Less is More?

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This advert would be great if there was less "less."

Does bad grammar darken your day when you hear it on TV?

This ad for L’Oréal Youth Code, a skin-care product, makes me see spots whenever it’s aired.

My first reaction was to the choice of “less” instead of “fewer.” However, the more I listened to it, the greater my suspicion grew that perhaps the writers chose “less” deliberately to confuse viewers as to the actual benefits of the product.

Are users seeing “fewer dark spots” (presumably the end result desired by consumers) or are the spots merely “less dark” and thus still hanging around?

Here’s the clip. What do you think?


By the way, here’s what Grammar Girl, who always says “No” to bad usage, suggests regarding “less” versus “fewer.”

Engaging Audiences with Storytelling

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Running rings around Saturn. The Cassini mission explored the rings and moons of the gas giant.

Last week, I had the extraordinary opportunity to get a behind-the-scenes tour of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., and hear from two of JPL’s master storytellers about engaging audiences’ imagination through the wondrous possibilities of space exploration.

My inner science nerd spent the whole time doing cartwheels while the professional me took lots of photos and some notes to share with you.

The organizers – the Los Angeles chapter of IABC – made the excellent choice to include both external and internal storytelling on the agenda, which opened up the topic and the perspectives in a big way.

Our speakers were Stephen Kulczycki, deputy director of communications and education at JPL, and Teresa Bailey, information science specialist and the JPL FIOA liaison in the Library, Archives and Records section.

Connecting with Hearts, Not Just Minds – Storytelling to External Audiences

Just as you’d imagine, we needed to submit our names to JPL several days prior to the event and there were security checkpoints throughout the Pasadena campus, which has more acreage than Disneyland.

The next Mars rover (landing Aug. 5, 2012) is Curiosity, and it's the biggest machine in space. Curiosity reminds me a bit of WALL-E!

Still, there’s a large public-facing component to this organization, including a visitor’s center housing a museum on the history of space exploration. Thousands of students come through each year, learn and discover, and are treated to a number of communications designed specifically to encourage their sense of wonder about “amazing places,” as Stephen Kulczycki says.

His office produces short films about JPL’s work that have the quality of Hollywood trailers with quick cuts, dramatic orchestral music, and lively graphics. The scientific language is pitched to “smart 8-year-olds,” which makes these mini-movies perfect as press releases, for the general public, for online platforms, and as footage in science programs, such as PBS’s “Nova.”

“Every good story takes a protagonist with a dream and a set of obstacles they need to overcome,” Kulczycki says. “We get the mechanics and explanations out of the way and get to the heart of what people feel.”

“We’re creating relationships here, person to person, house to house,” he adds.

JPL has one of the Apollo mission moon rocks. Note the giant padlock (back, left) securing this sample!

If you work in an organization with plenty of proprietary information to protect, it’s possible to give in to the restrictions on information-sharing and lose sight of how you can use communications to create those relationships. The JPL storytelling event demonstrated that even in a restricted environment, you can find innovative ways to engage, educate and enthrall your audiences.

One of the coolest ways JPL involves children is in the naming of spacecraft. Schools across the country are invited to submit names and, in the case of the latest moon orbiters (now christened “Ebb” and “Flow”), the winning school gets to take the first pictures of the moon. Brilliant!

We saw a video of the Skype transmission from the winning science classroom in Montana. All the kids were cheering while the teacher beamed and jumped up and down. The 8-year-old in me, who spent most of her Saturdays at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum, knew exactly how they felt. The communications professional recognized that one day, one of those students may grow up to become an astronaut, a spacecraft designer, an astrophysicist, or a politician who makes decisions about funding space exploration.

JPL uses communications and involvement to invest its audience. “The value we put on communication is the way it enables us to connect with the human soul and heart,” Kulczycki says. “We represent hope, otherwise we’d be machine-makers instead of dream-makers.”

Storytelling that Builds Community

Meanwhile, inside JPL, there’s been another kind of storytelling, and it’s been happening at the library for the last dozen years.

“Community-building is a common thing for libraries to be involved in,” notes Teresa Bailey, who developed monthly (now every other month) hour-long speaker programs after “puzzling over how to incorporate storytelling without making it sound like something happening at a children’s library.”

"Ground Control to Major Tom." This is mission control at JPL, where they monitor all the data sent back from spacecraft studying the moon, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and beyond.

But, she had a strong belief that the best way to transfer knowledge is face-to-face and launched the storyteller program in 2000. Bailey helped connect and engage her internal audience by encouraging speakers to share personal stories with insider details – “what makes your work meaningful to you? Only you have walked in your shoes.”

