Instead of Black Friday, how about Giving Day?

A new national tradition can help celebrate the power, passion of philosophy

Brattleboro — Rather than “Black Friday,” how about declaring the day after Thanksgiving as “Giving Day,” a day to encourage philanthropy?

This simple idea associates charitable giving and the celebration of philanthropy with our national holiday. All Vermonters would be encouraged to offer assistance to those in need, in whatever way they might be able to do so.

Recent disasters have proven that lending support to those in need is an important part of our Vermont tradition and the American tradition. The holiday season provides an occasion to remind us of all that we have to be grateful for, and it should also serve to remind us to continue to be aware of the needs of others who might be struggling and might find themselves in need of assistance.

As Vermonters already know, we can help others in many ways: donations of funds, food or individual help; giving of our time to individuals or groups struggling to meet their daily needs; and volunteering service to nonprofit and community organizations to assist their efforts.

Giving Day, a day when people across the state can celebrate the power and passion of their philanthropy, gives us an opportunity to think about what is important to us and how we can give.

We can give to a cause that means something to us: an issue that our passion connects to, a community need that tugs at our heartstrings, an organization we know that does good work.

* * *

You can participate in Giving Day by:

• Making a Giving Day commitment to support your favorite cause with a gift of time or money.

• Celebrating Thanksgiving! Whether it’s in quiet, personal conversations, a rousing ’round-the-table discussion, or an eloquent toast, take a moment to talk about issues that matter to you and your Giving Day commitment — and encourage others to do the same.

• Building a new tradition by encouraging others to celebrate Giving Day.

• Making a Giving Day commitment to support your favorite cause with a gift of time or money.

• Expressing your values, compassion, and passions with friends and family by discussing ways in which to support the causes that matter to you. Have a dinner party to discuss what you can do collectively to make a difference in your community.

• Teaching your children about giving by agreeing on a family gift to a nonprofit, or through activities that teach giving.

• Planning your legacy by creating your will.

• Gathering with friends to create a giving circle where you decide on a group gift that leverages your individual donations into one large one.

• Investigating the Vermont Community Foundation  whose staff can offer you information about local nonprofits and suggest ways to get philanthropically involved.

• Signing up for a regular volunteer opportunity.

• Serving on a nonprofit board. Bring your knowledge and know-how to help guide a local nonprofit. Check out your local United Way for organizations looking for board members.

* * *

This holiday season, we have much to be grateful for and, with the downturn in the economy, we also know that giving is more important than ever. Help is needed more when times are harder. The best reason to give in a down economy is because that’s when it does the most good.

The same slump that makes it harder for some to keep up their charitable giving makes it harder for others to put food on the table and keep hope in their lives. Hard times strain families at every seam. Charitable giving helps keep them from coming apart.

Giving Day provides everyone — those directly in need and those who want so much to help — with a concrete action that makes the world a better place. We can talk with friends and family about the things we care about, the causes we support, and what we want for the future.

By starting small — gathering with relatives to volunteer or joining with friends at work to combine charitable gifts — each of us can help make a bigger difference.

MartinCohn, a public relations consultant, has been working for more than 15 years with a number of organizations to help promote philanthropy. Between 2003 and 2006, 20 governors proclaimed a Giving Day in their respective states.

Originally published in The Commons issue #230 (Wednesday, November 20, 2013). This story appeared on page C1.

PR is Dead. Actually, Long Live PR! by Evan Zall

PR Insider posted this excellent op/ed by Evan Zall on the role of PR today.  My only regret is that I didn't write it first!

PR Insider: PR is Dead. Actually, Long Live PR!

by Evan Zall | 10/08/2013

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Two PR pros walk into a seminar. One says to the speaker, “Looking forward to your thoughts on social media and digital strategy.” Speaker points to his first slide and announces, “PR is dead!”

There’s no actual punchline (sorry about that), but I’ve lost count of the times that social media strategists have proclaimed that traditional public relations tactics are a fading, quaint art, antiquated, out of touch and ineffective. They say the new publicity paradigm is about direct engagement, brand-centric dialogue, and online visibility. Traditional media holds little value, and content must be drafted as short, energetic bursts that will capture micro-audiences with historically short attention spans.

I don’t roll my eyes at digital strategy—it’s an imperative piece of marketing for brands across all industries. But I balk at the idea that PR is on life support. The truth is that digital opportunities have given PR a second wind by adding a new host of channels for us to consider as we build programs.

Let’s jump back five years, when social media began to make an imprint on outreach to consumers. Even amidst the confusion of Twitter as either a sensationalist celebrity mouthpiece or an incredibly mundane tool to chronicle day-to-day life, it leaped to the front of the scene because people were communicating.

A debate launched over who would manage this domain (pun intended); new digital agencies and freelancers proclaimed that PR agencies were on the way out, to be replaced by armies of social media specialists.

I was confused by the tug of war back then, and I’m even more taken aback when I hear that theory today. As a journalist a long time ago, my job was to convey a story that would provide value to my readers. When I moved to investor relations, my job was to convey my clients’ story in a way that considered shareholders and regulators while still providing value to readers. Into public relations, where—funny about this—the job was still to convey my clients’ story in a way that supported their business goals, whether through print media, broadcast or online formats.

 How has digital media changed that? PR is not about the channel, it’s about the skill of storytelling, in the same way that baseball is still baseball with the designated hitter and an extra playoff round. Digital media improves our ability to target, learn and converse with audiences.  When combined with long form thought leadership content, traditional media, video production and speaking engagements, it presents the potential for more fluid, responsive campaigns that operate simultaneously on macro and micro levels. In fact, Twitter has given us a powerful way to connect with reporters in real-time as appropriate, allowing for fresher pitches in the 24/7 news cycle. With artfully blended tactics, brands can grow faster and better, and public relations can serve as the core discipline that gets them there.

Indeed, a singular focus on the digital side leads to subpar brand management. No marketing effort should be one-dimensional, and too often, those who are eager to bury PR embrace quantity of content and outreach over quality. But a barrage of social media posts with no anchor to an overarching message or business goal is begging to be ignored. In old school terms, we wouldn’t call a journalist five times a week with random story ideas: Whether for social media or traditional information streams, we need to know the audience and deliver a message they can interpret and eventually act upon.

