Merry Christmas 2011

Well, well...wasn't THAT a year!

I began in Texas, still hopeful about a company and job that wasn't quite what was advertised but still had potential...and I've ended home in Colorado, optimistic about a company that has tremendous values and the promise of a stable, bright future.

My journey this past year, I think, was in reality simply a chapter in my return home to Denver, where I quite simply thrive. From the ever-changing mountains, to the wide variety of weather, to the lovely low humidity, to the circle of good friends, to the Broncos, to the accepting, live-and-let-live philosophy of the West...I am so very glad to be home.

With the new job and the old stomping grounds comes something I haven't been comfortable pursuing since 2008: I'm buying a new home! Certainly, renting provides flexibility, and in retrospect, renting in Texas was an extremely smart play on my part, given the Sears debacle. But I have so missed being a homeowner and tinkering at the workbench or tackling some handyman project. The patio home on the 7th fairway that I'm under contract with (interior preview pic above) closes on January 6, and of course there's always a teensy chance that closing won't happen on time, so stay tuned for the new address, which I'll reveal via e-mail when it's time. It is in Aurora, close to Bill and Gary, and I'm looking forward to the housewarming party!

Also on the agenda to finish up the year is a quick trip to Las Vegas over Christmas, to see if I can still play hold'em poker with any skill; and then a visit to Ryan to help him with a couple of projects in Lincoln. Ah....it's good.

I hope all of you have a wonderful holiday season with great good things for the New Year. So many of us have been battered and bruised by the Great Recession - I honestly think that 2012 is finally, finally the year of improvement in the economy.

See you soon!

Thanks

It's been a tumultuous three months...or year and a half...oh, heck, let's face it, it's been a nasty last three years. The Great Recession caught me as it has so many millions of others, causing me to leave Denver on an odyssey that took me to one extremely fulfilling job (Noble) and one extremely frustrating one (Sears).

As I finally get settled back into my adopted hometown with a new job and a new future unrolling, what better time than Thanksgiving to show my appreciation to the people who have helped me the most?

• Two of the bestest friends in the whole wide world are Bill and Gary, who literally opened their home to me when I got the layoff word in August. Bill and Gary had done this before, back in '04 when I was having my Lowry townhome built; now they immediately offered me a free bedroom and office so I could come home and make my stand in Denver. In the Great Recession, there was every chance that my job search could have taken a year. Bill and Gary simply didn't care - they were willing to put up with me for the duration. You don't find finer friends in life.
• Big thanks to Michelle and Sergio, two of the loyal and hard-working managers at Sears, who have been supportive and helpful after the company made the massive 250-person layoff in August. In a company that, sadly, appears to be in the first chapters of an end game, these and others in the company remain dutiful and people-oriented. If anyone needs a mega-talented training director in Chicago, Austin or San Antonio, let me know - I have just the leader for you.
• I want to thank all the great people at Lee Hecht Harrison, who gave me such great advice these past three jobless months. Both the counselors and the many similarly-displaced job seekers that meet weekly at the LHH offices provided significant networking and support to make the job search go much more quickly than it would have otherwise.
• Ryan deserves great gratitude from me. He has managed to distract me at some of my lowest points with his goofy humor and his "projects" involving the purchase of rental houses in Phoenix. I hope to make many more weekend trips down there to help him install ceiling fans, Magic-Erase marks on walls, and plant trees to enliven back yards.
• And I can't thank enough my wonderful references, who helped me secure my next gig. Linda, Bob and Susan are true angels, confirming with my new employer that at least I have SOME skills. -grin-

I'll talk more about my next chapter soon, but for now, I'll digest huge amounts of turkey and rest content in the knowledge that I am home, and (as Linda knows) in the end, everything will be fine; if it's not fine, it's not the end.

Ten Years Later

I was 42, "ramping down" after a summer of travel to Hong Kong and Sao Paulo with Bank of America, working at home to develop additional coaching and leadership training for the bank. Part of my duties included the delivery of training in various areas, and Spokane was next up. My United Airlines flight DEN-GEG (Spokane) was Monday evening, and after overnighting at a Courtyard in Spokane, I'd have a full day providing a process improvement class to an eager group of new managers from all across Washington State.

