Pura Luhur Uluwatu Temple, Bukit Peninsula, Bali. May 26, 2012.[/caption]
Spring here in the Northern Hemisphere brings more color to the world, reminding me me of the power of color. Although the flowers and leaves have not yet blossomed where I am in Connecticut, this photo I took at a temple in Bali shows the power and pleasure of color.
A story in the Huffington Post features a chart from the book Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey and RJ Andrews how famously creative people spend their average days. Besides Ludwig von Beethoven, it features people such as Victor Hugo, Charles Darwin, Benjamin Franklin, et. a. Besides showing who was a ‘morning’ and who an ‘evening’ person, it’s helped me realize that my most productive working hours aren’t that eccentric.
What else I’m reading today:
For the first time in the history of the United States, the majority of member of its Congress are millionaires (as is President Obama and six of the nine members of the U.S. Supreme Court). So, is the United States governed by rich people? Quite literally, it is: the majority are people in the top one-percent of incomes.
I am proud that the New England Newspaper & Press Association has inducted my late mother and my late brother into the New England Newspaper Hall of Fame.
Please click this link to see photos of the induction dinner and event, which was held in the Park Plaza Hotel, in Boston, Massachusetts. Besides my surviving family, many people from the New England newspaper were there. Charles Ryan, editor of the daily Chronicle in Willimantic, Connecticut, gave the nomination speech. Patrice Crosbie, Kevin’s widow and his successor as Publisher of the Chronicle, accepted the award, which was given by Gary Ferrugia, publisher of The Day, of New London, Connecticut.
Are nude photographs art? Does nudity still shock you? If you’ve been perplexed by those questions, take a look at New York photographer Spencer Tunick’s ‘human art‘. During the past 20 years, thousands of people en masse have volunteered to disrobe and pose for him. I think his work is certainly art and nudity has ‘paint’ (even when his nudes are wearing paint!)
httpv://youtu.be/8zP7yP8hdLE
This amazing documentary from the Japanese TV network NHK (which someone on YouTube mistakenly labelled as from the BBC) details how advanced technologies about humanioid robots have become. Because I think NHK erred by starting the documentary with an artist’s robot, rather than with something more interesting, feel free to start this video as 4 minutes 15 seconds. This clips ends unexpectedly after 48 minutes, but continues (with a bit of overlap) at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrBWsSFgNsM
Expect to see these robotic being around town in 2020. I’ll then be asking you if my home robot recognize who you are, greet you at the door, escort you to me, then get us some tea, coffee, or some other beverage?
“The most beautiful makeup for a woman is passion. But cosmetics are easier to buy.” – Yves Saint Laurent.
“Don’t tell me how educated you are; tell me where you have traveled.” – Mohammed.
“All is flux, nothing stays still. Nothing endures but change.” – Heraclitus.
“The seen is the changing; the unseen is the unchanging.” – Plato.
“It is not certain that everything is uncertain.” – Pascal.
“The future is here. It’s just unevenly distributed.” – William Gibson.
“If you want to know the future, invent it.” – Peter Drucker.
“The most important skill to learn is the skill to learn new skills.” – Paul Bourke.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” – Einstein.
“They were there looking for people who had the talent to think outside the box. It never occurred to them that, if everyone had to think outside the box, maybe it was the box that needed fixing.” — Malcolm Gladwell.
“An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents. … Its opponents gradually die out and the growing generation is familiar with the idea from the beginning.” — Seventy-eight year-old, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Max Planck in 1934.
“Some see the glass as half empty, some see the glass as half full. I see the glass as too big.” — George Carlin.
“Of all manifestations of power, restraint impresses men the most.” – Thucydides.
“I have often reflected that the causes of the success or failures of men are dependent on their ability to suit their manner to the times.” — Machiavelli.
“Out of clutter, find simplicity. From discord, find harmony. In the middle of difficulty, lies opportunity.” – Einstein.
“Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your [creative] work.” – Flaubert.
“”Do not deny the classical approach, simply as a reaction, or you will have created another pattern and trapped yourself there” – Martial artist Bruce Lee.
