Back To The Future

Continuing to Disrupt...

2012-01-23T22:59:00.006-05:00

The Facebook group of friends and family connected to my friend Dave, is still pretty active, 3 plus years later. The posts come in waves. Sometimes they're generated by the triggers, like what happened to me last Friday.

Sometimes it's when old things are are suddenly found again...

Bonnie posted tonight:
"Just found some "truisms" that Dave posted outside our tiny work space at the Disruption Consultancy. So worth another look!"

a little knowledge can go a long way
a name means a lot just by itself
a sense of timing is the mark of genius
a single event can have infinitely many interpretations
decadence can be an end in itself
everything that's interesting is new
if you can't leave your mark give up
just believing something can make it happen
lack of charisma can be fatal
people are boring unless they are extremists
playing it safe can cause a lot of damage in the long run
push yourself to the limit as often as possible
revolution
symbols are more meaningful than things themselves
taking a strong stand publicizes the opposite position
you must disagree with authority figures
your actions are pointless if no one notices

Sign of the Times

2012-01-21T10:53:00.001-05:00

As anyone who has ever lost a close friend will tell you, it's not necessarily the big milestones (birthdays, anniversary of passing) that trip you up, it's the random day to day moments when something you do, say, or hear happens, and the only person you really want to talk to about it is them.

This happened to me Friday when I was going to a meeting at the new REI flagship in Soho. I was rushing from the subway and suddenly looked up and blinked a few times in the bright winter sun when I realized it was in the Puck Building in Soho.

The new REI store is amazing, it's like walking into a slice of Boulder, and since its opening in mid December has been a magnet for a community of outdoor and nature loving New Yorkers. From a work perspective, I had stumbled upon 'my target audience.'

Though it's a sign of the times, and one that made me miss my friend, the debunker, the high beam on the dark road. Dave always made us laugh while also so accurately interpreting 'what this means' from a larger social commentary perspective.

The Puck Building used to be the HQ of SPY Magazine, an iconic social satire magazine that existed in the late 80's to 90's, that finally folded in the late 90's when the age of irony seemed to end. 90's martini drinking and laughing about Donald Trump antics and what celebrity was 'separated from birth' from was no longer funny, and we ushered in an era of Real News, fear and earnestness.

In New York part 1, I spent a good portion of the mid to late 90's in Soho, working for a funny, edgy, fiercely independent ad agency, where I first met my friend Dave, who passed away three years ago. This was when Soho wasn't a corporate mall, when we hadn't sold the company, when everyone I worked with kept the bar very high on 'great creative' as the top priority.

Different time, different place...

I did love the new REI store, and felt that it's part of an overall "New York is getting better" wave, though all day I missed hearing what Dave would say about it.

He might say, something he often said to me about California, "It's right for the way you're living today."

Or he might say, what he also often said, and how he continues to still influence us:

"Just go have an adventure!"

First Snow!

2012-01-21T09:14:00.004-05:00

I was in Florida in late October and missed our unseasonably early snow storm here, that ended up shutting down parts of Westchester, Connecticut and New Jersey for a week.

Even though I'm already tired of wearing my big puffy coat, and fantasizing about the next big, equally unsexy puffy coat I will buy, and have already had a big dose of spring fever and some magical thinking that we would actually miss winter when we had 50 and 60 degree temperatures around the New Year...there is something so exciting about waking up, looking outside, and seeing a carpet of white for the first time.

I remember a line from John Irving's "A Prayer for Owen Meany" where the author mentioned that his grandmother used to say snow was very healing. He commented on her New England perspective, saying that it was a typical Yankee way to think: If there's a lot of it, it must be good for you!

This leopard has not changed her spots. I am still sea air, salt water and palm tree dreaming, though first snow of the season makes everything feel fresh, new, alive with possibilities.

While by far not my favorite month, that is the gift of January.

Let Your Voice Be Heard

2012-01-13T07:45:00.001-05:00

March-like winds and rain have roared into New York, killing a few umbrellas yesterday in the process.

While I have been (really!) enjoying milder winter temperatures, it's hard to ignore direct connections to warmer temperatures, warmer oceans, rising sea levels and long terms implications of what 'climate change' means for natural resources, species and our world population before it became politically-charged term.

Last night some of this was addressed at a "Discources in Science and Nature" event series at the NY Academy of Science, where a couple of our scientists and other scientists were part of a panel discussion about "Energy for the Next 20 Years." (A subject matter also not politically neutral...In fact, nothing like a debate about nuclear power to completely distract questions related to New York State's looming decision about hydrofracking!)

Some of the dense subject matter was not for the lay-person. What struck me most was how the better speakers kept my attention, and caused me to think about things a bit differently.

Interestingly, Seth Godin wrote a post about this this morning, which I think is useful to remember in any 'speaking occassion' you have, even if it's just one on one.

I remember once at a presentation skills class the coach said to us: "Remember, people are rooting for you. They don't want to sit there and be bored. They don't want you to dial it in. They want to learn something, they want to be engaged, they want to be inspired."

In other words, it's not about you!

Here's Seth's post. Connection is everything!

It's extremely difficult to read a speech and sound as if you mean it.

For most of us, when reading, posture changes, the throat tightens and people can tell. Reading is different from speaking, and a different sort of attention is paid.

Before you give a speech, then, you must do one of two things if your goal is to persuade:

Learn to read the same way you speak (unlikely)

or, learn to speak without reading. Learn your message well enough that you can communicate it without reading it. We want your humanity.

If you can't do that, don't bother giving a speech. Just send everyone a memo and save time and stress for all concerned.

New Year, New You?

2012-01-07T09:02:00.000-05:00

I haven't written a posting since the end of November. While I realize my readership isn't exactly, ahem, Oprah-like, I've been conscious of my non-writing and apologize for the lack of it.

The post Thanksgiving holiday blender of December seemed more action packed than usual this year. At work there's always a sense of everyone trying to get it all 'done' before the holidays (which of course is perpetuated at a very process oriented organization). With family, friends, loved ones, certainly an urgency to see everyone, do everything, be social and make merry during a concentrated thirty day window. I also tend to have that lingering "I think I'm Martha Stewart" thought pop up from time to time in my subconscious, typically like others, when you're really busy and then decide to run yourself a bit ragged shopping for the 'perfect' gift, making the 'perfect' meal, helping keep up the 'perfect' holiday tradition.

