J. Cafesin

The Yin/Yang of Love

2013-04-30T13:16:00.002-07:00

Got the call at 7:50 this morning and knew something was wrong. No one calls when I'm getting the kids ready for school unless it's bad news. And there was no possible way my 14 yr old son could have made it to school on his bike so fast.

Could hardly hear the woman over the sound of traffic digitally amplified through her cell, informing me my son had been in a bike accident. I finally got that he was pretty badly battered, but conscious. He was bleeding, she said, quite a bit, but seemed in tact. The moment I got where they were, and before she finished speaking, I put the phone on the kitchen table, called for my daughter to come with me and we got in my car and went to my son a few blocks away.

He was sitting on the curb when I pulled up behind the car I later found out belonged to the good folks who stopped to help my kid. They were in traffic and saw him on the side of the road crying and bleeding, his bike crumpled in front of him. I managed to get out of my car without faltering, and my son managed to stand so we could hug, feel each other, body to body, soul to soul.

“I don't know what happened,” my newly taller than me kid cried into my shoulder. “I didn't see the trash can. They're usually out tomorrow. I wasn't expecting them today. I didn't see it.”

His face was a bloody mess, bleeding across his chin, his upper lip, his shoulder, scrapes on his arm. He couldn't move his left hand. I didn't cry. He needed me to be strong. God, if he only knew how fragile and afraid I felt right then. The idea of him leaning on me was on par with absurd in my head. But I didn't cry. I thanked the woman and the man she was with probably fifty times in the space of five minutes. The man graciously put my son's bike in my car as I helped my kid in, and we went home.

My son walked away from the bike accident with a fractured wrist, abrasions, a loose front tooth that the dentist thinks will be fine down the line. In fact, in time, he should heal just fine. He will. I won't.

Went out to my office once my son was squared away and cried my eyes out. If I could have prayed, I would have right then, and did thank dumb luck all day, and even still as I write this, and forever forward, my kid wasn't killed, or injured beyond repair for life today.

I don't pray because I don't believe in God, any god/s, or 'higher power' exist that hears me. As an atheist, what happened to my son yesterday was an accident. He was careless, and the laws of physics that say he can't move through solid objects came into play. I know this law to be true, I believe in this law because I've spent a lifetime witnessing it. I've never seen anyone walk through walls, or pass a hand through a glass, except magicians, which we all know is an illusion, a trick of eye, not physically possible.

Don't know if I was born an atheist, but I've always been an empiricist—show me, don't tell me because I won't believe you. Bible stories in religious school my parents forced me to attend until my early teens seemed absurd, as twisted as Greek myths. Why believe, blindly, in a jealous, cruel and malicious God over Zeus, or Poseidon, of equally questionable character?

There have been many times, like this bike accident with my son, I've wished I could believe in something, anything to justify events other than entropy; cruelty: indifference to anyone by self, or stupidity. Always on the outside of our religious world, at times lonely to the extreme, I went searching in my early twenties for an ideology to be a part of, where I initially discovered Taoism.

I am not a Taoist. I am an atheist, and do not believe in any 'supreme ultimate.' And though I've read the Tao Te Ching through, many times, I understand little of the poems of Laozi. It was through Taoism, however, I first heard of the concept of yin/yang. 陰陽

The Taijitu, the commonly known yin/yang symbol from 14th century China, represents a philosophy first seen in the Tao Te Ching in the 4th century BC, though many believe the concept of opposites in harmony define balance existed many millennium before the writings. Black/white, day/night, male/female, dull/bright—in yin/yang ideology, with everything there is an equal opposite occupying the same space, intertwining, even mixing, actualizing each other's existence, and keeping the natural balance of the whole, that which is all.

Heady, to be sure, but not when you break it down to what we experience daily. We can't really know happy never having felt sad. Can't have a bottom without a top. There is no such thing as right with no wrong. These are abstracted, philosophical truths. Just like physics, yin/yang's empirical proofs play out in every aspect of living, which can never be fully appreciated without death.

While I believe the yin/yang philosophy to be truth, a basic physical and metaphysical law, and innately understand the balance interconnected opposites provide, I can't help resent this fundamental aspect of natures structure in times like these when my child's life is put on the line. The cruelest, sickest, most twisted yin/yang of all is the spectacular, magnificent, all encompassing love we get to feel for our kids/fear of, or actually losing them...

14 Dead, 200 Injured from Terrorist Explosion...

2013-04-22T10:13:00.000-07:00

Terrorist and organization responsible are known and have been found (though had to read deep into articles to find the buried name of their leader):

WEST Fertilizer Company, CEO Donald Adair

We have become intimate with the name Tesrneav, the boys from the Boston bombing, but almost no one knows the name of Donald Adair, the CEO terrorist that, "It seems this manufacturer was willfully off the grid," said Rep. Bennie Thompson, House Committee on Homeland Security.

According to Reuters, the plant stored 270 tons of highly explosive ammonium nitrate fertilizer that should have been reported to the Dept. of Homeland Security but was not. The Texas Dept. of State Health Services was aware of the dangerous chemical but failed to alert DHS.

Donald Adair is personally responsible for murdering 10 volunteer firefighters and the residents who tried to help them extinguish a fire at his WEST Fertilizer Plant site. He is responsible for leveling 50 homes, maiming 200 people, and wiping out two thirds of the emergency responders for the Texas town of West.

For money.

The Tesrnmeav brothers, at least, had a religious cause, and they only killed three, and injured way less. And they didn't destroy any homes, or communities. Yes, what they did was horrific. But where is the outrage at the terrorists within this country—the American corporations that commit acts of terrorism without ANY repercussions, or even much press. Look at any media the last five days and the Tesrneav brothers ARE the news. But not so much the far more devastating WEST Fertilizer Plant's blatant act of terrorism last Wednesday.

For money.

Evil is indifference to suffering. When the press ignores, or barely covers acts of terrorism like the WEST Fertilizer Plant explosion, they're not only irresponsible as journalists, but evil, helping promote and sustain homegrown, money-based terrorism.

PG&E murdered 8 people in San Bruno, CA in Sept. 2009, and destroyed the Crestmoor neighborhood south of San Francisco. January 2012, an independent audit from the State of California issued a report stating that PG&E had illegally diverted over $100 million from a fund used for safety operations, and instead used it for executive compensation and bonuses. Funding to fix the neglected pipelines is $769 million for a three-year increase in gas rates to US--their customers. Peter Darbee, then CEO of PG&E, received $8.4 million in total compensation in 2010, down from $10.6 million in 2009. Christopher Johns, still president of the utility, received $3.3 million in 2010, down from $3.5 million in 2009. These men are terrorists, responsible for the murder of thirteen-year-old, Janessa Greig, among the San Bruno dead, yet were PAID millions for acts of terrorism against humanity.

Why is religious jihad more interesting than our citizens genocide for money? Where the fuck is the outrage at our OWN corporate terrorists? Why isn't everyone reading this getting madder and madder with every line, and then sending this to a friend so they too become aware of the terrorism that MUST be dealt with at home, here, in the U.S. by our own corporate terrorist organizations, from PG&E to Apple (Foxconn slave labor) which globally abuses human rights? Watchdog groups and the rare social advocates who care enough to tweet more than the Tesrneav boys, can not and will not sway the press to pursue our homegrown corporate terrorists with the same fervor they present foreign enemies.

Today, now, Tweet, Update, whatever, the name of Donald Adair, CEO of West Fertilizer Plan, the latest of our own homegrown terrorists all of us need to hold responsible for crimes against humanity.

Marketing 102—Brand Loyalty

2013-04-08T15:09:00.001-07:00

My DH was a diehard HP fan. Twenty years we've been together, from his PCs to printers he's purchased HPs. Great quality, but even better customer service, he'd tout. Have a problem, they've always helped me work it out.

Upon his insistence (over the cheaper and more powerful Toshiba I wanted), I bought an HP laptop for close to a grand online. The machine was virtually non-functional—from broken keyboard to busted wireless, and working with the constant pop-ups was almost impossible.

First call to them to replace the laptop, they claimed I wasn't operating it properly.

Bullshit.

Spent several hours constructing an email listing everything wrong with the machine, in clear, concise language, which I sent to their service dept requesting an immediate response. Didn't hear back from anyone at HP. Few days later the laptop disk started screaming a hostile noise. I called again. They agreed to take the machine and have it diagnosed and repaired, not replaced. They returned it two weeks later after replacing something about bios.

The laptop had every single problem sent in for, and a few additional problems upon return. Called HP again. Each call I waited upwards of ten or more minutes on the line before getting a rep, who was in China, Mexico, India and couldn't really help me, and another fifteen to twenty minutes of my time waiting to speak with a U.S. rep, or a manager willing to do something to fix the crap laptop they sold me.

Over the next eleven months, thirty or more calls from both me and my DH (HP reps actually hung up on him twice after announcing they wouldn't help anymore), three laptop replacements, and four diagnose and repairs, they sent us yet another new laptop that is just above barely functional. By this time I'd already purchased my Toshiba, and couldn't care less about the newest, yet still screwed up HP, except to feel my skin crawl every time their name is mentioned.

Needless to say, my DH is no longer a loyal customer of HP. In fact, we go out of our way to avoid buying from them. So do a lot of other people now, resulting in HP having to cut their workforce substantially, and their stock is still at an all time low, even in this bubble market, as they continue to lose their market share to other computer companies.

I used to be an Apple fanatic. Hard core, owned nothing but Macs. Their computers were intuitive, visual, durable, reliable. I remember laughing at my dad who owned PCs with Windows when he assured me computers were inherently unstable and supposed to crash a lot. My Macs virtually never crashed. And though it cost me $500 every time I needed a few more megs of RAM to run Adobe software, I could call Apple at 3:00a.m. and get advice on how to daisy chain my peripherals, or properly load Photoshop.

I was happy as an ignorant Apple loyalist, until I found others using PCs with Photoshop, and all the other software I used on my Macs at half of what I was spending, and they were getting way more powerful systems. And their systems weren't crashing anymore, unlike the less stable Mac OSX hard and software. In fact, even the durability and longevity Apple used to claim in their products went away. And they nixed their personal customer service. If I wanted to talk with an Apple/Mac tech, it meant either waiting impossibly long through multiple phone loops to get to them, or they referred with recorded links to online Apple FAQ forums.

The love affair with Apple is finally showing signs of waning. Takes folks awhile because so much of what Steve Jobs sold was religion—“believe in Apple and you'll be cool.” Abstractions like 'believe,' and 'cool' will only fool people for so long. The death of the marketing guru is likely the slow decline of Apple, without the quality products or customer service to command the outlandishly high prices they do. Their stock off it's all time high of $700— today, right now at $425 in an extremely bullish market, to say the least. They lose market share daily to Samsung and others. I bought a SunDisk mp3 recently because my iPod, and my son's iPod, both only a year old, would no longer hold a charge.

The arrogance of CEOs who ignore that loyalty is built on product/service benefit/s continually filling a need, is only matched by their ignorance. For a while, large companies like Apple and HP can coast on their foundations of producing good products coupled with giving a damn about their customers. However, when product, or service, or both are lost for an extended period, after a while, customers will go to competitors. And like water through a hole in a dyke, competitors will eventually rush in to fill consumer need/s.

Sick of buying fruit that never ripened, I went to return a spoiled pineapple to Safeway my DH bought. Manager told me they don't sell that brand at Safeway, and accused my husband of being confused perhaps, about purchasing the pineapple there. I went into their produce section and pulled a pineapple with the exact same brand label as the spoiled one I brought in, and demanded they replace the fruit. The encounter took almost an hour of my time, for a $2.99 pineapple. But it's Safeway's corporate policy of replacing popular brands with their own crappy versions that has ultimately killed any loyalty to them, since they clearly care more about serving themselves than me.

The $350 weekly I used to spend at Safeway, I now spend at Trader Joe's, and Target. And I'm not the only one. Trader Joe's is putting stores across the country in record numbers, and expanding existing stores selection making it easier to shop for everything at one location. Target added food and produce several years ago and offers competitive prices, way cheaper than Safeway, to gain market share. And though their clothing and other products are not bargain rates, I can return anything without a receipt to the credit card I bought it on, no hassle, and their staff has always been fast at checkout and efficient on the floor. Target's sales and stock are consistently strong, even in very down markets.

Marketing 101 is developing product/s and service/s to fulfill target market/s need/s.

Marketing 102—Consistently produce better products, and refine services to fulfill changing (and hopefully expanding) market/s need/s.

The Systemic Problem with Public Education Today

2013-03-26T11:46:00.002-07:00

I didn't get in, mom, my daughter called me hysterically crying from school on Monday.

What? She couldn't be talking about her talent show. She insisted she'd get in, no problem, as last year a boy got on stage, threw a top hat at the judges, and he got in, she'd told us.

They didn't want me, mom, she managed through quick gasps. I wasn't good enough. And then she crumbled, lost to herself, and her value.

My heart in my throat, I told her I'd call the school and talk to whoever was in charge and find out why they didn't want her in the show. I insisted multiple times she WAS good enough, regardless of what her elementary school said. I had listened to her practicing for a week, and the last several days she was on tone, her voice strong, clear, resonant. It was mind-boggling why she didn't get in, I told her, and promised again to find out what was going on before we disconnected.

I contacted the school directly. Made the front office aware my daughter was very upset. I left messages for the principal, as well as the teachers involved with the talent show. Apparently, helping me deal with the child's heart they broke was less important than lunch, as no one got back to me, and I was unable to give my daughter any information when she got home. No one at school bothered to speak with her either.

