The Lions and the Sheep

"I am not afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep; I am afraid of an army of sheep led by a lion.”

-Alexander the Great

What separates me from those who work for me and even along side of me is this: 

I am a leader. I am responsible for the outcome of this mission. 

I am tired of other people dictating to me who I am and what my performance is. Only I can determine how I will respond to pressure. Only me. I am responsible for the outcome of this mission.

My statistics don't lie. 

My people are good people who want to do good. 

If they see me falter, they will fail.

I cannot be the sheep leading the lions. I must be a lion leading the sheep.

We are still Savages.

From General Mattis to the General Workforce

“I don’t give a damn about the officers. If they don’t like what they’re doing, they can get on a plane and leave the Corps — go back where they came from. But I do care deeply about those 18- and 19-year-old Lance Corporals out on the frontlines.”

This quote comes form one of my Marine Corps heroes, the legendary James N. "Mad Dog" Mattis. Matts has never been one for mincing words, and his leadership style is just as forthright. 

As a manager, I believe the same applies to my "troops." They may not be Marines, but they fight the good fight every day in the trenches. Often they don't get paid nearly what they are worth, and put up with disrespect, verbal abuse and occasional threats or intimidation from our clients.

As managers it is our job to lead. It is our responsibility to give our staff someone to follow. If we can't or won't do that it may be time to go back where we came from. Treat your employees well, and they will live up to your expectations! Don't, and well...

We are still savages.

The Logic of a United States Marine

The recent discovery of my biological family has been an incredible journey. In the months ahead, I expect I will tell my story. There are a lot of pieces, and the very fact that I am here to tell you about those pieces is nothing short of a miracle. God’s grace. Providence. Whatever you feel most comfortable with. In order to tell the story however, I need to ensure that the details are correct. Until then, I would like to share with you another story. This story is one that I found by scouring through papers that were left for me about my family. 

It is the story of my Grandfather, who I have the honor of sharing a birthday. My Grandfather who was also a United States Marine. My Grandfather, who was also apparently, a smart man as well as a smart ass.

The following is a direct line by line retelling of the story as told by my Grandfather Weldon Spradlin, complete with his misspellings and typo’s. I think it is brilliant.

Spradlin's Company MCRD San Diego 1955

While in the Marine Corps I found it necessary to learn a good deal about military law. During the time I was training troops, I found it necessary to bend the rules on occasion, therefore I sometimes found myself afoul of the law. While this caused me no end of concern, it did inhance my education.

"The first time I found it necessary to learn about law I was charged with Willful Destruction of Government Property, to the specifications that I did order my troops to bury their rifles, order my troops to pour water over the graves until the ground was muddy and order my troops to run back and forth over the graves until they were obscured. For this I could have been sent to prison for twenty years.

I was guilty as sin.

I could find no military lawyer who would say he could win the case so I took out a copy of the UCMJ (uniform code of military justice) and a copy of the MCM (manual for courts martial) and went to work. I was able to get a delay to allow me to prepare and for the next two months I spent all my time with my nose in one of the books. Then we went to pre-trial.

After two day of presentations the prosecution had even me convinced that I should be bound over for trial. Then it was my turn. I called my only witness whom I shall call Pvt. A, because I can’t remember his name, and ask him the following questions:

Q. Pvt. A do you know what this is? (I held up a rifle)

A. Yes sir, that’s a U.S. rifle, caliber 30, M1.

Q. How long would it take you to field strip this weapon, wipe it clean and put it back together, blindfolded?

A. About 30 seconds Sir.

I then set up a table with the rifle on it, blindfolded him and had the court time him while he did so, in less than 20 seconds. I then addressed the court. 'Gentlemen of the court, the defense moves for dismissal. It should be obvious that the troops I have trained are of the highest caliber, there are few men in the world who can match what Pvt. A has just done. I also submit the record of the platoon on the firing range, of seventy fife men in the platoon all have qualified at least as marksmen, over half are sharpshooters and the had the highest number of experts on the range when they shot for record, and they shot with the rifles I am charged with destroying. It is true that some small damage may have been done to the rifles because of the methods I used in training, however, the demonstration you have just seen plus the records of these men on the firing range surely proves the ability of these troop to repair any damage done to the rifles. Furthermore it is evident that the cost of any damage done to the rifles has been more than offset by the value of improved proficiency of the troops. If this court believes that rifles that set records on the firing range have been willfully destroyed then you must hold me for trial, if not then you have no choice but to dismiss the charges.'

The charges were dismissed."

