Josh

New Bryant Park in Motion Videos

2010-03-10T15:03:37Z

Bryant Park in Motion with Kids and Family: An amazing coincidence that a family of five happened by the piece while I was taping. All five, but especially the three kids, are fascinated by it, peer in it, and enjoy it.
Kids and Family Viewing Bryant Park in Motion: Just the kids and family from the previous video.
Two Men Viewing Bryant Park in Motion: An officer and subway rider look at the piece and discuss it with each other and the booth attendant.
MTA Arts for Transit Page on Bryant Park in Motion.

Public Art

2010-03-02T22:05:10Z

My first big public art piece is up: Bryant Park in Motion, co-created with four students -- Brett Murphy, Igal Nassima, Eyal Ohana, and Molly Schwartz -- at the NYU Tisch School of the Arts Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), supported by MTA Arts for Transit and Submedia. The piece was created at no cost to the MTA.

BPIM will be on display March 2010 at the base of the northeast entrance/exit stairs to the 42nd St Bryant Park subway station. The works consist of animations activated by viewers motion past the display, recalling zoetropes, early animation devices, and the MTA's own Masstransiscope. As with Summ Kunce's nearby permanent installation, Under Bryant Park, also commissioned by MTA Arts for Transit, each animation is inspired by a facet of Bryant Park as imagined by the artists. The images portray the park from below the surface to above the skyline; from nature to fashion, recreation, and the famed carousel; from season to season; and from concrete to abstract, always inviting the viewer to participate, wonder, and play.

After almost two years of preparation, a lot had to happen in the last minute in a blizzard. Besides their creative work, each student contributed some critical element without which the project couldn't have been completed.

If you're near Manhattan, take a look, invite your friends. If you need help finding it, let me know. Here are installation pictures, an initial video, and Arts for Transit's page for it. Note: The beauty and the challenge of the medium is that it's impossible to capture how cool it looks except in person, so online representations don't show the real thing.

Food

2010-02-09T22:18:12Z

A few years ago I stopped eating partially hydrogenated vegetable oil and high fructose corn syrup. I learned more than I expected from it. The change affected more than my eating habits.

I didn't know how healthy they were, nor did I care, since I eat plenty of unhealthy food. The issue was not that partially hydrogenated vegetable oil is bad for you. Lots of things are. Nor was it learning that food manufacturers tested it and knew it was worse for you than regular oil.

The clincher was that the manufacturers continued to say it was better for you after knowing it was worse. Once I realize their shareholders are more important to them than the people eating their product, I realized I couldn't do business with them. Not eating those things is a social issue more than a health issue. If they do that to me, what else are they willing to do?

I expected not eating those ingredients would cut out one or two things. It turned out to cut out a lot more. Well, it seemed so for a while -- a whole aisle or two at the supermarket. Later I came to see all the products in those aisle as different manifestations of the same thing. Now I'm back to feeling like I only cut out one thing -- the PepperidgeFarmKeeblerCocaColaPepsiFritoLayPartiallyHydrogenatedHighFructoseMonoAndDiglycerideEtcEtc
thing.

I felt like this wasn't food they made for you. It's more like food they make at you. It occurred to me that only in the past few decades could the concept of food being bad for you even exist. Outside of today's world, that must have been for someone to comprehend: food being bad for you.

Redefining Possibility

2009-10-01T15:51:18Z

I've run a few marathons. In New York they publish the finishing times in the paper the next day. For some reason I would look at the later finishers to see the oldest ones. I don't know why. I guess I found it inspirational. In the ones I've run a 91 year old man and an 88 year old woman finished.

I used to tease my mom: "You could train for twenty years and still be younger than a woman who finished one I was in." At the finish of my last one, the only one she had been able to attend, overcome with emotion, she said she would train for one. The farthest she had run by then was five kilometers, ten years ago, in a fun run she came last in. I've held her to it, even as the rest of my family warned she would just injure herself. Actually, I can't say I held her to it since she's gotten totally into it on her own.

She's scheduled to run the New York Marathon November 1st. She's up to about fifteen miles in her training runs and increasing.

