Thanks for your time

While we’re still on the Week of Thanksgiving, I’ll quickly give thanks for people who come up with loopy time-sucking websites that allow you—no, encourage you—to do things like…dress a turkey like a total douchebag and give it something to say.

Here’s how mine turned out:

It was a hard choice for me—I think you should have been allowed to attach up to five of the obnoxious utterances balloons. So just imagine this guy rotating through with a number of them.

Your turn.

Thanksgiving for the first responders

It’s 0755 on Thanksgiving morning, and from my vantage point half a block in either direction from Sunnyvale Fire Station No. 4 and El Camino Real, I can tell there’s some really big emergency. They rolled out of the fire station a couple of minutes ago, and since then there’ve been two more swarms of sirens going down El Camino.

It must be bad.

And since I was putting together my post-gym breakfast when I heard the first round—you know, just dawdling about in the lull between the cardio workout and getting going on all the holiday stuff—I was reminded of how grateful I am for first responders. The men and women who choose to put themselves in harm’s way year in and year out, days, nights, weekends, holidays—they’re there…

No, they’re here for us.

They turn out whether it’s a kid choking on a hot dog, a grease fire in a Thanksgiving kitchen or a blaze at a chemical factory.

I’m deeply grateful that they are here and do their job no matter which pols in municipal, state or federal governments take shots at the wages, health coverage and pensions they get. They show up every time, run into buildings that everyone else is fleeing and do their damndest to save us from the actions of bad guys, nature and ourselves.

I hope the crews from Sunnyvale FD and others around the country—hell, others around the world—have a truly uneventful day today, and that they return safely to their families after their shift is over. And that this is a happy Thanksgiving for everyone.

Helping without reason

Today I’m giving thanks for Good Samaritans, people who don’t particularly know you but still give their time, energy and expertise to help you out of a jam.

This has happened to me more than a few times, and on every single occasion I have been humbled by their generosity and kindness.

I try to hold this in mind, and to be one of those people. I have a tendency to think that what I know and what I can do aren’t of much use to other people, so I have to fight against that. You just never know, and it would be a shame not to try to help someone when you actually can.

For one thing, it’s good to share. For another—as Frank Cross so famously pointed out in Scrooged, it makes you feel so good.

Don't ditch the dogs

Carrying on the theme of giving thanks this week, especially for animals, I got involved in the #DontDitchTheDogs trend on Twitter yesterday. It seems that there’s a trend of a different sort in the UK, to cut funding for K9 units (as well as to police forces in general), and some of the various cops I follow started a campaign to raise awareness.

They actually made the number one UK trend during the period they had it going.

Anyhow, it got me thinking about service animals in general, and public-service dogs in particular. (Look, cats make excellent companions; none better. But training them to take on citizen-facing activities? Erm, not so much.)

Police dogs, drug dogs, rescue dogs, cadaver dogs, bomb sniffer dogs, military dogs, guard dogs--we owe them all a debt of gratitude.

Think about it: they do a hard and often dangerous job, going into harm’s way alongside serving officers. They go into gunfights, knife fights, riots, collapsed buildings, meth labs, war zones, scenes of terrible carnage. They face pissed-off protestors, hopped-up tweakers and crack heads, insurgents, unstable terrain, toxic substances, extremes of weather and every other kind of bad thing. Their human partners put their lives in their paws, relying on them completely; and they don’t let them down. They often are killed or wounded in the line of duty.

And they do it for love.

What the hell more could you ask from anyone?

Gratitude Monday: table graces

This is a big Gratitude Monday—the week of Thanksgiving, we should really be upping our game. So today let me express my heartfelt appreciation to everyone who contributes to our meals every single day.

Thanks to all the animals that provide us sustenance. Turkeys, chickens, geese, ducks, pigeons, sheep, cows, pigs, deer, goats, bison, rabbits, fish, shellfish and any others I’ve missed. For giving us bacon and chorizo, cottage pies and chops, eggs and kabobs, venison and bouillabaise. Thank you for Thanksgiving dinner with the family, Sunday brunch with friends, picnic sandwiches with a lover, chicken soup for a sore throat, fish ‘n chips on the pier, bangers and mash in a pub.

I pray that if you were raised for this purpose, you were safe, sheltered and healthy; that you had space to roam about when the fancy took you, and a warm place to spend the night. And that when the time came for slaughter, I hope you had no idea what was in store for you. Thank you for giving us your life to enrich ours.

If you were wild, my wish is that your death was a clean kill and that your herd or flock or school did not wonder where you’d got to. Thank you for your time on earth and for giving us our nourishment through your death.