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers.” – Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
“This is a great wall.” – U.S. President Richard Nixon at the Great Wall of China, February 1972.
As my wife has long suspected, I’m part Neanderthal!
Emma and I visited Denmark earlier this month. Here are eight photos.
And videos from Copenhagen of Strolling down Strøget and Shipping out of Nyhavn.
I’d like to post galleries of my photographs. So, this is largely at test of my technical integration WordPress and Adobe Lightroom.
Rather than start with my photos, however, I’d discovered ten commercial slide photographs from someone’s trip to Le Crazy Horse Saloon in Paris during the 1960s. I’ve restored these formerly badly faded, half-century old photos, and now post here as a test of WordPress/Lightroom integration.
These days, the photos are merely softly risque period pieces. See for yourself.
“But, Vin, you’re a Progressive,” retorted a Libertarian friend during a political discussion. I was taken aback by his characterization of me!
‘Progressive?’ I’d never thought of myself as that. What did it mean? I’d remembered the term as from the United States history. During the late 19th and early 20th Centuries a progressive was someone who advocated legislation eliminating tenement housing, preventing child labor, and ensuring food safety. There was a Progressive Party founded in 1912 by former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt.
Yet my experience has been that whenever someone tries to label you, they’ve already pre-packaged their view of the world. Few people are actually what other people label them. They’re instead more complex. Even people who label themselves, when asked questions that closely examine their values, will admit gaps, some opposite opinions, and plenty of nuances beliefs.
I realized that my Libertarian friend in 21st Century meant was not only trying to pigeonhole my beliefs, he was intentionally, inadvertently, or ignorantly trying to gloss over any complexities or nuances of our discussions. He wanted to believe I was either someone who just wants for the sake of change or someone who thinks that government can solve all problems. Neither of which is true.
However, the more I thought about he mischaracterized me, the more I realized there is another and newer meaning of Progressive that is unrelated to all those political old labels and characterizations. A meaning with which I agree and do identify. Allow me to explain.
During the nearly 60 years I’ve lived, I’ve seen the world change. The end of the Cold War, globalization, diversification, interwoven economies, international pollution and climate change, growing scarcity of resources, and decreasing scarcity of information are only some of those changes. The pace of change in all those things constantly accelerates. Yet so many of our institutions, laws, practices, and lifestyles haven’t or aren’t adapting to these obvious changes in the world. As the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus noted, change is the nature of things. Unfortunately, people fear or dislike change. So, it is human nature that our institutions, laws, practices, and lifestyles can become perilously out-of-date, particularly as the pace of change has accelerated.
No, not everything should change (fundamental human rights, for example). However, the list of things that need not change is remarkably small, as indeed any list of truly precious things will be. There are remarkably more things that need to change than don’t. So many institutions, laws, practices, and lifestyles are becoming obsolete. There is a need to bring those up-to-date with the way the world now obviously is. There is nothing new in that. Millennia of ‘divine rule’ by emperors or kings ended because it became out-of-date. So did the acceptance of slavery. Or the subjugation of women. So many other things that once were taken for normal.
I’m no Libertarian. Humanity tried that political philosophy for some 500,000 years up to a few centuries or millennia ago. It didn’t work well. My Libertarian friends see Conservatives and Liberals (or Tories and Liberals, or Republicans and Democrats), ‘left’ and ‘right’, simply as two basically identical but warring political parties, equal yings and yangs that, while struggling for power, just divide the populace. I think that characterization is wrong.
I instead see Liberals as people who accept the fact of change and Conservatives as people who deny the fact of change or wish change were reversed. It’s not politics but acceptance of change that divides the two sides. I think that every mature Liberal on the planet understands that government can’t solve everything. I think every mature Conservative on the planet understands that market forces can’t solve everything. I likewise think those Conservatives realize change has occurred and is occurring, just as those Liberals realize that change advocated simply for the sake of accelerating change is chaos.
I avow that change happened in the world. I advocate that too many of our institutions, laws, practices, and lifestyles need to adapt to the reality of the change, jettisoning old ways that are harmful, unfunctional, or archaic, even if cherished or traditional. I am a Progressive in the rapidly changing 21st Century.
