Life Is Too Damn Short….

While designing the above image, I remembered a strand of Longfellow's "A Psalm Of Life". If you, too, are muddling your way through loss, grief, broken-heartedness, or end-of-life issues, it will be well worth your time to read the brief poem here.  I like HWL's turns of verse from dark-to-light and confusion-to-hope, every word a reflection of his own struggle to make sense of the unexpected death of his young wife and child.

Yesterday marks four calendar weeks since my beloved friend and confidante Beverly died; Saturday the ninth makes it a calendar month.  As the song says,

"Time keeps on slippin', slippin', slippin'

Into the future."

Life is short, my friends, very, very short.  One minute you're running downfield, making your play, and bang, out of nowhere, there's the Referee, waving a red card at you.

Bottom line:  You matter, your life matters.  Whoever you are, big or small, famous or unknown, YOU are beloved of God and no matter how successful or wasted your life has been, He can use you to encourage, inspire, and revive others.

Life IS short and your Red Card is coming.  Eat dessert first, laugh more, hug more, dare to love when you might lose the one you love.  Stop giving a damn about naysayers, whiney-babies, and other time-wasting folk who drain and distract your energy with "important" or "urgent" bullshit.  Do this instead:

Live your life high, wide, and handsome.

Yee-haw!

Mi querida amiga Beverly, te echo de menos profundamente.  Mi vida tiene un agujero en él y sólo él quien es Todo y Santo puede llenarlo.

Happy Valentine's Day!

A small Valentine gift for all our friends, clients, colleagues, and followers.  Remember to add chocolate -- or whatever sweetness brings you joy!

Best advice we ever heard when feeling forlorn and forgotten on Valentine's Day, "Be your own Valentine!"  So, stop your scoffing and sniveling and Snap Out Of It!  You are beloved and lovable, don't doubt it for a moment.  Treat yourself well and others will, too!

A Fresh Year, New Chances, New Choices...

Yes, we're posting another welcome to the new year!

Why?  Because the last few days runneth over with an abundance of joys, some minute, some majestic, and all magnificent:   a chilly but serene walk around the lake as the sun slipped into a gold horizon; new-found old friends; an authentic Ethiopian jebena for making spicy, molten coffee; a brother-in-law who will soon leave the hospital to greet a new year with his wife and children; the generous neighbours who haven't yet taken down their Christmas lights; the jingling harnesses of the coach-&-horses as holiday-makers make one more chance to revel; the friend who invited me to share her Christmas celebrations.  Life is good.

However you welcome your new year -- sleeping through the toll of midnight, dancing in the streets, toasting champagne, or in quiet candlelight -- here is our New Year's toast to java-pals & Twitterverse compadres.  May yours be a safe & glittering 2014!

See you on the patio in 2014! ;-)

A Brief Tribute to Ambrose Thomas...

Last night, the courageous heart of our good friend, client, and business partner, Ambrose Thomas, owner of Gentle Bloke & co-founder of Carli Trading Group, gave out.

Only 26, Ambrose had survived Sierra Leone's civil war and much more.  He overcame Hodgkins Lymphoma, then created a line of skin products to help other cancer patients.  He and two business partners founded Carli Trading Group to shape a brighter future for his former homeland, Sierra Leone.

By some yardsticks, Ambrose had a short life, but he lived it with intensity, generosity and productivity.  A portion of Gentle Bloke's proceeds were donated to Operation Homefront, an organisation which had made it possible for his brother Joseph, serving overseas in the U.S. military, to come back to the states for a bone marrow transfusion critical to Ambrose's recovery.  A graduate of Texas A & M's Masters in Public Health program, Ambrose had been invited to the White House, and had recently learned he was accepted to Harvard to do his Ph.D. in Public Health.

Ambrose's brilliance and drive could occasionally swamp your boat.  His joie d'vivre, his wide-open smile, and his buoyant can-do attitude persuaded both competitors and colleagues. His mountain-top leaps from one idea to another meant you dare not doze off or let your mind wander.  But, if you challenged him, he listened.  Ambrose was the embodiment of Gitanajava Productions' company catchphrase, Get Javanated! -- he lived boldly and joyfully.  The occasional frustration or disappointment, in his hands, was transformed into finding a jet-fueled solution.

We are better for having known you, Ambrose. Your dazzling energy, your smile, your intensity, and your courage will live on in our hearts and minds.  We will work to fulfill your vision.

Falling Headlong Into Another World...

Design by Gitanajava Productions PR, LLC
Find it at http://tiny.cc/JAusten

If I'm a Jane Austen fan, it's as an admiring bystander of the language, customs, and history of the Regency/Napoleonic era more so than as a Janeite or romantic.  So, as I flipped the pages of Cindy Jones' book, My Jane Austen Summer, trying to decide whether or not to add it to my already lofty stack of books, I was braced to bolt and run at the first sign of words like swoon or limpid or cerulean orbs.  I needn't have worried.  I was hijacked and hooked anyway -- how'd that happen?

The Coffeehouse Blues

Gitanajava = Gypsy Loves Coffee

(The original Rajah Coffee label was designed by Henri Meunier, 1897,

find it at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rajah-coffee-ad-1897-henri-meunier.jpg)

(This post was originally written, published, and distributed under the title The Coffee Canticle in December 2008.  Although the coffeehouse in question has long since passed on to the celestial heights, the thoughts and sentiments about what remain the same.)


Starbucks #6262, alias Lower Greenville Starbucks, officially closed 2 PM, Friday 19th December 2008.  Even before the farewell party ended at 6 PM, the guerrillas from Starbucks HQ arrived.  While the corpus delicti was still warm, they began taping sheets of brown butcher paper across the windows:  pulling the shroud tight.


