Started listening to The Ruse, a great story of corporate espionage on my runs, which should make the runs more bearable in these 30C temperatures.

“On the Move” is a beautiful blend of science and humanism. A reflection on a life lived with relentless curiosity, a love for humanity and an unwavering passion for understanding the mysteries of the mind. “On the Move” isn’t just a biography; it is a love letter to life, a journey alongside a man who lived life on his terms and taught us to see beauty in the complexities of the human mind. An excellent weekend read!

I just returned from Tokyo, and if you are travelling to the city that continues to inspire the world, I recommend getting a copy of Emergent Tokoy, Designing the Spontaneous City by Jorge Almazan (ORO Editions).

I have been reading it as I explored Tokyo and found that Tokyo, despite being a massive city – almost the entire population of Canada fits in Tokyo and its vicinity –  remains a very functional, intimate and highly enjoyable city. Walking the streets of Tokyo, you will stumble upon very small businesses occupying microspaces. I found the breath of the businesses and spaces pretty mind-boggling, and looking at an explanation, I came across a passage in Jorge Almazan’s interview in Bloomberg: 

JM: There are a number of reasons small business in Tokyo is so vibrant. A huge one that you can look at cities around the world and ask is how many flexible microspaces are available across your city. By microspaces, I mean small little nooks and crannies in the commercial or residential sectors of the city that you can do a lot of different things with and don’t need to pay a huge amount of money in rent.

This is going to sound wild to anyone who lives in the US, but for any two-story rowhouse in Tokyo, the owner can by right operate a bar, a restaurant, a boutique, a small workshop on the ground floor — even in the most residential zoned sections of the city. That means you have an incredible supply of potential microspaces. Any elderly homeowner could decide to rent out the bottom floor of their place to some young kid who wants to start a coffee shop, for example. When you look at what we call yokocho alleyways — charming, dingy alleyways that grew out of the black markets post-World War II, which are some of the most iconic and beloved sections of the city now — it’s all of these tiny little bars and restaurants just crammed into every available space.

Amazing use of microspaces! Mind-boggling to think about the hoops a business in North America has to jump through to secure a tiny itsy bit of space to use creatively in a city! So much to learn from Tokyo.

I have a fondness for photography books which almost verges on an obsession. I enjoy spending time in my off-grid cabin, where there is nothing more enjoyable than sitting down to a photobook while the outside is blanketed in snow. I love being able to look into the world in complete stillness through a photographer’s lens. Sometimes the photobook is a walk down memory lane as one looks at familiar landscapes and world events. Other times, it is a descent into the unknown, tragedy and conflict. As I started photographing, I found I knew very little about the world of photography. Reading is how I learn, so I started purchasing photo books and reading!

When I mentioned to my photographer friend Stephen that I wanted to start writing short photobook reviews, I could hear his eyes rolling (we were on the phone)! Photobook reviews? Like writing words on a page? Yeah, that’s never going to happen! And where would you do this? In your current blog? The blog you post to once or twice a year? Who are we kidding here? And where would you find the time to do this? True words were never spoken! Given my work and travel schedule, it indeed seems impossible that I would be able to find the time to write photobook reviews in any shape or form!

Let’s have some fun and take a page out of Muhammed Ali’s book and say: Impossible is nothing! My photobook library is growing, and it is time I introduced you to some incredible photographers. Plus, I haven’t commuted to work due to COVID-19 for a few weeks; I have put that time to good use!

Today I am going to start not with a photobook per se, but Linsey Addario’s memoir: “It’s What I Do: A Photographer’s Life of Love and War.” This is cheating a little bit, I know, but not to worry, I will follow up with a review of her photobook “Of War and Love.”

I came across Lynsey Addario’s work on the pages of the New York Times years ago. I remember reading a photo credit and realizing Lynsey was in Afghanistan and thinking, what the hell is she doing in Afghanistan? This was before other photojournalists arrived in Afghanistan. Addario has covered just about every major conflict and humanitarian crisis of our generation, including Iraq, Yemen, Darfur, Libya, Syria, Lebanon, South Sudan, Somalia, and Congo. “It’s What I Do” chronicles her personal and professional life as a photojournalist coming of age in the post-9/11 world. To get a feel for the breadth of her work, take a look at her editorial prints.

