Day 15 - There Is No Such Thing as a Free Lunch

Image by Theis Kofoed Hjorth via Flickr

Something has been happening to me over the course of the past couple of years that I should have been able to predict. After all, I have a birthday every year, so by this time, my age has put me into a group that means I get invited to enjoy a free lunch – accompanied by a financial seminar – or a weekend at a luxury resort – which happens to be a time-share – or a free seminar on how to set up your own eBay business.

For those who haven’t yet hit that demographic, the offers come in lots of different styles. Here are a few I’ve received.

• A free fleece jacket;
• Dinner at one of three area restaurants;
• Complementary round trip air fare; and
• Complimentary seminars.

The ones offering something free don’t tempt me at all. But I did accept an invitation once - to a wealth building seminar. And that’s the one from which I learned there really is no such thing as a free lunch. Afterwards, I realized what subtle techniques persuaded me.  

Here’s why I gave in to this invitation.

• It wasn’t just an invitation: it was a “Special” invitation.
• The seminar wasn’t free, but the suggested “tuition” fee of $149 was waived, on the basis of my status as a special VIP guest.
• The presenters weren’t local; the invitation promised Donald Trump’s closest adviser, plus 4 self-made multi-millionaire “experts” were lined up to share the Trump family’s most successful wealth-creating secrets and strategies.
• The invitation would not be repeated; it was a once in a lifetime event.
• The tickets were numbered, and the numbers on mine were very low, implying that seating was very limited and/or that I was very high on the list of invitees.

Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr

The PS clinched it – “you will learn what others have paid over $20,000 to learn. Please RSVP soon as this event will be sold out.”

So I called and made my reservation.

When I got to the event venue, I realized I had forgotten to bring my VIP personal guest tickets. I asked two women who were heading in the same direction if they were also going to the seminar. They were. I mentioned that I wondered if I would be allowed to enter without my tickets. In response, they handed me one of their extras.

The number on the ticket was very low. When I got home I discovered it was the same number as one of my tickets. So much for the invitation being “special.”

The woman who gave me the ticket also mentioned that she had attended the same seminar before. So much for the “once-in-a-lifetime” claim.

Donald Trump wasn't there. That wasn't really a disappointment.

The first speaker’s topic was investment. He threw around a few new terms, like “market fundamentals,” and then he showed us a website he used to analyze these fundamentals. He illustrated his points with screen shots of very persuasive examples of how using this tool could help interpret the fundamentals of stocks. After 45 minutes, he got to the sales pitch. His product – access to and training on the website he used throughout the presentation. The price: $6,000. But, if we purchased the product that day, he was authorized to offer the product at a reduced rate, just $1,999.

And there was a money-back guarantee. Until the end of the second day of training, anyone who purchased the training would be able to decide whether the training was satisfactory and, if not, all the money would be returned. In addition, those who purchased the package that day would receive a password to the site immediately, an opportunity to become familiar with the software even ahead of the training.

Now I know it is probably surprising that someone as well-educated and well-traveled as I would fall for this sales pitch, but I hadn't figured out all the angles yet. I filled out the form, provided my credit card information, and signed up for a training session in two weeks’ time.

As the time for the training approached, I couldn’t attend because I had to travel for a funeral on the second day of the training. I called to reschedule. Unfortunately, there were no scheduled training dates in the future in my area yet, but the representative offered me a 30-day extension of access to the website so that I could continue to familiarize myself until I could attend training.

When I returned from the funeral, buyers' remorse had set in and I decided I wanted to get my money back. When I called, the representative tried to sound sympathetic as he explained that the deadline for requesting my money back had passed. The guarantee was only through the second day of the scheduled training. And that training had happened the weekend before. He pointed out that the purchase agreement I had signed clearly indicated this to be the case and there really wasn’t anything he could do. I had signed the agreement, and I therefore owed the company the money. The company would happily provide the training in the future.

That evening, I read every word of that purchase agreement. I had also received my credit card bill which indicated that the price had been charged the day after the seminar. But the purchase agreement, in addition to stating that I could only receive my money back if I requested it before the end of the scheduled training, stated that my credit card would not be billed until after the training.

Image by NobMouse via Flickr

I called the company back. I pointed out that I did not believe it was appropriate for me to be held to the terms of a purchase agreement when the company hadn’t followed the terms itself. I also pointed out that I thought it would not be in the best interests of the company to have me, a very dissatisfied customer, seated among other customers who may not have had a negative experience yet, but I could help that scenario along. If the company refused to return my money, I promised that I would attend their training in the future, and I would use that opportunity to explain how unhappy I was with the deceptive and high-pressure sales techniques of the company. It took elevation of the issue to several levels above the representative with whom I first spoke, but after consultation with their legal department, the company finally agreed to return my money in full.

Truthfully, I probably did learn at least a few of the secrets of the Trump family’s wealth protection:

• always read the fine print, even after signing an agreement;
• don’t accept “no” for an answer; and
• don’t be afraid to use intimidating tactics to get what you want.

Day 14 - Paperclips

Image by David Masters via Flickr                

One thing I have learned from Toastmasters is that even the most commonplace items can provide topics for interesting speeches. One of the earliest Table Topics questions I observed involved volunteers being handed a variety of common office items with instructions to describe how and why they came to invent the items.  The responses were inventive and creative, but they provided just a taste of the surprising, even fascinating facts, and some myths, that make up the story of the common paperclip.

