First, let me flash my badge, so that you will know I am here to serve, or
that the bell tolls for you. I should not have to flash my badge, and you
all are probably too polite to ask to see it. It's like me asking my
Prospective True Love for her date of birth. First, there is no way, and
second I would have to go a long way to establish need to know. (Badge:
BSEE, MIT, 1968. MS is Systems Management, USC, 1976. US Navy Submarine
Force, 1960 - 1980, on SSBN's - a consumer and operator of some of the
finest systems money can buy. Various high and low tech jobs since 1980.
Founding chairman of the MIT Enterprise Forum of the Northwest in Seattle,
mid 80's - figurehead for Gary Schweikhardt, Sloan School grad, and recent
past president of the MIT Alumni Association). So, take comfort, or not.
In the music store, it is a standing joke that trumpeters greet each other
with, "Hi, I'm Jim. And I'm better than you are." I play trombone. I
had two customers yesterday, friends, one a trombone player, and one a
trumpeter, and I heard the trombonist assaulting his trumpeter friend with
the joke as they went upstairs to try horns.
So, I thought I might come on line today an announce, in accord with my
intro model of May 8th, "Hi, I'm Jim, and I'm smart." I mean, who can ask
for anything more? Perhaps I am better than the rest of you clods who, by
my model, are smart with aberrations, smart with wrinkles, smart with a
fringe on top. That was until I went to our Central Square, Cambridge,
gig today (4 trombones playing for "Mad Hatters" day) and left the music
at home. Three of us carpooled to Central Square, and left the music
leaning against my car tire, in my apartment parking lot. I am not a
virgin in leaving music at home, so full systems protection measures had
been in effect, including the 3 man rule and the Human Reliability Program
(Positive measures to prevent..., etc.). And still we left the music at
home. My Human Factors in Systems Management course at USC was full of
tales of woe of things like the new aircraft with the eject lever where
the windshield wiper lever used to be. Despite training and other
measures, many pilots were unduly ejected on rainy days. I live only 15
minutes from Central Square, and by the time we got back, the stage preps
were just being finished. So we started on time, about 20 minutes late.
But, a question for today is, why have we set it up that way - why have we
set ourselves up with attention deficits, lower levels of awareness, or
whatever we posit to allow for this stuff? My Prospective True Love is
still only "Prospective" because she is a dunce. In order to make the
grade to be my bride, she will have to duplicate my years of experience in
this field, or listen to Peter Senge's tape set on the Fifth Discipline
200 times before lunch. Or, if she waits for Peter's 6th Discipline, she
need hear it only 167 times. In any case, this is negotiable. How in the
world and why in the world have I set things up that way???
By the way, talk about being a dunce, she laid me off because I was
projecting insufficiently into life, and that was true however you would
like to read it. This is a G-rated list after all. I assume to know why
I set that one up - to find out she was a dunce and to be able to tell you
about it today. I do not know how I set it up. So, I salute my creative
spirit.
By the way, my creative spirit is considering starting a franchise called
Lovers R'Us. Each store will have a repair department and will do it for
less than Herb's Loving Center down the street (Spirits buffed and
polished; pumped up cheap. Imperfections removed, major and minor. Call
for estimate.) Then you call for the estimate, and the tech at the other
end asks, "Well, can you bring that spirit closer to the phone."
But, alas, the repair business is in trouble. Ask my brother, Tom, at his
Meineke shop in Framingham, MA. Things are lasting longer, and there are
more players in the market. So, like new car dealers everywhere, whose
repair departments seem to roll along untouched, Lovers R'Us will have a
new spirit sales department (don't worry, we will recycle). Lovers R'Us
will cater first and foremost to the customer's desire to be where he is
not (see note).
Note: That lovely bon mot is cleaned up considerably from where I found
it. On my submarines, invariably you would find a grease penciled legend
on the Ballast Control Panel to the effect: 20 days BBML or 20 days until
Back Between Mother's Legs (there goes our G rating). I thought to
myself, "Now why can't those sailors just learn to be where they are, to
be here now, to be in the moment?" Of course, they were being in the
moment, looking downrange in the direction of BBML.
Reprise: A major assumption running through the above is that, "I set it
up." And the smell of horsesh*t is beginning to come up about that. The
notion might disappear in B-space. Horsesh*t figures prominently in every
trombonists' life. In parades it is the job of the trombonist to head
straight for the pile, without giving away its presence to the trumpeter,
who is following too closely and probably playing too loudly.
Jim Battell
--Jim Battell <jbattell@mediaone.net>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>