ANNIVERSARY CD

Earlier this month, in honor of our fifth anniversary, Amy and I decided to make a mix CD of songs that held meaning for our first five years. We had made a similar CD to give away as a favor at our wedding. We have already mused about what might be on our tenth anniversary, so we look forward to this being a little tradition of ours. Anyway, here are the 21 tracks that we were able to fit on our CD:

01 theme song to 'survivor'
02 mark schultz & ginny owens -- remember me
03 bruce springsteen -- streets of philadelphia (as performed by tufts beelzebubs)
04 eminem -- lose yourself (edited version)
05 dixie chicks -- sin wagon
06 alanis morissette -- you learn
07 amy grant -- ask me
08 point of grace -- saving grace
09 five for fighting -- superman (it's not easy)
10 rich mullins -- bound to come some trouble
11 theme song to ‘csi’
12 christina aguilera -- beautiful
13 michelle branch -- everywhere
14 vanessa carlton -- pretty baby
15 ji lim -- walk with me
16 tori amos -- silent all these years
17 michael w. smith -- the other side of me
18 chantal kreviazuk -- feels like home
19 mark schultz & rachel lampa -- think of me
20 avril lavigne -- naked
21 jewel -- cold song

1995 REDUX

It’s 1995 all over again. Back then, I was a senior in college, about to graduate from one of the world’s most prestigious business schools. Recall that in the mid-90’s, students were landing plum jobs by November of the senior years, if they hadn’t already locked them up from nabbing a good internship the summer before. Me, I’d gone to Eastern Europe to work with churches, and was exploring some small non-profit known as the West Philadelphia Enterprise Center. My parents thought I had lost my mind.

To make things even juicier, WPEC had no money to hire me. They were, however, working on a grant to expand their programs. I volunteered to help out, and got myself written in. By the grace of God, we got the grant, and I was offered a job, and ten years later, I’m still there. But that senior year was full of waiting and worrying for me. While my peers had their bird in hand and were having the time of their lives, I was sweating my chances on some no-name non-profit. I didn’t actually find out about us getting the grant until July after I’d graduated, and I didn’t get my first paycheck until two months later.

What sustained me through my emotional roller-coaster was a promise from God in the twelfth chapter of the gospel of Luke: “Seek first the Kingdom of God and all of its righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.” In these comforting words, I did not think God was promising for this grant to come through. Rather, I believed that if I kept on pursuing God’s ways, He would provide – if not through WPEC, than through some other channel.

Here I am, ten years later, looking that verse up yet again. For I plan to depart from what is now called The Enterprise Center. I hope to be able to go to school full-time at Fels, where I am currently taking classes part-time. And a third mouth to feed arrives on the scene later this year, via adoption from China. So there is the question of where the money is going to come from to take care of life’s expenses.

If anything, the stakes are certainly higher in 2005 than they were in 1995. Back then, I was 22 and single; now I’m 32 and married with a baby on the way. In 1995, I could’ve figured out a way to live on $200 per month, or ten hours a week at minimum wage. Now I’ve got a mortgage, utility bills, and health insurance.

But if the stakes are higher, the peace I am trying to live in comes from the fact that our God is still the same. He held me when I was 22 and will hold me when I am 42. And (I am telling myself this) if I continue to seek for His Kingdom and all of its righteousness, everything else will get taken care of.

ASIAN STEREOTYPES, PART II

Yesterday’s blog was written in a hurry, and upon further reflection I’m even madder at casting directors and others that have influence in determining which faces play which roles on TV and the big screen. Because it’s not just inner-city blacks who have a narrow exposure to Asians in mass medias. Now that I ponder on it, it’s much of mainstream America.

I mean, let’s think about this. Quick: name five Asians on TV. If you could even think of five, are there any in your group who don’t represent some Asian archetype? Mysteriously attractive female (think Lucy Liu), techno-geek (Archie on CSI), martial artist (pick your movie), sinister bad guy (the Taiwanese dude on Alias), or F.O.B. (hello, William Hung). Sorry, no Asian faces playing characters outside these comfortable stereotypes.

I played this game with other races, too, and was happy to think of some decent characters for other minority groups. African-Americans, for example, can celebrate Taye Diggs on Kevin Hill, Aisha White on Friends, and Jamie Foxx in Collateral as characters who are neither stereotype-reinforcers nor stripped of their ethnic identities.

