It’s a Jungle Out There—Protect Yourself

An article in the Wall Street Journal caught my attention. It was written in Give Me Back My Privacy, “These days, it seems privacy is under assault from all sides. Your phone can track your location, your thermostat learns your personal habits, Facebook knows the most intimate details about your life—and U.S. intelligence agencies are racing to sweep up reams of data.”

With every swipe, click and login, people are sharing ever-growing amounts of information about themselves. But now we're getting tired of the consequences and we're starting to fight back.

I understand that when I go to certain websites that cookies are gathering data. I delete them every few months and figure it is just part of the Internet. What I didn’t know is that “bricks and mortar” are trying to level the playing field and wireless technology—my cell phone—is giving them the means to do it.

My cell phone is sending a signal locating precisely where I am in the store. It is transmitted when I stop to look at the coffee, bread or expensive olives. Nordstrom’s received negative feedback from their customers and abandoned the program, but many other retailers are gathering everything they can about my shopping habits. They justify it, so they say, by giving me tangible incentives like targeted coupons. I discovered how to escape from their jungle. If I turn off the Wi-Fi on my phone before I shop, it doesn’t transmit a signal of my whereabouts.

I am also tired of being inundated with spam email that “mysteriously” appears after I visit a website looking for something like a recipe for ginger cookies. Immediately I begin to receive ads for new cookie sheets or weight loss fads. Now I know how to stop websites from collecting information about me.

 

Today’s gift is to share that knowledge with you, my friends. A free program called AVG Privacy Fix can be downloaded here. It will analyze your Facebook and LinkedIn accounts and fix your privacy settings. Plus, it puts an icon on your browser allowing you to opt out of ads on each website that are collecting information about you! AVG clearly states that they are not setting cookies or selling my information. At this time, it only works on Google Chrome, Firefox, Android and IOS. We face enough lions and tigers and bears each day that we can’t control, but AVG can protect us from whatever lurks in the shadows.

In Giving,

Robin

March Madness to March Gladness

How is your basketball team doing in the March Madness Basketball Tournament? No one won the $1 billion Warren Buffet bracket challenge by surviving the first round of the NCAA tournament. If you are like me, your favorite team is no longer playing. But I have a reason to cheer for another team.

The friendship between Michigan State basketball star Adeian Payne and 8-year-old Lacey Holsworth began two years ago when the Spartans visited a hospital where Lacey was getting treatment for neuroblastoma, an aggressive cancer of the nerve tissue. She couldn’t walk, paralyzed from a massive tumor around her spine and abdomen. But Payne couldn’t get over her amazing optimism.

The Lansing State Journal reported that their heartfelt relationship is much more than simply a star athlete befriending a sick child because it’s a nice thing to do. It’s indicative of self-awareness; Payne grasping a perspective that every single moment is precious. Anything can be taken away at any time.

While others consider college a spin through a revolving door, Payne gained a depth through four years of challenges and obstacles that made him a better player. But what Payne is proudest of is that these four years made him a better person with a stronger character. Such recognition often eludes the high-profile athlete who defines personal growth as an improved jump shot.

Payne can appreciate hardship better than most. His mother died in his arms following a severe asthmatic attack with Payne desperately trying to find her inhaler. He was 13. His grandmother became his legal guardian. She died two years ago from respiratory failure due to asthma complications. He struggled with breathing issues during his freshman year. His lungs were smaller than normal for a 7-foot frame. He couldn’t play long minutes without gasping for air. As a result, he learned how to take shorter breaths.

“It can’t be all about you,” Payne said. “I think that’s one thing I’ve learned now that I probably didn’t know as a freshman. That’s true with your teammates. What can you do to help make them better?

“She calls me her ‘Superman,’ but she’s the one who’s got the super strength,” Payne said. “She’s incredible with everything she’s gone through. (Doctors) told her she wouldn’t walk again. But she did. She’s just an incredible fighter. And if I can bring her a little bit of happiness to help her forget everything for a little while, then that’s what I want to do.”

