Author Archives: lesliedinaberg

About lesliedinaberg

When she's not busy working as an editor on a variety of magazine and book projects, Leslie Dinaberg writes feature articles, columns and grocery lists.

Giving Back: The Hutton Foundation

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logo_hpOne of the biggest obstacles facing local nonprofits is the high price of real estate in Santa Barbara. Luckily Hutton Foundation is helping to fill that gap.

One of Hutton Foundation’s most significant efforts is its Under One Roof program, through which more than 30 local nonprofit organizations are housed in 12 Hutton Foundation-owned and managed properties. “One of the things local nonprofits struggled with the most was finding high-quality, affordable office space,” explains Pam Hamlin, the foundation’s executive director. Hutton Foundation rents the buildings to nonprofits at far below market rates and signs 10-year leases to help give organizations financial stability.

The organizations sharing space run the gamut, from Community Environmental Council to Santa Barbara International Film Festival, United Girls & Boys Club, Alzheimer’s Association and Camerata Pacifica, to name just a few.

The foundation’s broad areas of interest are a reflection of its president, Tom Parker, a Santa Barbara native who returned to town 12 years ago to start the Hutton Foundation, after serving as president of Hutton Companies-one of Southern California’s leading real estate developers-from 1985 to 1995.

“It’s my fault,” says Parker, with a twinkle in his eye. “What happened to me was I was doing grants and I thought, Here’s the homeless shelter, there’s someone who is hungry that needs help, here is an arts organization that is opening children’s minds to music and art and things that will make their life so much better. Who do I donate to? How do I value the two? I realized I couldn’t.”

Consequently, last year Hutton Foundation gave away $4.4 million in grants, donations and assistance to more than 100 local nonprofit organizations.

“We want to be in this community to help the process, to help nonprofits be more effective no matter what their mission-so long as it’s a mission that makes sense,” Parker says.

One thing that made sense, not just to Hutton Foundation but also to the Orfalea and Bower Foundations, was grouping services together to help children arrive in kindergarten better prepared to learn. The three groups are collaborating on an early childhood education and family resource center in Carpinteria. Opening in January at the former site of Main Elementary School, with a Community Action Commission/Head Start preschool at its core, this project represents the next evolution of Hutton Foundation. The foundation also recently made a deal to purchase the former Washington Mutual Bank building in downtown Santa Barbara, and is now evaluating which type of collaborative center will best serve the community.

Parker expected he would be semi-retired when he started Hutton Foundation, but he admits that when a great opportunity comes along he just can’t help himself. “The nonprofit sector intrigues me because there’s so much to be done,” he says. “You can really make a difference in this community.”

Originally published in Santa Barbara Magazine

Lousy with Lice

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Photo by Marin, FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Photo by Marin, FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Eww! That’s all I’ve been saying all month. Eww! Until a month ago I had no idea that a tiny little bug could cause so much pain and suffering. Then I got that horrible phone call from school. My head starts to itch just thinking about this.

My son—he has less than three inches of hair; hadn’t had a sleepover in ages; barely brushes his own hair, let alone shares a hairbrush; does swim team three times a week; and takes such long showers that he may single-handedly be responsible for the drought in California-had somehow contracted lice.

I got the message while I was sitting in a drive-through car wash, picking up the voicemail that his school health clerk had left almost five hours earlier. I knew my husband hadn’t picked up Koss from school because he was on his way out of town for his infamous annual “caveman weekend.”

My mother-in-law was scheduled to pick up Koss from school about two hours earlier, but I hadn’t heard anything from her. I frantically dialed her number as-I kid you not-I watched two gigantic circular brushes come to a screeching halt on my windshield. I rolled down my window and a foamy pink ashy substance started coming inside my car. It smelled like a sweaty blend of smoke, strawberries and stress. Eww!

“It’s a power outage,” yelled a guy from one of the 13 cars in line behind me. Who knew that I’d be in the middle of a Curb Your Enthusiasm episode when I got the lice call? The realization that I was stuck in the car wash hit me just as I got my mother-in-law on the phone.

“We’re fine. Koss had been waiting in the office for a few hours when I got to school. They said that he has lice,” she said in her always-cheery voice. This nice reassurance from a woman who didn’t tell any of her adult children she was even in the hospital until a few days after she had hip replacement surgery was, frankly, not all that reassuring.

