Bits and Pieces 

Networking at Art Basel 

Art Basel is probably the most important art event in the world these days. If you are even marginally involved in the contemporary art game, getting to one of their several shows each year is the cultural equivalent of traveling to Mecca.

On Tuesday, Number 3 Son MCF and I spent the late afternoon and evening at the Miami show with TR and LC, two amazing people recommended to me by ABO, my main client’s PR director.

A few months ago, TR and LC had spent an evening with me and my partner in the art business, talking about how they could help us promote my Central American Modernist collection, as well as Central American art generally.

Before I met them, I wrongly assumed they were from Baltimore, where my main client is located. I thought they had a small PR shop there. Note to future self: Before meeting a new business contact, do some research!. It turns out they are very successful movers and shakers among the hippest of the hip in NYC. And, along with Paris, NYC is the world’s capital of contemporary and modern art.

TR and LC are each remarkable in their own ways. LC has an amazing story of clawing her way to the top through curiosity, humility, and unflagging determination. TR, a black man, had a privileged background as the child of a very accomplished father and equally accomplished stepmom, and a childhood immersed in intellectual and cultural opportunities. I quickly developed a man crush on TR (as ABO had predicted) because we share many of the same interests, and because his personality – huge and magnanimous and magnetic – compliments my reticent grumpiness in some surprisingly congruous way.

TR and LC gave MCF and me a three-hour, VIP-guided tour of the show. LC answered my many questions about how the Art Basel sector of the art market works, while TR was breaking from us every two or three minutes to hug it out with a range of Art Basel influencers and celebrities, including artists and dealers and models and famous and wealthy collectors.

Afterwards, we went to Red Rooster, which is one of three such restaurants under the banner of celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson, who (of course) hugged it out with TR before giving us a personal tour of what turned out to be a very cool restaurant. A must-see the next time you are in Miami.

I am not accustomed to the sort of constant celebrity interactions that are apparently normal in TR’s quotidian life. I’ve had my share of interactions with wealthy and successful people, and occasionally with sports and Hollywood superstars, but I’ve never seen anyone so connected to celebrities as TR.

And here’s the thing: These rich and powerful people seemed genuinely thrilled to be able to hug it out with TR. And he seemed equally happy to be hugging it out with them.

I’m telling you this story because it corroborates something I learned 30 years ago: There is more than one way to skin the cat of success. Genius is one. Relentless hard work is another. And then there is a third way that TR personifies: Pure charisma.

For someone like me, (a relentless hard worker), meeting someone in any field of endeavor that has achieved much through hard work and persistence is both agreeable and also comforting. But having the chance to meet someone that can obviate much of the work and stress through charisma and good will is… well, it’s downright inspiring!

The “Languishing” Cure 

Most of what self-help gurus tell us about living a productive and fulfilling life is delusional. That’s so because they define “productive and fulfilling” in terms of achieving career success or making lots of money or becoming “all that you can be” or by finding the perfect “soulmate,” etc.

Such notions are not new. Yet they persist despite the fact that they are proven wrong every day. The true elements of a good life are not secrets. They are there for us to learn every time we take a moment to contemplate the question.

And the answers are not new either. They were discovered and explained thousands of years ago in virtually every literate civilization since the advent of human thinking. But Homo sapiens, however capable in other ways, learn the important things only through experience. And so, we need to be reminded of those things constantly and continually.

In the days of Confucius and Aristotle, that was the work of poets and philosophers. Today, psychologists and sociologists claim this fertile ground.

In a TED Talk I watched last week, Adam Grant presents his view on how to live well and fully in modern terms. Discussing how he escaped a pandemic-induced slump into ennui by playing video games with his family, he identifies the problem as “languishing.”

Before you watch it, a warning: His understanding of this problem is superficial. But don’t let that dismay you. What can you expect from a person in his 30s?

What he gets right – or almost right – is his formula for having meaningful experiences. He says it is a matter of mastering, mindfulness, and mattering.

Click here.

Lucian Freud Fraudulently Asserts His Painting Is a Fraud 

Almost 25 years ago, a Swiss art collector bought a Lucian Freud painting – a full-length male nude – at auction. Soon thereafter, he received a call from the artist, asking to buy it from him. The collector politely refused.

Freud called him again. “I’ll give you more than you paid, I’ll double it,” Freud said (according to the collector). Once again, the collector demurred.

Freud became irate. “In that case,” he shouted, “I will never authenticate that painting. You will never be able to sell it!”

And to the collector’s dismay, Freud kept his word.

