That pretty much covers the facts at this time. Additional related verbosity follows.

I started my coffee career in 1998 when I was hired by Ted Lingle at The Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA). Just a few months after I was hired I headed to Seattle for Coffee Fest. Lindsey Bolger, now at Green Mountain, was then green buyer for Batdorf & Bronson Coffee Roasters. I had gotten to know her because she was a member of the SCAA Board of Directors, and she invited me to Olympia and Batdorf for a visit.

We spent hours in the Batdorf coffeehouse, tasting every coffee available. Then we toured the roastery and I met the owners and the employees. For those of you who are in coffee, this was the day the bug bit me. From that point forward I harbored a desire to one day work for a coffee roasting company. Those who know me well know I hoped it would be Batdorf & Bronson.

I don’t remember who I said it to, but it was someone at Batdorf & Bronson, Holly House I think, and it was about 10 years ago. I noted that even though SCAA was the trade association for the specialty coffee industry, we often didn’t have decent coffee in the office and had to run to the grocery store and buy a pound of whatever we could find there, or even roast some of our green coffee stash in the sample roaster. Our roaster members often sent us coffee, but not consistently. I only mentioned it because it surprised me that more members did not send us coffee regularly.

A week later, two pounds of Batdorf & Bronson coffee arrived at SCAA. That was great, but it wasn’t really remarkable. The remarkable thing is that the next week, another two pounds arrived, and again the week after that, and again the week after that. Even now, every week, two pounds of Batdorf & Bronson Coffee arrives at SCAA, come hell or high-water.

You might be thinking, “So what? Anyone can do that?” I have told this story many times to many coffee roasters and many of them have had that reaction and many of them have endeavored to prove it and started sending coffee to SCAA. During my time with the association, none of them kept it up, at least not on a regular and sustained bases.

I need to stop here and tell a story that Tom Peter’s use to tell about Disneyland. He was explaining to a group of business students that the lifespan of a piece of trash on the ground at Disneyland was measured in seconds, thanks to the ubiquitous sweepers walking the grounds. At other theme and amusement parks, the lifespan of a piece of trash on the ground was measured in minutes. Peters felt that this fact represented a key element of the company’s success compared to their competition, but the business students were skeptical. They didn’t believe that how quickly trash was picked up off the ground was relevant, “because anyone could do that.”

Tom Peter’s response? “If anyone can do it, how come they don’t?”

If anyone can make coffee show up at the SCAA offices once a week every week without fail year after year, how come they don’t? I came to believe that the fact that Batdorf could do it was indicative of other things in the company, such as attention to detail, respect for relationships, and quality in everything they do. The more I got to know the company and its people, the more I believed this was true.

The punch line to the story happened one day when I was speaking to a writer for the New York Times. We had been talking for nearly an hour about coffee when she asked, “What is your favorite coffee?”

Of course, I demurred, in part because it would not be an appropriate question to answer as a trade association executive, and also because, as coffee people know, even if I wanted to answer the question, I couldn’t. I loved many different coffees.

After pushing a little for an answer, she dropped that question and tried another. “What are you drinking right now?”

Well, what do you think I was drinking? The odds were heavily weighted in favor of the company that sent coffee once a week every week without fail. But anyone can do that. Everyone wasn’t. After a moment I decided that it was a fair question and told the writer I was drinking coffee from Batdorf & Bronson Coffee Roasters. I don’t remember the specific coffee I was drinking, but the writer ordered some off of the B&B website and then mentioned Batdorf in her article. Online orders at Batdorf spiked.

I caught some hell for that from other roasters, but I defended my answering the question. The conversation would go like this.

Roaster: “I just think, you know, if you can’t mention all of us you shouldn’t mention any of us.”
Me: “Well, I think the writer asked a fair question. I could have been drinking anyone’s coffee.”
Roaster: “Not our coffee…I mean, we’ve sent coffee to the SCAA offices before, just not all the time.”
Me: “Uh huh.”
Roaster: “So, how often does Batdorf send coffee?”
Me: “They send coffee every week.”
Roaster: “Really? Well, see, the odds were in their favor.”
Me: “Yes. Yes they were.”
Roaster: “We could send coffee every week.”
Me: “Yeah?”
Roaster: “We sure as hell will now.”

And many of them did…for awhile.

All of this is by way of explaining, in part, and particularly to my friends outside of coffee, why Batdorf & Bronson sat on top of my short list of companies where I wanted to work, and why I’m so excited that things have come together to make that happen. They just always impressed me, the people and the coffee.

