2006-2007
I have reached the age of entry level Elder, and I think it appropriate to have something to say.
For most of my life, I haven’t had much to say about what we “should” do, or how you- particularly my children- “should” conduct your lives. You may even have felt sometimes that I have abandoned you in times of great decision by not setting any hard and fast rules for you. This was not an accident- it was a strategy. (Of course, it only became a strategy after I met my oldest daughter. I didn’t realize until then that my convictions about personal freedom applied to children as well as adults.)
You must know by now that I believe one cannot find another person’s way for them: that telling others what they must do is in many cases interfering with their development, and is certainly futile. It is not for me to live your life. I believe strongly in the individuals’ freedom to follow their own destiny, and I think that the best thing a Father can do is to help a child find a way to themselves. I always tried to provide you with the security and the tools with which to choose your own path and your own goals.
Part of this strategy was learned from my own Mother and Father, who were both independent beings. My parents struggled sometimes, usually in some way related to their reluctance to attach themselves to any larger organization or group. They were not comfortable in, and did not trust, organized groups; whether they were Corporations or Churches or Schools or any other vertically structured organisms. When repeatedly offered a management position in the company he worked for most of his life, my Father chose to remain an independent contractor, strictly on commission. He was astutely aware of the price of having an “umbrella”.
Another part of my personal strategy was engendered by my being born in a free country, in a peaceful era. I have witnessed some events which belie this characterization; but after a life’s experience, I still believe in the set of tools provided to us by the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights. I relate to these documents in much the same way I relate to the Bible or the I Ching- as amalgams or maps of ways in which wise humans have found their way to Community. I believe that Community is the most direct path to Oneself. Is this statement paradoxical? Of course it is.
You might observe that these two base strategies are opposing. Later I will get deeper into this polarity.
My own greatest Epiphany occurred gradually, when I was in my early twenties- as I realized that all was not what it appeared to be. I was, and am, a believer- a seeker of truth- and the foundations of the organized religions and government as presented to me in very simplistic terms at the time seemed entirely valid to me. The precepts I accepted as my reality were, of course, not actually practiced by these social organizations. Even today, I am repeatedly shocked at the carnage both personal and social that takes place under the auspices of these organizations.
Here I encounter yet another polarity- the necessity of form in a civilization, related to the distortion of that form. I’m telling you, when I was 22 and 23 years old, I was a writhing, screaming mess of contradictions. The primary reason for my suffering was that I saw the disintegration of our culture from within, caused by betrayal of our civic ideals.
Form- Ethic, Law, Government, Community, Spiritual- is critical to our survival. Without a cultural form and structure, we have only anarchy and war.
Life before Rock and Roll
During the years in which I was growing from child to man, I experienced several different tableaus which fundamentally changed my perception of the world. You’ve all heard the gist of these stories, but I will repeat for the sake of ha-ha form.
The first was my experience in the US Army in the Berlin, where I was an illustrator and mapmaker in the Command Headquarters. My military experience in Berlin; then a closed city maintained by the British, French, German, and Russian Armies; gave me a window into some of the inner machinations of Military politics, and the psychology of Fear-based governance.
The second tableau was as Art Director for Metromedia News in Washington, where I looked at the World through another portal- that of the television newsroom. My job was to interpret the evening news by selecting and/or producing the graphical face of the broadcast. Later, due to a six-month strike, I was put on the street as a news cameraman, where I experienced the “street” version of news events, and my growing perceptions of darkness were confirmed. The contrast between my simplistic and idealistic early education and these very hard-edged experiences completely destroyed my innocent perception of our (American) reality.
The third was my brief experience with marriage under terms which I had been brought to believe were appropriate “form” for a lifes’ relationship with another person. Although my parents were a reasonably successful couple, they didn’t express much about how to make a relationship work in the brief 18 years I spent with them. I was compelled to get my understanding of the union from popular culture. They were so private with their relationship that nothing was apparent at all, except their occasional arguments.
