Here’s a speech I gave at the Speakers Forum - an advanced Toastmasters Club that meets on the 4th Saturday of each month at the Concord Police Station, Concord, California.
In this 5-7 minute presentation I discuss the differences in pronunciation and meaning between English and American uses of the same language.
Thanks to Sociological Images for an eye-opening display of vintage ads for cocaine and opium products.
They note that what is considered socially “acceptable” changes over time:
..it’s no secret that products with cocaine, marijuana, opium, and other now-banned substances were at one time sold openly, often as medicines. The changes in attitudes toward these products, from entirely acceptable and even beneficial to inherently harmful and addicting, is a great example of social construction. While certainly opium and cocaine have negative effects on some people, so do other substances that remained legal (or were re-legalized, in the case of alcohol).
I found one of the most enjoyable things about watching Mad Men was seeing the outrageous behavior of “normal” people in the early 1960’s - women who were 7 months pregnant sipping martini’s and smoking to “calm their nerves”; driving without seat belts; the treatment of women and minorities in the workplace.
What will our grandchildren find shocking about everyday aspects of our world, when they look back 100 years from now?
Will they be wondering why we drove private automobiles that ran on fossil fuels and killed 1.2 million a year worldwide in traffic accidents; or ate meat which sucks up plant food that could feed five times the number of people; or tolerated a world where the richest 1% of the globe own 40% of all wealth; or watched TV for an average of 151 hours a month; or allowed commercial TV stations to show 3 hours of advertising for every 10 hours of programming; or lived in a world with a stockpile over 23,000 nuclear weapons.
I wonder what, apart from all of that, will our grandchildren find surprising or shocking about the way we live now?
What do you think?
“I think heckling is something the people of Britain can well be proud of…” - Joseph Strick, documentary film maker, 1966
A BBC documentary film caught priceless moments in the 1966 British election. Politicians mixed it up with vocal members of the electorate who have no compunction about joining in the debate from the audience in the time honored tradition of “heckling”.
There’s a marked contrast with the recent “Tea Party” interruptions in the US. Back in 1966 Britain, the dialog, however robust and vocal, involves a shared understanding of the rules of the game between the speaker, the heckler and the audience. Save for the anarchists, the protesters often relish engaging in dialog. Even when it becomes violent the policemen have smiles on their faces and let the protesters finish their cigarettes before bundling them into the police car. In the US it was mere confrontation, with none of the repartee displayed by heckler and speaker in some of the scenes in this fascinating documentary.
Combining the wit of a stand-up comedian with the vocal variety of a fairground barker, these British politicians show how effective public speakers can deal with interruptions by working the bond with the audience and appealing to their supporters, who intervene on behalf of the speaker to silence dissent.
It’s a long-gone world of duffel coats and briar pipes, when everyone seemed to be having a bad hair day.
Read the BBC blog and watch the fascinating 40 minute video.
Here’s a nice way to celebrate the end of one year and the start of another. This awe-inspiring video of the known, material, universe deserves 5 minutes of your time to watch in HD and full-screen mode (click on the second box from the right in the menu bar below.)
The Known Universe video takes viewers from the Himalayas through our atmosphere and the inky black of space to the afterglow of the Big Bang. Every star, planet, and quasar seen in the film is possible because of the world’s most complete four-dimensional map of the universe, the Digital Universe Atlas that is maintained and updated by astrophysicists at the American Museum of Natural History. This new film, created by the Museum, is part of an exhibition, Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe, at the Rubin Museum of Art in Manhattan through May 2010.
Happy New Year!
Visiting my home town in the UK last week, I experienced a new perspective on some of the cultural oddities of these United States. For instance, people in England, as elsewhere across the planet, hang their washing to dry outside on clear days. This obvious solution to the final stage of the laundry cycle - drying clothes en plein air - is anathema to most Americans, who see clotheslines as a symbol of poverty and despair.
Matthew Engel writes in the Weekend Financial Times about one woman’s fight to air her dirty laundry, highlighting key aspects of the oddly American prohibition on hanging washing outside. Neighbors are quick to complain that “trailer trash” inhabit a home where the clothes dry outside. Like Victorians who insisted on demure skirting around piano legs, they object to seeing the neighbor’s knickers. In many upscale communities there are strictly enforced laws banning outside clotheslines. The gas or electric tumble dryer is fired up even on the warmest of days.
