BOOK REVIEW-- JOSEPH FINDER'S NEWEST

Through an odd sequence of circumstances, I received an advance reader's edition of Joseph Finder's new novel Power Play to review. Really, having people give me free copies of books to read just so I can talk about them strikes me as a sweet gig.

Finder is a Yale grad whose roommate was Franklinite Joe Teig. He started out specializing in Russki thrillers, then wrote Zero Hour after the first World Trade Towers attack. While history has somewhat overtaken that book, it was pretty much on the mark. He also wrote High Crimes, a military/legal thriller that was made into a movie with Ashley Judd and Morgan Freeman. After a sidetrack into some other writing gigs, Finder resurfaced as a specialist in corporate thrillers, a niche that he pretty much owns and which yields some interesting ideas.

Here's my quick review of his new book, Power Play.

Jake doesn’t want to be there. It’s a corporate retreat, an isolated camp where the corporate heavy hitters go to make their play for power. Jake’s been happy to be a quiet minnow, but now he’s forced to swim with the sharks, and there’s no familiar face in sight except for that of the woman he loved and lost. And things are only going to get worse when a group of armed killers arrive with an agenda of their own.

This is Finder’s best work to date. He has once again perfectly blended the battling and infighting of the boardroom with the action and suspense of a classic thriller.

Jake is by far his most compelling central character. Jake carries the burden of dark secrets and a troubled past—he maintains a low profile at work to conceal that burden, and he let it tear him apart from the love of his life, but now it is the only thing that can save them all. Finder has created a character who is not simply an action hero, but a man caught in a situation where he must deal with his dark past to preserve his life and his love. In Power Play, Finder gives us a man who must deal with the greatest external and internal struggle of his life, all in one weekend.

A work that fans of Robert Ludlum and Lee Child will enjoy, this is highly recommended, the best book from Joseph Finder to date.

RISK ASSESSMENT

(News-Herald, August 16)There are two factors to consider in risk assessment—how likely the risk is, and how great the cost would be.

When something is not likely to happen, and the cost would not be great, risk barely registers. Why do people drive up and down Route 8 at Mach 6? Because they figure that A) odds are against the police being around to catch them and B) a ticket wouldn’t be all that costly.

What makes them slow down? If they see a parked police car poised to pounce, the Likelihood of Being Caught estimate rockets up to nearly %100. If drivers have already collected so many tickets that their collection of points is Much Too High, then the cost of being caught becomes prohibitive. In both cases, they are more likely to slow down.

Many of us are naturally inclined to weigh one risk assessment factor more than the other. In fact, when we see a battle between people over a risky behavior, it’s often between people who are counting different factors.

Mom warns Junior to drive slowly and carefully for the zillionth time because she has a vivid and gut-wrenchingly clear mental picture of what it would be like to have police come to tell her that her child has been killed. Junior laughs at her fretting because he feels certain that, no matter how fast he drives, he’s simply too good to ever have an accident.

These different approaches are probably at the center of many parent-child arguments. Dad is focused on the cost factor, so he tells his daughter to never, ever, ever get in a car driven by a friend who’s been drinking.

Juniorette hears that, and since she assesses risk based on likelihood, she thinks that the heavy-duty warning means that Dad believes it’s likely she’ll ride with a drunk driver, and that he doesn’t trust her to make the right choice. In fact, he trusts her 99 times out of 100, but all he can think is that one time is enough to create unendurable tragedy.

Many household arguments that end with an offspring screaming “You just don’t trust me” start with two different styles of risk assessment.

The same argument takes place in the public sector as well. In the days after 9/11, everybody wanted to build a cage around every important place in the USA. The likelihood of a terrorist attack on the birthplace of Lawrence Welk wasn’t because everyone was gripped by a vivid understanding of how awful a terrorist attack could be.

Or take a whacko grabbing his gun and going on a school grounds rampage. The chances of such an event were the same the day before the Virginia Tech shootings as they were the day after. This fall, the chance of such an attack won’t have decreased a bit, but the memory of the horror will have faded, and with it, our need to be on high alert 24/7.

And, of course, we’ll spend the next month of our national ADD anxiety attack on bridge safety, not because there’s any reason the believe that bridges across the Allegheny are any less stable today than they were yesterday, but because we suddenly can imagine how awful a collapse would be. In a month or two, the comforting fog of denial will roll in again.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. In this world there’s a long list of really horrible things that could happen. The list includes tragedies that aren’t impossible—just improbable. If we were constantly, vividly aware of the potential disasters, we’d lock ourselves in the basement and never do a thing.

Risk assessment is hard. Some folks are too certain they’ll always avoid potential disaster. Others lack the imagination to appreciate how really awful disaster could be. And some people overestimate both and live in a state of eternal fear.

Media often make matters worse, either by making the possible disaster seem extra awful, or by artificially inflating the likelihood that disaster may strike. “Epidemics” like the fabled summer rash of shark attacks a few years ago—these are often complete fabrications with no basis in fact, and yet millions of Americans become convinced that the scary wave is real.

And sometimes the very thing that magnifies the impact of an imagine disaster is our own human hearts. A possible hurt or disappointment suffered by a child becomes massive suffering to the parent who loves that child so much.

Risk is part of the price we pay for being alive. We can’t make it go away by ignoring it, and we can’t escape it by running from every shadow. After all running away also has risks. Our best bet is to try not to do anything stupid, then find and share the strength to deal with what comes.

MERITOCRACY

(News-Herald, August 9) We like to believe that we live in a culture that rewards excellence, that the best way to succeed is to be really good at what you do. Close, but no cigar. Doing an excellent job is not what gets you a reward in our culture. Convincing people that you are doing an excellent job is what gets you a reward.

Now, one way to convince people that you’re doing excellent work is to actually do excellent work. In some fields that’s often good enough. Engineering tends to be that way, though engineers often get in trouble when forced to interface with other fields. Joy’s large success in peak years arguably came because they were an engineer’s company, letting good work speak for itself.

That ethic is even celebrated in our popular culture. House is a current extreme example of a man who cannot play the game, but is so excellent that he’s successful anyway.

This may be a distinctive difference between professional and amateur sports. When high school athletes square off, the team that does the best job usually wins the game. That’s still true in professional sports—except that the team that does the best sales job has more money and that translates into better players and staff.

In most arenas it is necessary to play the game, to sell the product, to convince others that you’re actually done a good job.

There are plenty of people who hate that part of the equation, turn up their noses in disgust at the smell of politics and popularity contests. They will announce that they don’t play the game in a tone that lets you know they consider that a badge of honor. But if they refuse to play the game and wait for their work to speak for itself, they often end up obscure and unknown. Plenty of artists have died hungry through the centuries.

In fact, the role of patrons in the art world is not just to pay bills, but to campaign and play the game for the artist. The artist paints, sculpts, composes or whatever; the patron goes out and shmoozes to convince everyone that the work really is good.

As much as some folks loathe playing the game, in most realms it’s hard to ignore. Remember Eugene Reichenfeld, conductor of the Wilkinsburg Symphony and one of the fathers of the Kennerdell Art and Music Festival? Gene was a fine conductor and musician, and he was a promoter of the first order, nearly shameless in his pursuit of support for the festival. Plenty of people may have ended up feeling as if they’d been hit by a tornado, but in the end, a woodsy gathering to look at pictures and listen to an orchestra became a source of culture and entertainment for folks throughout Western PA.

The Festival could have just set up in the shop in the woods and said, “Well, this is good stuff, so we’ll just wait for people to come be impressed.” And it would have died out decades ago.

There are certainly people who overdo promotion, who always sell hard even if they have nothing to sell but junk. Mass media shoves a variety of wretched garbage at us. Plenty of folks aren’t just willing to be sold to—they depend on others to tell them what’s good, as if they themselves were incapable of telling excellence from junk.

