The Troll Garden by Willa Cather

By my count this is the fourth collection of Willa Cather short stories that I’ve read. The Old Beauty and Others, which I posted about in August 2013, Five Stories in June 2014, Youth and the Bright Medusa in May 2018, and now The Troll Garden.

As I listed in detail at the start of my post for Youth and the Bright Medusa, Cather published a total of 17 stories in five such collections, with several of them republished in multiple volumes. By that tally, I have only one more collection to go -- Obscure Destinies, published in 1932, and containing one story I have already read and two I have not.

And although I had already read four of the seven stories in The Troll Garden, the experience brought something else to my attention. Although her popular stories were republished multiple times, they were not always the same versions of the same stories. In fact, the edition of The Troll Garden I read was, in part, an attempt to harmonize some of those changes.

The aim of this edition is twofold: to produce an authoritative text of The Troll Garden (TG) as Willa Cather intended it to appear when it was published in 1905 and to record all the revisions that took place in four of the seven stories in successive versions over a span of thirty-four years. Three of the stories (“Flavia and Her Artists,” “The Garden Lodge,” and “The Marriage of Phaedra”) were neither published in magazines before book publication nor ever reprinted in Cather’s lifetime. Thus they exist in a unique printing in TG. On the other hand, “The Sculptor's Funeral,” “A Death in the Desert,” “A Wagner Matinee,” and “Paul’s Case” were all first published in magazines (MV), revised for TG, further revised for inclusion in Youth and the Bright Medusa (YBM) in 1920, and all but one reworked for Cather’s collected writings, The Novels and Stories of Willa Cather (NS) brought out between 1937 and 1941. The fourth story, “A Death in the Desert,” was omitted from NS. Thus there are four versions of three stories and three versions of one.

Did you follow all of that? Cather was evidently not quite finished with these stories, working and re-working them as demanded by her bright and elusive muse.

But what kind of changes are we talking about? Well, here’s a taste from the different versions of “A Wagner Matinee.”

Between the appearance of TG in 1905 and YBM in 1920 Cather changed greatly in her attitude toward Nebraska. The affirmation in O Pioneers! and My Antonia are reflected in a much-modified portrait of Aunt Georgiana. Missing in YBM are more than four hundred words from what is the shortest tale in TG. Gone now are seven passages, including the yellow skin and false teeth, that made the original character a grotesque figure, and in additional places the “absurdities” of Aunt Georgiana’s attire give way to “her queer, country clothes”; her “misshapen figure” becomes her “battered” figure. One would have to say that the result of all this plastic surgery is to transform Aunt Georgiana from a cruelly used, worn-out farm wife from a harsh, isolated prairie farm into a quaint little old lady from the boondocks. By the time Cather revised the story once again for NS in the mid-thirties, there was not much left to change in the portrait, but still she managed three more small cuts that modify Aunt Georgiana’s emotional display during the concert, and the powerful ending of the story that survived three versions is emasculated in the final one. From “she burst into tears and sobbed pleadingly. ‘I don’t want to go, Clark, I don’t want to go!’” in MV, TG, and YBM, the final speech of Aunt Georgiana becomes in the penultimate paragraph: “She turned to me with a sad little smile. ‘I don’t want to go, Clark. I suppose we must.’”

They are, in fact, three different stories, told at different times in the author’s life. For that reason, if none other, each deserves its own read and preservation.

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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Dragons - Chapter 58 (DRAFT)

At the conclusion of the “state of the company” meeting, I did not approach Mary and Mary did not approach me, and for the rest of the day our paths did not cross. I don’t know if she was avoiding me, but I was certainly avoiding her.

But at home that night I said all the things I would have wanted to say to Mary.

“Eleven?” Really, Mary? I thought you said eleven was such an odd number. Don’t you think it will work so much better if there are only ten?”

“Obeys the rules?” Really, Mary? It takes a rule follower to think that’s a good idea. How does obeying the rules possibly fit in with the other qualities? You want people to show initiative, to creatively apply resources, to be visionary -- and you want them to obey the rules? Do you even realize how schizophrenic that is? Oh, and what the hell does obeying the rules have to do with maximizing productivity, anyway?”

“Company Values? Really, Mary? You don’t get it, do you? You can’t just take our list, slap Company Values on the top of them, and claim them as the company’s own. There’s more to it than that. Goddammit, we worked hard to describe professional qualities that people could possess. People, Mary, not companies! People can show initiative. People can creatively apply resources. People can be visionary. All the company can do is identify, encourage, and reward people who have those qualities, because those are the qualities that are most closely correlated with the company’s success. But you don’t have any plans in place to do any of that, do you, Mary? You certainly didn’t talk about those plans in the company meeting. All you did was pass out a list and remind everyone how important it was. If these are the company’s values, what is the company going to do to embrace them? To make them a reality? To reward instead of punish anyone who dares to embrace any of them except your glorious number eight? Because if I took a survey of everyone in that room today, I’d wager that number eight is the only one that any of them remember. Obey the rules!”

It all came tumbling out of my mouth. Like a holy roller, I was angry, indignant, and righteous. I wanted to do battle. I wanted to hurl myself on my enemy’s sword and let her feel the terrible heated pulsations of the blood I was willing to shed for my cause.

And through all of it Jenny simply sat quietly and listened. When I was spent and could speak no further, she was short and to the point.

