Archive for January, 2006

Many clubs and organizations leave the introduction of the principal speaker to a rotating assortment of members. You now have reached this stage and are ready to accept that important task. The individual selected not only introduces the speaker to the audience, but seeks to create a favorable atmosphere for him to present his ideas to the best advantage. If his opening remarks are well chosen he may put the audience into a receptive mood; ready to listen. On the other hand, a poor beginning can leave the listeners bored by a long biography, or by a line that belabors the speaker’s subject too long.

Plan Your Introductions

Introductions deserve more than extemporaneous stut-terings; they require a little know-how of what to say. If you are to introduce someone, learn about him well in advance. If he is a stranger, get acquainted. What is his subject? Why is he informed along this particular line? What is his business? Who says what about him? What are his habits, his character, and characteristics?

Plan carefully how you are going to deliver him to his listeners and to key them up on his subject, for you are running interference for him until he gets going under his own power.

Introductions also require some know-how of what NOT to say. Recently a college president fumbled when he introduced the new athletic coach and said: “His hobbies include fishing, hunting, tinkering with his convertible- and Catherine.”

An ill-prepared introduction spells trouble, anywhere from getting the speaker off to a bad start to making a mess of the meeting. As an example:

“Ladies and Gentlemen, we have with us a gentleman,” and here he tries to read a name from a card; fails; puts the card back into his pocket. “A gentleman who is to lecture on” . . . and here he pulls the card out again, . . . “on . . . Ancient-Ancient-I can’t quite read what it is . . . oh-Athens? Thank you. Athens. This is the first of our new series. The last one as you know was not a success. In fact, we ended the year with a deficit. This year we’re trying a new line by experimenting with cheaper talent.”

A well-prepared introduction however puts the speaker in harmony with the audience.

When you are presenting a plaque, scroll or other symbol of appreciation, propriety demands a careful review of the honored person’s achievements and praise for the measure of his work, a format that also fits commemorations of famous men.

But one word of caution: Be sure you honor the proper party. One famous speaker at a meeting of Democrats, praised an honored American. He dramatically pointed out how, like the Democrat Party, Jackson stood stalwart as a “stone wall” against the inroads of wrong. Later he learned they’d met to honor Andy-not Stonewall Jackson! Sketching the life and labor of an illustrious leader, when applied to Washington or Lincoln, frequently produces a lot of hackneyed heralding. Nothing more you can say will add to Washington’s worth or Lincoln’s luster. In fact, many people in attendance may know more about them than you do. Try a different tack:

Bear in mind the purpose of the meeting intended to honor the memory of the man, and to glean some good from his accomplishments. Memory of die man may be respected by a moment of silent reverence; as for gathering some good remember that his virtues have been gleaned clean long ago. Try sailing along the less popular and seamier side of his life. Try this:

History’s pages are filled with names of tenacious men, but none overcame greater obstacles than an early Illinois lawyer. He failed in business; was defeated for the legislature. He failed a second time in business, and was then elected to the legislature. He lost his sweetheart to the Grim Reaper, and suffered a nervous breakdown. He was defeated for Speaker, defeated for elector, defeated for Congress; then elected to Congress and defeated for the Senate, defeated for Vice President, defeated again for the Senate-and then in 1860-Lincoln became one of the greatest Presidents in history!

The above is not designed to dish out dirt, but to furnish encouragement for those who may have flunked some of life’s courses. A pat on the back for men in bad, may not be as popular as praising a bank president or buttering up a big politician-but it’s a lot more like Lincoln.

Senior Citizens’ Day

The other day an old timer soliloquized: “It ain’t age that’s aggravatin’ just the jolts that let us know it’s on the way.” How true! Age advances so gradually, we stay unaware of it until one human frailty after another shows up in the bathroom mirror.

A Senior Citizens’ Day would help absorb some of the shocks that come when a sweet young thing gets up to give you her seat; or you read that a child movie starlet is getting her third divorce; when your dimple turns to a denture dent; and your hairline seems to recede from your brow like a shoreline ebbing at low tide.

It’s rough when Senior citizens feel on Saturday night the way they used to on Monday morning, and instead of stairs two at a time-they take their pills that same way . . . and how rude the awakening when that gleam in his eye proves to be but a glare on his glasses! None of these surprises come to one of us alone; that’s part of the pleasure in growing old … we have so much company on Senior Citizens’ Day!

Presidents’ Day

On Presidents’ Day, March 4th, we think of the contrasts in the chiefs of our nation and their personal peculiarities. Attributes common to many of them have been their modesty, humility and simplicity. From silent Cool-idge to talkative Truman . . . from lean, lanky Lincoln to short, fat John Adams, we’ve had a typical American mixture of men in our highest echelon. Lincoln towered six feet four, but Madison couldn’t make five feet flat. Taft weighed in at a quarter ton, while Madison barely hit a hundred. Historians speak of him as more mind than man.

“Teddy” Roosevelt, “Andy” Jackson, William Harrison, Taylor, Grant, and Eisenhower all were outdoor men. Monroe, Adams, Van Buren, Garfield and Wilson were fireside favorites. Jackson was a pepper pot, and Arthur was solemn as a burial at sea. Harding has been described as the most handsome, but other presidents fell below par. Lincoln has been said to have resembled a crane in a wrinkled suit, and a man who looked as though he’d tried to swallow an apple but it stuck in his throat. Despite these impressions, he’s generally conceded as having been the best of the lot.

