From a few years ago

"I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life."

Steve Jobs (1955 - 2011), Stanford University commencement address, June 12, 2005

I originally posted this quote about a year ago. As many of you know, we had to close our business, Mastercraft, after 50 years. At that time, everything was still very much undecided as far as what would happen. By now, a year later, it pretty much has happened. The plant equipment was sold, the building was taken, and, as best we can, we have moved on.

There is still a part of me, a larger part than I care to admit, that is still hanging on. Not the part that wants to keep Mastercrafft going. We got to a place that there was really no return. It's the part that wonders what could have been if I had been a better time businessman, the part where I left a lot of people down, the family and the many good employees we had accumulated over the years, the part that, God help me, really likes building furniture.

While I wasn't fired from Apple, I was fired from Mastercraft. Strange, I'd never really thought of that before. I wasn't fired by a person, but I was fired by the Boss, the market, which it really is for all businesses. Even Apple. I failed to adapt, I failed to correct the problems. I failed.

Steve Jobs had the "heaviness of being successful" but I have a heaviness from what might have been. But we really were similar in our position in life. We both had a clean slate, a chance to start over. Of course, even thought he was fired, he had a few million in the bank to play with where I had a hat in my hand. He started an new company, returned to Apple, and performed one of the greatest business turn around a ever. Me, not so much.

While his creativity resulted in the wildly successful resurrection of Apple, my creativity may still resurrect my psyche. Is it too boastful to feel that there is a reservoir of creativity I have not yet tapped? I hope not. If there is anything that can pull me out of this strange blue funk I feel I've been inhabiting, the only possible answer lies there. What will it take? Courage to go places I'm not sure exist. Courage to drop any pretense about who I thought I was and embrace who I have become.

Courage. And a friend or two, pointing the way.

Note: I wrote this shortly after we closed the business. It was a little too painful then, but after a few years of “Putting it Behind Me”, I feel a little more comfortable and in many ways, it is still true. The pain has been mixed with a couple of new beginnings. Carpe Diem.

Locusts-Oops! I mean Cicadas.

 I am four years old. Well, cicada years at least. When I was 17, it was a cicada year and I did the math. I was born in a cicada year. It was the cicada symphony that got me thinking about the relationship, and for all those reasons you cannot understand, I remember when I made the connection. Sunday school of all places. It was in the summer and we took our class outside into the picnic woods. But the symphony was loud that day as it is as I write this. 

The early part of my life, my mother and I lived with my grandparents on the family farm while my Dad served in the Army. My house was built on the same family farm, just down the hill. As a baby,  must have been serenaded by the progenitors of the same cicadas I hear today. Can’t say I remember, I was 0 years old. But the connection I feel with the song I hear was formed back then as I lay in the crib, or when my great grandmother held me, as I probably wasn’t allowed to cry very often.

So I have survived through 4 cicada life cycles. I can only hope I get to see the fifth. Every appearance is welcomed by a vastly different world than the last. Let’s hope the next one is greeted by a better one..

Lloyd Boatang

I've spent the last 8 weeks, more or less, in rehearsals for a play, "One Man, Two Guvners" at Oystermill Playhouse. And for some unknown reason, I've become obsessed with a value analysis, trying to come to come to some conclusion as to whether it was "worth it".

First, the hours involved. The calendar tells me that including the final dress rehearsal with a test audience, there were a total of 28 rehearsals. While the last week they have run longer, it would be safe to estimate that they averaged about 2 hours in length of a total of 56 hours. While my part wasn't terribly long, I did have to learn a Jamaican accent as well as the dialog. I really have no idea of the actual time, let's say 10 hours. Then there is travel time. Twenty eight rehearsals equals 28 trips, roughy 1 hour each way for a total of 56 hours. I have become quite familiar with Interstate 83 from Camp Hill to Brogue and there is nothing like personal introspection and the occasional outburst at the errant drivers who seem to have no clue on the proper use of the passing lane. The total time involved comes out to 122 hours.

Then there is the actual mileage. The Maps app tells me it is 46 miles to Oystermill, and that seems about right, making a 92 mile round trip. So 28 trips at 92 miles each equals 2,576 miles. The federal mileage reimbursement rate is $.54 for business and $.14 for charity. If I was in business, I could use $1391.04. But it is charity I suppose and that comes up to $360.04. The former seems excessive, but the latter might be pretty close to actual gas cost,  so there it is.

