“I want just one leader to stand up. One leader who has something to lose.” –Joe Scarborough on Morning Joe (He was talking both sides of the aisle… mosque, entitlements, the whole enchilada.)
Add comment August 23rd, 2010
Republican Senator Orrin Hatch eulogized Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy early this morning on news of his passing:
“In the current climate of today’s United States Senate it is rare to find opportunities where both sides can come together and work in the middle to craft a solution for our country’s problems. Ted Kennedy, with all of his ideological verbosity and idealism was a rare person who at times could put aside differences and look for common solutions. Not many ever got to see that side of him, but as peers and colleagues we were able to share some of those moments.”
Add comment August 26th, 2009
Today Village Square founder and board of directors co-chair Allan Katz has announced he is resigning his City Commission seat.
To watch Allan during his many years of service to Tallahassee was to have the pleasure of seeing the consummate citizen in action. Despite the dizzying speed that he moved from one commitment to the next, he was always up on the latest news and working to fully grasp the complexities required to make a good decision for the City of Tallahassee.
For those of us who know Allan best, we know he is brave. And we’re not talking vanilla brave… he is a nerves of steel, emperor has no clothes unflinching kind of brave that is sadly rare among the too many finger-in-the-wind elected officials of our day. Agree with him or not, he has never taken the easy way if it sacrifices what he thinks is the right way. He steadfastly put the best interest of Tallahassee well ahead of how he’d be perceived or whether he’d be re-elected.
When Allan launched an initially one-man effort to oppose buying into the Taylor coal plant, his re-election campaign was right around the corner. While he knew it would be a harder slog because of the coal fight, it wasn’t even a consideration. In the no-nonsense common sense signature characteristic of Allan, he called the coal plant “like buying into the last buggy whip factory.” When he later supported biomass, he set himself against many of his no-coal allies. Didn’t matter, Allan thought it was the right thing for Tallahassee, so he took the steeper climb.
The Village Square was inspired by the way that Allan has done his public service. Despite his devotion to the Democratic party, Allan has never been limited by the ideology or party membership that most of us find ourselves boxed into. He is committed to the world of great ideas, wherever they come from. Allan has deep and meaningful friendships across the aisle which we built on to start our tilting-at-windmills-pie-in-the-sky-civility-in-politics effort.
If The Village Square is even half as successful as Allan was, we’re good.
(Link to Tallahassee Democrat article.)
Add comment August 14th, 2009
I will never meet Monsignor William Kerr in person and I am sure my life is the less for it. Kerr died yesterday at age 68. Of late, though, I’ve spent a bit of my time learning about him and I wanted you to know what I found out.
In my job, I scour this hometown of ours for the right people to have transcendent conversation across divides. I ask lots of my “neighbors” who might be just right. I look for unique spirits in a world so much less likely to celebrate what unites us than fight about what divides us.
For our summer program “A Rabbi, A Priest and An Imam” Monsignor Kerr never really had any competition.
Kerr’s professional reputation, to a person I spoke with, was stellar. And everyone stopped to say a kind personal word about him. One source shared that “people just love that man.” The Democrat’s obit mentioned a stealth hospital visit by Nando, Kerr’s German shepherd, arranged by those who most know and love Kerr in his final days.
Not a bad epitaph as vivid evidence of the measure of this man’s humanity.
“Monsignor Kerr traveled all over the globe, touching lives everywhere as he worked to build a more peaceful world,” FSU President T.K. Wetherell said in a statement… “Florida State has lost a good friend, and the world has lost a true visionary. We are extremely saddened by this loss.”
We’ll have to find a way to move on without Bill Kerr in July, as will so many other people who I know really needed him to be there. The world needed a couple more decades of Monsignor Kerr in it, but now we’ll all have to find another way. Perhaps we’re left to multiply Bill Kerr ourselves, to rise just a little higher to his call.
Today I mourn for what we all lost yesterday. Tomorrow I’ll try to pick back up my own little tiny piece of the work to be done. I’ll do it remembering Bill Kerr. And I think maybe I’ll try to live my life well enough that someone will do their best to sneak my dog in at the end.
I’ll call it my Bill Kerr yardstick.
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.
Add comment May 14th, 2009
From yesterday’s Bill Moyers Journal, Parker Palmer, founder of the Center for Courage & Renewal.
We want instant resolution. You give us a tension. We want it to get it over with in 15 minutes. We do it in everything from microcosmic situations to what happened in this country after September 11th, which is one of the great tragedies of our time, not only September 11th but our national response to it. We had an opportunity in the weeks following September 11th to really connect in new ways with the rest of the world, who were showing toward us compassion, which means suffering with.
They were saying today I, too, am an American, despite the fact that they knew more of this kind of suffering than we did. And we had caused some of theirs. Around the world people were saying, “Today I am an American.”
