My Amazing Mother
October 27, 2006
Today would have been my mom’s 96th birthday. She passed away in May, a week after Mother’s Day, so it is really with this birthday that the circle of firsts begin.
The first October 27th when we are not celebrating her birthday; the first Thanksgiving without her, the first Christmas without her and then the first Mother’s Day without her and finally, the first anniversary of her death.
This blog post though, is also a first…the first time I am going to try and put all of of my pent up raw feelings into the words that I hope will honor her memory and serve as a reminder to all to tell our loved ones not only that we love them, but even more…what they mean to our lives.
One day, they will simply not be there… and they will not be back for us to add a few thoughts or ask a few more questions. Inevitably some things will be overlooked…maybe not even thought of until it is too late.
There are thousands of search results to questions like, “what would you do if you only had a day, a week to live.” I couldn’t really find anything for “what would you do, ask or say if you know your loved one had only a short time to live”. So maybe ask yourself that kind of question…and then share the eulogy with the eulogized. Amazing things could be said.
My Dad had a heart attack and died shortly after my college graduation. There were no goodbyes….here one day, gone the next. As a child, I adored him…he was larger than life and there was nothing he couldn’t do from my perspective. As a disdainful adolescent, I was pretty sure there was nothing that he could do right.
At 22, to quote Mark Twain, I was just beginning to realize {again} that “My father was an amazing man. The older I got, the smarter he got.”
When I found myself suddenly without him, I was not only devastated by the suddenness of the loss but I wished that I had had just one last moment to tell him that I loved him and how proud of him I was and how much I looked up to him… and I could only hope that somehow he knew that all along.
With my mom, I had another 35 years and so we survived my nasty teenage years and my wild twenties and then had loads of grown up good times together. She visited me frequently when I lived in Boston and NYC and we had a ball….we cruised the Caribbean and vacationed in London and she shared my successes with pride. I know this. She told me. She told others who told me.
And I did tell her that I loved her. But by the time that I told her that I thought she had been the best mother in the world… I am not certain that she was able to actually hear me. There definitely wasn’t time to tell her why I thought that, in the instant that I blurted it out. In fact, although I had long understood what an amazing person she was, I didn’t really get how amazing a mother she had been until after she was gone.
So even though she was 95, and had quite a few dances with death, the final pas de deux had an abrupt, surprise ending. Each day of her last week was much like an act in a ballet or a 9 act play, an entity unto itself that was surreal both in real time and upon reflection; but then we didn’t know it WAS her last week. And I didn’t know her last morning on earth was her last morning on earth,…until it was.
She had enough medical issues in the second half of her life to have stopped most people in their tracks. She was diagnosed with MS (multiple sclerosis) when she was 50 but for a long time she seemed to ignore it and just kept on going.
Until well into her 80’s none of it really kept her from doing the thing she loved to do….get out of the house and meet her millions of friends for bridge, lunch and drinks. She never told anyone but family that she had MS and let people think what they wanted about the frequent falls, broken limbs and constant tiredness.
- Sea Island, Georgia October 27, 1992
When my second son was born in February 1993, she was 81 but flew down to Orlando for the occasion and then came back again in April. This was her last trip. When she got back home she fell and broke her hip and because she was insistent that she would stay in her own home until she was carried out to a nursing home, she had a hip replacement and insisted upon going right back home.
Unfortunately, the spirit was willing but the body would not cooperate. She fell again and re-injured her hip and thus began the second to last era of her life, the institution years. Without a discernible look backwards she sold her beloved home and gave me the keys to her equally beloved Mercedes. Giving up the latter was not about the car, it was about freedom and loss of independence.
But she and her trusty scooter persevered….for the next 10 years or so she was able to play bridge, go shopping and out to lunch and dinner with her friends. But over the course of those years she was diagnosed with cancer and had a kidney removed, then breast cancer. She developed a hand tremor that eventually made it impossible for her to feed herself, and was allowed to fall so many times in both of the assisted living facilities - which were outrageously well compensated to care for her but didn’t - that she lost the ability to transfer on her own.
