Lake Wobegon, Garrison Keillor & Me

Garrison Keillor is creator and host of A Prairie Home Companion which was first broadcast from the Janet Wallace auditorium at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, on July 6, 1974.

Today, almost 40 years later, his tales from the fictional Lake Wobegon, which he calls "the little town that time forgot and the decades cannot improve," are heard by over 4 million listeners each week on almost 600 public radio stations here and abroad.

Speaking about the show's long run on APHC's website, Keillor says:

"When the show started, it was something funny to do with my friends, and then it became an achievement that I hoped would be successful, and now it's a good way of life."

I get Garrison Keillor. I grew up in a small, out-of-the-way Minnesota town - not unlike his Lake Wobegon - and can relate to the yarns he spins about the folks who live there and the warp and weft of their lives.

I also get Garrison because he and I are pretty close to the same age and grew up with the same stuff spinning around, over, under and through us: the dawn of the nuclear age; the dark shadow cast 'round the world by an evil Soviet Union; The Shadow and The Lone Ranger on the radio; Ozzie & Harriet, Father Knows Best and Bonanza on TV; the birth of rock & roll; the tragic deaths of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P Richardson aka The Big Bopper; the civil rights movement; the murders of Jack and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King; Timothy Leary and trips on LSD; Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, and The Kingston Trio; San Francisco, flower children, Volkswagen buses and free love; Vietnam, draft dodgers, war protesters; the Beatles, Helter Skelter & Charlie Manson; Richard Nixon, Watergate, and on ... and on ... and on. Ahh! Yes! "Those were the days, my friend" ... sing along now ... "I thought they'd never end, we'd sing and dance forever and a day." Hmmm.

Times have changed, of course, just like Bob Dylan said they would, and when I get to looking back on those days of yesteryear, I usually get to thinking about how smart I thought I was; how I had all the answers. Maybe Garrison does too. But, once you get to be our age - Garrison's and mine - and if you still have your wits about you, it slowly dawns on you that you may not have been so smart after all. Or, as Garrison has simply and profoundly stated:

"You get old and you realize there are no answers, just stories."

Stories ... they are the principle driver of learning that sticks in the human brain:

"If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten." - Rudyard Kipling

Stories ... they keep us from losing our way:

"If you don't know the trees you may be lost in the forest, but if you don't know the stories you may be lost in life." -  A Siberian Elder

Stories ... they help us connect with others in a deep, meaningful way:

"We are lonesome animals. We spend all our life trying to be less lonesome.  One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the listener to say — and to feel — 'Yes, that’s the way it is, or at least that’s the way I feel it. You’re not as alone as you thought.' " - John Steinbeck

Conversation:

• In Dreamgates, Robert Moss wrote: "Australian Aborigines say that the big stories - the stories worth telling and retelling, the ones in which you may find the meaning of your life - are forever stalking the right teller, sniffing and tracking like predators hunting their prey in the bush." What is the big story you are meant to tell? How will it find you?

• Hannah Arendt has said: "Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it." How do you understand what she is saying?

• When he is talking to leaders, Peter Block often says: "Our ability to facilitate the learning of others is absolutely dependent on our own consciousness and on our willingness to make our own actions a legitimate subject of inquiry. Allowing the personal to become public is the act of responsibility that initiates cultural change and reforms organizations. Our need for privacy and our fear of the personal are primary reasons why organizational change is more rhetoric than reality. Real change comes from our willingness to own our vulnerability, confess our failures, and acknowledge that many of our stories do not have a happy ending." Do you typically share these kinds of stories? Why or why not?

Afterwords:

"The eye of understanding is like the eye of the sense; for as you may see great objects through small crannies or levels, so you may see great axioms of nature through small and contemptible instances." - Francis Bacon, Sylva Sylvarum

"Proverbs are always platitudes until you have personally experienced the truth of them." - Aldous Huxley

"The leader who says ‘I don’t know’ essentially says that the group is facing a new ballgame where the old tools of logic may be its undoing rather than its salvation. To drop these tools is not to give up on finding a workable answer. It is only to give up on one means of answering that is ill-suited to the unstable, the unknowable, the unpredictable. To drop the heavy tools of rationality is to gain access to lightness in the form of intuitions, feelings, stories, experience, active listening, shared humanity, awareness in the moment, capability for fascination, awe, novel words and empathy." - Karl Weick

