LASTING CONSISTENCY OVER THE LONG HAUL

Lasting consistency means one thing: dependable.

You know what you’re looking for and you know what you’re getting when you find it.

History is full of people needing things they can depend on and you can depend on this writer to dig them up.

I know you’ve got a few yourself but that’s for your blog.

This is a YouTube on the shovel.

“Every time you pick up a shovel you’re holding a piece of history.”

It doesn’t take a genius to know that, but when I pick up a shovel it’s usually not a museum piece, or an objet d’art.

Instead, it’s a tool and I’m about to break a sweat digging a hole and my biggest concern is breaking the handle off by leveraging it too much.

Do I think how much harder it would be if I had to use a digging stick instead of a shovel because someone with decision making power called the shovel a tool of oppression?

They don’t appreciate the evolution from one, a stick, to the other, a shovel. Maybe spend some time with each.

Don’t oppress me, bro.

Too many times an uninformed opinion blurts out of the face of someone who ought to know better.

A soft-handed man with a big mouth is not a shovel authority.

There’s a big difference between the golden shovel used for ground breaking ceremonies and the shovel in calloused hands.

 

Lasting Consistency In Communication

My lifetime spans the age of this pen.

I’ve used hundreds of them if not thousands.

From a marriage license to show my wife the kind of love that lasts, to rental contracts, to non disclosure agreements, the pen has left a lasting impression.

It’s a communication tool writers have used for centuries, although the one shown is specific to baby boomers.

We signed driver’s licenses, student loan papers, and mortgages.

We signed birth certificates, permission slips, and credit card receipts.

It’s been used to write speeches, scripts, and novels.

From its arrival this pen has rolled through the fabulous fifties, the sexy sixties, the settled down seventies.

We’ve used it enough to grow a calloused knob on our middle fingers. (Did you check?)

The pen is a tool for education, for learning. We take notes, numbers, dates, and time.

Put the pen down and your brain shuts off. It feels different than a keyboard, different than the phone.

Where the shovel and its early cousins began as a farming tool to grow food for early civilizations, the pen tells the story.

 

Agriculture is not merely a means of sustenance; it is a cornerstone of human civilization, shaping our past, present, and future.

From ancient farming techniques to modern innovations, agriculture has sustained societies, shaped cultures, and driven progress.

As we navigate the challenges of the 21st century, it is imperative that we work together to ensure a sustainable and equitable future for agriculture and the planet.

 

Write it down.

 

Connecting With The Right Fasteners

I hardly ever ask the historian’s question: What happened?

I’m more of a ‘why guy.’

Not ‘wise guy.’

Asking ‘what happened’ feels like an excuse to avoid responsibility.

A car crash is a car crash. That’s what it is. Why it happened is the story.

Was it texting while driving? Drunk driving?  Bad luck?

Maybe it was a construction flagger parking his car in the middle of the street in a dense fog and you hit it?

Or a bad driver deciding to accelerate from a yield sign on an incline then slamming on their brakes?

Knowing why something happened works to prevent future problems.

As a humble blogger I work to figure things out and explain it in an understandable way.

The shovel is pretty basic for most of us; like the pen it is ubiquitous.

Fasteners aren’t any different.

The cute ones with the ceramic or plastic heads?

Break them apart and you see the metal standard is still there, just with a new, pretty, face.

Oddly enough, some people work the same way.

They show themselves as an answer, a solution, a fixer to problems that have troubled modern times.

Instead of doing the work to make things better with precise shovel work, they bulldoze.

Instead of using the power of the pen to help, they use it to draw pictures of themself.

Many people, I’m told, make important connections between the present and the past in order to create a brighter future for their kids and their kids’ kids.

They do it with education, culture, and love.

They do it with travel, talk, and kindness.

The effort slows down when an old man with a lifelong grudge convinces the masses that his grudge is their grudge.

The effort turns into something else when the dark history of snatch and grab tactics is used in a town near you, in a house near you, when you see it happen on your street.

It’s not a question of what happened then, it’s a question of what are you doing about it?