This past week has been full of conversations, study and work around successful networks. An African proverb cited in the book Connecting to Change the World: Harnessing the Power of Networks for Social Impact may best describe the impact of connecting to networks: If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. A good reminder. Let’s go far, together. More to come… DJB
Walking the streets is what links up reading the map with living one’s life.
After 27 inches of snow fell in Central Park over Friday evening and Saturday, Sunday dawned bright, clear…and cold! So after being fortified by breakfast, I decided to wander out to see how New York City was faring as a follow-up to yesterday’s There are Worse Places to Spend a Blizzard. First, a check of 5th Avenue at 54th Street. When I was at that intersection last evening, it looked like this: While the hustle and bustle in the roadways hasn’t picked up, there are many more people out walking through this part of the city by mid-day on Sunday. It was great to be out with the “crowds” (using that term loosely). I saw dog walkers…and (small) dogs wearing booties. I saw people gawking at the Trump Tower. I saw men (mostly) doing the hard work of shoveling snow (with the main culprit in bad sidewalk maintenance being the luxury store Bergdorf Goodman.) I stopped by and saw the handiwork of old friends George Taylor and John Boody – Opus 27 – built by …
I came to New York City this weekend knowing full well that some of the meetings I had scheduled could be changed or cancelled due to the snow. But the predictions were off significantly, and the blizzard that blanketed Washington came right up the eastern seaboard to New York. However, our team made the best of it, and we were fortunate to have two of our members here from New Orleans. So they just did what they always do in the face of natural disasters, and we ended up having a great “hurricane party” in their apartment about a block from our hotel. What a wonderful way to spend a blizzard in New York City. More to come… DJB
“The landscape imprisons {leaders of all nations, big and small,) giving them fewer choices and less room to maneuver than you might think.”
Ta-Nehisi Coates and Bryan Stevenson are two of the more important voices today speaking about race in America.
If it is the Christmas season, it means that the Browns are likely to have a new family photo taken by our friend John Thorne. (Blog interruption: For those who may be wondering about the use of Christmas language after New Year’s Day, just think of the 12 Days of Christmas. That’s how we celebrate at the Brown home.) I’ve written before about the fact that we wouldn’t have family photos if not for John. Thankfully, he showed up at church on December 20th and asked if we would like a family picture. All four of us were there, and it was also Andrew and Claire’s 23rd birthday. A perfect day to capture the family for 2015! John used two settings, with two different cameras. At the top you see us in the church yard, while the photo below shows the Washington National Cathedral in the background. What a wonderful gift for the Christmas season. Thank you John! Speaking of getting the family together: I’ve been hinting over the past couple of months that I’d …
Once again, the New Year puts me in a reflective and optimistic mood. As in the past, I’m taking to More to Come… to reflect on the year just past, account for my resolutions, and look ahead to 2016. 2015 was the year that both our children graduated from college, my father turned 90-years-old, and Candice and I had blessings too numerous to count. While our family has been blessed on many fronts, the same isn’t true for so many of our fellow citizens of the world. The news we hear on a daily basis seems overwhelming in the nature and scope of the issues we face as a planet. As an example, my recent reading (the subject of an upcoming post) has focused on our country’s seeming inability to come to grips with our terrible history of racial divide and hatred. But I could just as easily be reading on income inequality, climate change, fake news, our increasingly broken political system, increases in poverty, or other similar challenges we face in this country and …
When asked, following the Constitutional Convention, what kind of government had been created, Benjamin Franklin made a now famous reply. “A republic, if you can keep it.” Those words have been on my mind a great deal in recent weeks. I wonder why? Could it be the calls from those who want us to seal the borders, shut off all immigration into the U.S., and deport 11 million individuals? Could it be presidential candidates saying – when a decision is made that recognizes that we are a secular nation and not based on religious law – that we have “criminalized Christianity?” Could it be the calls to register Muslims and to reopen the internment camps of WWII? When I hear these speeches, I’m reminded of the late great Molly Ivins’ quip about Patrick Buchanan’s famously combative “culture wars” speech at the 1992 Republican National Convention: It probably sounded better in the original German. But that’s not why I sat down to write. I’ve read three books over the past couple of months that all bring …
2015 featured college graduations, a celebration of Daddy at 90, and a birthday run-in with an ambulance.
MORE TO COME... 