Memories of Huntingdon College and Jeff Sessions

I attended two Alabama schools in pursuit of a bachelors degree. One was the University of Alabama and the other was a small, liberal arts college in Montgomery, Huntingdon College. I was awarded a BS with a major in business administration in 1969. Huntingdon was known as a "poor little rich kids school". The tuition was on a par with Harvard. Many children of rich and powerful people ended up at Huntingdon after an unsuccessful run somewhere else or just to keep control of the party hardy gene prevalent in many of them. I was not one of them. Huntingdon just happened to be in my back yard so I went there.

I ended up having a 30 year career with a huge, global company. I served in several positions ranging from sales rep to government affairs manager. The customers and clients that I served were very bright people. The prime customers were physicians and health related personnel. During the GA assignment I was in touch with legislators at all levels and association executives with ties to health care. I always was comfortable in relating to all of them and felt that my Huntingdon education had prepared me in a splendid fashion to conduct myself as a business professional.

I remember a certain business law class that I took at Huntingdon. The professor was appointed to a federal judge position later by President Nixon and had recently served as US Attorney for the middle district of Alabama. He was quite the colorful jurist.

The class I took from him was held at 7:00 AM in the Delchamps center on campus. He had a deep baritone voice and pretty much read the text book to us at that early hour of the day. The class of 25 or so of us would listen to him and wait for the inflection to rise in his voice at particular segues. When that occurred you were well assured that the subject addressed was going to be on the test. You wanted to take special notes during such moments.

On this chilly, January day we were in his class. I was taking careful notes with a Flair tipped pen. It had a nylon point and was a forerunner to the roller ball. It made a nice writing instrument with bold, black images that were easy to read. Amidst one of Judge Varner's changes in inflection I was furiously scribbling notes. The pen went dry. The seats in the classroom were aligned in a straight line with parallel rows running straight away from judge Varner. So we were seated right behind another student with the exact alignment to the right and left of each of us. As my pen went dry I shook it desperately like a thermometer and the ink happily returned to the tip so I was successful in completing my notes.

After a lull in the lecture I casually looked at the floor to my right. I was horrified to see splashes of black ink on the floor running at a 45 degree angle to the row of students to my right. I then noted a student who had ink all across his London Fog trench coat and part of his shirt. He was looking haplessly at the ceiling as if he had been awakened by a kamikaze from above. Class ended in a few minutes afterwards and I approached the student and apologized profusely offering to pay to have his coat cleaned.

That student was Jeff Sessions. I knew him casually having played intramural basketball with him. He was one of a few lucky campus dorm male students who lived amidst the 3 to 1 ratio of women to men there at Huntingdon. He was such a nice, gracious person who laughed at the ink incident. He was from Mobile and was immensely popular there on our tiny campus.

Jeff went to law school at Alabama. Practiced law in Alabama, was appointed U S Attorney there. He later became Attorney General for Alabama and won a senate seat and has been Senator Jeff Sessions ever since. He helped carry water for the Trump campaign and it is now being discussed that he  may well land a cabinet position. My ink target may possibly become the secretary of defense. You never know where life is going to lead. Wish I had been more careful with that Flair pen.

Medical Marijuana, in Case Oxycontin isn't Doing it For You

Repost from December 2013

I suppose if you live long enough you will have seen just about every liberal and demeaning piece of legislation there is roll through our state houses. Now we come to the legalization of marijuana in Florida. Apparently our chameleon friend and former Governor, Charlie Crist, is all about prescribing the benefits of Tetra Hydro Cannabinol (THC). As a morphed Democrat now he is all concerned about end stage cancer relief and glaucoma patients. Doesn't it just warm your heart? It is fitting that one of the foremost ambulance chasing law firms in the state, Morgan and Morgan, is squarely behind him.

I will admit that probably 9.9 people out of every 10 in Florida most likely light up a joint a couple times of month. It is extraordinarily common. However, it remains on the Florida statutes as a no-no. For my  money that should remain the case. There are far too many impaired people driving our highways presently. Do you really want to aid and abet more people in that regard?

Florida would become the 21st state to join the ranks of those who allow people to be prescribed marijuana for everything from glaucoma to fibromyalgia. However, guess what, prescribers can already dispense THC. Under the current DEA guidelines THC is a class 1 scheduled, controlled substance. Which means that a licensed prescriber can use it in an experimental fashion on a patient right now.

