Thoughts on Drawing from Life

Here's an oil sketch from our life drawing session last week.  This is an 18"x24" study of our model, Robin.  We're going to have another session with a different model this week and I think I'll add a sketch of her to the background.  When I posted the last oil sketch, I made a comment about moving more towards distortion of the figure.  This past week, I realized that distortion is only valid if it's done intentionally.  If the distortion is unintentional, like this sketch started out to be, then you're not being an artist, just incompetent.  Fortunately, I was able to catch the (unintentional) gross distortions in time and correct them.  

One of the things I've found in my own drawings, as well as countless other artists, is a subconscious attempt to straighten up a figure.  If the head is tilted, we unconsciously try to straighten it up, usually with laughable results.  I did it to my poor wife last week - I was doing a portrait, but her head was slightly tilted.  What I wound up with was a good likeness of her tilted eyes, a good likeness of her tilted nose, and a good likeness of her tilted mouth ... however, they were arranged in a vertical line rather than the tilted line of her head.  This made her look as if the lower part of her head had been pulled about two inches to one side.  Ooops!  Not a good thing to do if you're hoping for a little action later that night!  I scrubbed the whole portrait out and then did the sketch of her sleeping that was posted here last week.

I saw a similar thing start to happen with this week's sketch.  As you can see, the model was leaning on one arm.  I had painted her shoulders, waist, and hips tilted, but then unconsciously arranged them in a vertical line.  A paper towel and some mineral spirits wiped it all out again, and the next try came out much better.  The moral of this story: if you know how you tend to screw things up, you're better equipped to watch for them.

Firefight in Afghanistan

I just stumbled upon a very interesting blog post.  The blog is by a military guy.  He found a video of a mortar team in a firefight in Afghanistan and posted it, along with his comments about what was going on.  This is a real-life, no-shit firefight.  The mortar team wasn't lobbing softballs, they're launching white phosphorus and high explosives.  And as you can tell from the way they're moving their mortar tube around, the bad guys are close.  The team is very composed and professional, although their language may fry some ears (hey, they're under fire, you're not).

There has been very little in the news about Afghanistan and Iraq lately, but this video is a reminder that our troops are in combat for real, right now.

Delayed Again

I am NOT a happy camper.  Yesterday morning, I found out that the doctor reviewing my records at the Corps of Engineers wanted me to have a couple more lab tests.  I had been told that test results were good for a year, in which case my results from my State screening last June were still good, but the doc decided they weren't.  So I had to get more tests done the first thing this morning.  It has resulted in my reporting date being pushed back another week.  I was ready to go this time, so the delay is very annoying.  Not to mention a bit stressful, as all this stuff is outside my control.

In the meantime, Janis has gotten me started on the honey-do list.  I spent a day mowing our yard, which is not a trivial undertaking since it's an acre on a fairly steep slope.  There are lots of other projects: cleaning out and straightening up the stacked rocks, clearing last fall's leaves out from the bushes, fixing this and repairing that.  I'm actually enjoying doing these "real-life" things again.

I've been working on improving my little MacBook.  It needed a larger hard drive - the original was 120GB and I was rapidly filling it up, so I got a new 320GB drive and put it in.  And, of course, it didn't go quite as planned.  Turned out that a small technical detail made this particular hard drive a bit more of a problem to install.  I wound up taking it to Charlotte Street Computers in Asheville and they got the new drive up and running, but even they had to do some research before finding out what the issue was.  But now it's in and running just fine.

Another upgrade was to get an adapter cable that allowed me to plug in the monitor from my old Dell computer.  This effectively tripled my screen space - pretty cool.  The last time I did something like this was on a desktop PC - I had to take it apart, put in a new video card, install some drivers, and do some finagling before it worked.  With the Mac, I just got the adapter cable, hooked it up, and turned it on.  Voila!  Couldn't have been easier.  I keep thinking that I must be missing something and that either the computer or monitor is going to suddenly explode in a shower of sparks, but no, they just keep working like they're supposed to.

A third project was to get some old vinyl records into digital format.  I have a bunch of old LP's dating back to the late 50's - some were my parents', some were mine, some were Janis's - and I wanted to get them digitally recorded so I could play them on my iPod.  I found a free open-source program online called Audacity that's pretty much like a Photoshop for music.  You can record old vinyl, cassettes, live music, podcasts, whatever you want.  I've recorded several old albums now and have discovered that it's not nearly as easy as recording to cassette was back in The Day.  With a cassette, you plugged in the cables, set your recording level, and hit the "record" button.  With this digital software, you have to do a lot more.  But at the same time, you can do more, like getting rid of the pops and crackles that vinyl always has.  And if you really get into it, you can essentially re-mix almost anything.  Pretty cool.  The learning curve takes a while and the process isn't quick - it takes me anywhere from 20-60 minutes of fiddling to get a vinyl recording cleaned up and converted into something that iTunes will play.  So if all you want is to get your old albums into digital format, it's a lot easier just to find them in CD format on Amazon or eBay and record those.  But if you've got some records or cassettes that aren't available in CD, then Audacity will do the trick.