Spradlin "Keeping Watch" for his Honor Platoon circa 1955

Semper Fi, Grand Dad. 

We are still savages...

...and looks like we always were.

My Tribe is... A Tribe!

Friends,

Big Spring, Husband to my Great
Great Grandmother

Since my last post, I have made some incredible discoveries about myself, and where I come from. Some of these discoveries have been good, while others are what they are. Perhaps the greatest discovery is that after forty-three years, I have discovered that I have a whole family that I never knew. Adopted from birth, I already have a "story." I already have my "people," as I have written on in my post "All Good Things," last September. I know where my values come from, my work ethic, and my love for the outdoors. What I didn't know was where my hair went once I turned thirty-five, or whether I "have my mother's eyes..."

Well, it turns out, that I do.

I have found my birth parents, and actually met my biological uncle and his wife, two wonderful and amazing people who opened their home to my

tribe and shared with me not only their hospitality, but some images of my history as well. It seems that my humorous label for the population of small people I am responsible for raising is a more accurate moniker than I thought. 

Big Spring and his uncle,
the warrior Wolf-Eagle.

As I await the meeting with my biological mother (a wonderful woman who has remembered my birthday every year for over four decades) who will arrive in just a few short weeks, I devour the books she has sent me about my maternal lineage. There are thousands of pages to read, and the names and the dates are overwhelming. My uncle stated that he was the first in the family to have been born outside of the Federal Reservation established for the Blackfeet People near Browning, Montana. I see my mother's eyes in these pages, the same eyes I see when I look into the mirror, or into the faces of my children or the pictures of my newly discovered nieces and nephews. 

But the blessings of being descended from such a proud and noble people has its downside. I have discovered that diabetes and high blood pressure also come with the genetic package. I am discovering daily what the different physical sensations I have observed over the years mean to my body, as I learn to adjust to my body's issues with sugar. It isn’t the end of the world, but it did give me cause to pause for a moment and reflect on my mortality, and my quality of life.

I am not afraid of death, or of dying. I have experienced the power of that transition with two of the most important people in my life, my maternal grandfather, and my oldest daughter. Both of these experiences left me not with a belief, but an intuitive knowledge of life and what lies beyond. There is nothing there to be fearful of. As the Siksika Chief Crowfoot said, “Life and Death are no different, they only appear that way.”

If anything, these new discoveries have given me the opportunity to embrace life, and really enjoy it.

Hell, I may even learn to dance.

I still identify as that "Michigan Farm Boy," and forever will. But I would be lying if I said that I haven't felt the Spirits of my Ancestors throughout my journey to this point. 

We are still savages.

Suck it Up, Buttercup.

I was assisting a client with a crisis, this evening, and a story from my childhood again came to mind. It has come to be relevant on several occasions over the past month or so, and while I realize that this story is old to some people, I still see the value in sharing it, and the hard lesson I learned one summer...

When I was fourteen years old or so, I had an old Honda CT90 trail bike that looked a lot like a mustard colored moped on steroids. That little bike got me all over the nearly seven hundred acres of my grandparents farm every summer. Of course I rode with no helmet, often pushing the little 89cc 4 stroke to speeds that would have made my parents quite uncomfortable.

It was that summer of I guess it must have been 1985 or 86, that I was on my way from the dairy barn at one end of the acreage to “the house” at the other. It was a typical hot and humid Michigan summer, well into the 80s with air so thick you could cut it, so I was likely going even a little faster than usual to enjoy the breeze. I had just cleared the sand pit that we used to fill the free stalls in the cattle barn, and started into the massive hayfield on the south side of the lot my grandparent’s home was on, when it happened.

If anyone reading this has seen the movie “Spider Man” with Tobey Maguire, the scene where he first discovered his “Spider Sense,” you know where everything slowed to nearly a standstill? That is what happened precisely. I suddenly found myself airborne, floating what felt like a mile above my bike, which was proceeding in a straight line without me. I could almost count the spokes on the slowly turning wheels, and the wind that had been whistling in my ears mere seconds ago had been replaced by complete and utter silence. I closed my eyes. I knew this was going to hurt.

When I opened my eyes again, I could see my bike lying on its side, with the front wheel still spinning against the air. Nothing felt like it was broken, and I was pissed to say the least. I stood and kicked the rear tire, where I noticed the drive chain lay broken, and cried out as an excruciating pain shot through my ankle and up my leg. I looked down at my right ankle and saw that my foot looked more like a football already, and the swelling had just begun. Yep, definitely broken.

