And on the 7th day, God gave us basketball . . .

Why do parents say, "You can be anything you want to be?" 

If so, then I would be a great basketball player.  

But no matter how much I practiced in the cold fall and winter afternoons as a kid, the fact was I couldn't jump, I had small hands, and I had no speed.  The best I got to was church league basketball, basically because they needed bodies.  But it never bothered me, even when selected last in pickup games, just as long as I got to play. 

And I loved watching the game just as much.

I was raised in a fundamental Christian family where we attended two hours of church Sunday morning and then two more in the evening.  But my parents were cool enough to let me watch the NBA on tv in the afternoon after our big Sunday dinner.  And my love for the game became cemented watching the likes of Russell, Wilt, Barry, Havlo, West, Oscar, Billy Cunningham, Hal Greer, (notice a 76er fan with those last two?)

And I still love to watch, especially during March Madness and the NBA playoffs, even with some of today's "bad behavior," and my puzzlement over the appeal of multiple tattoos. (oh, just get over it, David)

I have always enjoyed the fine arts of dance and drama, but it's hard to beat the excitement generated from the unique combination of those two art forms in a close basketball contest.

And it seems we have a great series taking shape in the current NBA Finals.  Yeah, I guess I probably am rooting for the Mavs in the end (i.e. the so-called "good" guys), but what I really want, and if there is a god up above . . . we'll have a Game 7!

UPDATE:  Well, no game 7.  Oh well.  After the way Wade & James mocked Dirk (how immature!) I'm more glad that Dallas won (like most everyone else outside of Miami, I guess.)

So I settled on Tues evening for watching the Game 7 of the NHL, hockey - Vancouver vs. Boston.  Yeah, I used to watch the Bruins a lot as a kid, too, Bobby Orr, Phil Esposito and gang, but it was always second choice to basketball.  Gotta say, personally, no offense, but even with HD, it's still second choice for me.

What I am Reading for the 150th Anniversary of the Civil War . . . and Why

As you may know, we are in the midst of honoring the 150th Anniversary of the start of the Civil War.  The Washington Post has been printing excellent installments, and I have been collecting them.

I also highly recommend reading the masterpiece, "Reveille in Washington," by Margaret Leech.  It was published in 1941, but it remains a classic.   It is superbly written and well-researched, resulting in riveting detailed stories.

If you had any relatives who fought in the Civil War or lived and worked in the DC region during that time, this is a must-read.


But even if you do not have familial ties to that era, this book well illustrates the seismic transformation our country underwent during those five years that continues to reverberate to this day. 

For example, it chronicles well how DC transformed from being a Southern political power base to a Northern-dominated town, one of the most historically important transitions for our country as it signaled the demise of the Great Compromise of the Constitution (where slaves counted as 3/5 of a person in apportionment).  

As historians will tell you, that one compromise impacted our history in many ways, ranging from the election of Jefferson as president in 1800 to shelving the debate on slavery thereby ensuring generations of suffering and irreversibly setting the country toward a brutal Civil War.

And this book shows the macro aspect of that through the telling of countless personal stories. 


And for those thinking this book might be just another exercise of reading "dry" history, let me just say that the author showed that our "proper" ancestors certainly had a lustful side to them that would make even readers of today's tabloids blush.

If you live in the DC area, an added bonus will be that this book will make walking and driving around the region so much more interesting for you.

If you can't find the book in your library, (I found mine in a musty bookstore up in southern NY) it is available through Amazon.


If you get a chance to read it, I invite you to share what you think of the book.

Should I take offense? Que piensa?

Many of you know that one of my life-long goals is to be able to speak Spanish completely fluently.  Yeah, it's a modest goal compared to what so many others have been able to achieve in their lives, but still, it's one of my top personal goals, and I'm having fun working at it.

Actually, I'm getting pretty close, maybe 70 - 80%, but I still have a ways to go.  (As a side note, my daughter is now very good with her Spanish skills - better than I am in grammar and vocabulary at least -and we converse and text in Spanish all the time.  That's fun -- and about the only way I can get her to answer me! ;-)

I was fortunate to attend a rather progressive public school system in upstate New York where I began studying Spanish is sixth grade.  And I continued to study on through my first year in college.

