Every day of retirement?

When I retired, I expected that henceforth I would never miss a day of blogging. But a few late evenings of desperation, when I was tired from turf-turding, or just tired, or empty of inspiration—perhaps because I had some inspiration earlier in the day but made the mistake of ignoring it for later—have taught me that my daily post had better not be forced. Writing something because I "should" or because I promised myself I would hasn't done it for me.
    Posts I've written for those reasons likely haven't done it for anyone else either, for I suspect that even some posts I've written and really liked didn't do it for anyone else, but only for me.
    It would be too sad for a post not to do it for anyone at all.

Another movie tie-in to current events

As the black humor of Adam's Apples reflected the unruly weirdness of the Biblical basis of support for the marriage amendment, so did the plot line of the 2011 movie Margin Call reflect (or at least bring strongly to mind) the plot of the recently reported failure of JPMorgan Chase.

Margin Call (2011: J.C. Chandor) [Follows the key people at an investment bank, over a 24-hour period, during the early stages of the financial crisis] [E] 5-2?-2012

    New York Times movie critic A. O. Scott wrote on October 20, 2011 ("Number Crunching at the Apocalypse") that

There have been reports of hurt feelings among the bankers and brokers who have been the focus of public ire and Occupy Wall Street protests. And it is true that those poor, hard-working souls have been demonized and caricatured. Surely the much-reviled 1 percent does not consist of plutocrats in top hats or predators in blue suits, but of human beings just like the other 99 percent of us, albeit with more money and perhaps more to answer for.
    That, in a way, is the message of J. C. Chandor’s Margin Call, which does a great deal to humanize the authors—and beneficiaries—of the 2008 financial crisis. But the film, relentless in its honesty and shrewd in its insights and techniques, is unlikely to soothe the wounded pride of the actual or aspiring ruling class. It is a tale of greed, vanity, myopia, and expediency that is all the more damning for its refusal to moralize.

    To what extent greed, vanity, myopia, and expediency played roles in the recent failure, I'm not able to say, not being much of an observer of such matters. I'm just saying.
    And recommending Margin Call as an excellent film deserving of your serious attention and cinematic enjoyment. It's blackly comic, too, in a way.

How to slice & peel a mango (in that order)

Yes, slice a mango before peeling it. In previous years I peeled first, and doing that with but a single mango should have been enough to tell me that that isn't the right approach. Instead, I kept trying to learn how to slice a peeled mango without launching it across the room (or cutting myself).
    I guess it was my inability to slice without launching (or without coming perilously close to cutting a finger) that led me to try a whole new approach, as shown in this series of chronological photographs taken this very evening:

A perfectly soft mango (softening accelerated by the
mango's having been enclosed in a paper bag,
to collect the ethylene exhaled by its skin)

I've sliced the right half away from the mango's fibrous seed

Now both sides have been sliced away from the seed
(shown in the lower left)

Ooh, I forgot; at this point I do a bit of peeling,
of the skin around the narrow perimeter of the seed
(sometimes I get a single long piece of skin, but not this time)

Now I've sliced away the flesh from around the seed edges

And I've sliced one side into eight segments

...and wrapped the other half for having in the morning

Now I've sliced the side segments
(and already put the skin into the compost collecting container)

I've halved my wife's segments,
arrayed them casually on a small plate, and
provided a round toothpick for dainty eating

Now I've added eight large strawberry halves to her plate

The chef likes to delectate over smaller pieces,
and to do so still in the kitchen, off the cutting board

And now for some relieving laughter

Now that we've had a moment of silence (and removed our black arm bands) following Tuesday's election, let's indulge in some weird laughter by watching the 2005 Danish film

Adams æbler [Adam's Apples] (2005: Anders Thomas Jensen) [In this black comedy, a utopian clergyman finds his starry-eyed outlook challenged by a neo-Nazi ordered to perform community service at his church.] [E] 5-9-2012

The operative words in that brief description from Netflix are black comedy. The film, writes New York Times movie critic Matt Zoller Seitz (in his review "Religion with Guns," published March 15, 2007)

The clergyman (Mads Mikkelsen)
and Adam (Ulrich Thomsen)

is one of the latest examples of the post-Pulp Fiction bloody comedy [Pulp Fiction is one of my all-time favorite movies]. It's also one of the weirdest, mixing glib humor with dead-serious spiritual inquiry.

