The crisis we are facing is not the coming of the apocalypse.

I agree, COVID-19 ain’t chopped liver. We are reeling from the impact of the shelter-in-place directive, confined to our homes, compelled to obey restrictive rules from a catalog of authorities. We are victims of circumstances beyond our control. Those who live from paycheck to paycheck are living from day to day. Fear is the undercurrent of our every activity.

But the bodies are not piling up in Daley Plaza. An army of disenchanted veterans is not marching on Washington (at least not yet). The Olympics have been cancelled but the Nathan Hot Dog Eating Contest is still on as far as I know.

The big impact has been to our psyche.

Millennials have begun to realize there is no such thing as eternal youth. Us seniors have gone from facing mortality to embracing its imminence. Baby boomers have looked at the Dow Jones and realized at long last, the bloom is off the boom. It’s disheartening… but it is the opportunity for us to reconnoiter and reconsider, to ask ourselves, is this the world we want to live in… maybe this pause in the race to the cliff where the lemmings leap is the opportunity to create a better world.

I’m not talking about starting a Bitcoin-like app for virtual toilet paper. My wife, more connected to the universe than I, offers a guide to what is possible in an email to her considerable following.

The Coronavirus can be the wake-up call, the alarm reminding us that we are all connected; that the borders on a map do not separate us; fame and riches do not exempt us when the symptoms turn deadly; skin color and religion are incidental when a cough leaps from one to another; and that separation between our health and the health of our planet is a fiction.

Perhaps the virus, by forcing us to stay in our homes, will remind us of how important our family and home life are and how much we have neglected this fundamental part of our lives.

History can write about the Corona virus as the disaster that plunged the world into chaos… or the realization of a spiritual rebirth and revitalization of our commitment to our highest good.

Roux is a five-year-old, ten-pound, beautiful female silver and cream Yorkie-Poo looking for a loving guardian.

Roux is a playful and sweet girl who likes to snuggle and play ball. But she just takes a few minutes to warm up to new people. She is perfectly housebroken, crate-trained and trained with both voice and hand commands.

Despite all her training she is still nervous and anxious. When she goes for walks, she’s great on leash, but doesn’t tolerate people reaching out to pet her. She may growl but she has never bitten anyone.

She also guards her bones and food, so she’s best in a home with adults and those willing to work with her and learn to manage her quirks.

She is quiet in the home so she could easily live in an apartment or condo.

Roux is healthy, up-to-date on vaccines, heartworm-tested and on monthly heartworm preventative.

To meet and possibly adopt her, please contact [email protected] for an adoption application.

Her adoption fee of $200 benefits rescued pets.
She is being fostered in Chicago.

Branding is more than a logo and image or even a recognized name. It is a person’s collective experience with a company’s product or service. A brand is a person’s overall perception of a company or product built over time.

Here are four things you should keep in mind as you build your company’s brand:

1) Own the “Significant Thing”: Don’t try to be all things to all people spend your time focusing on a single clear message. Mercedes-Benz owns “Engineering” in the car industry because it’s focused on that singular message for decades.

2) Consistency is key: consistent presentation will ensure that your customers recognize you. Be consistent in the use of logos, taglines, visual elements, tone, and ad copy. Coca-Cola is one of the most recognized brands in the world because they haven’t changed in decades. Make sure your brochures, website, Direct mail, and all the other advertising have the same feel and message.

3) Make your message relevant: know your audience, know what they care about and how to speak to them. Make sure what you sell is what they need. Remember the conversation should always be about your audience, not you.

4) Use a strong offer to motivate: you want your audience to remember you and you want its members to buy from you. You need to move them to action. A strong offer should give them a reason to buy. Make the offer clear and appropriate for your brand.

Every time a customer comes in contact with your brand, they will have either a positive or a negative experience. Those experiences will add to their perception of your brand. Those experiences are recalled later when itís time to make a purchasing decision. How do you want your brand to be remembered when the time comes for a prospect to buy? You need to start building that positive perception today and do whatever is necessary to maintain it.

