The Little Words Mean the Most

the amazing things we learned so early

 

Pro donor comms are about

giving your supporters a lovely experience

at every stage:

1st gift;

2nd & subsequent gifts;

+ recurring thank you’s all along the journey;

+ regular reporting...

 

Do that?

You’ll fund WAY more mission ... because supporters will give far more support.

YES

 

That wasn't the plan.

         Until my senior year in high school, I didn't know there was a Brown University. Or what it was; stood for. Brown was a lousy, leftover color. Sharper, brighter, better colors made some kind of brown when they failed to illuminate. Brown happened when all other colors collapsed into a pit of gloom.

---

Of course, you learn it's not that kind of Brown. It's the Brown family. Four Brown brothers founded the school. One was an enslaver. One was an abolitionist. I went to their university. Brown University granted me two degrees, with scholarship support (thank you, donors). Post-we're-aged-+70s, our estate established an endowed scholarship at Brown.

---

On campus I met the Bruno the bear, the university's stuffed mascot.

         Bruno towered in the student union, claws out! You, freshman, passed Bruno on your way to the [then, long ago] below-stairs mailboxes (too often lacking love notes) and [then, long ago] below-stairs vending machines (where I learned this projectile lesson: don't trust aging chicken-salad sandwiches; puking consumed a weekend).

---

As a freshman at Brown, my first solid, reliable, trusted friend was a dorm monitor from Puerto Rico via New York City; like me, a would-be poet, haunted, reading the Beats, full of whatever was handy. Ramiro was a sophomore and die-stamped handsome.

         He came out to me early, just to get that off the board. He didn't at all come ON to me. I appreciated his trust: flattering. I hoped, craved, aspired to be counted among the UN-judgmental; it was the Beat thing to do and my chosen religion. It took a leap of faith for Ramiro: being closeted was the norm in mid-1960's America. The NYC Stonewall Riots were still four years off.

         Handsome, hip, NYC-him would sit with small-town me on the curb outside the brick-shoebox freshman dorm. I was a mess. It showed. My dad refused to drive me down, because we'd fought about something. Freshman week was when you moved in as a new student on the verge of the rest of your life. In the movie, your dad clapped you on the shoulder and said, "Do me proud, son." Then drove away.

         Not this time. Dad and me seemed to hate each other.

         What actually happened?

         I guess it was my mom who drove away that special day, in fact. I don't recall who drove me to Brown that day.

         I sure don't know what was on my dad's mind that day, that one day when he didn't drive me. Something was knocking around his skull. It wasn't all that much about me, safe to say: Dad's wife [mom] committed suicide 18 months later.

         Damn! Preventable? You're not that good.

         I think Ramiro felt instinctively sorry for me. He was compassionate and bigly personable. He knew stuff. I was depressed and shrunken. I knew nothing. As a Brown freshman, nothing got better for me; on the contrary. I went from being a little bit of something in sports and music and academics in my high school to being nothing worth noting at Brown. Suddenly everyone was much better in everything.

         I'd gone in a matter of months from being a big-enough fish in a small-town pond to a small fish lost and drowning in an ocean of achievement.

         So, yes, fish can drown. Some pray for belly-up

Chapter 2: My Father's War Stories As Told By Toys

 

 

My parents introduced me to my first dead body when I was six.

It was a big decision for them, discussed with the relatives: Should a child go to a funeral? They were afraid I wouldn't understand. Why isn't that man breathing? But I could see their pride, too. Tommy's first funeral. A social occasion. How would he act? In a large Scotch-Irish family, dead people in open caskets were no surprise. The oldest generation went, like a worn edge against a grinding wheel. The young had accidents. You behaved a certain way. Childishness was unwelcome.

I don't even remember which of my countless aunts or uncles it was who'd stumbled into the afterlife. But children have the curiosity of Elizabethans. I was excited, if in murmurs. I tiptoed up, at my father's urging. I kept my eyes fixed on the puckered taffeta lining of the lifted lid. I'd wondered about the smell. Bouquets cloyed the air; otherwise nothing. And then I looked down. The corpse's eyelids were shut. The face looked vaguely familiar. Very wrinkled. Very powdered. Very settled. A face so still it vibrated; maybe it was the molecules.

Now I knew.

Something. I wasn't sure then. Now I know: I'd been shown the end. A voice could have whispered into my waxy ear: "You have now, my fragile little nudgkin. This time you're standing in. And then you'll have this, three showings to anyone who remembers you exist. And between those two points in time you will have to fit in anything you want to do, anything you want to accomplish, anything you want to savor, anything you want to say. We pray it's for good, but that's not truly a requirement."

 

 

Greetings from Spaceship France

While Simone is in Amsterdam at the IFC, I am desperately holed up, trying to make progress on two books. I have a timer running. I've been writing now for 9 hours, devouring coffee, duck paté, a pear with artisanal blue cheese, a tomato with Laguiole farm cheese, crisps from Devon, leftover chicken, wine from select local vintners, Campari and soda, pepper relishes, whatever will keep me running. Talking to 5 time zones.

UNSURFEITED