Scientists can discuss research from the past, current projects, even their dreams for the future.

Bailey preps the storytellers in advance, allows more than one scientist to share the stage (because research generally involves large groups of scientists and engineers), encourages the use of visuals, and handles internal publicity. The stories are filmed and made available on the intranet, as well as through the library’s archives site.

Bailey sees storytelling contributing to a knowledge-sharing culture. Storytelling, she says, supports:

  • mentoring
  • socialization of new employees
  • building relationships and bonding
  • learning lessons from past or present projects
  • organizational identity
  • community

“It’s very contagious being here because there’s always something new,” she adds. Storytelling spreads that “contagion,” enabling employees to learn, ask questions, get involved, be inspired, and reach for the stars.

Many thanks to our gracious hosts, speakers and tour guides at NASA JPL. You can check out the stunning videos and learn more on the JPL website.

Writing that inspired me this week:

“Space. The final frontier.”
~ Gene Roddenberry, “Star Trek”

Employees on Social Media: Have Fun Storming the Castle

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The following is a true story. Could this still happen in the age of social media? If your company wants to remain competitive, let’s hope not.

Once upon a time, a company was struggling to regain market share. After trouncing all comers for a decade, it lost its punch as new competitors and more exciting products entered the ring.

The entire company was reorganized to focus on marketing. Despite decades of award-winning work, the old advertising agency was let go. A hip new one was hired. Product lines were brought somewhat up to date, but they didn’t function as well as the market leaders. Consequently, they received poor reviews from press and consumers alike.

And what of employees inside the hallowed halls of this once-great company?

The daily grind was pretty grim. Employees coped as best they could with successive reorgs, changes in leadership, mission rewrites, OPEX reductions, and the launch of one new initiative after another. It was hard to generate excitement when every move the company made seemed to lead to a new round of layoffs.

But try they did. At employee meetings, they sat politely as marketing unveiled the latest products and plans. When asked for input, they gave it. Intelligently, clearly, poignantly. They wanted this stuff to work its magic and they were fully invested in its success. But, because they were closest to the front lines (manufacturing, quality, sales, customer service), they also knew it wouldn’t and, like the little boy in The Emperor’s New Clothes, they felt obliged to tell the truth before the company threw good money after bad.

What did they get in return?

They were told repeatedly that they didn’t understand all this newfangled marketing because they weren’t the right demographic. They didn’t like the new products because they weren’t the ones who were going to buy and use them.

And the “right demographic”? What did they think of the new products and marketing? They turned away in droves.

Was there a Happily Ever After for this company? Sadly, no. Remember, this is a true story, not a fairy tale.

The only thing that kept this saga from getting any worse was the fact that it took place in the days before social media. Imagine if employees – treated like that – had access to Twitter, Facebook and blogs!

What’s the moral of this story?

Dismissiveness discourages engagement (and encourages mutiny)
What exactly are employees supposed to do with insults, such as, “You don’t understand because you’re not the right demographic?” (A lot of them might think about taking their revenge on Twitter or Facebook or in industry forums.)

Effective marketing is all about relationships. Launching a campaign calls for engaging key stakeholders to help build enthusiasm. It starts inside a company before the very first ad airs on TV or the first tweet goes out. If a company can’t build solid, positive relationships with its own employees – natural allies because they share the same goals – how can it expect to create them in the world, where people are far more suspicious of brand messaging?

And if morale is bad inside a company, it’s only a matter of time before that negativity seeps into the social world where it influences key audiences and customers.

Employees aren’t the “right demographic,” they’re the “first demographic”
Engagement must start inside the gates with internal audiences because they are a company’s ambassadors during good times and bad.

“Your people are your best assets,” notes Christopher Barger in The Social Media Strategist. “In an environment in which trust is a key currency, it is your people and their personalities that will sell an audience on your brand as much as your product.”

In this age of social sharing, even with limited or no budget, a company can still create word of mouth around its products if its social media strategy includes having employees use their expertise and enthusiasm to engage customers.

This is doubly true in a crisis, when employee goodwill is shared in social circles, reinforcing official communications. Effective crisis communication is no longer simply about “putting a coin in the good karma bank in case you need to make a withdrawal,” as crisis experts used to describe it.

Companies that value employees and empower them to engage with audiences in social channels on a regular basis have a host of vocal advocates ready to put their influence to work on behalf of the brand’s reputation when barbarians are at the gate.

It’s important to understand how employees relate (and are related to) your customers
Think about a company that makes toys for toddlers. The employees probably range in age from early-20s to early-70s. Clearly, they are not the target user of the toys they manufacture.

