A timely end to a long week. Or two or ten. And an even more timely reminder:
“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.”
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 – 1832)
Right. Haven’t been doing enough of that. And ready for the reminder. Next week…
A whirlwind return to the Big Apple to start packing up and moving on… With only a couple of weeks remaining before the closing, it’s time to make our home a movable nest for a while. Congratulations to Nikki Field, our excellent real estate agent, for finding the perfect buyer and for donating a portion of her commission to Hamilton College. It’s been a pleasure working with her and her assistant over the last year. Looking forward, we’re lining up a moving company to schlep our belongings north to our still-not-complete new home on Lake Champlain. Per the recommendation of our real estate agency, we’re leaning towards Padded Wagon. Seems like life has involved an awful lot of moving companies over my last decade or so. Time to settle down and stay put for a while. Until the wanderlust returns, at least… We’ve also been running some “furnishing errands” including hunting for rugs. And gobbling up sushi which is considerably less abundant in the North Country. Enjoying our final time in this beautiful apartment, but feeling very confident that the move is a great decision. I’ll update you once we’ve handed over the keys.
Drip, drip, drip,… Three days in and ten days to go. Feels like the forty days and forty nights. Sort of. Or that Ray Bradbury story where everyone’s going dipsy from the incessant rain on some far flung planet.
Headed out for dinner last night at Turtle Island in neighboring Willsboro, NY. Headed up the 2+ mile dirt drive way through the soggy woods. New leaves so green they were vibrating in the mist. Near the end of the road we approached the last of three ponds where we’ve been staging a turf war with a family of beavers for weeks. At least three times in the last week I’ve had to dismantle the dam he’s attempting to build across the road. And each time the beavers have rebuilt the dam, and attempt to annex the driveway as part of their swelling habitat. As I approached last night, I realized that they’d finally succeeded in building the damn about eighteen inches high all the way across the road. I stopped at the edge of the flooded section. A medium sized beaver was a couple of feet from us, clearly annoyed that we were going to dismantle his work once more. Even once he retreated several yards he swam back and forth menacingly. We pushed through the dam and headed on to dinner. Upon returning later in the evening he’d already rebuilt the area we’d breached. I had to accelerate enough to get my little four wheel drive Subaru to punch through once more. We drove through more than a foot of water!
This morning I snapped this photo of a resolute fisherman trolling along the Vermont shoreline undaunted by the rain, cold and fog. Slowly motoring along, almost imperceptibly. I was Skype-ing with a friend in Taipei, catching up on adventures and scheming an exciting and long overdue collaboration. I’ve been daydreaming ever since abbreviating the call to snap the pic, daydreaming about the quirky creations we’ll compose. I hope…
It’s Mother’s Day today, time to wish mine well for birthing me thirty four years ago. After all, I am sort of the one who “made her a mother” as first born, right? We’ll see what she thinks about that!
Aaahhh yes… This was too good to pass up. I’m going to pass along a Talk to the Newsroom snippet from New York Times Executive Editor, Bill Keller’s response to a reader’s complaint about badly written news leads. Read. And then re-read. And then print it, pin it up next to your desk and read it again every day. Am I speaking to myself? Perhaps.
Q. The colorful lead is the bane (or at least one of the banes) of my time spent with The Times. So often, I have tried quickly to get the gist of a story (this happens in the Sports section more often than in the news sections) only to find that I must read something like ‘it was a dark and dreary night’ before finding the point, or the score, or even a notion of what the article is about.
Whatever happened to the inviolate rule that a lead was 35 words or fewer, telling us where, why, what or who? (Peter C. Boulay, Bronx, N.Y.)
A. As the sun blazed above the snow-lacquered peaks of the Hindu Kush, the weary editor flipped down his clip-on sunglasses and booted up his laptop.
It had been a long week, a soul-sapping, disorienting and yet strangely satisfying week.
Past the simple campsite where he awaited his digital connection to the modern world flowed all the human mystery of the East: the women shrouded in burqas of azure, or possibly cerulean, he was not too good on blues; the camel-borne warlords draped with belts of bullets; the shoeless boys in filthy ‘I Heart New York’ T-shirts; and all the rest, all separated by semicolons and swaddled in colorful clichés.
The computer flickered to life. The keys clicked. (Bill Keller, New York Times Executive Editor, Bill Keller)
What a nice surprise to receive an email forward from my mother letting me know that an article had been written about this wonderful woman. Since I was a child Sally Johnson’s home/property restoration projects have inspired me while significantly polishing up the wonderful town on Essex, NY. I encourage you to read this article: Woman finds joy reconstructing homes, history.