Post Christmas the new theme takes over in the bubble, the year in review, highs and lows, what do you want to do for 2012, who do you want to be, where do you want to go? What are your goals and resolutions? It's not emotionally neutral territory...Especially for people I know who have suffered a great loss during the past year.

I personally had a more superficial response to the new year approaching by literally checking a bunch of nagging things off that internal To-Do list ranging from buying new shower curtain liners to Brita replacement filters. (As if carrying over these mundane things 'to do' in 2012 somehow matters?)

January's calm helps to still the waters. When I think of a new year, in my mind's eye I picture how things look in the woods outside of my cousin's house in Higgins Lake, Michigan, after a blanket of snow. Trees bare for the season, with morning sun reflecting off the white canvas. The beauty of enjoying the moment, just as it is. The freshness of what's ahead. Spring in slumber.

In the end, whenever that may be, the to do list, the goals, the resolutions, what we want to achieve...I don't think they matter as much as whether or not we listened to our dreams (the real ones, that only speak to us when we actually do slow down), and how much we loved.

Happy 2012 everyone. Expect great things.

Happy Endings

2011-11-29T22:13:00.000-05:00

One of my best friends, Greta, works for "Best Friends Society", the nation's largest sanctuary for abused and abandoned animals.

She recently posted this picture and caption:
"Best Friends resident of five years, Hurricane Katrina survivor and our sweet, funny Tuesday office dog Screech is finally heading home tomorrow. Here's to a great couch-bound life Screech!!"

Happy endings, even when they're delayed for a while, never get old!

Love Actually

2011-11-28T08:10:00.001-05:00

I've had many different types of Thanksgivings over the years. Big snowy family ones in Michigan, New York City Thanksgivings during NYC part 1 with friends, football and games. NorCal and SoCal Thanksgivings when it was too far to travel to Florida to see my family and I celebrated with 'local family'.

One in particular in Venice stands out when things were falling apart up in cold, rainy San Francisco and I sat on a back deck in the sunshine and the thought popped into my head that perhaps I had moved to the wrong part of California after all....

At the time, I had no idea what was ahead, and in fact, even more things fell apart in early December and I ended up moving down to Southern California two months later.

Thanksgiving is a wonderful pause when we gather together with people we love, and being grateful for life's gifts is very close to the surface. However, the days that follow the post Thanksgiving cocoon can be a time when 'real life' abruptly sets in.

I'm reruning another post of mine from a year ago, about post Thanksgiving disruption, because I have a feeling a couple readers of mine may need to see it again who are facing some of life's snowballs. You can read it in its entirety by clicking here.

In the midst of life, which can be difficult, you don't want to miss the point of the season and what it's all about:

Which is to love

However and whenever you are able.

Give Thanks

2011-11-22T22:11:00.000-05:00

A "Back to the Future" rerun is sharing President Abraham Lincoln's original proclamation in 1863, for a national day of Thanksgiving. While Thanksgiving has evolved to mean many things -- traveling to be with family and friends, the Macy's parade, turkey, pumpkin pie, football, 'Black Friday' -- it remains the one day out of 365 days we step back and give thanks, for everything we have.

What is so radical - and enduring - about Abraham Lincoln's proclamation is that he created this day during the midst of a Civil War. Not 1% vs. 99% or any of the other million ways that can divide us from one another, but an actual war, in our own country.

He didn't say "Well, when we finish the war, we'll create the day of gratitude for the war being over". No, in the midst of war, he reminded our nation of the importance of being thankful, for everything.

148 years later, thank you President Lincoln for your foresight and wisdom. May we continue to learn from you.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful years and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the Source from which they come, others have been added which are of so extraordinary a nature that they can not fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God.

In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere, except in the theater of military conflict, while that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.

Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the field of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship; the ax has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than theretofore. Population has steadily increased notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege, and the battlefield, and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and union.

In testimony wherof I have herunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

[Signed]

A. Lincoln

Colombia!

2011-11-20T14:22:00.000-05:00

We're entering Thanksgiving week, one of my favorite weeks of the year, one where our entire nation comes together to give thanks and appreciate everything we have in our life.

One of the things I'm thankful for this year is the reminder (again) that you don't really know what's around the corner. You don't really know what new dreams are being planted and what new adventures are waiting for you....especially when you loosen your grip on the wheel a bit.

Last week I went to Colombia for work, something I doubt I would have even imagined as a possibility a year ago. My colleagues Bill, Caralynn and Nancy traveled to Bogotá and Cartagena to visit some of our projects there, spend time with the Colombian team, and to essentially "drink from the well" as Bill puts it -- step away from powerpoints, white papers, strategic frameworks, task forces and committees to see and experience what we are doing, and why.

Our first afternoon and evening in Bogotá we got to know some of our colleagues from Colombia and Ecuador. Something I hadn't appreciated until last week was the amazing gift of being connected to colleagues in 35 countries.

Our second day we traveled to Chingaza National Park, about a two hour drive outside of Bogotá. This Páramo provides freshwater to more than 8 million people in Bogotá (the way that protecting our watershed in upstate New York protects New York City's drinking water downstate). The Conservancy is working in the upper watersheds to keep sedimentation and runoff out of the region's rivers.

What I didn't really realize (until my colleague Caralynn got sick) was that Bogotá's elevation is 8,000 feet above sea level, and the "road to Chingaza" was a slow journey over a bumpy and windy dirt road, another 5,000 more feet up.

Chingaza means "Temple of Sun and Water" and evidence of human life in Chingaza goes back to 500 B.C. Even though guerrilla rebels inhabited the area as early as ten years ago, Chingaza looked pure, untouched.

It was something to behold.

Through the ages, water has held a sacred quality to communities and cultures all over the world. Native communities of Chingaza believed this water was where all life began.

That evening we flew north to Cartagena, the second largest city in the Caribbean. For those of us experiencing some altitude sickness, and slightly chilled from rainy Bogotá, "Sea level" became code for balance and bliss!

