I headed to New York Sunday for a quick trip to the National Retail Federation 97th Annual Convention and Expo, a.k.a. Retail’s Big Show.

I mainly went to cruise the show and get info and meet a lot of the exhibitors.

I ended up with a bit of extra time on Tuesday, so I headed down to the World Trade Center Site. I’ve never been. I went on a walking tour with Tribute NYC. These tours are led by people whose lives were profoundly changed by September 11th. Each tour is unique and connects those who want to hear stories with those who want to share them. One thing that surprised me is that 75% of my tour was from Europe, mostly England.

My tour was led by Ruth and by Jack.

Ruth is a lifelong Manhattanite and volunteered extensively during the recovery effort and since then. Jack lost his 32 year old son. His son was a firefighter and ran into those buildings. They think his son made it to around the 40th floor carrying over 100 lbs of gear before the building collapsed. If you ever need a way to tell your kids what true heros are, tell them about firefighters and the like that run towards danger and to their own deaths oftentimes to try and help people and save lives. It’s hard for me to comprehend that.

I couldn’t help but feeling a lot of emotion and sadness by the tragedy of it all. But more than that I was proud, because all over that site, things are being rebuilt. I think that’s very entrepreneurial. New York was knocked down by this tragedy. But the site is alive with activity.

Things have been rebuilt and repaired. Buildings will be built there again.

And the tragedy and the lives lost will be remembered. By the memorials that will be completed on the site yes, but I think more by the fact that great people with great spirit rebuilt what was lost. That’s pretty cool if you ask me.

On or about October 20th I started a little project. I started keeping all of the mail order catalogs we receive at our home. I kept adding to my pile through Dec 31st.

I have a final tally of my roughly 10 week accumulation of catalogs:

- Weight: 80 pounds
- Height: 2 feet

Maybe eCommerce will grow enough that someday this will not be arriving in droves. In the meantime, if you suffer from a similar deluge, I’d highly recommend visiting Catalog Choice and they can help you get the flow shutoff.

And finally, I wonder if I shouldn’t be rooting for eCommerce afterall. Chris Anderson (Editor in Chief of Wired Magazine) makes a very convincing argument that Dead Tree Magazines are actually better for the environment than running a website with the same content. Could the same be true of mail order catalogs versus eCommerce? Maybe instead of using Catalog Choice to opt-out of all these catalogs, I should email e-tailers that I frequent and tell them that due to climate concerns, I’ll no longer frequent their sites for shopping, but if they’re interested and able, I’d be happy to receive their printed catalog.

I listen to this guy and I just get pissed off. Why isn’t this THE ONLY thing the current candidates are talking about? Why doesn’t Congress address this issue until there is a clear solution in place? Every American needs to listen to David Walker and realized our sense of entitlement is way off base, we need to realign our expectations of what our government can and should provide for us, and then we should all march on Washington until our dillweed Politicians pull their heads out and figure something out.

I sort of like his idea of putting them all in jail.

Thanks to Josh for pointing this out.

Scott Shane from Case Western Reserve University recently published The Illusions of Entrepreneurship: The Costly Myths That Entrepreneurs, Investors, and Policy Makers Live By. Here is where you can read a good book summary.

He also has an entrepreneurship quiz related to his book that tries to find out if you understand the reality of entrepreneurship or if you believe the myths. I scored 45% on the quiz. Hey, at least I beat Guy Kawasaki.

I ordered the book off Amazon. My score of 45% definitely shows that I succumb to more of the myths about entrepreneurship rather than the realities.

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Mark Cuban just reposted an article he wrote back in 2005 called The Sport of Business.

If you’re an entrepreneur, or have aspirations to be one, you need to go read it. And then find a way to get your edge.