Intrigued by the barrage of commercials for Nest smart thermostat, I have been testing smart home devices for the past four weeks. It has been a journey, and I finally tried installing the last of the devices on my list: the Yale Z-wave smart lock. Tried and failed, I should say. Below are some notes on my travels in smart home land. Please note that I am not a paid reviewer. All devices I tested were carefully researched by me using public sources, and purchased directly by me on amazon.com. Any external advice I received is explicitly noted.

1. Recency buzz: The concept of the smart home is not a modern year phenomenon. It is not even a modern decade phenomenon. Insteon and other companies have been making connected switches to control your lights, shades, and other household items for several decades. For a good example of an old-timey on/off switch that works by remote control, try the Etekcity ZAP (about $20 for a 3-switch pack with pre-paired remote, amazon.com). It lets you control three outlet switches (and whatever you have plugged into them) via a small remote control. It is completely self-sufficient and does not require a wireless network or hub of any kind. As such it is a great way to try out the smart home experience without doing any other groundwork.

What is modern about today’s smart home devices is the network that is required used to do the controlling. Nowadays, the broad platform of choice is the wireless home network (“WiFi”), and the wireless smart home platform added on top of your WiFi can speak one or more of several languages: zigbee, Z-wave, Bluetooth, and so forth.

2. Platform selection: While the WiFi platform is now standard just about anywhere, the smart home platform is far from it. So one of the first challenges I encountered was deciding which platform to purchase. I ended up choosing SmartThings ($100, amazon.com; or $200 starter kit), which speaks zigbee as well as Z-wave — as a hedge against a future where (1) one or another language falls out of favor with major manufacturers, resulting in (2) obsolescence of platforms that don’t speak the prevailing language, and (3) terminated development of the accessories and devices that enable the smart home network to grow. Plus, SmartThings was recently acquired by Samsung, so I figured that was a decent sign that the startup would not run out of money. Finally, the SmartThings app is rated highly by the hardcore smart home aficionados that have come before me in this journey.

Side note: Many people compare the developmental path of smart home networks to the historical battle of beta vs. VHS, wherein the technically inferior VHS won out due to industry forces (before losing to DVD). I think it might be like that OR CDMA vs. GSM, where both exist, somewhat uncomfortably.

3. Devices and accessories (aka the cool part): By far, the best part of the whole journey is the satisfaction that comes when I add a new device to my SmartThings network, and it works. It is a simply magical feeling. “And it works” is the important part, though. Sometimes the new thing doesn’t work, and that can spell lots of wasted time and frustration. The worst offender so far has been Yale, whose z-wave smart lock is well reviewed, and positively, on amazon.com. I received what turned out to be a physically defective product, but there was no way I could determine that without knowing what a sound product looked like. So between Yale’s slow email response times and a service organization that only operates on East Coast time, it took THREE WEEKS to get a response. And a crappy one at that — the last response I got from them was written in a form of English I haven’t learned yet. I finally gave up and Amazon.com was quick to take back the broken lock and send me a fresh one in two days. (I also complained about the experience on Twitter, which got a prompt response from @YaleRealLiving. Too little too late. And, maybe the social media help desk should take over the email and phone desks too?)

Alas the story ends poorly. It turns out that the hole for the deadbolt on my door is too small to accommodate the smart lock. So I am sending the replacement lock back to Amazon.com too. I did get it to connect to SmartThings, and had the magical experience of seeing the lock turn and unturn based on a command from my smartphone. But one of the aspects of smart home-ification that feels key to the experience is that I can set things up myself, without procuring power tools or hiring experts. The smart lock definitely required a locksmith, as I was not about to drill a large hole in my door. The lesson here is that smart devices can only show off their smarts AFTER you install them, and the same challenges in physical installation apply for both smart and dumb devices alike. I hear that the August smart lock offers a different — perhaps easier? — experience. Maybe I will try it after I get over feeling deflated from wrestling with the Yale lock.

