It takes me a couple of days to let go.  Why I have to work so hard to relax is beyond me but thanks to all of you, I am happy to share Step #3 of my Twelve Step Plan for Restless Creatives.  This Plan is for you who work hard and are passionate about what you do.  There is this fabulous quote by Leo Tolstoy that opens Part One of The Networked Nonprofit by Beth Kanter and Allison Fine, two creative social media thinkers, which I want to share with you.

“Everyone thinks about changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself”

I just got the book and am so thrilled that Beth and Allison have provided a “Google map”  for nonprofits to navigate their way into a new and highly networked world.  More on this book to come!  Just do yourself a big favor and get a copy for yourself.

Back to Tolstoy.

This Plan is to help you change yourself into a relaxed and rested version of yourself  so you can This is why it is so important for you to calm down!

I am so grateful for the suggestions you have sent me and will be writing them up for you  every Wednesday.

In case you missed them, here are Steps 1 & 2

1 Get over yourself

2 Get off the grid

And today we have -

3.  Get local

Slide your feet into those flip flops and stroll down the boardwalk to Rockaway Taco.

Check out the used surfboards with a fish taco in your hand.  Somehow you will feel a strong desire to wear one of those tank shirts that say, “Eat, Sleep, Surf” and watch the tide roll in.  I have been intrigued by the new patterns I have been seeing in board shorts.

“You got to take in a wave in clutch shorts, dude.”  I overheard this fashion tip from a bunch of surfers so it must be true.

Lose yourself in a different world.  Be a local in a different galaxy, one where the fire trucks sport rescue surf boards and the firemen look like surfer dudes.  It is hard to get aufgeregt (Yiddish for agitated) with sand between your toes.

What do you think?

Get more Wow, dude!

If you want style notes and more for people who change the world, please check out:

Getting to Wow! to feel good, do good and look good

Nonprofit Knitwear for all things knit and nonprofit

Style Notes from me, your artspy

Hoong Yee

– Subscribe and get a little Wow! every day

– Forward the link to someone you think would be interested

– Link to a post on Twitter (follow me @hylkrakauer)

– Put a link to the blog in your Facebook status update

Thanks so much! I really appreciate your help.

Word of mouth is the best way to share, don’t you agree?

I am not happy with my recent iPad experience.

Self Serve is Not for the Faint of Heart

I am trying to enter my credit card information so that my data plan can renew automatically every month but I keep getting an error message asking me to validate my billing address.  No matter what I do, AT & T will not accept where I live.  They have cut off my service and everyone I have spoken to over the past few days cannot help me.  They cannot even take my information over the phone because this is a “self serve account”.

When I am in the supermarket with Seth, we like to go through the Self Check-Out line where we scan, bag and pay ourselves.

Sweet!

I think the idea is great but I wonder if the cashiers will become as scarce as toll booth collectors since the rise of EZ Pass.  However, you will always need to have a person standing by to help you out when something doesn’t scan properly, or if the machine cannot read the barcode.

To help you out.

So, imagine my shock when AT & T shut off my data plan because they needed 72 hours to find somebody to resolve on the problem.

Somebody?

I thought “self serve”  means that iPad users manage their own accounts.  That’s why the very nice people answering the phones could not fix the problem.  Then who is the somebody who is going to fix it?

“I cannot take your information over the phone but I would be glad to walk through the self serve process with you again.”  said the pleasant but useless AT & T service person on the phone with me.

Are you kidding?

Where is the person that fixes self serve problems?  They always have one at the ready in the supermarkets.

Why doesn’t AT & T?

Get more Wow!

If you want style notes and more for people who change the world, please check out:

Getting to Wow! to feel good, do good and look good

Nonprofit Knitwear for all things knit and nonprofit

Style Notes from me, your artspy

Hoong Yee

– Subscribe and get a little Wow! every day

– Forward the link to someone you think would be interested

– Link to a post on Twitter (follow me @hylkrakauer)

– Put a link to the blog in your Facebook status update

Thanks so much! I really appreciate your help.

Word of mouth is the best way to share, don’t you agree?

All of you amazingly busy and creative people out there – stop what you are doing and relax, for crying out loud!  It is summer in the city of your soul and time to take a much deserved vacation.

