Author Archives: rebecca

The business of comfort levels.

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online_marketingOne week after purchasing a used vehicle I received an advertisement from the dealership’s Internet team asking me to check out the inventory of their brand new Phillipsburg lot so I could test drive and purchase a used vehicle. I had just handed over thousands of dollars to them.  This disconnect between the dealer’s Internet and offline marketing & sales functions really put me off from a personal perspective.

But from the perspective of the rebeccArtful experiment, I was intrigued.  Web analytics provides the data needed to integrate a business’ online communication with more traditional offline methods, including TV, print, radio, and face-to-face meetings.  But even if companies have the ability to collect data, do they know what to do with it?  This car dealership doesn’t appear to get it.  Their people aren’t communicating.  And they are also very possibly clinging to erroneous perceptions of customer behavior.  I conducted research on their website during the same time period I negotiated with the sales consultant on the phone and face-to-face.

In his book Web Analytics 2.0, web analyst Avinash Kaushik explains “we no longer live in a world that differentiates offline marketing from online marketing; we live in a world of nonline marketing (a phrase coined by David Hughes).”  Today, customer decisions are made using a combination of methods.  For example, a person reads an article about a product in a trade magazine, conducts research on the Internet, goes to a store to handle various products, returns to the Internet to compare pricing, then returns to a store for final questions with a sales consultant and makes a purchase.  Companies need to figure out how to use information accrued from numerous channels.  A shift to the nonline marketing model “goes against the grain of everything we have been taught so far; it messes with our comfort level,” says Kaushik.

“Ya gotta kill her.”

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Daughters_of_BluegrassThat was the amusing reply from Peter Rowan when Moondi Klein asked if there was another way he could end the murder ballad.  It was Moondi’s first year in a bluegrass band after leaving the world of opera.  He just wanted to be a 1990’s sensitive guy.  Peter Rowan wasn’t having any of that.  But Moondi’s sentiment wasn’t lost on me.  The tradition of women in bluegrass wasn’t overwhelmingly positive in the songs that were sung, or if you looked at how many women performed on the stages at festivals, or picked in the jam sessions at festival campsites.

A group of my lady friends tended to agree.  We gathered at Linda’s house one afternoon, and under the energetic direction of Dr. Mary we pulled together a band called The Daughters of Bluegrass.  It was well before the professional bluegrass gals Dale Ann Bradley, Rhonda Vincent, and Valerie Smith among others used the name for their 2005 lady band project.

Having an all-lady band was a bit of a novelty in our musical circles.  We improved over time as individuals and as a group.  If a set had 14 songs, each of us got to choose two, along with the opportunity to wing them out at street fairs, First Nights, festivals, and special concerts.

Bluegrass is sprouting new traditions.  You see more lady pickers in the campsites than you did 25 years ago.  There are more female/male bands performing on stage and more little girls joining Kids Academies at festivals.  And it’s thanks to songs like “Caleb Meyer” that we have parity in the bluegrass we hear today: “Ya gotta kill him.”

 

Flying—this time with strings attached.

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tandem_paraglidingA tandem paragliding ride in New Zealand let me compare the sensation of real flying to all those flying dreams I have.  Both have discrete pleasures.  In my dreams I’m always in the superman position, belly down with my hands out in front.  Control is sometimes sketchy, but I did once sail through a glass chandelier without breaking anything.

During the real flight in New Zealand I was introduced to charming Beloj, a retired Israeli paratrooper.  Before take-off he carefully reviewed what I’d need to do.  He walked to the hillside which I knew dropped off quickly and said we’d be running down that hill “Do you want to see it?”  I said, “No, I trust you.”  Which made him laugh and respond “That’s a good thing, since you’ll be strapped to me in the air.”  Then off we went.  And I kept running for a bit after take-off, because he told me that if I stopped running down the hill, he would crash into me and we would tumble down the mountain instead of glide in the air.

Once we were up there, I didn’t have a care in the world except for those darn strings.  There were so many strings tied to the material.  My only concern was the possibility they’d get tangled in the other paragliders who were soaring nearby.  I let it all go, fortunately, and enjoyed a gentle and relaxing long flight of soaring and spirals.  The only improvement would be if I could do it in the superman position.

Variation on a tortoise/hare theme.

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mandolinFans of bluegrass will probably agree that taking breaks (solos) at lightning speed is a thrill.  It requires coordination of your fretting hand with the pluck/strum of your picking hand, and keeping it interesting by throwing in syncopation, pull-offs, and hammer-ons, all the while maintaining a fast consistent tempo.  It’s quite remarkable to watch up close.  And it’s something I doubt I’ll ever do.

So I knew what I was getting myself into when Mike and I made a deal at the 2004 Shakori Hills Grassroots Festival.  He would enter the banjo contest if I entered the mandolin contest.

One by one I watched my competition… young country boys in overalls who ripped out their amazing licks with speed and force.  But I had a simple tortoise strategy. I picked a haunting hornpipe called “Gilderoy.”  And I played it as slowly and sadly as possible.  Each note was clear. The ends of phrases sustained in the air because I play a fantastic KG mandolin and the sound system was really good.  I won first place!

I promptly donated the $100 prize to the festival shower fund.  Good music at a festival is great, but a hot shower is greater.

