The hand of thankfulness

Sometimes we need to remind ourselves that thankfulness is indeed a virtue. 

―William Bennett

Thanksgiving Day was near. The first grade teacher gave her class a fun assignment―to draw a picture of something for which they were thankful.

Most of the class might be considered economically disadvantaged, but still many would celebrate the holiday with turkey and other traditional goodies of the season. These, the teacher thought, would be the subjects of most of her students' art. And they were.

But Douglas made a different kind of picture. Douglas was a different kind of boy. He was the teacher's true child of misery, frail and unhappy. As other children played at recess, Douglas was likely to stand close by her side. One could only guess at the pain Douglas felt behind those sad eyes.

Yes, his picture was different. When asked to draw a picture of something for which he was thankful, he drew a hand. Nothing else. Just an empty hand.

His abstract image captured the imagination of his peers. Whose hand could it be? One child guessed it was the hand of a farmer, because farmers raise turkeys. Another suggested a police officer, because the police protect and care for people. Still others guessed it was the hand of God, for God feeds us. And so the discussion went―until the teacher almost forgot the young artist himself.

When the children had gone on to other assignments, she paused at Douglas' desk, bent down, and asked him whose hand it was. The little boy looked away and murmured, "It's yours, teacher."

She recalled the times she had taken his hand and walked with him here or there, as she had the other students. How often had she said, "Take my hand, Douglas, we'll go outside." Or, "Let me show you how to hold your pencil." Or, "Let's do this together." Douglas was most thankful for his teacher's hand.

Brushing aside a tear, she went on with her work.

The story speaks of more than thankfulness. It says something about teachers teaching and parents parenting and friends showing friendship, and how much it means to the Douglases of the world. They might not always say thanks, but they'll remember the hand that reaches out.

 

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Decide what to do with each and every email

How many times have you opened, reviewed, and closed the same email message or conversation? Those messages are getting lots of attention but very little action. It is better to handle each email message only once before taking action—which means you have to decide what to do with it and where to put it. Under the 4 Ds model, you have four choices:

1.    Delete it

2.    Do it

3.    Delegate it

4.    Defer it

Delete it

Generally, you can delete about half of all the email you get. But some of you shudder when you hear the word "delete." You're hesitant to delete messages for fear that you might need them at some point. That's understandable, but ask yourself honestly: What percentage of information that you keep do you actually use?

If you do use a large percentage of what you keep, your method is working. But many of us keep a lot more than we use. Here are some questions to ask yourself to help you decide what to delete:

·         Does the message relate to a meaningful objective you're currently working on? If not, you can probably delete it. Why hang on to information that doesn't relate to your main focus?

·         Does the message contain information you can find elsewhere? If so, delete it.

·         Does the message contain information that you will refer to within the next six months? If not, delete it.

·         Does the message contain information that you're required to keep? If not, delete it.

Do it (in less than two minutes)

If you can't delete it, then ask yourself, "What specific action do I need to take?" and "Can I do it in less than two minutes?" If you can, just do it.

There is no point in filing an email or closing an email if you can complete the associated task in less than two minutes. Try it out—see how much mail you can process in less than two minutes. I think you will be extremely surprised and happy with the results. You could file the message, you could respond to the message, or you could make a phone call. You can probably handle about one-third of your email messages in less than two minutes.

Delegate it

If you can't delete it or do it in two minutes or less, can you delegate it?

If you can delegate it, do so right away. You should be able to compose and send the delegating message in about two minutes. After you delegate the action, delete the original message or move it into your email reference system.

Defer it

If you cannot delete it, do it in less than two minutes, or delegate it, the action required is something that only you can accomplish and that will take more than two minutes. Because this is your dedicated email processing time, you need to defer it and deal with it after you are done processing your email. You’ll probably find that about 20 percent of your email messages have to be deferred.

There are two things you can do to defer a message: Turn it into an actionable task, or turn it into an appointment. When you're using Outlook, you can defer emails that require action by dragging the messages to your Task List to turn them into tasks. Name the task to clearly state the required action so that you don't have to reopen the email message. The result is a clearly defined list of actions on your Task List that you can prioritize and schedule to complete on your Calendar. Or you can turn the message into a meeting request by dragging it to your Calendar.

