Personal & off-the-wall

I have occasionally mentioned that I am a diabetic in my social media writing. But I have rarely dwelt on it. I position it more as an incidental fact about me, than something at the core of what I am about. I'm a blogger who has diabetes, not a diabetic blogger and I hope you see the difference.

 There are nearly 24 million diabetics in the US and 250 million in the world, The World Health Organization says that on the average, five percent of deaths each year are caused by diabetes.  So having diabetes is not even slightly unique.

Nor does having a life-threatening health condition. I know of no family that does not have a member at risk of at least one of the myriad things that kill or debilitate us. I have no friends my age who have not yet experienced the death of a friend, which is a far different experience than losing a parent or elder.

So I write now, not to share how I feel about diabetes; nor do I in this case look for support on the subject and I do not think that I will write about it again in the near future.

I write now, because I just went through an experience that millions of other diabetics will have. It was emotionally difficult for me and involved a change in my daily activity. It involved a sense that I had failed and I want to share with others who may follow my path, that it really is not so bad as I had thought.

I am the son and grandson of diabetics. They both got it when they were in their middle 40s and had become moderately obese. So did I. Sometime around my 42nd birthday, I was about 20 pounds overweight. I had abandoned a very long routine of exercising and I had developed a love of starchy delights like pasta, pizza and San Francisco sourdough.

A routine physical exam showed my blood glucose had gone through the roof. A dormant beta gene that I had inherited from my dad was triggered somehow by the obesity. I had diabetes. I would always have diabetes and it is a degenerative disease. In short, no matter what you do, diabetes gets worse over time for almost anyone who gets it.

The good news for me 23 years ago was that I would not need to take insulin. I could control my diabetes by diet, exercise and a few pills taken every day. I got fairly obsessive with the diet and exercise, but still every few years my Glucose measurement would spike and another pill would get added on, despite the diet, the exercise and a headstrong determination that I would never, NEVER have to jab myself in the belly with a syringe.

This became personal between me and insulin. It was the enemy and if it won, I would have to concede that diabetes was defeating me. I would have to concede, that at age 65 I was closer to my death date than I was at 42.

About a year ago, my glucose number spiked again. It was the 5th time in 23 years when I had a spike, but this time there were no more pills. My doctor told me it was time to start taking insulin, and that insulin regulates sugar in my blood better than the pills. In fact, he said I would be overall healthier on insulin.

I refused. I started working out for longer periods of time and more times per week. I cleaned up my diet habits. I lost 8 pounds. A six-month glucose test indicated I had improved, but was not out of the danger zone. Then this past November, I registered some truly awful numbers and there were no more pills left to take.

I had lost. If I wanted to live a longer life I had to start using insulin. I posted a single comment on Twitter saying that I felt like I had failed and got all sorts of supportive and sympathetic tweets. While I appreciated all the words of kindness, I found myself feeling more embarrassed than supported. I felt that my tweet had a certain "oh poor me," tone.

I know that many people with conditions more threatening than I had found support, encouragement and strength in social media. I am happy for them and have written about why this is a good idea, but for me it didn't seem to work that way. I felt worse after tweeting about insulin than I had before.

On Dec. 14, I met with an extremely well-informed nurse nutritionist at the Palo Alto medical Center in Palo Alto. Her job was to educate me and get me to start on insulin. In our conversation, I realized that over the years, I had forgotten a great many tings about carbohydrates and fiber and so on. They were all minor, but over time they had accumulated.

I also took a lesson in self injection using a harmless saline solution. It was easy and did not hurt. That night, I began a ritual that I will continue for the rest of my life. I gave myself my first insulin injection.

Before bed, I use a device that looks like a big fountain pen. I turn a dial and give myself the measured dosage. The process is painless and takes less than 5 minutes. It is nearly foolproof for taking the right quantity and using sterile procedures. I use a form of slow insulin that seeps into my bloodstream slowly over the next 24 hours.

My blood sugar has been reduced but I am not there yet. Every couple of nights I increase my dosage by a couple of units. When my blood sugar settles into a reading between 150 and 100 every morning, then I will be "in control." There's a chance, even a likelihood, that I will need to take a "fast insulin" before and after dinner to avoid big spikes.