4. Winners! Sorry to put the complaint before the plaudits. I feel it is useful to embark on the journey with the cold hard facts. As I understand it, the Nest learning thermostat has similar issues as my door lock did — you need an electrician in many if not most cases. But the commercial makes it seem so easy! So new and desirable! So, caveat emptor. And, without further ado here are the winners:

– Aeon Labs Z-wave Smart Energy Switch ($30, amazon.com): This is a digital and physical switch for whatever you plug into one end. The other end plugs into your power source. I have my TV/speaker/Xbox power strip plugged into it, so that I can turn on the power strip while sitting on my couch. TVs are notoriously greedy consumers of electricity even when turned off, notes my energy expert friend who runs Carbon Lighthouse. To ward off the resulting “phantom load,” I use a switch to turn on the power strip only when I want to turn on the TV. At $30 on Amazon.com, the switch is the lowest priced that I found, and it both pairs and responds well to the SmartThings app. No more bending down to hit the power strip switch. It stays in the on position, and I use my Aeon switch to feed or cut power to/from it.

– GE Link Wireless A19 Smart LED: Controlling my lights digitally was a big attraction for me. Going around to switch off several lights before going to bed was a routine I could do without. Also, there was a prior structural problem I wanted to address, which is that my wall switches do not always control the wall outlets that my lamps are plugged into. Having smart light bulbs means I don’t care where my lamps are plugged, or whether there is a wall switch associated with an outlet. I can simply control the bulbs themselves. I tried both these and the Philips Hue bulbs, and I prefer these. First, they are $15 each instead of $60 (yes $60). The Hue does emit different colors on demand, which is cool, but it really performs best when it is connected to its OWN hub. (Another hub? No thank you.) When on SmartThings, the Hues take two attempts each to turn on or off, even with a firmware upgrade. (More on the firmware upgrade experience later.)

The GE bulb is much more responsive than the Hue. But it does have some frustrating bouts of unresponsiveness that are well documented in the SmartThings Community forum. While cumbersome to do the following, unpairing it from the SmartThings hub, power cycling it to reset it, and then re-adding it does work. I have also used the Aeon Labs switches to control the power into my lamps, using regular CFL or incandescent bulbs. From a reliability perspective, I prefer the switch method. However, I don’t have this option with bathroom lights so I put up with the occasional fritzing of the GE Link bulbs.

– SmartThings starter kit: The $199 starter kit came with the hub, a multisenser (a motion detector bundled with temperature and humidity sensers), a door open/close senser, and a presence fob. The kit is like a basic box of Legos: it’s a nice set of components to start playing with if you want to do more than control your switches and lights per the above. In particular, the multisenser ($50, amazon.com if purchased separately) is pretty cool. It lets me use motion as a way to trigger on the lights I have set up on my SmartThings network. For instance, my partner frequently forgets to turn off his closet light. We now have a GE Link bulb as the closet light, and a motion senser to turn it on when he walks in. A minute after no motion is detected, the light turns itself off. At $65 ($50 for the senser, $15 for the bulb) this solution is probably more costly than the occasional waste of keeping the light on for hours while not in use. What this solution has on the traditional bulb and manual switch is the magical feeling of the automatic light turning on upon your arrival. The feeling is not unlike someone opening the door for you (or the door opening automatically) upon your approach — it is just nice. The door open/close senser offers a similar convenience. You can use it to trigger on a switch, be it a light, set of lights, or another switch. Or, you can use it in the simplest way possible: monitor whether your front door is open or closed, or stays open for longer than x minutes. For me, it is a very basic security system. When the door opens, I get a push notification on my SmartThings app. I can also set the device to send out a text message alerting me to the same. The presence senser scares me a bit, and I will address that shortly.

– Sonos Play:1 ($200, amazon.com): Talk about magical. Adding a speaker to my SmartThings network has turned my home into a Siri like creature that talks to me. There are several Sonos smart apps available on SmartThings, and I have tried two. The first is to announce the weather, based on a triggering event or action. I have mine set to speak tomorrow’s weather forecast for my zip code, after 10pm when motion is detected in my living room. The voice gives a succinct forecast without my having to look it up. Nice! The second function I have set up is to play custom messages based on triggering events. When we turn off the TV switch, the Sonos now informs us, “A TV needs to sleep sometimes” — a remark that inspires giggles every time. I also set up a farewell message to air when the front door is first opened each day. This audible part of the smart home experience is really fun. I don’t know what else I want the Sonos to say, but I am on the lookout. Beyond being my home’s audible voice, the Sonos also serves as an excellent portable speaker AND manager of our music. The free Sonos app has the ability to pull tunes from both iTunes and Spotify (and others) into a seamless music stream, and unlike iTunes, allows for the queuing of tracks. It is a deceptively simple and magical device + music software, and I would recommend the Play:1 regardless of whether or not you intend to set up a smart home network. Thanks to consumer electronics DIYer MBD, il miglior fabbro, for tipping me off to the Sonos line of products. I gotta save up my pocket change to try more.

