Outliving the Suburbs, but Not Our Home

At dusk we walk the dogs.

As the house empties the evenings are the biggest change.

There was a time when I would rush home from work to help with the bath, pajamas, teeth-brushing, story-telling and to bed before the adults returned to the kitchen for a dinner of our own.

The routine changed as they learned to feed themselves and made sure the parents stayed away as they covered up on their way to the shower.

And now we come home and the lone remaining child is already upstairs doing things where we have no logical role.  Maybe we can look over a paper or answer high impact questions like: “I'm out of toothpaste.” “Why is it so hot in this house?”  “Is the Wifi broken?”

But other than that we are left to our own devices.  But what are those devices?

I’ve asked several friends whose nests have emptied what they do at night?

Seven o’clock is the new witching hour.

Our only remaining live-in child gets home from swim practice at six thirty, the elaborate meal of a protein, starch and veggie is eaten standing up at the kitchen counter much to my wife’s dismay.  But the child hurries back up to her room for homework, college applications and social connection via social media.

So now what?  It’s seven o’clock.

I used to sneak into my den for a few minutes of work or reading or writing when they were young.  Now I have the time alone, but I don’t want it.

So we walk the dogs down the street, up to the elementary school where they can go off leash to run.

At the school there are parents pushing strollers through the adjacent playground, maybe someone is on a swing, another is catching a child swirling down a slide.

On the blacktop there is a father chasing a bicycle as a little boy with helmet, knee pads and elbow pads wobbles back and forth before straightening his front tire and heading for the safety of the grassy baseball field.

Onto the soccer field we go, a practice of middle schoolers in full swing, a few parents linger along the sidelines.  When the dogs get too close and the snares from the sideline parents too intense, we call for them to come.

These are all scenes we have run through.  We have been on that playground, pushed a bike through that parking lot, anxiously cheered a child from those sidelines.

But now it’s all sidelines.

It’s getting dark and practices need to end, parents trying to get home, children stretching for one more chance at daylight.

A father in the parking lot implores his child to come to the car, as the little boy tries, in vain, to make one final shot on the basketball court before running to the open door.

“We don’t belong here anymore,” I say, as the dogs go into a trot on the way back home.  “The suburbs served their purpose, now it’s time for someone else to be on this street with their kids, their basketball, their dogs and leashes.”

These nightly walks are a trip through our lives, a splendid one at that.  Our kids played on those fields, but now they are gone and we should be too.

“We’re not selling the house,” she says.

“Why not?”

“You can’t sell their childhood while they are in college, they need a place to come home to.”

“We’re not going to be homeless, we’ll move someplace else.  The suburbs are built for families.  We have nothing to rush home to in the evening, our job here is done.”

“The kids need to know they can come home.  To their home, not some house where they stay in a guest bedroom.”

We went from living in a dorm, to an apartment in a city, to the suburbs.  But somewhere after suburbs, but before Florida or a “community”, where do you go? 

A friend of mine, a city dweller, called the suburbs soul-less.  I disagree.  The soul of the suburbs are the family’s that live there.  But when the kids leave the house, a light goes out. 

Had we outlived our suburban purpose?

Thanksgiving comes and everybody rushes home.  The kids love their beds and their bedrooms, their dogs and their place on the couch with unrivaled affection.  Rooms we haven’t entered in months are now filled with people and friends, empty bottles and cups, dented cushions and noise that is music to any parent’s ears.

I get it. 

The children are fiercely defensive of their homestead, their bedrooms, their backyard, their pets.  They want it all hermetically sealed in a place they remember when they were small(er).  We are not meant to live in museums.  They are places to visit, pause and remember. 

But what are we to do between visits?

Will the World Forgive?

In America we live in bubbles.

One bubble rolls its eyes every time the President opens his mouth, wondering where the truth lies.

The other bubble stands and cheers every time he pushes a world leader out of the way.

Outside our borders and beyond our walls the world seems to have made up its mind.