“What time is your flight tomorrow?”

I looked at her quizzically, wondering if she had even heard anything I had said.

“Ten fifteen.”

She slowly nodded her head. “Better get a good night’s sleep. You really need to knock them dead on Friday.”

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“Dragons” is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. For more information, go here.

This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

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Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas R. Hofstadter

Frankly, Achilles, being rather conservative and orthodox myself, I was a bit concerned about that very point on first receiving the letter. In fact, I suspected at first that here was an out-and-out fraud. But on second thought, it occurred to me that not many types of people could manufacture such strange-sounding and complex results purely from their imagination. In fact, what it boiled down to was this question: “Which is the more likely: a charlatan of such extraordinary ingenuity, or a mathematician of great genius?” And before long, I realized that the probabilities clearly favored the former.

So says “Crab” in one of the many “Dialogues” that Hofstadter put in-between the chapters of this long and difficult book. And just as Crab speculates on the intentions of a fictional letter-writer, I came to find myself making the same speculations about Hofstadter himself. A charlatan of extraordinary ingenuity? Or a mathematician of great genius? Perhaps more than a morsel of both.

Truth be told, I have found books on quantum mechanics to be clearer and easier to understand. The author is not so much dealing with math, but with the underlying structure that makes math work. For a while this is fun - a little like brain teasers. Like trying to do math in Base8 instead of Base10. But soon it gets too complicated (at least for me), and then you realize you have 500 more pages to go.

The fatal flaw is that Hofstadter assumes that the underlying structure of math IS the underlying structure of reality -- and that’s where all his comparisons between Godel, Escher, and Bach begin to stretch beyond my patience. In Hofstadter’s world math equals computer science equals the human brain equals objective reality, and those are leaps that I’m not willing to make, no matter how many creative word games he can weave around them.

It’s not until he starts talking about how the human brain interprets art that he once and only captured my attention.

There is a strange duality about the meaning of a piece of music: on the one hand, it seems to be spread around, by virtue of its relation to many other things in the world -- and yet, on the other hand, the meaning of a piece of music is obviously derived from the music itself, so it must be localized somewhere inside the music.

The resolution of this dilemma comes from thinking about the interpreter -- the mechanism which does the pulling-out of meaning. (By “interpreter” in this context, I mean not the performer of the piece, but the mental mechanism in the listener which derives meaning when the piece is played.) The interpreter may discover many important aspects of a piece’s meaning while hearing it for the first time; this seems to confirm the notion that the meaning is housed in the piece itself, and is simply being read off. But that is only part of the story. The music interpreter works by setting up a multidimensional cognitive structure -- a mental representation of the piece -- which it tries to integrate with pre-existent information by finding links to other multidimensional mental structures which encode previous experiences. As this process takes place, the full meaning gradually unfolds. In fact, years may pass before someone comes to feel that he had penetrated to the core meaning of the piece. This seems to support the opposite view: that musical meaning is spread around, the interpreter’s role being to assemble it gradually.

Yes. It is like I’ve been saying for years. Art does not happen on the canvas. It happens in the mind of the observer.

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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Dragons - Chapter 57 (DRAFT)

On Wednesday of that fateful week we had one of our “state of the company” meetings. As I’ve previously described, these were largely painful affairs -- painful for both the staff and the company owners -- as the latter went through the motions that would invariably fail in their intended purpose: convincing the former that the things they did were appreciated and pivotal to the success of the company.

This one was at least on schedule, in the sense that it had been three months since the last meeting and that they were supposed to be held quarterly. But it was also typical in the sense that no kind of agenda was circulated in advance of the session. For anyone outside the inner circle -- which evidently included me and anyone else who wasn’t Mary or Don -- all you knew was that you were supposed to show up in the company’s all-purpose room at nine o’clock sharp.

I got there at 8:57 AM, and most of the staff were already assembled by that point. Since all the chairs were taken, I squeezed my way into the room, and found a place to stand in one of the far corners. I avoided as much eye contact as I could on my difficult journey, brushing past Gerald at one point and walking behind Bethany at another. When I finally filled the only empty spot that remained in the crowded room, I had to reluctantly acknowledge Jurgis, who was already there, and who nodded to me as I assumed a position beside him.

There was a lot of chatter in the room as, true to form, neither Mary nor Don had yet made their appearance. The ambient volume was loud enough that I had difficulty hearing Jurgis when he addressed me.

“What?” I said.

Jurgis leaned in closer, revealing the color of the cream cheese that had adorned his morning bagel and which now adorned his grizzly beard. “They are unveiling the staff qualities.”

“What?” I said again, now looking at Jurgis square in the face. This time I had heard him distinctly, but doubted that such a thing was actually coming to pass.

Jurgis nodded knowingly. “Da. I heard them talking about it this morning. They are unveiling the staff qualities.”

I had no time to question Jurgis further, for at that moment both Mary and Don entered the room. Neither of them had any difficulty as the path to the front of the room was wide open, where a single table with two chairs had been placed. Don had a thick folder of what appeared to be loose paper in his hands. Mary appeared to have nothing but her wits.

The room quickly went silent as Mary and Don took their seats.

“Good morning,” Mary said. “Thank you all for attending this morning. As everyone here should know, last week we successfully navigated a major Annual Conference in Miami Beach. I thought I’d start this session by citing some of the impressive statistics from that event.”

