The Little Words Mean the Most

DC calling

The things you learn. Spoke to a client in Washington, DC. The city's in emotional and financial suspended animation. The client's $3 million capital campaign is now on uncertain hold "until the climate improves." Maybe tomorrow. Today, Congress gave the go-ahead to a $700 million bailout of too-smart-for-their-own-[and-our]-britches fat cats, pending details that will remove the bad odor. The American Voters' Prayer: Please, lord, give us a new, thoughtful, intelligent government real soon.

Well, I'm watching anyway

John McCain wants to postpone his Friday presidential debate with Barack Obama. Senator McCain has heard the claxon: All hands on the Senate deck as the $700 million bailout sails in for discussion. Is he the Senate's leading authority on finance? Would he be missed? No. He's an armed services geek, not an economy geek, as he himself admits.

But the proposed postponement has a Part Two: the rescheduled McCain-Obama dust-up would take the time slot now reserved for the VP debate, maybe sending that event into oblivion and freeing Sarah Palin from the uncertain task of matching her very recently acquired understanding of foreign and national affairs against a seasoned Joe Biden's. It's called risk management. Keep your weak assets away from excess stress.

I do have friends

The hard part when talking to a webinar (topic: Big Bux Case Statements) crowd (1,500 attending last week) is connecting with them personally. You can't see the audience. You can't make eye contact, read body language. So I have a stand-in hand-carved audience I speak to during webinars, sent by Marci Cornell-Feist, America's busiest and kindest charter-school ass-kicker.

Webinahr

And you know what? This one didn't work out so well. Yes: during, the UPS truck silently delivered my folding aluminum wheelbarrow capable of handling 250 lbs. I move rocks around the land, making trails, hoping to stay my muscles' decline.

But then I had to re-record the whole 1.5 hour presentation. Technical spit. Some shoe charity complained bitterly about static on the phone feed: so distracting, so upsetting, so mind-affecting that her (?) head spun. True. I could hear it spinning. Kind of a roulette-wheel noise. Phil Gramm's nation of whiners? No. No, no, no. Silly perfectionists is all.

My sister called

I learned from her that my father wasn't a racist. He was an equal-opportunity hater. Anyone different -- any nationality, ethnicity, or race -- was worthy of his casual contempt. Many of those he hated on general principles he liked personally and spoke of with admiration, when he got to know them. He's gone. I think about him a lot.

My sister and I discussed the impact on the 2008 presidential contest of Sarah Palin's womb.

And I find myself living in a state without economic development. It has economic arrested development. In one week's time, the newspaper has reported that state unemployment bounded skyward to 8.6% -- a three point gain in a month; AND that the local casino, the state's third largest source of revenue, is almost surely heading for bankruptcy. Understand, Rhode Island is desperately trying to sew closed a $425 million deficit tear. This is a seriously bad time to lose a huge chunk of slot machine change.

It is also the week of the proposed $800 million bailout. The FBI is investigating Fannie, Freddie, Lehman and AIG for fraud at the highest levels. Voters want someone flogged. They'd let the bailout off the scrutiny hook, I think, if someone senior in each company were flogged. I'm not talking metaphorically. Isn't it time for a return to corporal punishment, reserving it for destructive greed?

English language, world traveler

Declared: English is no longer an ethnic language. It is the world's language now because, for one, the world needs it: a common mercantile language. Trade requires some kind of pidgin, to do the deals. And it needs to be a language that's nimble, big-hearted, will accept anything; not stuck up or conservative.

People lament the hegemony of English. That's like lamenting the hegemony of hammers for driving nails. The adoption of English as the world's language isn't an act of cultural imperialism. Face it: not all developed languages were created equal. English is the right tool. It is a practical, pragmatic, average person's language; and always has been. The academy never got its mitts on it, despite generations of stick-wad grammarians who paled and fainted at the sight of sentence begun with a conjunction.

Finding us in France

We live on an apron of wine-making activity at the foot of the Causse, a somewhat desolate limestone plateau that forms the southern portion of the Massif Central. When Paris was already a cosmopolitan city of the world, the Causse was obscure, where each valley spoke an indecipherable dialect. Today, with its grand canyons and hidden places, it's a traveler's feast. Crumpled valleys. Deep gorges. The cliff-hanging cheese town of Roquefort. The Causse is our backyard.

The Mediterranean is our front yard, 20 minutes' drive away; the blue stuff on the lower right. Our town, Valros, is next to Pézenas, one of France's great antiquing centers; and a significant South of France arts destination. It's across the Hérault River valley from Montagnac. And it's near the Bassin de Thau, a huge shellfish farming area, backed by an undeveloped beach that runs for miles. Look just southeast of center on this relief map. That's us. Hi!

Clients also helpful with this

Tulsa: Take two

What I love?

It's the welcome: Sue Mosher picking me up at the airport, despite the inconvenience; toddler, dad getting a pacemaker, her life was in a deep fold at that moment.

It's the dinner with opinionated, fun, new-met colleagues at a hip, little place and trying for the first time an Oklahomer specialty: deep-fried dill pickles (a last-meal-on-death-row favorite, I'm told); delicious with a tangy sauce. Good, too, with the Fess Parker Pinot Noir (yes, boomers, Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier, turned into a seriously good winemaker); long legs, complex as a close shave.

It's definitely a little bit about Françoise and Darell Christopher. They operate the buoyantly welcoming Kennedy Mansion Bed and Breakfast, where I stayed the night. We watched a few hard-to-swallow minutes of the Republican National Convention together. Françoise packed me off with two kinds of crepes next morning.

Then Janet Gaskins, for the Tulsa AFP chapter, swept me away to Oklahoma State University -- Tulsa. This was my second time speaking at this impressive, well-appointed venue. That's Janet there on the right, in the light jacket, headed up the aisle in the main auditorium. On the end of each row of chairs is a big, metal "T" for Tulsa. The good kind of pride. All this, and it got even sweeter: the Christophers turned up in the audience! Surprise! My heart just about burst its baggie!

And it's a little bit about the fading romance/sheer annoyance of air travel these days. Carry everything with you, if you ever want to see it again. Put your gels and liquids in 3 oz. containers in a plastic bag. And eat in the Mexican place at the Cincinnati airport, C concourse, if you get the chance. The ancho burrito and a beer saved my road-worn sanity heading home.