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This is one of the stories that stayed with me after reading the book. Her philosophy of “doing what is needed at the time” resonated with me, plus the impact she made in the third quarter of her life (which is where I’m at right now) is inspiring. Thanks for sharing the story again, and happy new year!

p.s. I love her quote on leadership.

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Thanks Jen! I'm glad you weren't bored by getting it again. I think about that "doing what's needed at the time" constantly, and it actually led me to join the board of a non-profit in my area (even though they wanted my wife but she was too busy;). Really appreciate your kind words, and best wishes for a wonderful start to the new year.

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Hey @jenzug, I'm also in that 3rd quarter of life (AKA as 'geezerhood'). Hesselbein's life philosophy of “doing what’s needed at the time” reminds me of this quote from proposition #13 of The Humility Code by David Brooks in his book, Road to Character:

"A vocation is not found by looking within and finding your passion. It is found by looking without and asking what life is asking of us. What problem is addressed by an activity you intrinsically enjoy?"

David, props for joining the board of a local non-profit. Hopefully, you'll perform up to your wife's standards. 😂

Happy New Year!

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Hahaha...Griff, I think more than expecting me to perform up to her standards, the board chair was just realizing that they still get some of her along with me;)

I really appreciate you sharing that Brooks quotes. And since I mentioned joining that non-profit board, it sort of happened when I realized I was spending too much time looking within, and just needed to find something where I could use some skills and learn some things and just dive in and get going. (And again, this was after my wife said she couldn't do it!)

Thanks so much for sharing this comment...really adds to the content of the post. Best wishes for the New Year!

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You're welcome, David.

It seems you're following the footsteps of David Brooks in his follow-up book, The Second Mountain.

"When I wrote The Road to Character, I was still enclosed in the prison of individualism... I no longer believe that character formation is mostly an individual task, or is achieved on a person-by-person basis... I now think good character is a by-product of giving yourself away. You love things that are worthy of love. You surrender to a community or cause, make promises to other people, build a thick jungle of loving attachments, lose yourself in the daily act of serving others as they lose themselves in the daily acts of serving you."

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I really appreciate your quote (as well as general comments) - they really resonate with me. "Road to Character" looks like a worthwhile read to add to my list - Thanks

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You’re welcome, Mark. The Humility Code at the end of his book is something I frequently reread.

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"Your names are on the rivers." Wow, just wow. Thanks.

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That stuck with me. Thanks so much for reading and for the kind words, Geoff. Happy holidays!

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You're welcome, of course. There are a lot of ways to convey the same message, but "on the rivers" is perfect. And Happy Holidays to you!

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She was truly an inspiration. My favorite quote:

Great leaders make people’s strength effective and their weaknesses irrelevant.

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Woaa, I love that. A great way to frame leadership. Thanks so much for sharing. Happy holidays!

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Thank you for sharing Frances’ story. Her life is so inspiring- the kind of leadership she cultivated is what we need today. Happy New Year!

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Stella, exactly how I feel, which is why I'll probably keeping sharing parts of her story until you're bored of it;) Thanks so much for reading, and for the kind words. Happy holidays and best wishes for a great start to the new year!

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This is really an inspirational profile, thank you for it. I love the idea of circular leadership and less hierarchical organizational structures. An amazing life lived, and an honor to have met her I’m sure! 

One of my patients turned 100 years old recently, and I wrote a brief post about it, although she lived a much less well-known life, a lot of Frances’s story resonated with what I learned from listening to my patient. Even the most obscure little conversations with members of this disappearing generation can be enlightening and inspirational. 

https://mccormickmd.substack.com/p/one-hundred-long-years

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Ryan, this is beautiful. I love your post — interesting and very well written. You have some wonderful phrases in there, like "a traveller from 1922." It is like that, right?! They really are from a different time and place that we can learn about. And "likely aided by some parental sleights of hand, and hot chocolate." Great stuff. And I think you make an important point, that an older person needn't have lived the Frances kind of life to have a ton that they can teach us. Sometimes I like to think of old people as walking libraries;)

I'm sure you feel lucky to have met your patient, but man your compassion really shines through in this post, so I'm sure she feels really lucky too. Thanks so much for sharing this.

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Dec 28, 2022Liked by David Epstein

Wonderful story of leadership and authenticity! Thank you for sharing Frances’ story!

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My pleasure, Reba. I hope to keep telling her story for years to come. Thanks so much for reading, and best wishes for a wonderful start to the new year.

