Be Grateful for Friends Next Door

Christmas at the Gaffneys was always such a wondrous event. First of all, I  marveled at how Elsie and Charlie, their parents, could keep track of what each of their seven children-- Danny, Charlie, Tommy, Bobby, Mary, Ann and Ellen -- all wanted. How each seemed to get exactly the right presents, which always included clothing. My own, conversely, was the small, Jewish clan in a neighborhood of large, boisterous Irish-Catholic families. The Deegans, the Mulvehills, the Nortons, the Gaffneys and us.

My favorite part of the holiday was appearing at their back door on Christmas Day evening, knowing there was a delicious turkey or ham carcass in the refrigerator and that I could just slip in and pick the meat right off the bones! I loved their tree in the living room. I loved how Charlie, home from Yale, would sit at the piano and play holiday tunes for everyone. I loved the joking and teasing. I loved being included. There was always a new record for the girls. We would run upstairs and steal away for hours, listening, singing, laughing in the room the three girls shared. Some years it was comedy and we would begin the ritual of memorizing George Carlin's or Cheech and Chong's routines. Later on, it was Dylan or Harry Chapin and we'd study the album covers, pouring over the lyrics, singing our hearts out.

Joyous, wonderful times.

Yesterday morning, while preparing for our holiday feast, I received news that Ann Gaffney was murdered. Bludgeoned to death by her drug-addled tenant in Hurley, NY. There will never be a Christmas I will not think of her. There will always be a hole where that joy once was. But what I will think of is something her sister said in her eulogy: may the angels wrap their wings around Ann..and around all of those loved ones we have lost this year. And may we smile in remembrance of all of our friends next door. G-d bless.

An Infuriating Year

This has been one infuriating year.

Ten years past the fall of the Twin Towers, three years post-Lehman and the apocalypse of the financial system as we knew it, we stand hard-pressed to imagine anyone not touched in the last twelve months by some outlandish, ridiculous, mind-blowing, devastating, distressing, demoralizing, upending, brain-bending, off-putting, mouth-dropping, peculiar, uncharacteristic, wild, dramatic, off kilter shit. 

Certainly, Messrs. Gaddafi and Bin Laden would agree. Not a good year.

How about Arnold and Maria and his now-teenage Latino love-child? Chao bello!

How was that bed in a cage, Mr. Mubarak? I guess it might be better to sleep in your jammies through your trial than actually face it.  Gabrielle Giffords shot in the head.

SONY and so many in Japan—not a good time.

Arab spring, Muslim rage. Tahrir Square in Egypt. Syntagma Square in Athens.  

Wildfires in the South and E. Coli in our sprouts.

And even with her husband’s pants down, Madame Strauss-Kahn still can’t understand why the Americans are so provincial.

Elizabeth Taylor, Betty Ford, Steve Jobs, Andy Rooney, Amy Winehouse, Christopher Hitchens, my Mom, Nick’s Dad.  All renegades. All persuasively contrarian people. All gone this year.  Must be some party there with the Freshman Class of ’11.

Yup, 2011.

Started for us with a great adventure: the prospect of a move to Prague…again.  Michael was accepted at the International School. Toyota gladly took back our leased car. We hired movers. We found a lovely home in the heart of the old city. We gave up our home in South Pasadena. Then, just two weeks shy of packing, our move was abruptly cancelled. Seemed they needed Nick in the US more than in Europe.  “Would it be a hardship for you to stay?” they asked him.  No house, no car, no school…but “no hardship” we said. “SCCREEEEEEEECH” went our proverbial wheels.

With only weeks to find a house before the start of school, we landed in yet another area in Los Angeles—this time in Sherman Oaks. It’s our third California neighborhood in the five years we’ve been here. Beautiful home; least favorite community.

What a year.

And yet…the need to remember that the sun will set, the moon will rise and there will be a new tomorrow has never seemed more important. Oooohhhhmmmmmmm.

We need to think about those memorable moments that made us smile.  Two Royal weddings inspired us this year with ceremonial pomp and circumstance almost as much as the ubiquitous Kardashians repulsed us with their unnecessary opulence.

