I was listening to a podcast that was discussing personal awakening points in life: the moment(s) in life when we realize our super-power. Since being around Kanye, the ‘super power’ term has worn thin, but I took the point on board. We each have one, or several, special talents, special skills, that, if we realize them, and we nurture them, they distinguish who we are.
Homework from my Therapist
Make a list of everything you…….shit, I forget what I was supposed to make a list of.
Jacob Blake
Jacob Blake.
I watched the video of Jacob Blake being tracked by multiple, armed, white cops who mercilessly shot him in the back. One pulled on his t-shirt, like a child does to their parent, as he walked forward to open his car door. The cops pulled on his t-shirt and then shot him. Does that not stir outrage in everyone enough to call "stop" to the insidious horror of cops shooting Black men - at close range, without contest, and for no reason? His children were in the car; they are forever scarred by the sight of their father being stalked by pathological men. Those children will never be the same. They lost their youth on that day. How any one of us white Americans is not utterly horrified; how a single person does not recoil in horror over the sight of Jacob's shooting reveals the depth of our ignorance. Ignorance is not about a lack of education; ignorance is about a lack of awareness, exposure, and openness. Curiosity rivals ignorance. Ignorance drives us to live every day trying to "look good and be right" even at the expense of someone else - a man, with kids, with a life. His name is Jacob Blake.
The Cranks
My Dad was a teacher at the same school we attended. In fact, we attended that snotty prep school in Bloomfield Hills because he was a teacher there and our tuition was free. I was 8 years old, my sister Cathy was 9, and my brother Barclay was 11, and we lived in Auburn Heights, Michigan, a blue collar town outside of Detroit. Most adults in the neighborhood worked in auto factories of one brand or another and the quality of life was pretty sad. Houses fell in disrepair, kids were unsupervised, and consequently there was a considerable amount of trouble-making. Soon after moving to Auburn Heights, my parents separated. When they separated, we three kids stayed in that neighborhood and in our house with our mother. We never saw her though - after my dad moved out she went back to school to complete her Master’s degree, and she was working two jobs to make up for the fact that our dad never paid child support. She was a door-to-door saleswoman for Electrolux vacuum cleaners, and a psychologist-on-staff at DEHOCO, Detroit’s maximum security women’s prison. My dad’s life took on a mysterious feel after he moved out. He was living in a pool house on an opulent estate of one of his student’s parents. That’s how things worked out for my dad all the time - serendipity seemed to follow him - or maybe it followed his Cary Grant looks, his Oxford University vocabulary, and his British charm. Anyway, he had moved out and we were left in an environment where charm, intellect, and serendipity were absent.
He would pick us up for school every morning and drop us back at home in the afternoon or early evening, and only after he finished correcting papers from that day’s classes. Auburn Heights and Bloomfield Hills could not have been more opposite; they were the epitome of the contrast between 1970’s working class and the budding professional class. White flight had begun to empty Detroit and its suburbs, and the distinction between blue collar and white collar status had started to imprint on the American psyche. I don’t remember being told anything explicit, but my brother, sister, and I must have unconsciously understood that the two worlds did not mix. We never brought school friends home with us and, with kids in the neighborhood, we never talked about where we went to school. They were two different worlds that we implicitly understood were to be kept separate and almost secret.
I had one friend in school, Carol, but none in our neighborhood. At home I either followed my 11 year old brother around, playing matchbox cars in the driveway, mowing the lawn, or jumping off the roof of our garage. When Barclay retreated to his room, playing the Beatles on repeat, I knew I was not welcome company so I’d find my sister Cathy to tag along with. She always had some trouble or intrigue brewing. Cathy was friends with a neighborhood girl, Alice Crank, and Alice’s brother Doug. They were 15 and 14, respectively, and though Cathy was just 9, she seemed to fit in and play on their level. Cathy and Doug flirted a lot and the things that the three of them would do when they were hanging out scared me, but I still tagged along. I had no one else to be with.
The Cranks lived at the end of our street with their dad, Mr. Crank. We had met, more like, run into Mr. Crank on occasion but we understood he was scary and did not like us neighborhood kids hanging around his house. However, the Crank’s house became a kind of flop-house of sorts. We all went there because we knew that, after Mr. Crank left for work, the house was free reign. We never interacted with Mr. Crank and we did not ask questions. We also never knew Alice and Doug to have a mother; no one ever talked about or referred to her. Alice and Doug never met our mother either because she was never home. It felt normal that all of us kids were on our own. Alice and Doug’s cousin, Junior, lived in the neighborhood and he too was part of our ‘pack’.
