Sally by Eric Lanke

A little while ago, I made my novel, Columbia, available for download from this blog.

Columbia is the story of Theodore Lomax, a nineteen-year-old Union solider in the American Civil War, and as committed as any to the ideal of human freedom. After being assigned to the army of William Tecumseh Sherman, shortly after the general’s infamous March to the Sea, he willingly participates in the destruction of civilian property in Columbia, South Carolina, believing his acts are justified by Southern resistance to the Northern cause of emancipation. But when the destruction escalates into violence against the civilians themselves, he becomes disillusioned, and feels compelled to strike out in opposition to his own countrymen.

The novel is told from Lomax's point of view, but there are ten other supporting characters, each with a story of his or her own. "Sally" is one of these stories, centering on the character of Sally Andrews, and describing her journey as a young girl from the slave cabins on the Andrews plantation to her favored position within their Columbia home.

There was a time when I thought these stories should alternate with the chapters in Columbia, presenting a richer but perhaps more tangled tapestry of the lives that painfully converge in the novel's climactic scenes. But Columbia is clearly a more coherent narrative without them. Still, they were valuable to me as an author, and I hope you find them useful and enjoyable as a reader.

Sally by Eric Lanke - $3

Clicking the "Add to Cart" button will take you through a short payment process and provide you with a PDF download of the story that you can read on your computer or tablet, or which you can print at your convenience. The story is about 13,600 words and the document is 45 pages long. Given its theme and historical setting, the work reflects the racism of the time, and includes episodes of violence and strong language.

Want a sample? Here's are the first thousand or so words.

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They intended Sally for a house slave from the moment they brought her to their home on Elmwood Avenue, but she didn’t really learn what that meant until four years later when she was twelve years old. Before that they let her run with the other children, run until she almost thought she was one of them. It was only when Bessie died that Sally was forced to stop running. And what had seemed obvious and preordained to everyone else for the first time became an overwhelming and pressing reality for Sally.

They were the Andrews, a prosperous and fairly typical family of white landowners in Columbia, South Carolina. The patriarch, Zebulon Andrews, was a graduate of West Point and had served his country faithfully for thirty-five years before settling in to raise cotton on six hundred acres a few miles outside the capitol city. He had acquired the land early in his military career when he had married the daughter of an aristocratic politician who had twice run for governor and been twice defeated. Her name was Victoria Butterfield, and although three previous suitors had all written songs about her—one about her beauty, another about her charm, and a third, unbelievably, about her feet—none had been sufficiently eloquent enough to convince her father to release Victoria to the holy trappings of matrimony.

It was the ridiculous and self-absorbed requirement Victoria’s father had drunkenly announced would be the test of all who sought his daughter’s hand in marriage, likening it to some misunderstood traditions of old. In his more sober moments, Judge Butterfield was known to regret having made such a blusterous demand, but he never once had the humility to rescind it, and as much as he decried it, he had turned away three enviable young men whose attempts to indulge his fancy had been both creative and heartfelt. By the time Zebulon came along with his composition dedicated to Victoria’s sagacity and wisdom, therefore, most folks thought old Judge Butterfield’s strange demands on potential sons-in-law had doomed poor Victoria to life as a spinster. Either because the Judge was reluctant to have his reputation besmirched in such a fashion, or because Victoria herself had prevailed upon him to be reasonable, however, Zebulon’s creation was deemed the worthiest of the bunch and the wily old man quickly gave his blessing.

Zebulon and Victoria were married by an army chaplain and spent much of their marriage moving from place to place as Zebulon’s military responsibilities took them from post to post. They were separated for only three years, while Zebulon served with distinction in the Mexican War, leading first a company and then a regiment in two battles that had helped turn the tide for the Americans. After the war their itinerant lifestyle accelerated, the army prizing him as one of its best drill instructors and transferring him from one troublesome unit to the next, where he seemed to have a knack for improving not only conduct but also morale.

As best they could during these nomadic years, Zebulon and Victoria tried to raise a family, and were successful at bringing six children into the world, only one of which died as an infant. Of their surviving children, the four oldest were all boys—Zebulon, Marcus, Frederick, and Reuben—and the youngest was a girl, Emily. As babies and children, the boys were all healthy and strong, growing as if by divine right, but Emily and the other little girl born just before her, christened Elizabeth but not surviving beyond her third month, were sickly and weak. Victoria did not believe Emily would survive either, as she seemed incapable of taking nourishment and grew at only an imperceptible rate.

But Emily was special. Although always on the verge of death for the first two years of her life, she somehow managed to survive and grew into a happy and relatively healthy young girl. Her unusual physical characteristics, which is all Zebulon and Victoria thought they were at birth, did not fade with age. Instead they deepened and heralded the mental retardation she would struggle with throughout her development. At two she was very much still a baby, at five she was like what her brothers had been at two, and at ten she was very much like them at five. Her parents loved her no less because of these challenges, and did all they could to show Emily the same fondness and attention they had showered on their boys.