Playing the game doesn’t always work—New Coke was one of the most spectacular and expensive marketing failures ever. But people who refuse to play the game will often be at the mercy of those who do, and will owe their successes to people who were willing to play the game on their behalf.

It is easy to become bitter about playing the game, perhaps because we grow up hearing that excellence is all you need. Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.

In the workplace, a good manager makes a sales job unnecessary, because your best widget polisher may be lousy at playing the game. If you hired him to polish widgets, don’t make him spend time playing the game. A good manager frees employees to concentrate on doing their job without wasting time selling it.

People who play the game well are denigrated as suck-ups, political types who are somehow cheating. But, like it or not, if a tree falls really, really well in the forest and no one hears it, it never makes a sound.

If you’re like me, and not a big fan of playing the game, what can you do? Well, some times you suck it up and sell. And when you see something that is excellent and worth celebrating, make a fuss so that the person who did it doesn’t have to throw his own party. If everyone did that every day, our culture would be almost as much of a meritocracy as we like to imagine it is.

STILL NOT A FAN OF NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND

All right, so I've been harping on No Child Left Behind for years now. Here are some of the problems I saw back in 2003-- nothing that's happened since has changed my mind on the subject.

(News-Herald, August 2003) Folks in Oil City were dismayed this summer to find some of their schools on the state’s Big List of Naughty Schools, and in fact there are several county schools in the same boat.

What are we paying these administrators for anyway, came the cries of protest. Well, if you’re surprised when your school makes it to the failure list, you haven’t been paying attention. Your school, and everybody else’s, is supposed to fail. That’s what the law is for.

Let’s review. No Child Left Behind is a crock. It is a cruel and cynical joke on the American people, designed to dismantle public education and make it easier for the rich to send Chip and Tiffy to private school (where they don’t have to take the PSSA) and still afford that summer in Bimini.

It bears repeating until everybody finally gets it: every single public school in America will eventually be on the failing schools list, because under NCLB, 99% success will be considered failure. It’s not a matter of if your school will be “in trouble”—only when. Districts can postpone it, but not avoid it.

In Pennsylvania, a school can end up on the list for any one of three reasons. 1) Whole or part of the school’s population didn’t meet the year’s testing standard. 2) Fewer than 95% of students took the test. 3) Not enough students attend and/or graduate from the school.

Let’s look at these in reverse order.

Attendance and graduation rates are fairly straightforward measures. Nothing too tough there.

95% of students taking the test. More of a challenge. The government is adamant (to the point of actually putting some money where its mouth is) that it wants class sizes in the 15-18 range. But if a class has 18 students in it, 17 students equal 94%. If Johnny is absent on test day, his school fails.

And the state says that if Johnny’s family has religious objections to taking the test, Johnny doesn’t have to take the test. But he still counts as absent, and the school fails.

The achievement level is the kicker in all this. The state has set a benchmark for each year that each school must meet. In the commonwealth, that’s based on achieving an 80% on the PSSA test of reading and math.

But we aren’t just looking at the whole school population. Any sub-group larger than 40 is counted on its own. So if your school has forty Inuit students, or forty students whose first language is Swahili, or forty students who are blind and deaf, those students are counted separately from the whole school.

For many schools, the significant group will be special needs students. Law requires that these students receive instruction that is adapted, modified to compensate for their particular learning disabilities. The law also requires them to take exactly the same PSSA as everyone else.

So if you have a learning disability that makes it hard for you to do math, the state requires your teacher to slow down your math class so that you can get it. But the state also requires you to achieve an 80% on the math portion of the PSSA (including the sections dealing with algebra and calculus).

But that ‘s not the best part. The results for the sub-groups override all other results. So if too many of the 40 Inuit students in my school fall below the 80% mark, my school goes on the list. Doesn’t matter if the rest of the school tests out 100% at genius level; the forty Inuits decide whether we’re on the list or not.

Franklin and Oil City Middle Schools are perfect examples of this feature in action. They’re on The List because although each school’s overall performance was excellent, each has a subgroup of over forty economically disadvantaged students who took the test and didn’t quite make it up to the cut. (One might think that the logical next step would be to target this group for more intense instruction, except that, by law, no one can know who those economically disadvantaged students are.)

What comes next? Well, Hasson Heights Elementary was on the Very Naughty List for the second year (though the state neglected to tell them that they were on the list the first time) so the law says those parents would have been offered choice. Everybody else has to show the state how they’ll improve.

Oh, but one last wrinkle. All of the state’s information about the school is based on information from the 00-01 and 01-02 school years. That’s means Harrisburg wants to see each district’s plan for improving schools in 02-03 --- the year we just completed.

Harrisburg says that only by aggressively pursuing an audacious plan can we hope to make schools perfect. Right. This from the folks who can’t even pass a budget. Happy new school year, indeed.

I-80 TOLL ROAD

(News-Herald, August 2) I wish I had paid more attention when the idea of an I-80 toll road first popped up, but I thought, frankly, that it was an idea that was so stupid its time would never come. I should have known better than to underestimate the Harrisburg brain trust.

We’ve seen this style of financial planning before. Smilin’ Ed’s school funding “reform” rests on a foundation of trainloads of money that we will collect, someday, from gambling. Probably. In the meantime, this unknown amount of possible future money is already earmarked for piddly property tax relief and some extra subsidizing for the schools in Philadelphia.

And most notably, he’s never tried to sell this plan on its merits, but has tried to put it across with increasingly rough displays of political gamesmanship.

The governor has been peddling variations of this same exercise in full contact crystal ball economics for a while now, but at Smilin’ Ed’s Used Legislation Lot, sales have been slow. Now here comes the I-80 toll proposal.

You would think that something this large, something that will impact one of the major cross-state corridors, would come buttressed with impact studies and thoughtful testimony from many of the people who will be affected. You would think that, but you would be wrong.

Instead, the toll proposal arrived at the last minute, a quickie addition to the spending plan that is the illegitimate child of this year’s Harrisburg-based budget fiasco. (And I don’t need to hear any more political bloviating about which party was to blame for a budget adopted seventeen days after the legally required deadline—in the spirit of bipartisanship, I blame them all.)

I don’t think these pieces of legislative are an unfortunate side-effect of the annual budget battle. I think they’re the purpose of it. The cynic in me suspects that it is now strategy to push the budget until it HAS to be passed, so that eleventh-hour addendums are carried through with no discussion or examination.

So here’s the plan. The state borrows a trainload of money and plans to pay it back later by taxing motorists on I-80. Some cars on the train stop all around the state; many go to Philly and the Burgh. Did you know that Allegheny County and the Greater Philly Area add up to 22% of the commonwealth population? The suits in Harrisburg never forget it.

Winners in this plan? Well, the lawyers and financiers who will get a nice commission putting together the train-sized loan. Mass transit mis-managers in Philly and the Burgh who win another holiday from cleaning up their acts.

Losers? Anybody want to spend $80 to travel across the state? Traffic will be deflected onto “free” roads, which means a route like 322 becomes more crowded, dangerous, and worn (good thing we’ll have all that money available for road repair). Shipping products into the area by truck will get more expensive. I don’t think tolling I-80 will endanger Pennsylvania’s reputation as a business-unfriendly state.

It’s an entertaining twist that Republican Representatives English and Peterson have used federal political muscle to interfere with state government. I’m pretty sure it’s not a standard conservative value to cheer federal power interfering with state functions. That said, I’m perfectly happy they did it.

It’s possible that using I-80 toll to finance debt has many positive aspects. It’s possible that upon hearing some really good reasons, I’ll decide that it’s not a stupid idea.

But it’s not simply that I think the idea is stupid. It’s that I haven’t heard any explanation about it. I haven’t heard what anybody knowledgeable has to say about the impact of such a far-reaching change. And my elected officials owe me that at the very least.

