Letter From New York May 30, 2012

May 30, 2012

Or, as it seems to me…

It has been several weeks since I’ve written a letter; it’s not that thoughts haven’t crossed my mind to write about – there have been lots of those.   There is the ever-evolving political scene that leaves me fascinated as if watching a slow motion train wreck.

On the lines of politics there was a stirring sermon at Trinity Lutheran Church in Manhattan, at a service I attended largely because my friend Lionel was assisting.  [I am part of that ever growing part of the population that defines itself as spiritual but not religious BUT like many of those wish I could find myself in a community of believers with whom I felt comfortable; where I do NOT feel comfortable is within my native Roman Catholic tradition, finding the religion of my birth and upbringing ever more repulsive in its intransigence and lack of charity (my feelings)].

The assistant pastor at Trinity that day made a stirring call for all to be involved and it moved me and reminded me I must be involved, particularly this year.  While I am pleased with neither candidate I am more committed to the Democratic Party and that for which it stands.  I am a Republican who yearns for that party to return to the ideals of yesteryear rather than a party that seems to be looking to the Roman Catholics for inspiration on how to behave.

All these things have caused me to think about writing but none of them stirred me to actually write.  I have been diverted by the amount of tweeting I have been doing, enough to raise my Klout score to 42, respectable if not amazing.  I have also started work on a short story so that might have also diverted me.  There is also I a monthly column I do for one of Odyssey’s members [oh yes, a Catholic organization] on new media directions called @tombers.

But there has been more than diversion going on.  I have felt a quiet settle on me these last few weeks as spring has slipped toward summer.  Today is Memorial Day and I have been mentally paying my respects to the soldiers of former wars but with most of my thoughts on those coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan, who have been returning to a dismal job market with the shadows of traumas I can only imagine following them as they work to reintegrate back into civilian life.  I am still embarrassed that no President has asked us as a population in general to sacrifice alongside these men and women – that’s an idea we seem to have given up post World War II.  Guns and butter I think it’s called.  Better that we had a bit of rationing and sacrifice to remind us of the bigger sacrifices being made by others.

As I roll on Amtrak down the Hudson River, the waterway is wide and calm and dotted with pleasure boats out for adventure on a beautiful late spring day on the weekend that is the unofficial beginning of the summer season.  Hudson was filled to the gills this week with returning weekenders; houseguests and a herd of folks come to escape the city without the expense or pretension of the Hamptons.  I loved to see the town hum.

But here I am, writing, happy to be doing so but still unsure what the silence has been that has settled around my soul.  Intimations of mortality?  Certainly I have seen mortality a bit in the sudden death of a friend and illness of another, enough for me to think about the fact that if I ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for me.  As it does for all of us.

I’ll keep writing, when the words come.  I may start another blog based on my media musings.  That column is called @tombers so perhaps that is what I will call the blog.  But right now, this minute, I am on vacation, doing what I want to do rather than what I SHOULD do, a luxury I intend to do my best to pursue the next week as I work my way from Seattle back across the country.

 

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Letter From New York 4/16/12

April 16, 2012

Or, as it seems to me…

A little over a week ago, my beloved cousin Virginia passed away, rather suddenly, and much too quickly for all of us. She wasn’t eating much, which concerned all of us and caused us to think the end might be near but not so near. One moment she was with us; the next she was not.

Virginia was ninety when she passed away. Older than I by much, old enough to have been my parent and so it was always hard to think of her as cousin – I thought of her more as an aunt due to the age difference. Regardless of the relational nuances, Virginia was always present in my life and was a glue that held a family together. We gathered around her, to both honor her and enjoy her company.

I was asked to eulogize her; I did. I think it went well.

Last week’s Time Magazine’s lead article was about “Rethinking Heaven.” It posits that heaven is not just the celestial plane but also those things we do for each other, the kindnesses, the generosities, the graciousness and love we exhibit to one another, the concern we have for one another. Virginia manifested all of that; she was a bit of heaven on earth and she is now in heaven, surrounded by all those she loved and who loved her.

The ancient Egyptians had a phrase: To speak the name of the dead is to make them live again.

Virginia will continue to live in all of us who knew her, in our memories and we will speak of her but I exhorted my cousins, family and friends to let her also live through us, through following her example of kindness, graciousness, love and good works – to let her continue to live through us, to let us help heaven be on earth in her good name.

