Missing Persons: A Life of Unexpected Influences

by Bruce Piasecki

Overview

“An unpretentious, tactical, and sure-footed examination of the events that shaped his own life.”

--Jay Parini, author of the best-selling historical novel, The Last Station

Bruce Piasecki’s book on business strategy Doing More With Less: the New Way to Wealth, was an immediate success, becoming a New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestseller. Indeed, Doing More With Less is not just a clever book title; it explains the core philosophy of a man, who propelled from an impoverished and fatherless childhood, became an internationally, sought-after resource for the world’s largest corporations—from Toyota and Wal-Mart to Shell and Suncor Energy.

Those who helped and shaped Dr. Piasecki are the focus of his latest work Missing Persons: A Life of Unexpected Influences. Indeed, in this set of 70 vignettes Piasecki channels his poetic side - a side that was first noticed at Cornell when his little-known book of poems was published under the title Stray Prayers in 1973. The memoir, one part autobiography, one part creative non-fiction and written in vignette form, recounts the author’s formative relationships and experiences with intimacy and longing. Meet his mother, and father, his interracial brothers and sisters, his early and late business partners, his lovers, his daughter and his wife. It is told in a unique third person narrative that provides intrigue for the reader as they follow the protagonist through loss, passion, self-invention, a litany of fears and dreams - each revealed in eloquent prose. Through his uniquely informed perspective, Bruce allows us to understand the power of memory and how it influences us. The simplicity that made Doing More With Less a bestseller makes this new work not only compelling, but also life-affirming.

Missing Persons explores the meaning and power of memory, and offers an opportunity for the reader to pause, reflect, and recount the myriad of influences in their own lives.  

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780757054129
Publisher:	Square One Publishers
Publication date:	02/09/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

https://www.DoingMoreWithLessBook.com/

Bruce Piasecki, PhD is the president and founder of AHC Group, Inc., a top management consulting firm specializing in energy, materials, and environmental corporate matters, whose clients include Suncor Energy, the Warren Buffett firm Shaw Industries, to Toyota, and other international companies. In addition to his bestseller Doing More with Less, Dr. Piasecki is the author of nine other books on business strategy, valuation, and corporate change, including the Nature Society’s book of the year, In Search of Environmental Excellence: Moving Beyond Blame, as well as his recent bestseller Doing More With Less. Since 1981, he has advised companies on the critical areas of corporate governance, energy, environmental strategy, product innovation, and sustainability strategy. A highly sought after speaker and educator, Dr. Piasecki gives lectures, workshops, and seminars throughout North America and the world.

You can find this and all other of Dr. Piasecki's books at the following website:

www.DoingMoreWithLessBook.com

See more at: http://www.brucepiasecki.com/bio#sthash.5cIlxUhQ.dpuf

And for more details about Dr. Piasecki, be sure either to CLICK HERE for his EverybodyWiki page or visit the URL below:

