Chapter 6 - The Call of Stories

At the beginning of this chapter, he tells a storiy about Virginia Ramirez who was challenged by her community for their lack of compassion. Virginia watched her elderly neighbor die due to local poverty and detiorating housing needs. She was motivated by this story to rethink her own life and to feel empathy again.  He goes on to tell another story about Chris Kim who was changed by a fourteen year old black boy. The boy stole a pair of pants from the clothing store Chris ran in his minimall in a poor south Seattle neighborhood. Chris and another Korean store owner grabbed him, called the police, and were ready to press charges. Then Chris thought about Christ’s message of responding with forgiveness, not retribution. He decided to talk with the boy and his parents. “We always say we love our neighbors, but we never do it and risk something that belongs to us." Come to find out all the boy wanted was a job and Chris gave it to him because of his faith in God. He said he never would have connected with other races if it wouldn't have been for the boy. Chris also said that once you start to share it get easier and that you can never go back to who you were before.

Chapter 5 - Unforseen Fruits

At the beginning of this chapter he tells a story about going for a run along the riverbank in Texas. On his run he passes a man shaking a tree and wonders what he is doing. He asked the man and he said, "It's a pecan tree,"If I shake it enough, the nuts will come down. I can't know exactly when they'll fall or how many. But the more I shake it, the more I'll get." Remebering this story, he decides that it represents a methaphor for social invovlement. We must strive forward regardless of the partial outcome or lack of immediate results. A civil rights activists says "You have to begin with small groups," but you reach the people who matter and they will reach others."

Chapter 7 - Values, Work, and Family

In chapter seven, Loeb emphasizes some values that we sometimes take for granted: relaxing and family. In todays growing world, it seems that we have to try harder and harder just to maintain our current position. In Juliet Schor's book The Overworked American, she talks about how Americans work an aver 167 more hours per year than they did 40 years ago, which is about the equivalent to a month's worth of work. Americans also take less vacations, spend more time working, face greater amounts of daily stress. Schor stresses the importance of taking that time off but also talks about how many people can't afford to. Many people today are forced to work harder and suffer from things like debt, lack of health insurance, and time for those who must work two jobs to survive. I think that we as a society should try to do more to make our workplace a better place and our workforce a happier and more successful group.

Chapter 8 - Village Politics

In this chapter, he mentions a naive freshman that didn't vote in the 2004 presidential election because she didn't think it mattered. Later that year she was informed by a college professor about the concept of global warming and it stunned her. She was utterly surprised that more people weren't already aware of this and that not very many people was doing anything about it. This is ironic to her situation because she was as ignorant about modern politics as everyone else was about global warming. Hopefully after learning this lesson that she will begin to not take things for granted and to focus on more important things than playing beer pong during the election.

Chapter 4 - The Cynical Smirk

He start out this chapter with a story about seeing an ad for Slate, an online magazine owned by The Washington Post.  The ad talks about how the magazine tells it stories with a certain smirk that people are drawn to. He goes on to talk about people who smirk are self-centered and arrogant, he compares them to grade-school bullies.  He also says that Donald Trump and Marie Antoinette smirk. He wonders if the Slate editors meant for the ad to off this way. They presented it as something to be proud of and that it would boost sales. He talks about how the ad suggest that we ackknowlege that our world is corrupt but that thoughts for changing it is naive. After he goes on to talk about a veteran newpaperman who says "everybody lies, but it's ok because nobody listens." He then tells a story about a father and a son. The father tells his son to jump from the stairs to him, the father catches him the first two times but the third lets him fall to teach him not to trust anyone. We are taught to expect betrayal and we give up hope in people from the beginning.

Chapter 9 - Widening the Circle

Widening the circle is all about expanding your worldly views to extend over a broader range of people. Loeb mentions a former Army Ranger captain Joseph McMormick and his journey to bring together people of different ranges on the political scale. He wanted them all to come together so they could be more understanding of each others views.

Chapter 10 - Pieces of a Vision

This chapter is all about making sure we stay on a moral path when we go address issues that we believe in. Ha talks about finding your moral "magnetic north"and to try not to stray away from that path. He realizes that in today's age that sometimes its hard to keep your morals straight and that its not always easy but its very important to do the best we can. The best way is to start by establishing your basic ethics and build on from there.