Stay of Execution

Pop!Tech Guardian Angel Assignments Are Coming

One of the things we Pop!Tech organizers do is act as "guardian angels" for a couple of speakers each year -- making sure they arrive safely and get settled, showing them around town, etc, maybe giving them a ride to a cocktail party if the weather is lousy. Last year I did this for Joe Pine, a delightful fella, and Sasha Shulgin and his wife -- very interesting characters, lovely people. And I was lucky enough to sit beside Alvie Ray Smith, founder of Pixar, on a bus ride, where we got into a neat discussion about the nature of consciousness. That man is not only smart, but a deep thinker about what it means to be a good person.

This year I don't know who I'll get, but I'm hoping maybe Clay Shirkey, Geoffrey Ballard, Robert Wright, or Scott Hunt. The list is so rich, though, that I can't go wrong. Maybe I'll get to be Larry Lessig's guardian angel! Although we get the occasional prima donna, we pick speakers who are curious, creative, and friendly as well as brilliant, because half the fun is the mixing of speakers and attendees, and the arguments and conversations that folks get into during the breaks. Can't wait to make the acquaintance of this year's crop.

There will also be a whole bunch of Pop!Tech Fellows -- speakers from previous years who are attending this year's conference. It's possible I will get to be ambassador to the Fellows, and will head out to dinner with them instead of to the official speakers' dinner. If so I'll be hanging with Whit Diffie, John Perry Barlow, Seymour Papert, Jordan Pollack, Mike Hawley, Linda Stone, and a host of other neat folks. What fun....

One of these days I'll write a cogent piece about how Pop!Tech has changed the course of my life so far. It did so in 1997, quite dramatically, when I was living in the woods like a hippie and working as a small-town librarian. I pestered the organizing committee to let me join them; I decided to go to law school; I got interested in business. It continues to shape me each year. The ideas that start there, about technology, about change, and about what it means to be human, are ones I work on all year long.

If you want to come to Pop!Tech, email me and I can get you $300 off the ticket price, although I think we're pretty close to sold out.

About Resilience

Accompanying a pro bono bankruptcy client to a creditor's meeting is a good opportunity to think about resilience. You're packed into folding chairs; the trustee, a kindly older gentleman in a suit, is sitting up front; and around you are a couple dozen individuals who look nervous, ashamed, and fragile. There are a lot of crossed arms, a lot of chewing on lips. Not a lot of eye contact. It's like the line outside the principal's door, but without even any of the false bravado. Everyone feels like a failure.

I sat with my client and we talked about coping strategies. She's going to be just fine. She's fresh out of a long abusive relationship. She's sleeping on an air mattress at a friend's place. Her car's odometer just rolled over 300,000 miles. She's having trouble quitting smoking. But she's resilient. We talked about writing in journals, the mysterious way it helps. We talked about feeling guilty when we say no to people's requests for our time, and how necessary it is to do it anyway, to stake out some luxurious time for self-care and rejuvenation. We talked about school -- she's enrolled, and loves it. We talked about counseling and support groups and exercise and friends and family and all the ways there are to get support, to take care of yourself or to let others take care of you. She bit her nails and fidgeted, but when we were called up to talk to the trustee she laughed with him, met his eye, made a joke. She gave me a hug when we got back to my office, even though I told her not to (because of my various maladies). She presented me with a loaded bag of tomatoes from her garden. She's got a job lined up. She's going to make herself a duct tape bracelet "so the next time someone wants something from me that I don't want to do, I can imagine I have a big piece of duct tape over my mouth keeping me from agreeing to do it."

This woman will be fine. Being around her lifts me up. She's energetic and appreciative, expressive, smart, curious, eager to learn, real. She's taking care of herself, and of the other women in her domestic abuse support group. She's helping a friend of hers write a business plan for his landscaping business. She's helping her sister adopt a child. She's tough, and she's wounded, and she's got a load of healing to do, but she's got reserves, and resilience. She knows she'll be okay -- hasn't doubted it since I met her in the spring. And I know she'll be more than that -- with a clean slate for the future, this woman will be an inspiration.

....

Of all the cards you can be dealt at birth -- good looks, perfect pitch, laser-sharp concentration, charm, a rich daddy -- the one that seems most essential to have in your hand is resilience. I'm watching a person I love struggle with depression right now. It's so hard to watch. How do you break through the hopelessness and despair, the sense of unloveability, the unworthiness or shame that makes them withdraw? It's not about REALITY -- the folks I've seen fight depression have been smart, handsome, kind, sociable, active, and well-loved. Somehow it's just that sense of "I'm gonna come out of this okay" that gets lost. I wish, desperately, that there were a way for me to help give that certainty, that resilience, that confidence in one's inner resources, back to my dear friend.

Wisdom welcomed from those who know.

