Scott Hutcheson

Dancing with a Hamburger

Twenty-three, that’s how old I was walked onto a dance floor for the first time. The bride and groom danced first, then the bride with her father and the groom with his mom. As the first few bars of the third song began to play the bandleader announced that this was the bridal party dance. I nearly froze. No one had warned me of this particular tradition. I watched as my fellow groomsmen took the hands of the bridesmaid with whom they had exited the sanctuary.

I had been paired with a lovely young woman, a friend of the bride. Feeling I had no other choice, I placed a hand on her waist, pulled her close, and whispered into her ear, “I am SO sorry.” During the three minutes that followed, my patent-leather size-ten, EEE’s must have stepped on her delicate feet at least three dozen times.

How is it that I had made it though middle school, high school, and college without dancing? Well, it wasn’t that I was a wallflower or shy around girls. I had slipped my hand around the waist of a number of girls and pulled them close in my day, just not on a dance floor; and at a party, I could work the room with confidence. The reason I had never learned to dance was because I had grown up Baptist.

In the grand scheme of things, having parents that didn’t allow their kids to dance probably didn’t cause much lasting damage. And I’m beginning to suspect, that being denied the experience of publicly swaying to music might have made me more sensitive to some of the everyday rhythms of life.

What for some might be routines, feels to me a whole lot like dancing. Preparing a meal in my kitchen, for example, feels a whole lot like what I think dancing is supposed must be like. Not a predictable box step but more like improvisational movement. The seasons too, feel very dance-like: the check-to-check slow dance of winter, the joyful tap dance of spring, the steamy salsa of summer, then the elegant waltz of autumn. The transitions from once season to another even have their own rhythm, the downbeat between the two upbeats.

As winter gives way to spring, I’ll be moving some of my non-dance dancing outside, firing up the grill and these meatloaf burgers will provide the perfect transition from the comfort food of winter to the many cookouts that warmer weather will bring.

I’ve tried to dance a dozen times or so since that wedding, even took a couple lessons. I still awful, my wife can attest to that. But I can cook and sometimes, especially when the right dish aligns with the season, I get a sense of what Fred Astaire must have felt like dancing with Ginger Rogers.

So, if you are looking for me on a Friday or Saturday night this spring, you won’t find me on the dance floor. You might find me, however, out in my backyard, dancing with a hamburger.    

Hickory Meatloaf Burgers with Sharp Cheddar

• 1 lb. ground beef
• 1/2 lb. ground sausage
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 medium yellow onion, finely chopped
• 2 cups crushed corn flakes
• 2 eggs well beaten
• Sharp Cheddar (slices or shredded)

Hickory Sauce

• 2 cups catsup
• 1/2-cup water
• 3 teaspoons white vinegar
• 2 teaspoons sugar
• 2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
• 1 tablespoon liquid hickory smoke

Add all sauce ingredients to a medium saucepan and bring to a simmer. Let simmer for 10 minutes. Divide the sauce in two; half for brushing on the patties while grilling and the other have to serve with the burgers.

Preheat a grill to medium high. While it is heating up combine the meatloaf ingredients (beef, sausage, salt, onion, cornflakes, and eggs) in a large bowl and form them into eight 1-inch-thick patties. Grill for about 6-8 minutes, Turn the patties over, brush with half of the sauce, and continue grilling until cooked through, about five more minutes. Turn to brush the other side with the sauce then top with cheese. Remove burgers when the cheese has melted. Toast the buns, if desired. Serve with the other half of the sauce along with sliced onions, lettuce, pickles, and any other toppings desired. 

I Love this Town

"These streets will make you feel brand new, Big lights will inspire you, Hear it from New York, New York, New York!" 

If you've not heard Alicia Keys' soaring tribute to New York City, you need to. It's beautiful. It's a love song, really, a love song to her hometown. Keys, of course, isn't the first to write a song about a city. Not even the first one to sing about New York. Frank Sinatra told us if you could make it there, you could make it anywhere. He also had a soft spot for Chicago, crooning that it was his kinda town. 

