Presidents Endorsing Products

So. Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant and Benjamin Franklin all appear on American currency. This makes them natural pitchmen for TurboTax software, as demonstrated in a recent series of commercials. (One commercial called Money on Diapers has Franklin pointing out the need for a baby’s diaper change.)

This led me to wonder why we don’t see more Presidents  in commercials and other product endorsements. And if Presidents do start popping up more often, which Presidents should they be?

The question of commercializing Presidents has come up with the flood of Obama merchandise. The law of personality is complex and fascinating, but there is some consensus that despite legal protections for public figures, even politicians, it is unlikely that Obama would pursue those rights, unless there is the suggestion of outright endorsement.

There is a right to publicity in many states. The National Conference of State Legislatures has a brief and informal overview of the different state provisions:

Many states have long recognized the value and importance of an individual’s “15 minutes of fame” and have explicitly codified a property right in an individual’s identity.  As digital recording and distribution becomes more widely available and the public’s desire for “reality TV” grows, these rights will likely play an important and continuing role in the commercialization of not only celebrities, but also regular Joes and Janes.

At least 19 states currently recognize the right to publicity to some degree in their laws.  Many of these states explicitly recognize a right to publicity, while others have enacted broad privacy statutes that encompass unauthorized commercial exploitation of an individual. Most states continue to recognize these publicity rights even after the individual’s death and allow them to be transferred to others, just like real property.  However, because significant variability exists in the scope and term of the rights, conflicts are likely to arise, as different jurisdictions offer varying degrees of protection.  For example, some states offer no protection after death, others offer 10, 20, 50, 75 and even up to 100 years of protection.  Some states will protect the name and picture, while others protect “persona,” gestures, voice, signature, and so forth.  States that provide exemptions in their laws for certain activities, such as news reporting, are less likely to run afoul of possible First Amendment issues.  Eleven states have recognized the right to publicity in case law only.

Forget the “regular Joes and Janes.” How about the special Andys and Sams (Grant) and Bens? It would appear, without specific research in the various states, that to be on the safe side you would want to pick Presidents who were more than 100 years dead. That leaves Grover Cleveland as the last available President, with Teddy Roosevelt not due until 2019.

But besides freedom from lawsuits, what else should we be considering in a commercial President? We have some excellent guidance, just published this weekend, from the folks at C-SPAN. The Historians Presidential Leadership Survey is the latest ranking of best and worst Presidents.

We might want to have our products associated with the overall top Presidents, or even better yet with those Presidents who ranked high in the quality of Public Persuasion. Here are the Top Twenty Presidential Persuaders:

Franklin D. Roosevelt
Abraham Lincoln
Ronald Reagan
Theodore Roosevelt
George Washington
John F. Kennedy
Andrew Jackson
Thomas Jefferson
Woodrow Wilson
Bill Clinton
Dwight D. Eisenhower
James K. Polk
William McKinley
Lyndon B. Johnson
James Monroe
Harry S. Truman
Grover Cleveland
James Madison
Ulysses S. Grant
Zachary Taylor

Filtering for our 100-year legal criterion, advertisers might consider the short list of eleven:

Abraham Lincoln
Andrew Jackson
Thomas Jefferson
James K. Polk
William McKinley
James Monroe
Grover Cleveland
James Madison
Zachary Taylor
George Washington
Ulysses S. Grant

Interestingly, the Presidential talent for TurboTax did come from this list (of course, that was because they were on currency, but it is a happy coincidence).

So here’s a question: Besides Jackson and Grant, which other Presidents might be valuable personalities in a commercial for tax software or other products, or in a commercial that required them to comment on a couple buying diapers for their baby?