In a recent post, I introduced the first step of  my Twelve Step Plan for everyone like me who needs to be accomplishing things all the time and asked you to help me create this.   Thanks to everyone who responded with great ideas for the Plan!

I always believed that one of us can be so much smarter with all of us.

OK everyone, the first step to get you in the right frame of mind is:

1. Get over yourself

Here is the next step

2. Get off the grid

This is really scary.

It works better if you accidentally jump in the pool with your phone in your pocket, but for the rest of us who lobsterclaw our phones in our sleep it may be more difficult to let go.  If you must must must have your phone with you, shut your ringers and alerts off and try getting used to the silence.  After a while you will start to feel disconnected, a little bubble drifting above the rest of us.  Suspended.

Like floating on your back in the ocean, suspended between sea and sky.  A sunrise, a fading moon.

Have a conversation with the universe.  No data plan required.

Get more Wow!

If you want style notes and more for people who change the world, please check out:

Getting to Wow! to feel good, do good and look good

Nonprofit Knitwear for all things knit and nonprofit

Style Notes from me, your artspy

Hoong Yee

– Subscribe and get a little Wow! every day

– Forward the link to someone you think would be interested

– Link to a post on Twitter (follow me @hylkrakauer)

– Put a link to the blog in your Facebook status update

Thanks so much! I really appreciate your help.

Word of mouth is the best way to share, don’t you agree?

I am at the sweet spot of the summer.

Early summer, just after the Fourth of July weekend, lazy wide open days ahead of me.

So what does any self respecting nonprofit executive director/momspy/artspy/nonprofit knitter do – angst!

That’s right.  I am frantically scheduling relaxing moments and down time into my Blackberry with alerts to remind me to calm down, take deep breaths, wear sunscreen, read, exercise and lose 10 pounds.  God forbid I forget to do something.

Another couple of things I have added to my evergrowing List of Things I Must Accomplish are blog related tasks.  I want to write, write, write and accumulate a cache of posts.  Then I want to work on some sketches, videos, guest posts, reviews – just a few thousand other things.

Sound familiar?

Why do we do this at a time when we are supposed to be on vacation from all of this?  Simple.  It’s a habit.  We are in the habit of overachieving and addicted to the challenge of being ahead of the game.  Since we do this more than we are on vacation, it is difficult habit to break especially if we don’t have something else to replace it with.

What we all need is a plan.

This is what you should do.  I will give you the first step and then I will need your help in completing this list that will make us happier:

A Twelve Step Plan for Restless Creatives Like Me

1. Get over yourself

You are not as irreplaceable as you think you are.  If you go off the grid, believe me, everybody will somehow get along fine without you.

If you feel that the world will explode without you being part of everything, you are a bottleneck, not a leader.  Shared decision making infuses your team with an increased sense of responsibility.  You can delegate someone the authority to sign off on say, decisions revolving around purchases under $500.  Or all correspondences to committee members.  If it is something you need to weigh in on, have that someone evaluate the options and make a recommendation.  That way you can simply agree or disagree and move forward.

Get addicted to the gradual distancing between you and every little thing that has to be taken care.  Design a better system that removes you from doing it all.  This is a habit we can get used to.

Get more Wow!

If you want style notes and more for people who change the world, please check out:

Getting to Wow! to feel good, do good and look good

Nonprofit Knitwear for all things knit and nonprofit

Style Notes from me, your artspy

Hoong Yee

– Subscribe and get a little Wow! every day

– Forward the link to someone you think would be interested

– Link to a post on Twitter (follow me @hylkrakauer)

– Put a link to the blog in your Facebook status update

Thanks so much! I really appreciate your help.

Word of mouth is the best way to share, don’t you agree?

In the sweet spot of our summer days off,

we hopped across the burning sand to the water’s edge in our flip flops

three beach chairs, two bags balanced

on Sky’s blue boogie board

that we dragged to the shoreline,

riding Rockaway waves til sunset.

Get more Wow!

If you want style notes and more for people who change the world, please check out:

Getting to Wow! to feel good, do good and look good

Nonprofit Knitwear for all things knit and nonprofit

Style Notes from me, your artspy

Hoong Yee

– Subscribe and get a little Wow! every day

– Forward the link to someone you think would be interested

– Link to a post on Twitter (follow me @hylkrakauer)

– Put a link to the blog in your Facebook status update

Thanks so much! I really appreciate your help.