But for Asians, not a lot of good parts. And so if your non-entertainment human interactions with Asians are limited, you can’t help but buy in a little to these stereotypes. It worries me to estimate how many people in this country subconscious believe that Asians aren’t Americans, or that they are impotent nerds or exotic temptresses or kung-fu jokers.

Less than 25 years ago, a Chinese man was bludgeoned to death by two white guys who were mad at the Japanese because they had just lost their jobs at the local auto manufacturer. Three years ago, six men in Wisconsin were given prison sentences for attacking Hmong families; the defendants admitted in court that they didn’t know the families but targeted them because they were Asian. Less than three months ago, a bogus terrorist tip caused the Boston Globe to run mug shots of four Chinese people with the headline, “Find them!”

As someone with an Asian face, I could have been mistaken for any of those people; and as an Asian, at any given time I can be the subject of someone’s stereotyping. Nobody likes to be erroneously attacked or targeted, and nobody likes to have people make assumptions about them that are incorrect, insulting, or demeaning.

I don’t mean to solely blame the media, for people ought to take responsibility to be culturally sensitive, to teach respect for others to their children, and to not let hatred fester in their hearts or in their communities. But the media has to understand that it has influence, sometimes a monopoly of it, on how people view themselves and each other. And with that power comes responsibility. And as an industry, its treatment of Asian roles has been irresponsible and detrimental. Shame on them.

ASIAN STEREOTYPES

The tail end of my bike ride this morning took me through a pretty rough section of West Philadelphia. As I was pushing myself up a steep hill, I heard someone across the street yell out to me. I couldn’t make out what he said, but it had something to do with me eating or cooking fried rice. The comment was too stupid to merit a response, but I couldn’t resist an icy glare. He responded with “oh I see, no speakee English.” By then, I was way past him and even a little thankful to him for providing my body with some anger that I could convert into adrenalin to get me to the finish line.

But as I finished up my ride and got on with the rest of my day, I couldn’t help but stew on the man’s comments. I was offended by the man’s stereotyping. I tried to laugh it off – an articulate, Ivy League educated person who was born in America being mistaken for someone who can’t speak any English – but laughing didn’t seem to make the insult go away.

Whether or not this man was trying to be mean or just inappropriately funny, he was demonstrating an ignorance that worried me. In fact, I have met many young inner-city blacks whose only interactions with Asians are the immigrant shopkeepers in their neighborhood and the kung-fu actors on the big-screen. Every time I visit the local high schools to publicize our youth program, I am inevitably asked if I know the sweet little couple who runs the corner store on their block. I brace myself for the shouts of “Jackie Chan!” and “Bruce Lee!” And no matter how many times I hear it, their attempts to “speak Chinese” clang in my ears and weigh heavy on my heart.

This is why I get upset with things like the LeBron James “Chamber of Fear” commercials or the movie “Kung Fu Shuffle.” Of course mass media folks don’t mean to demean, but they need to understand that for many young inner-city blacks, this is their only mass-media image of Asians. It is not helpful to reinforce an existing stereotype if it is wrong, racist, and damaging. It needs to be said that the Asian experience in America is much more multi-layered, that Asians span many languages and socio-economic levels and professions.

Most of all, it needs to be said that Asians in America are American. I once had a middle-aged black man tell me to my face that I was not American and could never be American. I asked him where his ancestors came from, and he replied, “North Carolina.” I tried to correct him – “no, your ancestors came from Africa and then found their way to North Carolina, just like my ancestors came from Asia and then found their way to California” – but he would hear nothing of it. Even people who I would consider educated and worldly have given me the ever-popular “where are you really from” or the “where did you learn to speak English so well” when we meet.

I do not speak from on high, for I too have had stereotypes of black people, and have over time relinquished them even in the face of steady media reinforcement. It helps to have authentic relationships, to study black history, and to read stirring stories by and about prominent black leaders. Again, I know many people who I consider quite educated and worldly who have not had these inputs as I have had, and, left to the continuing onslaught of media reinforcement, have only further entrenched themselves in stereotypes that are wrong, racist, and damaging.

I understand that for media folks, it’s easier to sell what’s selling, and financial survival takes precedent over social justice and racial correctness. Still, if the media did a better job portraying the complexities of all people to all people, I’m pretty sure there would be less bike rides I go on where I get mocked and insulted.