5. Yikes!!! As hinted above, I had a couple of moments when I wondered if I should shut down my entire SmartThings network. While struggling to get my Philips Hue bulbs to respond to my SmartThings app commands, I emailed the SmartThings help desk (which is wonderfully responsive, clear, and thorough) to confirm that my firmware was the most current, and to receive an update if needed. (I later learned that I could have done this myself through my app, but this way was far more instructive as to the security issues of playing with a smart home setup.) Within an hour, I got a reply that not only was my firmware not up to date, but that the friendly agent had gone ahead and pushed out an update. So far so good — I also have a cable TV provider that can do virtual diagnostics and push upgrades, so that didn’t seem awry. Then, he said (paraphrased), “I see you have your Hue bulbs set up directly on SmartThings. I recommend using the Philips hub for improved performance.”

Yikes!!! In that moment, I realized that those very helpful folks could look into my entire smart home setup. That is a lot of information about my home, sitting out in — who knows where the help desk is located or who has access to it. Information is power. Used to help improve my setup, like the firmware upgrade, sharing intimate details about my home setup can be helpful to me. But in the hands of someone who wants to help themselves at my cost — well, the same information could be used to determine whether or not anyone is home in the horror story of the social media- or smart home-qualified empty-home burglary. Knowing this, I felt torn. Once I produce the information, I don’t really have control over where it goes. Heck, I don’t even have control over who gets a hold of my credit card number these days (here’s looking at you, Target, Home Depot, Neiman Marcus, Bank of America, and others)!

Based on this awareness, I decided to definitely not use the presence senser, which can hang on a key chain or bag and let your home know when you are home. The presence senser lets you set up convenient actions like triggering the TV or Sonos to turn on automatically when you arrive, and turn off when you leave. I then wondered whether to further limit my exposure by removing the motion senser from the living room, or to take down the SmartThings network entirely. I have not done either yet, mostly because I live in a high rise condo building with full time security, thereby limiting my exposure to the broader elements. But I may change my mind. I feel a little queasy thinking about the what ifs.

—

Was all this “worth it”? Depends on what you mean. The journey was tremendously educational, both technically and practically. I am inclined to comment, offhand, that:

1. There is no such thing as pure progress in the smart home game. I gained convenience and my home got ‘cooler,’ but I gave away a lot of information in exchange.

2. Just because a household device is “smart” does not mean it is easier to install. Whatever you would normally hire an expert for, you will likely need or at least have on call when installing a smart home version of it. I hobbled through a smart wall switch installation with the help of a YouTube crash course on electricity, but it definitely felt like traipsing through the jungle. While I took all known precautions, I was concerned about electrocuting myself and others. Moreover, my handiwork certainly does not compare to an expert’s wisdom of years and practiced hands.

3. There is a long way to go before prime time. I am a pretty experienced user of consumer electronics. I do my own set up of smart TVs, speakers, printers, repeaters, etc. I regularly restore my own laptop to factory settings and re-add everything to improve performance. I write a little html and C, and can probably still debug my old VB Script in Excel. So, technical enough, but not an engineer by any means. I am more of a logician, but after a while, I did tire of the incessant If This Then That (IFTTT) logic that is required to properly set up each device on the smart home network. IFTTT is a form of simple programming, and not difficult to execute. But to make all your devices work as expected, you have to specifically instruct them. Let’s say you want to set up the following: “If I come home between the hours of 6am and 10am, on Monday, Wednesday, or Friday, make the Sonos play Gershwin and turn on the kitchen light.” First, you have to think through all that so you can express it. Then you have to figure out how to input the right selections on the SmartThings app, so your IFTTT command executes properly. Both halves of that can be headache-inducing. Bottom line: You can’t just plug in smart home devices and expect them to work, like you plug in a toaster or coffee maker. After a while, I wanted my smart things to just work.

And honestly, some of what goes on in the SmartThings community forums makes my mouth hang open. Not that I don’t think I can figure out how to fiddle with the firmware on my hub or write my own apps. But consumer electronics are sold ready to perform the likely or most desirable use cases, not ready to be programmed by the consumer to do so. As others have remarked, this field is still very much a land of rich hobbyists.