And this Mary began to do -- listing, apparently without referring to any notes, a long slew of numbers and statistics that would have put a charging gorilla to sleep. Two hundred and twenty-one educational sessions. One thousand six hundred and thirty-two scientific papers presented in the poster sessions. One hundred and six exhibitors renting one hundred and forty-nine thousand square feet in the exhibit hall. Six thousand four hundred and twelve registered attendees. The recitation went on and on, the tone of Mary’s excited voice working overtime to convince us that each statistic was more interesting and relevant than the last.

From my vantage, it didn’t seem like she was convincing very many people in her audience. Other than a few sycophants up front, smiling and nodding as if being blown kisses from their lover’s mouth, most everyone else simply looked uncomfortable. We were stuck, listening to something we didn’t want to listen to. Doing something we didn’t want to do.

“It was the largest and most successful conference we have ever held,” Mary finally concluded triumphantly. “Eleanor Rumford and the rest of the leadership was VERY HAPPY with the outcome.”

That seemed typical, too. Eleanor was happy. Because that’s why we all worked so goddamn hard. Like you, Mary. All we want to do is make sure Eleanor Rumford is happy.

And it was that thought, sarcastic though it was, about all the work that had gone into the conference, and more specifically about the people that had done all that work, that made me realize, almost as an afterthought, that in her entire run-down of the event, and here, in front of her assembled staff, that Mary had utterly failed to even mention any individual staff person by name, and much less to thank them for what they had done to make Eleanor’s conference so large and successful.

Huh. I wonder why that didn’t surprise me.

“Now,” Mary was saying, already moving onto her next subject, “there is something else that we want to go over with everyone today. Don?”

Snapping to exactly like he had fallen asleep, Don clumsily got out of his chair and began passing out the creased and somewhat wrinkled pieces of paper that he had brought in his smudge-stained manilla folder. Giving a clump to several folks in the front row, he communicated with a grunt and a nod of his bulbous head that he wanted each to take one and pass the rest around to the other people.

“Don is passing around an extremely important document that we want everyone to read and come to understand as best they can. We’re calling them our Company Values, and we’re going to start using them to govern how we act around here.”

Oh my god. That’s how you’re introducing this? Despite my cynicism, and like everyone else in the room, I found myself suddenly desperate to get my hands on a copy of this important document. What did it say? What hoops were we going to have to jump through now? It can’t possibly be the list of ten staff qualities we had agreed on. Could it?

“As copies make their way around the room,” Mary said, “let me say that these Company Values were carefully chosen to help ensure the best possible performance among our various teams. While we were in Miami Beach I was able to review them with Eleanor, as I have reviewed them with the leaders of our other major clients, and everyone is in full support of their implementation within the company. They are absolutely essential to our success.”

If I was curious before, I was absolutely desperate now. Approved by Eleanor Rumford! Not even Moses, who witnessed the great and terrible finger of God carve His holy commandments into mundane stone, must have felt the anticipation I felt now. I had to see what Mary and Eleanor had done to our staff qualities. There was a reason, I suddenly knew, why I had not been told that they would be unveiled today. Clearly, they had been twisted into shapes beyond recognition.

I saw a stack of crumpled paper making its way towards me, but Mary began reciting the list before it got to me.

“Let’s start at the top,” she said, assuming that everyone was now able to follow along. “Thrives in a team environment. This is absolutely critical to our smooth functioning as an organization. If you’re not a team player, you really don’t belong here.”

She paused, almost for effect, but more likely because she had already lost her place on the copy in front of her. As she did, the last few pieces of distributed paper had finally made it to the back corner where Jurgis and I stood.

“Shows initiative,” Mary continued. “This one is extremely important, too. We need people…”

My ears tuned Mary out as my eyes greedily scanned down the list before me. Almost beyond my belief, I saw that they all seemed to be there: the staff qualities we had worked so hard on, that we had felt so strongly about, that had come together almost magically in that stuffy conference room. But, wait. What’s this? Are there eleven of them? Yes, yes there were. Had Mary reinstituted the one about practicing a healthy work/life balance?

It felt like way too much to hope for, so now I forced myself to slow down and actually read the document. Under a banner that read “Company Values,” the words in some clip-arty script font not quite centered on a unfurling parchment scroll, I saw:

1. Thrives in a team environment.

2. Shows initiative.

3. Anticipates challenges.

4. Creatively applies resources to solve problems.

5. Maintains positive relationships.

6. Shows respect for others.

7. Supports the mission of the organization.

8. Obeys the rules to maximize productivity.

9. Mentors--

Wait. What?

There were three more to read, but my eyes jumped back to number eight. Obeys the rules to maximize productivity. I looked up disbelievingly at Mary, who was busy talking about how important it was to apply resources to solve problems, her face turned down to her paper rather than up at her followers.

Obeys the rules to maximize productivity! I felt like screaming at her. Where the fuck did that mutated beast come from? From your twisted mind or Eleanor’s? Nothing like that came out of the inclusive discussion I had. It doesn’t even make sense. How does obeying the rules lead to maximum productivity? And what rules are you talking about? Are they posted somewhere?

“Maintains positive relationships,” Mary said, long since dropping into a bored monotone, and oblivious to the cyclone rampaging in my brain. “Now this one is important, too...”