It's not just big cities that can serve as a songwriter's muse. Rocker John Mellencamp's "Small Town" might be about a particular place in Indiana, but it has become a universal anthem for small towns everywhere. 

The month of February is a time when we think about love even more than usual, with the 14th marking Valentine's Day. Many of us will be both givers and receivers of tokens of love from people in our lives. As I considered a February column, I thought about how interesting it is that many of us have not only not people in our lives that we love but places as well - big cities and small towns. 

I discovered a book about this topic that came out a couple of years ago. Peter Kageyama's For the Love of Cities: The Love Affair Between People and Their Places says that certain attributes can make one place more lovable than another. He points to research conducted by Gallop looking at what community qualities influence residents' loyalty and passion for where they live. 

Aesthetics. The study indicated that a "pretty city" is a lovable city. Some of what makes a city beautiful is the natural setting - mountains and beaches, for instance - but also the built environment - parks, playgrounds and trails. Kageyama contends that lack of aesthetics does not ultimately disqualify a city from being lovable, but may mean the city needs to try harder in other areas. 

Social Offerings. Gallup also found that lovable cities are places where people have a lot of opportunities to meet up with others and make new friends. Kageyama suggests that although some of these social opportunities can be city- or town-sponsored, like a Forth of July parade, for instance, the most satisfying occasions are those led by "non-city agents." 

Openness. The No. 1 characteristic that makes a city lovable, according to the Gallup research, is openness or being a good place to live for a variety of people, which is defined as including, "senior citizens, racial and ethnic minorities, families with kids, gays and lesbians, college graduates, and immigrants from other counties." Kageyama has an interesting barometer for gauging openness. He says if a city seems like a place an outsider could move to, get engaged and in five or 10 years run for mayor, that's probably an "open" city, as opposed to a place where after living there for 20 years, you're still thought of as a "newcomer." 

He makes another point worth noting. When people "hate" something about a city or town, it is usually a big thing - crime, blight or traffic, but what they love about a city is often small things - a park in the middle of town or cafes with tables and chairs outside. He goes on to say that often just a few of the lovable little things can make up for some of the big challenges. 

So, as you set your mind on love this month, consider the place where you live. Do you love it? I hope that you do. If you think your city, town or neighborhood could stand to be a little more lovable, maybe some of Kageyama's ideas will help. 

Consider what you could do to help make the place you live more open, more social or more beautiful. You might not be able to do much about some of the big stuff that troubles many of our cities and towns, but we can all help with many of those lovable small things. Plan a block party or plant some flowers. Who knows, you might just be helping someone fall in love.

Originally published in quality newspapers in February 2015

Time for a Change of (Civic) Habit?

It’s January, the start of a new year, which means that many of us have made some sort of resolution. Researchers at the University of Scranton tell us that nearly half, 47 percent of adults in the U.S. make resolutions and that the most common are to lose weight, get organized, and spend less/save more. They also report that only about eight percent of those making resolutions will be successful in achieving them.

Part of what makes keeping resolutions difficult is that it demands a change in our habits, and that’s a hard thing to do. A recent story on National Public Radio included some reporting on what science tells us about translating our resolve into changed behavior. One of the insights noted that there are two sorts of behaviors: those that we perform infrequently and those that we perform very frequently.

A resolution to finally build shelves in the basement to help organize your totes and boxes is a very different sort of behavior than giving up cigarettes, when smoking is something you likely do several times each day. Those wanting to change the behavior of others have had pretty good success on these infrequent actions. Public awareness campaigns promoting annual preventative health screening, for instance, have worked well. They work less well for more frequent actions, like smoking.

The most effective way to change these more frequent behaviors is to change the environment in which the action occurs. If you eat your nightly pint of ice cream while sitting on the couch watching Wheel of Fortune at 7pm, then DVR the show and watch it in the bedroom, right before going to bed, ideally without the ice cream. You’ve changed the environment.

What, if anything, can this research on individual habits and behavior change tell us about our civic habits? By “civic habits” I mean the things we do to make the communities we live in a better place. Perhaps the most obvious civic habit is that of voting. But what about civic habits that go beyond casting a vote?