Neither was waiting for all of the cars behind me to back up before I could do a less-than-graceful 67-point turn to get my now golden-pinkish boat of a Mercury Marquis out of the car wash.

A quick stop at the drug store to pick up lice shampoo made my head hurt even more. Product names like Pronto, RID, LiceMD and Nix shouted at me from the shelves. They all looked like they should have a skull and crossbones warning label on them. I grabbed a few bottles and headed for home.

Grandma seemed calm enough when I get there, but she bolted as quickly as possible. Koss also seemed un-phased as he told me he read a whole book while waiting for someone to pick him up in the office.

I barely let him finish dinner before I doused his head with the inaugural lice treatment and then began what would be the first of 351 loads of laundry. After the 200th load I began to think that top sheets are overrated, as are hand towels, and really, wouldn’t it be easier to pull up the carpet than to vacuum it for the 32nd time? I was exhausted and I’d only been home for an hour.

I sprayed all of the surfaces that couldn’t be vacuumed or laundered with a toxic spray that smelled so bad it must have been killing something besides the nerve endings in my nose. Then I carefully examined every single strand of hair on my son’s head. I didn’t see a single louse, but there were lots of nits, which I painstakingly picked out with my fingers. Eww! I’m a monkey! This took an entire season of Eureka on the DVR.

I was certain his head was pristine when we checked in at the office the next day. Unfortunately the florescent lighting revealed a few more nits and the school secretary explained that they have a no nits policy. Oh joy! Off we went for a delightful day of nitpicking. Armed with wooden barbecue skewers, a fine-toothed metal comb, magnifying glass and disinfectant wipes, I examined every strand of my son’s head again and again until I started to name the individual hairs. “Hey, Curly. What’s up?” I wonder what they put in those shampoos?

Finally, someone turned me on to the “magic lice shampoo” from Caldwell’s Pharmacy that is nontoxic, can be used every day, and smells like peppermint, rather than motor oil. It costs a small fortune and we went through three bottles, but it was worth every penny.

We watched an entire season of Chuck and several Food Network Challenges as I picked through Koss’s freshly shorn head for what remained of these stubborn creatures. Finally, we were done!-until I checked my own hair. Eww! A welcome home present for my husband, who finally returned from his “stunted boy weekend.” Surprise. Lice to see you, honey. I’ll be the one with her head in the vat of lye.

Good times. My head itches just thinking about them.

Four weeks later, and I finally stopped checking for nits every time I looked in the mirror. Then we got a call from a friend who we were supposed to have dinner with, and he said his kid had lice. Did we still want to go out with them? I laughed until I cried, and then I sobbed a little more. Eww!

Share your lousy adventures with Leslie@LeslieDinaberg.com. For more columns visit www.LeslieDinaberg.com. Originally published in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on June 26, 2009.

My Two Dads

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Image by nongpimmy

Image by nongpimmy

On the surface I married a man who is nothing like my father.

Dad is a sports guy, through and through. One of his most defining-and endearing-characteristics is his love of the games. Any games, really, other than baseball, which he barely tolerated when my son played Little League.

Though it’s hard to imagine looking at him today-in fact, it makes for great slapstick in my head-my dad was once a gymnast. He even wrote his masters thesis on the Loop Dismount off the Side Horse, though by then he had bulked up considerably and was doing more tackling than tumbling. He played football at UCLA and it was a football coaching job at Santa Barbara City College that brought us to town. He was also Athletic Director there for what felt like decades. It seemed like he never missed a game. He still helps out with the women’s golf team, although I think it’s more for the free time on the links than anything else. Dad is definitely a sports guy. Even in retirement, he spends much of his time obsessively studying whatever’s on ESPN, checking his Fantasy Football league updates, and rooting for the Lakers.

It’s not that Zak is not athletic. He’s actually very graceful. He played water polo for a while, but couldn’t understand why the other guys took it so seriously. And now he swims masters to keep in shape. But the athletic fields were never his true calling. The only blocking he did in high school was on stage, and even then he was more motivated by access to cute senior girls than he was by curtain calls. In college he joined the Hasty Pudding Theatricals, where his fishnet clad high kicks took him to off-off-Broadway and Bermuda.

If I ever want to make my dad squirm, all I have to do is pull out the Newsweek photo of my husband in drag. Come to think of it, Zak’s own father wasn’t particularly comfortable with that picture either.

