Reading Obituaries with Pleasure

In a recent address Howard Batson includes this quote:

Clarence Darrow was so bold as to say, "I have never killed a person, but I've read many obituaries with great pleasure."

Batson continues, “That's a perfect portrayal of the sin of anger. Like Clarence Darrow, you and I have probably never killed a man. But how many times have we taken pleasure in their fall or their hardship? How many times have we been angry enough to wish that somebody didn't exist?”

Source: Howard Batson, ‘Above and Beyond’, 15 June 2008.

Dr Geoff Pound

Image: Clarence Darrow

Tiger Wood’s Victory over Himself

Brian Clark at Copyblogger has a great story about the victory by Tiger Woods at last weekend’s US Open and the way his performance, amidst injury, revealed much about the champion’s character.

Dr. Geoff Pound

Image: “performance, amidst injury.”

A Frightening Epitaph

A man once lamented the time he spent in meetings.

“I have this recurring nightmare,” he says. “My wife and five children gather at the cemetery for my funeral. At the close of the service, the funeral director approaches my weeping family and hands them a box containing all my earthly possessions. In the box are 35 years of my annual calendars and diaries. I read over their shoulders as they scan the appointment notes that kept me busy for so many years. It occurs to me how seldom anything of significance was ever accomplished at those gatherings. I turn to look at my tombstone. The epitaph reads, “Daddy has gone to another meeting.”

Dr. Geoff Pound

Image: “The epitaph reads…”

Gandhi Reflects on the Rose

Mahatma Gandhi would often say to Christians and missionaries:

“Don't talk about it. The rose doesn't have to propagate its perfume. It just gives it forth, and people are drawn to it. Live it and people will come to see the source of your power.”

Source: Mazhar Mallouhi, Gandhi’s Living Legacy in the Muslim World, IBMR, 1 April 2003.

Dr Geoff Pound

Image: “And people are drawn to it.”

Stephen Covey: Running on Empty

Mobile Parable
Heading for the Melbourne airport to pick up my homecoming daughter and friends one evening, I listened to a superb address (via CD) by Stephen Covey entitled, "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People."

Each habit was like a marker on the road that got me nearer to my destination:

Habit 1: Be Proactive
Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind
Habit 3: Put First Things First
Habit 4: Think Win/Win
Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood
Habit 6: Synergize

Half way along the final Freeway (the Tullamarine), Covey was extolling the virtues of the seventh and final habit—'Sharpen the Saw'.

No sooner had he illustrated the importance of self-renewal by speaking of the stupidity of those who drive with the petrol gauge on empty, when my car began to splutter. I switched my empty tank from gas over to petrol only to discover that the car continued to behave like a kangaroo having a fit! My gas tank I knew was empty but my petrol tank, I was discovering, was also empty!

I managed to exit the freeway but it was a late, red-faced, highly ineffective father, wreaking of petrol that had to give a pathetic explanation to four young women waiting at the airport.

Checking the Fuel Gauge
Since taking part in this parable, I've been more aware of people and myself when running on depleted reserves. Winter ailments, bleak days, meaningless arguments, screaming deadlines, a long Do List, heavy conversations and lack of clarity about the future are some of the things that chew up our energy fast.

Meandering meetings, conflicts over trivialities, loss of perspective, ‘spitting the dummy’ and blowing an emotional fuse can be the telltale signs that our tank is almost empty.

Fill 'Er Up!
Life and giving out to others is extremely demanding. I like the concept of doing things to fill up the emotional tanks of our children and other people. However, as we give out we are called to be attentive to our own energy levels. Taking time to fill up will mean different things for different people—leaving the desk or the bench and sinking into an armchair with a cuppa, making some sacred space in the midst of our work, turning off the talk back radio and listening to a symphony, curling up in bed with a novel, taking in a movie, playing a game of golf(?), walking along the river in the Springtime sun, booking a holiday....

How is your tank best filled?

What are some ways that you and your family might be replenished?