Another group of researchers provide a useful definition for this type of civic participation.” They describe civic habits that are “aimed at solving community problems.” In my experience, I’ve encountered very few communities that have developed the civic habit of coming together to address community issues.

The habit I have seen, however, is an enthusiastic willingness to complain about what’s going on in the community. We’ve even come up with some clever acronyms to describe these folks: NIMBYs (Not In My Back Yard) and CAVE –(Citizens Against Virtually Everything).

Visit a local coffee shop or log into a local online discussion board and you will see this particular civic habit in full force, significant numbers of folks having daily discussions about what everybody else is doing wrong in their community.

Imagine trying to change that particular civic habit, changing the direction of these conversations from a negative downward spiral to a more positive, “what could we do together to make our community an even better place?”

A few communities have been successful in changing that conversation or starting appreciative conversation where no conversations had existed at all. They took a lesson from the research on habits and changed the environment by offering a regular forum to have such discussions.

Nearly fifteen years ago, Earnest Andrade decided to create a new civic habit in the City of Charleston. The city’s economy had been riding the wave of tourism for some time but they knew that was not sustainable in the long run. Earnest launched Fridays @ The Corridor a civic forum to talk about what might be next for Charleston and how to take action to make something happen. All these years later and Fridays @ The Corridor is still going strong, an ongoing civic habit. It has been the catalyst for diversifying the Charleston economy into a high tech hub as well as a terrific vacation destination.

So, how about a community resolution for 2015? Does your neighborhood or community need to develop a new civic habit? Does a civic forum, like the one in Charleston sound like a good way to change the environment? If you would like some guidelines on how to start this new civic habit, the folks at the Purdue Center for Regional Development can help. You can find them at www.pcrd.purdue.edu.

Originally published in quality newspapers in Janaury 2015

Storyworthy

Last week life took me somewhere I had never been before. This particular someplace happened to be located on the other side of the globe. When the possibility of a visit first came up, impressions arose in my mind, creating a sort of loose narrative about what sort of place this might be.

The first image was of Simon, the charming and handsome one-time significant other of a dear friend. I also thought of a couple of their exports that are particular favorites of mine - Syrah wine and merino wool. Images of this place's rugged mountains and vast plains came to mind, as well. I had seen them in 70mm beauty in the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies. I also remembered the devastating earthquakes from a few years ago and the remarkable tales of the people of Christchurch, New Zealand's resilience and resolve.

I have now come and gone on my trip, and New Zealand's story for me is even deeper and more nuanced. I met some of those resilient folks of Christchurch and left with several new friends. I shared a glass or two of that Syrah with a few of them. I saw those landscapes with my own eyes, even more vivid and breathtaking than on film.

More meaningful still were some of the things that people in Christchurch are doing: operating a "container mall," an area in the central part of the city where shops have been set up in large shipping containers while the retail district is being rebuilt; the public art created from earthquake rubble, empty lots now transformed into urban gardens; the Student Volunteer Army, an organization made up of thousands of college students who began volunteering in the earthquake clean-up and continue to serve their community.  

While there, I told my New Zealand story to family and friends as I posted photos and made status updates on my Facebook page. Now, I'm telling you, perhaps adding to any impressions you have of New Zealand.

Every place has a story and in my work - economic and community development - I've seen a lot of communities and regions spend a great deal of energy and money on telling their story or building a brand. This is an idea borrowed from industry, of course. The job of marketing and advertising professionals is to construct stories, stories about soft drinks, trucks, smartphones and the like.

Some in industry, however, are sensing that times are changing.

In a new book, True Story: How to Combine Story and Action to Transform Your Business, author Ty Montage, says that "storytelling" is out, "storydoing" is what's making good businesses into great businesses. The difference between storytelling and storydoing is a subtle one. Storytelling companies do all the stuff companies have done for a long time, spend lots of money on establishing a brand. Storydoing companies, on the other hand, do things that are "storyworthy" and then let the stories emerge from their customers via social media and word-of-mouth.