Word of mouth is the best way to share, don’t you agree?

]]> http://hoongyee.com/2010/07/09/how-to-get-around-like-a-local/feed/ 0 http://hoongyee.com/2010/07/08/a-style-note-about-radishes/ http://hoongyee.com/2010/07/08/a-style-note-about-radishes/#comments Thu, 08 Jul 2010 08:29:02 +0000 hoongyee http://hoongyee.com/?p=719

Being around plants is good for you.

People are happier touching and caring for green living things. It brightens my day to be part of a Big Garden. Imagine how I felt to see my very first radish popping up out of the dirt!

While I am home on vacation this week, I am happy watching things grow in my backyard, taking in every new leaf, bud and blossom in amazement. Basil, arugula, all kinds of lettuce, tomatoes, celery and herbs are now my inbox inhabitants.

Edible emails from the universe.

A whole row of ruddy little radishes with tousled green leaves will find their way into something my nineteen year old son, Remy, calls Oh Wow Radishes!  It is a roasted radish crostini that you can make in less than half an hour.

Here’s how to make someone you love say Oh Wow! to your radishes:

Oh Wow Radishes!

Make sure you have:

A bunch of radishes

Olive oil (I keep a jar of oil with chopped garlic – it’s my Secret Stuff.  You should, too)

Salt & pepper (Try grinding sea salt and pink, green and black peppercorns.  Come on, you know you’re worth it.)

Half a stick of butter

A tin of anchovies (about 8 fillets, finely chopped)

4 big garlic cloves (not necessary if you have  a jar of you-know-what)

Red pepper flakes

8 slices of crusty bread, nicely toasted

OK, take a bunch of rosy red radishes and remove the leaves, stems and tails.  Cut them into chunky half moons lengthwise.

Cook radishes in enough oil to cover the bottom of a large skillet until they are lightly seared and tender, 4-6 minutes.  Season with salt and pepper.

In another skillet, melt the butter and stir in anchovies, garlic, red pepper flakes and about 8 tablespoons of oil.  Simmer for about 5 minutes.

Brush each slice of toasted bread with sauce and top with radish half moons.  Spoon a little more sauce on top, sprinkle with parsley and serve with a smile.

Get more Wow!

If you want style notes and more for people who change the world, please check out:

Getting to Wow! to feel good, do good and look good

Nonprofit Knitwear for all things knit and nonprofit

Style Notes from me, your artspy

Hoong Yee

– Subscribe and get a little Wow! every day

– Forward the link to someone you think would be interested

– Link to a post on Twitter (follow me @hylkrakauer)

– Put a link to the blog in your Facebook status update

Thanks so much! I really appreciate your help.

Word of mouth is the best way to share, don’t you agree?

What better way to spend a three hour drive from Baltimore, Maryland, to Rockaway Beach, New York, than to do dramatic readings from a travel phrase book for gay men, a souvenir from the American Visionary Art Museum, the host of a fabelhaft reception for the Americans for the Arts Convention this past weekend.

OK, now you know how to say “fabulous” in German - fabelhaft!

Chad Bauman, Arena Stage

I am pretty tired from the trip and two days of session overload. This is an annual conference that occurs in a different city each year and brings together a microcosm of arts thinkers, administrators, bloggers and People Who Have a Vested Interest in the Arts Who C’est Divin.

Sacre bleu!  You have just learned how to say “fabulous” in French - c’est divin!

As an attendee, I find myself in between sessions with my hand in the snack bowl more often than I care to admit but I did attend a few of the workshops and conversations.  On Saturday, I sat in on a session with arts bloggers in a discussion about topics including:

• balancing the personal voice and the organizational voice
• how often should you blog
• how do you achieve gravitas as a blogger
• the intersection between journalism and blogging

Do any of you have any experience with the above that you think might help others who are bewildered by blogging?

Please post a comment if you have something to share.

Thanks to my handy dandy iPad, I was able to check out the blog of everyone who spoke.

from the Arts Bloggers session

And with my newest divina app delight, Sketchbook Pro, I could capture drawings of people.

Uno mas:

from the Arts Bloggers session

Divina! That is how you say “fabulous” in Spanish.