Zak is long and lean, while my dad is round and cuddly. My husband will nurse a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Heath Bar Coffee Crunch for at least a week, if we let him. He likes nothing better than to morsel a bite or two out at a time as a late night treat, smoothing out the ice cream’s edges so it looks like it’s fresh from the factory.

As a kid I remember my dad also liked to smooth out his ice cream, but his style was different than Zak’s. He bought gallons rather than pints, and instead of a bite or two each night; dad would eat all except a bite or two in one sitting. Then, he’d smooth the miniscule remnants up into the plastic window of the lid, so that it looked like an entire gallon of ice cream remained untouched-until you picked it up and it was light as air. Truth be told, I’ve never been sure if he did this to hide the evidence that he ate all the ice cream, or because he was too lazy to throw the container away.

Dad’s a plugger and a plodder who plows his way through just about everything he does. If slow and steady wins the race then my dad would win every time. When he jogs it looks like walking to the rest of us, and when he hurries, it looks like a relaxed pace, but he gets the job done eventually, and he’s nothing if not consistent.

Zak, on the other hand, spends ridiculous amounts of time trying to think of the most efficient ways to do just about everything. Consequently, even if it appears to only take him five minutes to complete a task, it may have taken ridiculous amounts of time to do just about anything.

They both drive me up the wall with irritation, and make me laugh so hard I cry.

On the surface they couldn’t be more different, but inside they’ve both got hearts as big as oceans. They both love to play, have fun and be with their families. And my son and I both know that deep inside where it counts we’ve got the best two dads in the world.

Leslie wishes her dad, her son’s dad and all the dads Happy Father’s Day. For more columns visit www.LeslieDinaberg.com. Originally published in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on June 19, 2009.

Citizen Scientists: Santa Barbara Channelkeeper

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Left–right: A diver maps eelgrass habitat as part of Channelkeeper’s Marine Monitoring and Restoration Program. Watershed program director Ben Pitterle collects data on water pollution levels. Photos courtesy Santa Barbara Channelkeeper, originally published in Santa Barbara Seasons, Summer 2009.

Left–right: A diver maps eelgrass habitat as part of Channelkeeper’s Marine Monitoring and Restoration Program. Watershed program director Ben Pitterle collects data on water pollution levels. Photos courtesy Santa Barbara Channelkeeper, originally published in Santa Barbara Seasons, Summer 2009.

PEOPLE SAY WE’RE ONE OF THE best-kept secrets in town,” says Kira Redmond, executive director of Santa Barbara Channelkeeper. She may be right—but not for long.

Started as an Environmental Defense Center program in 1999, Channelkeeper is now an independent nonprofit, as well as part of one of the fastest growing grassroots environmental movements in the world: International Waterkeeper Alliance.

With just six and a half staff members, buttressed by an army of citizen scientist
volunteers, Channelkeeper works to protect and restore the Santa Barbara Channel and watersheds in a variety of ways, including water quality monitoring, education and community outreach, political advocacy and marine habitat restoration. Perhaps what is most unique about Channelkeeper is that its volunteers work out in the field.

“The field work is kind of what sets us apart,” says Redmond. “We work closely with groups like Environmental Defense Center, Surfrider and Heal the Ocean, but they are advocacy and public education focused. We work with them on a lot of issues, but as far as being out in the field and identifying pollution problems in the creeks or doing habitat monitoring in the channel, there really aren’t other environmental nonprofits that do that.”

Grassroots programs such as “Grunion Greeters” (where volunteers monitor grunion behavior on local beaches during spawning season) and “Stream Teams” (a volunteer-based water quality-monitoring program at the Goleta Slough watershed and the Ventura River) fall under the leadership of Ben Pitterle, watershed programs director.

The grunion program, which is part of a larger study being conducted at Pepperdine University, “is one of the best family-oriented volunteer opportunities I think we have,” says Pitterle. “I did Carpinteria State Beach last summer, and it’s really cool because of the campers. There are just all kinds of kids out playing. It’s fun, a family fun event. I think this is going to be our fifth or sixth year coordinating for this region . . .We get a lot of people who don’t otherwise participate in some of our water quality volunteer opportunities, so
it’s a good way to reach out to a broader group of people—especially kids.”

