Corporate Retreat: Hiking Along the Appalachian Trail
Going in at Newfound Gap
If we were a little slow to reply to your emails last week, it’s because we were out of the office. WAY out of the office. We took off Wednesday through Friday to hike a section of the Appalachian Trail in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It wasn’t a grueling hike, but the rain made parts of it more challenging than usual.
We set off from Newfound Gap on Wednesday and hiked up to the Icewater Spring shelter where we would spend the night. We decided to have dinner that night at Charlies Bunion, even though we knew it was completely fogged in. We hiked a mile to the Bunion and dined on freeze-dried beef stew. Then the fun really started.
The Shelter
As we were packing up, it began to rain. By the time I got my poncho on, it was really raining. Also it was dark. So we hiked a mile back up to the shelter in the dark and pouring rain. We arrived alive but thoroughly soaked and ready to dry our boots by the fire…but…no fire to be had because of two weeks of wet weather. I don’t think I was the only Fool to sleep in at least one article of soggy clothing that night.
The next day we woke for the sunrise and goofed off for an hour, mostly trying to delay the inevitable: Putting on our cold, wet boots. Then we headed back to the Bunion for a clear-weather view, which was worth it. We hiked down in the afternoon and stuffed our faces with burgers, steaks, and then more burgers.
A great short hike with exciting scenery and interesting shelter-mates. Next time we’ll stay out longer, which means better preparation and (hopefully) nicer weather.
First day at Charlies Bunion - Socked in
Magnificent Sunrise @ the Icewater Springs Shelter
Looking out over Charlies Bunion the next day
View from Charlies Bunion
And finally, a short video we made on the trail:
Useful Websites 2009
In our internal wiki, we keep a huge list of websites we find useful. Here are a few (dozen) we have tagged as somehow interesting. We cannot specifically endorse these sites. We just like the idea behind them.
- Policymap.com — Smart demographic data.
- YouNoodle.com — Networking for startups.
- Teamtask.com — Another online project management tool.
- Yola.com — The geocities of Web 2.0, build and host simple sites for free.
- Kickapps.com — Apps that integrate social networking features into a website.
- Widgetbox.com — Web widgets for a variety of applications.
- Goodbarry.com — Online website creation with robust ecommerce and customer management.
- Emachineshop.com — Online fabricator of custom parts.
- Squarespace.com — Amazing way to put together and host a quick, custom website.
- headrush.typepad.com — Blog: Creating passionate, engaged users.
- ncac.org — National Coalition Against Censorship.
- buddypress.org — Add a social media component to a WordPress site.
- thefire.org — Issues related to Free Speech on Campus.
- davidhorvitz.tumblr.com — Gives you one idea every day of something weird to do.
- sedo.com — For buying and selling domains.
- senduit.com — Super-simple way to send big files.
- mesh.com — Microsoft’s version of Dropbox.
- shopperpress.com — Cool WordPress shopping cart for simple, static online shops.
- fredmiranda.com — Will evaluate your photography.
- bhphotovideo.com — The very best place to buy camera equipment for a fair price. Good people.
- pitchengine.com — Interesting way to distribute a press release.
- storegadget.googlelabs.com — VERY easy way to sell a few quick things through your site.
- OneRiot.com — Search what’s happening in real time on the web.
- e-junkie.com — Easy way to sell intangible goods (like downloads) on your site.
- redfin.com — Local, Personal, and Niche site for real estate.
- pointbanner.com — Great for quick-n-cheap banner ads.
- xplane.com — Specializes in simplifying the presentation of super-complex ideas.
- accountemps.com — Temporary accounting employees for peak demand times.
- screentoaster.com — Easy screencasts in Java. No need to install anything.
- lovelycharts.com — Easy flow charts in Flash.
- pdftoword.com — Convert PDFs to Word files.
What sites do you groove on?
Forget What They Taught You About Essays
[Ed. note: Another guest post from the inestimable David.]
(cc) Flickr user Pleuntje
I’m currently taking a class called “The Art of the Essay.” Sounds fun, right? Essays. Woo-hoo. The word in itself evokes the ever-hammered-in high school template of five paragraphs: Intro, three main points, conclusion. Many of us might even remember the shape: upside down triangle, rectangle, rectangle, rectangle, regular triangle.
And so we spend years of our scholastic lives pouring our ideas into the essaic mold and—tada!—creating the most boring and predictable pieces of writing known to mankind. Well, the class I’m currently taking has led me to dust off—and rediscover—a book I purchased last year called The Next American Essay. Edited by John D’Agata, this collection of essays shows how tossing the old high school method out the window has led to some of the most non-traditional and brilliant pieces of short literature to appear in the past few decades.
