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Introduction > life
I have a book coming out that may well change my life
dramatically.
March 2004
The Beekeeper Gets a Tux
Yesterday, after the YMCA team that I coach won their last
game of the season in a defensive gem (my boy Kevin playing the
role of Ultimate Disruptor!), I got fitted for a tux. The rental
shop was very male, and gave off this Esquire vibe of modern
manliness. No surprise, their coffee table was full of back
issues. So I bragged to the guy fitting me that I have an
article coming out in the June issue timed to the release of my
book. It will be a look at the Pentagon’s New Map a year after
Iraq. Mark Warren and I are editing it now.
Anyway, the guy who fitted me up was impressed. I could have
said Naval War College, or “worked for Office of the Secretary
of Defense after 9/11,” but I got the distinct feeling (and
there is so much anti-Bush feeling everywhere I go) that these
lines would have impressed little. Instead, he thought my
writing for Esquire was distinctly cool, like a warm, moist
breeze from a bottomless Britney or a bikini-clad J Lo …. [full
text]
April 2004
Out of the tunnel...
...Onto the field
End of a long day. Got up this morning and headed to
Providence Place Mall with my son to update my wardrobe—actually
to buy my first suit in a decade. Indicative of how long it has
been since I bought one, I actually asked the salesman at
Nordstrom’s where the double-breasted suits were. They don’t
carry any at this time. Oops! Hard to look suave recovering from
that one. Fortunately, the industry replacement for tall guys,
the 3-button suit with no vent, was made for me. So I stocked up
and got a tuxedo to boot (already set to use the latter in NYC
in a couple of weeks when
my Mom is up for an Edgar for her non-fiction study of female
protagonists in mystery literature), laying out the bucks in
my first actual in-person purchase of clothing for myself in the
new millennium. True to my form, I’ve basically worn out all my
suits to the point where I’ve got actual holes in them, and
then, mustering a manly head of steam, I march into a men’s
department and replace my entire wardrobe in about three hours.
My wife’s threats to burn my old suits could have been a
trigger, but I don’t wanna go there . . .. [full
text]
May 2004
How long to keep running with this thing?
It’s an exciting time for me: coverage in national media,
appearing on national TV, an article in a national magazine and
a book selling smartly all over the country. That sort of heat
gets you emails like you wouldn’t believe, and offers from every
possible angle. All these transactions—both real and
prospective—can wear you out.
How to choose and how many to take on? How long to keep
flogging the book? Is this blog a forever thing or a
book-related thing? Does the vision beget some larger
organizational effort to push it? Do I incorporate or remain a
lone ranger? And aren’t we heading to China sometime soon for
child #4? [full
text]
Just me and my dad
Heading to my hometown (Boscobel, WI) with my eldest son
Kevin. It’s always a great treat to travel with one of your
children—just one. Spending that sort of time alone—just the two
of you—is so amazingly important in parenting. My own warmest
memories of my Dad center around the times we’d spend alone
doing two things: 1) Dad throwing me football passes as I ran
various routes (down-and-out, down-and-in, button-hook,
short-post, long-post, and bomb) on our front lawn; and 2)
whenever my Dad took me to the “country club” that was a 9-hole
golf course in the middle of corn fields between Boscobel and
Fennimore. The latter case was far better, because the nine
holes would drag on for quite some time, meaning lots of time
for talking, plus Dad would always take me to the bar at the
club afterwards and treat me with a 7-Up (with one of those
candied cherries on a swizzle stick) and a bag of Fritos. [full
text]
June 2004
Vonne Mei Ling Barnett was born on 4 November 2003
Yesterday afternoon I received the call from our adoption agency
in Texas (Great Wall Adoption Agency) announcing the official
"referral" from the Chinese government agency that oversees all
foreign adoptions. That referral revealed the identity of the
baby girl our family is adopting as our fourth child, following
in the footsteps of our three biological children, Emily, Kevin
and Jerome. That phone call was the official tipping point in a
bureaucratic process stretching back 15 months, and it was a
latest, most-amazing moment in our lives led together—Vonne and
I.
Our fourth child was born Yong Ling Zhou, but she will be
known to us as Vonne Mei Ling Barnett. Her original name meant
something along the lines of "the gift of harmonious chimes,"
and we will keep the "chimes" part as a legacy from her origins.
[full
text]
July 2004
That time of year for the long-term survivor
My daughter Emily was diagnosed with cancer ten years ago
last week—8 July 1994 to be exact. Found the strange lump
circling her abdomen like a shark fin on 3 July back in Boscobel
WI, my home town. Next day flew her back to Washington, saw our
pediatrician on the 5th and did the abdominal ultrasound on the
morning of the 8th. Got the call than noon and we were rushing
to Georgetown University Hospital within minutes. One kidney
came out the following morning and the fight was on.
About 500 days later and it was basically over, but then the
next phase began—survivorship. Emily is now a ten-year survivor
post-diagnosis and eight-and-a-half years post treatment. She is
what the pediatric oncology field calls a long-term survivor,
one of roughly 250,000 in the U.S. [fulltext]
August 2004
Answering the bell—personally and professionally
Yesterday was a day to celebrate all things Vonne in our
family, and as such it was a loving day full of fun stuff, after
all the usual errands were run.
