EVEN IN NEW ENGLAND
Category: American Affairs
OPA!
The Friday and Saturday of every Labor Day weekend here features Dover’s Greek Heritage Festival, which is much more than a fundraiser for the Assumption Orthodox church.
It’s more a community-wide FUN-raiser, with traditional food (the teenage workers in the kitchen, reflecting the instruction of patient grandmothers, is something I wish we had in our own congregation), conversation and mingling, cultural displays, crafts for sale, and best of all, live music and dancing.
But oh, my, am I really there dancing in that YouTube clip? All the dancers wearing white aprons, by the way, had dashed out from the kitchen, taking a break before returning to the cooking and cleaning. But, heavens, I still look like a New England contradancer. Lighten up! I really was having fun, but I’ll promise to stand straighter and smile more this time. OK?
STROKE OF GENIUS
“Do we have any cream rinse?” I asked, heading for the shower.
“The WHAT?” replied the chorus.
“You know, the stuff you put in your hair after you’ve used the shampoo.”
“Oh! You mean the CONDITIONER! They haven’t called it cream rinse for decades.”
Yeah, that stuff. There I go again, showing my age. Only to be corrected by my wife and kids.
Actually, I have to admire someone’s marketing savvy, however far back. Cream rinse, introduced to me by my first lover, always sounded like an indulgence – a luxury, superfluous but comforting. (She did have silky hair.) But conditioner? Now that sounds like something you might need to counter the, uh, harshness of shampoo. Not a luxury, but a necessity, making it all the better for marketing and sales.
Just goes to show the power of one word, doesn’t it.
WHERE, O WHERE
“Hey, you know your portrait’s hanging at Harvard?”
“Eh?” I replied, wondering what century the canvas would have evoked.
“No, it was the ‘60s. You were younger, of course.” And while a residence hall on the Yard was mentioned, I was too awash in wonder to catch the details. (Darn!)
Still, it stirs up the what-if musings.
At the time, Ivy League was completely outside my range of possibilities, beginning with finances.
Even so, here we were, one town over, a half-century later.
If only …
Or if they only knew …
VOCAL ROOTS
Everybody’s from somewhere. You know, the accents, etc.
Merlinders with their “youse” and so on. To say nothing of the Bronx or Queens. Or New England, now that I’ve moved.
I should talk. I have no accent. Pure American Broadcaster Country.
Except that one line of my ancestry started out Pennsylvania Dutch (talk about talking funny!) and came to Ohio by way of Maryland and Virginia.
And another line came up north more recently, meaning the 1880s, from the North Carolina Piedmont.
So, there. No, folks. This time, I’m keeping my mouth shut.
RESTAURANT CITY
Portsmouth, a city of 24,000 just a dozen miles to our south, probably has as many restaurants per capita as Manhattan – by some counts, 160 within a close radius of the downtown.
Much of the demand relies on the tourist trade. Nearly everyone driving to Maine comes through the city, usually on Interstate 95. Half of those going to New Hampshire’s White Mountains turn north there as well. And many simply stop altogether to vacation. It is, after all, on the Atlantic.
Still, that’s a lot of dining.
NOTTINGHAM SQUARE
MANAGEMENT STYLES
Within an organization, you may see a manager who chooses to surround himself or herself with talented individuals and then allows them the freedom to perform at their best. This is the leader who’s not afraid of being placed in their shadow but rather supports their efforts and builds a team of responsible players. This leader hands out kudos, rather than blame, and corrects errors as a matter of avoiding them in the future. Credit is shared rather than hoarded.
There’s another kind of manager who wants to stand taller than his or her subordinates. Talent is viewed with suspicion, and workers are held on a short leash and often micromanaged. Scant praise is handed out – and when it is, there’s little reason to trust it. Fear and blame, especially, are the root of motivation, and maintaining a low profile and even doing as little as possible (to reduce one’s exposure) are inevitable consequences. These managers don’t want to hear your ideas, though they expect you to follow their orders.
One type leads to excellence; the other, to mediocrity.
I’ve worked for both – sometimes briefly in the same enterprise. But I know which one gets the most for the money. Not that money’s the top item when you’re working for them.
JUST LIKE THE CORE OF THE UNIVERSE
Downtown, scrawled on the side of a public trashcan or light pole, in quite flashy strokes:
MR. E?
I read it again, and realized: it was a mystery.
Now I wonder how it was intended.
ONLY THE BEST
Often, the lessons appear when least expected.
One my thoughts returns frequently to a conversation I overheard on a Saturday afternoon in Baltimore’s Little Italy. A couple, recently back from New York City, was trying to impress the restaurant owner that everyone they had talked to was raving about the establishment, saying it was clearly the best in Little Italy. Finally, the owner was able to thank them, with this rejoinder: “Anyone who doesn’t think he’s the best in this neighborhood shouldn’t be down here.”
I admire that sense of upholding your own pursuit of excellence. No excuses. And I admire that esteem for the standards of others doing the same. Rivals. And yet colleagues.
I don’t want to hear a salesman slam the competition, or a priest short selling another denomination or congregation, except in this light.
My work is the best. And so is yours! And, yes, we can both do better!
Humbly yours, forever.
Jnana's Red Barn 