Joe Bryant

http://insideofknoxville.com/2016/05/is-knoxville-the-boulder-of-the-east/

Saturday Farmer’s Market in Market Square is excellent. 

Market Square & Market St Knoxville, Tennessee, TN 37902 

Stuff:

Mast General Store (Downtown)

402 S Gay St, Knoxville, TN 37902

Cool general store with outdoor gear, candy, clothing

Breakfast:

Gourmet Market (West)5107 Kingston Pike, Knoxville, TN 37919

Not too "gourmet" but good breakfast and lunch

Rankin Restaurant (North)2200 N Central St, Knoxville, TN 37917

Inexpensive old school Knoxville Diner. A local Waffle House

OliBea (Old City)119 S Central St, Knoxville, TN 37902

Hipstery cool breakfast Lunch:

Jackie's Dream (East)2223 McCalla Ave, Knoxville, TN 37915

Great soul food. Very clean. Barbie's favorite.

Chandlers Deli (East)3101 E Magnolia Ave, Knoxville, TN 37914

Great soul food. Not clean. Joe's favorite

Litton's Market (North - Fountain City)2803 Essary Dr, Knoxville, TN 37918

Nice American Food and Burgers

Tomato Head12 Market Square and 7240 Kingston Pike #172

Lots of Vegan and Vegetarian Dinner:

Chez Guevera (West) (locals will call it La Paz)Inside corner of Suburban Plaza strip mall8025 Kingston Pike, Knoxville, TN 37919   

(no sign)Local favorite Mexican food. Best decor in Knoxville

Chop House (West)9700 Kingston Pike # 21, Knoxville, TN 37922

Good American Food

Taste of Thai (West)8926 Town and Country Cir, Knoxville, TN 37923

Good Asian Food Beer:

Bearden Beer Market4524 Old Kingston Pike, Knoxville, TN 37919Super casual beer place with open patio 

Casual Pint (West)2045 Thunderhead Rd, Knoxville, TN 37922Casual but very clean and nice craft beer  Starbucks for beer

Crafty Bastard Brewery (Central)6 Emory Pl, Knoxville, TN 37917Super casual and not clean (more like murder scene in a basement) craft brewery. Best in town.

Shulz Brau Brewery (Central)126 Bernard Ave, Knoxville, TN 37917New and pretty impressive German style brewery Coffee & Beer

A few thoughts this morning.

1. We’ll be OK.

2. Try to see things from the “other” side.

3. Relationships matter more than politics.

4. Really, I think we’ll be OK.

Longer version.

I wrote this Monday. “My wish for us. If your candidate wins tomorrow, please show some grace in victory. This has been a painful election season. And real damage has been done I feel. But it's damage that can be healed. If, and that's a real "if", the side who wins initiates that healing. And it has to come from the winner. That's just how things work. God willing, we're going to have a new President-elect tomorrow. If it's the person you've wanted to win, consider how the "other" side might be feeling. And don't rub it in. It's the only way I think we can move forward.”

I’ll be honest, I had in mind Clinton supporters as the target audience asking they be gracious in victory. But the message works both ways. It has to work both ways. Healing and compassion and understanding the “other” side are not political traits. They’re human traits.  

I’m fortunate to have an extraordinarily wide range of friends from the political spectrum. I have friends who I love that are right of Rush Limbaugh and friends who I love that are left of Michael Moore. It makes social media interesting. And my life more interesting. And I think, better. 

For my friends who are Clinton supporters. And I have many.  

Try to consider the “other” side and assume the best of them.

Trump voters don’t agree with everything he says. They, like you, were repulsed by the Billy Bush video and many disliked the outrageous things he’s said. I believe a great many supported him primarily as a statement against politics as usual with a desire to change the direction they felt the country was going. And a huge number I believe voted for him incredibly reluctantly. My guess is there is way more common ground here than we might think.

For my friends who are Trump supporters. And I have many.  

Try to consider the “other” side and assume the best of them.

That “other” side was expressed well last night by Van Jones where he spoke of fear and concern. 

If you think his fears are irrational or overblown, I believe you have two choices:

1. Listen and accept the person is fearful or hurt. Acknowledge their situation. And show some empathy. You can accept the fact you disagree, try to understand the person and figure out how we’re going to move forward. Together.

or

2. Discard the person who thinks differently than you and tell them to toughen up or get over it.

I’m hoping and praying we choose option #1.

As I said Monday, I think graciousness in victory is going to be the key to moving forward.

Grace looks a lot like the words from Donald Trump’s victory speech last night. We’ll of course see if the actions match the words, but the words were on point last night. 

Grace is not mocking the losers. Or making fun of a magazine preemptively preparing a cover for each candidate’s victory. It’s showing some class and acting like you’ve won something before. And realizing we’re all citizens of this country and we’re all in this together.

And lastly, I hope we can value relationships over politics. People are complicated. Friendships and relationships are messy. I’m not going to tell you who to be friends with, but I’ll say true friendships can withstand some stress. And many times, the intentional valuing of the friendship over the politics is what keeps it together. Sometimes it takes being intentional and saying out loud the words, “Our friendship is my top priority here. Everything else is second.” Trust me, that changes the discussion and that works. 