Log cabin origins were commonplace among our early leaders, but with our two new states, birthplaces of these outstanding men in the future might well include a little icy igloo or a little grass shack.

Girl Scout cookies

The Girl Scouts kicking off their fund raising cookie campaign can’t afford to hire an agent to promote publicity, nor can they go to Congress to keep their cause cooking. They have to rely upon you and me and all they offer is the glow we get from giving to a good cause. Some people look upon this bobby-sox brigade as a band of “awe-full” fillies, always acting silly; they speak of them as the terrible teens and the adolescent age . . . and wonder where these giggly girls are headed.

But the adolescent period isn’t necessarily a problem, little girls can be one of the nicest things that happen to people. They defy the law of diminishing returns for there are millions of them around us-and in her own way, each one is precious. It’s true that little girls can grow into big problems when their popularity is measured by bicycle rings, phone calls, and automobile honks …. but while these ‘tween age Scouts are too old for dolls and too young for dates, they’re a cute bunch of cookies.

Grandparents’ Day

Grandparents can be young in years or old in age. Grandpa may have tied his horse to a hitching post when he courted his girl, or buzzed up the avenue in a raccoon coat with a flask on his hip. Perhaps Grandma ran to meet him in a skirt above her knees and they’d Charleston ’til “Three O’clock in the Morning.” Whether they’re old enough to speak only of yesteryears or young enough to be real hep, Grandparents bring lots of happiness to little children. Theirs is a function of love; they give all and ask nothing . . . just brag about the chips off the old block with all the modern improvements.

The favorite Grandpa is a mellow fellow with snowy hair; he’s full of fabulous stories about the past, and endowed with wisdom and a sense of values that’s never taught in school. He always understands, and is never too busy to listen. The nicest Grandma is experienced at baby sitting, a task she’s ever anxious to assume. Her house is always full of fun and she has lots of old snapshots; one even shows Daddy as a baby with no clothes on. Both Gram and Gramp tell lots of stories about the times when Mom and Dad were kids . . . how they did bad things too. They make kids feel they’re not so hopeless after all!

Father’s Day

Once a year a special day is set aside to reward the mouse of the house for his strong and silent service. In 1924 Cal Coolidge concluded that it could cost the government nothing-so he proclaimed the third Sunday in June as Father’s Day. Dads are commonplace commodities, but each has his individuality. As an overwrought lad he nervously awaits the new arrival that will make him a father, an experience followed by years of watchful care. As the little one grows a Dad is a big help over hurdles and in arithmetic (until his cumbersome solutions stop suiting modern mathematics). Dad means instilled confidence on a parity with a grown man yet treated as a pal until twenty-five years are too much of an edge in a tennis match.

Dad is a man whose stern discipline met our own stern often, but he was, in retrospect, sincere and not really tough at all. A Dad can be a bumbling, well-meaning lout who’s putty in the hands of his family . . . but Sunday is his day to really rule the roost!

Children’s Day

Mother has her day; Dad has his … and we observe a week for being kind to animals. But nobody’s ever set a day aside for Junior. School’s out now. Some kids graduated and some went to higher grades, but they’ve all passed another milestone.

We bust our buttons about the Great American Heritage we’re passing on to these youngsters, when in fact our founding forefathers created it and passed it down to us. All we’ve done is plaster it with mortgages, and who’s going to pay our debts? We aren’t … we just build bigger budgets and rarely balance them. Our “boisterous brats” will have to bail us out.

Common decency calls for buttering up the chap who picks up the tab. The older generation responsible for bungling world affairs should at least create a “Be Kind to Kids Day.”

Mother’s Day

The chairmen of most social service clubs oddly feel that character eulogies should be assigned to a neophyte member or to someone who is spoiling to make a speech. To help them, we respectfully offer these thoughts:

For days there’s been a run on florist shops, candy stores and gift counters; and volumes of phone calls, wires and greeting cards will criss-cross the country as Americans remember the “first lady” in their lives on Mother’s Day.

Mothers today bear small resemblance to the shawl-shouldered “Ma” in Whistler’s picture, painted when women were devoted to drudgery. In our lightened world, machines do the clothes and the dishes, and the lady of the house doesn’t have calloused hands as a result of preparing packaged foods from the freezer.

But despite all these current comforts, man has still come up with no machine that can soothe a fall, wipe a tear, scrub a dirty face, or capture warmth, like Mother’s embrace.

Mothers in awe

The American Society of Comedy created quite a stir when it culled one day from the calendar and called it Mother-in-Law Day. The Society sought to put humor and mockery into the occasion, but the idea of rehashing a hackneyed line about women who deserve reflective respect, fell like a lead balloon.

Satire that revolves around wheels spinning on a high center, loses its luster and gets nowhere. Most of these mothers-in-awe are kindly kinfolks-more imposed upon than imposing. Where else will you find baby sitters to render more dependable service, or serve without pay? The society missed the most material fact: that by a queer quirk of nature mothers-in-law are also mothers, an ancillary incident that prompts people to resent mother-in-law humor that hurts.