CONTEMPORARY EXPLORER

  More and more you are seeing media presentations incorporating the chaos of the street and life. Call them voices from the street. This includes platforms like street blogging, vlogging, advertising, and presentations. You can make a case that they have been around for a long time in major media, but not so much in mainstream business messaging.  A good example of this is the TV documentary series “How to with John Wilson.” Wilson takes a serious subject and mixes it with free for all street level scenes. Somehow it works, maybe because we all live, even thrive on the chaos of today. Either way, his messages get across. Others like the photographer Eric Kim’s blog site are recorded with him wandering the street, making his points sporadically, shouting out to his friends, noting sights along the way, all played against the music of life flourishing on all sides.  It makes you wonder about the presentations of old. How well ordered you tried to make them, how perfectly y...

  Eric Kim burst onto the photography scene a few years ago, becoming a noted street photographer. Following his photographs, career, blog, and philosophy since then, resembles  a bouncing ball. Some like his work and some don’t. Occasionally though, he comes up with interesting insights into photography. Such are his thoughts about “The Random Shot.” The unique scene you come across that does not fit the theme of your work or outing. Do you take the photograph or not? His answers is you should. If for no other reason, than it has spoken to you in some way. You sense the art there, but don’t completely understand the beauty yet. Besides you stretch your creativity and learn more about your camera. He discusses all this in his podcast “The Intrinsic Joy of Photography.” How art can be found in all things a photographer sees.

    One day you drive by and see deep forests of green. The next time only cleared land of a new subdivision. You spirit morns the passing of the green and wonders about the smartness of the new development. Why all the sprawl, you ask yourself. There are good things about subdivisions though. They offer more stability for growing families than apartment living. An opportunity to build your own life and home. Sometimes schools and areas are more safe than the city. Your money goes to build your worth, not the landlords. Not all is good though. Most subdivisions are isolated, away from the small commerce that often ties urban communities together.  Subdivision can break one of the three social legs phycologists say are important for well being. Family and friends are not enough. Random connections with other people are an equally key, but sometimes difficult in suburbia. Vivek Murthy, the surgeon general says the need for the third leg of social interaction is deeply embed...

  We seek out patterns. Ones we hope will reveal rich paths and ideas to follow. The mere act of living leaves patterns behind. Some well ordered, some not. They are often just fabrications, signs of a battle won or lost, accidents, scrapes left by trucks, remnants of signs, and thousands of other things. Some patterns only attract a glance, others curiosity. Patterns studied can stir visions and creativity. Inspirations for stories, new horizons, and art. Their meaning left to the viewers eye… David Young “Search for inspiration in the dirt on walls or the streaked patterns in stones” - Leonardo da Vinci

  There are times when I feel the richness of life, filled with passion to pursue interest and thoughts. To experience life fully, to create, to just listen to the world turn. The challenge is to let it be so….

  Small buildings dot and define America’s landscape. Usually built for a single purpose, apartments, grocery store, retail, bar, or restaurant. They all start with the glitter, excitement and bright signs of the original owner. Overtime those signs fade, owners retire or pass away. The building struggle to be repurposed, but seldom are. They languish for years, people remember the life once there, reluctant to tear them down. They look different in various parts of the country.  In the desert, they take on a bleached look. Separated by distance between them, the speak of loneliness. Urban small building often occupy crowded corners or are tucked away between larger properties. Almost afraid to show themselves for fear of being torn down. Small town ones form the closest bindings to the community, part of the landscape. These tend to last the longest, the small towns working to make them live again. Keeping them in the future as a fabric of the community. When a community dies...

  There are long walks in medicine through the sterile walls of clinics and hospitals. Thoughts of diagnosis and treatments bounce in your head, dealt out by doctors and nurses you only see for a short time. A physician once confided that in medical school, you are taught to treat the patient. To always cure the ills you see. For the patient though, the cost of the cure may be greater than the benefit, not just the money, but the depths of the side effects, length of time spent.  There are dragons that live in the depths of hospitals. There to help, but breathing fire. There are times when the medical matrix confuses. What are the next best moves. Sometimes it feels like no one is there to answer the questions. You look for promised miracles. In high end stylish clinics with all the decor and appearance of warmth, you can become a ward of the cure. The care you are given craved and repeated until you find yourself there more than away at the life you knew. I like many have gre...

