Ends - Winter Solstice 2021

 

The time of secrets is upon us. Today, I’ll share one of mine.

 

People often underestimate me. Mostly, I think, because I try to get along. Unless I implicitly trust the individuals I’m with, I listen more than I talk. I also watch how they treat others, fully aware from experience that if they treat others poorly, I or someone I value could be next. I am generally conflict-averse but not above it.

 

That dichotomy confuses some and leads them into thinking I am weak or an easy target. In reality, I am just choosing my moment and method to strike if necessary. Mostly, I just hope any issue goes away. Because when I choose to act, it’s game on.

 

As readers may remember from Switching Sides, the engineering setting I worked in was often confrontational and contentious. Toxic is a better word. Years after the events laid out in that essay, I found myself at a crossroads. By then I’d set down a financial plan that eventually led me to where I am today. That plan was still years away from fruition, four to five to be exact. But I am patient and goal-oriented. Once I set one in my mind, I am likely to see it through. At least when the time is right. Life doesn’t always cooperate.

 

At that time, I was still unhappy with my day-to-day. Mr. Wizard, I don’t want to be a defense contractor anymore. For a number of reasons and unique circumstances, I didn’t feel I had much choice, not at that exact moment. I had a mortgage. I would soon have a spouse. I wanted to move but she didn’t. Her career was bound up with our current location.

 

By this point, the toxicity of team rivalry in my workplace had morphed into a new kind of tribalism. Bias and prejudice against women and minorities in my workplace were patently obvious to anyone with eyes. There were inappropriate jokes and nicknames, and slights meant to cast individuals’ race or gender or religion into stark relief. Often to their face. Often in a distinct power play. Often within management’s hearing. A distinct old boy’s network was very much in evidence.

 

To give you an example, one of my coworkers, one of the sharpest, most talented, most intelligent engineers I worked with, was dinged on her annual review for the way she dressed (which wasn’t provocative even at the time). Not only dinged but called into her supervisor’s office to specifically address the situation with interim reviews. Her middle-aged, white, male supervisor who had enough contacts and seniority to be considered untouchable. All the women I listened to considered this outrageous. I don’t think this man understood that corporate culture had begun to change.

 

Around this time, the system my project was designing was in the middle of demonstration and certification. Which meant extended fieldwork all around. Unlike the previous rounds of fieldwork that I’d been involved in, this time our workforce, specifically our software department which heavily figured into the design, was more gender-integrated, or at least had more than minor female representation.

 

Management had no experience in dealing with that. Which showed when they laid down a set of unique rules that only applied to women who went to the field. One of these was that they had to observe a strict buddy system. So, unless two women’s schedules and expertise aligned, neither could be assigned to a field site. Management viewed this as a safety issue, although clearly it did not apply to all travel. Women traveled to our client’s site alone all the time. Another rule was that women couldn’t be assigned to a support a ship even if that ship was in port. They would only be allowed aboard if there was no other option, read no other male was capable of performing their job. This was seen as necessary so as not antagonize the Navy or its commanders. There were a host of other minor guidelines, all of which amounted to making it difficult for women to get field assignments whether they wanted them or not.

 

Fieldwork in engineering is often a make-or-break opportunity for career development and advancement. Especially in defense contracting. If you keep a site up and running smoothly under adverse conditions, you can find yourself in the spotlight. If you are the individual who solves a critical problem holding up a test or demonstration, you are suddenly a hero. Upper management remembers your name. Promotions are in the offing. As are team lead positions required to advance.

 

As well, the field is not a design review. It’s not even like the lab. The problems you encounter under real-world conditions provide insight into future designs and inform the way you debug problems. The field is a practical, not theoretical, experience for any design or systems engineer. It’s also a moment to shine as you highlight your understanding of the overall system, not just your tiny segment, along with any interpersonal or technical skills you bring along.

 

In other words, unless you are the best ivory tower designer or system architect, your career may depend on how you perform in the field.

 

Which requires being there.

 

This was well understood the day those field rules for women were announced. As I remember it, they were only announced to the women themselves, not to all members of the team. Perhaps I missed the meeting. But I distinctly remember the information came down to me secondhand. By this time, I was slated for significant fieldwork. Volunteered for it, in fact. I knew from my previous stints of extended fieldwork how critical it could be.

 

The women who discussed the rules with me were generally offended. They had maybe one advocate in the lowest level of the management chain. When they complained to her, she had stated their case and was overruled by upper management. Vehemently and with alacrity. They considered the gender rules settled divisional law. Case closed. Protest at your peril.

 

That attitude didn’t ameliorate the situation or the undercurrent of dissent. This was not a happy sailor is a bitching sailor scenario. Mostly these women were junior engineers who had come up in a time that promised them equal treatment, much more than women just five years their senior. But they had no agency and knew it, other than voting with their feet. I got the sense many were growing used to this level of bias and discrimination, and had begun to accept it as a given.

 

As a warning shot or a distress flare, a couple years earlier my company had gotten caught up in a pay scandal which was pretty unusual for a defense contractor, the resolution not the act. In their annual reviews and raises that year, a number of employees found their base pay raised significantly, in some cases by double digits. The official explanation was that the company was transitioning to a new employee evaluation system that placed people in quartiles based on current and previous review scores, each with a minimum salary they should receive within their job title.

 

The unofficial reason for these startling but selective raises was far more troubling. For whatever reason (likely under government duress, or from due diligence by an ever-present buyout suitor), the company had reviewed the salaries of women and minorities and found both to be significantly underpaid compared to their generally white, male counterparts with equivalent experience and education. To the point where certain female and minority employees were earning below even the minimum salaries for their job titles by 10-20%.

 

These pay deficits were large enough that it sometimes took two years of what amounted to unheard of raises for certain individuals to catch up because of corporate policies that limited any employee’s annual raise to a maximum of 10%. In at least one case I have direct knowledge of, an individual (whose voluntarily disclosed ethnicity marked them as a minority) received first a 10% raise one year, followed by nearly 10% raise the next. This in a time when a 3% raise was considered good.

 

Of course, the true explanation was veiled in secrecy although rumors of what had happened abounded. It wasn’t hard to sort out who got good raises and what they might have in common. In the way of all management, they discouraged employees from comparing salaries for just this reason. But in the way of all employees, they often did if only informally and circling the edges. Rumors were abundant about who made what and where they fell on the department’s informal totem pole for the ever-present next round of layoffs. I had the truth confirmed a few years after I’d left the company by a friend who sat in on some of the meetings where that pay disparity had been discussed.

 

Right after this, the company made a concerted effort to hire more women and minorities, many of whom were gone within five years. Some number directly because of the reception they received.

 

From my earlier experience, I was more outraged than jaded when my management announced those the gender-based fieldwork rules. I refused to accept them as the norm. I took the situation as a personal affront. Precisely because I knew how I’d benefited from fieldwork in the past and thought others deserved that same opportunity. I was sick of seeing petty egos who I never saw as that outstanding threatened by perceived competition. I’ve never seen diversity as a threat to my position or career. I’ve always seen it as my opportunity to work with, and learn from, the best. Period.

  

Discrimination always sets me off when I sniff it out, even if the people around me don’t always note it. I’ve brushed up against too much prejudice too many times concerning too many friends, black, female, and/or gay.

 

The problem was, I had no real agency then either. I wasn’t particularly senior, just a few years more senior than the women I’d heard from. I didn’t have any contacts higher up the chain that might give me a hearing. But I knew in my heart what I was seeing was discriminatory and unethical.

 

While I am goal-oriented, I am also a problem solver. People who know me understand that when I set my mind to something, I know how to get things done.

 

And yet there was a problem with tilting at ideological windmills in my environment. There was a very real threat of reprisals against anyone who pushed the issue. That I’d learned from a long line of experience. I had an idea of what my company’s management would and wouldn’t tolerate. I also knew how far they would go to reinforce their reputation and protect their prerogatives.

