Career Memoir – Page 4 – education and deconstruction.com

Burn Rate

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The Book of the Week is “Burn Rate, Launching A Startup and Losing My Mind” by Andy Dunn, published in 2022. Born in February 1979 in the United States, the author won the lottery in that he had family and friends who knew him well enough to recognize that, given his personality, his behavior was anomalous. He was doubly lucky that not only did he get mental-health treatment before he ended up in jail (well, at least on one occasion) or in the cemetery, but also, he could (with assistance from others) afford it.

“… for many, even a ‘chill’ drug like marijuana can stimulate a manic episode.” The author got to college still unaware that bipolar disorder (aka manic-depressive illness) ran in his family; his grandmother had had it. People who actually have the condition suffer under a Damocles sword their whole lives, as their mental state goes through unpredictable cycles, even with medication. Of course, stress exacerbates the highs and lows. The medication has side effects that are meant to dull the emotions, so bipolar patients don’t experience and enjoy life as much as people whose brain chemicals are more stable than theirs.

According to the book (which appeared to be credible although it lacked Notes, Sources, References, or Bibliography and an index), while in college, the author was ingesting alcohol and controlled substances such as ecstasy, magic mushrooms and marijuana on a daily basis, and taking the (radical) acne medication Accutane. Somehow, he graduated anyway, and got his MBA at Stanford. He explained that the professors there educated students in entrepreneurship, if they wanted to go that route. The author did.

After years of interesting ups and downs, in 2016, the author– a lifelong fan of the Chicago Cubs (who had last been World Series winners in 1908)– was afforded the opportunity to see game 7 of the World Series in Cleveland. But first, he had to rush to JFK airport from the streets in the East 50’s in Manhattan, beginning an hour before his plane took off, to get there. His cab driver did 90 MPH. Sympathetic people at the airport made way for him when they heard about his situation.

Read the book to learn of the author’s other trials and tribulations, triumphs and defeats. Speaking of defeats…

This is the song Hillary Clinton is singing now.

IN POST-CLINTON TIME

sung to the tune of “Sunny Afternoon” (Official Audio) with apologies to the Kinks.

My opponents BEAT me the last two times.
Deplorables and BERnie were unkind.
I SOREly miss the Situation Room.
And though I CAN-not be in charge,
I’m not locked up, I’m still at-large.
All I WANT’S in-the Situation Room.

Save me, save me, save me
from bad publicity.
I’ve got lots of enemies.
It’s a VAST right-wing conspiracy.

And I love to hobnob with elites,
brag about my political feats.
I SOREly miss the Situation Room,
in post-Clinton time,
in post-Clinton time,
in post-Clinton time.

Donald Trump’s ruined my rep.
He’s in his safehouse doing ’24 prep,
spewing the usUAL blather and cruelty.
Now I’m here online,
doing the grass-roots, make-work grind.
I SOREly miss the Situation Room.

Help me, help me, help me
revive my ca-reer.
Well, give my Party money
to get me out of here.

‘Cause I love to hobnob with elites,
brag about my political feats.
I sorely miss the Situation Room,
in post-Clinton time,
in post-Clinton time,
in post-Clinton time.

Ah, save me, save me, save me
from bad publicity.
I’ve got lots of enemies.
It’s a VAST right-wing conspiracy.

And I love to hobnob with elites,
brag about my political feats.
I SOREly miss the Situation Room,
in post-Clinton time,
in post-Clinton time,
in post-Clinton time,
in post-Clinton time,
in post-Clinton time.

Extreme – BONUS POST

The Bonus Book of the Week is “Extreme, My Autobiography” by Sharon Osbourne with Penelope Dening, published in 2005.

Born in October 1952 in the United Kingdom, Osbourne grew up in a dysfunctional family. In this volume, she revealed how her father– Don Arden– a music-industry executive got away with committing an excessive number of financial crimes. Basically, he never signed legally-binding contracts, but had his daughter and other members of his entourage sign them, so when it hit the fan, they were on the hook, not him. His contacts in high places did his bidding until his bullying and contentiousness wore thin and they abandoned him.