Engel identifies the historical origins of the uniquely American obsession with burning carbon fuels in order to dry laundry in tumble driers, come rain or shine:
This one is just a very strange and very American prejudice, which is at odds with some of the country’s other priorities: far greater piety than is now normal in Europe (surely sun and wind are part of God’s benison?) and the right to do what the hell you want on your own property. As Ms Froehlich said: “If my husband has a right to have guns in the house, I have a right to hang laundry.”
This seems, however, to clash with two other American traits: the puritan tradition, lingering from the 17th century, and an unshakeable faith in technology, lingering from the 1950s. So now battle is joined between the anti-hangers and environmentalists who accuse driers of being responsible for 6 per cent of domestic US electricity consumption.
An increasing number of environmentally aware citizens are pointing out the ecological advantages of the humble clothesline. Project Laundry List is a pressure group attempting to communicate the common-sense values and benefits to the planet of hanging laundry outside. I would encourage anyone interested in a sensible alternative to the foolish use of tumble dryers on warm and sunny days to join. My own family clothes are hung out on the Hills Hoist we purchased from the Australian supplier over ten years ago. And yes, those are my underpants (above) hanging out in the California sunshine.
I recently attended a full day seminar on social media presented by Patrick Schwerdtfeger, the author of Webify Your Business who I profiled on this blog back in July.
After the event, I caught up with Sheila Dobee, DDS who is based in Fremont, CA and asked her how dentists might use Social Media like Facebook and blogs.
To hear what Dr. Dobee told me, click on the podcast icon below.
Can you believe Woodstock took place 40 years ago this weekend! To commemorate LIFE teamed up with the MagCloud team to release a Special Edition print on demand Magazine….check it out!
Order your copy for just $9.60 plus shipping.
Great photos of those long-gone daze.
I’ve just finished reading The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work
In de Botton’s own words, he wrote the book to “shine a spotlight on the working world,” exploring both its beauty and its beastliness. By turning a philosopher’s eye on the intricacies of labor and trade, de Botton has produced a compelling series of essays that focus on life’s hidden minutiae, offering insights into working people as well as the taken-for-granted structure of the world around us.
The essays are compelling reading – and not only because the approach is novel and the writing superb. De Botton takes us to places most of us have never been, showing us the vast global framework of cargo ships and warehouses, delving deep into their particular logic and strange beauty. He takes us to anonymous structures on the outskirts of the urban core, where:
“…vessels slip in continuously, during humid summers and fog-bound winters, night and day, to deliver the bulk of London’s gravel and its reinforced steel, its soya beans and coal, its milk and its paper pulp, the sugar cane for its biscuits and the hydrocarbons for its generators - an area as noteworthy as any of the museums of the city, but about which the guidebooks are silent.”
De Botton sees poetry in areas others overlook, such as the food distribution facility in the British midlands, where, in early December:
“…twelve thousand strawberries wait in the semi-darkness. They flew in from California yesterday, crossing over the Arctic Circle by moonlight, writing a trail of nitrogen across a black and gold sky.”
In his chapters on the global supply chain, de Botton bridges the divide between the First and Third Worlds, detailing how cold-eyed, lifeless fish are transported around the globe by an assortment of humanity. His single-minded pursuit of the journey of a slab of frozen tuna – from the ocean off the Maldives to an eight-year-old’s supper plate in a Bristol kitchen – takes the form of a stark photo-essay.
The book skirts the edge of pathos when it teases the poetic from a Monty-Pythonesque cast of eccentric characters:
And if you want to know what Japanese day-time television, French Guiana, the freezing point of hydrogen and the fragile ego of a Hong Kong journalist have in common, read the chapter on Rocket Science to find out.
All of de Botton’s characters are treated with gentleness and respect. The one time de Botton seems to be peeved by a subject of his inquiries is, unfortunately, the one place in the book where the cloak of anonymity fails him. His long chapter on ‘Accountancy’ profiles the European headquarters of “one of the world’s largest accountancy firms,” and his interview with the chairman of the operation is singularly bad-tempered. De Botton notes that the senior executive has forsworn the trappings of authority - sitting in an open cubicle, asking people to call him by his first name – yet, as the author scathingly notes:
“…power has not disappeared entirely; it has merely been reconfigured. It is by posing as a regular employee that the chairman stands his best chance of preserving his seniority. His subordinates admire the sincerity with which he pretends to share their fate, while he privately recognises that only a convincing show of normalcy will prevent him from ever having to be normal again.”
