Authors Susan Coppack, Rick Wiggin, and Anita Harris; moderator Neil O’Hara. Photo by Katherine O’Hara. :

I was pleased to join Susan Coppack and Rick Wiggin on a panel about independent book publishing held at the Lincoln, MA Library on Wednesday, May 14, 2014.  All members of the Write Stuff, the Library’s writers group,  we’d each published a book in the past year–and had experienced both the excitement of having a book come out and the challenges of production and marketing. Link to video.

Susan told  the audience that she used a turnkey service from Book Baby to create and distribute her book, Fly Away Home: A Coming of Age Memoir, in electronic form. She said that had she realized how much time and effort it takes to market a book, she would have delayed publication by several months in order to reach her audience.  Fly Away Home describes her unusual childhood and adolescence as the daughter of disengaged parents, continuing through early adulthood until her mother’s death.  As described by moderator Neil O’Hara, who organized the panel: “At  25,000 words, the book is too long for a magazine but too short to interest traditional publishers, an example of how technology has opened up a new market for works of intermediate length, called “e-singles” in industry parlance. “Selling at “$1.99 on a multitude of electronic platforms, Coppack said she’s not in it for the money. Rather, she hopes to build an audience in order to engage in discussion with her readers.

Rick Wiggin is the author of Embattled Farmers: Campaigns and Profiles of Revolutionary Soldiers from Lincoln, Massachusetts, 1775-1783,a history of the revolutionary war focusing on the military service of Lincoln residents during the conflict, including profiles of the 256 documented combatants. The Lincoln Historical Society published Wiggin’s book in hardback and paperback. Wiggin described a painstaking editing process for which he is now grateful, a highly successful launch party that attracted some 300 people last July 4, and hundreds of sales there and at various historic sites on the East Coast. At some 1500 pages, the book sells for $30. Rick advised thinking carefully about whether to choose digital or offset printing. Digital  printing eliminates many of the mechanical steps required for offset printing such as making films and color proofs and thus offers quicker turnaround time and lower costs for very small print runs. Offset printing,  he suggests, can offer higher image and print quality and costs less as quantity increases.

Last but not least, I described the incredible number of steps involved in publishing Broken Patterns: Professional Women and the Quest for a New Feminine Identity, which tells the stories of generations of American  professional women. Originally published by Wayne University Press, it had gone out of print.   I  purchased back the rights, updated the book and published the new edition in both e-book and paperback formats through Cambridge Common Press, my own publishing imprint. I used Amazon.com’s publishing arm “CreateSpace” and Kindle.  Broken Patterns is now available on Amazon.com and Kindle, and in the Harvard Book store, in Cambridge.

I’ll write more about the publishing and the marketing processes in future blogs. For now, suffice it to say that all of us feel a bit overwhelmed by the  time, energy, strategy and skill  it takes to write, publish and market a book.

If you want to know exactly what we said, here’s a link to a video of our presentation.

–Anita M. Harris

Anita M. Harris is the author of Broken Patterns: Professional Women and the Quest for a New Feminine Identity and Managing Director of the Harris Communications Group, an award-winning PR and marketing firm based in Kendall Square, Cambridge, MA.

Governor Deval Patrick spoke yesterday at the Cambridge Innovation Center–emphasizing the importance of entrepreneurs to the Commonwealth’s economy and crediting them with being instrumental in the advent of late-night MBTA service.  Patrick was introduced by Carlos Martinez-Velam Executive Director of the Venture Cafe Foundation. 

—Anita M. Harris

–New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, an award-winning pr and marketing firm based at the Cambridge Innovation Center, in Cambridge, MA. 

The 2014 Whitney Biennial was  excoriated as “BS” by the Huffington Post, Even the BBC called the show “confounding and exasperating.”  It points out that the  the 77th edition of the Whitney Biennial begins with a question, asked at the very start of the text that greets visitors: “What is contemporary art in the United States now?” After seeing the work of 103 artists and groups on display here, a BBC critic suggests, “you might not be any closer to answering that enquiry.”

Because I had only a few hours to spare,   friends told me not to bother with anything but the exhibits on the fourth floor. But when I arrived at the museum, a tour of the third floor was about to start so I hopped on board. I’m glad I did.

