Category Archives: Work

What is ice hockey?

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With the Olympics approaching, I got to write a primer on “What Is Hockey?” for the International Ice Hockey Federation.

Hockey – a game of skill, speed, and heart
Games in which players use a club or stick to hit a ball into a goal date all the way back to antiquity. Ancient Greeks and Romans played similar games in Europe, while the Aztecs had their version in the Americas.

The clue to the special nature of ice hockey is in the name. This version of the game is played on a frozen surface, slippery ice, with players wearing sharp blades attached to their boots, as they try to handle a flat puck with a long stick while skating at high speed and avoiding – or delivering – contact with opponents.

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Cash no longer king in Sweden

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Only two percent of financial transactions in Sweden are made in cash. Fitting then that King Gustav Vasa will be replaced by Dag Hammarsköjd in the new 1000-krona bill.

In their hit 2015 two-man comedy show Ägd, Swedish comedians Henrik Schyffert and Fredrik Lindström ran a bit about a Swede walking past a beggar and instead of giving him  or her money, she just pats her pockets and shrugs her shoulders apologetically as if to say she’d give some money, if only she had some cash.

It always got a laugh because it was so easy to relate to. It felt true not only because the citizens of this Scandinavian welfare state have a hard time confronting underprivileged people in person to begin with, but also because nobody in Sweden carries cash with them anymore.

If they can’t pay with a debit or credit card, then surely the seller will accept Swish, an electronic payment solution that connects the users mobile phone number with a bank account and enables quick and secure transactions between consumers.

“Only about two percent of all payments in Sweden are made in cash,” says Jacob de Geer, CEO and co-founder of iZettle, a seven-year-old mobile payments company known for its payment card readers.

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Why be good

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An old man in Indiana named Glenn was once asked at a church meeting about his religion. He replied, “When I do good I feel good, when I do bad I feel bad, that’s my religion.” Now, Glenn’s words of wisdom probably wouldn’t have spread much farther than Indiana if Abraham Lincoln hadn’t heard him speak and later repeated Glenn’s words to describe his own moral compass.

Altruism as a concept isn’t very old. The word itself didn’t exist until 1851 when the French philosopher Auguste Comte coined it based on the Latin word alteri, “others,” but the act of giving may go back to the beginning of time. “When I do good I feel good” is something most of us can relate to.

A good deed does make us feel better. A smile of thanks after you’ve helped a person lift a stroller off a train, or the gratitude in the eyes of a beggar when a few coins land on the bottom of their paper cup, will make you feel like a good person.

And most of us want to be good people. It’s the definition of “good” that varies.

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It’s all good

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Believe it or not, I do remember the moment I read the April 1997 issue of the Rolling Stone magazine. I was traveling on business – if you consider government employees’ travel as business – in Newfoundland in Canada. I had just checked in at my hotel in St. John’s and hadn’t had time to finish reading the article on the plane so fighting off the jetlag, I picked up the magazine again.

And this is what I remember: MTV’s trend watchers said that the next big thing would be “good”. Not just a good thing, but that being good, instead of bad, would be the next megatrend in pop. They said they could see signs of the pendulum going from the dangerous Madonnas, and Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise” towards artists and movies that represented goodness.

I remember it because it surprised me and because I hoped it to be true. Because I considered myself a good guy, a nice guy, and for once, I also wanted that to mean that I was cool as well.

GIcover

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Column: Fear of traveling

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For a fearful person, there can hardly be a worse place than the airport. An airport offers a concentration of people – and fears. There are the crowds, the closed spaces, the impending airplane ride. Public places mean lots of germs and lots of strange people. Foreigners who do not speak your language are everywhere.

For many of us, there is the common fear of buying a cup of coffee and realizing at the register that you do not have enough money and cannot speak the language – and are naked, too.

But mostly, airports are happy places.

Happy landings!

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Almost (Hall of) Famous

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A few months ago, I wrote about the world and people behind the scenes at the Hockey Hall of Fame’s resource center, to be included in the Hockey Hall of Fame Treasures book, which will be out in November. While surfing aimlessly today, I saw that you can already pre-order it.

Do it.

I’ve worked at a few World Championships with Matthew Manor, the photographer who shot the artifacts for the book, and I know that the boy can shoot.

I may post my chapter here a little closer to the launch.

The Montreal edition

Z

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Hey, hey, hey. Here’s a piece I wrote for The Hockey News a while back. It’s about this Swedish kid with a Finnish mother and an Iranian father, and, well, he plays hockey. He’s pretty good, too.

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