...well actually, it's only Wednesday...and that makes today even better.

The first year I moved to the District of Columbia from California, I remember driving down Connecticut Ave to the IBEW Office at about 4:30am (I used to go to a nearby gym before work) on the day before Thanksgiving and the street was literally deserted.  The entire town seemed to be asleep, and as I crossed the Woodley Park bridge over Rock Creek, Michael Buble’s song “Home” began to play on the Wash, FM radio. I was so lonesome for Los Angeles, and I remember almost starting to cry when the haunting music started playing. Now, after living almost seven years on the east coast, I’m often amazed that no particular place feels like home…except maybe the few days every couple of years that I’m able to spend in North Dakota.

So, while I typically feel you can’t ever really go home again (especially when you’re not sure where it is), this past weekend I came pretty close. After spending the better part of the week at an IBEW conference in Las Vegas, I shot over to LA for the weekend and after years of being away, I was amazed at how much it felt like home.

I had a luggage nightmare when I arrived at LAX on Thursday evening, so I stayed by the airport on the Westside of town in the neighborhood where I grew up. The next morning I picked up an attorney colleague and dear friend at LAX (flew into LA for the MLS championship), and we cruised up to Malibu on Pacific Coast Highway to have lunch on the outside patio at an old haunt called Gladstones that literally sits right on the beach. After that, we shot up to the Pepperdine campus before turning around and heading back to Los Angeles.

We drove through West Los Angeles, and passed my elementary school in Cheviot Hills. We then cruised by the old house on Esther Avenue, the high school, the Beverly Hillcrest Hotel where we  had our (my wife and me…not the attorney) wedding my reception, through Beverly Hills where I had my first apartment and then through the mid-Whilshire District to downtown Los Angeles. That evening we went over to watch Dorsey High take on Fairfax High (where I coached for many years) in an inner-city playoff game at a field adjacent to the Dorsey campus. The police helicopters circling overhead before the game...only added to the atmosphere.

The next morning I checked out of the Wilshire Grand in downtown and drove west on the Santa Monica Freeway toward Beverly Hills. I met my friend Chuck at a Starbucks in Beverly Hills just north of my old apartment on Beverly Drive. As I sat there chatting with him and listening to Bing Crosby singing holiday songs while looking out the window (I was looking out the window…Bing was singing) at the intersection of Beverly and Charliville…I realized how familiar it all seemed. After saying goodbye to Chuck, I drove west bound on Wilshire towards Westwood passed the Diplomat (the first jobsite I was ever dispatched to as an electrical apprentice) and passed the UCLA campus where my short-lived Bruin football career crashed and burned in the ugliest of ways. As I entered the onramp to the northbound 405 toward the San Fernando Valley for the drive up to my mom’s place in Santa Paula, I realized that like it or not, Southern California really was home. Now however…it’s happily in DC…and as I drove up the 405 that morning, I couldn’t help but think how nice it would be to get back to the District.

With the litany of challenges, losses and setbacks facing so many, it's not always easy feel particularly thankful. However for the best of reasons, I'm hopeful you are able to find your own slice of holiday blessing. 

Not sure where you’re headed this Thanksgiving, nor whether or not you’ll even go over a river or through any woods. However whatever you’re doing and wherever you’re traveling, I hope get a break from the hustle and bustle to have some time to chill with family and friends. Whether it’s by a fire, sipping a glass of wine, or watching the palm trees sway in LA, have a wonderful and well-deserved holiday.

If you’re on the road, travel safely…we need to make sure you all make it home again.

Happy Thanksgiving

A Thanksgiving tune just for you...

...actually...it's only Thursday...and tomorrow is Veteran's Day.

“There goes the Arizona…there goes the California…there goes the West Virginia.” I don’t remember being spellbound too many times as a kid while sitting at the dinner table in my Los Angeles boyhood home, but the night my Uncle Ted recounted his experiences on a December morning in Hawaii in 1941 is etched in my mind as well as any childhood memory. Like a lot of his peers (and just about every one of my other relatives of that generation that I ever knew), I don’t recall Uncle Ted talking much about his WWII service. However for whatever ever reason on that night, he uncharacteristically provided a thorough account of much of what he remembered from that harrowing morning.

He was relaying the radio reports of a fellow Navy Officer who was providing almost  play-by-play account of the attack from his perch above high above one of the other U.S. warships. I couldn’t have been more than about 10 years old at the time my uncle told that story, which means the actual events had happened less than 30 years before (less time that I’ve now been out of high school). To attempt to retell my uncle’s story wouldn’t do it justice, but I remember being amazed, even at my young age, at the apparent chaos and horror conveyed through his graphic account. He always seemed like such a relaxed, reserved and mellow man.  However on this night while recounting the events from that morning in Pearl, he seemed like an almost a different person.

Over the course of my life, I can recall only a handful of similar times when I had the privilege of hearing from Veterans that served in the military and in battle. One of those times was listening to my own dad recounting the time his carrier, the U.S.S. Ticonderoga, was hit by two Kamikaze planes in the Pacific in January of 1945. Actually, for some reason, I had heard that story a couple of times…always as a result of my own coaxing. I always got the sense he didn’t like to talk about it, but I suspect as much to teach me about the the horrors of war, he typically repeated the story in an unemotional and matter-of-fact way.

The last time he told the story was in response to a request I made at the dinner table on a Christmas Eve sometime in the late 1990s. It dawned on me that my wife Julie had probably never heard the account, so I asked my dad to recount the events of that January day. My father reluctantly obliged, but as he moved through the story this particular time something was different from the usual nonchalant tone that he typically used to paint the picture. On this holiday night, as he recounted the horror of what he saw on the fight deck immediately after the attack, he began to cry.