Tip Use the To-Do Bar in Outlook 2010 and Outlook 2007 to drag an email message from an email folder to a date on your Calendar or to your Task List. On the View tab, in the Layout group, click the To-Do Bar. When the bar appears, drag the message to your Calendar or to your Task List. This copies the message to the new location; it doesn’t move it out of the original mail folder, so you’ll still be able to find what you need.

Use the 4 Ds model every day

Using the 4 Ds model on a daily basis makes it easier to handle a large quantity of email. Our experience shows that, on average, people can process about 100 email messages an hour. If you receive 40 to 100 messages per day, all you need is one hour of uninterrupted email processing time to get through your Inbox. Our statistics show that of the email you receive:

·         50 percent can be deleted or filed.

·         30 percent can be delegated or completed in less than two minutes.

·         20 percent can be deferred to your Task List or Calendar to complete later.

Of course, if you have a backlog of hundreds of messages, it will take time to get to the point where your daily routine keeps you up to date. It's important to get that backlog down, so I would suggest setting blocks of time aside to work through it. Then, you can really enjoy processing your messages every day using the 4 Ds.

More: http://www.microsoft.com/atwork/productivity/email.aspx

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Just friends

If ever the scene had been set, this was it.

A week in Paris. He is strikingly handsome with his classic Californian good looks and a smile that could melt butter, and I am probably at my physical peak, with wavy brown hair, bright blue eyes, and curves that could stop traffic.

Neither of us knew what to expect. After meeting on a humanitarian aid trip in Central America, there was clearly a connection between us that we had neither time nor opportunity to explore. The fact that he moved to Europe the day after our return left us to continue building our relationship online through email and chat.

So as I flew across the Atlantic to visit him during my vacation, the possibilities ran wildly through my head. Friends at home had inundated me with notions that Paris is the city of love, and we would be fools not to be swept away. Pessimism reared its head, too, taunting that I didn't really know this man, and for all I knew he was actually a monstrous human being I would be stranded with for a week.

However, from the time I stepped off of the metro and jumped into his arms until the moment we tearfully said goodbyes at the same station, all speculation was forgotten and the natural flow of "us" prevailed.

There were no impassioned kisses or nights of passion. But there were hours of conversation under the glow of the Eiffel Tower. Barrels of laughter over inside jokes that will never makes sense to anyone but us. Tears over the deepest secrets and pains of our hearts. Comfortable silences that can only happen in the peace of trust. Speculation over the future, our dreams and fears. Confession of our fears and failures. And reassurances that we see each other beyond the facade and to the truth.

And as I returned to anxious friends waiting to hear stories of scandalous Parisian rendezvous, there seemed to be some hint of disappointment. No excitement, no scandal, no drama. As though I had missed out on something.

Although our relationship did not progress or digress as I imagined or feared, I couldn't have written a more perfect story. No, I didn't walk away with a lover, but I now have a friend who is dear to my heart. Who I shared an amazing week with, who holds many of my precious memories, and who knows me and loves me. How could I hope for more?

One moment that resonates with me is of my last night in Paris.

Exhausted from a full week and dreading my departure the next morning, we collapsed onto the bed and looked at each other. His bright blue eyes softly pierced mine with a reassuring knowledge that he knew me, and I knew him, and this was good. As we lay there, I knew that this was right, and what was meant to grow between us had.

"Just friends" is not a disappointment. Sometimes it's exactly what you need.

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Detour to romance

Located in the checkroom in Union Station as I am, I see everybody that comes up the stairs.

Harry came in a little over three years ago and waited at the head of the stairs for the passengers from the 9:05 train.

I remember seeing Harry that first evening. He wasn't much more than a thin, anxious kid then. He was all dressed up and I knew he was meeting his girl and that they would be married twenty minutes after she arrived.

Well, the passengers came up and I had to get busy. I didn't look toward the stairs again until nearly time for the 9:18 and I was very surprised to see that the young fellow was still there.

