Joe Kraynak

Fast Becoming a Minority in America

In a recent article entitled “U.S. to Grow Grayer, More Diverse,” Washington Post Staff Writer N.C. Aizenman calls attention to the fact that according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates, “minorities will be majority by 2042.”

I don’t know what to think of this. In a way, I became a minority as soon as I moved out of my heavily Polish neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side in 1978. I quickly became one of the few students of Polish-Ruthenian heritage attending Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. (I did meet one other Pole from “Da Region.”) When I moved to Indianapolis, Indiana in 1984, I felt even more like a minority. In my 20 years of living in Indianapolis, I met only a half dozen Poles (none of whom was very Pole-ish) and not a single Ruthenian. And Crawfordsville, Indiana? Fugget-about-it… I have yet to meet anyone who’s even sampled a perogi.

Personally, I enjoy my minority status. It makes me feel special. When I mention perogi or kapusta, I feel like a traveler from some long-forgotten land. When I speak the few words or phrases I know of Polish, like dziekuje (pronounced jen-ku-ya, meaning thank you) or idz do domu i spac (pronounced eez-dough-dome-oh-spotch meaning go home and go to bed), I feel bilingual. I don’t even mind the fact that people commonly mispronounce my name as Kray-nee-ack (Ruthenian, not Polish), although for the life of me, I can’t imagine how they came up with that mispronunciation.

As a minority, I can blame everything on the majority. After all, if the Polish-Ruthenians were running this country, we’d all have high-paying jobs, low taxes, the best schools in the world, free universal health care, and other perks too numerous to mention. And since my ancestors arrived long after “The White Man” stole the land from the Native Americans and some time after slavery was abolished in the United States, I feel none of the guilt that the majority of Americans often suffer.

So, when I read about “becoming” a minority in America by 2042, it really doesn’t bother me. I’m already there… and loving it.

Beautiful Women

I read somewhere recently that 95-99% of what men find most attractive in women is in the neck up. We’re initially attracted to women and ultimately adore them not primarily for their “from the neck down” bodies but for the intelligence, grace, and sheer joy of life that beams forth from their faces.

This struck me as true and an important lesson to teach our daughters and the other young ladies whose minds we influence. With all the magazines and TV shows and ads constantly reinforcing the message that beauty means being thin - usually overly thin -and showing as much flesh as possible, we need to counterbalance these messages with the truth that most men find beauty not in the breasts and hips, but in the eyes and smile - in confidence, joy, intelligence, and individual expression.

The media’s message of what female beauty consists of is actually counterproductive to cultivating true beauty. It simply makes women, especially young ladies, overly self-conscious, not confident, and perhaps even bitter and unhappy. There’s nothing sexy in that.

Amazon’s Disreputable Marketing of The Tales of Beedle the Bard

Today, I searched Amazon.com Books for “bipolar disorder.” At the top of the list? J.K. Rowling’s The Tales of Beedle the Bard. That’s weird, I thought, maybe Beedle the Bard has bipolar disorder. Maybe I should order the book to find out.

On second thought, I doubted that Beedle the Bard had bipolar disorder. I decided to look up something else totally unrelated to fiction and J.K. Rowling. So I searched Amazon.com Books for “foreclosure.” Sure enough, at the top of the list again was J.K. Rowling’s The Tales of Beedle the Bard.

Now, I know Amazon.com wants to sell books, and this is sure to be a big seller. I don’t mind having the title splashed in my face on the opening Amazon.com page or even in the margins of other pages I look at. I might even be able to tolerate a pop-up ad or two. However, when I search for books on specific topics, I expect Amazon.com to display only books that fit my topic description. Otherwise, what’s the point of having a search tool?

Aren’t We All a Little Psychotic?

Just the other morning, I was staring at a dead bug - a wicked looking red and black insect with wings and stingers and pincers. At least I thought it was dead. I moved my face closer and closer to get a better look at it. When I was only a few inches from it, it started buzzing, and I recoiled and yelled, “Holy….” which instantly woke my wife who was sleeping right next to me.

Yeah, it was all a dream, as starkly vivid as anything I could experience in reality, maybe even a little more real. Sure, it was merely an illusion, something my brain cooked up, but how could it seem so real and how could I accept it as being real? Isn’t that what psychosis is - seeing and hearing things that aren’t there? What was asleep in my brain that prevented me from questioning what I was seeing? What was working overtime in my brain to make me “see” such a nasty looking creature?

I’ll leave all those questions to brain and dream researchers to sort out, but the experience made me realize that we might all be a little psychotic. At least we know from our dreams that we have the capacity for psychosis. When we dream, we become delusional. We hallucinate. We see things that aren’t there and hear sounds in the midst of silence. We have no trouble accepting these dreams as normal parts of our lives.

Yet, when we encounter someone who’s experiencing psychosis, it completely baffles us. We can’t wrap our brain around the notion that while people are awake, they can see things that aren’t there and hear voices when nobody’s speaking. We can’t imagine ever experiencing such a thing even though we experience it every night when we fall asleep.

