MuseLetter \’myüz-‘le-tər noun
1: a personal message, inspired by a muse of one's own creation, addressed to a person or organization, in the course of which, the sender becomes absorbed in thought; especially turning something over in the mind meditatively and often inconclusively.
2: a letter from a poet, or one who envisions oneself as such, in which he or she “muses” on that which is perceived to be news, or newsworthy, usually in some ironic or absurd way.
Whiteout
Intensely snowing
seeing silence
in the making
as if the world
is being
tucked in
put to sleep
and while somewhere
it is
stunningly sunny
we are all
not
on the same page
which starts out
wizardly white
awaiting
exacting explanation
forthcoming front
and center
yet
never arriving
unlike unending
snow
accusingly coming
down
holding
humanity hostage.
March Arriving
The low rumble through a heating vent
the lion roars at the door
behind which hibernation
is the better part of valor
people shuffling down below
climate change
hell has frozen over
black ice at the crossing
thick as thieves
undercutting the meek
the lamb of lame expectation
a snow job without shovel nor salt
to cast upon a winter's clinging
does anything spring eternal
other than this?
Former Burger King CEO
Remembers Jesse Jackson
In 1968 while at an ad agency on Madison Avenue, I became friends with an Account Executive, Jeffrey Campbell, whom I reconnected with just two years ago.
During his tenure as CEO at Burger King years later, he became a friend of the Reverend Jessie Jackson, who passed away this past February at age 84. In remembrance, Jeff recently posted on LinkedIn of that friendship with this legendary civil rights leader, and how it came to be. Which he has graciously allowed me to present in its entirety in this month's Muse.
Jeffrey Campbell is the Brinker Executive in Residence at the Payne School of Hospitality and Tourism at San Diego State University.
Remembering Jesse Jackson
The important work of the world does not wait upon perfect men.
George Eliot
I was pretty sure he was a bad guy.
Troublemaker, agitator, provocateur, fraud. I’d taken my attitude about him from the media and, when he came knocking at Burger King’s door in 1982, my inclination was to tell him to go pound sand.
Then, I was summoned to Minneapolis to get my marching orders from Bill Spoor, Chairman of the parent company, Pillsbury, and an astute and tough-minded senior executive.
I can still hear Bill’s voice in my mind’s ear 44 years later.
“You’ll give this a true college try. If you can make a deal with Jesse Jackson that you’re comfortable with, the Board will support you. If you decide you cannot, the Board will support that too. But you WILL give it a full college try.”
Got it, Boss.
At our first meeting at the University of Chicago in Hyde Park, Reverend Jackson asked me if he could open our session with a prayer. I agreed and he called on the Almighty to open the hearts of the men (us) across the table. We were down a touchdown, and the game had just started.
Before our second meeting in Washington D.C., I invited Herman Cain, our Regional VP for the area (who would run for President himself in 2012) to join us. Herman suggested that he open this second meeting with a prayer of his own. Reverend Jackson agreed and Herman got us back to even, with some serious Sunday preaching.
The subject of the negotiations amounted to answering the Reverend Jackson’s question: would it be fair to give black-owned businesses the opportunity to bid on procurement opportunities with Burger King? The goal would be to ultimately achieve the same percentage of our procurement revenue as the percentage of Burger King’s restaurant revenue generated by African American customers.
Seemed fair to me.
He also made it a point to say that those bidding firms should not be given any special concessions (other than the opportunity) because that kind of thing would inhibit them
from being truly competitive.
OK. Got it.
We moved ahead to see if we could make this happen. Jesse and Operation PUSH were very helpful, and I had a terrific guy in the company (Ollie Brown) who made things happen internally. Ollie Brown was a white guy, by the way…and his heart was totally in it.
Getting to that final agreement had been stressful on both sides, but we got there.
At one point, Jesse and I had nearly came to blows at the BK training facility, but cooler heads prevailed and, in the end - perhaps paradoxically - it became the root of our subsequent friendship.
