Bonanza Column 155 – Memorial Day

The National Memorial Day Concert from the Mall in Washington, D.C., is as much a part of the holiday as picnics, a day off, and flying the flag. This year's concert was the 20^th annual, and if you missed it you missed something really special.

The annual concert has all the elements – patriotic songs, flags and uniforms, moving tributes, and most of all the memory of those who served and gave their lives. This year's concert also focused on those who, while they may have physically survived their combat, will never be the same. A case in point is José Pequeño, a Staff Sergeant in the New Hampshire National Guard who volunteered to deploy to Iraq. While on duty, he was calling in about a suicide bomber when an insurgent tossed a grenade into his Humvee. He lost the bottom two lobes of the left side of his brain, and doctors held out very little hope for his recovery. His mother Nellie and sister Elizabeth went immediately to his side and remain there over three years later. At the concert they were front-row center.

As with most severely brain-damaged patients, it was very hard to tell how much of the proceedings José was taking in. His body is stiff and contorted, his head twisted to the side, his mouth open. His mother and his sister were in physical contact with him the whole time and talking to him as he was praised and saluted, standing as a symbol of all the severely injured and disabled veterans, and particularly of those with traumatic brain injury (TBI).

I have no use for war as an instrument of foreign policy; at the same time I recognize that, from time to time, wars will be fought, young men will die, and those who live will be forever changed. I'm not a pacifist. I believe that we must defend ourselves, our freedom, and our way of life when it is attacked. Moral choices are not always easy choices, but they must be made.

At the same time, I believe that wars of aggression, wars of pre-emption, are profoundly immoral. In hindsight it's easy to say that we would have been justified had we attacked the Empire of Japan before December 7, 1941, but it's easy to be right in hindsight, and we still hold that particular pre-emptive strike as one of the most immoral acts of warfare ever – would it have been less immoral if we attacked them instead? I think not.

The war in Iraq, where Sgt. Pequeño gave what amounts to the last full measure of devotion to his country and his comrades – where his young life effectively ended – is a war born of a pre-emption that was questionable at best. Everyone but the very few diehard defenders of the war has admitted that the intelligence was flawed, to put the absolute best case forward – falsified is closer to the mark.

Until 1950 almost all the wars fought by the United States were fought to throw off the yoke of tyranny (the Revolution), to meet aggression (the War of 1812, WW 1, WW 2), or to preserve the values on which the country was founded (the Civil War). In every one of these cases we emerged from the horror of the wars stronger and sounder as a nation. We had done the right thing, respecting the cost but not stopped by it. There were a few aggressive wars in there – the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War – and we can't say that these left us better as a country. Since 1950 we have had a series of wars of questionable provenance – Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, and now Iraq.

When the moral compass of those in power wavers and becomes shaky, young men like José Pequeño pay the price. In the small town where I grew up there was a statue of a WW 1 Doughboy inscribed "Lest We Forget." If we do forget, then the sacrifices of the José Pequeños will be in vain, and that will be the end of us as a nation.

Tahoe Ticker Column 3: Climate Change

I've worked in a number of areas over the years (decades?), but they've all had something in common. In every case, the people who were most prominent and respected in the various fields were those who stuck very close to the evidence.

I began my career in brain research, and that's kind of a no-brainer. You do what you do, measure what happens, analyze the data, and report out on what it shows. As a clinical psychologist it was a little less clear, but I quickly learned that therapy was most effective when it dealt with what was actually happening in the patient's life, and interpretations and advice worked best when they stayed close to the facts.

In business consulting, one of the most highly respected books in the field is "Good to Great" by Jim Collins. I've talked to Collins about the research and writing that went into that book, and what struck me was the integrity of his sticking to the data even when it didn't go where he expected it to go. One of the major findings in that book is the importance of leadership in moving companies from being good and solid to being great. Jim had believed that leadership was an overrated concept, and was chagrined, annoyed even, when the data said otherwise.

So why is it that when the conservative forces in this country and the so-called Christian Right have a problem with an issue of science, evidence and the scientific method suddenly don't matter? Take climate change. The data are not 100% on either side of the question. If the 20^th Century taught us anything, it is that science doesn't allow for absolute certainty. So scientific inquiry proceeds based on the preponderance of the evidence, not "beyond a reasonable doubt."

I'm not an expert on climate control, so when I want to learn about it I go to those who are – climatologists, geologists, earth scientists, marine scientists, etc. As a scientist myself, I look with great skepticism at, say, an economist making statements about climatology. The Right, apparently, has no such problem. Those on the Right who would have us believe that climate change isn't a problem, or that human activity is not a factor in what from the evidence looks like a potentially disastrous trend toward warming seem willing to quote economists, government professors, doctors, pretty much anyone who will say what they want to hear. On the scientific side of the argument, the alarm is being raised by people whom we would expect to know what they're talking about – who have done the research, gathered the data, and who, to my relatively untutored eye, don't seem to be straying too far from the evidence. Yet the Right seems to want to play "we have as many 'experts' as you do," and expects that to carry the argument.

With a bit of a twist, the situation is the same with stem cell research, Scientifically, there is no question that stem cells hold the possibility of great medical advances. Many people oppose stem cell research on what amount to moral grounds, particularly where the cells are derived from embryos. I don't agree with them, but I can respect their moral convictions without endorsing them. What I can't respect is cloaking those moral arguments in arguments about the efficacy of stem cells, arguments the data simply do not support.

And don't get me started on evolution vs. creationism. If you want to believe in creationism, great, but don't try to use science's always being open to new evidence to cloak what is, at root, a religious, not a scientific position.

The point is, let's stick to the data.

Bonanza Column 154 - Volunteers

I've said it before and I will say it again – Incline Village/Crystal Bay is the home, or at least the West Coast Distribution Center, for "no good deed goes unpunished." The latest is the spate of letters to the Bonanza taking the volunteers on the Nuisance Ordinance Committee to task for being "self-serving" and "power hungry." Give me a break!

In this town of some 9000 "residents" (only about half of whom live here full time) there is a handful of people who actually work for the betterment of the community. There are the 5 IVGID Trustees, the people who serve on advisory committees for golf, tennis, skiing, etc., the people who volunteer for Parasol, Project Mana, Tahoe Women's Services, and other worthwhile organizations (sorry if I left anyone out – I can't list them all, probably don't know of them all). Then there are Red, White, and Tahoe Blue, the Nuisance Committee, and the people who volunteer at churches etc. I would guess, given the overlap in all these groups, that it might amount to 500 people or so. These are the people who care enough about the quality of life in our community that they actually give of their time and themselves. Others may give money, go to fundraisers, and the like, but these are the people who use those funds to execute on the vision and mission of those organizations.

On the other hand there is a group that I suspect is much smaller – certainly it's the same 5 or 10 people who write the letters to the Bonanza, but let's say they represent another 20 or so – who just can't stand to see anyone try to do anything positive. They have a Constitutional right to express their opinion, and far be it from this opinion columnist to say they shouldn't, but really – do they have to insult the commitment of the people who actually do something?