A recent teaser on LinkedIn about research from the Content Marketing Institute hits it on the head, noting that most content marketing initiatives flounder due to a lack of three critical pieces: Strategy, focus and accountability. That is an insane observation, to put it mildly, and it applies to PR as well. Would a CEO launch programs in other facets of the business without strategy in place? Without focus or accountability? The ease of entry into digital channels has been twisted into the idea that “noise equals marketing." As this notion permeates the business, we see too many campaigns that are fragmented and ineffective.

Public relations ties tactics together under one thoughtful umbrella. It is bigger than traditional tactics alone, bigger than digital media alone, and it’s not going anywhere. The most impactful campaigns will be run by teams that embrace multiple channels and keep the emphasis on smart content; those that sacrifice one in favor of the other will miss opportunities and weaken client brands over the long term.

So the joke’s on you, Mr. Social Media Seminar Man. We’re all in this together.

Evan Zall is president of Ebben Zall Group.

 

NY Times Retro Report: Not Just a Hot Cup Anymore

 Fascinating account of how public opinion was shaped without the facts. Sadly, it still happens today.

Not Just a Hot Cup Anymore

By HILARY STOUT
Published: October 21, 2013

More than 20 years ago, 79-year-old Stella Liebeck ordered coffee at a McDonald’s drive-through in Albuquerque, N.M. She spilled the coffee, was burned, and one year later, sued McDonald’s. The jury awarded her $2.9 million. Her story became a media sensation and fodder for talk-show hosts, late-night comedians, sitcom writers and even political pundits. But cleverness may have come at the expense of context, as this Retro Report video illustrates. And below, a consumer affairs reporter for The Times reflects on how the world has changed since the lawsuit. 

It was pretty much a pre-Starbucks world. 

Back in February 1992, when Stella Liebeck ordered the 8-ounce cup of McDonald’s coffee that would famously spill and turn her, briefly, into a court-made millionaire — until the amount, the video reports, was lowered to about $500,000 — we were not the coffee culture we would become.

For those seeking reforms in the legal system since a jury tried to award Ms. Liebeck $2.9 million for the third-degree burns she suffered from the spill, little has changed despite efforts to cap multimillion-dollar verdicts like her original amount. 

But when it comes down to the morning brew at the center of the case, a lot has transpired in the two decades since the lawsuit caused such an uproar. 

We have become a society that totes hot liquids everywhere. Our palms seem to be permanently attached to an elongated cup with a plastic lid. 

This is partly a matter of growth and supply. The number of Starbucks stores in the United States has swelled from 146 in 1992, mostly in the Northwest, to 10,924 all last year, in cities, strip malls and small towns throughout the country. (There are six in my one-square-mile ZIP code on the Upper West Side of Manhattan alone and a seventh is opening soon.) 

The point is, the world now caters to the coffee drinker. The idea of getting into a car without cup holders and lifting the lid off the cup in order to add milk and sugar and drink the coffee, as the facts of the case show Ms. Liebeck did that morning, seems strangely anachronistic. 

Within the ensuing years, some genius invented a sculptured lid with a little sipping hole in the top, eliminating the need to open the cup and reducing the potential for spills. Sloshing grew less likely once the lip was raised above the cup rim. 

Let’s not forget the evolution of the cup holder. Teams of car engineers continuously work to perfect their design for drivers in the front and those passengers two rows back. 

Coffee technology has definitely come a long way. 

We now have that little cardboard thing that goes around the disposable cup so you can hold a cup of hot coffee without discomfort. (It actually has a name: the zarf, and one Jay Sorenson is said to have invented it in 1993 and he holds a patent on it under the trademark Java Jacket. Now multiple companies make them.) 

Berry Plastics, a company based in Evansville, Ind., that manufactures cold-drink cups for fast-food vendors, including McDonald’s and Starbucks (they’re the ones who created those clear plastic cups with the dome tops for Frappuccinos), recently got into the hot-drink business by developing a “fully recyclable thermal management packaging solution.” In other words, a cup. 

But not just any cup. This one — called Versalite, with 20 patents pending, and currently being tested in several markets — is a disposable cup that insulates the liquid to keep hot coffee from cooling but also to keep the cup from feeling hot to the touch. “We’ve known for a long time that there’s been a need for a better insulating cup,” said Jon Rich, president and chief executive of Berry Plastics. (Incidentally, the Versalite cup performs the same function for cold drinks.) 

Not to mention the variety of insulated, metal refillable travel mugs, with any number of push-button, sliding openings from which to sip a hot or cold brew. 

But all of this means we are even more lackadaisical about the potentially scalding liquid we carry. We nonchalantly sip coffee over babies, while pushing them in strollers (and stow them in the holders intended for bottles and sippy cups). We jostle one another on crowded subways and buses while clutching our coffee cups. We take them to class, carry them through stores, in libraries. Museums seem to be one of the few places that forbid them. 

Sure, warnings, then and now, are plastered all over cups and tops: “Careful, the beverage you are about to enjoy is extremely hot,” says the Starbucks cup. “Caution Contents Hot,” says the lid. “Caution Handle with Care I’m Hot,” says the McDonald’s cup. 

Nevertheless, an average of 80 people a year are hospitalized for coffee and tea scaldings at the William Randolph Hearst Burn Center at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, said Dr. Robert W. Yurt, the chief of the division of burns, critical care and trauma. Seventy percent of them were children under 6 years old, he said, though the majority of those accidents occurred at home. 

During the Liebeck court proceedings, McDonald’s said it served its coffee between 180 and 190 degrees. The company has refused to disclose today’s standard temperature, but Retro Report shows a handbook for franchisees calling for temperatures 10 degrees lower. 

At my local Starbucks, I asked the young barista who took my order (grande 1 percent latte) how hot the store brews its coffee. “We brew it at 200 degrees,” she said. (That is also the standard recommended by the Specialty Coffee Association of America.) 

But the serving temperature is lower than McDonald’s was back then. “We let it sit for a half-hour,” she continued, “so it is about 170 or 180 when we serve it.” 

These days, with so many choices on the coffee menu, customers may be more protected today from a scalding by inadvertent shields. In 1992, little in the way of milky coffee drinks was available that would act to drop the temperature a few degrees. 

After all, the word “latte” — whether whole, skim or soy — had yet to become part of the mass lexicon. 

