Jerry's Place

[caption id="attachment_2105" align="alignleft" width="225"] A life of sundaes[/caption]

Last week marked the launch of my 21 year-old son’s entrance of adulthood. It didn’t all happen last week. It just seems that way this week.

This deeply symbolic passage comes in the form of a one fire escape walk-up efficiency that is nearly equidistant between his childhood home and the two part-time jobs that gave Jerry the confidence and capitalization to move into his own place.

It’s not just Jerry that’s feeling his way around this dramatic shift in roles and perceptions. Even his landlord who fills ten other units at the same address appeared stumped when asked where Jerry should park his commuter mountain bike. His folks were equally challenged to navigate the rules of engagement when it comes to the necessary hands-off, hands-on adjustments to this heady transition.

One potential path to success here is to follow the roadmap that brought Jerry to the doors of his newfound independence. That means being given an arduous series of tasks that don’t change much from day-to-day. While Jerry didn’t master his dual roles of food portioning and custodial work off the bat, he did come to master those jobs during his trial period. Both his supervisors probably get the sincerity and genuine appreciation that Jerry derives from this honest, repetitive work. I say probably because providing more certainty is not my role here.

It’s Jerry who found these jobs. It’s Jerry who did the interviews and the call-backs. It’s Jerry who arrives on-time and prepared for work at hours many of us can scarcely function.

When Jerry tells his boss that he loves his job, it’s not that he has any fanciful relationship to cleaning floors or waking up before dawn to have them done before the first customer arrives. It’s that he’s been given the chance to succeed on terms he understands and in tasks he’s come to master. It’s on the strength of his rote memorization that this mastery can free his mind to escape to the world of superheroes, YouTube videos, and Facebook pages where Jerry is free to hit his personal play and record buttons while mopping up messes and counting out chicken fingers.

But while Jerry’s memory can cycle through those repetitions, he’s unfamiliar with the hard and fast rules of online banking, advocating for himself in the workplace, or reflecting those needs in the form of a schedule; for instance, more predictable hours on the time clock to go with his weekly routines.

That’s not to say that Jerry can’t make up his mind or lacks the willpower and motivation to develop these skills. Jerry’s emancipation wasn’t based on any grand design, parental prodding, or peer models (although I was immensely proud of him for placing independent living at the top of his agenda nearly two years ago and sticking to it). That’s also not to say that the executive function required prioritizing, negotiating, and self-manage are challenges for most 21 year-olds -- regardless of how one’s brain works or their prospects pan out.

It’s my hope for Jerry that a year from now he’ll look back on all the hard knocks, confusing signals, hidden surprises and unscripted disruptions, and he’ll out-surprise all of us (as his priest foretold when Jerry received a scholarship from his parish). His responses will be more surprising than the unplanned learning that springs from all these tuition-free lessons. He’ll be better equipped to absorb them and turn these challenges into his own precisely because he didn’t read the correct book, go to the right school, kiss the right ass, or pass the right test with the highest score. Jerry’s ticket to success will not be punched in some gold-plated diploma mill. His past achievements and future horizons are uniquely his.

He’s grown up in a time where the role of parenting has expanded from providing a “roof over your head” to a dome clear over your future. Sometimes … okay … more than sometimes … it’s hard to know when to let go and when to rush in: call the meetings, neutralize the likeliest risks, or organize the new nest. But before I rush in to save the day, I need to ask: whose day am I saving? Am I sparing Jerry from the jaws of calamity or am I serving at the foot of expediency so that I can vanish as swiftly as I swooped in?

There are many executive level decisions I’ve spared Jerry in the past. Either he was going to encounter it later under some trained supervisor in some accredited program or some other as-yet unnamed responsible member of another social circle and scheduling orbit was going to fill Jerry’s shopping cart of independent living with the tools and the mental models needed to bring a sense of order and priority. Like all false hopes that day never arrived. What was there all along was Jerry’s resolve. His sense that if it was part of his experience, it was part of his own self-paced curriculum; that he could learn and even master the finer and rougher points of this unprotected world.

I’m going over to Jerry’s place tomorrow to help simplify the paperwork needed to apply for health insurance. Later in the afternoon his mom will be helping him with budgeting. I will not be organizing his books. I will not be washing the splatters of sauce that gather on his stove. But I will be thinking of the day I’m no longer required to sign Jerry up for vital services.

When that day comes there will be some other complication. I’m confident that when this new difficulty arises Jerry will rise up to meet it. He will learn the problem’s name and maybe even turned an initial drawback into a more neutral puzzle that he can solve – nor not? Perhaps he’ll dismiss it as so much background noise – not worthy of his attention or energy, like the 97% of the BS that will land in the mail deliveries to come. Those are the lesson plans on which a graying father supports an adult son to live his own rich life – not on the father’s terms, or on those of these future challenges, but on Jerry’s own.

"Go See Your Uncle Stephen."

When I was young, spongy, unformed and self-absorbed I attended a young, idealistic, and small New England college. Hampshire convinced flocking Hamsters like me that you could mold that spongy absorption into your career clay, your alloy of choice.

My Hampshire diploma was my pink slip from the self-made sculpting factory. I received it 1984. "Morning in America" was my early wake-up nightmare to the reality that the days of self-made expressions visited on Kangaroo review committees had no currency outside of Camp Hamp.

I do remember the deflated bubbles, the kicks to the curb, and the queasy disorientation from the world of ideas to the world of shelter and clothing. But mostly I remember the woman with the megaphone blaring into my fallen house of young adulthood. The megaphoner-inner would be Grandma Harriet. Grandma would say:

"Go see your Uncle Stephen. He's very smart."

It wasn't a threat and it wasn't quite a reward. But there was an implied "... or else." Don't go ... at your own peril.

Harriet saw my bachelor’s degree from the self-ordained and the bona fide flakiness that comes with encouraging (if not outright expecting) payment for self-expression. Her suggestion felt more like an order. It's not that I lacked direction, role models, or a running list of intriguing career outfits to try on. She said go see your uncle because whenever I expressed those ambitions or desires she was clueless what I was talking about. She said go see Uncle Stephen because that was the single most direct way out of my head and into a job that paid something.

Career Characters

Stephen I should point out was not just Uncle Stephen. He had the unjaundiced eye. He wished the best for his little kid sister's oldest son. He defined that wish by the roles of people he'd either portrayed or tried to persuade through his own unflinching candor:

• The collateral-seeking lender,


• The risk-averse hiring manager,


• The status-conscious schmoozer, or,


• The distracted indifference of the restless producer.

It was that parade of characters who found their way into Stephen's mini publishing empire. For a 25 year stretch he and Mark Levine lined the Barnes and Noble self-help table with field guides, coaching manuals and life scripts. He wasn't just in my corner and kicking my ass. This was Uncle Stephen, one of America's leading personal finance mentors and a professional life strategist. His perceptions and influence fell into orbits that traveled far and wide of our extended family circle. Inside that circle, Stephen was the official voice of reason. He talked me through my unofficial failures to launch as a twenty-something. He talked me through my improvised workarounds. There were many of those.

Diplomas from Schools of Doubt

* I could tell you that a review copy of a runaway Stephen bestseller was my take home homework from those earlier coaching sessions. That would be misleading. He's always shown more interest in refining, channeling and ultimately investing his clients in their own destinies where self-discovery drives the narrative.

