Tag Archives: Bipolar Disorder

Woman In Love

15 Saturday Mar 2014

Posted by in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, eclectic music, Marriage, Mount Vernon New York, music, Pop Culture, Youth

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Cover art of "Woman In Love" (1980) single by Barbra Streisand, August 9, 2006. (JeanMarcDekesel via Wikipedia, http://www.discogs.com/viewimages?what=R&obid=539484). Qualifies as fair use under US copyright laws (low resolution and subject matter).

Cover art of “Woman In Love” (1980) single by Barbra Streisand, August 9, 2006. (JeanMarcDekesel via Wikipedia, http://www.discogs.com/viewimages?what=R&obid=539484). Qualifies as fair use under US copyright laws (low resolution and subject matter).

I actually like a couple of Barbra Streisand songs, both from ’80, and both from her collaboration with The Bee Gees (specifically, Barry Gibb). One is “Guilty,” the other “Woman In Love.” And yes, this is but one sign of how weird I am. But for the past thirty-four years, these songs have been part of my mental and actual music rotation, allowing me to ponder the mysteries of the opposite sex in the process.

For those moments, I’ve sometimes found myself wondering, has any woman ever felt that way about me? “I am a woman in love/And I’d do anything/To get you into my world/And hold you within.” I honesty have no idea, but the possibility of stirring passion in someone other than myself has fascinated me since the days of my Wendy crush in March ’82.

So, every time I’ve had a crush or love of major note, Streisand’s “Woman In Love” has given me to ability to think about what it would be like to be a woman. Young. In love. With all of the hopes and hurts, battles and betrayals. In ’85 with Phyllis, in ’91, in ’95 with my eventual wife, even after marriage. Somehow, the overwrought and — dare I say, Jewish — angst with which Streisand sang the song resonated with me and has stayed with me after all these years.

Cover art for Anita Baker's Rapture (1986) CD, April 25, 2006. (Faustlin via Wikipedia). Qualifies as fair use (low resolution).

Cover art for Anita Baker’s Rapture (1986) CD, April 25, 2006. (Faustlin via Wikipedia). Qualifies as fair use (low resolution).

It wasn’t just Streisand that’s given me this feeling over the years. Anita Baker’s “Sweet Love,” and “Body and Soul,” Chaka Khan’s “I’m Every Woman” (still like this version better than Whitney’s, may she rest in peace) and “Through The Fire,” even some stuff from Celine Dion. Their music has gotten me about as close as could get to understanding what it must feel like to be a woman, at least in a generic sense. My wife, though, could probably testify to a lot more moments.

Of course, I can’t actually be a “woman in love,” no matter how much experience, imagination and empathy I can muster. Passing a kidney stone for nineteen hours in ’02 may approximate what my wife went through in giving birth to our son in ’03. But I didn’t have to carry that kidney stone around for nine months while it made noticeable changes to my body, my diet and my psyche. And having a child that you’ve fallen in love with before their birth often make the process worth it. I couldn’t get my doctors to let me see my kidney stone, much less keep it!

“It’s a right I defend/Over and over again,” Streisand sings in “Woman In Love.” As a boy and man who’s been “in love” at least four times in forty-four years, I feel that I can relate — a lot, if not in total. Taken to it’s most illogical extent, though, would mean obsession, possibly even stalker-like tendencies, especially if someone else doesn’t feel anything near the same way. But, when you’re in the middle of it, you might as well be on coke, Oxycontin and weed all at once, and with some latent form of bipolar disorder to boot. And the hangover from being in love requires much more than a Bloody Mary to get over.

Parts of your brain on drugs (endorphins) when in love, June 28, 2004. (Andreas Bartels, AP/Forbes.com).

Parts of your brain on drugs (endorphins) when in love, June 28, 2004. (Andreas Bartels, AP/Forbes.com).

How women do it, I guess I’ll never know.

