JUMProductions » Uncategorized

“I would have forgotten the sandwich…”

Vicki — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 18:37:01 +0000

Donuts Are Forgettable. Cards for Forever.

A few months ago I watched a touching Masterpiece production called “Any Human Heart.” In one scene, a glamorous woman reaching the end of her life reflects back on a time when, almost penniless, she had purchased a bunch of violets even though she was going hungry at the time and perhaps might have used her few coins on a sandwich instead. Moments from death, she smiled and said, “I would have forgotten the sandwich.”

In this morning’s mail I received a flyer offering me a couple of dozen donuts for $9.99. I looked at it, then looked at the wonderful cards we have received over the last few days in which our friends acknowledge and share the joy of our 34th wedding anniversary. We are fortunate, now, that sending cards is so easy and so inexpensive, a penny a month less, in fact, than a few donuts.

If there is someone, anyone, in your life who would be better from a kind touch from you, remember the violets.

We will always remember and cherish the cards. We would have forgotten the donuts.

Find. One. Thing. (to examine from more sides)

Vicki — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 13:52:21 +0000

A Closer Look

If you garden with real engagement (more than mowing and retreating to the emotional safety of your four walls), you sometimes see things you would prefer to have missed. I confess myself to be guilty of sugar coating what goes on in my garden because I love it and would not have that experience diminished by the grim things that happen there from time to time. And yet, to cultivate a relationship of real understanding with it, you sometimes have to face the harsher truths.

Last evening I went out to check on water and provisions for some of our garden guests (we live on a wooded easement, so we get an astonishing variety) when I found someone had helped themselves to an appetizer: the ground near one of our bird feeders was covered with feathers.

The temptation, of course, is to remonstrate against this. I love the birds who visit us. I took time to contemplate the scattering of feathers, though, and to count backward through the food chain in just my own small plot: a bird that eats the dragonflies, a cat that eats the bird, the owl or the coyote that eats the cat. Nature sometimes confronts you with its reality, where life may be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” If you cultivate a place for Nature to happen, those realities get included.

A few years ago, I was listening to a panel discussion regarding child labor in the Far East, and one of the participants who is a child protective services worker in that arena shockingly observed that in spite of the harshness of the working conditions and the disconnect with what we in the West visualize as what childhood ought to be, such labor was in fact preferable to the alternative of many of these same children being sold into prostitution, an economic alternative to which their poverty-stricken parents might resort. She recommended improvement of the working conditions, not elimination of the work. This was a way of looking at what the realities were that stretched far beyond what I had previously experienced. It was uncomfortable.

When I saw those fallen feathers, my mind turned to those children. What sacrifices the world requires at times!

I took a picture of the feathers and have looked at them repeatedly. I have not moved them from their place. Sometimes, in spite of the discomfort, it is required that you Find. One. Thing. to examine from more sides.

High-Touch Science

Vicki — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 00:25:56 +0000

Have you ever looked around the room at a networking luncheon and wondered, “Why on earth do we all need to be here?”

Another day, another luncheon...

It turns out that science has an answer to that.

Scientists from the Department of Psychology at Harvard University, from the Sloan School of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and from Yale University have conducted research* that concludes that “(t)ouch remains perhaps the most under-appreciated sense in behavioral research” and that “greetings involving touch, such as handshakes and cheek kisses, may in fact have critical influences on our social interactions, in an unconscious fashion.”

It may be because touch is the very first sense we use to experience the world that it is powerful enough even to override the evidence we get by way of visual information. From the cushiness of a chair to the weight of a clipboard, the effect of the physical objects in conjunction with which we conduct our interactions and business have a profound and often unexpected impact so that just seeing is not necessarily believing. As the researchers state:

First impressions are liable to be influenced by the tactile environment, and control over this environment may be especially important for negotiators, pollsters, job seekers, and others interested in interpersonal communication, The use of ‘tactile tactics’ may represent a new frontier in social influence and communication.

Does this research mean that no one should bother with an internet presence? Of course not.

Does it mean we should abandon email? Or Facebook? Or Twitter? Unthinkable!

Does it mean that we need to pounce on one another physically at networking events like a lion on a wounded gazelle? Dear me, I do hope not. (And surely there’s already enough of that going on already!)

But, in our ever-more-virtual world, we do have to go out of our way (and out to lunch) to make the physical connections that cement relationships with the deeply sensory impressions that can seal the deal.

*For a more complete abstract of this research, please visit http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100624140908.htm

What We Did for Fun on Saturday

Vicki — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 00:33:54 +0000

Dallas Convention Center – August 15, 2009

A Treat ‘em Right to Remember

(We’ll just let the pictures do the talking.)

"OK, is everybody ready?"

"Smile!"

"Man, are there ever a lot of people here."

"That's OK ... It looks like a friendly crowd."

"Lots of new information, and now..."

"...it's time to sing again!"

Kody B The Master Emcee

"Kody B can actually rap. The rest of us, well..."

"Hey, Chris!"

"Having a good time yet?"

A Thoughtful Moment

Very Unexpected

Priceless!

"Mark Johnson got to meet Jordan Adler. Wow!"

"Just give her the ball and no one gets hurt!"

A Lot to Take In

Good Times Shared with Good Friends

"What a super day!"

Fleeting

Michael — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 17:01:14 +0000

A few days ago, I was talking with a coach friend of mine about happiness. There is, after all, so much to be unhappy about, and there are so many unsolicited resources to produce the state, that the effort to avoid it requires a real concentration of will and direction of mind. Happiness, on the other hand, is evanescent, bubbling up for an irrational moment and vanishing if observed too closely.

This morning, I was faced with an empty aged bud vase and one of the glories of our challenging Texas summers, a crape myrtle in resplendent bloom. Now, I know that as a cut flower, the crape myrtle is a pleasure of the moment. Try as you may, the flowers fall from the stem rapidly. But, oh, what a frilly riot of color they give you to view for that moment.

Being happy is like that as well. You know that it will pass too soon, that it is its nature to fall away. Nevertheless, that need not mean that, for whatever fleeting moment you find that you can keep your eye on it, you should refrain from doing so. As Diane and I agreed, it is all right – for that instant – to see things as being all right.

By the way, it may interest you to know another name for the crape myrtle: loosestrife

as lengthy the Texas’ summer, as fleeting the captured crape myrtle