For a Good Meal

Well, I made a complete embarrassment out of myself this evening. The Georgia Chopped Pork at The Fox & Hounds here in Pineville, North Carolina was just too delicious. To those of you back in Bland, you need to hop in the car and run on down here and try it.

I'm buyin'...

Exploring The Wonders Of The USA

I find myself momentarily stranded here at LaGuardia awaiting a plane to come in from somewhere; one that will - at some point in time - take me to Greensboro. That’s the plan anyway. I am therefore a temporary resident of the Big Apple.

I have to tell you, US Air doesn’t charge enough for the sightseeing excursion I was on earlier. In mid afternoon, with the reflecting sun glistening on the Atlantic below and a gentle breeze blowing in from the west, with excellent visibility for miles and miles (yes, it was a good day in the big city) we flew into New York from the north, passing directly over downtown Manhattan.

Off to the west, in the harbor, Lady Liberty, a dark silhouette rising above a shimmering sea, stood defiant. Her arm thrust skyward, she broadcast a clear and unequivocal message to any and all Islamist terrorists who might ever contemplate inflicting damage on the citizenry here. Her message: Never again.

Our plane passed directly over the Empire State Building. We were seemingly so close to the tower atop the skyscraper that I felt like I could have reached out and touched it. Almost. The view directly downward at the city’s tallest building (as of September 11, 2001) was enhanced by the attitude of our plane as it banked sharply in the direction of La Guardia. I found myself looking directly down on New York’s most famous building in America’s most expensive piece of real estate.

I craned my neck to catch a glimpse of ground zero where the World Trade Center once stood but our flight path prevented my getting even a glimpse. We had circled and turned northward and it was beyond my field of vision.

About this point in time, just after having passed over a blimp that was hovering above the Flushing Meadows stadium, jammed with US Open tennis spectators, we flew past Shea Stadium where the Mets play. We then crossed over the harbor and came down into LaGuardia.

So now I sit here in a terminal full of people destined for Providence, Charlottesville, Philadelphia, Norfolk, Richmond, Raleigh Durham, Pittsburgh, and parts beyond. Oh, and perhaps even Greensboro. Before dawn if I'm lucky.

Flying Should Be Fun

I found myself on my last two flights - the first to Chicago, the second to New Hampshire - sitting across the aisle from mothers with babies. Now, I love little babies. Except when they scream. Endlessly. In a small confined space. Within a few feet of me. God help, me I find it annoying.

There is nothing one can do, of course. I don't want the tiny tikes thrown overboard or anything. But it would be great if someone invented a muzzle of some sort. Or an incubator into which they could be placed while in flight.

Just some thoughts.

On The Road Again

Work brings me to Manchester, New Hampshire this afternoon. As you all know, this is ground zero when it comes to presidential primaries. So I'm up here testing the water to see what my chances are, should I decide to run against Hillary. The way I see it, I have a reasonable chance of success. Heck, I can make promises I have no intention of keeping as well as the best of them (except perhaps for Wet Willy; he was the master at lying through his teeth).

Actually, I've got meetings scheduled here this evening - along with the obligatory consumption of booze - and more meetings tomorrow morning. Then it's off to New York.

Hey. Somebody's gotta do it.

Am I Being Too Harsh?

So I fly into Charlotte last night about 9:00 and head over to my hotel. On the way, I stop at McDonald's to get the good old number 1 (Big Mac, fries, drink) to go. The young man behind the counter seemed nice enough, although he could have been a whole lot cleaner. And the filthy hat could have been thrown away.

And I wish they'd furnished him gloves.

After having given him a ten, he hands me my change and a bag o' stuff. Then he passes me my empty cup with which I'm supposed to go find the coke dispenser and pour my own drink. Saves on labor costs, I guess.

It was the manner in which he handed me my cup that pissed me off. He held it with his bare, greasy hand by the rim, with four fingers wrapped over the rim and down the inside and his thumb braced against the outside. He set it on the countertop.

There was no way I was touching that cup. He might as well have run his tongue around the rim. I would have had the same reaction. Perhaps.

So I asked - politely - for another cup.

"What?" he asked.

