Ernest the Frog. A Mostly True Story

I once worked in a television newsroom where the assistant news director was a huge Italian guy named Benny; a stereotype that should only exist in mob films and bad sitcoms. He was the kind of guy who celebrated even the most meaningless success by shouting “Bada-bing Bada-boom!” followed by a string of sexual metaphors describing the various ways we'd humiliated the competition.

So I was surprised to see him walk into my office uncharacteristically subdued one day. He shook his massive head and said, “Doesn't anyone around here have a sense of humor?”

“Whoever gave you that necktie does,” I said. I've never been good at comforting people.
“I was just kidding with Jake – told him I'd can him if he told another Italian joke. Before I could say, badda bing badda boom, he was on the phone and had the shop steward headed down to file a grievance. It was just a joke for God's sake!”

“Ya know,” I said, “It would have been funny if you threatened to fire me because you can't fire me. But it's not funny when you make a threat you can carry out.”
He looked puzzled.

 “It's like that old saying,” I said. “Boys throw stones at frogs in sport, but the frogs die not in sport, but in earnest.”*

Benny pondered that for a moment. “So you're saying Jake's the frog and I'm one of the boys?”

“No, Ernest was the frog, you're a rock.”

“So who's Jake?” he asked.

“Jake's the guy who's filing the grievance.”

I'd love to think that conversation had a long-term effect, but everyone and everything in the world of television news has a short life span. Today's screaming headlines don't even whimper tomorrow; people who were intellectuals last week are caricatures this week, and frogs die in earnest at the top and bottom of each hour.

But the lesson wasn't totally lost. Ever since that day Benny has called himself “Rocky.”

* Attributed to Bion of Borysthenes – 325 B.C.-250 B.C. It appears that the relationship between frogs and boys has changed little over the past 2200 years.

Venice has Issues

Venice is an attractive, middle-aged woman who cuts hair in an old-fashioned barber shop in Portland. She cut my hair a few months ago when I was visiting and did such a good job that I made a point of going back the next time I was in town.

When I slipped into her chair I remembered vaguely that she'd mentioned that she had a new relationship going with her postman, so I asked if her letter carrier was still making special deliveries.

She sighed and said the relationship was on hold because he had “trust issues.”

“You mean he's a jealous asshole?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said and starting snipping at my hair before she stopped herself, stepped back and asked how I wanted my hair cut. She was obviously having concentration issues.

Later that day I stepped inside a bank to report that the walk-up ATM machine wasn't working. The teller closest to the door shrugged her shoulders and said, “It's a new machine last week and it's been having issues ever since it was installed.”

So now I'm having issues with the whole issues issue. It seems like nobody confronts problems or acts badly these day, they just have issues.

Bullies have self-esteem issues. Drug addicts are burdened with dependency issues. I suppose serial killers are just dealing with life-taking issues.

Like many things, once you become sensitive to them, you start to see them everywhere. The other day I stopped into a neighborhood pub and found a nice-looking older woman named Rose holding down the stool next to me.

Rose, I quickly discovered, suffers from both “unemployed senior issues” and "latching onto strangers at bars issues”; but she was a good soul and I told her as much while I gulped my beer, then ran like a guy with "afraid to look back to see if he is being followed issues.”

I'm old enough to remember when people didn't have issues, children had disorders (“Oppositional Defiant Disorder”, “Attention Deficit\Hyperactivity Disorder”, etc.), often caused by genetic or physical problems; but adult problems without physical roots were complexes or syndromes. Post-first marriage baby-boomer men suffered from “Peter Pan Complex” and disillusioned women had a choice of either “Wendy Complex” or “Cinderella Syndrome.”

The diagnoses sounded to me like descriptions of behavior rather than symptoms of a disease, but people I knew talked as if it was because of their syndrome that they acted immature, too bossy, or had unrealistic expectations for relationships.

At the time, a psychologist friend of mine – who'd started seeing a lot of clients suffering from dysfunctions with Disney character names – told me he had identified a new dysfunction that he called: “Rumpelstiltskin Syndrome.” As he defined it, it is any anxiety-related condition which begins to clear up as soon as a therapist gives it a name.

I have no issue with that.

Too Many Different Kinds of Things

My favorite piece of advice for aspiring managers has always been, “Never admit that you know how to clear a jam in a photocopier.” It's something that invites even the lowliest employee to delegate grunt work to you.

It's perfectly logical, but I always enjoyed clearing my own jams, and creating my own spreadsheets, databases, and websites. When a new piece of software or hardware came into the workplace I'd always curl up with the manual until I mastered it. When a new programming language came out, I'd buy some books and take them with me camping on an isolated stretch of the Rogue River or at the fire tower overlooking the Three Sisters in central Oregon. I found it an exciting union of technology and nature.

But as time passed, my non-technical job responsibilities grew and new hardware and software started coming out faster than I could learn it; printed manuals disappeared, and instructions started being given in pay-to-play “webinars” -- a bastard of a word if ever there was one. Still, I hate not knowing how to take something apart and put it back together – at least in theory.

