The first Small Business Saturday took place on 11/27/10 and American Express encouraged people across the country to support small, local businesses by offering a generous statement credit of $25 off $25. The event was hugely successful, with people coming out in droves to shop and use their Amex cards.

For the past five years, small business owners have relied on the American Express statement credit program on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. The program has helped to counter balance lagging traffic and sales during Black Friday weekend for thousands of small business owners.

My question to Amex: You didn’t think your decision to effectively cancel Small Business Saturday didn’t warrant an announcement on the home page of your Small Business Saturday website?

Shame on American Express for not making sure that small business owners were given a heads up that, for the most part, Small Business Saturday has gone bust.

When I went online today to find out what kind of credit incentive Amex was going to offer for the 2015 Small Business Saturday, I saw nothing on their website. But I did find several articles claiming that an American Express announcement that no statement credits would be offered this year, was buried somewhere in their FAQ section. I looked around on the Amex Small Business Saturday website for quite some time and found no such announcement in their FAQ section or anywhere else.

I ultimately sent an e-mail to Amex directly, asking them if they were in fact canceling statement credits. I received the following e-mail reply back from them:

As in years past, American Express will continue to drive awareness of Small Business Saturday and encourage consumers to shop small through local and national advertising.

This year we are not offering a statement credit offer for Card Members on Small Business Saturday, but are instead increasing the support and resources we provide to help small business owners market the day within their communities and truly make it their own.  Learn about the materials we make available at ShopSmall.com/GetReady:

• Customizable marketing materials
• Free online ads
• Shop Small merchandise kits (while supplies last)
• Educational event guides

We are also significantly expanding our grassroots advocacy efforts, such as the Neighborhood Champion program, to facilitate more community events and activities to engage local communities to shop small on Small Business Saturday.

Why would Amex have a Small Business Saturday and not have statement credits? What would motivate people to shop on that day vs. any other day?

Sorry, Amex but your offer to increase support and supply materials isn’t going to bring the store traffic to small businesses that your statement credit program did. It won’t even come close.

The popularity of Black Friday Weekend has lessened in recent years, as e-commerce has completely changed the scope of holiday shopping. And now Amex has decided to quietly cancel their statement credit program?

As the Executive Director of my local Chamber of Commerce, I have seen firsthand how successful stores have been on Small Business Saturday, thanks in large part to the American Express statement credit incentives.

I also witnessed hundreds of shoppers who swarmed the stores that day with loads of Amex cards. And I mean loads—per person. I saw one shopper with at least 50 credit cards. And I witnessed store after store printing out sales receipts that were eight feet long nonstop until they closed at midnight.

A little-known rule regarding American Express cards, is that you can have up to 99 authorized users on any one card—each with their own card, and more importantly, their own individual statement credits.

So I am assuming that American Express was tired of shoppers abusing the program. But they could have easily limited the promotion to one card per person, and that would have been the end of the abuse.

Instead, they canceled the program entirely, with no formal announcement. Not yet, anyway.

Below is a history of incentives going back to the 2010 launch year:

2010: $25 off $25 offer announced on 11/08. Registration opened 11/08. Spending valid 11/27-12/31/10.

2011: $25 off $25 offer announced on 10/06. Registration opened 11/01. Spending valid 11/26/11.

2012: $25 off $25 offer announced on 09/24. Registration opened 11/17. Spending valid 11/24/12.

2013: $10 off $10 offer announced on 10/01. Registration opened 11/24. Spending valid 11/30/13.

2014: $10 off $10 valid 3 times per card announced on 09/27. Registration opened 11/16. Spending valid 11/29/14.

2015:  No formal announcement made yet, that Small Business Saturday statement credits are canceled for 2015.

I get that American Express is trying to cut costs, but in my opinion they should have canceled Small Business Saturday altogether. Let’s get real, without a financial incentive, people won’t pay attention. Wasn’t a financial incentive the whole point of the program?

Incentives or no incentives. At least let small business owners know.

I had a dream last night, although I didn’t remember having it at all until my husband mentioned it to me at breakfast. “In your sleep, you inarticulately mentioned something about gnats or nattering.  The first thing I thought  of when I heard you muttering was: nattering nabobs of negativism.”

Nattering nabobs of negativism. Wha?

I wasn’t able to remember the actual dream, but once my husband reminded me, I dimly recalled the words.

After breakfast at the beautiful Algonquin Hotel in St. Andrews by the Sea in New Brunswick Canada, I googled the phrase. To be honest, I barely knew how to spell it.

