More Matters

The national grass-roots response to George Floyd's tragic death has been extraordinary.  Some have taken to the streets, mostly in peaceful, if emphatic, protest.  People who have never created a banner or carried a placard have found the temerity to face a policeman eye to eye to add conviction to the silent statement that things must change.

And on a personal level, there are millions like me who are engaging in belated introspection, asking ourselves if we are part of the problem, and how we might contribute to the solution.  It is the Great Silent Majority of our times who are now reading, listening, watching, pondering and talking about systemic racism, at work, at school and around the dinner table. Many of us for the first time are questioning the role, the training and the culture of our nation's police.

And across the country, many people of color, and particularly black men and women, have found their voices, and are saying things to the white community that previously may have gone unsaid. They are sharing their emotions, rubbed raw by years of suppression, and trying to explain what it is like to be black in America; and not just the stereotypical convicted felon who runs afoul of the law, but people like you and me, except for the color of their skin.  And for the first time, some of us have begun to get it: that America has three branches of government, all of which are racially biased, and all of which result in pain and suffering for a portion of our citizenry who deserve better from their country.

We are thinking globally, but in the absence of a grand plan, we are acting locally. Communities across the country are reconsidering their monuments and namesakes, some of which memorialize racists, white supremacists and slave owners.  This is driven largely by support from the white community, which has hitherto rationalized these honors, but now recognizes that when a black person sees a statue of Robert E. Lee, he does not see a tribute to skilled generalship, but rather a thinly veiled acceptance of a culture and practice that is both personal and abhorrent.

This is progress. I am encouraged that we are changing from the inside out. Empathy and conviction have entered our hearts and minds, much like during the abolition of slavery in the 19th century, or the civil rights movement in the 1960's. Yet there is always the danger that this becomes a cause celebre that fades from our attention before the system can produce a meaningful transformation.  We can't let that happen. We must keep talking, keep learning, keep challenging our elected officials to reform our systems until reality meets the ideals our country has historically embraced.

Now we understand Black Lives Matter.  Let's not forget it.

What's in a Name?

Friday night Rebecca and I went to a dinner where we met Apa Sherpa, the Nepalese climber who has ascended to the summit of Everest 21 times--a record he shares with Phurba Tashi Sherpa.  It is an extraordinary achievement by a remarkable athlete.

We had the pleasure of sitting next to Apa's son at dinner.  Penba Sherpa grew up in a small village in Nepal.  Over dinner, he explained to us the naming conventions of his native people.

Sherpa is the surname used by nearly all villagers in the Everest region of eastern Nepal.  It was given to them by census takers, who didn't understand that some of the local population had only one name. So they gave them the surname Sherpa, which they kept, even though last names were not part of their culture.

First names for the Sherpas feature only slightly more variety, as each person is named for the day of the week on which he or she was born.  Sherpas rarely use middle names, although some do have prefixes, or virtue names.

And perhaps that is related to the humility shown by both Apa Sherpa and Penba Sherpa.  There is less ego involved in their identity.  The individual is, by its very name, less distinguished than the community.  I like that.

The Blue Zones

Dan Buettner, 2008.

Ridiculously short one-sentence description of the book: A study of geographic pockets around the world with a high incidence of centenarians, and what we can learn from them.

I loved this book, largely because it doesn't try to be more definitive than it deserves.  Rather--here are the areas where people live to be 100+, and here are a few observations about them.  And while there are a number of recurring themes, here are a few snippets I found interesting:

• Nicoya, Costa Rica: "We notice that the most highly functioning people over 90 in Nicoya have a few common traits. One of them is that they feel a strong sense of service to others or care for their family. We see that as soon a they lose this, the switch goes off. They die very quickly if they don't feel needed."
• Sardinia: "People here possessed a reverence for family... All the centenarians I met told me la famiglia was the most important thing in their lives--their purpose in life."
• Loma Linda, California, land of the Seventh-Day Adventists: "About half of the Adventists were vegetarians, or rarely ate meat ... We learned that non-vegetarian Adventists had about twice the risk of heart disease as vegetarian Adventists." Also, the non-vegetarians had a 65% greater incidence of colon cancer.  And Adventists who consumed nuts 5-6 times a week had half the risk of heart disease as those who didn't.
• Okinawa, Japan.  The old people in Okinawa, before they eat, say hara hachi bu, which is a Confucian-inspired adage which means "Eat until you are 80 percent full."