“American lives have no second acts,” wrote the novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald. His fellow novelist Ernest Hemingway disagreed, as do I. My life is now in its fourth chapter or act, I’ve realized as I start another new year.
My first was as the eldest child of newspaper publishers in a New England small town. I was skinny and studious, which made bullies prone to pick at me. Indeed, I was told by my parents that I needed to behave well due to their positions in town. And I was over-protected by them, forbidden to join any school sport team lest I get injured. I chafed during this chapter of my life.
Going away to college began the second chapter, marked by liberty, bits of exuberance, and romantic and career disasters. I became wild in college, the opposite of studious and over-protected. The liberty of living on my own, unrestrained by parents or their legacy in my hometown, was too seductive to resist. I got into a lot of trouble in college and eventually stopped attending classes. I left college because I didn’t know what I really wanted to do for a living. I went to work for my family’s newspaper for a few years. During that time, I met a coed at a nearby university, who I then lived with for eight years. She also wanted to work for my family’s newspapers, but there was something about her that troubled my surviving parent, who said no. So, I chose her over family and left my family’s business. I joined a brand name journalism company which unbeknownst to me was failing after 70 years. She and I bought a house; the company I joined went bankrupt twice; and the stress of saving it and my mortgage strained my marriage. Next I knew, the woman I lived with had had multiple affairs, ultimately running off with a guy when his wife alerted me to my woman’s second (or third?) adultery. I lost my love, home, and job.
Rebuilding my life from that rubble was the third chapter. I repaid the financial debts from my failed mortgage and marriage (my ex- also ran away from the former) and built from scratch a career in New Media (fortunately from its early days). Within ten years, I was speaking professionally at conferences worldwide and had clients on five of the six settled continents. Within 15 years, I was offered a university position teaching my expertise at a postgraduate level (not bad for someone with no college degrees himself!) And I met a highly intelligent and highly trustworthy Spanish woman who, after a long and cautious romance, became my wife.
I’m now in the fourth chapter of my life: married, financially secure, my wife and I are each regarded as international experts in our fields, we have homes in Europe and North America, and we travel where and when we want. I regret nothing in my life. Good things come to those who don’t deceive people. And Hemingway was right: there are multiple acts in a responsible American’s life.
From The Chronicle, Willimantic, Connecticut, April 18, 2012:
WILLIMANTIC-Chronicle Publisher Kevin Crosbie suffered a heart attack and died in his home Tuesdoy. He was 52.
tn the aftermath of h1s untimely death, friends and colleagues remembered him for the. person he was behind the title—a famity man, a constant in the community, an ally, an athlete and a very good fnend.
News of Crosb1e’s passing moved quickly through the community. Windham town offices Tuesday honored Crosbie with a moment of silence before the town council meeting, expressing shock and disbelief that such a prominent member of the community was gone.
Crosbie was remembered 1n many ways, not the least of wh1ch was for h1s forthrightness and honesty. “If he liked something, he’d tell you. If he didn’t like something, he’d tell you that too,”said Windham Mayor Ernest Eldridge. “Kevin and l didn’t travel on the same orbit but l considered hom my good friend.”
Condolences poured into the Chronicle Tuesday from newspaper heads around the state who knew Crosb1e professionally and personally “Kevin was a dedicated journalist and worked diligently to preserve community newspaperingin central Connecticut. He was committed to do1ng what was right in every situation and I took away new ideas from each conversation I had with him. The news media will be much weaker in this state with the loss of Kevin,” said Michael Schroeder, pres1dent of the Bristol Press.
Crosbie was a hands·on publisher and ever present in the newsroom, operating at times out of nothing more grandiosethan a cubicle in the corner. He was the go-to person for just about everything and would just as soon climb a ladder to change a light bulb as put on a jacket and sit down with the governor-as he d1d recently when Gov. Dannel P. Malloy paid a visit to the Chronicle.
