Dine In/Help Out

Last year, I had the privilege of hosting two of my long-time clients—Mike Cola, until recently the president of Shire Pharmaceuticals, and Jerry Sweeney, the CEO of Brandywine Realty Trust, along with the beautiful women in their lives, for an initiative called Dine In/Help Out.  Dine In/Help Out is designed to promote healthy eating through its Farm to Families program.  I chronicled my efforts here, on the blog.  Confessed to being a less-than-perfect cook who is blessed with near-perfect friends.

This summer St. Christopher's Foundation for Children is sponsoring its second DIHO event, and because I adore Jan Shaeffer, the Foundation's executive director, and because the St. Christopher's Foundation crowd is my all-time most favorite philanthropic Philly crowd, I was there, at the launch party.  Read about the whole story here, in this Joan A. Bang Mainline Media News.  Or go to the Dine In/Help Out site and see what you can do to have fun and help this worthy cause.

Thank you, Kimberly Hallman of Devine + Powers, for sending this to me just now.

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celebrating Mike Cola, Shire President, as he steps toward a new future

I don't often bring my business life onto this literary blog, but today has to be different.  Today I wish to honor Mike Cola, with whom I have had the pleasure of working at various corporations for the past two decades. Since 2005, Mike has been at Shire, a company that has grown from one primarily dependent on a single product to one now serving patients all over the world with a wide range of central nervous system, gastrointestinal, and renal treatments—and a company (most importantly) with a burgeoning Specialty development pipeline, thanks in large part to Mike's innovative, questing, and (quite frankly) brilliant mind.  Thanks, too, to the team Mike built.

When Shire announced Mike's resignation as president of the Specialty Pharma business yesterday, I thought back on the many conversations I have been privileged to have with this man.  We had a formal excuse—the internal Shire publication that I write—and we would (with the guidance and impetus provided by Charlene McGrady) get the job done.

But when there was time to spare, there would be so much more—conversations about history (personal and global); conversations about science; conversations about the kids Mike would meet along the way in his capacity as basketball coach and quiet giver; conversations about the beach and birds; conversations about the wife and children he deeply cherishes; conversations about chickens, eggs, the resurrection of barns; conversations about books; conversations about his dad.  I have consulted since I was twenty-five years old.  I have met some special people.  Mike Cola will always be, to me, one of those very special people.  He cares about big things.  He is prophetic.  He changes companies and lives in ways both sweeping and small.  He looks out across his desk and asks you how you're doing.  He remembers (his memory is startling) every last thing you ever told him.  He asks how your family is. He asks about the kids you teach and the books you want to write.  He comes to your birthday party and he arrives at your house when (almost paralyzed by anxiety) you have invited him for a Dine In/Help Out meal.

Mike Cola is one of the great minds out there—a scientist, a leader, a deep reader and complex thinker, a farmer, a philanthropist, a father, a husband.  He could be intimidating, if he wanted to be, but he's too interested in learning and doing more to crowd another out.

I will miss Mike greatly as I continue my travels throughout Shire.  But most of all, I wish him happiness—more time with his beautiful wife and kids, with those eggs in that barn, with the birds along the shore, and with whatever great thing he will do next.

Things change. The world opens itself newly.

   

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Dine In, Help Out: The Day After

Many of you have kindly sent your your encouragements to me during these Dine In, Help Out days, and so this is my final report back to you: it was a good and right thing to do.

Because the fact is that you can spend as much time as you want casting spider webs aside or watching Nick edge new stones into the garden. You can wonder obsessively if the yellow callas detract from the rust callas, if you have any business attempting appetizers, if you are just plain out of your mind for inviting two of the area's top business leaders and their beautiful women into your very modest home. You can wonder and you can worry, and then 6:30 comes, and there's no going back: the party finally begins.

It's not really, in the end, the food that makes a party (thank goodness). No one takes a tour of the garden and judges the stone work. No one searches for spider webs, or if they do, it frankly doesn't matter. People make a party, and last night I had the privilege of introducing two men to each other who share so many things—a talent for dreaming big and acting effectively on those dreams (these men build companies; they build legacies), a distinctly philanthropic lean, a transparent commitment to the families they have built, an abiding love for their fathers, and so much shared interest in farming ways that a good half hour of talk gets given over to the egg-laying-business of chickens.

These men also have incredibly good taste in women, and toward the end of the evening, MA asked if I might talk a little a bit Dine In, Help Out, this May-long initiative sponsored by St. Christopher's Foundation for Children. It's pretty simple, I said. Philadelphia-area residents are inviting friends to dinner in their homes throughout the month of May and encouraging those friends to contribute whatever they might have spent on a restaurant meal that evening to the Foundation.  The Foundation in turn is channeling those funds into a Farm to Families program focused on bringing affordable, nutritious food to North Philadelphia, the nation's second hungriest congressional district.

It's all thanks to my friend, Jan Suzanne Shaeffer, who has a heart the color of her very golden hair and who never works in the abstract. She cares about the plight of North Philadelphians because she has taken the time to make them her friends. She is doing good because good is her passion, her happy gift. I'm hugely uncomfortable in any fundraising role, but I did this because I believe in Jan and I believe in this cause.  I have worked way outside my comfort zone, these past few weeks, and I can't tell you if the food I cooked was any good because I was too nervous to eat it. But because of Jan I had, in last night, an evening I'll never forget.

