Glenn Keller

Other Recent Posts

• Thanks A Lot
• “I Swear To God I’ll Behave”
• The Mountain
• Together Again
• What Are You Reading?

• Thanks A Lot

  

  The cop came into the house without knocking. Not because we were having a wild party, (though he thought we might be). No, he came in because our cars were parked all over the neighborhood, in the snow covered streets blocking residents from getting to their homes. Reasonable enough.

  The second thing he saw when he walked in the door was me sitting in a chair, in the living room. There was almost no one in the living room with me. Almost.

  The first thing he saw, and the thing most men would notice first was Amy. He commanded me to go find the owner of the house, or at least someone that lived there. I didn’t budge. I didn’t budge because Amy was planted firmly on my lap. Why she was there, I wasn’t sure, but my sole mission at the moment was keeping her there. I mean this kind of thing didn’t happen to me every day. Amy looked at me, not budging either, almost daring me to get up. It was a test if ever there was a test. Although, to be honest, girl vs cop wasn’t that much of a test.

  He commanded again. Again I didn’t budge. And then, as if he suddenly registered what he was up against, laughed and said “okay, just tell me where they are?”

  I pointed towards the kitchen. “They’re in there sir.”

  No reason not to be polite.

  We were all underage but there was no alcohol on the premises. That was fortunate, because in a town that size the police knew everyone and would have ratted our host out to his parents.

  The cop walked out of the kitchen, satisfied that we would clear the cars. For good measure he tossed an admonition over his shoulder to clean the place up before the parents came home. As he passed us by on the the way out the door he paused and shook his head, giving Amy and I a wry smile.

  Amy got up right after he left.

  © Glenn R Keller 2022, All Rights Reserved

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  humor, memoir, Relationships

• “I Swear To God I’ll Behave”

  

  My new seat mate raised her hand like scout’s honor. And with that, she plopped down next to me in the first row of First Class.

  She had just strode onto the airplane, large and in charge and demanded a drink. When she was told we were getting ready to push back and she’d have to wait, she remonstrated, to no one in particular and to everyone in general, that $1200 ought to get you a drink whenever you wanted it. But she threw up her hands and started sizing me up. Was I going to be a problem? Would I put a buzzkill over the next 2 hours?

  I didn’t kill her buzz and she didn’t behave. She didn’t behave but she turned out to be one of the most fascinating people I have ever had the privilege of sharing a flight with. I looked into the galley. Here’s something I’ve learned about flight attendants: they are scanning and evaluating everyone that boards the plane. Is this person crazy? Could they help in an emergency? Might they need assistance during the flight? Were they going to be a pain in the ass? I’ve flown a lot, and you can tell a lot of things by just keeping an eye on the crew. Everything from a subtle nod of the head at a seat three rows up, to them tearing up the aisle at a run. (Flight attendants running is never a good sign.)

  I saw our cabin flight attendant right before she turned to hide her face. She was laughing. Hard. She decided this one was going to be a wild ride and she was up for it.

  As we spoke, I found out she was going to visit her mother. Her mother had built a fortune and then donated much of it to worthy causes around our city. There are buildings with her name on them. Big fancy buildings. She also gave much of it away as a parting gift to her employees when she sold her business. She was a popular woman. This was her wild child, but successful in her own right and owned a massive amount of vacation properties. She didn’t use her mother’s money.

  Over the course of the next couple of hours she analyzed my playlist and decided my music choices made me a good guy. She also made me listen to recordings she had made and published to iTunes and told me I should be drinking more “you gotta keep up buddy, I move fast.”

  She had some life behind her and she had made enough mistakes to make her interesting. She told me I wasn’t chasing my dreams, that she could tell I was successful, but wasn’t working in corporate America boring as hell? I laughed and admitted that yes, but that my upbringing, without much money biased me towards security…I never take for granted the roof over my head and the food on my table. I could tell by the look on her face that she had just learned something herself.