Lynsey Addario began her photography career for the Buenos Aires Herald in Argentina in 1996 without any previous photography experience. Today, Addario is one of America’s most accomplished conflict photographer. She does not just photograph wars, but the world’s injustices, conflicts, displacements and oppressions. Everywhere she goes, she bears witness, constantly making the decision not to stay home and travel to cover the stories that need to be told. Being behind the viewfinder is where she wants to be, and in those moments, nothing else matters. In her book, we follow along in her journey.

Addario has won a Pulitzer Prize and a MacArthur fellowship; she has been named one of the five most influential photographers of the last twenty-five years (American Photo) and one of 150 Women Who Shake the World (Newsweek).

Following her kidnapping in Libya in 2011 and the subsequent deaths of her friends and colleagues Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros in Libya, Addario decided to process her kidnapping and survival experience by writing a memoir. Addario’s memoirs take us along as a driver-side passenger while she is covering difficult assignments. I was struck by her openness to talk about her fears, being a woman in a male-dominated field, her dubious choices in love, loss and her unwavering desire to get her stories out.

Addario grew up in a family of hairdressers in what she describes as a hippie home. She was a self-taught photographer who started her photography career when she moved to Argentina after college. Her first break was an assignment from the Associated Press to photograph transgender-prostitutes in the Meatpacking District in 1999 amidst a spate of ignored homicides. This was her first long-term assignment and her first opportunity for a real photo-essay. In true Addario style, she spent weeks venturing out in the Meatpacking District “to make inroads into the seemingly impenetrable world of transgender prostitutes.” She travelled with a local organization that distributed condoms and information on sexually transmitted diseases and never took out her camera! Getting close to her subjects required earning their trust. 

In 2000 she travelled to Afghanistan to photograph women living under the Taliban. Not only did she manage to land a visa to Afghanistan, but she also photographed people while photography was banned!

Post 9/11 brought on a series of assignments, including Iraq, South Korea, Haiti, the Middle East, Syria, Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo.

As Addario, herself mentions, her type of photography “bears witness to history, and influences policy.” Throughout her career, she has given a voice to the voiceless and has been a champion of forgotten conflicts. Anywhere she goes, there is a story aching to get out and policies worth championing. Her book, in its frankness and emotional honesty engages and moves the reader: if getting these photographs is worth the risks that Addario and her colleagues take daily, it behooves us to look. And understand the conflicts around us. And influence policy. And drive change.

Pick up her biography anywhere you usually get your books. You will not be disappointed. It is beautifully written, emotional, and will nudge you out of your comfort zone to leave you with a better understanding of our world conflicts and a desire to change things.

If you would like to learn a bit more about Lyndsey Addario, I would suggest the following videos and interviews. These segments are wonderful companions to the book:

1. Rukmini Callimachi, New York Times foreign correspondent and three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, moderates a conversation with Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times photojournalist and best-selling author Lynsey Addario: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wo2XVvbK7FQ
2. From the front lines of Libya: https://www.marieclaire.com/politics/news/a6193/photojournalist-lynsey-addario/
3. Lindsay Addario tells the story behind five war photos:https://newrepublic.com/article/120983/lynsey-addarios-its-what-i-do-and-stories-behind-5-photos
4. Lynsey Addario: ‘War journalists are not all addicted to adrenaline. It’s a calling’ https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/apr/05/lynsey-addario-war-journalist-interview-its-what-i-do
5. Inside the Story: Photojournalist Lynsey Addario Documents Three Families’ Search for Asylum

Steven Yang quit his job at Google in the summer of 2011 to build the products he felt the world needed: a line of reasonably priced accessories that would be better than the ones you could buy from Apple and other big-name brands. These accessories — batteries, cables, chargers — would solve our most persistent gadget problem by letting us stay powered on at all times. There were just a few problems: Yang knew nothing about starting a company, building consumer electronics, or selling products.
[Read on]

In 1968, Sedaris’s parents had just moved to Raleigh, N.C., and were eating at an oyster bar when the news came that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had been killed. Everyone in the restaurant — except the Sedarises — burst into applause. “Our family hadn’t been in the South very long, and that was a real eye-opener.”

A collection of twenty-one personal essays on approaching middle age by David Sedaris. It is engaging, cruel, humorous and witty. All at the same time.

I am happy that the first book in my reading adventure is Insomniac City by Bill Hayes. A page turner that I finished reading at the cabin in a single sitting.

