I am a member of Toastmasters, I admit it.  www.toastmasters.org.  When I lived in “the big city” I don’t know if it would have appealed to me: a small group of people meeting regularly to help each other with public speaking and leadership skills.  I imagine to my younger self, it might have seemed a little corny: nervous middle-aged people giving their first speech; older people practicing gestures and making eye contact; a dozen people in a room coaching a local teenage pageant contestant on how to answer questions.  I was perhaps a little cynical in those days; I didn’t take the time to find out what Toastmasters was about.

Now that I’m older, I appreciate Toastmasters.  I’m glad that, in 11,000 clubs in 89 countries, people gather to help other people overcome the fear of public speaking and learn to speak better.  I enjoy it and it has helped me a lot.

But I’m not writing today just about Toastmasters; I want to talk about the appreciation of people in small organizations all over the world.  There’s a level of applause and gratitude I’ve seen at Toastmasters and I believe it exists for all those other organizations where people gather in communities, places like Kiwanis, Rotary, Lions, Elks, Soroptomists, Shriners and so many others.  By ‘appreciation’ I mean “Recognition of the quality, value, significance, or magnitude of people and things” as www.dictionary.com defines it.  It’s that moment at gatherings of clubs where they thank the volunteers and acknowledge the people who make a difference.

If you’ve never been to one of these clubs, you won’t know what I mean, so let me explain.  When my Toastmasters club meets, there are about 15-20 people in the room.  For two hours a week, people receive acknowledgment and applause.  I don’t mean all at once, of course, but frequently.  Each time a person stands to speak, there’s applause.  When someone explains what their purpose is at the meeting, such as timing other people’s speeches, there’s applause.  There’s applause when someone gets up to give a 5-7 minute speech, and more applause when they finish.  It’s a love-fest of acknowledgment.

Then, too, when Toastmasters clubs meet in groups, such as our district meeting or annual convention, there’s more applause and acknowledgement.  There’s a gathering where people bring the banner for their club or district and everyone applauds each one.  At the big Saturday night dinner, people are announced as they come in to much applause.  The volunteer leaders are often applauded.  Maybe “applause-fest” is a better way to put it than “love-fest.”

All of this sounds unbearably corny, I know.  Yet, wouldn’t you like to be applauded?  Wouldn’t you like your efforts to be acknowledged?  Wouldn’t you like to know, for a small moment, that what you do matters?

This is what I think is missing from life, and it’s what these organizations supply: a little bit of thanks for the work we do.  After all, in real life, you generally don’t get applause at your job.  Your family isn’t going to applaud you for cooking dinner, and you might go decades without your children ever telling you that you did a good job in raising them.  The husband who is having a tough time in his marriage doesn’t get applause for taking the same exit off the freeway every night and continuing to come home.  It’s seldom that anyone tells you that you’re doing well or that they appreciate your making the effort.

Too much of life is a cynical, sarcastic skepticism of accomplishments and motives.  You can just watch half an hour of the nightly news to notice this: the criticism of the quarterback whose team competed hard but lost the game, the snarky laughter when a movie star goes into rehab for an addiction, even the hardbitten comments to the weather forecaster when the weather takes a bad turn (as if it’s the forecaster’s fault).  Why not have places where people are kind and appreciative even for small things?

So that’s what these organizations do: they give people a place to succeed and then thank them for their efforts.  We all need some of that, it’s a nice feeling.  The successes may be small, but they’re important to the people who accomplish them.  Now if only we had some way of incorporating this applause into the rest of our lives.

That’s the Thought for the Day from The Dubmeister.

I admit it, I listen to country music on the radio.  (Not all the time: I’m also addicted to News Radio.  Not Talk Radio, just News Radio.)  Regretably the local country music station is owned by ClearChannel.

I wouldn’t be bothered by a mega-media company owning the radio station, if they would just play the hit songs.  But they don’t!  I don’t know why, but they don’t play the top-40 songs.  Now you would think this would be a no-brainer: there are statistics on the top songs, they know what they are, but they don’t play them.  I don’t know why.  Instead, they play the same songs in rotation, over and over, and it’s a very limited selection.

