bill berry

Mount Rainier Sunrise Before the Shadow Appeared

While Mount Rainier often casts her shadow against the sky by blocking the sun, this is the first time I’ve taken a photo where I can see that happening (zoom in for the detail).

My iPhone curates and shows me a different group of my photos every day, and these are from my current set.

• It’s New Year’s Day, and I’ll be making me some rolls!
• I crave me some Pasta Moon. Alas, coronavirus makes a visit impossible. And while I don’t make resolutions, I resolve to eat a lot less pasta this month to reduce the poundage. Plus, I need room for the rolls mentioned above.
• We miss Mo and have gone a whole year without being in his presence, except virtually, of course.

Goodbye, 2020! Let’s hope 2021 is better! That’s all.

Something I noticed…

Wondering how I came to be called (okay, okay, call myself!) The Rt. Rev. Dr. Uncle Billy Bob Jackson Brown Berry Black, Jr. Esq., Inc.com?

When my niece was, let’s just say, much younger, I’d ask her what my name was. When she called me “Uncle Bill,” I said “no, I’m Uncle Billy.”

The next time we’d talk, my name grew to be “Uncle Billy Bob.” Then, “Uncle Billy Bob Jackson,” then Jackson Brown, etc.

This went on for years until, as a teenager, she quit playing the game. By then, with very little additional embellishment, we had “The Rt. Rev. Dr. Uncle Billy Bob Jackson Brown Berry Black, Jr. Esq., Inc.com.”

But you can just call me Bill E. Bob, okay? Rev works fine, too! You can also catch my _ 🎶🎵🎤 sermons 👍🏾_ on #JazzChurch, Sunday afternoons between 1-4pm PST.

Welcome to #jazzchurch where The Rt. Rev. Dr. Uncle Billy Bob Jackson Brown Berry Black, Jr. Esq., Inc.com – aka Bill E. Bob – livestreams some of the music that’s resonating for him right now. Today we featured music by Nina Simone, Oliver Nelson, Keith Jarrett, Charles Lloyd, and Public Enemy, among others. Did you say “Public Enemy? I thought this was a jazz show!” :-)

Replay the show here:

Today is Father’s Day. I’m a father and have received plenty of greetings from family and friends. I love my son and my wife, and thank them for helping me be a good father.

My dad’s been gone for 41 years. I was 27 and happy to have at least had him that long.

My dad worked all the time, at least six days a week. I don’t remember him being home that much. I do remember barbecues in the back yard. Whole pig!

I remember drinking and arguing. I remember stepping between dad and mom. I remember running away and hiding. I remember being rescued from the basement by my grandmother. She also left us 41 years ago.

I remember my father being sick and in the hospital. I remember asking him if he was afraid. He said yes.

I remember taking him and Mfanya to Shea Stadium to watch the Mets. I remember thinking he had to do too much walking that day.

I remember he died the Tuesday before were going to Yankee Stadium to cheer for Reggie Jackson, not the hated Yankees. Yes, my father would rather die than go see the Yankees!

My father was wise. He once told me, “Go ahead and do what you want to do. I can’t stop you. But someday, you’re gonna look back and say, ‘My daddy was right.’” A few years later, I got to tell him he was right.

I remember saying, “stop fussing dad,” to which he responded, “I’m not fussing. I’m talking. I can talk, can’t I?” I remember shaking my head, and now I’m the one who is always talking, not fussing.

I miss my dad. I still love him. As my sister said this morning, “41 years but always in our hearts ❤️.”

Happy Fathers Day!

#jazzchurch 08 – Happy Father’s Day!

Welcome to #jazzchurch where we livestream two hours of music in two hours’ time. Today we featured Horace Silver’s “Song For My Father,” including the version by Leon Thomas. Other great songs as well. Preparations for this show got me thinking about my own father.

I hope the music provides you with some uplift, some new resolve, peace, and some hope! Enjoy! Here’s the audio:

Here’s an Apple Music playlist containing the publicly available songs I played.