Upon Zebulon’s retirement from the army, the whole family moved to the house on Elmwood Avenue in Columbia. The farmland just outside town Zebulon had acquired when he and Victoria had been married had not been standing vacant for the thirty years that elapsed between his wedding and his retirement. It had long ago been developed into a working and fairly lucrative cotton plantation, run by overseers hired initially by Victoria’s father and returning a steady stream of profits to Zebulon’s estate. With the end of his military career, Zebulon had decided to take over the plantation himself, and have a go at being a gentleman farmer. The house on Elmwood Avenue was part of the holding. Although a smaller one stood on the plantation itself, the one in town was considered more luxurious and certainly gave the owners better visibility among the important social scene in Columbia.

Another thing that came with the property was slaves, more than two hundred of them who lived in a series of long, low buildings on the plantation itself. More poorly constructed than the stables that sheltered the horses, the ramshackle slave cabins were freezing in winter and reeking in summer, and were the only place the plantation’s slaves could think of as home. All the slaves, that is, but one.

Her name was Bessie, and she was the house slave for the overseers who lived in the house on the plantation. Her job was to cook and clean for the white men who supervised the work—taking the slaves out to the crops each morning and bringing them back to the slave cabins each night.

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This post was written by Eric Lanke, an association executive, blogger and author. For more information, visit www.ericlanke.blogspot.com, follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

The Final Four

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Two weeks ago, in Reading Between the Lines, I continued writing about the process I used to create my association's values statement, despite some misgivings about the value of values statements I've previously shared and still hold.

In reviewing the suggested revisions that four of my staff members had made to the draft values statement that had come out of staff retreat, I had identified what I perceived to the common concerns and priorities of the people most willing to participate in the process. In looking at how they chose to organize and combine the values that had been discussed at our staff retreat, I felt I had the information I needed to distill them down to the shortest and most relevant list for both the organization that existed and the organization I wanted to create.

We had started with nine values: Clarity, Growth, Innovation, Integrity, Passion, Poise, Respect, Teamwork and Service. Various staff had reduced them down to either three, five, six or seven. In my final synthesis, I decided to focus on four.

LEADERSHIP
We lead the organization in creating new value for our members.

Leadership was key. I had known that even going into the exercise. With members increasingly focused on their day jobs, I needed staff to abandon even the pretense that we were following them--of waiting for them to make the right decisions and to drive the necessary programming for the future of our industry. If new value was going to be created for the members and their association, I wanted it perfectly clear that we were going to have to do it ourselves.

Innovation would be part of this, and so would Clarity. I combined the behaviors we had initially grouped under those categories to describe an association professional who worked collaboratively with members, who helped them make sense of constant complexity of our environment, and who expertly drove things from experiment to focused action and success.

ENTHUSIASM
We are excited about growing as individuals and about growing the organization.

Enthusiasm was the second new term that I brought into the mix. Similar to Passion, I wanted it grounded in something tangible, something specific that would demonstrably add to our success. The natural connection seemed like Growth, both growing ourselves as professionals and growing the organization. I wanted people who would approach our work with a spirit of fun and excitement. Instead of hiding or ignoring gaps in our knowledge, we needed to embrace our own developmental journeys, and connect them to the health of the organization.

INTEGRITY
We act with honesty and professionalism in all our relationships.

Integrity had to be included. The word itself resonated strongly with almost everyone in the organization, but more importantly, the behaviors we had used to describe it, as well as Respect and Poise, were foundational to the kind of organization we needed to be. Words like honesty and professionalism seemed to sum them all up best, and they had to be characteristics that we demonstrated not just with each other, but in every relationship we valued. We're good at what we do. We're professionals. But we're also human. And we make mistakes. And when we do we're honest with each other and with ourselves. Why? Because we're professionals and that's what professionals do.

TEAMWORK
We work together to deliver exceptional service.

And finally there was Teamwork--working together to deliver the Service we all knew was important but no one seemed  sure where it should plug in. In the grand scheme of things, ours was a small organization with big goals and limited capacity. If we lost our focus on giving our members exceptional service, they would likely (and all too easily) go elsewhere. And the only way we could do that was by working together. By watching each other's backs and sharing the work and pulling together when times got tough. Although we were a staff full of independent workers, we couldn't survive if we all tried to go at it alone.

Those were my thoughts and my way of combining the ideas we had talked about as a group into a short and memorable group of values and behaviors that, if we applied ourselves to them, would have real impact on the kind of organization we needed to be.

Stay tuned. I'll continue this story in future posts. Up next: The rubber hits the road. Our initial experiments in trying to see the values in action inside our organization.

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This post was written by Eric Lanke, an association executive, blogger and author. For more information, visit www.ericlanke.blogspot.com, follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

When the Boss Loses His Cool

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First of all, it happens. Did you think it wouldn't? Bosses are human beings and sometimes they get frustrated. Sometimes it's about things that are happening inside their organization and sometimes it's about things happening in the life they lead away from their organization. But occasionally--and probably eventually--the stoic masks they wear will slip and some of the frustration that every human being feels will show through.

