Category: Writing

Essay: When the USPS works faster than the internet or the phone.

On Saturday morning, I tried to stop my paper before I went on vacation.  An hour later, I was furiously typing the letter below.
Dear Oregonian Reader Services,
I am going away for a few days and would like to stop my paper. This used to be a matter of dialing the number in the paper, talking to a very nice person and telling them the dates I wished to stop my newspaper subscription. Then it became an automated voice, which was not as pleasant, but got the job done. Recently, I received information of how to set up my account online and I did so. I chose a password according to your incredibly labyrinthine—and unnecessary—specifications and then I emailed myself the password so I would not forget.
Today I remembered I needed to stop the paper. I dialed the phone number listed in the paper and found the line was busy. The automated lady nicely offered to keep dialing for only 75 cents, but I figured since the easiest avenue was closed to me, I would log on and use the online service I had already prepped for.
When I entered my email and password, I was told that they did not match. I chalked it up to my error—after all, I may have noted it incorrectly. I then used the “forgot password” link. The email that was sent DID NOT INCLUDE A PASSWORD. Instead, it prompted me to log on and then I could change my password. However, since there was no password forthcoming, I was unable to do that. I tried the phone number a few more times, but the line continued to be busy.
I then used the password again and this time the email contained a password. I copied and pasted it into the password field, only to find that your system, the one who just sent me the new password, told me that the username and password DID NOT MATCH. I enclose a copy of the emails for your perusal. I then searched the site for a way to email my request, but was stopped by the same email and password conundrum.
I feel I have made a good faith effort to put a vacation stop on my paper. Seeing as my paper will be delivered despite my efforts, I request 1) a refund for the papers delivered Sunday March 25 through Tuesday, March 27. 2)Some sort of confirmation that you will do this, contact information below. 3)Either an upgrade of your web service so it works, or an increase in the number of phone lines your company uses.
Sincerely,
Patricia Collins
[email address was here] (note that there is no complex log on procedure necessary to contact me)
[phone number was here]
When I arrived home on Tuesday night, I found a paper was delivered on Sunday and another on Monday.  There was no paper on Tuesday and none arrived on Wednesday.  I called on Wednesday and was able to get through.  The nice man who helped me helpfully told me that a complaint had been lodged, but that there was no hold on my paper and he wasn’t sure why it had not come for two days.  He promised to give me a credit (which, come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve received) and he would get my paper started.  
I enjoy that I explicitly stated my needs in my letter (even handily numbered) and the company was not able to meet any of them.  This is where I would love to cancel my subscription, but I need the paper, so I must put up with their shenanigans.  But it’s times like these that I wonder if this  is the type of efficient company “the government” is supposed to model itself after.

Essay: Mrs. Brown

It would be incorrect to say that Mrs. Brown taught me how to cook. This is because I was a regular in the kitchen most nights when my mother made dinner. Observation, as well as increasingly complex sous chef duties, probably did more for my cooking skills than Mrs. Brown ever did. But cooking was an everyday thing in our house, whereas Mrs. Brown’s cooking lessons were a unique experience. I think it was the short period of time and the fact that I was “officially” learning how to cook that keeps me remembering so many moments from those lessons.
I came to Mrs. Brown—like so many things when I was young—through my friend Stephanie, who lived across the street. Stephanie was two years older, incredibly curious and had an iron will, so when she got the idea to do something, we usually did it. At some point, she decided she wanted to do 4-H and so her grandmother, Mrs. Brown, was recruited as teacher. Our club was quite small as I recall, perhaps only consisting of Stephanie and myself, though there may have been one other student.

Mrs. Brown was a small woman, with a head of tight curls and an expression on her face that implied her life hadn’t quite worked out the way she envisioned, but that she was carrying on, regardless. She was no nonsense, but kind and though she was not looking to entertain us, I think enjoyed teaching us to cook.
We worked through a colorful 4-H workbook and learned the basics of cooking: reading a recipe, proper measuring, techniques for chopping and mixing. The workbook showed a picture of a boy squatting down to see the proper level of the liquid in the liquid measuring cup. This was a revelation to me as we always just held the cup at eye level in my house. I still hold the liquid measuring cup aloft today, though generally the picture flashes through my head and a twinge of guilt shoots through my body because I know I’m not using the proper technique.

I can recall Mrs. Brown instructing us to never chop directly on the counter, “I’ve had friends with new countertops who just started chopping away on them, and in no time at all they were ruined.” I locked that bit of advice away. She also cautioned us never to put a hot pan on the counter as it could scorch the counter. “I made the mistake of doing that once and had to live with the scorch mark for years.” To this day I cannot bring myself to set even a warm pot on the counter.

