Promises & Pie Crust…

Short Stuff from the Southcoast, MA – After thirty-plus years in advertising and marketing, it’s hard to shut off the part of my brain where those skills and experiences reside. While working on, developing and preparing my anyone can draw concept, I realized that – it’s not about the drawing stupid!

When I surveyed students in my community learning based art classes as to why they were giving up several nights of prime-time television to learn how to draw or paint, their answers were almost universal. They were, attempting to or, determined to, go back to a point in their childhood where art was very important to them. They all felt as though the joy they experienced doing art was, taken away from or denied, them.

Many were also left with the nagging doubt or question(s) as to whether they were actually any good at art (drawing). Most of them described how they were either commanded or instructed to: focus on more important things. They also were told that they couldn’t make a living doing that so they should concentrate on a more serious profession.

These adult students were, in effect, the walking wounded. Yet, despite this yearning to reconnect with the joy they experienced in their childhoods, they still misunderstood, or perhaps more correctly, didn’t quite realize that what they experienced as children was both spiritual and emotional. Drawing, as I’ve submitted previously is spiritual. It is either an individual (private) or community (public) expression of their reality. It is then, very spiritual and, as such, is highly emotional as well.

However, as with most religions, which are organized communal demonstrations of faith; there are precepts and cannons to follow. And, if Saint Augustine was correct, then, the reward of faith is belief. Just to be clear here, religion is communal, organizes the system of belief and offers individuals proof of the value of their faith. Drawing then, in my opinion, is no different.

If I may - if drawing is the religion - then there are rites, rituals and rules which define it. Therefore, there must be levels of participation starting with induction after a specified period of training and indoctrination. After the individual is accepted into the fold, they continue their spiritual education which is marked by specific events or milestones.

To learn how to Draw requires a structured indoctrination. The idea of free-spirited expression may be charming but, as with anything of true and lasting value; it requires patience, discipline and practice. Many first-time students become frustrated because they cannot curb their enthusiasm. And since we also live in a world of instant gratification; it’s harder to be patient. There are no shortcuts. There are no tricks per say.

There are, however, proven methods, manners and practices. For example, how to set up and use an easel. How to properly hold the drawing or mark making tool. How to isolate a scene or motif and so much more. How does this deliver the promise of a spiritual and emotional journey of self-discovery? Well, Mary Poppins said that a, "pie crust promise is easily made and easily broken.” So I want to be perfectly clear here. I can keep my promise to you of this spiritual and emotional journey of self-discovery if you give yourself the chance to allow me to prove it to you.

Once a student allows the teacher to guide them on this journey that is more mysterious and unknown than the student may realize; the self-discovery begins. So, instead of my drawing course being about learning a craft, it’s about learning about yourself and the world around you. You can learn and use drawing as a form of meditation that will offer you not only a spiritual and emotional journey of self-discovery but something concrete that you can share with others – your drawing!

I'm continuing on my journey to define drawing and to improve on its instruction in a manner in which anyone can learn to draw. I continue as well to develop my drawing blog in order to assist me to learn and be a better teacher. In the meantime, please join me.

Sign up for The Joy of Drawing starting on June 7^th (Tues 6:30-8:30 pm) at Artworks in New Bedford. I'll teach you the Seven Ts of learning to draw - Teacher, Trust, Time, Tools, Talent, Technique and Temperament

From College Classroom to Community Business Adventure?

Southcoast, MA - My 8 A.M. Business to Business Marketing students are developing the last phase of their semester-long project. The project has challenged them to research, analyze and study the feasibility of a Pike Place Market concept for the Southcoast area. Pike Place Market has been a Seattle mainstay for over one hundred years. Yet, it is not unique to the northwest. Cleveland has a marketplace that is even older and there are many others across the nation.

Why did I challenge and charge them with a project of this type? Well, to me, it was a perfect case study for teaching (B2B) business-to-business marketing since it contained nearly every aspect of the subject they needed to know. The other reason is that I try to bring as much hands-on, real-world experience into the classroom for them as I can. The course is learner-centric, which means they get involved in what the need to learn instead of waiting for the instructor to present them with a rigid agenda, or gauntlet, that they have to successfully get through.

