Essay and article: “It’s Time To Give up Hope for a Better Climate and Get Heroic.” |
2024 Berggruen $25,000 essay competition co-winner and Noēma article
Roles: Writer, researcher
In the mid-1940s, American social reformer John Collier surveyed the moral and ecological wreckage of the Western world and pronounced upon it bleakly. “Our race,” he wrote in the introduction to his 1947 book, The Indians of the Americas, “with all its lost values and values not yet lost, is wavering on the verge of self-destruction.” His solution: to hold onto “the long hope” that Indigenous cultures could survive to teach Western populations a wiser and more sustainable way of living.
At roughly the same time, J. R. R. Tolkien was viewing the same slide toward ecological devastation with equal grimness. His solution: to fight “the long defeat,” the valorous but ultimately futile battle against the world-destroyers.
Some 80 years after Collier and Tolkien laid out their visions, it is clear that although hope is the main rhetorical mode of the response to our current omnicrisis, it is Tolkien’s concept of the long defeat that is the fitting oratory instrument for our era.
The essay version of this piece, “Let Us Make Such an End: The Long Hope, the Long Defeat, and the Rhetoric of the End Times,” co-won the inaugural $25,000 Berggruen Essay Competition. An edited version appeared in an October, 2024, special issue of Noēma magazine.
“It is safe to say that the environmentalists’ message of hope isn’t working. Events have, as they say, overtaken us; the End Times are piling on. And despite the many thousands of articles, books and media segments giving voice to the hope-centric valedictorians of our time, the public remains static, overwhelmed and obdurately hopeless. By evoking heroism rather than hope and courage rather than comfort, Tolkien’s concept of “fighting the long defeat” offers us a way to respond and gives us the inspiration of a colder truth: We may not be able to prevent the end, but if we are willing to fight the long defeat, perhaps we can make a better one.”
“The 1894 diphtheria antitoxin threw
USP members into fierce debate. As a product
of a living organism, it was a biologic
medicine, a vaccine rather than a chemical
drug or a botanical of the kind for which USP usually set standards. Biological medicines are significantly more complex than chemical drugs, and because they are made from living cells, they can be neither precisely reproduced nor easily tested.”
Book: A Standard of Trust: 200 Years of the United States Pharmacopeial Convention | Echo Storytelling Agency
Echo Storytelling / United States Pharmacopeial Convention, 2022. Digital and hardbound; 139pp.
Roles: Writer, researcher, interviewer
With 2 billion people around the world benefitting from its quality standards for drugs and vaccines, the United States Pharmacopeial Society could be the most important organization you’ve never heard of. It’s been around since 1820—and it’s been a volunteer-run non-profit the whole time.
Here’s the story of the USP’s first 200 years.
White paper: 7 Steps to Creating an Effective Family-Business Succession Plan | The Targeted Strategies Group
Roles: Writer, researcher, editor, proofreader
For entrepreneurs, putting together a plan for handing over the family firm is about more than business: it’s about pride, legacy, and even identity. Does this make entrepreneurs any more likely than other businesspeople to get around to succession planning? Nope.
As with any daunting task, the best move for pushing past resistance is to break it into bite-sized pieces. Here is a step-by-step guide to the succession-planning process and the team of people needed to carry it out.
This is the final installment in my series of three white papers on succession planning commissioned by The Targeted Strategies Group, a life-insurance firm for UHNW clients.
“When family business successions fail, most do so because of the family element, not the business element. In fact, researchers have found that a full 70% of wealth-transfer failures stem from family factors—specifically, either lack of a family vision or a breakdown in trust and communication among family members. A further 25% of failures arise from failing to properly prepare the successor.”
“Shhh! Tarantula sleeping! Time slows in the Sara Stern Gallery, where animals, trees, crystals, and fossils are gathered in an awe-inspiring array of nature’s wonders. Get up close and personal with one of our gigantic Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches. Sara Stern Gallery will take you on a journey through the wonder of nature, from the majestic to the microscopic, from long ago to now.”
Content writing: Exhibitions, galleries, displays, and programs, Science World
Roles: Writer, researcher, interviewer
The problem: The sedate write-ups on the Science World website were a mismatch with the on-the-ground reality of hordes of excited, squealing kids running from room to room and diving into hands-on activities.
The solution: Rewrite all 100+ pages on the site in a vibrant tone that conveyed the fun the kids have at Science World, while also delivering needed information for the parents making the decisions.
Although many write-ups have been edited to relay COVID-era accommodations, my writing still peeks through in most of them.
Content writing: Why A Buy-Sell Agreement Is a Must for Every Family Business | The Targeted Strategies Group
Roles: Writer, researcher, proofreader
When it comes to shares in a family-owned business, the limited market and relatively small number of shareholders mean that the unregulated movement of even one person’s shares can send tremors through the company.
This LinkedIn/website article explains why a buy-sell agreement is important, what elements make up the agreement, and how different types of life insurance can be used to finance the purchase of shares.
All “Targeted Insights” articles on TTSG’s site and LinkedIn page are by me, with the exception of those on book awards and the more technical aspect of life insurance.
“What happens when the shareholding mother of the family unexpectedly dies? Does anyone in the family have the funds to buy her shares? Is there adequate life insurance in place to cover the purchase price? What happens when the shareholding son gets divorced and his now-hostile ex-wife receives shares as part of the settlement? Informal agreements and assumptions are not enough: the business needs a formal document with legally binding provisions for these circumstances.”
“Many people with ADHD do learn how to become more proficient at the things we normally associate with ‘executive function’. However, many ADHDers — that’s a nice neat shorthand that I think we should use — struggle throughout their lives with planning and execution. And this gulf between intention and actual results can be a real problem for many ADHDers, resulting in self-judgement and
frustration.”
Book: ADHD Unlocked | John Brink
Brink Media, 2022. Digital and hardbound, 165pp.
John Brink and Guy Saddy, authors
Roles: Editor, proofreader
At the age of 56, successful BC entrepreneur John Brink was casually looking at titles in his local bookstore when one caught his eye: Driven to Distraction, an account of adults with Attention Deficit and Hyperactive Disorder. After a few minutes of reading passages in the book, Brink’s world was changed. He had ADHD. It explained his many struggles, such as failing Grade 3 once and Grade 7 three times.
But the more Brink learned about ADHD, the more he realized that his condition also explained his many successes, including creating North America’s largest secondary forest-products company. In this readable book, structured in an engaging Q&A format, Brink offers others the benefits of his insights into turning ADHD from a disability to a secret weapon.
Pamela Swanigan portfolio 