She tried to put on a brave face--pretend it didn't really matter, though insisted she'll never try out for a talent show again. Usually singing softly to herself, she was quiet all afternoon. A few tears spilled when she thought no one was looking. Crushed me to my core.

A practiced pianist and singer, she'd wanted to try out for the talent show for years but had been too afraid to perform alone. This year, 5th grade, her last year of elementary school, two classmates asked her to do a song and routine with them. She was thrilled, especially having secured few extended friendships beyond school in her six years there.

After weeks of practicing on the playground together, and just days before the sign-up, the classmates decided to perform alone or with others.

They don't want me anymore, mom, she cried softly. I'm not going to be in the talent show.

I gathered her in my arms. I'm so sorry. I know this was important to you, I said as I held her. But you can still be in the show. You have a beautiful voice. You dance, you move like the music is in you. I love watching you perform! Please don't let this stop you from trying out for the show. Show them all how talented you are, because you are!

She didn't believe me. I'm her mom. Of course I'd say that. Which is what she said to me, per usual—RME (roll my eyes) to be exact. There was no way she was going to perform alone.

Enter her teen brother, a practiced, studied and performing guitarist of nine years, comes into the kitchen upon listening upstairs. Feeling her shame and sadness, he offered to perform with her in her talent show. She gratefully, proudly accepted. Beyond their constant bickering, he was showing he loved her, deeply, and my beautiful daughter glowed. Proud mama moment, as well!

They choose to perform Pink's So What. My son's suggestion. He's been learning it to perform on his own in a few months. His sister happily agreed, as she loves the song (in fact, had asked him to sing it in his performance, but he wants to sing it himself).

I was tickled they'd worked out a solution with such ease, and began practicing without my prodding, until I heard the words to the song:

I guess I just lost my husband

I don't know where he went

So I'm gonna drink my money

I'm not gonna pay his rent (Nope!)
I got a brand new attitude

And I'm gonna wear it tonight

I'm gonna get in trouble

I wanna start a fight

After watching Pink's video, I spoke to both of them that perhaps it wasn't the best song for the overtly Christian, conservative/Republican public elementary school my daughter attended. And while it's true, there are no cuss words, as my kids argued, and no slamming the church, or religion, or even Republicans, I insisted the words weren't appropriate for her audience and suggested they pick another song, on par with Amazing Grace.

Since we both want to sing Pink, then let's let the school decide, my daughter boldly suggested. Along with her parent-signed permission form to be turned in the next day, almost a week before the tryouts, the school required the lyrics from all singing performers. We agreed to let the school tell us if they could perform So What, or not, when they reviewed the lyrics. If the school felt it inappropriate, she'd pick something else for the try-outs.

She delivered the permission form and lyrics she'd printed out to school the next day.

Our daughter and son practiced multiple times daily. She also practiced alone in her room daily on top of that, to be on key and in sync with her brother's guitar. The day before, and the morning of the try-outs, they sounded really great. We had not heard from the school about the song choice, which our daughter touted multiple times with, See!, as if I'm ancient thinking the pop song inappropriate.

I didn't go to the try-outs. No parents were there, my daughter told me on the phone that afternoon. I dropped my son off at the school with his electric and amp and went home and watched the clock for his call. Picking them up, my daughter assured me it went well, they sounded good. According to our son, it went 'fine. She was on key and I was on time and we sounded pretty good, a lot better than any of the other five acts we watched trying out,' he assured me. He, too, was sure they'd get into the show.

When my daughter called me Monday morning and told me they didn't get in, I was floored. Teetering under the weight of her sadness, especially after all her efforts, I called the school to provide me information, and my child support, but they did neither. They denied her the opportunity to perform, while accepting the two girls she was originally slated to perform with, and sent her a message that she really isn't as good as the rest of the kids at school who consistently exclude her (involved in church activities and religious functions), and her school just publicly proved it.

After contacting the school multiple times, late afternoon I got a call from a teacher who claimed she wasn't involved with the judging, but after looking into it, the rubric the judges filled out during try-outs indicated the song my daughter sang was not appropriate. I inquired why she hadn't told us this a week ago when they reviewed the lyrics, and given my daughter the opportunity to perform another song. Her feather's ruffled, her tone clearly agitated, again she insisted her talent committee couldn't possibly review all 40 applications submitted. She quoted several lines from So What, subtly chastising me for not knowing them inappropriate, then told me they rely on the parents to know what is right and wrong, and clearly So What was wrong for children.

We do not restrict access to the books our kids read or the music they listen to. Never have. We play, and talk about music, a lot, what lyrics mean, underlying messages—like how Pink doesn't really want to start a fight. She's angry for being dissed, like our daughter felt by the two girls, and is lashing out in So What. I explained to the teacher, turns out coordinator of the talent show, that we were relying on the school to nix anything they felt inappropriate. It wasn't my call in this subtle situation (unlike our daughter choosing, say, American Idiot), but theirs.

The coordinator insisted I should have simply forbade my child from performing the song of her choice. The school did nothing wrong in failing to read what they themselves had requested, and eventually there was no point in continuing our dialog.

My daughter listened to our entire conversation. We have no secrets in our family. And I wanted to make sure she understood her rejection had nothing to do with their performance. She asked me to ask if she could pick another song, which I did, but the coordinator told us the acts had already been chosen and slated to fill the time. There was nothing she could do, nothing that should be done. We really should have known better.

Upon my request, the vice-principle contacted me via email that evening to arrange a phone conversation after she spoke with our daughter privately the following morning. I was afraid of the talk she wanted with my child, scared of the burden she'd surely place on my daughter while absolving herself and the school of culpability. Nine years and two kids going through this elementary school, and time and again I've watched educators put the onus of their screw-ups on the children, the parents, the lack of funding...etc. In all the years I've brought issues to the attention of our local public educators, maybe two teachers, and no admin, ever, have claimed responsibility for their mistakes.

The vice-principal contacted me the next morning, gushing over her dialog with my daughter, enamored by her 'extraordinary use of language.' Then she reiterated their conversation for me. She couched her speech in platitudes and soft instruction, subtly blaming my child for going into the try outs with a bad attitude after being dissed, suggesting perhaps it wasn't wise to try out for the show shouldering disappointment with something to prove. Oh, and she didn't like the word 'dissed,' told my daughter to used the word frustrated instead, in effect, instructing my child to mask feeling, well, dissed, which is way more than simply frustrated.

During their half hour talk she told my daughter she should be more aware of her audience, know what is appropriate and not by now, and learn to make better choices in the future. When my child mentioned submitting the lyrics, and thinking we'd be informed, as I did, if there was a problem, the vice-principle blamed my child for not soliciting a response after submitting her forms from the talent show coordinator, then unknown to her, if she wasn't sure about her song choice. At no time did the vice-principal say the teachers screwed up not reading the paperwork they'd requested. She never apologize for these teachers costing my daughter the opportunity to compete with something they considered more appropriate.

And the best part, the vice-principle didn't even know what she said to my daughter was wrong—ethically, morally, and worse, modeling a horrific lack of personal responsibility.

By her grace, I get that this woman really wanted to help. She's a mom of two girls, and knows how much it hurts to see your child hurt. So I listened politely then disconnected, suffocating under the weight of my disappointment. So systemic is this lack of accountability in our public education system, denial of culpability have become ingrained into the industry culture.

Admitting to mistakes is the only way to begin correcting them.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely—then by the same wisdom, absolute autonomy [our educators enjoy today via the Teacher's Unions] absolutely undermines responsibility! And teaching our kids by example to deny mistakes, or avoid repercussions by neglecting personal responsibility for them, will ensure the society of the future to consist of self-absorbed brats, more interested in covering their ass than helping humanity thrive beyond them.

Beyond Teen Angst

2013-02-28T09:46:00.002-08:00

I hate people, my [almost] 14 yr old son said to me, sitting at the top of the stairs this morning.

Felt like he hit me in the head with a brick.

Don't say that. It's not true (though it probably was for him right then).

You do, he sniped back at my offhanded dismissal of his feelings.

No. I don't. I don't hate anyone. Hell, I hardly know anyone. I don't try to make friends because I'm into creating. I'm self-absorbed, honey. Most creatives are. I don't have time to hang out, and be a mom, and wife, and create. So I choose to hang with just our family, and create.

Well, I don't like people, he said softly. But I knew what he meant was, they don't like me.

Sadness and concern that's been keeping me up at nights over my beautiful son's lack of friends consumed me. Again, my brain began racing, searching for ways to help him, methodology for him to actualize friendships.

At the beginning of this school year, his two closest friends since kindergarten gravitated to other groups. I never understood the friendships he had with these boys. They were both devout, practicing Christians, from very conservative families. My son is a self-proclaimed Atheist. He shared few common interests with either kid, except video games, which is what they did when they were together. And while our son was perfectly happy with this, I think the boys grew out of gaming, and with no other interests to connect them, they drifted to kids with more in common this year, leaving our son behind.

DH and I have enrolled him in music jams (he plays electric guitar since 7), robotics classes, kung fu three times a week, even Boy Scouts when he was growing up, in hopes he'd integrate, but he never really has. He relied on the two boys all these years, and since they've moved on, now finds himself very lonely.

And it breaks my heart.

Of course, we talk about things he can do, daily, to spark friendships. To his credit, he's tried several, but is consistently rejected, or ignored, or worse, bullied, especially now that he's on his own at school—an easy mark. Afraid of getting hurt, again, he shuts himself inside his head and avoids interacting, except at home, where he feels safe.

How do you know when I'm depressed? I asked him casually. You always know, even on the phone, right away, like you're plugged into me, know what I'm feeling.

I do. I hear it in your voice, see it on your face, even when you try and hide it, pretend everything's okey-dokey.

I love that you're plugged into me. It makes me feel valuable, important to you, but overall, too. You caring what I think, what I feel, validates me, empowers me. Do you understand?

Yeah. Like how you make me feel.

Yeah. He gets it. I smile. He does too.

I just don't care what most people think.

Again, it felt like he slugged me. And I knew it a lie. Why?

Well, no one outside this family cares what I think. So why should I care about them?

We sat next to each other, shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip (we have a small staircase). His anger and sadness oozed off him like molasses. Rat in a maze, my mind desperately searched for ways to help my kid.

Honey, why do you live?

He looked at me quizzically.

And I don't mean because I gave birth to you. You can off yourself anytime. Living is a choice. So, why do you choose to live?

He eyed me suspiciously, looking for my angle. To experience living...

I shake my head. What does that mean?

Well...I get to taste great stuff, and feel nice stuff, like how nice your hugs feel; and do fun stuff sometimes, like play video, or cook, or when we all go into the city for Dim Sum.

But what about the not fun parts of living, and there are many, as you know, the things we all have to do, from mundane tasks to getting an education, and then a job. What justifies living through the hard times?

His eyes drifted from mine as he considered my question.

Well, dead I wouldn't be able to feel the good stuff. I wouldn't feel anything at all.

So, why do you live?

To feel.

Bingo. You are here because your dad and I gifted you life, so you'd get the experience, the opportunity to feel. But you wouldn't be here, getting to experience the magnificent gift of feeling, if not for my mother and father, and dad's mom and dad, and so on, and on, back through the generations of our families, and humanity. So, why care about people you don't know, have yet to engage with? Because you are here because of them.

Micheal (a bully at school) didn't have anything to do with me being born, mom.

Sweetie, acknowledge it or not, all of us are intricately connected. We've evolved because we've worked together, as a collective. And if we hope to gift the next generation this spectacular experience of being human, and the one after that, we're going to have to continue to care what each other thinks and feels, way beyond our own families. Know what I mean?

He grinned at me sardonically. Shook his head with a scoff.

Do yourself a favor, and do something different today. Talk to the kids at the lunch table you sit at. Or sit at a different lunch table, maybe with some kids you'd like to get to know. Then ask three questions, and engage someone at the table in dialog. And care what they answer, what they think. Question anyone's answers who seem interested in talking. Plug in, like you do to me. Empower the people around you with genuine interest, and you'll make friends.

He stared down at his hands.

I love you, baby. And I know caring beyond me, your dad, sister, gram, is scary, risky, but you gotta choose to care. The best times of your life will be remembered with people—celebrating; sharing, creating; teaching; learning; and loving...ahh, love, the most powerfully wonderful feeling of all! I threw my arm over his shoulder and he leaned into me, so I wouldn't see him crying. It took all my will not to crumble, holding him there at the top of the stairs.

Promise me you'll do something, today, to get on the path to changing your sitch.

He straightened, wiped his nose on his hoodie sleeve. Just three questions?

Yup. Start with that for today.

OK. I promise.

And with that, we began our day.

Educating the Future of America

2013-02-12T08:51:00.002-08:00

Put an ad on Craigslist for a Video Editor. Designed a book trailer for my novel, Reverb. Did the storyboard, got the clips, had the sequencing (timing), music and text—just needed a production wiz to put it all together. Ad read 'local vendors ONLY,' since I wanted to be able to work in person if necessary, and also limit response. For what I assumed to be a couple days work in Final Cut, I offered to trade a couple days of my services as a CD/AD/MarCom specialist in my Craigslist post.

Received over 30 responses to my ad in the first two days. Five percent wanted money, ranging from $75-$1,500 for their services. Eight-five percent were willing to produce my video on trade. What surprised me—10% who responded said they'd do my video for nothing. Student, or pro-something looking to change careers, they wanted portfolio pieces.

I know what you're thinking...'you get what you pay for,' or, 'crap pay, crap product'...bla, bla...

OK. Me, too. Until I looked at everyone's reels. For the most part, the difference was negligible between the editor who wanted $1,500, and those willing to put together the video for nothing. Not really so surprising, since professional consultant to savvy student, all were on the same Final Cut Pro software, and most were on MAC Towers or high-powered Apple laptops. All were certain, and in most cases it seemed to me they could handle my video with ease, and with direction provide exactly what I wanted.