* I could tell you that I used the nesting impulse to impose my need for control and practicality onto my personal life.  I could tell you that I plunked my young adult savings down on a Park Slope co-op and road the coattails of the NYC real estate boom to financial stability. That would be someone else's investment success. Spoiler-alert: I held onto that apartment for a decade and still managed to lose 10% of the original sale price.

* I could tell you that I down-shifted from career drive to a more family-based focus. But my life's been one protracted stretch between where I work and where I live. That split has factored into great disruption, upheaval, and dissolution of several marriages.

So I won't lie. I will tell you straight as (Harriet is my witness) that Stephen is my secular rabbi and spiritual bookkeeper. In nearly all of Stephen's many interventions (barters, guiding questions, and petitions for my practicality) he's given me the gift of perspective-taking. He helped me unload the professional baggage we carry when the career options we select don't choose us back.

Our job, as he's often counseled, doesn't define us or who or what we mean to the people we cherish. It's a stream of income. It's just as fluid and prone to change as our income stream prospects.

13 Step Program

I went back to visit Stephen recently. It wasn't that I needed career advice, negotiation pointers for some negotiation in the balance, or greater appreciation for letting go of forces beyond my control.

I needed to tell him about a wonderful new job that among other things caused people I barely know to contact me out of the blue for career pointers and job-hunting approaches. I told Stephen that the experiences are my firsthand bumps and mid-course corrections. The messaging, however, is a page straight from the Stephen playbook. That alignment between personal ambition and market reality is a lifetime balancing act written, produced, and scored by Stephen Pollan.

The day I got to his office, his current admin (in a bad run of temporary admins) had bailed on the later afternoon appointments. Fresh from an AM appointment the same day, my sister-in-law prepared me for the empty reception area and the likelihood that Stephen would be jumping through honking congestion to make it back for our 4 pm (-- he strode in at 4:01 without breaking a sweat and asking how late he was).

I noticed then that his bookcases were bare and the wall was lined with moving crates. He had his office bags packed. No more cross-town hurdle-jumping wind sprints. Just an elevator commute from his east-side residence to a first floor professional suite in the same building.

He told me that he was starting his newest book. The working title? The Tyranny of Self. He wasn't too attached to it as he offered to let me steal it. After enough of Stephen's counsel, I understand. This was the 13th in a 12 step program to address the same demons I confronted when I left Hampshire: The raging seduction of a workaholic, who hides behind the virtue of the provider, and in the concealment, loses the dignity of his labor.

They share their better selves with the work, not with the selected people that a less involved laborer would simply understand as their home, their shelter from the ungenerous world. After enough trips to Stephen, I understand the need to give away working titles.

Three Strikes and You're In

I've been married three times. I don't know anyone else who has their names on three divorce decrees. And as improbable as it may be to have been undone by three declarations, eyes, hearts, and futures wide open. Three former wedding anniversaries. Three former mothers-in-law. Three former wedding toasts. It almost sounds exotic by the enormity of its dimension. Reminds me of my father's legendary request for his second wife to marry him on the same day as his first marriage so he'd only need to remember one date. With practicalities that impulsive, who needs secret valentines?

I am just now starting to appreciate the majesty of living in an unwavering state of love. I am stilled by the calm and quivering in the excitement of this very same love. It's an exploration of a mutual understanding that begins in adventure and carries me to a place I had only dreamt of before I met this love. That place is home and I'm surrounded by a nest that exudes anything but emptiness.

It's easy to overthink the role that destiny plays within the prism of possibilities that form the backdrop of a flowering romance. Easier still is to over-reach the emotional lift of falling in love. That it will bring stability to all we hold onto and change to every temptation we can't resist for letting go.

In retrospect each marriage was a reaction to a prior commitment -- not the right expression of a passing courtship, no matter how lasting or genuine the nature of these friendships. In but one of the disolutions was there someone else to spark the break-up. The truth is that I could no more ask my first three wives to honor their marriage vows than I could ask them to change their own guiding path or true nature. I accepted divorce not as a judgment of faith or commitment but the simple admission that three people had tried to maintain an appearance, to be something they were not. I accepted they were no longer in love with me as the rejoinder of an inertia-laden descent into a calculation best approximated as Bal's law of "diminishing returns."

It's a bit like the Central Square Payless shoe store I was shopping in last night. I tried on the 9.5s and they were too wiggly. I went down to the 9s. They were overly snug. I walked away from marriage with the sinking feeling I was walking on 9.25 feet in an unpaved world of unwearable fashion. That feeling only persisted when I went back to online dating -- especially when I tried to explain to potential dates the sincerity behind not wishing to walk directly into marriage #4.

Check Box of Open Questions

The first time I dated Patty I had checked the open relationship box. At the time it was hard to see how monogamy was going to expand my experiential horizons. It almost seemed a bystander, a pattern that held fidelity hostage to a lifelong quest for home and family. The more I played by the rules, the more they played me, boxing me into a corner of choices that found their voice in the language of rejection:

• Marriage 1: "The harder I try to make things easy, the less of a difference it makes."


• Marriage 2: "I 'have' to work three hours away to support us."


• Marriage 3: "My son 'lives' in Western Mass."

The sentiment feeding all these lines comes from a Matt Pond PA song called Locate the Pieces. It describes the isolation of a break-up when a couple's feelings for each other can't outlast changes in their relationship:

"Lately, I don't know what I could want from anyone."

That was my idea of holding on: to ask for nothing and expect less in return -- not exactly the cry for help that might inspire reaching back to Mister Solo-mon! Could I accept the uncertainty of a sputtering journey, a makeshift arrangement? All I could offer in exchange for hard-stop choices was the gentle acceptance that these misgivings were exception-proof. I can tell you through experience that loving someone for whom they are (apart from the best laid wedding plans) is not a marriage-preserving separation. It's a deal breaker.

Relationships abhor placeholders even worse than nature has it in for vacuums.  Whatever hurdles real or imagined would be cleared in time for a love to rekindle is one hope I have learned to extinguish. But the hope I held out for is the most intoxicating rush a spouse-worthy love scout can fathom: one where we're loved for who we are -- no matter the rawness of our wounds or the staleness of our circumstances.

In the Cards

It was that promise I heard being answered when Patty looked down at her plate on that first date and told me she could not abide by open relationships. I folded my cards almost as quickly as my dinner napkin. I'm one clumsy negotiator -- and proud of it. The pride lies in knowing my forte is in setting scenes, not in telling stories.

Patty and my story is a marvel of reverse engineering. Every tender adversity is an affirmation that we have something right and true to share. Our respective experience resonates through every loose end and unkept resolution. It's like we met in the relationship repair shop -- and we were both minding the store!

If I haven't already said it plainly there is all give and no rebound at work here. I can tell because...

* I ask things of Patty and she responds by spoiling me.

* She asks things of me and I'm honored.

* I laugh. She laughs back.

* We don't share a 50:50 split. It's more like a 100 all inclusive.

* When I leave to work in Eastern Mass she supports my travel. That's an inescapable presence in a drifting void for most of my adult life. I acknowledge this and call each night we're apart.

I pour my life into hers. I do it with the gratitude that I won't die with this replenishing love still inside me. I give it without qualifiers, conversions or justifications. On this Valentine’s Day, I give it to us. Measurement free.

The truth is that for all my passing grades and failing marriages all these lessons together add up to a smidgeon of why I found my life partner while I'm here. The rest is luck. It's purity diluted somewhat by my appreciation of the past as prologue. The rest is just an inkling of probability. There is no deserving this but a simple grace uncoerced in the heart.