"Your fingers were inside my cup, man. I'm not drinking out of that thing."

"Oh."

He didn't seem to be particularly flustered by my request. In all probability, I wasn't the first person that day that had requested that he not share his germs with his customers. He simply reached for another cup and set it on the counter, at least being careful not to ram his hand down inside this time.

I took my bag o' stuff, filled my cup with Diet Coke, and left for the hotel.

I usually enjoy the occasional Big Mac. But somehow, on this particular night, I was haunted by this recurring thought about ...

On The Road

I come to you this evening from the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Chicago. Yes, it's a tough life.

I am having dinner tonight with a new vice president and will be in meetings here tomorrow.

Then it's off on some other adventure.

Life is good ... if you can deal with O'Hare.

A Few Doors Down From Nowhere

Work brings me to Statesville, NC this evening. If you value your life, if you hold the lives of your children and your children's children dear, you'll never set foot in this town.

Although the Hardee's that, out of necessity, served as supper wasn't bad.

Five Guys Burgers

John over at Commonwealth Conservative swoons as a result of a visit to Five Guys. I wandered into one of their burger outlets up in Springfield a while back because I had heard how good the food was there. I too found the burgers to be disgustingly great.

The unsettling aspect to my visit was in the fact that the restaurant was full of grossly overweight patrons and me (a reasonably svelte 185 at the time). I fear a direct correlation exists between the massive burgers served up by the five guys and the massive girth achieved by Five Guys aficionados.

I became haunted by the implications.

Now I'm approaching 300* and can no longer squeeze into my Speedos. I'm not sure but I believe my problems all began that terrible night that I pigged out on thick, juicy, greasy, delicious Five Guys hamburgers.

* Just kidding. I was at 186 this morning, a condition I attribute to beer consumption yesterday.

Talk About Productivity ...

Yesterday was a busy day for me in the office. I was on the phone the better part of the day setting plans for the coming year. I noticed toward the end of the day that, in the course of sending and receiving email messages, spreadsheets, .jpg's, etc, I had transferred 40 megs of data*. In a matter of 10 hours. A routine day.

I think back just ten years when we relied on the US Postal Service for communication with customers and with the organization's branch offices. My God. How did we survive as a nation?

* My first computer was a Commodor 64. It had a storage capacity of 64 kilobytes or 0.064 megs ...

On The Road

It is a rare day that I declare a Chinese restaurant to be substandard but tonight I have to pass on a negative assessment regarding a place in Bethlehem, PA. It was really bad. You may want to avoid Pennsylvania until further notice. This is so disappointing. I mean, how do you screw up Chinese?

Anyway, I find myself here in the cradle of civilization (Get it? Bethlehem? Oh, never mind) this evening, with meetings scheduled in Easton tomorrow and more meetings on tap for Friday in Thomasville (near York).

Ah, the life of a gypsy. Who wishes he hadn't ordered the sweet and sour chicken.

I Can't Find a Signal!!!!!!!

I pulled into Harlan, Kentucky yesterday afternoon and immediately walked into the Cingular store on the town's main street. I hadn't been able to get a signal on my phone for an hour and a half and, in my business, that's a bad thing.

I walked up to the woman at the counter, holding my cellphone - I have Cingular (AT&T Wireless) cellular service - and asked, "Can you get a signal here?" I thought there must be a secret to getting service if there was a store selling it deep in the mountains.

The woman looked at me and replied, "No."

A cell phone store where you can't get a cellular signal. I felt like passing on to her some of my marketing experience. "Don't try selling ice cubes in Iceland or sand in the Sahara."

Or cell phones where there is no service.

But I was in a hurry.

"So where do I have to go to make a call?"

"Go back to the lat (that's light to those of you who don't speak mountain) and turn left. You should git a signal when you git to the Pizza Hut. But some days are better 'n others."

Darned if she wasn't right.

I made my calls. I picked up my accumulating voicemails. I sat in the car sweating like crazy.

But I got a signal! In Harlan, Kentucky!

I bring this up for a reason. Tom Friedman, writing a column for the New York Times, wants our politicians to do something about the problem - but for those like him who live in the big city.