  After being quiet for a minute while she processed that, she said “you are really self aware. More than me probably.”

  I told her that the part of my job I loved was the international travel, and the ability to get to know people all over the world. Her eyes brightened, her mother and now her, were making their fortunes in the travel business. “Now that’s something. That’s something to hold onto.”

  We chatted for the rest of the flight, and towards the end she gave me a business card and told me to bring my family out to Montana to ski. “You now know someone that can get you a good deal on a condo. The prices are crazy, but don’t worry, I’ll take care of you.”

  Despite her opening performance, she didn’t drink a whole lot but the crew kept her glass full. As much as she pestered them, she kept them smiling and laughing.

  I think that’s called charm.

  © Glenn R Keller 2022, All Rights Reserved

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  advice, air travel, humor, memoir, memories, travel

• The Mountain

  

  I’m not sure if I can really describe the feeling, but apparently, describing things is my thing. The first instinct you have after exiting the lift is to turn and look at the view. There are times when it is trees and that is all you can see, or a valley floor, or sometime it is just mundane, as it often is in the midwest: cornfield or a pasture. But there are other times, when it takes your breath away. You see snow capped Appalachian mountains, rolling and verdant, as far as the eye can see. Or if you are in the western US or Europe you might see the jagged rocky outcrops of a million mountains all covered in snow. They look like a painting in three dimensions, lifeless. But you know they are full of moose, bears, marmots…and cats you don’t want to even think about.

  The view, mainly a feast for you eyes, assaults all your senses. The air smells different, you can hear the wind and feel the cold crisp air on your cheeks. Later, when you eat, even notoriously crappy ski resort food will taste like a feast. Miller Lite tastes like the best craft beer. All the women at the bar are happy to be called snow bunnies and they feel like they’re 10 years younger.

  I am skiing with a buddy…we are at different levels…I am older and more cautious and he wants to push the limits. So we ski together for a few runs in the morning and then we break off agreeing to meet for lunch at one of the on-slope restaurants. Everyone here at the restaurant: the staff and the patrons are skiers and snowboarders…its is literally the only way to get here. We all belong.

  There is one thing every skier and snowboarder agrees with: this is special. Breathing the mountain air, filtered by the pine trees and chilled with the winter air is a privilege. Seeing the snow capped peaks, stretching out before you as far as the eye can see is a privilege. Being with people that can appreciate all of this is a privilege.

  You don’t have to be great or even good to experience this exhilaration of going fast enough that a mistake could hurt you, of skiing through thick forests and popping out to see alpine vistas. Of knowing that the person next to you on the lift might become your good friend for the next 5 minutes on the ride up.

  The adrenaline and the endorphins, sharpened by the cold air, the air that would send you running indoors anywhere else, combine to brew up a buzz.

  You find a little used trail; it’s all to yourself. And you meditate as you ski. Muscle memory takes over and your brain is hyper alert. The squirrel dashing across the trail, the woods buried in snow, the bluebird sky. All are in technicolor.

  © Glenn R Keller 2022, All Rights Reserved

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  memoir, skiing, outdoors, adventure

• Together Again

  

  5500 people at this conference tells me that people want to be together again. The rooms are packed, the hallways are packed and the dining areas are packed. Masking has become a non-issue…some do some don’t, everyone does what makes them feel comfortable. In hallways where we’re packed like sardines or the room is crazy crowded I wear one. Other times, I keep it off.

  I’m in the lobby of the Dolphin Hotel; it’s a sprawling space with fountains, a bar, sofas and tables. It’s jammed; its buzzing. The dolphins In the center fountain oversee it all, spitting water in all directions, the sound of the water drowned out by the din. Anyone walking in here now would never think Covid had been a thing, People are talking cheek to cheek with friends, new friends and strangers…laughing, talking strategy or pitching something. Then there’s the people like me; waiting on a colleague and looking for things to write about…always looking.

