Walking Around

All's Wells That Ends....

Village Savings Bank....First Fidelity....First Union....Wachovia....Wells Fargo......?

Somehow, the people who work inside this building have established continuity for their customers over the years through several changes.

We can pretty much bank (sorry) on the fact that this one isn't the last change, but we hope that whatever name appears above the door that the people inside remain true to their own values, and that WF adopts those values, instead of giving the employees a Mission Statement.

Otherwise, why would we bother to go there?

We can't resist another poke at this:

Here's something that never changes in spite of financial crises, war surges, stimulus packages, economic recovery, the Giants in the Series!

The Bridge That Never Seems To Rise. By Old Trip's/Black Bass Grill.

Will Wells Fargo get another name, before we drive across this bridge again?

Spotted this "family" on my way to town.

We have spoken about this trend before.

Just a reminder.

Moust we do this sort of thing?





When wandering in mid-town between appointments, we highly recommend The Leather Spa for a shine. It's a great way to spend $4 + tip.

Speaking of tips: just about every fashionista in Manhattan and around the world uses the shoe repair services here. Every editor (well, they send someone in a Town Car), editorial assistant, stylist, visiting sartorialist. You will see the most attractive looking women in NYC here and somewhat less attractive guys getting a shine as an excuse to see them get their Jimmy's, Manolo's, Gucci's, etc. fixed

This is a photo of their window display: 56th St. just West of the Peninsula Hotel.

A Bridge to Somewhere

As one of our heroes, Rumpole of the Bailey, might say, "Your Grace, we wish to enter into evidence the following Exhibits:"


Exhibit A. Afghan President Hamid Karzai has made a bold admission that he personally receives bags filled with $millions directly from his friends in Iran. "Patriotism has a price," he confessed. Well, he won't win any Patrick Henry Elocution Awards, but at least his admission shows that he might have a future on K Street in DC or in Albany, if he ditches the hat and cape.

Exhibit B. Investors have lined up in a frenzy to purchase US government bonds at -5.5% interest: that's negative interest, Friends.

Exhibit C. NYC's Mayor Mike. he of the $millions spent to allow him to purch.....ah.... seek a 3rd term, opined that NY state voters should now vote in favor of a 2-term limit for everyone else. Asked by a cowering media if this might be a bit hypocritical, he answered that, no, it was not hypothetical at all; he really meant it.

When I was a small boy, hiding under my desk in Our Lady Queen of Martyrs' school during an nuclear air-raid drill, I was taught to fear immanent annihilation at the hands of the Soviet Russians. As it turned out, the Russians self-imploded. All we had to do was wait them out and spend a few $trillion.

Now, we may be tempted to hide under our desks from ourselves.

Am I alone in thinking that our new "friends" around the world, the ones we sent our sons and daughters to free and protect, make old Uncle Nikita look like Santa Claus?

Am I alone in thinking that what passes for leadership today in parts of government and the corporate world makes even, dare we say it, Nixon's values, look good in comparison?

Meanwhile, instead of Walter Cronkite, we get media clowns on the left and right, who give new meaning to the word hysterical, never uttering a single useful, original idea about how to improve things, while making their own $millions.

Even Rumpole could not get us off in the face of all the evidence. Guilty! We pretty much stink at everything right now.

And yet....

.... Is that the sweet aroma of liberation in the air? Isn't it a liberating idea to simply say that we've all been stinking up the joint: left, right, middle: flat-taxers, value-added taxers, no taxers: those who are bankers, in bunkers, bonkers, or bloggers: those too busy branding, bland-ing, blonde-ing, and blinding themselves?

Yes.

In hindsight, it might seem strange, even insane, to have thought that those flimsy desks might have protected a classroom full of children in Forest Hills, Queens from a nuke exploding over Manhattan.

But, was that any more ludicrous than our current use of worn-out ideologies, third-rate opinions, and a thousand forms of entertainment distraction to hide from the eye-blinding fact that we have finally found those weapons of mass destruction right here in our own hearts and minds?

