Byline: By armand limnande section: Section mm; Column 0; T: Men's Fashion Magazine; Pg. 76 Length
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Entrepreneurs mingled with activists, swapping business cards, parading products, ranging from organic juices to photovoltaic backpacks, and trumpeting eco-themed services. The organic wine and spirits flowed. ''What I love about GreenDrinks is that I get to talk to people who aren't all architects; it's like cross-pollinating,'' said Andrew Zumwalt-Hathaway, 38, a sustainable-building consultant with a Norwalk company. He held court at one corner of the bar extolling waterless urinals. Using gel filters instead of flushing water means less bacteria growth and less smell, he said. Darek Shapiro, a Stamford architect and sustainable-energy consultant who ran for mayor of Stamford on the Green Party line, was touting the efforts of Clean Water Action, a nonprofit environmental advocacy group that is lobbying for a bill to support financing and tax breaks for low-income households to better weatherize their homes. ''Instead of the state giving money to people who can't afford to pay their heating bills, the state should cover the cost to better insulate and weatherstrip their homes so their heating bills are affordable,'' Mr. Shapiro said. A newcomer to Fairfield County Green Drinks, Herster Barres, 74, a retired United Nations forestry expert from Mystic, held two seedlings aloft as he maneuvered his way through the crowd. He came to spread his cause, Reforest the Tropics Inc., a climate-change initiative to plant fast-growing trees in Costa Rica to offset carbon emissions. Upstairs in the nightclub, the dance floor was filling up. A younger set of environmentalists, several in army-green coats and T-shirts, swayed as Brian Howard Clark, 28, the Home and Eco-Tips Editor for The Daily Green, a Hearst web magazine, spun vinyl from his vintage collection. And the organic wine flowed on.
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company 1166 of 1231 DOCUMENTS The New York Times
Late Edition - Final SECTION: Section BU; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; THE CHATTER; Pg. 2 LENGTH: 179 words ''All of a sudden, we believed in ourselves.'' James Murphy, founder of Lifes2Good, a marketer of drugstore products, on a new business climate in Ireland that has led to a flowering of entrepreneurship. ''Here at Google if you have a project, you press Send. We won't work that quickly.'' Dr. Larry Brilliant, director of Google.org, the company's philanthropy, which announced that it would spend up to $175 million in its first round of grants and investments over the next three years. ''I lost everything I worked for all my life.'' Jeffrey Evans of Jackson, Ohio, who at 49 was forced to move in with his mother after the town's Harley- Davidson plant shut down and he lost his job. ''Other people fail at this because they don't persevere.'' Thomas Germain, a homeless man who regularly sells books to the Strand Bookstore in Manhattan after sifting through recycling bins. ''I am surprised.'' Derrick Wong, vice president of Wonton Food in Brooklyn, the world's largest fortune cookie maker, on research showing that fortune cookies originally came from Japan.
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company 1167 of 1231 DOCUMENTS The New York Times
Late Edition - Final Delicate Melodies, in Need of a New Home BYLINE: By JAKE MOONEY. More Dispatches: nytimes.com/cityroom SECTION: Section CY; Column 0; The City Weekly Desk; DISPATCHES; Pg. 1 LENGTH: 657 words IF you call Rita Ford Music Boxes on the phone these days, the chances are good that the voice on the other end will belong to Chris Wright, 22, who was born a short time after his father, Gerald, went to work there as a salesman. The elder Mr. Wright, who was playing trumpet in a chamber music quintet, was drawn to the intricate mechanics and delicate melodies of the store's boxes, and he set about learning to repair and restore them as soon as he took the job. A few years later, Gerald Wright, his wife, Nancy, and her parents, Diane and Joseph Tenore, bought the shop from Ms. Ford, who had started her business in 1947 and cultivated prominent customers like Johnny Cash and the king of Saudi Arabia. The new owners kept things more or less the same, selling new boxes and antique ones, simple children's boxes that are almost trinkets, and wooden behemoths that could cost tens of thousands of dollars. Chris Wright practically grew up in the store, and he guides customers smoothly through their orders, sometimes with a finger in his ear if several of the store's boxes are chiming away at once. He has helped out a lot lately because his father has been walking the neighborhood's streets, miles at a time, in search of an empty storefront with affordable rent. The rent at 19 East 65th Street, a storefront near Madison Avenue where Rita Ford moved three decades ago, is rising out of the owners' price range, and a new tenant is scheduled to move in within months. The