Quite thankfully, I don’t have any stories about military service, or tales connected to the dreadful nature of battle. I can’t tell you about the trenches of Europe, the cliffs at Normandy, the jungles of Southeast Asia or the deserts of the Middle East. I can’t tell you about watching a buddy get cut down by machine gun fire, parachuting into a hail of gunfire, dodging roadside bombs or wearing the same underwear for months on end. I’ve never froze in a foxhole outside Frankfurt or boiled over in a bunker near Bagdad. As a matter of fact, due to timing, luck, and probably a relative life of privilege, I never had to suffer in battle on foreign land.

Sure…I do have legitimate stories of sacrifice here at home. Just in recent months alone, there are sobering tales of clogged shower drains, broken sink p-traps, non-functioning ATM machines and navigating paralyzing gridlock traffic while attempting to commute 4.6 miles home up 16^th Street. One recent Sunday, I was literally stranded when the battery died on my Harley while in Alexandria, VA (not exactly friendly territory) and I needed a jumpstart from a complete stranger. Just this week, I was literally schvitzing up a storm while sitting on the couch in my office…something to do with the temperamental thermostat. Just this very morning, I’m grappling with the hassle of walking to the Metro (and it’s kinda cold) versus driving in and having to fight the pre-holiday traffic on the way home.

Thinking back, people like my uncle Ted and my father never really had a fair appreciation for my own struggles here on American soil. On the eve of this Veteran’s Day, I’m awfully grateful for the sacrifices they made on foreign land…so I have the luxury of suffering here at home.

A couple of years ago we were travling with another couple over in France. We had headed out to Normandy for the afternoon...and after getting lost, we arrived on the cliffs about sunset. As darkness set in, there were lights twinking from a what appeared to be a small town at the bottom of the cliffs right next to the beach. We made our way down to the charming hamlet of Arrowmanches and walked into a near deserted cafe. As we sat down at the table...this song started to play.

Happy Veteran's Day

BTW...absolutely no time to proof today...so I apologize for the many likely mistakes.

...and you really should do your best to enjoy the weekend.

There are a lot of cool things about my current job, but one of aspects that offers the most tangible sense of accomplishment comes from the opportunity to teach as an adjunct several times a year in classes for union organizers. For me, it’s almost like smoking crack (I mean…so I’m told), and the therapy I get from spending an afternoon outside of the office and out in the field with the people doing the work in the trenches is beyond my feeble ability to describe. Usually, I am privileged to do a communication’s piece around skills needed when talking to unrepresented workers, or open shop employers, however this last time around, I did a new segment for advanced organizers on avoiding burnout.

Now, like just about everything else, I have zero academic expertise in the area of burnout. As the former head of a large contingent of construction organizers, and having been one for many years myself, I did feel as though I had some practical knowledge on the subject, but no textbook expertise. So…as I always do when I need to find out how to repair the belt on the clothes dryer, or the name of a buttery Chardonnay, or to diagnose shortness of breath and a sharp pain in my lower abdomen, I began surfing the internet.

While perusing the online material on the subject of burnout, it was tantamount to what happens to me just about every morning these days (OK…every morning). It was, for lack of a better analogy, like the horror that accompanies my first morning glance into the bathroom mirror (I have to put a dimmer on that light switch). Despite the fact that it happens every single day, I am still shocked and disappointed each and every morning…and I cannot fathom how things went so wrong so fast (actually…that’s the problem…it took a long time to get this bad). I could have a house on the water in Fort Lauderdale for all the money I’ve spent on those useless anti-wrinkle creams.

 As I read through the differences between stress and burnout, and the consequences of letting both go untreated, I recognized immediately that I was reading about me. Sadly, it was apparent that years of mounting stress and my failure to deal with it was resulting in my own burnout, and it was a difficult and sobering recognition that I had let things get way out of hand. I won’t bore you with all the details, but perhaps the best analogy I came across is this. If you feel like you’re an eight-ounce glance and someone is trying to pour a one-gallon pitcher of water into you…you’re under stress. If you feel like your glass is empty…you might be burned out. My glass is too often bone dry. If you feel like every day is a bad day, if you’re often exhausted, or if you feel like nothing you do makes a difference or is the least bit appreciated, you may be beyond stress and into burnout.

The good news is that burnout is reversible, which is why I’ve plunged headlong into increased tobacco consumption, heavy drinking, copious amounts of trash TV, reapeating myself and heavy drinking. OK…truth be told, I’m not sure that is the best medicine but I haven’t surfed yet on fixes and cures…too busy trying to self-diagnose this tightness in my chest.

I have a feeling one of the remedies is taking it easy, and because no one of us is going to turn this thing around by ourselves, there really is no reason to drive ourselves into the ground trying to do it alone. We are all reminded repeatedly of the fragility of life, and in recognition of those signposts, we owe it to ourselves and our families to just chill a bit. Who knows, if we were actually refreshed, clear-headed and well-rested enough, we may actually be sharp enough to figure out how to turn this thing around.

If you’ve ever wandered into a saloon down were Bob Wills is still the king, you’ve probably heard this snappy little tune. There are literally a hundred versions of this song, and I like this particular one because it is one of the longest. The sawing fiddle, steel guitar and piano won't be everybody's thing...but I'm hopful it puts a smile on your face nonetheless.

Have a wonderful fall weekend. The weather is supposed to be splendid, with sunny skies, colorful leaves and temps pushing the upper 60s. Go do something fun…recharge your batteries, step away from the chaos, laugh, crack a smile…and feel appreciated.

 This could be my theme song...