Okay? Fine. But, what does it mean when a boss loses his cool?

Frankly, not much. As I said, it probably means that he's frustrated. And that he's human. Maybe he's trying to do too much and maybe he needs to slow things down, but maybe not. It can sometimes be hard to tell, and there may not be much value in trying to dissect it.

Because what's more important is understanding what it doesn't mean.

It doesn't mean that he's no longer the boss. He obviously needs to own his behavior, and if he steps over the line he should apologize, but he's still the boss. And by that I mean he still has to make the decisions that bosses need to make.

It also doesn't mean he's wrong. It doesn't mean that he's right, either. The decisions bosses make are not really about being right or being wrong. They're about making the decision no one else in the organization can make, and sticking with it long enough to see if it is right or wrong.

You see, here's the thing.

Every organization does things that it already knows how to do. Decisions affecting those processes are best made by the people closest to them.

But a growing organization also tries to do things it doesn't know how to do, and decisions in that realm have to be made by someone who has the authority to commit resources, change the scope of someone's responsibilities, and resolve differences of opinion about what needs to be done.

Because there will be differences of opinion, especially when things like the allocation of resources and the scope of individual responsibilities are open questions. Someone has to make the call, and when the organization is operating out on the skinny branches, it has to be the boss that makes it. He's the one most likely to be looking out for the organization as a whole and, frankly, he's the one who's paid to take the heat if things go terribly wrong.

So in these situations, do what the boss says--even if he loses his cool when he says it.

Okay?

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This post was written by Eric Lanke, an association executive, blogger and author. For more information, visit www.ericlanke.blogspot.com, follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Cakes and Ale by W. Somerset Maugham

“Don’t you think it would be more interesting if you went the whole hog and drew him warts and all?”

“Oh, I couldn’t. Amy Driffield would never speak to me again. She only asked me to do the life because she felt she could trust my discretion. I must behave like a gentleman.”

“It’s very hard to be a gentleman and a writer.”

As good as any quote to sum up the theme of this delightful little tome, written eleven years after my favorite Maugham novel, and purported to be the author’s favorite of his own novels.

The second speaker above is Alroy (Roy) Kear, an English novelist of middling fame that has been asked to write a biography of one of the recently passed lions of literature--Edward Driffield--by that author’s second wife and widow. And the first and third speaker is our narrator, William Ashenden, to whom Kear has come for information about Driffield’s early life; for Ashenden knew Driffield as a younger man, when the lion was married to his first wife and, by most accounts, at the peak of his literary prowess.

The first wife, Rosie, is one of those characters in fiction that comes to symbolize much more than just her role in the story. She was Driffield’s muse and, evidently, the muse to many other men--Ashenden included. Here, the two of them talk about Rosie’s other affairs and Ashenden’s jealousy of them.

I looked at Rosie now, with angry, hurt, resentful eyes; she smiled at me, and I wish I knew how to describe the sweet kindliness of her beautiful smile; her voice was exquisitely gentle.

“Oh, my dear, why d’you bother your head about any others? What harm does it do you? Don’t I give you a good time? Aren’t you happy when you’re with me?”

“Awfully.”

“Well, then. It’s so silly to be fussy and jealous. Why not be happy with what you can get? Enjoy yourself while you have the chance, I say; we shall all be dead in a hundred years and what will anything matter then? Let’s have a good time while we can.”

She is a free spirit, Rosie is, one who sows happiness wherever she goes and, because she does so at least in disregard if not outright ignorance of the social norms that control the rest of society, she is viewed by most as something vulgar. Ashenden himself is troubled by her behavior, trained as he and all men are to believe that happiness can only come from the possession of women. But long after Rosie leaves both him and Driffield for new adventures in America, he comes to appreciate the unique role her spirit played in his art and the art of other great men.

This extended passage comes very late in the novel, when Maugham is clearly interested in summing things up and driving his points home. In it, Kear, Ashenden, and the second Mrs. Driffield are reminiscing, and they come across some photos of Rosie that Driffield had kept locked away in a trunk. I’ll make some comments along the way.

“And here is the bride,” said Mrs. Driffield, trying not to smile.

Poor Rosie, seen by a country photographer over forty years ago, was grotesque. She was standing very stiffly against a background of baronial hall, holding a large bouquet; her dress was elaborately draped, pinched at the waist, and she wore a bustle. Her fringe came down to her eyes. On her head was a wreath of orange blossoms, perched high on a mass of hair, and from it was thrown back a long veil. Only I knew how lovely she must have looked.

“She looks fearfully common,” said Roy.

“She was,” murmured Mrs. Driffield.