While that question awaits an answer, it might be worth some serious research on Presidential companies, but this is not it. Instead, here is a very quick walk among a few of the financial companies that have used the Presidents listed above, with mixed business results:

George Washington Life Insurance Company (liquidated 1991)

Thomas Jefferson Life Insurance Company (name changed to Fidelity and Guaranty Life Insurance Company of New York 2002)

James Monroe Bank (merged with PNC 2006)

Andrew Jackson Life Insurance Company (liquidated 1993)

Lincoln National Life Insurance Company (active):

The Lincoln National Life Insurance Company was founded in Fort Wayne, Indiana on June 12, 1905. During a time of controversy among big, established insurers, its 33 founders envisioned an insurance company rooted in dependability and honesty. To convey this spirit of integrity, they adopted the name of our 16th President, Abraham Lincoln, to represent the ideals the new company was founded upon. Robert Todd Lincoln, the President’s only surviving son, gave the founders permission to use his father’s name and likeness in July 1905, solidifying the name for the new company.

Benjamin Franklin Bank (active, calls itself “Ben,” but otherwise has no image or mention of Franklin)

And so, at least in this quick look at the financial world, nothing for Polk, McKinley, Cleveland, Madison, Taylor or Grant (who at least has his TurboTax gig). Advertisers take note. They’re available.

Saving Print Media, Part 1: Walter Isaacson, Will Rogers

I struggle with questions about the future of print media constantly. The questions are essential because media are a significant part of our business, creative and social lives. The questions are a struggle because getting to the answers requires a labyrinthine depth of thinking, which at the first level consists of making sure we are asking all the right questions (which I don’t think we have). If pushed for a quick initial list of questions, I might turn to the journalistic H and Ws: How to save our print media? Why save our print media? And maybe above all, What are print media, that is, What is a newspaper, a magazine, or a book?

So I’ve decided to break it down into steps. Hence the “Part 1” title of the post.

In the cover story of this week’s Time, Walter Isaacson offers a “modest proposal” on How to Save Our Newspapers. Isaacson is a certified thinker and media maven: President of the Aspen Institute, former Time managing editor, award-winning biographer of the brilliant (Ben Franklin, Albert Einstein).

His proposal is that newspapers stop giving away content, and start charging for it through the once-failed system of user micropayments. He recognizes that this is only a partial step, and even at that may fail in the face of user expectations and behavior. Along the way in his piece, he sprinkles quick references to some important footnote figures in media history. He mentions Ted Nelson, who he claims is father of micropayments, but who may actually be the father of the Web as infinite library, through his Xanadu concept. He also drops in the quote that “information wants to be free,” without attributing it to Whole Earth Catalog founder Stewart Brand, and without noting that the “freedom” that information wants is more about getting out in the world rather than not costing anything (Stewart Brand did not give the Whole Earth Catalog away for free).

When television arrived as a major medium, it seemed capable of killing two mass media at once: radio and movies. It was radio with pictures and moving pictures in the comfort of home.

What we know now is that radio and movies didn’t die, that after a substantial body blow to each, both came back, albeit with changes in style and strategy. Mostly, the biggest difference was that the old media had to share the pie with the new.

Of course, every new medium has the same potential to overtake the old. In 1931 there was a battle between newspapers and the emerging radio medium. Here is a report from Time on how newspapers were going to meet the challenge of radio:

Ink v. Air

Some years ago among newspaper publishers appeared little sparks of resentment against threatened competition from Radio. Puffed upon constantly by the tradepaper Editor & Publisher, those sparks burst into flame last week at the Manhattan conventions of the Associated Press and American Newspaper Publishers’ Association….

But rather than try to hamper radio by means other than withholding free advertising, Publisher McCormick believed the publishers should meet it with a superior product. A week earlier at the meeting of the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Washington, he had said: “. . . We must meet science with science. . . . Newspaper editors who refuse to meet changing conditions will reach the same end that came upon carriage manufacturers, canal companies, stage coach owners. . . . The greatest expense to all of us is printing paper. The paper we use is wretched. . . . In a world of color . . . we cannot afford to plug along . . . in sombre black and white.”…

Brightest event of the A. N. P. A. meeting was the dinner of its bureau of advertising, addressed by Funnyman Will Rogers. Twitting the publishers for their fear of radio, Rogers observed sarcastically: “If you hear any peculiar noise on the radio tonight it will be people breaking up their radios after reading a resolution adopted here today. If you really want to stop the development of radio advertising, either find a home-made cure for pyorrhea or murder Amos and Andy. Why, there will still be a radio in every home when people pay 10¢ to see what a printing press looked like! Radio is taking away your news. Television will take away your pictures. All you will have left will be the editorials and the letters from the people objecting to them.”