This is a notion to which our communities should perhaps pay attention. Every community, be it a neighborhood, city or larger region, has a story or a narrative. In come cases, organizations like convention and visitors bureaus and economic development organizations have attempted to manufacture these stories; in other cases the stories have emerged more organically.

Some communities are happy with their story. Others, not so much. Communities that want to change their narrative may want to embrace this notion of storydoing or doing things that are storyworthy and then let the story emerge. It's really the way it happens anyway. I'm sure New Zealand has spent billions on advertising and branding. In the end, however, its current narrative is being spun from the storyworthy things they are doing in places like Christchurch.

What's your community's story? Do you know? If not, ask around. Better yet, do a little searching on social media like Twitter, YouTube, Yelp or Foursquare. What's going on that's storyworthy? If it's not much, or if you don't like what you see, here's your chance to change the narrative. Go out and do something storyworthy.

This column was originally published in quality newspapers in December 2014.

Turkey Talk: Recipe for Cranberry Brine

Primum non nocere. First, do no harm. This Latin phrase, or something close to it, shows up in both the Hippocratic Oath and Star Trek’s Prime Directive. The same principle holds in the kitchen as well. Start with quality ingredients, and then don’t mess with them...too much. As we enter the holiday cooking season this is especially sound advice.   

In full disclosure, when it comes to both my Thanksgiving and Christmas meals turkeys are my go-to main course and I’ve “messed” with them a lot. I’ve salted them, wrapped them up in a lattice of bacon, shrouded them with cheesecloth, buttered them under the skin, over the skin, and used all sorts of herb and spice combinations.

The bottom line is that a turkey doesn’t need much help to be a star attraction. The one intervention I keep coming back to, however, is brining. The reason these other techniques don’t add much to the bird is that the flavoring and other benefits that occur when you treat the surface of the turkey remains, pretty much, on the surface of that turkey. Brining, on the other hand, can spread flavor throughout the meat.

When brining, you soak the turkey in a salty liquid solution that pulls the natural juices out of the meat where it mixes with the liquid you’ve added. Then, the now-dry bird acts as a sponge and pulls moisture back in, carrying with it the flavors you’ve added. Honestly, a simple solution of salt and sugar does an amazing job of enhancing the flavor and resulting in a juicier turkey.  A few extras are just icing on the cake…or bird…or…never mind, you get the idea.

If you are a fan of the having a bite of cranberry relish with your turkey you may want to consider this recipe for cranberry brine. I recommend 100% pure cranberry juice rather than the “juice cocktail” you might be used to. You can usually find the 100% version in the natural foods section of your grocery store. Also, no need to worry about this turning your turkey pink. It may look a little tinted when you pull it out of the brine but you won’t notice it once it is cooked.

The following is my recipe for cranberry brine and some instructions on technique. Note that if you are using a frozen turkey, be sure the bird is completely thawed.

Cranberry Brine

• 1 gallons of cranberry juice
• 2-1/2 cups kosher salt

• 1-1/2 cups sugar

• ½ cup of candied ginger

• 4 tablespoon black peppercorns, coarsely crushed

• 4 tablespoon whole allspice, coarsely crushed

• 12 whole cloves

• 6 bay leaves
• 1 gallon water

• Bag of ice

To prepare the brine, combine in a stockpot 1 gallon of cranberry juice with the next seven ingredients (through bay leaves), bring to a boil. Cook 5 minutes until the sugar and salt dissolve. Let this cool.

Remove the giblets and neck from the turkey. Rinse the turkey and pat it dry with paper towels. Place the turkey in a large plastic cooler. Add the juice mixture and enough ice to raise the level of liquid so that it covers the turkey. Close the cooler and let sit for 12-24 hours. Put cooler outside if cool and check a couple of times to see if additional ice is needed. The cooler should remain cold enough so that ice does not melt. If the outside temperature is below freezing, move the cooler where it will not freeze.

