Social Security, mend your ways

I just got my annual Social Security statement. It's the one that tells me if I have enough credits to get Social Security now due to a disabililiy or later because I make it to age 62 or later.

The form even projects how much I will get if I start collecting at age 62 or 66 or later - IF I continue to make the same amount I made in the last year recorded.

First, 2007 is the last year recorded. I can't believe my 2008 number hasn't made it to their office in the computer age.

Second, wouldn't it be more useful to also include the amount I would collect if I never earn another dollar? I can safely assume given my age and background the probability of earning the same wage is zilch, I am grateful to find occasional paying jobs.

I am not even sure age and skills matter right now in this community. I see daily how tough the job market is for my daughter's boyfriend. Despite a great work record and working family and friend connections, he's in his fourth month of looking for a job.

So Social Security, get real. What can I get if I never work for money again?

How did I miss this death pool?

I'm cleaning out my inbox and blog drafts today when I ran across this item:

Star-Ledger Death Pool

How did I miss it? Where is the one that lists all the newspapers?

Celebration as mysterious as disease of MS

MS Awareness Week is getting as confusing as the disease multiple sclerosis.

Over on the National Multiple Sclerosis site, it is March 2-8. A lot of media sites are writing about the week, including a blogger in New York who uses the occasion to share her MS diagnosis. (She includes a few books she's read since A Shelf Life blog is about MS.)

But then I get an email notice that "National Multiple Sclerosis(MS) Awareness Week is March 15-21." It's on PR Newswire, which cites ProLine Communications as the source. The real focus of the release is how those with MS can build and manage a small business.

"In recognition of National MS Awareness Week, we are proposing a program that will offer practical start-up advice, life wisdom, and inspiration from small-business owners who are also coping with medical adversity."

You can read about a couple of businesses that were started by folks with MS. Not much on MS, though.

There is more on MS over on the MS Foundation site, which declares all of March as MS Awareness and Education Month. It's a part of a campaign to raise the visibility of MS. As the foundation says:

"More than 450,000 people in the United States have MS. Can you tell who they are? Often, even doctors find it difficult to diagnose this chronic, unpredictable illness. Its symptoms may seem to come and go and many are invisible. Fatigue, vertigo and cognitive changes, along with depression, bladder and bowel problems, and sexual dysfunction all are commonly experienced by people with MS, but known only to them."

By the way, lots of folks write about MS and their lives with MS. Start reading at the Carnival of MS Bloggers, which will lead you to a lot of blogs on MS for real awareness of the "now you see it, now you don't" disease of mine.

Fame fleeting so make most of Letterman

Two formerly employed reporters showed up in my feed today. One had a story on David Letterman's Small Town News segment Monday and became a story because Letterman's advice to "keep up the good work" went to a laid-off reporter. The other reporter was praised in Jeff Jarvis's Buzzmachine for "using the brand equity said employer helped him build - in his own tinseltown blog, Greg in Hollywood."

So here's hoping that Alicia Ebaugh reads Jarvis and quickly converts her Letterman fame into a job.

She doesn't have the brand equity of Greg Hernandez, who started his own blog just seven days after the Hollywood writer for the LA Daily News was laid off (and knows the value of promotion). But she's done a few blogs, including Generation Why, so with a Linked In page supplementing her Facebook page and a plan she could get going fast.

Poynter's Romenski picked up what Aaron Barnhart wrote about Ebaugh in Hope you're happy, Dave! "Small Town News" journalist dissed by Letterman was laid off last week (He includes the TV clip so you can decide if Letterman was praising or criticizing her when he discussed the October 2007 story about police arresting a man found in a compromising position with an inflatable doll in a public restroom.)

The reporter was one of 13 that Steve Buttry, then Gazette editor and now information content conductor led go Feb. 24 on "saddest day."

By the way, the Online Gazettee also covered the Letterman story, including a link to Barnhart's blog. But that story and the online police story leave out Ebaugh's name. See, fame is so fleeting.

