The Little Words Mean the Most

To a colleague/friend in Australia engaged in a fundraising campaign

 

This program wanted to engage me to write a case for support. I couldn't at that time. We parted friends. And we just reconnected, many months later. They'd decided to put the case on a back burner for now, as they worked out other important things. This very focused cause is helping to build a new generation of nationally-capable leaders, now in their teens, of aboriginal origins.

 

Dear [you] ...

 

My hunch: You're going to EXPLODE. The time is SO right.

 

BTW: from the world of case writing; at least 30% of the cases I start writing get stalled and never reach the finish line ... for various reasons. A common one? "We thought we were ready. But we weren't yet. Struggling with the case made us realize that."

 

Your case for support will write itself, when you finally need to engage a copywriter.

 

Your mission is SO strong ... and influences what comes next in Australasia: future politics, future economics, a next gen of leaders, addressing past harms, making Australia some kind of beacon for the world. (The US is not that beacon: European settlers went genocidal in 1675 and didn't stop until they reached the Pacific ocean).

 

I've had the amazing gift of being involved with an Indigenous-led museum here in the US over the past couple of years. They shifted my understanding of white privilege completely.

 

As a child, I selfishly thought I was born an underdog, because my family was lower middle-class; in a community of maybe slightly-more-affluent families. Clothing, roof, food on the table, ethics, life lessons -- always; still, never a new car. I didn't see -- couldn't judge -- what I'd been given at birth: I was white in a majority-white nation, in a majority-white town, with a mom who insisted I go to university. We didn't have a new car because there were more important things to buy for the family: like college educations for my sister and me.

 

I didn't realize for decades what a leg up my birth had given me in life ... until recently, schooled (gently) by my Indigenous friends (among many others) ... and by [you].

 

My sincere thanks, [dear you]....

 

Encountering your mission and vision changed me.

 

With deep respect from the other side of this struggling planet,

 

Forgive me, if this is a Loch Ness repeat ... it was important to Simone and me

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

... before the average world 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. There's a fire. There's a single-malt bar. Our classroom overlooks Loch Ness. Highland cattle bagged in thick copper hair and lengthy 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 fundraising instructors [us] 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.

 

No one approves this message

 

Talking frankly to someone in New Zealand today:

[she asked; i said...]

I live between Boston and New York, in what's called the Northeast/New England.

I misspoke about the Maori museum here. What I meant is that the Maori, as Indigenous people who survived somewhat respected and intact, are inspiring.

Where I live is where the Pilgrims landed.

These English religious zealots would have starved to death without Indigenous aid in the first few years.

Yet, within another few decades, as majority-white became the thing, war broke out between Indigenous and invasive settlers ... and a pattern of genocide first pursued and perfected in New England -- to move Indigenous tribes permanently off their historical lands -- became federal policy; eventually coast to coast, as the centuries rolled on.

Here we are in 2022.

The evil deeds have been done. Later US immigrants (like me and my Irish-Scottish forebears) have benefited from the opportunities.

In the writing I do for this Indigenous-led museum, I refer to early English settlers as "an invasive species." And that's the only thing I can do: try to change perspectives among today's beneficiaries, beneficiaries of centuries of slaughter and inhumanity and firepower and cruelty.

love and maybe changed minds ... @ best

 

Posted by Cynthia Ries on Facebook ~ April 14, 2022

 

Ashley advice: Today, in diary life

 

Each day:

 

2 things you're powerless over

5 things you're grateful for

2 things you did well

 

 

My 401(k) would like to say something sincerely to Prez Putin, Invader Monster::::

 

60 million hardworking, responsible US citizens

have firm, personal reasons now to despise you and your shocking recklessness in Ukraine; SO congratulations of a weird sort

 

I know: Your opponents don't vote for you.

Nor does any other honest number-cruncher. They can't know the REAL truth ... since you've murderously rigged the ballot box for a long time. In your clammy world, I'll bet that rigging elections makes you feel smart, even wise; in the shrunken empire on which you quietly fart daily, into cushions.

In fact, you're probably less smart than you'd prefer to be. Me, too. Trying to be helpful....

Yet, Vlad, you definitely ARE "next czar" material.

Question? In truth: a form of denial.

It's a form of quaking. It's a form of anxiety attack.

I'm on the field, with my high-school cheerleader pompoms lofted (thank you, Andy Card), SHOUTING at the top of my lungs from my obscure corner of the Internet: Putin is POO and TIN = nothing more than SHIT and a soft metal.