My husband celebrated his one-year anniversary with Kit Digital, which  (since so many of you ask) defines itself as a global company providing end-to-end software and service solutions to manage video assets for its clients. “What?” you ask.  Just suffice it to say it’s a “next generation” company using old generation software, media, sales and computer geeks to sell software programs and services to companies that want to get their videos on all those many, many different platforms people use today.

Quite a year.

I finished a screenplay that no one’s bought. Counted over 1000 rejections from companies that never even called back yet claim to need people with exactly my skill-set and experience.  And took the GRE test for entry into graduate school after studying from “Math for Morons” and the “Idiot’s Guide to Acing Exams” to little avail.  Do I feel depleted? Yes. Defeated, no way.

Celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the launch of HBO in Hungary this year, along with nearly one hundred others, was a personal highlight. 

Now it's onward to a new beginning: this year I plan on entering a Master’s Program on the path to getting my PhD in Education. I’ve been spending more and more time in the classroom with Michael, guest lecturing at colleges in Multicultural Marketing and participating in various parent advocacy and activist groups.  I have not gotten so much out of anything in years as I do the gratification of teaching.

So what else is in store? Nick and I will celebrate 10 blissful (and at times not entirely blissful!) years on January 1. My son turns nine and we’re sure will continue getting the hang of piano and tennis. Logic and experience point to a move on the horizon. What can we say? We are, after all, Urban Nomads. Peripatetic entrepreneurs seeking our next game-changing opportunity, our next challenge.

With that in mind, we wish you a successful 2012 in which your dreams become your realities.  Don’t forget to smile and “Stay foolish!” (Thanks Steve Jobs …)

So Long Twenty-Eleven!

Twenty- eleven has been an infuriating year.

Ten years past the fall of the Twin Towers, three years post-Lehman and the apocalypse of the financial system as we knew it, we stand hard-pressed to imagine anyone not touched in the last twelve months by some outlandish, ridiculous, mind-blowing, devastating, distressing, demoralizing, upending, brain-bending, off-putting, mouth-dropping, peculiar, uncharacteristic, wildly dramatic, off kilter shit. 

Check out the headlines:

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords Among 17 Shot in Assassination Attempt, Six Killed

At Least 8 Die in Australian Flooding

Bombing in Moscow Airport Kills At Least 35, Wounds 168

Earthquake Strikes New Zealand's Second Largest City

Massive 9.0 Magnitude Earthquake and Tsunami Devastate Japan

Earthquake of 6.8 Magnitude Hits Myanmar

Japan Equates Nuclear Incident with Chernobyl

Series of Tornadoes Devastate Southern States

One of the Deadliest Tornados in U.S. History Hits Joplin, Mo

Toxic E. Coli Outbreak Linked to German Sprouts

Wildfires Rage Through East Arizona and New Mexico Wildfire Burns Near Nuclear Facility

The Atlantis Begins Final Mission

Bin-Laden dead.

Gaddafi Shot.

And today, Chris Hitchens died. His editor said it appropriately:  those who read him felt they knew him. That is true of how I feel.

We have lost a group of game-chagning renegades, all of whom were contrarian and brilliant. Hitchens, Liz Taylor, Andy Rooney, Steve Jobs, Amy Winehouse, my Mom and my father-in-law. Must be some party going on up there...

Whew.

Wage Gap Leads to Age Gap...Oh Crap!

This week I received three polite job rejections, all for positions that are equal to or less “demanding” (at least on paper) than what I had been expected to (and did) accomplish in past positions.  All located in the city in which I live. All in the field of media. Vice President of Business Development, Chief Marketing Officer for a sports-oriented start-up, Head of Brand Marketing for a Spanish-language content developer. The problem is not so much that I was not chosen. I generally handle rejection pretty well. The problem is that I wasn’t even in the running. I was rejected without so much as a call back or an interview. I was totally marginalized.

Throughout my career, that “nasty” reminder that I was a “woman” and somehow not as qualified has reared his ugly head. It became a fact of life.  My skin thickened at an early stage of my career. It’s something I believe all women who have been successfully employed in power positions have experienced at least once.

