Month: September 2006

William B. Ziff Jr. passes away

Colin’s Corner: William B. Ziff Jr. passes away

I am sad. This man was a hero to me. A lion in publishing and the smartest man in any room he stood. I worked for him for four years, interviewed him for a big Forbes story when he was selling the company, visited his Pawling home, and got to know his sons Dirk, Robert, and Daniel. My condolences to them, for he was larger than life. Ah, how I wish those years from Forbes were online so I could link to the story.

Bill passed away at home at the age of 76.

I have two Bill Ziff stories. The first time I met him I was returning to my office at PC Week following a weekly story meeting. My office was, to put it politely, trashed, a total health department violation, with heaps of press releases, torn apart PCs and general Dave-junk everywhere. When I flew through the door there was a man sitting in my chair looking out the window at the Charles River. He looked like a janitor, dressed in green khakis and looking a little dishelved.

“Can I sit there?” I demanded. He stood up, smiled, stuck out his hand and said, “I’m Bill Ziff.”

We talked for about five minutes until a writer stuck her head in the door and said there was an emergency at the copydesk that needed my attention. I excused myself, stepped outside, and was assaulted by a belly dancer who had bad odor on the occasion of my birthday. Bill Ziff stood by with a very sly smile on his face.

The second Bill Ziff story followed my big Forbes story (which should have been a cover and which was amazingly awesome in the first draft until my editor assaulted it). Bill was obsessively smart about certain topics: horticulture, sports statistics, the theory of relativity, and the Civil War, another passion of mine. So he invited me and my wife to Pawling for a weekend with him and his wife Anne to talk about the Civil War. The house was amazing, 40,000 square feet on a 500 acre arboreum. He sang me the Union song, Marching Through Georgia, and bellowed the refrain:

“Hurrah! Hurrah! We bring the Jubilee.

Hurrah! Hurrah! The flag that makes you free,

So we sang the chorus from Atlanta to the sea,

While we were marching through Georgia.”

He then proceeded to analyze me which was a thoroughly discomfiting experience, but one he apparently — gauging from the number of people who have undergone the Bill Ziff Analysis — was fond of performing.

I will miss him. Ave Atque Vale Bill.

Thirty Miles East Of Nantucket: Station 44018

NDBC – Station 44018

Here I was at dawn on Saturday morning, three hours after departing Popponesset Bay aboard the Champagne, a 23′ SeaHunter. It was flat calm under a full moon and the air got colder and colder as we left the shallow waters of Nantucket Sound for the deep blue briny of the Atlantic.

As false dawn pinked up the eastern horizon we passed this buoy, a weather station maintained by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — known as the “BB” buoy. It was foggy, but I saw the flukes of a whale’s tail break the surface before we were utterly socked in.

We trolled five lines across the thermoclines (differences in water temperature), hoping to lure a pelagic out of the emptiness and into the boat. I had eagle-eyes and saw bluefin tuna break the surface twice, sightings which gave us hours of false hope. The VHF radio was alive with cryptic chatter between fishing boats: “What temperature is the water where you are?” “Are you fishing where you fished yesterday? If so, I am two miles northwest of you.”

We didn’t see another boat for six hours, yet the radar showed they were all around us. It was like being in a vast sensory deprivation tank. A quarter mile of visibility, grey ocean, grey fog, and the diluted disc of the sun overhead.

We came home at 4:30 in the afternoon. I was exhausted, but it was cool to have been so far out in the ocean. Somewhat frightening when I thought of the possibilities of what could go wrong, but delightful given the calm conditions.

Skies without contrails

The Sunday paper is especially thick this morning, burdened down by the fifth anniversary attacks on the World Trade center. The television stations have been portentious with teasers for their five-year recollections, and commentators ask the question: when will it happen again?

There are signal events in history that we all live through, track marks in our lives that we can all point to and say, “I remember where I was and what I was doing when I heard….”

My father was in the boat shop on a cold Sunday evening in December, listening to the radio with his father when Pearl Harbor was announced. I was playing with blocks on the black and white linoleum floor of my parent’s house in Houston, Texas when JFK was shot, watched Neil Armstrong step onto the moon in the living room of Aunt Betty’s house ….

There will be a lot of this in the next few days. A lot of “I remember” and “It will happen again” writing. We trade our stories and anecdotes: “I know a guy who talked to his brother standing on the roof of the north tower when it collapsed and he’s been completely unhinged ever since ….”

I identify 9/11 with the weather.

Any cloudless blue sky in late August or early September makes me recall it. Walking through Terminal A of the Delta Shuttle in Boston makes me recall it.