This is not pleasant, but the nightly shots have already become part of a nightly routine. Before I go to bed, I check email and twitter, brush my teeth and take a shot of insulin.

I share all this now, so that other people who have this experience understand what I've learned in two weeks. Insulin, for some of us is a genetic necessity. Taking it is not a failure. It allows you to live longer and better. It allows you to watch grandchildren grow. Injections do not hurt and require no more time than brushing your teeth.

I hope you never have to learn what I have learned; but if you do, it simply isn't so bad.

Live long and prosper.

It's been my week for hallowed halls of academia.

First, I spent a couple of days in the Harvard Faculty Club at the 4th SNCR Symposium, then hopped a red-eye to Dublin where I start a three-city book tour with a pub-based tweet up tonight.

Yesterday was my jet lag recovery day and I used the afternoon to walk a strip of this city of 1.4 million. The highlight was my 2nd tour of Trinity College, Ireland's top-rated University, where Jonathan Swift, Samuel Becket, Oscar Wilde and many other giants went to school.

First Harvard. Then Trinity. Had I applied for admission to either of these two schools the Admissions officers would have been rolling on the floor laughing.

I got to Trinity via a stroll through St. Stephen's Green a small but very attractive park; Grafton Street, a crowded, thriving shopping district and Temple Bar, an historic district of shops and pubs where I most enjoyed the organic market recommended to me on Twitter.

I took the irreverent, but informative walking tour of Trinity Campus, where a recent grad told us a few juicy anecdotes, including Chancellor Salmon, who rule Trinity for many years. In 1904, he was confronted with proponents of allowing women into Trinity. "Over my dead body," he declared, then three days later proceeded to die. Women started attending a few months later. Salmon was interred at the south entrance of the university and for several years women were directed to enter the school via that route literally stepping over the chancellor's dead body.

I had taken this tour before. But last time, time required that I had to drop off before a visit to Trinity's Old Library, where the Book of Kells is displayed under glass. Hand-inked onto stretched calfskin by monks more than 1300 years ago. It is a beautiful work with an amazing amount of detail and colors which remain vivid despite centuries of aging.

Equally jaw dropping was the Long Room, a single space, two stories high containing 200,000 volumes of books, the most recent of which is more than 300 years old. They are arranged, not by author, title or topic, but by physical size. It seems the library was set up before there was a Dewey Decimal System, not to mention Google.

Students are allowed to use the library, but none do. First they can't find anything specific because the books are arranged by physical dimension not topic and second, there's no Internet connection in the building.

I did all this touring through historic volumes with an iPhone in my pocket and an eBook on my wish list, feeling more than a little ambivalent. Something there is that loves an old book, a hand-etched illustration created with patience, passion and inspiration by people who lived so many centuries past.

I am of a time in which the printed word is on the wane and the electronic book is on a relentless ascent. The benefits are clear. Tomorrow's eBook might contain almost as many volumes and words as do the Long Room. The environment benefits, the costs to all parties is reduced.

But something remains that loves an old book and I hope the future generations will know and see how books first came into being and how recorded words and illustrations were born so many centuries ago.

[Molson's Ferg Devins demonstrating Lethal Generosity.]

At any given time, I am researching one or more books to write. Most of them never reach fruition. A short while ago, I was working on a project that could have become Conversational Healthcare. As it developed, I became convinced that here was indeed a book in the abundant information I found, except that I came to realize it was not the book for me. It did not incur enough of my passion, which is an essential ingredient in the books I write.

I wrote a chapter in Twitterville called Braided Journalism. It looked at points where citizen and traditional journalism are intertwining together in social media spaces. I used examples such as Janis Krums ferrying to New Jersey when US Air 1549 landed nearby. He took a photo and 27 minutes later that photo was broadcast on MSNBC. I talk about Mumbai and Gaza and about Casper Oppenhuis de Jong who was about to Skype his parents in Holland from China when the Szechuan Earthquake took place. The Iran Election took place on the day I finished Twitterville and that is where this new book will probably start--if I write it.

I've been telling audiences about this idea and they smile and nod as I bop around talking about Twitterville. But I cannot help but notice that no one is running up to me and pumpng my hand and telling me how much they want to read Braided Journalism and offering an idea or two for the book.