I watched the President's press conference the other night.  It is SO GREAT to have a President who is intelligent, thoughtful, articulate, and nuanced!  Bush always sounded like a whiny little kid who was trying to wheedle his way out of being caught with his hand in the cookie jar.  Obama sounds like a true President.  He's been criticized for taking on too much - Iraq, Afghanistan, the economy, Mexico, health care, education, the environment, Guantanamo, energy, you name it - but all these things have to be addressed and won't wait.  I'm particularly impressed by his call to action to all of us.  None of the old "we'll do this or that for you", Obama has been telling us to get up off our duffs and start fixing our own problems.  Good for him.  Congress, though, has not been anywhere near as inspiring: it seems to be business as usual on Capitol Hill.  It's Republicans versus Democrats, right down the party line.  Both sides said during the campaigns that there would be more bipartisanship, but so far, I'm not seeing it.  Particularly from the Republicans.  C'mon, guys, I want to see informed, thoughtful, inspirational, and reasonable conservative leadership.  The country needs it.  Instead, you're still kowtowing to Rush (who has NONE of the above characteristics) and floundering around with Bobby Jindal (who gave a weak and partisan response to Obama's State of the Union speech), Boehner, McCain (who's not even a "true Republican"), and Palin (an idiot of the first order).  Until you find yourselves a leader, you're going to be the party of "just say no", which won't get you or the country anywhere.

It's a gray, rainy, gloomy day here in Asheville, which means that I'll be spending the day mostly indoors, doing things like writing this blog entry and taking care of Janis's honey-do's.  So now it's time to get busy.

TV Cop Shows

Ever notice, when you're watching a cop show, the detectives go to interview somebody who may have some important information, and the person they're interviewing goes on about their normal business while giving offhand comments to the detectives?  It's like the cops are no more important than some delivery boy off the street.  I dunno about you, but whenever I get interviewed by police detectives, particularly in a murder investigation, they get my full, undivided, completely focused attention.

Just a thought after watching another episode of Law & Order.

Art Thoughts

In my last post, I mentioned some oil sketches I've done since being home. Here they are:

Janis, oil on panel, 9"x12"

Soozee, oil on panel, 6"x9"

Robin, oil on panel, 20"x16"

It sure has been good to push some paint around again.  I'm going to send my oil paints to myself in Iraq and use them instead of those crappy acrylics.  It has also been great to paint from life again.  In Baghdad, I had to use photos, but here I've been able to work from my wife (Janis), my dog (Soozee), and a model (Robin).  There's such a tremendous difference in working from life.  The human eye sees things quite a bit differently than the camera does.  It picks up on subtle shapes and colors.  Skin tones, for example, are very different, even in areas that are adjacent to each other: one area will have a warm golden glow, another will be a pale and cool neutral, and another will have rich reds.  But to the camera, they'll all be the same light tan color.  And real people (and dogs) move around a bit, so you may start a painting with the subject in one position and end up with the subject in something completely different.  That may or may not be a problem, but it's something artists have to deal with.

Now that I can work from life again, I'm trying something a bit different with my figures, and you can see it with Robin above.  I'm playing more with distortions, stretching or compressing the figure, and deliberately not trying for a highly accurate representation.  I'm looking at what painting can do that photography cannot.  And in painting, the figure can be distorted for expressive effects.  When the figure is drawn in an extremely accurate manner, I find that I notice the artist's technical skill and not so much what he/she was trying to say.  When the figure is a bit distorted, then the expressive element is much easier to see.  But it still must be based in reality.  Many artists go straight into imaginary figures; I've found that whenever I do that, the image sucks.  Figures constantly surprise me: they take different shapes than what I think they should, or the color or shadows are very different.  When I put these surprises into the painting, even if the figure is distorted, it gives the painting a veracity that can't be faked.  For an example of what I'm talking about, go take a look at Peter Howson's web site.

On a slightly different note, a friend sent me an article about L. Paul Bremer.  Bremer was the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) - he was the de facto dictator for Iraq after the fall of Hussein.  Bremer is the guy who ordered the abolition of the armed forces and the de-Baathification of the government, decisions which were disastrous and whose ramifications are still being felt today.  Now, it appears, he has decided to become an artist, and he has a web site where you can see and buy his paintings.  I took a look.  I'm not sure which job he was worse at: being a dictator or being an artist.  At least as an artist, he's not having too much of a negative impact on the world, just on those poor souls who actually buy his stuff.  And no, I won't give you a link to his site.

Friday Night

A couple of days ago, I discovered that the Corps had slipped my training schedule by a week.  So I get to spend an extra week here at home with my wife and the dogs, working in the studio and around the house.  Yeah, it breaks my heart, as you can imagine.

I got to do some painting this week.  It was so good to work with oils again, as opposed to the acrylics that I had to work with in Baghdad.  I did a small oil sketch of Janis and another of one of the dogs.  On Wednesday evening, I had a life drawing session in my studio, and did a small painting of the model which turned out fairly decent.  I'll try to get some images of them up on the blog.

Come to think of it, I already promised you some pictures from my journey home and haven't posted them yet.  So here are a couple of pictures from Sather Air Force Base, which is the military side of Baghdad Airport.

Fast food in Iraq looks a little different than it does in the U.S.  And you have no idea how cool it is to see a familiar name like Taco Bell again, when you haven't seen it in months!

And if you don't like Taco Bell, well, there's always Subway and the Green Bean, which is our version of Starbucks.

Speaking of things that I don't get to see in Iraq, I'm sitting here on Friday night watching practice and qualifying for the NASCAR race at Bristol.  With the time difference, races come on the tube in Baghdad right about the time I hit the rack.  I'm a race fan, but not so big a fan that I'll skip sleep!  So it's great to be able to watch a race again.

Another thing I don't get to do over there is play with my dogs.  One of them just woke up from her 3-hour nap and is looking for some kinda trouble to get into.  So I have to go find some for her.  Right now.  