This is eighty years ago: “Why, there will still be a radio in every home when people pay 10¢ to see what a printing press looked like! Radio is taking away your news. Television will take away your pictures. All you will have left will be the editorials and the letters from the people objecting to them.” (For those who didn’t appreciate the genius of Will Rogers before, this should change your mind.)

Have newspapers simply been living on borrowed time for eighty years, having had a more than good run? Will printing presses be museum pieces? Are newspapers worth saving?

Stay tuned.

Disney and the Planets

You can think of Neil deGrasse Tyson as the Carl Sagan of the 21st century—as long as you envision a Sagan who’s muscular, African American and as cool as his predecessor was geeky. While Sagan used to appear on the Tonight Show to chat professorially with Johnny Carson, Tyson trades quips with Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. And you can hardly imagine Sagan’s being named Sexiest Astrophysicist Alive by PEOPLE magazine (Tyson got the nod in 2000) or declaring, as Tyson once did, that in high school “I was a nerd who could kick your butt.” (Time 100, 2007)

So when Neil DeGrasse Tyson talks about astronomy, we should listen. (And when purists complain that he is “popularizing” science – which means he is making it interesting and understandable – we have to point out that in the face of massive scientific ignorance, a little popularity is a great thing.)

In his new book The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America’s Favorite Planet Tyson writes about the massive public backlash to his claims that Pluto is not a planet, but is instead something else.

The popularity of Pluto, discovered in 1930, and the reaction to its planetary demotion, is based, says Tyson, on the decision of Disney to name Mickey Mouse’s dog after the former planet. According to Tyson, the rest of the world could care less about this controversy. Just one more example of how Disney has woven itself so tightly into the American fabric.

Astronomy aside, this opens the door to questions of equal seriousness. There are two dogs in Mickey Mouse’s universe. Pluto is Mickey’s faithful pet dog. Goofy is Mickey’s dog friend.

How is it possible that the same species can play such different roles? Or are the roles so different? Is Disney telling us that a dog is a mouse’s best friend and that a mouse’s friend can also be a dog? Should the planet have been named Goofy instead of Pluto (which may better describe its celestial behavior)? Would Tyson have been so quick to downgrade a planet named Goofy?

What does it all mean? I’m not sure. Maybe in the end, this is a job for an astrophysicist.

Movies: The Godfather and Obama

Entertainment Weekly reports that Barack Obama’s favorite movies are The Godfather, Parts 1 and 2 (about Godfather 3 he says “not so much”). The significance of that shouldn’t be lost.

Of course, The Godfather is now a near-consensus pick as the great American movie. So the odds are pretty good that anyone would choose it as a favorite. But there’s more to it than that.

The themes of The Godfather movies are power and leadership, honor and justice, place and family. This, famously, is how the saga begins:

It is the home of Vito Corleone, the Don, on the day of his daughter’s wedding. Bonasera is a guest, and he addresses Don Corleone with what begins as an endorsement of the America dream and family values:

I believe in America. America has made my fortune. And I raised my daughter in the American fashion. I gave her freedom, but — I taught her never to dishonor her family.

It turns out this was not good enough. Bonasera has come to ask the powerful man for help. Bonasera’s daughter has been badly beaten by her boyfriend, but at trial the man received only a suspended sentence. Bonasera asks the Don to help avenge this unpunished crime, to kill the boyfriend.

Don Corleone then explains the nature of justice, the strict rules of honor and respect, and the importance of friendship and family:

Vito Corleone: We’ve known each other many years, but this is the first time you came to me for counsel, for help. I can’t remember the last time that you invited me to your house for a cup of coffee, even though my wife is godmother to your only child. But let’s be frank here: you never wanted my friendship. And you were afraid to be in my debt.

