Bear Creek Concerts
No they are not gone. Merely hibernating. Cause that's what bear do.
Regular season begins September 15, 2007.
Listen to Christy
Christy's one and only solo project. There are a few still in the shrink wrap.
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Porch Talk...
It's been my experience that fundraisers tend to shoot for the big bucks, and that big bucks tend to come from people with big incomes. On rare occasion, the "every man" event scores big. i.e. Relay for Life. This is one of my favorite fundraising events because it's a community event, too. All walks of life participate because it's relatively easy to meet the $1000 per team goal. Therefore the participants look like a real community. Rich, poor, educated, working class, doctors, convenience store workers, young, old, black, white, brown, fat, skinny, fit, not so fit, you get the idea. If you can handle the all night part of it, a Relay for Life is one of the most fun and meaningful things you can do with your community.
However, fundraisers more often look like this: Affluent (or at least not minimum wage types), dressy, live auction, silent auction, expensive live band, a smattering of local celebrities and politicians, and glitz. It can go from full on "high roller" to full on "wallet seizure." I enjoy some of these events, but not many. Naturally, I really dig Family Crisis Center's dance, dinner and auction. It's a very open minded event because we all know about the "uglies" we're there to support. Lots of minorities are willing to work the day to day part of this kind of community need. So the event is much more real. We drink too much, dance too much, laugh too much and spend too much. But we've made some good friends at those events.
...O.K. So there's only ONE of these kinds of events I enjoy.
Even in the hospice world, our fundraisers tend to be insulated. In Austin, I've attended an auxiliary event that made me feel like a hillbilly. It was gross... but they raise some serious cash, and I can do gross if serious non-profit hospice cash can be raised. At my hospice, we have our big Happening in Bryan. We claim it's for everyone, but everyone doesn't come. I never see large representations of blacks or hispanics or poor people. It's the "important" people. And no one mingles. No one talks to anyone they don't know. It's a huge event. It's a big social bang that raises some serious cash, that once again, is very much needed. Mostly because we run this old fashion, expensive hospice model that just can't be touched by the contemporary hospice movement. That model alone allows us to raise serious money by seriously appreciative people who have seen the Hospice Brazos Valley team in action. In our Brenham office, it's more of a cowboy fundraiser. Still not particularly ethnic or socio-economically broad.
I march to a different hospice drummer. It makes some C-suite residents nuts.
I don't care.
When I do a hospice event, I totally think out the broad demographics of our communities and try to tailor to that. I want every soul ever involved in hospice care to be represented at my "fundraiser."
I throw community events.
This past Saturday, our La Grange office had a cooking contest that featured categories representative of our patient demographic. Czech, German, Tex-Mex, Soul Food, and the Texas Maverick. Although the event was not nearly as large as the Bryan or Brenham events, it was HUGE where diversity plays in. We had young, old, black, white, Mexican, German, Czech, rich, poor, college professors, long-haired bikers, foreign born citizens, fat, skinny, wheel chair bound, downs syndrome, good 'ol boys, Buddhists, Catholics, Protestants, aethiests, CEOs, minimum wagers, farmers, dogs, on and on and on.
... and we had big, big fun.
That's the kind of joy people who have been touched by death should share. The kind where we all hug, we all dance together, we all sing together, we all eat together, and we all share our cultures.
Food.
I'm telling you. It's the great peace maker. The soul food contestants were taking home left over Scotch Eggs. The middle class white mama (mine) threw all her votes to the soul food peach cobbler entry. Tamales. Biscotti. Peanut Cakes. Black Eye Peas. Chili. Sausage. beer. Popcorn. Kids of all colors running everywhere, making friends with each other. Working together. And the accordion lilting through the air with Cajun and Tejano favorites, but only to finish it all off with the Beer Barrel Polka and some dancing.
If there's a hospice heaven, then this is what it looks like. I'm telling you that it's full of crusty characters with long hair and tattoos, gentle ladies, ancient grannies whose mothers remember slavery, babies, dogs, cowboys, beer drinkin' coon-asses, Mexicans and bohemians. I think all the food must taste like Miss Gloria's black-eye peas and a young mother's undocumented recipe for peanut cakes that has been passed down for generations by word of mouth from grandmother to mother to daughter. It's the inexact recipe passed down by love and pride that took the Grand Prize in our cooking contest. And that is only fitting for a hospice heaven.
