44 Things I Have Learned at 44, by Scott Daris

Scott Daris wrote his "Things I Have Learned" list chronologically, with one lesson for each year of his life.

Scott Daris took a completely different approach to “Things I Have Learned” than the other contributors — rather than sharing an overall perspective on what he knows today at 44, he wrote a chronological list of life experiences in each year of his life and what he learned from them.

A chronological list never occurred to me but it’s perfect for Scott because he’s faced some tremendous life challenges, and seeing how each flowed into the next gives each subsequent year and lesson perspective. It’s a powerful, moving list and I’m honored he’s willing to share it here.

Scott is a freelance graphic designer/ art director and marketing consultant who gave up Manhattan for rural Massachusetts.

1.  I discovered Air. The hydrogen and oxygen mix I was used to was liquid. Now this Air thing is magically keeping me alive even though it’s invisible. Interesting.

2.  The patterns and rhythms of sounds started making more sense. These things, when not music, were words, and they could be both comforting and scary.

3.  The men landed on the Moon on my third birthday. I had rockets and spacemen on my cake and I learned to love cake and space. And spacemen.

4.  Movement and speed. When all the other kids were in nappytime at Tic Tac Toe Preschool, I was fidgeting and making shapes with my hands and mumbling to myself. I needed to run and play. This was the root of my insomnia.

5.  Sense of accomplishment. When I tied my shoes correctly for the first time in kindergarten, I ran through the room whooping and hollering. Woot!

6.  Peaceful ecstasy. The gentle sounds of springtime birds while having our special Friday lunch on the beautiful green grass of Green Meadows Elementary put me in a state of blissful peace. I go back to that place in my soul often.

7.  Respect. I adored Mrs. Collins, whom my mother also had as a teacher when she was a little one. Small-town country life was nice. Banjos and butterflies…

8.  Abandonment. When my mother suffered a nervous breakdown and left our family, it destroyed me. It was the basis for throwing me off and making me a damaged person the rest of my life. Not a bad person, just fundamentally damaged.

9.  Change and newness. I left the rest of my family – all my siblings and father – to live with my mother when she got out of the psychiatric hospital. I went to a city school and experienced kids of all races. Black girls were cool and Latino boys were badass.

10.  The shock of not being liked by everyone. I loved the other kids and just wanted to engage and have fun, but when I tried to be friends with some of the kids in my class, one of them said “Get away from me” and slapped me in the face. Wha?

11.  Love of nature. I was part of a ’70s experimental group that taught kids about the woods, nature and survival, and I fell in love with the Earth. I learned how to build survival structures, tie special knots, and know which plants and barks to eat. Teaberry anyone?

12.  Love of science. My seventh grade science teacher had a black and white science lab with shiny blood-red desks in our new junior high in town. How modern and cool. We each got our own frog to dissect.

13.  Music. I loved every single thing about music – the expression, the visceral feeling in the core of my being, and the group love from all the kids singing with me. My amazing teacher, Mr. Todd, changed my life.

14.  Embarrassment. We had to take nude showers before and after swimming class and I couldn’t believe I had to see all my friends naked. Was this school policy or the choice of a pervy gym teacher?

15.  Out-of-it while being in it. I fit in with everybody and nobody. I had friends from every clique and as many enemies, too. I was so multi-dimensional that I could relate to everyone and at the same time no one.

16.  Existential dread. WTF is the point of all this? Suffering, then random moments of happiness, then lather, rinse and repeat.

17.  Drinking and smoking pot. I was a happy teenage alcoholic, full of punch and poetry and puking, followed by pot to settle down. Then I needed to dance and scream so I drank more.

18.  Sense of failure. I was so musically inclined that I became the guest conductor of our a cappella singing group. I was terrible – so socially awkward and not a good fit – but my friends joked about it and forgave me. I was the tortured, oversensitive music whiz that needed to stay in the performance and be the music itself.

19.  Coming out without even trying. After being quite the ladies man throughout junior and high school, I had my first boyfriend in freshman year at state college. I was the art punk alternadude on campus and life was never more awesome. A big F U to the establishment!

20.  Rage. When I pointed out the bloated, Neanderthal guy at my state college who stole my roommate’s hidden savings (he overheard where it was hidden in our dorm room) he lifted me up by my throat and jammed me into the wall at a party. Perfect moment to be Carrie, motherf–ker, but instead, just drunken laughs.

21.  Freedom. I moved to Boston and became an artsy, new wave guy on the scene. City life was amazing, always filled with music, parties and new friends.

22.  Art. I became a painter at The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and I immersed myself in unbridled creativity. I was pathologically visual and visionary but also a firm believer in hard empirical fact. Mystical without a God. Still am.

