Of Presidential Candidates & Contenders: What’s The Use In Jiving?

{ Subtitled: Your Story’s So Touching, But It Sounds Like A Lie }

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Please note, I didn’t watch last night’s presidential wannabes debate tedious issues + character failings among themselves.  I get nothing from such events.  They are a waste of my time.

Next September after each political party decides who’ll be the candidate, then I’ll pay attention to her or him.

But in the meantime, I don’t want to be accused of encouraging any of these babbling, narcissistic, argumentative individuals with delusions of presidential grandeur by watching them.

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In fact, my suggestion would be that instead of televising these dog and pony shows debates, the TV stations would do better to play endless versions of the 1940s hit song, Straighten Up and Fly Right, written by Nat Cole and Irving Mills.

The lyrics of this tune summarize all that there is to be learned from the real presidential wannabe debates.  Or at least it seems that way to me, an Independent voter with limited patience for political shenanigans.

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Hazy Summer Days & A Less Than Brilliant Idea

Over the weekend we went for a walk on the trails in a wooded, overgrown section of a city park.  It was hazy and hot outside, but it seemed like a good idea to go for a walk… at first.
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In my mind this walk was going to be a glorious opportunity to photograph the flora and fauna we saw along the way.  Yes, I was going to capture, for all time, the beauty of late summer.

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I had my camera with me, but thanks to the hazy weather conditions + lens-smudging humidity most of my photos aren’t clear enough to be of any interest to me– or anyone else.
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I share these three photos which are, trust me, the best ones of the bunch.  No pithy story to go with them, however.  Only a realization that I need to check the weather forecast before going on a walk… if my camera is coming along, too.

Organizing Gibberish Thusly

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First leaf with Autumn color says, “Look at me!”

THIS WEEK I’VE BEEN SORTING through my desk drawers and my computer files.  I save lots of ideas, either scribbled on bits of paper or quickly typed on computer sticky notes.

I keep these ideas as prompts just in case I need something to write about here.

Like today.

MOST OF MY SAVED ITEMS are snippets of thoughts that float through my mind while I’m doing something else, so they’re not fully formed ideas.  In fact, they are generally pure gibberish.

But I continue to believe that one of these saved items will be the best idea ever, so I’m reluctant to throw any of them away– until I do.

I could be deluded, of course.

[Rather like Gayle King and her massive purse + jewelry collection, featured in O magazine this month.  It’s a collection so unwieldy that it required an outsider to sort through it, culling out that which no longer serves her.]   

[Alright, maybe my little pile of ideas is nothing like Gayle’s purse collection, but you get my drift.  Too much of anything is confusing.]

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Underwhelming decorative Summer grass says, “I’m not dead yet!”

I WON’T BURDEN YOU WITH a list of my half-formed ideas.  I respect your time and sanity, my gentle readers.

But I just wanted to let you know that I’m still moseying along the blogging trail.

Tossing and deleting the gibberish as I go.

Kindness Deconstructed, A Fun With Foibles Post

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John the CincyZooLion is not pleased that Ally Bean was dissed. *growl*

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I’VE ALWAYS OPERATED UNDER THE ASSUMPTION that kindness is a good thing.

This, of course, is a simplistic point of view.  One that along the way has gotten me into more trouble than you might imagine, allowing me to perfect my eye-rolling technique.

From what I can tell, if someone, for some reason, does not believe that they deserve kindness, then anyone who shows them kindness becomes a problem.

And it’s time for a squabble.

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TO WIT, LOOKING OUT MY WINDOW I remembered that a former neighbor here in the midwest, who now lives on the other side of the country, used to love this time of year.

So, spontaneously, without any expectation of reciprocity, I sent her a fast, sincere thinking-of-you email.

A random act of kindness.

A note saying someone cares about you. 

A positive little message. 

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WITHIN THE HOUR SHE WAS ON the phone, not calling to thank me, but to tell me how bad she felt about herself after receiving my kind email.

That I made her feel like a failure because she never thought to send anyone a thinking-of-you email.

And why did I bother with this email, anyhow?  Was I trying to make her feel guilty?

What was my real motivation?

And my only response, which was the truth but it seemed to irritate her, was that I was thinking. of. her.  She liked this time of year in the midwest and I remembered that.

I was just saying “hello.”  Nothing more.

*eye roll*

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WHILE THE GOLDEN RULE MAKES SENSE to me, I’ve come to discover that occasionally doing unto others what you would want for yourself, can lead to resentment among others.

Somehow, it would seem that some people with low self-esteem, or perhaps the inability to understand generosity of spirit, misinterpret kindness to mean manipulation.

Or showing off.

Or sanctitude.

Or, I guess, some other off-putting behavior, sneaky and weird, that doesn’t say friendship to them.

Meaning that, if you’re primed to believe that the golden rule is suspect behavior, then my kind email marked me immediately as an untrustworthy human being.

Twisted logic, huh?  Go figure.

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“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”

~ SIMONE WEIL

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