Practices before swim meets are the best type of practice. The expectation hangs in the air and everyone is radiating nervous energy. The pool seems to transform into a different, more exhilarating place and our coach paces around the deck, observing his team carefully. Everything felt different the day before my first meet of the season which was an invitational in memory of a deceased swimmer. I felt strong. I felt in control. And as a junior, I finally felt that I was needed as a role model for some of the younger athletes.

I acknowledged the pain in my lower right side during practice that day, but I ignored it. Instead, I concentrated on gripping the backstroke bar and thrusting my entire body up over the water and into a tight streamline. The motion hurt, but I wouldn’t stop. I entered the locker room completely soaked and exhausted and I popped a few Motrin into my mouth before driving home. Every time I hit a bump in the road, I grimaced. The heating pad and the extra strength pain medication didn’t put a dent in the pain in my side. At the time, it felt like the clamp we used in woodshop was being tightened on my body. My insides were being squeezed, but images of my upcoming races leaked into my thoughts anyway.

At the emergency room that evening, the doctor gripped my waist and shook me. He closely resembled Frankenstein. I remembered how my mom had rolled down her waistband to show me the scar left by her ruptured appendix, but the doctor quickly ruled out appendicitis and ovary complications. After I pulled up my hospital gown and the technician lathered my belly with gel during the ultrasound, my condition became glaringly obvious even to an untrained eye. A star shone brilliantly on the screen, directly in the middle of my right kidney. I had a kidney stone.

“I’m not going to lie to you,” one of the nurses said as she thrust a prescription for Vicodin and urine strainers into my mom’s arms. “I’ve seen grown men on their knees from the pain of one tiny stone.” My mom’s eyes flashed and I could imagine her rushing over to me and clamping her hands down over my ears. Through gritted teeth, she muttered something undistinguishable and we left the hospital to a silent and moonless night.

I awoke at two thirty a.m., a mere two hours after taking my first pill, to the most excruciating pain I had ever felt in my life. Somehow I staggered into the kitchen and unscrewed the lid to the pills and managed to summon the spit to swallow one. I returned to my warm bed shaking uncontrollably, but luckily the other half of my bunk bed was being occupied by a sister I can always rely on. She coaxed me through it and I fell back asleep.

The following morning, I felt terrible. Unanswerable questions popped into my head one after another. Why did this happen now? What had I done wrong? The best part of the day was when I saw my coach’s head bobbing up and down outside the flowerboxes in my living room window. He was wearing the bright purple “Kenzie Klassic” shirt and was literally clutching a can of homemade “whoopass.” He pretended not to notice me crying and described how the girls would kick some anus even without my help. (And for the next week, he called daily to check my condition.) I’ll never stop loving him.

The rest of the day, I sat heartbroken on the sofa. I clutched my stomach fleetingly and stared outside. Every few minutes, I checked the clock and speculated about which event was happening. And regardless of how much I tried to glorify my condition, I simply could not imagine any of my favorite female book characters or movie stars passing a kidney stone.

According to the doctor in the emergency room, kidney stones usually pass within the first two or three days after serious pain is felt. It did not pass for eight long, terrible days. My mother maintains that it was an exercise in patience sent straight from God, but I was too unhappy with any divine power to care what I was supposed to be learning.

Now I can see more clearly. I understand that sometimes things happen for unknown reasons and that maybe the waves of pain the crashed over my body were to remind me of how lucky I am. I haven’t had much experience with pain or suffering and I cannot even attempt to fathom how much there is in this world. Despite my age, gender and eating habits, this happened to me. It reminds me that life isn’t always predictable or painless. I can smile and joke about being sixteen going on sixty, but unlike the elderly, my memory is impeccable and I’ll remember the lessons I learned for a long time.

