The Little Words Mean the Most

I am now magnetic!!!

Koren & Shane display their newly arrived "Trained by Tom Ahern" magnets,

suitable for metal surfaces or erasing your hard drive

(it was the Coopers' idea, not mine)

 

In a small Scottish inn, we spot hints of the coming pandemic

 

In a small Scottish inn, we spot hints of the coming pandemic before the average person hears the news

It's a master class for about 25 fundraising professionals. It starts Monday, March 2, 2020; we meet and mingle the night before. Our classroom overlooks Loch Ness. Highland cattle bagged in thick copper hair and lengthy-enough horns graze the sloping fields in front of The Inch, our inn and classroom. These animals are an ancient Scottish breed; we're staring at Neolithic-period meat and milk.

Loch Ness isn't all that wide. But it is the very, very, well-fine-not-really-all-that-implausibly deep home to the (please adopt this lovely word) "cryptozoological monster" touristically known in gift shops as Nessie.

         And you know what, when you're teaching a master class?

         The Nessie legend is an f*ing distraction. Delegates can't help glancing out the windows, hoping. Walk a few minutes to the nearby village of Fort Augustus: Nessie is unavoidable. Nessie burgers. Nessie squish toys in tartans. Loch Ness energy drinks: "Guzzle the damn stuff!!! You'll feel like a dragon trapped inside a fathomless lake for at least 10,000 years!" Nessie petrol. And Nessie boat patrol.

Along with meals, lodging and pitiless instructors yapping about expertise for 2.5 days, our master-class students get a complimentary boat trip up Loch Ness from Fort Augustus.

         It's a sedate ride. A colony of feral goats chewing the scenery on the loch's sheer cliffs is the highlight; that, plus sunburn if you didn't bring covering.

         In several places, the boat's windows offer a pasted-on Nessie silhouette. Through that silhouette, you can shoot your very own pretend "I saw Nessie" photo. Everyone does it. It's the highlight of the tour. The silhouette features a couple of arching black spines and the famously erect swan's neck topped by that fierce presumably-ancient fish-crushing head.

         I notice that Simone has cornered one of our brightest, most eager master-class students. He's from the Czech Republic. Went to Harvard. Now back in his home country, where he's set on reforming public school education. The vision: to make the Czech Republic a superstar amongst post-Communist states, which ended almost 30 years ago. He's got grant funding, which puts a warhead on his missile (to slip back into Cold War terms).

Sim One lectures him throughout our one-hour ride re: her disgust with politics in America. She's not bothering with photos of Nessie. He's attentive, polite, calm, respectful. He's a remedy, too, I suspect. His unremitting, much-younger Czech attention span probably spares Simone's stomach a messy countdown.

         She is spectacularly prone to seasickness.

         More than once, within seconds, I've witnessed her explosive reactions to being afloat on any boat; on three continents.

         Even on today's prim, flat lake, aboard a tub in the Scottish Highlands, with waves no higher than careless gestures, waves less formidable than a gent's pocket square, I can easily imagine Simone collapsing on the deck, eyes rolling up, gracelessly puking without caring much, like a wan fire hose.

         So, PS: The cleaning crew for this Loch Ness tour boat wishes to thank the Czech Republic. Which I kept mistakenly calling Czechoslovakia in his presence, a political entity that dissolved peacefully on January 1, 1993. He was adoringly patient. He forgave me because I was clearly too old to castigate and my references were obsolete. My stamp collection was old, my atlas was old, my globe was old. I was an antique, too. I just needed to shut up and let the next generations have their say.

This was us

 

No more now

without you barking reasonable orders

down grocery aisles

 

umm just a fool

without a queen

nor any great desire to feedly care look presume know

 

I ended when you upended

yet breath goes on

remainder is mine and

this so-called person left unpaired

only

can

maybe inspired enough

to roll our this maybe faith bin a bit further

a well-inflated tire

headed somewhere

 

Women4Change Indiana sent me this T

This just in

 

"After John Fetterman, candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania and recovering from a stroke, did an interview with NBC News’s Dasha Burns in which he used closed captioning, successfully, to take questions..." [OTHER so-called "news" crews slammed John F. into the walls, for that closed captioning]

 

First: a stroke is NOT a beheading. It's kind of more of a daily thing, for the brain-burdened. (I have one. You have one, too; right? YEAH, you do!)

Second: really smart people (certified-by-Harvard smart, for example) SHOULD have strokes on occasion (Ted? Ron?) ... to regain any slender degree of perspective, any slender nail-biting membership in the suffering human race, 330 million in the US alone?

------

And then there's fundraising.

Today, Mr. Fetterman's campaign team asked for a little bit more.

I responded:

A. My REAL first name is TOM, not THOMAS. THOMAS is my credit-card name. If anyone responds to this correction, which I submit often, you'll be the first. Fingers not crossed.

 

B. I listened to a 'GBH (NPR/Boston) talk show today CASTIGATING Mr. Fetterman for not releasing his medical records re: the stroke.

 

Please understand: these 'GBH listeners ARE your voters (if they live in PA). Simone Joyaux, my irreplaceable wife of 37 years, died of a stroke in 2021; she'd had a mini-stroke the year before ... and the prognosis was open-ended, delivered by the world's top specialist/researcher: "Live your life as hard as you can. The next incident might be 10 or 20 years off."

 

This is a medical cause whose time has come ... and Mr. Fetterman can be a champion!!!

 

Respectfully submitted,

 

tom

 

 

 

 

DC was bizarrely uplifting...

 

DC was bizarrely uplifting:

I'd forgotten how much I NEED the arts ... and other people, too

Swarms and mobs of other people; not just delightful friends

It's coming back to me, XXX

Me. I'm coming back to me

 

Thank you for staying.

For reassuring.

For angling YOUR light into my corners.

 

Thank you ALL who are reading this; thank

 

YOU ALL

 

 

 

Why communicate at all?

Barb & I went hiking in RI last week

 

replying to my Southwest Airlines survey

 

I gave them 5 stars stars stars stars stars overall

(based on personal interactions with staff)

 

Yet:

 

Pre-pandemic, I was on a flight every 2 weeks or so. Routine for my business (training serious fundraising pros around the world). Southwest is always worth considering, when traveling in the US.

DCA Southwest, though, is UGLY and discomforting.

Unless absolutely necessary, I will now avoid Southwest's DCA arrival/departure in the future. It's sardine-packed squalid. Not evil exactly; clumsy and indifferent: just a reminder that the US has 330 million residents; everyone's different; and simple amenities matter a lot in terms of fast impressions.

Toilets were surprisingly OK (grade B).

Food/drink offerings, though, were bizarre: either a tunnel of grab-me's, where payment was understaffed and not-well-signed; or a bar that never had an open seat thanks to loiterers on their laptops.

General seating in the ready was a D-to-flunk: too many passengers, too few chairs; many standees (me included).

CONCLUSION: In one visit, as I was wearily departing DC to go home to RI, Southwest trained me to avoid DCA at all costs in the future.

What do I know? Maybe demand exceeds supply SO much that Southwest can inflate its middle-finger in the air for now.

For ever?

To repeat: In one visit, when I departed DC to go home to RI ... Southwest trained me to avoid DCA at all costs.

So, my beloved Southwest, do you need a UX (User Experience) analyst at Southwest DCA?

 

Sooner/better.

 

Grump-companionally yours,

Turned-Off Traveler (though will fly SW other places; but DCA outbound is a shit-show)

 

title in progress for a work in progress