Business curriculum for the Post-American Century

I saw one my business school professors
While idling in Starbucks today
I was reading the Saturday New York Times
I wanted asked him
What are you now teaching your students?

Today, the Times' business section read like
The script of a big budget disaster movie
Banks closing, people unemployed.
The Lions of Wall Street being sent off to jail
Or even worse getting rich and getting off scot-free.
But he left with his latte before I could ask

So I asked myself what would I teach?
History first, modern and ancient
Modern: how the Frat –Boy from Crawford
Helmed the American ship of state on to rocks
As big as his ego and like the Exxon Valdez
Out flowed from the hull breach
Barrels blood and treasure for the chimera of cheap Iraqi oil
On the widening stain of blood his partner in Crime
The War Criminal from Wyoming, the Senator from Halliburton
Lit a Cuban cigar with a hundred dollar bill
And tossed the now worthless greenback along with $10 trillion others
onto the bloodstained water

Ancient history next, a course of foreign study
A semester abroad
My students would explore the streets
Of the capitals of long-dead empires
Venice, Florence, Ravenna, London, Paris, Moscow, Beijing and Madrid
Buy Chinese-made souvenirs in shops
Lining streets where the long dead legions of conquest
Once marched in triumph their carts filled with the plunder
Stripped from the slaughtered
Their generals puffed with false glory, like an analysts
from The American Enterprise Institute
The legions are dead, the plunder has been squandered and the glory is forgotten
And only the street names remain to mark the location
Of a well forgotten past.

Having learned the soon-forgotten-history lesson
Natural history would be next Darwin, of course
Nature and time heals all wounds
That the stain of blood cast wide across the world’s waters
Would in time disappear
The pine cone must be burned by fire
to release it seeds
But what once was wounded is never again the same
That our task during that time would not be
Mint money from the world’s suffering
But help the healing, tend the seedlings,
and make the world a that can be passed on
to our children's grand children
Perhaps by healing the world, we might heal ourselves
Over time we might become better
In healing there is hope

Capitano Tedeschi

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copyright 2009 Jamie Jacks

Sellin’ Ramblers

Sellin’ Ramblers now 3/26/09

You could say this mornin’ I had too much time
You might say I was bored
My fingers did a devil’s dance
Across my computer keyboard

I typed in the name of my ex-boss
Someone universally hated
PhD, big whoopee!
Lady MacBeth with a southern accent
Even the blind despised her

She’s buying foreclosed houses
Just like in the infomercials
Offering to pay cash!
That is when I told myself
“She’s sellin’ Ramblers now”

Sellin’ Ramblers now?
What’s that mean?
You may well ask

It’s something my brother Frank would say
When he was selling sun-roofs and stereos
For Ford Mavericks and Monte Carlos
They turned out at GM-Fairfax or Ford ClaycoMoBack when people still bought American cars

But not from American Motors
That once made Rambler cars
Their cars were lemons
Pacers, Gremlins and Matadors
Sellin’ Ramblers now
It means as a car salesman you’re loser
And a loser you are lucky to be

So my ex-boss is sellin’ Ramblers
That gave me a few seconds of glee
But then I looked in the mirror
And caught a glimpse of me

My life not exactly a Saturn Rocket
Launched off into space
More like liftoff, then crash into the launching pad
Got a useless college degree
So I wouldn’t have to punch a clock
But punch a clock I do
I’m sellin’ Ramblers too

I am certainly not lonely
As I sit in the sandwich shop
I think I see in the faces of the diners
Certain desperate stares
As they wait for their sandwiches
They total up their cares

They worry about their health benefits
The safety of their 401ks
How our factories don’t make nothin’ anymore
How as a country we’ve lost our way
The Chinese won’t buy our treasury bonds
Rush hopes Obama fails
We’re white knuckling on a roller coaster ride
Or are we a doomed Republic on a downhill slide?

We return early to our offices
And try to act like we’re working hard
As we shuffle our pieces of paper
Probably worthless IOUs
We’re all sellin’ Ramblers
We’re all sellin’ Ramblers now.

Capitano Tedeschi

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copyright 2009 Jamie Jacks

My Bernie Madoff song

I dreamed I saw Bernie Madoff
Sung to the melody of the folksong Joe Hill as sung by Joan Baez

I dreamed I saw Bernie Madoff
Being sentenced on TV
Bern, I said, in ten you'll be dead
"I'll never die" says he
"I'll never die" says he

But Bern you ran a Ponzi scheme
that turned rich people poor
Thousands of people want you dead
Says Bern "don't be a bore"
Says Bern "don't be a bore"

They gave you their life savings Bern
They gave you their confidence
They're asking where their money's gone
Says Bern "my house in France"
Says Bern "my house in France"

Bern, you now sit in a New York jail
Will you cop a plea?
Give back all the money you stole
"Never" says our Bernie
"Never" says our Bernie

From Citibank to AIG
Wall street has left us broke
Bernie Madoff smiles in his prison cell
Life sometimes is a joke
Life sometimes is a joke

I dreamed I saw Bernie Madoff,
Being sentenced to burn in Hell
I hope the Devil is one of your investors Bern
Says Bernie, "I'll never tell."
Says Bernie, "I'll never tell."