Tune in 1-3pm PDT next Sunday for another edition of #jazzchurch!

While having lunch with a colleague two or three years ago, she asked a question I’d never been asked before. Being stunned at the time, I can only paraphrase it as, “how did you get to be you?” I recall fumbling through my answer, talking, not about education or training, but about some of the experiences that have helped shaped me.

The following passage from Frank Barrett’s “Yes to the Mess” provides a less rambling description of the process I’ve been through.:

When you’re learning to be a professional, it’s not just a matter of memorizing a set of rules or a stock of explicit knowledge. Often what you are learning is an outlook, a mood, a disposition. You’re learning to absorb a whole way of being —picking up practices, rather than learning about practices. This learning is anything but clean, rote, or logically arranged. Learning to be a practicing musician, like learning to be a practicing executive, is a sloppy process. It’s intuitive and vague. You are guessing and adjusting, trying to grasp what to do next, listening to how others grapple with dilemmas, imitating the phrases and facial expressions of admired peers, trying something based on vague glimpses and threads of meaning—and, critically, reorienting as you go.

This kind of learning involves trying, getting stuck, and then trying again. With jazz players, as with rising executives and junior partners, this is a work in progress that’s performed in public. But the presence of others and the stories they share make a difference. Just as a division head in a meeting learns the proper way to critique an idea and how to receive and give critiques in public settings, the jazz musician learns the norms of meta-learning, how to help others think, how and when to give advice—crucial skills for everyone.

– Frank J. Barrett, “Yes to the Mess: Surprising Leadership Lessons from Jazz” (p. 107)

What do you think? Maybe you’ve been through this process too?

Welcome to #jazzchurch! Today we featured the Edwin Hawkins Singers, Roberta Flack, Betty Carter, Pharoah Sanders, Branford Marsalis, Tom Harrell, and Gil Scott-Heron, just to name a few. Here’s more info about the meaning of today’s show. Feedback welcome!

I hope the music provides you with as much solace as it did for me! Enjoy!

Tune in 1-3pm PDT next Sunday for another edition of #jazzchurch!

Note: This blog post came about as I was getting ready for my #jazzchurch live stream.

After Emmett Till, James Earl Chaney, Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, Medgar Evers, Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, Carol Denise McNair, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Rodney King, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, Philando Castile, Walter Scott, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Manuel Ellis, George Floyd, Rayshard Brooks, and countless, innumerable others…

And after the George Floyd funeral this past week, “Joy, Joy” is the song that’s on my mind:

Behind every dark cloud
there’s a silver lining
After every rainstorm
there’s a bright new star
When troubles grieve you
and friends deceive you
Oh don’t worry
it will pass over
In the morning

when trials pull your heartstrings
don’t be discouraged
and even though pain and misery
fill your eyes with tears
these trials will soon pass
and soon they will depart
oh hallelujah
they will pass over
bye and bye

weeping may endure for a night
but joy will come in the morning

Police brutality keeps going and going and going, and I’m still waiting for joy to come in the morning. I’m working on not being discouraged, and it’s so damn hard…

#SayTheirNames
#BlackLivesMatter
#2020Roadsigns
#ideasfor2020
#song4today!
#ThisIsHowImFeelingRightNow
#jazzchurch

I love Steve Schmidt’s ability to be so clear and compelling, on-the-spot. Maybe he could work for the Biden campaign?

I couldn’t find the video, so here’s my transcription of his remarks on law and order Trumpublicans:

Well the obtuseness is extraordinary, the idea that, well, we’ll solve this issue politically by going to talk to the only black senator because he’ll have a particular wisdom that eludes all of us as we sit and we observe this moment.

It was remarkable that all the Republican Senators went into the Senate lunch shortly after the Trump ordering of the attack on Lafayette Square when he did his walk across to Saint Johns to desecrate the Bible.

They didn’t even talk about any of this in the Senate lunch! The subject didn’t come up! I mean they couldn’t be more out-of-touch if they were doing their senate work from a space station. It’s as if they’re on a different planet, that they are so disconnected from what’s happening in the country.

