Stuff

We have too much stuff, that's pretty clear to Diane and I. While I'll never give up my books, my laptop, or my cell phone (well, maybe the cell phone). I think the rest can go.

The question is when and why. In my mind the issues is to minimalize the impact on the kids (ie fast change isn't good), and my desire to work in tech (and therefore stay "current" on a slice of "stuff" - electronics and software. But I wrestle with the legitimacy of those arguments.

Then there is motivation, saving dollars, simplifying life, becoming less fixed to place are all great goals, but are they enough? What do you do with the excess money, more time, etc....

The impact and influence of stuff on the kids is interesting, it's not that Diane and I didn't grow up in a consumer society in the 60's and the 70's. But there were limits: a television in the living room, maybe a record player or stereo in the bedroom, going to a movie or two. In my house I'm sure there are more electronics than the entirety of 5 blocks of 15th street in NewCumberland in that era.

I remember Uncle Pepper's first computer at his house, it died, and the UPS hated his power, seems he only had 50amps. He had lived there for 30 years on 50amps with no problem using his tools, his tv, his stove, and his dishwasher. No one builds houses without 200amps these days.

Walking into the store in San Francisco's Chinatown, it was clear to me that there are no limits and that it all looked like junk to me. But the no limits applies to Best Buy as well, and maybe I need to think of Best Buy as a junk store as well.

Planning for Mud Volleyball Or Looking for a Frontier?

Last year the youth group of our church had a mud volleyball "game" at our farm in a retention pond. The idea was mine, but the outcome was unexpectded. First while I thought maybe 12 or so guys would show up from the church, about 80 people showed up, half girls, and half guys, with a bunch of people not from the church.

And while the first 10 minutes were "volleyball", the next 30 were flinging, wrestling, wallowing, and laughing anarchy. I had arranged for a firetruck to come and hose them off, which probably allowed me to return to the church the next Sunday.

This year they want to repeat, and they want to add a mud slide to this and the expected numbers are much higher.

So what is the insight here? I'm not sure, but I think that at least for the kids (and for a few adults as well), the desire to do something different is very large. Our highly pasteurized and suburbanized world allows this only to play out in illicit situations and relationships at times. In my past of living in a small town in the 60's bounded by a creek and a river, fishing, fort building in the woods, mud slinging, stripping down to your shorts and putting war paint on your body, whatever WAS the norm. We acted out beyond the frontier of the house and lawns in these ways and were not judged by the rules of not upsetting the lamps, the cats or the moms in the house.

Sociologist's talk about the loss of he frontier for America and it's impact. I think we all need a place where the "high civilization" rules don't apply, but the boisterous good fun rules do - we all need a personal frontier and to go to it occasionally.

That Old Twisted Tree

"Twisted" is one of those words with serious negative connotations, but with the help of Evan and a dictionary it is the 8th of 8 meanings.

When I bought the Farm it was a riot of collapsed fences, buildings, poison, overgrowth, etc... Somethings were replaced like the training oval of an earlier posting, but not everything. The architect and landscaper had a field day in what they thought they could do; however, they ran into my hatred of killing trees needlessly.

Don't get me wrong, I own two chainsaws and burn wood to heat my house, and my greenhouse, but so far I've been able to do that with the ones that had to be moved or fell down.

The landscaper come architect, wanted to get rid of the three trees in the picture, two locusts and an ash. And so an argument began, why redo the fence, cut the poison and cut the grass with those old twisted trees dominating the perspective.

My argument boiled down to three points:

1) the trees reminded me of me, aka twisted
2) they represented a true farm vs a suburban scape
3) they had been there a long time, and would (probably) be there after both of us were gone

I thought of that tree along the lines of the preferred definitions in 1-7, specifically "to be entwined so as to impart a single thread", and "to have a coiled or spiral shape".

The trees were planted by the original farmers (held in the same family since 1740's), who used them for fences (especially the Locust's in this area), nuts, fruit, shade etc. they were part of the single thread of "a farm". And they were changed to be twisted by their circumstance: the wind, being planted on a bank, etc.