And as an aside, I agree with the point of view being expressed by Dr Cherryl Woodson and others on Jane Gross’ blog (if you have an elderly parent, read this blog!)Â that assisted living is a myth that over promises and under delivers.
Quite frankly I think in the case of Sunrise Senior Living in particular it is an even darker myth….a profitable, exploitive business model preying on the families “wishful thinking” as described by Dr. McNabney. Wishful thinking that the assisted living facility looks and feels and smells more like a hotel than a nursing home but really the “assisted living” designation is an excuse to reduce the quality and quantity of staff versus what would be required for a nursing home or skilled living designation when most of the residents really require trained, degreed and licensed medical staff.
While my mother lived at Sunrise, I lived in close proximity and managed her medication myself. A phone call from her at 3 PM or 3 AM or sometimes both, and I was there within minutes to witness this appalling situation first hand.
And finally when macular degenereation robbed her of most of her sight she agreed that it was time to come and live with us. So in November of 2007, following her 95th birthday,
October 27, 2007
the final era began. My mom moved in with the boys and me.
She would sometimes ask me why did I think that God was keeping her around for so long. She felt that given her physical condition that she wasn’t really useful. It wasn’t spoken as a complaint; it was an inquiry.
I can only imagine how awful it was for her to have been so active mentally and physically and then with all of her mental facilities intact to loose most of her physical abilities. But yet there were no requests for pity.
Before we got the final diagnosis on May 17th….that she had matastisized cancer everywhere (I later put the pieces together….the breast cancer at 87 which she opted not to treat beyond a lumpectomy) I had begun believing that she was going to make it to 100. But that was my selfish fantasy of wanting her here for me and for my kids….she was ready to go.
My answer to her question about why she was still here was always the same….because I still need you to be, Mom.
And so do my kids. She would be embarrassed but proud I think to know that her grandson, Forrest, wrote his college essay about the six months of his eighteen years that she lived with us.
November 7, 1995
So, if I had been lucky enough to tell her why I thought she was the best mother in the world during that last week of her life, what would i have said? Well first of all she had asked me several times over the course of the last 10 years if I thought she had been a good mother.
She had also asked my sister at some point, who apparently gave her less than a stellar performance review. That bothered my mom and that sort of surprised me…i had never really thought of my mom as trying to win the mom of the year award. She had her own life and she had her life with my Dad and her life didn’t really seem to be all about her kids.
She kept us in line and she didn’t indulge; she did not want to be our friend….when she said “no” she meant “no”. We had strict bedtimes, curfews and we were never late for school…or anything else for that matter.We grew up with our parents telling us that they had money to put us through college and after that, we were on our own. No move backs. No hand outs. I took them at their word on this.
But then there were several stand out occasions where in spite of the limit that had been set, it became impossible for me to live within it….so at first there were punishments for that particular transgression and then much to my amazement, the rule would be re-thought and changed. When it happened, I would be astounded at my own good fortune.
I highlight these last two thoughts because, this is where I began to see, as I struggle to raise my own kids, how wise a mother my mom had been….and of course in contrast, how not so wise a mother I could be. I’m pedaling fast to try and fix that.
When my mom lived with us she would say to me frequently, “Marianne, you need to stop grounding the kids, its not working” or “You need to stop taking away their “fill in the blank”….IPod, car, PS3. It’s not working.” I would argue with her and say but I have to do something when they refuse to “fill in the blank.” After she was gone I finally realized what she was getting at…..I remembered how when she realized maybe it wasn’t the kid who was bad but the rule that was bad, she was a big enough person to change the rule and compliment the new cooperation. Bingo! Okay, so I don’t mean my kids are running wild….but lets just say we are using a bit more operant conditioning with more reinforcement and less punishment. I am working on it, Mom.
The other part…”you are on your own”. Well, although I never expected she would help me through life’s twists and turns because I took the “you are on your own after that” thing to heart..,,,she was ALWAYS there to help me. In ways that neither one of us could have probably imagined. And she was right in there helping me until the very end of her life. The lesson for me as a parent? Well my kids always think that I am going to fix their messes. The recent article in the WSJ called “the Trophy Kids Go To Work”? Way too close to home.
