Would Jesus Answer His Phone in the Middle of a Meeting

This post at kottke.org caught my eye: "Phone Etiquette and the End of the Individual." I am decidedly on the side of the traditionalists, who find it rude to unilaterally interrupt one interaction (in-person) to participate in another interaction (by phone or text).

But in professional services, you can often find yourself in the middle of a quandry: you are with Client A but you get an urgent call from Client B, so which will you prioritize? Here I think it is still a matter of etiquette: I have promised Client A this time slot and intend to give them my full attention, no matter the consequences of not being able to respond as promptly to Client B.

This can be easier said than done: what if refusing that call from Client B causes them ruin, or causes them to drop you as a consultant? It takes a little bit of faith to stick to your guns and let that phone ring or let that text go, and to place more importance in the person you are interacting with in the flesh than on any other possible distraction that might come your way, no matter what the implications.

I cannot help but think of one of my wife's favorite stories about Jesus, which is his juggling of two people in need as told in the fifth chapter of the gospel according to Mark. I've blogged about this story before, so I'll try not to repeat myself, but Jesus is confronted with a dilemma not unlike the one I presented above, although with significantly more at stake: an important man's daughter is dying, while an outcasted woman seeks long-needed healing. And yet he puts the important man's request for help on hold while he tends deeply and thoroughly to the outcasted woman.

Waiting, in the form of listening to the full account of the outcasted woman instead of cutting her off and telling her He had another "client" to tend to, may have seemed to have been costly: by the time Jesus arrives at the important man's daughter's bedside, the daughter has died. One might imagine a modern-day version of this story involving multiple calls and texts to Jesus from the important man, each with increasing panic and fury, all ignored by Jesus as He devotes His full attention to hearing out the outcasted woman's whole story.

When they arrive at the important man's daughter's bedside and she has expired, it is not hard to imagine people wondering aloud why Jesus had to spend so much extra and seemingly unnecessary time with such an inconsequential woman. But, an incredible take-away from this intimate story is that for Jesus, not even death is unovercomeable. Jesus is able to bring the important man's daughter back to life. For Him, there is no choosing between two in need, for He is able to help both.

I am not suggesting that every multi-client dilemma is fraught with the same urgency as this Bible story. But I do think there is some applicability to how we ought to respond. If we are given fully to acts of service, we can wait and not worry, knowing there is time for it all to work out. The seeming efficiency of cutting short one encounter to make sure a second encounter can happen is trumped by the importance that is given to making sure that we can fully there for those who we are with in the flesh and in the moment. This is a hard lesson for me and an important one. Whether juggling clients or tending to more personal issues, would that I have the same faith and focus as Jesus did when responding to multiple needs at once.

Lazy Linking, Nineteenth in a Series

Good stuff on the Internets:

* My reaction to "why going green won't make you better or save you money" is that people wanting to be green is easily trumped by their want for convenience and/or looking good to others and/or feeling good about themselves.

* Not from the Onion - "To Protest Hiring of Nonunion Help, Union Hires Nonunion Picketers."

* Signs of the Apocalypse: The founder of Ashley Madison dot com scolds Facebook for not letting it advertise there and thus do a favor to all married people who want their affairs to be secret rather than public; after all, "It's not necessarily the act of cheating that ends marriages; it's getting caught." (Um, not to get all moral on you, Mr. Biderman, but I think it actually is the cheating part that ends marriages.)

* Yes, hold ratings agencies accountable to the public for their review of clients floating bonds; but no, don't pass regulations whose consequences are so unclear that they cause those ratings agencies to want to avoid being used at all. Greg Mankiw calls this the "Dodd-Frank Anti-Stimulus Bill."

* Here's a good answer to the question, "If the whole world went vegan, would that be good for the planet?"

* Shameless self-promotion - I give link love to DJ Chuang for giving me link love.

* Guy Kawasaki is spot-on when he says having too much money is worse for a start-up business than having too little.

* I haven't gotten a chance to talk to her directly about the recent hire at Next American City of its first-ever President and CEO, but I send kudos to Diana Lind for all she's done to make that entity and magazine all it has become.

* Is America ready for the third generation of George Bush?

