Pavlov's Hot Dog

Business Owners' IdeaCafe is a site that takes "A fun approach to serious business!" (Just like ColorCode Mode journals take a fun approach to fitness journaling.) They're also one of the few organizations that offers outright grants to small businesses. That's important for reasons I'll blog about later.

But for now, we're thrilled and honored to be recognized for our "innovation and originality", and to be included in this group of entrepreneurs that impressed Idea Cafe "with their inventiveness and willingness to leverage their business acumen and personal talents to help others."

The Innovation and Originality Grant application only allowed one name from Luhrs Media Compay to be entered, and it's mine, but I assure you that Idea Cafe's criteria apply to my daughter/business partner as well, in every way.

Thank you, Idea Cafe!

So I watched St. Paul-born Dan Buettner talking with Dr. Oz and Oprah about Blue Zones, places in the world where people live long, healthy lives. I've admired Buettner's work for some time, especially the way his work/mission/lifestyle all intersect, as they have in my life since Alexis and I began publishing our fitness journals.

Dan talks about the importance of social support networks and getting together with friends and people you've known all your life and that reminds me I grew up with some Buettners in South St. Paul but I would never give them a call to see if they're related because that's not what we do these days.

Not much of what popular culture does these days resembles what people do in the Blue Zones, except for, maybe, drinking red wine, a health habit a lot of people seem happy to oblige.

Many people in Blue Zones garden and harvest the majority of their own food, which might catch on a bit more in the U.S. depending on how the recession goes. One of my seed catalogs is promoting again the idea of a Victory Garden, but even seeds and gardening supplies may be out of the budget range of many middle Americans, whose fortunes have changed very rapidly.

Just the other day a Colorado farmer opened up his already harvested land to anyone who wanted to glean what was left of the potatoes, leeks and carrots. An astounding 40,000 people showed up and dug in the dirt and picked the fields clean. For vegetables! That's stiff competition for even the dollar menu at McDonald's, and much healthier. (Unless people were planning to make greasy fries from their bounty. Not much you can do to make a carrot unhealthy.)

As much as I adore and would like to promote gardening for fitness (in 1990, I zoomed down to my pre-baby weight by installing seven perennial gardens at a rural conference center), changing people's habits through economic collapse is not what I had in mind. Seeing so many people motivated by a fear of hunger sent shivers up my spine and put a tear in my eye at the same time. And I'm rather stoic.

But back to what we learned from the Blue Zones.  Get regular, moderate exercise. Eat less meat, more nuts. Get some sunshine every day so that your body makes vitamin D. Eat a plant based diet. According to Dr. Oz, do squats for your quadriceps because once they go, you're not long for this world. All good stuff we SHOULD do. But easier said than done because we live in a HOT ORANGE ZONE where all the cultural cues and most of our friends invite us to stuff ourselves on unhealthy over-processed foods for which we expend little to no physical effort.

Barring a complete economic meltdown that has us all out gleaning in the fields for a subsistence, how do you tune out all the modern temptations and distractions and live like you're in a Blue Zone?

Well, you know what I'm going to say. Take advantage of any social support you can find that encourages healthy habits. But for the rest, turn inward through fitness journaling or a food diary. Negotiate with yourself to set small goals to practice the healthy suggestions from the Blue Zones book long enough for some of them to become habits, a normal, natural part of your lifestyle.

As you do this, your lifestyle will rub off on those around you, to help create a mini Blue Zone, in your home, your workplace, your community.

Of course we think that the best way to journal some Blue Zone into your life is to color one of our ColorCode Mode journals or food diaries in any of the colors you choose to denote your healthy actions each day. Green, yellow, blue. It's quick and easy and all up to you.

And because we were so excited about Dan's Blue Zones story on Oprah, we created some red-hot coupons to help you save on our Lean Mode, Color Code—Not Your Usual Food Diary eBook. This is a tool that can help you make good on all your good intentions after seeing Oprah's show. With all due respect to Maya Angelou, when we know better, we don't necessarily do better.

From the previews I think Oprah is going to be broaching her weight gain and struggle this January. But she needn't beat herself up. Sometimes we just need to change things up. Oprah may have hit the wall where outside forces no longer motivate her. Sometimes we need a tool that helps foster our fitness self-motivation, self-control, self-reliance. That's something a trainer alone can't do for us.