I need to change the expectation that I will be flying in on my helicopter every time they have a problem….On this one, I can only say, it’s going to be a long road, Mom…..but I am still hopeful to send two, empathetic, responsible citizens out into the world.
So, this is what I would have said….you were the best mom in the whole world because you set such an awesome example of perseverance, of bravery, steadfastness, integrity and absolute wisdom not only for me, but for my kids. And as it was with my Dad, I can only hope that somehow you knew that all along.
Now, to anyone who is still reading this long, long post…..make sure that your parents, your spouse, your kids and your friends know not only that you love them, but what it is about them that makes your world rock.
Letting Go 2007
Sam started High School yesterday….and far be it for me to say something trite like, it seems like only yesterday…but it does. And I can’t help but wonder, are we both ready for this? I know, I know its only high school; college will be where you will really have to let go.
Letting go? So I just wrote about helicopter parents last week. I didn’t raise the issue then, but of course I secretly wondered…am I a helicopter parent? Well Sam would probably answer that in the affirmative with that little eye roll and smirk that he started developing this summer whenever I would ask, “Who is going? Are {insert name} parents going to be home?”
We actually used to talk…as in conversation; two way, back and forth. Now he seems to be trying to perfect providing the least amount of information possible in the fewest words. This has caused me to try and perfect the art of asking every combination of questions possible regarding a certain event or issue so that the one thing that I didn’t ask is the one that really matters. The one that another parent asks the next day in the context of, “You didn’t know that they….”
OK, I have been through this once before with his older brother, but Sam is my baby. The dynamic is slightly different.
Last Friday we both attended what the invitation said was “Grade 9 Orientation For Students and Parents.” Yes, there more than a few helicopter parents in the room; but then again, this is a helicopter school.
We received several handouts. One was titled “Starting Upper School: Helping Your Teen Adjust.” I think it must have been written by Mrs Rayburn from Leave it to Beaver.
Some highlights:
“Don’t forget that your teen too, is about to enter or has already begun puberty.” Puberty? Oh, hadn’t noticed.
“AND IMPORTANTLY : Do not forget that despite their age, teenagers still need parental affection, love, guidance, and support.” Memo to parents, love your children.
Okay, so as Nordette Adams at Blogher said at the end of her post on helicopter parents,
“What’s going on here is simple: People worry too much. Sometimes you just need to have faith and let go.”
Well, I am not sure I am ready to let go. But I do know one thing, a very positive thing occurred this evening.
Sam handed me this note. A post it note. What’s the big deal? Well, today is Thursday. He doesn’t need the shoes he is referring to until Monday but he is letting me know now. With a note written on a post.
In the past, I would have heard about the shoes on Sunday night, after the stores had closed or on Monday morning on the way to school; even on a phone a few minutes after I dropped him off . And he wouldn’t have known whether he needed new shoes or whether his old shoes fit…and he wouldn’t have been able to find them anyway.
This was a big day.
Yay Sam…way to go!
MySpace to kids….ID, please.
MySpace recently announced that it was developing software that would be installed on home computers and allow parents to monitor the profile name, age, and location that children (or presumably any other computer user) provides when setting up a profile.It monitors sign ins from the computer on which it is installed as well as from other computers. Access to content within the account is not part of the surveillance.
The issue of online -predators lurking  for under age victims on MySpace and other social networking sites is obviously what is driving this…the question is whether or not this kind of surveillance addresses the problem it is being implemented to address. And it does feel a bit icky from many respects.
MySpace and the other online social networks have been apparently unable to find an age verification solution for the underage users. Other sites employ various means to address some of the peripheral issues of protecting kinds on the internet. Yahoo for instance has a parental control for content feature.
There does not seem to be a solution on the horizon to keeping the predators off the site or really controlling determined offenders, adult or child; so MySpace according to Hemanshu Nigam, chief security officer for Fox Interactive Media, the unit that oversees MySpace, is positioning Zephyr as a way to "give parents a tool to force a discussion with their kid."
 Forced discussions are of course always so productive…in reality it is probably safe to say that with most similar issues, the parents who are involved and have positive relationships with their children won’t need to be "forced" and those whose relationships and involvement with their kids put their kids most at risk, cannot be "forced."