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This story and Range as a whole keep popping up in my thoughts as I'm running my business and parenting. Range has inspired me to start blogging, with a focus on the intersection of my work in psychiatry with life and culture topics. I'm working on growing my audience. Would you consider recommending my blog, Olio of Thoughts? I'd be eternally grateful for the reciprocity!

Thanks for the work you do, David!

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Hi Paul, thanks so much for the kind words, and I'm so glad to hear that you've started blogging! And not just blogging, but bridging domains while you're at it. I have to say, for most of the time working on Range, I didn't think much about parenting. Here and there in chapters, but not constantly. But I became a parent between the time I turned it in, and the time it was published, and now I think about the topics with respect to parenting constantly. I'm looking forward to reading your writing!

As far as recommendations, I'm not posting any at all yet. As soon as I moved to Substack, I got a batch of requests, and I need time to actually read some of these Substacks and consider how or if to post recommendations. I hope that's understandable.

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Of course! I appreciate you getting back to me!

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Thanks, David. Every time I come across her story through your work, I feel rejuvenated and inspired all over again. "Doing what's needed at the time" is such a wonderful guiding philosophy, and it's so encouraging to see someone do so much good with so little personal ego or ambition. If I could ask a quick question, with these anecdotes I can't help but admire your storytelling skill. I realize this sounds a little corny, but one of my goals/resolutions for the year is to become a better storyteller (both in writing and verbally). I know you've talked in the past about actively studying plot development and storytelling through reading fiction and other ways, so I was wondering: do you have any advice on what resources (books, videos, whatever) I could use to to try improve?

On a more personal note, your end of year remembrances have been such a meaningful and unique set of posts. Kudos to you for so deftly honoring these people you know and admire.

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Matt, when I was writing this, I was like: for the Matts out there I need to put an "if you've heard this already" disclaimer at the top;) Since I tend to tell this story whenever the opportunity presents. But I don't get sick of it, and glad you haven't either.

As far as your goal, I don't think that sounds corny at all. I mean, that's basically my implicit goal every year;) It also reminds me that I saw a very famous tech investor guy on Twitter recently denigrating editors, and when people challenged him, he shared a paragraph he'd written and challenged them to make it better. The idea that a single tight paragraph would obviate editors is silly to start with, and, as I think I've told you, I see structure as the bigger issue. Plus, the paragraph was like some boilerplate description of how Einstein was an unusual thinker. I found it strange that someone would see such a thing as evidence of how they don't need an editor. The idea that someone would set a goal of improving their storytelling doesn't strike me as odd at all. I kind of think almost everyone should have that goal. Even if they aren't writing, most people would benefit from communicating their ideas more powerfully, no matter the medium, I think. I digress....

Anyway, I'm pretty sure I've given you my spiel about film editing, right? I'm honestly not sure what specific resources to recommend. I know a lot of people love Stephen King's "On Writing," but I haven't read it. Oh, probably the most beloved writing book among writers is Anne Lamott's "Bird by Bird." But again, I haven't read it. I know some writers I really admire who love it, though, so I bet it's great. I'm right now reading Verlyn Klinkenborg's "Several Short Sentences on Writing," because I think my sentences have gotten a bit long with em dashes and such, and finding it entertaining. To potentially recommend more stuff I haven't consumed myself: I've been very interested in taking Neil Gaiman's and Gladwell's e-courses on MasterClass. I think they're both epochal storytellers. Ursula Le Guin's "Conversations on Writing" is quick and great, but not so much instructional. Oh, Maria Konnikova turned me on to the four-book Paris Review series where they compiled their interviews with writers. (Here's part 1: https://amzn.to/3voMFXj). Those are great, but as much about the writers themselves as writing. You might check out one of those and see if it's too much about, like, literature than learning storytelling. There's a famous book among screenwriters called "Story" by Robert McKee. (I think he actually plays the writing teacher in Adaptation when the Nicolas Cage character gets stuck.) That is much more explicitly instructional. It's also for screenwriting, but I think many principles of structure and storytelling transfer. ....Anything sound interesting? All that said, I think the most useful thing for me was having a story I wanted to tell and limited space. A three-pager at SI was basically going to be 1,500 words, give or take a sentence or two. That was the shortest feature story, and if I wanted to tell a compelling story in that small space, it had to be structured really deliberately. To that end, I might recommend an online class if you get serious. I took one, and it was great. I think, especially earlier in your writing journey, having someone impose space (and time) limits is really useful. I never would've thought I could've given a sensible 15-minute talk about my books until I was forced to by TED. And then you can always expand back out, but I think being forced to structure things carefully is an important thing to focus on, and you only have to do that if you have space constraints. Have I said anything useful? ...Apropos of our previous conversation about me fact-checking Lee Jenkins, I think reading some good magazine writing and being conscious of the level of detail is helpful. Comedians are great about that, and Chris Rock talks about it. When you paint a picture, don't say the person was drinking while leaning on a car, say they were sipping a Sprite while leaning on Buick, or some such thing. I read Ian McEwan say something like that, that if you don't care to know the names of the plants or something, then you're not a writer. That's extreme, and I think he may have overdone it at times with the plants, but I think the point is that specific details capture attention, where general descriptions don't. That's probably the single most frequent piece of advice I give to developing writers who ask me to read something: be more specific. I think that's also why good storytellers/speakers cite stats frequently. It's a lot more engaging than saying "a lot" or "not many."

