This is Freddie Pup, my daughter's six month old golden doodle. Because he's my daughters, that means he's my "grand dog." He's a pretty great guy. I've had several dogs in my life, and this guy is rapidly climbing to the top of the hit parade. I like that he frequently chills out. He's also a pretty good retriever, which is a good trait in a dog, I think.
This is me when I was 25 or 26 and living in Greenwich Village, New York. My dog, Daphne, was the greatest of all time. Being a Samoyed Huskey, she loved the snow. You may recall a photo of her and my in my Job Description post: bartender in Vermont. That's the same daughter who Freddie belongs to.
Finally, this is me and my wife, Julie, with my friend Ted the Brewing Painter's dog, Stella, in Sonoma County. When I first met Ted, in 2009, he'd just lost a rottweiler named Mugsy and couldn't stop crying. I was the same way with Daphne when we had to say goodbye. So, Ted and I bonded instantly.
A couple of years later, Julie and I went wilderness camping with Ted and his squeeze, Katherine, whom Julie has known since she was 5 years old. They grew up together in Key Biscayne, Florida, when it was wild -- and so were they. Anyway, during that camping trip Stella was about as old as Freddy Pup, and demonstrated that we belonged to her by peeing in our tent. Ah, memories.....
Today I'm going to talk about two books which are equally transgressive, but each in its own way:
Ulysses by James Joyce, originally published in 1922
Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi, originally published in 2010 in Arabic; English translation published in 2019.
My History with Ulysses
In college I started working on my first novel, which was based on a section of The Odyssey by Homer. A friend told me I absolutely had to sign up for an independent study with a professor who guided students through their first novels. We'll call him Professor Boylan.
One of the first things Professor Boylan told me was, "You know, a modern re-telling of the Odyssey has already been done."
"It has?" I blinked. You see, I thought I was a creative genius and no one had ever had this idea before.
"Yes," Boylan replied, "James Joyce. It's called Ulysses. You should get a copy and read it."
Long story short: I eventually got a copy. I couldn't get past Page 100 before I threw it against the wall in disgust. It was i-n-c-o-m-p-r-e-h-e-n-s-i-b-l-e. The Vintage/Random House version I read, published in 1961, was 783 pages. So I didn't get very far.
A few years later I was part of a group of writers working on novels. They let me be a part of the group when I told them my novel was an attempt to shed light on the seven years that Odysseus spent on an island with the immortal sea nymph Calypso. Those years are left out of The Odyssey.
Genius that I thought I was, I set my novel on an island in the Caribbean and learned as much about calypso music as I could. Wikipedia has a nice article on calypso music. My favorite Calypso song, by the way, is "The Creature from the Black Lagoon."
One of these writers encouraged me to give Ulysses another try. I did. Sure enough, at Page 100, against the wall the now bruised and battered book went.
Later in life I heard that James Joyce had to get some friends to "leak" his structural scaffolding for the novel, which is quite intricate and -- dare I repeat myself? Incomprehensible.
Now, whenever I say his name out loud, there is an adjective in front of it -- beginning with an "f" and ending with "-ing...." The adjective is as obscene as many censors thought Joyce's book was -- it wasn't printed in his native Ireland until the 1960s, and was the subject of a lengthy obscenity trial in the United States that kept it off the shelves for 14 years.
Recently, I was perusing audiobooks and came across Ulysses. "What the heck!" I said to myself, "It's been at least 30 years." I'm happy to say that, so far, I've made it past Page 300. The reader, whose name is John Lee, IS a genius. He's got a great Irish accent, and while I still don't understand much, I'm enjoying the flow of Joyce's language.
My biggest takeaway from the book, so far, is that it does a brilliant job at capturing a particular man's internal monologue -- good bad and ugly. What goes on in this man's mind is, in fact, obscene at times.
Celestial Bodies
I'll admit that I had to take a break from Ulysses, and so I chose to listen to Celestial Bodies because it had won the very prestigious Man Booker International Prize in 2019. The author, Jokha Alharthi, is the first Omani woman to have a book translated into English, and Celestial Bodies is the first book translated from the Arabic to win the Booker prize.
