Little Girl Lost

Tonight as I write this, a family waits to hear if their little girl is lost at sea.

Sixteen-year-old Abby Sunderland was sailing around the world all by herself, a daring – maybe even reckless — attempt that her parents supported.

Her parents said she activated two emergency beacons after they lost contact with her when they were talking with her on her cell phone.  Earlier, she had blogged about rough weather. Experts say a person lost at sea can survive 12 days without water, and, as of this writing, the hope is that Abby is alive and can be rescued.

Many people have been expressing outrage that parents could let a 16-year-old try such a dangerous undertaking. Her parents have responded that they thought their daughter was prepared for the journey. In fact, her older brother had successfully sailed around the world by himself at 17 years old. Sure, they said, tragedy could happen, but it also could happen in traffic on her way home from a school dance.

My daughter is 20. Would I have let her sail around the world at 16? No way in hell.

And yet…

And yet, I gladly paid for whatever my daughter wanted to try. Soccer. Gymnastics. Horseback riding camp. I never knew when a hobby could turn into something that would change her life.

I have taught my daughter to believe in herself, to refuse to let fear get in the way of her dreams. I know that a teen’s brain is not yet ripe, that the part of their brain that correctly assesses the consequences of risk is not yet fully developed.

So, what if my daughter’s dream, the obsession for which she trained and practiced, was something that could cost her her life? Would I try to keep her safe at all costs and crush her dream? Or would I let her follow that dream and worry that more than her hope might be crushed? How much of letting our young ones go is sink or swim – literally, in the Sunderlands’ case?

I don’t know the answer to that, so I can’t condemn the Sunderlands. I just hope that their daughter is found, that she is safe, and that she goes on to sail after more dreams.

Don’t Tell Us What to Do

 

What do American Idol, CSPI and the GOP have in common?

We Americans hate to be told what to do. Oh, we love GIVING advice, but don’t dole out advice to us. We won’t follow it, just to prove a point.

 The latest examples all seemed to come at once.

 For years, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) has been warning Americans about the hidden – and not-so-hidden — fat in some of our most popular foods. Movie popcorn, fast food, and, most recently, menu items at the Cheesecake Factory all have come under fire for containing enough fat to plump up an army. We listen, but we swat away CSPI’s constant whining like a mosquito at a fat-laden picnic.

 For the second year in a row, the less-talented contestant won American Idol. Why? Is America tone-deaf? No, we just like voting for the underdog, and we hate it when the judges crown an heir-apparent early on in the process. Crystal Bowersox blew the competition away from the time she sang her first note, but there was no way the judges were going to pick the winner for us, no way we were going to listen to their opinions, even if it meant that the bland, if likeable, Lee DeWyze was crowned – a development that seemed to stun him as much as it stunned the judges.

And, finally, the GOP put up a site  asking the American people – and by that, they meant American people who looked and thought the way they did – to set an agenda for the country. An ambitious goal. And one that might have worked if they really wanted advice. Oh, sure, the crazies came out first. There were the advocates for corporal punishment. The haters. And my favorite, the one who was exercised that her child’s teacher dared to call whales and dolphins mammals (“A ‘teacher’ told my child in class that dolphins were mammals and not fish! And the same thing about whales! We need TRADITIONAL VALUES in all areas of education. If it swims in the water, it is a FISH. Period! End of Story” — presumably that leaves Michael Phelps stranded as some sort of unnatural hybrid).

But eventually, some valuable nuggets may have come through.

Unfortunately, that would have meant dealing with the advice that poured in, the bad as well as the good. I have to think the GOP didn’t really want advice, they wanted affirmation of their already-formed opinions.

The site was removed on the same day it launched. 

Because, really? We don’t want to be told what to do. We just want someone to agree with what we already planned to do. Because, if you tell us? We’ll just do the opposite. Oh, wait. Maybe it wasn’t crazies writing on the GOP site!

Ham With a Side of ‘Tude

It’s the holiday shopping season and I’m wondering what’s more important? A good deal, or good customer service?

