Sunday—Fort Lauderdale
This has been a good day.
Yesterday was terrible. Alex and I awakened yesterday in the
Capital Hotel in Little Rock. I had been up late because all around
me young women were running, yelling, and screaming, because they
were coming from a wedding rehearsal dinner in the hotel dining
room. They were drunk. They were loud. I didn’t like them.
However, exhausted as we were, Alex and I got ourselves over to
the Little Rock airport. It is now named the Bill and Hillary
Clinton Airport. I am not kidding. Where is the Richard Nixon
airport? Clinton had his points, but his accomplishments were minor
compared with Nixon’s. Oh, well. This will be an endless
struggle.
We flew to Dallas, where we had a three-hour wait for our
connection to Fort Lauderdale. I slept, then read a pleading in a
lawsuit in which I am involved as plaintiff. The defendants have
described me in ways so unrealistic they are almost funny. But they
are not funny. They are dismaying.
The legal process is difficult. I had probably better not say
any more than that right now. Let’s just say it is expensive but
offers major opportunity for interesting research and thought.
In Fort Lauderdale, we had a pleasant driver from Mongolia. Yes,
Mongolia. Now he lives in Fort Lauderdale. He was a superb
driver.
The hotel here in Fort Lauderdale welcomed me and treated me
like a prince about a year ago. Last night, the front desk people
could not have been much worse. Unhelpful. Slow. Surly. One man, a
young man named Brandon, tried to help but his boss, a woman whom I
will not name, was completely uninterested in any kind of help. It
took an hour and a half to find halfway decent rooms. I was
furious. This is no way to run a hotel. The Westin Diplomat.
Really, the contempt the front desk showed us was breathtaking.
Then, a 90-minute wait for toast. Amazing.
Then, a jolt. As I was watching Fox News, I saw that my old
marching companion and colleague, Chuck Colson, had passed away.
That is a loss.
However, today was a lot better. I spoke to a great group of men
and women who distribute janitorial and food-service products. They
could not have been better people. Smart, friendly, good energy.
These are almost all family-owned businesses with third and fourth
generation owners and executives. The backbone of the nation.
After the speech, I joined the men and women at a buffet. I sat
with men and women from Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi. We
talked about George Wallace, about the Franklin Battlefield outside
Nashville, about Shiloh, about folk art. All very jolly and
encouraging.
Then back to my room to read a condescending obit in the New
York Times about Chuck Colson. They have such contempt that
they dared to say that Colson “said” he had a spiritual conversion
about the time of Watergate. Now, look, NY Times, the man
spent 35 tough years to bring help to the least of the earth’s
people—its prisoners. He went into hundreds, maybe thousands, of
prisons, prayed with millions of prisoners. He did this for 35
years. He spent his whole life bringing Christ to people in steel
cages. Does that sound like a fake conversion?
His Prison Fellowship students, pupils, members, have less than
half the recidivism rate of prisoners who do not join the Prison
Fellowship. Does that sound like someone who just “says” he had a
spiritual conversion?
May I ask where or when any journalist of any kind has done more
for his or her fellow man than Chuck Colson? Where any former
political figure has ever done more for his fellow man than Colson?
I agree that Jimmy Carter is in the competition, but he’s far, far
behind.
I scoured the Internet and did not see one story that pointed
out the fantastic success record of the Prison Fellowship.
Naturally, it’s not there. Chuck would have prayed for the mocking,
contemptuous humans who could not hold a candle to him.
Well, I had the great pleasure of working with Chuck Colson on a
project he had going about the ethical dimensions of the collapse
in 2008. He was a thorough gentleman, gone far too soon. Too many
going too soon.
Then, a late supper with my wife at a restaurant on the
Intracoastal Waterway across from our hotel. The night was balmy
and pleasant. An immense yacht was parked right in front of us. Its
owner, a pleasant Texan who manufactures everything from controls
for torpedoes to locomotive parts, told us all about the boat. Two
2,000 horsepower diesel engines. Unbelievable. That boat was like
something out of a dream. An 88-foot Pershing. It was out of a
great dream.
So…let’s take it away from him, sell it, and give the money to
Solyndra! Then, let’s put him in prison for being a smart,
energetic guy. Doesn’t that make sense?
I stayed up very late watching a great steamy show on Showtime
called The Borgias. It stars Jeremy Irons, a talented,
super-talented British actor who was brilliant as Humbert H.
Humbert in the remake of Lolita some years
ago, and what a painfully sad movie that was. Pedophilia is not
really anything but cruel for everyone involved.
