MUSINGS OF A CEO

It has been many months since I’ve posted anything here. This silence isn’t very smart for me. I really enjoy writing. Not doing it leaves a vacuum inside me. I like putting my thoughts out there, love the creativity of assembling letters on a page, and even find some hint of the Divine when my mind and my hands become one and the words spill out of me. It is an altered state of consciousness, access to part of my brain, my soul, that I have no other way. Not to mention how fun I find it.  Nothing I do feels quite like it.

Until last year I had written non-stop since age 13. Back then I penned Letter’s to the Editor of the local newspaper commenting on current events. I did it sometimes under a pseudonym because I did not want to upset my parents with my more liberal views. I evolved from there to actual writing for publication, first for my college newspaper, and then free-lance pieces for national publications. My passion for language evolved into a career, taking me into journalism with Business Week until 1996 and continuing even as I moved into Emerald Packaging as a columnist for various publications. And then the blog.

So why the silence of the last year? Well, it has not been an easy year. Our business, which has grown rapidly, needed to catch-up with itself. We moved into an additional building, added more equipment, looked at the profitability of our accounts, shedding some in the process. We expanded into digital printing and tried to build a business around the new technology. Work took up a lot of time, to which my family can attest. Something had to give, and writing did.

Ill-health did not help. I had surgery in early May to repair some abdominal muscles. I spent so much time in bed recovering I pinched nerves in my back. Until the insurance industry could get around to approving cortisone shots I slept three hours per night. Once that was behind me I managed to take a tumble off a retaining wall in our garden. That was the end of July. Not a good streak. Certainly not conducive to creativity.

But above all I really wondered if I had anything to say. Not writing anything compounded the problem because the worry became it’s own inflection point. Part of my brain became depressed I think, not my entire being mind you, but an important part. Stuffing creativity, even when it is something as mediocre as my writing (let’s face it, I’m no Hemingway), corrodes the soul, atrophies the mind, and, given my faith, distances you from God, since the act of creation brings us closer to the divine.

Finally I just could not shake the need to write. To express. To comment and engage with others. To find that little moment when I feel connected to something larger. To play. I could not forever neglect the passion. So I’m back and I will be posting here more frequently. I am not sure who will read this blog going forward. It would be good to find an audience. Even better though to be who and what I am.

My message here is pretty simple. I should not have neglected this side of myself. If there is something, dear reader, you have pushed away in favor of work or family or mending health which nourishes you, don’t do it. It won’t do you any good, probably undermines health in its own way.

I imagine if today were my last, having to answer to St. Peter why I gave up doing something that God blessed me with the power to do. That is not a conversation I want to have. Nor should any of us.

This summer, the week before Israel and Gaza began flinging rockets at each other, I found myself looking at the Mediterranean Sea from my hotel balcony in Tel Aviv.  I had come to the Holy Land to visit Hewlett-Packard’s Indigo printing division, the company responsible for our new 30″ wide Indigo digital press. This extraordinary piece of technology transmits art work from a computer and prints it onto plastic without using printing plates.  Changeovers between jobs happen with the click of a mouse.  Digital has been around for many years, but this is the first press H-P has built specifically to print on plastic.  Lucky for us, we are the beta site for the new machine.  Which is why I was gazing at Tel Aviv’s beach.

I had flown to Israel to learn more about the machine prior its arrival.  I admit that a few days earlier I had equivocated about coming.  Israeli soldiers had flooded into the Palestinian cities of Hebron and Ramallah in the occupied West Bank looking for three Jewish teens who had disappeared.  They also took the opportunity to arrest members of Hamas, the Islamic movement opposed to the Occupation.  Palestinian youths reacted angrily to the arrests, and rioting broke out across the region.  I wrote one of my H-P contacts asking if we should still come.  Having covered the region as a journalist many years ago I knew how such moments could spin out of control so I worried about the safety of those traveling with me.  His reply chided me for even thinking about not coming and said that the streets of Tel Aviv were safer than Paris.

