About midday, Islay the Scottish terrier and I went out to get in the car to go to the office. About to put her on lead, I suddenly forgot I had left something on the front hall table, so I turned round, went back into the house, grabbed whatever it was, and went back down the steps....
...where there was no sign of the little black terrier.
This is not the first time in my life such an event has happened because of my own carelesness, and -it's true- I should have known better: A Scot can disappear quicker than you can imagine.
The first thing you do is a collection of stupid things - you check the house knowing full well the dog is not there. Next you wander around the outside of the house baying the dog's name, knowing full well that she's done a runner and is sniffing all sorts of new things, enjoying the sun, looking for birds, vermin, future pals, and a snack or three.
Next I got in the car and drove around with an alleged purpose, in spite of the fact that a small black creature darting about would probably not be trapsing down the bikeway/walkway adjacent to my property.
In the meantime, I was giving myself another in series of angry lectures and at the very same time a trying to will my heart down from my throat into its accustomed position. You know you are not succeeding when the position of your heart interferes with your voice which has suddently become high pitched and very strained.
Finally, I called the local gendarmes and was able to say that the dog had tags galore (she even has a microchip, but that wouldn't help much in these circumstances). The officer who took the call was understanding.
I drove around a bit more, came back to the house for as short period of ritual yelling, then decided to visit "Condo Land" just south of my house. I walked briskly down the path, keeping my braying to what I thought would meet the "good taste requirement" which these communities seem to relish, but again no luck. By now I was seriously vexed with me for my stupidity.
So the trudge back to the house was with a heavy heart, full of fear that some speeding car had taken out my little dog or that she had been captured by someone whom she could never love as much as she loves me (I think. No, I hope.)
About sixty yards from my house, I spied a small black creature sitting and looking at me with moderate interest. "Islay," I called with restrained enthusiasm.
She looked at me with an expression which said, "Bloody hell, now I suppose he'll make a speech, shake a finger, and there won't be any dinner tonight."
We walked together separately back to the front door, and into the house she went. And then I picked her up and gave her a big hug, the first of several, actually.
Some people believe that a dog is a living piece of furniture, something to decorate the place. Some believe that a dog is a member of the family and enjoys all Constitutional rights except the right to vote.
I have always been in the second camp and not always pleased about it, but the companionship of terriers over the years has always been a great solace against the sturm und drang outside my home. Tonight, Islay will lie down next to me with her derriere against my right leg. I shall turn out the light and will slide my hand so that it rests lightly next to the top of her head, and the feeling of gratitude for her safe return will be overwhelming.
No doubt we both caught a break today - lucky just begins to describe it.
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Monday, July 16, 2007
Her Majesty The Queen
Last month, I spent part of my vacation in a cottage near Balmoral Castle in the highlands of Scotland. As you probably know, Balmoral is the Scottish home of Britain's Royal Family, and after surveying the hills and rivers and lochs, you know that Queen Victoria and Prince Albert made a great choice something over a century and a half ago.
During my few days in the area, I was lucky enough to attend church with The Queen, sitting about thirty feet away from her, with perhaps sixty of us in the congregation that morning.
She and Prince Philip often spend time in Scotland outside of the annual Court Visit from August through early October, and in the Spring, she comes for a week and stays in another house on the Estate (opening up the castle is too complex for a short stay).
When I'm in the area, I often attend the service at Crathie Church, a short walk from the front gates of the Queen's Estate; I'd heard that she was "in the village," and I guessed she might be going to church. So on the Sunday morning, I turned up early in the neighborhood, and sure enough there were lots of police constables about, so I knew that The Queen would be attending.
The first constable who stopped me asked what my plan was. I told him to attend the service. He opined that the church would be overflowing with people, and I probably wouldn't get in. This contradicted what I had learned from a previous reconnaissance to Crathie and had chatted up the volunteer on duty.