Cathy and Alice hung out together a lot. The rest of us would gather only when Mr. Crank was not at home. Even Doug avoided being there when his dad was home; Alice, on the other hand, had to do all of the cooking, cleaning, and seemed to be a surrogate wife/mother. Cathy would help Alice, or at least keep her company at her house while she did her chores - whether Mr. Crank was home or not. Doug and Cathy had crushes on each other; - or at least they acted like it. Junior also flirted with Cathy, but it seemed he did that just because Doug did. I had a huge crush on Junior, but I was just 8 years old and the youngest in the group by far, allowed to tag along only because my sister was one of the ring leaders. I recall there were a couple other kids that were always with us but I don’t remember their names or much about them.
We would roam up and down our street on weekends with little to do. We’d pool our money to get submarine sandwiches from the corner store; we’d stop at our house to watch TV for a bit, but would leave when we felt Barclay’s disapproval; we’d ultimately make our way to the Crank’s house, at the end of the street. As long as we stayed away until 5pm, we were good. Mr. Crank worked the weekend graveyard shifts at Ford Motors. He’d usually leave the house at 5pm to work a 6pm - 4am shift, lunch pail in hand, usually yelling at Alice and Doug. Every time I ever saw Mr. Crank he was yelling. We knew Mr. Crank was violent with his kids so we’d avoid being anywhere near him. We’d all seen Mr. Crank chase after Doug with a belt and would hear the stories Doug being beaten while being held by his feet in a rusty barrel. Cathy would tell me stories about how, when she would be at their house, Mr. Crank would beat Doug first and then he’d go after Alice, chasing her into the basement, beating her with his belt and fists. Cathy told me that one reason she would hang out with Alice even when Mr. Crank was home, was because she thought she could protect Alice if her father went after her. I have no idea if that was true, but Cathy was always inserting herself in the middle of family fights - our’s and others’ families. She seemed to appoint herself as the grand mediator, though no one else saw her that way. She really just got herself into terrible situations. I had never seen the beatings but I did not need to to be convinced I should avoid Mr. Crank. And anyway, I actually hated being in the Crank’s house - the stench of the wall-to-wall carpeting we’d sit on and the filth of their bathroom told a pretty clear story of neglect and abuse - even to my eight your self. Not having friends of my own in the neighborhood limited my options.
On one of these many weekend afternoons Cathy and I found ourselves with nothing to do, we walked to the Crank’s house. It was after 5pm so more than likely Mr. Crank would already be gone and ‘the gang’ would be free to gather. His truck was not in the driveway so, more than likely, he had left for work, but we’d wait for a clear signal from Alice or Doug that the coast was clear. Despite the fact that Mr. Crank had four vehicles in his yard, only the truck he drove worked. I always wondered, if he worked for Ford, why he could not get the other three Ford vehicles in his yard working. I thought, maybe because that would mean Doug and Drew could drive away in them - they each knew how to drive.
We gathered in the house, once learning the coast was clear. We swiftly, and predictably, filled a large pot with water to boil a whole pack of Oscar Meyer hot dogs. We had Wonder bread, yellow mustard, and ketchup at the ready. While Alice prepared full meals for her father, she and Doug lived on Oscar Meyer hot dogs. The hot dogs were sheer bliss for my 8 year old self, who never got fed at home. At the Cranks’ house, I would eat as many hot dogs as I could while everyone else went into the living room to play spin-the-bottle, the game of choice for the older kids.
Sitting in a circle, each person would spin the Coke bottle, waiting for it to stop, and to point at their “partner” (or victim, if you ask me). Spin the bottle was supposed to be a kissing game but we took it to the next level. The pairing-off happened, but instead of the kissing taking place in the circle, it was done in Alice’s bedroom, with the door closed. Two people would rise from the circle and disappear behind the bedroom door while the rest of us would just stare at the door and wait. The door was just 5 feet away from us so we could hear the muffled voices, the sound of wet mouths separating, the clank of belt buckles, and giggles. The sounds that came from the other side of that door terrified me and lasted in my memory well into young adulthood.
While I had a huge crush on Junior, Alice’s cousin, he exhibited all the aloofness necessary to make my eight year old self go loopy with love. He was dreamy - one part Bobby Sherman and one part Keith Partridge. He had a shag haircut, wore wide-leg, low rise bell bottom corduroy pants, and he was 14 - a grown man in my eyes. Cathy always told me to stay away from him - that he was trouble. He ignored me anyway - he seemed to like flirting with Cathy. Both Doug and Junior flirted with her, though I thought Doug and Cathy were ‘going out’. When Junior would spin the bottle, my eyes would follow it, willing the bottle to stop in my direction. I don’t recall it ever stopping in my direction and maybe I actually sat on the sidelines stuffing my face with hot dogs - I don’t remember. I do however, remember being terrified by what my imagination thought happened behind the closed bedroom door.
