Jonathan Trenn popped this insightful article about Yelp over on Marketing Conversation, The contorversy about Yelp (and be sure to check out David Gelles’ article on a similar topic over at the Financial Times, Yelp rejects claims of extortion):

Ah, controversy.

Now, it’s with Yelp, the mega online review site.  On Wednesday, the East Bay Express, an alternative newspaper that covers Alameda and Contra Costa counties in California, published a very provocative article , “Yelp and the business of extortion 2.0″ on the sales operations and tactics of Yelp.  The paper made some very pointed accusations, some of them seemingly legitimate while others sounding too nebulous.  They state that Yelp is both maniupulating the placements of restaurants reviews as sales tools and then using scare tactics to then solicit advertising sales from these same restaurants.

The accusations are alarming but, because I think the article was poorly presented, it’s left me thinking that Yelp perhaps had a major sales problem in one office as opposed to a company wide sleaze factor policy.

Yelp’s initial response, written on the company blog by CEO Jeremy Stoppleman is inept and insufficient.  He’s likely satisfied that his blog posts are enough…and it may appear to be just that for the time being…but controversies such as this, be they true or just speculation, have a way of undermining a company’s integrity in a hurry.  Especially a site that 1)  is about user generated online reviews, and 2) has trust as a hallmark of its standing.

Oddly, the Yelp blog doesn’t allow comments.  That’s not a good idea…especially for a site that’s about online reviews and citizen participation.

Here’s the gist of the article.  Writer Kathleen Richards talked to “dozens” of business owners over the “past several months” and found that six of them said that Yelp sales reps promised to remove or move bad reviews if the business chose to advertise.  And these businesses would often get sales calls from Yelp reps soon after they mysteriously started getting a rash of negative reviews.  The theory here is that Yelp employees would start to or enlist others to write negative reviews on a company, those reviews would then appear at the top of a company’s page, and the company would get a phone call from a rep looking for an advertising by so those reviews can “go away”…usually to the tune of $300 a month.

For those that declined, positive reviews seemed to begin to disappear.  For those that did manage to buy, negative ones began disappearing.

This is pretty damning stuff.  If true, it shows a coordinted effort between people in sales those on the back end tech team.  It made some establishments feel as if Yelp was acting as if it was the “mafia” in that Yelp was threatening establishments to pay (advertise) in order to not be damaged.  That’s called “protection money” in organized crime.

But as I red between the lines I ended up scratching my head.   Over several months, after talking to “dozens” of businesses, Richards found six restaurants that felt that either they were being offered a quid-pro-qo for advertising to reduce or eliminate bad reviews; or some felt that this extended to manipulative threats of the placement of poor reviews and the elimination of postive reviews.

“Dozens.  “What does that mean?  36?  60?  84?  How did Richards find these restaurants?  Did she talk to one and then ask the owner/manager if he or she knew of any others that had similar stories?  Both questions are important.   The first because it leads to how widespread the problem actually is in the Bay Area and the second, because if there is a lack or randomness to all this, then the sample restaurants are self selected by the reporter.

The article relies on the how some of the restaurant owners “feel”.  These feelings may be completely legitimate.  But it is hard to counter a “feelings”e of another is the one with the feelings remain anonymous.  I fully believe in using anonymous sources, but there should be greater evidence used.  That is, if one is trying to prove that this is a consistent sales tactic used by the company as a whole.

And speaking of as a whole.  This article seems to be focusing soley on the East Bay restaurant seen.  True, it is an East Bay pub, but the article is written as if it is a widespread problem and the issue here is “the business of extortion”.  It fully damns the Yelp based on a small sample of local business’ feelings.

Stoppleman has since written a few more blog posts, but he could use a change of attitude.  There’s been enough discussion on the net about this article denigrating Yelp.  Hundreds of tweets on Twitter, negative mentions on Technorati, and articles in substantial online pubs.

The reason why I say that Stoppleman could use a change of attitude is because he’s treating all of this as an illegitimate attack.  The accusations, regardless of their veracity, at least sound reasonable.  And his defensiveness doesn’t really address the issue.

He does have on post that does work, at bit, in my opinion.  “Nine Myths About Yelp” is designed to negate what he feels are falsehoods.  The most important one he lists is #3 (it should be #1, but he doesn’t seem to realize it).  It is stated here:

Myth #3: Yelp salespeople manipulate reviews for prospective advertisers (for example, offers to remove a negative review if a new client signs up, or a threat to remove positive reviews if the business owner does not choose to advertise with Yelp)

Reality: We have every reason to trust the smart, hard-working and ethical salespeople who work at Yelp.  Beyond this, to avoid even an appearance of impropriety, we’ve taken several steps to ensure no member of our team is tempted to game the system.  Specifically:
1. Yelp salespeople do not have access to the system that deletes reviews; only a few members of Yelp engineering and user support team have this access, and they literally work on different floors within the office.
2. Every Yelp salesperson signs an agreement that s/he will not write reviews of any business while employed by Yelp.  We trust our teammates in sales to live up to this commitment.  We also have several monitoring systems in place to ensure nobody (accidentally or otherwise) crosses this line.
3. Through our vigilance, we once did find a salesperson who encouraged a friend to write a positive review for a prospective client (that the friend had actually patronized). The salesperson’s role at Yelp ended that day.
4. When a new advertiser signs up with Yelp, the relationship is handed off to an Account Manager.  The Account Manager then takes the client through a 30 minute phone training session — and confirms that reviews have nothing to do with advertising.
5. After the training call, the Account Manager sends a follow up survey that asks each client how much s/he agrees with the following statement: “I understand that Reviews are completely separate from the Yelp Ad Program, and that there is an automated filter that may suppress some of my reviews whether or not I am a client.”  Any client who does not click “Completely Agree” in this case gets yet another follow-up call for clarification.

Myth #4: Yelp removes positive reviews from businesses its staff does not like, or from businesses that do not pay for advertising

Reality: A review you may have seen on Yelp previously is no longer there; this happens.  The review in question may have “disappeared” for one of three reasons:
1. The review may have been suppressed by Yelp’s automated Review Filter, which is always out there looking for suspicious reviewing activity (like those anonymous rants and raves you see on other sites).
2. The writer may have removed her own review; she has the right to do that at any time
3. Another user believed the review violated Yelp’s Review Guidelines and sent it to our customer service team for review. The customer service team agreed, then manually removed the review.

Both our customer service team and the Review Filter work exactly the same way for advertisers as they do for non-advertisers.

This is how he should have addressed the issue at the very beginning.  Blown opportunity and his company has suffered and will continue to suffer as a result.  And he has to go beyond stating that the sales people and the tech people with access to placement of reviews work on different floors.

My guess is what happened is that a few sales reps in that particular office would scour the reviews on Yelp, and when they found some recent newly written negative ones, they then picked up the phone and made a sales call, offering the package that places a selected postive review on top – one that is visibly marked as being sponsored.  Some pitches probably went far beyond this…saying that they could make the negative one “disappear”.  Sales people will say sleazy things.  Stoppleman should understand this and not discount this.  He should then conduct some sort of internal audit that would show the public that he is trying to address the problem and root it out if it exists.  Retrain.  Resolve.

Now is it possible that some sales types had relationships with the tech people.  Absolutely.  Different floors – HA!  So the problem may have been more than a poorly written article.  Yelp needs to look into that because, as Yelp knows, online reputations matter.

And to Jeremy Stoppleman…you should allow people to comment on your blog posts.

The future of Social Network Services (SNS) can be discovered on High School and College campuses. I believe that topic-specific “vertical” SNS’s are very important, but I also think that the model needs to be University-like – a modularized SNS. There needs to be a campus “brand” (or University) within which the topic-specific “clubs,” “houses,” “fraternities,” “dorms,” and “interest groups” can interact – somewhere where crossovers, cross-fertilization, and aggregation are encouraged – no, needs – to happen. I hate SNS sites like boompa.com – a site devoted to your favorite cars – because I am not JUST a car guy.

I am a car guy for sure but I am also interested in rowing, in biking, in Thomas Pynchon, and in talk radio – Boompa might be successful in the short term, but in the long-term, the real power would come from creating a open, creative, resource-rich platform/campus/university/high school and maybe create a school of engineering, a liberal arts school, a law school, a dining hall, and so forth, but then allow the SNS to find itself.

To allow the SNS and its members to find their own voice, their own interests, and their own passions – which may well be very different from what is first assumed by the creator. Google gets this, though not yet within the construct of the SNS’s. What Google did do successfully was to buy USENET – the original newsgroups – and then build an superstructure on top of that – make it modern, sustainable, durable, and more readable.

Google returned USENET to relevance in a world that considered newsgroups and IRC to be dead or dying. Each and every one of communities on USENET is amazingly vertical, but they could all back up and back out to the larger USENET community – to the equivalent of the “welcome new students??? meetings and gatherings colleges offer to entering Freshmen.

Communities that are too vertical tend to shoe horn the “general topics??? conversations into hidden “off topic??? eddies. That is just the opposite of what should be done. The conversation should be general, cross-pollinating, and then move, after a conversation starts, into another room.

Start with an amazing platform, collect users, listen and watch them to see how they’re playing with the software application objects, widgets, and tools (are they playing with the toy or the box?), and then build for the users base, withholding judgment. Digg is a case study for this: start small, grow organically, and allow your members to find themselves.

The developers of Digg realized that after initial vertical growth based on the general members of Slashdot (techie, geeky, teens, boys), digg would suffer from the same sort of vulnerabilities that Slashdot suffered when Slashdot didn’t evolve and grow and broaden itself.

People love talking about Linux, but when happens when the Dow drops or the elections come? Where will the conversation happen? Where is the “kitchen??? at the party where every eventually goes to just talk about general interest stuff? Unless there are opportunities to express and share so-called “off-topic??? conversation right there, within the community in which members are already committed, with members to whom they’re already committed, then they are bound to go elsewhere.

Starting small and allowing the community to design itself is much different than starting big and losing one’s focus. Other mistakes happen when community builders make assumptions as to what participants, members, and lurkers want. Another mistake is putting a wall up around the community so that non-members cannot get a full feeling for the community from without.

The best SNS’s, virtual worlds, and online communities are honeypots. By honeypot, I am not suggesting, “a server that is configured to detect an intruder by mirroring a real production system. It appears as an ordinary server doing work, but all the data and transactions are phony. Located either in or outside the firewall, the honeypot is used to learn about an intruder’s techniques as well as determine vulnerabilities in the real system.” Although I am, sort of. The best SNS needs to be appealing, attractive, sweet, and compelling. Community-builders and SNS ASP developers need to be willing learn about member techniques, interests, processes, and needs, as well as determine “vulnerabilities” in the SNS platform that may repel, turn off, or limit the evolution and growth of the community.

To channel Chauncey Gardener for a second, one must do whatever one must to make sure that the earth in the garden is moist and well fed, one must seed well and completely, one must keep the garden in sun and water, one must encourage the garden to grow as it will for only in its growth will the garden be successful, and then, after rigorous growth, pruning and weeding must be done, only in order to allow the garden to be healthy, not to turn the garden into topiary. Okay, I am done.