This year’s Brighton Smokin’ Jazz and Barbeque Blues Festival is offering up a number of delicacies for both the taste buds and the ears. But, here’s a secret: you’ll want to be there Friday night from 9:45-11 p.m., because a world-class, award-winning treat is going to be available for you to enjoy.: Mack Avenue recording artist and Detroit-area blues mainstay Johnnie Bassett will be performing with his band, the Blues Insurgents (Keith Kaminski, saxophone; Chris Codish, keyboards; James Simonson, bass; and Skeeto Valdez, drums).

Bassett recently received the honor of being named the “Artist Deserving of More Attention” from Living Blues Magazine, and has received numerous Detroit Music Awards in his career – and as you’re about to read in this exclusive LivingstonTalk interview, the accolades are Johnnie’s just desserts for a dedication to the craft of playing the blues.

Daryl:  Having lived here for over 10 years now, I’ve noticed that the level of performers that are being brought in for local festivals like the Brighton Blues and Barbecue event has risen dramatically in the last few years.  However, not everyone follows blues and jazz closely enough to realize that.  Could you give us some recent highlights in your career to give people a sense of what caliber of artist they’ll be seeing?

Johnnie:  Sure.  We just got back a few weeks ago from Cognac, France;  I had never played in Cognac before.  I’ve played in Paris several times, but this was my first time in Cognac.   We played at a five day festival there that draws 55,000 people.

D: Fifty-five thousand?  Wow!

J:  Yeah, it was something else.  The organizers told my agent that a lot of people said that we were the highlight of whole festival. Before that, we played a festival in Belgium for about 2,500 people, and festivals in Kalamazoo and the Poconos Mountains in Pennsylvania.

D: You recently received an award from Living Blues Magazine as the “Artist Most Deserving of More Attention” for 2010.  Couple that with the Detroit Music Awards and other awards you’ve received – how does it make you feel about what you do to receive these honors?

J: After over 30 years, it’s about time…….. (laughs)   No, I’m always pleased to receive honors like these, and it validates that people get that what I’ve been doing for all these years is good.

D: Every once in a while, someone will refer to you as “this new blues guy in Detroit” and it always makes me laugh.

J: Yeah, all anyone needs to do is search my name on the Internet and they’ll see that I’ve been at this a LONG time (note: Johnnie first worked as a session musician on records in the late 50′s).  But I started out as a side man and didn’t start appearing as a band leader until 1994, and then people started to take notice. But you have to put in the time, man, and pay your dues. Plus all the songs on my CD’s, with only one or two exceptions, are originals.

D: I am aware of your work and the playing of the guys in your band, and because of that I wouldn’t miss this show for anything. Echoing my first question, some music fans here in the county may not realize what they’d be missing if they didn’t come.  What would you tell them they’re going to miss out on if they don’t come out, as a way to encourage them to make it a point to visit the festival for your set?

J:   Swinging, jumping, enjoyable music! This is a young band, and they have a lot of energy – which keeps me going too. And they’re have the ability to do whatever I ask them to do, which makes it so much fun. I just try and keep it fun and simple. This isn’t going to be down-home kind of blues, this is electric, swinging blues. People have a real good time listening to us.

If you want to have a real good time, check out Johnnie Bassett and the Blues Insurgents on Friday, Sept. 10, from 9:45-11 PM at the Brighton Smokin’ Jazz and Barbecue Blues Festival.

You can learn more about Johnnie and listen to sound samples by clicking here. Johnnie says to check out “Keep Your Hands Off My Baby” and “Feeling Lucky Baby.”

Some columnists use their positions to push for things like social justice or ending world poverty or putting an end to international conflicts. Not me. I’ve chosen instead to tackle the things that are REALLY important.

Specifically, I’ve taken on these two crusades in the past three decades:

Getting a Taco Bell for Howell.

Getting the Ugly Naked Guy moved away from the Mill Pond in Brighton.

That first one took me years to accomplish. I began my crusade in 1984, when I called the world’s attention to the fact that it was wholly unfair that Brighton had a Taco Bell, while Howell did not. After six years of non-stop berating, the Taco Bell people finally relented and built a restaurant in Howell. Two decades later, I’m still getting thank-you notes.