Dr. Geoff Pound

Image: Take a good look at this car. Someone was in so much of a hurry that they took off before the petrol hose had been properly removed.

Related:
Stephen Covey: How I Found my Calling, Discernment Resources
Stephen Covey: Coming Near with Understanding, Stories for Speakers and Writers

Bead Number 109

In many countries one sees followers of different religions with prayer beads in their hands, fingering them bead by bead.

I asked one man in a shop in Bahrain what it meant to him to carry the beads and he said, “Nothing really. They’re just a status symbol. Every man has them.”

However, for the devout the beads give a focus for their prayer.

Elizabeth Gilbert, in her best seller, Eat Pray Love, has adopted the idea of the traditional Indian prayer beads (japa mala) with their 108 beads and she has written of her ‘search for everything’ in 108 chapters. This is a literary method she employs to give her book structure and her ventures to Italy (for eating), India (for praying) and Indonesia (for balance) mean a nice even 36 chapters for each of these sections.

Gilbert in her introduction notes that the japa mala has a special extra bead that dangles outside the balanced circle of 108 like a pendant.

Gilbert says, “I used to think the 109th bead was an emergency spare like the extra button on a fancy sweater, or the youngest son in a royal family. But apparently there is an even higher purpose. When your fingers reach this marker during prayer, you are meant to pause from your absorption in meditation and thank your teachers.”

What a lovely thought. Even if you don’t buy your students some prayer beads, tell them about the wisdom of bead number 109. It is a wonderful gesture and a delightful discipline, that we all take regular pauses to be thankful for our teachers.

Source: Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat Pray Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything (London: Bloomsbury, 2006), 1-2.

This best selling book is reviewed at Reviewing Books and Movies.

Dr. Geoff Pound

Image: Prayer Beads

Fragrance of Love’s Actions

Ann Smith, our member who began “Charlotte Food Rescue,” was hauling a station wagon full of donuts to a food shelter. She stopped off to make a pitch to executives of what is now Bank of America. As she rode the elevator to the top floor someone said, “You smell like donuts!” She laughed and told why, and by the time the elevator door opened she had recruited another.

The fragrance of love’s actions is carried on the wind to places we never see.

Source: Stephen Shoemaker, Myers Park, 21 October 2007

Image: “You smell like donuts!”

Henri Nouwen: Gift of a Free Space

When we think back to the places

where we felt most at home,

we quickly see that it was where

our hosts gave us the precious freedom

to come and go on our own terms

and did not claim us for their own needs.

Only in a free space can re-creation take place

and new life begin.

Henri Nouwen

Source: I cannot locate the book where this was first published but the themes of hospitality and freedom are in so many of Nouwen’s writings. I would be grateful if someone could provide the reference for this wonderful statement.

Dr. Geoff Pound

Image: “Only in a free space can re-creation take place and new life begin.”

Related:
Henri Nouwen: The Wounded Healer, Stories for Speakers and Writers
Staying Alive when No One is Waiting, Stories for Speakers and Writers

Tim Russert: Journalism is a Vocation

CNN, on Larry King Live, had a special edition on the day (13 June 2008) that journalist Tim Russert died entitled ‘Journalist Tim Russert is Remembered’.

During this hour of reflection by many of his colleagues King played this video excerpt of Tim Russert’s thoughts about being a journalist:

“We are surrogates for the American people. Very few places in the world have the kind of protections, particularly the Constitutional protections, we have in this country as a free press. And we have an obligation for all those men and women who work hard all week long in real jobs that when they turn on CNN or turn on NBC, or pick up a newspaper or turn on the radio, they realize that someone else is working as hard as they are trying to get to the truth. And it is not an easy job, but you know what, Larry, it is the best one you could ever have. It is a vocation being in journalism.”

One might wonder when and how Russert developed this notion of vocation. In an ‘On Faith’ interview sponsored by The Washington Post and Newsweek (18 May 2007), he revealed the secret:

“Let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.”
--John F. Kennedy January 20, 1961

“I was ten years old when I heard those words. They still resonate with me nearly a half century later. Am I doing God’s work? Is being a journalist my vocation? How does my faith influence my judgment as a reporter? Should it? Are the demands of my chosen profession leaving enough time for my responsibilities as a son, brother, husband, father and friend?”