But, do none of these folks have children? Grandchildren? How about parents who buy toys for grandchildren? And cousins and aunts and uncles and friends and professional colleagues they meet at industry conferences, etc., etc., etc.

Of course, employees are customers. And, if they’re not direct consumers, they encounter customers in all walks of life and have the potential to be ambassadors for the brand and influence purchase across networks of family, friends and professional associates.

Companies don’t own their “story” any more
Companies no longer control messaging about their brands, leaders or dirty laundry in social channels. (Just ask Yahoo!)

Sure, companies can restrict access to social platforms on the corporate network and create HR policies that forbid mentioning the company in social channels after work. But brands that want to excel take a different tack.

Christopher Barger recommends “teaching the organization to fish”: “Not every organization or company will empower all of its employees to engage in social networks. All the same, it’s a good idea to build a social media education program for all employees anyway.”

Barger’s approach enables employees to learn everything – from social media platforms to publishing tools and company policy. It also gives employees insight into how the company – both marketing and corporate – shares messages and builds relationships in social circles.

This kind of immersion in social media best practices, based on teaching and trust, goes a long way to building a strong base of employee ambassadors who understand the vision and strategy and are well-versed at engaging with the audiences companies most want to reach.

Companies don’t always know how to build a better mousetrap
“Great leaders…know that if they come up with all the answers, the chances of having anyone else buy into the solution are next to zero,” write Andrew Sobel and Jerold Panas in Power Questions. “But if their employees come up with the answer – if they feel ownership of it – there is a good chance it will bear fruit.”

Many social media experts predict that smart companies will create iterative processes that allow feedback from social media fans and followers to inform the design of better and new products. Both consumers and employees are in prime positions to contribute expertise in this scenario.

Some companies are already doing this. So, when an employee figures out a whole new way to use a product, simplify consumers’ lives, solve a problem, streamline a service, or just make customers happier, give that employee a blog. Why restrict access to social media? Heck, let them share their personal story with as many people as possible, and watch how customers get engaged.

Now that gives employees and customers something to tweet about!

Do you have examples of companies that encourage employees to use social media channels? I’d love to hear about them in the Comments.

It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s Super Moon!

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If you looked up in the sky last night, you’d have spotted “super moon” – so named for the serendipitous occurrence of a full moon on the night the satellite passes closest to Earth in its orbit. Wikipedia says the official name for this is the “perigee-syzygy of the Earth-Moon-Sun system,” which sounds like something one of the guys on “Big Bang Theory” would say.

This photographer gets an “A” for effort (bringing back a photo of the moon on the rise) and an “A” for science, but the grammar miss? Wider than a mile.

There's some bad grammar on the rise. (Click image to enlarge.)

Remembering the Mills College Coed Strike

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From Los Angeles Times coverage of the Mills strike.

On May 3, 1990, Mills, a small women’s-only liberal arts college in northern California, decided to go coed and, much to the delight of media outlets and pundits, the students struck back and shut down the school for the rest of the semester. The events of those two weeks swept Mills and Mills women onto front pages and TV talk shows around the world.

When women’s issues make headlines, the coverage often wallows in the language of gossip and crisis. Its function, as Susan Faludi points out in Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, is to focus the reader not on the “actual conditions of women’s lives,” but on “a closed system that starts and ends in the media, popular culture, and advertising – an endless feedback loop that perpetuates and exaggerates its own false images of womanhood.”

When you are the public face of an organization dedicated to women, how do you avoid getting caught in that feedback loop? Is it possible, in a world where TV talk show hosts dismiss proponents of women’s equality by calling them “femi-Nazis,” to receive fair coverage?

Journalist Linda Ellerbee calls feminism “the new F-word,” an appellation so contentious that even women who’ve risen to the top of their professions feel they must assure the writers of magazine profiles that, No, they most certainly are not feminists.

Not that anyone, reporters included, can tell you what the F-word means exactly. Back in 1913, Rebecca West wrote, “I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.”

Two decades ago, the students of Mills College in Oakland, Calif., were blocking access to campus administration buildings, behaving like anything but doormats. They were protesting the board of trustees’ decision to make the all-women’s college coed. I was one of two spokeswomen responsible for explaining to the world’s media why they opposed the admission of men.

When the coed announcement was made to the Mills community, scores of students were filmed and photographed sobbing. Although many couldn’t understand why Mills women were crying, the reaction managed to pigeonhole them into one of the typical roles allowed to women in news stories. They were the perfect victims.

“We Will Not Accept This” – The Students Take Over

Syndicated cartoon.