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For tips like this and more:

Follow Nakita Nicci on all social platforms as @NakitaNicci

www.highsocietypublicrelations.com

As a word maven, I am enjoying something during all the stories about the novel Coronavirus pandemic. I am enjoying the use of the specific, but previously rare, word “pandemic” itself.

On the other hand, I’m reluctant to write that we’re “in the middle of” a pandemic — not because I’m worried about the word pandemic, but I’m worried about “in the middle.” It always reminds me of my mother, who did a lot of sewing. When she needed to cut two things from a piece of fabric, she wanted to find the middle. To do that, she would hold one end of the fabric. I would hold the other and bring it up to her hands. Then we knew where the middle was, the same distance from both ends. Without knowing the end, how can you say we’re in the middle? (I get the same way about “middle age.”)

But at least I’m hearing the word pandemic, not just epidemic. My old faithful dictionary, Webster’s  New Twentieth Century, second edition, calls pandemic “a type of epidemic that affects large numbers, whole communities, or the majority of a place at the same time.” Epidemic is “a disease prevalent in a locality, an epidemic disease; also, the rapid spreading of such a disease.”

The prefix pan- is defined on Dictionary.com as  “a combining form meaning “all,” occurring originally in loanwords from Greek (panacea; panoply), but now used freely as a general formative (panleukopenia; panorama; pantelegraph; pantheism; pantonality), and especially in terms, formed at will, implying the union of all branches of a group (Pan-Christian; Panhellenic; Pan-Slavism).”

So a pandemic is an epidemic affecting us all, or the majority of a place.

The majority of a planet, perhaps?

Margaret Serious has a page on Facebook. Stop by for a socially distanced  visit.

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Does taking a walk in the park in Chicago become criminal in the age of Covid-19?

It hasn’t — yet.

But the simple act of getting some fresh air in one of Chicago’s parks and along the lakefront may soon become one, according to Mayor Lori Lightfoot.

It’s understandable for people who have houses to perhaps stay home.  They can wander into their backyards at least.  But people crammed into highrises in the densely populated city center, what can they do?  Instead of gathering in a park, they can walk on the sidewalks downtown, the crowded, bustling and dirty sidewalks.  How can Lightfoot be sure that forcing people desperate for sunshine to take their short strolls on a city sidewalk won’t lead to more virus transmission, considering the virus that causes Covid-19 can cling to things like soles of shoes and hangs in the air for a time after a sneeze or cough?  Funneling people into a smaller space with heavy human traffic does not seem like the best choice for health protection.

Two people broke the spirit of the law yesterday.  I was one of them. More on me later.

One friend I know decided to leave her south suburban home and drive to a friend’s house in a semi-rural area. She was not going to help him with anything, bringing food or our new medium of exchange — toilet paper– no, she was going to his few acres to sit in a greenhouse to get some sun and some heat and destress.

“It was about 90 degrees inside,” she said.

Grant Park ImageChicago.com

Now for me.  I left the house twice yesterday.  Not for groceries.  Not for an emergency.  Not to help anybody in need.  I left to get some sunshine.  I don’t like walking around my neighborhood because now too many people are navigating down the narrow sidewalks and possibly sneezing and coughing and trampling disease with them, so I entered my car, which I alone use and took a walk in a solitary place.  On my way there I passed the parks, which were lined with cars in the lots.  I came right home.  I live alone. I liked it so much that I did it again in the afternoon, but instead of a walk, I jogged.  I didn’t see another soul.

Am I a criminal?  Or nearly a criminal?

Will Covid-19 make criminals of us all?

Is my friend a near or total criminal?

Is it criminal to funnel people onto a narrow corridor of a sidewalk instead of the green area of a park to stretch their legs, hoping they will get enough UV light to kill the virus and other germs?

