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| Notes from the Editor Rerun - A Messsage for Garciaparra By John Racho-June 03 In 1899 Elbert Hubbard wrote and published his classic essay "A Message to Garcia", inspired by a conversation with his son where he agreed that a messenger named Rowan was a hero in the Spanish-American war. What heroic deed had he done? He simply did his job and delivered a message from President McKinley to General Garcia, a leader of the insurgents the President needed to bring on board quickly. As Hubbard described, "Rowan took the letter, sealed it up in an oil-skin pouch, strapped it over his heart, in four days landed by night off the coast of Cuba from an open boat, disappeared into the jungle, and in three weeks came out on the other side of the island, having traversed a hostile country on foot, and having delivered his letter to Garcia." The point of the essay was that the heroism lay not just in finding General Garcia despite his unknown whereabouts or surviving an open boat journey to Cuba and the hostile jungle. The heroism was ordinary competence in extraordinary circumstances without question, complaint, helplessness or shirking in a time when getting someone to fetch a book would likely be met by at least one of the one of the four. To summarize, we turn to the Nike philosophy (makes more sense than the Nietzsche philospohy) when they said, "Just Do It." The moral of the story resonated and the New York Central Railroad requested to have the short essay reprinted and distributed. The Director of the Russian Railways read a reprint and had it translated into Russian for his employees. The Russian military then printed a copy for each Russian soldier sent to the Japanese front and once the Japanese got a hold of it, the Mikado ordered a copy for every member of the Japanese government. The chain of events revolving around the humble story of one messenger became the shot at excuse-makers and bellyachers heard �round the world as 40 million copies were published. Putting "A Message to Garcia" in today's terms, ask yourself what would happen today if Governor Romney asked us to deliver a message to Red Sox shortstop Nomar Garciaparra? Would he be met by . . . Why Nomar, I like Manny? . . . Let's set up a committee. . . I don't deliver messages, get so-and-so to do it . . . I don't want to go to Fenway. I hate driving to Boston . . . If I take it to Nomar, can I have a job? Of course Mitt hasn�t asked us to deliver a message to No-mah but it is the symbolic equivalent of what he has asked us to do. Our clear mission is to join him in building the Party. Will our candidates expect others to raise money or will they go about the yeoman's task of pounding out the fundraising calls? Will our Town Committees recruit, build and increase their activities or will they wait for the State Committee to carry the load? Will so- called leaders delegate everything and just show up at the "important" meetings or will they lead by example? Which Republicans among us could carry a message to Garciaparra? -JNR |
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