4:44PM
Happy New Year's
Wednesday, December 29, 2010 at 4:44PM
I and mine are disappearing to the north to baptize our two Ethiopian daughters in an extended family celebration.
The break will do me good. Nearly recovered from ear surgery, and beat after penning about 70,000 words for Wikistrat since early November.
Looking forward to 2011. Hoping it treats you better than 2010 did.
See you again on Monday, the 2nd of January.
Reader Comments (2)
God Bless.
Your Ethiopian daughters remind me of a relationship that was both happy and sad. In the late 1950s I went to an aviation management college that had outreach toward other countries. One of my friends was a young Ethiopian aviation military officer who had been sent to our school to learn advanced American methods. We were in one of the conservative states still trying to curb blacks, and store and restaurant managers got up tight when we went there. But when the learned he was from Ethiopia, and experienced his warm and smart sense of humor, they welcomed him. It was an interesting insight at the time.
Years later I was attending an Air Force management training course and learned there was a class of Ethiopian techs going to a course in the next room. At the next break, I talked to them about my friend, to see if they knew him. They got very up tight and would not talk. Later, one of the students talked to me privately. He said my friend had been using the US 'partnership' approach with enlisted personnel to understand and solve technical and management problems. He did not change when the military bureaucracy told him to change because it was not the 'Ethiopian' way, and could help undermine public support of government leadership. His father was given the option of getting him a pardon, but did not. My friend was executed.
That is not Ethiopia today, and it was the regional conflicts, and abuse of military power by European countries that later caused that 'up tight' period of their history. But I reflect on that experience when US sends tech oriented thinkers to modernize countries with cultures influenced by such difficult histories.
Your people oriented bottoms up approach is great. I hope my friend is in heaven and blesses the baptism.