After Freud’s death, the collector did not give up. He requested and received three independent evaluations that all concluded the painting was genuine.

“Standing Male Nude” by Lucian Freud

Photograph: Courtesy of Thierry Navarro 

It seems that Freud’s desperation to acquire the painting had been sparked by

embarrassment, because the male nude appears to be a self-portrait. He was famous for his female nudes and for philandering with his models. But he painted this one, according to the story, during a period of time when he was experimenting with homosexuality. He gave the painting to the great artist Francis Bacon, with whom he had an affair followed by a falling out. Bacon apparently abandoned it.

You can read more about it here.

Shoplifting Mania Continues in California 

You’ve heard about all the shoplifting going on in California, and in San Francisco in particular.

A recent example: 80 people drove their cars up to Nordstrom’s Walnut Creek store, blockaded the entry, and ransacked the place, getting away with tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of luxury goods before returning to their idling cars and driving away.

Fox News considers this to be criminal behavior. But those of us that are more enlightened understand it for what is really is: legitimate, non-violent social action by oppressed and victimized minorities.

And when we watch the footage on TV, these mass shoplifting events become even more admirable: a form of performance art, where dozens of actors and artists put on a beautifully choreographed display of correcting wealth equality in one of America’s wealthiest cities.

 I’m sorry to report that the grinch that runs Best Buy doesn’t see it that way. In a call with Wall Street analysts last week to discuss earnings, he accused the social justice warriors/performance artists with “aggressive” behavior and claimed, falsely, that they were “traumatizing” company employees.

He said that they “often carry in weapons like guns or crowbars” and they “threaten employees and customers.” So Best Buy has begun locking up products and hiring more security.

When questioned on this fascist tactic, the CEO admitted that locking up “creates a delay in the customer experience as an employee is required to open up an enclosure each time for the customer.”

He went on to say that San Francisco and other parts of California were “hot spots for criminal activity,” but there were problematic areas in other parts of the country as well.

So far, despite the CEO’s false statements and inflammatory language, Biden has not ordered the Justice Department to investigate him.

New Study Confirms: Natural Immunity Is Better 

A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine suggests that people that have recovered from COVID-19 have very little risk of contracting the disease again.

Researchers in Qatar examined a cohort of over 353,000 people between Feb. 28, 2020 and April 28, 2021. After excluding approximately 87,500 people with a vaccination record, they identified 1,304 reinfections.

What that means: Less than one-half of 1% (0.4%) of people with natural immunity got the disease a second time.

Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious diseases expert at the University of California, San Francisco, wrote on Twitter that the “study adds to the growing body of research that indicates that people who have recovered from COVID-19 enjoy high levels of immunity against reinfection, and even higher protection against severe disease and death.”

What the Media Didn’t Tell You About the Waukesha Parade Tragedy 

The headlines announced the terrible news: A red Ford SUV crashed into a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin, on November 21., killing 6 people and injuring 62 others.

A video shot by someone shows the speeding vehicle coming behind the parade and then ramming into and running over the victims.

If you followed up on the story, hoping to find out who did it, and why, you would have been disappointed. Most of the early stories didn’t mention the driver’s name or identify him in any way. But it was reported that he might have been pursued by the police, trying to get away after a traffic accident or some such thing. You might have even thought, “Why did the police force him into that crowd of people?”

But then if you continued to follow the story by looking at alternative media sites, you would have gradually pieced together the facts.

1. The driver was not running away from anything. He was on a murderous mission. His intent was to mow down innocent people.
2. He was not deranged or clinically insane. He was a violent criminal with a long rap sheet.
3. In fact, he had recently been bailed out of jail for (allegedly) trying to run down the mother of his child under one of the new easy-bail-out policies that have been touted as social justice by the mainstream media.
4. He was a politically active person with a history of media posts expressing his racially biased views.
5. But, no, he wasn’t a White Supremacist.

Worth Quoting 

* “If you judge people, you have no time to love them.” – Mother Teresa

* “The greatest wealth is to live contently with little.” – Plato

* “A great man is always willing to be little.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

3 Words I’m Trying to Work Into My Conversations 

* Gubbins comes from an old French word for scraps or bits and pieces of something. When it crossed over into the English language, it became British slang for an object of little value; a useless person. (“You silly gubbins!”)

* To pronk – from the Dutch for to strut or show off – is to leap high into the air. The word is usually used to describe the way animals like gazelles do it by lifting all four feet off the ground simultaneously with an arched back and stiff legs.