hunt for a new spot has been complicated because the store relies on a certain kind of customer: one with money and a taste for Old World craftsmanship. The best place to find such people, Gerald Wright believes, is still the Upper East Side. The outcome is a Catch-22, he said Tuesday afternoon. ''If we move to where we can afford to be,'' he said, ''we probably don't have the customers that have been coming.'' Meanwhile, the store's owners assume they are moving somewhere, perhaps to the suburbs to operate an Internet-only business -- though Mr. Wright called that a temporary last resort. Modern technology, he said, can hardly reproduce the magic of opening a music box and hearing tiny steel teeth plucking a carefully tuned comb. Packing and cleaning have begun in earnest in the back room, with its work desk and shelves lined with glues, stains, wire and gears, and in the corner of the store where Mr. Wright keeps ready-made assemblies that play dozens of popular songs, in case a customer wants a particular tune. The little gearboxes are in plastic drawers labeled with song titles from ''A Time for Us'' to ''You've Got a Friend'' by way of ''Brahms's Lullaby,'' ''Greensleeves,'' ''Hava Nagila,'' ''Moon River'' and ''When I Fall in Love.'' There were some customers on Tuesday afternoon, but not too many; selling music boxes is not a volume business. A young Japanese couple admired a bird cage that played a melodious nightingale song. It was on sale for $2,600, Mr. Wright told them -- 20 percent off. Ms. Ford never believed in holding sales when she ran the store, but the latest one has been a success. Soon, though, the couple put down the cage, thanked Mr. Wright politely and left. Chris Wright, meanwhile, was taking a phone order. ''And when is her birthday?'' he said. On the wall nearby was a picture of Ms. Ford presenting a carousel music box to the songwriter Richard Rodgers. The carousels were once the store's signature item. The last one in stock was sold just before Christmas, but Gerald Wright has watched his son, who studied theater design, and detected an ability to build things from scratch, not just restore them. Mr. Wright has thought about producing a new run of the carousels, though obviously, he said, that is all on hold now. ''If this was to continue,'' he said, ''we'd have a carousel maker that could create and make things, and between the two of us, we could keep them working.'' URL: http://www.nytimes.com SUBJECT: RETAILERS (90%); MUSIC (89%); CHILDREN (75%); CLASSICAL MUSIC (73%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (69%); SUBURBS (65%) COMPANY: OLD WORLD BAKERY (53%) PERSON: ABDULLAH BIN ABDUL AZIZ (56%) GEOGRAPHIC: SAUDI ARABIA (71%) LOAD-DATE: January 20, 2008 LANGUAGE: ENGLISH GRAPHIC: PHOTO (PHOTOGRAPH BY SUZANNE DeCHILLO/THE NEW YORK TIMES) PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company 1168 of 1231 DOCUMENTS The New York Times
Late Edition - Final On Africa's Roof Still Crowned With Snow BYLINE: By NEIL MODIE SECTION: Section TR; Column 0; Travel Desk; EXPLORER MOUNT KILIMANJARO; Pg. 5 LENGTH: 2020 words A THICK veil of snow had settled on Kilimanjaro the morning after my group arrived in Tanzania. Over breakfast, we gazed at the peak filling the sky above the palm trees of our hotel courtyard in Moshi, the town closest to the mountain. It was as Hemingway described it: ''as wide as all the world, great, high, and unbelievably white in the sun.'' I had wanted to climb to the roof of Africa before climate change erased its ice fields and the romance of its iconic ''Snows of Kilimanjaro'' image. But as we trudged across the 12,000-foot Shira plateau on Day 2 of our weeklong climb and gazed at the whiteness of the vast, humpbacked summit, I thought maybe I needn't have worried. An up-and-down-and-up traverse of the south face of Kibo, the tallest of the mountain's three volcanic peaks, showed us a panorama of the summit ice cap and fractured tentacles of glacial ice that dangled down gullies dividing the vertical rock faces. And four days later, when we reached 19,340-foot Uhuru, the highest point on Kibo, we beheld snow and ice fields so enormous as to resemble the Arctic. It looked nothing like the photographs of Kibo nearly denuded of ice and snow in the Al Gore documentary ''An Inconvenient Truth.'' Nor did it seem to jibe with the film's narrative: ''Within the decade, there will be no more snows of Kilimanjaro.'' As it turned out, we had simply been lucky. This was the last week of January -- nearly a year ago -- and the middle of the dry season. But several weeks of heavy rain and snow preceded the arrival of our group, 10 mountaineering clients and a professional guide from International Mountain Guides, based near Seattle. That made for a freakishly well-fed snow pack and the classic snowy image portrayed on travel posters, the label of the local Kilimanjaro Premium Lager and the T-shirts hawked in Moshi's tourist bazaars. But to many climate scientists and glaciologists who have probed and measured, the