Get Real, Granny

The New York Times reports that Baby Boomers are rejecting the terms "grandmother" and "grandfather":

“My wife and I were somewhat serious about being called Irene and John,” Mr. Dawson said. “We like our names and that it’s real. Grandpa, Grandma, Granny, Nanna, Gramps, etc., give off a vision of being old."

Now, I don't expect to be a grandmother any time soon, so maybe I shouldn't talk. But this trend annoys me no end. The allergy to aging smacks, to me, of the worst stereotypes about Boomers: vanity, exceptionalism and self-absorption.

Who me? Get older and become a grandpa? Never!

I can't quite detect the harm in cultural honorifics that convey respect, tradition and great affection. And can you imagine a toddler rushing up to hug ... Irene and John?

Those who think they're never going to get old should read "Never Say Die: The Myth and Marketing of the New Old Age," by one of my favorite authors, Susan Jacoby.

When I turned 50 last year, several people offered condolences. I didn't need them. I have several friends who never made it to 50, and a few who never made it to 40 - or even 30.

I was grateful to hit the half-century mark because, when you think about it, what's the alternative?

My parents met and married late in life and by the time I had children, my father was gone and my mother was declining. My husband and I watched enviously as we saw young-ish grandparents spending time with their grandchildren. Not only did our children not get those wonderful relationships, we didn't get the parenting breaks we desperately needed.

Few words, besides Mama and Dada, are more comforting and homey than Nana or Gramma, Gramps or Papa. Other people can stick with Irene or John. I'm looking forward to the day a toddler runs up to hug me and hollers "Grammy!"

Hug Challenge

My long-time (former) colleague at Businessweek.com, Michelle Nichols the Savvy Seller, has been pouring her heart and soul into a "hug your kids today" campaign since her son, Mark, died suddenly at 8 1/2 years old from brain cancer in 1998.

She's written a book for working parents, won awards and taken her concept global.

Now she's created the 30-Day Hug Challenge and she needs help spreading the word. Take a look, hug a kid (find a friend or a relative if you don't have one of your own) and send some feedback to Michelle. She's a dear woman determined to make the world a better place.

It really would be a better place if we had more Michelles around.

Garden Blogging

The tassels are on the corn ...



The bloom is on the tomatoes ...



The melons are setting ...



Summertime in the garden!

Is This Where It All Ends?

Off and on (mostly on) for the past 15 years or so, I've written about small business for the Los Angeles Times. At one point in the heady '90s, I had three regular columns going at once.

This week, I learned that my weekly Q&A column has been cancelled, the victim of "reduced revenues" and editorial budgets strained to the breaking by events in Japan and the Middle East over the past year. My editors, who were kind and apologetic, explained that the freelance budget at the paper has been basically squashed entirely. Of course, they didn't mention bankruptcies, terrible decisions by shifting owners and corporations that demand Wall Street-level returns from an industry that should rightly be seen as a public service. But, they didn't need to: We all know about that.

We also know that newspapers are dying. It's just that the death rattle has become increasingly pronounced as the months have flown by in 2011.

Our local San Gabriel Valley Tribune/Pasadena Star-News is now owned by hedge fund managers whose priority is the bottom line - period. As a result, reporters and editors have undergone a painful series of layoffs, pay cuts and furloughs at the papers.

The L.A. Times, one of the nation's best examples of daily journalism back in the day, has not fared any better. I remember having lunch in the Los Angeles Times cafeteria back when I was a downtown reporter for the Los Angeles Daily News (friends got me in the door) and always being wowed by the thrilling glimpse of a big-time news operation.

When I went back last year for a holiday party, I was shocked: rows and rows of empty, debris-strewn desks piled up around the edges of cavernous news rooms where a tiny group of layoff-survivors still worked at desks huddled together in the center. Carpets were literally threadbare, walls badly in need of paint. Many offices and departments, formerly filled with busy writers and editors, were simply shuttered, the rooms dark.

And this is at the newspaper that won the Pulitzer Prize last year for public service.

This article, by former New York Times correspondent Christopher Hedges, lays out the dire situation of journalism in all its sad, stark reality.