23.  Death. My older brother died of drug and alcohol abuse. He tried committing suicide earlier this same year and I saved him by breaking down our bathroom door and holding his bloodied body while I called 911. He died on the streets a few days before Christmas. I love you, Steve.

24.  True friendship. I loved my amazing creative friends so much, and they loved me. We were hippie punk freaks in love with life and each other. We baked bread and skinny dipped and slept on big beds all cuddled up with each other.

25.  Closure. School was over. My friends from the past four years either had babies, drifted way or tended to life’s other obligations.

26.  Radicalism. Maybe the wrong word. Without trying and without hatred, I questioned everything and focused on trying to free myself from the shackles of societal bullshit and the megastructures we’ve set up to enslave ourselves. Rockiness ahead.

27.  Service. I became a print shop rep and absolutely loved making things happen for people. I was rewarded with abundant thank yous, guest passes, special event tickets, and even money. Boston’s heyday was the late ’80s and early ’90s and I dove into the scene with lots of perks and fun people. I was drunk four days a week.

28.  Awareness of bad habits and repeating problems. I got so out of touch with my own needs and sense of purpose because of low self–esteem that I sabotaged jobs, relationships, everything. Good things fell apart and I often left a trail of tears. Twelve more years of this to come in different forms.

29.  Being used by people. I was such a caretaker that people milked me for all I was worth. I validated my sense of purpose by giving freely of my resources, my time, my money and taking care of people. People could be selfish, uncaring, brutal assholes. And they were.

30.  Putting my foot down. I kicked out my roommate/best friend and all our common friends took his side even though he used and abused me. Nice.

31. New York City. OK, I’m here in ugly 1996 Williamsburg with a BFA – now what? Time to learn about this wonderful town.

32.  Unbelievable hardship and struggle. I was sick of service and retail jobs so I made a point of learning new skills and getting entry-level desktop publishing jobs to pay my high New York City rent. This was the first year I went consciously forward in my career as a graphic designer.

33.  Respect for sentient life. My sister became a Tao Buddhist and I became a vegetarian when I had a dream of skinned humans in supermarket shrink-wrapped packaging. Life is tender, raw, vulnerable. I still save spiders and watch in wonder as a mosquito sucks my blood.

34. Office life. I became a graphic designer on Wall Street and melted into the social structure of office life. Something felt both right and very wrong. Was I an artist selling out? But at 34 I was officially getting old, so I had to – right?

35. Ostracization. I had such a long stint of bad choices, bad credit and bad habits that I had to settle on getting an apartment way out in the “ghetto” of Brooklyn in the Bed–Stuy neighborhood. Friends and family thought I would get killed. I could write a book just on living in Bed–Stuy for 5 years!

36. African-American culture. I had a motto in Bed-Stuy: “The Only Cracker in the Box.” I became friends with my neighbors and started to get involved with the dance and music culture of African-Americans. Amazing, supportive, connected people with huge extended families and networks of support – something I never had. I became an honorary brotha. And sista!

37. Late-30s alcoholism. I could not sleep without drugs and alcohol – a total insomniac. I was slipping into darkness. Nights were filled with nightmares. Days were unbearable. I may have even died quickly one night and came back to life, my health was so bad. Who knows.

38. Things falling apart. How long could a person not love himself, not know himself, not face the core reasons of why a life wasn’t working? When things fall apart, all the core truths are revealed. I started facing them one by one. I nursed my body and soul back to health with the loving guidance of a few close friends.

39. Pulling it together. I focused solely on becoming an art director by building a portfolio, even though I was stuck in production-level jobs while not having a dime to my name at any point in time. Focusing was about to pay off big time.

40. Reaping the fruits of my hard labor. Being a late bloomer and working myself to the bone, I finally became an art director. Sure, it was in pharmaceutical, but I learned everything about ad agencies from here on. Freelance life to come in many industries. Learning while getting paid – it was all good.

41. Losing everything. I lost my ad agency job, I lost my Manhattan apartment, I had to sell everything I owned, I couldn’t work because of panic attacks and I was near homelessness, so I made a last-ditch effort to stay in New York City by moving back to yet another bad Brooklyn neighborhood for the cheap rent. Epic fail. If it weren’t for Melody Beattie’s “Finding Your Way Home” and Pema Chodron’s “When Things Fall Apart,” I wouldn’t be typing right now. I left NYC and moved into my mother’s home in rural western Massachusetts.

42. Facing the core reasons and truths. So why would a life not work? I know now after many grueling seasons of deep reflection. I’m what is known as an HSP – a Highly Sensitive Person. There’s an acronym for everything! I internalized all the negative energy and dysfunction of the world and let it break me apart, then lashed out at people, leaving charred aftermath. I was often right in my observations and interactions, but I used the fire of intensity against myself and others instead of using it constructively to build and strengthen. Fire can be either terrifying and destructive or warm and life-sustaining.

