A Nice Visit

This morn­ing, the clouds parted, the rain ceased, and my par­ents and Pam and I took a lit­tle trip to Light­house Park (for the unini­ti­ated, that’s on the North Side of the Bur­rard Inlet, on the way to Horse­shoe Bay, where the fer­ries to the islands often depart from). My Dad drove us all in his rental car and we man­aged to step around the pud­dles, as it has been rain­ing for nearly a week before this brief burst of sun­shine. Then we did some shop­ping at the Whole Foods in North Van­cou­ver. The moun­tains are snow-capped and the air is clear and cool. I’m glad they got to see those peaks before they leave tomor­row (they had solid rain in Seat­tle and the first day here).

We’ve made the most of a short visit: Fid­dle­head Joe’s on Sat­ur­day Night with both my par­ents and my brother and his fam­ily, break­fast with every­one at the Granville Island Hotel, where they are stay­ing, and then a Craft Fair at the Con­ven­tion Cen­tre yes­ter­day — I was at Game­lan prac­tice, where my father and Pam watched for the first hour or so. Last night we feasted at home on cheeses from the cheese fes­ti­val at Granville Island, as well some tasty but­ter­nut squash ravi­oli, tossed in a bit of but­ter, chopped sage, and sun-dried olives. Also intro­duced my par­ents to salmon ‘candy’ (which is a local del­i­cacy — nuggets of smoked salmon tossed in maple syrup). Tonight we go to the Pacific Culi­nary School for din­ner. They’ve got­ten a good intro­duc­tion to our new home; the city, our condo, and lots of good food. My mother is as enthu­si­as­tic about the Pub­lic Mar­ket at Granville Island as I am, and now under­stands why I keep rav­ing about it.

They’re head­ing back to the US tomor­row. I hope they don’t have to wait too long at the bor­der, but for­tu­nately my brother only had to wait a half an hour on Sunday.

It's Almost Like Losing a Family Member

Those peo­ple whose last names are Trump, Per­due or even Reden­backer; While those last names aren’t always house­hold words, invari­ably, some­one will ask them “Are you related to…” (any of those famous peo­ple with the same last names). For me and the rest of my fam­ily, we were always asked “Are you related to Peter Drucker?” If the name doesn’t ring a bell, it’s because he was famous only in cer­tain cir­cles, notably amongst stu­dents and teach­ers of busi­ness and the the­ory of man­age­ment. With­out repeat­ing one of the bios that are out there (there’s a link to one at the end of this entry), Peter Drucker was an immi­grant from Vienna, like my mother, but the name obvi­ously doesn’t come from that side of the fam­ily. (Another coin­ci­dence: He and I both stud­ied at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity, and he took a course from the British econ­o­mist, John May­nard Keynes. My col­lege owned Keynes’s house, which they dubbed ‘Key­ne­side” — it was one of the two houses they had that housed grad­u­ate stu­dents. I lived in the other house, Elmside).

He’s mainly known for his 30-odd books, includ­ing “The Con­cept of the Cor­po­ra­tion”, which was pub­lished in 1946 and is viewed these days as the sem­i­nal work for the field of Man­age­ment. I remem­ber a news­pa­per ad for “The Drucker Library” (of man­age­ment books). My father clipped those words and put them on the door to (what else) his library/den. Drucker got the US Medal of Free­dom in 2002, and is pretty much seen as the ‘Father of Mod­ern Man­age­ment’. Well, yes­ter­day, Peter Drucker died at the age of 95.

Other famous Druck­ers have included Stan­ley Drucker, the first clar­inetist for the New York Phil­har­monic in the 60’s and 70’s, (Note: I’ve been informed by an atten­tive reader that Stan­ley is still the Prin­ci­pal Clar­inetist of that orches­tra. Talk about longevity!) Eugene Drucker, who is one of the vio­lin­ists in the Con­cord String Quar­tet, Michel Drucker, a now-retired TV Talk show host in France (My par­ents always found it easy to make reser­va­tions there; they’d just say ‘Drucker, comme Michel’), and it’s also the name of a man­u­fac­turer of most of the café chairs you see up and down the Champs-Elysées in Paris. Nev­er­the­less, it was Peter Drucker that peo­ple always asked me if I was related to. Pam, who has the AOL address that Peter Drucker would most likely have had, got half a dozen inquiries as to whether she was he or not, and peo­ple fre­quently mis­re­mem­bered my first name as Peter.

So, even though I never got to meet the guy, I sort of feel like I lost a famous uncle, or per­haps a cousin. Here’s to you, Pro­fes­sor Drucker, and I hope I make it to 95 as well, if not longer.

A Kindred Sentiment on DailyKos

I rarely quote any­thing 100%, but this is so great and so elo­quent (and short enough), that I felt it needed to be repro­duced in toto:

An open let­ter to George W. Bush

Dear Mr. President,I call you Mr. Pres­i­dent even though I don’t believe you won either elec­tion in 2000 or 2004.