"Self-disclosure is the act of revealing yourself to others – your thoughts, feelings, intentions– telling your story. Another word for self-disclosure is 'intimacy'. This word is commonly associated with sexuality. But it really refers to familiarity and closeness. Intimacy can be understood better by pronouncing it as 'in-to-me-see' – a clear reference to self-disclosure. Why is intimacy so important? It builds understanding, trust, compassion, and commonality – all of which are essential to effective relationships. When you begin to understand other people’s stories, your heart softens. You find that their sorrows and joys are similar to yours, and that you have more in common than you ever thought. You draw closer and become more tolerant, more supportive, and more understanding." - Mark D. Youngblood, Life at the Edge of Chaos

"'I would ask you to remember only this one thing,' said Badger. 'The stories people tell have a way of taking care of them. If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive. That is why we put these stories in each other's memory. This is how people care for themselves. One day you will be good story-tellers. Never forget these obligations.'" - Barry Lopez, Crow and Weasel

"A minister has to be able to read a clock. At noon, it's time to go home and turn up the pot roast and get the peas out of the freezer." - Garrison Keillor

"They say such nice things about people at their funerals that it makes me sad that I'm going to miss mine by just a few days." - Garrison Keillor

"Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people." - Garrison Keillor

Schindler's List

As the 1993 film Schindler's List opens, Polish Jews are being relocated from the countryside to a crowded ghetto in Krakow. The year is 1939. World War II has just begun. Shortly thereafter, Oskar Schindler - played by Liam Neeson - a successful businessman and member of the Nazi Party, arrives from Czechoslovakia hoping to manufacture field kitchenware and mess kits for the German army. He acquires a factory by bribing SS officials and brings in accountant and financier Itzhak Stern - played by Ben Kingsley - to help him run it. Among the first things Stern does is advise Schindler to staff the plant with Jews from the ghetto; he said this would give him a dependable, low-paid work force. Schindler sees the financial benefits and quickly agrees. For Stern a job in a war-related plant means survival - at least in the short term - for himself and other Jews working for Schindler.

Schindler initially treats the Jewish workers with indifference, seeing them as a nameless, faceless mass instead of individuals with rights and equal worth to gentiles such as himself. He changes on this score as the film moves on, though, and eventually spends his entire fortune and risks his life on many occasions to keep Stern and more than 1200 other Jews out of the Nazi death camps.

Why did he do it? What made this man do what no other German had the courage to do? This is the question people - including the Jews saved by Schindler - are still asking today.

Thomas Keneally, author of Schindler's Arc - later renamed Schindler's List - hints at why he thinks Schindler did it when he says in the book:

"Schindler grew up in a strong Roman Catholic household with deeply religious parents. Their nearest neighbors were a Jewish Rabbi and his family, and the Rabbi's two sons were Oskar's best friends for years."

Steven Spielberg, who turned the novel to film, said in an interview in Der Spiegel:

"Oskar Schindler was simply ein guter Mensch whose sheer humanity forced him to take great personal risk to save his Jews."

A decade before Spielberg's Schindler's List won seven Academy Awards, a British producer and director, Jon Blair, made Schindler, an 80 minute documentary on the life of Oskar Schindler for British Thames Television. The film won a British Academy Award for best documentary in 1983, but left few clues as to why Schindler did what he did. Blair was quoted later as saying:

"Oskar, this big man with a big heart and big connections, loved to be loved and needed. But I always thought that it was a weakness in my film that I couldn't explain Schindler's motivation, and Spielberg told me the same about his - it seems impossible to crack that enigma."

Perhaps Schindler himself didn't know for sure. In a 1964 interview he said:

"The persecution of Jews in occupied Poland meant that we could see horror emerging gradually in many ways. In 1939, they were forced to wear Jewish stars, and people were herded and shut up into ghettos. Then in the years '41 and '42, there was plenty of public evidence of pure sadism. With people behaving like pigs, I felt the Jews were being destroyed. I had to help them. There was no choice."