The people who have been using our journals regularly (some since 2004!) have been very actively ordering more this past week. That gives us a chance to practice one of the other Blue Zone habits: gratitude.

We are always thankful for the people who use our journals year after year to create healthier lifestyles. We just wish we had more of you.

And so this Thanksgiving week, we will give thanks for our many blessings, and also add our perpetual prayer to be blessed by the Oprah effect. She's featured Bob GREEN and the BLUE Zones, and could now pull together those colors nicely for people (and herself) by getting into COLORCODE MODE—where ANY color goes, as long as you 1) only color in positive things you do, and 2) color in something good every day.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL!

Today's the day you weigh in on how the people you employ to keep your government and your economy healthy and thriving are doing, and whether or not you want to rehire them.

An entire populace can check its pulse, stress levels and bank book, and with relative ease, vote to continue in the same direction, or make a change and bring in new people.

Our nation's founders were big believers in regularly scheduled change, probably because they understood that it's a lot easier to vote than to wage a revolutionary war.

The four-year interval they specified for executive change was ambitious and intriguing, considering how slowly business and daily life moved in 1788. News, or long-distance financial transactions, moved at the speed of a horse. Or, for overseas transactions, a frigate.

Now consider the lightning BlackBerry speed with which completely unregulated, high risk, over-the-counter credit default swaps circled the globe and grew from an estimated notational amount of $13.9 trillion in December 2005 to between $45 and $62 trillion today but of course nobody really knows for sure and you can see wheeeeeee how fast that change got away from us.

And while decades-old notions of trickle down and trickle up economics were being debated during the campaign, the plug had already been pulled on the vast middle class and that gushing sound you heard was the spending power that fuels over 70% of the U.S. economy going bye-bye.

Except for that big chunk that's frozen for nobody really knows how long because in an unprecedented redistribution of wealth we can barely begin to fathom, Congress gave banks billions of dollars in hopes they'd feel better and start lending again. Instead they're buying up other banks which reduces competition and oh yes also giving their executives huge bonuses which probably isn't the change Congress was hoping for which tells me a) they needed to be more specific in handing out the money which shame on them they should have known, and b) they really weren't equipped to handle this kind of rapid decision-making in the face of such unprecedented change in our economy.

Which also tells me that more than ever we need leaders who are visionaries and can process the rapid rate of change in the world. This may not be the person you'd most like to have a beer with, but that's OK, you can still have a beer with people you like, if you can afford it. We need leaders who are way ahead of the curve.

Functionally, our executive branch should be versed in change and at the very least fluent in using email. And they're going to have to have brilliant advisors who can comprehend the ways the technologically adept can game the system (Department of TRON) and also how to work with the vast middle as it writhes its way through unacceptably painful changes and morphs into something else, perhaps via its own shadow economy (Secretary of the Squishy.)

And then there's our broken down system of health care delivery, that so many are afraid to change or even tinker with, as if it were working. It's going to take astute leaders who can take an entirely fresh and thorough look. This is where I get on my soapbox and remind individual Americans that just as your votes add up to elect your leaders, your individual health behaviors add up to a healthy nation or a sick nation. With both deficits and health care costs spiraling out of control, making even small improvements in our health habits is one of the few areas where we can each make a difference that helps lower costs for our over-burdened system.

The last eight years have changed America profoundly and no one can predict what kind of drastic changes might still be ahead for the American people, and the rest of the world by association.

But what if we were stuck for decade after decade after decade with a government as incompetent as the one we've had the past eight years? Would you feel so desperate as to hop aboard a wooden boat, cross an ocean, and play Survivor for real in a strange land with no phones to call home? Would you fight a war to get free of a lousy ruler? Would you back away from your computer screen and go vote?

Two hundred years ago some guys got together and built a system of government based on constant and regular executive change. They picked four years as the interval, based on what, I don't know, but I'm sure glad they did. And the rest is history.

Well it's the truth. There's isn't a day goes by that I don't have what I think is a valid insight about what's changed, or what needs to change to get our popular culture and our intertwined economy headed in a healthier direction. But day-to-day realities keep pulling me back to the pragmatic.

