That, of course, is not the point of the trip, but it does make what would otherwise be a seemingly endless round of very important and, frankly, rather enjoyable meetings into a true delight. It’s (almost) a vacation . . . if it weren’t for those meetings.
Actually, these meetings could end up being the most important CESJ project of the entire year — which, admittedly, is almost over (CESJ is on a fiscal year ending September 30). As described below, a number of very important connections have been made, on which we hope to follow up in the weeks and months to come:
• On Thursday, immediately on arrival in Chicago, we had a meeting with Megan, of the 85 Broads, who is looking into expanding her activity into a network to help promote justice, equity, and fairness in the workplace, and continuing education in the truest sense of the word — not “job training,” but becoming more fully human.Those are the happenings for this week, at least that we know about. If you have an accomplishment that you think should be listed, send us a note about it at mgreaney [at] cesj [dot] org, and we’ll see that it gets into the next “issue.” If you have a short (250-400 word) comment on a specific posting, please enter your comments in the blog — do not send them to us to post for you. All comments are moderated anyway, so we’ll see it before it goes up.
• On Thursday early evening, we were joined by Chris, of a financial analyst company in Louisville, Kentucky, who is extremely interested in the Just Third Way and Justice-Based Management as helping new and transforming companies establish themselves firmly on a foundation of justice, the premier temporal virtue. A number of innovative financing techniques for start-ups were discussed, and the role of Equity Expansion International, Inc. as the for profit exemplar of the 21st century investment banking firm was highlighted.
• Thursday’s dinner, in which Lydia magnificently hosted an even dozen guests without seeming to take hardly any trouble (which any host or hostess is fully aware is pure illusion, the result of endless hours of hard work), was, to all intents and purposes, a continuation of the afternoon session, being joined by various media and religious figures interested in learning more about the possibilities offered by the Just Third Way in advancing the cause of human dignity. Late in the evening we were joined by Father John McCloskey, who was able to drop in for a short time.
• Friday morning we had a meeting with Father McCloskey, who was able to fit us into his extremely busy schedule. We found that we agree on many of the basic principles — and even had many acquaintances in common. A good deal of groundwork was laid for possible future collaboration.
• Friday afternoon we had a meeting with Mr. Robert Colangelo, head of the National Brownfield Association, an organization dealing with the terrible problem of “brownfield” pollution that afflicts many urban areas in Canada and the United States. Mr. Colangelo was very interested in the innovative financing techniques made possible by the application of binary economics in the Just Third Way. An important part of the meeting was a brief brainstorming session about Norman Kurland’s upcoming panel participation next month at the Canada-U.S. Brownfield Summit to take place in Buffalo, New York.
• As of this morning, we have had visitors from 41 different countries and 40 states and provinces in the United States and Canada to this blog over the past two months. Most visitors are from the United States, the UK, Russia, India, and Brazil. People in Venezuela, Guatemala, Poland, Bangladesh and the United States spent the most average time on the blog. The most popular posting is the one on “The Federal Reserve . . . This Time It’s Personal,” followed by “News from the Network” from two weeks ago, one of last year’s postings on the stimulus, “Aristotle on Private Property,” and, finally, “Creating a Life Supporting Economy,” the press release for Supporting Life.
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