Even if you do go to the polls next week wearing a clothespin on your nose, because of the smelly-cheese choices you have to make, you can feel a little bit better knowing that it's not Hamid's problem, or Mike's, or even Joy and Whoopi's problem.

It's ours. So, maybe we can find a bag of cash  and begin by finally fixing this broken bridge right in our own prosperous back yard.

Thanks. I , for one, feel better already.

Too Small Too Fail: Designing A Future? Call A Designer

The gadget on the left, along with its companion, itunes, changed the way we listen to, purchase, share, and distribute music.

Shockingly, Friends, it was not created by the Music Industry, which didn't like it one little bit.

I still have my first ipod, which I won in a contest. Like all of those original machines, its battery eventually died and was not worth replacing, since the design and technology had progressed so rapidly that we could buy much more machine for much less. I still have it, because it is a work of art worthy of a perch in a museum. Once in a while I just take it out and look at it, as someone else might stare at their special photo of Stephanie Seymour.

If you google "the amazon," you will see this photo of a mighty river in South America. If you google "amazon," you will connect to a product that made finding and ordering books simple and less expensive with a single click of your mouse or phone.

Stunning news! This system was not imagined, funded, designed or implemented by the Publishing Industry. They hated it, all of it, with a mighty hate.

I still buy many books at retail from small  independent booksellers like Diane's in Greenwich CT, and McNally Jackson, Crawford Doyle, and Mysterious Books in Manhattan. I still do it, because I don't mind paying more for the knowledge these shops share with me, and for the aesthetic, tactile experience of browsing and choosing books. But amazon is here to stay.

The Publishing Industry didn't care that it had been killing off these indie shops through its relationships with Barnes & Noble, Walmart, and other behemoths. This cabal was so focused on its own needs, instead of the readers', that it could not change the system. So amazon did it for them. Now, they are playing catch-up with amazon and apple on digitized content and hardware like Kindles and ipads too.

Back to Apple and its iphone, pictured on the left, which did for the cellular phone world what ipod/itunes did for the music world.


By now, you will not be surprised to hear that the Cellular Industry itself could not make this quantum leap in design and technology. Huge companies lack imagination, except when it comes to compensation for their executives, who wouldn't know a bit from a bat.


But, we think you get our point by now: as Mr. Einstein said: "You cannot solve a problem from the same consciousness that created it. You must learn to see the world anew."

Election Day is approaching. Many will go to the polls in anger and confusion, others will go out of habit or a sense of duty, and many millions will not go at all.  We will all be looking to the Political Industry and its enablers in Media to solve our tax, health, auto, financial, job creation issues to name just a few. Why do we think this will work any better than what happened with the Music, Publishing, and Cellular industries?

The Political Industry, in Washington has become completely corrupted. At times it looks like one huge money-laundering scheme, no matter what color political stripe you wear. How will a couple of billionaire candidates, 24-hour TV ranting, or a Tea Party make radical change? Duh.

In my home state, former NYC mayor, Mr. Ed Koch, is spearheading a statewide "reform" movement; he is asking his friends and even a few enemies, who created the messy New York State  government in the first place, to gather together and make it better. We are almost tempted to believe that someone best known for enacting the city's Pooper-Scooper Law might be perfect for the job.

Think again. Instead, we say, don't try to reform from inside, shred. Assign the task of re-design to the Designers, the Engineers, the Original Thinkers.The designers of the Declaration and Constitution (talk about killer apps!) not only could not get elected today or get their own reality TV show, they'd be put in jail or the nuthouse, quick.

Let's give our contemporary re-design  job to the women and men at creative enterprises  like IDEO, which will begin with no assumptions and with a clean white  page, be it analog or digital:  http://www.ideo.com/

Or, how about Apple or Google.Let's put Steve Jobs & the Google Twins in a room with their teams for ten days and see what they come up with; throw in Miuccia Prada to re-design the 1040A!

They have to do better than this mess! Let's hire professional designers to do re-design work.

Otherwise, you might want to begin brushing up on your Mandarin,       Comrades.