Self-serving? Please tell me whose selfish interest is served by a committee that is trying to work out how to have junk cars removed from people's lawns, or excess noise curbed, or eyesores like the Orbit station removed? Does anyone on the committee own a car removal firm or make money off things being quiet (?!), or maybe someone owns an ugly former gas station removal company? I don't think so.

Power hungry? What power? The power to serve on the IVGID Board and get abusive phone calls at 3 am? The power to … I just don't know. I mean I can't even make this one make sense.

Oh, I know – the power to exclude people from the beaches! No, that's in the CC&R's that founded the village. Maybe the power to keep people from sitting on the sand to watch fireworks. No, those same people buy punchcards at their own expense to make sure no one is excluded. Maybe the power to cloud men's minds. No, that's Lamont Cranston, the Shadow.

What rot! What utter balderdash (sorry, but it's a family newspaper). These people are volunteers – they are people who contribute and give back. I guess they shouldn't do that – they should stay home and write letters maligning the commitment of those who care enough to actually do something positive rather than whine and complain.

As I said, give me a break. You're either part of the solution or you're part of the problem. Which side are you on?:

Bonanza Column 153 - Hypocrisy

This is supposed to be my "off" week, but Andy is still on holiday and when I get a request from an ardent fan, it's hard for me to ignore it.

You may recall that in last Friday's paper, my long-time reader Bill Silcox requested that I "explain what U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano (and by inference, President Obama) meant when she wrote that returning veterans should be investigated as right–wing extremists, according to a nine-page report that was made public on April 14." He said my view will be "of interest," and I really can't fail to respond to a request like that from an admirer.

The problem is, I can't exactly respond because Bill doesn't have it quite right. According to Fox News among others, the DHS report in question contained a caution that returning veterans might be targets for extremist recruiters, and that we should be aware of that. Granted, not the most delicate thing to suggest, but a long way from saying that the veterans (not the recruiters) should be investigated as right-wing extremists. Further, when Napolitano realized what the report said and how it would be taken, she publicly and openly apologized for it and did so personally and face-to-face with the head of the American Legion, who graciously accepted her apology. Both the actual substance of the report and the Secretary's apology were widely and respectfully reported on both sides of the political spectrum of news organizations.

Now I realize that the sight of a high government official accepting responsibility for something that happened on her watch, clearly accepting and admitting that it was an error, and apologizing for it rather than staunchly defending that it's right because the Administration said it's right would be unfamiliar to some, but that's what happened, and Bill, respectfully, you have your facts distorted and just plain wrong.

A report last week said that only 21% of Americans identify themselves as Republicans – maybe an all-time low point for the Grand Old Party. I think one reason for this is that it must be embarrassing for anyone with any ethics or integrity to be associated with a party that, for the eight years of the previous administration, lied their (our) way into a bloody war, sloughed off responsibility for the disaster of rebuilding after Katrina, and all the rest.

What's amazing is that that remaining 21% keeps doing it. Last week Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) had the colossal effrontery to refer in open session to the hate crime murder of Matthew Shepard in Wyoming as "a hoax, and did that with Shepard's mother in the gallery! And this is only the latest in a series of lies, rumors, and false reports from the likes of Cheney, Rove, Palin, and the rest of the ever-shrinking right-wing Republican crew.

So Bill, thanks for asking. I know, because you've written in so often, that you are a regular reader – and I appreciate your designation of me as the NLTB's "ace columnist," although I think you may have made a spelling error. In any case, with Jim and Andy I'm at best one of three aces. As to expressing my political views and putting down previous presidents, well, the first is actually my constitutional right, and as to the second, it's really only one previous president – I'm pretty OK with many of the other 42. Anyhow, thanks for your interest.

Ticker Column 2: Red, White, and Tahoe Blue and Crystal Bay

As recent articles in the Tahoe Ticker have made clear, it's a pretty tough time for a great many people in the Tahoe Basin. The winter has been slow due to the economy, and then made worse by the sparse snowfall. Christmas week was a teaser – we really thought it might be a great season, but then we didn't see any real snow until March, and while it helped it was, economically, too little too late. The simple fact is that once Spring comes and the weather gets warm here and elsewhere, people's thoughts turn to golf and tennis, even if the snow is good.

Still, there are a lot of people here who, to put it charitably, have enough money that they don't have to worry. Unfortunately many of them do worry – about themselves and their own narrow interests. There are a few people in Crystal Bay, and I do believe it's just a very few, who have made it their lives' work to gain access to the beaches in Incline Village, even if that means that the private beaches become public. They have the unmitigated gall to frame their quixotic crusade as a civil rights issue and to compare their "plight" to the situation of African-Americans in days before the Civil Rights Movement. If that weren't so arrogant, it would be laughable.

These individuals' latest crusade is against Red, White, and Tahoe Blue, the Incline Village/Crystal Bay Independence Day celebration that is coming into its third year. By way of full disclosure, I'm one of the founding members of RWTB and on its Board. The Board is composed entirely of volunteers who are committed to a community celebration and to raising money for local charities. In the first two years of RWTB thousands of dollars went to local causes and the celebration consisted of entertainment, community fun (a rubber duck race, an ice cream social), a parade, and a tribute to local veterans.

Some of these events take place on the beach – the rubber duck race, the fireworks, and one barbecue. Actually, while the fireworks take place on the lake, they are widely visible. Last year a very popular event entailed watching the fireworks from the Village Green, across the street from the beach, while the Reno Philharmonic played, and the view was great. The Village Green is open to anyone, by the way.

Each year members of the RWTB Board have quietly purchased extra punch cards and made sure that no one was excluded from the events on the beach. Individual Board members have gone out of their way to invite Incline and Crystal Bay residents who don't have beach access to be their guests on the beach, but that apparently isn't good enough for the Crystal Bay few. They will settle for nothing less than full access and have instituted legal action to that effect. Well, this is America where anyone can sue anyone for anything, so I guess that's their right (or Wright), but it's going to cost the District, and therefore the residents, a lot of money and in the end there's a strong likelihood that the courts could open the beaches to the public. For those of you keeping score at home, the residents-only policy is a significant contributor to home values here, and if the beaches go public the values will go down. Great timing, eh?

I'm not going to debate the merits of private vs public beaches. The salient point here is, I think, that the Incline beaches have been residents only from the beginning of the community and everyone who purchased a home without beach access knew that when they bought. Their rec fees are lower as a result, and it doesn't make sense to me to now say "no fair." If you thought it wasn't fair, you shouldn't have bought that house.

With all that, to call RWTB discriminatory is sheer demagoguery. Don't make the mistake of buying in to it. Come to RWTB, give to RWTB, and have a great time. I know I will.

Bonanza Column 151 – Will No One Rid Us of this Noisome Governor?

Will No One Rid Us of this Noisome Governor?

Next Friday, May 8^th, Governor Jim Gibbons will be coming to Incline for a town hall-type meeting. The venue is not determined at this writing, but the D.W. Reynolds Building is a good bet. I imagine Gibbons thinks that a trip to Incline will be a friendly affair. Our community has the reputation of being pretty conservative Republican town (despite having gone for Obama in the election) and it's predictable that a lot of those who turn out will support Gibbons in a knee-jerk conservative kind of way.