Mind you, our culture was only just beginning the cultural consciousness transition that became the Freedom Movement. It was still an acceptable idea for most Westerners that people could be owned- that, indeed, women could be owned. The popular media, our music included, was all about the ownership of your mate. Well, I fell in love with a liberated woman. That was the last straw. Everybody was lying about everything!
The world events of those years closely resonated with our present situation- an illegal war in Vietnam; our Government run by a group of greedy and despicable morons with no moral or ethical foundation; the racist and fascist leanings of a portion of our populous; our adoption of the “nuclear family” concept to replace the extended family and community model; our food production and manufacturing capacity controlled by a cabal of corporate gangsters.
It seemed to me then as if my entire world was a cruel deception- that everything good I had learned from my beautiful Parents and Sisters and Brothers was a cruel deception. In fact, my poor parents may well have felt that way when they passed. So far as I know, my Parents believed what they had taught us.
It is the darkest day. I am in deep and seemingly limitless Depression. I try to give up- can’t do it. Some bouyant deep presence is not allowing me to slip under, but there is a veil between me and everything I encounter.
My perception of reality just doesn’t align with what is presented to me.
I wasn’t really aware of it at the time, but some of the things that I had absorbed while growing up in the Sanders Family were actually tools with which to work my way out of this state of being. As I said, my Father and Mother were very independent (stubborn). My Mother came from London wild side stock- middle class (dare I say city Liberals?) Mom’s Mom was an immigrant stage actress, her husband a Field Engineer for the railroad. He surveyed the rail beds across the US. My Father came from middle class Tennessee farmers. My Father has a gentility about him that was the best of the South- polity as a foundation for every transaction.
Now, everything my parents had taught me seemed in question, yet I could not for a moment believe that they lied to me. So here I stood, a very intelligent and well behaved young man with a cleaved persona in conflict with itself. And, somehow, there is an observer in this mix. Who am I? Which am I? Who is observing? Of course, these are existential questions which every Seeker encounters repeatedly.
So I have a big problem. Having been cleaved once, and being in nearly constant conflict regarding “what to do?”, I am coming to recognize within myself various other beings in my Persona. I suspect that I had always been vaguely aware of these other personalities inside my own- “potentials”, I might call them, although each was singularly recognizable. Now I recognize these as archetypes- characters in the great human play.
I, the Observer I, am beginning to think that maybe I the person who has to live here is Crazy. Maybe this increasingly conflicting World I’ve come to know has made me delusional. Well, I am a maker. I draw. I plan. I visualize. I design. I create. I can bring myself out of this.
This world is in such deep, deep trouble. I am overwhelmed by the hugeness of the cruelty being perpetrated here. I am so limited; powerless. Where is the power to change; the resource to stop this rampage? The power is in the hands of the rich- I am poor. How can I change it? Shall I just give up and join the fray? Shall I kill to stop the killing? Shall I rampage? Am I arrogant in my presumption that I can have an effect? I cannot kill- it is that very propensity for violence which I seek to escape. Shall I go into seclusion and live a monastic existence?
In the Army, I experienced the detached spiritual framework under which killing-by-proxy occurred, and which is in high form right now under the current administration. In the television newsroom, I experienced the aphasic (out of phase) nature of the Media and the disparities between reality and record. Why would I not believe that our Civilization lives a lie? How can I possibly help? There is really no reason to live unless I am helping to solve the problem.
How can I help?
My early experience with Design and Making taught me that, in order to solve complex design problems, one must repeatedly return to the most simple and proceed from there with experiment and observation, in order to return to the most simple.
My first tool is to visualize myself as awakening into a world before civilization; having no language, having no experience- only senses. I erected this mental structure years ago, and I keep it and keep refining it, so as to have a good vehicle for decision making. As I consciously progress through this visualization, both in an historical and personal sense, I begin to rebuild my frame of reference by adding only those elements which I trust from experience, and that which will do no harm. I still use this visualization as a sort of grid on which to lay any problem I might be considering. Y’know, I get naked all the time in the woods, working out how to get from there to the 21st century.