Tuesday Musings

It's been way too long since my last post.  Mostly that's because I'm bopping around the house, doing nothing much worth writing about.  It's great to be home and back in a sorta-normal routine, being with Janis, and seeing our friends again.  

One of the things I've been working on is getting the final medical clearances done for the Corps, and that's still ongoing.  It has amazed me how some of these things have been so hard to do.  For example, I needed a typhoid shot.  That's pretty easy, isn't it?  You go down to the docs, roll up your sleeve, get the shot, do the paperwork or pay for it or whatever, and you're outa there.  Ten minutes, tops, most of which is the paperwork.  Wrong!  You have to make an appointment, then get there fifteen minutes early to fill out reams of paperwork, then wait another fifteen or twenty minutes for the doc, then the doc has to talk with you for another ten minutes (to make sure you're not going to go into convulsions or something, I suppose), then FINALLY get the shot, then more paperwork.  Tomorrow I have my final appointment - this one is for an audiogram so they can chart how bad my hearing is.  And will this make one smidgen bit of difference on whether or not they send me back to Baghdad?  Are you high?

We've watched several movies on TV this past week.  One of them was In The Heat of the Night, with Sydney Poitier.  I had never seen this old classic.  I was growing up in Memphis when this was filmed, and it certainly brought back a lot of memories of the mid-to-late 60's.  One line in there caught my attention: where the town's rich plantation owner says something about how "the Negro needs to be taken care of", meaning that blacks were lesser persons who needed the benign rule by whites.  That's a blatantly racist statement, but I remember that in Memphis at that time, it was not an uncommon view.  I heard a lot of people saying things like that.  It really wasn't until after I'd been gone from Memphis for years, and then went back to visit, that I heard these sentiments for what they were.  

The next night we watched a more recent movie, Cadillac Records.  It's a recent movie about Leonard Chess and his record label, with blues artists such as Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Willie Dixon, Chuck Berry, Howlin' Wolf, and Etta James, and covered the period from around 1950 to Chess's death in 1969.  One thing that struck me was that (at least as portrayed in the movie) Leonard Chess actually practiced what the rich plantation owner in In The Heat of the Night preached: being a benign caretaker for the black artists on his record label.  I really had to wrestle with that one.  Finally I decided that Leonard Chess didn't do it because he believed his people were inferior; rather, they didn't have his education and understanding of white society's business practices.  He certainly respected them as his equals as people, so he used his skills to help them create better lives, while making himself rich in the process.

Which made me think of Iraq.  In some respects, Iraq is in a situation somewhat analogous to black America in the 50's and 60's.  It's just emerging to make its own way, no longer under the rule of a strongman or of an imposed power.  It needs some help, primarily in learning about things it has not had to deal with until now.  Things like budgeting, managing, banking, and law.  But it seems to me that the pace is beginning to pick up now.  My conversation with the Iraqi professor on the flight from Amman to Frankfurt gives me great hope for their future.  The educated ones, most of whom left Iraq either during Hussein's rule or during the violence of a few years ago, are starting to return.  

It took black America decades to get to the point where we have an Obama presidency.  I don't know how long it'll take Iraq to get to where they need to be - my guess is a generation, but they'll get there.

At Home

I've been at home for a week now.  Part of this week has been decompression from the constant go-go-go in Baghdad.  Another part of it has been it's own go-go-go as I try to get everything done so I can start with the Corps of Engineers.  The Corps follows Department of Defense guidelines for deployment and they are much more stringent than the State Department's.  At State, it's "are you breathing?  Got a passport?  You're good to go."  With DoD, it's "have you had your anthrax, smallpox, tetanus, flu, polio, MMR, and hepatitis shots?  Got a recent EKG, audiogram, eye exam, dental exam, HIV test, urinalysis, and blood tests?  Have you completed these 11 different training courses?  Got a passport?  Filled out a phone book's worth of forms?"  I was able to do a lot of stuff while still in Baghdad, but much of the medical had to wait until I got home.  So I've spent much of the past week running around getting tests done or scheduled or whatnot.  Still not done yet but almost.

I've been asked a few times what I notice most about being back home.  It's the little things, really, mostly things that I took for granted.  I can get in my own little truck and drive anywhere I want to, whenever I want to, and not have to think about the latest security warnings.  There aren't checkpoints every few hundred yards.  No guards toting AK47's.  No Jersey barriers set up in zigzag patterns, with big honking speed bumps, to slow everybody down.  You don't have to show a badge to walk into the grocery store.  The grocery store actually has a big selection.  The mere fact that there is a grocery store is an amazing thing in itself.  And these are just some of the differences between life in the International Zone and life in Mars Hill, North Carolina.

I was driving down the highway the other day heading into Asheville.  Now think about what has gone into this statement.  There is, in fact, a road there.  It was carefully planned between many national, state, and local agencies.  The land was acquired and paid for through procedures worked out over a couple hundred years.  A contract was awarded in a competitive bidding process.  Funds were identified and spent in an open and transparent manner.  The contractors had years of experience in building roads and bridges and built this particular road to modern standards.  It is maintained to modern standards as well: patched, repainted, and resurfaced as needed.  It's smooth and open, and anybody can drive on it, any time of the day or night.

This doesn't happen in Iraq.  Local, provincial, and national agencies don't work well together.  They don't know how to create budgets and have an extremely hard time spending the money they do have.  Corruption is rampant and available funds have a way of shrinking or disappearing.  There is no "eminent domain" procedure to allow for planning roads or other public projects.  There is no transparency in government.  While there are construction standards that they follow, these "standards" are subject to the whims of those in power, who are subject to all sorts of other influences.  In short, the governmental systems that give Americans something so normal as a road are dysfunctional in Iraq, if they exist at all.  