I walked up the hill and met a second police constable, a youngish woman, who stopped me, and we went through the drill again. Finally, I was able to ask, "Where is the queue for those of us not church elders and not church members?"
She pointed behind me. I looked back and saw no one. She smiled and said, "Right now, you are the queue."
We chatted for several minutes, and a few others - maybe ten arrived with the same goal I had; a quarter hour before the proceedings were to begin, we were admitted. I had been in the church enough to know to head to the far left side as far up as I could get, and I achieved my goal (sometimes it's good to be first in line, but not always). Members of the royal family sit on the right side of the church in a pew perpendicular to the ones we ordinary folk occupy.
We all sat quietly, not trying to be too obvious about checking the Royal pew every minute or so - well, every ten seconds or so. And suddenly, there she was in a long coral colored coat with a matching round-brimmed hat. We in the congregation became focussed instantly.
Reading glasses on, the queen participated fully in the service and occasionally glanced at the congregation, while we glanced at her often, trying not to be too terribly obvious. It was a service of two homilies, one for children, the other for the rest of us, lots of hymns, and a good sprinkling of prayers.
As I looked around the church, I was intrigued that there were more people outside the church waiting for a glimpse as she had arrived and would depart than there were in it.
Just before the benediction, we stood and sang what the program leaflet described as the "national anthem," although it has never been proclaimed as that in law. We call it "God Save The Queen," and to sing it with a handful of others in a small church with the Queen in attendance was an amazing experience.
God save our gracious Queen
Long live our noble Queen,
God save the Queen:
Send her victorious,
Happy and glorious,
Long to reign over us:
God save the Queen.
I didn't know all the words, although I probably should have, given the number of times I'd heard it sung. We all sang lustily, to impress ourselves, each other, and her, and I expect we all shared at least a portion of the emotion floating in the sounds echoing in the sanctuary. It might have been just another service for The Queen, but it was very special for those few of us in Her Presence.
I saw her again a half hour later at a concert on the lawn in front of her castle. She is very small, and as I am sure someone in the crowd must have observed - she looks just like her picture. Approaching her car after the concert, she looked around at all of us, from the very young to the very old, from many countries, and gave us all a wonderful warm smile. It was a simple thing, but I think we all accepted it as a great gift on an otherwise gray Scottish day.
After lunch, I repaired to my rented cottage and thought about Her Majesty and all that she has seen, experienced, and survived. My conclusion was to have a wee dram of Scotland's own spirit in her honor, so I did, and instead of the traditional toast "Slainte," I substituted, "God Save The Queen."
Under the circumstances, it seemed like the right thing to do.
During my few days in the area, I was lucky enough to attend church with The Queen, sitting about thirty feet away from her, with perhaps sixty of us in the congregation that morning.
She and Prince Philip often spend time in Scotland outside of the annual Court Visit from August through early October, and in the Spring, she comes for a week and stays in another house on the Estate (opening up the castle is too complex for a short stay).
When I'm in the area, I often attend the service at Crathie Church, a short walk from the front gates of the Queen's Estate; I'd heard that she was "in the village," and I guessed she might be going to church. So on the Sunday morning, I turned up early in the neighborhood, and sure enough there were lots of police constables about, so I knew that The Queen would be attending.
The first constable who stopped me asked what my plan was. I told him to attend the service. He opined that the church would be overflowing with people, and I probably wouldn't get in. This contradicted what I had learned from a previous reconnaissance to Crathie and had chatted up the volunteer on duty.
I walked up the hill and met a second police constable, a youngish woman, who stopped me, and we went through the drill again. Finally, I was able to ask, "Where is the queue for those of us not church elders and not church members?"
She pointed behind me. I looked back and saw no one. She smiled and said, "Right now, you are the queue."
We chatted for several minutes, and a few others - maybe ten arrived with the same goal I had; a quarter hour before the proceedings were to begin, we were admitted. I had been in the church enough to know to head to the far left side as far up as I could get, and I achieved my goal (sometimes it's good to be first in line, but not always). Members of the royal family sit on the right side of the church in a pew perpendicular to the ones we ordinary folk occupy.