  I admit to liking oak paneled decor and warm lighting. So upon entering the new AC Hotel and finding no wood paneling, I had to tack to relate to the place, moving my thoughts back and forth. It was a gray taupe upon gray, even the sparse decor items, a vase, a book, a few plants were such a dark green as to evoke no variety. I’ve always found you can learn most about a hotel from the lobby level one, the vibe of the place. Level one of this place did not disappoint, perhaps the still closed kiosk shop outside the entry should have prepared me. OK, the floor to ceiling LCD display with alternating colorful artwork impressed. So much that I looked around for a cup of coffee. I just wanted to sit in front of the display to avoid my being blended into the gray decor, lost forever.  At the small circle semi bar, lobby snack and coffee spot my mood began to change. Three affable patrons sat across from me, getting a last cup before heading to the plane. They were engaging, ex...

  In quiet moments, questions of purpose can corner you. Have I done enough to help others? This is especially true when you hear of grand things others have done for the betterment of all. You wonder if your work is really helping others. Even in retirement the question of greater purpose gnaws at you. Purpose can always be viewed grandly, but perhaps it can be found simply. The touchstone of the documentary “Road Runner” on Anthony Bourdain says a lot. That all the travel, food, found philosophy, and experiences Bourdain had were second to “Tony learning to be a better person.” Maybe this is the first step toward finding the purpose we seek. Being a better person helps us be more sensitive to others and in touch with the shared importance of dignity. Most of all, it helps us get beyond ourselves to be more observant of the world and its needs.  Needs that may be as simple as opening a door for someone, a kind word, listening, participating in a community meeting, rolling in ...

  They always cause me to pause. Marks on walls, pavement, and transit, all have something to say. I try to imagine art from them. How they were left there, could I use the renderings to paint. My camera comes out and there you have it. Another mark to pull at your wandering mind, to imagine, maybe create.  Perhaps it’s the randomness of them, how they break the perfectness of what is strived for in modernism and cities. All the while knowing they are the marks of our lives coming and going. Some are painted over, only to be marked again. Some aspire to a street art of their own, where intentions overcome the wildness.  I take the photographs home, play with them, get frustrated at times by what I thought I saw and didn’t. Still trying to pull the art from the mark. Sorting them out till one or two speak above the rest. Staying in my mind until art becomes…. Art Note: William Klein, the great street and fashion photographer who recently died was the first to paint fil...

  You find them in the corners of life, often left behind and alone. They can be people or just objects where you sense something happened. Like people they have stories to tell, testimony to make, but can’t except for the thoughts and images you give them. People always make the best witnesses. Still some are reluctant to share their experiences. Others shout them out and some think there are angles they can play. Some bottle them up, hiding in corners, unaware someone is watching, waiting to hear. Events cry out for witnesses. All want to give testimony. For some though there’s no one to listen…

Sometimes you learn things from relatives only after they have died. Ones your parents told you that you should get to know, but never did. All I really knew about Uncle Wes was he traveled the entire country as a salesman of small leather goods, men’s accessories like wallets and key chains. Ones he manufactured, selling them to variety, clothing, and hardware stores, mainly in small town America.  He and his wife Louis had a grand house on a hillside in Oakland where you could look out on the majesty of San Francisco’s skyline and the Bay bridge. In winter, Wes manufactured his products in the basement. Family rumor had it that Louis came from a monied family, the source of their wealth. My parents sent me there on school breaks to help him with manufacturing. The wondering imagination of a young boy looking out on what seemed like the whole world at the time. Even then, Wes would spin his tales of people he met on the road and wisdoms he learned. He took pride in fashioning thin...

