Do you concentrate on the toss that almost made it or the one that wasn’t even close?

While we were at the ball park a couple of weeks ago,  we encouraged my niece who has an above average throwing arm for an eight year old to participate in a pitching game. The object of the game was to throw a ball at a cutout of a catcher hitting his glove. Her first toss was too high, the second a little closer and the third almost made it.

What is the first thing she says when finished, “Did you see my first toss? It was terrible! I am so embarrassed it wasn’t even close.”

Of course we pointed out how good the last toss was, saying the first was just a warm up. Even the Brewers warm up. I couldn’t help but think how early in life we become self-critical and how this self-criticism tends to stay with us our whole life.

On a similar note, Molly of My Cozy Book Nook recently read Patty Digh’s book Life Is a Verb: 37 Days to Wake Up, Be Mindful, and Live Intentionally.While taking notes on the book she found twelve passages that spoke to her. She was so taken by these passages she decided to meditate on one each week during her summer vacation.

Particularly fitting to this post is Life is a Verb: Week 2 which deals with perfectionism and a fear of failure. Molly repeats this passage from the book:

Something happens between the ages of five and eighteen and all of a sudden our sense of adventure and self-confidence dwindles. If we cannot do something well - I mean nearly perfect - then we tell ourselves that we can't do it at all.

So sad, but so true.

Do you concentrate on the toss that almost made it or the one that wasn’t even close?

Life is about the moments

I don’t have children. This isn’t something I planned; I was never one of those women who adamantly announced to the world I am never having children. I just never got around to having them. My friend Amy (mother of two) recently told me most women are ready to start a family when they wake up and find themselves peeing on a stick. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve accepted the fact that I’m not a Mom and don’t feel as though something is missing in my life. I do, however, sometimes feel as if my childfree lifestyle should be more exciting and my job more prestigious with all the extra time and money I’m supposed to have.

In saying that, I have this incredible niece Kelsey who was born shortly after my doctor told me if you don’t get pregnant NOW it will be too late. Because of the timing of that conversation, I made a big deal about being Kelsey’s Godmother; I wanted to be an important person in at least one kid’s life. I became her Godmother and it is true I am an important person in her life, but so are all her other aunts and uncles and that is okay.

Kelsey is now eight, smart, athletic and passionately interested in professional sports. She even watches ESPN highlights before school.

My husband’s company has (front row) season tickets to the Milwaukee Brewers. He was given four tickets to last Saturday’s game with instructions to invite a company consultant and his wife. At the last minute they cancelled, so we asked my brother and Kelsey to go in their place. On the way to the game we talked briefly about the Brewers and Kelsey mentioned her favorite player was Corey Hart.

From the minute we walked into Miller Park, Kelsey was mesmerized and so was I as I watched the evening play out through a child’s eyes. It was all so perfect it could have been a dream (accept of course for the Brewers disappointing loss). We ate at TGIF’s getting an outside table facing the ball park. We caught an hour of batting practice, a new experience for me, my brother and Kelsey. We then walked around the park making Kelsey partake in all the kiddie activities including having her picture taken with a Corey Hart cutout until she begged us to go to our seats. I’ll never forget the look on her face as we sat down and directly in front of her stood Corey Hart and Rickie Weeks. We were admiring the ball park, when I spotted Corey Hart to my right signing autographs. I grabbed Kelsey, her baseball and a marker and guided her down the row towards Corey. My brother snapped a photo as she got her autograph. If that wasn’t enough excitement, during the game a foul ball landed near our seats and the first base coach spotting Kelsey threw the ball to my brother. A Brewer’s backpack, a baseball signed by Corey Hart, and a ball from Miller Park previously touched by Prince Fielder; not bad for a night at the ball park.

On the way home the conversation was about baseball, Kelsey asking questions, my husband and brother answering them and quizzing her on what she had just learned. The conversation ended with everyone content in their own thoughts when I realized this is one of those moments. All of the noise in my brain about my unexciting life and boring career had been turned off and had been all evening. I was living in the moment and life was good.

We can't measure our own spices!

I came across a new product in my grocery store’s spice aisle called McCormick Recipe Inspirations. I was drawn to its eye-catching package which includes six pre-measured packets of McCormick dried seasonings and a step-by-step recipe to make one of six dishes. The dishes include:

Apple & Sage Pork Chops
Rosemary Roasted Chicken with Potatoes
Garlic Lime Fajitas
Quesadilla Casserole
Spanish Chicken Skillet
Shrimp & Pasta Primavera.

Each package sells for $1.99.

I must have been staring intensely because a fellow shopper commented, "I am sure the spice you're looking for is there somewhere" as he passed. But I was no longer shopping. I was thinking:

“Has it really come to this? Are we this lazy and inept we can no longer measure our own spices. "

Here are the spices included with Shrimp & Pasta Primavera:
Garlic, onion, dill weed, black pepper, and thyme.

Black Pepper! Doesn’t everyone own black pepper? And Quesadilla Casserole comes with salt. Salt and pepper sold in pre-measured plastic packages ~ what a waste.

Supposedly, the product is designed for the newbie cook who doesn’t own a large variety of seasonings. Recipe Inspirations give them the opportunity to sample a more unusual spice to see if they like it before investing in an entire container.

I have a better idea. Take Spanish Chicken Skillet which includes:
Paprika, garlic, red pepper, thyme, and black pepper.

Why doesn’t McCormick give away a free sample of one of the spices as a grocery store giveaway, include the recipe and a coupon for a future purchase and call it a day.

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier ~ An Eye-Opening Book Despite Credibility Issues

Motivation for reading:  I decided to read Ishmael Beah's A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier after reading Simon Mac Donald's review in which he rated it a solid buy saying it will bring you tears on more than one occasion.

What is it about?
Ishmael Beah was recruited into the Sierra Leone Army when he was only 13; he didn’t really have a choice. His village had been attacked by rebels during the civil war separating him from his parents. He was forced to wander from village to village first with his brother and friends, then by himself and ultimately with another group of boys in search of food and news of his family. When he and the other boys came upon a village controlled by the army they thought they had found a safe haven, but were soon reminded the RUF rebels had killed their families and destroyed their villages. They were given an ultimatum:

“That is why we need strong men and boys to help us fight these guys, so that we can keep this village safe. If you do not want to fight or help, that is fine. But you will not have rations and will not stay in this village” (pg 106).

Once he became a soldier, he was taught to be a cold blooded killer assisted by an unlimited supply of marijuana, cocaine and other drugs numbing him to the violence. After two years, at age 15, he was released to UNICEF and rehabilitated.