We all sat quietly, not trying to be too obvious about checking the Royal pew every minute or so - well, every ten seconds or so. And suddenly, there she was in a long coral colored coat with a matching round-brimmed hat. We in the congregation became focussed instantly.
Reading glasses on, the queen participated fully in the service and occasionally glanced at the congregation, while we glanced at her often, trying not to be too terribly obvious. It was a service of two homilies, one for children, the other for the rest of us, lots of hymns, and a good sprinkling of prayers.
As I looked around the church, I was intrigued that there were more people outside the church waiting for a glimpse as she had arrived and would depart than there were in it.
Just before the benediction, we stood and sang what the program leaflet described as the "national anthem," although it has never been proclaimed as that in law. We call it "God Save The Queen," and to sing it with a handful of others in a small church with the Queen in attendance was an amazing experience.
God save our gracious Queen
Long live our noble Queen,
God save the Queen:
Send her victorious,
Happy and glorious,
Long to reign over us:
God save the Queen.
I didn't know all the words, although I probably should have, given the number of times I'd heard it sung. We all sang lustily, to impress ourselves, each other, and her, and I expect we all shared at least a portion of the emotion floating in the sounds echoing in the sanctuary. It might have been just another service for The Queen, but it was very special for those few of us in Her Presence.
I saw her again a half hour later at a concert on the lawn in front of her castle. She is very small, and as I am sure someone in the crowd must have observed - she looks just like her picture. Approaching her car after the concert, she looked around at all of us, from the very young to the very old, from many countries, and gave us all a wonderful warm smile. It was a simple thing, but I think we all accepted it as a great gift on an otherwise gray Scottish day.
After lunch, I repaired to my rented cottage and thought about Her Majesty and all that she has seen, experienced, and survived. My conclusion was to have a wee dram of Scotland's own spirit in her honor, so I did, and instead of the traditional toast "Slainte," I substituted, "God Save The Queen."
Under the circumstances, it seemed like the right thing to do.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Crop Or Seed Art
Lillian Colton died last week. You probably don’t recognize her name, but if you are an admirer of the Minnesota State Fair, you would never forget her and the work she created. No obituary was published in the New York Times, but her passing was marked by the two large city papers in the Twin Cities.
Lillian produced crop art – specifically, portraits made out of seeds, painstakingly, one seed at a time. The first time I saw her work – in the Horticulture building, naturally – I was bemused. Well, not really bemused, but not appalled either.
I think I thought something like, “Who would spend his or her time doing this stuff?” In succeeding years, as the portraits multiplied, I began to appreciate the commitment which this woman brought to her work.
Don’t get me wrong, the Metropolitan Museum or the Museum of Modern Art never beat a path to Lillian’s door, but one sensed that didn’t matter to her. She was in the exhibit space one year, answering questions, and she looked like everybody’s "with it" grandmother.
One year, there was an enlarged exhibit, and somewhere in the middle of looking at portraits of Garrison Keillor and Richard Nixon, I finally figured it out:
Like any true artist, what drove Lillian was her passion for it, the kind of commitment that kept her glueing seeds of various hues one by one through the dark Minnesota winters.
You may not like the art, but you must admire the passion.
Passion and playfulness are two essential traits for navigating the lengthening shadow world of old age. Lose the first, and your grip begins to weaken; lose the latter, and there is one less reason for friends and acquaintances to treasure their time with you.
So when you visit your next county or state fair and meander past the jams, jellies, breads, photographs, paintings, woodwork, ironwork, knitting, and crocheting. Remember the passion which underlies the creation of all of them.
I’m sure that there will be a memorial exhibit to Lillian at the Minnesota State Fair – they call it our great state get-together, and I plan on attending, in hopes that just around the corner or down the road, there is someone like Lillian Colton, waiting for his or her chance to illuminate our world with crop art or something very much like it.
