The Poetry of the Best Job You Ever Had

It started with a phone call from a friend. “Did you see the job ad in the paper?” he said.

“What job ad?” I said.

“The city school district is looking for a communications director. You’d be perfect.”

“Do you hate me or something?” I said.

The city school district was indeed looking for a communications director. The district was in organizational chaos. A reform school board had brought in a management consultant firm from New York to reorganize the district. Schools had been closed. Central office staff had been laid off – some 800 people. Management of cafeterias, school buses, and other services was being outsourced. The management firm was doing what had to be done, but the district was so strangled by its own politics and so intertwined with city politics that it was impossible to try to make the changes from within. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Photograph by Mesh via Unsplash. Used with permission.

The Poetry of the Crisis

There’s nothing like a good crisis to demonstrate how little control an organization has. There’s also nothing like a good crisis to uncover the poetry in our souls.

A product cancellation was looming, the cancellation to be imposed by a government agency. Thousands of jobs were at stake, not to mention income, corporate stock price, reputation, and significant disruptions for customers. The crisis had been coming for nearly a year, contained within official communications between the government and the company.

As time passed, internal anxiety grew. In the communications area, we were a relatively minor player, except for the moment at which the crisis would go public. Then we would occupy the most important position in the overall situation. Blow it there, and the product would be destroyed in the marketplace.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Photograph by Ante Hamersmit via Unsplash. Used with permission.

The Poetry of Speechwriting

The most solitary job in corporate America is not the position of CEO. It’s the position of the CEO’s speechwriter. It can be the loneliest job as well.

I spent about two thirds of my career in speechwriting. Forty years ago, no one aspired to be a corporate speechwriter. You would find people who wanted to be presidential or political speechwriters, but most people who ended up in corporate speechwriting did so by accident. In my own case, I was 25 years old and assigned to a huge issue threatening to disrupt the company. The executive in charge of marketing needed a speech on the topic. The regular speechwriters are unavailable, so I was asked to do it. My strength was, in this case, knowing the subject matter. I had written speeches for myself; I had taken a course in American speeches in college. But I hadn’t written for someone else. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Photograph by Alem Omerovic via Unsplash. Used with permission.

The Poetry of the Organization Chart

I was sitting with a woman in the Human Resources Department. There had been a reorganization of our department, part of a general reshuffling across the company, and I’d been assigned to sit with her to work out the new organization chart. 

You would think this was something of a useless exercise. Shouldn’t it be a simple matter of “here’s the boss, here are his or her direct reports, and here’s who reports to them.” But it was anything but simple, and I was to get a lesson in the Byzantine art form of corporate organization charts.

First, she pointed out, not all of the boss direct reports had the same title. Some were directors; some were managers. Next, there were directors and there were directors – a title wasn’t necessarily indicative of grade level, and grade level was everything. The chart had to indicate that by a subtle positioning of the boxes, with some slightly more elevated than the others. The same thing applied to the managers. Then there was the problem of some managers have more people reporting to them than directors did. 

To continue reading please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Photograph by Alex Kotliarskyi via Unsplash. Used with permission.

The Poetry of the Interview

It was the strangest interview I’ve ever participated in – on either side of the table.

A friend had talked me, or conned me, into interviewing for a job with St. Louis Public Schools – the director of communications. 

The school district was in chaos – an outside management firm had been brought in to run the district, schools were being consolidated and closed, services were being outsourced, central office layoffs had emptied more than half of the headquarters building, and protests by parents, students, employees, former employees, teachers and the teachers’ union were daily. School board factions were fighting each other through the news media. The news media was already showing up early each morning at the district’s administration building – knowing there would always be a new crisis to report.

And I wanted to insert myself into that?

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Photograph by Marten Bjork via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Heart of Darkness: All This Stuff Happens in the Middle

Someone forgot to tell Joseph Conrad. 

When you write fiction, you’re supposed follow the rule of thirds. The first third is the introduction of the characters and the development of the conflict. The second third is the development of the narrative, providing a deeper understanding of the characters and conflict. And the last third is the heightened pace of action leading to the climax and resolution of the conflict.

In Heart of Darkness, after the first third of the short novel, Conrad threw the rule book out the window. All this stuff happens in the second third, offering no respite for the reader.

To Continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Heart of Darkness: "One of the Dark Places of the Earth"

Five of you – friends, business colleagues, and the boss – are meandering your way down a river. It’s an early evening get-together, and you’re enjoying the company and the beverages. The sun has just set. It’s that early moment of dusk when the world becomes shades of gray. You’re feeling a bit mellow; it’s a bit of an escape from work and life in the city you just left behind.