Editors can view video for blogging idea

Sure, the American Society of Newspaper Editors Newspaper editors won't meet this year at its convention, but editors can keep learning. John Wilpers shares ideas for using bloggers to add content, reach, revenue in a video.

Could newspapers adopt the NPR fund-raising model?

June Thomas looks at the "10 cunning ways" that public radio raises money over on Slate. Her list includes these tactics:

• the perfect gift
• the guilt trip
• flattery
• match game

and these conversations:

• "We're here for you so you be here for us"
• "Your bill is due now"
• "Only you can save journalism"
• "You're not just helping us, you're helping your fellow listeners"
• "Stop me before I make the pitch again"

Plus the organizations do a good job of niche marketing, marketing shows with specific audiences.

"The best of public radio's weekend shows have distinct personalities: the discursive storytelling of This American Life, the self-deprecating bickering of Car Talk, and the cozy in-jokes of A Prairie Home Companion."

So tell me why couldn't newspapers and other media organizations use the same tactics?

Today's the day to be square

Today - 3-3-09 - is a special day. For the world, it's Square Root Day - day and the month are both the square root of the last two digits of the current year. For my family, it's another trip to Ann Arbor for more chemo and a trip to Whole Foods.

All of us would have more fun celebrating Square Root Day then doing the AA dash. Since the next such day won't be here until April 4, 2016, you might as well spend the day doing things such as this:

• Get squared away with a ton of tips from Squared Away
  
• Eat a square meal on square plates. (or learn why hotels started using square plates)
  
• Square your root vegetables (Potatoes, carrots,turnips, rutabegas, etc.)
• Play a game called Square Meal
  
• Go square dancing or learn some history of square dancing
  
• Put square pegs in round holes (video)
  
• Tie a square knot.
• Visit Square Root Day on Facebook
• Or learn the 53 ways to define a square Urban Dictionary
  

The last square root day was Feb. 2, 2004, which got a California teacher excited.

Cartoonist bottled up energy to save print

I am always ready for a laugh, especially when it combines two subjects near and dear to my heart. So click on the cartoon or head over to Matt Bors' blog and see the rest of this four-panel cartoon.

See Matt Bors has come up with his "completely serious, entirely workable, fail proof plan for saving newspapers. Free papers should go this route as well. Why deny yourself the revenue stream?"

(By the way, I was led to Bors and his "print-saving solution" through a Washington Post item on "our web addiction." You'll find another cartoon there: The Fall of Rome-nesko.)

Step into the dark

Richard Nicholson highlights some of the last operating darkrooms. Remember those?

'New toy,' crowded restaurant show some do their part

Some business owners went to sleep smiling last night. One smiled thanks to Jim of L-Town, who is spending more then a few pennies for"Our new toy." Since the purchase is leading to a new blog, perhaps the fancy RV will create even more smiles.

And at Italia Gardens in Flint Township, there was a 30-minute wait for a table. I could have paid for our four dinners if every person who saw the line and said "I thought the economy was bad" or "the stimulous package is working" had to give me $1.

One last observation - my daughter says she saw mini cash registers walking out the door, not the "doggie boxes" each customer carried out. One of her chef-making TV shows had said such boxes meant the restaurant was serving portions that are too big. Or maybe, I said, folks are eating less everyday as a way of stretching the food budget.

Just a thought.

Making it: 'Maize and blue' cake, life

February is a celebration month in our household. Besides Valentine's Day and Presidents' Day, my husband and our marriage turns another year older. Every four years, the kid who rolled over in the hospital gets an official birthday. The other three years, we celebrate on the most convenient date - Feb. 28 or March 1.

This year, we celebrated the birth of the 11-pound wonder on the 28th by going out to dinner and then eating a non-organic cake she baked. Note: She also baked that maize-and-blue one - all organic ingrediants - in a new cake pan for her dad's birthday. (Yes, she's trying to eat foods not enriched by hormones or vitamins. She wanted a confetti cake so she "went off the wagon.")