There was also a lesson in the proper way to wrap a sandwich. This was confusing to me as I’d been carefully folding my sandwiches into Saran Wrap for years, but according to our curriculum, we needed to use waxed paper, draw the ends together and roll them over and over until they reached the sandwich, tucking the ends underneath. I found this complex, and entirely unnecessary due to the Saran Wrap’s clingy powers. It was also fun in an old fashioned way, like shaking cream in a jar to make butter. Interestingly, today wrapping sandwiches is when I most often think of Mrs. Brown. I’ve switched back to waxed paper (wax and paper equal better for the environment than plastic) and always feel a bit of mirth thinking of Mrs. Brown explaining about her daughter, Stephanie’s mom: “Janet used to always wish I would buy the saran wrap—but the waxed paper was much cheaper.” Janet confirmed this to be true when she picked us up that day.

The food we cooked was generally normal American starter cooking food like muffins, but the 4-H curriculum introduced my family to stir-fry. We made stir-fry from that recipe weekly for the rest of my childhood and adolescence.

When our cooking lessons ended, Stephanie’s interest had moved on to other things, a different friend and I carried on with 4-H and Mrs. Brown, learning how to sew a nightgown. Though my interest in sewing waxes and wanes, cooking is something I still enjoy on a regular basis and I’m thankful for the lessons Mrs. Brown taught me.

Essay: Why I hate the song “Lean on Me”

I know a lot of you out there are fans, what with Rolling Stone naming it one of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, and with apologies to Bill Withers who wrote the song, but here is why I can’t stand it.

Its universality, combined with its simple lyrics, means that everyone knows the song and that it applies to nearly every situation. For example, each year the high school students at the church I attend produce a Sunday service for the congregation. The theme each year is tied to a few of the Unitarian Universalist principles. I was an advisor for the youth group for seven years and I can tell you that when brainstorming music for the service, no matter what the principle, someone always suggested “Lean on Me,” usually to excited approval. A free and responsible search for truth and meaning? (Principle 3) “Lean on Me!” Justice, equity and compassion in human relations? (Principle 2) “Lean on Me!” The right of consciousness and the use of the democratic process within our congregation and society at large? (Principle five) “Lean on Me!” I no longer am a youth advisor, but in youth service last week, there was my old friend, “Lean on Me” to accompany the first and seventh principles (If you are wondering, they are: the inherent worth and dignity of every person; and, respect for the interdependent web of all existence for which we are a part.) It got so that I wondered if a song that can fit so many different ideas is really saying much at all.

Secondly, the lyrics are pretty sub-par. Withers starts out okay, with the reminder that we all have pain and sorrow. But then, if we are wise, we supposedly know that there’s always tomorrow? What does that mean? Tomorrow with more pain and sorrow? Or just that, there is a tomorrow, that should be good enough news for us all? No matter, because he quickly leads in to his most excellent chorus, which is probably the main reason Rolling Stone and everyone else likes the song. It is a very good chorus. But then the second verse is quite awful, the worst one: It begins with the okay message that one should swallow one’s pride if there are things that one needs to borrow, but then a very bad rhyme scheme of “for, no one can fill/those of your needs/that you don’t let show.” Withers wisely quickly returns to the chorus. I do have to give it props for the next verse. It always conjures up a wheelbarrow in my mind. It is rare that yard tools make an appearance in the music I listen to.

Like many songs with few lyrics, it spends a lot of time repeating them over and over. Not only is this an example of lazy songwriting, it also drives up the “ear worm” factor. Ear worms, as anyone who has been through the “It’s a Small World” ride at Disneyland knows, are bits of songs that play repeatedly in your head. And the ear worm factor for “Lean on Me” is very high. In fact, I’m taking a chance writing this essay, that it won’t lodge itself in there for the next week or so. There comes a point when the catchiness of the song becomes a problem, not a good thing and this song crossed that point some time ago for me.

So continue to enjoy “Lean on Me” if you must, but please keep it far, far away from me.

Essay: In praise of the 32 hour work week

I work 32 hours a week and have for several years now. I love it and I think it is time for more businesses to rethink what a “standard” week looks like.