Credit to ARUP/Tim Griffith

In May, I attended the five year reunion of my MBA graduating class. If the two years we all spent on our degrees were an investment in our personal and professional potential, then five years out gives a good look at the range of outcomes. And the outcomes were unbelievably broad. There were:

• Personal changes like relocation, buying and selling homes, dating and marriage and divorce, having a baby and having another, departures of loved ones, gains and losses in health — the list goes on
• Professional outcomes, whether new roles and companies, starting or ending a new venture, all at various frequencies — or even no change
• Physical changes too, with folks taking on the palpable look and feel of where they are in their personal and professional lives: more serious, less irreverent, more confident, less uncertain, what have you, and the years being kinder to some than others.

The permutations that happened over five years were simply stunning.

—

I was recently asked to represent my summary observations from reunion to some current second-year students who hope to look ahead a bit to their post-grad lives. I think their question deserved a better answer than the searching, wandering one I gave. So I’d like to try again. Here is what I think should “matter most” to people who are graduating from a top MBA program and considering what is next. I rarely articulate my perspectives in terms of “should,” but I feel fairly strongly about these and will do so here.

First, here are two assumptions I make:

• You are ambitious, smart, and capable. You wouldn’t be where you are otherwise. Maybe the people around you also fit this description, and you feel comparatively less qualified. Pish posh. You deserve the distinction equally. Don’t second guess yourself.
• You intend to unleash your ambition, smarts, and capable self upon your life and career. This is critical. You have to want it, whatever it may be. Here, I assume that you want to have a rockstar career (and life!), whatever form it takes.

Assuming these are true, here are the top two attributes you should look for in your opening act post MBA:

1. Meaningful extensions of your core skills and experience. The MBA was classroom learning (for the most part); the post-MBA is the practicum. Case-based learning provides simulations of well-stylized business decisions that actually happened in ways that were far messier than able to be retold in a 10-page case with 5 neat exhibits. Real business stories don’t usually unfold the neat way they are narrated in cases. The judgment critical to being a good manager has to do with what kind of information should be an ‘exhibit,’ and how to get at that data so you can make some decisions around it. (“What matters most and why.”)

   You’re great at stuff already. You proved it in numerous ways to earn your spot in b-school, and your recommenders went to bat for you too. People believe in you. And now it’s time to take on some things that you haven’t exactly proven you’re great at — yet. You know best what ways you must grow in order to become like the alums or leaders you most admire and aspire toward. Those gaps are what you should endeavor to fill, and the bigger the gap, the better the opportunity to grow. If the thing you’re considering has you a little scared, that’s probably a good sign that the challenge is meaningful.

2. Adding your talent and energy to a team that can win. Unless you have an overriding commitment to a particular industry, region, or firm, the most important filter in your decision is whether the team you’re about to join can win. I’ve heard a variant of this idea expressed before, but in a way that did not resonate: “It doesn’t matter what you do after business school; just find a company that is growing and take any job.” It does matter what you do; moreover, taking any job in any growing company sounds so devoid of passion.

   Which brings us to the maddening question of what you are passionate about. Like asking a child what s/he wants to be when s/he grows up, the notion of professional passion lays a cognitive trap. For children, the answer comes back as people they are familiar with: teacher, fireman, grocery store clerk. For MBAs, the answer comes back as industries that are lucrative, trendy, or generally known: private equity, cleantech (although last I heard it is now sustainable farming), or whatever industry we came from (for me it was restaurants). I respectfully submit that unless you already have it, passion per industry or job is a search not worth conducting.

   What I think matters most to the post-MBA experience is getting a taste for winning at the management level, regardless of industry, location, or company. Most of us who enter into elite MBA programs are generalists in the sense that we could be great at a lot of things, if only we chose to do them. So why restrict yourself along those lines? Granted it can be convenient to look for what’s next by sector or by geography, because that is how the recruiting world is organized. But in going for your MBA, you took a non-linear jump in your career; why not take a non-linear leap in your departure too? Much like a seat on a top MBA roster, a spot on a winning team is a very nice get.

   Now here’s the magical part: Winning teams tend to foster passion. A passion for success and excellence is easy to embrace; instead of looking for an industry or job to be passionate about, why not let passion suffuse the results you help create? And then take your win and go make another win? A track record of winning makes for a great career. So find some winning teams and join the one you like best. Then work your heart out to make some wins.

