Them Down There in the Treme

So I have been watching the HBO miniseries Treme and I have been fascinated by the perspective on the post-Katrina New Orleans that the show provides. Clearly, the show is only a snippet and it is fiction. Nonetheless, I found it interesting to think about the damage done and the recovery process from the viewpoint of the types of people that the characters represent.

First, I learned that Treme is one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city, and early in the city's history was the main neighborhood of free people of color. It is reported that the neighborhood was and is an important center of the city's African-American and Créole culture, especially the modern brass band tradition.

Viewers of the HBO program get a good look at the landscape, the interior of houses and businesses, and the exterior buildings, houses, streets, and land areas. The sense of the damage, the amount of problems encountered as people attempt rebuilding, and the simple things like water in the gas line that will not power the cooking stoves on the restaurant of one character.

I can see the livelihoods that derived from a tourism industry devastated and decimated but not completely deterred.... the musicians, the chefs, the hotel staff, and more.  The neighborhoods that look desolate, isolated, and damaged.  The houses that are no longer homes.

My heart broke as the lawyer and the sister searched for the missing brother while the mother, older, less in control of her faculties, held vigil. All three hoping, searching, slaving through a bureaucracy that encouraged all the wrong behavior and provided no incentive for integrity and valor. Yet they found a little along the way. In the end, the viewer gets a clear sense of what happens in a moment when the world as someone knows it is literally washed away. And we get to feel, only barely, what it feels like to be someone, like the college professor-husband-to-the-lawyer, who knew his government had been failing his community for years.  Not enough of the right people put the appropriate degree of attention on the problems to solve them before catastrophe took those problems away and replaced them with new, bigger ones.

Treme is a beautiful creation and I am glad to have seen the program in all its beauty and grace amid debris and desolation... with all its hope and faith in the face of loss and mourning.

Visit: HBO's Treme Website  and The Times-Picayune HBO Treme website


The one thing that stood out in my mind Sunday after Sunday as I watched was the awareness of them and their plight. "Boy, they sure have a mess to recover from." "Man, what a trauma that was that happened to them." "They sure had a great place down there." "I wonder how they are doing."

I, sitting in the comfort of my Washington DC residence, wondered about them and felt very little connection to the post-Katrina New Orleans of 2010. Before this HBO special, that community and its devastation had been off my radar for quite a while. Have I done enough? Yes, I sent charitable gifts.... in 2005 and 2006. But what about 2009 and 2010? Who needs my help now? Have I done enough? I am not situated to travel there and spend my tourist dollars just yet, but when I can, will I go? Will I remember?

And then I wondered, when the next drama hits DC, if my neighborhood is torn apart, will I wonder then, if I had done enough for "them down there."

Then I listen to the stories about the oil spill and how business and tourism in the region are experiencing even more hardship. Am I doing enough now? What else should I be doing?

My First Fatherless Father's Day

Someone at church wished me happy father's day yesterday. I smiled. She knew my father had passed. She was acknowledging him and my loss in such a warm and loving way my heart just warmed over and swelled. She said it in a way that let me know, she knew he was still with me, fathering me, even if his body was no longer here.  It was the kindest, gentlest gesture and it made my day.

I had been afraid to go to church.

It was men's day and I did not really want to have my attention on dad... I thought I would be too caught up in feelings of mourning. I thought that I would see all of the dads, hear the message about fathers, and then feel devastated at losing mine.

But then again, church is not supposed to be about me!

Welcome to Northeastern Presbyterian Church

I am Pam Jackson, Phil Jackson’s second favorite daughter.

Alicia Keys singing about the Streets of New York

Alicia Keys sings that New York's streets "will make you feel brand new and inspire you." It is the "concrete jungle where dreams are made up There is nothing you can't do now that you are in New York."


I believe her. The music, the beats, Jay-z... all make me feel empowered and moved deep in my soul. It is the kind of song I would play very loudly on the car radio while driving on the freeway (at high speeds) with all the windows down at dusk. The kind of song that makes me feel free and hopeful with a full rich life ahead of me.


The song reminds me that life can be simple and joyful. Just show up and let life in New York move me.


Today is the last day of school for my soon-to-be-done-with-first-grade son. I feel emotional, sad that time has flown by, glad because he is doing so well.  As I listen now, to Alicia, I notice my dreams are less about me and more for him, more about his life than my own.


Don't get me wrong.... I have more to do and big dreams for myself.  But at this stage of my life, I dream of the world that my son will live in. And my focus of attention is on making the way for him to live the life he wants to live.... and making a way so that his community, his country, is as good or better than the one we have now.


I feel less of the inspiration of Alicia's Streets of New York and more of the drudgery of my work to make life all better. There are moments of inspiration. But I contrast those with the life I lived when I was twenty and most of that time was spent feeling inspired and invincible. 


"Where did it all go?" I ask the rhetorical question knowing the answer. It is all still there. I am just too serious about it all. The problems I have taken on are bigger and more complex... the consequences more severe. I am less mindful than I ought to be about the work to do to make my dreams come true. I focus more on what I have yet to do than on what I have done. I celebrate less and plan more. Oh, the adult life is a challenge. This parenting thing really can be fun and joyful but I have work to do on that front.


Maybe it is simpler yet... I am in DC not New York. Oops, better head north and have some fun!

Food from others

I am reading Rosabeth Moss Kanter, a professor at Harvard Business School and an author.