Want an example? The most blatant reminder took place at a Board meeting consisting of members from four Hollywood studios.  After leading a two-year transformation of a cable channel from underperformance to profitability, I was told, in front of the Board, when the subject of hiring a full time -rather than Consulting- Managing Director came up, “Karen, we can’t consider you. You are a WOMAN! This is Mexico.”  That occurred in 1996. The guy who blurted that out in front of his embarrassed colleagues still has his position – at FOX.

That all being said, I am not one of these people who “cry over spilled milk.”  I do not believe just because we are women, we need special treatment. What I believe is if you are good, you are entitled to rise to the top. If you cannot execute, you lose that privilege, whether you are male or female. Period. And, the fact is that by 2018, nearly 49% of the US workforce will be female; so there are plenty of women out there working.

But what I am saying is something is amiss.

So now, just when I thought I had a handle on the whole “woman” thing, after decades of increasingly more executive positions and successes, I find myself not in the running at all. I am forced to contend with something else entirely: age. 

Crap. And here I thought fifty was the new thirty! Boy was I wrong!

Women over 40 make up 24.3 percent of the U.S. population, the 2010 census found. In comparison, in Hollywood, for example, union casting analysis show actresses over 40 years old get 12.5 percent of roles for television and film. Men of that age are also about a quarter of the population but nearly equal their ranks in casting.

According to the National Committee on Pay Equity, the wage gap also tells a not-so-pretty picture. In 2010, women are still only making 77% of what their male counterparts are earning. Seventy-seven cents to every man’s dollar.

So, think of it: we always knew about the wage gap. Now, baby, think about the age gap. Fifty is still fifty. Deal with it!

The Miracle That Changed My Life (and led to education...)

In 2002, I experienced a miracle.

It took place in an unlikely spot:  a doctor’s office.  While lying on a hard table, a physician rubbing a sticky paste on my belly, I heard the clomping sound of a heartbeat and saw something moving on a monitor. The doctor smiled and quietly said, “You’ve waited for this your whole life, haven’t you?”  Yes, I guess I had. I saw my child for the first time that day. Just shy of my 44^th birthday, my son was born.

That moment changed my life in countless ways; in fact, it has defined it. Besides all the other things I had been – a daughter, a wife, a marketer, a Managing Director, a writer – I became a mother, a parent, a role model for my son. What I didn’t realize that day was that I became a “teacher.”  And what has come to be true is that his education – and that of those around him – has became my overriding priority.

Being active in his education is what has propelled me to pursue the field of education and has afforded me a profound respect and gratitude for the role teachers play. In particular, I’ve come to realize how critical the teachings we learn in our formative years are and just how true Robert Fulghum was in his book “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.”  I have been continuously encouraged by the enthusiastic support and thanks from the children, when I read them a book or assist in a project or simply help solve a math problem. Working with children has made me a better listener, more patient and more flexible. (Although my son complains that I am not such a great listener, as I don't always share his enthusiasm for aliens with guns or long-winded stories about inter-planetary wars!)
Since my son’s days in pre-K, I have spent hours assisting in the classroom, have been an active PTA member and Room Parent. I was voted onto the South Pasadena Educational Foundation in 2010, which has raised over $500,000 yearly to augment what the State has lacked in funding for our district. When I was asked to be an Art Docent for a school-wide program, I was thrilled to be able to develop a plan, teach and watch incredible talent unfold when our craft and video-based “Imagine Project” came to life.  When I brought my fictional series “The Jelly Bean Chronicles” to my child’s class, his teacher and I were so impressed by their enthusiasm and understanding of the concepts that she and I together developed a plan to use it as a pedagogical and fundraising tool.  

So, I have decided that my future is one in which education takes a front and center seat.

My goal is to help lead California to rise from the nation’s bottom in terms of student achievement, to be the beacon of educational success it once was.  I want to be at the “table” when decisions about what to cut and what to save are made. I want to help ensure that current events, global context and the arts are not lost on our children. I want to see a public school curriculum that includes second language study in the primary grades.  That is the kind of teacher and reformer I hope to be:  a globally minded leader, who can instill a can-do attitude and love of learning in her students and be a voice of reform and reason on a larger scale.

