TONE AND HABIT

What you need, and why you need it now

If there is a book for communications professionals to read in 2009, and read again and again, it is Peggy Noonan’s Patriotic Grace: What It Is and Why We Need It Now. “Being able to persuade, to explain, to elucidate, and to lead truthfully, matters,” Noonan writes, and bless her for reminding us.

Noonan’s book, published before the outcome of the 2008 election had been decided, is an argument for greater unity in a nation that is facing turmoil.  It’s a call for calm, wisdom and maturity, and a roadmap for credible and effective governance.

 

We’ll be inaugurating a new president soon, and he’ll be leading a nation that is still divided in thought and spirit.  I’ll be learning from what he says and how he says it, because the content and manner of his communication will inspire many to heroism, just as it will infuriate many others.

 

Watch the effects on people, and make note of the emotional triggers for their varied reactions, because there will be lessons for you in how you communicate in similar situations.  We’re not all responsible for leading a nation, but your business, city or neighborhood can be just as divided and difficult.  The simple lesson, too often forgotten:  we are stronger when we work together.

 

Noonan writes, “So:  we have much to do.  And it all starts with a greater civility, a greater respect, both a higher – and deeper – tone to our political conversation.”

 

We can start today.

A piebald duck, the Puzzle-maker, and your own bashful questing beast

There are hours that return to you after many years, sometimes in dreams.  These revenant hours linger through your morning shower ... a half-recalled turn of phrase, a tug in the heart, shapes of faces and emotions, a fog of sentiment that evaporates even as the mirror over the sink dries to reveal the man of the moment.  By the time you turn the key in the ignition and drop the stick into reverse, the hour is gone.

Unless someone has captured it somewhere on page, in the words that the Puzzle-maker himself might have invoked when he created that hour for you.  A ear that can discern those weird noises is a rare gift.

Bucky McMahon hears them, and his new (and first) collection Night Diver is that dream you forgot over the morning coffee.

I remember some of the pieces from their original run in the Tallahassee Democrat's Limelight section in McMahon's Barmadillo column.  The Friday Democrat was a treasure when the Barmadillo was out in the world and writing, something anticipated.  Bucky already covered it in the foreword, but I'll also say thank you to Mark and Zilpha and Janey for making that column happen.  As a young man (this was maybe 1990 ... I would have been 19), I read those columns and I saw a path.

There's a lot of good writing in here, much of it in the travel and adventure categories, a great deal of it from in and around Florida, and there is an illustrated dream journal.  Night Diver is eclectic and sublime.

The title of this post is taken from words that appear on page 187 of Night Diver in a piece called Lake Ella.  An hour walking around Lake Ella, while a cold front creeps over town.  We all forget important things, sometimes, in the circuits that we walk in our waking lives.  Thank God for those few who, in our march along the water's edge, can pick up the sound of the unaccented beat.