Pushkin was right!

“To the orders of God or muse be obedient.

Don’t be afraid of insult,

don’t demand the laurel wreath.

Slander and praise receive

with equal indifference.

     And never argue with a fool.”

This is from a poem Alexander Pushkin wrote in 1836. The epigraph is from Horace – “Exegi Monumentum”

Maybe if he had taken his own advice, he would not have lost in life in a senseless duel in St. Petersburg not long after he wrote this. Nevertheless the advice is not to be ignored. I gave these words in a calligraphic poem, framed, as a gift to my teenaged grandchildren for their home or college room walls. It is advice we all should follow.

Buy here  “Walking on Ice, An American Businessman in Russia”

The Cossacks are Coming

Recently I was introduced to a Russian lady here in California who soon informed me she was in fact a Cossack. In my interest in Russian history and culture I know about the Cossacks, but hard facts are elusive as to who they really are.  I knew them from the dramatic pictures and wild stories and that they chased Napoleon out of Russia in 1812. A few questions from my ignorance brought her answer, “Cossacks are a nation.” The origin of the name “Cossack” is from an early Turkic word meaning “free man”—anyone who could not find his appropriate place in society and went into the steppes, where he acknowledged no authority.  An independent people they have always been.

Olga told us of her family, its terrible treatment under Stalin, the “disappearance” of most of the men, Meeting Olga encouraged me to do a little research and I find their identity goes back the 16^th century in that southern steppe lands of Eastern Europe and Asian Russia, around the Dnieper and Don rivers—that geographic location destined to be forever in the way of invading armies going south or north, with  the Cossacks allying with one side or the other, or both.

As I underline in “Walking on Ice, an American Businessman in Russia,” I am always amazed at the determination and strength of many of the Russian women who come here for a new life. To meet a Cossack woman, here only three years, with a good job, and hear her decent English and resolve to better herself in this totally different culture, is admirable. The Cossacks are coming, but maybe only one at a time.

The Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan of Turkey, the painting by Ilya Repin shown above is in the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg

About Leadership

There is so much talk and teaching about “management” in these changing times. However, there is a difference between “management” and “leadership.” My own world experience has taught me that under good leadership, a good team manages to get the job done. Yesterday I visited the Milken Institute to hear a talk entitled “Defining Great Leadership” by Warren Bennis and Joel Kurtzman, both experienced and celebrated writers and speakers on this subject. It was a full house.

Bennis, in describing the start of his life-study of leadership related his experience during World War II as a fresh Lieutenant in a combat hardened infantry unit in France. His discussion rang a bell with me as that was so similar to my first leadership experience. In Korea in 1955 I was transferred from a non-combat assignment to a tank regiment on the front lines. Bennis and Kurtzman stressed one is only a leader when there are loyal followers and they both agreed the Army was the best training ground for this. When I was placed as a tank platoon leader, it was the “loyal followers” who trained me to be a leader. The sergeants, all veterans of chasing Rommel across Africa and Italy, showed me how to be part of the team, and lead.

Today, those companies with outstanding and responsible leadership, with the professional and social skills needed to inspire and harness creativity in the high-tech world, will be our heroes of this century.

Bennis’ book Still Surprised: A Memoir of a Life in Leadership and Kurtzman’s Common Purpose: How Great Leaders Get Organizations to Achieve the Extraordinary are available from Amazon and book stores.

Buy here  “Walking on Ice, An American Businessman in Russia”

Coco Chanel and WHO? Rasputin??

No, they were not lovers. Really!! But there is a connection, albeit a long thin one. Grand Duke Dimitri was one of the handful, led by Prince Felix Yusupov, who murdered Rasputin in Saint Petersburg in December, 1916. Czar Nicholas II sent the conspirators far out of town and Dimitri was sent to a military unit in Persia. In the next year, 1917, it was all over for Czarist Russia and the Grand Duke never returned. Like many other fleeing Russians he ended up in Paris. And who do you think took notice of the aristocrat’s arrival? Coco Chanel. She was eleven years his senior but that didn’t stop either one.