WHAT’S YOUR ARTEMIS

I gave a talk last year at PENN’s InterVarsity Christian Fellowship out of the book of Ephesians. I argued that the passage could best be interpreted by understanding that the context in which the author Paul’s audience was in was that of being surrounded by worship of the local deity Artemis. In calling his Ephesian readers to worship God, in other words, he was calling them to say no to the local deity. I then challenged the students to say no to PENN’s local deities – academic success, materialism, drivenness – and to say yes to Jesus.

I was reminded of this concept of the local deity when a friend of mine returned from Los Angeles feeling an almost palpable sense of vanity and image-consciousness there. I muttered to myself, “that’s LA’s local deity.” I have to fess up that I have an anti-LA bias, being brought up in Northern California and now living in Philly. But you can’t just chalk up my indictment of LA’s “Artemis” to just hating, because there’s some truth to it.

Another friend of mine is currently in South Asia serving as a missionary. He has told me of the village in which he lives and serves, and how it is literally under the power of a local deity who casts a huge shadow of fear over the residents. He prays daily that that fear will be cast out and replaced by faith, in the name of Jesus.

I tend to be skeptical of spiritual warfare talk, not because I don’t believe in it but because I know that taking it too seriously is worse than discounting it altogether. But I do believe in this concept of local deities and local idols. Ephesus, circa the first century, had Artemis. There is a village in South Asia that is governed by fear. LA’s idolatry is image. And Philadelphia? Where to begin? Finalists for the wrong kind of “American idol” include sports, patronage, and xenophobia. In the midst of all of our personal and metropolitan idols, there is One who invites, demands, and speaks: “You will have no other gods besides Me.”

I THINK ABOUT HER ALL THE TIME

I catch myself throughout the day thinking about our daughter, who at this point probably already exists. Maybe she’s a few months old, or maybe she’s still incubating in her mother’s womb. It fills me with wonder to think that somewhere in China, God is knitting her together, formulating the unique physical and mental makeup of our little girl.

I catch myself throughout the day thinking about how wonderful it will be to show her the world. I can’t wait to introduce her to my loves – baseball, Philadelphia, God, business – and I kid Amy that she will also take to some of Amy’s passions, like science or violin or soccer. A whole lifetime awaits this little one, and we’ll have front row seats to her blossoming. How wonderful!

How wonderful will it be, too, not just to have her latch on to the things we like but for us to see the world through her eyes. There is a truth to Jesus’ words about embracing the kingdom like a little child that will take on new meaning when there is a little child amongst us through whom we can gain new perspectives and new wonder.

We are worrying our share of worries, about her adjustment period and our ability to be good parents and what if this and what if that. And it is good to be diligent and to prepare and to plan. But I hope for the sake of the health of our souls that we will also take time to marvel and to wonder and to ourselves become childlike in our anticipation. For we believe in a Heavenly Father, and have prayed for our daughter to Him, and can therefore find peace in His Lordship over this adoption process, over this little girl, and over our parenting of her.

Someday soon, we hope, we will get word that it is time to meet this little one. We can’t wait.

SNAPSHOT OF A READING LIST

I’m always curious to hear what people are reading, so in the spirit of getting this conversation started, I thought it would be fun (and also a good piece of self-documentation) to offer a snapshot of my current reading list. These are items I have recently (i.e. in the past two weeks or so) read, am currently reading, or am about to get started (i.e. in the next two weeks or so).

· book: Buffettology, Buffett. An easy-to-read primer on the investment principles that have made Warren Buffett the second-richest man in the world.

· book: Caring for Your Baby and Young Child, Shelov. The authoritative reference guide, produced by the American Association of Pediatricians.

· book: Control Theory, Glasser. Argues that everything we think and do is about trying to manipulate the external world closer to our internal ideal of it.

· book: Growing Up, Vos Savant. A practical list of things your children should know before they turn 18, from home maintenance to social etiquette.

· magazine: 2005 Baseball Yearbook, Street and Smith’s. First time I’ve bought this since the late 1980’s. Great to have all my stats in one place.

· magazine: Asian Week. Not sure how I got on the mailing list of this California-based weekly, but I have enjoyed the Asian-American coverage on politics, culture, and sports.

