Vy Blog

I'll hear it on the Coconut Telegraph

Folks, I'll be offline for a stretch, soaking up some vitamin D, scuba diving and recharging the batteries. 

See you in a few.

More on keyboard cowards: I wish I had written these two pieces

Oh, man, how do I.  On my pet issue of keyboard cowards, the get-a-life people who descend immediately into the mud with the launch of the first comment.

John Wagner puts it more intelligently than I have in more than half a dozen attempts at it:

We are "word police," always on the lookout for something that we don't like, something we can criticize.

That type of attitude is a major detriment to true communication, and a real reason why so many companies/organizations/people are afraid to truly dialog with others.

Most importantly, it takes a medium that has great potential to increase understanding and help people find common ground -- the internet -- and turns it into one big shouting match, with no one really learning anything other than how to pick apart another's point of view.

Exactly, John.  It's like a Jerry Springer show.

John makes reference to this piece from Dorian Lynskey, the British music critic, who got a whoopin' for daring to criticize Bruce Springsteen.  Oh the humanity.  Lynskey writes:

The most belligerent voices on the blogs speak with either a weary, condescending sneer or a florid pomposity redolent of Ignatius J Reilly in A Confederacy of Dunces. If, as they imply, their taste is flawless and their intellect mighty, then perhaps they could find a better use for these prodigious gifts than taking potshots on websites. Just a thought.

Why am I so exercised about this?  Because it's such a giant waste of potential.  What could be valuable and helpful ends up an exercise in defensiveness and anger. 

And any of you who disagree with me obviously have not read what I wrote.

More pretentious names at my kids' basketball games

The latest batch:

• Dagny (female)
• Sebastian
• And one dozen Tristans

Manifestos continue

All of these are good.

This one is for attorneys, but could well apply to PR firms.

Notoriety and fame

John Wagner has a good post here about his interpretation of a 20/20 episode last weekend.  Thanks to the constant glare of media, we've had a number of curious changes in our behavior.  Like:

• Notoriety and celebrity -- once considered different animals -- are now interchangeable.
• Young people would rather be embarrassed publicly than ignored privately.

Wow.  Are we really that far down the line?

I guess we have been for some time.  It was 1994 when Don Henly said: "This year notoriety got all confused with fame, and the devil is downhearted because there's nothing left for him to claim."

President Ford

Gerald Ford is the first President I can actively remember.  I recall a bit of Nixon, but I was six when he resigned, and most of my memory of him involved Watergate.

I do remember President Ford, though, pretty well.  The 1976 presidential campaign was the first one I paid any attention to at any level.  Of course, after he lost that election, he pretty well kept out of the public eye -- and for a long time, too.  He was out of office for 30 years.

I had no realization of this earlier, of course, but what strikes me now about him is the fact that he was pretty well the last regular human being we've had in the White House.  Think about who we've had since.

• Carter:  Smart but not competent in the office
• Reagan:  Highly effective, oddly detached
• Bush I:  Probably close to regular guy status, but didn't keep it together politically
• Clinton:  Unbelievably intelligent, unbelievably preoccupied with himself in so many ways
• Bush II:  Well-intentioned but stubborn, too many blind spots

Ford was a smart, strong person who never sought the office.  He just stepped in and rose to the occasion by being simply decent. 

Maybe I have an odd affinity for him because he reminds me of my grandfather, who was a fairly successful small-town business owner.  I never saw him lose his temper.  He had a rock-solid understanding of what was important and what wasn't, and he tended to the former and ignored the latter, even if he knew there was a cost to either action.  He was amused at how people twist knots in their ropes, and sort of chuckled as he watched it all go by.  When it was time to step up, he stepped up.  When it was time to go home, he went home and paid attention to his family.  Everything was in balance and he knew it would all work out in the end, as it always does.

I got the same sort of feeling from Ford.  He made decisions the right way, despite the personal cost that might be associated.  Everyone else was losing their heads (like about the Nixon pardon) about what was at stake, but he was fine with just doing the right thing.  If it cost him the Presidency, OK.  Life would go on, and the country would be better for what he did.  That was better reward than the office itself.

My feeling is he had a very good sense of perspective.  I heard a commentator say over the weekend that people of Ford's generation that served in Congress had such a collegial working relationship because so many were World War II veterans, and they knew what a real enemy was.  No one got in a snit over a simple difference of opinion -- life was much bigger than that, and snits were somehow dishonorable to what they'd already accomplished and what they were in public service to do.  What a thought, huh?

I'm afraid men and women of this kind are becoming fewer, and that's a problem for our country.  Without healthy perspective and balance, and a devotion to something greater than ourselves, we'll continue to become a nation of the trivial.

My grandfather (like many of his generation, he went by his first two initials: C.A.) had a saying that I like to remind myself of as often as I might need to -- he called it C.A.'s Law:

It is utterly impossible to underestimate the relative unimportance of practically everything.

That of course is not literal about what truly is important.  It was more the way he oriented his own thinking, away from the noise of the trivial and toward the calm and lasting benefits of the real.  I keep having to re-learn the lesson, but maybe one day I'll get it right myself.

After the holiday

Man, what a couple of weeks.

I'm back home now after about a week and a half in the Midwest.  It was great to spend time with family, but sleeping in your own bed is never overrated.  Especially when you have a cold, like I seem to have now.