Even now, when the governor could be responding to Reps English and Peterson with a documented, fact-based, well-reasoned presentation about why this is such a good idea, instead of data and charts, we’re getting more political posturing and statements on the order of, “It is TOO a good idea, and these guys are just big doodyheads.” That and a petulant, “Well, then fine, I’ll just pull out that other plan that nobody liked.”

You would think that after the last election the folks in Harrisburg would have learned that Pennsylvanians would prefer to have important decisions made in the daylight, in full view. The Governor wants a toll road? Well, I want an explanation of why it’s good policy to drain more blood from our region to help feed Philly again. I’m waiting.

PEEKING AT THE LATONIA

(News-Herald, July 24)I’m barely old enough to remember when the Latonia Theater was a real, live operating theater (at least that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it). But I’m old enough to appreciate the place today.

I missed the Oil Heritage tour, but I took a trip over Tuesday night and got the super-deluxe tour of this work-in-progress.

The Latonia went into operation in 1929, just in time for the death of silent cinema and the stock market crash. It operated for many years as a Warner theater and was, in its prime, a great piece of art deco architecture.

Like many local theaters, it didn’t make it to the 1970’s. The problem with theaters is that they’re really cool spaces that aren’t good for much of anything else. So when they’re bought, they suffer through a great deal of renovating, and sometimes the original charm is hopelessly lost.

The Latonia certainly suffered from its transition to business space. Most famously, a concrete floor was inserted halfway between the original floor and ceiling, and shops and offices were shoehorned into the bottom half.

But what is left is exceptional. Walk up the sweeping staircase and you are looking at a circular mezzanine balcony above the lobby, ringed by a railing that represents some of the last iron-work that Wendell August Forge ever created. Across from that rail is an art deco fountain; facing it from the other corner is a fireplace. Both are in fine shape. Past the fireplace is the original office for the theater, with a conveniently located window that allowed the boss to look down over the house.

That’s all pretty cool, but the revelation is on the other side of the rail. Pass through a door and you are looking across that giant concrete slab, obviously out of place.

Originally you would have been entering here at balcony level, and the upper balcony is behind you, stretching up a reeeeeeeeally long way eventually to the projection room (located so far from everything else in the building that it has its own little rest room.

Opposite the balcony is the top of the stage, eight or nine feet of proscenium sticking up above the slab (the rest of the stage is intact, a few artificial floors down). The whole room gives a bit of the impression of something from a disaster movie, a building that has been engulfed and filled by snow or lava.

What dominates this large room is the biggest art deco chandelier I have ever seen in my life. Weighing more than a couple of tons, operating on three separate circuits, and requiring half a billion light bulbs (maybe closer to 800—but, dang!), it hangs below a sweeping dome which is itself resting on the wings of a circle of golden eagles. It’s impossible to look at it and not think, “Wow! I need a picture of that.”

The room ends up looking more like a ballroom or Greco-Roman amphitheater than a conventional theater, though it would be a great place to play a small show in the round. The acoustics are striking, but in 1929 the best sound system a theater could have still only put out about 50 watts, so the acoustics in a big room still had to be good. This certainly sounds like it has a large bare concrete floor, but with some carpet to take the edge off, it will be a unique space.

The stage is pretty shallow with virtually no space in the wings, but then, performers could walk out of the wings into a labyrinth of dressing rooms, storage rooms, and even showers. Doors lead to doors and the backstage area is further honeycombed with ladders and staircases and trap doors. A group of twelve-year-old boys could be entertained for a week.

The owners, Linda Henderson and Roxanne Hitchcock, have ideas and plans and a grant, God bless them, and they‘re to be commended for taking on this monstrous project.

The timing is in many ways perfect; this is a facility that can pick up some of the slack created by the Franklin Club’s self-destruction. And while purists may bemoan the presence of other businesses in the building, a steady source of income for this kind of operation is a major bonus.

And I know some people just can’t help themselves—if someone in Franklin or Oil City sneezes, they have to look for someone in the other town to sneeze bigger or louder or snottier—but the Latonia isn’t competition for the Barrow. They’re two types of operations, offering different settings and services.

Right now, the Latonia is trying a Tuesday night jam session starting at 6:30. Come listen, or come gawk, or do both. You can contact the Latonia folks at 677-1260 or e-mail thelatonia@verizon.net.

Riverfront Park

7.07.1, originally uploaded by palan57.

The blog posting function seems to clip the horizontal shots; let's see what happens to a vertical one.

Riverfront Park

7.07.8, originally uploaded by palan57.

Shooting from the middle of the Allegheny River at the mouth of French Creek.

French Creek

7.07.14, originally uploaded by palan57.

Riverfront park in Franklin

7.07.30, originally uploaded by palan57.

Woods and river

7.07.33, originally uploaded by palan57.

I've been doing some shooting around the area over the summer. Right now I'm trying out Flickr's blogging capabilities.

OIL HERITAGE FESTIVAL

(News-Herald, July 19) It’s time for the premiere Venangoland summer festival—the Oil Heritage Festival in Oil City. If nothing else, this is an opportunity for all those people who whine “There’s nothing to do around here” to either put up or shut up.

Squeezing the festival down from a week to four days (with some bonus warm-up events beforehand) was a genius move because it has helped the festival achieve that all-important critical mass. As with Applefest, the festival does not require you to plan or organize to attend and enjoy. Pick a day. Drive to Oil City. Park the car, get out, and spend the rest of the day enjoying whatever you find.

The legendary fearfulness of navigation in Oil City is not an acceptable excuse. There is no place in Venangoland (outside of the new hospital) with more available parking. Once you’re on foot in Oil City, the dreaded maze of one-way streets is not a problem.

No doubt the News Derrick will be providing a complete listing of events; let me highlight some of the treats that I think merit a trip to Oil City this weekend.

There’s a lot of history in Oil City. The National Transit Building tours on Friday afternoon (5:30) are definitely worth a look, but the tours of the Latonia Theater tonight (6-8 pm) are the big history draw for me. I’ve heard that the owners are up to some exciting things in that too-long-neglected building, and it is way cool to have the chance to take a peek.

The raft race on Sunday from Henry’s Bend to Veteran’s Bridge is also mighty appealing. Prior info about the race says that it will be canceled in the event of bad storms or dangerously high water in the Allegheny. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that the water level is not going to be a problem, though contestants should probably wear their river shoes for when they have to get out and push.

Fireworks are Sunday night. It’s not a party in Venangoland until Scott Cartwright blows something up (he should probably use that line in advertisements and on t-shirts).

And of course there’s the parade from noon till 2:00 on Saturday. The parade is always large, impressive, and well-run. And the same bizarre street layout that makes Oil City the scourge of little old lady drivers makes it a superb setting for a parade.

Those are the items on my own personal to-do list. But if that’s not your cup o’tea, another impressive feature of the weekend is the sheer variety of events. Skateboarding, weightlifting, a 5 K race, a fishing derby, and a softball tournament provide plenty for folks who want something a little more active than strolling and browsing. But there’s plenty of strolling and browsing, including the return of Pipeline Alley, a cute little side street from the past.

All of it is spread out enough to avoid the massive crammage of Applefest, but still compact enough that you don’t have to walk till you drop.

And the music! The organizers have outdone themselves this year with a steady diet of music that includes hired guns from outside the area and local favorites like Catro (really smooth and cool jazz), the reappearance of the much-beloved Southern Knights, and a Feroz Brothers reunion. Plus the various local groups that have been hired to accompany some of the other events and venues.

There’s something to listen to virtually all day every day. In an age where live music is a too-endangered creature, the Oil Festival Honchos are to be commended for providing a great setting for so many working musicians, and audiences will be fortunate to hear them.

