Last night, I downloaded the Godfather trilogy of movies which have been bundled by iTunes. I already own these movies on VHS, but the bundle was priced at $17.99, so the remastered digital versions were too good a deal to pass up.

As I watched the first of these films, it occurred to me that with all of the bravado on display: Sonny, Sollozzo (The Turk), Luca Brasi, Don Corleone himself, and many others, one of the most courageous characters in the movie was the easily overlooked Enzo the Baker.

A sense of gratitude prompted an unarmed Enzo to place himself into a dangerous situation.

“If there is trouble, I stay here to help you. For your father. For your father.”

Enzo stood in front of the hospital with Michael and played a dangerous game of chicken, as they bluffed the gangsters who had come to finish off the Don. His trembling hands gave away his nervousness, but he did his part just the same. This was not his quarrel, yet Enzo stuck his neck out when he didn’t have to. It would have been so much easier for him to simply walk away.

In a world of skepticism and self-interest it’s gratifying to be able to recognize and appreciate the many unsung heroes that are all around us.

Among these are the providers of child care who allow parents to make a living and those who care for our elderly. The people who perform these difficult tasks are heroes to the families who employ them.

You might say that those are just jobs, but they are more than that, and they should be valued accordingly.

If I do my job technically correctly, financial reports are in balance, but if I see my job in terms of how I can impact others, there’s much more that I can do. If the custodians of our very young and our very old perform their jobs in a caring manner, we’ll know that our loved ones are safe and secure, so we can turn my attentions to other matters.

In all of our interactions with others, we can choose whether to be detached or involved, closed or open, or annoyed or cheerful. The choices that we make determine how we view the world and how the world views us. Everyone can be a hero in his or her own way. Wearing a cape or a mask is optional.

There are many other jobs that fit into the unsung hero category: EMTs, teachers, police officers, and doctors. Those are the obvious ones, but there are other, more obscure, choices: road workers, waiters, maintenance workers, truck drivers, and crossing guards to name a few.

The list is endless.

Whatever it is that we do for a living, we can approach our days as if there is a little bit of Enzo the Baker in all of us. In all of our relationships, we can choose to take chances and not just play it safe. We can view our actions as interconnected bits that shape our experiences and the experiences of others.

Millions of heroes, each making small contributions, can be more effective than any single superhero, if superheroes actually existed.

So go ahead, step up to your next opportunity and show me your Enzo.

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Who are the unsung heroes in your life?
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Each time I play it, I experience six minutes and sixteen seconds of wonderment.

It’s funny that I would have been introduced to such beautiful music while watching a movie about contract killers for the mob. The movie was Prizzi’s Honor and the song is Ave Maria.

I don’t understand a word that’s being sung, yet I’m captivated by its splendor. The piano and the voice of the performer seem to have been created for this singularly beautiful purpose. I alternatively listen to two versions: one from the movie and a second version that has become my favorite.

Please sit back, turn up the volume, and listen as you read the rest of this post with me.

Listen here.

The music sets my mind to wander. I allow the sounds to take me where they may, as I type these few words.

I’m back at home with my brothers – running, playing, and laughing in ways that I haven’t done since. I’m thinking about tomorrow and the problems that will still be there when I wake from another fitful night. I’m thinking of snippets of life: love, sadness, joy, and heartbreak.

There’s a knock at the door and I’m brought back to the now. My daughter enters and places a plate on the desk – a skeptical eyebrow raised at my paused music selection.

“You like?” I ask.

She bites her lip, “Um”.

We laugh.

She leaves.

I press play.

I take a drag and exhale slowly. The smoke is wafted in its alluringly deadly dance. I watch it curl and dissipate and feel the sinfully pleasurable sensation of having mocked the Reaper one more time. He will win in the end, I know. But he won’t win today.

I’m holding her hand as she struggles not to push. Her grip is strong. Her nails are sharp. Freckles begin to dot her face in places where they did not exist before. One nurse encourages while another prepares. Her doctor instructs. I mumble as I try to repeat the pathetically useless words learned during six sessions of Lamaze. Her strong will is finally defeated by the pain. The scream is long and thick with distress. My knees feel weak.

I can’t really help her.

I realize that I’m no better than a bystander. There’s one final push, a gasp, then silence. The doctor hands me the scissors.

She’s taken away. The nurses hover over the child as she cries. They suction, wipe, measure, assess, and swaddle.

I can’t help her either.

They bring our child back to her mother.

The song ends and I’m back here with you.

Aren’t these wonderful gifts that we have been given? We have music that touches our souls, we can remember things so very vividly, we can choose what we do with our lives, and we can share the experiences of our lives with one another.

Be well.

If a tweet isn’t retweeted…

… does it make a sound?

Everyone who I have spoken with and everything that I have read about blogging can be distilled into a single, generally accepted truth: Content is king. Yet six months into my full court press of blogging, I’m beginning to doubt the veracity of that statement.

(This is a reprint of a post that I recently wrote for the Pocono Tweeup NING. Unfortunately, that NING is being taken down because The NING Network is now charging a fee for their services and also because the group’s activity on the NING was sporadic.)

While this Tweetup group is primarily made up of members who are seeking to harness the power of social media for business concerns, I would think that the rules, strategies, and implementations are applicable to non-business efforts as well. I’d appreciate feedback from my Tweeps as I provide an update of my efforts. Please share your experiences in the comments.

Finding Your Niche

By day, I’m an accountant, but what I really enjoy doing is writing. I write about life, politics, and people. This seems too broad a subject range to be crammed into a niche, but limiting the topics that I write about for the sake of conformity isn’t really a viable option.

I take great care to compose thought provoking blog posts, usually in the form of short essays, and I encourage visitors to participate in the discussions. What I have found is that once people spend a short amount of time on my blog, they tend to be repeat visitors – whether or not they leave comments. It’s a small, but attentive, group of people who are not known to me outside of my blog, as I tend not to push my blog on family and friends because I’m trying to assess whether my posts can stand up on their own.

There have been sixty-seven posts since January 29Th and they have all been new content and not simply reposting of Youtube videos and such. They have been topical, carefully crafted, and open ended so as to encourage continued dialogue.

Networking

The top non-direct traffic sources for my blog are as follows:

• Feedburner
• Google
• Twitter
• Stubleupon
• Facebook
• Youtube

Since my feed goes to my subscribers and Google visits are the result of keyword searches, I have found only marginal value in using the standard social media platforms for attracting visitors.

I have a number of longtime YouTube subscribers, but those numbers do not translate into blog visits. Twitter users tend to be less interested in viewing anything beyond the tweet, so links to blogs seem to be routinely ignored. Stumbleupon visits are usually hit and run and only a few seconds in duration, as those visitors stumble off to the next site in line. Facebook users appear to be more interested in Farmville or photos than anything else.

Support

Writing a blog is a solitary endeavor, so I look to myself for the drive to invest the requisite time to put out a quality site. But I realize that things may not change in the short-term, as my tagline reads: “Blogging, it’s just like howling at the moon, only quieter”. Consequently, fledgling bloggers eventually arrive at a junction where they contemplate whether the exercise is worth doing at all. This is where I am, today.

Looking to others for help is contrary to my nature. I’ve always been a bootstrap type person who is confident in my abilities. I’ve viewed success or failure as a direct result of my action or inaction. But I’ve come to learn that in social media, there are no lone wolves. Without the support of others, no blog can flourish.

I spoke of my reasons for blogging in this video that I posted to the new vlogging site, Let’s Vlog, in which I tried to encourage another fledgling blogger.

So the question for my Tweeps is what it has always been:

How do we leverage social media to attract new visitors, so that they can see what we have to offer?