The Final Touch

Heidi: proud copy edi­tor of ‘FRED WHO?’

Last fall I had the amaz­ing oppor­tu­nity to inter­view a real live pres­i­den­tial can­di­date for my work with the e-magazine, 10,000 Cou­ples. I was soooooo ner­vous as the time drew near for our con­ver­sa­tion over the inter­net! But Mr. Fred Karger, a lesser-known mod­er­ate Repub­li­can can­di­date for the U.S. pres­i­dency, was absolutely won­der­ful! He was such fun to talk to, easy-going, gen­er­ous with his time, very down-to-earth, and had no “agenda” what­so­ever — which is to say, he did not seem com­pelled to twist any ques­tion I asked so he could say what­ever he wanted to say, even if it had noth­ing to do with the ques­tion. So, you see… not at all like the typ­i­cal can­di­date for pub­lic office.

In prepa­ra­tion for our inter­view, I had pur­chased and read Read the rest of this entry »

OK, so at Isom Global Strate­gies, one of my pri­mary ongo­ing edit­ing clients, they’re putting together a quar­terly newslet­ter, and Towan (founder, owner, pres­i­dent, CEO) gets this idea of includ­ing a game in it where read­ers have to match the IGS team mem­bers’ baby pics with cur­rent pics. So far, so good, right? Except, take a quick look at this pic­ture of the IGS team, people:

IGS Team

And take a look at the head shot of me in the upper right sidebar.

Now, take a look at these pic­tures of me as a baby:

Exactly how long do you think it’s going to take for read­ers to match one of the pho­tos above (whichever they choose to use) with the cor­rect adult team member???!!!!!!

So, here’s a rough ver­sion (can’t give it to you exactly, because I deleted some of it) of the email con­ver­sa­tion that’s been tak­ing place between Towan, Samiha (the newslet­ter pro­duc­tion edi­tor), and me:

Me: It dawns on me that since I am in the dis­tinct minor­ity, racially speak­ing, it won’t be too hard for peo­ple to pick out my pasty-white face for an easy match!

Samiha: You’re not pasty-white; you’re of fair complexion!

Towan: I can’t wait to see your lit­tle cherry cheeks!

Heidi: Well, they’re not exactly “cherry”! In fact, [this was before Towan had seen the pics above] in one pic­ture I’m wear­ing white and lying on a white pil­low and it’s all pretty much white. It’ll prob­a­bly be all washed out and you won’t see any­thing! No hair even, to frame my face!

Towan: LOL

Me: Hey! Maybe we should use the one with the blue bear! Then at least peo­ple might have a lit­tle chal­lenge, think­ing per­haps I’m a boy. Maybe they’ll get me mixed up with David Luck­ett!!! ROFL

In case you couldn’t fig­ure it out, David Luck­ett (see team photo above) is as much in the gen­der minor­ity as I am in the racial minor­ity around IGS, plus he’s one of the darkest-skinned mem­bers of the team. So now you see why my com­ment was espe­cially hilar­i­ous!

Any­way… I just wanted to share a bit of the fun my clients and I often have together! It’s so fab­u­lous (under­state­ment, but there aren’t ade­quate words) when peo­ple of all dif­fer­ent races and eth­nic­i­ties, not to men­tion other forms of diver­sity, can join together in respect and mutual admi­ra­tion to do excep­tional work! Why can’t all the world be like this??

I find it delight­ful and refresh­ing to work (albeit long-distance) with such a mix of peo­ple, since most of my life has been largely the oppo­site. The Upper Mid­west is becom­ing more diverse, espe­cially in the cities, but with the excep­tion of my years at the sem­i­nary in Chicago, most of my life has been lived in the midst of homo­gene­ity. Nobody’s fault — that’s just how it’s been.

So, I love expand­ing my hori­zons, as well as those of my kids (who hear reg­u­larly about my work and clients). I get a kick out of rec­og­niz­ing that, across races and geo­graph­i­cal regions and cul­tures, we do some things dif­fer­ently — talk a bit dif­fer­ently, joke around a bit dif­fer­ently, relate to oth­ers a bit dif­fer­ently. At the same time, I get a kick out of dis­cov­er­ing, after all is said and done, that we’re all, really, so very much the same. We’re all human beings who take pride in our work, love our fam­i­lies and friends, endure sor­rows and strug­gles, cel­e­brate joys, and learn and grow each day.