Suddenly, you hear this: “And this also has been one the dark places of the earth.”

No one responds, except perhaps for a raised eyebrow or a slight roll of the eyes. The one who said it is known for such things. He’s also known for telling long stories, and you suspect you’re in for one. 

You're right; you are.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

The Sacredness of the Ordinary

I’m reading Vintage Saints and Sinners: 25 Christians Who Transformed My Faith by Karen Wright Marsh, and I’m struck by how ordinary all these famous Christians actually were. I ponder the thought that perhaps it’s our celebrity culture than permeates my thinking about people known as heroes and heroines of the faith. 

Consider Christians like Mother Teresa, one of the most famous saints in our own lifetimes. She was a woman who dedicated her life to God, and then wondered why God had stopped speaking to her. For decades. She lived with constant doubt, because, as she often said, God doesn’t call us to success; He only calls us to faithfulness.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Literary Life.

When the Story Is Not What You Think It Is

I suppose you could call me a Les Mis fan. I’ve seen the stage version of Les Misérables twice. I’ve seen the movie twice. I’ve watched the anniversary specials on PBS (the ones they show during fundraising months). I know the words to the big songs. I am deeply enthralled with the character of Jean Valjean. My heart breaks for Fantine. I laugh at and secretly adore watching the comic and grasping Thenardiers.

What I haven’t done is read the book by Victor Hugo. Perhaps it was the size – 1,222 pages of the “complete and unabridged” edition we have. Perhaps it was my wife telling me, as she read it, “There must be 300 pages describing the sewers of Paris. It goes on for page after page about the sewers.” Eewww. She surprised me when she said she loved the book.

Last year, I spotted a book at the local bookstore, and only saw the title on the spine first: The Novel of the Century by David Bellos. Ah, I thought, a book about David Copperfield, or Great Expectations, or Vanity Fair. Uh, no. It was subtitled “The Extraordinary Adventure of Les Misérables.” That book about sewers. Perhaps watching the movie version yet again would suffice; the sewer scene in the movie is the vastly abbreviated version of what the book contains.

The Grace of Les Misérables by Matt Rawle has changed my mind. And it did early on, as in the first two chapters. I’m a Les Mis fan, so I know that Jean Valjean (chapter 1) and Inspector Javert (chapter 2) are point and counterpoint, hero and villain, grace and justice, good and bad. Hold up, says Rawle. That’s not what Hugo did in the novel. 

Matt Rawle

The author provided a much more nuanced characterization of the two primary characters. Jean Valjean isn’t instantly converted to good when the priest lets him get away with stealing the church silver. It takes a considerable period of time and numerous events for Valjean to embrace grace. It’s a journey, not a one-time event. And as for Javert, the book presents him as an extraordinarily capable and resourceful police detective. He is a man whose very competence and experience will lead him to disaster.

I read what Rawle writes, and I’m reminded of so many times at work when people resisted doing something differently because “this is the way it’s always been done,” “this is what the boss wants,” and “it’s always worked before.” I watched one organization sail into disaster because of people’s incredible competence and experience – and an inability to change. Call it a “Javert moment.” It’s a very different view of Javert than what I understood. 

And I never realized that Valjean struggles for most of the book to be the man he will ultimately become. The priest shows him unmerited grace, and Valjean promptly turns around and steals a coin from a boy. He accepts his punishment in court, and then immediately escapes from jail so he can rescue Cosette. He almost leaves Marius to certain death because of jealousy. This isn’t the brave, noble soul we see in the play and the movie.

There it is. Victor Hugo’s sprawling saga of revolution in 1830s France isn’t a historical novel at all. It’s a novel of realism, with an understanding of human nature and the promise and perils of the human condition. It’s a novel for the times in which it was published, the 1850s, and it is a novel for the times of the 2020s. Works like Les Misérables that grasp the essential reality of the human condition are timeless. They endure because they speak to generation after generation.

I have to cast my identify as a Les Mis fan aside. I have to read the book. I have to struggle with Jean Valjean, and I have to see Inspector Javert for the complete character he is. I have to see myself in both of them.

I’m now steeling myself for 300 pages about sewers.

(This post originally appeared at Literary Life.)

Counting the Cost of Faith

Years ago, more than 40 to be precise, I was reading The Habit of Being, the collection of selected letters by Flannery O’Connor that had been recently published. Checking now, I see that my copy was from the third printing. And the book in various forms is still available on Amazon.

