Obama’s Afghanistan announcement, David Loyn’s book.

David Loyn's book provides helpful context for President Obama's decision about the war in Afghanistan.

President Obama is expected to announce his long-awaited decision about the war in Afghanistan tomorrow.

On yesterday’s edition of State of the Nation, CNN’s John King said Obama is likely to approve sending about 34,000 additional troops to the war-torn country.

During a conversation with Sen. Richard Lugar and Jack Reed, King explained that the troop increases would be accompanied by a drawdown strategy as the Afghan police and military reach full strength and benchmarks for the administration of President Hamid Karzai to fight corruption.

As seems to be common these days, Obama’s predicted call is receiving heavy criticism from many quarters.

Some say the troop numbers are too far below those made public in September by General Stanley McChrystal.  Others says trusting Karzai is a fool’s errand.  And still others say that Obama’s policy resembles that of former President George W. Bush.

Enter David Loyn.

The 2005 Dart Fellow and longtime BBC correspondent has written In Afghanistan, a book that provides useful context on the failed colonial ventures by British, Russian, Soviet and American powers during the past 200 years.  Drawing on his unusual combination of field experience and collection of rare books, Loyn argues strongly that none of these efforts has succeeded, in large part due to the inherent conflict between, on the one hand , the imperialists’ desires, and, on the other, indigenous will and knowledge of the local geography.

I wrote about the book last month, and thought that Obama’s arrival at a decision merited another recap of the work.

Understandably, Loyn spends the largest chunk of the book talking about the British experience, with significantly shorter sections on the Russian and American eras.  A skilled spinner of yarns, Loyn describes in vivid, if understated detail, several near-death adventures he had during his more than 20 years of reporting in the country’s forbidding terrain.

The well worn cliche that time will tell if Obama’s decision is the right one may be apt here.  In the meantime, though, readers wanting to learn more about the country that has repelled invader after invader would do well to read Loyn’s helpful primer.

Edward R. Murrow’s Harvest of Shame, David Halberstam’s The Powers That Be and Other Resources

Edward R. Murrow exposed the plight of migrant workers in Harvest of Shame.

UPDATE:  Austin Murphy has a well-written and engaging story in this week’s Sports Illustrated about the Belle Glade area that opens Murrow’s film.  Murphy talks in the piece about the townspeople’s resilience and grit that has contributed to the area being a NCAA Division I football pipeline.  He also discusses The Muck Bowl, which features teams from Belle Glade and neighboring Pahokee.

People across the nation have loosened their belts after consuming heaping portions of sumptuous Thanksgiving Day feasts.

Dunreith, Aidan and I went to Jon’s home in South Shore, where he prepared the turkey and all the trimmings, including stuffing, brussel sprouts, sweet potatoes, and acorn squash. Dunreith chipped in with a couple of pumpkin pies and Aidan made his trademark cranberry sauce.

Mom, Jon’s girlfriend Lynette, and his friend/roommate German Cabrera joined us for a warm and festive occasion.

For many others, of course, Thanksgiving is not a cause for celebration.

I vividly remember going to Plymouth Rock in the early 90s on Thanksgiving Day to observe what Wampanaog Indians called a National Day of Mourning.

Beyond that, much of the food that made our bountiful feast was picked by migrant workers.

The plight of migrant workers is not a new one.

Legendary broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow tackled the subject in Harvest of Shame, an hour-long documentary produced by Fred W. Friendly that aired the day after Thanksgiving nearly half a century ago in 1960.

Dunreith and I watched the video today, and it hit hard.

The opening scene, in black and white footage, had Murrow’s deep voice intoning over images of black workers being recruited to work in the fields of Florida.

He said:

This scene is not taking place in the Congo. It has nothing to do with Johannesburg or Cape Town. It is not Nyasaland or Nigeria. This is Florida. These are citizens of the United States, 1960. This is a shape-up for migrant workers. The hawkers are chanting the going piece rate at the various fields. This is the way the humans who harvest the food for the best-fed people in the world get hired. One farmer looked at this and said, “We used to own our slaves; now we just rent them.”

Murrow traced the workers’ experiences as they moved north from Florida with the crops, ending in New Jersey in November.