Ed Note: Feeling perplexed about how things have been going for the last dozen years? Are you wondering if our culture can excel and feel good about itself again without arrogance? We have an answer for you. Go directly to the nearest theatre and watch Secretariat by Walt Disney Studios (bet Walt could improve things). An even better idea: see it twice and send a copy to your local pols, when it comes out on DVD. 

Life In Transition: A Primer

transition, n. 1. the process or instance of changing from one form, state, activity, or place to another.

Actually, it's a lot more complicated than that.

When my Editor suggested that I write about "Life In Transition," I went about it the way any self-respecting columnist would: I got on the train and went to the city, to the MOMA to be specific. This was killing two birds with one stone; I could avoid meeting the subject head-on, and I could rationalize my behavior by pretending that looking at art might provide great insight into the same subject.

This plan worked very well, until I came upon this painting by Adolph Gottlieb called Descending Arrow. It actually did make me think about LIT: one day you might feel buoyant, floating towards a more fulfilling or more prosperous life, the next it's all you can do just putting one foot in front of the other. You're transitioning.

It is tempting to view LIT as something that begins at a single point in time. A boss, a spouse, or a doctor tells you bad news and, suddenly, you have a severe case of vertigo. And, you will be tempted to look back at that moment, as a person might who has fallen down a well and wonders, Is This My Well? How Did I Get Here? This is natural, but don't waste too much time on it: better to ask for some help than try climbing those slippery sides alone.

We tend to think of Transition as a noun, a thing or an event. Not so. The truth is that you had been transitioning for a while and you just didn't know it. Your husband, your boss, your body, or the universe may have known it was happening. You were the last to know, but you will need to get over it and move on.

On the upside of transition, and yes, Virginia, there is one, trust me, you may think of it coming to a close. Instead, you’ve just move on to a different, better stage.  It's just life, that thing John Lennon said was there all along, while we were busy “making other plans;“ except that the something else felt much more comfortable than a job search, career change, healthy recovery. But, how else are you going to live out your real dreams?

If you are looking to rebuild or find a new career,,  you will receive a lot of advice, much of it from experts in the field. In fact, at times you will think that there is a Career Search/Life Coach for every person searching. Where did they all come from? Many came from same place you did; they are former corporate HR people, who now make a living as career counselors, life coaches, branding/marketing specialists. A whole LIT industry has grown out of these whacky times, and you will mostly be grateful for it.

When I began my own search, the consulting firm I chose had me compose a 40-Year Vision. I was 58 at the time, so I had to imagine what I really wanted my life to be like at 98! No matter what cool idea I came up with, I always imagined I'd look like a cross between Yoda and Jobba The Hut! 

In the beginning,  this was beside the point, because my consultant only spent about five minutes on the Vision. Then, like Paton with his Commanders planning an attack on a Panzer Division, she mapped out a maximized plan for me to land a job just like the one I’d had. This involved branding myself as a kind of Energizer Bunny, who would stalk hundreds of contacts until they bought me. Overnight, I had to go from Visionary to Crazy Eddie.

It didn't quite work in the way we planned.

I had gotten a glimpse of me as a round peg, and I was trying to fit myself back into a square hole. Then, there was the age thing, which the consultant said I had to ignore, but apparently corporate recruiters and HR folks do not get the same advice. Finally, three things happened: Bear, Lehman, MortgageGate. Finito, except that that the experience was a liberating one in many respects.

Right now, millions of people are gathering all over the country in church halls, school meeting rooms, Y's, and Starbuck's to help each other keep their transitions alive and their spirits up. They learn to network, Link, Friend, make web sites, write resumes and cover letters. Seasoned vets are teaching newcomers and it helps both of them. Young people, some just out of college, work with those of retirement age who can't or won't retire. Their searches loop backwards and forwards, up and down.

When you are transitioning, If you haven't had much of a spiritual life recently, you will improve the quality of your search by having one. Prayer, meditation, yoga, or just taking a walk around the block will help immensely. Many transitioners begin referring to their Higher Power; job seekers may refer to their Hire Power.