My second crusade – which began about three years ago – concerns the little statue of an ugly naked guy that’s been sitting in front of the Brighton Mill Pond since then.

The statue was brought to town as part of something called the Brighton Biennial, which was a wonderful project designed to fill the downtown area with pieces of outdoor art.

Some of the pieces were cool, some of them were rusty pieces of junk, and some of then were little ugly naked guys. The statue’s official name is “Decision Pending,” and I’ve never been sure what “decision” it is that’s “pending.” Perhaps the decision to put on some clothes. I don’t know.

When “Decision Pending” was first unveiled, it was one of the most controversial pieces in the Brighton Biennial. A lot of people thought it was ugly and disgusting and borderline obscene, so, naturally, the Brighton City Council responded to the outrage by doing two things:

Buying it.

Giving it a permanent home at the most prominent place in the downtown area – right in front of the Mill Pond.

Way to listen to your constituents! Well, I’ve been on a crusade against the Ugly Naked Guy ever since then, because I feel that if you’re going to have something sitting in front of your downtown area’s crown jewel – the Mill Pond – that something shouldn’t be a statue of an ugly naked guy.

And I consider it one of the great accomplishments of my life that I’m the one who coined the term “Ugly Naked Guy,” and now, it appears to be part of the daily lexicon in Brighton. When the Livingston County Daily Press & Argus did a story about the statue last week, they referred to the statue as the “Ugly Naked Guy.” I was so proud, I could have cried.

In any case, the reason they were doing that story about the UNG is why I’m writing about it today. In case you missed it, the Brighton City Council voted 4-3 recently to move the statue to another spot in the city.

And now, I can die. My life’s work is complete.

This all came about because the City Council received a complaint that the Ugly Naked Guy was too close to the World War II memorial that also sits in front of the Mill Pond. Some people don’t think it’s very respectful to have a statue of a little naked feller so close to the war memorial.

Never mind that both the UNG and the War Memorial have been sitting side by side for the past few years. Once the council members got this complaint, they apparently decided it was finally time to find a new home for the Naked One.

I wasn’t at this meeting, but from the account in the newspaper, the debate on this topic was just shy of turning into a UFC cage match. The discussion apparently got quite heated, and in the end, a bitterly divided council voted 4-3 to move the UNG.

At this point, of course, the story becomes downright comical. According to a story in the Daily Press & Argus, a former Brighton City Council member named John Tunis has begun circulating a petition to keep “Decision Pending” in front of the Mill Pond.

Evidently, Mr. Tunis feels that in order for a town to truly be great, it needs to have a statue of a grotesque nude man resting in a place of great prominence. Amen to that.

And then, to further bolster his case that the Ugly Naked Guy need to stay where he is, John Tunis offered up the greatest rationale of all: The people honored by the World War II memorial would have wanted it that way.

“I believe those men gave their lives so we could have freedom of expression,” he said.

Well, doggone it all, it’s hard to argue with that logic. When our boys in World War II were fighting at places like Normandy and Bastogne and Guadalcanal, they weren’t fighting to oppose Nazi aggression or Japanese imperialism. Oh, no. They were fighting so that small towns in Michigan could put up statues of ugly naked men.

Ah, well. I don’t know if Mr. Tunis’ petition will go anywhere, but for now, I’m happy that the Ugly Naked Guy is being moved away.

Which brings me to my newest Livingston County crusade: Howell’s teeny-tiny roundabouts.

If we can bring a Taco Bell to town and get rid of an Ugly Naked Guy, getting those things torn down should be a piece of cake, right? Who’s with me, people?

The artists are Mary Rochelle Burnham, Dean Rogers and Joan Eaton. Their work will be installed on Sept. 1 and remain on exhibit until Oct. 26. Exhibit hours are 5-8 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays, and 9 a.m. to noon on Saturdays. The CoBACH Center is located in downtown Brighton, at 202 W. Main St., adjacent to the Mill Pond.

A “Celebrate the Artists” evening is scheduled for 6-8 p.m. Friday, Sept. 24 and is open to the public.