Russert had headed this article with the important question, ‘Am I doing God’s Work?’

Dr. Geoff Pound

Image: “Am I doing God’s work?”

Related:
Tim Russert on Lifting Others Up
Tim Russert on America
Tim Russert on Fatherhood and Family
Tim Russert: ‘Always Loved, Never entitled’

Al Gore on Why Elections Matter

In his speech endorsing Barack Obama as the Presidential nominee, Al Gore made this statement about elections:

“Take it from me, elections matter,” Gore said.

“If you think the next appointments to our Supreme Court are important, you know that elections matter.”

“If you live in the city of New Orleans, you know that elections matter.”

“If you or a member of your family are serving in the active military, the National Guard or Reserves, you know that elections matter.”

“If you are a wounded veteran, you know that elections matter.”

“If you've lost your job; if you're struggling with a mortgage, you know that elections matter.”

Gore cited concerns about the environment and lead-painted toys -- as other reasons to vote for the Democrat.

Gore, not particularly known for his sense of humor then said, “If you care about food safety, if you like a “T” on your B.L.T., you know that elections matter….If you bought tainted pet food made in China, you know that elections matter. After the last eight years, even our dogs and cats have learned that elections matter.”

Al Gore Backs Obama for President, CNN.com, 16 June 2008.

Dr. Geoff Pound

Image: Al Gore and Barack Obama in Detroit, Michigan

Al Gore on [Obama’s] Youthfulness

As a challenge to John McCain’s claim that Barack Obama (aged 46) is too young and inexperienced to be President, Al Gore, in his official endorsement of Obama’s candidacy made a statement.

The former vice president turned Nobel Prize winner playfully said he recalled one Republican nominee wondering out loud whether his Democratic rival for president was "naive and inexperienced."

"Who were they talking about? Every single one of those quotes came from the campaign of 1960, when the the Republicans attacked John Fitzgerald Kennedy for allegedly lacking the age and experience necessary to be president."

Richard Nixon was the Republican nominee in 1960.

Gore continued, "President John F. Kennedy once read to a rival: ‘To exclude from positions of trust and command all those below the age of 44 would have kept Jefferson from writing the Declaration of Independence, Washington from commanding the Continental Army, Madison from fathering the Constitution and Christopher Columbus from even discovering America.’”

Gore Endorses Obama as a Solver of Problems, New York Times, 17 June 2008.

Dr. Geoff Pound

Image: Al Gore endorsing Barack Obama in Detroit, Michigan (Courtesy NYT).

Leonard Cohen: There is a Crack in Everything

Stephen Shoemaker writes:

Last week I was convalescing in late afternoon and I turned on the Oprah Show…The guest was Elizabeth Gilbert whose best seller Eat, Pray, Love is a powerful spiritual memoir.

Someone asked if everyone needed to be broken open as much as she was in order to find one’s spiritual path. No, she said, but everyone needs to experience some crack in their life; and she quoted Leonard Cohen:

“There is a crack in everything/ That’s how the light gets in.”

I looked up Leonard Cohen’s song, and it sounded for all the world like an Advent hymn to me:

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.

That’s how the light gets into our personal lives. That’s how the light gets in to our community and nation. A crisis, a broken dream, a ruinous choice, a brute reality. And the hard shell of our perfect but hollow life cracks open to the mercy and light of God.

Source: Stephen Shoemaker, Myers Park Baptist Church, 9 December 2007.

Elizabeth Gilbert’s book, Eat Pray Love is reviewed at Reviewing Books and Movies.

Dr. Geoff Pound

Image: “That’s how the light gets in.”

John Wood: Accountability Helps Focus

John Wood writes:

…Nothing focuses the mind quite like having to broadcast your results hundreds of times per day.

On my frequent travels, I noticed a reminder of this from the private sector.

