Beach interview with Frank of “Dancing With Frank Pacholski”
…and he reminded me of these guys:
CHERYL, the dance party that will ruin your life (photo copyright Bubi Canal, used without permission)
Great minds, people! Great minds.
For higher genius, seek:
A couple of months ago, I got an invite from a friend-of-a-friend who was interested in forming a new North Brooklyn chapter of the business networking organization BNI. I had heard of BNI, but had (quite luckily and happily) always been too busy working to check it out.
However, this personal invitation grabbed me. I’d be founding a new group (fun professional development activity), with this friend-of-a-friend who I totally hit it off with (fun social activity), and would almost certainly gain some new business connections (fun $$$).
The photo of our founding members I’m sending out with all my email invites. Who wouldn’t want to join us?!
But it turns out it’s a pretty long and involved process to get a group started, and as we go through the paces, I admit I’m experiencing bouts of cold feet.
Here’s a plusses and minuses rundown—maybe you can help me decide if I should continue?
Pros:
Cons:
So, dear readers, what do you think? Have you heard of BNI? What’s your impression? Had any experiences with it yourself? If you were me, what would you do?
My dear friend and longtime client Elena is leaving NYC on a pre-dawn flight to Mexico tomorrow to embark on the 10-day silent meditation retreat that will usher in a bold new “oh-my-god-what-is-happening??” chapter of her life. I would say congratulations and good luck, but I don’t want to trip up her whole not-speaking thing.
Since we met a decade ago, I’ve known Elena by turns as a diligent, fair-minded, and hardworking coworker, partner in shenanigans, and small business proprietor. She thinks about almost everything deeply. She makes sumptuous vegetarian meals on the fly. Over the years, she’s handed down a grip of her classy clothing to me, which I hope made beautiful space in her closet with the same proportions as it filled the ghastly gaps in mine.
Recently, Elena decided to take an indefinite break from her glamorous Upper West Side life: she parked her baby blue Piaggio scooter in storage, sold most of her other belongings, and put her successful nutrition coaching practice on hiatus. Tomorrow, she’ll touch down in Mexico, and after that, it’s off to work on a veganic farm in the southwest. After that? I’m pretty sure she’d say your guess is as good as hers.
The fact that I realized today that I should probably retire Elena’s testimonial from my website (for now) is the least important part of this story, but it did make me want to tell it, so that’s cool.
Godspeed, Elena! You’ve got chutzpah, and I love ya. Just remember: Wild Women Don’t Sing the Blues.
Last week, I had the super-pleasure of attending the Urban Green Council‘s fourth annual EBie Awards (pronounced EE-bee!). These “Oscars of Existing Buildings” recognize improved environmental performance: measures that reduce energy consumption, efficiently use storm water runoff, improve indoor environmental quality to promote better human health, etc.
Please proceed to GOOD TIMES
I was there as a guest of the terrific designer (and my good friend) Claire Hansen and her equally inimitable husband Russell Unger, executive director of Urban Green, so the conversation over dinner was guaranteed to be good. But, to my delight, the merriment didn’t stop there.
The evening combined all the great things about classic awards shows—Broadway numbers, presenters ribbing presenters, and an open bar—with not-so-common actual importance: these people were being celebrated for saving millions of kilowatts of electricity, saving even more millions of gallons of water, and educating building owners, tenants, and visitors about their life-saving best practices. I’ll raise a Super Sap cube to that!
I covered the EBies for Urban Green’s blog, and I’m happy to report their communications crew was just as nice and fun to work with as I’d imagined. They organize and host great events all the time; I hope to hang out at and write about many more of them!
Thanks to my friend Naama Shefi, Director of Communications at EatWith, my man and I enjoyed a lovely Sunday brunch today at the Lower East Side’s historic Essex Market.
“Eat dinner with fellow food lovers at the home of a chef in your city or when you travel,” says EatWith’s website. Friendly, hungry people can browse shared dining experiences going on in over 150 cities, or book an EatWith chef for a private event.
I’m a huge fan of all the sharing enterprises that have rushed the market, tsunami-like, in the past few years. Pioneers like Craigslist, and now sites like Airbnb and NeighborGoods, have removed the middleman from the equation and allow people to share and sell their own stuff directly with other individuals. In these affairs, the personal reputation you earn makes or breaks your interactions, which seems like a pretty fair way to go about business to me.
A somewhat less Libertarian-y reason I enjoy these kinds of doings is that they’re a great way to meet fun people who also like to get out into the world. This morning, we sat near a Caribbean pediatrician, a young investment banker, and a native Texan who now writes movie reviews for The Hollywood Reporter. Not a bad haul!
Oh yes, and the food was also wonderful. Emily and Anais made tiny beer mustard deviled eggs, an asparagus bruschetta on olive bread, and a grilled pineapple sandwich on a sticky cinnamon roll, as well as other treats—all as good as they sound. The cucumber gin basil fizzy totally sealed the deal.
So get thee to EatWith, I say! It’s a fun and fresh method for getting one of your three squares in while brushing up on your conversation skills, and maybe even acquainting yourself with a new culinary idea or two. For example, I will now be making all my sandwiches on sticky cinnamon rolls.
By asking me to speak!
Oh, I joke. I’m really hoping to not embarrass my friend and fellow writer Tracy Sayre at her next awesome Writers Work conference, coming up on Saturday, June 27 in Manhattan.
Her excellent conferences provide newb and experienced writers alike with opportunities to network, hear useful advice from interesting speakers, and sometimes even take a few minutes to write on the fly and share what happens.
I’m super touched that Tracy asked me to hold court on the topic “How to Pay the Rent with Your Writing”—something I suppose I have been managing to do for a while! Now, I just have to think of what to say…
There are still a handful of tickets left as I type this. Git yer hands on ’em now and I’ll see you there!
April Greene 