  You find them in every state, small towns where the main engine of commerce has left, leaving empty storefronts and depressed times in their wake. These disinvested places seem left behind, apart for commerce, with little future evident. Many are attractive places with classic architecture and long standing residents who have weathered it all. You want to take these places in your arms and make them better, but how to make them sing and dance again can be elusive. Too often renewal efforts target the downtown areas of these places. Often not yielding the results wanted. Tearing down old classic buildings, attracting name brand big stores, and support for new subdivisions tied to downtown end up sputtering. They also can create gentrification that drives out long time low income residents. Surprisingly, the biggest asset these towns have is their stock of existing affordable housing. These small towns were once factory or mill towns. Ones built by the factory owner. They tend to b...

    Sometimes you feel like your stuck behind a large truck, traffic on each side, unable to pass, unable to see ahead. You grind away moving closer to the truck and then back, still moving, but trapped. You bide your time thinking of all the places you would rather be, but the path ahead isn’t clear. There are small breaks in traffic on either side once in a while, but thoughts of what could go wrong keep you where you are. You imagine all those bad outcomes of passing, until you take a chance and gun the engine, still unsure of what is beyond truck 30-055, but willing to take the risk…

  Thousands of cars pass it by everyday. To most, it just looked like another ordinary urban landscape. In the distance, beyond the broken parking lot with a few area lights flickering on leaning poles lay the concrete slab that was the corpse of the once great Eastland Mall. Gun shots rang out in the mall in 2005 as rival factions of the Happy Valley King’s gang fought it out. They did not kill the mall then, but its decline began. During its life, the mall had many more stories to tell. Eastland Mall began as a dream in 1975, billed a “crown jewel of Charlotte Commerce, a mecca for middle class shoppers, the heart of the Eastside.” The city hoped it would keep the Eastside growing and together, but things changed.  The demographics of the Eastside were strong middle-class with good payrolls from the light industry. Developers saw opportunity. The already successful Southpark mall had opened in 1970 just six miles away. It catered to high end stores and clientele. The middle ...

  Deep in the caverns of the medical matrix of the hospital a dragon lives. If you're one of the 1.7 million new cancer cases each year, you know what I am talking about. The formal name for it is a linear accelerator or EBRT machine, but to patients like me it’s a dragon, immense in size. You lay flat before its arms and hot breath, just hoping. Praying the treatment room professionals have it in control, that the out come will be good, that you will survive. There’s the preparation room where others patients sit waiting for their turn. Some for as few as 5 treatments, others for over 40. It all depends on the type of cancer and the prognosis. You get to know each other, at least by first name. All pretense falls away, you are all there for the same thing. Sometimes you ask what they are being treated for. Mostly though, the talk is of how many treatment days are left. They come and go as your treatment progresses. The ones with one or two left are envied by all. Your mind plays w...

  John Steinbeck’s “The Log from the Sea of Cortez” is not meant to be a book on business, but has things to say in this regard. The book is about the expedition experiences Steinbeck and marine biologist Ed Ricketts had on a voyage to catalog the different marine species off the shore of California. Steinbeck embarked on this journey to get away from the fame and controversy caused by his book “The Grapes of Wrath.” He needed time to recharge, to reset his spirits, and thoughts.  Experiences he recounts on aboard are thought provoking regarding the business age we are in. An age when so much of what reaches our desk is already evaluated, quantified, and carry with it specific instruction on how our work is done.  Steinbeck writes about the Mexican Sierra fish, one of the mackerel species of fish found in the Pacific. The Sierra can be identified in a lab by counting the number of spines. All done by employing the cold objectivity of a lab technician who opens a specimen ...

  The long empty roads of the high desert captured me. I stopped and got out of my car. The quiet and warmth of the desert wrapped around me. No words, thoughts or captions were needed. Different from the day to day life I had, where everything seemed to require a comment, a decision, point of view, or action.  Maybe this is why photographer Thomas Boivin produced a book of just photos titled “Belleville” This after years of producing photography books with narratives and captions, he arrived at a point recognizing that great photographs spoke for themselves. Ones that captured the heart of life.  I look these days for more of these special places, where I can pause and appreciate the richness of life just as it is.