Plenty of heart-rending footage of nine-year-old children tending to their younger, runny-nosed siblings while their parents work in the field mingle with interviews of the parents saying they would like more than anything to leave the work they are doing, but do not have any means or hope of doing so.

Murrow shows black, white and Latino workers essentially undergoing the same oppression.  The film also features interviews with several callous owners, one of whom talks about workers having “a bit of the gypsy” in them and living blissful existences, and with a farming official who essentially says that it’s better for a lot of people to receive poor pay a few days a years than nothing at all.

Secretary of Labor James Mitchell calls the workers “the excluded Americans,” but  seems surprisingly helpless to do anything to improve their situations.   Murrow, who is smoking in nearly every scene in which he appears, notes toward the end of the film that more than 150 legislative initiatives had been attempted, but just one had succeeded.

The film ends where it began, in Florida, with workers returning back after their journeys north to the latest chapter in a book of grinding poverty.  Murrow quotes a pastor who urges people to think not just about charity, but about justice, before uttering the film’s final words:

“The migrants have no lobby. Only an enlightened, aroused and perhaps angered public opinion can do anything about the migrants. The people you have seen have the strength to harvest your fruit and vegetables. They do not have the strength to influence legislation. Maybe we do. Good night, and good luck.”

The late David Halberstam wrote extensively about Murrow’s career, his seminal reporting during World War II, his pivotal work on Sen. Joe McCarthy, and the Harvest of Shame in The Powers That Be.  In typical fashion, Halberstam also writes unflinchingly how Murrow fell out at CBS with network head William Paley and the shabby treatment Paley doled out as a result.

Latino workers appears mostly in the Murrow documentary as competitors with the black and white workers, but my brother Jon has photographed the experience of Latino day laborers for the past decade.  His remarkable web site shows these workers’ journeys across the border, their efforts to provide for their families, their interactions with the criminal justice system, and their home lives.

Friend Kari Lydersen has written about the Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ struggle for better wages and working conditions and Guatemalan-born worker centers’ organizer Jose Oliva in Out of the Sea and Into the Fire.

Watching Murrow’s film, looking at Jon’s web site or reading Halberstam’s or Kari’s books can remind those of us who live in privilege and comfort that they do not come without a price, and to consider taking action accordingly.

Cool article about Jon Lowenstein and Carlos Ortiz’s photo exhibit.

Chicago Tribune staffer Lauren Viera wrote a piece about my brother Jon and his friend Carlos J. Ortiz’s exhibit at Roosevelt University’s Gage Gallery that appeared in yesterday’s paper.

The exhibit is up until mid-January.  Check it out if you can!

Sept. 11 Terror Attacks Prompt Economic Hit Man John Perkins’ Decision to Complete His Confessions

John Perkins decided to finish Confessions of an Economic Hit Man after the September 11 terrorist attacks.

According to some, the September 11 terror attacks “changed everything.”

While the subsequent eight years have proven that initial assessment to be a bit overarching, there is no denying the attacks’ real impact on people throughout the world.

For the families of the victims, the death of their loved ones created a gaping and irreplaceable hole in the center of their lives.

For many in the United States, an illusion of security and invulnerability was permanently ruptured.

For other people, the attacks sparked actions that they had long considered, but not yet taken.

Childhood friend and award-winning photographer Andrew Lichtenstein married his then-longtime girlfriend Linda, for instance.  The couple has since had two children.

And for self-described Economic Hit Man John Perkins, the planes flying into the World Trade Center towers prompted him to complete Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, the book he had begun nearly 20 years before, but deferred for several reasons.

The book’s title is apt.

Perkins’ work interweaves two related narrative strands.

The first is the role of hit men like him working for a few key companies-in addition to MAIN, the company for which he worked, he also writes extensively about Bechtel and Halliburton-to perpetuate the simultaneous economic and political domination of elites and environmental degradation and exploitation of the masses in the countries throughout the world.

The second is his personal journey, starting in a small and politically conservative New Hampshire town, going through prep school at Tilton and an unsuccessful stint at Middlebury College, serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ecuador with his first wife, and then, through her uncle, entering the far-flung world of the hit men that takes him to, among other countries, Ecuador, Panama, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq.

