Stumbled across this article in Digital Camera World highlighting some of the iconic destinations around the world that don’t allow — or heavily frown upon — travelers taking photos. I’m pretty good about doing my research into local customs before we travel and try to play by the rules. But sometimes an image appears in front of you that you just can’t help but capture.
with guards authorized to intervene if anyone is caught trying to take a sneaky shot.
The Crown Jewels in the Tower of London is one such place. Entering a dark room, you see the jewels in a glass case. You pass by them on a moving walkway. There are signs that instruct visitors that no photos are allowed. I took — mistook — this as a standard “no flash photography allowed” suggestion. It was not a suggestion. And it did not limit itself to flash photography. Nope.
I fired off a single hip shot as I passed. The Queen’s guards were waiting for me at the end of the human conveyor belt. A hand was placed upon my shoulder.
“Sir, please show me your camera. Sir, please delete the images.”
I fumbled for the play and then trashcan buttons.
“Thank you, sir. Have a good day.”
(Photo below is not of the Crown Jewels. To see more from London, check out this gallery.)
When we moved into our house twenty years ago, we moved into a tight-knit neighborhood. Friday nights meant poker games. Halloween meant Liqu-‘or-Treat with bespoke cocktails at the end of each driveway for the adults. Over the years, what began as impromptu gatherings became traditions.
One of those traditions originated in St. Louis long before any of us opened the doors into our homes for the first time. For it was in St. Louis, that Bill and Janie Swenson first invited their neighbors to an open house brunch every January 1st to kick off the new year. We’d all straggle in throughout the day, timing often dictated by the intensity of the previous night’s festivities.
Inside, Bill worked the pan and spatula like a world class line cook making fried rice omelettes. Sesame oil and “Happy New Year” filled the air. A Bloody Caesar appeared in your hand. “Who’s next?” Bill shouts over the hum. And repeat…70 times.
Bill and Janie moved south, extending the tradition to their new neighborhood, leaving a New Year’s Day void in ours. But traditions are traditions for a reason. They are meant to be carried on, torches passed. Such was New Year’s Day 2023 when Jenn and I raised our hands (or forgot to duck) when that void needed to be filled. We tiptoed in with a deliberately small gathering. Only a fool would cannonball into the deep end of trying to tackle a 70 omelet production line on their first go.
We hit 18 omelettes. I’m confident we’ll work up to a Swenson’esque 70 over the next two decades.
The period between life and death is filled with countless moments and memories. Most get lost in the voluminous noise of everyday minutiae. A select few — the big ones — become part of us.
For me, seeing Pelé on the pitch playing for the New York Cosmos in the late ‘70s is one of those big ones. As a young boy, I didn’t realize how seeing this legend play a sport I had yet to play would influence me. At the time, there were no soccer clubs in my school or town. You played football. The American kind. But watching Pelé sparked in me a love of the sport that, years later, led to Al Bundy greatness in high school, playing against a future three-time World Cup goalie, college recruitment, and many Saturday mornings on the couch watching the Premier League.
It’s time once again to look back on the things that made the days, weeks, and months on my calendar memorable this year. And what a year it was.
Let’s dive in.
As we rolled into 2022, I found myself neck-deep in behind-the-scenes planning to announce Akamai’s nearly billion dollar acquisition of Linode, where I served the past three years as global head of communications. It was exhilarating and exhausting. When the deal closed in March, I joined Akamai to lead communications for the company’s cloud and developer initiatives.
The announcement workload subsided once the deal was done. It was instantly replaced with a flood of transition and on-boarding work with the new company. It was a lot. A lot of work. A lot of challenge and opportunity. A lot of fun. But, still, a lot.
I needed a break. So I packed my carry-on and duffle bag and took flight on a three week exploration of southern Italy with my family. Because it’s not just the work part of our life that needs recharging. The commitment to doing and being the best we can be at the thing that pays us to do it requires harmonization with the commitment to be the best we can be at the thing that pays more than money ever could.
Off to Italy we went, spending the better part of July roaming around Rome, the Amalfi Coast, Naples, and Sicily. We walked amongst Roman ruins; viewed incredible artwork; jumped off a pier with locals to swim in the Tyrrhenian Sea; experienced Taormina and Cefalu before “The White Lotus” made them the next must-see destinations; watched steam rise from an active volcano; shopped and ate our way through local markets; and pushed the limits of human caloric capacity by ingesting copious amounts of pasta, mozzarella, octopus, arancini, cannoli, gelato, wine, and Aperol.
Early in the pandemic, we subscribed to the Kimmel Cultural Campus Broadway Series. 2022 was our second year as members, allowing us to see a great slate of performances: Rent, Hadestown, Beautiful, Les Miserables, and Tina.
We also caught the Piano Man playing one of his sold-out monthly residence nights at Madison Square Garden. On paper, Billy Joel is getting up there in age; on stage, he’s still an energetic young man at the top of his game.
Not to be outperformed by Mr. Joel, my friend Brian and I went live with the first episode of a new YouTube series we’ve dubbed “Bald Guys on Bikes” where we shine a light on the people who make the wheels of the bike industry go ‘round.
We participated in democracy, joining others (including a future governor) in our small town to fight for basic human rights.
We took time to celebrate events big and small throughout the year: a friend kicking cancer’s ass, a college graduation, an 80th birthday, and my dad finally succumbing to his aversion of modern devices and buying a new iPhone (though mostly for the camera).
To cap the year off, we — together with a few close friends — adopted a barrel of grapes from the Yakima Valley and had the privilege of bottling our own wine.