One of my favorite lines ever is Ram Dass’ “We’re all just walking each other home”. So much truth there. We’re not saving each other. We’re not doing anything dramatic. We’re just walking each other home. My wish for you and me and us is that we live that out. 

Peace and Grace to you.

I love my facebook group of friends. First, I'm only friends with a few hundred people. I know almost all of them well so my feed feels relevant to me. I don't have much of the "that's a crazy rant from someone I barely know". I do have some of the "that's a crazy rant from someone I know well" and that feels different.

I'm not sure what it says about me, but I have a huge range of friends. I have friends who are left of Michael Moore and I have friends who are right of Rush Limbaugh. My right wing friends think I'm a bleeding heart Liberal and my left wing friends thing I'm a cold hearted Conservative. I actually love the spot I'm in. 

With that said, I thought I'd share a string of posts I made today to my wide ranging Facebook feed.

Post #1:I saw three things today that resonated. This is the first and I think it's accurate. To me, this has been about moving the undecided voters. From the people I've talked to, the video release was the "last straw". People that had been on the fence are now moving to Clinton over it. People that had been begrudgingly on Trump's side and wishing away the things shown in this video now just can't in good conscience remain with Trump. It's like Ray Rice hitting his girlfriend. You knew it was there but it's different when you actually see it. I'm not saying these people are right or wrong. I'm saying that's how they're moving. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/10/08/donald-trump-just-lost-the-election.html?via=newsletter&source=DDAfternoon Post #2: I saw three things today that resonated. This second one makes me sad. The dogged determination from the Evangelical Trump supporters regardless of anything he does is baffling. It's important to me as I believe it hurts my ability to represent Jesus to others.http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/10/07/evangelical-leaders-shrug-at-donald-trump-s-lewd-comments.html?via=newsletter&source=DDAfternoon Post #3:I saw three things today that resonated. The last one was U2 and Bono with a strong opinion on the election. Yes, it's more complicated and nuanced than the simple ideas of open borders. But they do a strong job here of making a point and I've always loved music as protest. This one is probably the least important as I can't imagine many U2 fans cross over as Trump supporters. But if nothing else, it's just another example that few songs lend themselves better to a mid song narrative than Bullet The Blue Sky. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMRGHBsGsz8 And then Post #4And last thing I'll say on this. I have a pretty small number of Facebook friends. If you're on here, it's pretty safe to say I care about you. And I want you to know we can disagree on this election. I don't put my faith in the person we elect as President. I'm way more concerned about my relationship with you. So please know I put that first. And we can disagree and it's still cool. Peace and Grace to you. ********** The net effect of all these was overwhelmingly positive. I think it was more the idea that it was "this is what I saw" and "this is how I feel" compared to the declarative "this is how it is" type post. And mostly, it was the final post that I value the relationship with the people reading this more than who is elected.

One of the challenges of a virtual company with every single person working remotely is establishing “culture”. Without the talk around the watercooler, so much is left unsaid. I try to push out things to our Footballguys Staffers pretty regularly like this. It’s sort of a “Joe Rambles” thing. Some have a point. Some are me just literally rambling. But the goal is to help our Staffers get a sense for where we’re going and what we’re looking for. Here’s today’s.

***********

Hey Guys,

Just a thought here I wanted to pass along.

I always want us to push edges on stuff. Yes, some / lots / most of the edge pushes will fail. That’s ok. And very often some of the lessons learned in failure are the key to future successes. You’ve heard the stories.

I want us to do the same.

Here’s an insane company I read about today called Banjo. Basically, it leverages social media posts from all over the world and allows the user to see what’s being posted at certain times in certain locations. Want to see pics from people you don’t know of the Avett Brothers concert in Asheville? - Here you go. Want to see pics posted from Jerry World on Sunday afternoon? Got it. Want to see which kids are posting a bunch in your local zip code? There it is.

Incredibly powerful. And super scary too. I half joking talk about our march towards Skynet / Google / Facebook becoming self aware and this kind of thing totally plays into it. Basically, privacy is an extremely relative term. I’m sure your favorite political villain would NEVER use this type of technology for ill.

But that’s not really my point. Easy Sigmund and Keith… Smiles. And I also look past the chest thumping from the founder dude. Whatever. My points are this:

1. That’s CRAZY wild in what the guy is doing. Amazing leverage.

2. Incredible things are within our grasp. (and everyone else’s of course). This isn’t Albert Einstein. This is a really smart hard working hustling guy.

3. Money isn’t everything. In fact, I think money hinders. This guy built something incredible with no money.

4. He “And This’d” the technology. I just made up that word 5 seconds ago but what I mean is he didn’t really do anything “new”. He leveraged something out there and turned it into something new. In fact, his product dies without Facebook / Instagram / Twitter etc. Let those guys spend tons of money and time creating a platform and then leverage that work into something cool.

Again - the Banjo product isn’t the point. The point is don’t settle for what’s already been done and don’t accept the status quo. There are lots of amazing things being created all around us. Keep your antenna up.

Thought for the day.

Love you Boys. Have a great Wednesday.