I wouldn’t know that Clear Channel isn’t playing the top hits, except that there’s a syndicated weekly broadcast of the top hit songs, and I regularly hear songs on it that I don’t hear during the week.  Why is that? 

FWIW, I wrote a very polite email to the local music director asking this question but did not receive a response.

Why wouldn’t they play the top songs?  The only things I can think of are 1) that the radio station is owned by a record company that only plays its own artists, or 2) payola is alive and well at the national level, and someone’s getting a lot of money under the table to play for pay.

What do you think?

That’s The Thought for the Day from The Dubmeister.

Right now, news is PUSHED at you.  Whether you watch TV news or read a newspaper, someone edits what you see and decides what’s important.  The industry term is that they PUSH it at you.  However, technology allows you to choose what news you see, to PULL it by searching on it or requesting it be sent to you automatically or by clicking on a link.  What do you choose to see and hear and learn about?  The war in Afghanistan?  Or the latest news about Lindsay Lohan, a B-actress and singer at best with a serious drug and alcohol problem?

Be prepared for the death of broadcast journalism: it’s going to follow the death of newspapers.  What is killing it is technology: you are making daily choices every time you click on a link.  It’s going to get worse: when you can get the news you want on any item, like your eyeglasses or your steering wheel, you’re not going to want to know about Afganistan, first you’re going to want to know about the weather and traffic for your commute.  And once you know that, then you’ll probably choose the mental junk food of celebrity coverage, like what Lindsay Lohan is doing today.  When that happens, the major newsgathering operations will be gone and all we’ll have left is TMZ, because that’s what we choose.  http://www.tmz.com/person/lindsay-lohan/

You vote with your ad dollars and subscriptions.  Right now, enough people vote for TMZ that they make money, while traditional news gathering operations are losing money.  Enough people vote that way, and voila!  The end of journalism.  Which way do you vote now?  Where did your internet clicks go today?

That’s the Thought for the Day from The Dubmeister.

I wish it hadn’t come to this. I don’t know what went wrong. Actually, that’s a lie. I know exactly what went wrong. You had so much promise and potential “V”, but when it came down to delivering on it you failed. Miserably. I am leaving you, “V”. And I am sorry.

I admit that part of my interest in you at the beginning of our relationship revolved around your heritage. I’ve never seen your parent-show, “V” senior, but I was aware of the Nazi-lizard aliens invading the Earth disguised as humans concept, and the obligatory human-lizard hybrid birthing scene. These are great selling points, “V”. You really had a great deal of potential just based on those selling points. Your determined recruitment of science fiction castoffs for your characters was also endearing, if ultimately irrelevant. Throwing in that sinister woman from “BSG” to play another sinister woman is effective, I suppose, but it isn’t as though she was my reason for watching “BSG”. (real reason: Billy, the heart of the show. That was a joke. In reality, it was all for Dr. Cottle.)

So before we even started, “V”, you had a pretty good cast of actors and a great, great set up. And you completely squandered all of that potential, all of that goodwill. Things this show lacks: personality, humor, FUN. You are boring, “V”. And I tried to like you, God knows I did. But there’s nothing to like, “V”! You are the hollow shell of a good television show. Your characters are one-note in almost all cases, “V”. In the case of Erica I will allow that there could be two notes, those being her roles as hard-working FBI agent and neglectful mother. But each of these roles is completely flat. The slow loss of her son to the other side should be tragic to watch unfold, the tragedy of her losing the thing she wants most to protect. But this isn’t tragic at all in your execution, “V”. Her son is a whiny brat who drives a motorcycle and apparently never goes to school?? I couldn’t care less what happens to this douche bag. Which is how I feel about almost every character on this show, including the British super-terrorist who is named after deceased philosopher and sometimes tiger Hobbes.  Your characters are dull, “V”. You are dull.