* Talk about "fortune at the bottom of the pyramid" - how about a $35 laptop?

Update on "Dear Zachary"

Here's a note from my high school friend Kurt Kuenne about his documentary "Dear Zachary" and related activism around Canada's bail laws. Tune in to NBC Dateline tonight!

***

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Kurt Kuenne
Date: Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 1:20 PM
Subject: Dateline NBC episode on "Dear Zachary" to finally air Friday night

Hi Everyone,

Kurt here; I hope summer is treating you well.

A year ago, NBC's Dateline completed an episode on "Dear Zachary", the case, the film and its continuing reverberations throughout the Canadian political landscape. After a year of getting bumped, it is finally being aired...

Friday, July 23rd (tomorrow)
On NBC
10 PM Eastern Time
(There are two Dateline episodes airing back to back that night - one at 9 PM, one at 10 PM - and we're the second one, so I'm told. Check your local listings for confirmation on when it's airing in your area.)

NBC has asked me to answer viewer questions on line on their Newsvine site during the broadcasts Friday evening, so if you're interested, you can follow their links and see me typing away...

Our bail bill - Bill C-464 - continues to wind its way through Parliament. As you may remember, it passed the House of Commons unanimously in March, and is now in the Senate. It has made it through the first two readings in the Senate, and has once again advanced unanimously to the Senate's Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, where it will be heard this fall (they're on summer break right now). After that it goes back to the Senate for a final vote, and will become law. To quote, Senator Tommy Banks of Alberta, who has been our biggest supporter in the Senate: "Its passage is a certainty. The timing is very uncertain." But it looks likely to be this fall. I will certainly keep you all posted when that happens, and once again thank MP Scott Andrews, his assistant Ken Carter, Senator Tommy Banks, his assistant Thérèse Gauthier, MP Peter Stoffer, Senator Anne Cools for their integral role in this process -- and thank you again to all of you, for supporting this film from the beginning and for your letters to Parliament urging them to take action.

Happy July and hope all's well,
Kurt

www.dearzachary.com

Please Consider Supporting My Friend Charles Edwards

Charles Edwards is what you hope for when you do urban youth ministry. I'll let Charles' letter (forthcoming) tell his whole story, but where I intersect was when I was pretty young myself, in my early twenties, just out of college and deciding that where I wanted to serve in the church was through the youth ministry. Not knowing anything about urban youth, I kept quiet, listened a lot, and got to know the young men in the group. Charles I was able to develop a good relationship, through basketball and retreats and Bible studies, and especially through two trips we made to college campuses in Ohio and West Virginia when he was looking at schools.

Fast forward to the present, and Charles has a lovely wife, a beautiful son, and a heart to reach young men like him with the love of God that meant so much to him during his turbulent teen years. I'm making a contribution to Charles to support him in his new ministry with Young Life Nashville, and I urge you to consider to do the same, which you can do by writing a check to:

Young Life Urban Nashville
P. O. Box 120681
Nashville, TN 37212-0681

(Click here for pics of Charles sharing his testimony during our morning service this past weekend while he and his family were in town for a friend's wedding.)

One Year Later

My family's car accident took place one year ago yesterday. It's been a tumultuous year since then, to say the least. My parents continue to cope with the permanent injuries sustained to my mom, and the heightened vulnerability they pose to her health and quality of life.

While I think about them all the time, I've only been able to make it out to California three times since then (my next visit is later this summer), so for me, the adjustment is still in process and I don't very far along in the process of grieving. One poignant piece to that mourning was these past few weeks with my cousins on the East Coast for two weddings; these sorts of family gatherings and travel-related fun are part of what has been lost as a result of the accident.

At the risk of sounding preachy, schmaltzy, or overly serious: life is precious, and I for one see little point in wasting what little of it we have with mindless entertainment or petty complaining. There is a richness to the texture of a life truly lived, rather than shielding or numbing oneself against its very real hurts, or failing to hold fast to what is good even and especially in the midst of all that is bad. And so, one year later, here's to my family and here's to life.

Lazy Linking, Eighteenth in an Occasional Series

Here's what I liked on the Internets:

* In the fight for your life, it's not enough to exercise and eat right; you should also avoid TV and driving.