Say what?
More convincing are the comments on the frequent internal presentations the top guy delivers “against a backdrop of PowerPoint slogans”:
“It is evident that success in his job will ultimately depend less on anything he might do than on his relative luck in aligning his reign with auspicious currents in economic history. He is like a general on a battlefield vainly striving to maintain an appearance of control amidst the chaos of sporadically exploding munitions.”
‘Nuff said.
The one problem with the supposed ‘anonymous’ critique is that the company chairman is photographed in front of a PowerPoint slide where the logo of the major accounting firm is clearly visible. Curious which firm it is? Turn to page 253 to find out.
de Botton’s book reminded me of another of my favorite authors. John Berger is a Marxist art historian best known for Ways of Seeing
His examination of the life of a country doctor A Fortunate Man
Berger examines the daily life of the country doctor with an art historian’s and sociologist’s perspective. The working life of one man is situated in the broader framework of the social relationships.
The book is full of insights like this on the structures of social intercourse:
The easiest - and sometimes the only possible - form of conversation is that which concerns or describes action: that is to say action considered as technique or procedure. It is then not the experience of the speakers which is discussed but the nature of an entirely exterior mechanism ot event - a motor-car engine, a football match, a draining system or the workings of some committee. Such subjects, which preclude anything indirectly personal, supply the content of most of the conversations being carried on by men over twenty-five at any given moment in England today. (in the case of the young, the force of their own appetites saves them from such depersonalization.)
Both authors show depth of meaning and discover truth when they focus on the everyday. As writers, we should always look deeply into the world around us.
Ellen Taliaferro, MD (aka Dr T) is a recovering emergency physician now serving as the Medical Director of the San Mateo Medical Center Keller Center for Family Violence Intervention in San Mateo, CA.
Using her background in emergency medicine, stress management, and writing, she has created a program called Healing the Wound Within with a personal Writing Practice Prescription.
In addition, she continues to speak on Domestic Violence As A Health Issue and The Medical Aspects Of Manual Strangulation As A Form Domestic Violence Assault.
Dr T grew up in Will Rogers country and loves country humor. She sees herself as a true Okie: “Sooner born, Sooner bred, and when I die I’m California dead.” Of note, she finished her clinical career at UTSW medical school and Parkland Hospital. While there, the Dallas Morning News named her as one of the 100 most influential Texas women — an amazing feat for an Okie.
Dr. T. is a professional member of the National Speakers Association. She’s also a Board Member of the Northern California Chapter. Ellen is one of a growing number of established members who have enrolled in the 2009 Pro-Track class in order to take their career to the next level.
To hear what Dr. T has to say about professional speaking, well writing and Pro-Track, click on the podcast icon below.
Appearance is everything at this weekend’s Group of Eight food crisis meeting. Delegates from the eight leading northern hemisphere economies met in Italy to discuss world hunger.
Adverse publicity in advance of an “aperitif and gala dinner” caused the lavish dining arrangements to be replaced with a working dinner and no wine tasting.
The Financial Times report concludes with a reminder that a 2002 UN Food and Agriculture Organization meeting was embarrassed when a lobster and foie gras menu was offered at a forum on global hunger.
Executives and politicians (and their PR handlers) need to maintain constant vigilance as contradictions in lifestyles between the have’s and have not’s threaten the legitimacy of their words if undermined by their actions. The 21st Century is as rich as breeding ground for this hypocrisy as ever was the France of the Sun King or Victorian England.
The Detroit auto executives maladroit arrival in DC in “the jet” (as corporations refer to their private aircraft fleets) is but one example of the speed with which the current crisis is undermining previously non-problematic behavior in the C-Suite.
Executive communicators should be aware of the overall context of a spokesperson’s actions, not just the content of their speech or PowerPoint slides taken in isolation.
Authenticity is a valuable commodity.
Gourmand tastes should be indulged in private. You are what you eat.
