Lisa Napoli's Blog, page 73
February 24, 2011
Past Lives, and how N.C. resembles Bhutan
The man in the audience at Malaprop's Bookstore in Asheville, NC looked familiar, but it was only as I kept speaking and seeing the eager young woman next to him react to what I was saying that I realized they were my long lost friends. The young woman was Mark's daughter, now 21-she was probably 5 the last time I saw her. Years ago I'd helped Mark with a documentary he was making and spend countless trips to his cabin in the woods with our mutual friends. I immediately thought about hiking with them and how much the mountains of North Carolina and the whole feel here reminds me of Bhutan.
The Radio Shangri-La Quiz on Goodreads by Cyd Melcher
How cool is it that my dear old friend from college Cyd Melcher read R/S/L so carefully that she constructed a quiz about it on Goodreads: I wonder if I take whether I'll pass!
http://www.goodreads.com/quizzes/7145-radio-shangri-la-by-lisa-napoli
The Center for Creative Leadership
Somehow it seemed like the innovative Center for Creative Leadership, with headquarters in Greensboro, and which attracts management and thought-leader students from around the world, would be interested in the Bhutanese principles of Gross National Happiness; thanks to Katherine, who introduced me to Sylvester Taylor, and thanks to him for generously letting me stop by and talk about Radio Shangri-La yesterday to CCL employees and community members alike.
A bit of background from the CCL website is fascinating even if the idea of good management isn't your thing:
Excerpt:
"The inspiration for the Center for Creative Leadership came from the visionary and highly successful businessman H. Smith Richardson Sr. In the years after Richardson had built the Vick Chemical Co. from a one-drugstore operation into a major international corporation, his thoughts turned to questions of leadership: how can businesses remain vital and continue to provide useful, innovative products and services through economic ups and downs, in the face of changes in the marketplace, and in spite of the inevitable succession of management groups?
Richardson was particularly interested in this last issue. Many enterprises eventually fail, he deduced, because management sooner or later "loses the ability to recognize and adjust to new and changing conditions." What organizations needed was not just leadership for the present and the near future, but innovative leadership with a broader focus and a longer view. Such leadership would be concerned not with profits, markets and business strategies alone, but with the place of business in society. This sort of leadership would come from people, Richardson said, with "minds that could do cross-country thinking." Only by taking into account the broader implications of decisions could a business remain stable and productive "throughout future decades and generations." What was needed, he realized, was creative leadership.
His dream of an independent institution devoted to the concept of creative leadership was realized with the founding of the Center for Creative Leadership in 1970. The Smith Richardson Foundation Inc. provided the initial financial underpinning for CCL. The Foundation — and several generations of the Richardson family — have remained generous supporters of CCL's work."
And that work is slightly better described here: http://www.ccl.org/leadership/about/index.aspx
Asheville, North Carolina…tonight
Anyone in Asheville or anyone who knows anyone in Asheville, please send them out to Malaprop's Bookstore tonight. You can see what I look like when I look very very tired. But I promise to amp up the energy once it's showtime. 7pm.
Bhutan's fourth King honored for his environmental contributions
The Fourth King of Bhutan, pictured here and referred to in this story as the "Druk Gyalpo" (which means Dragon King) has been honored for his contribution to the protection of the environment.
Excerpt: "The Fourth Druk Gyalpo was among the earliest world leaders to become conscious of the mounting pressures of development on the bountiful, yet fragile ecosystem," Her Royal Highness said in her address to the gathering.
"As a result, Bhutan is more green today than it was at the beginning of Bhutan's developmental process some 50 years ago and highlighted that Bhutan has a forest cover of 72 percent, with almost 50 percent of the country declared as protected areas that host an array of flora and fauna, including some of the rarest and threatened species in the world," Ashi Kezang Choden Wangchuck said. "Such achievements emboldened Bhutan to pledge before the world at the COP 15 that it will forever remain carbon neutral."
In the acceptance speech that was read out by Her Royal Highness, the Fourth Druk Gyalpo said that he looked upon the award as a recognition accorded to his people and country for their efforts to live and progress in harmony with the natural habitat, and that he dedicated it to the people of Bhutan and all those, who have been steadfast in their support and commitment to preserve the natural environment in Bhutan and the world.
Thus We Heard: Recollections of the Life of the Buddha
Rev. Kusala made a page on this new book which sounds really interesting for all you Buddhist scholars out there. It's a biography, some of the Buddha's teachings, and a fictional recreation by a monk and a lay minister who also is a doctorate of Dharma.
EXCERPT from the forward: "Thus We Heard: Recollections of the Life of Buddha became an amalgam of three kinds of books: a fully-researched biography of the Buddha, a collection of his important Dhamma messages, and a historical novel that "might have happened," but we'll never know for sure.
The State of Things with Frank Stasio
http://wunc.org/tsot/archive/Radio_ShangriLa.mp3/view
So great to meet the famous NPR voice in the form of the kind person who delivers it!
Happiness and Beyond/Review in India Post by Srirekha Chakravarty
http://www.indiapost.com/happiness-and-beyond/
This is my favorite part of this kind story; thanks to reviewer Srirekha Chakravarty for getting it!
"Before reading the book, one is inclined to unfairly wonder if this is yet another 'Eat, Pray Love' kind of privileged-American-looking of 'happiness and meaning' in the obscurity of a third world getaway. But mercifully, Napoli gives us more than just insights into her existential crisis to understand a contemporary geo-political revolution that is at once a result of modern technology and a people's aspirations."