* After reading this article, I asked myself, "Do I love my wife enough that I would give her a poop transplant to save her life?" And I decided, yes, I do love her that much.

* Maybe there's a hidden growth industry associated with trends in DC: paper manufacturers.

* Government pork, Pennsylvania-style.

* A reminder that there's already a lot of distortion in our energy markets.

It's in the Bag

What better way to express the harried nature of my Friday late afternoon than to make a list of things I emptied out of my tiny little messenger bag upon arriving at home from work and picking up Aaron?

* My new smartphone, plus recharger, manual, and original box

* Aaron's bed sheet

* Receipts from Aaron's day care

* My bicycle lock

* Folders for two proposals and four projects I'm working on

* An empty Tupperware container from that day's brown bag lunch

* A wrinkled, half-read issue of The Economist

There's a story behind each of those objects. But suffice to say that, yeah, it was one of those days/weeks.

Why Do We Stereotype

The rational side of our brains can process the fact that the overwhelming majority of criminals and the overwhelming majority of crimes have absolutely no overlap with where and with whom we circulate. And yet, how often have we instinctively tensed up with fear when confronted with certain people and certain places, especially in the city? It is because it is human nature to stereotype, to disproportionately extrapolate and over-assign danger to a present situation from thin-sliced bits of information from our memories and from media. Time and brain space does not allow us to consider all of the variables in question when we walk down a certain street or pass by a certain group of people, so we make subconscious over-generalizations out of an innate sense of self-preservation.

One of the advantages of living in a city is that we are confronted with these kinds of situations all the time. We all have a lot of prejudice and ignorance that has built up inside of us, no matter how progressive we claim to be; and living in a city forces us to face up to these biases that we are not put together enough to explain away or stifle down. It is hoped that over time, as we keep an open mind and maintain vigilance against unhelpful feelings of mistrust and scorn, we will overcome these temptations to stereotype and replace them with more informed reactions to certain places and certain people.

I personally have a long way to go. But I am trying. And the city is helping me.

Championship Swagger

LeBron James' "Decision" last week has been talked to death, both by sportswriters and race/culture pundits. But you might have missed Penelope Trunk's post on what it says about how Gen Y makes job and moving decisions: "Lesson from LeBron James: How to Decide When to Relocate." It's not a perfect analogy, but it's instructive to also consider the flip side of that issue: how cities and regions can position themselves to attract the best talent. Not everyone can have Miami's weather, but there are things cities and regions can do - both in terms of style as well as substance - to become more attractive to young free agents of all industries to relocate to.

One elusive characteristic of successful cities and regions is positive attitude. Philadelphia suffers from a bit of an inferiority complex, living as it does in the shadow of one of the world's great financial capitals (New York City, a 1.5-hour train ride to the north) and one of the world's great political capitals (Washington, a 2.5-hour train ride to the south). But the City of Brotherly Love is making a mark in its own right, melding the advantages of being near (and easily accessible to) these other great cities with its own homegrown advantages: affordability, world-class culture/restaurants/recreation, underrated night life, and top-tier eds/meds.

And yet, it's really been since Ed Rendell started being the city's vocal cheerleader when he was mayor from 1991 to 1999, and the Greater Philadelphia Tourism and Marketing Corporation started selling the city and region to tourists from all countries, classes, and sexual orientations, that we've gotten a little bit of swagger about ourselves. Chalk it up to equal parts honing our strong suits and having the bravado to sell them to others; not easy given our Quaker roots. Hosting the X Games, Real World, and Live 8 were cause and effect of that newfound confidence.

And, very notably, the Phillies winning it all in 2008 has made a world of difference in shedding our image as lovable losers and pathetic step-cities. Witness our successful courting of Roy Halladay last year, and recall how proud Philadelphia sports fans were to hear him say things like "I want to come to Philadelphia because I want to play for a winner." It's wonderful what winning a championship will do for the psyche of a franchise, a fan base, and even an entire city and region.