Of course she looked different to Ashenden. He is looking at her through the eyes of love, memory, and understanding of what she meant for him. But note especially how vulgar Kear and Mrs. Driffield think she was. It’s not just that they don’t see the muse Ashenden knew--they see something loathsome, something almost opposite.

But first, we’ll pause for this wonderful insight into the life of a successful author.

We looked at more photographs of Edward, photographs that had been taken of him when he began to be known, photographs when he wore only a moustache and others, all the later ones, when he was clean-shaven. You saw his face grown thinner and more lined. The stubborn commonplace of the early portraits melted gradually into a weary refinement. You saw the change in him wrought by experience, thought, and achieved ambition. I looked again at the photograph of the young sailorman and fancied that I saw in it already a trace of that aloofness that seemed to me so marked in the older ones and that I had had years before the vague sensation of in the man himself. The face you saw was a mask and the actions he performed without significance. I had an impression that the real man, to his death unknown and lonely, was a wraith that went a silent way unseen between the writer of his books and the fellow who led his life, and smiled with ironical detachment at the two puppets that the world took for Edward Driffield. I am conscious that in what I have written of him I have not presented a living man, standing on his feet, rounded, with comprehensive motives and logical activities; I have not tried to: I am glad to leave that to the abler pen of Alroy Kear.

I really enjoy this aspect of Maugham’s fiction--the way he peppers the narrative with piercing and lyrical observations of art and artists, and how both fare in an unsympathetic world. More on that later. But for now, let’s get back to Rosie, and how she is viewed by Ashenden vs. Kear and Mrs. Driffield.

I came across the photographs that Harry Retford, the actor, had taken of Rosie, and then a photograph of the picture that Lionel Hiller had painted of her. It gave me a pang. That was how I best remembered her. Notwithstanding the old-fashioned gown, she was alive there and tremulous with the passion that filled her. She seemed to offer herself to the assault of love.

“She gives you the impression of a hefty wench,” said Roy.

“If you like the milkmaid type,” answered Mrs. Driffield. “I’ve always thought she looked rather like a white nigger.”

That was what Mrs. Barton Trafford had been fond of calling her, and with Rosie’s thick lips and broad nose there was indeed a hateful truth in the criticism. But they did not know how silvery golden her hair was, nor how golden silver her skin; they did not know her enchanting smile.

“She wasn’t a bit like a white nigger,” I said. “She was virginal like the dawn. She was like Hebe. She was like a white rose.”

Mrs. Driffield smiled and exchanged a meaning glance with Roy.

“Mrs. Barton Trafford told me a great deal about her. I don’t wish to seem spiteful, but I’m afraid I don’t think that she can have been a very nice woman.”

“That’s where you make a mistake,” I replied. “She was a very nice woman. I never saw her in a bad temper. You only had to say you wanted something for her to give it to you. I never heard her say a disagreeable thing about anyone. She had a heart of gold.”

She sounds lovely, doesn’t she? But wait. Those aren’t the kinds of things she will be judged by.

“She was a terrible slattern. Her house was always in a mess; you didn’t like to sit down in a chair because it was so dusty and you dared not look in the corners. And it was the same with her person. She could never put a skirt on straight and you’d see about two inches of petticoat hanging down on one side.”

Mercy. Ashenden, how can you possible counter that?

“She didn’t bother about things like that. They didn’t make her any the less beautiful. And she was as good as she was beautiful.”

Nice try.

Roy burst out laughing and Mrs. Driffield put her hand up to her mouth to hide her smile.

“Oh, come, Mr. Ashenden, that’s really going too far. After all, let’s face it, she was a nymphomaniac.”

That’s it. It’s out. She broke the sexual mores of their society. She must be all bad.

“I think that’s a very silly word,” I said.

He will try. Ashenden will try to explain what Rosie was in a way they can understand.

“Well, then, let me say that she can hardly have been a very good woman to treat poor Edward as she did. Of course it was a blessing in disguise. If she hadn’t run away from him he might have had to bear that burden for the rest of his life, and with such a handicap he could never have reached the position he did. But the fact remains that she was notoriously unfaithful to him. From what I hear she was absolutely promiscuous.”

“You don’t understand,” I said. “She was a very simple woman. Her instincts were healthy and ingenuous. She loved to make people happy. She loved love.”

“Do you call that love?”

“Well, then, the act of love. She was naturally affectionate. When she liked anyone it was quite natural for her to go to bed with him. She never thought twice about it. It was not vice; it wasn’t lasciviousness; it was her nature. She gave herself as naturally as the sun gives heat or the flowers their perfume. It was a pleasure to her and she liked to give pleasure to others. It had no effect on her character; she remained sincere, unspoiled, and artless.”

How was that? Do you think they will understand that?

Mrs. Driffield looked as though she had taken a dose of castor oil and had just been trying to get the taste of it out of her mouth by sucking a lemon.

Evidently not.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “But then I’m bound to admit that I never understood what Edward saw in her.”

“Did he know that she was carrying on with all sorts of people?” asked Roy.