Maybe the rest of us should turn out also. As I've said before in this space, this is one of the worst governors in the United States and, just a couple of weeks ago, he got a new title:

Our winner... Governor Jim Gibbons of Nevada.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that the FBI is investigating him for having allegedly accepted unreported gifts or payments from a military contractor, while the Governor was a U.S. Congressman.

But he has an explanation. "I have heard," he says, "that the Democrats have paid to have these Wall Street Journal articles written."

Governor, don't you think, if the Democrats could get good coverage out of the Wall Street Journal by paying for it, they might spend the money on a little higher-value target than the Governor of Nevada?

The Wall Street Journal, for cryin' out loud!

Governor Jim Gibbons of Nevada... Today's Worst Person In The World!"

That was Keith Olbermann on his TV show on April 10^th. Now despite Keith's side-shot at Nevada, we have further evidence that our governor's train is leaving the tracks. The news reporting of the Wall Street Journal, unlike its editorial pages, is among the best in the country. Gibbons' allegation (he later backed off, but it's on the record) that somehow this Republican paper was bribed by unnamed Democrats to malign him borders on paranoid psychosis. This comes on the heels of the latest episode in the ongoing saga of the Governor's divorce with new accusations of infidelity by his wife.

Of course we also have Gibbons' demonstrated incompetence in dealing with the state's budget crisis and his predilection for cutting education, presumably on the assumption that an uneducated electorate is his and his party's best insurance. Then there are the allegations of questionable contributions that are continuing as he raises money for a reelection campaign.

Sooner or later Nevada voters need to wise up. Harry Reid has made a big contribution toward our state not being seen nationally as a two-bit operation supported by gambling and prostitution, but as long as we have a governor who spouts paranoid nonsense, can't manage his domestic relationship with any honor or integrity, and is plagued by allegations of corruption that touch both him and his estranged wife (a Google search on "Gibbons Nevada" and "scandal OR accused" yields 489,000 hits in less than a second and includes names like InTreppid, Ozmen, and others), and as long as we are in the bottom tier of the 50 states in education and in the top tier in things like alcoholism and suicide, we're unlikely to be respected or seen as respectable.

TT Column 1: Susan Boyle and Mexicans

Let me introduce myself – I'm a business consultant and freelance writer. I've had a political column in the North Lake Tahoe Bonanza for the past several years in which I've attempted to bring some liberal/progressive balance to the largely conservative North Shore. In addition to politics I write on religious/spiritual topics and have a forthcoming book in that area. In this column on Tahoe Ticker I hope to bring some of both to readers both in the Tahoe basin and elsewhere. Now to business:

Unless you live in a cave, you have probably been exposed to Susan Boyle over the past couple of weeks. She's the 47-year old English woman who went on "Britain's Got Talent," the UK version of American Idol and wowed the whole world. What's interesting about this to me is that if she had just submitted a tape or sung with only the audio on, you would have thought "great voice." What made her such a sensation is that she is a rather ordinary looking middle-aged woman who was visibly nervous and at the same time, to use a Britishism, "cheeky." In the US we use a different anatomical reference, but mean the same – gutsy, a little brash, and a dash of impudence.

No matter how often we hear and say "you can't judge a book by its cover," we still do. If you watch the clip on YouTube, the judges and the audience are laughing at her until she opens her mouth to sing, and then they're astonished, as if age or looks or dress or anything else had anything to do with musical ability.

Now expand that out – we prejudge everyone and everything we encounter, and unlike a TV show that is set up for moments of high drama, mostly our prejudgments determine not only our behavior but the fate of those we judge. Since the 1960's there have been numerous studies that show that if you give teachers classes of equal ability but tell one teacher the students are bright and the other that the students are slow, the expectation set by the description has enormous power in determining the students' performance. What's remarkable about our first African-American President is not that he got there but that we had to go through 43 white men, many of them unexceptional, to finally elect an exceptional black man.

People who live at Tahoe have an extraordinary record of charitable giving – there are foundations, individual donors, fundraisers, etc. that account for hundreds of thousands of dollars in charitable giving every year. Unfortunately a lot of that giving is going to support programs and institutions that look a lot like the donors. A private school for the children of the privileged raises a hundred thousand dollars to fund its programs while the public schools are laying off teachers and cutting programs, and programs that benefit those who need it most go underfunded and under the radar of people who could support them.

One such program is called ARC – Adventure, Risk, Challenge. ARC is a non-profit program that, for several years now, has worked with English Language Learner (read Mexican-American) high school students in a year-round program that combines a 40 day summer program of outdoor leadership and academic education with ongoing work that turns out college students and community leaders. ARC has programs on the North Shore at the UC Berkeley Sagehen Field Research Center, in Yosemite in conjunction with the UC Merced Science Research Institute, and has had (and will have again) a program in Santa Barbara with UCSB. ARC has an amazing young staff in both centers, and is, like many programs of its ilk, massively underfunded. Maybe a program that starts with the Hispanic equivalent of Susan Boyles and turns out extraordinary human beings deserves at least as much financial support as do prep schools and animal rescue efforts. Or we could just figure what the hell – they're Mexicans.

Column 151 - Optimism

Tough times notwithstanding, it's hard not to be optimistic after attending Star Follies.

It's silly – an amateur hour of of local people in outlandish costumes, dancing with varying degrees of imprecision and lip-synching to loud music in a showroom that is a shadow of its former self.

It's a group of people – adults and children – having the time of their lives working their tails off to support our schools, and having such an infectious good time that you can't help but enjoy it.

This being Incline, I'm sure there are people who subscribe wholeheartedly to the first view – fortunately those folks don't come to the show and spoil it for the rest of us.

I think Star Follies has an importance to this community that goes beyond what it does for the schools. Since the early 90s, a group of writers, researchers and educators has been re-examining the profession of Psychology's focus on pathology and trying out the study of what can go right with people and institutions. These thinkers don't claim to have invented anything new or created a new profession, rather they distinguish themselves by their perspective. The value of positive psychology lies in its uniting of what had been scattered and disparate lines of theory and research about what makes life most worth living, according to Dr. Martin Seligman, a leader of the movement.

This research suggests that optimism actually affects the quality of our lives. Not an unquestioning, "glass half-full" positive thinking, but a healthy optimism, grounded in reality. Not being Pollyanna and thinking everything is wonderful, but making the best of things that happen. To use Star Follies as an example, we can bemoan funding cuts to the schools, blame the government and the economy, and be unhappy or we can seize the opportunity to create a great community event, have a lot of fun, make new friends, and raise a bunch of money in the process. Does that make it right or OK that the schools are underfunded? Of course not. But it gives us something positive we can do in the face of an unpleasant situation.

To use a formula developed by Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar, a positive psychologist at Harvard, we can give ourselves Permission to be human – to be unhappy about the situation, to feel powerless, then we can Reconstruct the situation – glean learnings from it and search it for opportunities – and then keep it in Perspective – look at how the problem fits into the great scheme of things with respect to the quality of our lives and, in the case of Star Follies, shift our perspective from "the State and Federal Governments should do something" to "we as a community can do something on our own." PRP – Permission, Reconstruction, Perspective – is at the heart of positive psychology.