My biggest takeaway is that Alharthi does a brilliant job of letting the reader into the private lives and thoughts of Muslim women -- in Oman, at least. And in that sense, half the Arab world must want to censor the bejesus out of it, just as half the English-speaking world censored Ulysses.
This was the photo I took from a friend's balcony in Tiburon, California on the last day of 2016. I don't know why the moon never comes out right in the photos I take, but it was a two or three-day old crescent moon, and the planet Venus -- sometimes the Evening Star, sometimes the Morning Star -- was up to its left. Outside the frame of the photo, a little above Venus, is Mars. Soon the two of them will have a close encounter of a very planetary kind!
If you're interested in what goes on above you at night, you might want to check out Sky and Telescope's "Sky at a Glance" blog. THIS WEEK'S covers January 6-14.
If you're interested in what the dance in the night sky has to do with your personal life, you might want to check out Chani Nicholas's Horoscope Blog. THIS WEEK'S starts on January 24.
September 3-9, 2018. National University of Singapore (NUS). USC Marshall's Case Team took second place out of 20 international business schools. Big deal! Plus, team member Caitlyn Huang took home Best Female Presenter! I'm humbled and proud.
Image courtesy of National University of Singapore
Left to right: Alwin Ong Wei Ren (NUS ambassador), Brandon Kay '21, James Yun '19, Jiaxin "Claire" Lin '19, Caitlyn Huang '20, and me, Professor Hansen
Space Alien Calligraphy at Singapore Chinese Cultural Center
This year's competition was broken into three parts:
A five-hour case on the Chinese Cultural Center in Singapore, worth 30% of the final score.
A 24-hour case on the Bank of China's Singapore Branch, worth 70% of the final score
Presentation by five finalists
Each team was placed by a random drawing into one of five brackets consisting of four teams each.
USC's bracket included University of Aukland, UPenn's Wharton School, and Corvinus University Business School in Budapest.
USC's initial goal was to beat Wharton. Corvinus scored #1 in the five-hour case, Wharton 2nd, Aukland 3rd, and USC dead last.
We were all seriously depressed.
The day after the five-hour case was dedicated to "The Amazing Race," a kind of social media scavenger hunt that took teams all over Singapore to complete and post about various tasks. I never did figure out where all this posting was taking place. My students muttered "Instagram, professor. Don't worry, we'll share the photos and videos with you on Google Drive."
Social media challenge: "Take a picture in a Singapore back alley." Note that even the alleys in Singapore are spotless!
Ambassador Alwin kept the team on the Amazing Race track, but then, as we all commiserated and bonded, we decided to stick together late into the evening and Alwin shared some of his favorite Singapore Spots with us, including Jumbo Seafood and the light show at Gardens by the Bay.
Alwin kept Team USC on track with a visit to a Hawker Center in "Olde Towne" Singapore
I was the only one who had seen all four case presentations, so I shared some observations with my team and they ran with them, not only beating Wharton in the 24-hour case, but scoring first (this time Aukland was second, Wharton third, and Corvinus last), thus securing a berth in the finals.
USC Marshall as "YRN Consulting" in the Finals. Judges are introduced, and USC starts its presentation at 4:21:30.
The judges for the finals are extremely tough, and include this notorious NUS faculty member Andrew Delios (right), who starts contradicting you and questioning you after you say, "Well, I --"...
USC were not rattled and ultimately placed second of the five finalist teams.
One last thing: while the teams have many opportunities to get to know one another (ours became particular friends with the Berkeley and New South Wales teams), the advisors end up having a lot of fun together.