For information about the Brighton Art Guild and other Guild events go to brightonartguild.com or call (810) 225-8197.

—

The immensely popular festival of blues and barbecue takes place throughout downtown Brighton.

For a preview of some music you might hear, take a listen to “Nice Guys Finish Last,” or other songs from the latest album of Detroit’s own Johnnie Bassett, who closes out the show on Friday night.

In its five years, the Brighton Smokin’ Jazz & Barbecue Blues Festival has become a signature event that draws performers from throughout the U.S.

Join the thousands of blues and barbecue lovers who will fill Brighton’s downtown to enjoy the eats and beats.

The lineup for this year’s much-anticipated festival is:

Friday:
6-7 p.m. – Tad Weed/Kurt Krahnke/Sean Dobbins
7:15-8:15 p.m. – The Rumpshakers (take a listen)
8:30-9:30 p.m. – Zydecrunch
9:45-11 p.m. Johnnie Bassett

Saturday:
3:30-4:30 p.m. Count Bracey & The Pleasuretones
4:45-5:45 p.m. – Paul Keller Trio: A Toast To The Nat King Cole Trio
6-7 p.m. – Trio Organic
7:15-8:15 p.m. – Greg Nagy Band
8:30-9:30 p.m. – Planet D Nonet (take a listen)
9:45-11 p.m. – Magic Slim & The Teardrops (take a listen)

For more information contact, Rebecca Boss at beccab@brightoncoc.org.

Yesterday’s Coffee, as a blog title, has been brewing on the back burner of my mind since last summer, when Maria Stuart of LivingstonTalk.com — the new online community for Michigan’s Livingston County – asked me to blog.  I did, but my blog didn’t have a title; it didn’t really need one at the time. However, that experience got me to wondering. What would I call my blog series, if I wanted to name it?

Last September my husband and I were camping in northern Michigan with his father.  One morning the men got out on the lake early to fish. Of course I’d slept in, so they returned to find only leftover coffee. Our camper has a microwave. We nuked the cold brew before making a new pot; and that’s when my father-in-law suddenly smiled, and came out with some saying about “Yesterday’s Coffee.”

Whatever he said was catchy; and I’m sure I wrote it down, but can’t find my notes. The gist, though, was that yesterday’s coffee was pretty good — and that it was an old song title!  A song?

Hmmm, I was thinking. Song or not, that could be a great blog title for me. So, I parked the idea away for a year.  And, who knew!  Dozens of others had the same idea, I discover. Everyone from a music group on Facebook to another blogger who changed his to “Reheated Coffee” (perhaps we’ll meet up sometime and rehash all this), to forums and surveys about leftover coffee – and, even a website devoted to funny jokes, called “Yesterday’s Coffee.”

It’s amazing how things work. Once you begin homing in on an idea simmering on the periphery of your consciousness, like pigeons aloft in flight, all manner of facts and events come into view.  Get enough of them, and you can make your landing.

Soon as I decided it was time to focus on my coffee theme, things began popping up. Coffee cup designs decorate the napkins I recently bought; even the paper towels sport coffee quotes. “Wake up and smell the coffee!”  Kind of overused, but it will do when in crisis mode.

“With enough coffee, anything is possible!” That would be my favorite.  I truly believe that, especially if the coffee is:  chocolate-vanilla-almond-maple-Jamaican-mocha-hazelnut, or some exotic concoction of flavors. If you drink yesterday’s coffee, though, can you be a coffee snob?

At this point in my life, yesterday’s coffee takes on new meaning. Beyond my own life story of remembered good coffee times, I’m beginning to feel swept up into the current of a very fast moving river. The other day, I was clearing space, making room for my future projects – tomorrow’s muse.

A wave of amazement flowed over me, realizing a box I was sorting held hundred-year-old letters from my mom’s parents.  One piece of antique parchment-colored paper unfolded to reveal a marriage certificate. It’s huge, with cutouts for photos of the bridal couple, and the pastor, as well. No, there are no photos, the paper is worn, and the dates are faint, but I’m sure it says Jan 1, 1900. That blows my mind, of course. I’ll have to check with my cousin, probably the only one of the family left that would know.

