Book Review

The Mission Song; John le Carre

Reviewed by Jeff Jordan

February 27, 2007

With the successful move from Cold War Spy thriller writer to writing of the Post Cold War scene, John le Carre has proved himself a master writer of any genre. Again as in “The Constant Gardener”, le Carre presents us with a beautifully flawed character, who against all odds is thrust in to the position of being the one good man between the world at its worst and something less than we would hope.

The stage is set in the Congo. Salvo, the young Congolese, is the son of a white man and native woman. The father takes the time to raise Salvo as best he can. The mother is long gone and dead before he finds out who she was. With his father’s early passing, it is up to others to pass on the wisdom of life to young Salvo. Life has given Salvo little, but he has made the best of what he’s found. He has one special talent. His upbringing in the Congo has made him expert in the many languages of the white man and the native. When we first pick up his narrative, he is telling his story in order to prepare us for why and how fate picked him to save his homeland and the price he will pay for his caring.

He is married to a young white aristocratic young woman, who is toiling in the trenches in an attempt to become a top notch reporter for a well read, but we’re lead to believe by Salvo, not all that reputable newspaper. Her toil has taken her far from their martial bed and the end of this relationship is foreshadowed by the opening scene where he’s is rushing to a party in her honor. He is late because he lingered to long in the bed of a young Congolese Nurse who he has met in the performance of his job as translator. She does not speak the dialect of the dying man. Salvo had taken the case as one of his community service stints. Normally, he is paid very well for his translating and he is known as one of the best.

Arriving late to the party, Salvo is distracted by the ringing of his cell phone. His other job of public service is working for Her Majesty’ Secret Service listening to purloined conversations in one of the cubbies with his mates trying to ferret out what people will say that may be of interest to the government when they think they aren’t being overheard. Salvo finds out this evening that he is being given a special assignment. The assignment opens his eyes to the reality of the harsh world around him and how his complicity might cost many people their lives and his country it’s future

Steadfastly British, our Salvo’s love and allegiance have been aroused and stimulated by the young nurse, Hannah. For her, he feels he must live up to her expectations, he will betray his adopted country; kiss off his failing marriage and condemn himself to exile before he finishes the trip. In the meantime, he will learn about the practical side of spy craft and who not to trust.

Le Carre, as usual, puts the nasty face on world powers as they blunder their way about the world in disguise of world peace prelates. Instead he shows them as servants of economic interest trying to gobble up every piece of the world that can yield a profit regardless of who they hurt in the process. Le Carre simply can’t write of the world that is the way we wish it was, he opts instead for the way it is, no matter how uncomfortable that may be.

It's Snowing, So What's New?

It's 8:45 AM, Sunday, February 25, 2007. We have experienced some nasty weather over the last thirty six hours. Friday night we were predicted to receive about 1-2 inches of snow. We got in excess or 6 inches. This snow was the garden variety fairly light fluffy winter snow. The streets became slippery, the sidewalks became skating rinks and piles of the stuff appeared at the head of the blade on the plow trucks on the street and in lesser amounts from the repeated action of thousands of individual shovelers out cleaning their steps and sidewalks.

But this we were told wasn't going to be the main event. A storm of the magnitude of 8 -12 inches of snow, (we even heard 19 from some forecasters.) was coming out of the plains with possible rain, sleet and ice. So we braced.

This morning we are looking at some icy slush and crusty snow. We are waiting for more and there is little doubt we will get it, but the worst has probably past. The smart person realizes that the best thing is to stay home, light a fire, pop some popcorn, and put a film in the DVD. It's Sunday for crying out loud! You don't need to bee anyplace unless you are an emergency worker, snowplow driver, or cop.

After I helped my neighbor clear our sidewalk, I perk my coffee, finished my blog entry and turned on my television so I could watch CBS Sunday Morning or as I call it Chuck the II. I was to be disappointed.

My major complaint and the biggest reason I don't watch local television news is their tendency to make something out of nothing. They didn't disappoint me. All four local television had preempted programing to grind out a continuous, boring, repetitive montage of reports that basically repeated the following messages.

• Look it's snowing
• It's not as bad as it could have been
• It may get worse later

Strategy: Lets see how many different people from various parts of our broadcast area can we get to repeat these messages and affirm the necessity of preempting broadcasting and bore the hell out of our viewers.
Did I mention they put the roll screen at the bottom telling me that virtually everything was closed or cancelled, as if I couldn't figure that out? Thank God, it wasn't a school day. It was bad enough that every church had to get it's fifteen minutes of fame.