Software is the great equalizer. Sort of...

Final Cut Pro is an amazing program, making it easy, or at least the learning curve within most's reach, to create virtually professional quality movies, clips, videos, with built-in libraries of filters and FX templates. Adobe's Premium Pro does pretty much the same thing for pc and windows users. In fact, total armatures like our 11yr old daughter now creates her class presentations on Corel Video Studio, and they are blow you away beautiful—educational and engaging, light years away from the color/cut and paste reports I did back in the day.

We have entered the Do-It-Yourself, Visual Age, and most of us—student to pros are creating and sharing visually. Technology has recently provided a myriad of tools for ages 5-105 for visual expression, at our fingertips. The market is responding to demand, and continually releasing new software made simpler and more user friendly.

Cool! (for creatives, at least, which is about 10% of the population).

The cost is jobs.

Used to be it took a unionized film and editing crew of many, a production company, extensive equipment and cameras behind the actors and action to make a movie or TV show. Now, some of the most popular films and series are produced with digital cameras, and edited with the a fore mentioned software by only a few behind the scenes.

Beginning in the late '80s, the ripple effect of the Mac and subsequent creative suite of software have wiped out many, once Advertising Industry staples:

—typographers

—lithographers

—layout artists

—pre-press production

and minimized demand for:

—photographers

—photography supplies, labs and manufacturing

—animators/illustrators

—art and drafting materials/supplies (CAD replaced drawing)

—freelance personnel

—sheet-fed press (replaced by digital printing)

I'm sure I'm missing many jobs that vanished with the advent of the Mac and Adobe Creative Suite of tools— many more than the opportunities that arose with electronic publishing, such as the digital press.

In manufacturing, beyond the cheap emerging labor markets, robots now build most car components that people used to build. Restrict outsourcing or not, manufacturing will never be like it was—most of those lost jobs are not coming back. And technology will eliminate more and more labor intensive tasks as it continues to get smarter, and we teach it to perform a wider range of functions.

Retail; consumer goods—better expect spending to go down, since fewer jobs means less discretionary cash for consumers, especially for the middle class. Advances in technology will hit the middle class, the labor worker, the office admin, first, and hardest as their jobs disappear.

The disparity between the wealthy and middle class is growing rapidly, reflected by the poor holiday sales last year with so many out of work, the unemployment rate made artificially lower from those who've used their benefits and have given up looking for a job.

It is not possible, nor do I wish to go back in time to preserve jobs/careers, or restrict our advances. I love technology. Big fan! In fact, we live a digital life. Laptop are always on, and mostly open. At any time, any member of our family is actively involved in creating something—my DH: AI software modeled after the human brain; I'm writing, designing or marketing something; kids are researching online, doing homework at assigned websites, writing reports or creating presentations.

In today's world, it is not enough to simply edit video anymore, or administer work-flow, or put together cars, cell phones or computer components when huge amounts of people globally can do it as well, and are willing to do it for little* or nothing**.

Manufacturing to civil, or customer service administration—simple, repetitive jobs are no longer the foundation that supports the U.S. middle class, and a strong economy. Ours is weak right now, and will continue to be weak, grow the chasm between rich and not, unless we change the focus of our education, and fast.

It is imperative our kids become technologically adept early on, and continue to learn and stay current with advances in creative tools. The families in our neighborhood can afford the latest technology, and ours is continually exchanging knowledge on working with it, but this isn't true of most East Oakland households. This requires K-12 teachers to college profs to understand and be working with the current technology [at least] in their field of study, to then teach it. Most can't/don't. Many classrooms across the country are still without enough computers or tech support to teach even the basics.

We all have access to information about anything now via the most powerful communication tool humanity has created to date—the internet. Both my son, now 8th grade, and daughter, 5th grade, have been required to work online for school assignments since the 3^rd grade. Neither have had any instruction on internet etiquette, protocol, or security. Viruses have wiped the family laptop four times, so far, with my son or daughter clicking school assigned links.

The jobs of tomorrow hinge on the education we give our kids today. STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) must be taught early on, and be the focal point of education today, but it's not. Introducing our kids to the amazing tools available, then teaching how to use them to realize a vision isn't enough. We must also instill in them the desire to create—explore and then develop their own ideas.

The U.S. has always perceived itself a country of creators, though not en-mass. Mostly we've been a nation where a few create and the rest of us market, or manufacture the creations. We need to switch that around—more creators than production, as electronics, robots and apps will continue to perform more of our menial (and not so menial) tasks.

We, The People, must become a nation of innovators, developers, technologists; leaders in science, medicine, global sustainability—climatically, economically and socially. Again it falls on our teachers to ignite a creative spark in their students, as parents are often too busy working, or don't understand the current [and future] job environment—that to compete globally their kid's skill set must stand out from the masses, which is now...well, the world.

*Enterprising young entrepreneur, Steve Jobs, exploited this trend by sending Apple's manufacturing overseas—both workers and materials cheaper in China for the same [or better] production of iProducts.

**Craig Newmark, Craigslist founder, began the trend of giving users the 'ability' to be free admins to monitor his site's content.

Real Price of Healthcare

2013-02-05T09:57:00.002-08:00

Mid-January, I called the Director of Emergency Dept. for the San Ramon Regional Medical Center in regards to outstanding bills sent to collection I purposefully have not paid. The bills were generated in early April, 2012, when my son was admitted to the hospital's emergency room, referred by his primary care physician, for [poorly diagnosed] possible appendicitis. I paid the hospital only 15% to date [of an over $1,000 bill beyond insurance coverage], included in a letter to the Director in June, 2012, and nothing to their vendors—from doctor bills, to radiation, to ultrasound, because both my husband and I feel many of the procedures pushed on our son were unnecessary.

I explained this again on the phone to the Director when I called a few weeks ago in regards to this still open issue, to stop the harassing phone calls at all hours from collection agencies. The hospital had yet to contact me, even once, in response to my original letter in 2012. They cashed the check though.

During our recent call, I again questioned the SRRMC emergency procedures in response to admitting our son. The Director was polite, but insisted the hospital had done nothing wrong, that even giving my son the flu test (least expensive and fastest results) first, instead of last as they did, they would have insisted on the chest x-rays, and the ultra-sound, and the I.V. If they'd found the flu virus, as they did, first, instead of last, and I'd said no to the additional tests, satisfied with the flu results, the Director then said the hospital would have called the police and child services and had me arrested for child endangerment and taken my son from me.

I was so taken aback by this blatant threat that I questioned it's meaning, and the Director repeated it, then again and again throughout our dialog. In fact, every time I questioned anything his staff did, he threatened me with legal action. He informed me the admitting doctor who originally saw my son regularly testifies in court cases and 'handles these types of things all the time,' referring to hospital lawsuits. When I questioned him why chest x-rays for possible appendicitis, he assured me six x-rays were necessary, though two doctors had listened to my son's chest through a stethoscope and admittedly heard no congestion.

Every question I had about the hospital's rational behind the extensive procedures performed on our son, and the Director insisted had my husband or I attempted to take our son from Emergency, they would have called the police and had us arrested. He assured me we made the right decision to keep our son there until the hospital was ready to release him—six hours and, regardless of our protests, two invasive and two non-invasive procedures preformed.

Forty-five minutes into our circular dialog, the Director offered to remove the ultrasound charges from our hospital bill. I questioned why the ultrasound if my son was admitted for possible appendicitis. Why not the x-ray, or both since he'd had no symptoms of appendicitis, his abdomen was not distended, nor had he vomited, was not constipated or experience pain when urinating, as is typical with appendicitis. In fact, he was awake and alert and watching TV in the hospital bed, and his stomach pains had subsided.

The Director had no response to my questions. He retracted his offer, suggested I retrieve my son's hospital records, then challenged me to get a doctor, a pediatrician, in fact, to confirm they did anything wrong, in writing, before he would take anything off our bill. Of course, the hospital records, entered that April day by the doctor's, will not reflect our consistent protests with every recommended test, nor the three hour wait between tests with what the Director claims the hospital considered a possible life-threatening emergency. The hospital records won't reveal both my husband's and my continual pleas for the hospital to administer a simple flu test, which the nurse indicated both doctors had neglected to order until after all the expensive, invasive tests were performed.

San Ramon Region Medical Center is the closest hospital within ten miles. We'd like to be able to count on them as a medical resource, however, the Director's threats when the hospital's authority is challenged is very concerning. His basic contention [at least] in the emergency room is they can do whatever they want, to whomever they want, whenever they want without question. And this is very dangerous, indeed. My husband and I have filed a complaint against the hospital with our insurance carrier, but it's unlikely they'll take any action. They don't care about their over $12,000 bill for the treatment and procedures performed on our son. They'll just pass the loss on to their customers with higher rates, and justify the increase with rising medical costs.

ObamaCare may be the beginning, but we're still so very far from regulating medical fraud, or eliminating the need for insurance entirely by instituting fair and equitable public health care.

On Writing Fiction

2013-01-22T09:59:00.000-08:00

Writing fiction is intoxicating. Fully engaging. Hot. Sexual. Physical. Mental. Spacial. Virtually touching real if I'm doing it right. Alone in my TuffShed/office, pounding on the laptop keyboard, creating stories filled with people, then enter the scene, a million miles from solitude...

I'm never lonely writing fiction, or bored. Frustrated, quite a bit, trying to get the full picture—the richness of the characters and story in my head out, and onto the monitor. And after editing for the twentieth, or fiftieth time, what I pictured in my minds eye is generally on the page.

Writing fiction is one expensive addiction. Beyond the writing programs and courses, beyond the cost of writers conferences, and sending out manuscripts, query letters, there is the time—the endless hours after my 'real' job, invested in actually writing. TV's out. Socializing, virtually never. I write fiction when I can, whenever I can.

Like jacking off, other than actually writing fiction, there isn't much reward. I write to be read, so I put my work out there to agents and publishers, but mostly I've been rejected. And it hurts. Bad. Agents, in particular, have been egregious in responding with even a modicum of humanity. They require writers to spend hours researching the books they represent, articles and information about them, then expect us to regurgitate this information in our query letter, along with paying for postage and/or copies of our manuscripts. They send back a half sheet of paper with a xerox of their rejection, or an email often addressed to “Dear Author,” if they respond at all, which is rare.

Fiction writers who are 'lucky' enough to get their worked picked up by a publisher aren't much better off. Most publishers do little or no marketing, other than on their own websites, to promote their authors. And I know many bestselling authors, some with major publishers, who don't make enough on their fiction to support them. They, too, have 'real' jobs, and must write in their free time to survive. Some are privileged enough to have spousal support, are retired with pockets of cash or a pension, or have inheritance. I envy them being able to jack off all day!

Been writing my entire life—journaling at first, then endeavoring into screenplays, novels and such after study. The process is such a turn-on that I feel compelled to write fiction, reward or not. Like any addict, I've done some stupid things to get my work out there and read, in hopes of being able to make enough to write full time.

My latest debacle was going with an indie publisher for my novel, Reverb. Thrilled to be accepted after over a year of rejections from agents and 'real' publishers, I gratefully signed a contract that stripped me of my rights to my work for over five years. The first two and a half years it sat on her desk. She then edited it with me via Google Docs for three weeks, insisting I put in all her recommended changes, which massacred the story and character development. Next, she hired her niece, I think, to design the cover. It was so horrible, reviewers (and readers) mentioned it again and again as tacky, and that it did not represent the writing inside. When I asked her if I could design the cover myself, she balked. My 'real' job—I'm a CD/AD of over 25 years. I've designed many book covers, was an Art Director at Windsor Publications for several years out of college, but she still insisted she knew best, and went with her version. Killed the possibility as an emerging writer of getting read, since a good percentage of unknown authors are judged by their book cover alone.

Marketing the novel is the only other chance of getting read. She did none, nothing, left it solely up to me to do all my own marketing. Some book reviewers I found willing to take on Reverb required a note from a publisher. When I notified mine with their request, she couldn't be bothered. She stuck my book on Amazon, had it published through Ingram and Lightning Source so it flooded the internet with places to purchase it, and that was it. Our contract expired in December, yet she refuses to take down the hundreds of sites it continues to sell on. She claims rights to the edited work forever, has yet to pay me anything, has shown me sales records just once, a year ago, for only paperback, even though the greater percentage of my [very meager] sales are ebooks.

Six years ago, when I originally went looking for representation, self-publishing on Amazon hadn't arrived yet. Back then, self-publishing costs money, money I still feel loathed to invest, cutting into our family budget to support my addiction, since I dedicate so much of my time and energy to writing already.

My ex-publisher warned me not to write this blog. She threatened it would hurt me more than her, make me look the fool. And yes. I was. Maybe, probably, still am. Other writers have cautioned me that agents and publishers will never rep me if I made public my experiences trying to get my fiction picked up, putting them down in the process. So be it. I am compelled to share my journey so far, and will continue to do so, if nothing else, to help other writers on their path to getting read beyond their lover, or mother.

Going to self-publish Reverb this time. Start with Amazon, maybe Barnes & Noble, chat up the book online, get reviews from bloggers and readers to help promote it. While it's true, I can hire book marketing contractors pushing their services on LinkedIn, and for $5,000 they'll put Reverb #1 on Amazon for a bit by buying copies then trashing them...or increase sales by paying for book reviews that tout the work as brilliant because I'm paying them to, I will do neither. Reverb is “an excellent read. Gripping, engaging, well told, very real,” according to a reviewer recently, especially now that I've had a chance during the five years it was locked up with Zumaya to polish it. “A good work will get out there, publisher or no (we hope!),” the reviewer assured me.