One thing that always tickles me about small town life is our sense of distance. City folks will spend two hours in the car just to go out to eat and never bat an eye. Here in Venangoland, folks don’t like to spend fifteen minutes driving eight miles—it’s just “too far” to go to all that trouble.

Well, this weekend would be a great time to hitch up the horses and make the journey to Oil City. It’s a festival that has much to offer everyone, whether they live in The City or not. It is a credit to Oil City and all the folks who support her.

Not that I’m suggesting you should go because it’s your civic duty or you have an obligation to boost a Venangoland activity. You should go because it’s a chance to get out and have some fun and eat some food and see some folks. But hey—you can stay home if you like. Just don’t start whining about how there’s nothing around here to do.

RULES FOR MARRIAGE

(News-Herald, May 2003) I’m not sure why so many people are interested in other people’s marriages. I don’t think it’s just a small town thing, but we certainly do like to play the game.

Probably the most common version of the game is to compare a couple to the unofficial, but widely known, Rules for Marriage.

It’s never too early to start that game. Back in college I knew a man who had almost never dated and a woman who had just come off a multi-year intense relationship. They had been seeing each other a week or two, I recall, when they announced their engagement. We thought they were joking. Nobody gets married with such little preparation. As you’ve already guessed, the punch line of this story is that now, twenty-five years later, they are still happily married.

We are forever noting the Rules that have been broken in the pursuit of matrimonial bliss. Too much age difference. Too much income difference. Too soon. Too late. Too mushy. Not mushy enough.

Many of us cling to the Rules with an obsessive tunnel vision. We know dozens of exceptions to the Rules, and dozens of people who followed the Rules and failed anyway, yet we hold tight to the notion that the Rules must be followed for success.

In life, some rules are valuable. Some rules are on the order of “Don’t stick your tongue in a running fan.” They tell you how to avoid fairly predictable unpleasant consequences.

But other rules are about trying to create particular consequences, and these strike me as more suspect. “Keep your tongue out of the fan and you will become rich and famous” is half good rule, half groundless hope.

It’s nice to believe in rules, nice to believe that if you just do the right thing, you get the right results. It’s comforting. It’s liberating.

And it’s a great excuse to be lazy.

We like rules because they can substitute for judgment. Rich or poor, well-off or struggling, we deal with one constant in life—making choices is hard.

One of the most basic pieces of information that most of us long for is an answer to the question, “How am I doing?” Do I have a good job? Am I in a good relationship? Am I good parent, spouse, friend? Am I happy? Should I be happy?

These seem like easy questions, but for many folks they aren’t. It is hard for us to look at out lives and decide how they are doing, to decide if they are going well.

Particularly something as large and amorphous as a marriage. There are good parts and bad parts, days of joy and days of misery, and long periods in which folks just go through the motions without thinking much about it.

What’s easier than thinking about it is carrying around a checklist. If I am doing A, B, C, and D, then my marriage must be good and my spouse and I must be happy.

And perhaps that’s why people who break the rules can seem so threatening. If you’re breaking the rules, and it’s working for you, then how can I be sure that following the rules is working for me?

Perhaps marriage is more susceptible to this effect because so many of us continue to think that romance and love are magical events that happen to us. You wander through life, waiting for the moment when your “soul mate” appears and announces his/her presence. As long as they match all the checkpoints on the list, you can remain confident that True Love has happened to you.

Well, it’s nice to be idealistic, I guess. But then one day you have an argument or a disagreement or you just look at the person once shone like the sun and now they just give off the dull glow of a waning 40-watt bulb, and you check your list of rules and there are too many being broken. So you conclude that that itch of discontent must be the Truth of your situation, not a condition to be overcome by commitment and work, and you head out the door, waiting for the next Soul Mate to appear.

Well, even the Bible tells us that we’ll know good or bad by its fruits. In other words, it’s not a matter of going through the right steps, but a matter of where you end up. If you’re in a good place, it really doesn’t matter when people tell you that you can’t get there from here.

TEACHER MERIT PAY

(News-Herald, July 12)Teacher merit pay is back in the news. Some pilot programs in Minnesota, for example, have met with support from teachers, and look to expand.

This is a bit of a change. The NEA has always been opposed to merit pay, a position that we can add to the sixty gazillion somewhat boneheaded stances that the NEA has taken over the years.

Many teachers chafe at not being treated like professionals, but traditional teacher pay scales, based on years on the job alone, is not how professionals are paid. And for many teachers, what really chafes is the realization that they work twice as hard as some of their colleagues, for exactly the same pay.

For a merit pay system to work, two basic pitfalls have to be avoided.

First is the issue of measurement.

In any system where numbers are used to measure quality, it’s crucial that the numbers mean what you think they mean.

One of the weakest links in the PSSA system is the assumption that the high-stakes test given to all PA students shows how well-educated they are. It doesn’t. Student scores on the standardized test are an excellent measure of how the students do on a standardized test. What that has to do with actual knowledge, wisdom or education is open to debate, but I feel certain that student scores are not a reliable measure of their education or their teacher’s quality.

Much ado was made recently of a study showing a disconnect between a hospital’s cost and its mortality rate. Figures suggest that patients are more likely to die at more expensive hospitals. Or maybe not. You’re terribly terribly sick, and you want to make sure you get the best care possible. Do you check yourself into St. Ignatius of the Presitigiously High Pricetag, or Bob’s Community Discount Hospital?

The high-prestige, high-cost hospital attracts all the worst cases. The best way for it to improve its mortality rate? Find ways to turn away difficult, inclined-to-die patients. One of the predictable outcomes of school evaluations based on test is scores is to make pariahs out of poorly-testing students.

Are there other ways to measure teacher quality? If every school administrator was excellent, we could trust their judgment. But there are plenty of bad administrators who already find ways to take out their petty personal vendettas on particular teachers; giving these bozos the ability to control a teacher’s pay will only increase the carnage and give bad administrators the ability to drive every decent teacher out of the building. That doesn’t benefit anybody.

We could come up with a rubric, a clear-cut objective set of measures of teacher quality. Three problems here—one is that so much of the best teaching is not so clear cut, second is that the rubric has to be set to measure what you want it to measure, and the third is that administrators then have to follow the rubric and not just ignore it when it gives them an answer they don’t like.

A real, useful teacher evaluation and remediation program is the great missing link of the ed biz. It would take a lot of time and effort, but until then any “merit” will be awarded randomly, and there will be little to do with incompetent teachers except hope they’ll get the urge to retire quietly to Florida.

The other challenge with merit pay is, well, the pay part.

If you work somewhere that uses a bonus pay system, you know the problem. Sometimes bonuses are based on the individual job performance. Sometimes they’re based on the performance of the corporation as a whole. And sometimes bonuses are based on whether or not the company wants to spend money on bonuses.

No public school district in the country will ever find itself in a position to say, “Well, we cleared an extra 100 grand this year, so we’re going to hand it out as bonuses to the best teachers.”

Instead, it’s far more likely that school districts, strapped for cash and wishing to avoid a tax increase, will “discover” that nobody on staff “merits” the highest level of pay.

A poorly-constructed pay system based on merit becomes an easy way for a district to cut teacher pay arbitrarily. And if too many safeguards are locked in to avoid that scenario, the district could find itself with wildly fluctuating payroll costs that it can neither control nor predict.

Neither the problems of evaluation nor the problems of money are insurmountable, but the solutions require leadership, vision, time, and a whole lot of work.

VENANGOLAND RESOURCES

(News-Herald, July 5) I was reflecting once again on the benefits of living in Venangoland, standing ankle deep in the waters of French Creek, right above the point where they empty into the Allegheny. The evening sun was angling in to illuminate 143 different shades of green, and every direction I turned, the view was beautiful.

Families of geese angling in across the water. A father teaching his daughter to skip stones from the edge of the park. Flashes of red and yellow as cyclers worked their way up the bike trail.

