The Title and the Little Clay House
August 1, 2023 – John Abrams
The Little Clay House - Terry Haas
Thanks a million from Berrett-Koehler and me to each of you who filled out our title survey. We decided on Founder to Future, the overwhelming favorite among the hundreds of responders, and our favorite too!
Not far behind was The Hundred-Year Company. There were Mission-Driven Succession advocates. Successioning, too. And there were a few suggestions of other titles for which I’m very grateful.
The subtitle we chose is New Strategies for Business Impact, Equity, and Succession, which was not one of the choices we offered, but which, editor Steve Piersanti and I decided, is a more complete expression of the book than any we had previously. “Impact” feels like a broader and less overused way to say “Mission-Driven,” and “Equity” encompasses ownership, inclusion, and democracy.
So, with your help, here’s where we landed:
FOUNDER TO FUTURE
New Strategies for Business Impact, Equity, and Succession
It may change along the way as the book gets written; only time will tell.
That’s enough about that, for now, because I want to reflect on gifts, like the gift of time and insight that so many of you contributed to the title survey.
In 1990, South Mountain completed a house for Terry and Gerry Hass and their three daughters, Caroline, Rachel, and Emily. Terry was enthralled with the design/build process. An accomplished ceramicist (my all-time favorite), she was inspired to make a small run of little clay houses. She gave one of them to me.
It reminded me of those timeless masonry barns you see in the south of France. Simple, spare, and solid, but projecting a warm glow. Kind of like Terry, who died in 2017.
The little house was one of my most treasured possessions. One day our cat knocked it off its shelf, and it shattered. I hated to lose it.
Three decades later, in 2021, I walked into my office and there on my desk was one of the little houses with a sticky note that said, “Happy birthday John. Love, Liz and Michael”. Mike Drezner and Liz Gude are old friends. Mike was a longtime SMCo employee and owner. Liz and I share the same birthday.
Turns out that when our mutual friend Ray Kellman died, he (also a close friend of Terry and Gerry) had one of the few little houses that Terry had made. It was given to Liz and Mike, who remembered how sad I was when ours broke decades before. They gave it to me.
I was thrilled to be reunited with this wonderful part of Terry, a gift I was given twice.
A while ago, Kim and I were visiting Valerie Reese in Vineyard Haven. She has done fabric work for South Mountain for decades. She’s not only a superb artisan; she’s an artist too. She showed us her pastels. One of them reminded me of Terry’s little houses. Same qualities. I loved it. We bought it.
Now I have both—a surplus of riches. We’re thinking about getting a cat. If we do, I’ll be sure that Terry’s second-time-around Little Clay House is in a safe spot.
I now have a title and subtitle, too. No cat can topple that.
Thank you for your help.
Valerie Reese