And then you have situations such as the kidnapping of Shawn Hornbeck and Ben Ownby in Missouri where there were Missouri; there were no neglectful parents, no online social networks; just victims and predator. 2 teenage sons. I have I I live in the town next to Kirkwood Missouri with my two teenage sons. I have replayed in my ain the thought that mind the fact that Michael Devlin was employed in a pizza place that I have been in; that I have actually encouraged by kids to walk places in our neighborhood (fortunately, it seems now, they prefer to be driven everywhere).
Danah Boyd has a visual on a post about the fact that for all the talk about on-line predators, there isn’t enough attention being paid to the fact that greatest number of sexual predators are in the most intimate relationships with the children that they abuse…..parents, relatives, household members: 95% of abusers are family members, 79% are parents and 5% are not those other than family members.
This is one frightening pie chart.
 She references an article by Pete Reilly that provides some interesting data regarding an unfortunate outcome of concerns about online sexual abuse of children, restrictions of the use of educational technology tools and online resources.
So….back to my original question: Does Zephyr, or any parental surveillance tool, address the problem of on line sexual predators? Well, just off the top of my head, there are many activities that parents should monitor, both online and off. In my experience as a child and as a parent, monitoring is most effective as part of an involved, attentive relationship; trust is the currency of a positive relationship. In my opinion, surveillance tools violate trust.
Online sexual predators are but one risk online; sexual predators in terms of sheer numbers are lurking off line rather than on; ironically it seems based upon the data from the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data Systems that parents themselves are frequently the predators.ÂÂ
The code name for the software is Zephyr although not sure of the relationship between the god of the west wind and protecting kids from online predators. Perhaps parental surveillance tools as it relates to online sexual predators is much like shouting into the {west} wind; less shouting more listening, better outcome.
From a marketing perspective, for MySpace this seems like a lose-lose; alienate your core audience with an empty gesture.
Tags: MySpace, Zephyr, sexual predators, online sexual predators, Pete Reilly, Danah Boyd, Marianne Richmond, Shawn Hornbeck, Ben Ownby
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Attention…Are Your Children Blackberry Orphans?
The Wall Street Journal paints a picture of Blackberry addicted, "furtive thumb typing" parents hiding in closets to check their email while their resentful, ignored children track them down. They warn, "There is a new member of the family, and, like all new siblings, this one is getting a disproportionate amount of attention, resulting in jealousy, tantrums, even trips to the therapist." OMG, not a trip to the therapist!
The WSJ consulted with mental health professionals, experts in obsessive compulsive disorder, to provide a 12-step program that skipped the, "Hi, my name is Mom and I am powerless and my life is unmanageable" part and went straight to that perennial target of parental guilt, meal time: #1 During meals, do not check email.
Some highlights of the other 11, written with all the right self help, empowerment words such as "commit to stop" and "endeavor to leave" are: Don’t hide your email habits from your family, don’t email while driving, when attending functions at your child’s school, when talking to your kids. Uh-huh….I see. Glad to have that pointed out.
Well, let me say first of all, I don’t have a Blackberry although I am frequently reviewing the possibility and the choices in PDA phones….perhaps I am only addicted to the concept of owning a Blackberry at this point and obsessed with the thought that when I finally make THE big decision, it will be a considered one. Hmmmm, maybe I do have OCD tendencies after all.
Second of all, I guess one issue I have with the WSJ article is with sentences such as these:
The refusal of parents to follow a few simple rules is pushing some children to the brink.
Emma Colonna wishes her parents would behave, at least when they’re out in public
Still, like teenagers sneaking cigarettes behind school, parents are secretly rebelling against the rules.
….how kids are fighting back.
 Although I admit to attention guilt when it comes to my children, I am uncomfortable with the thought that they are making the household rules, even though it feels at times as if they do; and that I am the misbehaving child because I am checking my email. Further, although I don’t feel that I am powerless, it is challenging to manage the allocation of time when there are so many demands on it simultaneously. Does that make us addicts?