Meanwhile there is another topic from Twitterville, which I call "lethal generosity." I talk about it in my book presentations as well. It's the concept that social media is built on a culture of generosity. Those who use social media to give information, ideas and sometimes money to the community become the most influential. I talk abou how Jeremiah Owyang started a data storage wiki back when he was at Hitachi Data systems and invited cometitors to join in. I also talk about how Molson Canada donated $20,000 to keep Toronto trains running on New Year's Eve as part of their branded campaign of community responsibility. Then they invited Labatts, their leading competitor to join them in the effort. If Labatts declined, would they be supporting irresponsible drinking? If Labatts said yes, would they be following Molson's thought leadership?

Lethal generosity is using social media to screw your competition to the benefit of your mutual customer.

During my recent Canadian whistle-stop book tour, several people told me how much they loved the concept. My host, Joe Thornley said he thought that would make a better book than braided journalism. Since then, in a Twitter conversation with Eden Spodek she said she thought lethal generosity was a better idea, and then several other tweeter chimed in agreement.

Sometime in 200, I plan to start writing my next book. I have actually drilled down and gathered several anecdotes for Braided Journalism, have started to outline chapters and have placed a few more brushstrokes to what could become a book. I have passion for it. But I am not sure I have audience.

I also have more than a little passion for Lethal Generosity and it feels like more people are interested in this latter possibility.

Right now, I am just thinking out loud. More of my focus will remain on helping Twitterville get noticed. But I have a great deal of faith and respect for my social media crowd. So I'd like to hear your thoughts on this subject.

Thanks to my friend Jeremiah Owyang and Facebook's tradition of ratting out it's users, the beans have been pretty much spilled. It's true. I don't feel a day over 64, which is exactly how old I am.

My first inclination is to demand a recount, but getting one can be challenging as my Iranian Twitter friends have learned.

It's also true, that I timed #tbash to coincide with my birthday.  I figured I could celebrate with over 300 people and have this little secret that I was also observing my birthday, but I got caught with my birth certificate showing.

I guess the worst part is knowing that it's well past halftime in the game of life and I'm still not sure how it will come out or when the game ends..

There are also a few perks. I get to save money at the movies and on planes and at some hotels. Also, I've picked up a few pearls of wisdom over the years--or at least I think I have.

Should I share them with you? Probably not. Life is about finding your own pearls of wisdom and yours and mine very well could be different.

I'll just give you one tip: Stay curious. If you ever succumb do a "been there, done that attitude, life gets boring and so do you.

I'll give you another one at this time next year. I should live so long.

A few people over on Twitter have wondered why I do not seem overly sympathetic to the plight of two-thirds of Detroit's car makers. Let me say at the outset, that I am extremely concerned for the millions of workers who theoretically could be laid off before this whole thing shakes out. I am also aware of the serious impact to the world's economic well-being. Already traumatized, the collapse of GM & Chrysler could be the most devastating body blow of a series of body blows.

Let me also say that I have relationships with people at GM and Ford they are good people. I believe them to be truthful overall. Although, I have to scratch my head because I visited GM & Ford earlier this year and met with more than 20 representatives of these companies. On after another sang me a song of a magnificent and imminent comeback. They showed me new designs and advanced applications of collaborative computing and virtual reality technologies that looked like they were reducing time to market of better, safer, more fuel efficient cars. In fact, one of them in jovial fashion, leaned over to me as we walked down a hallway and half-jokingly advised me, "if you have any spare cash laying around, this would be a great time to buy some of our stock."

Well it happened that this year I have not had any spare cash laying around. As a matter of fact, most people I know do not have any spare cash laying around and earlier this year, when Hank Paulson took a hefty chunk of our tax dollars and started to spread it around financial institutions in a haphazard and mysterious fashion, it inspired some of the most frugal thinking I and my fellow countrymen have expressed in about 75 or 80 years.

The bravado I heard in Detroit of February was gone. Now, Detroit's management and union leadership was in a panic. Suddenly, we were told, the end was near. If they could not get $15, billion--aw Hell, make that $35 billion, we are going to tank and millions of people in the world will be out of work.