Criminal or not, science-based or not, individually responsible or not, the restrictions on the population due to Covid-19 look like it will increase, at least here in Chicago.

Science-based channels focusing on Covid-19:

Dr. John Campbell

MedCram

When it comes to sports, for me it’s always been about baseball. Yes, I admit I’m a sports junkie. If there’s a game going on, I’m watching, but baseball has always been the leader…and by far.

My obsession started at a young age. WGN television would broadcast all the home games of the Chicago Cubs. They were day games starting in the 1 to 1:30 pm range. We’d get home from school and get to catch the last couple of innings of those games. Even though those Cubs teams of the early 1960’s were bad…real bad in many cases…I was hooked on the game.

When I hit fifth or sixth grade, my parents allowed me to go to the games. They were all day games back in those olden days. They were played faster, too. Usually in two hours or less. To get into the bleachers or grandstands, a ticket cost around $1. Yep…an entire buck to see players like Willie Mays, Henry Aaron, Frank Robinson, Sandy Koufax and our local dude, Ernie Banks. Quite the value to get hooked on a sport that was in its golden age. I’d hit the park with friends or my brother…or sometimes just by myself. I didn’t mind doing that. I just wanted to be around baseball. Along with the dollar for the ticket, I bring a lunch and another dollar which paid for the round trip train ride and either a soft drink or a frosty malt ice cream. We’d be home in time for dinner. Wrigley Field and the Cubs were my mom’s cheap baby sitting service.

Opening day has always been special to me. I’ve been to openers at four ballparks. Wrigley, Comiskey for the White Sox, Los Angeles and Anaheim for the Dodgers and Angels. It’s always been a wonderful day. It wasn’t so much the baseball itself, but the first day of baseball always signals the end of winter. Sure, it’s still cold out, but you know better days are just ahead.

I remember my first opener in the mid-1960’s. Ernie Banks hit a two out home run in the bottom of the ninth to tie a game against the St. Louis Cardinals. The game was suspended because of darkness a few innings later because Wrigley Field didn’t have lights at that time. That was still twenty years away. Other highlights include seeing both the Cubs and Sox opener on the same day. I went to one Dodger opener in L.A., left the park and headed to Wrestlemania 3. I also was at Wrigley when Dutchie Caray sang “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” a couple of months after her husband, Harry, died.

My last opening day memory was maybe fifteen years ago. It was a brutally cold day at Wrigley Field. I was bundled up in lots of layers. Around the fifth inning, I went to bathroom, found myself shivering and thought enough is enough. I left the park and watched the rest of the game from a bar across the street.

Today is supposed to be another opening day for major league baseball. The Cubs should be in Milwaukee, playing the Brewers. The stadium would be packed with fans from both teams. It would be the start of another season of high hopes for everyone. Optimism reigns supreme on opening day!

Sadly that’s not going to happen. Like all sports, baseball has been shut down by the coronavirus. Players are just like the rest of us, staying in their homes, trying to ride this pandemic out. We have no idea when real life will begin again, much less the baseball season. Hell, we have no idea if there will be a baseball season at all.

Last night I watched an interview with baseball commissioner Rob Manfred. He tried to put a positive spin on the season. He’s hoping they’ll get to play as close to one hundred and sixty-two games as possible. I can’t see that happening. Even if they get the clearance to go back in May, players will almost need to start spring training over again. I’m thinking an early June start is a best case scenario. That’s the best possible outcome. If that’s the best we can hope for, what’s the worse case scenario? A cancelled season! Yeah, saying that is a doomsday prediction, but if the Olympics can be pushed back a year, what makes you think baseball being played in 2020 is a certainty?

But, let’s try to stay optimistic. Everything is now on a day to day basis, including all sports. At some point, we’ll be back to normal, right? At some point, the games will go on, right? But, until then we can remember the good old days. We can remember the opening days of our past. We can live on our memories and hope to start making new memories soon.

Related Post: I’m still in shock the Chicago Cubs won the World Series

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