On Guilt, Responsibility, and the Power of Story: Notes from the Field

I'm a Co-founder and Creative Strategist for CreateHere, and I recently returned from a 25-day tour of seven European cities through the Marshall Memorial Fellowship. With two feet on American soil, I sent my team this dispatch about the importance of responsibility.

November 16, 2009.

Guilty, guilty… that’s all I could think about on while I shuttled across the world on a series of trains and planes. I was working my way across the Netherlands, Germany and almost half of the Northern Hemisphere on my long trip home, and the guilt wasn’t a sharp, cutting type (the kind just above your stomach… you know the type), but the slow-rising full body tension that finds its way to the back of your throat and sits for days on end.

With a bit of distance between now, and some convergent reflections brought on by the twenty year anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, as well as Veteran’s Day, that wound of guilt is healing to a scar of responsibility, and I’m finding ways to express its source.

It started while riding in an overnight train from Amsterdam to Berlin, appropriately foreshadowed by the previous week’s activities. From Belgrade, Serbia, we flew to Munich and then Leipzig, Germany. Leipzig, a former East German city, offered our first real glimpse into what the life divided had been like. We toured the former Stassi (East German Special Police) headquarters and saw some of the tools of manipulation and fear mongering the Stassi implemented first-hand. Honestly, the relics of repression were somewhat surreal for someone that grew up in such a starkly contrasted free society.

After seeing the Stassi tools, we sat down with Reinhard Bohse, a leading figure in the peaceful revolution of 1989 and listened to his story of determination and commitment. As we left that discussion, the stairs we descended were the same that once sheltered thousands of candles during the revolution: the candles were a sign of peace from the people who were feeling unrest to those who were bound to perpetuate a failing system. Pictures of the burning candles are one of the most powerful metaphors for non-violent change that I’ve ever been witness to.

Leipzig led us to Berlin for the Marshall Forum on Transatlantic Affairs. Of course, the focus of the Forum was the Fall, twenty years later, and the ramifications thereof. The air in the conference rooms was rather heady and academic, though perhaps the lack of distance from the events makes formality a cloak of comfort for discussion.

In spite of the formality, we heard from amazing change-agents who had led dissenting movements from various platforms. The stories ranged from pragmatic and logistical to heartfelt and cathartic. A former physician, biologist, and activist, Jen Reich gave an opening address that closed more powerfully than most addresses I’ve ever heard. The call for eternal vigilance towards the pursuit of liberty from a survivor of oppression will forever haunt me.

Still, I was not truly moved, not reflecting, and not feeling guilty. Shortly, Berlin was over, and it was time to visit the Netherlands for rest and recovery. Contrary to the popular conception of Amsterdam, I found it culturally enlightened, architecturally fascinating, and distinctive for reasons far superior than the city’s famed “coffee” shops. A city that has 1.5 bicycles per person and the largest bike parking garage in all of Europe is near to my heart for that reason, and the canal system (rivaling that of Venice) is an engineering feat that our own Gulf Coast could learn from. Thanks to good food and some much needed sleep, Amsterdam too was over in a moment.

We boarded a train for Berlin at 7 am, and made it almost five hours before we were awoken by a young couple in their late 20s. They were distinctively German in their features and obviously a bit timid sitting across from an imposing American and my friend Scott, who hails from Alaska. We were a foreign sight.

After some uncomfortable silence, the Beck’s beer the man across from me was drinking finally kicked in. “You are from the States?” he asked. From there, we were off to the races.

He was a bit older than me and she a bit younger, and they were heading back home to Leipzig from Cologne where his pictures had been featured in an exhibition. For all superficial purposes, we were much alike. He loved skating, I love biking. They were both creatives, which is where I focus my work. The latter half of our conversation traversed foreign territory for me: they shared stories of growing up in Communist-controlled East Germany. had never considered what life could be like without popular media, without culture that wasn’t infused with propaganda, without color in both the literal and metaphorical ways. Their stories were matter of fact and they both shined when they spoke of the fall of the wall. This told me all that I needed to know of what the transition meant to them: there lives had been half lost in to the repression of others and that’s an extremely foreign notion to Americans, and myself in particular. As our conversations wound down and we shook hands and parted, the first pang of guilt hit.