I think we're ripe for a revolution in our perspective. Whatever the economic factors, one thing that got us through the Great Depression was American optimism. Optimism became unfashionable after that, for some reason. It came to be called boosterism and cheerleading. As the country got more "sophisticated" after World War II, as the pseudo-sophistication of pessimism came into vogue, optimism came to be seen as naïve and "Midwestern,". As much as we may make fun of the French with their veneer of boredom and existential angst, their relationship to the world became our model, at least for those of us who wanted to appear "smart." Optimism was relegated to the realm of the quaint and as early as 1949 in South Pacific, Rodgers and Hammerstein poked fun at the "cockeyed optimist, immature and incurably green"

Well, maybe we lost something in "growing up" as a country, and maybe a lot of the ills and malaise of our culture are the national equivalent of a depressive neurosis. Maybe being "stuck like a dope with a thing called hope" is not such a bad thing. In fact, research in positive psychology shows that pessimism may put people at risk for chronic physical and mental illnesses and an earlier death than their optimistic counterparts.

So let's give ourselves permission to be human – scared, worried, discouraged, let's reconstruct - rather than hoping against hope that things will get back to where they were, let's look for a reset to a more reasonable, sane level, and let's keep things in perspective – we live in the most beautiful place on earth, we are alive and thriving, and we have in our midst people like the producers, directors, cast, and crew of Star Follies who are working to make our community a better place and not waiting for "them" to fix it.

Column 150 – Gibbons (again)

Just when you think there's nothing more to say about Governor Jim Gibbons, he up and pulls another one. Like other grandstanding Republican governors including such luminaries as Sarah Palin and Bobby Jindal, Gibbons has indicated he is considering refusing Federal Stimulus unemployment funds. What makes Gibbons more fun than Palin and Jindal, is that he's so inept at handling the political side of decisions like this.

First of all, he's made it an ideological issue – it's about "the Federal Government usurping state powers." Not really, but doesn't it sound great if you're a 1950's conservative? Then when Reps. Dina Titus and Shelly Berkley (both Democrats, of course – remember Reagan's 11^th Commandment) have the temerity to question turning down the funds, he criticizes them for their "attitude that Nevada should bow down to the federal government and give up its own state sovereignty in a mad grab to claim every last penny of stimulus dollars." Wow. Bow down to the federal government? State sovereignty? We're in the worst economic shape since 1929 and this governor is worried about state sovereignty? Give me a break!

Then we find out that, while the staff in the governor's office has been cut substantially (good economic move, except for those fired), the salaries of those remaining are being raised (bad move economically, politically, socially, morally, ethically). Let's cut teachers' salaries and make them pay more for their medical insurance, let's cut money from higher education, let's cut the pay of other state employees, lay them off, etc. But let's give Gibbons' staff a pay raise? I have an idea, let's ask all the people that have taken on more jobs in their work place because other people were let go and didn't get a raise. What do you think they would say?

I've been following the blogs on this last issue, and some people are trying to defend the governor saying it's good business practice – let people go, then raise the salaries of those who remain – after all, it's a net savings – Gibbons' office is under budget (and, incidentally, therefore exempt from legislative review of his practices). You know – like AIG paying "retention bonuses" to the people who stay on, like there aren't ten equally qualified people out of work who could replace them if they left. Well, I work with a lot of businesses – big ones. Businesses with budgets and workforces larger than that of the State of Nevada, and I've noticed something about the companies that aren't looking for a bailout – that are struggling through this downturn. For them, and by them I mean the CEOs of these companies, good business practice includes, but is not limited to, the balance sheet – it includes doing the right thing by their employees and the communities and society of which they're a part. Most of those CEOs, and most of their employees, would rather take a pay cut across the board so that people don't have to lose their jobs. Sure, no one likes it, but no one likes to see their neighbor or co-worker out of work either. Gibbons, apparently, doesn't feel that way about his staff.

I've been tough on Gibbons in these columns – I think he's intellectually, morally, and ethically challenged, and no more fit to be Governor of Nevada than he is to be an Olympic Diver. But can't he at least make a show of giving a damn about the people of the state? To put some vague ideology about "state sovereignty" ahead of jobs, to cut education in a state that's perennially at the bottom of the ladder for educational quality in the country – as Joseph Welch said to another official who put doctrinaire conservatism ahead of basic honesty and humanity: "If it were in my power to forgive you for your reckless cruelty I would do so. I like to think that I am a gentle man, but your forgiveness will have to come from someone other than me…Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"

By the way, I've heard from a number of you asking if I'm going to write a column on the IVGID Board's reversal on the domestic partner benefits issue. I actually wrote one online, and the Bonanza posted a link to it in last week's paper – if you missed that, it's at http://tinyurl.com/gurowitzondpissue or on my blog at http://www.egurowitz.blogspot.com or on my Facebook page.

Column 149 – Domestic Partner Benefits Redux

Eighty percent of the IVGID Board got it 100% right last Wednesday. The discussion of reversing their ill-conceived decision to revoke benefits for the domestic partners of IVGID employees got off to a strong start as Trustee Bea Epstein read a statement that was both considered and compassionate in an argument for her motion to reconsider. A surprise came when Trustee Gene Brockman, who had voted for the revocation, said that his concern was based in the current policy's use of a declaration and suggested using an affidavit instead. My dictionary defines an affidavit as "a sworn statement in writing made especially under oath or on affirmation before an authorized magistrate or officer," while a declaration is "a statement made by a party to a legal transaction usually not under oath," so there is a basis for the distinction.

Trustee Chuck Weinberger added a strong statement refuting the three supposed bases for the revocation – finance, danger of abuse, and community sentiment – with clear facts, and after some more conversation, Chairman Ted Fuller opened the floor for public comment from the standing room only crowd, which was overwhelmingly in favor of the motion to reconsider. The most predominant theme of the public comment, particularly an impassioned statement by community activist Barbara Perlman-Whyman, was fairness and equality, and in my view that raised the next hurdle.

Trustee Brockman made the very valid point that married couples were not required to provide proof of their marriage, and if an affidavit were required of domestic partners, then proof of marriage should be required of married couples. So far, so good. He went on, however, to say that in addition to the affidavit of committed relationship, domestic partners should be required to provide other evidence – for example, a joint checking account, joint ownership or lease of a property, which married employees are not required to provide. Oops, there goes the equality. There are plenty of married couples who, for a variety of reasons, don't have joint accounts or joint ownership, and in any case why should any evidence beyond a sworn statement be required? After all, isn't that what a marriage is (in the civil sense) – a sworn statement of commitment?

Here's the deal: there's no such thing as partial equality. To return to the dictionary, "equal" means "identical in mathematical value or logical denotation." Identical. Not similar, not sort of like, not identical up to a point but then one of them has some more, identical. After the 4-1 vote to rescind (about which more in a minute), the Board voted to charge staff with coming up with a new policy that included an affidavit. Hopefully the staff will respond to the Board's and the community's commitment to equality, and come up with a policy that sets equal requirements for all.