This week’s Retro Report is the 16th in a documentary series. The video project was started with a grant from Christopher Buck. Retro Report has a staff of 13 journalists and 10 contributors led by Kyra Darnton, a former “60 Minutes” producer. It is a nonprofit video news organization that aims to provide a thoughtful counterweight to today’s 24/7 news cycle. The videos are typically 10 to 14 minutes long.

Previous Retro Reports can be found here ( articles and videos) or here (videos only).
Visit the Retro Report Web site here.
Booming: Living Through the Middle Ages offers news and commentary about baby boomers, anchored by Michael Winerip. Sign up for our weekly newsletter here. You may also follow Booming via RSS here or visit nytimes.com/booming. Our e-mail is booming@nytimes.com.

Remembering the Guerrilla Marketing Genius of Jay Conrad Levinson

Remembering the Guerrilla Marketing Genius of Jay Conrad Levinson
Posted on Oct 10, 2013

By Susan Young, CEO,  Get in Front Communications, Inc.
 
Many of you recall the old commercials and ads that turned Charlie the Tuna, the Pillsbury Doughboy, and the Marlboro Man into household names and brands. I remember watching the TV commercials, in the pre-remote days when people actually watched commercials.
The common thread behind each of these products was Jay Conrad Levinson, who worked on the creative teams that developed these brands.
In the early 1980s, Levinson coined the term “guerrilla marketing,” which sparked a revolution in business marketing, advertising, and PR. He would go on to author and co-author some 60 books, selling more than 20 million copies worldwide.
The “Father of Guerrilla Marketing” passed away on Thursday at the age of 80.

During the past three decades, Levinson was able to use his talents and genius to morph his guerrilla marketing brilliance to include technology and social media.

So what exactly is guerrilla marketing? It started with three points, and over the years, has grown to 15.

This is how Levinson has described his concept. “I’m referring to the soul and essence of guerrilla marketing which remain as always — achieving conventional goals, such as profits and joy, with unconventional methods, such as investing energy instead of money.”

Entrepreneurs, myself included, can relate to the energy over money method, just as Gary Vaynerchuk writes in Crush It: “The best marketing strategy ever is to CARE.”

It is Levinson who encourages small business owners to “get back to basics” in marketing. On his list of 200 guerrilla marketing weapons, he includes:

• Business cards
• A street banner
• A landing page
• A vanity phone number
• Patience
• A meme
• Public relations

According to Levinson’s official website, guerrilla marketing is needed because it gives small businesses a delightfully unfair advantage: certainty in an uncertain world, economy in a high-priced world, simplicity in a complicated world, marketing awareness in a clueless world.

Thank you, Jay Levinson, for sharing your clues and knowledge with several generations of marketers and small business owners around the world.  

 About the Author: Susan Young is an award-winning news, social media, PR, and communications professional with 26 years of experience.  Her new book, “The Badass Book of Social Media and Business Communication” [Kindle Edition] was recently released.  She works with organizations that want to use digital platforms to increase their visibility, credibility, and revenues. Susan’s company, Get in Front Communications, provides consulting and coaching on all things communication. Her latest accomplishment: Being named one of the ’75 Badass Women on Twitter.’(@sueyoungmedia) 

Are You Living Your Eulogy or Your Resume?

Arianna Huffington, President and Editor-in-Chief at The Huffington Post Media Group, posted an excellent article on Linked-in today.  

While my wife and I bought cemetery plots years ago, we just started talking about the actual funeral service.   Rather than writing a eulogy under the pressure of planning for the funeral, we thought that we should sit down and prepare something in advance.

This exercise has me reflecting on how I want to be remembered.  Arianna Huffington makes the same point very eloquently. 

"Today I want every American to see how these men and women lived," President Obama said Sunday, eulogizing the 12 men and women killed in the Washington Navy Yard shooting. He spoke of volunteers who made time to give back to their communities, like "Frank Kohler, giving dictionaries to every third-grader in his county," and "Marty Bodrog, leading the children's Bible study at church." There were fathers like Mike Ridgell, "coaching his daughters' softball teams and joining Facebook just to keep up with his girls, one of whom said he was always the cool dad." There were mothers like Mary Francis Knight, "devoted to her daughters ... who had just recently watched with joy as her older daughter got married," and grandparents like John Johnson, "always smiling, giving bear hugs to his 10 grandchildren ... who would have welcomed his 11th grandchild this fall."

Have you noticed that when people die, their eulogies celebrate life very differently from the way we define success in our everyday existence? Eulogies are, in fact, very Third Metric. At HuffPost we've made the Third Metric -- redefining success beyond money and power to include well-being, wisdom and our ability to wonder and to give -- a key editorial focus. But while it's not hard to live a Third Metric life, it's very easy not to. It's easy to let ourselves get consumed by our work. It's easy to use work to let ourselves forget the things and the people that truly sustain us. It's easy to let technology wrap us in a perpetually harried, stressed-out existence. It's easy, in effect, to miss our lives even while we're living them. Until we're no longer living them.

For most of us, our eulogy will be not just the first formal marking down of what our lives were about but the only one. The eulogy is the foundational document of our legacy, of how people remember us, of how we live on in the minds and hearts of others. And it is very telling what you don't hear in eulogies. You almost never hear things like:

"Of course his crowning achievement was when he made senior vice president."

Or:

"What everybody loved most about her was how she ate lunch at her desk. Every day."

Or:

"He was proud that he never made it to one of his kid's Little League games because he always wanted to go over those figures one more time."

Or:

"She didn't have any real friends, but she had 600 Facebook friends, and she dealt with every email in her inbox every night."

Or:

"But he will live on, not in our hearts or memories, because we barely knew him, but in his PowerPoint slides, which were always meticulously prepared."

No matter how much a person spends his or her life burning the candle at both ends, chasing a toxic definition of success and generally missing out on life, the eulogy is always about the other stuff: what they gave, how they connected, how much they meant to the lives of the real people around them, small kindnesses, lifelong passions and what made them laugh.

So the question is: Why do we spend so much time on what our eulogy is not going to be?

"Eulogies aren't résumés," David Brooks wrote in June. "They describe the person's care, wisdom, truthfulness and courage. They describe the million little moral judgments that emanate from that inner region."

And yet we spend so much time and effort and energy on those résumé entries, which are gone as soon our heart stops beating. Even for those who die with amazing résumés, whose lives were synonymous with accomplishment and achievement, their eulogies are mostly about what they did when they weren't achieving and succeeding -- at least by our current, broken definition of success.

