More than emergency concerns about Haiti

The images that have come out of Haiti this past week have been heartbreaking; the delays in gettng supplies and aid to the injured and dying are horrific.  At the same time, the outpouring of compassion, cash and assistance from around the world is heartwarming and hopeful.

 Still, I can’t help but ask: will we, as former President Bil Clinton suggests, be able to help Haiti truly rebuild so that it becomes an independent, self-sufficient country?  What happens when there are viable buildings again, when all the medical help that can be rendered has been rendered?  Haiti cannot go back to the way it wa s, for one primary reason above all others: long after the instrastructure is repaired, long after the government is functioning again, long after schools are opened and businesses are functioning, there will still be grief that will last for generations.  For those of us, including myself, who are giving what cash we can to the efforts in Haiti now – will we tell our children and our grandchildren not to forget?  Will we help them understand that a neighbor was brought to its knees?  And that in some respects – as with Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans – it was a man-made disaster?  An article I read mentioned that the 1989 earthquake in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I was born and raised, caused just 63 deaths, yet was a 7.1 on the Richter scale; despite some severe destruction – particularly damage to the Bay Bridge – buildings did not fall down on people en masse as they did in Haiti.  The fact that Haiti put up buildings without rebar has been widely reported; but deeper than that, way down underneath all of that, is the fact that Haiti has had severe governmental and societal problems for two centuries.  Everyone on the news talks about the resiliance of the Haitians, as if they will surely recover – it’s a statement that effectively distances the speaker from the suffering on the ground, is not a little patronizing in nature, and is a statement that has begun to make me sick.

Will they recover?  Maybe - but surely not alone.  They’ll recover if the rest of us remember – if we continue to care after the emergency is over; if tell our children and grandchildren that once the world’s eye was turned to a tiny, impoverished island whose people sang in the face of death.

Social Media and the People’s Choice Awards

I was casually watching the People’s Choice Awards last night and reading at the same time; so I glanced up at the screen occasionally, but wasn’t watching continuously.  That’s why I took note of something: just about every other time I looked up, some star or another – either a presenter or an award recipient – was standing up on stage taking a photo or video of the proceedings in order to upload it immediately to the Internet.

First I was confused.  What is this?  Why are they doing that when they have a national (probably international) television audience?

Then I was perturbed.  How rude, I thought.  The fact that they have this room full of stars and fans in a ceremony that is being broadcast everywhere is just not enough for them.  They have to interrupt things to upload more of the evening’s sights and sounds to the Web, just in case some one person somewhere can’t wait and needs it right this minute.

It reminded me of the story earlier this year about the groom who sent Tweets throughout his wedding ceremony, leading one newscaster to wonder, “Aren’t all the important people in their lives right there at the wedding?”

Then today I heard about some big stars cancelling their Twitter accounts.  Uh-huh.  Bound to happen sooner or later.

All of these social media outlets are great when they’re used in the right ways and for the right reasons.  But you have to wonder how long it’s going to be before some people realize that 1), not everyone is fascinated with everything they do all day long, no matter how famous they are, and 2), you only have time to nurture just so many relationships in your life, no matter how you do it.  You only have time for just so many business relationships, no matter how well paid you might be; and you only have time for just so many personal relationships, no matter how much you care.  We can’t be all things to all people, nor should we even try.

There’s one more thing.  Publicity ain’t what it’s cracked up to be.  Those of us who have spent years working in and around the media – advertising, marketing, public relations – often tend to become camera-shy over time.  We’ve seen, felt, and sometimes been the recipients of too much media exposure.  It doesn’t fool us; we don’t equate it with credibility, friendship or love.  We don’t need it to validate our identities.  We know who we are away from the camera, and often we prefer it that way. 

Social media tools are just that – tools of communication.  They are an enormous help to a business in many ways; they help us keep up with friends and relatives at a distance.  But they are just tools; just methods of communicating.  They can’t, and won’t, change human nature; they can’t, and won’t, put more than 24 hours in a day; they can’t, and won’t, substitute for face-to-face relationships.

