Can You Hear Me Now? Intentional Listening.

Vístanme despacio que estoy de afán.

Dress me slowly, I'm in a hurry.

(Loose interpretation - Do your best and carefully, even more so
when you're down to the wire and running out of time.)

The Miraculous Melrosas High Wire Bicycles

Have you ever seen the circus act with the unicyclist crossing a tightrope hundreds of feet in the air?  Silly hat on his head, balance pole in his hands, and rising precariously from his shoulders and stretching upward beyond the spotlight's reach, a human lattice-work of more acrobats in more silly hats.  One missed cue, one miscalculation and spangles splattered across sand and sawdust.  Thankfully, long before donning his silly hat and climbing to the high wire, the unicyclist rehearsed, exercised, sketched, studied, imagined, trained, prayed, and prepared, prepared, prepared.

  

Few of us who work in the arts and entertainment arena are privileged to work in a proper circus, yet we face long years of preparation and our own peculiar dangers.  One of those dangers is when we're on a high wire and don't realise it.  In my case, I fell off my high horse, landed a black-and-blue bruise to my conscience, and barely kept my silly hat.  I learned something important about myself and about doing business though.  It all began innocently enough...

Get Javanated Friday - Free Screensavers for Bizfolk

(To save, right-click or control-click, open to a new window, click again to enlarge.

Review image, then add to your picture management application. All images are watermarked.)

It's Friday -- Get Javanated!


Friday:  ramp-up to the weekend, exit ramp from the week past, day to assess what's done and ruminate over the untidy leftovers, tinker-&-tweak day for entrepreneurs and bizfolk.  One part reflection to two parts reassessment, plus a dash of recovery.  Add ice, shake, strain, and shoot.

The Accidental Entrepreneur: Thoughts on Risk, Success, & Failure

Shout out to...

..the rockin' Plan Fund crew:  new-ish Exec Director Jeremy Gregg, Neil Small, Senior Loan Manager, Marisol Montoya, Office Manager, and the rest of the gang.  Plan Fund is a jaw-droppingly amazing MFI (a nonprofit micro-funding institute) built loosely around the Grameen model.  Their motto, "Capitalizing on Character" sums up their ambitions and accomplishments well.

Unlike the venerable and stodgy fleet at the Small Business Administration, with its Small Business Development Centers (SBA spin-offs) and SCORE (Service Corps of Retired Executives), Plan Fund works with a special breed of entrepreneurs some sources refer to as Accidental Entrepreneurs, others call them "under-served."

The Feds are like a fleet of ancient battleships creaking along with the best of intentions, not very fast and they don't easily navigate a sudden change in market direction or technology:  they aren't built to meet the intense, multidimensional needs of any entrepreneurs but those whose future success is fairly obvious, easily attainable, headed for mega-growth, and can be more-or-less traditionally financed.

Plan Fund, however, is a speedy and nimble PT boat, armed with micro-loans based on

Images = 1000 Words?

"Four Roses" Whiskey for a  Perfect Manhattan - artwork by John Falter -

the original 1942 magazine spreads also contained compelling text.

(Click to enlarge image - it rocks.)

Commercial Artwork Speaks


With the advent of the Industrial Age and the inventions of chromolithography and offset printing, many artists we value highly now first developed their distinctive styles as commercial artists, supporting themselves by designing advertising posters, packet labels, greeting cards, magazine and book illustrations, even toys and board games:  Parrish, Erte', Cheret, Lautrec, Mucha, Baxter, Gow, Shepard, Potter, Cappiello, Falter.


Admit it:  isn't it difficult to imagine anyone collecting the advertising artwork on today's gelatine boxes, cookie packets, or Yahoo banners?


Let's get extreme -- when your target audience encounters images representing you and your products/services, are they enlightened ("Okay, now I get it."), intrigued ("Interesting, I want to know more about this."), aroused (Wow, this is amazing!), or are they so underwhelmed they'd flatline an EEG?

Surrender and Win ~ Psalm 13

Free Screensaver for You!

(Right-click or Control-click & save to your image files)

From March 2010 to end of April 2011, I took nearly a thousand photographs of the All Saints church campus, attempting to chronicle its kaleidoscope shifts from melancholy to joy, its hushed and dusky dawns, the halleluiah-chorus sunsets, the corps de ballet of trees dancing a shimmering samba of light and shadow with the wind, the darkened chapel stirring with ancient hopes and fresh doubts.

This particular photo was taken at sunset, January 3d, 2011 -- a briskly cool, not-too-windy day, a week before the year's first snow.  The photo is unretouched.  As the sun slipped to the horizon, the actual colours were more more vivid than this image suggests.

I created this screensaver for display on my laptop,

a way to keep hope bright before me even as darkness approaches.

As a gift to readers of Java Chaat, you are welcome

to download the screensaver, for personal, noncommercial use.

Concept & Design by Shou'Shou, Gitanajava Productions LLC, ©2011.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

A few years ago, during a dark night of the soul, as I rifled through a stack of books, searching for any shred of comfort and guidance, I came across Psalm 13.   This psalm resonated in me then; it still does today.  When the seas of confusion and panic come crashing over my head, sucking the very breath out of me, this tehillah is my life-raft.


At first reading, it is the tangled, inarticulate prayer of a desperate man on the run from trouble, the prayer of a man to a God he isn't altogether sure is listening, and if He is listening, then He isn't answering.