I thought I knew, but I found myself asking the question again this Thanksgiving. I do a lot of cooking for Thanksgiving, but my family clamors for some store-bought dishes that have become as much a tradition as my cranberry sauce from real cranberries or the from-scratch pumpkin pie.

One such dish is the sweet potato soufflé from Honeybaked Ham.  My husband insists that Thanksgiving would not be Thanksgiving without it and, truth to tell, he loves it more than he loves my pie.

It used to be that there were Honeybaked Ham stores everywhere but – at least in my neighborhood – all but a few have closed. The closest store is far enough away that I plan my errands around stopping in the week before Thanksgiving to ensure that I can buy the soufflé before the holiday rush.

This year was no exception and I was dismayed when I stopped by to find the freezer space bare where the soufflé should be. The young woman at the counter told me to return the next day, that the shipment of soufflé would be there by then, but she wasn’t sure what time the shipment would arrive.  Not wanting to waste a trip, I called first the next day.

“Did your shipment of sweet potato soufflé arrive yet,” I asked the woman who answered the phone.

“Ma’am,” the woman said, sounding harried and not particularly friendly. “I don’t know what time the shipment will get here, I don’t know if it will include the soufflé, and if it does, don’t ask because we can’t save any for you.”

I was surprised. This was the weekend before Thanksgiving and the store didn’t know when or if one of its most popular holiday items would be in stock?

I went to the Honeybaked Ham site and filled in a complaint. Later, telling my mother about the incident, she said, “Oh, I’ve had that happen before with Honeybaked. They’ll send you a coupon to apologize.”

A coupon would be nice – our New Year includes a ham and the coupon would ensure I was back at Honeybaked – but I really wanted an apology.

The next day, I got one. The manager of the store called, explaining that for some reason the soufflé in their freezer was all past its sell-by date and they had had to empty their inventory and reorder. But the soufflé should be in that day, and they should have plenty.

I went in and, sure enough, the sweet potato soufflé that would make my husband’s Thanksgiving complete was there. I bought it, but as I left from my second trip to the not-close Honeybaked Ham store, I wished I had a coupon to take some of the sting out of the second trip.

So, the apology was lovely. It showed great customer service that the manager called right away to follow up. But the food at Honeybaked Ham is expensive. Will I go back for a New Year’s ham without a coupon? Probably not – in this case, customer service needs to be accompanied by a great deal.

What about you? Will you forgive rudeness if the price is right, or will you pay more for good service?

The Church of Facebook & Twitter

 A  recent study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project slashes the stereotype of the social network user. You know the one – the pale loner holed up in his tiny room, ruling the Internet world while he remains a misfit in the “real world.”

 The study shows that email, blogging and social networking doesn’t lead to social isolation. Quite the opposite, in fact. Only 6 percent of people say they have no one to talk to about the important things in their lives, and that figure is virtually unchanged since 1985, well before so many spent time in social networking.

 Whereas people used to use land line telephones to reach out and touch someone, now they’re as likely to use a cell phone or text. But face to face remains the number-one way people interact. According to the study, the average person sees people in their close group of confidants 210 days out of the year. If they have a cell phone, they call each close confidant on 195 days.

 And many times, social networkers are meeting those close confidants in bars. Users of social networking sites are 40 percent more likely to visit a bar than their non-social networking counterparts.

 But here’s the interesting thing. People who use Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and the rest of those sites are 36 percent less likely to visit a religious institution.

 Since I doubt Facebook’s marketing plan included reaching out to only heathens, I think something else is going on here.

 Many people use religious institutions as the places they visit to feel a part of something larger than themselves. I believe that social networks are serving that purpose now.

 Think about it: when you’ve had a bad day, your social network is right there to buck you up. When you want to raise money for a good cause, you can reach a large community quickly online.

 Have a sick relative? The Caring Bridge online will keep people current with the sick one’s every thought and prognosis. And the positive thoughts people leave on the guestbook are reminiscent of prayers.

 When you want people to support your opinions, your Facebook friends are there. In fact, in the new Church of Facebook, the thumbs-up “like” button has become the new “Amen!”