After the brining, remove the turkey, discard the brine liquid, and rinse the turkey in cold water, and pat it dry with paper towels. After brining, the cooler should be cleaned with boiling water and bleach. You would not want salmonella to grow all winter and spoil your next tailgate. You are not ready to cook the turkey as you normally would. 

Orignially published in the Winter 2014 issue of B Magazine

Rosemary for Romance

Some of the myths surrounding the herb rosemary are a bit on the racy side. Legend has it that when the goddess Aphrodite emerged from the ocean, stepping foot onto the Isle of Cypros, she was greeted by water nymphs who draped her naked body in rosemary. That’s why its been called “dew of the sea.” As a result of its association with the goddess of love, beauty, and sexual rapture, the pungent herb has been considered for centuries as an aphrodisiac. Science seems to support the lore because rosemary has been found to increase the circulation of blood in the body making skin hypersensitive. Ooh la la!

I can vividly remember my first encounter with rosemary. It was nearly 25 years ago at a tiny restaurant outside Chattanooga, Tennessee when a waiter brought to the table a basket of golf ball-sized rolls, with an aroma of yeast and a pine-like scent I could not quite place. Out of the millions of bites of food I’ve taken in my lifetime, my first nibble of that rosemary-laced roll is one of the most memorable. Had I not already been in love (and married) to my dining companion, I would have undoubtedly fallen in love with her on the spot.

Although rosemary is a year-round staple in my kitchen, as the weather turns from summer to fall, I find myself craving it even more and reaching for it dried from the spice jar or freshly clipped from our backyard rosemary bush, and adding it to vegetables I’m roasting, chicken I’m baking, or using it in a number of other ways.

There does indeed seem to be something special about rosemary, it’s wafting into every nook and cranny of the house, building the anticipation of dinner to great heights. Whether its the myth, the science, or a little of both there seems to be a little more cuddling on the couch during movie nights that begin with a dinner in which rosemary is featured.

One of the great things about rosemary is that it can be added so simply to things you might already be planning to cook anyway. It doesn’t require any special preparation or equipment. Here are five of my favorite ways to use it.

Rosemary Baked Potato: Slice a raw russet in half and sandwich a generous twig of fresh rosemary between the halves. Wrap the whole thing in foil and bake as you normally would. The rosemary permeates every bite of the spud.

Rosemary Butter: Soften butter and whip in dried rosemary. Let the butter harden again and then use it to on your dinner rolls or a crusty loaf of bread. You can add garlic to the butter too if you like.

Rosemary Chicken: If you are roasting or baking a chicken, simply roast or bake it on a bed of rosemary by placing several twigs in the bottom of your roasting pan and then placing the bird on top.

Rosemary Skewers: Use sturdy rosemary twigs as skewers for shish kabobs. Use any meat and vegetable you like. Lamb, however, works especially well with rosemary.

Rosemary Au Gratin Anything: Rosemary loves cheese, especially strong cheeses like sharp cheddar or Parmesan. Adding fresh or dried rosemary to an au gratin of potatoes, cauliflower, or nearly any other au gratin-able vegetable adds a whole new level of flavor.

No need to stop with these five. Experiment away. I can’t guarantee that rosemary will bring romance your way but you never know. If you’re new to the herb, however, you just may start a lifelong love affair with it. One word of warning. It’s a bit prickly so cuddling with it on the couch on movie night might not be a good idea.

Originally published in the Fall Issue of B Magazine

Big Wins with Small Goals

Lowell Catlett is an economist, futurist and professor at New Mexico State University. He often starts his talks about the future with a confession you might not expect. He can't really predict the future. Catlett points to research on the accuracy of economists' forecasts on stock prices, unemployment rates and the like. One study looked at 7,000 different economic predictions and found 47 percent of them were correct. In other words, flip a coin and you can beat the economists by 3 percent. Catlett's take-home message is that although you can't predict the future, you can prepare for it. The preparation is what helps us be adaptable when an uncertain future unfolds before us.