43. Connecting with family. I’m now back in my hometown near mom, dad, sister and her kids. One brother is dead and the other is in the Navy but I’m very connected to both. I love my family and we’re making up for lost time. I’m barefoot most of the time, even in winter. I love feeling myself on the Earth – finally.

44. Healing. The deepest healing on all levels that only the courageous or nuts could do. People hide in marriages, jobs, drugs, delusions, commonly accepted non-sanity, and many other things. I see right through it all and cannot use any delusion or crutch to keep going. Someone once told me my soul was 6,000 years old. Ha! I’m not that young.

Scott Daris was the fourth installment in the “Things I Have Learned” series, running each Thursday on Newvine Growing. Previous lists have come from:

• me
• Margaret Yang
• Amanda Hirsch

Each person’s list is their own. Life teaches us all different lessons, even when we face the same experiences. I’m honored to share this series of life lessons in each contributor’s voice.

Guy Laliberté driving Cirque du Soleil to $1 billion empire

Timed to Cirque du Soleil bringing its new show, Zarkana, to New York this summer, the New York Times offers up a lengthy profile of its creative force, who is described as a “very nice bulldozer.”

With the caveat “analyzing his character is challenging since he has few close friends, and even his longtime associates say they hardly know him,” writer Jason Zinoman sits in on a rehearsal with Guy Laliberté and profiles the impresario who has built a modern circus empire:

The truth is, circus is Mr. Laliberté’s third passion. His second is travel. His first is business. Within the Cirque empire he has been the major fund-raiser since the beginning; in 1983 he landed a $1.3 million grant from the provincial Quebec government to present a show as part of the celebration of the 450th anniversary of the discovery of Canada. At the time his company was a modest nonprofit that divvied up beers at the end of rehearsal in a rented gym. But his original presentation included a five-year plan with multiple shows. He was 24.

Cirque had its breakthrough in Los Angeles in 1987. “Cirque Réinventé,” staged by Guy Caron, was new for American audiences familiar with Ringling Brothers. It was dramatic, emotional, occasionally slow and highly theatrical. Disney made an offer to buy the company. So did Columbia Pictures. Mr. Laliberté turned them both down, insisting on creative control.

Mr. Caron left the company following a dispute over money, and eventually returned, but Cirque’s history is riddled with power struggles that end with one survivor. “I survived three putsches,” Mr. Laliberté says with his usual swagger.

It’s a fascinating peek into a creative mind that clearly understands the financials of what he’s doing. Click here to read the full story.

Some random observations about NOLA about one month in

John and I arrived in New Orleans for our quasi-sabbatical on March 25 so we’re approaching one month in our temporary hometown.

I’m already getting pangs about time running short. We have Easter weekend coming up, then two weekends of Jazz Fest, then we pack up for home a few days later.

Weve seen so many artists and musicians since weve been in New Orleans -- but so far, we havent seen a single mailbox.

So after we’ve crossed the halfway point in our stay, here are some random observations about NOLA:

Things in short supply: street signs and mailboxes, apparently wiped out by Katrina and never replaced?

Things in abundance: musicians and artists, rats and cockroaches, potholes

Phrases people use that I don’t think I can convincingly say:

• y’all, although I love it because it fills the “plural you” void in the English language
• making groceries, as opposed to going grocery shopping
• where y’at, which isn’t such an unusual question but there’s something about the pronunciation that sounds funny coming out of my northern mouth

Mudbugs are tasty, especially boiled with spices, garlic and onions -- but whether you call em palmetto bugs, water bugs or cockroaches, Southern weather grows them big and abundant.

Take a sweater: Weather has been lovely while we’ve been here, typically around 80 during the day and 60 at night. I almost always take a sweater with me when we go out, not because it cools off so much at night but because so many places we go are air conditioned like the refrigerator aisle when you’re makin’ groceries.

Really, people, it’s not so unbearable outside that you need that much cold air. Maybe they’re just getting ready for August?

Best tradition ever: the lagniappe. Merriam-Webster defines it as “a small gift given a customer by a merchant at the time of a purchase; broadly : something given or obtained gratuitously or by way of good measure.”

It seems baked into the New Orleans way of doing business, far more so than any other place I’ve been. We recently got our second dozen oysters on the house when we hung out and chatted with the bartender at one bar,  and John frequently wears the free shirt he scored when he complimented the fried chicken at one of his favorite joints in the Quarter.

It seems the rule is it’s not an advertised deal — this isn’t about the 2-for-1 drinks at happy hour — but instead it’s at the discretion of the person waiting on you.