Community events take a hell of a lot of work, and the pay off is more than money. However, if they succeed in unifying a community, the financial support usually follows. That's my hope and expectation for the La Grange hospice cooking contest. It's also my hope and expectation for our monthly installment of Bear Creek Concerts. At the end of the night, we all leave with an eclectic group of new friends, and we've heard music that feels like a traditional recipe for peanut cakes. It will never be exactly replicated, but the memory will be strong, and the sense of community will be powerful, because I will load up a heavy barrel of food and money and give it to the poorest of the poor in Fayette County. And those who feed them will be grateful, and we who come to the porch will be real fundraisers.
My headline sounds like the title to the latest "how to" marketing/business best seller. But there's more to it than that. I hope that what I write is obvious, but my experience tells me that it's not. Basically, most businesses do not have managers with good EQ. Many supervisors simply view their jobs as a bigger paycheck, but they don't understand the responsibility of their title. Therefore, some spend too much time "playing golf" and lunching. Others see their role as that of the "pick up player." They lack delegation or negotiating skills so they just overwork themselves to pick up the slack for a weak team. Neither one of these managers is worth much at the end of the day. Both are ignoring the cause of the problems that may be keeping a team from working at top efficiency or effectiveness.
I suggest thinking of your management role as that of a mechanic. I'll use myself as an example. I own an old diesel tractor that is always breaking down. The problem is never obvious. Recently, it wouldn't start. I said, "it's the starter's fault!" But it wasn't that simple. The starter couldn't crank because something else was wrong. I checked for fuel line leaks or places where compression could seep out. Couldn't find any. I took the battery in to be tested. It was fine. The alternator was good. I sprayed ether in the air filter. That just froze everything up. Finally, a friend came over and tried DW40 in the main fuel hose. That was it! My engine was air locked! It wasn't the starter at all, it was a fuel problem causing the starter to feel sluggish.
That's how employee issues work. Usually the obvious culprit is not the culprit at all. If an employee is not doing his/her job correctly, ask why? Is the employee really an idiot or lazy? Or did a manager fail to properly train that person. Or did the company fail to properly equip that person to do his/her job. Or did the manager fail to check in on the employee and monitor progress to insure all tasks were covered as they needed to be. Or has the manager failed to instruct and continue to help the employee grow and achieve? Is there some outside factor inhibiting good performance. How do other staff members treat or interact with that employee? And when the real culprit is found, is the manager prepared to deal with it?
My experience is that managers have no idea how to deal with it. They just blame the employee and then go play golf or do the job themselves. And they'll be bitching about the employee the whole way. As things deteriorate, they'll decide the employee needs to go, but then they're saddled with the big HR problem: no documentation of training, support, counseling or even so-called poor performance.
Now, my friends, that manager has a full blown, metasticized case of Cancer.
Every manager has a manager. Managers need to pick real leaders to manage. Not just someone whose been around for many years, or who knows how to do the job, or who plays golf with his/her manager. Managers need not be afraid of people with vision and insight. They need to put down their own golf clubs and and face real human problems. And if that's too hard for them, they need to pick people who CAN do it.
Most problems exist because we have poor people skills in the workplace. We let the loud, negative people run the place. We're so avoidant of them that we just let them take over and metasticize their sickness. My suggestion is that the manager use the golf club as a spine and call a spade a spade. Point out the poor behavior and ask why it's happening. Listen for those little air locks in the fuel line. Then spray some DW40 in there and get that engine cranking like it's supposed to. Most people are not hired as negative. Only an idiot would hire an obviously negative person. Employees grow negative as they settle into the job. I find that when I really take the time to observe the way that employee moves through the world, I find the cause of the negativity. I can then work to address and eliminate the behavior, if not the cause. Some causes come from outside the workplace, so it's simply a task of making the workplace a positive refuge that values the employee's skills, but at the same time the rule has to be set that "nobody wants you bringing your personal dirt to work, so don't. If you want people to value you, then do what is valuable to them: your job to the best of your ability. And I will do everything I can to reward you."
How do I listen? With my eyes and ears. With my gut, too. I have good intuition. When the red flag waves, I start kicking in the five physical senses to find out why. I don't talk myself out of gut feelings. I acknowledge and search for the reason it's there. I watch hands, and eyes and walking gaits and whether the cell phone is plastered to the employee's ear. I watch how they communicate with others. I feel for bad vibes. Then I ask how they feel about their job. Do they feel like something's missing. Do they have career goals, and are those being supported? I come to know deep complex stories that go beyond the 8 - 5 world because I know work is affected by outside life. No matter how much I desire that personal problems not come to work, they do and they always will.
Therefore, I acknowledge the fragility of humanness in every one of my employees. When I do that, I find each of them to be remarkable people who perform amazing feats; even when personal odds may be stacked against them.