  Four young women laughing, sitting on two couches drinking mimosas. There’s one guy making a pitch to the other…the guy on the receiving end has the look of a caged bear, looking around for a way out. Here’s some loud bro laughing complete with backslapping. Over there an older woman talks to a young man. You can tell they work together, her manner is that of a mentor and he is drinking it in. My eye is drawn to two young people, ostensibly talking business, but the guy is flexing about something. She is leaning forward, interested. They are both beautiful and you’d have to be blind to miss the mutual attraction.

  Everyone is drinking. A drink gives us something to do with our hands and for some, that slight hit of alcohol, lowers their guard. Introverts become slightly extroverted and extroverts just throw a wider net. There are a lot of nets in the room.

  Maybe no one sees it but me, and I maybe it’s my imagination, ascribing more meaning to normal human interactions. But then normal human interactions is the point. Despite our angst over remote work and the chance of catching the ‘vid we have a longing to be close, to look each other in the eye and share the same space. We communicate a lot in how we choose to share our space, like the young woman leaning in and the the guy looking for a way out.

  Besides, have you been to a conference, a meeting, a class in the last year that didn’t have someone say “It’s good to be together again.”

  © Glenn R Keller 2022, All Rights Reserved

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  business, business travel, conference, Covid, hotel, memoir, people, Relationships, travel

• What Are You Reading?

  

  I didn’t have to look up. I knew it was the flight attendant because everyone else was asleep. This happened a lot on overseas flights, usually to Asia…16 or 14 hour flights and I could never sleep so I would read. The only light on in the business class cabin.

  Sometimes the flight attendant left on duty would grab a nap herself or maybe read a book. But if they were the antsy type they’d see my light on and come over and ask if I needed anything. They were happy to get it and then we’d have a chat. If you’re in first or business class, you could stroll into the galley and they would usually have somethings put out for the restless types. Sometimes they would offer to warm something up…I always said yes, because they were not expected to, which meant they wanted to…they were peeps that liked taking care of people.

  I rarely watched movies on the overnight flights and was usually reading a book. “What are you reading?” They almost always asked, and then often we’d chat about the book and what she and her flight attendant friends were reading. There was always an author that was making the rounds it seemed.

  In this case, I spoke with her for all of 5 minutes as she stopped by a few times and I went forward to use the restroom or raid the galley.

  After we landed in Beijing I grabbed my things andI walked to the cabin exit and saw her in the group of crew saying goodbye to passengers. I caught her eye but before I could say anything, she waved goodbye and leaned over to a colleague and said “He is so nice! He made the trip so pleasant.” I hoped my goodbye smile told her I felt the same.

  And that was that…two people who just wanted someone to talk to and found each other.

  © Glenn R Keller 2022, All Rights Reserved

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  flying, friendly, memoir, people, reading, Relationships, travel

• Nora

  

  Sometimes I don’t know what my mother was thinking. She would send me to summer camps; Jewish, Catholic, Protestant…wherever she could get the best deal. She had help: kind relatives, boyfriends and even kindly camp administrators would give her a hand. She was resourceful like that. But it meant often, that not only was I in the minority, sometimes, like at one Jewish summer camp, I was the only one.

  But the biggest head scratcher was when she sent me to live with a family of women. Being farmed out wasn’t unusual for me, I lived seven days and nights a week with three different families by the time I was 11. And I always went away to those summer camps. Later, seven years of military school filled the bill. But Nora was a young glamorous mother with two teenage girls. I was in 5th grade, and well, had it been a year later there could have been issues. As it was, I felt drawn to the younger one. I really didn’t understand why, but if I showed it, SHE was certainly old enough to know why. Basically, I had a crush, but had no clue what the hell was going on.

  One of the girls had to give up her bedroom and double up with her sister in order to accommodate me. If there was any resentment they never betrayed it which, in retrospect, given their age is pretty remarkable. On the other hand I was sort of the little brother they never had and I functioned as a 24*7 science experiment.

