ex(PR)essed

This morning, Messiah College held a chapel for employees which proved to be a time to settle before the Lord corporately as a community of believers…to focus on him in song, prayer, and liturgy. Given the uneasy state of our economy and the struggles that distract every company and organization these days, it was especially refreshing to be reminded that the Lord is our refuge and strength.

Our opening reading this morning:
Holy God — in this precious hour, we pause and gather to hear your word. To do so, we break from our work responsibilites and from our play fantasies; we move from our fears that overwhelm and from our ambitions that are too strong. Free us in these moments from every distraction, that we may focus to listen, that we may hear, that we may change. Amen.

My retirement clock is dying.

In January of 2000, my dad sent me a clock labeled “Countdown to Retirement.” He was pretty pleased with himself for selecting such an appropriate gift for a bright-eyed girl who had just started her first “real job.” At the time, I think I had like 16,000+ days to work until I could retire (I can’t remember what age he based the countdown on…Jeff, can you do the math?) So, for all nine years of my professional life thus far, I have been keenly aware of how incredibly far away my retirement is. (I’m even more aware now thanks to Jeff’s faltering 401K and my diminishing TIAA-CREF fund.)

Well, last Friday, Jeff happened to be in my office, and he noticed right away that the screen on my digital retirement clock was…well, fading. And now it’s impossible to discern anything on the display besides the word “days,” which is somewhat fitting because it is days (and days and days and days) until I retire. A girl could get pretty depressed just thinking about it. And, let’s face it, with never-ending frigid temperatures and what feels like a total lack of sunlight this winter, this girl doesn’t need one more thing to bum her out.

I guess for now I’ll just hold on to the fact that it’s only 60 minutes until I can go home for the day.

Dear Josh Ritter: I barely know you, but you have restored my hope in the music industry by having one of the most helpful, comprehensive, easily accessible websites for promoters of your show to utilize. A downloadable photo prominently featured? Excellent! A bio and press release available for download into a Word document? Brilliant! A user-friendly menu of options? Fantastic.

I may not be at your concert at Messiah on March 27, but I will be thinking fondly of you and your management team while we work on the news release and other materials to promote your show.

All the best,
Beth

A large part of my responsibilities as assistant director of public relations at Messiah is coordinating our media relations efforts. A significant portion of that work is devoted to helping various groups on campus promote their events — lectures, concerts, performances, etc.

Messiah hosts a lot of concerts each semester: at least one a week and then two or three bigger name shows on select weekends. I am finding that it is getting more and more challenging to locate any meaningful information about the bands and performers.

I just got off the phone with a publicist who took exception to my frustration that the band she represents has very little useful information available online. Like no biography for instance. Or downloadable photo that I can include with the news release. But, they sure have a spiffy MySpace site where I can listen, listen, listen to their songs and read all their crazed teenage fans gushing about how “awesome” they are. Yippee.

A few weeks ago, I was working on text for a series of concerts, and the only thing I could find about a particular performer was a list of what foods he liked and didn’t liked. Helpful.

Why are these new artists desiring to live in obscurity? I mean, really. If you’re trying to break into the popular music scene, wouldn’t you want people (fans, publicists, journalists alike) to easily access everything they might want or need to know about you? Not too many of them truly care whether you like Twizzlers or not, but, if they’re like me, they would probably like to know the names of the people in your band, when and where you got started, how many albums you’ve released, what the critics are saying about you and your music, and where you get your inspiration.

Ok…that’s enough ranting for now. I do feel better though. And, while I was typing this, the publicist sent a photo I can use with my news release. Great. Back to work.

Well, in case you haven’t noticed, I haven’t much been in the mood to blog lately. Really, all I want to do is hibernate these days. The post-holiday cold weather inspires me to sleep and leaves me feeling rather unmotivated to tackle anything else. Therefore, though I have cute pictures of a memorable sleepover with those sweet Patton girls and Christmas with our adorable nephew, I feel unwilling to take the time to upload and size the photos and properly recount all my adventures. Please forgive my laziness, and trust that we had a nice holiday, even admidst the traveling and bouts with a sinus infection (me) and strep throat (Jeff).