As I worked my way through my personal epiphany to the present, I became quite sure that it is the relationship between myself and the materials of the Earth which leads me to Peace. I feel it immediately, every time I engage in the process of rendering a material. It is the process of visualization and rendering which has borne our species to this reality. But our rendering hasn’t created Peace on Earth- doesn’t stop our slaughter of each other. We have simply built an increasingly complex Stage on which to perform our dance.
Here I stumbled upon the concept of Maya- Illusion.
for Illusion
When I look around me with the mind’s eye of a Designer, little of what I see or perceive is untouched by my own hand and mind. The deeper into the City one proceeds, the less one can observe of pure Nature, unaffected by our imposed changes. Everywhere I look, I see what we have wrought. Maya- illusion of our own making, is prevalent in our setting, language, laws, religion, mores, behavior. Even the Earth’s horizon has undergone great changes wrought by our hand. We are making this up as we go along.
Realizing the depth of our illusion initially came as a surprise to me, but I looked again and again, and encountered very little that we haven’t made up. Only in the microscopic and the macroscopic- in the materials- was I relieved from looking into the mirror. Now the realization of Maya has become a very powerful tool in my own cultural and ethical development. To some, the concept may be perceived as a terrible threat to their belief system- as blasphemy. I don’t deny the value of our (human’s) long course of cultural precedents. I do, however, suggest that these precedents interpreted as Laws must always be observed from the perspective of NOW, lest they be reduced to dogma. Hence my regular return to the simplest of my selves.
One of the most ancient and interesting examples of an attempt at a balance between precedence and presence is the Chinese Book of Changes, which is a series of 64 cultural situations, each suggesting a set of potential responses for the reader. These cultural situations are based on archetypal human transactions long known to occur in human individuals, families, and tribes. The selection of a situation from which to learn is derived by generation of a random number. The introduction of random selection into the process is an acknowledgement to forces beyond our control. Even in our most complex sciences, the concept of random is given considerable authority. The I Ching is not meant to be used as a fortune telling device- it is a living lesson in a method of examining human situations and relationships, relying on the science of random generation as a selective tool.
Another example of these elegantly structured tools is our own (American) Constitution. The Founders of this country well understood the destructiveness of dogma and rule by proclamation, and responded to the danger of these human political proclivities by constructing an elegant matrix of checks and balances. They created a paradigm which took into consideration the ethical weaknesses of their current culture, they resolved the immediate disparities, and provided a very sophisticated method of centering and balancing our vastly complex government to this day. The structure of our National Government is a magnificent intellectual structure which, to a great degree, holds the potential chaos of Anarchy at bay.
It is not these Forms which are destructive, it is their misuse, and when they are misused, the chaos looms closer to us.
I have achieved intellectual certainty that we are making our own reality, individually and as a culture. With this realization comes the responsibility for my own actions and thoughts, every moment, every day, and the potential for influencing positive change in a larger sense. I can perhaps live up to this responsibility in my own behavior, and perhaps influence my immediate family, but how can I apply this influence to a broader platform? The authors of our Constitution did so, by consensus. They erected a model which resonated in the souls of we free people
In my repeated intellectual visitations to and through the simplicity of our pre-industrial past, I am learning that there are fundamental organizational paradigms which seem to work well. In my opinion, the most workable of these patterns begins with the individual and radiates out through the immediate family, to extended family, to community. Because of our (Sanders) unique cultural position- as stewards of many thousands of ethnographic objects- we have the possibility of witnessing everything of commonality in many cultures, through the objects and tools humankind has always used.
There is a huge transition visible in this record in every culture, where the advent of industrial production brings severe changes in the structure of the culture. The most fundamental of these changes is in our reason for making objects. In pre-industrial cultures, our reason for making objects was in order that we might use them. Today, in our society, our reason for making objects is in order that we might have them. Our reason for working is in order to have things- a consumer society.