Every time I talk with someone from another country they trip over themselves to find a way to bring up the topic of President Trump.  It often begins with: "You didn't vote for him, did you?"

In London they seem mildly embarrassed for us, as if something bad happened to a friend. They mumble something about Brexit, but the tabloids are unforgiving.

At a restaurant in Italy, when they learn you are from America, they launch into a re-telling of some story about Silvio Berlusconi as if to say:  "I understand."

In a cab in Croatia talk turns to politics and Washington and the state of our United States.

As the storm raged in Charlottesville and the President wondered aloud whether the KKK or the anti-KKK protesters were at fault, the cabbie's mood brightened when we told him we were from Washington, DC.

He was kind to us, but must have marveled at our astonishing lack of knowledge about a war that occurred in his backyard during the Clinton Administration.

But he wasn't judging us on that.

"Trump is a joke," he said in an accent that sounded like Vladimir Putin.  "But don't worry, America is still the greatest country in the world."

"Why do you think that?" I asked, "I mean with all that's going on?"

"We learned at an early age that America is the greatest country. The greatest economy and strongest military," he said. "During the war there was an aircraft carrier right out there," he said, pointing to the perfect blue of the Adriatic Sea. "That makes an impression on you."

"And the impression isn't ruined by President Trump?"

"This is a blip," he says. "Trump is not America.  One mistake does not ruin your greatness."

Days later a chef on the island of Hvar is, to me, remarkably fluent in the issues of Trump, North Korea and Hillary's email server.

"So what do you think?" I ask.

"You have a child running your country," he said. "On election night we were watching and couldn't believe it. Lots of countries are making this mistake, but America?"

"So does this make us like everybody else?" I asked.

"People here were laughing at first" he said.  "But now we are worried.  Maybe you can't control him."

Croatia is a long stretch of land, including 1200 islands, just the other side of the Adriatic from Italy.  A beautiful country of people who spend their summers on the coast taking care of tourists and their winters inland making money.

At a small restaurant on a tall narrow side street a family gathers for lunch. The family includes the restaurant owner, his wife and two grown children, a grandchild, two cousins and some employees. They eat a stew of leftovers, drink some wine and smoke cigarettes. They talk and laugh, and talk and laugh, until they are interrupted by a potential customer.

When the customer asks for a table the owner looks at his daughter, both award-winning chefs, they shake their heads. Better to stay closed rather than interrupt the family lunch.

"It's the Mediterranean way," the old man says, before telling his grandson to put his phone away.

On a recent call with a colleague from Hamburg Germany the discussion turned from business.

"Can we talk Trump for a minute?" he asked.

"Do you think America can recover from this?" I ask.

"Well," he said after a long pause. "I come from a country where we too were embarrassed by our leader.  America will be back."

"How do you know?" I ask.

"Here's what I've learned," he said, "the world forgives."

But it doesn't forget.

Fake News in a Real World: What It Means for Market Research

There is a famous New Yorker cartoon with one dog sitting in front of a desk-top computer telling another dog:  “On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.”

It appeared in 1993.

And now 24 years later the problem of internet identity has moved from a punch line to the front lines of business, news, politics and commerce.

The sad truth is that in 2017 on a Google results page, we all look the same.

On the internet we don’t know if a world super power hacked an election, or as President Trump said, it could be “Somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds.”

On a Google results page, where many business decisions are made, an unsuspecting consumer doesn’t know if you are a PhD who spent 400 hours analyzing a market or a recent graduate putting together numbers from a press release.

In the world of the New Yorker and dogs trying to pick up cats, it’s humorous.

In a 24-hour news cycle, it’s sobering.

In a business where trustworthy information is the coin of the realm, it’s industry-altering.

Why do we all look alike?

Historically, one way to show you were a reputable company was to brag about your resume, highlighting the top companies you serve.  In this new world you don’t need to really have them as clients; instead, you copy their logos from other websites and post them.