While LeBron James and Roy Halladay changing cities is covered ad nauseum by ESPN et al, every day young professionals in all industries contemplate similar geographic relocations. Let's hope, for Philly's sake, that we can keep up our swagger, for confidence seems to matter when young people are making choices to move in or not move in.

Finally Smart

News flash: as of later this month, I will be the proud owner of a smartphone. This is not an April Fools joke.

My introduction to the world in which most of my peers have inhabited for several years was somewhat abrupt and anticlimactic, but I couldn't be happier: my wife, the real brains in our family, just did it for me. She needs a smartphone for her new job, so she took care of that, moved me onto her call plan, and made sure I got a phone that suited my needs.

She was sweating out whether I would be upset, confused, or regretful, but I was none of the above. Rather, I was just glad, selfishly, that I didn't have to go through a long, drawn-out research process that probably would have left me upset, confused, and regretful. It helped that she did such a good job: she got us a relatively low monthly fee, was mindful of all of my preferences, and maxed out on all the goodies and breaks that companies desperate for your commitment are willing to throw your way.

So, later this month, my refurbished Motorola Backflip will arrive in the mail, and I will activate it, cancel my current phone plan, and move into a brave new world. No more hauling a brick of a phone and an increasingly fussy PDA, with all of the attendant limitations associated with this set-up. (Phone: the "3" and "5" button don't work, vibrate mode sounds like a dying duck, and I get less than three-and-a-half minutes of free talk time per weekday before I have to start paying exorbitantly by the minute. PDA: it freezes regularly, the stylus alignment is off more than it's on, and there's no access to web or email.)

It will be interesting to see how I adjust to this new piece of technology. On the one hand, I am making a vast jump in productivity capability: connectivity, talk time, apps, and so on represent huge gains in being able to do stuff faster and better. On the other hand, I kind of liked not being that productive, or, more correctly, I kind of liked having my productivity being at discrete times rather than all the time.

The moral of the story is that it's on me to manage this new capacity without being managed by it. On that note, I leave you with this quote from Lynn White, which is featured in a good book I'm reading now by Witold Rybczynski called "Taming the Tiger: The Struggle to Control Technology" that I am now finding quite relevant (even though it was written in 1982) given my upcoming tech upgrade: "A new device merely opens a door; it does not compel one to enter."

Living Epistles in a Socially Connected World

Picking up on something I linked to yesterday, I found this recent post from Penelope Trunk on Gen Y to be thought-provoking: "Privacy is the New Celebrity." Reared on a world in which reality TV can help you find a spouse, fix your house, and pimp your ride, is it any wonder that social media has taken off like it has? Unless you're really shy, and even if you are, attention can be irresistible. Who wouldn't want to be at the center of your own multi-media empire, video and text and witty banter, all about you and all swirling around you?

Elder generations look at Gen Y and tsk-tsk: what's gotten into these attention hogs, how can they be so self-absorbed to not realize how self-absorbed they are, and what's all the hoo-hey about this Twitter thing? Whatever happened to one-on-one phone calls, personal letter, heck even a private email? Why does every detail need to be announced, every snarky message made available for all the world to see, every social event captured in vivid detail in photo and video?

The elders have a point, to a degree. Attention for attention's sake is neutral at best and soul-atrophying at worst. Just because you can say something doesn't mean you should. And discretion is still a relevant art, even in a 24/7/365, cameras-everywhere world.

However, speaking now as a Christian, consider the benefits of a life lived under the white hot light of constant scrutiny. Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have made the world smaller, faster, and more transparent. This can seem awfully threatening and discombobulating. Or it can be a fabulous opportunity to live a publicly viewable life that points to Someone who actually warrants idolization and adoration and fascination.

Is this not the great fork in the road in the mind of the Christian? In our worldview, mankind lives for itself, its own glory and attention and publicity and celebrity status. And it is, if one is honest, both innate and yet unfulfilling. With effort and by grace, the Christian endeavors instead to be subsumed within a greater story and a grander God.

If this is the purpose of the believer, we live in an unprecedented time to do just that. It can seem scary that there is the possibility that every thought, every image, every action is out there for all the world to see. And it can be an incredible opportunity to be, as the apostle Paul coined it, "living epistles."

