"Buildings, too, are children of Earth and Sun."

Frank Lloyd Wright path to the Library, originally uploaded by Cameron Maddux.

The post title line is from Frank Lloyd Wright. This image in from my trip yesterday to the Marin Civic Center Library. FLW designed the Marin Civic Center; it is fun to explore and find pieces of his thinking and vision.

He definitely practiced what he preached.

Another favorite of mine from him:
"Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you."

I do this ... but I don't apply it enough to what "I do."

Tracing comics

Tracing to distract the left side of the brain, originally uploaded by Cameron Maddux.

I like tracing comics. I like the distraction for doing some real thinking.

Reading comics is like listening to Rock 'n Roll ... tracing them is like listening to classical. More about appreciation and the places your mind takes you.

GO SAM!

GO SAM!, originally uploaded by Cameron Maddux.

Sam had a good second trimester ... from grades to attitude to engagement to reading to fun to friends! Woo-Hoo!

Good Day today

We had an open house @AAU yesterday, so our weekend day had to be special this week, so Pre-Oscar we:

JET

Thanks to Virginia for getting me into the launch party of MLB2K10 to hear JET. (And that was an awesome single turned RBI triple my Panda hit off your Weaver in our game on the Xbox!)

Are You Gonna Be My Girl - JET from Cameron Maddux on Vimeo.

Small venue. Great 45 minute set of mostly new stuff.
Check out the new rockin' album Shaka Rock.

Neupogen shots

Neupogen shots, originally uploaded by Cameron Maddux.

This morning, Mary's numbers from yesterday's blood draw show that she is back in the severe neutropenia range.

Sorry, I haven't given an update in a while, but there is nothing really new to report. We are still dealing with the unknown and fluctuating numbers. She is off the steroid (however, these numbers might put her back on) and still gives herself a shot 3 times a week. She met with a new doctor who gave her some confidence in his curiosity and ideas. She also met with a social worker so that she can apply for disability, which will be good given the risks and her exhaustion level.

If anything significant happens we'll definitely let you know. Hugs and Love, Mary, Sam & Cam

The new semester...

Family is the recent theme around here. As you can see from the picture above, my dad and Liz came in for a visit on Super Bowl weekend.  They spent some time in wine country with another couple before some time down south.  We had a fabulous Super Bowl Sunday with a nice lunch at Slanted Door. We then headed to their suite high above San Francisco to watch the GREATEST SUPER BOWL EVER!!!  I have to admit I never really had a doubt they were going to win.  I didn't even know they were the underdog ... I mean it makes sense, but I hadn't realized it.  Like so many Saints fans this year, I just knew this team was going to win it - there was something about the whole experience that was quite unique.  Also, like so many Saints fans, about 2 plays before the most beautiful Pick. Six. I've ever had reason to celebrate I voiced, "This will be weird if the Saints win this game without a takeaway."  It was all destiny.

Anyway, our post-game celebration was a giant Chinese meal at R&G Lounge.  And like Anthony Bourdain, we tore into some Salt & Pepper Crab.


We also had some good Peking Duck, tasty Special Beef, mediocre lobster in a snot-like broth, salmon rolls ... it was quite absurd the variety of protein I ate that day (you can throw in catfish, chicken, pork and prawn from lunch!)

Anyway, the day of eating was followed by a nice drive to view the Elephant Seals at Chimney Rock Point Reyes.  They were making quite the ruckus. It was fun to see them at the peak of their population.

A majority of my time is consumed by school these days.  Learning the roughly 80 new faces, names and personalities I have in my classes as well as prepping one of the larger planner portfolio classes we've had. The semester appears to be going really well.  I've finally started putting class content online, in a blog built for function, not aesthetics. 

OK, it is time to hit the road and get back to play!  I am very excited it is Thursday!  Mary and Sam have been in L.A. doing the sibling+parental visit thing since Saturday.  I've really missed their hugs, laughter and joy.  Happy to see them tonight! (The continued family theme is my mom will be flying in from Holland next month! All the parents in like 6 weeks time!)

Oh, if you are around S-F - come by Likemind @ Blue Bottle tomorrow morning so we can share a cup of coffee.



(I remember wearing a watch at some point in my life!)

simple-complex-beautiful-fun ...

cam pixels, originally uploaded by Cameron Maddux.

This is absolutely beautiful. Making music into the hands of more people!

http://lab.andre-michelle.com/tonematrix

A nice new year's treat

Our Piano, originally uploaded by Cameron Maddux.

