The Best Things in Life are Free
According to an adage from the Internet’s early days, information wants to be free. These days, the free Internet is being challenged. Many sites have recently imposed pay walls or otherwise started to charge visitors.
Here at The D&O Diary, we are about to celebrate our seventh anniversary of providing information and commentary free of charge to readers around the world. Every now and then a concerned reader will ask, with furrowed brow, “You aren’t going to start charging me to visit your site are you?” Not to worry. For a lot of reasons, we are not about to start charging. The D&O Diary always has been and always will be free.
We are committed to keeping this site free because we think of our readers as our partners. In fact, we are so grateful for this sense of partnership that we would like to give our readers a token of our appreciation.
We would like readers who are interested to have one of our limited-edition designer coffee mugs, pictured above. Just to be clear, the price of the mug, like the price of visiting this site, is free.
If you email me at dandodiary@gmail.com and provide me with your name, address and e-mail address, I will mail you a mug. For free. (I promise that I will not use your information for any reason other than sending you the mug and for communicating with you about it. I will not share your information with anyone.)
That’s right. I am offering to mail you a D&O Diary coffee mug -- for free.
There’s just one little catch.
If I send you a mug, you agree that you will take a picture of the mug and send me the picture along with a 250-300 word description of the circumstances behind the picture. I will publish the best pictures and descriptions on this site – “best” meaning the most creative and imaginative.
What kinds of pictures and descriptions might readers send in? I don’t know. I have confidence that this blog’s resourceful readers, inspired by the experience of receiving a free D&O Diary coffee mug, will demonstrate unparalleled levels of ingenuity and inventiveness.
To get everyone started, here is an illustration of what a picture and description might look like.
In this picture, I am standing at the Ledges Overlook in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, near.jpg)
Peninsula, Ohio. Yes, there is a National Park in Ohio, located less than 30 minutes from The D&O Diary’s world headquarters. By the way, the park, the headquarters, and in fact the entire state of Ohio are all located in the Eastern Time Zone. This picture was taken by Mrs. D&O Diary. Later, the two of us christened our new mugs with a ‘00 vintage bottle of Château Smith Haut Lafîtte. I purchased the bottle at the Chateau --which is located in the Graves wine region south of Bordeaux --when I traveled there with several industry colleagues in May 2004. (Right now, several old friends are smiling and nodding at the recollection of a great trip.) When I purchased the bottle, the wine steward fixed me with a cold look, shook her finger in my face and said, “Attention! Do not drink for ten years!” I am not sure whether she meant ten years from the grape harvest or ten years from the day I bought the bottle, but either way I think she would approve of our enjoyment of the wine as the inaugural beverage served in our new mugs.
More Pictures and an Afterword
“Information wants to be free/and so does The D&O Diary.” This is the Free Stamp, a Claus Oldenburg sculpture located on a bluff in downtown Cleveland next to City Hall and overlooking Lake Erie.
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Cleveland Rocks, Baby. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is one of Cleveland's many beautiful buildings. I know that some of you, at this very moment, can hardly resist the urge to shout, “Play Freebird!"—because “free” is good.
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Cleveland may be known for its harsh winters, but the truth is that Cleveland has four distinct seasons. And after a long winter, spring is a glorious thing. Here is a picture of springtime at Horseshoe Lake, in Shaker Heights, Ohio. While it is true that no one can do anything about the weather, the weather is, undeniably, free.
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Do you know what the price of admission is for the Cuyahoga Valley National Park? You guessed it – free.
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Afterword: I hope that you are already thinking about the pictures you will take when you get your mug. Please let me know if you would like me to send you one. Due to my upcoming business travel, it will be a few days before I can actually send out the mugs. The first batch will go out around the middle of May. When you send in your pictures and descriptions, please send pictures in the JPEG format. Send the descriptions as a Word document without text formating (that is, no bold face, italics or underlining -- the formatting doesn't translate well into the blogging software). I look forward to seeing what everyone comes up with.
If to err is human, then writing a blog is a most human endeavor. Tight deadlines and late-night drafting sessions ensure that mistakes infiltrate even carefully composed posts. It is a painful exercise for me to review old posts and see the errors that managed to make it onto my site.