How’d it go so far? Well, it’s an 8 o’clock Monday, Wednesday and Friday spring semester class populated mostly by seniors, which means that they’re already chomping at the end of their four-year rope. It’s challenging for me. Even the best students and those whom I’ve had in several other classes and am very familiar with aren’t working at peak performance. Other instructors have told me that they too have been as challenged by an 8 A.M. class schedule. So with all this in mind, it’s actually going pretty good. Yes, I can say it’s like pushing string, corralling cats and teaching cardboard cutouts but I think they’ll end up surprising me, as much as, they’ll end up being proud of their accomplishments.

These students are also discovering the grim realities of timeframes, group dynamics and the concept of knowing that the more they learn; the more they need to learn. They were divided into seven teams. Each team focused on one specific aspect of the marketing mix including Product, Price, Place, Promotion, People, Process and Physical Proof. Oh yeah, working in groups can be as much fun as – insert your most horrible thought here – but, with a few exceptions, they’ve mostly all pulled together. They’ve also made their initial and progressive presentations (there are six scheduled before the final) to industry experts and members of the community. One of the most valuable lessons they’ve learned so far is to respect and not disappoint your audience, which they did and know how much work will be required to repair their credibility.

Currently, they are in the process of coalescing as a single super group comprised of one representative from each of the original marketing mix specialty groups formed earlier in the semester. The super group will be managing the final phase of the presentation, which includes social media components such as Facebook in order to attract attention to the project and get live feedback from interested parties. Using these methods is very current and offers them the experience of determining how to attract as many Likes and Friends as they can to stimulate the possible continuance of the concept. It’s as close to real-world as I can deliver. I’m writing this post because I want them to get them as wide an audience and as big a forum as possible. They’ve worked hard. They’ve thought it out and they’ve created something that’s a lot more than putting all of the farmer’s markets in the area under one roof. Yes, it is a huge risk from both them and I but they realize that this “test” it more than getting a good grade - much, much, more.

What they have managed to accomplish so far, is create a display window opportunity for the City of New Bedford with a tried and true marketplace concept proposal that offers a variety of options to small and mediums sized businesses to sell their goods either on a seasonal basis or year-round. For end consumers, everything offered will be as fresh as it can be off the farm and fishing boat. The market will represent locally produced products of all kinds, entertainment and a showcase of the myriad of local cultures that surround us. It can be, as they’ve discovered, a city within a city that will attract the locals and visitors alike; those on food stamps, as well as, those who can freely indulge themselves. Every detail has been reviewed from climate control and traffic flow to vehicular and pedestrian accessibility. They’ve looked parking challenges, considering their neighbors and surrounding community. Now they are exploring how to most effectively promote this enterprise as their feasibility studies have indicated.

Hopefully, with your input and feedback, these intelligent and eager students will experience learning in a new and memorable way. They are not only business majors at the Charlton College of Business at UMass Dartmouth. They represent our future entrepreneurs, business executives and business leaders. Their Facebook page is a work in progress – please visit it to see how their final presentation will unfold. As their instructor, while I expect a few missteps, oversights and errors in judgment, I also expect them to function at their highest capacity, especially since they will be presenting their concept beyond the classroom. Thank you in advance for your support.

Crossing the Bridge for a Pail of Water?

PROLOGUE: My Business Engineering blog has evolved into something that allows me to explore and pursue my passions of art, food/wine (sustainability) and marketing all in one blog: In Search of a Personal Stability Zone to explore our collective aspirations…

NEWEST POST: In my last post, I discussed the Belgian surrealist artist Rene Magritte’s painting: Treachery of Images (La Trahison des Images) painted between 1928 and 1929. The singular image in the piece is a tobacco pipe. There is only a blank background and script under the image of the pipe - ceci n'est pas une pipe – in English it means this is not a pipe. It seems more like a tobacco shop sign than it does a piece of fine art. The combination creates a contradiction.

Sometimes the obvious escapes us. This painting then, is not a pipe, it is an image; a painting of a pipe. It is nothing more than one individual’s interpretation (the artist) of a subject or situation. Yet, it is or becomes more than it represents. On one hand, the viewer’s perception, regardless whether it is correct or otherwise, constructs a truth that may be accepted. This truth will persist until another perspective is offered or another perception further defines what is in front of the viewer.