Like, for instance, if your c. 2003 site is hacked, maybe it's time to move to a more secure and feature-rich platform, which we did, officially launching both a new site, blog and online shop last Monday.

And if you see a study that shows food diaries can help people lose twice the weight, maybe you should figure out a way to make food diaries easier and more fun for people to use so that they'll be inclined to stop ignoring the most affordable and effective weight loss tool there is. So we did that.

And thinking maybe we should get with the program and offer it in an even more affordable and instant eBook version—we did that, too.

I think it was my first boss at 3M who told me it was OK for me to bring up problems, as long as I also suggested concrete solutions to fix them. Combine that with my Industrial Design education and I tend to put the focus less on talk, and more on tools to change things.

Well, sort of. I also tend to write copious descriptions of the tools we create and how to use them because on the web you need to give people everything they need to make an informed buying decision. You'll find all that and more at our new ColorCode Mode Journals site.

I also like to observe and write about change, an endlessly fascinating (to me) and ever changing topic. So two notes here on the changing workplace...

My daughter Alexis and I worked very closely to create our new food diary and our new website, hashing out the details for many, many hours each day and often into the night. Rest breaks were mandatory when her ancient Mac iBook would start to overheat, or experience a "kernel panic." Working so closely with my daughter, who has really given our company her all, has been one of the greatest rewards of my life.

But family members have worked together for centuries? What's new about that? Well, with all our resources going to our still-young company, Alexis and I haven't actually seen each other since last Christmas, almost a year. She's in CA, and I'm in MN (which helps explain that old picture we have on our site.) We're making other plans now, but until then, even I am amazed. If you had asked me 20 years ago what my workplace and co-workers would have been like, I could not have envisioned this and am thrilled, despite the unconventional way of staying in "close" touch with my grown daughter.

My other co-worker, without whom we could not have done our new journals, lives an hour away, which would still make it tempting to telecommute, especially with gas prices. But some things never change, and getting anything done when you have an infant and a toddler at home is one of them. So let's hear it for graphic designer Carolyn Gilde and her patient husband and co-worker Chris, of the talented Gilde Media Group, and for their adorable 2 1/2-year-old Luke and 5-month-old Juliet (aka Drooliet) as we completely blurred the lines between work and family and figured out a way to get the kids watched so that the new Lean Mode Food Diary could be born.

Sometimes when we really needed to work without interruption our workplace was Caribou Coffee, and on one late-nighter, the Perkins in West St. Paul, where we were assailed and tested by insufferably loud and horrible Musak that could not be turned down (or so they said.) I feel honored, Carolyn and Chris, to have been trusted with the care of your adorable, quick-with-a-big-smile children, who unlike my computer screen, return my gaze with a look of expectancy that I'm going to say something interesting to them, which of course, keeps me on my toes and also reminds me what's really important and truly delightful in life.

And so, from the creative workplace of Luhrs Media Co., wherever that may be at any given moment, I'd like to present the new ColorCodeMode.com web site, new official home of the Streaming Colors Fitness Journal and of Lean Mode, Color Code—Not Your Usual Food Diary.

When people from my generation (baby boomers) tell you they didn't think they'd see a black president within their lifetime, they're usually realists about how slow change can be. Or maybe they understand how complex it is — just like changes in our health behaviors. We don't change until we're ready, and when you're talking about a nation, you're not quite sure when there are enough of us who are ready.

So I find it particularly ironic that it was exactly 45 years to the day after Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech, that 84,000 people crowded a stadium to attest to their more-than-readiness for change from a man who could have been any color but just happened to be black.  People want a change from the failed Republican policies of the last eight years and the visionary person who they believe can deliver it is a man named Barack Obama who by the way happens to be black. He could be purple for all anyone cared, as long as he can help bring about change.

To the young people who grew up relatively color blind due to the hard-won school integration changes of the civil rights era, Barack is simply the guy who "gets it." He happens to be black.

This is an astounding and welcome change of attitude to many of my generation. When I was young, the repugnant and insulting question asked of both women and black men as leaders would have been whether they had the intelligence to rule (and in the case of women, in particular, the emotional strength.) I kid you not. How far we've come when the black candidate is accused of being TOO cerebral, too academic.