Why read this book?
This book convinced me not only do I need to be a feminist, but a humanist as well. According to UNICEF, an estimated 300,000 child soldiers - boys and girls under the age of 18 - are involved in more than 30 conflicts worldwide. Child soldiers are used as combatants, messengers, porters, cooks and to provide sexual services. Some are forcibly recruited or abducted; others are driven to join by poverty, abuse and discrimination, or to seek revenge for violence enacted against themselves and their families.

For me, one of the most powerful quotes from the book comes from a speech Ishmael made at a conference in NYC:

“What I have learned from my experience is that revenge is not good. I joined the army to avenge the deaths of my family and to survive, but I’ve come to learn that if I am going to take revenge, in the process I will kill another person whose family will want revenge; then revenge and revenge will never come to an end . . .” (pg 199).

My only complaint is that the book ended too abruptly. I would have enjoyed reading more about how Ishmael got out of Guinea and what his life was like once he moved to New York City. Perhaps he will write a sequel.

Follow up:
To keep my reviews original, I try not to read additional book reviews after I’ve made a decision to read a particular book. Upon completing my review of A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, I learned there is speculation that Ishmael Beah fabricated his story. You can read about the allegations here and his response here. These allegations seem plausible, at times while reading the book I did wonder if the events weren't exaggerated, but it also reminds me of childhood stories my siblings (I have five) and I share with each other, depending on who is telling the story, the date of occurrence, the people involved and even the motive behind the story can differ. So could a young boy, brain-washed by the military, pumped up on drugs get a few details wrong – absolutely.

Do I regret reading the book?
No, but if I had known about the allegations up-front I probably would have read David Egger's What Is the What, a novel based on the real life experiences of a young refugee in southern Sudan, instead.

When was the last time you started your day feeling this good?

I saw this on another blogger's site and had to share!

How does your pay stack up against the salary guides?

I recently compared my pay with the salaries listed in three different salary guides put out by national recruiting firms. All three of the guides group salaries according to job title, geographic location and company size. I knew my salary was on the low side, but I was shocked to see it was substantially lower than the salaries listed in all three guides.

I asked my company’s HR Manager for her opinion on the validity of salary guides. She told me I had to use a guide specific to our industry. She let me borrow hers which is put out by our industry’s association. According to this guide, I am still underpaid, but once you factor in my pay-cut it wasn’t as far off as the recruiter guides. (I also noticed our HR Manager’s pay is substantially higher than what is listed in this guide.)

I decided to get a second opinion.

I asked my friend who is a recruiter. She said she sees Accountant salaries that line up pretty close to the guides and others that are way off, but many factors are involved. Publicly traded and global companies pay more. Employees that are CPA’s or have their masters and those with public accounting experience (preferably with the big 4) make more than those who don’t.

What about my salary?
She thinks I am underpaid.

How does your pay stack up against the salary guides?

I can’t stop thinking about Nancy Horan’s book Loving Frank

Why did I decide to read Loving Frank: A Novel?
I had received word I could be in a waiting room up to three hours while my mom had routine cataract surgery. Like any avid reader, my first thought was I need to find a good book. I turned to Becky’s blog A Book a Week (one of my favorite sources for fiction selections). Her glowing review, and the possibility of an interesting conversation with my mom who’d also read the book helped finalize my decision.

What is the book about?
The book is a fictional account of the real life story of Frank Lloyd Wright’s affair with one of his clients, Mamah Borthwick Cheney in the early 1900’s. They both abandon their spouses and children; she had two and he had six, to flee to Europe for a year. She receives a divorce from her husband Edwin Cheney, but Frank’s wife Catherine refuses to grant him one. Hounded by the press even in Europe, Frank convinces Mamah to return to the U.S. where he will build her a sanctuary. True to his word, he builds Taliesin near his boyhood home in Wisconsin. Her new life is not perfect; her purpose at Taliesin seems to be cooking for the men building her new home, Frank’s mother refuses to acknowledge her, they are discovered and again hounded by the press and Mamah realizes Frank who loves beautiful things, doesn’t pay his bills. She does re-establish a relationship with her children and Edwin allows them to spend summers at Taliesin. Eventually things begin to turn around for Frank, whose work had been negatively affected by their affair and he receives a commission to design Midway Gardens in Chicago. Mamah at last seems content with her new life when tragedy strikes.

Thoughts:
I am originally from the Spring Green area and have toured Taliesin, so I was vaguely familiar with Mamah’s story, but found the tragic ending much more horrific than I had remembered. Horan’s book closely follows the events of the real story, but since so little of Mamah’s correspondence remains she needed to invent all of the conversations. I did feel the dialogue in some of these conversations was too contemporary for the era. When I asked my mom her opinion of the book she said only, “I don’t understand how she could have left her children.” The book is more than a love story; Mamah’s love affair with Frank was the catalyst which pushed her to search for her personality (now referred to as finding yourself) and provides plenty of fodder for book-club discussions:

While in Europe Mamah meets Ellen Kay a Swedish feminist writer and becomes her translator. In discussing the translation of Ellen’s belief “WOMEN NEED TO DEVELOP their personalities from within” Mamah wasn’t sure how the translations would be received after it was published, “The focus of the Women’s movement in America is the vote and equal pay.”

Ellen responds:

“To free women from conventionalism – that should be the aim of the struggle. What good does it do if woman is emancipated but has little education and no courage to act?

Men have always been trained to have the courage to dare. Women on the other hand, are stuck being the keepers of memories and traditions. We’ve been the great conservators. Oh, I suppose we’re suppler, as a result, because we’ve learned to see many sides. But what a price has been paid. It has kept us from greatness! And most women are happy just to repeat opinions and judgments they’ve heard as if they thought of the idea themselves. It’s dangerous! Women need to understand evolutionary science, philosophy, art. They need to expand their knowledge and stop assassinating each others’ characters.” (p. 150.)

Later in the book, Mamah becomes uneasy when translating “The Misuse of Woman’s strength.” Ellen argues that:

“Women’s energy should be used for child rearing, that suffragists were wrongheaded to focus so intently on jobs and equal pay when motherhood was their legitimate work.” (p. 261.)

Mamah is displeased with Ellen’s statements and is afraid if she publishes them, it will set back the women’s movement in America. She points out:

“It’s ironic that Ellen has never married or had children, yet she feels free to expound upon motherhood, I think that’s rather arrogant.” (p. 261.)

Does Mamah have a valid point? What about today? Should women who don’t have children be able to judge women who put their children in daycare and work outside of the home?