The most plausible explanation may have been revealed in a 1965 conversation between Schindler and Moshe Bejski - a Schindler Jew and later an Israeli Supreme Court justice. When Bejski asked him why he did it, Schindler answered:

"I knew the people who worked for me. When you know people, you have to behave towards them like human beings."

The story of Oskar Schindler is not merely one about an altruistic and morally decent man - though Schindler was that. It is, in the main, the story of a man who gets to know his workers through personal encounters, and comes to see them as individual human beings with hopes, dreams, fears, and passions just like his own. And, once he grants them humanity, he feels a strong pull to assist them. I think this idea is best expressed near the end of the film when Schindler introduces Stern to his wife. He says:

"Stern is my accountant and my friend."

Conversation:

• How does this last explanation for Schindler's behavior make more or less sense to you than the others considered?
• Why might it be important for leaders to build personal relationships with their followers?
  
• Why might they want to keep from getting too personally involved?
• What is your philosophy in this regard? How is it working for you? Have you ever thought there might be a better way? Have you experimented with it? What happened?
  
• What is your reaction to the statement: Your people are not human resources, they are human beings?
  

Afterwords: 

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." - Edmund Burke

"We ask ourselves, 'How could the German people not have known what was going on, long before the Panzer divisions moved into Poland in September of 1939? How could they not have known about Bergen-Belsen?' Well, a system to administer evil without interference is usually firmly entrenched before anyone notices - you don’t get the opportunity to see it coming. As Mussolini intuited, if you just make the trains run on time, people will be happy. So, if you’re simply getting on with life - paying taxes, changing diapers, wondering how you’re going to make the car payment next month- you’re not really paying attention to what having the trains run on time might mean." - Barry Lopez, in an interview with Christian Martin, Michigan Quarterly Review, Fall 2005

"They came for the communists, and I did not speak up because I wasn't a communist.  They came for the socialists, and I did not speak up because I was not a socialist.  They came for the union leaders, and I did not speak up because I wasn't a union leader.  They came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.  Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak up for me." - Martin Niemoller

"We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken away from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way." - Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

"After the war we reassured ourselves that it would be enough to relate a single night in Treblinka, to tell of the cruelty, the senselessness of murder, and the outrage born of indifference: it would be enough to find the right word and the propitious moment to say it, to shake humanity out of its indifference and keep the torturer from torturing ever again. We thought it would be enough to read the world a poem written by a child in the Theresienstadt ghetto to ensure that no child anywhere would ever again have to endure hunger or fear. It would be enough to describe a death-camp 'Selection,' to prevent the human right to dignity from ever being violated again. We thought it would be enough to tell of the tidal wave of hatred which broke over the Jewish people for men everywhere to decide once and for all to put an end to hatred of anyone who is 'different' - whether black or white, Jew or Arab, Christian or Moslem - anyone whose orientation differs politically, philosophically, sexually. A naive undertaking? Of course...." - Elie Wiesel, speaking of his book Night in his 1986 Nobel address

"Honor never grows old, and honor rejoices the heart of age. It does so because honor is, finally, about defending those noble and worthy things that deserve defending, even if it comes at a high cost. In our time, that may mean social disapproval, public scorn, hardship, persecution, or as always, even death itself. The question remains: What is worth defending? What is worth dying for? What is worth living for?" - William J. Bennett - in a lecture to the United States Naval Academy November 24, 1997

"We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm." - George Orwell

Video:

This scene takes place near the end of the movie. The Germans have surrendered. Schindler, who will now be seen as a war criminal by the occupying Soviet army, is taking his leave. It is a powerful expression of the deep affection that Schindler has for those he saved, and of theirs for him.

The Drunkard Disciple

In a recent Warrior of the Light newsletter Paulo Coehlo, author of The Alchemist, tells the following story which is titled The Drunkard Disciple:

A Zen master had hundreds of disciples. They all prayed at the right time, except one, who was always drunk.

The master was growing old. Some of the more virtuous pupils began to wonder who would be the new leader of the group, the one who would receive the important secrets of the Tradition.

On the eve of his death, however, the master called the drunkard disciple and revealed the hidden secrets to him.

A veritable revolt broke out among the others.

"How shameful!" they cried in the streets, "We have sacrificed ourselves for the wrong master, one who can’t see our qualities."