Genealogists must have a field day over cups and cups of yesterday’s coffee. I can picture them reaching for the strongest brew — reheating it, while propping their eyelids open to go after just one more clue, with detective-like precision and tenacity. Guess that’s why I keep procrastinating. A former co-worker of mine would love to know I found this stuff.  She has admonished me time and again for not working on my family tree, figuring it will never happen in her lifetime. We shared many office cups of coffee over that muse.

Well, as I pondered what to do with my stash — this legacy from my grandparents — I dusted things off to store in a better place.  Imagining those times, I saw my grandparents sitting at their great oak table. Actually, it’s easy to picture that, since I sit at that table.  It’s the one thing I’m glad I said ‘Yes’ for when no one else in the family could take it, back when. When, meaning as young newlyweds, we started out dining on a picnic table.

I can imagine nearly a century of yesterday’s coffee being shared by all the people who’ve gathered around my grandma’s table, because I grew up with it. Instead of  today’s coffee by the computer, and dashing off an email, I see them searching for paper and pen from their tall secretary desk, drawing up a chair over at the big round dining table – the hub of activity in the home.  With elbow room to spread out stationery supplies, cup and saucer, sugar,  cream, spoon, they’d  be sipping and thoughtfully writing those letters to loved ones….what would wind up being tomorrow’s muse for me to  see  and  cast my own muse upon, over  a cup of yesterday’s coffee.

Now that the format for Livingston Talk is a new creation, I sense this is the time for my blog to be a new creation, as well. So I’ll go with “Yesterday’s Coffee, Tomorrow’s Muse.”

You could be wondering where I came up with “Tomorrow’s Muse.” Well, I’m a product of a longtime group of women (originally and affectionately called, “The Tuesday Breakfast Club”) who’ve met monthly since our kids were toddlers. Until recently, we would meet without fail at a local restaurant. Dare I say the habit began about 30 years ago?

Yes, I’m that old; and that’s where “tomorrow’s muse” comes in. I think back fondly on those years of downing cup after cup of coffee with our breakfast group, discussing everything from yesterday’s happenings to tomorrow’s news. So, in contrast to what the literary folks write about T.S. Eliot’s measuring life in coffee spoons, as being mundane — in the context of my life, there’s sweetness to the sound of that line.  That is, I look back on yesterday’s coffee times, the countless coffee cups and spoons, as the chatter, which (like a cheery church supper in your mind) becomes tomorrow’s muse.

Am I making any sense with this? As I see it, I’m always musing over yesterday’s events, and I muse a lot about tomorrow’s while enjoying my own yesterday’s coffee. You could interpret it in a lot of ways.  But I like the sound of it — like the full circle of life or something — sharing pleasant moments of life with your family and friends over coffee (or tea, of course).

A Christmas gathering with my breakfast buddies was one such occasion.  The person among us who loves coffee, even more than I do, gave us each a slim little brown book – Coffee Talk: A celebration of Good Coffee and Good Friends by Ellyn Sanna. The author describes perfectly one reason why I appreciated those breakfast meetings with friends.

Being a young mother (as we all were when we began the breakfast coffee tradition), Sanna writes: “So when I escaped last Saturday to our local diner to meet a friend for breakfast, how good it felt to have someone wait on me for a change.”

For me, you see, there’s a touch of blessed hospitality to counting coffee spoons, especially when measuring time with friends. The T.S. Eliot quote, which Sanna shares in her book, adds a new dimension to my thinking about this. What is life, but finding wonder in the mundane moments? Back in 1919, when Eliot wrote that, my grandparents were living mundane moments, no doubt, while recording them lovingly in the letters they’d send.

