I must admit that I spend more time these days reading the obituaries. Yes, I know, it’s a sure sign of growing old. But a front page obituary in yesterday’s New York Times particularly caught my eye, “Inventor Whose Pioneer PC Helped Inspire Microsoft Dies.”

The obituary highlighted the life of H. Edward Roberts, a country doctor in rural Cochran, Georgia, who also invented what is regarded by many as the first personal computer in the 1970s – the MITS Altair.

Dr. Roberts may not be a household name for many people outside of this small town in Georgia, but he does mean a lot to two of the richest men in the world, who also happen to be co-founders of the Microsoft Corporation, Bill Gates and Paul Allen.

It was Roberts’s MITS 8800 Altair “microcomputer” that made it on the cover of Popular Electronics magazine in January 1975, which got the attention of a young Mr. Gates and Mr. Allen. The Altair was the “first inexpensive general-purpose microcomputer, a device that could be programmed to do all manner of tasks,” as described by the New York Times.

Gates and Allen were interested in writing software for the Altair. In fact, the lure of the Altair was so strong that Gates dropped out of Harvard and Allen quit his job at Honeywell, and they both moved to Albuquerque, NM — home to Roberts’s small MITS company. And it was there in New Mexico that Gates and Allen founded Microsoft in April 1975, not in Washington State, which they later moved to in 1979.

In 1977, Roberts sold his computer company, later attended medical school, and then moved to rural Georgia where he practiced medicine until he died this past Thursday at the age of 68.

Meanwhile, the programming language that Gates and Allen created for the Altair, called Microsoft BASIC, “was the beginning of what would become the world’s largest software company and would make its founders billionaires many times over.”

But the story doesn’t end here; this is where it gets “personal.”

In January 1985, I walked into a graduate school microcomputer lab at Indiana University, where I met by future husband, who was the lab’s teaching assistant. He showed me the basics: how to turn on the lab’s first-generation IBM microcomputer (running Microsoft’s MS-DOS), how to save data to its 5.25-inch “floppy disk drive,” and he showed me the difference between a “cold boot” and “warm boot.” I guess it was love at first byte.

We were married in 1987, and ironically, years later in 2003, my husband went to work for Microsoft where he still works today.

Our 23rd anniversary was yesterday.

Thank you H. Edward (Ed) Roberts for changing so many lives around the world, and in Cochran, GA — and thank you for helping to change mine. By the way, happy anniversary to my husband, R. Edward (Ed) Ingle.

As a child growing up in the 1960s and early 70s in Tehran, I spent most of my summers vacationing at the Caspian Sea with my family and other relatives.

During the day, my sister, cousins and I would spend hours riding our bikes up and down the seashore and nearby neighborhood streets, soaking up the sun and salt-filled air. In the evenings, we would go to bed early exhausted from the day’s activities, as my parents, aunts and uncles played cards and told stories late into the night. And the kids would get up early the next morning and start it all again.

On many days, we would occupy our time by putting on plays and skits, where our parents served as the audience. I always insisted on being the director, so I could tell the other six or seven kids what to do and say.

It was truly an idyllic time, which now seems very far away on so many levels.

I often think back on my summers at the Caspian Sea, as I did last night as I watched the 82nd Annual Academy Awards show, when they named Kathryn Bigelow as Best Director for her work on “The Hurt Locker,” which also won Best Picture.

Notably, Bigelow is the first woman to win the Oscar’s coveted Best Director award. More notable is that she won it for directing a war movie. Most notable, she won up against a highly competitive field of other gifted directors, one of which included her former husband, James Cameron.

Cameron, who was nominated for his directing work for “Avatar,” is no stranger to this Oscar category, having received the Best Director award for “Titanic” in 1997. But last night was Bigelow’s night, and she deserved every moment of the recognition. In all, “Hurt Locker” took home six Oscars for its gripping depiction of life on the fronts lines of the Iraq War for a U.S. Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team.

A director is responsible for taking the written word of a screenplay and bringing it to life on film, from every camera angle, in how an actor portrays a given role, and how a scene ultimately helps tell the story.

You cannot overstate the importance of the director’s role to a film or a play. More broadly, the same can be said for directing an organization or business. Good directing comes from years of hard work, knowing the business, risk-taking, effective training, learning from mistakes, and learning from other successful directors or leaders.

The best director is one who is able to pull the talent and an award-worthy performance from each team member. Such an idyllic moment will likely lead to your company’s own next blockbuster and plenty of precious memories down the road.

Randolph’s Greenhouses sits on a nondescript stretch of highway in West Tennessee on the outskirts of Jackson. There you’ll find Rita Randolph, one of the country’s top container garden artists at work, running from one greenhouse to another, making her next potted creation or selling a flat of annuals or perennials to a customer.

Fine Gardening magazine recently showcased Randolph’s work in a special edition on container gardens. But now during the hot southern days of late August, Randolph has closed her nursery as she does every year, and has turned her attention to a different type of artistic creation – making concrete garden art. For example, she’s making concrete leaves from impressions of the real thing. Leaves of hosta, elephant ears, banana plants, pipers, and other large-leaf plants cut from her greenhouses serve as real-life molds for her work.

She also conducts classes during August on Saturdays and Sundays for those who would like to learn this special craft. I took one of Randolph’s concrete leaf-making classes yesterday. Mixing the concrete by hand, shaping and working the wet sand to form to perfect foundation for the leaf, and painstakingly applying the concrete one small “patty” at a time over the leaf itself made for laborious and tedious work. It also required an artistic touch and eye to replicate the natural folds and undulations of the plant’s leaf.