One Good Job, On Real Education Reform

31 Friday Jan 2014

Posted by in 1, Academia, culture, Eclectic, New York City, Politics, race

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PCAS Visual Model, AED, June 14, 2006. (Donald Earl Collins and Lynda Barbour).

PCAS Visual Model, AED, June 14, 2006. (Donald Earl Collins and Lynda Barbour).

Yesterday marked ten years since I accepted the position of deputy director for a brand-new, embryonic initiative known as Partnerships for College Access and Success (PCAS). Who knew that, given the circumstances, this would turn out to be the best full-time work of my nonprofit sector years, with a good boss, a large measure of autonomy to make decisions and to brainstorm new ideas? And to put together a plan that, in the end, was about getting more low-income/first-generation students and students of color into and then through college? Looking at where corporate education reform has moved since, it’s a wonder that this initiative got off the ground at all.

There were two problems with this new position, neither of which were related to the job itself. One was that it kept me at the Academy for Educational Development (AED – now FHI 360), an organization that had screwed me in terms of pay and had left me in a hostile work environment with my then immediate supervisor at New Voices. I was a bit burned out from having to work in this environment of cynicism, distrust and bipolar disorder by the end of January ’04. Two was that my new boss, Sandy, would be more than 200 miles away from me for most of the time that we were to work together, since the job didn’t pay enough for me to consider a move to the New York City area.

A week into January ’04, I interviewed with Sandy for the first time. After weeks of interviews with two other organizations — not to mention three years with AED — I actually had low expectations as my Amtrak train arrived at Penn Station. Somehow, though, being in the city again, riding the 1 down to 14th Street and walking over to Fifth Avenue did take me out of my metro DC malaise.

Union Square, Manhattan (about two blocks from NY office on Fifth Avenue), November 14, 2005. (Postdlf via Wikipedia). Released to public domain via Creative Commons 3.0.

Union Square, Manhattan (about two blocks from NY office on Fifth Avenue), November 14, 2005. (Postdlf via Wikipedia). Released to public domain via Creative Commons 3.0.

I went up to the eighth floor and realized that I already knew two people at the NY office, one whom had overlapped with me during my Pitt/Carnegie Mellon grad school days. More importantly, though, I met Sandy. After three years of working for duplicitous people, at least Sandy was honest, maybe too honest, about the job and about her thinking regarding the people around her. For me, this was definitely refreshing. Maybe this was the Mount Vernonite/New Yorker in me that yearned for old-style New York honesty. It caused me to relax and to talk passionately about my writing and education, about what reform really should look like, about my disdain for data as the answer to everything, about the need to reach students and then help build the skills necessary for college.

After two hours, I learned a few things. Sandy could be a bit scattered, sometimes even sound a bit paternalistic, like a good, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, ’60s-era liberal can. Meaning she could rub folks outside of New York the wrong way, like the potential funders for this initiative. But Sandy wasn’t stuck in that moment, either, and the fact that her ideas for this new initiative were wide-open was wonderful for me. PCAS was so new that the grant money wasn’t quite in yet, and the folks at Lumina Foundation for Education wanted more clarity as to what we meant when we said partnerships.

So when I was offered the position three weeks later, I wasn’t actually surprised. I came pretty cheap, didn’t need to learn how AED worked, and had experience with providing technical assistance and in higher education (particularly in teaching teachers about the history of K-16 education and education reform). Still, how was working in DC with my boss in NY with a team of technical assistance folks scattered throughout AED (not to mention consultants, Lumina Foundation, the eventual grantees, the independent third-party evaluator in Philly) going to work successfully?

Ultimately, it was about having a foundation that was open, at least initially, to trying out new ideas. It was because we selected grantees with a variety of nonprofit organizational experiences around college access, youth development, workforce development, grassroots organizing and high school reform. We entrusted them to know their local context, their school district and college/university connections better than we could operating in DC or NY. We worked as hard as we could to help these organizations build real partnerships with their local high schools, school districts and colleges, because we and they wanted to reach students and encourage their pursuit of a college degree. And I had a good boss in Sandy who trusted me to do my job and to grow the work.

