Yesterday's Lunch

You know how easy it is to neglect someone? People you like, people you want as part of your life but you neglect them and loose them as life unfolds, and unfolds and unfolds round you., You see these people at Christmas parties and say, “ Let’s keep in contact” and suddenly it’s July and something happens, you see something on the news, speak with someone and that person whom you were going to “keep in touch” re enters your life with clarity and you are motivated to make contact.

This kind of clarity happened to me this past week. A local “international” newspaper agency made the headline when it was revealed the newspaper was drastically cutting staff: a major reduction in force. My good friend Jerry is an writer for this paper. He is more then that actually, but he carries that title. He has been with the institution for over 30 years and has reason in management, close to the top but basically has always written columns and editorials. When I heard the newspaper was “parachuting” upper management and laying off lower beings I began to be concerned. I emailed Jerry and responded almost immediately. He was fine and was hunkering down waiting for the storm to blow over. And let’s do lunch.

Jerry and I have a history of Chinese food and there is a great little Chinese restaurant in the heart of downtown Salt Lake, Cindy Lees. Cindy Lee’s is not the best Chinese I have eaten but the place is accessible by train, accessible and fast. My train made me on time and Jerry came in shortly after I had secured a table. He looked good for an old guy—we share this in common: good looking old guys. Jerry is doing fine. He was offered a “silver parachute” not enough to be in gold quality but enough to place Jerry high in the Silver category. He refused it meaning that Jerry will now be working more for less. But Jerry said,

“These guys(the new paper and management)have been good

to me. I won’t bail on them. It’s just not me. I figure I mean give

them 2 and half more years—can’t be any worse then two and half

years in Bolivia and survived that.”

I thought that was pretty cool and I was relieved that jerry would be round for a while longer. I found that one perks of Jerry’s commitment to the paper was he would assume much more power-not a big deal for Jerry but maybe for me. He told me to write him something and he would publish it. I sat back in my chair and considered the offer. Jerry asked what I was writing and I told him my bog, that I was close to my 1000 posting. I promised I would email him the address soon as I got back to my office—which I did. He’ll look at it. Plus Jerry wants a 600 word opinion piece about anything and he will publish it. I am going to bang out something and see what happens.

We ended the lunch right at an hour with the promise to get together in the Fall…I hope its way before then.