How far we've come when a female candidate and a black candidate really slug it out, both proving themselves to be warriors for the cause they believe in. I didn't mind the fight one bit. To me it just said how much they both cared about bringing change to America. And maybe it's the desperateness for change from the last eight years of unfettered Republican rule that ironically set up Americans to not really question race or sex in choosing presidential candidates. It's a good sign that the millions of young voters who turned out for the primary are probably wondering what's the big deal?

And yet for those of us who lived in the era of the civil rights struggle, the change is visceral. I was a senior in an all white MN high school when King was assassinated on April 4, 1968. My French Club had raised funds to take a trip to New Orleans to visit the French Quarter and ostensibly speak some French, departing St. Paul, MN, by train within a few days of King's death. Changing train stations in Chicago we rode a yellow school bus that was surrounded by helmeted baton-carrying National Guardsmen and rioters in the streets of Chicago. A bus of oh-so-clueless-oh-so-white kids. Then began the long 20-hour slog to New Orleans on the legendary City of New Orleans train, our hearts breaking for the heart-broken black porters so much that you didn't have the heart to even ask them to sell you a sandwich. Everything felt hopeless. Memphis, the scene of King's assassination, was burning, so the train didn't stop. It rolled slowly through, and I will never forget the sight.

When I entered college the next autumn, my freshman class had ninety black students, up from two the previous year. Shocking circumstances had prompted change, as they so often do. The seeds were sown. And lo and behold, on August 28, 2008, they were reaped. Who knew that that would be the day we felt the change profoundly?

ABC news interviewed a black woman who had seats in the nosebleed section of Mile HIgh Stadium. She spoke eloquently of looking down on Obama and feeling she was looking down from the mountain King spoke of in his last speech before his death. If you have any doubt of the magnitude of the changes of the past forty-five years, read that speech again.

Diets don't work, the health behavior change experts keep telling us, because they are too drastic. Instead we're supposed to make gradual changes that become second nature to us—-habits we hardly think about. School integration and affirmative action programs helped us slowly change our schooling, hiring and employment habits to be more inclusive of minorities (and women) in our day-to-day living. Were they working? There's still far to go, but Barack Obama's nomination and Hillary's historic good run at it are indicators of how much our attitudes have changed. Change has arrived. Followed, of course, by the need to keep changing.

My wise grandmother told me that the only thing we could count on was change. (She also told us, as we sat on the couch and watched it with her in 1969, that the first manned moon landing was a fake-—completely staged. But I'll give her a pass on that.) I try to embrace change. Or at least I hope I do. When my choice of presidential candidates from either party was not to my suiting, I wrote in Alan Greenspan's name, as I considered him the most potent agent of change in our nation.

Peaceful change every four years is one of the very foundations of our government. The founding fathers passionately believed in the need to regularly shake up the power bases lest they become too entrenched. Yet here we sit mired in partisan politics that make us believe we are meant to act as if we were die-hard loyal fans of our sentimental-favorite sports team, rather than informed voters who weigh the pros and cons of supporting a candidate to lead us for the next four-year term. We are stuck, stuck, stuck in our partisan habits, no matter how much we suffer at the hands of our own party, and no matter how much they flip-flop their policies so that you can't really tell what they stand for. Yet we remain slow-moving elephants and stubborn donkeys. Polls show only a slight margin in the middle that is willing to change its mind, and that group essentially controls the election.

If you are one of those people who is able to adapt your thinking, I would urge you to look outward at our rapidly-changing world and ask who can best help America regain its edge. Vote for the person who can bring us back from the brink, not for the next prom king or guy you'd most like to have a beer with. If you really can't decide, consider that roughly half of the U.S. has had to suffer through the destruction of the American dream by an administration they did not elect. If you voted for the Republicans and feel they didn't live up to their promises or reputation, you might want to make it up to the other half of America by going with change for change's sake and voting in the other direction. If you're not happy with the results, our marvelous Constitution gives you the opportunity to express your change of mind four years from now. Now if only we could change our ingrained eating and exercise habits by simply going to the polls and flipping a lever.