Work Coat - Dedicated to Mike and Oscar

 I'm not exactly sure what this post will be about. There is this phrase that comes back to me periodically, "work coat".

When we departed Virginia for my first assignment as a consular officer in Shanghai, China, the State Department still had a program of arranging observations with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP). It made sense; State Department officers issuing visas abroad see their mistakes being correct by DHS colleagues in the USA. We flew from Dulles to San Francisco where I did my observations before boarding the big flight to Shanghai. One consultation was with a USCIS office that investigated suspicious immediate relative relationship immigrants, the IR category. The officer I visited was charged with ensuring marriages were real, as in Peter Weir's 1990 movie Green Card staring Gerard Depardieu and Andie MacDowell. This was my very first time wearing a suit and tie for actual work. I took a lunch break on my own. My older brother, Tor, flew to San Francisco to visit a former college professor and see me off to China. (I don't think he would have made the effort if it was just me. It's not that we aren't close. It's more that I get in the way or can't keep up.) We met on the sidewalk outside the USCIS office. I saw Tor walking towards me wearing his usual outdoorsy casual clothes. He looked right through me, didn't recognize me in the suit and tie. I had to shout "Tor!" as he was walking right past me. It was the first time he'd seen me in a suit and tie, the first time I wore a suit and tie for work. We were both a bit shaken. 

The suit pants and jacket, beige color, were tailor made in Johor Bahru, Malaysia, by an older Chinese Malaysian gentleman. His shop was called The Mandarin Tailor. The suit is hanging up in my closet at the office waiting to be donated to a Mozambican preparing for his first professional job interview. The fabric is a cheap polyester blend. It doesn't fit in the waist any more but is otherwise a nice looking suit. I'd wear it if it still fit. Oddly, I have a second suit made at the same time by the same tailor, blue, also polyester blend, and it still fits. They were both tailored in two fittings, but the measurements on the blue suit must be a little different, or the fabric more forgiving. I had two more suits tailor made in Shanghai, another tailor made in Hanoi, my Dad gave me one, and I bought a suit off the rack recently from a U.S. Department store before moving to my post in Mozambique. Tailor made suits are cheaper in Asia than suits off the rack in the USA. That said, the Chinese suits were crap. The Vietnamese suit was better but still fit wrong after three fittings. I like my Dad's suit, but I ripped the upper pant's thigh on a door frame the first time I wore it to work. The department store suit is okay. Those first two suits from Malaysia always fit me the best. Tailor made clothes should be made to fit. I don't know what the fuck I am doing with  tailor made anything, so I guess I just got lucky with those first two suits from Johor Bahru. 

I don't like suits. Two daily things I don't enjoy about my job. 1) Having to carry a cell phone constantly. 2) Supposedly having to wear suits. I mostly don't wear suits in Mozambique where I run my own small consular section.  

But this is not where the phrase "work coat" came into my life. That was much earlier, on my second or third fall/winter working at the YMCA of the Rockies just outside of Estes Park, Colorado, as a seasonal maintenance worker. My much older seasonal colleague, Michael Connelly, or "Irish Mike" as I thought of him, pushed it on me. "Work coat." He said it in his matter of fact manner, with a wry smile that implied I would be dumb or incompetent to refuse it. It was a demin jean jacket with fake wool fleece inner liner. It was a proper work coat for construction workers to replace the outdoor fleece zip up I wore. Mike had found it discarded in one of the approximately one hundred cabins at the YMCA where we did maintenance work. 

Me (foreground), twin brother Leif, and older brother Tor (furthest back in cap) on top of Teddy's Teeth overlooking the YMCA of the Rockies just out of view to the lower left.