Arden bribed a U.S. senator to help Osbourne acquire a green card. She thus became a permanent resident of America and got a Social Security number so that he could commit tax evasion. Of course, he also hid his assets in offshore bank accounts, which the United States cannot outlaw. Her formal education ended when she quit high school in her sophomore year. So her limitations led her to join the family business. In her early twenties, she was so flattered that her father trusted her with important documents that she happily signed everything put in front of her.

Osbourne met her future husband Ozzy in the late 1970’s. He was the lead singer of the rock band, Black Sabbath. “The music business in those days was a boys’ club, fueled by cocaine and sexual favors. These were the days of payola and Mafia involvement…” But Osbourne would sooner get violent with the boys than give in to their advances or threats.

Read the book to learn many more details about the lives of Osbourne and her family, trials, tribulations and triumphs.

Open Skies – BONUS POST

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The Bonus Book of the Week is “Open Skies, My Life as Afghanistan’s First Female Pilot” by Niloofar Rahmani with Adam Sikes, published in 2021.

Born in December 1991 in Afghanistan, the author deserves major bragging rights. For, she possessed the courage to serve as a liberated female role model (given her culture) by risking her own life and her family members’ lives in serving her beloved homeland. She joined the air force in December 2010. According to the book (which appeared to be credible although it lacked Notes, Sources, References, or Bibliography and an index) this was at a time when the Americans and NATO were running the show.

The Taliban and other devout Muslims were less than thrilled that she was the first Afghan female ever to learn to fly a fixed-wing aircraft. Pursuant to the Koran, a female’s priorities were: submissive girlhood, wifehood, motherhood, and womanhood (and usually, the first three were forced on females simultaneously), and taking care of a household; only then, might she work outside the home if her oldest living male relative allowed her to.

The author spent her early childhood in a refugee camp in Pakistan. Anomalously, but fortunately for her, both of her parents believed in educating her and her siblings (mostly sisters), and encouraging them to pursue the career of their choice. The family eventually moved to Kabul. Unsurprisingly, the author’s career choice provoked angry reactions from the male-dominated air force and males in her country. The most fanatical ones began to smear, spy on, and threaten her and her family.

Nevertheless, the author’s parents martyred themselves in so many ways for their children’s futures. Her father continued to encourage the author to keep flying, even when her family was under siege and suffering many hardships due to her focusing on her dream job.

A barbaric incident that occurred in March 2015 was just one indicator that in Afghanistan, the tide was turning toward the dark side yet again: a huge flash-mob of outraged, radical Muslim men tortured and killed a devout Muslim woman wrongly accused of burning the Koran.

The victim was set upon because a mullah (a credible, influential religious leader) was her accuser. Just a few of the vicious untruths spread about her were that she was a prostitute, a blasphemer of Islam, and was an agitator sent by the Americans (perceived as the evil occupiers). The author herself was subjected to roughly equivalent, ugly utterances.

Read the book to learn how the author cheated death in this wordy, redundant yet suspenseful volume.

Here, Right Matters

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The Book of the Week is “Here, Right Matters, An American Story” by Alexander S. Vindman, published in 2021. Some construe the word “right” in the book’s title as the political Right, which implies political power. In that regard, perhaps the author made a Freudian slip, or he got bad advice on the book’s title. By “right” he obviously meant moral. The author had particular expertise on the Soviet mentality, as his family was originally from the Ukraine. He was born there, was fluent in its language, but admitted he was never trained as an interpreter.

According to the book (which appeared to be credible although it lacks Notes, Sources, References, or Bibliography and an index), in July 2019, the author heard unethical and possibly treasonous utterances issue from the mouth of a representative of then-president Donald Trump in two separate conference calls among American and Ukrainian government officials. Pursuant to the chain of command, he informed his identical twin brother, who happened to be chief ethics counsel for the National Security Council.