But they're getting better, slowly.  Very slowly.  Violence is a tenth or less of what it was a year ago.  The "brain drain" that took place under Hussein and again during the violent 2004-2008 period is beginning to reverse, and people with training, education, and experience are beginning to return.  I still say it'll be a generation before Iraq gets up to the level of Jordan, Kuwait, or maybe even Lebanon, but at least it's starting.

Home Again

It sure is great to be back home again!  After the last post, I went in to Washington and outprocessed from the State Department.  I am officially unemployed again.  The whole procedure at State was quick and efficient.  Afterwards, I went over to my favorite place in DC, the National Gallery of Art, to see what they had on exhibit.  One show caught my eye: a small Philip Guston retrospective, which was very interesting.  He's not my favorite artist, but he's a guy who reinvented himself and his art in a major way at least twice, which was (is) very inspiring and encouraging.  

The trip from Washington to Asheville was pretty uneventful - I got delayed, but what else is new?  Had a very interesting woman sitting next to me on the flight to Charlotte: she's a British research scientist who morphed into a marketing consultant a decade ago.  Evidently research scientists and artists have much the same economics: they're constantly trying to find funding for their projects.  If there's no funding (or the funding comes with too many strings attached), then they do something else.  Like becoming marketing consultants.  Or project managers in Baghdad.

I have to give a big thumbs-up to my hotel in Washington.  I stayed at the Best Western Dulles Airport.  It was a pretty typical mid-grade hotel, but it was very clean, the breakfast bar was a notch above normal, and the staff was exceptionally helpful.  And the price was lower than just about anybody else in the area.  I'll definitely stay there again.

It was wonderful to finally land in Asheville shortly before midnight and walk out to find Janis waiting for me.  Nothing like a big welcome home!  And I got another one from the dogs when we got back to the house.  They jumped all over me.  Janis says she's just chopped liver to them now that I'm back.  

We've gotten back into the groove pretty quickly.  It's my job to walk the dogs, and now that the weather has warmed up, we're doing it twice a day.  I've been taking care of some more screening items for the Corps of Engineers, trying to wrap the remaining items up.  Last night we went down to the Art 4 Food event that our friend Genie Maples put on - a fundraiser for the Manna Food Bank.  There was a HUGE crowd there, much bigger than I expected.  Many were my artist friends from around town and it was great to see all of them again.  I have to admit, my memory is getting shot to hell (I blame it on advancing age ... why not?) and there was more than one occasion when somebody walked up and we had a great time talking but I couldn't recall their name to save my soul.  I remembered the person, just not their tag.

We're off on a road trip today.  It's supposed to be a beautiful day, so we're going to get outa town and play.  And the boss just came in and told me to get my butt in gear.  So I'm off.  I've got some pictures to share and a few random observations, but they'll wait til next time.

The Trek

You sit sideways on a C-130, on red nylon fabric stretched like a cot, and lean against red nylon webbing.  If you're on the outside rows, your back is to the inside of the airframe.  If you're in one of the two inside rows, your back is probably against somebody else's.  You're crammed in about as tightly as the cargomasters can cram, knee-to-knee with the poor slob in the next row.  Your carry-on items aren't under the seat in front of you nor in the overhead bin, since neither exists.  Rather, it's in your lap.  Earplugs are stuffed in your ears because the plane is loud.  And to top it all off, when you're flying in and out of Iraq, you wear 35 pounds of kevlar body armor and helmet.  It's like strapping big frying pans to your front and back and wearing a football helmet made out of concrete.

But C-130's are reliable.  Baghdad was covered with a thick, dusty haze that seemed to grow thicker by the hour.  I was concerned that the flight would be cancelled, particularly when the guy in the terminal said "well, planes are landing ..." but I didn't see any leaving.  However, we were eventually lined up and marched out to the flight line and onto the plane.  In fairly short order it was buttoned up and off we went.  Amman, Jordan, was cold and wet - they told us it had actually snowed a bit the day before.  The State Department had people at the airport to meet us and we were taken to our hotels.  I checked in, took a nice long hot shower to wash off a pound or two of Baghdad dust, and went down to grab some lunch.  The hotel had an American-style Champions Sports Bar (!) and I treated myself to a big, thick, fresh-cooked cheeseburger and fries and a big ol' stein of draft beer.  It was the most delicious meal I'd had in my whole life.  Well, two or three months, anyway.  And then I went up to the room and went to bed.

I never sleep worth a hoot the first night on the road.  Something about being in a new place,with new noises, and having to get up early to catch a can't-miss flight, means I didn't get any sleep the night before leaving Baghdad.  So that six hour's snooze in Amman was heaven.

We were collected from our hotels around midnight for the trip out to the commercial airport.  Getting through ticketing, baggage, passport control, and various security points was slow but non-eventful.  I was told I'd have an aisle seat, but found out they gave me a window seat, and then when I got there, found out that a family with three or four kids had taken over the seats.  I wasn't about to wave my ticket at them (what, and wind up with two small kids in the seats next to me?  NOT!!!).  The Lufthansa stewardesses were very cheerful and efficient and found me an aisle seat instead.  We took off on time at 3 am.  The gentleman sitting next to me turned out to be an Iraqi college professor, now living and working in Jordan, who had spent years in prison under Saddam Hussein.  He was a very interesting man and we spent most of the 4-hour flight talking about all sorts of things.  Got into Frankfurt about 6 to start a 5-hour layover.