It’ll be interesting to see whether any of the stars who delayed some of the proceedings during the People’s Chose Awards ever decide that they were actually quite rude to the audience in front of them in their quest to extend their 15 minutes of fame.  The only person who was even halfway validated in what he did was Ashton Kutcher, who was receiving and award as “Web Celeb,” and who, in that role, raised money for many thousands of mosquito nets to be sent to Africa to help halt the spread of disease while people slept.  He did a good thing, was being rewarded for it, and was justified in feeding the whole thing live over the Internet.

The rest?  Only concerned with themselves, even to the point of rudeness to their fans and colleagues.  Sad.

A reverse-sexism stance: in praise of football

For some years now,  I’ve taken what I call a “reverse-sexism” stance concerning a certain type of woman in business.  Women who fit into this category tend to be passive-aggressive (i.e., they don’t communicate directly but always have an agenda on the side);  when upset, they become catty back-stabbers; when questioned, they do not answer a direct question with a direct answer; when considering power in their organization, the confuse genuine power with getting attention and getting one’s own way.

For the record, I define power as whether or not a person can motivate and inspire people to take action, not whether a person has authority and can bully others into getting his or her own way.  And gaining personal attention?  If we haven’t seen the downside of that this past year in how the media has played out so many stories, then we haven’t been listening – or watching – or paying attention ourselves.

My belief is that the women who act this way tend to be older women who were not allowed to play in team sports in junior high and high school.  Nor did they get the mentoring and encouragement that team sports provides.  Not until Title IX came along in 1972 , requiring gender equity for boys and girls in every educational program that receives federal funding, did things begin to change – five years after I graduated from high school.

I clearly remember watching the boys play softball in junior high school, and not understanding why I couldn’t join them.  I was a competitive springboard diver in those years, training for the Junior Olympic tryouts when I quit after a series of injuries, and those years taught me a great deal about continuing, trying, going back the next day. But all that was outside of school.  In school, there were P.E. classes (why aren’t those still mandatory today?) and a few sports for girls; I remember swimming and earning a letter sweater.  But it wasn’t the same.  In those days, if you were athletic and female, you weren’t considered feminine; and there was no competing in the really big sports.  I would have played softball or basketball.

When you effectively strip any given people of power and visibility – whether those people are women, or people of a certain race or ethnicity – you relegate them to back-door tactics for creating the life they want.  You render them dishonest, because to live honestly as who they really are is to risk being ostracized and shunned – or worse.  Remember, it was not so long ago that women did not have access to birth control; it was not so long ago that they could not control their own finances; it was not so long ago that women could aspire to being a teacher, a secretary, or a nurse, and that was about it.  (Not that there’s anything wrong with that…. as Seinfeld would say.)  Those are developments within my lifetime.  When I was first divorced over 32 years ago, I had no credit in my own name, despite the fact that it was me who had consistently paid our bills on time.  I started my life from scratch, because until the divorce was final, I didn’t really exist in either a financial or legal way in the eyes of society.

So I understand why certain women act in certain ways.  It makes sense.  Subterfuge, hidden agendas, indirect statements, passive-aggressive behavior, lack of confidence and assertiveness and, when upset, back-stabbing and catty behavior – these all make sense if a woman has grown up in the circumstance just described.

But it’s really, really bad for business.  It’s so detrimental in the business world and in academic institutions that I’m alarmed that more people aren’t alarmed; or maybe it’s just not popular, or politically correct, to recognize it.

The boys started in football usually in junior high, and certainly played through high school and often through college.  Not all of them, certainly; but I’m using football here as a metaphor for all team sports in which boys have been encouraged, mentored and sponsored since their earliest years.  In football, boys and young men go at it on the field; they execute strategy, they bash each other solidly and sometimes cruelly; they get mad and upset and determined – and when the came ends, they go into the locker room, shower up, and go home without worrying about it.  The next day, grudges are not remembered, and they are back on the field doing it all over again.  It’s not personal (as Tom Hanks said in “You’ve Got Mail).  It’s a game, for the most part – remember I’m not talking NFL here – it’s a game that involves a great deal of strategy and teamwork.  You can’t hog the ball and expect your team to benefit; you can’t play for yourself and expect to come out a hero.  You play for your team, and that involves some strategy; some willingness to take direction; some willingness to come out a bit battered and bruised on any given day.