Current Lumina Foundation logo (at least their 3rd change in eight years), January 31, 2014. (http://luminafoundation.org).

Current Lumina Foundation logo (at least 3rd change in eight years), January 31, 2014. (http://luminafoundation.org).

It was a good four-year run, one that ended in no small part because neither AED as a whole nor Lumina were interested in increasing college access and retention for underrepresented students. They were both interested in finding out where the dollars were or in leveraging those dollars to remake K-16 education. In AED’s case, it became about data and data systems, because of course, that’s where a lot of the Gates Foundation money for education has been since ’06. For Lumina, a change in leadership at the beginning of ’07 meant a shift away from a diversity of initiatives to a big focus on research grants into making college more affordable through student loans.

My last day at AED as a full-time staffer will be six years ago tomorrow. The grant funding from Lumina was almost done, and after seven total years, I needed to build a future beyond AED for myself. I learned a lot working for and with Sandy and did a lot working on PCAS. The sad truth is, though, that an initiative like the one we were able to put together, make work and grow wouldn’t happen in today’s corporate reform environment. And where does that leave someone like me?

Bearing False Witness At Work – It Can Hurt

16 Saturday Nov 2013

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Hannah Arendt on false witnesses, November 16, 2013. (http://izquotes.com/).

Hannah Arendt on false witnesses, November 16, 2013. (http://izquotes.com/).

I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least mention the fact that this week ten years ago, I endured what was the beginning of a three-month period of a hostile work environment (one that was already not-so-optimal to begin with). It was brought on by my then immediate supervisor’s paranoia and jealousy, and intensified by his then undisclosed bipolar disorder. I’ve written about my three years of hell with Ken before on this blog, most notably in “The Messiah Complex At Work, Part 1” from a couple of years ago.

What I haven’t really discussed at all was how I felt about all of this as I went through it. As a man, as a Black man, as a person who believed in social justice, including in a workplace in which we funded social justice projects. I’d only been accused of sexual harassment one other time, by a boss whose best friend had been harassing me at work for the better part of two months, in the early part of ’89. Now, fourteen years later, here was Ken, at an HR meeting he set up, accusing me of saying things that I never said, of thoughts that I never had.

I was already used to being guilty before being innocent. With police. In a public setting, like a supermarket or bookstore. But not at work, and for the most part, not while I was at Pitt or Carnegie Mellon. Why? Because I tended to be at my most guarded while at work back then. In fact, during an exit interview the year before, a former program assistant at New Voices said that I needed to be “more open” at work if a team like ours was ever to reach its full potential. She may have been right. If only I had bosses who were more open, more relaxed, less accusatory, and in Ken’s case, on his meds.

Archie Bunker from All In The Family (1971-78) screen shot, June 2013. (http://www.chicagonow.com/).

Archie Bunker from All In The Family (1971-78) screen shot, June 2013. (http://www.chicagonow.com/).

There are few things worse in one’s job or career than reckless false accusations. Even if proven completely untrue, there are some who’ll choose to look at those accused with less trust and more suspicion. And Ken, for all of his bluster about social justice, had proven himself to be as much of a bigot as former executive director at Presidential Classroom, an openly admitted bigot. He could’ve accused me of insubordination, of wanting his job, of not doing my job well enough. Instead, Ken relied on the whole hyper-sexualized Black male motif, as if my testosterone was dripping right out of my penis, like some animal in heat.

Of course, some of you will say, “He had untreated bipolar disorder. He didn’t know what he was doing. Cut him some slack.” No, I can’t and I won’t. As I’ve noted in another post regarding Ken’s condition, bipolar disorder doesn’t equal insanity or irrational behavior necessarily. I worked for Westchester County Department of Community Mental Health between ’89 and ’92, and for Western Psychiatric Institute & Clinic at Pitt between ’89 and ’91. I became pretty good at understanding the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders. I did learn a thing or two from having Dr. Juan Mezzich as a boss while I worked at Western Psych between my junior year and first year of grad school at Pitt. 