Another way to show you are reputable is to prove your US bona fides.  But instead of having an actual office now all you need is the address of an office share and suddenly you’re in Albany.

Another way to prove trustworthiness is a show of force on LinkedIn.  Now these questionable firms post fake identities and histories with head shots of unsuspecting strangers.

Since 2001 MarketResearch.com has sold information for more than 1,000 publishers from around the world.  We sought out new publishers, new titles and curated them in a way to help make buying expensive industry analysis easier.  Our first tag line was “Helping you find the market research you need,” because we knew that nothing felt worse than buying a $5,000 study and not getting your question answered.

What is relevance in the age of Google?

Relevance used to be the best report that answered your business question.  Now when a reputable publisher comes out with a report, a fake publisher can produce a slim volume with the same title a month later.  When a business user searches Google, the more recent title often rises to the top.   

When there is no apparent distinction between what is inside a report, all you can do is judge a book by its title.

As good data, or hard news, become watered down, client expectations change.  When a news headline turns out to be inaccurate, people begin assuming all news must have something wrong with it.

We face the same challenge in the information space.  We can suggest that a client buy a $5,000 study because it was written by an industry analyst who studied the market for 30 years and is an industry expert.  But too often that same client opts for a less expensive report published by a new firm with no track record.  When asked why the client will use the dangerous phrase:  “Well, good enough, is good enough.”

My response to that client is:  Expect more.  Ask questions.  Don’t rely on a clever title and a well-crafted marketing email.

There is a way to conduct accurate research.  Try reading a study on the US market for packaged goods that was written by a person who never stepped foot in a US grocery store and the difference is painfully obvious.

Fake news and alternative facts, while a problem for our democracy, can be ferreted out by choosing where you get your information. 

But when you need to make informed strategic business decisions, good enough is not good enough. In fact it’s risky. You need accurate information from a reliable source. 

Five Oh

No I don’t want to be 21 again.

But I want to remember what it felt like.

Not because it was perfect, but because the farther away from it I get, the more it fades.

Anna Quindlin once wrote :

I did not live in the moment enough.  This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three of them, sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing on a summer day, ages 6, 4 and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night.

But I knew this.  I kept a journal and wrote down so much.  But I don’t remember what it was really like.  I’ve tried to stop the clock, but you can’t even catch it.

Life is With People is a study of the culture of the Jewish neighborhoods of Eastern Europe, the Shtetl.  The book attempts, not only to describe life in these communities that no longer exist, but recreate them.  They take the reader through the rhythms and sounds of the week, trying to reconstruct daily life.

The Introduction to the book describes its task this way: 

Like a dance, for which the music and the choreography have never been written down, a great part of any human culture is lost to humanity when the group which has carried it, devotedly, in every word and gesture dispersed, or destroyed, or forsakes the traditional way for ways which are new.

It is the same for every culture and community we have been a part of:  The house we grew up in, the fraternity we lived in, the place our kids called home. Every dinner table has similarities and differences from those before, but none are exactly the same.  

We were taught, inculcated, at 800 Lincoln to learn and live as the Men of the Mu did before us.  That house had a smell and a rhythm that existed while those 50 boys lived there, but when they scattered, it did too.  Just like the culture of the cabin at Camp Walden, the hockey team, or Southfield Lathrup senior high school class, or our house when it was filled with the five of us.  

And once they are gone the culture is only in the memory of the participants.  You can’t recapture it.  When the kids come home it’s not the same as when they lived there, or when I go home or the people from those places get back together at a birthday or a reunion.

New people now live at 20445 Willowick Drive, others walk through the halls of Markley, the apartments and classrooms look the same, but they are different, because the personalities are:  6500 days in that childhood bedroom, 200 nights in that dorm room, 400 mornings in that fraternity house, 15 years when all 3 children lived under that roof.  Those world's cannot be reconstructed.

There is a value in memory.  More certainty there.

The logical steps of growing up, college, work, marriage, kids, more, have ended. 

At 50 there are more choices, but less clarity.