Of Bids, and of Lists, II

Though as we're quickly learning, a general amenability to sudden change is a key asset for a Foreign Service Officer, our bids seemed really to coalesce today, after I spent several hours in a suite at FSI (the Foreign Service Institute) known as the OBC (Overseas Briefing Center).  The OBC contains gems such as post videos made by officers and their families at each of the posts, and the so-called Personal Post Insights form (PPI), which is a survey that post personnel can fill out anonymously, and on which they can list the grievances, grudges, regrets, exasperations, and conspiracy theories they've accrued during their time at post, as well as the satisfactions and delights of the post.

After poring over these for hours today, and then conferring with Nina, I think we have a pretty firm setting on our high and medium bids.  They are as follows:

High--Astana, Kazakhstan; Belgrade, Serbia; Bogota, Colombia; Geneva, Switzerland; Krakow, Poland; Kyiv, Ukraine; Vilnius, Lithuania.

Medium--La Paz, Bolivia; Nicosia, Cyprus; Oslo, Norway; Rome, Italy; Sofia, Bulgaria; Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia; Washington, DC.


Now.  Several of these may seem perplexing, even downright counterintuitive, or just plain bananas to those who know Nina and myself well.  And several of them, if anyone's counting, did not show up on our first list of likely high/medium bids.  So, there follow selected explanations.

Bogota: This posting was added a few days after Nina received the initial list of open posts.  Not well known, I suspect, is the fact that though near the equator, Bogota sits at an elevation of more than 8,000 ft. above sea level.  Due to this elevation, Bogota has an extraordinarily mild climate--high temperatures in 'winter' are rarely below 55 degrees, and high temperatures in 'summer' almost never rise above 75 degrees.  Indeed, it is said about most of Colombia that there are no seasons, only elevations.  In addition to this pleasing climate, there are many very positive facets of a Colombia posting.  First, individuals who, like Nina, speak Spanish receive incentive pay for going to a post at which Spanish is required.  Second, the post fulfills the Junior Officer requirement of doing a Consular tour in one of the first two assignments.  Third, the PPIs report that spouses at the Bogota embassy have ample opportunity to work if they choose.  Fourth, security in Bogota itself is of minimal concern--little more than the usual big city issues with pick-pocketing, purse-snatching, and the like.  In general, all available information indicates that Bogota is an overlooked jewel of a post.

Ulaanbaatar:  There's no getting around it, Ulaanbaatar is considered by many to be an irredeemable dump in the middle of nowhere.  But.  But.  The job there is a particularly appealing one, having to do with several science and technology issues related to climate change and agriculture.  Furthermore, it's a new position which will likely allow the holder of the job considerable leeway in shaping her work.  And the landscape surrounding the city is breathtaking, an unimaginable sweep of mountains (the Altai range, if I'm not mistaken) and grasslands.  The biggest question here is taking a pet to a post that's so far away and so hard to get to.  For that reason, we still need to do some investigating before we rate this position medium, but it is interesting in its own impenetrable sort of way.

La Paz: Like Bogota, La Paz sits at an extraordinary elevation (some 13,000 ft.), and has, therefore, extraordinary weather.  Such extreme altitude does give one pause in considering one's health and the health of one's pet (and in fact the State Dept. requires special medical clearance, which, I suppose, either Nina or I might not receive if we're tested and found wanting).  But it has its charms as well, and the post holds many of the same inducements as Bogota.

Nicosia: This may also get downgraded to a low ranking in the end.  They drive on the left side of the road.  They endure occasional extreme water rationing.  Etc.  But it's a relatively wealthy European city on an island in the middle of the Mediterranean.  Mountains, beaches, and no humidity.

Rome: Pollution, crime, gridlock.  But, a fairly interesting job in the economic section of the embassy, dealing with the full range of international economic and foreign policy issues in a G-8 country.