Lacey’s cancer was thought to have been beaten last summer. But it returned last fall.

“She’s an inspiration for all of us,” guard Gary Harris said. “We get upset and depressed when we lose games or aren’t playing well. And then you realize what Lacey’s going through and how she always has a smile on her face when you see her.”

Watch the video here.

In the grocery store parking lot I saw an older woman loading groceries into the backseat of her car with slow labored movements. Today’s gift was to ask the woman if I could help her by returning her shopping cart to the corral. She and I probably won’t develop a friendship like Adein and Lacy, but I got just a hint of the feeling of brightening someone’s day—from March Madness to March Gladness.

In Giving,

Robin

Cherry Delight Disaster

It was a summer Saturday morning in 1966. My brother, Rick, and I were eager to go outside and play, but Mom and Dad were still sleeping so we kept ourselves occupied watching black and white cartoons. One of us would adjust the rabbit ears with aluminum foil dangling from the ends, until the other one said, “It’s good.”

A commercial flashed on the screen for Stax cereal. The announcer said it was "the cereal for adults that is toasted in places where other cereals don't have places!" We watched intently as the actor measured the small, near square, honeycomb-shaped pieces of cereal. He put a piece in his mouth and chewed it. He took another piece and began stacking the cereal. Then a woman came into the scene. She was eating her cereal and stacking it, too.

The actor said, “Once you stop snacking and start eating you'll find there's more to STAX than stacking. New Wheat Stax really tastes good. They're bite-sized chunks of toasted whole wheat. Crunchier because they're toasted on the bottom, top, sides—even inside. They're the toastiest, tastiest, crunchiest, stackiest cereal you've ever tasted.”

Rick and I raced to the kitchen to find the box of Stax cereal in the cabinet. We took it to the table and the competition was on. Who could build the tallest tower without it falling over? I was following the directions on the TV and put one in my mouth. Rick said, “We aren’t going to have enough. Stop eating it.” Each time one of our towers toppled over, it scattered cereal on the table and floor.

All of this work was making us hungry. We went to the fridge and saw one of Mom’s specialties, Cherry Delight. We thought that Mom would be so proud that we were eating fruit. Never mind the cream cheese, whipped cream and huge amounts of sugar. No need to get a plate, since we were both eating it we could easily polish off the 13” x 9” pan.

Imagine Mom’s surprise when she walked into the kitchen—it looked like a bomb went off. Cereal was on the table and floor. She gasped as she saw the empty pan of what had been Cherry Delight. She had made it for her bridge game. Mom tried to be mad, but laughter won. I’m not sure what food she took to the bridge game that day, but regardless she had quite the story to tell.

I was reminded how occurrences like this affect kids. One of my speaker colleagues, Michael Scott Karpovich, influences kids in a positive way. Michael began wearing two different color tennis shoes when he was a kid because he was dyslexic and needed a way to learn his left from his right. When someone comments on his shoes he answers, “I have another pair at home just like them!” 

He posted on LinkedIn that he would like endorsements as a youth programs speaker. Today’s gift was endorsing him in two youth related categories. I’m sure he has his own Cherry Delight disasters that he shares with kids so that when they do absurd things, they can learn to laugh it off too.

In Giving and Laughing,

Robin

Expressing Creativity

While rummaging through boxes in the garage, I found a box full of How to Draw Cartoons book and pen sets. In the past when I spoke to corporations about Making Leadership and Team Building Fun, I created and sold Executive Toy Boxes that included toys to encourage creativity.

Today's gift was to give the box to the Children's Ministry at the First Presbyterian Church in Klamath Falls. When I asked the director if she would like them, I could see her imagining how she would incorporate these new creativity tools into her lesson plans.

