Story Telling

When a politician walks into a room, according to Lyndon Johnson, the first thing you have to decide is who's for you and who's against you. Once you've made that decision you have to decide how to communicate with them. The most time-honored and most powerful form of communication with human beings is storytelling.  It's the same in every culture on the face of the earth. The most honored person in an Irish village was called the Shenachie who was the storyteller and the oral historian of the village. He was the accumulated wisdom of what it going on in the in the village and what has gone before. Good politicians are all good storytellers.  I've known some: Tip O'Neill, Tom Foley who was my mentor from the state of Washington was extraordinary storyteller. The best storyteller I  ever met was a member from Louisiana by the name of Billy Tousan.  Billy would talk almost continuously in stories. One of my favorites from him which I often used to begin speeches with was a story told me one day.  We were sitting on the floor one afternoon  and Billy told a story about Pierre Dugau who was a typical Cajun who had been out fishing in the bayous of Louisiana. As he came up to the dock with a boat loaded with fish, the game warden observed him and said, “Where  did you get all those fish, Pierre?”

 

Pierre rather matter –of –factly said ,”I just fished ‘em out of the water.” The game warden said, “Tomorrow I think I'll go out and see how you fish.”

 

Pierre said, “Suit yourself. Meet me at 5 o'clock tomorrow morning on the dock.”

The next morning the game warden appeared and climbed in the boat.  They rowed out into the bayous behind the cypress trees.

 

Pierre reached under the seat and took out a stick of dynamite. He lit it and dropped over this side of the boat. There was a thunderous boom and the stunned fish began to float up to the surface.  Pierre began to flip them into the boat. The game warden watched this performance and said, “Pierre, that's against the law in  Louisiana.”  

 

Pierre ignored him and keep throwing fish in the boat. The game warden said, “If you throw one more fish in the boat I'm gonna have to arrest you.”

 

 Pierre looked at the game warden, and reached under the seat for another stick of dynamite.  He offered the sputtering dynamite to the game warden and said, “Do you want a fish or do you want to talk?”

 

The point of the story is that people come to meetings sometimes, simply to talk and not to do anything.  I often use it as an introductory story before I give a speech because I want people to figure out what the mindset there really is. Are they there to do something or are they there just to sit listen to the proceedings?  When you find a good story is that has a point not aimed directly at the audience, they can perceive it. Jesus told parables, but very seldom, said to the people, “You're a sinner.” He talked often indirectly to them through stories.   Often politicians don't want to directly confront people with the truth that may be unpleasant or problematic, so they tell a story that allows the person in the audience to connect with the story and get the meaning without feeling attacked. It’s a skill that every good politician hones to a sharp point.

 

 

 

 

Why have intern and fellows in your office 8-6-2020

 

A couple of days ago a 26 year old French woman turned up at my house in rural France during the pandemic.  She is presently employed at the environmental protection office of the French Government in Paris.  I had not seen her since more than 5 years ago when she was an intern in my office. In 28 years in Washington I had about 400 interns in my DC and Seattle offices. 

As we were eating lunch, I asked how she got to be an intern in 2015.  She was in the US after a year abroad from University and she decided she would like to have the experience of being an intern in a Congressional office.  She did some research and drew up a short list of 5 offices.  Her top choice was the office of “Baghdad Jim”. I got that nickname by stating from Baghdad in 2003 that George Bush would mislead us into a war in Iraq that I thought was folly.

She submitted an application to the office along with her curriculum vita.  I looked at the application of all my interns and interviewed them if it was convenient.  I noted that she was from a French university and I had never had a French student so I accepted her without meeting her. 

My criteria for interns was not the standard set of criteria. I took people from outside my district in the US and looked for interesting backgrounds. I always checked what languages they were proficient in both spoken and written.  During the 2001-2010 I had an Arabic speaker almost every year.  Their job was to read the newspapers in the Arab world and tell me what seemed important to them. I had interns and fellows from 40-50 countries.  I occasionally took high school seniors who were recommended to me. I took kids from Foreign Service families who wanted their kids to come to the US. I took kids who families needed a little distance from their youngster. We would have a conversation in which I told them that if they caused me any problem, I was going to send them straight home. I never had a problem that I knew of. 