More later.

Get more Wow!

If you want style notes and more for people who change the world, please check out:

Getting to Wow! to feel good, do good and look good

Nonprofit Knitwear for all things knit and nonprofit

Style Notes from me, your artspy

Hoong Yee

– Subscribe and get a little Wow! every day

– Forward the link to someone you think would be interested

– Link to a post on Twitter (follow me @hylkrakauer)

– Put a link to the blog in your Facebook status update

Thanks so much! I really appreciate your help.

Word of mouth is the best way to share, don’t you agree?

This post appears on the Queens Council on the Arts site.

I have been running around with Roz Nieves of QPTV and her camera crew grabbing footage of artist interviews, performances, readings, and garden tours happening this weekend on the Queens Art Express.

Dean Project

So far, we have spent time in Long Island City chatting with Reinaldo Sanguino about the quirky hand twisted mops from their exhibition, “Jack in the Space” at the Dean Project and meeting John Navarro, a young film maker screening his horror film at the LaGuardia Performing Arts Center.  After a full day of filming we topped off our day at Bistro Latino La Vuelta with mojitos and great food – a fantastico combination of art and food!

sign in tables for the garden tours

Saturday morning found us wandering through Jackson Heights starting with a garden tour with the Jackson Heights Beautification Group and art around the park featuring one of a kind pieces and one liners from local artists from the Jackson Heights Art Club exhibiting their work on the fence,

Me and two Jackson Heights artists

against the walls of buildings and inside a neighborhood jewel of a cafe, espresso 77, where the friendly girls behind the counter were busy restyling their Queens Art Express T shirts.

espresso 77 girls

art on the walls in Jackson Heights

In another garden, in another part of Queens, we walked into a jazz concert at the Louis Armstrong House Museum in Corona.

Shades of Satchmo and ice tea in a leafy garden was a very cool way to spend a Saturday afternoon!

For lunch, Roz brought us over to Pio Pio, a cavernous Peruvian chicken place on Northern Boulevard where we ordered something called the Maestro.  ”You get more than you can eat and you end up taking stuff home.”  she warned us as we scanned the menu.

She was right.  Instantly, a rotisseried chicken cut in quarters appeared with large side orders of yellow rice and beans, maduras, yellow plaintains and an avocado salad.  This is a family style place with a relaxed atmosphere, a place to come back to with a swarm of friends or, in our case, with a TV crew.

sitting with theater members of Adhikaar’s Arts & Activism program at the Jackson Diner

Our last Queens Art Express event for the day was a literary reading presented by a new QCA program, QUILL, Queens in Love with Literature, and the Asian American Writers Workshop at the Jackson Diner in Jackson Heights.

I walked down iconic 74th street talking about the neighborhood as Kevin caught some B roll and when we got to the diner, Manjit, the owner, brought out four tall glasses of mango lassi and a plate of vegetable samosas for us.

You would never have thought we had just devoured a Maestro platter at Pio Pio the way we savored this Indian treat!

Several local writers and members of a theater group presented readings in a glass enclosed second floor space above the restaurant to a packed audience.

Platters of samosas were served with two sauces – tamarind and cilantro with green chili – and hot masala tea.  I was struck by how much everyone loved the localness of this literary event and that they wanted more of it.  For me, to present writers of other languages and other experiences is a way to live in other worlds.  Local artists bring a passion in presenting their work that is both transcendant and transformative.

Add great food and atmosphere and you have a  true word feast.

Me, Koosuke Ikeda and Roz @ Subdivision in Long Island City

crazy T shirts

To wrap up our weekend, we set up shop in Subdivision, a boutique/gallery in Long Island City to talk to Koosuke Ikeda,  a local artist currently exhibiting there.  Here you will find unique pieces by emerging designers including some handknit pieces by Virginia, the owner.

“I have to really start working on stuff now that its summer so that I have things ready for the fall.”  Virginia smiled with a sigh.

“You are a knitting squirrel.”

She liked that.

Get more Wow!

If you want style notes and more for people who change the world, please check out:

Getting to Wow! to feel good, do good and look good

Nonprofit Knitwear for all things knit and nonprofit

Style Notes from me, your artspy

Hoong Yee

– Subscribe and get a little Wow! every day

– Forward the link to someone you think would be interested

– Link to a post on Twitter (follow me @hylkrakauer)

– Put a link to the blog in your Facebook status update

Thanks so much! I really appreciate your help.