That sense of guilt grew as I bounced from place to place, slowly approaching home. The closer I got to home, the more I knew that I would never be the same again. As introspective as I’d tried to be in the past, as worldly as I’d been in my views, I realized: it had all been a failure. I had never truly understood how incredible my life circumstances have been. I’ve always known freedom, I’ve never seen war, and I’ve always been able to question, speak and move freely. As I said in opening, that guilt came from the shared stories of my new friends, a guilt now scarred into responsibility. I send this final Marshall Fellowships dispatch to anyone who’s out there reading as a call to action. Think now about what you take for granted, and make it so no longer. I know I will.

The People who Populate our Travels: Notes from the Field

I'm a Co-founder and Creative Strategist for CreateHere, and I recently returned from a 25-day tour of seven European cities through the Marshall Memorial Fellowship. With two feet on American soil, I sent my team this dispatch about a far away place from recent memory: Belgrade, Serbia.

November 5, 2009.

The first chill of fall was in the air as I awoke in Serbia. Having arrived late the previous afternoon, my colleagues and I were still travel-warn and bleary-eyed. Filip, our host, had made the most of our time so far, proving he was more organized and efficient than the previous two coordinators. As a result, I was feeling more and more comfortable with Eastern Europe, a place I came to rife with preconceived notions and anxieties. On this day, Filip would be joined by a support staff of three, including a tour guide, driver and host. Their stories warrant retelling here.

Chirra was our tour guide.

By all descriptions, he was a normal, middle aged guy, with dark hair and round features. His English was fantastic, and to say his knowledge of the nuances and layers of Serbian history was impressive would be a vast understatement.

Chirra made his living as a tour guide, saying his lifestyle offered him the opportunity to save money and travel in the off-season. That alone would have been enough to place Chirra high on my list of “mad props.” But he was very modest: the entire trip might have passed without me know more of him had it not been for a conversation we had over lunch, conveniently held in a fortress some 2,000 years old. In that discussion, Chirra told me how he had been part of student demonstrations during the Milosevic regime. He would regularly leave school with a group of classmates in the months leading to the overthrow, and during these organized demonstrations, he would take commands from a powerful dissenting structure. Chirra was on the ground for 89 days in Belgrade, during which NATO bombing came in regular intervals for the purpose of infrastructure lockdown and psychological combat, often during periods of calm, in the middle of the night. In fact, he was part of the group that stormed the federal government building just as the regime fell.

Images of this same dissenting group were seen around the world, and I distinctly remember being in my living room for that epic moment in Chirra’s life, watching, not knowing I would eventually meet this man and that history would become real, visceral in fact, in that conversation.

But he never mentioned it until I asked. I’m sure that he could have made bigger tips from foreign tourists wanting to vicariously experience the horror and strife of violent transitions. He spoke of this time in his life as a part of him that had come and gone, and I was honored that he shared. What’s more, I was humbled to stare a man in the face and realize how privileged my life had been and how but for a place of birth, his story could have been my own.

Dragon was our driver.

Dragon didn’t speak much English, though I could tell from his eyes that he understood much more than he let on. Flat-footed, he stared me in the eye: making him about 6’4”. He had the square jaw and menacing stature of the communist soldiers in movies from my childhood. And yet all this was in opposition with a gentle spirit that brought me pause at the instant my mind raced to prejudge.

I would learn that Dragon had once been a prize-winning boxer, a fact that his broad shoulders and long arms confirmed. He was a fan of Serbian brass music, which fascinated me on my visit, especially in the blue grass tones I heard, or wanted to hear, underneath. The music is a blend of raw metal sounds and rhythms, sounds that have drifted across generations.