Digg allows all of these things. Digg is perfectly useful and compelling even as an alien, but it is way more fun and interesting when you’re a citizen, that’s for sure. An SNS community needs to be as attractive as possible because exclusivity is no longer essential or even valuable. What is valuable is “useful,??? “interesting,??? and “authentic.??? They also have to have community buy-in and the best enjoy a certain fanatical devotion. Just like the best Universities and Colleges.

And Digg allowed its member to tell it when it was time to evolve past tech and geek news. Digg did not limit its scope or define itself too tightly with being “gear for geeks??? or “news for nerds.??? That would have ultimately been the death of Digg.

What the best Universities (such as Yale) understand is that it is not the student who is blessed and honored by being accepted by a top college (Yale College) but rather it is the college that should be blessed and honored (and should be grateful) that such a quality student is accepting its offers and actually attending – choosing – their particular school: Yale instead of Princeton, Brown, Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, Dartmouth, Stanford, Columbia, Berkeley, etc…

Harvard, too, is aware that although in the short-term Harvard makes the Harvard Man, over the long term, it is Harvard Men who made Harvard and continue to make Harvard. “Who have you graduated recently???? Unless the quality and character of its students and alumni remain top-drawer, Harvard is not guaranteed its position as “top three??? in USA Today alongside Princeton and Yale. No matter how grand its endowment.

So, Harvard and Yale spoil their students rotten! My friends who attended Harvard or Yale college swoon over those 4 years like I swoon over my first love.

Likewise, SNS’s, virtual worlds, and virtual communities need to realize that at any one point, their brand is only as good as the collective that is manifest in the users, the members, the lurkers, the stewards, and the alumni of the property.

This isn’t only true in SNS’s. The same thing can be said of the most successful message boards and online communities. The most important distinction, I think, is that all of these “rooms” and all of these “clubs” and all of these spaces where (and are) defined and created by the communities themselves. Sui generis. And this sort of ownership – “for us by us,??? as the slogan goes over as Howard Rheingold’s Brainstorms community – should never be underestimated.

The Well has Howard Rheingold as a member and alumnus, for example, and the credibility of all that he has made and done; over time, more and more virtual communities, virtual worlds, and SNS will be known for their members as well: who studies, who studied, and who wants to join.

“What’s in it for me??? (WIIFM) and the concept of pride of ownership are important – essential – ingredients of a sustainable, deep, thriving, and healthy community. The success of MySpace and of Facebook is that the verticals are not (were not) defined for them by their grand architects – they are self-creating, self-forming, and also self-destructing. They form, reform, mutate and disperse after they hit a limit of general conversation and then either break off and reform into an “interest group” or “club” or they self-check and work to “get back on topic.”

SNS’s and communities in general tend to be formed in one of two ways: like Paris or like London. Intelligence Design (architecture) or Emergent Design. The later never looks very beautiful or the way people – or the creators, investors, and architects – expect (or want) it to look, because investors and designers tend to not be able to control it – and when they do try to impost order, often in a heavy-handed way, they also tend to scare off all of their members, too.

This organic revolution has proven its success online time and time again. The Internet does not respond (well or at all) to command and control. The smartest Web 2.0 platforms allow the “masses of asses” (yes, the customer; yes, us) to define the platform and the experience – their own and collective environment and experience.

MySpace does this amazingly well and so does Facebook. Until recently, Friendster suffered from a vision and used command and control tactics to try to coerce its users that “it didn’t really want to do things that way??? and Friendster members abandoned in droves to platforms and experiences not so monitored by “mom and dad.???

A command and control grand vision doesn’t work when you develop an environment that needs to be truly both attractive and compelling much more than it needs to be informational or instructional. An SNS needs to be attractive, diversional, compelling, amusing, and entertaining – never limiting.

My analogy of college and high school never mentioned classrooms or classes for training or learning. People do enough of that at school and at work. An SNS needs to give its users a university campus without any expectations or concepts of dropping out, getting judged, doing homework, or being held accountable for anything.

A good SNS should be all late-night wine-influenced discussions of Descartes and Plato and the summer afternoons on the quad and the time playing Xbox with your roommates.

When I go onto my long-term online communities, the Well, The Meta Network, USENET, and Brainstorms, there are many very deep and very vertical communities, discussing things as frivolous as fashion and video games and as deep as how to survive cancer, how to get a post doc grant, and very deep discussions on “spirit,” “chaos theory,” and “world politics.”

What makes this amazing and sustainable is that there are an infinite number of ways to get along, to move into a space of intense conversation, and then to pull back into common areas, just to see who’s around. In a university setting, this could be the dining hall, the quad, the commons, etc. These spaces are very important.

If you think about all of this in terms of evolution, then we can think about the way things evolve in the most perverse ways when isolated from others of its kinds. So, if there are impervious walls – gaps or voids, mountains or ridges – between these vertical markets, SNS’s, and communities, then there may be an initial success, but there can also be a terrible volatility. One plague or drought can decimate a population completely.

Having a commons allows members and visitors to have a place to meet new people, have new experiences, and learn of new clubs, new opportunities, and new places – inbreeding versus crossbreeding. Ultimately, a diversity of visitors helps build a more resilient, invested, and self-identifing community. They will become “students for life??? at best and proud alums at worst. They will carry the brand awareness, even if their lives become too busy to participate any more.

They will become life long brand ambassadors for your community. Proud alumni.

And, in terms of “viral marketing,” it is also important when it comes to a member of an SNS “inviting his friends” – not all of my friends have the same vertical interests that I do… They could have very different interests – but as I explore the “commons” of an SNS, I can note that there are things happening online that “friend x” and “friend y” would love, and that would be my incentive to invite them on board.

Boompa? I am the only person I know in my entire community – that is not true, my buddy has an Audi S4 – who is into cars. My buddy is an Audi driver and I am a BMW driver. Does that mean we’re both drivers? Does that mean we love cars or our particular car? Do we cross over on performance sedans? On German cars? On luxury cars?

You have to offer the tools to allow the market to choose for itself, otherwise, you might never find out that the SNS needs all three, or none at all.

A “Modularized SNS” should be neutral like a university (unlike MySpace, which is pretty pre-defined as to what the demographic is), and there are lots of “vertical niche SNS’s” (e.g. car enthusiasts, gourmet cooking, travel, Rolex fans, Republican politicos, etc.) That way, everyone can form a SNS experience that actually fits them by modularly assembling the groups of people who have similar interests, (not just friends-in-common!)

This is the full text of President Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration speech, courtesy of NowPublic, KansasCity.com, thanks to a link from @Aisle7

Full text of President Obama’s Inauguration Speech 2009

My fellow citizens:

I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors. I thank President Bush for his service to our nation, as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout this transition.

Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath. The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms. At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forbearers, and true to our founding documents.

So it has been. So it must be with this generation of Americans.

That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.

These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable but no less profound is a sapping of confidence across our land – a nagging fear that America’s decline is inevitable, and that the next generation must lower its sights.

Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America – they will be met.

On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.

On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.

We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things.

The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.

In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted – for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things – some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.

For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life. For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West; endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.

For us, they fought and died, in places like Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn. Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.

This is the journey we continue today. We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth. Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions – that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.

For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act – not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. And all this we will do.

Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions – who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this country has already done; what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage.

What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them – that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works – whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. And those of us who manage the public’s dollars will be held to account – to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day – because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.

Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control – and that a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous.

The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our Gross Domestic Product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on our ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart – not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.

As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience’s sake.

And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more. Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.

We are the keepers of this legacy. Guided by these principles once more, we can meet those new threats that demand even greater effort – even greater cooperation and understanding between nations. We will begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people, and forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan. With old friends and former foes, we will work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat, and roll back the specter of a warming planet. We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.

For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus – and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.

To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society’s ills on the West – know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds. And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world’s resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.

As we consider the road that unfolds before us, we remember with humble gratitude those brave Americans who, at this very hour, patrol far-off deserts and distant mountains. They have something to tell us today, just as the fallen heroes who lie in Arlington whisper through the ages. We honor them not only because they are guardians of our liberty, but because they embody the spirit of service; a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves. And yet, at this moment – a moment that will define a generation – it is precisely this spirit that must inhabit us all.

For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies. It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break, the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours. It is the firefighter’s courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent’s willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.

Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends – hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism – these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility – a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.

This is the price and the promise of citizenship.

This is the source of our confidence – the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny.

This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed – why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall, and why a man whose father less than sixty years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.

So let us mark this day with remembrance, of who we are and how far we have traveled. In the year of America’s birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river. The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood. At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:

“Let it be told to the future world…that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive…that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet [it].”

America. In the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children’s children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God’s grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.

The ‘I Have a Dream’ Speech by Martin Luther King, Jr, in 1963

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we have come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.” But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check — a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. They have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.

As we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?” We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied, as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating “For Whites Only”. We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with a new meaning, “My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.”

And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!

Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!

But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

The answer, of course, is “it takes about ten years of suffering hard work to become an overnight sensation.” In the case of new media and Web2.0, you can so that in a lot less time. Being an early — the earliest — adopter doesn’t hurt, but it isn’t necessary, really. However, any way you slice it, with a few exceptions, becoming an overnight sensation on Twitter, YouTube, Plurk, QIK, Utterli, LinkedIn, Facebook, or MySpace is going to require a lot of your resources (time and/or money) and more time than you probably planned out for your boss or your client — or yourself!

I am pretty interested in seeing how my Twitter profile has gone from nothing to 2,511+ followers. Twitterholic has allowed me to figure that out in an easy-to-read format, which I appreciate. I joined Twitter on January 6th, 2007. By October 30th, I had 441 followers. It took until May 5th, 2008, to break 1,000 followers. It only took until September 11th for me to break 2,000 followers, and now, as of December 7th (a day that lives in infamy), I have 2,511 followers. I find that interesting to study but I don’t know what it means.

I think I will venture to explain its meaning: social media requires investment and time. Growing a social media profile is like growing a coral reef: after seeding the reef, there are so many things that need to happen before a reef blooms “in its own.” There are many things that can aid the reef: safety, cleanliness, warmth, nutrients, oxygenation, etc… however, one of the most important thing is time and commitment.

Social media cultivation makes most PR and marketing professionals cringe at the thought of trying to sell these solutions to their clients. A client generally wants metrics now and right away. Clients oftentimes spend tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars to create a social network platform, a blog, or a spate of social media profiles that are world class and amazingly turned; however, when the six-month mark comes around and the community is not yet bustling, most clients get severe cold feet and oftentimes abandon all of the work-in (and money out) as a failed campaign — right before the reef blooms!

It kills me to see the number of corporate blogs, home-grown social networks, message boards, and social network profiles that are like those bare and barren rocks and wrecks that never in fact ever blossomed into an emergent community manifest in a coral reef. An ecosystem as delicate and hardy as any social media space, from Twitter to Facebook, from MySpace to your corporate blog.

I forgot to also add to the resources plus time equation: commitment, consistency, calmness, dedication, generosity, and compassion. When you invest in online community as much as I do (2,511 on Twitter with 11,200 tweets, 2,734 on Facebook, 1,496 on LinkedIn, and 5,321 posts on my blog, an online presence I have had since 1999, for example) then you need to be generous — give more than you take — and you need to be committed to the long term. You will need to learn what each community will allow, suffer, enjoy, or penalize. You will learn where the borders are and you will learn what works (and draws people in) and what doesn’t (making them flee).

