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.

VENANGOLAND MYSTERIES

(News-Herald, March 2003) As a student of local history, I have learned the answers to plenty of questions.

I know, for instance, where Coal Oil Johnny’s house stands. I have a rough idea of where the three forts stood in Franklin. I know where the bridge at the south end of Oil City used to cross the river to carry the trolley out to Monarch Park.

But there are certain local history answers that still elude me. Most of them are matters that are probably irresolvable, short of the development of time travel apparatus.

I keep thinking that some day, someone is going to come here with some serious high tech equipment and find the French plaque that Celeron planted down by Indian God Rock back in colonial times. In this day and age we ought to be able to beam some secret x-ray vision space satellite and spot where that little sucker has gotten to.

Some mysteries are just personal concerns. For instance, I don’t know the names of any of the original Franklin Silver Cornet Band members in 1856. I wish I did. Some of my other favorite mysteries are of more general concern.

Did George Washington fall into French Creek? Did he even have to cross it? I can believe that the young woodsman got his boots wet here on his colonial scouting mission, but fall in? I don’t know that anyone will ever be able to confirm whether or not George Washington slipped here.

Then there’s the carousel at Monarch Park. It’s widespread enough to count as oral tradition that the carousel was transported to Conneaut Lake Park when Monarch Park folded in the mid-twenties. It’s a cool story, and I’d love to believe it, but I’ve never come across anything that would corroborate it. I know lots of folks who have “always heard” it, but that comes a hair short of conclusive evidence.

I think there’s a lot of history still locked away in people’s heads in this area. For instance, I believe there still have to be many tales to be told about Monarch Park. The park thrived for almost thirty years at the beginning of the 20^th Century; that’s a lot of warm summer evenings and sunny Sunday afternoons.

I’ve been out to the site of the park; bits and pieces of it are still in evidence. You can tell where the dance hall stood, where the trolley tracks ran. I stand there and try to imagine what it was like when thousands of area residents strolled through the garden, listened to a band concert or enjoyed a family picnic. There must be so many stories still to tell, and I wish I could hear, or read, each one.

The same holds true of the Sugarcreek Pavilion. It was a skating rink, a dance hall, and a revival tabernacle. It was this dance hall, and others like it, that helped put the nails in the coffin of places like Monarch Park—why sit and be taken, family in tow, on the trolley when you can hop in your automobile and go dancing with just your friends. Some of the hottest, best bands of the day played at Sugarcreek: Isham Jones, Fletcher Handerson, Coon-Sanders Nighthawks, Vincent Lopez. I wish I could know what it was like to hear them shake the rafters. Even as a skating rink, it must have been a sight to see. And Kathryn Kuhlman—well, I’ve seen pictures of her and while I’m sure her preaching skills deserve to be legendary, I’m guessing that it didn’t hurt that she was a major babe.

Then there’s Glenfern Park, apparently located on the lower end of Franklin, with some springs attached. I’ve encountered passing references to it but never heard any good stories, though I know they must be out there.

I’ve also come across indirect references in newspaper stories to a skating rink in Franklin, but never come across a direct mention of it. Where was it? What was it? Or was the writer making some sort of sly in-joke that has not aged well across seven or eight decades?

I bring this up now because it’s the mucky part of spring, not quite nice to be always out and about yet. This would be a good time to collect up some of these tales and set them down on paper, before they vanish into the dim past. You can lock them up in the family vault, send them to the Historical Society, or mail them to me here at the newspaper. The important thing is to hold onto these little bits of history.

FIFTIES NOSTALGIA

(News-Herald, May 24) Nostalgia is a powerful force, powerful enough to disable some brain cells while filling others with a rosy glow of altered old images.

A favorite decade for rosy reminiscence is the fifties.

I don’t have a strong personal connection to the decade, but then, I was only alive for the last three years of it, and I will admit that in those days I didn’t pay much attention to current events.

But what I read about the fifties does not make me sad that I more or less missed them.

The decade opened with a really scary global power grab by Communists that pretty well ruined the warm afterglow of accomplishment left over from WWII. We had gone from leaders of the free world to one of the last beleaguered outposts of it. We got to wrap our heads around the nuclear arms race and the mysteries that accompanied it.

Students dutifully learned to duck and cover; an educational film of the era shows a family pulling a picnic blanket over their heads for protection from a nuclear explosion. A certain amount of the 1950’s peace of mind came from believing whatever the government told us, no matter how stupid it was.