The nefarious portion of the “Ukraine call” (the second conference call) whose unredacted transcript that was analyzed to death by the media circus, the American government, and every “news” junkie on the planet– consisted of the president’s asking a top leader of the Ukraine to gather any data that would smear Joseph Biden– the likely 2020 American presidential candidate, and to gather any data that would make Trump and his party look bad.

Administration officials who aided the president in this endeavor included (but were probably not limited to): the attorney general, his personal attorney, the White House chief of staff and the American ambassador to the European Union. In addition, the president withheld $400 million of American aid to Ukraine as a bargaining chip in doing his bidding.

The way the Trump administration handled foreign policy with regard to the relationship between Russia and the Ukraine obviously has raucously controversial international ramifications.

Profiteers, exploiters and human right activists would argue that military, financial and humanitarian assistance should be sent to the Ukraine. Profiteers and exploiters would trot out the age-old argument that Russia could ally with China in ways that would crush the United States. But that hasn’t happened. Activists would argue that Russian leader Putin and his military have been committing atrocities and war crimes, and theoretically they could eventually occupy Eastern Europe as the Soviets did in the 1950’s.

According to the author, in the early 2000’s, in Iraq, the Stryker brigade was used to move powerful, high-tech military equipment and supplies over long distances in record time. There is a risk that Putin could show his military might partly by using a version of the “Stryker brigade” in certain countries. But the takeover would probably occur only in those places where the older generation is resistant to change, or cannot afford to, or lacks the connections to leave their homeland to seek freedom and better living standards elsewhere. And most people who realized they had been oppressed, had a chance to leave in the last twenty-five years– if they had really wanted to.

In the 1990’s, different countries threw off their communist yoke at different speeds. People in the former Soviet Union had lived under communism for decades longer than their Eastern bloc counterparts. The older ones residing in the latter had known a better quality of life prior to Soviet takeover. Jeri Laber wrote, “They looked around them and saw corrupt, repressive governments, failing economies, contaminated water, polluted air, alcoholism, and apathy.” The more things change, the more they stay the same.

When Siberians discovered freedom and consumer goods, they became like Americans. They started riding in cars instead of walking. They ate fatty foods for lunch and the men stopped exercising. The women started going to aerobics classes at the gym.

From a purely economic standpoint (a neoconservative viewpoint)– selfish, heartless and sociopathic– the United States would benefit the most by not risking the lives of its own people to fight for the freedom and security of the peoples of whichever territories Russia decides to occupy, even if oil prices rise.

By its inaction, the United States would maintain its economic dominance in the world. It is becoming wise to Russia’s “…hybrid warfare… fake news, insincere diplomacy, intervention in elections…” drones, cyberattacks and jamming of Ukraine’s communications.

Read the book to learn more information about the author’s life, career and morals.

Gunfight

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The Book of the Week is “Gunfight, My Battle Against the Industry that Radicalized America” by Ryan Busse, published in 2021.

The author’s grandfather’s generation of gun enthusiasts embraced Depression-Era values: “Principles. Safety. Camaraderie. Pride.” He believed in the New Deal, and the then-culture of the National Rifle Association: admiring the craftsmanship and power of firearms, using them safely for hunting, and the challenge of shooting targets consisting of inanimate objects; not the current goal of amassing money and power for the firearms industry and its trade organizations, human lives be damned.

Additionally, every incident is milked for funding demands from law enforcement agencies across the country. And most politicians insincerely grandstand “enough is enough!” but do nothing until dissatisfaction with the status quo reaches critical mass– until there’s a real threat to their reelection. Then, in their campaign, they promise to make relevant legislation a priority.

Anyway, in 1995, the author, born in 1970 and raised out West, began working for the tiny Portland, Oregon rifle company, Kimber. It made and sold high-quality guns to be used for collecting and hunting. Kimber had a checkered past because the big boss was a psycho but nevertheless he truly believed in the product.

