ken-zen ichi nyo

If we buy a book from our fave indie + make it one of our titles, we help the store, boost our Bookscan #s… but nick the bottom line - oy!  Is this how the economic maelstrom started?  Or as Yogi (Bear, not Berra) says, is this the downside of only being smarter than the average Bear.

The real bottom line: buying books, regardless of who may have published it, is always a good thing.  Cash may be king, as our investors say, but books are oxygen and breathing comes before fiefdoms.

the KeenComm crew in action

Amidst the daily deadlines. innumerable to-do tasks, and sleepless nights, which would have to be the yin of business, the yang (the bright side of the mountain) has to be the people with whom I work.  I’m thankful for their shared commitment, smarts and humor.  Last week, we spent three days hammering through issues, concerns and organizational challenges,  we took a break to practice what we preach…we took a hike.

To get out, as always, was wonderful.  To get out after a day of meetings in a conference room was a double scoop of happiness.  To get out after a day of meetings in a conference room on the most glorious day of sunshine and warm weather was the trifecta.

There was a little good-natured trash talking while on the trail.  Roslyn, who was in from Berkeley and is our most experienced long-distance hiker as veteran of many week-long sojourns in the Sierra, called the two-hour trek a “nice little warm-up.” We all laughed, gulped some more water, and to keep this in the idiom, took it in stride.

The loop was one of the hikes detailed in 60 Hikes Within 60 Miles Birmingham, so there were many immediate benefits to the walk in the woods: “fact-checking” a section of the book/trail; a spot of gentle exercise, a different experiential context with colleagues; reminder of the value of our authors’ insights and psychological bump of hiking guides.

On the road…again.  Doing what we can to make a milestone birthday more momentous, plus reading a couple manuscripts while en route.  Hoping that time will allow a quick stop at the Dirt Rag’s 20th birthday party at Ray’s Indoor Mountain Bike park while in Cleveland - two decades writing about riding…chalk one for the good guys.  Will also get to see the Buckeye State starting to bloom.

The guy I work out with turned 39 yesterday.  Between sets this morning, he told me that he spent part of the big day reflecting on where he was in life; all things considered, he feels fortunate.  He attributed this positive assessment to staying fit.  Markus (rightly) believes that regular exercise has allowed him to maintain everything he’s done in the previous (almost) forty years.  Endurance - check; strength - check; joie de vivre - check.

I agree with all of it.  But…being a full decade older, I’ve found the last year the hardest in accepting the physical fall-off.  For the most part, I’ve been lucky enough to beat back five decades of days with sweat, optimism, occasional surgery and a glass of wine.  I didn’t notice that first stage of slower reflexes which  happens in the mid-twenties for two reasons: first, I was never tip-top-tier where hundredths of a second will determine who wins and who loses, and second, because for the sports in which I competed (wrestling and soccer), you could pretty much make up that blink with a blend of technique, anticipation, a little physics and being stubborn as hell.

But now, it’s inescapable.  And precisely because I could totter on for 50+ years at essentially the same pace, now it’s deeply irksome to not recover as quickly, not run as smoothly, and not go toe-to-toe.  So as my bones became more porous, my expectations ossified.  More than ever, I am in need of the wise internal counsel that will speak to the middle path of engagement, endurance and insight.

Talk loud, Mr. Voice - my hearing’s going too.

true confess - who cares if I’m eating pizza or scratching my head, i.e., what I’m doing now.  No big whoop, frankly.   But what I’m learning now, what I’m seeing through now, well that could be interesting.  So as of this moment, this’ll be about what’s here, now.  Approaching more zen (seeing/feeling/appreciating this place in this world), less mirror.  Time to go.

Bill McKibben wrote the amazingly insightful and equally terrifying The End of Nature.

This excerpt came from his next book, entitled Enough; Staying Human in an Engineered Age published by Times Books.  Bill is clearly a smart, thoughtful, centered advocate for the human spirit coexisting in the natural world.  I suspect a couple hours in his company as he talks to a group would be enlightening and inspirational. 

CHAPTER ONE   Too Much

For the first few miles of the marathon, I was still fresh enough to look around, to pay attention. I remember mostly the muffled thump of several thousand pairs of expensive sneakers padding the Ottawa pavement-an elemental sound, like surf, or wind. But as the race wore on, the herd stretched into a dozen flocks and then into a long string of solitary runners. Pretty soon each of us was off in a singular race, pitting one body against one will. By the halfway point, when all the adrenaline had worn off, the only sound left was my breath rattling in my chest. I was deep in my own private universe, completely absorbed in my own drama. 

Now, this run was entirely inconsequential.  Read the rest of this entry »

So how does one approach coming back, and equally so, moving on.

When young, the body is Mission Control while the brain tags along and hopefully sponges up all there is to learn from the journeys.  In time, the mind becomes the training partner of the body, not setting the pace, but at least in stride.

Then as we age, and the body, in turn(s), relies on the mind to prompt the body, based upon years of experience so that we can be in the right place, make the right moves, and stay in the game.  That’s when the teeter begins to totter the other way.

So the hard line to cross is not the next finish line, but the next starting line.  At what point should I make stubbornness step down?  Read the rest of this entry »

    The weather ’round here this time of year is spotty: spots of rain, spots of sun, spots of warm, cold, wind, gray, all patched together like a teenager’s jeans.  The local wisdom is “If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes, it’ll change.”  I suspect that line is said in many places, but it sure works in the Ohio Valley in spring.          

   Even though the forecast last weekend called for thunderboomers on both days, thankfully Saturday and Sunday instead bloomed brilliant blue and stayed that way, with some high, puffy clouds added late in the afternoon to add an artistic quality to the skies. Fair weather being our friend, the St. Mary Cub Scouts and their posses (thirty+ folks in all) took on the Little Miami River.           