And Now, A Complete Waste of Time: On the website for 
One of the reasons 
If you were among the many who extended the holiday vacation all the way through the short week following New Year’s Day, you may not have seen the year-end retrospective articles that I posted last week, including my list of the Top Ten D&O Stories in 2012 (
This mix of items from around the web may be just the thing after a long weekend of leftover turkey --even though we are well aware that nothing can come close to a heaping helping of Turkey Tetrazzini three days after Thanksgiving. 
Can I just say that I find it mighty depressing that everyone is talking about Hurricane Sandy in the past tense, as if the storm were already done and gone? Here in Northeast Ohio, as I write this blog post on Thursday evening, the rain continues to fall and the cold and gloomy damp lingers on. We have had continuous rain here since Sunday afternoon— and it is still raining. Trees down, power out, water everywhere. We haven’t yet arrived at the “aftermath” part of this story because the event is still taking place. Sandy just won’t leave.
On Friday September 7, 2012, the 
One of the many gifts my wife brought to our marriage was a generations-long family tradition of spending summers in 
. The day begins at sunup, with a walk through the woods into the village, along the channel, and out to the signal beacon at the end of the channel breakwater. From that vantage point, the beach curves away, about 20 miles north to 
At midday, the noon whistle in the village sounds, which means it is time to take the bicycles out from under the cottage. We ride out Park Street, past the volunteer fire department, past the library, past the school, and out across the Pentwater River into the countryside. The road traverses a short stretch of the Manistee National Forest, and then rolls out into fields of corn, orchards, pumpkin patches and Christmas tree farms. As a lifetime city dweller, it is always a little bit of a surprise to me how close the countryside is.
These are the open cockpit, flat bottom kind of kayaks. They are more stable in the Lake’s choppy water. When our kids were small, we would have point-to-point races and distance challenges, but these days I prefer a more leisurely paddle along the Lake Michigan shoreline, or through the channel and into Pentwater Lake. It always strikes me how out on the water, even just a couple of hundred feet offshore, the trees, houses and people back on shore look so small and the Lake seems so immense. I suppose that is the reason we go on vacations, to get that kind of perspective. From a distance, all those problems that loom so large can seem so small and unimportant.
for ten bucks. If no one’s there, you put your money in a coffee can by the first tee. Just make sure to bring a sand wedge.). With the kids working as conscripted labor, we can harvest many buckets of blueberries in a short time. The farm owners encourage pickers to eat blueberries while picking, which is part of the pleasure. (A handful for the bucket, a handful for me…). The smaller, sweeter 
On Thursday evening, there is a band concert in the bandstand on the village green. Families gather and sit on blankets or folding chairs, and little kids run around playing chase games or eating ice cream cones from the House of Flavors ice cream parlor across the street. My own kids used to like to sit in the branches of a big maple tree behind the bandstand, but two years ago the maple was struck by lightning and they had to remove the rest of the tree. The band members run from their mid-teens to their mid-80s. They play a medley of tunes, including marches, college fight songs, and patriotic melodies. For example, the band might play the Wisconsin fight song, the official words of which, I am informed and believe, are: “On Wisconsin, On Wisconsin, We don’t know the words.” 
exactly like you’d expect a place in rural Michigan called the Antler Bar would look. There is a big set of antlers on the wall behind the bar, and several other sets on the other walls. The walls are also covered with sports memorabilia. Like all right thinking people everywhere, the management of the Antler favors the University of Michigan. (The Village Pub up the street favors Michigan State. We do not patronize The Village Pub – even though it does have a cool outdoor terrace with a view of Pentwater Lake). For the boating crowd, the Antler serves upmarket draft beers like Stella Artois and Guinness, but the thing to do is to order a longneck Bud, and then drop a quarter in the jukebox. You can play any song you like, as long as it is by Bob Seger.
Because Pentwater is on the western edge of the Eastern Time Zone and so far north, it does not get dark there until quite late. In late June and early July, the sun does not set until about 9:30 pm, and it is not completely dark until almost 10:45 pm. Even after a round or two in the Antler, the sun will likely still be above the horizon. Walking home along the beach, we can watch the sun set. As the sun sinks slowly toward the horizon it casts a cascade of colors across the western sky; and the orange, reds and yellows of the sunset give way to purples, blues and greens after the sun has gone down. After sunset, a small gesture of appreciation for the good people of Sheboygan always seems appropriate. All hail the citizens of Sheboygan, faithful Stewards of the Sun.