Calling All Luddites
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

I've been thinking of running for high office on a one-issue platform: I promise, if elected, that within four years America will have cellphone service as good as Ghana's. If re-elected, I promise that in eight years America will have cellphone service as good as Japan's, provided Japan agrees not to forge ahead on wireless technology. My campaign bumper sticker: "Can You Hear Me Now?"

I began thinking about this after watching the Japanese use cellphones and laptops to get on the Internet from speeding bullet trains and subways deep underground. But the last straw was when I couldn't get cellphone service while visiting I.B.M.'s headquarters in Armonk, N.Y.  

He goes on to say Congress should fix the problem.

I'll not hold my breath.

Ode To Babes

I try my best to do what's right,
To take no prisoners; to join the fight.
.
It's when I gaze upon these pics
I know to side with right-wing chicks.
.
And then there're those
who'd stop a clock.
.

Who look like they

crawled from a rock.

.

There is a message in this post

to those who wish to join the host.

.

I think that I'd prefer to be

a member of the GOP.

Click on image to enlarge.

I Battle a Snake

Because of recent heavy rains, our gravel driveway had taken a bit of a beating in terms of erosion (we live on a spur of Big Walker Mountain and our drive curves about 300 yards up a hill; with a downpour, we can get a good bit of runoff from the hillside) so I decided to hitch my grader blade to my tractor and level the driveway.

I find myself having to do this three or four times a year. It takes me about two hours and it ain't no big thang, as we say.

Because I don't use the blade much this time of year (I get lots of use out of it plowing snow later on), I keep it under a tarp out behind the fenced pasture.

One thing a person learns around here is that, in the summertime there is a snake lurking under every rock, behind every tree, in the rafters of every outbuilding.

So when I got to it, I intentionally lifted the tarp away from the grader blade carefully.

Sure enough, there were two huge black racers curled up beneath the tarp, all intertwined and not particularly pleased that I had disturbed them.

What was odd about the encounter was that the snakes, once disturbed, didn't slither off into the weeds. They untangled but circled the blade as if both of them were going to challenge me.

Under normal circumstances, I'd give the snakes their space. But on this day I needed my farm implement. They were, therefore, occupying my space.

As I backed the tractor up to the blade - to connect it to the three-point hitch and to scare off the pesky not-so-little reptiles - sure enough, one finally moved off into the tall grass.

The other one, though, wasn't going anywhere. He coiled up beneath the blade and signaled, "Come on, big daddy. Let's see what you got."

Hmm.

My thought was, "Look, you little reptile, go have your snake sex under someone else's tarp. I've got work to do."

So, with a good deal of effort and cajoling, I finally got the black snake to see things my way; he slithered away, obviously not happy with me.

I hitched up the blade and started heading off across the pasture toward the driveway. As I rode along, I began to think about the encounter. I'm no snake expert but it seemed the two that I had come upon had acted rather strangely. I thought it odd that they would be so aggressive, particularly the one that would not back off when confronted. Showing off in front of his mate is a commendable exercise - heck, I used to do it for Paula myself ... a few years ago.

But this was different.

Then an idea came to me. Perhaps I hadn't interrupted snake sex. It might be that I had unknowingly busted up a family. The two snakes might have been raising babies. That would certainly explain the aggression.

But I hadn't seen any babies when I lifted the tarp off the blade, and the blade is nothing more than a five-foot long steel ... well, blade.

Except ...

I brought the tractor to a stop, put it in neutral, and jumped off. I walked around to the back, knelt down, and attempted to peer into the space that existed behind the blade itself and a support beam that ran its length.

It was too dark in the confined space to see anything. So I walked around to the other side of the implement and stuck my eye up to the narrow opening. And looked inside.

Something was looking back.

I knew immediately that it had to be a snake; the cause for the parent snakes to be agitated. I knew too that I was going to use that blade - on my driveway - that day.

The snake had to go.

But how was I going to get him / her /it out?

I decided to drive the tractor up to my garage and to prod the little tyke out of its lair.

As I headed up the driveway, I looked back, only to see a snake head and about twelve inches of snake body dangling below the blade. He was attempting his escape. Which didn't upset me at all.

