By John Y. Brown III, on Fri May 10, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET
Thank goodness for imaginary umbrellas and silver linings.
26 years ago this week, Rebecca Jackson (now Rebecca J. Brown) showed up to work at a Derby party my father and step-mother put on. It was a combination Derby and political event. My father was running for governor (term limits at the time prevented him from seeking a second term in 1983 so he had to wait until 1987). He was ahead in the polls but there was this fella named Wallace Wilkinson who was getting attention for proposing a lottery and he had a new hotshot campaign manager named James Carville, who had just come off his first major campaign victory and was looking to make a name for himself.
But 26 years ago yesterday isn’t about politics. But rather romance. I had invited a friend of mine to join me, Andy Blieden. Andy and I had been friends since high school and he was determined to fix me up on a date. The week before we had met for dinner and Andy asked when I had last been out on a date. I answered somewhat jokingly, “Let’s see, this is Thur. So….Wed, Tues, Mon…Um…About 8 ½ months since my last date, give or take a week.” That did it for Andy.
At the party, the outgoing and slightly intoxicated Andy, struck up a conversation with one of the Southern Belle’s greeting guests. He asked her what her name was. “Rebecca Jackson,” she said. “Are you dating anyone?” Andy asked point blank. “No, not right now.” Rebecca responded. “Would you like to date someone?” Andy humorously and pointedly asked. And then brought me over and introduced me.
But before introducing us, Andy pointed out Rebecca to me and said, “You have to meet this girl. She’s beautiful and not dating anyone now.” I said OK and then scoped her out from a distance. She had long blonde hair and seemed sweet and shy. I liked that. So Andy brought me to her and said, “Rebecca, meet John the third. John, meet Rebecca.”
I said, “Hi. How are you?”
“Fine. How are you?” Rebecca responded.
“Are you in a sorority?” I asked.
“Yes. Are you in a fraternity?” Rebecca asked.
“No.” I said.
After a pause, I said, “Well, nice to meet you.”
It was an inauspicious start but later in the day I struck up a much more meaningful conversation with Rebecca about such intimate topics as what she was majoring in and even disclosed my major, too. It was a start.
As the party was winding down I noticed that the group of Southern Belles were leaving the party. I went down and said goodbye and thanked them. And looked longingly at Rebecca because I wanted to ask her out on a date but she was surrounded by sorority sisters and it was too embarrassing for me to pull her aside. She seemed to look longingly back at me, but I couldn’t be sure. So I waved goodbye and as I walked away I was angry at myself for not having the courage to just ask this young lady out. I let her get away.
I missed my chance. She was gone.
Or so I thought.
A few minutes later while I was talking to a photographer working the party, I looked up and saw Rebecca walking toward the house. She had made up a story to her sorority sisters that she needed to go back inside the house to retrieve an umbrella she left behind. She never had an umbrella but wanted to give me another chance without all the other young ladies around to come up with the gumption to ask her out.
I saw her and without thinking went with my gut, “Rebecca. Hey there. Can I talk to you for a minute?”
I said, “You know. Um. ….Maybe sometime, um. We can, you know….If you want to….go out, or something.” Rebecca coolly said, “Yeah. That would be OK.” She added she was moving out of her sorority house and into an apartment that week and didn’t have a new phone number yet. I wrote down my phone number and said, “Why don’t you call me sometime, when you get settled in?” She grimaced slightly and I realized giving Rebecca my number and asking her to call me was not the proper way to ask a true Southern Belle on a date. I quickly recovered by promising to call her sorority in a couple days before she moved out.
I had her number but she didn’t have her umbrella. But achieved her goal of giving a shy guy a little extra time to do what she knew he wanted –and needed–to do.
And I’m awfully grateful for that. And will always have a soft spot in my heart for umbrellas, real and imaginary. Because that one umbrella changed my life forever—and without it I would have missed marrying my soul mate.
Three weeks later, my father lost the Democratic primary for governor to Wallace Wilkinson—but there was a silver lining. I came out a big winner and won the heart of a loving lady now named Rebecca J. Brown. And she won my heart. By a landslide.
I’m not sure what I’m whispering into Rebecca’s ear in the picture above on the afternoon or our wedding day 4 years later…..but it could have been something reaffirming my profound gratitude for sliver linings—- and imaginary umbrellas.
The world is still waiting for an unpredictable take on George W. Bush, whose dedication of his presidential library has spawned mostly commentary that can be pegged from knowing the writer’s pedigree: liberals who downgrade Bush for a war he could have declined and a recession he arguably could have avoided, but cite his relative moderateness as proof that today’s Republican Party is caught in a fever; hard-core conservatives lamenting that Bush spent promiscuously and short-changed social issues, and appointed the Obamacare-saving John Roberts; and center-right conservatives observing that Bush at least understood the value of a conservatism that appealed beyond the Republican base. (a point that I have made in past columns on Karl Rove and Jeb Bush).