Hers was a life well lived.

I went from her funeral to Philadelphia, where I attended the Religious Communicators Conference. Odyssey was up for and won a number of awards at the ceremonies for both the DeRose Hinkhouse and Wilbur Awards. But I knew I was tired and had trouble getting through them. Virginia’s passing took a toll on me, physically and emotionally and it was only today that I have felt near my old energy level back, after a good night’s sleep in the little apartment in New York.

She was the last of her generation in our family and her passing brought to a close one more chapter in the book of Tombers. Now it is my generation that is at the forefront, we are next in line, in the natural way of things, to pass and our passing will close yet another chapter in the book.

Like all families we have been wrapped in our family stories and our family myths, all twined together to make a history. But that story now runs thin and I doubt the stories bind to my cousins as they did to the generation before us or to us. I doubt the story of my immigrant great-grandfather and his stern wife is much retold these days.

All the folks today are a long way from the stories that once bound us and that, too, is the way of families. With Virginia gone there is no one left who can identify the strangers in the photo albums or retell the stories of the interesting relatives who inhabit those albums.

It is the way of time. It’s the way it is. But it has filled me with a bit of sadness which is, mostly, the sense of loss of an extraordinary ordinary woman who lived an ordinary, extraordinary life, who lived long and well, who prospered and shared, who was generous with her gift of love, who had a shy warm smile and who everyday did a good deed, a natural act that came from an uncommon generosity of spirit.

Rest well, Virginia. May you inspire the rest of us.

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Letter From New York

April 2, 2012

April 2, 2012

Or, as it seems to me…

 

It is the Sunday evening of a dreary, chill weekend, when all the world seemed cold and darkened, a world in grief.  The wild portents of spring of a week or so ago have retreated; lost to the Queen of Winter who wants one more mad moment of sway over the world before she hibernates for another year.

Perhaps it is just the earth mourning for some reason.  It seems to be a time of mourning. A week ago my lunch was punctured with the news my friend Jim Marrinan had died.  That news was followed Tuesday by news that a neighbor of mine was in very bad shape and not expected to recover, followed by the news that another friend, a sweet, gentle man named Tim Smyth, was in intensive care at Bellevue Hospital in New York with no one sure what had happened to him nor whether he would “make it.”

He’d been found, alone, lying on a street in the West Village in New York.  It does not quite fit the mold for anything and so the NYPD has assigned a detective to the case; enough doesn’t add up that they think Tim may have been the victim of a mugging or, perhaps, a gay bashing. 

And so, I sit here on a Sunday evening attempting to pull together the mysteries of a week in which it seemed bad news cascaded.  I spoke to Tim’s sister who said, “You never know when the last normal day is going to be.”  And that has resonated so much with me this weekend as I have ruminated on life:  you do not ever know when the last normal day is going to be.

And yet we go on, living our lives while other lives end and are celebrated.  Jim has been put to rest with all the celebration he would have wanted, in a way consistent with his proud Irish heritage.  Tim lies in a hospital while surrounded by family and friends, waiting to see if he will be roused from the coma in which he rests.  Outside the hustle and bustle of the city goes on.  In another hospital my neighbor Rosemary lies, also hovering between here and the hereafter.

It is a reminder to me that I must live in the now and treasure my now because now cannot be taken for granted.  And as I grow older, and I do even while feeling as if inside I haven’t changed in twenty years and think I am still younger than I am because I do not, inside, feel old, I am growing older and my friends, my contemporaries, are dying of “natural causes.”  And while I still live with the illusion of immortality, I cannot any longer so exquisitely embrace that illusion and must make sure my affairs are in order and tidied up for those who will come after, so they are not burdened more than necessary in the stream of events.

It is all sobering and yet somehow comforting, this understanding that all is not infinite – finite is the normal.  Thousands of millions have come and gone and will come and go and life will go on while we are remembered after our passing by those who loved us.  The Egyptians had a phrase:  to speak the name of the dead is to make them live again.  No wonder the Pharaohs worked so hard to be remembered.  Few of us will have that resonance but all of us will be remembered and our names will be spoken by those who loved us.  And the love we give will shape those around us so that goodness and kindness will whisper down the generational trails even after names are forgotten.