He slowly worked his way out of the blade and plopped down on the driveway. All three feet of him. The cutest youngster a mommy and daddy snake had ever produced. He lay there for a few moments, got his bearings, and then slid off into the grass.

And my day progressed.

Another day on Snake Mountain.

A Great Night For Baseball

The Salem Avalanche (a AAA league) crushed the Frederick Keys 6-2 last night. The weather turned out, after threatening rain, to have been perfect for the game.

We were particularly glad to see the Av's crush the Keys because ... well, because the Keys had the gall to show up on our diamond. On our home turf. In our house. You do that, you should expect a good thrashing.

Attendance at the game was just over 5,500; not bad for a Carolina League game.

A band played on the lawn outside the stadium after the game. Little Kaid and Jayla danced the night away to "Cheeseburger in Paradise."

It doesn't get any better.

Blood Flows on the Fuhrman Farm

Paula and I have had a tough time this summer with black snakes eating barn swallow babies. (I know there are men and women in uniform dying in Iraq, but I'll concentrate on them after we finish picking up tiny feathers and body parts).

I took a picture once of a black racer that had to have been six feet long slithering across the pasture and posted it to this weblog. We grow them really big on the farm. Well, they are quite common around here and one (or more) is (are) raiding the swallow nests when the four, five or six fuzzy little birdie heads are just starting to appear over the rim of the dried mud nests. One day they're all there; the next day, they're all gone.

And they ain't flying away.

I thought for a while that it was a barn owl coming in at night but signs are pointing more toward snakes.

We have had about fifteen nests of swallows this summer, all high up in the rafters of our barn (there are three active nests right now even this late in the summer) and few of them have seen chicks grow to adulthood.

Paula would probably prefer that I shoot the snake but I won't. Such is the way of nature.

But I will strangle the little bastard if I can catch him in there late at night.

Such is my nature.

Time To Hang It Up?

I've often told family and friends that I plan on never retiring. I'll work till I drop.

But a sign from God might change my mind.

Here's a bit of news about M. Arthur Anderson's tap on the shoulder in the Richmond Times-Dispatch:

Motorist aide struck by car on I-64 

By Mark Bowes, Times-Dispatch staff writer

M. Arthur Anderson and his family are probably counting their blessings.

The 73-year-old state police motorist assistance aide was struck by a car going about 40 mph on Interstate 64 near Staples Mill Road yesterday. He survived, suffering a broken leg and head injuries.

That's even more remarkable when you consider Anderson is still recovering from open-heart surgery. 

MEMO

From: GOD

To: Art

I thought the blocked arteries would have been enough of a signal. It is time to kick back and take in your daily dose of The Price Is Right, dude. Your days of bouncing off of cars and running that six minute mile are over.

Fond Memories

I never met Kim Woo-choong. But I feel like I know him well. That's why this brings back a flood of memories.

Founder of Collapsed South Korean Conglomerate Daewoo Hospitalized 

The Associated Press

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - The former chairman of collapsed South Korean conglomerate Daewoo Group was hospitalized with a life-threatening heart ailment Friday, casting a shadow over a multi-billion dollar fraud investigation.

Kim Woo-choong was admitted to Seoul's Severance Hospital in (sic) was in serious condition, said hospital spokeswoman Park Doo-hyuk. 

I had the good fortune of working side-by-side for a few years with executives at the now-defunct Daewoo Automotive Group (Daewoo U.S.), before the parent company collapsed under the weight of its staggering debt.

(Interestingly, this article throws out a debt figure of $70 billion. When I was travelling regularly to Compton, CA to meet with my Daewoo counterparts in 1998 and 1999, I remember reading, in the Wall Street Journal, articles that pegged Daewoo Group's debt at $20 billion. Then $30 billion. The last report I read estimated the company's debt at $50 billion. With the profligate spending that I was witness to, I knew the ever-accelerating race to insolvency was a fast-approaching matter of time.)

Despite the regret that I still feel for those who were thrown out of work by the company's collapse, I have nothing but fond memories of my Daewoo experience. And of those with whom I worked.