Several people have asked if I will continue blogging on business and leadership topics. The answer is, sort of. My personal blog received very little attention from me while my consulting blog was active, so I hope to get back to more personal topics and stories, and the occasional poem. I may touch on coffee industry issues from time to time, coffee itself, and occasionally a business topic, when I can do so in a manner appropriate to my new position.

I hope to blog as I drive to Atlanta from California in January.

I want to thank everyone who sent congratulations and best wishes. It means a lot to me.

At the time I wrote it, I was reading three or four times a week all over Long Beach, California, and a feature reader once a month or so. Oddly, there were more coffeehouses around then than now, at least in Long Beach. People would rent a space, throw the espresso machine up on sawhorses, put out some rusty lawn furniture, and call it a coffeehouse. And they all had open mic poetry nights, providing at least one venue every night of the week for poets who wanted to read.

You can’t get away with the sawhorse and lawn chairs anymore, but it was a fun time.

Intestinal Fortitude

Run away, run away, run away. --Monty Python

Protocol prohibits the absence of flavor
when referencing childhood.
Gray memories are disallowed
by color commentators guarding the gates.
Your father wounds must be red
and your mother wounds a smothering shade of
not-quite-white blankets stacked to the ceiling.
Breathlessness and breathlessness.
I sit on my hands.

We were all of us fools gold for our parents.
And now everyone wants to be a comedian
but no one can take a joke.
They keep bleeding all over my shoes,
leave rust thumb prints on my forehead,
go fishing for gaggles of children inside me,
write epitaphs:

He was careful.
Then he wasn't.
And this made him lucky.

My ambivalence is hermetically sealed.

The windows here are the thickest damn windows.

I cannot speak your name without dreaming.

Family is an abnormal topic,
like sponge-fungus pie or cows with ambition.

The true name of this poem is Give Me Your Blessing.

Even when I have my ultimate defense against sports fans in my hand, a book, I still get some guy saying, “so how about them ball-tossing, bat-swinging, end-running, jump-shooting, puck-slapping, full-backing, sons-of-pinch-hitters?”

I have a few options in terms of a response.

1) Fake it. Although this is my least favorite option, I am surprisingly good at it, not because I’m a good liar, but because it requires nothing more than a bunch of nodding, the occasional shaking of the head, a handful of grunts, and a few different versions of saying “jeez.”

2) Become a temporary student of the game. This is more honest but less desirable because it requires me to engage by asking questions when I don’t really care about the answers.

3) Admit that I’m not really into sports. Despite being the least desirable, this is the option I choose most often because, as we all know, honesty requires the least effort in the long run, even though it can be uncomfortable at first. The most common response is silence, and I go back to my book.

But this dynamic shifted about a year and a half ago, when I started playing golf regularly. Once I started playing, I started watching more golf and then before I knew it I was actually following golf.

Not long ago my father-in-law asked, “Hey, who is that left handed golfer?” and before he even finished asking the question I blurted out “Phil Mickelson? Mike Weir? Steve Flesch? Bubba Watson? Of course, Phil is actually right handed, he just plays golf left-handed…”

Hearing myself, I stopped. I couldn’t believe it. I was now one of those guys. For years I have been amazed at how people know so much about sports and have wondered if that brain space couldn’t be put to better use. And here I was, naming four left-handed professional golfers off the top of my head.

I play golf at a short, very inexpensive nine hole course often enough that some of the guys who work there know my name. Recently I walked in the door and one of the guys pointed to another golfer and said, “Hey Mike, tell this guy who the architect was for this course?”

“William F. Bell,” I said. “Billy Bell Jr. He and his father, William P. Bell, designed and built dozens of courses throughout southern California and the western U.S. In fact, Billy Bell Jr., the same guy that designed this course, was the original course architect for Torrey Pines. People think it was his dad because the plaque reads ‘William P. Bell and Sons,’ but that was the name of the company and Billy Jr. kept it after his father passed away, out of respect.”

Dang. I am one of those guys. At a recent anniversary party I was standing near the beverage table. A guest walked up and filled his glass, half with iced tea and half with lemonade, and before I could stop myself I said, “you must be a golf fan.” He looked at me like I was speaking Russian and walked away (surely, he must have known that a lemonade/iced tea mix is called an Arnold Palmer).

Last fall I had to get on an airplane during the final round of the Ryder Cup. On the way to the airport I followed the action on my phone via online postings. I rushed through the airport looking for a television showing the Ryder Cup, then stood, dumbstruck, watching the American’s tee off, one after another hitting brilliant drives. A guy next to me asked, “What are we watching?” I looked at him like he’d been living under ground. “The Ryder Cup.” He looked up again at the screen and asked, “Golf?”