It’s All Good But That May Be Bad

We’ve all heard the news teases: “How to Know if Your Spouse Is Cheating;” “Why Your Dog May Eat Your Face Off While You Sleep;” “How What You’re Eating This Minute Could Kill You.”

Usually, the tease is followed by “details at 11.”

They do this because they know that we’re hooked by bad news, or even the threat of bad news.  Celebrity bad news hooks us even more deeply; it has become its own genre. Sites like TMZ have made their fortunes by showing us the rich and famous in compromised positions, whether it is behaving badly at an airport or dining out with someone other than their spouse. Celebrity trainwrecks like Lindsay Lohan, Brittany Spears, or Jessica Simpson are stalked, recorded, goaded into bad behavior.

And we can’t tear our eyes away.

Compare the recent news coverage of some recent celebrity deaths. Farrah Fawcett’s death after her long struggle with anal cancer got a few days of coverage, given a bump when Ryan O’Neal creepily propositioned his own daughter at the funeral. Gentle Mary Travers from Peter, Paul & Mary rated genteel mention, with some obligatory chuckling about the not-so-hidden meaning in, “Puff, the Magic Dragon.” But Whacko Jacko? The entertainment media are still covering his death, racing to reveal ever-more bizarre details. Bad news sells, and the more celebrated the unfortunate celebrity, the more the bad news sells.

So I was a bit surprised when I read recently that the Hallmark Channel is launching a Web site dedicated to good news about celebrities. The site launched September 23 and says its mission statement is to “clean up the red carpet.” The site bills itself as the “anti-TMZ” site.

And, lo and behold, lots of that good celebrity news is about celebrities who are starring in Hallmark vehicles! But even leaving that cynicism aside, I’m wondering who they think they’re going to attract. If you’re a celebrity follower, chances are you aren’t all that curious about the noble things they are doing. And if you are someone looking for role models who won’t let you down…well, chances are you aren’t going to pick celebrities anyway.

What do you think? Is the Hallmark site going to fall flat?

I’ll Never Eat a Harlem Tomato

There have been some public apologies lately and I haven’t believed one of them. I didn’t believe Chris Brown was sorry for beating Rihanna, I didn’t believe Kanye West was sorry for bullying Taylor Swift, and I didn’t believe Sen. Joe Wilson was sorry for calling President Obama a liar. They all lacked authenticity.

You’ve got to have authenticity whether you’re selling an apology or a brand.

I was reminded of that when I went to Safeway this weekend.

Usually, I go to Wegman’s, the mecca grocery store for foodies of all stripes. I love going to Wegman’s…the glossy, almost obscenely ripe produce; the chocolate-covered pastries lined up behind glass cases; the multi-colored olives swimming in brine.

But the thing I like best about Wegman’s is the Wegman’s staff. The meat guys deliberate with me about which cut will cook up most tender on the grill. The produce people  will chat about the fact that purple cauliflower tastes just like white cauliflower, despite its inky hue, and the wine sellers will help me match a wine to a spicy Cajun turkey. And, there is Gary, the fish guy, who knows my name and will point out what’s just off the boat, advise on how to cook it, and ponder what salad to serve alongside.

But Safeway is closer, and it was having a grand re-opening. It was looking quite Wegman-ish. The wine department has a wine cave with sliding glass doors that open into a sophisticated cooler. The bakery features a wood-burning oven open to the public and the loaves are stacked with care behind glass.

Like Wegmans, the new Safeway offers samples in each aisle and enthusiastic salespeople.

I was overjoyed. Then I got to the salad aisle and the lovely young woman pressed a salad sample into my hands.

“You’ve got to try this,” she said. “It’s delicious and it’s made with organic greens.”

It was good and I asked what kind of dressing was on the salad.

“Tucson,” she said.

I had never heard of Tucson dressing and wondered what was in it…what kind of Arizona ingredients could be enhancing this dressing? Cactus? Desert sage? I picked up the bottle. Oh. Tuscan dressing. As in Italy.