And what’s a year in review without a few recommendations based on movies, books, songs, and television I discovered in 2022. Here are my picks for the best of the best this year:
Movies
The Phantom of the Open
Top Gun: Maverick
Bros
Hustle
Elvis
Television
A League of Their Own
Abbott Elementary
The Bear
Our Flag Means Death
Julia
Reading
“Billy Summers” (Stephen King)
Music
Maneskin
“Only the Strong Survive” (Bruce Springsteen)
Lastly, a look at a few of my favorite images I created with my camera in 2022 (click the images to see them full size):
A wise friend once imparted advice that has stuck with me: “Just say yes.”
I’ve done my best to live by that rule. It’s given me the opportunity to do and experience amazing things, and — since my friends have a habit of concocting some outrageously questionable ideas — it’s also given me the opportunity to do some really dumb things.
Case in point: My friend Brian, who owns a bike shop and has encyclopedic knowledge of bike history, shoots me a text and suggests the two of us host an interview series with pro cyclists, bike industry reps, the mechanics who make the wheels go round, and various other members of the cycling community.
Brian, I should point out, is one of those forces of nature that Makes Things Happen™. Start a bike shop in a small, southestern Pennsylvania town? Why not? Create and then direct a professional bike racing team? Go ahead. Open a second bike shop in the middle of a pandemic? Of course. Produce a documentary film that followed the journey of a local racer (and friend) diagnosed with brain cancer who endured life-saving surgeries to further endure and finish a legendary mountain bike race in Leadville, Colorado? Sure.
As you can imagine, saying no or I’ll think about it was not exactly an option.
So what do two follicly-challenged, lantern-rouge-carrying ham-and-eggers like us do? We reach out to the fine folks at GoPro who set us up with a Hero10 camera and creator kit, and ask our friend Andy Jarin and his crew at B&B Beverages in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, to hook us up with cans of liquid gold. Then we put the GoPro on a tripod, cracked open the craft, and started inviting folks to join us in fun conversation.
The first episode of “Bald Guys on Bikes” went live this week. Brian and I suckered in, I mean, sat down with Bike Works p/b Fred Beans elite athlete and BMC Ride Crew ambassador Chris Meacham to talk about racing the Leadville 100, hitting the gravel from atop his BMC URS LT One bike, a way cool company called Moosepacks, and the insanity of riding Pennyfarthings.
More episodes to come, so hit that subscribe button as the cool kids say.
Back in 2016, I wrote a post about people naturally wanting to work for the good of humanity. I included a pullquote highlighting OpenAI’s non-profit mission.
OpenAI is a non-profit artificial intelligence research company. Our goal is to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return.
Fast-forward to December 2022 and the meteoric buzz and building around ChatGPT. And I am reminded of this four year old Monktoberfest talk by Bryan Cantrill on the too frequent gulf between an organization’s stated principles and their actions.
Twitter was never a social network to me. I mean, sure, I made and had friends there. And I interacted with reporters, analysts, and influencers. But it was first and foremost a newsfeed. A wire service of industry and world news. A place to spot trends and stay on top of breaking events. It was RSS on ‘roids.
And then it imploded.
How do you replicate that river of news? It’s not like journalists stopped producing news. For some of us old timers, RSS fills some of that void. But it’s not the same. Many have migrated to the fediverse to maintain as much of those Twitter connections as possible. But it’s not the same, either. Twitter was different.
The fediverse shows promise as a Twitter replacement, but it’s likely too byzantine for a generation raised on walled-garden technologies. But it’s what we’ve got today. So how do we use it to fill the Twitter void? I’m just spitballing here, but I could envision someone cranking up a Mastodon instance just for technology new outlets to let their publishing bots run free. An instantaneous RSS feed, if you will. I’m sure others also have ideas (sound off in the comments).
The scale of technology is shifting, the weight transferring from random algorithms and advertising to individual control of the bits and bytes one puts out into the world. It’ll be messy. It’ll take time. But make no mistake, it’s happening.
Locals call the Amalfi Coast “magic earth,” a terroir sheathed in rock and ash from the 79AD eruption of Mount Vesuvius that destroyed Pompeii.
One of the towns that dot the hills of the coast is Ravello. Founded in the 5th century, Ravello is known as the City of Music. Throughout history, musicians, artists, and writers have made the picturesque coastal town their home…people like Richard Wagner, M. C. Escher, Greta Garbo, Gore Vidal, Joan Miró, Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, and Leonard Bernstein.
While strolling through Ravello this summer, we — my wife, Jennifer, and daughters Allison and Taylor — stopped into Pasqual’s studio. His son showed us around and explained how his father carried on the hundred-years old tradition for the art of ceramics using the locally-distinctive sulphuric soil of Vesuvius.
All of Pasquale’s work is handmade and personalized for his clients. Each piece is shaped by the expert hands of the foggiatore who, with a handful of clay, magically create the ceramic artwork. They are meticulously painted by more than 70 artisans. Oprah Winfrey, Julia Roberts, Richie Sambora, and Bruce Springsteen own pieces of Pasqual’s artwork.
And now The Maney Family does, too.
A table in the courtyard kept calling to us. Pasqual emerged from his studio and we talked about his creative process. We talked about what we liked and how he might incorporate it into a table. No drawings. Just words. And then some signed papers, the exchange of funds, and a few months of anxious waiting while Pasqual worked his magic from the magic earth.
Democrats turned out tonight in Doylestown, Pa., to rally around women’s rights and democracy itself. Led by Bucks County Commissioner Bob Harvie, speakers included State Senator Steve Santarsiero, PA-01 House of Representatives candidate Ashley Ehasz, and Pennsylvania House Democratic Leader Joanna McClinton — the first woman elected House Democratic Leader in the institution’s 244-year history.
Mike Maney 