Cathy seemed to love the attention of both boys and she willingly went into the bedroom with either of them. But Doug and Cathy seemed to get the bottle pair-up a lot. They would both smirk as they went into the bedroom and emerge looking self-satisfied. Doug would be zipping up his pants - he wore really low-waisted pants snd a huge belt buckle; the glance he gave to us as he threaded his belt back through the loops was all-revealing. Cathy would not even look at me. In that moment I felt like my sister had betrayed me. We had talked about hanging out with the Cranks, about playing spin the bottle, and about my crush on Junior. We had also agreed we would never let Junior or Doug “do” anything with either of us without agreeing with one another that it was OK in advance. I don’t think I even knew what the “do” was that we were talking about, but I knew we made a promise to one another and her refusal to look at me meant it had been broken.
I withered inside, realizing what separated me from Cathy was my fear - my fear to go along with whatever the older kids were doing behind Alice’s bedroom door. I had failed to attract Junior, and if my eight year old self could not attract the affections of a 14 year old neighborhood boy, of what value was I?
Suddenly, the screen door slammed open, hitting the siding of the house with a big “FWAP”. The latch return on the screen door had long broken off - I had previously noticed that it was broken when we would have to search for it to close behind us. All of us leapt to our feet. Mr. Crank came blasting into the house, storming through the kitchen, and into the living room where we had been sitting in our circle. He never stopped moving as he broke up our standing positions, unbuckled his belt, unthreading it from his pants, swinging and swearing in our direction. He doubled it up and went straight for Doug’s legs. We watched Doug jump over the belt, dive under the belt, and then get smacked squarely on the back as he ran past Mr. Crank. Both Doug and Junior turned into arial gymnasts as we saw them catapult past Mr. Crank and then out the back door. All of ran in the direction of the kitchen and the back door; I ran outside to find Junior. Even though he never paid any attention to me, it seemed the time to join forces. Once outside, Doug, Junior, and I paused, looking back to make sure Mr. Crank was not following us, and then to check that Cathy and Alice were. They were not. From outside the back door, we could hear Mr. Crank yelling about his “whore” daughter and his “useless” son. He was demanding they come to him. He demanded to know what we were all doing in his house.
Doug and Junior took off running down the driveway, turning right toward the high school where they knew they could hide in the woods next to the administration building. Sometimes we we would hang out there - mostly when Doug, Alice, and Junior smoked pot. I waited outside the back door for Cathy and Alice to come out. When Cathy appeared she was not running. In fact, she stopped, turned around, and started to walk back toward the house, going back into the back door that remained open and through which we could hear Alice screaming. I wanted to run after Doug and Junior but Cathy was walking back toward the kitchen door. She did not motion for me to follow; she did not even look at me, she just went into the house. I followed her because, at this point, Doug and Junior were gone, and I was scared to do anything else.
We heard Mr. Crank yelling and we heard Alice screaming. The sound of the belt slapping against her flesh was alarming. It took a minute or two for me to realize that that was what I was hearing but the synchronization of the slapping belt and Alice’s screaming were deafening. Cathy and I walked back through the kitchen and into the living room. When we did not see Mr. Crank or Alice, I begged Cathy to leave, crying and pulling on her arm. But she was driven by an inner force telling her to find Alice. Cathy always butted into everyone’s business.
We stood looking at Alice’s closed bedroom door. Her screaming pierced the air along with slaps, bangs, and thumps. Cathy went to the bedroom door and tried to open it but the door was locked from the inside. On the one hand I was relieved that she was unable to enter Alice’s room, but it also meant that all we could do was sit outside the door and listen to Alice get beaten mercilessly by her father.
Cathy screamed and cried for Mr. Crank to leave Alice alone. The beating seemed to pause and Cathy banged on the door wildly. She yelled at Mr. Crank to leave Alice alone and to come get her instead. I could not believe what I was hearing - my sister was inviting and provoking Mr. Crank to come after her instead of Alice. I had no idea what was going on inside Alice’s bedroom but I knew whatever it was was not something I wanted to have happen to Cathy. As I pulled on her arm and on her waist, begging her to leave, Cathy pushed me away. I was not going to leave my sister’s side though. Cathy collapsed at the foot of Alice’s bedroom door and we sat there for what seemed an eternity listening to sounds that I did not understand until later in my life. The beating, the screaming, the smacking sounds turned to muffled grunts and the sound of bedding being violently tossed around. It was not until my mid 20’s that I connected my repulsion of hearing people having sex with this day at the Crank’s.
William Barclay Livingstone Palmer, aka "Dad"
Obituary
William Barclay Livingstone Palmer
Date of Death: September 27, 2020
Date of Birth: March 2, 1932
Biography:
William Barclay Livingstone Palmer known as Barclay, a passionate humanities teacher and administrator, education reformer, and pianist, who served in the British Army and competed in the 1956 Olympics, died peacefully at Avita of Brunswick on Sept. 27. He was 88.
Barclay headed the Upper Schools at Friends Seminary in Manhattan from 1977 to 1987, and at Gill/St. Bernards School in NJ from 1974 to 1976. Working with the National Association of Independent Schools, he helped propel a nationwide shift from memorization and testing toward critical and creative thinking, and moral, racial and social awareness. With specialties in Shakespeare, poetry and myth, he taught at The Roeper School and the Detroit Country Day School in Michigan, Shady Side Academy in Pennsylvania, Salisbury School in Connecticut, and Manhattanville College in New York. He also led high school students on summer European study tours for Scholastic International.
