The Greatest Show On Earth

Like the fabled little-girl-with-the-little-curl-right-in-the-middle-of-her-forehead, when branding is good, it’s very, very good. And when it’s bad, it’s horrid.

And here’s the thing: There’s a great deal of skill, finesse, and psychological fill-in-the-blank-ing that goes into the very best branding. But creating good, solid branding is not all that difficult; it just requires a level of commitment that many of us lack.

What are you selling? You are selling a microcosm.

You’re selling small parcels of an entire, perfectly-formed, miniature world. A world with its own logic, order and beauty. This world does not exist, could not possibly exist, as a whole, on this planet. But the parcels you sell make their buyers feel as though they carry bits of this world around with them. They serve as covert membership cards, touchstones, rosaries, IDs.

Your branding needs to be utterly earnest, regardless of tone, about the world it’s selling. Earnest about its cheekiness, its usefulness, its temporary nature, its atemporal nature, its status, its cuteness, its superiority.

Believe. And then make me believe.

Consider the circus. When I visit the circus, I know that, very probably, the Bearded Lady is not truly bearded; the Alligator Girl is probably rocking a whole lot of dried Elmer’s Glue; the Wolf Boy is not some sort of lupine missing link. (And the clowns, obviously, are neither jolly nor intent on making you laugh; they are, in fact, waiting for you to turn your back so that they can sneak up on you–a fact best left for another post.)

But this is the circus, and I came to believe.

So let your production value be over the [big] top. [Sorry.]

Show off for us.

Or don’t: Let the stark, non-showy nature of your branding speak to us in reverent tones about your practical, tactical, no-nonsense world.

Commit.

Because my money can go in any direction my browser can pull up.

Make yours the greatest show on earth.

Impressionable

I remember meeting A. for the first time when I was not-quite-three years old. Although he’s my first cousin, he’s only two years younger than my father, which would have made A. twenty-two, then. There was something dangerous and a little sad about him, it seemed to me from hushed conversations I’d overheard. But he wasn’t dangerous himself: He was a sweet boy who’d done dangerous things. (Drugs, and jail time for said drugs, I would later learn.) Blue eyes blazing, he came to visit our aunt’s apartment, wearing a pin-striped suit with a pastel-colored shirt, shiny black Stacy Adams shoes, very short, gold-burnished hair, and sideburns.  He practically crackled, he was so phenomenally exciting.

I have a vague recollection of being introduced to him, of his being sweet to me, of sitting in my aunt’s living room and listening to what, in retrospect, must have been a whole lot of unsolicited advice from people who were only slightly older than he was.

What I recall with utmost clarity is the photograph.

It was time for us to go, and I desperately wanted not to be separated from A. I recall big feelings that protested going home, and the certainty that I had no way to get the feelings out of my chest and into words that would make sense to the grown-ups. And then my mother said she wanted to take a picture of me with A. We stood near the top of the stairway that led to our aunt’s door, and my mother went down onto the patio below. She told me to stand a little closer to A., for which I was glad. He put his hand down, gently, flat onto my head, and I remember feeling like there wasn’t enough room in my body for all the crazy joy that flooded me. And I knew later I’d be able to look at the photo and remember.

(A. remains a badass.)

Love letter.

The people I love are the ones who create. On their own time, on their own dime, because this is the way they know how to live. It is the way they make sense of the world, and the way in which they can hear their own voices. They’re the people who create because it feels like inhaling and exhaling, because to stop doing it, to ignore the call, the compulsion, would mean death. They’re the people who put on the show, write the short story, knit the sweater, burn their fingers with the glue gun, dig the fire pit, build the treehouse, practice alone and late into the night.

Those people.

Are you one of them?

You.

You’re really quite wonderful.

The Girl Effect

Photo by orange tuesday, used under a Creative Commons license.

I am not inclined toward grand statements about how infinitely superior Woman is to Man. Simply: I don’t believe it.