Perkins is a skillful writer who knows how to turn a phrase and keep the action moving briskly forward.  He has plenty of material to work with, too.  At times, Confessions reads like a James Bond yarn, with the difference being that he is working to develop models of long-term economic growth that he and others use to convince government officials to accept.  Padded with hefty profits for the contracting companies like Bechtel, the contracts also tend to ensure the country’s dim financial prospect and nearly permanent indebtedness to financial institutions like the World Bank.

Confessions also effectively provides brief historical background on the countries on which Perkins focuses before launching into his experiences in that country.

The chapter on Saudi Arabia, which takes places in 1974, shortly after the OPEC oil embargo staggered the American economy, sheds much light not only on a massive money-laundering scheme, but on many of the relationships and forces in Saudi society that received so much attention in the aftermath of September 11.

At times, Perkins reminds the reader of a economically savvy Forrest Gump, zipping from country to country, forging relationships with novelist Graham Greene and General Omar Torrijos in Panama, reconnecting with a college friend in Iran who tells him in the late 70s to leave the country, and returning in the early 2000s to the Ecuador where he had served in the Peace Corps 35 years earlier.

Perkins does not spare himself either from noting his own seduction, immersion into, and dulling of his critical faculties about, the world he enters.   At different points in the book, he says that he helped to continue a system of slavery and was himself enslaved by the material goods and lifestyle to which he had access-the second claim is less convincing than the former.

He credits a number of people, including a Colombian woman named Paula, who nudge him to consider the moral consequences of his actions.  Looking at his inflated resume is one choice of many that moves Perkins eventually to quit the agency in 1980.

The path to the book was far from a linear one, though.

Perkins started working on it after his second marriage and birth of his daughter Jessica, but decides instead to accept what amounts to a bribe to keep the project unfinished and unpublished.

He works in the energy field for a time in the 80s, deciding eventually that advocating for nuclear energy may not be the best way to go, and picks up the story after the two planes flew into the towers.

Confessions contains an epilogue, some recommendations for action, and a timeline of key personal and professional events in his life.  He closes the work by citing both Tom Paine in Common Sense and Thomas Jefferson’s fabled words to begin the Declaration of Independence.

In the end, Confessions does pull back the veil on the workings of the global economic system from the late 60s to the 80s, with a reminder in the epilogue that Bechtel and Halliburton’s strong connections to the Reagan and Bush White Houses that the ties still run deep.  This is the book’s most distinctive and sobering aspect.  The confessional dimension works less well, but still brings the reader along to the end.

Perkins’ words may not be enough to undo his actions, but we should be glad that the terror attacks moved him to finish the project he had begun shortly after his daughter’s birth.

Happy Thanksgiving, quick book notes.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! The late Benazir Bhutto's book about reconciliation is one of the many reasons I am grateful today.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

I feel grateful for many gifts in my life.

Most basically, I am grateful for a wonderful family and circle of friends, a sense of wonder and spirit and purpose, meaningful work, a clear mind that allows me to read, think, admit error and learn, a sturdy constitution and good health, and financial sufficiency.

I’m also profoundly grateful for the slivers of experience and memory that I have each day that remind me of what life is about: love, shared connections with other people, working for a larger cause, and trying to make the world better than it is now.

This blog has been a major project for me this year, and I am extremely grateful to all of you who have clicked on, commented, or in some way joined the conversation and community we are creating together.

Your ranks have grown.

The first day I blogged last December, seven people looked at what I had put up and written.

For the past eight weeks, it’s been just about 1,000 people per day.

This is a shared venture of the heart in every way, and I want, on this day of giving thanks, to thank all of you who have joined and contributed to the space.

Have a wonderful day!!

I’ve got a couple of quick book thoughts.

Longtime Washington Wizards’ owner Abe Pollin died earlier this week at age 85.  He is a minor character in When Nothing Else Matters, Michael Leahy’s highly unflattering portrait of Michael Jordan, the man generally considered by many to be the greatest basketball player ever lived.

I recently finished Dart Fellow and Pulitzer Prize winner Amy Dockser Marcus’ Jerusalem 1913, an intriguing look at the waning days of the Ottoman Empire that suggests how the current Arab-Israeli conflict might have turned out differently.