I thought a Congressperson has a job to train the next generation for entry into government and so I wanted to give these students a chance to experience the workings of an office, close up and personally. Today I have a loose network of people who worked in my office who now are spread all over the world.

I lived in Kinshasa, Zaire for a number of months when I worked for the State Department providing mental health services for official Americans.  I don’t remember the country where I learned the African proverb: You put a seed in the ground but you may never sit in the shade of the tree that grows from the seed.  For me interns were like planting seeds.

There is a budget director for a state in Brazil who wrote and administered the plan to cope with COVID19. Another just left a job at the American consulate in Frankfort after many years there. She is a German citizen.  Another of my German fellows was one of my Arabic Speakers who had lived in Cairo and he is now teaching in Liepzig. Ornanong  worked as the chief of the political section in the foreign ministry of Thailand. 

Having interns from outside my district and especially from foreign countries was very important to me as well as good for them.  The Congress fancies that it runs the world, and yet many members couldn’t find Kosovo on a map if their life depended on it.  I wanted these interns in my office to learn our form of government but also to challenge and teach me and my staff by the questions they felt free to ask.

I told all interns that the internship was their chance to learn and that no question was too stupid to ask if they didn’t know the answer.  Their questioning of my staff as to why certain things were done a certain way allowed my staff to rethink their certainties. I also tried to get them to believe that they could ask to do things that looked interesting on the Congressional calendar.  They could pursue their own dream if they saw a spot that seemed to lead in a direction they wanted to go.

What surprised me the most was the fact that many members took no interest in talking or eating or drinking with their interns.  I heard again and again,” I haven’t even met my member.” For five years I had a dinner in my office for Australian interns as we watched the State of the Union extravaganza.   I let interns come and ask me questions, sometimes to the dismay of my staff. Mentoring takes time but has long term payoffs that you may never see.

One of my interns asked me one day how to get a job in Washington DC. I told her that she had to be ready to take a job that seemed below her skill level as a way of paying her dues into the system.  Promotion is always possible. A few weeks later an entry level job on the front desk opened up in DC.  She was almost finished with college, so I offered her the job. If she would leave college and finish her degree in the summer in addition to working for me.  She took the job which she felt was below her skills but stuck at it until the job of coordinating all my legislative correspondence came open.  She was promoted but still felt that handling all the mail was not using all skills so asked for some substantive work.  I was chair of the subcommittee on income security and family support and I gave her several issues. She did well.  She decided to get a master’s degree at night, so she worked doubly hard.  Then a spot in the US senate came open and she moved to the Senate where she was responsible for the work of one of the subcommittees on Health, Education, Labor and Pension committee.

Now she is a special assistant to the Prime Minister of New Zealand.  Neither she nor I ever imagined that would be her path. 

Bright and hard working young people need internships to figure out where they may fit in the governmental process. They have no real idea what government is all about, so they need to have a chance to explore the possibilities.  An English Major from a middle western university came to congress in 1989 and was assigned to the HIV-AIDS issue.  She knew nothing about it but worked hard and mastered it for my purposes.  She decided to get a Masters’s degree at John Hopkins in Health management.  She is now high up in the hierarchy of one of the medical specialty societies.  In her wildest dreams she never anticipated the career course. 

One caveat: the Chinese say that if you save a man’s life you are responsible for him forever. Interns come back for letters of recommendations.  I’ve written 7 in the month of July. My modus operandi is simple.  You write the letter you want in my voice. I reserve the right to add or subtract.  Send me an updated resume and a recent picture in case I can’t remember your face from 5-10 ago. I just got a thank you today from a young man in South Dakota who got a job in health care. 

Mentoring is the biggest secret that no one tells you about the job as a Congressperson.  You will never know whose life you have changed.  I don’t know how many people have told me of things I said to them in the past that resonated in the future.