Well, with no further ado, here’s a lot of work, time, creativity, hours, minutes, wit, mistake, missteps, business, play, Washington, Berlin, Slovakia, San Diego, and a hundred other places. If you want to have 2,500 followers and you’re not already famous, you’ll have to put in the work. If you can achieve tens of thousands of followers, you’re probably already somebody; in that case, it wasn’t just overnight: you just put in your licks elsewhere. Otherwise, put on those work-gloves and start working!

Visit Chris Abraham’s Twitter Page
Visit Chris Abraham’s Webpage

• Chris Abraham was the 608,473rd person to sign up for twitter!
• Chris Abraham is ranked 843rd on twitterholic! (by followers)
• Chris Abraham is ranked 1st in their location on twitterholic!

Bio: Web strategist and new media guru and president of Abraham Harrison LLC, http://chrisabraham.com
Joined Twitter on 2007-01-06 14:51:39

This news is from the hasn’t this already happened before department?  Also, from the I can’t believe it took this long department. Via the Washington Post.

Yahoo chief executive Jerry Yang will step down, the company announced last night, as the once-highflying Internet portal struggles to steady itself in the turbulent environment for Web media.

Yahoo! should be one of the coolest brands on the block.  With Flickr and del.icio.us, Yahoo really should be #2 — and it could be #1 if it would stop with the self-loathing — and it is not. Why?  Because Yahoo isn’t nearly shameless enough to survive in the 2008 Internet.  It is no longer the world of wizened Unix gurus who would easily define what is and isn’t couth on the Internet. Yahoo! is stuck in the days when it was uncool to splash your own brand on the brands you own (so is AOL); Yahoo! is stuck in the Internet of the 90s, an Internet wherein being good enough was good enough.

If Yahoo! was trying not to become gauche or become an ugly American in the Europe of the Internet, then it was successful! Yahoo! has become irrelevant. At least people hate Microsoft & AOL. Hell, I have nothing at all to say about Yahoo! except I adore del.icio.us and Flickr.  How could the owner of two of the Internet’s coolest properties never be able to harnest the gravity of these two major celestial bodies and slingshot themselves into #1?

Maybe there is too much modesty, not enough braggadocio, in the halls of Yahoo!  Maybe if you look closely, Yahoo! is the company that does no harm and does no evil.  Maybe the company who’s motto is “Don’t Be Evil,” is actually pretty shameless and far from modest. Maybe on the modern Internet (and in modern business) it is more important to say you’re doing good, being good, and being modest than it is to actually be modest.

Yahoo!, Yahoo!, Yahoo! please try your darnedest to spend more time sharing yourself with the world and less time being the best of the good citizens.  Google is absolutely shameless when it comes to all the good work they’re doing.  They are not keeping their religion to themselves, they’re not praying quietly to themselves in a bare cell, away from prying eyes!  Google is on the soapbox!  Google is bragging!  Google is sharing the Holy Spirit with the world!

If you keep on slipping those alms into the alms box of Internet Good Works by dark of night you will actually become irrelevant.  Nobody is against you but nobody is for you, either. Nobody cares.

What’s worse, I don’t think enough people even really think much about Flickr and del.icio.us being Yahoo! properties.

Yes, you make folks become Yahoo! members, but that’s not enough. In DC and Virginia, everyone has a Safeway card but nobody like to shop at Safeway — it’s only because Safeway makes it super-easy to become a member.  There is no brand loyalty, there is no passion behind the brand (OK, OK, Safeway Select pasta sauce is awesome — it is like Safeway’s Flickr), even if everyone has a Safeway scan card on their key ring.

Anyway, Yahoo!, I am so sorry for the rant.  Oh, also, why is it that all of my geeky friends in the Zope and Python world all want to work for Google and not for Yahoo!?  How come all of my PHP and MySQL friends ache to work for Google and not for Yahoo!  How pissed you must be to suffer that Google drank your milkshake.  They took you toys!  You, Yahoo!, where supposed to be that success story!  I mean, you were the first search engine, after all!  You were the first directory, right?

Well, it is time to get off your pity pot, kick Jerry to the curb, and again become the Yahoo! I have known you since 1994 and have loved you (although I have not used your email address since Gmail came out, sorry) and I really want you to get you some smarts.  Give me a call at +1 (202) 352-5051 or +49 (0)151 52579077 — I would be more than happy to try to help you turn this ship around!

Viel Glück

Today is Veteran’s Day, a day that pays homage to every man and woman who has served in the United States Armed Forces, in times of war and peace.  Please consider donating any amount today to help our returning troops.  If you donate now your funds will be matched dollar for dollar!

I have personally pledged to raise $1,000 of the $10,000 that Survivor Corps is raising this week to help returning soldiers in remembrance of Veteran’s Day, today — please help me make my goal. Honestly, a couple-bucks is cool — feel free to donate whatever you want. There is always the “Other” tab. If we have lots of small donations, it all adds up!  Please join me over on Facebook Cause in support of my pledge.

Our soldiers need our help now. Which is why, this Veterans Day, I’m asking you to honor their service with a modest gift to Survivor Corps’ program for U.S. Armed Forces veterans, Operation Survivor.

Survivor Corps is aiming to raise $10,000 over the next week, with your help. We currently have just over 600 members in the cause. If each member donated just $20, we would have well over $12,000. In addition, Survivor Corps is currently running a matching-gift program so your donation will be doubled for the returning troops! Please join Survivor Corps on Facebook Causes to help them reach their goal of $10,000!

Right now, about 620,000 veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), traumatic brain injuries (TBI), major depression, or a combination of the three. Many returning veterans are facing family, employment, and other community reintegration issues. Using our ten years of experience helping survivors of violent conflict find a way back to peace, within their own bodies and minds, and in their communities, Survivor Corps founded Operation Survivor to provide the same kind of life-changing services to American veterans.

NEWS FACTS
Within the United States there are over one and a half million service members that have served in military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Over thirty thousand have been physically wounded, but many more have experienced less visible, psychological wounds. Traumatic Brain Injury and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder have emerged as signature injuries of these conflicts, with recent reports suggesting an increase in rates of suicide, alcohol and drug abuse, homelessness, and domestic violence among returning service members and veterans.

These traumatic affects of conflict, left unaddressed, could have far-reaching negative consequences for the individuals affected, their families, and our country. Survivor Corps’ work in some of the most conflict affected countries in the world has shown community reintegration to be the key factor in those that overcome their traumatic experiences, and those that are consumed by them.

• 1.6 million servicemembers have deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001
• 300,000 have reported symptoms of PTSD and major depression. (RAND)
• Over 5,391 service members haveben killed in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001 (hostile and non-hostile)4,447 killed in Iraq, 944 killed in Afghanistan (iCasualties, 06 AUG 08)
• Over 30,000 injured
• Over 1,000 lost limbs
• Walter Reed Amputee Center serves 100 veterans daily

The main issues for returning soldier since WWI have been:

• Major depressive disorder
• Alcohol abuse
• Domestic violence
• Suicide
• Homelessness
• Unemployment

All of these issues repeat after each war, and are symptoms of the much greater problem facing Veterans: How to reintegrate into families and communities upon return. We’ve seen these issues in our overseas networks, US citizens have seen these symptoms after past conflicts, and we are seeing these same symptoms again today..

PTSD:

• 53% of soldiers with PSTD receive treatment. (RAND)

SUICIDE:

• Since 2002 suicide attempts have risen from 350 to approximately 2,100 in 2007. (VA)
• The Army is committing $1.4 billion this year to add to the quality of life of a soldier including an informal peer support program through distribution of ACE of hearts playing cards.
• ACE cards: Ask your buddy, Care for your buddy, Escort your buddy.

SUBSTANCE ABUSE:
According to the Department of Defense heavy drinking occurred in 18.5% of those individuals from the U.S. Armed Forces surveyed.

• 41% of veterans who drank reported problems at work
• 24.7% of veterans who drank reported problems at home
• 31.2% of veterans who drank reported depression

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE:
A study conducted by the National Institute of Health showed returning veterans listed alcohol as the second most frequent cause of spouse violence.

UNEMPLOYMENT:

• 11.2% of returning young male veterans are unemployed (US Dept. of Labor)

HOMELESSNESS:

• 40% of homeless men are veterans. (National Coalition for the Homeless)
• 200,000 veterans are homeless. (NCH)
• Already 600 returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan have sought transitional housing services from the VA. (NCH)
• Women are 2 to 4 times more likely to become homeless. (NCH)
• After Vietnam, it generally took 9 to 12 years for veterans’ to become homeless…Returning veterans from Iraq are seeking housing services only months after returning. (NCH)

OPERATION SURVIVOR

Ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan are creating a generation of veterans in the United States from all branches of the armed services and all 50 states who are struggling to overcome physical and psychosocial injuries. Most combat veterans convalescing in military hospitals across the country will survive physically, but getting on with their lives after returning home to their families and communities is proving a significant challenge for hundreds of thousands. Among the 1.6 million who have served since 2001, suicide is on the rise, as is unemployment and incidents of substance abuse and domestic violence.

The successful reintegration of returning service members is an issue that will have a long-lasting impact on American society, and may become the single defining struggle facing this new generation of veterans. Survivor Corps and its partners are determined to avoid the mistakes made when veterans returned from Vietnam, which resulted in tens of thousands of post-war suicides and over 200,000 men and women living on the streets.

To head off this tragic outcome, Survivor Corps will build peer support programs at the community level that will bring service members and veterans together for mutual support and encourage both individual responsibility and collective action to help others in need.

Survivor Corps is offering an alternative “treatment” that can be made readily available in all communities, regardless of proximity to traditional military or govern¬ment centers of support. Our approach is nimble enough to address the needs of individual survivors, while still broad enough to build a coalition of survivors and service providers working to effect long-term positive change.

This new program will help the recovery and reintegration of hundreds of thousands of returning U.S. service members at a critical time for them and their country.

I am sitting here in Berlin, Germany, listening to NPR on 104.1 FM (yes, we have National Public Radio on-tap in Berlin, it is true), and I am rooting for Barack Obama. I have to admit that I voted Republican in the last two elections, in 2000 and 2004, because I was appalled by both Gore and Kerry. I was passionate about Bill Clinton during his eight years in office and preferred anything to Gore or Kerry, to be honest. That said, I want Barack Obama to win because the world wants Barack Obama to win.

After church yesterday, I got to talking to my fellow parishioners and they want Barack Obama. These are not your traditional European communists you hear about, they’re devout Christians — born again — who are probably considered pretty conservative in the context of Europe. However, in the context of America, even a right wing wingnut European is still relatively liberal by American standards.

When Berliners look at Barack Obama, they don’t see someone who will set race riots afire, they don’t see someone who will turn America into a Marxist-Leninist stronghold, they see a man who is sophisticated, education, trained, has a brain in his head, went to the best schools, has explored the world, cares about civil rights, and who will most likely be willing to span the broken bridges across the Atlantic to Europe and Russia and try his best to rebuild them and begin to regain the trust, admiration, and even envy that much of the world had fifty-years ago.