 If we just take a brief snapshot of yesterday afternoon for instance, one of my sons had to be picked up from basketball practice at 5:30 while the other one had a basketball game for me to attend that started at 5:30; at 4:15, after promising a client that I would be downtown no later than 4:15 because I would end my 3:00 call at 3:30, I was in my car driving downtown with the presentation that he needed to look at for next Thursday because I was leaving town on Sunday night through Wednesday night….and my elderly mother needs her pills at 6:30 PM; oh and both of my sons left their mobile phones, purchased ostensibly for logistic coordination not texting their friends, at home. Not complaining, it is just life. The WSJ article even acknowledges that it is a struggle to find balance and that mobile email can allow parents to attend a soccer game in the middle of the day.
The issue is really, attention, interruptions, and keeping up…. Linda Stone names the problem: continuous partial attention. Her definition: "To pay continuous partial attention is to pay partial attention — CONTINUOUSLY."  In other words, everyday we are doing lots of things, but none of them as well as we would like to because nothing has our undivided attention.ÂÂ
Scott Berkun, author of The Art of Project Management warns in a wonderful blog post titled, Attention and Sex, "There isn’t a single great work in the history of civilization, no novel, symphony, film, or song that was completed as a 1/5th time-slice between e-mail, IM, cellphones and television."
But, we are on overload. As Kathy Sierra writes, "And we’re all feeling the enormous weight of not being able to keep up. We can’t keep up with work. We can’t keep up with our social life. We can’t keep up with the industry, our hobbies, our families. We can’t keep up with current events. We’ll never read a fraction of those books on our list. And we are hurting."
Of course, this was written in a post that was called, The Asymptotic Twitter Curve. And regarding Twitter, she writes, "But email, IMs, social networking, and blogs are nothing compared to the thing that may finally cause time as we know it to cease. I’m talking, of course, about Twitter." Ah, Twitter…where does it fit?
Linda Stone has recently set up a wikki and says,
"I believe attention is the most powerful tool of the human spirit.  We can enhance or augment our attention with practices like meditation and exercise, with technologies like email and Blackberries, or alter it with pharmaceuticals.  In the end, though, we are fully responsible for how we choose to use this extraordinary tool."ÂÂ
Kathy Sierra has a list and also suggests 43 Folders, Lifehacker and Steve Pavlina.
Scott Berkun says, " Make a list of all the things you read, check, skim, or browse every day (Include every gadget or device you use once a day). Make a second list of why you’re spending your attention on them. What are you trying to achieve or feel? Rank the first list based on the second. Then cut the first list in half or by one-third and see what happens."
So, where does this leave us: Are we helpless addicts or responsible masters of our attention fate (or even, first mates)?
As an aside, Valleywag suggests other ways besides the Blackberry to "abuse" your children with gadgets…for mine: "Merry Christmas! It’s a Zune!"
Tags: Blackberry, Wall Street Journal, attention, Marianne Richmond, Scott Berkun, Kathy Sierra, 43 Folders, Lifehacker, Steve Pavlina, continuous partial attention, Linda Stone, Valleywag, Zune
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In Social Networks…You’ve Got Birthday
OK, so my birthday was a few days ago and although that fact seems to have escaped the minds of my children (I think they must have also forgotten who the real Santa Claus is and how close my birthday is to Christmas) it did not go unnoticed in SocialNetwork World, a very friendly place where the meaning of friends is perhaps under revision. This one from Faces may have been my favorite…..
There were others in email: Hello Marianne Richmond,
We at PMB - Pimp My Blog would like to wish you a happy birthday today!
Others came from MySpace friends, in MySpace email and Comments….Some with offers for a free drink:
I also got an email from Plaxo, telling me that Frank Barnako was having a birthday the same day as mine. I am more than willing to wish Frank a happy birthday inasmuch as we have "met" via the blogosphere, just not sure why Plaxo was emailing me the birthday news.
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I guess I thought that there were other reasons that social network sites asked for birthday information….I had no idea it was all about saying, "Happy Birthday."
This started me thinking about the evolution of "Happy Birthday" in a social network world. Although e-cards and email have more or less replaced paper birthday cards, this year, for the first time, I got text messaged "Happy Birthdays." Now if my kids were reading this blog post, which I can say for sure that they would rather be reading anything else, they would no doubt be rolling their eyes over the statement "first time….text messaged" and the thought bubble would be "Mom is sucha loser." But, if you need help texting happy birthday, try lingo2word.