For example, look at Steve Jobs, a man whose life, at least as the public saw it, was about creating things, things that were, yes, amazing and game-changing, but when his sister, Mona Simpson, rose to memorialize him at his memorial service at Stanford University, that's not what she focused on.

Yes, she talked about his work and his work ethic, but mostly as manifestations of his passions. "Steve worked at what he loved," she said. But what really moved him, what he really loved, was love. "Love was his supreme virtue," she said, "his god of gods." And though yes, he loved his work, he loved his family too:

When [his son] Reed was born, he began gushing and never stopped. He was a physical dad, with each of his children. He fretted over Lisa's boyfriends and Erin's travel and skirt lengths and Eve's safety around the horses she adored.

And then she added this touching image: "None of us who attended Reed's graduation party will ever forget the scene of Reed and Steve slow dancing."

And about his wife: "His abiding love for Laurene sustained him. He believed that love happened all the time, everywhere. In that most important way, Steve was never ironic, never cynical, never pessimistic."

And then there were lines like these, sprinkled throughout:

"Steve was humble."

"Steve liked to keep learning."

"Steve cultivated whimsy."

"With his four children, with his wife, with all of us, Steve had a lot of fun."

"He treasured happiness."

"He was an intensely emotional man."

His sister made sure in her eulogy that we knew that Steve Jobs was a lot more than just the guy who invented the iPhone. He was a brother and a husband and a father who knew the true value of what technology can so easily distract us from. Even if you build an iconic product, even one that lives on, what will be foremost in the minds of the people you care about most will be the memories you built in their lives. In her 1951 novelMemoirs of Hadrian, Marguerite Yourcenar has the Roman emperor meditating on his death: "[I]t seems to me as I write this hardly important to have been emperor."
And Thomas Jefferson's epitaph describes him as "author of the Declaration of American Independence ... and father of the University of Virginia." No mention of the presidency.

What the old adage that we should live every day as our last usually means is that we shouldn't wait until it's our last day on Earth to begin prioritizing the things that really matter.

Anyone with a few smartphones and a full email inbox knows that it's easy to live while not being aware we're living. So a Third Metric life would be one lived in a way that's mindful of what our eulogy will one day be. "I'm always relieved when someone is delivering a eulogy and I realize I'm listening to it," joked George Carlin. We may not be listening to our own eulogy, but we're actually writing it all the time, every day. The question is how much we're giving the eulogizer to work with.
This past summer an obituary of a Seattle woman named Jane Lotter, who died of cancer at 60, went viral. The author of the obit was Lotter herself.

"One of the few advantages of dying from Grade 3, Stage IIIC endometrial cancer, recurrent and metastasized to the liver and abdomen," she wrote, "is that you have time to write your own obituary." After giving a lovely and lively account of her life, she shows that she lived a life with the true definition of success in mind. "My beloved Bob, Tessa, and Riley," she writes. "My beloved friends and family. How precious you all have been to me. Knowing and loving each one of you was the success story of my life."

Just months before the historian Tony Judt died of ALS in 2010, he gave an amazing interview to Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air. She asked him about his spiritual beliefs. He replied:
I don't believe in an afterlife. I don't believe in a single or multiple godhead. I respect people who do, but I don't believe it myself. But there's a big "but" which enters in here: I am much more conscious than I ever was, for obvious reasons, of what it will mean to people left behind once I'm dead. It won't mean anything for me, but it will mean a lot to them, and it's important for them, by which I mean my children or my wife or my close friends, that some spirit of me is, in a positive way, present in their lives, in their heads, in their imaginings and so on. So in one curious way I've come to believe in the afterlife as a place where I still have moral responsibilities, just as I do in this life except that I can only exercise them before I get there. Once I get there, it'll be too late. So no god, no organized religion, but a developing sense that there's something bigger than the world we live in, including after we die, and that we have responsibilities in that world.

So whether you believe in an afterlife, as I do, or not, by being fully present in your life and in the lives of those you love, you are creating your own afterlife and writing your own eulogy. It's a valuable lesson, even more so while we have the good fortune of being healthy and having the energy and freedom and lack of impediments to create a life of purpose and meaning.

It shouldn't take a near-death experience to remind us of what we're all going to lose one day. According to Colors magazine, something called "living funeral therapy" is becoming increasingly popular in South Korea, which has the highest suicide rate of developed countries. It can involve actually getting in a coffin and having it nailed shut, to experience a glimpse of the finality and closure of death. One operator sometimes has the participants make a list of the people in their lives who matter to them. One woman said the process made her realize she'd been neglecting her husband. "I feel like I've been reborn," she said. "I want to call my husband, to tell him 'thank you,' and 'sorry.'"

It's an extreme method, and hopefully most of us won't need to be nailed shut inside a coffin to get a sense of what we really value. But the good news is that if you're reading this, there's still time to live up to the best version of your eulogy.

Here are some of my favorite eulogies, courtesy of Alison Nastasi of The Atlantic. Do you have a favorite eulogy, or something in particular you remember from a eulogy you heard?

Wishing everyone a good year!

I read an interesting article on aish.com about the difference between wishing someone a happy new year versus a good new year. 

The typical greeting for the Jewish New Year is Shana Tova.  This has typically been translated as as Happy New Year.  However, it actually means Good Year. 

If someone has a good year, they have achieved their purpose and fulfilled what they are meant to be. 

Therefore, I wish all my family and friends a healthy, prosperous and good year!

Jews Don’t Say Happy New Year

What’s the best wish for the new year?

by Rabbi Benjamin Blech

Ever notice that Jews don’t traditionally wish each other “happy new year”?

Instead we say the Hebrew phrase “shanah tovah” which — in spite of the mistaken translation that appears on almost all greeting cards — has no connection at all to the expression “have a happy new year.”

Shanah tovah conveys the hope for a good year rather than a happy one. And the reason for that distinction contains great significance.

This past January, the Atlantic Monthly had a fascinating article titled There’s More to Life than Being Happy. The author, Emily Esfahani Smith, points out how researchers are beginning to caution against the pursuit of mere happiness. They found that a meaningful life and a happy life overlap in certain ways, but are ultimately very different. Leading a happy life, the psychologists found, is associated with being a "taker" while leading a meaningful life corresponds with being a "giver."