You found paradise in America, had a good trade, made a good living. The police protected you; and there were courts of law. And you didn’t need a friend of me. But now you come to me and you say “Don Corleone give me justice.” But you don’t ask with respect. You don’t offer friendship. You don’t even think to call me Godfather. Instead, you come into my house on the day my daughter is to be married, and you ask me to do murder, for money. That is not justice; your daughter is still alive.

Bonaserra: Then they can suffer, as she suffers. How much shall I pay you?

Vito Corleone: What have I ever done to make you treat me so disrespectfully? Had you come to me in friendship, then this scum that ruined your daughter would be suffering this very day. And that by chance if an honest man such as yourself should make enemies, then they would become my enemies. And then they would fear you.

Bonasera: Be my friend (bows and kisses his hand) Godfather?

Vito Corleone: Good. Some day, and that day may never come, I’ll call upon you to do a service for me. But until that day — accept this justice as a gift on my daughter’s wedding day.

When we watch the films, here are a couple of things we can ask about The Godfather’s most powerful fan in the world:

What characteristics of the two Dons (Vito and Michael) might Obama relate to?

This is the story of smart men who wield power quietly, temperately, even privately. Bombast and braggadocio are not their way (unlike Sonny, the older son, short-tempered, less smart, almost a Wild West character itching for a fight). It is Michael, however, who sees that in a brutal new world, his father’s temperance might be taken for weakness, and so he walks the line between his father’s values and his own disciplined toughness.

Both Vito and Michael reflect leaders whose lives straddle two worlds. Vito crosses the ocean from the Old World to the New. Michael crosses the generations from his father’s America to post-World War II America and beyond. But all along, there are two parallel senses of place. Where they both came from is branded in their name, Corleone, the ancestral homeland. Yet the are both loyal Americans. The struggle to resolve these conflicts is central to The Godfather.

What aspects of the story tell Obama and us something about how other powerful people operate, whether we agree with them or not?

The opening scene of The Godfather tells us about the code of honor and respect in operation, admittedly often not for the good. Yes, of course, honor among thieves and killers still results in theft and murder. But in The Godfather, when honor breaks down among the lawless or the lawful, little remains to hold back chaos and individual agendas, and things fall apart.

Throughout his campaign, and from the Inaugural Address to having the very first Presidential press interview with Al Aribiyah, Obama has placed honor and respect high on his list of values, especially internationally. He recognizes that not all men or countries are honorable, but to assume that those with whom we disagree are by definition dishonorable is a road to nowhere. People of all stripes crave respect, and recognize, whether willing to admit it or not, that it must be earned. Offering honor and respect, and expecting that in return, doesn’t mean weakness or a lack of will. On the contrary, it means that when the time comes to act, we do so in support of maintaining our highest values and order. “Unclench your fist,” Obama said, “and we will shake your hand.”

Movies: Danny Boyle’s Millions

With ten Academy Award nominations, Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire is poised to win a bunch of Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director. Almost all the media coverage, and many of the people who see the movie, recognize Boyle as director of some powerful and dark films, including Trainspotting and 28 Days Later.

Lost in the shuffle is Millions, a gem that Boyle directed in 2004. It shares some of the same themes as the latest movie, but received less attention, at the box office and from critics.

Millions, like Slumdog, is a little movie with big ideas. The main character is a child, seven-year-old Damian, who with his older brother Anthony stumbles upon stolen money – a bag of British pounds – only to discover that the deadline for converting pounds to Euros is approaching. Right around Christmas, the money will be worthless. So the money must be given away, spent, saved, exchanged, destroyed – all the complications that surround money, but things that are still less complicated than the people who have it or want it or need it.

Damian is obsessed with saints, and along the way his adventures include cameo appearances by St. Peter, St. Clare, St. Francis, St. Nicholas, and St. Joseph (at a school Christmas pageant). Yes, this is a Christmas movie, in the best way possible. It asks in a light-hearted, funny and heartbreaking way for us to think about the real value of people and money, about faith and religion, and about love and miracles.