    My wife and I actually watched it the day after the election, so we had our laughter prior to putting on our black arm bands on Thursday. The movie and the passage of "Amendment One" in North Carolina do have one thing in common—weird. Well, two—religion also.
    But, then, religion is weird. You justify voting for the Defense of Marriage Act by quoting Leviticus 18:22, which states that homosexuality is an abomination, but you conveniently ignore

• Leviticus 11:20^*, which says the same thing about eating shellfish,
• Leviticus 25:44, which states that you may possess slaves,
• Exodus 21:7, which permits you to sell your daughter into slavery,
• Leviticus 19:27, which forbids you (if you're a man) from having your hair trimmed,
• Leviticus 11:6-8, which forbids you to play football [well, literally, it says that touching the skin of a dead pig makes you unclean],
• Leviticus 24:10-16, which requires that you stone your neighbor to death if he curses and blasphemes,
• Leviticus 20:14, which requires you to burn people to death if they sleep with their in-laws....

The black humor is pretty thick here too.
    Still, I recommend Adam's Apples if you like black comedy in film and are looking for an excellent one. (By the way, every time the Bible that the clergyman gave Ivan falls onto the floor, it falls open to the first page of the Book of Job.)
_______________
* I didn't check all of these references (I break out in a rash when I open the Book of Leviticus), but just used them as I found them, in a humorous letter to Dr. Laura Schlesinger written by James M. Kauffman, Ed.D., Professor Emeritus Dept. of Curriculum, Instruction, & Special Education at the University of Virginia. Dr. Schlesinger had said on her radio show [I am told by my friend Jason Jolley]

that homosexuality is an abomination, according to Leviticus 18:22, and cannot be condoned by an observant Orthodox Jew under any circumstance.

A moment of silence, please

‎"All the fools in town are on our side—that's a majority anywhere."
–Mark Twain, The Man Who Corrupted Hadleysburg

Put on your black arm band

"A setback for human rights and dignity," as a headline in today's Durham Herald-Sun put it. Sixty percent of North Carolina voters had somehow voted for "Amendment One," or the so-called "Defense of Marriage Act" (DOMA).
    In the column beneath that heading, Chris Fitzsimon, the executive director of North Carolina Policy Watch, explained the outcome this way:

Polls showed that the amendment would pass in large part because the vast majority of voters did not understand what the amendment actually would mean, how many lives it would affect, how many laws it would threaten, how many families it would hurt.

    Judging by the many Bible-thumping letter-writers who got their diatribes printed in newspapers in the weeks leading up to Tuesday's election, I think it's fair to say that the voters they represented didn't give a jot or a tittle about any of that.
    If the amendment didn't pass because of ignorant (intellectually aberrant) voters, it may have passed because of the Bible-adherent, morally abhorrent ones.  (Hmm, enough rhymes here for a limerick or two....)
_______________
Mr. Fitzsimon's text can be found on the NC Policy Watch website under the title "The morning after and the morning after that," dated yesterday.
    Thanks to my friend Mr. Tom Lowe for the Mark Twain quote.

Mebane, NC's famous teenager

Fourteen-year-old Jake Foushee, of Mebane, North Carolina, came to my attention only recently, but his voice has been in the news for about a month. Listen and you'll understand how that could be.

Stay alive...dance!

