Re-Building

Change is inevitable.

Just as today becomes tomorrow, the current state of affairs is fleeting.

One day a nation, however troubled, is standing. The next it is rubble.

One day you are cruising along with a consistent and reliable source of income. The next thing you know, you're idle.

True, these two examples are only superficially similar, but they have something in common regarding recovery: it takes a partner.

When adverse change grips a population or an individual, the first responder of greatest effect is another caring population or person, respectively.

I personally experienced professional upheaval recently in the form of a major client loss - 90% of my income. After slogging through the usual angst, I realized that my business had a partner who would enable me to re-build in a rational, orderly manner ensuring greater stability in the ever-changing future: Linda, my wife and partner of 33 years.

Through the stability afforded by Linda's position as the principal driving force behind technology integration in the curriculum of a large school district, and the reassurance she provided that we were financially OK, I was able to patiently and hopefuully more sustainably rebuild.

As a result, instead of blanketing the landscape with resumes and cut-rate offers of service, I was, and continue to be, able to target my outreach to potential clients who value what I do. I have restored relationships which had lain fallow as the departed "big enchilada" increasingly dominated my capacity. I am well on the way to generating a healthy revenue stream. Best of all I am doing interesting work for good clients. I have my partner to thank.

That's the way it hopefully will be with all of the cities and nations devastated by disasters natural or man-made. If local partners in long-standing step up and provide comfort, reassurance and simply make it possible for those effected to do the hard work of re-building, then vast swaths of humanity will be bound together by a combination of devotion and accomplishment that rogue or rapacious ideologies will be helpless to strain.

Meta Post

As the name implies, this is a post about posts.

Having attended Fresh Dialogue 25: www.DesignBloggingIsChangingEverything.com presented by the NY Chapter of AIGA I gained a fresh appreciation for the blogger as citizen publisher in a discrete space. In this case, that space is design, which is hardly discrete but rather global in reach and impact.

While this blog is a member of the "note to self" genre, the master bloggers who spoke at the Tishman Auditorium at The New School begin each post with the same motivation, but are so self-assured as to the relevance and potentially transformative power of their findings, that they make sure to share.

Somewhere out there is an invisible boundary between the isolated and the ubiquitous, as far as blogging goes. It's kind of like the event horizon associated with a black hole, except instead of things that are outside being drawn in, it's the musings from the core getting pushed out. And once they escape, there is no stopping them.

Perhaps this is an extension of the blogger's ego. If ego has force, then perhaps it imparts to the person's efforts that extra inertia required to break beyond the bounds constraining it's spread. Each of the presenters at the AIGA event projected considerable egos. To do what they do, they must. After all, they are taking it upon themselves to filter the output of that slice of the world they are inspecting, setting aside those examples that they feel possess certain attributes, and sending them back out into the world having conferred special status upon them.

To be sure, the response creates a feedback loop that determines whether or not the effort should be encouraged. But, I bet the folks I saw would likely have moved on to another form of expression had this one not proved so reinforcing.

If you detect a note of envy in my tone, you're right. I do not have the egotistic energy or disciplined drive to stay on track as consistently and fervently as the master bloggers of the world. Maybe I don't need to. Maybe an occasional "note to self" is all I need to record the odd brainstorm or validate my personal views, to myself. Publish.

You Get It From Your Kids

No, not insanity, which you get hereditarily from your kids. I mean culture, if you're lucky. I just had the great pleasure of seeing Bela Fleck and the Original Flecktones last night at the Paramount Center for the Arts in Peekskill, NY.

What is relevant here is not that it was an amazing, inventive display of jazz, blues, techno and bluegrass virtuosity. What is relevant is that I would likely never have heard of the artists were it not for my kids. Back when they were in high school, during the '90s, both became interested in ska, an eclectic genre that pulses in and out of general awareness, as well as related styles. Some of the artists I came to hear about and listen to were Bela Fleck, Medeski, Martin & Wood, the Skatellites, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones and more. I have gravitated toward the first two on this list owing to my preference for jazz and blues.