In truth, there is only one redeeming quality in you, “V”. Anna is both compelling and entertaining to watch. She has no more depth of character than anyone else on the show, but she makes a great evil villain. But she’s not enough for me anymore, “V”. You aren’t enough for me anymore. I had something of a revelation in the aftermath of last week’s terrible “LOST” episode, a show that even at its worst still elicits some sort of feeling from me, rather than the deathly numbness I feel while watching you. You came on the air then, while I was still burning with rage and frustration, and I couldn’t be bothered to pay attention to your melodrama. You were acting out for attention, “V”, but I realized in that moment the sincere lack of interest between us. So I am sorry, “V”, but I am leaving you to look for greener pastures.

It’s not all bad though, “V”. Despite losing me, you still seem to have a bright future. I hear you’ve been renewed while the equally uninteresting “Flash Forward” has been cut loose. And I imagine you have other viewers out there to look to for comfort in this moment. You probably even have some fans out there, somewhere! Fans who will love you unconditionally, despite, maybe even because of, your many flaws. So cheer up, “V”. You’re going to be alright. And if you ever manage to get exciting, feel free to give me a call. I’m all for second chances.

Sincerely,

Matthew

P.S. WHY ARE YOU SO BORING?

I’ve written here in the past about Farmville.  Here’s how to tell if you or someone you love is addicted to Farmville (with apologies to www.giftsanonymous.com, which seems to be a website either designed by the AA people or by clever people imitating AA in order to cash in on product sales)  (www.aa.org is the official site of AA but they have intellectual property policies and I wouldn’t want to annoy them by using their materials since they seem to have a lawyer watching over them):

Farmaholism has many characteristics. Here is a list of some of them with a brief explanation:

• Denial! Denial! Denial! (We deny we have a problem and are usually the last ones to admit there is a problem.)

• We play Farmville alone or in secret. (Playing is a social activity done with other people, and playing alone or not posting when we find collectibles is a signal that we have something to hide.)

• We fail to remember conversations we’ve had or things we’ve done while playing Farmville-usually referred to as “multi-tasking blackouts.” (A common occurrence when we play heavily.)

• We establish Farmville routines like “playing Farmville before dinner every night” and become annoyed when they are interrupted. (Becoming angry when “Farmville hour” doesn’t happen are definite warning signs.)

• We lose interest in hobbies or activities that used to give us a lot of happiness. (Playing Farmville has become the main focus of our lives.)  We think about our crops during the day.  We plant crops that require us to be home at a certain time.

• We become increasingly irritable as our usual playing time approaches, especially if there’s no internet connection available. (The obsession and compulsion to play begins to affect us physically as well as mentally.)

·         We play Farmville before we go to parties. We sneak onto friends’ computer connections behind their backs. We make sure we have extra internet connections at home or in the car. (We worry that our crops will wither if we’re away from our computer.)  We hum the Farmville music during the day when we are away from the game to comfort ourselves.

• We experience legal problems, or problems with family, jobs, and relationships. (A natural end when playing Farmville becomes our main focus instead of our personal responsibilities.)

• We start to suffer withdrawal symptoms (nausea, shaking, irritability, sweating) when we aren’t playing Farmville. (We are experiencing the effects of withdrawal as time lapses without playing Farmville.)

• We develop a higher and higher tolerance to Farmville, meaning we need to play more and more to be satisfied. (Increased tolerance to Farmville is always accompanied by increased playing and planting crops that need to be harvested more frequently.)

• We hide wi-fi connections in our homes, our cars, and even at work so that it is always available. (Hiding Farmville and our computer connections is a three-alarm warning siren that we have a problem.)

• We desperately want to stop playing Farmville and we don’t know why we can’t. (Farmaholism is cunning, baffling, and powerful.)

• The most telling characteristic of Farm-aholism is that PLAYING FARMVILLE BECOMES THE #1 PRIORITY IN OUR LIVES! (Nothing else matters.)

That’s the Thought for the Day from The Dubmeister.