We took a boat to see flora and fauna sanctuaries and more national parks that protects plant and wildlife species. The Conservancy is developing a coastal water fund for nearby wetlands that provide fresh water to Cartagena.

The Conservancy is also working with the National Parks Authority to determine environmental services that this area provides, such as sedimentation control, flood regulation and fish nurseries.

The small community above continues to get washed away from rising sea level and impacts of climate change. They refuse to leave.

While the fishing must be rich and abundant in the area as we saw a few small boats near the coastal mangroves, what is likely more powerful is their belief that their ancestors are part of the trees in the sanctuary. The story goes that their ancestors were so grateful for the abundance that nature provided them, it was their way of giving back to the source of sustaining life.

Unmistakable Caribbean blue water near one of the islands.

Another day we traveled to Luriza watershed, over 2,000 acres of protected 'dry forest' that shelters 244 species including plants, amphibious, reptiles, mammals and birds.

The New York crew, looking quite a bit fresher than we did after our 2 hour hike in the sun, wearing high rubber boots for the muddy trails and river basin.

The muddy river bed becomes a river when it rains.

Luriza means paradise.

The importance of water quality, flow, access...a profound take-away from my trip.

New amigos...another gift.

Thank you Colombia.

Hope to see you again!

Love and Loss

2011-11-05T10:34:00.010-04:00

It feels significant to lose both Steve Jobs and Andy Rooney within weeks of each other, two very different individuals whose unique lens of the world we embraced and trusted.

Steve Job's eulogy, shared below from The New York Times, is a love letter from his sister who helped explain how Steve brought beauty, inspiration, excitement and pure wonder about 'the future' to our everyday lives.

Steve gave us magic.

Andy Rooney, every week, in his homespun folksy way, continually grounded us, year after year, in troubling and confusing times, with perspective and wisdom gained only by experience, and often, prickly humor.

Working up until last month at the age of 92 at Sixty Minutes, he continued to learn along with us, and share what was on his mind. Below, I've shared some of his famous "I've learned" thoughts.

Andy gave us balance. And he made us laugh.

Of course both were full of flaws, not without criticism, made their share of mistakes, definitely not adored by all.

They were always very deeply and honestly themselves, which is probably why we loved them so.

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

A Sister’s Eulogy for Steve Jobs
By MONA SIMPSON
Published: October 30, 2011
The New York Times

I grew up as an only child, with a single mother. Because we were poor and because I knew my father had emigrated from Syria, I imagined he looked like Omar Sharif. I hoped he would be rich and kind and would come into our lives (and our not yet furnished apartment) and help us. Later, after I’d met my father, I tried to believe he’d changed his number and left no forwarding address because he was an idealistic revolutionary, plotting a new world for the Arab people.

Even as a feminist, my whole life I’d been waiting for a man to love, who could love me. For decades, I’d thought that man would be my father. When I was 25, I met that man and he was my brother.

By then, I lived in New York, where I was trying to write my first novel. I had a job at a small magazine in an office the size of a closet, with three other aspiring writers. When one day a lawyer called me — me, the middle-class girl from California who hassled the boss to buy us health insurance — and said his client was rich and famous and was my long-lost brother, the young editors went wild. This was 1985 and we worked at a cutting-edge literary magazine, but I’d fallen into the plot of a Dickens novel and really, we all loved those best. The lawyer refused to tell me my brother’s name and my colleagues started a betting pool. The leading candidate: John Travolta. I secretly hoped for a literary descendant of Henry James — someone more talented than I, someone brilliant without even trying.

When I met Steve, he was a guy my age in jeans, Arab- or Jewish-looking and handsomer than Omar Sharif.

We took a long walk — something, it happened, that we both liked to do. I don’t remember much of what we said that first day, only that he felt like someone I’d pick to be a friend. He explained that he worked in computers.

I didn’t know much about computers. I still worked on a manual Olivetti typewriter.

I told Steve I’d recently considered my first purchase of a computer: something called the Cromemco.

Steve told me it was a good thing I’d waited. He said he was making something that was going to be insanely beautiful.

I want to tell you a few things I learned from Steve, during three distinct periods, over the 27 years I knew him. They’re not periods of years, but of states of being. His full life. His illness. His dying.

Steve worked at what he loved. He worked really hard. Every day.

That’s incredibly simple, but true.

He was the opposite of absent-minded.

He was never embarrassed about working hard, even if the results were failures. If someone as smart as Steve wasn’t ashamed to admit trying, maybe I didn’t have to be.

When he got kicked out of Apple, things were painful. He told me about a dinner at which 500 Silicon Valley leaders met the then-sitting president. Steve hadn’t been invited.

He was hurt but he still went to work at Next. Every single day.

Novelty was not Steve’s highest value. Beauty was.

For an innovator, Steve was remarkably loyal. If he loved a shirt, he’d order 10 or 100 of them. In the Palo Alto house, there are probably enough black cotton turtlenecks for everyone in this church.

He didn’t favor trends or gimmicks. He liked people his own age.

His philosophy of aesthetics reminds me of a quote that went something like this: “Fashion is what seems beautiful now but looks ugly later; art can be ugly at first but it becomes beautiful later.”

Steve always aspired to make beautiful later.

He was willing to be misunderstood.

Uninvited to the ball, he drove the third or fourth iteration of his same black sports car to Next, where he and his team were quietly inventing the platform on which Tim Berners-Lee would write the program for the World Wide Web.

Steve was like a girl in the amount of time he spent talking about love. Love was his supreme virtue, his god of gods. He tracked and worried about the romantic lives of the people working with him.

Whenever he saw a man he thought a woman might find dashing, he called out, “Hey are you single? Do you wanna come to dinner with my sister?”

I remember when he phoned the day he met Laurene. “There’s this beautiful woman and she’s really smart and she has this dog and I’m going to marry her.”

When Reed was born, he began gushing and never stopped. He was a physical dad, with each of his children. He fretted over Lisa’s boyfriends and Erin’s travel and skirt lengths and Eve’s safety around the horses she adored.

None of us who attended Reed’s graduation party will ever forget the scene of Reed and Steve slow dancing.

