Clintonaut

Images I Like: Sharks

Sharks at the Florida Aquarium in Tampa.  

Images I Like: Summer in Florida

The clouds we get in Florida when the rainy season -- that's summer -- starts are fantastic.  I love the clouds, I love that they tower over us.  They're beautiful.

Robert Caro at Work

Just some great visuals from the New York Times on Robert Caro, who is about to publish a biography of Lyndon Johnson.  

Of course, the pictures are really less about Mr. Caro than his work and where he works.  You already know my affinity for the spaces in which we do our work and our writing -- it's just really cool to see where someone like this puts together Pulitzer-winning work.   

The Good Old Days: Fun with Pictures Part III

It's no Texts from Hillary, but...

That is actually one of the few pictures of myself I sort of like.  I'm not a fatass, I still have hair, and I have a good hair cut.  And my suit fits, and I'm not wearing an idiotic tie.  

Oh, and I'm standing with the First Lady of the United States.  Pretty awesome, right?  Yeah, this is another one with the ex-wife cropped out.  You'll find this is a theme in many of my photos with the Clintons.  What can I tell you: it was the '90s.  I was married to someone I am no longer married to.  There's going to be some cropped photos.  

I honestly don't remember when this was.  I'm guessing late 1996, or early 1997.  I'm still able to suck in the gut with apparent relative ease, but it really is the hair that's the giveaway.  

This would be when I was still working for the Drug Czar, around the time General McCaffrey came on board as the Director.  That was a great job, and I learned a lot.  About a year later I'd go work for the First Lady in the White House Millennium Council.  That was an interesting job, and tough, but not because of her.  

By the way, I'm not posting these pictures because I love to look at myself, or because I like to brag or something.  That's not it at all.  

I am proud of the time I spent in Washington, DC, and the amazing things I got to do, and the remarkable people I got to meet.  I guess that's the point: it's just sort of visual proof that a goofy kid like me can go to a place like Washington, work in a place like the White House, and it all really happened.  

I think a lot of folks think about Washington, DC and politics and the highest levels of government, and they think about super-smart people, highly competent, maybe brilliant.  There's truth to that, but none of those things describe me.  The only thing I was ever able to rely on during my entire Washington tenure was the fact that I was willing to work hard -- harder than any of my peers, if I had to.

I guess these pictures are just a form of validation of that work.

The Best Liar You Know

I visit Terribleminds every day.  If you are interested in writing even a little bit, you should, too.  It is an indispensable resource.  And kind of fun, too.

The other day, Chuck's list was 25 Lies Writer's Tell -- and it hit me: I tell, or have told, every single on of them.  

I-don't-have-time is the biggie for me.  And to be fair to me, time is something of a premium around here.  To be even more fair to me, Chuck is already a professional freelance writer.  Writing is where his time is dedicated, and that's great.

For me -- for most of us -- we've got an 8:30 to 5:30 job to grind out.  That doesn't include commute time.

Chuck has made the valid point in the past that you have to find and/or make your own time.  Got a regular job?  Wake up at 4:00 in the morning and get it done.  Or stay up until midnight.  A lot of folks do it.

Anyway, I've been thinking about how my time has been spent lately -- probably because with the arrival of Finnegan in a few weeks, it will be reorganized for me.  We'll see what I can make out of that.

The Good Old Days: Fun With Pictures Part II

Because this was sort of fun last time I did it:

To answer several questions: yes, that is a cool tie I'm wearing.  Yes, that is a limited edition Peter Max pin I'm wearing.  It's based on his famous poster, "100 Clintons."  Can't remember where I got it -- it may be that my parents got it for me, somehow.  But it is one of the few true treasures I have from that time (aside from memories and corny photos).  I never wear it out.  

Yes, there was a time when my hair was so long, it curled a bit.  

That would be either Christmas '96 or '97.  I only know that because, as you may have noticed, Clinton is cropped awfully tight over there on his left.  That would be where my ex-wife is standing (I mean, now ex-wife.  She was just my wife back then.)  

I know.  Awkward.  

Still, it's a pretty good picture of me and the boss.

This is still my favorite, though:

That's me shaking hands with the boss in 1999, as I'm leaving the White House Millennium Council and going to the best job I had in government and in the Clinton Administration: the U.S. Department of Justice's United States Parole Commission.  