As we mourn the loss of John Lewis I sat next to him for 12 years on the W&M committee and watched as he helped hundreds of people see a brighter horizon for themselves. They say, “A person dies twice: once when they pass away, and they pass again when they stop telling stories about them.  Mentor’s stories are long. If you want a legacy this a sure fire one.   

 

 

What is a French Holiday? Celebration of the Assumption

 

Every day I go to the store at 8:30A M to get one of the two NYT that come to Lesparre in rural France. My second wife said she could tell I was on the hunt for the NYT ,no matter where we were traveling in the world. Croatia, Italy or some African country were all the same she said.  “I was like a bird dog looking for a pheasant in the brush.”

In France I have been buying and painfully translating the Sud Ouest from Bordeaux.  It is a regional paper that tells us what is happening in the SW of France. One day I noticed the International New York as I picked up the local paper. There was only one so I felt it was a sign from the universe that I should stop reading on line. I started going to the only place I could find that sold real papers. If I got there at 8:30 sometimes there were 2 papers, some days only 1.  So my plan each day was to get a croissant and an expresso at a nearby boulangerie at 8A M.  Then I could be first in line to get into the store and make sure I got the paper.

The prize of the week is the SAT-SUN edition which includes the world’s greatest anti-Alzheimer’s treatment in the world, THE CROSSWORD PUZZLE FOR SUNDAY.  I set off on the 15 of August to get the prize. I was first and there was a paper.  I checked the date and it was 14 August ; yesterday’s paper. I checked around and no one had an explanation for the failure.  

I went home, crestfallen but determined to try today and be sure to be first in line. There were others confused yesterday.  They were looking for foreign newspapers also.  This morning I was first in line and quickly walked to the kiosk.  There was a NYT.  The problem was that it was the same paper I rejected yesterday because now it was 2 days old.  Not even fit for the bottom of the proverbial bird cage.

There were other confused customers looking for Italian, German or Spanish news.  We accosted politely a store employee but he had no explanation. I ventured the possibility that the failure was due to the fact that August 15 is celebrated as Assumption Day and perhaps that might explain the failure to deliver international papers. The puzzled clerk brightened and agreed maybe that explained the failure. “Try tomorrow”, he suggested.

Living in a country for a long time forces you to learn some of the cultural practices. On the back page of the local paper each day there is a statement of what holy day it is or what Saint’s day it is.  I read that column each day which is how I knew it was the celebration of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. 

7 August  St.Gaetan died in1547 : 11 August St.Claire was born in Assissi in1193 and died in 1253: 12 August St. Clarisse founded a monastery in the 7^th Century: 13 August St. Hippolyte who was an anti-pope 217-235:  14 August St. Eviad died in 958 in a monastery in Switzerland: 15 August Is the Fe’te De L’Assumption of the Virgin Mary. Everyday has a holy aspect assigned to it.  In case you are wondering today is St Armel’s day  an evangelist in the 7^th century

This Saintly start for the day is followed by the events that have occurred on the Saint’s day in history. On this day in 1977 Elvis Presley died.

Every village has a church built before WWII or restored after war damage. My village of 650 souls has Church of St Peter.  I been a resident here and off and on for 4 years and the Mass has never been said here. There is a sign on the door that tells you where mass is being said In a nearby church. Itinerant priests move from place to place on Sunday. France is a Catholic country. The religious history is deep but today it is often only a patina EXCEPT when it comes to important holidays.

You don’t get your paper on a holy day.  

  

 

The John Lewis I knew July 18, 2020

                                     

For 12 years I sat next to John on the W&M committee.  He was not interested in making a name for himself by the legislation he wrote. Rather he was interested in doing what was best for people.  We often talked about the effects that various pieces of legislation had on ordinary people. This was the guiding principle of his vote on all legislation. 

He came to the hearings prepared with his remarks and questions and since he followed me in the order of speaking, he would often say that he liked the direction I had taken in my five minutes of speech and questioning. He was selfless, in that he could give credit to others and did not seek to dominate the issue.  He simply wanted to stand up for the right principle, no matter the impact on him.

