With the exception of Monday’s blog, I’ve been mostly silent during the last two weeks, part of which I was pre-occupied with visitors from Israel here for the annual Shalom Yisrael hosting of first responder-trauma care providers from the area next to the Gaza Strip. (More about them in an upcoming blog.) So let me now take this opportunity to catch up on some of the news and views stored up in my notebook, on scraps of paper and on clippings from the newspaper.
I can report that last Wednesday I demonstrated extreme tact and restraint. While sitting with the Israelis in the congressional dining room eating lunch with Congresswoman Nita Lowey, my ears perked up at the sound of an obsequiously rich baritone voice. In my direct vision, buttering a roll at the adjacent table, Grover Norquist held forth. He of the “no new taxes” pledge. He who is largely responsible for stymieing the government into uncompromising inaction, thereby subsidizing the bifurcation of society into haves and have-nots by inhibiting the development of programs to help the less fortunate while the fortunate become richer and more insulated.
How fitting to see him eating at the public trough, bending the ear of a congressman I did not recognize. But, as I said, I was a model of decorum. Aside from pointing him out to a colleague seated next to me, and texting my sighting to Gilda and a friend, I sat there stoically silent. I'm grateful the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre wasn't with him or I wouldn't have been able to restrain myself.
The trip to Washington reinforced an old truism I had encountered during three decades of criss-crossing this great country of ours and, for that matter, much of the rest of the civilized world. Namely, the best showers often can be found not in expensive hotels but in moderately priced abodes. I was vigorously refreshed by the shower in my room at the Holiday Inn of Alexandria, VA, reminding me of a stay in the Anatole Hotel in Dallas a decade ago.
As head of a convention that brought 1,200 guests to the Anatole, the hotel placed me in the presidential suite, 20-plus floors above ground. Beautiful accommodations. But when I sought the cleansing refreshment of a shower, I was startled. The water cycled between hot and cold every 30 seconds. And, most disappointing, the flow was, shall we say, less powerful than an elderly man’s discharge. When I complained to the concierge, I was told the problems resulted from a system that required hot water to be pumped up to the twentieth floor and above. So why did the hotel put the presidential suite on such a high floor?, I asked. Did they not like George W. Bush? He was a Texan, after all.
As you might expect, aside from voicing my displeasure, I received no satisfaction.
Blessed Passing: More and more I’m feeling the world is passing me by, especially when it comes to technology and the inculcation of terms and figures of speech into the vernacular of everyday life. Until a May 4 article in The NY Times (“They Feel ‘Blessed’”) I wasn’t aware “blessed” had become a standard form of expression and thereby a problem for many, though not to me because of my ignorance, which is a blessing, really (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/04/fashion/blessed-becomes-popular-word-hashtag-social-media.html?).
Legs to Die For: I have legs most any woman would die for. Long. Thin. Not overly muscular. Pinched in at the ankles. What I don’t have are legs most men would die for.
So I have been particularly amused by the fixation some celebrities and fashion designers have displayed lately by dressing up (or down, in my opinion) in dress shorts and sockless ankles. It came to a head at the Academy Awards in the personage of Pharrell Williams (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/30/fashion/men-in-shorts-girls-pharrell-williams-critics.html?).
Perhaps in Silicon Valley and Silicon Alley offices shorts could pass as acceptable business attire, but I’m an old fogey for any other formal occasion, and I still believe business counts as a formal occasion. If you’ve read this far, you probably won’t mind my reprising an incident from some 30 years ago.
As an offshoot to my publication, we had launched a separate apparel magazine, staffed with its own publisher, editorial and sales teams. The publisher traveled to Los Angeles to make calls with his new resident salesman. They planned to visit Ocean Pacific the first day. OP was an emerging brand at the time.
Carl, the publisher, showed up at our LA office in our standard corporate uniform, meaning a suit. Not even a sports jacket and slacks was acceptable back then. His salesman, on the other hand, came dressed in a T-shirt, cutoff shorts and flip-flops. The contrast could not have been greater. The salesman explained that when they arrived at Ocean Pacific Carl would see that casual was the norm, that Carl would be the one whose dress would stand out from the crowd.
Sure enough, the salesman was correct. The next day Carl fired him. He had been guilty of either failing to properly uphold our corporate profile on a business call, or failing to properly communicate in advance the appropriate dress code to Carl for the OP call. Either way, he was history, one of the shortest-tenured salespeople in our company’s history.
Bird Watching: A team from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology won last Saturday’s World Series of Birding in New Jersey. The six-member team identified 218 species during the 24-hour competition.
I have more modest expectations. My side yard bird feeders draw 10 types beyond the usual sparrows, mourning doves and black birds: blue jay, female cardinal, red-bellied woodpecker, male cardinal, downy woodpecker, cedar waxwing, chickadee, goldfinch, western tanager and nuthatch. Occasionally a migrating hummingbird stops by.
It’s About Time: The Times finally got around to noting this past Sunday that unrest in Ukraine has prompted cancellations of vacation travel to the region. As I reported two months earlier, on March 3, Gilda’s and my Black Sea summer cruise, including stops in Odessa, Yalta and Sevastopol, was scrapped.