The whole piece is worth a read, but here's how he concludes:

The death of journalism, the loss of reporters on the airwaves and in print who believed the plight of the ordinary citizen should be reported, means that it will be harder for ordinary voices and dissenters to reach the wider public. The preoccupation with news as entertainment and the loss of sustained reporting will effectively marginalize and silence those who seek to be heard or to defy established power. Protests, unlike in the 1960s, will have a difficult time garnering the daily national coverage that characterized the reporting on the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement and in the end threatened the power elite. Acts of protest, no longer covered or barely covered, will leap up like disconnected wildfires, more easily snuffed out or ignored. It will be hard if not impossible for resistance leaders to have their voices amplified across the nation, to build a national movement for change. The failings of newspapers were huge, but in the years ahead, as the last battle for democracy means dissent, civil disobedience and protest, we will miss them.

Helicopter Parents

We've all heard about helicopter parents who are overly involved in their kids' choice of college classes, majors, etc.

Now it seems that behavior is being extended into first jobs. According to a new survey from staffing firm OfficeTeam, clingy mothers and fathers submit their child’s resume, follow up on salary offers for their kids and even ask to sit in on job interviews!

Executives interviewed were asked to recount the most unusual or surprising behavior they had heard of or witnessed from the parent of a job seeker. Here are some of their responses:

“One parent wanted to sit in during the interview.”
“A parent called a politician to push me to hire his son.”
“A mother submitted her daughter’s resume on her behalf.”
“Someone stopped an employer at a grocery store to ask that person to hire her child.”
“A parent called to ask about a job applicant’s work schedule and salary.”
“A parent called during the interview to try to push me to hire her daughter.”
“I received a call from a father asking about the status of his son’s application.”
“A parent came by my desk and told me that he expected his daughter to get preference for a position since he was a manager at the company.”
“A mother called to ask how her child did in the job interview.”
“A parent called to find out why we did not hire her son and why we felt he was not qualified.”

Must resist such interventions. Seriously, it's harder than it sounds.

Business Majors

Are you studying business as an undergrad or getting your MBA?

I'm thinking I need to get my MBA. While journalists were not expected to have advanced degrees when I started in the newspaper business back in the dark ages of the last century, that has changed.

Particularly for business writers, having a more sophisticated understanding of finance and economics is becoming de rigueur.

Here's an interesting resource: A list of the 10 Best Study Abroad Destinations for business students.

Sounds pretty exciting, doesn't it? I'll keep you posted on my efforts in this area.

Eschew Your Comfort Zone

I'm a person fairly addicted to comfort. Not luxury, not wealth; but I do very much enjoy my comfortable routines and my comfortable life.

When a friend told me once how much she loved putting herself in risky, scary situations to see how she'd respond, I just shook my head: Does Not Compute. I don't like roller coasters, either.

As an introvert, getting out of my cave and shaking up my routine takes work and doesn't really feel ... comfortable. But I know that I have to fight this tendency to burrow in. I have to pry myself out of my comfort zone every once in a while. And when I do, it is usually with good results. (Not always, but usually.)

Last week, I got out of my routine for a couple of days and attended the Invent Your Future conference for women in Santa Clara.

It brought together entrepreneurs and professional women in a dynamic confluence of networking, learning and encouragement. I got to meet some terrific women, racked up a bunch of column ideas and ledes and heard Guy Kawasaki's presentation on "enchantment."

It is rather sad that Guy - the only guy on the speaker's roster at a women's conference - was the big hit of the event. But he's at a really high level when it comes to presentations, and he even gives some advice on presenting that I found very helpful.

Listen to his lecture or just review his slides. I hope they push you out of your comfort zone (once in a while), too.

Naked, Naked, Naked

Yes, I'm quoting Elaine Bennis from Seinfeld.

But I'm also letting you in on a (not so) super-secret marketing tool that I stumbled into by accident last week.

I was looking over my Google Analytics and noticing a nice uptick in blog/site traffic for 2011. Then all of I sudden I clicked on a graphic and thought, "What the heck!?"

The little line went along fairly steadily all month and then - wow! - it shot way up and plunged back down the next day. In that one high-traffic day, I got close to 5,000 visits.

What in the world? I wondered if someone try to hack my site or pull a bot attack. And then I looked up the blog post for that day and noticed the headline:

Working Naked Day

I shared my findings with my web guru, Paula Johnson. Being a marketing genius, she suggested I elaborate on the theme.

Add naked to all your headlines:

New trends in naked small business financing.

Developing a slogan for your naked company

Marketing secrets from the band Bare Naked Ladies

I don't know about that.

But at least now I know why they call it Naked Juice.

The Dream of the 90s...

... is alive in Portland.

You know you're in Portland when:

* Airport toilets include detailed flushing instructions for saving water and specially treated, non-germy handles.

* You don't bother with tickets for the interconnected system of light rail, street cars and buses as long as you're in the downtown "free rail zone."

