In honor of 2008

An image from a November trip to New Orleans to restore a double shotgun house in the Upper Ninth Ward owned by an 81 year old lady who weathered Katrina. Here's to everyone who miraculously weathered the amazingly heart-wrenching and heart-lifting events of 2008.

Mushrooms

Sometime in the night,
I fell on my nose.

I had been using it to sniff out things,
To jump on chance.

Now I’m back to breathing in
The moorings, mournings and mushrooms of winter
And finding balance on a dark floor.

Chronicles of Appreciation: University of Tennessee College of Business Administration

Cindy Raines at UT's College of Business Administration asked me to write the college's annual report, insightful profiles of teachers and descriptive pieces of particular MBA programs and school initiatives, like undergraduate trips to explore import-export companies in Australia or sabbaticals to universities in Italy or China.

I went into the assignment wondering how interesting I could make stories about the business school. I came out flying with good energy. The place is a hot house of opportunity.

Chronicles of Appreciation: CarePartners

When design partner Jim Julien and I began collaborating with CarePartners, this well-established healthcare organization was better known for one of its parts--Thoms Rehab Hospital--than for the sum total of what it provided, which included a hospice unit and a visiting care contingent.

The challenge became one of creating a new identity for the whole of the organization and giving that whole a new voice and bearing.

We conceptualized mark and stanceline (Many Hands As One), and went about developing a quarterly magazine, for both patients and the medical community, that would present this diverse, human resource group for what it was--diverse and human.

Chronicles of Appreciation: The Rathbun Center

The Lewis Rathbun Center is a hospitality house primarily serving the families of patients facing overnight and longer duration stays at Mission Hospital in Asheville.

Board and staff leadership there wanted a way to "seat" each visitor in the ethos of the place, to make each visitor comfortable-totally comfortable-with everything from kitchen appliances to washing machines to the completely voluntary nature of payment for accommodations.

The strategy became a "soft" booklet, down-sized, written in story form, that could be handed out, mailed, or placed on a nightstand or pillow.

The Rathbun Center continues to be one of the premier facilities of its kind, with a roster of former guests who live throughout the world, many of whom insist on keeping in touch and, if close by, stopping in to volunteer.

Many thanks to Adelaide Key and Kay Dossett.

Chronicles of Appreciation: Life After Cancer

In the zeitgeist of this small non-profit, the simple idea of hope can rearrange the molecules of run-away cells.

Established way before this sort of thinking began to have widespread providence, Life After Cancer is living proof that a focused support group can make a world of difference.

In communications, we wanted to set out this attitude in clear fashion, backed by inclusive, open, substantive programs.

Great thanks to Mary Rich Hill.

Chronicles of Appreciation: Boman Financial

The basic notion behind this small space campaign was to offer a gateway to planning resources for individuals with a life of their own but not necessarily the means to cause people at Merrill Lynch to vault over their desks.

The campaign, which touched in on the nervous excitement of thinking freshly about the road ahead, created a good bit of respectful chatter and, importantly, the client felt it expressed her way of seeing things in a perfectly elegant way.

Great thanks to Beccah Bowman.

Chronicles of Appreciation: Jaan Ferree

Interior designer Jaan Ferree, friend and client, wanted to create a portfolio system she could post on her site and present in consultative presentations.

Design partner Ron Zisman and I fell into a matrix of adjacent squares, each showing an aspect of the project.

The architecture fit Jaan's style of sharing exactly since she likes to point to a corner, nook, window treatment or entranceway and talk about the thinking that went into each of the choices she and her client have made.

Christmas, 2008

Up early, I walk the hill behind my house,
watching the sky.
I'm hopeful for a gap
in time and space
large enough
for a miracle
to fit through.

Florence

I ran in the mornings, in November especially,
along the banks of the water windings,
sometimes through an antique show in a park,
out the bus route to Fiesole,
stopping under an overpass to climb a bank
so I could walk back to our apartment
under yellowing sycamores.

Chronicles of Appreciation: Muddy Sneakers

Fueled in part by the phenomenal instruction and success of Richard Louv's Last Child in the Woods, Muddy Sneakers has been a passionate labor of love for all who have come in contact with it. The basic premise: expeditionary learning incorporated into the standard course of study for public school fifth graders.