If you have been brought up in such a way that you never learned teamwork, were never treated as an equal in a group setting, and you go into the business world or into academia with a mindset that your own agenda is the only one you’re working toward, you not only have problems – but you also make problems.   You don’t understand that power and getting ahead are not about getting your own way; you don’t understand the art of compromise; you don’t understand when to step back, and when to speak up. 

Granted, this is a gross generalization and is not true for every man and every woman.  Bear in mind that I originally said it applies to some women, perhaps mostly to older women, and that one of the main reasons, I suspect, is the lack of experience with team sports when they were young.  Women had to try much harder for a very long time, and with a greater skill set, in order to make any headway at all.

But we should have been training them for management positions all along; we should have understood what team sports can provide.  We should have understood that yes, a man may slam his fist down on your desk when he is upset enough (I’ve had that happen), but at least it’s direct.  A woman will start pulling the knitting string that unravels all the knots before you even realize what’s happening. 

Some women.  With some backgrounds.  Perhaps of a certain age.  We needed to have played softball, basketball, football, anything – anything to teach us how to shrug things off one day, and come back the next day for the good of everyone involved.

Would more money help students know that grammar, spelling and punctuation count?

In recent months, I have heard from too many friends and too many students entering my classes that their high school teachers – and sometimes college instructors at other institutions – graded the work they did in their English and writing classes by content alone, with no attention paid to grammar, spelling or punctuation.  I don’t know what their teachers thought they were doing.  Did they think the business world pays no attention to how content is presented?  Did they think that a garbled, misspelled, clumsy message was going to carry professional weight?  Did they think for one moment about preparing their students for the job market?

I’m furious at teachers who have done this, and not for my own sake.  Granted, I spend more time than I would like doing some remedial teaching to students who shouldn’t need the instruction by the time they get to college.  But most of all, I’m furious that these teachers have betrayed their students. 

Add to that the fact that the schools are forever asking for more money in order to succeed, and I really start shaking my head in disbelief.  Maybe they need more equipment in science labs, or for band instruments, or sports, or shop, or any of a number of other classes that use equipment.  But all you need to teach a decent use of the language is pen and paper.  A dictionary.  You don’t even need a computer (Shakespeare didn’t have a computer; neither did Homer, or John Steinbeck – or the writers of the U.S. Constitution.).

You need an instructor who cares about a well-crafted sentence; you need an instructor whose love of literature and love of communication comes through in every class session.  You need an instructor who is willing to take the long way around, with no shortcuts.  You need an instructor who understands that how the content is packaged is as important as the content itself; that it’s important to tell students about subject/verb agreement, about run-on sentences, about fragments, about the need for a subject and a verb, and a modifier that isn’t left hanging as if ready to fall off a cliff.

Does that take more money?  No, absolutely not.  It takes instructors who know the language and have a passion for the language as well as a desire to help students be the best that they can be.

That a full third of our area high school students don’t graduate is alarming and indicative of this same trend.  In addition, our local Oregonian newspaper reports that most students who take classes in English as a Second Language don’t learn English.  A dear friend back in Montana used to prepare his college students for a semester studying in Vienna by taking them out for beer once a week and allowing only German to be spoken there for several hours.  Immersion still works.  If you have a few basics, your ear will pick up the rest, and pretty soon you’ll be speaking the language.  When my friend Magda, from Poland, lived with me the first year she was in the U.S., she would call home every Saturday morning, and after a while I came to know what subject was being discussed. I could figure out when she was talking about school, about work, or about other family members.

Why, then, is it so darned difficult for teachers of English and writing to hold students to standards that will help them succeed on the job?  Why is more money necessary?  Why can’t a given instructor simply tell a student, “No, you can’t use a plural form of the verb and a singular form of the noun.  They have to both be plural or both be singular.”"  What’s so hard about that?  Are teachers afraid of hurting students’ feelings?  Why?  Isn’t it going to hurt a whole lot worse when they lose a job – if they get hired in the first place?  What on earth is going on here?