Wasn’t there a better way?
Did Mamah have to abandon her children the way she did? Did both her and Frank have to hurt so many people? I realize there were few options for women who at the time were still considered property,* despite having a master’s degree, no one would hire a divorced woman and after the divorce her children didn’t live with her permanently because Edwin refused to allow her to have custody, but still there had to have been a better way. Even today, when a woman abandons her children for another man or to find herself she is judged harshly.

Should Mamah have been punished for the rest of her life for choosing the wrong man?
Jessie (Mamah’s single, childless sister who helped care for her children after Mamah left says:

“You had everything? You had a wonderful man who adored you, beautiful healthy children. Freedom. No money worries. A nanny and a housekeeper. You didn’t have to work and Edwin never asked a thing of you. Do you realize what you gave up for Frank Wright? The kind of life most women – most feminists – dream of?” (p. 295.)

What I can’t stop thinking about?
The issue isn’t whether Mamah should have suffered for marrying the wrong guy. The real victim in the story is Ed Cheney. He lost everything and all because he married the wrong woman.

*Frank Lloyd Wright writes a wife is still “property” in his letter to the Weekly Home News after Mamah’s death.

The Accidental Billionaires

I love business books, especially those that provide insight into the creation, growth and sustainability of a business; some of my favorites include Taylor Clark’s Starbucked: A Double Tall Tale of Caffeine, Commerce, and Culture, Michael D'Antonio’s Hershey: Milton S. Hershey's Extraordinary Life of Wealth, Empire, and Utopian Dreams, Rich Cohen’s Sweet and Low: A Family Story and Jim Collin’s Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't. Unfortunately, I will not be adding Ben Mezrich’s The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal to my list.

I decided to read The Accidental Billionaires after Citizen Reader, one of my favorite book bloggers, mentioned it in her post Why read business books?:

“So that's why I hang in there on the business books. Every now and then, as in John Bowe's Nobodies, Ben Mezrich's The Accidental Billionaires***, and Paul Midler's Poorly Made in China (as well as anything written by Michael Lewis), they actually open my mind in ways I never expected. So do consider a business book this weekend. It may not make you happy, but it might blow your mind OR give you a laugh. Both good things.”

***About the founder of Facebook, who is icky, and who could care less about your privacy, especially if he can sell it for profit.

The problem with the book is twofold. First, Citizen Reader isn’t kidding Mark Zuckerberg is icky and it isn’t just him. I was repulsed by everyone for most of the first 100 pages of this book. Zuckerberg hacking into Harvard’s computer system, stealing photos of students with the intention of creating a website that would compare photos of girls to farm animals is creepy, but so are Eduardo Saverin and the Winklevoss twins. Saverin, Facebook's first investor, spends his time trying to become a member of the Phoenix, a social fraternity at Harvard, so he can improve his social standing, meet girls and get laid. The behind the scenes story of the Winklevoss twins, who claim Zuckerberg stole the idea for Facebook from them, is also nauseating. They are Harvard seniors on track to make the Olympic team and members of the Porcellian Club the most prestigious, secretive and oldest of Harvard's eight all-male clubs. Most likely Zuckerberg did steal their idea, but I disliked them so much I found myself rooting against them.

The second problem with the book is the lack of any real insight into Facebook or its creator Zuckerberg. The book is more about Facebook’s co-founders and their account of how they were screwed by Zuckerman than the genius of Facebook. Ben Metrich writes in the first paragraph of the book:

“The Accidental Billionaires is a dramatic, narrative account based on dozens of interviews, hundreds of sources, and thousands of pages of documents, including records from several court proceedings.”

And then:

Mark Zuckerberg, as in his perfect right, declined to speak with me for this book despite numerous requests.

After only a couple of chapters in, I found Zuckerberg’s voice to be a noticeably absent; there are two sides to every story and the real story of Facebook probably lies somewhere in the middle.

Despite the issues I had with the book, The Accidental Billionaires is a quick engaging read and there are lessons to be had:

-Be daring. Be different. Be first. Getting there first changes everything:
Tyler Winklevoss claimed a lot of the features in Thefacebook were different from his site, ConnectU originally called Harvard Connection, but the overall concept was similar. The problem was that for certain industries, it wasn’t about the quality of the product or even corporate strategy. It was about who got there first. When Zuckerberg agreed to write the code for Harvard Connection then stalled for two months while he launched his own site he put the Harvard Connection a disadvantage. If Harvard Connection would have been the first site to launch and every college kid had signed up for it Thefacebook may have faded away unnoticed even if it was the better product.

-Put it in writing. I’ve seen more than one partnership end disastrously.
The Winklevoss’s should have put their proposal in writing and Zuckerberg should have signed it. The outcome may have been the same, but legally the twins would have been a stronger case.

- Eduardo Saverin should have drafted a written a contract with Zuckerberg before he lent him money. The act of drafting the partnership agreement may have clarified each party’s intentions and dispelled future problems.

- It really is all about the numbers.
Even if Zuckerberg’s actions are proven to be unscrupulous and Facebook is proven to be a huge tar baby (the humble opinion of my favorite librarian) it isn’t going to matter. With articles like Facebook surpasses Google as number one site no one is going to care that Zuckerberg is an unethical jerk or that spending hours on Facebook is really a big waste of time.

Please Note, I am an Amazon Affiliate

The Heartbreaking Reality of Animal Shelters

Buck, our golden retriever, was the first dog I ever owned. He was the pick of the litter and would have been destined for show dog stardom if running around a ring would have been my thing. We immediately signed him up for puppy classes. He was the naughtiest dog in the class, but did learn to respond to a couple of commands when rewarded with a treat. Unfortunately, at ten months he wasn’t completely housebroken and listened only if given a treat. At our wits end, we enrolled him in an expensive training program.

Our new trainer took one look at Buck and said, “I like his look. You should consider breeding him.” I loved this idea. We could recoup some of the training costs we’d spent on Buck plus, it would be fun to have little golden retriever puppies running around. The training program was more about training us than Buck and well worth it in the long run.

When we took Buck to our Vet for his one year checkup the Vet tech asked when we would like to schedule his neutering. I told her he wasn't going to be neutered we were considering breeding him. I was shocked by her negative response:

“Leave the breeding to the professionals the world doesn’t need anymore dogs. Novice breeders don’t realize what they are getting into in both time and money and it usually doesn’t end well. Most of the puppies end up at animal shelters.” She volunteers at the humane society and was telling me from experience the majority of dogs dropped off are never adopted and end up being euthanized.

"But our dog is a beautiful purebred golden retriever. We will easily be able to sell his puppies."