The author quickly learned that gun sales have assumed a certain pattern in the United States of the last few decades. Whenever the political climate changes from conservative to liberal or when another unbalanced individual kills people in a highly publicized incident, the firearms industry propaganda machine generates phobia and fury among gun enthusiasts in convincing them that the government is going to take away their instruments of power and masculinity. These impressionable, mostly young males, have the mentality of cultists. They rush out and add to their collections, just in case the vicious rumors are true. The buying frenzy lasts a year or two.

The first major piece of legislation that touched off this angry cycle was the Brady Bill, signed by president Bill Clinton (who was scapegoated by Second Amendment promoters) in November 1993. Then, in September 1994, it was the assault weapons ban, sponsored by then-senator Joe Biden.

However, the bill became Swiss cheese with loopholes because the NRA exerted overwhelming political pressure on power- and donation-hungry Congress members to exempt or grandfather-in more than 650 kinds of firearms. Even so, the little regulation there was, arguably, prevented ten more shootings like “Columbine.” Unfortunately, it is impossible to prove what would have happened otherwise, but judging from what has been happening more and more and more, with almost total absence of preventive measures, some more measures might be helpful.

After 1994, the excitement died down, and gun sales plummeted for the rest of the 1990’s. Struggling financially, Kimber was forced to merge with a firearms distributor which sold cheap plastic handguns– made in South Korea, or with the name Daewoo– that were used in street crime.

The company survived. However, the author reflected on how his industry was desecrating his philosophy (which he shared with his grandfather) when, in the single-digit 2000’s, he brought an industry contact of his to a national park to share in the breathtaking beauty of Montana. The contact was apparently sociopathic because he was able to rationalize away the environmental destruction that would ensue if the land was opened up to oil drilling. The NRA, via political front groups, was aiding and abetting backroom deals as they spoke (!)

In addition, a controversy also raged over whether owners should be allowed to carry concealed weapons, instead of having the world openly see them in a holster. As is well known, in twentieth century history, the kinds of people who armed themselves openly out in public included Nazis, the Red Guard, teenage thugs in Third World countries, and in Soviet satellites after the Berlin Wall fell– during times of strife, civil wars, and genocide.

Americans have never experienced that kind of scene (except in Western or Southern states until they became urbanized and did away with “frontier justice” or Napoleonic justice), and would not expect to, either (except in isolated incidents immediately after 9/11).

The NRA’s argument for allowing people to carry concealed firearms is that they should be allowed to defend themselves, if they are attacked. But, the only reason one would need to defend against attacks, is if one has angry, violent enemies. What is the character of these people who garner such enemies?? Or, if people are targeted in a random shooting, the argument goes that if the targets are armed, they can immediately shoot the shooter to prevent more carnage. Sounds as though NRA members think life is a violent video game, if they expect bullets to fly when they go out in public.

In addition, the NRA’s fear-mongering never ends, as it scares single females into thinking they’re vulnerable to street crime from strangers, if they must pass through high-crime neighborhoods, for whatever reason. And apparently, many people are led to believe that strangers perpetrate home-invasions left and right!

Further, the NRA has whipped up a frenzy of hatred and violence. Once a taboo is broken, it’s easier to break more and more taboos. Excuse the cliche, the fish rots from the head down: when the nation’s leaders behave badly, their underlings copy them in a free-for-all.

Professional baseball discovered that players’ alcohol consumption before and during competitions was bad for revenues in the long run. And not only because it compromises judgment and coordination, but also because fans imitated the players’ behavior, and lawlessness resulted. Eventually, such a revelation will turn the firearms industry around, because profits are one of its major goals. It will be curbed of its own excesses, by allowing regulation, slowly but slowly.