My interest in their tastes and experiences in popular music is not borne of a need to police their activities, as is so often the case today among "helicopter parents". Rather it is a response to the frustration I felt as a youth with the absolute, principled rejection of the popular music of the time (the '60s) on the part of my parents. Boy, what they missed!

Well, that wasn't going to happen to me, or my kids. I happen to toil in a field where experiencing new stimuli and open-minded awareness of trends are crucial to relevance and survival. You don't have to like it, you just have to acknowledge it, whatever it is. (You may in fact like it!)

As a result, I feel closer to my family and I enjoy more things than I otherwise would. Many of our forebears would reject the new and different out of the need to preserve parental hegemony, or adhere to symbols of "the good old days" associated with generational markers like war and depression. Instead, we should recognize that most trends, attitudes and art forms are part of an unbroken continuum stretching back to our cave-dwelling days. I hope a great many parents, especially the children of the '60s, adopt this approach. If we're remembered for anything, this would be a biggie. (Incidentally, this attribute is even truer of my wife, who has an amazing ability to exchange attitudes and ideas with members of both the younger and older generations.)

So, when I enjoy a rousing evening of incredible music such as last night's show and reflect on how I came to be in attendance, I also experience the warmth of sharing and appreciation for the cultural and intellectual sensibilities of my whole family. More than anything else, that makes me feel strong and important.

The Lady or the Tiger

This is a cop-out of sorts.

Simply, after reading the op-ed by Robert Kaplan in the Times today regarding our options in Afganistan and the consequences of the principle choices, I realized that we are faced with a classic dilemma.

The author of the piece states it better than I possibly could.

Go figure.

That Was Fast

Miss me?

I doubt it, since summer tends to be a blur of active malaise (I just made that up).

Seems like only yesterday that I was writing about the comic antics of the Wasilla Family Palin.

In between, the true summer season was compressed into a two-week period of Dog Days that barely grew past puppy status.

Now, it's back to a preternaturally cool gloom more reminiscent of Scotland.

So what has motivated this entry?

Simply that over time, I accumulate various free associations that require noting lest they be forgotten.

Random Note One:

I have been keeping track of the tendency for people to cling to pet words or phrases uttered by small children, which then enter their personal vernacular.

"Garbage" descriptively mis-pronounced "Go-bage".

"PMS" transformed into a state of being: "PM Mess".

Even a simple case of childlike observance of a familiar noxious experience into a lifelong recollection shared by the whole family, as in "I smell a skunk" becoming "I mehwa kuk" as tiny fingers hold a button nose. That's how it's now pronounced by all who know.

Or, a five-year old chronicling the gustatory odyssey that was a vacation in Florida with a single notation pertaining to each experience, "thar was good food". To his day, that is the highest compliment any establishment can garner in our family.

There are more, but you get the idea. We all do it, or at least we should. You might make a "ginormous" contribution to the language.

Random Note Two:

The coming months should be an interesting test of the "learning from history" and "teaching old dogs new tricks" axioms. If in fact we are beginning to emerge from the chthonic depths of the Great Recession it will be interesting to see if anything has really changed. So far, we have demonstrated our ability to forget the unspeakable amounts of money dumped into bank and insurer coffers to stave off their demise. It's a collective behavior not unlike using the equity in one's house as an ATM to finance groceries. We'll see.

Random Note Three:

What's with baseball teams that fall out of the pennant race pulling star players out of the line-up with "season-ending" injuries? Can't the procedure wait for the off-season? I thought that this was entertainment. For those prices, fans want to see their heroes. Hurt is hurt, but husbanding resources is theft of services. If Broadway stars gave way to understudies with similar aplomb, the Great White way would go dark from lack of attendance.

Hopefully, the next post will come sooner.

