• Fred's Blog

    Sisters: A Christmas Story

    Listen to “Sisters: A Christmas Story” by Fred Smith   I’ve been reading this week about the disaster of Sumner Redstone’s family. While Sumner built great business ventures in CBS and Viacom, his personal life and that of his entire family is a tale filled with betrayals of trust, conflicts of interest, lawsuits against each other, theft, shady ethics, deceit and greed that steadily consumed them. It is a dismal story played out in families from the beginning of time. It’s not Cain’s spontaneous and raging murder of his brother, Abel. It is the slow and measured killing of love over time. It is the story of sisters Rachel and…

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  • Fred's Blog

    Haters

    Listen to “Haters” By Fred Smith   Facebook is not the place for subtlety and we all know that.  Yet, this week I posted a spoof from the Babylon Bee and several good friends took it seriously. I know I should file disclaimers, but I don’t. It was the one telling us that scores of Trump supporters were abandoning him because he preferred McDonald’s over Chick-fil-A. I thought it was funny and said more about the fickleness of supporters than the animus of his detractors. However, one of my friends made a comment about evangelicals who are “Trump haters” and ignore the fact that God has used imperfect leaders and…

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    Place and Power

    Listen to “Place and Power” by Fred Smith   If you want well-written insight into the work of speechwriters and their behind-the-scenes influence, I would suggest Barton Swaim’s book, “The Speechwriter.” Its soul-searching honesty about the conflicts, challenges and moments of both praise and despair are good reading. Some of our finest pundits, commentators, and authors have served as speechwriters. I am thinking of Michael Gerson (for George W. Bush), Peggy Noonan (for Ronald Reagan), and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. (for John F. Kennedy). Standing somewhere between press secretaries, diarists and fiction writers, they all wrestled with finding words for individuals who were often not, with some exceptions, gifted with language.…

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    The Glitter is Gone

    Listen to “The Glitter is Gone” by Fred Smith In the past there has always been an unspoken bond between the very rich “one percent” of our world and the rest of us. During the Great Depression, people flocked to the movies to escape the harshness of their lives and catch a momentary peek at the one percent who were doing well. For years, the most popular movies were those with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers floating around dance floors in formal wear, drinking champagne and enjoying the life of high society. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s bleak, “Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me…They…

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    Quo Vadis?

      Listen to “Quo Vadis?” by Fred Smith Haley was five when she came to me and said she wanted to set up to sell lemonade in the front yard.  Not being the craftsman my father was, I hammered together a very wobbly cardboard and wood stand.  After she laid out her cups, pitcher and money box, I stepped inside the house for maybe two minutes.  When I returned she was gone – along with the pitcher and cups. Yes, I did panic. I looked down the street and saw her two houses away ringing the bell. I ran and asked her where in the world she was going. She…

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    The Thing With Feathers

    Listen to “The Thing With Feathers” By Fred Smith   Watch the SYFY channel and one of the obvious changes you’ll see is the apocalyptic nature of so much science fiction today. It’s all about the end of the world as we know it with either invasions or self-destruction. Being now in my 70’s, I started thinking about what science fiction was like when I was growing up. It was not apocalyptic at all. It was futurist and optimistic – even a bit naïve. Yes, it was something of a paradox to be huddled beneath our wooden desks shielding ourselves against the near-certain nuclear blasts while reading Tom Swift piloting an…

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    Fifty Ways To Leave

    Listen to “Fifty Ways To Leave” by Fred Smith   When I began writing this blog almost eight years ago, John Kelly was my editor. He told me, “Don’t worry about being relevant or even timely. That is what op-ed columnists and pundits do. Write about what you are thinking. People can choose to read it or not but what you are thinking is the most important thing for you to write.” That has proved to be good advice and has kept me – for the most part – off the side road of relevance. Now, even though I know it will not be on the front burner for many…

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    I Stand Relieved

    Listen to “I Stand Relieved” By Fred Smith   Almost ten years ago, the Board of The Gathering and I started thinking about succession. Clearly, we did not consider it an emergency or urgent matter but did want to be prepared and not surprised by the inevitable transition of leadership to the one who would assume the helm. It is especially important and often difficult to make that move from a founder to the next generation. However, I was determined not to be that founder we all read about who could not turn loose and in one way or another made it impossible for the next leader to succeed or,…

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    Crossing The Line

    Listen to “Crossing The Line” by Fred Smith   One of the most pronounced trends in the non-profit world in the last ten years has been the number of men and women in business careers making a transition to the non-profit world. Books like Bob Buford’s “Half-Time” both launched and responded to a wave of men and women who wanted to move “from success to significance.” For many who had spent a good part of their lives and careers intensely focused on financial returns, advancement, awards, and promotions, the world of non-profits appeared to be the best place to make a difference. Having accumulated enough to make the move possible…