Kingda Ka, the world's tallest roller coaster, Six Flags Great Adventure, Jackson, NJ (Exit 7A, NJ Turnpike), September 23, 2006. (Dusso Janladde via Wikipedia). Released to public domain.

Kingda Ka, the world’s tallest roller coaster, Six Flags Great Adventure, Jackson, NJ (Exit 7A, NJ Turnpike), September 23, 2006. (Dusso Janladde via Wikipedia). Released to public domain.

One of the things I learned was that bipolar disorder generally exaggerates existing thoughts and behaviors. The psychosis can often be exasperated by stressful situations. For those with the illness, the highs are way too high, the lows so low that suicidal thoughts can become prevalent. If one tends to be paranoid, the paranoia becomes heightened, as was the case with Ken. Still, even with bipolar disorder, he was acting on his bigoted and paranoia template, there long before bipolar disorder manifested itself in him as an adult.

I understood all of this, even as I went through months of accusations and arbitrary changes to my work schedule. But that didn’t mean that there wasn’t a part of me that felt rage, wanted revenge, wanted to take the physically and emotional stunted twerp and stuff him in a garbage can. Or that I didn’t come to work at AED every day between November ’03 and February ’04 with thought that I should just quit, turn around, go home, watch my newborn son Noah and figure out my next step. Most of all, there were times I wanted to choke Ken until he told the truth, that he was a jealous-hearted bastard who lied about me to HR in order to put me in my place as a Black guy working under a White guy.

But I didn’t. I didn’t because I knew that I was right. I knew, somehow, that things would work out in my favor. I knew that God and the universe would vindicate me. If my life is proof of anything, it’s proof that my truth wins out in the end. Those thoughts dictated my actions and counteracted any feelings of rage or violence I had during those cloudy days. To Jonathan Martin and so many others out there, I think I know how you feel right now. Please hang in there, and hang on to the truth.

Terri and Mr. Asexual

07 Wednesday Aug 2013

Posted by in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, High Rise Buildings, Pittsburgh, Pop Culture, race, University of Pittsburgh, Work, Youth

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Asexual pride flag, September 18, 2010. (Wikipedia). In public domain.

Asexual pride flag, September 18, 2010. (Wikipedia). In public domain.

One of my inner circle of friends during my undergraduate years at the University of Pittsburgh was Terri. She was one of the more interesting folks I met during all my years at Pitt and in Pittsburgh. She was so smart, so intriguing, so whimsical, so troubled, so much in fear of success and so flawed. I learned so much from Terri without ever really trying, because she herself was in search of something during all the years I knew her.

I first met Terri in January ’89 at Pitt’s William Pitt Student Union, in the TV room where a bunch of us were watching Dallas (the original series on CBS that Friday night).

William Pitt Union (as viewed from Cathedral of Learning), University of Pittsburgh, July 28, 2012. (Mackensen via Wikipedia).

William Pitt Union (as viewed from Cathedral of Learning), University of Pittsburgh, July 28, 2012. (Mackensen via Wikipedia).

(From Boy @ The Window) “At five-two, she had short dark-brown hair and also wore glasses. There was something about Terri that I knew was different, that she wasn’t just “Black,” whatever that meant. She was one of the first biracial women I’d come to know. It seemed like those were the first words out of her mouth. Maybe not. But Terri did tell us she was “half-Black and half-White” before the night was over….She immediately jumped into our growing conversation once they sat down and criticized Dallas as one of many examples of lily-Whiteness on TV. That launched a whole new discussion, with everything from The Cosby Show to 227.

