March | 2015 | BAReed Writing, Business Writing

The Last Vestiges

An article in the Sunday paper talked about how to properly put away your snow blower until next season. It liberally refers to best practices during the last use of the season. Stepping out to retrieve the paper from the end of the driveway this morning, I passed what I hope were the last vestiges of snow from the winter just completed. (I feel safe saying winter is done since we have already entered meteorological spring and are mere days from astronomical spring.)

Winter weather, however, may not be done with us yet.

How does one know then that the current use of the snow blower will be the last of the season, in order to follow the directions provided in the article? How do I know that those tiny patches of snowy ice are the last, at least for months to come? (Looking out now with the thought of capturing them to illustrate this post, I see that I am too late and they are gone.)

odd post-snow remnants, picture taken by a friend

We often talk in terms of end of this and last of that, but unless the deadline is self-imposed, calendar based, or otherwise easily limited and under our control how do we know it is a last of something? This question comes to mind when I pass the bookshelf in my living room where the last book that my mom was reading sits. The clean tissue that she had hastily or lazily pressed between its pages to mark her progress has been replaced by a book mark from one of her favorite independent bookstores. It took me a couple of years to even make that change, but it never occurred to me not to mark the spot.

That last book, Tobias Wolff’s Old School, isn’t something that I have any interest in reading, at least not currently. It sits on the shelf as a dust catcher between books that I have read and deemed worthy of keeping. It represents all of the things that mom was still planning on doing, learning, accomplishing and experiencing. There were stacks of magazines that were folded open to articles that she was in the midst of reading, other stacks of notes she had taken to be used in a future project, all signs of her planned continuation of intellectual development. Despite cancer’s effect on her physical self, she would not have proclaimed Old School as the last book she would read until circumstances made that decision.

Last, as in previous, makes sense and I do truly hope that the last snowfall we experienced days ago in my region will be the last for months to come. But I won’t bet on it or plan in it. There are too many variables out of human control. That book makes me consider my use of the word last in many instances. How do I know?

Niceties and Curiosities

“Beauty gives you peace, wherever you encounter it in the world.”

~Jens Jensen

A variety of events, occasions and articles have formulated into this post. I am in the midst of binge watching season 5 of Downton Abbey before it is no longer streaming on PBS.org, I read an article that 5/3 bank commissioned a study of our impatience as part of their new marketing campaign (we are a terribly impatient crowd), and I have stumbled back upon these unrelated quotations that I am using in this post and they helped my disparate thoughts to gel. Plus other bits of mental flotsam and jetsam.

Downton is set in a time that was more mannered than our own, not a time that was simpler (though we like to imagine that past times were simpler than our own, because we crave simplicity), but also a time when there were stricter class distinctions. Courtesy ruled interactions, decorum was de rigueur, and while class might have locked you in place it also told you where you stood.

“Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.”

~Mother Teresa

When the societal changes after WWI started to gather strength, somehow courtesy was weakened with the loosening of class structure. We have lamented the increasing lack of common courtesy for a very long time, it seems. But still niceties can be more like curiosities these days. Since solutions have to start somewhere, I work to stay conscious of my own level of courtesy. There are times when strangers are almost amazed when I have held a door for them. Not just pleased or thankful, but stunned from complacency.

public domain image

My local grocery chain is running a promotion right now that I am not participating in, though I have gotten dishes and cookware from past promotions. When I’m asked if I am participating, I check with the person behind me in line and if they are I say that I am and give them the tokens. It is a little thing, but it makes us both feel good. I have been the beneficiary of such gestures in those past promotions.

These are tiny little connections with my fellow humans that I only wish could be more frequent. Sometimes I am too deep in a reverie and I miss opportunities, which is unfortunate. Perhaps a part of our general impatience is just the fact that we have too many interactions with others that are lacking in any connection. Sometimes the opposite happens, I walk into the store frustrated and out of sorts at the end of a long day and by that simple act of sharing those tokens and making eye contact I walk out feeling better about the world.