I'll never forget Irish Mike's smile and gravely voice. I'll never forget him as a person, or our senior citizen, seasonal colleague, Oscar. Mike and Oscar both had mustaches. They both were good with tools and had clever minds for fixing things. They were both kind, friendly. Mike was often brash and was always on the prowl for a good joke or opportunity for laughter. Oscar was quiet, calm. One thing about Mike that makes me smile: He told me how a contractor buddy of his would invite him down to his lakeshore home in Loveland, Colorado, to watch running races, which annually took good advantage of the location. Mike and his sometime boss would sit in beach chairs along the route drinking beers as the runners went by and would hold up judges' numbers, one to ten. Scores were based on looks. Mike had such a good laugh sharing the story. I was somewhat appalled. But it was just in good fun. If people were offended, none was intended. Mike was a generous person, always ready to help others. "Loosen up man." Mike would tell me with an infectious smile. Oscar came down with cancer. We were all going to write him cards and wish him well with treatment. I didn't write one. I was waiting for the perfect words to write. They didn't come. "Loosen up man." I learned something about myself and connections between people. 

I was a college student who worked autumns at the YMCA to help pay my very limited college costs. Governor Zell Miller's Hope Grant ensured 100% of tuition, fees, and books were covered at the University of Georgia. Mike and Oscar were former construction workers, had high school diplomas, and molded my perspective of America and Americans.

I'm contrasting that work coat Mike gave me with my foreign service officer suits. I don't fit in either world, but I did love that work coat. 

The Janitor and The Diplomat

Nannies. House Keepers. Cooks. Free housing. Free utilities. Good health insurance. Pension. Free rest and relaxation flights (R&R). Paid home leave. Free moving services, including overseas air and sea freight. 

Do these sound attractive? Do they sound American? These are the primary benefits that attract "the best and brightest" people to the foreign service to act as diplomats on behalf of the United States. To the list of servants above we could add drivers, gardeners, dog walkers, pool cleaners. Granted, the range of servants are only free for Chiefs of Mission, who also have a free car. Because servants are paid out of salary they are generally only feasible in the developing countries of Africa, Asia, Central and South America. The same goes for R&R flights. 

I've been embarrassed to write or speak about these benefits. I don't think they sound very American, at least not my America. I hate having house help - cleaners and cooks. I didn't give birth to our girls so I don't begrudge my wife seeking help from nannies. We had two: Xiao Hu in Shanghai and Raquel in Rio. There is a complicated range of other benefits for foreign service officers as well, so complicated I don't bother with most of them. I admit the free hosing in exotic places abroad attracted me to the foreign service, and the R&R flights. My in-laws are in Malaysia. It had been a major financial planning hurdle budgeting travel to visit them once every year or so. 

Recently one of my Army colleagues (Defense Attaché Office in the Embassy) stopped to say hello on a run as I was leaving work for the evening. He said he would share an objective opinion with me: Foreign service officers are spoiled. The Army officer was an immigrant to the United States from Ivory Coast. He had a relatively well off upbringing. This was his first overseas tour at a U.S. Embassy. His wife, born in the USA, had joined a Facebook chat group for foreign service officer spouses called Trailing Houses. His objective opinion was based mostly from content in the Facebook group, which is mostly people complaining about not having this or that benefit. That's life though. No matter who you work for or what country you live in people complain about paychecks, benefits, social security, medical care, insurance...it's a never ending part of life. That's my subjective opinion. 

My friendly Army officer colleagues shared his objective opinion with me because he had just asked me what I did before joining the foreign service. I told him that I had a full life before starting this career with several previous careers and many different jobs. I've worked as a janitor three different times in my life, up to this point. I might be one again after leaving the foreign service. It's because I was a janitor that my friendly Army officer colleague shared his objective opinion. Now that I really think about it, there are probably not many foreign services officers who previously worked as janitors. I might be the only one who gave it a go three different times in my adult life. 

Boulder, Colorado, water sanitation plant where I started my second gig as a janitor. This place always smelled like shit. It was here and an office complex closer to town, both nice bicycle commutes. 

One advantage of moving often - easily cataloged memories

 I have two memories from before or around the time of my first birthday.  My younger daughter, Sage, has no memories of Brazil, where we lived until she was more than three and half years old, and no memories of China, where we live until she was over a year old. 

