Be Vivid. Leaders. CEOs. Managers. A Lesson. My wife just called her brother, whose college graduate grandson across town from him had been pretty sick yesterday. I heard my wife ask in her first sentence how the boy was, and her brother answered, "Well, I took him a pork chop last night and he seemed better." And that sums up the southern literary sensibility. Most of us would have said, "I saw him last night and he seemed better" or "I took him something to eat last night" or "I carried him a small dinner" which are all generalizations and even abstractions, and not that specific concrete detail the southern story teller uses naturally, the particular descriptive that forms a mental image and carries more than its weight in sparking our imaginations and moving the story forward. As a philosopher trained in abstraction and generalities, I have to make myself remember at all times the power of the pork chop. Y'all remember it too, hear? And pass the mashed potatoes.
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