The Frankfurt terminal is one of the major ones in Europe, meaning it's big, well-stocked with stores and restaurants, and way too many checkpoints.  I wound up going through personal screening four times ... partly because I kept wandering around (with a 5-hour layover, what the hell else is there to do?) and partly because I kept getting bad information whenever I asked directions.  Eventually I found my gate, where we loaded up onto a United flight and left for Washington Dulles at about 11 a.m. for a 9 1/2 hour flight.  This time, the person sitting next to me was a little old Hungarian lady who had lived in the US for 26 years and returned to Hungary after the fall of communism there.  She was very energetic, curious, and funny, a great travel partner.  

Then we got into Washington Dulles about 3 pm.  After collecting my bags, getting through customs, and calling the courtesy van from the hotel, I finally got to my room.  I talked to my wife, grabbed dinner from a restaurant next door, and crashed into bed about 8 pm.  I was beat - and had been going non-stop for about 30 hours at that point.

Now it's early Tuesday morning.  I'm about to head into Washington to outprocess from the State Department.  Later this afternoon I'll go back to Dulles and get on a plane to take me home.  It's freezing cold here, but with the end in sight, I don't mind.  Not too much, anyway.  Just get me home!

Outbound

I'm sitting at the military side of Baghdad Airport now, having left the Embassy earlier today for the last time. Since my last post, I've been busy with packing, cleaning, passing on the last bits of wisdom to Pat (the guy who's taking over most of my duties), and all the other things associated with closing out another phase of my life.

Our weather looked like it was going to have an impact on my travel. Yesterday the wind picked up and last night it got really dusty - I mean really dusty. Looked like a heavy San Francisco fog, except it was orange and gritty. Fortunately, I knew the weather might be an issue, so I had arranged for both a ground and an air option to get my butt over to the airport today. Then this morning the skies were bright and rapidly clearing. Great day for a helo ride! So right after noon, I caught a ride over to Landing Zone Washington. I was a couple of hours early but had nothing to do but hang out anyway. Then began the Great Bag-Drag Caper.

I checked in with the air ops people to let 'em know I was there for the flight later this afternoon. The kid checked through his paperwork, but I was not on the manifest. Ooops. I had a confirmation email yesterday, so I knew I was on the flight. Then he asked if I was a State Department guy. Yep, I am. So he said, you gotta go check in with the State Department air ops office. They're on the other side of the LZ. Okay, no problem. I grabbed my bags (one wheeled duffle, one wheeled carry-on, my shoulder bag, my body armor which weighs almost as much as my duffle bag, and my helmet) and waddled off to the other side of the field. Once there, I found the air ops office and reported in. The guy flipped through his paperwork and asked how my name was spelled two or three times before deciding that I wasn't on any of his manifests. So he called and talked to another office back at the embassy. Somebody there found my name on a list (yay), only I had to go back to the first side of the LZ to check in. All right, what else do I have to do, anyway? So I grabbed my bags and walked back across the LZ for the second time to the first office. About a half hour later, one of the ops guys came out and told me that the flight I was supposed to take was cancelled due to weather. Huh? It's beautiful outside! Yeah, but not up north, where the helos were flying from - it was dusty and they were grounded. However, the State Department guys might have something flying that afternoon. So I grabbed my bags and tootled back around the LZ for the third time. Turns out there was another State Department flight scheduled for later in the afternoon and I could probably get on it. So I sat and waited.

A while later, with a bunch of us sitting there hoping, a guy with the flight manifest came out and rounded us all up. He'd scored a hop for us with a couple of military helos. Except - you guessed it - it was going to leave from the other side of the field. Now a whole bunch of us made the LZ Bag Drag trip, me for the fourth time. We stood around for a little bit and then the guy came out and said that half our group was to catch the military helos and half would catch the blue State Department ones. Guess which group I was in? So for the fifth time, I dragged my bags around LZ Washington.

Hell, with as much walking as I'd done, I could've been at BIAP by then!

But finally they took our bags and loaded us into the helos and off we went. After all that trouble, the actual flight only took about six or seven minutes. We lifted off, arched over the old Palace, down across the Euphrates, and over the west side of Baghdad. In no time we were crossing over the runways and then settling down at the military side of the airport. After collecting our bags, we were shepherded through the military facilities (big steel temporary buildings surrounded by T-walls, not exactly the most picturesque environment you can imagine) and into Sully Compound. I got checked into my room, explored the adjacent BX compound, and then had dinner at the DFAC.

Now it's time to kick back and unwind. I'll go watch some mindless TV and hit the rack. I've got an early showtime tomorrow morning for a flight that doesn't leave until much later, but that's the way the military runs things. Let's just hope that I don't have to drag my bags all over BIAP tomorrow, too!

Nits and Noids

I finished a new painting last night.  It's in acrylic, about 30"x24", more or less (I don't have a ruler), and based on a watercolor painting I did a while back.  I discovered that I do not like working in acrylics.  At least here - with Iraq's low humidity, I usually had less than a minute to use any color I mixed up.  Even then, it was like painting with tar.  The acrylics just wouldn't flow or blend or anything.  I felt like I was fighting the paint most of the time rather than thinking about the image.  It just wasn't fun.  As for the image, well, I think it's not bad for somebody that hasn't been in the studio for months.  

The painting was one of the things that I needed to wrap up before leaving.  I got everything at work done, so last night I dove into the painting and finished it.  Today I spent most of the day running around doing the checkout sheet.  It took me over a week to get checked in when I arrived, but almost all the checkout was done in just over two hours.  The rest can't get done until I'm actually ready to head out the door.  