I’m not just saying the lagniappe is excellent because I like a bargain. (I do.) But there’s something so endearing about feeling you’ve gotten more than you paid for, that you’re getting treated special. Isn’t that why Cheers was such a great bar, because everyone knows your name?

According to Wikipedia:

Mark Twain writes about the word in a chapter on New Orleans in Life on the Mississippi (1883). He called it “a word worth traveling to New Orleans to get”:

We picked up one excellent word — a word worth travelling to New Orleans to get; a nice limber, expressive, handy word — “lagniappe.” They pronounce it lanny-yap. It is Spanish — so they said. We discovered it at the head of a column of odds and ends in the Picayune, the first day; heard twenty people use it the second; inquired what it meant the third; adopted it and got facility in swinging it the fourth. It has a restricted meaning, but I think the people spread it out a little when they choose. It is the equivalent of the thirteenth roll in a “baker’s dozen.” It is something thrown in, gratis, for good measure. The custom originated in the Spanish quarter of the city. When a child or a servant buys something in a shop — or even the mayor or the governor, for aught I know — he finishes the operation by saying — “Give me something for lagniappe.” The shopman always responds; gives the child a bit of licorice-root, gives the servant a cheap cigar or a spool of thread, gives the governor — I don’t know what he gives the governor; support, likely. When you are invited to drink, and this does occur now and then in New Orleans — and you say, “What, again? — no, I’ve had enough;” the other party says, “But just this one time more — this is for lagniappe.” When the beau perceives that he is stacking his compliments a trifle too high, and sees by the young lady’s countenance that the edifice would have been better with the top compliment left off, he puts his “I beg pardon — no harm intended,” into the briefer form of “Oh, that’s for lagniappe.”

My goal in New Orleans: soaking up creativity like a sponge

Since arriving in New Orleans Friday, several people have asked us what our goal is for the next six weeks here.

Depending on who it is, I might quip back that my goal is to have no goals — to just be, which is the opposite of hyper-achievement oriented New York.

But that’s not actually true. My biggest goal is to soak up the creativity and energy of New Orleans like a sponge.

So far, we’re doing pretty well.

Among other things:

• 

  One of several bands we enjoyed Saturday on Royal Street.

  Friday we arrived around noon, just ahead of Doug and Cara’s wedding that night. The reception featured a rather large jazz band called the Boogie Men that had more horns at the ready than a music store, then the bride and groom led an entourage down to live music venue dba for an afterparty. We called it a night around 2:30 a.m., but they were still going strong.

• Saturday was a day of grazing, both food and music. We took in the Roadfood Festival in the French Quarter, where we’d each buy a nibble of something good, then stop to watch the nearest band performing in the street, then get another couple nibbles and watch another band on the courthouse steps.
• 

  Wow, can this clarinet player blow! She's amazing, and a good story teller.

  After we were stuffed, we took in some art — including having a chance conversation with artist Jamie Hayes, who was painting in a gallery on Royal Street, and meeting Ritchie Jordan, a former NYC chef who moved with his wife to NOLA after Katrina and has become an artist selling his works in Jackson Square.

• Sunday night after dinner, our group strolled past Jackson Square, where a busker Peter Bennett was playing glasses filled with water — complex tunes like Danny Boy and Yesterday.

 

 

One of the things I love about this city is how much creativity is part of life. You might have a brass band lead a parade when you get married, then again when you die. Musicians and artists and poets aren’t just set off in institutions like museums and concert halls, they’re outside where you’ll encounter them just walking about. Ben Jaffe of Preservation Hall once told me he was in college when he realized everyone doesn’t have a costume room — just the good people of New Orleans, who take pride in their carnival costumes.

 

We were walking down Royal Street when these colorful paintings caught my eye in a gallery window. The part of the gallery where they were hanging was closed, but when we asked if we could see them, we not only got access to the art but the artist himself making a new painting. Here's Jamie Hayes.

We have some of the same in New York. The caliber of musicians who busk on subway platforms is sometimes breathtaking, and one of our favorite artists sold her paintings on the street on Broadway for years.

 

I can’t yet put my finger on what’s different. Maybe it’s that New Yorkers often seem like the creativity they pass on their way from A to B is a distraction or inconvenience, where here, it feels celebrated.

Our lunch waiter on Monday was just wrapping up the midday rush when he called out to some other restaurant staffers that he needed to go give the sax player a dollar. Here’s a guy hustling for tips who values street musicians enough to share one of the dollars he just earned.

I’ll be stewing in more of that creativity until mid May and trying to figure out why it feels so danged good. Or maybe it’s just enough that it does?

Goin’ to New Orleans: sinking in to a city we love

Me and our super-fabulous hostess, the bride who's helping make the plan come together. Here we're toasting in her kitchen -- and we will most certainly toast her numerous times in the weeks to come. Thank you, Cara!

