As I packed today for my trip to New York tomorrow, I thought back over my relationship with that city, which goes back over four decades. I've been there for fund-raising trips, book tours, reporting trips, to meet with publishers and secure book contracts, to help clients meet media leaders, to attend conferences, to discuss screenplay ideas with film executives, to give speeches, and to attend board meetings.
I've even been there a few times for family reasons.
All in all, I suspect this will be my 50th or 60th trip to Manhattan. Who knows.
For various reasons, this may well be my last trip there for quite a while. If so, I'll miss the place, even with all the hassles it brings, it's the greatest city on this continent.
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I've been rereading kevin Kelly's What Technology Wants; on this trip I think I'll reread Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel. These books fare well on second readings; it's also cheaper to reread them than buy new books.
My wish list for new books, if I could afford to buy them, is long.
Kelly writes about the grandparent effect, postulating that human progress only accelerated once we lived long enough for an older generation to pass along knowledge to the generation produced by our children.
This is relatively recent development in human history.
I think about that every time I share my "collections" (shells, stones, coins, seaglass, books, music, cards, letters, photos, and so many more) with my four-year-old grandson. I don't know how important collections are, in fact, as any source of wisdom, but they are a major source of comfort from my long life.
Maybe he will be a collector too?
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