And yesterday I completed the late Benazir Bhutto’s Reconciliation.  Written after her dramatic return to her native Pakistan and right before her assassination two years ago, the book is an effort to bridge the chasm of understanding between the Western and Muslim worlds.  Bhutto takes on the legacy of Western colonialism and the current war in Iraq as well as Muslim extremists.

Fun exchange about virtual Third Places between Ray Oldenburg and Bob Yovovich.

Ray opens the exchange:

Hello Jeff,

Glad you enjoyed the book.  I don’t have much enthusiasm for the so-called “virtual” third places.  The pitch is too psychological or individual-oriented; the “group” doesn’t really do anything, doesn’t build neighborhoods, is not visible to others.  Virtual 3Ps don’t have the mix of personalities, viewpoints, and leanings that real places do.  “Virtual private clubs” would be more accurate. Proponents seem unaware of all that is lost compared to face-to-face interaction.

I’m revisiting some data on laughter which third places generate in great amounts and which, we are told, is good for us.  I rarely chuckle at electronic communication unless a really good joke is forwarded.

Electronic communication spans great distances but what does that do for the neighborhood one lives in?  I concur with Wendell Berry…real community is local, all else is metaphor.  One doesn’t promote a neighborhood very well sitting in a darkened room staring at a computer screen.  Whoever observed that we are no longer neighbors but mere “nigh dwellers” had a point.  Way back in the 1920s Mary Parker Follett saw the folly of “cosmopolitanism” realizing how alike those folks all are.  Real differences between people exist in close physical proximity beyond our privacy fences but we have found need to protect ourselves from them.

By the way, I tried tuning in to a lot of the stuff so easily available while sitting on my ass.  Very boring for the most part.  But I’d never give up my electronic sources.  I have published pieces based on what Google, et. al. provide and could not have done it otherwise.

Bob Answers:

Yes, Ray makes a lot of sense in his comments about the limitations of “Virtual Third Places” (VTPs).

However, I would argue that — despite the limitations of VTPs — they still can play very powerful and valuable roles … and there are lots of examples of how they can actually do some things better than “traditional third places” (TTPs) can do.

I see the relationship between TTPs and VTPs  as similar to the differences between, say, face-to-face communication and written communication.

There is no question that face-to-face can be a very powerful communications tool in ways that written cannot match.

On the other hand, there also are ways in which written communication can be FAR superior to face-to-face.

In the discussions of VTPs, it is important to keep in mind that it is easy to both overstate and understate their effectiveness and usefulness.

And here’s a further complication: It is likely that the virtual / online environment will change our concept of “community” in ways that we are not anticipating.

I came across this type of thing about 20 years ago.  In connection with a book that I was writing, I took at look at forecasts that people – smart people – were making back in the late 1800s about the impact that the telephone would have on businesses and “business communities.”

The forecasts basically fell into one of two categories:
1 – There were those people who were convinced that – because the telephone meant that you did not have to be in close proximity in order to engage in business interactions – the new technology would cause business activity to become much more dispersed and decentralized.
2 – On the other hand, there were those people who were convinced that – because the telephone meant that you now could (from a central office) control business interactions in far-flung locations – the new technology would cause business activity to become much more concentrated and centralized.

What actually happened wasn’t one or the other.  In fact, it wasn’t even a hybrid of the two.

What actually happened was a complicated re-shaping of the business topography of a sort that really had not occurred before. The shapes and nature of “business communities” changed in ways that simply were not anticipated. (For examples of the kind of thing I have in mind, you might want to check out an essay – “New Maps For A New World”  – that I wrote about twenty years ago in connection with that research.)

And, just like the telephone-spurred re-shaping of the business topography, we are in the middle of a Web-spurred re-shaping of our “socio-communal topography.
That’s one of the things that makes all the new social media so exciting.

And, to underscore how fast these changes are taking place, let me point out that NONE of the social media are mentioned – no Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, etc. !!! (much less Twitter, etc.) — in the excellent 2006 paper on “the impact of Internet usage on social connection” that you cited in your initial blog entry.

We need to keep in mind that we are just at the beginning of the discussions of these Web-spurred changes – and I urge you to revisit the work of good old Marshall McLuhan, who has some terrific contributions to make to those discussions.