"Happiness without meaning characterizes a relatively shallow, self-absorbed or even selfish life, in which things go well, needs and desire are easily satisfied and difficult or taxing entanglements are avoided," the author writes.

Happy people get joy from receiving while people leading meaningful lives get joy from giving to others.

She quotes Kathleen Vohs, one of the authors of a new study to be published this year in The Journal of Positive Psychology: "Happy people get joy from receiving benefits from others while people leading meaningful lives get a lot of joy from giving to others." In other words, meaning transcends the self while happiness is all about giving the self what it wants.

According to Roy Baumeister, the lead researcher of the study, “What sets human beings apart from animals is not the pursuit of happiness, which occurs all across the natural world, but the pursuit of meaning, which is unique to humans.”

Long before all of these studies, Jews somehow understood this intuitively. Happy is good, but good is better.

To hope for a happy new year is to give primacy to the ideal of a hedonistic culture whose greatest goal is “to have a good time.” To seek a good year however is to recognize the superiority of meaning over the joy of the moment.

The word “good” has special meaning in the Torah. The first time we find it used is in the series of sentences where God, after each day of creation, views his handiwork and proclaims it “good”. More, when God completed his work he saw all that he had done “and behold it was very good.”

What does that mean? In what way was the world good? Surely it was not in any moral sense that it was being praised. The commentators offer a profound insight. The word good indicates that every part of creation fulfilled God’s purpose: it was good because it was what it was meant to be.

That is the deepest meaning of the word good when it is applied to us and to our lives. We are good when we achieve our purpose; our lives are good when they fulfill what they are meant to be.

We know many people of whom it can be said that they had good lives in spite of their having had to endure great unhappiness. Indeed, the truly great chose lives of sacrifice over pleasure and left a legacy of inspiration and achievement that they never could have accomplished had they been solely concerned with personal gratification.

A shanah tovah, a good year, from a spiritual perspective, is far more blessed than a simply happy one.

Meaning Leads to Happiness

A shanah tovah may not emphasize happiness, yet it is the most certain way to ultimately achieve happiness.

Because another powerful idea discovered by contemporary psychologists is that happiness most often is the byproduct of a meaningful life. It’s precisely when we don’t go looking for it and are willing to set it aside in the interest of a loftier goal that we find it unexpectedly landing on us with a force that we never considered possible.

Happiness is the byproduct of a meaningful life.

You would think that acquiring ever more money would make people happier. There are millions of people ready to testify from their own experience that it just isn’t so. But if getting more won’t do it, what will? Social scientists have come to a significant conclusion: while having money doesn’t automatically lead to happiness, giving it away almost always achieves that goal!

The prestigious Science magazine (March, 2008) tells us that new research reveals when individuals dole out money for gifts for friends or charitable donations they get a boost in happiness while those who spend on themselves get no such cheery lift. “We wanted to test our theory that how people spend their money is at least as important as how much money they earn,” said Elizabeth Dunn, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia. What they discovered was that personal spending had no link with a person’s happiness, while spending on others and charity was significantly related to a boost in happiness.

“Regardless of how much income each person made,” Dunn said, “those who spent money on others reported greater happiness, while those who spent more on themselves did not.”

In a fascinating experiment, researchers gave college students a $5 or $20 bill, asking them to spend the money by that evening. Half the participants were instructed to spend the money on themselves, and the remaining students were told to spend it on others. Participants who spent the windfall on others — which included toys for siblings and meals eaten with friends — reported feeling happier at the end of the day than those who spent the money on themselves. Spending as little as $5 on other people produced a measurable surge in happiness on a given day, while purchasing supposedly pleasure -gratifying personal items produced almost no change in mood.

 “It doesn’t surprise me at all that people find giving money away very rewarding,” Aaron Ahuvia, associate professor of marketing at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, explained. “People spend a lot of money to make their lives feel meaningful, significant and important. When you give away money you are making that same kind of purchase, only you are doing it in a more effective way.” He added, “What you’re really trying to buy is meaning to life.”

Meaning is our ultimate goal; in our pursuit of the “good” life we will discover the reward of true happiness.

So shana tova, may you have a year filled with meaning and purpose. And happiness that will surely follow.

How Martin Luther King Improvised 'I Have A Dream'

Excellent article on Forbes.com by  Carmine Gallo on the background and lessons to Martin Luther King's "dream speech.

 

Few people know that the prepared text to Martin Luther King Jr.’s transformative “dream speech” did not contain the passage that started with “I have a dream;” the phrase that most of us remember as we mark the 50th anniversary of King’s famous speech. Something extraordinary happened around the seventh paragraph of the speech, an event that instantly transformed the speech from a good one to one widely considered the greatest speech of the twentieth-century. What happened in the second half of the speech carries an important lesson for today’s business leaders who need to inspire their teams.

In his book, “Behind the Dream,” King speechwriter Clarence B. Jones told the story of what really happened as King prepared for the speech and the astonishing thing that occurred as he was delivering it. I’ll summarize the story and follow it with the vital lesson it carries for contemporary leaders.

The story begins the night before the speech, Tuesday, August 27, 1963. A group of seven individuals, including Jones, had gathered with King at the Willard Hotel to add their input to the final speech. King asked Jones to take notes and to turn the notes into cohesive remarks he would deliver on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Everyone in the room represented a group that had a stake in the speech and who wanted their voices to be heard. “I tried to summarize the various points made by all of his supporters. It was not easy; voices from every compass point were ringing in my head,” wrote Jones.

The next morning King’s speech was finished and copies were delivered to the press. Fast forward a few hours later when King was delivering the speech. If you watch the video, you’ll notice that King is looking down a lot in the first part of the speech (watch King read at 2 minutes, 10 seconds into the video clip). King looks down because he is reading the text. “A pleasant shock came over me as I realized that he seemed to be essentially reciting those suggested opening paragraphs I had scrawled down the night before in my hotel room,” wrote Jones.

