The Battle Of Anghiari, Rediscovered

NatGeo is poised to bring back to life the long lost Leonardo da Vinci painting The Battle Of Anghiari at the Palazzo Vecchio. It has long been believed that Giorgio Vasari painted The Battle Of Marciano over the remnants of Leonardo's painting, fifty years after da Vinci abandoned his unfinished project. It is unlikely that any rescuing effort will yield a clear image of the original Battle Of Anghiari, as it was nearly destroyed by Leonardo himself, who melted most of it in an effort to dry the ink. But we have his studies, as well as Peter Ruben's copy of the painting.

 I blended both da Vinci's known studies, as well as Rubens' rendition, and the result gave me a more precise idea of Leonardo's forceful imagery. Leonardo's sketches can be seen in the second and fourth faces from the left: 

 That, at least for now, is as close as I could get to admiring da Vinci's original intent.

Is There A Place For Us?

It seems like a lot of us don't fit, do we? You gotta be crazy to  start an online business and to think that you are going to make a living out of it. We're nuts, or are we?

1. I graduated from college on a beautiful summer day in California. There was no hint of  recession yet. My GPA was great and so were my prospects. I posted a résumé on Monster.com and within half an hour my beeper (yes, they were still in use then) started beeping with 17 (!) calls for interviews.
--And I eventually found a corporate job
--And had a cubicle
--And a 401 (k)
--And a great credit rating
--And a luxury car

So I played to script.  Should have been happy, right? Well no, not at all. At the most prosperous time of my young life I felt boxed in. And working from a cubicle, I literally was.

2. If corporate work wasn't my thing, what was? Very helpful magazines like Entrepreneur and Inc. appealed to my free spirit, and I soon found myself opening a small business.
--And I bought a large format printer
--And got myself a client base
--And worked hard at my job pipeline
--And got myself known in the small business community

Now I was free, had my own hours, and responded to no one but my clients. I should be happy then, right? Well no, not quite. The business consumed all of me, all of me. No time to relax, no weekends, no time with my family. Either I made it happen or no one else would. I was a true business owner.

3. After a long period of indecision, failure and frustration I decided to, for the first time in my life, abandon whatever safety I had in doing what is known and tested and try a new thing: I decided to start writing.
--But I'd never written before!
--There's a ton of bloggers out there!
--It's like wanting to make it as a Hollywood actor!

But guess what: I am happy. For the first time I feel connected. Connected to my audience. Connected to whom I really am. Connected to a sense of purpose.

And there's a ton of us our there. All my blogging friends, self-help experts and independent writers, we are where we should be! Let's keep this momentum going and continue building our networks and our audience. We make a difference, we can help, and the online business community is where we belong!

Smoked Rice

Pictured: My grandfather Jose with me and sister Mariel, late 1980s.

One of the most powerful life lessons I've learned came from the kitchen, and my grandfather quite accidentally taught it.

It must have been 1988 or 1989. I was in high school then, and came back home daily from school to an empty condo in Mexico City. My mom worked until the evening and I  had to cook for myself every day, even though I didn't know how to.

On one occasion my grandfather, Jose, came over to wait for my dad. They were going to a doctor's appointment. I was happy that he was there. He was a pleasing old man, gentle, warm, and always in a good mood.

In my eagerness to please him, I offered him some rice that I was about to cook. He said that he was hungry too and that he would eat with me. Being only about sixteen and having cooked rice only once or twice, I proceeded to attempt steaming it on the stove. I must have applied too much heat and not enough water, because after a few minutes the whole condo was filled with smoke. My rice was a smelly mess of hard-burned grains on the bottom  and  half-cooked grains on the top.

My main concern was my grandfather. Perhaps now he would be upset or make fun of me and laugh at my ineptitude. But instead he said, "It's OK Mario, hurry up and clean it up. I won't tell your father!"
In  just a few words he showed me his love and acceptance. He did not judge  me or criticize me. He was not concerned about his food. He was more concerned about me not getting in trouble. And that selflessness has stayed with me ever since. He passed away a decade ago at the age of 91, yet I always remember with love and admiration. With that kind of acceptance I was able to grow up with confidence. I could screw up and still be OK, after all.

The State Street Brige Shootiong: An Unexpected Story Of Kindness

Sources: John Kass and Jeremy Gorner Chicago Tribune) and Steven Dahlman (Marina City Online).