I nudged Jurgis and pointed to the eighth item on the list he also held in his hand.

“What the hell is that?” I whispered.

Jurgis appeared to squint at the document, his eyes all but disappearing into the lines of his face. When he looked back up at me, he simply shrugged.

I looked up, scanning the room for the others that had been in that magical meeting with me. One by one I found them. Peggy Wilcox, our director of human resources, sitting in the front row, facing forward, with her hands neatly folded on top of the offending piece of paper. Two chairs down from her I saw the back of Scott Nelson’s head, his long and angular frame striking just about the same pose as Peggy.

“Shows respect for others,” Mary’s voice droned on in my ears, as if trying to lull me with a sleep spell like she had done with most of her audience. “This one is very important, especially when it comes to our interactions with our clients.”

God! They’re all important, Mary. That’s why they made the list. You don’t have to tell us that every single one is important!

I managed to catch Angie Ferguson’s eye. She was standing on the side of the room, her back against the wall, her piece of paper held up so she could follow along. She looked quizzically at me, as if not understanding the angry glare I was giving her. I mouthed “Number Eight” as clearly as I could, and I watched as her brow wrinkled in distaste. Evidently, she had not read ahead as I had.

“Supports the mission of the organization. Now this one may be the most important of them all.”

Someone coughed on the opposite side of the room, and as I turned to look, I saw my final two co-conspirators, Gerald Krieger and Bethany Bishop, standing together, and both looking intently at me. Gerald was bringing his hand down, his faux cough having accomplished its objective. As we stared helplessly at each other, Gerald slowly shook his head and Bethany looked for all the world like she was about to cry.

“Obeys the rules to maximize productivity,” Mary’s voice echoed, but then stopped short, as a deep silence fell over the room.

When it had gone on to an uncomfortable degree I forced myself to turn away from Gerald’s disapproving and Bethany’s disappointed eyes and realized with a sinking feeling of horror that Mary was waiting until she caught my attention. I had to clench myself to keep my bowels from loosening when her steely gaze bore into me and then, and only then, did she resume her sonorous incantation.

“I misspoke,” she said, her voice as dull and mechanistic as a soulless robot. “This is actually the most important of them all. Every business, every culture, every society has to have rules, and those rules must be obeyed if the people within that society, within that culture, within that business are going to flourish and succeed.”

There was another long and silent pause, and throughout its length it was as if Mary and I were the only people in the universe. The room, the building, the world, it all dropped away as Mary and I locked eyes in a silent and deadly battle of will.

You will lose, Mary’s eyes, her face, her whole bearing seemed to say, and say it as confidently as anything she had ever said in her life. In response, I could only slowly nod my head, understanding, perhaps now irrevocably, that I had indeed lost my battle with her.

And worse, if I didn’t mind my Ps and Qs, the dragon was going to win the war.

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“Dragons” is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. For more information, go here.

This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

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http://lres.com/heres-why-amcs-need-to-pay-close-attention-to-looming-regulatory-changes/businessman-in-the-middle-of-a-labyrinth/

She Said by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey

I picked this one up on a whim. I saw the authors interviewed on a late night talk show and decided to buy their book, right then and there. When it came, I did the rarest of things -- I put it right to the top of my “to-read” pile.

I’m glad I did -- for two reasons.

First, it’s a good read. Someone once said that journalism is the first draft of history, so books like She Said -- books based on journalism -- must be only a kind of second draft, but they represent important records for our posterity. Like my experience in reading The Enemy of the People by Jim Acosta, there is so much that is so quickly forgotten in our modern news cycle, that journalistic books seem a great opportunity not just to document, but to remember What Actually Happened.

And in that regard, She Said delivers in spades. If you’re not familiar with the subject matter of the book, here’s the longish-blurb from the dust jacket.

For many years, reporters had tried to get to the truth about Harvey Weinstein’s treatment of women. Rumors of wrongdoing had long circulated. But in 2017, when Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey began their investigation into the prominent Hollywood producer for the New York Times, his name was still synonymous with power. During months of confidential interviews with top actresses, former Weinstein employees, and other sources, many disturbing and long-buried allegations were unearthed, and a web of onerous secret payouts and nondisclosure agreements were revealed. These shadowy settlements had long been used to hide sexual harassment and abuse, but with a breakthrough reporting technique Kantor and Twohey helped to expose it. But Weinstein had evaded scrutiny in the past, and he was not going down without a fight; he employed a team of high-profile lawyers, private investigators, and other allies to thwart the investigation. When Kantor and Twohey were finally able to convince some sources to go on the record, a dramatic final showdown between Weinstein and the New York Times was set in motion.

That’s a good summary, and probably enough for any book of this type, but it is, really, only half of the story.

Nothing could have prepared Kantor and Twohey for what followed the publication of their initial Weinstein story on October 5, 2017. Within days, a veritable Pandora’s box of sexual harassment and abuse was opened. Women all over the world came forward with their own traumatic stories. Over the next twelve months, hundreds of men from every walk of life and industry were outed following allegations of wrongdoing. But did too much change -- or not enough? Those questions hung in the air months later as Brett Kavanaugh was nominated to the Supreme Court, and Christine Blasey Ford came forward to testify that he had assaulted her decades earlier. Kantor and Twohey, who had unique access to Ford and her team, bring to light the odyssey that led her to come forward, the overwhelming forces that came to bear on her, and what happened after she shared her allegation with the world.