Let me know if anything here sounded interesting. I enjoy our back and forth about writing, so please keep asking!

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Hahaha yeah my teacher friend playfully gives me a hard time about being a try hard in my responses, so your joke about the disclaimer fits exactly what she's talking about. Even if I'm lucky enough to live to 107, I don't think I'll ever get tired of Frances, honestly.

Thank you for the validation! I'm looking forward to taking advantage of the fresh start effect once the calendar turns to 2023. Those resources are amazing. Your advice on writing with a deadline and word count is great. It reminds me of something that I heard Ryan Holiday say on a podcast once. He credited his writing improvement to all the reps that he got through writing every day and sending daily newsletter emails for years. Daily deadlines and word counts... food for thought.

These resources are phenomenal. Gladwell stands out to me too. For me reading him at his best is like watching a good movie: I am so engrossed that I forget myself and my surroundings. So much of what you said sounds interesting. I think I'll start with the Paris Review Series and "Story". If Maria Konnikova recommends it who am I to say no? I also think it's so telling that the people you've mentioned range from writers of all kinds to comedians to screen writers. Storytelling is such a fundamental skill that applies in so many domains. This also sounds like a good excuse to watch some comedy specials!

This already has me so excited about how I can try to build the skill. I usually take day trips on Sundays in the UK, and I send my parents postcards about the coolest stories/things I learn. I've been toying about maybe trying to type them up. I have a friend living in Thailand for the year who sends periodic life updates to anyone who is interested, so maybe I could email a weekly story/stories from a place or something. That would be a way to write with a deadline and maybe a self imposed word limit, all while trying to be more specific... sorry I'm thinking out loud, but I'm getting really excited.

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Your thinking out loud is welcome here any time! And feel free to share any travel stories. As you think about this more explicitly, I'm sure you'll realize how, for instance, the consumers of the story and the medium impact where you decide to start. ...I was just thinking a bit about the books I mentioned above, and what might be best to start with, but honestly I think this is very much a "carry a big basket to bring something home" situation. Now that you've decided to do this, I think you'll see lessons all over the place, and will take something from whatever you read or listen to about writing or storytelling. I wandered into an anime convention (meaning: I saw some costumed people, got curious, and followed them) a few years ago that was taking place at a hotel a few blocks from me. I ended up sitting in on an attendee-led session about narrative. It was very basic, and I still found myself taking notes! ...For me, writing is both frustrating and extremely compelling, alternating between feeling like I finally nailed something with one paragraph, and then feeling like I forgot everything I ever knew in the next. Keeps it interesting;)

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Haha I love that. I guess that's one thing I have to look forward to: I'll always have more to learn! I'll keep you posted.

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Selling camps out from under girls and communities who relied on them to experience nature, build leadership, and form community was a bad move. Scouting is not supposed to be about selling out and lining the pockets of executives.

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Dec 28, 2022·edited Dec 28, 2022Author

Hi Sarah, thanks for reading, and for sharing this critique. I'm sorry if you happened to be one of the volunteers or scouts affected by this. For the most part, though, it didn't inhibit troops from nature experience, it just meant that Girl Scouts didn't have to own and manage campgrounds anymore. But they continued with myriad outdoors activities, just as many people and organizations do, without a need to own the land. And Girl Scouts is structured as a charity; selling assets didn't lead to financial bonuses for executives. In any case, I appreciate you commenting here, and wish you a great start to the new year!

