Jane Genova: Speechwriter - Ghostwriter

Facebook: Turning up ugly underbelly underneath cute kitten/family gathering photos

Let's cut to the chase. I have a hunch that I am not alone.  One of those accidental acquaintances on Facebook turned so sour that I had to call in legal help - and more.  What we tend to forget is this: Underneath all those cute photos of kittens/family gatherings is the ugly underbelly of mankind as the species exists.  Some of that is horrific.

I will continue posting on my wall on Facebook. Thanks to this social network I have resumed friendships with Seton Hill, Greensburg, Pennsylvania Class of 1967 members such as Lee Harrison, Irene Nunn, and Charlotte Toal. They were there for me on my 68th birthday as well as my two biopsies for breast cancer.

However, I will invest less time on that social network.  After all, no new assignments for my ghostwriting/speechwriting business have come from years of keeping up with the growing gang of photo-posters.  Where I will invest a lot more resources, including money in premium services, is LinkedIn.  Without all the photos, it provides an it's-all-business platform for developing new contacts, updating our professional lives with current ones, participating in community discussions, and winding up with high-traffic links.

The bad taste in my mouth from my recent Facebook disaster will be there for a while.  Hopefully, like all suffering, it will be a teacher.  What am I learning? Beware the possible wolf in wholesome family-style clothing serving wondrous family-style dinners on national holidays.  Maybe that had penetrated my subconscious as much as the sugary programming of the Eisenhower era like "Father Knows Best."

Mirror Neurons: Why man the social animal is returning from virtual

In the presence of each other, a number of species, including us human kind, affect each other cell by cell. Some of us always knew this.  For example, our moms told us to stay clear of "bad companions." The transmission process happens across the species. My dog Molly Mittens could pick up that I was depressed before I did. The vet, part Dr. Phil, told me she had been hanging on despite her bad heart trying to keep me together.  

But how we resonate off each other was confirmed by researchers such as Marco Iacoboni on mirror neurons in Italy. He made all that science user-friendly in his book "Mirroring People: The New Science of How We Connect with Others.  Last night at the New Haven Zen Center in Connecticut we discussed why meditating together in-person can center us so quickly.  As a guiding teacher noted, we feed off each other's strength.  The same principle operates in 12-step programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous.

No surprise, we are returning to in-person speeches, meetups, chats by the water cooler, author presentations at bookstores, and church services. Virtual social networks were fun but they left us, well, unconnected.

For the past four months, although I was doing my time virtually on Facebook and LinkedIn, I would get attacks of extreme alienation. They were brutal enough to dry up the creative processes as I tried to write.  When I packed up the laptop and went to the public library in North Haven, CT, the juices started flowing again.  Clients raved about what I had created there.  Blog posts done there went viral. The help-wanted I answered there brought in good assignments.

We need other human beings around us. They don't have to even actively interact with us. For this very reason, we speechwriters have been busy preparing what speakers are delivering in the flesh, not on webinars. Social networks have proved to be unable to transmit from mirror neurons.

Everything Changes: Hillary Clinton no sure thing for '16

The Democrats, so recently riding high, are now under the kind of attack which could keep them out of the White House in 2016.  Hillary Clinton as the first U.S. President is no longer a sure thing.  Be ready to read plenty in the media about conservatives who are being groomed and funded for campaigns for 2016. 

Scandal is one of the most effective tools for cutting the legs off a political party.  It could be driven out in the wilderness for several election cycles. Since Clinton is associated with one of the them - Benghazi - Democratic party leaders may already be searching for other suitable candidates for the next presidential races.  Other scandals, as POLITICO reports, include the IRS' targeting conservatives and the Justice Department's snooping into members of the media's phone records.

Shell-shocked Democrats might decide to start studying zen, the philosophy which teaches that everything changes and provides tools, including meditation, to stay centered amidst the flux. 

Blogging: When life intervenes

"I'd rather be blogging." That's what I told my blogging coach Paul Chaney back in 2005, after he helped me get this site up and running.  I was totally taken with the ability to publish what I wanted, without middleman editors poking around, making changes, and telling me that their efforts were necessary for me to go to the next level in writing. 