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The Minneapolis-St. Paul (Minn.) Star­Tri­bune news­pa­per, in its blog enti­tled “On Weather,” stated today that Moor­head, Minn. — only 30 miles south of Hen­drum, where I live — was the “hottest, most humid  spot on earth Tues­day evening”:

“The coolwx​.com site shows global extremes from hour to hour. Tues­day evening, around the din­ner hour, the dew point at Moor­head reached 87.8 F, mak­ing this the most humid report­ing sta­tion on the planet. The heat index peaked at an almost incom­pre­hen­si­ble 134 F. at Moorhead.”

Hearty — or fool­ish! — peo­ple that we are, my fam­ily and I were OUTSIDE at my youngest’s tee­ball game, and there was NO shade at the ball field! For­tu­nately, it only lasted an hour. I wouldn’t have even taken him if it hadn’t been the last game of the sea­son. He would have been awfully sad to have had to miss out.

(By the way, the pic­ture below is not of our ball dia­mond — WAY too much shel­ter from the sun to be ours!!)

I hope the rest of you are sur­viv­ing sum­mer quite nicely — spoiled, per­haps, as we are by our air-conditioning and fans, and for­tu­nate to not be home­less on days like these. Sum­mer bless­ings to you all!

If you are tired of the cold and snow, raise your hand!

Got this from a friend/colleague and just had to share it! It has snowed here, I believe, every day since New Year’s Day — and quite a few days in Decem­ber as well. The white stuff is piled high around our house and community.

Oh, and yeah — it’s COOOLLLD: –20s air tem­per­a­ture much of this week, and that doesn’t even count the windchill!!

Any­one in a warmer clime care to do a house-swap for, say, three months or so? Liv­ing here builds char­ac­ter — but I think I’ve got enough char­ac­ter for the time being. Hey, and you could get in on the result­ing sand­bag­ging in March and April, too! You’d like that, wouldn’t you?

Suu­ur­rrre, you would!!!

Isa­iah 43:19 and many other Bible verses tell us that God is always doing some­thing new. From the very first words of Scrip­ture, we know God as cre­ative. Some­times, cre­ativ­ity means tak­ing some­thing old and shar­ing it in a new way. The mes­sage of Christ­mas — the Good News of Great Joy that Jesus has been born to save all peo­ple! — is not new, but it must be told in new ways in order to be received and embraced by each new gen­er­a­tion. The video at the link below is truly clever! (The only thing I would change is the sound­track, per­haps to a lively ver­sion of “Joy to the World.”)

Enjoy! And remem­ber — it’s still Christ­mas, accord­ing to the Church-Year cal­en­dar!
MERRY CHRISTMAS! AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!

First of all, “Happy Mon­day morn­ing” to you all! My dar­ling cat Pump­kin and I have a video mes­sage to share with you:

I had so much fun mak­ing this video! For starters, it’s the first one I’ve ever made online, and I think it’s so fun to learn new skills!

Sec­ond, I made it using an awe­some web­site called Ani­moto*, which is so easy and slick that I was absolutely amazed! Not only can Ani­moto cre­ate videos out of var­i­ous video clips you upload, but — as you can see in this video — it can make a video out of your still pho­tos. You can do short (30-second) videos for free, or you can pay $30 a year to make as many unlimited-time videos as you wish. Seems like a great deal to me — and so much fun!

Third, this one-year-old kit­ten (he still acts young even though he’s offi­cially full-grown now, and we still refer to him and the other kit­ten we got at the same time as “the babies,” as com­pared to our two older cats) is such a cutie — don’t you agree?! — that I just laugh out loud each time I see these pics, espe­cially the “pull-up” ones, and I just had to share him with all of you!

Hope you enjoyed the video — and my goofy cat! Would you please let me know what you think by post­ing a com­ment? Thanks!

Have a PURR-fect day!

* http://​cmp​.ly/5