I’m in San Francisco. Today we discussed business and tomorrow we’re headed to wine country. It’s always the case that the time shortly after meetings, when your mind is free to wander and roam, that the best ideas come. For me, they come over white wine.

On the plane ride over, I read a little of everything: Gladwell, Orwell, Ad Age, and poetry. Let me share a few things I liked with you:

From the Tipping Point: “The word Maven comes from the Yiddish, and it means one who accumulates knowledge…The fact that Mavens want to help, for no other reason than because they like to help, turns our to be an awfully effective way of getting someone’s attention.”

From Orwell’s Politics and the English Language: “The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms…”

From some poems I brought with me,
“We look at the world once, in childhood.
The rest is memory.”
- Louise Glück

How often do you look at the world and question what you see? Not question for other people’s benefit, but question privately to discover something fresh in what seemed so familiar.

Welcome home – Z

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