Insomniac City is:
A celebration of love, life and loss.
A love letter to New York City.
A love letter to Oliver Sacks.

After the death of his partner of sixteen years, Bill Hayes leaves San Francisco and moves to New York. Bill Hayes is a writer, photographer and insomniac. Seeking a fresh start in New York, he is rewarded by a city that never sleeps.

Hayes writes:
“If New York were a patient, it would be diagnosed with agrypnia excitata, a rare genetic condition characterized by insomnia, nervous energy, constant twitching, and dream enactment – an apt description of a city that never sleeps, a place where once comes to reinvent himself.

And reinvent himself, he did. He fell in love with New York City and then Oliver Sacks. Yes, the Dr. Oliver Sacks (I am a life long admirer!). Alongside the portrait of New York, Hayes paints a portrait of Oliver Sacks. We catch glimpses of his daily life: he writes with a fountain pen and has never used a mobile device. Has never emailed or texted (how is that possible!). He calls Hayes’ iPhone a “communicator”, he has no clue who Michael Jackson was and carries the periodic table in his wallet.

Told through notes and journal entries, Insomniac City is a book that you will devour in a single sitting. But perhaps you should press pause, and prolong your reading adventure.

Haywes writes:
I suppose it’s a cliché to say you’re glad to be alive, that life is short, but to say you’re glad to be not dead requires a specific intimacy with loss that comes only with age or deep experience. One has to know not simply what dying is like, but to know death itself, in all its absoluteness.

After all, there are many ways to die — peacefully, violently, suddenly, slowly, happily, unhappily, too soon. But to be dead — one either is or isn’t.

The same cannot be said of aliveness, of which there are countless degrees. One can be alive but half-asleep or half-noticing as the years fly, no matter how fully oxygenated the blood and brain or how steadily the heart beats. Fortunately, this is a reversible condition. One can learn to be alert to the extraordinary and press pause — to memorize moments of the everyday.

Good bye Dr. Oliver Sacks, we miss you!

Photograph by Bill Hayes.

My friend Tom Hobson and his partner in crime Zoe Daniels are organizing a Toronto version of Comedy Hack Day and it is happening in November. November 14 to November 15, 2015 to be exact.

This is a weekend long hackathon where you get to build a funny app, website, SaaS solution, hardware project or anything that you would like to build, provided it is funny/comedy related. As a developer you will have an entire weekend to do that, and at the end of the weekend you will get to demo your creation at a public show on Sunday night. A comedy show to be enjoyed by everyone who cares to join us!

Interested? Well, go ahead and apply to participate. Now.

If you have any excuse that you would like to use to avoid joining us, let me tell you this: your excuses SUCK! So join us. You will have a blast. And you will meet some awesome new friends. You have questions? Well Zoe and Tom are a friendly bunch, so go ahead and ask them anything!

If you are curious about what happened at other Comedy Hack Days, well check out LA, NYC, SF and everything you need to know about Comedy Hack Day Toronto can be found here, and here is how it is shaping up:

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 14 – MEET + GREET + START HACKIN’

• Location: HackerYou – 483 Queen St. West, Toronto
• 6:30PM: Doors open
• 7:00PM: Idea pitching
• 8:00PM: Team formation
• 8:30PM: Hacking begins
• 11:00PM: HackerYou closes

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 15 – HACK DAY ALL DAY

• Location: HackerYou – 483 Queen St. West, Toronto
• 9:30AM: Doors open
• 12:30PM: Lunch
• 4:00PM: Projects due
• 4:30PM: Internal demos
• 6:00PM: Dinner for participants
• 8:30PM: Doors open for public show
• 9:00PM: Public show starts
• 10:15PM: Awards announced
• 10:30PM: Afterparty (location TBD)

Apply to participate in the hackathon.

Purchase a ticket to see the comedy show and view everything that has been built during the hackathon.

And did I forget to mention the awesome judges? Check out this judges line up! See you in November!

The 4am Panic is achieved when the work I need to complete exceeds my mental capacity to consider it. Something annoyingly biologically chemical is triggered at 4am where apparently I must uselessly consider all of my current work on my plate for no productive reason at all. Just stare at the ceiling and fret until I fall back to sleep.

In my case I don’t actually fall back to sleep and simply head to the office at 5 am. Starring at the ceiling while watching my entire to do list scroll by is pretty maddening. I am an internal optimist who REALLY needs to learn to delegate.