It took only a few hours for students to move into strike mode and effectively shut down the college. But, when the students threw off the victim mantle and took a stand on keeping Mills for women only, the headlines, letters to the editor, opinion pieces, and cartoons turned absurd and nasty. Amongst the condescension there was a strong undercurrent of anger. A few even suggested the students should be punished.

“When is the administration going to bring in the police to remove students?,” we were asked hourly. With students sitting around studying for finals in doorways, there wasn’t much juicy “Film at 11” footage. The news media resorted to rerunning the scene of crying “victims.”

In this uncomfortable climate – with some reporters panting for a confrontation between students and police – you’d think it would have been impossible to come off sounding rational in news reports while discussing the benefits women’s colleges offer female students.

How did we handle it? From the moment we heard the first mention of “coeducation” as one of four possible strategic directions for the future of Mills College, we knew that only a proactive approach would allow the Mills message to be heard.

Our first press release went out more than eight months before the trustee decision. We spent whole days talking with reporters who arrived on campus (some with fairly sensationalistic preconceptions), spoke with students and professors, and left with a greater understanding of women’s colleges.

In an educational environment, we set out to teach about the many studies which show that coed colleges offer women fewer chances to become leaders in and out of the classroom and why, given that research, Mills would consider the possibility of admitting men. During the months before the decision, we were repeatedly rewarded with intelligent media analyses of the coed debate.

Even in the midst of the two-week protest, persistence, patience and the educational approach tamed the most objectionable inquiries.

Did it work?

The pre-work we’d done ensured reasoned stories from reporters who’d met students, faculty and trustees before the decision. They discussed why women’s-only education was important to defend. It was the reporters – and editorial cartoonists back at the paper – who dipped in to the story after the tears who didn’t always offer balanced coverage.

But, some journalists even reexamined the students’ tearful outburst on May 3. By May 18, Richard Price was writing in USA Today: “Shannon McMackin has a message for the world. She’s crying no more. McMackin was caught weeping on camera after Mills trustees voted to accept male students. ‘I couldn’t stand it if we were remembered as just a bunch of hysterical crying women,’ she says. ‘When we were done crying, we went out and did something about it.’”

What they accomplished – overturning the coed decision – has never been done before in the history of U.S. education. It caused women’s colleges that were thinking about coeducation to re-evaluate, strengthening their resolve to continue to offer a curriculum for women only.

From Washington Post coverage.

After the Mills revolution, other stories, such as the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, received wall-to-wall coverage. In the years following the strike, I noticed more women giving testimony in the news media about the empowerment they’ve received because of the fight for women’s equality. In fact, if you’re a woman, and you’ve ever told someone you feel “empowered,” you probably have Mills women to thank for that particular vocabulary choice. For two solid weeks, empowerment was at the heart of the students’ messaging to the world and, with all that media attention, “empowerment” did the 1990s’ equivalent of going viral. Nike even created an ad campaign aimed squarely at women, all about empowerment (and sneakers).

This is not to say that 777 Mills students are entirely responsible for the resurgence of feminism and the support of equality and empowerment, but there’s no denying they were out there at the forefront, pushing women’s issues back into the public arena at a time when most politicians, reporters and even feminists were trying to sweep them under the doormat.

Is Privacy Still a Choice?

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It happened in the middle of a Liz Phair concert. One moment I was dancing with friends and singing along to songs I’ve known by heart since “Exile in Guyville” came out in 1993. The next I was in turmoil.

Phair asked for a volunteer to join her onstage at the Troubador to sing “Flower.” Hands shot into the air, begging to be the chosen one. My friend turned to me and said, “You should do it!”

“Absolutely not,” I responded.

“Flower,” for those not familiar with “Guyville” or Liz Phair’s oeuvre, is an explicit song about a sexual act. This frankness is a hallmark of Phair’s early albums and, as an artist, it’s her choice to create a stage persona who shares supposedly intimate details. As a public figure, presumably she understands that singing about certain subjects is going to bring her both adulation and unsavory attention from fans. But, what of the average concertgoer, plucked from the audience? Is she given a choice?

Phair selected a young women in her mid-twenties. Let’s call her Jennie. Jennie’s friends giggled and cheered as she made her way to the stage and Phair whispered encouragement in her ear, showed her to the mic, and counted out the beat.

As the last lines of the chorus echoed around the venue, Jennie thrilled to the applause and her moment in the spotlight. When she rejoined her friends in the crowd, the first thing one of them said was, “I got the whole thing on video.”