Good to be home: PRSA conference / Veterans Day

Got in last night from a wonderful week in San Diego at the PRSA International Conference, feeling saturated with new information, new friends, reunions with old friends, and thoughts about my last conference as a sitting member of the board of directors.  I rotate off the board in December, and have to say that it’s been one of the best experiences I’ve had in my professional life.  Those who have given even a brief moment’s thought toward taking on a national leadership role in PRSA – do it.  You’ won’t regret it.

I’ll write more about the conference later, no doubt – but for now, my mind and heart are with our veterans.  Some of you know I’ve worked for the past nine years with active-duty service members and veterans concerning the mandatory, yet still experimental, anthrax vaccine.  The web site I run in support of that is http://www.mvrd.org - the Military Vaccine Resource Directory.  I’m behind on updating it as usual, but will be working on it today.  What I really want to say, which still astonishes and amazes me, is that those veterans whom I know personally, who have suffered incredibly from the effects of the anthrax vaccine – everything from grand mal seizures to loss of testosterone; from tumors and cysts to years of severe bone and joint pain; from continual migraine headaches to uncontrollable hemorrhaging and loss of the ability to bear children; from short-term memory loss to extreme weakness and fatigue – to a person, they say that if they could somehow be well once again, and if the military would stop demanding they take experimental bioterror vaccines and pills, they would still go back and serve our country.

For a moment there I paused at the end of that sentence, and thought “I don’t know that anything more needs to be said about the quality and devotion of our veterans.”

But something more does need saying.  These men and women, often medical-boarded out of the service with a too-low disability rating for what they have gone through, have had to wait up to two years and more to be seen by the VA.  In the meantime, they have to pay their own medical bills – if they can; if they don’t have to sell their cars in order to do so; if they don’t have to sell their homes in order to do so; if the can still somehow hold down a job, though many can’t; if their marriages can survive under the strain, though many don’t. 

When you see a veteran out on the street in your town, think about this.  He or she may not have been able to get proper medical care in time, and his or her once-familiar world fell apart, one piece at a time.  This is how we treat our veterans when they come home, when they become ill from a service-related action.  They’ve done their jobs; now they are disposable to us. 

Outrageous barely begins to cover it.  Don’t run around with a magnetic yellow ribbon on your car.  Run, don’t walk, to your nearest veterans center or VA hospital, and ask what is needed.  You’ll gain far more than you give.

Thanks, veterans; thanks volunteers.  I hear from the DoD that there are huge efforts at work to enable a 120-day handoff between the active-duty medical system and the VA; that is still too long, but is certainly better than the years veterans have to wait now.  We need – we need desperately – to deal with the consequences of war.

In praise of silence

This Newsweek article titled “The Devil Loves Cell Phones” – http://www.newsweek.com/id/219010 - by Julia Baird addresses something that’s peeved me for a long time: the constant noise in our society.  This is a beautifully written article, and makes the point in an almost lyrical fashion that when we eliminate silence from our lives, we are the poorer for it – emotionally, physically and intellectually.  We need spaces of silence the same way your eye needs some white space on this page.  We don’t need to be stimulated and entertained every minute of the day.

Baird’s writings remind me of when my dog, Bear, first came to live with me over six years ago.  He was a three-month-old puppy at the time, a gift from my daughter that Mother’s Day, and he’d been a pound puppy.  During those first weeks when I would turn on the evening news, you could tell the TV disturbed him a lot; he would whine and cry each night when the TV came on.  To this day when I have TV on in the evenings he goes into another room or lies on the deck outside until it’s time to shut everything down and go to bed.

Bear’s hearing is acute, and always has been – I’m sure that’s one reason the television makes him so uncomfortable.  But he’s also reacting to something that his physical system was never wired for in the first place: the overlay of noise, and lots of high-frequency noise at that, in his daily life.  It’s the same overlay we get as human beings, when we cannot go grocery shopping without music blaring throughout the store; cannot go to a doctor’s office without “musak” playing in the background; cannot even swim at the health club without music coming from the loudspeakers.  We treat silence as if it were a deadly poison.

We don’t have enough white space, enough silence, in our daily lives: enough space and time for reflective thinking, to gain the perspectives we need; enough space and time to adequately think through the problems that challenge us both personally and professionally; enough space and time to cultivate relationships the way they should be cultivated.