His abiding love for Laurene sustained him. He believed that love happened all the time, everywhere. In that most important way, Steve was never ironic, never cynical, never pessimistic. I try to learn from that, still.

Steve had been successful at a young age, and he felt that had isolated him. Most of the choices he made from the time I knew him were designed to dissolve the walls around him. A middle-class boy from Los Altos, he fell in love with a middle-class girl from New Jersey. It was important to both of them to raise Lisa, Reed, Erin and Eve as grounded, normal children. Their house didn’t intimidate with art or polish; in fact, for many of the first years I knew Steve and Lo together, dinner was served on the grass, and sometimes consisted of just one vegetable. Lots of that one vegetable. But one. Broccoli. In season. Simply prepared. With just the right, recently snipped, herb.

Even as a young millionaire, Steve always picked me up at the airport. He’d be standing there in his jeans.

When a family member called him at work, his secretary Linetta answered, “Your dad’s in a meeting. Would you like me to interrupt him?”

When Reed insisted on dressing up as a witch every Halloween, Steve, Laurene, Erin and Eve all went wiccan.

They once embarked on a kitchen remodel; it took years. They cooked on a hotplate in the garage. The Pixar building, under construction during the same period, finished in half the time. And that was it for the Palo Alto house. The bathrooms stayed old. But — and this was a crucial distinction — it had been a great house to start with; Steve saw to that.

This is not to say that he didn’t enjoy his success: he enjoyed his success a lot, just minus a few zeros. He told me how much he loved going to the Palo Alto bike store and gleefully realizing he could afford to buy the best bike there.

And he did.

Steve was humble. Steve liked to keep learning.

Once, he told me if he’d grown up differently, he might have become a mathematician. He spoke reverently about colleges and loved walking around the Stanford campus. In the last year of his life, he studied a book of paintings by Mark Rothko, an artist he hadn’t known about before, thinking of what could inspire people on the walls of a future Apple campus.

Steve cultivated whimsy. What other C.E.O. knows the history of English and Chinese tea roses and has a favorite David Austin rose?

He had surprises tucked in all his pockets. I’ll venture that Laurene will discover treats — songs he loved, a poem he cut out and put in a drawer — even after 20 years of an exceptionally close marriage. I spoke to him every other day or so, but when I opened The New York Times and saw a feature on the company’s patents, I was still surprised and delighted to see a sketch for a perfect staircase.

With his four children, with his wife, with all of us, Steve had a lot of fun.

He treasured happiness.

Then, Steve became ill and we watched his life compress into a smaller circle. Once, he’d loved walking through Paris. He’d discovered a small handmade soba shop in Kyoto. He downhill skied gracefully. He cross-country skied clumsily. No more.

Eventually, even ordinary pleasures, like a good peach, no longer appealed to him.

Yet, what amazed me, and what I learned from his illness, was how much was still left after so much had been taken away.

I remember my brother learning to walk again, with a chair. After his liver transplant, once a day he would get up on legs that seemed too thin to bear him, arms pitched to the chair back. He’d push that chair down the Memphis hospital corridor towards the nursing station and then he’d sit down on the chair, rest, turn around and walk back again. He counted his steps and, each day, pressed a little farther.

Laurene got down on her knees and looked into his eyes.

“You can do this, Steve,” she said. His eyes widened. His lips pressed into each other.

He tried. He always, always tried, and always with love at the core of that effort. He was an intensely emotional man.

I realized during that terrifying time that Steve was not enduring the pain for himself. He set destinations: his son Reed’s graduation from high school, his daughter Erin’s trip to Kyoto, the launching of a boat he was building on which he planned to take his family around the world and where he hoped he and Laurene would someday retire.

Even ill, his taste, his discrimination and his judgment held. He went through 67 nurses before finding kindred spirits and then he completely trusted the three who stayed with him to the end. Tracy. Arturo. Elham.

One time when Steve had contracted a tenacious pneumonia his doctor forbid everything — even ice. We were in a standard I.C.U. unit. Steve, who generally disliked cutting in line or dropping his own name, confessed that this once, he’d like to be treated a little specially.

I told him: Steve, this is special treatment.

He leaned over to me, and said: “I want it to be a little more special.”

Intubated, when he couldn’t talk, he asked for a notepad. He sketched devices to hold an iPad in a hospital bed. He designed new fluid monitors and x-ray equipment. He redrew that not-quite-special-enough hospital unit. And every time his wife walked into the room, I watched his smile remake itself on his face.

For the really big, big things, you have to trust me, he wrote on his sketchpad. He looked up. You have to.

By that, he meant that we should disobey the doctors and give him a piece of ice.

None of us knows for certain how long we’ll be here. On Steve’s better days, even in the last year, he embarked upon projects and elicited promises from his friends at Apple to finish them. Some boat builders in the Netherlands have a gorgeous stainless steel hull ready to be covered with the finishing wood. His three daughters remain unmarried, his two youngest still girls, and he’d wanted to walk them down the aisle as he’d walked me the day of my wedding.

We all — in the end — die in medias res. In the middle of a story. Of many stories.

I suppose it’s not quite accurate to call the death of someone who lived with cancer for years unexpected, but Steve’s death was unexpected for us.

What I learned from my brother’s death was that character is essential: What he was, was how he died.

Tuesday morning, he called me to ask me to hurry up to Palo Alto. His tone was affectionate, dear, loving, but like someone whose luggage was already strapped onto the vehicle, who was already on the beginning of his journey, even as he was sorry, truly deeply sorry, to be leaving us.

He started his farewell and I stopped him. I said, “Wait. I’m coming. I’m in a taxi to the airport. I’ll be there.”

“I’m telling you now because I’m afraid you won’t make it on time, honey.”

When I arrived, he and his Laurene were joking together like partners who’d lived and worked together every day of their lives. He looked into his children’s eyes as if he couldn’t unlock his gaze.

Until about 2 in the afternoon, his wife could rouse him, to talk to his friends from Apple.

Then, after awhile, it was clear that he would no longer wake to us.

His breathing changed. It became severe, deliberate, purposeful. I could feel him counting his steps again, pushing farther than before.

This is what I learned: he was working at this, too. Death didn’t happen to Steve, he achieved it.