My conclusion across all the permutations of personal, professional, and physical lives among my classmates is thus: winning is a great look on anyone and transfers well across industries, locations, and personal choices. In your post-MBA, go get some stretch experiences and make some good wins. You’ll find your passions there.

When I started my MBA at Stanford in 2007, the typical career paths leading into and out of business school — consultant (or professional services), operator, and investor — seemed largely equal. A matter of taste more than anything else. Coming from a professional services role within an operating company that had public shareholders as investors, I wanted to parlay my MBA into trying my hand at being an operator or investor. More precisely, I figured I could become a successful operator, and then build toward being a successful investor.

Professional services career paths often lead into MBA programs, and I think they are great ways to transition out of college and into “business.” I can think of few more stimulating paths that pay as well, and none that provide better training on business operations and market economics. For me, the professional services path started at a top business school, where I researched cases and wrote them up for class consumption. The job led to a consulting-y role at a publicly-traded restaurant company, where I did project management and research to support the executive team. Working there made me really want to be an executive (loosely, an “operator”).

At the time, my reasoning was that the operator created value in companies in a direct manner, while what I did in support of real operators impacted business results indirectly. In retail, we say that nothing happens in the business until a cashier rings up a sale. I wanted to be on the side that figured out how to ring up more sales and better sales. As I entered business school as a student, I was determined to be one step closer to the action, rather than staying on the side of those supporting the people who took the actions.

As I look back, my preference was less in wanting to be a part of the action, and more in wanting to direct the action. In polite company, girls aren’t supposed to want to be in charge. But that desire is an important driver of horsepower in operating leadership. When things fall into a poor pattern, it is tempting and easy to capitulate or to blame circumstances (the people, the industry, the competitors, the climate, what have you). One must have a certain drive to take the responsibility for results regardless of what all is going on and lead the charge in getting teams out of ruts, so that the pattern is growth and success rather than stagnation. These ruts happen frequently in the normal cycle of businesses, so a healthy sense of take-chargeness is useful to have.

This is something I learned to appreciate only after becoming an operator — a Co-CEO to be precise. Streaks and ruts are part of my job, and what I am responsible for managing.

When I was writing business cases, I had some satisfaction in interviewing the top eight or ten executives of a company, interweaving their stories into a cogent whole, and publishing it as curriculum. Watching my work being taught was the icing on the cake, especially if the inaugural teaching went well. I drove the work product, and the feeling of winning was both palpable and clear cut. If I kept winning, I could keep the streak going.

As Co-CEO, these clear cut moments of satisfaction are rare. They happen when we report a strong month, or show growth in a key metric that the team has been working hard to improve. But I don’t personally drive this success the way I used to drive my cases. The nature of operating companies is that the work production is shared, so the wins are shared.

Shared wins feel great — they imbue a magical esprit de corps upon the whole team. They can also lack a certainty around attribution and ownership, as it is tricky to figure out who did exactly what and to what extent to drive the win. In all cases, I know it wasn’t me, so much as it was the team. As such, that feeling of personal ownership that I felt as a casewriter and even as an ‘assistant to-‘ has been replaced by a necessary trust of the team.

What I’ve learned is that winning in previous professional services roles was about my doing my work well. Winning as an executive-operator is about helping our team do its work well: defining roles, setting goals and rewards, providing coaching and feedback, celebrating successes (and mourning losses) — in a somewhat cyclical, non-linear fashion. For just as soon as we report a winning month or quarter, the next period of measurement has already begun, and it’s time to up our game.

This has been one of the most important shifts in my understanding from professional service provider to operator. My derivative sense of impact in professional services that led me to choose an operating role has, ironically, yielded to a derivative sense of effectiveness. Put another way, I still rely on others to drive the wins. The difference is that instead of doing the analysis on behalf of the executive team, I consume and employ the analysis to help my team produce strong results. The real win in being in charge is in the successful enablement of others — and that has been a powerful lesson.

Like millions of people around the world and especially in my native South Korea, I have been transfixed by the stream of tragic updates to the sunken ferry Sewol off the southwestern coast of Korea, near Jindo. Today’s news is particularly poignant: a pair of high school students were found in a passenger stairwell, each wearing a life jacket. Of the two clasps on each jacket, one was properly fastened to hold the jacket in place; the other was tied to the other jacket, holding the young boy and girl together in their slumber.