disappearance of the summit's ice fields is inevitable and imminent. Lonnie Thompson, a glaciologist at Ohio State University who has studied Kilimanjaro's ice fields for years, photographed the summit a year to the week, coincidentally, before we were there. He found only a few, isolated snow patches in shaded areas, a drastic difference from what we encountered. Even on the world's highest free-standing volcano, seasonal snow doesn't remain on a peak so close to the Equator. One of our Tanzanian guides, John Mtui, a tall, bespectacled and soft-spoken Chagga -- the people who inhabit Kilimanjaro's southern foothills -- began climbing the mountain as a porter 25 years earlier, when he was 18. ''When I first started climbing, we had big snow, big glaciers,'' Mr. Mtui said. ''The glaciers were bigger and taller than now. And also, the weather changed. We had heavier rain than we have now.'' Like other exotic destinations widely believed to be threatened by degradation from climate change, the mountain's precariousness has become a marketing opportunity. The adventure travel industry sends about 30,000 climbers a year toward Kilimanjaro's summit. Scientific and outdoor magazines mention the imminent loss of the ice fields. So do guide services and outfitters on their Web sites. Our climb leader, Justin Merle, a mellow 6-foot-4 man in his late 20s who has a world-class mountaineering resume, said of the typical adventure-travel article: ''It's like, 'See Kili Before the Snow Is Gone.' That's almost a catchphrase.'' Given Kilimanjaro's snow, glaciers and volcanic upbringing, it didn't look all that different from peaks I've climbed in my native Northwest. From my living room in Seattle, I can gaze at Mount Rainier, which I've climbed a dozen times. Even in the dead of summer, it retains a mantle of ice that makes it seem like a hulking life form. Kilimanjaro is almost unimaginably bigger: nearly a mile higher, it covers 1,250 square miles abutting Kenya. And yet, unlike Rainier, climbing Kilimanjaro required no real mountaineering skills, no ice axes, ropes or crampons, merely strong legs, hearts and lungs for trudging more than three and a half vertical miles above sea level. That, and a supply of Diamox, to fend off altitude sickness. Our approach was on the Machame, the most scenic and second-most heavily traveled -- a distant second -- of the six designated routes to the summit. Even so, our six camps along the way, five on the ascent and one on the descent, were 200-tent metropolises. The most heavily congested approach is the Marangu, called the ''tourist'' or ''Coca-Cola'' route, a reflection of its overcrowded, touristy ambience and the ubiquitous soft drink, which is sold at camps along the way. Our longer, more macho Machame is known as the ''whiskey route.'' The trip to the summit and back down again covered 39 miles. Most of my companions were seasoned hikers and backpackers but had scant mountaineering experience. Two exceptions were Todd Ziegler, an orthopedic surgeon from an Atlanta suburb, and his friend, Julie Nellis, a physical therapist from Atlanta, a diminutive but tireless, multisport athlete and the only woman on the trip. Both had climbed Rainier and major summits in the Sierra Nevada, the Rockies, Mexico and elsewhere. Mr. Merle had already guided expeditions to four of the Seven Summits -- Aconcagua, Everest, McKinley and Vinson Massif in Antarctica. Kilimanjaro was his easiest. We 11 Americans were the pampered tip of a human iceberg that included three Tanzanian guides and 38 porters and cooks, all Chaggas. They cooked and served our meals, boiled our water and carried much of our individual gear along with cook pots, food, our sleeping tents and a walk-in dining tent. As we'd trudge with our day packs up the mountain, the porters -- some in their midteens -- would overtake us while hauling on their backs our duffels containing our sleeping bags and extra clothing, tents and plastic armchairs. ''Jambo,'' they'd murmur, Swahili for ''hello''; it was a polite way of saying, ''Coming through. Step aside.'' We passed through ecological zones of spectacular diversity: equatorial rain forest, followed by misty heath and moors dotted with outsize, otherworldly flora, then alpine high desert and finally the frigid, dry summit zone. It was all on trail, but several steep stretches required grabbing handholds on near-vertical rock. At 5,718 feet at the trailhead Machame Gate, we set out on a muddy track in the rain forest, thick with vines, old-man's-beard and trees perched atop giant above-ground roots. The cloudy sky abruptly gave way to heavy rain, which ceased once we made our way up a misty hogback ridge onto the Shira plateau, covered with giant heathers and sprinkled with glossy volcanic obsidian. As we traversed the plateau, gaining, losing and regaining elevation between 12,300 feet and 15,200 feet, four of us took Mr. Merle's offer to make a side trip to the Lava Tower, a black volcanic plug rising some 300 vertical feet above the plateau, while the