It’s a marvelous book, filled with so many great quotations and observations that they’re difficult to keep track of. One that I memorized, and sometimes used in Sunday School classes, was something she said about faith: “What people don't realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross.”

It is the cross. That observation keeps coming to mind over and over as I read William Wilberforce: A Hero for Humanity by Kevin Belmonte. Three chapters in particular demonstrate the truth of O’Connor’s statement – the three that describe the “two great objects” Wilberforce said God had set before him once he had experienced the “great change’ and became a believer.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Literary Life.

Painting: William Wilberforce by Karl Anton Hickel, about 1794.

The Road is Long and the Call is Loud

The road ahead was not a literal road. But it felt like one. A very long one.

My organization had just done what organizations are famous for doing: internal politics. A spectacularly successful initiative had been rewarded by the wrong person getting a promotion, someone not even involved in the success. The team went from celebration to devastation in 24 hours. I spent a few days considering what to do. I’d poured life and soul into what became a success, and I’d been slapped, hard. Overnight, gold had become rust and tarnish. I decided to leave. Go to another part of the company.

I accepted a job that had been turned down by five people, including two people on the outside. It was considered the worst communications job in the company, dealing with all the dirty stuff, like pollution, spills, accidents, emissions, waste sites, and more. No one looked for gold here. And it was facing a huge challenge – a new law requiring public reporting of all toxic emissions. It was if I’d boarded the Titanic knowing there were icebergs ahead.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Literary Life. 

The End of ‘The Scarlet Letter’ – and its Lasting Influence

We’ve come to the end of The Scarlet Letter, and it’s time to consider this journey we embarked upon almost three months ago.

In 1876, George Parsons Lathrop (1851-1898) was editor of The Atlantic Monthly (and at 25 years old, no less). That year, he published A Study of Hawthorne, neither an official biography nor an official literary study, but more a hybrid of the two. Lathrop himself called it a “portrait” rather than a biography. Whatever it’s genre, it remains one of the best studies on the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne (1809-1864). The book remained a popular study of the author for at least the next quarter century; I have an edition published in 1898.

Lathrop notes that it was The Scarlet Letter that made the author’s reputation when it was published in 1850. The subject was something of a shock and sensation, but the public quickly got over it and the book became a bestseller, selling out the first printing of 5,000 in 10 days. It was not without its contemporary critics; a publication of the Episcopal Church, which fancied itself the authority on all things Puritan, rained harsh criticism on the book, its story, the author, and anything associated with them. The criticism was ignored.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Literary Life.

Hawthorne and Suspense

The end is near. Or getting nearer. And the suspense is mounting.

Events in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter are accelerating. It’s been seven years since Hester Prynne sewed the scarlet A on her dress, seven years since Roger Chillingworth began his disguised torment of the Rev. Arthur Dimmesdale, and almost seven years since the birth of Arthur and Hester’s elf-like child Pearl.

The community has reached the point of almost-acceptance of Hester, and she’s just pulled the A from her dress and tossed it in the forest. Dimmesdale encounters Hester in the forest and decides to throw over everything and flee with her and Pearl to Europe; there’s even a ship anchored in the harbor that could take them. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Literary Life.

The Contradiction of Guilt

The deeper I get into The Scarlet Letter, the more I wonder who the novel is really about. It may be less about Hester Prynne and more about the drama unfolding with Roger Chillingworth, the wronged husband on his quest for vengeance, and Arthur Dimmesdale, the minister who’s fathered Hester’s, out-of-wedlock baby.

Chillingworth, in the guise of the trusted doctor, is gradually pushing Dimmesdale toward a crisis or breakdown. He occupies an interesting position in the story – associated with neither the Puritan church and culture nor the Romanticism of Hester and her daughter Pearl. He interacts with both but acts more like a free agent, outside church and conscience.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Literary Life.

Image of Dimmesdale, Hester, and Pearl on the platform is from the 1878 edition of The Scarlet Letter.

The Surprise of "The Scarlet Letter"

It’s been 50 years since I read Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlett Letter in my high school American literature class. What I vaguely remembered was a story about a woman named Hester Prynne in Puritan New England, with a baby born out of wedlock, and the narrowminded colonists who took great pride in displaying their superiority over the sinful, fallen woman. 

As I started reading the book in May, it took me all of the first two chapters to realize that what I remembered, and what had seeped into my head about the book in the past half-century, was superficially right but substantially wrong. It is much more than what I remembered. 