 The French perfume business was booming because the scents didn’t last past eleven in the evening. So they bathed in the stuff. (Can you imagine!) But, as I heard the story, Dimitri said to Coco that she should not sell big bottles of perfume for cheap prices, but small bottles for high prices. He introduced Coco to Ernest Beaux, a successful Russian-born perfumer from St. Petersburg, whose French employer, Coty, would not follow his suggestions. Beaux insisted that the addition of deer musk would make the perfume last the night. Coco hired Beaux, added dear musk to the eighty-some other ingredients and voilà- Chanel No. 5 was born—that was 1920. The Coco-Dimitri affair was in 1921 and while she moved on to others, the relationship in indeed historic. You may have seen the film “Igor and Coco” about her affair with Stravinsky. It seems she liked Russians – famous Russians.

In my next book, “The Lady with the Ostrich Feather Fan” you will learn more about Rasputin’s murder, but it is really about the “life” of two Rembrandts that were the pride of the Yusupov collection and now hang in the National Gallery of Art. More on that later. This perfume story is just one of the many side-stories that emerge when writing.

To read more about all this read “Chanel” by Edmonde Charles~Roux.

Getting the Microstory of the Mexican Revolution

 I have been asked to join a panel discussion on October 30 at The El Paso Central Library, part of their celebration of the Mexican Revolution centenary. The host of the discussion will be David Dorado Romo and that is what this post is about. He is a very interesting man, author of “Ringside Seat to a Revolution: An Underground Cultural History of El Paso and Juarez, 1893-1923.”

The fascinating thing to me is Romo’s approach to uncover the underside of the Revolution, the characters who made a difference, but seldom make it into the history books. That is what I like to do and what my book, “Dos Gringos” does in its own way. And Rome focuses on El Paso, my hometown, and its critical role in the happenings in Mexico. I very much look forward to the meeting and the panel discussion.

 For more on the book and the author see http://www.sergiotroncoso.com/essays/eptimes/05-1113/index.htm and a youtube NPR interview  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGm61qvnAI0

Buy a copy of “Dos Gringos”  here.

The St. Patrick Battalion

It is amazing what develops out of the exercise of writing a novel. Things you never thought about come to mind. If you had been watching TV or at the gym instead of secluding your thoughts into your story, it simply would not happen.  In writing “Dos Gringos” I quickly realized that the story was a peek into a history of much grander happenings that just the lives of these two unlikely partners in the midst of the bloody Mexican Revolution. One of these is the historic relationship of Mexico and Ireland.

In the story, the relationship of the red-headed Catholic Irishman Flaherty with the idealistic young peasant revolutionary boy with a tall gun evokes memories of the famous “San Patricio Battalion” of Irish who fought with Mexico against the Americans in the Mexican-American War of 1846. What made this largely Irish outfit exceptional was that it was composed almost entirely of deserters from the United States Army who, after defecting, fought on the Mexican side in five major battles and with great heroism.

These men, fleeing the Irish Potato Famine were often pulled of the boat in New York and sent into the army to fight in the Mexican war. Killing other Catholics was not exactly why these starving men had fled Ireland, hence, that religious loyalty, along with mistreatment by their army superiors, prompted their desertion. They were appalled by the American troops treatment of the priests and nuns. After the war, these Irishmen were tortured and executed by hanging.

Yes, it’s amazing what you learn when writing a novel.

Read more about Mexican history. Buy a copy of “Dos Gringos”  here.

Russia Burning – to do what?

 The disastrous fires in Russia will soon be over—and then what? I was amazed to hear that the fires had started. I spent six years in Russia, in Moscow winters and summers. Nothing like this has happened before in Russia. What lasting effect these fires will have is open discussion now. Fingers are pointing9, but will they return to counting money soon?

This crisis has presented Prime Minister Putin with a great opportunity to show himself a hero on TV, at the controls (really?) of a BE200 dropping water on the fires, and to pose as master of the situation, and he has done just that. That’s despite Putin himself bearing the brunt of responsibility for Russia’s lack of preparedness for the fires, according to a scathing article in the Moscow business newspaper Vedemosti. It points out that Putin abolished the state forestry service three years ago and scaled back state funding for fire prevention measures. According to the paper, Russia currently spends about 4 cents per hectare of forest lands on fire-fighting services, compared with about $4 in the United States.