15 Steps for Successful Strategic Alliances (and Marriages)
http://blogs.hbr.org/kanter/2010/06/15-steps-for-successful-strate.html?loomia_ow=t0:s0:a38:g4:r2:c0.000000:b0:z6

She has developed a 15-step guide to ensuring success as every stage of the relationship, from courtship to ongoing success. Her advice:
1. Be open to romance, but court carefully. At the beginning of new relationships, selective perceptions reinforce dreams, not dangers. Potential partners see in the other what they want to see, believing what they want to believe. Hopes, dreams, and visions should be balanced by reality checks.

2. Know yourself. Build your strengths. An organization seeking partners should identify assets that have value to partners and strengthen them. Networks of the weak do not survive. The best alliances join strength to strength.

3. Seek compatibility in values. In rapidly changing environments, compatibility in values, philosophy and goals is more important than specific features of an immediate business deal. The basis for collaboration must be more enduring, and there must be a foundation for mutual trust to help weather inevitable changes or problems.

4. Treat the 'extended family' respectfully. Include other partners and stakeholders. Rapport between leaders of partner organizations is not enough. Other people and organizations who are the 'relatives' in each organizations' extended family must also be won over.

5. Put the lawyers in their place. Leader-to-leader relationships are important. Partnerships and network formation shouldn't be turned over to third-party professionals, such as staff analysts, lawyers, consultants, or deal-brokers.

6. Vow to work together until business conditions do us part. Commit to a first project, to exploring growth in the relationship, to monitor change, and to remain friends if changing conditions require a graceful exit.

7. But don't count on the contract. Formal agreements can't anticipate everything, and interpretations of the agreement vary — even within the same organization.

8. So keep communicating, face-to-face. Matters are more easily sorted out when partners' leaders keep talking long after their initial deal-making and dedicate people to watch over the relationship — a partner or alliance 'ambassador' (the equivalent of key account managers).

9. Spread involvement. Create more ties for more people. Alliances begin with a few direct connections among top leaders. As projects unfold, more people at more levels must get involved, and they need to feel connected, too — that they know their counterparts in their partner organization. The more people feel included, the more they have a chance to see the others face-to-face and come to know them, the easier it will be to implement partnership activities.

10. Build organizational bridges — formal structures. Active collaboration occurs when organizations develop structures, processes, and skills for bridging organizational and interpersonal differences and getting value from the relationship. Bridges include formal governance (a partnership board), joint project teams, and alliance ambassadors.

11. Respect differences. Alliances, partnerships, and networks are most helpful when they involve differences — when partners give each other something they do not already have. But differences in "specialty" desired by partners are accompanied by more "inconvenient" differences in behavioral style, motives and goals, operating methods, or cultural assumptions. Respect is essential. Time must be invested in understanding differences and transcending them.

12. Teach partners. Learn from partners. People from across the partnership network must become teachers as well as learners. Often the ultimate value of a partnership is the new knowledge and skill it brings. Organizations that derive greater value from their alliances tend to have greater communication internally, share more information, and promote an atmosphere of learning.

13. Be prepared to change yourself. Partners must be willing to be influenced by one another. To make linkages possible requires operating compatibilities, project by project and sometimes even in a larger sense. This can mean learning the other's language and style or inventing a new one; changing to the other's system or creating a joint one.

14. Help everyone win. Mutuality is the hallmark of organizational collaboration. Balancing benefits so that each partner gets something of equivalent value can be hard to do in the short run, but it is essential in the long run. The best alliances try to maximize the value of the whole relationship, which then makes it more valuable to each partner.

15. Get closer, change course, or exit gracefully. Like living systems, relationships evolve. Change should be expected. But the best guarantee that organizations will be closer in the future is success in what they try to achieve today. Success strengthens relationships.

If the world is about to end

So there is a line in the John Legend song, Quickly, where he talks about needing to love the girl he just met quickly cause the doctor told him he is dying slowly.

I love that line in part because it is true for most of us, that we are dying slowly.... but also I love how he sings it.  In that song, like most of his songs, is really passionate. He says time is running low so he wants her (the girl he is singing to) to love him like the world is about to end. Can you imagine that? What would that be like? the attention, the passion, the focus, the disregard for the day-to-day and mundane... whew.... hours of pleasure??? romance? love???

So if the world is about to end, I guess I would not care about a lot of the things that take up space in my thoughts. I would be more free and at ease to enjoy the moment, to be fully focused on the man in front of me and not worrying about my chores, my errands, my budget, and my parenting. I imagine myself in beautiful surroundings with this beautiful person, uninterrupted and full of pleasure, excitement, lust.

Do you do that right now? I know I don't. Well, I might for like 5 minutes in a month or something. It seems like the shortage of time is always on my mind when it comes to many aspects of my life. If the world were about to end, my sense of time, its value and my choices about how to spend that time would shift powerfully.

If I pause a moment....let's see. It is Saturday night, in June. If the world is about to end then I do not have to think about:

1.teaching Sunday school tomorrow
2. finishing the laundry to get ready for the next week of school
3. applying the dog's monthly flea and tick medicine
4. vacuuming the first and second floors of the house
5. washing my hair and deep conditioning it
6. losing 10 more pounds
7. saving for my son's post-high school options (college? entrepreneurial start up?)
8. figuring out how to manage the mid-year performance reviews that I am about to have to start at work
9. resolving my father's estate and selling his house
10. and 20 other things

Then I guess I could be free.

Interestingly enough, it does occur to me that if the world is about to end, the distraction of wondering when, exactly, the world is ending and how it might be ending....may interfere with my beautiful, in-the-moment, passionate rendezvous I have been speculating about.

oh well. I guess I will just stay in the moment when I can and go on with my world ending much later on.

Now, if John Legend himself calls me, everyone else will see me gone with the wind as the world ends!
http://www.johnlegend.com/us/home