God said:  go forth and multiply.  I think He meant not just in numbers but also in deeds and so may all of us go forth and multiply our good deeds so that the memories of us are carried by the winds even to those who do not know our names.

 

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Letter From New York

March 26, 2012

March 26, 2012

Or, as it seems to me…

 

It is evening at the Cottage, after a restful weekend.  I returned here Friday after two weeks “on the road,” mostly down in Austin, TX for South by Southwest, a huge Interactive, Film and Music Festival.

It started out some twenty-five years ago as a music festival and it has grown and grown until now 125,000 people descend on Austin each year for one part or all of the Festival.  My main focus was the Interactive portion though I lingered on for some of the film part.  It is, without a doubt, the most intellectually interesting conference I have ever attended – this year and last and I am already looking forward to next year.

One of the defining things about the Interactive portion is the hopefulness that underlies it, that the gift of technology is, indeed, a gift and that it will help solve, not create, problems.  In any given hour of any given day, there were at least two or three panels I wanted to attend and since I was not able to clone myself I was constantly making hard choices.  My colleague, Greg Nelson, was there with me, shooting video and producing video stories all by shooting exclusively on an iPad 2.

When we went to register the iPad, the man at the camera desk looked at us as if we were rather mad, shaking his head at was obviously a first for him – but we needed it to be official if we were going to be shooting with it so it proudly was graced with a green camera tag throughout the conference.

I learned that much this year was about “vicinity based software,” apps that told you where your friends were, where you were going to be so they could get there before you or who in the restaurant you were eating in was looking for your particular skill set.  A new browser was launched though I am not sure we really need another browser but it’s www.blekko.com if you’re interested in looking it up.  It claims to be spam free, which is a good thing.

It was a year of catching up; there were no GREAT things that sprouted this year, no huge trends except for “vicinity based” and all that noise was really refinement of what had come before – think Foursquare.  But yet there was that underlying sense of hope and that is one of the things that is so attractive about SXSW [as it is known], that the hope that springs eternal in the human heart is manifested there in the Interactive portion; the music part and the film festival – for the twelve days of SXSW Austin is a town that is infused with hope on all levels and it is good to be there, submerged in hope in a world that often doesn’t feel that way.

So I came home to the Cottage, grateful to be back in my own place of shelter, to catch up with myself, to reconnect with home and hearth.  The days have been grey but good for reflection and I was awash in the bliss of it.  I was having a lazy Sunday afternoon brunch with my friend Larry Divney when I got a call from Nick Stuart, CEO of Odyssey.

On Friday I had been in meetings with Jim Marrinan; he had been working with Odyssey as a consultant for several years and had become a friend during that time.  We were brainstorming how to approach folks for charitable giving.  He was there all day; I spent ninety minutes with him.  He left before I had a chance to say good-bye.

Saturday he arrived at LAX, suffered a heart attack and passed before he could get home.  Since hearing the news I have been overwhelmed by sadness and by the heightened sense of the fragility of life, its quick passing, the suddenness with which things can change.  A Santa Claus like figure, Jim was full of the HO HO HO and never did I hear him say an unkind word – even when he had the right to.  We met Friday morning at the coffee machine, exchanged pleasantries; he told me he had heard good things about some recent projects.  So like Jim, praise before anything.

I will miss him and am glad that life crossed our paths so I did know him; my life was richer for the moments shared.  I will miss him and use his passing to remember we are all but whispers in the wind and should be kind to each other while we can.

 

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Letter From New York, Feb 10, 2012

February 10, 2012

Or, as it seems to me….

Last week, at the Renaissance Hotel in Washington, DC, gathered the glitterati of the non-fiction film business, if the folks who work in this world could be called “glitterati.” It’s mostly a hard working crowd, the folks who produce, program, schedule, develop the hundreds of hours that fill the schedules of any cable network that shows non-fiction programming. The event is called Real Screen.

Across the ballroom where the opening party was held, sponsored by A+E Networks, David McKillop, now SVP of Programming for A+E but who, until recently, was holding the same job for History Channel where he helped resurrect that channel from ratings doldrums with the like of Ice Road Truckers and Ax Men, not to mention Pawn Stars. Success there resulted in his moving to A+E, which had reached a ratings plateau. He is one of my favorite people in the business, a man who became a friend after helping resolve conflicts with a pilot I had worked on back in the days when he was with Discovery Channel.