 

The example foremost in my mind involved our division’s annual savings bond drive. Our company had a reputation of universal voluntary employee participation in buying US Savings Bonds. Higher than a similar campaign to support the United Way. Our divisional vice president had more invested in the savings bond campaign than any charity. Our 100% participation rate resulted in him being flown out to corporate headquarters each year to be feted. A trip he relished and had come to expect as his due.

 

The thing is, that 100% participation was only on paper. But the division took it seriously enough to assign people, usually supervisors or people aspiring to promotion, to talk to everyone in their department who hadn’t already signed up. On company time. Their pitch was that you could have as little as a quarter a week ($0.25) deducted from your check and assign it to a bond with a face value as high as $500 ($250 purchase price). Which meant it would take nearly 20 years to get one issued. If you left the company before then, all that money would come back to you.

 

When I was first approached, I looked over the information including the rates of return (which at the time were locked in as long you owned the bond) and decided it was a good way to create an emergency savings fund that I might later use to buy a house. This was before George H. W. Bush changed the terms by fiat, directing that the interest rates float at a reduced market rate to save the government money. Which basically gutted the biggest benefit of the program.

 

Either way, it didn’t matter to me. It was still a convenient way to save money that was accessible outside retirement with a reasonable return.

 

It did matter to a friend of mine who had been hired a couple years later. He was a savvier investor. He looked over the terms then turned in his card, declining to participate. Which meant his savings bond representative, in this case his direct supervisor, came around to ask him to reconsider. Because this was a “voluntary” program, he politely declined. Which then resulted in him getting called first into his manager’s office, then a program manager’s office (the one who told people who complained they were lucky to have jobs), a director’s office (who once ripped the wallpaper off of a conference room wall while demanding the name of an engineer who had accidently damaged a piece of equipment so he could fire him on the spot) and finally into our divisional VP’s office (the one whose trip to Texas depended on my friend’s participation), each stop with an increasing amount of pressure and intimidation. A lot of attention for a junior engineer.

 

I very much remember my friend describing his final encounter with our divisional VP. When asked why he wouldn’t participate after hearing how good of an investment these bonds were, my friend simply answered, “I have better investments that make more money elsewhere” and laid out exactly what they were. After a brief stunned silence, that encounter quickly turned to veiled threats about him not being a team player with the unspoken understanding that his refusal would be remembered when raises and promotions came around.

 

My friend remained unphased. After seeing the way the division operated, he wasn’t planning to make a career out of our company anyway. In fact, he took a better paying job within a year. A very sharp design engineer who we should have been trying to retain. He’d recognized the strong undercurrent of good ole boy network tinged with sometimes very literal gun-toting conservatism (one of my former supervisors carried a handgun in his briefcase). Many of the people we worked with were former military which shaped their thinking in ways most civilians didn’t cotton to.

 

As it turned out, the US Navy was also in transition at this time, against its will, as was American society at large. Around this time, our recently elected President was considering repealing the prohibition against female military personnel serving on combatant ships, which he did several months later. After the debacle of the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings under the previous Administration a few years before (rivaled only by the recent confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh), his EEOC suddenly had some teeth. The times they were a-changing.

 

All of which I understood as I examined the board and plotted out my best, most productive move.

 

Because I had no agency, and because I knew the threat of reprisals was very real, I treated this as an asymmetric warfare situation. I listened as events unfolded as a way to gather intelligence but I kept my own counsel. I didn’t grumble to anyone, not even friends, or give a hint that I planned to act. But plan to act I did. From the moment I heard those gender-based fieldwork rules announced.

 

Because our company was a defense contractor, many of which had been caught up in various ethical scandals dating back to Reagan, we had mandatory ethics training every year. From that, I knew we had a corporate ethics department. I knew their contact information was in our employee handbook.

 

But I was not naïve. I knew that corporate ethics departments, much like modern HR departments, are more about preventing the company’s image from being tarnished than about what you might think their job description might be. They are servants of the corporation, looking out for its best interests, not the employees. In many ways, they are the foxes guarding the henhouse.

 

I also knew that while the EEOC had strong legal mandate regarding discrimination, it had limited reach and powerful political enemies even after it had been revitalized by the then current Administration. Finding their contact information was a bit trickier as I recall.

 

With that in mind, I chose an uncharacteristic path. I embraced my inner Niccolò Machiavelli’s and heeded his advice, from Discourses not The Prince.

 

People who know me know that I have a complex, ambiguous and sometimes ambivalent relationship with Machiavelli. On the one hand, his words have been used to propel any number of despots into power. On the other, he captures a great deal of truth in the way people interact politically. Having played enough of the Avalon Hill game that bears his name, as I’ve mentioned in other essays, I had an idea how to use his principles for good. I see them as a tool, not inherently good or evil.

 

My plan was simple. I would outline my ethical and legal concerns over our corporate policy in a professionally crafted letter, using all the communications skills I’d picked up to make the arguments for my case. I would send it to both relevant parties, our ethics office and the EEOC. Since I was dealing with two weak allies with suspect individual motivations, I opted for a strategy that would force an alliance between them, much like I’d seen used quite effectively in the Machiavelli game.

 

Not only would I send the letter to both parties, I would clearly mark each as having been cc’d to the other. Which meant it would be more difficult for either to bury the incident for fear the other would act and blame them for not acting, thus exploiting their mutual antagonism. At the time, any ethics complaint involving a federal contract was required to be forwarded to the government. That did not always happen. Or if it did, the issue was often buried.

 

The thing is, if I believe in something, I don’t mind signing my John Hancock, despite the potential consequences. I don’t mind making a stand and have made more than a few unpopular ones. I don’t mind going toe-to-toe when necessary. I understand there are times you have to die on that hill just to protest, just to make a statement. Because sometimes by losing now, you can win later. You don’t do it capriciously, but there can be a long-term strategy at play.

 

Winning and losing are only words that reflect personal investment. My only real goal was to get the policy changed and give these women the same opportunity I had, to rise or fall on their own abilities, not their gender. An equal opportunity you might say.

 

But I knew I was dealing with some petty, vindictive people in my chain of command. If they were willing to threaten reprisals at highest levels over a bond drive, I had a pretty good idea of what they might be willing to do here. Which meant my letters would go unsigned. That rubbed my personal ethics wrong, primarily because I believed in what I was doing.

 

There was an advantage in anonymity. If corporate could ID who had complained, they could attack the individual (with rumors or reprisals). Without knowing who it was, they could only attack the ideas. As well, if that anonymity held, they would be more likely to hesitate in the future because that whistleblower could still be lurking. Those advantages outweighed any reputation I had at that moment, which honestly wasn’t much. As squeamish as I was, and as dishonorable as it felt, I had to the let the ends justify the means.

 

You may remember from Leadership that I value actions over words. In the end, I value actions over credit though credit can be nice. Effort matters but results matter more. I won’t die on hills for glory or recognition. I will die for results. It doesn’t do anyone any good to be martyred. Any martyrdom complexes I may have harbored were long dead, killed by practical experience. I intended to continue fighting for what I saw as important. Like this.

 

The risk was that the blame might fall on the women themselves and make their lives more miserable. Were that to happen, I planned to come forward before they could take the fall. I had to trust my instincts that the culture had begun to change. And that I could engage in round two if round one didn’t result in a KO, mine. To keep fighting, you have to survive.

 

And I very much intended to survive.

 

So, I let my native paranoia take the wheel. I didn’t compose my letter on a work computer, or even the laptop I rarely took to work. I wrote it with a different style, different words and a different voice. I didn’t put a return address on the envelopes that I ensured were typed, not hand addressed. I mailed both through a company drop box that went through the mailroom to the post office rather than dropping them where they might get a defining postmark, like say in Seminole. I stopped short of wearing gloves.

 

I told no one what I was doing except my wife, then fiancée, who I swore to secrecy. I trusted her implicitly. She supported my decision. We both held clearances, which if nothing else teaches you how to keep a secret.

 

I buried those two letters in different corporate mail drops, each in stacks of other envelopes of interdepartmental, corporate and personal mail. That was a risk, but so is tampering with stamped and addressed US Mail. Not that they should have been able to ID exactly where either came from. When I was finished, I deleted the files from my home computer.

