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The Company We Keep

Dear Reader,
This blog is now an archive. John Abrams (Founder of South Mountain, author of this blog, and a book of the same name) retired on December 31, 2022. All posts published up until this date are preserved below.

For updates on John's next chapter, visit abramsangell.com.

For updates on South Mountain's second act, subscribe to our newsletter using the form below.

Climate change

Clearing a Path to Energy Independence

February 25, 2015 by John Abrams Leave a Comment

The Vineyard remains uncommonly chilly.  Snow on the ground since late January, more last night.  The other morning it was 6 below zero, the coldest since we arrived 40 years ago.  Mal Jones told me the last time it was colder than that was in 1961.  Quite a winter.  But if we’re going to live in Vermont, I think we oughta get to have some mountains!! No such luck.

Recently Julie Wells, the editor of the Vineyard Gazette, asked me to write an article about the demise of Cape Wind.  Reasonable request, but I declined.   What I could do, I suggested, is include a few thoughts about Cape Wind in a larger context.  She agreed to that, and here’s the piece that emerged, published in the Gazette on February 5, 2015.

On the Gazette website there were many comments about the article, both positive and negative.  My favorite, from someone in Oak Bluffs, who called himself (or herself) BS:  “I’m tired of shoveling all this global warming from my driveway.”

That was the only one I responded to.  I said:  “Hah, BS, I’m tired of it too – you shovel mine and I’ll shovel yours. But you’re not shoveling Global Warming, it’s Climate Change you’re shoveling, which brings, over time, greater weather extremes – more precipitation, more drought, colder temps, warmer temps. Some even call it Global Wilding.”

Onward.

Filed Under: Climate Change, Energy, Martha's Vineyard Tagged With: Cape Wind, Climate change, Julie Wells, Mal Jones, Vineyard Gazette

Vineyard Controversies

May 7, 2014 by John Abrams 2 Comments

Most of the time, there are one or two raging controversies on the Vineyard.   The last few years, however, have been quiet.  The only polarizing conflict was a roundabout in the center of the island.  I never understood that one; it really didn’t matter much either way.  I thought it would be fine to have a roundabout, but I thought it would be fine not to, as well.  What’s the big difference?

Now it’s built.  It’s fine.  I like it.  Nobody really cares that much, as far as I can tell.  So be it.

But now there are two big controversies, and both seem important to me.  One is the Squibnocket Beach parking and access re-design in Chilmark.  The beach and its parking lot, and an adjacent roadway that is the only access to a number of valuable properties, are threatened by coastal erosion.

The town selectmen, together with the property owners, a land conservation non-profit, and coastal biology and geology experts, have fashioned a unique partnership and plan.  The plan has generated intense controversy.  I don’t know if it’s a good plan, or the best plan, but it makes sense to me.

Nobody knows what the precise outcome will be, but something is going to happen, because it must – it’s in everybody’s interest to solve this problem.  I’m particularly interested in the outcome because it foreshadows many such efforts to come.  This is about climate change adaptation and mitigation.  It is the future, right now.

The other big controversy is the efforts of Stop and Shop and its parent company, Ahold, to significantly expand their shabby downtown supermarket in Tisbury.  There are many issues – scale, congestion, community character, the need to raise the building to stay above the flood zone now and in the future  – and the debate has become highly emotional.  My knowledge about this plan is limited too, and I haven’t been inclined to wade into the  sea of accusations, wild inaccuracies, and finger pointing.

But then I read a letter in the paper from Henry Stephenson, the co-chair of the Tisbury planning board, a good thinker with a broad design background.  He quietly suggested important ways to make it a much better project.  His solutions rang true, and I had also been noticing something missing from the debate, so I wrote the following to our regional planning agency, the Martha’s Vineyard Commission, which is the primary regulatory decision-maker for the project,  and to the local papers:

It’s hard to imagine anyone who cares more about Tisbury than planning board co-chairman Henry Stephenson.  He thinks deeply about the town and he has a nuanced and practical sense of design.  His Stop and Shop letter several weeks ago was right on the mark, in my view.  