The paperclip's history begins with the first patent being awarded to Samuel B. Fay in the United States in 1867.  That design was intended to attach labels to garments and fabric.  Just 10 years later, in 1877, Erlman J. Wright patented the first version explicitly intended to clip sheets of paper together.  But neither of these patents were for the design we know of as the Gem paperclip.  That design was never patented, which contributes to a long-standing myth that the first paperclip was invented and produced in Norway.  Norwegian Johan Vaaler patented his design in both Germany and the United States in 1901.  

Vaaler paperclip design from Wikipedia

The myth of the Norwegian origin of the paperclip really gained ground after World War II.   When the Germans prohibited wearing pins including the Norwegian flag or insignias or portraits of the king, the Norwegians began to wear paperclips on their lapels as a symbol of their solidarity against the Nazis.

Sandvika Norway paper clip via
Wikipedia

Never mind that Johan Vaaler’s design wasn’t very practical – it consisted of only one loop, not the double loop that we know.  The coincidence of the myth of the Norwegian origin and the fact of the Norwegians wearing paperclips during the war led to the Norwegians erecting a large model of the Gem clip in Sandvika, Norway several years after the end of World War II.

In 1998, the myth of the Norwegian origin of the paperclip was still prevalent, along with the embellishment which transformed the tale of the lapel paperclip from a symbol of resistance against the Nazis to a symbol of solidarity with the Jews.  When students at Whitwell Middle School in Whitwell, TN, asked their teacher if they could collect something as part of their unit on the Holocaust to get a concrete idea of just how big the number six million is, they discovered the paperclip’s myths and set the goal of collecting six million.

By 2001, the eighth graders had collected not six, but 30 million paper clips.  They had received and cataloged 30,000 letters about their project.  And they had received a donation of a box car that had been used to transport Jews, gypsies, and others considered undesirable by the Nazis, to concentration camps.  Transporting the box car included crossing the Atlantic on the chartered Norwegian freighter “MS Blue Sky,” continuing the myth of the Norwegian connection.  The box car now forms the centerpiece of the Children’s Holocaust Memorial.  The documentary “Paper Clips” retells the whole story.

A footnote, related to World War II but not included in the Whitwell Middle School Paper Clip Project, is that another post-World War II effort, code-named “Project Paperclip,” resulted in the immigration of more than 700 German scientists into the United States, including Werner von Braun and 125 rocket scientists who contributed significantly to the development of the NASA space program in the 1950s and 1960s.

Image by kylemac via Flickr

The final example of the fascination that can come with paperclips began in 2005 when Canadian Kyle MacDonald posted an offer on Craig’s list to trade a red paper clip for anything of greater value that he could continue to trade, with the goal of bartering his way to home ownership.  One year and one day later, after 14 trades, he had his house – in a small town in Saskatchewan.

The trade that propelled the bartering to a higher level for Kyle was the opportunity to spend half a day with Alice Cooper.  And the trivia highlight for me in all of this is that before moving to his next trade, Kyle was asked to join Cooper on tour in – of all places – Fargo, ND.

As I think back to that Table Topics exercise, I can’t recall a more imaginative response than the actual story I discovered through research about the humble paperclip.  I hope that I have provided you with some entertainment, along with the lesson that there is no subject is too humble to be considered as a topic of a Toastmasters speech.

Warming Up - Exercise 17

It’s Not Easy Being Married to Alex

            It’s not easy being married to Alex. At the same time, I wouldn’t trade places with anyone. He’s mine.  I won’t let him go, and I won’t let anyone try to take him away. And I hope by the time I end this piece, you’ll all understand how I can say all those things and mean them.

            First, Alex is a Brit. More precisely, he is a Geordie, from the extreme north-east of England, near Newcastle, 60 miles south of Scottland. And that means he speaks with a funny accent. It’s not a posh Oxbridge upper class accent – he speaks Geordie.  It goes something like this, “Eeeh, it was narf pissin down last night.” And if I have to ask him more than once to repeat what he said, he says, “Aw, forgerrit.”

            He uses expressions that don’t mean what I think they mean. "Wa George" means his uncle George.  And "our kid" means his younger brother Wayne, not our son Simon. I nearly fell out of my chair the day he started telling me about when he “served his time.”  He meant when he served his engineering apprenticeship, not a jail or prison sentence. When I ask him a question, like, “Do you think I should call my Dad?” He’ll respond, “I think you should do.” “Do what?” says I.

            He uses strange weights and measures. It’s difficult enough to keep track of my progress maintaining (ha, ha) my weight, but for him to understand me, I have to track my numbers in both pounds and something called stones. 140 pounds – my target weight – is 10 stone. That number is so small I can’t figure out how anyone can weigh so little.

            Second, Alex is an extreme extrovert.

      He’ll talk to anyone. If there is someone in the elevator when we get in, Alex will strike up a conversation. He’ll talk to anyone about anything. The weather, religion, politics. I mean it – about anything. And he’ll talk to anyone about anyone else he knows. When he travels to England I cringe when I think of the number of people he has had access to there – people who then know my deepest darkest secrets.

            I had to learn to behave like an extrovert in order not to be invisible next to him.  I discovered this when a friend of a friend called to invite Alex and me to a party. Alex was working in Abu Dhabi at the time, so I told her I would be happy to come, but Alex was out of the country. She could barely disguise her disappointment.