The “Stream Team,” operating since 2001, has a core group of volunteers. “We go out once a month to collect water samples,” Pitterle explains. “We do that with a few different purposes. One is to collect a baseline of water data to monitor over time to see if things are getting better or worse. Another reason is it’s a great way to reach out to the public, educate and to reach out to the public, educate and train them about watersheds, and help them to become environmental stewards themselves. The third is that looking at
the data helps us identify actual problems, and then we can relay that information to
different public agencies who are responsible for regulating water problems to try to get them fixed.”

Working with public agencies is a big part of what Channelkeeper does. When
budget cuts forced the county to stop its marine monitoring program this past fall,
Channelkeeper rallied its supporters and pitched in thousands of dollars to continue
this important warning service system for surfers, swimmers and beachgoers at 12 county beaches. Santa Barbara city officials also helped pick up the slack by testing at four additional locations.

In addition to partnering with county and city officials, Channelkeeper works closely with researchers at UCSB and Channel Islands Marine Sanctuary, and is collaborating with the state to implement a Marine Life Protection Act that will create a network of marine protected areas or underwater parks along the entire California coast.

“In the work that we do in the field, we work with agencies that don’t have the resources to be everywhere themselves,” says Redmond. “For instance, the city of Santa Barbara has two code enforcement staff. So they’re out there like we are, looking at businesses that might have a high potential to pollute and checking up on them. But they can’t
be everywhere at once, so with budget cuts our role is becoming increasingly important. We have really good relationships with people at these agencies, Basically, they’re grateful to us for helping them do their jobs.”

For more information about Santa Barbara Channelkeeper, call 805/563-3377 or visit www.sbck.org.
n Santa Barbara Seasons Summer 2009.

Originally published in Santa Barbara Seasons Summer 2009. Click below to read the story as it appeared in print.

SB Seasons Summer 2009

Romance heats up

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Photo by Dan, FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Photo by Dan, FreeDigitalPhotos.net

It’s not just the approach of summer playing tricks on your mind-bulging biceps and busting bodices are gracing the covers of paperbacks everywhere you look, from aisles at drug stores to the book store shelves.

Harlequin Enterprises Ltd. celebrates its 60th anniversary this year.

But the venerable publisher has lots of company. According to Romance Writers of America, romance fiction was responsible for $1.375 billion in book sales last year. That’s more than a quarter of all books sold and 51 million readers.

That’s a lot of crumpled sheets and hearts skipping beats.

While sales of books in other categories are declining in this down economy, romance novels are thriving. It’s no surprise that people want to escape when business is bleak and reality is even bleaker.

Love may not conquer all, but it sure conquers at the cash register. Business is booming.

According to the Associated Press, Kensington has seen a five percent increase in sales of mass market paperback romances for its current fiscal year, while Harlequin reported forth quarter earnings up 32 percent over the same period a year earlier. Nielsen BookScan data for May had romance book sales up nearly 2.4 percent compared with the same time last year, while sales of self-help, travel, and mystery books all showed declines for the same period.

An Associated Press Ipsos Poll found that of those who read books in 2007, one in five read romance novels. Not only that, new technology is bringing new steam to the genre. While the vast majority of readers may still prefer to curl up with an actual book (I prefer mine in a warm tub with lots of bubbles and candlelight), romance publishers are also reaching readers with electronic book formats that can be read on a variety of devices from cell phones to computers to Kindles, and services such as Daily Lit, which allows readers to read their romances through e-mail and RSS feeds.

For about a $45 investment you can even give your loved one the gift of a personalized romance novel. For example, at www.booksbyyou.com you can customize your 160 to 200-page novel with more than 26 personalized names, features and places. You can even get your pets into the story, with book titles such as “Vampire Kisses,” “Western Rendezvous,” and “Medieval Passion” to choose from. The website www.torridromance.com lets you put yourself into titles like “Allure of the Cowboy,” Beauty and the Bodyguard,” “Knights of Passion,” “Strangers in Paris” and “Taming the Tycoon.” They even have a special “buy three, get one free deal” for these books, in case you want to share your romantic adventures with your friends.

Sounds like a pretty good business-and a happy ending for somebody in today’s economy.

My husband suggested that rather than reading romance novels or writing about romance novels, I write a romance novel myself. Hmmm … perhaps a fantasy about a woman who spends 20 years with a poor but loving man and then discovers he’s really a prince, which makes her a princess, and they go off to live in a castle in the style to which she would like to become accustomed to.