What I’ll always remember was how Dragon watched over us. It was as if he felt the burden of all future Trans-Atlantic relations on his shoulders, and accordingly, he watched us as a shepherd does his flock. He knew we were in a place that was strange and he had lived to see the cruelties that we had only heard of, and that position left him with a great deal of responsibility. He lectured cab drivers that took us to individual appointments with a giant, shaking fist. I can only imagine what he told them, but I know a few things: we were cordially delivered, our drivers had turned ashen-faced, and we didn’t have to pay for our lifts.

On the final night of our visit, we convinced Dragon to join us at our going away dinner. He sat at the head of the table and watched us in fellowship and revelry as if we were his own.

Chirra and the Dragon led us to Jeremiah.

Jeremiah was of average build, in above-average health for a man in his sixties. The shock of white hair around his head gave way to a neatly coiffed beard, à la Abraham Lincoln. We first met him on a tour of his labor of love, the Museum of Bread. Jeremiah’s talents were many, but it seemed that his paintings of traditional Serbian landscapes and scenes had gained him international notoriety and resources to preserve traditions and artifacts through his museum.

The wonderfully hand-crafted structure was all built by Jeremiah, and served as a display place for hundreds of artifacts used in the collection and processing of wheat and the baking of bread. The entire collection was amazing, but I was most drawn to and original McCormick and Co. reaper that worked with mule assistance. Jeremiah had also gone to great lengths to preserve the tradition of bread-making, beyond just the tools that make production possible. His artwork and pottery showed various examples of how bread was used for the celebrations and sorrows of all major life events, as well as explored the spiritual contexts for bread, and Jeremiah was especially interested in how bread related to the body of Christ.

What was more striking, however, was Jeremiah’s character, which drove his admirable vision. He brimmed with energy and ended our tour telling us stories about everything from plane crashes to beautiful women. We laughed ourselves to tears, and washed down his tales with homemade liquor. It was an experience in grace, and an unforgettable one.

As I think about these three characters, and the many more that I met and traveled with across Europe, I realize that the landscapes and cathedrals of my journey are blending together in my mind. Now, I’m left with people, and happily so: a journey of mere images and artifacts would have been worthless. What left a mark on my soul? The small moments of connection with other individuals. These moments serve as subtle reminders that our paths are all different, and that we all have a story (or two) to share.

Future Economies in Italy’s Piedmont: Notes from the Field

I'm one of CreateHere’s co-founders and Creative Strategists. I recently embarked on a month-long trip abroad through the Marshall Memorial Fellowship, and sent my team this dispatch from Italy.

October 26, 2009.

The pace of my trip has sped up significantly, to point where it’s become difficult for me to write regularly. That’s probably best, though: Italy, our most recent stop, takes time to digest, literally and figuratively.

We flew from Paris to Turin via the French/Italian Alps, welcomed by the violent shudders of “Siberian Winds” some 24,000 feet above sea level. The plane’s shaking was unlike anything I’d experienced before, and the panicked look on the flight attendant’s face must have mirrored my own. A silver lining, however: this was to be the first and only terror of my visit to Italy.

We were welcomed at the home café of Italy’s largest coffee company, Lavazza. The raciness of their advertisement campaigns was in sharp contrast to the humility and easy candor of our host, Piero Gastaldo of the Compagnia di San Paolo.

The Compagnia—company—has billions in assets and stands as one of Europe’s top three private philanthropic foundations. It began as a brotherhood of social service in 1563, and following the recent global economic crisis, is now one of the world’s 10 largest banks

Over nearly five centuries of growth, the Compagnia’s philanthropic arm spun out and now focuses on a mission of bettering Turin specifically, as well as the larger world, by connecting the local dimension to the global sphere.

During this trip, I’ve had the opportunity to witness an exciting fact: many great cities that excel at improvement derive that capacity not through transitional governments but through the long-range vision of benevolent philanthropic entities.

If Paris was a “Moveable Feast”, then Turin was a fixed celebration of place and presence. From touchdown to wheels up, our visit showed how a post-agrarian (and perhaps re-agrarian) economy has transformed itself into the epi-center of a movement.