It all started with the idea that we might have to skip Jazz Fest this year.

While I’m getting my business off the ground, our cash flow is reduced, so we’re looking at all the expenses we can possibly trim to live within our means. We love going to the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival every spring, but it’s optional. We consoled ourselves with the knowledge we’d at least be in NOLA in March for our friends’ wedding.

But then I started putting the pieces together for an exciting little scheme:

• My new part-time role allows me to work from home, so I can do that work from anywhere there’s Internet and cell service
• Likewise, the work I’m doing for my business can be done anywhere
• John’s self employed so he can paint and do graphic design anywhere
• The bride at the wedding we’re going to in March is moving in with her groom after the wedding, leaving her cute house in the Garden District, where we’ve often stayed during Jazz Fest

We began to investigate the pieces so we could stay in New Orleans from the wedding through Jazz Fest in early May, and every sign pointed to it being a good idea:

• The bride agreed to sublet her NOLA house to us at a rate that’s less than our NYC rent, so assuming we’re able to sublet our place, we come out ahead in living expenses
• Changing our flights home from late March to early May would have cost more than $500 — but one-way tickets from New Orleans to New York in May were cheap.
• John has picked up several new design gigs in the last few weeks, which will help keep his cash flow up while we’re away
• I was worried I’d have to put piano lessons on hold — but my teacher here is on Skype and I lined up a place to practice in New Orleans. Maybe you’ve heard of Preservation Hall? I’m helping them with some marketing work around their 50th anniversary, and their marketing director said I can practice there during the day.

John made a painting that's a vision of my life -- see the music and the Mardi Gras beads? This plan is getting more of both into our lives.

Before you post a comment that says “I’m so jealous, I wish I could do that,” let me share with you an excellent blog post from Peter Shankman, founder of Help a Reporter Out. It’s headlined How to Jailbreak Your Life So You Can Live the Way You WANT and it arrived in my email this week, just as we committed to New Orleans.

It’s a long post but well worth reading if you wish you could do what we’re doing. Here are a couple of highlights:

• Is your job to be somewhere in a physical place, five out of seven days a week? If you love your job, I mean truly love your job, love the people with whom you work, love your office, love your commute, then hey, you know what? RESPECT. You’ve got it. Enjoy it, baby. You’re done with this blog post, and I give you mad, mad props. For real.
• We all need to work. We all need to make money. With the exception of trust fund babies, we all gotta find a way to make some cash and live our lives. Some people just choose to do it a different way than others. Some of us choose to work for a living, and some people choose to incorporate work into living. For the past 16 years, I’ve worked harder than almost every person I know, yet I’ve never felt like I’ve worked a day in my life.
• I will never, ever begrudge someone their fear. If what you’re doing works for you, that’s fine, but if you’re jealous, then you got a problem. See, being happy and being jealous don’t mesh. So it usually comes down to you being angry about your fear. But here’s the thing: Fear keeps us healthy. Fear keeps us alive. It’s what got us through the age of mountain lions and other big-ass animals that could have us for tea. But here’s the thing – Fear is built-in because we used to have no other options. Wanted to eat? You had to face your fear and kill something. Back in the age of the stone, Dean and Deluca didn’t exist. Fear now exists primarily to hold us back.

Are you motivated? Are you thinking of how you could ask your boss if you could work from home three weeks out of four so you could go live in your dream locale? Or contemplating how you might live someplace with a low cost of living so you can launch that business you’ve been fantasizing about?

If you aren’t now, maybe you will be in a few weeks when we start filing dispatches from New Orleans.

When I first started blogging, back in late 2005, it was to chronicle a one-month stint in NYC. John and I sublet an apartment on the upper east side to test drive living in New York, and I wanted to share the experience with friends back home. So consider this round two of sharing a cool life experience with you.

Laissez les bons temps rouler!

Robert Fogarty reinvents himself by helping transform New Orleans

Robert Fogarty believes in raising money for hurricane evacuation enough that he'd paint himself gold and ask for donations in New Orleans' French Quarter.

Robert Fogarty didn’t set out to become a New Orleans community activist.

He just knew New York wasn’t for him.

Fogarty moved to NYC after graduating from University of Oregon with a degree in journalism and communications in 2005. About a year later, he began searching for an exit strategy.

“I was like, ‘I don’t know if I’m cut out for this place,’” Fogarty recalled. “I though, ‘If super for-profit New York isn’t working, then what’s different?”

He found his solution in Americorps, because unlike the Peace Corps, the uptake process was only a few weeks and he got to not only choose what region he wanted to go to domestically, he got to apply to specific jobs.