In the seventh paragraph, something extraordinary happened. King paused. In that brief silence, Mahalia Jackson, a gospel singer and good friend of King’s, shouted “tell ‘em about the ‘dream.’” Few people heard her, with the exception of Jones, Ted Kennedy, and, of course, King. Here’s what happened next. Jones saw King “push the text of his prepared remarks to one side of the lectern. He shifted gears in a heartbeat, abandoning whatever final version he’d prepared…he’d given himself over to the spirit of the moment.” Jones leaned over to the person standing next to him and said, “These people out there today don’t know it yet, but they’re about to go to church.”
King improvised much of the second half of the speech, including the “I have a dream” refrain. Improvise means “to deliver without prior preparation.” It does not mean that King completely made up the words on the spot. In fact King delivered the now familiar refrain, or at least a version of it, two months earlier at Cobo Hall in Detroit. Remarkably, if you read the text of the Detroit event, you’ll see that he did not recite the same sentences word for word. His mesmerizing words and sentence structure were truly delivered extemporaneously. It’s an example of rhetorical dexterity at its finest. Now watch the video again, beginning at 12 minutes, 30 seconds. King rarely looks down in the second half of the speech. It’s because he’s not reading; he’s riffing, like a jazz musician. “So much for providing advance material for The March reporters,” wrote Jones. “The effect was nothing short of soul-stirring.”

How does this apply to you? If you want to inspire your listeners, consider the opinions of others, but find your authentic voice.

Think about the majority of business presentations that you see. Many, if not most, are dull and often read directly from notes. They’re functional, but uninspiring. And they are uninspiring because the leader’s voice is nowhere to be found. Recently I was advising a top executive at one of the world’s largest companies. We were seated in a grand, magnificent conference room in the expansive executive wing of the company’s headquarters. It was a very formal environment. A speechwriter was taking notes as representatives from public relations, marketing, and other departments discussed the content of the speech.

The team was building a functional presentation. It contained plenty of compelling statistics and information. Near the end of the session I said, “It’s missing something.” I could feel the glare of some of those in the room who just wanted to end the meeting. I turned to the executive and asked, “Where’s your voice? What’s in your heart?” What happened next was the ‘dream’ moment. He lowered his voice, turned to the group, and fought back tears as he told us why he believed in the company and how proud he was of its 60,000 employees. Every person sat in stunned silence. I turned to the group and said, “There’s the ending of your presentation. Don’t script it.” The executive delivered it two weeks later, adding his ‘voice’ to the conclusion. He received some of the highest marks ever given to an executive speech in the company’s long history.

Find your dream moment by asking yourself this question: What is it about my [company, product, idea] that makes my heart sing? The answer will reflect your authentic voice and it will connect with your listeners on a deeper and more emotional level. Sure, be functional, but build in your voice from time to time and deliver a message that your audience will want to remember.

 Carmine Gallo is the communications coach for the world’s most admired brands. He is a popular keynote speaker and author of several books, including the international bestseller The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs. Carmine’s upcoming book, Talk Like TED, reveals the public speaking secrets of the world’s top minds. Follow Carmine on Facebook or Twitter.

Business Golf 101

Public relations is about relationships. During the golfing season, a round of golf is the perfect opportunity to build a relationship with someone with whom you will later do business. However, there are some dos and don'ts on conducting business on the golf course. In fact, there's even a course (academic, not golf) for students at Northern Illinois University to learn the proper golf behavior on the links.

Here are twelve tips provided by Professor Dan Weilbaker:
1. Don't rush things. Use the first six holes to get to know your potential customer.
2. Use the next six holes to better understand your potential customer's business.
3. Use the final six holes to share ideas about how you can help meet your potential customer's needs.
4. Close the deal on the 19th hole (or over dinner / lunch).
5. Don't initiate wagering and don't bet more than you have in your pocket.
6. Don't let your bad golf slow down play. Pick up your ball after double par.
7. Don't intentionally play poorly.
8. Observe how people play the game.
9. Listen more than you talk.
10. Don't tell off-color jokes.
11. Don't offer golf advice unless asked.
12. Leave your mobile phone behind.

Jewish Astronauts--

When NASA first started sending up the astronauts, they quickly discovered that ball-point pens would not work in zero gravity. To combat the problem, NASA spent a decade and $1.2 billion to develop a pen that writes in zero gravity, upside-down, underwater, on almost any surface, including glass, and at temperatures ranging from below freezing to 300 Celsius.

Confronted with the same problem, the Israelis used a pencil.

As we get ready to celebrate the 40th anniversay of Skylab, this would be a great time to look back on Jews in space. ... . . No, not the Mel Brooks version. I'm talking about bona fide Jewish astronauts who have translated the ancient, nomadic ways of our people into a passion for exploration among the stars. . . ==================================================== Boris Volynov Boris Volynov was the first Jew in space. He was the commander of Soyuz 5 in January 1969. ========================================== . . Judy Resnick, was the first American Jewish astronaut to go into space. She served as mission specialist on the maiden voyage of the Space Shuttle Discovery in 1984 and also on the Challenger. . She died tragically when the Challenger broke apart shortly after liftoff for its 10th mission. She consulted a rabbi about lighting Shabbat candles aboard the Space Shuttle. Of course, an open flame was not permitted, so she was advised to use electric lights at the proper hour corresponding to the onset of Shabbat at their home base, in Houston . ====================================================== . . Jeffrey Hoffman Jeffrey Hoffman was the first Jewish man in space and the first person to ever bring a Torah into space. He did this during his 1996 mission on the Space Shuttle Columbia . ================================================= . . David Wolf Another Jewish astronaut, David Wolf, was in orbit during Hanukkah and, though he couldn't light his menorah due to the hazards of fire in an oxygen-rich atmosphere, he did take advantage of zero gravity when spinning his dreidels. "I probably have the record dreidel spin," he later said, "it went for about an hour and a half until I lost it. It showed up a few weeks later in an air filter. I figure it went about 25,000 miles." =============================================== . . Gregory Chamitoff Then, of course, there's Gregory Chamitoff, in 2008. He took mezuzot shaped like rockets on to the International Space Station and placed them on the door post near his bunk bed. ================================================ . . Ilan Ramon was the first Israeli astronaut. Ilan Ramon He was the payload specialist on the Space Shuttle Columbia and, sadly, he died along with his crew mates when the Columbia disintegrated during re-entry over Southern Texas . But during his career as an astronaut Judaism was a prominent part of his life in space. He was the first astronaut to request kosher food in space and also the first one to consult a rabbi about how to observe Shabbat while in orbit. In addition to a Torah scroll and microfiche copy of the bible, he also carried a picture of Earth as seen from the moon that was drawn by a Jewish boy in a concentration camp during World War II. . . ================================================= Gary Reisman Last but not least on this list is Gary Reisman, who was the first Jewish astronaut to live on the International Space Station, and who brought a memento from Ilan Ramon's widow with him. He left right before Passover and asked if he could bring matzah with him, but, alas, mission control thought the crumbs would be uncontainable. . ( Reisman is a self-proclaimed member of the Colbert Nation and had a cameo appearance on the series finale of Battlestar Galactica).

