Letter from the Road #5

Breaking News

Generally, my postings cover several destinations and appear 4 to 5 days after the actual visits. I’m breaking the pattern today with breaking news. Yesterday, I had an unanticipated desire to evaluate medical services in New Mexico. I fully expected to have been touring the Georgia O’Keefe Museum in Santa Fe yesterday morning. Instead I ended up taking a cook’s tour of the brand new Presbyterian Hospital in Santa Fe, a state of the art medical facility opened less than a year ago. The tour included an experiential visit to the imaging department. On first blush, it looked more like a showroom for the manufacturers of the diagnostic equipment than an imaging department. For those looking for obscure information, Siemens appeared to be the favored supplier. Strangely, nothing appeared to have ever been used. MaryAnn and Carmen, the department technicians, relished the opportunity to engage in conversation and demonstration. I suspect they were feeling much like the Maytag Repairman felt. Oooops, my apologies, here I’m going on and on about the hospital and you’re wondering why this made my must sees list and worthy of CNN’s breaking news banner.

My ruse is not working. I thought of making up a falsehood along the lines of “sometime in the early morning hours after an evening of cable news talking heads, I thought I should try my hand at inventing news.” Create some drama in other words. All for the purpose of increasing readership. Alas, I realized it was a scheme far too clever for me to devise and execute convincingly. So the truth. I had an overnight of excruciating abdominal pain ultimately diagnosed as kidney stones. Whenever the stones moved, trust me, you just want to bite carpet. Having experienced them previously, I was looking for confirmation and hopefully some assistance on breaking them up.

Ian, a friend based in Santa Fe, ferried me to the hospital. The hospital was empty when we arrived. There was only one other person receiving treatment in the emergency department. Dr. Harvey (perfect for casting on the Young and Restless) and his emergency room professionals could not have been nicer or more caring. I left feeling better physically but a little tired.

The underlying message I want to leave you with is the impact social media has on one’s psyche. While I really didn’t dream up a ruse to increase readership, there is something narcissistic about social media. It has claws. We are drawn to counting our followers. We’re persuaded to paint rosy pictures, obscuring reality. We can be too easily tempted to manage the news to enhance our personal brand. Relationships and followers built on falsehoods are a fool’s paradise. I’ll do my best to keep it real and not further contribute to the avalanche of “trumped” up news on social media. :-)

Boyhood Hero

Leaving Arkansas, passing through the border city of Texarkana, and entering Texas is analogous to passing through a vortex. The first first thing that hit me was how the landscape had suddenly become open and expansive. In the northeast corner of Texas, the land is flat and dotted with squat oak trees. Big ranches line either side of the highways. Because of the unusually excessive rainfall this year, the prairie should have been turning brown, instead, everything was lush and green. I was curious if would like Texas. Over the years, I had been in and out of Texas for one day business trips. Hardly enough time to form an informed opinion. Relying on my trusty bellwether, Zillow, I would soon know.

My first stop was Dallas. Big and Brash. Young and Vibrant. And, oddly out of sync with the prior four labels, citizens of Dallas also respected traditions. The city and its residents wear these labels comfortably. On my first night, I enjoyed dinner with a friend, George, at Javier’s. Javier’s is an upscale, old world Mexican restaurant that still offers matchboxes as it did when it was fashionable to smoke. The restaurant was packed with a mix of younger professionals and middle aged movers and shakers of the city. Instinctively I would have placed the younger professionals at the hip W Hotel. What in the world was I doing staying there, come to think about it?

As I was putting my itinerary together for the next day, I came across The Sixth Floor Museum. Had I been quicker off the mark, I would have realized the significance of the name. I thought wrongly that it was an art museum in one of the office towers near The Perot Museum or Dallas Museum of Art. You most likely have deduced, It was from the sixth floor of the Dallas Book Depository that Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated my boyhood hero. Under no circumstance was I going to miss the opportunity to pay my respects to John F. Kennedy.

