Oooh, nothing ever quite goes as you think it will.

This morning promptly at 10 we met a smiling man in an official position and he was quite willing to say nice things about the world and about our project until a moment when he insisted we turn off the camera (and to our cameraman M.'s discredit, our cooperative, professional, and friendly official had to ask twice and it felt like a dirty trick when M. mumbled something about unplugging the camera before he really turned it off). Then our smiling man said: Off the record, I'm leaving at the end of this weekend. My position is no more. It was all a sham: My board raised no money for me to work with, no feasibility study was done before I came, our lame duck of a governor has no power and no credibility left in anyone's camp, and I've done all I can here. I am going home to save what is left of my marriage. He was all at once devastated, bitterly disappointed, hoping he still has a hearth to which he can return, dreading "moving house" this weekend, and dreading flying his dogs many hours next week. But he was stopping on the East Coast on the way home to see where some settlers landed because he has a family member of the same name who was in the party of people who looked for survivors of that settlement. So he'd always been compelled by the place and was planning to spend a couple of weeks reflecting and recovering there. What a bruisingly short and abrupt bump in his career he allowed us to see all at once. I'm amazed no one cried. (He even said something about hoping never to return to jobs like selling cars as he'd had to do in the past.) But he had lined up a new project in yet another country to which he could look forward. We all hugged -- even he and I although we had just met and were unlikely ever to meet again. By 10:30 we were out the door and waiting for the elevators. When the three of us reached the lobby floor, M. had to work at shoving the elevator doors aside with his hands; the buttons we pushed had no influence on it. Not long after that, we emerged onto the street once again, on our way back to our own worlds.

And so goes another of a million stories in the big cities.