“Kevin was a soup to nuts guy,” said former Chronicle features editor Terese Karmel. “At m1dnight he’d be at the paper, in jeans and a sweatshirt, ironing out some printing problems with the Daily Campus production editors and then that night, he’d be in a gray suitand be hosting a Chamber of Commerce dinner.”
Chronicle photographer AI Molpa said Crosbie treated everyone -no matter his or her lot -the same “There was no hierarchy with him,” said Malpa, who described Crosb1e as a forward thinker, always drumming up innovative ways to make the paper better. His business savvy ways and his nose for news combined to make him one of a kind.
“Kevin was a smart businessman with the soul of a journalist,” said Gary Farrugia, publisher of The Day. “He was a fine human being.”
Outside of the newsroom, Crosbie held several roles in the greater newspaper community, serv1ng as past president for the Connecticut Daily Newspaper Assoc1ation and chairman of the Connecticut Daily Newspaper Association’s legislative committee. “As president of the association, he was a committed leader. He was a fierce advocate for our industry who successfully fought legislation that stood to negatively affect our business in a significant way,” said Richard Graziano, publisher of the Hartford Courant.
Mike Killian Sr., vice president for the Record-Journal in Menden, descnbed Crosbie as a “fellow who loved the industry. He had a passionate commitment to journalism, as did Lucy, his mother.”
A graduate of Windham High School, Crosbie went on to earn a bachelor’s degree on English from Skidmore College in Saratoga, N.Y. He joined the Chronicle on 1984 and became publisher on 1992, making him the fifth generation of his family to act as publisher.
“Kevin was a class act. The closest I’ve come to George Bailey of ‘It’s a Wonderful Life,’ said George Geers, who was the Chronide editor when Crosb1e made the transition to publisher.
Despite trying economic times that continue to take a toll on newspapers around the country, the Crosbies have fought to keep the Chronicle 1n the fam1ly and have done so despite great odds. ‘The fact that he was the fifth generation of a family that has lead a local media organization stnce 1877 speaks volumes,” said Graziano.
Despite the Chronicle‘s status as a smaller daily, Crosbie as its publisher was well respected as an Industry leader amongst his peers. “He was passionate about, and dedicated to, preserving the independence of the Chronicle,” said Shawn Palmer, publisher of the News T1mes 1n Danbury.
Outside of the news bus1ness, Crosbie nurtured his longtime friendships and enjoyed some 30 years of ice hockey with old high school buddies. The group began getting together to play pond hockey in the woods of Windham and whole they all loved the game, their greatest fondness was for one other.
“They were terrific hockey players, but they were better friends,” said M1ke Sypher, Chronicle sports editor, who went to high school with Crosbie and has worked at the Chronicle for 25 years.
Norm Miller, a longtime friend and fellow hockey player, said there were countless good times to be remembered w1th Crosbie but what stuck out most 1n his mind was the kind of friend he was . ” He always seemed to be there when I needed a friend. When I came home from Iraq, he was the guy who p1cked me up. When I was down, he was there,” said Miller.
And for all that he was hands-on, Crosbie was hands-off where 1t mattered most. ‘”‘He let us do our jobs and he trusted our abilities. He was the best boss t ever had and ever will have, “said Sypher.
Michael Lemanski, Chronicle city editor, has known Crosbie since 1997. As a sports enthusiast, Lemanski said he admired Crosbie for his interests both 1ns1de and beyond the newsroom -and especially his membership on the Soubere and Buzzard hockey teams.
“Kevin was the only publisher I”ve ever worked for who played ice hockey,” said Lemanski. “He cared about his staff, family and community and he represented what newspapers should be.”
Lemanski’s sentiment was shared by others who knew Crosbie. “He was a man that you could trust,” said Eldridge. “There are not many newspaper people you can say that about, but Kevin was one of them.”
•
From the Hartford Courant, April 17, 2012:
WILLIMANTIC — Kevin Crosbie, the publisher of The Chronicle newspaper of Willimantic has died at the age of 52.
Vincent Crosbie said Tuesday that his brother died unexpectedly overnight and that the cause was determined to be a heart attack.
