The Little Words Mean the Most

The Practical Lariat

Tonight, I began using a lariat as a heavy-duty tool for the garden.

People, easterners like me anyway, see lariats mostly in design motifs. They look fluffy and floaty, the kind of lasso you'd throw around a date for the Saturday square dance.

Actually, lariats are about as tough as steel cable and not much more bendable. They appear to be made of fiberglass, Kryptonite, and long painful hours. They are used to restrain steers and plunging horses; it's not needlework.

We bought a modern lariat in a Wyoming antiques store years ago. Some ranch hand was probably doubled over, laughing at the "tourists" who bought his worn-out gear.

But tonight that lariat finally went back to work, to help me drag a rock that's easily 150 pounds. I weigh more; but it's enough. I threw my back out right away. Gravity waits for no man. Now I'm wearing the brace. Which I like actually, it helps with my posture.

I can leverage big rocks out of the ground. But moving them is tough. My approach: wrap one end of something like jumper cables (now my lariat) around the formerly immovable object, wrap the other end around around my waist, and pull like a mule. I'm building a high-stepping path of boulders across the front lawn. I need big rocks.

Oh, cripe, more bad news

"Study: Heavy Boozers Outlive Abstainers"

I'm declaring this case my masterpiece...

...whether the client thinks so or not. [Shown: the concluding "thanks for listening" statement, on the back cover.]

Until, of course, "my" next masterpiece of concision, boldness, and donor-centricity. Why "my"? I wish to thank my hundreds of mentors, without whom I would be fingernail dirt.

What's an expert? Someone with an unconfessed Napoleonic complex? Thinking personally.

The Sixteens

I'm doing the 16s for a $125 million campaign. I set my trusty battery-powered Timex timer for 16 minutes and begin writing. When the buzzer goes off, I stop and record the increment in my log.

I set the timer for 16 minutes and charge my client for 15.

The 16s: this is what I do when I'm galloping. I only learned to really write a few years ago. I was surprised to discover how fast I could go when all I cared about was entertaining - best case, moving - my reader.

I don't care what a client thinks of my work during the approval stage. This isn't a private confession from me to you, by the way. I try to tell new clients upfront what they're getting.

Sure: correct things. But don't second-guess things. My best clients change nothing but factual errors, and otherwise park their opinions at the curb. They are only interested in one thing: my results. It's about the money. Which is the smart and professional approach.

Many conversations with clients, though, are NOT about the money. They are about some board or committee member's swollen ego or fulsome ignorance.

I read a lot of history. Far more than average, I'm sure. I have an indisputable frame of reference to pass along. You'll be dead soon enough. Don't be an ass.

Uninformed "average intelligence, common sense, I built a company from scratch" opinions cost the nonprofit world a lot of support. "Rank amateur" opinions are more draining than bedbugs.

Best thing? Shut up. Listen. Read.

The new cocaine

I know. I don't care. I'm so far beyond hyperbole I'd need a dogcatcher or a supermodel to snare me. Prancing. Prancing me to [death]. I've got something to say. Don't remember what. From inside the cave, this is David Brinkley reporting....

Well, I am sorry. About a lot of things. But this post is about our new front door mat. I had a T-shirt made for Simone that declared, "I am NOT your employee." Simone has since customarily in her memory rewritten the T-shirt to say, "I am NOT your administrative assistant."  Which explains our different points of view; a pleasant robot would do as an administrative assistant. You want a partner? Don't treat him like a cold sore. In retaliation, I bought a new front doormat.

I'm using in my diaries

Me. Using. Like Dads would have in the 60's, if they'd had it. Would have spread like anti-ant powder, permanent glue tape. It's the best Staples product in years. Abandon the revolution. Use glue tape. Solves a problem you didn't know you had.

When Michelin marks a road with green

On a Michelin map, a road lined with green means "scenic." It can also mean, in France: "This road was so narrow, twisted, and deep-fried scary that I prayed to the Virgin multiple times, although I had been until that particular waypath a sworn atheist. Plus I begged my own deceased mother, between sobs and panic braking, for Divine Intervention. Yes, true, the two-second glimpse I caught of the scenery a thousand feet below was quite lovely. Before my hair shot up again like soda straws." I have been on French roads so tiny and forlorn that mountain goats went single-file.

Driving tractors while drunk

M. and L., a married farm couple at the Saturday market, said they'd pretty much stopped drinking altogether after one incident, when Laura flipped a tractor in the asparagus field. I don't know. Drinking while driving a tractor? That could be an Olympic sport. Which nation would dominate? I'm going with me old sod until further notice.