How many people needed to know what was going on with the weather? What service did this massive mobilization of broadcast resources provide? I would say that the numbers of people affected and served was minimal. Sunday morning is a slow period in viewership. Is this going to appear on the record of the stations as a massive amount of public service? Probably.

Constantly Strapped

While many things can be irritating and God knows I write in my blog in order to vent my irritations, shoulder straps rate right up there with the profusion of broccoli in restaurant dishes and the sound of crying babies.
My shoulders do not accept shoulder straps. They don't have the configuration, slop or convenient notch for which shoulder straps are designed. I can sling a hang bag onto my left shoulder and the carry-on bag over the right, which leaves my hands free for opening doors and fumbling for tickets, but all I have to do is start walking and both bags start slipping toward the front and eventually the floor.

Leaning over for any reason will start a mass evacuation of my load. Lean out to open a door with my right hand and the carry bag slips immediately down my arm and requires me to raise my arm to stop it from falling to the floor. Unless of course the strap isn't already hanging loose because the bag is on the floor, as can happen if the straps are long enough.

Reaching into my front pockets, where I normally carry my wallet, causes an avalanche. Most of the time this involves both bags, but often I can save the situation by letting one bag go and humping my shoulder to stop the other. Either way, I have to lean down to get the one that got away. I have to sling the rescued bag onto my back hip and if I don't take care ... well I might as well not have bothered. Sometimes it's just better to drop them both, do what ever I have to do and remount the load.

I can walk for blocks with a bags slung over my shoulder, if I don't need to do anything other than walk, eyes forward, and don't encountering any traffic. Does that sound like the typical airport, downtown street or public building experience to you? I think not. As I navigate these challenges, one inadvertent contact, one tick of a bag edge on a corner wall, public bench or a passing pedestrian and the abandon ship signal is passed from load to strap and the inevitable escape plan is launched. So as I walk I am constantly hiking the straps back up on my shoulders either one at a time or both simultaneously.

Does the strap design make any difference, Jeff? Hell No! I have an athletic bag that has a strap that attaches across the load instead of the traditional end for end. It also has a very generous width padded strap that literally covers my shoulder. It works somewhat better, but wins no prize in the "strap design that will work on Jeff's shoulder"contest.

It's true that if I bandoleer the straps across my shoulders I can get from point A to Point B without constantly readjusting the load, but than I feel like a kid in a snowsuit trying to do ballet steps.
No, the truth is just like my inability to execute a consistent inside out path on my golf swing so that I can get that sweet right to left path on my golf shots, dreams of shoulder straps that work on my shoulders is a dream and a dream only.

"Honey, can I have the roller bag for this trip? "

New York, New York 2007

I’m not sure when I was told that were going to New York for a long weekend, but I can assure you, Maria, my wife, didn’t think it was necessary to tell me. Okay, maybe she did ask me if my schedule was clear from Saturday February 10 until Tuesday February 13, but if she hadn’t I wouldn’t have been mad. She got the tickets on sale from Jet Blue. The bill for the two of us roundtrip O’Hare to JFK was less than two hundred bucks. Sorry Midwest! You have to know we won’t get that rate again and we may not have secured it if she had waited to consult with me.

After work on Friday, we traveled to Chicago and stayed with our long suffering friend Gail Cohen. This time the suffering included getting up at 4:00am to get us to the airport for our 6:00am CST flight. While this seems like a pain in the butt time to be leaving, it permitted us to arrive in New York at a really great time. We landed about 30 minutes ahead of schedule and after a quick cab ride through the light Saturday morning traffic we are checked in to our room at Milford Plaza by 10:30am EST.

We blew the biggest advantage by not getting into line at Hot Tickets for a matinee show at half price. But we did manage to meet up with our favorite New York travel friends the Nagler’s and their daughter, Ann, in time to get tickets for the evening performance. We get five seats to see “The Little Dog Laughed” at the Cort Theater. (I will blog on this separately.)

Helpful Hint: It’s a little known fact; there are two lines at the hot tickets booth in NY. One, the really, really, really long one, is for all of the shows. However, if you want to go to a drama there is a much shorter line. Now I realize an hour wait for half price ticket to see Lion King or one of the other perennial favorites is tempting, but remember they probably will send a road company version to a town near you. Some of the excellent theater productions that are available in New York are not a musical and not all good theater will win a Tony Award. Take my advice; check out the plays available in the short line.

The girls go off and bond doing whatever they do to bond. Lenny and I head for “the hole”, the New York Subway. If you travel to New York City, you’ve got to learn to use the Subway System. Cabs are very expensive. You sure as hell don’t want to drive your own car in New York City. If the cabs don’t kill you the parking fees will.