https://en.everybodywiki.com/Bruce_Piasecki

Table of Contents

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments, xiii

Foreword by Jay Parini, xvii

Preface, xxi

Introduction, 1

PART ONE
The Discovery of Colette
Vignettes of Innocence and Youth

Uncle Zigmund, 9

Edwin Torres and Suie Ying Chang, 11

Mary Beth and Trespass, 15

An Angry Young Man, 17

Encounters with Al Oerter and Marcus Aurelius, 19

With Lefty at the University of Maryland, 22

Hurricane Sandy, 26

The Blind Alley of Birth, 28

Lillian Ann Piasecki, 30

A Second Mother, 32

Stories by Lillian That Last, 34

A Funeral Message, 36

Coastal Bliss, 38

Walking with Varlissima, 41

A Maddening Couple, 45

Pregnant and Unchanging, 47

Frida and His Fly, 49

Another Visionary, 51

The Discovery of Colette, 52

Colette at Night the First Four Years, 53

The First Obsession, 54

Attic Bliss, 56

Meeting Jay, 58

His Neighborhood After Meeting Jay, 61

Moby Dick After Meeting Jay, 64

Appreciating Varlissima, 68

PART TWO
The Sensual Middle
Vignettes of Experience and Middle Age

The Art of Being a Dog, 76

Extending a Life, 79

The Sensual Certainty of Youth, 83

His Father Glimpsed in Istanbul, 87

Divine Compensation, 89

Surprise Is Never an Isolated Event, 92

Granting Himself Forgiveness, 95

Forgiveness Is a Journey, 98

What He Found Next, 102

Meeting Darlene, 107

Adding Vermont Stones to Stone Church Road, 110

Woman with Many Tongues, 111

Choosing the Right Pond, 113

A Mother’s Death, 116

A Father’s Death, 118

We Flower Under Stress, 119

Frankly Torn, 121

Freedom and Fate and William Hogarth, 123

All Ice Is Dangerous, 125

Venture Understanding, 127

Regression Is Progression, 129

The Second Obsession, 131

Varlissima in Wonderland, 134

An Afterlife, 138

PART THREE
At Old Stone Church
Vignettes of the Magic in Old Age

A Drunken Hercules, 143

The Push of Humanity at His Door, 148

Colette at Night, Again, 149

Sacred Memory, 151

The Dragon Arum, 154

Mr. Plumer, His Teacher, 157

Old Age at the Lotos Club, 159

Norah Jones, Faith, and the Fabulous, 162

Success at Home, 165

The Last Obsession, 168

Good Reading Becomes His Mistress, 170

The Wind in His Backyard, 172

Further Reading About the World, 174

Karl Marx and His Nurse, 176

Seldom Seen in Saratogam, 177

Titillating the Amygdala, 179

The Beach Where He Was Born, 181

The Incredible Rightness of Resolve, 182

His Succession Plans, 183

FINALE

He Imagined His Readers, 187

Colette Discovers This Memoir, 188

Homes, Hope, and the Hidden, 192

Memory Is the Accomplishment, 194

Around Here, Everyone Talks Like Lions, 196

Afterword, 197

About the Author, 199

Preface

Good Reading Becomes Introduction

“I count myself in nothing else so happy
As in a soul remembering my good friends.”

—William Shakespeare, Richard II

My name is Bruce Piasecki.

I know that’s a long name, and an odd one. It has proven difficult for many Americans to pronounce and even to remember. Once, when I had rented a home situated high above the fog of Tennessee’s Great Smoky Mountains, the landlord eyed me sideways, refusing to turn over the key until I had verified that I was, in fact, the strange fellow with the small family he was expecting. I pronounced and spelled my name slowly, making sure he heard. But when I got to the “a” and then the “s” followed by the “e” then the “c”—he interrupted with, “Wait a minute now, son! Letters can’t fit together that way in Tennessee!” When I persisted, he handed over the keys, saying “Well, I suppose you speak pretty good American, for a Polack.”

I start with my Polish name because I can still remember the out-of-body sensation of watching myself as my grandmother—my Bapci—tried to teach me to say it: “Pi-a-sec-ki, Pi-a-sec-ki.” This was the beginning of my ability to see myself in the third ­person, which is how I have written my story. You can blame my name.

My Bapci, who spoke only Polish, held dominion over my early attention like an exotic queen. Her attempts to teach me to say my name that day persisted for nearly an hour. Later that same day, she and I played an amazing game of catch. Many years afterward, my mother, Lillian, would say, “There is no way you could have played catch with Bapci, Bruce. She was already totally blind by then.”

My mother may have insisted it wasn’t possible, but I can still remember the wind swirling around my grandmother that day, the bandana in her hair, the Eastern European patterns on her blouse, her aged fingertips, and how proud she was that I could catch what she had thrown my way. And I do remember that catch, vividly—even as I prepare to turn sixty within a few short months. I also remember her catching the ball, many times. I remember the ball bouncing around near her breasts, and her arthritic fingers groping for it in this new world. And I remember her insisting that I pronounce my name the correct Polish way. That, I’m afraid, I never got right.