Capitano Tedeshi

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Not a bad day so far

Don’t think I don’t know the difference
between a good day and a bad one.
I’ve had days…
Well you don’t know.

I mean days where I was child in the passenger seat
of a Goodwill stroller with four front wheels
and two back ones that were taken from
the rollers of a discarded Kenmore ice box.
I was being pushed by a 9-year-old former cocaine baby
with the attention span of, well something short term,
like my brother.

I was being pushed slantwise
up a slope grass and dust.
I sat rigid in the webbing of the stroller
with a look of disinterested fear on my face.

As if I really knew that at some moment
I was going to dumped like a sack of grapefruit
on to the ground
and the sensation would not well—be pleasant.

But those of you who think you know
how Life is. You think you know
that I wasn’t tossed on the ground and
that my pose of disinterested trepidation
was mere affectation.

I attained the top of the slope without incident
and was propelled by Fate or
a nine-year-old former cocaine baby
into the greater world
where the houses where clean, clear and sharp
all made of razor blades.
All the machines were gas-powered herbivores,
harmless mostly, just don’t fall into the path of one.

The sun was bright, bright yellow, like an idea
whose time was going.
I was pushed into the coming night
thinking not so bad, nothing different
Silently praying that I would not be shoved
into the side of a razor sharp house
or tossed into the path of a mechanical herbivore.

Not a bad day so far I guess.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

copyright 2009 Jamie Jacks

For all you meditating poets out there

Shedding new light on mindfulness

Okay let’s start and I must start at the beginning
I am dumber than I don't know I am

Meditate on that if you will

Everything I know is ancient history
Like scraps of Roman wooden messages
Written in charcoal ink in wax and when read then discarded
And found two milenia later at the bottom of an ancient privy

Palimpsets buried among the offsified dung
The message of History: "Mother send me more woolen underpants
It's cold as Hades in Britannia. Love Giaus"

100 hundred deep breaths later more thoughts flow by

And I realize how little I have actually evolved
My opposable thumb still useful
like a wrist sundial at night
Or that I am haunted by the memory
of having read a thousand self-help and spiritual books
But I still find myself patiently waiting like a dog at the french door
Hoping others will take action and let me in.

Clear your mind of such nonsense
return to the cloudless sunny skies of patient mindfulness

Arriving finally at the end the meditation music CD, serenely humbled
Humbled, the way one is humbled by reading an actuarial chart
Discovering in the hieroglyphs
I have a 66% chance of making it to age 67
And a 33% chance of hitting age 75
Oh, I think I can beat those odds

Or seeing the picture of my high school football team
Sent by a chair of the 40th reunion committee
Looking at the faces of my 18 year old team mates
He's dead and He's dead and Him I've known since
Since I was five but I haven't seen him for 30 years

What now have we in common? Except--
We played beneath the trees of his grandmother's house after kindergarten
And were on football teams whose glories are
enshrined in dusty glass cases
in some old gym in Shawnee Mission, Kansas
Wherever that may be, if it ever existed

The Ohm of the singing bowl vibrates into peaceful silence
Meditate on that if you will

Capitano Tedeschi

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copyright 2009 Jamie Jacks
title from Shedding new light on mindfulness.Preview Cox, Richard H.; PsycCRITIQUES, Vol 54 (10), 2009. pp. No Pagination Specified.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Well folks, I just about missed it. It didn't even realize it was St. Patrick's day. Fortunately, a newsmodel from MSNBC mentioned that today was today. So I dragged out my 1987 Parade Committee button that was given to me when I had the privilege of walking in the Kansas City Parade.

The Kansas City parade is one of the nation's largest and for four or five years I'd take March 17th off from work and go down and watch the parade. It was always fun, as far as I can remember. The next day I would show up at work, hungover and with the shakes so bad I could barely hold a cup of coffee.

So I went to KansasCity.com and read stories about the Kansas City Parade. This year the parade route instead of going from Crown Center to Downtown, went through midtown Kansas City. This is the area where I lived and still love.

I spent 15 to 20 minutes searching for web sites related to my old neighborhood and stomping grounds of my mispent youth. Kansas City has been calling to me of late. About a month ago someone I played football with in high school called to tell me about a reunion they were planning for this September. Then there's the Kansas City Star's pictures of St. Patrick Days.

I want everyone to understand I am NOT getting nostalgic or homesick. At least I don't think that I am.