Uncharted Territory

Time and the economy have pushed us into uncharted territory. According to this past Sunday's edition of 60 Minutes, over 16 million children are living in poverty in the United States, a quantity not seen since the very early 1960s. Families are living in cars, trailers, makeshift shelters in unprecedented numbers. There have never been this many unemployed for this long in our history. Families are forced to face their worst nightmares on a daily basis. I know-- I am one of the affected.

While I speak to many friends whose lives and lifestyles have barely been touched by the economy of the past couple of years, there are countless others who have felt the hardships. Children being yanked from schools because their parents can no longer afford their homes. Depression setting in. Bankruptcies, foreclosures, unplanned family moves, lay-offs, endless unemployment. Nuclear families are growing to include two and three generations under one roof. Urban Nomads are becoming much more commonplace, as people fight for survival and move to more fertile ground. Fertile for employment and a place for their kids to learn. Safe, secure. The US was once known as the country of opportunity. It is now a place for simple survival.

Have no doubt: we are swimming in uncharted territory and if we do not make course corrections very soon, we will drown. If our children continue to study without a global perspective, we will continue to spiral downward with no cultural compass. If we do not begin to re-build the infrastructure of our cities, and by doing so, employ masses of those currently unemployed, we will crumble. If we do not begin to harness the energy of our people, cultivate our resources, there will be no harvests to reap.

BUT there is good news: we have not yet drowned. We ARE able to swim. We ARE capable. There is still time to write the course and right the chart. Look around you. Stand up for what you believe. Do not take no for an answer. This is the moment when everyone needs to be counted.

Spend time in your children's schools. Write letters to your local politicians and make your voice be known. Spend time in a Food Bank. Give back and be a helping hand because only together can we re-build. Please.

A Conspicuous Life Means Being Active, Present and Accountable

I was raised with high expectations.

When my father recently handed me a tattered and crumbling cardboard binder, I wasn't sure what to do with it. Nearly disintegrating in my hands, I recognized the handwriting and saw it contained a young man’s research—his research. There were articles torn from newspapers and completed school assignments reflecting my father’s perception of current events in the 1930s. Among the top twenty people he noted in the news were Ribbentrop, the Duke of Windsor and Pearl S. Buck. In short, the students at the East New York Junior High School were learning about literature, China, trade pacts being signed and Hitler on the rise.  They were taught where Tanganyika was and about Mussolini in Italy. He took both Spanish and French.  Latin and Greek classes were also part of the curriculum.

In one paper, something he highlighted resonated with me and stood out above all the other work. It was something that I know he taught me and my two sisters. The note said,  “Advancement in life means becoming conspicuous in life.” I believe I am my father’s daughter in many respects, but perhaps none more so than that singular belief:  being “conspicuous in life” - present, active and accountable. What was most remarkable to me, the mother of a third grader in California's public school system, was how impressive the curriculum was in the 1930s and how globally-minded students were back then and how sad it makes me that we no longer have that kind of quality in our classrooms.

I thought about was how far our educational system is from the days when Greek and Latin were accessible to all students, when expectations were high and teachers were revered. 

Recently, I attended a parent leadership training conference led by “Educate Our State,” a grassroots volunteer organization uniting the voice of Californians to demand high quality K-12 public education through a re-prioritization of funding at the State and local levels. The keynote speaker, Delaine Eastin, the former State Superintendent of Public Instruction said something so simple, yet so memorable: “Our children are a message we send to a future we will never see.”

This will be my guiding light moving forward, being "conspicuous." I am asking any of those reading this to join me to ensure and safeguard that future…to guarantee that it is not one in which our children do not know the Periodic Table because they’ve only had science in 2^nd and 4^th grades or one in which a child doesn’t know how to hold a paintbrush because she’s never been in an art class or a young boy hasn’t a clue how to catch a baseball because Physical Education was not in the budget.

If you are in California, you will have a chance to sign a petition in January which will seek to put a Constitutional amendment on our 2012 ballot to re-prioritze funding in our state. If you are not in California, you can still support us! Stay tuned for how!