That evening we dine on Broadway on appetizers and our favorite beverage and than it was off to the theater. I will expound more on the performance of , “The Little Dog Laughed” in another blog, however a quote from Lenny as we left the theater pretty much sums it up.

“It’s wonderful when you start out a trip like this with a performance that will make you glad to came to New York no matter what you see the rest of the time you’re here” so sayth Len and I agree.

We ate breakfast Sunday morning at Junior’s which is a Brooklyn Family Restaurant Chain with great value and great food. After the wait in the line for matinee tickets to see “Spamalot”, we trudged down the street to Café Europa with Helen’s NY Times until we could gt our seats at the Schubert. The humor in “Spamalot” is slap stick as is all of the Monty Python stuff. We just let it roll over us and enjoyed it, rather than wonder what high brow stuff we might be missing. That evening we took the Subway to Astoria in Queens to have dinner with Aaron Nagler his wife Carolyn and their two kids Madeline and Violet.

Monday the merry band of travelers got to on their horse (the subway) and goto Chelsea. Known for its art galleries and it’s colorful residents, we were only disappointed in the fact that all of the galleries were closed on Monday. We had breakfast in a neat neighborhood place. Len and Helen went to the Met. We went to the Tenement Museum. This lower East Side attraction includes a history lecture and tour of a well preserved Tenement House circa the turn of the century. When we regrouped in the evening we had a sumptuous dinner at Robert Emmett’s on Eighth Avenue. We skipped the overpriced dessert’s at Emmett’s for a piece of cheese cake at, (where else?), Junior’s.

The trip home deserves a blog all to itself if only because we were on the cusp of a disaster, but didn’t know it. The short version is that on Valentines Day 2007 we flew one of the only planes out of New York to Chicago. Out flight hopped over a storm that the Midwest and particularly Jet Blue will not soon forget.

Our approximately two hour flight from New York’s JFK to Chicago’s O’Hare was followed by a automobile trip of three and one half hours from Chicago to Milwaukee in blinding snow, slippery roads and not a lot of company.

Rewards of Work

If you've been lucky enough to have a successful career, as I feel I did, than work after retirement is a vastly different thing. There is the search for fulfilment and satisfaction as opposed to money, power and prestige. I know that most people don't admit to a career path as money power and prestige, but the reality of American Society requires that the participants do understand that the best of any profession will be those who make the most money, command the most power and garner the most prestige. For those who haven't faced that reality I'm sorry, but CEO and upper management salaries in all reaches of American business and public management haven't gotten to the levels they are by accident.
No, after you retire you can drop the pose and become ... well let's say a Guest Services Representative at a museum of technology and environment, because let me assure you if you do that, you are not looking for money, power or prestige. When you finally downsize your ambitions, you can finally "leave the work at work". There is one small problem. You can't forget what you've learned. When your being supervised by twenty and thirty somethings who are learning on the job, you can see the shortcomings, mistakes and misconceptions. The impulse to want to reach out and grab the wheel is often overwhelming.
I remember a commercial from years ago where a wool clad new Englander states from his frozen snow covered backyard somewhere in in rural bumfuck that "It used to be if you got a yen fer a fresh peach in February, you just laid down and waited until it went away."
Good advice and I probably will take it. But if they could only hear themselves?

After the Fact

Maybe it was because both my wife and I got sick in the middle of the task, but I'm glad we turned the grand kids back to their parents Tuesday morning. Stacy and Dan dropped the kids at our place in Milwaukee on Thursday of last week. The next day I came home from work at noon, went to bed and didn't get up until Saturday morning. I was running at about fifty percent went Mi Mi went down for the count at noon on Saturday.
Fortunately for us Ryan and Kim, our son and his girlfriend, were visiting. They helped throughout the day and I probably got my meter up to 60 before they left and more importantly they had wore out the kids to the point that they were far more manageable. On Sunday, we migrated back to Appleton. Eli had school on Monday
The next two days were a blur of juice, cereal, peanut butter and toasted waffles. These things I provided the kids while a pile of toys with millions of parts came out of the closets and drawers.
I was a guest in a make believe restaurant. I played games I had never heard of before, with rules that were in all cases made up as the game progressed.
Finally, they were safe in bed on Monday night. I was able to sit and contemplate. Yes, I was still not one hundred percent and as I write this on Thursday I have away to go, but the effort to keep up with those kids took it's measure also. It was job well done, but thank God it's over.

A Visit from The Little People

In the grand scheme of things grandchildren are one of the pleasures of life. Yeah, I know all of the cliches about grandparents. We spoil or grandchildren because we can. We can enjoy them and than send them back home to their parents. We can get a measure of revenge on our kids by siding with the grand-kids.