He told me, when he was saying goodbye and telling me he was sorry, so sorry we wouldn’t be able to be old together as we’d always planned, that he was going to a better place.

Dr. Fischer gave him a 50/50 chance of making it through the night.

He made it through the night, Laurene next to him on the bed sometimes jerked up when there was a longer pause between his breaths. She and I looked at each other, then he would heave a deep breath and begin again.

This had to be done. Even now, he had a stern, still handsome profile, the profile of an absolutist, a romantic. His breath indicated an arduous journey, some steep path, altitude.

He seemed to be climbing.

But with that will, that work ethic, that strength, there was also sweet Steve’s capacity for wonderment, the artist’s belief in the ideal, the still more beautiful later.

Steve’s final words, hours earlier, were monosyllables, repeated three times.

Before embarking, he’d looked at his sister Patty, then for a long time at his children, then at his life’s partner, Laurene, and then over their shoulders past them.

Steve’s final words were:

OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.

Andy Rooney

"I've learned..."

I’ve learned…. That the best classroom in the world is at the feet of an elderly person.

I’ve learned…. That when you’re in love, it shows.

I’ve learned…. That just one person saying to me, “You’ve made my day!” makes my day.

I’ve learned…. That having a child fall asleep in your arms is one of the most peaceful feelings in the world.

I’ve learned…. That being kind is more important than being right.

I’ve learned…. That you should never say no to a gift from a child.

I’ve learned…. That I can always pray for someone when I don’t have the strength to help him in some other way.

I’ve learned…. That no matter how serious your life requires you to be, everyone needs a friend to act goofy with.

I’ve learned…. That sometimes all a person needs is a hand to hold and a heart to understand.

I’ve learned…. That simple walks with my father around the block on summer nights when I was a child did wonders for me as an adult.

I’ve learned…. That life is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer it gets to the end, the faster it goes.

I’ve learned…. That we should be glad God doesn’t give us everything we ask for.

I’ve learned…. That money doesn’t buy class.

I’ve learned…. That it’s those small daily happenings that make life so spectacular.

I’ve learned… That under everyone’s hard shell is someone who wants to be appreciated and loved.

I’ve learned…. That the Lord didn’t do it all in one day. What makes me think I can?

I’ve learned…. That when you plan to get even with someone, you are only letting that person continue to hurt you.

I’ve learned…. That love, not time, heals all wounds.

I’ve learned…. That the easiest way for me to grow as a person is to surround myself with people smarter than I am.

I’ve learned…. That everyone you meet deserves to be greeted with a smile.

I’ve learned…. That there’s nothing sweeter than sleeping with your babies and feeling their breath on your cheeks.

I’ve learned…. That no one is perfect until you fall in love with them.

I’ve learned…. That life is tough, but I’m tougher.

I’ve learned…. That opportunities are never lost; someone will take the ones you miss.

I’ve learned…. That when you harbor bitterness, happiness will dock elsewhere.

I’ve learned…. That I wish I could have told my Dad that I love him one more time before he passed away.

I’ve learned…. That one should keep his words both soft and tender, because tomorrow he may have to eat them.

I’ve learned…. That a smile is an inexpensive way to improve your looks.

I’ve learned…. That I can’t choose how I feel, but I can choose what I do about it.

I’ve learned…. That when your newly born grandchild holds your little finger in his little fist, that you’re hooked for life.

I’ve learned…. That everyone wants to live on top of the mountain, but all the happiness and growth occurs while you’re climbing it.

I’ve learned … That it is best to give advice in only two circumstances; when it is requested and when it is a life threatening situation.

I’ve learned…. That the less time I have to work with, the more things I get done.

Enjoying the Ride

2011-10-21T08:31:00.011-04:00

My sister emailed me a few photos of my other niece Ellie, who loves wearing her 'Gangsta' Halloween costume around the house. Ellie and I spoke on the phone and she kept mentioning the gold tooth she gets to wear.

My sister commented, "Not the most feminine..... And I'm not letting her wear the tooth right now."

For some reason this reminded me of a friend in California who enjoyed wearing mullets and 'hillbilly teeth' to trade shows. (A key part of his sales strategy when he talked to buyers!)

Another friend of mine in California (who is a wife, and a mom, and a sales director at a well known national magazine) still enjoys making phoney phone calls, and 'keeps that lovin' feeling alive' with her husband by frequently hiding sex toys in his briefcase.

The thing is, whether you're the 1% or the 99%, life isn't fair, has its share of ups and downs, and certainly can be painful and difficult.

Prioritizing laughter and having fun - every day - is an essential component of enjoying the ride, where ever you are.

Happy Friday everyone.

If You Let Me Play

2011-10-19T21:56:00.010-04:00

My niece Katy, who's 11, and the tallest one in orange in the photo, sent me an email last week telling me she was excited I was coming to Florida to visit, and " I want to talk to you about sports (and I have a lot to say!)"

Tonight Katy called to tell me that she made the traveling volleyball club team. We spoke for a good 15 minutes about volleyball, also other sports, and what she's enjoying most. It was absolutely wonderful to hear how excited she was about everything.

A couple weeks ago I was on jury duty and sat in a judges' chamber in downtown Brooklyn for two days during the Voir Dire process as attorneys questioned potential candidates to serve on a criminal case about a young man who allegedly stabbed his girlfriend. It took a two full days to select jurors as so many candidates were dismissed due to personal experience with crime (ranging from mugging, rape, assault, domestic violence, murder). I didn't get selected, though left feeling incredibly humbled by all that I heard.

Katy's excitement tonight made me smile and think that the world is ahead of her, and Thank God for that.

The classic Nike campaign "If You Let Me Play Sports" came to mind too....

Camp Mashomack

2011-10-11T08:16:00.033-04:00

There are some people in life, and places, that you you meet and instantly love.

In August I had visited Mashomack Preserve on Shelter Island for the first time, part of a field trip for work. I had that sense inside of when you run smack into the familiar longings of your heart, and know, God willing, you'll be back - and often.

Last weekend a group of us went back out to Mashomack to stay during an impossibly lovely 80 degree blue sky October weekend.

Where your breathing slows down to nature's pace, the perfect pace.