Watch This Space

Spent the morning learning that I have conjunctivitis now, along with the headcold that makes me sound like a talking frog (although I keep imagining that it is low and sultry, I have been disabused of that false hope). Spending precious blog-time scampering around to pharmacies and eye doctors and on the phone w/ insurance companies and other yucchy stuff.

So you'll have to wait until tonight to hear me wonder about depression. This is based on a weekend spent with some fantastically beautiful and talented people (many with impeccable pedigree), some of whom I know are struggling with depression. It's so hard to understand depression in people who radiate goodness and potential. It's just a reminder that achievement, beauty, money, these things don't bring about the peace and contentment that we associate with them. There's a neat New York Times article I read about a month ago about how we're lousy at predicting what will make us happy and the degree of happiness it will add or deduct from our life. (I see you need to pay to read the article. I predict it won't make you all that happy to read it....)

Fall Games Wrap-Up

Had a great day yesterday, notwithstanding early day rain showers. Due to weather, we started off with pie eating: blueberry, blueberry-apple tart, mushroom pie (quiche), blueberry-nectarine, turkey pot pie, apple pie, peach pie, mushroom pizza pie, chicken pot pie, and the medal winner for innovation: crustless avocado-mango-sweet-potato pie.

Then did time trials on the Huffy (actually our Huffy was a Murray, but close enough). I believe our model was the smallest size two-wheel bike there is; certainly pedaling it and staying on were very challenging. Manhole Charlie narrowly bested Curbside Pickup with a 1:00.17 time around the block. Snackpit was women's champion, with her innovative seated pedalling stance, a method tried with less success by Scupper.

We were joined for the time trials by Swims-With-Shoes-On, who earned a medal for most courageous journey to be at the Olympics, as he had back surgery just two weeks ago, and his walk to Olympic Headquarters was the furthest he's walked since the back surgery. We applied the healing salve of pie to give him strength, and after time trials I drove him home to lie on his back and watch college football.

Then off to the island, where we set up camp on a grassy hillside and the sun burned off the foggy haze. I took a lot of lumps as ref of Pumpkin Croquet, but the men's team bested the women's team fair and square, and Ettuce walked away with a medal for MVP in the game.

The wheelbarrow leg of the triathalon relay unfortunately ran through a nettle patch, and Curbside Pickup earned a medal for bravery in the face of danger, but ultimately Hydroplane handed his baton off to Snackpit and me just ahead of the other three-legged runners, and we handily outpaced Shifty Bob and Hard Knocks running to the waterside. As it turned out, however, our assigned dog didn't like to fetch or swim nearly as much as the other team's dog, so although we tossed our baton first, the other dog fetched it and our dog tried to steal it. Ultimately the event was a wash as neither team's stick was returned by the correct dog, if at all.

We then had a lie on your backs in the grass, drink water, look at clouds, and make whistling sounds through blades of grass event. There was uniform excellence by all competitors in lying around in the grass, but J. Kiddy grabbed a medal for persistence and volume in grass-blade-whistling.

Finally, the Huffy Toss. Only a few competitors were moved to leave the grassy hill for the tossing ring, but Ettuce, Manhole Charlie, Hydroplane, Snackpit, and Milkbone all took their shots. J. Kiddy dominated this event, however, and the Huffy soon began to come apart.

We headed for home, tea, more pie, napping, and quiet conversation, and I left with Boyfriend before dinner and awards ceremony, because with this persistent headcold I was exhausted and ready for bed at about 7 PM. Among our midst we had a psychiatrist, a graduate student in urban planning, a partner at Prestigious Law Firm2, a nurse practitioner, a microbiologist, an Internet entrepreneur, a vice president of marketing for an outdoor gear manufacturer, a botanist, and a sculptor. What fun to get a bunch of grown-ups playing together like kids.

Today our guests have gone home. My cold is still keeping me low-key, and I'm going to curl up on the sofa with a cup of tea and read.

The Fall Games, Or Call Me 'Milkbone'

Last night was Opening Ceremonies for the Fall Games. My housemate and I (the Olympic Committee) haven't hosted a Fall Games before, but last February we hosted the popular Winter Games, and what with weddings and regattas and conferences we couldn't manage to make schedules work for the Summer Games.

As is traditional, the competitors all gathered at a local restaurant for torchlighting, carbo-loading, and, most importantly, the nicknaming portion of the event. At the Games, all competitors are given a nickname (drawn out of a hat). You "lick it and stick it" -- so everyone has a scrap of paper on our foreheads with our nickname for the duration of the Opening Ceremonies. [Interesting phenomenon: three bar patrons and our waitress at the restaurant we were at requested and wore nicknames too. Everyone wants to belong, I guess.] Any competitor calling another athlete by his or her "street name" instead of the Olympic Nickname during the event must pay a penalty: deliver, on the spot, an apologetic limerick, haiku, rap, or interpretive dance incorporating the nicknames of both the infractor or the infractee.