Since many people think marathons are about who you are rather than how much you've trained, making them think it's impossible, their training redefines possibility for them. They realize their identity is much more under their control than they thought and changing it is easier than they thought. Some people believe running a marathon is a physical impossibility, which makes their redefinition all the more profound.

Anyway, she turned 66 last month.

Update:

Yesterday was the Marathon. My stepfather and I took the subway along the route to cheer her on in multiple places: Brooklyn, First Avenue in Manhattan, Central Park East Side, then at the finish.

My favorite moment: My stepfather made a sign that said "Go Grandma Marie." When she arrived at First Avenue we started cheering for her. The people at a roof party across the street saw and, having seen us with the sign for so long, started cheering "Grandma Marie! Grandma Marie! Grandma Marie!" so loud -- from about ten floors up -- she turned and cheered them back. I can almost still hear the chant: "Grandma Marie! Grandma Marie!"

When we saw her in Central Park, around mile 24, we got more people cheering "Grandma Marie! Grandma Marie!" When we met her after the finish, she said people were asking her "Are you Grandma Marie?"

Anyway, she finished in 6:55, in 42,900th place out of 43,741 starters. At dinner she was very tired but in great spirits. I haven't found out how sore she is yet today.

Update 2:

She just emailed. Some excerpts:

THANKS for encouraging me to run this marathon. Your support was key to my finishing and I really appreciate that. I am not sure that finishing a marathon had been on my bucket list, but now that I have done it, I am glad that I did.

I hurt really a lot during the night, hard to sleep, but oddly, this morning I feel pretty good, not much more stiff than ordinary runs. You are right that after 26.2 miles, 5 miles seems ordinary.

Turns out that my physical therapist was there in the Park and saw you and Bill...and the SIGN...said that she was sure Grandma Marie was her patient. She helped another patient, who was about a mile ahead of me walk to the finish line. I emailed back that if the other patient was already a mile ahead of me, I clearly needed more help. But, in the end, I did it my way: finding what I needed to find to get across the finish line. THANKS for asking if you and Bill should come with me for that last mile. I needed to be alone; to find my own reserves.

Here is what I emailed to a couple of friends:

My marathon was HARD, and I can see if I had had a couple more LONG runs in, I would have had better times.

However, I DID finish, was not the last one, not sure about my age group.

Brooklyn was great...Bill & Josh held up a BIG sign "Go Grandma Marie" and then about 1 mile later, Penny from Amherst, MA saw me and cheered.

Then it was all down hill after that...

My "wall" was about mile 15, going across the Queensborough Bridge...very lonely and I lost those with whom I had been running.

When Bill & Josh then saw me at 73rd and 1st Ave. they were worried. However, I saw the sign, Go Grandma Marie, and a bunch of young people on the roof of a tall building across the street had, apparently, been watching the sign, so when they saw Bill & Josh get excited, they all started yelling from the roof top, and so I got some energy.

I made it into the Bronx before they closed the Willis Bridge, so I can honestly say, I ran the WHOLE THING...well, the last 8 miles were gruesome...walking, hip hurting, and then a women that I had met at the very beginning came by, and told me about the Willis Bridge, and the suggested that I really wiggle my hips, exaggerate, and so I tried that and walked...whenever I paused, muscles would seize up, so couldn't stop.

Bill & Josh saw me again just in Central Park, and later, I told Bill that I wasn't sure at that point if I could make it, and he said, he knew that even if I had to crawl, he knew that I would finish...so that was a nice vote of confidence.

I thought that the finish line would NEVER appear...at one point I snarled at a by-stander, "Where is the damn finish line?" She laughed and said, soon...

It was so dark, and once I finished, I could barely stand, and two different medics wondered if I were okay. One dialed Bill's number on her cellphone and told him where he and Josh could retrieve me.

In retrospect, I wish that I had had 4 16-mile runs and 2 18-mile runs, however, I didn't, but I did meet my goals.

Josh & Bill & I had dinner at Pomodoros' ...Italian seemed really like the right food.

Discipline

2009-06-18T18:44:25Z

On a scorching August day, running along the Hudson I passed a sign: "Runners: Free T-shirt for Interview."

I stopped and agreed to be interviewed. A sports apparel company was interviewing runners for a commercial. They had constructed a small plywood hut with the cameras inside that was air-conditioned. They had me wear a shirt over the one I had been running in to cover their competitor's logo.