I was also fortunate that my family set up a private exchange through my Dad's work at GE with a Mexican family in Mexico City.  Their kids stayed with us over the years and my brothers and I each spent a summer with them down there.

And then there was the formative summer I spent in San Jose, Costa Rica, working for a missionary.  That's a whole other story in of itself (i.e. how it started my eventual falling away from the religion), but I did get pretty good with my Spanish.

So I should have been able to achieve my goal of total fluency long before now.  But yeah, we get sidetracked in adult life, don't we?  Well, so what, it's now been a steady onward progress over the past five years or so.

A great assistance in my effort to improve my Spanish is the Hispanic population's tendency in general, at least in my experience, to be very patient with those of us who attempt to speak Spanish.  I've ended up saying some rather comical things in my attempts.  Like "How are you sitting down?" instead of "How are you feeling?"  But my Latino friends just laugh, graciously correct me, and genuinely appreciate that I at least try. 

Contrast that with my experience at attempting French. I am sure there are exceptions, and I do not wish to promote unwarranted stereotypes, but I think it's pretty safe to say that the French are less tolerant of those who imperfectly attempt speaking their language.

So, with that all said, you maybe can better understand why I listen to Spanish radio while driving around town.  We have about five such stations here in the Baltimore / Washington DC area.

I have found this to be a great way to improve my Spanish skills.

One of my favorites is listening to the morning news program, "Calentando la Manana" (Warming up the Morning), on Radio America, 1540AM based out of Wheaton, MD.  I really like the host of the program, Alejandro Carrasco.  He not only is very intelligent and an excellent interviewer, but he has succeeded in establishing himself as a good representative and yes, leader, of the growing Latino community here in the DC/Balt region.

And I also like him because he enunciates very well, and that makes it much easier for me to understand him.  I understand that he is from Colombia, and that many of the on-air personalities of the Hispanic world are from that western equatorial region of South America.  Their accent is a easily understood throughout the Spanish-speaking world, much like many of the American on-air personalities have traditionally been from the MidWest. (eg. Tom Brokaw, Jane Pauley, David Letterman, etc.)

So, with that said, let me relate what I heard on the "Calentando la Manana" show recently.  There was an ad for legal services that ended with the tag, ". . . Es Roberto, no es Robert.  Es un latino."  Translated that says, "His name is Roberto, not Robert.  He's Latino."

Hmmm, granted the station's audience is almost exclusively the Latino community.  And granted, it has been a solid tradition in our American history for minority and immigrant communities to rely on their own members for strength.  I mean, we see it in the growing Korean immigrant communities. And yes, we even have religious groups, like evangelical Christians, marketing their services among each other via custom telephone books and directories.

But I really have not been comfortable with such advertising.  I mean, advertising that one's business speaks Spanish is one thing, but something about blatantly saying in an ad that your name is "Roberto and not Robert" seems offensive to me, especially now in the 21st Century.

I mean, what about the many North American lawyers who advertise on the same station who also are fluent in Spanish.  Is the lawyer Roberto saying that just because he is Latino that he can represent the community better than Robert?

What would be the reaction to an ad on the English-speaking newsstation WTOP that said: "My name is Jack White, not Juan Blanco . . ."

So yes, I think Alejandro (again, for whom I have great respect) and his team should consider having "el abogado Roberto" revise his ad.

But ok, yes, maybe I am being too narrow-minded about this.  What do you think?  I open to being convinced that I am blind to a certain perspective.  I welcome comments below.

I invite you to also check out my media news and info website/blog: DavidRyanMediaSolutions.com
 Go to the picture of "Mindy the Cat" on the homepage and subscribe for my free periodic (every 4 - 6 weeks) media eNewsletter.

Also, follow me on Twitter.  (Here's why I like Twitter so much.)

What am I doing eating lunch in a graveyard?

It was my definition of a great vacation day.  Sitting in an old church cemetery eating lunch at the grave of an ancestor.