With this in mind, please allow me to present the paradox on the New Bedford-Fairhaven Bridge [Author’s Note: This blog offers another perspective and a photo. It is interesting to note how little there really is on this bridge in the Google organic rankings.] The bridge has been around for quite some time; over a hundred years in fact. It, as well as, its purpose has not changed very much. Its primary function is to connect. Yet, as the years have rolled on, it has been accused of doing more blocking and interrupting than anything else.

It’s not the bridge that’s the problem! The Old Norwegian folk saying of not crossing a bridge to get a pail of water holds true in this case. The bridge opens to water traffic closing the road to vehicular traffic. It does this on a set time schedule allowing commercial fishing vessels working out of the Port of New Bedford to leave on a trip or return with a catch, which combined represents the top-dollar value fishing port in the United States. The epicenter (there are either two or, depending on your point of view, one split into two) of this prosperous industry is located north of the reviled bridge. So then, if the industry had continued being developed south of the bridge where it began, in my estimation then, the problem would be moot.

The pipe is not a pipe. The bridge is not the problem. The problem is where the industry’s expansion was sited. Expansion is the result of the physical evidence or anticipation of growth. Increase the boat traffic and increase the number of bridge openings which impedes the flow of traffic on Route 6 between New Bedford and Fairhaven, Massachusetts. In actuality, the normal scheduled openings are not a problem if you are aware of them. The entire process usually takes, on average, just ten minutes. However, being constantly bridge opening conscious may be a problem as is working, living and traveling around that schedule. Of course, there’s no getting around the inconvenience of major bridge repairs which totally put a kink in everyone’s schedules, business and traffic patterns.

Taking a Zen approach isn’t something that I would suspect would be universally embraced. Being one with the schedule takes a specific character profile. Imagining that every time the bridge stops traffic is an indication of this community’s pride in being home to the nation’s number one fishing ports would only warm the cockles of the hearts of those associated with the industry.

From a marketing perspective and that of a self-professed marketing engineer, a solution is possible but not before really studying where the industry stands at present and where it may end up in the near future. To move industry operations to the south of the bridge would solve one problem and cause others. However, it is doable and does offer several types of opportunities. At this point in time and with the knowledge and information I have in hand (or, in head), the industry has the opportunity to evolve to the next level and solve other issues at the same time. Regulations, overhead costs and safety concerns come to mind. But, if selling fish is and always has been about freshness, then, please allow me to offer this idea, or scheme, up for your consideration.

Relocate a majority of the shore-side processing operations to at-sea or off-shore processing vessels. The result of such a move would be the reduction of shore or land based issues and an increase in product freshness. Day boats would unload their catches at these processing vessels, which would then be transported by helicopter either whole or in various states of processing to distribution points within 24-hours. This eliminates the archaic top of the catch concept. It reduces trip times. It increases cash flow. It reduces the strain on the old bridge. Traffic flows! And, we stop crossing the bridge to get the proverbial pail of water.

Cheddar Man – Local Hero

In 1903 in a place called Gough's Cave in Cheddar Gorge, Somerset, England, the skeletal remains of a man dating back to approximately 7150 BC were found. Yes, Cheddar, England is where Cheddar Cheese originated and has been made for about one thousand years. The remains are Britain’s oldest complete human skeleton and have been called, what else but, Cheddar Man.

In the 1990’s, the dawn of DNA testing, Cheddar Man and at least 20 residents of Cheddar had their DNA tested. Cheddar Man’s DNA was extracted from one of his molars. Cheddar Man was proven to be related to the living residents of Cheddar village, which brings us to the point of this posting. Cheddar Man was a local guy! His descendents didn’t wander too far from their ancestral home either.

What does it matter? A locality that is sustainable is a locality that sustains. If your location provides everything you need to survive such as food, shelter and clothing, why wander? Well, okay, what about the need to be self-actualized? A location’s culture must also be sustainable and sustained. I’ve written before that in this area, the south coast of Massachusetts, that our greatest export is educated youth. Even with a school system that others would envy, if there is no industry, commerce or enterprises for our young people to join, they will move on in search of employment.