Kissing French Street Hello

One of the telltale signs that your heart is in lockstep with your head is that your home and hearth is also your most prized capital investment.

An indication you're on the cusp of home sweet investment is the positive tipping point behind the rejoinder formerly known as there-goes-the-neighborhood. The gentrified winds are blowing on my squatting parcel and summoning these changes down the newly-paved Route 47 off ramp known as French Street:

1. Gardening of plenty: Reclamation of river bed fertility
2. The planning principles for doing this: Mother Permaculture (you go, girl!)
3. Kitchen channel for home cooking: Energy star foodie cathedral
4. Clearing the air rights: Demolition of skanky, derelict trees
5. Stubborn with the thermostat: Extra helpings on the insulation

All these soaring resolutions bring out the domain master in me -- the dominatrix of domesticity. All unannounced particles of crumbs that cross my slippers prompt the next dust cloud gathering before the welcome mats reawaken.

Under the Effluence

[caption id="attachment_1104" align="alignleft" width="300"] Knotweed pops through a patch of cardboard mulch like so many pimples gathering after a teen pizza binge.[/caption]

This gushing of OCD on display tackles a very different agenda beyond the foot-wiping at the front door. There are no such dust-ups on the Hazmat-strewn floors of my backyard. Chards of broken bottles, oxides of batteries, remnants of socks, and the spew of non-degradable garage sale relics form an open burial pit of squalor. This caliber of decreptitude is normally reserved  for a harder core of hillbilly location.

That's when rugged individualism goes it alone and flies past the D.I.Y. stop sign and straight into the DDA ("don't-do-anything") ditch. That's the post industrial stench rising from the fertile river beds of Hadley:

"No other species fouls its own nest," as my second spouse liked to say in a categorical rejection of another isolated mountain culture. The flock of the church of humans has been known to place claims on the privacies contained within these soggy, crumbling mountain isolations. Abuse of the land is no less inevitable than the slicing through of these edens-turned-junk-yards by the rampaging of cold flood flash points into the convulsing rivers.

If my scavenger escavations are no more burials than treasures then my true anal obsession is taking wide open aim at nature's own neighborhood bullies. That's not the occupation of the soil by years claims on its transfer station status. That's the feeding on its natural generosity by the invasives -- namely the conspiracy of Japanese Knotweed that strangulates a less aggressive and more local population.

Godzilla the Gardener

My obsession reminds me of the fascist four-year-old games that I used to play in pursuit of childhood justice fired by World War II movies, newsreels, and riveted fixations on "Victory at Sea." My fighter squadrons were fresh on the heels of those unrepentent Pearl Harbor bombers. "Take that!" I'd shout, pumping my payloads into the tails of those nose-diving dragon gunners. "Take that to your Emperor of Knotweed!"

That's the viligence that captivates the digging up of the necks of these vermin by the clenching of my dirt-stained fingers and insatiable shovel. The vehemence only deepens when they rewire the rooting systems I've disrupted. I've created my own barriers by patching together some cardboard mulching around the most infested areas. The counter-insurgency lies somewhere between feeling the need to squeeze out the latest outcrop of whiteheads from these lawn pimples and playing whack-a-mole with a tenacious and cunning adversary. This is certainly the gaming board when a new strain peaks its head above a crack in my patchwork.

My tree guy Matthew tells me that I'll need to keep my retribution guard up for at least another two years to wrest control away from the invasion of these garden snatchers. Given the small dimensions of my yard I intend to maintain a heavy footprint on the lay of this promising land patch.

On Living Solitary and Small

Here's what it's like to move into a new and empty home by yourself when just the idea of it delivers a serious buzz:

* I can walk the boat to the pond or run the fan or fan the incense or un-run a color choice or the number of napkin boxes I opportune. And that's not even messing with the cabin zoning as the AC can be as noisy or as borderline lukewarm as I want.

* I can bump into bumpable unpacked boxes and not have to explain the noise or wonder if I'm bumped up to noisy neighbor status.

* I can agonize over a soap dish at Cedar Chest. I can play out the cleaning habits of the three women I've co-starred in the preening of house. These three women will have agreed on little except that Alan Rickman is the pinnacle of sexy and that their co-star was raised by wolves.

So which civilizing influence will tilt the battle to burnish my OCD credentials in the cracks of my early post polyurethane floors? Is it the Dust Vac or the Swiffer? Am I persuaded to visit the Murphy's Soap upon the soft, placid cork in the kitchen? Do I Lemon Pledge the electronics? Where will an all-purpose generic suffice? Do I suck down moths in mid-flight or wait for the dust-up in the morning glare? When are spiders the enemies of my enemies and when do I have to vanquish the suspect in a potential spider bite case? When is it time to dispense with dry mops and play whack-a-mole in the stubble of the backyard? I turn my ADD shopping list to the insidious weeds that require my train wreck brand of root canal and trunk piles.

I'm beginning to understand why I revel in these minutiae flare-ups. This house was built by men. However unlike in most cases, a woman's hand is not present in the expression of the home. I'm free to second-guess my own interior decoration in the privacy of this creation. I have amnesty blankets of permission to make up my mind. This act holds certain unintended consequences. Sometimes this contains savage consequences in my marriages -- especially when I saw the choices as two avoidable extremes:

(A) Making a fuss about it or,

(B) Complete suppression.

Talk about no one being vested in a sunk cost situation.

Playing out scenarios like juggling calendars is one such hazard. I’m traveling too far over too few hours and I misplaced a few priorities along the way: Especially when my sense of obligation and devotion are locked in private competition.

This sounds like a simple case of arguing over control. But to be more concrete here, the conflict is fundamental. It’s the appointment-cancelling version of a gagging reflex. That’s a reference to our impulsive aversion for event planning – namely who’s the sponsor and what are the attendance requirements:

• What do I say to whom?


• How do I listen in a sincere, attentive way?


• Where does non-verbal dialog outflank both of these channels?

Another is my mastery of the self-limiting nature of failed relationships that go on for too long. Show me a reason to avoid an argument and I'll show you another expectation that I could learn to live without.

In place of this master miscasting I have an open and not so fragile invitation to live in a state of generous communication. Anyone who opens the bulkhead to the basement of their brains has free and welcome access to my attic whenever the sump pump forgets to take its allergy meds. I really mean that.

Yes, I am both the kind and queen of my castle. And that's just the warm-up for the ultimate victory here. I attain the unnatural born rite to exercise a woman and Governor Romney's prerogative -- the right to change my bleeping mind.

Home Stretch

The pulsating membranes of a home are springing to life. The floor plans are now sanded, stained, and open to trafficking feet. The brittle bones of an 1875 farm house have been reclaimed by the construction methods and materials of tank-less hot water systems, natural gas stoves and hearths, mini-splits, and spray foam insulation.

I am humbled by good fortune, astonished at the outcomes, and deeply gratified as:

1. An info-geek whose architectures are purely mental constructions -- even after my user-tenants take occupancy. (The concentration of ownership in data "clouds" is one aspect of climate change I'm better prepared to handle than a flood in my basement).


2. A weary refuge released from the splintered floorboards of past broken homes.

Point 2 does not imply a replay of this road map. Contrary to industrial grade spiritual traditions, I have come to know absolution as a two-way street. I feel nothing but resolution and regard for my fellow passengers from these prior home wrecks.