"So, Devon, how much allowance do you get?"

"Gee, that doesn't sound like much. I think you should get more. You are expecting a car and full ride at the college of your choice, aren't you?"

But the real joy is looking at these little blank pages writing their future. First of all, let's be clear about something. Every bodies grandchild is bright, cute, talent and inquisitive. The filed is pretty much even, if only in the minds of the individual grandparent. Since, for the most part they are an extension of ourselves, of course, they are just the greatest grand-kids ever. I beg you to remember that most serial killers had grandparents. However, most kids don't exhibit that kind of behaviour until they become older when they have completely blinded their grandparents to their faults.

Grandparents are suppose to be a persons where kids can go when they feel that no one else is listening to them. I'm not suggesting that grandparents undermine their kids authority, but some times just listening can go along way to quelling the fears of a child feeling that they are not heard. Parents after all have a lot more to worry about than the minute by minute concerns of their children. Grandparents, on the other hand, have nothing else to do but swoop in at the right moment to console the abused and neglected grandchild.

This week, we are entertaining our grand-kids while mom and dad take a well deserved break. We will return them in good working order and the kids will be more than glad to see mom and dad come home, but in the mean time we will corrupt them with extra treats and expose them to new experiences. We will be typical grandparents. The kind that love their kids, but love their grand-kids just a little bit more, because they need us.

Going Home.

When I bought my first computer it was an Apple II. It consisted of a box and two floppy drives, back when floppy disks were flexible and actually flopped. Soon after came the first MacIntosh Apple (Mac) with less memory than my ROM Cache today (128K).
because Windows was nothing but a pale I had to convert to a PC for business reasons. Business went from mainframe to PC network. I actually had a head start on my contemporaries because Windows always was a pale imitation of the Mac. In fact, I became a coach in our companies effort to build a local area network (LAN). Became of that I became a home and office user because of the compatibility. Well now I'm retired and I want to go home.
I'm sick of error screens, inconsistent performance, problems with add on programs, and VIRUS threats.
Apple is easier, more intuitive and responsible. What do I mean by responsible? When a Mac has problems you don't get into those finger pointing sessions where the software guy is telling you the hardware's the problem and the hardware guy is telling you it's a software problem. They are probably sitting side by side in a call center in India laughing as they frustrate you.
The new Mac is just as easy to use, as it always has been. I like the compatibility with all of the applications I use and the files I have that mean something to me. I'm going home and I'm happy

How Cold Is It?

( February 5, 2007 6:30am, Milwaukee, WI, Temperature -13 degrees)

The wind chill factor is in the area of -30 degrees. On a beautiful sunny day, we will cancel school, because children walking to school could experience frost bite. For anyone who has not experienced this kind of cold let me give you some idea of what it's like. Any warm air from a chimney, exhaust pipe or just breathing will freeze on contact with the air. Frost coats every thing and won't melt even when exposed to direct sunlight. Moisture of any kind from a spilled cup of coffee to spitting on the sidewalk will freeze on contact. Exposed skin is vulnerable to freezing in minutes. Walking, even from the front door to the car, is painful. You have to dress in many layers and dare not forget to cover yourself. whatever you don't protect you will know immediately. Even the dog seems to hurry through her business. Walking her? Forget it.

Cars with weak batteries won't start. Batteries will actually freeze if they aren't able to hold a charge. Because of advances in computerized starting systems, most cars will start if the battery is in good shape, but it will not operate normally. The suspension is stiff, the brakes are soft and the transmission seems like it's stuck in mud.

The macabre thing about weather like this is the window view. Aside from any frost that might be on the surface from moisture on the inside of the window, you would think the weather was great. When we get extreme cold like this it's because of intense high pressure, which means clear skies and dry air. The sun rises early with no hazy or fog. It sets late on a razor sharp horizon. But alas the heat generated is unable to have much if any effect on the weather except solar heating of the rooms of their house that get the sun and some minimal heating of the inside of your car if it's parked in the sun.
It can fool you, but if your a veteran of this climate you just know better than to run to the garbage can in your tee shirt just because the sun is shinning. I know you've seen pictures of over served young men at Green Bay Packer football games baring their chest in this type of weather, but let me assure you it is not this cold when they do this or if it is their exposure is brief or their life is short.

Fortunately, this kind of weather doesn't stay long. By the end of this week, our temperatures are due to move up to the low twenties for a high and above 0 for a low. That may not sound like much relief if your living in Florida or California, but the difference in living conditions is huge. We might even open the schools.

