Stories

My friend Marshall Goldsmith likes to hold his birthday parties at a piano bar called Don't Tell Mama in midtown. I quoted the following from an email to him and couldn't help sharing here. A moment broke out last night that I had to tell you about. I went to a park around the corner from my apartment to work on my laptop around 8 or 9pm. It's a tiny park, smaller than some Manhattan apartments. It happens to be across the street from the Stonewall Inn. Here's nearly the whole park from a picture I found online: It's near the 50th anniversary of the uprising so the West Village is upbeat and happy. The city or someone put a piano in the park when…

I forgot to mention one of my most memorable experiences on my recent trip across the country: shooting guns. I'd never shot a handgun and had only shot a low-caliber rifle in North Korea. I learned a lot, as I'll describe below. From my train arriving in Houston, I caught a bus to an environmental research place. Before continuing with the story, I have to mention that most people I told I took a bus in Houston responded, "I've lived here ten years and never took the bus," or the like. Same when you tell Los Angeles people that you took the subway. Three things lined the highway from Houston to the research place: car dealers, fast food chains, and hotel chains. Plus one gun…

I'm on the train from Atlanta home to New York. I left October 29 and visited Chicago, Los Angeles, Ventura, San Diego, and New Orleans too. The impetus came from attending the Summit in L.A. I found reasons to visit places along the way. Here are 30 highlights an lowlights from the trip. 1. I traveled intercity only by train and bus since I'm not flying. 2. At the Summit I spoke to several world-renowned people, establishing relationships, and taking steps to record conversations with them for Leadership and the Environment. They're bestsellers, TED speakers with collectively over 150 million views. 3. I got a guided tour of Patagonia's headquarters, which Leadership and the Environment guest Vincent Stanley set up. Their culture is incredible and…

In my ongoing efforts to be burdened with less material stuff, I've scanned many of my old photographs so I could get rid of the physical pictures. Now that I can see the images on my screen when I want, I'm not sure what to do with them besides sending them to a landfill, sadly, but I caused the physical waste when I paid for the pictures. I'm only moving it from one place to another now. For those keeping track, I still haven't thrown out my landfill waste since June 2017, so some of my trash this year dates to the 70s---for example, here's the story leading to the picture below. In the winter of 1979-80, my father took my two sisters and I…