That said, my gratitude extends beyond life lessons and circumstances to Lesley Theall. Lesley clearly saw my handyman challenges extending beyond hammering and measuring to include project managing the orchestrations of home-building from scratch. She knows that merely pitching a mailbox at 4 French Street would earn instant ribbon contention in the soap box derby of my personal Home and Garden network. She saved me from myself.

As I transitioned from land parcels to housing options I also received the good counsel of realtor Maryellen Stokarski. Maryellen knew there are few options between empty-nesters looking to downsize and younger couples with McMansions in their sights. So she led me to my love at first sight moment. That's not an overstatement considering the monogamous nature of this transaction (the property never made its way to the MLS listings)!

I am particularly grateful to Peter Gelinas of Valley Building Co. and his capable team of contractors for their dedication to details, deadlines, team play, and an innate ability to anticipate issues that will never surface because of their design work, coordination, and craftsmanship.

Here are the spoils of their handiwork.

[caption id="attachment_1079" align="alignleft" width="300"] Living room: man cave or conference facility?[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_1080" align="alignleft" width="300"] Site of future privacy room of reading library.

Wall-to-wall screens at porch side.[/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="300"] Hickory owes nothing to consistency and has thus found a home in my kitchen.

The second floor landing banister view of the front door. (Note that patch of cork flooring on the lower left)

Lowe's did the carpet with lightening speed but I completed their customer satisfaction survey even faster[/caption]

Nesting for Now: Building a Home With a House

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="341"] Unofficial team portrait[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_985" align="aligncenter" width="158"] Feng shui ... or bust[/caption]

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="217"] French vanilla siding on N. Hadley's biggest small house[/caption]

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="273"] That truncated look from the deck-side[/caption]

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="239"] Back wall of kitchen and living room[/caption]

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="225"]First floor landing rights[/caption]

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="239"]

Mayhem in the master[/caption]

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="239"]

Dungeons without doors[/caption]

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="239"]

Life begins at the hop but it ends better on the porch[/caption]

The Silver Linings of Graying Temples

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="101" caption="Ruthellen Pollan, 1941-2004"][/caption]

When mom's demise began to lay claims on her speech, she gathered her neighbor Jill. In halted and fraying tones, she dictated the love she was carrying from this life to my brother and me. A lot of it was gratitude for her many joys. A lot was about her wishes for our futures. It was obvious she wasn't going to mention the burdens -- those were present in the ritual itself.

But she did  confide her sadness of birthdays and weddings and graduations to come that would escape her presence. She was missing a future that she had visited before she was to leave us. I don't know if either of us realized it at the time. But evoking future memories all but guaranteed her poignant and ceremonial presence not only in our future gatherings but our lasting togetherness.

Sometimes though, when I fathom my own removal from the guest lists yet to come, I assemble these fragments in a more detached state than our boundary-crashing mom. I won't be dragged kicking and screaming if the world around me remains in a benign state of oblivion. It's not that shuffling off the pier dignifies the modesty of a studied release. It's not fatalism. It's a comfort that the species has a replacement at the ready. And I'm not replaceable. And neither is my replacement. So long as those parties are still in the planning stages I can let go, perhaps a little less grudgingly than mom.

I took solace in April's Wired piece on Escape from the  Memes by Mary H.K. Choi. Choi admonishes us to vanquish our participatory narcissism or FOMO -- fear of missing out. That's the darkest corner of cosmic isolation. Or, as Choi points out, where memes get their power. That's where oblivion deserves to steal back some thunder while the memes are preening in the mirror.

Is it even possible to see the reflections of fading memes any more?  We live in a place in history where even our closets have windows. The memes have escaped before we know we're even under surveillance. Just when we're about to catastrophize a shakedown, who should come to our rescue but our old pal oblivion. His advice? "Ignoring it will only make it go away."

That's what I try to tell Suzie the sales woman at the local Sleepys. She's about to convert me from an idle mattress speculator to a triumphant bargaineer. I assure her that I'm positive nobody can match her on price today and that I wouldn't be sliding my plastic in to meet her monthly quota. And as for the unresolved purchases in our cash-strapped futures?  I insist that I'm oblivious to brand. Caught sleeping with a Simmons instead of a Sealy? Not a reason to lose sleep over. I still might be registered up on Suzie's watch just yet.

Whether vagrant futon or pillow top halo, I can rest easier knowing this: I live in a community where every wrong turn has the potential of turning into the right direction. And there's an unformed mound in my new backyard with my mother's insatiable need to propagate and nurture.

That's uncertainty I can believe in.

WFCR Responds to Vocal Valley

Since online discussion threads appeared like those from the offline wakeup call there are signs of a signal shift -- both in terms of local station policies and their infrastructures. While I don't believe in once-in-a-hundred-years prophesies or the "perfection" of storms, I do believe a change is in the air and may well land "on" the air before the next perfect storm appears.  Here's a response from Helen Barrington of local NPR affiliate WFCR that Marcia Yudkin shared through the Hidden.tech list:

++++++++++++++++++++

We, at New England Public Radio, sadly, have learned much from this storm and are actively updating and revising our approach to be ready for the next event. This was the "perfect storm," and has challenged every service from the media to utility companies.

Sunday, we lost power at the studios on the UMass campus. WFCR's transmitter is on Mt. Lincoln in Pelham. When the power fails (which it did), it's often because Route 202 is impassable (with trees down), as is the road to the transmitter site itself. We have not been able to purchase a generator due to concerns about fuel storage at the site and access to that remote area where the transmitter is, in bad weather. But, we're working on those problems...quickly and actively.



Now that we own WNNZ, we hope to purchase a generator for it (which is also thousands of dollars, a major capital expense), to become our primary broadcast source when WFCR is off. It, too, was the victim until this Wednesday afternoon, of a commercial power failure in Westfield. We're again trying to see if we can get some grants or do some quick fundraising to get generators for both stations (though, once obtained, the weather may impede installing them until spring, but we'll see).

And on top of that, due to the constraints of our budget, we have a small staff trying to cover this immense region. If we could have gone live all day Sunday, we would have, and we will find a way to do this in the future. We will be prepared to go live locally for as long as is necessary, to get critical information out. We will provide better service in the next storm(s), as we know there will be one or many this fall/winter.

We were trying to reach everyone we could with the web and phone info, realizing that some people may not have been able to access either (I live in Belchertown and only had cell service restored Tuesday night, as well as no landline; I still have no power). The size of the region makes this piece very complex, figuring out the best way to get info to people. But we now know - more than ever before - that the radio is the thing just about everyone can access in such situations.

All of the above led to a great many frustrations and impeded our ability to adequately serve the public. We are working on solutions.

Thanks so much for your comment and for listening.

Helen Barrington
Executive Director for Programming and Content
New England Public Radio/nepr.net
Phone: 413-577-0541
Please note my new email address: hbarrington@nepr.net

Offline Wakeup Call

Usually when we're caught off guard it's because we've underestimated an irresistible force or resist the inevitable damages of an overdue payment. Gotta say, leaves on matchstick splits of front yard lumber debris might be the new normal or a black swan event. Either way extended power outages are no more exclusive engagements than they are failed lab experiments.

We can point our fickle time cards at the utilities. But the average flip-switcher is in the dark as much as a an irate news consumer than as an impotent ratepayer.