Our civic leaders do a great deal of thinking about the future, often setting ambitious, long-term, big goals. Perhaps your own community has a set of these big goals for the future. I know of a large metropolitan region that set a goal 20 years ago to build a light-rail, public transit system; several rural communities that set their sights on luring large auto manufacturing plants that promised hundreds of jobs; and urban neighborhoods that worked diligently to attract large foundation grants they were sure would reverse years of decline.

What about that metro region? Still no light rail. Those communities looking for the big employer? It never happened. The neighborhoods eyeing those big grants? Not a dime. The people in these communities looked ahead and set big goals. But a recession knocked the props out of the tax revenues expected to fund that light rail system. Some other communities landed those auto jobs. And as for that big grant for the neighborhood, the foundations changed their funding priorities. Big goals, like the future itself, are dependent on too many factors out of our control.

Teresa Amabile, a professor at Harvard, writes about the power of small wins. She notes that doubt and dwindling motivation comes on quickly when a big goal is missed. She advises that, on the other hand, small wins lead to what she calls the progress principle - more confidence, high performance and motivation to keep moving forward.

Another researcher, John Bryson from the University of Minnesota, says that this same principle holds true for communities. He defines small wins for a community as "concrete, completed, implemented outcomes of moderate importance." To get to the big payoff, Bryson says communities need to set a progressive series of small-win goals informed by a sense of strategic direction. Some recent research done at Purdue University seems to confirm this. Looking at over 300 community planning efforts, those that focused primarily on a progressive series of modest, near-time, easy-win goals were more likely to be successful that those focused primarily on bigger, more transformational and longer-term goals.

For example, one rural community was looking to bolster its agricultural economy, and leaders set their sights on repurposing an old outlet mall near the interstate as a distribution facility for agricultural products. They grew frustrated and discouraged after years of no progress. When they regrouped, they focused instead on setting a few more-modest goals based on what they could make happen in the short run.

Setting aside the outlet mall for the time, they settled on organizing a festival to promote one particular agricultural product produced in their area. They worked first on a recipe contest that would be a featured event at the festival. Within a year, they pulled off the festival with great success. It is now an annual attraction, drawing thousands of visitors (and their money) from around the U.S. and internationally. The big goal - the old outlet mall - was too big, too distant and too much out of their control, but a progressive series of small goals took them to a place they could never have anticipated.

So, the next time you and your fellow community leaders are dreaming of the future, try taking one small step. With each step you can see a little further on the horizon, and eventually you may see something that you couldn't have just a step back. That's when you start running.

This column was originally published in quality newspapers in August 2014.

Take Me to Your Leader

"Take me to your leader." This cartoon and movie catchphrase, or something close to it, has been uttered by fictional extraterrestrial visitors demanding to see the president or a general, to negotiate some terms before annihilating our planet.

Leadership is a concept we talk about a lot in the context of our communities. Our cities have mayors and other elected officials. Many of our towns and neighborhoods have formal and informal leaders to whom we look to help shepherd us forward.

With some of the kinds of issues we face in communities, it is pretty clear who the leader is in a particular issue. This summer in my community, a large infrastructure project has been going on to fix some stormwater drainage issues. The head of the street department is the city leader who is called upon to take care of this community issue.

Ron Heifetz of Harvard University, along with colleague Riley Sinder, has studied leadership as it relates to public problems; they classify problems into three types. They describe the street drainage problem as a "Type 1" public problem in which both the problem and solution are clear, and there is a clear leader "in charge" of addressing the problem.

Heifetz and Sinder also point out, however, most of the really big problems our communities face are of the Type 2 and 3 varieties in which either the problem is clear but the solution is unclear (Type 2), or both the problem and solution are unclear (Type 3). Leadership for these types of problems is a little less cut and dried.

If the issue in our community is related to economic growth, for instance, raising graduation rates or reducing neighborhood violent crime, what one individual do we go to? If instructed, "take me to your leader" in one of these contexts, where do we go? Heifetz and Sinder contend that there are no single leaders for Type of Type 2 and Type 3 public problems.

What makes these issues even more complex is the fact that we are trained to think of the world in hierarchies, looking up and down some real or imagined pyramid-like organizational chart for the fix to our problems.