No hyperbole, no careless inaccuracies – just the most cogent and thoughtful alternative plan to date.

I hope the Martha’s Vineyard Commission will heed his specific suggestions about decreasing building size, increasing setbacks, re-designing the municipal parking lot, Water Street congestion, Union Street traffic flow, and added transportation services.  I hope the MVC will condition the project in the realistic ways he suggests.

I also want to call attention to something that has been sadly absent from the Stop and Shop discussion.  The Martha’s Vineyard Commission has a responsibility to promote appropriate economic development.  I hope the MVC will add to its conditions – if and when it approves a better, scaled down version of the plan that is before it – that Stop and Shop will be required to provide full time jobs with full benefits at Living Wages.  

We need good jobs.  Part-time jobs at low wages are harmful and unprincipled.  Stop and Shop and its parent, Ahold, can afford decency.  It is within the powers of the MVC to require such decency.  And we cannot afford to accept less.  Thank you.

I hope this letter brings support to Henry’s excellent suggestions and, at the same time, opens up a new – and very important – topic of discussion.

But aside from the particulars of these controversies, there are two things I particularly like about both of them.

First, it’s the passion.

The downside of passion is that it can bring out hostility – people attack, personalize, demonize, distort, and falsify.  But that’s part of the deal, part of the inherent messiness of democracy.

The upside of passion is that it brings people out.  People put themselves on the line.  I recently watched a good talk called Why Your Critics Aren’t the Ones Who Count, by Brene Brown, a researcher and author who studies vulnerability, courage, worthiness, and shame. She is the author of The Gifts of Imperfection (2010) and Daring Greatly (2012).

In it she says, in part, “Show up.  Be seen.  Be brave.  If you do show up, in the arena, there’s one guarantee:  You will get your ass kicked.  That’s the only certainty. “  My experience over decades bears that out.  Brown goes on to say that “if you’re not in the arena, getting your ass kicked like I am, then I’m really not interested in your feedback.”

Along with “showing up”, she honors the importance of vulnerability.  She points out that vulnerability is the gateway to love, belonging, joy, trust, empathy, innovation, and creativity.  Without vulnerability, she says,  you can’t create.  We need to enter the arena, and we need not hide our vulnerability.

I like seeing so many entering the arena, warts and all.

The other thing that interests me is the essential importance of the issues at stake.  In the scheme of things, these are minor controversies in small towns.  But they both have elements of two of the great issues of our time – climate change and income inequality.

Climate change is certain to test our democracy in ways we can’t foresee.  Nobody will be un-affected, nobody will be able to stand on the sidelines.  That much is clear, and here are two examples of the issues, in a nutshell, in our small outpost.  Such examples, close to home, may promote greater engagement in the larger arena of public policy that our future depends on.

And two sides of the income inequality issue are visible in these controversies.  At Squibnocket, land owners are showing what’s possible when it serves all interests for the wealthy to enter into public-private partnerships.  At Stop and Shop, we see a major multi-national affecting a small community in ways that corporations do, and the community exercising its will to make sure that local benefits come first.

In her book The Sixth Extinction, author Elizabeth Kolbert says,  “Chimps are smart, and can do all kinds of clever things, but they don’t have collective problem solving ability.  You’ll never see two chimps carrying something together.  Only humans do that stuff.”

Whatever the outcomes, Squibnocket and Stop and Shop are vibrant examples of humans fully engaged in collective problem solving.  Doing that stuff.  Good stuff.

 

 

 

Filed Under: Climate Change, Collaboration, Design, Environment, Martha's Vineyard, Politics Tagged With: Ahold, Brene Brown, Climate change, Daring Greatly, Elizabeth Kolbert, Gifts of Imperfection, Henry Stephenson, income inequality, living wage, Martha's Vineyard Commission, Sixth Extinction, Stop and Shop, Suibnocket Beach

Milestone for Mike… and SMCo

October 12, 2012 by John Abrams Leave a Comment

Last week we had our first official retirement party.  Mike Drezner became the first SMCo employee to reach retirement age (and actually retire!). He came to work as a carpenter in 1985 and stayed for 27 years.