I turned, ready to let him know that this wasn’t just golf, it was the Ryder Cup, the pride of America, redemption, pay back, stompin’ time. But I just said, “Yeah, looks like golf.” He moved on and I moved closer to the crowd huddled near the TV. When Anthony Kim took yet another hole from Sergio Garcia, I actually jumped into the air and yelled “yes!” But so did everyone around me. When I arrived at my seat on the plane to discover it came with a TV screen (something I was not expecting on Delta), I almost cried. I flew from Atlanta to California while watching and savoring every stroke of the 2008 Ryder Cup.

And so I have evolved into something I scarcely recognize when it comes to golf. I am a fan, a student of the game, its history, its tactics and strategies, its lessons both real and imagined. I have opinions on equipment and rules and approach to the game that so far exceed my ability to play that the chasm is quite simply embarrassing. On the rare occasion that I am in the company of others who take the game seriously, I don’t actually let on how much I know about golf for fear that they may one day see me play and expect great things.

In the end, I will not claim to be different from those sports fans who have been sitting down on the barstool next to me for years, except in this one respect. I get to play the game I love to watch and read about. Even though I have a long arcing slice with my driver that I prefer to call a “power fade,” I get to play the game. Yes, I still top the ball when I’m nervous, I tend to read too much break in a putt, and try to hit the ball too far out of deep rough, where I often find myself. But I get to play golf.

When I watch Tiger Woods bounce on to the green from the rough 200 yards away, I know it’s impossible. I not only know it in my head, but I know it in my feet and my arms too, and in the palms of my hands because I’ve been in the rough 200 yards from the green. I’ve stood over that little white ball snuggled down in the deep grass with a 5 wood in my hands and felt like it was the first time I had ever addressed a golf ball in my life. No spectators. No money. No reputation to speak of on the line.

On a good day, I put the fairway wood back in my back, pull out my 7 iron and advance the ball carefully into the fairway a 100 yards closer to the hole (give or take 25 yards in either direction). On a bad day I swing hard and hack away with the 5 wood, hit it fat or don’t hit it at all. Then, on a rare day, I might inexplicably pull out my 5 iron, swing like Freddie Couples on vacation, and drop the ball between the bunkers, 25 yards shy of the green where, 70% of the time my 52 degree wedge will leave the ball in one-putt range.

I had one of these shots just yesterday when, for the first time, my wife and two young daughters went golfing with me. We had a lot of fun, with everyone playing as best they could with almost no coaching from me. As long as the ball is steadily moving toward the hole, and we are not disrupting the play or the pace of others, what else is there to worry about except having fun? Today, all three of them are asking when we can do it again. And I really did hit the 5 iron shot described above. My wife, playing her first round of golf ever, said “wow.” Heaven, that.

Shots like these are the high that brings me back and they are at the heart of why, if you don’t play golf, you will carefully avoid ever asking me about golf. My enthusiasm in answering your question will be disproportionate to your actual desire for an answer, and I might go on to answer four or five questions you didn’t even ask. And I know how annoying that can be.

So here it is, my first and last, rather rambling, blog post about golf. It is already my longest blog post to date, and I could keep writing. Like a good sports fan, I have included some lingo and references that not everyone will understand. I didn’t do this because I’m so myopic on golf that I assume everyone will know what I’m talking about. Truth is, it has been done to me for so long by sports fans that I wanted to be on the other end of the slightly arrogant assumption. But I apologize. I only enjoyed it a little bit.

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At that time, The Magic Magic Shop was the HQ for The Long Beach Mystics, a local magic club with an astonishing history and an international reputation. This was a club for magicians under 21, a surprisingly disproportionate number of whom, compared to clubs like it all over the world, went on to professional careers in magic. It is not an exaggeration to say that, within the magic world, The Long Beach Mystics are renowned.

On the very same day I was hired to work at the shop, I was also made Vice President of The Mystics, pending my "audition" in front of club members. It is fair to say that The Mystics were, though active and still developing professional-level talent, past their prime by then. The stockroom in back of the shop had been converted into something of a clubhouse, complete with a small stage where members could perform for each other.

With my hands shaking terribly, I mumbled through my audition with a series of rope tricks. My "patter," the things I said during my routine, had to do with owning a pet rope named Fred. My routine contained more excruciatingly bad jokes and puns than it did slight-of-hand skill (e.g. "Oh, Fred is being Knotty again").

For reasons that can only be associated with the narcissistic delusions of an adolescent, I continued developing this routine and eventually won first place in a magic contest. It should be noted that the only other competitor in my age bracket was a guy who did party magic for children and tipped his young volunteers a dollar as they left the stage. One of the judges actually wrote on my score sheet that if I won, it would say more about my competition than it would about my act. I scored points for being generally affable on stage and technically competent, but the tricks I performed were not difficult.