     The river had been at flood stage a couple days before, so the crew at Morgan’s Canoe decided the water was still too high for canoes or kayaks and wisely shuttled us into the large rafts, ideally suited for nine paddlers per craft.    

      I’ll attest that watching a pack of 9 and 10 year old boys try to synchronize their paddling is akin to watching a drunken centipede walking Spanish down the hall; but on this day, the strong current was more of a deciding factor in our steering than was the erratic and intermittent paddle strokes.           

     As long as we avoided the strainers (i.e., the trees whose roots had been eroded by the high waters and toppled into the river, their branches then combing and catching the unwary), it really didn’t matter if we unintentionally covered more distance side to side rather than upstream or down.  It was a splendiforous affair.         

    Hawks shadowed us at times, their wide wingspan  silhouettes and near motionless thermal-surfing made them resemble kites attached to strings as they floated overhead. We didn’t see many turtles as the high waters had submerged most of their favorite sunning logs.  But there was a family of duckling that raced alongside for the last quarter mile or so…and the little fuzzy kids entranced the boys.            

     The best part was that for over five hours, these boys were unplugged from electronic anything and plopped down in the midst of natural beauty.   Read the rest of this entry »

This from the man who brought you TrekAlong - we love Travis 

Idea to sell books via cell phone wins Birmingham Startup contest as reported in Birmingham Business Journal - by Jimmy DeButts

      A Birmingham entrepreneur’s plan to make books available via mobile phone was selected as the top business idea introduced in the second installment of Birmingham Startup. Travis Bryant’s vision to provide small and medium-sized publishers with an alternate avenue for distribution beat four other entrepreneurs who competed over two weekends to launch their own business.  

Bryant, who works for Birmingham’s Menasha Ridge Press, said making novels available digitally was inspired by seeing publishers holding onto manuscripts with no quick way to distribute them.”I’ve been looking for a print-to-digital option,” Bryant said. “This will be the first solution. Birmingham Startup helped me craft a business-to-business mindset. We’re sitting on the content. We can respect the authors and publishers and get it out there.”

Birmingham Startup is a collection of professionals who gathered over consecutive weekends listening to business proposals, helping entrepreneurs shape their business model and exiting the second weekend with a new company. The first Startup was held last fall. Finalists presentations were held at Burr & Forman LLP on May 12 and were judged by Innovation Depot CEO Susan Matlock, Jemison Investments CEO Grey Wood and DAXKO CEO David Gray.

The last month was certainly one of reaching many goals. Yet what martial arts training reinforces with its Zen underpinnings is the concept of balance, that within every victory is a bit of loss, within the dark is a spot of light.  

The following is from Clearing Away Clouds; Nine Lessons for Life from the Martial Arts by Stephen Fabian: 

The soft and yielding yin must be balanced by a hard, forceful yang.  Patience must be balanced by perseverance, the active principle of continually putting one foot before the other.  Inevitably, you will stumble while on your Way.” p. 125    

As the pace picked up and I didn’t take the time to metaphorically catch my breath, sooner rather than later my body stopped responding to the internal call of more, now, faster, harder, just once more… After fifty trips around the sun, you’d think I’d know this by now.  So when my back bucked and my knee buckled, anxious to maintain the mind-body balance while recuperating, I’ve read a lot to keep up the engagement quotient. 

Here are a few passages that took me back to playing fields of a lifetime ago and the search for the coach who cares more about the kids than winning.  Michael Lewis, the wonderful author of many award-winning titles, went back to his high school in New Orleans (the same school from which the Manning boys hailed), to re-connect with his former baseball coach as controversy surrounded him.  His words capture it better than mine: Coach; Lessons on the Game of Life by Michael Lewis 

HE WILL NEVER BE A TOUGH COMPETI-TOR.  HE DOESN’T KNOW HOW TO BE COMFORTABLE WITH BEING UNCOMFORT-ABLE: quote from Lou Pinella p 54 

“By ‘it’ he did not mean the importance of winning or even, exactly, of trying hard. … ‘It’ was the importance of battling one’s way through all the easy excuses life offered for giving up.” p 54 

“Fitz’s office wasn’t the office of a coach who wanted others to know of his many triumphs.  There were no trophies or plaques, though he had won enough of them to fill five offices.  Other than a few old newspaper clips about his four children, now grown, there were few mementos.  What he did keep was books—lots of them.” p 55 

“…some of them will never understand the responsibility they have to their teams and themselves…He was running an organization that , like the Franciscan order or the Marine Corps, depended on a more difficult system of values than that of the greater society.” p 62 

“What it means to be a man was that you struggled against your natural instinct to run away from adversity.” p 77 

“We listened to the man because he had something to tell us, and us alone.  Not how to play baseball, though he did that better than anyone.  Not how to win, though winning was wonderful.  Not even how to sacrifice.  He was teaching us something far more important: how to cope with the two greatest enemies of a well-lived life, fear and failure.  To make the lesson stick, he made sure we encountered enough of both.  What he knew—and I’m not sure he’d ever consciously thought it, but he knew it all the same—was that we’d never conquer the weaknesses within ourselves.  We’d never drive the worst of ourselves away for good.  We’d never win.  The only glory to be had would be in the quality of the struggle.” p 82-83 

“One of the goodies about athletics is you get to find out if you can stretch.  If you can get better.  But you got to push.” p 87 

“ ‘Do you really thing there’s any hope for this team?’ The question startled him into a new freshness.  He was alive, awake, almost well again. ‘Always,’ he said.  ‘You never give up on a team.  Just like you never give up on a kid.’  Then he pauses.  ‘But it’s going to take some work.’ ” p 90