After finishing up most of the checkout sheet, I went for a jog.  We had a really beautiful day here, fairly clear skies, temperature this afternoon in the low 70's.  It was too nice to waste, so off I went for my slow plod around the compound, waving "bueno' tarde'" to the Peruvian guards at all their posts.  (I noticed that they drop the "s" off the end of a lot of their words - took me a long time to be able to do it myself, dunno why).  Now I'm cooling off from the run before grabbing a shower and heading out to my farewell dinner.

There are three of us leaving the office permanently in the next two days.  I was working with the Corps of Engineers on their job offer rather quietly, and about the time I was finally able to announce that I was leaving, another guy in the office (who's been here for a year and a half) announced that he had decided to head home, too.  Then just a few days ago, one of our military officers, a reservist who was here on six-month orders that he was trying to extend, found out that not only was his extension not going to be approved (due to an odd technicality), but that he had to be physically home by the time the orders were up.  And when they started looking at everything he had to do with travel, outprocessing, flight availability, all that stuff, they realized, "oh, you have to leave on Friday" (this was on Monday).  Nothing like a little preparation, huh?  So our boss has NOT been in a good mood this week.  

I've written a good bit about how things have been improving here in Iraq.  Overall, it's quieter now than even when I first arrived in September.  But this morning we got a reminder that all is not yet well.  I was walking to breakfast at the DFAC when there was this ungodly loud POOOOOM from across the river, loud enough to shake the buildings, followed by a lot of rattle from AK-47's.  A lot of rattle.  One of the old hands in our office said it sounded like a 240mm mortar explosion.  It was a very sharp sound, certainly different from that of a car or truck bomb (which are usually a deep "thud").  Baghdad still gets several explosions a day from car bombs or suicide bombers or roadside IED's.  They're mostly targeted against other Iraqis, such as politicians, police, army, or judges.  There haven't been any attacks on the Embassy the whole time I've been here.  

I was picking up a few items in our little PX the other day and got to wondering about some of the things they carry in there.  Now, consider: here we are, a small group of civilians and military, living in a pretty nice compound in a war zone.  You'd think that they'd have a somewhat inadequate selection of the basics.  Well, you're mostly right.  But why would they have a whole bunch of Mad Dog 20-20??  Yeah, they have beer and wine and hard spirits because this is the State Department and not subject to General Order #1 like all military people are (General Order #1 prohibits drinking alcohol and having sex, among other fun things, and applies to all the hormone-crazed young men and women running around Baghdad in uniform).  But wouldn't you think that State Department people would want to give a somewhat better impression to the non-alcohol-drinking Iraqi natives than to have a large stock of Mad Dog??  And over on another aisle, they had a selection of quarts of motor oil and automotive paste wax.  This in a town where nobody has a private car and all the vehicles are maintained by KBR.  The only thing I can think of for the paste wax is that a lot of the military guys shave their heads these days, so maybe a coat of wax would add that final sheen.  Can't think of any use for the motor oil, though.

'Nuf for now.  Gotta get rolling.  Have a nice day!

Wrapping Things Up

I'm scheduled to leave the Embassy on Saturday to start the journey home.  That will be the end of my tenure with the State Department, a 6-month stint that has been extremely rewarding.  Ever since my last post, I've been working like a madman in the office, trying to wrap up several projects and get things ready for handoff.  I can't say I'm handing them off to my replacement, because there isn't one.  If (and that's a big "IF") they ever get somebody in here, it'll be many months down the pike.  In the meantime, there's one guy who's getting custody of my files and some of my duties, and I need to be able to tell him what needs to be done.  So I've been trying to gather a lot of information together in a sort of "How To Do Skip Rohde's Job For The Complete Idiot" guide.  Yes, I hear the wags out there saying that it should be a 1-page book, and half of that blank.  But you're wrong.  It's two pages, including the copyright notification.  

Today I passed a milestone.  (Much better than a kidney stone, but that's beside the point).  Today I finished up a report on the status of our ongoing projects.  For the record, there are 256 reconstruction projects still ongoing at the present moment, most of which, contrary to media reports, are going well.  There was a big meeting this afternoon that discussed a couple of key projects from that list and the way forward for both of them was locked in place.  Then I had this great feeling of relief, as in "My work here is done ..." I was able to shift my focus from finishing the big reporting jobs to wrapping up my desk and getting files ready for handoff.  Late this afternoon I was able to go for a jog around the compound.  It was a nice day for once and I was happy to be able to get out and enjoy it.  Then this evening, a group of us got together for a special Italian dinner.  Most enjoyable.  

I'm looking around my room at this mess and thinking about packing.  Right now it looks like the aftermath of an explosion in a dollar store.  But there's a logic to it.  I keep trying to get stuff into boxes, but every time I do that, I wind up needing something from the boxes the very next day.  So half of what I pack soon gets unpacked again.  I'm thinkin' that I should just organize my stuff into general piles: this stuff gets packed up and stored until I come back, this other stuff goes with me on the trip, and that other stuff gets mailed home or thrown out or something.  Decisions, decisions.

But now it's late and I'm bushed.  Time to hit the rack.  I'll worry about my dollar-store explosion tomorrow.

Adventures with Bodyguards

I got to participate in something today that was, for me, highly out of the ordinary.  And, as it turned out, highly fun.  I took part in some exercises with our personal security teams.  They were running some drills and needed somebody to be the high-value VIP.  Somebody who didn't know squat about how these drills are supposed to be conducted, who therefore wouldn't anticipate things, and who might do something completely unexpected.  Somebody like me.  Fortunately, I happened to be in the right place at the right time and volunteered for the job.