Hope springs eternal...

Trickle Down Polarization

2012-12-17T13:18:00.000-08:00

My father is a fervent Republican. My mother was a Democrat. Once saw him put his fist through the solid maple cabinet an inch from my mother's head because her vote was going to cancel his in the second Regan election. Though he never hit her, connected anyway, he often shouted, slammed things, threw things, at me, even, when he encountered resistance (reason) when espousing his conservative views.

My father doesn't believe Global Warming is real, or caused by us in any way (absolving himself of conserving resources).

My father believes all non-believers, atheists and agnostics are dangerous fools—to be converted.

My father distrusts all Muslims.

My father believes in trickle down economics, (though it's been proven again and again not to work).

My father doesn't believe in gun control. “If they come for me, like they did our ancestors in Germany, I'll stop them at the door.” He quotes the NRA with fervor! “Take away what kind of guns we get to own, and you chip away at the foundation of the 2^nd Amendment.”

I remind him he can't stop a tank with an AK-47. I implore him to examine history, and context—that the right to bear arms our forefathers were talking about were pistols and shotguns that took three minutes to load and didn't fire straight or would blow up in your face. Automatic assault weapons were neither considered, nor anticipated when the 2^nd Amendment was written.

He scoffs. As his daughter, and a women, I am clueless.

As a mother of a 10 year old and a 13 year old, I am horrified.

Not only by what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary, but everywhere else, every time an assault weapon is uses against our own because the NRA wants to keep making money. And our government, ostensibly “by the people, for the people,” is paid-off to let them. At least, one very specific part of our congress, and five members of our Supreme Court: the Republicans.

Grew up on the Valley side of the Hollywood Hills, and went to school with writers, producers, directors kids, all fairly to extremely liberal. My father was the outlier in our neighborhood, and among my parents colleagues and friends. The Great Divide between the Republicans and Democrats, fueled by Regan pushing religion, conservatism, and then ignited by Bush Jr's administration didn't exist yet. My parents lived together in relative peace, except around election times.

We have become a polarized nation, and this serves no one here. Down to the personal level, it has divided me from my family, my siblings, like my father—fervent Republicans. My sister, disgusted we're raising our kids without religion, decided she'd had enough of my liberal leanings and checked out of our life. My brother forwards emails from his born-again Christian community to everyone he knows that Obama is a Jew-hating Muslim who believes it's okay to kill babies.

The chasm in our morality, our philosophies is so diametrically opposed at this point, the rare times I talk with my father our dialog turn sours quickly, then invariably moves to contentious. Told him time and again I won't discuss politics with him, but he insists on little digs, like, “Do you care about your kids,” since I voted for Obama. He has not spoken with my children in five years or more, acknowledged them in any way, not birthdays, no calls, ever, and virtually never inquires about them when I call him, which I do because he doesn't call me.

Truth is, it's getting harder and harder to call him. Almost a decade after my mom's death, my dad is now in an elder care facility two states away, on the bottom floor of a three story building where the first floor is elderly who are...capable. Second floor is the dementia ward. Third floor is check out. Forever.

Living as he does must be nightmarish, especially compared to the vital life he once lived, where his vote and opinion mattered for years to come, instead of being barely acknowledged, and only for elections. Regardless of his current circumstances, my father is undaunted by age or illness in his quest to spread conservative ideology. He's a true believer, as are most vocal Republicans, because believing is easier than thinking. Being told what is right and wrong, good or bad, is simpler than considering the many, often infinite possibilities, our obligations to each other and the world we inhabit.

My father, sister and brother believe woman should not have the right of choice with their own bodies.

My family believes gays should not have the legal, nor moral right to marry. They think homosexuality is a mental illness.

My family espouses they believe in “less government”—preaching the Republican's canonical tagline, but want to restrict women's choice and limit our resources; control who gets to marry; limit medical treatment to citizens who can afford care; allow corporate, Wall Street, even gun regulations to lie, cheat, steal, and mass murder of our children.

Been wondering when it's time to say good-bye to family, even before they die. The little connection I retain with my brother and father seems...over. My kids have no relationship with either—their choice not ours. We have virtually no common ground, share little time that isn't contentious, and only via phone. So, really, what's the point? Don't want to know them anymore. Harsh? You bet. Ugly? Yeah. Sad. Hurts. A lot, knowing there are people out there who still think like they do. I'm shamed by them.

Profoundly saddened we've come to this impasse. Our nation is fundamentally divided, like never before, or maybe, perhaps akin to the Civil War.

Interpret a Dream

2012-09-28T09:23:00.005-07:00

I have a recurrence dream and I'll be damned if I know what it's trying to tell me.

Can you help me figure it out?

...I'm in, or walking around a house. Either we've recently purchased this home, or we're looking to purchase it. The houses differ dream to dream, but they're usually big, have large bedrooms and family areas with extra rooms to use as office space, or whatever. Spectacular Bay, or treelined suburban neighborhood view out most windows, except for the rooms that face a factory, or the gangland streets of East Oakland.

There is always something wrong with the house.

As I'm moving from room to room I realize how wrong. Floors are warped from hillside erosion. Rooms are tilted. Either it turns out the house is in the crowded, concrete city—hence the Bay view, or the suburb has a busy strip mall that neighbors the lot. Whether a gift from my husband, or my own poor purchase, the house is always a mistake. I don't want to own it. I don't want to be there. I wish I had my old house back.

In some dreams I've lost my current (real life) home—my husband has sold it to purchase this new one, or it's already been purchased by someone else. In other dreams we don't own the house yet, and I'm thrilled I can go back home, glad for the house we have, in our quiet, treelined suburban area.

That's it. I usually wake up contented with the awareness I'm in my bed in my home with my husband next to me and our kids are safe, sleeping in their rooms.

_____

Couple of things:

--The area I live is spectacularly beautiful (to me, anyway).

--The house we have is adequate in terms of size and property, but the walls are thin, with little insulation. Crappy construction, though we've been lucky so far without a lot of costly repairs.

--I'm madly in love with my DH and kids.

--Neighborhood is safe, but religious conservative (Christian/republican) and I'm not.

--We have no plans to move any time soon.

I have this dream several times a week, and have for the past 7+ years. I've never before had a reoccurring dream this frequently or for this long. And I haven't a clue what it means, if anything, though I find it hard to believe I keep having the same meaningless dream night after night.

So, if my subconscious is trying to tell me something the last 7 years, I'm not getting it. You have any idea what this dream might mean?

Immigration Ignorance

2012-09-25T11:08:00.002-07:00

Had some yard work done that required cutting concrete. My gardener gave me a quote of $150 to do the job. I accepted his bid as fair and equitable and we agreed on last Sunday for him to do the work.

He arrived promptly 8:30 Sunday morning and began cutting our concrete patio. He used a small electric saw with a 4” blade, which I thought odd, since the last guy I'd seen cut concrete had a major power saw that had to be held with both hands and came with a water supply to keep the blade cool.

Gardener struggled to cut a mere 20” of concrete for over 5 hours. He left once, to buy new blades for his little saw. He did not take a lunch break. In fact, he took no breaks at all.

Ninty-four degrees at mid-day when I brought him some ice water. Sweat dripped down his face and cut brown lines in the concrete chalk covering his skin. He gave me a crooked-tooth grin of thanks, took a long drink then wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “Caliente!” (Hot!)

I nodded agreement and pointed to his little saw. Pequeño (Small), I said, closing the gap between thumb and forefinger. Why so small? Harder to cut the concrete. I spoke in English, as my Spanish sucks, but he got it.

He laughed. You're right. Yes! Si! Demasiado pequeño (too small). Herramienta incorrecta (wrong tool). He picked up his tiny cutter. Muy caro! Expensive! $100 for herramienta. $35 for blades. Ay, yi yi!

I'm paying him $150 for the job. He'd just spent over that buying equipment to do the work. I was mind boggled. I assumed he had all he needed to do the job when he gave me his bid. He went back to work and I went inside and got the receipt from the equipment rental place I'd visited the previous week. Only $24.99 to rent a jigsaw for 24 hours! At the time I rented the jigsaw, I inquired about renting a concrete cutter. $59.00 for 24 hours. Why hadn't my gardener just rented the right equipment? He could have got the job done in half an hour and actually made money.

I took the receipt outside and showed it him. Do you know of this place? Just down the road?

He took the receipt and studied the logo at the top of the paper. His expression brightened. Si! Yes! Alquiler de equipos Rentals. Rents. Yes?

Yes! Concrete saw is $59.00 bucks for the day. Taken you 30 minutes to do the job. Why didn't you rent a saw? Using hand signals and body gestures I somehow communicated.

Ah. No. No rent. Can't. No license. No seguro (insurance). Not legal here.

Four years running our gardener's been coming and he is the best gardener I've ever had. More than a gardener, he fixes our watering system, landscapes, trims trees, sets fences. He comes every Tuesday around 9:00am, rain or shine, and is on time, every time. He always smiles and waves when we cross paths. He is a stellar model of a dedicated hard worker for our children, and the community at large.

Yet, he can not get a Green Card.

His company won't sponsor him. He has no legal relatives here. He is not a refugee. Even if he could get one, the process of applying and then waiting for the Card takes years. My gardener needs, and in fact, has work now. He can't wait years to get U.S. approval to work for a living.

Why doesn't he leave his job for Americans and just go back to Mexico?

I had three other bids on the concrete work I needed. A neighborhood contractor quoted me $1,600 to do the job. A mason didn't want the job because it was 20 miles from his location and not worth the trip. A local handyman quoted $800, but couldn't start the job for over two months, and required half upfront to hold my time slot. All were licensed, bonded, U.S. citizens.

Until our conversation last Sunday, I had no idea my gardener was here illegally, and driving without a license. The man is probably in his early 30s. He'll die young from hard labor, lack of medical care, working with poor or improper equipment, like breathing toxic concrete dust without a mask, carcinogenic construction materials, garden poisons. If he is graced with children, and I hope he is, and will pass on his excellent work ethic to them, he still will not be granted U.S. citizenship, and is at risk of deportation. Like many illegals lately, he could end up having to take his American children back to live in the Mexico he left for a 'better life.'

Sunday alone, our gardener put over $150 into the U.S. economy, counting just his little saw and multiple blades. He will buy his food here, pay for his housing here, his utilities, his fuel costs. He lives here, and contributes to our economy with every dollar he spends. He probably pays taxes, as do many illegals working for large corporations. My gardener is an employee of a huge gardening and landscaping company.

Next time you bite into that peach, remember it only costs .39 cents because illegals planting and picking the fruit are cheap labor. (Your iPhone5 is made in China for the same reason, yet Apple is rewarded with tax breaks instead of kicked out of the country.) Billions in tax dollars and consumer spending in the U.S. by illegals annually, yet they get none of the protections of our citizens. No medicare. No social security or unemployment benefits. No welfare or government handouts. Illegals are invisible here.

I am privileged by birthright for the lifestyle we live, and can provide for our kids. I haven't a clue, and never want one, how it feels to be so far from home, without 'inalienable rights.' But I know one thing for sure—our gardener deserves the 'better life' he sought when moving here, the one [ostensibly] available to most citizens who work hard to prosper.

The Layering of Life

2012-09-11T08:53:00.001-07:00

Hiking on the Matanuska Glacier in Alaska a few weeks ago, I was trying to capture the iridescent blue/green light coming through the ice below my feet with my Canon Digital SLR. I took a few shots, with different apertures, from different p.o.v.s, but knew when I put them on the computer the pic would flatten. The spectacular translucence would be lost—look like a blue/green patch on dirty white ice.

At a photography store in Anchorage a few days later, I asked the guy behind the counter how one could pick up that exquisite depth of field of the light coming through the glacial ice on camera. Can't, he said. But you can create it in Photoshop. Layering the image multiple times should bring back some of the depth the camera can't pick up.

Layering...

It was like a light bulb in my head. He was right, of course. The camera can't pick up the photons moving through ice, only the ones reflecting off the surface. But the word LAYERING reverberated in my head, as I'd been thinking about layering for quite some time.

When I'm not writing fiction [or blogs], I'm developing and designing marketing/advertising campaigns. I recently created an illustration of sound waves using an image off Google. Simply adding filers to the image made it brighter, or weirder, but still left it rather...flat. I lifted another image of radio waves, and layered it over the sound wave, filtering it to 50% opacity. Then I went back to Google Images and got another light wave, and another, and layered them with effects too. As I built out the image, layer upon layer, the picture became richer, deeper, more 3D, almost in motion.

A while back my father took a painting class where students replicated a favorite work of a Great Master. Dad picked Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring. It took him five months to paint, which upon completion looked virtually identical to the real one.

How did you do that? I inquired upon seeing his work. Did you know your could paint like that? My dad had been a weekend painter most of his adult life. This class, a first since college, was his attempt in retirement to reinvent himself as an artist.

No! He practically giggled with delight. Honestly, this teacher was fantastic. She taught us all about Layering, from when the Romans began using it, to the Masters to the Impressionists. I've been painting for 40 plus years layering two, maybe three colors or tones. But in some areas on this canvas I must have used fifty. He proudly showed me highlights on the girl's face that nearly glowed, bringing her right off the canvas, as in Vermeer's original. It's all in the layering, my dear, he'd said back then with a grin.

Layering...hmmm...

I've always been scared of old age. The prospect of getting old is so terrifying, at times not getting there seems the better option—hasten the end than drag it out with modern medicine. Watching my mother die and my father age hasn't been pretty. It's pretty scary. And I'm right behind them. Other than senior discounts, the upside of aging seems rather illusive.