What do Warren Buffett, Jim Carrey, Ray Romano and a Puppet Have in Common?

They all made appearances on last night's season finale of The Office on NBC. From jokes about the Chinese taking over the world, to corporate downsizing, to the common occurrence of managers failing upward, this show, with all its stupid jokes, mockery and situations that make you say "No he didn't just say that…," has made an impact on the way we think about our jobs, our bosses and what makes a workplace family as dysfunctional as they are, work. Everyone who is anyone wanted to get in on the finale, it seems. Warren Buffett, in a cameo appearance as an interviewee for the GM job, asked "Is that the best you can do on salary?" He asked whether long-distance calls were monitored or whether the honor system was in place. Okey dokey. Bet that's how he achieved his billions back in Omaha-- through the honor system. No, make that the monitoring system, for sure. Jim Carrey, disguised as a schleb from the Finger Lakes, wants the job. James Spader believes he's a shoe-in for the position. Ray Romano frets that he bumbled the interview.

Ricky Gervais, in creating this show in England then bringing it to the States, touched on something very, very raw: our workplaces, corporate structures, interoffice relationships and office policies have become a joke, around the world. As farcical as the show is, it continues to hit a nerve, season after season. Why? Because somehow, we can all relate to these characters and their situations.

On this eve of what some call "the end of the world" I am sitting, watching The Office finale via hulu on my computer, which sits on my home office desk. I am contemplating how the world has indeed changed. How offices like Dunder Mifflin actually exist. And while we joke, how is it possible that  over 20% of the work force in California is unemployed, but not unemployable?  Workers who indeed know what they are doing are finding themselves without employment, through no fault of their own…yet bumblers like the characters on The Office remain…and remain in force.

This may indeed be "the end of the world" as we know it. We may need a "rapture" as those believers call it. We may indeed need to be "called home" in order for us to recuperate and get back to being productive, around the world.

I guess I'll just keep watching the summer re-runs until I get called up…or employed.

International House Hunters

Prague, here we come! For the next week, we will be seeing apartments and houses. No doubt I'll be bringing back lots of stories -- horror, funny, incredible and, hopefully, life changing!

Super Optimistic or Depressingly Upbeat?

This morning while doing my half jog/half walk on the treadmill at the Y, reading my latest copy of "O"  during the only part of the day that is truly "me time," I came across a survey that looked intriguing. "How Optimistic Are You?" it implored. I had to do it.


So making mental additions counting up my answers, here's how I scored: I AM A SUPER-OPTIMIST! Wow!  Only ten percent of people, they say, are "super optimists." I thought that was great. I've always been upbeat. In this survey, I was not just a "super optimist" I was an off-the-charts super optimist!  My score was really high. Now I'm not one of those people who wakes up smiling every morning. Nor do I see the world as one big "LaLa" land. I think I'm an optimist because I am a realist. I see the world starting anew every single day. So whatever happened yesterday will not be exactly the same today. The world renews itself every sunrise, as do we.


And then  I read on. "Research has found that super-optimists tend to be prone to unrealistic expectations. When they're driving, for example, they often believe that they're invulnerable to crashing." This immediately brought out the pessimist in me!  The doubter. The superstitious, cautious, reluctant girl inside. 


Maybe this is why I sometimes think about driving into headlights. Maybe this is where the thoughts come from that if I went off a cliff I might survive. Maybe this is why I have countless dreams of being chased. But never being caught. Could I be a depressed optimist? Maybe they forgot to add that. I didn't see that category on the Oprah list. 


What I found out was that super optimists must, then, be really paradoxical. We think we can do it, so we do it, even if we cannot. We just don't stop to think about all the consequences. How screwy is that?


Hmmm, now that makes me depressingly upbeat. I guess that's par for being an optimist.

Schengen & Apostilles: What Do You Know?

My husband accepted a position based in Prague. What does that mean? The Urban Nomads will be moving tents this summer. Unlike twenty years ago when I did it alone, there are some changes in our strategy as a family and some interesting new terms that will affect our move in ways different from how I did it back then.