Here’s my story:

I flew out of Logan that Tuesday morning on my way to LaGuardia. I am still chilled by the idea that I was in the same airport, on the same morning, headed in the same direction as the terrorists. I am chilled that they got to Logan on the same commuter airline I flew for years to Manhattan, Colgan Air. I arrived in the city an hour before they did, took a car into the city and through the Midtown Tunnel to my office on 51st and Park. Stopped at the Starbucks in the lobby and was in the elevator, on my way to my desk, when a bicycle messenger said, in a joking tone: “A plane hit the World Trade Center.”

I thought about King Kong. I thought it was a Cessna. I thought it was a traffic helicopter.

I walked into my office and saw the tower ablaze.

Like most of the world I watched the rest of the disaster unfold on television. My phone rang — friends were calling from around the country to check on me. I made arrangements to return to Boston. No rental cars were available, so I found my two Boston colleagues and discussed our options. Stay in the city. Take a ferry to New Jersey and work out a solution from there. Walk to the South Bronx.

After the collapse we left the building and walked to Grand Central. I saw people in the crowds I hadn’t seen for years. F-16s from Otis Air Force Base, five miles from my home on Cape Cod flew down Park Avenue. Grand Central was choked with people, dotted here and there by survivors who were completely covered in dust, standing out like snowmen in the mobs.

There was a Metro North leaving for New Haven. We boarded it. Cells phone didn’t work. I read the wire news on my Palm through an early wireless modem and shared updates with my colleagues. We were met in New Haven by a colleague’s husband and driven to Logan, arriving there around midnight. The airport was roadblocked but the State Police let us in to get our cars from the parking garage. The garage was adjacent to the airport hotel where the families of the dead on the planes were gathering. I found my car and drove home.

I couldn’t return to work for the next two weeks. I went fishing by myself in Nantucket Sound and did a lot of thinking. There were no planes in the skies and the skies remained as blue as they did that Tuesday morning, only without contrails.

‘Goat-free roads made me speed’

BBC NEWS | Americas | ‘Goat-free roads made me speed’
In the Swiss Weirdness category:

“A Swiss man caught speeding on a Canadian highway has blamed his actions on the absence of goats on the roads.”

If you can’t ride, then row

The end of my cycling career is essentially sealed now that I have sent the insurance settlement check for my old bike (The Viktor Rapinski Team Saturn LeMond) onto New York University so my eldest can become Martin Scorcese.

That means getting on my other exercise vehicle, my Empacher T18R training scull, and logging some meters around Grand Island here on Cape Cod.

I rowed in high school and college, gave it up after I graduated, then returned to it in 1995 after writing The Book of Rowing for Overlook Press. I bought my scull in 1997, named it the Arsch Clown in honor of Michael Bolton, Office Space, and the boat’s German origin, and have raced it a couple times in the Head of the Charles and the Green Mountain Regatta.

 

Here I am in the HOCR. I later hit a bridge abutment,  but managed not to capsize despite the exhortations to do so by drunken Harvard students. That would have been more than embarassing.

I carry the boat on my head down the hill to the harbor, launch off of the beach, and row approximately 9,000 meters around Grand Island. Here’s a link to the route.

It’s a great workout on some of the most beautiful sculling water in the Northeast — maybe a little less fun than cranking around on a racing bicycle, but infinitely safer and a better overall bang for my exercise buck.

Cotuit Skiff Scantling Plans

This is painted on the floor of my boatshop — probably painted by my grandmother who was the type of person who could pull off this type of work.

I believe these are called “scantlings” — essentially full-scale plans that boat builders referred to as a template for cutting planks. I don’t fully understand how they were used, and when in the boat building process, but it’s pretty cool they’re still there after 60 years.

Cotuit Skiff Scantling Plans

Originally uploaded by dchurbuck.

Tennis grunting

Found myself cheering against Maria Sharapova in tonight’s U.S. Open simply because I couldn’t abide her shrieking. She won despite my negative mindbullets aimed at the television, but honestly, who deserves to shriek save those suffering mortal pain? I know, it’s some sort of hai karate chi thing, but it still sucks.

Apparently some opponents feel the same way I do:

“Sharapova, who at 16 is one of the game’s most promising young players, was warned by tournament officials after Dechy and players on an adjacent court complained about her high-pitched shrieks.”

Flickr: Explore everyone’s geotagged photos on a Map

Flickr: Explore everyone’s geotagged photos on a Map

Geotagging is addictive.

Here’s the photoset for Cotuit, Mass.  My fotos as well as the rest of the world’s. Flickr grows more indispensible to me with every session.

johnon.com – good SEO blog

johnon.com

“You probably won’t listen to me if I suggest you keep your voice lower, not discuss tactical or strategic issues in a pubic forum, or speak in secret code, so this is the least I can offer you. If you finish your overly loud public “search marketing” pitch and walk out leaving your dream client behind, I will feel compelled to hand her my business card and offer her a free review of your written proposal. Like I just did.”

Ah, the perils of the Starbuck’s economy. This looks like a keeper for the blogroll.