 

Once I released those letters, I treated them like fire-and-forget weapons. Don’t linger in the area. Fire and move.

 

I wasn’t certain my actions would do much more than serve as a protest to be honest. I figured in the way of the world, no one would take my complaint very seriously. Management was more likely to find a reason not to act than to change the course they’d chosen.

 

Imagine my surprise a week later when I arrived at work and found the building already abuzz. I asked one of my friends what was going on. One of my female friends. She said word had come down from on high revoking the gender-based fieldwork rules. The women were now on the exact same footing as the men.

 

I quickly dropped a stony poker face in place. The eyes that look right through you, as I’d been told. Oh, I said.

 

Then she lowered her voice conspiratorially and looked around. Her contact higher up said that someone had complained anonymously and everyone in management from our divisional VP down was livid. Another of her contacts said there were management meetings all over the building trying to ferret out who it was.

 

Huh, I replied, then headed to my cube. I just went about my day, pleased my plan had worked better than expected, trying not to let it show.

 

Another friend in a different department who was in some of those meetings later confirmed that management was actively hunting for the whistleblower. They desperately wanted a head to roll to serve as an example. They never claimed one.

 

No one ever asked me about the incident. No one ever leveled an accusation against me or anyone else, at least that I know of. If management suspected me, I never heard.

 

I don’t believe they did as a few years later, I received a divisional excellence award for Development (for a different “accomplishment”), about the time I was slated to lead two dozen engineers on three teams (predominately of our female engineers) with a multi-million-dollar budget. I RSVP’d that I wouldn’t be able to attend to the dinner ceremony where the award would be presented by that same divisional VP. Instead, I had to go to HR to pick it up the Monday after. They didn’t realize that by that point I was beyond caring. I’d seen enough. I was already on my way out the door.

 

Before today, I’ve only shared this incident with a handful of people. With the exception of my wife, that happened only once, twenty years later at a Kitten*Con as we were discussing gender bias after the wine and cognac had flowed. I am still not entirely sure why I chose to share it at that moment. Maybe it was after a lecture on feminism in science fiction. Maybe after a discussion of the Bechdel Test (wiki it). I guess I trusted the people I was with. Although I could see little harm coming of it by then, I’d just gotten used to keeping that secret to myself.

 

So why reveal it now? Why bring it up again?

 

Perhaps because I’ve been thinking about that incident a lot recently. It is one of the few clean victories I can claim in my life, even if unattributed. A small victory which gained more meaning as time went by and other conflicts in my life have drawn to more ambiguous closures.

 

Perhaps because I feel we’ve been slipping backwards, that hard won progress has been eroded in recent years as old attitudes not only have resurfaced but are now rewarded. And likely will be again in the near future. The authoritarian, Q-Anon, Proud Boy opposition isn’t playing at their goals. Or rather they’re playing for keeps. Social progress, unlike technological advances, are often cyclic. While it’s rare for society to set aside a new technology, that is by no means true for civil rights.

 

And perhaps because I feel I’m getting too old to fight. Or I feel I’ve spent too much time fighting. I am tired and don’t know how much practical fight I have left in me. Perhaps I just hope someone else will take up the torch, using all the tools they are given, and leverage them to get the job done. If my experience serves as a guide or an inspiration, all the better. Or perhaps I am just reminding myself that I once knew how to fight and will again if necessary.

 

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

 

As we approach the day of deepest darkness, we may do well to reflect on the light we bring to this world. Sometimes you need place that lamp high on a pedestal for all to see. And sometimes concealing it beneath a bushel basket, or in a cellar to light a stop on an underground network, is much more effective.

 

Often you will never know how others perceive the path you light. If the right light guides you, you don’t need to. Even if, within the framework of the greater good, you sometimes compromise your personal code and allow more ethical ends to justify your means.

 

 

© 2021 Edward P. Morgan III

St. Augustine (a field report)

Five years ago, we stopped in St. Augustine as a part of a short driving tour of north Florida. At the time, I hadn’t been there since I was a kid. We stayed out by the highway and visited the Castillo the first morning, then wandered into the Old Town market district for a few hours while feeding a parking meter (remember those?). That afternoon and the next morning we headed further afield that to explore the nearby coquina quarry and the smaller island fort that guards the intercoastal inlet to the south.

 

Because that weekend bordered on sweltering, we didn’t spend as much time as we would have liked to poke through the back alleys of the Old Town. When we left, we felt we’d missed a lot and vowed to go back.

 

After the weather broke in November, we decided it might be the right time to make that return trip. This time we booked a hotel on the water within sight of the Bridge of Lions for a couple of nights, just on the edge of Old Town. We figured that way we could explore at leisure and retreat to our hotel if we got hot or tired. This was only our second overnight trip since the pandemic hit. Really since Karen retired. We were very much looking forward to a more in-depth exploration, not quite realizing how much might have changed in interim, whether with the place, with society, or within ourselves.

 

For the drive over, we opted to avoid as much of the interstate as practical without going too far out of our way. The quickest route on Apple Maps followed I-4 to Daytona then up I-95 from there. Which would include a scenic tour of Malfunction Junction of Tampa followed by the Death Race of Orlando with the Damnation Alley of Lakeland in between, where inevitably someone would try to kill us each time we made the pilgrimage to Brevard. So, we quietly deleted that option from our list.

 

Instead, we chose an alternate that took us up the Veterans Expressway past Brooksville, over to I-75 to just short of Ocala then onto a maze of two-lane county roads that would drop us just west of St. Augustine for not much more time. Karen was somewhat familiar with the route having used similar on her drive back from one of her final field trips to North Carolina for work before she retired. Easier now that she had discovered the convenience of Siri calling out directions on the backroads during her recent trip to Massachusetts.

 

While this gave us a pleasant drive beneath the spreading oaks of central Florida, this is an area that put the Red into redneck, at least judging by the 2020 election map. Which I wouldn’t have much thought about without the constant reminder of Trump signs littering the roadside.

 

And I don’t mean a few bereft and forlorn, forgotten throwaway campaign signs on the shoulders or easements. I mean full, fresh, 3’x5’ or larger wood framed placards. One was backdropped by the unholy trinity of a Confederate flag, a Gadsden flag (Don’t Tread on Me), and a Thin Blue Line flag fluttering atop fifty foot or greater poles, marking territory much like the white and yellow calvary crosses dotting the landscape outside any and all manner of primitive Baptist churches. On another an ambitious individual had taken the time and effort to carefully paint out Pence’s name, I assume on January 6^th. Several more had already upgraded their cult of personality American Idol campaign signs to the 2024 editions. With at least one shiny new sign boldly declaring “Trump is my President” to all passersby. The transition from Pinellas, even from the wilds of Seminole, a year after an election was like the tale of two Americas.

 

Having driven the backroads of this state before, we somewhat expected this, though perhaps not with the insurrectionist intensity. As we drove deeper into the remote rural landscape, I was left with the distinct impression we had entered the Dead Marshes of Florida on our quest. Knowing fully that should we linger, our tiny candles would be snuffed out.

 

But we didn’t expect those mycelial roots to have snaked their way into St. Augustine, although perhaps we should have.

 

Like all but the largest, most populous Florida counties, St. Johns is increasingly sanguinary red. And I mean in the bloodthirsty sense of the word. The moderating influence of Duval or the I-4 corridor has yet to spread this far. St. Johns is still more likely to look to Alabama than Alachua as its guiding light.

 

I’m not sure this was always the case. Back when St. Augustine first began its most recent redevelopment and revival, it seemed to take its cues from Baltimore’s Inner Harbor or Jacksonville’s Riverwalk, revitalizing what was otherwise an old, jaded, touristy southern town, albeit with a unique colonial history, into a quirky, somewhat hippie holdover arts community blended with its proximity to Flagler College, a private liberal arts institution occupying the old Florida Industrialist Era Ponce de Leon Hotel built by Henry Flagler.