“I’m sure he didn’t,” she replied quickly.

Editor’s note: He did.

“You think him a bigger fool than I do, Mrs. Driffield,” I said.

“Then why did he put up with it?”

“I think I can tell you. You see, she wasn’t a woman who ever inspired love. Only affection. It was absurd to be jealous over her. She was like a clear deep pool in a forest glade into which it’s heavenly to plunge, but it is neither less cool nor less crystalline because a tramp and a gipsy and a gamekeeper have plunged into it before you.”

Roy laughed again and this time Mrs. Driffield without concealment smiled thinly.

“It’s comic to hear you so lyrical,” said Roy.

I stifled a sigh.

So did I. They just don’t get it.

I have noticed that when I am most serious people are apt to laugh at me, and indeed when after a lapse of time I have read passages that I wrote from the fullness of my heart I have been tempted to laugh at myself. It must be that there is something naturally absurd in a sincere emotion, though why there should be I cannot imagine, unless it is that man, the ephemeral inhabitant of an insignificant planet, with all his pain and all his striving is but a jest in an eternal mind.

Wow. Write that one down on a small card and carry it around in your wallet.

The conclusion here is that Ashenden in unable to make Kear and Mrs. Driffield understand. But there is a deeper question: Is he able to make you understand? Because that’s really the point, isn’t it, Dear Reader. The point of this whole story. Where does great art come from? After the journey you’ve taken through the novel--Ashenden’s journey, a journey through his eyes and heart--are you in a position to understand in a way that Kear and Mrs. Driffield can’t?

Okay. So dwell on that for a minute. But now, here’s a twist. For as much as Ashenden understands the role that a character like Rosie can play in the soul and inspiration of a writer, Rosie herself is incapable of understanding what makes a writer truly tick.

The very end of the novel is Maugham at his very best, deftly using the narrative flow of his characters and their relationships to explore the very esoteric subject of art and its painful genesis.

Here, Ashenden happens to run across Rosie years later while visiting New York. In the course of their discussion, she mentions the child she a Driffield had had at the very beginning of their marriage.

“I didn’t know you’d ever had a child,” I said with surprise.

“Oh, yes. That’s why Ted married me. But I had a very bad time when it came and the doctors said I couldn’t have another. If she’d lived, poor little thing, I don’t suppose I’d ever have run away with George. She was six when she died. A dear little thing she was and as pretty as a picture.”

“You never mentioned her.”

“No, I couldn’t bear to speak about her. She got meningitis and we took her to the hospital. They put her in a private room and they let us stay with her. I shall never forget what she went through, screaming, screaming all the time, and nobody able to do anything.”

Rosie’s voice broke.

Someday, I’ll write a thesis on the use of brevity in portraying horror in fiction, and this paragraph will be one of the examples I cite. The brutal efficiency of the words convey so much more than they deserve to.

But Ashenden has a different reaction.

“Was it that death Driffield described in The Cup of Life?”

The Cup of Life is Driffield’s controversial masterpiece. But note what Rosie says about it.

“Yes, that’s it. I always thought it so funny of Ted. He couldn’t bear to speak of it, any more than I could, but he wrote it all down; he didn’t leave out a thing; even little things I hadn’t noticed at the time he put in and then I remembered them. You’d think he was just heartless, but he wasn’t, he was upset just as much as I was. When we used to go home at night he’d cry like a child. Funny chap, wasn’t he?”

Sure, Rosie. Funny chap. Why would he do such a thing? Oh, wait. Here’s why…

It was The Cup of Life that had raised such a storm of protest; and it was the child’s death and the episode that followed it that had especially brought down on Driffield’s head such virulent abuse. I remembered the description very well. It was harrowing. There was nothing sentimental in it; it did not excite the reader’s tears, but his anger rather that such cruel suffering should be inflicted on a little child. You felt that God at the Judgment Day would have to account for such things as this.

Obvious. What writer wouldn’t want to write something like that? And most writers know that that kind of writing comes only from real harrowing experience, not from fancies that are simply dressed up to be.

But here’s the best part of all. Rosie’s incomprehension about what would possess someone to write about such a tragic circumstance prompts Ashenden to meditate upon the writer’s life. And, as our narrator, we are privy to the following thoughts that must surely have passed through Maugham’s mind as well.

It is full of tribulation. First he must endure poverty and the world’s indifference; then, having achieved a measure of success, he must submit with a good grace to its hazards. He depends upon a fickle public. He is at the mercy of journalists who want to interview him and photographers who want to take his picture, of editors who harry him for copy and tax gatherers who harry him for income tax, of persons of quality who ask him to lunch and secretaries of institutes who ask him to lecture, of women who want to marry him and women who want to divorce him, of youths who want his autographs, actors who want parts and strangers who want a loan, of gushing ladies who want advice on their matrimonial affairs and earnest young men who want advice on their compositions, of agents, publishers, managers, bores, admirers, critics, and his own conscience. But he has one compensation. Whenever he has anything on his mind, whether it be a harassing reflection, grief at the death of a friend, unrequited love, wounded pride, anger at the treachery of someone to whom he has shown kindness, in short any emotion or any perplexing thought, he has only to put it down in black and white, using it as the theme of a story or the decoration of an essay, to forget all about it. He is the only free man.

