Keep Counting, Florida !!

My shining moment with Madame Secretary, here.

Cheers, all!

Katherine Harris, at the Orchid Ball
"Those Who Do Not Learn From Their History Are Doomed To Repeat It ! "

Winston Churchill,   paraphrasing George Santayana 

Lucy Wilson Benson - Absolute Class

I can't tell you enough about how much I admire this lady!  My friend Lucy Wilson Benson serves as Chairman of the Board for the Amherst Cinema Arts Center, operator of the Amherst Cinema and the Pleasant Street Theater.  It has been my privilege to meet and get to know her whilst serving on the Board myself for the past four years.

In Virtue, One Gains Knowledge...

"You Never Can Tell!"  A devoted Smith College alumna, (Class of '49), Lucy married an Amherst man - Physics professor Bruce Benson - and has scaled the heights.  The phrase "distinguished career" is so often overused, but it fits Lucy like a smart Peck and Peck suit.  She became local, then state, then (1968-1974) national head of the League of Women Voters. Jimmy Carter named her Undersecretary of State, at the time the highest ranking woman ever at the State Department. 

''Don't ask me what it feels like to be a woman Under Secretary of State, because I don't know. I do know what it is like to be an Under Secretary of State, however.''

Lucy later served our state exceptionally as MA Secretary of Human Services under Governor Mike Dukakis.  A woman with clear head, a quick tongue - always constructive and right to the point.  A lover of life and funny as hell.

Two Beauties of the Silver Screen

Here is a nice profile written a few years back, in the Amherst College campus paper, about LWB.

I am proud to know Lucy - she went out to change the world after college, did so, and has remained our "United Nations of Amherst" treasure.

And her hair is spectacular!

Leigh Keno: an Elegant Highboy

Leigh Keno: A Hamilton Original

You know him as a peripatetic TV host and one half of a matched-set of enthused antique furniture appraisers.

I first knew him as a hyper, wired sort of guy in the class a year ahead of me at Hamilton College.  A local-area kid from Herkimer, one exit over on the NY Thruway, Leigh was a pretty good drummer who sat behind the kit for Robbie and the Nylons, a new wave band on campus that occasionally shared rehearsal space with the band I was in, Rogue.

Queen Anne, c. 1760

Leigh and I also took a couple of the same courses in Art History from notorious department head Rand Carter, although Leigh must have really been paying attention.  He and brother Leslie (Williams '79) have parlayed their love for the "breakfront," the "high-boy," and all things "clawfoot" into a multivariate avocation - not only as an appraiser, collector, gallery-owner, philanthropist and all-around personality, but most recently as impresario with Keno Auctions.

Come to find out that Leigh's quite involved with the antique and collectible car market, personally as a race-car collector & driver, and ceremonially as a judge at the annual Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance charity event.  And in 2005, he wrested a National Humanities Medal from the hands of President George W. Bush.

In college I had a '74 Chevy Nova 350-SS. No match for Leigh's 1938 Jaguar SS 100 . . .

Though I didn't know Leigh well, from our paths-crossings I can attest that what you see is what you get - he's really that nutty, animated and passionate about the 18th century furniture that your great-great-grandfather, in his youth, thought was long in the tooth.

Will Leigh Keno be our last link to the Golden Age of the American empire, now in such wretched decline?

Playdates with Tama Janowitz

Tama Janowitz + Thomas A. Porter = Tom A. Janowitz

After I became a nursery school student, I had to deal with extroversions of every imaginable shape and size.  So she was an obstreperous child - are you surprised?  80's lit. brat-pack & NYC art/scene darling Tama Janowitz spent pre-school days in the classroom with yours truly, wreaking general havoc (her family was also at my home the weekend of JFK's funeral)

During the 60's, Tama's mum Phyllis was a grad student in my dad's U. Mass. English Department, and her dad Julian a psychiatrist - about the only one in town, in those days (now Amherst requires dozens of professionals to keep people from the tipping point).

My prime memory of Tama is from a July 4, 1964 cookout.  Julian had dug a huge pit in the driveway to roast a gigantic pig.  It should have been the center of attention.  But the performing daughter entertained one and all, peaked on the attention, collapsed in a tantrum and was carried off.

Twenty-two years later, as Slaves of New York hit big and Tama became toast of New York with her Warhol, Sid Vicious and Indochine credentials, my mother reminded me that we'd been 'mates and played at each other's houses.  "You must look up Tama Janowitz, next time you're in New York!" she urged. While it certainly seemed like the thing to do, I've never crossed paths with Tama in adult life... but Julian's still in the area, and going strong.

Football with Queen Noor's Dad, Najeeb Halaby

Happy Thanksgiving!

Early Thanksgiving morning in 1983, my friend Suzy - shortly to become my boss's wife - called rounding up a gang for a friendly, co-ed football game at the park west of Massachusetts Avenue, just beyond Westmoreland Circle over the DC line in Maryland.  Suzy's angle was to bring a bunch of single folks together and I was living a bachelor existence at the time.  The carrot: "You'll meet my friend Alexa.  Her sister is the Queen of Jordan."

Playing football suddenly sounded like a wise move.

Well, we all got to meet Alexa, who of course was lovely, and I was picked to play on the team quarterbacked by her father, Najeeb Halaby.  What a charming, distinguished and friendly man.  At 68, he had tremendous energy and this hale fellow led us charging up and down the field.  At one point Najeeb and I connected on a beautiful buttonhook-right pattern for a very long TD.  I eventually (much later) learned that my team leader had been at Paul Nitze's side in the formulation of NSC-68, and thus an icon to any anti-communist, cold warrior or neo-con (the term "neo-con" then only recently-coined by Irving Kristol, in his 1979 "Confessions of a True, Self-Confessed, 'Neoconservative'.")

