Order from chaos. Practicality from absurdity. Hope from hopelessness. Wood from the trees. Identify weakness. Calculate action. Deploy resources. Measure impact. Repeat.
This is my job.
519 years ago last week, Christopher Columbus set sail from Spain to re-discover the continent already discovered by Leif Ericson 500 years prior. That’s the Viking explorer Leif Ericson, dear readers, not the star of the 1960’s TV show High Chaparral. The Viking expedition was not punctuated with adverts for Marlboro cigarettes and Pine-Fresh Mr. Clean (to the best of my knowledge).
Columbus’ voyage became the popular myth of American discovery; the accepted version of a manufactured history. The woefully lost Italian sailor unintentionally sailed into legend. In his ships’ wake a minor public holiday, Hallmark cards (Happy Columbus Day from Across the Miles) and countless elementary school displays washed ashore.
We live with the sham. It is OK. The Columbus story works and who wouldn’t agree that District of Ericsonia doesn’t quite roll off the tongue?
My youngest daughter spent the evening last night contemplating a carton of juice. She examined its colour, the font chosen by the graphic designer, the messages the packaging wished to imply. The sky blue and sun drenched orange colours suggested the healthiest, most natural of beverages. A bright and happy cartoon fruit, rejoicing in having been halved by a blade and dripping its very life juices away beamed out from the front panel.
The juice inside was a chemical concoction of artificial flavourings and preservatives served up in a NASA-style foil bag. A semi-lethal, pointed plastic straw was attached to each astro-pouch so that the thirsty consumer could access the contents. The box proudly proclaimed the product to be free from artificial colourings. It didn’t lie but it didn’t tell the whole story either. Economic with the truth, I think the politicians would say.
Columbus perched on the bridge of the Nina or the Santa Maria, taking a long sip from a futuristic bag of orange by-products was an image that passed through my mind today. In my imagination he talked like Tony Soprano; wielding his pointed straw and threatening to whack the first Indian he encountered. Senor Paulie Walnuts was by his side whispering, “You gotta teach ‘em to show some respect, Skip…Hey look, it says no artificial colours. Tu capisci?”
Our new assessment system has thrown up several issues that were proving very difficult to deal with. In response, I called a meeting with the four most senior members of our school staff as well as the local inspector. I advertised it as a brainstorming session. There would be proper coffee. And cakes.
I had decided what the outcome of the brainstorming session would be some days ago. That was not the purpose I had for calling the meeting. My secret agenda was for the middle management team came up with the same solutions I had already tagged. The trick of the meeting was to make it seem it was their own decision. I had to create the illusion that they had arrived here first; it was their New World to discover. The chemically brewed orange substitute, industrially extracted, needed to be dressed up as something organic; like they had grown it themselves.
And so it went. Three hours after the meeting had started the outcomes were what I had identified days before. But my colleague’s collective belief that they had germinated the ideas were as deeply rooted as the oldest orange tree in the most ancient grove in Columbus’ adopted Spanish home.
And before you ask, it is not a cruel trick to play. Now the middle management team own the decisions. Now they will run with the ideas. And thus, dear readers, I know the project will work. It is their baby and they will see that it not just survives but grows and flourishes. Columbus shall have his glory whilst Ericson is cold in his Nordic grave. The manufactured orange-like conglomeration shall be sold as nature’s own.
Order from chaos. Practicality from absurdity. Hope from hopelessness. Wood from the trees. Identify weakness. Calculate action. Deploy resources. Measure impact. Repeat.
This is my job.
I sail home in my battered green 7-seater, imaging a dragon masthead thrusting forward from the radiator like a great Viking ship. I sail westward. I am Leif Ericson pulling a pen from my great horned helmet and inscribing a Hallmark card: WISHING YOU A HAPPY COLUMBUS DAY.
Keep the Faith,
The Head
Love this post.