New Bipolar Blog on Psych Central - Bipolar Beat

Anyone who knows me well is aware that my family has been living with bipolar disorder for nearly a decade. My wife, Cecie, was first diagnosed in 1999 and has had quite a journey trying to discover the right combination of doctor, therapist, and medications to stabilize her moods.

When I first heard the term “bipolar disorder,” I did what I normally do when I’m totally ignorant of something I need to know about - I headed to the bookstore, purchased every book I could find on the subject, and spent every spare moment reading them. I learned a great deal, but none of the books provided me with everything I needed to know about bipolar disorder and what I could do to help.

I thought I could write something better, so in 2005, I pitched the idea of doing Bipolar Disorder For Dummies to an acquisitions editor I knew at John Wiley & Sons, Mikal Belicove. He proceeded to search for and find a suitable co-author for me - someone infinitely more qualified than I was to hand out advice about bipolar - Dr. Candida Fink MD (FinkShrink.com). She had plenty of experiencing diagnosing and treating bipolar disorder in her patients and had already co-authored a book on bipolar disorder in children and teens called The Ups and Downs of Raising a Bipolar Child. She also grew up with bipolar disorder in her family and has a great sense of humor.

A couple years after Bipolar Disorder For Dummies arrived in bookstores, we decided to do our own blog to promote the book. On June 18, 2007, we launched our Bipolar Blog. Now, as anyone in the publishing biz knows, waiting two years to start promoting your book is kind of dumb, but we had a “better late than never” philosophy and figured that our new blog would help us deliver fresh information to the bipolar community and give us a head start should we ever have the opportunity to do a 2nd edition of the book (or some other project).

Recently, John M. Grohol, Psy.D., CEO & Publisher of PsychCentral.com, “discovered” our blog, liked it, and appreciated the way we handled the topic of bipolar disorder in Bipolar Disorder For Dummies. He was in the process of recruiting qualified professionals to blog on specific mental health related topics on his Web site and offered us the opportunity to create and host Psych Central’s bipolar blog. We accepted the offer and have chosen to call our new blog Bipolar Beat. Here, we will be posting articles and insights on topics of interest to those in the bipolar community – people with bipolar disorder and their loved ones, physicians, psychiatrists, therapists, and anyone else who’s interested in learning more about bipolar disorder.

While readers of Bipolar Disorder For Dummies and visitors to our blog are no doubt on their own bipolar journeys, Candida and I have had our own journey of discovery related to both bipolar disorder and blogging. We invite you to explore what we’ve discovered by visiting Bipolar Beat and Bipolar Blog and to share what you discovered with us and with the community we are working to build.

Current Project - Cross-Cultural Selling For Dummies

Over the past several months, I’ve been working with Michael Soon Lee of EthnoConnect, a leading expert on the topic of selling to customers from diverse cultures, and sales guru Ralph R. Roberts to develop Cross-Cultural Selling For Dummies®. We just wrapped up the writing phase of the project and are currently working through author review - when we have the opportunity to review changes and suggestions from editorial and answer their questions.

We’re developing the book primarily for salespeople who want to expand their business into any of various multicultural markets across the country and around the world. (According to the Selig Center for Economic Growth, the combined purchasing power of the multicultural market has grown from $1.39 trillion in 2000 to over $2 trillion in 2006 and is estimated to reach $3 trillion in 2011.) However, the book is useful for others, as well, including small-business owners, entrepreneurs, and any front-line sales or customer service staff. Cross-Cultural Selling For Dummies® provides readers with practical tips and strategies showing them exactly what they need to do to appeal to clientele from different cultures:

• Assess your multicultural readiness (a self-test)
• Develop basic multicultural competency
• Hone your multicultural customer service skills
• Adjust your marketing campaign to make it more appealing to clients from other cultures
• Go beyond marketing to make your entire business multicultural friendly
• Redesign your store or office to make it appeal to a broader clientele
• Adapt your product line for multicultural sales
• Meet and greet prospective clients without turning them off
• Adapt your sales presentation and techniques
• Recognize multicultural buying signals
• Acquire closing techniques that are more effective with clients from other cultures
• Negotiate with clients who may have more experience and expertise with haggling than you do
• Build your referral base in the ethnic community
• Assemble and manage your own multicultural sales team
• Discover commonly held myths about your own culture and others that may be holding you back
• Uncover a host of multicultural resources that can help you transition your business for other markets

The book will be available in bookstores by November 17, 2008 – just in time to make the perfect Christmas present, or Kwanzaa present, or Hanukkah present, or ….

AARP and My Premature Aging

I turned 48 this year. Yet, I’ve been a member of AARP (Association for the Advancement of Retired Persons), an advocacy group for people age 50 and over, since 2006. When I became a member, I had just turned 46. With social security fast on its way to bankruptcy, I doubt I’ll ever retire, so why did AARP choose to add me to its rank and file in 2006? Because that’s the year my wife, Cecie, turned 50.

I have no regrets about having married an “older woman.” My older woman is wiser, more fun loving, more beautiful, and more energetic than most of the women I’ve met who are my age and younger. 