The repository borders an upscale neighborhood of high rise apartment buildings and easily walkable to the W Hotel and the American Airlines Center. The building is unremarkable in design and constructed with dull orange tone bricks. It sits next to a railroad track. The loading dock faces the tracks and is the entrance to the museum and probably how Oswald entered the building for work and ultimately his violent act. After purchasing a ticket and picking up the self guided tour headphones, I took an elevator to the 6th floor. Exiting the elevator, I knew immediately I had entered a dark space. No one spoke. Everyone moved slowly and orderly from one section to the next, intent on absorbing every detail of November 22, 1963 and the days following. Eventually the path lead to the window and place where Oswald fired his deadly shots. The area was walled off with glass and looked as it did on November 22. Through the neighboring windows I was able to see where the presidential Lincoln convertible made its fateful turn at Dealey Plaza.

Interestingly, the museum acknowledges the six alternative theories of who could have been behind the assassination. Probably the two with the most currency were people either associated with the John Birch Society or Cuba’s Fidel Castro. In my lifetime. I’ll never know any more than what the Warren Commission concluded. A younger generation may learn more because in 2050, the evidence collected by the government will be made public.

The Sixth Floor was not part of my original itinerary. Conveniently, John F. Kennedy became the perfect backdrop to the three presidential libraries I was there to see in Texas. It was Kennedy who declared “a torch has been passed to a new generation…..” As I walked back to my hotel, I thought about the Presidents that followed and asked myself. Did our leaders, or for that matter, did we rise to his challenge?

Guns or Butter

Excuse me as I share two quick little stories. First, I am collecting coffee mugs from each of the museums as a souvenir. Not an original idea, but guaranteed that all the museums will have them available. So far, the mug from the Clinton Library was the least expensive. It was purchased for $8.95. Bush 43 was the most expensive at $16.95. I was aghast. I would hope he is taking the excess profits and passing it to the US Treasury to partially augment the bonuses paid to Wall Street after the 2007 economic collapse. (Oh no! There goes your New York followers!) Second, the best hotel and restaurant surprise were the accommodations in College Station. The George Hotel, Bush 41 being the namesake, is a delightfully trendy and sweet boutique hotel. The adjoining restaurant, Poppy, was named after me, adopting Baby George’s nickname for me. Now that’s a fib. Bush 41 was affectionately called Poppy by his family and the rest you can figure out.

There are three presidential libraries in Texas. Lyndon Johnson built his at the University of Texas in Austin. President H.W. Bush selected Texas A & M in College Station for his. Finally, George W. Bush chose Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Addressing the architecture and aesthetics of each, the libraries could not be more different. Lyndon Johnson’s library is housed in a large, 70s modern 10 story building that looks more like a mausoleum than a library. The displays do not utilize interactive technologies as they do in the newer libraries. The museum could be easily retrofitted and should be to make it interesting to younger generations. That said, Lyndon Johnson loved the telephone and recorded many of his phone conversations. There are a several telephone banks scattered throughout the museum where visitors can listen to Johnson jawboning, cajoling, shaming and seducing the person at the other end of the phone. Beyond this, the balance of the displays were either looping films and printed wall displays touting his many accomplishments. Surprisingly there is very little memorabilia, saving a report card or two. Still, I was gobsmacked by the amount Johnson accomplished in his 6 years. I knew the headline legislation, but there was so much more.

Located 100 miles from Austin and 200 miles from Dallas, the Bush 41 Library is well off the beaten path. The library is a solid, modest in design, two story building nestled at the edge of College Station. Mistakingly, you could easily be thinking you’ve arrived at Archer Midland Daniels corporate campus. The museum’s interior consists of dark paneling and understated marble floors. The displays convey a sense of duty to country and importance of family. I felt a strong sense of quiet strength. He knew who he was. A replica of the fighter plane that he was shot down in hangs from the ceiling. The museum curators emphasized his diplomatic and government service stressing the vast number of international relationships he developed through the years and would come to rely on. The falling of the Berlin Wall and his relationship with Gorbachev was covered extensively. As you would expect, the first Iraq war is a feature of the museum. His domestic agenda and accomplishments are lost in the displays, probably because there were not many. President Bush and Barbara’s simple gravesites are tucked away across a pedestrian bridge. The site lacks the grandeur of Reagan and JFK’s. The restrained gravesite communicates volumes.