With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, the concept of “nuclear family” was created to suit the requirements of Corporate organization for mobility and standardization. The connections between immediate family, extended family, and community were co-opted because these relationships demand proximity in order to flourish. I believe that the loss of these connections has created a poor experiential foundation for what we now face.
Middle age has brought the truth to me that my whole life, and all our lives, are defined by the transition from a provincial to a global perspective. I first became aware of this as a young man while reading Alvin Toffler’s “Future Shock”, where he described with considerable prescience the personal trials that we would all experience with shifting our daily input and perception of reality from local to global. What an incredible burden for our generations! We have the visual weight of every act of carnage floating on a blue screen in front of us! Now we must each embrace a world of diversity- or not.
On one hand, those of good conscience are reaching out to embrace the wonderful diversity of other cultures as a human family. On the other hand, large power blocs with insular and dogmatic structure are vying for global power, attempting to impose their structure and precepts over all people, using fear and greed as their driving forces. This isn’t a new story, right? However, in our generations this face-off is Global for the first time.
two
It is these considerations which have driven me for my entire adult life. We have finally made it to the here and now in my complicated tome, and I will describe to the best of my ability what I perceive as a potential path into the future for our extended family. I have thought long and deeply over the years as I matured - about how and what resources to strive to build for you (our human future), and how to make those resources as versatile as possible. How can I prepare my family to survive and even prosper in this dangerous and constantly shifting world? Where does security come from? What is ownership? Can one own a person? Can one own a piece of the earth? If I choose to regard the entities around me- (land, people, conceptual frameworks like a business or a “territory”)-if I choose to regard them as property, what happens to my relationship with them? Conversely, what happens to my interface with the structures and laws of the community at large (represented by Fed/State/Local)?
After meeting Carol, it was an inevitable circumstance that we would have a family. We choose to be embraced by a Family, Tribe, and Community. We left the book of decisions open and embraced all sorts of potential living situations and relationships and types of people. We both regarded the extremes as just that, and kept our activity pretty close to the middle. I think we were both aware that the world of our parents had some great flaws, and we mutually wanted to find a more joyful life. In my opinion, we have succeeded beyond my wildest dreams. Thank you.
Visualization
The ownership and resource management thing is magnificently complex, and lends much color to our theatre of the absurd. We could flip the world on it’s ear if all of us were giving rather than our various degrees of trying to take, or hold. Imagine spending all that Iraq money for healing. Does corruption arrive with the concept of ownership? OK friends, now it gets really difficult…. mmm.
Visualize the sign of the Yin/Yang. Think about exercise. What is it that keeps your body healthy? What is best in theatre? What keeps the earth from falling (down? Out?). Think it through all the way. It is the dynamic tension between opposing forces which describes our reality. The dark and the light describe us. They are not going to go away. The concept of ownership also will not go away anytime soon, either; so we have to deal with it.
However, since I personally don’t believe in ownership, what will I do to secure the resources necessary to raise a family? How will I relate to my “belongings”, including, by law, my wife and children? And then how will I help the World heal?
Early in my life, I knew that I could not answer these most difficult questions to my own satisfaction unless I had the freedom to adjust my everyday situation to accommodate the basis of dynamic design- trial and error. I work with models- imaginary mental structures intended to emulate large ideas in a smaller format, for the sake of applying changes and observing the effects. I certainly couldn’t proceed freely with this process inside an Institution or a Corporation. I knew that I would have to construct my own vehicle (bubble) on which to experiment, the hope being that I could protect myself and my family from pillage while I went about trying to discover how I could help to heal what I observed as being an ailing planet.
I was already convinced that “big business” wasn’t a viable framework for me as a human. I never believed that the Industrial Revolution was amenable to humans- one only had to watch “Metropolis” or read “Brave New World” to see the potential of that monster. I understand that organizing human labor as working parts of a machine has created the amazing technology we now command, but the underlying conceptual model has outlived its’ usefulness. I believe that a holistic paradigm will better serve us as our expendable resources become scarce or change their form. The concept of renewability must drive our future.