My heart’s beating faster just thinking about it.

Or better yet, a woman who spends decades toiling in the newspaper business before she heaves her bosom into fiction and finds fame and fortune as a romance novelist. Stay tuned.

Share your romantic favorites with Leslie@LeslieDinaberg.com. For more columns visit www.LeslieDinaberg.com. Originally published in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on June 12, 2009.

My fling with Fling

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flingMy son started giggling when he saw the pink candy bar in the checkout line at Vons. “Mom, that looks like something you would like,” he chuckled, as he pointed to the new “Fling” chocolate bar, a hot pink-drenched confection that looks so girly it could have stepped right off the shelf of Barbie’s Dream House.

When I told him we needed to try it, he giggled even harder, and turned a little red in the face. This candy bar screams “girl cooties” even louder than the tampons my husband thinks he deserves a medal for buying.

I don’t know when Mars began using five-year-old girls as graphic designers-I’m surprised its shiny pink and silver packaging isn’t wrapped with a feather boa. And I don’t know when Mars started using frat boys in its marketing department- they must have been working round the clock to come up with the tag line “Naughty, but not that naughty” as the motto for this 85-calorie trifle. It’s positioned as a simple pleasure you can guiltlessly enjoy in the middle of a workday, with ads that winkingly allude to a different kind of simple pleasure you can guiltlessly enjoy in the middle of the workday.

The television commercials seem to depict strangers having sex in a dressing room (they’re actually in adjacent dressing rooms and the woman is only eating chocolate), while the print ads urge you to “Pleasure yourself” with “Fling’s slender fingers.”

So much for slyly winking innuendo-they want you to pleasure yourself with slender chocolate fingers! You don’t have to have a dirty mind to go THERE with that one.

Other “Fling” ads urge you to: “Have a ‘Fling’ in private, or wave it all around town; in the office, the bedroom, or the great outdoors.” Nothing ambiguous there.

Seriously, I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried. Sexual euphemisms are now available at the grocery store-at least in California where the product is being test marketed-in convenient chocolate form.

Not only is this candy sexy, it shimmers. According to the website (www.flingchocolate.com, not www.fling.com, which is a risque dating site which I accidentally went to in the course of writing this column, and which forced me to figure out how to erase my browser history so my son and husband wouldn’t freak out when they next went on-line): “You are not seeing things. The Milk Chocolate flavor has a pink shimmer, the Dark Chocolate has a gold shimmer, and the Hazelnut has an orange shimmer. We like variety.”

Clearly this candy bar from Mars is aiming for women from Venus. What I don’t really understand is why. Maybe the fact that “Fling” is the first new chocolate bar Mars has introduced in 20 years is the real explanation for the stereotypical “Marketing to Women 101” campaign. They’ve covered all of the cliched bases: skinny, sparkly, naughty but nice and most of all, pink.

Surely M & M’s and Snickers’ new little sister is looking for trouble with her flirty little wrapper, not-so-subtle wordplay, and marketing of herself to just half of the population. I personally shoulder (or should I say “thigh”) more than my fair share of the chocolate bar economy. As such, I’ve always thought the woman in the Dove commercial who’s satisfied with just one piece of chocolate was faking it. But even I can’t eat enough “Flings” to keep this new product on the shelves.

When she’s not nibbling on chocolate, Leslie can be reached at Leslie@LeslieDinaberg.com. For more columns visit www.LeslieDinaberg.com.  Originally published in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on May 29, 2009.

The Attention Recession

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Photo Stuart Miles/freedigitalphotos.net

Photo Stuart Miles/freedigitalphotos.net

Lately I’ve had the uncomfortable sensation that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, moving things around, connecting circuits and memories and synapses in ways they weren’t connected before. It’s not that I’m losing my mind exactly—though we do obsess about green tea, crossword puzzles, and red wine in our house, since Alzheimer’s runs in the family-but my mind is changing and I’m not thinking the way I used to think.

Getting completely immersed in a book or even a long magazine article used to be the most natural thing in the world for me. I’d spend hours happily adrift in a sea of prose. Now my concentration goes overboard after just a few pages. I get anxious and start looking for something else to do. And let’s face it, there’s always something else to do.