Driving my daughter and her teammate to soccer last Friday, they chatted in the back seat about science class, both amazed by the video of Neil Armstrong on the moon, each trying to quote his words upon stepping on the lunar surface for their test on Monday. They didn't know he said it grammatically wrong. They hadn't been there to see the grainy black and white image turn upside down on TV. They hadn't held their breaths, or felt the collective sigh of a nation, and of the world when our astronauts returned safely home. They hadn't experience the layers of that moment, that day, all the days of the moon mission, or the ones leading up to it, or since, for the most part.

Mankind's first steps on anything but our home planet is a mere footnote to the two 5^th graders. The video image they watched in Science was a flat view of a definitive leap in human history. I've learned an undeniable gift of adulthood is understanding the significance of a given moment because of the layers of experience proceeding it. At 10, kids images are still just forming, their depth of field still limited to what reflects them, like the photons on the glacial ice.

Living through the moon landing created a page, a layer, a memorable slice of my time. Aging's saving grace may be these collection of moments of living, layered upon each other, giving, if not wisdom, at least a broader range of knowledge and experience for a vibrant life picture.

Apple is Evil

2012-08-24T13:19:00.001-07:00

“Apple is evil,” I tell the man tapping his iPad to retrieve my son's information at middle school registration.

His bushy eyebrows furrow. No they're not. They're great! They practically gave the district iPads for every grade, student, and even all the admins. And next year we'll be going digital with most textbooks, he said enthusiastically.

You think Apple is giving away iPads because they support education? I inquire while filling out my check to the public school to which we already pay ever increasing taxes.

Again his brow furrows and a frown is perceptible between his heavy peppered beard and thick mustache. I know the kids come home and ask their parents to buy Apple. But they should. It's a great product!

And a lot more expensive than most comparable phones, pc's, and tablets out there. If Apple is supporting education, why are they charging parents, and everyone else they're not giving their computers to, 30-50% more? I'm now in the position of having to buy both my kids Macbooks and iPads so they can do their homework. And the topper— Apple will saddle us with yet another monthly connection bill.

He sits behind a long folding table, between two women, one of three men in the auditorium of 50 volunteer parents. His arms are folded across his protruding belly, expression—an indulgent grin, the kind where it's obvious he's tuned me out. He's a diehard Apple fan, one of Steve Job's faithful followers, a blind believer.

I used to be a diehard Apple fan. My father gave me my first computer, a desktop PC (whose brand I don't recall) back in the late 70's. Monitor and PC were one unit, matte gray screen supported only a text interface with bright green type, in one size only. It was hard to use, kept losing my files, freezing up, shutting down. Then along came the Mac. I started with the llc and fell in love with the UI's ease of use; the stability of the OS; the selection of exclusive programs for graphic and marketing pros. In fact, Mac's marriage with Adobe virtually invented today's desktop publishing with software such as PageMaker, Illustrator and Photoshop, originally only for Macs until the 1990s.

I was a Mac fanatic all the way through the G4s, until I could no longer afford to get ripped off. The advent of the Adobe suite working seamlessly on Macs made it easy for businesses to take their marketing efforts in-house. By the mid 90s freelance gigs were harder to come by, and clients expected consultants to have the latest technology (like their in-house departments boasted). Maintaining my Mac systems—the high priced software combined with the continual investment in extended memory needed to run it was costing me practically as much as I was making. Even after Adobe opened their platform, and offered their software to PC users at a third of the price for Macs, I was loyal to Apple.

Moved from graphics to mostly creative direction and content writing at the turn of the millennium. Needed a laptop for quick communication with clients and couldn't afford what I needed to even run Photoshop on a Macbook. Got a Toshiba, with more memory, faster clock speed, great graphics card...etc. Photoshop was $355 less than for the Mac. By the early 2000s I'd replaced most all the software I had on my Mac with their PC versions that worked seamlessly on most any computer we had, and I've had no need to buy Mac products since. And we save a hell of a lot of money!

Business knows when they sell to children, they have a customer for life. This is particularly true with electronic tools. Kid learns at school how to create reports on a Macbook with iMovie. iMovie is Apple's proprietary software, and can only be used on Mac platforms. I have a choice of many video editing products for Windows/Linux/Firefox that are more powerful than iMovie, starting at just $49. We have no need of iMovie, yet for the kids to function in school they must have both formats, or at least Mac available at home to work on projects outside the classroom.

To date, the new Macbook base model is priced at $2200 for just 256GB of hard drive space and a quad-core 2.3 GHz Core i7 processor. Compare that to the $1500 Asus G75VW gaming laptop featuring the same processor, six times the storage space, and a 17-inch screen with 1920x1080 resolution. We have three laptops, and four PCs in the house. We don't need, and I don't want to get back in bed with Apple. Their 'discounts' to our schools, accepted by admin without a clue, once again, leaves parents paying the bill.

Sentiment Analysis Exposed

2012-08-22T13:27:00.000-07:00

I made it with Max last night! Mary texts her BFF Shelly.

OMG! Welcome to womanhood!! How was it/he? Shelly texts back.

And right about now, Mary's mom gets a 'notification' on her cell phone that her daughter is texting sexual references, and displays Mary's texts with Shelly upon mom's request.

Mom spends the rest of the day at work fuming, conjuring dialog with her daughter for later that evening when they'll be home together. Mom doesn't like Max. Never did, and told Mary not to see him.

Sentiment Analysis is the latest hip, slick, and trendy software in the Valley. In a nutshell, it classifies text messages, tweets, blogs, FB and social media updates into categories such as 'positive, angry, happy, sad, drug and sexual references'...etc. This information is purchased by businesses, or political campaigns to determine public sentiment about everything, from Mitt Romney to HP. SA has been going on for quite some time, but only recently has it filtered down to the individual level, and this is where it becomes dangerous.

Along with analyzing public sentiment, now you can analyze your employee, child or spouse's text messages, whether they know it or not, if the phone bill is in your name and you pay the monthly SA app fee. You are instantly notified through your computer or cellphone if your child is texting about drugs, sex, or perhaps chatting with someone you don't like, or bullying, or getting bullied. You are notified if your employee is texting his wife instead of attending to your customers. You can assess your husbands mood before seeing him that evening from the SA report on the aggression level of his texts for the day.

Smartphones now have built-in software that tracks all activity, including motion, i.e. whether you're sitting, walking, driving...etc. SA services not only alert their customers of “inappropriate behavior,” but allows them to remotely control all the phones on their plan as well. At work or on the go you can now monitor and control behavior 24/7. Don't like the boy your daughter does. Block his number. Don't care for a site your employee visits. Block access.

SA service companies are popping up everywhere selling all kinds of crap, like 'it's for the safety of the child'—know what your teen is texting, and with their classifiers you'll get to know your kid. Track your employees for greater staff commitment and productivity. And while SA features such as being able to shut your kids phone down when they're texting while driving is unarguable beneficial, using sentiment software to spy on, and then rely on it to assess behavior is irresponsible at best.

If your child is texting while driving their irresponsible behavior is most assuredly reflected in others aspects in their life. Invest the [life]time to teach your kids right from wrong and you'll know, or at least trust when and what they text is in appropriate range. Talk to your kids and you'll learn what's important to them and why, and you may just be wrong about who is good and bad for them. Get to know your employees, what your direct reports need from you to inspire their staff to excel. If performance is optimal, what the hell difference does extraneous phone or online usage make.

Part of the marketing blitz with SA services is it saves the customer time by pulling only 'relevant' information from the average 60 texts a day sent by teens, and ever increasing number of adult texts. Anyone who knows code knows a computer is blank until someone programs it—tells it to do something. With sentiment software, 'notifications' of 'inappropriate behavior' becomes a construct of SA programmers and the sample groups that define the classifiers. Clients can input keywords and other preferences such as number of alerts a day...etc, but the SA program has its own sets of keywords, and more troubling —algorithms that analyze patterns of word usage to determine what should be flagged.

While SA programmers purport a 93% accuracy rate in the best scenarios, tests have been limited to small sample groups, and rely on few users to rate the success of assessment. It is beyond arrogance to think we can quantify human emotions. Mom may find out that Mary made it with Max (or not, as Mary may be bragging about something that never happened). But this information does not tell Mom why, beyond her daughter's previous texts that he's 'so hot.' DH texting something sexual to someone other than you? The real time alert on your iPhone may reveal infidelity, but will not illustrate the communication gap between you two that was clearly ignored. And watch out for that 7% SA software is flat out wrong...

Now, more than ever, we are privy to a spectacular array of communication tools with the potential to connect us all for greater understanding and tolerance. SA software is counterproductive for open dialog at best, and fundamentally corrosive at worst. It is sure to infuse discord, distrust, paranoia, and eventually disconnect today's devices from their magnificent potential.

A Day in Naharia

2012-07-27T15:24:00.002-07:00

My mom was a born again Jew—her response to my brother's conversion to Christianity, and my unwavering commitment to Atheism. In her continuing effort to have me meet and marry a Jewish man, during my vagabond years she suggested I to go see Israel. She said it was the most beautiful place on earth, an oasis they'd turned from desert wasteland into paradise. She had taken the guided Hilton Tour. My mother never really saw Israel.

The moment I got off the plane I knew something was wrong with the place. Bullet holes riddled the walls of Ben Yehuda airport, which had plaques commemorating this or that war or terrorist encounter. I had traveled much of the world by then but had never seen anything like this. Military men and women, some no older than teens were armed with Uzi's; grenades hung off breast belts lined with bullets. On the ride to Tel Aviv, the public bus was packed with soldiers. The French girl next to me leaned over and whispered, "Are those guns real?" Clearly even she thought it odd.

I rented a flat in the heart of the city for a month, and used it as a base to travel from. Using public transport and walking, I explored most of Israel and Egypt, spent hours on buses and in cafes watching and listening. A lone traveler, I was continually invited to join diners, and occasionally even into people's homes to partake in authentic meals and enlightening conversations. Most everyone spoke English, and after a while an image of the people began to emerge. However, it was my strange encounter with a Islamic man that brought into sharp focus the plight of the Middle East, and ultimately, the world.

My last full day in Israel I took a bus north, toward the Lebanese border to explore the beach town of Naharia. I felt him staring at me from where he sat a few rows back. He was in his early 20's, dark curly hair, swarthy, handsome. He was dressed in jeans and a Hard Rock Café t-shirt, but wore the traditional Islamic headdress with a black cloth band crowning a red and white checkered bandana that cascaded over his broad shoulders and down his back. The intensity of his gaze unnerved me. I assumed he was on his way to Lebanon, or the West Bank, but when the bus finally got to Naharia he go off too, and I got scared.

I tried to convince myself he wasn't following me. I window shopped and then got some lunch in a very public café. I saw him meandering around town, often stopping to chat with small groups of men, but almost every time I caught sight of him he looked over at me. Eventually he went into a shop and I ran across the street and tried to disappear into some woods. The low pine forest was only a few hundred meters thick. The blue/green Mediterranean glimmered beyond the trees. When I finally sat down on a log at the edge of the forest I was sure I'd lost him. I dug my toes into the warm sand and looked out at the dazzling sea. The deserted beach was silent. Then I heard twigs breaking underfoot behind me as someone approached.

The Arab man came out of the woods a few yards from me. The thought of running seemed absurd. He could have caught me in a flat second if he wanted to. I stood up, spun around, and tried to make myself as tall as possible. Then I looked him straight in the eye and said in my harshest tone, "What the fuck do you want?" Cussing, speaking before spoken to, and looking a man in the eyes are things I'd been told Islamic women do not do.

He stared at me, startled, but didn't respond. He probably didn't speak English. And I didn't speak anything but.

"Leave! Or I will." I pointed back through the forest. He didn't move so I started to walk away. I was scared out of my mind.

"Please don't go." He spoke softly, his voice deep and throaty. "You're an American, right? I just want to talk to you."

“About what?”

“I've just come back from the States.” His accent was English, but richer, more sultry. “I was two years in Boston, at university there. I've been back in country three weeks now, and I am missing the hell out of good conversation.” He smiled then, thick ruby lips curved into a gentle grin.

I don't know if it was his tone, his easy manner, or his striking green eyes that made me stay. He kept distance between us, and slowly sat cross-legged on the sand in the spot he had been standing. Curiosity overrode every other feeling. I'd never spoken at length with an Arab. An opportunity to speak freely without the prying eyes of others could be educational, to say the least.

“I'm from Lebanon, but in my heart I'm an American. What about you? Where are you from?”

“L.A. Hollywood,” I clarified, since many outside of the States had no clue where L.A. was, but everyone knew Hollywood. The conversation spun from there, unraveling like a well worn sweater, venturing down the road of trust, slowly revealing ourselves.

He'd recently graduated from Harvard—not just for the prestigious MBA, and the connections to society's elite, but also to study our people. He'd returned home to take his place beside his father, a wealthy statesman of some note, and it was going to be his job to advise on how best to “work with the infidels,” meaning the U.S, according to dad.

Strange mix of anger and fear. “I’ve never considered myself an infidel as an American. I thought that title was meant for Israel, or Jews in general.”

He laughed, but not like he thought it was funny. “And that’s exactly what Islamic leaders want you think. They will say anything to get media support. They ask for a little of the West Bank here, a little of Jerusalem there. After all, who can deny them since they’ve been there for thousands of years and have no where else to go? But they don't want just the West Bank, or Gaza, or even Israel. They want the world—to convert every human being to follow the teachings of Mohammad, and eliminate anyone who won't." He shook his head in shame. “Historically, Muslims have been ruled by tyrannical machismo narcissists. The wealthy few twist and distort and then push their brand of religion to keep people ignorant, and poor. Fundamentalists, and there are many beside Hamas, preach from birth that in order to be faithful it is the duty, the responsibility of every Muslim to convert or kill all infidels. Through killing, the individual becomes divine, and will thus spend eternity in heaven basking in Allah's glory. All who don't believe as they do are targets, so the ultimate goal is the annihilation of everyone who cannot be converted."