* You eat at stationary food "carts," not mobile food "trucks."

* Food carts appear in narrow sidewalk spaces in between buildings. Who needs waivers or permits when they make the most delicious homemade peanut-butter, cherry jam, jalapeno and bacon sandwich on grilled challa bread you've ever tasted!?

* Community gardens spring up in vacant lots. Instead of complaining, the neighbors donate water.

* Community gardens spring up on construction sites, with cisterns to collect rainwater. Homemade signs thank the developers for the space.

* Instead of for-sale flyers in plexiglass in front yards, you find poetry flyers.

* The beloved visionary governor who restored open space and limited development was both a journalist and a Republican.

I was raising kids and missed the '90s zeitgeist, but Portland is definitely weird. In a good way.

Check out this photo album that Steve put together.

Working Naked Day

When I heard about Working Naked Day, I had a disturbing mental flash of Wall Street staffers stalking around with only their briefcases for "cover."

Then I read further and found out that the designation - it's today in fact - was created to highlight the millions of us who work from home and have little to no outside support, except for what we find for ourselves.

Lisa Kanarek, founder of National Working Naked Day, offers these appropriately provocative tips for all of us who are working naked (figuratively, if not literally!):

Expose yourself to new technology. In addition to storing data on your computer or an external hard drive, use an online data storage option, such as Dropbox, and start implementing planning software, like Evernote, into your everyday tasks.

Strip your home office down to the basics. Instead of using separate machines for faxing, printing, scanning and copying, use an all-in-one machine.

Don't be modest. Share your accomplishments by hanging diplomas or business awards on your wall. Let your home office reflect your personality and style.

Dress up your office. Your home office doesn’t have to have a boring, corporate look. Install draperies with interesting patterns and designs, paint your walls bright colors and hang colorful artwork.

Cover up your floor (or at least part of it) to absorb sound. By adding an area rug or wall-to-wall carpeting to your home office, you won’t sound as if you’re in a cave when you’re on the phone or a video-conference call.

I love Lisa's concept and her tagline, "Working from a home office never felt so cool."

Last year, I reconfigured my office after years of staring at a wall. I also got a beautiful, much larger desk and finally have adequate lighting. I think working at home on a shoestring means that many of us (I'm guilty) endure less-than-optimal conditions. Lisa has some good advice about making a home office attractive and fun. I'm going to take them to heart.

Analog Girl in a Digital World

I am always quite thrilled, in that small-t thrilled way, to hang my new calendar up and crack open my new At-A-Glance each January. There's something hopeful about all that fresh scheduling space and all those pretty pictures to look forward to each month.

But the other day when I mentioned this, my kids looked at me quizzically, as they so often do since they went away to college. "Why do you need a wall calendar?" one son asked.

"So I can see what date it is," I explained.

"You can Google that, you know," he replied, scornfully.

"I know, but I like to see what day goes with what date, and how many more days are left in the week and how many more weeks are left in the month," I replied, patiently.

"Pfffttt" is the closest I can come to the sound he made next, something between bafflement and pity. Poor old girl, stuck in the last century.

Remember when the Generation Gap described a dichotomy in parents' and kids' musical taste, political proclivities or sexual mores? No more. I would like to posit that today's Generation Gap involves the analog vs. digital divide.

What distinguishes my attitudes and habits from those of my Millenial offspring? It's wearing a wristwatch and reading the print version of the newspaper, and even watching the television set.

It's a spatial thing. I seem to need the physicality of objects to orient myself in space and time. And not only do I rely on a watch, I actually prefer an ancient two-hands-that-point-at-the hours-and-minutes timepiece.

But why oh why do you need a watch, or even a clock, when your phone can wake you up and tell you the time? my kids will ask.

And why trek outside to pick up an inky newspaper (or several, at my house) made from dead trees when you can read any number of them online, for free?

The other day, when I informed my son that I had recorded his favorite TV show for him, he made another one of those "pffffttt" noises. "I can watch it online, you know," he said.

"Yes, but I thought you might enjoy watching it on the big screen in the comfortable living room, instead of hunched in front of your computer," I replied, teeth clenched.

He smiled patiently. "Thanks, Mom," he said, patting my hand.

I didn't say anything, but I noticed later that he did watch the show in the living room, on the teevee.

Score one for the old girl. There's some life in that analog universe yet.

Stranger in a Strange Land

Everything was perfectly fine on the World Wide Web. I checked email and noodled around a bit - it was a Sunday afternoon, after all - and then I took my son to a fun holiday show.