On my first morning in the city, I strolled out for a 7:00 am market visit. It was Tuesday, and conventional wisdom has taught me not to have high hopes for early mid-week mornings, but insomnia drove me to restless exploration. I was blown away to find Europe’s largest outdoor market, boasting more than 1,000 stalls of fresh food, meats, cheeses, fish, clothing and sundries of all types. People of all stations piled into the market to shop, but also engage in the rich cultural tradition that is a town market: the market is far more than just a place to get supplies. It’s a place where news is passed from booth to booth, where culinary traditions are preserved, and where immigrants and natives alike gather around the shared concerns of sustenance and survival.

It is evidence of a good practice: the market is the flagship for a region that is conscious of where it came from and where it’s going.

Our travels and studies took us to the production facilities of the aforementioned Lavazza coffee company, where the discussions focused more on grower conditions than profit margins; the emphasis on carbon reduction rather than global economic crisis. Lavazza does well by doing good, and that was clear throughout their presentation.

From Lavazza, we drove deep into the Piedmont Plateau to tour the University of Gastroendemonic Sciences, where undergraduate and masters students were building the skills of palate definition, taste recognition scales, and agro-business. Their goal is to become front-line leaders of the quickly globalizing food renaissance. From preserving all of the wines of Italy to developing standardized palate recognition scales for the world, the Institute is the brainchild of Slow Food founder Carlo Petrini. The shining eyes among the student body was enough to prove to me that magic is happening in that valley.

There’s no way to capture that entire valley in one dispatch, but I can say that I had two of the best meals of my life in the course of twelve hours there; drank beer that is inspiring a revolution in the Italian wine country; stood on top of a hill and soaked up the cool breeze that turns out some of the world’s best grapes; talked Slow Food strategy in the office of Carlo Petrini; and changed my outlook on the world. It’s a big valley, y’all.

I realized: we are faced with morally imperative issues on a frequent basis. From genocide in the developing world, to our footprint on the earth, our shared values tell us that things are wrong, but that we cannot work alone. Transformation can only come when moral imperative meets fiscal imperative, and that’s what I witnessed in Italy’s Piedmont. Slow in no longer an isolated idea: it’s a robust and growing economy that is poised to change the way we think about sustenance and agrarian economies.

As a firm believer in the free market, this brings a smile to my face. It also restores my confidence that markets follow the consumer and not the other way around. There’s hope, then, for leaving this world better than we found it.

Setting the Table for a Movable Feast: Notes from the Field

I'm one of CreateHere’s co-founders and Creative Strategists. I recently embarked on a month-long trip abroad through the Marshall Memorial Fellowship, and sent my team this dispatch from Paris.

October 12, 2009.

I arrived in Paris with some anxiety: prior descriptions I’d heard of the French (and you’ve undoubtedly heard them, too) ranged from irrational, blind admiration (we all know a Francophile), all the way to utter disgust (we’ve all had a Freedom Fry). Further, I came to Paris knowing I’d be on my own without much command for the language, and in this country above all others, I’d been told that was a cardinal sin.

My anxiety was grounded in the idea of dissonance and difference. And yet what I found was harmony, the type of raw and edgy harmony that can only happen when people and place intersect, with the very old and the very new working together.

In Blink, Malcom Gladwell gets at an unspoken truth: we have a sixth sense to “know” truth long before we can articulate the “why.” Our guts tell us its good before we have the words to say so. After two hours on foot in Paris, I was able to know the city as Ernest Hemingway did, as a Movable Feast. After 24 hours immersed, I think I have the words to express why Hemingway was able to say that.

In my world, people and place are inextricably connected, so I’ll have to address both. In Paris, I stand in awe of my physical surroundings: around me, the delicate choreography of thousands of people walking, biking, scooting, and driving, graceful as ballerinas, aggressive as teenagers. Cathedrals, palaces, museums and parks, all dreamed up and executed on scales unfathomable at the time of their inception, and perhaps still today.

And the river. The River Seine flows as a primary artery through this city, as in so many of the cities I love. Norman Maclean puts it best: “Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.”