 

In Florida, Flagler is most noted not as the founder of Standard Oil but as the founder of the Florida East Coast Railroad (FEC) which fueled the first Florida land boom. The construction of which heavily relied on convict leasing. In the then segregated Old South, that generally meant free black labor supported by an apartheid legal system. Which perhaps should have been the first clue of what we found today.

 

Our second perhaps might have come from five years before the college’s founding. During the Civil Rights Era, St. Augustine had a deeply checkered past. In 1963-64, the city found itself in the front lines of that social conflict. Some of which we knew from our previous visit, some of which we learned more of after we checked into our hotel.

 

The Hilton Bayfront was constructed on the site of the old Monson Motor Lodge which had been demolished in 2003. Only its steps remain, preserved as a memorial and a reminder. The steps where MLK was arrested in June of 1964, followed a week later by the largest mass arrest of rabbis in US history. In fact, St. Augustine was the only Florida city that MLK was arrested in. A neat trick considering Tampa/Hillsborough (along with four other Florida counties, one of which includes Naples) remained under federal monitoring from the Voting Rights Act of 1965 until its effective dissolution in 2013. Andrew Young, the then director of the Southern Christian Leadership Council, was also arrested in St. Augustine that year as he had been in Selma.

 

Which all stemmed from peaceful anti-segregation protests surrounding the city’s 400^th anniversary and a student sit-in at a Woolworth’s lunch counter. Some of those juvenile participants in the latter required the intervention of the governor and the cabinet to eventually reattain their freedom. Those protests escalated over the next year as local Klansmen (read white supremacists) grew increasingly violent and issued quite credible death threats. Their nightriders terrorized black neighborhoods by shooting into homes until residents returned fire to drive them off.

 

Undeterred, the Klan eventually cornered and beat four activists with clubs and chains, resulting in the Klansmen having their charges dismissed but their activist victims being convicted of assault. Sprinkle in an arson and an attempted mass drowning when activists tried to integrate a local beach and a picture begins to develop.

 

But all that is ancient history now, even though most of it occurred within my lifetime, although not my memory.

 

(And mind you that I am writing this against the backdrop of the Rittenhouse trial and the Arbery trial, both of which have that Throwback Thursday feel, as does much of 2020 and before.)

 

It was wandering around Old Town that the past and the present of the drive over began to collide, thankfully not violently.

 

The first change we noticed from our previous visit was the number of homeless camped out on St. George’s Street, the central avenue of the Old Town market district. Part of that could have been seasonal. Florida’s homeless population ebbs and rises with the onset of summer’s heat and humidity and winter’s transition of construction jobs from north to south (requiring more day laborers). Or maybe part of it was the economic dislocation of the pandemic. Part but not all.

 

These were predominately men, predominately white, predominately my age or older by appearance. Most were panhandling, though not aggressively, with one busker. Most were veterans or visibly supported them, perhaps from prior service, perhaps for more tactical reasons to elicit donations. Most chatted amiably with the more integrated city workers doing cleaning, repairs and maintenance before the shops opened.

 

We were stuck by the number of bikes, dogs and cellphones sprinkled through that population. Passing strange for people literally sleeping on the streets, at least until we thought about it. Cellphones are often bought and maintained by concerned family members so their loved one can keep in touch, or call for help. Dogs have been guardians and companions for thousands of years. The over/under of feeding one likely pays off in security and psychological comfort. Bikes are cheap, easily maintained modes of transport for either seasonal migration or for getting back and forth to work. Homeless isn’t always synonymous with unemployed.

 

These are the Americans our country has made great again.

 

It was also striking that we saw no police patrolling Old Town except along the thoroughfares at the edges, either in cruisers or on foot. Which was very much in evidence the second night of our stay when a local with a megaphone, perhaps the busker, began loudly harassing some of the black population with things like “at least I don’t sit around all day collecting welfare… You’re sitting on his lap but he’ll leave you for a ho…” Several times in succession starting at 11 p.m. and ending around 1 a.m., in the cobblestone alley by an Italian restaurant right outside our first-floor window.

 

But the biggest change that struck us was in the merchandise for sale at half a dozen or more stores along the strip, declaring their profane rather than profound political opposition to the current Administration, and their deeply committed support our previous President and our governor. Vehement and vitriolic, with no laissez-faire capitalist counterpoint in sight (i.e. they weren’t just trying to profit from whichever side was paying).

 

Which perhaps shows how truly wealthy this area has become, and how well its economy is doing, as they could afford to alienate 40-50% of the population with their unwelcoming displays, never mind any internationals (of which we saw and heard many). In this, they seemed to aspire more to the Redneck Riviera model of Panama City than something more egalitarian in Orlando’s Magic Kingdom.

 

Both of us also noted there were very few black tourists except at the Castillo. Which was odder with the interspersed Civil Rights plaques, monuments and artwork, some conspicuous, some more hidden if you know where to look. More so because the historic conflict I described above directly led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, including footage broadcast internationally from the Monson Motor Lodge when protestors forcibly integrated the pool while the manager poured in acid to drive them out.

 

Except that like in the aftermath of most such conflicts, when the cameras stopped rolling and the public moved on, many of the principal local activists and organizations were either left destitute by white boycotts or felt profoundly unsafe enough that they moved to marginally more welcoming points south like Ft. Lauderdale or Miami-Dade. So, at best a pyrrhic victory.  

 

Now three blocks from where MLK was arrested, three blocks from where Andrew Young was beaten and arrested, these businesses openly decry their contempt for the ideals these men sacrificed for. Openly support the ideals of insurrection. Openly declare that anyone who believes what I believe is suffering from a mental illness, as evidenced by a huge hand-crafted sign overlooking St. George’s Street that says exactly that.

 

These displays, as well as the displays on the drive over, are embraced by people who not only distinctly stood against the anti-racism protests in 2020 (and before) but by some who took up arms against them, like the “good people” bearing tiki torches in Charlottesville, the vigilantes in Kenosha, or the insurrectionists at the Capitol on January 6^th. All beneath the same flags, chanting similar slogans, whipped up and praised by the same authoritarian leaders.

 

Not in search of justice or equality. In search of something much more Ayn Randian. Under the guise of personal freedom, they stand against everything that made this country great, a shining city upon the hill once upon a time. Though even that was always a fairy tale when viewed up close from the ground.

 

The difference is that the older Civil Rights movement, the movement now represented by BLM banners and Juneteenth flags, not Confederate, Gadsden or Thin Blue Line standards, strives for equal rights for all, not the selective rights to discriminate for a self-martyred few. I’ve built enough in my lifetime, and destroyed enough, to understand the difference between sacrifice and selfishness.

 

I’m not saying we won’t go back; there’s too much history and culture we’ve left untouched. I’m just saying that if we do, we’ll be more circumspect.

 

 

© 2021 Edward P. Morgan III

Shades of Gray – Samhain 2021

 

I recently had an online encounter that set me thinking about trust, integrity and someone’s word. I posted a summary of it on Facebook which generated some feedback which revealed how many of us interact in anxious, stressful times. Increasingly we long to see our world as wholly black and white. I find the world more nuanced, more Celtic, full of banshees and black dogs whose cries can be difficult to interpret.

 

My tale begins at Kitten*Con: Tactical back in September. During the weekend, I read a couple articles and watched some related videos on using a series of commercial wargames as models to simulate how some current potential international conflicts might play out. Mainly these exercises, run by the likes of Rand or other strategic think tanks, serve as training for military officers and their civilian counterparts for what to expect and to highlight possible deficiencies in strategy and tactics as well as in equipment, training and/or logistics. They are complex real-world problems with consequences rooted in realpolitik.

 

The main article I ran across, in Forbes from a few years ago, laid out a scenario the US has struggled with since just after the Cold War ended and the Berlin Wall fell. Basically, how would we handle a series of simultaneous regional conflicts. In this case, they involved Russia seizing the Baltic countries (ala Crimea 2014) at the same time China forcibly attempted reunification with Taiwan while unleashing its ally/proxy North Korea upon the south to muddy the waters, to tie down US assets, and/or for its own territorial gains. It’s a nightmare scenario with our current NATO, Korean and Taiwanese alliances and commitments.