Creepy? Nope, not for me.  And not for many cultures throughout the history of mankind either, from the ancient Gaelic celebration of Samhaim which eventually got wrapped into the Christian Halloween . . . and the pre-Spaniard indigenous people's festivals of the dead in Latin America which evolved into today's Dia de los Muertos celebration in Mexico and other parts of region.

Earlier in the day, I had taken a sharp turn east while heading home from a high school reunion in upstate NY.  I had granted myself the day to pursue what is a passionate avocation of mine, geneaology.

It works like this: whenever I vacation near a likely ancestral location (NY, CT, PA, OH, Ireland to name a few places) I give myself a "bite-size," manageable quest to research.  Sometimes my wife and daughter indulge my fun and accompany me; other times they, ahem, "encourage" me to head off on my own ;-).

Now let me state right up front. I for one do not get carried away with long lines of colonial ancestry. That has its place, but my experience has been that if you get too concerned with that, you very likely will become disappointed at some point. I find that the fun is in the search itself and tying together individual lives with what was going on in the world around them. 

Perhaps just as important, my findings over the years have also helped me to better answer the question we all ask of ourselves, "Who am I?"

I was traveling solo on this particular trip.  And on this day, I was hoping to locate more information about the Dakin line, the family of my 4th great-grandmother on my mother's side, in the area of Duchess County, NY, which is on the east side of the Hudson River near the border of CT and NY.



This is beautiful country, and I was there at a prime time of the year, the fall.



I got lucky with my search.

I had done some online research previously, and after a quick stop at the local library in Middleton in the township of North East, where I obtained some valuable clues from the friendly and knowledgeable staff, I ended up at a small church cemetery (the building is now gone) established in the 1770's by my 6th great-grandfather, Simon Dakin (1720 - 1803), a Baptist minister.

                                    

                                     

Many of the gravestones were illegible and/or overgrown.

I did not find one for Simon nor of his son Joshua, who was my great-g-g-g-g grandfather (1744 - ?), but I did find one of the family.  It's the leaning gravestone in the foreground of the above picture, and it's the one behind me in the picture at the top of this post where I am eating lunch. 

Below is a closeup of the headstone.  It's of Jacob Dakin (1775 - 1836), a son of Joshua, and brother of my g-g-g-g grandmother, Charity Dakin, who married a neighbor (see census data below), Elisha Driggs.

And next to Jacob was is the gravestone of Olive Clark, his wife.

So I sat down and had a lazy picnic lunch with "family" on a beautiful fall day.  As I mentioned, there used to be a church standing next to this graveyard.  Hmmm, I remember how I used to run and play in the chuch graveyard after Sunday service while growing up in Schenectady.  So I could easily imagine my ancestors doing the same here.

As I said above, I like to ponder these finds in the context of what was happening in their world at the time.  For example, in the census of 1800, both Jacob and his father Joshua had a slave listed as being part of their  households. (see last column in 1800 census for these guys.) Wait, a minute, slaveholders? . . . in this rural area of Duchess County, NY?!

Well yes, it appears so.  I don't have all the answers, but here's a plausible explanation . . . and an example of why I find genealogy searching such an engrossing avocational pursuit: 

If you remember your history, the election of 1800 was where Thomas Jefferson defeated the incumbent Federalist president, John Adams.

The state of New York played a pivotal role in that election by being a swing state for Jefferson.  You may ask, how did that happen, a northern state not voting for John Adams of neighboring Massachusetts?  Well, that was partly enabled by the well-organized politicking of Aaron Burr, a Jeffersonian "Republican" who outmaneuvered Alexander Hamilton, a Federalist, on getting the vote out in New York City (yep, the famous duel of several years later had deep roots of simmering acrimony.)

But there was more to why NY was for Jefferson in 1800.

New Yorkers never have really considered themselves as part of New England, even when many of the migrations of Eurpoean settlers into New York over the centuries originated from neighboring CT and MA.  Something about leaving the Berkshire Mountains changed them.  My theory about that is that those that headed into New York were looking for a new life away from the "confines" of New England, much like pioneers in later decades who moved far to the Great Plains, Rockies and beyond.