When Paul wrote that - "being manifested that you are a letter of Christ, cared for by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts" - he wrote within a Corinthian community not much less secular and profane than ours. And the church there was to live out its newfound faith in the public arena, so that others might "read" them and be intrigued, informed, and influenced.

So are we to live out our faith in the public arena. But, that arena has widened to include countless connections, and what can be "read" is limited only by our imagination and our diligence.

Gen Y may have it half-right after all. We all are celebs, in that the world is watching us with voyeuristic interest, waiting to see if there is anything about us worth a second look. But, what they should see should not glorify ourselves, but rather One greater than us whose name and reputation we endeavor to advance ahead of our own.

Lazy Linking, Seventeenth in an Occasional Series

What I've liked lately on the Internets:

* Would that we could read and hear from more "charming, levelheaded optimists" like David Brooks. Instead, we get talking heads and partisan screed. (Btw, if you're wondering whether I resonate with his "rational, unflappable DNA," consider that this line in the column got the most head-nods from me: “I think inside I’m as emotional as anybody; I just don’t emote it.”)

* Speaking of Brooks, here's a nice column on A.A. founder Bill Wilson. Money quotes: "In a culture that generally celebrates empowerment and self-esteem, A.A. begins with disempowerment. . . . In a culture that thinks of itself as individualistic, A.A. relies on fellowship. . . . In a world in which gurus try to carefully design and impose their ideas, Wilson surrendered control."

* Speaking of money quotes, I loved this one from a recent Wall Street article on gaffes in a 24/7/365 media cycle: "The old way of thinking was that speech evaporates, while the written word was lasting. . . . But what has emerged is a culture in which the written word can be revised [online], while on YouTube, speech lives on."

* OK, one more quote, courtesy of my friend David Oh: "Give me 6 hours to chop down a tree and I spend the first four sharpening the axe" (Abraham Lincoln).

* Kenneth Rogoff thinks the BP oil spill is a moment to push for a carbon tax. He's right that it makes sense but wrong that people will agree with him.

* Joe Posnanski explores what is and isn't cheating in sports.

* Penelope Trunk considers that Gen Y'ers consider themselves to be mini-celebs, and so communicating via social media versus private email makes complete sense, since privacy isn't assumed to be necessary but speed and breadth are.

* I'm beginning to think that the highest-leverage earthly good you can do in the world is to figure out a cheap and easy remedy to diarrhea.

* Ronald Bailey reminds us that sustainability can't just be about leaving fallow, but also about being efficient and productive.

* Even Harvard Business Review is reporting that suburbs are out and cities are in.

* Paging through this spreadsheet, which models the economic and environmental impact of every single car, bus, truck, taxi, train, subway, bicycle, and pedestrian moving around New York City makes me very happy.

* If Philly's soda tax wasn't enough to convince you to stop drinking Coke, this will.

* So wait, it was politicians heavily funded by the teacher's union who scuttled DC's successful school choice program? I'm shocked, shocked I say.

Philanthropy Bleg

I got a letter from Christian Aid earlier this month, stating that the ministry I support in Kenya has identified other sources of funds and therefore is no longer in need of my monthly donation in support of the five orphans I have been sponsoring since 2006. I have appreciated the opportunity to contribute through Christian Aid to this ministry for the past 15 years. It was neat to see, through semi-annual report cards and photos, the progress of the five kids I first started supporting in 1995, to see them graduate from the orphanage in 2005, and then to start anew with five new kids. I hope they, and others served by this ministry, will go on to adulthood and faith and gainful employment.

I called Christian Aid back in response and told them to call me back in 12 months and let's talk about what else I can contribute to. In the meantime, I thought it might be fun to take 12 months' worth of what I would have sent Christian Aid's way ($15 a month per kid, times five kids, plus a $25 a month contribution to a parallel street outreach ministry in Kenya, means $1200 a year) and contemplate how that can be deployed in a slightly different manner, just to change things up a little: both that I would think about a one-time gift rather than an ongoing commitment, and that I would be open to another ministry or cause.