And it’s this second story, the story of Christine Blasey Ford and her decision to come forward, which makes up the second reason why I’m glad I read this book. The women who were victimized by Harvey Weinstein -- some famous and some not -- and those with similar accusations against Donald Trump; previously unknown to me, these women came together to form a community of support around Ford. They helped her -- as only they could -- through her decision process, and Ford, in turn, helped some of them through their trauma and their grief.

Here’s just one example:

After Rachel Crooks came forward about Trump in 2016, she suffered from crippling anxiety and self-consciousness, she said as she sat facing the others with her long legs tucked beneath her. She was the only one present who lived in a rural, conservative area -- “more of a #himtoo community,” as she called it.

After she got through a few television appearances and a press conference about the accusation, she received an unexpected invitation. Local Democrats wanted her to run for a seat in the state legislature -- a terrible idea, she thought. Critics had already accused her of telling her Trump story for political ends. “It’s confirming what everyone thought, that I was doing this for some sort of agenda,” she explained.

But she cared about education and health care. As for the incumbent, he was “a rubber stamp for the Republican party,” she told the group. Maybe she could use her new profile in a positive way, she thought. “Right or wrong, I would have more fund-raising potential because I now had this national voice,” she said. So Crooks ran for public office, learning to lead rallies and make speeches, she said. She had joined an unprecedented wave of female candidates across the country, campaigning to seize more political power than women had ever held in United States history.

The night she lost her race, she said, she didn’t even cry or feel self-pity: Democrats had, for the most part, lost across Ohio. But months later, she was struggling with the way the campaign had solidified the tendency of others to view her only through her Trump story. On television, she was sometimes just labeled “Trump Accuser” at the bottom of the screen, a phrase her mother hated. “This has become your identity,” a male friend told her recently.

“It has opened doors and provided this new path, but it also ties me to this awful human being,” she said.

The group silently considered her dilemma. Crooks was living out one of the most common fears about coming forward: It could label you forever. Ford listened particularly closely. Her current fears matched what Crooks described having faced two years before, right down to a specific detail about avoiding local stores. Sitting on the couch, with her red glasses pushed up on her head, she began quizzing Crooks, as if she held a map to what lay ahead.

“I was wondering how long that lasted before you just sort of normally jump into your car and go to a restaurant without people looking at you and wondering if that’s really you,” Ford said. She was also struggling online, including with fake social media profiles of her saying, “I recant my whole story.”

“I’m, like, ‘That’s not true!’” Ford said. “But I’m not brave enough to get into that with them. And there’s just too many of them, so … the social media piece … I don’t do well with that,” she said.

“Sometimes I write the replies, and I just never post them,” Crooks told her. “It’s very cathartic.”

The reaction wasn’t all negative, Ford acknowledged. She had been offered prizes, invitations, book and movie contracts. The mail for her was still accumulating, including many private stories of violence -- “175,000 letters in Palo Alto,” [Debra] Katz interjected. Those were only the paper letters. There were many more electronic missives. In those, and everywhere else, the reactions to what she had done were so extreme.

For hours, the others had mostly been nodding and asking polite follow-up questions. Now they spoke up with purpose. [Gwyneth] Paltrow offered a football analogy of her own. “They only tackle you when you’ve got the ball,” she said, explaining that she had once heard the phrase from the country singer Tim McGraw.

She and [Ashley] Judd -- longtime experts in fielding public scrutiny and criticism -- began to coach everyone else in how to deal with other people’s judgments. Judd was direct: Stop reading about yourself online, she instructed Ford.

“If an alcoholic can stay away from a drink one day at a time, I can stay away from the comment section one day at a time,” Judd said. “I’m participating in my own self-harm when I expose myself to that material,” she continued.

“Do you just not really go on the internet much?” Ford asked Judd, incredulous.

“I’m completely abstinent from all media about myself and have been for probably almost twenty years,” Judd said. She posted pictures and links on social media but tried not to read anything written about herself: that was part of why she had disappeared to the woods after the first Weinstein article had been published.

As she spoke, she was curled in a pink upholstered chair facing the group. She had sat there all day, absorbing what others had to say, speaking relatively little. She seemed like the one participant who had not really been transformed. She had always wanted to be an activist, and when she went on the record about Weinstein, the world affirmed her instincts.

“I have to know the hill on which I’m willing to die,” she told the group. “The equality of the sexes is that hill for me.”

There are so many facets to this powerful tale, it is remarkable that Kantor and Twohey were able to document some of these conversations and interactions. Little else can begin to peel apart the impossible choices these women face and the boxes that society forces them into.

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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Dragons - Chapter 56 (DRAFT)

The balance of my comp day and the ensuing weekend were spent planning and prepping for my interview with Quest Partners. Airline tickets were bought, a hotel room was booked, public transportation systems were researched, my resume was polished up, interview questions imagined, and responses written, practiced and honed until they almost seemed natural. On the upcoming Thursday I would board a plane, fly to Boston, and spend a night in a budget hotel. And on Friday I would wake, dress, enter the downtown offices of Quest Partners and submit myself to whatever fate awaited me there.

But now it was Monday, and I was back in the office, with only one important task on my mind. I had to take two vacation days which would allow all of the preceding planning to flow forward unimpeded.