In 1988, Barclay founded the nonprofit "Teachers In Depth," videotaping teachers and leading workshops in which educators could discuss classroom challenges and strategies. He taught at Maine Senior College into his 80s. As an avid pianist, he played every J.S. Bach keyboard piece, and had served as board member of the Bowdoin Music Festival. He also had been a council member of The Darwin Project, which promotes awareness that Charles Darwin emphasized "moral qualities" rather than "survival of the fittest" as the primary driver of human evolution.
Barclay was a great grandson of William Booth, founder of The Salvation Army and author of "In Darkest England, and The Way Out," and grandson of Catherine "Kate" Booth-Clibborn, known as La Maréchale, and her husband Arthur Booth-Clibborn, who brought the Salvation Army to France and Switzerland and were repeatedly jailed for their evangelical work. Through his grandfather, Barclay was a descendant of the Barclays of Urie, who had fought for Scottish independence and were founders of Quakerism and Barclays Bank.
Born March 2, 1932, in Toronto, Barclay was the fourth child of Josephine Booth-Clibborn and the Rev. Francis Noel Palmer, an author and Anglican minister. After his father was transferred in 1938 to Everton in Liverpool, Barclay spent months in hospitals with a bronchial infection and then varicoses. At 11, he spent a year in hospitals with degenerative disease in his leg and ankle, and was cured after becoming the first British civilian to receive penicillin. He recalled isolation and malnutrition as a boy during WWII, with "constant air raid sirens screaming our fear."
Barclay went on to serve as a lieutenant and platoon commander in the British Army 1950 to 1952. Educated at Monkton Combe School, he earned a BA and MA in theology at St Peter's College, Oxford, where he gained an Athletics Blue in 1953 for weights, discus and javelin. He won the British AAA shot put championships in 1955 and 1956, held the British shot put record, received a trophy from Queen Elizabeth, and competed for England around Europe and at the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne. On his way home, Barclay fell in love with New York's high energy and jazz scene and worked unloading trucks and designing educational film strips before teaching.
All his life, Barclay lived by the Salvation Army's commitment to under-privileged people, and Quakers' commitment to peace, equality, community and democracy. He launched diversity and racial awareness programs, and expanded scholarship programs to bring under-served students into private schools and universities.
Barclay was predeceased by his wife Esther Lacognata Palmer, who had served as president of the League of Womens Voters of Maine, and Asst. Commissioner to Gov. Joe Brennan; worked with the Maine Land Use Regulatory Commission, Council of Governments, and Farmland Trust; and ran for state Senate in 1998.
A virtual celebration of Barclay's life and spirit will be held at 11am Saturday Oct. 17 by the Unitarian Universalist Church in Brunswick. William Schultz, a former student of Barclay's, now Senior Fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, and former Unitarian Universalist Association President and Amnesty International Executive Director, as well as Dame Felicity Palmer, an opera singer and Barclay's first cousin, will be among those speaking.
Barclay is survived by three children, Barclay L. Palmer, a journalist, producer, consultant and educator, and his wife Dana Cowin; Catherine Von Burg, CEO of SimpliPhi Power Inc.; and Deborah Palmer Keiser, President of Timbuk2; as well as his sister, Catherine Palmer, former Music Director at the Yorkminster Baptist Church in Toronto, and her husband, the Rev. Nicholas Morkel, Dean of the York Mills Deanery in Toronto; as well as five grandchildren; two nieces and a nephew and their children.
In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made in Barclay's name to the Unitarian Universalist Church of Brunswick, CHANS Home Health & Hospice, Pathfinder International, American Friends Service Committee or Amnesty International.
Groceries
Even at 7 years old I knew we didn’t eat well. I could tell the difference between the food that was in our house and the food that we had to scavenge.
First, breakfast was a catastrophe. Our choices were Fruit Loops or Cream of Wheat. I’d always choose the ‘Loops but somehow they’d show up again as a day-old bowl of soggy Fruit Loops. If I dared not finish the bowl I had poured myself, it would be put in the fridge by my mother for me to finish the next morning. Swollen Fruit Loops floating in pinkish-green milk in a plastic margarine-container-bowl; we did not have real dish wear. If I whined about not wanting to eat the cereal sludge my mom would holler “we don’t have the money to waste food”. It was true, we didn’t. My dad had moved out and wasn’t paying child support; my mom was working two jobs and was never home; my brother was in charge of me and my sister, and he was only 11 years old. Sometimes my sister Cathy - as we called her then - would cook Cream of Wheat, though the rubbery clumps would make me want to gag. My mom would tell her to cook it with “butter” to smooth it out, but the “butter” was actually margarine and it made it taste like motor oil. Most mornings my brother, sister, and I would leave the house hungry and thoroughly under-nourished. It drove us to constantly be scavenging for food.