 

Foreign policy has long been an area of interest to me. I have often debated over coffee with a defense contractor friend (who was formerly in the Navy) how some of these scenarios might spin out. As I wrote about earlier this year, these problems interest me because I see complex wargames as problems I can solve. Or at least give a good go. They help me understand how the world works and the limitations of US power and influence.

 

The exercise Forbes wrote about used a set of commercial wargames published by GMT called the Next War series. I have long been aware of these games. I own two of the five already, Poland and India/Pakistan. Over the summer and into the fall, intensifying provocations by China against Taiwan got me interested in Next War: Taiwan.

 

That game (published in 2014) was out of print. GMT, as with many of its more popular games, planned to issue a second edition. That required receiving enough pre-orders to justify the cost of a second printing. This is pretty much their risk reduction business model, which many other wargame manufacturers have emulated. Normally, once they got enough pre-orders (incentivized with a significant discount off the retail price), they would send the files to their printer after making any adjustments to the rules and graphics from errata and clarification to the first edition. That process might take a year depending on the rest of their production pipeline.

 

One small problem. Covid-19. As you may have guessed, their printing facilities, like many other companies, are in China. Between the pandemic shutdowns and continuing supply chain disruptions, GMT’s production schedule ground to a halt over the summer. I mean basically a full stop. They, like many other retailers, had crates of games waiting to be loaded onto cargo ships in Chinese ports. And because GMT is not a big game company like, say, Asmodee, they regularly get bumped out of production and shipping schedules around the time of GenCon, the Essen Game Fair, and again at Christmas. Reading GMT’s monthly newsletter, it looked like the totality of circumstances could backlog a second printing of Next War: Taiwan by a year at the very least. Likely more.

 

These problems have a few readymade solutions. First, I looked on Amazon to see if anyone still had a copy laying around a warehouse. No joy. Then I checked my favorite independent reseller out in Oregon, Fine Games for Players and Collectors. No luck there either. I glanced at eBay but the prices there were exorbitant ($400 for a $90 game). Fortunately, there was one more place to look, the marketplace on Board Game Geek.

 

On the Saturday night of Kitten*Con, I scanned BGG and found a copy of Next War: Taiwan for sale. $100 including shipping. Like new. I wanted to think about it for a bit to ensure this wasn’t a cognac-induced impulse buy (which has NEVER happened). I figured I had time. Games on BGG don’t usually disappear that fast. And yet, when I went back the next morning, the listing had already been snatched up.

 

The more articles I read over the weekend, the more videos I watched, the more I thought about it, and the more headlines of Chinese overflights of Taiwan I saw on my newsfeed, the more I was confident I wanted to explore this game. So, post-Kitten*Con, I began checking BGG every week. From the marketplace history, it looked like a copy of the game might crop up every month or two.

 

Low and behold, one did near the end of September. Good price. Punched but in Good condition. Standard shipping. PayPal. 19 positive reviews on the seller, none neutral or negative. Check, check, check. So, I added it to my cart.

 

The process on BGG is pretty straightforward. When you check out, you don’t actually buy the game at that moment. You just put a reserve on it and the listing comes off the marketplace. The seller gets notified you want the game. S/he has three days to respond. Then s/he sends you a notice with the cost of shipping (if not included) and where to send payment. Finally, if all goes well, your game ships within a few days. Easy-peasy.

 

At least that’s the way it’s supposed to work. The first two parts of the process went fine. I got notified through the BGG messaging system that the seller had seen my desire to buy and would get back with shipping and his PayPal account. Which he did within a day. I sent payment right away. The next day, I received an email saying that the game had shipped along with a tracking number. Great.

 

Until I scrolled further down the message. Where the seller mentioned oh-by-the-way that ten counters would be missing because he wanted to keep them. Wait, what? I started a fervent search of all the messages I’d received so far. There was no mention of this in the listing. Nor when the offer was accepted. Nor when he gave where to send the payment. Only after it was shipped with a tracking number which meant the box was already in the USPS system.

 

But in that message, he said he’d send them if I really wanted them. He listed exactly what they were. So off to GMT’s site to do more research. Turns out Next War: Taiwan has a scenario that combines with Next War: Korea using four land-based US counters and six upgraded air counters that had been included with Taiwan. Next War: Korea was still in print and on my wishlist to pick up sometime in the near future.

 

I responded back, yes, I would like those counters. I was not particularly happy about having this sprung on me at the last minute but kept everything professional. I think I said something about the “complete game as sold.” I got back a message that basically said, Oh, ok, I’ll send them. But I am going out of town. For a week. Tomorrow.

 

Uh, really? Ok, now my alarm bells are beginning to sound off. Some polite back and forth later I got increasingly suspect information. The counters are in another box (Korea). That I loaned to a friend. Who is going to Denmark as soon as I get back.

 

By now, those alarms had become a three-alarm fire. What in the actual was this guy up to? Was he holding the counters for ransom? Was he going to ask for additional shipping? Was he really just clueless or was he truly unscrupulous? I couldn’t even begin to comprehend. This very much sounded to me like someone making excuses and running out a clock. So once again to the internets to do some research to figure out where I stood.

 

First, I look up to see exactly what various conditions mean on BGG. Without belaboring it, a game in Good condition is supposed to mean played once or twice, minor wear, and all components present. In fact, missing components makes the BGG condition Unacceptable (two grades lower), which they very clearly state should not be sold on their marketplace. Ok, so far, so good.

 

Turns out that BGG has a dispute process. But because they are only a facilitator, it’s a bit toothless. They will mediate between the buyer and the seller to reach an accommodation. They have the ability to ban as seller (or a buyer) from the site. But they specifically tell buyers not to expect to get their due. So basically, caveat emptor.

 

I know our Visa also has a dispute process of 60 days (a long time to run out a clock). I’ve used that before though not with this particular (new) card. But I’ve read it is complicated by using PayPal because of the way the charges are listed on the card. But Visa, like BGG, takes a dim view of mis-advertised merchandise.

 

So off to PayPal to see what they can do. This one is more interesting. Their clock is 180 days to notify them of a dispute through their Purchase Protection program (which appears to be automatic as long as you list the payment as a purchase, rather than sending money to friends or family). After a dispute is filed, you have another 20 days to make a claim, during which they also attempt to mediate a solution. I know how serious they are from reading about small businesses who have had their funds frozen and sometimes pulled back after that 180 days (which makes their accounts receivable a bit of a nightmare).

 

But I’ve also dealt with PayPal enough to know they can be dicey in communication and in protocol. I currently have a credit card perma-banned from their site for having deleted it once too often from my account (btw, the magic number is 3). Although they say that nowhere in their terms of service. But they steadfastly refuse to reinstate it for “security reasons” even a decade later. Yeah.

 

In the interim, the game box arrived at my door. Which set off a full inventory of counters (over 600) based on images from BGG, because none of what I’d heard from the seller up to then sounded sketchy as hell. Yup, ten counters short. The ten counters listed. It didn’t help that he had misaddressed the package by hand which the post office kindly corrected.

 

More polite but firm back and forth later (including an address correction), I finally get a shipment date for the counters, although the seller is obviously annoyed with me by this point. Dredging up my best professional email skills, I tried to be calm and collected. I didn’t rant or get rude or issue a threat, just asked for a “firm” date so we could both put the transaction to bed. Which he seemed to be take as a personal slight to his integrity. Uh, yeah, ok.

 

That shipment date is three weeks away. Much longer than I want to spend with what should have been a simple purchase in the wind.

 

By now my inner voice was screaming at me. For whatever reason, my anxiety had ramped up to raging at something just short of an existential crisis. I kept waking up, sorting through options and contingency plans, desperately trying to figure out how to resolve this issue without escalating the situation inappropriately (and thus compromising a possible resolution), but without getting taken, and without losing my shit.