I’ll forego those arguments for now to make another observation that Bush’s admirers and detractors gloss over: Bush happens to be the rare president who made a practice of being indifferent to the legacy building implications of his office. He said as much on several occasions (and was ridiculed for it) and his comments reflected a mindset which governed largely in the moment with no pretense of a signature governing vision. Consider the many plays this ad hoc style played out.
Where Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan had specific and in their case diametrically opposed conceptions for the long term relationship between the world’s military superpowers, Bush’s foreign policy was really just a stop-gap. He bought into the intelligence that Iraq was a budding security threat, wiped its leadership out, and spent five years massaging the results with little trace of a broader strategic design (the neo-conservative rhetoric about democratizing the Middle East never got much more than lip service from Bush, who easily accommodated the region’s other autocratic regimes). While Ronald Reagan actively sought to dismantle the framework of liberalism, and Bill Clinton and Barack Obama openly attempted to redefine their party and their opposition, Bush seemed notably uninterested in weaving a long term or even distinct short-term ideological blueprint. His signature domestic victory, No Child Left Behind, was technocratic and did not lean hard to the left or the right; the prescription drug benefit was similarly ambidextrous: insubstantial and loophole filled on one hand, the first expansion of Medicare in forty years on the other. And once the drug benefit passed, he barely mentioned it, much less tried to expand it into a template for how a conservative reformer might tackle health care in its broader dimensions.
Even when Bush overreached, as I argued then and would still argue now, in the way he waged the war on terror, it should not be forgotten that the bulk of what he sanctioned happened in the shadows, without Bush ever outlining in any concrete way a new formulation of American interrogation or surveillance policies. When “caught”, the Bush team, more often than is remembered, either reined themselves in or minimized the scope of their departure from preexisting laws. And Obama’s wholesale adoption of those same techniques, only substituting drones for torture, makes them already look more like another chief executive pushing for more authority than some uniquely Bush based doctrine.
It’s worth remembering that Bush actually tried to preserve an assault weapons ban, but never spoke of it; tried to roll back farm subsidies while doling out new oil subsidies; pinched pennies in specific agencies without even faking a grand deficit reduction strategy. The absence of any memorable Bush speeches on domestic policy is not entirely a function of his famous inarticulateness, but reflects the fact that so few Bush initiatives kept his own administration’s attention.
Read the rest of… Artur Davis: Yet Another Way of Looking at George Bush
By John Y. Brown III, on Wed May 8, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET
“Weight where you are the healthiest and happiest”
I was talking to my wife this morning about me losing a little more weight.
Rebecca asked me to think back and ask myself what was the weight I felt the healthiest and most comfortable with myself and to make that my ideal weight and try to attain it.
After reflecting for a few moments, I had my answer and responded to Rebecca.
By John Y. Brown III, on Tue May 7, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET
Practical and helpful negotiating advice I learned from my father
“Give a little, take a little, but don’t break up the game.”
We need each other and the best long term strategy for being someone wants to so business with is to be fair to others.
They deserve it and will appreciate the respect —and help the “game” keep going (and with you in it).
It takes more energy to be rude than pleasant. And is a sure indication that a sense if inferiority is masquerading as superiority.
You will go farther in life being average and kind than smart and condescending: Besides who wants to “play” with people like the latter category anyway?
Be a person who gives and little and takes a little and is in the game.
By John Y. Brown III, on Mon May 6, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET
Re-thinking old assumptions and Prince Charming.
We go through life locked in to certain beliefs, goals and aspirations. That is fine but many of the beliefs we carry with us at ages 20,30, 40 and beyond are based on subconscious decisions we made when we were children. We adopted a belief about ourselves, the world and what we wanted to do in life and, in many instances, have never pulled out those beliefs and looked at them from an adult perspective. Maybe they were good assumptions we made about life and we decide, as an adult, to keep that belief. But others won’t be as sensible to our grown-up selves as they seemed when we were, say, age 10.
Think about Prince Charming. Ladies this is for you. We men are told that all women want to marry a Prince Charming.
I am now into my 21st year of marriage to my wonderful wife, Rebecca. She once told me when we were dating all women, including her, want to marry Prince Charming. I said, “Really? Think about it. Have you ever seen pictures of the guy? He looks boring and kinda like a dandy (this was before “metrosexual” was term).”
“Sure,” I conceded, “he was handsome but what would you talk about after the first date? Probably him. It would be all about him. You can tell by looking at him. Do you really want that?”
