I screwed up and accidentally put Denebor’s IP in a copy and paste. He complained and by the time I read it it was fixed.

So how does MY screw-up which somebody ELSE fixed make ME great? If you have ever managed anything, you will KNOW.

I feel especially sorry for the beginning manager who has new and none-too-bright people to deal with. They LOOK like homo sapiens, but they will come to YOU to tell you water is running out in the bathroom. You go and see that, yes, water is running in the bathroom, and they didn’t CUT IT OFF.

Two of our blacks once knocked on our front door at the plant. My brother went to the door saw a bag right in front of him and the two blacks cowering away from and they wee standing back from a bag they had placed on the porch. They were afraid it was a bomb, so they had brought it to US.

It was a bowling ball that someone had, God knows why, had left in the woods. They had carried this possible bomb half a mile to our door and THEN backed away from it. Actually, the likelihood of someone leaving a bomb in the woods was in the same range as someone leaving a bowling ball, INSIDE a bag, in the woods. They did what they always did; they brought the thing to the Whitakers to figure out.

Bless their hearts, I guess they would rather carry a potential bomb in their hands rather than ask US to go look for it. But they should have known we would rather look at it than have them risk their lives over it.

When we went out to prospect for clay, two of them would dig an auger into the ground. I would get them started by winding my finger in the air clockwise, which is the way AMERICAN augers and screws go.

I ran campaigns, where everybody was a volunteer and nobody knew what they were doing.

I have led Africans, South Americans, and white Americans. When I got people on Capitol Hill who could just DO things, I was in hog heaven.

Other people who are used to managing people who are wholly dependent get SCARED when they get somebody under them who can do it themselves. That is why coming up through the management bureaucracy, like coming up through ANY bureaucracy, is such a disaster.

I don’t need to tell most of you what it feels like to work under somebody who got his job through the management bureaucracy. No, you’re not being hypercritical. They ARE the dolts you take them for, and it could not be otherwise.

As I say, anyone HERE with management background can understand why I am so PLEASED that, in a small unpaid group like this, people just DO things. The better you are, the better I can manage you.

That makes me proud of ME.