To them and to me, Barack Obama will be able to return the United States to the hands of the rational. A United States with a better separation between Church and State. Maybe even a country in which Jesus Christ is the co-pilot and not the pilot any more. Where saner, more peaceful, minds prevail. A nation willing to put away its herald and sword, stop with the Christian Crusades, the preemptive strikes, the unilateral military conquests, and the obsession with being Exceptional. Exceptionalism is the most dangerous aspect of the George W Bush and Neocon White House.

“When the United States looks abroad, it does so from an assumed position of moral and spiritual strength. For as long as the United States has existed, a perceived sense of its exceptionalism has permeated the way that Americans view the rest of the world . . . this view has been reinforced by the material reality of US economic and military strength. The essence of American exceptionalism is a celebration of the uniqueness and special virtue of the United States. It rests on the belief that the United States has a special role to play in the world, and unique qualities to bring to this role . . . The roots of the concept stem from the Puritan vision of America as a ‘shining city upon a hill’, a society designed to serve as a moral example to mankind.”

The idea that America is any better-suited than any other nation to lead based on some sort of Divine Inheritance or Plan is ludicrous and very insane, especially when no one else in the entire world agrees. I am a big fan of Mike Signer’s concept of exemplarism:

“Exemplarism is the principle that the United States could best serve the spread of liberal democracy by being an enviable example to the world—the shining light on the hill, the beacon. Being a good example requires strengthening the institutions that assure individual liberties, the rule of law, and the prosperity born of industry and commerce. Adherents to exemplarism would find themselves in agreement with Kant’s principle of noninterventionism into the affairs of other nations.”

Telling yourself and everybody around you how amazing, brilliant, noble, moral, and generous you are when you’re the biggest and meanest and best-armed and best-outfitted man in the room is hubristic and kind of pathetic. Delusional, actually, and certainly not the best way for a man — or a country — to be. America is kind of being an International douchebag.

I must admit that I have a special weakness for exemplarism’s belief in the “principle of noninterventionism into the affairs of other nations” even if you don’t like the way other nations are running their households. There is a certain amount of independence and internal liberty associated with being sovereign. Sovereignty, to me, is holy. To me, exporting culture, policy, morals, or any concept of character or politick is poor form, especially when it is at the tip of a sword.

What scares me about American Exceptionalism is that it allows just about any behavior based on the premise that we can do no wrong. That any move we take to help is helpful, that any gift we have to give is welcome, that any feeling a foreign nation could feel is grateful.

When America thinks the entire world is so “insane” and “drunk” that only America cane make the important, sober, choices, then it is in fact that America is the Nation suffering from mental illness. You know what they say, right? If you think the entire world has gone mad, that the entire world is against you, that the entire world is violent and full of unrest, the unappealing truth might just be that you’re severely paranoid and might be the most mentally ill in the room. There is no way that the entire planet is conspiring again the United States — unless, of course, we have gone one step too far.

I am told that we have gone one step too far; however, Europe and most of the world is willing to let bygones be bygones because we’re loved by the world, at least mostly. Berliners no longer trust America but they’re willing to give Barack Obama a chance — they’re not willing to give John McCain a chance, sadly.

They see in John McCain an angry, malicious, foolish man — which is fine; however, in Sarah Palin, they don’t even seen some harmless vice presidential candidate, they see a very dangerous indicator that the McCain/Palin ticket will more assuredly take the United States to an even darker, more jingoistic, more conservative, descent into fascism.

When I tell people these things, especially on Twitter, I get the strangest response, even from the Democrats: “America is the best country on earth.” “America may not be perfect but there is no better country on earth.” “I am proud to be an American — I am patriotic, surely.” Alternately, I also get, “I think we have gone too far as a nation — we have descended into a self-centered feeding frenzy rife with elbows and short-sighted land-grabbing.”

To me, I am somewhere in the middle. I love the foundation of the Nation. I love the literature, the heart, the soul, the worlds, the music, the history, the compassion, the Faith, the persistence, the curiosity, and confidence, the optimism, and even the cocksureness! I love the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence. There is a reason why many nations worldwide have patterned and even plagiarized our Constitution, to be sure.

Hell, Europe loves the idea of America! Basically, we are a nation that, in its source code, has embraced all that is liberté, égalité, fraternité; however, the world had not been able to enjoy our uniquely American version of liberty, equality, and fraternity for all the foaming at the mouth and the bared fangs! There is a fear that this mad-dog may have gone too far into its rabies and is too far gone.

In Barack Obama, they see that maybe what America has been doing for the last eight years as been a sort of postpartum, post-911, depression. That the Nation, all big and clumsy, hung over, and feeling a little sick, is finally reemerging from darkness into light — luckily, just in time, when the world needs a leader in the community and not just a dangerous paranoiac who lives in the dilapidated house at the edge of town.

The rest of the world has not given up on us as Americans or as America. Have we as a nation give up on ourselves?

• Survivor Corps – Peer Support
  (tags: ping.fm)
• Charity Folks | Online Auctions
  (tags: ping.fm)
• Netvantage Marketing Blog
  Let’s face it, we’re in a recession. In the past five weeks, the stock market has tanked, the credit market has dried up, and a very large rescue/bailout plan has seemingly had little effect. Companies are now cutting back and employees are being let go.
• Daily Herald – Before and After
  On Oct. 2, 2006, Capt. Scott Quilty, 26, was leading a foot patrol in Rustimullah, a town south of Baghdad. An improvised explosive device, or IED, detonated near him. He lost his right arm and right leg.
• DEFENSE STANDARD: Wounded Not Broken
  Her husband, Capt. Scott Quilty, lost an arm and a leg and spent two years at Walter Reed recovering. She wants the patients she sees to live the life her husband now enjoys.
• Before and after Iraq – Los Angeles Times
  On Oct. 2, 2006, Capt. Scott Quilty, 26, was leading a foot patrol in Rustimullah, a town south of Baghdad. An improvised explosive device, or IED, detonated near him. He lost his right arm and right leg.
• * photo op at Walter Reed – pics – Democratic Underground
  President Bush, right, shakes hands with the prosthetic arm of 1st Lt. Scott Quilty during a visit with patients at the physical therapy wing of Walter Reed Army Center in Washington, Friday, March 30, 2007. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
• KarlfromNH.com Weekly Columns
  This interview was followed by yet another inspirational young man on my June 1st radio show. Captain Scott Quilty, a Francestown, NH native and son of friends of mine, related his experiences in the military
• Briefing on the importance of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
  Scott Quilty, Program Manager for Survivor Corps; and Anne Somers, Policy Counsel for the American Association of Persons with Disabilities.
• Organizing Committee Contacts
  Survivor Corps
  Contact Scott Quilty 202.250.3946 squilty@survivorcorps.org
• Johns Hopkins University | Today’s News
  Capt. Scott Quilty, a rifle platoon leader with the 10th Mountain Division, had been in Iraq for two months on Oct. 2, 2006, when he stepped on an improvised explosive device while on patrol near Baghdad. Surgeons amputated his right arm below the elbow and his right leg below the knee.
• Bush Issues Apology Over Conditions At Walter Reed | National Security Network
  At Walter Reed, Bush awarded 10 Purple Heart medals and chatted with patients. In a physical therapy exercise room, he shook Lt. Scott Quilty’s prosthetic right hand, hopped onto an elliptical exercise machine next to Staff Sgt. Gregory Robinson (who lost a leg) and admired a naked woman tattoo on Sgt. Mark Ecker’s left shoulder.
• ON EDUCATION; Graduating Into the Real World, And Preparing to Take Up Arms – New York Times
  These 17 had entered R.O.T.C. for different reasons. Cassandra Crosby could not have afforded college without the program’s scholarship. Benjamin Keating had absorbed ”the idea of citizenship” in his classics courses. Scott Quilty and Megan McGrevey embodied the third generation in military families.
• Survivor Corps – Survivor Corps Staff
• Welcome to New Hampshire and to the homepage of Karl from New Hampshire.
  On June 1st, 2008, I was joined in the studio by Capt. Scott Quilty of Francestown, NH.
  Capt. Quilty suffered the loss of his right arm and leg, below the elbow and knee, respectively, while gallantly serving his country in Iraq.
  He is now involved with SurvivorsCorps, a non-profit organization based in Washinton, DC which is developing programs to reach out to other injured veterans to help them realign their lives.
  Scott currently lives in Maryland with his wife, also a veteran.
• Iraq Today: War News for Friday, July 04, 2008
  Scott Quilty, 28, lost his right arm and leg in October 2006 to a roadside bomb while serving in Iraq.
• June 3rd Briefing on Capitol Hill | RatifyNow.org
  Scott Quilty, U.S. Program Manager, Survivor Corps; Disabled U.S. Veteran
• At Ease!
  Scott Quilty, a 28-year-old Iraqi war veteran who lost part of an arm and leg while on foot patrol in Baghdad, presented the award to Lee Woodruff, who said she accepted it on behalf of all caregivers, parents and wives of those who have been injured in war and on behalf of anyone serving in the military.
• M?u Thân 68
  Ba tháng sau l?i tiên tri toán pháp này ?ng d?ng vào ??i úy Scott Quilty, 26 tu?i; anh d?n trung ??i ?i tu?n ti?u t?i Rustimullah, m?t th? tr?n phía Nam Baghdad, ngày mùng 2 tháng M??i 2006. Quân Iraq cho n? m?t qu? mìn, anh b? m?t tay m?t và chân m?t.
• ??? PoEnglish: Bush Apologizes for Poor Conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center
  President Bush, right, shakes hands with the 1st Lt. Scott Quilty during a visit to Walter Reed Army Center in Washington, 30 Mar 2007
• Bush Apologizes for Poor Conditions on Visit to Walter Reed Army Hospital «
  March 30: President Bush shakes hands with 1st Lt. Scott Quilty during a visit to the Walter Reed Army Center.
• \jeff{krimmel} » Blog Archive » Americans Dying at Alarming Rate in Ira
  First Lt. Scott Quilty, 26, had to have his right leg amputated below the knee and his right arm amputated below the elbow, his father told The Sentinel.
• Nashuatelegraph.com: Benefit bake sale rescheduled
  MILFORD – The bake sale to benefit the family of 1st Lt. Scott Quilty has been rescheduled to this Saturday from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. It will be in front of the Toadstool Bookshop, Lorden Plaza, Route 101A, Milford.
• President Bush shakes hands with the prosthetic arm of 1st Lt. Scott Quilty · Scaz.Net
  President Bush, right, shakes hands with the prosthetic arm of 1st Lt. Scott Quilty during a visit with patients at the physical therapy wing of Walter Reed Army Center in Washington, Friday, March 30, 2007.
• Today in Iraq
  Lieutenant Scott Quilty, a native of Francestown, was injured in Iraq Sunday night when an improvised explosive device was detonated while he was on a dismounted patrol with the Army platoon he led. As a result of his injuries, Quilty, 26, had his right arm amputated below the elbow and his right leg removed below the knee, according to his father, R. Scott Quilty, who said he had not been told where in Iraq the attack had occurred. A state lawmaker stationed in Iraq has been injured.
• Bush Apologizes for Poor Conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center
  President Bush, right, shakes hands with the 1st Lt. Scott Quilty during a visit to Walter Reed Army Center in Washington, 30 Mar 2007
• LJWorld.com / Bush apologizes at Walter Reed
  President Bush meets Army 1st Lt. Scott Quilty during a visit with patients at the physical therapy wing of Walter Reed Army Center in Washington, D.C. Quilty has a prosthetic arm because of injuries suffered during his Army service.
• reaching out «
  March 30: President Bush shakes hands with 1st Lt. Scott Quilty during a visit to the Walter Reed Army Center.
• Before and after Iraq — O Papel dos EUA no Sistema Internacional Pós-1989
  On Oct. 2, 2006, Capt. Scott Quilty, 26, was leading a foot patrol in Rustimullah, a town south of Baghdad. An improvised explosive device, or IED, detonated near him. He lost his right arm and right leg.
• U.S. Programs Office of Survivor Corps
• Roadfood.com Forums – For a Debt That Can Never Be Repaid
  On Oct. 2, 2006, Capt. Scott Quilty, 26, was leading a foot patrol in Rustimullah, a town south of Baghdad. An improvised explosive device, or IED, detonated near him. He lost his right arm and right leg.
• Survivor Corps – Programs – United States
  Scott Quilty
  Survivor Corps
  2100 M St. NW Suite 302
  Washington DC 20037
  Ph: 202.250.3946
  F: 202.464.0011
  squilty@survivorcorps.org
• Acinetobacter Baumannii in Iraq the Casualties
  First Lt. Scott Quilty
  “Doctors had to amputate a portion of one of Quilty’s arms, and part
  of one leg.
  He is really battling infection, so he has a very high fever. He is still
  in critical condition
• BLOG.DEFENSESTANDARD.COM
  For Quilty, the motivation to come to work each day is intensely personal.
  Her husband, Capt. Scott Quilty, lost an arm and a leg and spent two years at Walter Reed recovering. She wants the patients she sees to live the life her husband now enjoys.
• Untitled Document
  Brotheres, Just finished reading the 31st. Inf newsletter. I was disconcerted to find out that, on 9/19/o6, Spec. Bobby Callahan from Jamestown, N.C was killed in iraq, when the vehicle he was in turned over. On Oct.1st.P.F.C Satieon V “T” Greenleewas killed by sniper fire in Baghdad, he was from Pemdleton, S.C. Also on the 1st., Lt. Scott Quilty lost an arm and leg (improvised explosive device) while on dismounted patrol. These men were and are with A/4/31, the unit, since 2001, has had four combat tours. Our’ brother Polar Bears are still under the hammer. With deep regret, Ed. Pro Patria.
• Military & Veterans: Politics for the deserving: 5/11/08 – 5/18/08
  On Oct. 2, 2006, Capt. Scott Quilty, 26, was leading a foot patrol in Rustimullah, a town south of Baghdad. An improvised explosive device, or IED, detonated near him. He lost his right arm and right leg.