Well, if we had held the tension between that attack, that horrific criminal attack, and this possibility of connecting and deepening compassion, held it not through inaction but through what Bill Coffin called the justice strategy rather than the warfare strategy. If we had done that I think we would have opened a new possibility in American life. But we couldn’t. The 15 minutes elapsed and we had to hit back.
Add comment February 21st, 2009
Reaching across the partisan divide is nothing compared to this reaching across the “aisle.”
… a Virginia businessman is spending more than $1 million to rent prime hotel rooms and promising that assorted down-and-out citizens — from the poor to the terminally ill to wounded soldiers — will have a perch of privilege on Pennsylvania Avenue for the parade.
The Capraesque gesture — dubbed “The People’s Inauguration” replete with two gala balls — is the gift of Earl Stafford, a 60-year-old Air Force retiree who made a fortune founding a military technology company.
Mr. Stafford is picking up the tab for three nights with meals at the hotel for scores of the normally uninvited and overlooked. He’s even promising gown, tuxedo and hair-dresser costs for those most in need. “We just need to get back to caring about one another,” Mr. Stafford told The Washington Post, paraphrasing the Bible: “To whom much is given, much is required.”
Mr. Stafford is one-upping Obama inaugural vows to “open this up to the public.” It’s heartening to contemplate a few of Washington’s steam-grate hoboes partying spiffy as expense-account insiders.
Talk about our higher angels. Party on – spiffily.
Add comment December 6th, 2008
Liz’s blog was the like adding dessert to some reading I had been
doing over the long weekend. If only it had actually come WITH a
dessert, perhaps something chocolate… oh, i digress already.
I have been reading the book Good to Great by Jim Collins about why
some companies become great and others don’t seem to make that leap.
And I found so many useful life lessons in this book and so many
applications to who might or might not be a good president that it
almost makes my head spin.
Collins makes the point that the great companies all had CEO with this
one thing in common… they were humble & willful, modest & fearless.
He compares them to President Lincoln, personal humility & willful
strength to get it done. Now if only I could find a candidate with
that fabulous combination of seemingly opposite characteristics. But
it does make me evaluate candidates with a different set of criteria.
Do I see them as an either OR personality, or do they posses that
elusive & within their soul…
Another great story he tells is of Admiral Jim Stockdale, who was
imprisoned for 8 years in the “Hanoi Hilton” prison of war camp.
Stockdale managed to survive because he believed 2 seemingly
contradictory things at the same time (again with the contradictory
&). He retained faith that he would prevail in the end, regardless of
the difficulties & he confronted the most brutal facts of his current
reality, whatever they were.
Businesses that do this become great. They know what is wrong and see
clearly what they need to correct & they know that they can overcome
it and become great at some undetermined point in the future. I think
countries and political parties and ordinary people can use this
“Stockdale paradox” to motivate them to make the necessary changes to
become great.
The power of &…
So many times we think things are __________ OR __________, when in
reality we need the &. We don’t need a country that is Republican OR
Democrat, we need both Republican & Democrat to make a great county.
I mean Liz is great on her own, but put Liz & Lea together blogging
and all I can say is WOW.
Diet & exercise, good & plenty, peanut butter & jelly, freedom &
responsibility, give & take, tastes great & less filling, saving &
spending wisely, helping others & taking some time for yourself, cream
& sugar. So many things are better with the & in the middle instead of
the OR.
We need to stop focusing so much on the OR these days and embrace the
& whenever we can. We have a good country, but let’s be totally
honest, it has flaws. And there are some big ones that need hard work
and someone tough enough to take on that job.
Let’s take an honest look at our challenges without the blame game
(which takes a lot of humility) and see what lies before us & let’s
unwaveringly believe that we can do it, that we will prevail, that we
will take our lives and the lives of other Americans into the
GREATness that is in our future.
OK, got to go off to the gym to face the brutal facts & the harness
the power of hope for a smaller jean size tomorrow. Now that is the
power of the & at work….
Add comment January 22nd, 2008
We’ve been thinking for a while now about just how this civility thing might go, and all that thinking has produced some ideas. Just to confuse you, here’s our tickler:
Bring your human brain.
Hold opinion lightly at times.
Eat potato salad, make potato salad.
Recognize horse manure before tracking it.
Find the wedge. Lose the wedge.
Fight like Founding Fathers.
Get (un)personal.
Lose the evil “they.”
Build your vocabulary.
Remove punctuation
Meet your batty brain.
Hold discomfort.
Be a comparison shopper.
Elevate substance over symbolism.
Err on the side of laughter.
Next week we will jump right in to discussion about bringing your human brain and leaving your lizard brain at home (when you come to the Village Square AND – we might humbly suggest as long as we’re being bossy – when you drive and when you vote).
2 comments October 26th, 2007
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