And so when we talk about law and order, we should understand what that means. It doesn’t mean justice. Law and order is not what we saw in Lafayette Square when innocent protesters asserting their constitutionally protected rights were assaulted and attacked by the police. So much of the chaos we’ve seen on the streets has been the chaos of the state exercising violence against the citizens.

And so, when we look at this moment, all across the country, people are saying we’ve had enough of militarized police departments. We want to see police men and women dressed like they’re in Mayberry, not that they’re in Falluja with the combat boots bloused into the pants, the tactical gear, all of it.

When the American people saw the injustice of a man’s life being snuffed out over eight minutes with a knee on his neck it was as if the whole country finally in this catalytic moment said enough is enough.

This isn’t a conversation about law and order. It’s a conversation about justice. And when Trump talks about law and order, it’s the law and order of Bull Connor, it’s the law and order of police dogs, and vicious dogs, and domination of the streets.

That’s not law and order! The people who crave law and order are the people on the streets protesting for justice.

Welcome to #jazzchurch where we livestream two hours of music in two hours’ time. Today we feature John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Kenny Barron, Bobby Hutcherson, Branford Marsalis, and Tineke Postma, just to name a few.

I hope the music provides you with some uplift, some new resolve, peace, and some hope! Enjoy!

Livestream audio on SoundCloud

Apple Music playlist

Tune in 1-3pm PDT next Sunday for another edition of #jazzchurch!

Today’s #jazzchurch livestream featured music by Wayne Shorter, Dexter Gordon, John Coltrane, and Betty Carter, just to name a few. As I listened I thought to myself, “these songs have some great bass lines.” If you know me, well, that makes a lot of sense!

Anyway, some great music, and a mistake or two to learn from. Enjoy!

Livestreaming jazz on a Sunday afternoon

Once upon a time, I declared jazz as my religion. No dogma, just the pure unmitigated sound of the music known as jazz. Today at 1 pm PDT, after a little encouragement from my friends, I’ll live stream some songs I love (#LoveStreaming!!!).

Welcome to #jazzchurch! Let’s see/hear/feel what happens…

I’ve lost my car in some strange, unknown place. I know it’s here somewhere, maybe a block away. Over there? Nope, not there. How about over here? Nothing works. I can’t Google it. I can’t connect to it with my iPhone (what’s an iPhone???). The button I press on the key fob results in no horn sound I can hear. I think I remember the landmarks, the lost road signs, but retracing my steps lead nowhere.

The only way out of this dilemma of tragic proportions is to wake up and realize this was only a dream. And I wake up and I realize that, no, this time, not a dream. Or maybe the dream isn’t over yet? I remain stuck.

Worse yet, everyone else around me is stuck too. We’re all looking for the same damn lost car and it’s just not here. It’s not anywhere. We’re nowhere.

If you’re not one of us lost souls, if you know the way out, please share it. Please share it right now. ¡Immediatamente!

Thanks for listening.

MustRead: A letter to the UK from Italy: this is what we know about your future

My ALF colleague David L Hirschberg shared this letter written by acclaimed Italian novelist Francesca Melandri to fellow Europeans ‘from your future’. She has been under lockdown in Rome for almost three weeks due to the Covid-19 outbreak and lays out the range of emotions people are likely to go through over the coming weeks.

“I am writing to you from Italy, which means I am writing from your future. We are now where you will be in a few days. The epidemic’s charts show us all entwined in a parallel dance.

“We are but a few steps ahead of you in the path of time, just like Wuhan was a few weeks ahead of us. We watch you as you behave just as we did. You hold the same arguments we did until a short time ago, between those who still say ‘it’s only a flu, why all the fuss?’ and those who have already understood.

“As we watch you from here, from your future, we know that many of you, as you were told to lock yourselves up into your homes, quoted Orwell, some even Hobbes. But soon you’ll be too busy for that.”

Click to read it all!