We’re on this planet together. We have different gifts and different foibles. We need those differences.

And we all need a fair shot at what Prince once referred to as “this thing called life.” This includes basic human rights and necessities. It includes education.

At present time, particularly in developing countries, education for girls lags far behind that of boys.  And while that in itself isn’t surprising, the effects that an education has on a girl’s life are pretty surprising. For instance:

• When a girl in the developing world receives seven or more years of education, she marries four years later and has 2.2 fewer children. (United Nations Population Fund, State of World Population 1990.)

• An extra year of primary school boosts girls’ eventual wages by 10 to 20 percent. An extra year of secondary school: 15 to 25 percent. (George Psacharopoulos and Harry Anthony Patrinos, “Returns to Investment in Education: A Further Update,” Policy Research Working Paper 2881[Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2002].)

• Research in developing countries has shown a consistent relationship between better infant and child health and higher levels of schooling among mothers. (George T. Bicego and J. Ties Boerma, “Maternal Education and Child Survival: A Comparative Study of Survey Data from 17 Countries,” Social Science and Medicine 36 (9) [May 1993]: 12 07–2 7. )

So what can you do? It’s twofold, I think. You can start by making the people in your circles aware of this dynamic, and of these and other facts. And you can donate money.

This situation is utterly changeable. You and I can help change it.

Reminder!

The chances of it being about you are very, very, very slim.

(Seriously.)

Recuerdos de Mezcala

Estas memórias tienen todo que ver con los cinco sentidos. Por ejemplo, el olor
del verde zacate del potrero. El aire tan limpio, tan fresco, casi dulce. El sabor
del agua, traída desde el poso, casi dulce, como el aire. Recuerdo el sonido de
las lluvias que llegaban rápidamente, y que rápidamente se iban.

Recuerdo al paletero que salía cada tarde, gritando “¿Cuantas paletas?
¿Cuantas, cuantas?” Las campanas del templo que anunciaban la hora. Los
cuetes y las bandas que se anunciaban cada año para las fiestas de Agosto. El
sonido metálico de la puerta de la calle en la casa de mis abuelos. Las voces
de los vecinos que entraban, casi siempre sin tocar, diciendo “¡Buenos días!”
o “’Tardes…” y, muy de vez en cuando, “Buenas noches.”

Recuerdo el sonido de la risa de mi Papá Cacho, llena de travesuras y sabiduría.
Y a Doña Chepa, que seguido venía a la casa a cortar guayabas. Y a Don
José Gregorio, que todos los días pasaba, serio y digno, montado en su
burro. “Buenos días, mi’ija,” me decía al pasar, y yo me sentía muy importante.

Recuerdo el sonido de la nica sobre el mosaico del piso. Y la sensación de ese
mismo piso, frío bajo mis pies. Recuerdo las noches que se sentaban a platicar
los adultos en el patio, con tazas de té de naranja. Yo me sentaba con todos. Me
encantaba escucharlos. Cada persona tenía su forma de contar una historia.
Recuerdo los grillos. Los gallos. Las vacas que ordeñábamos. La caña que nos
comíamos. Recuerdo que caminaba por las calles empedradas y cada cuando
alguien me decía, “Tú eres la hija de Ramón, ¿verdad, mi’ija? Te pareces mucho
a tu mami.”

Recuerdo un gran sentido de libertad. Allí podía jugar todo el día sin tener que
reportarme. Podía ir a donde quería, jugar con cualquier chiquilla en cualquier
casa. Me imaginaba yo que era la protagonista de un libro divertido, más o
menos la versión femenina de Tom Sawyer o Huckleberry Finn.

No deseo, con todo esto, romantizar al pueblo de Mezcala. No me interesa pintar
una escena sin defecto. Simplemente, estas son mis memorias favoritas de ese
lugar en esos tiempos. Con cada año que pasa, veo más claramente que mucho
de la mujer que ahora soy, tiene que ver con lo que recuerdo de Mezcala.