Chip Filson
Amid sheepish shepherds,
embarrassed kings, awkward angels
with their bent-coat-hanger wings –
my most unforgettable character
is the tender-hearted lad
assigned to play the innkeeper,
who undid the whole production
when he assured the wandering couple,
“You folks are so, so lucky.
We just had a cancellation.”
by J. Barrie Sheperd
My mom grew up in Taylorville, Illinois.
This is an EXTRA edition of the Breeze Courier, Christian County’s only daily from 80 years ago.
The headline event changed the world for our parents. Knowing what was coming, my mom and dad eloped to Missouri to get married as there was no waiting period required for a license.
My Dad’s military ID shows his active service from May 5, 1941 to his release from inactive duty on January 17, 1946.
On page 6 of the paper are ads for current local movies. The main show is Keeping “Em Flying starring Bud Abbott and Lou Costello.
The Special Sunday dinner of roast tom turkey at tne Blue Classic restaurant is 50 cents, served from 12 to 8 pm.
Nature’s fashion change brightens our autumn.
History remembered for those who welcomed the first newcomers to our shores. This blog was written on the land of the Piscataway peoples.
People living in temporary shelters. The unhoused on the grass circle in front of Union Station in DC.
A gift of thanks for a life well lived and hope in the future. (Nun danket alle Gott)
The Pilgrims did much more than inaugurate a national holiday. They set up the first civil authority in the New World. The full agreement is a single paragraph. It was called The Mayflower Combination (November 11, 1620):
IN THE NAME OF GOD, AMEN. We, whose names are underwritten, the Loyal Subjects of our dread Sovereign Lord King James, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, & c. Having undertaken for the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith, and the Honour of our King and Country, a Voyage to plant the first Colony in the northern Parts of Virginia; Do by these Presents, solemnly and mutually, in the Presence of God and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politick, for our better Ordering and Preservation, and Furtherance of the Ends aforesaid: And by Virtue hereof do enact, constitute, and frame, such just and equal Laws, Ordinances, Acts, Constitutions, and Officers, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general Good of the Colony; unto which we promise all due Submission and Obedience. IN WITNESS whereof we have hereunto subscribed our names at Cape-Cod the eleventh of November, in the Reign of our Sovereign Lord King James, of England, France, and Ireland, the eighteenth, and of Scotland the fifty-fourth, Anno Domini; 1620
Historian Bradley J. Birzer describes this effort as follows: “what incredibly and pugnacious audacity these Pilgrims had. Ruling themselves with a simple agreement, a single paragraph, and a deep and abiding faith.
“I wracked my brain trying to remember an example of another, earlier assertion of self-government. Had the Greeks done it or the Jews? No, they had already relied upon a law giver. The Romans asserted something in 509BC, but I’m not sure it had quite the same texture as what the Pilgrims did in 1620.
“I really couldn’t come up with a significant example. For all intents and purposes, the Plymouth Combination is the first real assertion of the right to self-governance in the modern western world and one of the most important in any time or place.”
The unique elements of cooperative design are all in this founding document.
Words familiar to any cooperator include: mutually, covenant and combine, for better ordering, and acts, for the general Good of the Colony.
The document was an agreement to work together to further everyone’s well-being.
We remember the Pilgrims for many historical reasons. But the legacy that may be most consequential to America’s history is this commitment to self-government.
Credit unions are the embodiment of this ideal in their design for community financial services.
As we give thanks tomorrow, add the credit union model to the Pilgrim’s legacy for America.
These brief examples represent the ideals, principles, and qualities desired and admired by persons, communities and nations. The three persons apply these principles in their daily efforts.
In their individual areas, they rise, or rose, above self-interest and seek to bring out the best in others.
Building the character of the rower is just as important as developing the skills of the athlete. Diligent training on respect, resilience, and the outcomes of hard work is rewarded with improved teamwork and an overall love for the sport.
Every word spoken is intentional to create a positive learning environment and consistently progressing rowers.
Maybe we need to delete the word ownership from our vocabulary and certainly from our legal contracts and sales agreements and land deeds. Instead, let’s use the word stewardship — and introduce a raft of legislation that defines stewardship as “leaving something better than you found it.”
Steward it or lose it.
What made Aaron Feuerstein famous was not success but his attitude in the face of catastrophe. When a fire destroyed the textile mill he owned, he faced the decisions of whether to rebuild and whether to continue to pay his 1,400 workers, who were left destitute in the dead of winter. His decision became a model of how employers should treat their workers.