The sun set as he spoke, and murky twilight replaced the light. Again he shook his head. Profound sadness filled the space between us. In the States, he'd become agnostic, a humanist, he told me. Integrating with our mix of cultures and beliefs taught him we all basically feel the same things, want mostly the same things—a safe, supportive environment where our needs are met so we can thrive.

"My fanatical father insists it's business as usual—finance the current regime and whatever one replaces it. But how can I support ideology like this and sleep at night? How do I stay here and marry into a faith I no longer believe, and raise my kids to rise above the ignorance that surrounds them? Reason, logic, sanity are all washed away with the fanatics who will sacrifice their children, or raise them to hate, and the killing never ends." He sighed heavily, his despair visceral.

I sat against the log, not three feet from him, tears streaming down my face. I had no idea what to say. I was there because of my fanatical mother. She blindly believed Jews had imminent domain to Israel, had single-handedly turned a desert into a flourishing country, and chose to see only the beauty there.

“You've seen a different world,” I said to him softly. “You've become a different man. If you can change, you can help others change.” I shut up then. Platitudes at best. I sounded like my pollyanna mom. I had no idea if change was possible with religions talons buried so deeply into the psyche of his people.

We left the beach a short while later, as it was getting dark. We both had buses to catch to take us home. He told me to leave first, walk back without him, as it wasn't safe to be seen together. A Muslim prince alone with a white western woman in public wasn't proper, yet, he said with a wink.

I knew I'd never see him again, and was surprised by a stab of regret as I stood to exit the scene. Only a few hours in his company, and I felt certain I could love this man. Without embracing or a parting cheek-to-cheek kiss we said goodbye, and I ventured into the small pine forest towards town.

Unfamiliar with infatuation, I had the surreal sensation of missing him on the bus ride back to Tel Aviv, and still the next day on the plane home. He'd given me a view into the plight of the Islamic people, and a deeper understanding of the struggle of Israel, and ultimately the world against our fundamentalist neighbors. And he unwittingly gave me a profound sense of hope, knowing he, and others like him were out there.

The Great Patent Race

2012-07-06T11:06:00.002-07:00

New patent office opening soon in Silicon Valley, and everyone is cheering. The viral ignorance is it'll make it easier for all those young entrepreneurs at Stanford and such to get their ideas protected from corporate thieves, enabling them to launch their start-ups and shed their inventions of technology upon the world.

The truth is, more and more patents will prevent technology from being actualized, limiting new technology and inventions to only those that can afford to submit, pay for, protect, and defend their patents.

Case in point:

A developer friend works for a growing tech start-up which has been aggressively filing patents for the last couple of years. He and his colleagues are encouraged to write patents on all their ideas, in fact, he gets a substantial bonus for every patent he writes for the company no matter how obscure or feasible they are. Patents are granted on ideas [with methodology for execution] alone. They do NOT need to be tested or functioning ideas, or even in the process of development. The start-up my friend works for spends in the range of $10,000-$30,000 in filing, bonuses and legal fees on each patent for the following reasons:

--More patents make the company more valuable to investors.

--Patents on their ideas gives the company time to develop them, if they choose to do so.

--Patenting ideas protects the company from anyone else actualizing them in the near [or sometimes distant] future.

--Patent protection enables the company to protect themselves against future infringement suits, and counter-sue for frivolous claims.

The tech company gets to protect their designs from anyone else developing anything even similar to their patented ideas, initially for 14 yrs after the date the patent was granted; or 20 yrs from filing date for virtually everything else, and can be renewed with extensions for many years to come. All the company needs is money to pay for the lawyers to defend existing and pending patents. Very few start-ups have this kind of cash, even fewer inventors have the resources to compete with, challenge or defend against Apple or Microsoft.

Apple spends millions annually, suing Google, Motorola, Samsung and many other large and small companies for patent infringement to prevent other businesses from creating a competitive market for Apple.* But they are not alone. Large corporations to trending start-ups are playing the patent game, spawning hindrance of progressive innovation. My friend's tech company is growing rapidly, and are fighting more and more Patent Trolls, about four a week now, that's 200 yearly, suing them for patent infringements, not only for the settlements, but to hinder development.

The patent race is running rampant in the Valley now, and another patent office is not necessarily a good thing without stricter regulations on what is patentable. From my friend's venture-backed tech start-up to Apple and Google, tougher restrictions on term length protections and curbing frivolous lawsuits meant to stall progress are necessary for the role of the patent to spark invention and innovation on a mass, multilateral scale, as the patent was originally meant to.

*Steve Jobs ripped off the initial idea for the first Apple computer from Xerox PARC, and the MP3 player from Creative Technologies and who knows what else, yet Apple aggressively plays the patent game that restrict others from pursing creation of even vaguely similar technologies.

MARKETING 101

2012-05-24T12:20:00.000-07:00

I hate running.

It hurts my legs, my lungs, my back, my tits.

I run between 3 and 4+ miles, five days a week.

I continue to run because the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.

--I hate being fat, and running is the quickest calorie burn I know of (my me-time is hugely limited with two jobs and two kids).

--Running helps me think. It not only activates neural connectivity, it's also a quiet space, undisturbed by kids or clients.

--I get to listen to my music, blasting loud through my earbuds, let it absorb me, the rhythm drive me, and in moments it feels like I'm flying.

I run whether I'm healthy, sick with a flu or anything else that isn't laying me out on my death bed because I'm afraid if I give myself one excuse not to run it will lead to another, and in short order I'll quit running. But I won't quit--as long as the benefits serving my needs outweigh the hardships.

Benefits that fill Need is, or should be the foundation of all Marketing efforts.

The net is the new hip, slick and trendy way to market. And no doubt, there are great marketing opportunities online. Websites, email blasts, analytics, blogs...etc, are TOOLS to market with. But marketing online (wow, moving pics and videos!) or off IS THE SAME THING. The basic principles of marketing must be applied to sell (beyond the freakish, short-lived fad), and grow any company.

Print, online, or on the friggin moon, Marketing is selling BENEFITS fulfilling a NEED. Advertising, PR, branding, visual design, copywriting, marketing communications are, or should be developed, designed and produced to SELL products/services/ideas/message.

Viral marketing trend in the Valley these days is to flood the net with ads, games, videos and such with a product/service already available, and/or with no discerning or lasting value to anyone. This "Ready, FIRE, Aim," approach clearly illustrates why so many start-ups that ignore the foundation of marketing—fail. Been a MarCom consultant in the Bay Area for 25 yrs now. Worked with a ton of start-ups, and Fortune 500s who don't consistently realign to completion, nor do they invest in development to continually fill need/s, and watched them fold again and again, sometimes in ridiculously short order.

Marketing 101-- IN ORDER (”ready, AIM, fire!”):

1. Productize Idea—to fill the needs of specific target market/s for your product/service (or idea/message).

2. Create Brand Identity—establish image and voice through marketing communications that speak directly to the target market.

3. Engage CTA—Call To Action. Motivate people to act—to buy, or buy into your message.

The new order of entrepreneurs is young, weened on TV and technology, and generally taught to specialize in a very narrow range. Unfortunately, opting for graphic tricks over real content—selling benefits answering a need—and relying on Google Analytics doesn't actually sell much. GM recently pulled their ads from Facebook because they didn't work. Well, duh! Coders are writing them and then the ads are going out to the world, not a targeted market (which the world is not).

Measuring response rates isn't new, in the background since advertising began, and generally offers limited utility. Marketing is dynamic, results variable by the day, time of day, day of week, the weather, social trends, financial climates. The principles of Marketing may be simple, but motivating people to bend to your will isn't easy. Beyond the primary building blocks of any campaign, Marketing's core is psychology, and psychology applies online or on mars. True marketing pros study people, not code so much since coding, especially with ever-emerging complex technologies, is time consuming to learn, and generally requires a different kind of awareness than psychology. I've yet to meet a web developer who's demonstrated mastery in marketing. Competent at development means they're investing their time in technology, not in the study of human nature.

While most of my work is online now, I tell my clients the net is not the answer to effective marketing. New avenues of selling will arise, and others fade away, but the growth of any business, idea/message, or even activity, like running, is in its benefits, continually fulfilling the need/s of its target market.

The 5% Factor in Finance

2012-05-14T13:32:00.000-07:00

I had a conversation with my former financial advisor when the markets were crashing back in ‘08. I asked him to give me an estimate, his best, ostensibly educated guess when the market might turn around or at least stabilize. He assured me it would be soon. The credit default scandal had already been exposed. Real estate foreclosures had been assessed and the projected losses factored in to financial projections. The fact is, he offered with conviction, in any industry one had to account for a certain amount of corruption. Maybe 5% of the people in any given field were evil. The evil had now been weeded out and the markets would bounce back to its mean of 8 to 10% growth or better annually very soon.

Turns out, evil abounds in the financial industry. From Bernie Madoff to AIG to JP Morgan Chase and their corporate cronies with 7, 8 figure bonuses; to banks and mortgage brokers hording stimulus funds, my advisor had to be grossly low on his 5% estimate of evil in finance.

According to forensic psychologist and author Robert Hare, it is possible, even likely, that the percentage of evil is greater in the financial industry than most any other field. Money attracts greedy people. Those who choose a career pursuing money, instead of building, inventing, engineering, teaching, are generally looking for what they can get from society instead of what they can give to it. In Snakes in Suits, Mr. Hare claims at least 10% of all those in finance are psychopaths.

The 5% (or more) who callously exploit the rest of us is what makes the free-market system they purport a myth. That 5% evil controls 95% of the financial markets of the world. The enormous scale of capital they play with has proven to collapse economies, robbing millions of their life savings, their jobs, their homes.

Most of us put our earnings in the bank or the market and hope our savings will go up. We depend on those in charge of most everyone’s money to know what they’re doing and manage the money we entrust to them wisely. Most of us don’t have the time or inclination for in-depth study and monitoring of the markets. Even if we did, it is rarely possible to get an intimate and transparent view inside most corporations. We rely on our government to monitor the SEC and avoid financial catastrophes. The Bush administration is an example of what happens when they don’t.

A 'free-market' system strives to maintain very few restrictions, touting supply and demand will regulate economics. And though this is a lovely idea, like communism, it doesn’t work in the real world. The economy collapses when demand is only from the [wealthy] 1% of the population that can afford anything. Public companies with no limits on growth, minimal regulations, limited liability and lack of transparency virtually invite exploitation by the small, but none the less formidable percentage of evil. Our 'free-market' invariably becomes controlled by a small minority who represent only their own interests. This corrupts the entire society by shifting the balance of power to a handful of narcissists, if not out and out psychopaths, as Robert Hare claims.

Republicans and conservatives threaten socialism if the government regulates the markets beyond ‘protection of property and against force or fraud.’ But everyone pays the price for the 5% that continually redefine the term ‘fraud.’ The 5% evil at AIG, and more recently JP Morgan Chase that took ridiculous risks for excessive short term yields to line their pockets continue to send shock waves throughout our financial industry and beyond. And the fact is, it IS socialism when taxpayers are forced to bail out banks and brokers who were, and are still indifferent to the suffering they cause—the very definition of 'Psychopath.'

We will never be able to ‘weed out’ evil from humanity. A certain percentage of our population will always be narcissists, care exclusively about their own welfare over the society in which they live. Regulations on our financial industry must be imposed and upheld to keep evil in-check, and limit the damage the 5% factor will surely cause again and again. We are more than willing to put sanctions on countries that support terrorism. If we are truly 'by the people, of the people and for the people' of this nation, we must sanction the evil in our system as well.

On Being Human

2012-05-07T11:58:00.002-07:00

Talked to an old friend yesterday. We hadn't spoken for almost 2 yrs. No particular reason. Life took over and we lost touch. The last time we spoke he told me his wife had quit her job as a restaurant manager and was very happy to be home, fixing up their house, shopping, cooking, doing things she never had time to do when working. Two years later, she is still at home. The house is now fixed up. There are no children, and she has no other responsibilities. When I asked my friend what his wife does with her days, he told me she enjoys working out, watching TV, and she plays a lot of Angry Birds.

My mother-in-law lost her husband of 53 yrs a couple years back, a year after they closed the small business they had together for almost as long. With no business to maintain, no kids to care for, and only sparse time with grown grandchildren, I assumed she'd would find her niche in volunteering, perhaps invest time into her community, teach literacy at her local library or maybe the hospice her husband spent most of his last days in. I don't like sick people, she told me upon inquiry. And she has no interest in teaching, anyone, anything, she insisted, clearly annoyed at my suggestions. I've worked my whole life. It's my turn to do what I want. What does she do all day? Plays Solitaire, or goes to plays and movies with friends and family, when they're available, which isn't often. Most elderly folks she knows are helping their kids with the grandkids, or volunteering.

On the phone with my old friend, I intimated his wife was wasting her life. A talented professional, she has too much to give to waste time with Angry Birds, I insisted. But my friend disagreed. She enjoys her days now, no longer under constant pressure to preform, he informed me. She's allowed to relax, after working most of her life. She's 45 yrs old, I countered. And has been relaxing for almost 4 yrs now. So? He was perturbed by my observation. They don't need her income. He makes enough to support them both, so no harm, right?

Wrong.