“After about an hour of debates, jokes and wonderful conversation, we all went out into Oakland. We started at The O, the nickname for Original’s. It had already been a mainstay for students and steelworkers in need of cheap food and beer since ’60. The Pitt football team often drank and caroused there, often getting into fights with Pitt Police. This Friday it was overcrowded and dirty, and we wanted to talk. Terri had become the leader of our pack, and took us over to Hemingway’s as an alternative. The bar and restaurant was The O’s opposite, very quiet, very reserved, with a very much older and Whiter crowd. It was also the first time I’d been carded, so I couldn’t have a drink even if I wanted to.”

Terri was the one who could truly bring out my adventurous side, as she introduced me to Pittsburgh’s night life — Black and White. She didn’t seem to care that I was still only nineteen or twenty years old. Terri could talk herself — and me — into a private over-twenty-five club in Homewood or Penn Hills, or out of trouble with police like no one I knew back then. I met all kinds of Pittsburghers as a result. Gay and straight, older and younger, college educated and working-class stiff. Hanging out with her was a constant balance between a real social life and one when being out too late may have put her or us in danger.

Apartment building at corner of North Aiken & Centre Avenue in Shadyside, Pittsburgh, PA, August 7, 2013. (http://pittsburgh.olx.com).

Apartment building at corner of North Aiken & Centre Avenue in Shadyside, Pittsburgh, PA, August 7, 2013. (http://pittsburgh.olx.com).

My shift to a more regulated schedule with Terri began during the summer of ’90. I came back to the ‘Burgh the first week of August after nearly two months working at Westchester County Department of Community Mental Health. I wanted to find my first real apartment, not just a room in which I shared a kitchen and bathroom with six others in South Oakland (which I’d done in the two previous years). I stayed with Terri and her mother at their new place in Shadyside for a week, fairly close to all the neighborhoods in which I hoped to find a place.

At first, the late nights of talking and hanging out were fun. But by the third day, I was knee-deep in apartment listings and phone calls to landlords in Oakland, Shadyside, Squirrel Hill, Wilkinsburg, Bloomfield, Point Breeze, Homewood and East Liberty. Terri wasn’t exactly a happy camper, with me, her mother or her various suitors for that particular week. Terri and her mother had several arguments that week, about money, dating, even over her treatment of me. The most remarkable thing what hearing Terri call her mother a “bitch” over and over again one night, as if it was a period at the end of a sentence.

My problem, of course, was that I was “asexual” according to Terri. It wasn’t the first time someone had described me as such, and it certainly wasn’t the first time Terri had called me “asexual.” This time and week was different somehow. I guess that Terri thought that I’d look at a couple of places and then spend the rest of the week partying. But given my finances, I couldn’t just plop down money on a $400 a month one-bedroom with bay windows. I don’t think that she understood this, though, not the way Terri spent money back then.

I assumed, right or wrong, that she felt spurned by my lack of interest that week in spending my late nights out on the town with her.  For that week at least, I wasn’t into the Terri Show. As up and charming as she could be, Terri had a dark side, one in which her mother obviously faced much more than anyone else. I still considered her a friend, even a good friend. I just couldn’t be the kind of friend that could be what she wanted me to be on whim and demand. And over the next six years, I gradually also stopped being the friend that would listen to all of Terri’s gripes about life and race, identity and bad boyfriends.

Miller Genuine Draft: The Messiah Complex At Work, Part III

30 Friday Mar 2012

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This is the third in a series of posts I’ve done about my experiences with a former supervisor during my years with the New Voices Fellowship Program at the Academy for Educational Development (see my earlier posts, “The Messiah Complex At Work, Part I” and “Breakdown: The Messiah Complex At Work, Part II” for more). This one is a bit out-of-order, but it’s also both funny and sad at the same time.

It was the last Friday in March ’03 that the powers that were at the Ford Foundation had requested a meeting with Ken about the program up in New York. Not me and Ken, not “Driving Miss Daisy” Sandra and Ken, and not Yvonne and Ken. Just Ken. I knew immediately that this was a bad sign when I learned of the meeting. But Ken said, “No, no, this could be good. We’ve done everything they’ve asked of us.”