“The shelters are full of purebreds with the majority being retrievers. And what about back yard accidents. What will your neighbors do with the puppies? Are they qualified to select adequate homes? Dog ownership is a huge responsibility with many purchasers having no idea what they are getting into. Once a puppy is too big to handle it is dropped off at a shelter never to come out again."

I was reminded of this conversation while reading the following excerpt on A Gai Shan Lifes's blog:

I think our society needs a huge "wake-up" call. As a shelter manager, I am going to share a little insight with you all...a view from the inside if you will. First off, all of you people who have ever surrendered a pet to a shelter or humane society should be made to work in the "back" of an animal shelter for just one day. Maybe if you saw the life drain from a few sad, lost, confused eyes, you would stop flagging the ads on craigslist and help these animals find homes. That puppy you just bought will most likely end up in my shelter when it's not a cute little puppy anymore. Just so you know there's a 90% chance that dog will never walk out of the shelter it’s dumped at? Purebred or not! About 25% of all of the dogs that are "owner surrenders" or "strays", that come into a shelter are purebred dogs.

......Odds are your pet won't get adopted, and how stressful do you think being in a shelter is? Well, let me tell you, your pet has 72 hours to find a new family from the moment you drop it off. Sometimes a little longer if the shelter isn't full and your dog manages to stay completely healthy. If it sniffles, it dies. Your pet will be confined to a small run/kennel in a room with other barking or crying animals. It will have to relieve itself where it eats and sleeps. It will be depressed, and it will cry constantly for the family that abandoned it. If your pet is lucky, I will have enough volunteers in that day to take him/her for a walk. If I don't, your pet won't get any attention besides having a bowl of food slid under the kennel door and the waste sprayed out of its pen with a high-powered hose. If your dog is big, black or any of the "bully" breeds (pit bull, rottie, mastiff, etc) it was pretty much dead when you walked it through the front door. Those dogs just don't get adopted. It doesn't matter how 'sweet' or 'well behaved' they are.

What happened with Buck?

Buck was neutered shortly after the above vet appointment. Our vet also strongly encouraged neutering convincing us it was better for his health in the long run.

What about the expensive dog training?

We ended up buying a second dog from our trainer and my husband became a training center volunteer.  He plans on dedicating his retirement life to training and fostering rescue dogs.  Here he is with our two dogs and our trainer's puppy Molly:

He's polite, he doesn't make excuses, and he doesn't lie.

While discussing overdue accounts at a recent meeting, my boss made the comment he liked working with a particular customer even recommending the company extend his payment terms, “He’s polite, he doesn’t make excuses, and he doesn’t lie.” Unfortunately, honest non-abusive behavior such as this is rarely observed in our slow-paying customers.

This scenario reminded me of a chapter I had read in Stacy Horn’s book, Waiting for My Cats to Die: A Memoir. Stacy had received a hostile note from a customer who had become unhinged over an unpaid bill for services from her company Echo. In response she wrote:

It’s the rare person who says, “Oh God, I’m sorry, I wasn’t really using my account, I meant to close it.” No. Not only do they owe you money they have to be abusive about it on top of it. Then they have to come up with something to justify their hostility, like “Echo was so slow this month, and the phone lines keep disconnecting me.” Anything to prove that you’re the asshole, not them. But I’ve finally accepted that this is the defense that people adopt when they are in owing-money mode. This is how they cope.

I’ve been known to become unhinged a time or two myself especially when sneaky fees* appear on my cable or cell phone bill (not to mention the customer service rep who refused to accept my credit card payment until I located my password), but not every company is playing gotcha with sneaky fees. The majority of business owners are trying to sell you their product or idea at a fair price, so they can pay their own bills. If you can’t pay your bill on time or are no longer interested in receiving a service you legitimately signed up for why be abusive about it?  Be polite, don’t make excuses and don’t lie. You might receive better service in the long run.

*To learn more about sneaky fees and what to do about them I suggest reading Bob Sullivan's Gotcha Capitalism: How Hidden Fees Rip You Off Every Day-and What You Can Do About It.

Toxic Sludge is Good for You!

My favorite librarian recommended I read John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton's Toxic Sludge is Good For You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry for my "Getting a Clue" project. The book exposes the deceptive practices PR representatives use while representing their clients i.e. corporations, the US Government and foreign regimes. After reading, I am convinced this book was the perfect introduction to manipulative schemes. While advertising messages are known to be propaganda, the messages received from public relation campaigns are often disguised as information and are much more dangerous.

Public relations specialists are hired to create a particular image for their clients. They do this by working behind the scenes employing tactics to ensure their clients agenda becomes popular opinion. They do this by:

Censoring information. They keep damaging books off of bookshelves and dissenters from being heard.

They use opinion polls and focus groups to gather information about us. They use this information to spin their message to resonate with our beliefs.

They infiltrate grass root citizen campaigns on behalf of their corporate clients.

They create media. The corporations and their front groups send the media hundreds of "press releases" every week promoting new products or defending firms from attacks by consumer organizations. Nearly 40% of these “press releases” are published with no changes whatsoever.

They front organizations. Prominent scientists can sometimes be induced and even bribed into endorsing or supporting research findings by the corporations' front organizations. Their names in a press release can often guarantee publication.

Even country’s that torture and murder their citizens, mount public relations campaigns to convince American legislators that there is nothing the United States government should worry about.

There are so many lies, deceptions and mixed messages out there how are we to know who or what to believe?

Stauber and Sheldon write:

Ultimately, the power of PR is limited. It can often redirect public anger and insulate individual corporations or politicians from the consequences of their actions, but as Abraham Lincoln observed, “You can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”

The solutions we do possess are partial: first, learn to recognize the influence in your life; second, seek our alternative sources of information; third, become personally involved in local efforts to directly address important issues at the community level.

Final thoughts:
Although some of the examples in the book are a bit dated, the book’s message remains relevant and the techniques used by the public relations industry continue to be valid. Anyone who is interested in becoming more informed about PR industry tactics should consider reading this book.

My next big thing

My goal for 2009 was to focus on getting my ducks in a row. I was feeling stagnant at my job and wasn’t sure if I wanted to remain in my current field or to pursue an alternative career altogether. After a year of personality assessments and soul searching, I’m sorry to say nothing in my life has really changed. This is partly due to the soft job market, but also to my discovery that my strength and passion is to read and learn. My desire to pursue a new career is more about taking the classes required for a new career than actually working in it.