All this tended to piss me and a lot of other people off, but that did not get me to oppose the package. When the head of the UAW termed a temporary pay reduction to $49 an hour "unacceptable," I wondered just who that was unacceptable and if he really did prefer the $0 an hour that the other side of his mouth said was coming. But that also did not stop me from opposing the bailout.

What got me to oppose it was that these guys, sitting before our Congress were the very guys who got us into this mess and they were proposing to be the guys we financed to get us out of it. They had no plan, displayed no vision and demonstrated the same lack of leadership that are at the nexus of the problem we are in.

Let's talk about that issue as well. My last American car was a 1974 Ford Mustang, a beautiful little car whose gear shift came off in my hand at about 42000 miles. My dealer's response was that I should buy a new car. He was right. I have been driving Japanese cars ever since. Most older Americans I know who drive foreign cars have some story of what an American manufacturer or dealer did at some point in the past 40 years to put them into other cars. We raised our children to believe that value and safety could be found more easily in cars made elsewhere. There is a mountain of data to back that up.

Not only did Detroit make the mess they are in, but they have had more than four decades to turn it around. They have an awful record in safety, value, environmental responsibility, credibility and more.

Still, I would have supported the bail out. What stopped me is that I saw and heard no evidence that the people glaring at Congress had any sense of their enormous contribution to the mess we are in and I had no sense that they would step aside and let newer, fresher thinkers replace them to drive our failing auto industry in a new direction.

     [Christmas lover Paula Israel with Brewster & very old friend. Photo by Shel]

Mumbai ... Detroit... Thailand... Foreclosures ... Greece. This is a very difficult season to feel jolly. This is the 5th year in which I have posted this piece. I post it earlier this year, in part to remind me of what this holiday season is all about. Hopefully, it may help you as well as me shake the malaise of this particular holiday season. If you remember this from a previous posting, please just mutter Bah Humbug once and move along.

"I grew up in the 1950s in New Bedford, Mass., a second-tier East
Coast city. Christmas was the biggest day of the year. School was
closed. Parents had rare paid days off. There was usually snow on the
ground and the abundant churches would chime carols from bell towers
all day long.

This is the 2000th time I have posted on this blog since it began as "TheRedCouch" in December 2004. That was the first of a good number of names for the book that eventually came out as Naked Conversations. It was called red Couch after a piece of furniture in my co-author, Robert Scoble's house.

Global Neigbourhoods is th third name for this blog, which has received 8622 comments, according to Typepad. WebPage Grader says that sometime in the past few days I received my 50,000 inbound links. I am not sure of the exact number, but I'm pretty certain that I've posted over a million words here, more than 13 times as many as we wrote in Naked Conversations.

What a terrific journey it has been. What a wonderful journey I know it will continue to be. Thanks to so many people in so many places for so many interesting conversations. I have learned so much from so many people. Social media has brought me to 14 countries so far. This would never have happened without this blog and China is kind of the cherry on the Sundae.

I can't wait to see what happens next.

As people who follow me on Twitter already know, I have long been an ardent supporter of Barack Obama. It is with joy and trepidation that I realize the very high likelihood that in less than three weeks, he will become the resident-elect of the United States.The joy is because of the hope I have for what he can achieve. The trepidation is because--like so many times in the past--the person elected does not do what the people who voted him in hope he will do.

Four years ago, slightly over half this country voted for George Bush. They sincerely believed he would do better for us than he did. Their disappointment in what has happened to this country and the world during his tenure is probably no less than mine. I had great faith in Bill Clinton, the first time I voted for him, and some faith in him the second time around. But he did not conduct his personal life in a way that most American's had hoped he would. His sex life became a public issue and distracted from more important matters.

My point is this. Having your guy beat the other guy is not like a sporting event. This is not about one side winning and the other side losing. It is about a process that is supposed to have friction in it. It is also about a process that works best when there is compromise involved. It is about a process where we are supposed to argue our cases with all our hearts and learn that there are other credible viewpoints being held by people of equal wisdom and integrity. In our passions we all get angry at times and in politics I find myself blowing my own top early and more often than I do in other areas.

