A Thank You letter

There were times this year when I wondered if I was a bit nuts. Not exactly opera-in-the-jungle Fitzcarraldo nuts—but as close as I’d been in a while. I was sending my second kid off to private college. At the same time, I was deferring nearly every other paycheck just to keep a non-profit afloat.

I figured if I were nuts, I must be in good company. My board of directors—an amazingly accomplished, committed, fun, and generous group of people—must be nuts too. And the customers buying nearly 100K worth of granola. Not to mention the grass roots support—individual donors like you—who were giving so generously.

Funding, Entrepreneurship, Rollercoasters, RefugeesKeith CooperFebruary 13, 2015Comment

Pantophobia

This summer, on our annual visit to Cedar Point (a rollercoaster park in Ohio), I rode something called The Gatekeeper (you can virtually ride it here) which turned out to be an ideal apparatus to get better acquainted with my growing fear of heights.

I, honestly, don’t get my fear of heights. Back in junior high, I seriously considered making a career out of getting girls to scream at me by standing at the edge of cliffs or ledges. I once solved a lost key problem and impressed my now wife by scaling a 3-story apartment building and going in the skylight. And enthralling as this fear may be, it doesn’t always pre-register in the cognitive part of my brain, which means I could look at The Gatekeeper, and think, goofily, sure why not. It wasn’t until I was locked in and making the 170 foot initial ascent, that both my body and brain registered an entirely different take on the situation.

Social Ventures, On-the-job training, Rollercoasters, Fear of heightsKeith CooperAugust 26, 2014Comment