As for the people of Paris, they are mixed but not melted. A strong display of personal identity reminds us that individual cultures are to be celebrated, and accepted where they can not be understood. Civil discourse is an art form (a well-regarded one at that) that pairs thought and action. People protest here, and it is meaningfully done. Rather than repressing inner concerns, the French populace finds means to relieve themselves of civic passive aggression. Yes, young guys fight in the streets after succumbing to alcohol, always at hand, but they don’t use weapons: they are bruised but not broken. Call it what you will, but I’ll call it respect.

Exposure is what leads to respect, and it’s perhaps the most important gift we can take away from the ideals of urbanism. Disregard is all too easy when you never cross paths with starving immigrants or wayward travelers. Standing face-to-face, sharing in our joys and our appreciation for beauty: you can not deny our shared humanity.

This shared humanity strikes a chord with this American of European descent. In the faces of those around me here, I’ve begun to see the roots of many of those people who surround me at home. The sharp and still prevalent features of our European ancestors transposed across generations and continents, not as copies, but almost like an old photograph. Their is beauty in the rhyme that is history.

Before I left the US, Dr. Gary Weaver told our group that this trip would “help us understand what it is to be American.” I have to thank Paris for some of my newfound understanding on the subject. This is a city that has returned to me thousands of years of lost personal history, not just the hundreds that I once understood: being an American means knowing that history didn’t start with 1776. Paris is a place that speaks to the ages. And it reminds us, finally: we are more as many than as one.

Paris, je t’aime.

Institutions and the Future of Collaboration: Notes from the Field

I'm one of CreateHere’s co-founders and Creative Strategists. I recently embarked on a month-long trip abroad through the Marshall Memorial Fellowship, and sent my team this dispatch from a train in Belgium.

October 8, 2009.

Today marked my fourth day in Brussels, Belgium and already, this trip is offering some profound food for thought. My personal and professional experiences here have been woven through with what I recognize to be (sleep- and sweet-tea-deprived though I may be) some exciting, unexpected truths. It’s exhilarating to witness what we all hope for back home: there’s a growing hunger among the world’s progressive thinkers to find new modalities of living and doing business.

But we don’t learn significant lessons in silos, and this lesson, like many, started with time on my feet. After a redeye flight from Washington, we soaked up Brussels’ architectural and cultural heritage. The city is rich: natural Art Noveau swirls and streamline Art Deco curvatures; cookie-like waffles and sweetly effervescent Trappist beers. There’s a sense that history, order, and progress are combined here, that intersectionality isn’t a bi-product of organic growth: it’s a goal.

A large portion of the city’s landscape is dedicated to highly fortified (and somewhat antiseptic) facilities where bureaucracy reigns. The EU and NATO are stark backdrops for a bustling ex-patriot community, and interestingly, an underground creative scene. It’s an exercise in compare, contrast.

Our first night in the city happened to coincide with Nuit Blanche, a celebration of creativity across much of the city center. From fire dancers to rogue art booths to large public dances, over eighty individuals and groups animated public spaces in innovative ways well through the wee hours. It was electric, with citizens and tourists laughing, dancing, learning the night away.

Twenty-four hours later, I found myself in briefings and frank conversations at NATO. A Cold War relic with an uninspiring early ‘80s aesthetic, the place lacks vision. Often times, it seemed from presentations that they’d forgotten their initial purpose: bright people seemed overwhelmed by, but chained to, a bureaucratic inertia. Furthermore, the organizational mission has creeped to a place where climate control is qualified as a North Atlantic security issue.

At this point you might be asking, Josh, what’s with the stream of conscious dispatch? EU bureaucracy and Belgian Waffles… Is it just the jetlag talking?

It’s not random at all, though. NATO and Nuit Blanche are great examples of what Clay Shirky calls a transition as significant, paradigmatically, as Gutenberg’s printing press. That transition is from institution (often entrenched and bureaucratic) to collaboration (platforms for solving issues of shared concern)...

The organizers of Nuit Blanche looked at Brussels, full of people and places, as a series of assets. They set up a framework to bring disparate groups together, to perform and celebrate.