In this long quest of mine for an appropriate legal paradigm into which to tuck our various Family properties and resources, I have tried three potential underlying formats: Profit Corporation, Non Profit Corporation, and Sole Ownership; as well as an aborted venture into a Limited Liability Corporation.
At first, I visualized a Profit Corporation and a Non-Profit Corporation linked by common ownership and related goals (let’s say promoting the Arts). This is a pretty common arrangement, so there was precedent for me to work with. Just as an experiment, I wrote a paper laying out a potential non-profit structure. The format was that of a Guild; the members were to be the designers from many different fields of endeavor- those who were providing the intellectual engines which drive us into the future. The task was to examine why and how we work- and what the goals of working should be, above our survival margin. Simple, right?
I wish that I had understood more thoroughly what 30 years of perspective gives me now. The position paper, which I read in my living room to a group of about 15 people, began the creation of the Holistic Design Guild. The ensuing experiment led to knowing many wonderful and fantastic people, some of whom are now our oldest and deepest friends. However, as the numbers in the organization increased, the common task bent more and more toward survival and less idealistic and lofty. As a “non-profit” structure, we were spending as much time searching for funding as we were creating. As “starving artists”, the absence of potential personal gain inherent in a non-profit eventually seemed to diminish our striving for ideals. And, we had way too much fun. The whole adventure, however, was a deep learning experience in the psychology of groups of people and their relationship to the marketplace. The fun part was the Community.
Later, in the beginning years of our business, Carol and I enlisted the aid of one of our Guild members in the legal field to help us incorporate as a business and try to sell shares as a way to finance our expansion. Our friend generously provided us with a formal legal structure which allowed us to offer shares. We didn’t have a clue how to go about selling ourselves, and the whole venture was a fiasco- “not with a bang, but a whimper”. Our business wasn’t, and isn’t, an attractive profit making venture. I might have even realized that at the time, but like all young men, I had delusions of grandeur. I didn’t see that the form I was engendering was just another venture in march time- another expression of Corporate organization, and a trap of familiarity. The sale of stock was fortunately a failure.
Delusions notwithstanding, I still recognized that the Museums provided a niche market which fitted perfectly with my larger goal. Oh, what is my larger goal? Survival. Finding a sustainable balance in the Marketplace. Leaving my Family with a vehicle within which to confront the future together as a Community. Finding a tolerable existence.
A rant about manufacturing, including food
As I said, the Industrial Revolution severed many links in Family and Community. It also completely reorganized our concept of how, and why, we work. Previous to the Industrial Rev, products were for the most part designed to serve a need, and fabricated by craftspersons with a broad range of understanding of the media they were working. Each small town, sometimes each household, was independent from others in terms of simple everyday survival.
The Industrial Rev changed that concept to that of designing products to serve the process of manufacture and distribution; products that could be stamped out and assembled by a labor force in which individuals specialized in a single narrow aspect of the craft. This trend served to separate those who had a broad understanding of the craft from the materials- “Designers” were born. This has evolved to a point now where product designers are physically isolated from real trial and error experience with the materials, and are expected to design functional products by the numbers. I call them the “flat people”, who design to minimum standards set by law, and to suit the manufacturing process before end function.
I’m speaking of trends here- I don’t deny that industrialization has brought us many wonderful things, but we are living an existence which depends on increasingly complex specialization, and the functional path to where we are is fading. What happens when the grid goes down? All but a few individuals and small organizations are rendered helpless. Our dependence on fossil fuels is only the most obvious of our dangers- our dependence on complex and specialized systems of design, manufacture, and delivery is actually more dangerous to us. In pre-Industrial Rev, each small town was complete in itself, in terms of survival. Most food was locally grown and processed- most of our product needs were provided by local makers. The functional path to survival was shared, or at least observed, by a great number of us. Our dependency for survival was local.
