I’m Just Saying

Parsing The Meaning Of Thanksgiving

/ Ally Bean / 6 Comments

√  To me Thanksgiving means…

  • gratitude
  • sharing
  • bounty
  • kindness
  • celebration
  • family
  • friends
  • joy
  • tradition
  • cooperation

√  We received a Thanksgiving card from a business with the following message in it:

“At this time of thanksgiving we pause to count our blessings. 

The freedom of this great country in which we live.

Its opportunity for achievement.

The friendship and confidence you have shown in us. 

For all of these things we are deeply thankful.”

√  I really don’t what to make of this message.  Putting aside that the third line makes no sense to me, the copy in this card sounds more like a Fourth of July card than in a Thanksgiving card.

√  Then, in a lightbulb moment, I went to the website printed on the back of the card.  There I discovered that this Thanksgiving card had an alternative message available:

“At this time of

Thanksgiving celebration

our thoughts turn gratefully to you

with warm appreciation.”

√ Clearly the alternative message better encapsulates my take on what Thanksgiving is all about.  However, considering the card company offers both messages, some people must find the first message to be meaningful and appropriate.

• • •

All of which leads me to ask:

What does Thanksgiving mean to you? Given the opportunity, which message would you send to your clients?  And why?

• • •

Red Wine Served In The Wrong Glass

/ Ally Bean / 14 Comments

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After a rainy Monday our weather this week has turned sunny and unseasonably cool– cold even.  I’m rather torn about this.  While my spirit likes sunny days, my body prefers gray days.  I always have more energy on gray days than on sunny ones.

I know, it’s backwards from how most people operate.  But that’s how I roll, so I’ve been in low gear all week.

Unique.

~ • ~

I attribute this weirdness to my childhood.  For me, grays days were in the fall + winter + spring when I was in school and involved in all sorts of extracurricular & church activities.  If it was gray outside, I was busy.

But sunny days were summer days when I was free to do nothing.  I learned to relax during the summer when the sun was out.

Mellow.

~ • ~

Earlier this year I bought some cut crystal glasses.  I thought the small size was about right for one healthy serving of red wine.  Plus serving red wine like this makes it easy to hold & pretty to look through.

Unexpected.

~ • ~

I told a friend that I was drinking wine from the wrong glass.  She was not enthused.  She explained to me all the different types of wine glasses that she has, and how she keeps track of them in her home.  She reminded me that the shapes of the wine glasses were for a definite purpose– to enhance the wine.

She shook her head from side-to-side about my lapse in proper wine glass procurement & management.

Concerned.

~ • ~

It’s not as if I go out of my way to do things in an unusual fashion.  I just do my thing– and somehow it often seems to be the odd thing to do.

It’s not a bad way to live your life.  But it does, from time-to-time, give me pause as I wonder how it is that I naturally end up doing things differently from everyone else.

Unconventional.

~ • ~ 

Desperately Seeking Votes

/ Ally Bean / 26 Comments

WE live in a political battleground state. Regardless of which side of the aisle you favor, this is not a great thing.  Since the middle of August we have been inundated daily with TV and radio ads, as well as one or more of the following:

  • robocalls
  • personal phone calls
  • telephone opinion polls
  • political mailings
  • lawn signs
  • people at the front door
  • bumper stickers on cars.

• • •

FOR those of you not living in a battleground state it’s difficult to get across to you how intrusive*, annoying & wasteful this really is.  I’ve never seen a presidential campaign like this one that diminishes the office of president and insults a voter’s intelligence with incessant gibberish and visual clutter.  It’s quite something.

• • •

• • • 

WHILE I trust that the election on Tuesday will put an end to this nonsense for now, I worry that this 2012 presidential election will become the prototype for all future elections.  Because I fear that the lesson of this election is: if you want to make sure that no one gives a flying fig through a donut hole about who wins an election, bother the electorate every day until they are just too tired to care about it any more.  Then railroad your candidate through.

• • • 

[H/T to Pied Type for the YouTube link.]

[H/T to Carmine Coyote & his defunct blog, Slow Leadership, for the cartoon.  Image & link removed because spammers could not leave it alone.]

[* Case in point: while writing this post yesterday afternoon I’ve received two phone calls.  One was a real person who told me who to vote for and then hung up on me without so much as a thank you for listening or a goodbye.  The other was a robocall from a doctor somewhere in Washington, D.C.]

[Further: Throughout the rest of the day I received two more unsolicited political phone calls.  One was a robocall from a nurse in Chicago.  The other was a robocall from an actor in CA.]