So off to Israel I went with our business partners and two senior colleagues.  The trip astounded me on many levels.  I have never been in a foreign city where I felt like I had never left home.  Tel Aviv must be one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world.  Our meals seemed to encompass the globe, including one evening where we ate Cuban food.  Our hotel’s beach turned out to be where gay’s congregated to sun bathe, a group that would not show themselves in most of the Middle East.  English was widely spoken and news easy to come by.   Plus so many Israelis seemed connected to the United States.  Most of our H-P contacts had lived there for a few years or had family in the U.S. and perhaps even gone to school stateside.

But I caution colleagues I travel with not to assume the places we visit are like home.  If you do, you miss nuances that could later effect doing business, or simply end up missing the world’s diversity.  Israel proved no different.  An hour drive by car to Jerusalem transported you back into the beginning of time, with devout religious from the three major faith traditions jostling each other in the Old City’s alleys.  Islam’s second holiest mosque, the Dome of the Rock sits right above the wall of the Jewish second temple which is only a few minutes from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre which stands on the ground legend says Jesus Christ died.  All the pilgrims offering their devotions reminded me more of the 16th century than the 21st century.  Tel Aviv seemed far longer than an hour away.

Later this summer my son and I saw a play in London entitled “Holy Warriors”.  The piece ponders how history might have been different if Richard the Lionheart of England had chosen to visit Jerusalem at the conclusion of the third crusade, when he forged a truce with the great Islamic chief Saladin that opened the city to Christian pilgrims and merchants.  Perhaps the two religions would have cemented a lasting peace.  Instead, Richard leaves for Europe, unwilling to enter a city still under Muslim administration.  Down through the years the play takes us to today, when Christians, Muslims and now Jews battle throughout the region, with much of the conflict centered in historic Palestine.

I saw hints of the conflict on the drive back to Tel Aviv.  New Jewish settlements dotted the hills around Jerusalem, encroaching on the eastern half of the city once controlled by Palestinians.  A high wall zig-zagged across the landscape, built by the Israeli government trying to protect its cities from suicide bombers.  One settlement I saw seemed completely surrounded by barbed wire.  Meanwhile, out of sight but not out of mind, a few miles to the east the IDF continued its search for the teens, which dominated the news during our visit.

The tensions ate at me.  As an Irish-American I know the history of my own people, their land stolen by the British, their religion and language banned.   My family arrived in the 1920s following a bloody War of Independence against British soldiers partly drawn from prisons.  I could not but feel some sympathy for the Palestinians on the other side of that long, snaking wall.  On the other hand, the murder of the three teens, found dead a few days after we left, drove home just how wide a gulf exists between the two sides.  What could be gained by such brutality?

I’m saddened Tel Aviv isn’t Paris after all.  I’m glad to have gone and happy to have left a week before the Hamas rocket attacks started.  I formed a much deeper appreciation for what H-P has achieved in digital printing.  The string of high-tech companies that surround the city point to a vibrant economy firmly planted in the 21st century.  But the wall, the occupation, the rockets, the clashes in the West Bank point to tensions inherited from a much earlier time.

The play Cormac and I saw concludes with Richard in Purgatory, having to witness the bloodshed spilled over the centuries in part thanks to his unwillingness to bury the hatchet.  Finally, he is given another chance.  He can enter Jerusalem, or not.  If he decides not to, the bloodshed goes on and he goes to Hell.  If he decides to set foot in the Old City, peace comes and he enters Heaven.  Of course he cannot bring himself to enter Jerusalem, leaving me to wonder if cosmopolitan Tel Aviv will ever find itself free from the troubles conjured by that ancient city.

Tel Aviv, Israel

Thirty years ago I never imagined being in formation, commemorating Memorial Day in formal ceremony, while dressed head-to-toe as a corporal in Union Army uniform. No, while marching in the streets of London protesting apartheid, the nuclear arms race and the bombing of Libya during graduate school I didn’t project myself standing here at requiem arms honoring the American dead of wars past and present, but specifically those who died between 1861 and 1865.