In Giving,


                           

Robin




Examples from the book that I drew:

Road Trips with a Purpose

Reprinted from the March 2^nd, 2014 Parade Magazine.

It’s 2 a.m. and I’m trying unsuccessfully to sleep in the loft of a tractor trailer parked outside a motel in Allentown, Pa. A 12-week-old black lab is curled up inches from my face, and below us, 64 more dogs are resting peacefully in kennels stacked two or three high and secured along the truck’s walls. Our driver, Greg Mahle, is sound asleep in the middle of the floor.

Mahle is used to sleeping in his truck: Twice a month he leaves his wife and home in Zanesville, Ohio, to drive a familiar route through the Deep South, making stops in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama to pick up dogs that have been removed from “death row” at high-kill shelters by local rescue groups. Then Mahle turns north toward New England, where there is higher demand for shelter dogs.

Over the past nine years, Mahle has helped save tens of thousands of dogs. His transport service, Rescue Road Trips, just about breaks even. (A portion of adoption fees covers his costs.) But Mahle, who ran a family restaurant in his prior life, doesn’t do it for the money: “I turned 51 last year, and I am happier now than I have been in my whole life.”

At designated spots along Mahle’s route, volunteers meet his rig for “walk-potty-snack” breaks. Last night as he pulled into the Comfort Inn parking lot, two dozen “Allentown Angels” had gathered, as they do every other Friday night around 7 p.m. The volunteers are drawn to Mahle’s mission, as well as to the man himself: “His heart is as big as a Volkswagen,” group coordinator Keith Remaly told me.

The puppy snoozing in the kennel near my head is Audi. She’s on her way to the Dooley family of Connecticut. Teenagers Meagan and Lauren fell in love with Audi when they saw her photo on PetFinder.com, a database used by rescue groups such as Labs4Rescue, which arranged Audi’s adoption.

Audi’s mother was found pregnant, living by a dumpster in the small city of New Iberia, La. When two Labs4Rescue volunteers learned she was to be euthanized at the parish animal control facility, they rushed to get her; she delivered several of her 11 puppies in the backseat of their SUV. (Editor’s note: All 12 dogs have since made the trip north with Mahle.)

But for every dog Mahle delivers, many more are euthanized. Southern shelters are overwhelmed by strays, says Keri Toth, president of the Humane Society of Central Louisiana, because spaying and neutering are not common practice. In rural areas, backyard breeders produce more puppies than they can sell; many dogs are let go to fend for themselves. In Louisiana in 2010 (the most recent year for which statistics are available), 32 shelters reported taking in 69,540 dogs; 43,278 of them were put down, according to Maddie’s Fund, a nonprofit that tracks canine euthanasia statistics.

At sunrise, Mahle fires up the truck and we push off for New York and Connecticut, where dozens of families are waiting in parking lots to welcome our passengers. At every stop, Mahle leaps out of the cab and shouts, “Hello! I’m Greg! Is everyone excited?”

When we find the Dooleys, Mahle takes Audi from her crate and hands her to the girls; full of pent-up puppy energy, Audi squirms to lick their faces. For Audi, a long and difficult journey is ending as one filled with love begins.

Mahle has witnessed this scene countless times, but it never gets old. As he rolls up to a fast food restaurant in Putnam, Conn., the final stop of the day, some 50 people burst into applause. “A few weeks ago these dogs were going to die,” Mahle says. “Now watch. The truck doors open, light pours in, and each one goes into the arms of a loving family. This is heaven.”

Today’s gift was to give a donation to rescueroadtrips.com. In my receipt was a thank you email from Greg, “Rescue Road Trips is an endeavor of love and my goal is to help those which have no voice. I realize I can't change the world. Though for many I CAN make a difference, and I CAN change their world. This is my love. This is my passion. I sincerely hope to be able to continue to do this all the rest of my days.” I admire Greg’s passion for road trips with a purpose.

In Giving,

Robin

To see photos of Greg and some of his dogs click here.