Ah, Cape Cod where the wind blows away the chaff of society and the waters unfetter the soul.
I emerge from his morning swim ritual in Cape Cod Bay – water temps ranging from a tingling 48 to an invigorating 56 degrees.
Escape to the Cape.
Travel
Fugal Leadership
Maestro Nicholas McGegan is short in stature, unprepossessing of character, and was able to draw the absolute best out of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra last night when they played Handel’s Water Music, Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto and Mendelssohn’s Reformation Symphony. Does it help that he is 32-year director of San Francisco’s Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and has been awarded the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for music services? Not really.
At some point earlier in the week, guest conductor Nicholas had to stand up before a group of total strangers, each an expert in playing these pieces. With a mere eight rehearsal hours, he had to weld them into a unit that would perform this music his way. And from the moment he raised his hands at the podium, his mastery methods became evident. Nicholas McGeghan completely enjoyed this music and these musicians. It was obvious to everyone in the hall that there was no other place on this planet Maestro McGeghan wanted to be. His gestures were unconventional. He used no baton. But his sheer joy contagiously radiated throughout the hall. Of course the NJSO musicians followed suit. Nicholas’ enthusiasm was irresistible….Leadership lesson #1, I noted.
After the performance I chatted briefly with a couple of the musicians concerning their guest conductor. Both agreed that this Cambridge and Oxford educated professor held an exceptional gift for articulating exactly what he wanted, in a way that they all understood. I have been able to experience this Leadership lesson #2 at work under the direction of Mr. Noel Werner, music director of the Nassau Presbyterian church choir. Noel employs a humorous verbal precision to steer our vocality away from “the Carol Channing flat aya” and “the sonorous Kentucky hills RRR,” onto the exact tones he requires. The more precisely and comprehensibly you can articulate what you want, the more likely you are to get it.
Ten cents of my own money says that lessons #1 and #2 just might apply to the leadership of my own ventures.
Wishing you Every Success,
– Bart Jackson
Yeti sightings in Cranbury
While out skiing this morning to check the vines in their vineyard and brush the snow off their solar panels, we sighted this photo of what we claim to be an over-bundled Yeti crossing our property. Lorraine thinks he may have stowed away in our packs when they came back from Tibet. Bart says Lorraine is always complaining about how heavy her pack is.
Have fun and stay warm
One Day in Tibet
…So we are squatting there, huddled tightly around this tiny tin stove, glowing with embers of yak dung, clutching a stone cup of ink-black tea in our hands.
Now this is good, because the wind outside is blowing its cold and constant 40 mph across the Tibetan plateau at 16,000 feet of elevation, and we are tucked toastily with the nomads inside their yurt – a tent made of pressed yak felt, held up by ropes of twined yak hair, and staked down by shards of yak bone.
And from over in the corner comes Neema who has been churning, churning, churning in her precious wooden churn. And as she passes, every hand goes out – and thus so does mine – and slap. A greasy glob lands in my palm. And I look. Following suit, I scrape it into the stone cup, watching it ooze and sprawl across the tea’s surface in grey, bobbing globules.
This is yak butter. It’s intriguingly cloying – at least for the first four cups. But the grinning nomads who have invited us into their toasty home are really putting it down and my wife Lorraine and I are expected to keep up.
Then sweet-smiling Neema comes by again. This time it’s a bowl of nearly-ground barley; and out go the hands, and slap! More yak butter. Following suit, we kneed and kneed and kneed these two until we get something about the consistency of wallpaper paste, but not quite as tasty. This is the second staple of the Tibetan diet, called tsampa.
The wind continues outside, driving blasts of horizontal snow. The laughter grows more raucous. Our 200-word Tibetan vocabulary gets stretched beyond comprehension, but the language of camaraderie melded us together like warm tsampa. In appreciation for their gracious hospitality and feast, we shared pictures of our home torn from calendars we’d brought with us. As Lorraine and I eventually toddled off to our little backpacking tent, several of the children followed, poking heads and hands inside to examine the strange gear belonging to their strange guests. (Our down sleeping bags were a great hit.)
So if you are considering making your way to this enchanted land pressed hard against the northern flanks of the high Himalayas – Yes. By all means go to Tibet. Experience the globe’s most physically rugged and spiritually rich people. Find joyful companions. Explore what Everest is like. Discover if there is truly a Shangri-la. But do not, I beg you, go to Tibet for the food.
Wishing you joyful treks & warm companions,
– Bart Jackson
The Healing Shore
HD Thoreau noted of Eastham Cape Cod, that “the barren aspect of land would hardly be believed if described.” I suppose it depends upon what you are cultivating. For me, our home in Eastham shores writhes abundantly with life. Whether it is the view from out of my window on Cape Cod Bay, or walking the hard sand flats at low tide, there stands no more fertile plain for raising up one’s most profound and deepest thoughts.
Or wading heavily amidst the thunderous rhythms of Nauset Beach’s ocean waves as they crash and seethe along the slender sandy strand hemmed by towering dunes and open sea. Surely, there lies no richer field for planting soul into perspective & the mind into more astute reflection.
‘Twas to this most blessed retreat I came this week after shoulder-replacement surgery. The quelling of the mind and the release from the daily frenzies of home and office life proffered the utmost recuperation. With my good wife Lorraine, and later joined by my COO & laughing adventuress Carol Ezzo, we journeyed into the realm of simple re-creations such as finding clams on the flats, half-shell oysters amongst the shoreside restaurants, and bright-plumed birds in remote marshes. And yes, and in the eve, we even made some amazing strides in our latest book, along with lining up new guests for our The Art of the CEO radio show. The brain works best when freed from the chaff of distraction – and fueled by good friends and lobster in drawn butter.
Wishing you all a grand summer,
– Bart Jackson