            A few years back, one of my Toastmasters clubs held a holiday party at the Fort Meyer Officers’ Club. I had weeks to prepare a toast for the event. But on the night, once Alex had introduced himself to everyone, one of the club officers invited Alex to give a toast, too. He did. His was better than mine.

            Third, Alex is, well, Alex.

            He doesn’t have even a nodding acquaintance with antecedents. While we are driving down the road, Alex will turn to me and tell me something out of the blue like, “That was pretty stupid of him.” I don’t know what “that” or who “him” refers to. I’m just supposed to know. He expects me to be able to read his mind.

            He loves an argument. His favorite topic is the American Revolution which he always claims was really just a tax write-off to get rid of the colonials.

            He constantly asks me if I have my keys, my badge, my green bag, my lunch, you name it before we leave the house – as though I were his child, not his wife. But when he is in England I often discover I have run out of clean underwear – because he wasn't around to pay attention and remind me.

            The bottom line – it is not easy being married to Alex. I don’t always understand him, even when I understand his words. But if I don’t pay attention to what he says, I may learn from strangers that they know what I didn’t understand. Then, because he loves an argument, I can’t even let him know when I’m upset because that just gives him another opportunity for his favorite activity. 

Warming Up - Exercise 16

Context is Everything

       What we see, hear, and understand is shaped by contest.  To illustrate, here’s a story of how what we understand serves as context.

       Many years ago, before cell phones, Google earth, and GPS, I was at an event in Berkeley, California, with my friend Doug who introduced me to one of his high school friends, Paul. After the introduction, Doug asked if anything interesting had happened recently. Paul said yeah, something very interesting had happened the other day. Because Paul had to go to San Francisco, he called his sister to ask for her help to find a parking spot. His sister said she would try.  After a minute – just enough time for his sister to go to the window and look out – she told Paul she thought she had found a spot for him three spaces up from the corner of California and Van Ness. She said the spot was in front of a car that was either red or white, she couldn’t be sure about the color. So Paul drove from Berkeley to San Francisco where he found a spot just where his sister had told him to look. Behind it was a small white car with enormous red tail lights.  My friend Doug then looked over at Paul and said “Wow! That IS interesting.”

       I, on the other hand, sat there, wondering what my friend Doug has been smoking. The two of them kept on talking until I just couldn’t stand it. I finally blurted out, “What was so interesting about that story?” Doug replied, “Paul’s sister lives in San Jose. She has ESP.”

       Context is everything. What we see is shaped by context. Consider the Ebbinghaus Illusion to the right where the size of the circles around the central circles disguise the fact that both central circles are exactly the same size.

       Context is everything.  What we hear depends on context.

       A few years ago in Germany, my downstairs neighbor Tim had an African grey parrot. These birds live to be very old, and they are also very smart. They are particularly good at mimicking sounds. Tim’s bird, Francis, was no exception.  Francis was particularly adept at mimicking sounds that resulted in all eyes turning to face him. Such as at a dinner party when Francis would be left on his perch in the living room while Tim and his guests sat in the adjoining dining room – close enough for Francis to see us, but far enough away that all conversation was contained among the humans. Francis could imitate the conversation – using nonsense sounds to mimic the rising and falling intonation patterns of sentences. So we would occasionally hear him vocalizing in this way, as though he thought he could join into our conversation. But when the guests didn’t turn his way, Francis would mimic language in a manner more likely to get everyone’s attention: he spoke a string of foul-mouthed words that caused even the most sophisticated among us to look up.

       One time, Tim he had had enough of Francis’ bad language. Leaving his guests at the table, Tim took Francis into the kitchen. We heard Tim say “Bad bird” a couple of times, after which Tim returned, put Francis back onto his perch and rejoined us at the table.  Surprisingly, Francis remained quiet the rest of the evening.

       I finally had to ask Tim what he had done and why it had resulted in Francis’s change in behavior. Tim said it was simple. One day when he was putting groceries away, Francis was in the kitchen with him and to get Tim’s attention, Francis began chewing packages on the counter. Tim happened to have a frozen turkey in his hands at the time. He turned to Francis and said “Bad bird,” while he opened the freezer to put the turkey away.  Tim noticed that Francis stopped picking at the carton and became very quiet. Since then, Tim could silence Francis by bringing him into the kitchen, opening the freezer door, and say “Bad bird” first to the turkey, and then to Francis. Francis got the message.

     Context is Everything. What we see, hear, understand, and therefore know, is shaped by context. Now, when I think I see, hear, or understand something worth condemning, I make sure I understand the context before acting on that conclusion.

Warming Up - Exercise 15

Better Than The Alternative

            I really don’t understand why, now that I am over 60, every man of any age who opens doors for me, serves me in restaurants or stores or just drives my bus calls me “young lady.” Who do they think they are kidding? I’m not young. And while I am also not yet old, I clearly qualify as older. In other words, I am a person who has stopped growing at both ends and now spends all my time struggling to keep from growing in the middle. Getting old SUCKS. But it is better than the alternative.

            Getting old affects everything – Body, Mind, and Spirit. I’ve been observing this in my father recently. And I know it is time to watch out for myself.

            Let's look at Body first. Maybe it's true that life begins at fifty. But everything else starts to wear out, fall out, or spread out. Then there are the senses. With age, one's peripheral vision is reduced.  Lenses in the eye become clouded, requiring stronger light for me to be able to see. The result, I don’t recognize people I pass in the hallway.

            And then there is Hearing. I’d really like someone to answer the question, “How many times is it appropriate to say ‘What?’ before I can just nod and smile because I still didn't hear or understand a word they said?”