The biggest surprise so far has been the two significant male characters, the Reverend Mr. Arthur Dimmesdale and the man who shows up and calls himself Roger Chillingworth but is actually Hester Prynne’s long-absent husband. (You have to love the names Hawthorne gives his characters, as descriptive as those of Charles Dickens, but then, Hawthorne was writing and publishing about the same time). 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Literary Life.

Poetry at Work, Chapter 20: The Poetry of Retirement

I might have retired twice from the same company.

I officially retired in 2015, and I’d had given a year’s notice. I could have continued working, but the fact was that my skills, experience, and abilities were being wasted. I could have continued for a few more years, perhaps hoping for another general downsizing and a severance package, but work had become almost painful. 

When I told the head of the department of my plan to retire, the response was surprising. He became angry. It wasn’t as if I was irreplaceable. Without really knowing, I suspect it was more a case of I was doing it on my timetable, and it wasn’t something the department was planning on its timetable.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Literary Life.

Poetry at Work, Chapter 19: The Poetry of Workplace Restoration

For a long time, I had what several of colleagues called the most interesting office at work. Because I was a speechwriter, I was expected to (a) read everything the CEO did, (b) read a lot of business books, particularly popular ones, (c) study books about speechwriting, and (d) read books on current issues. All of which meant I was doing a lot of reading. And the CEO likcd to read the novels of John Updike, just about anything by Charles Dickens, and anything published on the subject of Winston Churchill.

For a reader like me, this was a great job. 

One end of my office was floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Another wall had a smaller but still sizeable bookshelf. I also had a row of books on a credenza. It’s no surprise that my office was known as the building library. 

My “frequently consulted” books included poetry. That was by design. I had several old American poetry anthologies, and my Norton’s Anthology of English Literature (college textbooks) included considerable poetry by British writers. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Literary Life.

Poetry at Work, Chapter 18: The Poetry of Electronic Work

Think back 25 years (if you’re old enough). It sounds almost quaint today, but email was just beginning to come into its own. At the company where I was working, with more than 40,000 people, some 5,000 had been brought into the email system. Eventually, all would be, but 5,000 was enough to give us critical mass for a new communications venture – an email newsletter for employees. 

To show how new this was, only one other company in the United States had an employee email newsletter. I hoped we would be the second.

I had meetings with the people in charge of the email system – not only were there various departments, there was also an email council overseeing email operations. My proposal was a text-only newsletter to be sent to the 5,000 people on email.

The response was something akin to asking people to sit in a room full of rats infected with bubonic plague. I didn’t know what I was asking. There were too many hardware platforms. I didn’t understand the technical aspects of the work. The system could crash. The company was too diverse for people to care about what was happening in other divisions. To be fair, these objections came not only from IT people but also from my own communications colleagues.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Literary Life.

Poetry at Work, Chapter 17: The Poet Blogs the Layoff

Layoffs were coming. The big announcement from the CEO was circulated by email. It was a masterpiece of vagueness. It didn’t say how many people would be affected. It didn’t say when the affected people would know. It did say there would be a severance program, although it included no details. 

In short, the important things people wanted to know weren’t communicated. I’m sure management congratulated itself on communicating, but the rumors had already been circulating and people were already far beyond “layoffs are coming.” What people also knew was that the people being laid off might be the fortunate ones. Those who remained would likely be reorganized, with more work and fewer people to get it done.

Having been through this before at another company, I had a better idea of what would happen and what people really cared about that colleagues who hadn’t been through it, especially younger colleagues. A small group came to me and asked if I would consider blogging about my past experience on the company’s intranet. I said I’d think about it.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Literary Life.

Poetry at Work, Chapter 16: The Poetry of Unemployment

It happens to most of us, at one time or another in our careers. You’re called into the boss’s office and discover there’s an HR person waiting as well. Yep, you’re being laid off.

Sometimes you’re expecting it; sometimes you’re not. In my case, I knew it was coming. A work colleague had found out and couldn’t keep it to herself. She tried to look appropriately sad and concerned, but it didn’t work. She was actually rather gleeful (yes, there was a history here). I looked at her and said, “You won’t understand this, but a considerable amount of good will come out of this for me.” Her almost angry response: “You’re just in denial.” 

Perhaps I was. I felt my ears grow warm, a sure indication that I fully understood what was happening. And I really upset the process when I walked from her office to my boss’s office and told him I knew I was shortly to be laid off. He blew up – because it upset the usual process for these “elimination” programs. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Literary Life.