About a month ago, while I was still commuting to work (that is, before I retired), I happened one day to ask a passenger sitting in the seat ahead of me whether he'd ever been told that he looked like the actor Bob Balaban. He said he hadn't, but that was an interesting thought.
    A few minutes later, he turned to me and said that because I seemed to be knowledgeable about movies (how many people have heard of Bob Balaban?), he wanted to tell me about this terrific video on YouTube. "Someone has done a collage of Rita Hayworth dancing with different people, and set the whole thing to the Bee Gees' song 'Stayin' Alive'."
     I finally got around to watching (and listening to) it today. It is terrific, and I think you'll like it too. Right now. Not a month from now.

Up against a wall of hats

It's fun today to remember the fun we were having on February 26, in the colorful shops of Pescadero, California.
    There's a self-portrait in there somewhere. (Wearing the cheesy grin.)

Those dull, blank eyes

When I told a friend of M. Scott Peck's line about the eyes of "people of the lie" ("...hooded with reptilian torpor....," [People of the Lie (1985), p. 196], he said

that's the classic look of the crocodiles in Africa as they swim toward you. They don't rush, they don't show expression. They just give you a look that says "you mean nothing to me but food and I am coming to eat you and there is nothing you can do about it."

    In workplaces characterized by reptilian disregard for employees among the positionally powerful, the help are advised to get out of the water.

Modern face of a katydid

A caryatid (Greek: Καρυάτις)
was a sculpted female figure
used in architecture;
a katydid is a cricket 

When I was pointed out^* to the new white lady
by the old, a Judas look passed between them
that I didn't register then. I was distracted—maybe

I could come to think her comely, she was tall and slim,

the bridge of her nose had something in it Greek,
and her buggy eyes—didn't Socrates also stare?
But soon I came to see that no lamplight peeked

from inside out, nothing gleamed, no brilliance flared,

no love radiated from her unsmiling mouth;
no light, no nurture, no glistening from that face.
An agenda had been given her, her project set.

Rilke himself could not have seen a glow within
her eyes—so dull and blank. There was no place
that really saw me. My choice to retire was a given.
_______________
* January 17, 2012, in the Board Room
[Follow-up]

Is today Saturday?

Today's the sixth day of retirement, and every one of them has seemed like Saturday. It's a good thing, except I'm never sure which column to take my pills from.
    Today is Saturday, isn't it?

Speaking of memory, I spent about an hour this morning going through most of the rest of the boxes I brought home from the office. One of the items I found was my leather-binder collection of congratulatory letters written to me and presented on the occasion of my 25th anniversary at IBM (January 16, 1992), where I remained another five years.
    I hadn't looked at them for twenty years. The comments that struck me the most were thanks for my cheerfulness, helping people, sharing everything, professionalism. They were, by and large, of the same sort I have received lately from my colleagues at the University. Very touching. But sad, too—not because I'm retired now and can't be cheerful or helpful or sharing or professional any more. I can still be all that, and I'm sure I will be, for though I may have become a bit cynical over the past few years (I think it's true), I'm basically who I am and can't change the fact that I'm cheerful, optimistic, helpful, etc.
    But being reminded how much other people appreciate these things has made me more thoughtful, more aware of an excellent reason to be cheerful and so on. That is, aside from the immediate personal satisfaction I derive from it all.

Now, after my second retirement, I'm more aware than ever that what matters most is our present moments and what we do and who we are in each of them, one by one. I hugged my wife when I came in from the garage and told her so. I almost wept.
    I've consigned all those letters of twenty years ago to the recycling bin (along with scores and scores of letters and postcards from a number of people—including school friends Jon Price, Chuck Smythe, Jim Carney, Bill Silveira, high school teachers Morris Knudsen, Lois Thompson, Al King, sisters Patsy, Flo, Anna, Mary, Mama, cousins Billy Charles Duvall, Lisa Duvall Carter, friends Thom Green, Lucia McKay, Harriet Mabbutt, Sverre Vik, Barry Wright, new Bulgarian relatives Veska & Jordan Ravnopolski, Milka K...as well as several other letter writers whose names didn't even dredge up a face at this point. It was such a walk down memory lane, it hurt after a while.
    Two things are interesting to me about the cache of letters.
    First, what were they doing in my office? I'm still thinking about that one. But I imagine that the answer will provide justification enough for letting go of them now.
     Second, the letters were from roughly the same period, with its 25th Yale Class Reunion in June 1989, Youie Summer, its aftermath of Chronic Fatique Syndrome the following year, our son's marriage and departure for Bulgaria. At times, life has taken its toll of me, and it may be taking a toll now.
    I reckon I'll find out.