The interviewer sat facing me just to the side of the camera, clipboard in hand. He perfunctorily asked questions, which I answered, not sure if I should look at him or the camera. The questions were good, along the lines of why I ran, what about it I enjoyed, how running made me feel, how I prepared for a big run, etc. He was doing his job and hardly looked up to look at me.

Until my answer to one question. He almost dropped the clipboard and did drop the unemotional tenor. He looked at me and said, "I've been asking the same questions for two days straight, hearing the same answers over and over. But your answer I haven't heard, and frankly it's the best one I've heard."

His question:

Distance runners hit a wall, maybe it's at twenty miles, maybe going up a big hill. What do you do to get past the wall?

My answer:

My life is good. It's not always easy, though. The things that are hard I don't always have control over. But getting through the challenges is what makes me who I am.

The reason I run is for the wall.

He asked me to continue so I did:

The first fifteen miles are to push myself so that at miles eighteen, nineteen, and twenty, I find out who I am. If I run ten miles I get exercise, which is nice. After fifteen miles, my legs say stop. Then my lungs. Then my mind. By mile twenty, every part of me except an inner voice says to stop. That voice is me. Everything else is secondary -- legs, lungs, other thoughts. I run to challenge myself to find that voice so I can learn who I am and be myself under whatever conditions.

I've learned to enjoy something more challenging than most of what life throws at me. Everything else is fun in comparison.

I thought that was why people ran. It's not fun like a team sport.

In any case, they were out of free shirts in my size.

Jumping for Joy

2009-06-08T17:43:37Z

By the second day of Noble Silence at last week's five-day meditation retreat, the mental static of everyday thoughts had mostly passed.

During the 9am-11am session we switched techniques from focusing on breathing to scanning the body for sensations and letting them pass. After one or two scans I found I could hardly sense anything subtler than, say, my shirt on my arm. Frustrating.

Another scan brought me back to my last retreat, a twelve-day in 2007. I realized then I was holding tension in my chest muscles and how, until released, that tension blocked my ability to sense subtle sensations near that muscle. This time my chest muscles weren't tense; my back muscles were.

Later I realized how tense my whole back, shoulders, and neck were. At this point I could only sense the tension in my back muscles around the bottom of my rib cage. Sensations from areas around the inner muscles were hidden by the tension in the outer ones.

With awareness and calm focus, I could feel the outer muscles relax. It felt great. I moved my back to experience the relaxation. That motion revealed tension higher up previously masked by tension in lower muscles. As I relaxed each higher muscle, I could sense the tension in the next set of muscles.

That session ended at 11 for lunch. After lunch I restarted in the pagoda, where I had a solitary room so quiet I could hear my own breath. I could focus better than in the group room I was in before.

I restarted at 1pm. Muscle by muscle, as I moved my attention up my back, I relaxed each next muscle up, feeling good and revealing tension in the muscles above them. Tension vanished. Flexibility increased. I could breathe unhindered. My chest opened wide. It felt like someone replaced muscles that felt like old, brittle, dry rubber bands with... I don't know, like clouds. I think I started to laugh it felt so free. As each muscle relaxed, I could feel the sensations on my skin near the muscle and within the muscle. I felt good.

I moved my attention to my shoulders and neck. The tension in my neck was harder to release, but with motion to highlight its precise location and working from the outside in, it went away. I would focus on a muscle, sense the tension, move my head or back to locate the specific muscle holding the tension, and with patience relax it and move to the next muscles.

When I left the clock said 2:15. BAM! I had sat for an hour and fifteen minutes. Longer sessions mean deeper progress, which is good.

The next group sitting was 2:30, so I only had fifteen minutes' break.

I walked -- almost bounded because of my energy -- to the path in the woods by the pagoda. No one else was there. I felt so good I had to express it. I stretched my arms out wide, like Julie Andrews on the Sound of Music poster. A straight, male version, anyway.I would have been embarrassed if anyone saw, but I had to. You have to let that out.

Then I remembered a picture of a girl I know jumping for joy on the beach. She's in a bikini, mid-jump with her arms and shoulders back, her legs back too, like she's jumping forward, and a big smile. I thought, "That's how I feel. I want to jump like that because that's how I feel." So I looked around. Nobody. Good. So I jumped like her.