Though I enjoy writing, words pale against the feeling of crunching through the woods during hikes.

Waking to Canadian Geese honking "Good morning! Good morning!"

Listening to waves lap against stony beaches.

The joy of suddenly seeing an osprey nest, and then a hawk, soaring.

How everything looks better by water.

When there, I'm suddenly 11 year old Sam Beaver from "The Trumpet of the Swan", sitting quietly on a log in the wilds of Canada, observing and also participating in the full chorus and drama and beauty of nature.

"All of us have, in our veins, the exact percentage of salt that exists in the ocean...

We have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears.

We are tied to the ocean."

- John F. Kennedy

King of the Crazy Ones

2011-10-06T19:57:00.009-04:00

Whether you've been a "Mac" your whole computing life (I was a PC for 5 days only this June before my new job sorted that situation out) or you have been touched by the sheer impact of Steve Job's influence, which went far, far beyond business, brands and advertising, the whole world seemed to be mourning today.

Adweek's video tribute helps to explain why:

"Crazy Ones," the iconic Apple commercial by TBWA\Chiat\Day from the "Think different" campaign of the late 1990s, was always, in a way, about Steve Jobs. Voiced by Richard Dreyfuss, it celebrated "the rebels, the troublemakers, the ones who see things differently" and would therefore change the world. The images showed everyone from John Lennon to Gandhi, but the inference was that Apple's visionary leader was one these remarkable souls. We've now added him to the end of the "Crazy Ones" spot—a place he rightfully earned, even if he would never have come right out and said so. Jobs died Wednesday at age 56.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

2011-10-05T23:43:00.009-04:00

From Steve Job's commencement address to the Stanford University graduating class of 2005:

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

Learning How to Protect the Planet

2011-09-27T07:38:00.032-04:00

It felt a bit like the Griswalds in "Nature Vacation" last Friday, as our New York office went on a hike in the rain. Though the forecast did call for heavy rain showers, we had planned the date for a while, and, as our NY director pointed out, "Well we are the Nature Conservancy."

We went to Mianus Gorge, about an hour north of the city, and the original "place" protected by The Nature Conservancy, by some inspired Westchester residents who banded together, 60 years ago.

While there we learned about trees from foresters Bill and Tom (below), our finance guy, whose 'day job' is looking at conservation deals but taught us all a lot about the trees around us.

Saw some critters...

Mr. and Mrs. Frog

A salamander in full fall fashion

And lots of earthworms, which we discussed as being "invasive species", likely from Asia originally.

The beauty of nature, a sense of timelessness...and that intangible ability that nature has to balance and restore you, and slow you to 'nature's pace'. (Which is far far better than the pace most of us experience)

Some damage from Hurricane Irene last month.

The intrepid crew!

Every day I feel like I'm learning something completely new. And sometimes while the volume of information can be daunting at times, there's a sense of wonder and amazement about this wonderful planet we call home, that we rely on not just for beauty and restoration, but for critical life elements such as water, food and the air we breathe.

Yesterday I was at a global task force meeting with several members of our board of trustees, many who are seasoned business leaders from finance and consulting industries. Listening to them speak about how they personally got interested in conservation was inspiring and you almost saw the kid inside, that never stops learning.

Last night NBC Nightly News aired a wonderful segment about an educational program of ours called L.E.A.F. that helps to grow the next generation of conservation leaders. CBS Early Show aired a similar segment last month.

"...And while this learning isn't happening within the walls of a classroom, it may be the best learning of all..." - Brian Williams

Please click the highlighted links above or below to watch our future.

Lake The Posts

2011-09-20T07:36:00.024-04:00

Autumn felt like it officially began last weekend with slightly crisper temperature and a certain charge in the air of things happening. I took a trip up the Hudson with two great friends from college to watch Northwestern take on Army.

I'd never been to any type of Academy game. Besides the rare site of seeing nearly 9,000 purple Wildcat fans on the East Coast (and a large organized group participating in Sailgate), the atmosphere of being at West Point was entirely new for me. Cadettes in white, parachute jumpers, and a certain level of respect and reverence all around us.

While we lost and didn't get to 'lake the posts', there's a sense of watching Army play football and realizing that due to service commitments after graduation, they're playing for the love of the game, and were really happy for the win on Saturday.

And you couldn't help but feel happy for them too.

On the way home we spoke to a couple West Point seniors, who were taking a trip to NYC to check out a couple good parties they heard were happening Columbia University (and hoping for slightly better male/female ratio than what they have at school!). One was hoping to go to med school and said he wanted to join an NGO like Greenpeace after his service duty, the other was a history major and thought law school and being a lawyer might be his path. They were bright, thoughtful, respectful, engaging and certainly "best and brightest" and "our future" came to mind when speaking to them.

I couldn't help but whisper a silent prayer for their safe return.

Yesterday, my friend Dennis shared a post on N.U. fan boards written by an Army football fan, underscoring what I thought about the weekend in terms of "class acts":

Your team & fans were total class today.

I've missed only 3 Army home games since 1994. You had the largest turnout I've ever seen for an away team.

I hope you run the table the rest of the season.

People and Places

2011-09-11T09:38:00.006-04:00

Part of honoring September 11th - and any event where you are reminded of deep and shattering loss - is being grateful for what you do have, the small pleasures of day to day life, and especially the people who you share your life with. The perspective given to you after loss of what really matters, and what you should really value most.

I loved this article by the wise and soulful Nicholas Kristof about what we as a country are also very rich in...

"....The wilderness trims our bravado and puts us in our place. Particularly in traumatic times like these, nature challenges us, revitalizes us, humbles us, exhilarates us and restores our souls. It reminds us that we are part of a larger universe, stewards rather than masters of our world..."

Looking Back

2011-09-10T07:51:00.028-04:00

I ran to the roof and snapped this picture a few weeks ago, before Labor Day, trying to quickly capture late August skies before the moment passed.

For two years now, this has been my view, and in retrospect I wished I snapped a picture daily to show a time lapse of how dramatically different the sky looks during the seasons, the range of activity in the harbor, and moving or still waters. The only constant is that gap in the sky, that I always see.