I think the most visible demonstartion of the IR mind-shift is the way our culture grew food pre IR, as opposed to the practices which evolved in the twentieth century. The concept of Monoculture- replacing the Farmer with a Corporate structure and burning out the land with huge single crops and the poisons necessary to sustain the practice- has evolved to its absurdity. Marketplace proofs are beginning to influence our food production practices back toward the old polyculture and organic approach; and our better understanding of soil behavior is leading us toward more holistic methods to growing food. We are beginning to heal.
What is my goal?
Think of the evolution of the 20th century as an overlay map- communications, agriculture, manufacturing, ethics, politics. Now, look at that overlay and consider where the holes, misconnections, short circuits, and undeveloped territory are. The consciousness which now pervades and manages that overlay is the same one which embraces monoculture in farming, and the production line in manufacturing.
What I see the most clearly on this complex overlay are the areas in which I’ve concentrated my own development- the relationship between humans and their work as individuals and in task-oriented teams; the relationship between humans and the Earths’ materials and resources. I am dismayed at the sociological implications of our current pursuit of more of everything.
So, there is my goal- to create an organism- a bio-model- within which to develop survival strategy and tools. I want to examine organic farming, small manufacturing processes, renewable energy. We need to understand how families and task oriented groups evolve together. We need to find a structure for the education of our children which is more whole than the warehousing which is prevalent now. We need to build a sustainable survival vehicle, and strategies for interface with the Marketplace. These are areas where I feel that our culture is in considerable danger of ongoing damage.
I want to understand how to organize a business with more horizontal management, and focus on the quality of the relationships between person, process, and product. I want to find a meaningful relationship between what I do as work- how I survive- and my personal, family, and community life.
Here I am, a senior with some considerable resources at my disposal, still wondering about the concept of ownership. In my own Bradleyworld, I replaced the principle of “ownership” with “stewardship” long ago. In legal reality, Carol and I legally own (sort of) a defined piece of the earth and a defined business entity.
Now that leaves us with all of our homogenized resources in one big bucket- the property, the tools, the vehicles, and the land. It is time for us all as a family to embark on a fact finding mission to ascertain how we should adapt our vehicle, our model, our resources; to accommodate all of us in the future. Under our stewardship, the model has grown to fairly well accommodate all of our needs, as well as those of others in the community. I believe that it could and should continue to do so, but soon enough it will pass into your hands, my children; and you will assume stewardship of our property, together or separately. Hopefully this passage will occur in a timely and measured manner, before it has to occur in probate court, or even with a will. Our holdings are a bank and a shield from the travails of poverty. We are not by any means wealthy or secure, but we have erected a set of interlocking endeavors and relationships which affords us with some cushion from being ruled by the whims of others. None of us have to justify every moment of our time to anyone. That situation allows each of us the time to explore our own endeavors and interests. That is true freedom and responsibility.
I am gratified by your individualism and by your love and respect for each other as a Family. You are the center of a potentially broad and meaningful endeavor which could, with your diversity, grow to be a substantive family holding. Our endeavor has deep roots both in the local community and in the National museum community, and there are considerable latent opportunities for individual business expansion endeavors contained within the niche we have created. In my fantasies, I envision a network of small businesses, owned and operated separately, and linked by reciprocating goals; Family, Community, and Trust. You see, my goals have never been particularly aimed at acquiring- I am more interested in experiencing.
Our Business Form
In my opinion, a good strategy for business entities is to stay small and lean, and lay low. I believe that the closer to the ground management is, the more flexible and responsive the entire organism becomes. All of you have observed in the field the clumsy behavior of topheavy companies driven by middle management who have little understanding of the events on the ground. Our country has recently been driven into a horrible war once again by the arrogance and hubris of a vertically managed government. Guerilla Business, in my opinion, is an extremely useful format to adopt for a small business in the Corporate Globalization to come. I believe that all the medium sized businesses are too exposed to absorbsion by the big fish.
What I’m getting at here is that it is time for us all to begin serious and informed consideration of how to continue to effectively manage what our family has created. We have created a family and business and community structure which has a good chance of surviving Carol and I, and that eventuality should be as well orchestrated as we can make it.
