The four seasons…
“Spring was Smith’s favourite season. In spring a man looked forward to two summers and only one winter. People said the fall was cleaner and prettier, but in the fall you faced two winters and only one summer.”
Never have looked at it that way, nor even thought of it that way, have you?
It was looking out the window at our Mayday trees that triggered this seasonal thinking.
Three wild canaries sitting midst the green caught my eye, then when they left, the yellow was still there, a good dozen yellow leaves on them, fireweed blossoms are moving to the plant top making way for seed pods, and road repairs are beginning so it’s a sure bet, autumn is here.
(Author Paul St. Pierre, came up with that description in one of his books, Smith and Other Events. He’s the apple of my eye when it comes to reading this day. He’d be a good fit for an honorary Yukon sourdough. Most of his people would fit in Jim Robb’s Colourful Five Per Cent.)
The magic formula that successful businesses have discovered is to treat customers like guests, and employees like people.
Liquid logic …
A man stands in front of the judge, obviously drunk.
The judge says, “You’ve been brought here for drinking.”
The drunk replies, “OK, let’s get started.”
We, Yukoners that is, don’t need any help on that angle. We started in the gold rush days, and we’ve managed to make those so-called heavy drinking sourdoughs look like pikers.
The Yukon Liquor Corporation’s 2005/2006 annual report, the most current one on the ‘net, reports it sold 43,785 hectolitres, so I guess we can assume we drank it.
One hectolitre equals 100 litres or 22 gallons. My math says that’s 4,378,500 litres or 952,270 gallons, Imperial at that.
Oh, should you feel it’s all those summer guests who come to ogle the place who push the numbers so high, assume each of them quaffs liberal amounts of the stuff, and my math doesn’t support the assumption. See what your results are.
First the man takes a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes the man. (Japanese proverb)
There’s always an excuse…
In a small town during the dry times called Prohibition a stranger in town asked a man on the street where they could get a drink.
“Well,” said the man, “in this town they only use whiskey for snake bite. There’s only one snake in town, and it’s gettin’ kind of late. You’d better hurry down and get in line before it gits exhausted.”
The 10 most powerful two-letter words are: If it is to be, it is up to me!
A thought from Margaret Wheatley’s Simpler Way…
“I cannot heave everything I know into the abyss. But I know it is coming. And when it comes, when I have made my sacrificial offerings to the gods of understanding then raptures will cease. Healing waters will cover the land, giving birth to new life, burying forever the ancient, rusting machines of my past understandings. And on those waters I will set sail to new places I now only imagine.
There I will be blessed with new versions and new magic. I will feel once again like a creative contributor to this mysterious world. But for now, I wait. An act of faith. Land ho.”
We could use some of those wishes.
Sixty-two years ago from Monday last, a Japanese city was destroyed by a single bomb, a new weapon of horror which “vapourized” people and places.
Maybe one day Carl Sandburg will be right. He said, “Someday they’ll give a war, and nobody will come!”
Lest we forget!