I have to admit I felt a bit funny traveling to my hometown for the funeral of a friend I knew for over thirty years, Mark “Biff” Fitting.  After all, it’s not like we were an everyday part of each other’s lives.  I worked for him for a couple summers in the early ’80s, and saw him maybe every year or two or three since then.  Why did I feel so compelled to send him off in person?

Judge Roy Gotham was a very dear friend of Mark’s, and he erased any feelings I had of being out of place at Mark’s funeral.  He pointed out that in attendance were grade school friends of Mark’s from LaCrosse, Wisconsin, people he had farmed with in North Dakota decades ago, friends from all over from Mark’s whole life, along with his devastated family and local friends.

The entire focus of the service, as well as comments I heard from numerous friends I chatted with around town during my hometown visit this week, explained why I was drawn to be there.  Mark was one of those amazing people who is just genuinely your friend, no matter how close or distant, no matter how long it’s been since you’ve seen one another.  He cared about people.  That’s one reason he was such a successful businessman.  That’s why I always went to his shop when I visited my parents.  That’s why my brother Rich and I still regularly share fond memories of our summers together working for Mark at the Hobby Wheel, and why we still jokingly use goofy expressions he used all those years ago.

That’s why so very many people in Ironwood and far beyond are heartbroken, and why my hometown will never, ever be the same again.

He’s a recruiter wanting to place me in an exciting new job.  But that’s neither here nor there.

He’s a Canadian.  Named Vlad.  It’s at once exhilirating and contradictory.

I may change my name to Vlad.

I wrote a few months back about what I see as our crisis of leadership, and how — in both business and politics — we suffer “leaders” who want only the perks of position, and none of the awesome responsibilities.

I’ve seen two additional regular phenomena as I’ve studied the problem.

The first is that our leaders today have an overwhelming contempt for the people they lead.  Silly me — I’d have thought signing up to be a leader would mean you valued people, and wanted to work for them.  Instead I see a vast majority of leaders who want to dictate to people, “fix” people, and who have nothing but criticism for those they lead.  Instead of understanding that, no matter how smart they personally are, the individual abilities of leaders are always and everywhere eclipsed by the collective brainpower and capabilities of their groups, today’s leaders are smug, elitist asses who are generally taking us all over a cliff with their arrogance.  Good leaders don’t ask their people to do anything they aren’t willing to do themselves.  And their main job is to realize the awesome potential of the team, to set their people up to deliver at their highest level of ability, and to clear the roadblocks that stand in the way of maximum success.  Here’s a book on the matter that spells it out much, much better than I…

Related to this is the seeming inability of today’s leaders to admit failure and chart a new course.  In both government and industry, we’ve long since passed the point where anyone not irretrievably daft can see that what we’ve been doing isn’t working.  Yet our leaders expect us to stay the course, because if reality fails to fit their dogmatic theories of how things ought to work, why, it must be reality that’s wanting!  A real leader in this case has the courage to face his people, admit he’s failed, and set a new direction.  That critical facet of leadership seems almost nonexistent today.

My younger son Bug has taken to telling people “You’re stupid!” when he gets angry lately.  He did it to me in the car the other day when he didn’t get his way about going into one of the places we stopped.  Since I was driving, I was restricted to making it very clear by my words and voice tone that he would be well-served to keep quiet.

My older son added, “Yeah, you’d better not take Dad’s name in vain!”

Smart kid…

I finally got a chance to skip out for a while on a business visit to Richland Center, Wisconsin (birthplace of Frank Lloyd Wright) and dash over to nearby Spring Green to tour Taliesin, Wright’s summer home and studio.

I can see why Wright always came back to his roots in this amazing spot on the Wisconsin River.  It’s a serenely beautiful place.

The site is something of a “Wright’s greatest hits” — its buildings are representative of Wright’s different works through the years and around the country, since this is where Wright and his students did their experimentation.  So, for example, the oldest part of the school building is reminiscent of the George Barton house of the Darwin Martin Complex in Buffalo; the theater foyer evokes the Usonians; and the latest bedroom additions (for Wright and his wife) have the feel of those at Fallingwater.

The buildings are wonderful but fragile.  Everywhere are signs of deterioration — heaving stairways, uneven floors and walls, and sagging floors and foundations.  Much of the construction was done by inexperienced students, and even the basic and vital notion of proper compaction of earth prior to building was missed in many places.  Wright believed houses shouldn’t outlive their owners, so none of this crumbling would likely bother him.  But it certainly makes the job of the preservationists difficult and expensive.