“If you have patience and leverage, you can do anything.”

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Those were the words of Grillbillie Matt on New Year’s Eve 2011.  I took his words to heart.  The next day I started tearing up the linoleum and luan plywood flooring in my kitchen, hall, and downstairs bathroom.  One year later, these remodeled areas reveal my limits of things I’d never attempt to do (electricity), things I can do (demolition, design, drilling, leveling, sawing, painting, pneumatic nailing, caulking), should improve doing (sanding wood, miter cutting, spackling drywall), and what I probably shouldn’t do (plumbing).

Plumbing by dumb luck.

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faucetWhen my grandmother, an award-winning seamstress, asked how I was doing with the curtains I purchased for my living room, I told her “I just hung them up and they were the right length.”  In her typical dry manner she said “Oh, design by dumb luck.”

I apply this sentiment to my forays in plumbing.  Dumb luck was present when I put together the new fancy shmancy kitchen faucet.  I assembled all thirty pieces, but only after piecing together instructions in the faucet box with another set of instructions found on the Internet.  Dumb luck was also present when the sink pipes had to be reconfigured, since I had designed my counters to be 3” deeper than before.  After 10 days, that little leak near the p-trap gradually did clog itself, just as the man from Home Depot said it would.  But where was dumb luck when my dishwasher connection leaked?

Sometimes you just luck out.  Other times, your luck just runs out.

Ebony and ivory.

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piano_dreamAs a child, I fantasized wildly of being a concert pianist who played in large halls with huge appreciative audiences.  I took lessons through my elementary years with the strict and sensitive Mrs. Schwartz.  She was great.  No recitals, just me and my imaginary concerts.

When I started college, I returned to piano.  At SUNY-Binghamton I had the phenomenal opportunity to start my first semester studying piano with Mr. Walter Ponce.  From Bolivia, he is a world master!  The grace of his fingers on a keyboard can be compared to an angelic ballet dancer whose power and control lets him leap fiercely across a stage then slowly turn with gentle elegance.  It’s great to hear and watch, especially as Mr. Ponce’s entire frame would shake when he pounded all fingers on the keys.  Ironically, he couldn’t type to save his life and he had a most clumsy manner in handling sheet music.  Anyway, I got to take lessons with this amazing man.

I took it seriously and practiced every day.  In that semester I had my first recital ever.  I can’t remember what I was thinking.  What I do recall is that after finishing my piece and discussing it with the teachers and students I excused myself from the room.  I exited the building and at the nearest shrub I vomited.  My lesson that day was more than piano lessons.  Apparently, a critique of my childhood dream was hard to swallow.

Play out, plug in, keep plucking.

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MardiHubAndSprocketsI have many teachers, friends, and strangers to thank for encouragement in my musical life, but Jamie stands out in particular.  He pulled together a band called Mardi, Hub, and the Sprockets around the time I bought an amplifier to plug in a bass guitar.  Before electricity entered my musical world, I played acoustic tunes, mostly bluegrass.

The Americana rock band pushed me into new territory.  We played for friends’ birthday bashes and a wedding, a couple bars, a Philly street fair, Bucks County wine tastings, and even the XPN theater twice as a warm up band!  During performances my nerves were channeled as best as possible, but I always struggled to “get off the paper.”

After years of reading music on paper, the ability to improvise still escapes me.  My journey to overcome this started with the fiddle.  I picked it up figuring that my friends were all playing around a dark campfire and there was no opportunity to see written notes.  Jamie was most often present calling out “get your axe, let’s pick a tune.”  Later I started playing mandolin, figuring it had the same fingering as fiddle so I could use the frets to learn where to put my fingers for all those notes.  But when I began to sing along, I realized I had to get a guitar.

Years later I realized I still didn’t know how to improvise—to take a break on an instrument, calling out the lead melody or a variation of it.  My journey then took me to the bass, figuring I’d have no choice but to play the structure of a song.  And since I had no electric power connection at outdoor bluegrass festivals, I bought a ¼ size stand up Kay acoustic bass.  All of these instruments are my children.  Mostly recently I bought a ukulele.

Can I improvise a break?  Not like I’d like to.  I have moments when notes come together.  I’ll keep trying.

Five miles.

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race_timeRacing is new to me.  I signed up for a 5-mile event in the Fall of 2012 because I have very encouraging friends.  Besides, the event supported the Wissahickon Valley Watershed Association and I encourage efforts to maintain clean water.  The running terrain covered meadow, forest, road, and stream.  I try to run three miles every day, so pushing myself an additional two was a stretch.  Lenore’s phone app provided mile-by-mile pace alerting which helped.  Of the hundreds of participants I think about 7 came in behind me!

Archetype wheels.

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wheelHealth pertains to your emotional intelligence as much as it does to your body.  It starts with self-awareness and understanding your capabilities.  It deals with how you react in certain situations and the initiatives you take in others.   Carolyn Myss provides a tool for self-reflection.  She suggests identifying your archetypes and relating them to aspects of your life.  The wheel pictured here represents categories of life that are a focus of her philosophy.  She asks you to align your archetypes with these categories.  It’s a great exercise to start a conversation with yourself about yourself.  Even better if you share it with someone you trust.