I went to Real Screen without much of an agenda, not really being there to sell shows but to reconnect with people and work on distribution for Odyssey Networks. I spent Monday in the joyous process of seeing people, reconnecting, spending a few minutes with Steve Burns, who until recently ran programming at Nat Geo, who good naturedly was saying he was surprised anyone was talking to him since he didn’t have a budget anymore. But he needn’t worry; lack of budgets will not decrease his overall popularity; he is at heart a filmmaker and, as such, is well respected. He began his career in the cold and snow, shooting films for National Geographic.

When I first started going to Real Screen lo those many years ago, it was a clubby little world of a few hundred, most of whom knew each other unless they were neophytes to the business and looking for ways to “break in.” It’s different now, 2000 or more crowded the hotel. No one could get into the lobby without a pass; security was tight. In the old days, the lobby was full of folks who didn’t spring for registration but got the benefits of attendance by playing lounge lizards, taking up a bar stool and waiting for the world to come to them – and it did. No more. My friend Gail Gleeson and I had to meet across the street for a simple hello. Acadiana, a southern themed restaurant close by, found itself the recipient of extra business, I’m sure.

The cable business is in full bloom. The panels underscored the health of the present by focusing exclusively on that with no forward facing discussions about digital and its impact. The present is too rich, too full right now to worry much about a pending future even though that future is out there and coming on full steam.

That the present is full and rich and seen as getting richer was evidenced by the number of agents who attended. They were there from all major players; twenty-five from CAA alone! They gave extravagant parties, courting the cable players as they would court Hollywood. Let the good times roll.

Many of the young “Turks” making digital video successful would fall into the non-fiction category but there seemed no room in the tent of Real Screen for them – or at least not much room. Hence, the very nascent International Academy of Web Television that had its first awards show at the CES. Prediction: it or someone very like it will soon begin to have a conference like this but focused solely on those who are doing web TV, of which there are many and it’s a number that is growing.

Personally, it was rich, professionally helpful but ultimately, because I am now more of a new media person than an old media person, left me wanting something more, some workshops about the differences between producing for the web and for television – or are there any? But that’s not where Real Screen is now and may be never will be but that doesn’t change that the future is changing and we’re living in a more multi-platform world than ever before.

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Letter From Las Vegas

January 12, 2012

Consumer Electronic Show 

 

Monday evening… January 9th, 2012

 

The main hall at the Venetian in Las Vegas has been filling up for the last hour; folks have waited as much as four hours for a seat to hear Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft give the keynote speech tonight.  I am thanking my lucky stars that I have press credentials – I’ve found myself in one of the front rows for a close hand look at what is going to be the last Microsoft appearance at CES – at least for awhile, probably a reasonably long while.

 

Maybe because of the CES/Microsoft rift everyone seemed a bit forced.  Gary Shapiro, CEO of CES, seemed forced, as did Ballmer, through the whole program.  Back story:  apparently CES wanted to give the Microsoft Keynote slot to someone else next year [think Google] and Microsoft simply said, well, okay, in that case, we’ll take our toys and go home – for good.

 

Onto the stage bounced the perennial pixie of television, the inestimable Ryan Seacrest, who has a business relationship with Bing, the search engine extraordinaire from Microsoft.  His job was to host the evening and he and Ballmer began extolling the virtues of the Microsoft phone – soon to be on sale in the United States.

 

My colleague, Greg Nelson, leaned over and reminded me that a couple of days ago there was a brilliant review of the Microsoft phone in the NY Times. And, indeed, there is an elegance to the phone that deserves to be looked at more closely. The phone has a people hub, bringing together all the folks in your life and social networks.  It looks elegant and may well be one of the reasons that the New York Times gave it a good review, though in one moment of the demo it didn’t work on the voice feature.  Oops!

 

It’s a very visual phone.

 

Much is being made of the partnership with Nokia, which will eventually use Microsoft to power all their smartphones.  Some of the phones will be available soon.  HTC will be offering a Microsoft smartphone with a 16-megapixel camera. That’s a wow!

 

I was impressed by what I saw but not by the way it was presented.