It turns out it was a phrase often used by Nixon’s Vice President Spiro Agnew to refer to the members of the media with whom he had a very acrimonious relationship.

Agnew, who was extremely inarticulate and later a disgraced VP, didn’t have the brains or the wherewithal to come up with such a memorable and jarring expression.

The phrase was actually written forty-five years ago by William Safire, the former Nixon speechwriter turned New York Times op-ed columnist, who died in 2009.

The nattering nabobs were the mainstream American news media. So what the heck was I dreaming about to cause me to mumble it out loud in my sleep?

To be clear, I had never uttered those words before last night. And now I can’t get the words out of my head.

According to Dictionary.com, natter as a verb means to talk incessantly; chatter. As a noun, it means a conversation; or chat. The origin of natter occurred between 1820-1830. Its variant was gnatter.

Nabob, as a noun, means any very wealthy, influential, or powerful person.

No need to look up negativism. We all know what that means.

I’ve been wracking my brain to recall what it was I was dreaming about. I do remember something vague about someone making light of my words. I recollect saying over and over: “It’s my story to tell.” A blonde woman was vehemently shaking her head as if to say “no,” and trying to devalue my telling. She was refusing to listen and/or acknowledge what I was saying about my telling, i.e., my life.

I also vaguely remember thinking that she was usurping my words, my writing style, and my story.

Who was the blonde in my dream? Was she the nattering nabob, or was I? And what was I trying to tell?

Portrait of me painted by my daughter
Ariel when she was ten years old, and
one of my most prized possessions.

Research has confirmed that viewing a human face, sets off a unique reaction in our brains. For humans, faces are among the most important visual stimuli.

A myriad of information can be extracted from a single glance at a face, including their identity, emotional state, their level of engagement, and even their internal thought processes at that moment in time.

I feel very much the same about the human face and form in stone, bronze, pencil, paint, chemicals or photographs. Any human face in art form always draws me in, and the subtle deviations in figural appearance fascinate me. But it’s the eyes that evoke a particularly salient emotional cue for me.

As a writer, I’m always using words to explore emotions—either to express my own feelings or to evoke emotions in others.

So when I view a face in any art form, that haunts, calms, exhilarates or saddens me, I find myself asking the same question over and over again.

Are the feelings I’m experiencing, a mirror image of the artist’s emotional state at the time the work was created?

Whatever mood the facial imagery evokes in me, I can’t help but feel an affinity with its creator, assuming that he or she was feeling similarly affected at the time of its conception.

The facial images that affect me have nothing to do with its monetary worth. Its value comes from a sense of profoundness, and a feeling near impossible to express.

Below are but a few examples of images that are near and dear to me, although I’ve never been able to articulate exactly why.

Please share by posting some of yours?

According to scientists, 60 is the new 40, and healthier lives mean people now hit middle-age much later in life. This is awesome news for me now that I’m 62. So I’m figuring it’s time to party hard, right?

No one likes to party more than me, but here is the question I keep asking myself:

Is there anything to celebrate about turning 60 and then beyond?

I’ve been assiduously mulling over the pros and cons of 60+. Try as I may, I haven’t found much to celebrate, and I’m struggling to think positively here, but there just aren’t a ton of advantages to oldness.

After much consideration, I was able to find one glorious Pro: I can finally say no.

I can’t avoid aging, but at least I’m now old enough to not  care one hoot about what anyone else thinks or wants. It’s finally all about me, with no regrets and no apologies.

So no, I’m not commemorating 62, but I have come to terms with it.  And I would like to think I’m at a stage in my life where I am also at peace with my age—and my wrinkles. But please do me a favor, and NEVER call me a senior.

And let’s be real—it’s exceedingly difficult to jubilate over my crow’s feet, laugh lines, jowls, and the dreaded “11’s” in between my hooded eyes. But the alternative is for sure a whole lot worse.

So I’ve created my own take on an old rant:

I’m old as hell and I’m not doing that anymore.

I first heard a similar phrase back in 1976 while watching the American satirical film Network. Howard Beale (played by Peter Finch), was a longtime newscaster at the United Broadcasting System, who was fired because he skewed old. Beale couldn’t fathom losing his 25-year post as lead anchorman simply because of his age.

So in his next broadcast he announced to his viewers that he was going to commit suicide on his final program. UBS believed that they would have their greatest ratings ever and hyped Beale’s fateful and final telecast as a momentous, must-see event. No surprise that Beale didn’t follow through with his suicide threat.

