This article and these photos are priceless! I discovered these courtesy of Rob Brezsny’s newsletter, and I’m reprinting his introduction to the link.
Rob Brezsny
“Maxim’s “Hot 100” is the magazine’s list of the planet’s sexiest women. Sports Illustrated has its yearly Swimsuit Issue, which presents a bevy of twenty-something women dressed in skimpy bikinis. Esquire’s regular feature “Women We Love” is a gathering of skinny young celebrities. Now here are some of my current favorite beauties. The images are from photographer Katarzyna Majak’s assemblage of witches and healers of Poland.”
I hope you don’t mind the informal greeting, but I have seen so much of you in the past few months that I feel I know you, even though we’ve never met, and I doubt that you know me. (You can google me, though, and find out.) Along with millions of other Americans, I’ve been watching you as you’ve presented yourself and your ideas in televised debates, campaign rallies, and interviews. I’ve listened to various of your supporters extol your personal virtues and their belief that you can make America great again. (I don’t as yet really know what that means.)
With this modest preamble, I want you to know that I am writing to thank you. No, I’m not your fan or supporter, as I’ve been infected with the Bern, but that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate what you’re doing for the country. I’m grateful. But my appreciation and gratitude take a bit of explaining, a bit of backstory as we say here in Hollywood.
I’ve been working with three clients on creating presentations, one for a workshop and two for conferences. In each case, they presumed that their audiences would have the same understanding, the same reference points, the same backstory of certain key words and ideas as they, the speaker, would have. I always challenge that. Just because we speak the same language does not mean that we speak the same language, if you know what I mean.
Each of my clients is an expert in her field, with decades of study, learning, writing, teaching, and speaking in her area of expertise. So, when a key word or phrase or concept is put forward, she, the speaker, has decades of precise and practical meaning associated with each thing. The presumption is that everyone does. Everyone does not.
We’ve got to take great care to define and illustrate key words and ideas in our presentations, and not just in terms that only we will understand, but that our audience will understand. In many cases, we need a decoder ring, in order to be able to communicate important key words and ideas in a manner that the audience can understand and relate to, easily.
Here’s a pretty hysterical video which pits an Italian man against someone from Malta. Though Italian and Maltese are similar, the characters in the film are speaking English, albeit with accents. They are speaking the same language, but they do not understand each other. Accents aside, is this not too often the case in our own lives?
If you’ve got a presentation coming up, be sure your audience will understand you. If you’re not sure, get in touch with me and I’ll help you out. It’s very important.
Enjoy the video, which is R-rated and not politically correct. Thanks to my friend Amara from Perth for turning me on to this one.
I have created the Speaking Truthfully Award to recognize and honor people who exemplify and embody Speaking Truthfully principles and practices.
There is impossible and there is IMPOSSIBLE. Me? In love? IMPOSSIBLE. No way! Head over heels in love, now, after everything that’s happened!? Who would have thought? Not me, that’s for sure. Those chapters had been written, and that was that. BUT IT HAS HAPPENED. I am madly, deliriously, out-of-control, top to bottom and inside out, take-me-to-bed-and-rock-my-soul-and-f*^k-me-till-I-scream-and-then-don’t-stop — in LOVE.
She’s super smart, sassy, brassy, edgy, gorgeous, fearless as a zombie apocalypse (I don’t know what that is but it sounds utterly fearless), brave as all get out, fierce, funny, hot — holy mother of god, I adore this woman. (more…)
“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few.” ~ Shunryu Suzuki
“Everything that can be invented has been invented.” ~ Charles H. Duell, Director of US Patent Office, 1899
“Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?” ~ Harry M. Warner, Warner Bros Pictures, 1927
“There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom.” ~ Robert Miliham, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1923
“Heavier than air flying machines are impossible.” ~ Lord Kelvin, President, Royal Society, 1895
“Video won’t be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.” ~ Daryl F. Zanuck, 20th Century Fox, commenting on television in 1946 (more…)