They ran the drills at one of the bases here in the IZ.  We'd drive up to the building for a meeting with the "minister".  The security detail would do all their security stuff, then we'd go in the building and start our "meeting".  Then all hell would break loose.  Their job was to get me and two other "VIPs" safely out of the building and loaded into the cars and outa there.  

Without going into the details, I can say these men and women are pros.  They know their stuff and I'd go anywhere with them.  I'd be talking away with the "minister" when the action would start, and those guys would have me under a protective umbrella in nothing flat.  Then we'd begin the movement to the car - lots of team members rotating back and forth very quickly, everyone covering everyone and everything else.  They weren't gentle with us VIPs, either: they'd physically steer us wherever it was they wanted us to go.  And when a big burly guy with arms as big as your legs has you by the belt and shoulder, you damn well go where he says to go!

We ran several drills, each a bit more complex than the last.  Our little group of VIPs each got to play different roles, too.  Once I was the Ambassador and another time I was a kidnap victim.  Besides having a lot of fun, I gained a new appreciation for our security guys.  You'd expect to find only the best of the best in a place like Baghdad, and you'd be right.  They're professional, highly skilled, highly trained, and extremely disciplined.  And completely irreverent cutups when the action is over.

Your tax dollars at work.  Well spent.

An Interview With An Artist

Several of my artist friends have been doing interviews with other artists and posting them on their blogs lately. Here's an especially good one. If you want an insight into the life and mind of a contemporary working artist, read Constance Humphries' interview with Genie Maples.

Art in Baghdad

There's a very interesting article in the New York Times, from a few days ago, about an art exhibit in Baghdad.  The title was "Beacons of Humanity", with 80 works from 39 Iraqi artists.  Most interesting, the exhibit was held in conjunction with a Shi'ite religious holiday and was sponsored by followers of Muqtada al-Sadr.   

You may remember al-Sadr.  He is an extremist Shi'ite religious leader whose Mehdi Army was one of the most violent paramilitary forces during the height of the Iraqi insurgency.  He is a sworn enemy of the United States and almost everything Western.  For maybe the past six to nine months or more, he has apparently been living in Iran, maybe pursuing his religious studies, maybe doing something else.  Anyway, for whatever reason, al-Sadr left Iraq last year and since then his movement has pretty much fallen apart.  The recent elections appear to have relegated his followers to the sidelines.  People in Iraq are tired (and afraid) of his extreme religious militancy.

And now this art show.  Held by an extremist Shi'ite movement.  It's a non-sequitur, like going to a rave party sponsored by the Seventh Day Adventists.  Islamic fundamentalists don't condone the representation of the human figure, yet here were many paintings with figures.  Drawings, paintings, and prints lined the walls.  Abstraction is big here - for many artists, it is the only form that gives them adequate freedom to express their feelings.  This wasn't a Sadrist propaganda show, since few of the artists were Sadrists.  Rather, it just seems like the Sadrists decided to sponsor something that would show the Iraqi public that they're not really the bad guys that the media says they are.

Have the Sadrists really changed?  I don't know.  All I know is that they sponsored a very inclusive show, filled with some work that looks very, very good.  It's a rather daring move.  Most of all, it's encouraging: it means they're trying a different, more constructive approach to winning hearts and minds.  With art, something that's near and dear to me.

During the time that the art show was up, a Sunni female suicide bomber walked into a tent that provided shelter for Shi'ite pilgrims on the way to Karbala.  She killed herself and 40 other people, mostly women and children.

Iraq still has a long way to go.

Gettin' Short

I still find it hard to believe that in a couple of weeks, I'll be leaving the Embassy, my home for the past six months.  But it's true.  I'm trying to wind up my projects and get them into decent shape for handover to another guy in the office.  I've been busily making travel arrangements for the trip home.  And I've been filling out forms and taking online courses like a madman to get all the Corps of Engineer's employment and deployment requirements met.  Meanwhile, Janis has been making appointments for me at home to get tax stuff done, some dental work done, and more forms to get filled out.  With all this busyness, there's no time to sit and think about what it all means.

I was told, when I was going through the State Department training last summer, that everything in Iraq was in a constant state of change.  That has been borne out.  If it's not the Iraqis changing things, it's us ... and if not us, then the Iraqis.  I arrived when our offices were still in the Palace but we were starting to live in the new Embassy compound.  Now the Palace is back in the Iraqi's hands and we live and work at the Embassy.  The old BX has been turned over as well.  During the next year, more US compounds in the International Zone will go away.  The commands will consolidate onto fewer FOBs, or move out of the IZ entirely, or even leave the country.  Ambassador Ryan Crocker, who has headed the Embassy for two years, is leaving.  Our mission in Iraq is probably going to change in a big way very soon, since President Obama has stated his intention of drawing down the American presence fairly quickly.  And the Iraqis are gradually assuming more and more control over their own affairs.

That's not to say things are going smoothly.  Today a female suicide bomber killed herself and 40 other people, mostly women and children, who were on a religious pilgrimage to Karbala, south of Baghdad.  There are bombings in the city every day, mostly targeting police, judges, and prominent political leaders.  Corruption is still rampant throughout the government.  And venturing beyond the FOBs and the IZ is still dangerous, both for Americans and everybody else.