The 10 year anniversary of September 11th has triggered many emotions and memories, and so many things I personally forgot. It's also been strange to think about being back in New York, part two, the city I left partially due to not really wanting to live here anymore after the attacks.

Two of my favorite pieces, is the New York Magazine feature The Encyclopedia of 9/11 - wide and encompassing in its scope - which you can read by clicking here. The other is the 9/11 Diaries shared by my friend Andy from Fortune as he posted entries from the Street Life blog reflecting the hours and days after the September 11, 2011 tragedy, especially through the lens of how things impacted the business world. I had forgotten things like how exciting it was when the stock market opened again, and when sports resumed. Markers that life would go on after all. Please click here to read his entries.

In addition to remembering what it was like living here then, in the days and months after the attack -- how the air smelled as the buildings burned until after Thanksgiving, fear and sadness everywhere, the bars jam packed with people wanting to connect (and dull their pain), the Mayor encouraging us to shop -- I had almost forgotten who we were then: Softer, humble, compassionate, patient, giving, caring, wanting to serve.

The irony of how we become better people, after we're a bit broken.

After the storm

2011-08-28T22:44:00.012-04:00

Out for a walk this afternoon in evacuation zone A, that didn't get flooded from the Hurricane Irene storm surge the way the news had been predicting. Also, thankfully, my neighborhood had no major damage, flooding or power outages (or worse). Others up and down the coast, and of course the Bahamas, weren't nearly as fortunate.

An earthquake and a hurricane in one week, and the 10 year anniversary of September 11th around the corner has made everyone's nerves a bit more jittery than the typical lazy days of late August.

The air felt particularly fresh this afternoon, like an exhale.

The Leading Lady

2011-08-20T08:39:00.015-04:00

Last weekend I went up to the Hudson River Valley, which I hadn't visited since I moved back, but like the East End of Long Island remained in the shadowy background of my mind the entire time I lived in California.

Watching "Hamlet" at Hudson Valley Shakespeare at Boscobel, (which was amazing!), the entire experience was highlighted by the most dramatic leading lady of all, Mother Nature.

Looking out over the Hudson Highlands, before the storm rolled in, you really get the sense that things pretty much look the way they always have.

I hope they always will.

I read an article this morning in my favorite blog, Dot Earth. Most of the time Andrew Revkin explores natural resources and the environment and "how to balance human affairs with the planet's limits".

In this post, he simply goes on vacation and beautifully describes a camping trip with friends and family at Hither Hills State Park in Montauk. In "On the Merits of Parks and Bluefish" he elaborates on the value of where he was:

"...The park, like so many other state, county and local preserves and public spaces, is proof that one doesn't need a lot of money to reconnect with natural landscapes and seascapes. Even when times are tight, or perhaps especially then, it’s vital to invest in and maintain public spaces that can be utilized by all citizens, rich or poor...."

You can read the rest of the post by clicking here.

We need nature more so much more than we realize.

Enormity and the Power of One

2011-08-18T07:28:00.015-04:00

Seth Godin wrote a post once about enormity that I often think about, especially lately, working in the non-profit world, that certainly has no shortage of daunting challenges. How can one person really make a difference?

Enormity doesn't mean really enormous. It means incredibly horrible. The problem with enormity in marketing is that it doesn't work. Enormity should pull at our heartstrings, but it usually shuts us down. Show us too many sick kids, unfair imprisonments or burned bodies and you won't get a bigger donation, you'll just get averted eyes. If you've got a small, fixable problem, people will rush to help, because people like to be on the winning side, take credit and do something that worked. If you've got a generational problem, something that is going to take herculean effort and even then probably won't pan out, we're going to move on in search of something smaller.Not fair, but true.

I love how the story of Rachel Beckwith has taken on a different narrative.

Please click here for a recent Today Show episode, showing how one nine year old girl's birthday wish for clean water for others has inspired over 30,000 people from all around the world to donate, raising over $1.1 million dollars so far (!).

Summer of Sharks

2011-08-17T07:22:00.026-04:00

Three years ago today one of my best friends passed away unexpectedly. I was living in Southern California but in New York at the time, at a company picnic on the North Fork, when I heard the news.

It's that funny wrinkle of time when you blink and suddenly three years pass, you're now living back in New York 2.0, and over the course of time Dave's friends and family have figured out a way to go on with things, without him. In a way....

The posts on his facebook memorial, Blessed to Have Known Dave Freeman, are still fairly regular, often bringing a bittersweet smile, or chuckle, as friends and family mention a story or place or happening or idea that brings Dave immediately to the foreground. Sometimes the posts are about looking back, but it's often looking forward, going back to our touchstone, the person we knew with the greatest sense of adventure and perspective in him, wondering what Dave would think or say about something. What would Dave's take on it would be.

He was, for most of us, the high beam on a dark road.

Nearly 10 years ago, in the hot August of 2001, when we were both living in New York and working at the same ad agency, Dave had pronounced the summer "The Summer of Sharks" when things like PR party planner Lizzie Grubman running over someone in her SUV in the Hamptons and a couple shark attacks on kids in Florida was what was making major headlines. No one could quite see ahead that "Summer of Sharks" wouldn't last and of course we entered an era of 'real news'...

...Confusing news, upside news, news that is often overwhelming to process between wars, financial drama, earthquakes, people starving, nations running out of water, people out of work, flash mobs, unrest and uprisings...

In addition to what it's like to just miss spending time with a good friend, I think we all miss how Dave would interpret things, what he would say that would help make sense of all this to us. One of the things Dave would often say, clapping his hands impatiently was: "We're going to the future, people, are you coming??" Live in the now. Don't be afraid. Make something happen.Have an Adventure. Get fast. Keep moving. Change.

His specialty was the unapologetic kick in the pants, delivered with biting truth and humor.

While Dave now has a change of address, and in our non "Summer of Shark" times, "We're going to the future, people, are you coming??" still remains a reminder of where and where not to place our focus.

Right Time, Right Place

2011-08-12T11:21:00.018-04:00

Last night I experienced one of those right time, right place moments.

It was a lovely night, summer in the city style, and we were having dinner at Barbuto in the West Village, which is across the street from Tortilla Flats, a place that will always be etched in my mind as where I was when I first learned Princess Diana had been killed.