In mid-August, the village hosts its annual Homecoming celebration. There are games and prizes on the village green, a sand-castle contest on the state park beach, and a Coast Guard water rescue demonstration in Pentwater Lake. In the afternoon, there is a parade through the village. Proud veterans in uniform carry the flag, and girls in shiny costumes twirl batons. There are squadrons of antique cars (this is Michigan, after all). Political candidates work the crowd. There are floats from various local businesses, and there are also separate floats for Mrs. Asparagus and for the Cherry Princess. The highlight of the parade is the locally famous Scottsville Clown Band. The Clown Band marches in costume, with some dressed, for example, as clowns. A disturbingly large number of the (male) band members are dressed as women. The parade culminates with a band concert on the village green.
a business trip to Lansing, and afterwards I drove out to Pentwater to have a look. It was one of those sunny October days when it was warm enough to wear shorts and to walk barefoot on the beach. The scene was strange – everything was familiar but somehow altered. The cottages were all closed, the trees had changed colors, and the dune grass was dry and brown. The sun was much further South in the sky than I had ever seen it, and at an odd angle too. As I walked along with the warm sun in my face and the warm sand underfoot, and not another soul around for miles, I thought to myself, I could do this forever.
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The final stop on The D&O Diary’s Asian Tour was the island city-state of Singapore. Located only about 60 miles north of the equator, Singapore is a sun-drenched commercial center that has managed despite its slight size to become one of the world’s wealthiest countries..jpg)
would probably guess you were in a particularly well-off suburb of Miami. I suspect that most Americans would find Singapore a particularly comfortable place to visit.
One of the literal high points on my brief visit was a ride on the .jpg)
One particularly interesting area to explore and to eat is 
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The D&O Diary’s Asian mission continued this week, with Hong Kong the next stop on the itinerary following Beijing. If Beijing is a Chinese city wearing a new Western-style business suit, then Hong Kong is a Western city with a Chinese heart.
second story level, a network of walkways connects much of the central city, by-passing the busy city streets. In addition, a clever center city escalator system connects the lower business district along the waterfront with the residential area in the “.jpg)
We then strolled into an area of narrow pedestrian lanes and alleyways lined with shops and vendors selling clothes, toys, leather goods and shoes, and vegetables and fruit. Butchers carved meat right out along the street and fish vendors displayed tanks full of lobsters, crabs and assorted other kinds of sea life. You can buy fried or dried octopus, fermented bean curd, curry fish balls , 
about 1,800 feet, the Peak (as it is known locally) is the highest mountain on Hong Kong Island. Oddly and incongruously, the tram terminates near the top at a modern shopping mall. Outside the mall, a paved pathway winds around the Peak through parklands and near some very high end residential real estate. The path affords glorious panoramic views of the harbor and the Kowloon Peninsula to the North and of the South China Sea to the South.
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The D&O Diary is on assignment in Asia this week, with a first stop in Beijing and with other Far Eastern stops scheduled after that. Even traveling “over the top,” Asia is very far away. When the flight progress monitor shows your plane traveling over Irkutsk and Ulan Bator, you know you are far from home.
description. Its grounds are larger than those of the Palace at Versailles. I visited it twice on this trip and still feel as if I only saw a very small part. Many of the buildings were dazzlingly restored for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and during my visit the courtyards were full of blooming fruit trees and blossoming flowers.
Emerging at the Northern gate of the Forbidden City, you suddenly leave behind the venerable vestiges of the country’s imperial past and plunge into the tumult of the city’s jarring present. Vendors, beggars with shocking wounds and deformities, school kids, and tourists jostle and push along a walkway not nearly large enough for the crowds. Beijing can be simply overwhelming at times.
million are out on the roads at the same time – but that is a mistaken impression. Each weekday, traffic regulations bar one-fifth of the cars from the inner city based on vehicle registration number, and trucks are banned altogether during the daytime. But even with these restrictions, the roads are jammed at all hours. Picture the worst traffic you have ever seen in, say, L.A., multiply times ten, and then allow for the fact that rules of the road are viewed as purely advisory. A red left-turn arrow does not mean no left turn; it means jockey for position until you see an opening and then go for it (and for Beijing drivers, an “opening” means only ten or fewer pedestrians directly ahead).