Since 2005, I have fallen apart when, well, life intervened and I couldn't blog as much as I wanted.  There is this nasty reality of having to earn a living.  Today, I started the day with several hours of blogging for this syndicated site and two others (here and here.)  As the day went on, I realized that time should have been invested in two client ghostwriting projects.  Progress on one, for example, was interrupted when the client wanted me to interview two sources for his book this afternoon.  I really felt the loss of those early morning hours.

I dread my blogging time reduced.  There will be major developments I can't comment on.  Not that the world will care.  But that has been my priority for eight years.  Will that priority have to be changed to take advantage of the bull market in executive communications?  

Amanda Knox Kept Together in Prison through Reading: That wouldn't work for us digital folks

It seemed strange to read in THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW's interview with Amanda Knox that she depended on reading to maintain sanity in the Italian prison.  That's what most of us would believe pre-digital times.  Now, books are hardly anyone's emotional, spiritual or even intellectual salvation.  At least not anyone on my networks.

Several at my colleagues back in the auto industry used to opine that a stint in the slammer would be a vacation for them.  That's because they could do all the reading they ever wanted to do.  Bosses who retired gushed that for the next six months they would just read.  I craved to have the time to learn Russian and then read Tolstoy et al. in their native language. 

Then came digital.  When I tunnel into myself, which is a dangerous place to be for someone with a history of severe depression, I don't reach for a book.  I surf the web to my favorite provocative spots like Abovethelaw.com, especially the comment section.

I doubt if the correctional system, federal or state, would allow me the hardware and the WiFi to remain whole.  Books wouldn't do it.  They did, though, years ago.  That's why I majored in literature and didn't stop until I was working on a dissertation on the novels of Thomas Hardy.  When I lived in Spain, I was a regular at the bookstore.  In my early days of executive communications, I peppered speeches, books, and articles I ghostwrote with the wisdom from the great authors.  Currently, clients want allusions to Mark Zuckerberg and TECH CRUNCH.

Books have become all-business.  I read them to review them and to present ideas to clients. I ghostwrite books to help clients share their ideas on how to make more money.  In our interactions we never sit around and praise the beauty of a sentence or paragraph.  We do, though, commend the cleverness of how BUSINESS INSIDER built itself to such a high-traffic digital media property.

If Knox has to return to prison after this next trial, I wish her well with the books. 

Fame: Is the need for it getting re-wired into our brain patterns?

"Neuroplasticity" is the term researchers use to describe how human beings can re-wire the patterns of their brains.  Most commonly this is accomplished through mindfulness training.  MRIs show, for example, how monks' gray matter changes.

But our brains can also be changed through the collective push of contemporary culture which salutes fame. In some circles it has become a dominant value.  Of course, that makes a growing number of us vulnerable to doing anything which we assume will lead to fame.

This fame mania might have taken hold during the "Me Decade" we Baby Boomers are known for.  The Me demanded all the attention we can get.  The drawback from that was that too many of us, including myself, became public nuisances.  We clamored for more than a sensible share of attention.

Ironically, that addiction, like all dependencies, can hurt professional success.  Through mindfulness I am exiting a lot of that noisy self-promotion and just settling down to doing the work.  Amazing results are happening.  For example, without my going after attention, more and more professionals, from diverse  fields, are checking my LinkedIn profile and contacting me about possible assignments in ghostwriting and speechwriting. 

Fame or at least the pursuit of it may be counterproductive to enduring success.

Bloomberg Brand: Competitors are licking their chops, politicos can get edge

Bloomberg competitors, ranging from Thomas Reuters on the terminal side to News Corp on the media side, probably can't believe their good luck.  That huge and respected Bloomberg brand just took a major hit.  Could it be fatal? Time will tell.  Meanwhile, the politicos could get an edge by zeroing in investigating what has just been disclosed.