Fogarty was looking at opportunities in late 2006 and early 2007, just as New Orleans was recovering from the devastation of hurricane Katrina. That timing helped lead him to a one-year commitment in the mayor’s office doing public advocacy and coordinating volunteers.

Happy Mardi Gras from Dear New Orleans

And so it was that a native of the Pacific Northwest, not exactly hurricane territory, two years out of college became the city’s point person for volunteers when hurricane Gustav hit in 2008. He worked on the plan to get people without cars out of the city.

“I was over my head helping the city evacuate for Gustav,” Fogarty recalled. But “going through that was an invaluable experience.”

Drew Brees showing off that SuperBowl ring

Invaluable in part because it led to the Evacuteer, an all-volunteer not-for-profit Fogarty founded. From their website:

Evacuteer.org recruits, trains, and manages evacuation volunteers (evacuteers) who assist with New Orleans’ public evacuation option called the City Assisted Evacuation Plan (CAEP). The CAEP activates when a mandatory evacuation is called in the city of New Orleans and is designed to move 25,000-30,000 New Orleanians without transportation. The City has successfully implemented the plan once, in advance of Hurricane Gustav (Sept. 2008), when 18,000 residents utilized the CAEP.  Evacuteer.org is an organization created out of lessons learned from that experience. Through an existing agreement with the City of New Orleans Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness (NOHSEP), the City of New Orleans has authorized evacuteer.org to manage all volunteers who work within the CAEP at 17 neighborhood pick-up points, at the Union Passenger Terminal (hereafter UPT) for evacuee processing, and at City Hall to assist with hotline operation.

Here's a group answering the Dear New Orleans question, "What inspires you?"

To date, the organization has 27 non-profit, faith based and neighborhood based partner organizations and has over 700 “evacuteers” ready to assist should a mandatory evacuation be called.

Long term projections for the organization include a nationwide proof of concept in New Orleans to export to other American cities. The organization also develops academic, peer reviewed emergency preparedness research, new and social media emergency preparedness campaigns and its current flagship initiative is working with the City of New Orleans to commission public art to double as hurricane evacuation pick up point markers.

New Orleans piano legend Dr. John has a message for BP

While important, an all-volunteer effort doesn’t pay the bills. So about a year ago, Fogarty founded Dear New Orleans, a photography business that donates 10 percent of its revenue to the Evacuteer, helping to demonstrate its financial viability to potential donors.

Dear New Orleans encourages easy expression: you write something on your hands with a marker, and Fogarty takes your picture. Sometimes the messages have a theme — the BP oil spill or the anniversary of Katrina,  for example, or new year’s resolutions or “the moment I knew.” Other times it’s whatever the portrait subject wants to say.

“This really simple idea is really accessible to people,” Fogarty said. He’s done photos of Drew Brees, Susan Sarandon, Mos Def, Dr. John and James Carville, among many others.

Fogarty is just 27, and he says he used to fall back on youth as a crutch. Not any more. He realizes he’s growing something powerful, he’s part of the New Orleans entrepreneur community and providing an important service to the city.

“If you have value and provide something of value, your age doesn’t matter,” he said via cell phone, just before ducking into a networking event in his new hometown.

Dear New Orleans did a school event and asked kids for their messages on the theme "I will ..."

It all comes full circle this week — Robert Fogarty will be in New York March 2 and 3 with Dear New Orleans.

d.b.a., a bar with locations in New Orleans, Manhattan and Brooklyn, will host photo shoots. You can attend either event to help support Dear New Orleans, Evacuteer and Fogarty.

• d.b.a. Manhattan (6-10, Wednesday night)– 41 First Avenue , between 2nd and 3rd Streets in the East Village
• d.b.a. Brooklyn (6-10, Thursday night)  — 113 N. 7th St.,near Berry, in Williamsburg

A social innovation conference in New Orleans the week of Jazz Fest called Second Line is underwriting a portion of the expenses to make photos only $10 per person.

Here's Robert with his own Dear New Orleans message, courtesy of Bob Dylan.

 

Here's my Dear New Orleans portrait from South by Southwest 2010

Creativity tips from Creative Cookie Lesley Williams

Lesley Williams is a Creative Cookie. She's also part of a creative duo with fiance Kamau Ware, who made this portrait.

Fellow Michigander in Brooklyn Lesley Williams is a creative force to be reckoned with.

Her blog Creative Cookie is largely about her passion for fashion — she charmed her way into covering New York Fashion Week and has befriended some of the Project Runway talent — with healthy doses of art, crafting and decorating, among other creative muses. Last fall she launched a handmade zine, Easily Inspired, which she describes as “my take on fashion focused inspiration.”