And that’s when I grew terribly worried for Jennie. Because while her friends might have her best interests at heart and agree not to post the video to Facebook or YouTube, there were, of course, dozens upon dozens of recordings of Jennie, all taken by strangers.

If even one of them doesn’t have scruples about invading Jennie’s privacy, then she may have to live with a video of herself singing a salacious song, out there where everyone and anyone can see it, for the rest of her life. Who knows? Someone might recognize her and tag the video with her name, or perhaps her friends already have on their Facebook pages.

When she’s 27 and applying for a job. When she’s 32 and needs clearance to do research. If she wants to run for office some day. When she meets the man of her dreams. If her parents Google her. Because of one innocent and spontaneous moment in a club, she’s going to have to face the questions and consequences (like not getting a job) that stem from those four minutes of fame.

Okay, maybe this doesn’t happen to Jennie. But, if you visit popular social sites, it’s obvious that inviting audience members onstage to sing this song is a regular part of Phair’s repertoire. There are plenty of other Jennies online, dueting on “Flower” for eternity.

(This is not about Liz Phair, mind you. Obviously, I’m a fan or I wouldn’t have been there that night. What this is about is claiming privacy that we all have a right to.)

Perhaps these women posted those videos themselves, but I worry that they may never have had a choice about keeping this moment private. Moments that, when I was 23 and attending concerts dressed in safety pins, dog collars, ripped T-shirts and studded bracelets with purple hair, I never had to spend a second worrying if someone was going to video me and my friends. Think of all the crazy, fun, messed up, spontaneous things you did before the days of smartphones. In retrospect, how many of those times would you revisit if someone pressed Record and turned a camera on you?

There are so many benefits to the transparency and connection of digital and social media, along with the simplicity of online publishing: making library resources available to people who couldn’t otherwise access them, opening up the practices and processes of government, helping people find and reconnect with family during a disaster. It’s hard sometimes to see the downside.

Choose Privacy Week, which takes place from May 1 – 7, isn’t a bunch of Debbie Downers wagging their fingers at Facebook. Rather it’s about creating a conversation about privacy – and what it actually means – in the digital age as the boundary between public and private morphs and becomes more permeable.

The goal is to give people, especially young people, resources to make informed choices about how they use digital/social media and where they might want to draw the curtain.

There’s a fascinating Choose Privacy video featuring authors Neil Gaiman and Cory Doctorow, Camila Alire, past president of the American Library Association, and other librarians, as well as children and parents. It explores the practical approaches that families are taking to protect personal privacy and looks at the efforts of libraries to protect intellectual freedom. As one librarian notes, only you should be trusted with your information.

The privacyrevolution.org website offers more information, a video gallery and links to resources, events, position papers and surveys related to Choose Privacy Week.

I still worry about Jennie. But, it’s nice to know there are organizations out there, including the American Library Association, dedicated to keeping the discussion going about digital privacy and helping everyone who uses these platforms to educate themselves about the issues involved. To paraphrase one of the speakers in the Choose Privacy video, it’s indifference to privacy that makes you vulnerable.

Writing that inspired me this week:

Moss: “My mum’s on Friendface! My mum! I’ve opened up another channel of communication with my mum.”
Jen: “Isn’t that good?”
Moss: “No, it is not good. She’s put down her current mood as ‘sensual.’”

~ “Friendface” episode of the British TV series “The IT Crowd”

What is Children’s Book Day?

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Today is El Día de los Niños/El Día de los Libros, a day for sharing the joys of reading with children across cultures.

This celebration day was created by children’s author Pat Mora with founding partner Reforma, the National Association to Promote Library and Information Services to Latinos and the Spanish Speaking. In recent years, the American Library Association and the Association for Library Services to Children have joined in to offer events, services and resources to support the founding goals: “Many Children, Many Cultures, Many Books.”

There are wonderful resources on the Día website for parents, children, teachers and librarians. (This website is in English.) There is a brochure (in English, Spanish and Chinese) recommending books for children from cultures around the world, which includes learn-to-read tips and other resources. Under the Celebramos tab, you’ll also find an interactive map to help you locate El Día de los Niños/Libros events in your area.

Reading Lessons

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I’d been happily wending my way through books week after week as part of a personal year-long reading challenge, when April arrived and brought a few surprises along with its traditional showers.

April was National Poetry Month, and to celebrate and fill in a (gawping) hole in my experience, I read an entire book of poetry. This was also the first time in a very long time (at least since college) that I devoured a book in one sitting (actually, I’m lying – I was prone).