The total comes to 122 hours and $360.04.

So the question. Is it worth 122 hours and $360.04 to be in a show? That brings us to the audience. We are on stage, we run the lines. There comes a moment of truth, when the answer will be determined. Your first funny line.

The audience laughs.

Yep.

Auschwitz

I've been trying to put Auschwitz-Birkenau in perspective. There is no perspective.  I have no frame of reference. It was a little surreal, driving through the Polish countryside, and getting the feeling that it felt like home. Rolling fields, crops that would seem proper for Brogue PA and suddenly being there. The brick buildings of Auschwitz were spread out in front of us. Why were they so clean and bright? The trees were growing, grass was green. I'm sure there was a bird singing.

All I heard and all I saw was 1.5 million people dying at the hands of a people that defy reason..

"Arbeit Macht Frei" in cold iron over the gate to the camp. "Work Makes You Free". How many truly believed it? Did it give hope in a place where none was intended?

We walked the unloading area where boxcars filled with 100 people and their luggage were unloaded after trips that may have lasted 11 days. We passed where a Nazi doctor sent the prisoners left or right. Left leading to the gas chamber directly, the right to a work camp where death came slowly. Maybe 6 months at best. No question which direction I would go. If I made it past at all. Pretty good chance I'd be shot right there.

The long walk on the left side lead to a stairway leading down to a long room. "The Showers". We needed one after days on end in a closed cattle car. The only thing that came down upon us was canisters of Cyclone B. It didn't take long. Young first, then women, men struggling against everything they believed, that they needed to be the strong ones, standing on top of the first to die, gasping for life. Those who were sent to the right, the "lucky ones" not sent immediately to the showers job was to remove the bodies and take them to the crematories.

Walking in a gas chamber where thousands died, filing past the furnaces where body after body was shoved into oblivion, reduced to a pile of ash.

Birkenau seemed to stretch on forever. The men on one side, women on the other. The barracks with rows on 3 deck, washrooms and toilets where you had seconds before you were forced to move on. It was important to get the top bunk. At least there you were out of the line of fire from rampant diarrhea and it was a little warmer up top on cold nights. Not that the little warmth gained was much help on -25 deg nights.

And then, if you survived the night, roll call and on to work. Some did construction work. Many other were forced to work in the genocide division, forced to perform the gruesome grunt work of moving and burning dead bodies.

We walked through the corridors of those buildings at Auschwitz. Through rooms with photos. Through rooms with relics from those years. Rooms of luggage with birth dates and interment dates. Rooms with thousands of combs and hair brushes. Rooms with shoes, most of them brown, the red ones are like beacons. And then there was the room displaying human hair, shaved from the prisoners before they were killed. About two tons of it, of the 7 tons that were captures on liberation day, of the thousands of tons that were taken.

And then there was the building where Joseph Mengele worked. We walked past the rooms where unspeakable experiments took place. The building seems to scream.

What is it about evil that lives on 70 years after? How long does it take to become just another part of the innocent countryside? Hopefully it never happens. The inscription on the International Memorial says, "For ever let the place be a cry of despair and a warning to Humanity where the Nazis murdered one and a half million people". I am afraid humanity has forgotten this message. Africa is still ripped with violence and tribal warfare. The Middle East and the radical Muslim jihad against the Jews and Western civilization threatens to destroy what little "Peace" we have. It may not have gas chambers, there may not be another Auschwitz, but it isn't over. How do we sit by and ignore it? The fight must continue.

Show Notes

I had a moment Monday evening during Tech rehearsal that really brought it home. My bit was complete and I sat in the audience watching the 3rd act, which I really hadn't seen before. This time there was no facade. Everything showed. The high lift was to the right. The step ladder was to the left. None of the seating was in place. Cables were hanging here and there from the ceiling, and from the few seats that were place around the stage. All of the set was in place, but the floor wasn't painted and showed traces of the previous two shows here and there. The director making notes, the lighting board in the center, one row back, the props people making sure they knew what had to be where, the stage manager, even with a terrible cold, making sure all was running properly, the sound guy working on cues. And there were even a couple of actors on stage, giving great performances. An audience never gets to see all the people doing their job, all the hours and days and weeks it takes to make a script, words on a sheet of paper into a show that breaths, laughs and cries. But it really is a fugue, a concert given by all the players, all notes making the whole.