Chicle

Jennifer P. Matthews, 2009.

Ridiculously short one-page description: The history of chewing gum in the Americas, from the ancient Mayans to William Wrigley.

Rudolf of Habsburg

I have had some wonderful reading experiences when I've chosen books somewhat randomly, based on a momentary pique of curiosity.  When I was younger, before the era of massive brick & mortar bookstores, and online ones of near-infinite scope, I used to go to libraries.  Sometimes I would walk the aisles at random, flitting about the shelves until I found just the right book--interesting, readable and with just the right level of obscurity.  I recall getting one such book at the St. Petersburg Library--a biography of Rudolph of Habsburg, the 16th-century Holy Roman Emperor and part-time alchemist, which I was reading late at night when I was interrupted by Rebecca's laboring with the birth of our first daughter.  But this has nothing to do with chewing gum.

I didn't choose the book Chicle at random, but it seems like I did.  I was doing research for a book I never finished writing, but once I started reading Chicle, I couldn't put it down.  Here's one of my favorite stories in the book:

Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna

Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna was born in 1794 in the Mexican state of Veracruz to an upper-class family of pure Spanish heritage--a criollo.  His parents wanted him to be a businessman, but he entered a military academy instead, and at 16 joined the Spanish army and fought against the liberation of Mexico from Spain. In 1821 he switched sides and joined the Mexican army, rising to the rank of brigadier general.  When Mexico was liberated from Spain he became governor of Veracruz, and later President of Mexico, a position he would hold for eleven terms.

In 1836 he temporarily resigned his presidency to lead an army of 1500 soldiers to defeat the Texans at the Alamo.  It turned out to be a Pyrrhic victory, suffering heavy casualties, inspiring the Texas rebellion and followed a month later by an attack led by Sam Houston which resulted in 400 Mexicans killed, 200 wounded and 730 taken prisoner, including Santa Anna.  In 1837 Santa Anna signed the treaty giving Texas its independence, and was released back to Mexico in disgrace.  He regained his popularity by fighting and losing his left leg in the Pastry War with France in 1838, and was re-elected to president, serving six more terms.

So what does all this have to do with chewing gum?

In 1855, during his eleventh and final term, the Mexican economy was in shambles and the country had suffered the loss of enormous territory.  Realizing he could be exiled, Santa Anna fled to the island of St. Thomas in the Caribbean.  There he met U.S. Secretary of State William Seward, who was scouting for an island to buy to install a naval base.  (In 1867 Seward negotiated the purchase of Alaska for two cents an acre, which at the time was derided in Congress and the press as "Seward's Folly.")  Some men used Santa Anna's connection to Seward to swindle him, forging a letter from Seward inviting Santa Anna to come to New York and prepare to lead an expedition against Maxmillian, the Emperor of Mexico, who was backed by France.  Santa Anna invested and lost 40,000 pesos in the fake venture and and wound up broke, living in a modest house on Staten Island.

Getting closer to the chewing gum.

Thomas Adams

Through a mutual friend, Santa Anna was introduced to Thomas Adams, a former Civil War photographer who owned a store as a glass merchant.  Adams was also an inveterate inventor, having developed a new bag for horse feed and a burner for kerosene lamps.  Santa Anna had brought with him some chicle, which is a rubbery sap from sapodilla trees in the Yucatan Peninsula.  Santa Anna had hoped to get rich by finding someone to develop chicle as an alternative to rubber, a booming new industry. Adams--the inventor and entrepreneur--took Santa Anna's chicle and tried to replicate the vulcanization process developed by Charles Goodyear in 1839.  Despite Adams spending $30,000 on the venture, it was unsuccessful.  Santa Anna had returned to Mexico (he died, senile and impoverished, in 1876) and Adams was ready to put the whole chicle fiasco behind him.

Now for the chewing gum part.

While in a store, Thomas Adams overheard a young girl ask to buy some paraffin wax gum.  Paraffin, beeswax and other products had been introduced as substitutes for spruce chewing gum, which had been chewed by Indians for centuries for health and recreational purposes, and had become a minor industry in the U.S., only to dissipate due to the demand for spruce trees in the lumber industry. Adams recalled hearing how the indigenous people from the Yucatan chewed chicle, so with his sons they boiled the leftover chicle in a pot, rolled it into small gray balls and sold it at their store.  It sold out in hours.  They made more.  By the late 1880's, Adams and Sons was employing over 300 workers at a plant near the Brooklyn Bridge.  They produced five tons of chewing gum daily, including their best-selling Tutti-Frutti and Black Jack licorice gums.  Adams is generally recognized as the father of the modern chewing gum industry--thanks to Santa Anna.