So I wrote the current president of all that's left of shrunken Russia...

Instead of a birthday gift, Vlad, I'm sending you wishes for a massive heart attack or stroke; your choice.

Tonight? Please be thoughtful ... before you kill any more pregnant Ukrainians or their newborns?

Here's my well-informed promise to you: you'll become a freak of history soon. Predictably. A bizarre not-quite-human person others can stare at and avoid.

No statues for you, Puttie. Planet Earth (for those desperate to save it) is a global enterprise now. Your border tantrum smells really bad ... for the future.

Grow ears for once.

Realize that even at their peaks Russian czars were small-timers globally. "Peter the Great" was really just "Peter, Better Than Many Other Second-Stringers ... and Yet Most of the World Never Noticed...." Same for the admirable Catherine.

------

So THAT was your nefarious plan, Vlad Pee?!?!?! To become some temp "leader" on whom massive millions of disgusted humans internationally can now happily urinate?

Wow. That's your business model?

What a goal.

What a sloppy, unplanned, I dunno, could-go-anywhere goal. A goal that effective leaders across the millennia and across continents would avoid.

Admired, effective leaders don't win (or survive long) by dropping bombs on innocents. Bomb-droppers might look like they're winning for a few weeks. BUT...

Maybe you're smarter than all of human history, Vlad Pee!!!

Still, someone neutral and analytical needs to check your military's adult diapers: the graveyard of history is full of idiots. (PS: Mr. President Vlad Pee has been nominated to the International Hall of Shame.)

China abstained, craving some temporary economic/political advantage. China waits and sees. Or maybe China and its leaders have grown too big to think straight.

Dear Vlad: Did you write about this originally in some 6th grade-essay labeled: "What do I want to be when I grow up?"

Young Putin's answer, I imagine:

"I hope to be boss of Russia one day [so stop picking on me, bullies, because I'm not THAT tall; and I promise I will destroy you years from now ... with pleasure (it's the Russian way). I'll also destroy your entire miserable family (again, the Russian way). And I want everyone living beyond my propaganda machine to hate my marrow, because they can't vote....]

"'Cause that will make my beloved Russia great again."

If you noticed a disconnect in "young Putin's" answer? Congratulations. Putin lies about everything, including his eye color.

Repulsed and despairingly yrs,

>>> tom

 

Julia is a teacher. Now she has a gun ... to defend, if she can, Ukraine. She's weeping and going to war. [NY Times; 2/26/22]

 

 

 

Amy challenged me to write a blizzard haiku, based on my last-chance visit to a local grocery store where "deli butts" wooed my shopping cart, as the storm embraced us all!!!

 

 

Deli-knife outcasts

 

strike hard my empty belly

 

"Make him strong for snow!"

 

 

Jan 28, 2022: the US Northeast: an alarming blizzard cometh?

Larry and Nicole in vulnerable, coastal Scituate MA had this comment:

"They're comparing this one to 1978."

I responded:

No.

 

Absolutely not.

 

Go away.

 

I survived 1978. Luckily, my apartment never lost power: I had heat, I had an oven, I had hot water, I could listen to music.

 

But ... here's the diff ... the wind behind the blizzard of 1978, as I recall, was reasonable, not reckless; though the snow mounted up, for sure. It would take a week for the streets to start moving again in Providence.

 

That 1978 day, I was driving a used (used up) Saab, coming back from an elementary school where I was a "writer in residence for 1st and 2nd graders" (yes, I complained, but they can't actually write, can they?) ... and as I left that school in North Kingstown the snow was floating down in mere light, charming, countable flakes ... and by the time I reached the Providence city limits, about a half-hour later, the highways were beginning to seize up. I ended up peeing in a jar, as I made my way inch by inch.

 

This was, though, the one obstacle a Saab was well engineered to overcome. It might otherwise be a complex machine that no one in RI knew how to fix ... but it could defeat heavy snowfall. I vividly recall steering around an abandoned city bus, its doors flung open, a few blocks from my residence.

 

But I reached safety. I reached my apartment and settled in to see what would happen.

 

It was Apocalypse S-Now.

 

Trains stopped running. Stranded commuters abandoned countless cars on the Interstates; just vehicle roofs were still visible from overpasses (I went to see). Heavy machinery and the national guard were brought in as soon as possible to clear the highways.

 

Eventually spring arrived ... and a few years later, the dumped snow from the 1978 blizzard finally melted.

 

 

Dammit all, some GOOD news on the COVID front

 

Go here.

Spread the word.