Standing By His Employees
Mr. Feuerstein won where it matters most. As a business leader, he captured the hearts of his employees and the imagination of Americans everywhere.
What made Aaron Feuerstein famous was not success but his attitude in the face of catastrophe. He became a model of how employers should treat their workers.
In December of 1995, a fire raged through the Malden Mills complex, destroying almost everything. He faced the decision of whether to rebuild. He also saw that the plant’s 1,400 workers were left destitute in the dead of winter. He could have collected the insurance proceeds and walked away from the disaster.
However, he decided to stand by his workers. He took a risk and retained all 1,400 employees on the full payroll for three months. He extended their health benefits and began rebuilding the plant so that they could return to work.
In a 1997 speech, he explained that if the worker felt he was “treated the way he should be treated,” he would go the extra mile and make quality products for the company. He was right.
Here is the link to his interview on 60 minutes (6 minutes): https://youtu.be/ry7_FcSiQL8
How will your stewardship be remembered by your credit union’s members? Who is showing the way for others on your leadership team?
Philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote almost a century ago, “the fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”
For generations men and women have been rising before dawn to row. These early morning workouts are dark, cold and damp. The sport is far from public view save for infrequent weekend regattas.
The physical and mental sporting challenge can be rewarding. But more unique is the setting–the never ending tableaus of dark nights transforming into colorful mornings of first lights.
Nature as it awakes, monuments bathed in artificial pre-dawn light, and the iconic sight of an “eight” participating in this classic ritual of humans and nature. That is rowing’s aesthetic experience that transcends the physical. And draws people of all ages back to the water.
Dawn’s dramatic opening fanfare
John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
The Georgetown Waterfront
The half-awake moon over the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument
Monuments at daybreak
Rowers greet the dawn
Light announces a new day
Photos by Alix Patterson, a life long rower, rowing coach and parent. From high school through college and now in a master’s program on the Potomac River in Washington DC.
One of history’s many lessons is that organizations, institutions and even countries rarely end their existence because of external forces.
Leadership failures, not competition, cause the demise of most businesses and non-profits.
In the credit union system today it is easy to see examples of this failure of leadership oversight described by Warren Buffett. The technical term for this activity is governance.
Rarely do credit unions have elections for directors; CEO’s end their reign and opt for one more big payday by selling their coop to another; CEO’s buy banks with members’ savings without disclosing relevant details or future returns to their nominal owners; etc.
Here are Buffett’s view of these institutional failures. The question is whether your credit union could be fairly characterized by one, or all?
How are the member-owners represented in your credit union? Are they are just well-served customers? What is necessary for credit unions to reverse the all too frequent examples of leadership and governance failures now occurring? And accepted as “usual and customary”?
It is not a shortfall of capital that causes most credit unions to turn in their charters. It is the absence of character and awareness of the member’s “common good” by leadership.
When every credit union performance measure is a number, one consequence is that everyone has a price.
Our neighbor’s yards have been filled with signs of the season these past several weeks. They include white ghost-like specters hanging from trees, scattered skeleton parts on lawns, mock tomb stones and the endless variety of orange-lighted pumpkin carvings-some real and others plastic.
Halloween is a secular recognition by costume and irony-trick or treat-of the final reality that we all share.
Our neighbors invite us to join with them around an open, outdoor fire pit with the greeting of “Happy Halloween!” Adults accompany children dressed as multiple characters on their door-to-door hunt for sweets and show.
Yet Halloween is about death’s reality-sort of. One of the most popular poems in England is Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. It captures the haunting challenge of life observing death.
Published in 1751, the narrator uses the setting of a church’s graveyard to mediate on the inevitable fate of everyone, whether rich or poor, known or unknown, skilled or day laborer. It begins:
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea,
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
The poet then enters the churchyard cemetery:
Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree’s shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a mould’ring heap,
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.
The breezy call of incense-breathing Morn,
The swallow twitt’ring from the straw-built shed,
The cock’s shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,
No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.
The remainder of the poem’s 32 stanza’s is a meditation on the democracy of death no matter one’s station in life. From the poor to the powerful.
Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
The short and simple annals of the poor.
The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow’r,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,
Awaits alike th’ inevitable hour.
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
The complete poem can be found here.
Happy Halloween!?
From yesterday’s edition of the Banking Dive newsletter.
TD Bank will give a bonus of 5 shares to non-executive employeesThe incentive, worth around $363 based on Wednesday’s closing price, references TD’s tenet that employees should “act like an owner.” Employees outside the U.S., Canada and the U.K. will receive cash instead. |
Question: Does your credit union have employees or owners? Is there a difference?