This morning's prompt is 'danish'.

A face, a place and some good, bad and ugly things to build a character and a story. Not a baker in a fancy French bakery or patisserie...

Buckminster Fuller came up in a post today: People like Buckie make me believe in a benevolent agency, perhaps spiritual, perhaps the manifestation of the creative and empathetic side of our natures, as opposed to the violent, selfish and domineering side. We will always object to being bossed around, especially by jerks who don't have any talent for it, nor any idea how to get the job done.

True leadership is not about (just) getting people (to want) to do your will, it is about getting people working together for some purpose, convinced or assured that they matter, that they can contribute, that they are needed. That was Buckminster Fuller's story and his message

I've been with Quan and Quan's Curious Goods for a long time now, and sometimes he sends me on errands, over yonder, as I put it. Home is an Earth where the Blue Sox lose.

Every.

Single.

Season.

And I'd go back again, at least one more time, to take in a game anyway.

I made the delivery and stopped in a patisserie, for, I don't know what it was, like some sort of danish. The french did something right and coexist in North America with New Spain or something; there are kingdoms but the people seem happy, busy, and fulfilled. When I see that, and it happens more often than a pessimist like me would have expected, I take notes.

People are busy doing interesting things, talk about politics without rancor, the nuts and bolts, practical social engineering, not, well, like sports fans.

Here they have a living secular saint of sorts, with royal patronage and beloved of the common folk. He got them to think about new ways of doing things, got enough smart, ambitious people involved. It's not a socialist paradise, but it's not a zombie capitalist 'paradise' either. Workers own their work, hire managers and lawyers, and if they can't make it happen, they go bankrupt. But they know their business, believe in the work.

The whole world went over to this system in two generations and they haven't fought a major war in a quarter century.

Lucky bastards.