The competition was video taped, but I have been told that the video was lost or taped over long ago. For this, I give thanks to the magic gods, not only because the jokes were so awful, but because I was wearing black Angel Flight pants, a white dress shirt unbuttoned to mid-chest and with the collar laid flat, a black vest, and brown suede shoes. My hair was down to my shoulders.

A true multi-use facility, The Magic Magic Shop was also home to the Wait Wait Wait School of Juggling, founded by the shop's manager, Randy Pryor. I learned to juggle and then became an assistant instructor, which meant I dragged all the equipment out and put all the equipment away. From fellow students I learned to ride a unicycle and several times rode a 6 foot unicycle from my home to work at the magic shop, 4 1/2 miles away. This, by the way, is an activity I do not recommend. It was either the unicycle or walk, and every time I did it I arrived at the shop swearing I would never do it again, and walking bow legged.

The Magic Magic Shop was owned by Stan Allen, now publisher of Magic Magazine, the magic industry's most successful publication and host of Magic Live, a trade show for magicians that sells out. Stan Allen was one of my first mentors, not in magic, but in life, along with the shop manager, Randy Pryor and magician Michael Weber.

Aside: Trying to find a URL to send you to for Michael Weber is surprisingly difficult, given his success as a movie consultant through a company he founded with magician Ricky Jay called Deceptive Practices, and his corporate speaking and entertaining, and his career as an author...but it is strangely appropriate to Michael, who often came and went from The Magic Magic Shop with a random ninja-ness. Numerous times he walked quickly into the magic shop, almost always when I was the only person there, to perform some card or coin trick he was developing. After executing the trick, every time successfully as far as I knew, he might say "hmmm," or "ah, yes" or some such thing and then leave without further comment. Michael was, and I suppose still is today, one of the cool kids who enjoyed the company of not-so-cool-kids. It's not that links don't exist for Michael (Google "Michael Weber magic"), it's just that none of them really capture him...and that, I'm sure, intentionally or not, is the point.

It was while working at The Magic Magic Shop that I learned to throw a playing card, thanks to a book written by the aforementioned Ricky Jay and some lessons from friend Ken Hada. It is a skill I retain and that one day will, I am certain, save my life. The shop was the scene of several brutal card fights that often left small welts wherever I took hits to exposed skin.

My senior year in high school we moved to San Jose, California. I found a magic shop near our house to hang out in, and was generally accepted by the locals, but I was just "one of the regulars" and eventually my interest waned.

I can still manage a few slight of hand tricks for my kids, and even wow them with something now and then, like I did this morning when I correctly predicted which card my daughter would pick. If you know how these things are done, you'll note that I keep it simple. One thing that Michael Weber taught me, and that I've used in many ways outside of magic, is that the effect is what matters, the experience of your audience. Your physical dexterity as a magician matters only to the extent that it serves the effect.

I have yet to show my daughters my rope tricks, however. I can still perform them, but I don't have much left up my sleeve anymore, so I'm holding them in reserve.

www.aboutferguson.com

www.freshgroundconsulting.com

I replied that I no longer worked or spoke on behalf of SCAA (and I only mentioned that because I wanted it to be clear that anything I had to say would not be in any official capacity or the view of the SCAA) but would be happy to provide an answer over email because the answer was long. The roaster did not take me up on my offer, sensing, no doubt, the verbosity of which I am capable. I decided to answer his question here.

I have been asked this kind of question dozens of times over the years and touched on the topic once in an article titled Righteous Coffee. My response here is not necessarily specific to the most recent inquirer.

Dunkin Donuts is a member of SCAA because they can be a member and why wouldn’t they? SCAA does not and has never policed its membership. In fact, this is dangerous ground for a trade association to tread and it places an organization many steps closer to engaging unintentionally in restraint of trade. It’s not impossible, but would require a lot of legal monitoring of association activity, especially within committees.

Add to this the expense of monitoring the membership to ensure everyone who says they are “specialty” is specialty and we’re looking at a significant bureaucracy. It would be an expensive implementation and what value would it return to members? At best, it would equate to a meaningless “certification” of specialty coffee companies; meaningless, because it would be impossible to truly enforce.

There are other routes, like having people sign a commitment or pledge, but, again, meaningless at the end of the day and what value does the activity return to members? I agree with the philosophy of those who founded the SCAA: They decided they would be coffee clerics rather than coffee cops.

It is true that many companies that may or may not import and/or roast and/or serve coffee that scores 80 plus on an SCAA cupping form join SCAA, and some of them do so only to bask in the collective glory, to be “specialty by association.” But I would be cautious about calling them out within the industry because roasters who live in glass houses should use a de-stoner. If you call them out as part of your formal and informal marketing efforts, that’s another topic. It’s not my style, but if that’s how you roll, that’s how you roll.