My flight out of Denver International Airport was the epitome of routine. To this day, I clearly remember the bored look on the security guard's face as I swiftly walked through the metal detector and gathered my stuff for the flight. The trip was smooth, Channel 9 (air traffic control) was available to listen to, and we made a nice landing. I got to add GEG to my growing list of airports I had traversed, with my return set for later the next day.

It was September 10, 2001.

The next morning I was up early - 6 AM Pacific Time, 9 AM Eastern Time. I flipped the hotel room's TV to NBC for local news and was surprised to note that the Today Show was on live - on the West Coast, the program was usually delayed to start at 7 AM local time. A building was on fire...a big building...the World Trade Center in New York. Katie Couric and Matt Lauer were speculating about a small plane crash. "Hmmm..." I mused. "This'll be on the evening news tonight." And I promptly padded to the bathroom to take a shower.

Coming out of the shower and dressing, I continued to watch the live pictures on the Today Show. And I along with millions of others witnessed the second plane hitting the South Tower.

It's amazing what the mind will process in a couple of milliseconds. My thoughts went from "Oh my God, what's wrong with these pilots? It's a beautiful clear day in New York - how can two of you be so blind?" to "Wait a minute - one crash is an oddity...two is a pattern..." to "Oh my God...this is deliberate." in less time than it takes to blink. Within perhaps ten seconds I realized I likely wasn't flying home that day.

The rest of the morning is a blur in my memories today - obviously, we cancelled the training session; half the class was intending to fly over from Seattle and they were grounded before they took off. A few local bank managers and I watched a TV in the hotel's meeting room...and were there for the collapse of both towers. It's the only time in my life where I have been in a group of dozens of trainees, hotel staff and other guests, all in a state of mass shock.

Hertz was exemplary that day. "Just keep the rental car and try to get home," the lady at the airport counter said. "We'll figure it all out later." My boss at the bank, John Henessey, was equally supportive, even though he was in about the same state of incomprehensibility about the events as I was. I commenced to drive generally east, back to Denver, noting that at least the way home avoided any major metropolitan areas in case there were further waves. (And I think most of us felt there would be.)

It took three days to get home, with overnights north of Salt Lake City and outside of Laramie, Wyoming. When I returned to DIA to pick up my personal car, the Hertz people were amazing in the face of the attack, but very clear in their instructions: You'll get on our bus. Your bus will be stopped and checked at least three times before entering the parking garage at the airport. You will tell the driver where your car is and he will stop. You'll have 60 seconds to get out, start your car and move towards the exit. No loitering, no pausing for anything. You'll be cleared at a checkpoint before leaving the airport.

Believe me, it was the closest to a wartime situation I've ever experienced.

Beautiful Denver International Airport was ghostly - ground stop, no flights in or out. (They resumed a couple of days later with quite different security from September 10.) As I got into my car I felt for a moment like the last man alive.

Ten years later...and to a large extent, the anxiety, foreboding, and worry are still there. We live in a world forever changed. In many ways we're in a "lost decade" because of the consequences of that horrible day ten years ago. While we immediately went on the offensive in Afghanistan, I feel that we detoured to Iraq, lost focus, took 10 years to get Osama bin Laden and lost additional thousands of American lives with not so much to show for it.

Some of this anxiety, no doubt, stems from my current job situation; and there have certainly been fun times, great joy and magnificent events in the ten years since 9/11. But the events of that day remain like a milky film on reality, and so many things we have to live with in 2011 - the Great Recession, the permanent heightened security, the erosion of liberty, the rise of regulation, the financial and housing crises, the inability of government to work - all have their roots in September 11, 2001.

Mount Rushmore, Fort Robinson and the Stimulus

On my Grand Northern Tour (ostensibly to add North Dakota as the 49th state I've been to, leaving only Alaska) I was able to soak in a few memories of family vacations past by hitting up Mount Rushmore and Fort Robinson.

In an obvious sense, Mount Rushmore is exactly as it was in the early 70s when Mom packed up the kids in the Town and Country wagon and exposed us to Pioneer Village, Valentine, Nebraska, a fresh new I-90, and the Black Hills. The four faces of the memorial are just as they were back then. This is despite the exhibits, educational videos and displays that all describe Gutzon Borglum's original vision to sculpt the Fab Four down to the torso. WW2 and a lack of funding stopped Mount Rushmore in the state we see it today.