Truly distinctive parts are frequency--up to 12 trips into nearby wilderness areas during each school year--and field instructor to student ratios, which are roughly 1 to 10.

This fall Muddy Sneakers served 11 schools in western North Carolina and close to 900 students.

From a communications perspective, the challenge has been to develop a brand and a brand personality inventive and large enough to work with principals, teachers, parents, kids and funders and to present all aspects of the initiative in super relevant and understandable ways.

Many thanks to Tripp Tuttle (http://www.quipcreative.com/) who teamed with me and others to congeal the look and feel of this non-profit, render a stage one web site (muddysneakers.org) and a steady stream of pieces for expositions and fund-raising events. If the kids' response to Muddy Sneakers is any indication, we have an excellent chance of modeling a good and proper, sure-fire remedy for nature deficit disorder.

I'm especially grateful to Sandy Schenck and John Huie who asked me to be a part.

Chronicles of Appreciation: Golf writing

Golf has been a life-long love affair and, like most love affairs, embodies every human emotion known to man.

Because I feel so disproportionately drawn to the game, and because of the cosmic glitch that once allowed me to shoot 69 in qualifying for a tournament (hooking me forever to Shivas Irons and Bobby Jones), I have been asked on several occasions to author programs for important golf tournaments, write about golf equipment or (once) the history of a clubhouse.

For the U.S. Women’s Amateur at the Biltmore Forest Club in Asheville, I developed a hole-by-hole player’s notebook, informed by the strategic sketches of Curtis Cup player Brenda Corrie Kuehn. I also researched and wrote summary pieces on the history of tournament play at the club, touching in on the lives of Louise Suggs, Estelle Page, P.J. Boatwright, Ben Hogan, Ralph Gudahl, and Byron Nelson.

For the 2003 USGA Senior Amateur at the Virginian, I took a similar player’s approach to describing each hole, with the program itself focused primarily on the draws of the surrounding southwest Virginia region, in general.

Over the years, too, I’ve written about the golf architecture of Donald Ross, Pete Dye, Arthur Hills and Jack Nicklaus. The writing’s been great; nevertheless, I’ve still only broken 70 once.

Chronicles of Appreciation: The Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy

I feel like saying: "From the folks who brought you Roan Mountain, here's a perspective on sustaining paradise." That's essentially the message of this "organically" beautiful book, created as the lead in a fund-raising campaign seeking $4 million to preserve vital watersheds and other significant properties in land trusts and conservancies.

Without 30 years of enormously dedicated work by the SAHC, Roan Mountain certainly would not be the magnificent wilderness area it currently is. The idea is to keep development from swarming its great flanks and to protect it and other wondrous places far into the future.

The strategy in this case held to a simple mission: To tell the conservancy's story with integrity and authority and to speak with reverence of the areas it protects.

Some of the language:

There is no place like Roan. Home to rare and endangered plants and animals that cannot survive elsewhere, it is one of the world's most important sanctuaries of biological diversity.

Its grassy balds, its thrown-down boulders, its firs and lilies and rhododendron, its stepping-stone mile-high mountains-Round Bald, Jane Bald, Grassy Ridge, Yellow Mountain, Little Hump and Hump Mountain-these precious notations on a map or in a walker's journal represent an ageless landscape crucial to save for future generations.

All in all, a passionate effort, a completely successful effort, and one that continues to work on me. In my life, Roan Mountain, which I've climbed, cleared and sketched, remains a sacred place like no other.

Many thanks to Jim Julien, designer, and Carolyn Novak, friend.

Chronicles of Appreciation: Asheville Tourism

Running in the eighties, Asheville, it will lift your spirit was the first fully choreographed campaign after a room tax established the funding source for marketing the city to a traveling public.

In television commercials under the branding, writer George Plimpton spoke of a creative environment that attracted George Vanderbilt, George Gershwin, Henry Ford and Thomas Edison and inexorably continues to inspire. Created at Price/McNabb where I worked as creative director, the campaign wrapped around the profoundly simple idea of a sophisticated and charming city within a fly-cast of deep and pristine nature.

The visitor upsurge this work triggered set off an up-building of accommodations of all kinds, from brocaded bed and breakfasts to Victorian inns to glassy hotels. More importantly, the outreach brought to our city travelers who felt at home here.