I blame it in part on the Web. I don’t want to diss it too much, since it supplies a large part of my income, and has made finding sources for stories a breeze, but it’s a huge time and attention vacuum. Even when I’m not working, I’m scanning Facebook and Twitter, reading and writing e-mails, fixing pictures in Photoshop, perusing headlines, watching videos or downloading podcasts.

Then there’s parenthood, an enemy of concentration if ever there was one. Since I became a mom I haven’t stopped multitasking. Even when I’m sleeping I’ve got one ear cocked to make sure my child is still breathing. And when my son is away from me, the other ear is always perched at attention in case the phone rings. It could be the emergency room, or the school principal, or another parent calling to warn me about some horrible disease going through the school.

Yes, parenthood is awful for concentration, but great for the imagination, and that constant fear that something awful will happen now that you’ve got a great big piece of your heart walking around in the world without you.

“I call this concentration thing ‘Adult onset ADD,’ said my friend Angie. “It probably started with child number one, but has progressed rapidly since. Task completion is often difficult. Getting ready for the day involves not just the bathroom and closet, like in the old days. It generally includes the kitchen for breakfast and lunch making, homework signing, etc.; laundry room (gotta get a load going); home office to get the computer booted up for the day; and a ride to school for the ‘drop and run away quickly so I volunteer for anything’ of child number three. Most days I remember to take off my bunny slippers, but it’s a little embarrassing to get to the bagel shop and realize they’re still on. Hopefully I’ve remembered my bra.”

“We all forgot what it was like to finish a sentence, let alone a conversation, once we started bringing kids to social gatherings,” said my friend Tanya, handing me a glass of wine, which probably doesn’t help with my concentration, but does help with my mood.

My friend Janet sent me a text. “It starts with pregnancy and ‘Baby Brain.’ I believed everyone who said it was hormones and that it would get better when the baby was born. Wrong! Then we blamed it on ‘sleep deprivation.’ Then, when my child was a toddler, I figured it was because I was overwhelmed with watching her, Secret Service-style, every minute. But watch out, menopause is the worst,” she warned.

I’d lost my focus by that time.

Rather than blame the kid, I could blame it on technology. What it seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for focused concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the technology distributes it-as a swiftly moving stream of particles.

Or maybe my survival instinct kicked in when I read her menopause comment and it won’t allow my brain to go there yet.

I’ll have to think about that later when I have more time and I can concentrate.

When Leslie’s not struggling with adult onset whatchamacalit, she can be reached at Leslie@LeslieDinaberg.com. For more columns visit www.LeslieDinaberg.com.

Originally published in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on May 15, 2009.

A Tale of Mice and Moms

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DisneylandI have to admit I was a little skeptical when I received the invitation to attend a “Mom Bloggers Day to Learn, Eat and Play at Disneyland.” I love Disneyland, and I like eating, playing and learning, and I am a mom and I do have a blog. But was I really a “mom blogger?” I wasn’t so sure. First of all, I have no idea what they call themselves. Moggers? Bloms?

At the same time, there aren’t too many perks for members of the press these days-unless you count all of those forwarded articles about the demise of the newspaper business from my college friends who I accused of “selling out” when they went to law school-so when I read the words “free admission for your whole family” I was sold, despite my apprehension about the words “mom bloggers.” Not that I have anything against these little moggers. But unlike them, I’m a working stiff, who doesn’t have the luxury of spending hours writing blogs only to be paid with cases of Rice-A-Roni, or even trips to Disneyland.

Okay, maybe I have a little bit of resentment toward the blommies because I actually make my living writing stories, meager though it may be. This isn’t just a hobby for me like it is for most mommygrrs, and I can’t help but remember what my mom used to say about not buying cows when you can get the milk for free.

But the waters are getting murky out there for journalists and bloggers alike. Back in the old days, reputable publications and journalists didn’t take any freebies. But the times are changing, and with barely enough money coming in to pay their writers, publishers are getting much more relaxed about letting their employees enjoy whatever perks they can get.

Just last week, The Wall Street Journal had a story about bloggers getting paid in hard, cold cash to pitch products, which used to be called public relations. According to the article, “Companies see the freebies and payments to bloggers as a cheap way to boost brand buzz during the recession.” It goes on to say that, “The Internet is becoming so rife with paid blogging that the Federal Trade Commission, which guards against false advertisements, is examining whether it should police bloggers.”