And today you can "see" the memorial in a much more up-close way than us kids did 40 years ago. In 1998 a new walking/hiking trail was installed to allow visitors to get some really unique perspectives on the faces. I've added a couple of my pics here - you can really look up the noses, so to speak.

There are lots of other improvements as well, all of them costing far more than the whisker under $1 million that the original blasting, drilling and polishing originally cost. And it brings up an interesting point: Mount Rushmore remains unfinished. The original vision was indeed to show the necks and chests of the four presidents, and some Borglum's original plaster models on display clearly show this.

Also part of the original plan, and completely unknown to me in 1971, is the "Hall of Records" started behind Abe's countenance. It's a really, really big vault carved out of the solid granite of the mountain, originally designed to house the record of the monument's - and the nation's - construction through Borglum's era. Given the conspiracy theories surrounding the "mysterious" underground areas of Denver International Airport, I'm astounded that some kook hasn't created a website linking Mount Rushmore's Hall of Records to space aliens or the Illuminati. Even the movie National Treasure: Book of Secrets mentions this intriguing, unknown part of Mount Rushmore only a bit.

Here then is yet another way to stimulate the economy, provide hundreds of jobs, and enhance the pride of the USA: We should finish Mount Rushmore and the Hall of Records. I can't think of a better project than one that was started during the Great Depression and could be finished during the Great Recession.

Of course, it's difficult to see almost any change in this area of the country. A good example of that is Fort Robinson State Park in northern Nebraska, site of another O'Neill family vacation. (That one was in the summer of '70, just after Dad died.)

On my way home to Denver, I detoured through this sleepy park - and it was as if it were 1970 all over again. The barracks converted into a tourist court-like hotel seems exactly as it was 40 years ago. It's a sleepy, little-known converted Army post where you can go to disconnect, laze in the August heat, and forget about virtually everything else. It's the very definition of isolation. We kids had a blast in 1970; I can't imagine a kid in 2011 surviving more then two hours without his or her internet, iPhone, cable TV and fast food.

Tube TVs

I'm the first to admit that I'm tech savvy - not quite geeky enough to covet the latest iPad every six months, but far more adept than my Luddite friend Bill, who managed to live on this earth until 2010 before owning a cell phone.

My tech prowess extends to TVs, probably because of my original Radio-TV college degree and aspirations (indeed, I was an on-the-air reporter for a short time on WIBW-TV in Topeka during my sophomore year in college...but I digress).

I clearly remember the very first HDTV I ever saw, much earlier than 99.9% of the population. It was at the 1983 National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas, and I was captivated by the incredible realism of the unbelievable 1,080 lines of resolution. Your basic '83 set at home at the time (color, console, 25 inches if you were lucky) only showed about 325 lines of resolution. It was an experience full of the future.

Some 20(!) years later, the display I saw at the convention finally began to trickle into American households, and as I write, over 60% of US households have at least one digital set. Flat screen TVs are ubiquitous, in airline terminals, bars, restaurants, convenience stores...everywhere it seems, except: Hotels.

I travel about 50% right now for my job, and I've seen the inside of virtually every midpriced brand hotel in the country. Courtyard, SpringHill Suites, Holiday Inn Express, Hampton Inn - you name it, I've slept there. So I speak with great authority when I say that the hotel industry is trapped in a bizarre time warp, clutching to their hulking tube-style TVs like a bag lady clutching a rusted shopping cart.

Fully two-thirds of the hotels I patronize are partying like it's 1999 - with ugly, squat, curvy and decidedly low-definition TVs. (Okay, they're a bit more updated than this Polish TV pic - but believe me, not much.)

There are reasons, of course. The HDTV standards took a while to get settled in the 2000s, and hotels tend to use satellite transmission companies for all but their local signals - most don't use the local cable company to bring the signal to you. Those satellite companies have been nothing short of glacial in their attempts to pump a digital and/or high-def signal to room TVs. Hotels also have been clinging to their old models of pay movie systems, made obsolete in just the past couple of years by video streaming over a laptop. Then of course the Great Recession hit, stopping many hotel renovations in their tracks for half a decade.