· magazine: Diversity Inc. First time I’ve read this one; so far, so good, since it’s the nexus of diversity and HR, two interest of mine.

· magazine: Economist. Always good to get world news and business analysis from a non-US source. Sad how little we know about the world outside out country.

· magazine: Fast Company. Has lost some velocity since its mid-1990’s peak, but still a winner in terms of business and leadership insights.

· magazine: Harvard Business Review. As a Wharton alum, it pains me to say that Harvard is the authority on management, but this rag proves definitively that they are.

· magazine: Parenting. The tagline says, “What really matters to moms,” but there’s some useful stuff for soon-to-be dads in here, too.

· magazine: US News and World Report. I’ve rotated between Economist, Newsweek, and now this one. A quick way to get caught up on the headlines.

· magazine: Wired. A pretty fun read; I feel like by reading this rag, I’m “up to date” on what will be hot in 12-24 months.

· report: I can’t share the title or author because it’s not for public consumption just yet, but it was a nice read about non-profits and growth.

· report: Performance Management, Wye. Practical answers to the question, “How do you get people not used to being measured on their results to buy into such a system?”

· report: The Benefits and Realities of High Density Development, Liu; Transit-Oriented Development, Belzer; Ten Principles for Successful Development Around Transit, Dunphy. OK, I’m cheating here; these were for school.

· report: The High Cost of Being Poor, Brookings Institute. A well-done analysis of just how much more the urban poor have to pay for things like utilities, short-term loans, and car insurance.

I’M NO FUN

NT’s in the Myers-Briggs personality test are known to not be very fun-loving. “To the NT,” says the description, “work is work and play is work.”

Suits me to a tee. First, I work a lot. And I don’t play a lot. Who has time to play when there’s so much work to do? Even when I do play, it’s work. I don’t go to parties to have fun or listen to good music (actually I don’t go to parties hardly at all, but humor me), but rather to network and explore new places. Play for me usually involves learning new things, whether it’s reading a magazine or visiting a museum. Even the two things I do totally for fun – watch sports and run – have some work involved: crunching stats, making predictions and sweating over them, or keeping a log of miles run.

Here’s the thing: psychologists now say play is extremely important to a child’s ability to learn. Monkeys that were kept from playing as babies grow up unable to be good parents to their babies. Children learn significant physical, intellectual, and social things when they frolic around with their playmates. As I prepare to become a parent, I wonder if I’ll be able to just play. Maybe if I tell myself what good outcomes result from playing . . .

MY HOW TIMES HAVE CHANGED

In the five years between the time I graduated from college and got married, I lived in row homes in University City, first with a married couple on 43^rd Street and then with a bunch of guys on Chestnut. I paid anywhere between $140 and $225 a month for rent. Many of my friends also lived in University City or in the Fairmount section of the city in similar situations. Whether it was an intentional attempt to practice Christian community, a desire for dirt-cheap rent, or similar the inertia of moving to where you were comfortable, we all found ourselves clumped together in these two neighborhoods. Around the time my wife and I bought a house in University City, you could find more than enough house than you needed in either University City or Fairmount for less than $100,000.

Fast-forward five years. I’m reading the paper this morning, and there’s an article about home prices in Philadelphia in 2004. Out of 56 neighborhoods, there are six that have median 2004 prices above $200,000. Four of the six are easy guesses: Center City West (#1), Chestnut Hill (#2), Center City East (#3), and West Mount Airy (#6). Guess who’s #4 and #5? That’s right: Fairmount and University City. The median house in Fairmount sold for $275,000 last year, a 179% jump since 1998; in University City, it was a 116% jump, to $207,500. Both neighborhoods had 30+% jumps in just the past twelve months.

My friends and I reminisce often about those post-college days. I once lived with nine guys, in a three-story house in which we converted two living rooms into bedrooms and still had to double up a couple of rooms. Another friend of mine spent two years living with three women – all platonic, really. A third friend of mine lived in such a low-rent area and with so many people that his monthly rent was $100. And now our old neighborhoods are the flavor of the moment in real estate. My, how times have changed.

NO COMPETITION

Let’s say you live in a small and fairly isolated town. So small, in fact, that there’s only one plumber. Which means that except for minor problems, you have to call this guy. Only he’s completely incompetent, hard to track down, and he charges you up the wazoo. Too bad, right? If the alternative is a big mess (literally), you tolerate the ineptitude and just pray he doesn’t charge you an arm AND a leg.