Ever since I was a kid I felt that I was part of a single thread of the lives of the people I knew and who I didn't they made up my family, my church, and the town that I lived in. Time and experiences changed me (not always for the better!), but thankfully the "soil" that I was "planted in", the "rain and the sunshine" etc., allowed me to live.

The Commission

The painting above the mantel is the ouput of a water color commission, but the commission isn't of the farm house that is on it.

My former milkman from NewCumberland retired and took up a new vocation - painting. Not only does he paint, but every Summer he goes to Europe to paint, and in his 70's is teaching painting at Lebanon Valley College. I found him while looking for some local watercolors that weren't Amish. While my family is Pennsylvania Dutch and spoke this colloquial German, they were thankfully not Amish, and I certainly know there were other influences in Central Pennsylvania from the Moravians to the Mennoties to the Molly McGuires (couldn't think of another "M" word to round the list).

Seeing a print of the Susquehanna of his, I tracked him down to his studio in Hummelstown and coaxed him to the Farm and asked him to do a watercolor of the (newly reconstructed) Barn. Sure he said, and I told him I was going to Europe for a month would he be done when i got back - sure he said.

When I returned I forgot all about him for about a month, but eventually I remembered, called, and he said he would be out the next day. When he got to the Farm he was all excited, he told me it turned out really well, and that he enjoyed doing it, and hoped I would like it.

Out of his trunk he pulled this picture of the old Farm House.

I didn't say anything.

He then asked me what I thought about it. I said it was beautiful (and it is), but that it wasn't a picture of the barn like we had agreed.

Oh yeah, he said. When he got here the light on the house was just perfect, with the shadows, and the care worn exterior etc etc etc........

We are people of expectations - we use our money, our time, our power over nature to achieve our vision or goals. Sometimes, we are surprised at the outcome, even pleasantly surprised by the twists and turns. The most surprise is when we deal with people who's personalities and backgrounds are completely different than ours.

I couldn't parse the logic of our conversation to the artist's actions, but I could recognize a positive outcome.

I ended up paying for two paintings and getting what I wanted a year later, a picture of a barn with little character because it had no shadows, no care-worn boards, and no passionate artist. Maybe I would have been smarter to have gone with original picture only; however, when I see this less than adequate picture I am reminded of someone else's superior vision, and that is a good thing.

The black bag

I was given this Kenneth Cole black bag at the official IPO party for PSINet (traded as PSIX) by the investment banker who led the IPO. I used to keep my computer and various corporate stuff in this bag as I travelled around, it was and is a great bag. More bag then I would have bought myself and eventually more bag that I needed for my Panasonic ToughBook being rained on in the mud.

In some ways it is one of the last vestiges of a former corporate life. It was in the bottom of my closet and I gave it to my son to carry his books in to and from school (sans strap). It kind of has a renewed lease on life.

The bag reminds me of temptation, the temptation of ego which is one of my weaknesses, it takes me back to some decisions I made during the hey days of the 90's and the Internet bubble, something that is in a bit of a comeback right now. Being in the center of the Internet run up, a CTO/COO and doing an IPO was pretty much a corporate person's dream. It was great but it wasn't quite my dream.

I was just trying to build a better mouse trap, the rest of it was I guess just icing.

However the mouse trip issue alone was enough to destroy oneself through ego.
Years before I had set some trigger points for myself to power down. One of them for me was the IPO itself, I decided not to participate in this 1995 IPO, not to go to the investment banker's trading floor etc. I stayed home and played with Derek and didn't even goto work. My partner was a little surprised, but he had gotten used to my out of the box actions over 10 years of partnering, be called me from the trading floor to give me the news.

But I knew that I had to do one thing this day, I called up the 20 some people who had worked for the previous 5-10 years who were employees 3-25 and invited them to my favorite spot, the Ice House Cafe in Herndon Virginia at five 5pm. 5PM? They had never left work at 5PM before, but this was an important day for Mark Fedor, Wengyik Yeong, Mitch Levinn, Kimberly Brown, my dad, and my brother and others.

The "Ice House" had a private back bar which I rented, and for a couple of hours bought appetizers, beer, and their speciality - raw oysters. The owner would show up about 6pm with two buckets of ice filled with these bad boys everyday from his trip to the Bay, they were fresh and they were good.