Life Imitates Politics

So here's how it must have gone down:

Todd, Sarah and the fam were sitting around the breakfast table enjoying their Canada (that foreign country Sarah has visited on policy fact-finding tours) goose egg and wolf bacon omelets when Bristol asked, "Mom, is it true?"

Sarah: "Is what true, of course you realize that true is the new false according to the national media by that I mean lower 48 or is it 47, so don't waste your life just feeding the idea that your baby is loved any less than that."

Bristol: "That Dad's making you quit."

Sarah: "Not tomorrow, if you ask me." 

Bristol: "I am asking you."

Sarah: "Well as Lady MacBeth wrote in her play, 'Shakespeare', 'If it were done when 'tis done, then t'were well. It were done quickly.', as in, TODAY!"

Bristol: "But you can't, I mean, how are we ever gonna get to see so many cool places and travel around buying stuff that you and Dad never let us have if you ditch your gig?"

Sarah: "Oh, quite the opposite my dear child, sister, child, niece, child, buddy. I'll be cross-crissing every state, from New York to Saskatchewan, bringing the message of do something not what they want if you are a patriotic and then some. You can come too if Dad says yes."

Todd: "Listen up everybody, we just need a little time off to decide if Alaska is really the state it is, or the independent, gun-loving country it should be."

Bristol: "Dad, that's treason!"

Todd: "No, it's a reason without the 't' to take some time off and let those media wolves starve for your Mom's hot copy."

Bristol: "That reminds me of another thing Mrs. Shakespeare wrote on her blog, 'That what we have we prize not to the worth Whiles we enjoy it, but being lack'd and lost, Why, then we rack the value, then we find The virtue that possession would not show us Whiles it was ours.' A priest said that so it must be true."

Todd: "Sounds like gibberish, whatsit supposed to mean?"

Bristol: "Simple, Dad, you don't know what you've got 'till it's gone."

Sarah: "Gone, but certainly not forgotten. Is the baby crying?"

Bristol: "Which one?" 

Obligatory Post

I'm sure this happens to many who start a blog.

It begins with a head full of pressing issues that require comment and critique. (Issues in which those close to the blogger are SURELY interested.)

So you write it down.

Then time does what it inevitably does. It passes. Though events occur (nieces graduated high school, attended U.S. Open, sliced finger with bread knife requiring stitches), trips are taken (Paris) and issues continue to press (economy, Iran), the blogging lapses.

I have chosen randomly from this selection of subjects to illustrate this post. It's just eye candy.

There is a notion in the marketing world these days that centers on the idea of "stickiness". It basically refers to the ability of a suggestion, proposition or behavior to gather a committed following. Books have been written about this, laden with the expected "proprietary" acronyms and principles that govern the phenomenon.

So maybe blogging isn't very sticky. (Always.)

Obviously it is for many, but not like the stickiness of avoiding an open flame with your bare hand, (contrary to myth, it's not about "not minding").

Blogging may be, for some, more like buying that new gadget you have been eying for awhile but could not quite justify. Circumstances align one day and you take the leap. You bring it home, play with it for a few days and then...it sits there.

Perhaps the allure lay in proving to yourself that you like the idea of it, could afford it, and you could make it work. But you don't really need it after all. Not to continue living a meaningful life, anyway.

In the case of blogging, I have found that I do like the idea, though it is largely indistinguishable from a web site or wiki. I can afford it, since all you need to spend is time. Plus, I can make it work which for me is another victory that includes screwing in lightbulbs.

The truth is, I don't need it to be more than a scratch pad. It's more like a "note to self" app. I have found that the only time I create a new entry is when I have something to say to myself (my favorite interlocutor). I might as well just create another Word file. Of course, the blogness enters the picture when vanity and narcissism suggest that I tell the few people who are close to me that the blog even exists, or that I have added to it. There is no rhyme, no reason to the posts. The posts just are.

I suppose in my case blogging is not quite sticky, but it does have a certain tackiness to it, like the floor of a movie house after the Saturday matinees.

After all, I did make sure to enter at least one new post in the month of June.