Sucking the Marrow

Sucking the Marrow

It’s late in the afternoon, but not so late that the sun is yet setting. My day starts early out here in San Diego. That is especially so on Tuesdays because Wednesday may be Prince Spaghetti Day (for those of you who grew up in or near Lowell, Mass.), but Tuesday is CEO Management Day. It is the day we get everyone together to update ourselves on what everybody is doing to advance our cause. That cause has become easy to explain in these trying times. On the tech side our team of eleven scientists is trying to get us to TRL5 in May and TRL6 in December. That would be Technical Readiness Level 5 and 6 to you and our investment bankers. It is a level of progress that is arbitrarily deemed to be significant enough and far enough ahead of the competition that it makes us worthy of all kinds of investor interest (both strategic and financial). On the other side of the house (generally known in the business world as General & Administrative – G&A) there are four of us who focus on finding money to keep the tech side going. Right now that is focused entirely on finding grant, subsidy and loan funds offered by a combination of the U.S. Government, the U.K. Government and the Scottish Government (with an occasional flirtation with the European Union and several undisclosed Latin American governments).

We are in the Endowment Zone, where the world has gone into voluntary rigor mortis to keep us mere mortals (or the older, less immune of us) out of harm’s way. Every government in the world is trying to insure that their populace keeps their jobs. That may be to do the right thing or it may be to keep unemployment numbers from reaching 50% and to keep the wheels of the economy at least partially on the rails by making sure there is at least a trickle of consumer spending. We straddle the worlds of the United States (where our parent company is domiciled), the U.K. (where our operating company is situated), Scotland (where our labs are positioned), and the E.U (where we have threatened to open another sub-operating subsidiary for our pilot plant). In other words, we cry at the feet of all governments equally, begging for grants and/or subsidized loans. So far the tally over the last two years is $3 million with another million on the hoof. That represents about a third of what we need to operate and continue our progress.

So, while we struggle to make ends meet in the scientific climate-change-busting business, the world seems inclined to allocate more funding to help small companies like ours. Today, somebody sent me a copy of a letter sent to the Secretary of the Treasury, Steven Mnuchin, from Nancy Pelosi. She and a Congressional colleague were writing to specifically petition him on behalf of the venture community making the argument that the procedural guidelines of the new $350 billion CARES Act loans for small business simply must leave room for start-up tech companies such as ours. As I said to my colleagues, anyone who votes red in November had better get out of this business because it seems it takes the Democrats to make sure that innovation continues to have a place in the economy.

Now the sun is starting to set over the Pacific Ocean and the sky will burst forth with all manner of reds and orange on the horizon. The day was a typical Coronavirus WFH day here on the West Coast. That means it started at 5:30am (remember, it’s CEO Management Tuesday) and ran to noon with two fundraising calls (one on Zoom), two managerial calls (one on Zoom), one vendor/partner call and three expert witness calls. naturally there were spreadsheets and emails tossed in, but I measure my days by the number of calls I make and take and the number of pages I write. The expert game also allows me to record a few hours I can bill for the day and that provides a good benchmark for me.

I have promised myself to finish this story before the sun goes down, so I need to get to the point. I watched two things in the last day that have given me pause. The first was Julie and Julia with Amy Adams, Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci. The point of the story finally comes in Julie’s last blog post to Julia where she tells her that she saved her by helping find the joy in life as she defined it, which was cooking. Julia (at least as portrayed by the finest actress of our age, Meryl Streep) is the essence of sucking the marrow out of life. Here was a somewhat awkward and overly tall and large woman who let nothing stop her. She was literally an American in post-war Paris who spoke little French, but loved the butteriness of French cooking. She had unbounded love for a man who gave her what we all deserve, the unconditional support that only comes from love.

The other show was a Netflix series called Unorthodox, which chronicles the journey of a nineteen-year-old ultra-orthodox Jewish young woman who surreptitiously escapes her husband and sect and flees to Berlin to start a new life. From Williamsburg to the center of Euro-liberalism gives quite a backdrop for a unique insiders glimpse of a very secretive anachronistic and female-unfriendly sect in today’s internet-connected world. This is a woman who thinks eating pork will literally make her sick and doesn’t know how an internet search engine works. She is literally a babe in the dark Teutonic woods with reminders of the Holocaust around her at every turn. In the case of Esty, her passion is music and while she knows little of its intricacies, she is certain she wants to know everything about music and wants to suck the marrow out of the soul of the Gods of music.

Naturally, neither young woman’s journey is straight and narrow. One must suffer the loneliness of blogging from home while she works at the 911 reparations agency by day. Esty must learn about modern life and both heal her wounds of youth and simultaneously dodge her searching husband and the Hasidic Head Hunter enlisted to assist him. But their passion sees them through. They find the joy in their lives, the joy in every day.

That is the lesson of sucking the marrow from life. We must each find the joy in whatever we are doing in whatever way we can. I think of that lesson every day. It’s easy in the early morning when the sun in rising in the East over the cactus garden. It is easy in the evening like now when the sunset colors inspire us to notice them and comment to one another. The challenge is to find the joy in the middle of the day when work is at hand or work is done. It is easy to wonder in this time of quarantine what to do with oneself. And then I remember my joys. I am blessed with great enthusiasm for many things. My wife and children are my first order joys. The rest of my family and friends are next. I love my work and I love a challenge of problems to solve. And then there is my writing and my riding. That is as full a life as any man needs. I am blessed with all the marrow I can suck.