others hiked on to the next camp. I get spooked scrambling up even nontechnical vertical rock. But when Mr. Merle asked if any of us wanted to ascend the tower, and Ms. Nellis instantly chirped, ''I want to go,'' the rest of us followed, assisted by Mr. Merle and Mr. Mtui in finding each handhold and foothold. In the moors were the region's most distinctively weird plants: colonnade-like, eight-foot lobelias and clusters of tree-size senecio kilimanjari, or giant groundsels, with clumps of cabbage-shaped leaf clusters atop withered-looking trunks. Kilimanjaro's abundant wildlife was rarely visible. Small snakes and monkeys scurried away from us in the rain forest. Jet-black, white-necked ravens -- sturdy, hatchet-beaked, mean-looking -- uttered guttural croaks as they fought over food scraps at the higher camps. At our highest camp, austere Barafu (ice in Swahili) on a cliff top at 15,200 feet, the only permanent residents were primitive lichens and mosses. From there, starting at midnight with headlamps, we clambered, gulping thin air, up frozen scree the final 4,100 vertical feet to the summit. ''Pole-pole,'' the porters counseled, Swahili for slowly. As if we could do otherwise. On several steep, single-file stretches, we waged elbow and expletive duels with Italian, American and Russian parties trying to crowd past us and other teams who were slowed by traffic jams of climbers above us. Patchy snow covered the upper slopes above approximately 18,500 feet. At dawn, as we reached Stella Point at the lower lip of Kibo's summit crater, the fluted walls of the flat-topped Rebmann Glacier stretched out to our left. Snow blanketed the summit area, a mile and a half wide and hemmed by glaciers. Uhuru, the highest point in all Africa, was a 45-minute slog ahead. From there, we gazed toward Kenya, obscured by clouds, on the mountain's northern flank. In the distance to the southwest rose the volcanic cone of Mount Meru, 15,000 feet. Seven miles to the east, yet still part of the Kilimanjaro massif, was its fanged, eroded, second-highest peak and Africa's third highest, 16,893-foot Mawenzi. (Mount Kenya, about 90 miles north of Nairobi, is No. 2 at 17,058 feet.) All 10 of us reached the summit, even two stragglers fighting altitude sickness. That let International Mountain Guides continue to boast of a 100 percent success rate in getting its Kilimanjaro clients to the top. That flies in the face of the mountain's overall record, thought to be roughly 50 percent failures, mainly on the less acclimatization-friendly Marangu route. After the ascent, we dropped 4,100 feet back down loose scree to Barafu for a brief rest. Then we descended another 5,000 vertical feet, the last hours in a downpour, to muddy Mweka Camp, our final overnight, in the rain forest. There, we beheld a most welcome namesake of the mountain: Kilimanjaro Premium Lager, sold by the Mweka park ranger out of his tiny hut. Descending the final 4,800 feet of elevation to Mweka Gate, we found a clamorous gaggle of local entrepreneurs hustling T-shirts, souvenirs and services. Two dollars bought me an incomparable bargain: a thorough scrubbing, rinsing and wiping of my mud-caked boots, gaiters and trekking poles. Back at the Keys Hotel in Moshi that night, the local lager was the official beverage of our victory celebration. On its label, at least, Kilimanjaro's snows would never disappear. IF YOU GO Kilimanjaro has two main climbing seasons: January through February and mid-June through mid-October, typically the most stable weather periods. The mountain has six established routes to the summit, some of them demanding mountaineering routes. The most heavily used trekking route is the Marangu, but other routes take longer to reach the summit and allow for more gradual acclimatization. Numerous adventure travel companies in the United States and abroad offer guided climbs of Kilimanjaro. International Mountain Guides (360-569-2609; www.mountainguides.com), which has led treks to the summit since 1989, takes the Machame route. There are a 7-day climb for $3,600 and a 15-day trip for $4,975 that includes a wildlife safari to the Ngorongoro Crater and the Serengeti Plain. Prices include park fees and in-country travel. Alpine Ascents International (206-378-1927; www.alpineascents.com) has scheduled 2008 winter climbs at about $5,600, via Machame and including a safari in a 15-day trip. There are climb-only ($4,700) and safari-only ($2,500) options. Rainier Mountaineering (888-892-5462 or 360-569-2227; www.rmiguides.com) offers a 13-day climb via the Machame route and a safari for $4,895 or a 9-day climb-only trip for $3,495. Mountain Travel Sobek (888-687-6235 or 510-594-6000; www.mtsobek.com) takes trekkers on a less traveled route, the Rongai, to Kilimanjaro's summit in a 14-day trip that includes a wildlife safari and a stay on Kenya's coast. Prices start at $5,995 plus $1,050 for park fees and $300 for in-country airfare, or a 10-day climb-only option for $3,995 plus $975 for park fees and $200 for in-country airfare.
