intramuralist ™

For years many encouraged this former HR director to be a graphic designer. I could see things and draw them with ease, often adding that clever, artistic touch. Despite the consistent encouragement, I instead pursued a management career.

Later there was one of those “seasons in life” when I thought, “I could do that… I could be a graphic designer, too…” I even set up my own design company — working with multiple clients — corporate and individual — designing logos, storyboards, even complete marketing campaigns. It was fulfilling and fun, and many even raved at my work. There was one problem: it was never quite my actual “gift.” It wasn’t my deepest passion. While I could do it, I wasn’t certain that I should.

Yes, I could accomplish the tasks and do the job. I was able to create some fascinating designs, but there was something more — something deeper within me… something laborious… something that just didn’t flow as naturally… something that was more work than talent… more strain than strength, and more burdensome than actual brilliance.

Then it dawned on me. As much I was able to fulfill the role of a graphic designer, it wasn’t my “gift”; it wasn’t something where all flowed naturally…

• … like the highly intelligent doctor with a rude bedside manner…
• … like the articulate preacher who can’t selflessly relate to the persons in the pew…
• … or like the salesman for whom cold calling is especially uncomfortable.

Maybe they want to be a doctor, preacher, or salesman, but the necessary skill set may not be completely compatible with their actual gifts.

It’s part of what I observe in Hillary Clinton — a person who seemingly, strongly desires to be President, but yet seems so calculated and uncomfortable handling conflict. It’s what I saw evolving in former VP candidate, Sarah Palin — just a repeated awkwardness in moments of significant limelight. It’s the same awkwardness I’ve observed manifest in varied forms within Al Gore, Rick Perry, and Ron Paul, for example. While each possesses a credible resume (even from varied parties), there’s something within them that makes me question whether they also possess the actual “gifting” necessary for the job.

One of the Intramuralist’s long habits has been reading varied biographies. From athletes to politicians — from Ronald Reagan and Zell Miller to George Stephanopolous and Louie Zamperini. One of my favorite biographical reads in recent years, no less, is that of Condoleezza Rice.

Condi Rice has an incredibly impressive resume. She became the first black, female and youngest provost of Stanford University at the age of 38. She later became the National Security Advisor and then Secretary of State. She is considered an expert on Soviet and Eastern European affairs. Prior to each of those accomplishments, however, Rice had long planned on pursuing a professional music career; she is an exceptional pianist — even playing Mozart with the Denver Symphony at age 15. But Rice realized something fairly early on.

As shared by the New York Times: “At 17, she attended the prestigious summer school at the Aspen Music Festival in Colorado and came to believe that though she was a very good pianist, she was ‘not great,’ she said. ‘That was really the revelation,’ she added. ‘And it wasn’t just that experience. You start noticing prodigies, and you realize that I’m never going to play that way.’ There is ‘just some intangible’ in music, she said. Whatever it was, she said she felt she didn’t have it. She decided to major in international relations instead…”

There is just some intangible. I call that a gift… something that comes more naturally — less laborious… more talent than work… more strength than strain… an obvious, innate ability.

Just because we can do something, doesn’t mean we should. Just because we are good at something, doesn’t mean we’re gifted. My sense is we each function best when using our gifts.

Respectfully…

AR

So today it’s exceptionally tempting to talk about the plethora of games currently being played. Lest I be unclear, “games” such as…

1. Hillary’s uncanny defense of a private email account.
2. The rhetorical ping pong between the Executive and Legislative branches on who has the constitutional authority to negotiate foreign treaties. Or…
3. How (un)pleased the administration is with Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu winning a 4th term…

Oh, the games people play.

Sometimes, it seems, with all due respect, intelligence doesn’t extinguish the game-playing; it only makes us use bigger words when we play. Hence, let’s instead focus on the onset of this year’s “madness” — moving from the hardheartedness of Washington to the hardwood of NCAA basketball. After all, there are so many diverse entities and aspects to focus on…

From the perennial Tigers and Bears to multiple Bruins and Bulldogs… From the Utes, Rams, and Ducks — while I continue to ponder the ease of a duck playing basketball…

I wonder, too, what exactly a Hoosier is — although perhaps others would wonder about my precious, beloved Boilermakers (… Boiler up… always… wait… aren’t Boilermakers actually still Hoosiers?)

From Cavaliers to Chanticleers, excellent names abound, as arguably evident in those intimidating Anteaters out of UC Irvine.

Shockers will shock. Lumberjacks will lumber. Tell me: what does the color Crimson do?

We’d be amiss not to mention the Great Danes from Albany or Xavier’s far more than three Musketeers. There are also Friars and Flyers and Mustangs and Mountaineers.

For the record, Terrapins are turtles, and the Irish are one of the seemingly few allowed to keep “Fighting” in their name.

Too bad, though, that Manhattan’s Jaspers were ousted in “The First Four,” the NCAA’s catchy play-in game system (note: see “NCAA Attempt to Make More Money”). We still, though, have North Florida’s Ospreys to root for. Go Ospreys, go.