And for the first time in 10 years we talked about money, not the whole time, but a bit. In 10 years I had never talked to these people about money, I didn't want to use money as the motivator it became for the rest of the Internet, and certainly as the 90's progressed. I wanted them to build the mouse trap.

Maybe this was a trade of Hubris for Greed, but I don't think so, because I remember the fear more than any hubris in building that mouse trap.

Mom and Dad's Porch

From my past posting you know I like porches and I mentioned my parent's porch, so on my way to do a little PC training in New Cumberland to a Senior Citizen I stopped and took a snapshot of the porch as it is today. The porch hasn't really changed that much, the big porch swing is gone, replaced by chair swings, keeping up with the times but retaining she spirit of the past.

What struck me was how small the house looks from the front, one window on either side of the door. That probably says alot about my expectations on houses and my lifesytle. When I left metro DC I wanted to move back to NewCumberland but that was kind of nixed. Now I think I apsire to move to Lingelstown to a house like this or maybe back to NewCumberland to this house on 15th street.

What also struck me and not available in the picture is the flanking trees that I remember my father planting in the front yard (twice really, the first ones died). They are gigantic, I remember them when they were sticks. Now that is scarey. In the back of my mind I equate my children growing older to the Sugar Maple trees around the training ring.

You got to wonder if those trees will last longer than the house, they will certainly last longer than me.

What is a porch for?

When I was a boy living in NewCumberland, we knew what a porch was for - cooling off, talking and seeing the neighbors. Everybody was on their porch in the Summer, or walking down the sidewalk between porches. You had to have a swing, and libations to fit in with this crowd. For christmas when we had a few extra dollars we put a christmas tree with lights on the porch.

I'm not sure in NewCumberland now a days if they still do this, but I like porches, so I built four of them. The front one doesn't have a swing, and that may have been a mistake, but not having any neighbors as it sits in the middle of 60 acres kind of eliminates that opportunity anyway here in Lower Paxton.

Since the fruit does not fall far from the tree, we put a tree on the porch, grown in our christmas tree patch, and we put a bunch of other decorations as well. But we've found some other things to do.

Carving pumpkins is my favorite. Find a beautiful Fall day, some pumpkins, some kids, some sharp knives and you can have a good time. It also makes a good backstop for every "First Day of School" picture, though I have yet to put them all side by side because I'm afraid it would be scarey to see diapers becoming trousers, boys becoming men, and a bit of apprehension become "can't wait to see my buds".

In Anna Karenina, Tolstoy writes: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Maybe using your porch improves your ability to have a happy family, or at least looking back you can remember the happy times you had on a porch.

The Old Training Oval

Being an engineer, I like things that are designed, being a creationist I see design everywhere. When I bought the Farm it had been empty for six years, and the previous 20 years to that, there hadn't been a lot of investment in upkeep, but underneath the ruin, weeds, poison, etc there was 60 acres of design.

In the middle of the Farm there was a broken down training oval because it had been a horse farm and years ago (ending in the 60's) the Pennsylvania Horseshow used to hold there annual event here. It was ugly. So my cousin and I tore it down, boy did things look better, and off we went to the next project on a long list of projects.

But the space was empty and generations of horses and people had tracked the earth into the oval, everyday I walked past it, there would be a whisper, "needs a training oval". My father and I, my cousins, my uncle had been replacing the rest of the fencing on the farm, killing the poison, etc. Nice straight fence we did, a couple of acute angles - not a problem.

An oval, I don't think so.

So I hired someone to build me an oval, six men showed up, they had wet wood, they had special tools, down-sized "come alongs", they had experience, they sweated alot, I'm pretty sure they drank some beers. In two days they were finished, it was awesome even without paint which we put on ourselves.

Having watched Derek being trained on a horse, (he sits a horse nicely by the way), I noticed that the trainer knew what they were doing, the horse knew what it was doing, the trainer's horse knew what it was doing. Derek was trying to learn what to do. I even knew what I was doing (not to try).

I think about that oval, it has no moving parts, no electrical connection, no software, it doesn't appear very complex, but to get one trained rider there is huge stack of design and experience, experiences that I am willing to admit I don't have and won't even attempt.