  To the girls I was an eating machine. One day they determined to see just how much I could eat at a single seating. They knew I loved French Toast and so that became the test food. I don’t remember how many slices I ate but I know if was well into the teens and they ran out of eggs or patience before I had eaten my fill.

  Other than basic oversight, I was pretty much ‘feed and forget’. I made some friends in their neighborhood and when not in school we kept each other occupied with various projects including collecting old newspapers which we could recycle for a little cash and figuring out how to catch frogs at nearby Alley Pond Park. Probably it was good I never caught one because there surely would have been a girl-finds-frog kind of incident.

  I remember having to take a couple of buses with my temporary family to go to endless dance recitals. The younger one was taking dance. Normally this would have made me want to blow my brains out, but there was the crush thing so I don’t recall minding all that much.

  I don’t remember a whole lot beyond that, but I was treated kindly. It was a little much to ask a single mother of two daughters to oversee a rambunctious boy bent on self-destruction. Plus I was out of walking distance to my school and had to take a city bus everyday to get there and back. Since a city school bus pass would let you travel anywhere in the City of New York by bus or subway this resulted in many un-sanctioned adventures. I don’t know who pulled the plug first, Mom or Nora, but I eventually wound up with a family that had a strong father figure. Good move that.

  Nora was not her real name, but recently I connected to someone on one of those old neighborhood nostalgia type sites that remember Nora and the two girls. And his recollection was just the same as mine. (I think he had a crush on one of them too!)

  © Glenn R Keller 2022, All Rights Reserved

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  adolescent, childhood, crush, family, memoir, mother, parenting

• Secrets

  

  Mind your secrets my love

  Each one weighs you down

  A small leak in the bilge

  It’s nothing

  Until it’s something

  ..

  Some like a dragging anchor

  You stand watch

  Lest you’re dashed upon the rocks

  ..

  Each waits for the misstep

  The drunken slip of the tongue

  The friend that didn’t know

  You weren’t supposed to be there

  Caught unawares by the squall

  You’re left stranded, desolate

  ..

  Each one has a price my love

  You’ll know it when the bill comes due

  ..

  © Glenn R Keller 2022, All Rights Reserved

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  poetry, Relationships, secrets

• How To Be A Leader

  Lots of people want to be leaders. Just check LinkedIn. Leader leader leader. This can be a difficult job, mostly because to be a leader one must have followers. Face it, without the followers, it would be a walk in the park. But, according to LinkedIn, followers are a mandatory thing. Apparently.

  Fortunately for you, there are tons and tons of followers on LinkedIn that are willing to tell you exactly how to be a leader. They will also tell you how not to be a leader. You can find these tips in helpful posts and memes so clear and simple even a five year old can understand. That’s because a five year old wrote most of them. Luckily, we get to see them over and over again as grownups post them them over and again.

  Now on to being a leader!

  Lets look at the negative side first, because, it’s always good to leave things on a high note. See there? That’s a leadership thing right there. I mean even King Henry V in his band of brothers spiel before Agincort snuck the whole we’re probably gonna die thing in and then wrapped it up with they were all gonna be famous and how it would be easy to find dates when they got back to England. The Agincort battle was real but I’m pretty sure Shakespeare made up the the whole ‘band of brothers’ speech thing. This begs the question of whether it was Henry or Wild Will that was the real leadership expert.

  But I digress. Writing tip: It’s okay to digress when writing, as long as you say “But I digress.”

  The most important thing that you can never ever ever ever do is be a manager. Like ever. Apparently a manager is a very bad thing to be. Nero, for instance, was probably a manager.

  Boss is also very very bad, though to be honest, in the cartoons that people use to illustrate important points on LinkedIn, bosses look like they are having much more fun than managers. Bosses get to do things like be carried around like Cleopatra and whomp people over the head with a club. So I guess if you have to be one or the other I would go with Boss.