* A yooper is a nickname for a native of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula – i.e., a U.P.er.

The Good, the Bad, the Uncertain Making Sense of Recent News Stories

GOOD: Federal Judge Issues Injunction Against Biden’s Race-Based Loan Forgiveness Program 

US District Judge S. Thomas Anderson issued an injunction against the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), halting the distribution of federal loan-forgiveness funds under the Biden-sponsored American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). The ruling was in favor of Robert Holman, a Tennessee farmer who argued that the “whites-only” provision of the program is unconstitutional.

The injunction will be in place until the case is fully resolved. However, the judge noted that Holman “has shown a substantial likelihood that he will prevail on his claim.”

Is the American Rescue Plan racist? Click here.

BAD: Crime Surges in San Francisco After Passage of a New Law 

I’ve been writing about the violence in Chicago, but Chicago is not alone. San Francisco is having a different kind of crime wave. Ever since they passed Proposition 47, amazingly called “The Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act,” theft has been on the rise. Organized gangs have taken advantage of it by hiring kids to ransack stores, knowing that so long as each hired thief keeps his score to less than $950, the worst that will happen to him – if he’s caught – is a ticket and a misdemeanor.

There have been dozens of videos of this, but the one that went viral was of about a dozen men rushing out of Nieman Marcus with tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of designer handbags, before jumping into three getaway cars: an Infiniti, a Mercedes, and a Lexus..

Click here to see the video.

And click here for a clip of locals reacting.

UNCERTAIN: European Union’s COVID-19 Vaccine Passport Goes Live

The European Union is taking the lead in creating vaccination certificates, an idea that horrifies proponents of medical privacy and individual liberty, but pleases proponents of Big Government.

“In March, we promised… free and safe travel within the EU by the summer,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. “We can now confirm… the system is up and running!”

One hopeful note: “Member States must refrain from imposing additional travel restrictions on holders… unless they are necessary and proportionate to safeguard public health.”

How does the EU’s Vaccine Passport work? Click here.

GOOD: FTC to Investigate Non-Compete Contracts 

As part of a broad executive order, President Biden called on the FTC to “ban or limit” non-compete clauses in employment contracts. IMHO, that’s generally a good thing, because it gives employees more freedom to change jobs. About 32% of US companies use such clauses in their employment contracts, according to PayScale Inc. Currently, these sorts of employment issues are handled at the state level, but getting the FTC involved would bring jurisdiction to a federal level, which is, of course, what the government wants.

BAD: FTC to Investigate Non-Compete Contracts 

The problem with banning non-compete clauses is that it would create a serious risk for companies – that their employees would feel free to share trade secrets and other proprietary information with their new employers. And that could set in motion a policy of poaching key employees from one’s competitors simply for that purpose.

UNCERTAIN: FTC to Investigate Non-Compete Contracts 

As an employer, I’ve never required non-compete clauses in employment contracts. Nor do I worry too much about them. If they are very restrictive, they are legally unenforceable (or so I’ve been told). And when it comes to trade secrets, most of them aren’t secrets at all. Just imagined secrets that everyone else is already doing.

On the other hand, if I were in a business whose success depended on developing new technology, I would worry about having that “stolen.”

I have to believe there is a rule that falls in the midground that protects true trade secrets – but only true trade secrets. And even then only within reasonable boundaries.

GOOD: Zaila Avant-garde Becomes the 1st African-American National Spelling Bee Champ 

Eighth-grader Zaila Avant-garde won the 2021 Scripps National Spelling Bee – the first African-American to do so in the competition’s history.

One year after the coronavirus pandemic forced the cancellation of the annual tournament and two years after eight contestants were named co-champions, the Louisiana native correctly spelled the word “murraya” – a type of tree – to claim this year’s title and the $50,000 prize.

(And spelling isn’t her only skill. She’s pretty good at basketball, too.)

Click here.

BAD: Biden’s Not Worried About Inflation 

Joe Biden’s handlers brought him out on in public recently (at a so-called town hall meeting) where he was pitched softballs by CNN’s Don Lemon.

One particularly spongy one was on the subject of inflation – whether Biden felt that it was an emerging problem.

“First of all, our experts” predicted it,” he said.

This is not true. The White House budget office forecast inflation of 2.1% and the Fed had it at 2.2% for 2021. But in June, the number was 5.4% – and that number is artificially low.

Then Biden said that inflation is “just a temporary phenomenon.”

This may be true. There are good arguments on both sides.

Finally, he promised to “keep inflation in check” through his $4 trillion spending plan.