Anyway, in 2008, just to make sure its smear campaign against presidential candidate Barack Obama stuck, the NRA created war-glorifying videos aimed at couch commandos. It became a “… bought-and paid-for wing of the Republican Party…” and in 2016, “The Trump and NRA operations ran identically.” There was no more reason and accountability among supporters of those two. After years of seething silently at what was happening, the author acquired sufficient courage to express his displeasure with it, and advocate against it, even though he knew full well he and his family would be subject to endless harassment for being a traitor.

Read the book to learn more about: the author’s activities; a case of industry-ostracism of a perceived traitor-company; a victim of cancel culture (hint: besides the author: an old-school gun-industry writer who dared opine in 2007, that using assault weapons for hunting, was overkill); and more on the NRA’s extremely radical behavior, that was ongoing at the book’s writing.

I’ll Take Your Questions Now – BONUS POST

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The Bonus Book of the Week is “I’ll Take Your Questions Now, What I Saw at the Trump White House” by Stephanie Grisham, published in 2021.

This is yet one more volume penned by a Trump-administration insider. As is well known, president Trump’s White House embodied all of the contemporary Washington, D.C. cliches— excuse the cliche– on steroids.

It takes a certain kind of person to want to work for someone like Donald Trump. He or she is a star-struck social climber. The female especially, must have low self-esteem, and if she works closely enough with the president and endures his abuse and does not resign immediately or start looking for work elsewhere– she has a version of battered woman syndrome. The author was one such individual.

According to the book (which appeared to be credible although it lacked Notes, Sources, References, or Bibliography and an index), the hostile work environment became even moreso when chief of staff Mark Meadows came to power.

Pursuant to the way they are raised (translation: family dynamics), people gravitate toward relationships, situations and environments with which they feel comfortable. Employees in Trump’s orbit formed a dysfunctional family comfortable for them. Yet it was a place with sky-high turnover because it was full of workaholics who behaved like extremely self-absorbed, socially manipulative teenagers who thought they were starring in their own reality show; and they were– it’s called social media.

Just two of numerous episodes included:

In 2018, a top adviser to national security adviser John Bolton launched a witch hunt. It was alleged that twelve American political workers (including the author, a communications director) engaged in inappropriate sexual behavior at a social gathering abroad. After the author put out a statement saying the adviser needed to be fired because nothing happened at that gathering, “Three minutes passed, and it was all over Twitter and within ten it was on TV.”

In 2020, the president’s then-wife Melania Trump was infuriated by former communications adviser Stephanie Winston-Wolkoff, who published a tell-all book on her employment experiences, and was selling audiotapes of their conversations.

Read the book to learn how the author experienced the way the president, his daughter and son-in-law were actually running the country; and what the president’s then-wife was doing in the meantime.

A Woman Among Warlords

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“We are right now under the ‘protection’ of armed forces from 43 countries, yet we are still living with war, brutality, poverty and crime.”

The above happens to describe Afghanistan.

The Book of the Week is “A Woman Among Warlords, The Extraordinary Story of an Afghan Who Dared to Raise Her Voice” by Malalai Joya with Derrick O’Keefe, published in 2009.

The second oldest of ten children, born in April 1978 in western Afghanistan, the author– a political activist– deserves major bragging rights. For, she risked her life in remaining in her beloved homeland where she spoke the truth about the war, the corruption, the leaders and all the other ugly aspects of her country’s impossible situation to raise awareness of what the world could do to make things better in the future.

Joya (a pseudonym, as she was in a witness protection program of sorts at the book’s writing) spent her childhood in various refugee camps in Iran and Pakistan. Her family lived in Iran because her father received medical treatment there after having his leg blown off by a land mine. He was a member of the mujahideen and political dissident. Her family moved to Pakistan because her father wanted to provide her with a decent education.

A few years after the 1989 withdrawal of Soviet troops, Afghanistan was a chaotic, poverty-stricken, war-torn wreck, and stayed that way for the next four decades– due to very common, oft-repeated historical forces; human nature, especially. Armed Muslim fanatics roamed the streets to violently enforce the dress and behavior codes for females, five-times-a-day prayers, and to suppress free speech and ban any and all pleasurable activities in the name of their religion the way they themselves perceived it should be. Nevertheless, in the 1990’s, ordinary Afghans watched the bootlegged American movie Titanic in secret.