 

As I have mentioned in other essays, I sometimes haunt game stores (and since the pandemic online sales) as a reward to alleviate stress. My wife buys yarn. Other friends buy electronic gadgets or motorcycles. I buy games. I draw comfort from them, from proving to myself again and again that I can still learn something complex and new. The controlled conflict of wargaming relaxes me, mostly because I see it as an exploration not a competition, which not everyone understands.

 

Believe it or not, I am generally conflict-averse for a variety of reasons, most of which center on how I grew up. I prefer to settle things amicably. Which often leads people to underestimate me and my resolve, which they take as sign they can bully me. But from a variety of experiences, I also know how to settle disputes through conflict as necessary. I am reasonably good at it. We’ve had a new water heater installed for free, out of warranty, by a national retailer after I (professionally) went to war with them. We’ve received a $3000 refund from of a national AC company for a four-year-old unit they mis-installed after I started a very minor social media campaign against them (without signing their required NDA). I convinced our cable company to run a hundred yards of new line behind the house without charge when we got into a dispute over their signal quality. Though I score that one as a draw as we canceled service when they still couldn’t fix the underlying issue because they were incompetent and didn’t know how to ground their cable.

 

So, I was pretty sure I could handle this dispute if I had to. I just didn’t want to and wouldn’t like to. I try to only use my powers for good. But once the leash is slipped, it’s game on. Hope for the best but prepare to burn the motherfucker down.

 

The problem is that you never know who you are dealing with on the other end of the equation. This guy had my physical address. Was he the type of gamer to SWAT someone as a resolution strategy? Seems extreme but it’s been known to happen for less reason. I had no idea and no desire to find out.

 

And that was just one of many scenarios my mind spun out in the middle of the night. Thankfully, the email address was to a junk account that I don’t use for much other than online purchases (i.e. not traceable back to social media accounts), and easily discarded if necessary.

 

As I mentioned, my anxiety was pretty much running to the redline by then.

 

Like I said in Kintsugi, I’ve been taught that if you feel bad, you’ve done something wrong. Even though my wife reassured me that I hadn’t. But by this point, I felt awful. I wished I’d never poked my head out of my pandemic bunker. Wished I’d never logged onto Board Game Geek. Wished I’d never heard of this game. Somewhere, somehow, I was convinced I’d done something wrong. While I could eat $75 without it breaking the bank, I really didn’t want to, nor did I feel I had to. So, I tried to walk a fine line until I saw how all this played out.

 

And that was before my wife booked an emergency trip to see her mother one final time (for whom hospice had been called in) only to have her pass while my wife was in the air. Which put all of this mostly to sleep while I supported her. Mostly.

 

As the promised shipment date approached, my contact had gone dark as had I. But that didn’t mean all was quiet on this eastern front. My mind was constantly writing and rewriting the messages I anticipated having to send, to the seller, to BGG, to PayPal. Chipping away at individual words, replacing them with others, substituting them back. All without putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard), because I was afraid if I actually committed the words to a message that I would want, almost need to use them. So, kind of an iterative Obsessive Composition Disorder. Much like my normal mode of writing only with scarier inner voices who weren’t nearly as entertaining.

 

So yeah, I was a bit of a mess, trying to hold together my composure by self-mediating with superglue and strapping tape with minimal success.

 

Then a day before the deadline, a message arrives. The seller was going to his friend’s that day to pick up the counters. Terse. But fine. Slightly comforting. Later that day, another message. Equally as terse. A USPS tracking number and an estimated delivery date. This time I said I would let him know when the package arrived.

 

Now I felt a little more confident and began to relax. Four days later, the mail arrived. I interrupted the Facetime call I was on to go grab it. I popped open the envelope to find a sheath containing the missing counters. After the call, I verified they are indeed the right counters via the images on BGG.

 

Then I sent an email, letting the seller know they’d arrived and looked good. I also said my wife and I were looking forward to exploring this game, especially given recent events overseas. And I again thanked him for his effort. Even though this was a self-inflicted wound on his part, which I tactfully didn’t mention.

 

I figured that would be the end of it. So, I posted my much shorter summary of the experience on Facebook to vent. Over the next couple hours, I got a lot of advice to ding the seller with a negative review on BGG for a variety of reasons.

 

Which I had decided not to do although I did understand why opinions might vary. The way I saw it, he did (eventually) make it right on the timeline he promised after the back and forth, which didn’t require my shepherding him. Which is all any official dispute process through BGG or PayPal would have done.

 

As well, when I’d dinged a bookseller over a purchase for similar reasons about a decade before on a similar but different marketplace, he causally stated he would just trash my rating as a buyer (which is a real thing, btw). At which I laughed and wished him good luck as I closed out my account.

 

In this case, straightening it out was a hassle and an anxiety-inducing pain. But in the end, no blood, no foul. Not worth more drama, even as a PSA. This had already been more stress than I was looking for in buying a game that was supposed to be a reward. Which is why my future purchases will likely be through Amazon, a manufacturer like GMT, or Fine Games, not independent third-party sellers. Because you never know who you are dealing with or what assumptions they’ll make.

 

I get that all of this was my reaction, and so to a large extent my issue. My mind raced away from me. Although, in its defense, I have known individuals who would settle disputes with noisy Hispanic neighbors by threatening to call immigration (without knowing their status). I’ve known individuals who would threaten the same with child services or the IRS in similar circumstances just to turn someone’s life upside down because they’d pissed them off.

 

As I said, I know my reaction sounds extreme. But so is finding out that one of the Jan. 6 Insurrectionists lives a couple blocks away (and was recently rearrested for DUI boating while he was supposed to be under house confinement). Never mind locals straying toward confrontation and violence over who is or isn’t wearing a mask. It’s all fun and games until real-world news stories slap you in the face. People can be bizarre and vindictive. Witness Gamer-Gate.

 

But for me, this level of anxiety was new and generally not the kind of behavior I expect in a major appliance. Perhaps understandable given the circumstances of the past few years, and yet still disconcerting.

 

That evening, after the post-crisis drinking had begun, I noticed another little red 1 on my email icon again. A final message from the seller, a response to my last email. Reluctantly and with trepidation, I opened it.

 

In the message, the seller spontaneously apologized for his assumption about the counters. I hadn't brought that up in any of our previous communications. I got the sense someone may have pointed out to him how his actions might have been perceived. So maybe he had learned something. At any rate, that apology neutralized much of the sour taste from the encounter.

 

As I said early on, you never know who you are dealing with. Sometimes they surprise you.

 

Even with the sirens sounding in my head, I had resisted escalating the situation until I knew without a doubt that this individual was actually being dishonest, even as I stressed over that possibility and plotted out scenarios of what to do should that get borne out. While I still have trouble comprehending the particular decisions made, he was generally honest (though not up front). A set of unique circumstances and perhaps bad decisions conspired leave a distinct impression with me. One that, thankfully, ended up being wrong.

 

Or so I choose to believe. Because it’s easier and likely healthier than walking away from the encounter with a deeply ingrained sense of cynicism. Experience teaches us. But experience and instinct aren’t always right, especially under stress. Something that I need to remember as I continue to navigate this world with all its grayscale inhabitants, from dark to light.

 

The black dog howls. Sometimes it’s a warning. And sometimes it is just trying to woo the moon.

 

 

© 2021 Edward P. Morgan III

Kintsugi (from Four Fragments) – Fall Equinox 2021

 

The season of secrets is once again upon us.

 

The time when we tell children harmless little lies to increase their joy and sense of wonder. The time when we hide gifts from them and our significant others. The time when we paint on a smile and pretend that our families don’t drive us completely bat-shit crazy. The time we tell ourselves that all those cookies we baked are for everyone else and not secretly for us. The time when we think we really mean the words we say, that it was great to see you, that we should get together again soon.

 

Though by that standard, this time of year isn’t special. We all keep secrets year-round.