It is easy to take so many of the resources around us for granted, to imagine that we enjoy all of these things for free. But I’m inclined to believe that anything worth having is worth paying for.

I’ve written about the bike trail before. I think it is one of the great treasures of the region.

I have no doubt that it brings people in from outside the region. It’s certainly not Disneyland or a giant casino; it will never be a great driving engine of tourism. But it does bring a slow steady trickle of people here to visit, buy some food, envy us our beautiful river and woods.

But if the bike trail never brought a single soul into Venangoland, it would still be a local treasure for what it contributes to quality of life. It gives each of us a chance to walk or run or pedal our way through long stretches of natural beauty the likes of which millions of Americans will never ever see.

I know there are some people who are violently, vehemently opposed to the trail, and while I try to see most sides of an issue, I can’t really see theirs. The people who have blocked the trail’s progress through some areas have put petty selfishness ahead of the good of the community. The people who continue to subject the trail to petty harassment need to crawl back into their caves and get over themselves.

The trail is an enormous asset to the region and deserves appreciation and support, and it’s an asset that’s provided to us without ever an admissions charge. We get to use it for free.

Not all our assets are outdoors. We just finished up the run of Sweet Charity at the Barrow-Civic Theatre, and afterwards dozens of people have stopped me to tell me how great it was to see such an outstanding amateur production in such a great space.

The Barrow is just about to turn fifteen. It showcases local talent and a wide variety of professional acts that our region would be hard-pressed to book without such a showplace to put them.

But a regional theater like the Barrow is a hard resource to maintain. Management has to balance what it actually costs to run the place against what people in this market are willing and able to pay for a theater ticket. Theaters like the Barrow live forever on the edge of financial disaster, even as people go on about how great it is to have such a place here.

The list goes on and on—there are libraries in Venangoland, including the Oil City library that was built as a Carnegie library. A Carnegie library!! The country is filled with cities, much bigger cities, that fought to have a Carnegie library and were bitterly disappointed to fail.

We’ve had a chance this summer to experience the loss of one of those take-it-for-granted resources. Hopefully, once the smoke clears and all the children are done throwing hissy fits at each other, someone will figure out how to restore the use of Two Mile Run County (or Not) Park. But in the meantime, there’s not much the rest of us can do.

But for everything else, we have power. It’s the power to put our money where our mouths are. If you think it would be tragic, a major loss, for DeBence Music World or the Venango Museum of Arts & Science to have to close up shop, write them a check. If you regularly use the bike trail, show your appreciation by sending them some money.

If something’s worth having, it’s worth paying for. Do your part, however large or small, to preserve the better parts of life in Venangoland. Look—I’ll even give you some addresses:

Allegheny Valley Trails Association
Box 264
Franklin, PA 16323

Barrow Civic Theatre
1223 Liberty Street
Franklin, PA 16323

You can find more in the phone book. Go ahead and put your money where your heart is.

BULLY HILL BRASS IN CONCERT

This Thursday night the Bully Hill Brass Band will be appearing at the South Park band stand. It will be a concert of traditional dixieland jazz, free and open to the public.

The band includes Dave Greene, Fred Frye, Ed Frye and Kristen Criado. Oh, and me. Drumming this time will be Nate Frye, and Suzi Ditzenberger will be guest vocalist for the shindig.

We've been around for years-- you might have caught us last spring as the house band for the Barrow-Civic production of A Night at Big Daddy's. Our repertoire runs from period pop pieces like "After You've Gone," "Five Foot Two" and "Ain't She Sweet" to jazz standards such as "That's A Plenty" and "Wolverine Blues."

We have a lot of fun, and we don't take things too seriously. We hope you will join us-- it will be a good time. And there will be popcorn for sale, too...

DO THE RIGHT THING

(News-Herald, September 2002)This originally saw the light of day back when contract talks between the school district and the teachers union, of which I was the president, had pretty much ground to a halt. Within a month we were going to be on strike. It was a tough period for writing this column, because I didn't think I could follow my usual approach and simply write about what was on my mind. A little more thought and I found my way around that obstacle...

I am an optimist in some things. For instance, I believe that the vast majority of people always try to do the right thing.

I have known just a handful of what I think of as Bad People, people who knew right from wrong and chose purposefully, deliberately, to do the wrong thing. But almost every person I’ve ever known, I believe, was a person trying to do what, in their own mind, was right. Even the people that I really disagreed with.

Not that Doing the Right Thing is always easy. First you have to settle on what the right thing is, and that can be a good deal of hard work, hard enough that many of us, in our laziest hours, will look for a shortcut. We’ll find an expert to tell us, some authority figure who will do us the favor of telling us what answer is correct, what course is the right one. We’ll sort people into two groups—people who we always agree with and people we think will always be wrong—and then we don’t ever have to actually think about what anyone is saying ever again.

Of course, I’ve never known anyone who was either right or wrong 100% of the time.

But even as people take the lazier route and avoid thinking through the matter of right and wrong in a situation, I still believe they are trying to do what they think is right.

That probably seems like one of the less profound observations that I’ve ever made here, but I think it’s pretty commonly overlooked.

I think it’s more common to believe that those who are taking a position opposite our own are doing so because they are evil or stupid or out to get us, and that mistaken belief makes communication break down in some critical ways.

First, we stop listening. After all, why listen to evil, stupid people who are out to get us? However, my own observation over the years is that if someone has something important to tell me, and they don’t think I’m listening when they just talk, they will scream instead.

Second, we stop talking. After all, why try to explain yourself to evil, stupid people who are out to get you? Unfortunately, the chances that they will understand my concerns and my intentions when I’m not trying to explain myself are slim indeed.

So if other people really are trying to do the right thing, how can their right thing be so different from mine?

Sometimes it’s a matter of different values. For instance, America continues to have trouble finding a common view with some other cultures because we value an individual human life so much more than they do.

Often that differing value system extends to disagreements about The Right Thing itself. This is one of the hardest things about parenting. Virtually every major argument that I’ve ever had with my children (particularly since puberty) has not really been about what The Right Thing is—it has been about whether my idea of The Right Thing would prevail or not.

I have done extensive field research with my children. I have, on so many occasions that I’m ashamed to count them, stopped thinking of them as rational, reasonable human beings who wanted to do what was right as they saw it, and instead viewed them as willfully obtuse, wrongheaded little children who needed to be made to see things my way (AKA “the right way”).

I could say that I was perfectly happy to discuss the matter at hand with them, but what I really meant was that I’d be happy to talk to them just as soon as they acknowledged that I was standing up for what was right and they were being bullheaded for no good reason.

What I have had to learn, and relearn, is that as soon as I could unclench long enough to recognize that they were trying to do what was right as best they could see it, my house stopped feeling like a battlefield. At that point the real search for a Right Way that we could both live with could begin.

Believing that other people want to do the right thing doesn’t cost you a bit. You can still stand up for the right thing, as you see it, just as forcefully as you need to.

In fact, the third mistake is to think that since you’re stupid, evil, and out to get me, I had better not stand up for anything, but just try either to obliterate you or, failing that, pay any price for peace. My mistake here is to think that you are all of the problem, instead of part of the solution.

POST-NATIONALISM

(News-Herald, June 28) I want to start with a short history lesson. Please bear with me.

Up until the 19^th century, nationalism was not much of an issue in the world. People’s allegiances were to family first, then maybe community or tribe. The king was just some guy who, hopefully, would leave you alone. “The king is dead; long live the king” didn’t so much mean “Hooray for us” as “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”

In the 19^th century, several leaders discovered the value of nationalism as a motivational tool, building it up until we arrived at “modern” wars like World War I, where people were successfully motivated to fight and kill and die for The Motherland.