Shortly after 9/11, the Taliban disappeared because they knew the jig was up. They reinvented themselves as students at Ivy League universities, parliament members in Afghanistan, and propagandists. Incidentally, ex-Nazis after WWII reinvented themselves in a similar manner; those with transferable skills became Soviet officers. This kind of scenario has been repeated throughout history amid regime changes, among men with superior survival skills.

Anyway, in 2002, the United States destroyed communications infrastructure via modern weaponry in Afghanistan. After about three years, though, the U.S. and NATO failed to deliver on promises and installed a corrupt puppet regime that actually hurt ordinary Afghans. Unsurprisingly, “International Security Assistance Force” became a misnomer– just another foreign occupier. The usual CIA bribes, human rights abuses (especially against females!), growing of opium that would be processed into black-market heroin to be distributed worldwide, and other nefarious activities continued to proliferate behind the scenes.

Beginning when she was in high school, Joya taught literacy to adult women who, if they were allowed by their husbands to attend classes, were expected by their husbands to do all the housework and childcare. There was fear not only of physical abuse from husbands, but also public-square lashings, beheadings or hangings if the Taliban discovered the hidden classes held in basements.

In 2004, Joya attended a conference and delivered political speeches that provoked angry reactions from Afghanistan’s evil leaders– mostly alpha males with hubris syndrome in the dictatorship that the country had become, backed by the U.S. and NATO. Her fellow political workers called her a Communist, infidel, and worse, incessantly smearing her.

The United Nations provided some security for Joya, but she became especially vulnerable to assassination attempts when she began traveling between Kabul and her hometown of Farah City, to run for a seat in the Parliament of Afghanistan.

Joya named just a few of the ginormous number of parties whose advice and actions worsened Afghanistan’s plight in recent decades (despite all of the parties’ bragging about how they helped bring democracy to Afghanistan; in no particular order): Reagan, George W. and Laura Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Robert Gates, Brzezinski, Obama, the CIA and NATO.

The U.S. learned nothing from the French in Vietnam, and nothing from the Soviets’ nine-year quagmire in Afghanistan, that turned into forty years of devastation. (The U.S. did, however, groom Boris Yeltsin in its own image to lead Russia in the 1990’s. Unfortunately, his reign didn’t last long due to ill health. Maybe next time it’ll choose someone with better staying-power.)

Read the book to learn of: numerous other abominations Joya harped on and lamented over as a political activist (hint: Afghan children faced “…smuggling, abduction, child labor [due to severe poverty] and lack of education”) and her recommendations for how the country could turn itself around, and her reasons for hope for her country’s future.

The Way It Was With Me

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The Book of the Week is “The Way It Was With Me, A personal and political memoir, told with relish and laced with dire truth” (sic) by Senator Glen H. Taylor, published in 1979.

Born in 1904 in rural Idaho, Taylor quit high school to financially support his family. In the backs of bars, he was a singer of “illustrated songs” (good old American classics, accompanied by a slide show, a piano and a three-piece orchestra). He appeared onstage as the last act after showgirls and burlesque in Western states. Later, thanks to his older brother, he traveled with an acting troupe, competing with movies that featured sound.

Taylor first ran for office in 1938, on a shoestring budget as an Idaho Democrat for the U.S. Congress. He wasn’t the first choice of the local political machine. He lost. American politics has hardly changed in centuries (never mind eighty years ago), in terms of dirty tricks and backroom deals.

Because he was a showman, when he ran for the U.S. Senate in 1942, Taylor adopted the shtick of riding a horse to campaign stops; a total distance of five hundred miles. He was doing his rationing bit for the war effort. He handed out postcard-sized campaign cards with his picture and name. The newspapers knew that human-interest articles (translation: tabloid stories) sold more papers than discussion of the issues by the candidates, and they all behaved accordingly. Taylor lost again.