Including this great McLuhan observation:
“We shape our tools and then our tools shape us.”

Let’s keep the conversation going.

– BGY

What do you think?  What are the advantages and tradeoffs of virtual and in-person third places?  Can they work in concert?

 

Rev. Hood brings together people working for peace.

The Rev. Robin Hood looks on as former gang member Derek Brown talks about his efforts to bring peace to the North Lawndale community.

UPDATE: A thoughtful comment from fellow blogger Geoffrey Kruse-Safford:

A couple points. First, it is heartening to see local churches banding together to work to change their neighborhoods, particularly when those neighborhoods are awash in violence. These are the kinds of things that churches do well, and more should be actively involved in them.

Whenever I read criticisms of Christianity and church action on the web, it is a program like this, and organizations like this, that I think about. Who is going to step in to the gap and offer alternatives for communities suffering from official neglect? Who is going to provide space for the voiceless to speak? Only churches do that. Far too often, secular advocacy groups enter from outside and tell local communities what they should do, rather than developing local leaders and advocates from within and providing opportunities for neighborhoods to change themselves.

Second, while there is no doubt that the kinds of things Rev. Hood and others are doing can make a difference, decades of urban policies that officially neglect minority neighborhoods – withdrawing support services, including police and fire and sanitation; offering small business tax incentives to open providing local shopping opportunities and jobs; creating an infrastructure that supports the community rather than pushes it aside – need to be addressed as well. Mayor Daley’s father was infamous as a leader in encouraging white flight, and shunting minority communities to one side. When I lived in Washington, DC in the early 1990’s, we always laughed a little ruefully at the fact that one local thru-street actually had speed bumps while some communities (especially southeast of the Anacostia River) received virtually no city support at all. While it is true that in politics, money speaks far louder than anything, organizing local communities to advocate on their own behalf, as well as push candidates for city offices to encourage changes in policies, in services, in zoning are also necessary.

THE POST:

Violence has claimed the lives of far too many young people in Chicago.

Saturday morning, the Rev. Robin Hood of Clergy Committed to Community brought together about two dozen people at Pastor John Drummond’s New Grace Emmanuel Church in the South Chicago neighborhood to figure out how to stop it.

The crowd in the pews were mostly black women, some of whom had children with them, many of whom wore green t-shirts proclaiming their membership in Mothers Opposed to Violence Everywhere, or MOVE.  Four Latino mothers who belong to Mothers for Peace in the Back of the Yards neighborhood sat in a pew in the second row.

The late November morning was sunny and temperate, but the content the speakers discussed was not.

Derek Brown, formerly known as “Shotgun”, spoke after Rev. Hood gave introductory comments.  The formerly high-ranking member of the Vice Lords talked about the work he has done with the youth in his native North Lawndale community to reduce the violence that has been so rampant.

“It’s easy,” said Brown, who has a shaved head, full beard and thickly muscled arms covered with tattoos.  ”Give them something to do and keep them focused.”

One of the somethings Brown has done is get a boxing club started.  This past week he helped organize a talent show that hundreds of kids attended.

Brown explained that funding thus far has come partly through grace and also through he and other young men visiting the businesses in the community.

Lisa Rivera of Mothers for Peace talked about the importance of loving children unconditionally.  Her shoulder length black hair flashing as she spoke, she explained that she has come to realize that judging and condemning her son’s behavior may have pushed him to the street corner, where gang members were waiting for him with open arms.

Rivera, whose 20-year-old son has been incarcerated for two years, visits him every week in prison.  Her group has held meetings with gang members in the community, and the word is spreading.

James Thindwa spoke last.

The Zimbabwean-born former head of Jobs for Justice acknowledged the importance of taking responsibility for children’s actions. But he also talked about the necessity of holding politicians accountable and recognizing the devastating impact job loss has had on black and Latino communities.

“Let’s have both conversations,” Thindwa said, his voice rising as he spoke about Mayor Daley’s 2006 veto of the living wage ordinance that passed the City Council and the $14 billion the United States spends monthly on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Many questions remain.