Hey, It's Not My Fault. The Babe DId It!

Our Sunday school class is discussing the "Bad Girls of the Bible." I've always found an attraction to bad girls. Case in point, my wife. But that is another discussion. Trying to get a take on the traditional evil girls of the bible has been a bit of a challenge. The book we are reading takes a very literal approach. If it was written in the Bible, that is exactly what happened. As a mostly modern guy, I find this rather hard to digest. Eve was tempted by the serpent, who said this and that, and as a result of that temptation, Eve ate the apple, tricked Adam into eating it (my interpretation, of course), thus sending man into the unending spiral of sin. The first one. Perfect before then. And we only had that one little fruit we were not supposed to eat. That seems really simple doesn't it? But then again, it was from the "Tree of Knowledge." We all want to be smart, but as smart as God? How could we resist that?

The apple is a metaphor for something we lost long ago. It is described in the Bible as a loss of innocence. Adam and Eve suddenly knew they were naked. Cain kills Able. The rest is history. Maybe it did happen this way. Perhaps there was an obelisk that appears one morning. We scratch ourselves, eat a bug from our neighbor and suddenly discover that if we take a stick, and whack him on the head, he dies. (Ask any SciFi geek if you need help on that one.) We really don't need an apple to pull it off, to become who we really are. 

Maybe we are who we are. Maybe we are just animals. At least we were before we got the idea that our actions make a difference in the world. There was a time when we whacked somebody's head it just was something we did. Only when we developed the ability to realize that whacking heads resulted in our friends or mates disappearing from our lives that we though perhaps there is a better way. And we found a better way when enough us stopped whacking heads long enough to form a tribe, a village, and a nation. I hope we find a way real soon to stop whacking nations.

Thanksgiving 2013

Thanksgiving 2013

Before I go any further, I want to make something perfectly clear. I like Wegman's. For those of you who may not know the name, it is what you might call the Cadillac of grocery stores. A real "If we don't have it, you don't need it kind of place." Rita and I had the opportunity to go to the Mechanicsburg Wegman's on Sunday. Most any day, there is a certain guilty pleasure that goes along with me when I go. Walk in and you are assaulted with the sights and sounds of just about every market of the world, without the livestock. The bakery is pumping out delicious aromas of cinnamon and nuts toasted perfectly under 3 pounds of sugar coating. You turn the corner into the produce sections and your eyes are assaulted by the bright reds, yellows, and greens of the freshest vegetables you can find. One display has Dragon Fruit from Vietnam of all places. I still have a hard time getting my mind around something from there that does not explode, or is MIA, or is a Dove or a Hawk. We'll save that for another day. There is romanesque, which is an unusual clump of green and pale green that sort of looks like cauliflower but greener and more delicate and mysterious. Turns out is a flower bud with vitamins. We never had that at the Brogue store.

We could go on, but I would only repeat superlatives in just about every department, from fish (the smoked one with head and fins still attached stands out), to crackers (why we need more than Wheat Thins escapes me.)

So here we stand on the cusp of Thanksgiving, and boy do I have a lot to be thankful for. My wife is the best and after almost 39 years, we are still buddies. My kids aren't kids anymore, but they have turned out to be as different as night and day, and somehow they have seemed to have successfully made it to adulthood (close anyway) without driving me totally crazy. And my Grandkids are the best fun I've had since my kids were small. And we can send them home. My extended family, Mom and Dad, 2 brothers and 4 sisters, 8 nephews and nieces, and 13 of the last generation still manages to get together a Mom's on a regular basis. Forty Four of us all together, counting the in-laws. We aren't all there every Sunday, but over a month, you see them all. And we like each other.

I have a bounty before me, food, family and friends, and Wegman's. I rejoice. But deep down inside, I hear another voice. One that reminds me to temper my joy by remembering those less fortunate. Remember those who won't have a Thanksgiving feast of abundance. Those who find that no matter how hard they try, each day is a burden they may not be able to survive.

Perhaps we should suppress those feelings. Cover them up with a little more joy, a little more food, and a little more wine. I hope not. I hope we show real Thanksgiving by taking the extra step to support the food banks, the soup kitchens, the clothes closet. And not just at Thanksgiving, but for the 364 days after November 28.