BarnRaisers

A first rule of blogging is to be helpful.  A second rule is if you need help ask for it.  Hopefully, in this blog, I can accomplish both.

A friend of mine has done very well in life. He has an important job, loving family and lives in a great town.  His daughter has a rare disease called Rasmussen’s Encephalitis.

Rasmussen’s Encephalitis is a rare, chronic inflammatory disease that affects one hemisphere of the brain.  It occurs in children under the age of 15 and is characterized by frequent and severe seizures, loss of motor skills and speech, paralysis on one side of the body and mental deterioration.  After the the first 8 to 12 months, most individuals with Rasmussen’s Encephalitis enter a phase of permanent, but stable, neurological deficits.

While this could tear anyone apart, in my friend’s case, it made him stronger.   He’s dedicated his life to a solution by founding the RE Children’s Project to increase awareness of Rasmussen’s Encephalitis (RE) and to support scientific research for a cure. The organization supports research toward the recovery process following hemisphrectomy surgery, a life altering surgery that is the only known “cure” for the disease.

I’ve offered to do what I can to raise awareness through social media.

I know first hand how powerful social media is in health care.  For conditions like Multiple Sclerosis and Epilepsy, patient communities on Facebook and Twitter offer support to one another with member numbering in the 10′s of thousands.  Studies in countries around the world have proven social support from patients with similar health conditions actually results in better health outcomes.

But for rare disease like Rasmussen’s Encephalitis, community creation is more difficult because there are less people to rely on for support.  There are valuable videos on YouTube.  One (below), less than 2 minutes, is factual and hopeful.

So I thought what if the blogging community and Twitter, the micro-blogging community, could help out.  What if, when you read this blog, you just re-tweet it.  In your re-tweet, you ask the next reader to re-tweet it.  If one person did this and so did the next person and so on, pretty soon, we would generate greater awareness of Rasmussen’s Encephalitis and the chances of finding a cure would be that much more likely.

What do you say?  The re-tweet button is at the top of the blog.  After all, it’s called social media for a reason.

Since there were plenty of rocks on our property, I saw no reason not to try this for myself.   We now have a dozen cairns.  At first, they didn’t stay up long.  Then, it was a couple of weeks before they toppled over.  Now, they’ve stood for years even through heavy wind and ice storms that brought down sizable tree limbs.

I don’t know anymore about the physics of cairns today than the day I started.  And no matter how many I build, there is always that moment of truth when the hope of a connection between the stones competes with the fear and frustration that the rocks won’t balance and it will all fall to the ground.

But I know now even if a heavy wind or a storm knocks them down, I’ll be able to put them back together so they stand stronger than before.

Could that help explain why people have put them up for so long?

In November, Warren Buffet bought Texas-based Burlington Northern Santa Fe for $26.3 billion dollars.  His analysis shows in our lifetimes trains are going to be the most effective, fuel-efficient and green means available to transport cargo from point A to point B.  For anyone investing in railroads, trains are going to be a source of “steady and certain” growth.

“Steady and certain” is more than an economic valuation for trains.  Their familiar sound is one of purpose and flow.

I’ve always lived in towns where trains pass through.  In Croton-on-Hudson NY, where I once lived, their sound was particularly melodious.  Trains travelled right alongside the Hudson River and the hills on both sides brought out a deep, rich sound.

If you search YouTube for Croton-0n-Hudson, what appears is an entire page of videos devoted to trains.  Apparently, from the comments, I’m not the only one to find something comforting and reassuring in their sight and sound.  Here’s one of those videos.  See if it has the same effect on you it has for many of us.

Thank you Warren Buffet and YouTube for something steady and certain.

Let me say at the outset this is a nondenominational blog.  I’ve been reading Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life which might sound like a self-help book, but it’s not.

Whereas self-help books tell you purpose, essential change or course correction in life comes from within, the point of view here is you’re not here by accident.  Your purpose in life has already been individually thought out and finding it happens, not by looking within, but surrendering to something larger than yourself.

It’s also deals with community as good as any book I’ve read.  One reason, as the book devotes a chapter, is we are here to belong.  Because, through belonging, we learn and put in practice the seven characteristics of fellowship which are to:

• Share our true feeling (authenticity)
• Encourage one other (mutuality)
• Support each other (sympathy)
• Forgive each other (mercy)
• Speak the truth in love (honesty)
• Admit our weaknesses (humility)
• Make group a priority (frequency)

Although it could be read faster, the book is meant to be read and considered a chapter a day for 40 days  because 40 days is considered a time spiritually significant for  transformation.

There have been 133,000,000 blogs indexed by Technorati since 2002.  They have been read by 346,000,000 people since 2008.  There are 900,000 blog posts within any given 24 hour period.  Positive perceptions of a company increase by 36% if they have a blog on their web site.

With numbers so large, it may seem no individual blog really matters.  I believe just the opposite.  It’s significant proof of our need to belong and commitment to fellowship.  So, if you blog or you read blogs, keep it up and keep the seven characteristics in mind.

In a year where we’re more interested in the best deals and with more reason to be, here’s a snapshot of where we’ll look this holiday season before we hit the stores (according to Deloitte)

40% turn to print

29% look at flyers

27% check out websites focused on holiday deals

24% go to retailers’ websites

Newspapers, magazines and flyers are still the most popular.  The internet is not far behind and growing faster while print and flyers slowly decline.  This means we’ll do more shopping online than ever before we buy offline.

Many x-mas info and retailers sites now have connections to social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, MomsLikeMe , TriangleMom2Mom and MyBlackFridayDeals.  This means we’ll go to stores with more recommendations, reviews and advice from others and we’ll be more certain about what we’re going to buy. We’ll feel more satisfied about having made smarter decisions. We’ll spend less time in crowded stores.

This means this holiday season the two biggest purchase drivers, word on mouth and content on the web, will be put to use more often and in more measurable ways.  Kasey Lobaugh, a principle at Deloitte’s retail practice says “if you send out a URL on Twitter, you know how many people clicked on that URL.”

And it costs a whole lot less than print and flyers for manufacturers to know a lot more about what it takes to find advocates for their brands.

This means we should expect to see manufacturers offer great deals that we actually want for many more Xmas’  because it’s more affordable and consumers will reward the ones who do a good job at it with more business.

Happy shopping this holiday season where ever your journey, online or offline, takes you.