 

Ballmer was loud, brash, an executive turned annoying cheerleader who would have been better served by being more genuine than so forced.  I found myself not wanting the phone just because of the person presenting the phone.

 

Moving forward, they began talking about Windows.  Currently Windows 7 is powering some elegant thin notebooks, many were highlighted – Samsung, Vaio, Acer, you name it, if runs on Windows there is a thin computer.  And Windows 7 is going to, they tell us, seamlessly transition to Windows 8 when it is released later this year.

 

Enter Tami Reller, Chief Marketing Officer of Microsoft to discuss W8.  “Charms” will connect the various features of the phone.  She showed off a Samsung tablet with “Metro” style apps that will be available in the Microsoft Windows Store. They are totally throwing themselves onto the HTML 5 bandwagon and demonstrated it with an app called CUT THE ROPE.

 

“Metro” apps are, as far as I could tell, much like apps you find in the iTunes store but with their own distinctive look and, one assumes, some distinctive functionality.  What that might be, I couldn’t quite tell from the demonstration other than they moved about easily on the desktop.

 

The Microsoft Online Store will be open in February, as will more brick and mortar Microsoft stores, selling Microsoft gadgets.

 

“Semantic Zoom” is an ability to enlarge or reduce the size of apps.  There seems to be a wonderful fluidity to the technology.  Tami was absolutely breathless in her enthusiasm.

 

In what was hoped would be an entertaining way of highlighting tweets from the presentation, Microsoft had the “Tweet Choir” come out, a local Gospel Choir, belting out the tweets [all of them as breathless as Ballmer, Seacrest, Tami and everyone else].

 

It was cringe worthy.

 

Ballmer and Seacrest moved onto the Xbox. And THIS is an area that Microsoft is leading in – they are looking for Kinect to help keep them at the forefront, which is where they are.  Here Microsoft is in front of the pack with Kinect translating physical movement to computer commands.

 

They made much of their integration of voice technology.  Which, unfortunately, even if they are ahead of the pack, it seemed liked they wanted to be seen as ahead of Siri, the voice technology from Apple powering the iPhone 4s. And this is one of the major challenges of Microsoft, they might be first but does anyone believe them?

 

There is also an app for the phone that will allow the phone to be the remote; Xbox wants to be the entertainment device for the living room. They are offering programming from some major suppliers via the Xbox and it’s impressive.  Gaming mixed with Netflix. 

 

They want to be at the forefront of two-way TV.  Working with Sesame Street they have done some 2 way shows.  Very interesting and should be great fun for pre-schoolers.  More interesting was the example that allowed the viewer to then be put into the screen and I found myself smiling at that and thinking what great fun that would have been when I was five.

 

Much noise was made about how Kinect is being integrated into Windows and that is big news.  Xbox and Kinect are two things where Microsoft is genuinely breaking ground these days.

 

Ballmer went on to cars and Office and Skype and how wonderful all the things are that they are doing on these fronts but they were thrown in at the end, more afterthoughts than primary points.

 

Truly, it was not a very good last performance.  I would give it a “C.” The amount of forced enthusiasm was depressing at the end, reeking of a kind of unnecessary desperation.  Microsoft has some good things going for it but the impression left behind was not very good – I came away feeling a bit like “poor Microsoft” which was not what Ballmer wanted, I’m sure.

 

But what does this mean for those of us who use their products?  It means that Microsoft is getting tools which are very interesting, with a promising technological fluidity for which Microsoft has never been particularly known.  The Kinect technology and the Xbox potential is amazing; the early stages of development of two-way programming is amazing even though one can tell it is in its nascent moments.  Here is where I see Microsoft being able to genuine take the field and create wins against their competitors, Apple and Google.

 

It will provide programmers incredible new opportunities with great potential innovation for story telling.  It will provide new dimensions to Transmedia, the term now being used to describe the integration of storytelling across platforms.

 

If – and I think it is a big IF – the Microsoft smartphone platform catches on, app developers will have to develop for that too.  Right now iOS and Android control the smartphone world and it may be that Microsoft is too late to the game though it will be interesting to watch.

 

All of this will be interesting to watch.  This was the first big salvo for CES, which will go on for days and I’m eager to make my next foray into the future, a series Tuesday afternoon, hosted by Ericsson phones about the future of mobile.