Lately, I’ve been uninspired:
I wrote last week about not being busy at work. That along with the lousy spring weather in Wisconsin has left me feeling lethargic and uninspired. I even contemplated taking a break from blogging. Does anyone really want to read another blog post on “Why the Roth IRA conversion may not be for everyone?” Good because I don’t want to write about it. Even my new series, "Getting a Clue" seemed dull. The only problem with taking a break from blogging is I don’t have anything relevant to do in its place.

Then I read Penelope Trunk’s post how to get unstuck in life. She writes:

I coach so many people who tell me they can’t move forward because they don’t know where they are going. And I tell them, make something up. I tell them to commit to a goal, any goal, and move toward it until you think of a better one. The act of moving toward something helps you crystallize where, exactly, you want to be moving.

So what is next?
For the time being, I have no choice but to continue working at my present job. I still feel stagnant, but I need to buy groceries and pay my mortgage. To appease myself, I’ve signed up for two conferences one was last week and the other in a couple of months. And I do have this blog.

I spent most of my twenties and early thirties either studying for my business and accounting degrees or working multiple jobs in attempt to pay the tuition for these degrees. In my free time I read mindless fiction or books from Oprah’s book club. Books of substance were few and far between.

My focus for 2010 is going to be reading to “Get a Clue.”

I will blog about the books I’ve read and what I learn. My first series is going to be, “Getting a clue about aggressive advertising and marketing campaigns.” My favorite reference librarian has compiled a list of books for me. Since I don’t enjoy writing book reviews, I am signing up for Trish's non-fiction book challenge to push me into actually writing about these books. Who knows where this new goal will take me; hopefully to the next big thing. If not, at least I will be doing what I enjoy ~ reading.

Alternatives to a “Mental Health Day”

For the first time in years, I have a lull in my work load. With the slow economy I’ve had the luxury of working ahead. I’m between deadlines plus, waiting for my boss to finish his portion of a project before I can proceed. I can’t help but think this would be the perfect time to take a sick day. In the past, I’ve had difficulty calling in sick when I was actually sick. My job revolves around deadlines many of which the company can be fined for if not met. I don’t have anyone who can easily cover for me, so If a tax return is due or commissions need to be calculated I go to work even if sick.

At a previous job, one of my co-workers accused me of making her look bad; I never called in sick while she repeatedly used all of her sick days. She called them “mental health days.” I once asked her what she did on these mental health days. Mostly she read and caught up with her family’s laundry being careful not to leave the house fearing she would be caught. She often reminded me sick days are a benefit you lose if you don’t use.

I don’t want to use a vacation day, but a day of reading and blogging sounds pretty attractive right now compared to sitting at my desk trying to make myself look busy. My friend Bob grew so tired of watching his employees trying to look busy he instituted a furlough policy. Friday would be my day; I will call in sick and have a three day weekend. Then the guilt and my farm girl work ethic came into play:

My boss and my bosses boss know I’m not busy even asking me what I was working on while I was unsuccessfully trying to cut and paste a picture out of a newsletter onto my blog (it was technically lunchtime). They are going to know I’m faking it if I call in. I will then be lumped in with all the other employees with poor attitudes. Then it came to me -- what if I used this slow period to become a better employee. I’ve always been reactive rather than proactive and there are all those interview questions about self-initiative accomplishments I stumble through. Now is the time to update my work skills and our department. I came up with the following list:

Resolve all those little bugs in our systems and procedures:
Debug spreadsheets. Set up query reports for spreadsheets we now prepare manually. Update procedure manuals. Clean and organize my desk. Organize and delete old emails.

Create in-house computer accessible expense report; saving money on forms.

Interview outside payroll companies in search of a cheaper, more service oriented, less cumbersome system than we use now (ADP).

Offer to assist my overworked boss with his portion of the project we are working on. Ask him for additional work.

Talk to my boss’s boss. What would he like me to do to take our department to the next level? What would he like to receive from our department that he is not currently receiving?

Thursday night's episode of "The Office" only confirmed my decision not to call in sick. Kathy Bate’s character Jo says the following to Michael who wants to leave for the day:

"If you can put your name on this day and are proud of the work you’ve done by all means go home."

Do you take “Mental Health Days” when you’re not busy? If not, what do you do to keep busy?

"In the Name of Honor" is an important book that deserves to be read

Mukhtar Mai’s book In the Name of Honor: A Memoir is on my list of non-fiction books every woman should read and also counts towards the Women Unbound Challenge.

It is the story of Muktar Mai, a poor, uneducated peasant woman from the small village of Meerwala, Pakistan. Her life is turned upside down when she is gang-raped on the order of a council of elders as punishment for her brother’s alleged affair with a woman of a higher clan. Instead of committing suicide, as many Pakistani rape victims do, Mukhtar Mai decides to fight for justice and report the incident to the police. She experiences opposition (the police are controlled by the upper castes) and it was not until her story was picked up by the media that an investigation was conducted and her attackers were arrested. Ultimately, she was awarded the equivalent of 8,500 U.S. dollars which she used along with international donations to start the first school for girls in her village. Her goal is to ensure that future generations do not suffer, as she had, from illiteracy.

For me, this book was eye opening. Prior to reading, I had known Pakistani women were mostly uneducated and had few rights, but I had no idea barbaric practices such as “Honor Crimes” were still in existence. Mukhtar Mai informs us:

A woman is nothing more than an object of exchange, from birth to marriage. According to custom she has no rights.

And:

Naseem says we’re less important than goats, or even worse, less important than the slippers a man throws away when he decides they are worn out.

I admire her extraordinary courage and strength:

When I begin this journey into the legal system, a path from which there is no turning back, I’m hampered by my illiteracy and my status as a woman. Aside from my family, I have only one strength to call upon: my outrage.”

She was fortunate to have been born into a family whose men supported her; without it she would never have been able to seek justice:

Her father and her imam and her uncles supported her through the worst of it. They encouraged her to seek legal redress and their encouragement wrought a miracle beyond their imagining. Their tribeswoman — daughter, niece, cousin — became an international heroine.

In the Name of Honor is a short book that can be a bit dry at times, but is an important book that deserves to be read. Not to mention the fact that Mukhtar’s case against her attackers remains pending.

What to do when you are unhappy with job offer?

Marcie asks about a recent job offer:
My company closed last summer putting me out of work for the first time in eighteen years. I recently interviewed for a position that was almost identical to the job I held at my previous company. The interview went well and I was given a job offer. Unfortunately, the offer was not for the position I applied for, but for a lower-level position. The recruiting firm I worked with told me the company decided not to fill the original position opting to create this new position instead.