So, what does it mean? Well, let’s look at some of the underlying concepts that drives all of this…..the foundation of Web 2.0 is sharing, collaboration, generosity and, well, isn’t that what friendship is all about? That and remembering birthdays and sending and receiving lots of Christmas cards (Ok, well I am a little preoccupied right now with the spirit of the Season and the annual Christmas card photo).
Web 2.0 is about business, but of course this is the personal web. We collaborate and share, use and produce. And we have lots more friends than we used to. We meet them in so many places and have so many identities that there is a new service available, FindMeOn, and a similar one, Profilactic in beta, that will help create a single social network identity to either simplify the process, keep us honest, or "cure multiple web personality disorder" depending upon how you look at it.
As an aside, I think they might be missing an important point, context; we have "multiple personalities" in real life, too. Tristan Louis expands upon this in a post about why social networks fail. And, as Stowe Boyd writes, "If social networks provide a value, it has to be contextual. An SNA cannot provide some sort of blanket support for all sorts of people doing all sorts of things."
We don’t necessarily want a single identity; we are on Dogster because of our dog owning identity while on LinkedIn that is mostly irrelevant. Fred Stutzman discusses this as part of his post on Why They Are Leaving MySpace.
And if you thought TV was dead, maybe it will live as the missing link to document life meeting art (or art meeting life). Mike Yamamoto notes that MySpace meets reality TV on ProjectMyWorld, as three young women embark on a journey to meet their virtual friends face-to-face. It’s on DirecTV and of course DirecTV’s majority owner is News Corp which also owns MySpace.com…which I think makes it art imitating life.
So, what DOES it mean? Well, for one thing, if you enter your birth year as "1906" on a social network site, be prepared to be wished a happy 100th birthday. On Flickr there are 341 photos tagged 100th and birthday. My photo is not there. My social network identities are not quite in alignment…. yet.
 From a marketing standpoint, I will note that I did not receive a happy birthday email from Vocal Point, the P&G mom’s network.
Tags: social networks, MySpace, Tristan Louis, Stowe Boyd, DirecTV, NewsCorp, Mike Yamamoto,Web 2.0, Faces.com, Fred Stutzman, LinkedIn, Dogster, FineMeOn, Profilactic, Frank Barnako, Plaxo, Pimp My Blog, Marianne Richmond, Flickr
Snakes on a Plane: Bad Is The New Good
Yes, I am really writing a second post on Snakes on a Plane. Why? Because my 13 year old son asked me this morning if he could go see it. His reason? "Because I heard it was really stupid and I want to go see what its about."
And that just about sums up the impact of all that blogger buzz translated into the spoken word of the target demo (Mack pointed out today that I wasn’t in the target demo, but I am the mother of two card carrying members of the target demo so I do think I have a proxy opinion).
Now, Seth Godin pointed out today that awareness doesn’t translate into purchases. He said, " I fear that people are missing a fundamental truth: just because people know who you are doesn’t mean they’re going to buy what you sell." It is indeed a fundamental truth that seems to be frequently forgotten, or at least disregarded. But, what about "Because I heard it was really stupid and I want to go see what its about."
Well, I asked my son who else was going to the movie he named two friends. When he says "I heard" it doesn’t mean he read a blog (THAT he thinks defines stupid), read it in the newspaper, or saw it on the evening news. Most likely he saw the trailer at another movie (he has gone about twice a week this summer) and/or saw commercials on ESPN. He and his friends most likely "talked" about the movie on IMs. It is highly possible that their were more than the three of them "talking" about the movie and "how stupid" it was online. OK, the sample size is small. But, I think it gives credence to the "its the experience, stupid" contingent. Mack, you called it
Jackie Huba wrote a post about the five lessons to be learned from Snakes on a Plane. Number 5: "The experience is the difference between profit and failure. SoaP was not just a film but a film-going experience…. some people said it was the most fun they’d had at a movie in years. That’s welcome news for an industry whose revenues keep declining."