She didn't come on the 9:18 either, nor on the 9:40, and when the passengers from the 10:02 had all arrived and left, Harry was looking pretty desperate. Pretty soon he came close to my window so I called out and asked him what she looked like.

"She's small and dark," he said, "and nineteen years old and very neat in the way she walks. She has a face," he said, thinking a minute, "that has lots of spirit. I mean she can get mad but she never stays mad for long, and her eyebrows come to a little point in the middle. She's got a brown fur, but maybe she isn't wearing it."

I couldn't remember seeing anybody like that.

He showed me the telegram he'd received: ARRIVE THURSDAY. MEET ME STATION. LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE. MAY. It was from Omaha, Nebraska.

"Well," I finally said, "why don't you phone to your home? She's probably called there if she got in ahead of you."

He gave me a sick look. "I've only been in town two days. We were going to meet and then drive down South where I've got a job. She hasn't any address for me." He touched the telegram.

When I came on duty the next day he was still there and came over as soon as he saw me.

"Did she work anywhere?" I asked.

He nodded. "She was a typist. I telegraphed her former boss. All they know is that she left her job to get married."

Harry met every train for the next three or four days. Of course, the railroad lines made a routine checkup and the police looked into the case. But nobody was any real help. I could see that they all figured that May had simply played a trick on him. But I never believed that, somehow.

One day, after about two weeks, Harry and I were talking and I told him about my theory. "If you'll just wait long enough," I said, "you'll see her coming up those stairs some day." He turned and looked at the stairs as though he had never seen them before.

The next day when I came to work Harry was behind the counter of Tony's magazine stand. He looked at me rather sheepishly and said, "Well, I had to get a job somewhere, didn't I?"

So he began to work as a clerk for Tony. We never spoke of May anymore and neither of us ever mentioned my theory. But I noticed that Harry always saw every person who came up the stairs.

Toward the end of the year Tony was killed in some argument over gambling, and Tony's widow left Harry in complete charge of the magazine stand. And when she got married again some time later, Harry bought the stand from her. He borrowed money and installed a soda fountain and pretty soon he had a very nice little business.

Then came yesterday. I heard a cry and a lot of things falling. The cry was from Harry and the things falling were a lot of dolls and other things which he had upset while he was jumping over the counter. He ran across and grabbed a girl not ten feet from my window. She was small and dark and her eyebrows came to a little point in the middle.

For a while they just hung there to each other laughing and crying and saying things without meaning. She'd say a few words like, "It was the bus station I meant" and he'd kiss her speechless and tell her the many things he had done to find her. What apparently had happeded three years before was that May had come by bus, not by train, and in her telegram she meant "bus station," not "railroad station." She had waited at the bus station for days and had spent all her money trying to find Harry. Finally she got a job typing.

"What?" said Harry. "Have you been working in town? All the time?"

She nodded.

"Well, Heavens. Didn't you ever come down here to the station?" He pointed across to his magazine stand. "I've been there all the time. I own it. I've watched everybody that came up the stairs."

She began to look a little pale. Pretty soon she looked over at the stairs and said in a weak voice, "I never came up the stairs before. You see, I went out of town yesterday on a short business trip. Oh, Harry!" Then she threw her arms around his neck and really began to cry.

After a minute she backed away and pointed very stiffly toward the north end of the station. "Harry, for three years, for three solid years, I've been right over there working right in this very station, typing, in the office of the stationmaster."

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Friends forever

Dear Arizona,

My friend is moving in a month―and not just to a different neighborhood, but to a whole different country! I'm so sad, I can hardly think about anything else. I know you can't make my friend's family stay, but I'm hoping you'll at least have some helpful ideas. ―Already Lonely in London

Dear Already Lonely,

The first thing I want to say is―I'm so sorry your friend is moving!

The second thing I want to say is-are you from London, as in London, England? That is so exciting! Have you ever seen the Queen? Is it true that people there drive on the left side of the road? How big is Big Ben, really?

OK,I guess I should stop asking questions and get back to your letter-which reminds me of how beyond and I was when my friend Elizabeth had to move.

