Latinos In America

By DONALD RUMSFELD

At their worst, meetings can be both useless and mind-numbing. It calls to mind an observation made in that endless font of wise management advice, the comic strip Dilbert: “There is no specific agenda for this meeting. As usual, we’ll just make unrelated emotional statements about things which bother us.”

David Hume Kennerly/Getty Images

Colin Powell, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld in the White House, Jan. 14, 2002.

Not every meeting has to be a source of dread. If you think about it, a meeting’s function is to pool an organization’s collective wisdom and knowledge in one room, making it easier for a manager to learn what his team knows that he doesn’t, and to provide guidance to all of those involved in one place at one time. Well-managed meetings can be valuable—indeed, indispensable.

The first consideration for meetings is whether to call one at all. The default tendency in any bureaucracy, especially in government, is to substitute discussion for decision-making. If you are the leader of an organization and call a meeting, make sure you have something to communicate or need to learn in a group setting. If the meeting is to be purely informational, without much back and forth, that information could probably be as easily relayed in a memo or email. One of the reasons President Nixon preferred to have important proposals put in writing was to ensure that a meeting’s outcome would not be unduly affected by whoever had the more assertive voice.

Second, when you decide to hold a meeting, it is important to avoid meandering sessions. When I moved into my first executive position in government in 1969, I had a stand-up desk. I use it to this day. Aside from the more recently heralded health benefits, standing up while working tends to be an incentive for those who come in for a discussion to say what they need to say, and not linger. I want folks to be comfortable in my office—just not too comfortable.

Third, pay close attention to who is invited and, for goodness’ sake, avoid making meetings so large that it feels you should have rented an amphitheater. During my last tour as secretary of defense, I found it not uncommon to walk into meetings in the White House Situation Room and see more than a dozen people packed in. In previous administrations, a single note-taker sufficed. Who knows exactly how many damaging leaks may have resulted from Hollywood-size entourages sitting in on sensitive high-level sessions.

Fourth, start and end meetings on time. Consider how much time is wasted by starting a meeting 15 minutes late. If 20 people are in attendance, that means that cumulatively you will have wasted five hours of time that could have been spent on something productive.

Fifth, encourage others to give their views, even if it may ruffle some feathers. “Stay in your lane” is not my favorite phrase. Usually it is deployed by those who don’t like other people commenting on their activities. An organization with impenetrable silos is not benefiting from the brains of its people. In meetings, endeavor to foster a culture in which people can comment on anything as long as their comments are relevant and constructive.

Sixth, as the saying goes, “Nothing betrays imbecility so much as insensitivity to it.” During meetings, I confess to being less than patient with folks who bring up irrelevant information or are ill-prepared. I also tend to lack patience with PowerPoint presentations that convey obvious information or slides with grammatical errors and that lack page numbers.

There were occasions when I abruptly ended a meeting in progress and advised the participants that we would reconvene when everyone had had time to fully prepare. The response was usually surprised looks all around. In my experience some leaders don’t end meetings when it’s clear they’ve become a waste of time. Instead they sit there and let the meeting experience a slow, painful death.

Seventh, keep in mind that when new ideas are broached in a meeting, there is often an instinctive and immediate opposition. Large bureaucracies can be masterful at creating an insular and self-serving culture in which people reinforce each other and become captive to what becomes the conventional wisdom. Meetings are a good place to discover whether an organization might be suffering from groupthink. If everyone in the room seems convinced of the brilliance of an idea, it may be a sign that the organization would benefit from more dissent and debate.

Finally, when ending a meeting, make a practice of summarizing the salient points and take-aways, making sure that all participants know precisely what actions you intend to be taken and by whom. I’ve found it can also be helpful to offer a last opportunity for anyone in the room to speak up by my asking, “Is there anything else?” or “What have we missed?” There often is something important that someone was thinking of saying and never found the opportunity for.

Hopefully, when a meeting does end, it has been valuable enough that people look forward to the next one. But then again, that’s probably too much to ask.

—Adapted from “Rumsfeld’s Rules: Leadership Lessons in Business, Politics, War and Life,” which will be published Tuesday by Broadside Books. Copyright © 2013 by Donald Rumsfeld. Mr. Rumsfeld served as U.S. secretary of defense from 1975 to 1977 and from 2001 to 2006, and as the chief executive officer of two Fortune 500 companies.