Dinner at our house was no better than breakfast. Our mom cooked very infrequently. When she did, she’d make pork chops, or maybe a roast with Yorkshire pudding. Everything would be over-cooked, if not altogether burned. I learned to like burned food, but if she cooked a roast, I knew I’d not get to eat much of it. She saved the meat for herself; my portion was often the string that bound the roast - greasy and blackened with shards of meat attached. I learned to love chewing on the bundle of string-meat, sucking out the flavor and spitting out the wad of cotton string when it lost flavor.
Usually though, we kids were alone at dinnertime and had to fend for ourselves. We were poor, which made it difficult to “fend” at all. If my parents had decided to put their kids first, we would have been just lower-class poor. But since they were both raging narcissists, and put us last, we were dirt-poor. Barclay, the oldest of us, was in charge of the household and ‘on point’ to care for me and my sister. He was full of schemes that, at that age, I thought were games - though I know he’d not think of them as having been “fun”. Barclay took caring for us seriously, always having our backs, always doing his best to keep us alive. He was the oldest, the boy-in-charge, and was the responsible one; my sister was the stereotype middle child to whom everything shitty happened and who took no responsibility for anything; I was the baby, somewhat oblivious to the trauma of our household but completely reliant on my siblings. We stuck together. Even when we fought and nearly killed one another, no one could break our bond.
To get food, Barclay devised schemes: #1 collect change. Barclay and Cathy had side-gigs to earn pocket change. They each figured they could buy candy at our corner store and sell it at a premium in school. I don't know the specifics, but they seemed to be able to pull change together on demand. I, on the other hand, took to stealing money from my mother. I’d sneak into her purse and dig around at the bottom where I knew there’d be change. I knew if she ever caught me I could get away with it because I had “most-favored-child” status. She’d laugh and let me off the hook for the same things that would result in a beating for Barclay and Cathy. Being the youngest had definite advantages in our home. Dimes were the best: they were small, I could hide them in my mouth if I had to and, in the 70’s a dime bought a lot. With one dime we could buy our favorite submarine sandwich at the corner store. I loved those submarine sandwiches. Like the scavenging hyenas we were, dime in hand, we’d walk to the corner store in a pack. The subs were in cellophane packaging in the fridge. One of us would retrieve the sandwich while another of us would give the clerk the dime. We’d anxiously watch the clerk unwrap the sandwich and place it into the toaster oven, anticipating the smell of the browning bread, melting cheese and sizzling salami. My mouth would water and I’d get so excited. I never got my own sandwich though; I always had to share with either my brother or my sister, or both. My brother would take a bite of the fresh-from-the-toaster sandwich under the auspices of checking that it was not too hot for us. He was a reasonable-size biter. He’d then hold it to my mouth and I would lurch forward taking a huge bite, laughing. The scalding cheese would stick to the roof of my mouth, usually giving me a huge blister, but I did not care. Barclay would then rotate the sandwich toward my sister’s mouth and just as she was going to take a bite, I’d pull back on his arm forcing her to crane her neck forward so she’d get only the tiniest of bite. I’d howl with glee and my sister would cry. Cheating my sister out of things happened all the time because she was the weak one of the three of us and an easy target on which to take out our unregistered anger. I hated sharing with both of them and I did not mind making it known. I’m sure they hated sharing with me too, but I did not think about them and their needs. I looked to them for my needs.
My all-time favorite Barclay-game was “grocery shopping”. My mom would give him money to “get groceries”, which meant walking to Krogers and buying whatever food we could, for whatever pathetic sum of money she handed him. In order to maximize the money we had, Barclay would tell us, once in the store, that we had to eat as much as possible while “shopping”. It really did not matter how much money we had to spend because I heartily took up the challenge. I loved this game and I was really good at it. “Grocery shopping” honed my shoplifting skills at a very early age; skills I maintain to this day. We’d enter the store and would scatter, having agreed on our meet-up time back at the register. My internal engine would rev as I took off through the aisles. I knew exactly where my favorite foods were and I knew exactly the route to take to open, eat, and stash the packaging by the time I arrived at my next food item. I’d start at the packaged meat section, slyly squeezing one package into the waistband of my pants (for seconds, of course), simultaneously opening the top of another package as I turned into an aisle of totally unrelated products. I’d peel back the plastic strip and put the entire wad of sliced turkey or beef into my mouth as I stuffed the empty package between rolls of toilet paper, en route to the cheese section. Arranged like rows of cards in a game of solitaire, I’d select the ‘family-sized’ package of Swiss cheese, fold the stacked slices together lengthwise and shove the whole thing into my already bulging cheeks. The goal was to mix the flavors of meat and cheese. I’d swing by the milk aisle to get a school-sized carton of milk and wash everything down my gullet. Then I’d eat the second package of meat on my way to the candy aisle. After stashing the empty milk carton, the packaging from the cheese and the second pack of meat, I’d grab two 3 Musketeer bars, my candy bar of choice for grocery shopping trips. The whipped nougat would dissolve so fast I could consume two of them by the time I got back to the front of the store. I’d arrive at the cash register to meet Barclay and Cathy at the agreed-time, belly full, and quite proud of my achievement. Stealing, or “grocery shopping”, definitely contributed to building my self-esteem when there was little else in our life that did. If it wasn’t for the burden that Barclay had to bare, I would say I had fun.