I met Elizabeth in my very first karate class. I was the only new kid in the class. Everyone else knew a lot of the moves already and had yellow or orange belts.

I had a total beginner's white belt and felt unbearably nervous the whole way through the class. I tried my hardest to follow along, but everything was way harder than I thought it would be.

Afterward, as I was putting on my shoes, I was thinking, There is no way I am ever coming back to karate!

And that's when I met Elizabeth.

"You did great!" I laughed. "I was so clueless!"

"That's how I felt at first, too," she said. "If you want, I can help you practice."

"Really?" I said.

"Sure. By the way, I'm Elizabeth." She scribbled on the back of a karate schedule. "Here's my number."

"Wow, that's so nice of you!" I said.

She smiled. "No problem."

Anyway, to make a long story short, I called her a few days later, and we've been amazing friends ever since.

Now for the sad part. Not very long ago, Elizabeth had to move. Her family still lives in California, but if you know anything about my state, then you know it's gigantic. And I'm not positive about the exact geographic details, but the distance Elizabeth moved was about the same as if she had moved from London to Paris!

"You can't move!" I screamed when she told me the terrible news.

"I know. That's what I told my parents,"she said. "But they said we don' have a choice. We'e moving in with my grandparents, and I guess it'l be way cheaper than where we live now."

"Wait! I have the perfect solution,"I said. "You and your parents can move in with my family! We can share my room, and it'l be like having a sleepover every single night! I' sure my parents will be totally cool with it."

"That would be so great!" said Elizabeth, then she sighed. "I wish we could do that. But there's no way. My parents also want to be closer to my grandparents, so I think we're definitely going."

So Elizabeth and I had to come up with a Plan B. A would have been, we were actually pretty happy about our solution. Here's what we did.

First, we asked my mom to take a picture of us together and help us print it out regular size and teeny-tiny size .

We put the regular photos in special frames that we decorated Forever. I gave me the frame she decorated.

Then, we cut the teeny-tiny picture of us in half. I put the half with Elizabeth's face in my locket necklace, and she put the half with my face in her locket necklace.

So even though Elizabeth lives miles away and I only get to see her once in a while, our Friends Forever picture frames and lockets really do help with the "missing-you" part.

Besides that, our parents let us e-mail sometimes, and we still get to talk and crack up together on the phone now and then. Also, we love sending each other funny letters and packages filled with goofy surprises.

So, dear Already Lonely, being separated from your friend doesn't have to be as bad as it seems right now. Photos, letters, phone calls, e-mails, and great memories can really and truly make a friend seem closer than he or she is.

I hope these ideas help. As they say in London, "cheers" to you and your friend! And as I like to say…

Ciao for now,

Arizona

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Roadside inferno

Looks like a brush fire, Kim Cooper thought as she spotted an orange glow ahead on Interstate 75. It was near dusk, and she and her husband, Steve, were trucking through northern Kentucky hauling auto parts from Louisville to Detroit for a freight company. Steve, 59, was fast asleep in the truck's living quarters as Kim, 52, drove up to the scene. That's when she saw it was much worse than a brush fire.

"Steve, wake up!" she shouted. "There's a truck on fire!" A big rig had tumbled down an embankment, and flames were crawling across its cab. Kim yanked their truck to the side of the road, and Steve pulled on his clothes. Then he scrambled down the slope.

Inside the burning truck, Ronnie Sanders, 38, was fighting for his life. He'd been running a heavy load of tractors and forklifts from Georgia to Indianapolis when a Grand Caravan in front of him stopped suddenly in traffic on the icy road. As Ronnie bore down, he could see children in the backseat. The truck's bulk would probably protect him from the worst of the impact, but the momentum of 23 tons would likely crush everyone inside the van.

"In Kentucky, the hills are steep, but at that moment, I didn't think about it," he says of that evening last November. "I figured instead of killing other people, I'd just put the truck in the ditch." He jerked the wheel to the right, somehow keeping the truck upright as it plowed 60 feet down the embankment. At the bottom, rocks pierced a fuel tank, which ignited. A tree branch smashed through the windshield and knocked Ronnie unconscious. He came to a couple of minutes later to find the cab in flames and his legs on fire.