Wonderfully phrased, 100% true, and makes you wonder how much of the novel you have just read is autobiographical.

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As I think I’ve commented before, Maugham’s observations about the world and the cultures in it in Cakes and Ale are as inerrant as ever. Here’s a few that really jumped out at me.

Regarding the use of ready-made phrases to abbreviate common ideas into as few imaginative words as possible:

The Americans, who are the most efficient people on the earth, have carried this device to such a height of perfection and have invented so wide a range of pithy and hackneyed phrases that they can carry on an amusing and animated conversation without giving a moment’s reflection to what they are saying and so leave their minds free to consider the more important matters of big business and fornication.

Regarding beauty in art:

Beauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger. There is really nothing to be said about it. It is like the perfume of a rose: you can smell it and that is all: that is why the criticism of art, except in so far as it is unconcerned with beauty and therefore with art, is tiresome. All the critic can tell you with regard to Titian’s Entombment of Christ, perhaps of all the pictures in the world that which has most pure beauty, is to go look at it.

Regarding finding truth in fiction:

As we grow older we become more conscious of the complexity, incoherence, and unreasonableness of human beings; this indeed is the only excuse that offers for the middle-aged or elderly writer, whose thoughts should more properly be turned to graver matters, occupying himself with the trivial concerns of imaginary people. For if the proper study of mankind is man it is evidently more sensible to occupy yourself with the coherent, substantial, and significant creatures of fiction that with the irrational and shadowy figures of real life.

And regarding the subjective nature of time, this time squarely in the narrative, when Ashenden encounters and old classmate, now grown old like him:

He had drawn breath, walked the earth and presently grown to man’s estate, married, had children and they in turn had had children; I judged from the look of him that he had lived, with incessant toil, in penury. He had the peculiar manner of the country doctor, bluff, hearty, and unctuous. His life was over. I had plans in my head for books and plays, I was full of schemes for the future; I felt that a long stretch of activity and fun still lay before me; and yet, I supposed, to others I must seem the elderly man that he seemed to me.

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This post was written by Eric Lanke, an association executive, blogger and author. For more information, visit www.ericlanke.blogspot.com, follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Reading Between the Lines

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Two weeks ago, in Cut, Copy and Paste, I continued writing about the process I used to create my association's values statement, despite some misgivings about the value of values statements I've previously shared and still hold.

I had challenged my staff to take the initial values statement I had drafted--which contained the nine broad areas we had discussed during our retreat--and combine or refine the values and associated behaviors described so that there were no more than six areas (and perhaps less).

Four of my nine staff members took me up on this challenge, returning revised drafts incorporating their thoughts on how to condense the statement down. In reviewing their work, I made the following observations:

1. Innovation and teamwork were core concepts that everyone seemed to emphasize.

I found the two concepts an interesting and, in some ways, a juxtaposed pair. Innovation--described as it was with behaviors like challenging prevailing assumptions, taking smart risks, and exhibiting a bias towards action--seemed to ideally embody that future organization we wanted to create. We weren't any of these things currently (at least not consistently), and there seemed to be a broad consensus that we needed to move more deliberately in this direction.

Teamwork, in contrast--described as it was with behaviors like treating people with respect, being receptive to constructive criticism, and sharing information openly and proactively--seemed specifically designed to address some of the dysfunctional elements of our current culture. Reading through the behaviors people had grouped under Teamwork, I realized that any well-functioning organization would view some of them as things that should go without saying. Admitting you weren't innovative was easy. Who was? But admitting that you didn't treat people with respect, or accept constructive criticism, or share information? That meant something was wrong.

I mentioned that this juxtapostion between what we wanted to fix and what we wanted to grow into had been part of our dialogue around values from the very beginning. And here it was again, manifesting as an essential tension as we started honing things down into a memorable and actionable set of values.

2. Concerns about maintaining a focus on service to our members were still lurking beneath the surface.

The importance of service, and more specifically, service to our members, had been a topic of conversation during our retreat, and it had made it into the initial draft as one of the nine core values. But each of the four staff members who took a stab at revising and condensing the draft did something different with it. One left it entirely alone. Two others reinforced it with new language, one focused on providing value for the member's dues dollar, the other focused on being responsive to their needs. The fourth dropped it from the list of core values, but distributed the behaviors that describe it in other areas.

In other words, everyone felt that service to our members belonged somewhere, but no one agreed on where that place should be.

