SMART Letter #60
From a Clear Blue Sky
September 24, 2001
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SMART Letter #60 -- September 24, 2001
Copyright 2001 by David S. Isenberg
isen.com -- "army of one"
isen@isen.com -- http://isen.com/ -- 1-888-isen-com
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CONTENTS
> From a Clear Blue Sky
> Quote of Note: What a Wonderful World
> Conferences on my Calendar
> Copyright Notice, Administrivia
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From a Clear Blue Sky
by David S. Isenberg
September 24, 2001
Nominally, I was going fishing. That is, my fishing rod
was in the boat, my sweet, fast, tippy little cold-molded
rowboat. I named her Nod when I bought her from her
builder in 1981. I could row her effortlessly at 3 knots
all day. When I say 'could' I'm talking about twenty years
ago when I could still pretend I was an innocent,
irresponsible, carefree kid.
It was August 2001. I was not 32 anymore. As I rowed Nod
out of Little Harbor, I could feel a twinge in a wrist and
a dull ache in an elbow. But these small discomforts gave
perspective to the northerly wind and the blue August day.
Zephyrs spilled textures onto the water of the harbor. I
was not hungry. I was not lonely. I was not cold or hot.
I was exactly where I wanted to be. I was doing exactly
what I wanted to do. I was aware. I was content. It was
perfect.
A friend came by in his outboard motorboat. It floated
alongside Nod in Little Harbor. We had no arrangement, no
email, no voice mail, no cell phone homing, no appointment.
We had time. We smiled.
"Let's go to Lackeys," said my friend. I pulled Nod up
onto the beach and waded to his boat. We skitted across
the water like a finger riffles a deck of cards. In
Lackeys Bay the Southwest Gutter connects Vineyard Sound
with Buzzards Bay. 'Gutter' is a misnomer; the narrow
channel is sheltered; its clean, clear salt water rips a
fast vee of deep blue current. We shut off the engine and
drifted in the back eddy, watching the current move the
eelgrass on the sandbar beneath us.
There's a little wooden bridge at the narrowest part of the
Gutter. A dozen children were swimming, splashing,
laughing. They were jumping off the bridge, hanging on a
rope in the current, clambering up the rocks with bare
feet. An osprey landed on a tree branch low by the water.
Thick sunshine clung to each moment as if it were a ripe
berry suspended in a glass jar. The children's voices
streamed away on the north wind. It was so perfect, too
perfect. I thought of war.
I do not know why I thought of war. Maybe it was the way
the water, moved by the moon and held by the land, coursed
under the bridge to meet itself with such turbulence.
Maybe it was the way the laughter of the children rose into
the same sky that hangs over suffering that is very far
away. Maybe it was the late summer blue.
I do not know why I remembered a Wall Street talk by a
Harvard professor(1) about why the undeveloped world had no
economic growth. I recalled how his story spun out, how
half the world had flat-lined for two centuries despite
steam engine, electricity, antibiotic and fertilizer. The
cause, he said, was weak institutions. The prognosis:
gated nations guarded by rent-a-cop soldiers -- not
globalization, but isolated, idyllic islands of so-called
world trade surrounded by oceans of dystopia, disease and
despair.
The crystalline days of late summer are perfect for flying.
From an airplane on such days Planet Earth looks like a
model train set. In the air over New England on such a day
you can see the mountains to your right, the islands to
your left, every building in every city. September 11,
2001 was such a day. Airplanes leaving Boston that morning
had such a view. The perpetrators of the terrible crimes
that morning had spotted their towers eighty miles out.
The horrifying acts of September 11, 2001 were years in the
making, but the United States government did not see them
coming. How can I trust when the same government names a
cocksure culprit within hours? Certainly there is an
instinctive need to strike back when wounded, and a strike
demands a target. Perhaps rumblings of pending deeper
crises give the government impetus. But how can I trust
that war -- *war* -- against an uncertain surrogate for a
sparse, stateless, widely distributed and ill-defined foe
will not make a bad situation irretrievably worse?
Indeed, how can I trust? The innocent irresponsibility of
a blue summer day is gone -- gone, gone, forever gone.
---
(1) The Harvard professor was Bruce R. Scott.
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QUOTE OF NOTE: What a Wonderful World(2)
by George David Weiss and Bob Thiele,
recorded by Louis Armstrong in 1968
http://mujweb.atlas.cz/www/oukey/Mp3/wonderfulworld.mp3
"I see trees of green, red roses too
I see them bloom for me and you
And I think to myself what a wonderful world.
"I see skies of blue and clouds of white
The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night
And I think to myself what a wonderful world.
"The colors of the rainbow so pretty in the sky
Are also on the faces of people going by
I see friends shaking hands saying how do you do
They're really saying I love you.
"I hear babies crying, I watch them grow
They'll learn much more than I'll never know
And I think to myself what a wonderful world
Yes I think to myself what a wonderful world."
---
(2) Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World" was on the
list of songs that Clear Channel Communications, owner of
over 1170 United States radio stations, suggested might be
"inappropriate" for airplay following the September 11, 2001
tragedy.
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CONFERENCES ON MY CALENDAR
October 1-2, 2001. Washington DC. Jeff Pulver's Telecom
Policy Summit. I will be making a plea for radical
simplicity on a panel called "Elements of the New Network"
on Monday, October 1. For more detail see
http://pulver.com/policysummit
RESCHEDULED -- NEW DATE: November 4-6, 2001. Lake Tahoe,
CA. Telecosm. Latest word is that I will be moderating a
panel on the morning of November 6. Telecosm will be much
different than last year, probably quieter, perhaps more
thoughtful, and certainly different. For information, see
http://www.forbes.com/conf/telecosm/agenda1.shtml
POSTPONED -- NEW DATE TBD: October 18-20, 2001. Sarasota
FL. Gilder Fellers technology investor's conference.
Gilder and other notables will be there. I'll be
Moderator. In other words, I'll be trying to get the
participants to hold down the hype, jargon, positioning and
techno-babble so the individual investors in the audience
will understand. Some might argue that this'd be like the
pot calling the kettle . . . For information, contact Joel
Srodes [joel_srodes@prusec.com].
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COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Redistribution of this document, or any
part of it, is permitted for non-commercial purposes,
provided that the two lines below are reproduced with it:
Copyright 2001 by David S. Isenberg
isen@isen.com -- http://www.isen.com/ -- 1-888-isen-com
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