Our economic system is such that a job or some form of livelihood is needed to fulfill our daily physical needs. We’ve got to work to buy food to eat to live. This area once subsisted on toil focused on the bounty of land and sea. The Industrial Revolution brought us the textile mills. Our standard of living increased with the nation’s. The automobile gave us mobile freedom and the suburbs (where the farms used to be). Are there Cheddar men amongst us? Are you one? I am not. One side came to New Bedford via Canada and Normandy. The other side came to New Bedford via the mountainous region of the Portuguese mainland. My roots in this area are only one hundred and thirty years old.

Yet, my ancestors brought what was local to them here. So, is local a place, a state of mind or something else completely? In the real estate profession the key factor in selecting the right property is location, or, as they like to say: location, location, location. Location requires locality. Locality is both a physical and an emotional sense of place. Where are you located? Where are you situated? Where do you live, work and play? How much and in what way does your current location sustain you?

Is self-reliance a benefit, an advantage or feature of your location? Is self-reliance a form of independence? Does change force us to change? Is change the result of external uncontrollable forces? Are we left to decide whether to change or be changed. Someone once said that what we are never changes. But, who we are never stops changing. Ben Franklin said we could only depend on death and taxes. In a letter he wrote in 1789 after the turmoil and triumph of the American Revolution he stated, “Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”

Permanency, like that of the Cheddar Man and his modern cousins on his mother’s side is not certain. Alvin Toffler described that: The rate of turnover in our lives, for example, can be influenced by conscious decisions. We can, for example, cut down on change and stimulation by consciously maintaining longer term relationships with the various elements of our physical environment. Now, remember that Toffler wrote this in the Seventies, another period of turmoil and uncertainty in America.

He went on to say that: Thus, we can refuse to purchase throw-away products. We can hang onto the old jacket for another season; we can stoutly refuse to follow the latest fashion trend; we can resist when the salesman tells us it's time to trade in our automobile. In this way, we reduce the need to make and break ties with the physical objects around us.

We can use the same tactic with respect to people and the other dimensions of experience. There are times when even the most gregarious person feels anti-social and refuses invitations to parties or other events that call for social interaction.

He was talking about the creation of a “personal stability zone” in which: We consciously disconnect. In the same way, we can minimize travel. We can resist pointless reorganizations in our company, church, fraternal or community groups. In making important decisions, we can consciously weigh the hidden costs of change against the benefits. Perhaps stability is sanity?

Why else is it that when we find ourselves outside of our stability zone, home and hearth if I may, we either bring some of it with us or look for it, or something similar to it where we find ourselves? Why else is it that Hoo Mee Chow Mein Mix brings such joy to the expatriated south coast Massachusetts resident along with Portuguese sausage products and coffee syrup just to name a few stabilizers within our personal stability zones?

Perhaps it’s because we all need something we can identify with and with that thought in mind, I present for your sampling, the concept of food, location and sustainability. The more I post, the more (hopefully, I think) evolve. The more I evolve, the more I am convinced that in order to be truly happy, as I learned in Psyche 101, we need a sense of control, belonging and verifiable affection. So, for all of the other Cheddar “men” out there, please consider this: sustainability is anchored to locality. And, a sense of place is represented by what we share at the table. It is with this thought, or revelation, that I am contemplating shifting my thoughts on my vocation – marketing, to something that has always intrigued me – food!

To me, food defines my personal stability zone in many ways. It represents my cultural background, it is engaged in at my family’s table and it connects me to what I am and where I live. It is about sustainability, survival and culture. It allows me to describe directly what I’ve learned and supports me indirectly as a metaphor for what I’m thinking. And, it may redirect me to rename this blog to: In Search of a Personal Stability Zone to explore our collective:

• Conscious decisions
• Environmental relationship
• Ties to physical objects
• Social interactions
• Pointless reorganizations

As well as, perhaps assisting in the investigation in to the strengths and weaknesses of current or popular short-term and long-term investments that are supposed to benefit us rather than destroy us. So yes, what I am has not changed but who I am is changing – again.

They say, go with your passion and food and everything about it is a passion of mine but not, in a gourmet sense. Or, in any matter connected to traditional food writing but, more so, it is about the one personal stability zone we can control – the table. Here is where we are identified, how we identify with where we are right now and perhaps where we’re going. It is also a way for me to tie food, art and marketing into one package in one place just to sustain myself and my sanity.