 

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Letter From New York December 28, 2011

December 28, 2011

Or, as it seems to me…

I am sitting on a couch at the cottage, feeling like an overstuffed gnocchi. It has been several days of feasting and fun; my longest standing friend, Sarah Malone, was here with her husband Jim, their son Kevin, who generously considers me his uncle. Sarah’s sister Mary Clare was here with her husband Jim and their son Michael, who is now on his way to Rio for New Year’s. I spent last Christmas with them; this Christmas they came to me and it was restful and joyful to be surrounded by old friends with whom I have shared so much through all these years.

It’s my hope that everyone’s holidays were as goodwill filled as mine.

The sun is slowly beginning to set, a soft grey is entering the room, the Christmas tree lights sparkle while a fire burns gently in the stove. Soon we will begin cooking for the evening.

The year is ending with a soft sigh; I’m glad for that. It is lovely to begin the march toward New Year’s Eve in the gentle company of Kevin and Michelle.

I am looking forward to 2012. I’ll be attending the CES Show in Las Vegas and will be covering South By Southwest as well as being on a panel there. Hopefully, I will make a pilgrimage to Martha’s Vineyard to Jeffrey and Joyce’s as I have in the last three of four years. It’s my plan to take the Empire Builder from Portland to Chicago, one of the two most beautiful train rides in America, I’m told. I’m sure I will make a trip or two to Minneapolis and there’ll be unexpected business opportunities that will take me hither and yon.

It is a year to look forward to.

It is my hope that readers are also looking forward to 2012. Once a salesman, always a salesman and so I live in hope. But then, so do we all – live in hope. We have to or we would go quite mad I suspect, looking around the world we inhabit.

We have Syria in revolt against Assad, a restless Russia, an Iraq that appears to be splitting along sectarian lines, pirates seizing freighters, an Iran threatening to close the Straits of Hormuz, and a nuclear North Korea run by an untested 28 year old. Put it all together, it’s not a pretty picture. But it’s never been a pretty picture and yet we go on. Why? At the bottom, we live in hope, hope that if in nothing else, in our small corner of the world, we can make a world safe for ourselves, that we can do something that will better our lot and the lot of those around us.

This year, as in some years past, I did not give gifts to friends and family but made donations to causes – the Food Bank of the Hudson Valley, the USO and to a challenged family in Reading, PN so that they might have gifts for their children under the tree. It seemed a better use of resources than to search out trinkets for people with too many of them already.

Having the Malone/Eros clan here was a gift to me and I hope that Christmas communicated to them the gift they are and I hope the gifts I gave in the name of family and friends helped them know the gift they are to me. Listening to NPR one day this season, a commentator was talking about Christmas as a time to show the people we love that we loved them. I hope I did and I hope the people in your world shared their love with you.

Now we move on into the New Year and as the New Year approaches, I will focus on living in hope as it is in hope that we are all able to provide gifts to the world in which we live.

Happy New Year!

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Letter From New York November 25, 2011

November 29, 2011

Or, as it seems to me…

My birthday is just past; I was feted to a fair thee well by friends over my birthday weekend, starting on my birthday eve with Lionel and Pierre at Thai Market, followed by a Friday evening dinner at the fabulous Robert on the 9th floor of the Museum of Art and Design at Columbus Circle, with a stunning view up Broadway, to five hours of haunting the New York Antique Show with my friend Paul, who then took me to dinner, followed by Todd Broder taking me to brunch and so it went on and on and on and I admit I allowed myself to be smothered in all kinds of affection over the weekend, for which I was very grateful.

It is Thanksgiving morning and I am curled on the couch at the cottage with the sun pouring in while glistening off the creek; in the distance are the morning cries of the geese flocks that call the creek home.

These are moments of self-indulgence, of celebratory rejoicing, of placid enjoyment of the time, moments when one can shutter out the harsher realities of our world. This morning, as I perused the digital version of the New York Times, I stumbled upon an article that posits that we, as a human race, are getting nicer.

When I saw the headline, I raised my eyebrows. How, in the century of 9/11, could we think that the human race is getting “nicer”? But the writer makes a strong case that historically, we are. May it be so. If so, we should be grateful that there may be an evolutionary process happening with mankind that heralds a better age for all.