THE NEW YORK POST, owned by News Corp, broke the story that the 2,400 Bloomberg News reporters had access to the activities of Wall Street subscribers on the 315,000 Bloomberg terminals.  Now, THE NEW YORK TIMES has made that story legitimate.  Here you can read the detailed coverage of a scandal which can make the high-risk trading at JP Morgan Chase and the allegedly non-client-centric folks at Goldman Sachs seem like petty stuff.

In a nutshell, Bloomberg News reporters could log into the accounts of terminal subscribers and track a lot.  That could provide the reporter with unique insight about what the traders could be planning to do.  For example, if they kept checking X category, reporters could parachute in and start nosing around that area, gather information, and try connecting the dots. 

This could spread beyond Wall Street.  As THE NEW YORK TIMES reports:

"Banking regulators at the Federal Reserve are examining whether their own employees were subject to tracking by Bloomberg reporters, according to people briefed on the matter." 

The scope of the possible mischief is the stuff new brandnames are made of and current brandnames can be given a major boost.  Could Bloomberg terminals and Bloomberg News go out of business?  That will depend on how aggressively competitors and politicos pursue this matter.  Meanwhile ethics experts can opine on how our society has to re-think the extent it will go to in order to get an edge. That edge could turn on the edge-holder, delivering a deadly wound.

Sandy Hook Elementary School - Symbolism and Voodoo

The Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut holds the memory of the loss of 20 little lives.  That symbolism, like all symbolism, is so powerful that something had to done to blunt that memory. In addition, there are those who believe in voodoo, that is, forces of the universe which have influence over what could take place on planet earth.  In short, some probably believe the building is jinxed.

Therefore, it's no surprise, reports THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, that a 28-member committee decided to tear down the school.  It will be replaced by a newly constructed school building.

Once the building is gone, residents of the area might not be so haunted by the memory of that fatal December morning in 2012 when something happened that society might never be able to understand why.  We know so little about what goes on in the mind of a disturbed human being like Adam Lanza.

Lunch Break Dance Parties: No-tech disruption for tech overload, obesity

With a bit of complimentary Absolut vodka office workers start shaking their booty at lunch time dance parties instead of staying by their computer screens gobbling down a sandwich.

That's the new trend THE NEW YORK TIMES reports.  And this no-tech introduction could disrupt the tech overload among professionals and deep six obesity.  So huge could be its implications that organizations could start creating incentives for employees to get out of the office and onto the dance floor at clubs which provide this time-out.

Before the company gym was introduced, we Baby Boomers remember how restorative it had been to grab our coat and flee the cube for a walk for a few blocks.  Along the way we peeked at store windows and even got fresh ideas for our work.  Instead of consuming a 700-calorie lunch, we might have just sipped a can of those diet meal drinks which were in vogue then.  And, all was right with the world.  We were in control again.

BigPharma such as Johnson & Johnson which is so concerned with obesity and emotional health might partner with the sponsors of these lunch break dance parties.

Mother's Day for Pet Parents: Respect for the bond, finally

The bonds of parenthood might be a curse.  Across all species and between species - as with pet parents and our four-footed children - the caring is so intense. Yes, it borders on the neurotic.

Finally, others understand.  A man who I was supposed to interview on his niche business finally was free, after traveling for weeks.  However, I had told him I wasn't.  I was overwhelmed.  For one thing I had to get up to speed on a ghostwriting book assignment.  But even more depleting was that I had to continue with tests for my 18-year-old cat Jason.  The businessman agreed to wait another week.  He seemed compassionate.

So far a lot of nasty stuff has been ruled out.  The vet needs to check his kidneys.  The fake litter the vet gave me to catch urine at home didn't work. Jason was having none of that.  So, now I have to go over to the vet's and find out what other ways we can get urine and at what cost.  That will be tomorrow.  Meanwhile I am a basket case of worry.

But come Mother's Day, the pain will be forgotten as Jason and I curl up on the sofa, me reading, he purring.  He will look into my eyes with such trust.  Mothers around the world who earned that should feel such a sense of satisfaction and joy next Sunday.