  The best worst injury

• Photo from AP Photo by Gerald Herbert – Daylife
  President Bush, right, shakes hands with the prosthetic arm of 1st Lt. Scott Quilty during a visit with patients at the physical therapy wing of Walter Reed Army Center in Washington, Friday, March 30, 2007.
• President George W. Bush watches U.S. Army 1st Lt. Scott Anthony Quilty of Francetown, N.H., demonstrate his walking abilities Friday, March 30, 2007, during a visit to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. Standing with the President is Lt.
  President George W. Bush watches U.S. Army 1st Lt. Scott Anthony Quilty of Francetown, N.H., demonstrate his walking abilities Friday, March 30, 2007, during a visit to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. Standing with the President is Lt. Quilty’s wife U.S. Army Capt. AnnMarie Dora Quilty. Lt. Quilty was later awarded the Purple Heart by President Bush. White House photo by Eric Draper
• President Bush, right, shakes hands with the prosthetic arm of 1st Lt. Scott Quilty
  President Bush, right, shakes hands with the prosthetic arm of 1st Lt. Scott Quilty during a visit with patients at the physical therapy wing of Walter Reed Army Center in Washington, Friday, March 30, 2007. At center is his wife Annmarie Quilty,
• President Bush watches as 1st Lt. Scott Quilty goes through his exercises as he visits with patients
  President Bush watches as 1st Lt. Scott Quilty goes through his exercises as he visits with patients in the physical therapy wing of Walter Reed Army Center in Washington, Friday, March 30, 2007. Between them is his wife Annmarie Quilty.
• Bush Apologizes for Poor Conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center
  President Bush, right, shakes hands with the 1st Lt. Scott Quilty during a visit to Walter Reed Army Center in Washington, 30 Mar 2007
• The UNH Connection: An Electronic Newsletter
  PROUD VETERAN
  In 2006, while serving in Iraq, Scott Quilty ’04 (pictured with President Bush at Walter Reed Army Medical Center) lost his right arm and leg in a roadside bombing. But he didn’t lose his commitment or his hope. He tackled his rehabilitation process with determination, married his high school sweetheart, AnnMarie Dora Wilcox Quilty ’03 (also pictured), and today is leading a pilot program that will help train other survivors of traumatic injury. Focusing on his blessings is a poignant exercise for Quilty, whose close friend and UNH roommate, Ben Keating ’04, lost his life while serving in Afghanistan. “Knowing that for whatever reason I was still here and a guy like Ben isn’t — who was my better on every measurable level — kind of solidified within me that I needed to, regardless of the situation, push through the darker periods to rise above being a victim of it all,” Quilty says.
• The long road back for a wounded warrior
  There were dark days, but a retired Army captain who was injured by a roadside bomb feels lucky to be alive. First of two parts
• Soldier wounded in Iraq bombing
  FRANCESTOWN (AP) – A Francestown soldier serving in Iraq was seriously wounded over the weekend in a roadside bombing.

  First Lt. Scott Quilty, 26, had to have his right leg amputated below the knee and his right arm amputated below the elbow, his father told The Sentinel.

• A Need to Take the World Seriously
  Capt. Benjamin Keating ’04 and 1st Lt. Scott Quilty ’04 began their UNH journey together in 2000, when they enrolled in the Army ROTC program. They participated in countless early morning field exercises, spent many a late night studying for exams, and, as seniors, became roommates. By 2006, they had something else in common: both were assigned to serve in war zones, Keating in Afghanistan and Quilty in Iraq.
• U.S. Programs Office of Survivor Corps
  Survivor Corps and the global consulting firm Booz Allen Hamiliton are hosting an Initiators Conference on the Community Reintegration of Service Members and Veterans in an effort to bring together the leaders of key government, business, nonprofit, and academic institutions currently engaged on this issue. Booz Allen Hamilton, which has a long history of commitment to America’s service members and veterans, has joined us in this effort, bringing their extensive experience in helping leaders and organizations collaborate to address complex issues across sectors.
• Scott Quilty with George W Bush — PHOTO
  Bush, right, shakes hands with the prosthetic arm of 1st Lt. Scott Quilty during a visit with patients at the physical therapy wing of Walter Reed on Friday.
• Bush promises vets a better Walter Reed – USATODAY.com
  Bush, right, shakes hands with the prosthetic arm of 1st Lt. Scott Quilty during a visit with patients at the physical therapy wing of Walter Reed on Friday.
• Rockingham Ambulance Online – News
  Two Stars of Life proudly represented Rockingham Regional Ambulance, Inc. this year. EMT – Intermediate Scott Hurst and Operations Center Coordinator Scott Quilty were selected by their peers and managers to represent both Rockingham Ambulance and the State of NH at this annual event.
• LSN – Landmine Survivors Network – Bios
  Scott Quilty – U.S. Program Manager
• UnionLeader.com – New Hampshire news, business and sports
  Capt. Scott Quilty, center, and his wife, Capt. AnnMarie Dora Wilcox Quilty, pose with President Bush during Scott’s Purple Heart ceremony at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. (COURTESY)
• PC World – Unlocked G1: Not (Yet) Worth the Effort
• Scott Quilty ’04 – UNH Alumni Association
  In early October 2006, Scott Quilty ’04 was seriously wounded in a roadside bombing in Iraq. Read more
• Facebook | Scott Quilty
• Neighbors Working To Help Family Of Injured Soldier – New Hampshire News Story – WMUR Manchester
  Neighbors are reaching out to help the family of an Army soldier from Francestown who was seriously injured in Iraq.

  First Lt. Scott Quilty was on foot patrol near Baghdad last week when he was taken down by an explosion. Doctors had to amputate a portion of one of Quilty’s arms, and part of one leg.

  “He is really battling infection, so he has a very high fever. He is still in critical condition,” said Raisa Marshall, Quilty’s neighbor.

• A MEMORABLE MEMORIAL DAY – KarlfromNH.com Weekly Columns
  On October 1st, 2006 after being in Iraq for just six weeks, Scott was struck by a roadside bomb while on patrol. He was a platoon leader, 30 men, and he had trained at Fort Drum in Watertown, New York. They were members of the 10th Mountain Division, a Combat Infantry Unit. At the tender age of 26, Scott was to lose a leg and an arm. He was lucky to have survived at all. Flown first to Germany, and then later to Walter Reed, he is still in rehabilitation there. Not once, through any of this ordeal, did he complain or regret his service. His family stood by him for months as he underwent over 15 surgeries. Skin grafts, closing of wounds, countless procedures undoubtedly painful beyond reason, and still never even a hint of “poor me”.
• Does the board wish to help out? – Viper Alley – Dodge Viper Forum
  Neighbors are reaching out to help the family of an Army soldier from Francestown who was seriously injured in Iraq.First Lt. Scott Quilty was on foot patrol near Baghdad last week when he was taken down by an explosion.

  Doctors had to amputate a portion of one of Quilty’s arms, and part of one leg.”He is really battling infection, so he has a very high fever. He is still in critical condition,” said Raisa Marshall, Quilty’s neighbor.

  Quilty is now at Walter Reed Medical Center. His mother and father have rushed to his side. Quilty’s mother quit her job at a New Hampshire Inn, anticipating his need for care when he returns home.”It’s time for the community to step up.

  It’s time for the community to take responsibility, help take the burden off of Janet and Scott’s shoulders so that they can focus on their son, not worry about the electrical bill,” said Marshall.Marshall decided to help by writing a compelling letter outlining financial needs.

  The letter was emailed to dozens of peo

• GI SPECIAL 4J5 – 5/10/06
  Francestown Soldier Injured In Iraq

  Lt. Scott Quilty, 26, a UNH graduate, had his right arm amputated below the elbow and his right leg removed below the knee.

  Oct. 4, 2006 By STEPHEN BEALE, Union Leader Correspondent

  Lieutenant Scott Quilty, a native of Francestown, was injured in Iraq Sunday night when an improvised explosive device was detonated while he was on a dismounted patrol with the Army platoon he led.

  As a result of his injuries, Quilty, 26, had his right arm amputated below the elbow and his right leg removed below the knee, according to his father, R. Scott Quilty, who said he had not been told where in Iraq the attack had occurred.

  “He had only been there six weeks and they have been moving him around,” Quilty said today in an interview. “He didn’t have any permanent station at the time.”

