transitive verb
- to bring back to the level of conscious awareness : [remember] trying to recollect the name
- to remind (oneself) of something temporarily forgotten
intransitive verb
- to call something to mind
— Merriam-Webster
Author: Dell Deaton
Posted this as a registered journalist with AnnArbor.com, which is the online evolution of The Ann Arbor News.
Additionally, as stated, I am “a local volunteer with the Boy Scouts of America,” currently serving “as an executive board member with the Great Sauk Trail Council and Huron Trails District Chair.” Having been elected and stepped into this position in 2010, I was the second of two local Centennial Chairs (Howard Conlon, under whom I served for several years as Vice Chair for Membership, was my predecessor and remains a friend).
rev August 12, 2017
When Ahab saw Elijah, Ahab said to him, ‘Is this you, you troubler of Israel?’
He said, ‘I have not troubled Israel, but you and your father’s house have, because you have forsaken the commandments of the Lord ….’
— New American Standard Bible
Question posed:
Who would you like to aim a loaded phaser at?
Answer, Jolene Blalock, well-known for playing the role of T’Pol on Star Trek: Enterprise, as interviewed for Maxim:
People who require drama like it’s their lifeblood. Even if nothing is wrong, there’s got to be something wrong.
Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?
Tell Me, if you know so much.
— New Living Translation
- (of online content, merchandise, information, etc) selected, organized, and presented using professional knowledge:
- individuals still desire curated news content
- a curated alternative to the world’s most popular video portal.
— Oxford Dictionary of English
As I’ve grown older, I’ve found fewer and fewer absolutes.
Five years ago or so, on a canoe trip with an acquaintance, the subject of “joining” came up — as in becoming a member of an organization. He’d joined a local church and we were discussing what he actually knew about it, the seriousness of the commitment.
Surprisingly, he didn’t seem to know much. How could one make such a significant commitment based on so little information?
“If I don’t like it, I’ll quit,” he answered simply.
In hindsight, maybe I shouldn’t have been so surprised.
My father’s generation joined companies out of high school or college, and stayed with them for life. My generation saw companies treat their “human resources” no better than plastic buildings on a Monopoly board. Whole departments and divisions and larger were subject to being wiped out in service to some senior executive’s need to hit an EBIT target upon which some suit’s stretch-bonus depended.
Although I don’t revisit my past (see Genesis 19:26) — wouldn’t do a thing different even if I could — I do wonder upon reflection if I haven’t had a problem of sticking with some things for far too long.
I don’t think “quit” need be viewed today as the pejorative it might once have seemed to have been.
That’s not to advocate making the sort of hollow commitments that came so easily to canoe-trip-guy. Due diligence largely instructs my looks-before-leaps.
But the story of Sodom and Gomorrah isn’t limited to Genesis 19:24, which reads: “The the Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah….”
No, it starts over two pages earlier in my NIV. Second chances abounded. With each succession, it looks to me like the bar was lowered beyond that which anyone should have expected. Warnings were clear.
My Grandma Deaton used to muse about folks who’d stick with organizations that had “quit us” long ago. In the Bible story here, I think Sodom and Gomorrah quit God long before God quit Sodom and Gomorrah.
Commitment is important. But there’s gotta be a reasonable basis for it.
I don’t think it’s wrong to say “enough is enough” when you have, indeed, had enough. How do you know when that is? Pray for discernment.
Amen.
via Internet Archive—
A partner and I started D² Enterprises on August 12, 1983. One of our first major clients was the University of Michigan Panhellenic Association.
They hired us to produce marketing materials and do some re-imaging work.
The impetus for D² Enterprises actually came a year earlier. I was freelancing for a business contracted to photograph sorority rushes. Our contract called for me to be paid for every “salable” image I took, shooting 35mm film with my own camera over the course of six hours or so.
As an aside, I knew an advisor to the program and some of the women independently through a local theater group. They were very pleased with my results, and, based on the orders they shared with me, I anticipated a rather sizeable check from the firm for which I’d done photography.
So I was floored when [the business man’s] calculations yielded a payment for less than a third of that. He explained that “salable” was a term subject solely to his interpretation, and that nowhere in our contract did it say that salable was related to actual sales.
In other words, just because an image had, indeed, sold, well — that didn’t mean it was salable. “I don’t care what you think,” he said without further explanation. “If you don’t like it, go start your own business.”
And I did just that. No hard feelings. Within five years, this photograph guy was gone, D² Enterprises had become D² Corporation, and I’d bought-out my former partner ….
When I started out pitching articles for print publication in the 1980s, there were commonly at least three contending types serving any given demographic.
The clear leader. The second on its heals. Then some periodical running clean-up. My first run was always at the top book. Readership didn’t anoint this position easily, editors guarded the brand that kept ’em there jealously. But the payoff was a peerless credential. Someone reads you there, and they know you’ve been vetted, edited, and confirmed ten-ways-to-Tuesday.
Twenty-some years later now, I still prefer hardcopy periodicals to electronic format for my most important communications. The former is in trouble of course; many going dorsal-fin down, others transitioning to online. I guess they couldn’t leverage their differential advantage of credibility — if, in fact, they even realized they held that key at all. Me-too managers and committed bean-counters seldom look for such things.
Be that as it may, now that those who’ve fled to the Internet are here, translating the trust of ink-on-paper is their challenge. Cut-and-pasters chip away at intellectual property protection. Expectations of “dialogue” portend message re-direction concerns (admittedly salted on occasion with nuggets of serendipitous good). Publishers long for the days when a part-time ombudsman fielded complaints and letters to the editor were handled space-permitting. A “get it posted,” if not “get it first” mentality has largely replaced “get it right” here. Material and mailing cost savings are eaten up by increased speed and quality control demands.
Still, it’s my contention that true thought-leaders will emerge here, too. They may not be print veterans. But they will have distinguished themselves by clarity of purpose, consistency of output, and reliable output schedules. Oh, yeah: And largely bullet-proof credibility (coupled with a rapid-response system for admitting and correcting the inevitable faux pas or outright screw-up).
In a word, it’s still “branding” as we in marketing have always known it.
It simply remains to be seen who will emerge as the web equivalent of our favorite obsoleting media. But the criteria by which that position will be objectively understood is not in doubt.
Ian Fleming is said to have been most disciplined in showing different aspects of himself to different groups.
You saw only what he, with conscious direction and discipline, wanted you to see. As a result, two strangers could meet, each thinking he “knew” Mr. Fleming — but neither in the end would continue to believe this after they’d compared notes in conversation.
To lesser or greater extents, we all do this, of course. Relaxed at home is different from workplace. Project meetings are different from end-of-the-day unwinds with those very same colleagues on the road at a trade show.
And it wasn’t that many years ago that it actually took a bit of effort to really flesh out every disparate aspect of a Supreme Court nominee’s background.
“Screen names” used on Internet Forums and Chat Rooms provided somewhat of a challenge in connecting the person expressing views on movie interests on what part of the Internet with that same person’s pitch to would-be romantic persuits on another.
But what are you gonna do with Facebook?
You can spend years developing expertise and respect in advanced rocket science if you’d like. Still, that image will forever onward be seasoned with high school connections from decades past to the choice you made for prom date.
It’s all “who you are.”