Goshen-based Marcia Yudkin weighed in today on the Hidden.tech list with her assessment of the utilities as news producers. None of us were clear on how up-to-date mobile friendly our power utilities were before climate change. But most of us gave the benefit of the rounding error doubt that they would maintain the most up-to-date alerts, estimates, and outage mappings of an unfolding dilemma. Said Marcia: "Nope, not National Grid.  I used part of my precious battery time during the outage to check their website, and it was completely unhelpful." She goes onto say that you literally need to be an obstacle to merit any direct attention by people in the know:

"The power companies were updating the local fire and police companies regularly, but the only way I found that out was to get in my car (once it was dug out) and go there and ask."

So if your car is not disabled, your trees aren't draped over a drooping power line, and you're not suicidal, what's the fastest way to get our critical fix of preventative pills for blackouts? It's as if there were no meds for blackouts, if you ask Marcia.

Her storm intel trick or treat bag includes the following news goodies:

1. Town-by-town information


2. Risks and hazards, i.e. live wires, carbon monoxide poisoning


3. Lists of stores or gas stations


4. Bonus points: any reportings of price gouging, impassable roads, shelters, donation centers, etc.

Grid and Bear It

It wasn't just the sketchiness of the details that carried the post storm risks well into the following week. Current state weather forecasting in the post digital age is often pre-recorded and not locally based. Forget access to cable or rabbit ears. According to Hidden-Techie Tom Kopec, off-the-air TV is literally off-the-air. Kaput. Even from the blare of my transistor most radio jocks would rattle off two or three school closings and then advise listeners to check the complete web listings of websites they had no means to access. Does that mean they read the complete lists and kill the infomercials about soiled gutters?

Darn straight it does.

This is not about the clock radio blinking 12:00, 12:00, 12:00 before fumbling for the snooze button. This is about hitting radio reset. You don't need to be a ham hobbyist to have a personal stake in cutting through the static. This is not a business model. It's a survival tactic. The urgency reflects what the times demand -- not what the market supplies.

One feint glimmer according to Tom Kopec was FM 94.7: "It used to be WMAS. I don't know if it still is." Tom says they did finally go live and intermittently poured some meaningful factoids into a darkened and media-starved community.

From Charlemont Cheryl Handsaker related the bucket brigade messenging relay that was invoked by Hurricane Irene's arrival in late August:

"... Local emergency officials (and eventually the rest of us) [were] driving the roads and passing along information 'the old-fashioned way' by flagging down neighbors and asking them what they knew. Combined with town emergency robo-call updates when our phone line was intermittently up was an information life-line for us. We don't have cell service at my house so we don't have access to the 'smart-phone' route."

Tricks of Future Trades

Tonight I'll be returning to Amherst with the fervent hope that I can catch up on several missed wash cycles. I expect the house plants will be quivering and my freezer-bound ice cream, a temperate puddle of cone chunks drowning in preservatives. With any luck all those unturned yard leaves will have unclung to the arthritic branches of brittle trunks: forced to choose between foliage and mister frostee.

They say that Peru, Mass was able to endure 32 inches of snow and continuous power -- precisely because their trees were past peak. Maybe we'll need our leaf blowers to scale our unshedded deciduous before the next climactic spasm. Maybe next year we'll just have to rake trees the way we shovel the snow off our sagging, 19th century New England roofs. Those clinging leaves are almost as stubborn as us adopted and genuine New Englanders.

It's easy to compare Western Mass to a backwater: (1) because commerce is rarely the reason for settling here; (2) many privileged Valley folks express our activism through supporting global causes in the developing world; and (3) because there's an obliviousness to the outside world that includes the business of being outside. That doesn't mean a disregard for nature. It means a lack of preparedness for dealing with it.

The regional truism: "if you don't like the weather, wait five minutes" would likely include a drumbeat of acuweather updates in Boston. Here, you might have to wade five hours into the work day just to find out that you left home without the right attire.

It's time to put our fingers to the wind and get with the probable directions and velocities. Or maybe it's past time after a calendar of unscheduled events that include earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, and a week-long blackout from a white Halloween. Those costumes we sketched into the charcoal-like clouds of October would scare the daylight savings out of the solstices to come.

What I Learned at Useful Information Summer School

The first round of a useful information summer meetings concluded last Thursday in much the same way it began:

1. One stalwart member whose attendance record is as visible as her contact details are hidden.


2. A marketing professional whose feigned technophobia belies her online sophistication.


3. A community-based non-profiteer  looking to raise awareness and funding for some local groups.

No one knew the other.

No credit cards were swiped. No RSVPs were required.

There were no commitments for additional classes or word-of-mouth campaigns for swelling the ranks.

[caption id="attachment_726" align="alignleft" width="116" caption="Courtesy of Livbaldino on Flickr"][/caption]

I was as pleased with three attendees as I was happy with the dozen who came the week after the Greenfield Recorder's Chris Curtis profiled the Society for Useful Information made the rounds in local media circles. Strangers now familiar with my work were intrigued by Chris's piece and needed to see for themselves. Friends and family who've never sat in on a useful society session felt like they had after they read the same article. My fifteen fame minutes were spent in the right place.

I was prepared for the next dozen or nobody and I was ready to launch with intermittent WIFI from the Bookmill or to model frameworks in lieu of another feeble Verizon / Comcast signal in Montague Center. (Apparently the Bookmill is as hard to find for WIFI signals as the patrons who come prepared to shop for dispensible books).

What They Don't Teach You in Information Wants to be Free School

My Delicious page was base camp leading outward for all investigations. That's how I could keep my dualing promises of minimal memorization, free sourcing, and optimal confusion. I also led the group through the basic building blocks of query formation  -- syntax, semantics, and operators. When the WIFI failed it challenged me to teach the source conjugation frameworks that go to the motivations of information providers both in terms of why they would share and what they would hope to achieve. There's no better search tool than Google -- when it's not Google's nest being padded by the investigation in question. We are, after all, the products being monetized, not the customers being serviced.

We also spent some time on establishing information oceans, lakes, and ponds, and what's in store in terms of expectations and time sinks when we dip our rods in these vastly different search environments. Not surprisingly the relatedness of social networks and topics were a source of great debate and interest among most attendees. This is a far cry and a heartening refresh from the binary constraints of corporate information fetishes around silo-driven expertise, the disregard for interdependent thinking, and the culpability of knowledge. Thank you, Pioneer Valley!

What I enjoy the most in these sessions is not only the co-mingling of multidimensional inputs and interpretations but the ability to throw a browser window up on the pale, thumbtack hole-infested walls of the Sawmill River Arts gallery and abolish online isolation, at least for a few hours. The ability to team lead around both intentional and serendipitous discovery is the most compelling kind of learning I know.

I'm pleased that this heady blessing will continue after a four week respite with classes resuming on Thursday evening, September 29th.   In the meantime I hope that no one shows up  unannounced with an empty shopping cart.

15 Minutes of Vertigo-inducing Fame

I'm deeply in love with Western Massachusetts.

I can tell it's love. Because given the choice between burbs and cities I can't abide either. This no-choice-at-all is called Pioneer Valley (and that's the path I've chosen). The connection runs deeper than the infatuation of floods or famines. It's given me more than any lover, credential, or birth rite can bear. That's the simple embrace of community.

It's a zagging of offshoots. It's a smattering of vocal opinions beholden to even louder lives in motion. The Valley residents that inspire this love don't just think something would be a good idea when they get around to it but make the time. I hear the words, see the actions, sense the community, and feel a group participation number coming on. And it sounds like this:

1. We can't make the money here but we can make the time -- and the effort to engage the neighbors, encircle the orbits, and divide up the work.


2. That's the thinking behind helping Valley folks become more "Knowledge-ABLE."


3. That's the term defining the web-based research skills and actionable outcomes convened by the Society of Useful Information.