 (Oh, wait… they lost in that money making attempt, too… dang it…)

Of course, we have our more familiar Buckeyes and Badgers, Cardinals and Cowboys, along with those Sooners and Spartans. Don’t forget the Bearcats and Blue Devils, Colonials and Crusaders, in addition to the Razorbacks and Red Storm. Perhaps neither will be bested by any Terrier or Tarheel — or even Aztec or Aggie (… uh… what really is an “Aggie”?).

So there’s no Dasher or Dancer but still Panthers and Pirates… Eagles and Rebels… also, on Cyclones, Huskies, and Leopards — not to omit the blossoming Beta fraternity, represented by the Bulls, Bison, Blazers, and Broncos. 

Don’t forget the birds — the Hawkeyes and Jayhawks — nor the wilder Cougars, Longhorns, or Valvano-less Wolfpack. It’s inspiring how NC State legend, Jim Valvano, still makes so many of us smile.

Wait… did I neglect the Wildcats? Far more eyes than super fan Ashely Judd are on those ‘Cats from Kentucky, although Wildcats also freely roam from Arizona, Davidson, and Villanova. Go ‘Cats, go (… good thing they’re not playing the Ospreys…).

Oh, the games people play.

Respectfully…

AR

The Intramuralist posted last week that they don’t care if Hillary Clinton used only a private, personal email server during her entire tenure as Secretary of State.

But I do. Here’s why….

I want to know what happened during Benghazi.

Four American diplomats lost their lives on September 11, 2012. They had requested additional security measures, and those requests were denied. Then the President and the Secretary of State advanced a cockamamie story about this being about some YouTube video rather than a preplanned assault by a group affiliated with al-Qaeda. The Secretary even made reference to “an awful Internet video” at the victims’ funeral. And we are to believe that the Secretary never sent any emails during this incident?

I want to know about foreign donations.

The Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation accepted millions of dollars in donations from seven foreign governments while Hillary was in charge of United States foreign policy as Secretary of State. The countries are Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Algeria and Brunei. Sure, the foundation does some good work. But these countries have never heard of the Red Cross? I’ll bet emails from these countries were deemed “personal Foundation business” and not subject to State Department retention.

No one should be their own judge and jury.

In allegedly coming clean, two years later than the law required her to do so, allowing Hillary herself to delete who knows how many emails, she still didn’t turn them all over. There were 62,320 emails on her personal server. She only turned over 30,490, and she says she deleted the rest. Who decided which emails were State Department business? She did. Or her closest inner circle of staff and lawyers. No independent verification. “I fully complied with every rule I was governed by,” simply by her own declaration.

Are we really to believe that more than half of the Secretary of State’s email was personal?

She insults our intelligence.

Her alleged reason for keeping her email system off the grid as Secretary of State was “for convenience…. I thought it would be easier just to carry one device.”

Except I only carry one device, and I have separate work and personal email accounts on that one device. That sure was a whole lot more “convenient” than setting up my own personal server to run all of my email.

And just last month, when asked in an interview if she prefers iPhone or Android, Hillary responded, “I have an iPad, a mini iPad, an iPhone, and a Blackberry.”

Hmmm. More than one device.

There has to be more to the story.

Hillary could easily have made this whole story go away. Walk into that press conference carrying the physical server itself. Tell everyone she made a mistake in setting up her own email server, but she doesn’t have any secrets. Hand over the server and ask an independent third party to review it in its entirety to make sure the State Department obtained everything the law requires and that national security has not been compromised.

Except she didn’t do that. She deemed riding out this controversy as preferable to coming 100% clean.

She must be hiding something.

And it must be big.

– Guest Contributor

[With the Intramuralist tending to a special family event, I share one of my favorite editorials. This insightful piece was written by Taffy Brodesser-Akner, originally appearing on Salon.com in April of 2011.]

Janet and I would likely have never met, save for the thing that unites so many women across divides of income and age: fat. We met in a weight-loss group. There were six or seven of us in that group, but Janet and I were drawn toward each other. I liked her refusal to lie about what she’d eaten or rationalize it. She liked my tenacity and optimism. She handed me a business card that said her name, followed by “Ph.D., Housewife” and contact information. Clip art of an American flag appeared on the next line.

Beyond our weight-loss goals, we had little in common. She lives in Beverly Hills; I live in an area just beyond it where the potholes are reminiscent of Sarajevo and the government is broke. When we met, Janet was just closing up shop on reproduction, and I had just gotten married.

But for all the things we don’t have in common — and the papery, crumply things we do — our main difference is our political affiliation. Janet is a lifelong, passionate Republican. She does not pretend she is just a fiscal Republican, or just a Republican for Israel, as so many in our Jewish community are. She is a real, live, voting Republican. She likes Fox News and Rush Limbaugh. She admires Sarah Palin. She is for the defunding of NPR and Planned Parenthood. She is against “Obamacare,” and she is for parental notification of abortions. Right now on my Facebook page, I have linked to a New York Times article on how women’s rights are being violated by South Dakota’s new abortion laws. Janet has just posted on hers — I’m not kidding — video footage of her and her husband at target practice.