I believe we are still benefiting from the carefully articulated positioning that this campaign crystallized more than twenty years ago.

Chronicles of Appreciation: Asheville Transit Authority

In the fall of 2006, riding the bus in Asheville, thanks to a three-month trial by city government, required only the willingness to show up. Fares were waived in an effort to improve passenger numbers and hold onto a percentage of the increases after the free period came to a stop.

Working with city council and the Asheville Transit Authority, Ron Zisman (http://www.ricochet.org) and I built our strategy around the notion of swelling the city's traditional rider base while going after environmentally-aware commuters who would typically drive to in-town destinations.

In both instances, communications had to read instantly. The goal became one of instantaneous visual and verbal understanding with media that included street posters, door hangers, newspaper advertising and emblematic decals that rode on the buses themselves. At the transit center, we strung banners, created flowering pots, swept up trash and catered lunch for passengers.

The trial became a major entry in the diary of the city and, in the end, a major success story when measured against original goals. Ridership has stayed up and life in Asheville remains good to great.

Chronicles of Appreciation: The University of Tennessee

In the midst of a campaign to remind Tennessee residents of UT's presence in the life of the state, another need developed for a rich overview of the school--an orientation piece for visitors from other colleges and other countries.

Communication leaders (including my friend Katherine Key) wanted, at the very least, to balance UT's image as an NCAA powerhouse with other aspects of campus life, each holding out its own inherent drama and value.

The strategy became one of shuffling ten profiles into a single sketch book, lavishly illustrated and illuminated with historical time line and a clutch of effervescent sidebars on subjects like dance marathons and cosmochemistry. We also included a "Harper's Index" fact page and, in the end, brief descriptions of the nine colleges within the University. But the central theater of the piece rests in the ten profiles chosen, from Marco Institute medieval studies to campus internationalism to the court-side philosophies of Pat Summitt.

Published in the spring of 2007, the brochure (later imported to UT's web site) set off a storm of interest beyond its original purpose.

Writes Nancy McGlasson, director of undergraduate admissions: "Congratulations. . .for this magnificent piece! I would love to have lots of them for special. . .groups and let me know if we should work up a list of these sorts of things. Truly, this is the prettiest piece like this I have EVER SEEN and I see a lot of them. Get this, I cannot decide which spread is my favorite two pages."

Many thanks to Katherine Key for stewarding this project and to Alison Fields who co-drafted the profiles with me.

Chronicles of Appreciation: HandMade in America

With partner Brad Campbell, I wrote the first edition of The Craft Heritage Trails of Western North Carolina and, years down the line, wrote two subsequent editions. This richly woven compendium of craft and art in the mountain counties of the state, commissioned and published by HandMade in America (an Asheville-based, but nationally celebrated non-profit), has inspired an active following—there are over 80,000 copies sold, presumably dog-eared, flagged and stuffed with scribbled reminders.

The book grew out of a strategy to build community between studios, galleries and visitors to the region and to make handmade work universally more accessible from an appreciative and experiential point of view. In short, it’s an outright celebration.

I sat in the original planning meetings for HandMade, led by Becky Anderson and Dan Ray, and feel extremely fortunate to have been involved in the unfolding of overall strategies and a ten year sequence of communications pieces.

Over that period, the handmade community has grown in leaps and bounds and the third edition of the trails book carries 200 fresh listings.

Chronicles of Appreciation: Biltmore Estate

I began working on Biltmore Estate communications when admission was seven dollars and about 300,000 visitors dropped by each year. Some 15 years later, at the end of my creative journey with the Estate, guest numbers had risen to 750,000 and tickets to just under $30.

In the in-between years, I had the good fortune to design advertising programs and creative strategy for Biltmore around travel trends, gas prices, and a near continuous run of new openings, including the Downstairs, the Winery complex and Christmas (now the Estate’s most visitor-drenched time frame.)

We recast the Estate’s identity (as an “Estate” as opposed to a “House and Gardens”) and we positioned the property as a place of unfolding seasons and events, each celebrated in the grand manner of the Vanderbilt legacy with brand extensions into wines and furniture and other exquisite things.

Living close by, I often visit, and in 2003, wrote the Estate’s new visitor’s guide.