            Mobility is also affected. The other day my husband got stuck on the ground in our driveway when he sat down to fix a plastic part within the wheel well of our car – and then he couldn’t get up.

            Each year seems to rob me of my strength. The other day I realized I don’t have the strength needed to keep my arms raised to look at dresses on the rack during Ross’ Dress Week Event.

            Whether the body weakens more quickly than the mind is a question I still wrestle with. For example, the first area of the brain affected by memory loss handles names. And wouldn’t you know it – when I need to look up someone in a directory, I can only remember the first name. But when I meet someone in the corridor, I can only remember the last name.

            Did you hear about the 83-year-old woman who talked herself out of a speeding ticket by telling the young officer that she had to get there before she forgot where she was going?

            I spend a lot of time working on cross word puzzles, jig saw puzzles, and computer games, trying to keep the neural pathways in use to retard the rate of mental deterioration. And I joined Luminosity recently to improve my brain functioning the scientific way. Thank goodness they send me a daily reminder to complete the exercises.

           The Spirit is also affected, bringing forward different personal traits as dominant. Stubbornness is common. For example, my friend’s father is 94 and he still insists on driving to and from the hospital for “procedures.” According to hospital regulations, patients are required to be escorted out in a wheelchair when being discharged. A student nurse was having some trouble with an elderly gentleman who insisted that he did not need a wheelchair. After some discussion about rules being rules, he reluctantly agreed. As she was wheeling him out, the student nurse asked the man if his wife was going to pick him up. "I don't know," he replied. "She's still upstairs in the bathroom changing out of her hospital gown."

            I have my own serenity prayer: God grant me the serenity 
to do the things I can do; courage to ask for help with things I can’t; and wisdom to know the difference.

            In closing, I am reminded of a group of residents at my Dad’s former independent living apartment who were sitting around talking about their ailments. One woman complained that her arms are so weak she can barely hold a cup of coffee. Another followed up that her cataracts are so bad she can't even see her coffee.  A gentleman added that he can't turn his head because of the arthritis in his neck, to which several nodded in agreement.  Another man reported that his blood pressure pills make him dizzy. "I guess that's the price we pay for getting old," he winced as he shook his head. There was a short moment of silence. Then the optimist among them spoke up. "Well, it's not that bad," she said. "Thank God, we can all still drive"!

Warming Up - Exercise 14

Out Of Africa

Africa is a continent of stories.  This is a taste of just a few of them.

Karen Blixen’s autobiography, Out of Africa, opens with the line, I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills. Blixen’s story is of her life in Kenya from 1914 until 1931, during which she and her husband operated a coffee plantation until they divorced in 1921.  Blixen returned to Denmark in 1931 and wrote her autobiography which was made into a movie with the same name in 1985.

Whether you consider her attitude towards the Africans as compassionate, patrician, or bordering on patronizing, she was a compelling story teller who conveyed her love of Africa through her stories.

My next tale of Africa is a story about Jewel McKee, a friend I met in Africa. Jewel’s story might begin, “I once had a mountain in Africa.”  After trekking in the Himalayas five times, in the Alps several times, and in mountains around the America, it was no surprise to me that Jewel took her last few days in Africa in 2004 to climb Mt. Kenya before she transferred back to the U.S. from Eritrea.

Jewel identifies three significant rewards from trekking.

• Number One - The challenge of overcoming a sense of limitations, a trait that spills over into other aspects of life—like learning Chinese.
• Number Two - The enrichment of observing different cultures. She takes a sketchbook with her and draws the villagers, porters and other hikers. 
• Number Three - The chance to help. During her treks, she met mountain people who live in poverty and can’t even send their children to school. When she retires, she would like to get involved with a group like Habitat for Humanity or UNESCO to help preserve mountain villages and improve the lives of the people. 

I characterize Jewel’s attitude as the epitome of passion.

My third tale is from Sandra Bagley, another friend I met in Africa. If Sandra Bagley were to write her African story, it might begin with the line, “I once had a clinic in Africa.”  In 2002, the Sisters of the Good Shepherd in Antananarivo began a supplemental nutrition program for single mothers whose infants were below normal weight. The program gives food to the nursing mothers to maximize the opportunity for their children to thrive. In order to insure that the women get maximum benefit from the food being provided, in 2003 Dr. Bagley began a medical clinic that evaluates and treats the mothers and children for underlying medical conditions, such as failure to thrive, parasites, worms, malaria and pneumonia. While food for the program is provided by U.S. Government grants, the medical equipment used were Dr. Bagley’s personal items.  As she readied for her transfer to Ruwanda, she applied for and received funds from the J. Kirby Simon Trust to purchase medical equipment to leave behind for the clinic.

I consider Sandra Bagley’s African adventures to illustrate her attitude of compassion.

As for my African story, it would begin with “I once had a soccer team in Africa.”

It’s not that I owned a soccer team, or even that I managed a soccer team.  They managed me.  And I certainly wasn’t their coach.  There must be a word that accurately portrays my relationship with the team.

Opportunity in this case came in the shape of a group of 8 Eritrean boys who looked like they were about 6 years old, but turned out to be between 11 and 14.  They were looking for donations to buy uniforms.  They were somewhat convincing – or I was somewhat charmed by them – so I gave them a small amount – enough to buy shorts and shirts for three of them.  In addition to the 300 nakfa (local currency), they left with my telephone number written in ink on the palm of the tallest of them and a promise that they could be trusted to buy uniforms – not candy bars or whatever else was tempting to Eritrean pre-teens – with my donation.  I really expected to see nothing more of them.