I jumped for joy!

Jumping felt great. Not just because it's fun, but because it expressed exactly how I felt. And it made me feel better to do it. Feeling better made me want to jump more, which made me feel better. So I jumped a few more times in a few different ways. I could feel my heart beat stronger with the exercise.

I was jumping for joy! When had I jumped for joy before? Had I ever? How often do people jump for joy? Had I been risking going my whole life without it? When would I ever had expected the motivation to come from sitting in a dark room alone for an hour and change?

Meditating later that afternoon, I continued my pattern of finding and relaxing tense muscles, reaching increasingly inner, protected ones. I have been trying yoga for a couple months with modest progress. This meditation made something about yoga click: I was trying to stretch muscles by pushing against the resistance. This technique was different: stretch to highlight the position of the tension, then, once aware of it, mentally relax the muscle to let the tension out.

Before, when tension kept me from doing a yoga pose I would relax my form to go farther, even though I wasn't doing it right, only as best I could, evading the tension. Now I saw the point was to maintain the form to highlight the tension, hold it, and be aware of it, that being the only way to know what to release.

I left the meditation hall to do some yoga poses. It was like I was doing it for the first time with the realization that the point of the poses wasn't to challenge me, it was to reveal the tension. A couple poses I breezed past where I used to have to stop.

But now I'm getting past the jumping for joy part of the story. I could go on about awareness, discipline, focus, letting go, and other meditation stuff, but the jumping was the remarkable part this time.

(Note: less than a week later I found myself jumping for joy at a Yankees game. Maybe I do it more than I thought without realizing...)

Less, please

2009-04-12T13:57:32Z

[In response to posts on the value of books]

I used to view books like Mette and Brandon. Books reflected who I was, they added to my home, let people know more about me, were good to have for quick reference, etc. I went through an experience that changed that. It started innocently enough. I decided to get rid of only the most useless books I had. The ones I would never miss and had for no good reason in the first place. Looking at my shelves it was easy to figure out those from the ones worth keeping. Actually there were some borderline ones. I decided to be conservative so I kept all the borderline ones. I still got rid of a good portion of my books.

Some time later I found, as expected, I didn't miss any of the books I got rid of. Unexpectedly I realized that without the disposed-of books, the formerly borderline books didn't seem so worth keeping as before. I decided I had been too conservative and got rid of some of the previously borderline books. As I got rid of them I found some previous keepers were on the border. Staying conservative, I kept all the new borderline books.

Some time later I found, as expected, I didn't miss any of the books I got rid of. Unexpectedly I realized that without the disposed-of books, the formerly borderline books didn't seem so worth keeping as before. I decided I had been too conservative and got rid of some of the previously borderline books. As I got rid of them I found some previous keepers were on the border. Staying conservative, I kept all the new borderline books.

In case you didn't notice, I repeated the last paragraph. In real life I iterated several times over the course of a couple years, always selling the books to Strand. I now have a few books, mostly reference books like a dictionary, thesaurus, Strunk and White, and the Feynman Lectures on Physics.

The experience led me to many unexpected discoveries

I missed the gotten-rid-of books less than I expected, if at all
My attachments to many other things decreased from the experience
I used the library a lot more. No matter how many books I had, the library always has more
I came to understand my attachments to books, especially specific books I thought I couldn't part with
I continued to read as much as ever
My apartment has more space for other things
I found differences I had been unaware of between a physical book and the concepts the book communicates

The more important a book was to me, the more I learned about myself in letting go of my attachment to it. Which leads me to the biggest thing I learned from the experience: I had earlier viewed getting rid of books only as losing something; I now see the flip side, which is what I gained: freedom, both physical and mental.

Not that this is supposed to be deep or anything. It's the same freedom I get from letting go of attachments to anything, but books were so important to me it was a lot of freedom.

Expressions like Brandon's and Mette's, as much as I remember having them and with all due respect, would be backwards and counterproductive to my life. I understand and respect their views, of course, and I'm sure their books contribute to their lives. My father,
a history professor, continues to amass books and I recognize people look at things differently. I've just never written up this experience, and I wanted to share an alternative perspective.