I'm happy with my decision to leave the State Department and go to the Corps, though.  I'm looking forward to getting more involved in planning and doing, rather than monitoring, which is what my job has entailed up to now.  I'm also hoping that I can get around the country more.  And the military mentality of the Corps is more in line with my own way of thinking than is the State Department's essentially political mentality.   Looking at the general plans for the Corps, the military, and construction projects for the next six to twelve months, I'm excited about the possibilities and opportunities ahead.

But right now, my room is a mess.  I'm starting to sort my stuff out.  I'll put a good bit of it into boxes and take it over to the Corps during my last couple of days here.  Some will go back home with me, and some will just get dumped.  Unfortunately, it seems like I still need all the stuff in the "take it to the Corps" and the "dump it" piles!  So I'm gonna have to live in a pigpen for a while.  Some things just don't change ...

A Signing Ceremony

Today was the culmination of the working group that I was involved with over the weekend.  There was a ceremony in which the US transferred ownership of the Basrah Children's Hospital to Iraq's Ministry of Health.  The Ambassador, Ryan Crocker, and the Iraqi Minister of Health, Dr. Salih, were the two officials signing.  It went off very well, much to my relief, since I did much of the coordination for it.  The event was held in a small courtyard at the Al Rasheed Hotel.  We had Iraqi and international press front and center, with a lot of people who've been involved with the hospital in one way or another observing.  

Here's Ambassador Crocker giving some very well-spoken remarks just after the signing.  Dr. Salih is pretty pleased, having just been given ownership of a very expensive, as yet unfinished, hospital.

Ever wonder what these events look like from a distance?  Here ya go.  I noticed that, quite often, the further back the individual was, the more work they'd done on the hospital.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

I'm going to change jobs in another month. I'm going to leave the State Department and go to work for the Army Corps of Engineers. They're just down the road and I've been working with them on a daily basis for most of my time here. Last month, they made me an offer I couldn't refuse. It's a very interesting and responsible job, more in tune with my interests and capabilities than the one I'm doing now. Plus, the pay is better. And I'll be working with an organization whose functions I understand better. And finally, I will be able to get out and see the country more than I have here.

I'll probably be in Iraq longer than I originally planned, too. The job has some interesting aspects to it that I'd like to see play out. So my end date for my Iraq deployment will probably be a few months later than planned. But that's life.

Janis is comfortable with this new development. Neither of us are big fans of this separation, but having a videochat capability so we can talk every day is a big big BIG morale booster for both of us. We talk about all the daily events and it keeps us close. I'll still get breaks every few months and get some time at home.

So that's the news. I've had a good time here at State, but I know a good opportunity when it comes along, and this is one. Time to jump!

The Conference

The conference that I was coordinating is over and I survived.  What an experience that was!  Yesterday was the first day and of course there was a new checkpoint on one of the two main routes to the Embassy, which meant traffic was snarled.  We started about an hour late.  That afternoon, we were 4 hours into the conference and 3 hours behind schedule.

Iraqis and Americans have very different ways of conducting meetings.  Here's a typical exchange among Americans:

Ralph: "Give me a status report on the project.  Start with line 1."

Bob: "Lines 1, 3, and 5 are done and signed for.  Line 2 will be done this coming week.  I need your people to provide us with a Mark 2 shnabblefratzer before we can move any further on line 4."

Ralph.  "Right.  You'll get it tomorrow."

Bob: "Roger that.  Then we'll be done with line 4 by the 25th of the month."

Now for the equivalent exchange between an American and a team of Iraqis:

Ralph: "Give me a status report on the project.  Start with line 1."

Iraqis: A 20-minute discussion of line 1 ensues, complete with five people talking at once, mostly in Arabic with some broken English, arm and hand gestures to rival the Italians, sometimes sounding like they're about to come to blows, and the hapless translator is completely overwhelmed and unable to provide more than a rough outline of what's being said.  And at the end of it all, we still haven't even started talking about line 2.  And Bob?  Bob gave up about ten minutes ago and went for a cup of coffee.

Americans are very businesslike about meetings.  Facts and clarity are paramount.  Not so with Iraqis: personal relationships are the key thing.  They'll spend a lot of time in small talk, trying to get to know who you are.  What you know is not that important, even if what you know has a direct impact on their business.  It's a way of life that's well adapted to their social roots and history.  It's not well adapted to high technology and a fast-paced, globally interconnected world.  So when the modern Western way collides with the ancient Iraqi way, people on both sides can get perturbed.  We see them as slow and inefficient.  They see us as pushy and insensitive.

Today's session was very similar to yesterday's.  We started almost as late despite the fact that there was no checkpoint to delay traffic.  And when we jumped into the first topic (a planned 30-minute review of something previously settled), we promptly ground to a crawl.  It was like they'd never seen the document before.  Two hours later, with only an hour left before we had to leave, we moved on to the second (more important) topic.  The third and fourth topics (even more important) were covered in ten minutes, mostly by skimming over the all-important (to us, not to them) details.

So the next time I conduct a conference like this, I'll try to keep a few things in mind.

1.  We won't really start until an hour after the scheduled time.

2.  Iraqi watches evidently have no hands.

3.  We'll move at the speed of a snail for the first 80% of the meeting.  We'll speed up a bit for the next 30%, and only lightly touch on things for the final 20% as we madly try to wrap things up.  You'll notice that's more than 100% of the meeting time.  That's because it will go well over the allotted schedule.

4.  Don't present them with something new and expect them to make an immediate decision.  If at all possible, give them some time to go ask their boss.  It's pretty likely that they're not empowered to make those decisions.

5.  Be respectful.  Their way is not our way, but that doesn't mean it's wrong or bad, just different.