I promoted a product branded Percodan for many years. It is a schedule 2, controlled substance and is most likely the most qualitatively effective pharmaceutical product for pain available. The generic name of this product is Oxycodone. You have to go to the needle to find something that will make your pain go away more effectively. Along came a delivery system that got it into your blood stream a little better in the form of Oxycontin, marketed by Purdue Frederick. It was marketed to oncologists primarily for pain associated with cancer. Fast forward a few years and you see a glaring problem all over the country. Pill mills in various Florida locations have sprung up everywhere so the prescriber can make money and the consumer can get high. Many people die as a result of this widespread problem.

Back in the 70's there was a drug called LSD that the drug culture used to abuse.Lysergic Acid Diethylamide was used to induce a psychotic state in laboratory animals so that antipsychotic agents could be assessed as to efficacy. PCP, phencyclidine HCl, was used as an animal tranquilizer. The drug culture discovered it and it became a widespread problem. People are weird about looking for the next magic elixir. Now you make THC more available and what do you have? A bigger and wider generation of zombies to drive domestic disputes, fill up the emergency rooms and populate the pshyciatric hospitals.

The Florida Supreme court just approved a measure that will put it on the ballot in November. Those who vote will decide whether or not it is a good idea to put medical matijuana into the hands of Florida citizens. Polls indicate that such a measure would pass by 80% or more.

The apostle Paul did his own poll. He said in 2 Timothy 3: 1-4: " This know that in the last days, perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy. Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good."

So the world is ripe for medical marijuana. May the God of heaven help us all.

October Memories and the Apocalypse

I remember it like it was yesterday. 6th period at Landon High School in Jacksonville, Florida. October 1960. I was 14 years old and in sixth period study hall, I was usually allowed to miss the study hall so that I could go from 5th period to basketball practice. On this day the coach, Jim Kitchens,  had cancelled practice. Probably so he could go home and watch the 7th and deciding game of the World Series. I remember the thrill of that game and the exuberance that followed a walk off home run hit by Bill Mazeroski. That won the World Series for the Pirates 10-9 and remains as the only walk off in the 7th game in the history of the World Series. It was an historic occurrence and I was able to see it via a little black and white TV sitting up on the stage.

I also remember another walk off home run. This was hit in an NCAA regional baseball game which I attended in May 1997 held here in Tallahassee. The game was between Auburn University and Florida State. It was the championship bracket of that 8 team tournament. There was huge significance to the game because with a win the Seminoles went to Omaha and the College World Series. There was a member of the Auburn team who had played at Florida High school about a 7 iron from Howser stadium. I remembered him because my son had played HS baseball for Lincoln HS. They played against one another in a summer league program. He was not a prominent member of the team as a back up catcher. Auburn's All American catcher, Dunn, had been hurt in the SEC tournament and that had activated this young man as starting catcher.

In the bottom of the 9th inning this young man came to bat with 2 runners on base. Seminoles were up by 2 runs. This young fellow worked the count to 2-2. The pitcher threw him a fastball middle in and he turned on it and sent the ball over the left field wall in the direction of the stadium where he had played HS baseball. Walk off win for Auburn. In the next game Tim Hudson beat the Seminoles 8-7 to send Auburn to the CWS. The young man's name who hit this home run? David Ross, 2016 World Series icon whose final year in MLB has dominated the canvas of fall baseball. Funny how things work out isn't it? From back up catcher to hero in the NCAA tournament. The story did not end there. David was drafted and played many years in the bigs. He ended his career with the Cubs on the highest of notes. He also was a star of stars on Dancing with the Stars, coming in second place in that competition.

I am telling you this has been a world series to end them all. Their win is almost apocalyptic. Here in this fairly new millennium we have all sorts of signs that point to apocalypse. Global warming, the economy, the wierdest of all elections ever held and now this. The Chicago Cubs are the world champions of baseball. Surely the apocalypse approaches steadfastly.

A Ride to South Georgia with Georgia and Benjamin

It was a beautiful October day, this first Saturday in October. Our cousin, Hilda Vann, was to have celebrated her 96th birthday at her daughter's home in Newton. Georgia and Benjamin had spent the night with us and were to accompany us to this gathering of "old folks". With a smattering of young and middle aged folks mixed in. Promises of good food and a chance to run around on a south Georgia peanut farm enticed them to come along. They are 8 and 9.