With Alan Jenkins now the head of the Human Rights and International Cooperation unit — Anthony Romero having left more than a year before for the ACLU — and with Yvonne about to retire, there really wasn’t anyone on either side of the AED-Ford Foundation relationship that would ensure the continuing, intact funding of our little program. If I could figure this out, I figured anyone could. At least, anyone with any experience working with foundations.

So around 5:30 on March 28, as I was cleaning up my office and preparing for the much-needed weekend with my five-months’ pregnant wife, my phone rang. I half-expected it to be Angelia making some requests for stuff to pick up from CVS or the grocery store on my way from the Silver Spring Metro, so I left the music running, which happened to be Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus.”

As soon as I picked up and said my name and “New Voices,” Ken began to talk. He asked me,”Are you sitting down?,” and then continued about the main event at 320 East 43rd. Despite the efforts of Ken, me and the rest of the staff to attract new kinds of fellows to New Voices, the various successes of those Fellows and their organizations, that a couple of program officers were unhappy with the amount of investment it took to attract these highly qualified individuals. That, and an overall change in priorities — which could have been seen from Mount Everest looking down on New York once Ford had launched its International Fellowship program at the end of ’01 — meant that there was a decreasing interest in New Voices.

Two things occurred at this meeting. One, the Human Rights and International Cooperation unit would now only renew funding for New Voices on an annual basis — it was funded in two-year chunks up until that day. And two, starting in ’04, Ford would reduce their overall funding effort by fifteen percent across all aspects of the New Voices budget.

“Well, at least they didn’t cancel the program,” I thought. Ken, though, seemed distraught. Then I noticed

Depressed Forty Year Old Man Drinking Alone, May 6, 2010. (http://istockphoto.com).

that he was slurring his words, a bunch of voices, and the clinking of glasses.

“Ken, where are you?,” I asked.

“Oh, I’m at a bar, drinking a Miller Genuine Draft,” he said.

“Really, you’re drinking?,” I responded, with a gasp as a substitute for laughter.

“I have to drown my sorrows somehow,” Ken said.

“Oh geez,” I thought. He continued talking about the good fight, about parts of the program that we’d have to curtail immediately, about looking for new funding streams for New Voices (the last one I had suggested two years earlier).

“Given where you are, I don’t think that this is a good time or place for us to discuss these issues. Plus, I can barely hear you,” I said.

“You’re right. Well, have a good weekend,” Ken said with his worried, crazy laugh.

I got off the telephone, and turned off the music from my computer’s Windows Media system. Two songs had played since Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus,” but it was pounding in my head. It was now mixed up with the image of Ken looking disheveled post-Ford meeting, downing a bottle of Miller Genuine Draft while sitting on a bar stool, then ordering another. All by himself. All the while, everyone else around Park Avenue and Grand Central having themselves a good time. I realized at that moment that I wouldn’t see or hear “Personal Jesus” the same way again.

I felt sorry for him, but knowing what I’d gone through with Ken two years earlier, I couldn’t trust his judgment either (see my “Working At AED: Alternate Sources of Fear” post from June ’11). It was the first evening of the end of my time at New Voices, as well as the first day of Ken’s ten-month spiral that led to Georgetown University Hospital’s psychiatric ward. Apparently, a bottle of MGD’s hardly strong enough to take the weight of mental illness off. Nor did it make Ken wise enough to recognize that when a messiah has failed to deliver, that it would be a good time to rethink how one sees himself and the world.

Breakdown: The Messiah Complex At Work, Part II

07 Saturday Jan 2012

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Cosmo, from Nicktoons' Fairly Odd Parents, a reminder of Ken, January 5, 2012. (http://fairlyoddparents.wikia.com).