I’m also grateful for the people who care for these animals—ranchers, wildlife conservationists, fisherfolk; and for those who grow and harvest the other things we have on our plates and in our glasses. Farmers, orchardists, vintners, brewers, distillers, bee keepers, pickers, packers, truckers—thank you for doing jobs that never end, that depend on the vagaries of nature, that are hurry-up-and-wait…and sometimes worry. Thank you for my mangos, my apples, my raspberries, my broccolini, my potatoes, my haricots verts, my pinots noir and gris, my cask ale, my Oban, my coffee beans and my decaf green tea.

I’ll even thank you for the Brussels sprouts, because there are some misguided people out there who like them. I guess I’m grateful to them, too, since with them eating those nasty things there are more roasted parsnips and steamed carrots for me.

I’m grateful for millers, bakers and pastry makers—especially those who show up at the local farmers markets. And for baristas who give me latte with a picture in the foam. And for counter people who recognize my face and remember my name. And for wait staff and bussers and dishwashers for the times when I want a meal without having to prepare, serve or clean up after it.

It has been said that is love. If so, then there ought to be a whole lotta that going around this week. Spare some of it for those who made it possible.

Ho, ho, what the hell?

I was…I don’t know, I was doing something the other day, and I had the TV on. As usual, unless it’s a foreign film or something that actually engages my interest (or something so gobsmackingly bad that I’m nailed in place, like the Father Brown series currently running on PBS), I wasn’t really paying attention.

Look, the TV for me is basically a talking lamp. It’s background noise for doing other things.

Anyhow, there I was, doing whatever it was, and I heard some Christmas song being  done entirely by little bells. So I glanced up, thinking it was the Hershey’s Kisses “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” commercial—you know, the one where the chocolate doing the “yeeeeaaarr!” note kind of goes bananas.

But no. It was not. It was a line of boxer-shorted guys shaking their stuff just like the kisses did. Only to “Jingle Bells”. And it ends with the guy on “sleigh” doing essentially what that Kiss does; with, so to speak, a flourish. Play it again, you’ll see what I mean.

Imagine my surprise—and my gobsmacking paralysis to see this: I mean, really—I kind of stood there, mouth agape, eyes blinking in disbelief. It was a huge change from my expectation of cheap little chocs—to cheap little…oh, never mind.

Then I realized it’s for Kmart. And not yo mama’s Kmart, apparently.

(Although, in fairness, when I went to look up the video, I couldn’t remember what the commercial was for—store, shorts, Chippendales, what. Which means it’s not the best possible ad—you’re supposed to lock into the product being sold. Or maybe it just means that I’m not a Kmart customer and there’s nothing that’s going to change that.)

And it’s generated some controversy, as you might imagine.

For me, the bells in a commercial is always going to mean Hershey’s kisses doing “We Wish You a Merry Christmas”, even though I don’t buy them or eat them. But I’m going to be a lot more careful when I look up the next time I hear those bells.

And it’ll be interesting to follow Kmart’s sales performance this season. And other, you know, performances.

Let the flashing begin

We’re moving inexorably into the Holiday Season, as you know. (As of Tuesday, at least, the town of Los Altos actually had its civic Christmas décor out. Ugh.) And don’t know about you, but I could use a flash mob to help me into it.

(As an aside—yesterday I went to Dreamforce, the Salesforce user conference extravaganza. Wouldn’t you know—the one day it actually rains after more than nine months of not a drop is the day I have to walk from the Caltrain station to Moscone Center. The Salesforce people also hadn’t counted on rain—this year they took over Harrison Street, between Moscone North and South, for what was probably intended to be a bucolic experience, complete with AstroTurf, but no one was taking advantage of all the little tables.

(I have to say, too, that Salesforce partners and companies that build applications that integrate into Salesforce, are not nearly as interesting as the security companies I talked with at the last Moscone event I attended, the RSA Security Conference. Plus—these people were desperate to scan your badge. I watched one of the chicks at one booth offer someone walking past a chocolate square. When the woman took it, the chick demanded her badge for scanning. That’s harsh, man.

(However, my point here is that any conference or trade show is a perfect venue for a flash mob of some sort. Why is no one filling this need?)

So here’s a flash mob in Köln, playing the “Star Wars” theme. Enjoy.

Concise communication

Since I’ve been on a historical rampage, let me share something with you. I came across this in my Twitter feed—a letter to the Telegraph in 1913. In it, one Bertha Brewster summarizes the whole Woman Suffrage issue, as well as offering the only two possible solutions, in a total of 56 words (including salutation and closing):

Two thoughts on this:

1) She was right.

2) Who’s gonna argue with someone named Bertha Brewster?