She unwrapped a few gifts - more cotton thread to crochet, a few books and a new comforter. She hit the quarter of a century mark so that means she must move off her father's insurance. I'm looking forward to informing all the medical people of the third insurance switch since her cancer treatment started. (you can bet we are following the switch carefully - 1 application was already lost.)

Some friends and family members expected a bigger celebration - especially as the first set of chemo shrunk the tumors by about 9 cm. But the newly weekly chemo treatments leave her tired. Plus alcohol and crowds ate to be avoided. We want to see the doctors do another happy dance at the end of this set of chemo, so it is early to bed, late to rise and naps in-between. Plus yoga. Some days, she's making a few meals..... or baking a cake.

Impossibility of 'Hot Box' reminds ex-Journal editor how truth emerges

A former Flint Journal copy editor recalls The Hot Box  and shows how that related to where newspapers are today.

He starts the tale this way:

Years ago, in the early stages of newspapers' redesigning, I worked for a chain of eight midsize newspapers in the Midwest. Some of them looked as if it were still World War II, but in the early 1970s one of them had radically redesigned and managed to lose 10 percent of its subscribers in one week, or some figure like that. So they were going about it more cautiously.

So they had hired a designer to redo all the papers. (His name was Ralph "Chic" Bain. I have no idea what happened to him, although LinkedIn might place him in Austin.) We were Chic's third or fourth paper in a row and he had used all of his easy-to-gin-up ideas in other cities.

For our paper, he unveiled "the hot box." This was an attempt to get away from the tyranny of the three-across teaser box that then dominated newspaper design. Instead, we would have a line of type -- the equivalent of the Times Square zipper, but not moving -- at the top of the page, and then a box with a big image -- 2x2.5, about -- at the right margin, next to the flag. As with all designers, Chic selected a striking illustration for his prototype. He presented it to the top editors, and they approved it.

David worried about " our ability to come up with a striking illustration 365 days a year. I was scared that within a week this would end up being another grainy wirephoto of Jimmy Carter (we had old presses and almost no color). "

David says even Chic thought The Hot Box would be killed. See the original post for how David recalls that conversation, one with an editor who approved the plan and why this matters today. It has something to do with what journalists really believe. Let's just say the emperor wears no clothes, some editors who believe an artist is right even while doubting the the vision can be done, and journalism is doomed.

Should your spouse have your passwords?

When I saw this Facebook status:

XXX loves her husband dearly and remembers her wedding vow to LOVE and OBEY! Oh, and XXX (her husband) is ALWAYS right.

I immediately remembered the time in the newsroom when a reporter did not log off and his credit line was changed to Journal bonehead reporter. It made the newspaper because the friend assumed the reporter would catch and what copy editor looks at what is always the same.

When I later saw this status:

XXX just changed her Facebook password so her husband can't change her status. Uggh.

I remembered I wanted to ask if you give your spouse all your passwords to all of your online homes. It's not that I'm hiding anything. I just join a lot of things. Sometimes I hang around; sometimes I don't.

Not too long ago, I was showing my husband one of the sites I use when he asked if I had all my sites and passwords written down. He says he just wants to make sure he can clean up after me in case I die.

At least, we are Facebook friends so he'll be able to take of that page since Facebook changes policy on deceased users accounts

Kristen Nicole on All Facebook shared this tale:

Late last week the Consumerist wrote an article highlighting a woman who had trouble convincing Facebook to remove the profile of her deceased brother. William Bemister, the brother of Stephanie Bermister, died suddenly last November. Stephanie's case in particular brings up several important issues regarding Facebook, it's policy towards deceased users, and the way in which it deals with family members of the deceased.

Per Facebook's policy, his profile was memorialized, a process by which certain private information is removed and the page is only accessible to confirmed friends through search.

