gathering dust in our attic), most of what I receive is quite frankly not very nutritious, loaded with empty calories, and at my age best avoided. Oh, it all looks wonderful, and one small bite will leave your taste buds begging for more; the problem is that the generous provisioners never consider that not everyone eats this stuff.
I'm speaking of moist, tender homemade cookies speckled with oversized chocolate chunks; crispy, flaked wafers rolled around chocolate and vanilla filling; Godiva chocolates laced with rum, fruit, caramel, or darker chocolate; mouthfuls of sweet Hershey kisses dressed in shiny red, green, gold, and silver foil; handfuls of popcorn -- caramel, buttered, and cheese -- overflowing a large, seasonally decorated, cylindrical container; Harry-and-David gift boxes (each one of which has to be pried open) offering delicate pastries, assorted cheeses, fancy crackers, smoked beef, choice preserves, and juicy pears and apples; a gorgeous pre-sliced cheesecake, complete with freezing plate, featuring natural, chocolate silk, raspberry, and peanut butter flavors; several Virginia Diner tins of gourmet peanuts, pistachios, and salted almonds; homemade blackberry jam (tasty and useful); a pungent, honey-smoked, spiral ham-and-a-half (my family will enjoy it, even if I won't); a luxurious Montana Plains raisin and honey bread loaf (appreciated by all); and the outrageous piece de resistance, a huge basket filled with boxes and containers of chocolate peppermint smoothies, Ghiradelli peppermint squares, Lindt cappuccino sweets, chocolate-covered graham crackers, more Godiva chocolates, Walker chocolate fruit, King Leo mint puffs, Brown and Haley butternut toffee, Old Dominion peanut brittle, chocolate cream-puff cookies . . . well, you get the idea.
This ultimate cornucopia wasn't even sent by a vendor, but rather by a non-profit furniture buying group, whose other members would certainly be justified in protesting its president's holiday perquisite if they ever found out about it.
All the cookies, candy, nuts, and cake I laid out for my employees to dispose of, which they did in short order (I even ate half a piece of cheesecake myself), except for that last monstrosity, which, having been sent to the house, my wife decided to keep, more as a display of ostentatious indulgence than something one really wants to ingest.
I did receive one handy gift from a manufacturer's representative, a stubborn Republican who, after seven years in the wilderness, may be seeing the error of his ways. This inveterate prankster sent me a roll of toilet paper, on each panel of which is imprinted a likeness of George Bush mouthing some infamous malapropism. Since I haven't opened it yet, intending to regift it (perhaps to the sender!), I am only able to reveal the first three (I doubt my readers will mind, after 3000 words): "Bring 'em on" (Bush on Iraqi militant attacks, July 3, 2003); "They misunderestimated me " (Bush on Bush, November 6, 2000); and "We need an energy bill that encourages consumption" (Bush on the environment, September 23, 2002). Although you can't eat it, you can still use it to wipe the crumbs off your . . . smiley face.
Sometimes, though, even a Scrooge receives a gift he cannot spurn. This morning, Christmas Day, when I went to my mailbox, I found a mysterious white envelope, its stomach bulging like a pregnant woman's, its flap and ends so meticulously sealed and wrapped in protective tape that no loose edge was visible. As I struggled to open it, cursing its security, I noticed the return address: Macey R., a high school friend, now living in Berkeley, whose only recent contact with me was one e-mail six weeks ago, to which I had responded by sending this blog link. Finally, I was able to dislodge the letter inside, on which was typed a brief message: Natalia (Macey's significant other) and I thought you might like these. "These" fell out into my hand: twenty-two baseball cards, the 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates, World Series champions, surprising victors over the invincible Yankees in the Greatest Game Ever Played, which I witnessed sitting beside my father in Forbes Field forty-seven years ago.
They were all there -- Gino Cimoli, Hal Smith, Rocky Nelson, Harvey Haddix, Roy Face, Bill Virdon, Vern Law, Bob Skinner, Don Hoak -- and now they rest on my dresser beside the signed photograph of their teammate Bill Mazeroski crossing home plate after hitting his unforgettable home run, simple but magnificent reminders of youthful avocations, baseball lore, enduring friendships, and the power and poignancy of an ingenious gift. Bah Humbug!
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