United Airlines touted their number one on-time performance record on each and every napkin. Tens of thousands of times per day, they were telling their customers (and their employees) that this metric mattered.

Within a few weeks, I noticed that their flight attendants were much more focused on helping people with their overhead bags so that we could "push back for an on-time departure."

Knowing that they would be measured each month, and having bragged about it, the entire organization was focused on not losing their number one ranking.

Source: John Wood, Leaving Microsoft to Change the World: An entrepreneur’s Odyssey to Educate the World’s Children (New York: Collins, 2006), 141.

A review of this inspiring book is posted at Reviewing Books and Movies.

Dr. Geoff Pound

Image: “performance record on each and every napkin.”

‘Do You Love Me?’ Tevye and Golde

Welton Gaddy recalls and reflects on a well known story:

With delight and a smile I recall that terrific interchange between Tevye and Golde in Fiddler on the Roof:

“Do you love me?” Tevye asked his wife.
“Do I what?” Golde responded.
“Do you love me?” Golde repeated the question with no little disgust in her voice and then commented, “Do I love you? With our daughters getting married and this trouble in the town, you are upset, you are worn out, go inside, go lie down, maybe it’s indigestion.”

“Golde,” Tevye said with growing impatience, “I’m asking you a question. Do you love me?”

Golde knew impatience as she observed aloud to Tevye, “You’re a fool.”

“I know,” her husband agreed, “But do you love me?”

If you have ever longed for someone to speak to you of their love for you, sensing that these words were as important for you as food for your stomach, as air for breath to keep you alive, you understand the importance of this exchange.

Golde speaks again, “For twenty-five years I’ve washed your clothes, cooked your meals, cleaned your house, given you children, milked the cow. After twenty-five years, why speak of love right now?” “I’m your wife,” she said. “But do you love me?”

Suddenly Golde becomes reflective, “For twenty-five years I’ve lived with him, fought with him, starved with him. Twenty-five years my bed is his. If that’s not love, what is?”

Tevye begins to feel better. “Then you love me?” “I suppose I do.” Tevye speaks of his love for Golde and confesses, “It’s nice to know.”

Well, of course it is.

Source: Welton Gaddy, A Community of the Resurrection, 13 April 2008.

Image: “Do you love me?” (Photo)

J K Rowling on Living Good Lives

In her Commencement Address at the 2008 Harvard Commencement Exercises, novelist J K Rowling spoke of what was important in life:

And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom:

‘As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.’

I wish you all very good lives.

The full transcript and the video recording of Rowling’s address entitled ‘The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination’, may be found at this link.

Dr. Geoff Pound

Image: J K Rowling

Related:
Amnesty International’s Influence on J K Rowling, SFSAW
J K Rowling on the Value of Imagination, SFWAW
J K Rowling on the Value of Failure, SFSAW
J K Rowling: Giving a Commencement Address, SFSAW
J K Rowling’s Commencement Address at Harvard, SFSAW
J K Rowling on Friendships, SFSAW

J K Rowling on Friendships

In her Commencement Address at the 2008 Harvard Commencement Exercises, novelist J K Rowling spoke of the importance of making friendships:

“The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life. They are my children’s godparents, the people to whom I’ve been able to turn in times of trouble, friends who have been kind enough not to sue me when I’ve used their names for Death Eaters.”

“At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for Prime Minister.”

“So today, I can wish you nothing better than similar friendships.”

The full transcript and the video recording of Rowling’s address entitled ‘The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination’, may be found at this link.

Dr. Geoff Pound

Image: J K Rowling

Related:
Amnesty International’s Influence on J K Rowling, SFSAW
J K Rowling on the Value of Imagination, SFWAW
J K Rowling on the Value of Failure, SFSAW
J K Rowling: Giving a Commencement Address, SFSAW
J K Rowling’s Commencement Address at Harvard, SFSAW

Simple Secret of Super Rugby Coach Robbie Deans

He was a great All Black and an outstanding coach of championship Rugby teams ‘down under’. Now Robbie Deans has commenced as the coach of the Australian Wallabies rugby team and his charges have been looking to discover his secret?