The next Saturday, they called and arranged to meet me the next day to show me that they had used my donation to buy uniforms.  Instead of the 8 boys I met the week before, there were 14 on Sunday morning.  And from that day until my departure from Eritrea in June, I spent each Sunday morning watching them play soccer.  Afterwards, they came to my house to have sandwiches, popcorn, chips, and soft drinks and we would often watch a movie.

In addition to all the other wonderful people I met in Africa, including Sandra Bagley and Jewel McKee, my soccer team remains the centerpiece of my exceptional African adventure.

Warming Up - Exercise 10

Blink! 

How long does it take to blink?  A second?  Half a second?  How much can you learn about someone in the blink of an eye?  These questions lead to some interesting concepts in Malcolm Gladwell’s best seller, Blink:  The Power of Thinking Without Thinking.

In his book, Gladwell presents a number of examples that initially seem counterintuitive, especially to Baby Boomers and bureaucrats.  We usually accept as a given that more data will make both the task of decision making easier and the results of the decision better.  Instead, Gladwell proposes that in many situations, when the decision maker is an expert, less is really better.

One example that I found compelling concerns determining the likelihood that a physician may be sued for malpractice.  Gladwell proposes two scenarios and asks which would provide the average person with the information needed to determine which doctor has been, or will be, sued.  In option one, the assessor would have information about the doctor’s training and credentials and records showing how many errors the doctor has made over the past years.  In option two, the assessor would be able to listen in on very brief snippets of conversation between each doctor and his or her patients.  Gladwell’s surprising assertion is that option two provides more relevant information.  You see, people don’t sue doctors just because they’ve been harmed by shoddy medical care.  People sue doctors because they’ve been harmed by shoddy medical care and something else happens to them.  People sue doctors when things go wrong – but they sue the doctor they believe didn’t care.  This is why there is more relevant information available in overheard conversations between doctors and their patients if the question to be answered is “Which doctor is more likely to be sued for malpractice.”

In fact, psychologist Nalini Ambady refined the experiment that proved Gladwell’s contention by taking ten second segments of these recorded conversations and “content-filtered” the slices so that there were no recognizable words left.  The only thing left was the intonation, rhythm, and pitch.  And using only that much information, she was able to predict which doctors got sued and which didn’t.

A “blink’s” worth of information, when presented to an expert, is enough to predict certain behaviors.  Gladwell provides many more such examples to support his theory that we can accurately process information even when it doesn’t seem as though we have had enough time to process any information.  Yet, we continue to look for more and more data on which to base decisions.  And we continue to propose more study, more research, and pilots from which we can gather even more data before we commit to making changes.

But Gladwell also points out the dangers of acting too quickly on the basis of first impressions.  He identifies the all-too-common mistake of making decisions on the basis of appearances as the “Warren Harding Error,” after the 29^th President of the United States who served for just over two years.  Historians have often identified President Harding as one of the worst in U.S. history.  Warren Harding became president in 1921 at least in some part because to many people, he looked like a President.  

To explain the extent of the challenge we face overcoming the “Warren Harding Error,” Gladwell describes the Implicit Association Test or IAT.  The premise of the IAT is that we make connections more quickly between pairs of ideas that are already related in our minds than we do between pairs of ideas that are unfamiliar.  The website, Understanding Prejudice, explains that the IAT reveals unconscious biases regarding people of different races, genders, religions, or other characteristics.  And the unconscious bias that the IAT has been uncovering for the longest period of time is based on race.  To test out Gladwell’s theories, I completed the IAT for myself.  After all, Gladwell himself – the mixed race child of a white father and Jamaican mother – reported that his IAT results consistently rated him as having a “moderate automatic preference for whites.”

I tried my hand at two of the IATs available on the Project Implicit site.  And I can report that my results are consistent with Gladwell’s contentions.  This statement will be more meaningful later, so let me repeat it.  My results are consistent with Gladwell’s contentions.

You see, Gladwell contends that the “automatic preference” is unlikely to change over time.  I have taken two different IATs consistently over the past several days.  And the results of my taking the Race (i.e., Black-White) IAT, have been consistent – and consistently other than what I want the results to be.  The results over the past three weeks reveal that I have a “moderate” to “strong” automatic preference for whites.  This is not a result I want.  But since the IAT reveals “unconscious” associations, I shouldn’t be surprised by the consistency.  No one has to choose positive associations with the dominant group.  The fact that the associations are revealed should not, therefore, be surprising.

But on the other IAT – the Arab-Muslim IAT – my results have been quite the opposite:  The results on that IAT show “little to no automatic preference between Arab Muslims and Other People.”  In fact, once the result even showed “a slight automatic preference for Arab Muslims compared to Other People.”

How can I claim that my results – which appear contradictory themselves – are consistent with Gladwell’s contentions, especially since he proposes two apparently contradictory notions?  His first contention is that we don’t need to spend so much time gathering and analyzing data to make accurate decisions.  His second contention is that we need to avoid making decisions on the basis of only first impressions.  

But Gladwell also provides some interesting – and optimistic – ideas for how to take advantage of his arguments behind each of these two ideas.  You see, he learned that there is one way to change the IAT results.  And that one way probably explains why the results of my Arab-Muslim IAT show such a positive stance.