Come to think of it, having heard my experience, my brother-in-law is starting to give me his books to sell to Strand too. We call the process "putting the books back into circulation."

My Cash Machine Heineken Story

2009-02-23T15:05:03Z

Friday night I was out with a few friends in the East Village. At the end of the night it was time to go home. Leaving the last bar I started walking home. One guy suggested a slice of pizza, then we could split a cab home. I didn't want to pay cab fare at all, but everyone was going so why not.

Walking in the pizza place, I noticed a couple girls at an in-store cash machine with one of those giant keg-shaped cans of Heineken. After a few moments at the counter ordering pizzas I happened to glance toward the ATM. The girls were gone and there was a $20 bill sitting in the machine!

I picked up the bill and showed it to my friend, "Check it out, free $20!" My rule is if I find something identifiable, I should try to return it, but cash I can keep. Then I realized I could identify the girls by that giant Heineken can.

I walked out and saw them and that beer can down the block a ways. By the time I caught up with them, they had walked up a couple steps to their building and were about to walk in.

I tapped one on the shoulder, they turned, and I said "Hey, were you in the pizza shop just now?"

Before describing the interaction, I should mention I will occasionally talk to someone on the street I don't know and would say they generally react positively. My friend Sebastian pointed out that if you approached someone to return a wallet they dropped, you'd expect them to be gracious and appreciative. Well, a wallet is just money. If you're a good person offering your time, shouldn't you expect the same graciousness and appreciation?

I have come to expect this gratitude and appreciation since my street interactions tend to go well. This time I took for granted I'd get it since I actually was offering them something they'd lost, though they didn't know it yet, so I was surprised to see their looks of "Who is this and why is he bothering us?". I think they thought I was trying to pick them up.

So they answered my question of if they had been in the pizza shop with a no. They were being unfriendly to a guy they'd never met trying to do them a favor.

I said "Are you sure?" They said "Yes." I asked if they were sure three more times, the last time really dragging out the "suuuurrrre" to give them every chance to say they could have been there.

After the fifth time they said they couldn't have been in the pizza shop I pulled out the twenty, showed it to them, and said loudly "Cause you left $20 in the cash machine!", turned, and left!!

As I walked away I heard "That's our money, bitch!"

"Ha!" I thought. They just told me five times it couldn't have been theirs when I was trying to do them a favor. What can I say? They convinced me it wasn't them.

I walked back the the pizza shop and said to my friend, all smiles. "The coolest thing just happened."

He said "Yeah, I know, you gave the money back," crestfallen, like it's not that great a deal to give money away. So I showed him the $20, told the story, we laughed at the expense of people acting unfriendly for no reason, and everyone's evening ended positive.

Saturday Morning Hudson River

2008-08-20T13:52:42Z

The Beginning

It began last year with a scene in Motorcycle Diaries where the lead character did something that led me to wonder if I could do the same. I mentioned my thoughts to a few friends. Only one, Dave, said let's do it. (What "it" is, I'll get to below)

We scheduled it for June 15. A trip to Rome delayed that. Rescheduling was a challenge. Thursday it seemed like there was too much left unplanned to do it this weekend. I said if we postpone we'll just be in the same state one month later. So we said Damn the torpedoes, let's do it Saturday.

The Day Of

Saturday I woke up at 8am and walked over to Dave's place. He met me downstairs. We walked down to the Hudson and up to the 39th Street ferry terminal.

We took the ferry across the Hudson to Port Imperial, New Jersey, walked north to a pier that felt about right. It was roughly across from 60th Street.

As planned, we then threw our shirts and shoes in a trash can so we were in just our shorts, climbed over a fence, into the water AND SWAM ACROSS THE HUDSON RIVER TO MANHATTAN!

Ho Lee Shit!

We swam across the fucking Hudson River.

We had no backup or plan. Getting in the water was eerie. I'd never done anything like this. Were there rules about this? Was I going to bash myself against these rocks? Would the current carry me out to sea?

People walking along the pier stopped as we climbed in to ask what we were doing. "Swimming across the Hudson, of course." "Have you done this before?" "No, we're just doing it."