As a relatively modern nation composed almost entirely of non-natives, the US has always had a bit of the nationalism bug—though the Constitution was a tough sell because most folks at the time considered their primarily allegiance to be to their state. But we’re used to the notion of national pride, national honor, national interest. It seems natural and normal to us, but it’s not the way Things Have Always Been.

Now, I wonder if we aren’t seeing a change into a post-national world. And these days it’s clearly visible in two ways: terrorists and corporations.

Lebanon is an example of a place where government and nation are in danger of being overwhelmed. It’s just one of many locales on the globe where terrorists live, or at least occupy the space, with no particular allegiance to or stake in the actual nation.

The Taliban have always been an effective enemy to pretty much anyone who wandered into Afghanistan because they show no particular interest in actually taking over the country. Terrorists don’t want to rule, don’t want to waste their time on the mundane business of government like maintaining roads and services. They just want to be able to do as they please and take what they want.

Likewise, modern multinational corporations operate in a world that is above and beyond nations. These days, nobody would expect a CEO to announce that he was making a corporate decision based on loyalty to the nation that he calls home.

We occasionally get some noise about how global economic stuff will ultimately be good for America, but nobody really knows how that will pan out, and, really, it’s a justification after the fact, not a motivation for decisions. There seems to be an unstated assumption that governments are an obstacle to economics.

Terrorists threaten governments with guns and bombs while corporations buy them with money. Both are looking for the freedom to exert their will without being restrained.

I have no idea if life in a world without national allegiances is a Good Thing or a Bad Thing. Nationalism had its good points, but it has also motivated people to do many awful things. I suspect the post-nationalism is neither good nor bad—it just is. It will be a benefit for some people, a curse for others. It will lead some people to do good things, and others to do terrible things.

But a post-national world will be one that involves new roles for governments. Terrorists and corporations want pretty much the same thing from governments—to be left alone and allowed to pursue their interests with a minimum of interference.

That requires some sort of cooperation with the government, because while interference sometimes comes in the form of laws and legislation, sometimes it comes in the form of angry citizens carrying pointy sticks. Corporations cooperate by paying some attention to citizen interests. Terrorists cooperate by agreeing to not blow up too many important people too often. Both have learned to cooperate by providing some of the goods and services that governments traditionally take care of.

The big difference between these new rulers and governments is that citizens don’t get to elect the CEO of Satan-Mart or the leader of Titanic Whackos Instigating Terror.

That’s what may make bad news for the rest of us. First, because we don’t easily wield the power to make these guys go away. And second, because governments are torn between serving the citizens who elect them, the bomb-wielding whackos who threaten them, and the corporations who pay them. My hope? That government will remember that their job is to protect those of us who think of ourselves as citizens from all those other folks who don’t.

OPPOSING DRUGS

(News-Herald, June 21)So how do you get rid of drug abuse, drug users and drug sellers, anyway? I’m not going to give one quick, easy answer and solve the problem in under 800 words, and I would be a fool to try. Behind any discussion of how to fight drugs is one painful fact; for every anti-drug technique ever mentioned, there’s some parent or friend who did everything right and still failed to rescue someone they loved.

Though no approach is 100% certain to work, there are definitely some ideas that are better than others. And in the war on drugs, there is one powerful truth— It is almost impossible to affect the behavior of people if you aren’t involved in their lives.

Here’s some total stranger sitting on the front porch. You can run up, holler “Stop that” and then run away. The chance that the total stranger will stop is close to zero.

Now here you are sitting on the porch with someone you know well, because you have been sitting together on that porch every evening of every day of your life. You’ve shared struggles; you’ve helped each other. If you ask that person to stop, whether it’s chewing gum, smoking a cigar, or speed-drinking a case of Bob’s Wine In A Bag, you might have a chance.

Many adult anti-drug initiatives fail because adults and teens are working at cross-purposes. The adult wants to feel that he has delivered an important message to the teen. The teen wants the adult to leave him alone to do as he wishes.

“Promise me you won’t do Naughty Things,” says the adult.

“Why, I surely won’t,” says the teen.

The adult walks away feeling virtuous. The teen goes back to ingesting his or her Inappropriate Substance of choice. Everyone is satisfied; nothing is changed.

You would think my generation would know better. But we love having teens sign pledges. Promise not to drink at Prom. Promise not to have sex. Promise not to eat raw sushi. But what teens take away from the pledge-signing is what boomers already knew perfectly well as teenagers—if you tell adults what they want to hear, they will give you stuff and leave you alone. We shouldn’t be surprised, for instance, that studies repeatedly show that abstinence programs have absolutely no affect on teen sexual behavior.

Some of this is hard to hear. The DARE program is enormously popular both nationally and locally, yet everyone from the US Surgeon General’s office to the US Department of Education has declared the program ineffective. One study in Illinois suggested that it actually encouraged students to try drugs.

Drug abuse is no different than any other part of human behavior. People who are not actively involved in your life are unlikely to change your behavior.

People in the illegal drug sales business understand this, and they use it in two ways. First, they become involved in the lives of their customers. Particularly in an area like ours, people don’t get their drugs from strangers—they get them from people they consider friends. Second, these sorts of criminals make it a point to keep people uninvolved who might want to stop them.

Teens instinctively get this. If I’m so scary and difficult that my parents just back away and actively ignore my life, they’re less likely to stop me. Getting out of bed at 3 AM to confront the teen who has just stumbled in drunk is hard. Getting a promise is easy; sticking around to hold someone accountable and facing the possibility of disappointment when they don’t—that’s hard.

For criminals, it’s just good business. If I come across as scary and really dangerous—well, people who don’t know my name, don’t speak to me, and pretend they don’t even see me on the street are actively staying out of my life, and their ability to affect my behavior is therefore minimal.

That’s why taking back neighborhoods by being vocally involved, by looking dealers in the eye and saying, “I see you, I know who you are, I know what you’re doing, and I’m not going away” can be so powerful. And that’s why pretty pledges signed for strangers in the midst of drive-by do-goodery aren’t.

The number one cause of teens drinking and drugging in Venango County is not boredom, unemployment or lack of a good arcade. It’s teens making the choice to use drugs and alcohol.

The number two cause of teens drinking and drugging? Teens without any adult actively involved in their lives who seriously suggests that they shouldn’t. This weekend in Oil City, some folks are planning to stand up; I hope they do well.

CHARITY UPDATE

(June 21) The show opened tonight, and I can say that I'm really pleased with the final product. For the first time in quite a while I'm working with a full pit, and while there are still just a couple of rough edges to sand off, the sound is tremendous. We tweaked the drumming for "Rhythm of Life" and that number absolutely rocks. It is a well-orchestrated score; the pit really boosts many of the numbers.

Terri Gilmore manages to make me like a character that, on the page, doesn't really appeal to me. She really commits. And I would pay cash money every night of my life to watch/hear Jodi and Carissa sing together-- absolutely ballsy and beautiful.

The dancing is tremendous-- the Rich Man's Frug is a brutal marathon and we are dripping with sweat just playing it in the pit, so I can't imagine how whupped the dancers are, but it's really exciting to see. The Big Spender girls are tremendous.

There's such a parade of characters in this show-- Tom Greene's Oscar climbing the walls, Steve Teig's smarmy-yet-likable movie star, Jen Monahan doing a strong turn as the spoiled starlet, Nick Hess's various quirky creations, Marc Holland taking total command of the stage as Big Daddy, and I can no longer imagine how a mere man could do Erma justice. The audience's surprise that she can sing, and sing well, was palpable tonight.

A lot of great performances and some really nice musical moments tonight. I'm really proud of these guys and the job they did, and I only wish I could sit back in the house to get the full audio effect.

SWEET CHARITY AT THE BARROW

Next weekend we'll be putting Sweet Charity on displqay at the Barrow. I'm not going to be plugging it in my column (I have some shame) but thought I'd say a couple of words to my three readers here.