I read another article yesterday from somewhere that the most popular “Tweeters” out there – those with thousands upon thousands of followers – tweet as many as 50 times a day.   There isn’t time for reflective, serious thinking there, either – must less for their followers who read all those tweets.  We cannot absorb hundreds and thousands of messages a day and make sense of it.  We are overloaded.  We need some silence.

I’m lucky – I work out of my home.  I can control the amount of noise in my immediate environment, and of course Bear is delighted when I do.  I’ve wondered lately if this isn’t the way the balance used to be – that we lived quieter lives, and went to social and entertainment events on the weekends in order to break through our own daily lives and enjoy some time with others.  It seems to me, at least given the amount of traffic here in the Portland Metro Area, that most people live their daily lives in cluttered, noisy work environments, and go home on the weekends to get some peace and quiet – if they are so lucky to have that in their own homes. 

Is this not a little backwards?  Wouldn’t we all be more productive if we had silent spaces in our work lives – those wonderfully regenerative spaces where our creative minds could do their best work?  – those still moments where the answer which may have been drowned out with distractions before suddenly becomes apparent?   Wouldn’t it be better and more productive if, when we came home on the weekends, we’d had just the right amount of silence and white space in our lives that there was energy left over for being with people just to be with them?

I’d rather have the base-line of my working life be anchored in a kind of silence that encourages intelligent thinking and discussion, rather than have it be anchored in noise, over-stimulation, distractions and constant rush.  I’d like to enter public spaces – stores, medical offices, health clubs, malls and elevators – without being bombarded with constant noise disguised as music.   I know that’s asking a lot, and most people will never have that luxury.  But I think we’re far the poorer for it.

Our uninformed public dialogue

Last Saturday, Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts wrote an article entitled “Get Ready for Conservative Bible” – http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/columnists/story/1287092.html.  The column appeared in this morning’s Oregonian, my daily newspaper.  Pitts makes a more universal point in talking about the fact that the Conservapedia web site is “correcting” the Bible according to conservative principles and interpretations.  That point is this: we are becoming a society where we only have to listen to, or read, information with which we agree.  Here’s how Pitts puts it in his column: 

“Rather than trust those beliefs to stand or fall in the free market of ideas, some conservatives now apply a kind of intellectual protectionism. So now you have your conservative newspaper, your conservative radio station, your conservative university, your conservative “facts” and, apparently, your conservative God, and you may build yourself a conservative life in a conservative bubble where you need never contend with ideas that challenge, contradict — or refine — your own.

“But here’s the thing: When no authority can be regarded as unimpeachable by both right and left, when no fact can be universally accepted as such, when anything you prefer not to believe is automatically dismissed as a product of “bias,” you impoverish intellect and render informed debate impossible.”

Those of us engaged in tracking new media and teaching it; those of us engaged in public communication of any type, whether making a living or just following trends, have been worried about this for a long time.  No, not worried about conservatives taking over the universe; worried about the larger point of how people are tuning out information, opinions and dialogue with which they disagree.  Complicating the issue is that it had become increasingly difficult to sort out truth from opinion from entertainment.  Witness the mainstream media last week, falling for the story of a complete 180-degree turn by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on its position regarding climate change:  http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/climate-change/whoops-reuters-acknowledges-that-hoax-story-on-climate-change-could-have-moved-financial-markets/ 

News moves at warp speed anymore, and in trying to keep up, much of which passes for news is just not credible stuff.  How do we educate our young people to have discerning minds without turning them into complete cynics?  How do we once again grow a country which is intellectually rigorous and willing to consider different information which may actually change our minds?  These are questions we’ll be having to answer for a long time in the future.