We’d leave the store buying something ridiculous like a cake mix from the “sale” bin. Invariably it would be orange flavored or one equally disgusting. We’d get home and not even bother cooking the cake. We’d mix the batter and eat it, one spatula at a time.
Sustainability is unsustainable
I am struck by the claims of “sustainability” from apparel and home furnishings brands that proliferate fashion media and marketing. A decade ago “sustainability” carried different meaning than it does today, but the term has been used loosely and without clear definition for long enough. Brands need to be called to task for using the term as a scheme to promote healthy environmental practices when, in fact, they either fail to adhere to healthy practices, or they fail to learn the veracity of their own claims in order to have an authentic message.
What does “sustainability” in the retail / product industry mean in this time of evidenced environmental degradation? What does “sustainability” mean when communities are suffering from unbreathable air, undrinkable water, toxified soil, and suffocating waste? What does “sustainability” mean when women demonstrably earn less than their male counterparts - irrespective of country - but dominate in the ‘making’ of product? What does sustainability mean? One dictionary definition is: “the quality of not being harmful to the environment or depleting natural resources, and thereby supporting long-term ecological balance”.
What exactly is sustainable about brands that knowingly and intentionally purchase goods from countries and suppliers who put toxins into the earth, the water, and into the lives of the people who make product? What exactly is sustainable about brands that source from regions where there is little regulatory protection over the earth, air, and water? What is sustainable about brands that neither take responsibility for output of and waste from the sourcing and making of the product they purchase, nor do they consider the product’s end of life and its impact (again) on water, soil, air, or people?
I’ve spent 30 years on the front line of ‘the making’ - in the fields, the factories, and the mills - I have breathed the air, drunk the water, and walked the land where apparel, accessories, and home furnishings are made. I have worked with the people who started and who run manufacturing facilities around the world, as well as those who do the actual making.
Over the past 20 years, an entire industry of “sustainability” and “corporate responsibility” has been generated: in-house brand teams and 3rd party service providers charged with ‘engaging’ various nonprofits, NGO’s, and reporting organizations to assess, evaluate, measure, and grade suppliers on THEIR ability to meet varied standards. Never has their been an end-to-end measure of a brand’s ability or failure to deliver on those same standards and requirements. Myriad assessing and reporting tools have been generated, fueling the perception that data exists, but, in fact, the reporting tools change, morph, disappear, and can actually operate in conflict with one another. So, as seasoned professionals we spend time debating the accuracy and efficacy of the various tools - and we fail to actually deliver transformational change where the work is done.
So here we are in 2019…
The apparel industry, in particular, is the #2 environmental polluting industry - second only to the oil industry. That is embarrassing - especially since I have invested my career in working for the betterment of it. Home furnishings companies decimate more virgin forests than global forest fires - second only to commercial farming. The data is available. The results of 20 years of “sustainability” are abhorrent. Brands do not allocate budget dollars to “results”, they expect that innovation associated with “sustainability'“ is paid for and managed by suppliers. However, the economics of this are upside down: Brand product margins are 60-85%; manufacturing margins hover around 3-12%. Brands must start to admit, and to account for, their impact and their flawed ‘sustainability’ economic models.
I’d like to shift the focus, alter the perspective, and evolve the dialogue. My point of view is not popular. My point of view demands that people, teams, companies, and brands actually DO something vs market something that leads the industry to massive, scaled transformation.
Refreshingly, or frustratingly, there is no one single solution. Yet there are myriad solutions to exploit, and many options to exercize in the short term and the long term. Let’s start with stating what “IS”: apparel and home furnishings brands have the resources and data to report on their current utilization, impact, and recovery. Before they sign up for a 3rd party assessments, just state what is:
How many units of product manufactured - let’s say per year
Of those produced, how many are sold - at full price or markdown - and go into the homes and lives of consumers
How many units are not sold - where do they go
How much of what / each raw material is sourced to make the product(s)
Of each raw material,, how much is virgin and how much is reused / recycled
How many gallons of water used in manufacturing each raw material and each finished product
How many ‘dirty’ gallons went through treatment - how many did not
How many clean gallons were returned to nature and/or public use
Define ALL waste material
Map disposal of all waste
Define bio-degradation of waste material
How much CO2 is generated in order to support the business
How much particulate is put into the air as a result of the business operation
Community impact - the manufacturing, the purchasing, and the waste-receiving communities: how are their lives and well being improved by the existence of the business
You get the point.