Now about that 4-1 vote. After public comment, Trustee John Bohn attempted to thwart the vote, first by conflating the idea of domestic partner benefits with gay marriage and then, in a trifecta of hypocrisy, to suggest that, since the courts have ruled (misguidedly in my view) that the full faith and credit provision of the Constitution did not apply to gay marriage, the Trustees would be violating their oath to uphold the Constitution if they voted for the motion. When it was clear that that tortured "reasoning" was not going to fly, he tried an even more far-fetched idea – that since the majority of Fortune 500 companies have domestic benefit coverage, a minority must not have it. Presumably that was supposed to have some logic to it. Amid cries of "resign" and "recall" from the crowd, Bohn's view was repudiated and the motion, which should have been unanimous, passed 4 to 1. Too bad. A unanimous vote would have gone a long way toward repairing IV/CB's image in the larger world, I guess you can't fix arrogance and Trustee Bohn continues to mistake the limits of his vision for the limits of the world.

Column 148 – Town Center

Aside from the occasional brain spasm by IVGID Trustees, things are notably good here in IV/CB. We can feel the effects of the economic crisis, but arguably not as acutely as they're being felt in other places. Non-profits are certainly feeling it – donations are down sharply, but those fundraising efforts that really matter seem to be holding up. The IHS Boosters crab feed was a success, Project Mana is still able to help people who need food, and local businesses are even pitching in with discounts for people bringing in canned goods that then go to Project Mana.

Even Nature seems to be pitching in. the March snows should go a long way toward saving the winter tourist season, and who knows, we may even be able to launch boats this summer.

The Boulder Bay Project debate has been remarkably civilized and the folks who are promoting the project are going out of their way to listen to those with concerns and reservations. In short, they're acting like real members of the community. Now news reports have indicated that another major development may be in the offing. The "old" (K-2) elementary school on Southwood will be closing soon, and there is starting to be discussion of possibilities for developing that plot, possibly along with the site of the Village Center, though I don't think anyone has asked the tenants of the Village Center how they feel about that. IVGID is being proactive in getting involved in any plans for the school site, and others including my alternate-week colleague Andy Whyman and developer Vince Scott have been looking at possibilities ranging from recreational use, housing, eldercare facilities, and public facilities have been floated. Even more encouragingly, Scott and others have prominently mentioned "green" building as integral to their plans.

In TRPA's Pathways 2007 planning and our own Incline Vision meetings, the notion of a center for the village in the area of the school site and Village Center came up repeatedly. I've lived here for over thirteen years and came here for years before that, and can remember the sense, when I first came here, of there being no "here" here (to steal from Gertrude Stein). IV/CB really has no community center of gravity – we have the Raley's Center, Christmas Tree Village, the Village Center, and the Hyatt/Country Club Center, but none of these provide what I remember "downtown" providing in the small town where I grew up – not so much a commercial center as a place to come together. I can remember on Friday nights, during the Christmas shopping season, and on Sunday afternoons you would run into people you knew downtown. In the first two cases the stores were open late, but on Sundays it was more a matter of the movie matinees, and people going for walks, and generally knowing that downtown was a place you'd see people and have an opportunity to socialize without having to entertain or plan.

I think, and people in the TRPA and Incline planning workshops seemed to largely agree, that we need something like the downtown I remember. Not the glitzy "ski village" that you find at places like Northstar, Squaw, Whistler, Aspen, and Vail – that sort of place isn't for families and residents but rather for tourists. Rather, something more like the idealized "Main Street" of Disney World – small shops, eating places, parks, and walking paths where we can go to be together, talk, and generally be a community.

This being Incline, some will disagree. Any move for change here runs up against those who want things to be as they were 20 or 40 years ago, but that's not going to happen. It seems to me that we have three choices – become a destination resort like Aspen or Whistler, which I don't think anyone wants, remain an aging community where half or so of the residents are here part-time, or be a real community with a diversity of ages, incomes, etc. In order to do the last one, we will need to create the things a community needs – facilities for old and young, opportunities for all, and places to go that accommodate a range of incomes. A town center would be a step in the right direction.

Column 147 – IVGID Board Revokes Domestic Partner Benefits

The published vision of IVGID says, in part, "we will maintain the reputation of our Community as an excellent place to live, work, recreate, visit, and invest." The actions of the IVGID Board of Trustees last week in revoking a long-standing policy of providing benefits to domestic partners of employees has done violence to that vision. The story was quickly picked up by the national media, and the reputation of our community is sadly tarnished.

The Bonanza editorial staff did an excellent job of dissecting the issue on Wednesday, and if you have not read the editorial entitled "An Embarrassing Stance," I recommend you find it online and read it carefully. I won't repeat their points here, but do want to weigh in with a couple of my own.

In Wednesday's page one story on the issue, General Manager Bill Horn is quoted as saying "the newspaper has made a controversial issue." I would submit that blaming the newspaper for the controversy is disingenuous on Mr. Horn's part. The Board created the controversy; the newspaper did its job in reporting it.

One fact not sufficiently emphasized, in my view, is that this is not a new policy, but the revocation of an old one. IVGID has offered domestic partner coverage in the past, and stopped doing so when the District changed to a carrier, St. Mary's, that did not offer this coverage at the time. Since then, St. Mary's has started offering the coverage, and it would seem that continuation of this benefit would be a no-brainer. It's interesting to note that, according to their website, Saint Mary's Preferred Health Insurance Company is a wholly owned subsidiary of Saint Mary's Health Plans which, in turn, is owned by the Sisters of Saint Dominic. Last I looked, the Catholic Church placed a strong value on marriage, yet here is this health plan offering domestic partner benefits. At least 1300 private companies in the US offer this benefit, as do numerous colleges, universities, and municipalities.

Right now, exactly two IVGID employees are affected by this revocation. These same two were covered before the change of carriers. It seems unlikely that this will open the floodgates, and as pointed out by the Bonanza, the total coverage for these two amounts to 0.14% of the total IVGID budget. Some cost savings.

Other arguments advanced for the revocation are equally specious. The real point of domestic partner benefits is fairness. Marriage, where the government is concerned, is a civil contract. The fact that this contract is also, for many, a religious sacrament is irrelevant to a governmental body – only the civil aspect obtains. For IVGID to provide different benefits to those who choose to enter into this contract, which is a private matter, than to those who for whatever reason do not is unfair on the face of it, and that is why the thousands of entities referenced above have domestic partner benefits. A couple declaring a commitment to each other and signing a contract to that effect is a matter of personal choice – the impact is the same; the difference between partners and spouses is, as a civil matter, a moot point.

So at best, the Board's decision (and kudos to Trustees Epstein and Weinberger for opposing it) is unfair. Worse would be if it is an undeclared attempt to impose someone's private morals on others. Worst would be if this is a misguided and covert expression of homophobia. Most egregious, in my view, is Trustee John Bohn's statement that "I just don't think this community supports [this] and we have to represent our constituents." Mr. Bohn is, of course, entitled to think what he wants. What is outrageous is that he then asserts that following his thought, whatever it is based on, is representing the constituency of Incline Village. This is arrogance worthy of Rush Limbaugh.