Near the end of the movie, Damian dreams about talking with his dead mother. In a world full of movies with such conversations between the dead and living, this one is as touching as any:

Damian: I know you’re only a dream. But I don’t care. It’s nice to see you. Even if you’re just a dream.…The money just makes everything worse.…I’ve got something for you.   From Readers Digest. Here. You may have already won ten thousand pounds.…Please will you talk to me?

Mum: Five minutes. Okay?…Now, don’t interrupt. I’m dead. I know what I’m talking about, okay?…You need to use conditioner on your hair. Your dad won’t think of that, but it makes all the difference.….Me? You are not to worry about me. You have been worrying about me, haven’t you? I’m fine….Anthony. He seems to have taken it better than you. But he hasn’t. He’s got a good heart, he just…he doesn’t know where it is. Damian? He’s going to need you. Be good to him.

Damian: Dad doesn’t believe.

Mum: Doesn’t believe what?

Damian: Any of it. Anything. He mustn’t do or he wouldn’t. Couldn’t you talk to him?

Mum: He can’t see me.

Damian: Oh….Is it because of the money?

Mum: In a way. The money makes it harder to see what’s what. You know that already….Never really win with those things anyway. You just end up with books about the American railways…It’s her isn’t it? Your dad and her? Damian. You know how complicated the money was? Well, people are even more complicated. You need to remember that there is nearly always enough good around to be going on with. You’ve just got to have a bit of faith, you know. And if you’ve got faith in people that makes them stronger. And you, you’ve got enough to sort all three of you out….Hey? That’s why
I’m counting on you.

Damian: I haven’t really been worried about you. I’ve just been missing you.

Mum: That’s allowed.

Damian: Are you really a saint?

Mum: Well, the criteria’s very strict. It’s not just a case of doing good and all that. You do have to do an actual miracle.

Damian: So…

Mum: I’m in there. Course I am.

Damian: What was your miracle?

Mum: Don’t you know? It was you.

So if you like Slumdog Millionaire, and are wondering what else Danny Boyle has done, Millions is certainly the place to start.

Copyright: Creative Commons and CPSD

During Inaugural week, CNN announced that it was going to show Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech in its entirety, which it claimed was big deal. This surprised me, but it turns out to be true. The King estate has been very aggressive in protecting a broad range of rights to the man and his work. The estate has, for example, sued newspapers (USA Today) for reprinting the speech without permission, and networks (CBS) for broadcasting it. In 1999, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit found in Estate of Martin Luther King, Jr. Inc. v. CBS, Inc. (194 F.3d 1211) that the speech was indeed subject to copyright.

Also part of the Inaugural week was an endless variety of merchandise, some of it about Obama, but some of it naturally linking him with MLK and The Dream. As expected, since the election the King estate has objected to unauthorized T-shirts depicting MLK and Obama together. As reported in The New York Times:

Isaac Newton Farris Jr., a nephew of Dr. King and president of the King Center in Atlanta, said the family was considering several options, including lawsuits against sellers of unauthorized merchandise linking Mr. Obama and Dr. King under slogans like “The Dream Is Reality.”

“It’s not about the money,” Mr. Farris said. “The law says that if you don’t assert and protect the right to an image, you can lose that right.” But he added, “We do feel that if somebody’s out there making a dollar, we should make a dime.”

This is just one more example of how copyright and related rights are occupying a growing part of our media and culture, in ways expected and unexpected. So here are just a couple of resources to help guide you through the more adventurous pathways of early 21st century copyright.

Creative Commons and Lawrence Lessig

If the digital world is the informational Wild West, Lawrence Lessig may be the frontier marshal trying to bring a new kind of justice to it.

Lessig is a law professor at Stanford who for a number of years he has been writing and speaking about the importance of crafting a system of copyright that fits the times and encourages the creativity unleashed by all these digital possibilities. His most recent book is Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy:

Lessig is also the founder of Creative Commons, which describes itself this way:

Creative Commons is a nonprofit corporation dedicated to making it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright.