Socially, there was not too much unrest. That was because people who were “Not Normal” knew their place and stayed in it. When the nostalgia starts flowing like Clarabelle’s seltzer water, you don’t usually hear elderly African Americans wishing they could be confined to the back of the bus again.

Anyone who dared to step outside the lines, who dared to suggest that some aspects of society were less than delightful, was some sort of dangerous whacko. When southern men killed Emmett Till, a fourteen-year-old Black from Chicago, for daring to whistle at a white woman, people who called for their conviction were accused of being “Communist agitators.”

The fabled peace and quiet of the fifties seems to have come, in retrospect, at the price of squelching the voice of most unique individual persons in the era. The affection for staying inside the lines is understandable; in its own way, it was even reasonable. After all, if you were an adult in 1955, you would be hard pressed to remember a time when the world was not on the brink of one sort of disaster or another. A period of relative peace and quiet had to be mighty attractive.

At the same time, the intolerance for anything that might disturb the peace and quiet seems a bit extreme. After all, it was in the fifties that Congress held hearings to discuss the dangerous, destabilizing, morally corrosive effects of comic books (shudder). Of course, that was before the rise of Elvis and Brando, scary young men who oozed sex.

There were certainly things to love about the fifties (as near as I can tell). There was a great sense of progress—people were able to enjoy financial stability beyond anything their parents had imagined, and even lower-middle class folks could enjoy luxuries beyond anything imagined in all of human history.

And while life was certainly repressive and difficult for many folks, there was also little sense that everyone was entitled to live in a perfect world in which some Higher Authority guaranteed that all would be Perfectly Fair. It’s the irony of the fifties that people probably had more reason than today to be discontented, but were less likely to complain.

It’s worth noting, though, that in all of my reading from the period, I’ve seen little to suggest that folks felt they were living in a golden age. The Commies are everywhere! New weapons like the H-Bomb are scary! Mass media are become morally suspect! And what the heck is that darn rock-and-roll music, if not the herald trumpet of decaying youth!

It’s true of every decade-- at the time, nobody is cheering the splendor of the age. It’s only in the rear-view mirror that joys of the day appear larger than they actually were.

There’s a lesson in that. Someday folks are going to look back at the Ought’s and speak in loving tones. There will be tv shows celebrating the special spirit of the times. It seems a shame to wait until a time is past to love it. It seems a shame to wish that you could go back and live in a time that you did, in fact, already live in; all the bigger shame if, at the time, you were busy wishing you were back in an earlier time.

Better to see spot what we will miss about today while it’s still today, and enjoy it while it’s still warm reality and not a faded memory.

FIFTY

(News-Herald, May 17) Twenty was barely noticeable, thirty was kind of exciting, and forty came at kind of an odd time in my life. But in a couple of days I turn fifty, and that’s a whole different experience.

I have the advantage of being on the tail end of the Baby Boomers. The Boomers, who originally declared, “Don’t trust anyone over thirty” have, as we’ve aged, regularly re-defined “old.” According to one recent article, sixty is the new forty; I have now been middle-aged for roughly twenty years.

There are some unavoidable symptoms of this age. Parts of me just aren’t as nimble or responsive as they once were. I have a library of glasses for various functions, and sometimes I still can’t see. Some of my hair has deserted, and some has migrated.

I came late to exercise, and now, with effort and sweat, I can almost manage to be in the same lousy shape as when I never moved my lazy twenty-something posterior off the couch.

But there’s more than just physical slackage to face at fifty. I’m forced to really confront the list of things that are never going to happen.

I’m not talking about the things that were always highly unlikely, like my canoe trip down the Mississippi, my torrid fling with Sheryl Crow, or my international tour as a highly-acclaimed tailgate trombonist. Other things aren’t going to happen as the result of the choices that pile up in five decades.

I chose work where there is no professional advancement—ten years from now I’ll still have the same level of responsibility and power that I had when I started twenty-five years ago. When I was young, I didn’t think I’d care, but it turns out that I do, a little.

I didn’t think I’d ever want to teach on, say, the college level. But a few years ago the notion grabbed hold of me, and I discovered that that door has closed for me. My financial situation is certainly not bad, but I have a gift—in general I would have done better with an investment strategy of burying money in a mason jar in the back yard.