Oslo: Obviously much in the news of late.  So much so as to make it the butt of jokes.  So much so that foreheads will surely be slapped in disbelief upon finding it a part of this list.  But the recent incident there is a red herring, and everyone has to know this.  Oslo is no more dangerous now than it was a month ago or a year ago, and it is no more dangerous than any other place on the list.  What happened there could happen anywhere.  Could happen in California or Canada, or Kyiv, or even at, say, a shopping mall in a place like Omaha.  Right?  C'mon.  Is Oslo dangerous?  Yes.  The world is dangerous.  Life is dangerous.

In the end, though the ways of the Foreign Service are inscrutable, they tend to put people where those people fill needs.  And for that reason, I truly, truly can't imagine them putting Nina someplace other than a) Eastern Europe/former Soviet Union, or b) a Spanish-speaking country.  Now, one last caveat is that Mexico is a Spanish-speaking country.  And there are probably at least a dozen posts in Mexico on the full bid list.  Which means that, yes, Nina could conceivably get sent to any one of them, despite the fact that she's ranked them all low.  I'm not sure what to say about that possibility.  We may know more after we meet with Nina's Career Development Officer tomorrow.  We may not.  In the end, we signed up for worldwide availability, and that's a promise we'll fulfill.  If doing so means landing in Ciudad Juarez, well, one just has to keep in mind: it's only for two years, we can drive the dog there, and the flights back to the States will be short and cheap.

Of Bids, and of Lists

Raise your hand if you've heard of Ouagadougou.  Or Lome.  I hadn't.  All the others posts on Nina's 162nd training class bid list I'd heard of.  Doesn't mean I wanted to go to very many of them, but I at least knew that they existed.

Let me back up.  "Bid list": the list of open positions which Nina and the 97 other new recruits in her training class will be filling when they finish their training.  The class gets the list, each trainee confers with his or her spouse/partner/family/guinea pig to rank each open position either High, Medium or Low priority, and then turns those rankings in to the Career Development Office, which ultimately makes the assignments (presumably taking the trainees' rankings into consideration).  As I understand it, the CDO tries to match people up with their stated preferences in making the assignments, but at least theoretically would not hesitate to assign a trainee to a post with which their skills and time frame match up, even if the trainee has ranked that position as a low priority for him or her.  This contradicts my previous understanding that it was quite rare for someone to get sent to a post s/he had ranked as a low priority.  Anecdotally, however, we've still not met anyone from previous training classes who was sent to a post they'd ranked low.

So, what were some of those other posts, those places I'd actually heard of?  The most relevant (that is, the ones we've ranked either high or medium) are: Astana, Asuncion, Belgrade, Geneva, Krakow, Kyiv, La Paz, Sofia, Vilnius, and Washington DC (for a one-year domestic post).  Beyond these, there were more than a dozen posts in Mexico, two in Caracas, and two in Santo Domingo, to which it's at least conceivable that Nina might be sent, given her Spanish proficiency; this despite the fact that we've ranked them low.  The rest of the posts were either in Africa or Asia, to which I can't imagine even the Federal Government would send us.

All that said, the list itself is not set in stone.  Posts get added and subtracted--indeed, posts can be changed even after assignments have been made, and even, occasionally, after a good chunk of language training has been done.  Thus, we still know relatively little at this point.  The Kyiv post fits time-wise and, obviously, language-wise, but is not a position in Nina's particular job track.  (Another side-bar tutorial--there are five career "tracks" in the Foreign Service: Political, Economic, Management, Consular, and Public Diplomacy.  Nina's track is Public Diplomacy, the Kyiv position is Political.)  The Vilnius post is a Public Diplomacy post, but requires functional Lithuanian--Nina obviously doesn't speak Lithuanian, though she could by the time the position starts, roughly a year from now...

And so on.  You can see how many moving parts there are, and how rarely any one position will match up perfectly with any one candidate; the CDO describes the matching process as "chess in 3-D."