An elder in a black three-piece suit asked Brown how others who have less street credibility than he can intervene with the young people in the community, and did not appear completely satisfied with the answer Brown gave to show no fear.  Several speakers passionately denounced violence in the community while at the same time appearing to condone hitting children as an acceptable form of discipline.  Some of the statistics speakers mentioned were of questionable accuracy.

But a start was made.

On a clean and quiet street in one of the neighborhoods hardest hit by violence, black and brown people came together to talk, to support each other, to forge alliances and to design solutions.

They spoke from their hearts. They listened with respect.  And they gave each other strength to continue the fight.

Ray Oldenburg bemoans the decline of the Great Good Place in American cities

Ray Oldenburg makes a passionate plea for public spaces where people gather. What does this mean in the Internet era?

UPDATE 2: Bob Yovovich responds to Ray Oldenburg’s comments:

Jeff, thanks for your very useful discussion of Third Places … and for bringing Ray Oldenburg directly into the conversation.

Yes, Ray makes a lot of sense in his comments about the limitations of “Virtual Third Places” (VTPs).

However, I would argue that — despite the limitations of VTPs — they still can play very powerful and valuable roles … and there are lots of examples of how they can actually do some things better than “traditional third places” (TTPs) can do.

I see the relationship between TTPs and VTPs  as similar to the differences between, say, face-to-face communication and written communication.

There is no question that face-to-face can be a very powerful communications tool in ways that written cannot match.

On the other hand, there also are ways in which written communication can be FAR superior to face-to-face.

In the discussions of VTPs, it is important to keep in mind that it is easy to both overstate and understate their effectiveness and usefulness.

And here’s a further complication: It is likely that the virtual / online environment will change our concept of “community” in ways that we are not anticipating.

I came across this type of thing about 20 years ago.  In connection with a book that I was writing, I took at look at forecasts that people – smart people – were making back in the late 1800s about the impact that the telephone would have on businesses and “business communities.”

The forecasts basically fell into one of two categories:
1 – There were those people who were convinced that – because the telephone meant that you did not have to be in close proximity in order to engage in business interactions – the new technology would cause business activity to become much more dispersed and decentralized.
2 – On the other hand, there were those people who were convinced that – because the telephone meant that you now could (from a central office) control business interactions in far-flung locations – the new technology would cause business activity to become much more concentrated and centralized.

What actually happened wasn’t one or the other.  In fact, it wasn’t even a hybrid of the two.

What actually happened was a complicated re-shaping of the business topography of a sort that really had not occurred before. The shapes and nature of “business communities” changed in ways that simply were not anticipated. (For examples of the kind of thing I have in mind, you might want to check out an essay – “New Maps For A New World”  – that I wrote about twenty years ago in connection with that research.)

And, just like the telephone-spurred re-shaping of the business topography, we are in the middle of a Web-spurred re-shaping of our “socio-communal topography.
That’s one of the things that makes all the new social media so exciting.

And, to underscore how fast these changes are taking place, let me point out that NONE of the social media are mentioned – no Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, etc. !!! (much less Twitter, etc.) — in the excellent 2006 paper on “the impact of Internet usage on social connection” that you cited in your initial blog entry.

We need to keep in mind that we are just at the beginning of the discussions of these Web-spurred changes – and I urge you to revisit the work of good old Marshall McLuhan, who has some terrific contributions to make to those discussions.

Including this great McLuhan observation:
“We shape our tools and then our tools shape us.”

Let’s keep the conversation going.

– BGY

UPDATE: Friend Jim Peters of the Responsible Hospitality Institute connected me to Ray Oldenburg today.

I asked Ray what he thought about virtual, as compared with in-person, third places.

Here is his response:

Hello Jeff,

Glad you enjoyed the book.  I don’t have much enthusiasm for the
so-called “virtual” third places.  The pitch is too psychological or individual-
oriented; the “group” doesn’t really do anything, doesn’t build neighborhoods,
is not visible to others.  Virtual 3Ps don’t have the mix of personalities, viewpoints,
and leanings that real places do.  “Virtual private clubs” would be more accurate.
Proponents seem unaware of all that is lost compared to face-to-face interaction.
I’m revisiting some data on laughter which third places generate in great amounts
and which, we are told, is good for us.  I rarely chuckle at electronic communication
unless a really good joke is forwarded.