He thanked me for my service in the Office of the First Lady, and I'm sure I said something dumb.  What the photographer didn't get was, as he started to pull away, he kind of kept a grip on my hand, leaned way in to me, locked into my eyes and almost whispered, take good care of Mike.  Mike Gaines was the Commission Chairman, a fellow Arkansan and a long-time friend and staffer of the President, even back to the days when he was Governor.  

When I told Chairman Gaines that story, he laughed out loud and said, "Yeah, he probably meant 'take care of,' like, Mafia-style!'" and did his fingers like a gun.  God, I loved that job. 

Red Base 7

It's flash fiction from Chuck Wendig's Terribleminds.  This time around we had to choose from a handful of settings and set our 1,000 word story there.  

I'll tell you right now, as tempting as "Abandoned Amusement Park" was, I had to go with "Lunar Brothel".

Enjoy.

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My girls had planned on taking me on board the Scimitar for drinks tonight  It's my birthday.  My birthday, and the birthday of Red Base 7 -- we share a birthday.  Red's only a little older than me.

The Scimitar is a Basto warship, Thenian Class Destroyer, but they have one of the best bars in the quadrant.  And as it happens, they're docked in Neptune’s Station R-73, close enough that we can zip-jump it.  We don't have to cryo-sleep, which is important, because when you're my age, you can't.  They won't let you anymore.  

Not that you'd necessarily want to.

Doesn’t matter.  I'm stuck here for the night.  Praetorians from Squadron Seven are already on their way to investigate.  

The girls are in our mess hall, at the other end of Red Base 7 – we call her Red, because after all, she’s one of us.  The mess hall is where we spend most of our time, and where the girls spend most of their time when I'm not around, talking gossiping.  Living as best they can on such an obscure base.  I'm glad they're in the mess hall.  It’ll give me a chance to walk through one more time, talk to her, commune with her like I’ve done for so many years, now.

Secluded as we are, Red usually gets decent traffic.  She's quiet, for now.  Probably will be for at least a couple of days.  The Praetorian Police will quarantine it for at least two days, of that I’m sure.

I get up and start to leave the deck – it’s like the deck of a ship, but we never go anywhere.  Most of us don’t like it in here, never even bother to come in here.  On other bases like ours, everything is automated.  Red was built before the Robot Synergism, so you still have mostly useless rooms like the deck.

I suppose it wasn’t useless earlier today.

I look at the monitors, dark now.  I don’t want to look at them anymore.   

Past the deck is the first hall -- the low-rent rooms.  They’re our cheapest, but they’re still nicer than some of the new ones I’ve seen, all white rubber and slick surfaces.  The cheap rooms have a nice bed, a couch, and a small kitchenette.  There are six of them, and I consider poking my head in Number 4.  It was my first room so many years ago. 

And like most girls, my first time was a miner.  Just a kid from the Vilaxian District, not much older than I was, if at all.  He had the two hundred credits – two hundred, at the time, all those years ago – for the thirty minutes, so we had sex and he spent the rest of the time talking to me about his days in dark caves mining iridite ore and Paravan-52 dust.

I skip looking in on Number 4.  I remember it, anyway.  

Nana T was never a greeter, but like the girls here, that’s how I started out.  I’m in the entryway now, and I am reminded again of my first day.

Low, red lights coming off the docking stations.  There’s always been a red light here in the foyer.  It’s big, and white, and soft, and the red light gives it a welcoming glow, a nice, easy glow.

The girls are still in the mess.  I can hear them at the end of the hall, talking in low whispers.  They know what’s coming.

She was beautiful, Katja.  I loved her the way Nana T loved me.  I was sure she was going to take over for me when I left or died.

Katja had come from the Aurealian Sector, the Lumin District.  She was perfect, and I hired her on the spot.  

She brushed a strand of her long, brown hair away from her face, never stopped engaging me with her gorgeous, perfect brown eyes.  

So do I have the job, Miss Marnie?

Yes, I said, breathless, yes, you have the job, love.  She smiled, bit her lip, and gently carressed her breast for an instant as she put her shirt back on.  

Now I only know what I saw the monitors showed me on the deck.

I thought the rumors about Booster G where bullshit.  It’s a new go-drug, you don’t have to wait for juice. 