I decided to do some detective work of my own. I wasn’t just taking a free trip to Disneyland-albeit with absolutely no promise to them that I would write about them- I was doing some investigative reporting.

I was infiltrating the exciting world of mom bloggers.

Judging from my extremely unscientific sample survey of momoggers who came to Disneyland last week, the vast majority of them took their responsibility to report the objective facts about Disney’s “summer nightastic” plans very seriously. This is despite the fact that some of the mom bloggers had been buffed and bouffanted at the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique; many had limbo-ed and conga-ed with Mickey’s crew in his Celebrate! Street Party parade; and all of us had indulged in the tasty “Cowboy Conecakes” served in Frontierland’s new Celebration Roundup & Barbecue restaurant. Seriously, no one turned them down. The presentation was very Martha Stewart, and the frosting to cake ratio was just right, which any self-respecting mom can certainly appreciate.

I struggled to keep my conecake enthusiasm in check, hardened professional that I am. But I couldn’t help but get a little giddy at the reserved front row seating we had for the parade (I could see the flop sweat on Pluto’s face, as he danced his goofy little heart out), and did a little happy dance when they gave us front of the line fast passes for “It’s a Small World,” “Toy Story Midway Mania” and “Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage,” none of which have regular fast passes available to the hoi polloi.

I tried to keep my excitement on the down low as I listened to the mom bloggers talk about some of the biggest issues on their websites.

“Our most lively discussions are always about breastfeeding,” said one of the mooggers, who happened to be 15 months pregnant.

“Not our site,” said a perky blonde. “It’s all about whether or not to go back to work. The great stay at home debate.”

“Not that anyone can afford to stay at home with their kids these days,” offered a tall brunette blogger, in purple sequined Minnie Mouse ears.

Seeing my opening, I pounced. “So do you any of you get paid for writing your blogs?” I asked. They all looked at me like I was crazy. “Does 500 cases of laundry detergent count?” asked a sweet-faced woman with exceptionally clean clothes.

They continued their conversation without missing a beat. It was fascinating, it was fun, and best of all-it was free.

I still don’t know if I’m really a mom blogger. But if you want to know the specifics about all of the new attractions at Disneyland, you can read about them on my, ahem, blog.

When Leslie’s on deadline, or blogging, mogging or tweeting, or on Facebook, she can be reached at Leslie@LeslieDinaberg.com. For more columns visit www.LeslieDinaberg. Originally published in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on May 1, 2009.

The wheaty taste of niche gone nuts

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Wheat ThinsWe have so many choices, yet so few of them are really important.

But that doesn’t stop the marketers from giving us more to choose from. We live in an age of niche marketing gone nuts. There’s actually a $47 marketing book that people presumably pay for, called “Niche Marketing on Crack!” I’m not kidding. Look it up. That’s how insane it’s gotten.

There’s a desperate battle going on for shelf space and brain space, space on your bookshelf and space on your DVR. Just the other day I went shopping and looked for Wheat Thins. Remember Wheat Thins? Square, thin, made out of wheat. They used to be pretty simple. Not any more.

They still have the original Wheat Thins, but there’s also a reduced fat kind; there’s one with a “hint of salt,” then you have the fiber selects type in garden vegetable or 5-grain; the big size, which are the same as the original only bigger; the multi-grain kind, not to be confused with the 100 whole grain type; the sundried tomato and basil flavor, not to be confused with the parmesan basil flavor; not to mention the cream cheese and chives, the ranch flavor, the reduced fat roasted garlic and herb flavor, the reduced fat country French onion, and the new artisan cheese Wheat Thins, in white cheddar or colby flavors.

I’m not kidding. There are also the toasted Wheat Thins chips, which come in a few more flavors, but in bags, rather than boxes. Plus they have all these flavors of Wheat Thins in at least three different sized boxes, plus the 100-calorie packs and the slightly larger lunch packs, and that’s not even counting the ginormous boxes of Wheat Thins you can buy at Costco.

You can see how this all gets to be exhausting.

I took my son to Barnes and Noble and Chaucer’s yesterday because he had gift certificates for both. The Maximum Ride book he wanted was available in hardcover or paperback, which we expected, but also a larger trade paperback which had a nicer cover and cost a dollar more, so he had to decide about that. But even though the book said it was number one in the series, we later found out from his friend that it was number one in A SERIES but not number one in THE SERIES that he wanted because there were two other series he was supposed to read first. So, of course, he wanted to go back and get those.