But he did go on a maniacal rant and concluded his tirade by challenging his viewers to: “Go to the window and shout as loud as you can: ‘I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!'” His ravings make him an icon and Beale landed his own show and became the hottest TV personality in America.

Now, I’m not going to scream out any windows, and my “hot” days are long gone, but I can finally run my own show.

And I’ve given up faking my age. I used to shave off ten years, but it got complicated and confusing. One tiny white lie turned into an entire ruse. Take for example this innocent question: “How old were you when you had kids?” The honest answer is 31 and 35. But I had to remember the minus ten-year rule, so the fake answer was 21 and 25. “Wow, you were young when you had kids,” my friends would retort, as I sheepishly agreed.

And then there were the times that I forgot about the negative ten, and would ruminate about things that I was barely born for like almost making it to Woodstock. I had to backtrack that white lie by adding that my mother was going to accompany me since I was a mere six years old.

And then there was always the uneasiness that my husband or offspring would spill the old age beans. But those days are thankfully gone. Now, I just don’t care what other people think about my older-than-dirt self. Because I’m old as hell and…

Every now and then, I get requests from colleagues asking me to speak at some conference, workshop, or seminar. They try to convince me that it will attract lots of business prospects.

In the old days, even though I would have preferred to stick a hot poker in my eye, I would succumb to the pressure, and say “yes.” Now? I say, “Thanks anyway, but my prospecting days are over.”

As recently as five years ago, I understood the importance of doing things I didn’t enjoy or want to do. But those days are long gone. I’m older and wiser now.

When I’m asked to make dinner for the masses, I politely notify: “I don’t have the strength at my age.”

Turnaround business trips to wherever? “I’m not able to do that any longer.”

Obligatory outings? “I can’t sit for that long.”

Need help moving? “My back is shot.”

Now that I don’t have to prospect, cook, travel, or move people, I have a lot of time to ponder and observe women like me who are getting long in the tooth. And yes, there are some women aging quite well out there. But there are also way too many women who have gone under the knife, a few too many times. The search for the fountain of youth can sometimes get very (and I mean very) ugly.

You know the look: Windblown facelifts that resemble trudging through a typhoon…

…the permanently surprised face, the piggy nose, trout lips, way too big and white teeth…Listen up people—YOU CAN’T FIX OLD.

And let’s face it—ageism, no matter how young you look for your age, is a real downer. Plus as the saying goes: You’re only as young as your neck.

These days, it seems that everyone is obsessed with fixing old. There’s microdermabrasion, triphasic facials, Botox, fillers, hair extensions, acrylic nails. There are butt lifts, breast and chin implants, tummy tucks, liposuction, lip augmentation, blah, blah, blah. Is there anyone authentically old left out there?

And am I the only one who is sick and tired of the Victoria’s Secret models prancing around in undergarments? I can’t wait to see what they look like at 62. Oh, I almost forgot—I’ll be long gone by then.

I try to stay in shape—trying  being the operative word, because I’m just too damn old to be jogging, spinning, cycling, weight training, and the like. Hell, I can barely dance without limping around hunched over the next day.

I prefer to think of myself as “Native American Summer”—before politically correctness kicked in, aka Indian Summer.

Somehow Native American Summer just doesn’t have the same ring, but call it what you want. Bottom line: I am under a warm calm spell, with the sober realization that a long, cold winter is on its way. As I enjoy the tranquility and serenity of my old age, I know that my personal El Niño is lurking around the corner.

I try not to look back at the days when I would walk into a room or down the street and actually get noticed. Now I am invisible to all. The upside of being a ghost is the increased freedom to explore who I am without all the scrutiny or outside expectations. My irrelevance has made it easier to relax—and be myself.

And I’m finally able to focus on what I want to do, and not what I should do to make everyone else happy about me, my lifestyle, my career, and my life choices.

I once read a fascinating article by Pulitzer Prize winner and psychologist Erik Erikson regarding his belief that there were eight psychosocial stages of life development. His theory has stuck with me and goes something like this:

The first year of life: “I am what I am given.”

Second and third years of life: “I am what I will be.”

Fourth through the sixth year of life: “I am what I imagine I will be.”

Age six through puberty: “I am what I will learn.”

Adolescence: “Who am I?”

Early adulthood: “I am what I love.”

Middle adulthood: “I am what I create.”

Late adulthood: “I am what survives me.”