There were police barricades set up (which can be a common sight in New York) and we learned that President Obama would be coming by!

We saw him coming.

And we saw him going.

I have never been so close to a head of state, so it was pretty unexpected and exciting! Someone, who will remain nameless, texted me a less than enthusiastic reply when I had told him I had just seen President Obama.

So, the world is a mess, and there's no reason not to feel cynical and depressed about the state of things.

Or is there...

The day before at work I was just finishing a meeting, when the New York State Director brought in an envelope with $16 dollars that his 7 1/2 year old next door neighbor put under his door. She had a lemonade stand and wanted to give all the money she raised to The Nature Conservancy.

Then I read this Op-Ed in the Times by Nicholas Kristof about another little girl who also wanted to help make this world a better place...

Perhaps every generation of geezers since Adam and Eve has whined about young people, and today is no different. Isn’t it clear that in contrast to our glorious selves, kids these days are self-absorbed Facebook junkies just a pixel deep? No, actually that’s wrong at every level.

This has been a depressing time to watch today’s “adults,” whose talent for self-absorption and political paralysis makes it difficult to solve big problems. But many young people haven’t yet learned to be cynical. They believe, in a wonderfully earnest way, in creating a better world.

In the midst of this grim summer, my faith in humanity has been restored by the saga of Rachel Beckwith. She could teach my generation a great deal about maturity and unselfishness — even though she’s just 9 years old, or was when she died on July 23.

Rachel lived outside Seattle and early on showed a desire to give back. At age 5, she learned at school about an organization called Locks of Love, which uses hair donations to make wigs for children who have lost their own hair because of cancer or other diseases. Rachel then asked to have her long hair shorn off and sent to Locks of Love. “She said she wanted to help the cancer kids,” her mother, Samantha Paul, told me. After the haircut, Rachel announced that she would grow her hair long again and donate it again after a few years to Locks of Love. And that’s what she did.

Then when she was 8 years old, her church began raising money to build wells in Africa through an organization called charity:water. Rachel was aghast when she learned that other children had no clean water, so she asked to skip having a ninth birthday party. In lieu of presents, she asked her friends to donate $9 each to charity:water for water projects in Africa. Rachel’s ninth birthday was on June 12, and she had set up a birthday page on the charity:water Web site with a target of $300. Alas, Rachel was able to raise only $220 — which had left her just a bit disappointed.

Then, on July 20, as Rachel was riding with her family on the highway, two trucks collided and created a 13-car pileup. Rachel’s car was hit by one of the trucks, and although the rest of her family was unhurt, Rachel was left critically injured.

Church members and friends, seeking some way of showing support, began donating on Rachel’s birthday page — charitywater.org/Rachel — and donations surged past her $300 goal, and kept mounting. As family and friends gathered around Rachel’s bedside, they were able to tell her — even not knowing whether she couldn’t hear them — that she had exceeded the $47,544 that the singer Justin Bieber had raised for charity:water on his 17th birthday.

“I think she secretly had a crush on him, but she would never admit it,” her mom said. “I think she would have been ecstatic.”

When it was clear that Rachel would never regain consciousness, the family decided to remove life support. Her parents donated her hair a final time to Locks of Love, and her organs to other children. Word spread about Rachel’s last fund-raiser.

Contributions poured in, often in $9 increments, although one 5-year-old girl sent in the savings in her piggy bank of $2.27. The total donations soon topped $100,000, then $300,000. Like others, I was moved and donated. As I write this, more than $850,000 has been raised from all over the world, including donations from Africans awed by a little American girl who cared about their continent.

“What has been so inspiring about Rachel is that she has taught the adults,” said Scott Harrison, the founder of charity:water. “Adults are humbled by the unselfishness of this little girl.”

Yet this is a story not just of one girl, but of a generation of young people working creatively to make this a better world. Mr. Harrison is emblematic of these young people. Now 35, he established charity:water when he was 30, and it has taken off partly because of his mastery at social media. (He’s not as experienced in well-drilling, so the wells are actually dug by expert groups like International Rescue Committee.)

Youth activism has a long history, but this ethos of public service is on the ascendant today — and today’s kids don’t just protest against injustices, as my contemporaries did, but many are also remarkable problem-solvers.

As for Ms. Paul, she’s planning a trip on the anniversary of her daughter’s death next year to see some of the wells being drilled in Africa in her daughter’s name. “It’ll be overwhelming to see Rachel’s wells,” she said, “to see what my 9-year-old daughter has done for people all over the world, to meet the people she has touched.”

Rachel Beckwith, R.I.P., and may our generation learn from yours.

Where They Go By Water

2011-08-09T20:30:00.059-04:00

My working theory is that adults need field trips too. We need them to keep us wide eyed and creatively inspired; to spark that deep sense of wonder around what an amazing world we live in.

(Even when it can seem a bit crazy from time to time...)

I temporarily abandoned NYC office building life with power points, calls and long meetings and went on my first field trip for work, visiting our chapter in the East End of Long Island yesterday,with an educational tour of where we work.

Atlantic Double Dunes Preserve - East Hampton.

Montauk.

And then a ferry ride to Shelter Island, a place I'd never been, but always knew in my heart I would love.

We stayed overnight at the Manor House, build in 1890, located on the grounds of Mashomack Preserve. Mashomack is an amazing 2,039 acre nature preserve that's a third of the entire island with tidal creeks, mature oak woodlands, fields, freshwater marshes and home to many plant and animal species.

We spotted two rather chubby racoons crossing the road last night as we were driving in, ospray and a family of deer today and heard lots of critters last night as we slept.

This is my colleague Adrienne and Mike who runs Mashomack, and toured us around the preserve in the front of his pick up truck. Mike has been living on the preserve for 31 years. As you can imagine, he has some good stories!

Shelter Island was established in the 1600's and originally inhabited by the Manhansets, Native Americans who were part of the wide-spread Algonquin culture. It's located between the North and South Fork of Long Island, and is surrounded by Shelter Island Sound and Gardiners Bay.

It's only 100 miles from New York City, but feels a world away.

Mashomack means "Where they go by water."

It is a very special place.