Sharing Wisdom

There's a book I've used both in business and ministry titled Sharing Wisdom by Mary Benet McKinney. It's a great tool for anyone who does organization effectiveness work - I highly recommend it.

This Scribblings entry, however, is SO not about the book! It's about spending a couple of hours over lunch earlier this week with Darlene Stover, Jimmy Pic, and Tom Swan ...

They were already at Friday's when I arrived, and I got there in the middle of a hard-pressed recruiting effort by Tom to add two more horns to the Melrose Blackhawks line. "It's just like the Saints - you'll see!" was repeated in various and sundry ways over the course of the next couple of hours. Every once in a great while, I have some pangs of shoulda-coulda when it comes to playing a horn or drum ... not during this lunch! No offense, Bucky ...

It's probably been 25 years - a quarter century - since I last saw the person forever linked with the success of our horn line. In a pattern repeating itself over and over lately, it seemed we were each able to pick up where we left off all those years ago. It was probably the longest amount of time I ever spent chatting with Mr. Swan ... and what fun!

Feel free to validate this with Pic and Darlene: There were probably no less than a few dozen stories Tom started which he cut off at their mid-points, choosing instead to save them for "at the bar, after the reunion." Tales about our successes and failures (self-imposed or at the hands of judges), personalities galore, other experiences - the master weaved his way through them all non-stop.

What's one more thing I need to do before the reunion on the 9th? Run out and pick up a new digital recorder ... I'm not going to miss one word of the wisdom he - or any of you - will be sharing that night!

All for now - corpsdially yours from jo!