Give me your music, your art, your huddled masses of words and rhythms yearning to breathe free.
Dana Spiardi 
On July 22, 2011, I had the pleasure of seeing two major pop/rock acts from the 1960s — The Young Rascals (now known as Felix Cavaliere and the Rascals) and Tommy James and The (new) Shondells — at the Chautauqua Institution, that venerable adult education center that began as a camp for Sunday school teachers … Read more
Every year when I watch the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s new inductees deliver their acceptance speeches, I’m moved to hear the titans of the music business thank their mothers – for buying them their first guitars, for putting up with their basement drum practice, for driving them to early gigs. Who could forget … Read more
I was 13 years old, gawky, zitty, unpopular, and academically mediocre. Unlike many of the girls in my class, I didn’t have a boyfriend. Mary Richards was 30-ish, beautiful, accomplished, and smart. And unlike many of the female characters on TV at that time, she didn’t have a boyfriend. And that made me feel SO … Read more
If we all experience what Andy Warhol called our “fifteen minutes of fame,” I had mine in Bulgaria, a small Balkan nation I visited six times in the early 1990s. As a Westinghouse PR manager it was my job to inform the Bulgarian media of my company’s capabilities related to the country’s nuclear program. I … Read more
I touched down in Prague in April 1991 to launch a public relations campaign for Westinghouse Electric Corporation – 16 months after the collapse of communism. And that’s when my real PR education began. Forging relationships with skeptical journalists is hard enough, but imagine the difficulty of communicating to audiences stifled by 50 years of … Read more