Even with the SCAA and other cupping forms in use, specialty cred is often in the eye of the beholder and on the tongue of the customer. For every roaster who points to another roaster and says “not special,” there is someone pointing at him and saying the same thing. I know many roasters who think that flavored coffee could never be considered specialty coffee under any definition, or coffee with chicory, or coffee more than five weeks out of the roaster, or coffee without a born on date, or any coffee at all grown under (pick an altitude) or on (pick a cultivar). On the other hand, I know roasters who insist that their Indonesian coffees are specialty even though they do not score 80 plus on the SCAA cupping form.

Because I did not occupy a competitive position within the coffee industry for many years, I was often given access by companies to information about their coffee, including buying specs and cupping scores, etc. Even though I no longer occupy a wholly neutral position in the industry, I still honor implied and stated confidentiality from those years. But I can tell you this with absolute confidence: many of the companies that we all consider “less than specialty,” or assume to be “far from special” have the same or better, and certainly more consistent, green buying specs than the majority of those who do not hesitate to claim the descriptor of “specialty” coffee roaster.

At the same time, many many many “specialty” coffee roasters regularly compromise their stated standards when it comes to the quality of green coffee they purchase. Sometimes they are simply surviving, sometimes they are being “practical” with their product mix given the highly variable needs of their customer mix, and sometimes, too many times in my opinion, roasters actually believe that a mediocre green coffee becomes a specialty coffee inside their roaster because they are genius with fire.

The SCAA can and does develop and publish standards but they do so as clerics and not as cops. And there is no guarantee that adhering to these standards will make you successful. But adhering to these standards does help define who you are, where you’ll compete, and who your customers are. In my experience, when a company asks SCAA to define the marketplace and its players for them, it is because they are having trouble understanding who they themselves are and where they fit.

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Eleven years ago I received a job offer for significantly more money than I had ever earned before that time and I told them I needed to think about it. I didn’t really need to think about it, I was waiting for a different job offer from Ted Lingle, then Executive Director of the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA). The call from Ted came and I took the job at SCAA, even though it was for less money than the other offer. Why? Because I knew I would love working in the coffee industry. I knew I would love the people.

Eleven years later, I can do a lot of the things that coffee people do. I can cup coffee, but I’m not a cupper. I can brew coffee correctly, but I’m not a retailer. I know my way around a coffee mill, but I’m not a coffee farmer. I can even pull a shot of espresso or roast a batch of coffee if you hold a gun to my head (though I’ll probably do a better job at it if you put the gun away), but I’m no barista and I’m certainly not a roaster.

No, even though I know an awful lot about coffee, the coffee industry, and coffee history, I am not a coffee professional. Even during my “sojourn in Seattle,” helping run a coffee company, I did not think of myself as a coffee professional. I was then, before then, and am now, a coffee people professional.

I wouldn’t have it any other way. And as I celebrate my 11th year as a coffee people professional in my own quiet way (except for the part where I write about it on this public blog thingy), I let my mind drift, stream of consciousness-style, and it spit out the randomness below.

Yes, they are unforgivably “inside” and represent only a small smattering at best. It is a desperately incomplete version of the pages and pages and pages of notes and memories I have gathered over time. I took them as they came at me and, except for a handful that are recoded somewhere in writing, allowing me to check my memory, I took them as remembered. I have the worst memory for names but an excellent memory for things such as this. Still, I will not claim they are verbatim if someone wants to take exception. I will insist that something very very close was actually said or written at some point in time and space. Stopping at 30 “items” was completely arbitrary. I mean, I have to save the rest for the book, right?

Don Holly: “We should have stopped at five stores.”

Paul Katzeff: “If I find out you went for the money and not your passion, I’ll find you and kick your ass.”

Jim Reynolds: “Don’t carry an umbrella.”

Steve Colten: “I haven’t been on that road in ten years. We use a helicopter.”

Mayor Willie Brown” “I can hear him, Mike. I’m not deaf. Now where are the Brazilian dancers you mentioned?”

Christopher Schooly: “We were like the panther.”

Mike Ebert: “I’m tired of the wine analogy. I’m in the coffee business.”

David Griswold: “Can you believe the front desk just let me into your room?”

Christian Wolthers: “I just got lucky, that’s all. I was in the right place at the right time…well, I should say, my containers were.”

Bruno Souza: “It’s called caipirinha…very little alcohol. You can drink many more.”

Paul Bassett: “The kangaroo meat adds a savory flavor that compliments the espresso.”