That is just plain crazy. You don’t limit inflation by borrowing money you don’t have paid for by counterfeit dollars. That is, by definition, inflationary.

DISAPPOINTING: Highway Dollars Won’t Rev Up the Economy 

Infrastructure spending can create economic expansion. The government-sponsored interstate highway system of the 1950s-1970s, for example, greatly reduced the time it took to travel cross-country. As a result, businesses gained access to new suppliers and new customers. Cities were able to specialize in certain industries. And international trade opened.

But some economists are saying that the White House’s $116 billion plan won’t have the same effect. Maintaining old infrastructure or adding new roads here and there, though necessary, tends to boost GDP only in developing countries like India and China, not in industrialized ones.

Click here.

My introduction to Stoicism began many years ago and without knowledge of what I was doing.

It happened after I got married… I noticed that I was getting upset when, after we’d agreed to do something together, K would change her mind at the last minute. Since these agreements were about trivial things (like going to a movie or the zoo), she didn’t feel obliged to stick to them. I, on the other hand, would become furious.

I have never won an argument with K. And I have always regretted any complaint I voiced against her. Thus, these silent rages I would get myself into each time she changed her mind were doing nothing but eating me up.

One day – and I don’t know what provoked it – I woke up with a solution. From then on, every time we agreed to do something, I would take a few moments to vividly imagine K cancelling at the last minute and then vividly imagine me feeling okay about it. Sometimes I even went so far as to imagine something else, something fun, that I’d do instead.

It worked like a charm. And it’s been working perfectly ever since.

At the time, I thought of it merely as a personal strategy to manage my marriage. Since then, I see it in larger terms: about accepting the universe for what it is and not trying to force my will upon it.

All of which brings me to thoughts I had while recently re-reading Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations…

So, What Were You Expecting?

Meditations on Reality, Personal Relationships, and Social Ills

“The vast majority of our mental, emotional, and spiritual suffering,” says Maria Popova, the brain behind BrainPickings, “comes from the violent collision between our expectations and reality.” And since it’s only rarely possible to bend reality to our will, the intelligent course of action is “to calibrate our expectations to reality.”

In simpler terms: Don’t make yourself miserable being angry about events and outcomes that are beyond your control.

This is a basic tenet of Stoicism, and it is not a difficult concept to understand. Most people understand it when it comes to events and outcomes such as flat tires and cancelled birthday parties. But few apply it to more important aspects of life – including, most notably, relationships with friends, family, and colleagues.

Meditations is a collection of writings by Marcus Aurelius, emperor of Rome from AD 161 to 180. It’s kind of a self-help journal written from a Stoic’s perspective – a series of notes that Aurelius almost certainly never meant to be published.

And it’s jam-packed with solid advice and Stoic wisdom.

For example, on the issue of people that act in ways you find hurtful or offensive, Aurelius has this to say:

Whenever a person’s lack of shame offends you, you should immediately ask yourself, “Is it possible for there to be no shameless people in the world?”

[Since it isn’t], you should stop demanding the impossible….

Keep the same thought available for when you’re faced with [other sorts of] devious and untrustworthy people, and people who are flawed in any way.

The moment you remind yourself that it’s impossible for such people not to exist, you’ll be kinder to each and every one of them.

Thus too… we human beings can deal with any given offense – gentleness, for instance, to counter discourteous people…

A three-step method for dealing with disappointing behavior:

1. 1. Don’t be upset. Nothing happens that isn’t in accord with universal nature. Before long you won’t exist at all.

1. 2. Always define or describe to yourself every impression that occurs to your mind, so that you can clearly see what the thing is like in its entirety, stripped to its essence. Nothing is more conducive to objectivity than the ability methodically and honestly to test everything that you come across in life.

1. 3. Focus on the matter at hand. See it for what it is. And then take the action that seems to you to be the most just. But do it with kindness and modesty, and without dissembling.

Further Thoughts on Accepting Reality vs. Unrealistic Expectations

There is more to Stoicism than the idea that we should see the world for what it is and not impose unrealistic expectations on it. But I find it interesting that it has not only made an important contribution to the modern philosophy of living well, it can be found in Zen Buddhism and Cognitive Therapy. They all recognize the common-sense truth that wisdom begins by accepting the world as it is, not how you’d like it to be.

That goes double for personal relationships. I not only believe, I know that the only way to maintain relationships and be happy in them is to expect that the person you married or befriended or to whom you are related will always be exactly the person he/she was when you first met.