Nothing wrong with either of these events except that I was so curious about the collection of Mick Imlah poems and so thrilled to read Jeanette Winterson’s memoir after hearing her talk about how reading led to her life as a writer that, the moment these two books arrived in the mail, I set aside my “assigned” weekly reading and plunged headfirst into my new acquisitions. And it took a while before I could get back into the frame of mind to pick up The Stolen Child again – this was the book I’d stolen time from to devote to the others.

It occurred to me that I own quite a few books with tongues hanging out of their pages, some marked a quarter of the way through, some half. The reason is that I lost steam, or my mood changed, or I developed fervor for a different book and just had to read it now, as I did with Imlah and Winterson.

It also struck me that while “assigned reading” – reading one book until it’s done, then picking up the next selection in an orderly fashion – seems almost too structured for free time or pleasure, there’s still value in the discipline. Up until April, it certainly kept me on track for this goal I’m hoping to achieve. I didn’t blow it, but I could’ve, and I recognize how I’ve fallen off course with other books before. So, just for this year, I’m going to try to read sequentially instead of the anything-that-strikes-my-fancy and everything-at-once approaches I usually take, and see where it gets me.

How about you? Do you organize your pleasure reading in any way?

SCORECARD

April
5 down, 33 to go!

REVIEWS

Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson
This is the book I finished in one go. It arrived during a rare rainstorm in Los Angeles, the perfect evening to curl up with a great book while the heat radiated through a cozy room and the rain pitter-pattered on the roof.

If you’ve seen a review of Winterson’s memoir or read her first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, you’re familiar with the outline of this story: Winterson was an infant when she was adopted by an evangelist couple. They lived hardscrabble in northern England, spent summers proselytizing, no books but the Bible allowed in the house.

I, too, was adopted within weeks of birth and about a year after Winterson was. Obviously, I grew up with a love of books – fully aided and abetted by my adoptive parents, who adored reading – and so this story was enthralling in its own sad and scary way.

Winterson had at least three coming-out episodes with her mother, a woman with no joy in her life, who took her religion far more literally than Winterson’s father appeared to. The first battle was over young Jeanette’s love of books and reading, the second was caused by her break with the church, and the third, which created a final, unrecoverable rift, over her mother’s refusal to accept Winterson’s love for other women.

She left home at 16, lived out of her car, and, despite years of struggle at school, became an autodidact, reading her way through the library’s fiction section from A – Z.

“I had no one to help me, but the T.S. Eliot helped me,” Winterson writes. “A tough life needs a tough language – and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers – a language powerful enough to say how it is. It isn’t a hiding place. It is a finding place.”

The memoir examines these early years, up to Winterson’s arrival at Oxford, with an unexpected fair-mindedness. There is then an intermission of 25 years – a wise choice to skip the details, well-travelled by book reviews and profiles, of Winterson’s successful career as an author – with the story picking up again as she suffers a dark night of the soul.

Part of recovery involves searching for her birth mother; the book describes how frustratingly difficult and bureaucratic the effort is, despite the loosening of Britain’s privacy laws regarding adoption records.

I won’t spoil the ending for you. This is a sharply observed life, told with powerful economy (coming in at 230 pages) and language that has the ability both to stagger and uplift. Much of the memoir focuses on the ability of books to nourish one’s strength (or soul, as Mrs. Winterson might have it), create us, help us define our beliefs and values, and make us whole again when those beliefs are shaken.

I’m lucky enough to live within the listening area of public radio station KCRW, which beams Michael Silverblatt’s “Bookworm” to the world. He recently interviewed Winterson about Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, and it was pure magic to listen to both of them talk about the transcendent nature of reading. (This is a 30-minute program.)

A Million Nightingales by Susan Straight
Straight has a remarkable facility for character voice. Through Moinette, 12 at the time the novel opens, she evokes the lives and experiences of slaves working the sugarcane plantations around New Orleans in the early 19th century.

The novel follows Moinette’s journey from Azure, where she was born to an enslaved mother and white father, to the troubled family that owns the de la Rosiere plantation, and, later, as she is sold to a young lawyer, Msieu Antoine, who has his own reasons for needing a beautiful young slave in his house. Moinette is only 18, and mother to a son by her former owner. She has been torn away from her fiercely protective mother, Tretite the cook, and all the other older women who looked after her and loses her son because Msieu Antoine cannot afford to buy them both.

“And now I was eighteen and had already collected memory people. Is that how the balance shifted for the rest of life, as Tretite has once tried to explain to me? She said you grew older and lived inside your memory, the things you saw and tasted and smelled in the past. My son hadn’t remembered me at all this time. Not until I said my name.”