As for songs about yesterday’s coffee, most lyrics seem to churn along Eliot’s humdrum tune. So, I’m curious to know which song my father-in-law used to croon. As I reheat, I’ll keep looking for the right one, the one that speaks to the joy in yesterday’s coffee, and sings of tomorrow’s muse.

“Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow…yesterday’s gone….yesterday’s gone.” – Christine McVie of Fleetwood Mac

At the end of March, Dominick’s 25-year-old mother moved with him and his 8-year-old brother into the apartment of her boyfriend, a 24-year-old ex-con who was a couple months out of prison.

Less than two weeks later, after four days of unimaginable horror, Dominick was dead.

I didn’t know Dominick, but I find myself grieving for him, at least in part, I think, because I do know well how lovely it was to spend a year with a 4-year-old boy.

When my son was that age, he sometimes had trouble sleeping at night. Bad dreams, car headlights shining into his window, temperature fluctuations and general sleeplessness often chased him into our bedroom.

On those nights, I’d wake with a start to find two huge, blue orbs staring at me.

“Momma, it’s me,” my son would whisper loudly. “Are you awake?”

I’d lift him into our bed, hold him close and wait until he fell back to sleep. Then, my husband or I would gently carry him back to his own room and tuck him into his own bed.

After awhile, his sleeping patterns righted, and those blue orbs became part of my maternal memories.

My son told me last week that during that sleepless spell, he was convinced he was “magical.”

“I would come into your room at night,” he said. “I’d open my eyes and I’d be in your bed. I’d shut my eyes. Then, when I opened my eyes again, I’d be in my own bed. I thought I was magical, that I transported myself.”

I smiled.

“You guys carried me back into my room, didn’t you,” he asked.

I refused to answer; it delighted me that for a time in his life, my son believed he was full of magic.

I wonder whether Dominick ever thought that he, too, might be magical, whether he ever felt extraordinary or special, or in possession of superpowers.

I imagine DNA hurtling through time, from generation to generation, mixing and moving and morphing, landing who knows where, creating who knows whom. Some of us are either extremely fortunate or unfortunate in the circumstance of our birth: thin or fat, serious or funny, exciting or boring, with good parents or bad. Some of us are at one extreme or the other, with most of us landing somewhere in between.

Why, I wonder, was little Dominick so unfortunate? How could a 4-year-old deserve such a short life and terrible death? Why did the village surrounding Dominick let him down so?

I’ve been thinking, too, of the mother authorities say didn’t do enough to protect her son. I want to know why she and so many other people couldn’t, wouldn’t or didn’t do anything to save the little boy’s life, to shield him from the wickedness that rained down upon him. My heart aches to think how scared he must have been.

There are so few answers. All I know is that the end of this child’s life was horrific.

The police officer who responded to the scene when someone finally reached out for help testified that when he saw the condition of the child, he cried, “What the fuck kind of animals are you people? Look at this boy. He’s crucified.”

The medical examiner stopped counting the injuries to the little boy’s body when he reached 100.

This case is so vicious, so full of fury and rage, that it is making me rethink my opposition to the death penalty.

Dominick’s final days were long and torturous, meted out in kicks and punches and burns. It began when he wet himself while eating breakfast on the sofa and ended four days later when he was removed from life support. And even though there were at least a couple handfuls of people with the knowledge, proximity and ability to summon help, it wasn’t until it was much too late that anyone did anything.

There’s so much about this case that has kept me awake some nights.

Maybe it’s that I am the mother of a boy who’s not so little anymore. Maybe it’s that Dominick met his “bogeyman,” as a prosecutor called the man charged in his death, so close to my own home. Maybe it’s because this case defies all standards of basic, decent human behavior.

All I know is that I can’t get this little boy out of my head.

His mother was in drug rehab when she was 13, and involved with Child Protective Services after she became a mother. She was on probation for a drug charge. Her own mother tried unsuccessfully to get custody of the two boys a year-and-a-half ago, citing her daughter’s drug use as the reason.

The boyfriend, who was released from prison after serving nearly two years for assaulting, resisting, obstructing and fleeing a police officer, had previous convictions for drugs, and domestic violence and battery.