The forms of essay featured in this book span from traditional prose, to numbered lists, streams of consciousness, to what D’Agata refers to as simply “something else.” The writers featured in this collection push the boundaries and redefine what we think of as literature. A carefully arranged to do list becomes literary; another essay is composed entirely of footnotes. All in all, these essays offer compelling glimpses of reality and vivid revelations of what it just might mean to be human.
I highly recommend this book to anyone: aspiring writers who are searching for a way to break out of their academic shells, artists searching for inspiration, those seeking to forget what they learned in high school. As D’Agata writes in his introduction to one essay, an encounter with this book just might leave you “with the suspicion that there are essays somewhere to love.”
DISCLAIMER: This book breaks every rule your teachers ever taught you. If you are in high school, don’t read this book unless you’re prepared to fail English.
Square Books Celebrates 30 Years
Congratulations, Square Books, on your 30th year. BookFool.com began in Oxford and took advantage of many great Square Books events, including Thacker Mountain Radio hosted at Off Square Books.
Check out their 30th Anniversary video for a taste of how hard it is to establish a successful bookstore.
Eileen’s Favorite Reads 2009
[Ed note: This may be Eileen's last post for a while. She's taking some time off to focus on school...and read a few (dozen) books! I've included price comparison links to most of the books she mentions so you can find the cheapest copy.]
(cc) Flickr user Kilgub
Chalk this up to the English major in me, but I believe there is nothing, nothing, like a good book. And it’s a fallacy that only certain people can enjoy reading; you just have to find what you like. Read the latest Nicholas Sparks if you want, or the classics. I don’t care. Just READ.
Reading keeps you centered; it illuminates aspects of life that are too easily forgotten in the day-to-day drudgery. It also keeps your mind from becoming just a big lump of grey stuff that floats around in your head.
The following is a list of books and authors I adore. Check them out if you’re looking for your next great read:
- Don’t Pat the Wombat, Elizabeth Honey – This is my most beloved “chapter book.” It’s children’s literature, yes, but it would be a shame not to include it in a list of greats because of its audience. The writing is clear and honest and perfectly captures 6th grade humor. (Please, never get too serious to appreciate a good fart.) Consider chapter 9, “The Bomb vs. Jonah: Round 2,” that begins with “Adults won’t find this bit very tasteful. Sorry, it can’t be helped, it’s what happened.”
- Lewis Carroll – Oh so funny, particularly his poetry. Carroll reminds me that although literature has immense value, it need not be taken too seriously. Read his poem “Beautiful Soup, So Rich and Green,” and read it aloud. Actually, memorize it.
- John Steinbeck – Snobs should not dismiss him because a few of his books have Oprah’s Book Club stamps. Read East of Eden. It’s lovely. I give you permission, however, to skip The Pearl if you must.
- The Last Samurai, Helen DeWitt – Sibylla is one of the most beautiful characters written in modern literature, and yet nobody knows about this book! It’s not about Tom Cruise, by the way, or samurai; it’s about the notion of intellectual genius. Appropriately enough, the book itself is brilliant.
- William Faulkner – He’s perfect. Read everything of his. But let yourself ease into his voice because his prose does take a minute to get used to. Once you’ve got it, though, oh my. And if you haven’t read any Faulkner yet, you might start with The Unvanquished. It’s actually the novel that Faulkner himself recommended that his audience read first.
- Cormac McCarthy –
(cc) Flickr user daralibrarian
He is perfect too. And gloriously frank. And rather grotesque—you’ve been warned! But he’s brilliant. You can taste every word. Watch his interview with Oprah if you can; it’s the only TV interview he’s ever given and it’s wonderfully awkward.
- All the King’s Men, Robert Penn Warren – People say this is one of the greatest political novels in all of American Literature. It’s true. And it’s about so much more as well: love, death, prejudice, religion, Southern culture . . . I can’t even talk about it. It’s too good.
- Dorothy Parker – One of my great heroes. She is hysterical, darkly so, but also extremely insightful. Interestingly, she never could write a novel and for a while was quite disheartened by that. But she is a master of the short story. Her anthology is called The Portable Dorothy Parker.
- The Stranger, Albert Camus – This is a short little book, and every page of it is gorgeous. It’s one of those where you’ll read a sentence three times in a row because it just rings. I can only imagine what it’s like in the original French.
- The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera – You should keep this book with you at all times. It has such dazzling little insights into life. You’ll never wear a bowler hat the same way again.
Of course, there are so many other brilliant books out there. I know I’m leaving out a great many of them (may their authors forgive me), but these are a few of my loves. Give them a try. And if you hate them, please don’t tell me. I might not be able to take it.