 

When I was younger, I didn’t talk much about my life. Pretty much I didn’t see the things that happened to me as secret, more as normal events that no one chose to talk about. It didn’t take me long in middle school to learn that I was mistaken. The few times I related a story about things that had happened to me or my sister, I was greeted with open-mouth astonishment that quickly turned to stunned silence. Silence that spawned avoidance which felt suspiciously like rejection, whether of me, my experiences or just a reality that didn’t fit someone else’s illusion, I wasn’t sure. But I took away a reading of the implicit social contract that home life was something I shouldn’t talk about. It made people uncomfortable which made them drift away.

 

Keeping my silence felt less lonely and vulnerable than actually being alone. Older now, I am beginning to re-appreciate the wisdom in that.

 

Well into adulthood, I kept to that personal rule: Don’t talk about family. Don’t talk about things that happened except with the few people I felt I could deeply trust. To this day, I still have friends I spent inordinate amounts of time with growing up who tell me they never knew anything was going on.

 

The problem is, those secrets never went away. They continued to cast doubt on what was and wasn’t normal. On whether I did or didn’t have self-worth. Sometime in my late twenties, I began to rethink what I’d learned.

 

I was thirty when my wife revealed her own family secret to me. As she struggled to cope with how to finally deal with what had happened, I realized I couldn’t very well advise and encourage her if I didn’t confront my own experiences. As she sought counseling, I made an effort to begin to share more of my experiences more openly. Not just with her, she already was pretty familiar with my background, but with people I knew when the opportunity seemed right.

 

Initially, unlearning that early lesson was hard. But slowly I discovered there is power in the truth, power in revealing secrets. While those secrets protected me, they protected others as well. Those people had more to lose than I did when the truth came out.

 

Over the next twenty years, I became more comfortable with telling people things that happened to me. By the time I was forty, I would openly tell people there was abuse in my family if it seemed pertinent to the conversation. By the time I was fifty, it no longer made me particularly emotional. It was just another story from my background I had to tell.

 

That’s not to say it wasn’t difficult along the way. Hearing the answers from the people involved as to why they thought they did what they did was emotionally painful. But over time, reviewing those answers provided a modicum of peace even if I didn’t like what those answers said. And that’s not to say I don’t still engage in arguments in my head with people not present. Or sometimes not living.

 

Recently, I began reconsidering the lesson from nearly forty years ago that I’d taken so much effort to unlearn. Anymore, I wonder if I’d initially gotten that lesson right. It turns out that adults even well into middle age aren’t really much better about how they respond to other people’s adversity.

 

Yet, I also know that if no one is willing to speak out, the perpetrators continue to get away with their crimes. They hide behind those secrets. They rely on the pain and shame their victims feel to shield them from what they’ve done. There’s a reason for the admonishment about not shooting the messenger. It’s the action we’re naturally inclined to take, because the messenger is an easy target who stands right in front of us.

 

There doesn’t seem to be a path of least suffering. Only one of right and wrong which requires personal sacrifice.

 

And maybe all the talking in the world won’t make you feel any less alone.

 

---

 

No good can come of what I am about to write.

 

Six years ago, I awoke in the middle of the night suffering from an existential crisis. That’s not a euphemism; it’s an accurate description of how I felt. My thoughts then strayed onto choices, mechanisms. I won’t share the details. Suffice it to say, after a couple hours reviewing options, I came up with something that seemed palatable.

 

As soon as I settled on that possibility, I got back to sleep.

 

Sleep, that’s all I really wanted anyway. Rest. Peace. A brief respite from pain and struggle.

 

When I was young, I never really thought about suicide but I often thought about going to sleep and never waking up. Let God claim me. I prayed for that more than once. That was back when I still believed.

 

Those were the type of thoughts that emerged again that night.

 

Now there are going to be several reactions to what I just wrote. Let me outline the most likely.

 

First, there is: Oh my god, I never knew. These are the people who will never get past the word “suicide” whether stated or implied. They will treat you like a Faberge egg for the rest of your life. Something fragile and easily broken, if not quite beautiful. Something to be pitied, not someone they can understand or relate to. An object, not a human being.

 

The next reaction is to run as far and as fast as they can. This one is more common than you think. I don’t really know him that well. I don’t need his drama, I have enough of my own. I’ll let his friends and family deal with it. I hope he gets it all straightened out. Maybe if he does, I’ll come back. Maybe, but probably not. The damage has been done. So de facto exclusion and exile.

 

Perhaps the next most common is cynicism. This is just a cry for attention. You weren’t really serious. You don’t even know how good your life is. I wish I had your privilege. What a waste. You’re not special. Everyone goes through it. Just get over it and get over yourself.

 

Then there’s the even more callous variant of: Someone should really call your bluff. You want to die, then do it. I dare you. I double-dog dare you. If you succeed, maybe then I’ll believe you. But either way, you’re a coward.

 

And finally, there is: You really need to talk to someone. Not me, of course. We’re not that close. I wouldn’t know what to say. A professional. Someone who is trained and gets paid to deal with stuff like this. Someone who knows the exact right thing to say. Someone who can make it magically go away, or prescribe the drugs that will. So, I don’t have to deal with it. Because I’m not sure I can. Or that I really want to.

 

These are the pretty standard reactions to anyone else’s existential crisis. Any revelation that makes us uncomfortable or upsets our worldview. This I know from observation and experience. I’ve called it out time after time. And yet, I am still surprised by how exactly right it turns out to be.

 

One of the first basic lessons I was taught growing up is that if you are upset, if you feel bad, you must have done something wrong. You, not anyone else.

 

Not only family reinforced this lesson, friends have, too, as well as the whole pop-psychology social media. It’s like a surficial reading of Buddhism by someone who never cracked the book or even the Cliff’s Notes. Life is suffering, snowflake. It’s all in your mind and how you deal with it. You. Not me. Not what I do. My actions bear no responsibility. That’s what led any number of nominally Buddhist cultures to think the Enlightened One would have been cool with torture. That’s what led to our current society to see Ayn Rand selfishness as a laudable trait.

 

Then why am I writing this? What do I want or think will happen? Now that’s the fundamental question.

 

First, let’s get something straight. I am not now and have not been suicidal.

 

My grandfather committed suicide. The Best Man from my wedding committed suicide. I’ve told the story that my mother slit her wrists in our driveway when I was very young, although I don’t remember it (but have seen the scars). A friend from high school later told me he made two or three attempts in college. Another friend from high school tried at least once, seriously enough to end up in a college infirmary two thousand miles away.

 

I’m familiar enough with the signs by now to have talked a near total stranger off that ledge for hours late one night, because I recognized their pain and knew it was the right thing to do. Which was evidenced the next morning when they told me that right after they stopped talking to me, they called a suicide prevention hotline.

 

I’ve never made a move in that direction. No overt act. I’m pretty sure I won’t, although I can never say never. None of us can.

 

But as I’ve talked about before, I have had someone actually try to kill me, up close and personal. I remember exactly how hard I fought to keep that from happening, using every bit of force and guile at my disposal. I know from experience that I have the will and stubbornness to keep going under adversity, both mental and physical. I’ve suffered enough shocks to feel fairly certain I can do it again, though I also know it takes me more time now to recover from the initial hit. Or hits.

 

What this little late-night episode told me was that something in my life needed to change and I didn’t know how to do it. I was profoundly unhappy. I felt trapped because I couldn’t see a clear or easy way out. Just like when I was a kid.

 

Now comes the hard part. Because what I write next will probably hurt any number of people. That is not my intent. My intent is to outline the truth of the situation as I see it. As I experienced it.

 

The cold, harsh reality is this: In the past several years, I’ve had to confront the dark side of human nature. I’ve witnessed some abhorrent behaviors, heard life-altering statements. Things like that rape doesn’t matter as long as the rapist is more fun to be around. Things like that I should never gotten involved, no matter who I was trying to protect, who I was trying to defend because it threatened someone’s cherished illusions. By implication and action, that this was somehow my fault for pursuing it, and not letting it go. No matter who was at risk.