Gladwell reports that a student of one of Project Implicit’s three Principle Investigators has taken the Race IAT every day.  And every day the results were the same, until one day when his results reported a positive association with blacks.  This result was so puzzling that the student spent a lot of time trying to figure out what was different that morning.  Finally, he realized that he had spent the morning watching the Olympics, and in the space of those several hours, he saw some of the most powerful black athletes in the world.  His mind was full of positive associations with powerful black athletes, which translated into more positive unconscious associations with blacks generally.

The way to change the IAT results is to become accustomed to people in the other category.  Even more than that, to become involved with people in the other category in a manner that increases the positive thoughts you have about the other category.

And this is why I believe my results when taking the Arab-Muslim IAT are so different from the results of my taking the Race IAT – I spent the majority of my career with the Department of State in the Arab world where I have met some of the most passionate and compassionate people in the world.  But my attitude wasn’t always so positive.  I am ashamed to admit that I recall the days when my automatic response in a word association exercise to “Palestinian” would have been “terrorist.”  The connections between “Arab” or “Muslim” or “Palestinian” and negative images were in the newspapers, on TV, in the movies every single day.

Our first impressions are the result of two things:  our experiences and our environment.  By changing the environment, thereby changing our experiences, we can change our unconscious impressions.  Dr. Norman Vincent Peale said it in other words way back in 1952 in the title of his most widely read book, The Power of Positive Thinking.  

This is why I think the message of Blink! is so important.  By getting involved with the diversity around us, we can change our implicit associations.  We can change our unconscious first impressions.  We can do it.  And we must.

Warming Up - Exercise 9

I’m from Minnesota

My name is Sandra, and I come from Minnesota.  I think that is the simplest way to begin my story because I’ve lived in enough different places to know that places become significant characters in my life. 

One of my most important places in my life is Dudrey Court, a two-block long street, spanning 3^rd to 5^thAvenue South, in my hometown.  It was at the time one of only two streets in town with a name instead of being numbered.  

But though Dudrey Court was short in length, and therefore small in stature, it played an enormous part in my life.

You see, people who live on Dudrey Court don’t really ever move away.  Take my family, for example.  My parent's first house was 307 Dudrey Court, a two-bedroom bungalow.  My parents had always planned to have five children, and Dad turned the bungalow into a three-bedroom story-and-a-half by converting the unfinished attic into a third bedroom when there were four of us.  That meant Mom and Dad had a bedroom, the two boys had a bedroom and we two girls had a bedroom.  And once the planned fifth baby got too big to remain in a crib in my parent’s room, they planned to put bunk beds into one of the rooms to accommodate the third boy or girl.  But my parents’ plan to have five children collided with the reality of my two youngest brothers arriving a month early as unexpected twins.

Twins complicate things.  My parents realized neither bedroom was big enough for four children.  And there wasn’t enough room on the small lot to expand the house.  In fact, none of the houses on Dudrey Court in those days had more than three bedrooms, but the houses on the east side sat on bigger lots.  So when the family in 312 Dudrey Court put their house on the market, my dad bought it, knowing he could add bedrooms at the back of the house.  And “voila.”  Our previous “across-the-street” neighbors, the Simonitsches, became our new “next-door” neighbors.  And our former “next-door” neighbors, the Colemans, became our new “across-the-street” neighbors. 

Since then, three other families have moved from small to larger houses on the street, or vice versa, as family sizes increased or decreased.  And families in those days, in that place, generally did increase.  The Simonitsches had eight children, spaced so that there was one of them corresponding in age to each of our six kids.  Margaret was my age -- and therefore my best friend.  The Colemans had four children, including twins a year older than my twin brothers; their oldest, Steve, was the same age as my brother Wayne, making it a virtually certainty that they would become best friends. 

Because Dudrey Court was so short, it wasn’t on the route to get anywhere.  As a result, it was a safe playground.  We played our version of baseball in the street. When we played kick-the-can or hide-and-go-seek, we set the goal in the middle of the street.  One of Mr. Carlson’s driveways had enough of a slope on it that we used it to launch ourselves on skates into the street.  So long as we stayed away from the avenues, we were safe. Perhaps because the street was our playground, we were referred to by outsiders as “the Dudrey Court Gang.”

Occasionally a family had to move from the neighborhood.  Our next-door neighbors, the Simonitsches, moved to Wisconsin Dells when Mr. Simonitsch changed jobs. Their oldest daughter, Margaret, had completed her freshman year of college in town, so the family agreed she would remain in the finished basement apartment of the house to complete college.  They rented the rest of the house to a young couple. Margaret asked me if I would like to share the apartment, rent-free, as she wasn’t sure she wanted to live entirely on her own after having been surrounded by so many siblings. But even though my parents could have kept nearly as close a watch on my activities by just looking out the dining room window into the basement window next door, they wouldn’t allow it! I have often thought that my apparent wanderlust may have started then – as a way to get even with my parents for not allowing me to move out of their house.

In August 1969, I finally did move away from Dudrey Court – at least I moved away physically. But when Margaret Simonitsch’s mother Mary passed away in a small town in Wisconsin a few years ago, the Dudrey Court gang reunited online, in spirit, as we mourned together the passing of one of Dudrey Court’s matriarchs, even though more than forty years had passed since she moved from the neighborhood. Then when my brother Brian died, the Dudrey Court gang reunited at his funeral in person. And this summer, many of us gathered for a picnic - just for the pleasure of seeing one another.