Psychology Today, in an online article by PhD Vanessa LoBue, published April 11, 2022, states that it is impossible for me to have memories from my first year and a half of life; these memories are constructed from photos or stories of the older people around me. When I told my daughters that I thought it was odd that Sage had no memories from Brazil, my older daughter, Solveig, told me it is because babies' brains have not developed their hippocampus, the region of the brain that stores memories and creates a sense of time.  LoBue, our PhD psychologist from Rutgers University, explains in her article (which I looked up after Solveig told me about underdeveloped hippocampuses) that memories come in different types. Babies first develop recognition and procedural memory before they develop autobiographical memory. Autobiographical memory is generally tied to a sense of self and of time passing and comes around eighteen months of age. In addition, LoBue explains that memory, especially autobiographical memory, is not fixed. These memories are malleable, can change with time and under new circumstances, have the ability to be manipulated by outside forces. This is more true in children than in adults, but happens across all age groups. Interesting. 

I do plan to return to LoBue's conclusions when I write about an American prisoner case I dealt with as a vice consul in my first tour as a foreign service officer in Shanghai, China. The American, a first grade teacher at Shanghai's French School, was arrested and convicted of sexually abusing several of his students. For now, I'll just focused on memories in my family. Happily, they do not include child sexual abuse. 

My first memory is of falling of the porch of our home in Homer, Alaska. There was snow on the ground, which broke my fall. I can begin to place the relative age and date of this memory based on two items: Alaska and snow. I was born in Alaska, lived there until I was approximately sixteen months old. My Dad then moved us to Casterton, Australia, for a one-year teaching exchange program. I know I was a toddler, and that my twin brother and I were held back from our Mom, who was leaving the house, by an accordion style child's gate on our home's quasi second story porch. We were super connected to our Mom. I have vague memories of screaming at this particular separation, not being able to get past the child's gate, then the ground rushing up to meet me and being buried in the snow. My Mom talked about this event on occasion for the remainder of her life to illustrate how Leif and I were such mama's boys. Maybe I created the memory from her stories. I don't think so. I believe the memory of the ground rushing up, the confusion of struggling in the snow, is my memory, not part of the story she tells.

Photo from the same winter as the fall from the porch. This was the winter of 1975/76.

My second memory is of hitting a tree. Again it is in Alaska, and there is snow. We were on a sled going down a hill. We were supposed to roll out of the sled before it went into the trees. I can see my older brother, Tor, doing just that, explaining to us that's how to do. The next thing I remember is my face smashing into a pine tree trunk, the bark scratching my face, blood. The first part of the memory perhaps comes from stories from my Mom and Tor. The second part, my face hitting the tree, is all mine. I thought it was a memory form age three, but as an adult my Mom told me no, Leif and I were one. It happened before we moved to Australia, not after. Damn, that memory is so typical of us three brothers. Tor the talented adventurer. Leif and I the blundering boobs. 

Solveig's first memories are from Malaysia, probably close to her second birthday. I passed a Chinese language test for the State Department and was invited to join the 164th foreign service officer generalist class when we still lived in Malaysia. We travelled to Idaho, then Colorado just after Solveig's second birthday. Solveig remembers her grandfather, who she calls Gong-gong (this literally means paternal grandfather in Mandarin Chinese, which I encouraged because Gong-gong had no other grandchildren at the time, and Sage was his second and final grandchild) putting her in the the basket of his motorbike and giving her a ride around the neighborhood. This happened before Solveig's second birthday

Sage has a variety of fun memories from Virginia, where we moved after our tour in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She was over three and a half years old then and says she has no earlier memories. I feel like Sage had a super happy-go-lucky life in Rio. She had an oldish nanny (baba) named Raquel who was big, gregarious, and loving and then moved on to a very loving, nurturing, and creative preschool up the hill from our apartment. It was all very Rio-style; lush (or big-bosomed and big-assed in the case of Raquel), artistic, musical, joyful. Sage doesn't remember any of it. 