One of Kilimanjaro's rocky trails. Despite the heights, climbing the mountain does not require technical skills. (PHOTOGRAPH BY TOM NORRING) (pg. TR11) MAP (pg. TR11) Map of Mt. Kilimanjaro. PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company 1169 of 1231 DOCUMENTS The New York Times
Late Edition - Final Bottom Line on Doing Good BYLINE: By PAUL B. BROWN SECTION: Section C; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; WHAT'S OFFLINE; Pg. 5 LENGTH: 619 words ''IT'S alluring and very much in vogue to connect social responsibility with profitability,'' an article in The Harvard BusinessReview begins. ''If you can make a business case for positive social action, everybody wins -- employees, shareholders and society at large.'' That, of course, leads to the question: Is there such a link? The issue has been studied to death. And after reviewing a huge number of the studies, the writers say, the answer is that if there is a link, it is ''not a strong one.'' Joshua D. Margolis of Harvard Business School and Hillary Anger Elfenbein of the University of California, Berkeley, say they analyzed 167 studies conducted in the last 35 years that examined the issue of whether social responsibility leads to increased profitability and found that while it certainly did not hurt -- that is it did not diminish shareholder value -- there was only ''a very small correlation between corporate behavior and good financial results.'' And that minor correlation, they add, could be explained by the fact that companies that have performed well over a long period of time have enough money to contribute positively to society. Conversely, corporate misdeeds, once they become known, do have a significant negative impact on financial performance. So, intriguingly, it is easier to prove the negative in this case. ''Perhaps the easiest way to communicate our findings is to say that only 2 percent of the studies we reviewed showed that managers who dedicate corporate resources to social performance -- taking actions that consider in the interests of society -- impose a direct cost to shareholders,'' they write. ''Companies can do good and do well, even if they don't do well by doing good.'' STAYING PUT For years, senior executives have been worrying about how to capture all the knowledge of their baby boomer employees who are expected to start retiring soon (the oldest of the boomers are now 62). But it appears that older workers are not in any hurry to retire. In fact, they show signs that they will continue working, according to HR magazine, citing figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which show that the number of workers older than 64 is expected to increase by 74 percent from 2004 to 2014. That is ''nine times faster than the number of workers between the ages of 35 to 44,'' the magazine points out. The magazine gives no reason for the growth in older workers. But data suggests that a majority of people in their 60s have not saved enough to retire the way they want. Another explanation could be that most people in their 60s today do not consider themselves to be old. ''Baby boomers represent about one-fifth of the work force and most of senior corporate leadership, according to Novations, a global consulting and training firm,'' the magazine says. EASIER UPGRADE As has been well documented, using frequent-flier miles to obtain an upgrade has become much more difficult since airlines have started to reduce capacity on their domestic routes. One way to increase your chances, writes Julie Moline in Entrepreneur, is: ''Don't fly out of your preferred carrier's hub. There is less competition for upgrades from secondary airports.'' FINAL TAKE Here's one way to (seemingly) gain a dramatic return on your money, courtesy of ''Next Month's Business News'' in Conde Nast's Portfolio. ''In keeping with its philosophy of offering upbeat business news, the Fox Business Network will begin broadcasting Nasdaq quotes from 1999,'' Andy Borowitz writes, with tongue firmly in cheek. In case you have forgotten, the Nasdaq was at 4,069 as 1999 came to an end. It closed at 2, 340.02 on Friday. PAUL B. BROWN Directory: ~hesterj -> Entrepreneur Entrepreneur -> Byline: By richard siklos section: Section C; Column 5; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 1 Length Download 3.51 Mb. Share with your friends:
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