Official Competitors in the Fall Games:

Shifty Bob
Scupper
Milkbone (that's me)
Curbside Pickup
Ettuce
Manhole Charlie
Fang
Hydroplane
Hard Knocks
Rounder
(two yet-to-be-named arriving today from New York City)
[our waitress, Sugar Knees, was invited to compete, but has to work all day.]

Winter Games Athletes who couldn't be with us:
Papa Queso
Glacial McGee
Deep Pockets
Nutmeat
Nimbus
Chutney
Buzz

The first event, over beer and pizza, was for competitors to tell the assembled group the story of how your partner came to get his or her nickname. I am called Milkbone, of course, for my crusading work to battle osteoporosis. My favorites: Shifty Bob is so named because she is a kidnapper who sends palindromic ransom notes (hence the "BOB") in all caps ("Shifty" is a shortening of "Shift Key"). And like the warriors of old, who would take the names of their vanquished foes, or like early hunters who might wear a bear claw or a bear tooth after surviving an attack by the savage beast, Ettuce earned his name by foiling a wily salad's plot to choke him, and took the name "Lettuce", later shortened, of course, to "Ettuce". There was a fantastic story about Scupper' heroics in Nome, Alaska, but I can't do the tale justice here.

Today's events: we assemble at my house at 11 AM for a bike procession to a nearby island (connected by a causeway). A support vehicle will transport dogs, equipment and pies. A rule of competition is that each competitor must bring a pie; once on the island, we will have a potluck pie luncheon. Then the games: a triathalon relay (two-person biking, three-legged running, and swimming (dogs only)); pumpkin croquet; the Huffy toss; and ultimate wiffle. Possible stone-skipping competition; other events TBD. Will keep you posted on the results.

This morning's challenge for me: find a Huffy for the Huffy toss. Wish me luck.

Expression of the Day: Where the Cheese is Binding

The Big Guy just came in and gave me what sounds like an interesting assignment. A couple of times he used the expression "where the cheese is binding" to mean "the sticking point" or "the thorny part of this deal". E.g. "The acquiring company proposes to do X and Y, but where the cheese is binding is that X may not permit Z to happen on schedule."

My quick Google search for the expression showed nothing but this page, which is a far cry from an answer.

Calling All Happy Lawyers

Columbia Law School 1L Anthony Rickey has been doing a little too much thinking and observation of the profession he's heading into.  He observes that a lot of lawyers really don't like their lives, and wonders why a profession of generally smart people has let this happen.  His commentators offer candid and often really depressing takes.  I pointed Anthony to this law review article, which strikes me as generally honest and pretty depressing.  But what do I know about all this -- I retreated to the small pond of Maine and don't have a clue about the world beyond.   

In his post he holds me out as the "single example" of a young lawyer happy with her life.  Yikes.  That can't be true -- what a tragedy, all kinds of talented people living joyless lives.  Please, friends, tell Anthony why you're excited about the law, why you're proud to be a lawyer, how you're living the life you want.  It isn't really about the money, is it?   

UPDATE: Fixed the link to Anthony's website 11:26 AM.  Thanks for letting me know it didn't work....

Scheherazade: Synonomous With Exquisite Craftsmanship, Meticulous Detail, and No-Expense-Spared Luxury

The rumor mill tells me that my namesake, the lovely megayacht Scheherazade being built up the coast a ways, will be launched on Saturday. I know some of the guys at the boatyard and still haven't gone up to take a tour. Now it's too late to take a tour amidst the sawdust and epoxy. She looks beautiful, from the photos, and if the other work of Bruce King is any indication. She's the biggest yacht now being built, and the wood from all the framing comes only from trees that fell from natural causes. Amazing.

Maybe I'll see her on the water someday, and be able to row a little dinghy over, introduce myself to the gazillionaire owner and explain that, well, I sort of consider her my boat, and could I please take a look around, or maybe oh maybe go for a sail someday? I mean, doesn't a boat like that deserve its very own Scheherazade?

Update: Here's more about the launching celebration, complete with baked beans and singing. If you're wondering why the launch time is "between 11:45 and 12:22" the answer is: high tide.

Update 2: Apparently the boat is so big that they didn't use traditional fasteners, and Lloyd's of London ordered testing on the load bearing strength of some of the unconventional fasteners. Interesting reading here. (If you're into that kind of thing.)

Scorching Sore Throat

How can I be sick? Been exercising regularly, sleeping well, eating fresh vegetables and farm stand apples. I blame my co-workers with school age children, although it seems early for the fall maladies to be spreading. Now you know why I'm quieter than usual today, whispering if at all.

Mystery of the Hour

In a contract I'm reading:

(b) The maximum term of any incentive stock option shall be ten years from the date it was granted.

(c) The maximum term of any non-qualified stock option shall be ten years and one day from the date it was granted.

I wonder why?