So there's really only one principle here, I think, and that principle is fairness and equality – two good old American values. By going against the tide of fairness in this area the Board has failed to live up to its vision and has damaged the reputation of our community. What is called for is a reversal of the decision by the Board before further damage is done.

Column 146 - Bloviation

According to Matier and Ross in Sunday's SF
Chronicle, California State Senator Abel Maldonado got a lot of press when he criticized CA Controller John Chiang for spending nearly $1 million on new office furniture while the state was going through a budget crisis. As a result of Maldonado's attacks the money was not spent. It turns out, however, that the new furniture was to go into new, cheaper offices the Controller had leased; now Chiang can't cancel the lease and can't move in without furniture, so the Controller's office is stuck in their current, more expensive office and the state may be on the hook for $4.8 million in higher rent and other expenses over the next six years. Also, according to M&R, the 20-year-old furniture in the controller's office doesn't meet requirements under the federal Americans With Disabilities Act, a situation which will require correction – presumably the purchase of new furniture anyhow.

 

If this were an isolated incident, it would be a one more stupid political move, but so what? Unfortunately it's not isolated at all. It has become common for politicians to make political points by isolating one piece of a larger picture and ignoring the impact beyond their own political fortunes, and for interest groups to dwell on the impact of cutting or not increasing funding to their area while ignoring the impact of what they are advocating on the budget as a whole.

 

This phenomenon crosses party and ideological lines and it's not confined to legislative politics. Industries do it, advocacy groups do it, it seems like everyone is doing it.

 

When you combine this with the tendency of a lot of well-meaning folks to confuse what they're sure about with the facts, it gets deadly. For example, Rush Limbaugh, when the stimulus package was being debated, announced to a nationwide audience that the Administration had purposely put it into PDF format because in that format it could not be searched, so to find out anything specific about the thousand-page proposal would be next to impossible in the time before it was to be voted on. Just one problem – PDF format is easily searchable. In other words his bloviation, while I guess he must have been sure about it, was flat-out wrong!

 

Perennial candidate Alan Keyes, (who was defeated by President Obama in the 2004 US Senate race in Illinois) declared publicly that the President is a "radical Communist" and that his US citizenship is in doubt , asserting that the Obama campaign never produced one shred of evidence that the President was not born in Kenya as Keyes claimed. This claim was repeated by a sitting Senator, Richard Shelby (R-Ala) as well. If Keyes and Shelby are not simply the biggest liars since Baron Munchausen, then we have another case of using a national platform to state strongly held view as if they were facts. (Fact: The President has never said or done anything remotely radical or communistic. Fact: the Obama campaign posted online a verified Hawai'i birth certificate in June, which was then also attested to by a right-wing website, World Net Daily)

 

So we have two converging trends: the tendency to advance one's own agenda without regard to the effects of doing so on the common good and the tendency to do this by stating what we can charitably call opinions as if they were facts. Put these together and those who, wherever they are on the political spectrum, are trying to do some good have their work made more difficult for them by orders of magnitude.

 

So what can we do? I urge a twofold effort: First, when you are advocating any political, economic, social, or military move, as much as possible consider the big picture. Don't advocate saving $1 million if it's going to cost $4.8 million annually with no remedy in sight. Second, it's fine to have opinions, but as Bernard Baruch said, Every man has a right to his opinions, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts. As was famously said, you're either part of the solution or part of the problem – hopefully these two moves will increase the chances of being part of the solution.

Where is the Bi-Partisanship? (Posted on AllVoices, 2/12/09

From the campaign on, President Obama has made it clear that he is committed to working with Republicans to accomplish the urgent business that is confronting him in the first days of his administration. He has appointed Republicans to his cabinet, he has held out olive branch after olive branch to Senators McCain, Lieberman, and others, and when his intended appointment of Bill Richardson as Commerce Secretary cratered, he appointed Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, a Republican, going so far as to agree to a deal that would have required the governor of New Hampshire to appoint a Republican to the vacated seat.

Now let's look at the Republican side: After the President went to Capitol Hill to meet with Republicans about the stimulus plan, Senator Graham (R-NC) declared him "AWOL" on the discussion. Even before that meeting, House Minority Leader Boehner instructed GOP Representatives to vote against the bill no matter what the President said, and they did.

Now Senator Gregg has withdrawn the bid that he initiated to be Commerce Secretary, citing "irreconcilable differences" with the President he asked to serve. Put this together with Rush Limbaugh's wish that the President fail and Republicans' constant sniping at the President's efforts on the economy, and it's hard to escape the suspicion that the GOP leadership is out to sabotage this Administration.

Where's the bi-partisanship? All on the White House's side, it seems. Maybe it's time for the President to just move on.

Column 145 – Invasive Species

TRPA, according to its website "is charged with protecting this national treasure for the benefit of current and future generations. Our vision is to have a lake and environment that is clean, healthy and sustainable for the community and future generations." This job made more difficult, as I discussed in my last column by the "Tragedy of the Commons" phenomenon, whereby people who share a common resource tend, unless they are careful, to treat that resource as if it were theirs to do with as they wish. A case in point is the problem of invasive species.

During the last 130 years numerous non-native fish, invertebrate, and plant species have been introduced intentionally and unintentionally to Lake Tahoe. Each of these non-native species have had an effect on the environment of the lake. Those that were introduced by game and fish managers – trout, for example, have done well. Those introduced by what the professionals call "bucket biologists" – notably bass, bluegill, and other warm water species, have decimated certain native populations. It's the species introduced unintentionally or unintelligently that cause the problems. Eurasian water milfoil and Curly leaf pondweed took hold in Tahoe Keys and continue to proliferate there and in other areas such as Emerald Bay and need to be cut back. Currently Quagga and Zebra mussels pose a threat, and Asian Clams are established in the lake. The latter, while not as harmful as the mussels, provide a source of calcium which the mussels need to thrive and have been linked to algae blooms, etc. for example in Marla Bay.

Like the invasive plant species, the mussels are brought to the lake from other bodies of water. Lake Mead and Lake Havasu, for example, already host them. The only way they can get into Lake Tahoe is to be brought in by people – on powerboats, sailboats, jet skis, kayaks, canoes, etc., that have been in water where the mussels live. These species are famous for their ability to latch onto anything in the water, and they are then carried dormant for long periods – weeks in cold weather - unless they are taken off.

TRPA has launched a major effort in this regard. All the boat launching sites around the lake have inspectors and no craft can launch without being inspected and, if necessary, cleaned. But these inspections only cover boats that launch from trailers or are put into the water at marinas. What about the rest – the kayaks, canoes, and other craft that can launch from any lake access?

The key to all this, of course, is an educated public. Consideration has been given to creating education/inspection stations at the seven entrances to the Basin, but neither TRPA nor the conservation districts have the power to require cars to stop, so instead the agencies will work with the Forest Service to distribute literature and educate people at the launch sites, by material at the kiosks and information stations, etc. Ultimately, though, it will depend on people acting in the long-term interests of all rather than their own short-term convenience.