At the end of the day, it makes me a better performer because of my admiration for the humanity around me. As my philosophy permeates the office, we collectively grow a strong armor that protects us, as a team, from the negative forces that would bring us down.
Finally, I realize that some companies are easier to apply my philosophy to than others. If you work somewhere that makes it impossible to achieve top performance and positive results, find another place to work. No job should ever ruin a perfectly good starter.
Death from a broken heart
This is something I need to write down, but I'll have to be vague because I want to honor the person I'm writing about, but today, I realized that there are many ways to die from a broken heart. I've always tied this romantically tragic concept to the loss of a human being who is dear to the person whose heart is breaking. This is obviously obtuse of me because I'm a passionate person. I live my life with passion. The things I believe in, I uphold them with passion. You've read it here before: I want to be remembered for the worn out soles of my shoes when I die. The words I write or say are insignificant. It's the walk I'm willing to take that counts.
So back to death from a broken heart.
I have a work colleague who lost her husband to a sudden heart attack. The event was shocking and sad because both she and her husband are such vibrant, dedicated, respected people in their community. She is a Chief Officer for a reputable non-profit. He was a Vice President of Research in a major university. She is extremely down-to-earth and human, and she always described him in the same way. I never met him, but her offhanded, loving, supportive way of talking about him defied his role in the university, the academic world at large, and the realm of American government/politics. He socialized with world leaders and former American Presidents. He created major world educational entities. He was a brilliant scholar.
About a year ago, he was involved in a homeland security project that went awry and put some researchers in harm's way. The flap was the responsibility of a co-worker, but having compassion for her, he did not fire her, and took full responsibility for the mistakes that were made. After all, he was the one ultimately in charge, and it was the honorable thing to do. It was also his fall from grace. An easy scapegoat for the this fumbling mess of a Presidential administration we have. So the "friendships" dried up. His life changed.
Today, as I talked to my friend, his widow, I saw a tender sad story unfold. Without really saying it, and maybe without fully realizing what she was saying, she told me that her husband died of a broken heart. He had a heart attack on his way home from work. She found his abandoned car (EMS had already transported him to the hospital) on the by-pass as she headed home at the end of her day.
The way she found out is horrible by itself. It's terrifically sad because it was no secret that even after many, many years of marriage, and raising several kids, she still loved him deeply.
As she talked today, she spoke of a former President who used to consider her husband a close friend, but after the research flap, closed in his ranks. In fact, that "old friend" didn't even send as much as a sympathy card. She talked of the waning of meaning in her husband's life. She got a little angry as she spoke of several international math programs her husband created. Major academic coups for his university. Major positive relationships with very important foreign powers. None was acknowledged by the powerful who needed those allies for their political well being. And nevermind the pure intention of creating a better, more intelligent, safer, more humane world. All forgotten with a research mistake.
Then she told me her husband used to carry an index card in his shirt pocket with his entire day detailed. She found some after his death. One from before the research flap, one the day he died. The one before was thick with appointments. Every hour crammed with meetings and a thriving, vibrant scholar's day.
"He lived for it."
The day he died, the only appointment was dinner with the underling researcher who cost him his career in the first place. After that, he got in his car and died.
I told my friend about another friend's Buddhist suggestion that we need to lean into the sword and let the pain penetrate us.
My work friend, stood up straight as if a major revelation had been given to her. She leaned back a little, pursed her lips and put her hand to her face. She squinted, and seemed to find a connection to that idea.
"Well, I think he did that the day he died."
"He just couldn't get back off the sword," I finished.
You see, passion is our heart. No matter how much we're loved by our partners, family and real friends, sometimes life loses it's reason for being if we lose our reason for being. A man who was making a significant difference, who loved his life and how he lived it, made a gallant choice that cost him his spark.
My only question is for the former President whose son once described him in a party convention speech as the most decent man in the world...
What's decent and human about letting an honorable man die of a broken heart?
Culture and Compassion
i'm still in taos on a broken down computer that has too many plug-ins, add-ons and other unnecessary crap that just pops up and ruins what-ever I'm working on. That is to say that this is my second attempt at writing this particular blog. The first one was obliterated by a Soutwest Airlines marketing pop-up. you'll also notice that sometimes my shift key works and sometimes it doesn't. thank the bird for that.
so let me try again. I've been thinking a great deal about compassion and culture. or better phrased, compassion and the american sub-cultures. basically, our thin attempt at really understanding people we don't know. that may mean a stranger in a coffee shop or it may mean a poor kid who lives on the other side of town from you. I think there's a well heeled element of society that likes to play dress-up to compassion. they feign education, self-actualization, propensity to participating in peace movements and other community focused events. But it's at a comfortable distance from what really is. it's safe and it makes them feel good. sort of like going to church every sunday, but still cheating on your wife.