  Quilty said that his son was initially taken to a hospital northwest of Iraq and then transported to a military medical facility in Germany on Monday. He is scheduled to arrive a

• U.S. President George W. Bush Visits Walter Reed Army Medical Center | Article from Getty Images (by Event) Individuals | HighBeam Research
• Francestown soldier injured in Iraq
  Lieutenant Scott Quilty, a native of Francestown, was injured in Iraq Sunday night when an improvised explosive device was detonated while he was on a dismounted patrol with the Army platoon he led.
• Shindig benefits injured GI’s family
  Go back about a month ago, for instance, and put yourself in the shoes of Scott and Janet Quilty, well-known residents of the tiny Monadnock village of Francestown. Early one Monday morning, some of that dreaded news found them: Their son, Army First Lt. Scott Quilty, 26, a college scholar who’d gone to Iraq just six weeks before, had been seriously injured when a roadside booby trap blew up his platoon.
• Survivor Corps US Program Update
  Last week was a busy one for the Survivor Corps US Program. On August 18th and 19th, Survivor Corps hosted a round table discussion for organizations serving the recovery and reintegration needs of US Veterans. Participants discussed the value of connecting newly returned service members and veterans with other veterans who had been through the same experience for support. This type of relationship helps both individuals to overcome traumatic experiences and participate in community.
• A Day in the Life of President Bush (with the troops at Walter Reed): 3-30-07
  A Day in the Life of President Bush (with the troops at Walter Reed): 3-30-07
• The long road back for a wounded warrior
  Scott Quilty has always been a leader who shows us how to beat our own doubts
• Hosted by Siteleader.com
  (tags: ping.fm)
• Roger Wolfson: Why Obama Supporters Need to Do More than Vote
  (tags: ping.fm)

I don’t think that anyone can explain anything to Sara Palin. Does anyone know what her IQ is? I know that the United States sees a rugged individualist out fighting bears and wolves in the wilderness whenever she looks at herself in the mirror. Ignorant ruffian is not the source of our Constitution or our Bill or Rights.

None of the founders of this country were ruffians and all fancied themselves to be both men of letters and of the people. Diplomacy, freedom, liberty, and self-determination are things that came from the foundry of Enlightenment.

Americans mis-remembers their history: the founders of our country were not the same people who settled the continent on the shoulders of Puritanism, they were revolutionary humanists! The were men who valued the rights of man above anything else, believing men to be worthy the responsibility of being stewards of both a Nation and each other. Worthy of a democracy!

I don’t know what people think smart is, but I don’t count street smarts when it comes to world politics and diplomacy. Are we in an anti-intellectual, anti-thought, anti-rational US now? Is being a maverick better than being wildly capable. I value intellect, education, training, capability, creativity, compassion, altruism, generosity, humanitarianism more than most.

You know, good rational thought. A good sense of logic and fairness. A deep background in philosophy, history, civics, poetry, literature, and the law. We always forget — or fail to state — that Barack Obama is a Harvard-educated civil rights lawyer! This is a blessing in a world wherein we, the United States, are single-handedly dismantling the same rights, protections, privacies, and freedoms that our founding fathers, soldiers, and Americans have been fighting and dying for since we were born as a nation.

One’s mind is only knowable through the things one expresses, be it in writing or spoken word. After taking a bunch of multiple-choice tests, one’s left only with one’s capacity to communicate.

I really don’t know what to say except there are even brilliant people in my career who have trouble writing a good sentence. In communications and PR, well-written messages, conveying complexity, simply, are so valuable yet so under-valued. While I have not yet read The Age of American Unreason, we’re too close to our own dumbing-down and have become what we fear in other countries: intolerance.

We don’t even see that our own personal behavior as a country, supposedly protecting us from tyranny and “wrong-doers,” is making us tyrannical!  We’re sacrificing many of our freedoms of a perception of safety.  Safety from what? After 9/11, there is not been a brutal follow-up of discotheque bombings, the like of which marred 1980s Europe. We have not had to suffer any of what the UK needed to suffer under the IRA. We have not needed to avoid city buses the way Israelis sometimes do during real and present threat.

Since 9/11, nothing’s happened.  Nothing. And don’t even suggest that our democracy is 100% sealed against such things and that our military intelligence, our domestic intelligence, our federal and local police, our FBI, and our special operations commandoes can protect us were there another bold and well-funded attempt against any place in our continent. Impossible! Nothing’s happened.

And yet, our civil rights, our freedoms, and our personal privacy is constantly being eroded and threatened just because people are scared out-of-proportion to the real and present threat. Hell, we’re not being stolen from, we’re actively pursuing perceived security at whatever cost is necessary. Egad.

Back to writing. Back to communication. Back to anti-intellectualism. The problem is: people don’t know what “bad,” “wrong,” “imprecise,” “inarticulate,” or “confusing” writing is. I don’t buy the “anti-East Coast” thing. Mid-West universities are some of the best. There’s Rice and Austin even in TX! I see people pissing and moaning about how they need to use “SMS shorthand” on Twitter because Twitter keeps your microblogging posts under 140 characters. Well, I am “restricted” by 140 characters, too, as are we all; however, I use complete sentences, never blaming Twitter’s 140 limit!

I agree that one needs to read and read to become a better writer. It is like that in everything, including painting and photography. My dad was a shooter. He told me, “to know good photography, one must both shoot, shoot, but also look, look, look!” When your job is to communicate, “knowing social media” isn’t enough. We win gigs because we can communicate exceptionally. I don’t know German yet. I would never consider doing PR in Germany unless I hired exceptional writers and thinkers.

In America, yes, but around the world, subliteracy abounds. I love Frank Luntz’ tagline: “It is not what you say, it’s what they hear.” Understanding comprehension is key to controlling the message. When I started on USENET in ’93, it was still an ivory tower in many ways. You would win or lose argument threads through precise argument.

If I didn’t think my USENET post through, I would have my argument — my post — picked apart. The argument is every bit as important to communication and persuasion — the process and proof — as is the truth you’re trying to convey.  Not being able to think through one’s own political or esoteric argument as well as being incapable of parsing and comprehending another’s argument is what is getting the United States into such a mess.

If you can’t map historical context, rigorous research, and experiential perspective to current events, you’re liable to be manipulated or persuaded against your will based on your emotions or fears instead of logic or reason. Yes, there is a sucker born every day, and it is my passion to do my best, day by day, to avoid being that sucker.  I recommend that we all try to check the facts, the history, the recommendations, the logic, and the reason of all of the news and political discourse that we’re listening to right now, in these few days before the U.S. General Election.

Are you thinking things through or are you carrying someone else’s ideas, convictions, or beliefs?  Do you even have your own?  What do they even look like?

CHALLENGE: This was a two week, high pressure campaign focused on getting International Medical Corps (IMC) into the final five of the American Express Members Project $2.5 million giveaway competition. 1,190 projects were nominated for participation in the competition, Amex cardholders could vote for their favorite project, and the top five projects receive a portion of the $2.5 million in grant money.

The challenge that Abraham Harrison faced was to take IMC, a relatively low-profile $100MM per year organization that gets all its money from government grants and had essentially no support base among the general public and activate a mass wave of support and votes for the organization – in two weeks.

International Medical Corps is a global, humanitarian, nonprofit dedicated to saving lives and relieving suffering through health care training, relief operations, and development programs.

STRATEGY: Abraham & Harrison has developed strong relationships with a large group of bloggers interested in humanitarian issues who in turn act as influencers in their communities of readers. The goal, as with all online influencer outreaches, was to earn these bloggers’ support and their willingness to act as repeaters and amplifiers of our client’s message, get their implicit or explicit endorsement, and motivate their readerships to action – in this case to vote for IMC in the Amex Members’ Project competition.

Abraham & Harrison was in constant consultation with the client, advising International Medical Corps on their message copy, their use of widgets, their posting of banner ads, and guiding their broader strategic decisions.

TACTICS: Abraham & Harrison reached out to close to 4000 bloggers across a spectrum of demographics. The Abraham & Harrison team reached out to these bloggers multiple times over the course of two weeks directing them to the Members Project website and the helpful, blogger-friendly Social Media News Release that made blogging on the topic an easy cut-and-paste action. http://internationalmedicalcorps.smnr.us/

Abraham & Harrison also turned to its strong presence on Facebook, Twitter, and several other social networks, building groups and messaging followers as well as the broader Abraham & Harrison community. To drive SEO and further traffic, every one of the over 190 blog posts was posted on Digg and several other social bookmarking platforms.

RESULTS: Within two weeks the team at Abraham & Harrison had achieved close to a 10% response rate to the outreach emails, leading to over 190 blog posts with more trickling in daily. Millions of impressions were made, and given the permanent nature of blog posts and the resultant presence on the search engines, impressions will continue to be made into the future.

International Medical Corps was able to fend off challenges from those organizations in 6th and 7th place, finally finishing in the top five, guaranteeing them a portion of the $2.5MM in grant money.

"Abraham & Harrison has been a tremendous asset to International Medical Corps during our American Express Members Project campaign. Their online strategy and outreach helped introduce International Medical Corps to many new audiences and raised our visibility during this time-sensitive campaign. International Medical Corps was written about in more than 170 blog posts.

"Abraham & Harrison brings a unique approach to online public relations. The worldwide web is a vast space, yet Abraham & Harrison has found a formula to reach out to target audiences, effectively raise awareness and get online readers and activists to take action.

"The entire Abraham & Harrison team has been fantastic. Each team member brings creativity and passion to the cause. Without a doubt, International Medical Corps would engage Abraham & Harrison for another campaign."

Rebecca Milner
Vice President, Institutional Advancement
International Medical Corps

If you have not been keeping on top of all of the great comments streaming in to the AH Poll entitled “If John McCain died or became incapacitated, would Sarah Palin be competent to be President?” you are really missing out! Some of them are the most insightful, thoughtful, and brilliant collection of thoughts representing the best and the worst of the right and the left! Roll up your sleeves and batten your hatches because you’re going to have one hell of a ride. Oh, also, these comments are in reverse-chronological order so the most recent are at the top. If you want to keep track of them live, please go visit them where they love and breathe. Read below for the most amazing Sarah Palin comment thread of the Internets!

And, here’s an embed of the poll, if I’ve piqued your interest by now:

Firstly, please vote now for the Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children. Secondly, I really want International Medical Corps to do as well as possible in the American Express Members Project. IMC has an amazing worldwide mission, “dedicated to saving lives and relieving suffering through health care training and relief and development programs.”

My team and I have been working with the IMC team for the last three weeks. After the first two weeks, we all were were able to collectively get IMC into the top-5, which was an amazing feat since there were quite a few organizations who were really hot on our heels!

The project? Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children. Now that the Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children project has made the top-5, we’re all pushing for the last 5 days and we need your vote! We’re currently in 4th place, which guarantees $100,000; however, if we are able to secure number 3, International Medical Corps would receive $300,000; then, if we could make it to second, IMC would receive $1,000,000. Making first would mean $1,5 million dollars to help feed hungry and malnourished children worldwide, saving the lives of malnourished children.

If you want to learn more about the project, Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children, feel free to check out the Social Media News Release we created for this campaign. If you wan to learn more about the International Medical Corps, please check out the IMC web site and their about page:

About International Medical Corps

International Medical Corps (IMC) is a global, humanitarian, nonprofit organization dedicated to saving lives and relieving suffering through health care training and relief and development programs.