There was a time when I thought it would be nice to be, eventually, sitting on the porch next to the same woman that I’d been looking at for fifty or sixty years. That’s not going to happen. I sometimes wish I’d gotten real musical training. Also not going to happen.

Mind you, I am not boo-hooing over any of this. You get older and you leave stuff behind, pick other stuff up along the way. I have two nearly grown children who are really fine people. I get to do work that I love, and I get to spend my free time on things I really value. I did finally learn how to play banjo and paddle a kayak. I have known thousands of people, and hardly a one that I didn’t like. I have made some good choices and some bad, and while the good ones haven’t always paid off, there are some bad ones that never cost me as much as they could have.

If you’ve been around many years, your life is really great, and your life is really awful. You get to pick which way you want to see it. At fifty, regardless of what you’ve gained and lost, you get to learn a few things about yourself.

When you’re twenty, you have a set of things you like to believe about yourself. By fifty, you learn which are true, and which are not. Some are pleasant surprises—you always believed you were a crumudgeon, but it turns out you like people. Some are hard to face—you always wanted to see yourself as responsible, but it turns out that people really can’t depend on you.

When you’re younger, you can write your own story from scratch. But by fifty, instead of writing fiction, you’re looking at history. It’s a matter of record, instead of what you can make up. At twenty, strength of character is about trying to be the person you ought to be. At fifty, strength of character is about facing the person it turns out you actually are.

By fifty, you’re had a chance to test your theories about how the world works. Sometimes it’s difficult to face the results of those tests—if you got it wrong, there’s no chance to do it over, and hard to find someone who wants to hear what you’ve figured out.

I have to admit—this is not what I thought my life would look like at fifty. But it’s not always a bad thing to face the unexpected, and we can always learn a few new tricks.

BEN HOGAN: THE WICKEDEST MAN IN THE WORLD

(News-Herald, February 2003) Today we revisit Ben Hogan, one of oildoms more colorful figures.

According to The Golden Flood by Herbert Asbury (author of Gangs of New York on which the Martin Scorsese movie is loosely based, and actually an interesting story in his own right), Ben was born Benedict Hagan in Wurttemberg province, Germany, in 1841. His parents, a cabinet maker and an acrobat, brought him to the East Side of New York City in 1852; the family’s first lesson in new world economics came when a shopkeeper promised to change their life savings ($800 in gold) but instead stole it. 11-year-old Ben returned with a cohort and asked for the money. When the shopkeeper refused, they beat him to death. According to Ben, they took only the $800 they were due.

At age 17, already an experienced thief, Ben went to sea. It was during this time that he learned boxing. In New Orleans when the Civil War broke out, Ben became a spy and blockade runner for both sides, doing steady trade smuggling drugs and alcohol. He also joined a band of bounty jumpers—men who enlisted for the few hundred dollars bounty and then deserted, cash in hand.

By 1864, Ben was back in the job that brought him to Pithole—brothel bouncer. In Pithole he started out at Emma Fenton’s house, where he met up with French Kate. According to some sources, Kate had been a notorious spy, part of the Surrat circle in DC, and a friend of John Wilkes Booth. No evidence of this has ever turned up, but then, anti-government spy conspiracies are notoriously bad at record-keeping.

Ben and Kate left the Fenton establishment and went into business for themselves (a difficult separation, eventually requiring Ben to beat up Emma). Hogan’s Lager Beer Hall was successful, employing fifteen ladies. Over the door, Ben hung the sign “Ben Hogan, The Wickedest man in the World.”

The bull-necked Hogan could neither read nor write, but apparently could summon up charm when needed. When temperance ladies who attacked his bar were abused by the patrons, Ben said he wouldn’t allow rudeness to ladies in his presence. According to Hildegarde Dolson’s Great Oildorado he said, “Men, remember you too had a mother. Let’s drink to the health of these good ladies.”

In another oft-cited story, Ben, at a court appearance, explained that he was only running a “gymnasium where members of both sexes may enjoy wholesome exercise using the different parts of the body in such a way as to bring all the muscles into play.”

He worked in oil country with a traveling brothel, then in 1870 went that one better in Clarion County with Ben Hogan’s Floating Palace of Pleasure on an old river steamer, which traveled in and out of Clarion, Armstrong and Allegheny counties, depending on which county’s officers were trying to catch him at the time.