So, when I picked my son up from the movie he got in the car, grinned and said, "It was awesome, mom."
"Awesome?"
"Yes, he said, It was so bad it was hysterically funny." And there you have it….it was funny. They had fun. OK, maybe not THE "film going experience" but a positive nonetheless. They are not going to go out and buy rubber snakes and go see it twenty more times.They are not planning an audience participation party. But, they will tell their friends, who will tell their friends…..This may just make the difference between profit and failure.
Now, I am not taking back anything else I said previously, even, " I think part of the experience is a good movie; a good experience requires a good movie." I will revise the definition of "good movie." They thought it was FUNNY….this made it a good movie. This made it a good experience. In my opinion, Seth Godin is right: "The best way to succeed is to have a really great product." OK, well this one we will just call a good experience. Bad is the new good. Or the new awesome.
I still believe that bloggers could focus on more deserving movies. Like Karl Long wrote, "Dear Blogosphere, Can We Promote A Better Movie Than SoaP to Promote Next Time?" But then again, the MSM is hanging onto the Jon Benet Ramsey/Mark Karr story for dear life. John Stewart nailed that one. CNN, Fox, and MSNBC really didn’t cover the plane carrying Mark Karr taxing down the runway, live. Did they?
Tags: Snakes on a Plane, SoaP, Seth Godin, Marianne Richmond, Jackie Huba, John Stewart, CNN, Fox, MSNBC, bloggers, blogs, word of mouth Mack Collier, Karl Long
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MyGrace: The Other Blog Evangelists
Inspired by a member of his congregation that used MySpace to attract listeners for his rock band, Rev. Patrick Gray, am Episcopal priest from Boston set up a MySpace profile, the Advent, to attract listeners to his sermons. His site includes reminders about service times as well as audio files of the choir. The graphics are very cool and the Advent has 671 friends. The WSJ reports that churches across the US are using social media such as blogs and podcasts and on line social networking to connect with members and potential members.
Church Unplugged, according to the WSJ, attributes its growth to its MySpace profiles, saying that the church profile can be found while searching for music, television, or local MySpace users. Unplugged has about 100 church attendees and over 2000 MySpace friends.
The evangelicals are leading the way with blogs such as Outside the Box Ministry and Church Marketing Sucks that provide "how to’s" for churches to improve their marketing and their messages.Church Marketing Sucks has a Squido lens and posts with titles such as, "What Web 2.0 can mean for your church." Outside the Box Ministry is a little less "in your face" than Church Marketing Sucks but the message is similar. Their language is about engagement, connection and recognition that if people are on MySpace or Facebook that’s where they need to be.
The Vatican is podcasting and has a web site and according to Businessweek is hard at work on a faith based social networking site which is referred to as MySpace for Catholics. Sister Judith, the nun who is responsible for the web site and the upcoming social networking site, says that "the Net is the ultimate way to reach millions of people and to connect… it’s about something much bigger than myself…you can touch it, you can change it, and you can touch people with it." Spoken like some other evangelists at a different church.
According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project (2004) 64% of online Americans use the Internet for faith based acclivities. The study said, "Faith-related activity online is a supplement to, rather than a substitute for offline religious life. The survey found that two-thirds of those who attend religious services weekly use the Internet for personal religious or spiritual purposes." Sounds like online out reach is reaching the target.
But what about the MySpace environment for delivering the MyGrace message? Businessweek recently reported of the growing campaign to protect children from online predators that may close space on MySpace. One church education group mentioned in the WSJ article that the challenge was to reach teens without exposing them to inappropriate content. I think he may have the equation backwards, teens and actually most people, are probably not on MySpace to find a church but rather may find a church while they are MySpace.
As Ross Dawson writes about the MySpace generation, on Trends in the Living Networks, " The way I see relational technologies such as mobiles, chat forums, multiplayer roleplaying games, video sharing and so on, is that they extend our capacity as humans to relate. People have a built-in drive to connect with others, and now that has a far wider canvas across which to express itself. We can now discover many of the latent propensities and characteristics of humans, because we have been given new tools to explore our human identity." Or our spiritual side.