A version of this article appeared May 11, 2013, on page C3 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Rumsfeld’s Rules For Meetings.

Sepp Blatter, the president of FIFA, soccer’s world governing body, called out the Italian league Tuesday, saying that it hadn’t done enough to punish AS Roma

after its fans racially abused three black players on AC Milan in a game on Sunday. The league, known as the Lega Calcio, had fined Roma €50,000 ($64,875) and issued a warning, but stopped short of imposing an additional penalty.

“Just to give a pecuniary sanction is not valid, that is not acceptable,” Blatter told FIFA’s website. “You will always find money. What is €50,000 for such an incident? I’m not happy and I will call the Italian Federation. That’s not a way to deal with such matters.”

Blatter didn’t say what sanctions he would prefer. But UEFA, European soccer’s governing body, has recently forced national teams to play in empty stadiums after fans were found guilty of racist abuse. Another proposed measure is docking points from teams whose fans continue to misbehave, but Europe’s major leagues have yet to go that far.

The Lega Calcio has not reacted publicly to Blatter’s comments.

—Joshua Robinson

New Pirelli Tire Change After Failure in Spain

Facing a barrage of criticism from Formula One teams, the sport’s exclusive tire supplier, Pirelli, announced Tuesday that it would make further changes before next month’s Canadian Grand Prix.

Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

A technician prepares tires at Sunday’s Spanish Grand Prix

Pirelli had already tweaked its hard compound tire before last Sunday’s race in Barcelona, but that did little to solve the tire degradation that has come to dominate F1 this season. The objective of Pirelli’s tire strategy for 2013, Pirelli’s motorsport director Paul Hembery said recently, was to have races with two and three pit stops. In Spain, Fernando Alonso won the race after making four stops.

“With limited testing time, it’s clear now that our original 2013 tire range was probably too performance-orientated for the current regulations,” Hembery told Formula1.com.

Teams like Red Bull have argued that the tires have come to influence too many races and limit performance.

“Whatever car keeps the tire alive normally is on the podium at least—or winning the race,” Alonso said after Sunday’s win. “If it’s too much confusion for the spectators? There is no doubt. I think it is impossible to follow one race now.”

—J.R.

By JOANNE KAUFMAN

Dallas

The way Robert Edsel tells the story, it all began in 1997 on the Ponte Vecchio. He’d recently sold his oil-and-gas exploration business for $37 million, and moved to Florence with no grand plan except to find a grand passion.

Zina Saunders

“I’d always been interested in art and architecture, but I’d never had any courses. And I thought, ‘Well, I’m in Florence and there are all these art-history professors, so I should go around and learn about the subject.’ I was reading about 10 books a week because I had the time,” said Mr. Edsel, 56, who’s tall and lean (a former nationally ranked tennis player, he still logs regular court time with his good friend Rod Laver) and has a shock of white hair that he keeps futilely shoving back from his forehead. But what you mostly notice is the intensity. That and the apologetically long answers to any and all questions.

At one point in his tutorial, Mr. Edsel became immersed in “The Rape of Europa,” a chronicle of the Nazis’ looting and theft. “I remember standing on the Ponte Vecchio. I knew I wasn’t a World War II historian, but I knew enough to know that Europe had been beaten to pieces,” he said, sitting at a conference table in his downtown office here. “So if the continent was in shambles, how did all these works of art survive? They didn’t have legs. They didn’t go hide on their own. So I started asking people in Florence, and they all said ‘that’s an amazing question.’”

The onetime oil man has been drilling for answers ever since, first with “Rescuing Da Vinci” (2006), a book of photographs, and then with “The Monuments Men” (2009), an account of a special Allied force—museum directors, curators and conservators—who risked their lives to keep the world’s masterpieces from falling into enemy hands.

A film adaptation of “Monuments Men,” co-written, produced and directed by George Clooney, who also stars with Matt Damon and Cate Blanchett, is due out in December; Mr. Edsel is confident that the movie will give a nice lift to the Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art, the nonprofit he established half a dozen years ago to safeguard the legacy of his “protagonists” and to help complete their mission of returning stolen treasures to their owners.

