Antidisenfranchaisementarianism

Fellow voters, I declare the obvious, based on conclusive, first-hand, tangible, ethnographic reasearch: we're screwed.



In June, an earnest young woman with a clipboard and mismatched socks urged me to register to vote.



"Great!" Now I don't have to figure out where to go to fulfill this civic duty. Gave her my stats, my digits, coordinates of my abode and signature.



Jump to eight days before the national election. We receive a call from another earnest young woman from another nonprofit. She notifies me that 2057 names on the previous nonprofits list of registrants, did not, in fact, have registration forms submitted, and voter cards issued. And one of those disenfranchaised voters was me! ME! The one in our house who has been obsessed with the mechanizations of the 2004 election... ME!



My wife actually took the call and she said, "Oh, man, is he going to be pissed!!"



What to do!? I was informed to march down to the election office in downtown Pittsburgh and rectify the situation.



Cut to Tuesday. One week out from the election. County election office. Downtown. When the elevator door opened on the sixth floor, that is the moment I realized that we are screwed.



The first vision to smack the hapless disenfranchaised voter��stacks and stacks of arcane black briefcases with battered corners in columns from floor to ceiling and marching the length and breadth of the entire hallway.



Second impression when I was directed to the person who would address my problem... no line! Out of 2057 people notified that they needed to fix the situation in person, I was the only one there.



So, I explain the situation to Lisa, the young woman perched amidst a nest of binders and manilla envelopes in impressive clusters, stacks and piles. Lisa asks for pertinent date, clicks on the keyboard before her, and announces: "You ain't in the computer."



"I know, I registered back in June and they called me to let me know there is a problem, and that I should come her to fix it."



"They shoulda have turn'd in the registration earlier!" Lisa assessed. "You ain't got a voter card?"



"No, ma'am, that's why I am here. They called me Saturady to tell me to come here as soon as possible."



"Saturday!?!" Lisa spat beneath a wrinkled, disbelieving brow and cocked a wary eye. "They shoulda have called you way earlier than that!"



After more of this, a middle-aged bustling woman rescued me, diagnosed the problem and evolved a quick, direct solution. I would come to her office and she would get me a voter card. Great! Who was my savior? The Director of Elections? Secretary of State??? No.



Diane is the Chief Cartographer for the City of Pittsburgh. Thanks, Diane.

Aw Lewy, Lewy

Once again, the mystery of the brain.



In our family, we have a loved one who is fading. The doctors don't know what it is specifically (appearantly they learn about our ailments once we're stretched out on a cold slab). The terms dementia, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's are bandied about inconclusively. Even "Lewy Body", a term that sounds like it originates more from major league baseball than from biology.



However, he is fading in time and space. His brain is producing fibrous tendrils of proteins�literally cobwebs of biological matter�and crowding out new memories, logic, even perceptions of reality. He masks his lapses in reason with humor and self-deprication. But even the home he has known for 22 years is becoming stranger and more dangerous. The stairs to his bedroom, the garage, the bathtub... all are navigated at his peril.



His long-term memory is still good: images of his childhood home, his mother, his brother, dates and details about Elvis and the music scene on the Mississippi Delta.



But the new memories are muddled and clouded by illusions, hullucinations, confusion and doubt.



When this happens to us, where do we go? Where does the spirit reside? In the frontal lobe? The cerebral cortex? When recognition goes, when humor leaves, when speech and gesture desolve,... where are we? Where will he be?

Our daughter was born and life changed. Platitudes, yes, but true. Mostly, I was a big chicken before she showed up. "Oh! How will we handle it all!!!"



Now she is my teacher. She is a lesson in pure presence and pure joy. She finds wonder in everything from the overgrown garden to the labels sewn into clothes to light bouncing off of the aluminum waste basket, splashing the wall with color.



Life, business, home... everything is in chaos and everything is fun!

Whelp. It's already started.



Politicians are claiming that they know what "The American People" think. They claim intimate understanding of how "The Swing Voter" feels about (fill in the blank... healthcare, campaign finance, gay marriage, etc.).