I mentioned in my last column one boater who went to several launch sites hoping to evade inspection. Why would someone do that? All the inspection does is protect the lake, and if they had to clean mussels from his boat, it would have taken less time and gas than going from launch site to launch site cost him. But nobody was going to make him submit to inspection! He had, in his mind, a right to use this shared resource, even if his use was to the detriment of the resource.

Last year only one boat was found to be contaminated with adult mussels at the inspection sites and one at the Ag station in Meyers. Twenty-five vessels that may have carried mussels were decontaminated as well. So far as we know, TRPA and other organizations have been successful in keeping the mussels out of the lake, but that won't continue as long as we who use the lake treat this like someone else's problem. Get the word out, support the education efforts, if you have visitors who bring kayaks or canoes have them check them carefully, and remember, the lake you save may be your own.

The Highest Bar (posted to Allvoices.com February 4, 2009

In his press briefing on February 4, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs asserted that President Obama has set the bar higher for integrity in his administration higher than it has ever been set in the history of the Presidency.

Let's assume for a minute that that is true and ask what it will mean for this already historic administration? First of all, as has already been demonstrated in the cases of Daschle, Geithner, and others, it means he will fail. If your standard is perfection or near-perfection, you can bet that you will fail and fail often. But it means something else as well, that is more important than failure.

Imagine you have a sink full of dirty dishes - what happens when you add one more dirty dish? It disappears - just one more of many. But if the sink is clean and empty, every dish put into it stands out and screams to be cleaned. By setting a very high standard for integrity, President Obama ensures that every flaw will show up to be dealt with. Most commentators have argued that Tom Daschle, a former Senate Majority Leader, would have been confirmed as Secretary of Health and Human Services despite his tax issues and even despite the fact that he was, after leaving the Senate, a lobbyist for a health care company. It has even been argued that the end would justify the means. Health care reform is a top priority for the Obama Administration, and Daschle was arguably the best available architect for the program and the best person to get it through Congress. But apparently, for this President, pragmatism doesn't trump integrity.

It is that last principle that is the best evidence for Gibbs' assertion. Bismarck said "politics is the art of the possible," and this adage has been the rationale for countless sacrifices of integrity for the sake of getting something done. Two things seem to suggest that this will not be the case for the Obama Administration - first, that otherwise stellar nominees such as Daschle and Richardson have, presumably on their own, popped out of the confirmation process, recognizing that they could not clear the bar. Second is that the President himself, in an interview on February 3rd, took full personal responsibility for the bar not being cleared. He didn't blame Daschle or the Senate or the Media - he said, in words to clear to be mistakable, "I screwed up." It's been a long time since we've heard those words from the occupant of the Oval Office.

Column 144 – TRPA and the Tragedy of the Commons

John Singlaub has resigned as Executive Director of the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA) after five years in that position. In his letter of resignation to Chairman Allen Biaggi, he included that the position is "relentlessly grinding on the individual who sits at the helm of TRPA, both mentally and physically." That statement, made in the face of John's also saying that this was his "'dream job,' and working with the …TRPA staff…has been rewarding," got me wondering – why should that be so?

While I doubt I'd get unanimous agreement for this, I contend that John has done a good, maybe excellent job at TRPA. To compare him to his predecessors, particularly his immediate predecessor, would be to damn him with faint praise, but in the early days of his tenure the change was remarkable. John took the contentious agency in the direction of transparency, responsiveness, customer service, and efficiency to a level that was beyond anything in its history. Sure there were mistakes (remember the guard rails on Route 267) and things didn't move as quickly or decisively as we might have liked in some instances (see "shorezone"), but in general the improvement over the past five years has been significant.

So this guy has arguably been effective in dealing with some really difficult constituencies – the Governing Board, two state governments, two county governments, the League to Save Lake Tahoe, the Sierra Club, boaters, hikers, anglers, IVGID, PUDs, the list goes on and on, and would be incomplete without mentioning the TRPA staff who, under John's leadership, went from being known as internally focused bureaucrats to being customer-centric and responsive. And now, after honorably fulfilling his commitment to serve for five years, is ground down and sees resigning as the only way to take care of himself. Why?

In almost 14 years living at the Lake, I've watched as public officials, both elected and appointed, as well as those who aspired to public service have been subjected to attacks, abuse, political undermining, and relentless criticism, all in the name of passionate commitment. Don't get me wrong, I am all for scrutiny and even criticism of public officials, but as I've said many times I think that criticism needs to be informed, rational, and above all not personal. In dealing with those many constituencies of TRPA (and the above list is only partial), no one could have pleased everyone.

At its essence, a job like John's has to be about making decisions for the common good. In 1968, Garrett Hardin published an essay in the journal Science called "The Tragedy of the Commons. This article has had an enormous influence in a variety of areas of science that study human cooperation. The article describes a situation in which multiple individuals acting independently and in their own self-interest can ultimately destroy a shared resource even where it is clear that it is not in anyone's long term interest for this to happen. Hardin used a metaphor of residents of a village grazing their cattle a shared piece of land (the commons). While it is in each residents interest to graze as many cattle as possible on the land, if they do so, the commons will be destroyed. The herder receives all of the benefits from the additional cows, while the damage to the commons is shared by the entire group. If all herders make this individually rational decision, however, the commons is destroyed and everyone suffers.

True story: a boater who come to the Lake did everything he could to avoid having his craft inspected for invasive species, apparently for no other reason than that he didn't like the idea of anyone telling him what they can and can't do. Faced with that kind of attitude, anyone in John's position (or Bill Horn's, or Katy Simon's or Ted Fuller's…) had better be ready to have his actions scrutinized, criticized, and even attacked. That's fair game and comes with the territory.

But I contend that it's not the scrutiny, not the criticism, not even the attacks on decisions that wears people in these jobs down. Certainly it's not people's passionate commitment to the environment. Rather I think it's two things: first it's the ad hominem nature of the attacks –what is attacked is the person, not the decision – and second I think it's the obstreperous nature of the criticism – too often the criticism is like the guy with the boat – it's about how I want it done, about my ox that's being gored, and to hell with the common good.

And that's what grinds our public servants down.

Sidebar for MLK Day

When I was about 10 years old I traveled to Florida with my mother to visit relatives and encountered the realities of racism and segregation for the first time. This was the mid-fifties, when schools and buses were segregated, there were white-only drinking fountains, and even "separate but equal" was an idea whose time had not yet come. It's not an overstatement to say I was shaken by the experience. I came home and wrote an essay on it for school, and the memory of those things was a large part of what I took away from the trip.

When I went to college, the Civil Rights movement was just starting in the South and on campuses – this was the era of sit-ins, church bombings, police in schoolhouse doors, fire hoses and dogs, and Freedom Riders, and of a young, electrifying preacher from Atlanta called Martin Luther King, Jr. The year I graduated, 1964, two things happened: a fellow Cornellian, Mickey Schwerner, was killed along with Andrew Cheney and James Goodman in Mississippi and Dr. King called for a march on Washington and a rally at the Lincoln Memorial. I was working in a hotel in the Catskills at the time, and was desperate to go to on the march, but could not. I watched and listened as Dr. King spoke of his dream – of an America where people would be judged "not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."