To provide additional context to this decision, I would want to think about how this donation would fit into my overall portfolio of giving, which at this stage in my life includes tithing to my church, $100 a month to Opportunity International to fund small business loans to women in Uganda, $25 a year to support hunger relief advocacy efforts through Bread for the World, $200 or so a year in support of The Enterprise Center here in Philadelphia, a tithe of my IRS refund to whatever worthy causes happen to cross my desk that time of the year (note to charities: you should think of this when planning your solicitations), and whatever else I decide in the spur of the moment to respond to in terms of random campaigns and asks.

The only other piece of information I'll offer is to say that while I don't want to just write a check and forget about it, neither do I want whatever I give to to become high-maintenance. In other words, while I may have a temporary blip of money to redirect to something interesting and worthwhile, I don't have, temporarily or otherwise, any excess blip of time to redirect. Other than that, I am open to any topic and any location in the world, so long as it resonates with what I am about and I can learn a thing or two along the way.

So, all of that said, does anybody have any suggestions regarding what I should give to, or how I should go about deciding? Also, I would welcome you sharing about your own thought process concerning how you make your philanthropic decisions.

Global City Bleg

Though Philly lags behind other cosmopolitan US cities like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Miami, it is still large enough (1.5 million strong) to contain plenty of people who have roots all over the world. In just the past 30 days, I've had the pleasure of riffing with colleagues of mine who have strong familial and/or commercial ties to practically every part of the globe: South America, the Caribbean, Europe, Africa, Asia. A common theme in these conversations is the sense that Philadelphia, both the geographic location and its municipal government, has more potential than it has so far actualized, in terms of capitalizing on these familial and commercial ties.

Consider the benefits associated with transnational connectivity and multinational density, which I list in stream of consciousness mode: facilitating business deals, encouraging tourism activity, mobilizing attention in moments of crisis, opening up new cultural experiences. We should want more of this, no? If anything, to make daily life more flavorful. Or, if you are more cold-blooded like I am, to increase trade opportunities for the private sector and tax revenues for the public sector.

The aforementioned more cosmopolitan cities are brimming with vibrancy and activity, and that is helping stem some other fiscal or demographic challenges they are facing. What about Philadelphia? What is going to take for us to make the most of the ties we already possess, and to foster even greater and better ones? What can local government do, what can institutions do, what can everyday citizens like you and me do? I know that being a more global city is good, and can even articulate the benefits that accrue from it; but I look to others and ask if anyone knows what steps to take to help make it happen.

Strolling Through the Neighborhood

The good people at University City District have put together something quite clever this summer: the Baltimore Avenue Dollar Stroll. To celebrate the burgeoning retail corridor this street has become, the second Thursday evening of every month this summer has seen multiple stores offering something fun for just a buck.

The combination of cheap eats and walking through the neighborhood were too irresistible for this urban miser and his family to resist. Because we go to bed so early, we only hit two places - Green Line for an iced coffee and four sliders, and Milk and Honey for ice creams for the kids - but it was fun to see people out and about, strolling, waiting in line at the more popular stops, and just generally vibing with the usual assortment of residents and passersby. There's something cozy about making small talk with strangers who are neighbors, as well as trading pleasantries with neighbors who aren't strangers but who you might not have seen out and about in a relaxed social setting like this.

To cap off the evening, Aaron dropped his ice cream cone on the ground and tried to pick it back up; and though one of us parents blurted out "five-second rule," the other hastily snatched it out of his hands and tossed it in a trash can. (I'll let you guess which of us did the protesting and which of us did the tossing.) Aaron, understandably, was crushed, and why not; talk about going in an instant from thrill of victory (eating an ice cream cone on a hot summer evening) to agony of defeat (losing said ice cream cone forever).

Frozen treat casualty aside, it was a fun stroll. So, while we missed June's version, we'll be sure to not miss August's. After all, you can't beat a buck. And you can't beat a stroll through the neighborhood on a hot summer evening, not with you and everyone else out and about to chat with and smile at.