However, his sister was not a friend so she couldn't get the profile completely down even after sending in a request and copy of the death certificate.

Nicole asks:

Should Facebook have the right to decide what to do with a deceased member's account despite direct and confirmed contact with a relative?

Facebook removed William's account all together, and Nicole says Facebook responded to Nicole that it will honor such requests from family members.

Nicole wants to know how Facebook knows someone is dead; I want to know what does Facebook do if some family members want the profile up and some want it gone.

Meanwhile, Nicole suggests you

• make sure you're friends with your closest family members that also have Facebook accounts.
  
• have a plan that outlines instructions to family members and loved ones in regard to what should be done with accounts.

What are you going to do?


Related posts:

• Worry time? Husband wants my online info Published July 17, 2008
  

Facebook replacing rallies, picket lines? Citizens aim to ‘Save the Jersey Journal’

The Jersey City Independent chose to report on what's happening with the Jersey Journal, an Advance Publication facing closure by focusing on a community effort happening on Facebook.

A 36-year-old journalist started the Save the Jersey Journal” group on Facebook "just a week after the Evening Journal Association, which publishes the tabloid daily, announced an April 13 expiration date for the 142-year-old paper if its revenue was not sufficient to support a “reduced expense plan.” "

Just one more Facebook group among zillions, today's replacement for petitions and picket lines. I've got The Path to Pink, and Feel Your Boobies for breast cancer; closer to home Support downtown Flint neighborhoods. and in a way, close to home: Don't Let Newspapers Die and Stop Outsourcing US Jobs - Support American jobs . There's Save GM and Support The UAW and so many more. (Am I really stopping global warning with each plant in Green Patch?)

Kate Kaye told Jon Whiten, the article's author, why she started the Facebook group:

"I decided it was the very least I could do to show the publishers that people care.

I realize to many this seems like a futile effort, and as one who has covered the online newspaper sector for years as a business reporter, I’m well aware of the reality — and cynicism — print papers face.

But I’m also someone who recognizes the value of having a daily print publication for any city for historical, cultural, communal, political, and utilitarian purposes.””

By the time of Whiten's article, the group collected 124 members.

The group's purpose:

"This group has been created to foster ideas to help save The Jersey Journal , the only daily paper covering Jersey City, New Jersey's second largest city, and the county seat of Hudson County. The paper has served Jersey City for over 140 years. It survived the Great Depression. Let's not let it die now, especially in a year when a tight mayoral election race is heating up."

There's advice there that the best way to save the newspaper is to subscribe.

You'll also find a post suggesting folks sign a petition (not that petitions do much to get businesses to change their ways when they are failing.)

Whiten, who has freelanced for the newspaper, said includes information about fewer editorial employees, including management's hope that four to six of the about 13 remaining newsroom staffers to leave voluntarily (down from about 60 in 1972.) and a request to the Newspaper Guild to let the growing number of interns stay longer then nine months.

Whiten also writes about how overall coverage is going, the newspaper's Internet presence, why the local government won't save the press and why some don't read the printed newspaper.


Related posts - Advance Publications:

• Advance newspapers get warning of closure
• Flint Journal sister paper to hire Local News Service
• Nothing new in news business

Related posts - Facebook:

• Facebook's 25 Things gets noticed by Time, NYT; gi.ves me some attention
• Graphing Social Patterns: The Business

Fighting (again) wastes time

My doctor fought and won - I can keep taking the medicine that has helped me fight fatigue for five years.

He called my insurance company numerous times (and didn't bill for the time.) He gave me samples to keep me going for the six weeks of rejection.There is no generic substitute. There is no alternative, including the insurance company's advice to take more naps.

I already try to fight MS fatigue by using my energy wisely. I nap. I sleep. I exercise.

I wonder how much money is wasted each time a doctor who prescribes a rejected medicine fights. There's paperwork, phone calls, research - all done by humans.