I can tell you one thing: when he first came he sure wasn’t a carpenter.  He wasn’t even very handy (if you know what I mean) and he wasn’t young to be just starting out – pushing 40.  He had been a teacher – a damn good one I’ll bet – and had traveled a lot.  But carpentry? None.

So why did we hire him?

I don’t know.  Just a feeling.  He asked, or maybe his wife Liz did, I can’t really remember.  I do remember that I was still on the fence about being in business, and I hadn’t really learned much about saying no.  So I said yes.  It was about who he was not what he was.

He didn’t exactly take to carpentry, not right away anyways.  What size nails did you say for this decking? he would ask, over and over.  8 penny nails Mike, same as last week.  He was dogged and determined, but it came slowly.  He made up for it in so many ways they’re hard to count.

He was as reliable as the tide.  He cared about people.  He was steady.  He was a great member of every crew he worked on.  He was a calming influence for all.  He was a student of the world, and how it works.  Still is.  And he became an excellent carpenter, but so much more as well.

He was an important part of our Personnel Committee.  Later, he was a charter member of our Management Committee.  A closet stock market maven, he stepped up and shouldered the stewardship of our pension fund and our equity fund.  This was huge.

Both funds have prospered under his steady hand.  They dipped in 2008 (like everything else in our madhouse economy) but came back strong (like us).  There is now over $3.5 Million in the two funds, and we are beginning to look at ways to gradually shift from socially responsible investing to socially responsible local investing.

At the party we gave him a beautiful bowl turned by shopper Ken.

And Deirdre  produced a beautiful book signed by each of us called The Drezner Years, with photos of people he worked with, projects he worked on, and a brief tribute.

And he doesn’t know it yet but the ratty old nail apron he wore for years is off getting bronzed at this very moment.

Mike could not have been a better co-owner.  As much as anyone he embraced the concept that we are a group of individuals, all of whom matter, but we are also another entity, The Company, which matters even more.   He gets the true meaning of workplace democracy, through and through.

For me, his counsel was invaluable.  We often disagreed, and still do, but the disagreements are most remarkable and noticeable because we share so many points of view and have so much in common.  I always come away from the resolution of our disagreements wiser than before.  You can’t always say that about people you disagree with, right?

I treasure the work that we did together and I will always honor his influence and value his friendship.

I hope his retirement is just what he wishes it to be and I’m thrilled that he will stay on the SMCo board to continue the work we began so long ago.  He will also continue to manage our two funds as he gradually passes that baton to Ryan Bushey (an architect managing a money fund?  Uh oh).

Mike’s retirement is also a reminder that the gradual transition to SMCo’s second generation that we refer to so often isn’t just talk – it’s what’s happening,  here and now.  It’s like climate change – not an abstract thing that’s going to happen in some distant future but a set of changes we are living with right now.  I like thinking about SMCo’s next generation more than I like thinking about climate change, but the point is that both are becoming more and more a part of our present.

As for Mike, he’s irreplaceable, and he will not be replaced, because he’ll be staying with us in so many ways.

Filed Under: Climate Change, South Mountain Company, Workplace Democracy Tagged With: Climate change, local investing, Workplace Democracy

Co-ops in the Rise

December 7, 2009 by John Abrams Leave a Comment

I’m still excited about the budding alliance between the United Steelworkers (USW) and the Mondragon Cooperatives – and the general awakening consciousness about worker co-operatives and co-operative business in general that I wrote about last month.

And there’s more.

Read More about Co-ops in the Rise

Filed Under: Climate Change, Collaboration, Economic Crisis, Employee Ownership, Environment, South Mountain Company, Workplace Democracy Tagged With: Bernie Sanders, Climate change, Copenhagen, Equal Exchange, Gamesa, Green Jobs Coalition, Mondragon, South Mountain Company, United Steelworkers, Vermont Employee Ownership Center, Worker Cooperatives, Workplace Democracy

Orr & Brand: To Save Our Civilization

October 23, 2009 by John Abrams 2 Comments

downtowire-24pxAwhile ago I gave up on doom and gloom.  I’ve learned enough to know the problems, and I tired of reading 250 pages of meticulously researched how-bad-it-is-and-how-bad-it’s-gonna-get followed by 25 pages of generalities about the solutions.  But I broke my rule when I saw David Orr’s new book, Down to the Wire.  The subtitle is Confronting Climate Collapse.  He does just that.

