Not so long before he died, within a year or two in any case, I was hanging out on the porch with Mary's dad George Sr, overlooking the Long Island Sound. He was an amazing guy. He had done very well within the corporate world, ending his career as General Counsel and board member at a decent-sized bank, while remaining a frugal sort. Never hired anyone to mow his lawn or clean his house, ate the same boring thing for lunch every day, etc. I have probably told stories before here. Though he would spend on things he thought mattered, like cruises or education and housing for his kids, when they needed support.
In any case, we're sitting there one summer afternoon, and somehow the conversation comes around to a point where he says: "I remember warm Saturdays when I'd be sitting at my desk reviewing a contract or something and I'd here people laughing and sounds of splashing drift up to me from the beach over there. And I resented it."
Last night I was on a Zoom call with a bunch of people from the newly-formed Equity Task Force for the lake on whose board I serve. For the moment I am the board liaison to this task force, since the recent college grads who have spearheaded it were first connected with me by someone else. I found myself of necessity playing the heavy, saying that whatever happened would need to go through the board, and that whatever we proposed would have to take into consideration the fact that we were trying to raise more money to maintain the lake, because we are only recently beginning to understand what the actual costs of operating the lake are over a long cycle and we are underfunded. All within the political context of an organization in which membership is elective, not mandatory like an HOA, so that if people don't like what we are doing they can elect to not pay and we have limited recourse. This is all true and I needed to insert a note of realism into the discussion and help everyone understand that we would need to walk slow and build consensus in whatever we did.
But undergirding it all is a fundamental tiredness. It gets tiresome having to be the person who can back out and take the 100,000 foot view of the problem and frame it all out. And think about the money, and ultimately find it. Meanwhile the young people are fundamentally not wrong to frame this as an issue of structural racism in that people of color haven't had the access to the educational and cultural opportunities to earn the money that would allow them to be part of this process. They are seeing only the 200,000 foot view, but it is good for them to have taken it.
In some sense it is a failure of delegation, empowerment and letting go on the part of those of us in power, as it were. So it is an opportunity to do better.
As so often is the case, what was a relatively complete and well-integrated thought when I started off writing has fallen victim to the time elapsing as I write. And now it is time to start the day. That's why this blog is published under a pseudonym, and that's why professional writers devote so much time to re-reading, editing, etc.
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