And now Mr. Edsel has a new book, “Saving Italy,” a companion volume of sorts to “The Monuments Men.” His original plan was to tell both stories between a single set of covers, “but when I was writing ‘Monuments Men’ and it got to 500, 600, 700 pages it was clear that something had to go.

“By then I understood a lot better the distinction between what the Nazis did in [the rest of] Western Europe—where there were the more targeted thefts from Jews and other collectors—and what they did in Italy. There wasn’t the same mass premeditated looting going on there. But there were severe threats to the art,” he said, among them the Allied bomb that almost destroyed “The Last Supper.”

“In Italy you turn left and you turn right; there’s usually something very old and very important wherever you go.”

Mr. Edsel almost went bankrupt twice in his previous career. Thus, he wasn’t one to be daunted by the historians who initially dismissed him as a rich dilettante, and the publishers who simply dismissed him. “They said: ‘Nobody is going to be interested. It’s an old story.’ And I said, ‘I really think you’re wrong,’” he recalled. Then they said, ‘It’s already been done.’ And I said: ‘Hey, save me from myself. Tell me the name of the book and I’ll stop.’ And of course nobody could.

“I’ve made the mistake many times in my life, in the midst of my exuberance and passion, of thinking because I love something everybody will love it. But from the time I got interested in this over a four- or five-year period, I’d go to lunch or dinner with people and they’d say, ‘What are you working on?’ and I’d tell them for two minutes, and then I’d say, ‘What’s happening with you?’ And they’d say: ‘Forget what’s happening with me. Go back to that story about the salt mines,’ he said, referring to the Nazi repositories for the safekeeping of stolen treasures by the likes of Rembrandt, Rubens and Vermeer.

“I believe everyone has a connection to this story,” said Mr. Edsel, who lectures frequently, customizing his talks for the occasion. When, for example, he’s addressing Jewish audiences, he’ll mention the hundreds of Torahs collected by the Nazis, then found and repatriated by the Monuments Men. Veterans will hear the tale told in military terms—which Army units had which Monuments officers.

“I once challenged a group of middle-school students to name a subject of interest to them, and I told them I could put up an image that would show their connection to the story,” he recalled. “One boy yelled ‘sports,’ so I put up a picture of Hitler standing in front of the Discobolus, which he illegally removed from Italy.”

The refusal of most museums to publicize their own link to the story is an endless source of frustration to Mr. Edsel. “The Kimball, the Meadows, the Dallas Museum of Art—those are our three main museums here,” he said. “I can take you and show you the pictures that have ERR codes”—the Nazis’ inventory system—”that were properly restituted. There’s the connection to the Monuments Men.”

The eldest of three children, Mr. Edsel was born in Oak Park, Ill., and raised in Dallas, which remains his base of operations. Headquarters for the Monuments Men Foundation, a converted warehouse with exposed brick walls, is lined with photographs—Florence’s Accademia where Michelangelo’s David was entombed in brick to protect it from bombing strikes by the Allied forces; Gens. Omar Bradley, Dwight D. Eisenhower and George Patton surrounded by Nazi plunder inside the Merkers, German salt mines.

Here, Mr. Edsel works the phones, appealing to the better angels of veterans who are holding on to spoils of war, perhaps even trying to sell them. One victory: He convinced a veteran to give up a leather souvenir album he’d picked up when his unit took over Hitler’s house, one of the long-missing volumes cataloging the never-built Führermuseum in Linz, Austria. Now, see it at the German Historical Museum in Berlin.

“The final chapter of World War II is just now being written,” he said. “In the next five or 10 years the remainder of that generation—whether they were veterans, displaced persons, American, French, Soviet—are going to pass, and the things that are in attics and hanging on walls are going to have new owners. My concern is that if it’s documents or books and they’re in a foreign language, the heirs won’t know what they are and may just toss them.

“Nobody can go find everything that was taken during the war,” Mr. Edsel said. “But what we can do by raising awareness is to let people know where they can find us.”

Ms. Kaufman writes about culture for the Journal.