  Something else you should never do is remind your followers that they are being paid. But isn’t that why they come to work you say? Ha! Ha! That’s rich, you simpleton, and just illustrates why you are not yet ready to lead. People want meaning, they want to make a difference. Meaning they want to see a difference in their bank account on pay day. You could stop paying them for a couple of weeks and they will leave to find meaning and making a difference elsewhere which only illustrates my point about their need for meaning and making a difference.

  Now that we have covered the top three no-nos lets look at some things you should always do.

  You should provide a nurturing environment by making sure each and every employee feels like they are living their best life. Remember, before storming the beaches at Normandy, General Eisenhower asked each and every one of HIS followers what he could do to help them live their best life. Interestingly, most decided living their best life involved running onto a beach while being raked by machine gun fire and flamethrowers. But “Ike” believed in giving his followers “options” so he made sure they understood that they could always be stood up against a wall and be shot by a firing squad if they didn’t like the whole storming the beach thing. It really made no difference to him. I think those soldiers were feeling extremely nurtured as they hunted down Nazis and helped them live THEIR best lives. All because Ike set a good example for them. Shadow of a leader stuff right there.

  Another important thing to do is to have empathy. Nobody understands what the hell this actually means so maybe an example would be best. Let’s say your follower brings his big-ass pet spider into the office and you jump up and down screaming “Get that thing the hell out of here!” Not only would that not be empathetic, it will also scare the bejesus out of the spider who will run and hide. Then she will make hundreds of big-ass spider babies and you will have to burn down your entire 250 acre headquarters complex; even the vegan climbing wall. No. Empathy would be telling your employee you understand and that you like having big-ass spiders in the office. This will make them feel nurtured and valued and they will probably head down to the cafe for a soothing cup of free chamomile giving you the opportunity to pound the spider into the carpet with a shoe. (Most office carpet patterns are designed to hide dead insect smears so they’ll never find the body.)

  Then there’s development. Everyone wants a leader that will help them grow to their full potential, even if their potential isn’t all that full. Thank goodness this is another fuzzy one that can mean almost anything from learning to write code in Middle English to how to avoid making idiots feel like idiots. That makes it easy to apply the old business adage of “what’s loosely defined is easily achieved.” Share this post with your whole team via your slack or chat channel and put it down as leadership development. If they object tell them they’ve apparently missed the point and they’ll need to read another asinine post to reinforce the lesson.

  Finally, and most importantly, you have to give people the opportunity to fail. Apparently no one can succeed without failing so it’s very important that you help people fail. An important aspect of helping people fail is teaching them how to brag about it on LinkedIn. For full impact you should brag about how you helped a subordinate fail. This will make people realize that you are a great leader because you understand that succeeding at something is really besides the point. I have to be honest though, you are going to run into some naysayers here. They will commonly use arguments such as “what if you’re doing brain surgery or flying an airplane with 450 people on board?” It’s sad really. This type of negative attitude can create a toxic environment and ruin the failure vibe you’ve so carefully nurtured.

  In conclusion (because this is the end) if you focus on these principals, you will find, that over time, you will be able to write great LinkedIn posts about leadership.

  © Glenn R Keller 2022, All Rights Reserved

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  career, empathy, failure, humor, leadership, satire

• Castaway

  

  You’re never too old to cry for that which is lost

  The pieces of my life are woven together with the thinnest of thread. I don’t think there is anyone that even remembers Cambria Heights. Especially Cambria Heights. I have few living relatives, and I see them rarely, if at all. None of them would remember Cambria Heights. This is the first place I lived, in a house that my parents owned. A little brick house; the blue collar post-war dream. Then my father became an alcoholic and so much for Cambria Heights. So much for dreams.

  I have some pictures of the that house; inside and out. Me and Elisabeth, a little girl from the block I hung out with. Everyone said “they’re so damned cute.” And “Aunt” Marie, who watched me when my mother couldn’t. Mom couldn’t because she’d lost her partner and her financial security and had to go to work at Drakes Bakeries every day, leaving me with whoever she could get to care for me. Maria was an older lady and was kind. She taught me to like tea and would give me hot tea with milk and some Stella Doros to dip in it. Then we lost the house and I lost Aunt Marie, and Elisabeth, and Jeffry, and the retired couple next door.

