Damned if you do, damned if you don't

P.T. Barnum once said there is no such thing as bad publicity. After 20 years in the PR business I know that's not the case.

In the 1990s the utility company I worked for needed to trim some trees in Boulder, particularly around an always contentious and incredibly ugly monstrosity known as the Grape Street Line. The Grape Street Line was part of the original infrastructure in Boulder and it was a huge, ugly power line that ran up Grape Street and on up the mountain to service Nederland, Eldora, and other mountain communities. I'm 99% sure it's still there today.

The neighbors on Grape Street hated the line. Every few years they'd organize in an uproar to request the utility company bury it. The cost of burying the Grape Street Line was phenomenal, and the utility had responded on numerous occasions that they'd be happy to bury it if the residents wanted to join together to pay for it. Stale mate.

So here we were after a particularly glorious spring in the Rockies and the forestry crews were preparing to go samurai on the tress that hid the Grape Street Line. Our quandry was whether to just show up with chain saws (the company's usual modus operandi, always causing a stir) or inform the citizens first.

We decided we wanted to be the kindler, gentler power company, so in addition to a carefully crafted letter "from" our forester, we enlisted his help and his movie star good looks to educate the community (a very tree hugging, berk wearing activist community) about the environmental benefit of this particular form of cutting. The Shigone method, or something like that, which leaves the tree with a giant hole (shaped like a "V") in the middle. It's bizarre, ugly, and supposedly the healthiest thing for trees that live around power lines.

Anyway, the plan sounded good, I personally handled Forest Boy's media training, and booked him on TV shows and with the editorial board at the Daily Camera. With the Dear Resident letters off in the mail and a fresh shirt for the himbo (who in all fairness really knew his stuff when it came to trees), we set off to Boulder, feeling good about what we were about to do -- for the good of the trees in Boulder.

Our campaign was wildly successful from a shear "impressions" standpoint. We made the front page not only in Boulder, but as the story grew we made both dailies in Denver. Then it went national -- Today Show, USA Today -- and foresters nationwide debated with activists in San Francisco and Bend and Vermont on CNN. Thankfully the internet did not yet exist.

But I've blocked out most of the rest of the details at this point, except for the team wide face-to-face with the CEO, who demanded to know whose idea it had been to be proactive about the whole tree cutting thing. I took the blame and learned a valuable lesson which was "never take the blame."

No matter what happened the results were the same. The company got its trees trimmed and the local paper got photos of college kids chained to the trees while bucket trucks loomed in. It was awful, horrible, but it was wildly received "publicity," talked about in every coffee shop in town. People knew about it, and they knew who was behind it. The company's name was on every tongue. There were opinions on it on talk radio and letters to the editor for nearly a week.

It was all packaged up neatly with a bow -- the biggest story ever until the Douglas County sheriff shot somebody's dog because the meter reader couldn't get in the back yard.

In hindsight, it was pretty dumb. Today I would insist on a different path. But I was pretty young back then, and we liked the idea of being open and forthright so much better than the idea of just showing up with chainsaws.

But every year since, residents along Grape Street (and Elm, and Walnut, and, and, and...) are awakened by the sound of chainsaws. No warning. No education. Just Cut and Run. It's the only way to do it. Quick and painless. No newspapers, no TV crews, no neighborhood uproar. No publicity.

Sometimes you can wag the dog, and other times the dog wags you. P.T. Barnum was wrong. There is such a thing as bad publicity.

The girlfriend

Last night a bubbly, giggly, pretty teenage girl was in our house. She was also in our pool, with our son, in the dark, alone. Since it was the first time we'd had a visitor of that nature, it was a bit of a milestone, a right of passage, and a little bit of an "oh no" moment.

I always knew the girls would come. I guess that time has come. And I'm okay with it. From my perspective, at the age of 15, you should be interested in girls. By the time I was 15 I'd probably had half a dozen boyfriends -- some 17 and even 18. I know what I was doing. I like that my son is willing to bring a girl here.

My husband, on the other hand, was a bit more concerned. "They're getting a little huggy huggy out there," he had warned me from his recon post near the kitchen window. "You'd better get out there," he had said, pacing nervously in front of my view of the TV.

But I was horizontal on the couch and couldn't come up with a reason why I needed to move at that moment. I've talked to my son. He's talked to me. He told me about a senior football player at his school whose girlfriend got pregnant and so he wasn't going to college on the scholarship he'd received. "It can ruin your life," he had said. "It will at least change it," I had replied.

We've talked about what boys are feeling and how girls can be, and how it's best to wait for the girl that he really really likes and to date a girl for quite a while before deciding anything about getting really close. I've also more blatantly told him I don't want to be raising grandchildren. We've had our talks.