Docent Janice Lieberman explained that the third floor exhibit, curated by Stuart Comer, Chief Curator of Media and Performance Art at the Museum of Modern Art, was meant to show transitions, the blurring of boundaries, changing concepts of internal and external, of gender and sexuality, of political and geographical economy and environment, and the interplay of images and text embodied in art. “What’s an artist, what is art is up for grabs,” she said. “We’re living in a strange time–the disappearing plane off Maylasia, for example, and the shipwreck off Korea.”  She pointed out that it’s a time of transition for the Whitney itself, because the current Breuer Building, built in 1966, will close this summer, and the museum will move to a new highrise at the tip of Manhattan,”

Lieberman explained all of the above in the hallway off the elevator of the 3rd floor, where work by Ken Okiishi is displayed on screens resembling large ipods–on which the artist superimposed digital images on old video,then smeared the screen with what looked to me like finger paint. As Okiishi explained to Interview Magazine:  “I had already been making straight video works, and then I asked, ‘What if I move even further outside of the screen and work on top of the screen?” According to Lieberman, museum visitors often take photos of this work. thus further blurring boundaries by becoming a part of the work. I dutifully took a photo (top left) but to be honest, was not blown away by these. .   The New England Puritan in me was boggled by photos of Zackary Drucker and Rhys Ernst, a man and a woman who “fell for each other,” as they each switched gender.  Disconcerting and meant to be. I could have lived without the photo of their bare behinds, each with a band aid covering the site of a hormone injection. 

“Meh” to Canopy Canopy Canopy: .com–the work of a collaborative group interested in the history of objects and collections: showing original wooden stand, a reproduction, though others in my tour group were quite impressed by the 3-d printed version o the same.

At one point, when we were standing in front of a workbench amidst sand, tools and other objects, Lieberman said, frankly, “I don’t get this,” I’m not sure if it was she or someone in our group who suggested it was a reference to environmental change. Soon after that, Lieberman warned us that the exhibit gets “stranger and stranger.”

“The American Dream,”  for example, is a collection of paintings by Keith Mayerson, who, Lieberman explained, is a psychoanalyst’s son whose dreams were  to show his work in the Whitney–and  to come out as gay. As described on the Whitney Website, “The salon-style installation includes images of Annie Oakley, Sitting Bull, Abraham Lincoln, and others, and links these stories to those of the nation and of Mayerson.  Paintings of Superman and popular musicians such as Marvin Gaye and the Beatles are juxtaposed with depictions of the artist as a child with his family…and of Mayerson with his husband, Andrew Madrid.”  The beautifully composed paintings, with striking brush strokes, hang close together on walls from floor to ceiling. More power to Meyerson and his dream, I say. I  also say that it was not MY dream to look up and see a large painting of  actor James  Dean, in the nude, masturbating.

Less vibrant, less provocative, are hats, placed on the floor as islands on a piece of cloth, meant,  to show that New York City is no longer the center of the art world–and that the US is now part of the Pacific Rim. .Another set of three attached hats  is used in performance art to show, when worn by  three people, what it’s like to try to move anything politically, Lieberman explained.

I found the painting, drawing and tapestry of 89-year-old Lebanese poet Etel Adnan quite inspiring. Adnan, who now lives in California,”  makes “accordion-fold books, or leporellos, that meld visual and verbal observation, fusing the artist’s parallel practices in painting and writing as she transcribes poems and records unfolding landscapes and urban spaces,” .according to the Whitney writeup.

Before we entered the last room in the 3rd floor exhibit, Lieberman said that, at first, she’d found its contents shocking. ” I couldn’t believe I’d ever actually show it to people,”  filled as it was, with images conveying violence and sex.  In fact, she added, the museum  considered putting a warning sign in front of the doorway. Norwegian artist Bjarne Melgaard, “goes to the extreme to show the extreme.It’s an example of an artist going to the top to jolt you.” Then, she shrugged. “People love it,” she said. And in we went. The large room  was crowded with museum visitors and mannequins standing or sprawled on couches and chairs, amidst mobiles, hanging art, and stuff strewn all over the place–so chaotically that I couldn’t focus.  When I heard someone exclaim to a friend,  “Look at this,”  I did so. She was holding up a pair of stuffed, beachball sized gonads hanging at either end of a long string.

I decided it was time to leave, thanked Lieberman for her frankness and humor, and asked if I could quote her in this piece. “Yes,” she replied. Then she  suggested mentioning that, in “real life”, she’s a psychoanalyst –clearly the perfect qualification for guiding people through this show.

Incidentally, I did also visit the fourth floor, curated by Michelle Grabner, an artist and Professor in the Painting and Drawing Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Grabner’s stated goal was to “develop a curriculum that presents identifiable themes… that are currently established in the textures of contemporary aesthetic, political, and economic realities.” She prioritized “contemporary abstract painting by women; materiality and affect theory; and art as strategy—in other words, conceptual practices oriented toward criticality.”