When I returned a couple of hours later, all hell had broken loose. Or rather, my computer had gone to hell. Commands were not followed, programs did not open and it was slow, slower, slowest - until it just quit working altogether.

There's nothing quite as disorienting as being without my computer. I hate to admit it, but I rely on this machine like I rely on my right arm. When it abandons me, I am lost.

This was back in mid-December and my college students were home, so there were lots of spare laptops available. But they weren't my laptop, with my bookmarks loaded and my passwords stored. Stumbling around cyberspace on a strange contraption whose keys are in all the wrong places is like being a stranger in a strange land.

Thanks to my computer repair guys, I was able to save needed work on a flash drive and meet a couple of crucial deadlines over the holidays.

But along with the computer virus came a biological virus that had me down, and even more disoriented, for a good two weeks. The energy is only now starting to return.

Why, dear reader, do I subject you to this long tale of woe? Only to apologize for my long absence and assure you that I will do better in 2011. Happy new year all, and may your backups be diligent and your cybersurfing efficient and familiar.

Feast or Famine

This is the rhythm of the freelance life.

After 21 years of self-employment, I've learned that work begets work and vice-versa. One on-hold project turns into another and the downward slide begins. Suddenly, you think about using all your free time to tackle that book you always wanted to write.

And then, assignments start trickling in, the snowball starts rolling, and suddenly, you're piled on two weeks before a busy holiday season.

You learn to roll with it, and be thankful. The upswing always feels better than the downturn.

If, as I've always contended, my work load is something of an early indicator of the economy, things are definitely looking up for 2011.

That book will just have to move over to the back burner yet again. One of these years.

My Status Symbol

The other day, my son informed me that success is demonstrated with three status symbols: A good job, a fine watch and a nice car.

That conversation came to mind this week while I was waiting in the valet queue at The City Club at Bunker Hill.

Suit after suit accelerated smoothly away from the scrum: Here a Lexus, there a BMW, then again a Mercedes. And then up rattled The Big Orange, noisy tailpipe vibrating away against after-market trailer hitch, hood full of scratches from its long use as an extension of our garage laundry area.

The Big Orange is the affectionate moniker we gave our (you guessed it) bright orange, manual-transmission, two-wheel-drive Isuzu Rodeo when we motored off the used car lot in Chino 11 years ago. The salesman was clearly thrilled that someone - anyone - was interested in this odd duck. He named a ridiculously low price, we paid cash and climbed in. Best vehicle negotiation ever.

More than 100,000 miles later, the old girl has been a jaunty companion, taking us to the Grand Canyon, the Bay Area and over dirt roads south of the border. We've crammed the back with dorm furnishings and loaded the roof with camping gear.

Put down her middle seats and The Big Orange can bring home any kind of cargo. Her brilliance makes it impossible to lose her in a parking lot, no matter how crowded. We've maintained her well and in return, she's never refused to get us where we need to go.

I held my head high as the curious crowd watched me claim my wheels. Nope, I'm not a big banker or a wealthy investor. I also didn't get bailed out or rip anybody off lately.

The Big Orange and I drove away and left the other cars cooling their heels. Someday, probably sooner rather than later, I'll need to buy a new car. But I'll never find one as loyal, or as beautiful, as my status symbol.

What's The Word?

When I ask business owners to tell me what their company does, in a nutshell, they often stumble, hem, haw or guffaw.

Eventually, most read off or stumble through a recitation of a formal "mission statement" that they've cooked up with their marketing team. Since it's typically a string of oddly related, formal words incomprehensible to the average reader, I usually have to boil down what they do by myself.

It's amazing to me how few CEOs can succinctly and spontaneously say what it is their business actually does.

That's why I like this one-word mission statement, proposed by a long-time Internet marketing source, Todd Miechiels.

It got me thinking about what one word would best encapsulate what I do writing about and for entrepreneurs. Explain? Encourage? Nurture? Advocate? I'll have to think about it.

What one word best describes your company or personal mission in life?

Sad Reality

I've been incredibly fortunate to see my way through this horrid recession and most of my friends and loved ones (though not all) have similarly been able to stay afloat.

But not everyone has been so lucky, by any means. This week, I answer a question from a former small business owner who not only lost his bagel shop in Claremont (the long-time local favorite Tasty Bagel) but also pretty much his whole life in the past couple of years.

Interviewing people like this really bring home a few things: The tragedy of our economic downturn; the crushing damage that a sliver of greedy, short-sighted individuals unleashed on "the least of these" in society and how fortunate those of us who've escaped ruin really are.