Electronic communication spans great distances but what does that do for the
neighborhood one lives in?  I concur with Wendell Berry…real community is local,
all else is metaphor.  One doesn’t promote a neighborhood very well sitting in a
darkened room staring at a computer screen.  Whoever observed that we are
no longer neighbors but mere “nigh dwellers” had a point.  Way back in the 1920s
Mary Parker Follett saw the folly of “cosmopolitanism” realizing how alike those folks
all are.  Real differences between people exist in close physical proximity beyond
our privacy fences but we have found need to protect ourselves from them.

By the way, I tried tuning in to a lot of the stuff so easily available while
sitting on my ass.  Very boring for the most part.  But I’d never give up my
electronic sources.  I have published pieces based on what Google, et. al.
provide and could not have done it otherwise.

Cafes, coffee shops, bars, and beauty parlors share several fundamental similarities.

They are public spaces.  They are where we hang out.  And they help us get through the day.

Author and emeritus sociologist Ray Oldenburg finds, though, that these “third places”-the first two being work and home-are on the decline in urban America, and he’s not pleased about it.

The Great Good Place is his look at these places, their characteristics and meaning, and what can be done to have them re-ascend in importance.

Many thanks to friend and writer Bob Yovovich for pointing me toward this book.

Oldenburg opens the book by talking about the places he has in mind and then takes a global tour of third places, with stops in Viennese coffee houses, Parisian cafes and English pubs being some of his more notable destinations.

While he clearly enjoys the food at these various locations, he is also writing about a quality of interaction, of convivial conversation exchange and of shared pleasure simply in being together.

This type of connection, he argues, was on the downslide in urban American in the late 80s, when the book was first published.  Oldenburg opens and closes the book by examining the reasons behind the fall of the third places-he talks about suburbanization and the emergence of malls as a poor substitute-and ends the book with a passionate and italicized reminder that “It doesn’t have to be like this!”

Fast forward 20 years.

Oldenburg of course was writing before the ascendance of the Internet as a global force for community and connection.

This is dicey territory.

A survey of scholarly research has shown that Internet usage for social connection increases, decreases and does not effect users’ social ties to other people.

I have not yet contacted Oldenburg, but imagine from reading his book and subsequent Project for Public Spaces that he is advocating for more in-person, rather than online, contact.  He writes passionately in his book about American homes becoming the site where one does everything and the diminished public connection that accompanies this development.

Yovovich, on the other hand, is optimistic about the possibility of creating a similar kind of virtual great good place in which people can regularly gather to hang out, share thoughts, see each other and enjoy each other’s company.

What do you think?  Do we have fewer third places?  Is this a bad thing?  Do you connect more often with people in person or online?

The One Minute Manager and Marcus Buckingham tells to go to our strengths.

 

One Minute Manager was one of the two books I read last night.

Dunreith and I hung out for a few hours last night at Border’s in downtown Evanston.

I love it there for many reasons, one of my favorite of which is that I get to wander around and see which books call me.

I’m never quite sure what I’m going to end up sitting down with, although I did know that I wanted to read Pulitzer Prize winner and Dart Fellow Amy Dockser Marcus’ book about 1913 and the start of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Although I did pull that one down from the shelf and have since taken it out from the library, I did not get to it last night.

Instead, I made my way two business books: The One Minute Manager by Kenneth Blanchard and Spencer Johnson and Marcus Buckingham’s Go Put Your Strengths to Work.

I initially got into business books as a way to connect with my brother-in-law Josh; however, I’ve since found that I very much enjoy the genre and often find elements that I can apply to my work and home life.

The One Minute Manager is told as a parable.

The protagonist talks about meeting the one-minute manager, who briskly explains both that he does not like unnecessary repetition and that the author should talk with his employees to find out what type of manager he is.

The protagonist does, learning that the one-minute manager believes in three essential elements: a one-minute goal, one-minute praise, and one-minute reprimand.

The emphasis in each aspect of the approach is that goals should be specific and able to be conveyed in no more than 250 words and 60 seconds.

The praise and reprimands both come within a context of rapid, if not instantaneous feedback, and emphasize letting the feedback settle in for a little while before affirming the person’s value to the organization.