I don’t understand why a company would do this? The company will still need the work completed for the position I applied for. Why didn’t they hire me for the appropriate position?

This is an easy one:
The company didn’t want to pay you what the original position was worth, so they created a scaled down version of that job. This new position probably includes many of the duties from the original opening, but pays less.

Did the company think I was so desperate I’d settle for a lower-level position?
Apparently they did. In the current economy, the main objective for most companies is a positive bottom line. They know if you turn down this offer there is another qualified candidate out there who will be desperate enough to accept it.

What happened?
Marcie decided to take the lower-level job and then continue searching for a more appropriate position. When she called the agency to inform them of her decision she was told the company had rescinded their offer; they thought she would leave at her first opportunity.

What really occurred here?
A recruiter is not an employment counselor. Their loyalties lie with the hiring company who pays their fees. To entice customers, many recruiting agencies are currently offering additional guarantees on their placements. This means if you accept a position only to resign after working a couple of months, the agency will lose all or a portion of their commission. When Marcie entrusted her true plans with her recruiter they no longer wanted to place her and are probably responsible for the rescinded job offer.

My opinion:
If you are unhappy with a job offer and are in a position where you can be picky you should turn it down. You lose credibility when you accept an offer only to resign a couple of months later. Plus, it’s difficult to continue a job search once you have started a new job. Instead of taking a lower-level permanent position, consider temporary or contract work until the job market improves. If you are not in a position to turn down a job offer, accept it immediately and keep all plans of a continued job search to yourself; you may end up working there longer than you anticipate.

Packaging Girlhood; a book I wanted to like

I wanted to like Sharon Lamb and Lyn Mikel Brown’s book, Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing Our Daughters from Marketers' Schemes. I really did. I mentioned previously, I am working on a series of posts called "Getting a Clue" where I attempt to disclose aggressive marketing techniques. I was hoping this book would provide insight into the marketing schemes that target young girls. Unfortunately, after about 150 pages I can’t bring myself to read another page. For me, this book is too focused on gender stereotyping, mired in detail and repetitious. I can no longer sift through example after example of gender bias in search of the actual marketing scheme.

This is a shame because I do believe the authors had important information to share; before abandoning I came across these interesting points:

-Until about the age of six, children can’t separate TV shows from commercials. To them it’s all the same and it’s all reality. Your young child can’t distinguish between a TV show's positive message and a commercial selling them a happy meal.

-Advertisers are aware of TIVO and the option that DVD movies provide of skipping trailers and ads; it is the reason that immersive advertising and product placement in kids shows are on the rise.

-Despite the movie Shrek's anti-fairy-tale message: “looks don’t matter,” Fiona the princessis featured over Fiona the ogre in most merchandising campaigns. Why? The human princess Fiona has a product selling face and marketers always choose pretty over ugly, ignoring the story line. Changing beloved movie characters slightly in order to sell products happens all the time.

What could the authors have done to make this book more readable?

I recommend beginning with a strong paragraph similar to this one found in Anne Lamott’s book Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith:

This culture’s pursuit of beauty is a crazy, sick, losing game for women, men, teenagers and with the need to increase advertising revenues, now for pre-adolescents, too. We’re starting to see more and more anorexic eight-and nine-year olds. It’s a game we cannot win. Every time we agree to play another round, and step out onto the court to try again, we’ve already lost. The only way to win is to stay off the court. No matter how much of our time is spent in pursuit of physical beauty, even to great success, the Mirror on the Wall will always say, “Snow White lives,” and this is in fact a lie ~ Snow White is a fairy tale. Lies cannot nourish or protect you. Only freedom from fear, freedom from lies, can make us beautiful, and keep us safe.

Follow this paragraph with actual concrete marketing schemes, including only "one" good example. Close with (what I consider the strongest feature of the book) the lists of alternative books, Web sites, movies and magazines that provide positive role models that help both parents and daughters make better choices.

Perhaps, if I had a daughter of my own I would have found this book more readable. Have you read this book? What were your thoughts?

Target’s Elimination of Farmed Salmon is a Smart PR Decision

Target announced last week it has eliminated all farmed salmon from its fresh, frozen, and smoked seafood offerings in Target stores nationwide. This announcement includes Target owned brands – Archer Farms
and Market Pantry – and national brands. All salmon sold under Target owned brands will now be wild-caught Alaskan salmon.  Target is taking this important step to ensure that its salmon offerings are sourced in a sustainable way that helps to preserve abundance, species health and doesn’t harm local habitats.

Why is this important?

I became aware of the realities of salmon farming while reading Charles Fishman’s book The Wal-Mart Effect: How the World's Most Powerful Company Really Works--and How It's Transforming the American Economy. Fishman writes Wal-Mart, whose company sells more salmon than any other store in the country, buys all its salmon from Chile:

“Atlantic salmon are not native to Chile (its coastline runs along the Pacific). It's an exotic species that is literally farmed and processed by thousands of Chileans. The labor conditions are certainly a concern (long hours, low pay, processing of salmon with razor-sharp filleting instruments).

Another concern is the environment. Salmon farming is already transforming the ecology of southern Chile "with tens of millions of salmon living in vast ocean corrals, their excess food and feces settling to the ocean floor beneath the pens, and dozens of salmon processing plants dumping untreated salmon entrails directly into the ocean."

He then asks:

"Does it matter that salmon for $4.84 a pound leaves a layer of toxic sludge on the ocean bottoms of the Pacific fjords of southern Chile? After all, these salmon are raised in pens (with as many as one million per farm). They are fed antibiotics to prevent disease. As a result, you have quite a mess. One million salmon produce about the same amount of waste as 65,000 people. And add to that additional waste from unconsumed food and antibiotic residue. In essence, the current method of salmon farming creates a toxic seabed.

So how do we change this? His answer is simple: by changing consumer behavior. If shoppers won't buy salmon until Wal-Mart insists on higher standards, Wal-Mart will insist on them. The same company that created this huge market for salmon can also change it. But this will only happen if consumers voice their concerns and back it up with their behavior."

I have never been a fan of Wal-Mart always preferring to shop at the more sophisticated higher priced Target.* Family members who are fans of Wal-Mart loved to bait me with statements such as “Target’s business practices are no better than Wal-Mart's.” “What’s wrong with you; don’t you like to save money?” This latest move clearly places Target ahead of Wal-Mart and many other retailers in the environmentally conscious arena.

* In actuality, I’m really not much of a Target shopper either, but after reading "The Wal-Mart Effect" I will defend almost any store against Wal-Mart.

Did your sweetie have a star named after you this Valentines Day? If so, was he or she scammed?