When Taylor finally won an election, he was shown around Congress by a megalomaniacal alpha male who abused his power. Taylor, on the other hand, committed political suicide for his principles, defending Henry Wallace (about whom president Truman made an unfortunate remark that gave rise to vicious red-baiters such as Joe McCarthy and Richard Nixon to do their things). In campaigning for Wallace, Taylor refused to bow to the rules of segregation at a church in Birmingham, Alabama in 1946. Bull Connor had thugs haul Taylor off to jail for being a “radical integrationist Commie.”

Read the book to learn many additional details about Taylor’s life– how it contained the kinds of characters who: would appear in a Mae West movie, populated Vaudeville and politics; how he made a small contribution to electoral politics in Idaho (hint: he went door-to-door to verify a vote count because Idaho election law was silent on voting-recounts), and how he satisfied his entrepreneurial bent, finally striking it rich.

North By Northwest / My Old Man and the Sea

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The first Book of the Week is “North By Northwest, A Seafaring Family on Deadly Alaska Waters” by Captain Sig Hansen and Mark Sundeen, published in 2010.

Born in the Seattle area in 1966, Hansen was of Norwegian ancestry. He was mentored in fishing for a living by his grandfather, father, and the Norwegian fishing community. His older male relatives had been sourcing seafood for decades. The community had been growing in the upper Midwest in the United States since the early 1800’s. It was a lucrative, male-dominated career– a subculture bearing a resemblance to military life in certain ways:

Teamwork was required of five or six men who lived in close quarters, doing rigorous physical work under life-threatening conditions at all times at sea;

There were numerous ways to: become seriously injured, and / or suffer serious financial losses rather than reap huge financial gains from selling expensive seafood;

The crew consisted of a hierarchy whose entry involved initiation rites in the form of practical jokes that were not always harmless; and

Even during the off-season, the men’s drinking fostered male bonding that allowed them to mitigate the emotional stress of their work, and maintain their relationships in the old-boy network.

After high school, Hansen apprenticed as a deckhand on his father’s boat. The men were away at sea from nine to eleven months of the year, using “pots” (large, unwieldy cages that trap the seafood) to catch: red crab in the Bering Sea and near Nome in Alaska and near Adak, blue crab at St. Matthew, and opilio crab at Dutch Harbor.

In the 1980’s, the fishermen were allowed to carry boxes of live crabs in the plane cabin on Reeve Aleutian Airways. When starting their winter fishing season, if they were extremely lucky, they could complete their flight from Anchorage to Dutch Harbor in Alaska on an icy twin-prop plane. They booked it months in advance, arrived at the airport in the wee hours of the morning, and prayed that the weather would cooperate.

Read the book to learn a little history about seafaring in general, including the context of the following quote:

“That winter he was killed by Hawaiians at Kealakekua Bay, his body torn apart and burned.”

and much more about Hansen’s life and times in his community. By the way, he appeared on the reality TV show, “Deadliest Catch.”

The second Book of the Week is “My Old Man and the Sea, A Father and Son Sail Around Cape Horn” by David Hays and Daniel Hays, published in 1995. Father and son alternately described, beginning in the new year of 1985, their adventures at sea– sailing (with no motor) on a tiny yacht for fun from New London, Connecticut southward thousands of miles, and eventually, around the tip of South America from west to east (the less dangerous route). They began testing their boat in fall 1984, sailing through the Panama Canal, and the Caribbean Sea.

As they well knew, all kinds of discomforts and life-threatening dangers awaited them. That was the challenge of it. Even with all of their experience in purchasing the boat, making it seaworthy (over the course of two years), maintaining their (then-primitive) communications and navigation equipment (which required them to pack thousands of items for every possible scenario they might encounter), they still suffered injuries, seasickness, hangovers, etc. When sailing along the South Carolina and Georgia coasts, the chart warned them to watch out for “… unexploded mines, rocket casings and torpedoes, and chemical warfare dumpings.”