We provide free licenses and other legal tools to mark creative work with the freedom the creator wants it to carry, so others can share, remix, use commercially, or any combination thereof.

Center for the Study of the Public Domain

Center for the Study of the Public Domain is focused on intellectual property that is not protected by law. Or as CSPD puts it, “the other side of the picture”:

The public domain is the realm of material—ideas, images, sounds, discoveries, facts, texts—that is unprotected by intellectual property rights and free for all to use or build upon. Our economy, culture and technology depend on a delicate balance between that which is, and is not, protected by exclusive intellectual property rights. Both the incentives provided by intellectual property and the freedom provided by the public domain are crucial to the balance. But most contemporary attention has gone to the realm of the protected.

The Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke Law School is the first university center in the world devoted to the other side of the picture.  Founded in September of 2002, as part of the school’s wider intellectual property program, its mission is to promote research and scholarship on the contributions of the public domain to speech, culture, science and innovation, to promote debate about the balance needed in our intellectual property system and to translate academic research into public policy solutions.

Of the all the valuable cutting edge work that CSPD does, none is as fascinating as the comic book Bound by Law: Tales from the Public Domain. Yes, a comic book, but more than that, very likely the best comic book ever created to explain a complex, significant and dynamic issue of law (we need more of them!). Here’s how Brandt Goldstein describes it in the Wall Street Journal:

Bound By Law stars Akiko, a curvaceous, muscular filmmaker (think Tomb Raider’s Lara Croft with spiky hair) planning to shoot a documentary about a day in the life of New York City…[It] translates law into plain English and abstract ideas into ‘visual metaphors.’ So the comic’s heroine, Akiko, brandishes a laser gun as she fends off a cyclopean ‘Rights Monster’ – all the while learning copyright law basics, including the line between fair use and copyright infringement.

Bound by Law should not be missed by media creators or media consumers. The best part is that CSPD has made the comic available for download under a Creative Commons Attribution, allowing for appropriate use and distribution. (In fact, some members of the CSPD faculty played a major role in setting up Creative Commons.)

Bad News: How Much Is Enough?

Bad news on the doorstep;
I couldn’t take one more step.
Don McLean, American Pie

I get all the news I need
From the weather report.
Paul Simon, The Only Living Boy in New York

This is the first economic recession of the all media all the time everywhere age. Which means that you can hear, see or read fact and rumor about the latest bad economic happenings every waking minute, on your computer or television or cell phone or Blackberry, or in newspapers or magazines, often the same bleak news over and over and over again.

It’s not that people in past recessions didn’t know they were living through hard times. They experienced hardship in their own lives, saw it in the lives of their neighbors and friends, and certainly paid attention to media reports about it. But there seemed to be places and spaces where you could be farther from all that, where you could regroup and regenerate, where you could count your blessings – even as they seemed to dwindle – without being interrupted by a reminder that you might just be fooling yourself about the good and the possible.

The bad and the dark are the stuff of current events and history, just as much as the good and the bright, so the media can’t be blamed for showing and telling. The thing is that they may deliver the same disastrous news a thousand times, without caring (and why should they?) whether you listen to it a thousand times.

Which leaves it up to media consumers to choose wisely and well. Of course you need to know exactly how things are, as bad as they may be, so that you can understand how it is for yourself and others, and so that you can make good choices and plan appropriately. But beyond that, no matter the barrage of information thrown at you, how much bad news do you really need? How much is enough?

Jon Scieszka

I haven’t thought about children’s author Jon Scieszka (SHEH-ska) for a few years. But just because the child in our family who grew up on those books is now in college doesn’t mean that Scieszka is forgotten. Far from it. Because his work is unforgettable. And popular: he has sold over 9 million books.

Which is why it was great to see him in Parade magazine this week (Getting Kids to Read). Even more remarkable was learning that Scieszka was named the first National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature by the Librarian of Congress. Whatever that means exactly, it sounds important and well-deserved.