We had no idea what would happen. We had no idea if it was legal. I had heard that a drowning person in panic would push an untrained person down to save himself, so we agreed each of us was on his own with the river.

Maps on the web make it look like about a mile across. We couldn't estimate the current. The air and water temperatures were perfect. The web said the city declared the water safe for human recreation and, in fact, sponsors swims in the Hudson (though never across).

It took about an hour of swimming. Dave neglected to tell me until afterward that he had experience in open water swimming, when I realized in retrospect his swimming form looked remarkably good. The current took us a mile downstream.

Not many boats went by while we swam, although a giant Norwegian Cruise boat had been tugged in while we were on the ferry to Jersey. If we were in the water when that thing went by, no one would have noticed it totally destroying us. The only boat that went close enough to interact with us, not counting wakes that hit us, was a guy on a kayak with an outrigger. Boy was he confused to see us. Dave yelled out to him, "Hey, have you seen our kayak? We lost it. It's big and long and blue. We paddled in from England," which didn't resolve his confusion. But it was fun for us.

Dave had gotten two waterproof disposable cameras so we were taking pictures the whole time (I'll probably post them somewhere sometime). We took a picture of the kayak guy. Before us he probably felt special as the smallest boat out there.

We reached Manhattan about 40th Street, at the end of a pier where the Circle Line docks. People saw us and started gathering around. We couldn't talk to them because we were on a ledge under the pier and they were over it. I cut myself a few times climbing on the concrete and Dave slipped and almost fell from the slippery moss on the concrete. We walked to the land end of the pier and climbed up the rock wall to the main landing.

People reacted extremely positively to these two guys woo-hooing and high fiving each other. They couldn't believe we did it -- even the people who saw us swim in and climb up. Amazing: They didn't believe their own eyes! We got a couple beers and celebrated by cheering, telling interested people about what we did, and answering their questions: Why? How long did it take? Is it polluted? Was it hard? How far is it? etc.

Our adventure wasn't over. We had to walk from 40th Street back to the Village barefoot and shirtless. The one bar we stopped in wouldn't serve us, dammit. My worst injuries are the sore and cut bottoms of my feet from walking city streets and hot asphalt and a sunburn.

We showered, dropped off the cameras to develop the pictures, and went for lunch around 1:30pm. Eventually we went to a rooftop party in the East Village.

Let me tell you, risking your life in a barely-considered, crazy way makes for a great story at a party. The answer to most questions about why we did it were "testosterone."

What I Learned

The two main realizations came when getting in the water and about three quarters of the way across.

Getting in the water it became real. I could easily have done everything up to there on my own. Having Dave helped a lot to actually do it.

Three quarters of the way across I was very tired, realized my plan had a problem, and had a face-to-face-with-myself moment. In particular, since I hadn't swum in years but am nearly in marathon running condition, I figured if I got tired, I could just tread water until my strength was back. But at that point I realized not only was I more tired than I expected, the current was fast enough that if I treaded water too long I could miss Manhattan and end up in the Atlantic.

If you get tired running, you can just sit down and someone can help you. If you get tired in the middle of the Hudson, no one is going to walk past. If I ran out of energy, it could take Dave an hour to get help, by which time my body could be floating by the Statue of Liberty. So not that I was close to panicking, but it was definitely a time when I was face to face with myself. I mean, no one could take a single stroke for me so if I was going to make it it would have to be me doing every stroke.

Not that the swim was "extreme," but a lot of "extreme" things people do are actually planned and structured, which de-extremizes them. If you sky dive, for example, you're doing exactly what someone planned for you. I don't know of anyone who just decided to swim across the Hudson. Yet it's easy. Anyone can do it anytime. I think the simplicity of doing something perceived by so many to be so risky added to the positivity of everyone's responses.

I didn't talk to anyone with a good idea of how to estimate the risk, let alone to quantify it. Everyone except Dave and I thought it was too risky. They all overestimated the risks. But everyone thought it was cool. How many cool things are people not doing for no good reason?

It's so easy to plan to do or think about doing things like this and never do them. On the other hand it's as simple as anything just to do them. Life is best lived just by doing them.