I found the work she chose more accessible and understandable but far less provocative than the work shown on the third floor. I liked Sheila Hicks “Pillar of Inquiry.” The work of the 80-year-old Nebraska artist melds the weaver’s craft and fine art. (Photo, left,by Bill Orcut)t. Was also struck by Sterling Ruby’s large, colorful ceramic vessels filled with remnants of earlier works that he had deemed failures or which had accidentally blown up during firing” As explained on the Whitney Website, the finished works contain notions of archaeological excavation, reanimating his own objects exhumed from the past into new, living forms.  I did wonder if the docent leading the fourth-floor tour I was kidding when she told us Grabner wanted to award “best-in-how” to a “12×12″or so z-shaped- sculpture coated to look like foam rubber– on a pedastal, with a string pulled through it.

I was sorry to miss Grabner’s selections of women’s abstract expressionists–and also the second exhibit floor, chosen  by Anthony Elms, Associate Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia.

Donna De Salvo, Chief Curator and Deputy Director for Programs at the Whitney, noted: “Together, the 103 participants offer one of the broadest and most diverse takes on art in the United States that the Whitney has offered in many years.”

While many critics dumped on the show as a whole, I  thought it was fun.

The Biennial runs through May 25, 2014.

–Anita M. Harris

Anita Harris is a writer, photographer and communications consultant based in Cambridge, MA. New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, an award-winning PR and marketing firm in Kendall Square. Cambridge.

The Cambridge Art Association’s 13^th National Prize Show,will open May 13, CAA announced today. The show will exhibit the work of 82 artists chosen by Dr. James Welu, Director Emeritus of the Worcester Art Museum from among 383 artists from 13 states.  Prize winners, include artists from Lexington, Belmont, Duxbury, Lexington Providence, Roslindale, Providence, and West Yarmouth.

The show will run  through June 26, 2014, at both the Kathryn Schultz Gallery (25 Lowell Street, Cambridge) and the University Place Gallery (124 Mt Auburn Street, Cambridge).  An opening reception will be held on Friday, May 16, 6-8pm, in both galleries.

The prizewinners are:

Best in Show: Zoe Perry-Wood (Lexington, MA)

Mixed Media Prize: Warren Croce (Belmont, MA)

Photography Prize: Dorothy Pilla (Duxbury, MA)

Painting Prize: Wilson Hunt, Jr. (Roslindale, MA)

Sculpture/3D Prize: Jesse Thompson (Providence, RI)

Work on Paper Prize: Carol Flax (West Yarmouth, MA)

Welu, who selected  the exhibitors and the award-winners said: “Jurying the National Prize Show was exciting and challenging–exciting to see such a wide range of art from across the country, but challenging to narrow a field of over a thousand entries to an exhibition of about 85 works.”

In jurying the show,  Welu  focused on  visual impact and originality with the goal of representing the variety of media that was submitted, he said.  “I was particularly attentive to the artists’ choice and use of medium for expressing the subject of their work. It was reassuring to see so many fresh and innovative approaches to a number of traditional subjects.” Welu said he was also impressed by the number of outstanding abstract paintings.

Previous jurors have included: Toby Kamps (Menil Collection) Malcolm Rogers (MFA, Boston); Clara Kim (Senior Curator, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis); Joseph Thompson (Director, MassMoCA); Lisa Dennison (Guggenheim); Marc Pacter (Director, National Portrait Gallery); Robert Fitzpatrick (Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago), among others.

–Anita M. Harris
New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, an award-winning PR and marketing firm in Kendall Square, Cambridge, MA. Anita Harris is the author of Broken Patterns, Professional Women and the Quest for a New Feminine Identity, the forthcoming Ithaca Diaries–and managing director of the Harris Communications Group.

Our friends at 360 Chestnut  and BTW [Behind the Walls Magazine [] present: 

DOES YOUR HOUSE KNOW TOO MUCH ABOUT YOU?
What:  Panel presentation: impact of home energy monitoring devices on privacy
When:  April 8^th, 2014
Where: Cambridge Innovation Center, 1 Broadway,Cambridge, MA Havana 5^th Floor
With:  Deborah Hurley, Jim Bride, Joseph Kolchisnky, Jason Hanna, and Daniel Hullah. Moderated by Alexandra Hall & Harold Simansky

Google’s recent acquisition of “smart thermostat maker NEST” was met with excitement in the home energy world—Google is finally recognizing the importance of energy efficiency. But now that the excitement has died down, people are realizing that Google will be in their homes more intimately than ever before. What does this mean for Americans’ already compromised privacy?