Here's a last photo from the gala final dinner featuring just some of advisors and my new pals:
Clockwise around the table, starting on the left: Marielle Nilsen from BI Norwegian Business School, Jen Laurette from Queen's University, Smith School of Business, Keith Niedermeier from Wharton, Brian Burfitt from New South Wales, Chua Lily (doyenne of the NUS Case Competition and hostess with the mostest), Geok Teng Lau (case writer, retiring force behind the NUS competition and husband of Lily), me, Pieter Verhallen from Maastricht University in the Netherlands, Rene Gendreau from HEC Montreal, Miklos Kozma from Corvinus in Budapest, Ingrid Larkin from Queensland University, and Erika Walker from Berkeley.
Most of the advisors joined their students at mega international dance club Zouk afterwards, but what happens at Zouk stays at Zouk, so I'm not at liberty to divulge any details, except to say that one of the challenges of being an advisor involves students, stress, alcohol, and catching early plane flights....
Libby was already seated by the time Carl arrived at the table. He was escorted by a waiter, dressed in black pants and white shirt, who had appeared, literally, out of nowhere. The waiter pulled out the chair opposite Libby and waited for Carl to sit down before offering him something to drink. Having been in Heaven only a year, Carl wasn’t used to the “no caffeine” rule and asked for a cup of coffee. He was politely denied. The waiter suggested that Carl try Heaven’s Special Drink, the ingredients of which were kept secret, but made everyone happier. “It’s marvelous,” Libby said enthusiastically, noticing Carl’s hesitation. “He’ll have one and I’ll take a refill,” she said to the waiter who glided away, his feet barely touching the ground.
What are relationships for? Most people might say that relationships are for having a companion to share interests and activities, a partner to raise a family, a mate for sharing expenses, etc. While those are certainly legitimate reasons for forming relationships, there is another level that goes on concurrently and most often unconsciously. A deeper reason we are drawn into relationships is to expand our sense of self and become more whole, integrated human beings. (Austen)
WORKS CITED
Austin, Stephanie. “Synastry: The Mirror of Relationship” from www.ecoastrology.com
Isackson, Peter. "The Daily Devil's Dictionary: Donald Trump and Respect." February 6, 2018 https://www.fairobserver.com/region/north_america/donald-trump-african-union-letter-us-politics-news-34958/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=February+7%2C+2018
Hovanetz, Michelle. "Employment and Recruiting Agencies in California." October 2017
This post combines the kind of inspiration we got from GROWING A FARMER with the harder to understand information we touched on in THE GENIUS OF MONEY. One of many innovative "new economy" ventures I've run across is the Slow Money Institute, whose mission (according to their website) is, "To catalyze the flow of capital to local food systems, connecting investors to the places where they live and promoting new principles of fiduciary responsibility that 'bring money back down to earth.' "
Maybe some of you business majors would know what "fiduciary responsibility" means, but it sounds good, solid, and conservative to me.
Anyway, picking up on the BOTANY OF DESIRE (the Tulip/Beauty section we didn't watch—here are two representative clips: Antique Roses and the Wall Street of Flowers) and FIXING THE FUTURE videos we watched in class, I found this recent post on the Slow Money Blog, "How A Zero-Percent Loan Is Helping this Colorado Farm," to be particularly fun as well as enlightening. Here's a quote from the article by Don Lareau that made me think: "Oh, not only is a flower farmer really good at writing this blog post, but he's got the intelligence to know when something makes good business sense—duh! Advanced Writing for Business!
After local banks scoffed at us and loans for a new truck seemed way too expensive, we heard about the 2Forks Club, a local Slow Money investment club.... They gave us a $23,500 zero-percent loan, which we are paying back over a few-year period. The part that amazes me to this day is the degree to which the members of 2Forks worked with us to customize the loan for our benefit. For example, they said, “You are not asking for enough to get a good truck,” so they gave us more than we were originally asking for. “This is not how a bank works!” we thought. If that wasn’t enough, they also looked at our cash flow and structured a bit more time to pay the loan back, with some discretion built in. They understood that we are not selling widgets, that we are dealing with Mother Nature and biology and many variables not in our control, such as late frosts, early heat, hot winds, and the like.
Zephyos Farm owners Daphne Yannakakis (left) and Don Lareau
Courtesy of the Slow Money Blog