And the brunches she hosts with her fiance, Kamau Ware, are creative showcases. Anyone can have people over for food and drink, although theirs is above average, but they also use their gatherings to showcase creative friends, so they might include live music, a film screening, a reading or whatever else strikes their fancy.

We’re fortunate to have met them through Brooklyn Artists Gym, where John used to paint and Kamau did some event planning work. Kamau and Lesley bought one of the first paintings John sold in New York so when we go to their brunches, it’s an honor to see his piece mixed into the stew of creativity.

The DIY Business Association Blog recently did a Q&A with Lesley on creativity — how she became creative, what inspires her, how she overcomes creative ruts.

Under the headline is “Rock your most creative self,” Lesley offers these tips:

What tips for being your most creative self?

1.Start small. Set attainable goals, each week, for your creative life. This could simply involve visiting a thrift shop, making a card, or watching a film.

2.Find accountability. Share your creative interest by maintaining a blog, joining a group, or taking a class. By engaging others in your exploration, you’ll find a support system and, maybe, a few champions of your work.

3.Spend time alone—even if it’s only 30 minutes a week to journal, collage, or stitch.

4.Do it now. If you have a creative impulse, act on it. There’s no better time than the present.

5. Never say or let anyone tell you that you are not creative. “There are moments in all of our lives where we might be stagnant, but we all have the innate urge, ability, and right to create something that did not exist before,” Williams says. “We are all creative in some shape or form.”

From Lesley’s Creative Cookie welcome to the new year:

My creative start for 2011 has included  gathering materials for collaging, writing notes of gratitude, and celebrating things big and small — there’s oodles to smile about. Life is not “perfect” but its pretty darn good & 2011 is showing promise of becoming a super snazzy year.

Musical role models in strong, soulful ladies

Now you have to know I’d love a story that starts like this one in the Brooklyn Paper recently:

Mavis Staples is the queen of reinvention.

The Chicago-based singer and civil rights icon has been a staple on the gospel circuit for over 50 years, making her name foremost in spirituals with her family’s group, the Staple Singers, who added “Respect Yourself” and “I’ll Take You There” to the American music lexicon. But on her own, she has continually put her stamp on pop, rock and folk worlds thanks to her work with such varied artists as Prince, The Band, Curtis Mayfield and Bob Dylan (who once asked for her hand in marriage; she declined).

Though it’s a different plot line, this reminded me of a New York magazine profile I read last year on Sharon Jones:

After three decades of near obscurity, Jones is in demand; she and Brooklyn soul curators the Dap-Kings will release their fourth album, I Learned the Hard Way, on April 6. In recent years, she’s sung with Lou Reed in the stage version of Berlin and with Phish for their re-creation of Exile on Main St.; she duetted with Michael Bublé on Saturday Night Live and sings a funkified version of “This Land Is Your Land” in the opening credits of Up in the Air. “I feel like I asked God, and it took me a while,” says Jones. “So instead of ‘Why?’ I say, ‘Thank you.’ ”

Maybe the common element is strong, talented women who are doing what they love well into their mature years — and instead of doing some county fair greatest hits tour, coasting on past successes, they’re bringing new energy to their craft.

And while we’re at it — Jack White loves the older ladies, eh? Wanda Jackson and Loretta Lynn

Evolving Newvine Growing in 2011 to tighten the focus a bit

Earlier this week, I wrote about the most popular blog posts in the two-year run of Newvine Growing and about the most common search terms that bring people here.

Studying those data points is part of some work I’m doing to refine my focus for 2011.

I launched Newvine Growing in January 2009 with broad goal: to have a forum for exploring what makes people happier and more fulfilled.

I’ve always been a girl who knows where she’s headed about two or three chess moves out. That might change if an unexpected opportunity pops up, but generally speaking, I like to think I’m facing in the right direction.

After we moved to New York, I purposely stopped looking forward to enjoy the present. I’d arrived at a place I had been working toward for many years and I wanted to savor it.

But eventually, my desire to contemplate what’s next returned, and thus, the launch of this blog.

After the first year or so of just blogging whatever seemed to fit with living life intentionally, I crafted some broad themes that seemed most interesting: career, creativity, food and drink, health and well being, home and family, lifestyle.

Now I’m planning to tighten the focus on three areas that have most excited me:

Creativity — I am drawn like a moth to a flame to creative folks, whether they’re writers or artists or musicians, and have been since I was a kid. As I’ve profiled creatives for my blog, I realize it’s their passion for what they do that really gets me. Most creatives will get neither rich nor famous doing what they do, so they do it for love. I’d probably enjoy talking to a used car salesman who sold cars for the pure joy of it, but since that’s more likely to be a choice you make to pay the rent, he might be harder to find.