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Getting help (deep gratitude)

I've blazed my way through this life of mine—doing my best (and that's not always the best) at whatever chores stand here before me. I've not wanted to bother anyone else with the trivialities of my living, have thought it best to make and feather my own nest, which is also, of course, the nest of my family. Nick has been the one exception to this rule—building me a small stone wall, mowing my lawn, edging my flower beds, wheelbarrowing mulch, and digging me out of the worst weather. I don't know where I'd be without Nick. He's worth the price of this entire neighborhood.

The past two weeks, however, I've relented, asked for help. Hired a man to repaint the deck that was destroyed by winter weather. Hired Nick and his team to help me with my garden. Hired two young women to help me refresh the tops of ceiling blade fans, the bowls of lamps, the racket of blinds, the wood oils of the banister. I'm having a small dinner party. I want things to be right. My best is not always the best.

Perhaps it's because I've been emotional lately—faced with both anticipated and unanticipated losses and goodbyes—that the work of these good souls has so moved me. Perhaps because asking for and getting help is, for me, such a novelty. But yesterday, joined in my office by one of these dear young women, I could barely hold it together. She was dusting the books, rearranging the potted flowers, realigning the glass apples along the sill. She was talking, telling me about her second job, a merchandising job, she said, in which she helped arranged displays in retail stores. "I know that one," she said, pointing to Dangerous Neighbors. "I put it out on bookstore shelves all around here."

She said she thought it was cool that I'd written so many books. I said I thought it was cool that she commandeered dust, oiled down the bannister, had batted down the pincer-handed spider with her own skinny mop.

"I keep a really neat house," I said, "but I don't have your skills."

"It helps," she said, "if you're a little obsessive compulsive."

I don't know if people who help like she helped, who help like Nick always helps, know how valuable they are. I'm putting it out here, though, in this fractured universe. I'm putting out my gratitude.

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The garden is ready to receive

(now to start cooking for Dine In Help Out)

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Dine In, Help Out: Philadelphians Taking a Stand Against Hunger

May has been decreed Dine In, Help Out month in my wonderful city—a time when we gather friends around us, in our own homes, and donate whatever we might have spent at a restaurant to a program devoted to bringing affordable, healthy, farm-fresh food into North Philadelphia homes.  The innovative St. Christopher's Foundation for Children has organized the drive, and it has the remarkable support of Iron Chef Jose Garces, not to mention NBC 10’s Dennis Bianchi, Philadelphia Media Network's Greg Osberg, and Montgomery McCracken’s Steve Madva.

My own dinner is slated for six days from now, and I've invited two long-time clients and their beautiful ladies to my house.  That takes guts, as you can imagine, for a modest-living woman such as myself—no grand chef, no proven hostess, and far better with words than I am with soup spoons.

But I'm doing this, nonetheless, and I encourage you to consider throwing a dinner yourself.  Check out the web site linked above.  You'll find recipes, invitations, ideas, and facts that will both inspire and motivate.

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Dine In, Help Out: Philadelphians Taking a Stand Against Hunger

I seek out Philadelphians who make a difference; sometimes I have the honor of calling them friends.  Tonight I joined old friends and new at JG Domestic, an innovative Jose Garces restaurant, to herald the launch of Dine In, Help Out, an initiative designed to increase access to fresh, healthy, and affordable food in North Philadelphia, one of the poorest—and hungriest—congressional districts in our country.

The initiative is the brainchild of Jan Suzanne Shaeffer, who isn't just my beautiful and witty friend; she's also the executive director of St. Christopher's Foundation for Children, an organization with an established interest in the people of North Philadelphia. Not long ago, Jan and her board read the  devastating Philadelphia Inquirer portrait of North Philadelphia hunger and began to work toward solutions.

Through its very own Farm to Families, the Foundation is already bringing fresh farm foods to those North Philadelphians whose diets are saturated with health-compromising sugars and fats. Through Dine In, Help Out the Foundation raises the ante—asking friends and families across the region to commit to forgoing "one night of dining out by donating the dollars they would have spent at a restaurant to help bring affordable, healthy, farm-fresh food into North Philadelphia homes."

It is an idea that has caught the imagination of many.  It has, moreover, won the backing of those who are pictured here (left to right) with Jan—Philadelphia Media Network CEO Greg Osberg; NBC 10 President and General Manager Dennis Bianchi, Iron Chef Jose Garces (I have all my most important meals at his restaurants); and Montgomery McCracken Managing Partner Steve Madva.

Others of us are proud ambassadors—people who have committed to hosting meals in their homes on behalf of this initiative.  I'll be having a small event at my own home in early May (hoping that clean windows, fine Ikebana arrangements, and a newly mulched garden will compensate for any flaws in my menu).  I'm encouraging others of you to do the same.  It's time, every now and then, to remember how very blessed we are.  It's time to come together, over our own tables, so that we might give back to those in need.

Please look for more information here, on Dine In, Help Out's spanking new web site.   

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