There is not, however, anyone at the top of those organizational charts. Who is in charge of assuring all our kids graduate from high school; that everyone has the skills and opportunity to work in jobs that pay a living wage; or that each child has the support they need to maintain a healthy weight?

Heifetz and Sinder's answer to who is in charge of these issues is that we all are. There are no true experts with specialized know-how to fix these public problems. It takes, rather, the collective effort of all of us.

How does a community address these messes when nobody is in charge? The very first step is to move away from the hierarchy mentality of looking up and down, and, instead, adopt network thinking, requiring us to look out to our left and right, forward and backward.

These horizontal networks are how we best organize ourselves to address complex issues. A network is powerful because it optimizes the number of connections that can be made among the member of a network, many more connections than are made in a hierarchy.

Think about a hierarchy with 10 people. One at the top who directs the actions of three people, each of whom directs two people. That’s a total of nine connections. Now arrange those same 10 people in a horizontal circle where they can each connect to the other eight. You end up with 45 connections.

The only chance for our communities to address their most pressing problems is to adopt network thinking, harnessing the power of all the connections that can result. No single person or organization has the knowledge, resources or power to address these issues, but a network of people does.

So, if aliens shows up on your street insisting that you take them to your leader, don't head for city hall. Instead, shake their hand, tentacle, or whatever, and then have your neighbors form a receiving line right behind you.

This column was originally published in quality newspapers in July 2014

What's Your Sign?

What's your sign? No, not your astrological sign, the sign, rather, that greets you as you enter your community. Mine says, "Welcome to the Friendly City." Others I've seen celebrated some favorite son or daughter - "Childhood Home of..." Still others note a famed successful season of a sports team, "State Champs 1976."

These signs often signal what residents are proud of. My career has taken me to a great many communities, and many times I've asked groups of locals what makes the place they call home unique? What separates their community from most others? What gives people a reason to come there to live or do business? What keeps people there instead of moving away?

About 80 percent of the time I've received remarkably similar answers, something along the lines of, "It's a great place to raise a family." Even when I inquire about a community's greatest economic development "asset" that's often the answer I get. Mayors and regular folks alike seem convinced that businesses should be lining up to invest in their communities and that people would be hard pressed to find a better place to put down roots. When that's not the case, they are certain it's because they must be their region's "best-kept secret."

There's a bit of a problem when so many communities point to their quality of life as what makes them unique and special. If everyplace is unique and special, then no place is unique and special.

Don't get me wrong; there is much good in having a self-confident community. It leads to all sorts of social benefits. There is also, however, great value in communities understanding their truly unique assets because every community is in competition with many others. Every time businesses take a look at them for its next expansion. When residents consider job offers that would take them away. When soon-to-graduate college students decide whether to move back home or seek their fortunes elsewhere.

When I work with a community, identifying these unique assets is one of our first orders of business. We often start with brainpower, the distinctive skills, abilities and know-how resident in the community. Next we dig to understand the pipeline of new ideas and innovations that brainpower produces - things that are made there and types of new enterprises that get launched. We also consider place-based assets like natural resources and amenities. Last, I ask them to recount the stories that set them apart, the culture, the heritage, even the legends and myths.

Every community - even the smallest ones - has unique assets in all four of these areas: brainpower, innovation and entrepreneurship, quality connected places and stories. Identifying these assets, however, is just the first step. The next one is leveraging and combining them in ways they've never been linked before.

One community did this after recognizing its significant historical asset in the large number of European immigrants who had settled there more than a century earlier. There was architecture, food and culture still resident from that era. Community leaders leveraged that feature by becoming a travel destination, resulting in a new unique brainpower asset: hospitality and tourism. Later, the community capitalized on this new expertise again when recognizing it had an unusual number of illuminated ball fields and set out to become a regional hub for baseball and softball tournaments. This local economy continues to hum along quite nicely.

Communities - large metros, small towns and suburban neighborhoods - need to be in a near constant state of reinvention in order to survive. It sounds awful to say it, but at a minimum, they need to replace the dying with the living just to maintain the status quo. Some, of course, want to grow at a steady rate. The best strategies for survival or growth are built on a community's existing unique assets, the building blocks for what's next.

