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December 31, 2004
Running, but not for office
One of the activities in which I am involved (and have been for the past 11 years) is organizing the Ringing in Spring 5K race in Valparaiso. It started small but is now the largest fundraiser for the local YMCA and one of the largest 5K races in Northwest Indiana. If you're in Indiana on April 2, come down and volunteer or run the race. The entry form went live today.
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December 30, 2004
Inspiration from a Lithuanian vandal
Shortly after I first landed in the former Soviet Union for the first time, I took a walk around Vilnaus, Lithuania, and encountered a graffito reading: “Your life becomes more and more of adventure.” It was an auspicious start to a great weak of adventure.
Here, the movers just departed my apartment. I suppose that now it’s official, although it is bittersweet. I am sitting in a 30’ white box, completely empty save a halogen light, with assorted doors at one end and a view 800’ over Chicago on the other. The sounds of the city echo up.
I decided while I was in Belgium to apply to the MBA programme at Columbia University in the City of New York, as it is officially called. I was admitted after Thanksgiving and start orientation on January 3—which is all pretty rapid. The Firm offered to pay the tuition, which saves $75K over the 17 month course of the programme; in return, I have signed a contract that expires in late 2008. My goods are on their way to an 1888 Italianate/Queen Anne transitional townhouse in Harlem, which, like Chicago’s Water Tower district, is one of America’s most storied neighborhoods and promises to be a great adventure. (Some guys at the office are taking an over/under on how many times I will be a victim of a violent crime while living there. I racked up 21 non-violent counts in West Philly.)
Nonetheless, my empty box is initially quite bittersweet. Sweet, because it feels so nice not to have any material possessions to my name right now. If the truck were to plunge into the East River and I collected my $10K insurance, I am not sure that I would mind not having all the things and stuff that enrich life at the cost of clutter—organized clutter but still clutter. On the other hand, $10K isn’t much, and the mementos of visiting 56 countries, hand-written correspondence, and the various gifts from friends and relatives are hardly worth $10K.
My empty box has depressions in the carpet and wear patterns where I surely trotted, happy, sad, awed by the city below. I’ll never forget my “oh my god” reaction when I first saw the apartment like this, and the same reaction from so many visitors—and the movers today. Then there are the friends and relationships in Chicago, which I hope to retain-—from the doorlady at the commercial entrance to the closest friends.
It can be hard to give up good things, but often we give up good things to get something even better. We call this “opportunity,” and it’s often good if not preceded by “fabulous work-at-home.” Many opportunities together are called “get rich slow” and “more and more of adventure.” I usually hate vandals, but I owe something to an unknown Lithuanian hoodlum.
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December 29, 2004
The merry women of Wharton
One of the more intelligent Daily Pennsylvanian articles appeared in the Winter Break issue. (This concerns Penn and its Wharton School, my undergrad alma mater.) It begins:
Wharton kids get a lot more perks than the rest of us losers. E-mail accounts for life, the use of voluptuous Swedish models in secret dungeons, job offers.
The author, Melody Joy Kramer, then describes two matchmaking systems for lonely Wharton men, suggesting that they first try MEL (note the author's name) before "resorting" to PENN GIRLS, which she claims tend to give one's system "viruses."
And just remember, if MEL and PENN GIRLS don't work out for you, there's always the Penn Engineering dating service. Their motto is Helping All Nerds Date, and they're looking for members to start Jumping On Board Soon! They're always willing to lend a helping hand to Whartonites in need.
This is by far the best example of sexual innuendo ever published in the DP, except maybe when 34th Street gave its opinions on the collective looseness of various sororities, with SDT somehow beating out my friends in KAΘ.
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December 28, 2004
Doesn't the Bible also say, "thou shalt not allow moochers into thine hut?"
Although we have amber alerts when kids get lost in Wal-Mart, descriptions of crime subjects in the mainstream media (MSM) have been getting spottier. This is principally because certain mainstream media (MSM) outlets refuse to state basic information about a suspect, principally his race: "the suspect is a 5'8" male, 231 lbs, with short dark hair. If you have information..." If men were more organized, we would get it such that the MSM wouldn't even give the suspect's sex.
A bit of relief is found in Kuensel, the newspaper from Bhutan that I read from time to time. Notice the addresses in this article, which are provided right down to the number of the crooks' huts.
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December 25, 2004
Fat Albert, no Einstein
I was really hoping to join Fat Albert in a rousing "hey hey hey, bombs away!" at the local cinema hall today, but The Onion AV Club warns against it. Sometimes I have no idea what the Onion reviewers are talking about, but here it's pretty clear:
A movie year already filled with disturbing images has saved one of the least comfortable spectacles for its final week. ... It's supposed to be funny, apparently, but it bears an uncomfortable resemblance to watching a difficult childbirth, and a mere stream of amniotic fluid would make it look like a scene cut from Videodrome.