Marty Curtis: “There’s no such thing as a smokeless roaster. A smokeless roaster is a bomb.”

Ted Lingle: “Hire compassionate people. We can teach them about coffee, but we can’t teach them to be compassionate.

Martin Diedrich: “He’s probably right. We should have stopped at five stores.”

Duane Sorenson: “If this is not the best Papua you’ve ever tasted, I’ll pay you to drink it.”

John Gant: “It is about rogues, the elephant, the coffee, the business, the search, and about us coffee people.”

Geoff Watts: “A great cup of coffee is more than just a riveting sensory experience. It is in fact a small miracle.”

Peter Giuliano: “He asked me if I believed in fate.”

Rob Stephen: “I was fairly disappointed to discover that I was suddenly part of the second wave.”

Ward Barbie: “If I thought they would actually fire you, I would have never demanded it, you know what I mean?”

Erna Knutsen: “Write it all down, tell all the stories, don’t keep any secrets.”

Paul Songer: “What is defective to the constructionist may be interesting to the romantic.”

Lindsey Bolger: “I love you but it sounds like you’re blaming the farmers.”

Alf Kramer: “Someone has taught you to toast like a Norwegian, I think.”

Terry Davis: “The first question I’d ask them is, Do you have access to the capital you need to grow the company?”

Laura Sommers: “Well, I think we all thought you would be the one.”

Ellie Matuszak: “You see, there it is again, The Paradox of Choice.”

Mark Prince: “Ice is a legitimate part of the taste experience.”

Dismas Smith: “No, we want to start a barista guild…the coffeehouse owners can start their own guild.”

Mark Inman: “Ferguson knows where all the bodies are buried.”

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www.freshgroundconsulting.com

On November 22, 1963 John F. Kennedy, C.S. Lewis, and Aldous Huxley all died within a few hours of each other. In his 1982 book, Between Heaven and Hell, Peter Kreeft imagines what it might be like if the three of them met after death and had a conversation about the really big question: life, death, and everything (spoiler: Kreeft doesn't believe the answer is "42").

The book is entertaining and thought provoking, if necessarily manipulative and bias toward the point of view of C.S. Lewis. Lewis fills the role of Socratic moderator/inquisitor and "theist" aside Kreeft's versions of Kennedy as humanist and Huxley as pantheist. Lewis gets all the good lines (Kennedy: Where the hell are we? Lewis: You must be a Catholic…and I’m pretty sure you’re wrong about the location) and one imagines these men, wherever they may be, taking exception to the words being put into their mouths, including and perhaps especially Lewis. But for observers of Socratic inquiry, or Spock, or classic Christian apologetics, it is a good primer and illustrates how far most of us drift away from any approximation of logic or honest argument on most important questions. In my view, some of the arguments in the book are flawed, not in their above-ground construction but in their underlying assumptions, or the sources of authority upon which they are built.

I suppose I will always feel most aligned with faith as a purely existential experience and with the value of doubt, which, as a tradition, has been honored in many of the world’s religions, including Christianity, though not generally the western evangelical variety. This may or may not be a cop out. Ask me again tomorrow.

Kreeft’s  book came to mind a few days ago, when Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson died within a few hours of each other. I kept thinking about it until it became clear I had to write something down. Now, I cannot claim to have been profoundly affected by the lives, careers, or deaths of these two people. I enjoyed much of Michael Jackson’s music but I never purchased an album. I was a incidental observer of his life, not out of choice, but because I own a television. As a young teenager, I was a fan of Charlie’s Angels in the way that young teenage boys were fans of Charlie’s Angels. I did not own Farrah’s famous poster, but several of my friends did. Still, I was never alone with one long enough to create a memory.

Other than some generic despondence over the human condition, and some sharp stabs of empathy upon catching a glimpse of Ryan O’Neil’s face while flipping through the channels that night, I had little personal reaction to the deaths on that day. But having read the Kreeft book at least twice, the idea of a conversation between Farrah and MJ after death would not leave me alone. It was nothing complicated or profound that occurred to me, no message,  just a brief exchange in a taxi cab.

If I have any aspirations whatsoever as a writer, especially one who is trying to return to his creative writing roots after many years in the business writing wilderness (greetings to my clients...thank you for your business...I love you all), it is better to listen to impulses such as these, as useless as the outcome may seem. So, I wrote it out my little scene and, after much internal debate, decided to post it on my personal blog. Why? Because whatever else I am, I am a writer too and it's about time I get back in the habit of admitting it without apology, and a writer needs readers, even if they be only two (hi Jen).