But it’s got some nasty side effects.  He was a miner.  And I thought he looked funny when I saw him come through the foyer, drop his credit in the slot by the door, and get assigned Katja’s door.  I should have known.  I should have stopped him.

The monitor.  It was horrible.  His muscles should have been thin and limp.  Instead he had a giant fist gripping her hands together above her head, another hand on her mouth.  She couldn’t scream. 

They weren’t kidding about Booster G.  His eyes, though, were the worst, a sickly gold, ears and nose bleeding with the pressure of his bulging, straining muscles. 

He tore her to shreds, even after I gassed the room – a precaution all greeter bases have.

There’s another precaution the new bases don’t have that we do. 

See, Red’s four hundred years old – just a little older than me, cryo-sleep Earth years – and she was built during the Domker Reita Invasions.  You never knew when you’d get one of those shape-shifting little fuckers in your room.  They’d eat you alive.  The rooms are off the main hall, like leaves on a tree.  And each of the rooms was built with an independent ignition and ejection switch, which no one – not Nana T, not me – had ever had to launch.

Until today.

That fucker is floating out in space, somewhere.  He’s long out of oxygen if the Booster G didn’t kill him.

The Praetorians will take me, I’m sure of it.  One last walk down the low-lit red corridor to the mess hall to be with my girls.   

Breakfast to Cure What Ails You, and the Story of Petit Jean

This is a story I shared at work a few years ago when we were kicking the tires on some software that allows us to share documents, calendars, that kind of thing.  It's really a recipe -- the idea was to share recipes, but since I'm a lousy cook, I just told a story instead.  It's not actually my story, just my telling of it.

For anyone that knows my eating habits now, yes, the bacon thing is only based in memory -- I'm still doing the no red meat, no pork products deal.  As Chavet might say, cest la vie.   

Enjoy.

# # # # 

The recipe: 

You'll need two decent size eggs, and probably more because there's a good chance at least one will end up on the floor. 

Petit Jean Mountain Hickory Smoked Thick Sliced Bacon.  If you think anything else will do, you're crazy.   

Toast.  White bread.  Preferably Wonder Bread. 

Salt.  Pepper.  Butter.  

A pot of coffee and some orange juice. 

The directions: 

 You need a black iron skillet for this recipe.  Don't use a Calphalon no-stick thing, don't use a wok.  If you do, I don't want to know about it.   

I use a black iron skillet that was used by my great-aunt Hebe.  She and my great-uncle were like grandparents to us.  They'd have me and my little brother and little sister over on weekends, and they'd cook us breakfast.  My Aunt Hebe was one of the last great southern cooks.  If it wasn't cooked in bubbling-hot pork fat, it wasn't cooked.   

Take your black iron skillet and heat it up.   Now, you have to use Petit Jean bacon.  I'm not kidding.  

Petit Jean, by the way, is a mountain northwest of Little Rock near a town called Morrilton.  I went to Camp Mitchell on that mountain at least a couple of times.  My family has been there many more. 

Some time in the 1700s, there was a French explorer named Chavet.  He sought permission from the King to explore the New World, which the King -- hearing tales of riches and wild wonders -- granted.  Chavet was engaged to be married to a beautiful and adventurous young Frenchwoman named Adrienne.  

Adrienne begged to go with Chavet on his wild adventure, and Chavet, citing the treachery and danger of the journey, said "No."

Adrienne was not one to take "no" for an answer.  She disguised herself as a boy and joined Chavet's crew as a cabin boy.  On board, the crew called her Petit Jean -- Little John -- and not even Chavet recognized her.  It was a pretty awesome disguise. 

That spring they made their way to the New World, went around the southern tip of Florida, up the Mississippi River, and landed near the foot of the mountain.  The Native American people greeted them, and for the rest of the year they stayed on the mountaintop overlooking what would someday become Arkansas.   

When fall approached, they prepared the ship for the return journey to France, bid the Native Americans farewell, and descended the mountain.  The night before they were to leave, Petit Jean -- Adrienne -- fell quite ill.   

Her true identity was discovered and she confessed her whole scheme to a distraught Chavet.  She asked that if she died, she be buried at the peak of the mountain where they'd spent such a wonderful summer with the Native Americans.  Later that night, she died in Chavet's arms.   

There is still a mound on Petit Jean which marks "Petit Jean's Grave."   That's the story of Petit Jean.