Related points of interest: Thomas Adams invented the first chewing gum machine in 1871, which he placed in drugstores, and in 1888 commissioned the first penny vending gum machine, for subway platforms, They introduced Chiclets in 1900.  The family grew rich, and Thomas Jr. and John Dunbar Adams had a double-residence mansion built in Brooklyn (across the street from the Feltman mansion, owned by the German-born Charles Feltman, who first turned a frankfurter into a hot dog and sold them at his shop on Coney Island). The Adams mansion featured the first elevator in New York City.  One year, when the Adams' returned from a six-month stay at their coastal home in Bay Shore, New York, they discovered four servants who had gotten trapped in the elevator and perished from starvation.

In 1919, now the American Chicle Company, the Adams' spent $2 million on a massive five-story 550,000-square-foot building on Long Island. It was producing five million packages of chewing gum a day.  The company survives today, through Black Jack licorice gum, Chiclets, and Cadbury-Adams LLC.

So chew on that.

In 2017 I'm revisiting 50 books I've enjoyed over the years.  This is 7/50.

Zen Story: Bankei

When Bankei held his seclusion-weeks of meditation, pupils from many parts of Japan came to attend. During one of these gatherings a pupil was caught stealing. The matter was reported to Bankei with the request that the culprit be expelled. Bankei ignored the case.

Later the pupil was caught in a similar act, and again Bankei disregarded the matter. This angered the other pupils, who drew up a petition asking for the dismissal of the thief, stating that otherwise they would leave in a body.

When Bankei had read the petition he called everyone before him. “You are wise brothers,” he told them. “You know what is right and what is not right. You may go somewhere else to study if you wish, but this poor brother does not even know right from wrong. Who will teach him if I do not? I am going to keep him here even if all the rest of you leave.”

A torrent of tears cleansed the face of the brother who had stolen. All desire to steal had vanished.

Talent is Overrated

Geoff Colvin, 2008.

Unreasonably short one-sentence description: Excellence in any endeavor is primarily a function of persistent and grueling "deliberate practice," and not innate talent or native intelligence.

I've always enjoyed Geoff Colvin's work in Fortune, and the topic was in my wheelhouse, so it's no surprise that I enjoyed this book. Two years later David Shenk published The Genius in All of Us, which I thought was remarkably similar.  Talent is filled with fascinating research, but it opens with perspectives on why some of history's most notable "prodigies" were more made than born.

• Mozart's father, Johann Georg Leopold Mozart, was a renowned expert in music pedagogy and a domineering parent who started young Wolfgang on an intensive training regimen in composition and performance at the age of three.  As a result, Mozart's early compositions as a child earned his some renown, supported by his father's promotion of his "prodigy."  But historians note that none of these early compositions are in the child's own hand.  Rather, they were "corrected" by his father, who just
  
  happens to have stopped his own composing when his son took up the practice.  Further, none of Wolfgang's early compositions are highly regarded, and are mostly unoriginal arrangements of Bach's work, under whom Mozart had studied in London.  In fact, Mozart's first great work wasn't until he was 21 years old, and had been devoting his life to music for 18 years, living with an expert teacher who was consumed with his success.
• Earl Woods, Tiger's father, was a golf fanatic with plenty of time on his hands and a single-minded ambition to teach his son to golf.  He gave Tiger his first putter at seven months.  He'd set Tiger on a high chair in the garage and have him watch as Earl hit hundreds of balls into a net. Before Tiger was two, they were at the golf course playing and practicing regularly.  By the time Tiger rose to national prominence, as a 19-year-old Stanford student, he'd been an avid, dedicated student of the game for 17 years.

Colvin makes a compelling case that high levels of excellence and achievement in all endeavors, including business, do not spring from inherent intelligence, memory or any other genetic endowments.  Rather, they are a function of persistently hard work; and specifically, what Colvin refers to as "deliberate practice," which is a mentally intense, focused effort to improve one's skills.

In 2017 I'm rereading 50 books I've enjoyed in recent years.  This is 6/50.

Zen Story of the Day

The Emperor asked Master Gudo, "What happens to a man of enlightenment after death?"

"How should I know?" replied Gudo.

"Because you are a master," answered the Emperor.

"Yes sir," said Gudo, "but not a dead one."