When is a cup of coffee more than a cup of coffee?  What recombinant DNA transforms a mere java joint into a legend?

Buried Treasure, Part 2

5 Steps to Creating a LinkedIn Recommendation
To view full sized, go to http://tiny.cc/Endorse

In the original Buried Treasure article, we discussed the professionals' methods for requesting, shaping, and leveraging effective recommendations from colleagues and clients.  However, in my perfect world, I would have preceded that instruction with tonight's post and asked this crucial question --

Forgotten Heroes, Abandoned Children, Devalued Seniors

1 of 5 prototypes for Stony Mountain Ranch logo & bizcards.
See them all at http://tiny.cc/STONY

The Challenge

What do the following people have in common?

• Aged-out foster children
• Military veterans returning to civilian life
• Devalued seniors

Buried Treasure

Not long ago, I wrote a colleague, the former chief exec of a client organisation, asking for his recommendation.  We have a sound, genial professional and personal relationship, and we have communicated regularly by phone and email since parting ways a few months ago.  Although we didn't get the happy ending we strove for throughout our last adventure, I was proud of the exceptional effort and dedication we had given.

I'd spent four years nurturing the growth of his organisation, first on a pro bono basis, and when the small but feisty nonprofit hit a sizable financial and regulatory speed bump in late 2009 and the crisis took on life-or-death dimensions in early 2010, I stepped in as full-time formal consultant to him and the wounded organisation.  I liked these people, I liked their organisation, and I wanted success for them.

Don't Be Afraid of the Kid in You!

I don't care what anybody says, I like the Teletubbies.  I also dig Schnuffelbunny.  I'm a happy subscriber of Peter Rabbit and the rest of his posse, Jemima Puddle-Duck, Squirrel Nutkin, and Hunca Munca.

I've never needed an excuse to enjoy a retreat to childhood joys and fantasies -- when I was up to my eyeballs in the nightclub business and then later, music management, marketing and distribution, it was a welcome relief to arrive home in the pre-dawn hours, just in time for the local broadcast of Teletubbies.  Just the same, I'd like to thank my niece and nephew in Germany for sharing the welcome news of their soon-to-come baby.  If I need it, I have a cover story for why I'm singing the Schnuffelbunny song.

When you find yourself mired in cynicsm and the weariness of grown-up responsibilities, sing the Schnuffelbunny song to yourself, my friend.  It'll do you good.

See you on the patio!

Bring Down Your Wall!

Building the Berlin Wall, August 1961

Don't you hate it when you read an article, blogpost, or book you know you shoulda-coulda written (but didn't)?  Yeh, this is one of those times for me.  I hope you'll permit me a short ramble, fellow entrepreneurs.

Today, I came across a nifty CNET article by Dennis O'Reilly, How to Use Powerpoint Effectively.  I started kicking myself.

Lotsa Communicating, But Less Connecting?

This image courtesy of Steve Kryger, CommunicateJesus.com

During the Get Javanated! workshops I conduct for entrepreneurs' groups, I use a chart not dissimilar from this one discussed a year or so ago at Steve Kryger's church marketing blog, Communicate Jesus.  Customised to the special needs and challenges of each audience, I also include an additional building block:  blogs.


The best blogs can be superior  communication tools, with a level of intimacy and authenticity varying by how well the blogger at the hub performs his/her role as presenter and moderator.  Readers' comments and interchanges with the blog author and one another act as the sine qua non of how successfully this momentary intimacy is consummated.

To extend your thoughts re people feeling more lonely than ever despite today's Social Media Wonder Tools, consider what Wayne Cordeiro, senior pastor of New Hope Church, Oahu says in a talk entitled "People Hiding in Plain Sight" (the vidcast version at  http://www.enewhope.org/videob... shows the title as "Hidden in Plain Sight").

In a pair of sermons on Social Networking delivered 11th April 2010 (BFF - Best Friends Forever, Pastor Elwin Ahu) and 18th April (Hidden..., Cordeiro), Cordeiro and Ahu re-define and most importantly, re-direct, listeners' attention to the fact that digital communications -- Facebook, Twitter, texting, et al. -- are most successful when --

• (A) we remember the tools are meant to serve us and our needs for friendship and community (fellowship), and
• (B) we use these tools with forethought and intentionality.

"In this socially connected world, *people* are still not connected....In this world of social connectedness, it [social media] can never become a substitute for F2F, face to face....I want to challenge you today, when you see this social networking increase...use it to motivate yourself to go face-to-face with people."

New Hope's well-designed website contains a wide array of digital media -- livecasts with a chat room enabling viewers to ask questions and offer comments; downloadable vidcasts, podcasts, sermon notes, and newsletter; a journalling process for personal faith-building and to share as devotionals through "Doing Life Together"; a "prayer wall"; and "iNeed", their own online classified ads (imagine a scrupulously cleaned-up Craigslist!) -- plus, thoughtfully deployed social networking, New Hope Oahu could be held up as a model for the faith community of a church who have adapted well to modern realities. But, as Cordeiro and the pastoral staff consistently point out, the tools and toys would be hollow and meaningless without "'ohana".

In Hawaiʻi, 'ohana is family - extended, adopted, blood relatives, or anyone sharing fellowship in Christ with one another for an hour, a day, or a lifetime.  And when you have 'ohana, there are connections, face-to-face and heart-to-heart.  The Social Media Wonder Tools are there to serve the spirit of 'ohana by building and connecting the New Hope family.


When you and I review our own whiz-bang technomarvelous tools, let's do a reality check:  what spirit are we building?  Are we deepening and strengthening our connections or are we just beating our drums louder and longer?


Just asking....

See you on the patio!