I don't think changing the pill top label to use less ink or dropping the label completely will ever save enough to make up for the firm's questioning of the accredited doctor's judgement.

If he prescribed it, he thinks it should be filled - especially if it is a refill.

Another paper wants to try charging

Reuters reported today that Cablevision Systems Corp (CVC.N) plans to charge online readers of its Newsday newspaper. The agency said the move that would make it one of the first large U.S. papers to reverse a trend.

A Newsday rep wasn't immediately available to elaborate on the paper's web plans. Cablevision chief operating officer Tom Rutledge made no-more-free-content remark during a call with analysts.

"Our goal was and is to use our electronic network assets and subscriber relationships to transform the way news is distributed," he said on a conference call with analysts.

"We plan to end the distribution of free Web content," he added.

That should make L. Gordon Crovitz, the columnist with the Wall Street Journal who recently wrote that "information wants to be expensive."

Personally, I liked Mark Ingram's take on the column: "WSJ: We charge, so why don't you."

Simple drawing a good predictor

Is this bag lying down or standing up? Or can you see it both ways?

Some days I can flip the bag drawn by one of my doctors. Some days I can only see inside the bag one way.

The one-way day is not a good day for me to go looking for Waldo, finding the "magic picture" hidden in scribbles or picturing what the completed quilt or necklace will look like.

Real-life story problem boggles minds

My daughter's newest prescription came with the pharmacy's explanation and five more letter-size sheets of instructions. The cautions are frightening. So was figuring out when to take it with her other drugs.

It boils down to one drug must be taken 30 minutes before eating, the new one two hours after that one amd the other one at least an hour later.

She and I both graduated from college and are good readers. It took several readings, an Internet search and a call before it was all sorted out.

Keep your fingers crossed that this new drug wipes out her infection. I am not sure either of us is up for the next round.

Give up Facebook for Lent?

Today's the first day of Lent. For many Christians, it also is the first day they give up something to make a sacrifice in preparation for Easter.

Giving up Facebook for 40 days , as one friend plans to do, seems over the top. I'm sure she'd be shocked to find out how trendy giving up social media networking for Lent is.

Twitter talk about Lent was such a popular topic, it consistently was listed as a hot topic on the search page. Twitter also led me back to Facebook.

alexcrabb: Just talking with E about - Facebook should have a Lent application: see what your friends give up.

Alexcrabb included a link to How to give up Facebook for Lent and keep your friends.

That included mention of a Wall Street Journal article on Lent that referenced a Giving Up Facebook for Lent group. (By the way, there are more then 500 Facebook groups with Lent in the title, including 94 that have the words giving up Facebook for Lent in the title.)

Then, I decided to check my RSS reader. Some folks are giving up and giving: Dave Harte, who is giving up Twitter pledges a donation to a group helping homeless youth for each day he stays off Twitter. He'll double the donation for any day he goes on Twitter.

I regularly give up Facebook, Twitter and other social media when other activities call so dropping social media would not be much of a sacrifice for me.

On the Levite Chronicles, Jon Swanson describes fasting as "giving up unhealthy dependence on stuff." It is part of a post on "Deliberate Silence," a choice the blogger can make in a world filled with noise from family, friends, advertisers and more.

"But at 6:30am on Ash Wednesday, in a quiet house, I can choose to be silent, or not. I can choose to have noise, or not. I can decide to look at the stream of images and words, or not.

I can decide whether there is an unhealthy dependence, or not."

Once I finish that, I started thinking that maybe the sacrifice I should make is giving up making these Internet connections.

Night Blind: Latitude Loyalty

Night Blind: Latitude Loyalty and my Grandma In Compton, 1960

Isn't 'latitude loyalty' a wonderful way to describe the worry you stayed too long and the town is no longer home, sweet, home?

That the town is Flint, Michigan, makes the question even more bittersweet.

The good news is the Internet makes the world smaller every day.