He had big companies in his city like Coca Cola and CNN, but he was always interested in how the law would impact the workers who he represented.  He would not pander to anyone. I had plenty of time at his elbow to watch him deal with people. He was polite to all of them, whether they were press or lobbyists or constituents. He always took time to talk to and shake hands with kids.  He drove his staff crazy because it always took so long for him to move.

What you saw as his image was what he really was.  I can’t remember a single time in my time on the committee with him when he showed another side to himself. The chairman, Danny Rostenkowski who was the consummate old-time pol from Chicago wanted him on the committee.  Danny was never sure how John might vote but he trusted him.

John came to Seattle to help my campaigns on several occasions. Most memorable was his trip to do a fundraiser for me.  In advance I had given him a book entitled “Not on American Soil” which was a book written about the one of the most egregious miscarriages of justice to soldiers going to fight in war for their country. It happened at Fort Lawton in Seattle.  There were Italian prisoners of war housed next to the barracks of a company of Black stevedores headed to Iwo Jima the next day.  Drinking and fight occurred. In the morning an Italian was found hanged in a tree nearby. 

The US government wanted to sweep this under the rug as quickly as possible. Leon Jaworski of later Watergate fame and the Nuremburg trials, was sent to do the investigation and trial.  With little evidence or witnesses and one defense counsel for 20 men, all were convicted of some part in the “Lynching”.  All received bad conduct discharges that followed them all their lives.  Several were sent to Leavenworth.

John helped me get the Army to reverse, posthumously, the BCD’s. When he came, he wanted to see the place where all this occurred.  I’ll never forget walking through the area at Fort Lawton.  No one was too small or forgotten for John to stop and remember others who had suffered. 

He met with a nine-year old black boy who came to testify to the Congress about the need for health care for his caregiver and grandmother.  They were from my district.

Humanity and love for all without respect for politics emanated from him at all times. If he were here, he would deny it, but he is as close to a saint as I have ever been. He walked in Christ’s footsteps every step he took.

He always did!!!     

Q 74 Enfin Libres Finally Free

Enfin Libres The Message to the USA from a rational Country

“Finally  free” is the headline of the local newspaper, Sud Ouest, in Bordeaux. On the second page the headline is “Now Liberty will become the rule again.” Ask yourself when you will see that on the frontpage of the NYT. 

This a clear example of the results of having a thoughtful rational leader who gives a clear consistent message.  Our motto is E Pluribus Unum, from “many comes one.” The French national motto is “Liberte’, equalite’ and fraternite’.  Roughly translated, by a non French speaker, as liberty, equality and brotherhood.  This phrase governed the reaction of a socialist leaning country as they responded to the epidemic. France is a very regulated society that allows freedom in concert with equality and reverence for the common good..  There was no absence of griping and some lack of Masques in stores but generally they daily filled out an attestation which they carried with them, checking the boxes which stated their destination: doctor, work , visiting a sick relative , going to court or government office or exercising themselves or their dogs. These documents were available on line at midnight on the first day of Confinement.  I was stopped twice by gendarmes who inspected my document. In case you don’t have a computer and printer the back page of the paper had four copies everyday for you and your family to fill out.

Seen from this vantage point it is clear that equality and brotherhood are not in our souls.  The events of Minneapolis and the widespread protests against wearing a mask or staying out of large groups reflects a failure of our society to believe that the common good should be the driving force. The concept that liberty allows one to do whatever they want will not produce a functional or livable  society.  This epidemic ripped th,e mask off our facade that we care about one another.  It has exposed in all its ugliness, the truth that Me, ME, Me and me will not work.  Sometimes we have to accept restrictions for the purpose of making it better for everyone. 

Make no mistake!  Small shop owners and restaurants and barbershop and hairdressers and pedicurists and manicurists suffered in this time. Monday will be the 75^th  day since confinement began.  I know the woman who owns my favorite restaurant and we have talked about her financial situation.  She and her husband and son have been damaged economically but not destroyed.  They have health care and the school has opened up on a limited basis and no one is going to evict them from their home. In the midst of all of this, she ran for city council, and although her list lost, because of proportional voting, she has one of the two opposition seats on the council. It took  her a month to gear up to do take out but she is keeping the wolf from the door. This is La Pen (Trump) country but here everyone generally wore masks. Working in a vineyard is not like working in the Renault Auto plant. But they recognized the fears and concern of their neighbors.