Now let’s take another small isolated town. Only this town has three or four plumbers, of which one is as bad as the guy in the first town. At first, the bungler might get a few odd jobs from folks who randomly pick his name of out of the Yellow Pages. But after a while, people realize he’s an idiot and they take their business elsewhere. The other, more competent plumbers get your business, and the poor-performing plumber doesn’t have a living anymore.

I share this hypothetical situation because in our public management class today we talked about personnel management systems. A yawner, right? Perhaps, if you don’t dig this kind of stuff (and perhaps even if you do). But I found the discussion and material quite interesting, because I happen to believe that unless your business is all about heavy machinery or intellectual property, how you manage your human resources determines how successful you’ll be.

Anyway, civil service reform is afoot, with the reformers pushing some sort of “pay for performance” system and finding resistance from a number of places. In the private sector, you wouldn’t have this argument; just let companies do what they want, and whoever does better will get more business and grow, and whoever does worse will get less business and die.

But the public sector has a monopoly in most of what it does for its taxpayers. In fact, much of what the public sector does that it has private sector competition for has been outsourced to the private sector itself: waste collection, public education, and even space exploration. But a lot of what governments do still do is stuff that is much harder to have private sector competition for, like homeland security and economic policy and criminal justice.

So when you have a monopoly on what you do, you can be like the plumber in the first town. There is no incentive to be competent, accessible, or cost-effective. Now granted, there are plumbers who have monopolies on geographic areas that are quite effective, just as there are government agencies who have monopolies on their tasks that do quite well. But when the market mechanisms aren’t in place to reward effectiveness and punish incompetence, it is hard to guarantee effectiveness and easy to permit incompetence.

So back to civil service reform. Again, in the private sector, you leave this alone and see who does better. In the public sector, however, you have debates and discussions and papers and politicking. And what? Keep your eye out, and let’s see what happens next.

LEADERSHIP SELECTION

I was an active member of a Christian group in college. We sought to support one another, care for those around us, and speak of our relationship with Jesus Christ to others. I remember how big of a deal leadership selection was in our group. Leaders would come together to make a list of possible people to discuss for leadership. We then delegated who would talk to these people to get their permission to talk about them. Then over several weeks, we would evaluate each person and their strengths and weaknesses. We were careful to attempt to discern if and where they might be placed in leadership for their own development as well as the benefit of the group. Then we would make selections, talk to those we had chosen, support them as they decided on whether they wanted to make the commitment to serving as a leader, and then finally pray over the whole group as we prepared to initiate them into the work of the leadership team.

I share all this to say this process came to my mind as I have been hearing and reading about the selection of the next leader of the Catholic Church. In churches and religious groups, leadership selection is everything because the success of such organizations has everything to do with the quality of the people. Other organizations might be able to lean on fixed assets, brand value, or best practices. But spiritual groups are only as good as the people who are in them, and so identifying and supporting leaders becomes everything. While I may not agree with everything in Catholic doctrine, I have many good Catholic friends who I find to be some of the most godly and justice-minded Christians I know. So I join with them in praying for the cardinals who are themselves praying as they navigate through this leadership selection process. May God’s hand be on the next person to lead this large religious organization, that the Catholic Church for the next generation would be a place where His work is done.

CONNECTING TODAY’S CORRUPTION TO THE 17^TH CENTURY

We had a guest speaker in class last week who made an interesting speculation in passing that I wish he would’ve sat on for a little bit. We were talking about the MOVE incident in Philadelphia, and how politicians have to be able to wield force (police at a city level, military at a federal level) in a way that is neither overly timid nor overly brutal. He mentioned that Philadelphia was founded by Quakers, who were deeply and religiously peace-loving. It is a great attitude, he noted, but it may not be compatible with political leadership. And in fact, in the 17^th century, he recounted, most Quakers shied away from politics, choosing instead to found voluntary organizations, many of which still exist today.