A version of this article appeared May 2, 2013, on page D5 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: He Drills for Answers.

By JAMIE EWBANK

Christian Mueringer / Alamy

Mont Ventoux’s peak

THE BARREN PEAK of Provence’s Mont Ventoux has a fearsome reputation among professional cyclists, but the Giant of Provence is also proof of the great cycling truism: Anyone with a bike can ride the same mountains as cycling’s heroes.

The Tour de France will return to Ventoux for the 15th time this summer, bringing with it enormous crowds. But even outside of those raucous days, the area remains the perfect place to make your own breakaway, offering everything from medieval architecture to mountain-reared pork and lamb, to be washed down, of course, with robust local wine.

Unlike multi-mountain holidays such as the Raid Pyrénéen—the route across the Pyrenees from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean—Mont Ventoux is ideally suited to credit-card touring and has enough off-the-bike diversions to be more than just a cycling holiday. Instead of climbing several mountains over several days, moving from hotel to hotel as you go, here you can stay in one location and choose three routes up one mountain.

Professional cyclists can make the ascent in just over an hour of nonstop cycling. Strong club riders will manage it in about double that time, but anyone who is fit and healthy can attempt the climb as long as you allow yourself several hours for rest stops.

Here’s our guide to an ascendant weekend on Mont Ventoux.

Day One

Friday

7:46 p.m. | Arrive at Avignon TGV and head to the small commune of Crillon le Brave, near the foot of Mont Ventoux. Hardened cyclists may want to ride the 40 kilometer journey, or you can take a taxi for around €80.

8:40 p.m. | As well as being a perfect base camp for all three ascents of Ventoux, the Relais & Châteaux’s Hotel Crillon le Brave is a beautiful place to stay. Its guest rooms are spread across several 17th-century houses linked by courtyards and bridges, and set alongside a pool and restaurant area where you can dine on local specialties, including filet d’agneau, and sip Châteauneuf-du-Pape. If you’re traveling without your bike, you can rent one from the hotel, which also has a Coureurs du Ventoux guest book to record your time. Rooms from €280 per night; place de l’Église, crillonlebrave.com

Day Two

Saturday

10 a.m. | Cyclists looking to record a good time for the ascent tend to set off early in the morning to avoid having to ride in the midday sun, but if you’re planning to bike at an unhurried pace, you can afford to leave later. Take the D974 and D164 toward Sault and enjoy a late breakfast at Le Provençal, a courtyard cafe in one of the town’s venerable buildings, where you can enjoy local pâté and lamb dishes for very reasonable prices. rue Porte des Aires; +33 (0)4 90 64 09 09

12 p.m. | Arrive in Sault, often thought of as the gentlest ascent and the most traditionally picturesque route. The town sits on the tip of the Vaucluse plateau, looking west toward Ventoux. Head to its elevated public boules court, from where you can see farmhouses dotted among the vast, blue fields of lavender the city is known for. Everywhere in town you’ll be greeted by the stylized ceramic cicadas designed by Louis Sicard.

From here, ride up the hill into Sault’s winding medieval streets, where you’ll find well-preserved 16th-century houses and a moving Maquis memorial. Grab lunch at one of the numerous cafes and enjoy the laid-back, Gallic culture, with a good view, a strong drink and not a laptop in sight.

1 p.m. | Begin your 26-kilometer ride from the boules court, dropping down the short, steep road into the valley and heading toward Ventoux on the narrow D164, making long sweeps left and right across the valley before entering the beech forests and starting the climb. The ascent from Sault is the longest of the three, and consequently the gentlest, with the early roads in the forest taking long, straight tilts.

2:30 p.m. | Two-thirds of the way into your climb, approaching the cafe and ski station at Chalet Reynard, the route is almost flat. The easing gradient comes at just the point where the road starts to lift out of the trees, giving you respite and a view to enjoy with it. The crowds—and applause—that greet your arrival at the chalet can be a shock after 15 kilometers of comparative solitude. Eat at the cafe and refill your water bottles before tackling the last leg. +33 (0)4 90 61 84 55; chalet-reynard.fr

3 p.m. | From here, you enter the iconic “moonscape,” where the peak of the mountain, beginning in the 12th century, was deforested to feed the shipyards in distant Toulon. The roads are steeper, and the mistral can be as difficult as the gradients if you’re unfortunate enough to find a headwind.