The Fall Garden

My son and gardening apprentice, Andy, was home from school last weekend. So we took advantage of the cool drizzle to reinvigorate our soil and do our fall planting:



Some of these beds have been resting since the end of summer, with compost mixed in. Those we turned over and beefed up with organic steer manure.

The others still had the remnants of tomato and pepper plants in them. We removed those, dug up the soil, lined the beds with dry leaves, then layered back in topsoil and manure, moistening as we went along.

Here's what we have planted: Lettuces, rainbow chard, kale, spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, basil, Italian parsley and jicama. An artichoke plant that barely survived the hot summer seems to have rallied, so I have high hopes for it to produce by the spring.

In the center washtub, you'll see the blueberry bush I bought at the L.A. Arboretum plant sale last spring. It produced about two dozen berries and made it through the summer. It has about doubled in size, so I hope all those new canes will be loaded with berries next year:

The Right to Dry

It's one of life's frustrating ironies: As many of us try to reduce our energy consumption, we live in old homes with rusting clotheslines hulking in the backyard. Like the ultimate Southern California irony, the Los Angeles Red Car line, these metal contraptions were allowed to rust over or removed altogether when clothes dryers became the rage.

When I rented a house in Monrovia, we had something like this clothes tree in the backyard:



Just picture that contraption 50 years on, creaky and sagging in spots. But I had no dryer at the time, and hey - it worked great! If I did my wash strategically (which I seldom did), I could even peg up the unmentionables on the inside and hide them from view of the house in back (which shared a lot with ours) by stringing the sheets on the outside.

Although I did eventually get a dryer, I continued using a clothes line, especially on hot days, until my kids came along. With the volume of laundry that little kids produce, the dryer really was a savior at that point.

But now that I'm washing for two again, I've been wanting to get back to line drying and I rigged up a short line near my garden this summer. The notion was reinforced when I interviewed an advocate for the right to dry movement a few months ago.

So how fortunate was it when I whizzed past a little hulk of metal and wood on someone's curb yesterday? I turned my bike around and discovered a fold-up drying rack that I slung over my shoulder:



It was in great condition except that one metal rod had come loose from the wooden rack. A hot glue gun, a nail and a bit of packing tape, et voila! Good as new.

The Politics of Disgust

Everyone in this season of "enthusiasm gaps" is asking the same question: Why are Americans so disgusted with politics and the democratic process?

I think the political media plays a big part in the answer. At least it does for me.

After the 2008 election, I swear not three weeks went by before I started hearing about "repercussions for the midterm elections." Not three weeks.

In the next two years, huge policy initiatives were introduced, haggled over, debated and eventually passed - or not. But more likely than not, the bulk of the media coverage revolved not around the substance of legislation, but around the political and reelection prospects for the legislators involved.

It's all about the horse race. I understand that certain reporters are paid to cover politics and it's a very legitimate beat. But isn't there anything more to politics than elections? How about the long-term policy implications of legislation - rather than the short-term political?

We're all pretty sick of the horse race. Or at least I am.

And now, right on cue, comes the first glimmer of the next leg. Coming around the far turn, heading for the home stretch, two weeks before the midterms: There's this.

Let the handicapping for 2012 begin. I, for one, am hoping that the starting gate gets stuck.

Skim Chance

I have swiped my debit card many, many times. Thousands, probably. But never before have I been "skimmed."

Then I had the audacity to spend an afternoon downtown last week. Met a source for an interview at L.A. Live, hung out at the L.A. Public Library and had dinner with some friends.

By the time I arrived back home, there was a message waiting for me from my bank's fraud department. Some "unusual activity" on my card had been detected. I've gotten the message before, usually when I've made a purchase or withdrawn money in an unusual spot (turns out I'm deathly predictable), so I ignored it.

I wasn't worried until they called back the next morning. Three $75 to $125 charges at gas stations in Colorado that evening had triggered the red flag. Gas stations? I hadn't gotten gas in more than a week, and when I do I use my Chevron card. And Colorado? I can't remember the last time I've been in Denver or Aurora.

The fraud claim has been filed and my card has been shredded. It could have been much worse. I'm particularly grateful for the nervous Nellies at my bank, who obviously have darn good algorithms.

I can't help but think that my card and PIN number were skimmed at one of the two downtown garages where I parked. Convenient as they are, I've never liked those swipe-your-own-card machines. First off, they're eliminating jobs for parking attendants. And now, I know how easy they are to defraud. I think I'll have to avoid them whenever possible.