Why most D&I programs don’t work

I’ve been taking a deeper dive into Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion this year, and still just learning. Getting people to learn new ways of thinking, and having that result in changed behavior? Well, that’s just hard.

I’m reminded of a quote from one of my favorite management books:

People don’t change that much.
Don’t waste time trying to put in what was left out.
Try to draw out what was left in.
That is hard enough.
– First, Break All the Rules, p. 57.

Almost by definition, EDI work seeks to put in what was left out, something largely not there in the first place.

To accomplish that kind of change, we need to go deeper than seeking changed behavior. We have to change mindset. We’ll be more successful in achieving EDI if we first focus on understanding and changing the underlying mindset.

Mindset –> Behavior –> Results

I exchange pleasantries all the time. Colleagues ask me, “how are you doing?” and feel disappointed if I don’t respond, “Awesome!” Like, “What’s wrong?” Disappointed.

All that to explain why this puzzle was so right-up-my-alley, my wife let me handle it. :-) #awesome!! #winning!!!

(Unsplash photo by Hans-Peter Gauster)

Once upon a time, I was fixing to get ready to walk into a leadership team-building workshop. While improving the team had sorta been my idea, past retreats hadn’t gone too well. They all seemed to focus on why I wasn’t like everybody else and I decided I wasn’t doing that again.

Before leaving home that morning, I wrote in my journal. The basic idea is to clear my head, empty my thoughts onto paper, and contemplate what I want to do that day. I always start with the date, followed by the name of a song that’s reverberating in my head. This day I chose a Eddie Harris song called “Listen Here!”

In keeping with the theme, I wrote myself the following instructions:

Listen
Ask questions
Be curious
Ask humble questions
Listen
Summarize
Synthesize
Pass
Say “I don’t know.”
“Let me think about that.”
Speak the kind truth? Nah!!
Observe
Shut up!
Listen!

### How’d That Work?

I thought the day was going well until my boss approached me during our lunch break.

“Bill, are you okay?”
“Sure. Why do you ask?
“Well, you haven’t said anything all morning, and that’s not like you!”
“Oh, I’m fine. I’ve just been listening. Taking it all in.”

You see, I’d forgotten to actually participate in the conversation. While I didn’t want to provide my colleagues ammunition they could use to attack me, I also didn’t want that to be noticeable. So I chimed-in more the rest of the day.

Message From Above?

During the afternoon session, a buzz from my watch notified me that a new Harvard Business Review “Ideacast” had been downloaded to my iPhone. The title? “Become a Better Listener!” Surely this was a message from on-high that, despite my faux pas, I was on the right track.

In the next day or two, I listened to the podcast. It featured an interview with Mark Goulston about his book, Just Listen: Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone. I read the book.

Goulston’s book was published by the American Management Association, and they offered a class based on Just Listen. I took the class.

The podcast, book, and training were all excellent. Goulston’s work featured a deep-dive into brain science to help explain how and why we respond to stimuli the way we do. The book and class also provided practical tips for handling different situations we face and to improve our ability to listen.

A Journey Begins

I ended up taking four AMA seminars over the next year:

• Just Listen!
• The Voice of Leadership: How Leaders Inspire, Influence and Achieve Results
• Leading with Emotional Intelligence
• Transformational Leadership: How to Inspire Extraordinary Performance

I learned a lot in each class. I was clearly searching for something, and, I’m pretty sure I found it!

More on that in a future episode…

Lessons Learned?

What questions do you have?

I, Too

I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.

Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed—

I, too, am America.

– Langston Hughes

My friend Jackie shared a link to Ten Poetic Quotes by Langston Hughes and it gave me a much-needed pick-me-up!

I can’t decide which quote is my favorite, so I’ll go with this one:

“Humor is laughing at what you haven’t got when you ought to have it… what you wish in your secret heart were not funny, but it is, and you must laugh. Humor is your own unconscious therapy. Like a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air, and you.”

I’ve been #workingonit!!! for a long time. #ALutaContinua!