The Brady Bunch this was not.

While Dominick was being tortured, his mother left the apartment at least once for over six hours with her mother, but said nothing about the danger her son was in. Police say she was left alone in the apartment with her sons at least twice, yet did not summon help.

Visitors to the apartment throughout the weekend saw that the boy was injured. They urged his mother to get help. She asked them not to alert anyone, that she didn’t want Child Protective Services involved again, so no one said a word.

Now, 4-year-old Dominick Calhoun is dead.

I have no way of knowing what hell his mother may have been going through. Maybe she had no idea how close to death Dominick was during those four days. Maybe she was too battered by her boyfriend herself to think straight.

I can’t know what she was thinking, but I wonder how such disregard for a child on the part of so many — including his own mother — could be possible.

When I held my son in my arms for the first time I knew instinctively that I could and would do harm to someone else to protect my baby, that I would push him out of the path of an oncoming truck, that I would sacrifice myself for him.

That’s not to say I am the best mother in the world, because I’m far from it, but I pity the person who tries to harm my child. That’s why I struggle to understand this case.

Dominick’s mother and her boyfriend are both charged in his death.

When binding Dominick’s mother over for trial on second-degree murder and child abuse charges, the judge said, “If you can’t depend on your mother, I don’t know who you can depend on.”

The boyfriend is charged with seven felonies, including murder, torture and child abuse.

Like so many, I am sorrow-filled about Dominick’s murder, and I keep thinking about my own 4-year-old boy who asked me a beautifully thoughtful question years ago that struck like a thunderbolt and stole my breath away.

“Who put the magic in us, Momma,” he asked.

“The magic in us?” I replied, not quite grasping where his question was going.

“You know, Momma,” he said, “the magic that makes us alive.”

That question is now part of my soul; it’s what I hold close when my kid frustrates me; sometimes, when I am alone and in the right mood, the depth of it makes me cry.

I grieve for both little 4-year-olds.

I remember fondly my own, holding his thoughts of magic and life close to my heart as he readies himself for middle school, eagerly leaving his younger years behind.

I cry for the one I didn’t know, wondering why there was no magic in the world that could have protected him from the village that let him down, the bogeyman who beat him to death, and the mother who didn’t save him.

—

Writer Andrea Chang points to a National Retail Federation study whose findings showed that Web sales have increased nearly 400% over the past decade! She explains why:

“Traditional brick-and-mortar retailers once outsourced their online sales to specialty ‘fulfillment’ companies. Today they are running their own online operations and increasingly challenging their executive brainpower to find more sophisticated ways to compete with online-only retailers…”

As you undoubtedly know, one main contributor to the surging popularity of e-commerce is its convenience factor. After all, the Web makes it easy for consumers to seek out and purchase their favorite products and services, “instead of driving to the mall, where they may or may not find the right size shoe or the exact color bed sheets they want,” Chang writes.

Of course, the economic benefits can’t be ignored, either! Chang explains that operating costs online are far lower since businesses don’t need “to lease retail space and field an army of sales clerks.” This is an especially valuable selling point for those potential partners who’ve just started their business, and are looking for a way to save on rent costs!

…And in case there’s any doubt in a Decision Maker’s mind about the Web’s staying power, tell them what comScore’s Andrew Lipsman told Chang:

“The entire retail industry, in one way or another, is becoming driven by digital, and the days of just going to the store and shopping are really declining…We’re really at the tip of the iceberg.”

In the meantime, brick-and-mortar stores will fade into the background, according to Chang, who added these concluding remarks from Marshal Cohen of the NPD Group:

“To expect the consumer to come in and to convince them to buy a product that’s folded on a shelf is irrelevant…No one shops like that anymore.”

The message is clear: a traditional storefront isn’t going to cut it anymore! But your potential partners don’t have to worry about the formidable task of managing their digital presence. You’re offering an opportunity to interact with a solution that has it all – including dedicated support every step of the way!

——-
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