So, as the messy slog of election year banter, punditry and speculation clogs every media outlet (including, now, this one), I am still baffled by how We, The People actually think.







I'm not intrigued by the what we think (ex. Tort Reform vs. Patient Advocacy), but by the mechanics of the how we feel (morbid despondency vs. cautious optimism).



I'm fascinated by the brain and it's ability to process information, especially visual information. What is more amazing is how the mind maps that information against all the other memories of all our experiences, both past and present. Why even those experiences buried deep in the physical memories of our bodies are involved in the mix.



Why? Because the mind is so much more than the cantaloupe folds of the physical brain and the set of juices and tubes making up the nervous system. Feeling (depression, apprehension, enthusiasm, nostalgia) is so much more than just raw emotion (pleasure, pain, joy, anger, etc.).



What is more, both mind and feeling are so much more than simply the sum of sensory input and data. The cooking of this particular soup involves that magic process of synthesis, of bringing together, that takes place.



It is this process that is so far beyond my powers of comprehension!



To take that process of synthesis to the more complex level of the social or organizational level is even more baffling. It sure can't be described in charts, graphs, or through the consultant's favorite tool of simplification... the Microsoft PowerPoint 2-by-2 matrix!



So, how do groups of people--be they in families or in factories--actually "feel"? Meaning, how do they take in information, add meaning through referencing everything that has happened, and everything that might happen?



I mean, that process happens. It happens everyday, all over, without trying too hard. We are living in that process continuously. But how does it happen? And, how can anyone be aware of what exactly is happening inside that large, messy collective mind? Of collective feeling?



Of course, thousands of consultants, authors, scientists and professors make their careers claiming to have figured that out.



Antonio Dimasio, however, is different. His work is so refreshing, because as a European scientist (originally from Portugal) he writes in English with such a poetic style. Through his writing, a deep reverence for that mystery of the mind is celebrated with every explanation of the feeling of what happens, no matter how technical.



Most of us use facial expressions and body language to gage how our companions are feeling about whatever news we've just given them.



Along with his wife Hanna, Dimasio has spent his career as a neurologist mapping emotion as it ripples across the tangled landscape of the physical brain.



In their lab at the University of Iowa, the Dimasios have access to truly awesome technology. These computers and scanners allow the user to see the emotional storms of human brain--in real time and on screen--like watching an alien weather map.



Damasio has written so beautifully about the brain, the mind and feelings in:

The Feeling of What Happens : Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness

Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain

Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow and the Feeling Brain

Dimasio mostly focuses on the individual mind. What about this collective mind? Not only does it make decisions based on information and desired goals, but it also possesses an ever-shifting tone, a fluctuating mood, an emotional temperature, attitudes and even energy. Dimasio shows us that the mind even has a colorful aura (think: trippy sceen saver).



Sounds a little fruity, I know. But still, to me it is an infinite mystery. The emotionally charged and divided "Collective Mind of the World" continues to be the Earth's greatest threat. Basically a global warming caused by hot-headness.



To be sure, the mental weather map of The American Voter would look very trippy indeed. And to the frustration of political types, it would remain as impossible to decipher as the weather patterns of Jupiter.

In 14 days, we supported 4 sessions in 4 cities in 2 countries!



The events varied widely:

-- the Fellows Program in Public Affairs of the Coro Center for Civic Leadership;

-- Directors of the Girls Scouts of the USA;

-- a pharma company's all-employee meeting;

-- a public War Game attended by private citizens, a member of the US senate and Pentegon staff members.





See War Game



One thing remained consistent across this very diverse group of participants: they were all dealing with immensely complex problems, and they used visual learning to create solutions.



In each group, the power of telling stories, swapping ideas, and creating learning experiences seemed to be the fundamental tools of the game.



It was a privilege to witness their personal and organizational struggles, and to be invited to work along side them.

On a recent trip to Budapest to support an HR conference, I was bowled over by how much Buda and Pest have changed in 10 years. In '93, as a student studying in Krakow, Poland, I tagged along on a Spring Break road trip over the mountains of Slovakia, to the land of the Magyers. The team consisted of 3 big American boys, 2 girls, 2 Hungarian drivers,.. all crammed into 2 antiquated Russian sedans. These vehicles looked exactly like a car would if you asked a pre-schooler to draw one: a vaguely t-shaped box on four oval tires (two of which went flat in the mountains).