First we had a long, leisurely lunch at our favorite Japanese
steakhouse in Swansea MA, getting the same chef we had for
Father’s Day. Our waitress, from Hong Kong originally, chatted
us up big time about our upcoming trip to China and our
adoption, saying our family was looking at some amazing changes
in the months ahead as we realized what it was to become a
Chinese-American in everyone’s eyes all of a sudden. Good point.
After lunch I took Jerry (our four-year-old) to “Spiderman 2”
again (he is a Spidey fanatic), while Vonne took Emily and Kevin
to “The Village,” which was so good that Emily said she had to
watch the entire movie from between her knees. Then home to a
huge cake from Mad Hatter bakery of Newport—the best cake on the
planet (I had more for a nighttime snack last night and started
back in for breakfast this morning). We ended with a baby shower
of ten gifts for Vonne and our Vonne Mei. When you adopt after
already having three kids, no one really treats it like a new
baby, so you have to treat it that way on your own—a core
definition of family I guess. [full
text]
September 2004
Tom Almighty
Getting emails on broadcast is very different than getting
them on Esquire articles. There I got a lot of hate mail (about
50% I would say), but here it's maybe one of every 40 emails, so
much nicer.
Do I wish I could spend the time to respond to all like I
usually do? Yes, but I know people value the speed of response
more than the content when they feel so motivated as to send
something off immediately upon seeing you on TV, so I try to
meet that expectation, sacrificing the content somewhat.
Plus, frankly, I just can't stand having unread email in my
accounts. Bugs the hell out of me. Plus, I just can't stand not
replying immediately if someone goes to the effort to send
something to me. Many write that this is the first time they've
ever sent an email like this, so you want to be as responsive as
possible.
Still, it all becomes a blur with that sort of volume. Not
that I'm complaining, but the time I've spent on this gets
stressful with the family, who wonder why I feel the need to
stay chained to the PC all day on a beautiful Labor Day weekend
Sunday. [full
text]
October 2004
Maintaining the balance = maintaining the passion
I get a lot of emails praising the blog for its informal,
personal tone. Most people tend to like the small details from
my life, the struggle to balance work and home, stories about my
kids.
Others, perhaps admiring me too much, chide me about such
things, saying the vision is far too important and far too
needed in today's world for its clarity to be diminished with
all this intimacy.
The emails roughly match the reviews of the book, with the
most ardent supporters of the content often being the ones
decrying the personal narrative as a waste of time.
Let me save people a lot of effort on these emails. The blog,
much like the book, is not about keeping it interesting for the
reader so much as keeping it interesting for me. That's the
baseline I have to protect if I'm going to maintain this volume
and this focus. As soon as it starts to seem like I'm serving
the blog/books rather than the other way around, I will gladly
walk away. [full
text]
November 2004
2004 Thanksgiving Rhode Island Essay Contest
Grade 7, Second Place
By Emily Barnett, All Saints Academy, Middletown
The thing I'm most grateful for is my sister, Vonne Mei Ling
Barnett. We have just adopted here from China this summer. My
parents went to China for two weeks, which is a long time. It
took them so long because it took about two or three days to get
there, then once they were there and had retrieved Vonne Mei, my
parents had to stay one week in China. After that, my parents
came back home and brought Vonne Mei with them.
Vonne Mei is the new joy of my life because she is a really
wonderful little girl. Every morning, I help feed and dress her,
and every morning, I love her more. I am so grateful for her
because now I have a sister, a sister who is beautiful. She has
almond-shaped brown eyes, tiny hands that are always reaching
and most gorgeous of all, her smile. Every time she smiles, I
want to hold her close and never let her go. My new sister is
the greatest thing in my life right now, and I'm extremely
grateful for her. I wouldn't give her up for the world.
December 2004
Approaching the tipping point
A death in my spouse's family this morning ends a tough year
on that score, so we're up before dawn on New Year's to drive
Vonne and baby to Logan airport for the flight back, leaving me
and the three oldest for several days. That'll push off the
start of my writing for a couple of days, but that seems for the
better. I am still wrapping my mind around the outline and a
couple of more days fiddling will seem good. Plus that'll give
me Monday and Tuesday to get things settled at the college
regarding my formal end date.
Interesting possibilities already coming in over the transom,
so my sense is that 2005 will be a very good year, but one of
transition. Clearly, everything will revolve around the sequel
to PNM, and looking at the outline, I realize clearly that this
will be a sequel.
That feels both odd and quite natural. Given the year I've
had and how PNM turned out, it would seem both weird and false
to simply write another book where Core-Gap, System
Perturbations, SysAdmin, etc. all seemed to vanish into the
past. I mean, what's the point of being a visionary if you're
just going to change your look with every book? Either I'm with
the program or I'm not, and I've decided I'm with it.
So I signed my contract with Putnam tonight, and it'll go out
with FEDEX on Monday, the same day I hand in my resignation to
the college—at the very strong suggestion by my superiors. Their
choice, my choice, and never the twain will meet from here on
out. [full
text]
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