What makes it sad for me is seeing that if Our beloved leader had simply worn a mask and made it  a masculine symbol of virility on March 10^th  we could all be recovering in a few days. But he has adopted a program that seems to say, “ let the old and weak and the young take care of themselves.  We 20-60 year olds won’t get sick so lets do whatever we want.  Let’s be free and don’t you dare tread on me.”

The resultant chaos has led to 1000’s of layoffs The resultant chaos in tourism, travel , higher education and health care will take a long painful time to repair.  It didn’t have to be this way if we had remembered that America was not built by rugged individualists on Harley-Davidsons.  It was built by ill prepared Pilgrims who were saved from starvation by Native people who had been here for thousands of years. Our Capitol was built with slave labor and the West was by railroads built by Chinese that weren’t allowed in the picture of driving the Golden Spike in Utah. Barns were built and grain harvested by communal labor, not by “sharpies” from Chicago in Suits and white shirts.

My hope is that this epidemic will rekindle the “common good flame” in the American people so we can add “equality and brotherhood” to our national motto.   

Q 53 Anum Cara=Soul Friend

I just walked 6800 steps through the vineyard and never met a car or a human being. One and half hours of solitude as I thought of friends I had not heard from and wondered how they were surviving this isolation.  All my life I’ve made a habit of calling someone whose name comes to mind.  I think it is a remnant of the Highland Gaelic belief in the Second Sight. I often feel I know things I have no reason or basis to know.

I am blessed with a coterie of friends who fit the definition of Anam Cara which is described in a book   written by John O’Donohue.  Anum cara is the word for a Soul Friend in Gaelic. When you pick up the phone or meet someone you have heard from for a week or a year or 3 years and you pick up the conversation as if there had been no interruption You are talking to a soul friend.  The depth of the conversation is the sign of the real depth of the Anam Cara ness. You can talk the weather or how is your job.  That doesn’t count.

The real connection comes when you begin to reveal your soul.  Life changing experiences of death, divorce, professional failure or loss of dreams for the future. It can’t be one way. Both you and your Anam Cara need to share the view of our souls. Then it is real.

A real Anum Cara is someone who can accept you with all your warts and faults and not turn away. There is no one who does not have characteristics that might make one want to walk away angry or disgusted.    For some, the desire to eat animals that were living breathing creatures and subjecting them to the process of meat production is repulsive. One of my AC is one such, but she can accept that I love bacon and lamb sandwiches and still communicate deeply with me.  I suspect she will never stop verbally raising the images of abattoirs, but I will always laugh gently and move away from breakfast or lunch conversations.

Racial references that are hurtful present the same problem even among good friends. I told a political story about the Southern US just as it was told to me, using the Governor’s actual words that were commonly used in the 1950’s. One of my AC was offended and told me so.  The point was that for him that word was never to be used.  We have worked together for years and our friendship is still deep although we don’t see each other very much.  I’m sure if I picked up the phone and called, he would pick up our conversation that has 2-year gap in it like we had spoken only yesterday.

If you think through your friendships call the names that come to mind. I have always loved the “Concept of 6 Degrees of Separation” expanded by the Hungarian author, Karinthy in 1929.  His idea was that 2 individuals are separated by only 5 people. He believed that if he wanted to, he could contact to any human being on earth through personal acquaintances.  I found my first girlfriend that I hadn’t seen in 40 years with 5 phone calls. Try it sometime in Quarantine when the world seems to be closing in.  I did this before Linked-In or Facebook which are only technologies based on this theory. I bet writing the patent on this idea was very interesting.

We all have Anam Caras if we allow ourselves to think about what is hardest to bear in the social isolation required by public measures in an epidemic. Loss of human touch can be mitigated by a phone call or two.  Reach out and touch them.  