It probably won’t surprise you to hear that the company had an archaic mechanism for requesting vacation days. Accessing the company’s network drive, I found the Wordperfect document that sufficed for the vacation day request form, printed it, and filled out the necessary information with a blue ballpoint pen.

The color of the ink is significant. Legend had it that vacation requests submitted in blue ink were more likely to be approved than those in black ink -- and for those completed in red, green, or some other subversive color, everyone knew that those were never even considered. One might as well put the paper slip through one of the many shredders that dotted the office landscape. None of this, as far as I knew, had ever been tested in any scientific sense, and yet the veracity of these beliefs were never questioned, and we all adjusted our behavior accordingly. That’s the way things generally worked in any cult-like setting.

The next step was to drop the completed document in Ruthie’s inbox, whose job was to log the request, make sure the employee in question actually had the vacation days available -- because, you know, we’re all trying to scam the company -- and then, if passing that hurdle, initial the document in the designated spot and route the document through the appropriate supervisory chain. Since I reported directly to Mary, my request would go directly to her desk for consideration. Other employees, lower on the company’s chipped and paint-faded totem pole, would have their forms go through all the layers of management before landing on either Mary’s or Don’s desk for the final approval.

“Taking some time off?”

I had already turned and was moving away from Ruthie’s desk when her question stopped me in my tracks. I didn’t even think to ask her how she knew I was dropping off a vacation request slip. Ruthie, it seemed, knew everything that happened in the organization and even a few things that hadn’t happened yet.

“Umm, yeah,” I said, trying to convey with my tone of voice that it really wasn’t any of her business.

“Going somewhere?”

“What?” I asked, now turning fully towards her and meeting her eyes. She was dressed in blue, with diamonds sparkling on her ear lobes and at her throat.

She looked at me for a full ten seconds before speaking again, the silence in the air between us thicker than cookie dough.

“You and Jenny. You’re going somewhere for a little getaway. Something nice before the baby is born.”

Oddly, none of her sentences were questions. They hung in the air like the accusations they were. Go on, they seemed to say. Make something up. You’re going to need a believable story if you expect Mary to approve this request.

And, of course, I had no such story. I hadn’t even bothered to think up a plausible excuse. The week after the Annual Conference was one of the busiest there were -- with all kinds of details to see to: minutes to write, evaluations to tabulate, refunds and extra charges to process, follow-up conference calls to schedule. Usually, it was the second or even the third week after the conference that people chose for burning their vacation days.

My wheels were spinning but I kept my face as placid as possible. “No,” I said. “Nothing like that. I wish. Truth is, Jenny’s mom is moving into a new condo and we need to help her get settled.”

To this day, I have no idea where this particular lie came from. It’s true that Jenny’s mom was a widow, and that Jenny was trying to get her to downsize into something more manageable, but Trudy had so far refused to be removed from the sprawling house in which she had raised her three children.

“Uh huh,” Ruthie said, and when she didn’t seem to have any other comment, I turned quickly and walked without further comment back to my office.

There, I shut the door and hid my face behind my computer monitor. I had done a lot of stupid things over the last several days, but I decided then and there that telling that particular lie to Ruthie was clearly the stupidest of them all. Not only did it sound like a lie, it was too easy to check, too easy to verify that there wasn’t a shred of truth behind it. Why, all Ruthie had to do was give Jenny a call and ask her about--

In my fevered mind I knew I had to beat Ruthie to the punch. I had to talk to Jenny and bring her into the center of my conspiracy. My hand reached out for the telephone, but the instrument began ringing before I could bring it into my grasp. Recoiling as if it was a venomous snake, I peered at its little screen and saw it was Ruthie, calling me on the intra-office line.

“Hello?”

“Alan.”

“Yes?”

“It’s Ruthie.”

“Yes?”

“I forwarded your vacation request to Mary.”

“Yes?”

“She would like to discuss it with you in her office.”

“Yes?”

“Now.”

“Yes. Okay.”

I placed the handset back in its cradle, and found that I had some small sliver of the presence of mind needed to contemplate my downfall. Never, in the history of the company, had a vacation request moved so quickly through the chain of command. Five minutes, surely no more than three hundred seconds from the time I dropped it in Ruthie’s inbox, I had a request for an in-person meeting in Mary’s office. I didn’t know how I had misplayed the situation so badly, but it appeared that I didn’t have the proverbial snowball’s chance in hell of getting the time off I requested.

And then what would I do? Go to Boston anyway? Call Quest Partners and tell them I couldn’t come? Either action seemed equally impossible.

I composed myself as best as I could and presented myself as ordered in Mary’s door. As I passed by I gave Ruthie the best poker face I could muster. She did not look at all convinced by it.

“You wanted to see me, Mary?”

Mary was standing next to her glass curio cabinet, wearing one of her smartest suits, and carefully re-arranging some of her trinkets and trophies. “Yes, Alan. Please. Come in and shut the door.”

I did as instructed, standing, more or less at attention, just inside the office.

Mary did not turn to look at me. “What’s this I hear about you wanting two days of vacation at the end of the week?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’ve earned them, haven’t I?”

That got her attention. She turned toward me, a large crystal award still in one hand. “Well, I don’t know why you’re taking that tone. I’m just curious why you would need to take vacation so soon after the Annual Conference. Is everything all right at home?”