On April 8^th at the Cambridge Innovation Center in Kendall Square, 360Chestnut, Inc., and BTW: Behind the Walls magazine will host a panel discussion titled, “Does Your House Know Too Much About You?” Featuring experts on the home energy industry and “green” home improvement, the panel will address the looming issue of “smart” home monitoring devices: with sales expected to increase by 300% by 2020, are we giving up too much of privacy when embracing them?

The panel will include Deborah Hurley, a fellow at Harvard University’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science; Jim Bride, Founder and CEO of Energy Tariff Experts, LLC; Joseph Kolchinsky, Founder and Managing Director of OneVision Resources; Jason Hanna, Founder and CEO of Embue and Daniel Hullah, Partner and COO of Rockport Capital.  The moderators will be Harold Simansky, Founder and CEO of 360Chestnut Inc, and publisher of BTW: Behind The Walls and Alexandra Hall, Executive Producer of 360 Chestnut Inc, and Editor-in-Chief of BTW: Behind the Walls and COUPBoston will be the moderator.

The Panel:

Deborah Hurley is is a Fellow of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science (IQSS) at Harvard University and directed the Harvard University Information Infrastructure Project. At the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, in Paris, France, she was responsible for drafting, negotiation and adoption of the OECD Guidelines for the Security of Information Systems. Prior to joining the OECD, she practiced computer and intellectual property law in the United States. Hurley is Chair, Board of Directors, Electronic Privacy Information Center. She carried out a Fulbright study in Korea and is the author of Pole Star: Human Rights in the Information Society, and other publications. Hurley received the Namur Award of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) in recognition of outstanding contributions, with international impact, to awareness of social implications of information technology.

Joseph (Joey) Kolchinsky is the founder and Managing Director of OneVision Resources, a company that merges his curiosity with technology and passion for simplicity. The firm is redefining excellent service for the modern family, providing comprehensive and stress-free support to members across a growing range of needs including personal technology, smart home design, and health management. Joey lives in Boston with his wife Jennifer and daughter Penelope.

Jim Bride has over a decade of experience in the energy and environmental industries. He launched Energy Tariff Experts, LLC to address an unmet need in the marketplace for accurate utility rate and energy cost information to enable more informed energy investment decisions. Prior to Energy Tariff Experts, Jim spent over four years at EnerNOC, a pioneering Smart Grid firm.

Jason Hanna is the CEO & Founder of Embue; a Boston-based company developing connected heating & cooling controls for residential and small commercial application. Jason is also the Founder & Board Chairman of Greentown Labs, a Boston-area incubator for clean energy and hardware companies, now home to over 40 emerging start-ups. Jason previously worked in high technology and was responsible for building an organization that automated over $1B of transactions for EMC Corporation.

Daniel Hullah is a Partner and COO of RockPort Capital a multi-stage venture capital firm that invests in the areas of alternative and traditional energy, mobility, and sustainability.  Daniel is an active member of the screening and diligence team and has worked on multiple transactions in several key cleantech sectors most notably solar energy and green buildings.  One such company is EcoFacto, a leader in home energy management, providing user-friendly active management of residential and small commercial thermostats using a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model.

Harold Simansky (moderator)  is the founder of 360Chestnut.  Before 360Chestnut he was involved in the creation of Green Guild of MA, LLC, a full-service energy audit and home weatherization company that has helped over 1,000 Massachusetts home owners make their homes more energy efficient.  Earlier, Harold was the developer of one of the first green, LEED-certified residential buildings in the Boston-area.  Harold also has experience in the world of finance and as a consultant with Bain & Company. He is a graduate of the MIT Sloan School of Management and Brandeis University.

Alexandra Hall (moderator) has more than ten years’ experience as a critic, lifestyle writer and editor of lifestyle topics in Boston and beyond. Alex has covered fashion, travel, entertainment, food, beauty, books, and the arts. She is currently editor-in-chief if COUP Boston, the city’s only luxury digital lifestyle magazine, and a freelance writer for publications including: Condé Nast Traveler, Bon Appétit, Town & Country, and Elle Decor.

360Chestnut is a multi-platform media company that helps consumers make their homes more sustainable, healthy and energy efficient.  This free-to-the-consumer service provides engaging experiences, expert information and personalized access to the 5000+ rebates that pay homeowners to be more energy efficient, as well as a connection to those who can do the work.  360Chestnut also published BTW: Behind the Walls magazine in partnership with the Wall Street Journal.