To enjoy some of Lillian’s work, click here.
August, 2007 Update From The Minnesota State Fair
K. and I went to the opening day of our great state get-together. Not the grandest of days, it was rainy but cool, and we managed to traipse around for just under seven hours when our legs turned into immovable stumps. One of the highlights was the seed art exhibit. In celebration of Lillian's life, there were photographs of her home in southern Minnesota, her jars of various seeds, and a very congenial picture of her. At the other end of the exhibition were several pieces of her crop art from her career.
And in between, oh my, does the legacy endure you may wonder ? Surely so, with some lovely work done by the young and the not so young. So the foremost practitioner of the art has left us, but her legacy is there for all to see.
Lillian produced crop art – specifically, portraits made out of seeds, painstakingly, one seed at a time. The first time I saw her work – in the Horticulture building, naturally – I was bemused. Well, not really bemused, but not appalled either.
I think I thought something like, “Who would spend his or her time doing this stuff?” In succeeding years, as the portraits multiplied, I began to appreciate the commitment which this woman brought to her work.
Don’t get me wrong, the Metropolitan Museum or the Museum of Modern Art never beat a path to Lillian’s door, but one sensed that didn’t matter to her. She was in the exhibit space one year, answering questions, and she looked like everybody’s "with it" grandmother.
One year, there was an enlarged exhibit, and somewhere in the middle of looking at portraits of Garrison Keillor and Richard Nixon, I finally figured it out:
Like any true artist, what drove Lillian was her passion for it, the kind of commitment that kept her glueing seeds of various hues one by one through the dark Minnesota winters.
You may not like the art, but you must admire the passion.
Passion and playfulness are two essential traits for navigating the lengthening shadow world of old age. Lose the first, and your grip begins to weaken; lose the latter, and there is one less reason for friends and acquaintances to treasure their time with you.
So when you visit your next county or state fair and meander past the jams, jellies, breads, photographs, paintings, woodwork, ironwork, knitting, and crocheting. Remember the passion which underlies the creation of all of them.
I’m sure that there will be a memorial exhibit to Lillian at the Minnesota State Fair – they call it our great state get-together, and I plan on attending, in hopes that just around the corner or down the road, there is someone like Lillian Colton, waiting for his or her chance to illuminate our world with crop art or something very much like it.
To enjoy some of Lillian’s work, click here.
August, 2007 Update From The Minnesota State Fair
K. and I went to the opening day of our great state get-together. Not the grandest of days, it was rainy but cool, and we managed to traipse around for just under seven hours when our legs turned into immovable stumps. One of the highlights was the seed art exhibit. In celebration of Lillian's life, there were photographs of her home in southern Minnesota, her jars of various seeds, and a very congenial picture of her. At the other end of the exhibition were several pieces of her crop art from her career.
And in between, oh my, does the legacy endure you may wonder ? Surely so, with some lovely work done by the young and the not so young. So the foremost practitioner of the art has left us, but her legacy is there for all to see.
Thursday, August 24, 2006
Blogger's Block
I haven't written one of these things for over two months, and I've begun to worry about the reasons for that. I don't know what writer's block is, but I do know that I don't live there. To be sure, this summer has not been full of many pleasures and delights - the weather was beastly hot and humid for a few days - nothing that residents of the American South would be derailed by, but up here in what we call the "northland," we just melted into puddles of goo.
After what seemed like forever, the heat subsided, but the humidity has remained, so the towels hanging on the rail are forever damp, paper curls, the spirit weakens until one senses that
Yes, two of my rooms at home are air-conditioned (it's over a hundred years old - pretty old by our standards - and is heated by radiators, and to the best of my knowledge, it can't be cooled by radiators, so we all suffer and survive.
Islay the Scotty has had a rambunctious summer chasing squirrels, birds, and the occasional cyclist, but the head and humidity knocked her for six, too.