Of all the things that have changed in the former East Bloc city, the cars and clothes are definitely the most readily apparent.



Instead of East German Trabands, Polski Fiats, and Russian wind-up toys, the denizens of Budapest all seems to have newly appointed Volkswagans, Citreons, Mercedes, BMWs and Volvos. I only came across one SUV, a massive black Hummer with Florida tags blocking the entrance to a parking garage. Now, who the hell...?



Also, instead of being crammed into a private boarding house with four other poverty-striken students, I was living large in a brand-spanking-new Hilton Hotel. The thing was built right into an upper-crusty North American quality Mall, complete with Christmas decorations, an over-abundance of marked-down specials and young-n-trendy mall rats hanging out and scoping chicks. Since my luggage was lost in transit, I had to stroll the gleaming catwalks, searching for work clothes. I was drawn to The Elvis Shop. For my emergency purchase of sock, undies, shirts and such, I was lost in the currency converter haze, ready to gloat if my purchase was, as I calculated, only $15 USD, or cringe, as I feared, it would ring up at $1500 (it was squarely in the middle with only 1 zero).







Also, I calculated that for the one-week engagement, I was being paid 25% of the entire year-long Rotary Ambassodorial Scholarship that funded 18 months of hitch-hiking, partying, drifting and making lots and lots of prints and paintings during my stay at the Polish Academy of Fine Arts ten years earlier. Now, every penny of this week's income will be flung into the black pit of general debt reduction.



Even with all the changes, the general nostalgia for a time long gone and friends scattered like seeds still overwhelms, as I stroll in the dark of a wet Hungarian fall night along the Danube River. On the bluffs and hills, palaces alight with flaming spotlights, memorials to poets and revolutionaries, barges leaving rippled reflections in their wake.



Gorgeous.

Today I felt proud to lead my crazy, warm, eccentric family around the city of Pittsburgh. The Strip, Parmanti Bros. sandwiches, the South Side, Mt. Washington, etc.



The most exciting moment came when my 71-year-old step-father discovered the new pay-per-pee bathroom that costs only 25 cents!

Peutz Valley, CA: The valley where Sterling Oaks Ranch was nestled near San Diego lost 75% of the residences in the recent fires. Miraculously, the Sterling's place was spared, although everything right up to the house itself (chicken coop, mulch, scrap wood, newly planted trees) burned to ash.



When Joe saw his place still standing, he said to himself: "You have to earn this."



He pulled the grill around and began cooking for neighbors and friends who were clearing roads, and sifting debris.



His ranch became the planning center for the rescue and rebuilding effort. Church groups, the US Marines, the Red Cross, FEMA, all rolled through.

Flew from the drizzly tail of Hurricaine Isabella, to the permisunny light of Southern California. Uncle Joe rented an industrial backhoe for the occasion. Sliding across black packed sand-dirt flecked with mica, he taught me how to raise the bucket, drop the arm and scoop up gravel, mulch, manure and more.



We dug out holes for trees. And in ten years time, when convelescing in their dappled shade, he can rub his whiskered chin and remind his aged Labrador, "Me and my buddy Pete planted those!"



Creating magic, listening to coyotes cackle and the rooster roar at Sterling Oaks Ranch.

Today I wondered into the pantheon of the classic wired kid's wet dream... the original Apple Store in downtown Palo Alto.



What a simple, beautiful playland! And every blessed, white, smooth, soft-edged thing spoke to the creative spirit [forgive me for gushing] in offering a minimal, clean interface, a palette for creating, ultimately, the stories and songs of our lives. Moving pictures, sound and music. How? That's up to each artist to decide!



Quite predominently featured in the space, are long, bistro-like counters with iBooks, desktops, speakers, headphones, and computers open for people to play. Also, in the center of the aisle, low tables and comfy round balls, for kids to sit on and play games of creation or exploration.



Design. Yep. It speaks.