Electing a president is not about winning. It's about setting a course for the common good. It's about picking the perceived leader of the Western world. It's about finding a healthy level of governance. It's about finding peaceful solutions with other countries, many of whom have leaders who regard us with hostility or downright hatred.

The media has come to treat political races as sports matches, perhaps
boxing or live professional wrestling. That's why negative ads have
been effective in recent elections. I see the paucity of media interest
in complex issues as a major reason why these ads have worked--until
this time and this election, which most people realize is just too
important to decided by slur and innuendo.

It is about finding common ground and respecting the views of others, no matter how boneheaded we regard those views--and they view ours.

I hope I'm right about Barack Obama. If I am, our domestic situation will improve and our relationships with a great many countries of the world will improve and our realization how we all have come to interdepend on each other.

I spent a couple of years, a very long time ago, in state government. When I left, I wondered if it had been ego or naivete that made me feel I have actually made a difference. I've been thinking about this for a few days after my old friend, who grew up with me, blew into town for lunch on Friday. Paul is now retired, after serving without passion for 25 years as a government lawyer in Washington, DC. He's glad to be done with it and gladder for the pension that allows him to spend most of his time getting serious with his passion with photography,

Paul lived in government for a long time. It s the dominating culture of where he lived most of his life. He knew the people whose passion was like mine when I went into government, who believed that they really could change a system; that they really could serve people and make the lives of citizens better. As years went by, and those that stayed, got promoted, they started acting and thinking like the elders they had replaced. Government got bigger and less effective and they grew more apathetic and their purpose was the inevitable pension rather than helping people in a democratic system.

That's one thread of four that I'm braiding in my mind. The second is the very cynical voices I am hearing from American voters on Twitter, where I talk politics far more often than I do here. I've often chatted with LizWebPage , who is usually optimistic and even more frequently funny in her 140-character missives. But when it comes to this imminent presidential campaign, Liz has a dark and frightened view of how it will come out. I asked others if they felt the way she did and the majority--particularly among voters under age 35 seemed to share the feeling that this voting stuff was just a game engineered by Carl Rove and equally dark manipulators.

At lunch, I told this to Paul, who nodded his agreement. The system, he said, was hopelessly corrupted, and he no longer saw a way to fix it.

The first place that I visited that was governed by what I considered to be less than a Democracy was Singapore, in 2004. I went, expecting to encounter an oppressed people under the powerful thumbs of an uncaring government. I wonder, once again, if it was ego or naivete that set my expectation. I met some incredibly capable people in government, who displayed great passion about education, technology and well-being of Singaporeans. I met quite a few citizens who seemed overall happy about their lives under the existing (unopposed) president and his regime. They had their complaints, but they were no greater and perhaps less than those I hear from Americans on Twitter. And they spoke freely about them, with polite requests that I do not cite them in my writing. My dialog with several has continued for four years.

One recently observed that people anywhere will fight back if you repress them beyond a certain point, but it hasn't happened  in Singapore because the basic human priorities are met -- safety,
shelter, food.

As an American, the word "Katrina" rolls through my brain. Sometimes our democracy doesn't even try to meet those same requirements. It is one of many examples where our democracy, which is elected to serve the needs of its people failed to provide basic servers to people who had fallen into harm's way.

I go to China in six weeks. I started writing about the world's largest country only six months ago, when I cited a UN report that said China had lifted 300 million people out of poverty in a generation. I was surprised by the hostility and factual inaccuracy of some of the people who commented about China, it's policies and the government that has evolved in the 32 years since Mao's death.

I too had misconceptions about the relationship between China's government and its people. I have spent a fair amount of time reading what I can and speaking to Chinese people, particularly those who Chinese involved in social media. "You think of our government, ' one of my new friends told me, "like the Bourne identity--listened, watching able to eliminate anyone, anywhere. It's not that way. It's more like your government, more like your Keystone Cops. Officials running all over the place, in all directions, barely getting anything done."

There are many actions of the Chinese, or Singaporean governments that I don't like. Then again, I'm aware of the facts in more cases of my own government's actions that I consider pretty untenable. But what is clear to me is that both of these governments, who do not allow two-party votes for their highest offices, have agreements with their citizens. These agreements ensure that life will be stable and it will improve. That freedoms will come at a pace which ensure social stability, and that sitting here in California, I have limited access to the big picture in either country. So I bring them in to this conversation, not to judge them, but to challenge my own basic premise.