Through these years, he supplemented his income with the occasional prize fight and scam. When his brothel at Parker’s Landing burned down, Ben pursued a theatrical career, but became bored. He returned to Elk City in 1876 to set up a brothel, but was double-crossed by his mistress.

In 1877, while in New York City, Ben met and fell in love with a mission worker on Broadway. They married in the spring of ’78. But according to Asbury, Ben remained troubled. He had told her only part of his unsavory past (the part that didn’t involve pimping). Walking on Broadway on August 22, 1878, trying to decide how to unburden himself, Ben heard music coming from the Park Theater. He took a seat, hoping to see a show, and found himself instead in a revival meeting run by Charles Sawyer, famous as “the converted soak.”

According to Hogan’s own book (wonderfully reprinted by Margo Mong and available in fine local historical outlets) Hogan attended revivals for the next two evenings, spent a long troubled night asking his wife to read scripture to him, and emerged a newly converted man.

Did Ben Hogan really see the light? Well, he certainly stayed in the mission business longer than any other line of work he had ever pursued. There is a certain practical sincerity in his book, issued in 1887. His instructions on how to run a mission make it clear that he used his own background to spot men who would try to play missions as a scam. Although he whitewashes his gangland past a bit, he is free of the self-congratulations and righteousness of many new converts.

Ben and the missus staged revivals in the oil region, even preaching at the Methodist church in Franklin, but crowds were sparse and skeptical. So instead they spread the word successfully elsewhere. Famed revivalist Dwight L. Moody helped set them up with a mission in Chicago slums. One of Moody’s great backers was John D. Rockefeller-- interesting to think of the Reverend as a link between two men who captured much of the worst and best of oil country.

PRIMARIES 07

(News-Herald, May 10) I’m not always one to count down to election day, but I’ll be glad when the primaries are over Tuesday.

The newspaper’s real reporters will no doubt continue their fair and even-handed coverage of the upcoming election. Fortunately, I am not bound by any requirements to be fair or reasonable, so I can present you with my totally biased voting guide.

ACT 1

Act 1 is Smilin’ Ed Rendell’s latest attempt to pretend to provide property tax reform in Pennsylvania. All of these attempts have had one thing in common; they’ve been set up so that if people like them, Harrisburg can take the credit, and if people don’t, Harrisburg can blame it one someone else.

The saga has been marked by a struggle between local school boards, who keep refusing to do what they’re told, and Smilin’ Ed, who keeps looking for ways to force them to.

Act 1 will not reduce taxes. It will just move them around. The question that voters get to answer, unfortunately is not “Do you think this is stupid?” The question instead is, “We’re going to force someone to pay some of Grampa’s property tax. Should we force people who work for a living, or people who have investments?”

Retired homeowners will be the big winners. Depending on where you live, big losers may be A) people with jobs who rent or B) people with significant investment income. Should be interesting to see what effect the decision has on where people choose to live, since school districts can make themselves investor havens or renters’ hell.

JUDGE

I just had no idea that a judge job was such a plum. I am becoming tempted to run for the office myself.

It’s not just the astonishing amount of money being spent on the campaign—it’s that it’s all been spent so badly.

There’s the signage, enough that if we could make a sizable papier mache addition to the courthouse. There’s the small forest of junk mail bending the backs of Venangoland mail deliverers. And there’s the endless onslaught of phone calls, many of which sound as if they’re coming from a call center somewhere folks couldn’t even find Venango County on a map.

And out of this very expensive onslaught of campaigning, we get these basic messages:

1) This is my name.

2) This is what I look like.

3) I want to be judge.

4) I think fairness, integrity and experience are important.

From the weight given to #4, you would assume that the candidates think

they're running against a sleazy crook who has never seen the inside of a courtroom. If that guy were running, at least he would stand out in some significant way from the other three. As it is, we’ll all just vote for the one we’ve got the best impression of based on hearsay, stories we’ve heard at church and the grocery store, and any personal info we have. We could have done that without record-breaking attempts to buy the office.

COUNTY COMMISSIONERS

Here’s a clue. If you think one of the major issues facing the commissioners is how to handle Two Mile Run County Park, you shouldn’t be a county commissioner.