Hearing the commotion outside, the dying master remarked, "I had to pass on these secrets to a man that I knew well. All my pupils are very virtuous, and showed only their good qualities. That is dangerous, for virtue often serves to hide vanity, pride and intolerance. That is why I chose the only disciple whom I know really well, since I can see his defect: drunkenness."

Please don't jump to the conclusion that this is a story about whether you can trust "drunkards" or not; that's a whole different conversation. This is a story that asks the question, "How can I trust you, if I don't really know you?" And that question begs another, "How can you come to really know another person?"

The answer to the first question is "You can't." The answer to the second is you can never really know another person - not even those closest to you - but you can come to know most of the people in your life well enough to know whether you can trust them or not.

The notion that it’s important to be able to build trust with others is one of the latest “silver bullets” ricocheting off the walls of corporate America. As a result, books on trust, seminars on trust, and consultants that say they can help a company create a high trust culture in ten easy steps are in high demand. This is hogwash!

There is no formula or set of skills that you can master to help you build trust with others. Trust building is a raw, organic process that consists of spending whatever time it takes to tell our stories to others and listen to theirs. And, I don’t just mean stories that flesh out our resumes. I mean stories that tell where we came from, and where we dream of ending up; stories that shed light on the paths we’ve traveled - triumphs and tragedies alike; stories that reveal not only what’s on our mind but also what’s in our heart.

Then, at the end of the storytelling, or when we’ve gotten to know each other from as many different angles as possible, we get to decide whether we trust each other or not. And, if we’ve been really truthful with each other, a genuine trust relationship is almost always the result.

Conversation:

• What is trust?
  
• How is it created?
  
• In what, or whom, do you trust?
  
• How freely do you extend trust to others?
  
• How can others earn your trust?
  
• How do you react if someone violates your trust?
  
• Will you ever be able to trust that person again? Why or why not?

Afterwords:

"Let us approach our friend with an audacious trust in the truth of his heart." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Freedom is about being vulnerable to one another, realizing that our ability to connect is more important than feeling secure, in control and alone." - Eve Ensler

"If you are to judge a man, you must know his secret thoughts, sorrows, and feelings; to know merely the outward events of a man’s life would only serve to make a chronological table — a fool’s notion of history." - Honoré de Balzac

"Conversations are efforts toward good relations. They are an elementary form of reciprocity. They are the exercise of our love for each other. They are the enemies of our loneliness, our doubt, our anxiety, our tendencies to abdicate. To continue to be in good conversation over our enormous and terrifying problems is to be calling out to each other in the night. If we attend with imagination and devotion to our conversations, we will find what we need; and someone among us will act—it does not matter whom—and we will survive." - Barry Lopez - Eden Is a Conversation (closing remarks at Quest for Global Healing, Ubud, Bali, Portland Magazine Autumn, 2006)

"We are not as near each other as we would like to imagine. Words create the bridges between us. Without them we would be lost islands. Affection, recognition and understanding travel across these fragile bridges and enable us to discover each other and awaken friendship and intimacy. Words are never just words. The range and depth of a person's soul is inevitably revealed in the quality of words she uses. When chosen with reverence and care, words not only describe what they say but also suggest what can never be said." - John O'Donohue, Beauty

The Power of Stories

A recent speaker at the Masters Forum said that having a story to tell about our product or service can add value for customers and be a differentiator in the marketplace. He went on to say he was recently influenced to buy a product called Big Tattoo wine because of the back story he found on the label. Here's a slightly expanded version of that story; it appears on the company's website:

Two Brothers Winery, a partnership between brothers Erik and Alex Bartholomaus, released their debut wine, Big Tattoo Red 2001, in autumn of 2002 as a way to raise funds for cancer research and Hospice care in memory of their mother, Liliana S. Bartholomaus.

Alex Bartholomaus, President and C.E.O. of Billington Wines in Springfield, Va., created this unique blend in Chile. Alex then teamed up with his brother Erik, an established world-traveling tattoo artist, to design a fun label that would remind the two of their mother. Erik designed the label and they named their creation Big Tattoo Red.

