The Little Words Mean the Most

Signs

Stopped at a country farm stand to buy lettuce and corn. The cashier, clearly the owner since everyone else stood back, said as she rang me up, "I took 10% off." Thank you, I said. Then, "What did I do?"

"You've lived a good life," she stipulated. She had black hair, field-wrinkled skin. I left wondering sardonically, "How did she know?"

More seriously, "By any published standard," certainly the Catholic one I was glued to growing up, "I wouldn't call it a good life." I'm trying to get the seesaw balanced. It takes time.

Sure, I know: she'd uttered her standard deflection. Her mind had then sped off to the next customer, the next problem. At the end of the day, in her mental inventory, our exchange wasn't a weed in her daily field.

Thanks again, though: today it turned out that I needed your blessing. It sent me home in a golden chariot.

Airborne cassoulet

Question: Can we take factory-canned French-made cassoulet aboard an airliner in our carry-on luggage?

Answer: (1) It screens like a land mine. (2) It has the consistency of C4 plastic explosive.

My garden has a Middle East peace plan

In the front bed, next to the walk ...

... where acid-loving plants and alkali-loving plants thrive in each others' arms. Here, beds of evergreen pachysandra intermarry with Mediterranean thyme.

Lesson learned? Conditions don't have to be perfect for a tough plant to succeed. Maybe that's all tough means: thriving in less-than-perfect.

So my garden proclaims to the world and all its spy-in-the-sky satellite surveillance: There's hope for Israelis and Palestinians yet.

The one

The Princess Bride. The brave and vengeful swordsman says, "Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."

When you choose a career goal, you vow something like that. "Everything else, prepare to die." I knew I would be a writer from a very young age. Some kind of writer. Every kind of writer, it turns out, chasing any degree of measurable success (i.e., audience response). Daisies wilt, forearms shielding their eyes, faced with an obstinate career obsession. True love?: Simone, doesn't.

Sausage factory speed record

Sketched out what I think could be a good direct mail letter in about 15 minutes. You should ask three times: see the places I circled. Note: pen on paper, thoughts first, before turning to the keyboard. You're going for a conversation.

Three Philosophers, the ale

Given to me as a special gift by Jim and Lisa Rattray on the occasion of the Joyaux/Ahern 2009 annual party for the people we'd most to like stay marooned with on a desert isle.

Ommegang, in Cooperstown, NY, brews Three Philosophers. The label bears a quote from Plato, "Philosophy begins in wonder." The literal translation from the Greek: Drink this masterful, slightly strange, steroidal (9.8% alc. by volume, almost 20 proof), Belgian style blended ale ("98% ale, 2% ale with cherries added").

The Rattrays brought me just one bottle to start. A good thing: two of these and they take away your license for the riding mower.

Now ah done drunk it. I yesterday celebrated a close encounter with a bureaucrat - a frustrating trip down "Smaller government would definitely be better, at least at the state level" Lane - by ingesting my single bottle of Three Philosophers ale. Popped the expertly attached top. Outside in 90 degree humidity. And lo, my outlook and understanding did improve, replaced (hey, Plato!) by wonder.

Thanks, Lisa and Jim! Always -- the pleasure of your company.

I've been "de-cheekified"

My all time favorite client not my wife invented a word: "de-cheekified." It refers to the removal from my writing of phrases that will predictably set the pinstripes of trustees on fire. This college [confidentiality prohibits me etc.] will celebrate its 100th anniversary soon. It's launching a $150 million capital campaign; I'm writing the case. Decheekified? That would be questionable phrases like, "We're into three digits, baby!" (I.e., their centennial.)

Otherwise, though (I post these comments in my office for solace on the days of doubt), she wrote: "You nailed it baby. WOW. Can't thank you enough. Wow, indeed." Got the whole vast scheme inside 2,000 pretty quick words. I'm happy.

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Where it will appear as a public document Pendel (1981) believes that the style should be motivational. [That is like saying, when the sun appears, it ought to be blinding. Is there a counter? Maybe an UN-motivational style? {Though, frankly, going all confessional now, and just between us garden gnomes, MOST of the communications created inside the dictatorial confines of an institution, are FAR more likely to DE-motivate than motivate. They just suck in so many ways.} Back to you.]

My definition of a tight argument...

... is one I can follow easily with two margaritas under my [lizard skin with a sand-cast by a southwestern Native American silver buckle] belt.

See: I'm having a ball right now. I'm reviewing, under contract, a serious textbook by an author [no names] who was born with a jargon dictionary in his mouth. Oh me oh my.

Trashing his (not a her) sloppy pretensions glues [it would feel like in shop class] cherub's wings to my back. I am all aflutter. With celestial deoderant.

See. I might not go to regular heaven, for a lot of reasons I'm happy to share with my closest friends (almost zero). But I will go to writer's heaven for my editorial hatchet job on this occasion.

If you can't stand to write well, my little pompous-ite, then, pretty please, crawl OUT of my kitchen.

What direct mail looks like at the sausage factory

L-r: printer (printing a new draft every few minutes); earlier printed drafts; current draft on-screen; favorite lamp (artist-created, with a 'go team' message from a client taped to the shade); yogurt-coffee-water; annual report (I'm double-checking financial claims); interview notes; a pile of backgrounders; reference books by esteemed experts Mal Warwick and Alan Sharpe; dictionary (I check my spelling a lot). What you can't see: the inspiring music playing in the background, today 50 repeats of "8:03 AM," by Carmen Twillie, from the Cold Case soundtrack, Best of Seasons 1-4.