I decided that I would take a back road up to the main drag into Newton. We would see some swamp land and forest along the way and perhaps see a little wild life. I told them about the time I had taken John Darwala, a company colleague from Philadelphia up to Cairo via that route. He had asked me in his best Indian accent if I had ever seen an alligator whilst riding along that little two lane stretch of road. I advised him that I had not. It was a mile down the road that a big gator, about an 8 footer, dragged himself from one side of the road to the other right in front of us. John was ecstatic and would refer to this experience all along the course of my 30 year career with DuPont.

I told them of another time that Benjamin's Mom and I had taken this road on a fallish Sunday morning and had seen two of the most beautiful wild turkeys we had ever seen. I then regaled them with a tale of one of the biggest rattle snakes that I had ever seen coiled up on the shoulder of this little back woods road. It was about at this point in the trip that I noticed that I was getting little, if any, affirmation of what I was speaking of. I looked in the rear view and saw the ear buds of their individual devices just entertaining them as best could be. Benjamin was gaming on his Kindle and Georgia was listening to her music on her I-Pod.

I am pretty used to being ignored. I am 70 and have been invisible to humanity for a good 20 years. Please see my BLOG entitled The Invisible Man. So I dispatched with the fascinating tales of my journeys down this road less traveled and began to agree with my  wife that we had wasted a good 30 minutes on this back woods road.

My mind traveled back to when I was around 9 and my brother was 6. We had grabbed a good hand hold in the bed of Dad's old pick up truck and enjoyed scooting down the old country road on our way to a church picnic. Our entertainment was spitting into the wind to the other's detriment. Our entertainment at the picnic was catching tadpoles in the pond near the site.

I further mused as to what it must have been like to have been 10 years old back in Hilda's day. That would have been around 1930. People could talk for days about the airplane that they  had seen fly over their farm or the fact that the preacher had a new car and maybe they could get a ride in it one day. No television, maybe a radio. Certainly nothing like a lap top computer, I Phone, Kindle, X-Box.

My 7 grandchildren have incredible technology at their finger tips. They bore easily. They must constantly be entertained by what's on cable TV or what game they can conjure up on their devices. As I drive by the nearby elementary school I am taken by the fact that the kids walking home from school are not running and playing tag or tossing a ball. They are walking along staring into their palms and tapping on that device held there. They truly do look like a Zombie nation.

I suppose each generation must have similar observations about the kids in their worlds. I still revel in the road less traveled and the mysteries and surprises that lie along the way. " Oh I shall be telling this with a sigh, somewhere ages and ages hence. How two roads diverged in the woods and I, I took the one less traveled by and that has made all the difference."

Where Were You? (Repost)

I remember where I was when President Kennedy was shot, so do you. I remember where I was when Bobby Kennedy was shot, so do you. I remember where I was when Dr. King was shot. I will always remember the day I watched Neil Armstrong take that first step on the lunar landscape. You have to be a mature American to recall all those events.

You can be a child as young as 12 and remember the most significant event since the shot heard around the world that was fired at Ft. Sumter, South Carolina somewhere around 1861. That event was September 11, 2001. The Ft. Sumter event was the impetus that led to the most blood ever spilled here in America since the Revolutionary war.

When those planes flew into the World Trade Center and our Pentagon approximately 3,000 innocent Americans shed their blood, innocent, collateral damage in a cowardly act of terrorism. Since then one of the most evil dictators in history was captured, tried and hanged. Our soldiers still are taking it to the terrorists and those who have harbored terror. Many additional lives have been lost in an effort to make you and I feel safe once again.

I was in Baton Rouge, La. with DuPont. I had flown in on 9/10. Myself and 2 colleagues were doing software training for 2 cardiology groups assembled at the Baton Rouge Hilton. I had been to breakfast and had read a little article in USA Today about the establishment of 911 as the emergency number for the nation. Some sort of commemoration was scheduled somewhere on 9/11 to apply a little numerology. When I left my room to go down to the meeting room my colleague, Roger, came out of his room with a funny look on his face and announced that an airliner had just flown into the World trade center. I thought back about the article I had read and I said " No that is just some sort of gimmick to promote the establishment of 911 as the nationwide emergency number." Boy was I ever wrong.

