The Great Helmsman passed away today, taking his last swim up the Yangsi River. Last of the Big Boys, he was, last of the great generation of movers and shakers. I was about to join the Navy when he passed, the dust hadn’t settled over Vietnam and I and was driving a Chevy about the size of a battleship to get ready. The Great Helmsman, they called him, Master of all China. Long Marcher and implacable ans serene Victor. When they began to whisper that he was ill, not able to appear in public. To couonter the runmors, he was photographed neck deep in teh Yangsi River. The West whispered that it might have been a doctroed picture. But it was him, swimming in the river, big as life and vigorous. A life force of his own.

Speaking of life, Julie Gerberding was in the paper this morning. She is the director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. I used to do the daily video-teleconference with her. She wears Chanel suits and has a dramatic streak of gray that sweeps across her forehead. She was rolling out a new surveillance plan to better track HIV infections, one that does not rely on information submitted by the various State health departments. The data instead will be stripped of personal data by 35 sites around the country and will include two antibody tests that will show whether or not the infection has occurred within the last six months. This is important, since there was no means for DCD to tell anything about the rates of infection before. So this is a good development and I applaud the efforts of the Department where I used to work.

Singapore reported a case of SARS this morning to much consternation. The last reported case was five months ago, and the World Health Organization said the corona virus was eradicated. Maybe this is a real case and maybe it is not. But it reminds me that there is a genie somewhere struggling to get out of a bottle. Maybe it is the anniversary week, the in-depth reporting on the terrorists and the news that the Defense Department is responding to the President’s firm declaration about the commitment to Iraq. They are drasgging the DepSec and the Chairman down in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee and rake them over the coals. The Secretary is wisely on travel and can’t make it. Mr. Rumsfeld’s numerous enemies are coming out of the woodwork now that they sense vulnerability. Despite it all, they say the President is likely to get the additional money he has requested from the Congress, and the Army has announced that they are extending the rotational assignments in the region to a full year, just like it was in Vietnam. I don’t get the feeling that there is a firm hand on the tiller in all this. We need to stay focused.

It’s chilly today and I feel like crap. My younger boy called last night just as I was drifting off. He wanted to talk about his cell phone plan at college. Life is a lot harder than it used to be, when the Great Helmsman directed China with a will of iron. Phones were simple black units that sat on a desk, or hung on a wall, connected to it by the ubiquitous cord. It is a nice place to work. It is dark, though, not one of the big public places I am used to. There is no Great Hall like down at the Hubert Humphrey Building, nor the feel the looming majesty as I amble toward the mighty Pentagon. Not even the feeling of being in a shopping mall that I used to get at the Defense Intelligence Agency, housed in the Big Aluminum Bread Box at Bolling Air Force Base.

The office I go to now is a big enough place, but human scale. It has eight or ten floors, though I only go up to the second floor from the marble and brass-trimmed lobby. I am content with the elevators. There are four of them, and they go from the lower of two levels of parking garage all the way to the top. The garage features parking places so small that you cannot put two SUVs side-by-side. The lighting is low and the air conditioning doesn’t seem to work on the weekends. But I like my window and the Internet radio works just fine and my computer is finally working properly and the voicemail is operating on my phone. Not that I get many calls. I am still too new there, and in fact am getting more calls from my old job than from the new one. That will all settle out over time, I know. It is just a little strange this week. I’ll stay on course, gain my sea legs and things will be OK.

The Business Manager is trying to figure out the value of his estate. He is an old Colonel, balding and toothy, a former flyer of FB-111s. He has been with the Company six years. He had a set of pictures he had printed off at the office of his home. It is quite a remarkable, unlike anything I have seen here. He says it cost $1.2 for the original builders to plot the thing down in Vienna and then they went bust in the dot.com melt down. He got it for a song, less than a mil, but put three hundred grand into it to complete the crazy vision of curved walls and a pool off the dining room. I observed that it was hard to get curved furniture and he told me that wasn’t the half of it. He dreamed that what he and his wife had done might strike the fancy of some high-roller and he could sell it for a couple mil. Then he could tell the company that he really needed to cut his hours back and go do what he wants to do. I marveled that he had the ability to buy a house for a million dollars, and goggled at the notion that he put another three annual Colonel’s incomes into the place. He said it is so big that he feels like the Custodian, raking endless leaves and waiting for the real owner to show up.

I would like that, to have a home. I am a little disassociated this morning, smoking cigarettes and watching the sun rise like a brillant orange ball over the city. Maybe it is the season, maybe it is the change of jobs. Maybe it is the week and the anniversary and maybe it is the start of Monday Night Football, that cruel fraud perpetrated on innocent viewers. The Network has been doing this to me since the Great Helmsman was alive, starting the game of nine at night and pushing on past Midnight to find out the answer. I went down again after my son called but I was restive and slept badly. That is going to make for a long drowsy day, and it will go on. The Doctors have invited me to talk about a project after work, and as a Business Development Guy, I feel obligated to go follow it up. Maybe I can make something happen on the business front, create a new Group for the Company and work myself into the ground doing it.

I will try my khaki suit one more time before the season really changes, maybe with a colorful dress shirt. I don’t know that anything of significance will happen today. The two kids we interviewed yesterday are on tenterhooks about employment, and I had to negotiate a salary with one, an eager young officer who survived a divorce and was starting out fresh in the corporate world. I told him I couldn’t put him on overhead, like I am, and that we had to get the contract, before we could really bring him onboard. A chicken-and-the-egg thing, I explained. Maybe we could get something temporary as a bridge. I was amused by the words coming out of my mouth, not having done anything like this since I was an assignments officer in the Bureau of Personnel. I got him for $55K, a pittance, but he doesn’t know it yet. He just needs the money. I know the feeling. I am trying to hire him to fit one-half of a twelve-hour watch. “One of the selling points,” I said like a conspirator, “Is that it would be three days on, three days off. A three day weekend every week.” I almost convinced myself. I was helping the young man to chart a new course.

Some things are constant, wherever you go. I was daydreaming over my PowerPoint Presentation on the computer yesterday afternoon. It was after lunch and my blood sugar was not right and the cool air, fresh from the conditioner, did not sugffice rouse me. Outside there was life, I could see it right through the window. I just couldn’t be in it.

I need a vacation. That isn’t going to happen today. But I could sure go for a jump in the Potomac and swim right away. Just like the Great Helmsman.

Copyright 2003 Vic Socotra