The impact of this disaster will be, I think, another weight on the scale of change inching forward in that country of a thousand years of autocratic rule where all change was determined from the top down. The demand for regional elections to choose regional leaders is growing. Putin eliminated regional leadership choice and moved it to the Kremlin. Now the regions want it back. Local control to create local solutions to unforeseen disasters such as the wildfires is one of the reasons argued in favor of this move.  The fire of change has already begun. It will take time.

Buy here  “Walking on Ice, An American Businessman in Russia”

The Spirit of the Siberian Tiger

Alexander Dolitsky is deeply absorbed by the Russian heritage of Alaska and lives in Juneau.  He has written many books on this subject, but the ones I have been so enthralled with are the tales and myths from Siberia, and especially his book, “Spirit of the Siberian Tiger: Folktales of the Russian Far East.” It is a masterpiece of story-telling, of art, poetry, and information. The illustrations are phenomenal. The stories focuses on the cultural significance Siberian tigers have held in the Russian Far East and tells us much about the native people, the Eskimo and Chukchi.

Dolitsky, who heads the “Alaska-Siberia Research Center,” is now beginning a new series of tales from the north country that will be published in the future. It is certainly a pleasure to be on the edge of this and see it growing.

To acquire a copy of “Spirit of the Siberian Tiger…” contact adolitsky@gci.net or write  the Alaska-Siberia Research Center, P.O. Box 34871, Juneau, Alaska 99803.

“Dos Gringos” for Latinos

The interest in “Dos Gringos” amongst the Latino community is growing.   As Dena Burroughs writes in the “LatinoLA” and earlier in “LA Arts Examiner,“  the story in Dos Gringos is of particular interest this year as November 2010 will mark the centennial of the onset of the Mexican Revolution.”

She points out, “While World War I created havoc on the other side of the world, civil strife went on in Mexico for ten years in a war that became known as the Mexican Revolution. Those years saw a simple bandit become a revolutionary man whose name is today a Mexican icon – Pancho Villa – in a war fought between two sides supplied with arms by one same foreign outfit. It was also the time, says Frederick R. Andresen in his book Dos Gringos, when a Norwegian and an Irishman found themselves hired in El Paso, TX, to work at a gold mine in the town of Parral, Mexico.

The adventures of Arthur Johannesen and Michael Flaherty, amidst gun fire and colorful country sceneries, are what Andresen describes in his book based on the tales told to him years later by his 70-year-old father – the Norwegian of the story.”

Dena Burroughs recommends, “Dos Gringos is an entertaining read presented in 28 short chapters. It feels familiar with the names of real towns both north and south of the US/Mexico border and by the use of…Spanish sentences within the dialogue. It is likewise a tale of immigration – Europeans who left their land to come to the Americas in search of work and tranquility and who married, worked, built, and made this continent their home and a home for their children.”

I am pleased this little episode in that crazy and dangerous time finds an appreciative audience with our Latino friends.

See http://latinola.com/story.php?story=8814  for the whole article

A Russian Boy for a Yosemite Camp

Two years ago my business partner in Russia asked me to help find a summer camp in the U.S. for her then eleven-year old son, Egor (nickname “Goshka”.)  My family experience with camps was all in New England. So I asked a group in church here in California for a reference and a friend mentioned Yosemite Sierra Summer Camp. So I made the contacts and Goshka came for two weeks in 2009. . He was thrilled with the camp Califonia’s Bass Lake, in the shadow of Yosemite National Park. YSSC was established in 1972 to provide Christian adventure camp experiences for children 8 to 16 years old.

Goshka speaks good English and they were pleased to have him. He was thrilled with the camp and with the competent, supporting and loving leadership. He vowed to come back this year (2010) and he did,  now at age 13. I am sending a boy back to Moscow again thrilled with his experience and commitment to return again in 2011. This is a great life experience for this Russian boy to take home and share with his family and friends. Goshka tells me there are no summer camps in Russia like this. My thanks to Steve and Sara Kuljis, the camp managers and their devoted staff.  I am happy to be a help in this regard.