This is Straight’s sixth novel and it weaves together historical fact (like the laws established by the Code Noir and the harsher treatment of both slaves and free people of color when Louisiana became an American territory) and wonderfully realized details of daily life, such as the way Spanish moss is boiled and dried to use as mattress stuffing and the ingredients that go into the laundry soaps that Moinette’s mother uses.

With the grace of a poet, Straight keeps the reader with Moinette through all the pain and suffering, the small acts of kindness and the fragility of existence along the rough edges of bayou.

Collected Poems by Mick Imlah
“His early death was an incalculable loss to poetry,” writes Alan Hollinghurst in the introduction to this collection, and one is left with an unexpected frisson, a curious combination of thrill and mourning after reading Imlah.

Hollinghurst, as I’ve mentioned before, is one of my favorite writers, and he dedicates his latest, The Stranger’s Child, (the plot of which revolves around a charismatic young poet, gone before his time) to Imlah. This led me to a remembrance by Hollinghurst in the English press and the desire to read at least one of the two books published during Imlah’s lifetime. It took a while, as neither Birthmarks nor The Lost Leader seem to be available in print. Selected Poems gathers examples from both with several unpublished poems.

I struggled with many of the later poems about Scotland, where Imlah makes detailed (and obscure, for the uninitiated reader) reference to ancient kings and battles. But elsewhere Imlah’s turns of phrase – “too burgled to speak,” “his eyes pin-clear, pleading” – helped me press on.

As Hollinghurst notes, “What dazzles and thrills throughout the thirty-year span of Imlah’s work is his inventiveness, the sense of a mind pondering and producing at any turn something wholly unexpected…”

You’ll encounter an evolutionist in his bathtub, short verses describing the counties of England, alcoholism compared to a birthmark, Quasimodo, Alfred Lord Tennyson, all those Scottish ballads, and two late poems for his children. Not your typical stuff of poetry, but all imaginatively handled, some in rhyme, others that read almost like newspaper reports or essays (with footnotes!).

Imlah was the poet I decided to read during National Poetry Month, and it’s a good thing because he’s put me in the mood for a quest (perhaps it was all those Scottish legends) for more, more, more.

The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue
While myths and certain aspects of science fiction intrigue me, fairy stories haven’t been a draw. So I approached this with trepidation and found a unique story that tackles the subject without being cloying or cutesy.

Donohue keeps the myths of stolen children part of the mystery – are the bands of changelings in the woods innocent fairies or hobgoblins and devils? Are the abducted children better off with the supernatural powers of changelings while a hobgoblin assumes human form and their rightful place in a family? Donohue explores all of these ideas, alternating chapters from the point of view of Henry Day, the stolen child, whom the changelings rename Aniday, and the sprite (a century-old abductee himself) who takes Henry’s place, finally allowed to grow to human adulthood, marry and have his own family.

The book is filled with longing and doubt on both sides, as the decades pass and the city spreads into the countryside, encroaching upon the woods, threatening the cyclical life of the changelings forever.

There are some fairly big slip-ups in the plot – a major discovery that happens twice, a big revelation that once out of the bag doesn’t make any sense, the changelings’ powers appear and disappear at the author’s convenience – and Donohue tends to tell us what characters are feeling rather than show us. The alternating-chapter structure means that the fairy story in the woods drags along with repetitive scenes in order to accommodate all the years it takes new-Henry to grow up. And the reader never really senses why Aniday, especially in the days and weeks after he’s first taken, remains with his captors rather than giving in to his homesickness.

However, Donohue does a good job of creating his own mythology of changelings and stolen children and there’s a good deal of tension between new-Henry and his parents, with the reader curious to find out just how much the Days know and whether or when they’ll act on their suspicions.

Optimize: How to Attract and Engage More Customers by Integrating SEO, Social Media, and Content Marketing by Lee Odden
I received a free review copy of this book from the publisher. My review, “SEO: It’s All about the Customer,” can be found on the Social Media Club website.

Listening that inspired me this week:

NPR’s “Pop Culture Happy Hour” podcast features a lovely discussion about books and reading challenges.

Poem in Your Pocket Day

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Today is “Poem in Your Pocket Day,” part of the celebration of National Poetry Month.

As the Academy of American Poets notes on its website, “The idea is simple: select a poem you love…then carry it with you to share with co-workers, family, and friends.”

Squeeze a verse or two onto Twitter with #pocketpoem and use the hashtag to search for and read others’ favorite poems.

The AAP site offers suggestions for those who are looking for a poem, as well as ideas for celebrating Poem in Your Pocket Day at your favorite bookstore, library, school or café.

Which poem will you share? And who will you share it with?