Actually Yuri Gagarin was the first Jewish man in space. He flew into orbit aboard the Soviet spacecraft Vostok I on 12 April 1961.
He never told anyone he was Jewish.

5 ways to get the most out of LinkedIn Groups

The party's in full swing, and you're invited. Just make sure you're a welcome guest with something significant to contribute. Here's what you should know. 

 

By Matt Haskell | Posted: March 7, 2013

 

If you are on LinkedIn to connect with businesspeople, LinkedIn Groups is where the party is happening. Sometimes you get invited, sometimes everyone is welcome, and sometimes the party gets a little wild. You can even get turned away at the door.

To get the most out of LinkedIn Groups, you need to learn how to be the life of the party—not a wallflower or a party crasher. Here's how:

1. Don't be a party crasher
 
Few things are worse in a group than a member who continually "spams" discussions with his direct advertisements for products or services, or starts discussions with direct-sales tactics, pitching what he's selling. Linking to a blog and asking a question regarding your own content are both fine, but the quickest way to get kicked out of groups is to constantly pitch your stuff.

Don't focus solely on sharing your own content. This is a community, after all, so comment on and share other people's articles in your status updates; it's a great way to build your network and start conversations.

2. Don't join too many groups
 
Join a variety of groups, keying on those with high numbers of members and very active discussions, but be careful not to join too many (the maximum is 50), because keeping up just becomes too hard.
A handy way to keep up with discussions you started is to hover over the "notifications" flag on your LinkedIn home page and see who's commented on or "liked" your discussions. (It's also a great way to make connections.)

3. Use the "Share" feature to post to multiple groups
 
Do you have a company update, a blog post, or an article that you'd like to share with several groups at once? Either post it as your status and click "Share" or do the same from your company page. When sharing to multiple groups, make sure you change the title to fit the group and rephrase your introductions to make them discussion starters.

Some blog posts or articles might be appropriate across various groups, but be sure not to share an article or start a discussion in multiple groups that have very different interests. Chances are, your retail banking network group doesn't really care to hear about marketing strategies for higher education.

You can share your discussions and articles to batches of separate groups with targeted titles and details to fit the mission of several groups at once. For example, if you are a member of numerous social media groups, make sure the title of the discussion fits those groups and you aren't also pushing that discussion to unrelated groups.

4. Join groups for your target market
 
If you use LinkedIn for prospecting or business development, you likely aren't going to find much use in joining only groups of other marketers. So join groups in your target markets, too. Doing so will help identify conversations going on among your customers, and you can respond to inquiries and discussion to spawn new business.

A great function of LinkedIn Groups is that they allow you to listen. When you are a member of groups pertaining to your target audience, you have the opportunity to eavesdrop and find out what is truly important to your audience. It's a great way to do market research.

5. Ask questions systematically: polls
 
Polls are a great way to help you make smarter business decisions. They also make your discussions the most popular on the board, boost your influence, and make connections.

Ask your group members a question that you face in your business. Especially if you are in groups with your target audience, asking a polling question can help you solve client problems and make smarter decisions. Polls also open further discussions when group members comment on the results of the poll.

In addition to providing valuable market research, polls add great visual appeal to the look of a page and so boost your clout in the group.

6. Sometimes it's OK to "take it outside"
 
LinkedIn Groups aren't necessarily meant for prospecting and lead generation, but sometimes discussions can lead to real opportunities. Occasionally, a participant in a discussion or a poll will want to know more about how to start working with your company or might like to take advantage of your product or service offerings.

Rather than continuing that discussion in the public arena, "take it outside" by requesting to connect with the group member and sending a direct message that offers more information about your product. Doing so in a group would come off as solicitation, but it can be mutually beneficial if your new connection wants to learn more in a private setting.

LinkedIn facilitates such interactions by letting you request connections with group members, even if they are not second- or third-degree connections.

Matt Haskell is the Social Media Marketing Manager for SourceLink, a marketing services provider focused on data-based marketing. This article first appeared on MarketingProfs.com.

Taking Pictures in Public

Found this article from 4/17/08 edition of USA Today on considerations needed before taking pictures in public.

Think twice before taking pictures in public

 

Thanks to digital cameras and camera phones, photography is experiencing a renaissance. Many people carry a camera everywhere they go.

 

But before you start snapping, ask yourself a question: Is it legal to take a photograph in this situation? Test your knowledge with this quick quiz.

(Local laws regarding photography may differ. I'll tell you what is generally permitted. It should not be construed as legal advice.)

You're photographing the exquisite steps of a public library from a nearby sidewalk.

This one is easy. It is legal to take photographs in public places. This includes streets, sidewalks and public parks. However, you cannot obstruct other passersby.

You want to photograph an older couple holding hands in a public park.

You can photograph people in public places without consent. There are exceptions, though. If subjects have a reasonable expectation of privacy, don't photograph them. For example, don't photograph someone in a restroom or locker room.

You plan to photograph your neighbor's house from the sidewalk.

Your neighbor's house is private property. However, it is visible from a public place. So photographs are legal. Get permission if you plan to stand in the driveway or yard, though.

You're photographing your neighbor's house from the street. Your neighbor is visible through the bathroom window.

Your neighbor has a reasonable expectation of privacy, even though the window is open. So don't photograph your neighbor in the bathroom. The bedroom is also off-limits.

You're on the street photographing a military base.

The military can prohibit photographs it deems detrimental to national security. Likewise, you may be banned from taking photos of nuclear power plants. And don't expect to take photos in government buildings like courthouses.

You witness an accident scene from public property. You want to sell a photo of it to a newspaper.

You can take such pictures from public property. However, don't hinder police or emergency workers. If asked to move, do so. You may take photos from another location.

The newspaper will use the photograph for editorial purposes; no consent is needed.

You're photographing children in public. You will sell copies at an art gallery.

You do not need permission to photograph children in public. Art falls under editorial usage; consent is not required.

You take pictures of people in public. You want to sell the photos via a stock photography site.

Get a model release from anyone uniquely identifiable before trying to sell the photos.