I though one of the advantages of moving so often was to help with memory. I can categorize memories based on distinctive places I have lived, then place the memory in time. It works for me. It doesn't work for Sage. From birth to the age of thirteen I moved nine times to seven different towns: Homer, Casterton, Spearfish, Virginia City, Sandal, Alpine, and Valdosta. I generally feel this is a curse, but I'm trying to find some advantages in it. The most "stability" I had in my life was my six-years in Valdosta, Georgia. That is odd, because Leif and I were like ducks out of water there, never felt at home. Home is where the heart is. 

Dungeons and Dragons Art Review - Gerald Brom the Dark Master

My disturbed  sleep brings me to this place in the history of TSR's Dungeons and Dragons game - Dark Sun and the art of Gerald Brom. Brom is without a doubt the dark master of D&D art. No other painters for the genre draw near his hard edge and ugly beauty. Indeed, he was such an outlier he is the only one among TSR's painters to move on to a far more prominent solo career. I think I can write that his artistry is renowned even outside the genres of sci-fi, fantasy, and horror. He's such an artist that he dropped his first name. He is BROM. Here I will focus on his pre-BROM days as a TRS Pit artist, with a special emphasis on the Dark Sun campaign setting. 

Brom began working for TSR in 1989 and was an inhouse artist in the Pit through 1993. I believe one of his first D&D paintings was of a wild elf for the Dragonlance setting. It may have first appeared in the 1989 Dragonlance calendar, but I first saw Wild Elf as a full color interior in The Complete Book of Elves, an AD&D 2nd edition source book published in 1993. Wild Elf foretells the coming of the grunge era. Looking at the work below, I try to place what sets it apart fromTSR's Four Greats of Elmore, Easley, Caldwell, and Parkinson. The stone background with skulls could easily feature in the work of Caldwell or Parkinson. The tree roots, Parkinson. The figure's pose and general composition, Elmore. From there we have a divergence. The blade of the spear has a naked quality to it, the true appearance of hard edged metal. The skin and musculature of the figure also have a quality that speaks truth. Then there is the face. It has detail not seen in the other painters. The quality is so different it had me wondering if Brom works in acrylics rather than oils. Brom states that he combines both, starting with acrylic washes and moving to oils for depth and detail.  The hair, war paint, spiked vambrace all point to the grunge era to come. That face almost looks to be inspired by Eddie Vedder. 

                 Brom's Wild Elf

From here we make a true departure from the Four Greats and all Dungeons & Dragons art up to 1991. Here we arrive at Dark Sun. Brom's themes are grim and apocalyptic. The style of art is harsh. Lumps and pounds of flesh come to mind. Colors go from clashing to subdued. In many cases I say the colors are ugly. It reminds me of grunge, which I hated at the time. All my friends were deep into grunge music and esthetic. I recall too many high school nights spent in dark, dank rooms that smelled of shrooms and snakes with the aggressive thumping of grunge bass guitar and the wailing complaints of grunge singers. As much as the Dark Sun esthetic speaks to grunge, I have a fascination and attraction to Brom's vison of the setting. My twin brother and I bought the massive D&D Dark Sun boxed set. However, we had never before even brushed the surface of the dark apocalyptic. We remained dyed in Arthurian legend, landscapes of the British Isles, and pre-Black Death medieval history. I think we played one or two sessions of Dark Sun and gave up, not knowing how to approach the subject matter.  

Brom's The Darkest Shadows

The image above is the cover to Dragon Magazine Issue #173, published in September of 1991. It was TSR's entre to the Dark Sun setting, with that massive boxed set for the game setting coming out later in the year. There's just nothing pretty about this Brom's painting, but it's well composed and executed, hard to look away.

Brom's Burnt World of Athas 

The painting above was a full poster included in the original boxed set. The two interior books of the boxed set (were there two?) featured covers with the left and right half of the painting. Below are two pieces of concept art Brom did for the game, probably earlier in 1991. 