For whatever reason, the agrarian populist theme of Jefferson's platform resonated with these rural New York farmers and pioneers.  You see evidence of the devotion by towns named in the region like Monticello and Jeffersonville.

In 1800, many in the country felt that the Federalists had overplayed their "aristocratic hand" by cozying up to England (ghast!) and stacking the federal judiciary.  And then this became a real palpable fear amongst many in the country with the passage of the ill-advised, Federalist-sponsored Alien and Sedition Act, which was meant to squelch raucous pro-French sentiments.  Result?  To a growing segment of the population, the Federalists threatened the sacred rights won in the Revolution, while Jefferson represented "a second revolution to save the first."

Few others in this area had a slave listed in that census, but hmmm, maybe, just maybe, if the famous patriot Thomas Jefferson was a slaveholder, perhaps having a slave in rural New York was also acceptable at that time?

But then I asked myself, weren't these Dakins fervent god-fearing Baptists?  How could they have been slaveholders?  History has an answer for that. While certainly not excusing the horrible practice, let's remember these were different times.  As escaped slave / abolitionist Frederick Douglass so eloquently wrote in his autobiography several decades later in 1845, it was certainly well known amongst the slaves themselves that the masters who were most pious were often the most fervent supporters of slavery.  Such believers followed the skewed theological reasoning that scripture ordained slavery as being part of the will of God.

But then again, maybe I have this all wrong.  Perhaps there is another completely different story to the marking of a single slave in these ancestors' households in the census.  For example, maybe these are instances of charity somehow . . . efforts to shelter runaway slaves -- claiming them as their own slaves so as to protect runaways from being sent back South.  And what about those entries to the left of that far-right column, for "free non-whites," which usually was marked to indicate native americans in the household?  Perhaps some sort of missionary effort?

Ah, the search continues . . .  But first, where did I put that delicious apple cider I bought along the roadside?

To Dream . . .

With apologies to Man of La Mancha.  : - )

Marketing standouts and well, those not-so-much-so

Now that my first eBook, Synchronize or Sink: Developing an Online Marketing Strategy that Works, co-written with Leslye Reaves, is about to be released, my thoughts are turning to my next eBook.

I've been working on an idea for awhile now to publish a book with photos of public displays that exemplify both superb and well, let's say bizarre, examples of marketing and/or advertising.

I always go around with my camera on hand, so I plan to intensively collect examples over the next few months.  I also ask you to send me examples that you may see.  Any submitted photo that is used will receive a credit and a discount to the final eBook.

Now let's get one thing straight as I embark on this endeavor.  We all have our glorious moments, and we all also make mistakes, sometimes HUGE mistakes.  

My credo is to be gracious with the winning moments and admit mistakes in a forthright manner and learn from them.

As for the latter, ok, I'll go first . . . like that time early in my career in South Carolina where I put out an audition notice for child actors for an TV spot, and through a series of "miscommunications" (completely on my part), 750 kids with their parents showed up at the front desk of the TV station late on a Friday afternoon.  Talk about angry parents and some really bad PR!

Again no one is perfect.  

And so, with preface, let's begin with a strange example I ran across recently during a trip to Philly.

While you can't help but laugh at the above church sign, you have to wonder, "What happened?"

What was the decision process that let this be built?  Wouldn't you have loved to have been a fly on the wall in that meeting?  Perhaps it might be better to learn that it was the result of a lapse by a single individual.

The sign is well constructed and professionally presented, which makes my cringe factor all the more intense.

It would be an understatement to say that the Catholic Church is dealing with an image problem these days.  Ugh.  A sign like this just adds to the perception, doesn't it?.

Maybe I'll try to contact the Diocese and see what they have to say.

Let me know your thoughts as well.  Feel free to write a comment below.

And while at it, you might want to take a look at an earlier blog post of mine that talks about several great examples of marketing.

Follow me on Twitter for more media news and info along with exclusive steep  and quick-turn discounts.

Contact me at 240-268-3504 or dcryan7@gmail.com

Diversity Training for Vegetables

It takes a village . . .  to make a good salad.   :-)