Teddy Roosevelt and the meteorite

I read and enjoyed Jim Rasenberger’s book America, 1908, which tells the story of the year the Model T was introduced, the Wright brothers made a series of record-breaking flights in the US and France, and two attempts were made on the North Pole.

It was also a significant year for meteorites. An estimated 80 million trees were knocked over when a big meteorite exploded near the Tunguska River in Siberia. And in the US, a smaller meteorite nearly ended the second term of Theodore Roosevelt prematurely.

In an interview that summer for the magazine The American, Roosevelt said several times, “I’m through now,” though he still had six months left to serve. As Rasenberger notes, “He was closer to being through than he realized.”

Just past midnight, August 24, as Roosevelt slumbered in his bed, a small meteorite bored into earth’s atmosphere and blazed across a clear starlit sky toward Oyster Bay. Secret Service agents who were posted outside heard a hiss, then saw a flash that bathed Sagamore Hill and its lawn and tennis court in intense light. The meteorite landed less than a hundred yards from the house, just missing the president of the United States. It exploded into a hundred fiery pieces and disintegrated into dust.

Madagascar chocolate

Earlier this week I wrote about Seth Godin’s new book Linchpin, and posted a love poem from Madagascar at Words Without Borders, in honor of Valentine’s Day.

Now, by one of those odd convergences, Seth Godin and Madagascar and Valentine’s Day have come together again. Godin says he doesn’t do consulting, but apparently he’s been talking to the people who make Madécasse Chocolate, “the only imported chocolate made on the continent with local beans.” (Well, Madagascar isn’t technically on the continent, but it’s considered part of Africa.)

As it turns out, Madécasse is based in Brooklyn, not far from where I live, and the chocolate is sold, among other places, at one of my favorite independent bookstores, McNally Jackson.

At any rate, Godin’s point is that you can’t market effectively by being all things to all people. Pick a story and go with it.

For example, the Madécasse story about made by Africans in Africa is very powerful, at least as powerful as fair trade, if not more (they keep four times as much money in Africa by selling a bar as they would if they just sold beans to other companies).

If that’s true, then why not put your workers on the label? Big beautiful pictures that would be an amazing juxtaposition against all the other abstract stuff in the store. Tell me the story of the worker on the back. Make each one different and compelling. Packaging as baseball card. I wouldn’t put a word on the front, just the picture.  Now I not only eat something that tastes good, but I feel good. You’ve made it personal. The story on the back is about a real person, living a better life because I took the time to buy her chocolate instead of someone else’s. When I share the chocolate, I have something to say. What do you say when you give someone a chocolate bar? This package gives you something to say.

The illustration I’ve borrowed here is apparently Godin’s idea of what the Madécasse package should look like. I think it works, and I’ll be interested to see if the company goes with the idea.

Linchpin by Seth Godin

Over the weekend I bought Seth Godin‘s new book Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? On Monday I finished reading it, and in the evening I went to hear the author at the Borders in Columbus Circle, where he was appearing with Steven Pressfield, author of The War of Art.

The idea of Linchpin is an attractive one. At a time when the economy has drummed into us that no one is indispensable, it’s appealing to be told that we may be indispensable after all, or that this book can tell us how to become indispensable. But the book quickly makes it obvious that it’s not so easy. Career survival requires being genuine, creative, and willing to take risks, says Godin. In fact, it requires being a kind of artist, and artists are subject to blocks.

The reason for that block is what both Godin and Pressfield call Resistance, and Resistance is very hard to overcome. Facing it requires facing our fears, and as Pressfield put it, you may find that the thing that scares you the most is the thing your soul needs. It’s easier to avoid doing difficult creative work by procrastinating on Twitter or Facebook or by keeping busy with routine, following-the-map tasks.

How do you overcome Resistance? Welcome your ideas, says Godin, even the bad ones. (I was reminded of Anne Lamott’s chapter on why “shitty first drafts” are a good thing.) Set deadlines, meet them, and move on to the next thing. Shipping all the time, he says, is the way to avoid burning out.

In the end, said Pressfield, he found that the pain of not doing the work he wanted to do was greater than the pain of doing it. Similarly, Godin said that if he ever stopped shipping, he would have to become a bank teller, and then he would have to blow his brains out.

Even if you make a habit of overcoming your Resistance and doing the creative work you were meant to do, there is no guarantee that it will make you money. It has made money for Godin, but he isn’t fooled by that into thinking it will do the same for everyone. After twenty years of studying successful people, Godin said, the only thing he’s found that they have in common is that they’re successful.

In Linchpin he makes it clear that trying to make your art pay can debase it, and that the best course for many people may be to bring their genuine, creative selves to both their day job and their novel—but without any expectation that the two can be combined.

What does the billboard say?

On my morning walk to work, over the Manhattan Bridge, I encountered a kind of koan: a billboard that says, “What does the billboard say?”

What does it say? It says, “What does the billboard say?”

One mango at a time

In 1996, a relatively peaceful time in Haiti, I traveled there with Global Exchange and was struck—despite the deforestation, despite the outbreaks of violence—by what a vibrant, welcoming, and even beautiful country it was. I wrote an article about the trip called Haiti as a Tourist Destination.

About a year later, I came upon a book of photos from Haiti that made me wonder—beginning with the seeming village idiot pictured on the cover—whether the photographer had been to the same place. “Steeped in Voodoo and brutalised by its rulers,” the book’s description read, “it is a country where human life is cheap and animals hardly worth life.”

Along with a surprising amount of help and compassion after the earthquake in Haiti, there has been a strong undercurrent of contempt and condescension. Once the compassion has faded, I’m afraid the contempt will continue. Long-term assistance and development requires a recognition that Haiti is worth developing.

For that reason I was pleased to see an op-ed in the New York Times called Building Haiti’s Economy, One Mango at a Time. Here’s an excerpt:

Haiti is by far the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, and yet it need not be so, because unexploited economic opportunities abound there. Some of the best mangoes in the world grow in Haiti — though too many of them rot, offshore from the world’s largest market, for want of adequate roads and well-governed ports. Excellent coffee is grown in the Haitian mountains, but much of it is sold informally across the border to coffee producers in the Dominican Republic, who reap most of the profits.

Haiti also has many qualities attractive to tourists: a warm climate; magnificent white-sand beaches and turquoise water; Tortuga, the famous pirate island off the northern coast; and the Citadel, a mountain fortress erected after Haiti’s independence in the early 19th century to fend off colonial powers, now a World Heritage site. Still, it is one of the least visited places in the Caribbean.