4. We meet each Thursday evening in the Sawmill River Arts Gallery at the Montague Book Mill.


5. Click here to sign up for an upcoming session.

Who are the de-facto members of this Commonweal? They're the local educators, students, small business owners, web designers, social workers, and policy advocates. They don't need more connect time but better connections to their own research, customers, funding sources, and the powers to size up the stature, positions, and end games of the folks they'll be seated across from in their next business trips, job interviews, and power negotiations.

One of the other benefits of my Valley allegiances is that it only takes unmasking those affections in public for the media to cover these community-based meet-ups. Last week I landed on the front page of the Greenfield Recorder and Daily Hampshire Gazette's reprint of the same piece. And I didn't have to hack into any phones or call in any favors. The reporter Chris Curtis did a stellar job of recounting the hit-and-miss trial-by-errors of "the founding and sole member" of the Society for Useful Information. What could be more ground-breaking and less pressing than teaching to an impartial observer and "publicity-shy Amherst area consultant?"

As lifelong friend and chief rhetoric connoisseur Terry Canade remarked later on email:

"Your writer/editor was good at distilling quotes which sound like you, move the story along, and intrigue the reader."

The proof in Canade's assessment lies in last week's attendance. I drew double digits -- practically standing room only (and none of them repeat members). None of them were entirely clear on what to expect but they all showed up assured that the full cost was absorbed by the gas eaten up to occupy "a place that's impossible to find." Two hours later they had a grasp of the virtues of...

• Social bookmarking (exhibit: Delicious tagging and commercial-free search)


• Getting from a search ocean to a proprietary pond (exhibit: child molesters and malpractice doctors)


• Visualization tools (exhibit: connecting the vectors between events and stakeholders through Silobreaker and Muckety)


• Word algebra (exhibit: query formation techniques that combine a handle on semantics, syntax, and search operators)


• Credibility factors (exhibit: Site Explorer to compare self-directed and externally triggered attention)


• Timeliness (exhibit: the /date slashtag in Blekko search)

I was exhausted by the end of the session. I was compelled to do most of the talking because I didn't have prior knowledge of attendees search projects or the class size. I learn lots more when we can move beyond lecture and offer the group therapy benefits that come with articulating our silent confessionals to Google. Bringing voice to the discovery process is far more rewarding that the best engineered web destination. To paraphrase Karl Weick (or perhaps E.M. Foster):

"How do I know what I click on until it clicks with those I'm searching  (or reaching out to?)"

We'll know when curiosity leans forward and attendees find themselves returning with theories to test. That's when the class will find its voice. That's when the classroom will evolve into a round table and participatory search will become the key to self-education online. For now, crowding around the communal browser is a throwback to the early days of TV. Soon perhaps, it will be a leap forward to a collective experience that is anything but placid or unquestioning.

Just like the community of my affection.

Packing Your Own Lunch @ the Web Search Cafeteria

How do we know it's time to suck in the bulge around our brains?

[caption id="attachment_636" align="alignleft" width="240" caption="The marketplace for ideas need not be a storefront"][/caption]

That swelling is not transmitted by airborne virus or insect. Most likely it's the encrypted WIFI signal ready to auction off our attention based on:

• Who wants it,


• Where they will be for the next 45 minutes, and


• a coupon for perishable inventories echoed in the placeholders of past browser sessions.

Like any internet marketer Google's efforts are focused on converting web surfers to online shoppers, translating our calls for help into online ads it sells to the market. This arrangement connects some sellers to buyers but does little to resolve our need for quality information from credible sources. We must fend for ourselves when it comes to online investigations. And that isolation compromises our effectiveness as learners:

• The web by remote control: Google IS the internet. If it doesn't rank, it doesn't exist.


• The priority switcheroo: What landed last is what deserves to be acted on first.


• The sourcing dilemma: The motives behind information providers and how that squares with evidence used to substantiate their claims.

The simple truth is that Google has a great deal of value for the researcher -- little of it that's monetizable. Ironically Google's unrecovered assets are where web researchers should be investing big time:

1. How to assess: frameworks and models: Aligning knowledge-seeking requirements with an informed sense of where to go and for acting on what we'll expect to find there


2. How to ask: semantics, syntax, and operators -- The building blocks of query formation; the act of interrogating databases and training them to do our bidding


3. How to act: context and meaning: Applying source fluency in order to scope the credibility, authenticity, and ultimately our understanding of where our findings are leading us

Internet sources and the search results they spawn are dynamic, conflicting, and open-ended. Your time commitments, however, are not. We have set objectives and hard stops for reaching them. Too often our need for closure and certainty suppress our hunger for learning. Connecting poor search results to preferable outcomes is like trying to shape up on a diet of lard and donuts. No matter how many searches and site results we retreat from the computer with more uncertainties and less time to settle them.

There are two reliable reasons most of us go online to research:

• Learn enough to act on what we’ll learn


• Reduce the uncertainty around what those actions may bring

These are the themes and objectives we'll be exploring each Thursday evening this summer at the Montague Bookmill. We hope you can join us for our weekly meetups from 7-9 pm. The series begins next Thursday, June 2nd. We look forward to your input and addressing the pending research projects that fire your desire to learn in the first place. A laptop is optional but do pack your own homegrown research problems.

And be prepared to share.

Betting Against the Church of the House of Google

[caption id="attachment_619" align="alignleft" width="300" caption=""I don't know who discovered water, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't a fish." -- Marshall McLuhan"][/caption]

Marshall is suggesting that familiarity is the home of the oblivious. Our blinders are affixed to our unblinking screens. We put them on once and no interruption can slip between our trackable eyeballs and our data plans. Digital natives may awake ready to greet the dawn or completely hung over. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt says that either way, they wake-up connected.

Being offline requires a manual override. It's not natural. And it requires reflexes, negotiations, and a tolerance for uncertainties that can't be novelized in gaming or commerce.

At last weekend's first annual Valley Summit, a forty-something social media marketer was addressing the virtues of Google Analytics to the conference gallery. He mentioned how his pet store merchandiser/client delivered him a handful of variations on the naming of some hot-selling accessory for dogs. But then he ran the keyword combos through Google AdWords and the verdict was unanimous: there is only one commonly accepted way that customers use to search for this item. That's right -- one way to the AdWords bidding auction or the highway of web marketing roadkill.

On one hand this was a battle of ideas between who keeps through my store and who lands on my site. On the other hand this is a major inversion-bender between the customer-leaning client and search-literate counsel. Man, talk about the client seeing the complexities of the world more clearly than their social media handlers!

The larger story here is that the new media brokers are all too willing to confuse the business model of a software giant for the marketplace itself. The fact that this single expression for doggie collars, leashes, or dinner bells is reducible to one expression says as much about the media buyers as it does about the search media. Each term in succession describes one thought planted in front of the next. That's the extemporaneous stamina of Google as mind-reader. There are no original search terms under the Google Sun.

It's one thing to "organize the world‘s information and make it universally accessible." It's quite another thing to appropriate the language for doing so as an auction-based sweepstakes where Google has trademarked all the concenants, vowels, and punctuation symbols. Every symbol on our keypads prompt a suggestion from Google. Our minds may be shooting blanks but our stares have been paved over by the power of Google suggestion.