I have thoughts that we're never going to get to that place we claim we're striving to find as we gather around tables in fine wine shops and cafes. That's because we talk our little buddha asses off without any first hand authority on the subject. exactly how does our kind conversation really change anything? it doesn't. unless those who have the ability to really affect change get up and cross the proverbial tracks, it can't be done.
We have to learn how to communicate with those we aspire to help. We'll have to listen, participate in their activities and realities. We'll have to do it more than once. We have to humble ourselves and acknowledge that our educations won't help us here. We're not in a place where we carry even an ounce of expertise.
I have had well-traveled worldly people tell me, "oh, i can't listen to rap," yet rap is the language of the streets, the poor, the oppressed, those we claim to want to help.
People. Listen to rap. Get comfortable with it.
Go to an urban music festival. You'll be the only whitey there, but it's simply the mirror image of what it means to be black and struggle to succeed in a white world.
Go listen to Tejano. Drink beer or sangria. Dance with whoever asks... even if he looks sunburnt, poor and rough. What you'll find is that he smells really good. He's got his best boots on and he just wants to dance.
Take a few ibuprofen to clear the sinuses and hit a beer joint. Play dominoes with the farmers and truck drivers. Eat a greasy hamburger. They'll welcome you.
And wherever you are, talk to the people. Listen to their stories.
You'll have to listen with your whole body; not just your ears. Smell, feel, register your gut, touch, taste. Take note of everything around you and of everything about who is talking to you. Notice their eyes, their body, their clothes, their movement. What do they drink? What do they eat?
You have to get comfortable with it all, and don't do it just once. And remember, you're not there to transform anyone. You're a student. you also have to gain the trust of the culture you've come into.
I simply do not think that we can fully realize the idea of compassion if we do it from afar, through conversation, blogs, news, computers, books, papers, NPR. Those things are more like maps that help us find where we need to go if we're truly going to transform the world we live in the way we say we want to.
cap free blogging in taos...
i'm in taos having myself a respite, and sheryl informed me that her dell laptop; which she loaned me, is handicapped on the left side of the keyboard due to the handiwork of her african grey. it has no shift and no cap lock. instead of trying to retrain my right hand to do my left hand shifting, i'm just giving caps a vacation, too.
i'm in taos having a respite from mostly work. but i'm also trying to recalibrate myself and my creativity. actually, it's already working. i bought myself a nice little journal, and i've started writing some ideas for a novel that i may or may not attempt. since i've never tried it, i think it may be time...
there's so much good writing out there, so i have to get over the intimidation of that and just go for it; even if no one ever reads it. but in the meantime, it's my usual observations of my world, and today my world is in taos, nm.
right now, i'm listening to 3 friends have their monthly pow wow in a local coffee shop. they're counseling one on her credentials and how good they are and how she should use those credentials to advance her career. i'm listening in. maybe i'll get a good pointer vicariously.
in the meantime, let me review taos as i've seen it so far.
touristy on the square. just a smaller version of santa fe.
lots of good little restaurants and coffee dives.
hard to find a good bottle of wine to take home. after many searches, if ended up at albertsons.
right now, in this coffee shop, it's a representation of the educated and well off. i suppose it would be a center for creativity. the artwork in here is amazing. the music is housy fusion of electronica, hip hop, and smooth jazz. star streams with a youthful splash. i like it here.
yesterday, i found my observations weaving in and out of tourism and poverty. i wandered the square. i ate over priced green chile stew. it wasn't hot enough for me. i wanted my nose to run. currently, i'm sporting a sinus disturbance due to allergies and the dry climate. my throat hurts, and i just can't pour another ounce of mint tea into my stomach. but yesterday, as i explored, i saw so many people who are so obviously the indigenous locals who really do struggle. fortunately, you can pretty much walk around the town proper, but i doubt the poorer people live in town. i've seen alcoholism; red eyes skin, bruises and defeat. i was stopped by a couple of "homeless" teenagers who asked for a few bucks because they had run out of dog food. and when i look one block behind the tourist center, i see nothing but run down trailer houses and shacks.
i wonder how folks address or explain this. i'm also interested in how that affects town government, etc. and then i need to ask questions about bill richardson. was i misguided to want to vote for him? some might say yes, but was this state worse before he came along?
questions....
I'm off to explore.