Charity is not one of my most favoritest shows in the world. Its genesis was an attempt to turn a Fellini film into a Broadway musical, which makes about as much sense to me as an impulse to turn Greek statue into a coat. This is not a show that I could ever hjave stage directed, and God bless Ted Smith for taking on that task.

Our Charity is Terri Gilmore, who was last seen by Barrow audiences in Guys and Dolls as Adelaide. She is a terrific belter and has one of the toughest assignments in this show, which requires her to be on stage for almost every scene. Charity moves through an assortment of men, most notably Barrow regulars Steve Teig and Thomas Greene (yes, that's my son, which reminds me-- if anyone has some contacts in LA, my son is still trying to land an apartment for school there in the fall).

Marc Holland is choreographing the show. Marc is a tremendous dancer and choreographer and can do might fine singing when the occasion calls for it (this would be one of those occasions) and his presence on the production staff of a dance-intensive show like this is a big plus.

I'm the music director mostly because this is a fun score. "If My Friends Could See Me Now," "I'm a Brass Band" and "Big Spender" are the most recognizable tunes from this show, but there are several other terrific numbers as well, including "Rhythm of Life" and "I Love To Cry at Weddings."

It has been an enjoyable cast to work with, and your only chance to catch alocal musical at the Barrow this summer. If I weren't already going to be there, I would surely go. Next week-- Thursday, Friday, Saturday and a Sunday matinee.

BAD MANAGEMENT MADE SIMPLE

(News-Herald, June 14) Is it really that hard to be a good manager? Is it that difficult to understand some basic principles of how to motivate people? Or if you can’t figure out how to turn them on, at least manage not to turn them off.

Rhetorical questions, really. There’s no question that the world is filled with lousy managers. For them, here are some of the basics of Management 101.

Talk is cheap. Some managers seem to think that platitudes about teamwork and vision can be uttered like magic incantations, after which the manager can go ahead and do whatever he feels like.

Wrong. Talk means nothing; actions mean everything. If your employees really are part of the team, and you treat them that way, they’ll know it even if you say nothing. If your employees aren’t part of the team, saying so won’t make them believe it. In fact, saying so is insulting, suggesting that you think they’re too stupid to know the difference.

Tell them what you want. The one time talk means something is when you are articulating what you expect. If you don’t (or can’t) tell your employees what you expect from them, do not be surprised (or angry) when you don’t get it. It is not your employee’s job to read your mind; it is your job to articulate what you want clearly. That, however, leads directly to:

And mean it. See point #1 above. Think about the vision that you articulated. Imagine what you would do if you really meant all that stuff you said. Is that what you’re doing, all day, every day?

Bullying is not a management style. Yelling, browbeating, intimidating and just generally being a pushy strong-armed jerk will not get the best out of your people. They may never do anything unpleasant to your face, but they will never go the extra mile for you, unless it’s going out of their way in the company parking lot to slash your tires.

Include them. When you have to make decisions that affect how your employees do their jobs, it is the most basic of common courtesies to consult them about it.

People do their best, hardest work when they have some sort of emotional investment in their job. When a job situation becomes unpredictable and out of their control, the natural reaction is to disengage. It’s like dating the crazy woman—after a while, the only way to cope with her bizarre behavior is to simply make yourself stop caring.

Listen. Listen listen listen Listen. And also, listen. The most underused management skill in the world, and yet one of the most effective ones.

People want to be heard. When they have concerns or objections, they really really want to be heard.

Many bad managers seem to believe that all negative comments and contrary opinions must be squelched and stomped flat and rolled over. The irony is that nine times out of ten, people who believe they’ve been heard can take it when the decision doesn’t go their way. But when they feel that their point of view wasn’t even heard or considered, their anger festers and grows.

Sure, if you hammer hard enough, you can’t get people to shut up and do as their told. But all that gets you is a bunch of people who do just what they’re told, and no more, which isn’t anything close to “getting the best work from your people.”

And if you really want to anger them, set things up so that they never have a chance to express an opinion in the first place. Management by e-mail is excellent for this. But there are many ways to arrange things so that you rarely have to meet your people face to face, or even learn their names.

Managers almost always skip listening because they think it will solve or avoid problems. They are wrong—refusing to listen, either by passive avoidance or hostile confrontation, creates far more problems than it solves.

Beware convenience. In all fairness, this is not simply a management problem. The whole world is suffering at the hands of people who don’t want to do one part of the job or another because “it’s haaarrrrrd.” Managers face double pressure here; not only do they need to do the hard parts because the hard parts need to be done, but managers also have to set an example for their people.

Note for managers: the hard parts include everything on this list.

Note for everyone: if you’re unwilling to do the hard parts, your employer is justified in asking what exactly he’s paying you for.

Of course, no bad managers will see themselves in this article. Feel free, employed readers, to clip it out and send it by inter-office mail.

HAVE KAYAK, WILL PADDLE

(News-Herald, June 2003) There I was, paddling away and thinking that everyone needs a kayak. French Creek is a special treat, because it’s not accessible all summer long. Well, it’s accessible, but you have to get out and walk for long stretches, which is not the most enjoyable way to spend the trip.

There was a time, a century or so ago, when French Creek was considered the vacation destination of the area, sort of a Venango County Poconos. It’s not hard to see why.

There’s the stretch below Utica that offers many islands, side trips, and interesting little eddies. There’s French Creek’s generally windy nature. I love the Allegheny, but there are long straight expanses that can feel a bit like the waterway equivalent of Indiana—long and flat and after traveling for a while, you can look up and see exactly what you saw an hour ago. But French Creek has so many twists and turns that there’s always another corner to peek around, another view to be unveiled like a series of beautiful paintings behind a row of velvet curtains.

French Creek also offers long stretches away from civilization, completely quiet but for the sound of birds and water. It is good for the spirit to be reminded of what real quiet sounds like.

I am partial to the view from the water. The tree-covered hills, families of geese, ducks overhead—and I’ve seen deer at the edge of the water plenty of times, but there is something special about seeing them from the creek itself.

You can make the journey by canoe if you wish. I confess to being totally biased in favor of kayaks. You sit lower, you travel lighter, and you always have available the minimum number of people needed for an enjoyable trip (that is to say, one).

Selecting a kayak can be daunting—there’s a great deal to choose from out there. Kayaks are available to be used for acts of momentary insanity, mythic foolishness, and conservative wimpiness. It’s important to make the selection appropriate for you.

Acts of momentary insanity are best committed in what are often called “playboats.” Do not be fooled by that term, which suggests a ten-year-old romping in a friendly fish pond—these are the boats that you see in ads for SUV’s in which studly young men pitch themselves over dribbly cliffs, their legs wrapped in a slim sheath of multicolored vinyl. That slim sheath is the kayak.

Playboats are short and tricky. In our neighborhood, I can’t honestly think of what you’d do with one, although if you have a three story house you could run a garden hose up to the roof, drag your playboat up there, and ride the drizzle all the way to the downspout.

There are expedition kayaks as well. These are slender and longer than a Lincoln Continental. Strap one to the top of a VW Beetle and not only will you look ridiculous, but you will fly away in the first stiff crosswind. These come with lots of straps and compartments, the better to store and carry all the supplies you’ll need when you leave to circumnavigate Antarctica.

Both types require a certain amount of physical stamina. It’s not just the paddling; steering has a lot to do with using your lower back to aim your legs. Hang from a doorjamb by your arms, pick up a bottle of ketchup with your feet, and use it to write the Declaration of Independence on the floor. It’s kind of like that.

Find kayaking appealing yet? Fortunately, there is also a large category of Kayaks for Normal Humans. Not too long, not too thin on the bottom. You may want to try a few out to get the right combination of characteristics. You may not want a boat that tips over easily, but on the other hand, if it’s too stable, it will handle like a brick.