Wayne Smith picks up the story in The Australian:

“Turns out there was no secret at all. Everything Deans was telling them had been enunciated one-and-a-half centuries ago by American philosopher Henry David Thoreau. OK, not the bit about non-violent resistance, because Deans is the first to acknowledge that rugby is a violent sport and that turning the other cheek simply leads to matching sets of tag marks on your bum. The other bit - "our life is frittered away by detail ... simplify, simplify".

Smith says that in recent years the Wallabies have been coached to play in “tangled spaghetti strands of interconnected nodes. Running lines, packing angles, kicking zones. It was Thoreau turned on his head. Complicate, complicate?

And suddenly here was Deans telling his players that if there was space in front of them, run to it. If a roadblock was in their way but a team-mate was free, pass him the ball. It might all have been borrowed from another great American philosopher, the late and legendary Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi, who, when asked by one of his receivers what lines he should run to get free of the defence, replied: "Run to the daylight."

Think back to that Sydney night in 2003 when the Deans-coached All Blacks backline cut the Wallabies to shreds to rattle up an astonishing half-century. Afterwards [Australian Rugby Manager John] O'Neill sought out the New Zealand skipper Reuben Thorne, Deans' Crusaders captain at the time, to congratulate him on the most dazzling display of attacking rugby he had ever seen.

"Rugby's a simple game, John," Thorne responded, no doubt directly quoting his long-time coach.

Source: Wayne Smith, ‘Secret of the super coach: run towards the daylight’, The Australian, 14 June 2008.

Dr. Geoff Pound

Image: Robbie Deans

Creativity Bubbling When the Pressure is on

What gets your creative juices flowing?

Paul Torday draws this extract from Peter Maxwell’s unpublished autobiography. He said:

“Mostly, I react well to stress. A lot of my best ideas come bubbling to the surface when the pressure is on.”

Source: Paul Torday, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (London: Phoenix, 2007), 234.

Dr Geoff Pound

Image: “My best ideas come bubbling to the surface when the pressure is on.”

Fathers and the Gift of Standing Alongside

Barrie Hibbert tells this story about a father and daughter (names are changed):

Sometimes, unexpectedly, in the middle of a conversation something is said that strikes you as being quite extraordinarily profound or beautiful or moving. That seems to happen often when I’m talking with my old friend William.

The other day as we were sharing news of our respective families, William mentioned his very bright, talented and vivacious daughter. But life has not been kind to Sarah, and over the years she has endured hardship and suffering almost beyond belief. Currently she is going through another very difficult time, and talking about it, William said:

“You know…I often think of the words “Stabat Mater”- that incredible phrase which describes Mary the mother of Jesus standing before the cross on which hangs the broken body of her beloved child.”

“She stands there heart-broken and helpless: she feels so deeply…but she cannot do a thing to help her suffering son.” William paused for a moment, then added, “That’s how I feel about Sarah.”

A brief silence followed. It was somehow the only appropriate response.

The scene at the foot of the cross is briefly described in the twenty-fifth verse of the nineteenth chapter of John’s Gospel. The brevity of the account somehow adds to its poignancy:

“Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother… and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene.”

“Stabat Mater dolorosa” (“Stood the mother, full of grief”).

All of us… like Mary, like William… have ‘been there’ one way or another. Heart-broken and feeling helpless, we have watched a partner, a child, a grandchild, a parent, or a friend, enduring a pain which we can do nothing to cure, and little or nothing to even alleviate. At other times, we are more like those other women as we stand alongside the one standing alongside.

But ‘standing alongside’ is not as useless as it may sound. Many a sufferer would testify that it mattered more than they could ever say that there was somebody there - just standing alongside. When that is all you can do, that is all you can do and in the mysterious way that love works, it helps.

I am sure Sarah knows that her Dad is standing there. She knows that he can’t do anything much, but she knows that he is there and that he cares. As William talked the other morning, my heart went out to him. Perhaps, in a sense and for a moment, I felt that I was like the other two Marys in the Gospel: one who was standing alongside the one standing alongside. In such times, the poet John Milton reminds us: “They also serve who only stand and wait.”