Halaby - active in both the Defense and State departments under Truman - later helped form Saudi Arabian Airlines, was eventually appointed by JFK as head of the Federal Aviation Administration (1961-65) and still later became CEO and Chairman of Pan American Airlines.  A record-setting pilot himself and lover of the skies, his bio will fascinate you.  As an aside, Suzy and I had met working at CTM for Robert L. Schmidt, a Georgetown Law grad from the Kennedy White House who'd onetime QB'ed for both Notre Dame and USC (see p.4) in college (the only player ever to do so, and a lefty to boot).  Thanks to Suzy I have the Kennedy / touch football connection with both of these accomplished field generals.

I ran into Alexa a few more times, usually at Suzy and Tim's, and last I heard (ages ago, still in the 80's) that she was in Jackson Hole hiding out with William Hurt.  But that's her Celebrity Romp to tell....

Election Special: Eye to Eye with Katherine Harris

What a Difference Ten Years Makes!

(with apologies to my Amherst friends)

A Proud Mount

Three days into the contested 2000 Presidential election and 35-day recount, I proposed a business idea to Verisign: use the trusted authority of its own authentication & digital certificate technology and the DNS architecture of newly acquired Network Solutons to bring integrity to voting.  Verisign hired me to develop the concept as VoteSecure (TM), an internet-enabled voter registration, balloting and tabulation solution.

By December the votes had been counted and by January a new President sworn in [remember?].  Our work was in full swing: we built Verisign Ventures - a skunkworks shop - and hustled like crazy. In no time I was dealing with the state capitals and I found myself meeting with big Washington players like EDS, UniSys, IBM, Booz Allen, Diebold, et alii.

The technology is one thing.  State law and bureaucracy - as we learned during the recount - is entirely another, and those folks in state legislature were hustling too, to define, interpret and pass new laws (it's all they know how to do).  Meanwhile, the State Secretaries of State - Katherine Harris and her 49 counterparts - convened at the US Capitol in March to examine the nationwide mess, and I was right up front and riveted for Ms. Harris' luncheon address to the group, upstairs at Bullfeathers on Capitol Hill. 

The woman they loved to hate: Ms. Harris was intensely charismatic, and all business.  As she was swarmed afterward, I made my way downstairs and was preparing to leave when a young, energetic aide on her Tallahassee staff tapped my shoulder at the coat check window to ask if I knew whether C-SPAN's studio was close enough to walk to.

So picture this pas de deux: as I began to recommend cabbing, I turned and our eyes met: Ms. Harris was struggling into a fine, tailored coat and had need of a third hand to hold her handbag - and my own hand was open.  "Why thank you!" she said as, thinking quickly, I reached gallantly for the Fendi purse with my left hand while fishing a business card from my shirt pocket with my right.  As Ms. Harris' own bejeweled hand emerged from her coat sleeve I placed my card in it and made my pitch: "Tom Porter, Ms. Harris, working for Verisign to design secure voting technology and failsafe authentication systems for the state-capital-to-county-registrar architecture.  We'd love to be in touch with your office!"

My Favorite Secretary of State

We spoke for another 45 seconds or so as I walked the Florida Secretary of State and her aide to the curb, saw them into a cab, and caught my breath.  Tallahassee and I did have 3 more conversations that spring, as well as an exchange by post with the Secretary, who kindly enclosed a memento for me to share with y'all. >>>

The Porter family name comes from ancestors who must have carried bags for the aristocracy.  My heritage prepared me well for this encounter with the Worth Avenue Fendi and its dynamite owner.

"See you at the Orchid Ball, Katherine....

Katharine Graham: Ass-Grabber!

A (very classy) little old lady when I met her, Katharine Graham (1917-2001) was larger than life: incredibly driven, energetic and prescient, very wise and supremely influential.  The Washington Post Company, which her father Eugene Meyer had bought in 1933 and she took over on her husband Philip's death in 1963, grew to a dominant position in the news media and to diversify successfully into many other realms (education, television and technology in particular).

By 1999 the Post empire was leading the way in digital news delivery with the ambitious, groundbreaking washingtonpost.com. and for 8 months yours truly sat in the newsroom among veterans like Doug Feaver (the midnight desk editor who took the call June 18, 1972 about the Watergate burglary), young bucks like hysterical cut-up Daniel Froomkin (then Metro Editor), and sundry other journo's.

As we worked together for several months on a cool technology project, the digital division's deputy General Counsel Katharine Weymouth (then Scully) became a good friend, and I eventually learned that she was Ms. Graham's namesake and grand-daughter (young Katharine is now Publisher & CEO, and assumed by many to be heir apparent to WPO when Uncle Don decides to retire).

there's a Ben Bradlee's connection too... but that's another story!

One day that April, Kay left the 15th street NW HQ and surprised the 'post.com staff in Arlington VA.  As she chewed the fat with newsies and with chief executive Marc Teren, the young Katharine appeared and yelled, "Hi, Gran!"  Grandma wheeled around, embraced our legal counsel, and then grabbed a good handful of little Katharine's rear end, giving it a quick squeeze followed by three or four long, loving grandmotherly kneeeeads.

If you have children or grandchildren, you remember this reflexive, affectionate and innocent fondle from when they were 2 or 3 years old. Quite a different effect here for us in attendance - but most pleasing!