The saying goes that a lawyer who represents him or herself at trial has a fool as counsel. This is also true of a supervisor who believes that the only ideas worth pursuing are his own, unadulterated ones. Especially one in the midst of a nervous breakdown, who who’d know since the late-1980s that he had bipolar disorder. This was the case of my last days at New Voices in January ’04, as I prepared to move on, and as Ken prepared to flip out (see my “The Messiah Complex At Work, Part I” from November ’11).

The seven weeks between the weird November meeting with Ken and others and his breakdown were tension filled. I worked out a schedule that allowed me to take until the middle of February — three months — to find another position at the Academy for Educational Development or elsewhere. Beyond that, I did my job, and found Ken constantly snooping in my office, monitoring my telephone calls, and double-checking my times in and out of the office in the meantime. It was as bad as it was during my first weeks working for him in December ’00 and January ’01.

I’d long suspected that Ken had some mental illness, either bipolar disorder or paranoid schizophrenia (as I noted in my “Working At AED: Alternate Sources of Fear” post in June ’11). And in the year prior to January ’04, I’d made some of my suspicions known, to superiors like “Driving Miss Daisy” Sandra, my former Center Director Yvonne. I’d even taken two New Voices colleagues out to lunch that summer — a month before the birth of my son — to warn them about the signs I’d seen of Ken become more maniac and paranoid than usual.

But I didn’t realize that Ken’s condition knew no bounds. So it was that on the morning of Wednesday, January 7, that Driving Miss Daisy had called us into an impromptu meeting with Ken. We went into the seventh floor conference room, not knowing why we were meeting. Ken came in last, after I’d spent about five minutes updating Driving Miss Daisy about the preparation status for the New Voices gathering at the World Social Forum in Mumbai.

His face was flush, the color of freshly caught and gutted salmon, and sweat ran through his hair like he’d just run his five-foot-two frame a couple of miles in a sprint. He came in, sat down as I continued the update, then started to cry. Ken said, “Sandra, I’ve got to go,” and then left in a rush. By the time we had adjourned, Ken had left the building.

I wouldn’t see the man again for another five weeks. In the meantime, several AED higher-ups brought me up to speed on what had occurred between the time I changed my son’s diapers and disembarked from the Metro at Du Pont Circle that morning. Ken and Driving Miss Daisy had met with AED’s president and CEO that morning about the status of the project. During that meeting, Ken had gone off on the head honcho, accusing him of sabotaging the project, of sabotaging him as the project leader, of being a corrupt, money-grubbing president. Of course, I found a letter in a printer two days before which summarized some of these

Georgetown University Hospital, Washington, DC December 16, 2008. (http://flickr.com).

ideas, but I’d no idea that Ken had printed it or planned to use it.

The next revelation dropped that Saturday, although I wouldn’t learn of it until I came back to work that Monday, January 12. Ken had left me a message Saturday morning, around 8 am, apologizing for the hell that he had put me through the previous couple of months. Then, as his voice started to crack, Ken said, “I love you, Donald!” I heard a sniffle, and then a click on the message. Within that week, I learned from one colleague in human resources that Ken had checked into the psychiatric ward at Georgetown University Hospital, and from another person that it was Driving Miss Daisy who’d driven him there.

There are any number of lessons that I or anyone can draw from this experience. For me, of all of the jobs I’ve held, this one was the most bittersweet experience, and in retrospect, I probably should’ve said no to it when it was offered to me in November ’00. That everyone with some authority who worked with me or Ken should’ve but didn’t notice the signs of his manic-depressive behavior.

That no matter my integrity or proper professional behavior under the circumstances, that I’d end up the bad guy. After all, my staff went to Mumbai without me — Driving Miss Daisy’s decision — while I went on to hold down the fort and found another position at AED. And don’t tell me race wasn’t involved. A tall mentally stable and heterosexual Black male versus a short, bipolar and semi-in-the-closet White male? Only in this world does the latter keep his position another six years after this and several other breakdowns.

That said, one thing stands out above all else. It’s a sad but important lesson about the difference being true to yourself and lying to yourself, about finding the right balance between life and career.