Established in 1984 by volunteer doctors and nurses, IMC is a private, voluntary, nonpolitical, nonsectarian organization. Its mission is to improve the quality of life through health interventions and related activities that build local capacity in underserved communities worldwide.

By offering training and health care to local populations and medical assistance to people at highest risk, and with the flexibility to respond rapidly to emergency situations, IMC rehabilitates devastated health care systems and helps bring them back to self-reliance.

I worship Hill Holliday. They have their required Flash “brand presence” with all the fancy “interactive” requirements, and that takes up 800×600. Were that all, I would blanch and spit on the ground.

I hate Flash because I am highly textual. So, go to Hill | Holliday and then… wait for it … scroll down. Yes, the entire Hill Holliday corporate site is a simple header on the top of a powerful and admired blog. A powerful and admired vertical and industry blog. Brilliant! Bravo!

Here’s why this is all so important: Google and the other search engines don’t see Flash-based sites: they’re invisible. Read this…

Make Your Invisible Graphics-Intensive or Flash Site Highy Visible to Google

Chances are that your corporate website is beautiful and expensive. Beautiful websites tend to be rich in graphics, images, photos, and Flash content. They also tend to be shallow with few pages and very little copy. Sites like this are almost impossible for Google to find. If Google can’t find you then neither can your customer. Until now. This article helps you turn your invisible corporate website into a high-profile and highly-effective medium for communication.

This article is designed to help you turn your stealth website into a big, loud, impressive, bomber of a website with plenty of payload capacity, the payload being your company, your message, your products, your services, and your story.

Corporate websites that are highly graphics-intensive or are built using Macromedia Flash or Shockwave rich content are pretty much invisible to every search engine because search engines want nothing more than lots and lots of descriptive and rich content. In general, the prettier the site, the more impossible it is to actually find unless you know just where to look.

Websites are delivery vehicles and their payloads are your company message, your products, your services, your brand, your culture, and your story. Is your company website an F-117 stealth fighter, only visible to people who know where to look and only carrying a small payload, or is your company a C-130 Hercules, filling the sky with its size and noise and carrying a massive payload.

There are some important things to consider when optimizing a web site for search engines, using Google as the gold standard. SEO requires three things, two of which most web developers and companies do good jobs: rich textual title content, rich textual metadata content (in the form of meta tag keywords and description), and rich body textual content.

Most websites suffers from a strong lack in rich body textual content because they are in general built like brochures: very shallow and very graphical. Sites that rely heavily on either image files or Flash content suffer disproportionately when it comes to search engine ranking. Why?

Because search engines can only index the content that web sites offer them and the only content that the search engines can use is plain text. Although handsome, graphically-rich sites don’t have either the diversity or the sheer volume of keyword phrases that text-rich sites have. In addition to pure volume, search engines also need to find all keyword variations of your service – all variations of the service that your potential clients might use. Search engines also care about what is called “keyword density?? which means that the most readable of copy isn’t necessarily the most findable.

Keep Pronouns to a Strict Minimum

First, never use pronouns. Keyword density is essential to how Google ranks you. Second, use variations on search terms. To illustrate the first two points, I will take a bit of copy and optimize it for search engines and their love for keyword density. Instead of this:

“Viral marketing is now an essential strategy for every firm. It has become as essential to small and large firms alike, both for its relative affordability and its potentially high effectivity. With the advent of the Internet, it has become amazingly efficient: all you need is a laptop and a compelling message.??

Try this:

“Viral marketing is now an essential marketing strategy for every marketing firm. Viral marketing, also known as relationship marketing, buzz marketing, word-of-mouth marketing, conversational marketing, and passion marketing, has become as essential to small and large marketing firms alike, both for its relative affordability and its potentially high effectivity. With the advent of the Internet, viral marketing has become amazingly efficient: all you need is a laptop and a compelling message.??

Yes, you’re appalled by its inefficiency and wordiness. Your boss would never approve, nor would your writing coach. Tough. This is not about winning the PEN/Faulkner, its about arousing Google’s algorithms. Of course, I am exaggerating in order to make a point. I removed all the pronouns and made sure that everything is completely contextualized – not for your visitors, but rather for the search engines.

For my example, I made sure that there was a broad diversity of all the ways people might search for this content. In addition, I made sure that I also mentioned all the buzzwords and key terms that I could imagine. Brainstorming with your sales and communication team or looking at the kind of words and wording your competitors use is always a great idea.

The Controversial Image ALT Tag

Although there is much debate over whether Google pays any attention to ALT tags for images, I always recommend adding ALT tags to all image files, even when the web page is made up of a “sliced image.?? The only ALT tags that exist are usually in the banner of the site. No other parts of a highly graphical or flash-based main page are usually textualized using image ALT tags.

Your company slogan, tagline, phone number, guarantees, products, services, the menu choices (navigation) should be included in the image ALT tags. Even if Google doesn’t care about ALT tags like the rumors say, the site will be way more navigable, especially to the blind and seeing impaired – and don’t they deserve a break? don’t they need your services, too?

Google’s “Eyes” Focus on Where Your Eyes Do

Google give favor and weight to headers and emphasized text. No matter what anyone says, Google cares about formatting. Strong, Bold, Emphasized, Italicized, and Hyperlinked text is favored by Google. Also, Google looks at header tags, too. Header 1, Header 2, Header 3, and Header 4 are important to use. This is especially important because when the same desigers who have you that “sliced” graphics-based site, they might have designer the CSS style sheet without concern for these thing. CSS styles can change the look of regular HTML tags as easily as they can customized DIVs, SPANS, and STYLES.

Corporate Blogs

Corporate blogging is essential to the growth of online properties for a number of reasons, including access to the blogosphere and its interested and passionate community of bloggers and blog-readers. Blogs offer built-in useful tools such as RSS syndication, comments, outgoing links, blogrolls, trackbacks, a richness of text and textual content, and the ability to build celebrity and personality online through a first-person relationship with said blogosphere, current, and future customers.

Since potential and future clients are clueless as to how the company works, how you have grown the company, why you chose to go into this business, and what your vision is, this is a great opportunity to share yourself as the owner, as someone who has his finger on the pulse, and also to directly respond to the curious and the unconvinced. It would also allow you to accept and then publish shameless testimonials from real fans like me. It would also allow you to publish any and all positive or neutral mentions (testimonials or otherwise) about the blog or your official corporate website.

Corporate Blog as SEO Strategy

The Search Engine Optimization of your official corporate website will aid in the site’s “findability?? in Google, MSN, and Yahoo!. There are other things that Google and the other search engines consider in addition to the textual completeness of the entire web property. The most important are the depth of the site (more pages are better), number of links and interlinks to and from the site (can be within the same site), and the frequency with which the site gets updated. A traditional corporate web site is shallow, poorly-linked (especially to external sources) and can oftentimes go for months without being updated. If Google can figure out that your site isn’t changing, it passes it over for constant indexing. It does this because Google has a finite number of resources and will revoke any resources it can in order to preserve them. Since the Internet is vast, Google give priority to web sites and web pages that are constantly-updated such as blogs. Blogs are constantly-updated, deep, many-paged sites that are constantly being updated and constantly being spidered by search engine robots.

Corporate Blog as Community Outreach

No matter how many cool offers there might be online and no matter how much of a your company’s products and services might be, a real angle in the entire blogosphere and blog world is in not only letting your service speak for itself but also that people are even more attracted to story, personality, and the behind-the-scene experience of both the people who run companies and their clients than they are to the services themselves. If you have the time, passion, and wherewithal to put the time and energy into really reaching out to the blogosphere and the community of readers and bloggers, you can get quite an amount of influence and sway – real impact and market penetration – by just building a relationship with the blogsavvy, wealthy, young, and the professional – people with money, in other words. These types of people, 25-45, are the same sort of people who spend a lot of time reading blogs.

Blog Community Outreach

One powerful technique for building community on blogs is to first find a compelling item about your industry, products, and services then search for the blogs that are already talking about it on Technorati. It is much easier to message on blogs that are already having friendly conversation.

Technorati as Strategic Tool

Spread the word online: People are already talking about how busy they are, how awful their places look, and so forth — tell them about your company, your culture, your history, your story, your products, and the services you offer – and do it openly and honestly and place your own name, your own email, and either the URL of your web site or the URL of the blog itself. Here’s how:

1) Go to Technorati.com, a blog search engine.

2) Type in one or more of the keyword phrase in your Meta Tag keywords

3) Go to the blogs that are talking about your company, industry, products, and services

4) Where appropriate, leave a short note about your company or your corporate blog

5) Come back the next day (or as often as you can) and do the same thing but be sure to follow-up with the conversation because dropping a message without coming back is considered spam and in the blogosphere, an ounce or prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Submit your Blog and Website to Search Engines

I personally use Dynamic Submission, but there are a bunch. Web Position Gold is another fave. I choose Dynamic Submission because it allows me to spider my entire blog to within an inch of its life and then submit not just the site’s arteries but also all the way down to the site’s villi as well. In my opinion, search engines are lazy. They have only so many resources and so many nanoseconds in the day. They need to put first things first. So what I do before I spider the blog is set the index page of the blog to view 365-days of posts, or maybe a bunch of weeks, so that I can spider most of the blog from one “Import from Web.” When the import is complete, I change it back to showing only the last 7 days. I even maintain a separate box on which to host the Dynamic Submission tool because it’s such a processor hog. And then let it go. Seems to work like a charm. Why? Well, not because I am doing anything unseamly but rather just because Google and the rest sometimes miss something and I want to make sure that all the engines get everything. Every little dumbass link.

The Services You Might Want to Employ

Although I have not used the services, one respectable way of increasing your link popularity and prestige in Google is to use a service like Text Link Ads. What Text Link Adss offers is a link-buying service that does double-duty. The double duty is as follows: in addition to creating clickable links on the popular sites that can choose and afford, it will also allow you to legally create Google bombs that will heighten the probability that your company website or your corporate blog will turn up when people search for your company, your industry, your market, your products, and your services.

Employing “localized” Google AdWords, content-based Google AdWords, and search-based Google AdWords is a no-brainer. There are other advertising solutions available now, including finding the advertising networks that might be placed on some of the blogs you find the most focused or relevant, including BlogAds, etc.

Okay, I hope that helps. I am tired of writing but if you have any more questions, please feel free to ask me questions below in the comment section and I will both answer them and also use your questions, comments, feedback, and suggestions to fuel future articles.

A reflection on a two-month sailing trip from Acapulco to Los Angeles on a 42-foot Jeanneau catamaran. Almost two-years-ago now.

My spiritual experience of sailing during Lent during my Jesus year birthday of 33 and all the important lessons and experience I have been lucky to have as a result. Although I am a member of the Vestry of Saint James’ and its currently both the most exciting time and my favorite time on the Church calendar, Lent, I responded to the call of my best friend Mark when he asked me to come to Mexico to help him complete his sail from Charleston, SC, to Los Angeles, CA.

I joined the sail on March 1, spent my birthday on the boat, and find myself stuck in Cabo San Lucas over a month later.

What I have realized is that sailing allows one to better understand the nature of God’s grace in my life. Little did I know that it would be as much help to me as it has been to him.