In their absence, the visiting professor told us, others who weren’t nearly as morally good as the Quakers, moved in to fill the political vacuum. Corruption began to fester unchecked without the moral influence of the Quakers, who dared not dirty themselves with the brutality of politics and instead contented themselves with voluntary rescue services and monthly social discourses. The professor remarked that you could make a case that today’s corruption is merely a natural outgrowth of seeds planted some 350 years ago. For someone who believes in the old saying that those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it, this is a delicious and thought-provoking hypothesis. I already know a little bit about a messy annexation in 1854 and a revision of the city charter in the 1950’s, both of which are still playing themselves out today. And now I can go back a couple of centuries further. How deliciously intriguing!

CITY SERVICES

At a “grip and grin” last night at the Faculty Club downtown, I got a chance to meet Phil Goldsmith, who recently stepped down as Managing Director of the City of Philadelphia. During his 26 months on the job, Mr. Goldsmith served essentially as the COO of an organization encompassing 135 square miles and 1.5 million people.

We have instituted a “trouble ticket” system at my office, which encompasses 35,000 square feet, a dozen or so tenants, and about 100 users. Any time anyone on site has a facility or technology problem – Internet doesn’t work, there’s a leak above my desk, I see a piece of trim coming off the wall – they can fill out a quarter-sheet at our front desk, and our operations team is being held accountable to how well and how fast they can fulfill the request. It takes a massive effort by many people to stay on top of all of these requests.

Now imagine multiplying that by a factor of thousands upon thousands. At my office, we average about 80-100 requests a month. I can only guess that Philadelphia gets that many in an hour! Abandoned cars that need to be towed, streetlights that need to be fixed, potholes that need to be filled.

And, as Mr. Goldsmith pointed out, all of these essential city services need to be provided with less money. Our city has lost population and gotten poorer, both of which contribute to a lower tax base. We get less federal and state money. We have made large investments in the public schools, and have had to keep up with sizeable increases in our prison and social services budgets.

As he talked about how hard it was to be Managing Director, I nodded my head in support. After all, I play a similar role at my job, only (as mentioned above) at a much, much smaller scale. Having the job I have gives me a better handle on what it means to be COO of a city: delivering quality services with limited funds, mobilizing a massive bureaucracy towards the mundane tasks that are required to keep a city going and its residents satisfied.

THE HIGH COST OF BEING POOR

Yesterday, I attended a very stimulating briefing hosted by the Greater Philadelphia Urban Affairs Coalition, at which a Brookings Institute report entitled, “The Price Is Wrong: Getting the Market Right for Working Families in Philadelphia.” Commissioned by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, this report highlights the high cost of being poor, from higher interest rates for short-term loans to higher premiums for auto insurance. It was a fascinating look at the “expense” side of the ledger, as one speaker put it.

Two main points are cause for ongoing thought and action for me: 1) higher costs often come from less choices, and 2) the cost of being educated now is less than the cost of being ignorant later. As to the first point, competition is good for consumers, because it drives prices down. But if there is less perceived choice because you lack the access to market prices, you pay more. This is true if you are a poor farmer in Bangladesh (Mohammed Yunus is addressing this market inefficiency by providing cell phones to poor villages) or a poor family in Philadelphia (the city is considering a plan to go wireless, which if properly executed could help poor families comparison-shop online). And if there is less real choice because a provider of goods and services has a monopoly, you pay more. As a Philadelphian, I have to get my gas from PGW, which my friend used to say stood for “Patronage Gone Wild.”

As to the second point, it costs a city less to fund financial literacy initiatives now than to suffer the deleterious effects of people being financially illiterate later. It doesn’t take much to make your case that a dollar spent today offers a substantive return, in the form of a more economically inclusive city, stronger tax base, and more efficient commercial activity. But I posed the question after the briefing to a local politician like this: when those who control the purse strings have a choice between certain costs now versus uncertain costs later, will they not inevitably choose the latter?

This goes back to a running theme I’ve been mulling over. You can know the right answer – spend the dollar now on financial literacy, save many dollars later on financial ignorance – but you still have to have a political strategy to put it into action. The politician I queried mentioned that incarceration was a similar equation, and political leaders could no longer ignore the bulging prisons and prison budgets and would have to realize that an ounce of prevention now is worth a pound of cure later. We can only hope that when it comes to things like financial literacy and free-market fairness, our political leaders will come to that realization soon.

