How many people are going to be in the crowd?

Introducing the president
Originally uploaded by Brite light photos.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - The task was a fairly easy one: Introduce the president of the university before he gave his annual fall address.

In my new job, Faculty Senate Chair at CSU, Sacramento, this kind of things pops up all the time. I spoke more before large groups in the first week of school than I had in the five years previous. (I'm not counting standing up in front of class of 25 undergraduates. They have to listen.)

This day, I knew there could be a sizable crowd and so uncharacteristically I wrote out a few key phrases and actually pulled the president's resume to be able to give him a nice warm welcome.

Unfortunately, I waited until the morning of the introduction to actually do that and by the time I had my talk all ready and my tie knotted in a nice Windsor, it was a half-hour before I was expected to be on stage.

And I live 20 minutes from campus.

Miatas are very handy in such situations and I blasted to campus in the requisite time, breezing in 5 minutes before showtime where I was faced with a somewhat frantic aide-de-camp of the president who was afraid I was not going to show.

Not show! Please! Ye of little faith. (And speaking of faith, thank God that I found parking right away - or I would have been late.)

Then I walked into the University ballroom and realized that there were hundreds of people in the audience - maybe close to 1,000. And their wasn't just a simple podium, it was a real raised stage with a podium, a sound system with plenty of horsepower, cameras all over the place, and teleprompters.

Teleprompters.

The teleprompters were not for me - they were for the president - but they made a great thing to joke about. And getting a laugh when you utter your very first sentence in front of that big a crowd takes all the steam out of any potential stage fright. The laughs continued through my introduction (and not always during the laugh lines...hmmmm...) and after about five minutes I got to say, "Please welcome the president..."

But the real surprise came a few hours later when I walked into a faculty member's office and heard my voice on his computer.

The speech - and my brief introduction - was posted on the university website and there I was, in full living color for the university and the world to see.

I am very glad I didn't tell the joke that I was considering about how many university presidents it takes to screw in a light bulb. It seemed hysterically unny when I wrote it...

But perhaps I should save it for another day. Maybe I'll refine it a little and use it in the spring when I get to introduce him again at his spring campus address.

Or the other one I made up.

There were these three university presidents on an airplane...

The Smartest Guys in the Room, sort of...

Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling
Originally uploaded by Brite light photos.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Free movies are hard to turn down, plus, the tale of Enron was too good to pass up, so a normal Friday-stay-put-at-home turned into a night at the University at a showing of The Smartest Guys In the Room.

I had seen snippets of it earlier on PBS, but seeing it on the big screen - and all at once - gives it much more power. clearly calling into question the power of corporations.

And it pretty clearly says that corporate ethics is an oxymoron, at least at Enron, I thought last night.

But after mulling over the movie and then reading a few headlines today, the smart guys at Enron are hardly alone in their arrogance and total disdain for the havoc they wreak.

Twenty-five years ago, when I was a newspaper editor, I debated with a free market friend of mine about corporations and the lack of personal accountability. I opined that the invention of the corporation was one of the worst ideas ever conceived. We argued for hours because although he was a free market advocate, he also believed that corporations were very necessary to shield people (people running the corporations).

My point exactly. No personal responsibility.

Unfortunately, the corporate make-money-at-any-cost mentality has so pervaded society, that even the few students who attended the screening last night seemed more upset that Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling got caught than that their hubris ruined the lives of thousands and thousands of people and actually cost California Gov. Gray Davis his political career.

Were Dante to revise his Inferno today, I believe he might describe a new circle set up for corporate executives who put profits (and their salaries) over any thought of people. It's probably one of the most crowded spots in Hell.

Perhaps the most intriguing part of the film is a description of the budgeting practices of Enron and how no one could figure out how it was making so much money.

It wasn't, of course, it was all sham, all lies and ultimately collapsed in a heap that wiped out the life savings of many people and will have ramifications for the retirements of a big chunk of the nation for years.

I would not recommend watching this movie and "Who Killed the Electric Car?" in the same evening, unless you have studied with Zen masters about how to control your blood pressure.

But do watch it.

In the meantime, the following website is worth taking a look. Be sure to check out the brief movie trailer.

Enron movie

'Who Killed The Electric Car?' - worth watching

EV-1 sporting around town
Originally uploaded by Brite light photos.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - I have to be dragged to see some movies and this was one of them.

Not because I didn't believe that the EV-1, produced briefly by General Motors, was the victim of corporate greed. But because the movie would reinforce that and just raise my blood pressure.

It did both, but the movie has a surprise ending which I won't convey here.

But I will give you a hint: I'm really glad I'm buying a Toyota Prius. Really glad.

The arguable star of the film is the EV-1 car itself, but in a supporting role is Chelsea Sexton, who was a GM employee in charge of selling these vehicles. She's now an advocate for electric vehicles and if she weren't so honest, could have a great career in politics.


Chelsea Sexton at a rally to save the EV-1

She's the kind of bright young person I love to see in my classes at the university - far brighter than the people at GM (and the oil companies).

The movie makes a brief mention of the last time the big players teamed up to force the automobile on the American public - back in the 1930s when the oil companies, tire manufacturers and automakers sold many American cities buses at well below their real cost (as well as promises that tires and fuel would be very cheap) so that cities would get rid of their electric trolley systems.

They also required the cities - to get those big discounts - to rip out the rail tracks and in many cases, even give up their rights of way to ensure there would never be another electric railway - just buses that needed parts, tires and of course, oil. Pretty ironic that as a nation we are spending billions of dollars to build new electric light rail lines when we had them 75 years ago - and they worked just fine, thank you very much.

The saddest part of this film is seeing stacks of the destroyed EV-1 vehicles - perfectly good cars, perhaps too good to survive. Remember the expression 'planned obsolesence?' GM forgot to program that in for these sporty - and fast - little cars.


Stacks of EV-1 autos ready for the shredding machine.

Who Killed The Electric Car? is well worth watching. But before you do, check out this website:

Plug In America

And check your blood pressure before and after, too.

Sunday - a time for boating, barbecues and music

Leigh Graham
Originally uploaded by Brite light photos.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Most Sundays in years past I would have been aboard Sabbatical today, either closing the boat up after a weekend cruise or frequently fixing whatever we might have broken while out sailing (or was about to break).

But this Sunday was stay and home and catch up a few things, one them rest and relaxation, which included listing to a lot of music - mostly on the IPod, of course.

One of the songs that just played is Perfidia, sung by Leigh Graham, a Toronto-based chanteuse who has a wonderful voice. She sings a lot of the old 1940s songs, as well as swing numbers and big band stuff. Her rendition of Hernando's Hideaway is not to be missed.

When Admiral Fox and I were in the east this summer, I tried to make arrangements to go see Leigh perform live with the Toronto Starlight group, but it turned out she was off the singing tour for most of the summer, pregnant with her first child.

What a warbler of lullabyes she will be!

The other song that just popped up is "As Time Goes By," sung by Dooley Wilson, shown in the photo here toasting with Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in a famous scene from Casablana.

Dooley Wilson, Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman

Did I say a famous scene? All the scenes from Casablanca are famous, aren't they?

Right now dialogue from the final scene is playing with music in the background.

"Here's looking at you kid."