Some examples:

• Jim Tobin, Jim Ottaviani, Lara Zielin,Bruce DeSilva and Jennifer Worick are all writers who’ve contributed Q&As on how and why they write, giving insight into their creative process and the challenges of turning out good stories.
• I’ve profiled Clint Maedgen and Ben Jaffe, two New Orleans musicians who are balancing tradition and innovation in exciting ways.
• I’ve also written about making it a priority to see more live music — we’re going to see Woody Allen play traditional jazz this Monday! — and to learn to make music myself.
• A post I wrote on painter Chuck Close reinventing himself continues to be one of my most popular.

Food and drink — I have long been a girl who doesn’t skip a meal, but in recent years I’ve become more interested in eating well and passionate about supporting sustainable food production. I feel strongly about the importance of eating well for our health and for the benefit of the environment, and because I just think it’s enjoyable to cook and eat good food.

Some examples:

• How I fell in love with farmers markets and began a tour of some of the best farmers markets in the country
• On watching Food Inc. and contemplating the American food production system
• Why I’m vegetarian, which is basically because I’m an animal lover who can’t in good conscience support treating living, breathing, feeling creatures the way our large-scale meat farms do.
• One of my most popular posts ever — on calling a truce with cilantro

I’ve also started a paper.li daily collection of news on Twitter about food, farming and related issues. Check it out here.

Career — When I added this category, it was a big, broad area that could catch anything that might land in the business section of your newspaper or in an MBA lecture. Now it’s come into focus as specifically meaning topics of good leadership and vision and of choosing a career path that’s consistent with the kind of passion in the creativity area. Often that means entrepreneurs, maybe because you have to be awfully passionate about something to take the risks associated with launching your own business — and as I’m writing this I’m thinking that really, creatives are entrepreneurs who sell their own work, so it’s all interconnected.

Some examples of career posts include:

• Profiling Lou Rosenfeld, who has redefined his career in the Internet space to include consulting, speaking and running his own publishing division
• Matt and Rene Greff left jobs they hated to launch a successful brewpub and microbrewery
• Joel Zeff turned getting laid off into a blessing when he pursued a career path he loves
• How love at work can help leaders succeed
• Corporate job versus entrepreneur isn’t an either or choice
• I wrote about the lessons I learned on my first job — doing children’s parties and balloonograms as a clown

So those three topics are the ones I’ll focus most on in 2011. That’s not to say I’ll never write about health if the spirit moves me, but I think each year we spend together, the more it becomes apparent what really excites me.

And that’s the whole reason I launched Newvine Growing. I love it when a plan comes together.

I am grateful for: public art

John has an art show tonight in Brooklyn and I will beam like the proud wife I am seeing his paintings showcased by ContaminateNYC.

But one of the things I love about New York is that even when you aren’t at a gallery, museum or other designated art event, you’re surrounded by art.

Last Friday we were headed to an art salon in Chelsea and on the way we walked through Madison Square Park. At first I thought this mass of white lights among the trees was holiday decorations going up, but after a minute, I figured out what it was — an installation of lights that simulates shadows of pedestrians walking by.

We enjoyed that for a bit, then continued on our way, only to stop at the nearby Flatiron Building. Colored lights projected onto this iconic building gave the illusion that it was being spray painted.

It’s not just visual arts, of course. We’re surrounded by all manner of musicians on the sidewalks, on the subway platforms, in the subway cars themselves.

A few weeks ago I was heading home from work when I heard a rockin’ brass band in Penn Station. I decided to grab a sandwich from one of the underground restaurants and sit and enjoy Underground Horns for a while.

I saw Underground Horns truly underground. Click here to listen to them on MySpace

Sprinkled in with some spectacularly talented artists and performers are those that make me laugh — like this little jazz combo I ran across.

We’ll likely go to Jalopy Theater in Brooklyn Friday to catch Baby Soda Jazz Band, which I fell in love with when I saw them playing in Penn Station about a year ago — similar to the way we became smitten with High and Mighty Brass Band when they were playing on a bench in Central Park. We’ve since paid to see High and Mighty numerous times.

Here’s Baby Soda at work …

New York certainly doesn’t have a lock on public art. Many cities, big and small, have this experience of creativity coming to you instead of waiting for you coming to it — one of John’s favorite memories of Ann Arbor was “Michael Jackson guy,” this dude who lip synched to MJ with full choreography.

So wherever you are, I hope you appreciate the people who are creating public art and making your day a little brighter.

And if you’re in New York — it’s still nice to go to art shows, so come to John’s tonight!

Opening Reception: Nov. 11th, Thursday – 7:00pm – 10:00pm
Ongoing Exhibition: Nov. 11th – Dec. 11th
Wine Tasting: Dec. 2nd, Thursday – 7:00pm – 10:00pm

@Root Hill Café
262 4th avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11215 (Map)