There was a lot to unpack there. I had successfully struck the opening blow, knocking her somewhat off balance with my curtness, but she had recovered well, feigning both offense and concern for the welfare of my family. It was meant to soften me up, to get me to drop my guard so she could slip in her knife. My next play would be crucial. I decided to stay focused on the facts -- such as they were.

“I already told Ruthie,” not altering my hostile tone in the slightest. “Jenny’s mother is buying a new condo, and we’re going to help her move and get settled in.” It was still a lie, but it felt more like the truth this time, or at least I felt like I had put more indignant truth into it.

Mary stood silently for a moment, hefting the large chunk of crystal in her hand like she might throw it at me. I could see her wheels turning. Eventually, she turned and gently placed the award on one of the cabinet shelves.

“Alan, have a seat, please.”

“Okay,” I said, moving into the office and taking an uncomfortable seat in one of the uncomfortable chairs opposite her desk.

Mary came over and perched herself on the edge of the giant slab of mahogany that served as her desktop. In doing so, she had to hitch up her skirt a little, revealing a tiny run in her stocking as it passed over her bony knee. She looked at me gravely.

“Alan, I want you to know that I know about the mistakes in the final conference program.”

It was such a non-sequitter that at first I wasn’t even sure she had spoken English. “Excuse me?”

“The mistakes. The ones Eleanor was counting on you to fix. The ones we were both counting on you to fix. I know that Eleanor said that the matter would remain between you and her, but later on she felt it was important for me to know and she told me about it.”

Yes, I’m sure she did. Something of such magnitude? I was very important for you to know. After all, how are you supposed to run your company if you didn’t know how far the key members of your staff could be trusted? Especially with something as crucial to the very survival of your business as a few misplaced words in a 200-page program book. I mean, if you had an employee like that, one who lacked either the competency or the judgment necessary to protect the integrity and reputation of the company’s clients, it was absolutely vital that such information not be hidden from you. To do so would undermine your ability to lead your organization forward. Why, if Eleanor hadn’t volunteered the information, it wouldn’t be surprising if you hadn’t managed to drag it out of her.

“Alan,” I suddenly heard Mary say, “did you hear what I said?”

She pulled me out of my Pavlovian brain rush of sarcasm. Fortunately, none of it had escaped through my lips, but mentally, the damage was done. I was now completely off my game. Whereas before my anger had been calculated, now it was honest and true.

“Sure, I did,” I said. “I heard your words, but I guess I’m struggling to understand their importance. What mistakes did Eleanor tell you about?”

“Mistakes in the conference program,” Mary said.

“Yes. Such as?” I could see Mary tensing up. She did not like being confronted.

“Are you denying it?”

“I’m not denying anything,” I said. “I just want to be clear. What specific mistakes did Eleanor tell you about?”

With that, Mary skooched off the edge of her desk and moved around behind it. She opened a drawer and pulled out a perfect-bound copy of the program from the Annual Conference just completed. “Here,” she said, tossing it across the desk at me. “Eleanor gave me her copy. She wants it placed in your personnel file.”

The booklet that landed in my lap was creased and well-worn -- almost like a Bible that a zealot had poured over and carried in her grimy hands for decades. Pages were tagged with dozens, maybe hundreds, of little sticky notes, and as it flopped open almost of its own will, I saw that the random spread was covered with little underlines, cross-outs, and marginal notes in Eleanor’s tight and exact script. I did not, but I felt like flicking the offending thing off my lap like some hairy insect. I didn’t even want to touch it, so I simply let it lay there.

“Mary,” I said, feeling my anger rise even as I was trying to calm myself down. “I fixed everything she wanted fixed before going to press. Don’t you remember? I worked late for a week to get them done. These have to be all new changes. These have to be things she didn’t even tell me she wanted fixed.”

Mary looked at me suspiciously. “Alan, I find that very hard to believe.”

Now I did pick up the tattered document. “Look at this one,” I said, literally seizing on one correction at random, but my anger swelling even further when I realized what it was. “She’s rewriting the learning objectives from an education session she wasn’t even part of. Look at this! She’s not correcting their punctuation or grammar. She’s rewriting someone else’s learning objectives.”

“So?”

“So?” I said. “She wasn’t part of that session. The learning objectives come directly from the presenters. What right does she have to change them like this?”

“She’s was the program chair, Alan. She was responsible for all the education sessions. How do you know she didn’t speak with the session presenter and get their agreement on those changes?”

I shook my head. Mary wasn’t hearing me, and I was too upset to realize that she wasn’t going to hear me, no matter what I said or how long I explained it to her. “Then why wasn’t it part of the changes she sent me before the program went to print? How am I supposed to make changes to a program after it’s already gone to print?” And with that I threw the offending program back onto Mary’s desk, where it landed with a dull slap. “This is a joke, Mary. And I think you know it is.”

Mary sat down behind her desk. “Alan,” she said seriously, “none of this is a joke. In fact, the cavalier attitude that you’re showing now is part of the problem you’re creating for yourself. Eleanor and I, the two of us, we’re frankly questioning the seriousness with which you’re taking your responsibilities.”

I tried to interrupt her, but she held up a hand and I held back.

“At first, I thought that maybe I had promoted you too soon. That you weren’t ready for the additional responsibility. But now I have to question if you’re even trying. You’re not making mistakes because you don’t know what you’re doing. You’re making mistakes because you don’t seem to care.”