We are ALL born owing humanity for the life we have. Without those who worked hard before us, there would be no humanity at all. My mother-in-law, my friend's wife, you or I wouldn't exist without the hard work of those before us. From our laws to the lightbulb, we stand on the shoulders of those who contributed to the human race that provide us with the life we now enjoy.

Our system that seemingly runs itself--doesn't. We actually have to work at making it work. And playing Solitaire or Angry Birds does nothing for our society. It's selfish and lazy. Everyday we are alive we owe each other and those who will follow us. We are ALL responsible to make the world better. Whether fighting for a worthy cause we believe in, or inventing technology to make our lives more productive, or managing a restaurant or small business, we must continually contribute to humanity for our race to survive.

Life did not begin, nor does it end with my friend's wife, or my mother-in-law, or the tens of thousands out there wasting enormous amounts of time playing with themselves. Lazy, selfish behavior must be compensated for by those who see beyond their own narcissistic desires, putting the burden of humanities survival on the few, instead of us ALL, which is where it must be for our race to thrive.

The Hunger Games Reviewed

2012-04-24T08:38:00.002-07:00

One wish. Right now. What would it be? Mom asked me and my sister on our drive home from school when I was 10.

To get those new knee-high black leather boots, my sister answered quickly. Which I know you won't let me. And she left an opening for mom's response but got none.

What about you, Dolly. What would you wish for, mom asked me, checking me out in the rear view mirror.

World peace. It was the answer I always gave when anyone asked what I'd wish for. I wanted it more than anything else. Feeling the wrath of my father's short temper, or looking for my brother among the soldiers on the day's clips from Vietnam, I abhorred violence.

What a stupid answer, my sister proclaimed. Never happen. Why don't you ever wish for something you could actually get?

I slumped, but crossed my arms over my chest and countered, It's possible. Anything is possible.

Not world peace, she assured me. She was parroting our father.

Nothing ever changes, was Dad's canonical refrain. Humans are aggressive, territorial, warring beings. We will always be aggressive/violent—a product of our foundation, forever encoded in our DNA.

Not true, I'd argue through the years. We've advanced from apes, developed complex language, laws to protect and care for each other. We've risen from hunter/gatherers to farmers that now feed millions, created technology that allows us communicate globally—

And we've invented better ways of killing each other, was always Papa's rejoinder.

But we can learn how not to, I'd add with less vigor, as we'd invented a way of killing every living thing on our planet just two decades before I was born.

---

Fast forward 23 years—a generation drop. Went to see Dances With Wolves in Piedmont with some friends. An epic film, made for the big screen, about an Army Lieutenant's experience with last Native Americans in the Dakota/Wyoming territories before the White invasion that annihilated them. Opening scene: U.S. civil war—blood, gore and all. Two scenes in, Army Captain blows his brains out. Couple scenes later, wagon driver pierced threw the chest with an arrow. Scene after scene showed violence. Whites killing Whites; Whites killing Indians; Indians killing Whites; Indians killing Indians with warring tribes. Ten minutes before the film ended I'd had enough. I literally ran from the theater, outside to the curb and threw up in the gutter.

My father is right. My father is right, was screaming in my head. We were engaged in the Gulf War back then, yet another stupid skirmish over territory, like dogs peeing to mark their spot. We're better than this, a part of me pleaded. No. We're not, I heard my dad say.

A car full of black guys drove by slow, watching me. The driver stuck his tongue out and waggled it at me. Fear replaced blackness right then. Piedmont is a wealthy suburb of Oakland, but between the theater and the slums was only a drive by away. The too low to the ground BMW passed slowly but without further incident.

My father is right. Nothing ever changes. We're still killing each other over nothing everywhere. My father is right.

---

Fast forward 22 years—another generation drop. Just finished The Hunger Games with my 13 year old son. I never see movies or read books anymore that involve kids getting hurt, mentally or physically. As a parent, I can't handle touching that terror. But my son insisted Suzanne Collins was the best writer he's ever read, a high endorsement for a kid who reads three or more books a week, and requested we read it together for our traditional nightly read. And as a fiction writer, I had to see why my son loved this novel so much more than any before it.

The Hunger Games was brilliant, at first read. Engaging. Fast. Edgy, but a smooth, entertaining read. Knowing there were two more books in the series made it credible the main character, Katness, went along with the games with only the vaguest of questions about the morality behind them. The novel focused on the games themselves, and although exploitative and ugly, I figured it necessary to invoke change in the complacent characters of Collins' feudalistic society that would unfold in the rest of the series.

The Hunger Games was sad, dark, deeply disturbing from opening line to closing sentence, a grotesque statement on our character—Ms. Collins's self-proclaimed interpretation on the popular reality show Survivor. My son promised me the series provided a happy ending, and reading the other books would eventually reveal in detail how this society became so distorted to justify the violence in, and acceptance of killing children for spectacle.

We finished Mockingjay last week, the last book in The Hunger Games series. The novel was disjointed, too many quick cuts with no real depth scene after scene. Beyond exploitative, reading it was like watching CNN—a barrage of video clips of what's happening, and only the briefest explanation (and generally singular POV) why. And though Katness, and her band of tortured cronies eventually win the day, Ms. Collins makes it very clear the new order is the same as the old one, equally ugly, most having learned nothing from their past persecution and perilous fight.

My father is right, according to Ms. Collins.

Nothing ever really changes is not a happy ending. And in retrospect, after finishing Mockingjay, the first novel I liked so much, The Hunger Games, is more for effect than content, on par with reality TV the YA author was ostensibly mocking. Been feeling somewhat ripped off for wasting my time with the series, and the message Ms. Collins is clearly selling our kids.

My husband and I are raising our kids with the belief that people are malleable. We can, will, and do change. We are evolving beings. We encourage the notion we can reach our amazing potential for invention, compassion, with enough collective intelligence to build a flourishing society. We promote these concepts to empower our children with the mindset they are changeable, bad habits are breakable; war, famine, disease are all eventually resolvable if we strive to communicate, compromise, and allow our creativity a safe harbor to thrive.

Idealist, my father, and seemingly Suzanne Collins mock. Better an idealist then the cynic resigned to impending doom, or the Young Adult author who exploits our frailties from voyeurism to sadism for book sales, and then lays our character flaws in stone to our children. We first must believe fundamental change in our nature and character is possible to begin to achieve it.

We Are What We Do.

2012-03-28T10:08:00.002-07:00

In the car with my 10 yr old daughter the other day, she asked me what Ego meant, one of her vocabulary words for the week.

I laughed. Good question, I replied. What do you think it is?

I wouldn't ask if I knew, mom.

Well, use it in a sentence, in context. You've heard the word enough to have an inkling what it means. And an inkling is as close as you're going to get to defining an abstract like Ego.

Her brows narrowed and I could see her pondering in the rear view mirror. My ego got hurt when Ms Brown told me I was singing flat this morning. She paused. And she did, mom.

Sorry. We'll get back to that. OK? So Ego is feelings then?

Not exactly. It's more like how we see ourselves. To me, I'm a good singer. You can hurt my feelings by being mean to me. But you hurt my ego when you tell me I'm not how I think I am.

Do you think you were flat this morning in glee?

Well, yeah. When I listened. I guess I'm not such a good singer.

Ah, but you could be, if you practiced singing. And not the perpetual off-key humming you do, but really practiced, daily—sing along with your favorites, or sing the notes when you practice piano. I glimpsed her rolling her eyes at my suggestions in the rear view mirror. Being a good singer doesn't happen inside your head. What is the only way to really get good at anything? (One of my many canonical refrains.)

Practice, mom. She sighed.

I sighed. My beautiful daughter, I think your explanation for Ego is excellent—it's how we see ourselves. Ego is an idea, even an ideal—who we want to be, but it isn't real. We are what we do, my dear (another of my refrains). If you want to be a good singer, you're going to have to practice becoming one.

So you don't think I'm a good singer, she asked hopefully.

Were talking about ego, right?

Yeah. And my ego says I am one. So is ego always fake, just pretend inside my head?

You tell me. Do you think our ego ever gives us an accurate depiction—paints a real picture of how we are, who we are, what we do in the real world?

Probably not. She sighed again, deflated. Just cuz you think you're good, or talented, or special doesn't mean you actually are to anyone besides yourself.

Okay. Let's explore that. So, there's a great chef, recognized around the world for his delicious creations. This renowned chef practices his craft daily, has been a professional for over 20 years. It's not just his ego talking that's telling him he's a good chef. He decides to try creating a new dish, and serves it to five friends. And all five hate the meal. The combination of flavors tastes just terrible. So, is the guy delusional that he's a good chef—it's just his ego talking—or is he really one?

My daughter considered my little tale carefully before answering. Well, if he thought of himself as a great chef with everything he made, then his delusion was that he could be good all the time, that everything he created would be a masterpiece.

So then, ego is never an accurate depiction of self?

I guess not. Just like there is no such thing as smart, mom. She quoted another of my canonical refrains. Her bright smile in the rear view mirror lit up my world.

My DH and I NEVER tell our kids they're smart. In fact, when other people do, we smile politely, turn away and snicker. Our kids are consistently at the top of their classes because they work at it. A lot. There is no such thing as smart, we preach. Smart is an abstract, merely an idea, a concept, like democracy, or love, potential, or ego. Smart is as smart does.

We are what we do.

Time to Start Grading Our Teachers--Fixing Education III

2012-03-22T14:40:00.004-07:00

Teachers grade students. Students and parents should grade K-12 public school teachers. Every quarter, semester, at least at the end of every school year, parents, and students where applicable, are asked to fill out a report card on each of their teachers. Similar to the report card students received from teachers, parents (and students where applicable) will receive an online report card that can be filled in anonymously and e-mailed back directly to the school principal.

ScanTron type forms will automate the reporting process for larger schools. However, a 'Comments' box should be available on report cards for direct, targeted input. Teacher grading will be based on 1 through 4, or A through F, as applies to school standards. Grading will be based on meeting or exceeding criteria headings such as tests; homework; class discipline; effective communication; student/teacher, teacher/parent relationships; creative and original teaching techniques; to name just a few.

Teacher report cards will be evaluated by the school principal, and small nonpartisan group of parents whose kids are NOT students of the teacher they assess. Quarterly report cards are optimal, but even semester report cards give the principal, parents, even students the opportunity to solicit teacher improvement in areas of discovered weakness. At minimum, final teacher report cards are a must to help measure teacher effectiveness, direct development, and promote success by rewarding and modeling excellence.

The perspective of students and their parents on teacher effectiveness is invaluable. An enormous part of learning is how the material is presented and reviewed, which can only be assessed by the student, and those monitoring student progress. In a recent op-ed article to the New York Times, Bill Gates purported highly trained teachers and principals should evaluate teachers. Not a good idea. In my experience, educators protect each other. They are not required, and often don't listen to the students and parents they are paid to serve.

Teacher report cards can apply to all grade levels K-12, any school, any district, any socioeconomic level. Reminding parents with multiple e-mails, flyers and/or phone calls over time will increase response rate of completed and returned report cards. Requiring parents from kindergarten forward to fill out teacher report cards will increase return rates with each subsequent grade level.

Teacher report cards are kept confidential and are viewed only by the principal and the nonpartisan parent group. Their sole purpose is to aid in teacher effectiveness and development. Report card results will be reviewed with the teacher by the principal in a private meeting. Recommendations for improvements will be given to the teacher in writing at their report card review/s. Schools/districts should institute an incentive-based rewards program for improving teachers, as well as those consistently achieving superior grades. Teachers unable to achieve a C or better average after multiple opportunities for improvement will be subject to a review process and possible termination.

Teachers are required to frequently test students to assess their knowledge. Student grades are based on the information they retain and apply, as proven by their test and assignment scores. Parents cannot test teachers, and must rely on school principals to hire teachers with the knowledge base and skill set to do the job. Parents and students must assess teacher ability on their performance alone. Grading teachers with the same system they impose on their students will not only help the teacher recognized areas of deficiency but also areas of success that can be shared with and modeled by other teachers.

Parents (and students) have virtually no recourse if a teacher is ineffective, unresponsive and/or unwilling to improve. Working moms and dads have little time or energy left to fight the school system to discipline teachers, principals, or administrators to contribute effectively without any standards they must adhere to. Grading teachers, at the very least, gives parents/students a say – a forum to be heard, contribute ideas for improvement or praise successes. At best, grading teachers can be an effective learning aid for teachers, principals, students and parents alike to improve teaching, learning and communication.

Teachers, districts, and teacher's unions resist parents/students grading teachers. Parents unfairly blame teachers for failing classrooms and API scores beyond the teacher's control is the rhetoric used to thwart teacher report cards. But specific criteria can be implemented to ensure student/parent are assessing the teacher within the standards and boundaries imposed and/or required, just as students are graded within specific academic and social standards. Grading students or teachers should not be viewed as an indictment, but an opportunity for assessment and growth.

Talk to other parents, your school or district about implementing a grading system for their teachers. Principals, parents and students can partner with teachers to consistently achieve excellent scores and begin to restore the U.S. public school system from barely achieving average globally back to the best in the world.

Fixing Public Education—A Place to Start II

2012-03-19T15:10:00.002-07:00

DEMAND STANDARDS.

Anyone who follows this blog knows I'm fighting tooth and nail right now to get the principal of my daughter's elementary school to enforce even simple, baseline teaching standards. Trusting the teachers, principals and district administrators to do the right things has proven unwise. Hours in meetings and email communications presenting actionable, bulleted items of basic teaching techniques have evoked no changes to the troubled school. I've been racking my brains for some sort of system that would give parents input and teachers insight into their effectiveness. STAR tests and API scores alone don't provide an accurate assessments of an educators abilities or progress.

The idea of STANDARDS came to me when I was running the other day—actionable requirements that could apply to all teachers, anywhere, any grade, any level.