  I have met some friends from Queens Village on one of those Facebook Old Neighborhood type pages. (Cambria Heights is part of Queens Village you see.) I didn’t know them growing up but they remember my cousin and an aunt. But they don’t remember me.

  No connections to Cambria Heights though. No Maria, no Elizabeth, no Jeffrey. The most tenuous connection to Queens Village and none to Hollis where we moved after losing an apartment in Queens Village. I had just turned seven and had lost two homes already. Not to complain, just a fact; a minor trauma. I always had a roof over my head no matter how small the roof.

  I can remember the names of some of the kids in Hollis: Cindy, Ricky, Robert and Claudia. There was also a James and his crazy sister, and tons of tons of kids that were on the periphery but whose faces and names I can’t remember. By ten years old , I was a wild kid which made me popular. Robert told me “my mom and dad said you’re not allowed in our house.” Of course this meant that I was invited over at lunchtime at every opportunity. (Most of us were latchkeys and the kids with nice houses would walk home and eat lunch.) The same with Claudia, though the benefit with Claudia was that she fed me. A fifth grade girl sneaking the fifth grade troublemaker over to her house and making him lunch. I don’t remember much about Claudia, other than she was tall, but I imagine that even today she must be a kind soul.

  Meanwhile, Ricky and I fed off each other as we raced to the bottom, to see who would get picked up by the cops first.

  I went to live with someone else and left Hollis behind, winding up back in Queens Village. The people I lived with were good folks and I felt welcome. I got in a lot less trouble there but school, especially this new school, was a death spiral.

  Now I’m twelve years old, sent to DeVitte Military Academy in New Jersey. I had two friends there that carried over to High School as we plotted and schemed to go to school together in Virginia. Good friends. But they are lost to me. One has passed on and the other is off the face of the earth. To understand how my mother, poor as we were, could afford Military School you’ll have to read another one of my stories.

  That takes me to 15 and now I have some connections. But nothing in the first 15 years of my life. What about relatives? Completely lost touch on my father’s side, though I loved them deeply and was loved in return. There is only an uncle and a cousin left on my mother’s side. No one else.

  There are photos of contemporaneous places and events. My grandparents and their house on Broad Channel, Rockaway’s Playland, cowboy outfits and Christmas time. All of these, the places and family that are lost to me…they live only in photographs and my memories.

  © Glenn R Keller 2022, All Rights Reserved

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  childhood, friends, growing up, memoir, memories, Relationships, trauma

• Best Intentions Don’t Count

  Japanese General Masaharu Homma was in charge of the invasion of the Philippines at the start of World War II. The mistreatment of Allied prisoners of war and Bataan death march must be laid at his feet because even though none of it was his intent, he still presided over the disorganization and lack of discipline among his troops that led to it.

  As for his his treatment of civilians he was under constant pressure from Tokyo to crack down on dissent and generally rule with an iron fist. This was not in his nature as he believed Japan needed the cooperation of the Filipinos and he saw first hand that brutality would only harden their loyalty to the United States in general, and Douglas McArthur in particular.

  Perhaps the final straw came when, in keeping with his nature and beliefs, he allowed a Filipino band to march in the Japanese victory parade through the streets of Manila. The crowd that lined the streets were sullen, but other than that things went fine. That is until the band approached the viewing stand packed with Japanese dignitaries whereupon they broke into a rendition of “The Stars and Stripes”. This ignited a joyous reaction from the crowd and Homma being relieved of duty.

  For his troubles, he was executed by firing squad for his role in the treatment of allied prisoners of war. He was certainly overwhelmed as the Americans and their Filipino allies fought longer and harder than expected, and his best troops were reassigned before the job was done. But in the end, he was in charge.

  © Glenn R Keller 2022, All Rights Reserved

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  general, leadership, non-fiction, pacific war, war