Eventually, Carol and I returned to a sole proprietorship as a vehicle for our business. It has been the most responsive and pliable entity we could have asked for in our relationship with our clients and with the Government. Our clients enthusiastically support the idea of a family business, and the legal procedures for individuals owning a business are not as bulky and impossible as those required for Corporations. The biggest problem about this kind of vehicle is that it leaves the proprietors open to personal mishaps occuring in or around the business. My attitude, however, is that I’m personally responsible for my doings anyhow, and there is no escaping that, particularly in the intimate service which we offer. If we should suffer a mishap, Corporate law might protect us from financial responsibility, but does it protect our reputation, which is a vital part of our trade? No. Our only real protection from mishap is attention to detail and excellence in our craft.
That format works well for our business, which is intimate by necessity, but the Mountmaking business was never developed for the purpose of making money. It is intended as a vehicle with which to gain a reputation and name recognition in the Museum and Artistic community. I always loved the work, but it is not my end game. It will not, should not, grow much larger than it’s present form. The mountmaking business was a way to establish a presence, and we have achieved National recognition as experts in our field. Fantastic! In my great plan, I had hoped that this process would be more quickly accomplished, but of course it was much more difficult than a young arrogant and idealistic man could forsee.
Now I hope to gradually embark on Phase 2, which is to make a profit- not personally, but to support our endeavors in a more secure way. A service organization, particularly one as unique as ours, depends on constant high level attention, and every project is completely different. And, the possibility for profit is small in this kind of business arrangement. Normally, the kind of organization we are running would be considered an R&D endeavor, and would be supported by a more profitable manufacturing or sales entity- a “mother ship”. This is why there are so few competitors in our trade- there is no profit in it. It is a labor of love (and long term strategy).
The scenario which I have always envisioned to lend support and autonomy to our ever growing Family entails exploring the Museum trade further, seeking other niches which relate to our own, and responding to the market demands from our strong position in the industry. By nurturing our new endeavors until they are strong enough to carry themselves as independents, we can build a unified but not financially connected network of trusted practitioners in related businesses. This kind of organization is called a “cell” organization, and has been very effective against much larger opponents. Autonomous small endeavors linked by common purpose and cooperation are also a protection from the systemic management failure which larger organizations suffer when a market changes or other mishaps occur. Small Business as defined by the tax codes are free of most interference.
Our mounting systems are one example of this kind of potential derivative; the whole garment mounting trade is another. Both of these endeavors are far enough along that they could be pursued as independent businesses with linkages to SMS as one of their preferred consumers, and still cater to the whole industry without making SMS larger and more difficult to sustain. Effective management of a business entity requires very specific strategy depending on the purpose of the business. SMS is a service business, and our structure doesn’t lend itself well to a product related business, which can be operated with a more traditional format.
Another resource which I have not explored here is the garden. We have nurtured this little plot and kept it organic for almost twenty years, and the Larue family before us for another twenty. When we first arrived, I dug a series of beds two feet deep, and we gardened as much as we could until the business took all our time. It is always fantastic to have a garden, but lots of work. With some communal effort, this little plot of land could keep all of our families in good organic food, and probably support a full time gardener if it were organized properly, and the right person took it over. Consider how wonderful it would be to build a village here with a common garden for your children to experience.
Each of these endeavors is in a late formative stage, each has been road tested for feasibility and potential, and each would benefit by having its’ own team of owner-managers to carry it forward into a self supporting business which could carry a family and employees.
Mind you, I am not advocating a radical change in our current relationships. Everyone is doing a great job of managing this crazy wild thing we’ve grown here. What I am suggesting is that we develop our next Twenty Year Plan with the idea that all your children should have the same kind of potential opportunities that you and I have. You know that I adhere to the principles of slow organic development, and to my mind, this kind of approach yeilds very whole and healthy organisms.
Ah well, Happy New Year, my dearest. We have the most unique, wonderful Family I have ever seen. We are blessed. I am full. Thank you. Make yours this world.
Father