3:40 p.m. | After a few kilometers on the limestone slopes, stop at the Tom Simpson memorial for a reflective moment, leaving a bottle or cycling cap in tribute to the World Champion who died here during the 1967 Tour de France. This stop is also a useful respite before the final kilometer up to the last hairpin and the tiny, steep ramp to the Ventoux observatory.

4 p.m. | Spend some time getting your breath back and taking in the spectacular views. Despite being a crowded tourist spot, the summit of Ventoux has little more than a gift shop to offer, where you can buy sweets and souvenirs before starting the descent.

The contrast between the hours of ascending and the minutes of descending is striking. Even if you’re riding cautiously, you will be back in Crillon le Brave and taking a dip in the hotel’s pool within the hour. Take the descent cautiously, watching for oncoming cars that have pulled into your lane to overtake ascending riders.

Day Three

Sunday

10 a.m. | Follow the D138 through four kilometers of fields and flatlands from Crillon le Brave to Bédoin and start your morning with a tour of the town.

For cyclists, Bédoin is both Mecca and the Glastonbury festival, a place of solemn pilgrimage, yet so filled with kindred spirits that it is hard to avoid an atmosphere of communal celebration. You cannot take a photograph without a handlebar, a wheel or a Lycra-clad thigh intruding into it.

Fortify yourself for the journey ahead the way professionals did in less scientific days: with steak tartare at a roadside cafe. For something less visceral, lunch at the Hotel des Pins’s restaurant, L’Esprit Jardin, where you can have another Provençal speciality, côte de porc du Ventoux aux girolles. Mains from €15, hotel-des-pins.fr

1 p.m. | From Bédoin, ride gently through the vineyards of St.-Colombe and St.-Estève, spinning a lower gear than you think you need and saving yourself for the beautiful but unrelenting climb through the forest, where you’ll hit stretches of gradients that average 9% and peak at more than 12% along this 21-kilometer route.

2:40 p.m. | Stop at the signpost for Petit Moutet, about 12 kilometers up the climb, and enjoy the vista between two sections of forest. Few other vantage points include so much of Ventoux’s varied terrain. It can be daunting, but keep in mind that the summit isn’t going anywhere: Measure your efforts, take in the lush woodland and rocky passes and work your way up to Chalet Reynard, where you’ll benefit from familiarity with the final kilometers of the route.

4:30 p.m. | On your downhill leg, stop for a cooling demi-pression at Le Guintrand, a quiet cafe bar in St.-Colombe that offers shady outdoor tables and a view of the route without the bustle of Bédoin itself (+33 (0)4 90 37 10 08; leguintrand.com

). Once refreshed, cross the road for dinner beneath the hanging baskets at La Colombe. +33 (0)4 90 65 61 20

Day Four

Monday

9 a.m. | The route along the D13 and D938 to Malaucène is a short but rolling 16 kilometers—just enough to warm up for the final, third ascent. Begin the journey from Malaucène, which has neither Bédoin’s single-mindedness nor the valley vistas of Sault, yet in many ways is the start of the Ventoux legend. It was from Malaucène that the Renaissance poet Petrarch made one of the first ascents of the mountain, albeit on foot rather than on a carbon-fiber wonderbike. It is said that Petrarch’s account of climbing Ventoux popularized Alpinism, and Malaucène remains popular with rock climbers to this day.

11 a.m. | The ascent from Malaucène can be as tough as the climb from Bédoin, but with more shelter from the wind. It will take you three or four hours, depending on how well you have recovered from your previous exertions. While you will spend long spells riding up 9-10% slopes, the steep sections are broken up by gentler pitches of around 3%—and even the odd false-flat. This forces some grueling changes of rhythm, but also allows you some respite.

1:20 p.m. | By the time you reach Mont Serein, you’ve tackled the hardest that the Malaucène ascent has to offer and the final stretch is similar to the Bédoin ascent.