The Crosbie family started The Chronicle in 1877, and Kevin Crosbie succeeded his mother, Lucy Crosbie, as publisher in 1992. He represented the fifth generation of the family to lead the daily newspaper. Lucy Crosbie died on Jan. 1.
Rich Graziano, publisher, president and CEO of the Courant and vice president and general manager of Fox CT, said he got to know Crosbie through their mutual involvement with the Connecticut Daily Newspaper Association.
“As president of the association, he was a committed leader. He was a fierce advocate for our industry who successfully fought legislation that stood to negatively affect our business in a significant way,” Graziano said. “Kevin was a very special type of business leader. The fact that he was the fifth generation of a family that has led a local media organization since 1877 speaks volumes. But even more impressive than any of his accomplishments in business or at the CDNA is the type of person Kevin was.
“He was always passionate, prepared, warm … a class act. He was an ideal ambassador for our industry. I will miss Kevin. The industry will miss Kevin.”
Crosbie began working for the Chronicle within a few years of graduating from Skidmore College.
In addition to serving as president of the CDNA, he was a member of the board of the New England Newspaper Association.
•
From The Daily Campus, University of Connecticut, April 17, 2012:
Kevin Crosbie, the longtime publisher of The Chronicle newspaper in Willimantic, has died at age 52.
Kevin’s brother, Vincent, has told various news sources that Kevin died overnight Monday and that the cause was believed to be a heart attack. Kevin has been the publisher of The Chronicle since 1992.
This is not merely a loss of a well-respected local. For many years, The Chronicle has printed the copies of The Daily Campus that are delivered around UConn every weekday, and for as many years Kevin has served as the primary point of contact for the executive staff at The DC. For those of at The Daily Campus who had the pleasure of working with Kevin, he served as a mentor and a valuable resource.
“Kevin was a great mentor and friend to The Daily Campus and was always willing to help,” said Russell Blair, the Managing Editor of The Daily Campus for the 2010 to 2011 Production year.
“I remember calling him on a few occasions well past midnight, and even though I had woken him, he didn’t hesitate to help me with a technical problem,” Blair said. “I am confident that I am just one of the many journalists who Kevin mentored throughout his time at The Chronicle.”
But Kevin went beyond answering phone calls. He opened his pressroom to give personalized tours to DC staffers, and offered the use of his newsroom when power outages threatened to halt production. He worked with his staff to set up free training sessions and workshops for Daily Campus advertising representatives and photographers.
There is no other way to put it: Kevin loved The Daily Campus. He was equally as likely to brag about the achievements of The DC as its own staff, and he took great pride in being associated with a nationally ranked student newspaper.
But Kevin’s passion for UConn student journalism extended beyond The Daily Campus.
“For as long as most people can remember, the Crosbie family and Kevin in particular have been friends of UConn, especially the Journalism Department and its students,” said Marcel Dufresne, associate professor of journalism. “Kevin’s influence and support were felt in so many ways, whether it was working with students at The Daily Campus to get the paper published regularly and on time, or giving student interns a chance to gain experience and see their first byline in print.”
Dufrense also spoke of Crosbie’s selfless help with his Publication Practice class’ special project this past spring.
“I asked him for a price quote to print a special edition of a student reporting project about services for adults with autism,” Dufresne said. ”Once he heard what the topic was, Kevin immediately offered to print it for free, even using high-quality paper to give the publication a polished, professional look. To increase the exposure, Kevin had the newspaper inserted into a weekday edition of The Chronicle and delivered it to each of his subscribers.”
“When I first met Kevin, all he wanted to do was talk about how great he thought The Daily Campus was and how happy he was to get to work with us,” said Mac Cerullo, the current Managing Editor of The Daily Campus. “Every time I called him this past year to ask a question or work out a production issue, he always complimented us on our work.”
“No one was more supportive of us than him,” Cerullo said, “We’re all going to really miss him.”
Kevin’s experience, dedication and endless patience will be missed by The Daily Campus, and the newspaper staff wishes to extend condolences to Kevin’s family, friends and coworkers, who are undoubtedly mourning the sudden loss of this incredible man right along with us.
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