These honored dead

In the months following the carnage at Gettysburg in July, 1863, there was a movement to turn part of the battlefield into a national cemetery honoring the fallen of both sides. (Yes, primary consideration was for the Union dead. But, you know, it was probably hard to tell some of them apart, and, in the end, every one of them was somebody’s boy.) By mid-November they were ready to dedicate the burial grounds.

Those in charge had invited Edward Everett, former president of Harvard College, former US Representative and Senator from Massachusetts, former Governor of Massachusetts, former Ambassador to Great Britain, and former Secretary of State (under Millard Fillmore), to deliver an address properly commemorating the occasion. Everett was one of the foremost orators of the day—and it was a day when orators were, uh, rock stars.

Listen—150 years ago, there was no streaming media, no IMAX theatres, no high fidelity sound systems, no—you know—rock stars. Oration was a standard, accepted form of providing both information and entertainment. Think of them as the infomercials of the 19^th Century. Only they generally went on for longer than 30 minutes. You judged an orator by how long he held your attention no matter the weather.

Everett was a sure bet for multiple hours, so he was good value for the event organizers.

They also invited President Abraham Lincoln to deliver a few “dedicatory remarks”. It seemed like the thing to do, although he definitely was not the draw. Due to Everett's schedule, the dedication was set for 19 November.

Lincoln wasn’t feeling well that day, so he would not have been in top form—although in fairness, even in top form he probably wouldn’t have been rated in the rock star region. Everett’s speech lasted for two hours (and more than 13,000 words), and by all accounts was received with acclaim, both from the crowd and the journalists present.

There was a musical interlude, and then Lincoln stepped up to speak. There’s some question now as to the exact wording of his remarks—there are different versions floating about. But, in comparison to Everett, he’d only just started when he sat down again. Just a few minutes, just ten sentences. Then the choir sang a dirge and a preacher pronounced a benediction. Lincoln didn’t hang around, but took the 1830 train back to Washington, with a fever and a headache.

And yet it’s a stunningly concise summary of the American character at its best, and a continuation of the simple clarity that marked the documents of our Founding Fathers.

I don’t know whether they make school kids memorize and declaim it any more—but if put to the test, I could probably still call up most of it, because even a school kid can get it. (By contrast, “It droppeth as the gentle rain” is about all I can recall of Portia’s quality of mercy speech in The Merchant of Venice.)

It’s worth you taking a look:

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

“Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

“But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Lincoln’s brevity disappointed the crowd, and journalists criticized it along party lines. For a while it did indeed seem as though the world would little note what he said there. But we’ve come to recognize that when it comes to encapsulating the democratic ideals on which this country is founded—the unfinished work towards which we should continue striving—no one has ever said a truer word than this speech.

It’s doubtful that any president—even one with Lincoln’s sensibilities—would get away with delivering an address like this these days. (Well, but—Lincoln wouldn’t have been elected these days; doesn’t look presidential, if you know what I mean.) Peggy Noonan in fact has deconstructed how modern professional speechwriters would modify, mollify and magnify all the points necessary to please the maximum number of constituents and piss off the minimum number of everyone else. (Although these days, doesn’t really matter what you say—haters gonna hate.)

So take some time to appreciate that, at one moment in time, we had someone rise to the occasion, speak from the heart—for all our hearts—and get the hell out when he was done.

Gratitude Monday: What you do makes a difference

 It’s Gratitude Monday, and today I’m grateful to have found this story about Austin, Texas, photographer Jamie Moore.

For her daughter’s fifth birthday earlier this year, Moore shot a series of pictures that honors both potential and achievement: the anti-Disney-Princess approach to what a young girl could look forward to.

She chose icons like Earhart, Chanel and Goodall, and made some amazing images. One example here:

The rest are on Moore’s website on the “Not just a girl” page.

What I like about these choices is that the subjects are not perfect by any means. They are tough, confident women whose dreams took them to places many others didn’t want them to be. They flew—literally and figuratively—against the winds of their times; they occasionally crashed and burned. But they kept on.

Since the original story broke (I found it in The Guardian), Moore is looking for contributors to expand the project by photographing girls from all around the world in conjunction with other female role models—Marie Curie, Ada Lovelace, Josephine Baker, Doris Lessing, Christine de Pisan, Phyllis Wheatley. Well—the list could include hundreds. It's a great project.

Look—I’m not unalterably opposed to Disney princesses. In fact, I quite like Mulan. But the notion that little girls can learn about and aspire to be more than an all-singing all-dancing Barbie is refreshing. You can fly against the prevailing winds in ways large and small, and maybe start with a photograph and the knowledge that others have done the same thing.