It’s great that we achieved such enormous successes over a short time frame but, truthfully, what I most cherish are the many years, at odd times of day, exploring, photographing and writing about this magnificent grande dame—infused as she is with such atrocious imagination. My daughters, I’m fairly certain, still consider Biltmore House their second childhood home.

Chronicles of Appreciation: Grandfather Mountain

It's called Grandfather Mountain because, coming from Foscoe, it looks like the profile of a bearded man and because, geologically speaking, it’s older than most anything else on the planet. And about the experience of visiting—in the snowy cold, in whipping winds, in the time of flowering serviceberry or rhododendron, when blueberries and bagpipes arrive down on McCrae Meadows or when clouds cotton-stuff the valleys and leaves melt into reds and yellows and violets—in all those times, you’re in a zone of overwhelming gratitude. And you wonder: what could have possibly been so important to have pressed me down before I rose to the occasion of coming here?

In working with all this as a consultant to the mountain, our main challenge came down to discovering the most compelling reason for visits across seasons and to detailing enough of the experience—manmade and natural—to attract first-timers.

After focus groups led us to feelings and biases, we developed Nature on a whole different level and reworked all image materials, gate package and advertising, which later informed a comprehensive web site.

Looking back on the many years of connection with Grandfather, there are few experiences on Earth that can match crossing a “closed” summit parking lot behind Harris Prevost in a hundred-mile-an-hour gale. (As Catherine Morton says, “This is a serious mountain.”)

I am deeply appreciative of my friendship with the Morton family through years of connection with Grandfather and, as always, with Harris and Scottie Prevost.

The story: Coming around full circle

I started my career as a journalist, working for a daily newspaper that covered the coal counties of Southwest Virginia. A few weeks after I joined the paper, fresh from journalism school, I made a routine call to the sheriff's department in a mountainous county. A deputy there said, “Well, there is one thing that happened,” then proceeded to tell me about a fire in a remote valley in which three children burned to death. He referred me to a social worker who knew the family. Apparently a single mother had left her home to gather in water from a nearby well when the house erupted in flames from an over-turned kerosene lantern. It was a small frame cottage and it went up like dried moss. All the mother could do, the social worker said, was stand at the window and scream for her children.

The story means more to me today than it did when I wrote it. Then it was news and a pat on the back. Now there’s something unforgettable in its retelling.

I spent about three years as a journalist; some of that time writing about troop exercises on the Czech border and how to navigate the bahnhof as an Army writer in Germany.

Once back in the states, I took a job in advertising--as a copywriter--veering off from straight reporting.

I soon discovered that creative work, the craft of it, pretty much boiled down to beseeching the universe for a concept. Even so, a lot of great work spun around the retelling of human experience; around some form of story that triggered a response--wonder, maybe, or dismay, or curiosity. In other words, the best work, as I saw it, even in the micro-world of a :30 commercial, once again had to do with story.

When the nineties drew to a close, the world I knew began to shift. Less advertising, more work involving longer pieces; more web work, more brochures, more magazine development (in print and on-line), more portraits of causes and institutions.

Now I’m part of another sea change: blogging as a world-wide phenomenon. As a communicator, I love the idea of it and I’m crazy about the form. Here’s why:

• It’s fast. You can get a blog out as quickly as an email; okay, it can be an email—to virtually any constituency you want to clump together in a working list-serve, whether for yourself, a social change organization, small business or non-profit.

• It’s flexible. You can totally tailor what you want to say to fit and resonate with anyone in the known world

• It has an inherent viral quality. And can be passed along willy-nilly or purposefully across vast social networks

• You can marry all the strategic, conceptual and visual impact of advertising with the intimacy of a diary and/or the news-worthy and linear qualities of good reporting

• And, finally, it’s a great medium for telling stories--long or short stories, rambling or to the point, epic or not, the stuff of good journalism, good advertising and good memory.

Looking back, I feel like I’ve come a long way from the nervous chat I had with a social worker in Ft. Blackmore, Virginia, thirty-five years ago. But I’ve also come all the way back around to that very starting place. Back to the importance of a critical piece of information, well-told, delivered in a timely manner, then retold and passed along (sometimes with great rapidity) person to person, story to story to story to story until it’s embedded in the social fabric and the history of our time, and a part of the human experience.