Mary paused, but I kept my mouth shut, not wanting her to shush me again. Inside, I was boiling, but I knew blowing up at her more than I already had wasn’t going to do any good.

“And now there’s this vacation request,” Mary resumed, speaking logically, as if one idea flowed easily from the next. “The very week we get back from one of the most difficult conferences we’ve ever run, you’re planning to take some vacation. And for what? To help your mother-in-law move? Is that it?”

I remained silent, but this time Mary really did want an answer.

“Alan. Is that it?”

“Yes,” I said tersely. I was trapped in my own stupid lie. There was nothing else I could say.

“And how long have you known about this? Did she just call you up over the weekend? Hey, Alan, I’m moving next Thursday, can you help me?”

“We’ve known for a while,” I said slowly. “But everything has been so crazy and hectic. It just kind of snuck up on me.”

She sat there behind her desk, her arms folded across her chest, a pouty look on her face. She might have been waiting for me to say more, but I did not give her the satisfaction. I very much doubted if I ever was going to give Mary any kind of satisfaction in the future.

“Okay, Alan,” she said finally. “I’ll approve your vacation request. I don’t know how I’m going to explain it to Eleanor, but you can have my approval on one condition.”

“And that is?”

“That you start taking your responsibilities to this company and the clients we serve seriously. No more putting silly family matters like this ahead of your professional responsibilities. You are a senior leader in this organization now. Your allegiance and loyalty has to be first and foremost to the satisfaction of our clients. If Eleanor Rumford doubts that commitment, she would be within her rights and authority to pull her business away from the company -- and I cannot have that. You are far more expendable than the business that Eleanor represents to this organization. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

Did I understand? I sure did, perhaps more than Mary realized.

“Yes, Mary. I understand.”

“Good. Now get the hell out of my office.”

+ + +

“Dragons” is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. For more information, go here.

This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Image Source
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2010 by Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke, I have found, is very good at writing science fiction that has enough science to satisfy, but not quite enough fiction. The details of orbital mechanics are there, and they don’t overburden the story, yet, oddly, his characters seem as lifeless and as interchangeable as the rocky moonlets orbiting a distant gas giant.

What he does really well in 2010 is make a coherent story out of the intentional incoherence of 2001. There is mystery here, but the mystery is eventually revealed and explained.

Now the long wait was ending. On yet another world, intelligence had been born and was escaping from its planetary cradle. An ancient experiment was about to reach its climax.

Those who had begun that experiment, so long ago, had not been men -- or even remotely human. But they were flesh and blood, and when they looked out across the deeps of space, they had felt awe, and wonder, and loneliness. As soon as they possessed the power, they set forth for the stars. In their explorations, they encountered life in many forms and watched the workings of evolution on a thousand worlds. They saw how often the first faint sparks of intelligence flickered and died in the cosmic night.

And because, in all the Galaxy, they had found nothing more precious than Mind, they encouraged its dawning everywhere. They became farmers in the fields of stars; they sowed, and sometimes they reaped.

And sometimes, dispassionately, they had to weed.

The great dinosaurs had long since perished when the survey ship entered the Solar System after a voyage that had already lasted a thousand years. It swept past the frozen outer planets, paused briefly above the deserts of dying Mars, and presently looked down on Earth.

Spread out beneath them, the explorers saw a world swarming with life. For years they studied, collected, catalogued. When they had learned all they could, they began to modify. They tinkered with the destinies of many species on land and in the ocean. But which of their experiments would succeed, they could not know for at least a million years.

They were patient, but they were not yet immortal. So much remained to do in this universe of a hundred billion suns, and other worlds were calling. So they set out once more into the abyss, knowing that they would never come this way again.

Nor was there any need. The servants they had left behind would do the rest.

On Earth the glaciers came and went, while above them the changeless Moon still carried its secret. With a yet slower rhythm than the polar ice, the tides of civilization ebbed and flowed across the Galaxy. Strange and beautiful and terrible empires rose and fell, and passed on their knowledge to their successors. Earth was not forgotten, but another visit would serve little purpose. It was one of a million silent worlds, few of which would ever speak.

And now, out among the stars, evolution was driving toward new goals. The first explorers of Earth had long since come to the limits of flesh and blood; as soon as their machines were better than their bodies, it was time to move. First their brains, and then their thoughts alone, they transferred into shining new homes of metal and plastic.

In these, they roamed among the stars. They no longer built spaceships. They were spaceships.

But the age of the Machine-entities swiftly passed. In their ceaseless experimenting, they had learned to store knowledge in the structure of space itself, and to preserve their thoughts for eternity in frozen lattices of light. They could become creatures of radiation, free at last from the tyranny of matter.

Into pure energy, therefore, they presently transformed themselves; and on a thousand worlds the empty shells they had discarded twitched for a while in a mindless dance of death, then crumbled into rust.

They were lords of the Galaxy, and beyond the reach of time. They could rove at will among the stars and sink like a subtle mist through the very interstices of space. But despite their godlike powers, they had not wholly forgotten their origin in the warm slime of a vanished sea.

And they still watched over the experiments their ancestors had started, so long ago.

Against this backdrop, Clarke attempts to tell a human story -- a story of astronauts and scientists and politicians -- but none of the details of that story linger very long in the memory. Perhaps they were not intended to.

+ + +

This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.