Food Access

I must confess that all of the good intentions and thoughtful strategizing by those lamenting “food deserts” in low-income urban neighborhoods across the country has just left me bewildered. The thought process is that there are pockets of real estate where fast food is accessible but fresh fruit is not, so a pox on McDonald’s and bring on the urban gardens. Indeed, in my very neighborhood, at the halfway point on my bike commute from home to my son’s school, is an intersection that has on its four corners a high-rise housing project, a gas station, a Checkers, and a Dunkin’ Donuts. Coastal liberals envision this and keel over with rage.

Yet within two blocks of this corner, albeit in less prominent locations and with less flashy signage, are a produce truck I have frequented for over 15 years, a full grocery store, and at least one produce-only storefront. My own two kids and their friends are admittedly a small sample size, but if you ask them why people pick Big Macs over red peppers, they'll opine that it has nothing to do with access and everything to do with taste; and their parents would add that this is more about acculturation and habit and less about spatial distribution or marketing.

But let’s leave aside people’s motivations and just talk about where produce should be grown. Let me be clear: there’s nothing wrong with encouraging urban gardening, and I love that Michelle Obama has helped make it cool. Kids can only gain from exposure to soil and seeds. If you want to reclaim a vacant lot or bake open space into new development plans, I am behind you applauding.

But understand that, by definition, cities are not the most efficient location for agricultural production. In terms of making the most of the scarce resources that are our land and water, rural farming runs circles around urban farming. If we are worried about the environmental impact of “food miles traveled,” we should be lobbying for a more accurate price on carbon, not necessarily for more localized and smaller-scale production. And if we consider a city neighborhood without a garden to be a “food desert,” then the solution should not necessarily be to move the garden into the desert but to make the residents of the desert more mobile so as to access the garden.

I find it awfully patronizing to think that poor people are different from the rest of us, who don’t limit our day-to-day pleasures to only what we can get to on our own two feet. If we want to facilitate gardening for educational, communal, and supplemental purposes, three cheers. But if we want to garden as a seemingly more righteous alternative to buying produce that was grown in Lancaster, Florida, or (gasp!) Chile, I’d have to run the numbers but I don’t think that is at all a more environmentally friendly way to go. It certainly isn’t the best use of existing agricultural systems, retail infrastructure, or urban land.

And what if, instead of “helping” the poor by keeping them immobile and limiting their choices, we helped them do life like the rest of us do? To provide one small example, though we have made impressive strides in the distribution of grocery stores in urban neighborhoods, there is still a relative dearth of them as compared to the suburbs. People decry this as crippling to the poor, who it is suggested must now rely on corner stores and fast food joints for their food. But what if instead we worked with local elected officials and community groups to get PhillyCarShare pods in low-income neighborhoods, so that families could make grocery runs and capitalize on the remarkable selections and prices that are available there? When the poor are limited by mobility from the same dizzying array of choices you and I have as to where we can buy our groceries, why not, rather than pretending we know what's best and providing a sub-optimal local alternative in response, simply remove the mobility limitation and make available to them the same dizzying array of choices, thus giving them the freedom we have to do what is best for themselves and their children?

When we think about making sure our kids eat nutritiously, we might involve them in a backyard garden project to connect them to the earth, give them a sense of how produce grows, and make eating vegetables fun. But we don’t clamor for existing produce networks to be avoided at the expense of setting up a more localized infrastructure of food production; instead, we get in our cars, tap into whatever grocery store offers us the best goods, and haul them home. Might it be more environmentally friendly and less patronizing to help low-income households get to the same resources, rather than keeping them in place and bringing everything to them?

Happy Birthday to a Nation, a People, and an Idea

"Oh, there have been revolutions before and since ours. But those revolutions simply exchanged one set of rules for another. Ours was a revolution that changed the very concept of government." - Ronald Reagan, 1981

The story of our Founding Fathers has been glamorized, sanitized, and co-opted to the point of absurdity. And yet let us not lose sight of the extraordinary feat they accomplished of conceiving, forming, and nurturing "a more perfect union." Their act was audacious - in signing the Declaration of Independence, they were sealing their condemned fate as traitors if they lost. It was thoughtful - drawing from concepts as far back as Plato, Locke, and Rousseau. And it was simultaneously revolutionary and basic - that "that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Note from the last clause of that famous sentence what right has been thought of as divinely endowed to us - "the pursuit of Happiness." Not happiness itself. This is what has defined this great country we call America. Here we are about pursuit. Here, uniquely among all nations now and in history, are the freest paths to opportunity and prosperity. We may have many scars, many skeletons, many topics we disagree on, many issues we are getting wrong. But we, as a nation and a people and an idea - are still worth celebrating and emulating.