As I left a breakfast at Pershing Square yesterday, the man with whom I was meeting, paused on the street and commented on how lucky we were to have had a good breakfast in a good restaurant, talking about interesting things. Compared with 99.9% of the world, my life is absolutely magical, which I remind myself of as often as I can as and if we, as a human race, are becoming nicer, then indeed we must be grateful on this Thanksgiving.

It is a good thought; a powerful one that comes at a good time because when we look around we can find reason enough for despairing shakes of the head. Because we are so wired together we learn of every brutal hiccup in the process of the evolution heralded by Mr. Pinker in his book, “The Better Angels of Our Nature” and commented upon by the notable Nicholas Kristoph in his NY Times column today. The Thirty Years War, fought, at least partially, over religion, decimated much of what is now Germany while killing off a third of the population. As grim and stupid as the Iraq war has been, it has not affected that kind of mortality, at least to date.

Some of the thoughts ring true if stunning when thought. “Today’s conservatives are more liberal than yesterday’s liberals.” Yes, let us hope so.

On such a beautiful day, with soft jazz playing, sunlight bursting into the room, with promises of magnificent food in the hours ahead, with the great good company of my friends Larry and Alicia, it is a day to be both thankful and hopeful.

One of the dazzling aspects of human nature is that we as a race do change and against the darkness of our own acts have the capability to hope and to believe in a better future.

I am thankful today. I am hopeful today. May you all have grand and hopeful Thanksgivings as well…

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Tomorrow’s Technology Today (November 11, 2011)

November 15, 2011

Click here to download the Tomorrow’s Technology Today presentation.

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Letter From New York October 25, 2011

October 26, 2011

Or, as it seems to me…

There is a autumnal nip in the air; frost has held off but it is supposed to come this week with rumors of snow by the weekend. I’m at the cottage, enjoying a rare evening at home, floodlights lighting the creek so I can enjoy it from where I sit writing, a blaze cracking in the Franklin stove after I had stoked the coals back to life and added wood.

The leaves are turning but their color is muted; too much rain, not enough sun, something? But the vivid, vibrant hues expected of the Hudson Valley have failed to appear so far. Driving down from Albany Airport after dropping a friend there, I thought about how muted the colors were and how muted I have been the last few weeks.

It’s the first time in several weeks I’ve sat down to work on a letter. After I finished the last one, I paused. It was, after all, ten years since I had begun to write these missives, asked by Hal Eisner to describe what it was like to be in New York in those weeks and months post 9/11. Perhaps, I thought, it was time to let the Letters go – perhaps they have outlived their time and their usefulness. Some friends have encouraged me to continue writing them. Some have admonished me to do what felt “right” to me.

And that’s what I’ve been thinking about: what felt “right” to me? Don’t know yet. Do know that tonight, I wanted to sit down and work on a letter, I wanted to tap away on my laptop and see if I could organize my thoughts. And I’ve been thinking about a lot of things.

One of them is “Occupy Wall Street” which has spread into a bit of a global movement though almost everyone is casting about in the runes to figure out exactly what “Occupy (you fill in the blank)” is all about. What we do know is that it has become a political force seen by some as a counterpoint to the Tea Party. Though it doesn’t seem as quite clear-cut as that. While I haven’t studied it deeply, it seems there are some things they have in common.

But then the question to me is this: why haven’t I studied them that carefully? Partly it’s because I have been sunk deep into the new media world, prepping several speeches on new technologies and tweeting like mad on the digital world.

But tweeting and the letters serve different purposes and satisfy different things in my soul. The letter gives me a chance to sort the world out a bit while the tweets are a sequential sharing of things I note about the digital world I think should be shared with those who are interested. Both are subjective but one is more emotionally satisfying – and the one that is more emotionally satisfying is the letter I once wrote on a weekly basis but have been a bit of slacker about lately while I have been figuring out its place in my life.

And while I have been figuring out the role “tweeting” is playing in my life. It’s been surprising to me that every week five or more strangers seem to begin following my tweets because they are interested in what I am passing on about the digital world – which has been fascinating to me ever since I had the epiphany that the world was moving digitally into this to be defined universe that will, in the end, change everything.

So, in the end, I guess I will keep on tweeting and writing my “Letter From New York” because they both feed some part of my soul and, hopefully, resonate with some part of your soul also.

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