2:20 p.m. | On the descent to Bédoin, stop at Chalet Reynard for one final lunch, before returning to the hotel and departing. Express trains to Paris leave Avignon TGV every hour, and although the distance from Crillon le Brave to Avignon was ridable Friday, no one could fault you for taking a taxi back.

TYSON COLE IS ON a quest to create “the perfect bite.” In his second Slow Food Fast contribution, the components are seared broccolini, blanched romanesco, deep-fried quinoa and savory lemon curd.

At Mr. Cole’s restaurant Uchiko, in Austin, Texas, the constantly evolving menu reflects the chef’s imaginative, sculptural handling of his ingredients. “We try to do specials that are produce-focused,” Mr. Cole said, “and sometimes we base them on themes and colors.” In this case, the theme is variations on broccoli—pale-green romanesco florets and darker broccolini, crisped at the edges and tossed in a miso dressing. Creamy lemon curd enriches each forkful, brightening the vegetables’ flavor and the plate’s overall color scheme, while the ruddy quinoa grains provide earthy ballast.

As in all of Mr. Cole’s dishes, establishing equilibrium among the various elements is essential. Taste as you go to get the seasoning right. You want the lemon curd to be as smooth and luscious as can be, so monitor the heat carefully during cooking to prevent the eggs from seizing up and getting lumpy. Use a thermometer to make sure that the oil for frying the quinoa hovers right around 325 degrees: Let it go much lower, and the grains will be greasy; much higher, and they will scorch.

Prepared with care, each of the elements will shine, but it’s when you put them together that Mr. Cole’s art really reveals itself. “There is balance on the plate,” the chef said, “so that no matter what direction you attack it from, you are guaranteed to get that perfect bite.”

—Kitty Greenwald

Romanesco With Seared Broccolini, Lemon Curd and Quinoa

Total Time: 40 minutes Serves: 4

Ingredients

5 egg yolks

Zest and juice of 2 lemons

1 stick butter, softened to room temperature

Salt, to taste

1 cup red quinoa

1½ cups water, plus 1 tablespoon

1 pound romanesco, broken into bite-size florets

½ tablespoon white miso

4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, plus extra for seasoning

2 cups canola oil, for frying

1 pound broccolini, dry ends trimmed

What To Do

1. Find a metal bowl that fits over a large pot to create a double boiler. Fill pot three-fourths of the way with water and bring to a steady simmer. In bowl, off heat, whisk together yolks, lemon zest and juice. Place bowl on top of simmering pot and whisk yolks continuously until they lighten in color and thicken enough to form a ribbon when you lift whisk, about 5 minutes. (Take bowl on and off heat as needed to prevent eggs from curdling.) Remove bowl from heat and whisk in butter, bit by bit, until incorporated. Season with salt and set aside.

2. In a small pot set over medium-high heat, combine quinoa with 1½ cups water. Bring to a gentle simmer, cover, reduce heat and cook until quinoa is tender, about 20 minutes. Strain quinoa and toss to dry.

3. While quinoa cooks, set double-boiler pot (without bowl) over high heat and return to boil. Add romanesco and cook until al dente, 3-5 minutes. While romanesco cooks, make dressing for broccolini: In a large bowl, whisk miso with 2 tablespoons olive oil and 1 tablespoon water. Season with salt and set aside. Once romanesco is cooked, drain, season with olive oil and salt and set aside.

4. Rinse and dry pot used to cook quinoa. Add canola oil and set pot over medium-high heat. Use a thermometer to determine when oil reaches 325 degrees. Add cooked quinoa and fry until darkened and crisp, about 2 minutes. Use a slotted spoon to transfer quinoa to a paper towel-lined plate and season with salt.

5. Set a large sauté pan over medium-high heat. Once hot, swirl in 2 tablespoons olive oil. Working in batches to avoid crowding, sear broccolini until tender and lightly charred, 2-3 minutes per side. Remove broccolini from pan, add to bowl with miso dressing and toss to coat.

6. Divide broccolini among four plates. Arrange 5-7 romanesco florets around broccolini on each plate. Spoon generous dollops of lemon curd around broccolini and romanesco. Sprinkle quinoa over vegetables.

A version of this article appeared April 27, 2013, on page D5 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Romanesco With Seared Broccolini, Lemon Curd and Quinoa.