I remember attending a panel discussion where several great minds debated the relative merits of scientists having broad general knowledge versus in-depth command of a narrow area of study. The moment in that discussion which stands out in my memory came when one of the participants quoted a British academic chiding a confused colleague by saying, “The trouble with you sir, is you know too many different kinds of the things.”

The trouble with having too much technical knowledge is that it's tempting to spend your time clearing jams in copy machines instead of creating content, programming spreadsheets instead of running a business, or learning a new computing device instead of writing the great American novel. 

When I had a business that created custom software, I found that the hardest part wasn't writing the program, it was figuring out what the client wanted to do. It wasn't unusual to be in the initial meeting and have someone say, “What we need is a form with two drop-down boxes, a set of check boxes and a button . . .”

After the fourth or fifth time I confronted that kind of thing I started interrupting with, “Before we start talking how we're going to feed this thing, tell me what you want to come out of its ass end.” Often, it would take hours to figure out what the client really wanted, because they had been so focused on the tools rather than tasks.

If I had to divide people into two categories I would say there are: (1) Technicians – people who are fascinated with tools, and (2) Architects – people with a vision that cannot become reality without the use of tools. (There are also politicians, but I'll deal with them another time.)

Technicians always have the coolest toys and the best home entertainment centers, but most people's eyes glaze over as soon as they start talking.

Architects tend to do well at cocktail parties, but you can't sleep in a castle built of dreams.

The real danger of being too much the architect and too little the technician is falling prey to technicians who believe their ability to control the plumbing is a license to control the creative forces in society.

Several years ago I had a client who returned from a professional association conference with the pronouncement, “I'm convinced that within five years our whole business will be Internet-driven.”

I asked, “So what's driving it now? Telephones? Fax Machines?”

The Internet is, of course, just a data delivery system. Like airports and highways, it enables things to move around, but doesn't drive anything.

A pure technician sees a tool and looks for a problem it can solve. The danger in that is, as psychologist Abraham Maslow observed, “If the only thing in your toolbox is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

A pure architects sees a problem, thinks up a solution, then tries to find tools that will fit the solution. Architects and technicians need each other, but while an architect's hands may be on the steering wheel, technicians control the throttle and the brakes.

To offer a first-hand example: In the county government I work for there's an ongoing struggle for control of the budget between the elected official that controls the accounting software that holds the budget data and the appointed official to whom the county charter delegates responsibility for making budget decisions.

The appointed official can hold his breath until he turns blue, but nothing gets entered into the budget program until the independent department head approves. The result has been the creation of a parallel budgeting system – which, of course – adds another technical gatekeeper into mix.

How does one find a balance between the dreamers and the keepers of the tools?

Please don't look to me for an easy answer. I'm afraid that I know too many different kinds of things.

The Empty Page

It's been so long since I've put words on paper,

that I'm afraid that my words may have

become bored with me and fled to younger

more energetic minds.

I see young men and women

that look like children to me,

producing plays,

creating songs,

writing parody and farce;

with the thoughts and

restless lust for life

that I once owned, as if

I'd let them go for pennies

at a yard sale.

Writing is scribbling on a page
until the scribbles map
a corner of the writer's soul.

An empty page is

an unforgiving mirror.

Pepper on my Eggs

My God he had an awful diet. You'd see him a couple of times a day loading up on the cheap peanuts and beef whips and the second tier candy bars they kept on the bargain shelf at the Ace Hardware. He'd been around forever, he and his rusty old flatbed tow truck with the words: “Terminal Towing – we'll get you There in the End” hand painted on the door. The way There and End were capitalized sometimes struck me as mischievous, sometimes as ominous.

There was something charismatic about him – he always had a smile and an aura of contentment, like he was pleasantly stoned but in control. He didn't talk much, didn't solicit conversation, but looked like he would be happy to pass the time with you if you wanted to.

He looked like that guy on The Woodwright Shop on Public TV, except scarey skinny; the kind of skinny where his pants hung straight down from his waist, no hint of a butt at all.

He died the other day. The County prosecutor, who doubles as the coroner, told me the news as we were crossing the street in front of the Courthouse. He said Gary, that was his name, had been in hospice care for a while. But I swear I'd seen the Terminal Towing truck parked in front of the Courthouse within the last few days.


Gary and his rusty truck and his dirty khaki pants and his long, tangled hair, and droopy mustache, and the friendly, contented expression on his face have been part of the landscape ever since I moved to this island. Like the sound of the sea breeze whispering through the tall trees or the dash of pepper on your morning eggs, you don't really notice until its not there.

As familiar as he was, I don't recall ever making eye contact with him. I'd see him park his truck as I was crossing the street, or see him digging in his pockets for change to pay for his jerky and candy at the hardware store, or walking down the street, always away from town, but I never really encountered him.

All this time he was dying and I didn't know it. He knew it, but I just had him pegged as an underfed, but contented stoner.

So last week my world shrank a little and lost some of its color. I never saw it coming.