Do you know what Schengen is? How about an apostille? Does it help if I say we need an "apostille" to get into "Schengen"? How about the fact that you need to know what both of these are before moving to Europe?

As  a soon-to-be wife of an EU citizen,  some years ago, when I first went to Greece with my husband, my Greek father-in-law chastised us for not knowing what "Schengen" was, as if our minds had been cleaned barren by the mere fact that we were from the United States. "Ignorant peasants" is something I have no doubt went through his mind, despite the fact that we are both culturally savvy, well-educated and seasoned world travelers.  "Don't you know Schengen?"  became an inside joke to my husband and I and has given us many moments of shared joy and giggles. I will bet that  99.9% of Americans have no idea what Schengen is and bet that many EU citizens have but a vague notion of its existence.

In fact, in 1985 an agreement was signed by some EU Members in the town of Schengen, Luxembourg that basically called for free travel within twenty-five countries in Europe. In all honesty, I knew that there was a free-travel provision in and between EU countries since the '90s but had NO idea they were now known as the "Schengen" countries! I guess I am "so yesterday" as my son calls me.  There is now a Schengen visa and it's something we are going to need to live in one of the twenty-five countries, Czech Republic being one.

An apostille is much like a notarized document, but it costs more and has way more logistical steps that must be completed. By definition, the "apostille" came about under the terms of the Hague COnvention in the 1960s and was specifically intended to create one international method of documenting paperwork. The Apostille ensures that documents issued by one signatory country will be valid in any of the other signatory countries. Well, as often is the case, the intention has been lost in execution.  First of all, each country has a different apostille certification process and necessitates separate paperwork. The immigration process cannot begin until we have the apostilles of our birth and marriage certificates. In order to get those, we need to go back to the originating states to get the proper documentation to then request the Apostilles. Each separate request and certificate costs money. In our case, we are needing birth and marriage certificates from the State of Florida and are requesting Apostilles prepared for the Czech Republic and for Greece.

(If it worked correctly, we should be fine with one apostille for each document, irregardless of the country it was destined for. But that's only according to the Hague Agreement-- not the state of Florida!)

So, if you're planning to go to Estonia, Latvia, Malta, Lithuania, Slovakia or Slovenia and were not clear that these were now EU and Schengen countries, think again, for you too will need your apostilles before you step foot in Schengen.

NO MORE TV!! NO MORE FRUIT NINJAS! WHEN WILL IT STOP?

Are there any parents out there who have suggestions for how to lesson the "guilt" -- or at least assuage my tiresomeness -- for having to say "NO" all the time? "No, you can't play on my iPod." "No more TV!" " No, you can't download Fruit Ninjas." "No we can't have a playdate today because I just cannot take having two screaming boys in the house." "No you cannot have Henry over because you have not cleaned up your room, done your homework or attempted to do any of your other chores!"

BLAH,BLAH,BLAH!  On and on it goes.

In the "olden" days of my parents, a good, stiff J & B (scotch for those too young to know!) did the trick. They were knocking those suckers back. Sending the kids outside to play was also an alternative. Sending them across the street to the neighbors was a good choice. I recall spending cumulative hours, peering through the screen door of house next to ours, seeing what delights my friend's Mom had cooked for her huge Irish Catholic brood of ten. There was always some ham and turkey in their house -- very tempting for a young Jewish girl being brought up in a Kosher household. 


As kids, we watched as our parents got ready to go out most weekends. Yes, they left us. Often. They were sloshed a lot or leaving us to our own devices…or to the vagaries of babysitters. Often. 


There are plenty of books out there on how to coddle our children. How to "rear" them with logic and love. How to help them find their inner selves. How to protect them. Perhaps enough is enough. What I'd like is more time for parents, not parenting! 


Maybe what we need to assuage this guilt, this constant cloud of "NO" is to walk away more. 
Let's start letting them fall down. Let's let them screw up. Let's let them run amok. 
Heck, it's for their own good!


Well, then how will we deal with the guilt of their chaos? We'll go back to coddling! 


Anyone have ANY ideas? We need help.