 

At one point six years ago, I said very publicly that I had checked out. That all I was able to do for two solid weeks was lie in bed and watch movies. I was unable to think straight, unable to write, barely able to function. Exercising and daily showers were major accomplishments. Maybe two people checked on me, both a couple thousand miles away. No one local. No one stopped by to see if I was ok, or just to say, hey, I’m here if you need me. I heard that statement once or twice well afterward but saw no follow-up.

 

In fact, I watched any number of people put daylight between me and them when I needed them, when I had said I needed them, because they didn’t know what to do or say. So, they said and did nothing. People who I thought meant something to me. People I thought I could trust.

 

One brave soul apologized, saying they had done exactly that, months after the crisis had passed. While it showed a great deal of honesty and integrity, it also served as confirmation.

 

Most people aren’t as forthright.

 

---

 

Beyond the time of secrets, we enter a brief, ten-day twilight zone between the solstice and the New Year. It's a time we usually reserve to do a few things we enjoy as well as looking both back and forward to sort out where we've been and where we think we're going.

 

Six years ago, in that interstice, we visited with college friends we hadn't seen in nearly twenty years. In the process of catching up, I started thinking beyond the normal where have we worked and what we’ve seen on trips to what was really important. Looking back, I think there are really three things I am extremely proud of having done, none of which I talked about that night.

 

That's not to say I don't have achievements that I'm pleased with. Things like reviving two dying organizations when I was younger that meant a lot to me, and keeping a third on life support before finally pulling the plug. Or the design and debug I did in engineering, though I'm sure someone somewhere by now has found any number of issues with it, if it still exists. Or more in having a body of writing that includes a novel, fifty plus short stories, twenty plus poems and over a hundred essays.

 

The problem is, I can't point to any one thing among them that feels like something meaningful.

 

The first accomplishment I felt, oddly, was managing our finances. Meeting my goals, many earlier than expected, has meant both Karen and I have been able to pursue careers we really wanted and enjoyed. It also meant that when things stopped being fun for her at work, she could bow out when she wanted. It involved a lot of hard work, worry, long-term planning and sacrifice. But the security and stability has been worth it. It's one of the few things I feel successful at.

 

The second accomplishment was taking care of Karen when she was diagnosed with cancer. Being home to do what needed to be done felt and feels important. I know how lucky she was in needing as little care as she did. Yet it constantly amazes me that her situation was not and is not a given, how many spouses and SO's walk away or fall down when things get tough. I can only hope that my small effort made a difference in how she responded to treatment and in the speed of her recovery. The pieces I wrote to entertain her while she was going through it still feel like some of the most important things I've written, though not the best.

 

Finally, I am proud of going to bat for her and for others who didn't know, some of whom may never know, the darkness her brother wrought. Of trying to defend three little girls from a sexual predator without losing my marriage in the process, which ended up being a close-run thing. For twenty years, I stood alone. I fought as hard as I could as long as I could. While I know I could have said and done certain things differently, I don't regret a thing. Except maybe that I didn't fight harder and do what I thought needed to be done from the beginning. I just hope I did enough.

 

Not exactly the types of things you recount over Indian food while everyone else talks about their jobs, their kids, their houses and their vacations. An odd collection to say the least. But I think if I look back in another thirty or forty years and that's all I have, I'll be content.

 

I’ll have to be.

 

---

 

Two years later, I revisited that third accomplishment. For decades, I thought I’d wended my way through a very narrow path to success on that one, despite the cost. Then, without warning, part of that accomplishment was ripped away. I thought I was doing something for someone else, because they couldn’t and I could. Turns out, they never wanted it. None of it. Ever. More the pity that I even bothered.

 

I could have turned my back and moved on. I had been lied to from the onset, repeatedly, overtly and covertly. By the time I learned the truth, at least part of it, a vow had been extracted. Not the last as it turned out. I kept them as best I could, at least the ones I swore.

 

But in that moment, I burned a final bridge to the waterline and fully expected it to remain in ruins. In fact, I still see that river as my Severn. If anyone from that clan brings that conflict back to my side, they are fair game. Like an onion eater straying west of Offa’s Dyke. This time, I will not stop until I’ve done what I should have from the start. But for now, I’m content to just enforce the border. With fire if necessary.

 

Yes, I was angry. And deeply hurt. Twenty years of effort is a lot to have devalued.

 

As a result, my writing, suffered. I stopped writing essays about my life entirely for years because they seemed to have become a sort of entertainment for the audience. Something titillating or voyeuristic rather than a mechanism to relate to people, to speak a truth of one kind or another I knew from experience many people shared but were too afraid to express. That was just too painful.

 

In the isolation of the pandemic and a time of social uncertainty, I still struggle with that.

 

Even fiction became more difficult. It felt trivial. Each time I sat down to work on a story that had been in process for months, I just pushed it away. Most days, I was no longer sure who I was writing for. To entertain an audience who may not really care if I lived or died? That may not be true, but some days that’s exactly how it felt.

 

I don’t write for me or to perfect my craft. I write to share with others. Because I can and they seem to enjoy it. Or because it sometimes enlightens them in some way by putting something into words they can’t. Though I have developed some deep trust issues on that score now.

 

As I’ve said before, the only thing I write for myself is poetry. Unlike fiction which is meant to entertain and so has to connect with the reader, poetry for me is about expression and capturing something I see or feel. I share it as a curiosity, not because I think it’s particularly good. Maybe it will resonate with someone, or reveal some portion of me that will help others understand. That’s why for a few years I posted so much of it.

 

But my choice is either to self-censor, or to attempt to express a truth destined to be misunderstood. Damned if I do, damned if I don’t. So, I often sit, bound up in knots, trying to sort out a way to see myself clear, or set it down forever.

 

Which is a third option in a way.

 

---

 

When that third accomplishment was taken away four years ago, I checked out again. This time instead of movies, I read ancient science fiction for two weeks straight. Same deal as earlier. Only this time, I didn’t bother to mention why. It didn’t matter the first time, and I was well aware people were tired of hearing about it. So, I held them at arm’s length for my survival.

 

I knew how to survive. I’d done it as a kid. Then, I’d learned through social convention that talking about things didn’t help. People just looked at you in shock and turned away. Responsible adults didn’t or wouldn’t intervene, despite my then having no power to change the situation for myself. No agency.

 

Since I was young, I’ve heard excuses like, maybe if you’d been a better kid, I would have done more to help you. Or, don’t tell me, I don’t want to know. Even recently, I’ve watched conversations with people close to me get actively shut down, diverted or minimized.

 

A great deal of my faith in people had been shattered. I’ve been trying to piece something, anything, back together ever since. Not some Humpty Dumpty Faberge egg. Something more akin to Kintsugi.

 

---

 

"We are all just three bad breaks away from seeing throwing scud missiles as a valid career path."

 

More importantly, we are all just three bad breaks away from being that person so much of our society loves to look down on. That person who struggles. That person caught in a downward spiral. That person who needs help. 

 

Those bad breaks could come from your attention wandering for a split second too long in a parking lot with a pedestrian, your birth control failing under normal parameters in high school or college, or that lump that turned out to be something malignant rather than a sebaceous cyst. It could be identity theft. It could be getting laid off from your job. It could be the family or circumstances you were born into. It could be an addiction or mental illness. It could be the extended isolation or lingering illness from a pandemic that only half the country seems to take seriously. Stack any three of them together and you could be almost anyone.

 

Your life and circumstances can change in an instant, not always because of poor planning or poor choices but rather because sometimes random bad things happen to random decent people. If you've avoided them in this life, you are exceptional, in that you are lucky, not superior.

 

The day you forget that is the day you put your first foot into the grave. Because your sense of compassion and empathy has begun to die. And with it, your humanity.

 

And in a time of personal struggle, pandemic and insurrection, our shared humanity is all that stands between us and chaos, the container that holds in civilization while keeping anarchy at bay.

 

That vase is vital to our continued communal survival, no matter how we manage glue it back together, with platinum, gold, or silver. The flaws may be clearly visible, but the whole is stronger despite its imperfections.

 

And perhaps more beautiful for what it has overcome.

 

 

© 2021 Edward P. Morgan III