I have not attempted anything as ambitious or clever as Kreeft, or anything ambitious or very clever at all. I had a short vignette bouncing around in my head that needed to get out. That’s all. The exchange below does not necessarily reflect things I believe in or things I do not believe in. It’s just a bit of imagining to excise whatever it was that these two public deaths and reactions to them set off inside my brain. And the magic of the blog is, I get to do that, regardless of…well, regardless of anything that could come after the word regardless.

As is often the case when I try to write an introduction to something, the things I really want to say are mostly in the introduction itself.

With that ringing endorsement…

Last night while I lay, I mean, sat on the couch watching The Golf Channel, I mean, The History Channel, my dog started growling out on the back patio. At first, I thought she must be growling because she forgot that “lay” is past tense for “lie,” which means to recline (though not necessarily to relax), but it is also the correct form for the present tense of depositing an object, to lay something down. This is a very frustrating grammatical reality, but must be absolutely infuriating for a dog, as evidenced by the fact that she had graduated from growling to full blown barking. So I went outside to explain “lie, lay, lain” and “lay, laid, laid” to our dog, Sookie. I thought a nine-quadrant matrix would work best as a visual.

But Sookie was not barking at the insanity of correct grammar. You see, like most pet owners, I project my thoughts and behaviors onto my dog.  I am the one who growls and barks at grammar, not my dog.

Sookie is a Jindo/Sheppard mix (i.e. Korean/German...Hyundai/BMW, or maybe Kia/Audi)), very territorial, loyal, and protective of her family. So, she sends a few barks over the bow of anyone who steps onto the property or thinks about stepping onto the property. I’m quite certain she would go tooth-to-bone on the mailman if given the chance, but if she sees him while out on her walk, she ignores him. It’s all about turf.

Last night she was staring into a group of potted plants, barking and growling and generally attempting to look bigger and badder than whatever it was that had her attention.

Imagining some small animal cowering among the pots I went over for a closer look. Sookie did not stand down or even acknowledge me when I reached her side, as if whatever it was might escape if she let down her guard.  I looked but could not see anything. When I moved a vine from the tomato plant to get a better look, Sookie darted in toward one of the green tomatoes and then quickly withdrew with a half growl half bark, a warning that she was serious about something.  I reached in to touch one of the tomatoes and Sookie followed my hand in and then pulled back again with dog-like-cat-like reflexes.

The dog was barking at the tomatoes.

I told my wife, Jen, when she came outside to see what was happening, that the dog was barking at the tomatoes. I said it twice because, well, they were words I had never uttered previously in my life and such phrases deserve repeating.

The tomato plant, complete with several small and mid-sized green tomatoes had just arrived on the back patio that day and although it had been resting in its new home for several hours, the shiny green skins were now reflecting the porch light, making them stand out among the surrounding plants.

But Jen wanted to be sure and went back into the house for a flashlight. There are a number of stray cats in the neighborhood and our backyard offers several discreet locations for depositing a litter. Jen wanted to make sure there wasn’t a baby kitten or possum or some such chew toy hiding in the shadows. While she was gone, I moved the tomato cage several times, causing the tomatoes to move and Sookie to do her dart-in-for-the-kill-but-then-change-her-mind routine.

The flashlight revealed nothing and after several minutes of my talking baby-talk at the tomatoes, Sookie either lost interest or decided once and for all that I am a complete and utter numb-skull and wandered off.

We have a weird dog, I guess. But I can’t help thinking that maybe she knows something that we don’t know and I have had a second and third look at those tomatoes in the light of day. Sure, they’re just tomatoes, right? Probably. Maybe. Worst case scenario, they are actually alien pods waiting for a signal from the mother ship before they take over our bodies. Nah.

I did look up the recipe for fried green tomatoes, though.  You know, strike first, strike hard, no mercy. That's how I roll.

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So, my first ever blog post, Superman’s Mute Canary, may have conveyed the idea that I am a skeptic when it comes to hope, or worse, that I’m one of those emo-cynical types we tail-end boomers are young enough to know about but too old to really understand. Like my parents were with Wacky Packages trading stickers.

Au contraire (that’s French for nuh-uh).

Remember the character of Andy, played by Tim Robbins, from Shawshank Redemption? He was friends with Red, played by Morgan Freeman.  At one point, somewhere in the second reel I think (this is how we talk about movies in LA), Red takes exception to Andy’s seeming reliance on hope. Andy insists that they should not give up hope, while Red believes that hope, at least for men in prison, can leave you one beer shy of a six pack.

Andy chooses hope, clings to it and even appears mesmerized by it to the point that his pals think he might be out of his tree and about to commit suicide. But Andy isn’t bonkers, he channeling Warren Buffett, who said (didn’t you read my first blog post?) that HOPE IS NOT A STRATEGY.