How­ever, you’re the pres­i­dent. And you’re doing a heck of a job of it, the way your boy Michael Brown did a heck of a job as FEMA direc­tor for New Orleans after Hur­ri­cane Katrina.

I never sup­ported you. I never thought you were qual­i­fied and I thought Al Gore was well qual­i­fied. He rep­re­sented every­thing you did not: intel­li­gent, curi­ous, deter­mined to rein­vent gov­ern­ment to make it serve the peo­ple bet­ter even as the bud­get deficits Pres­i­dent Clin­ton inher­ited turned into the largest sur­plus in history.

The elec­tion of you ended that. As The Onion said, our long national night­mare of peace and pros­per­ity ended with the Supreme Court’s selec­tion of you in 2000. Deep in your heart, you know the nation did not pick you and most Amer­i­cans did not want you.

But we’re stuck with you for three more years.

And let’s be hon­est, you’re stuck with the mess you’ve made for three more years.

Three more years of dis­as­ter. Every­thing you touched has turned foul.

You’ve brought dis­honor on the coun­try. And the world is let­ting you know it. Peo­ple that loved Amer­ica on Sep­tem­ber 11, peo­ple that sur­rounded our embassies to form human shields to show their sup­port for our nation, peo­ple who lit can­dles and sang the Star Span­gled Ban­ner and pro­claimed loudly that they too were New York­ers, now despise us.

As well they should. We’ve not been the shin­ing bea­con on the hill as in the past, unless it’s a warn­ing bea­con on top of a pile of bones.

Do you really want this job any longer? Seri­ously, life has always been easy for you and as my friend Mike expressed so elo­quently the other day, being the Worst Pres­i­dent Ever is hard work.

I want to help you. I want to give you advice on how to get out of your predictament.

Walk away from the job.

And you can do it in a way that will restore integrity and honor to your name.

Walk to Patrick Fitzgerald’s office. Ask him to bring out a tape recorder. And then begin talking.

Con­fes­sion is good for the soul, and you, Mr. Pres­i­dent, need to remove the taint that stains your soul. Con­fes­sion can be cleans­ing and it can help you on the path to healing.

Tell him every­thing. I sus­pect — and I guess most of us sus­pect — that the deci­sion to out Valerie Plame as a covert CIA oper­a­tive didn’t come from Karl Rove or Scooter Libby or even Dick Cheney.

It fits the kind of thing you did for your father’s campaigns.

Ambas­sador Wil­son attacked your administration’s ratio­nale for war. And you wanted to be a war pres­i­dent and you didn’t want any­one to ques­tion that. Of course you attacked back. It’s what you do, whether it’s Ambas­sador Wil­son or Al Hunt or John Kerry or even your own father when you were a young man.

So own up to it. Con­fess. And then resign. You can return to your ranch and begin clear­ing brush. I’m sure it’s good brush clear­ing weather down there. Clear­ing brush is so clean and sim­ple. No fam­i­lies to meet with when you’ve cut down a brush at the prime of its life.

No, for your sake and the nation’s, con­fess and resign and go home. Just walk away.

And take Dick Cheney with you.

Sin­cerely,

Car­nacki.

Here’s the orig­i­nal diary entry. I think it’s absolutely bril­liant, and they speak for me as well.

A Quiet Day in Canada, a More Exciting One in the States

Had a quiet day today, mostly rein­stalling soft­ware and reen­ter­ing pass­words in online accounts. If they’ve come out, I’ll post some more pho­tos on Flickr from the hockey game we went to his week­end (the Van­cou­ver Giants vs. the Cal­gary Hit­men). Pam is turn­ing into a real hockey fan.

More Google Ad Fun
This evening, I clicked on the Reuters story: “Under fire from Democ­rats, Cheney pushes back” and saw this jux­ta­po­si­tion of ads:

The Begin­ning of the Return to San­ity?
Some of the returns have come in from US Elec­tions. There are now new Demo­c­ra­tic gov­er­nors in New Jer­sey and Vir­ginia. The Vir­ginia win is seen as a blow to Bush, who appeared with the Repub­li­can can­di­date, Jerry Kil­gore, in the final hours of the cam­paign after the Repub­li­can can­di­date had avoided being seen with the Pres­i­dent for nearly the entire campaign.

In Penn­syl­va­nia, a school board favor­ing ‘Intel­li­gent Design’ in the cur­ricu­lum was ousted — in fact, 8 of the 9 incum­bents were replaced “in an upset elec­tion that sur­prised even the chal­lengers, who had been hop­ing for a bare major­ity to take con­trol of the board.”

On the other hand, Texas voted over­whelm­ing in favor of adding a ban on same-sex mar­riage to their con­sti­tu­tion. Two steps for­ward, one back.