The last time I saw him, the two of us had dinner at 21 on West 52nd Street.
The staff recognized him and asked the two of us if we wanted a tour of their “secret” wine cellar in the basement. It had been there since the days of Prohibition and regular raids by the police. There was a heavy door to be pushed open and then you were in a wine cellar that also served as a private dining room. The wine bottles had names on them. I remember one being Elizabeth Taylor’s.
In reflecting back on Jesse, I am drawn back to the first day I met him face-to-face in 1982
In Hyde Park.
We checked each other out, assessing, as men will do. I remember thinking at that moment that we were rough contemporaries (he was two years older) and had experienced some of the same things. But we also had – in more fundamental ways – had very different life experiences.
I remember wondering that day that, had we switched backgrounds and I was the 40-year-old black man, would have been making as many waves as Jesse?
I’d like to think so.
To me, Jesse Jackson was a force of nature and a man of his word.
Now, he’s another departed friend…alas.
May he rest in peace.
Quote of the Month
"Bad weather builds character. And even sometimes, a snowman."
— Francis Lawrence
Scenes from a Journal #4
After seeing P —a very upbeat energetic session—the day for a change had been mild at 40 +, I had the impulse to stop off at Paladino's for a martini and pastrami sandwiches to go. Which would serve as dinner for myself and J.
While in the bar, I jotted a few notes that could serve as the start of a poem. I haven't written many poems of late. Where once, when starting out, poems flowed out daily. It seemed everything was a poem. Not that they were any good. And mostly short.
After the pastrami dinner, I wrote a first draft of the poem. And made the mistake of reading it aloud to J. Is it ever a good idea to expose your work—or thoughts—to anyone before worked all the way through to completion? Especially to a spouse or partner? Probably never. Though I think a guy in my writing group does. Wonder what she thought of some of his macho-driven fantasies? Are they not? A young tall goodlooking man summoned to a far off place in space and time to deflower a dozen virgins? To plant his seed in each that they will bear the fruit of his stud labors? But onward.
I tried to make what I thought were innocuous observations I've made over the years while sitting at a bar. While people watching and self-watching. The first, is that when you think about it, we come to a bar to alter a mindset. As if an unaltered mind, in its natural state, needs to escape the grind of the everyday.
J took issue with this observation. Not everyone goes to a bar for that reason. Fair enough. Yet, in a bar, spirits are served. No? In lieu of just non-alcoholic drinks. As J is not a drinker she makes a case for ambiance. As too do I. We both remark on how artistic and stunning all those bottles of liquor look, so colorful and backlit behind a bar. All J could see in the poem though, was the abuse of alcohol. Drunkenness...barflies. I try to point out that the poem is inspired by a particular bar location: Grand Central Terminal. The "last train" etc. And yes, thoughts of death are apparent. And I, often thinking about death and existence, don't represent a universal sensibility when it comes to marrying, the sitting at a bar, with such thoughts....A simple observation winds up as a point of contention.
At its core, drinking alcohol will alter mood or mind in some way, no? But that said, maybe she does have a point. That my poem could be leaning too far in the in the direction of implying dependence on alcohol.
I returned to the poem and made wholesale changes...as potential readers may take away certain aspects never intended. And maybe my mind was on one track (pun intended) when I wrote it. I got to bed at almost 3:30 AM
This morning at the laptop, I made still further adjustments to the poem. Which as invariably happens with anything I write, becomes a labor. And not one of love. With all of this as preamble, the poem follows.
At Grand Central Terminal Bar
Do geese see God?
Perhaps, but not as we do;
not through some palindrome
but sometimes just sitting at a bar
a realm full of spirits
in backlit saintly glory
that could all turn satanic
if over-summoned in our prayers.
And in here we sit and sip
transfixed by them
contemplating at times
the hereafter…a few.
Have we ever been
fully at peace?
Do geese see peace?
Or just a piece of us at this place
where we come for a tuneup
of mood and mind
or even at times
a transportation.