Andy not only has a strategy, he has a plan, a plan only the mind of Stephen King could dream up for escaping from prison.  When Andy looks dreamily off into the distance and talks about hope he’s not talking about Chuck Norris repelling unexpectedly from a helicopter to sweep him up to freedom. He’s not talking about some uber-liberal member of the parole board who likes his dimples and lobbies for his release.  And, he’s not talking about faith. His friend, Red, was talking about faith, I think. Not faith in God or heaven, but faith in anything around them to deliver freedom.

I’m not talking about faith. That is for another day, another blog, another world maybe. My point or my questions or the nails in my soapbox amount to this: Hope happens. Yes it does. Sometimes it’s the sun that does it, or the caffeine in your coffee. Whatever. It happens. So what? Then what? Unless it’s attached to something it is just a cheap high.

Not long after Andy escapes, Red is paroled and sent back out into the world where, despite his freedom, hope does not appear…until, he has a plan. The plan is accompanied by these words from Andy: “Remember Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”

But what isn’t said but is said by the movie is that hope never dies as long as you are moving toward, or not even toward but striving for the thing you hope for. Hope blossoms in Red because he has a plan. He has a strategy. Get on a bus and head for Mexico to find his friend.

No, hope is not a strategy Mr. Buffett, but a strategy can ignite hope. And that’s what I think about hope. Good feelings feel good, but get on the bus. Feeling hopeless, Mike? What’s the plan?

As he makes his way to Mexico on the bus, Red, who told Andy that hope can drive you crazy,  says in voice over: “I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend, and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope.”

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I have nothing to say but I have gathered, unintentionally and over the years, a personal index of what others say around the idea of hope. The things that others say about unfathomable topics are comforting, of course, especially when the words are attributed ultimately to someone who keeps the blueprints for the universe on file in his office, in a file cabinet made of gopher bark, no doubt. It's nice to know that others, omniscient or not, have arrived at some conclusions. But I am on the verge of a bottomless digression, so on with it.

Emily Dickinson famously versed that "hope is a thing with feathers." The poem goes on to describe hope as Superman's mute canary, or maybe Yankee Doodle Pigeon. Neither rain, sleet, snow, nor Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines can drop this bird.

(For those of you of a certain age or those of you who watch retro-toon channels, it will now take about 37 minutes for the song, "Stop That Pigeon" to stop repeating in your head)

Nearly the best part about Emily's portrait of hope is that the super-bird lives in our soul. Nice. What better home for a ubiquitous if ambiguously defined concept than inside another ubiquitous if ambiguously defined concept? But I like it. I have learned that success is not only about showing up, it's also about gaining access. But I don't have to figure out how to get face time with hope or get hope to visit my website or read my resume. According to Ms. Dickinson, I don't have to stalk hope. Hope is in my soul right here...or maybe it's over there...but it could be under here, about two inches to the left.

Then there is Woody Allen, and Woody Allen is the best part of Emily's poem. Years ago he published a collection of stories, many of them having appeared in the New Yorker. He named the collection Without Feathers because, well, his persona as a comedian and humorist was a man without hope, or perhaps more correctly, a man who has hope but it looks like a plucked Cornish hen and never takes flight. Now that I think about it, I'm sure that is what Woody Allen's hope looks like, a featherless bird furiously flapping its buffalo wings.

But never mind that, the book itself is hilarious.  The first time I read it was on a road trip. I sat in the back seat reading and laughing so hard and so often that the other people in car became annoyed. You see, while the existence of the soul and therefore a bird cage for Yankee Doodle Pigeon might be dubious for some, myself among them at times, laughter is as tangible an experience as exists, and an experience within which hope really does take flight. It is difficult to despair while laughing, is my guess. Unless you are the caped crusader's arch enemy, The Joker.

This, I think, is why I watch comedy at night. Sir Francis Bacon said (and I'm paraphrasing here) that hope makes a great breakfast but a lousy dinner. The morning time, especially under the influence of good coffee, holds out the hope of many possibilities, accomplishments, wins, new starts. Anything can happen. At night time, it's all over. This morning-time optimist club to which most of us belong (again, except for The Joker) reflects the seduction of hope and a siren song I try not to hear.

Which brings us to my very favorite saying about hope, most often attributed to the Oracle of Omaha himself, Warren Buffett, and the antidote to high hope and the accompanying crash. Buffett said, "Hope is not a strategy." Hoping for things to happen is, for me, the quickest path to depression. Planning for things to happen can take me through the day and to my pillow on an even keel.

But then again, as a good friend of mine said, "Hope may not be a strategy, but it's a hell of a campaign slogan."

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