Q 50 Touch

As I walk through the vineyards awakening from the winter, my mind turns to the clouds which makes me think of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Although you may not have been in Rome, most everyone has seen the Michelangelo scene of God touching the finger of Adam, creating the humanity of human beings. This an iconic image that is everywhere in the Western world.  As I am walking alone through the vines, I long for the touch of another human being.

Quarantine or social isolation is most difficult for me and others because we can not touch or hold or caress those closest to us: lovers, sons and daughters, parents, grandchildren and on and on the list goes. Intellectually we understand why the isolation is necessary whether it is in a Covid-19 case or just an ICU after some medical procedure.   

Usually we think there is a time limit on the prohibition, but there is no end in sight for this epidemic because we don’t know what the virus will do next. We fear a second wave, but we don’t even know when, or if, it will come. It is like a thief in the night that disturbs our sleep. How can we cope with endless estrangement from human touch?

My little village has several meetings about how to reopen the primary school. How do you enforce social isolation in children who are interacting physically with one another? Everyone who is or has been a parent knows that each school year brings an unending string of sniffles and coughs as children bring to school or home, whatever they have come in contact with.

Imagine being a teacher and unable to put a hand on a child’s shoulder to encourage or comfort a child. Which then brings up the whole subject of learning on-line.  This is not a panacea because again, you have social distancing that makes it hard to ask questions or to judge whether the answer given was satisfactory. Anyone who has spent 5-6 hours a day staring at a computer screen on Zoom feels a little detached.

We have five senses by which we take in information: touch, smell, taste, hearing and sight.  I once had an intense discussion with a violinist about which sense I would miss most.  We only talked about seeing and hearing. The other senses are primitive and useful perhaps in other times. I took the position that eyesight would be the biggest loss, but she insisted that hearing loss was the worst. She pointed out to me that the process of hearing is done in milliseconds with no chance to rehear the sound. Sight, on the other hand, allows us to refer back to the subject to see if what we thought we saw was in fact true. Was the sound “in tune” is decided instantly but “is it green or blue” can be reviewed. Watching old people who are deaf shows the isolation they feel and retreat into unless they get hearing aids.

I thought about that conversation and I think we both missed touch. We say, “That touched me” about both things we hear and see. Maybe we say that because it reaches out deepest level of understanding. I’ve read stories of people who are in solitary confinement who develop relationships with mice or other creatures.  I now understand better people who live solitary lives and relate to birds and plants. As I have talked to people about this ache in my soul they send me all kinds of interesting information.  The German Psychiatric Association has a message on-line: “We are flooded with calls. During Quarantine it is completely normal if you talk with walls, flowers and some other items. Please only call us when they are talking with you.”  It is hard to tell if it is tongue-in-cheek but lots of people tell me how much they miss touch of a Human being.

In a totally unrelated conversation my brother and I got to talking about how we surviving the lock down and he surprised me by saying, “I miss touch.” He is an extraordinary dancer, especially in Contra and Irish set dancing where the dancers are touching one another all the time as they do intricate steps, taking the lead from one of the partners. As I thought about this, I thought of an old Joke in the world of religion.

The religious leader was asked if having intimate relations while standing” up was acceptable. The emphatic answer was “NO”.  The questioner asked for a rational for that response and was told, “Because it would lead to dancing.”

The next question is “When can we touch?” Will we resume shaking hands, or will the French and other Europeans resume kissing on the cheek? I look forward to the day when I can give a hug again to someone I care about.

As I was walking, I was reminded of our basic animal nature by a growling dog I met. A neighbor yelled at the dog in French, so I don’t know what he said.   The dog slunk away with its tail between its legs.

The next day I met the dog and he growled. I yelled at him and he slunk away.  The dog lives around the corner from me and as returned home from my walk the dog followed me at a distance. On instinct, I summoned the dog in a quiet friendly voice. He came to me and let me pet him and wanted to follow me into my house. It seemed like he needed me to touch him and I needed to touch him for my soul needed a touch.