I had never sailed with Mark, even though he lives and works from the deck and cabin of a gorgeous yacht catamaran named Kinship II. I have never been much of a sailor and so much of my sailing enjoyment has been vicarious. It just never interested me and Mark never really pressed the issue.

A little over a month ago, Mark called me and told me that the crew of six he started with in South Carolina had started abandoning the vessel beginning at the first stop after a grueling trek from the Keys all the way to Central America, through the Panama Canal, and back up the Pacific coast of Mexico. The faithful remnant left in Acapulco because their money had run out and the time schedule had slipped and slipped and slipped, as sailing schedules are wont to do.

So, when Mark suggested that he would pay for me to fly to Acapulco to join the crew — him — I took this as one of those veiled manly calls for help which never really show either fear or desperation.

When you spend time with men’s men, you have to read between the lines. I was in Acapulco within five days. I might have hurt a relation with a client and leaned on my lovely friend Sarah a little too much, to say nothing of the strain on my new and wondrous relationship with Wendy, but it was Mark! The brother I never had.

We burnt two weeks moored off of the Club de Yates de Acapulco as most of the beatings that Kinship II had suffered on the long passage through the Gulf, along Central America, through the Panama Canal, and up along the Pacific coast were being healed by our angel, Gabriel, who took the time and the pride to get us up to ship shape.

I have been officially sailing the Pacific sea since the first day of Lent, 5 March. An equal time has been spent stuck in port and harbor as it has been sailing miles offshore; some of it has been gentle and awe-inspiring while other parts have been punishing and trying.

Although I have not officially given up anything for Lent save my job, I have been able to use the time to become more essential.

Things have been very difficult for me over the last year or so, at least since 9-11, but including the technology crash. Technology and the Internet is the basket I had been placing all of my eggs and I had been compensated very well for it.

During the last six months, thought, I have be grasping at straws, asking myself what I want to do with the rest of my life. Become a lawyer? Go to business school? Pursue a PhD?

I was stuck in a myopic infinite loop. My priorities, my goals, my desires, and my true wants and needs were befuddled and unclear. Sadly, I have unintentionally hurt people as they were caught in my personal panic as I desperately searched for my equilibrium while not giving myself either the time or the slack with which to find it.

On 8 March, in addition to everything else, I became 33, which to everyone I have spoken to at Saint James’ and elsewhere is my “Jesus year.” Allegedly, the age Jesus the Christ died for our sins. Lord knows this was renting space in my mind as the date approached. Lord knows that there was no way I could even remotely find the time or the money to be able to take this time to both help my friend and save myself. But there it was, and I am still sailing with a lot of help from my friends.

Sailing takes time, and it takes its own time which has nothing to do with either my desire or the requirements of society. The moment one becomes willful enough to disrespect the nature of the sea is the day something breaks. Its as simple as that and is kind of spooky at first. Easy as she goes. Cliche sentiment seem to reverberate on the sea. The 96-hour passages blur one into the other into one long day, and when the limits of my tolerance were reached I was rewarded with a pod of a hundred dolphins dancing in and out of my wake. Or a field of basking green sea turtles in the middle of the sea. Or a dense morning fog clearing to a double rainbow.

God can be very remedial in his lessons when you are sailing. He also protects fools and drunks and I am most certainly a fool at the very least. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction and Karma is direct, reciprocity is king on the sea. When I am tempted to be willful and push myself past either my abilities or my energy, I always either hurt myself or break something onboard. This is not a joke. It seems gentle — the sea always does — but it is life or death.

The lesson I have learned thus far is that there is a definite rhythm I have been blind to, within which everything works beautifully.

As a striking example, last week we were on route from Manzanillo to Cabo San Lucas and it was to be a milk run. Easily enough diesel to motor from where we were anchored at the Las Hadas Resort to where we were to moor in Cabo San Lucas. First impossibility: we ran out of diesel prematurely because the engine was detuned and was drinking the fuel quickly. So we ran out with just enough to bring us in to port when we finally made it to port, which was still 150 miles away.

That’s okay, we have a sailing catamaran. We sail easily in 5 knot winds. During the second day, the main sail halyard snaps at the block, at the top of the mast. That’s okay, we have a redundant halyard — which snaps four hours later! We string up the Genoa line and limp the rest of the way. Impossible, but normal I guess.

Things like this happen a lot. When we arrived at Cabo San Lucas, we could not find anyone who would climb the mast, until we ran into Sebastian and his family, from Vancouver, BC. He shimmied up the mast for free and we were back on schedule. We ran into many people like Seb along the way and the Cruiser community around the world is amazing generous.

Sartre was wrong, hell is not other people: grace is other people.

Every day of this trip has humbled me; every day has given me confidence. Not once have I felt humiliation and every day has been a celebration. The confidence not to fear what will happen next, to remain present and observant, to remain vigilant but not aggressive.

And I have been thriving and I am strong and worthy of supporting Captain Mark as his only crew and of protecting the delicate fiberglass exoskeleton Kinship II so that she is seaworthy and makes her voyage to Los Angeles on one pristine piece.

On the sea, nothing needs to be forced, nothing needs to be rushed; in fact, there are very few things that can be rushed. I have had to turn on the hourly chime on my wristwatch because I have experienced a couple of these 96-hour days. Time shrinks and expands. Being on watch exacerbates this experience. Time is relative in a practical sense as it can stretch or compress, and some nights I have been on a watch for what feels like an hour starting at 0100 and then the sky lightens and turns pink and the morning comes. Other times, I fight for wakefulness and after making a go of trying, I wake Mark and ask him to take the watch instead so that I can catch some sleep for a little while. This is too much to risk, too much to lose, if I were to try any harder and fall deep into an exhausted sleep leaving no one at all to keep an eye out for cruise ships or super liners.

What’s on the line is the safety of the boat — a quarter-million-dollar investment — and the safety of the crew. There is only one person, usually sleepy and bored, who takes watch and single-handedly keeps the fragile and absurdly delicate vessel going 8 knots out of the way of container ships moving at 25 knots. There is a feeling of trust, the kind of confidence-building experience that can easily undo damage done in the workaday world of corporate America, can rebuild the confidence and self-love that might have blossomed in simpler times. I know they did for me. On the sea, either alone or with a crew, one can renew one’s faith in oneself and others.

Post Enron, dot-com, 9-11, and Clinton, my world changed in significant ways. I am a pretty technologically-savvy fellow and when I graduated from GW in 1993, during a low point in employment and jobs, I became an Internet and web developer in addition to photography and writing. Although a student of literature at University, I didn’t choose graduate school right away but instead became part of the great excitement of the dot-com explosion. I have been using the Internet since a bet version of Mosaic; since I played with MacWeb, when I noodled with lynx. I am pre-Internet and as a teen I was part of the BBS culture. It was natural for me to join the excitement and during the 90s I didn’t explore graduate school or law school, but rather put all my eggs into the Internet economy. And I was rewarded for a time.

Recently, times have become tough and I have lost much of my confidence in my choices, what I have to offer, and in myself. Luckily, I have never lost my Faith.

While on Kinship II, Mark and I went over my life because I needed distance and clarity. I was able to note the five things that are most important to be in my life, and I am proud to say that I have four out of five of them in spades: A partner, my family, my friends, my spiritual life, and money.

I am told that there are so many rich Americans who suffer from a true lack in their lives. So many Americans who might have money and a partner, but lack friends, family, and spirit. Or have money and nothing else. I am reminded every day that in a conscious, present, spiritual life, money is the easiest to secure for many of us as it is the most valued. Surely, it can feel that way. There are days when I lose sight of all the things in my life for which I am amazingly grateful and focus on only the things I lack, in this case money. And then it is often a downward spiral, where lack begets lack and before I knew it, I find myself feeling not only like a loser but like the worse kind: the fellow who failed to live up to his potential. In these times, I lose sight that I have had money before and that I will have money again. Its easy when one lives in a small world — or a world, shrunk — to find oneself skewed: both in perspective and proportion.

But on the sea, its different. As a geek, I liken it to rebooting my desktop computer. Rebooting the PC is the secret we techies have for fixing most of the problems wrong with most desktop PCs. Most of the time, these slowdowns occur because there are too many things going on on the PC that the user is no longer aware of: memory leaks, infinite loops, crashed software. These things cannot fix themselves and most users cannot truly sense this chaos in any way short of system slowdown. Not all problems result in the blue screen of death, some just send the computer into a morass. A skilled technician can fix some of the problems from the keyboard or by using a piece of software as an elixir, but the simplest thing one can do to set everything right is to turn the machine off, wait a minute and then turn it back on. Reboot.

So as I sit in an Internet cafe in Cabo San Lucas, Baja California Sur, Mexico, wondering if I am spending Lent the way I should. Mexico is a traditionally catholic country, truly religious. I have not given up coffee, chocolate, or even beer; I am not attending church and I am three thousand miles away from my pew in my parish, Saint James’ Episcopal Church, Capitol Hill.

Yes, I am spending Lent better than I could have ever imagined, in my opinion. For all the fears, stresses, and anxieties I have been suffering under, I have had my head truly buzzing so that I couldn’t hear myself think clearly, to say nothing of the soft voice of my Faith.

On the boat, I have had time to think. At first, way too much time! I felt guilt and boredom; I felt like I needed to do something, needed to get back to the office to make sure everything was all right. After two weeks — yes, I buzzed for a fortnight — I started to relax. I felt my heart, my face, by body, and then my mind become more tranquil. On the boat, I have been getting a good lesson in Faith, in trust, and in moving with the flow as opposed to opposing it, striking against it. To force it makes it break; to avoid it doesn’t make it go away; to fear it doesn’t help. Whatever it is. To be completely honest, I have not felt so good about myself and what I have to offer in ten years. I feel like a tiger!

So I have done the most irresponsible thing imaginable in dropping everything and flying three thousand miles to help a friend by replacing his crew and becoming a sailor for what will be over six weeks. It would never have happened had the request come in any other form than what I perceived as a mayday, an SOS. But it did and I am here and I am changed. Does this mean that I will be doing this irresponsible thing again and again? Will I need to do this again in the same way, taking an unscheduled, selfish, and fool hardy escape again? Probably not I have learned so many things and the next time I become overwhelmed or lose faith in myself or my life experience and am myopic and suffused with fear, all I need to do is remember; or, be reminded. Quite possibly this very writing will be enough; if not, then Mark, my friends, my parish family, or you.

Instead of being changed into a bum, a drop out, or a vagabond, am becoming more clear that I want the life I have, that I can handle the life choices I make, that I make fine life choices. I have had an amazing growing up, brilliant parents, a world-class education, and have many friends, and a fine girlfriend. When I make a life choice there is a good chance that my decision is a result of a very fine coming up and I should not worry too much. My choices will probably — based on a thirty-three year track record — be moral and kind.

I have been spending the last three years attending Saint James’ Holy Week religiously. Saint James’ offers one of the most spiritually rich Holy Week and Easter I could ever have imagined. From Maundy Thursday through Easter Eve, the Spirit is palpable and the presence of God is undeniable; similarly, I have a profound personal and spiritual experience while sailing. As arcane and transcendent and as undeniable as what I experienced in Church. To be sure, I am grateful to have had spent a truly blessed experience.

The next time I wish someone Godspeed, in my mind and heart that will forever be between 2.9 and 8 knots.