One of the treats we got for ourselves this new year's is an 88-key Casio Privia Piano. It's quite nice. I don't play and Sam just plays around on it a bit. However, Mary is playing regularly. She's even taking a couple of classes at College of Marin.

This morning it was such a treat to work on my classwork while she practiced and welcomed the morning with song.

Kayaking

Mary checks out the Harbor Seals from the Kayak, originally uploaded by Cameron Maddux.

One of the great things about living in Marin:

Mary and I were taking a morning walk; we were sitting on a dock watching someone kayak in the water and thinking, "It sure would be a nice day to kayak."

So, we decided to go kayak. We ate some lunch and headed to Sea Trek to rent a double sit-on-top. We kayaked up Richardson Bay along the harbor seals in Sausalito (you can see them on the left on the dock.) We didn't want to get too close and disturb them. We lucked out though. One gray, spotted harbor seal didn't feel the distance was necessary! He/She followed us for quite some way, popping up often close enough to splash water on us or the kayak. What a wonderful companion! We watched the cormorants and pelicans of course and just enjoyed the lovely January weather. We made it pretty far up the bay, even getting to go under a small bike path bridge due to the exceptionally high tide. 

My favorite part was when these two seals popped up right in front of us and it was so peaceful that all we could hear was the deep breaths they were taking through their nostrils, collecting air before plunging down again.

A nice way to spend the afternoon! (Not too many pictures due to the camera being wrapped in a plastic bag in my pocket in a limited mobility situation.)

Hanging around some smart, wonderful people

Last week (if Sunday is truly still part of a week's end) was quite remarkable in the people (who I normally don't see often in person) that I got to listen to for a bit.  Here they are in order of influence on my life so far:

4th + 3rd place, respectively - Stewart Brand & Wade Davis - On Wednesday night, Mary, Sam and I went to dinner at Greens and then to the Wade Davis conversation at the Long Now Foundation.

To be honest, I am just learning about Stewart Brand's thinking and influence. He's obviously quite intelligent, controversial and doing a fantastic job of bringing both attention to issues & amazing speakers to the SF area for a cheap ticket price to us. I look forward to exploring more about him. I definitely respect and understand his push to get out a picture of the whole earth; what a wonderful idea.

I was so thankful to hear Wade Davis talk about his new book/lecture series: The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in a Modern World.

Quick note.  Um, how cool is the CBC Massey Lecture series? A week long lecture series hosted in Canada that is then converted into a book. Lovely idea. I want to start something like this.  Who's in? Anyway, you can hear some of the lecture streaming on the site. Although like the book, the podcast loses a bit of its impact by not having Davis' striking photography of the people and places he is discussing.

I first made note of Wade Davis when Boing Boing reported on his, "shit knife" story (which we heard told in-person at the event - I'm pretty sure that had a significant impact on Sam's impression of what lectures can be.) I greatly enjoyed reading both Light at the Edge of the World & Serpent and the Rainbow. He's really helped me in taking a more realistic world view.  I don't see human cultures as fragile as I did before, but I want to fight more aggressively for them. I have a better understanding of how to approach people and investigate human priorities.  Lastly, I am deeply curious about the collective non-technological intelligence that has built-up over the past centuries.

2nd place - Daniel Pink - Friday evening, we went to a @DanielPink book lecture here in Marin County. He totally got marin-countied (which means bombarded with distracting, single-minded questions-statements about government, politics and education from a bunch of Boomer hippies!) So I didn't get to hear him discuss the topic of his newest book (Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us) as much as I would have liked; I wish I had gone to the Google lecture.  But it was good to see him on his first visit to Marin County, tell him thanks for helping us discover a vision for the program & putting us up on his blog and get a few signed copies of his books. I'm looking forward to reading Drive - and not that I needed encouragement, but one of my favorite thinkers agrees.

1st place - John Murphy - Dr. Murphy "Boss" was in town for the annual University of Texas Advertising student visit to San Francisco. I attended a nice reception at DDB which led to Dr. Murphy and I scheduling an early-morning breakfast later in the week which led to us scheduling a nice drive, beach walk, dinner with Mary & Sam and co-attendance to the Daniel Pink lecture.

Murphy taught me Introduction to Advertising (like he has to thousands.) As a "project-winner" I got to have lunch with him and we became quick friends. He offered me a T.A. position, where I was fortunate to actually spend some quality friend time with the fabulous Heather LeFevre. And he introduced me to Owen Hannay, who would offer me my first job in advertising (again thanks to an assist from Heather.)  He was also quite comforting in a troubled time for me.