The Messiah Complex At Work, Part 1

12 Saturday Nov 2011

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Heinrich Himmler, ala Messiah Complex, 1938. (German Federal Archive via Wikipedia).

Today marks eight years since my former immediate supervisor Ken (see my “Working At AED: Alternate Sources of Fear” post from June ’11) forced me into a meeting with the head of HR and his “all-wise” boss Sandra “Driving Miss Daisy” in an effort to strip me of my Assistant Director of New Voices title at the now defunct Academy for Educational Development. All because I did my job while he was out of the office tacking on a couple of extra days after we’d attended the Independent Sector Conference in San Francisco the week before.

But this wasn’t about me or me doing my job as I’d been doing it for three years. No, this was about Ken in the middle of a period of emotional and psychological instability, and about me no longer trying to work around his moments of mania and depression. After all, I had a newborn son to worry about, a job search to keep secret, and a book I was determined to publish. Couple that with a fifteen percent cut in funding from the Ford Foundation for the New Voices program, and there was no way I’d make it through my last months with New Voices without Ken reacting irrationally.

Anglo Corned Beef, November 11, 2011. (cgi.ebay.com).

It didn’t help that Ken suddenly wanted to do a New Voices conference in Mumbai, India as part of the World Social Forum with no significant planning that August, while I was out on maternity leave. It also didn’t help that Yvonne, our center director, chose early retirement in June over being kept into “Driving Miss Daisy’s” box of highly talented and experienced but underutilized managers of color.

Most of all, it didn’t help that I was completely honest, for once, in my assessment of my performance in my annual review that October. I dutifully reported my recent publications in The Washington Post and a semi-scholarly journal, presentations, teaching of graduate courses at George Washington University, and so on. During that meeting, Ken all but told me he was jealous of the kind of year I was having professionally. He even asked me where I wanted to be in five years. “I want to be director of my own project, of something like New Voices,” I said, again being all too honest.

So, during a week in which we had zero babysitter coverage, where I’d taken the week off to take care of my three-month-old son, Ken insisted that I come into the office. All so I could listen to an hour of accusations, insinuations and wild speculations. He accused me of undermining his authority because I relayed State Department travel warnings for Mumbai to New Voices Fellows. He told me how “amusing it was” that I had titled my position Assistant Director, even though that was the title of my position when I applied for it, interviewed for it, and accepted the position three years earlier. And even though he’d been introducing me as his assistant director for three years.

He accused me of sexually harassing a New Voices Fellow and two staff members back in ’01 over two conversations that he had heard about third hand, and not from a staff member. One was about a strange site visit conversation that had nothing to do with anything approaching sexual harassment. The other conversation, it turned out, was about me and a former staff member’s gastrointestinal illnesses, something we had in common. Ken also accused me of wanting to take his job, of believing that I could do his job better than he could. Only on that last part I agreed, with a definitive nod of my head.

So when he asked me to accept having my title as Assistant Director stripped, along with the commensurate duties that went with that title (including supervisory authority), I said, “No, I think it’s time for me to move on from New Voices.” It left Ken in shock. Heck, it left me in shock, thinking about how we’d make it without my income if I couldn’t find another job over the next three months. The HR director and “Driving Miss Daisy,” though, weren’t surprised at all.

The meeting Ken had forced made my secret decision to move on an open one. Either way, it was inevitable. As I’d written in my journal after my annual review with Ken a couple of weeks before the meeting:

Mr. Magoo screen shot (and a serious lack of vision), June 23, 2011. (http://tumeke.blogspot.com).

“The most telling comment that my Director made during our fundraising effort came when I asked about his vision for our project. ‘I don’t know what the project’s vision should be,’ he said. I realized at that moment that everything we had worked for would fail, no matter how sound our ideas. My Director’s vision for the project did not extend beyond his need to feel needed, to feel as if he alone could keep our project – and by extension, himself – alive. I concluded that this was a dangerous position to find myself in professionally, and that it was beyond time to go.”