The woman continued, “And aren’t these tomatoes the best? They’re real Harlem tomatoes.”

I didn’t know Harlem had that much arable land. Then I saw the sign. Oh. Heirloom tomatoes. And, yes, they were delicious. But it was clear that Safeway was just a Wegmans wannabe.

A spokesperson has to genuinely represent the brand and genuinely mean the message. You can not just put words into spokespersons’ mouths and hope that they can carry off the message with authenticity if they don’t have that authenticity to start with. If you don’t choose the right spokesperson for your brand, it’s just putting fancy dressing on what is, after all, just a Harlem tomato.

Is a Generation Losing the Ability to “Read” Emotions?

A recent (Aug 28)  op-ed in the Wall Street Journal talked about “Why Gen-Y Johnny Can’t Read Nonverbal Cues”

The essay, written by a professor of English at Emory University, laments that our youth has lost the knack for what anthropologist Edward T. Hall calls the “silent language,” the body language that accompanies words in face-to-face interactions. Because middle schoolers and high schoolers spend an average of nine hours a week on social networking (according to the National School Board Association), rather than socializing, they lose the nuance that imparts a wealth of additional meaning to conversations, meaning that emoticons can’t capture.

The author, Mark Bauerlein, posits that this has lead to workplaces where the younger workers exasperate their older counterparts with their inability to focus, with their constant umbilical attachment to a Blackberry or iPhone, with their desire to carry on a text conversation at the same time as a verbal one.

They are creating a world in which they are blind to nonverbal communication, a world that will get them in trouble if they attempt to communicate beyond their own country’s borders where they might offend if they ignore the nonverbal cues.

Well, maybe.

My daughter is 19, and she lives fully in the world of texting and social networking. I’ve watched the world she and her friends have created, and I think they take the world in differently.

In the social networking world, the nonverbal cues don’t matter as much because the social networking world relies on other things to arrange its hierarchy. Salary, cute clothes, skin color – they all become irrelevant in favor of wit, shared experience, and simply being there for one another. Even borders are irrelevant as Skype makes it possible for my daughter to video chat with her dear friend in Poland.

What has changed is that my daughter and her generation take in the world not by visual cues but by thousands of data points at a time. Think of it like pointillism, the painting technique in which thousands of tiny dots of primary color come together to form a complete picture that your brain takes in as a palette of secondary colors The world is no less nuanced and beautiful in a pointillist painting, it’s just very different.

The Facebook Charade

For those of us who have ever been on either side of the glass in a focus group, we know that a focus group is an elaborate charade.  Those of us behind the glass pretend we’re not really there, and those being paid for their opinions pretend that they don’t know their every utterance is being pored over.

As long as the focus group people can pretend they’re not being observed, they get swell food, swell drinks and an even more swell check at the end of the day.  No one who ever sat through a focus group is surprised when his or her opinion is recorded and mined like gold back at some office so that we can sell them – or people just like them – more stuff. That’s the tradeoff for the free food and for the check.

So why is it that those who use Facebook profess such shock when their data is mined?

Maybe it’s because Facebook started out as a tool for the young and idealistic. But really? Did anyone truly imagine the Facebook folk were providing a rumpus room for us to reach out to old high school friends – just because they’re so darned nice?

Every time someone accepts an application that tells them which musical star they’re most like, or what piece of pie represents their personality, they are giving up some information. The application even politely asks first whether it can glom onto your information.

Facebook hasn’t really perfected the formula for monetizing your data. But it is coming. We can all pretend that Facebook is just one happy party room where we get to post photos of our exploits, but come on  – did you think no one would want to pore over your every utterance so they could see how to sell you more stuff?

Seems a bit disingenuous to get all huffy now after playing for so long.

Facebook Friendships: Rejecting with Grace

My parents raised me to have good manners. Be honest, but don’t hurt people’s feelings. Those were the spoken rules. The unspoken one was just assumed: let people down easy, whether the rejection is because you don’t want to be their friend or their lover. Although I had a few false starts in my teens, I finally got it down.