Though I spent quite a bit of time (especially last week) on work, I did have a chance to clear the cobwebs a bit.  Thoughts in no particular order:

City personalities: If you want to know what's important to people who live in any particular place, look at what that place embraces.  I amused myself a little by doing this on my trip.  Are there billboards, and if so, what do you see advertised on them?  What ads to you see on TV and hear on the radio?  What does radio "talent" talk about?  What are the leads on the local news?  What is the main source of entertainment?  Is there any consistency to the feel of a city's personality, or is it a mishmash?  Are people openly friendly?  How do drivers behave on the highways?  Is there a lot of sprawl?  If you assess these things, you can get a pretty good idea about what it's like day-by-day where you are.

Wally World: I certainly don't like Wal-Mart any more than I ever have.  I want to be as fair as I can in saying that.  To be more precise and honest, what I don't like is Wal-Mart's level of dominance in local merchandising.  (This is different from admiring their business success, which I do -- but acknowledging their success and liking their behavior is two different things.)  I also don't care for the fact that, somehow, your local Wally has somehow become the center of town in many places.  No more barbershops, town squares or diners.  Nope -- any more, it's "I was talking to Bob at Wal-Mart today..."  That's what I don't like. 

Official end to the holiday season:  You don't need more proof from me, but I'll say again that it's wildly evident that Christmas is more a commercial holiday than a spiritual one.  You heard holiday music for since mid-November, but none yesterday.

TV is of course overrated:  I didn't necessarily intend to do so, but I managed to watch hardly any TV for more than a week before Christmas.  One less stimulus fighting for my attention.  I highly recommend it.  Somehow, you're not going to waste away by not watching Entertainment Tonight.

Intention:  Speaking of intention, I had a chance to reflect on what has become my favorite thought from this year.  I blogged in July about it, but it started germinating from a casual dinner discussion in New Zealand in March.  (I gave the location not to be pretentious, but to recognize at least in my own head the value of having the conversation somewhere other than in your familiar surroundings -- better for the perspective.)  Most of us, probably close to all of us, live without much in the way of significant intention.  At best, we float around, and at worst, we're dragged through life by our impulses.  I was talking earlier in this month with a friend who told me about someone he knew who felt trapped in his job (one he hated) thanks to a huge mortgage he's carrying and other similar handcuffs.  I wonder if -- at say, age 12 -- he thought, "You know, what I really want from my life is to be a purchasing agent and feel like I can never do anything else in life because of a big stack of bills I rang up."?

Of course not.  But that's where many of us find ourselves.  Just today, in returning to the office, I found a Christmas card and letter from a friend who, in her words, was presented a chance to do a six-month assignment in Paris and jumped at it.  Her husband started French lessons, and they're packing up their toddlers to live there for half of 2007, maybe longer.  Good for them.  What a way to actually live.

So, why do you do what you do?

Happy New Year.

We're screwing ourselves out of prosperity

I'm writing from middle America, where I was raised.  Every time I'm here, I'm reminded about the basic goodness of the folks here.  There are things that drive me insane about the midwest, but overall, most you meet are, as they say here, "good people."  (Usage:  "He's good people.")

I'm also reminded about the differences in the way of life between here and the west coast, where I live now.  Mostly it's in the area of perspective on life.  It's much different.

Then I read posts like this and this from my domain industry colleague Susan Crawford, one of the more insightful people of this planet, and I'm reminded of the even bigger gulf in thought between the United States and the rest of the world.  The thesis of each is that we're not doing enough in the United States to prepare ourselves for continued leadership and prosperity.  Susan quotes Thomas Friedman, one of the authorities on this subject:

In a globally integrated economy, our workers will get paid a premium only if they or their firms offer a uniquely innovative product or service, which demands a skilled and creative labor force to conceive, design, market and manufacture — and a labor force that is constantly able to keep learning. We can’t go on lagging other major economies in every math/science/reading test and every ranking of Internet penetration and think that we’re going to field a work force able to command premium wages. Freedom, without rigor and competence, will take us only so far.

Very true, almost frighteningly so.  As Friedman wrote, in India, Bill Gates is Britney Spears.  In the U.S., Britney Spears is Britney Spears.  They're hungier than we are, and we're falling behind.

As a parent, I have to figure out how to prepare my children.  One way must include the value of perspective -- that so many others live so differently than we, and in some ways, better.  And that more than was the case for me, the world is out for their lunch and will take it away if they're not prepared.  Language, skills, and desire are going to be necessary like they never were before.

Manifestos in 500 words or less

These are great reading.

The five weird

Risley tagged me.

I'm a person of myriad strangeness.  The five that are probably the most benign:

1. I can't stand tomatoes or mushrooms.  I wish I liked them, but I don't.  I can, however, eat nearly anything with these as an added ingredient (e.g., tomato sauce in Italian food).  No, it's not the texture.  Tomatoes taste like crap to me.
2. I drank with the best of them, particularly in my younger days, but I've never ingested a drug.  I don't know if that makes me weird or just puts me directly in a small minority.  Whatever.  I just never saw the point.
3. You probably can't find very many people who care less about NFL football than me.  I appreciate the game, and I'll watch the Super Bowl, but week-by-week, forget it.  Overall I'd rather play sports than watch.
4. I'm a decent athlete, but there is no sport that makes me look dumber (than I already do) than trying to play basketball.  I have no feel for the game.  However, I can spin a ball on my finger as if I'd played for the Globetrotters.
5. If you name a popular song from the 80s, I can probably tell you the year it was released.

Truth is I don't mind these memes because people (most people) interest me.  But the further truth is I don't have another five to tag, sorry.  Carry on.