The result is that while the rest of the world has taken great strides in video technology innovations, to this day you will yet be confronted with your grandma's TV set when you check into any of the major brands of hotels. How quaint.

Some hotels may skip the "first generation" of HDTV altogether and wait for next-gen systems with direct connections to your laptop, iPad, or other device. Then there's 3D. For now, I'd settle for a reasonable widescreen digital picture when I overnight around the country. Unfortunately, I'm not holding my breath.

The Class of '77

As spring began to arrive in central Texas (a beautiful time of year here), I took a good look at the calendar and realized: It's time.

In this case, it's time to begin planning for the Phillipsburg High School Class of 1977 35th year reunion, in 2012.

For whatever it's worth, I was class president, so I think I have at least a smidgen of responsibility to gather our 85 classmates and see how things are going as we enter the fabulous 50s of our lives. And, sadly, our class wasn't very good about organizing the 25th and 30th year reunions. As in, they didn't happen.

Also sadly, we are depleted by 9 members. Over 10% of our class has passed on before age 50 - a combination of accidents, illness, and (I suspect) the harder life on the Plains as compared to the bigger cities where about half of us have migrated. By harder life, I mean harder work, harder drinking, smoking, and such.

Our last organized reunion was the 20th year, in 1997, and it was a blast. We spent Labor Day weekend catching up and basking in the wonder of life in our late 30s, when family building was in full swing for many and careers were tracking along to dreams imagined. I'm sure all high school classes think they're special, but for Pburg's class of '77, it feels even more real. Huge numbers of our small class ended up in education and training, a tribute to the fantastic Pburg school system. We have bankers, VPs and PhDs galore. We're pretty proud.

Now at the 35-year mark, we're of course beginning to see how the road ahead may not be quite so long as the road behind, and many of us are at or near our peak of career aspirations. Some are thinking about, or already basking in, retirement. Many of our families include sons and daughters just now graduating, or celebrating their 5th year reunion. Funny how the cycle goes.

I've been in contact with a few of our class and the enthusiasm is strong right out of the gate. Looks like Labor Day weekend 2012 will be our time to descend on Pburg and whoop it up like it's 1977. The biggest issues aren't about whether we'll be there - over half the class has already responded positively - it's where we'll all stay! Phillipsburg has perhaps 40 hotel rooms in the "city," and those who are familiar with Rodeo weekend know that every room and relatives' bedroom in town fills quickly for any significant event.

We're also hoping to invite the teachers to whom we owe so much, and we'll welcome any of our chronologically close classmates to come say hello as well. One of the many benefits of having grown up on the Plains instead of in XYZ South High School with a class of 2,000 is that we all know each other, and we all care about each other. We got to have high school the way it should be for everyone.

So, we've got a dinner to plan; perhaps a movie night at the recently restored Majestic Theatre; a tour of the old stomping grounds; and most importantly, time to catch up and laugh with all the people who shaped us as the adults we are today.

Can't wait!

Silver no more

Well, that only took 40 years.

One of my lesser childhood memories involved trudging into Dr. Scotty Patton's dentist office in downtown Phillipsburg, Kansas. It's never fun or exciting to go to the dentist, and I'm sure that a huge amount of my residual anxiety to this day stems from those...visits...to that office.

We O'Neills didn't lack for dental hygiene, mind you. We brushed; we had the benefits of fluoridated water in our progressive little town. But for some reason, Dr. Scotty Patton managed to find an exceptional amount of tooth decay in our mouths. I mean...a lot.

I can still remember the dread of going to that office, sitting in that chair, having x-rays taken, and then always...always...hearing Dr. Scotty Patton say, "well, you have 2 new cavities." And then the inevitable shots, drilling, and filling - with shiny silver amalgam fillings.

It didn't seem to matter what we did; we always had cavities. And our mouths filled up with silver.

I probably shouldn't complain; after all, Tom ended up with braces and Jim should have, but was so traumatized by Dr. Scotty Patton and his endless fillings that he never wanted to go near an orthodontist. But my own personal "drill and fill" episodes left me with a sour taste for dentistry for decades.

And the gas! Dr. Scotty Patton tried nitrous on me exactly once. I'm one of those who doesn't take to it well. Let's just say it was a bad trip. Further increasing my fear and shunning of all the DDS's of the world well into my 30s.

