Monthly Archives: October 2007

“A man with integrity will draw more business than a man without it.”
- Mark Gillard

This is our belief, also. See below for details on what we think about “integrity.” We have other values, too. Among them:

Authenticity.

Credibility.

Determination.

Curiosity.

Our Team.

This list is not all-inclusive, of course. We’ll blog on these and other values over time. Consider this a work in progress, and stay tuned.

Last weekend I took my family down to my brother’s to help out with a fall project. His house is on property in the suburbs of Chicago that in the ’40′s and ’50′s was the J.C. Penney Christmas tree farm. Since that time, it’s grown mostly wild, so he has quite a forest. This year, more trees than normal died, and so he had an arborist come in to take them out. The trees were felled, cut into appropriate sized blocks, and left where they lay. We wanted to help him move and split the wood. We had a beautiful weekend outside, and the work was a good reason to be active, also.

Tuesday the 23rd was my youngest daughter’s birthday. She turned four, and we had cake and presents for her. Her little brother didn’t quite get that he wasn’t going to be getting presents, too. In a pinch, we wrapped some new clothes so that he had something to open, also. Then, everybody was happy. In contrast to this joy, by coincidence the 23rd was also the first anniversary of the death of one of my closest friends. I’ve been a bit moody recently, because of this. The joy of my daughter’s birthday party was in welcome opposition to some of the grief that I’ve been feeling, lately.

I like to believe that in life we’re given both good and bad in equal measure. Sometimes, these things are even wrapped in the same package. That an important birthday is on the same day as the anniversary of a significant death is a good example of this. Rarely are we given such opportunities to examine life so fully. While it wasn’t a gift that I expected or packaged the way that I wanted it, my friend’s death last October also gave me the gift of more time with his father Bob, who died last fall as well. Bob was a significant mentor for me; it’s not an exaggeration to say that I wouldn’t be who I am today without his influence.

One of the things that Bob taught me was how to wield an axe. He even gave me a double-bit axe that I still have, and it sits here in my office here at Pemba Base. It’s more appropriate for cleaning or felling trees than it is for splitting wood, so as it turns out I didn’t use it at my brother’s. My brother has a good splitting axe and a splitting maul that I used instead. In the heft and release of these tools, I felt Bob’s presence in my hands, and in the wood as it yielded, also.

Stephen Covey says that there’s a time to sharpen the saw, and there’s a time to cut wood. In life – and yes, in business – we need to prepare for action as much as we need to act. Whether you pick up a tool to use it or to maintain it you’re lifting the tool for a good reason. We don’t always get the gifts we want, nor are they always packaged in the way that we expect them. Joy and grief are good complements to one another, as it turns out. More importantly, we can’t experience one without the other, and this is as it should be.

On our way into the office Monday morning, we were greeted by the smell of tar. It was the best smell in the world, because it meant that they were pouring asphalt, at last. The water-main construction out in front of Pemba Base is finally finished. If you’ve talked to us at any time over the past few months, in the background you’ve most likely heard jack-hammers, incessant beeps from heavy-equipment backing up, and earth-movers lumbering down the road. Team Pemba has also experienced ankle-deep mud, smothering dust, parking difficulties, and they even shut off our water a couple of times.

It’s been a hoot. Really.

As much as we like the fresh blacktop, the best part of this project was when they first tore up Main Street. Deep down underneath the layers of asphalt patches they found old cobblestones. These were mostly intact – like big bricks – and they piled them up by the side of the road. I meant to borrow one for the office before they hauled them away. I think I was hit by a car or something and never got around to it. This is just as well – really – as I’m no thief. (See “Integrity,” below…)

Pemba Base is on a block that’s been in Madison since it was founded. The building we’re in is over one hundred years old. Our sample warehouse is in an adjacent building, and the roots of it go back over one hundred and forty years. There’s an old aerial picture here in the lobby – most likely taken from a kite – that shows our warehouse and several other buildings from the neighborhood. Across the street is a former hotel and brothel; out our back door is an old train station. Both of these are still here. (Well, NOT the brothel – much to Pete’s dismay – but the building that housed it, anyway.) Down the way a bit is a former grocery store which is now the headquarters for The Onion. In the picture, you can also see Madison’s second capitol, which burnt down in 1904.

There’s a lot of history in this building, and on this block, and for that matter among our team. We’re proud that Pemba Base is here. We also like our space. It’s a good place to work, and it really reflects who we are. Maybe someday we’ll post pictures. I’m not tech-patient enough to figure it out, at the moment. Until then, if you’re ever around feel free to drop by. You have the address, and unless we’ve gone out to play – Parkour, cyclocross, slack-lining, and fly-casting have all been a part of our workweek in recent months – we’ll be here.

Pete wrote: “Important fact number one: Pemba? WTF is up with that name? Short answer: Brad’s sherpa on Everest. I think they were in love. Brad is the boss so he makes these calls. Long answer: check back later for Brad’s inevitable counter-post.”

Yeah, it’s inevitable that I write back to this.

To clarify, Pemba and I weren’t in love. It was a very one-sided deal. I told him up-front that I wasn’t built that way, and also that I could never bring him back to the States. While Pemba didn’t break my heart, he did break parts of me. A word of warning: Never teach a yak-herder to slam-dance; they take it very seriously, as evidenced by the number of times we Americans were launched through the wall of our own cook-tent cum dance-hall. To this day, hearing the Violent Femmes brings flash-backs, mostly of bruises long since healed.

I’m serious about the slam-dance warning. Ask Mark Twight. He was there. I’m sure that Francine has pictures still, too.