Before & after retirement

I learned today that I am still listed as a staff member on the University of North Carolina website. And not only that, but my website authority is still intact.  So I did some updating:

Before:

Morris Dean
State Coordinator of the UNC Academic Common Market
[telephone number]
Mr. Dean coordinates the Southern Regional Education Board’s Academic Common Market for the State of North Carolina and manages the UNC Academic Common Market website.  He edits reports and other documents for presentation or publication, prepares presentation slides for staff members, and designs, prints, and electronically scans student survey instruments and other questionnaires for data capture. He is also a web content manager for Academic Affairs and gives special attention to the webites of the UNC Faculty Assembly, the UNC-GA Staff Forum, and Study North Carolina.

After:

Morris Dean
Retired [effective May 1, 2012]^*
For a number of years Mr. Dean coordinated the Southern Regional Education Board’s Academic Common Market for the State of North Carolina and managed the UNC Academic Common Market website.  He edited reports and other documents for presentation or publication and helped fellow staff members prepare presentation slides. He was also a web content manager for Academic Affairs and gave special attention to the webites of the UNC Faculty Assembly, the UNC-GA Staff Forum, and Study North Carolina.

_______________
* Actually, I didn't include the link from "Retired [effective May 1, 2012]."

Ken Marks: Bad managers as types in Dante's circles

[Ken and I go way back, to 1970's IBM in San Jose, California. Reading his cast of bad managers actually makes me feel less bad about my own recent experience. And I bet he could identify a few more types from among the dozen managers to which he alludes....]

Courtesy University of Texas at Austin
(lots of incisive graphics)

It's impossible for me to pick a single Bad Manager story. At least a dozen managers in my work history are Dantesque figures whose characters vary in all the textures of venality, timidity, pomposity, oafishness, and treachery that you might imagine. To pick one would be as capricious as awarding a Razzie for worst movie of the year. But maybe you'll permit me to offer a sample.

Do you have a bad-manager story?

Yesterday I told my most recent "bad-manager story." I said there were innumerable such stories told by workers all over the world. Surely you have one. If you do, let's hear it.
    To get us started, here's one provided by a woman who prefers to remain anonymous:

Another crazy bitch. There is a truism, I guess you'd call it: People take jobs because of the company reputation and leave jobs because of their manager. I've probably worked at 20 different jobs since college and had one really great manager, a few tolerable ones, a few not so great ones, and maybe three truly horrendous ones. One had been reported to HR many, many times and continued her absolutely unconscionable management style—for instance screaming at one of my employees in the middle of the work area. I asked her to apologize to my employee. She went up to my employee, again in front of everyone, and said, "I heard you wanted me to apologize. You know how I am, get over it." She finally moved on to another company and we were all so happy...until they promoted from within and we got another crazy bitch in her place. Except this one did not acknowledge her own craziness and "unique" management style (at least the first one realized she was a pain in the ass). I left, the person that took my place left, one of the two other managers left, but almost everyone else is still there, trying to tough it out until the new crazy bitch moves on. I tried to give feedback to this woman's boss before I left but as long as the department is doing okay, he and the company are unconcerned with what they view as "personality conflicts."

Why I decided to retire

When it comes right down to it, my retirement story is utterly banal—one of the innumerable “bad-manager stories” told by workers all over the world. You just don't expect to have to tell such a story when you worked for a great university. But, then, maybe you don't expect to have to tell it when you worked for a great corporation. I have a similar story about IBM.
    Maybe we need to look at “great” and see what's missing.
    But that's for another time, or never.