Come to think of it, when it turns really hot, I don't consume alcohol - no beer, none of my whisky drams, none of the dreadfully sounding popular forms of pushing alcohol down the gullets of the young.
Maybe it's that I've been paying too much attention to daily events - the cable channels must be grateful during the slow season when reporters tend to be on holiday for sundry wars, airline industry problems, and confessions from decade old murderers, each of which allows them to terrorize those of us sitting slack-mouthed in front of our television sets.
The rich are doing great, thank you very much; the poor, who will always be with us, increase. We can't figure out an equitable immigration policy or how to provide our citizens with medical insurance, what constitutes appropriate end-of-life care when all hope is gone, or how to invent a car which does not make us dependent on people, none of whom seems to like us at all. And while the globe heats up, it's our country which contributes much to the problem which actively chooses to avoid even thinking about the problem. Even public radio and television now have what they call "enhanced underwriting," or what the rest of us would call commercials
Meanwhile, our politicians diddle while the voters burn, and any list of their accomplishments during this Congress would be appallingly brief. Those in the administration play the terror card at every opportunity, vaguely aware that they are weakening the Constitution but apparently not caring.
William Butler Yeats wrote "The Second Coming" just after World War I. It was taught to me in secondary school, and I have yet to shake it out of my ears, probably because through the decades of my life it has increased in meaning. So here it is:
THE SECOND COMING
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
W.B. Yeats, 1920
Normally, summer ends, and we start bunching our muscles because we know that darkness, snow, and ice are just ahead. This time, at least for me, I'm hoping things won't get a hell of a lot worse than they are - they're already bad, and that a few months of cold and dark might offer some kind of perverse respite, enough anyway, to help us slough off this national depressive state, so that we can look to the future with some sense of hope, however moderate.
After what seemed like forever, the heat subsided, but the humidity has remained, so the towels hanging on the rail are forever damp, paper curls, the spirit weakens until one senses that
Yes, two of my rooms at home are air-conditioned (it's over a hundred years old - pretty old by our standards - and is heated by radiators, and to the best of my knowledge, it can't be cooled by radiators, so we all suffer and survive.
Islay the Scotty has had a rambunctious summer chasing squirrels, birds, and the occasional cyclist, but the head and humidity knocked her for six, too.
Come to think of it, when it turns really hot, I don't consume alcohol - no beer, none of my whisky drams, none of the dreadfully sounding popular forms of pushing alcohol down the gullets of the young.
Maybe it's that I've been paying too much attention to daily events - the cable channels must be grateful during the slow season when reporters tend to be on holiday for sundry wars, airline industry problems, and confessions from decade old murderers, each of which allows them to terrorize those of us sitting slack-mouthed in front of our television sets.
The rich are doing great, thank you very much; the poor, who will always be with us, increase. We can't figure out an equitable immigration policy or how to provide our citizens with medical insurance, what constitutes appropriate end-of-life care when all hope is gone, or how to invent a car which does not make us dependent on people, none of whom seems to like us at all. And while the globe heats up, it's our country which contributes much to the problem which actively chooses to avoid even thinking about the problem. Even public radio and television now have what they call "enhanced underwriting," or what the rest of us would call commercials
Meanwhile, our politicians diddle while the voters burn, and any list of their accomplishments during this Congress would be appallingly brief. Those in the administration play the terror card at every opportunity, vaguely aware that they are weakening the Constitution but apparently not caring.
William Butler Yeats wrote "The Second Coming" just after World War I. It was taught to me in secondary school, and I have yet to shake it out of my ears, probably because through the decades of my life it has increased in meaning. So here it is:
THE SECOND COMING
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
W.B. Yeats, 1920
Normally, summer ends, and we start bunching our muscles because we know that darkness, snow, and ice are just ahead. This time, at least for me, I'm hoping things won't get a hell of a lot worse than they are - they're already bad, and that a few months of cold and dark might offer some kind of perverse respite, enough anyway, to help us slough off this national depressive state, so that we can look to the future with some sense of hope, however moderate.