I recall the scene from the movie Titanic that brought the most tears to my 16 year old eyes, the first time I watched the epic: Macy’s Department Store co-owner and US Congressman Isidor Straus and his wife Ida, who refused to leave the ship without each other. They are last portrayed in the movie lying side-by-side in a narrow bed as the icy water rises around them.

The story is more complicated than that, as it always is. In this case, the story is decidedly more heroic, while maintaining its loyal and romantic tenor. Here is an excerpt from Isidor Straus’s Wikipedia entry:

Once it was clear Titanic was sinking, Ida refused to leave Isidor and would not get into a lifeboat without him… According to friend and Titanic survivor Colonel Archibald Gracie IV, upon seeing that Ida was refusing to leave her husband, he offered to ask a deck officer if Isidor and Ida could both enter a lifeboat together. Isidor was reported to have told Colonel Gracie in a firm tone: “I will not go before the other men.” Ida insisted her newly hired English maid, Ellen Bird, get into lifeboat #8. She gave Ellen her fur coat stating she would not be needing it. Ida is reported to have said, “I will not be separated from my husband. As we have lived, so will we die, together.” Isidor and Ida were last seen on deck arm in arm. Eyewitnesses described the scene as a “most remarkable exhibition of love and devotion.” Both died on April 15 when the ship sank at 2:20 am.

In sharp contrast is the Sewol captain’s decision on the morning of April 16 to abandon his ship in advance of its sinking and well in advance of his passengers’ escape. He, and other members of the crew, have been labeled “murderers“and “cowards.” Given the tremendous loss of lives, most of them 16 and 17 year old high schoolers on a field trip, it is not hard to understand why. The captain and 22* of his 29 crew who survived the disaster will forever be known as those who went before the children. (*A caveat that some of the 22 who survived were saved while attempting to rescue others from the doomed ship.)

A friend who is a former investment banker observes that people tend to make deals based on fear or greed — or both. As the ship showed signs of a rapid descent into the dark and rapid current (I recall the waters between Jeju Island and Jindo as being particularly frightening, even from the distant perch of my hotel balcony), I imagine the captain’s decision to abandon ship was fueled by similar impulses. If he knew what was at stake — that the entire connected world would put him on trial in the court of public opinion and find him guilty, over and over again — maybe he would have stayed and done the honorable thing: let the children get off before him.

(Or maybe not. In the end, perhaps he would deem preservation of his physical self to be worth the shame of public guilt; I don’t know.)

In the long wake of the disaster, much has been made of whether or not Korea has a law barring captains from abandoning ship before passengers disembark. (For the record, the country apparently does have such a law, and it will likely provide a legal basis for Captain Lee’s prosecution.) Captain Lee himself has suggested that his long tenure and superior navigation skills would have averted the disaster, pointedly placing the blame on his relatively inexperienced twenty-something third mate. To my eye, these discussions divert our global attention from the greater issues of Lee’s humanity and fitness to lead.

Elie Wiesel defines humanity by the presence of gratitude and compassion. In the case of Captain Lee, I find myself fixed on the absence thereof — where one would hope to find a full measure of both, all I see are fear and greed. People who behave as he did roam the earth; they always have. They are often kind-hearted and well-liked. But they should not lead. Because when they choose poorly between gratitude and greed, compassion and fear, we all pay the price as their lives become swiftly defined. Leadership is never satisfied by the technical ability to do the job. It does not necessarily grow with age or experience. It requires vigilant judgment and fierce wisdom, particularly when the waters get rough.

As I mourn the young couple whose discovery hearkens the touching legend of Mr. and Mrs. Straus, so also I mourn the death of Captain Lee: his sterling four-decade reputation of service and kindness were buried last week beneath the enormity of his decision to abandon the children on his ship. And as I continue to obsessively track the excruciating process of recovering and delivering children’s broken bodies to their grieving parents, I’ll close with a short passage about the Strauses:

Isidor Straus’s body was recovered by the cable ship Mackay-Bennett and brought to Halifax, Nova Scotia where it was identified before being shipped to New York. Ida’s body was never found. Isidor and Ida are memorialized on a cenotaph outside the mausoleum with a quote from the Song of Solomon (8:7): “Many waters cannot quench love – neither can the floods drown it.”

What irony — they stayed on that ship and became immortal.