I sat there for a moment and rocked back and forth in pain. I felt the sweat running down the back of my neck, and realized that not only did I hurt, but I was really thirsty. Then I looked down the long row of fence posts that lined that hay field and swallowed hard—or would have if my throat hadn’t been so dry. It was almost a mile in the sun to my grandparent’s house, and help. I looked back over my shoulder in the direction that I had come, and realized it was just as far—if not farther—to the dairy barn and a phone.

So there I was, back in the old days before the advent of the cell phone, in the middle of over six hundred acres of woods and fields, sitting in the hot sun with a broken leg, a motorcycle that was going nowhere, and no one knowing which way I had gone. I was faced with three choices;

One, go back the way I came, through the sand pit and up the two-track to the dairy barn and call for help. Two, go straight ahead down the fence row in the heat until I reached the farmhouse and call for help. Or three, sit there in the sun and wait for someone to find me.

I tested my leg, found that there was no way it was going to bear my weight, and took my first step down the fence row anyway. The next hour and a half or so was excruciating. I walked, hopped, and at times crawled the distance of the field that my cousins sometimes used as a landing strip for their crop-duster. My leg was throbbing, the heat was unbearable. My mouth felt like it was full of cotton balls. I made my way to the kitchen and called my mother, who came and took me to the emergency room in Mount Pleasant.

At fourteen, I learned a valuable lesson in life.

You do what you have to do.

Sometimes there will be no one to rescue you. Sometimes there will be no outside support. No cavalry to save the day. No one with a big “S” on their chest. Nobody to do it for you when it gets tough. The only person you can rely on at the end of the day, is you.

In our every day work relationships, when we don’t feel valued or respected, it hurts. Sometimes the disrespect is intentional, mean or even cruel. When that happens, we have three choices;

We can complain to those who will listen, hoping that by venting and revisiting the past we will somehow feel better, stronger or validated. We can sit and wait, hoping that things will get better and feeling miserable in the meantime, or we can move on with our day and take care of our business.

Bills still have to be paid. Clients still need the services they have paid us for. Products still need service. Deadlines still have to be met, and none of these situations gives a thimble full of that product that our dairy cows produced about how you feel… And no, I am not talking about milk.

At fourteen I developed my disdain for weakness and the inability to make a decision. I realized that if you don’t choose, life will choose for you, and more often than not the failure to make a choice is not going to be in your favor. This realization was tested and proven twenty years later with the passing of Marissa, my oldest daughter. No matter how much it hurt, and how my world had just simply stopped, things had continued on as normal for nearly everyone else. The electric bill still came in the mail, groceries still had to be purchased and my other children still needed their father.

I had to choose to walk that fence row again, this time with a broken heart.

It is absolutely acceptable to hurt. It is unavoidable really. It is okay to want to vent. It is fine to process emotions. We are all human, and we all have them. It is the time and the place and the intent in and which you choose to hurt, vent or process that makes the difference. What you choose to do during times of stress, crisis, or pain is what defines who you are.

It’s what separates us from the civilized folks.

After all, we are still savages.

Oh, and just to finish the story of the broken leg. When I finally reached the house from my useless trail bike, I found the place empty. My grandfather’s truck was gone, and I did not see the tail end of my grandmother’s Ford Taurus poking out of the garage. I was completely and utterly alone. I gulped down several glasses of iced tea I picked up the phone to call for help.

Remember that this was in the mid 1980s in rural Michigan? Remember how I said that this was back before cell-phones? Well, some of you may remember something called that “party line” and I don’t mean that late night 900 commercial. For those of you who don’t know, or don’t remember, the party line was where two or more homes share a phone line.

I put my finger into the little hole on the phone dial where the number “9” showed, and I heard a woman’s voice in the receiver. It was the little old lady in the house at the top of the hill, carrying on a conversation with one of her friends or children, or perhaps grandchildren, who knows? I don’t know how long I was on the line before she must have realized I was there, but she said;

“Hello?”

“Hi,” I responded, “I’m sorry to interrupt, but I think I broke my leg, and I need to call for a ride.”

“In a second, dear,” she told me. “We’re almost finished here.”

CTM

Heroes Come in all Colors

It was humid, as it almost always is in the Tampa Bay area. A woman walked the streets of St. Petersburg alone. She could feel the air hugging her face and thought how thick and heavy it felt.  She pressed on in the dark. On these dimly lit streets the humidity was punctuated by halos that appeared around the street lights in South St. Petersburg, in an area known as "Midtown." 