Briefly, I have my wife to thank for this. She found a wonderful group of Civil War re-enactors, men and women who encourage an interest in history by spending several weekends a year doing living history, dressing, living and fighting as those on the battlefield did 150 years ago.  This group of 70 or so re-enactors in particular, the 20th Maine Co. G based in northern California, has a program for children under 12 which teaches them about the period. The cadet corps, as it is called,  proved a perfect match for my son Cormac, then 7, who dove into history at a very young age, probably around four, and has never varied. Not many of his contemporaries in school shared his enthusiasm — in fact none did — but he found a home among kids who donned wool uniforms, learned how to hold a rifle circa 1861, learned the battlefield maneuvers and talked history late into the night around campfires. My wife found him a home, and I came along for the ride.  But over the last nine years it has become more than that to me. I look forward to the fellowship and the immersion into a different time.

These days I am the second-in-command of our group’s cadet unit, even though Cormac, 16, now takes the field with a black powder rifle to duel Confederates.  This day I hover nervously in back ranks, behind the 12 to 14 year olds, who have their heads lowered, replica rifles upside down, with muzzle on the toe of their boot and butt resting against their lowered forehead.  They are holding the position as a sign of respect for those who “gave the last full measure of devotion” as Lincoln said in the Gettysburg address. I’m looking for any signs of fainting or sickness which can happen if  the youngsters haven’t  taken enough water or lock their knees, which effects blood flow.  While I keep my eye on 10 cadets, I listen to the ceremony and peek around the parade ground watching the event along with a couple of dozen civilians.  I can’t help but admire the reverence of the 200 Confederate and Union re-enactors standing at requiem arms, our commander Dan dressed smartly standing straight at attention.

The service begins with some history.  The Confederate brigade commander walks through the evolution of the day, which actually started in the South in 1862 when the women of Savannah, Georgia decorated the graves of the war dead.  The Northern states adopted the tradition in 1868 declaring May 30 Decoration Day.  My imagination wanders to images of widows, in black, dressing the dirt covered bodies of their husbands, fathers and children.  Gradually the day expanded beyond a remembrance of the Civil War dead to include those fallen in World War I and World War II and so on.  The federal government officially christened May 30 Memorial Day in 1967.  A year later they moved it to the last Monday in May, thereby creating a three-day weekend.  Like many, I am sure, I did not know the roots of the holiday which  now is mainly known as the beginning of summer, reserved for barbecues, beer and 50% off sales.

Not everywhere though, certainly not here.  We progress through a flag raising to half mast, a 21 gun salute and a reading by a pretty good Lincoln impersonator of the Gettysburg address with its stirring final words recalling the many who sacrificed their lives “that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from this earth.”  Every time I read or hear those words I think they speak to us today.  I believe Lincoln constructed the speech talking to generations yet to come, challenging us to ensure that our government by the people should not perish.

The ceremony calls forward those veterans in attendance for recognition, and remembers the dead of more recent wars.  This is when my 25-year-old self returns.  Despite what these speakers say today, I can’t accept that those who fought and died in Vietnam and Iraq did so to ensure democracy not perish.  Those wars seem horribly misguided seen in the light of the Civil War, where the very existence of the nation hung in balance. In fact we know now that our leaders in the instance of Vietnam knew but did not tell us that the war was unwinnable, the cause not worth the cost.  Fighting these conflicts  chipped away at the republic Lincoln called us to preserve, instilling fear among us and diverting dollars that could have been used to build the nation he imagined.  As I stand behind the cadets I worry about whether they will be thrown into conflicts that lack the meaning of the Civil War or World War II, their lives lost in foreign lands where we don’t belong.

Thanks  to Civil War re-enacting, thanks to my wife, my son, I stand and ponder.  And catch the first of two 12 year olds that day before they faint.  May that be the worst to ever befalls them in uniform.  Unless it really is about preserving, as Lincoln said, “our nation conceived in liberty.”

Come out and join us some year.  We’re at Roaring Camp in Felton, California near Santa Cruz every Memorial Day.  Or visit the nearest military cemetery on that last Monday in May and read the Gettysburg address.  I promise you will not leave unchanged.