Prior to each gift giving holiday, International Star Registry advertises heavily on Milwaukee radio stations:

This Valentines Day give the most romantic gift ever received. Name a star after them.

According to their website, they offer gift packages starting at $54:

• Dedicate a star to someone special. We offer a Gift Package where we select a special star in the sky and record your Star Name and Star Date. The Gift Package includes a beautiful parchment Certificate, a Sky Chart with your name and the star's coordinates and an informative booklet on astronomy. We publish all names in the astronomical compendium Your Place in the Cosmos©, which is registered in the U.S. Copyright Office.

Personally, I have always thought naming a star after someone was a pretty lame gift, plus after digging deeper I realized your star’s name means nothing to the scientific community. Also on their website:

Will the scientific community recognize my star name?

• A: No. We are a private company that provides Gift Packages. Astronomers will not recognize your name because your name is published only in our Star catalog. We periodically print a book called Your Place in the Cosmos © which lists the stars that we have named.

So for $54 to $489, you receive a fancy certificate with your star’s name, a booklet on astronomy and a locater chart with your star’s coordinates.

Was your sweetie scammed?

According to Tammy Plotner's post "name a star:"
When you buy a star for someone, you are paying for the entertainment you will receive for learning a little about the night sky. If the agency is misleading about what you're getting in any way, then you should rightly feel that you're being scammed. But if they're up front that the name isn't official, and is only kept in their own catalog, you can know what you're getting.

This post is part of a new series I’m working on called “Getting a Clue” where I attempt to dissect aggressive advertising and marketing campaigns to understand exactly what we’re purchasing.

If you liked this post you may also like: Duped by Pottery Barn's aggresive marketing campaign

Is a book about Marie Antoinette’s fashion choices really a book every woman should read?

I recently read both Antonia Fraser's Marie Antoinette: The Journey and Caroline Weber’s Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution for the Women Unbound Challenge.

Motivation for reading:
I’ve always been intrigued with all things French, had a vague recollection of Marie Antoinette from my French classes (she was the Queen guillotined for saying “Let them eat cake” right) and was curious to learn more about the French Revolution, so when I saw Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution listed as one of the non-fiction books every woman should read I decided to give it a try. Prior to reading, I read a review recommending readers begin with a more thorough biography such as Antonia Fraser's Marie Antoinette: The Journey because Queen of Fashion is not a definitive biography. Despite fears that reading two books on Marie Antoinette might be a bit much, I decided to tackle them both and was ultimately glad I did.

Marie Antoinette: The Journey is a comprehensive biography of Marie Antoinette’s life from birth ‘til death whereas Queen of Fashion chronicles her life through her fashion choices upon her arrival in France ‘til her death. By becoming familiar with her upbringing in Austria, the intricate details of her life at court and those who surrounded her, along with learning the politics of the time I came away with a better understanding of who she really was and what caused her downfall; she was more a naïve victim of circumstance (a scapegoat) than the spendthrift, heartless queen she was accused of being.

It was interesting to note:
~ The Austrian court was much more informal than the French court and allowed young Marie Antonia to basically do whatever she pleased; she learned to play the harpsichord, dance ballet and enjoy games. She had an idyllic childhood with little formal education. When she was tagged to be the next queen of France it was discovered she could barely read or write. This lax of formal training did not adequately prepare her to be the Queen of France; she arrived politically ignorant and inept.

~ Marie Antoinette never really uttered the phrase “Let them eat cake!”

~France was governed by Salic law which banned widowed royal wives from succeeding their spouses on the throne. At the time of her arrival three things were important at Versailles – the King, his mistress and his court. A Queen was nothing.

While reading Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution, I couldn’t help but think is a book about Marie Antoinette’s fashion choices really an important read, if so why?

In making my decision I considered the following:

What she was trying to achieve?
She was attempting to make a statement and strengthen her position in a hostile court where as a foreigner and a woman she had no power. Not to mention the fact her husband, the future King of France Louis XVI refused to sleep with her for the first seven years of their marriage. The book describes how almost immediately upon arriving at Versailles M.A. began bucking the rigid court code of dress. She refused to wear the corset, introduced the English-style riding coat and wore trousers while riding. She dressed and played like a commoner at the Petit Trianon. It was only after the fall of the Bastille that she began dressing like a royal.

How radical her clothing choices really were:
If early American feminists were taunted and ridiculed for wearing bloomers in the19th century, can you imagine how shocking it must have been for the future queen of France to wear men’s riding clothes and to ride astride?

What was or wasn’t she thinking?
Her hairstyle of choice the pouf, a thickly powdered, teetering hairstyle that re-created elaborate scenes from current events, was coated with animal fat and a powder mixed from flour. Was she not aware France was undergoing a flour shortage? Her headdresses, when seen by the population on fashion engravings and newspapers, led to the flour wars after her subjects concluded the Queen was taking flour and bread from starving people’s mouths to use for her own adornment.

Also think of the inconveniences-
Carriage interiors were not high enough to accommodate the monstrous three feet high constructions, so women had to travel crunched over crumpling their full skirted silk gowns because their hair would not travel upright.

Not to mention the vermin-
Since the hairstyle was costly, women would keep them for a week or two. The animal fat and flour would become rancid and attract vermin.

By not dressing like a queen she gave her enemies fodder to conspire against her?
At the Petit Trianon - the private country retreat she received as a gift from her husband shortly after their accession - she adopted unstructured chemise dresses that facilitated distinctly nonroyal shenanigans such as picnics on the grass, blind man’s bluff, and frolics among pretty, perfumed flocks of sheep. Conservative courtiers protested that the dresses made their noble wearers indistinguishable from serving wenches. Furthermore, by allowing only a small close knit group of friends including a couple foreigners access to her private palace she alienated important members of the Court. Exaggerated, scandalous images of her life at the Petit Trainon became regular features in underground pamphlets and caricatures.

She maintained an aura of grace and self-possession right up to the end:
Reading the final chapters of her life was heartbreaking; the death of her first son, the murder of her friend Princess de Lamballe, the execution of her husband, her imprisonment, brainwashing her second son to testify against her, her trial whose outcome was decided before it began and finally her own death at the guillotine. Even at the end she controlled her image by wearing a radiant white ensemble.