But I enjoy the aesthetics of the oval, I enjoy watching a horse, a rider on a horse. I know the story of the oval, I saw the experiences in operation. The kids now repaint the oval every now and then, yet more experience.

The oval looks simple, I take it for granted that it is simple, but is it really?

What else looks simple to me, and that I take for granted....

Greenhouse Thoughts

Today I hand split (my preference) a bit of wood to heat the greenhouse and did my normal routine of looking for bugs, checking water levels, a little bug spraying, checking the hydroponic system and picking some tomatoes and ground lettuce (for "Speedy" the dwarf rabbit who roams our house). The splitter is for the 4 foot diameter hickory tree which defies my pounding with the hand splitter.

The greenhouse is a classic "Marty Project", lots of vision, a little shakey in details and finish, and requires help by others, (help can somtimes be 90% of the project). This one was even more interesting because after grading the hilltop and dumping stones, and then a bunch of pounding of the steel pipe into the ground and a very few other things I abandoned Harrisburg and went to New Orleans for a month and my cousin Steve continued the project as he does many times.

Still to this day it is not really complete, but that hasn't stopped me from using it, in fact I put the fish (more on that another day) in the roofless footprint before I left for New Orleans. We even just got gas backup heat into it about a week ago thanks to Steve and my Uncle Pepper.
But despite all of that, we've eaten cucumbers, tomatoes, radishes, lettuce etc from the Greenhouse.

This is another piece of the Marty philosophy - when you have enough done to do something with it, do it. Rarely does this really impact the strategic value of the project, usually it refines it. My poor wife Diane sees this all the time in me, my engineering incrementalism is applied everywhere.

I can't remember if it was my friend Seth or who - they equated this with God's ability to use us despite not having perfected us.

Creating the Chocolate Cafe in Lingelstown

This is a project that I and a bunch of others have been slowly working on, trying to restore a 100 year old church so that it can be used to create community again in Lingelstown. 6000 square feet of wooden building. The Schoffstall Associates crew has been cleaning and fixing this up in preparations for Blue Mountain Foods to start the cafe in it after a major contractor rehab to install a kitchen and try to conform to the various Lower Paxton Township regulations. It is really hard to not lose the historic and aesthetic sense of this building with these regulations which I think are more focused on boring box buildings and greenfield.

Lingelstown has a real opportunity to create a small historic retail core of community oriented businesses thanks to Geof Smith at St Thomas Roasters showing us all what can be done. But it is a trial to be patient with the restrictions, I thankful that Bill is helping.

St Thomas Roasters In the Afternoon

The west hanover shop is quiet in the afternoons. Bad for business but good for meetings.

I came here to meet with Pastor Joel for our regular weekly meeting, but I'm guessing that he is tied up with two new babies in the last 72 hours. This location and the location in Lingelstown for St Thomas are where I like to have my meetings. Meeting people in public is about a couple of things for me - transparency of almost all that I do, not forcing people to meet me on my terms on my turf and lastly my hatred of institutional ivory towers.

This period of my life reminds me a lot of the two years I worked and taught at rpi, it is a lot less ferentic and a lot more contemplative, though stress levels are the same just different. What RPI taught me in those two years was the value of engagement and the valuelessness of institutional loyalty.

Like all institutions RPI was an ivory tower filled with people who believed that you had to come to their office to get things done. And they never left those offices, from staff to administrators and for the most part the faculty with some noticeable exceptions like Joe Flaherty. In 24 months I taught them the value of roaming the campus to get things done, though despite all of the publishing that was done then it was clear they never appreciated it. How do you know what people are like, what they want, what they need, without going native where they live and work?

Prior to this in the startups of Boston in the early 80's I learned the value of meetings. that the law of diminishing returns applied to them as well, whether it was a consensus building meeting or an authorative meeting, or an instructional meeting. After 60 minutes there was an immense drop off in value. And that was with that generation, i suspect it is less for Derek's generation.

By the late 80's I had added the concept of "one screen thinking", if your email didn't fit into an 80x25 screen (i'm dating myself) then it would never be read, formatted it should fit on one piece of paper double sided in memo form on paper.

I guess I'm having these thoughts because I talked to Seth, and commented on his organization.