Fifty cents from every bottle sold was donated to the Hospice of Arlington, Va., and other breast cancer research foundations in the name of Liliana S. Bartholomaus. The two sold 13,835 cases of the 2001 debut vintage and raised $83,010 to donate to Cancer research and support. The 2002 vintage was released in June, and the brothers were able to raise $300,000 in donation money. Erik and Alex have decided to make some of the donations on a state-by-state basis. This has helped them convince many distributors across the country to join in matching donations from Big Tattoo Red sales and giving even more money to local charities.

In an effort to expand this project even more, the brothers are now producing Big Tattoo White, a Riesling blend from Germany and a Syrah from Chile.

It was the Bartholomaus brothers' goal to honor their mother, who lost her battle against cancer in 2000. They wanted to do this in a creative and beneficial way. These fun wines boast a label with a Fleur de Lys, Liliana's favorite symbol, and their labels stand out on any retailer's shelf. The popularity of the wine soared during 2003, popping up on wine shop shelves and restaurant wine lists nation wide.Because of this touching and powerful story, the brothers have raised $1,305,100 for their cause as of today's date.

At the Masters Forum, we've focused on the power of stories from the beginning. In fact, one of our founding principles says it’s stories - not data or information, no matter how well or cleverly presented - that are the principle driver of learning that sticks in the human brain. Or, as the author Rudyard Kipling said:

"If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten."

Accordingly, we have always selected our speakers not only for their great new ideas and unique ways of seeing, but also for their knack of saying what they have to say in the form of highly compelling, entertaining stories. In addition, we have held several sessions over the years on the subject of storytelling as a leadership and culture-building tool.

One of my favorites featured journalist and storyteller extraordinaire Roger Rosenblatt, whose first words to us were:

"I believe we're here to tell one another stories."

From there on, Roger's talk was simply a string of stories, along with a handful of suggestions on how to live. Anecdotes from his travels as a journalist, to Africa and Asia. Memories of growing up in the Gramercy Park neighborhood in New York. People he has interviewed over the years. Stories he has read. Quotes that stand out in his mind. He encouraged us to think of our lives and our stories. Many of us were straining though to connect the idea of stories with the challenges of doing business.

Writer Mike Finley, who authored the summary of Roger's session for us, was one of those scratching his head:

He's a professional storyteller. But what do stories mean for those of us making a living light years from the New York Times Magazine?

In business it may mean that we must identify what our story is. Chances are it is not something that has been percolated down in corporate communications. It may include, but does not center on, the plucky tale of the company founder and what he learned to do with baling wire and chewing gum.

The story may focus on the struggle to get inside your customers' problems and solve them. Or the individual lives of employees, their dreams and their difficulties. The challenge of being a decent employer, a good neighbor, and still returning a favorable yield to investors. Or the brave face you put up against competition that threatens at times to blow you away. It is the culture of the company, and how it is built upon sweat and care, and what it expects of people. It is the struggle against chaos that packs each day with new tensions. It is coping with the story itself, and the unavoidable arc that takes a company from early growth to slow decay.

The story changes every day, and the best you can do is to be sure that on any given day your story is as true as you can make it. The worst is to live a lie.

Conversation:

• What is the story of your company's birth and formative years? What was its raison d'etre? What were its guiding principles?
• How has its story unfolded over the years? What has changed? What is unchanged?
• Does your company's official mission statement inspire you? If not, what story would you write to replace it?
• What stories do you tell new colleagues to let them know how it is to work here? Are they the same stories you would tell them if you were forced to toe the company line?
• Does your company need to create a new story to compete more effectively in today's rapidly changing world? If so, what is the story you think needs to be written?
  

Afterwords:

"Man is eminently a storyteller. His search for a purpose, a cause, an ideal, a mission and the like is largely a search for a plot and a pattern in the development of his life story—a story that is basically without meaning or pattern." - Eric Hoffer

"Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, the power to retell it, rethink it, deconstruct it . . . and change it as times change, truly are powerless because they cannot think new thoughts." - Salman Rushdie

"But do not despise the lore that has come down from distant years; for oft it may chance that old wives keep in memory word of things that once were needful for the wise to know." - J.R.R. Tolkien

"'I would ask you to remember only this one thing,' said Badger. 'The stories people tell have a way of taking care of them. If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive. That is why we put these stories in each others memory. This is how people care for themselves. One day you will be good story-tellers. Never forget these obligations.'" - Barry Lopez, Crow and Weasel