If you need some help thinking through your community's unique assets and how they could be leveraged, take a look at the work of the Asset-Based Community Development Institute at Northwestern University.

So the next time you drive into town and see that sign that welcomes you back home, be thankful that it likely is indeed a good place to raise a family or a friendly city. But many will never get the chance to learn this, as you have, unless you also know your community's unique assets and spread the word.

Now Playing at Your Local Farmers' Market

In 1953 George Marshall directed superstars Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh in Hollywood’s telling of the Harry Houdini story. I wasn’t around in 1953 but in the 1970s, when I was growing up, it was my favorite movie after having caught it on the late, late show some Friday or Saturday night. I had a handful of other favorite classic movies befitting of a boy enamored with magic, monsters, and adventure. Each week I read through the TV listing hoping one of them would be playing.

Before the days of Netflix, DVRs, Blockbuster, or even VHS recorders this was the way it was when it came to television. You had to catch things when they were on. If you missed a TV show episode you had to hope it would be on summer reruns and when it came to favorite movies, you either went through the TV guide like I did or you caught it by chance when scanning the channels.

As much as I love Netflix and my collection of DVDs, which includes a copy of Houdini, I miss the simple thrill that would come when, usually once a year, a favorite was on. Back in the day, that excitement over something that could come and go quickly was also present on our family’s dinner table. Strawberry shortcake, watermelon, and sweet corn, were like my Houdini movie.  Catch them now or it will be a long wait before you see them again.

To a previous generation the modern-day supermarket would be no less a marvel than the DVR. Those of us, however, who have tasted both grocery store sweet corn in November and Indiana sweet corn straight from the farmer’s field, know there’s no comparison. The real thing, you just have to wait for. A visit to the farmer’s market brings back that sense of anticipation, seeing week to week what’s there, finding both long-time favorites and newly-discovering new ones as well.

Here is a recipe that takes advantage of some of the early offerings you will find at your local farmer’s market. For roast chicken with vegetables you don’t have to wait for the traditional veggies and herbs that come later in the season you can use what’s ready now. Radishes, for instance are wonderful when roasted. They get sweeter as the sugar’s concentrate. The same goes for the green onions. Garnish this dish with fresh chives instead of heartier rosemary or thyme gives it a bright, summertime finish. If you are lucky, you may be able to also pick up the chicken at your market.

With our own farmer’s markets in full swing, I’m hoping you are a regular like me. If not, visit once and you might become one. One word of warning: once you experience local in-season versions of what you find in the produce section year round, you’ll be left wanting for about 50 weeks a year, but when that favorite comes around again, the long wait will be worth it.

 Roast Chicken with Farmers’ Market Vegetables

• 4 chicken quarters (all white, all dark, or mixed)
• Kosher salt
• Freshly cracked black pepper
• 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 pound small potatoes, washed
• 2 bunches radishes, washed cut in half
• 1 bunch green onions, washed and trimmed
• 1 bunch baby carrots, washed and greens removed
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh chives
• 1 lemon, halved

Preheat the oven to 500 degrees. Rinse the chicken and pat dry with paper towels. Season with salt and pepper, then place skin-side up on a rimmed baking sheet lined with parchment. Drizzle with oil and roast 15 minutes.

As chicken is roasting cut the potatoes and radishes in half and cut the scallions into thirds. Toss the potatoes, radishes, carrots and the remaining olive oil in a bowl and season with salt and pepper. Toss to coat.

Remove the chicken from the oven and reduce oven temperature to 375. Add the vegetables to the baking sheet, positioning them around the chicken pie. Continue to roast until the vegetables are tender and the chicken is golden and cooked through, registering 165 on a probe thermometer for white meat or 175 for dark. This will likely take about 30 more minutes. Move chicken and vegetables to a platter, squeeze the lemon over the chicken and vegetables top with the chives and serve. Serves about four adults.

Adapted from a a column originally published in B Magazine, June 2014