We went to the meeting room checked in with our management and called off the training and went to pack. I was fortunate enough to think about getting a rental car. I had National Car Rental on speed dial. After I speed dialed it about 10 times I was able to successfully reserve a car. By the time my colleague from Birmingham, who had driven down, got us to the airport all airports across the country had been closed. Air Force One was heading to Louisiana, where I was. I had a guy at the rental car desk offer me $1000.00 for my rental car. He was trying to get home to Los Angeles. My other colleague and I drove the 8 hours back to Tallahassee and then he went on to Sarasota. We were scared. I just wanted to be home with my family.

I remember my daughter stood in line in Gainesville at the University of Florida, along with her room mates, to donate blood. People went to church in droves. Retailers sold out of flags. The mood of the country was anger towards the terrorists.

Where are we now? Blood donations have become a way to buy dinner for some. People stopped going to church in droves. Republicans hate the Democrats. Democrats hate the Republicans. Everyone hates the war. Tea parties abound. GM's principal owner is the U.S. Government. Financial institutions are owned by the government. The government wants to own health care.

What scared us to death back on 9/11/01 is now just a bare memory. If you fly into New York City there are new structures going up to replace those twin towers. It is hard to remember what they looked like in our mind's eye.

The same resolute planning that effected 9/11/01 is still going on in some Al Queda camp somewhere. Death to America still motivates people to strap bombs on thier children and send them into a crowd.

I wonder when and what the next 9/11 will be. Sure makes you pause and reflect doesn't it.

Surviving an Itty Bittty Hurricane

Living in Florida means one thing pretty consistently. You are vulnerable to a pretty volatile meterologic environment. I'm talking a consistent rash of thunderstorms, a much lesser occurrence of tornadic activity and a miniscule threat of tropical storms and hurricanes. Someone once said that this is the cost of living in paradise. I really cannot dispute that statement. One consistent thing about Florida is the hot and humid weather.

A couple of weeks ago my wife, Nancy, and I were laying in our bed. Around midnight we were awakened by the distant sound of thunder and could see some bright flashes of lightning. The storm was sort of pretty and melodic mixing flashes of light with rolling cascades of thunder. As the storm approached our address we could tell that it was going to roll pretty much right over us. Sure enough it did. After a few minutes of being a bit on edge we heard a zap and a ping and then a heavy retort. We had either endured a direct hit or one very close by.

The next morning we were disappointed to learn that we had no cable, internet or phone service. Life without TV is very difficicult for my wife as well as myself. I only watch sports on the cable. Her viewing is much more wide and sophisticated. I am an internet junkee. I find it unnerving not to be able to look at Real Clear Politics, Alabama.com for my team, ESPN.com, LDS.org and  local news all driving to and culminating in the many pithy tweets I send out via Twitter.

It took us 4 days to restore our TV and internet. Life was not pleasant. I also make my living via access to the internet as do so many other people. Thank heavens for the IPhone. We had to buy a new TV as a result of one being fried. That meant a little larger screen just in time for football season. Little did we know what lay in store for us.

We get somewhat Tropical storm weary in this part of the world. Seems like every year about this time there are numerous tropical depressions floating around in the Gulf or the Atlantic. In my world of real estate the significance is that if there is a named storm floating around in the "box" then real estate closings come to a grinding halt. The box is an imaginary space 700 miles X 700 miles. If a named storm moves into that box then property insurance issuance is frozen. If insurers won't insure, lenders won't lend and most buyers cannot buy. I had 3 closings scheduled this past week and was keeping a close eye on TS 9 out in the Gulf. Having barely managed the closings and getting past them I suddenly realized that TS 9 is now Hurricane Hermine.

Two of the families I was helping were out of town move ins, one from Atlanta and one from Niceville. A race was on to get closed, beat the storm and get moved in. Both families accomplished their moves and settled in prior to the storm settling in on a direct line for our location .

I had been so involved in business that I was totally naive concerning the storm. All of a sudden here it is Thursday and all manner of storm preparation has broken out around me. Fortunately, my wife, Nancy, is always in a state of preparedness for most things. We had plenty of water, food, snacks and batteries, meds, fresh clothing, etc. I settled in to watch two football games Thursday night. Both were humdiingers. I began to realize the seriousness of the matter when the wind started blowing and rain was hitting my house sideways. It really got my attention when in the space of seconds my house was darker than the inside of Marianna caverns. The only sound manifested was the whistling of the wind. It seemed like morning would never come. It did.