Brom's Blood Weaver

This cover painting for the 1993 Dark Sun adventure module Dragon's Crown by Richard Baker is, for me, the epitome of the setting. Unforgiving, ugly, otherworldly. It's no wonder Brom went onto painting the cover for the horrific hellscape of a computer game Doom II. It's worth noting the composition is 100% inspired by Frank Frazetta's Conan painting, The Destroyer. 

Brom's Seductress

This Dark Sun painting has always intrigued me. It's an interesting depiction of the sorcerer-ruled cities of Athas, Dark Sun's world setting. But mainly I think it's the colors. They have a very desert Southwest feel, which is close to me. The female figure again goes to Brom's ugly beauty, and to grunge. There's no seduction there for me. The painting was split in half to feature on two Dark Sun novels by Troy Denning, The Amber Enchantress and Arcane Shadows. Denning's novels were also a departure from previous TSR fare. Main characters routinely died. 

Brom's Freedom

Freedom is a classic that becomes representative of Brom's post TSR style. It was the cover to the 1991 adventure module of the same name, Freedom, by David "Zeb" Cook. The pale flesh and black spiked features of the figure's rig again speak to the grunge esthetic. I would not call her pretty, but a grim beauty, yes. 

I don't expect to ever return to Brom's work in this blog, so I'll add a few more of Brom's Dark Sun paintings below for additional flavor:

 

Brom's The Reconeers

Brom's Dune Trader

Brom's Slave Tribes

A good sample of Brom's more recent works can be on his website:https://www.bromart.com/

I'll add two final Brom D&D paintings that were not of the Dark Sun setting, and then two classics from his early solo career. Plus my final thoughts. Brom's not to my style. I have a gentle soul. Brom's is dark. He is an excellent artist. His paintings demand "look at this."

Brom's cover painting to the AD&D 2nd edition adventure module FR11 Dwarves Deep by Ed Greenwood, published in 1990. Lumps of flesh. Pounds of meat. 

Brom's cover painting to Legacy of the Drow, the collectors edition of the trilogy of the same name by R. A. Salvatore, published in 2001.  

Brom's The Gunslinger from the Deadlands RPG Player's Handbook published in 1996. An earlier Brom painting of an undead confederate soldier is said to have inspired Shane Lacey Henley's Deadlands "weird West RPG, and he did his level best to commission Brom to do the first work of art for the game. 

Brom's iconic painting for the computer game Doom II, released in 1994 by id Software.

Peering Beyond the Veil

I have not slept well for months due to varying pressures and pains in my ears and nose, probably the result of a damaged audial nerve. As I lie semi-conscious in the dark of night I feel the memories coming. Between the memories, which make me feel brittle and old, I have night terrors. I feel (believe) I am seeing past the veil at the end of life. What do I see? The chaos of atoms being ripped apart, the void of space filled with horrible rending. I have no other words for it except that it is terrifying. I am not ready to go there. I have to assume through all that chaos something crystalizes again into consciousness or life. 

I am not a scholar or a philosopher, nor an avid reader of books, journals, blogs, websites, social media posts...What do I know of the veil? I've heard of it. It makes sense. As I think back, the first time I heard of the veil in a concrete sense was in a Mormon Church in Alpine, Texas. My twin brother and I would go there about once a month with our best friend, Casey Dickman, and his family. We'd spend the night at Casey's on Saturdays, occupy ourselves with books or the piano while he read passages in his Book of Mormon, chat and listen to his music before going to sleep at a decent hour and go to his church the next morning. I recall there being preaching or discussion of crossing the veil at birth, or lifting the veil. It makes sense. Before we have consciousness, before we develop into a human being, there is something that precedes, something before. Between then and this life there is a veil which we do not see past, but sometimes we feel or sense past. 

Now I feel that I have peered beyond the veil at the other end, death. Am I cracked? I feel like my head cracks open at night in the dark. I'm better in the day.  In the daylight I cannot recall the memories that visited me in the night.