I'm not suggesting this power is sinister any more than I'm suggesting that Google is acting as our scalable, benevolent, reference librarian in the cloud. Google is acting in its own corporate interest when it channels our curiosities into manageable chunks of its revenue model. The fact that the service is so compelling and the model is so persuasive means that Google's evisceration of the ad business sounds like the sour grapes of a dead fruit tree -- not the grounds for anti-trust litigation that awaited a browser-bundled PC empire when the Clinton Administration chased after Microsoft in the late nineties.

“The perfect search engine,” says co-founder and new CEO Larry Page, “would understand exactly what you mean and give back exactly what you want.” Page might be casting a perfectly earnest engineering posture. Or cynicism may compel him to see the non-paying Google public as a customer that doesn't know what it wants (other than for an intermediary to broker their virtual needs in a clean, unassuming interface). My money is on an enduring love of search science. That's as far as Larry's sincerity needs to travel for my purposes. I'll know that Larry shares my enthusiasm when he figures out a way to pad revenues from servicing the needs of researchers.

That's fantasy. One emerging reality is the appreciation of my new Pioneer Valley colleagues for brilliant search engineering. That's my takeaway from the first meetup of the Society for Useful Information last night in Northampton.  That appreciation will deepen as they reverse engineer Google into doing their bidding on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and other walled gardens to come. Perhaps then we'll start to warm to this reality: that we feel no pain with our fingers plugged into the sockets of Google Search.

Organic search, my ass.

Didn't I Know of You?

I'm in the throes of reaching out to my adopted home of Western Massachusetts. It's a place that's welcomed me as a prodigal orphan who punched a one way ticket off Long Island, did my time in NYC, and never really warmed to Boston. The only sticking point is that I've never developed any business here in this "buy local" of all economies.

It's hard to imagine a more awkward introduction than drawing bands of would-be web developers and digital marketers into an FF vortex on Twitter to announce an open enrollment of my self-education program (Knowledge-ABLE) and the community for evolving it -- The Society for Useful Information (#SFUI). The SFUI introduction was held last month in Amherst and I'm continuing the same agenda at the Forbes Library this Monday.

Today I'm taking in the scene at the first ever Valley Summit where virtual personalities are materializing on our collective home turf. Eric Schmidt's parting observation before stepping down as Google CEO was that digital natives are never "online." Once they awake, their connected. I'm reminded of this as Karo Kilfeather is leading a social media marketing session on how the blurring together of the virtual and real world is a marriage that will stick. Honestly, my whole schtick (READ: thesis) is based on maintaining healthy boundaries between the two worlds. I've landed in the happy Valley -- the mayor of FourSquare be damned!

At least now I'm leveraging the less invasive and blander call to action of connecting on LinkedIn. It's no less impersonal than Twitter but at least my prospects can sniff me without feeling assaulted by non sequiturs. One of the folks I reached out to is a local WordPress developer named Terran Birrell. Terran was generous to share an insightful post on the finer points of the LinkedIn Soiree.

It doesn't make my pitch any less impersonal that the curriculum of Internet Research is inclusive to a fault. Outside of folks who would rather outsource their powers of reason it's hard to rule out an independently-minded individual who wouldn't benefit from a more disciplined approach to search engines, social bookmarking, RSS, and link analysis.

Here's my direct mail voice talking in the latest invites:

There are few allegiances I express with less reservation than a love for Pioneer Valley. Its natural beauty is keenly matched by the inner resourcefulness of those who call it home. We not only prefer to buy local. We insist on the ultimate demonstration of growing local – thinking for ourselves In that spirit I'm inviting you to join a community-minded group of local marketers, business owners, advocates, and educators who share this strong independent streak.

Honestly I have no idea what the turnout will be but I'm not holding my baited breath. This is a long term investment measured in community-building (sharing what I know). The fact I can hold a job and chew gum is what makes this enterprise feasible and me lucky to be sharing these skills. What I truly value is how web research augments the work of the advocates, educators, business owners, and marketers who I will grow to know in the coming years.

Happy spring, New England.

Plumbing Below the Radar

[caption id="attachment_534" align="alignleft" width="240" caption="Photo by Jim Henderson | jim@henderson.org.nz"][/caption]

"Never mistake your presence for the event."

- Roscoe Lee Brown

I'd like to say that the highlight of Tuesday's Open Mic Night was that I got to teach what I love in the manner I love doing it (teach). I'd like to affirm further that there was an airy effortlessness to the presentation. After all this was a captive, active group -- engaged, smart, skeptical -- all the requisite aptitudes. Finally I should clarify that the staging was in a stately conference facility with a robust wifi signal, no dial-in audience to accommodate, and most importantly ... no institutional middle man.

Truth is, the most gratification came from assembling two Boston-based information communities -- my PI/detectives and fellow SIKM colleagues -- then watching the collaboration fly across the conference table. The joy of discovery is one thing. But sharing that joy is pure rapture.

Kirstie Fiora filled in for my woeful event-planning deficits -- ushering in attendees past locked front doors and assorted roadblocks that escaped my logistical skills for bringing people together. I've been living off her Angie's Kettle Corn snack offering since the session ended. Pathetic.

In addition to Kirstie and brother Gordon, my improbable roundtable for round one included:

• Ann O'Connor (PI) -- Researcher, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers ("IBEW")


• Carrie LaRose (PI) -- Comptroller, H&H Delivery


• Dave Wallace (KM) -- Managing Partner, GameChange LLC


• Joe Cadillic (PI) -- Private Investigator, Murphy & Associates


• John Dalli (PI) -- Owner, Worcester Record Search


• Kate Pugh (KM) -- President, Align Consulting


• Paula Cohen (KM) -- Knowledge Manager, Information Enterprises

The premise of the News Radar theme was that we're fussing over stuff that should not rise to our radar levels. I demonstrated tools for flushing information waste products back down below the sewer line where they belong. On the attention scale we rake our mental bearings into three piles:

1. PURPOSE: What makes our lives worth living


2. OBJECTIVE: What do I do to make #1 happen


3. DISTRACTION: What gets int the way of #2

Way too much of the web is sheltered under the growth of pile #3. That's where I introduced the pruning shears of semantics, syntax, and search operators for pruning away the rubbish. I also tried to give them some bearings on when a scarcity of information actually calls for expanding the boundaries through keyword cultivation or the simpler queries that create more productive outcomes in ponds (specialty databases) in lieu of oceans (commercial search engines).

These examples were modeled on the saving graces of an XML-centric approach for having useful information find us -- assuming that web searches don't fall in the #1 pile camp. We used syntax to forge for RSS feeds. We used semantics to develop some word algebraics for trapping some common corporate event triggers (marketing, finance, regulatory, musical management chairs, etc.) We even set up watch lists to ensnare specific people we might call on that we can insinuate by the job titles in the announcements of their promotions.

We tested the relationship of push and pull sourcing by using Site Explorer to compare self-referring links to external ones as an even-handed basis to gauge the credibility of information providers by their web domains and pages. Finally we went shopping for higher level concepts like citizenship in Google Keywords and came away with the humbling conclusion that "Citizen Watches" were likelier to tell us Google time better than the Bill of Rights. Another discrepancy worth noting is the number of searches generated for terms versus the ad dollars they fetch, e.g. "SAS Document Management" yielded 73 searches last month despite its "competitive" appeal to Google advertisers.

The one underwhelming demo I thought was the section on rolling your own custom search engines. We grouped media sources back into their traditional pre-web categories. Remember the term "paid media" to describe the success of 20th century PR campaigns?" Didn't think so. The disappointment was in the lack of evidence that the keyword refinements did much to skew the results or tell the underlying story of the custom search theme. I also flew over the information pond completely. That means I didn't focus much on using Google as the search engine of record in order to qualify and build contact lists from social media sites.