A dashboard that would say what “is” - in measurable units - is essential to know where one is starting from in order to the the course of where one is going. Not percentages of decrease or increase - the absolute values that are, relative to what are “acceptable” and decided health standards - for soil, water, air lungs, kidneys, etc. The data exist. For argument’s sake, and because I know people like to argue absolute values, let’s say that 50% of the data is true. If only 50% of findings are verifiable, they will be significant enough to raise an eyebrow and to demand true action. The indices that exist today measure incremental percentages of change +/-. They do not measure what ‘is’ and they most certainly do not inform people that whatever their current measures are, they are nowhere significant enough to transform the industry.
Starting with what ‘is’ enables us to know how far we have to go, informs what we have to do, and who we have to work with to impact results.
Organic Milk
Organic Milk is a metaphor for so much that is messed up in our society.
We buy and eat organic food. We doubled down when we had a kid; we wanted to give her every opportunity to experience healthy, local, nutritional food that tasted as Mother Nature intended it to taste - not like the generic colored version of what is offered in most grocery stores - or in all convenience foods outlets. We eat full fat dairy - butter, cheese, milk. As athletes and generally physical people we believe in the benefits of slow-burn calories, the appetite-satisfying nature of fat, and the flavor it brings to everything.
When people come to our house, they notice the flavor of things. When we get into a conversation about organics, full fat, etc. we listen to the apologetic argument that “organic costs more” and that’s why “they” don’t buy it. Sometimes it does, and often times it does not. The real issue seems to be the thought and effort one must commit to eating an organic diet. To us, it is worth it; exponentially worth it. It did not keep my daughter from developing allergies, but she does know what food tastes like - the real flavor of ingredient.
So, wherever I travel and wherever I eat, I select the organic options, if not for my own preference, then for the revenue I contribute to the organic food industry. As mainstream food companies acquire organic brands one may suspect they are ‘blending’ or even passing non-organic for organic. I am sure this occurs - I’ve been in global supply chain my entire career, so I have seen what happens in the land of raw materials- but generally, there are clear and verifiable standards and protocols that makers must practice, and verify, that make it challenging to fully dupe the system, or the customer.
But still, people like to debate with me which organic dairy farm, in particular, has been acquired by which mainstream dairy and why the acquisition negates that veracity of thier ‘organic-ness’. Rather than applauding the organic farmers for sustaining and achieving an ‘exit’ to a bigger company that may put money in their pocket to start another venture, we scrutinize their motives - and the net result. And, rather than support the organic food industry revenue generation overall, we quibble about the degree-of-organic-ness. How about we turn our energies toward the resolute non-organic food producers? Industrial dairies are sights of anguish, filled with distraught, abused animals. Industrial meat production is even worse.
We who #resist mainstream industrial food production need to align with our kin and focus on the true ills of food production and consumption. Again, a metaphor for so much going on these days. Align. One doesn’t have to agree in order to align (#TriumGroup); one needs to decide that the bigger picture and the larger principle is one that one can stand with and behind, as if it was one’s first choice. Then we can align our focus on the issues needing to be solved, like the healthy treatment of animals in our food supply chain.
On Being...Married
Funny how difficult this day is to remember - the specific date. October 7, 1998 is our wedding day, our anniversary. County Courthouse, San Francisco. Lunchtime. I remember that because after getting married I went back to work. Romantic, huh? In fact, everything about me has been "back to work", "at work", "going to work". I think I thought I was put on this earth to work. Everything about me was work. Through work I have met extraordinary people; traveled to seemingly unreachable places; enjoyed music, culture, and friendships that have lasted my adult life. And, through work, in work, I have hidden.
June 1993 I was introduced to "Keiser". He was going to teach me to in-line skate. I was a 'quad' skater; a beach dance skater. Having observed the new 'in line' skates on the Venice Beach boardwalk, I was curious and intrigued. Keiser was a Comedian, an in-line skate racer, and a Tech Rep for Rollerblade. He was also going to be my skate instructor. After a couple skate-path outings with him I was hooked - on in-line and on him. This was the time of beepers...I beeped him all day asking for, and confirming, our skate hook-ups during which we would go from Santa Monica to Manhattan Beach and back. We really did not speak much; I was crouched behind him, nose to booty, following in his stride. Keiser had a long, elegant extended stride. He also had great balance, tenacity, rhythm and endurance. But it was his ability to hang in silence that I began to enjoy and yearn for. Calm, quiet, present, resilient, ready. Our friendship grew into love, grew into partnership, grew into family.
Ironically, I was not working when I met him. For a short window of time I was not hiding...behind work at least. Keiser saw me.