  Reaching out to meet new people can be challenging even in normal times. Today, the hurdles are greater. Technology and other factors have lessened our face to face social contacts. The irony of todays life is the value gained by short interactions with people is snuffed out by the aversion to strangers. David Sax just wrote about this in the opinion section of The NY Times entitled “Why Strangers are so Good for Us.” COVID, CRIME, POLITICAL DIVISIONS and many more things have deepened the inclination to avoid personal contact with others, let alone strangers. Technology is also a culprit, making it possible to go through an entire day without interfacing with another human being. Examples abound from the fast food kiosk to being able to silence the Uber driver by hitting the no interaction button. It all causes us to withdraw and interact less.  There are many social costs to all this. A certain loss of the richness of life, as David Sax describes it. On the business side, ...

  “Art is not what we see on the wall, it is what we make of our lives.” This quote from the Nomad series is so true. We get so hung up on the 1,2 and 3’s of life, that we sometimes forget to nourish the whole. Life is not all about career, family, the money we have stacked up, or the rewards on the wall. It’s how we move through the world. How we are regarded by others, how we treat others, how we view the breath of life before us, and how deep our passion goes. The question is have we learned to enjoy life fully. There is no one formula for this, that’s the art of it. Over time and sometimes because of circumstances this concept becomes evident to us. We are comforted by the niches we have carved out in life. It is only when we are out in the world unhinged that we discover the true value of becoming as complete a person as possible. People, especially in new situations, care less about the work you do and more about the person you are. Our family is more than just our relatives,...

 Most of the time, you just pass closed shops and the miscellaneous of street wandering. Sometimes though, you catch a reflection, a pattern, mark or color that makes you pause. A learned blessing it is to be wise enough to stop, reflect, imagine or just enjoy for a moment...

  We had been through so many mergers in 24 months that we lost count of them. Every morning when we came in, we looked at the name over the reception desk trying to find some foundation to things. There were just nine of us left from the original staff of 40 people. Those let go were replaced with rookies and a current crop of new management. Branded with the macro vision of our new owners, often separated laughingly from the market place we worked in. Where did they get their research anyway?  We began to call ourselves the leftovers. There were reasons why we were still there. Most of the time, it was the book of business we had, that somehow remained loyal through all the changes or some specialized knowledge not easily replaced. It was not because they loved us. In fact, we were kept far away from the inner circle of where the big next moves were made. The new rookies sent out like bots to capture that vision. Quickly replaced if they did not. It was almost like the...

  There’s another market for opportunity out there. One often overlooked. It’s a market where consumer units are a mix between people trying to stay in the middle class or striving to reach it. Where a segment uses a culture of improvised self sufficiency and government support just to make it. The Bureau of Labor Statistics breaks our economy into five income brackets. Much of the target for products and services is the two top brackets, consumers making more than $96 thousand. Disposable income fuels a slew of luxury items in hot competition with each other. However, these two brackets only represent 30% of the 132 million consumer units in the United States. Surprisingly, the three lower brackets representing 92 million consumer units combined almost equal the spending of the top two. No wonder it has attracted business models like the dollar stores. This other market often falls outside the traditional profit thinking of many. Part of the reason is the breadth and diversity of ...

  The next you may be no further than the pencil on your desk. It’s important to move the edges of our experience. To think and create whimsical things. More difficult with age, because of the burden our our legacy experiences. The marks and strides may not be of any importance or impact. Sometimes though, it turns into art, special things that inspire. Artists like Cy Twombly and Joan Miro were masters of turning random marks, swirls and squiggles into beautiful things to ponder. It’s all about getting beyond the self you have known, testing the bounds that hold you in place. Whether it be in art or business, it is where great performances can be found…