What was particularly interesting about Kim Woo-choong and the many executives that would show up in Compton for routine updates on the progress of their company's U.S. entry into the highly competitive sub-compact car market, was the extraordinary deference that was paid these people. I could use the word godlike (OK, apostlelike) in describing the way they were viewed by the employees and it would not be too much of an exaggeration.

When a corporate executive came near, everyone around me bowed (No. I didn't. I bow only to my wife.). There was only fleeting eye contact on the part of those I was with, especially if an executive chose to speak directly to one of them. It wasn't out of fear so much as a profound respect for the position that executive held within the company.

And the stories about Kim Woo-choong were legion. His work ethic. His wrath. His power. Many of the stories were recounted to me over dinner or mixed drinks in bars and restaurants in Torrance, Redondo Beach, Palos Verdes, and aboard the Queen Mary down in Long Beach Harbor. Stories related in hushed tones almost. With an occasional sideways glance that ensured the storyteller that Kim Woo-choong wouldn't find out that he was the topic of casual conversation.

I remember too that every Korean working at Daewoo smoked cigarettes. Every one. Non-stop. Which was understandable, considering the fact that employees there had no life. An 80 hour workweek was the norm (oddly, workers at their headquarters were expected to be there at all hours but it wasn't unusual to walk past someone's office and see the occupant sleeping).

I took all this in with a great deal of fascination. I had, at the time, a number of opportunities to fly to Seoul to inspect facilities there but I never set aside the time (and I hear they serve dog in restaurants there; the un-hot kind; I can't say for sure). In any case, I wish now I had taken that time.

So, I hope Mr. Kim gets well soon. I hope too that all those wonderful friends I got to know at Daewoo U.S. have prospered.

And have given up their god-awful Korean cigarettes.

Eyewitness to Carnage

In Detroit, they're called "gawkers," in Chicago, "gapers." Those are the drivers who cause traffic jams by slowing down at the scene of an accident in order to get a glimpse of catastrophe. The worse the accident is, the slower they drive.

On Thursday, I was one of them, whatever we're called. I found myself slowing to a crawl on eastbound Rte. 58 west of Martinsville in order to avoid debris (and a state trooper) and to take in the sight of this horrific accident.

Collision kills Danville man
A Danville man was killed Thursday in an accident on U.S. 58 in Axton, according to State Trooper E.J. O'Connell.

Emory Midget Thomas, 69, of 115 Ash St., Danville, was driving a 2003 Suzuki Burgman motorcycle west on U.S. 58 when the accident occurred at 12:26 p.m., O'Connell said.

Thomas was driving in the right lane headed toward Ray Lambert Auction Co., O'Connell said. Witnesses said Thomas was interested in looking at lawn equipment at the auction house, the trooper said.

He apparently missed his turn and attempted to make a U-turn in the crossover about a mile east of the U.S. 58 bypass when the accident occurred, O'Connell said.

The motorcycle collided with a 1995 Dodge Neon traveling in the left lane, he said. 

Collided. There must be a verb that better describes the encounter when a car traveling at a high rate of speed makes contact with a motorcycle that is crossing broadside in its path. The report provided above is actually rather antiseptic - probably in deference to the victim's relatives - compared to what I saw. A crushed motorcycle with parts scattered across the highway. A small red compact car with both its windshield and the front of its roof caved in, the cause of the damage to both being obvious. By the time I got to the scene, the injured - and dying - had been removed and taken to the hospital but, when I gazed on the extent of the damage, I knew someone's life had come to an abrupt end. That day. Near Axton. On State Route 58. Moments before I drove by. It was a haunting experience.

If you've never been involved in an accident while riding a motorcycle, you can't truly relate to this experience. You probably have a reasonable understanding of that which can happen. The vulnerability. The lack of protection. Blood. Injury. Worse.

But you don't know the pain. The trauma. In my case, the inability to breathe. I described it afterwards as feeling like I'd broken my lungs. They didn't seem to function. The overwhelming distress from the many broken bones did reasonably mask the dysfunctional breathing apparatus but both seemed to contribute to a feeling of profound shock, as I tried to ascertain just what harm I'd inflicted on myself, without being able to fully grasp that which was happening. The notions that interrupt the thought process contribute to the shock: Can I walk? Am I dying?