Keiser and I have been together for 23 years. Today, October 7, marks 18 years married. Because we both come from families of serial 'marriers', our tenure alone is remarkable. But what I am most proud of, most appreciative of, is having found someone with whom I have been able to be me, and to be seen: to grow, to open up, to fail, to triumph, to laugh, to cry, to eat, to travel, to love. In turn, I have given my best to be all the same for him. We've 'gone outside our marriage', we've struggled through near separation, we've felt fear and anger like most do. But we have worked through all the crap, learned to 'get over ourselves', pressed through challenges and gained perspective to arrive at what is really important: how much love we have for one another and how deep it goes. I attribute this to our shared skater skills: balance, tenacity, rhythm and endurance.
Happy Anniversary Keiser. I'm honored and proud to be part of us.
Ms Hillary
I will be voting for Hillary. I will be doing so without an ounce of trepidation. I hear the news of her dishonesty; corrupt politicking in the name of 'friendship' or diplomacy; and endless review of email improprieties. While I have not worked in Government, so I cannot fully understand the operating context of Hillary's career and related decisions, I have worked in large, publicly-traded multi-national corporations and I find the parallels quite empathy-building.
First, the Woman Card: No one, but another woman, can understand the trade-offs, the scrutiny, and the ever-so-subtle sexism that women experience in a professional environment unless they are a) female or b) so "woke" they see it in the moment and for what it is (vs realizing it after-the-fact or having it explained for them). Daily, subtle gestures and comments remind us of where our place is. They become so expected and so familiar that often we stop noticing or taking exception. The behavior fills our day and we are fully immersed in it like a water tank in which we are submerged again and again. We get used to the immersion and begin to feel as if it is 'normal'. And then it is us, women, who have realizations as afterthought. So, standing up for our selves, standing up for one another, or just standing up can appear to be an act of aggression for which we get singled out and labeled with that very word "aggressive".
I heard a recent discussion distinguishing the word "assertive" and "aggressive" - the former being "leaning in with empathy"; the latter, just "leaning in" (with self-interest in mind). But who is the referee in this semantic debate? Of course the term "lean in" was coined by a woman who has now come to understand the privileged context from which she spoke. Double irony. First, operate in an environment in which you have the opportunity to 'lean in'; then, make sure that environment will tolerate you 'leaning in'. In other words, make sure you do not need your job so much that you can suffer getting cut off at the neck - if you stick it out.
Aggressive and assertive have a new sister - she is called 'disruptive'. While this is the favored word today, one cannot be disruptive without being assertive or/and aggressive. Semantics.
I previously had a boss who was affiliated with a particular religious group in which abortion is seen as immoral (and certainly not to be left up to an individual woman to choose). After learning that I had attended a Pro-Choice march in Washington he first initiated a closed-door confrontation about the morality of my actions and beliefs. He then proceeded to pepper every discussion with comments (teaching moments) about 'higher moral standards' related to apparel supply chain. Righteous words shared in a professional context...how could I accuse him of over-stepping boundaries when it was all work related discussion? His message was clear: my character would be called into question with every professional decision because my foundational moral compass was off. Loud and clear.
So, part of me will vote for Hilary simply because she is a woman. Men have had a long run at being in charge. While I do not think one president, in place for potentially one term, will disrupt that which needs disrupting in our fair democracy (e.g. Obama), I will play my card that Hilary may trump even the best alternatives. But my vote is really for Hilary, the woman, the person, AND the politician. By contrast, I would not be voting for Carly Fiorina, though she is surely a woman. This leads to my second point...
Second, The Path to Power: Anyone who has held a position of power - in any institution - will have gotten to that place not via a straight line, but by way of curvy and sometimes jagged lines comprised of negotiations, trade-offs, and pivots. There is no such thing as a direct and linear path from vision-to-action-to-reality unless we are speaking of a dictatorship - which I am not. Managing groups of people means managing divergent views, egos, and agendas. Allies and enemies are created concurrently; egos are challenged and soothed simultaneously; short-term impact is parlayed with long-term relevance. For me, what distinguishes an individual in how they build and use their power is authenticity. Authenticity is measured not just in hard facts and demonstrable action, but also in how they 'show up'. Do they show up at all? Do they show up at the right time? Do they show up demonstrating knowledge and understanding of the circumstances and situation before them?
Hillary's path to power has been long, sustained and composed of significant and significantly different roles. I applaud her path. But I err on the side of favoring interesting career paths. The roles she has held have been substantive and unique in their own right. She has held positions of power in the periphery to build substantive credibility for "the big one". In this process she will have erred, she will have exercized lapses in judgement, she will have made enemies, she will have had some failures. Perfection is not achievable, even in the eyes of a single supporter. In the eyes of this single supporter, Hillary has navigated the mine field of power with grace, tenacity, and as much authenticity as her being a woman would allow. She has shown up, garnered the votes, tolerated the scrutiny, persevered through judgement, and stands willing and wanting to yet again be held accountable for the impact she may have.