My grandmother died a few years later. Her death was not my first major loss: that would have been the death of my father, Walter, when I was three. There would be other losses to follow—not necessarily deaths, but endings or disappearances. This book traces my encounters—some real, some imagined—with the “missing persons” who have shaped my life.

During the past seventeen years, as I wrote Missing Persons, I came to see that telling stories about my life continued to actively shape my identity—the sense of who I was, and who I had been. I felt that the crucial relationship between memory and identity was best captured in a cinematic vision of personal history—complete with close-ups, tracking shots, flashbacks, and the occasional lurch of the handheld camera. I hope to have captured these moments, these magical memories, in a series of vignettes that are housed in the three parts of this book.

The vignettes that make up Part One explore what it felt like to grow up poor, to make it as a basketball player, and to find myself in the early 1970s on full scholarship at Cornell University. I was raised near the railroad tracks of West Islip, Long Island, by a widowed mother who took in foster children from a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds. Even through high school, most of my teachers didn’t believe that the Chinese or Puerto Rican kids they saw me hugging in the hallways during school or after basketball games were my brothers and sisters. My youth was magical, but leaving home and moving on to college was even more so. It was like manna from heaven—except that the manna was actually chocolate-coated bread and full of the nutrition (and poppy seeds) I had desperately needed on the courts and in the alleys of West Islip.

It was at Cornell that I met my magical wife, Varlissima. That is not her real name. I would like to have used her real name, but since my Sicilian-American wife is mostly American now—as well as being reserved, private, and far better educated than I—she insisted that I use a fictitious name in this book. Was this to ensure that her real name would remain unknown? Was it to protect the innocent? Was it her way of distancing herself from the facts and fantasy of my life? I think it was because of her deep humility, which renders memoirs fundamentally foreign to her way of being.

The vignettes in Part Two explore the delights and sensuality that come with a successful path in life, as well as the many fears we face as we age. For me, during the long valley of middle age, the magic of my life with Varlissima was complicated by the growth and success of my management consulting firm, which necessitated global travel; by the emergence of an increasingly strong desire to establish myself as a writer; by the death of my mother; and by the presence of the many muses in my life.

One of the central characters in this part of the book is Darlene—who actually exists and who has indeed improved the life of my family and my firm. But like other characters in the memoir, Darlene is a combination of herself and others I’ve met as I traveled the long road of middle age. How else to sum up that magic but through the composite flowers before you?

While echoing some of the themes found in Parts One and Two, Part Three is perhaps the most magical section of all. Inspired by a hopeful passage from best-selling author Oliver Sacks about life after eighty, this part involves the fascinating idea that one’s reputation can continue in the future. It presents a flash forward of my life—a visionary journey of memories and new adventures—during my final decades.

When I think back to my childhood memory of playing catch with my grandmother all those years ago, I can still hear my mother’s voice telling me that it could not have happened. But the memory was absolutely real to me. In that same manner, the future vision of my life—the essence of Part Three—is as vivid and real as those moments with my beloved Bapci.

For once we come to appreciate the power of memory, we can make out the patterns that will likely precede our end. This might prove the most magical stage of all.

Editorial Reviews

03/02/2015
Piasecki (Doing More with Less), head of a management consulting firm, looks back at his eventful life in a fragmented, energetic memoir occasionally resembling the cut-up techniques of Burroughs and the stylistic methods of the New Journalism of the 1960s and 1970s. Piasecki started this book 17 years ago when his daughter, Colette, was born, recalling his hardscrabble childhood on Long Island and his journey to becoming a promising three-letter high school athlete, a Cornell University scholar, and a successful businessman. The key influences of his life include his rebellious Uncle Ziggy; his foster children, Edwin Torres and Suie Ying Chang; artist Frida Kahlo; writer Jay Parini; and his confidante Darlene, whom he loves as much as his mother, wife, and daughter. Piasecki's compulsively addictive memoir, combining rich cinematic touches and psychological elements of memory and dreams with dispassionate third-person narration, celebrates family life, marriage, reading, writing, and business achievement. B&w photos. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