I'll  miss you Gary. I hope that in the End you got There.

You Get Used to the Disembowlings

After working in the private sector for four decades, I'm five years into my first major outing as a government bureaucrat. At the outset I resolved not to turn into a stereotype of a government worker – uncreative, cold, by-the-book, just marking time until retirement.

Well . . . I'll be vested in the retirement plan in a few months. After so few years the benefits would be almost negligible, but it's a milestone and I have to admit that I'm worn down enough that it's starting to look like a finish line.

The sick economy and falling tax revenues have forced cuts at all levels of government. Positions have been eliminated, job duties combined, work hours reduced – the government work force in my county has dropped 15% since 2008. Also reduced: Health insurance benefits, cost of living salary adjustments and take-home pay, due to mandatory days off without pay. But citizen expectations and the need to provide essential services have not decreased.

Where once the goal was to provide better service to more people, now managers are hard put just to keep essential services running. One manager I know describes what he's doing as “playing Whack-a-Mole against an army of moles.” As resources shrink, crises multiply; paperwork piles up; and statutory deadlines start to scream like incoming artillery shells. A few months ago I made an emergency visit to the medical center with chest pains. I thought it was a heart attack. Turned out to just be stress.

Now, even as government's ability to provide basic services is being tested, a well-organized campaign has emerged that, by all appearances, is aimed at undermining the legitimacy of representative democracy itself.

On our little island of fewer than 6,000 souls, cartoons in ads placed in the local weekly portray the beleaguered County government as everything from a demon to a giant python squeezing the life out of property owners because it's doing a state-required update of land use regulations.

Anti-government activists as a group have adopted bullying tactics, calling out mid-level employees by name Our code enforcement officer has received abusive emails locally and from literally all over the country after a property rights group posted and promoted a video smear job online, along with the employee's name and email address. His offense? Sending a letter of inquiry to someone who was running a store in an unpermitted building in an area which was not zoned for the purpose.

It's worth taking a moment to stop and consider something: County employees live in the same community, attend the same churches, send their kids to the same schools, pay the same taxes and live under the same regulations as everyone else in the County. Anything they do might do that would hurt the community would hurt themselves and their families as well.

The ersatz video exposé, made by the “Freedom Foundation,” spun a story that the County had ordered the store operator, a hardworking farmer, to close down his store or spend tens of thousands of dollars upgrading the property. Even though all relevant “facts” in the video have been discredited the video remains online and people still send out links to it.

Public meetings on land use regulations increasingly, are packed with property rights activists, who take advantage of public access time to consume hours reciting talking points excoriating the County's planning staff and elected officials, seldom letting facts get in the way of a good jibe.

The public debate has increasingly become dominated by private citizens who openly scorn the community leaders they voted into office just months earlier, and denigrate the people who do the things necessary to keep the community viable, healthy and safe, and manage the infrastructure that allows commerce to take place.
In this atmosphere, it would be easy to take cover in the rulebook, not show any flexibility or creativity in dealing with problems, and to just hang on tight until retirement.

But few of us want to live that way. It's our community too.

Citizens, especially when they are in trouble, like to remind us that we work for them. We do appreciate that, and just about every government employee I know works hard for their fellow taxpayers. If we screw up, we expect to hear about it. But we are human, and we'd really appreciate it if our fellow taxpayers - the ones not employed in public service - tried a little harder during these tough times to be good bosses.

It's Okay, I'll Just Sit in the Dark

It's comical how dependent we are on the movement of subatomic particles through copper wires. Living five miles from the only village on an island 20 miles from the mainland makes it even more so.

When the electricity goes out, the phone and the Internet also go. Cell phones don't work out here anyway, and my battery-powered radio only picks up static, so I'm starting to feel a little isolated. 

Our car has a pretty good radio, but my wife drove out to the old gravel pit to let the dog have an early morning run before the lights went out. She probably doesn't even know that the electricity is off, since there aren't any traffic lights on the island and the only store between here and the pit opens late on weekends. 

We get our water from a well, so no electricity means no shower. I used what was likely the last lights-out flush before a coffeeless breakfast – orange juice and a packaged chunk of pastry that could have benefited from a few moments in the microwave.

I have Roomba vacuuming the living room, but he got off to a rough start because he can't communicate with his docking station. Unless the power comes back on, he'll just wander around wondering where home is until his battery dies. 

Most of our clocks are battery operated, so I amused myself by resetting them for the end of daylight savings time and feeling screwed out of an hour of sleep. 

My computer has about an hour's worth of juice left in its battery. I'd planned to pay the bills, but I do that online. 

Maybe I'll just toss this month's trash into the pickup and take it up to the transfer station. It's scheduled to be open today, but its scale and cash register are electric. 

The sky has turned dark, it's beginning to rain and the temperature is dropping. I suppose the mainland may have disappeared entirely. I could punch up the camera at the ferry terminal and see if there's any sign of panic; if I could get online. 

I'd better stop fooling around and check Facebook and Twitter and see if anybody's posting about the outage.

It sure is dark in here.