Those looking for a new job, as part of their transition, will agree on one thing: the process for hiring at most companies is not friendly; it seems primarily designed to eliminate you as a candidate. It can be a humbling experience, requiring you to implement guerilla tactics to get through the maze.

Companies are so overwhelmed with applicants that they cannot treat them all with respect. They actually damage their own brands in some cases by the way they treat applicants, who just might be customers too.

But, we have to lay all of that aside, because it all comes back to personal, individual responsibility. You cannot let anything deter you, although you may detour here and there for good reasons. You never give up, but you learn to give in, allowing the world to help shape you as you steadily make your case to the world for who you are and what you have to offer.

Eventually, my consultant became frustrated with my initial job search, and that was before the financial mess. "You're becoming too fond of the process, she opined, "I'm afraid you're beginning to like it."

As if!  But, she had a point, even if she did not realize it the same way that I did. If she had remembered her own firms's Vision method, she might have known that is was precisely that topsy-turvy process that might appeal to someone whose job might become writing about it some day.

Like today.

Too Small To Fail: Learning How To Manage Again

Thirty years ago, my father-in-law, who had been CEO of two companies before that term became an mild expletive, took on a project: helping me find a job. He was a brave one.

If he had been fazed by the fact that I didn't know squat about business, he didn't show it. He had been in the navy, and besides, he had been sent on his mission by a higher authority. Eventually, and with some help from the feeble, I found out that most people in business don't know much about it either, but that was much later. 

The most enduring lesson he taught me was about something called Management. He had borrowed his definition from the American Management Association (AMA), where he sent each of his company's execs to learn this fine art. I had my Darling Girl wife, fiance' at the time, copy it down for both of us. Here it is (above, left); it reads:

"Management is the art of getting people to do what they're supposed to do when they're supposed to do it how they're supposed to do it the way their supposed to do it because they want to do it."

Most of us would amend this definition today, since it assumed the kind of top-down management that fell out of favor over the last 30 years, with the stunning exception of China. Having one big guy in a huge corner-office telling everyone what, when, how ceased to work well in our individual-crazed Twitter culture.

But, after allowing for some "decentralization,"  the fundamental idea still works pretty well, especially the last part, wanting. Getting people to want to do something together is what makes Management an art: the art of teamwork

          "The vision, dedication, and integrity of managers determines whether there is management or mismanagement." - Peter Drucker

Gen X and Y may find this very hard to believe, but basic management of people, operations (now called process), quality, customer service, and R&D were actually taken seriously by Busy-ness Schools as recently as thirty years ago. Perhaps even harder to believe is that respected corporations  had their own management training programs. Gasp!

So, what happened? The Numbers.

"....A million zeros joined together do not, unfortunately, add up to one...." - Jung

Too many of the "best and brightest," the T-Rexes of the business world,  began to treat wise teachers like Peter Drucker and W. Edwards Deming, the quality expert,  as if they were writing science fiction. The MBA fast-trackers thought that learning the art of management was  a waste of their precious time, which they believed could be better applied to learning shortcuts to personal wealth.

Instead of the nuts and bolts of business management, they fell in love with, and I'm not kidding, Accounting. Then,  they cleverly married Accounting to Higher Math, re-branded it as, da-da, Financial Management! The rest, as they say, is hysteria.


 Cue "Synergy," the Internet Bubble and our current calamity, MortgageGate. These are what happen when you mistake managing The Numbers for managing the whole Enterprise.

            "It's amazing how difficult it is for a man to understand something if 
            he's paid a small fortune not to understand it." - Upton Sinclair       

That little slip of paper with the definition of Management on it came to mind recently, when I read  several headlines in the newspaper of record (No, not that Foxy WSJ, yet):

                                       UNEMPLOYMENT AT 9.6%

          TOP BANK HALTS ITS FORECLOSURES IN ALL 50 STATES

                      STATE IGNORED RED FLAGS ON TEST SCORES

And one from today:

                                      PARALYSIS OF THE STATE!