Dudrey Court is still a character in my life.  It always will be.

Warming Up - Exercise 8

Windfalls:  Watch Out! 

Have you ever bought a lottery ticket?  Or been tempted when the prize amount soared into the hundreds of millions?  More importantly, have you ever won big?  Well, I have. But I’ve never bought a lottery ticket.  And those two statements go together to explain my title:  Windfalls:  Watch Out!

You see; I once won a lot of money – oh, not millions.  Just two thousand, two hundred, and nineteen dollars.  Not millions, but in November of 1972, it meant just about as much to me.  It was my windfall and it made the difference between my desire to go to graduate school and the means for me to do so.

Two thousand, two hundred, and nineteen dollars in 1972 was enough for me to pay the in-state fees and six months of living expenses so I could enroll at San Francisco State University.  That led to a degree, and a job overseas, which brought me into contact with the diplomatic corps, eventually leading to my entry into the Department of State as a Foreign Service Officer.  Sounds like a good ending, right?  Well, let’s go back to the beginning.

In November of 1972, I was working in Berkeley, California, earning $500 per month.  My rent was $125 a month.  My car payment was $80 a month.  My student loan payments were $100 a month.  After taxes, there wasn’t much left for anything else.  But I wanted to go to graduate school.  In fact, I had already applied and been accepted.  But I didn’t know how I was going to pay for it.  And then, one day, I got up late, late enough that I hadn’t left for work yet when the Channel 7 producer of Pippa Scott’s morning TV program called to ask if I would be willing to play their “name that tune” game.   

My telephone number was selected from the telephone book.  I had 5 minutes between the call from the producer to the second call with Pippa herself, just long enough to find the issue of the San Francisco Chronicle from the previous week with a column by Herb Kaen, my favorite columnist, that I recalled contained a clue to the answer.

I didn’t even have a television set.  So I had to listen to the tinny tune through the telephone receiver.  In response to Pippa’s question of whether I could name that tune, I responded somewhat hesitatingly, “I understand it is the theme from the movie ‘They Call Me Mr. Tibbs.’” I thought that was a clue.

Imagine my surprise when Pippa told me I was right.  So instead of the consolation prize of dinner for two in a restaurant in San Francisco, she told me I would receive a check for $2,219 on her program the next morning.

So I’m thinking that you’re thinking that all of this is still good news, right?  What’s the deal with my warning to watch out for windfalls?

The next day, I received a phone call from a friend to ask me if I was the Sandy Ferguson from Berkeley who won the money.  I said yes and asked how she knew.  She read it in Herb Kaen’s column that morning.  It seems that the producer contacted Herb Kaen to let him know that someone finally won the contest after reading his column.  So now my name is in Herb Kaen’s column.  Things are getting even better, right?  Let’s continue.

A few minutes later, the phone rang again.  This time it was a stranger who begged me to share my winnings with her.  Since my name and telephone number were in the telephone book – how else could Pippa’s producer find it? – anyone in the San Francisco Bay area could also find it.  And they did.

But what really scared me was the effect that winning the money had on my own thought process.  As I mentioned, it was enough money to allow me to enroll in graduate school.  But I didn’t do anything with the intent of getting that money.  It was entirely coincidental.  Coincidental that my number was selected from the book that day.  Coincidental that I got up late so that I hadn’t yet left for work that day.  Since I hadn’t done anything with the intent of obtaining the money, I began to think of spending it on something I had never planned to do – like taking a cruise.  When I think how I nearly wasted my windfall on something frivolous, I shudder.

After I had the check in my hands, I started looking around and my eyes fell on my 4-year-old baby blue VW bug.  It was nearly paid off, and that meant that it was getting more expensive to maintain.  I thought about getting a new car.  Now, it’s not that I thought about using my windfall to buy a new car.  My mind didn’t work that way any more.  Oh no, the first thought that crossed my mind was, “Well, I’ll just win some more money.”  That’s when it hit me.  My windfall winning had twisted my thinking.  It happened once, so why shouldn’t I expect it to happen again?

Imagine how much stronger the connection in my brain would have been if I had done something – like purchasing a lottery ticket – to win the money.

To explore my concern, I checked out the Gamblers Anonymous website.  It lists 20 questions to help determine if someone has a compulsive gambling habit.  Seven yeses mean you’re in trouble.  Fortunately, only two questions applied to me:

1. Were you reluctant to use "gambling money" for normal expenditures? 

2. After a win, did you have a strong urge to return and win more? 

So here’s the lesson I learned and my message for you:  Don’t waste money on lottery tickets.  If you buy a ticket and you don’t win, the money is gone.  But if you do win, you may just have “won” something you’d rather not have.

Next time you feel tempted to buy a lottery ticket, call me.  I have a list of a hundred good charities that can put the cost of that ticket to much better use.

Warming Up - Exercise 7

Rituals – Why We Need Them

Do we really have to put up a Christmas tree this year?  We won’t even be home to enjoy it.

I’ve heard this thought a couple of times.  I’ve even said it myself.  In fact, the version I spoke was more a statement than a question.  My then-husband and I planned to spend the Christmas holiday with my family in northern Minnesota.  Being ever so practical, I told my husband that it didn’t make any sense to put up a tree that year.  And since I had already come to that very sensible conclusion, there wasn’t much room for my husband to provide his counter arguments.  We didn’t put up a tree that year.