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December 23, 2004
The first Bûche de Noël
MK restaurant is known for some amazing food, but if you can make it soon, don't miss the Bûche de Noël (Yule Log). The Yule Log is a French dessert of loaf-shaped cake with creme that, when sliced like a bread loaf, looks like tree rings. (So far, this is pretty standard; you can buy one at Neiman Marcus or make one.) MK adds two wonderful edible almond oak leaves and two mushrooms of white meringue that look perfectly realistic. Anyone who goes to a good restaurant and doesn't save room for a creatively-presented holiday dessert like this is a fool.
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A Couchwork Orange
For 22 of the 25 Christmas Eves of my life, we've gone over the creek and through The Pines to grandmother's house. Grandma lives in the Indiana snowbelt and gets far more snow than we do 30 miles SW, meaning she often has a white Christmas. If you're looking for evidence that today's kids are spoiled, consider this. When I was a pup and we went to grandma's, we had dinner and *then* opened presents, usually at a late hour like 19h00. Nowadays, the rugrats open presents *before* dinner, usually around 15h00. The next generation will probably start opening presents Christmas Eve morning, or maybe even on 23 Dec. How spoiled and overindulged.
There was one area where the 1980-1986 generation was spoiled, namely the orange couch. My two brothers and two cousins could all sit on this orange couch and open presents thereupon. Then, one day, it was gone, nothing but a dusty outline from where the couch had been stolen by some na'er-do-well. Grandma said that she "gave it to a nice colored man whose family's house burned down." I have spent the last decade searching for this family--with whom I would happily swap the old orange couch for a sweet new leather model--to no avail. If anyone knows someone with a kick-ass old orange couch, please e-mail me.
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December 21, 2004
A Farewell to Comrades-in-Arms (but with a happy ending)
I wanted to wish everyone at the office best wishes as I depart for New York City. Please join me for drinks tonight at One North Kitchen & Bar in the UBS Building at 6PM.
UPDATE: The line in my goodbye e-mail about an "advanced pathbuilding fellowship" is not for real...
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December 20, 2004
The Son Also Steals
The Wall St. Journal editorial and op-ed pages, which led the charge against Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac long before their accounting scandals were discovered, is now leading a charge to get Kofi Annan to resign. Today Kenneth Cain, who served in four UN peacekeeping operations, argues that the real reason Kofi should resign is not that he oversaw the biggest fraud in world history (Oil for Food, from which Annan's son reaped a significant illegal windfall).
That debate is 10 years too late and addresses the wrong subject. The salient indictment of Mr. Annan's leadership is lethal cowardice, not corruption; the evidence is genocide, not oil.
Cain's argument is that the UN was too cowardly to take action to head-off preventable genocides in Rwanda and Bosnia. It is particularly fitting in the light of my visit to Bosnia this fall, where one finds cemeteries of people who all died in the same year (usually 1993 or 1995) and cities destroyed by an out-of-control-war. Bosnians are not quick to forget the murder by Serbs of the Srebrenica's 8000 men who were in a UN safe area guarded by UN troops.
One woman at the Screbrenica cemetery mourning the murder of her entire family told Cain: "If the U.N. goes somewhere now, how can the people there believe or trust that the U.N. will save them?"
Certainly the Annan tenure marks a new nadir of the UN's usefulness, but sacking Annan is only a first step. There are some very interesing proposals to create a UN of only democratic governments that could act more decisively, leaving the existing UN to do what it does well, like teaching family planning and digging irrigation ditches in Rwanda--not preventing wars or genocides.
Still, Cain's conclusion speaks for itself:
If anyone's values have been betrayed at the U.N. over the past decade it is those of us who believe most deeply in the organization's ideals. Just ask the men and women of Rwanda and Srebrenica.And Darfur.
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December 19, 2004
For whom the wedding bells toll (but in a happy way!)
I never read that book, so I don't know if the title of this entry is appropriate, but there have been two wedding announcements of best friends getting married, two weeks apart.
Congratulations Jaime & Zac and Kathryn & Chris.
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The old woman and the knee
My grandmother is perhaps 85 years old and spends most of her free time at the local Catholic church doing laundry, maintaining the altar, etc. Her Polish immigrant family was quite poor when she was young, and as a result she was placed in a Catholic orphanage. She has returned the favor to the Church her entire life, even now that she is approaching Pope-like frailty. The new priest, however, really drove her up the wall. She thought for sure that he didn't like her, and she also thought he was a perv. Well, turns out that grandma was right:
GARY — A Northwest Indiana Roman Catholic priest, accused of sexual misconduct that allegedly occurred while he was serving in Florida, has been placed on administrative leave.Gary Bishop Dale J. Melczek took the action against the Rev. Richard Emerson, 52, of Hammond after the diocese’s response team reviewed the allegations...
He is restrained from public ministry or contact with minors pending a Vatican review, the release said. Emerson, who was ordained in 1978 in the Gary diocese, has been pastor of Michigan City’s Notre Dame parish since July 2003.