I didn't necessarily disagree. Providing exceptional programs and services to our members was obviously tightly aligned with our overall success, and it surely belonged somewhere in a document that described the values and behaviors we knew we needed to exhibit if we were going achieve that success. But my own preference was that the concept more appropriately belonged as a means to that end, and not an end in and of itself. Member service, as the rallying cry that knit us together, would, in my opinion, keep us all as followers, and not the leaders I thought we needed to be.

Stay tuned. I'll continue this story in future posts. Up next: Making some tough decisions and putting the final draft together.

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This post was written by Eric Lanke, an association executive, blogger and author. For more information, visit www.ericlanke.blogspot.com, follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

What If I Make a Mistake?

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What do you mean "if"? Isn't this a better question to ask: What happens when I make a mistake?

Because you're going to make them. You'll make them, I'll make them, everyone in this organization is going to make them--and some of them are going to be whoppers. Did you really think we were going to be able to navigate the difficult waters ahead without making any mistakes?

I mean, look around. Surely you can see all the uncertainty that surrounds us. And surely you can appreciate how difficult it is just making sure everyone is rowing in the same direction, much less trying to get us all to any particular destination. You might think that it's my job as the boss to do exactly that--to remove the uncertainty and provide a well-reasoned and resourced plan that will inexorably lead to our success. A lot of people think that. And I guess they're not far wrong in doing so.

But how do you think someone in my position comes up with such a plan? Maybe you think that's what the corner office is for. I do spend a lot of time in there, after all. Maybe you think I'm sitting in there for hours at a time, thinking and devising the grand strategy that will solve all of our problems. Right?

Wrong. The plan--to the extent that it exists at all--isn't cooked up in isolation from the people it's meant to serve. Rather, it's created in continuous interaction with them. There is no end to the amount of behind-the-scenes work that we must do to prepare for those interactions. That's the nature of our work. But if we never push ourselves out onto the stage--if we never get in front of our members and let them see what we've been working on--then we will never learn anything about what they really need from us and how we can best provide it. In fact, the more frequently we can interact with them, the better.

That means taking risks. That means doing things we don't fully understand. That means launching things that aren't yet finished. And all of that means making mistakes. And being comfortable with it.

So let me try to answer that better question for you. What happens when you make a mistake?

Simple. You learn. And if you share what you learned with everyone in the organization, then the organization leans, too. And that--learning--is frankly more important than any particular objective we might want to apply that learning to.

Let me put it this way. No one gets in trouble around here for making mistakes. They get in trouble for not learning from the mistakes they make.

Isn't that obvious? If not, then I must be making mistakes of my own.

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This post was written by Eric Lanke, an association executive, blogger and author. For more information, visit www.ericlanke.blogspot.com, follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Powell by Eric Lanke

A little while ago, I made my novel, Columbia, available for download from this blog.

Columbia is the story of Theodore Lomax, a nineteen-year-old Union solider in the American Civil War, and as committed as any to the ideal of human freedom. After being assigned to the army of William Tecumseh Sherman, shortly after the general’s infamous March to the Sea, he willingly participates in the destruction of civilian property in Columbia, South Carolina, believing his acts are justified by Southern resistance to the Northern cause of emancipation. But when the destruction escalates into violence against the civilians themselves, he becomes disillusioned, and feels compelled to strike out in opposition to his own countrymen.

The novel is told from Lomax's point of view, but there are ten other supporting characters, each with a story of his or her own. "Powell" is one of these stories, centering on the character of Albert Powell, and describing his pre-war involvement with a small pro-slavery organization in his hometown of Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

There was a time when I thought these stories should alternate with the chapters in Columbia, presenting a richer but perhaps more tangled tapestry of the lives that painfully converge in the novel's climactic scenes. But Columbia is clearly a more coherent narrative without them. Still, they were valuable to me as an author, and I hope you find them useful and enjoyable as a reader.

Powell by Eric Lanke - $3

Clicking the "Add to Cart" button will take you through a short payment process and provide you with a PDF download of the story that you can read on your computer or tablet, or which you can print at your convenience. The story is about 20,800 words and the document is 68 pages long. Given its theme and historical setting, the work reflects the racism of the time, and includes episodes of violence and strong language.

Want a sample? Here's are the first thousand or so words.

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Albert Powell was a man who believed things happened for a reason. He hadn’t always felt that way. His entire youth and first few years of his young adulthood had seemed very much like one random event after the other. Like the chicken pox Powell nearly died from when he was eight, things seemed to come out of nowhere into his life, cause a great deal of pain and turmoil while they lingered, and then depart just as mysteriously as they arrived, leaving behind an inscrutable pattern of effects like the pockmarks that had permanently scarred his face. The awareness that events which appeared random while one was living through them could be connected into a clear pattern with the exercise of hindsight did not come to him until one dark night in the middle of his twentieth year.