Not surprisingly, this business of bidding is what has been preoccupying us for the last 24 hours or so, since Nina brought the list home last night.  It's a strange kind of obsession.  On the one hand, it is undeniably a great spur to the imagination, and rather an electrifying new reality with which to grapple.  On the other it's all perfectly bureaucratic, a nightmare of tedious scheming to get what you're after.

I don't know.  That sounds too conclusory.  I suppose that like any writer worth his laptop, I'm over-eager for a grand and punchy summing-up.  The trick (if I've learned anything from J.D. Salinger) is to subdue the instinctive desire for impact, without defusing it.  Needless to say, I'm working on that.

And how did this turn into a post about writing?

Two Books

In 1452, a monk (or scribe) living in the city of Mainz, in the southwest of Germany, began work on a tremendous bible, a Biblia latina, which would take him 15 months to complete.  That bible, seen in the top picture, above, is now known as the Giant Bible of Mainz, and sits encased in glass to the right of the entrance to the main reading room at the Library of Congress. 

In that same city of Mainz, at the same time (roughly), Johannes Gutenberg was perfecting the process of printing with movable type.  Among Gutenberg's innovations (many of which were also tinkered with by other printers, metal-smiths, etc. around Europe) were oil-based ink, and a hand mold for casting metal (rather than wood) type.  In at least 1450 Gutenberg's press was operating, producing Latin grammars and, later, indulgences for the Church.  In 1455, the press produced 180 copies of the "42-line" (so-called because each page comprised 42 lines) Gutenberg bible.  Of those 180 copies, 30 were printed on vellum.  Of those thirty, three remain: one in the Biblioteque Nationale in Paris, one in the British Library in London, and one which sits encased in glass to the left of the entrance to the main reading room at the Library of Congress.

Obviously volumes have been written on the impact of the Gutenberg revolution.  Time magazine named Gutenberg its Man of the Millenium.  The sudden diffusion of ideas occasioned by the availability of mass-produced printed materials made possible the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution.  Before Gutenberg, no one read because there was nothing to read.  And there was nothing to read because no one read. 

I stood today between those two bibles at the Library of Congress.  I stood thinking that I'm likely to spend a good chunk of my life having nothing to do, and knowing no one in whichever city Nina's diplomatic orders have landed us.  Why?  Because of books.  Because I can read.  Because through reading I can come to sense a world around me about which I might write books.  Because the books I read and write will make the cities of my life holy and true.

I have staked my life on books.

And I stood there looking at the reason I'm able to do so, and I cried.  I am who I am because of that bible.  I cried.  I'm crying now.

Silence

Silence, Mother Teresa says. The fruit of silence is prayer. The fruit of prayer is faith. The fruit of faith is love. The fruit of love is service. The fruit of service is peace.

An astonishing sequence, this. I've been thinking about it for months, since a wise counselor shared it with me. It continues, every time I come to it, to surprise, and challenge. It's a surprise, initially, to consider that silence does not automatically or immediately equal peace. We think of the two as being linked so closely, as following so completely each from the other, that they are at least functionally synonymous. We think, peace and quiet, and don't see Mother Teresa's intermediaries coming. That said, those intermediaries are themselves surprisingly intuitive. Each step makes a kind of unexpected, yet obvious sense, irrespective of how much work it might take to make said step, or how easy it might be for the progression through them all to break down at any point. And there is work, and there are breakdowns. And that's surprise no. 3: despite the clarity of the formulation, despite that obviousness, there's nothing pat or facile about it. It's complicated, and hard.

Surprise no. 4: Mother Teresa, a tough little thinker.

Well. Why lead off a blog with this topic? Because today, after more than a month of frantic activity, of upheaval and noise, there is a fifth-floor apartment in Falls Church, VA, that has fallen blessedly, blessedly silent.

And since the fruit of silence is prayer, and since writing is a kind of prayer, well... Watch this space.