According to the allegations, Emerson engaged in sexual misconduct with a minor in the late 1980s while he was a priest in the Diocese of Orlando.
It is rumored that Grandma's weather-forecasting knee also tells her which priests are perverts.
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December 18, 2004
The Snows of Lazienki
Over the years, Ted Turner has published a few of my pictures on his website, cnn.com. There was just one published last week...
- Poland: Warsaw, December 2004
- Monaco, May 2004
- Lao Peoples Democratic Republic: Luang Prabang, February 2003
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December 17, 2004
You've Got Mail! Excerpts from Adrian's mailbag
Sometimes I get comments on my website by email. Here is an excerpt of one:
"I would appreciate it if you would remove your own political biases from your website and return it to what it was meant to be."
Actually, the sole purpose of this website is to express my political bias. Like in the entry below...
Posted by adrianjo at 09:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The divine thunderbolt of wisdom scores in Bhutan
The country in which I've spent the most time consecutively without actually living there is Bhutan. It's a little dictatorship in the Himalayas, and no, I wasn't imprisoned. Occasionally dictatorships prove that they are actually pretty cool, and the King of Bhutan does this quite frequently. Bhutan's environmental, cultural, and public health laws are some of the world's most enlightened. It may help that the country's patron saint is the 15th century "Divine Madman," whose oversized erect phallus is painted on houses around the country. With an attitude like that, you'd think Bhutan would soon set about legalizing marijuana or turning into another Amsterdam.
Instead, the Bhutanese government outdid itself today when Bhutan became the first country in the world to ban the sale of tobacco and impose 200% tarrifs on its importation. Three cheers for the little Bhutanese children who will grow up smoke-free. And to paraphrase the Divine Madman:
The sign of a rich man is a tight fist,
The sign of an old man is a tight mind,
The sign of a stupid man is a tightly-grasped cigarette
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Revenge of the popular crowd
I had lunch recently with one of the more accomplished members of the VHS Class of 1998. We ran through our respective circles of friends and what they're up to, and she concluded, "isn't it amazing that everyone's so successful? Our friends are now dentists, lawyers, engineers, realtors, accountants..."
What is interesting is how strongly one's high school reputation for physical attractiveness, intelligence, and social skills correlates with future success. At VHS, the popular crowd tended to be high on each of these three axes--and they have by-and-large been quite successful. (I use the third-person "they" on purpose.) Other people who were particularly high on one axis have also beeen successful. On the converse, almost nobody who wasn't known for at least one of the three (attractiveness, intelligence, or sociability) has acheived a particularly high level of "success" as traditionally defined.
It seems a bit surprising that one might predict so well in 9th grade who would be doing "best" ten years later.
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December 16, 2004
Launching a Transatlantic Zeppelin
I had two choices today: do laundry or build a blog. I chose the latter, and after fiddling for many hours with CGI, PERL, SQL, and a few other languages, I have launched Transatlantic Zeppelin. The name comes from a "blue-chip" stock Mr. Burns owns, along with Amalgamated Spat (spats being shoes popular in the 1920s), Confederated Slave Holdings, and "that up-and-coming Baltimore Opera Hat company." Feel free to post comments.
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December 15, 2004
Community Activism - Gold Coast Style
I attended a "community forum" tonight. It was held in the Ritz Carlton's grand ballroom, on the 12th floor under a massive crystal lightpiece and all the elegant decorations that make the Chicago Ritz Carlton one of the world's top 100 five-star hotels. Inside were gathered perhaps 250 millionaires and other wealthy Gold Coast property owners. At times it was hard to hear from all the jewelery clanging as people shifted in their chairs. Welcome to the Gold Coast. As the poorest member of this crowd, I wore a ratty faded shirt from 1997, jeans with holes, and an old pair of sneaks I bought from one of the hottest Swedes I ever saw. (OMG, she made Tiger's wife look ugly as Roseanne.)
The topic of conversation is a giant 750-foot tower to be built atop Fourth Presbyterian Church on Michigan Avenue across the street from the Hancock. The church sold the right to the air above the building plus a very small plot of land for $25M. Yes, a developer paid $25M for some air and the right to try to build a structure in that air. The problem is that the building will block views and make traffic even worse, but it will surely be built and become a blight upon the church. But hey, it's their church, and 10% of the congregation voted to sell the air rights, so it shall be. As one resident pointed out: "Fourth Presbyterian does a lot of important things for our neighborhood. I tutored there for four years and just got a letter from the boy I tutored. He's now in prison."
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December 02, 2004
Memoirs of St. Adrian
Today's bemusement is to look up a saint of your name at Catholic Online. There are a million and one saints, including surely one with your name, unless you're named a mid-1990s fad name like Dakota or Sierra. Consider Saint Adrian III:
"Little is known of ... why Adrian is venerated as a saint. ... [He] had a widow of one of the opposing nobility whipped naked through the streets of Rome. He died early in September on his way to the Diet of Worms, at the invitation of Emperor Charles the Fat.
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