Once a person is formed, and that usually happens in their late teens or early 20s, he/she is formed for good. People rarely change. And when they do, it’s almost always for the better. So, if you are happy with the imperfect mix of a person when you first meet him/her, expect he/she won’t ever change and you will never be disappointed.

And that leads me to this thought (which is inchoate): All social, business, and government programs whose aim is to improve adult behavior is doomed to failure. Think about the failure rate of addiction programs. Or the shockingly bad results of public education. Or the near impossibility of trying to improve business performance by “motivating” employees to work harder and smarter.

Despite decades of retrogressive results, we continue to believe that the problems with these failed programs is not that they are fundamentally wrong-headed, but that we haven’t spent more money on them.

You can’t fix a problem by spending more on a solution that doesn’t work. What if, instead, we accepted the reality of the problem – that it cannot be fixed by changing the behavior of the people involved?

What if, instead of continuing to unrealistically believe we can “help” addicts get clean, we accept the fact that more than 90% of them never will? And that those that do will do so on their own? What if we went a little deeper and asked, “What is the social problem with addiction anyway? What social problems do addicts cause?”

It’s not difficult to identify those problems. There are three of them: crime, homelessness, and infectious diseases. All three could easily be solved by providing large, clean facilities where addicts can get their drugs in a sanitary way when they want them, along with a bed and food.

That would actually work, and probably for 20% of what we spend now. But it’s not going to happen, because drug rehab – including hospitalization and incarceration – is a multibillion-dollar business with strong support among the politicians that win their posts by promising to spend more money on the same failed programs.

“The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing.” – Marcus Aurelius

What’s the Toughest High School Sport?

A Reader Remembers His 2 Weeks as a Wrestler 

From Joe M:

I was a basketball player in high school, but I tried wrestling senior year after I failed to make the team. (Last one cut.)

I thought I could learn a thing or two from the sport. An additional incentive was that two of my friends were wrestlers. It would be a chance to make new friends and enjoy the comradery of a team of wrestlers.

There was indeed comradery on the team, and I enjoyed that. What I learned was that wrestling is a team sport, but only secondarily.

The primary fact about the sport of wrestling is that, although you may be part of a team during practice, when match time comes, it’s just you and your opponent, out to beat the other, in front of everybody else.

I didn’t have the physical toughness back then to endure the hours of hard-core training. Nor did I have the mental toughness to endure the humiliation of defeat. Eventually, I had to accept what I had done – quit on myself. I promised myself I wouldn’t do that again.

My Non-Experience as a High School Wrestler 

I never joined the high school wrestling team, and I’ve always wondered why. Back then, I got into a lot of scraps – like two or three a week – and always considered myself a good grappler.

I did try out. During that tryout, I was tested against a kid that had been sectional champion the year before. He was a better athlete – quicker, stronger, and better coordinated – but I had a 10-pound advantage. I beat him easily, but illegally. The coach wanted me to join the team, but by the time we finished a “sample” practice I had decided, like Joe M, that it was far more work than I was willing to put up with.

I always regretted that decision, and I think for the same reason Joe M did.

I’ve never thought about it before, but I think wrestling may be the most challenging high school sport.

The physical challenge is enormous. You spend several hours every day, sometimes twice a day, training very, very hard in a hot and stinky room.

Sure, you train hard for team sports. But with team sports (think basketball, baseball, soccer, etc.), the athlete doesn’t have to go at 100% nearly 100% of the time. In fact, that’s counterproductive. With team sports, you learn the skill of intermittent effort: sprinting, then standing, then moving at a moderate pace, and then sprinting again.

With solo sports like tennis, you train hard, too. But again, you don’t have to go full out for the entire match. As with team sports, pacing yourself is key.

But with wrestling, there’s no such thing as a comfort zone, because the wrestler does not dictate the pace he must keep. His opponent does.

I came to understand the physical challenge of wrestling, when, at 47, I began practicing Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. And it has been responsible for keeping me in relatively good shape all these years (notwithstanding time out for three surgeries and many other injuries).  It’s just you and another person engaged in the most rudimentary competition – one person attempting to physically dominate and submit another person, in front of an audience that is rooting for or against you.

But the biggest challenge was, and is, the mental challenge of allowing yourself to fail and lose, over and over again, in a public arena.

Try it. You might like it.

Me, at 58, 12 years ago… after winning two firsts in NAGA (North American Grappling Association). I have selected this photo from several that were more relevant because I wanted to show you how I looked then. I’m 23 pounds heavier now, but I like to think that somewhere underneath the gentle slopes of my current body’s fat this old musculature remains.