What we first forget and then rescue from our memories make for the best memoirs. Bruce Piasecki, remembering in Missing Persons, inspires everyone to find what is missing in their own life. An inspiring read.”  —Rabbi Laurence Aryeh Alpern Temple Shabbat Shalom Saratoga Springs, NY

“In this eloquent memoir Bruce Piasecki . . . celebrates the family and friends who made possible his journey from an impoverished childhood to hard earned success.”  —Lucien Ross Tharaud, Contract Lawyer, Legal Editor

“Bruce Piasecki’s memoir is a work of art— lyrical and luminous . . . a moving account of the people in his life who inspired him. From dirt poor to best-selling author, Bruce never stops thinking and feeling. It is a rare treat to reflect with  him  on his journey. Poignant and profound.”  —Sanford Schram, Professor of Political Science and Public Policy, Hunter College, CUNY

“How do the street smarts learned at an early age show a born poet and scholar the way to wealth based on ‘doing more with less?’ In a constantly surprising series of vignettes based on love, labor, and loss, the protean Bruce Piasecki has written a fable for our times, one that reminds us of how powerful the art of ordering our memories can prove. Meet here a Ben Franklin for our times.”  —R. Laurence Moore, Author of Religious Outsiders and the Making of Americans

“Bruce Piasecki's lovely book Missing Persons reminds us that life does not just happen to us. Instead, it demonstrates how life responds to us with magic and surprise!”  —Erol User, CEO Founder Erol Corporation, Istanbul Turkey

“Bruce Piasecki’s writing style possesses a sense of wonder that reaches a new level of imaginative discourse. Here, the magical realism and sensitivity to the people who have shaped his life bring a new understanding of this man, who has already done so much in the realms of business and life.”  —Thaddeus Rutkowski, author of Haywire

“A delicious read! Missing Persons reveals the man behind business bestsellers like Doing More with Less. Piasecki’s evocative vignettes reflect a generosity of spirit and a genuine humility that will inspire you to reflect on your own influences.”  —William M. Throop, Professor of Philosophy and Environmental Studies, Green Mountain College

From the Publisher

Missing Persons is more than a memoir; it is wonderful entertainment and a celebration of memory . . . [Piasecki’s] writing clearly reflects the talents of a man who is in love with words and writing. His sentences flow easily, and he has an ability to capture a moment and precisely convey its intensity. He takes a moment that may have happened before and makes it a unique and powerful symbol . . . The author also has broken down the book into short vignettes, each easy to read in a short period. One can either consume the book slowly, savoring each vignette, or devour several scenes in a sitting. Either way, the book is fun to read.” 

Foreword Reviews

"Exceptionally well-written, organized and presented . . . a fascinatingly candid and informative read. Very highly recommended . . . [Piasecki's] stories, set out in such a unique literary fashion, is certain to be an enduringly popular addition to community library American Biography collections."

MBR Bookwatch - "Taylor's Bookshelf"

Bruce Piasecki has added his own twist to the endlessly repeatable tale of self-invention, tracking a spiritual journey through love and faith, family and friends. Missing Persons is a book about the absences that define our lives, the tears in the fabric that we spend a lifetime trying to repair.”  —Jay Parini, Author of The Last Station

Jay Parini

"Those who helped and shaped Dr. Piasecki are the focus of his latest work . . . in this set of 70 vignettes, Piasecki channels his poetic side . . . the memoir, one part autobiography, one part creative non-fiction and written in vignette form, recounts the author's formative relationships and experiences with intimacy and longing . . . it is told in a unique third person narrative that provides intrigue for the reader as they follow the protagonist through loss, passion, self-invention, a litany of fears and dreams—each revealed in eloquent prose . . . Missing Persons explores the meaning and power of memory, and offers an opportunity for the reader to pause, reflect, and recount the myriad of influences in their own lives."

BookSpin

"A unique experience for the reader . . . Bruce Piasecki's book is luminous, especially for those of us who are finding ourselves reflecting on the past attempting to understand the present and predict the future."

Literary Aficionado - Grady Harp