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Dog, Yoga and the Prayer of St Francis

Normally, when I do yoga, I am joined by my dog Bella. She will sit in the corner and wait patiently while I go through a 30 minute routine.

But she knows that after I do a shoulder stand, I go into fish pose and then lie on the floor for savasana and deep breathing. That is her invitation to start licking eyes, face, fingers and feet.

When I sit up and get into half lotus to pray, she puts her head in my lap. Imagine saying the prayer of St. Francis and now imagine saying that part of the prayer that goes

O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,

while petting your dog's chest and looking into those patient trusting eyes.

It is an amazing feeling, humbling and serene.

Prayer over, I hop into all-fours, chase Bella around the room, she runs down the hall and jumps on my bed waiting for me to finish chasing her. It's lots of fun.

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Random thoughts

Haven't posted much lately. Shame on me. What follows is a three part post on the publication of the Yoo memos, cycling after work, and doing yoga in the morning.


The Yoo memos

I was going to create a rather long post about the recent publication of the John Yoo memos which essentially gave George Bush the authority to tear up the Constitution. Why didn't he turn the Republic into a full-fledged police state? Three reasons come to mind: 1) he never had the opportunity; 2) he was either way too lazy; or 3) way too stupid to do so. Take your pick I am sure it will be the subject of debate scholars more patient than me.

One of the reasons that I didn't post on these memos was the nagging suspicion that I should n't say anything until I had actually read the things. But the first one was 37 pages long! I come from the school that says any memo over four paragraphs is not a memo, so I didn't read them. Though I imagine if I were writing a memo allowing the dumbest president in American history to destroy the U.S. Constitution I would probably want to put in a few paragraphs to justify my syncophancy.

So no Jermiad on these terrible memos but I will say that I will be writing my legislators to encourage them to support Sen. Leahy's "Truth Commission." because I believe it is wise, especially when one remembers that Bush and his toady Karl Rove spent the last few months of his presidency trying to put lipstick on the pig-like corpse of his presidency.

When not engaging in political Jermiads, much to the relief of some, I might add, what have I been doing? Riding my bike and starting to get back to doing yoga. One of the reasons for the change is that I've been reading Parker Palmer's Let your life speak. What I've read so far, encourages me to seek my true self. I believe that two aspects of my true self involve cycling and yoga.

Cycling after work

I am certain that I am not the only person on the planet to use Photoshop to put my head on Lance Armstrong's body, but I am pretty certain I am the only one in Bakersfield, California. You put a personals ad on Craigslist, you've got to be willing to bend the truth a little. Putting a picture of my head on a picture of the seven-time Tour de France champion is either creative or pathetic depending on your point of view. But even crazier and disgusting is that I have been totally unable to put my big butt on a bicycle seat and pump out some miles.

That insane and repugnant state of sloth lasted until a couple of weeks ago. My evening routine was incredibly dull. I would come home from the Knowledge Factory, get a glass of cold water, turn on the TV, let my dog in the house and become a vegetable. I would veg out. My intention was to veg out for an hour or so and then go the gym or walk my dog or go to Starbucks and have coffee with friends. So I'd be sitting there watching MSNBC drinking my water, getting lots of dog love and becoming incredibly sleepy.

When that happened, I'd wander back to my bedroom for a nap, with the idea of taking a siesta for an hour and then hopping out of bed and heading for the gym, the dog park, or the coffeehouse. But it never happened. I'd sleep too long, and then say "heck with the gym," turn on the TV, let the dog in, head to the ice box, and then back into to the chair, to vegitate until bedtime.

But spring is coming, the days are getting longer. One day I forced myself to get into my cycling togs and get on my bicycle and get in a 30 minute ride. That changed my original set of habits and now I am trying to get into the habit of hopping on to my bike insteasd of plopping down in front of the television. Now I come home and hit the road pedalling for 30-50 minutes and then I come home and turn into a vegetavo. Now, thanks to cycling and doing yoga in the morning, I feel like I have accomplished something during the day.

Yoga

I used to think I was a morning person, but it's harder now. Morning is the best time for me to do yoga. I've studied it off and on for years. I have a room for doing yoga, all the necessary equipment and some instruction videotapes and DVDs. I just haven't been willing to train. That has changed. Monday and Tuesday I was up early and did my routine. I am evening working on going to bed earlier, so I have the energy to get up and work out before I have my morning and coffee, watch fiancial porn on television, drink an ice coffee and have a bagel. Do I feel better yet, not really. But as I said cycling and yoga are part of my true self. So doing them in a consistent regular fashion is important to me.

Once I have become habituated to those two joys, I can start on other aspects of my true self, whatever they maybe. A little voice in the back of my head says its studying French and taking Tango lessons. Can it be? I'll keep you posted.

Ciao

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