Tag Archives: Stephen Covey

The Bottom of The Top

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Posted by on in Assistance, collaborating, Hiking and Nature, Inspiration, Personal goals, Personal Values, Social, Striving, Travel

August 16, 2023- As a five-time hiker of the Grand Canyon’s Bright Angel Trail, from rim to river and back, I can attest that there is no appreciation of the bottom, without the top, and vice versa.

This afternoon, I completed reading “PrairyErth”, William Least Heat Moon’s “sequel” to his account of a back roads ramble around the United States, entitled “Blue Highways”. The latter took in travels through 38 states. The former concentrated on one county, in Kansas, which was one of the ten contiguous states he didn’t visit the first time. Mr. Least Heat Moon’s style is consistent, covering all bases of an area, telling anecdotes of his encounters with Man and Nature, weaving details of history, sociology, biology and geology into each chapter-in both books. The micro reflects the macro.

The writer, named for his having been born during a New Moon, entered the words of this post’s title, in the final chapter of “PrairyErth”, in the course of describing a walk which he and a friend took, tracing as best they could the route taken by the Kansa (Kaw) people, when those who gave their name to the state were removed to Oklahoma, in 1872.

He christened the base of a small, but steep, hill in the west of Chase County, as “the bottom of the top”, and thus connected beginning with end, east with west, north with south. Stephen Covey, many years ago, did the same in his life coaching book, “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”: “See the end in the beginning”.

Continuity and connection have been essential in my own approach to life, for at least forty years-and probably longer, on a subliminal level. Leaving someone out, not seeing a task through to its completion or omitting a detail have been foreign to my thinking, often to an extent that has been maddening to those around me-and sometimes to me, as well. Dr. Covey’s book helped, in teaching that planning things ahead of time can help enormously, with regard to remembering details-and so I have made that second nature-at least in the past fifteen years.

The first part of anything signals the nature of the last. The bottom is essential to the top. The converse of these is also true.

Surfside

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Posted by on in Assistance, collaborating, Community, impediments, Inspiration, Personal Values, Social, Striving

June 26, 2021, Carson City- When I was in Metz, France, in the summer of 2014, I passed by one of the many high-rise, multiunit apartment complexes that dot virtually every large city in France. There were a large number of people of North African and West Asian descent in the complex. One young man, 10-years of age, allowed as he went to bed each night, wondering if he and his family would be alive the next morning. Fear of fires, explosions and general mayhem in the complexes abounds, in such complexes.

This past week, we have witnessed the realization of the nightmare described above: The implosion of a high-rise apartment tower, on U.S. soil, in Surfside, FL, just north of Miami. Five people are confirmed dead, with 159 unaccounted and 157 confirmed to have survived. An adjacent tower is in the process of being evacuated.

There are already allegations of shoddy construction, the implication being that saving money was the prime impetus in the building of this, and probably many other, residential towers. I am sure this is rampant in the construction industry: Contractors and subcontractors have ample incentive to cut corners-but the onus is not all on them: The lenders, architects and complex owners all have a share of the blame, when the safety and well-being of residents take a backseat to financial concerns. In other nations, when such a horror has happened, those found to be short-circuiting legitimate safety matters have been held to account-often sent to prison for their role in the slaughter.

The collapse of Champlain Towers should never have happened. I have family members in the construction industry, one of whom lives in south Florida. None of the work these men have done has ever involved cutting corners-anymore than any engine my father helped construct. for a commercial jet plane would have failed, due to human negligence. Work involves commitment to the final level of customers, be they tenants in n apartment complex or passengers on a jumbo jet.

The late Stephen Covey said: “See the end, in the beginning.” Surfside is yet another wake-up call!