On their voyages, they met with visiting family or friends to celebrate Jewish holidays such as Yom Kippur. They attended a service at a synagogue on the island of Jamaica. The ark and dais were at opposite ends of the sanctuary, on a floor comprised of sand (representative of a desert).

Much later, when they arrived at a port in the Galapagos Islands, local law allowed them to pollute the water there for only three days; then they had to ship out. The authors described the area thusly: “In the name of white rice and virginity, Western man spent a good two hundred years raping, robbing, and leaving neat diseases here.” It was rumored to be a gateway to Atlantis, and the approximate population was three thousand.

The onshore entertainment consisted of the American movie “Blade Runner” whose soundtrack was poor quality, and whose reels were screened out of order, but the native people in the theater were undemanding.

The authors related that it is easily conceivable that about a hundred men could have made the sculptures on Easter Island over the course of a few decades, thus blowing speculations of alien-artists out of the water.

Read the book to: learn additional info about the authors’ adventures at sea (including their crazy pets), about previous trips made by them and others, see sample pages of their log, a diagram of their boat, and much more.

Every Town is a Sports Town

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“Its demise was caused by low attendance, conflicting agendas among the owners, and a number of very poor business decisions.”

MLB? Possibly, but definitely the USFL by 1985.

Regardless, the Book of the Week is “Every Town is a Sports Town; Business Leadership at ESPN, from the Mailroom to the Boardroom” by George Bodenheimer with Donald T. Phillips, published in 2015.

In September 1979, the Bristol, Connecticut-based cable-TV channel ESPN began televising sports-related shows, by means of deals with: RCA (regarding a space-satellite), the NCAA (regarding covering basketball games), and Anheuser-Busch (regarding sponsoring the programs). The initial concept of the then-shoestring operation was to dispense information on sports 24/7, to serve fans. ESPN won contracts to show March Madness games and the NFL draft to start.

The workplace was team-oriented with a family-feel, so everyone was a jack-of-all-trades. In 1981, the author, a recent college graduate, worked as a mailroom guy and chauffeur of sorts, for executives of ESPN. He was later promoted to videotape librarian. He was willing to relocate when the company opened new branch offices, including Denver.

Anyway, ESPN could not survive financially on ad revenue alone, as the company was paying cable operators to carry its channel. It saw a loss of $25 million annually until it negotiated in 1982 to have cable operators pay the company a certain number of cents for each household receiving its channel, and that figure could rise up to a certain maximum percentage during the term of a multi-year contract.

Due to the ultimate takeover by Capital Cities Communications, and a favorable change in media law– ESPN grew by leaps and bounds. Meanwhile, it added professional tennis, golf, NASCAR, World Cup soccer, the America’s Cup yacht race, and Sunday Night Football (for which ESPN had to pay the NFL) to its lineup in the mid-1980’s.

Globalization, recording devices, the Internet and mobile devices have made the negotiations over intellectual-property rights and sports programming between and among ESPN and other stakeholders, infinitely more complicated. In 1985, ESPN could be watched in about 30 million viewer-households in America; in 1999– in about 80 million in America and about 100 million elsewhere worldwide.

Read the book to learn: of how the author achieved a high position at ESPN, and how he boosted the morale, energy and innovative thinking of his fellow employees; what the company did when it saw its ratings plummet; what his executive team did to resolve the controversy that arose when ESPN made a movie in which the “F” word was uttered approximately thirty times; about the author’s business philosophy; and much more about the history of ESPN.

ENDNOTE: The author’s photo appears on the book’s cover with his head very slightly tilted. This flex is pleasing to the human brain, projecting the impression that he is a people-person. His boyish good looks probably served him well, too. [Total lack of head-flex, projects an unfriendly vibe.]