I posted here on February 1 that I would announce my retirement officially later that day. The event that prompted the announcement took place the day before. When I called my wife immediately after it, we agreed that now was the time for me to leave. I initiated retirement proceedings the next day.
    So, what was  “the event”? I characterized it on April 1 by quoting from the movie and Kathryn Stockett's novel, The Help:  “The white ladies aren't your friend.”

No, the white ladies weren't my friend.

    On January 31 my supervisor required me to meet with her and a member of her Human Resources department. I say her HR department because it certainly isn't mine, or any other worker's. HR departments serve the white ladies (aka “The Man”), not the help.
    Both of these literally white ladies insisted that I stop working a half-hour a day at home, even after I explained the consequences—that I would have to stop commuting by collective van (whose timetable allowed me only eight hours total at work, including the mandatory half-hour for lunch) and start burning either a gallon of gasoline a day to catch the nearest bus or two gallons to drive to work and back. They showed not the least sympathy for the environment.
     Nor did it seem to matter to them that I have a tendency to doze off behind the wheel, a tendency exacerbated by surgery sixteen years ago to remove a tumor in my pineal gland. Fortunately, in the three months I complied while waiting for Retirement Day, I nodded off only twice—each time waking up in time to avoid colliding with another car or running off the freeway.
    Nothing doing, they said. They said—literally, in the case of the HR lady—that they don’t trust employees to actually work when unsupervised, and neither of them believed that much can be accomplished in a lone half-hour. These two white ladies had (and no doubt continue to have) a low opinion of employees generally.
    My supervisor's “cover story” was that she needed me there forty hours a week (not just 37.5) to “collaborate” with her and the rest of the team. To see how absurd that is, consider that she seemed to regard (and no doubt continues to regard) cooperation as something meant for employees to do with their supervisors, but not for supervisors to do with the help.

A third white lady was centrally involved in this, as it turns out.

    The same afternoon as the meeting, a friend overhead my supervisor's supervisor thanking the HR lady for her help with the meeting. It immediately appeared that the meeting had been a set-up, either to cow me into proper colored-maid servility or to actually hasten my departure. I could not in good conscience accept the first alternative.
    The third white lady had been my immediate supervisor for several months, during which time she finagled permission to create a position into which to recruit the new white lady, who had worked for her in their previous fiefdom. The new white lady finally arrived—precisely two weeks before she and the HR lady came down on me.

The third white lady was (and no doubt continues to be) a piece of work. Any self-respecting individual is naturally going to find it hard not to bridle when such a person climbs on his back. Minny and the other colored maids may have had more profound reasons to write about Miss Hilly (her campaign for bathroom sanitation) and the other white ladies for Miss Skeeter's book than I have to write about the conditions where I worked.
    But I worked for dozens of managers in my forty-five years “in the work force” and in all those years of course had a few bad ones. But until this chief white lady came along, I never had a manager who was so widely despised among the help as she seems to be.
     And also feared by those who, unlike me, have something to lose.

“We don't have any money,” the chief white lady had told a number of people who asked about a raise. No money for raises for the help, no, but money for raises to the supervisors, yes. And money, yes, to bring her protege into that tailor-made, cushy-salaried position.
    The chief white lady's management style seems to me to be rigidly top-town and authoritarian. She asks for information, you provide it. But don't expect any information in return.  And little thanks. As I told my colleagues in Atlanta two weeks ago, only commands come down and only servility is expected to go back up.

That's all I'll say for now about the chief white lady.
    On Monday, I sent her boss some additional information. I trust that he will investigate. I hope he can confirm my allegations and uncover more.
    “Don't ask HR to investigate for you,” I suggested.
    But what if these three white ladies are just what The Man wanted (and will continue to want)?
    What if all the help are going to get is a toilet in the garage?
   [Follow-up]