Fortunately, the area near my hotel is not representative. There are several areas full of restaurants and street life. One afternoon, we had lunch in a lakeside restaurant in the .jpg)
The 
I had arrived during a particularly clear interlude (as shows in many of my pictures). But the thicker air soon settled back in. Nearby buildings nearly disappeared in the haze. The sun faded into a diffuse, low wattage glimmer behind a blanket of smog.
Near one of the ornate pavilions (pictured to the left), a group of traditional musicians attracted my attention. I sat and listened to them for a long time. Their music sounded strange to my ears; there seemed to be no rhythm or melody, at least that I could discern. The singing sounded, to me, tuneless and off-key. I found the music strange and absolutely fascinating. I would have liked to have spoken to the musicians, to know more about their music and their instruments. But as it was, I hesitated even to take their pictures for fear of being intrusive or causing offense.
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On first encounter, three impressions immediately emerge regarding the throngs of pedestrians walking along O’Connell Street, the main thoroughfare in Dublin’s central district: first, everyone is incredibly young; second, they are a surprisingly diverse crowd; and third, there are a hell of a lot of babies in strollers everywhere you look.
civilize and improve her Irish subjects. I can’t say for sure what the campus might be like under ordinary conditions, but on a sunny Spring day with temperatures in the 70s, its lawns are covered with students enjoying the warmth in a way you might expect, say, on a college campus in South Carolina.
Although there is much to be said for a pub and a proper pint, on a warm spring day Dublin’s outlying areas offer an even more alluring attraction. Thirty minutes north of the city on the DASH commuter rail line is the seaside village of 
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The 
those days marine risks were underwritten at the shop’s stalls and booths. The boxes today include sleek computer screens, and they often display the names of large multinational insurance organizations. Just the same, according to time-honored practices, the brokers still queue up at the boxes to present their client’s risks and much of the business is still transacted face-to-face. Even if these processes are vestigial, they represent both a civilized tradition and a time-tested way to transact insurance business.
Notwithstanding the building’s ultramodern décor and the omnipresence of electronic technology, the building as an insurance market retains important artifacts reflecting its long history and embodying many of its traditions. The 
The D&O Diary is on assignment in the British Isles this week, with the first stop on the itinerary in London. The London sojourn represented a return engagement to a familiar and favorite place, both for myself and for my 18 year-old son, who accompanied me.
as a beautiful city. On a sunny spring day with the spring flowers in bloom and flowering trees in blossom, the city is stunning. In defiance of all expectation about London weather, we enjoyed several remarkable days of warm sunshine. We later learned that the weather set records in many places in Britain.
There are indeed four lions in Trafalgar Square, at the base of the Nelson Monument, but at least on the occasions when I have been there, the lions have not been engaged in any particularly noteworthy activities. There is also a large digital clock near the steps to the National Gallery that is displaying a countdown to the summer Olympics. Even though the games begin in July, the clock was the only active reference to the Olympics we noticed.
Upon waking to a sunny and warm morning, we declared Saturday to be Market Day. We first went to the 
After a short distance, the market street intersects the 
Sunday was a full British day, in a variety of ways. First, we attended the worship service at 
With a relatively recent purchase of an iPad 2, I have made a quantum leap in technology utilization. The iPad is not only a brilliant piece of technology in and of itself, but it is also a platform for a host of brilliant applications. Indeed, there are so many nifty applications that using my iPad has become a process of continuing discovery as I encounter new ways of using the device on virtually a daily basis.
Did you go to bed in the Seventh Inning when Adrian Beltre and Nelson Cruz hit back to back jacks for the Rangers and the Rangers also added an additional insurance run to go up 7-4 in the Seventh Inning?
I inhabit a world in which hotels loom unfortunately large. During many work weeks, I spend more nights in hotels than at home. Many of these hotel nights involve nondescript rooms in cookie-cutter chain hotels. These chain hotels are neither good nor bad, merely boring. They are so lacking in distinctiveness that often I am unable even to remember where I am when I first wake.