This led the community to see their places in new ways.

Parks, once for strolling, came to be for dancing and twirling fire.

Museums, once for hushed contemplation, emerged as places for hundreds to salsa and tango to the rhythm of live quartets.

City squares, once for simple transit, opened up to reggae DJ’s in pop-up campers and buses and hundreds of diverse dancers.

On the other hand, NATO works together towards an irrelevant mission: security against a singular, known, and predictable enemy. There’s been no cataloging of assets, nor discussion of the world that the members want to live in twenty-five years down the road. Moreover, there’s no evidence of questioning core competencies and opportunities.

Frankly, NATO is stuck in a perpetuity crisis that is plaguing governmental, non-profit and for-profit organizations around the world. For examples of this phenomena, look at our social security system, symphonies across the country (minus LA perhaps…) and corporate stalwarts like General Motors. These institutions have become slaves to sunk costs, legacy systems, and un-adaptive behaviors.

Yet, all is not lost. There is surely a need for a central command and deployment system for entities that seek peace through combined society just as there is a demand to celebrate creativity on the streets of cities worldwide. The task at hand is to embrace a sense of urgency in transforming existing platforms and building anew for the challenges and opportunities of the next one hundred years. No small task… but the future of the world just might depend on it.

What is “Here”? Notes from the Field

I'm one of CreateHere’s co-founders and Creative Strategists. I recently embarked on a month-long trip abroad through the Marshall Memorial Fellowship, and sent my team this dispatch from the road.

October 1, 2009.

Today I find myself in our nation’s capital, doing highly uncharacteristic things. First and foremost, wearing a suit and a name tag that’s not permanently part of my yellow shirt. But I’m also awash in other unfamiliar feelings.

Most notably, I miss home.

This is only further compounded by the fact that this name tag hanging around my neck simply has my name and the combined words “Create” and “Here.” As I meet new people, they tend to study the tag, ponder for an uncomfortable minute and then ask, “Sooo, where is Here?”. I usually only get a moment to find words befitting a place that captivates me. That’s why I wanted to write more here.

Now, Home is an elusive concept in a digital society, and Here is even more esoteric. Let me expound a bit more on what I mean.

First, Home. My home is a topographical “saucer” on the earth where the land and the water intersect with the Southern sky in a way unlike anywhere else I’ve ever been. It’s the first major break in a mountain chain that runs hundreds of miles to the northeast, a geographical touchstone that has directed settlement patterns for thousands of years.

And it is a fertile valley in many senses. Our agrarian past is not so distant and our fields and surrounding foodshed are putting more sustenance on local tables by the day. The spirit of innovation that found roots in primary elements like metal and sugar is today reemerging in areas like clean energy, transportation, sustainable manufacturing, technology, and design.

Perhaps most importantly, it’s a place where people come together to do things that are larger than any one individual.

On the subject of people it should be noted that we, the citizens of Here, are wildly different. Our ages, our backgrounds, our incomes, our educations, even what we individually regard as quality of life. Here is all over the map. Still, there is on constant: an overwhelming sense that our individual pursuit of happiness is advanced by thinking and acting in ways bigger than ourselves.

And before you accuse me of being pollyannaish about Here, let me also say: we’ve come so far, but we have farther to go. Our rising tide has not lifted all boats. Our growth and vehicle patterns have isolated entire areas of our city and groups of people that somehow seem forgotten. These people and places teem with unrealized potential but often stand before barriers to entry that seem insurmountable. This unrealized potential should stand as a call to action to each and every engaged citizen to never declare “mission accomplished.” Community building is a process, not a static goal, far on the horizon.

So, where is Here? Here is home. Here is Chattanooga. Here is the best city in the world, not for any individual attribute but for a spirit that admits, anything is possible when people care equally about themselves as for others. A city rich in history and ripe with potential standing on a precipice. A city spreading it’s ever strengthening wings about to embark on another twenty-five years of incredible change and progress with an eye for the benefit of all and an uncompromising commitment to quality. A city that I love and can’t wait to get home to.