On Tuesday, January 20, 2009, Dr. King's dream will become a reality. Whatever your race, whether your people came over on the Mayflower, in the hold of a slaver, across the Rio Grande, or through Ellis Island, whether you are a Republican or a Democrat, a conservative or a liberal, whether you think Barack Obama is the answer to a prayer or the second best of two candidates, Tuesday, January 20, 2009, is a day when everyone in America can be proud, a day that history will mark as an inflection point – a point after which nothing will ever be the same – we've had a few of those – July 4, 1776, January 1, 1863, October 29, 1929, December 7, 1941, September 11, 2001, to name a few – and 1/20/09 is one we can be proud to add to that list. Dr. King's dream is fulfilled.

Column 143 – The ROI of Failure

I don't know about you, but for me the month of January always has a wistful quality to it. The holidays are over, New Years Eve has been its usual anti-climax – an arbitrary ending that doesn't change anything but the calendar, the college football season has come to a close without resolving the earth-shaking question of "who's number 1?," and somehow we always seem to spend January waiting to see if this winter we'll have enough snow for a good ski season.

I spent part of last week working at the New York Stock Exchange with a group of managers in a specialized function there. I stayed at a hotel opposite the site of the World Trade Center with my room overlooking what is still basically a hole in the ground, and I'm sure that contributed to my sense of melancholy, but so did my experience of being in the heart of Wall Street. I was in New York not long after September 11^, 2001, and the feel of the place was much the same – a bit slower than I'm used to in New York, a bit more subdued, a subtle sense of everyone being in the same (sinking) boat together.

One of the things I worked with my clients at the NYSE about was the issue of failure. As you might expect (and hope), these people, who are responsible for oversight of the processes by which investments move in the markets, are very careful and have a healthy respect for the consequences of mistakes they might make or goal they might fail to achieve. They are also conscious of the fact that too much caution can be as dangerous as too much risk, so they were very interested in how to walk that particular tightrope. We spent a good part of the two days looking at what was to them a novel concept – that judicious failure can be a good thing.

An excess of caution, the attempt to avoid any risk at all, makes for a sterile, unimaginative life that few of us could tolerate. On the other hand skating on thin ice, playing on the skinny branches, is too stressful for most, so what's the middle ground? In that middle ground, some failure is inevitable – if we live even a little ways beyond absolute safety, we will, from time to time fail. The movers and shakers of the economy have been living way out on the skinny branches for some time, and through our naïve trust and greed in varying degrees, we followed them out there, so when they failed, we failed as well, so the question isn't a theoretical one. For me, and I believe for all of us, the value of the difficulties and privations of this down economy worthwhile will lie in finding something that gives a return on the investment of our money, hopes, dreams, and egos in what is one of the most colossal failures since the Great Depression.

A friend of mine, years ago, lost his business and most of his net worth when a trusted associate embezzled most of the value of his business. He was understandably upset and chagrined and spent a lot of time on the traditional questions – "why me?", "how could they do this to me?", "how could I have been so blind?" you know the lot. Finally a close friend took him to task and said "if you lost $3.8 million in this failure, for whatever reason, you'd better get more than $3,8 million in learning out the experience, or it was a total waste."

What returns the investment in a failure is getting a lot smarter as a result of it. Learning enough to make the next venture (and the next failure) better and more valuable than the last one. According to Winston Churchill, "success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm, but that is only true if we learn from each failure; if we don't, then we go through the same failure over and over again, and enthusiasm is hard to maintain in the face of that.

So as I listen to economists, business leaders, and government officials talk about how to deal with the economic crisis, and particularly as I listen to those who will take the helm of the ship of state next Tuesday, what I'm listening for is learning – are they focused on learning, have they learned, and are they applying what they have learned, so that the next time we fail it's because of different mistakes and we fail at a much higher level. I hope so.

Column 142 – Incline’s Historical Exhibit

Americans have been accused, rightly or wrongly, of lacking a sense of history. I don't know if this is true or not – I grew up in the "leatherstocking country" of upstate New York, surrounded by the history of the French and Indian War and the Revolutionary War, in a town that had preserved a "stop" on the underground railway of the Civil War era, so it never seemed so to me, nor did I have that sense when I lived in the Boston area, but the Northeast is a hotbed of historical sites.

When I moved to California, I still found history around me – the missions, the gold rush, the San Francisco earthquake were all part of what I learned about as a new "left coaster." Still, I guess a case can be made that we don't carry the reverence for history that I've seen in Rome or Athens or Paris or London.

In Nevada, and particularly here in Incline Village\Crystal Bay we have a much shorter history (if you don't count the first nations who were here long before Europeans came). We have the Donner Party story nearby, and we have Squaw Valley and the Olympics, but the real history of IV\CB starts with logging in the 19^th Century, and really kicks off with the formation of the Crystal Bay Development Company in the 1960's and the sale by the CBDC of the development to Boise Cascade in 1968, a scant 40 years ago – yesterday by European standards. That 40 years of history isn't much, but it's ours, and a diminishing number of residents have been here for all of it. Some of those pioneers and other present and former residents have been trying for some years to preserve and document that history.

Around 2007 a community project was formed to do just that and to find a permanent location for an exhibit of the history of Incline Village and Crystal Bay. A lot of people have worked on that project including Chuck Greene (son of Bonanza's Lorne Greene), Joe Bourdeau, Andria Daley, Michelle Schmitter and long-time residents Manny Sylvester and Georgia McGregor. In 2008 a site was secured in the upper part of the Village Center, adjacent to McGregor's Century 21 Real Estate offices (full disclosure: my wife, Emy, is a real estate agent in Georgia's office), and in August, 2008 the exhibit opened. Appropriately enough, the space where the exhibit is located is the original office of the Crystal Bay Development Company and later the Boise Cascade developers. In fact, one part of the exhibit, behind a Plexiglas barrier, was the vault in that office. The exhibits include photographs, diaries, scrapbooks, the original dinner table from the Bonanza TV series, and a wonderful model train-type recreation of the original Incline flume and logging operation.

Now, given the vagaries of Incline real estate and particularly office rentals, we are in danger of losing this wonderful and unique exhibit. Unless something happens, and soon, the exhibit will lose its space and, right now, there is nowhere for it to go. I don't know what the plans are for the space, or even if there are any, but I do know that unless help comes from somewhere it will no longer be available for the exhibit, and the exhibit will need to find other space or be mothballed. I don't know about you, but I believe that would be a real loss to the community. It costs us nothing, it is educational, and it preserves our community's history. I don't know what you can do to help, but I'll bet you do. Art Hoff, the owner of the Village Center is a business man – I don't fault him for making a business decision, whatever its basis. I do hope that it might be possible to work out an arrangement to have the exhibit stay in this perfect space – donations toward rent would surely help. Failing that, maybe you know a space that could be used for it or you can help in some other way.

I may regret saying this, but I really don't think there are two sides to this one – there is only the good that will come from keeping and developing the historical exhibit and the loss that will come from its demise. See if you can help.