I'm looking forward to the next several sessions in Western Mass and will try to localize them. Candidate projects on the agenda? Building alumni lists from LinkedIn of Five College graduates.

Birth of the River Arts Collaborative

I've been reading James Mauro's take on the 1939 New York World's Fair -- my favorite historic crossroad between past and future. Twilight at the World of Tomorrow chronicles  the clairvoyant visions and grandiosity of scale. The fair as not just a carnival or a fish bowl but frankly the best of what the Greatest Generation dared to dream of for our parents' time.

Sure, one sobering underside is the naiveté fueling the hopes pinned against the darkening skies of World War and the Death Camps. A more contemporary irony is that this colossal undertaking was all done within the time frame that it takes in our time for a broken commuter rail escalator to go out to bid.

I mention the book because Albert Einstein has a cameo as the flakey genius-philosopher who idles away sleepy Sunday afternoons off the North Fork of Long Island in a moribund and motor-free boat where he can bob to the waves of the LI Sound until the tides determine his return to shore.

That pretty much sums up how I feel about the Book Mill in Montague. Like the bumper sticker says, it's a place with books you don't need in a place you can't find. One finds new excuses to drift back there once this place discovers you. The Book Mill is a haven for creating lazy, lilting vacuums of time to slip away on the back channels of the Connecticut Riverbed. It's there at the fork of the Saw Mill cascade is where some paper mill kingpin planted his own early 19th century vision of a prosperous future.

When I dream in my wi-fi sofa I don't see dollar signs but ...

* an enchanting sanctuary

* an expansive nesting bed of solitude and exploration

* a place for teaching to the insatiable learners of Pioneer Valley

That was my groove path when I approached Louise Minks, the local painter, teacher, and owner of the Millworks Studio -- one of the retail spaces within the Bookmill complex. Louise told me about an ongoing interest by several artisans to revive the vacant space next door with a collaborative of painters and crafts-makers. I said that suits me fine. My classes would happen after shopping hours anyway.

I didn't let on straight away but the proposition I was making extends beyond self-interest. That meant I'd be willing to match my rent commitment with assuming my shopkeeper share during the monthly retail shift. The gesture was not meant to be sweeping or dramatic; just a modest reserve of generosity that bubbles up from the gratitude of having the chance to work with a talented group in a captivating space. I'm not sure if that's how fortunes get made but certainly that's pretty solid footing for how sustainable partnerships come about -- even communities.

What has struck me in terms of the group's formative stages in our first several meetings is how essential it is to show up in the actual space. An email-only presence gives voice to speculations that dwell on the specifics of outcomes as detailed as they seem improbable. They flirt with the temptations of rock-solid business proposals and the contingency plans of a more elaborate and weightier commitment.

The more immediate concern is getting our first year off the ground -- not putting out every potential fire , or worse, a prepared response to our future successes! Heaven forbid we stir too much interest in this enticing, and not intemperate undertaking.

This afternoon we named ourselves the River Arts Collaborative, based on input from Terri Fain. Montague artists Christine Mero and Jill Bromberg agreed to serve as co-chairs for the first year. Susan Essig recorded the notes. Louise and I rounded out the circle. Together we formed a compelling blend of due process and consensus-building with simple intuition and open communication. A nucleus is forming.

Einstein, by the way, refused to wear a life jacket. Apparently his seaside wayfarings were buoyant enough to resist them.

Fan of Inevitability

I know that information management is my vocational calling. I know this because whenever I communicate its impact I can talk to any related topic, wander off on a tangent, and circle back to the central premise, helping students, colleagues, and friends become better managers of their own information domains.

Nobody plotted this path for me. I did not apprentice in an information factory. My father was not a voting member of the Information Manager's Guild. I started reading newspapers when I was five and I knew that I was more productive outside of class by the time I was eight. But I had no idea what the name of the place was where passion and practicality coincided to form the small, affirming patch of understanding that seeds and nurtures the teaching, writing, and collaboration (all are gifts I have coming and going).

This mental universe has a new physical home which is in some respects not new at all. My son and I have stayed weekends together with our extended Hadley family of Andy and Michele Morris-Friedman. Prior to that Pioneer Valley was the rescue that harbored an escape from Farmageddon -- an oddly-conceived plot in the early nineties to start a family in deepest Appalachia on the backs of a goatherd, my son's mother's homespun talents, and a license to distribute M.A.I.D. -- Marketing Analysis and Information Database -- from Atlanta to the RTP ("Research Triangle Park").

The bet on the farm lost, the marriage eventually failed, and my son was raised by his mom in Greenfield. But even after I left Western Mass for a new love and the prosperity of Boston I still felt rooted to the rich, pastoral hills and gulches of the happy valley. An improbable confluence of events has hastened my return and so too has the sense that being lost is a good feeling when it can only lead to a sharper cut over and more beauty and the unforeseen intersection of two meandering roads.

That's what I remember from my first spring semester at Hampshire College back in 1981. Everyone had gone home for spring break except my friends Steven Marcus (then Weiner) and Michael Schwarz. We tooled around in Steven's car in a constant state of intentional wander-tripping, stumbling into the blossoming color burst of back roads that never failed to lead us back from where we came. I could not know at 19 that this was home with ancestral certainty any more than I could have told you that what I wanted to be when I grew up was the person I was to become.

The arc of personal history pulls these transitional days into the keep and trash piles. We make all the right moves for all the wrong reasons. We curse the punishing fury of changes beyond our controls and then we see the shiny linings wear down the festering stain. We pin down our lifelong hopes long enough to create perfections in our miniature fortresses, policed by our own inflated sense of control. But then the concrete castles of our own creation crumble because the virtues from our former neighborhoods don't beat a path to our newly gated doors. Instead of shedding some street noise or outgrowing a partner, we find our nests inhabited by squirrels. Who invited them?

Regardless of how tortured the logic or how unforeseen the consequences the consummate mover is an expert at what to keep -- if not what to keep out. One of the pleasures of dragging your artifacts from one bubble-wrap unraveling to the next reel of packing tape is that you are the curator and vessel for the beauty that your loved ones have brought into this world. There is never enough wall or floor space to hold the museum of treasures that only seem to resurface in the belly of a rented van. Conversely the shedding of ancient tax returns and other vestiges and placeholders is a rapture worthy of a greatest hits release party. After the landfill leaves town I find myself polishing and sparkling my crystal ball binoculars in the most myopic of ways. Exhibit A: rejection notice for Mastercard/Visa payment services dated April 21, 1993 from a customer service rep with the First Commercial Bank in Burnsville, NC:

"... [A]fter speaking with you I called a contact with our merchant company. She did some research and has informed me that the type of business you're in is prohibited. I understand that the reason this type of business is prohibited is because it is not tangible."

The cost of moving to Bumfuck? Having our possessions lost in transit by Mayflower Moving Co., fully razed / renovated barn, animal husbanding for dozens of livestock, including goats, sheep, bovine; taking an ill-suited job and driving tens of thousands of miles in a puke green Datsun pick-up for sales appointments...

The cost of not being able to bill for my information management services as a credit transaction? Priceless.

All I know is that if the pilgrims had hired Mayflower our beloved Bay Colony might have remained inhabited by darker-skinned people with lighter footprints. I am home again in Amherst and time can now care for itself.