BE LIKE BUSH AND KERRY

In my Public Management class today, we discussed the 1985 MOVE incident. The visiting professor actually authored the case study we read, in which he interpreted then-Mayor Wilson Goode’s decision-making as a class example of the dangerous combination of “defensive avoidance” followed by “hypervigilance.” In Goode’s case, he sat on his hands while the MOVE situation worsened, and then moved way too rashly to squash it. As a result, 60+ houses were destroyed, 11 people died, and Philadelphia was made a national laughingstock as the government that dropped a bomb on dissenting citizens.

My take-away from this case study was that good leaders have to be able to act decisively AND simultaneously be fluid enough to be accountable to others and allow their opinions to mean enough to change your mind if you’re in the wrong. It is easier said than done to be decisive as a leader; stressful situations and imperfect information mean you have to pull the trigger, and if things blow up you look bad. It is also easier said than done to be open-minded; every leader says they’re willing to be corrected by their subordinates, but how many give off non-verbal cues that make subordinates fearful of doing the correcting?

It occurs to me that we recently had a very prominent example of this continuum between decisiveness and open-mindedness. Bush’s people painted Kerry as a flip-flopper, while Kerry’s people protested that Bush was being stubborn. Which would you prefer, the election seemed to boil down to: someone who is stubbornly wrong or someone who is maddeningly indecisive? Most of us had trouble visualizing someone who could be both certain and adaptable.

But good leaders are able to be both. In fact, they must be both. For in the crucible of real life, when things are going wrong and information is imperfect and every avenue looks bad, leaders must be able to be simultaneously resolute and pliable. Easier said than done.

BETTER OFF

The thing about living in a city is that it gives you a unique and distinct context for theological musings that you otherwise might muse about in a vacuum. This is of course not to say that non-urban locations don’t provide their own unique and distinct contexts. But think about it. Where you live, do you give a second thought to how garbage is picked up? Whether property taxes are being accurately assessed in your neighborhood versus a poorer or richer neighborhood? What it might be like to apply for social services when you do not speak the native language? In a city, these are live issues, infused with justice and morality and spirituality.

For example, I think often about how I am better off than others around me, better off in terms of physical health, book intelligence, and financial wealth. Where I live may have a little or a lot to do with where I stand in these continuums; if, for instance, I live in a part of the country that values fitness, or in a neighborhood that is near a college campus or that is under-resourced. That’s not my point. There are always going to be people healthier, smarter, and richer than me, and people not as healthy, not as smart, and not as rich.

My point is that because I live in a city, these differences make formerly abstract musings quite tangible. I wonder about the source of my fortunes. Fundamentalists might say it is all of God, and tell me just to give thanks and not think too much about it. Conservatives might say it is my good decisions and work ethic, and tell me to keep doing what I’m doing. Liberals might say it is my privileged upbringing, and tell me to fight against systemic injustices that keep others from enjoying the same starting point. Radicals might say I’m part of that systemic injustice, and tell me to sell my possessions and become poor.

Who I listen to affects how I feel about my good fortune. Should I be thankful to God? Guilty for being so abundantly blessed? Scornful of those around me who have made poor choices and who don’t work as hard as I do? Resolute to make sure others have the same opportunities I’ve had? Convinced that I should worry less about all this and just enjoy myself? I must confess I’ve thought all of these thoughts. Again, in other places these might be abstract musings, but here in a city I must daily choose my worldview and align my attitude around it.

MLB 2005 PREDICTIONS

The A’s have lost two of their Big Three, ‘roids are raging, and fantasy simulations on Whatifsports.com have captivated me more than real-world off-season news. So you’ll have to excuse me if I’m feeling a little lethargic about the new baseball season. But once spring has sprung and the days get longer and the paper is running box scores, I have a feeling I’ll be hooked once again. Ah baseball: the soundtrack of summer, the metaphor of America.

AL
West: Angels
Central: Twins
East: Yankees
Wild card: Red Sox
MVP: Vladimir Guerrero
CY: Francisco Rodriguez
ROY: Nick Swisher

NL
West: Padres
Central: Cards
East: Braves
Wild card: Phils
MVP: Jim Thome
CY: Jason Schmidt
ROY: Gavin Floyd

PLAYOFFS
ALDS: Yankees over Twins, Angels over Red Sox
NLDS: Cards over Phils, Braves over Padres
LCS: Angels over Yankees, Cards over Braves
World Series: Cards over Angels (MVP: Pujols)