In the beginning, it didn’t matter. We were more concerned with our own mutual war on body fat. And we soon found on the periphery of weight loss the other things we had in common: a love of books and science, a hatred of hysterics. After I gave birth to my son, so far from my own extended family, her children became a local version of cousins: They marveled at his every new word, they imitated his walk, they donated the books they aged out of. Our husbands began to socialize. Before we knew it, our families were, well, family.

Word got out that Janet and I were spending time together.

“You know she’s a Republican, right?” whispered another member of our weight-loss group after I took her card. It was meant as, well, what, exactly? A warning?

Yes, I had known. Her daughters’ names are Liberty, Honor and Victory, the latter named at the time we invaded Iraq. (Her son’s name, inexplicably, is Bernard.) She owns a bust of Ronald Reagan and cried when he died, proving that she, perhaps alone with Nancy, had remembered that he was still alive. There is a bumper sticker on her very, very large SUV that says “REPEAL,” and I believe it refers to the healthcare bill. Janet and I refer to each other’s political parties as “your people,” but mostly, we try to stick to the things we have in common: budgets, schools, child-rearing. Janet wore a Tea Party shirt to my last birthday party, and my birthday present to myself was to not ask about it.

But it’s hard not to talk about it at all. When you live, say, on a coast or in a very blue state, you grow accustomed to being surrounded by people who believe like you do. You get to thinking that the only people who would dare contradict you are ignoramuses. Meanwhile, I began directing all my anger toward the Republican Party at Janet. On the day that Congress voted to defund Planned Parenthood, I found myself furious at Janet, just Janet, as the face of all that was bad in the world. Feeling sad and deflated, I wandered over to her house, unable to look her in the eye, asking her why? How? To what end?

She told me she didn’t believe government had any business funding it in the first place. That this isn’t about abortion or hating women but ways the government doesn’t need to be involved. She told me Planned Parenthood was well-funded and won’t even miss the money. “Planned Parenthood will be better off without government funding and all the strings that are presumably attached,” she said. “I sometimes wonder why liberals, who are so enamored of the freedom to do any damn thing they want, even take government money when it constricts their freedoms.”

I closed my eyes and breathed through what she was saying. Janet isn’t Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin. She believes what she’s telling me, and she’s studied the issues. That might be what is so difficult: She has the same education as I have, and yet she has made different decisions, decisions that are so counter to what I believe. Decisions I find abhorrent.

And yet, I think having a Republican friend is making me a better liberal. We need friends who differ from us. It’s easy to watch Republican extremism and think, “Wow, they’re crazy.” But when someone is sitting face to face with us, when someone we admire and respect is telling us they believe differently, it is at this fine point that we find nuance, and we begin to understand exactly how we got to this point in history. We lose something critical when we surround ourselves with people who agree with us all the time. We lose out on the wisdom of seeing the other side.

When I moved to Los Angeles, the 2004 election had just finished ravaging the neighborhood. Friendships had ended over differences of opinions, a few marriages had learned what they were made of when one couldn’t abide what hadn’t been that big of a deal before 9/11. And so when I met Janet, she was on the defensive. That first dinner at her house, someone brought up her Republicanism. I looked down into my soup, sure this was something we shouldn’t talk about. I don’t remember the comment, or Janet’s reply, but I remember my husband asking why she’d be friends with all these liberals — and yes, it was only liberals at the table — if she felt so strongly. Throwing her hands up, she said, “I guess I lack the courage of my convictions.”

But it’s not that. I don’t speak for Janet, but I think there’s something deeper at play. Janet’s willingness to associate with so many liberal friends — though I know she seeks refuge in chat rooms and magazines that share her beliefs — makes her a better and more interesting person. She has her beliefs challenged constantly. She is more well-read and educated in her politics than most of the liberals I know. Too many liberals I know are lazy, they have a belief system that consists of making fun of Glenn Beck and watching “The Daily Show.” Shouldn’t their beliefs be challenged, too?

This is a democracy, after all. Isn’t it worth understanding a bit more about why approximately half the country votes differently than we do? Isn’t it important that we understand why people — good and legitimate Americans, whose votes count as much as ours — like Sarah Palin? Isn’t it crucial we figure out why any woman would want to defund Planned Parenthood, if only so we could then address the argument? Nobody benefits from sitting in a room, agreeing with everyone else.

Last year, Janet sent me a gift subscription for the National Review. Maybe it was her way of trying, like I am here, to understand how we can be so different and yet the same. Maybe it was a wish, a kind of magical thinking, that if I knew what she knew, I would think how she thinks. It didn’t work. In fact, I now often receive solicitations for causes and candidates I find objectionable. Every time I have to unsubscribe from something, tear up a brochure or tell someone on the telephone how disgusted I am with his or her mandate, I think again about how deep our differences run, mine and Janet’s, and I wonder if this is all worth it.

Then I remember the things that don’t get discussed in our debates — how she held my hand through a recent surgical procedure, rubbing it and distracting me the way a mother would, how she calms my fears about parenting, how she has been a family to me in a town where I have none. How that right-wing, gun-loving, flag-wearing, union-busting Republican still thinks, after all this time, and with so much information to the contrary, that I can lose and keep off weight.

I can’t help it. I love her.

Respectfully… always…

AR