I’ll settle for someone who has a reasonably good grasp of how to handle the nuts and bolts of keeping the county functioning. I would love to see people in politics in the region who have some drive and a plan, some sort of vision for the county beyond plodding along with business almost as usual.

But vision is hard to come by in local politics, and I don’t necessarily blame our politicians. I suspect that some days they feel that if they brought back a sack with a billion dollars in it, some local residents would complain about the composition of the sack, the stacking of the money, and how we should just throw the money out if those people are going to get some of it.

Beyond that, I don’t honestly know who half the commissioner candidates are. Heck, I couldn’t even tell you which office some of the names-on-signs are running for.

School board elections? As usual, there aren’t enough willing citizens to give voters a real choice, except in Cranberry, where it will be a circus no matter whom the voters elect.

One word of advice. If you have a true favorite candidate for one of the mob races, vote for just that candidate. When the ballot says “select up to three,” you can select just one, and that gives your candidate a better shot.

And whoever ends up running the county, I hope they vigorously pursue candidates who don’t take down their stupid signs promptly.

LEARNING FROM CRISES

(News-Herald, May 3) Every time an organization goes through a crisis, it reveals two things about itself. It doesn’t matter what size the organization is. It can be as small as a family or as large as a government. And it doesn’t matter whether the organization intends to reveal these two things or not; in a time of crisis, the revelations cannot be avoided.

First, a crisis reveals who is on the team.

This works two ways. One is that we find out who steps up and who steps back. Some people don’t want to be on the team; they want to kibbitz and cheer and offer critiques of what the team did. But on the whole, they’d rather not be directly involved. Like the children in a family, they prefer the security of believing that the grown-ups, the team, will take care of everything.

Sometimes people who might have stepped up have simply given up trying. Because in a crisis, leaders show who they think is on the team. The easiest way to track this is by the flow of information. The people who get the information quickly and completely are on the team. Everyone else isn’t.

Leaders, managers, presidents of boards—they mostly know that they’re supposed to include everybody on the team. Sometimes they honestly mean to--sometimes they even think they’re doing it.

If you are in a leadership position, imagine a crisis developing. Immediately, you think, “I have to let X know what’s happening.” X = the actual members of the team.

You also think, “I need to let Y know, too—after I know what we can tell them and how and when.” Y = the people who are not on the team. And now that you haven’t included them, they know they’re not on the team.

The other thing that’s revealed in a crisis is what the organization really values. You can find the true values of the organization in the “have to” list.

In the midst of a crisis, whether it’s an onslaught of government regulation or a flat tire on the family vacation, leadership has to make choices about what to keep doing and what will have to be modified or dropped. Leaders will often talk as if these categories are decided by circumstance, but very often they are entirely a matter of choice.

When the front tire on the family mini-van blows, Dad can say, “Well, we’ll still eat lunch at noon, but it’ll be sandwiches instead of Burger King.” He could also say, “Well, we’ll still get our Whoppers, but it’ll be later than usual.” In each case, he may act as if the tire’s to blame, but he has told you whether he most values the schedule or the King.

It’s these two revelations, the revelation of the team and the revelation of values, that often give a crisis its most lasting effects.

At Virginia Tech, it turned out during the initial crisis that hardly anyone was on the team, and it appears that leadership valued things such as maintaining the slothlike bureaucratic process and keeping trouble quiet over making 100% sure that students were safe. But as the day wore on, as on 9/11, the team became larger, and the values that it revealed were values everyone across the country could share.

A crisis can bring an organization tightly together, one team united behind a shared goal.

But sometimes a crisis creates cracks in the foundation. An organization can weather the crisis itself, and yet months down the road find itself tearing apart, collapsing.

When your leaders cut you out of the loop, when you leap up to help and are told “Get back in your seat; the team will call you when we want you,” and when you find out that the things you value aren’t even close to the list of “have to’s”—well, those are hard things to bounce back from.

Leaders can tell their people time after time, “We’re all in this together; we’re all a part of the team.” But when crisis comes, if they don’t act as if they mean it, nobody is going to believe them. Leaders can tell their people time after time, “We’re here to make the best widgets we can for our customers.” But when crisis comes, if they holler, “Drop the widgets and help the lawyers keep us looking good,” all their nice widget words mean next to nothing.

Whether you manage a family or a business or a school, in the midst of crisis, you will tell your people the truth of what you really believe. You should hope that it matches what you tell them, and yourself, the rest of the time.