BTW: Behind the Walls is a quarterly magazine focused on healthy, sustainable and beautiful homes.  It is created in partnership with the Wall Street Journal and is distributed to more than 50,000 Wall Street Journal subscribers in MA, NH and VT.

COUPBoston is a multi-platform online magazine dedicated to all things innovative and forward thinking in Boston’s lifestyle community.

Info@360 Chestnut.com

–Anita M. Harris
New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, an award-winning PR and marketing firm based in Cambridge, MA.
Anita Harris is the author of Broken Patterns, Professional Womenand the Quest for a New Feminine Identity, publisher of New Cambridge Observer, and  managing director of the Harris Communications Group. HarrisCom provided editorial advice on the above writeup and is listed as a co-sponsor of the event.

Anita Harris speaking at the Lincoln, MA Library

Had fifteen seconds of fame on Friday, March 21, when I commented on Sheryl Sandberg’s Ban Bossy Campaign for PBS’s To the Contrary. The program, which airs nationally and on the Web, is public television’s all-female news analysis series–now in its 22nd season. You can view the program at http://www.pbs.org/to-the-contrary/watch/2885/contraception-cases;-ban-bossy;-congresswomen-and-leadership. 

My taped interview introduced a segment about Sheryl Sandberg’s campaign to expunge the “b” word (that would be “bossy”) from our vocabulary. I’d posted a New Cambridge Observer blog questioning whether the campaign will promote or harm good leadership among girls earlier in the week.
The program also covered the Obamacare Birth control mandate. Guests included:  Former Congresswomen Blanche Lincoln, Carol Moseley Braun, Connie Morella, Barbara Kennelly and Mary Bono. Panelists were Amy Siskind, The New Agenda; Kay Coles James, *resident, Gloucester Institute; Avis Jones DeWeever, NPR host, and Rina Shah, Republican strategist.

New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, an award-winning PR and Marketing firm based at the Cambridge Innovation Center, in Kendall Square, Cambridge. Anita Harris, HarrisCom’s Managing Director, is the author of Broken Patterns, Professional Women and the Quest for a New Feminine Identity.  Broken Patterns is available at Amazon.com, Kindle.com, and at the Harvard Bookstore, in Harvard Square.

Anita M. Harris (Not to be confused with the Anita Harris who wrote two of the books used to illustrate my introduction).

Pleased to announce that our imprint, Cambridge Common Press, has launched a new edition of Broken Patterns, Professional Women and the Quest for a New Feminine Identity . The release is timed to Women’s History Month (March, 2014).

Broken Patterns,  by award-winning journalist Anita M. Harris (that would be me)  traces the experiences of 40 American professional women who entered male-dominated careers in the 1970s and 1980s. Placing these groundbreaking women in generational context along with their mothers and grandmothers, the book outlines a “push-pull” pattern of historical development going back to the Colonial period in America.

The new (2nd) edition adds stories of present day college students and recent graduates, a new preface and an afterword assessing how far women have come since Broken Patterns was originally published, in 1995.

In the 19th century and again in the 20th,  Harris writes, the more women left the home for paying work in one generation, the  deeper the societal belief in domesticity for women in the next.

A “push-pull” pattern first became apparent when,  to Harris’ surprise, women told her they chose their careers because they didn’t want to emulate their mothers, who were homemakers in the 1950s–but described grandmothers who had worked outside the home in the early 1900s.

In light of the struggles of today’s working women to balance careers and families, Harris asks, what does such a push-pull dynamic portend for the future?

Unlike several new books arguing that women’s quest for equality has stalled, Harris takes a hopeful view, suggesting that “progress is not linear, nor cyclic, but spiral.”  As individuals and as a society,  she writes, “we  push forward toward a goal, reach an impasse, pull back  to retrieve and reintegrate aspects and values of the past, building new frameworks in which to move forward, once again.”

The book will be of interest to all working women because it shows how their life decisions may be influenced—consciously or unconsciously—by mothers’ and grandmothers’ lives.

NPR Reporter and author Margot Adler calls the book  “A splendid study of professional women.”

Broken Patterns Second Edition  [ISBN 978061590615907062] is available from Amazon.com, Kindle.com, and  the Broken Patterns E-store.   It will soon be available at the Harvard Bookstore, in Cambridge, MA.

For more information, please visit the Broken Patterns Website at http://brokenpatternsbook.com, or http://Cambridgecommonpress.com.

New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, a PR and marketing firm based in Kendall Square, Cambridge, MA.