Who is the Marie Antoinette of our time?
Queen of Fashion’s author Caroline Weber answers this question in an interview on Big Think:

We don’t have anybody like that nowadays because, again, the political context is very different. But I think that we could look at a figure like for instance, Madonna. Somebody who succeeds in capturing the world’s attention time, and time again by refashioning her body, by changing her hair styles, by changing her appearance, by changing her identity through clothes. This is how she sells records and we all know that Madonna has relatively little talent. I think it was the shoemaker, Manolo Blanic, said that he was shocked that somebody with as little of the singing voice as she has good sound harsh and enormous star, and stay such an enormous star. And I think that's a testament to her genius as a chameleon. And this is been talked about by a million people before me, but I link her to Marie Antoinette because Marie Antoinette similarly was able to manipulate the public and stay in the public eye by changing her costume and this really flamboyant way, and doing it constantly.

Which brings me back to my original question: Is a book about Marie Antoinette’s fashion choices really a book every woman should read, if so why?
The book did cause me to think about my own appearance, the clothing choices I make and about such things as:
How much power can you really wield through your appearance? I know it is important to consider the image you want to portray. We’ve all heard the advice: Look the part. Dress for the job you want to have, but in the long run if all you have is your appearance is it enough? Many of the best & brightest women I have worked with don’t care at all about their appearance. Does it hurt them in the long run?

Would I want my daughter (if I had one) to read this book and then emulate Marie Antoinette? Would I want her to emulate Madanna?

Or consider this passage from Sharon Lamb's Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing Our Daughters from Marketers' Schemes?

Image protects high school students by giving them a sense of belonging, but it also gave them a premature identity while they are insecure or struggling to forge something unique and personal. While this may be okay for someone who can move beyond image during or after the teen years, others become trapped and stuck in this superficial world. For those who can preserve a self apart from image, the divisions and unhappiness that come with focusing too much on image in the teen years creates too much stress and too much of a diversion from what they could be doing and creating for themselves.

What do you think? Is a book about Marie Antoinette’s fashion choices really a book every woman should read, if so why?

The Feminine Mystique

I recently finished reading Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique which I read for the Women Unbound Challenge.

Motivation for reading:
Grace of GRACEful Retirement inspired me to read this book when she left a comment on my blog post: Ten non-fiction books that help us understand the world stating this was the book that helped her better understand the world. It was also included on Caroline Benders list of 20 business books they expect you have read.

What is the Feminine Mystique?
Friedan begins with her discovery of women’s unhappiness in post-World War II middle-class suburbia which she calls “the problem that has no name.” She attributes this unhappiness to the loss of identity women experience from devoting their lives to housewifery and motherhood. “The Feminine Mystique” was the phony bill of goods society sold women leaving them financially, intellectually and emotionally dependent on their husbands.

My thoughts:
For me, this book was a difficult read. I found it to be long and repetitious. I understand Friedan needed to hammer in her points to get woman to take notice, but if I had attempted to read this book when I was younger I am sure I never would have finished it. Despite the books difficulty, it did leave me with several valuable insights I would like to share:

Women abandoned their careers, so they could buy the latest carpet sweeper and cleaning cleanser:

The important role woman served as housewives was to buy more things for the house. The real business of America is business. The perpetuation of the mystique makes sense (and dollars) when one realizes that women are the chief consumers of American business. Somehow, someone must have figured out that women will buy more things if they are kept in the underused, nameless yearning, energy-to-get rid of state of being a housewife.

Magazine editors perpetuated “The Feminine Mystique” by restricting the topics and advertisements portrayed in their magazines:

Friedman had studied women’s magazines for decades and found the editorial decisions were made by men who enforced “occupation housewife.” Articles and advertisements only portrayed women as housewives. They didn’t want them to have any other ambitions than to be housewives.

A perceptive social psychologist showed Friedman statistics which seemed to prove American women under 35 are not interested in politics. “If you write a political piece they won’t read it. You have to translate it into issues they can understand – romance, pregnancy, nursing, home furnishings and clothes. Run an article on the economy, or the race question, civil rights, and you’d think that women never heard of them.”

Maybe they hadn’t heard of them. Ideas are not like instincts of the blood that spring into the mind intact. They are communicated by education, by the printed word. The new young house-wives who leave high school or college to marry, do not read magazines. Magazines today assume women are not interested in ideas.

Nineteenth-century feminists fought a ferocious battle:

Friedan recalled the battles faced by nineteenth-century feminists in the United States. As in her own time, nineteenth-century society attempted to restrict women to the roles of wife and mother and slandered women who challenged this gentle image. However, despite harsh resistance, early feminists held their ground, and women were ultimately given many opportunities men enjoyed, including education, the right to pursue their own careers, and, most important, the right to vote. With this last major goal fulfilled, Friedan says, the early women's movement died.

The Feminine Mystique was still prevalent in my community in the late 70’s:
Less than ten percent of the females in my graduating class went on to earn college degrees immediately after graduation. They either married, found a job or took secretarial courses to bide time until they got married and had children. My father didn’t support my college education decision thinking I wouldn’t use it once I got married. My Aunt advised me to find a man who would take care of me.

Then there was my mother’s unhappiness in her role as a housewife. We lived in the country and she did not have her driver’s license. She had to ask my father for every penny she needed (not to mention a ride to the store); justifying each purchase whether it was a card for a sick friend, a birthday present for one of her six children or a tube of lipstick for herself. She fondly reminisced about her life before she was married; her friends, her job and apartment in the city and her own money.

What can women do to break "The Feminine Mystique?"

Women need creative work of their own equal to her actual capacity. The only way for a woman, as for a man to find herself, to know herself as a person, is by creative work of her own. There is no other way. But a job any job, is not the answer-in fact, it can be part of the trap. Women who do not look for jobs equal to their capacity, who do not let themselves develop the lifetime interests and goals which require serious education and training, who take a job at twenty or forty to “help out at home: or just to kill extra time, are walking, almost as surely as the ones who stay inside the housewife trap, to a nonexistent future.

Is The Feminine Mystique a non-fiction book every woman should read?
The subject matter of this book is certainly relevant today. Many Americans both male and female are currently trapped by their circumstances; underemployment, housework, child rearing and caring for their aging parents. Advertisers and marketing schemes continue to influence us to make poor decisions; purchasing huge Mc Mansions we can’t afford with money we don’t have comes to mind. Despite these circumstances, the book will not be making the list. I foresee my list as a list of books that not only teach, but inspire women to read additional non-fiction and I don’t think The Feminine Mystique is up to that task.

For a case study of “The Feminine Mystique,” I recommend reading Life List: A Woman's Quest for the World's Most Amazing Birds by Olivia Gentile. The book details the life of Phoebe Snetsinger an overeducated, bored, depressed and underutilized suburban housewife before she took up birding as an excuse to get out of the house.