It was shortly after the Reverend Thomas Hutchins came to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The church on Twelfth Street Powell attended had the autumn before lost its minister, a man of imposing bulk and reputation who had tragically postponed giving up the bottle for one year too many. The Reverend Hutchins had been chosen by the Council of Deacons in Boston to serve as the new shepherd of the Twelfth Street flock, which had evidently been left to wander aimlessly for the seven months between his predecessor’s death and his arrival.

Powell still remembered the excitement that foreshadowed Hutchins’s appearance in their community, especially among the young ladies of the congregation, who had heard through whatever currents carry such news that the Reverend possessed all three of the traits they held most desirable in a man—he was young, good-looking, and unmarried. And sure enough, when he arrived in mid-March he was exactly as advertised. A tall young man with a boyish mop of thick black hair and a twinkle in his eye that made one suspect he hadn’t learned everything he knew in the seminary.

His first sermon to the Twelfth Street congregation was also something Powell would not soon forget.

“Lastly, on this Sunday morning,” the Reverend Hutchins had said, “I want to talk about the latest news from Washington, the awful decision the Supreme Court has made against a man named Dred Scott. Some of you may still be unfamiliar with that name, although it has been in all the papers and is a matter, I fear, of the greatest urgency. If there are some among you who do not know who Dred Scott is, than I praise God and His wisdom for establishing this church so I may have the chance to enlighten you. As children of God we must be ever vigilant against the works of Satan in our human society. Listen closely as I speak of what may be the fallen angel’s latest accomplishment.”

Powell had certainly heard the name Dred Scott before, he had even read it in some of the newspapers the Reverend Hutchins had mentioned, and he had immediately known from the Reverend’s short introduction that he and Hutchins had two clearly different views on the matter. Work of the Devil? To Powell’s way of thinking, the decision against Dred Scott amounted to nothing more than a declaration for the natural order of things.

Nonetheless, Powell had sat and listened to the Reverend’s entire diatribe, both his description of the facts as well as his—and evidently God’s—opinions on what those facts meant for the future of the country. Dred Scott was a slave who had been taken by his master to live for a period of time in the free state of Illinois. Upon their return to slave-holding Missouri, Scott began to sue for his freedom, arguing that once in Illinois, a state in which the institution of slavery had been outlawed, he had no longer been a slave, and his master no longer had any right to take him anywhere against his will. The lawsuit had been filed a number of years ago at the local level, but had recently, through a series of appeals and countersuits, reached the Supreme Court of the United States. The Court had just issued its final ruling in the matter, and that ruling was not favorable to Scott and his supporters.

Slaves and their descendents, the Court had said, were not citizens, and therefore had no rights the Constitution was obliged to defend. Scott had still been a slave during the time he had spent in Illinois, and although Illinois certainly had the right to outlaw slavery within its borders, it did not have the right to deprive visiting slaveholders of their property.

Or so said the Supreme Court of the United States of America. The good Reverend Hutchins clearly had a different point of view, and he was determined to share it with his new parishioners.

“The Court’s argument,” Hutchins had said that Sunday morning, “is ridiculous in the extreme. It is based on faulty reasoning and cannot be the work of honest men dedicated to the betterment of all mankind. If the State of Illinois does not have the right to free the slaves that slaveholders bring onto its soil, then it does not have the ability to outlaw slavery within its borders. In the wake of this decision, what is to stop other slave owners from bringing their slaves into Illinois and perpetuating their unrighteous bondage on the supposedly free soil of that fine state? What is to stop ten, a hundred, a thousand slave owners from bringing a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand slaves into Illinois and turning that free state into a place where the passions of Satan reign supreme? And if they can do this to Illinois, what’s to stop them from doing it to every other free state in the Union? Even possibly here in New Hampshire itself?”

Powell had not fully seen the logic of Hutchins’s argument, nor the likelihood of the events he seemed to foretell. First of all, as Hutchins’s predecessor had often posed to him, did a state have the right to take a man’s mules away from him, simply because he brought them into its territory? Of course he didn’t. A man’s slaves, like his mules, belonged to him, and no one had the right to unjustly deprive him of his property, not even a lunatic state government that passes an incomprehensible law mandating that mules be treated as free and equal citizens. Secondly, Powell had a hard time imagining an army of slave owners bringing legions of slaves up to the rocky soil of New Hampshire to help them eke some sort of living out of the few select crops that could be raised between the cold, harsh winters. Powell knew those slaves were making a fortune for their owners, picking cotton and cutting tobacco in the long growing seasons that blanketed the South. Why would they willingly give all that up?

But Powell, like the rest of the congregation, did not interrupt the Reverend Hutchins’s sermon with any of these counter arguments. Powell knew there were plenty of his neighbors who certainly agreed with Hutchins’s perspective on this issue, just as he knew there were a few like him who did not. Listening to other church goers applaud Hutchins for his platitudes as the Reverend concluded his speech, Powell found himself sitting quietly in the back pew thinking of all the things he would say at that night’s meeting.

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This post was written by Eric Lanke, an association executive, blogger and author. For more information, visit www.ericlanke.blogspot.com, follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.