on bringing literary thinking and heart to corporate leaders

Yesterday, on behalf of Leadership Philadelphia, I stood among 120 corporate and organizational leaders and talked about literature, language, and life. Our topic was home, but it might have been any number of things. Our process was embellished by words from James Agee, George Hodgman, Jacquelyn Woodson, and Katherine Boo, an excerpt from Love: A Philadelphia Affair, the thoughts of a West Philadelphia fifth grader, this Beltran recording on home (a composite reading from my Penn students and colleagues), readings about loss from This Is the Story of You and Flow, and conversations about gain.

We listened. We wrote. We shared. We talked to one another. We isolated telling details and pondered how the best of life can be transported into the best of work.

Having spent nearly three decades writing for corporate America, it was extraordinary to write, at last, with it. To reach toward the heart, and hearth, of lawyers, strategists, account managers, senior vice presidents, chief financial officers, portfolio managers, presidents, directors of communications, franchise managers, risk managers, school principals, art leaders, and civic leaders, to name just a few.

The lesson is this: literature—the act of naming the things we love and want, the act of putting want into words—is not an exclusive, excluding art. It is our art. Our shared humanity. Making as much difference in the workplace as it does on the family stoop.

I plan to bring these multi-media workshops to other organizational gatherings in the future, as part of the expanding realm of Juncture Workshops. Happy to talk, if the idea intrigues.

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oh such a (bad) writer I was: three talks this week

This week I'll be giving three different talks on three very different topics. I've been in the midst of preparations.

The first, this Tuesday evening, is a keynote on behalf of Historic RittenhouseTown, birthplace of paper in British North America and home to David Rittenhouse, a polymath of such considerable renown that Philadelphia's largest square bears his name. I'll be talking about my recent visit to this historic site (the topic of my Sunday Inquirer story, a link to which is here). But I'll begin by reflecting on my own relationship to paper. Which necessarily involves my reflections on my life as a writer. Which means that I must confess what a poor writer I was.

Proof:

I may have been an angsty adolescent, but my darkest secret involved nothing more than this: a box of watercolors, a drugstore paintbrush, a Bic pen, and a series of blank books with Naugahyde covers. I painted the pages of those books to buckling saturation. I waited, impatiently, for them to dry. Afterward, alone on my roof or in the shade of a tree, I Bic-scratched into those multitonal hues such awe-invoking grandeur as this:

A daffodil dons her yellow skirt,
Smoothes out the ruffled pleats of the hem,
Places her fringed bonnet on her tiny head

. . . and goes out for tea.

Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/20160508_Before_we_write_the_words__papermaking_is_its_own_story.html#3pMPqLCegIF7QgBX.99

On Thursday I'll be joining Leadership Philadelphia, an organization dedicated to mobilizing and connecting the talent of the private sector to serve the greater needs of the community. I'll be part of a much larger agenda, offering thoughts on home and a writing workshop to the 120 members of the current core class.

Over the weekend, I'm on a very secret mission. But I can't talk about that one yet.

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On looking ahead to this day—among leaders, and in the audience of "Once"

Today I'll give what I'm pretty sure will be my final talk emanating from LOVE: A Philadelphia Affair. I'll join Liz Dow, the extraordinary woman behind Leadership Philadelphia, and her leaderly contingent. We'll talk about this city we believe in.

The rest of the day will be a father-daughter day. Museums in the afternoon. Dinner. Then my father's early birthday present—tickets to "Once," which won eight Tony Awards, including Best Musical, in 2012.

I. Love. This. Story.

I. Sing. Those. Songs.

And while I gave my father many choices when we were planning out this day, I was secretly very glad when he said that "Once" was his first choice.

So off we will go.

Away, for a day, from here.

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