Random Notes

The scene in Motorcycle Diaries that inspired this is where the main character swims across the Amazon River.
The river bottom on the New Jersey side is less that six feet deep a couple hundred yards out, but it feels WEIRD to your feet. It has the consistency of guacamole, so you don't want to touch it.
When a power boat goes by even very far away you can hear it under water as if it was next to you, which can freak you out.
Visibility in the water was about twelve inches. The water may not have been polluted, but it was definitely dirty.
Your mood is great for at least a couple days after swimming across the Hudson River.
People in New York can see two guys walking barefoot and shirtless on the street and not notice anything unusual.
When I was starting to worry about making it across I remember thinking I would never want to do this again, but as soon as I was back on land that feeling was gone. I felt like I had conquered the river.

My Note

Worried I might have underestimated the risks, and having told almost no one, including family, about the plan, I wrote the following note just before heading to Dave's in the morning (I didn't tell Dave about it until afterward):

"I'm about to go swim across the Hudson. I suppose there is a chance I'll die. It wasn't suicide if I did. I was loving life. Better to enjoy it fully than not live it how you want."

Acceptance and Celebration

2008-04-28T21:52:57Z

Who among us hasn't had to interact with a jerk at some point?

A common "virtue" is to accept that person for who he or she is. People aspire to accept what they can't change and expect frustration, disappointment, impatience, and related emotions to yield to acceptance with enough understanding.

While acceptance isn't necessarily bad, it isn't that great either. I've come to view it as a sign of complacency -- that with more work I can improve my life, but I'm not there yet. To accept something says you don't like it. If what you are accepting is, say, a person or their behavior, it shouldn't be hard to realize they don't merely "accept" themselves. They probably love themselves, as much as anyone loves him or herself, and think their behavior is great. They may have to force themselves just to accept you, whom you appreciate or even love.

I've come to see acceptance as a sign of provincial inability to see things from another's point of view, and concluding therefore one's view is right. No matter how "unacceptable" you find someone else, they think they are terrific. No matter how terrific you think you are, there is a perspective from which you are a jerk and someone would have to work to accept you.

Who are you to say they were "unacceptable" or that you are virtuous for accepting them?

Much better, in my experience, is to realize the shortcoming of your inability to see their perspective. After all, your judgment of what's acceptable or not could only make your own life worse -- hardly a virtue! To go from frustration or whatever related emotion to acceptance is only a good start. Anything you can accept you can appreciate, though you may have to look at it from such a different perspective it doesn't seem like the same thing anymore (now that's a skill!). Anything you can appreciate you can celebrate.

If anyone anywhere can celebrate something, you can too, and your life is better for it.

Get out what you put in

2008-02-12T15:05:14Z

[In response to some alumni on the Entrepreneurs' mailing list complaining the school wasn't helping alumni enough, proposing a "nuclear option" of talking to the press about it.]

If anyone thinks "we have little to lose" and that the "greatest risk is that nothing will happen anyway" of a process called a nuclear option, they should sit down and think more. If you prepare for war, you'll get it. War means loss of control (to the press, who promotes conflict), factions form, people get hurt, conflict escalates, nobody wins.

I wasn't going to participate, but people are pushing increasingly extreme viewpoints. I am concerned one or two people may decide for everyone they'll take the matter into their hands and complain to the press. Bad idea.

Honestly, I've never seen entrepreneurs complain so much in the face of so much demand. The tone of the discussion is like a bunch of people feeling entitled asking for a government handout. Instead of making things better they complain and organize a protest. Demand is supposed to mean opportunity.

YOU'RE ENTREPRENEURS! SOLVE THE PROBLEM. Meet the demand.

You want a great headline? How about this: "Columbia's B-School Alumni organized the best alumni network and helped catapult their school to the top of the rankings." Just do it! Meet the demand. Organize. BE PRODUCTIVE!

If Columbia's alumni are to be the best it will be because WE ACT the best. Not because we complain the most. Get the ball rolling and the school will fall in line. Others will help you. Frankly, I wouldn't want to work with all the complainers, either. I'd want to work with people who get the job done. If the school gets in your way, succeed anyway.

In the meantime, let's create a mailing list complainers@gsb.columbia.edu. It may get more mail than entrepreneurs@gsb.columbia.edu, but we'll get more done and we'll help the school more.