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Making
things happen - with integrity. A weekly CyberMemo designed to keep you on task. Monday March 11, 2002 Volume IV Number 10 |
FOCUS - Hallmark Card
Gordon MacKenzie spent thirty of his most productive years at Hallmark Cards, “When you care enough to give the very best.”
During those years, he emerged as a creative force, not only producing a prodigious collection of verse and commercial design, but also as a teacher and mentor and motivator to other artists. He believed in the possibility of working within a large corporate structure and tapping into one’s creative capacities all at the same time. A novel concept.
After hours, in his garage, he kept the creative impulse alive sculpting in steel. He welded, and stoked, and bent, and turned all sorts of shapes and sizes making curious creatures and mock machines from the future and the past. People would ask how he had the energy and time to head home after a long day managing a wild crew of artist types, creating all day long for a greeting card company and then home to create more.
He’d simply answer, “Creative activity is energizing.”
A local school teacher early on asked him to bring a collection of his most recent works to the elementary school in his neighborhood to display some of his collection. He was so well received by the children and teachers and parents that it became an annual event. For twenty straight years.
He’d set up the night before. All day, he would show how he sculpted in metal. He prepared some sample welding. He’d pound out a few shapes with his mallet and anvil. He’d tell the story of what inspired this or that most recent work of art.
Through out the school day, each grade level class one at a time would sit cross legged and enraptured around MacKenzie’s steel. And every year, every class, he would begin the same way.
“Thank you for inviting me to your school today. I am an artist,” he explained. “Already, I feel right at home. I see from the classrooms and the hallways that there are many artists like me in this school. It makes me feel like I’m not alone. I like being in the company of other artists.”
“I see bright colors and shapes and interesting pictures and interpretation of events all over these walls. I really enjoy looking at your art. And I hope you enjoy mine.”
That was his introduction. Then he asked a question. A question he repeated at every age level.
He discerned a pattern in the children’s response. And as the years progressed, it was confirmed. It became as predictable as the sunrise.
“So I’d like to know… how many of you students are artists? Raise your hand,” he’d say with a smile.
The First Grade class, without fail, every one of the children would reach skyward with their hands, waving, standing to their feet just to be sure the sculptor noticed them. In the Second Grade, about half of the children lifted their arms, not many stood. Some waved. By the Third Grade, maybe a quarter would respond and in comparison to the younger children, the enthusiasm clearly waned. By the time the Sixth Graders gave their response to the same question, after the same welcoming introduction, only one or two braved a timid affirmative signal. The lonely young respondents would be the subject of subtle little sneers from the others.
And MacKenzie would ask… “Wow, what’s happening to the artists in this school? Are they all transferring out to Art School?”
The teachers and the parents in the crowd got the point.
At some moment in time, most all of us have decided that we are “no good” at drawing or singing or playing the instrument or writing or composing or painting or making music… and so we retreat into the mode of observer. We observe art. We don’t create it. We watch movies. We play the stereo. We surf the net. We are responders. Not creators.
Gordon MacKenzie, now retired, has pursued a lifelong mission to reawaken the artist he believes lives in every one of us.
* * * * * * *
On that painful Saturday morning two days after we lost our first grandchild Isaac nearly six months into our daughter’s first pregnancy, I planted two peach trees.
It was a welcome work-out.
I dug two large holes in the hard ground; come to think of it the two gaping pits were considerably larger than necessary. I mixed the soil in with some compost and a few other amendments. The physical labor somehow helped.
It just felt right.
As I pushed my wheelbarrow full of tools from the garage to the site for the trees out back, I walked through an open patch of ground that at one time was a parking area for our old travel trailer. In a dozen years of hauling that camper all over the Western States, we logged a lot of memories on vacations and long weekend get-aways. Just recently, the trailer was sold to a new family and we believe it will make more good memories. Left behind in our side yard is a thirty foot square of open ground, waiting for some kind of plan.
On that gloomy morning, grief still fresh, I lumbered across the square, shoulders drooping… and the thought came to me.
Isaac’s Rest.
We’ll build it right here.
So this is how gardens get their inspiration, I thought. Born out of pain. Hopes and dreams gone. And in their place, the demanding work of preparing the soil and laying out the hard-scape and erecting the arbor and setting the fountain on a level concrete base... hooking up the electricity for lights at night, and running the pumps so that the water flows and makes that peaceful sound as water falls and splashes and during the day, dances in the sunlight.
I tested the idea with Carolyn. And then Kris and Ben.
They all liked it. Me, too.
So now, together, we are creating that garden – a place to remember Isaac and everything he brought into our lives.
* * * * * * *
MacKenzie’s new book has an intriguing title – “Orbiting the Giant Hairball.” He’s a veteran of corporate life. And he’s an artist. Generally the two avoid each other like Republicans avoid Democrats and vice versa. But MacKenzie not only survived corporate life, he thrived in it.
In his book, he reveals his secret.