I spent almost three hours working on the first phase of a two-foot by three-foot elephant ear leaf impression. I had to leave it there to cure for at least a week before I can pick it up, and then attempt to paint it. So the jury is still out on how my concrete leaf will actually turn out. But the time spent at Randolph’s gave me the opportunity to view her own beautiful concrete leaf creations, in every size and shape, hue and texture.

Her leaf work already rivals some of the best in the country, including those made by famed garden art designers George Little and David Lewis of Bainbridge Island, Washington, whose garden and artwork I saw two years ago on a trip to nearby Seattle.

Randolph estimates she’s already made (or assisted others in making) over 1,000 concrete leaves. That’s a lot of concrete, sand, mixing, and dirt under the fingernails. But dirt under the fingernails is nothing new for Randolph, who has been in and around plants all of her life. Twenty-six years ago, she bought the now 62-year old nursery business from her parents, the source of her passion for plants.

Randolph’s recipe for success as an innovative garden artist is instructive for those of us in other professions. First, distinguish yourself through creativity and an eye for design. Next, you’ll need to work hard – very hard — and get more than a little dirt under your fingernails. And finally, be passionate about what you do. If so, you might just find yourself leaving a good impression on your own clientele.

One of my favorite places is Bryant Park in New York City, named for the American poet, journalist, and New York Evening Post editor – William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878).

Bryant Park is a modern day oasis in the heart of Manhattan situated on a plot of land with a long history in one of the most storied cities in the world. First designated as a public space in 1686 by New York’s colonial Governor, Thomas Dongan, it later served as a crossing for General George Washington and his troops in 1776 as they retreated from the Battle of Long Island. Fifty years later the land served as a potter’s field.

The first park at the site opened in 1847 as Reservoir Park. During the Civil War in the 1860s, the park was used for military drills. In 1884, it was renamed Bryant Park in honor of William Cullen Bryant who had died six years earlier. The park’s nadir was during the 1970s, when it served as home to drug dealers, prostitutes and the homeless. In 1988, it underwent a major renovation and re-opened in 1992 with much acclaim.

Today, Bryant Park is a hub of creativity — home to New York’s celebrated “Fashion Week” and HBO’s “Summer Film Festival.” The park’s vast expanse of green lawn is framed by scores of large, majestic plane trees (i.e., sycamore), descendants of the plane trees found along some of Europe’s most picturesque city streets. Bryant Park is a wonderful place to read a book, sip a cup of coffee, or simply watch humanity pass you by.

It would be difficult to find a more fitting namesake for the park. William Cullen Bryant was a driving force behind the idea of New York’s Central Park, and helped in the creation of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His poetry has been described as “thoughtful and meditative.”

Bryant Park is a showcase for how passion, perseverance, and creativity can transform an ordinary or forgotten space into a special and inspirational place. Let New Lantern help you transform your business into a more creative and productive place – worthy of your company’s name.

Fumiko Toda

Growing up in rural Japan, Fumiko Toda spent many summer days visiting a nearby pond to study the insects, leaves, and stones that lined its banks. She later went on to attend the Kyoto University of Art and Design, and after graduation Fumiko moved to New York City in 2001 to continue to pursue her passion as an artist.

From 2001 to 2007, Fumiko studied art at the National Academy of Design in Manhattan. The Academy (now known as the National Academy Museum & School of Fine Arts) was founded in 1825 to promote American art through exhibitions and education. Today, it houses one of the largest public collections of 19th and 20th century American art in the United States.

Since coming to America, Fumiko, 28, has won numerous awards and grants for her work, which has been showcased in more than two dozen exhibitions in New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Minnesota, Japan and Thailand. She admits that she is “obsessively fascinated with color, texture, textile design, and form, although most of the images and inspiration I find for art, are drawn from my childhood background.”

The Safe-T-Gallery in Brooklyn will be the site of Fumiko’s first major solo exhibition in New York, which will be open to the public from April 23 to May 30. Her show is aptly named “Recent Insects.”

What can a company and its employees learn from a young and promising artist? Success is not a static destination; it requires continuous, thought-provoking training and rigorous practice of one’s craft. Find what inspires you and leverage that inspiration in your work. And, if you’re seeking to create “buzz” with your next product or service, you might try looking at obvious things in a new and less obvious way.

The Phillips Collection is America’s first museum of modern art. It was founded in 1918 and opened to the public in 1921 — eight years before the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, and two decades before Washington’s National Gallery of Art.

Located in the eclectic Dupont Circle area of our nation’s capital, Duncan Phillips (1886-1966) established the museum as a memorial to his father and brother who died, respectively, in 1917 and 1918. The brothers both went to Yale, were very close, and shared an interest in modern art. “Sorrow all but overwhelmed me,” Duncan Phillips later wrote. “Then I turned to my love of painting for the will to live.”

Over the next five decades, Phillips collected a broad representation of both impressionist and modern art – including works from European and American artists. The museum has showcased works of Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Klee, Henri Matisse, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, John Marin, and James Abbott McNeill Whistler.

Today, the Phillips Collection is a model for other museums to follow – giving back to the nation and the DC community through education and outreach to nearly 90,000 children, teachers and families each year. The museum’s programs seek to leverage the “magic of the arts” to inspire creative expression, the development of critical literacy skills, and lifelong learning. Phillips’s upcoming Annual Gala on May 15 raises money to help fund these very worthwhile causes.

The magic of the arts can also transform individuals in the workplace. Inspiration from present-day and past artists can provide a mighty catalyst for more inspired products and services. Putting your employees in creative environments can pay dividends for your company or organization. Learn from innovators like Duncan Phillips who used loss and adversity to break from the pack and turn a passion into a life-changing experience.