We awakened to trees down all over our neighborhood as well as the Big Bend region. 150,000 people were without electricity across the region. One of the clients I had closed had a tree down across their house on the first night they had stayed in it. Of my three children they all had power. My son's thankful to a home generator that powers his whole house, even AC.

We were without power for 60 straight hours. We were able to cook, keep two refigerator's cool, light a couple of lamps, power a TV and run fans thanks to a small generator. The absolute worst was being without AC. We could watch cable and take baths over at our daughter's house but laying in bed sweating is no fun.

As always it is nice and disappointing to see people at their best and worst. Tree removal people were out in droves after the storm. My client with the tree on her house was offered a removal service for $1000 per hour and it was going to be a 5 hour job. Fortunately, she was not born yesterday. Her husband is a police officer and hopefully this contractor will hear from the AG after this cools down. Be nice to see him pay some heavy fines and maybe even do a little time.

It was also nice to see people treating  each other with courtesy as they approached traffic lights that were not working. Dangerous intersections were being negotiated very carefully as people very kindly yielded to one another as they moved through the intersections. I checked on a neighbor who is a very capable widow. She assured me that she was fine. As I left I provided her with an ice cold Diet Dr. Pepper from a cooler on my back seat. She smiled and hugging me accepted the treat and wiped away a little tear. Just a little kindness goes a long way when people are stressed out and disadvantaged.

The Psychology of a Bonus

It is an interesting thing to note that a person could be making $200,000 per annum and get a $10,000 bonus and be near nirvana as a result. I was employed by a multi-national, world wide company for 30 years. For twenty years of that time I was a salaried employee as were all of my fellow employees. The company we worked for believed in paying you well. There was no such thing as a peformance bonus. You were given a yearly performance evaluation. If you were fortunate enough to hit on all of the metrics in this performance evlauation you got a salary increase. There was a complicated, human resources developed, career grid. Every position had a level and a salary guideline. If you went from being a paper clip counter 1 to a paper clip counter 2 you got a very nice salary increase. There were 4 levels in each position. The gist was that there was a 56% spread across those levels. If entry level was $10,000 per year then the spread across the level you were in went to $15,600. Go to the next level the entry on that level would be $13,000 and the spread would take you to $20,280. All I know is that I started with the company in 1972 at $7800 per year. When I left, 30 years later, I was making $180,000.

Along the way, I was invited to serve as a member of a task force that looked into adopting a bonus program. Our division, within the company, was to be a test market on the effects of implementing such a bonus program. If it seemed to have a synergistic effect on employee performance then it would be adopted all across the company. The career performance evaluation method was to be retained and this was to be an opportunity for a bonus to be paid out quarterly. It took us 20 meetings at 20 locations across the country. We retained consultants to help us with the analytics and we rolled out the finished product approximately two years later.

The bonus was designed to provide you with an additional 10% added to your base salary. It behooved you to be the bosses fair haired child still to get good peformance evals. It was strange to see the level to which the sales force reacted to this bonus program. There were all sorts of little pockets of schemes across the country designed to tweak the sales numbers to drive optimal bonuses. Most employees lost sight of the fact that 90% of their compensation was performance based along such ideals as ethics, teamwork, sharing of information, etc. Instead people in teams would conspire against fellow employees to drive this 10% bonus system. If their conspiracies were egregious enough they could be disciplined, put on probation and receive no salary increase or bonus.

I was not ever able to see how this effected the overall ability of our sales force to drive more business. The sad result was that due to other issues the company decided to sell our division to another company. There were mass layoffs and I and many of my colleagues who had helped develop this bonus structure never saw enough proof that it was all worth the time and effort to create it.

Thus I conclude after thinking about this issue that there lurks within us some strange corner of reason that bonuses play to. It is sort of like "found" money. I recall the character Clark Grizwold, played by Chevy Chase in the movie Christmas Vacation. A sizeable part of his income had to be his salary. That seemed to provide more than adequately since he had a very nice home and numerous amenities. However, he dreamed of his Christmas bonus and the swimming pool it was going to provide for his family. One can only assume that he was willing to put in the extra hours, take on extra assignments, and whatever else it took to max out this bonus.

I suppose that this "found money" analogy must be what drives people to play online poker, buy lottery tickets, spend a week and a wad of money in Atlantic City to win the bonus. The very next lottery ticket I buy will be my first. That truly is a tax on the stupid. That is a whole different post to this Blog. Lot of tricky psychology wrapped up in this whole American scenario of the bonus.