Something to lift up our souls
to help us forget
we’ll be on that last train going out
before you know it.
o
The Pervasiveness of Ghosting
While the term "ghosting" whooshed in on the culture almost 20 years ago, and the reaction to it being as if this was something new in the course of human encounter, or dis-encounter, especially among the young... was not Adam and Eve's banishment from Eden, Absolute Max Ghosting?! Though as Merriam Webster defines it (since 2017), it is the act or practice of abruptly cutting off all contact with someone (such as a former romantic partner) usually without explanation by no longer accepting or responding to phone calls, instant messages, etc.
If you go back somewhere between 29 and 19 BC you find a classic case of ghosting in Virgil’s epic poem, The Aeneid. As related verbatim by a search I recently did, it goes something like this:
Aeneas, a Trojan hero, is shipwrecked in Carthage. He meets Queen Dido, and the two fall deeply in love. Dido views their relationship as a marriage; Aeneas enjoys the hospitality and the romance while his ships are being repaired.
The gods remind Aeneas that his true destiny is found in Rome; not to stay in Africa. Instead of sitting Dido down for a difficult conversation, Aeneas secretly prepares his fleet to leave in the middle of the night. And this ensues:
-
Dido finds out and confronts him, essentially asking, "Are you really just going to leave without saying anything?"
-
Aeneas offers a cold, "It's not you, it's the gods" explanation, (sound familiar guys?) claiming he never actually promised her marriage.
-
The Result: As his ships sail away, Dido builds a funeral pyre, curses Aeneas (setting the stage for the Punic Wars), and takes her own life. (Source: Google AI)
Beyond dating, affairs of the heart and friendships in general, the ghosting trend has even expanded to professional, “workplace ghosting.” A recent piece on the subject noted that 78% of job seekers have ghosted employers, and 40% of employers have ghosted applicants, a significant increase from previous years.
I've thought that there has got to be a kinder, gentler and yes, even friendlier way of going about this ghosting thing. I imagined... Casper-ghosting?
Of course unbeknownst to me at the time of my imagineering this, "Caspering" as a concept, does already exist. It's a "gentle form of ghosting in the dating world where a person gradually fades out of a romantic connection in lieu of disappearing abruptly.... This approach involves responding with friendly, vague, or delayed replies to minimize the other person's emotional pain."
Yet, in an article in Psychology Today a couple of years ago, a M.D./MBA made a point, that in some ways Caspering can be worse than ghosting. He writes: "Rather than ripping the Band-Aid off quickly so that the other person can heal sooner, Caspering pulls the Band-Aid slowly so that it yanks at every single individual hair on a person's skin for an extended period of time. It draws out the deception and keeps both parties in a fake relationship for an extended period of time." In other words, it can give false hopes for far too long and further delay the recipient of such ghosting, from getting on with their lives without you. You creep.
But in all this rumination on the subject, I can't help but recall a form of ghosting from back in the day in my old neighborhood on the Lower East Side. It might have been called, Go-F___-Yourselfing. Perhaps an apropos segue for this last piece of Muse.
Uh-oh, Canada
The opposite of ghosting is the relationship the United States currently has with Canada. At odds with what we learned in grade school—"Our neighbor to the North"—it is now one of, "In your face." While we're still friends, the implication is that we are going to treat you like we do everybody else. That's the way it's gotta' be. US vis-a-vis you. And if you don't love it, look at it as tough love. Tough.
Then to add insult to injury, they beat the Canadians at their own game winning the hockey Gold, in the recently concluded Olympics. Both the women and men teams. Both by identical 2-1 scores. Both in overtime. What are the odds of that? But dare I not get started again on numerical alignments, patterns and their improbabilities of ever coming to pass.
These Olympian victories are only fair since their guys beat our guys twice before in Olympic finales in 2002 and 2010. Not that any grudges have been held. You don't hold grudges against friends, do you? But what's fair is fair in love and war. And be glad we're not at war. We're not ghosting you. Just putting you on notice.
Ugh. As in, an ugly piece of business really.