Source: Barrie Hibbert, 14 June 2008.

Dr. Geoff Pound

Image: Father and daughter.

The Best Stories about Fathers

Here are fourteen of the best stories about fathers on this site, Stories for Speakers and Writers:

Tim Russert on Fatherhood and Family, SFSAW

Benjamin Zander, SFSAW (see at the end re the review from his Dad)

Julie Andrews discovers the truth about her father, SFSAW

Nick Hornby writes about his father, SFSAW

Martin Luther King Jnr and his father, SFSAW

Yolanda King speaks of her father, Martin L King, SFSAW

Steve Martin: Weeping for the lost years, SFSAW

Albert Einstein: He’ll never amount to anything! SFSAW

A father gains true sight, SFSAW

Jeff Skoll (eBay) on the words of his father, SFSAW

Frenzied Father, SFSAW

Children asking father questions, SFSAW

Tiger Woods and his father with a great story told by Sam Keene, SFSAW

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Dr. Geoff Pound

Image: Earl and Tiger Woods.

Tim Russert on Lifting Others Up

Tributes are pouring in for legendary journalist, Tim Russert, who died today (13 June 2008).

Here is one of his sayings about children and helping those who struggle. It comes from the conclusion of his 2000 Commencement Address at Niagara University:

But please do this world one small favor.

Remember the people struggling along side you and below you. The people who haven't had the same opportunity, the same blessings, the same education.

No matter what profession you chose, you must try, even in the smallest ways, to improve the quality of life of the children in our country.

We can build more prisons…and put more police on the streets…and we will …but unless we instill in our young the most basic skills and cultural values…we will be a very different society in the next century. We must motivate--inspire--yes insist--they truly love and respect one another.

But while we are trying to change behavior, we cannot forget those who have not been reached. We must teach our children that they are never, never, entitled, but they are always, always loved. Liberals call it doing good…conservatives call it enlightened self-interest. No matter what your political philosophy, you know there is a child you can coach, mentor, teach--some are sick, some are lonely, some are uneducated. Most have little control over their fate. Give them a hand. Give them a chance. Give them their dignity. Indeed there is a simple truth; "No exercise is better for the human heart than reaching down to lift up another."

That is your charge. That is your opportunity.

Dr Geoff Pound

Image: Tim Russert.

Tim Russert on America

Tributes are pouring in for legendary journalist, Tim Russert, who died today (13 June 2008).

Here is one of his great sayings about America in an American Profile (2006) by Beverly Keeler:

Russert says he feels blessed to have enjoyed a career that’s allowed him to meet the pope, interview presidents and learn so much about so many subjects. "My dad’s favorite expression is, ‘What a country!’"

Russert says. "I look back to see the house I was born in and my dad quit school in tenth grade. The fact that the son of a truck driver and garbage man is now the moderator of Meet the Press, that’s everything you want to know about who we are as a people, society and a country. It’s not very complicated to know me. What you see is who I am. I am just someone who grew up in an extremely traditional lower middle-class upbringing and celebrates the uniqueness of this country every day.

"It can’t happen anywhere else," he says, then pauses. "It doesn’t happen anywhere else."

Dr Geoff Pound

Image: Tim Russert giving the 2000 Commencement address at Niagara University.

Tim Russert on Fatherhood and Family

Tributes are pouring in for legendary journalist, Tim Russert, who died today (13 June 2008).

Here are some of his qualities and quotes on fatherhood and the famliy as compiled in an American Profile (2006) by Beverly Keeler:

Russert’s father, whom he affectionately calls Big Russ, retired with 200 unused sick days and taught his son the value of hard work and education. Russert and his siblings did their homework around the kitchen table as the sweet aromas of his mother’s cooking drifted from the oven. "We couldn’t trade our pencil for a fork until all the homework was done," he says. Both parents signed his report cards.