Hands down, the best designed library was Bush 43’s. Strong, elegantly simple, environmentally sensitive, easily navigable, and with technologically enabled displays, the library hit all the right buttons. Half the museum is devoted to the war on terror and the other on his domestic agenda and his post presidency work on behalf of wounded warriors. Many of the pictures on display conveyed a strong message of inclusion and diversity. Without a doubt, the gifts from foreign governments were the most opulent that I observed for any of the four libraries visited thus far.

When it came to consistency of content presented, I could not help notice that there was one stark difference between the Bush 43 library and the libraries of LBJ’s. and Bush 43. LBJ gave prominence to the role his vice president played in promoting the Great Society. Nicknamed the Happy Warrior, Hubert Humphrey was a tireless and effervescent advocate for the Johnson agenda. Dan Quayle, the Indiana Senator, prone to gaffs, (P-O-T-A-T-O-E) who became Bush 41’s VP, had similar prominence as to Humphrey. As for Dick Cheney, Bush 43’s VP, It was not obvious Cheney played a role in the administrations, saving the odd group picture. Like looking for Waldo, Where’s Dick?

Leaving the libraries, I formed several impressions. First, If you’ve read my previous blogs, this is going to sound vaguely familiar. Our leaders and for that matter the nation, no longer imagines the impossible and translating that into a domestic agenda. Agreed, I’m a bit obsessed in understanding why? I contend, Johnson’s Great Society and mission to the moon were the last grand and transformational domestic programs conceived and undertaken by our government. It underscores this notion of “big” first articulated after my Oak Ridge tour. We use to do it successfully on multiple fronts. Today, only if it involves military engagement.

Taking partisanship out of the equation, Johnson lead from the front, articulating grand goals, converting them into significant legislative programs, and masterly moving them through Congress. He forged coalitions. The major civil rights legislation was brokered between he and Senator Everett Dirksen, the Republican leader. While building the coalition he was counseling Martin Luther King. Some of these conversations are available to listen to at the library. I was transfixed listening to them. Johnson jawboned and cajoled. He was a force majuere . Perhaps on many measures a great President. A less publicized role was as architect of the moon mission. It was LBJ who convinced President Kennedy that it could be done within a decade. Only George H. W. Bush since could build coalitions, albeit military. Can you think of anything as significant as Johnson’s legislative accomplishments since?

Top of the pops on your list might be Obama Care and prescription drugs for seniors, achieved under Presidents Obama and Bush 43 respectively. I would argue these were incremental improvements and expansions of programs first introduced by Johnson. Furthermore, congress and these Presidents avoided the tougher part of the equation, funding. Johnson was crude, overbearing, and uncharismatic. He, also, worked harder than anyone else in Washington, was driven by heart felt conviction, and never gave up. It begs the question, has the profile of what we want our leaders to be today actually working against the development of bold goals that our nation needs?

I don’t know how much geography has to do with a person’s outlook, but I’m willing to bet something. Lyndon Johnson was born and raised in Texas. Johnson drove big ideas. The Bushes and Clinton come from states where the notion of going big was not part of the culture. From them came incremental progress our society.

Geography and character maybe part of understanding our lack of appetite for “big”. Technology, lack of shared experiences are two others among possible explanations. Think about the following. Each of these men were wartime Presidents. Fifty percent of the display library space was devoted to military actions. During the later days of the Johnson Administration two themes would emerge. First, government can’t do guns and butter simultaneously. Second, the credibility gap. Delivering social solutions is expensive. Running a war machine even more. Distorting the truth undermines confidence. Eisenhower warned us of the threat the military industrial complex posed. He saw the corruption and damage it could inflict and the lies it could advance. These powerful forces came together making a perfect storm and putting the military’s needs over social need. So the question I reconsidered and modified, after taking in the four museums was: Where was Dick Cheney and what was he up to then (and now)?

Next

Marfa

El Paso

Sante Fe