And because it was reading, and I like to encourage that, I took him back to the store. By this time I was ready for some escapist reading of my own, but trying to browse a bookstore for plain old fiction is just about impossible these days. Did I want literature, romance, mystery, best sellers or book club favorites? What about women’s fiction or an Oprah’s selection? By the time we got out of there my brain was too fried to curl up with anything other than a nice stiff gin and tonic, because there was no way I could possibly decide which bottle of wine I was going to open at that point.

Then I flipped through the cable music channels trying to find some music to listen to. Can someone please explain the difference between adult alternative rock and adult album alternative?

When I was a kid, everyone watched The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family because there was nothing else even remotely appropriate for us to watch on TV at night. Now we have so many cable stations I can’t keep them straight. Forget channel surfing, I need GPS on my TV.

I couldn’t figure out which music I wanted, but then I stumbled on the Food Network’s Home Shopping Channel.

Guess what they were featuring? Wheat Thins.

When Leslie’s not being bewildered by “Marketing on Crack!” she’s usually on her computer, at Leslie@LeslieDinaberg.com. Originally published on April 24, 2009 in the the Santa Barbara Daily Sound. For more columns visit LeslieDinaberg.com.

The Blessings of Boredom

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(Ambro, freedigitalphotos.net)

(Ambro, freedigitalphotos.net)

“I’m bored.”

Ask any parent and they’re sure to tell you that these are the two most irritating words you can hear come out of a child’s mouth. More annoying than “Are we there yet?” and more ubiquitous than “five more minutes,” when a child says he’s bored it’s enough to drive any over-scheduled, multi-tasking adult crazy-especially since most of us would sell our souls for a day of guilt-free, free time.

Even though he’s rolling his eyes like he’s bored, I try to explain to my son that the concept of labeling a huge part of human experience as “boring” is a relatively new phenomenon. “Think about how hard people used to have to work simply to survive. Taking care of the cows and the pigs and fields required rising at the crack of dawn, while preparing meals without microwaves and running water and mending clothes so they would survive another winter kept people busy well into the night,” I tell him. He fake snores in response to my diatribe.

Hmmm, that went well. What’s even more surprising to me is that it’s my kid who has a problem with this, as my husband is a master of playing with himself.

“Why can’t we play on the computer or watch TV?” he asks for what feels like the 900th time.

“You’ve got friends over. You’re supposed to entertain each other. Go outside and climb a tree, run around, make up a game.”

Finally, blessedly, they do.

And they’re happy and they’re stimulating their minds and tiring out their bodies just like kids were meant to do.

But we have this “I’m bored” conversation more often than we should, primarily when other kids come over to play and I refuse to let them plug in to the television or the computer. So far we’ve resisted the Nintendo marketing cry in our house, but if we ever do give in (who am I kidding – when we do), I can guarantee I’ll be that mean old mom who won’t allow plugged in play dates.

There’s a huge upside to downtime and I worry that today’s kids are so overscheduled and over stimulated that they have no idea how to entertain themselves.

A survey by the University of Michigan found that in 1997 children between the ages of 3 and 12 had nearly eight hours less free time each week than they did in 1981. And I’m sure it’s only gotten worse. It’s no surprise that in a recent study approximately half of adolescents surveyed said they feel stressed out at least once a week. They’ve got too much on their plates. They need a little time to be bored.

But they also need some guidance from their parents so they can carve out the free time to explore, create, connect, contemplate or just be. Even a bit of intentional boredom stimulates creativity and can help children become more relaxed more self-sufficient and, ultimately, happier.

Instead of letting the phrase “I’m bored” send us scrambling for ways to stimulate, entertain or occupy our kids, I think we should try to embrace it. Children are like nature, they abhor a vacuum. Give them some do-nothing time and the odds are pretty good they’ll find an interesting way to fill it. Hopefully they’ll learn something, and even more hopefully very little property will be damaged.

The next time my son says, “I’m bored,” I’m going to try my best not to be annoyed. “That’s great,” I’ll say instead. “Have fun.”

When Leslie’s not fantasizing about having some guilt-free, free time of her own, she can be reached at email . Originally published in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on April 17, 2009. For more columns visit LeslieDinaberg.com.