Is it Okay to Take an Admin Job to Get Your Foot in the Door?

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Since today is Admin Professionals Day, I thought I’d address a sensitive question that seasoned professionals in PR, marketing, advertising and communications often hear from recent graduates, looking to get experience in the field:

“Should I take an Admin job to get my foot in the door with an agency or company?”

My answer is a definite “No.”

(This advice comes with the caveat that, even as we climb out of recession, jobs continue to be scarce, so if you desperately need to work and the only option is an Admin position in your industry, take it – and check out the tips at the end of this article.)

My response is never meant to dismiss the role of administrative professionals. They work exceptionally hard, multitasking across dozens of projects and requests, while keeping the office, its people, client relations, business processes, and technology on track and operating smoothly. It’s no surprise that the theme for this year’s Admin Professionals Day is “Admins, the pulse of the office.” They are the lifeblood of our workplaces, we couldn’t get by without them, and the fact that there is only one day a year that honors administrative pros is the real shocker, to my mind.

So why the big fat “No”?

It’s precisely because we depend so much on admins that these situations become fraught for everyone involved. The disconnect happens because the person who accepts the offer for an Admin position when they’d rather be at a higher pay grade (let’s call this person the Non-Admin-Admin) expects to take on development work – projects that will position the Non-Admin-Admin for a promotion to Associate. Meanwhile, the agency or department has enough administrative tasks to bury a battalion of Admins, which is why it posted and interviewed for people with specialized administrative skills.

Frequently, the Non-Admin-Admin has enough experience to be an Associate (there just isn’t an opening right now), but doesn’t know some of the necessary requirements for an Admin job, whether that’s ordering supplies, maintaining databases or the delicate dance of keeping everyone scheduled and organized so they can focus on their work. When the Non-Admin-Admin doesn’t want to be an Admin, it’s painful all around, and everyone in the office ends up unhappy.

If you find yourself working as a Non-Admin-Admin, and you’re frustrated with the lack of forward momentum, here are a few key suggestions for career advancement:

Know your company’s promotion policy
Make sure you know the official HR policy on applying for new jobs and in-place promotions (don’t just rely on your manager or hearsay). Do ask people who’ve been promoted (from Admin to Associate, from Associate to Manager – this is probably the range you want to explore, rather than asking the Senior Vice President how she climbed the corporate ladder) if you can schedule a brief informational discussion with them, a half-hour at the most or offer to buy them a coffee in exchange for some career mentoring. People love talking about their accomplishments, so find out what kinds of skills they needed to learn or projects they took on that enabled managers to see them in a promotable light.

Put a review process in place
Got four-to-six months before you’re eligible for promotion? That’s not an eternity in corporate life, and so not the time to sulk or fill the office with eau de bad attitude. Embrace this time with gusto and schedule a meeting with your manager pronto. Tell him that you see yourself as an Associate in six months, and that you’d like to put a development plan in writing that you’ll both review on a regular schedule. Ask for your manager’s honest assessment so that you have a realistic idea of the skills and behaviors you’ll agree to work on. You can ask questions to clarify, but this isn’t the time to argue with the boss. You’ll need her to sign off when you’ve achieved everything in your plan and are ready to move on.

Accept and excel at your Admin job
This one is absolutely crucial. There’s no question that the ability to succeed at a higher grade will be judged on success as an Admin. The prospect who leaves work undone, doesn’t support the team, acts as if administrative tasks are beneath him or her, shows up late, or, worse, winds up being disciplined for poor performance, will never be eligible for a promotion and may even find themselves unemployed. How you perform at your current position counts for (or against) you when you apply for your next job.

Volunteer for professional-level projects
This is the best way to learn new skills and practice new behaviors. Remember, you still need to keep your current job running like clockwork, but projects are a great way to learn more about the work you’ll be doing and make new allies who can help you navigate your career path at the company.

Learn new technology
Many small agencies and big companies are struggling to manage the additional workload of social media on top of all the existing client work. Learn the company’s blog publishing tool or how to post to its Facebook, Twitter or MySpace accounts, and you may become indispensible. You’ll be doing the kind of work expected of an Associate and be seen in a new light.

Support your agency’s clients
Are the office’s exempt employees volunteering this weekend at a client’s charity walk-a-thon? Have they been spending lunch hours running around getting people to sign a petition for the client’s pet cause? Once you become an Associate, your focus will be on the client. If there’s a way to jump in now – as a development project, free from concerns about overtime pay – grab it. Like the previous two examples, this will give you the perfect chance to do work at a higher grade level and show everyone what you have to offer.