● STANDARDS give teachers specified, attainable goals with measurable results.

● STANDARDS give student/parents up-to-date and actionable information.

● STANDARDS require teachers to continually demonstrate their level of proficiency to student/parent, principal/school.

STANDARDS MUST be imposed on and adhered to by our educators, principals and admin, but should begin at the teacher level with in-classroom best practices. Regardless of the grade, the level of learning/understanding, the socioeconomic status of the school/district—simple, baseline academic STANDARDS should apply to ALL TEACHERS at all grade levels of K-12.

1. Teachers must assign students homework of grade appropriate material [per State guidelines or better!] with a specified deadline date for student to return completed.

2. Teachers must correct all homework assignments and return corrected homework to students within 3 to 5 days of completion, sooner is optimal, for continuity in learning.

3. Students must be tested on all subjects frequently [per school/district/State requirements, or better] to assess student understanding and target learning hurdles.

4. Teachers are required to return corrected tests to students within 3 to 5 days, sooner is optimal, for retention in learning.

5. Teachers must notify parents with failing or potentially failing students.

The simple requirements above are deliverables, like in real business, where employees are required to do a job and deliver results. Returning homework and tests to students properly corrected and in a timely manner:

● Demonstrates teacher follow-through, models consistency, self-discipline and builds trust.

● Lets the student know their work is being scrutinized which motivates students to do better work.

● Corrected work and tests returned within days reinforces the process/methodology student used to study and/or complete work, and promotes learning retention.

● Returning corrected material quickly helps track student progress and knowledge base.

● Requiring teacher deliverables—a maximum 3 to 5 day time-frame to return corrected work and tests imposes specific, actionable, accountable guidelines.

Simple. Right? Except most public school districts across the country have NO real standards of any kind directing teaching excellence. Parents/students are at the mercy of the quality of the teachers/principals their district hires. We must then pray that they are responsible because they haven't any firm requirements to adhere to.

Good teachers and principals create their own standards of excellence, which often far exceed school/district/State standards. But educators who DON'T challenge themselves or their staff to excellence, or don't have a clue how to without guidelines to follow impedes the learning process, taking down classes/schools/districts/States, as in California, which ranks 46^th nationally, though we have the highest paid teachers nationwide. (So much for it's all about money...)

Educators don't want STANDARDS. They want to preserve their omnipotence. Who wouldn't. They can't be fired for just about any reason, save offenses of the most egregious sins. Most educators salaries exceed average full time jobs, when most work less than two thirds of the year; and they receive, at minimum, cost-of-living raises annually regardless of job performance. Where is the incentive for excellence in our current education system?

STANDARDS impose incentive. Meet them, as good teachers will, with or without them, or exceed them, and realize built-in rewards with measurable milestones. Teachers that consistently miss return dates; return sloppy, few or no corrections on work and tests; neglect [frequent] testing and/or giving homework assignments...and after a couple warnings the principal, who uses STANDARDS with deliverables to monitor teacher performance, has the discretion to fire them. Unpaid suspension with specified retraining, maybe, but teachers who can't perform even baseline job functions after multiple opportunities should perhaps seek a different profession. Public school teachers mold the bulk of our society into the producers of tomorrow, or not. Elementary school teachers are especially important. Modeling and teaching consistency, creativity, organization and discipline early on sets our kids up for a lifetime love of learning.

Public/private/home schooled, STAR tests through college and professional boards requires our kids to prove what they've learned again and again. Business requires employees to consistently prove their value. Without any standards of excellence to build on, educating our kids becomes hit and miss at best. In the broader view, society becomes complacent, and mediocrity becomes the norm. And our kids need to be more than mediocre to compete in our now global economy.

DEMAND STANDARDS from your teachers/principals/schools/district. Public education must be accountable to the public they serve.

When Do You Walk Away?

2012-03-12T12:50:00.017-07:00

Met with a supervisor and the principal of my daughter's elementary school last week. I called the meeting to talk about the failing school, the new principal having dropped the school's API scores by a whooping 15% her first year there. The elementary was failing before her. The last principal, a promoted third grade teacher, brought our award-winning, California Distinguished School down as well. She was replaced by the current principal, with no experience as a principal, she was never even a teacher, comes from the admin side of the school district. And she doesn't listen to parents who tell her anything she doesn't want to hear.

I can't fire her. I have no authority to stop her from continuing on her failing path. I have no authority to stop paying her, or even reprimand her. She'll get a cost-of-living raise like most every other year. We pay almost $1,000 in add-on parcel taxes to the schools now, and they're asking for more again. And they'll get it, by threatening parents that things will get even worse at school if they don't get more money.

So I'm climbing the ladder of the current principal's superiors to get them to put in some, any accountability into their education system. But they don't want to change their policies, or make educators work harder, or be accountable. They want their jobs tomorrow, like the principal, like the newbie teachers she keeps hiring.

To date, I've spent endless hours and heart-wrenching frustration trying to help turn around this failing school. We moved to this community when the elementary was award-winning. We moved for the schools, for our kids. Now we're stuck in a school system that won't listen to anything they don't want to hear. We can't afford to move. The housing values here were hit very hard. They're not likely to go up much any time too soon. Housing values in suburban areas are largely based on the school API scores. Failing schools lowers home values and keep them low.

I'm tired of fighting educators to do what is right. And I'm sad a lot. Even with the below, bulleted list of action items, I'm getting nowhere fighting a district that cares more about keeping their jobs and maintaining their omnipotence then the community and kids they are hired to serve.

● Teachers are not required to correct homework or tests by any school or district policy. In fact, they have no requirements to return assigned work at all, and often don't.

● When homework is requested to be returned to student/parent, it isn't corrected, or only minimal, inadequate corrections applied. Teacher consistently ignores most misspellings, grammatical errors, and incorrect mathematics.

● Teacher's aids and other students are now correcting most tests. Teacher is not required to make sure they are corrected right, but simply record the grade.

● Teachers have no requirement to return homework and tests within a few days, and often don't, for a week or more, killing consistency and continuity in learning.

● Teachers choose how often they test, give homework what homework to give, whether they return assigned work or not. Their ONLY requirement is to meet California Standards— which ranks D minus, and 46th in the nation, close to the bottom, though we pay the highest teacher salaries nationally.

● The school district has awarded themselves furlough days, teacher work days, recess days, half days and short Wednesdays--students out at 1:00pm every Wed. There are only 168 full time school days, and getting less annually, though the schools get their add-on parcel taxes every year.

● The school district imposes NO WRITTEN STANDARDS on their schools, principals, teachers. They have vague 'policies' directed at the students, NOT the teachers or admin in regards to appropriate behavior, homework requirements and testing. In fact, our school systems has NO REQUIRMENTS at all other then teachers must fulfill California State Standards issued by the State Board of Education.

And I can't convince them, even with these simple action items, to put in place a set of baseline TEACHING STANDARDS.

And I'm tired now. And I cry a lot, too.

I too, am losing the will to fight the system. I can't change it. Clearly. Other parents have commented on my blog posts on public education that I'm anti-teacher; hateful; stupid; blind to teacher's plight. I was a teacher, have my K-12 Credentials, taught for five years. I'm also the parent of two kids going through the failing public school system. And I'd rather be working my job, making money, taking care of and playing with my family than writing these blogs and meeting with teachers, principals and admin not doing their job.

I wish I could be like all the self-righteous who keep defending the public school system instead of tackling what is wrong with it. Or perhaps just bend over and write another check, and tra la la go off to my job and ignore that my kids are being screwed by a system with no accountability.

But if no one speaks out, ever, if we all just toe the party line, or write another check, how is our education system going to get any better? U.S. Education ranks average, in many cases far lower than other industrial nations. America has received scores around 500 on a global scale that goes up to 1,000, and our scores are going down annually. Fast. How are our kids supposed to get a job in our global economy without the education to compete?

But I'm tired now, and so unbelievably disheartened, meeting with teachers, principals and admin, just to be condescended to, and then ignored. I'm too sad, too often to continue fighting for what I know is right, knowing I'm not getting anywhere, and no matter how much time and energy I devote to trying to improve our failing system I won't change a thing. Frustrated, exhausted and sad all the time isn't helping my kids.

When do you walk away from a cause you believe in? When the cost seems greater than the investment, how does one sustain the impetus to proceed? I want to ignore the destructive path our education system is on. I want to so bad! But I don't know how to turn a blind eye, be sated with my cable TV at night instead of investing my time and energy to fight for what is right.

But my conviction is waning...

Another DOT Screw Up!

2012-03-09T06:43:00.002-08:00

Live near a freeway, or use any, ever, anywhere across the nation?

HOV lanes and access ramps are coming to your town/city/state.

Except they DON'T WORK.

● HOV lanes cause MORE CONGESTION

● HOV lanes cause MORE POLLUTION

● HOV lanes INCREASE ACCIDENTS AND FATALITIES

● HOV access ramps DELAY STREET TRAFFIC accommodating lights on overpasses

● HOV access ramps INCREASE CRIME, POLLUTION, NOISE, CONGESTION AND ACCIDENTS to residential neighborhoods

Why should you care about HOV lanes?

Your half hour ride to work will increase to an hour or more while you sit in traffic jammed into the remaining regular lanes the 99% of us drive in.
State and federal taxes are building HOV lanes instead of investing our tax dollars in improving our public transportation system, schools and other worthy projects.
HOV lanes are being converted to TOLL lanes across the country, serving only those that can pay to avoid the excessive traffic the rest of us must sit in caused by losing a freeway lane to HOV.

HOV lanes DON'T WORK.

High Occupancy Lanes (HOV) were originally meant to encourage carpooling and use of public transportation, reduce congestion and pollution. Nice idea, but most of us can't, won't, or don't carpool. Why?

● In most major metropolitan areas across this country, we work in the city and live in the suburbs, too far to bike to work.

● Public transportation is notoriously unreliable and often doesn’t take us where we need to go.

● We have a fierce sense of independence in the U.S., in love with our cars and the 'freedom' they provide.

Clearly, we're not likely to start carpooling en-mass anytime soon.

HOV lanes have been around for 20 years now, yet 82% of the suburban workforce are still solo drivers, virtually the same percentage before HOV lanes.

Studies of HOV lane effectiveness are few and far between. Most are based on projections of future use, or deemed successful in their operations without accounting for their effect on the rest of the freeway, or on the communities with HOV access ramps added to suburban overpasses. Touted stats by Cal Trans and other state transportation agencies of increased speeds and vehicle throughput in the HOV lanes do NOT account for the overall increase in traffic congestion and delayed throughput of every other lane on the freeway where HOV lanes exist. Obvious to even the simplest of minds, shoving most freeway traffic into fewer or narrower lanes to accommodate HOV lanes will, and does increase traffic congestion, accidents and air pollution.

HOV LANES DON'T WORK.

So why is the U.S. government throwing federal stimulus funds at your state department of transportation, cities and municipalities to build HOV lanes through your community?

'Shovel ready' HOV projects employ lots of people. Implementing HOV lanes cost hundreds of millions but support many jobs, regardless if workers are building yet another bridge to nowhere.

For their cut of the stimulus pie, CalTrans and their like, and state and local governments are willfully blind to the effects of HOV lanes on overall traffic congestion and pollution. They do few verifiable studies, pass on foundation-less claims to the press why this or that HOV lane isn't being utilized or is causing major traffic delays and a massive influx of complaints from drivers. Lazy reporters pass on the PR from CalTrans that ultimately supports more HOV lane implementation.

Except HOV lanes don't work—not for their intended use, anyway.

Beyond garnering stimulus funds, from S.F. Bay Area to Atlanta, failed HOV lanes are being converted into Express lanes, or HOT lanes—toll lanes for solo drivers of any type of vehicle (deemed Lexus Lanes) willing and able to pay for the privilege of bypassing the traffic jams created by the HOV lane.

Extortion 101.

Anyone who drives an HOV/HOT lane corridors not willing to pay sometimes $5 or more for a few unobstructed miles bear witness to the Express lane's failure to ease congestion while sitting in the traffic the rarely utilized lanes create. City and state [transportation] agencies looking to fill their dwindling coffers promote HOT lanes being added to freeways nationwide now, ignoring legitimate studies that prove narrowing or omitting regular lanes on freeways to accommodate HOV/HOT lanes hurts all but a handful of drivers. Government officials don't take the time to research for facts. They get their information from invested stakeholders, and the media.

Except hardly anyone is doing the research, and reporting facts these days.

The recent New York Times HOV article doesn't bother to present the full picture. The journalist regurgitates meaningless stats on lane speeds in the HOV/HOT lanes only. He briefly mentions Howard Rodgers, joe-ordinary guy who sits in gridlock daily since the HOT lane was put in on the freeway he commutes to work. The reporter doesn't mention the bipartisan Berkeley study, or any legitimate report or study challenging the effectiveness of HOV/HOT lanes in reducing traffic congestion and pollution overall. Instead he goes on to quote Ellen Hanak, senior policy fellow with the Public Policy Institute of California for a third of his article, clearly in support of charging drivers. Instead of returning the HOV lane to a regular freeway lane for all to use, Ms. Hanak says “put a price on the availability of a faster lane.’ ”

Freeways will cease to be free ways in the U.S., usable for only those that can afford their price.

We can stop this idiocy, divert our local tax dollars to worthy projects that actually provide public benefits to many. Make your voices heard and protest the implementation of HOV/HOT lanes in your community! Only with thousands of voices can we motivate our civic leaders to do what is best for the communities they represent and reject HOV/HOT models.

Make a positive difference! Learn about HOV/HOT lanes and access ramps, and how to stop them.

We can. We are the internet!