If the method sounds straightforward, well, that is because it is.  Blanchard and Johnson both talk about the goal of management being to have employees who are excited about the work and who themselves go on to extend the method.

Which, unsurprisingly, is what the narrator ends up doing.

Behavior change is also the goal of Buckingham’s book.

I have not read his earlier book about discovering your strengths, and get the sense that this book is a call to apply the strengths identified through reading the previous work.

A former Gallup pollster, Buckingham takes square aim at the ideas-he calls them myths-that we should work to shore up our weaknesses, that our personalities change significantly over the course of our lifetimes, and that being a team player means doing whatever the team needs at all times.

Instead, he advocates identifying, and then figuring out how to spend more time doing, the activities we do well and that give us pleasure.

These are our strengths.

Buckingham’s book includes an online survey through which readers can identify how often they are currently applying their skills in their work. From that assessment, he supplies a six-week program to help raise that percentage.

The book also includes tips on how to talk with peers, friends and eventually managers about how to make these shifts without appearing overly self-promotional or unwilling to do necessary hard work.

Buckingham unfolds his method through talking about Heidi, a woman working for a hotel chain who has, over the course of eight years, lost her zest for her work.  By tracking the amount of time she does activities that either energize or drain her, she is able to start to increase the former and decrease the latter.

Buckingham states clearly that, while we may dream of a job in which we telecommute, hit the beach and make millions, few, if any, such jobs actually exist.

In a similarly unsurprising ending to the book, Heidi gets her work groove back through participating in the six-week program.

The book has some parts that don’t make much sense.

Buckingham cites Dennis Rodman, whose rebounding and defensive prowess were all out of proportion to the rest of his skills, as evidence of how one can parlay playing to one’s strengths.  Yet no serious fan of basketball would consider Rodman an all-time great at the level of Larry Bird, Magic Johnson or Michael Jordan, all of whom continued to refine and improve their games throughout their careers.

His statement that parents who do not harm their children have very little influence on them is also highly likely to raise eyebrows.

That said, both The One-Minute Manager and Buckingham’s book are worth picking up for a quick read. Accessibly written, both offer useful tips for one’s personal and professional development.

 

George Scialabba event, other bloggers.

Geoffrey Kruse-Safford was just one of several bloggers I met at last night's reading by George Scialabba.

I had a lot of fun last night at Powell’s Book Store, where uber-connecter Danny Postel and chronicler of the “Backlash Trilogy” Rick Perlstein introduced review extraordinaire George Scialabba.

Scialabba was soft-spoken, intensely intellectual, humble and obviously passionate about the books he reads and the ideals he holds for a better world that may yet be possible.  He opened by reading his title essay from his recently published book, What Are Intellectuals Good For?, to which he added a coda about the possibilities and realities of public discourse in the Internet era.

From there, the discussion was on. It was a wide-ranging one. Scialabba and the standing room only audience of about 35, nearly all white, mostly middle-aged and above, and seemingly all left-wingers of some stripe dug into everything from the implications of Obama’s presidency for public intellectuals to what would happen if all diseases on the planet were eradicated.

Scialabba was a combination of presenter and facilitator, asking people to elaborate, explaining where he agreed with the questioner, clarifying his positions at points and generally modeling the kind of discourse he in his book advocates.

Following the event, about a dozen of us trooped down to Maza’s for a hearty meal of Lebanese food.

Several other bloggers were in tow.

Geoffrey Kruse-Safford and his lovely wife Lisa sat across from Dunreith and me.  Geoff works for Wal-mart on the third shift in the Rockford area and has blogged actively about things spiritual and religious for about three years.  I definitely recommend checking out his site.

We also gave a ride home to Michael Kramer, a humanities scholar at Northwestern who blogs about cultural criticism and the role of the scholar as a public intellectual. He’s finishing a forthcoming book from Oxford University Press about rock music and the making of sixties counterculture.  From what I could pick up from our conversation, between his dissertation and book revisions, he’s been at the project for about 10 years.  That’s longer than many hippies were hippies!

All in all, it was an evening rich in conversation, ideas and good will.  Danny is remarkable in his ability to bring together diverse yet like-minded groups of people, and I was glad to be among that number.