Career at a Crossroads: Managing your Career in a Recession

MARYLHURST UNIVERSITY

17600 PACIFIC HIGHWAY (HWY. 43) MARYLHURST, OREGON

Career at a Crossroads –

Managing Your Communications Career in a Recession

6:30-9:00 pm Wednesday, October 14^th:  Flavia Hall Parlor,

Marylhurst University 

Free and open to the public; RSVP requested at www.marylhurst.edu/homecoming 

 

Released Oct.1, 2009

The Communication Department at Marylhurst University and the Portland Metro Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) are co-sponsoring a free workshop for anyone working in, or interested in, a communications career from 6:30-9:00 pm Wednesday, Oct. 14, in the Flavia Hall Parlor at Marylhurst University, 17600 Pacific Hwy, Marylhurst, OR. Titled “Career at a Crossroads: Managing your Career in a Recession,” the evening will being with a wine and cheese reception from 6:30-7:00 pm. 

From 7-8:15 pm, participants will hear a panel discussion with experienced communications professionals from the Portland metro area; the list follows.  Panelists will discuss their career fields and what the job market looks like right now; what they look for in new hires; how someone can prepare for a communications career in their field or industry; and whether skills and knowledge from their field might transfer into a related field.

Following the panel discussion will be roundtable guided discussions.  Throughout the evening suggested tips, tools and techniques for strengthening one’s own position in the marketplace will be offered and discussed.

The evening will wrap up with an overview of a subsequent five-week seminar at Marylhurst offered for classroom credit, which goes into the issues of re-engineering one’s career at a much deeper level.  Finally, for those who interested, a discussion from 9:00-9:30 pm will focus on what it takes to be a free-lancer or entrepreneur.  People can stay to ask further questions at that time.

 

Panelists: 

• Dianne Danowski Smith, APR: Vice-President Publix Northwest Public Relations/Public Affairs
• Gail Dundas, APR: Senior Communications Manager, Intel Global Communications Group
• Benjamin Tomkins: Media Consultant and Journalist
• Amy Gaskill, APR: Public Affairs Specialist, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
• Bill Johnstone: President/CEO, Oregon Association of Broadcasters
• Tom Unger, APR, ABC; Vice President, Regional Manager, Corporate Communications; Wells Fargo & Company

 

Panel moderator:

• Kathryn Hubbell, APR, Fellow PRSA: Owner, AdScripts, Inc.; Adjunct Professor in Public Relations, Marylhurst University

 

For more information contact Kathy Hubbell at 503-669-8100 or Kathy@adscripts.com, or

Communications Department Chair Jeff Sweeney at Marylhurst University at 503-699-6269

From the beach at Yachats

The last few weeks seem to have been filled with a tumult of activity and voices and Yachats beckoned once again.  Here on the Central Oregon Coast, life is quieter and slower; Yachats is one of the most undeveloped parts of the coast (the amazing restaurants here not withstanding), and the minute I am within view of the ocean, I start relaxing.

Each time I am here, the hours for quiet reflection and thought bring me to a deeper understanding of whatever has been driving me just before I came.  Today, walking on the beach with Bear as the tide receded, I realized that I feel greatly privileged to be teaching, and I feel greatly privileged to still work with veterans who are sick from the anthrax vaccine. 

The teaching end of the deal was something I decided just about six years ago, when I made up my mind to go back to school and get a Master’s degree so that I could make the career switch.  I feel lucky that I was able to tell Mom about the decision in August of that year, just two months before she passed away. I wasn’t totally sure what I would do yet, only that I wanted to go back on the ship (www.semesteratsea.org) and that I wanted to go back to school with the goal of teaching in mind.  She was thrilled about both ideas.  I did go back on the ship, briefly, for an alumni reunion cruise to the Bahamas a few years ago.  Archbishop Desmond Tutu was on board, and that alone made the trip an incredible experience.  But I also found out that, contrary to my experiences at 19 on my first voyage, by now it was entirely possible for me to get seasick.  Our first night out at sea after leaving Fort Lauderdale was “a wild and stormy night,” and the ship was tossed around pretty strongly.  I had to leave a meeting in the student union and go outside for some air, and got very little sleep.  I’m not sure that a four-month semester at sea is any longer in my best interest, though I’m certainly going to look at some of the shorter educational voyages that are held every year.

Back to teaching: I’m enjoying it three times more than I ever anticipated.  I love the interaction with students, even though it’s primarily online.  I love the thoughts and creativity that come my way across the keyboard.  I love our live chats, and the SKYPE calls.  I’m working on putting a video component into our online classes, but that might have to evolve a little bit more.  Nevertheless, teaching is an enormous pleasure and privilege.

