Connecting The Dots

The President announced today that our various intelligence agencies had all the information to have thwarted the Christmas Day terrorist attempt before the fact, however, “they failed to connect those dots.”

I have a theory as to why.

We live in a world of titles. In a world of titles there are no grunters! There is nobody down in the trenches. Everyone has a title and is hell-bent on getting another one. It all began when we awarded a college degree in reading comic books! It is called Sequential Art. For goodness sake, it is a comic book; it is not high literature! Get off your duff and read a real book – one with few pictures!

It is a part of the culture that says each child should get an award, even Billy who missed more days than a tenured PE teacher. Remember that horrible line from MC Hammer, “you can’t touch this?” I cannot believe that I confessed that I had heard that dribble. So we reward Billy’s ineptness with a prize of some sort merely for breathing and in so doing tell his parents, or in many cases the grandparents since the parents dropped out of sight, let Billy miss school, it’s ok. We don’t want to traumatize him. It is ok to be unmotivated, unchallenged.

Remember Stuart Smalley? “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and dog-gone it, people like me.”

When I was teaching a college course in American Studies, I had this eager student who handled my essay exams with the barest of success. She just couldn’t master abstract thinking. But she was so eager. She stopped by often to try to find her way amid the concepts presented in class. I will admit I was never interested in the memorization of a list of art, architecture, philosophers, or music. She could have handled that well. Instead, I wanted my students to grasp what was behind the products of the creative mind. Sheila just couldn’t, but she was so eager. She was the first in her family to attend college. She had such energy. So I looked the other way and gave her a better mark than I should have. After all, my humanities course was not the glue that held her career together.

A couple of years later she stopped by my office. I don’t know why. She gave me an update which evoked horror. She was getting a degree in English and the humanities. Afterwards, I stopped by a colleague’s office to confess my sin and reveal the result. Halfway into my outpouring of my academic sin, he exclaimed, “I know her. She was a really eager student. Not great, but so eager. I had her in one of my classes.” Well, it seems several of us had succumbed to the eagerness and cooperatively created this academic monster. Mediocrity breeds content.

Washington has also created monsters. Monsters of entitlement. People rewarded with jobs because of political connections. Sometimes because of donations to campaigns. Had Desiree Rogers been doing grunt work instead of parading that dress that looked remarkably unfinished, perhaps there would have been no gatecrashers at the party. Somebody has to do quality control.

So, I wish to offer a way to connect the dots.

Create a series of jobs with no titles, and, of course, no business cards. With a business card comes networking and with networking, job performance goes down the tube. The person is always off schmoozing.

Remember: in this job your are a grunter. There are no windows in the office; no name on the door. You will give no interviews and appear in no photographs.

The job: spend each day pouring over the data. Look at all the clues. Read all the reports; all the emails. Make lots of post-it notes. Make a flow chart. Use colored pens if necessary.

“Connect the dots.” Then get on the phone and let everybody know! After that, call your mother, she has been worried that you have not been getting enough sleep.

For every planned attack you stop, you will be given a bonus on the order of one doled out by AIG. Then you may retire early and give another grunter a chance. No strobe lights. No smiles toward the camera.

Then, and only then, we can arrive at the airport with all our clothes on.

Going Naked Into The World

It is the afternoon of the first day of a new decade. I am supposed to be in Alabama preparing to head back to Chicago on a 5:20 United flight. Instead, I am sidelined in Chicago with a new pacemaker.

I missed the great Brunswick Stew at the Downtown Grill and, of course, puttering around in the golf cart with my granddaughter Gracie. However, at 3:40 on January 1, I am happy that I am snug in my condo and not facing airport security in the post-Christmas Day fiasco.

“Sir, look at the ID card, it is a pacemaker!!! I am not a threat!”

David Brooks, the NYTimes columnist, had a brilliant essay today about the failure of our technology and of our vast governmental systems to keep us safe in a world full of people out to do harm. In the post-9/11 world, even the “hyped” governmental agencies have proven to be an empty shell when it comes to actually functioning. I must admit that I always felt The Department of Homeland Security sounded like a name contrived from a Dick Tracy comic strip. Think Tom Ridge in a yellow fedora and trench coat.

My son figures that we will soon all arrive at the airport in a skimpy hospital gown and get dressed after going through security. Having been so attired earlier in this week for the surgery, I can attest that it can get drafty. We are all going to get to know each other far more than I had ever wished. Too much information!!!

This put me to thinking about the past.

My mother’s maiden aunt, Birdie, who lived next door to us, was a very religious woman. She steadfastly refused to cut her hair because it wasn’t Biblical. She washed the long tresses each Saturday and when dry, placed them into a bun. It was a weekly ritual in which she would sit on her back lawn in a large white Adirondack chair and let it dry in the sun. This was before the days of the hand-held hair dryer and to go to a commercial establishment would risk some of the “crowning glory” being caught off-guard by Maylene's unwieldy scissors. So she sat in the sun, read her Sunday School lesson, and sang great hymns of the faith.

This time also coincided with an era where the giving of a baby chick at Easter – usually dyed a nice blue or pink - was not at all empathetic with the needs of the fowl in question. Think pre-PETA. So each Easter I received one. It usually didn’t make it but a few weeks. However, one such baby chick survived and became a large white rooster, which we named Charlie. Charlie had keen ear and a mean streak.

Now Birdie was lame from birth – her left side was malformed such to cause a severe limp and limited use of that hand. Her agitated walk seemed to attract the attention of Charlie when the two – the rooster and the Aunt – encountered each other. Charlie would peck at her heels as she tried to get away from this unwanted attention.

Each Saturday, before heading out with wet hair to her favorite chair in the sun, she would phone my mom and request that I place Charlie in the pen. While my mother would dutifully tell me to do so, I often failed. Eventually, on the failed days, Charlie would hear the strains of “Will There Be Any Stars In My Crown” and wander through the opening of the hedgerow that separated our lawns.

He would immediately startle Miss Birdie. Her combs would fly in one direction and King James in another as she tried to make a dash to the safety of her back screen porch. Rarely was she the winner. If I tell you that I enjoyed the spectacle, then it would alter our relationship irreparably.

One particularly hot summer day, she was expecting the Preacher to drop by her home around one in the afternoon to pick up a check to purchase new collection plates for the church. Birdie was generous to a fault and this particular clergyman seemed to see her as a source to be tapped often. She told the housekeeper that she was expecting the preacher, but wanted to freshen up before he came. She was wilted from the heat.

She retired to her bathroom for a long cooling soak.

Repairs were being made to the rear porch on her home and the workman had not yet reinstalled the doorway to the screened porch.

Enjoying the cool waters of her tub, she began to sing one of her favorites, “The Unclouded Day.” About the time she wafted into the chorus, “Oh the land of cloudless day……,” Charlie wandered into her yard and found his way up upon the porch through the opening where the door should have been. He followed the sounds and soon was eye to eye with Birdie in her bath. Upon seeing the rabid rooster, Birdie jumped, totally naked, from her cool waters to beat a hasty retreat. Charlie was on her heels.

Meanwhile, the preacher had arrived a bit earlier than expected in order the mention that the church piano was in bad need of tuning and had been shown to a seat in the living room.

It was reported later that each time she passed the Preacher on any of the several circles through her house trying to elude the white demon, she never failed to say, “How do you do, Reverend?” It was a testament to her good upbringing and impeccable manners, even when nude before a man of God.

So now it seems, like Birdie, we will dash through the airport with as little on as possible so as to not cause a problem with a TSA guy named Charlie.

But keep your cool. As my mother would say, “Without good manners, you might as well go naked into the world.”

Happy New Year.