He says that  “The global crisis ahead is a direct result of the largest political failure in history.”  

Read More about Orr & Brand: To Save Our Civilization

Filed Under: Climate Change, Energy, Environment, Leadership, Politics Tagged With: 350.org, Bill McKibben, Climate change, David Orr, Down to the Wire, EF Shumacher, Small is Beautiful, Stewart Brand, Whole Earth Discipline

Cool Biz

October 18, 2009 by John Abrams Leave a Comment

I have about half a dozen posts half done and about half as much time as I wish, so for the moment I’m just going to tell a short story paraphrased from Tim Brown’s new book Design Thinking. But coming soon there will be more about that book (and IDEO, the amazing company of which Brown is the CEO), a piece about pirates (as democratic role models!!),  a review of two remarkable new books about our future (one by Stewart Brand and one by David Orr), a discussion of how little I understand about the economy (after reading The New Yorker’s ” Money Issue”)  and more. . .

In 2005 the Japanese Ministry of the Environment approached an advertising agency called Hakuhodo. They wanted help getting the Japanese people involved in meeting Japan’s Kyoto commitment. Hakuhodo suggested creating a campaign to mobilize the collectivist ethos of Japanese society toward the goal of reducing emissions 6 percent.

They called the campaign Cool Biz. Within one year a staggering 95.8% of the Japanese population recognized the slogan.

Read More about Cool Biz

Filed Under: Energy, Leadership Tagged With: Climate change, Cool Biz, Design Thinking, IDEO, Tim Brown

Living Local & The Next Generation

October 4, 2009 by John Abrams 2 Comments

The third annual Martha’s Vineyard Living Local and Harvest Festival just ended.  It  began with a Friday night forum called Opportunities and Challenges – a Panel Discussion with Next Generation Island Leaders.

It was about youth.    logo_LLHV_50pc

Having just turned 60, I am acutely aware of the role of young people (in their 20’s and 30’s)  in my work life and civic life.  At work they are a constant theme and a growing force.  There is a great transition in process at South Mountain Company – from first generation leadership to the next.  It’s a long, gradual journey, sometimes a bit frightening but mostly thrilling, and it’s gathering steam.

Read More about Living Local & The Next Generation

Filed Under: Leadership, Martha's Vineyard, Politics, South Mountain Company Tagged With: Climate change, Local Economies, Martha's Vineyard, Re-localizatio, South Mountain Company

Out of the Minefield

September 26, 2009 by John Abrams 1 Comment

After reading my last post, Values and Principles, Ross Chapin (www.rosschapin.com.) wrote to me.  Ross is an architect in the Northwest who has pioneered in the design and development of small “Pocket Neighborhoods” and is currently writing a book on the subject. IMG_0188

Read More about Out of the Minefield

Filed Under: Economic Crisis, Energy, Leadership, Politics Tagged With: Climate change, energy efficiency, Pocket Neighborhoods

Are We Different Enough??

August 12, 2009 by John Abrams 4 Comments

At the recent conference of the Vermont Employee Ownership Center (VEOC) in Burlington, VEOC board president Paul Millman asked an important question to the attendees, who represented some of the many remarkably progressive companies in the Green Mountain State. “Are we different enough?” he wondered.

Good question.  I wonder about that often when I think about South Mountain.  Are we promoting a system that would, if widespread, create fundamental change in our broken economic system?  Or are we just avoiding one avalanche chute by traversing to another with a slightly more gradual incline?

Hard to say.

I

Read More about Are We Different Enough??

Filed Under: South Mountain Company Tagged With: Climate change, Deep Energy, Economic Crisis, Employee ownership, Martha's Vineyard, peak oil, South Mountain Company, Worker Cooperatives, Workplace Democracy

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