Hemingway in Mendocino

We drove to Mendocino last week. It is a different sort of coastal California here. The air is very clean. Black hawks fly above the ocean cliffs. Deers congregate on the nearby fields at dusk. I can see all this from our room at the Heritage House.

My husband and I are here for a few days to help his recuperation. He suffers from back injuries that prevent him standing or even walking more than a short distance. He has been spiraling downward emotionally; constant pain takes its toll. A change of scenery seemed like a good idea.

Our room at the Heritage House is Deerfield Seven. It is done in a sort of faux French provincial; a throwback to the 1950s. One critical Internet reviewer called it "decorated like your grandma's house". I don't mind much. Sometimes all the modern marble and granite and shades of beige in modern hotels can get rather boring. This place evokes memories of the 1950s -- cocktail hour, the Cold War, and Hemingway.

It is different; a change of scenery.

Our room looks out on a field and cliffs and the ocean. This is a big view. A panorama. One wall of the room is all windows with a big sliding glass door. We look through this wall of windows and view the ocean while we are comfortably seated in the blue upholstered swivel chairs in our French provincial parlor.

There's no television in the room, no phone, no Internet access, and no cell phone service. My husband dozes off, reads a little, and watches the ocean. I am reading and re-reading Hemingway. Every hour or so I get up and stretch. I check out the effect of the light and wind on the water. Then I go back to Hemingway.

I finished "A Farewell to Arms". I was vaguely hoping that the story would have a different ending and that Catherine Barkley would become a feminist in her old age. Of course it did not happen. I still enjoyed re-reading the novel.

I forgot how much the characters drink in Hemingway's novels. Reading about all the drinking has made me thirsty. Our room has a complimentary minibar (first complimentary one I have ever seen), so although I would normally have a cup of tea, I decide to plunge into the total Hemingway experience and fix myself a gin and tonic. It is very refreshing.

The taste of hard liquor brings me furthur back to the 1950s and now I start in on "For Whom the Bell Tolls". I have never read it before and I am feeling the thrill of reading a classic for the first time. Unfortunately, "For Whom the Bell Tolls" is harder going. The cast of characters are mostly Republican banditos fighting the Fascists in Spain's civil war. They are not very likeable. One is a drunk. The others like to argue a lot and bait each other into arguments. It seems like a sort of competition of aspiring alpha males. This does not interest me. These unlikeable people are banded together on a mission to blow up a bridge.

Time to get up and stretch and look at the light and wind on the ocean. It dawns on me that there is a reason women readers like Hemingway's novels. Hemingway's male characters are realistically drawn, heterosexual men who develop deep feelings for women. Of course, they are interested in sex, but they are also deeply connected to one woman. I think this is comforting to most women. Hemingway's universal theme -- that none of us goes through life without significant pain and loss -- makes his work appealing to all readers. Love, pain, and loss.

Now it is time to awaken my husband to dress for dinner.

Do Financial Planners Come from Hell?

My husband and I have been working with a financial planner for a couple of years. The financial planner is Steve Brown of Asset Planning & Management in Aptos, California. In general, the financial planner has done a better job of managing our investments than we would have done on our own.

We had a meeting scheduled today to specifically discuss the plan for my retirement. After reviewing the status of some of our assets, Steve Brown, turned to me and said "Your last email to me is a complete waste of my time."

A copy of that email follows.

----------------------------Email Start---------------------------------------
4/14/2006
To: Steve Brown
From: Chris Wellens

Steve,

I think that you, my husband, and I need to have a meeting to get back on the same page. We seem to be going in different directions and that is not going to work out very well for our financial future.

When we first met with you and started this process, you felt that we had a "mishmash" of investments and you were going to straighten that out. I think we got started on that path and made some progress. However, now we seem to have wandered back into mishmash.

I would like to see a coherent plan to get us to our goals. I think we should be defining how much of each type of investment we should have (real estate, stocks, bonds, cash, gold, art, etc.), by what date, so we can live off the interest and dividends. I would like to start with my end goal of retirement, and work backwards from there.

Please let me know when we can have this meeting.

-----------------------------------Email End----------------------------

(1) If financial planners are not coming up with a plan for your retirement, then what are they doing?

(2) Is it normal for financial planners to tell their clients that the client's questions and goals are a waste of time?

Outstanding Females in Technology Are Exhausting

I belong to organizations that support and promote women in technology.