Saturday, August 19, 2006
Humidity & Hot Air
I haven't written one of these things for over two months, and I've begun to worry about the reasons for that. I don't know what writer's block is, but I do know that I don't live there. To be sure, this summer has not been full of many pleasures and delights - the weather was beastly hot and humid for a few days - nothing that residents of the American South would be derailed by, but up here in what we call the "northland," we just melted into puddles of goo.
After what seemed like forever, the heat subsided, but the humidity has remained, so the towels hanging on the rail are forever damp, paper curls, the spirit weakens until one senses that
Yes, two of my rooms at home are air-conditioned (it's over a hundred years old - pretty old by our standards - and is heated by radiators, and to the best of my knowledge, it can't be cooled by radiators, so we all suffer and survive.
Islay the Scotty has had a rambunctious summer chasing squirrels, birds, and the occasional cyclist, but the head and humidity knocked her for six, too.
Come to think of it, when it turns really hot, I don't consume alcohol - no beer, none of my whisky drams, none of the dreadfully sounding popular forms of pushing alcohol down the gullets of the young.
Maybe it's that I've been paying too much attention to daily events - the cable channels must be grateful during the slow season when reporters tend to be on holiday for sundry wars, airline industry problems, and confessions from decade old murderers, each of which allows them to terrorize those of us sitting slack-mouthed in front of our television sets.
The rich are doing great, thank you very much; the poor, who will always be with us, increase. We can't figure out an equitable immigration policy or how to provide our citizens with medical insurance, what constitutes appropriate end-of-life care when all hope is gone, or how to invent a car which does not make us dependent on people, none of whom seems to like us at all. And while the globe heats up, it's our country which contributes much to the problem which actively chooses to avoid even thinking about the problem. Even public radio and television now have what they call "enhanced underwriting," or what the rest of us would call commercials
Meanwhile, our politicians diddle while the voters burn, and any list of their accomplishments during this Congress would be appallingly brief. Those in the administration play the terror card at every opportunity, vaguely aware that they are weakening the Constitution but apparently not caring.
William Butler Yeats wrote "The Second Coming" just after World War I. It was taught to me in secondary school, and I have yet to shake it out of my ears, probably because through the decades of my life it has increased in meaning. So here it is:
THE SECOND COMING
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
W.B. Yeats, 1920
Normally, summer ends, and we start bunching our muscles because we know that darkness, snow, and ice are just ahead. This time, at least for me, I'm hoping things won't get a hell of a lot worse than they are - they're already bad, and that a few months of cold and dark might offer some kind of perverse respite, enough anyway, to help us slough off this national depressive state, so that we can look to the future with some sense of hope, however moderate.
After what seemed like forever, the heat subsided, but the humidity has remained, so the towels hanging on the rail are forever damp, paper curls, the spirit weakens until one senses that
Yes, two of my rooms at home are air-conditioned (it's over a hundred years old - pretty old by our standards - and is heated by radiators, and to the best of my knowledge, it can't be cooled by radiators, so we all suffer and survive.
Islay the Scotty has had a rambunctious summer chasing squirrels, birds, and the occasional cyclist, but the head and humidity knocked her for six, too.
Come to think of it, when it turns really hot, I don't consume alcohol - no beer, none of my whisky drams, none of the dreadfully sounding popular forms of pushing alcohol down the gullets of the young.
Maybe it's that I've been paying too much attention to daily events - the cable channels must be grateful during the slow season when reporters tend to be on holiday for sundry wars, airline industry problems, and confessions from decade old murderers, each of which allows them to terrorize those of us sitting slack-mouthed in front of our television sets.