Hmmm… Survey says, “Strange but intriguing!” But who believes surveys, especially when they are fictional rhetorical devices dreamed up extemporaneously by your present tour guide? I say, check for yourself if you have a couple of moments to let the video load. It’s a little slow, so don’t bother to watch it the first time as it’s loading. Turn the volume down/off and get back to whatever you were working on in another window. Then, when you remember that you’ve loaded the short, return to Elvis D’Silva’s video and hit play.
So how’s everybody coming on the NATO Phonetic Alphabet? Next time you book your airline tickets, read your confirmation code back to the attendant employing this new tool and she just may be so impressed she’ll give you your tickets for free. Maybe…
Just returned to the North Country after a couple of groovy skiing escapes. First a short week at Stratton in Vermont for the Philips US Open 2004 with my brother, and my buddy who works for Burton. He had volunteered us for the banner crew which meant we helped prepare all of the marketing banners, signs, etc. for the competition each day. And we skied. And skied and skied. We received plenty of fresh snow, and we threw ourselves into it like it was the last chance of the season. And it almost was. Except…
The following week I headed off to Whistler Blackcomb in British Columbia with MHD for another short week of skiing. Spring conditions the first couple of days, but amazing snow since it had dumped just before our arrival. Then some base rain which was snow on the mountain. Skied the hell out of both hills including both glaciers. Visibility wasn’t always so great, and the bottoms of both mountains tended to mashed potatoes, but everything else was amazing. And hardly no lift lines since we went the week after most spring breaks. Then a stop-off in Chicago for several days to take a seminar on e-publishing at the University of Chicago. Also a chance to catch up with a couple of old high school buddies which was great fun. Then back to NYC and a long drive back to the Adirondacks where spring is arriving ahead of schedule.
When it rains it pours. A month and a half of drought; then a deluge. That’s life! Yes, I’m back sooner than expected with a couple of collectibles that I couldn’t let slip through my fingers without passing them along. And knowing where they’d be when I came looking for them later.
First off, is it late? Are you tired? Are your eyes pretty well shot from looking at the screen for too long. Then check this out. Optical illusion to dazzle and dizzify you… And before I let you slip into total disorientation, here’s another handy tool to have up your sleeve, the NATO Phonetic Alphabet.
Do you know them all? Give it a try: Alpha Bravo Charlie Delta Echo Foxtrot Golf Hotel India Juliet Kilo Lima Mike November Oscar Papa Quebec Romeo Sierra Tango Uniform Victor Whiskey X-ray Yankee Zulu Now test yourself. Spell your name. Or spell your address… Good night.
Would you, could you, should you believe it? It’s true. Life’s been happening, oh-so-happening, and I’ve scarcely grazed the surface in my blog. The adventurous will know better, but for you, the sedate, the loyal, the unadventurous, I’ll apply the digits to the keyboard for an instant. No updates. Just a slap-dash drop-in zinger of the here and now.
So to start, how about taking the load off your shoulders and slipping into your ballet slippers for a little shuffle around your desk. Here’s a song and video to inspire the uninspired.
Now that you’ve restored your levity quotient, on to other tidy news-bits. Watched “About Schmidt” two nights ago. Ugh and wow, at once. Downer. And so clever about it. Great work. I highly recommend.
And then, even more delightful, in a different strain altogether and with a far more memorable soundtrack is Bernardo Bertolucci’s “The Dreamers” which will pull you out of your stupor and dazzle you with Parisian psychedelics of a sometimes racy, sometimes quaint, mostly lucid and totally engaging variety. It’s been released NC-17, a tolerable compromise to not cutting the original film. Also check out www.the-dreamers.com which dishes up a cool multi-media digital story complete with creative click navigation.
Also recently picked up Augusten Burroughs’ Running with Scissors: A Memoir. I’d read Sellevision on the suggestion of a friend, a check-in on what young authors are writing and selling. Tripe, I thought at first, but gradually yielded to the entertaining, irreverent prose. A gas! Enough to propel me to purchase Running with Scissors: A Memoir, optimistic that this earlier work will be as engaging. His characters in the novel are all caricatures, and his memoir seems to do the same, despite its apparent status as non-fiction. Verdict’s still out. Thoughts?
Auction time. Ever used voice recognition software? It’s amazing. Quite simply it revolutionizes the way we interact with out machines, folks. You’ll want to try it. Soon. I’ve just upgraded my Dragon Naturally Speaking software, so I’m passing my previous version (v2.02) along to some lucky eBayer. Interested? Going cheap. No reserve. I’ve done a week-long auction during Christmas, probably not the smartest of all possible times to list. But I didn’t really think about it before putting it up. Have so much to offload after my relocation from Paris back to the US… Just starting to motivate to Yard Sale another big batch once Christmas holidays are past. For now, it’s Christmas eve, and I think I’ll wrap this up and head off to enjoy myself. Merry Christmas to one and all.