There are not that many of us.

Some of our challenges concern achieving our goals in an environment where style, cultural values and norms created by our male colleagues are not comfortable for us. We try to bridge the gap through discussions, workgroups, presentations, etc. Our goals are diverse, but we generally want to help each other. I have met many fine, brilliant, and highly ethical women in these organizations.

Then there is the annual honoree dinner.

Many organizations have their "Outstanding Person of the Year" dinner. I know there is a "Realtor of the Year". I suppose there is a "Mayor of the Year", "High School Teacher of the Year", and so on. The women in technology organizations also have an annual honoree. The dinners are generally upbeat, positive, and fun.

Having attended many of these dinners over the years I have made some observations.

The master of ceremonies reads a long list of the honoree's accomplishments. The honorees have advanced degrees, multiple offspring, professionally successful husbands, track records of successive advancement in their professions, and high level positions demanding 60+ hours per week. Then there is always the quirky component. For example, "Rebecca creates jewelry in her spare time." "Sara is an avid sky diver, placing first for women over 50, in the national competition." "Leslie's water colors have been featured at the Met."

Not only have I not accomplished these things, I feel exhausted listening to these long lists. Then it seems that whoever has the longest list wins.

At one dinner, I talked to the honoree, Peggy Taylor. People were in line taking turns to chat with her for a few minutes each. I told her that I admired and was impressed by her many accomplishments and the number of people who said she was their best friend. I asked her where she got the energy to do so much and to invest so much time in maintaining so many close friendships. To my amazement, she replied that she was very fortunate to be a high energy person who got by with only five hours of sleep a night. I was impressed with her directness and honesty.

What is wrong, though, with just living your life and making one contribution to your community? Isn't it enough to work at your job and then maybe volunteer at your church? Why does the woman who has the longest list win?

Stephen Sondheim has something, but not much of it

I spent $51 on a ticket to see "Into the Woods" with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by James Lapine. This is my fourth Sondheim musical. I hope it is the last.

Here is what I conclude:

Stephen Sondheim:
- does not know how to tell a story
- has a somewhat despairing outlook on life
- has way too many words compressed in a short space of time
- oddly couples these supremely compressed intellectual lyrics with trite, cutesy, but forgettable tunes

Will the theatre of the future, 100 years from now, be performing Stephen Sondheim? I don't think so. I don't understand why theatres today perform his work.

"Into the Woods" is a very confused story. It does have a beginning and a conclusion, which is an improvement over the other Sondheim musicals that I have seen. However, all the events occuring in the middle are extremely confused.

The Sondheim fans tell me, breathlessly, "that's because life is confusing". I can agree with that statement. I cannot agree that the confusion of life justifies creating a work of art. Instead of art imitating life, we've got life imitating life here. In other words, "Into The Woods" is confused and aspires to imitate life which is confusing. In this case, why spend $51 per ticket? Why not watch someone's life for two hours? Or watch one's own life for two hours?

But let's move on to the play itself.

Sondheim's lyrics are very often clever, eclectic, and unusual. Perhaps he should have been a poet. The actors and actresses sing these lyrics in a compressed amount of time. Their ability to do is impeded by their lack of diction. As a result, the audience cannot hear the actual lyrics in real time. About the only way to follow the story is to read the musical in advance.

The audience hears an actress sing "Chow Doon". We attempt to mentally translate what we heard into something meaningful. Even though it sounds like Chinese we want to understand how that fits into the story. However, the actress intended to say "What are you doing?" But if you say "What are you doing?" over and over again as fast as possible, it comes out sounding like "Chow Doon".

This is a key problem with Sondheim. Either his work is simply unsingable, or there are not enough singers with sufficient diction to perform Sondheim. Either way, this is a big problem.

So why is Sondheim popular? Why is his work performed?

I believe that two phenomena work in his favor: (1) His relationship with Oscar Hammerstein, and (2) The lack of evolutionary direction in the American musical.

(1) Due to a set of circumstances, the well-known lyricist and playwright Oscar Hammerstein became a surrogate father to Sondheim. This connection opened doors and opportunities for Sondheim in the American musical theatre that other lyricists and composers could only dream about.