Working with veterans and active-duty service members – something I’ve done for over nine years now – is also a wonderful privilege.  I spent the early years not knowing how to handle things emotionally; the knowledge that our government has conducted more than one medical experiment on the troops over the years, usually without their knowledge, is appalling and tragic.  I could not believe this was my country.  But I’m also an advocate of changing a country from within, not throwing up my hands and walking off.  The anthrax vaccine was then, and is now, an unproven, dangerous drug.  Just ask the FDA where the peer-reviewed, published research studies are; they only exist for the original cutaneous anthrax vaccine, not for the re-configured vaccine that is supposed to protect against inhalational, or aerosolized, anthrax.  The years of bungling, sheer stupidity, greed and blatant attempts to save face are documented on the web site I run, www.mvrd.org- the Military Vaccine Resource Directory.  The vaccines are on my mind because while I was walking on the beach this morning, I called a vet in Michigan who wrote to me last weekend detailing his massive problems since being forced to take the anthrax vaccine, in one e-mail writing, “PLEASE HELP ME.”  The phone call this morning was the third for fourth time we’ve been in touch this week. He won’t need me constantly; I have a network of people whom I can contact who can and will reach out to help him.  It’s a good, close, caring community, but it’s a tragic one.  It’s a community that should never have to exist.

While I’m on the beach, these thoughts are in my head, but they aren’t swirling and noisy as they so often are at home.  They go deeper and quieter.  The sound of the ocean is a steady rhythm against life here; and the beach reflects the entire cycle of life and death and the tides that bring both.  I think often of Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s “Gifts from the Sea,” and know what she meant.  Here – for someone who has spent a lifetime dealing with what it takes to establish those “mutually beneficial relationships” between a business or organization and its publics; who has studied and worked in public relations since 1980 – here my relationship with myself and the world around me settles into something peaceful and quiet.  Here I understand a lot more about the ties that bind.

Check your facts!

I’m on the same rant: I can’t stand it that our public discourse has turned rude, ugly and cynical.  I watched all of President Obama’s health care speech tonight, and was as stunned as a lot of people were when Joe Wilson of South Carolina shouted out ‘You lie!” when the President said the proposed health care bill would not fund illegal aliens.  Folks, CNN.com does a pretty decent job of fact checking, and they’s run down a list of facts they checked from the speech here:  http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/category/health-care-fact-check/  What’s the verdict on the illegal alien bit?  “A new report finds bill could require illegal immigrants to buy coverage, but it clearly restricts subsidies to U.S. citizens and legal residents.”

Have we stopped teaching high school civics and government classes?  Have we not taught our young people how to check the facts before they open their mouths?

This is not a minor issue. For those of us in public relations, accurate research and fact-checking form the core of our credibility as professional communicators.  We have to know how to find out the truth and the facts (they are not synonyms) and we have to know how to communicate both the truth and the facts.  We try to anticipate how people might respond by knowing the people who are going to be receiving those messages; we try to get people engaged in the issue or concern at hand, because communication without action is merely information dissemination.

But we now live in a world where people choose what they want to believe with seemingly complete disregard for the facts and no compulsion at all to have respect for an elected government – a government at many levels which, they are probably loathe to admit, provides for paved roads, public schools, fire and police protection, and, oh yeah, provides social safety nets for the poor, the disabled and the unemployed.  Yeah, none of  it is perfect; the health care system in this country needs work and so do a lot of our social services.  Our veterans, for God’s sake – those men and women who put their lives on the line in the service of our country – too often wait years for adequate medical care, and go bankrupt and homeless in the meantime.  Our veterans – to whom we owe so much – are treated as disposable toy soldiers once they get home.  There’s a lot in this country that needs fixing.

So take your anger and your cynicism and channel it into helping these changes take place.  Don’t like what’s going on?  Get involved.  Knock off the ignorance, knock off the anger, knock off the insults and trash talk and do something positive with all that energy.  And if you don’t want to get involved, then quitcherbitchin’.  We need strong people and intelligent people and people willing to check the facts.    Anyone can protest; to make a difference, help create solutions.