The rich are doing great, thank you very much; the poor, who will always be with us, increase. We can't figure out an equitable immigration policy or how to provide our citizens with medical insurance, what constitutes appropriate end-of-life care when all hope is gone, or how to invent a car which does not make us dependent on people, none of whom seems to like us at all. And while the globe heats up, it's our country which contributes much to the problem which actively chooses to avoid even thinking about the problem. Even public radio and television now have what they call "enhanced underwriting," or what the rest of us would call commercials
Meanwhile, our politicians diddle while the voters burn, and any list of their accomplishments during this Congress would be appallingly brief. Those in the administration play the terror card at every opportunity, vaguely aware that they are weakening the Constitution but apparently not caring.
William Butler Yeats wrote "The Second Coming" just after World War I. It was taught to me in secondary school, and I have yet to shake it out of my ears, probably because through the decades of my life it has increased in meaning. So here it is:
THE SECOND COMING
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
W.B. Yeats, 1920
Normally, summer ends, and we start bunching our muscles because we know that darkness, snow, and ice are just ahead. This time, at least for me, I'm hoping things won't get a hell of a lot worse than they are - they're already bad, and that a few months of cold and dark might offer some kind of perverse respite, enough anyway, to help us slough off this national depressive state, so that we can look to the future with some sense of hope, however moderate.
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
There's Customer Service & Then There's Customer Service
As a predominantly internet business, my company rarely deals with customers in person. Occasionally, some hardy soul will find his or her way to our office/warehouse on the second floor of what used to be a movie theatre in suburban Saint Paul, Minnesota - that happens so infrequently that we are always surprised - and given the general state of things, not always delighted.
A decade ago, most of our business came in by fax, mail, or phone. When we decided to stop pulverizing trees by publishing catalogs and to head to the internet, we did so with some trepidation.
Yet in spite of all those electrons dancing from hither to yon and all over the globe, we've gotten to know some of our customers from phone conversations and the comments they write about the business in on-line evaluations or letters.
About a year ago [Ed. Note: May, 2005], on the day I was flying to Glasgow, Scotland, on holiday, I checked my email just before heading to the airport. One new order had come in, and it turned out the customers lived in Scotland and not more than twenty miles away from the bed & breakfast I had booked near Loch Lomond for the next night.
This was too good to be true, so I threw caution out of my carry-on, tore back to the office, did the paperwork and put a baton and carrying case in the space left by caution's departure, and then headed to the airport.
When I fly through the night across the Atlantic, my goal is to get in the rental car and drive no more than thirty minutes to my first night's lodging and then collapse. So after a brief nap, I rang up the customer - let's call her Ellen G - and after telling her my name, I said that I had good news and bad news about her baton order.
"The good news is that the baton has shipped. The bad news is that I'm here to deliver it in person."
Ellen tooks this news onboard very evenly. "My hustand and I are leaving in the morning for Lancashire where our daughter has a school performance. Is there any chance you could come up tonight?"
And so I got in the car, remembering to keep to the left, and headed north along the western shore of Loch Lomond in that period the Scos call the gloaming, with a crescent moon eventually lighting the night sky.
I turned away from Loch Lomond and found my way to the village of Arrochar on Loch Long, and shortly thereafter was knocking on the door of a stone cottage, and Ellen herself answered the door. No doubt she was surprised, and I was delighted. I gave her the parcel, and she invited me in for coffee.
Her husband Stuart came along, and we sat down and chatted for a few minutes. At one point she said that while I was enroute to the cottage, she and Stuart checked the picture of me on the company's web-site to make sure the guy at the door was the same person. I guess I couldn't blame them - stranger arrives after dark from the USA with something you've ordered online the day before.
As it turned out, the baton and case were to be a birthday present for Ellen's brother, and she would see him the next day. She told me that she would say to him that she had a remarkable story to tell him - but not until his birthday.
We talked about the internet, its advantages for people living in small villages, how she had come to order from us, what she and her husband did , and about the renovation of their cottage.
And then it was time for me to go. On the drive back, I thought about what a rare experienced this had been - to get an order from over four thousand miles from our office and to be able to deliver it the very next day. That has never happened before, although once or twice orders from London have arrived the day after I've flown there - I've always regretted the missed opportunity.