Jeremy Irons plays a Borgia Pope and he plays him for laughs. He
is really funny and the whole storyline is extremely funny. I am
not sure it was supposed to be funny, but it has such perfect
Brentwood/Santa Monica story twists (a single mother daughter who
will not breastfeed her crying baby unless her father buys her a
Porsche, or something like that…maybe it was to grant her dead
lover a decent burial) and Jeremy Irons plays it for such canny
self-mocking humor that it works as a medieval sitcom with a good
bit of nudity.
Then I watched a simply fabulous movie, also on Showtime, called
Drive Angry. It is about a man who comes back from the
dead, Nick Cage, to save his granddaughter from satanic worshipers.
He is aided and abetted in this task by someone from Hell, played
by a very funny guy named Fichtner, and by a spectacularly perfect
looking woman who I thought was Denise Richards but was really
Amber Heard. She is so beautiful it should be a crime.
The movie had way more sex than was necessary and way too much
graphic violence. But it also was extremely funny in its own campy
way. I would watch it over and over, but then there is no better
actor on the scene than Nick Cage. So, anything he’s in…I’ll watch
it.
Monday
I WAS AWAKENED by a scary dream about my son bothering me while
I was napping and wanting to go drive to Richmond. Where did that
come from?
Then various sobering thoughts about life in general. Then off
to give a speech to super nice people who distribute trash can
liners, paper products, hand cleaner, to institutions all over the
country. Super-duper friendly, smart people. I could have spent a
week with them.
Now, let me tell you something. I literally felt ultra-depressed
this morning. Like I wanted to jump out of my window here on the
30th floor. I don’t know why and probably it was just indigestion.
But, when I finished shaking hands with hundreds of men
and women, getting my picture with them, talking to them, making
them laugh, I felt totally great.
That’s what work does for you. Work is a sovereign cure for
despair. I cannot recommend it highly enough. It is better than any
drug. Work is a gift from God. Depression is death blows of low
self-esteem. Work is self-esteem.
A nice walk along the Intracoastal, then dinner on the water,
served by a sweet woman from Austria. Then lots more picture
taking. One of the men I took my picture with pointed at an immense
cruise ship nearby and said, “I guess to you, that’s a dinghy.”
Why do people think I’m rich? I am mystified about this. I am
not at all rich except in my family and friends and my country. I
am not rich and never have been rich and never will be rich. Warren
Buffett is rich. Larry Ellison is rich. I am not rich. I have never
said I am rich. There is nothing in my life to indicate that I am
rich. Oh, well.
“It looks like a huge boat to me,” I said and smiled wanly.
Then a nice stroll with my wifey back to the hotel, hoping to
find something great on TV. No such luck. Just packing and getting
ready to go back to LAX tomorrow and see my Julie Good Girl. I miss
that girl so much, that sweet loving girl. Sometimes in the night
she actually sleeps with her trusting, noble head on my pitifully
unworthy shoulder.
What a gift work is. What a gift Chuck Colson was. What a gift
dogs are. What a gift my wife is. And my son and his wife and my
granddaughter and my pals. What gifts from God.
But what is going to happen to this great nation? Too much debt.
Too few people who want to work. I took pictures with many Haitians
today at the hotel. They really work. They also all carry little
bottles of Clear Eyes. Those people come to America to work. Too
many of the ones who are born here want no part of work. There’s
too much of mockery of work—and nowhere near enough work. Not even
close to enough. It all scares me but I cannot do a thing about it.
I can just step out on my balcony and look at the moon over Miami.
Or maybe it’s Fort Lauderdale. It shines on the man who owns the
Pershing 88 and the man who mops the floors. It shines on anyone
who pays attention. We all live our lives with a death sentence,
but it can be a beautiful ride.
Oh, dear God, how I miss my parents though. I bought perfect
postcards of Miami. I sent them to my sister, to close friends, but
I wanted to send them to my parents. This is cruel. I told them I
loved them a million times. I wish it had been a billion.
Tuesday
TIME TO GO HOME. This hotel turned out to be fabulously good.
Great room service most of the time, fabulous view out our windows,
basically quite quiet. Whatever they did wrong that first night,
they recovered beautifully.
Florida is glorious when it’s not hot or humid or rainy. I had
breakfast on the balcony with Big Wifey this morning, eating
oatmeal with the waves in the background and birds hovering
nearby.
My wife said, “I woke up in the middle of the night and turned
on the light next to the bed and there was the most beautiful
insect I have ever seen. Like a long, glowing, blue-green
stick.”
My wife sees beauty everywhere.