However, it certainly wasn’t all work and no play for the father and son, who caught the International League’s Buffalo Bisons playing baseball whenever possible. It was during one of the outings, a 1963 exhibition game between the International League All-Stars and the New York Yankees, that Big Russ taught his 13-year-old a lesson that he never forgot.

“My dad bought tickets way up in the nosebleeds,” he says. ‘I went down the aisle and tried desperately to get autographs. This one baseball player, Joe Pepitone, pushed me aside and I was crushed. I came back to my seat very dejected and my dad said, ‘What happened?’ I explained it to him and he said, ‘Don’t ever forget that. It takes as much time to be nice to someone as it does to be a jerk.’ It has stayed with me my entire life.”

Although he works seven days a week—attending church on Saturdays since his Sunday mornings are booked with Meet the Press—Russert makes it a priority to spend time with his family. Wife Maureen Orth, whom he married in 1983, is a correspondent for Vanity Fair magazine, and their son, Luke, 20, is a sophomore at Boston College.

“Through the course of it, I have never missed one of my son’s football, baseball or soccer games,” he says. “If he had a 3 o’clock game, I would carry my cell phone, go to it and come back. Everyone understood what I was doing. I think the most precious commodity you can give someone is your time.”

“My relationship with my son is much different than the relationship my father had with me,” says Russert, who admits he was "shattered" when his son left for college. “One, he is an only child. Secondly, I had the time and opportunity to be much more involved in his life and school and sports. My dad, because he was working so hard, couldn’t bring me to a lot of places. I probably overcompensate for that. I try to go everywhere and bring my son with me.”

Dr Geoff Pound

Image: The Russert trio.

Tim Russert: ‘Always Loved, Never Entitled’

Tributes are pouring in for legendary journalist, Tim Russert, who died today (13 June 2008).

Here are some of his qualities and quotes compiled in an American Profile (2006) by Beverly Keeler.

"I so admire Tim’s ability to weave his way through the political minefield of Washington," says Russert’s colleague Brian Williams, anchor of NBC Nightly News. "While on the air, he betrays no alliances and never violates a trust. He is as adept at political analysis as anyone in Washington. And he may know more of the players than any single media figure in the nation’s capital."

But it’s Russert’s roots in a working-class neighborhood in Buffalo, N.Y., that make him stand out in the ultra-polished world of network television. With his straightforward, common-sense approach, the plain-spoken Russert defies the stereotype of smooth-talking TV personal-ities with perfectly coiffed hair. "His great gift is that he’s never forgotten where he’s from," Williams says. "Quite the contrary: He wears his Buffalo roots like a badge of honor, and well he should."

"When I talk about Social Security, I think about my mom and dad," Russert says. "When I talk about taxes, I think about my mom and dad and people in our neighborhood and my three sisters and their families. I think about a sense of right and wrong—you can look at things and say, ‘That just doesn’t feel right’—and a sense of accountability. I remember making mistakes and being held accountable, and that’s terribly important for a journalist to understand.

"But our job really is that of a watchdog and trying to hold our government accountable to its people," Russert says. "It’s easy for government officials to develop a sense of entitlement, and the one thing you learn in Buffalo growing up is that you are never, ever entitled. There is not a day that goes by that I don’t say to my son, ‘You are always, always loved, but you are never, never entitled.’"

Dr Geoff Pound

Image: Tim Russert

Amnesty International’s Influence on J K Rowling

In her Commencement Address at the 2008 Harvard Commencement Exercises, novelist J K Rowling spoke of the influence of Amnesty International on her life:

One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working in the research department at Amnesty International’s headquarters in London.

There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.

Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to think independently of their government. Visitors to our office included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had been forced to leave behind.

I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.

And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since. The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her. She had just given him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country’s regime, his mother had been seized and executed.

Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.

Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power. I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard and read.

And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.

Amnesty mobilises thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet. My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.

The full transcript and the video recording of Rowling’s address entitled ‘The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination’, may be found at this link.

Dr. Geoff Pound

Image: Amnesty International Logo