Dateline: SWA Flight 227 from BWI to PVD, 14 September 2004

Any Bears fans should avert their eyes through the first para:

That was one fabulous win last night by the Packers. Yes, the Vikes and Eagles both looked good, but both were playing at home against weak (Giants) to middling (Cowboys) teams, whereas the Pack won on the road against the NFC champs. What was impressive about the win was not just the butt-ugly 100+ yardage that Ahman Green cranked (not a pretty run in the bunch), nor Favreís complete lack of mistakes, but just the confident way they played against a team nobody (check out the ESPN pregame) picked them to win. And you gotta like a defense that blitzes that effectively. Only one game, yes, but a very good one.

Okay, now that thatís out of my system, I wish I could report we (me and my webmaster) saw it coming before yesterday but we did not. So we too were a bit surprised at having the site shut down by the provider for exceeding our bandwidth flows. Real problem is that the C-SPAN broadcasts created such a huge demand for the slides, that when I direct these people to the Pre-Production Storyboard pages, all that graphics downloading taps out our allotment. Yes, we immediately put in to have it boosted dramatically, but I wonít pull the slides, because to me they are interesting artifacts of the book-writing process, and more than anything, I see the site as an archiveóprimarily for me. Having the slides on the site allows me to beg off the many requests for a copy of the PPT file itself, something I simply donít hand out.

Why? Itís my baby and my lifeís blood, so why in hell should I simply hand it over to anyone on the web who asks for it? So instead of handing it over, I direct people to the static slides, which, because the brief mutates constantly, grow older by the day. You might say, ìYou need to spread your word, so why not put the brief online?î First, the animation doesnít work online, and second, I wrote the book for that purpose. Thatís a message I spent months getting down just so. That can never be with the brief, which is just a bunch of whirling images without the oral soundtrack. ìBeing thereî for the oral pitch is what I do, so I resist efforts to separate me from the material, just as I insisted (along with editor Mark Warren) that the book be written in a very first-person style. I didnít spend a career getting the vision to this point to have it casually unleashed upon the world; I want to control that process as much as possible, primarily because I fear misinterpretation.

So, everyone who wants the brief emailed to them as an attachment, understand it will never happen. Meanwhile, we buy more bandwidth to accommodate all the downloads, and life goes on.

Today I was in DC to do a repeat of the C-SPAN broadcast: same theater at Fort McNair, same college (Industrial College of the Armed Forces), same guy introducing me (now good friend Paul Davis), and pretty much the same package (with about a dozen or more changes sprinkled throughout the slides). Only thing different is the crowd. Last June I just caught the tail end of the school year, briefing the entire class on its way out the door. Their big complaint in the feedback was, ìWhy didnít we get this material at the start of the year?î So here I am back again in roughly three months, doing a repeat performance for this yearís class at the start of the school year. Combine this brief with the one I seem to give every year now to the Naval War College class, plus the one I scheduled to give at the Air War College in Alabama in November, and weíre really only talking about the Army holding out at this point. But good news on that front as well: finally got the invite from Ft. Leavenworth and the lessons learned/warfighting lab down thereóand so life goes on.

I flew in last night even though I am not talking until 1330 today. Why? Two big reasons: one, I donít like to fly there and back on the same day; and two, I donít like to fly the day of a brief as long as the long I offer at Fort McNair (the mega, 50+ slide version). You have to remember, this is one long, one-man show of almost three hours of me talking in strict synchronization with the slides. Thatís a lot of RAM and hard-drive usage. My CPU is cranking at just under 100 percent the whole time, which means I canít let my mind wander much during the show. It is an exhausting affair. Sometimes I can barely talk afterwards, and often, about a third of the way through, I catch myself wondering if Iím going to make it to the end that day, or should I just bag it and walk off the stage for once.

But I never do. Once in the show, itís all about finishing. Much like playing a long piano piece (I just started Beethovenís 8th Sonata, Opus 13, Adagio Cantabile), once youíre in, you donít stop until you hit the finish line. Itís almost instinctive.

So I have a fairly strict routine for a show this long: get there the night before (not late), get a good night sleep (no, the beer and the game didnít help, but the 1330 start did), and then find some way to busy the mind right up until the show. Then leap out of my hotel room, dash across town, and show up just in time to start the show without much forethought. Then itís bang-bang-bang until youíre done, and then you canít believe you just talked non-stop for almost three hours straight. In many ways, it reminds me of running the marathon: best not to think about the finish until you can see it. Until then, stay within yourself, working each stride to the best of your ability.

Yeah, much like the Packers last night.

I must say, though, that it is weird to be traveling alone again, after three weeks with Vonne and two weeks with baby Vonne Mei. I always miss my family on the road, and it feels nice to realize I miss Vonne Mei as well, even the 3am feedings she sometimes insists on. But it does feel normal to be alone on the road again, which is almost always how I travel. Like anybody, I have routines and preferences, and while traveling with Vonne was great (I remembered why I originally loved hotel rooms as a young man), itís nice to be off the tour bus.

The brief went okay at NDU. I say okay because I started awfully slowly and had the break much later than last time. It always amazes me how no two briefs are ever the same, despite my using the same material by and large. Today, however, I was guilty of trying out new material, which never goes quickly, plus I loaded up the brief with even more slides than last time. Going right to the edge of my time limit, I only answered one question, which made me feel bad, but I offered to answer any by email if sent. I also signed maybe 40 copies of the book, which is always nice. Also got an interesting invite to a policy "writing group" inside State (they were there checking me outóapparently PNM sits on more than a few desks there, like DepSecState Armitage), and heard of an NDU negotiating exercise that is going to use the concept of splitting the force into Leviathan and Sys Admin as a bureaucratic scenario to be played out by students in coming weeks. Also looks like I'll be invited to brief all the new one-stars in the congressionally-mandated Capstone program (another guy checking me out). Add to all that I get an invite via my Blackberry to brief the Defense Science Board, a high-level group of grey beards who advise SECDEF (been waiting on that one for about a year or more). So clearly, the vision is picking up steam

All in all, a wonderfully reinforcing experience, even if it wasn't my best performance (alright, alright, the "St. Pauly girls" from last night didn't help, but I can't watch the Pack without tipping a few back; anyway, my "bad performances" tend to exist only in my mind, as several who had their books signed said I was much better "live" than on C-SPAN).

Today I offer another review. This one is from a local Democratic party newsletter in Pennsylvania. Itís a great review that shows the book in the way I like it most to be interpreted: as fundamentally compassionate and driven by a need to care about the world outside our bordersóeven outside the Core.

Following the review, hereís todayís catch (all from the Washington Post, becauseódamn it!óIím in Rome):

■Sometimes a banana is just a banana in North Korea . . .
■Why I can't vote for the big-government Republicans
■Maintaining the "grip" is what maintains connectivityóand the Core
■India and China grappling with AIDS, each in their own bottom-up way
■Fareed Zakaria cracks the code on Iraq