In one respect, kayaking is like bicycling. You can sink a gazillion bucks into flashy equipment, cool accessories, and scary fashions to wear, and become Way Too Serious about it all. Or you can just get some cheap basic stuff and have some fun.

Kayaks can be found used (think ebay, though the postage can be a killer) or rented. Used kayaks are not as pretty as new ones, but since most modern kayaks are made out of the same sort of indestructible materials used in space rockets and Tupperware, they’re usually a safe bet. After the human race is extinct, the cockroaches will be tooling around in our old kayaks.

And whatever you do, get some advice from reputable professionals. In other words, drop this paper in the recycling bin and go ask the guys at Wiegels Marina to fix you up.

GOODBYE TO ALL THAT

(News-Herald, June 7)It’s one of those classic social problems of the workplace.

The first time you pass each other in the day, a simple “Hi” or “Hey” or “Howsitgoin” is appropriate. But then ten minutes later when you pass each other again, what do you say? You can’t do a full-blown greeting—that might suggest that you actually forgot you already said “Hi” and that would be kind of rude. But if you don’t say anything at all, that seems like you’re ignoring the person, and that’s rude, too. So you use some sort of head-bob or brief grunt to serve as some sort of not-exactly-a-greeting and you can both get on with your day.

The inconclusive goodbye is harder. Admit it—at least once in your life you’ve made a complete goodbye to someone, stepped out, realized you forgot something, and then decided not to go back after it because it would just be too awkward to face the people you just said good bye to.

The inconclusive goodbye is the opposite of the repeatable partial greeting. With the greeting, you already know which was the First Greeting of the day. But with the inconclusive goodbye, you never know when the actual final goodbye is going to come.

If the possible separation is short, there’s no pressure. “See you later” and “See you tomorrow” are fairly close. It’s tougher when you’re trying to choose between “See you later” and “See you in twenty years.” Underestimate and you’ve given someone a lamely inadequate parting message; overestimate and you have to sheepishly face someone to whom you bared your soul a day or two ago.

The inconclusive goodbye is, of course, one of the many challenges of high school graduation season. There are plenty of people to say goodbye to. Some of them you will see repeatedly over the summer and every vacation for years to come. Some you will stay in touch in through the magic of the US Postal system or the mighty internet, even though you will rarely meet face to face. Some will be regular fixtures of your life practically until the day you die. And some you will never, ever see again.

It would be great if you had a window on the future, a way to sort these different folks out, so that you could correctly hand out a “See you later” or a “I hope your life goes wonderfully.”

Of course, as much as we avoid thinking about it, we already face this puzzle in the average non-graduation seasons of our lives. Every time you say goodbye to someone, it really could be the last time you see him or her. But it’s too heavy to think about that. Only at weighty times of transition in our lives does the issue become unavoidable.

We have to part, and we have to think about what that might mean.

As if that weren’t enough, there are other flavors of parting to be tasted as well.

Students who aren’t graduating use pretty light goodbyes to end the school year. “See you next fall” isn’t much weightier than “See you later,” and it’s true that we will all be back in same building next year. But it won’t be the same.

I can be sorry to see a class go, even if I know I’ll see every single student in it around next year, because they’ll never be back in that exact combination again. They’ll be certainly older, possibly wiser, in new groups, with new concerns in someone else’s classroom.

Families face the same thing. It’s not like you usually send a child off to college or work or a separate apartment or even marriage knowing that they’ll never ever be back under your roof again. They’ll be back, sometimes for quite a while.

But it won’t be the same. The pieces of your family will be back together, but they will make a new and different picture, and the old one will be gone forever.

That’s not always, or even often, a bad thing. The new picture usually shows strengths and joys and bright new colors even as the parts and patterns of the old picture are visible underneath. Growing up improves most people without destroying what there was to love about them when they were younger.

I suppose that’s why graduation time is a bit sad for some people. You can know that you will be together again, but not like this, not the way you are now. In the best of partings, there’s joy in what the person is becoming and what they are moving toward. But even when you can say “See you later” to a person, you can know that you are saying “Goodbye forever” to something else.

TWO MILE RUN: WRETCHED FAILURE ALL AROUND

(News-Herald, May 31) The Two Mile Run County Park flap has been, every step of the trip, a classic Venangoland confrontation between folks who set out to do the Right Thing in the worst possible way, and folks who believe the world would be a better place if we could just roll the clock back forty years.

When these two sides line up against each other, confrontation always turns ugly. When one side looks across the gulf, they see a bunch of slope-browed yahoos who don’t have the brains to know what’s good for them. When the yahoos look back across the gulf, they see arrogant snobs who believe their money and education make them so much better than everyone else.

The last time these two groups squared off was the Great Hospital Merger Fiasco. History shows that merging Oil City and Franklin hospitals was exactly right, but the Big Bosses managed to mishandle it every step of the way, feeding an increasingly angry opposition. Arrogance married mule-headedness and gave birth to the Worst Possible “Solution” -- a hospital in Cranberry.

The county’s decision to give up management of Two Mile was smart. It was a black hole of tax dollars, taking from the taxpayers while barely remaining usable. Handing it to a management firm made sense. Instead of the classic government management model (“Run this business for us and we’ll pay you the same whether you succeed or fail”), we got a conservative free-market approach (“Run this business, and you will prosper only if it prospers”).

But the first proposal for park development called for a complete change in the character of the place with a resort hotel and a fancy restaurant. At the most this required a steady stream of rich folks from far away places; at the very least it required that local folks be convinced the plan had merit. The park folks failed to sell the plan, and by the time the plan was scaled back, it was too late. Somehow the battle lines between ignorant yahoos and arrogant snobs had been drawn.

Some of this mess was unexpected. I’ve met Tim Spuck, and I’m familiar with the Rudegeairs, and they all strike me as reasonably decent folks, so how the stupid spat over the observatory managed to spiral out of control is a mystery to me. From out here in the cheap seats, it seems like the sort of dispute that two friendly ten-year-olds could resolve.

Of course, other parts of the mess are completely predictable. Once things turned unpleasant, lawsuits were inevitable—the courts remain the weapon of choice in the county.

Not that there was any mystery about some of the outcomes. If the Two Mile Run treehouses are competition with Turtle Bay Lodge, then my dog is competition with the Lipizzaner Stallions and I am a serious contender for the US Senate. Of course, if Mrs. Beichner becomes commissioner, she’ll be able to insure that the “competition” never threatens her again.

And about the commissioner soon-to-be-elects. I’m not particularly comforted by their offer to help out with the park. Here we are about to seat an entire brand new set of inexperienced county commissioners who will have to manage a court system, oversee regional economic development, and administer a massive staff of county employees, and the first thing they want to get a primer on is the park !!??!

But there’s still plenty of dopiness to go around. When a usually-reliable radio newsman reported that the Rudegeairs had skipped town, he could have resorted to the journalistic approach of driving past the house with his eyes open. The Rudegeairs deserved better.

And I’m going to hope that the park board’s decision to freeze Two Mile in place for the summer is a prudent managerial choice and not just a petulant pouty fit. Because it certainly seems like the message of the shut-down is “Our main goal in managing the park is to get our own way, and if we aren’t going to, then why bother.” This is a different message from, say, “We’re going to take this chance to give the county one more summer of the park being run the way we believe it should be run.”

Right now it looks like a bunch of sad failure all around. Parks Unlimited failed to win allies and articulate a vision of themselves as aggressive caretakers of a county trust. Their opponents failed to articulate any vision that didn’t include some fantasy-based return to a golden age of the park that never existed.

In some ways it’s a small loss. It’s not like we have a woods and water shortage in Venangoland. But it would be nice not to have to watch the “arrogant snobs” and “ignorant yahoos” square off yet again.