In my case, on a beautiful summer day, riding a sleek, handsome Yamaha 650 Special, I steered straight when I should have turned. Doing about 25 mph, I slammed into the side of a brick house. For years I blamed the accident on a throttle that stuck (in order to avoid accusations that I had no hair on my chest; a man-thing) but aficionados saw right through that excuse and knew without hesitation that I'd simply lost control of the bike.

The valuable lessons learned from that accident are four: (1) The human body is extremely fragile. (2) A motorcycle affords no protection in a collision with a stationary object. (3) The extent of the damage done to the body is in direct proportion to one's rate of speed and the physical nature of the object met. (4) The catastrophic damage that is inflicted never completely heals.

So, when I passed that accident over near Axton, it brought back memories. Ugly memories. And I immediately knew that someone's life had been forever altered.

It's odd. The thought came and went that perhaps the rider was only permanently disfigured; his bones rearranged. As if that were a good scenario. I knew from my experience that that was the best that he could expect. I also knew, though, after seeing the depression left in the roof of that car, that the motorcyclist was not injured.

His luck had run out on Thursday, June 23, 2005.

As for me, after spending what had to be 15 seconds gawking at the accident, I drove on. I had work to do.

Kaid Finds a Rattlesnake

Three-year-old Kaid Fuhrman was out tooling around the yard in his battery-operated automobile the other day when he happened upon a snake. And not just any snake. It was a rattlesnake, or to the aficionado of such stuff, an Eastern Timber Rattlesnake. Three feet long and in a foul mood was the way it was described to me.

What makes the story charming (can a story about a venomous snake be charming?) is that little Kaid, who's still working on developing a broad vocabulary, jumped off his ride and came running into the house (my son lives up in Roanoke County) screaming, "Rattlesnake! There's a rattlesnake in the yard!"

My son, as it turns out, had warned Kaid and Kaid's twin sister about bad snakes, one of which - the biggest, baddest of which - is the rattlesnake and warned them to never go near them. Nobody's sure how Kaid was able to recognize the breed but, sure enough, when my son and daughter-in-law went out to inspect Kaid's find, there lay, at the side of their house, a chubby little rattlesnake.

After the initial shock wore off, my son retrieved a garbage can, scooped the surly monster inside, drove down the road, and released it into a creekbed.

Before you ask, "Why didn't he shoot the snake?" understand that that is not how we do things in modern America. We love all God's creatures; even those that choose to kill us and eat us.

Anyway, we're all proud of little Kaid. Most adults wouldn't be able to recognize a rattlesnake when they came upon one. But then most people don't live in Rattlesnake Central either.

Today's Wisdom

Stress Management

A lecturer, when explaining stress management to an audience, raised a glass of water and asked, "how heavy is this glass of water?" Answers called out ranged from 20 grams to 500 grams.

The lecturer replied, "The absolute weight doesn't matter. It depends on how long you try to hold it. If I hold it for a minute, that's not a problem. If I hold it for an hour, I'll have an ache in my right arm. If I hold it for a day, you'll have to call an ambulance. In each case, it's the same weight, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes."

He continued, "And that's the way it is with stress management. If we carry our burdens all the time, sooner or later, as the burden becomes increasingly heavy, we won't be able to carry on. As with the glass of water, you have to put it down for a while and rest before holding it again. When we're refreshed, we can carry on with the burden."

So, before you return home tonight, put the burden of work down. Don't carry it home. You can pick it up tomorrow. Whatever burdens you're carrying now, let them down for a moment if you can. Relax; pick them up later after you've rested. Life is short Enjoy it!

I was forced to terminate an employee years ago for having reported to work drunk. It was not his worst offense, but it was his last. When I sat him down to break the news to him, I said:

"John, I swore when I took this job that I'd never take a problem to bed with me at night. It was, and is, my intention to deal with problems swiftly and to move on. John, you and I have been to bed together too many times. You're fired."

The company I worked for profited from my having pulled the trigger.

Stress is often caused by allowing problems to fester and problem employees to accumulate.

Want to control work-related stress? Deal with your problems. Once. Swiftly. Move on.