Also, Pemba wasn’t a Sherpa. He was a Tibetan yak-herder. It’s a completely different culture altogether.

Another interesting thing: Pemba’s an amalgam. He’s mostly an individual Tibetan who lived with us in Base Camp, but there are a lot of different memories all blended together. For instance, the actual Pemba didn’t slam-dance.

Have I ever mentioned that Coors Light was a sponsor of our Everest expedition? Yep, we had pallets of beer. This explains the decades-long hangover, and the extended memory loss, also.

As measured by the weather, this was the first true weekend of fall. Here in Madison, it was grey and dreary, and it seemed to be making an honest effort at being chilly. I put on some of my favorite warm fall clothing, and most of the time I felt over-dressed. Still, there’s no doubt now that things are changing. It will be cooler, soon.

We spent the weekend doing fall things. On Saturday, my wife and I took the kids to a local apple orchard and pumpkin patch. There, we picked late raspberries, walked among the orchards, and tried to find pumpkins that were suitable for jack-o-lanterns. It was a hard summer for pumpkins, alternately too dry and then too wet. We saw some beautiful large orange gourds out in the fields, and when we turned them over they had all mostly rotted almost completely through. We did manage to find two small ones that wouldn’t be all that good for carving, although they were good for eating. At home, we turned them into a thai-based pumpkin soup and garlic pumpkin seeds. We used the last tomatoes from our container garden as garnish for the soup, which was also flavored by the last of our home-grown red peppers. The soup was a hearty meal on a rainy, cold day. We’re still munching on the seeds.

Not many people know that my degree is in writing poetry and fiction. I don’t do much with it now except embellish some sales presentations with a turn or two of phrase. A good friend of mine from my writing program has actually gone on to do some wonderful work. Anne-Marie Cusac appeared today at a local rite of fall, the Wisconsin Book Festival. I went down and enjoyed her reading from her recently published novel in verse, “Silkie.” It’s a story about a tragic love between a woman and a mythic beast that transforms from seal to human and back again, and she read it well. Afterwards, I stopped by Darren Bush’s house to help maintain the gunwales on a solo canoe he had loaned me recently. I still owe him some labor on the paddle that I used to scratch the gunwales, but this is a job for even colder winter weather that won’t yet come for some time.

We’re all making transitions now from summer to fall. For most of us, this means that we’re moving from outside of ourselves inward. Even being outdoors now is more contemplative than a purely recreational undertaking. It’s not for nothing that poets write about forests of falling leaves, stands of dried corn, and orchards. These things are perfect metaphors for changes both visible and invisible. It’s a good time for reflection, for harvesting the last fruits of summer, and for putting away the warm-weather toys for the season.

We know that things are changing on the retail front as well. Recent record high temperatures have now turned more seasonal. More people are coming into the shops and are looking with more than bemusement at fall and winter goods. Some of the shops that we’ve been in have put out hot cider, and people are actually drinking it.

Here’s a nod to this season of transitions, and we hope that you find your place out in it.

in·teg·ri·ty [in-teg-ri-tee] –noun
1. adherence to moral and ethical principles; soundness of moral character; honesty.
2. the state of being whole, entire, or undiminished: to preserve the integrity of the empire.
3. a sound, unimpaired, or perfect condition: the integrity of a ship’s hull.
[Origin: 1400–50; late ME integrite < L integritās. See integer, -ity]

—Synonyms 1. rectitude, probity, virtue. See honor.
—Antonyms 1. dishonesty.

Chalk this one up as an impulse at having a random word of the day, though this isn’t entirely random. We’ve been talking about “integrity” here at Pemba Serves a lot, lately. For something so concrete, it’s a rather abstract concept. Not since “Quality English” in “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintainance” has something so well understood been so open-ended, also. The interesting thing about integrity is that it is somewhat determined by self-definition and then reflected back by society at-large. How you define your standards and how you hold to these same self-set standards goes a long ways towards how you are viewed by people as to whether you have – or don’t have – integrity.

Consider this example: I can go out and have a beer and it’s not a moral failing. As a matter of fact, I can have a few beers in a row and under certain circumstances this is perfectly acceptable. Sometimes, it might even be commendable.

- “Your birthday party was really fun, Brad! You sure cut loose!”

Then again, I’m not an alcoholic who has just returned from rehab. If I were, most people would consider it inappropriate for me to have even one beer, let alone a few.

- “Did you hear? Brad’s off the wagon, ALREADY…”

Same person, same event, with different standards for integrity, as viewed by society as a whole. If someone says to society,”I won’t drink,” for the most part they’re expected to hold to this. In this example, the individual defines the standard and society helps to maintain it by reflecting it back.

This isn’t always how it works, though. We’re also held to certain standards that are defined for us. There’s not a lot of wiggle room in certain areas, as far as society is concerned. Having no or low standards doesn’t get you off the hook. I’m reminded of the old joke: “Yeah, so I killed a few people – that doesn’t make me a murderer!”

Uh, yeah, it does.

Having integrity means mostly that you stay true to your own sense of right and wrong, and you do so consistently in a way that’s predictable. You also stay true to what’s expected of you by your culture. Inasmuch as it seems abstract and open to interpretation – especially these days – we are serious about integrity here at Pemba Serves, and we hope it shows.

Unfortunately, at the moment – by definition #2, above – Pemba Serves lacks some integrity. Basically, we find ourselves to be diminished by one able body. If you or anybody you know is looking for a job, quite unexpectedly we happen to be looking for a field rep. Make us whole. Help us to restore our integrity.

Call today. Operators are standing by…