It wasn’t until after the holiday that he told me he felt cheated that year.  We spent the holidays with my Scandinavian family where we ate buttered lefse sprinkled with sugar on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and every other day spent at my parents’ home, but there was nothing of his Romanian traditions – no whiskey shots before each meal, no Romanian carols.  There was nothing that meant Christmas to him.  Once I realized how important the elements of tradition – the ritual of the holiday – were to him, I also realized that by not putting up a tree, I robbed both of us of an opportunity to establish some of our own uniquely Scandinavian/American-Romanian/Canadian traditions. 

Since my practical nature is likely due in large measure to the influence of my practical parents, I wasn’t surprised one Thanksgiving to hear my father say he didn’t think it was necessary for him to put up a Christmas tree that year.  It was the first Christmas after my mother’s passing the previous January.  Her death came just days after the previous year’s Christmas tree had been taken down and stored away.  I had already decided that we kids would put up the tree, lights and decorations for my father before I returned to Washington.  And that we did – most of the decorations were placed by me – Dad’s oldest child – and three-year-old Megan – Dad’s youngest grandchild.

The next year, I traveled back to Minnesota again for Christmas.  This time, my husband traveled with me.  And our son traveled to England to spend the holidays with his English relatives.  So again, I wasn’t surprised when my very practical husband pointed out that he didn’t think we needed to put up the tree that year since no one would be home on Christmas anyway.  He was a little surprised to hear me laugh so loudly in response to the idea – I couldn’t help but think of the contrast to the time so many years ago when I first said the same thing.  It felt good to know that my husband and I share that practical streak.  But since our family consists of three, I advised him that we need to know how our son would feel about skipping the tradition.  Our son’s response was that well, yes, it wasn’t necessary for us to put up the tree, especially since he’ll be gone for two weeks and we’ll be gone for eight days.  But he added that it wouldn’t be Christmas without a tree, even if was no one would be at home.


We put up the tree that week.

Warming Up - Exercise 6

To Visit Japan, A Childhood Dream

One of my earliest childhood memories is of a wooden trunk in the basement that contained my parents' mementos.  The trunk was off limits to us kids, although occasionally Mom or Dad would open it while we were in the basement and would show us some of the things in it.

My special memories of the contents of that trunk were all connected to items my father brought back from ports he visited during his days in the Merchant Marines during and in the year after World War II.  And the most important of those for me were a  kimono and fan from Japan.  I had never seen such a colorful, decorative, or soft piece of clothing as that kimono.  And it opened up a door in my curiosity that demanded I learn as much as possible about Japan and the people who lived there.

When I started school, I discovered there were a few books in the school library about Japan.  I read them all, starting with the shelves that were identified as appropriate for first graders and then continuing up the graded shelves.  By the third grade, I had finished all the available books, all the way up through those on the sixth grade shelf.

The dream of someone else also contributed to my dream.  Miss Ingram, the music teacher in our elementary school, was dedicated to igniting interest in music among her students.  Each year she organized two musical productions, operettas, in which we students starred, one for the third and fourth graders and one for the fifth and sixth graders.  The sixth grade production when I reached that age had Around the World in 60 Minutes as its theme. One piece included was the Gilbert and Sullivan tune "Three Little Girls From School Are We."  I will never forget wearing the purple silk kimono from the basement trunk in that production.  And my curiosity about Japan got a little more of a boost when Miss Ingram taught the three of us who sang the song how to open our fans one-handed with the flick of the wrist.  Until then, I had had to use both hands to pull the two wooden ends apart carefully to expose the painted scene of Japan on the delicately folded paper between the wooden handles.  By then, my dream had grown from learning as much as possible about Japan to visiting Japan.

In the following ten years, my Japan dream took a back seat to the shorter-term goals of finding and keeping best friends, passing tests, getting good grades, growing up, getting boys to notice me, getting my parents to stop noticing everything I did, and getting away from their limits and the small town I had felt I was stuck in.  Eventually I did made it away from the midwest, all the way to San Francisco where I ended up in a Masters Degree program in Teaching English as a Second Language (ESL).  My acceptance into that program was the switch that turned my dream of visiting Japan back on.

There weren't many jobs in Japan when I completed my training, so I chose Iran as my first overseas experience.  While there, I continued to dream of visiting Japan.  At the end of that two-and-a-half year-experience, I finally made it to Japan, my final stop in a two-week, multi-country trip home.  Four days in India, then four in Thailand, four in Indonesia, a day back in Thailand, and finally, four days in Tokyo.  Four days when my jaw ached the whole time because of the ear-to-ear grin that I couldn't stop.  I was in Japan!  And I loved everything I saw.

By accomplishing my dream, I learned that having a dream, and working steadily to accomplish it, made problems and disappointments, both small and large, almost disappear.

The Big Lesson

The most important lesson of this experience wasn't obvious to me until years later when my parents, my husband, and I were crossing the mall in Washington, DC.  A middle-aged Japanese man approached my father to ask for directions.  After pointing out the way, my father joined us and commented that fifty years earlier, while he was in the Pacific in the Merchant Marines, he would never have imagined that he would one day be speaking to someone from Japan in the capital of our country.

Hearing that comment made me realize how much it meant that my parents never discouraged me from my dream of going to Japan, a dream that began so shortly after the end of World War II.  It would have been easy to understand had either of my parents tried to dissuade me from my interest in our former enemy.  Instead, they encouraged the spark of interest with the hope that it would lead to other interests and a love for learning. They were right.