But Facebook has changed the rules.

I use Facebook as my personal network, but many of my Facebook friends are work colleagues, just like in real life. My Facebook entries are personal, but, mindful of the professional colleagues, I am always careful to never veer to “TMI.”

Just as you learn to regulate the information you give out on Facebook, you learn to regulate what you comment on outside of Facebook. When you work in a cubicle, you learn to feign deafness when you overhear your cubicle neighbor speaking to her doctor about her nasty infection. You know better than to ever mention it when the two of you are face to face.

Likewise, with Facebook, you know better than to greet your coworker with, “So, sounds like you and your college pals had a wild one last night!” The unspoken rule is that you politely ignore Facebook revelations in the workplace just like you politely ignore cubicle conversations.

But what about the people who never learned these unspoken rules?

I have several friend invitations sitting in my Facebook that I haven’t done anything with. I pretend I don’t see them. They are perfectly nice people. And if I ran into them at a cocktail party, I would smile and be happy to see them. But if I saw them listening in to my conversation with friends at that cocktail party, I would stop talking until they’d moved on. And I am not sure I want them overhearing my conversations with Facebook friends.

These are people who have never done anything to me to make me shun them. When they asked me to be their Facebook friend, I am sure they did so with the best of intentions. Is it their fault no one has clued them in to the unspoken rules of social networking?

So I wonder how to let them down gently. Should I pretend I never got the invitation? Should I give them a chance and then un-friend them when they violate the unspoken rules? This question of manners is not one my parents can help me with, but it is one that we social networkers need to figure out.

How do you gently reject your not-quite Facebook friends? #fb

Sure, You Can – But SHOULD You?

I lost a young friend on Facebook the other day and, at this rate, I’m going to be completely friendless.

I go on Facebook many times a day because it is an easy way to keep track of my colleagues and buddies.

Like many in my age group, I was introduced to Facebook by the next generation and my most effective threat with my daughter was to take away her Facebook time. She overcame my early social networking misgivings with a haughty, “Oh, mom, you can set your privacy settings so nothing gets out beyond your friends.”

Well, of course that teen attitude hid a teen naivete and with experience, I later learned that, if you want to, you can eventually find almost anything on Facebook.

I have a young friend my daughter’s age whom I’ve kept track of on Skype and on Facebook as well as by reading her blog about her experiences. So when I saw that I was tagged in a photo she’d posted, I clicked on it to see what it was.

The photo was one from my college days. It showed her mom and me laughing riotously together. What you could not see – but I worried you could intuit from our vague, unfocused eyes– was that both of us had been drinking, leading to the hilarity.

I was upset. Without my permission, someone had posted a photo of me that was from pre-Internet days. Somehow it made it worse that this was my memory, not hers – she hadn’t even been conceived yet, never mind present at the party.

I emailed her to remove the photo immediately. She was hurt, said you couldn’t see any alcohol in the photo, and responded sarcastically (she is a teen, after all) asking whether she had to ask my permission before posting any photos of me at all. I think she was surprised that my answer was yes. I followed up with an e-lecture about the fact that some of the jobs I’m applying for require security clearance and did she really think this was the best time to post photos from my wild and crazy college days?

And that’s when she “unfriended” me.

The Internet makes it easy to cut and paste others’ words, which is why teachers have new strict anti-plagiarism policies in place. The social networking generation thinks nothing of posting whatever they want on their Facebook pages – anything seems to be fair game.

As my friend, David, said, “They think that because they CAN do it technologically, they have the RIGHT to do it.”

My daughter seemed to come down on the “anything is fair game” side of things. I showed her a Facebook photo from another young friend we shared. Photos from a party with the friend and a young man in – well, let’s just say, an inappropriate – position. A position fueled by alcohol at the party.

And I saved the photo to my desktop.

“Now,” I told my daughter. “The photo is mine and I can do anything I want with it, on Facebook or off. I can send it to anyone I want, including her mom if I really wanted to.”

The girl “unfriended” me the next day. #fb