Here we go again. The blob I wrote last night is not to be found anywhere. It's not in the Cloud and David thinks that it's probably in the Fog. We love the concept of “the Fog”. David is working on the promotional material.
What year was it when you first had no trouble writing a new number. For me it was when we transitioned from 2012 to 2013. What's the point. Who knows? Does everything have to have a point? Ok, the point is that the older you get the easier it is to adjust to change. Some may disagree and say that the older you get the less flexible a person gets. Let's be honest, Who cares about “some.” But that's not what I wanted to blob about.
Is there anyone (in the entire world who is over thirty) that doesn’t think time is flying by. Each year seems to get shorter and we can’t figure out how to stretch the time. When we’re kids we can’t wait for time to pass so we can be older to vote, drink, or be allowed to go on all the rides on Disney. It’s a wonder because friends and family who have passed remain so immediate but we can’t remember how long they have been gone. The years pass so quickly it’s unimaginable to think that any of our contemporaries have been gone for 20 years or more. Yeech!
The thing is there is always something that happens daily that reminds me of those people. I can hear their voices but when I turn around they are not standing there. For example, everytime I make coffee I can hear my pal Penn reminding me that you don’t boil the water for coffee. You take it off the fire right before there are bubbles. My friend Steve would always ask me if the vodka he poured from the Grey Goose bottle was real or had I simply filled the bottle with Smirnoff. I marked the bottles so he never got the cheap stuff. Although in taste test the Smirnoff often won. But of course in those days there was no Tito. And whenever I ordered something in a restaurant and I was disappointed with my selection, our darling Jeff would say, “How many meals do you think you are going to eat in your lifetime? This is just a miniscule part of the overall number.” Basically he was telling me to suck it up, sit down and shut up. But in the nicest possible way.
There are many more examples. You probably have had the same experience. If not then you better make some dear friends. When you are working in Presidential politics and you only see friends for a short time every four years, keeping track is even more complicated. But none of this is what I wanted to talk about.
When my friend Pamela Harriman was Ambassador to France an unauthorized bio about her life (which was pretty steamy) was published. She called and asked me how to respond. My advice was not to respond at all because that would make it more important than it needed to be. When we created the Special Events (Ha!) operation during the 1992 Clinton campaign, the chickens that appeared at President Bush events it went unnoticed, until the day that the President talked to the Poultry. At which point the national media looked and talked about the chicken everyday. And this morning, when Obama responded to the Netanyahu speech, it not only was unnecessary, it elevated Netanyahu and the speech to a place it didn’t need to be. There is only one more thing. Hillary Clinton had her own e-mail system. Anyone who has ever worked in the State Department knows that the clearance process is ridiculous and certainly not timely. There is a story about when Colin Powell was Sec. of State and the US lost a seat on the UN Human Rights Commission. The memo he needed to send took so long to be cleared, vetted, and get to him that it was still sitting on someone else’s desk when the critical vote was taken. Yeah I think I’d have my own e-mail. We’re just sayin’…Iris
What year was it when you first had no trouble writing a new number. For me it was when we transitioned from 2012 to 2013. What's the point. Who knows? Does everything have to have a point? Ok, the point is that the older you get the easier it is to adjust to change. Some may disagree and say that the older you get the less flexible a person gets. Let's be honest, Who cares about “some.” But that's not what I wanted to blob about.
Is there anyone (in the entire world who is over thirty) that doesn’t think time is flying by. Each year seems to get shorter and we can’t figure out how to stretch the time. When we’re kids we can’t wait for time to pass so we can be older to vote, drink, or be allowed to go on all the rides on Disney. It’s a wonder because friends and family who have passed remain so immediate but we can’t remember how long they have been gone. The years pass so quickly it’s unimaginable to think that any of our contemporaries have been gone for 20 years or more. Yeech!
The thing is there is always something that happens daily that reminds me of those people. I can hear their voices but when I turn around they are not standing there. For example, everytime I make coffee I can hear my pal Penn reminding me that you don’t boil the water for coffee. You take it off the fire right before there are bubbles. My friend Steve would always ask me if the vodka he poured from the Grey Goose bottle was real or had I simply filled the bottle with Smirnoff. I marked the bottles so he never got the cheap stuff. Although in taste test the Smirnoff often won. But of course in those days there was no Tito. And whenever I ordered something in a restaurant and I was disappointed with my selection, our darling Jeff would say, “How many meals do you think you are going to eat in your lifetime? This is just a miniscule part of the overall number.” Basically he was telling me to suck it up, sit down and shut up. But in the nicest possible way.
There are many more examples. You probably have had the same experience. If not then you better make some dear friends. When you are working in Presidential politics and you only see friends for a short time every four years, keeping track is even more complicated. But none of this is what I wanted to talk about.
When my friend Pamela Harriman was Ambassador to France an unauthorized bio about her life (which was pretty steamy) was published. She called and asked me how to respond. My advice was not to respond at all because that would make it more important than it needed to be. When we created the Special Events (Ha!) operation during the 1992 Clinton campaign, the chickens that appeared at President Bush events it went unnoticed, until the day that the President talked to the Poultry. At which point the national media looked and talked about the chicken everyday. And this morning, when Obama responded to the Netanyahu speech, it not only was unnecessary, it elevated Netanyahu and the speech to a place it didn’t need to be. There is only one more thing. Hillary Clinton had her own e-mail system. Anyone who has ever worked in the State Department knows that the clearance process is ridiculous and certainly not timely. There is a story about when Colin Powell was Sec. of State and the US lost a seat on the UN Human Rights Commission. The memo he needed to send took so long to be cleared, vetted, and get to him that it was still sitting on someone else’s desk when the critical vote was taken. Yeah I think I’d have my own e-mail. We’re just sayin’…Iris
No comments:
Post a Comment