The D&O Diary is on assignment in Europe this week. The first stop on the Continental itinerary was Amsterdam.I had never been to Amsterdam before, but I have traveled to Northern Europe quite a bit, so when I packed I made sure to load up on sweatshirts and a fleece. And an umbrella. As it turned out, I could have used some shorts and a tee shirt. The weather was absolutely gorgeous, with temperatures in the upper 70s and not a cloud in the sky. I don’t know what Amsterdam is like the rest of the year, but in early October it is spectacular.
people. Bicycles are the prevailing physical force and predominant spirit. The bicyclists ride without regard for public order or their personal safety. The Dutch bicyclists seem to think that a bike ride is a good time to catch up with their friends, as almost every cyclist is talking on their cell phone. Or texting, using both hands. The prize-winning multitasking bicyclist I saw was a young mother, riding along with her kid straddling the back fender, talking on her cell phone and smoking. And wearing sun glasses. At night.
was so glorious that I spent the better part of Saturday afternoon in
There are innumerable cross streets spanning the canals on gently curving bridges. At many of the corners where the cross streets and the canals meet there are cafes and coffee shops. If I could drop one moment in amber and have it with me always to warm my spirits when the January winds howl, it would be 4 o’clock on Saturday at a sidewalk café overlooking the 
went out to the waterfront and rode along the docklands. What I found there was as deeply disturbing as the Canal District was uplifting. Over the past several years, developers have invested hundreds of millions of euros building a new residential area along the shipping canal. The area, called 
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Three minutes. That’s how long it was between the dramatic moment that clutch Baltimore Oriole hitter Robert Andino drove in Nolan Reimold from second base, bringing about the victory of the Baltimore Orioles over the hapless Boston Red Sox, and the dramatic moment just seconds later that Evan Longorio hit a home run to push the Tampa Bay Rays to victory over the New York Yankees. In that small interval, the Red Sox were knocked out of the playoffs and Tampa Bay secured their spot in the post season.
In a few days I will celebrate the fifth anniversary of the day I published my first post on this blog. I had no idea what was going to follow after that first post, but having come so far after so long, it seemed appropriate on this occasion to reflect on the enterprise. It has been an interesting, unexpected, and ultimately rewarding experience.
One of the great things about having this blog is that it has brought me into contact with a wide variety of interesting people, among them other bloggers, journalists, academics and writers. Among the interesting people I have come to know is Susan Beck, who is not only a Senior Writer for 
From time to time, readers suggest blog topics to me. I am always interested in the range of topics suggested. Very late at night (or perhaps early in the morning) in the bar at the recent PLUS International Conference in San Antonio, a loyal reader whom I had only just met for the first time suggested that I write a blog post about my favorite business books. Unsurprisingly, it seemed like a good idea then. Surprisingly, it still seemed like a good idea later.
The LexisNexis Top 25 Business Law Blogs of 2010, as selected by the members of the LexisNexis business law communities, have been announced, and I am pleased and honored to discover that The D&O Diary is among this year’s designees. The LexisNexis announcement, including the list of the 2010 Top 25 Business Law blogs, can be found 
Early in my career when I was doing legal work for London insurers, we communicated with our U.K. clients using 
Twitter: A cross between blogging and instant messaging, 
LinkedIn: 
Facebook: For a long time I was skeptical that Facebook offered anything of value to me. I considered it a place where college kids wasted time and posted career-limiting pictures of themselves doing embarrassing or incriminating things. However, a friend who was for many years a Wall Street media analyst and who now teaches at a local university convinced me that I needed to get on Facebook. Among other things, she told me that that over 20 million of Facebook’s 150 million users are over the age of 30, and that the over 30 crowd is by far Facebook’s fastest growing demographic.
At what point can we declare that the subprime securities lawsuits are not doing particularly well in the courts? It may not yet be time, but there unquestionably are growing numbers of subprime lawsuits that have failed to survive motions to dismiss, at least as a preliminary matter.
After nearly two years publishing at its original site on Blogger, The D & O Diary is proud to move into its new home on LexBlog. I hope that all of my readers will welcome and enjoy the new site’s features. The new site should be easier to navigate, and has some added functionality, such as the ability to print individual posts in a printer friendly format (use the little printer icon at the bottom of the post), and the ease of locating popular posts in the (soon to be populated) "Posts of interest" function in the right hand column. 