That premise has been part of my own conventional wisdom all my life: that America's way of governing s best because it allows the most freedom and that most people in the world would like to have our way of life and government.

I think in emerging countries, stability, health, education, housing are inalienable human right, just as they are supposed to be here. But I think a case is emerging that our particular system may not be the best at all times and in all places.

And I think that before we judge our global neighbors, Americans need to spend a great deal of time and energy in getting or own house in order first. Which brings me to the 5th and final thread in the rope that connects this--social media. In social media we have the opportunity to restore the voice of our citizen. We have the ability to talk directly with those who govern us, and are supposed to serve us. We have the ability to bypass the admen and Carl Roves who use traditional communications to deceive us, to by lies that hurt us.

We have just begun to use conversational technology in this light. Until very recently, politicians used social media to get message out and campaign contributions in. But new ways of conversing are happening, such as the Contact TV-Twitter project I wrote about earlier this week. That project itself is relatively minute when one looks at the challenges we face to restore American faith in the American system, but as Malcolm Gladwell, told us in his Tipping Point subtitle, little things can make a big difference.

Or, the other thought is, that at this late date in my life, I still have the ego and naivete to believe people like us can make a difference.

I was at Molly Stone in Belmont, Ca trying to find the ^&*$#** Mandarin oranges my wife fancies so much when my iPhone buzz in my pocket. I happen to know that this place is a dead spot for AT&T so I ignored it. The phone rang less than 60 seconds again and I saw it was my wife, so I went outside to find out what else my wife wanted me to pick up.

But that wasn't it at all. She was calling to tell me that our daughter Melanie in Dallas, had given birth to Isla (pronounced AYla) a few hours ago. Isla is 8 pounds, a few ounces and 19 inches long I was told. More important, all her toes and fingers are where they are supposed to be. For once in my life, I was pretty speechless. We spoke for another minute or two, then I returned to Aisle 3 and my quest for Mandarin oranges.

Slowly, I realized that my eyes were misting up. And then I was bawling like Isla must have done a few hours earlier. I stood there wondering if I could shoplift a Kleenex when some guy came up to me, concerned, asking what was wrong. I told him I had just learned I had a new granddaughter. He stared for second, then, beaming, stuck out his hand.

"Congratulations, grandpa,"  he said. I think I said thanks. Then he turned to someone passing by and told him I just learned about a grandchild. Then one person was telling another and people were patting me on the back and I was wiping my eyes and saying thank you.

I know that I just had one of those memories that will stay with me. I even remembered the Mandarin oranges. 

Life is beautiful. Birth is a miracle. And yes, you can call me grandpa. At least today.

I was 23 years old when Paul McCartney sang that question for the Beatles Yellow Submarine. Now I discover, to my great ambivalence that I will be precisely that the day after tomorrow. I was going to write something truly profound this Thursday, as I did when I turned 60, but I was afraid that by then I would forget what it was I wanted to say.

In fact, I already have. There isn't profundity floating around anywhere, in here. So instead, as I'm increasingly prone to do, I offer you a few scattered and random thoughts:

• This distance between 23 and 64 is a lot shorter than you think.
• Some of the most memorable experiences are simpler than you may think. For example, my first espresso in Italy. A smiling girl on a subway with who I never spoke, the first time I smelled jasmine.
• Babies. When you are young other people's babies are pretty much boring. When they are your grand children, it's entirely different.
• Letters about Medical and Social Security arrive every year after you turn 50. This year they are suddenly of great interest to me.
• I stay young by seriously considering a great many new ideas.
• I exercise like there is no tomorrow. One of these days, there won't be.
• The hardest human virtue for me remains forgiveness. I've been working on that one for a very long time. Oh yeah. I'm also not particularly good at shutting up.
• Pay attention to little details. Very often, that's where you'll find the most revealing secrets.
• Of all the things you can possibly run out of, time is the one you cannot replace.

May each of you live long and prosper. Hopefully, I will continue to do the same. Now where did I put my spectacles?