It all happened in an instant, on a rainy summer evening in downtown Chicago:
A man was walking over the State Street Bridge when he was approached by someone who shot him in the back of the head. 

A young man named Shane Carrol and his mother Ann were walking across the bridge and saw the shooting. Shane rushed to help victim Todd Brown, while someone unsuccessfully chased after the shooter.

Carrol knelt before the victim, who was still conscious. The bullet casing rolled off Brown's clothes. Another man called Kyle Smith (who remained unidentified for three months) grabbed the casing before it rolled off the bridge. Carrol took off his shirt and handed it to Smith, who used it as a tourniquet on Brown, who was bleeding profusely. Shane's mom had already called 911; police and paramedics arrived at the scene, but Brown's life had already been saved by Carrol and Smith, who didn't know each other. The shooter is still at large.

The incident would have been just one more unfortunate city crime, but the people involved and their circumstances have captured my imagination.

It turns out that Shane Carrol is a cadet at the New Mexico Military Institute. He was visiting relatives in Chicago.

Kyle Smith is an Army sergeant and a SWAT officer in West Chester, Ohio. He was on his way to an FBI job interview. 

And the victim, Todd Brown, is a career criminal. He has a lengthy record, including narcotics and aggravated battery. He was attempting a fresh start, staying off the streets for the previous four months. He was walking to work on the evening of the shooting.

But Brown's background didn't matter. Two brave men happened to walk by when he was shot. They didn't stand by. They didn't ask questions. They didn't wait for an ambulance to arrive. A man had fallen and they rushed to help, instead of walking away.

Shane Carrol was recognized for his "swift response, bravery and indispensably skilled first aid" by the Cook County Board of Commissioners. He will graduate from the Military Institute this year.

After saving Brown's life, Kyle Smith still attended his FBI interview. An FBI official told the Chicago Tribune that Smith got the job because of his "calm demeanor in crisis on that bridge, and his act of kindness and helping."

Maybe it's this kindness that captured my imagination; it's something to aspire to and we can emulate.

From Gaga To Liszt: A Musical Journey

It all started one cold morning, not long ago, when I turned on the TV and a Matlock episode was beginning. I've never watched that show, as I consider it for and older audience, but what caught my attention was that it opened with a very old ragtime piece. Wait a minute, I thought, I've heard this song before, a long long time ago. Yes, undoubtedly I had heard it before, and I recalled hearing it in an old cartoon. I copied some of the lyrics, which mentioned something about a "ragtime gal," and in a few seconds the Internet (which I half-jokingly call the oracle) delivered a 50's Warner Brothers cartoon in which a green frog sings ragtime pieces, driving its owner mad in the process.

The song is Hello Ma' Baby, and it is one of a handful of ragtime standards that are still known by name today (The WB cartoon is a delight and a classic; you can see it here). Hearing Hello Ma' Baby got me thinking about Duke Ellington's Take the A Train. But Take The A Train is of course a jazz piece, not ragtime. I dug up an old CD with the original Ellington standard, and it became clear to me that the delightful piano at the beginning of the tune has a definite ragtime influence. Indeed, Ellington was originally a ragtime musician, heavily influenced by Scott Joplin, the great ragtime pianist.

For some reason, ragtime also got me thinking about Lady Gaga. Strange, because even though I admire Lady Gaga and recognize her talent, I've never been into her music; I never paid attention to it, or at least never realized I did. But I could not scape the feeling that somewhere in her pop hits there lies a ragtime influence. I watched some of her videos, and the only influence I could find just by listening was a certain similarity in her piano's playfulness, but not something that could be pinpointed. I searched a little more, and found a fantastic video in which she appears live before a French audience. In it, the TV host asks her to play something classical, and she indulges him by playing not a classical piece, but of all things, a part of Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag! In addition, in her  "You And I Video" she plays an old 1905 Shilling upright, just like the ones played at the height of the ragtime era. All of a sudden I realized that one of the greatest pop singers of our time has a very deep musical heritage. But it didn't stop there.  Joplin was in turn influenced by Franz Liszt, the greatest piano musician of the 19th century.

Liszt was the first to tear up a concert hall with his performances, as Lady Gaga would some 150 years later. Last October, on occasion of his 200th birthday, NPR called him "The World's First Rock Star."

What a musical trip I got into, all thanks to an old Matlock episode.
 

--Mario Miranda