"Midtown" is a beautiful neighborhood, rich in history and full of promise for the future, but in the present, it is marked by liquor stores and poverty. Drug deals are commonplace and in the open, in spite of the community's efforts against the criminal element, bars are still mounted to business windows, and the homeless mark their territory with their empty bottles, and shopping carts. 

She continued on towards her destination, unfamiliar with her surroundings. She had a vague recognition of the area, where she was in relation to where she was heading, and how long it should take for her to get there, but now with each step she took uncertainty began to grow. When she felt his presence fall in step behind her, uncertainty turned to fear. When his shadow fell upon her fear turned to panic.  

Then, there was the glint of steel flashing in the dark and panic became absolute terror. At first no sound came out as she screamed. She was certain that this dark figure was death, come to claim her. 

And then he was gone.

Around her were three young men, asking her if she was alright, and assuring her that she was safe. These young men had heard her cries for help, and had driven her attacker away. He had fled into the shadows from where he had emerged.

In this day and age, we see more and more incidents of violence on Youtube and Facebook than ever before. Nearly everyone has a cell phone, but rather than using it to call for help, too often it is used to make videos of these acts. People being beaten or even killed is only a web search away if you need to see it. Many people will not call the police in these neighborhoods, because it "isn't their business."

A week after this incident took place, a St. Petersburg City Council member would say to these young men who had made this their business, that what they did was remarkable. He told them that "It wasn't your concern, but you made it your concern. You didn't have to act, but you chose to." 

Courage, it is said is finding it in yourself to do something, even when it terrifies you.

So... Why do I do what I do? Why do I choose to work with youth that other people would just as soon write off?

Because I have always been contradictory. I have always looked for the exception to the rule. In a society that calls our youth--especially our back youth "entitled," and "self-centered," I have living proof of the contrary. Our culture looks at young black men as "thug," "ghetto," "lazy," "street," and any number of unglamorous labels that only fuel the stereotypes that lead to disaster, these three young people acted in an extraordinarily courageous manner.

They did the right thing. Because it was the right thing to do.

Every day I am nauseated by the polarized view on race in this country. Too often these views are displayed in social media and on websites after something terrible has happened. Somewhere along the way, our country has to figure things out. Note the faces you see preventing looters during the Ferguson, Missouri riots. 
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/16/ferguson-protesters-guard-stores_n_5684042.html

On a side note, I would like to point out the faces you see in Kentucky, after their loss to Wisconsin.
http://nypost.com/2015/04/05/kentucky-fans-take-out-anger-by-rioting-after-loss-to-wisconsin/

Pay attention to the children whose actions saved a five-year-old from a kidnapper.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/15/justice/pennsylvania-teen-heroes/ 

Recognize the young man who saved the life of the police officer who was arresting him.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/after-arrest-florida-teen-helps-save-officers-life/

Contemplate the actions of the teen who protected a Klan member from an angry mob in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/29/keshia-thomas-black-teen-white-man-kkk-rally_n_4175020.html

Respect City of St. Petersburg, Florida's "Sunshine Ambassador" award winners, Barrington Williams, Richard Canty, and Chauncey Swinton. Three young men who had the courage to do the right thing, in spite of what our mainstream media would have you believe. It is character not color that matters. Someday, I hope to blog about how one citizen helped another, rather than how a "black" or "white" citizen helped another. Until than, I will rave about the actions of the few, that benefit the many.

Top Row: Councilmembers Amy Foster, Karl Nurse, Charles Gedres, Steve Kornell, Darden Rice, Bill Dudley and Jim Kennedy. Bottom Row: Councilman Wengay Newton, Chauncey Swinton, Barrington Williams, Richard Canty, and Myself.

Ordinarily I am not allowed to post on the youth I work with. This, however is a matter of public record, and these fine young men stood before the Mayor of St. Petersburg, and the City Council of the beautiful City of St. Petersburg, Florida. 

In a society that calls our youth--especially our back youth "entitled," and "self-centered," "thug," "ghetto," "lazy," "street," I call them "upstanding," "citizens" and "protectors," and heroes.

I am exceptionally thankful for all those who shrug these stereotypes. I am especially grateful for our heroes. Our society needs them. 

After all...
We are still savages.

Happy Holidays!

Many changes have taken place in my life in the past several weeks. Most of them extremely promising and positive, but they have kept me busy. I have some debts to pay, and some loose ends to tie up with people who are important to me, and new beginnings to forge. 

Have a wonderful holiday season, friends. 

I will see you after the New Year, and we will pick it up where we left off.

Until then, remember...

We are still savages.