Watching Peter O'Toole

Watching Peter O'Toole in his performance in Venus was like watching Ali with Parkinson's, you'd rather retain better memories of him. Watching his demonic red rimmed eyes, landslide sagging facial features and the wet weak lips in full closeup was not flattering nor particularly endearing. While you get a glimpse of the cocky, intelligent rogue of old, mostly he just looked pathetic as he panted and lusted after the young, Jessie, played by Jodie Whittaker.

O'Toole plays, Maurice, a charming and still popular actor that represents a not so pale image of himself, who meets this irascible young women and gets a death sentence from the doctor at the same time. Maurice is still working as an actor, but living with all of his popularity and accomplishment doesn't seem to be enough, he can't resist one more dive into the love pool, when he meets his friends niece, who was dumped on his doorstep by a mother who had enough of her rebellious uncontrollable women child. When we meet Jessie she is consuming all of the food and alcohol she can ingest and has this frantic look of a Holocaust camp survivor Maurice makes this headlong leap off the high-board in spite of the tremendous cultural difference between the two and his inability to perform anything like a normal sex act.

For Jessie's part, she is first appalled at his approach, than curious, playful and manipulative and finally in spite of all logic, fascinated and pulled into a relationship that somehow they both profit from.

If this film lacks anything it's a believable script. Despite a wonderful performance by all of the cast, my ability to get taken in by this story is clouded by the conflict of characters. I never could quite buy the idea that Maurice offered this waif enough charm to sidetrack her on her trip to self destruction. I did understand his fascination with her and his desire to have that one more time with someone young and vital. I just could never accept the fact that she was willing to do it.
I did get two things from this. I'm assuming there will be few roles in the future for O'Toole. Seeing but a flicker of the old Peter O'Toole is better than seeing a raging fire from some of the new young actors or should I say what passes for actors today. Witnessing the introduction of Jodie Whittaker was a find indeed. I think this young lady has offered us great promise.

More About Software Addiction

As long as we're talking about software, let's mention the standard "office package" that many people think they need to survive. MS Office in its many configurations usually consists of Word Processing, Spreadsheet, Presentation, contact management and data base programs. Some packages include so-called Publishing, photography management, web site development and other programs that I put in the "might be nice, but do you really need them category".

If you want to take the time to look at these programs one at a time, you will realize that they are for the most part loaded with features that you may never use, but more to the point most people don't even know that they have. I guarantee that if you go out and buy one of those door stopper manuals that the aftermarket provides because the software developers don't, you will find mind boggling features that you will strain your mind to figure out what you would even do with them. At a Microsoft (MS) seminar about ten years ago, we were told that users on the average take advantage of about 10% of the capabilities of the programs.

Some of the programs I have I almost have to relearn in order to use them because I don't use them often enough for them to be intuitive. I don't have a Data Base, except of course my contact manager, which even though it is in MS Outlook is nothing but a database in a pre-formatted form. I don't use Access for anything and the couple of times I tried I found it difficult and confusing. But that is the problem with a lot of software. The developers have given all of this whiz-bang technology, but it isn't intuitive and it tends to be unstable

I am doing this article on something called Google Docs & Spreadsheets. I can transfer this to my blog because it is writing the text into HTML. This is advantages in a lot of ways, but the important thing is that it's doing it without any extra effort on my part. I can actually assign collaborators, co-workers that would have permission to edit or change this document (and I'm sure my copy editor A-Rob wishes I would). what makes it a little clumsy is formatting it into a letter form or using it for extremely long manuscripts. But I have even more options than this program and MS Word for word processing. There is an Office Suite Program called Open Office that is available free at www.openoffice.org. I also have a version of Word Perfect 12 that came with my computer. I have so many ways to word process that you might think I was David Progue or some other software reviewer. I'm loath to give up MS Word because so many of my manuscripts are in that format, but now these other programs are able to read and even convert MS Word files to their format or vice versa.

I've written in all of these programs and frankly after a while I don't even notice the difference. They are so much a like that, let's face it,word processing software is a commodity. And I think we can say the same for spreadsheet, contact management, web browsers, data base, and inexpensive photo manipulation programs.

Were they put the buttons and what they call them might vary, but the similarities are more obvious than the differences. I agree the inner activity between MS programs and the sameness of the layout can be comforting, but I find that most of the stuff I use that is not MS, works just fine. I also agree that certain "power users" might have legitimate reasons for preferring one package over another, but the vast majority of user are not in that league.

I've been tempted to buy a clean computer, one with nothing preloaded and use Linux as the operating system and free Office suite software, just to see if it had any downside, but alas there is so much software out there and so little time. The problem is if I really wanted to simplify my computing life I know the answer. Buy a Mac.