Outside of the Box Ministry has a post titled Blogging is Similar to Spiritual Multiplication which is a pretty good explanation of word of mouth marketing with blogs. If you want your message to be heard, as Businessweek notes, OClick All Ye Faithful.
Tags: MySpace, WOMMA, word of mouth, Church of the Consumer, Evangelism, marketing, church marketing, blogs, social media, media, podcasting, social networks
Passion versus Obsession
A client was recently expressing her concern that her adolescent son may have Aspergers. He is and always has been a computer genius or computer nerd, depending on who is describing him, with a few friends that have similar interests. She and her husband are very social people which makes their son’s personality all the more striking in its contrast to theirs. He has one official diagnosis, ADD, and is medicated for that. Other than ADD, he is an adolescent which probably should be a pathology all of its own to define the narcissistic, angry years that begin around 13 and end around 20. Or so I am told. Over the years, they have consulted with many mental health professionals. Currently, the combination of adolescence, stimulant medication, his temperament and personality are expressing some very unpleasant behaviors. Aspergers keeps rearing its head as they consult with psychiatrists, neurologists, therapists and counselors.
The issues pointing at Aspergers are the lack of basic social skills, the inability to decode social signals, lack of eye contact, and conversations that about narrowly defined, highly technical interests. However, the last doctor that they saw said that he thought "everyone" at the medical school had Aspergers.
And we have all heard others say that "everyone" in Silicone Valley including "you know who" has Aspergers.
In thinking about this, I wondered about the difference between being considered passsionate about say, computers or being considerered obsessed with them. Or medicine, or whatever the narrowly defined highly technical interest might be. If the interest is "highly technical" maybe we say obsession. If the interest is not technical, such as a sport, maybe we say, passionate?
Of course one of my favorite blogs is Creating Passionate Users which is written by some very technical people….who write engaging, passionate posts most recently about the developmental stages of companies. What do you think about passsion versus obsession?
Not Your Parent’s Cliff Notes
School starts on Monday for my 7th grader which means the summer long countdown to finish the math packet and the summer reading books is about to end…ready or not. It our house it seems not to matter if we actually start early in the summer or late, it just wouldn’t seem like the last weekend of summer if we weren’t still trying to complete it before M-O-N-D-A-Y! To complicate our lives even more, we just got a puppy. So, the other night a frantic call from our house to a friend’s house regarding a puppy crisis found their household in the middle of a summer reading crisis. A quick swap…help me solve the puppy problem and I will help you solve the reading problem. Google, the source of most if not all of life’s problems revealed, PinkMonkey.com. No need to leave the comfort of your own crisis, Pink Monkey had the book in question, the information was FREE and instantly available and they promised hundreds of other titles. You have to pay to download. I was ready to completely write off Cliff Notes, my own personal long time friend and constant companion during junior high and high school as being as dated as the library card catalog when I decided to Google, Cliff Notes. Sorry, Cliff Notes…you too are instantly available on line.
And now for the real question: Are many blogs just like Cliff Notes? You don’t read the story, you read about the story…over and over and over again. I think bloggers should at least add a personal comment or two when they post a "new flash" quickly excerpted from someone else’s blog or the morning news…otherwise what’s the point? What do you think?
Andy Milonakis
My kids and I have several TV shows that we watch together with some regularity but with no particular rhyme or reason. I will confess them now: Roseanne and Murphy Brown on Nick@Night and Saturday Night Live. I never watched Roseanne when it was on prime time and Murphy Brown I never missed. Saturday Night Live and I go waaay back together although there were many seasons that were just plain b-a-d. My kids and I have found the last several seasons really funny. Go figure!
Now this post is about Andy Milonakis who I know nothing about other than one day my youngest son, Sam was watching him and I stopped because Andy was singing a song with a cutout pancake on his head…for whatever reason I found him hysterically funny. Andy is a very funny guy if you like his humor. We have been watching ever since….actually Sam was watching before as was my older son Forrest. Now, we all love Andy! I am not sure why.
Andy is in Wikipedia. Andy has a blog. Andy gets mentioned on other blogs. Andy is in USA Today. Andy is everywhere. What do you think?
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