Ronnie yelled for help as he struggled to escape. But the cab was smashed in, and try as he might, he couldn't untangle himself from his seat belt.

As Steve bolted down the slope, he could hear Ronnie's cries ahead. Then a thundering sound erupted behind him.

A Ford Taurus, which had lost control in the melee above, had skidded off the highway and was now barreling down the slope directly at him. With no time to dive out of the way, he leaped upward and sailed over the car's hood.

The Taurus came to a halt close to the truck. Kim was already scrambling toward the car. Its passengers appeared shaken but unharmed as she helped maneuver the car away from the burning truck. Meanwhile, Steve dashed to Ronnie, who was dangling headfirst from the passenger door. Ronnie had used his pocketknife to cut himself free from the driver's-side seat belt only to get his boot ensnared in another one. Steve climbed into the burning cab to free him.

"All that was going through my mind was, My God, I do not want to be here," Steve recalls. "It was so hot, I could hardly stand it."

He tried three times to pull Ronnie out before finally freeing him. But Ronnie's legs were still burning, so Steve laid him on the ground, ripped off his own shirt, and beat the flames with it. He'd managed to drag him about 20 yards when one of the truck's 150-gallon fuel tanks exploded.

"It was like a cannon blast," says Steve. "The percussive force hurt my chest. It just picked me up and blew me back." Fortunately, the explosion was aimed skyward.

Steve got up and peeled off what was left of Ronnie's smoldering jeans and held his hand while they waited for the ambulance, as Kim raced up and down the slope, grabbing wet towels and a blanket.

Both Steve and Ronnie paid a price for risking their lives for strangers. Ronnie spent two months in the hospital and received skin grafts on both of his legs. He now wears compression garments for his scars and gets physical therapy twice a week. "If Steve hadn't done what he did, I probably would have been toast," he says. Steve suffered smoke inhalation and minor burns, and shrapnel from the explosion broke a tooth.

In February, the Coopers received a Hero of the Highway award from the Open Road Foundation for rescuing an injured driver. Steve insists Ronnie is the real hero: "If he hadn't gone into the ditch, he would have hit that van. It was his decision to drive off the road."

"I feel pretty good about it," says Ronnie. "A lot of people could have been hurt."

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Chilly Today, Hot Tamale

"It's my own fault." Carl Fenter tugged his jacket closer against the abnormal bite of cold morning wind. "The rest of the family is home, where it's warm."

Just another one of his brilliant ideas - a big tamale feast after tonight's Christmas Eve service at church - and look where it landed him: waiting in a line 50 people deep.

Who would've guessed that every tamale shop in the city would be sold out the day before Christmas? But they were, as Carl knew. He'd been driving all over El Paso that morning. Determined to bring home the tamales, Carl tried one last tienda, an old favorite out in Canutillo.

When he arrived, a fresh batch was due off the steamer in 45 minutes. Taking his place at the end of the snaking line of tamale-seekers, he watched the woman in front of him remove her jacket to drape around her shivering youngster. It wasn't long before she, too, shuddered in the chilly wind. After only a moment's hesitation, Carl shed his own jacket and offered it to the grateful mother.

Together, they cheered when the line crept forward at last, and smiling people exited the shop toting steamy bags. Finally, Carl got inside the door and inched his way closer to the counter, the woman now first in line.

"Sorry folks," the clerk announced, "that's the last of the tamales."

"No way!" Carl groaned with everyone else lined up behind him.

"But," stressed the man at the counter, "we'll have a final batch ready in, oh, about two hours."

Defeated, Carl backed away, but the young mother grabbed his arm.

"You're leaving?"

"I have to," Carl glanced at his watch. "I promised to put up luminarias at my church."

"I'll get your order of tamales and bring them to your house."

Carl's brow furrowed. "I couldn't ask you to do that."

"But it's the least I can do. You lent me your coat." Her smile overrode his objections. "Just give me your address." She and her little girl settled in for the long wait.

And at exactly noon on Christmas Eve, they delivered four dozen fragrant tamales - along with Carl's brown jacket - to his home.

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