I don't expect this will ever happen again, and until Ellen and Stuart read this, they'll not know what a treat it was for me to be driving down from the Highlands later in the trip, and as we went past their cottage, I said to Karen, "I have a customer who lives in the stone cottage, just there. Nice people, she and her husband...she's the one who bought a baton for her brother. Hope he'll like it."
It was a great trip to Scotland, one of my favorite places ever, and after swimming in all those electrons all these years at The Nash Company, meeting one of our Scottish customers was one of the highlights of the trip. Maybe, just maybe, lightning - or pixels might strike twice and soon, because I'm heading back to Scotland shortly, and I have this funny feeling....
A decade ago, most of our business came in by fax, mail, or phone. When we decided to stop pulverizing trees by publishing catalogs and to head to the internet, we did so with some trepidation.
Yet in spite of all those electrons dancing from hither to yon and all over the globe, we've gotten to know some of our customers from phone conversations and the comments they write about the business in on-line evaluations or letters.
About a year ago [Ed. Note: May, 2005], on the day I was flying to Glasgow, Scotland, on holiday, I checked my email just before heading to the airport. One new order had come in, and it turned out the customers lived in Scotland and not more than twenty miles away from the bed & breakfast I had booked near Loch Lomond for the next night.
This was too good to be true, so I threw caution out of my carry-on, tore back to the office, did the paperwork and put a baton and carrying case in the space left by caution's departure, and then headed to the airport.
When I fly through the night across the Atlantic, my goal is to get in the rental car and drive no more than thirty minutes to my first night's lodging and then collapse. So after a brief nap, I rang up the customer - let's call her Ellen G - and after telling her my name, I said that I had good news and bad news about her baton order.
"The good news is that the baton has shipped. The bad news is that I'm here to deliver it in person."
Ellen tooks this news onboard very evenly. "My hustand and I are leaving in the morning for Lancashire where our daughter has a school performance. Is there any chance you could come up tonight?"
And so I got in the car, remembering to keep to the left, and headed north along the western shore of Loch Lomond in that period the Scos call the gloaming, with a crescent moon eventually lighting the night sky.
I turned away from Loch Lomond and found my way to the village of Arrochar on Loch Long, and shortly thereafter was knocking on the door of a stone cottage, and Ellen herself answered the door. No doubt she was surprised, and I was delighted. I gave her the parcel, and she invited me in for coffee.
Her husband Stuart came along, and we sat down and chatted for a few minutes. At one point she said that while I was enroute to the cottage, she and Stuart checked the picture of me on the company's web-site to make sure the guy at the door was the same person. I guess I couldn't blame them - stranger arrives after dark from the USA with something you've ordered online the day before.
As it turned out, the baton and case were to be a birthday present for Ellen's brother, and she would see him the next day. She told me that she would say to him that she had a remarkable story to tell him - but not until his birthday.
We talked about the internet, its advantages for people living in small villages, how she had come to order from us, what she and her husband did , and about the renovation of their cottage.
And then it was time for me to go. On the drive back, I thought about what a rare experienced this had been - to get an order from over four thousand miles from our office and to be able to deliver it the very next day. That has never happened before, although once or twice orders from London have arrived the day after I've flown there - I've always regretted the missed opportunity.
I don't expect this will ever happen again, and until Ellen and Stuart read this, they'll not know what a treat it was for me to be driving down from the Highlands later in the trip, and as we went past their cottage, I said to Karen, "I have a customer who lives in the stone cottage, just there. Nice people, she and her husband...she's the one who bought a baton for her brother. Hope he'll like it."
It was a great trip to Scotland, one of my favorite places ever, and after swimming in all those electrons all these years at The Nash Company, meeting one of our Scottish customers was one of the highlights of the trip. Maybe, just maybe, lightning - or pixels might strike twice and soon, because I'm heading back to Scotland shortly, and I have this funny feeling....
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