Turtles on the Move

Airport delays typically don't make people smile, though this story has caused quite a few of them.

Yesterday, runway 4 at JFK airport was temporarily shut down when over 150 breeding turtles crossed the runway to lay eggs in the marshland and bay surrounding the airport. The story was quickly picked up by news outlets and social media all over the world, with @JFKturtles suddenly launching as a popular twitter account in the Bronx Zoo Cobra tradition.

Fabien Cousteau commented, "Even busy New Yorkers pause for nature."

Day 14 at my new gig, and of course this story can't help but illuminate the big stuff we're talking about at work. Nature isn't something "out there" -- we are all one big eco-system, and 'healthy people, healthy planet' is completely intertwined.

I've always loved turtles, and know in certain cultures and traditions they're a symbol for many things - protection, longevity, fertility, afterlife, endings and beginnings.

To me, they are nature's reminder that things often don't happen on your timetable, and of the wisdom of patience.

Back to the Future

Earlier this week, had a 'Back to the Future' moment with my friend Rebecca who just relocated to the East Coast, and starts a brand spankin' new job on Monday morning as general editor of national magazine with an extremely well known brand name. Hurrah!

(And if I can wrangle a tour for my 11 year old Godson Connor perhaps I can get another hug or two outside of the every-6-month ones he dolls out!)

The picture above was taken in late March of 2006, at the outside patio of "Beach Fire" in San Clemente, at the launch of the new community paper, The San Clemente Times. Reggae music is undoubtedly playing and inside the restaurant, highlights from surf contests at Mavericks, J-Bay and Teahupoo are shown TV monitors. I had just relocated to the small California beach town known for Richard Nixon and great waves, had started working at a very fast moving start-up, survived my first Natural Products Expo West Trade show, and met my first friend (Rebecca) when she featured the founders of Sambazon in the San Clemente Times inaugural issue.

In the last couple of years, Rebecca relocated to Austin and bought a condo after her San Clemente job folded, began a new job at a community paper in Austin, which also folded earlier this year, and lost her mother very unexpectedly.

When I spoke to her earlier this year (after she lost her job in Austin and of course was worrying about things like paying her mortgage) she did have a sense of inner calm within chaos. I think this calm sometimes happens when you run out your own ideas and schemes and plans not working out, and have to Let Go, and Trust.

So you already know the end of this tale - doors shut, but big windows opened, and life in its circular way, brought my friend from my small California beach town to the East Coast.

I enjoyed the wisdom in a blog I follow, written by the daughter of a friend of a very good friend of mine, who besides being only 18 years old, has also never verbally spoken a day in her life. This is what Gaby recently wrote about change.

"..To transform my self-image, I had to learn – and am still learning – how to organize myself so I can sift through the chaos. This has been a slow process, and each day is a metamorphosis within itself; some days I wake up feeling like a cockroach scurrying around throughout the chaos, and sometimes I am the caterpillar serenely dormant in my cocoon, awaiting the moment of my emergence as a butterfly....Whatever stage of metamorphosis you are in, I urge you to embrace it. You might be entering a new and different stage of life and feel a change within yourself. It might be a joyful or incredibly trying journey. The important thing is to remember that to metamorphosize is to live; transformation is life. Feel the process, appreciate the progress...."

Bedtime Story

Over the weekend I was at the beach, and kept seeing postings on my phone from the "Blessed to have known Dave Freeman" Facebook group which was established in August of 2008. Because Facebook evolved their policies and practices on memorial pages, everyone was receiving the postings in real time, and over 20 people felt compelled to write new stories on the group's wall between yesterday and today. It was strange, though nice, to see all the new postings.

"You must be hovering Dave," one friend wrote.

One story made me especially smile, written by the Executive Creative Director of the ad agency we used to work at. Here the post:

Dave and i were shooting in New Orleans on the edge of the water. The idea was simple...David LaChappelle will film a model on a rock wearing nothing but silk fabric draping her full body. The only problem the temperature had dropped to 45f, and our girl was not coming out of the Winnebago. I asked David L to flatter her to convince her to come out so we can capture the image. Nope. I called the agency's lawyer to call her agent to convince her to come out and get the shot. No way.
It was Dave Freeman who then had the idea...let's all strip down to our underwear to let her know we were willing to deal with the same elements she was about to endure. I knocked on the door of the Winnebago, and she burst out laughing with what she saw. A minute later, she came out, and we got the shot. This is one of many stories that illustrate Dave Freeman's humanity, compassion and creativity...teaching us all lessons of how to solve problems and to inspire others in unexpected ways. I know I was always in awe of his head and heart. -bill

California Soul

Dear California,

Thank you for vastly improving my "Garden Leave", and reminding me why I love you.

The sun. The food. The landscape. Barbecues. Firepits. Groms. The smell of the ocean. Someone always deciding to strum a guitar at a certain point in the evening. The way the sun looks when it's setting over the Pacific (vs. New Jersey).

The sheer beauty of my former "yoga studio" location...sigh.

And most of all, the people.

So you never really know where your journey will take you, but I'm thankful to have a bit of California Soul in me, no matter what my address is!

Hope to see you again soon!

xo Laura

Garden Leave, Day 1

Garden Leave is a term I'd never heard of before until a friend was on it. I believe its primarily a banking industry term where when you leave your job, you're still paid for several months and not allowed to start your new job to, in theory, lose that competitive edge. I think it's a funny rule, somewhat like the penalty box in hockey (the adult "time out").

I'm on my version of Garden Leave before I start my new job though realized last night my approach to it could use some improvement. Yesterday after a nice morning of sitting on the roof, in PJs, watching boats, and listening to birds chirp I felt that nagging urge that I should be 'doing something.' I then proceeded to have a day of paying bills, running to the phone store, going to both the dermatologist and dentist (even my dentist laughed at that) and then going to two department stores. After a day in midtown I was ragged and experiencing the opposite of La Dolce Vita, and the opposite of being still.

All day a friend had been trying to send me the final episode of Oprah that I missed, and of course it arrived right on time. Excerpts of the transcript are here and among the many messages she said what clicked with me most was this:

""I have felt the presence of God my whole life. Even when I didn't have a name for it, I could feel the voice bigger than myself speaking to me, and all of us have that same voice. Be still and know it. You can acknowledge it or not. You can worship it or not. You can praise it, you can ignore it or you can know it. Know it. It's always there speaking to you and waiting for you to hear it in every move, in every decision. I wait and I listen. I'm still—I wait and listen for the guidance that's greater than my meager mind. The only time I've ever made mistakes is when I didn't listen. So what I know is, God is love and God is life, and your life is always speaking to you. First in whispers. ... It's subtle, those whispers. And if you don't pay attention to the whispers, it gets louder and louder. It's like getting thumped upside the head, like my grandmother used to do. ... You don't pay attention to that, it's like getting a brick upside your head. You don't pay attention to that, the whole brick wall falls down. That's the pattern I've seen in my life, and it's played out over and over again on this show. .."

So Day 2 of Garden Leave will be different. And I think staying up on the deck and just being still for a while is going to be more 'productive' than anything I created on my To Do list....