It's a pretty good story, and pretty good bacon.  When you throw a few slices into the heated skillet, it'll sizzle real nice.  Take it out when it's brown.   

You'll see a virtual lake of grease in the skillet, easily a quarter inch worth.  Crack open two eggs and let them soak up as much grease as they can.  I like mine over medium.   

Don't forget to toast the toast, pour some coffee and a glass of juice (because something in this meal has to be good for you).   

As you take a bite of bacon, chased with some egg and a sip of coffee, you can think about poor, lonely Chavet, sailing back to France, heartbroken, and who knows: maybe you'll feel just a little bit better.

 

Saint Patrick's Day

Happy Saint Patrick's Day, everyone.  Sláinte.

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At That Hour

At that hour when all things have repose, 
O lonely watcher of the skies, 
Do you hear the night wind and the sighs 
Of harps playing unto Love to unclose 
The pale gates of sunrise? 

When all things repose, do you alone 
Awake to hear the sweet harps play 
To Love before him on his way, 
And the night wind answering in antiphon 
Till night is overgone? 
Play on, invisible harps, unto Love, 
Whose way in heaven is aglow 
At that hour when soft lights come and go, 
Soft sweet music in the air above 
And in the earth below. 

James Joyce

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Where My Brain Lives (A Note on Inspiration)

Professionally, I live in a world that is consumed daily by events.  It is largely a world of reactions.  What's in the newspaper, what is happening nationally, locally, even just down the hall.  Who said what to who, why, and when.  What do our board members want?  What do the executives need that day, that week, that hour?  We traffic in information, horse trade bits of news, cobble together coalitions based on intelligence and our own experiences.

Makes trying to schedule anything interesting.

It also makes it hard to think about stories, or a story.  Usually if I have an idea, I try to tuck it into the back of my mind, like a seed, and let it germinate.  I compartmentalize.  I can't just sit at work and daydream about stories -- or a story -- all day.  

Sometimes, though, it's hard to find where you planted that seed at the end of the day.  After all, if it's been a long, productive day of pumping out advocacy in the advocacy factory, that ground can be pretty well stomped down.

It can take a little inspiration to remind you of where you need to be, where to get your head.  

The inspiration today was a little girl with skinned knees and a woodpecker.

Alright, so here's the drill.

Get home, get out of the car.  Better hurry, because the hundred and ten pound Great Dane can't contain himself (asshole).  He'll tear shit up if you don't get inside and pet his ass, calm him down just a bit.  Which is only buying yourself a little time.

Hug Emmy, hug Duncan.  Kisses all around.  Coffee mug to counter, bag on the chair, and go for the quick-change.  Out of the pants, shirt and tie, into the short, sneakers, and t-shirt.  Stinky baseball hat if you can find it.

Why are you in such a goddam hurry?  Because the dog doesn't do well if he doesn't get a walk.

I know what you're saying: screw the dog.  He'll get over it.

No.  No he won't.  110-pound Great Danes don't "get over it."  They get all up in your griddle.  

Think about it.

At any rate, Emmy and I were on our walk tonight, and I was worried about Duncan (33+ weeks pregnant), and hassled and wanting to get home.  Emmy was wearing a pretty dress, and I always make her hold my hand when we cross the street or driveway entrances, because I'm a pretty okay parent.

She likes to goof off -- no idea where she gets it -- and was kind of walking funny, lost her balance, and skinned her knees pretty good.  

And as I as sitting with her, calming her down, a little worried because her one knee looked a little rough, we heard it.  We heard it together, the familiar rap-rap-rap-rap-rap-rap of a woodpecker.  

"What dat?" her favorite question.

I told her it was a woodpecker, and we looked around for it until we found it.  There it was, in a tall palm, just across the street.  Her crying stopped immediately, and she listened for it again.  

rap-rap-rap-rap-rap-rap-rap

And then she saw it.  I am sure there are things more inspiring than the face of a child discovering something for the first time -- Really?  A fuckin' bird that bangs it's head against a tree all day?  Seriously?  No way! -- but I don't know what it is.

The story I'm working on is about family, and it's about discovery.  Sort of self discovery, and not of the good kind, but of discovery, nonetheless.  

I owe Emmy one for getting my head straight today.  Her knees will be okay.  And maybe tomorrow, if we're both lucky, we'll discover something new.