So as my husband paced nervously next to me and I patted myself silently on the back for my open communication style, the girl came in the house. Her high pitched, peppy entrance made sure we all knew she was there. "Which switch is the light?" she had asked at the door of the bathroom. "I don't know," I had said from my couch, "Try one." "Thanks!" she had said in a cheery squeak, as if my advice on how to solve the dilemma had improved her night, perhaps even her life -- forever!

As I heard the door slide closed, I looked at Mark who had somehow fallen into his chair, perhaps stunned, and laughed. Then I jumped up and walked (okay, I ran -- really fast)through the house to the back door, opened it,and found my son flexing in the pool.

"Hey, what's up?" I had said. "Nothin'" he had said backinng out of the light. "You be careful out here," I said sternly. "I will," he said, then "I'm not..." he said. "I know," I said.

About that time our visitor, who I noticed as she stepped into the moonlight had an ever-so-tiny nose ring, bopped out the door. "Are you coming swimming with us?" she had asked with a huge smile, as if it would make her truly happy if I would. For a split second I considered, then reconsidered. Looking at my son, I said, "Not right now, maybe later." Then I turned, did a quick scan for visible tatoos, seeing none, smiled and said, "When it's time, we'll drive you home," and I walked back in the house.

I knew it was just a matter of time before the girls showed up. That's why I talk to my sons. This one may be the first to be alone in the dark in my pool with my son, but she certainly won't be the last. And I have another son who loves girls, and soon they'll be coming to my house to see him too. I'm okay with all that. But tonight when you lay down to sleep, please, say a prayer for me. I'm the mother of two teenage boys.

Vacation time

It's the time of year when everyone is going on vacation. Elian is in Holland, she's on her second week there. Ana just got back from Toronto and she's going to Vegas Friday. Jeanette and Randy are planning their August cruise in Alaska, which her BOSS gave them, I might add. I need to get on the stick, or we'll be going no where.


It's always hard to fit in a vacation, even when you're self employed. Most of my clients took the whole week of the fourth off. It rained, so I worked. My husband and I did go to Houston for a wedding last weekend. It was the first time we'd been away together in a couple years. It was enough like a vacation -- great hotel, room service, shopping, a fabuolous wedding party, Sunday brunch with bottomless Bloody Marys...it will get me through for a few more weeks.


But my kids are another story. Some might argue that every day at our house is a vacation. There's the pool, an infinite number of video systems and games, four televisions, kids to play with. The lake. But after six weeks of that the kids are getting bored and they're starting to ask about going on a vacation.

But with our vacations so much depends on work and sports schedules that it's hard to fit anything of any length at all in. That leaves us with trying to schedule shorter trips that usually end up costing twice as much, and since there's no real downtime, you come home more tired than when you left. I've suggested a weekend in Dallas, maybe a trip to Six Flags or Hurricane Harbor, but my son said, "That's not a vacation, that's a field trip." I suppose that's true. The way I look at it, it's at least a day off.

Now we've been to a couple Rangers day games and we went to the mall once. None of that counts, I guess. While we were in Houston my sister came to stay. She took the boys to Chilis for lunch and then bowling. They went to the music store and Blockbuster. "That was sort of a vacation," I told them. They agreed that it was fun, but vacation it was not. "We didn't leave town," Dill said.

So in addition to the umpteen things I have on my to do list, I now have to plan a vacation. I've been saying that for a few weeks. But now that we're nearly mid-July, I need to get going on it.


A couple weeks ago when my son asked, "Where are we going on vacation this year?" I suggested he take care of it. "Let's go to the X Games in LA," I said. "Get on and find out what events you want to see and find some flights. We can stay where we stayed last year. Best Western Hollywood. August 2 -5. Thanks!"


"Huh?" I heard him say as I flew out the door.


Needless to say he didn't get that vacation planned. If we're going to go, I need to do that.

We are also going to my grandmother's 95th birthday party in Indiana the second weekend of August. I've been stalling on planning that until I figure out what I'm going to be working on and how much time I'm going to have. If we have time, I'd like to take a week and drive -- leave right after we get back from LA. I've even toyed with the idea of swinging through Iowa. The boys and I like road trips. But I think hockey is going to get in the way for one kid. That means we need to fly and plans need to be made, money spent, etc. It gets so complicated and expensive!

It's a wonder anyone goes anywhere at all.

So until I can get going on it I'll just revel in my friends' stories about their trips. I'll keep plugging away on my to do list and hopefully sooner rather than later the item that says 'plan vacation' will rise to the top.

At least I hope it does before I miss mine.