Companies purchasing your photos will use them for commercial purposes. They need a release to limit their liability. Otherwise, they could be sued. Stock sites have their own rules governing model releases. They won't accept photos that don't meet these requirements.

You're photographing products at the supermarket.

You need permission to take photos on private property. But stores are private spaces open to the public. Owners can limit photography with clearly posted restrictions.

You want to photograph your son's soccer game at a public park.

Amateur leagues often rent public parks for events. Some jurisdictions consider the property private for the event's duration. The league can ban photography.

You're photographing an NFL game.

Many professional leagues ban photography. Restrictions should be posted. Some venues only ban professional cameras, like SLRs.

Finally, you may encounter problems taking photographs in legally permissible situations. The best solution is to avoid conflict. If in doubt, identify yourself and ask permission before taking photographs.

Kim Komando hosts the nation's largest talk radio show about consumer electronics, computers and the Internet. To get the podcast or find the station nearest you, visit: http://www.komando.com/listen. To subscribe to Kim's free e-mail newsletters, sign-up at: www.komando.com/newsletters. Contact her at gnstech@gns.gannett.com.

Save our Post Office Service

In the Saturday, February 9, 2013 edition of The Brattleboro Reformer, the following editorial appeared:

Our opinion: Bleeding the USPS

Our opinion: Bleeding the USPS

Do you think the U.S. Postal Service is deeply in the red because of mismanagement? Because of competition from private carriers? Because of a bloated work force?

If you think any of those, you are wrong.

The reason the USPS is considering cutting Satur­day delivery is something called the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006, which requires the Postal Service to pre­fund the next 75 years of retiree health benefits by 2016.

As Ralph Nader said, that congressional mandate forces the USPS to cover employees who haven’t even been born yet.

This mandate was only inflicted upon the USPS, no other governmental agency, and some have ven­tured to say it’s an attempt by Congress to disman­tle the National Association of Letter Carriers, which represents about 200,000 city delivery letter carriers.

Others say it’s just another example of Grover Norquist’s philosophy of shrinking government to the point where it can be drowned in the bathtub.

Let us not forget that the USPS does not receive tax dollars or subsidies from the federal govern­ment; it is intended to be self-funding.

Under PAEA, the Postal Service is required to make $103.7 billion in benefits between 2007 and 2016, or on average a little more than $10 billion a year.

Since the enactment of PAEA, the Postal Service has lost $41 billion, nearly 80 percent of which can be attributed to having to prefund the retiree bene­fits plan.

Astoundingly, according to the Inspector General, the annual payments could be eliminated because the USPS’ retirement fund is at more than 100 percent.

In addition, the Postal Service has overpaid $80 billion to the Civil Service Retirement System and the Federal Employees Retirement System, according to the USPS’ Inspector General.

And to no one’s surprise, the federal government has made no effort to repay the USPS for the over­payment.

Nader maintains if Congress were to reverse PAEA and reimburse the overpayment, the Postal Service wouldn’t be in the predicament it is today.

Instead, the Postmaster General is making small cuts here and there to try to stem the hem­orrhaging; either way, the post office is bleeding to death.

The most recent pronouncement to come from the Postmaster General is his intention to cut Sat­urday services.

“Ending Saturday delivery not only threatens the future of the U.S. Postal Service in the long term, but in the short term it harms small businesses’ ability to carry out their operations in a timely manner, may inhibit the elderly’s ability to receive important medication by the mail, and will drive even more customers away from the USPS and toward private mail carriers like UPS and FedEx,” wrote Nader.

Nader admits that declining mail volume has con­tributed to the USPS’ woes, as has the financial cri­sis, but it’s not the chief problem affecting the post office’s bottom line.

“The Postal Service’s ‘financial crisis’ is in fact an entirely manufactured ‘crisis’ precipitated by the ill-advised schedule of prepayments ... mandated by the 2006 PAEA ...” wrote Nader.

The Reformer urges our readers to contact their senators and representatives in Washington, D.C., and ask them to rescind the PAEA and reimburse the Postal Service the money it has overpaid into the federal retiree system.

Rather than hacking the USPS to pieces, perhaps we should call upon Congress not to surreptitiously bleed the system until it falters and collapses, leav­ing for-profit industries to scoop up the pieces.  

We don’t believe that would be of benefit to any­one.

I really like the USPS.  I enjoy sending out mail and look forward to receiving some each day. I interact daily with postal workers.  And, I genuinely appreciate that I can put a stamp on an envelope for less than 50¢ and have it arrive anywhere in the United States within a few days.

So, I sat down and wrote the following letter-to-the-editor:

Thanks for pointing out that the real reason for the “Postal Service Fiscal Cliff Crisis” is The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 (PAEA) which forced the Post Office to pay ahead 75 years of expected pensions. In other words, pay ahead for pensions for people not even hired yet. No other corporation or government agency has to work under such an unfair burden. As consumer advocate Ralph Nader noted, if PAEA was never enacted, USPS would actually be facing a $1.5 billion surplus today:

The solution to this strictly political, manmade “crisis”?

Undo the 75 years’ advance payment requirement and relax the numerous constraints on the type of products and services USPS can provide - such as notarizing papers, having coin machines available for making copies, or selling maps.

Also, as more and more Americans order products online, there is tremendous potential for boosting USPS revenues from parcel deliveries. Give the Postal Service more flexibility in pricing its products. Such pricing would more accurately reflect the actual cost of providing a service and would allow it to better compete with private carriers.

The Postal Service helps the elderly get their medicines, helps small businesses send products and payments inexpensively, helps retirees cash their Social Security checks, and lets us cast absentee ballots so that we can participate in our democracy.

No company can grow or maintain its business by weakening service to customers. It is clear that USPS must adapt to our nation’s changing needs and that adaptation might mean shared pain for all stakeholders involved. Instead of adapting, too many in Congress, and in Postal Service management, see cuts in service as the only solution. But making the Postal Service less valuable will drive customers away, leaving it to face a new financial crisis in just a few short years.

Our postal service and its workers have been a national necessity and treasure since Colonial days, especially in rural areas. Hang them out to dry for political points, and we all lose. It’s up to Congress to act to allow the Post Office to save itself, lest it become a victim of a crisis that Congress itself manufactured.

The letter was published on Tuesday, February 12, 2013 in the Brattleboro Reformer.