Finally, about 18 years ago (!), I found a dentist I could trust - Mike Golinvaux, a kind, earnest, conservative dentist who has answered every single one of my questions, considered and inane, ever since a former sales manager at my Courtyard hotel in Denver recommended him. Mike firmly believes in keeping and preserving teeth - and when he first looked at mine, he was flabbergasted to see all the silver. "A lot of fillings here...but they're all very shallow surface fillings. At least they're done well - we don't have to even touch these for a while."

And so it went over the years. Mike has handled a couple of crowns for me, and has slowly replaced silver with white composite fillings, but he takes his sweet time. Other dentists might have said "get rid of all of 'em - that silver amalgam is so passe, and possibly harmful with the mercury in 'em!" Mike's take: "Hey, they're stable and not breaking down...let's not worry about them for now."

Thanks to Mike, I have little dread when going to see him these days - and I've seen him exclusively since that first time, even when I had to move to Atlanta and now Austin. A few weeks ago, he decided to re-fill two rear upper molars, and I marveled at how the anesthetic works these days - painless shots and painless drilling in only about 3 minutes after the injection!

Once the molars were filled, I asked if they were old Dr. Scotty Patton silver amalgams, and Mike said "They were, Brian - and they were the last ones!" After almost 40 years, my mouth is Dr. Scotty Patton free.

I surmised long ago that drill-and-fill was a lucrative way for Dr. Scotty Patton to make extra dough in a small town that trusted all medical professionals and wouldn't know any better. But as a small consolation, I take a bit of comfort in knowing that he made the highest-quality, longest-lasting silver fillings one could ask for. (Mike says silver amalgams usually last 20 years tops.)

My mouth is now silver-free, with just a hint of gold from a couple of crowns in the back. My teeth are all mine, they're white, and I intend to keep 'em that way!

Why not more infrastructure?

We're into the second decade of the 21st century, and a new paradigm is fighting to emerge - one where unemployment is chronically high, or the definition of "full employment" rises to the 8-9% range that we have today.

Does it have to be this way?

In decades past, the federal government played a significant role in the building of the nation's infrastructure - the roads, bridges, rails, electric transmission networks, waterworks and related stuff that helped secure the USA as the superpower of the world. In the 1960s, as much as a third of the federal budget went to infrastructure. You're familiar with one of the most notable federal infrastructure projects: The Interstate Highway System. Imagine where our country would be if we still attempted interstate commerce on the two-lane, narrow blacktops of the 1930s and 1940s.

For lots of reasons, infrastructure has become politically passe. And yet, nothing short of a massive new infrastructure project will bring unemployment down to levels we still consider "normal." The private sector? It's hoarding cash, and in any case, no single business or group of businesses has the clout to build the way the federal government can - and should.

Here's one idea: For many years an "Interstate 66" project has been bandied about by road enthusiasts. There is an existing I-66, starting in DC and ending in western Virginia, but this idea envisions a coast-to-coast I-66, evoking memories of the Route 66 of lore.

This idealistic I-66 would be a minimum of three lanes in each direction the whole way. It would be designed from the ground up for the massive, high-capacity trucking industry and would be built for a 100-year lifespan using modern construction techniques. It might possibly be a truck-only freeway spanning the continent, especially if a high-speed rail line was laid down the center of the right of way. In any case, such a Mother Road would also serve currently economically disadvantaged areas like southern Kentucky, southern Missouri, southern Kansas, and southern Colorado.

The cost of something like this? Heck, I don't know. It's quite possibly a trillion-dollar project. But something like this would inspire a nation - and put thousands of unemployed Americans back to work. It's useful to note that a large majority of the current 9% unemployed are in that state because they've lost construction jobs. More than just a new bridge or interchange here or there, a new I-66 megaproject would jumpstart the economy on a number of fronts, in ways even bigger than the WPA and CCC projects of the Depression era.

Likely this will remain a theoretical exercise similar to my grand scheme to reduce time zones throughout the US. But these kinds of ideas can get people thinking. And the more I see us wallow through the Great Recession, the more I believe that it will take grand ideas far beyond what our leaders have mentioned so far to prevent a "new normal" from infecting our country.