I have been off the grid for a few days, which is not unusual for bloggers.  My absence, however, it a little more, um, detailed.  It’s full of good and bad, righteousness and frustration.

Intrigued yet?

It begins with me making a trek to New Jersey the day after Christmas and then heading for my beloved Pinewood, my cabin in the mountains.  Except things did not go according to plan.

In what is every parents’ “ugh” story, somewhere on I-78 West in Northeastern Pennsylvania around Hamburg, the dreaded “service engine soon” came on while my Explorer (I should change one letter to make it an “Exploder”) died.  On the side of a busy highway.  In the middle of nowhere.

About the worst day of the week to have your car break down is Sunday.  This was on a Sunday.  About the worst time of the year is the week between Christmas and New Year’s.  Two for two.

If this has happened to you, you know that with your whole family (and dog) in the car, you need time to think and use the old cell phone to find out about road service, rental cars and hotels.  It’s a confusing time, and no less so with two kids in the back who are justified in continually asking what’s going on.

So after about 20 minutes of trying to regroup, I thought I would at least raise the hood of the car as a sort of distress signal;  maybe a cop would stop or something.  Within 30 seconds, a guy stopped just ahead of me.

Where the Good Comes In

The guy’s name who stopped was Dustin.  Dustin is a Marine home from Afghanistan. I grew to learn that Dustin is a Recon Marine, pretty much the toughest of a very tough bunch.  With one tour in Iraq and going back for his third in Afghanistan today, he is used to tricky situations.  So he took a look at the engine, we got the owner’s manual out, and we tried troubleshooting the car for about 30 minutes (and by the way, on a highway with a blind downhill slope where he told me a friend was killed in the same situation in almost the same spot).

What happened next?  After figuring out that we could not fix the car there and coinciding with the arrival of the tow truck, I entrusted my new friend Dustin with taking my family to the next exit/truck stop where we could, in his marine vernacular, “regroup.”  My gut gave me no hesitation whatsoever after meeting this guy.

At the truck stop, true to his word, Dustin met me there after delivering my family in a McDonalds — where it was a lot warmer.  He texted a friend of his who is a Ford mechanic, explained our troubleshooting and basically told me that his mechanic friend said that we had done everything we could – it was time to turn it over to the professionals.  Dustin recommended a Ford dealership (that did not show up on my iPhone, by the way), I called a second tow truck, and me and Prince the Dog stayed behind while I sent my family off in a “taxi” (a Lincoln Town Car was the only transportation for miles around).  While I waited an hour and a half in the increasingly dropping temperatures for the second tow truck, Dustin even stopped back to check on me and make sure that everything was ok.  Here’s what you need to know about Dustin:

• First, he stopped to help complete strangers on a road where he watched a friend die in a similar situation.
• He is a decorated Marine with tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan; he has been wounded in battle twice.  And he is going back.
• Once, shot in the shoulder and femur with no radio, he told me that he walked 30 miles back to base.  When I asked him how he could do this, he simply pointed to the picture of his children on his car dashboard.
• Most importantly, every moment with your family is precious when you are home on leave from a combat zone.  Dustin spent at least three hours trying to help a complete stranger when he could have been spending that time with his family.

An Incomplete Ending

When we parted ways, I gave Dustin my word that I would keep in touch with him, both via text and email.  In my state of confusion, I got BOTH his cell phone and email address wrong.  I never even got his last name. I don’t know the name of his platoon.  In short, I have little chance of contacting him and I want desperately to keep my promise.

About the only thing that I can think of today is to call the local newspaper, push the “Good Samaritan Marine Helps Family at Christmas” angle in the hopes that they will publish the story and his family or friends will see it, enabling me to get in contact with someone who can get me in contact with him.  I hope and this will work – for the first time in my life, I am grateful for having to do all that media pitching when I was a young buck in the agency world.

And the truck?  It’s still somewhere in Northeastern Pennsylvania and may or may not be ready before 2014 at a cost of a small used car.  But what’s more important is that I can keep my word to a stranger who kept his to me.

Mark

P.S. – If any of you have any other ideas on how to locate someone in the military, please comment on this and let me know.

P.P.S.  – Could you please use the “Share/Save” icon at the bottom of this page?  The more people who see this, the greater chance I have for getting in touch with Dustin.