Banks can't even foreclose on their own messy deals. We treat schools as if they were purely political institutions. We spend more money on prisons than on schools (this is actually true in CA). And, we're leaving out the the Hardy Boys' Search For The Missing WMD's caper (a novel way to burn a $Trillion or so).

It is very fitting that Election Day closely follows Halloween. It gets scarier every year. Why? Mostly because we know that, whoever wins, we will continue to mismanage. We will not know whathowwhen and we most certainly will not want.

Here's a proposition: mandatory Management courses in every grade level of every school in the country. Home of the Free and the Brave, yes! But, wouldn't it be nice to be the Home of the Smart for a change? Wouldn't it be nice to drive into your town and see a sign up there with the State High School BeeKeeping Championship that said: Home of Citizens Who Learned How To Manage Again?

Yes. It would.

Ed Note: Okay, we admit that our explanation for calamity is a little simplistic in that it appears to blame everything on people in accounting/finance. Also, we employed some hyperbole (look it up). We wish to note that any appearance of bias against the financial world, where I have many friends, is completely, totally with merit. 

Doing A Columbus

Mention the name, Christopher Columbus, in most households and the reaction will be mild glee at the thought of a day away from school or work. The more historically-minded among us might even feel a tinge of nostalgia for the bygone schooldays in which the name evoked adventure, courage and discovery rather than greed, intolerance and violence.

But, mention the name in our house and family members run for the hills. It all began innocently enough several years ago, when my youngest child asked me to tell her "about Columbus," while we were sharing a pizza. I seem to recall that she was about to write a school paper at her Country Day & Bond Trading School and she had been hearing some pretty bad things about old Chris. My answer, apparently, was a little long-winded. Some have claimed that it was very long-winded, applying several thousand words towards a fifty-word answer.

This became known forever more as dad "doing a Columbus." After that pizza, and the long walk home that followed it, anyone in the family asking me a question, and there arose far fewer instances of this, prefaced it by saying, "Without doing a Columbus....can you explain the infield-fly rule....or ....without doing a C, who invented the SAT's and did they execute him/her for that?"

Let's just say that they were all thrilled when I took up writing three blogs, known affectionately in my own home as Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria.  Now, I can do a Columbus and even, on occasion, get paid for it. Talk about gold in the Indies!

Somewhere between Samuel Eliot Morrison's view of CC as heroic "Admiral of the Ocean Sea" and contemporary scholars' venom against CC's "capitalist, colonialist empiricism" lies a pretty simple truth: here was a fairly gutsy European human, who had one very good idea about the earth's roundness keeping  his ships from tumbling off into space. He was right about that.

As for finding a direct route to the Indies, we can say that in a real sense, he failed. How was he to know that there was a land mass, which would one day become one huge SUV parking lot and mortgage swindling emporium! Where's Leif Ericson when you need him!

But seriously, Friends. We hear a lot of advice today from experts on how we can "transition" our lives, and a lot of this advice includes first becoming familiar with failure, as odd as that may sound. I have more than trifling experience with this method, as it happens, and I cannot yet say if there is indeed a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow of many small failures. But, we could do a lot worse than take a look at Columbus's example of imagination, courage, determination as we sail our own little boats to a million different versions of the "Indies."

As usual, Saint Robert of Hibbing, who is still strumming in his cave high above the river,  weighs in on this brilliantly if not so clearly:

                                "....She knows there's no success like failure
                                   and that failure's no success at all...."

Still, we must sail along our routes, somehow keeping our crews from hunger, mutiny, and not seeing this week's JCrew catalogue.

 I like to think of Chris, alone each night in his bunk (protective dagger under his pillow) praying for a sign that he was not really off his rocker, or the Italian equivalent of that. And, I think of him on that morning, when the call came from the crow's nest high above him that land had been sighted. Phew! That was a close one!

I do not think that  he really failed in any meaningful way in that moment, especially since that landfall turned out to be close-by my beloved Bahamian isle of "Saint James."  Those of us who land in unlikely places, which may be different form the ones we set out to find, may discover that "doing A Columbus" is not so bad after all.

We'd do well, I think, to just say Amen,  and get on with living on the rock we have found.