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Myself and roughly 150 people enjoyed an afternoon with former ambassador and CPA director Paul “Jerry” Bremmer. The event was held at the Northshire Bookstore in Manchester, Vt that was just voted the top bookseller by Publisher’s Weekly. Quite an accomplishment for a small-town store.

Bremmer gave about an hour long talk on his new book, My Year in Iraq. I took very thorough notes which I will soon share below. But first, a few thoughts. Bremmer was thrown into a caldron that was ripe with failure. When you think of home many Bush appointees have failed, need I mention “Brownie” and the Katrina fiasco, it is amazing that Bremmer is not made into a scapegoat. He in fact conveyed a sense of compassion for Iraq, admitted some of his mistakes, and mentioned some issues where he differs from the White House (though he did toe the party line mostly). He opened the floor for questions and did answer, albeit simplistically at times, the hard questions tossed at him.

I came away from the talk with a favorable impression of Bremmer. It seems that he did the best he could with the situation. Of course he chose the statistics to whip out, so who knows if there are some negative numbers to throw against him. But nevertheless, it does not seem like he made things worse in Iraq and that he often made things better.

What I found most interesting was his compassion for the people who have endured and continue to endure so much. He mentioned that the whole nation may be suffering from some kind of post-traumatic stress disorder. This is something that I find fascinating and is worth exploring. It may be a huge part of the recovery process for a nation that was broken over a 40 year period.

Without further ado, my notes:

Continue reading Paul Bremmer at the Northshire Bookstore

It all began when I was reading Jordon Cooper’s blog one day. He was talking about not being interested in blogging while at work. He only carried his Moleskine notebook with him to take notes and write out ideas.

It intrigued me. I looked into the moleskine web site and found that this notebook used by the likes of Hemingway and Picasso had vanished in the 20th Century and has recently been brought back by a Spanish company. It looked really neat and right up my alley, but wasn’t quite right for me at the time.

Continue reading My Manic Moleskine Search

I’m probably a few days off, but about a year ago from today, theologian Stan Grenz quietly passed away. Grenz was very influential on many young theologians (including myself) who were trying to make sense of theology in a postmodern context. He put into words what many of us felt. He provided categories, the very building blocks we have been using to form theology in today’s context. While I’m not particularly interested in posting here on religious topics, I will include them when I’ve published something along those lines. That’s the case here.
The Princeton Theology Review has been accepting papers over the past few months related to Stan Grenz and his influence on the world of theology. I submitted my own paper yesterday.
As a little teaser, I thought that I would share my introduction paragraph to give an idea of where I took this paper. I’ll try to post a link to the issue with these papers when it is released. It should be a great read. Here’s a peek at my article:

Continue reading My Article to the Princeton Theology Review

I am a firm believer that the way to make a mark in today’s culture is to collaborate on projects within a community and offer up your product free of charge. Instead of charging for your services or products, make them available for wider use. This will invite others to improve the product, recommend it to others, and spread it quickly. If your goal is to offer something that will be the best of its kind and will help as many people as possible, sharing is the way to go. One area of the non-profit world where this is very true is in churches.

Read what Bob has to say:

“One of the beautiful things about the age we’re living in is the unlimited potential to share. Where sermons and art and music used to take years to circumnavigate the globe, now, they take less than seconds. We have the ability to share what we create in our local Christian communities with the larger Christian community and with the world. But not many of us do it.”

Continue reading Free is the Future

Stuck in a rut or trying to innovate? Perhaps a personal coach is worth considering. The Rutland Herald reports:

“With so many of us overwhelmed in our jobs or relationships, the concept of having a personal coach has appeal. Once reserved for executives, personal coaches are trickling down to the average American worker struggling to build a small business, get out of a dating rut, restore balance to their lives or find an alternate to retirement.”

While a personal coach may not be the best long-term financial paln, I think that it would be helpful to have an outside perspective for important transitions and the vision process.

Technorati Tags: personal coach

Using the following three cliches throughout, take 15 minutes to write a short story.

• “The game is up”
• “Don’t eat your heart out”
• “I need someone I can count on”

Here’s mine:

Continue reading Cliche Writing Exercise

You can read all about team players in the latest business books and Dilbert cartoons. But behind all of the jargon and overused sports analogies, is a great deal of truth. In fact, I would venture to say that a co-worker who is a team player is the best kind to have around. An acquaintance of mine who is the CFO of a major company said that his number one qualification for job candidates is “team player.”

So what is the big deal exactly with team players? Why is the value of team so important?

Continue reading Team Players: More Than a Cliche