Ok, David Wescott did it, so I’ll push out some emotional gruel for your consumption this morning.  I am grateful for:

• My family, my family, my family.
• My children are happy and healthy.  Period.  Full stop.
• I have a few jobs.  A lot of people don’t even have one.
• The ability to have built a pretty successful consulting practice – as a part-time gig.
• The Simpsons.
• In a year in which way too many people lost their homes, I gained a second one.
• My friends – those relationships that have developed and grown over the years.  You know who you are.
• Gaining new friends through social media – and meeting them in person.
• The ability to laugh.
• The fact that I get to try cool stuff in social media – and love it.
• Baseball, specifically the Boston Red Sox.
• Having the time to coach my son in baseball and basketball, and watch my daughter become an accomplished Irish dancer.
• The word “w00t!”
• To live in a country in which your career is often what you can make it.
• When my former students come back to me for advice.
• Meditation.
• Speaking another language that is my passport to forming friendship with people with whom I would not have the opportunity otherwise.
• Knowing that every day I try to touch someone’s life in a positive way.
• Our soldiers who have either made the ultimate sacrifice, or as I write this, are missing their own families to protect the freedoms that we too often take for granted.
• Pizza.
• Walks with my dog.
• Cigars.
• (I am stealing this from David Wescott) – the two people who read this blog.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.  I like days like today that make people stop and thing about what they are truly grateful for.

Mark

Am having a wonderful, very serene vacation on Cape Cod, but could not resist the opportunity to pay tribute to my pal, David Wescott.

Here you go, David.

Mark

P.S. – playing the part of the foot model is my five year-old daughter.

This posting is republished from an article that I wrote for Media Bullseye.

For those of you who have not seen it in the news, French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been under fire lately in the French press for, of all things, hiring, as the French call him:

• Sarkozy’s little cop
• Sarkozy’s eye on the net
• Cyber Spin Doctor

What are the French all up in arms about? The French president had the Gaulle (pun intended) to hire a 24 year-old kid to monitor what was being said about the President in the online environment. Mon Dieu!

Bienvenue to 1999, la France! Let’s not forget that it was out our French brethren who actually did help invent the Internet with Mintel in 1982. Yes, 1982. According to Wikipedia:

Since its early days [using Minitel], users could make online purchases, make train reservations, check stock prices, search the telephone directory, and chat in a similar way to that now made possible by the Internet.

So what’s the big deal?

I don’t know what is more surprising; that, for the president of a republic to have waited nearly one year into his term to hire someone to monitor what is being said about him in the online environment (Custom Scoop does monitoring in French, BTW), or that the French public would put down their smokes and café au lait and react with outrage that some 24 year-old kid is following what people are saying about Sarkozy.

What is even more surprising is that, in many way, the French “get” online politics, especially the way in which the final two French presidential candidates made use of online tools and tactics. Selogene Royale, the socialist candidate, used her website for, in essence, a “listening tour” of France that would help her gather information and make up a platform of issues and policies. French voters rejected her by a margin of 53 to 47 percent, a sizable victory considering that Royale was the socialist party candidate, one that has traditionally fared well in France.

And Sarkozy? His website was all him. Literally. My French is not good, but it doesn’t have to be, because Sarkozy’s Web site (and now “presidential site”) is all about video, images, music and creating an online image of strong, self-assured leader. The guy, or at least his advisers and most definitely the people who voted for him, understands that his people get the Internet and social media.

So what is it that is causing the French bloggers to become enraged that someone would actually read their blog postings about the president? (Note to French bloggers: isn’t it a good thing if someone in the president’s office actually does read what you are writing?) But, I digress.

Aside from Sarkozy himself, the poor kid at the center of the monitoring controversy is Nicolas Princen. Here are some of the things, as reported by AFP, that are being said in the French blogosphere:

• “The appointment of Nicolas Princen, who worked on the website of Sarkozy’s presidential campaign last year, has sparked derision but also serious concerns among the online community.” Serious concerns?
• “One satirical video posted on Dailymotion begins with a poster showing the Soviet symbols the hammer and sickle and bearing the words ‘KGB Web – Elysee. It then shows a man in a wig, his face covered in bandages, advising viewers that they should follow his example and be careful about what they say about the president. I don’t want to end up in a jail, tortured,’ said the man.” KGB?!?!?

Memo to my friends across the Atlantic: the Internet matters to public opinion.

Further note to my friends across the Atlantic: blogs are about opinion, and people have some very strong opinions about the French President and are expressing them in the blogosphere, particularly in regards to a YouTube video in which the French president appeared intoxicated at the G8 Summit.

Sarkozy, who has had several missteps, finally wised up and put someone on the payroll to give him a sense of what was being said about him.

So my unsolicited advice to the French bloggers is to put down the Gauloises, take a deep breath and relax. Having someone reading your blog postings and maybe – just maybe – reacting to them is not a bad thing.