My beef is with AARP.  Just because Cecie turned 50 doesn’t make me 50. I feel old enough as is. Not so long ago, I could run six miles and barely break a sweat. Now, I have to run/jog and can barely make it 2.5 miles before I collapse. I don’t need to be carrying around an AARP card in my wallet as a constant reminder of how old I’m getting.

I’ll hit 50 soon enough, no need to rush it, AARP!

Ralph R. Roberts Offers to Assist Ed McMahon

Today’s edition of The New York Times carried a story by Joanne Kaufman entitled, “A Shift in Real Estate Books.” The story is about how publishers are scrambling to get books to market to help homeowners and real estate investors with the downturn in the housing market and increasing foreclosures.

The article begins by focusing on the fact that even rich celebrities are having trouble. Recently, Ed McMahon, famous for being Johnny Carson’s co-host and for making lots of people happy with his Publisher’s Clearing House giveaways, has run into some financial trouble and is facing foreclosure on his $4.8 million in home loans.

My co-author for several books, including Foreclosure Investing For Dummies and Foreclosure Self-Defense For Dummies, Ralph R. Roberts, heard about Mr. McMahon’s problems and called him to offer his expert assistance. Ralph has been through foreclosure himself and works with another guy to audit home loans. In many cases, they are able to reveal problems with loans that force the lender to renegotiate. McMahon turned down the offer. Personally, I think Ed McMahon made a big mistake in doing so. Ralph is what I would consider the top expert in foreclosures in the U.S.

Well, maybe Mr. McMahon has enough money to buy a copy of Foreclosure Self-Defense For Dummies. If he doesn’t, we’d be more than happy to send him a free copy.

Parents Only: Censoring the Web Through Your Router

I used to spend a lot of time writing computer books. I’m currently working on updating The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Computer Basics, 5th Edition, and realized that most articles written for parents on how to keep their kids away from the nasty stuff on the Web recommend buying and installing one of the many Internet monitoring and filtering programs currently available.

Everyone who’s ever tried to censor the Web using Internet Explorer’s Content Advisor is well aware of the fact that it’s almost totally useless.

What most articles fail to mention is that if you have a router, it probably has its own monitoring and content filtering features built right into it. (A router is a networking device that not only allows several computers to network with one another, but also allows them to share expensive equipment, such as a printer, and services, such as broadband Internet.)

I just posted an article about censoring the Web through your router on my computer-focused blog ComputerChimp.com.

Crest Team Responds to Consumer about Crest Pro Health

Shelley, a visitor to this blog who also experienced tooth staining when using Crest Pro Health Mouth Rinse submitted a complaint to Proctor & Gamble and received a response back from them. Here is Shelley’s original letter of complaint, followed by the Crest Team’s response, followed by how that response made Shelley feel and my own comments.

Shelley’s Complaint to P&G

I purchased this Crest Pro Health Rinse. It was packaged with Crest White Strips, which I always buy. After a few weeks of use, I noticed brown in the spaces between my lower teeth. I did not know this was caused by the rinse and I have been flossing aggressively to get it out. I’ve never had this kind of problem before - I usually have nice white teeth. I found out that this may have been caused by the rinse and now I’m afraid to use any Crest products. I will see if my dentist can get this brown out of my lower teeth.

Crest Team’s Response

Thanks for contacting us.

I’m sorry to hear of your experience when using Crest Pro-Health Rinse. I appreciate the time you’ve taken to bring this to our attention and I’ve shared your report with our specialized representatives.We conducted comprehensive studies on Crest Pro-Health Rinse to prove its safety and effectiveness. The active ingredient in Crest Pro-Health Rinse, Cetylpyridinium chloride (CPC), has been recognized as safe and effective by an FDA advisory panel. The label meets current FDA standards.

My Comment

The Crest Team is careful when quoting statistics, claiming “Less than one-tenth of 1% of people who have purchased Crest Pro-Health Rinse have raised this concern.” They don’t say less than one-tenth of 1% of people who have used Crest Pro-Health Rinse experience this problem, they highlight only the small percentage of people who report it. Granted, they cannot possibly know how many people experience these problems if people are not reporting it, but I believe that many people who are having problems are not reporting it for one of the following reasons:

• They don’t realize that the mouthwash is the cause.
• They simply stop using the product and don’t report anything.
• Some consumers simply don’t file formal complaints - it’s like patrons who have a bad experience at a restaurant and decide never to eat there rather than complain to the manager.

The comment that the staining is “largely preventable - through options like brushing with a power toothbrush and tartar-control/whitening toothpaste, flossing, and visiting the dentist regularly” is baloney. I was doing all this at the time and it did not succeed in preventing the stains caused by Crest Pro Health Mouth Rinse. This is insulting to anyone who experienced this staining.

I’d like to see a controlled clinical study.

I also think P&G should be proactive in adding a warning label to the product regardless of whether the FDA requires it. It would demonstrate P&G’s commitment to its customers’ health and well being.