I honestly can’t remember anything else about that conversation. It probably ended then. My real goal was to set the bar much lower for me than Prince Charming so I could step over it. I did successfully set the bar lower. Whether I have stepped over it or not is a question only Rebecca can answer. But at least I’m not a “Dandy”
By John Y. Brown III, on Fri May 3, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET
The next “Big Idea”
The most brilliant solutions are usually the most obvious. Mine is no exception. After you hear it, you will want to kick yourself for not thinking of it yourself.
I believe that given the extent of our national debt coupled with individual’s lack of retirement savings and the disappointing failure of multitasking to allow us to complete all of our errands and “action items” each day in our frantic wireless world that never turns off, we need a solution that is bold and “out of the box” — a “game changer,” if you will.
Here’s my idea to solve all these problems. It’s this generation’s Star Wars Missile Defense System. Only better.
We must use our best and brightest scientific minds to get an extension, as it were—via Mother Nature.
We need to slow the rate at which the Earth rotates. Not a lot. Just a little—so that it is barely noticeable after the first month or two (like in the 1970s when the speed limit was dropped to 55 mph to reduce our national usage of and reliance on foreign oil. Car pooling helped to.)
By slowing the Earth’s rotation to lengthen our days from, say, 24 hours to 27 1/2 hours, and our calendars from 365 days a year to 432 days a year, we will buy ourselves the much needed extra time we need to pay down the debt, put away adequate retirement savings, and finally get to check-off our entire “to do” lists including everything from that overdue oil changes to getting our dog’s nails clipped. And we’ll still have extra time left over for flossing, which we seem never to have time for in our current outdated 24/365 system.
Will it work?
I think the Japanese are already doing this and having quantifiable success. Retirement savings are up and cavities are down, per capita
We need to “catch up” and we aren’t able to “speed up” any more. Slowing the Earth to lengthen our calendars is the only thing that makes sense.
Who doesn’t love that feeling of getting an extra week to finish an major assignment you are behind on or moving a conference call you aren’t prepared for to the following week? This solution would do that for everything!
If this doesn’t work, the federal government will be left with no choice but to require the only beverage served in the US to be Red Bull–to speed us up artificially. And not only would that not work since most of us are already hopped up on caffeine, but drinking that much Red Bull daily is really bad for our teeth and causes gingivitis.
This “game changer” solution just makes good common sense! Not to mention political, economic , and dental sense.
Its brilliant but not a panacea. We should still encourage car pooling too. It can’t hurt.
By John Y. Brown III, on Thu May 2, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET
For my entire adult life whenever I would walk past a noisy bar with young intoxicated people and catch their eyes, I have always felt very intimidated—and dismissed —by the rowdy unrestrained “cool” types hanging out at places like that.
Until a few years ago, that is. I’m wearing a blue blazer and slacks and maybe even a tie. It’s not like I fit in. But I was thinking maybe I’m getting cooler with age I’m not as intimidated either. And my our eyes lock with these younger types, it doesn’t feel like they are being dismissive of me anymore.
I really liked the possibility that of the “I’m getting cooler with age” theory, until it happened again last night. And I looked a little deeper into the glazed over eyes of the 25 year old unshaven young man with tattered jeans and a hipster air.
His look of “respect” toward me wasn’t because he thought I was “cool.” It was because I reminded him of someone who could be his boss —and could fire him.
So, I’m not getting cooler with age. I’m just looking more like someone who could fire you.
And after letting that sink in a little bit, I decided, it was even cooler than being cool.
Anthony Weiner and Mark Sanford are both trying to re-assert their power on the political stage, but is there a difference between forgiving and trusting? What are the limits to political redemption and where do we draw the line?
Huff PostLIve: Originally aired on May 1, 2013
Hosted by: Abby Huntsman
Guests:
Jeff Smith @JeffSmithMO (New York, NY) Assistant Professor in the Urban Policy Graduate Program at the New School; Former State Senator for Inner City St. Louis
Caryl Rivers (Boston, MA) Professor of Journalism at Boston University
Jeff Kreisler @jeffkreisler (New York, NY) Comedian and Author
Jordan Barowitz @jordanbarowitz (New York, NY) Former First Deputy Press Secretary for Mayor Bloomberg, Director of External Affairs for The Durst Organization
Thank goodness for imaginary umbrellas and silver linings.
I said, “You know. Um. ….Maybe sometime, um. We can, you know….If you want to….go out, or something.” Rebecca coolly said, “Yeah. That would be OK.” She added she was moving out of her sorority house and into an apartment that week and didn’t have a new phone number yet. I wrote down my phone number and said, “Why don’t you call me sometime, when you get settled in?” She grimaced slightly and I realized giving Rebecca my number and asking her to call me was not the proper way to ask a true Southern Belle on a date. I quickly recovered by promising to call her sorority in a couple days before she moved out.