If you have children, please consider adding Scieszka’s books to their diet. Even if you don’t have children, please consider adding some of the books to your own book pile. Your life could be better for it.

To get a complete listing of his books, and to get a real sense of the intelligent originality and playfulness that continue to make kids and adults laugh, visit Jon Scieszka Worldwide. This is absolutely one of the most fun sites on the Web. Also, as Scieszka talks about in Parade, one of his missions is to get boys to read. For more about this, see his site Guys Read.

Where to start with Scieszka books? Well, in our family, the Time Warp Trio books were popular. And I gather that The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs is considered a signature book. But for me nothing beats The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Fairy Tales (illustrated by Lane Smith).  This is a completely crazy reworking of the standards, a book I read out loud way more times than I had to, simply because it cracked me up, laughing out loud, every time I did. Also, this fall Scieszka published an autobiography for kids, Knucklehead: Tall Tales and Almost True Stories of Growing up Scieszka.

Thank you, Jon Scieszka.

American Tradition: The Sunday Papers

Every household I have lived in, from the time I was born to today, has gotten a daily newspaper. Often more than one. And no paper is more important than the Sunday paper.

This is much more than an information experience. In our household, we can and do read newspaper content online from around the world whenever we want. But on Sunday at the kitchen table (or even when we treat ourselves to Sunday breakfast out), the sections are strewn among the plates and the cups of hot coffee. It is a social experience, a face-to-face, in the moment social experience. Articles and columns are pushed across the table, discussed and (yes) argued about. An amusing comic strip might even be found, though to be honest, the quality of the Sunday funnies seems to have declined precipitously these days.

(One of my favorite early photos of our son shows him in his high chair, with the Sunday funnies spread out in front of him. He is apparently reading thoughtfully, but smart as he is, I think he was just looking at the colorful cartoons. By the way, no children were harmed in the making of that photo – I hope.)

There is a movement to bring back the tradition of American families eating one meal a day, or even one meal a week, together. Research seems to show that children who grow up with those family meals thrive (of course, this kind of research often has trouble distinguishing correlation from causation, but we’ll leave that for now.)

Anyway, I want to add reading Sunday papers at Sunday breakfast to this movement.

We don’t, and can’t, keep traditions alive just because they are traditions. We can and should keep them alive if we can find the inherent unique qualities that are part of the traditions in the first place. Without those values, a call to tradition is nothing more than a stubborn unwillingness to face change, or just nostalgia.

A family sitting around eating meals together is not nostalgia. And neither is the Sunday paper at Sunday breakfast.

Media Never Die: Word Stones

The oldest writing in the world might be an engraved stone tablet found in Bulgaria, dating from around 5000 BCE.  That’s seven thousand year old.

This comes to mind because of a visit a few years ago to one of those gift and home decor stores in the mall. If you shop and pay attention, even a little, over the years you notice items that are perennials, along with items that seem to suddenly appear or disappear from one year to another.

Items that suddenly appeared were rocks with words engraved on them. Some have just a single word – Peace, Faith, Hope – while others manage to include entire quotes or Bible passages. Some are real rocks (more expensive), others are cast in (sort of) stone-like resin (cheaper). Sizes range from pocket-sized to table-sized to garden-sized. They of course come in a variety of decorator colors. They are known by a variety of names: word stones, engraved stones, garden stones, etc.

I’ve never purchased one, and never received one as a gift (and probably never will now). But I have to say that as I stood there, holding some of them in my palm, reading the words, something elemental happened. Obviously, this is in part because engraved stones have a very deep meaning, as our way of memorializing the dead. In other circumstances, though, we usually don’t go around engraving our thoughts on stones, carrying them around, or throwing them at each other to communicate. But people did in the past, sometimes people who mattered (I’m thinking here of Moses, not Fred Flintstone). I felt that.

And then was the thought: media never die. They evolve, they may lose some of their significance and primacy (which they may regain), they may even end up as a gift store novelty. But they survive. For seven thousand years. It appears that writing on stone will always be here. So for those who wonder, as I sometimes do, what will become of this medium or that, remember the word stones.