Word of mouth is the best way to share, don’t you agree?

]]> http://hoongyee.com/2010/06/14/heres-whats-happening-on-the-queens-art-express/feed/ 0 http://hoongyee.com/2010/06/09/listening-is-sexy/ http://hoongyee.com/2010/06/09/listening-is-sexy/#comments Wed, 09 Jun 2010 08:29:43 +0000 hoongyee http://hoongyee.com/?p=1715

photo by Ldng photos

I was being interviewed for a cable show by an extremely attractive woman who managed to capture a sound byte from everyone she wanted  at a crowded press conference.

“You are really good.”  I said, very impressed by how she worked the room.

“Handling people?  This is easy compared to the job I retired from.”  She tossed her head and laughed, “When I was a police officer, I was always packing and people always listened to me if they knew what was good for them.”

Retired? Police officer?  Packing?  OK, now she had my complete attention.  She was dressed in a classy dark suit with a string of pearls in the most un-law enforcement style.

“I still pack a gun to get people to listen to me, I just wear it better if you know what I mean.”  She grinned and winked as she moved in on her next unsuspecting interviewee.  “People love to be listened to so that’s what I really do.  I listen to them and boom! – they fall in love with me and then they listen to everything I tell them.  Happens all the time.”

Roz happens to be right.  Give someone your total attention, no cellphone, no alerts, no interruptions and see how quickly that person will open up and spill their life story.  Someone who cares enough to listen and focus solely on you is someone you can fall in love with and bare your soul to.  Imagine!

People are natural storytellers.  They are not as interested in being told what to do, or what’s best for them.  Much better to ask a question and just listen carefully to where the answer goes.  That is what most of us humans like doing – telling stories about ourselves to anyone who will  listen.

And for all of you smart listeners,  here’s one of my favorite quotes from Agatha Christie:

“Conversation reveals all.”

Now how sexy is that?

Get more Wow!

If you want style notes and more for people who change the world, please check out:

Getting to Wow! to feel good, do good and look good

Nonprofit Knitwear for all things knit and nonprofit

Style Notes from me, your artspy

Hoong Yee

– Subscribe and get a little Wow! every day

– Forward the link to someone you think would be interested

– Link to a post on Twitter (follow me @hylkrakauer)

– Put a link to the blog in your Facebook status update

Thanks so much! I really appreciate your help.

Word of mouth is the best way to share, don’t you agree?

I love that!

I love good things thoughtfully put together in one tasty, well messaged package.  Chocolate bars, websites, visual identities, yes, and meetings, too.

This meeting included Bob Holman, Katherine DeFoyd and a new staff member from Growth for Good, Lyn Pentecost, Diem Jones and moi.

Diem at my desk

Diem is a new friend and an old soul.  A creative force that speaks with a deep and gentle cadence to each thought.  It seemed to me that he and the Artsopolis program from Silicon Valley would bring some great synergy and conversation to the pack.

Wow!

The Howl! Festival promises to be a huge unifying celebration of the restless poetic spirit that roams the street of the East Village.  There are many things to be done and a lot of people that Bob and Lyn need to talk to in order to move ahead.  Lots of thoughts for Katherine and I to share.  Some emerging consortium projects for Diem and me to talk about in Baltimore later this month.  This is the part I love – envisioning the architecture of a great collaboration, figuring out who else would be fabulous to have at the table with us.

Creativity just how I like it – in one, thoughtfully put together, tasty, well messaged package.  Stay tuned for more as we she wolves and he wolves move in on a killer festival!

What could be better than chocolate or poetry?

Get more Wow!

If you want style notes and more for people who change the world, please check out:

Getting to Wow! to feel good, do good and look good

Nonprofit Knitwear for all things knit and nonprofit

Style Notes from me, your artspy

Hoong Yee

– Subscribe and get a little Wow! every day

– Forward the link to someone you think would be interested

– Link to a post on Twitter (follow me @hylkrakauer)

– Put a link to the blog in your Facebook status update

Thanks so much! I really appreciate your help.

Word of mouth is the best way to share, don’t you agree?