Tom Watson

You Know Who You Are

"I must tell you that I abhor an informer."

- Stephen Maturin, in The Commodore  by Patrick O’Brian

Pay Up

I like to pay taxes. With them I buy civilization.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

I Ain't Worrying and I Ain't Scurrying

Yesterday it was my birthday
I hung one more year on the line
I should be depressed
My life's a mess
But I'm having a good time

Maybe I'm laughing my way to disaster
Maybe my race has been run
Maybe I'm blind to the fate of mankind
But what can be done?

- Paul Simon

Silent Sister Veiled in White and Blue

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessèd face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

- T.S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday

That Reality

I don't believe in Kennedy
I don't believe in Buddha
I don't believe in Mantra
I don't believe in Gita
I don't believe in Yoga
I don't believe in Kings
I don't believe in Elvis
I don't believe in Zimmerman
I don't believe in Beatles
I just believe in me...and that reality

- John Lennon

A Mythical Concept of Time

II must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Letter from a Birmingham Jail, 1963

Reading List

Some links outside the cozy confines of this blog to some other stuff I've been working on, involved in, or peripherally tied to:

• Newsweek's Brian Braiker has a piece on "Facebook Philanthropy," a topic I've been interested in since the beginning on the year. Brian focuses on the Causes app that's raising money (tiny) and attention (huge) for causes, and he quotes me as saying the young wired demographic "wears their causes like the way they wear their favorite fashion." True.

 

• Brad Burnham, managing partner of Union Square Ventures (and partner with my old buddy Fred Wilson), graciously gave his post on the Hacking Philanthropy conference he hosted last month to us at onPhilanthropy (where I'm publisher), and we adapted it for our audience of nonprofit professionals. It's very good, and analyzes the effect of capital market forces on philanthropy - please comment on this hot topic.

 

• Speaking of markets and philanthropy, I wrote a piece for onPhilanthropy a couple of weeks ago about a fantastic organization in Kenya that is, in many ways, bringing the philanthropic quotient back to microfinance, which has become big business in recent years: "Jamii Bora (Swahili for “A Better Family”) makes loans to street people, specifically targeting thieves, beggars, prostitutes and the HIV-positive population of Kenya. Yet repayment rates are as high if not higher than some of the big lending programs, and the immediate benefits of lifting the destitute out of poverty are more apparent, said Ingrid Munro, a soft-spoken woman who moved from her native Sweden to Kenya."

 

• You can't get 'em online (alas) but I've also got columns in the current issues of both Contribute and Worth magazines about the confluence of philanthropy and social networking. If I get links eventually, I'll post them but if you catch them in the doctor's office, give them a read and drop me a note.

 

• My longtime partner in crime Jason Chervokas returned to the Silicon Alley beat this week (who'd a thunk it?) with a post in Henry Blodget's Silicon Alley Insider (which I changed my mind on and now read daily) on Halo 3, the best-selling video game for X-Box and his claim that content may again be king. I loved the lead, of course:  "In Silicon Alley's formative years, 'content is king' was the most commonly heard slogan, an article of faith repeated like a mantra from the scruffy tables of Eureka Joe's to the board rooms of media companies uptown. In truth, like the name 'Silicon Alley' itself, 'content is king,' was a phrase we used defensively. Back then we had coder envy. Sure, we clung to the notion of the Internet as a media platform first and a technology platform second, but more than believing it we desperately hoped that it would be so."

 

• Speaking of Silicon Alley, one of its pioneers - the redoubtable Howard Greenstein - joins our lineup of bloggers over at newcritics with a post on (appropriately enough) the geek factor in the new NBC lineup. If anybody knows geek cred, it's Howard. At the same address (and man, I'm really loving the newcritics experience - such a fab crowd), I've got a post on Pete Townshend's masterpiece, Quadrophenia. Pete (I all him that since he posted here last year) is expected in town next week at the Paley Center for the new Who documentary.

Sunday Morning

Sunday morning, praise the dawning
Its just a restless feeling by my side
Early dawning, sunday morning
Its just the wasted years so close behind

Watch out, the worlds behind you
Theres always someone around you who will call
Its nothing at all

Sunday morning and Im falling
Ive got a feeling I dont want to know
Early dawning, sunday morning
Its all the streets you crossed, not so long ago

Watch out, the worlds behind you
Theres always someone around you who will call
Its nothing at all

Watch out, the worlds behind you
Theres always someone around you who will call
Its nothing at all

Sunday morning
Sunday morning
Sunday morning

- Lou Reed & John Cale

The Essence of Great Writing

I think Ken Levine has summed up with some eloquence what it takes to be a professional writer (in this case, a screenwriter - but the principle applies across the board):

If you have ANY connections, now is the time to use them. Call in favors. Reconnect with your estranged father. Email your former fiancée who you caught sleeping with your estranged father if her new boyfriend is in the biz. Drop the lawsuit against her even if she’ll make a call on your behalf. So what if it’s humiliating? You’re a writer. Get used to humiliation.

TW Minus One

One less Tom Watson in the world, but he receives an obit any God-fearing, wordsmithing Watson would died for:

"He was a newspaper man through and through. He was a journalist who gave everything to his work - and was not a nine to five man. He was also an editor who was approachable."

The former editor of The Star (Sheffield, UK), described as "a towering figure in Sheffield's journalistic history," was 81.