Two nights ago, as Amy and I were sitting along the waterfront, American flags flying everywhere, crowds gathered for a free concert by the Philadelphia Orchestra on the eve of the Fourth of July, we could not help but ponder what Franklin and Washington and Adams and Jefferson and Madison and Hamilton and Jay would have thought of us, circa 2010. Their letters indicate they had history in mind, that they had a sense that what they were doing was going to matter, that they were planting the seeds for a mighty forest to grow.

But could they have conceived a nation 50 states and 300 million people strong, a superpower unparalleled in military and economic and intellectual and creative power? Could they have anticipated that checks and balances, peaceful transfer of executive power, and an orderly process by which laws are passed and upheld would not only survive but thrive to the point that we are the blueprint for fledgling democracies throughout the world? Amy and I could only marvel, with goosebumps, at the marvel they would have had in their hearts.

God, bless America. May we bless it, too. For it has had, and may it continue to have, an extraordinary run in the history of mankind.

"Just imagine the extraordinary audacity it took, 233 years ago, for a group of patriots to cast off the title of 'subject' for 'citizen,' and put ideas to paper that were as simple as they were revolutionary: that we are equal; that we are free; that we can pursue our full measure of happiness and make of our lives what we will." - Barack Obama, 2009

Fireworks

Because of some client work I'm doing on the waterfront, I scored an invite from the Delaware River Waterfront Corporation to a barbecue right next to the Philadelphia Orchestra's free concert at Penn's Landing last night. Amy and I left the kids at home with her parents, took the bus down to Penn's Landing, flashed our invite and got waved through, and stationed ourselves as close to the water as possible, even if it meant we couldn't see the stage.

For the next three hours, we enjoyed splendid weather, a great spread, incredible orchestral and voice performances, and gorgeous views of the river and the skyline. We saw Miss America, I shook hands with the Mayor as I was returning from the restroom, and I pointed out to Amy who else was in attendance from the Mayor's cabinet.

The highlight, of course, was the fireworks, which were launched from a barge right in front of us in the middle of the river, affording Amy and me front row seats to one of the nation's great Fourth of July pyrotechnic shows. The whole area was still buzzing after it was all over, adding to the general revelry of thousands of people spilling back out through Old City, inching our way through sidewalk cafes and others out and about on a steamy July evening. Dinner, concert, and fireworks: not a bad date night out for Amy and Lee.

Econsult Corporation, Ft. Lots of Really Cool Senior Advisors

This was one of my "lazy links" earlier this week, but I wanted to loop back on the story: Econsult Corporation Announces Addition of Senior Advisors to Firm. So far, it's been picked up by almost 200 news sites online, which may be more of an indication of space being free and not much else going on in the news than of this being so prodigiously newsworthy.

Nevertheless, it's an interesting angle, and I say that not just because I work at Econsult. Affilating, however loosely or tightly you may choose to define it, seems like the sort of win-win thing that makes you wonder why it doesn't happen more often. Let me rephrase, since in fact it does happen all the time - Daniel Pink's notion of "free agent nation" is at least a decade old - but some industries seem slow to the party.

But why wouldn't you figure out as many affiliations as are profitable for you to form? As our article suggests, we are incredibly glad and fortunate to be able to say that we have so many studs on as Senior Advisors. And, every one of them is as happy to be associated with us.

But it's more than just affiliation; it's also the actual work. No one knows everyone or everything, and having these Senior Advisors on has been a boon to our efforts to expand our networks, go after new gigs in new realms, and learn a bunch of useful things along the way.

It's not hard to think of examples in the sports and entertainment worlds - freely mix with others different from you, pollinate new concepts, and end up better off for it - so why wouldn't it similarly work in the knowledge economy? I'm glad my firm has been open to these sorts of associations and mash-ups, as I think I can say that, all around, we're all better for it.