Spending time with him is ALWAYS a joy.  We are hoping to colaborate on a few efforts this upcoming year. Good fun.

A great bunch of people that will have lasting impact on my thinking.

(Oh the picture ... Pablo and Kristie came up for a visit.  They wanted to spend New Years Eve somewhere besides Dallas.  We loved seeing them ... but they don't count on this list since that was weeks ago - but my blogging has been so slow lately!)

Yes, Tahoe for Christmas!

We did head out to Tahoe for Christams '09.

The trip started sourly with Alamo promising me a 4WD SUV and then saying, "No, we did not promise that."  Plan B - Chains and taking the Accord (sans grocery).  We left Sunday December 20th for the short drive to Homewood, CA on the west side of Tahoe and came back on Sunday December 27th.

Last year in Truckee was amazing (beautiful home and a remarkable amount of snow), but this year we got to stay right on the Lake. You can see the whole experience on my Flickr set.  Mary is starting to Flickr the time as well in more digestible chunks (1, 2, 3, 4 ... so far).

I'm actually feeling a bit under the weather and not up for much of a narrative.  So, here are 10 highlights in addition to the photos and videos. 

1. Sam loved his rocking loft in what was a fun house from the 60's.
2. Instead of a BIG Christmas morning of presents we opened one present a day and it was always boardgame-related.  We played games every night.
3. No internet, no phone, almost no TV (a bit of Weather Channel and LOTR DVD), no screens.  Disconnected from everybody but my wife and kid.  Harmony.
4. A gigantic, powerful snow fort.  Seriously, those who stormed Normandy would have looked at it and thought, "Damn - glad he wasn't there."
5. Snowman and snow angel - check.
6. Sunning myself on the Lake Tahoe shore ... in snow shoes
7. Sledding until it hurt ... really bad! (Mary will hopefully post a video soon where my head and butt met on the sledding track.)
8. Squaw Valley & Sam doing some Olympic snowboarding - while Mary and I rested our wounds
9. Sunrise on Lake Tahoe Christmas morning - 3 1/2 years after celebrating during a sunset.
10. One of the most peaceful canyon hikes I've ever had.

Tahoe Christmas 2009?

We are hoping to spend Christmas 2009 in Tahoe!

Specifically, Homewood on the west side. The home that we are renting is B. The A is Squaw Valley and the white circle is Alpine Meadow.  You can see the legend in the bottom left corner ... everything looks pretty close.

Last year in Truckee was pretty amazing and will be tough to beat - but we have high hopes!  This year I plan on trying out some snowboarding w/ Sam.

Mr Thingy

Mr Thingy - MSCED 21/04, originally uploaded by Seven_Hundred.

I love this mash-up. Two MAJOR influences on my understanding of STORY and CHARACTER as a child: Mr. Men and the Fantastic Four, especially the Thing.

Great Flickr set of many more.

Sharing Pics

In my lecture on new marketing, I often mention to students the photography industry as a great example of a HUGE shift: how there are many situations that used to call for professionals that are now just absorbed by the "organizing without organizations."

Here's a great personal example: a picture I took being used in an article about Wiener's Circle in the Onion's A.V. Club in Chicago .  (I am very happy to give them this pic for free - I know they've given me lots of entertainment over the years!)  I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THE ARTICLE.  I know people will skim this blog post and think I did.  Nope.  They just asked me about the pic a while back, and I had forgotten about it.  I love the article sub-hub:
A night of friendship, racism, a '90s rapper, and stomach aches
Yep, that's a night at Wiener's Circle.  Mmmmmm.  Not exactly sure why MY pic is the one with the "You want racism with that?"caption, but This American Life did nail this place ... and it was Erik at the counter, next to Herb ... so ... well, moving on.

Now, this is just beautiful.  Because not only am I not a professional photographer, I was frackin' drunk. It was a Wiener's Circle run after a Cubs day game!  Here are some other classics from that night:





Not professional quality ... but they just needed a shot to help tell their story, and a drunken shot of drunken people fits.  I mean shoot even that picture of Sam and Tori I just blogged about is being used over here (in a blog post which offers some great interview advice for planners, not just journalists) and here [to be fair, I would guess Mary took this picture, BTW!], and the knots are on a text book on Supply Chain Management in Italy (I think.)  I constantly use people's pics to make my blog stories stronger.  Beautiful community we have.  Thank you everyone who participates.