(2) There seems to be a paucity of break-through ideas for the American musical theatre. The art form had its golden age in the 1960's and since then has been thrashing about for a new direction and a new inspiration. The musical needs to evolve as an art form. It has become derivative. The only new ideas apart from Sondheim are with the mega-musicals, like Les Mis.

Yes ... Stephen Sondheim has new ideas. His supremely compressed intellectual lyrics are thought provoking, even unusual. What a pity they are not performable.

What group of young artists, composers, lyricists can now come forward and fill the void to help musical theatre evolve?

Winning the Iraq War

How do you win a war? This is a serious question I've been pondering. I think the use of language or the rhetoric of the question is flawed. "Win" is defined as:

1. To achieve victory or finish first in a competition.

So we could rephrase the question substituting the definition above for the word "win":

How do you achieve victory or finish first in a competition in Iraq?

I don't think the Iraqi insurgents consider the presence of U.S. troops in their country a "competition". I don't think they are interested in "testing their skill or ability against a rival" (the definition of compete). I think the insurgents want the U.S. out of their country so they can take control again.

Normally when we use words like "winning" and "competing" we have a mental model of a sporting event like a soccer game or baseball game. In these tests of skills, both sides agree to follow a certain set of rules, there are referrees, and there is an outcome. Both sides accept the outcome or result and there is a clear winner and a clear loser. The matter is settled and the game is over.

The Iraqi insurgents, however, never agreed to "play a game". They never agreed to "test their ability against a rival". They are not participating according to time intervals like innings or 45-minute halves. They are not paying any attention to rules, referrees or outcomes. Especially outcomes. The Iraqi insurgents are not going to agree on the outcome; in other words, that they lost. No matter how the facts of the war appear to the U.S., it does not seem likely that Iraqi insurgents would forfeit, wave a white flag, resign, or admit defeat, regardless of the circumstances.

So when I hear Republicans saying things like "we are going to kick their butts in Iraq" or "we are winning this war", or "we're going to win this one and show them", these expressions sound like fans at a sporting event cheering for their team. In the case of Iraq, the fan is going to be disappointed because "the game" is not going to end.

The trouble is that the U.S. presence in Iraq is not a sporting event. It is not even clear that it is a war, since technically the U.S. has not declared war on Iraq. Most importantly, it is not clear that the Iraqi insurgents are interested or even paying attention to an outcome or result. It seems more likely that the Iraqi insurgents will continue fighting and lose their lives if required to get control over the country. They are not on any kind of time table. It seems they have infinite time and are willing to lose their lives for their cause.

I propose that our rhetoric is all wrong and that we as a nation have phrased the question very badly when we say "winning the Iraq war". We should take a step back, look at the big picture, and ask these questions:

(1) What does the U.S. want from Iraq?
(2) How can this be achieved?
(3) What are the benefits?
(4) What is the return on investment?

In reading the White House web site (www.whitehouse.gov), it appears there is some hope that the administration has shifted its focus away from the win/lose war rhetoric to the questions above. I hope this continues.

Let's Ban Cinderella

Banned Books Week is September 24 to October 1, 2005. This is an event promoted by the American Library Association (ALA) with the positive message that "Free People Read Freely". Nevertheless, the American Library Association receives "challenges". These are requests to remove or restrict materials from a curriculum or library based upon the objections of a person or a group. Last year the ALA received 574 challenges. Challenges differ from banning in that banning is the removal of those materials.

The challenged books are most often challenged for offensive language, homosexuality, witchcraft, and sexual content. Among the books that were challenged in the last ten years are: "Of Mice and Men" by John Steinbeck. "Harry Potter" by J.K. Rowling. "The Color Purple" by Alice Walker. "Lord of the Flies" by William Golding. "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley. "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain. I have read all of these books. Most of the books were on my list of "books that must be read before enrolling in college". The list was compiled by my middle school English teacher in the 1970's. I wonder how it is possible that a list of books considered required reading for those seeking higher education has now become a list of books that many would like to see banned? I wonder, who are these people?

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, including me. So if a large group of people want to ban books that are considered classics, then it is only right that I should pick some books that I believe should be banned. As a hypothetical exercise, I thought about the book that has done the most damage to society over time, and should therefore, in the interest of public policy, be banned. It seems right to me that we should have some reason for banning books.

My reason is public policy. My book to be banned is "Cinderella".

