Resistance is useless…
July 18, 2009
Friday evening, this email arrived:
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Mr. Xxxxxx,
Would you mind commenting at all on signing on as city manager in Ferris?
What are you looking forward to bringing to the city? Any changes you see that need to be made in a timely manner? How do you feel about the transition from Ennis? Any other thoughts or views you would like to share with our readers?
I look forward to meeting you and thanks in advance for your time.
My deadline is noon Monday.
fnu LNU
The Ellis County Press
972-***-****-office
972-***-****-fax
Which was just too hard to resist. Did a little research on the background via the Ellis County Press and Google Earth, then composed my reply:
| from |  <yxxxxxx@gmail.com> |
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| Sent at 7:37 PM (GMT-04:00). |
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| to | fnu LNU <**********************@gmail.com> |
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| date | Fri, Jul 17, 2009 at 7:37 PM |
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| subject | Re: Press Inquiry – Deadline |
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I think that the new catch-and-release program that we will institute at the animal shelter will sharpen the skills of the staff there and will tend to reduce, over time, the stray population in the city because of simple exhaustion rather than the unpopular euthanasia program proposed by some of the interim city personnel.
I’m sick at heart that we have not found someone that I can feel sure will even duplicate, much less exceed, the success that Buck Rogers has had at Ferris High. It is imperative that we find a way to bring the image of prosperity and success to the city that comes with successful athletic programs, to say nothing of the contribution that such programs make to the well-being and motivation of the youth population of our city.
I welcome the challenge that the City Managership of Ferris brings. I am relieved and grateful that my exile in Ennis has come to an end and that I can rejoin the American mainstream in Ferris: It’s only 15 miles, but it has been an awesome journey!
* * * * *
To quote my daughter in Wisconsin when she found out, “Bad Daddy! Bad Daddy!”
* * * * *
Monday afternoon brought this:
fnu LNU ✆ to meThank you for the reply.
What is the new catch and release program about?
Look forward to meeting you soon,
fnu
I fretted about a response, but as I tried to figure out what to do, this arrived an hour and a half later – noting gratefully that we were now on a first-name basis:
fnu LNU ✆ to me
Hi Yyyy,
Would you be able to provide me with a head shot for the paper this week so I may introduce your face to the residents this week? We go to press tomorrow at noon. Thanks!!
fnu
So, despite the really great plans I had to innovate with a humane animal control policy – that combined human physical fitness with animal well-being – I felt I needed to ‘fess up. (And listen, folks, it’s getting bad out there in Texas. Today’s issue of the Ellis County Press quotes Dr. John J. Pippen thusly: “This order will force the Ferris animal shelter to revert from its incredible turnaround under Misty’s [Clark, animal control officer] [sic] into an animal Auschwitz.” [Emphasis added] Yikes.)
So my brother chipped in with a vintage photo and it all ended like this:
Yy Xxxxxx ✆ to fnu
fnu -
Sorry that I decided to be a wiseguy. You might reasonably expect that “yxxxxxx@gmail.com” would be an email address for Yyyy Xxxxxx, Assistant City Manager at Ennis, Texas. On the other hand, it could belong to a lot of other people, one of whom is me.
You should call Yyyy for his email address…and probably ask him for his photograph, too.
In the meantime, here’s mine from 1958.
El Carpintero, 1958
Auto rants (Part 2)
July 14, 2009
Chrysler set a record for passage through bankruptcy, just in time for GM – a more complex financial beast – to emerge even more quickly: In on the First of June, out on the 10th of July. Three days later, Advertising Age asked the first-page rhetorical question “Is this the right guy to run GM’s marketing?’ next to a photo of Bob Lutz.
The answer to that question should have been clear from the July 14th Wall Street Journal headline advising that Mr. Lutz was toying with the idea of breathing some life into the almost-dead corpse of the Pontiac division by resurrecting the Chevrolet Caprice model name and putting it on the Pontiac G8.
The answer is no, Bob Lutz is not the right guy to run GM’s marketing.
He’s 77. He’s retired from GM once already. He is steeped in the tradition of the US automobile industry. The G8 fizzled after it’s 2007 introduction, but sales are picking up…so the logical conclusion is to make sure we hold on to this model, “citing nascent demand.”
In the depths of the Depression, Packard Motor Car company hired production and sales executives from General Motors because Packard didn’t understand how to make or sell a popularly-priced car to save their souls. It worked!
The equivalent in today’s market in which GM has been unable to sell automobiles profitably would be for GM to hire marketing and production executives from Toyota.
Mr. Lutz, you have to narrow the range of models offered by each of your surviving divisions, not broaden them; you have to reduce the overlap of models, not further confuse them.
Clarity, Mr. Lutz. Focus. One big winner, not a half-dozen stunted, resource-sucking minor models that you produce for inventory (not demand) and then have to liquidate.
Blues, running
July 7, 2009
Yes, there was a time when this title would have been about a New Orleans footrace. But today it’s about bluefish in a feeding frenzy.
This was one of those mornings that I wanted to change up the daily walk routine. Yesterday I’d missed the moment of sunrise because I was behind a hill and some trees; Nick had mentioned on Sunday morning that the sunrise had been beautiful at the crest of Asylum road next to the North Burial Ground, so today I took the camera and walked from the Coggeshall Farm entrance up to the burial ground.
As it turned out, there was a bank of clouds that obscured the sunrise and kind of changed the timing of the coloration of the sky, so things were interesting and beautiful but not spectacular. Harrumph.
Sunrise, North Burial Ground, Bristol, RI (1920 x 1200 pixels)
But there was this kind of feeling that there must be something happening out there that had nagged me into bringing the camera out and changing my route. So I went back by the marsh where the heron and the egrets hang out, pretty sure that I’d catch them there. They had been there yesterday when I didn’t have the camera, so I anticipated the possibility of a heron shot or two.
Heron in the salt marsh at the head of Bristol (RI) harbor (1920 x 1200 pixels)
And sure enough, there he was. But too close to the edge of the road to really let me get both close and unobstructed. An egret hung about for a bit but got spooked and flew off. So, a little bummed out, I took my heron shots, hoping that I could get a shot of him as he flew off – it’s usually just a matter of time before he tires of my stalking him.
A sound of waves behind me distracted me a little. It was a still morning and I couldn’t figure out what could have made waves in the harbor. But the sound was enough to make me miss the heron’s takeoff; I snapped off a shot as he circled to the harbor side, but all I got was the tip of a wing, out of focus, at the edge of the picture.
But just as I returned to my bummed-out state, I realized that the sound of waves was actually the sound of hundreds of bodies slapping the water as the bluefish worked their way towards me, chasing the menhaden into the shallows at the head of the bay.
Which, of course, made my day.
Bluefish chasing menhaden, Bristol (RI) bay (1920 x 1200 pixels)
It made for a few minutes of novelty, bluefish bodies slapping the water (one’s body is visible in the foreground, above), seagulls hovering and wheeling to pick up a leftover tidbit, and one very busy cormorant (head visible to the left of the two seagulls on the left side of the picture). The egret even made a slow pass overhead but appeared to decide there was just too much going on to feel comfortable about going in low. Two fishermen on the seawall pulled in bluefish every time they cast.
Which, of course, totally vindicates my having hauled the camera along and changed my route. Except that I missed Nick who had come out to walk with me assuming that I would use my regular route. I told him it was all his fault anyhow for having told me about the sunrise Sunday morning.