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I'll preface this by saying I am not writing this in a snide tone, and certainly am not making any criticism of your newsletter and I absolutely loved "The Sports Gene", but this is being delivered in a general sense of the culture of CEO worship, which I find to be so unbelievably deserving, and desperately needing to be on the way out as a trend from the people in media who can publish with reach,

I see the problem Sarah mentioned is that the growth of 700k employees she is so praised for, most of them being unpaid volunteers is really not something that should be celebrated. People need employment, they don't have lots of free time, and if they are doing work they should be paid especially if the board and administration of the organization had salaries as high as girl scouts. It seems like you could find any worker co-op in the world and they would all be operating at a minimum how she did, but really much more "circular". And little things like the "dont say but, but say and" is one of those things that seems like you are being thoughtful but its easy to read between lines in conversations and also address tones.

Also anyone closely affiliated with Peter Drucker should be taken with a grain of salt he is a known liar (you could say he plays loose with facts, but he lied a lot) and these are also people who have had more than enough praise, accolades, and pomp surrounding them for their entire lives, if there is anyone to celebrate its all those people who volunteer and don' take a paycheck usually while working another job. That is who builds an organization and that is why it was successful, not the CEO, its never the CEO, its the thousands.

This culture of elite worship seems to either be done because editorial boards decide it has to be, or writers feel they have to cover them because another outlet does, but in reality are all the praise pieces that get written about the executive class in which they are fawned over and only presented in the best light, and all the quotes are from other CEOs or executives, not subordinates. This merely reinforces the culture in the country of lionizing and deifying CEOs as the end all be all of success, forgoing people who work 90 hour weeks to raise a family at multiple jobs. They don't get a story, only the CEO does

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yep, the biggest issue I have is the coordinated lionizing of CEOs as they are the reason something is successful, they get all the write ups, all the praise, all the money etc, and really I cant see anything that she has done that is either revolutionary, novel, or even amazing. She was the CEO of girlscouts when the younger baby boomer cohort came of age for scouts, OF COURSE THE NUMBERS WENT UP. just like they went up from like 40k to 200k from 1921-1930. Its just demographics.

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Thank you for highlighting this again, David. Such an amazing story.

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John McCutcheon wrote a wonderful song - "The Greatest Story Never Told" and it's about unsung heroes - and such is usually the case. I love this post and will be reading others, Thanks, Mark

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Growing people, on purpose, because we can, defines greatness to a T

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David, your title nails it, she lived a remarkable life. The one thing that stands out from reading this story is her ability to see things so clearly for what they are in the moment. I am sure many others tried to diagnose the same circumstances differently, and without success prior to her. I am convinced people like Frances, who can clearly think through and diagnose large issues, have a superpower.

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Derek, thanks so much for this comment. That is an interesting ability, isn't it? To sort of almost cut through some fog and see what needs to be done clearly. I'm not sure what mix of personal acumen and background and timing make it, but it's a cool thing to see or learn about! ...I don't have much to add, I just appreciate your eloquent point.

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Jan 2, 2023·edited Jan 2, 2023

You encourage sharing Range Widely, so I did. As with many publications this time of year, one of the others I follow - Slack Tide by Matt Labash - was doing a year end retrospective of notable people who had died, though much of this accounting came in the form of a well written piece the author had done several years ago, because his points about how these deaths affect us are valid in any year.

https://mattlabash.substack.com/p/making-it-through-this-year-if-it

I'm re-posting what I wrote in sharing your accounting of this remarkable woman's story in the comments there, minus the link to Range Widely at the end. It accounts for what I think of her life. Thank you so much for telling us about it

Of all the notable stars that flickered out in our world this past year, I doubt this one will be noted nearly as much as it should be, since it didn't shine in the firmaments of sports or pop culture or celebrity. And that's a shame. Because although there will never be anything even approaching a heaven on earth, it won't be because of people like this, whose star is no doubt shining in its rightful and well-earned place now.

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This is a wonderful note. Thank you so much for reading, and for sharing this. You make a great point about sports and pop culture. And I certainly understand why prominent deaths in those areas impact us, and make us reflect, and evoke nostalgia. But I'd like it if we could bring a touch more celebrity-style mourning to some of our servant-leaders as well. Perhaps a pipe dream, but I'll keep sharing Frances's life and wisdom nonetheless. If nothing else, it's always a good reminder for me personally. I'm really heartened to read that it obviously touched you too.

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It did. I've not read your book, but I believe you wrote about her in this space previously, since I already knew the 'outlines' of her story and seem to remember you as the source. Maybe not. But no matter, I very much agree with all you say here, and thanks again for this piece. Happy New Year.

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