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everything we do. Our strategic direction—we’d like to expand it a couple of different ways. We think we have an excellent leadership team, which has capacity to manage other organizations under management contracts. Can we market our management capabilities? We also want to be open to, alert to, other acquisition or even greenfield opportunities. This direction was developed about three years ago, before the current

economic climate. We’re building 106 new units at Bailey’s Crossroads—The Pointe— connected with our existing facility. Goodwin House was founded about 42 years ago. One of the continuing questions the board is asking, and especially the Mission and Strategy Committee, is what will we look like at our half-century mark. We are convinced, to a person, that it will be different, perhaps not markedly, but there will be changes in how we do what we do, how we offer our services, and

who we offer them to. We have a guiding set of questions that the executive leadership team, especially Kathy, always keep in mind: What are we doing that we shouldn’t be (stop and get rid of it)? What are we doing that we should (continue doing it)? What are we not doing that we should (here is where we significantly change ourselves)? These three questions drive the board and the organization, and are setting the scene for that 50th year celebration.

Civility, ethiCs and Building respeCtful Communities continued from page 13

asked to speak about ameliorating the quality of life of the workers is in the medical profession—hospitals and medical institutions. More and more medical institutions are making their personnel aware of the advantages of a culture of civility and of the costs of incivility. At the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, in the Washington, D.C., area, they have started permanent civility committees. They have a “civility collaborative”—regular meetings of workers at all levels who have a great personal investment in the notion of civility. They try to capture the imagination of their coworkers and foster talks on civility and diversity. They are one of the most active employers that have embraced this notion and have permanent initiatives. Also, one thing I do is go to communities around the country that want to create civility initiatives, that want to rally around the notion of civility. There are dozens of civility projects and programs around the country. Some of the things done are, for instance, going to the local school district to persuade them to teach good manners in the schools, involving the police department, talking about the notion of community policing. FA: AAHSA and its members put great emphasis on public-policy advocacy. We have been concerned with the general lack of civility within political life, and want to be sure that we and our members keep our eyes on the important issues and not get sidetracked. The bitterness that appears in our leaders and the media is misleading because it does not necessarily extend down to the ranks of ordinary people.

People see endless, ugly conflict in the media, and perhaps are swayed to believe that the whole world is going crazy even though it is not. What is your take on that? PF: I think you are right. About 75 to 80 percent of Americans think incivility is a major problem. About the same percent think the situation has gotten worse in the last 20 years. They see the glass half-empty, but not half-full, because of the highprofile cases of incivility in the media. For every three of those there are millions of people who behave in a civil way that we never hear about. But what do we mean when we say civility is in decline? There are certain forms of deference and respect that are becoming obsolete. But every era creates new forms of civility, and that means the situation is not so bad. Take my example of a pregnant woman on the bus, who has to stand because no one will give up a seat for her. This is a sign of a decline in civility. But when that woman steps into the workplace, the number of men who see her as an intellectual and a professional peer is higher than in my father’s generation. And that is an increase in civility. Today we are more respectful of people who have a different skin color from our own. We have higher consciousness of environmental protection than we had several generations ago. The glass is halffull. The high-profile cases of rudeness tend to eclipse the good things, but they are there too. FA: How did you, a professor of romance languages and literature, become interested in civility?

PF: For the first half of my career I was a straight scholar working in medieval Italian literature. About 10 years ago something changed. That was not enough anymore, I needed to dedicate myself in part to something with a more direct relevance to everyday life. It was my middle-age crisis—the middle-age crisis of a professor of the Middle Ages. My crisis came in the form of falling in love with this notion of civility. It seemed to me a much underused, crucial resource and I decided to make an attempt at changing that. It all was born or coalesced when one day I was teaching my students Dante’s Inferno, and I looked at them and a thought occurred to me that stayed with me. Here are my students, I thought, and I would be delighted if they knew everything there is to know about Dante, but even if they did, if they went out and were unkind to an old lady on a bus, I would think I had failed as a teacher. I had spent my life under the sway of aesthetics, but at this point ethics was knocking at my door. Now the time is right to discover that civility is the most egalitarian way of living because the rules of good manners require you to treat everyone the same: the president of the United States and the person who cleans his office. I want to disabuse people of the notion that good manners are a façade. They are just tools and are as good as the use we make of them. If we use good manners to discriminate to each other, to keep people from having access to the halls of power, to keep people divided, to keep them out of the golden circles of privilege … that is the appearance of good manners but not the substance.
futureAge | January/February 2010

AAHSA Future Age Jan/Feb10

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AAHSA Future Age Jan/Feb10