Corporations, he claims, are like hairballs. Not so in the beginning. To start, someone comes up with a winner of an idea, and the idea succeeds. Then, the success develops a center of gravity, and attracts all manner of organizers. People who write policy manuals. And procedural instruction books. And layers of hierarchy. One hair attracts another. And another. And before long, the winner of an idea has become a disgusting knotted mass of dry tangled hairball. A twisted mess of piled up outlines and charts and graphs and bound booklets. Every organization is prone to the same process. And if the Idea is good enough, it will support the planetary sized globe populated by corporate hangers-on… mediocre producers and second rate talent and those who have achieved their ultimate level of incompetence.
This whole devolutionary process will in direct proportion extinguish the very creativity that brought the Idea that sustains the whole mess in the first place. So, if you are an artist, if you still have something of that first grader inside you that will stand and wave and dance at the very question, “Is there an artist in this group?” - well, you are the type who will have serious difficulty surviving corporate America.
Maybe you’ve already checked out. You tried it. It was so stifling. So suffocating. So far removed from anything that brings you any sort of personal satisfaction that you submitted your resignation long ago and you never looked back.
MacKenzie understands.
But he’s also a realist. We have this uncomfortable relationship with structure. We can’t escape it. We rely on it. But we know we can be consumed by it. So we want to stay close enough to it to enjoy the benefits but far enough away to soar above it.
And that is precisely Gordon MacKenzie’s advice.
Orbit around the hairball.
Blast off from your own personal launch pad. But not without a plan. Some of us explode upwards and fly, slipping away from the surly bonds of the gravitational pull of planet hairball only to follow a lonely trajectory into deep space never to return. MacKenzie suggests otherwise - that we find our orbit. Just far enough out to rise above the life-draining brain-draining health-robbing rules and structure and mis-directed expectations and demands but not so far out that we miss the benefits that contribute to growth. It’s the science of orbit and the art of flight.
Orbiting the Giant Hairball.
* * * * * * *
At the Edison Charter School, the faculty and staff are committed to the basics – reading, writing and arithmetic – but also to character values. An intentional part of the curriculum involves the development of character including themes like courage, perseverance, diligence, loyalty, trust, dependability, that sort of thing. Every month the teaching staff is assigned a core value and asked to identify a student who that month most exemplifies the trait. At a school-wide assembly from a microphone up front in the presence of all, the teacher awards the student with a certificate.
Our daughter, Kristyn Duncan, Edison’s Middle School science teacher, just last week was assigned the character trait “Hope.”
The day after the assembly, I spoke to her on the phone.
“I give out an award every month, Dad,” she told me. “But this is the first time I made a speech.”
“What did you say?” I knew she would tell me.
“I talked about Hope. I told the whole assembly that today’s award is in recognition of a very important character trait. Hope. Hope is best seen in someone who has faced a painful and discouraging loss, and in spite of the hardship, remains positive about the future. Someone who can stand up tall again after getting knocked down. Someone who can cry real tears and then smile even in the face of adversity.”
And then her voice caught. I knew she was telling me about more than the young student who only recently lost his Mom to a terrible and tragic turn during a routine surgery, she was telling me what she was learning, too, so soon after she lost her little boy Isaac.
“I found him in the crowd,” she continued. “I could tell by the look in his eyes that he knew who I was talking about. Then I said, ‘Today’s winner of the Core Value Hope Award is a young man who very recently faced a terrible and painful loss… but in spite of it all, knows he has a bright and promising future and in his smile we witness a Hope that inspires us all… join me in congratulating this month’s winner… William!’… and the whole student body and all the teachers and support staff stood up in applause and thirteen year old William came bounding up the aisle to the stage where I gave him a big hug in front of everyone… and Dad, when I handed him his certificate, I never saw him happier.”
I couldn’t speak. This was the boy who returned to class the same day Kristyn returned – both after a life-changing and disorienting loss. They talked that day. And in private they wept. Now she acknowledged him in the bright sunshine of public approval.
As I listened to her recount the story, I realized it. Kristyn has a new set of tools in her educator’s tool bag. And I know that William’s got a tough road ahead. His mom is gone.
But for the rest of his life, no one can take away this moment in time when someone believed in him – young William will forever remember the smile and the understanding and the warmth of his seventh grade science teacher, Mrs. Duncan.
And the compassion she showed when he needed it most.
It came from her heart.
* * * * * *
It’s Monday morning. You are a leader.
Maybe you are feeling caught in the hairball. Maybe it’s time for you to find your launch pad, light the fuse and get out there in orbit where your God-given talents will find their expression. You’ll become an artist again.
The garden’s taking shape. Already, I like to stand out there alone and reflect. The fountain will be delivered this week. The water will flow. The color will appear. Springtime will bring a new kind of blossoming for me. It will mean more this year. I think I’ll take some time to breathe in the fragrance of God’s creative work.
Maybe it will inspire mine.
And yours.
Thanks to Scott Last for the Recommendation of MacKenzie's Book
© Copyright Kenneth E. Kemp 2002
LeaderFOCUS is brought to you by Good Stewardship Associates
Special Thanks for Design by my good friend David Belcher, owner of Rhino Media Group and creator of WisdomGram
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