Cinderella is in the public domain. Cinderella is folklore, a fairy tale. There are some 345 variations on the Cinderella story. Cinderella is multimedia; Disney has a Cinderella film. There are two Cinderella ballets; there are even more Cinderella operas. So banning all instances of Cinderella will be a monumental undertaking. Considering all the damage Cinderella has done, though, it must be eradicated.

What are the fundamental messages of Cinderella?

(1) If your mother dies when you are a young girl, and your father remarries, you will have big problems.

(2) Your new mother and her offspring will treat you as a servant and abuse you in other ways and your father will do nothing.

(3) If you are a young woman, your goal in life is to marry a prince. If that means cutting off your toe or cutting off your heel so that you can meet the prince's requirements, then you need to maim yourself.

(4) It is the natural course of young women to fight and abuse each other in order to win over the most desirable man.

(5) If you marry a young man of very high rank, you will be set up for life.

I find all of these messages objectionable for all sorts of reasons. The clear amalgamation of the messages: give up control of your life to a man who will take care of everything for you.

No one should give up control of their life to another person.

Although there are certainly many men who would do their best to love and provide for the woman in their life, it is best to have a back-up plan and an exit strategy in case things don't work out.

Sadly, many women have believed in the Cinderella story and found themselves:

• Pregnant and alone.
• Homeless.
• Responsible for small children as a result of desertion.
• Physically and/or sexually abused.

Now... how did this happen? Where was that prince?

It seems apparent that most men are not familiar with the Cinderella story, or, they don't identify with and model their behavior after the prince. Or, they don't relate to the story at all because the prince has such a tiny role and the story is primarily about Cinderella and the injustices done to her.

Cinderella's problem is not so much the wicked stepmother and step sisters, but rather her own father who has no backbone and will not defend her and stand up for her with the stepmother and step sisters. Given that her own father has let her down, it seems irrational that Cinderella should be so quick to hook up with the prince. Who knows if the prince is going to love and protect her? Perhaps the prince will be as weak as her father.

Although the story ends with Cinderella marrying the prince, if the story were to continue, I think we would find Cinderella has traded in one bad situation for another. If we examine her character we see that she is passive and depressed (over the death of her mother). She is not standing up for herself. She is not setting boundaries. She has not even asked her father to intercede. She goes to a ball and is swept off her feet by a handsome man. She knows nothing about him. She completely trusts that he will take care of her. In short, Cinderella is stupid. The definition of stupidity is engaging in the same behavior twice and expecting different results. The first time was with her father; the second time with the prince. If and when she finds herself in another abusive situation, what is Cinderella's back-up plan? What is her exit strategy?

There are no answers to that question in the Cinderella story and that is our public policy problem.

If Cinderella had a good education, some experience, some marketable skills, and some connections, she could probably take care of herself. She would not have to be dependent on the prince. She would have more self-esteem and confidence.

The public policy message we need to promote is: learn how to take care of yourself and then take care of yourself! When young women get the opposite message: give up control of your life to a man who will take care of everything for you -- the result is a public policy failure. When things do not work out, our society pays the price for the non-existent prince. These women need public assistance or get low paying jobs. They cannot provide for their children. They cannot control their children who get into trouble. They get caught in the downward spiral of poverty and crime. All the while obsessing and dreaming about a fairytale prince who is simply that -- a fairytale.

So let's ban Cinderella. Let's print some extra copies of the essay "Self-Reliance" by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Complaint letter to the FCC regarding the SuperBowl

February 21, 2005

The Honorable Michael Powell
Chairman
Federal Communications Commission
445 12th Street SW
Washington, DC 20554

Dear Mr. Powell,

I am writing to complain to you about the television coverage of the "Super Bowl 39" on February 6, 2005. I was extremely offended by what I saw and I think this programming is totally unsuitable for Christians and children.

This program graphically depicted explicit violence between gangs of young men. Even worse, older men in striped shirts, who should have known better, actually seemed to be directing the gratituous violence with whistles and hand gestures. The hitting and tackling between the groups of men could only result in serious injuries and bodily harm. These injuries appear to warrant medical attention. I fear that most of the injuries will not be easily treated and will require additional doctor's visits, xrays, casts, and physical therapy. Some of these injuries may even produce chronic pain that will affect these men for the rest of their lives.

Please work to have this type of programming removed from the airwaves. I am sure that there are may alternatives that are non-violent and non-destructive to the human body.

Sincerely yours,


Chris Wellens