The thought I couldn’t escape as our knowledgeable tour guide told the story of Wright’s life was that he was a great man — but he was assuredly not a good man.  Sad…

I loved this article.  Turns out little boys need to hammer on each other and their parents.

Fortunately, The Reverend Doctor Vinoski Sweetness, Bug and I are way ahead of the game here.  “Meting out some punishment” and “savage beating” are regular phrases for us.  My boys think little of unleashing a storm of pummeling on me or each other.  It’s a beautiful thing.  (Not so beautiful when they also unleash such on Sweet Miss ViVi, but a) she’s the one who “bored” them, so she has only herself to blame, and b) they’re young, so they still have time to learn.  On the other hand, the article says roughhousing is good for “parents” too, so maybe Mom just needs to man up a bit.  (But, please, dear, not so much that it would be visible — because you look really, really good the way you are.)

But I also loved this:  the reference to the “roughhousing workshop in New York.”  If that isn’t ample proof that I’m dead-on right in finding big cities distasteful and disgusting, especially for their effect on the menfolk, I don’t know what is.  “Roughhousing workshop” — why doesn’t China just invade us and get it over with?  (Oh, yeah, that’s right — because as soon as they got past the coasts, they’d encounter that wall of deer hunters…)

Here’s a really interesting article announcing the discovery of a new heat-treating method for steel that makes it 7% stronger.  I find two points interesting.  The first is that there’s such a big deal about the discovery being made by a “self-taught metallurgist.”  Aren’t pretty much all the big discoveries made by the self-taught?  And look around — aren’t the colossal problems facing us the creation of well-schooled “experts?”

Second, this picture accompanied the article:

Why the need to trumpet the “Environmentally Friendly Flowing Water Quench?”  What, for the love of all that’s holy, is wrong with us?

Kudos to Gary Cola.  You’re what makes America great.

There are no thanks enough for the brave ones we honor today, those who “gave the last full measure of devotion.”

When I read Flags Of Our Fathers years ago, I took it as my tribute to them all to memorize the names of the men in the famous Joe Rosenthal photo of the flag-raising on Iwo Jima.

Left to right:  Ira Hayes.  Franklin Sousley.  Mike Strank.  John Bradley.  Harold Schultz. Rene Gagnon (behind Bradley Schultz).  Harlon Block.

Sousley, Strank and Block died on that godforsaken island.  The rest are gone now, too.  God bless and keep them all.

UPDATE: Amateur historians discovered an error in identifying the men in this iconic photo. Thanks to them, we now know that John Bradley was not the fourth man – it was USMC Corporal Harold Schultz.

I’ve had a couple of acknowledgements of the Navy SEALs here lately.  And they deserve it.

But while they go through the torturous BUD/S training, culminating in the all-but-humanly-impossible trials of Hell Week, yesterday I discovered an even greater challenge.

It was the combination of getting up early with Bug, putting together and later launching (twice!) a model rocket with The Reverend Doctor Vinoski Sweetness, running six miles in horrendous humidity, putting the boys to bed, then trying to stay awake to watch the ’80s sci-fi Muppet drama Dark Crystal.

Hell Week is doable.  What I attempted, as I personally proved, is not.

I travel to little Richland Center, Wisconsin, a good bit for business.  It’s in the southwest corner of the state — a little-known area of the ancient Ocooch Mountain range, which are now forested rocky hills cut through by streams.  The area is more technically known as the Driftless Region (referring to its getting a pass from glaciation in the last ice age), and it’s a beautiful spot.

Usually I stay in the quirky little Ramada Inn right in town.  Also called the White House, it sports a capital dome, pictures of all the presidents in the lobby, and rooms named for the states.  But if was full this week, as was the only other decent motel in town.

So I searched for B&Bs and instead came across Candlewood Cabins.  The pictures of their “Glass House” intrigued me, so I called on my drive down and booked it.

It’s appropriately named.  Made of 4×4 posts and a tin roof, pretty much the rest of it is double-pane glass panels salvaged, according to the proprietor and builder of the place, from a bunch of sliders from a single house.

It’s glorified camping.  There’s electricity, but no TV, no phone, no Internet, and (for AT&T, anyway) no cell phone service.  The little house behind it is the bathhouse, reached by a short outdoor bridge.  There’s electric heat that didn’t quite keep up the one night I was there, when it dipped into the high 30s.  Air conditioning is also known as a ceiling fan and a portable fan tucked away next to the futon — oh, and all those upper hinged transom windows and two screen doors.

But it’s quiet and cozy and hidden away almost out of sight of the other two cabins, there in the thick woods.  I think I’ll be back.