I have had a lot of jobs over the years and the one thing that all of my full-time jobs had in common is that there was not enough work to keep me busy full time. I am efficient in my work and do not like to mess around, which may contribute to my quick completion of all the duties of my position. And when I did what I should and asked for more work I never was assigned any additional, nor were my ideas for me to increase my workload approved. In previous positions this led me to many frustrating hours of aimless Internet surfing and eventually, a new position at a new company where the problem would repeat itself. In my current job, my plan to work less was approved.

I have taken a 20% pay cut which was worth it to trade in eight hours of aimless Internet surfing for time that is my own. I still qualify for full-time benefits, and my employer gets a happier employee doing the exact same amount of work for less money.

I physically have to be at my job every day as I just can not get out of recess duty one day per week and so I work five days, but leave early on four of them. This has been a fabulous schedule for me as it gets me up and going five days per week, but with built in free time four days per week. It feels great to leave at 1:30 on three of those days.

So why do we have to work 40 hours per week? I’m lucky that this job pays the full cost of my benefits; at many companies employees must work 40 hours to receive any benefits at all. But maybe we should have a rethinking of what “full time” really means. How much of the American work force is stretching their workload to fit an eight hour day just to qualify for the health insurance? How much money are companies wasting on employees who are not actually working at work? Because our view of “full time work” comes from a “40 hours per week” lens perhaps companies are missing out on making positions more flexible. If more companies employed more people who did their jobs in less than 40 hours perhaps more people could be employed.

My reduced work schedule has benefited both myself and my employer. Let’s open our minds to a “full time” work week of less than 40 hours. Try it on and see how it feels.

Essay: So you are going to see the movie adaptation of a book you have read.

Brace yourself. What you are about to see on the screen will be different than what you read on the page. The book world is limited only by the author’s imagination, has only one puppet master (the author), and the narrative is not hemmed in by the pesky human need to go to the bathroom, thus can extend longer than two hours. Movies? They are limited by what computers and movie magic can create, have many puppet masters and must tell their story comprehensively, succinctly and briefly. They are two different animals. Here are three tips for successful viewing of your book-to-movie adaptation.

Let go of the book. Though it is rare, movies sometimes use novels as a jumping off point to tell an entirely different story. So the story you read might not be the story you watch. Movies also need to condense narratives, eliminate characters and change endings. What you read will not be what you see, so just let it go right now.

Realize that these are two mediums. A book where we mostly live in the character’s head will probably not make a very good movie. (A-hem Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close) Books are a medium of “telling.” They use words to let us into their world and the words can be used in a variety of ways: jumping into various characters’ heads to capture their thoughts, giving hefty background plot using a narrator, painting elaborate portraits of families, landscapes, careers. Movies tell by showing. Sometimes we get a voice over, to varying success, but mostly movies reveal things by showing us things: through dialogue, through action, through picture or the classic montage. Remember that how you learned about things in the book might not be revealed in the same way in the movie. It can be frustrating, but it’s necessary and sometimes the movie can explain things better than the book did.

Stop keeping score. It’s hard, but the more you forget you ever read the book, the more you can lose yourself in the movie. Sure, the movie people may have eliminated several characters, including your favorite, but just let it go. What have they done in place of those characters? Were those characters necessary to the plot of the story the movie is telling? The time for comparing the book movie format is after you have watched the movie. If you are too caught up in the fact that the main character is driving the wrong car, you might miss an extra detail the movie brings out that was skimmed over in the book.

As someone who loves both books and movies, I can say that I nearly always find the book a superior method of storytelling than the movie adaptation. But consuming both the book and the movie allows for interesting contrast. It also tends to be a nice commentary about society and allows for a juicy discussion of just what is up with Hollywood that they would have made exactly the movie they did. And once in a great while a movie will elevate your book into something really marvelous. All of those are reasons to take in both the book and the movie.

Essay: Growing your first garden

Depending on where you live, spring is around the corner. The excitement is building because winter is nearly over and this spring you will plant your first garden. I am excited for you too. And here is some unsolicited advice for you to digest while it is still too cold to muck in the yard.

1. Start very small

It is very tempting, when looking through the seeds catalogs, or spinning through the rack at your hardware or home improvement store, to purchase a grocery store’s worth of vegetable seeds and bring them home. I did this my first year, and still struggle with not buying too much seed. In January and February there is so much potential that it is easy to overdo your plans. But if this is your very first year, I recommend choosing one item (yes one!) that you would like to grow. For many people that will be tomatoes and those are a great choice, but given our cold summers the past two years, I would warn residents of Portland away from the tomato as a monocrop. Maybe get one plant (thus breaking my first rule right off) and then choosing another item for your main crop. My suggestion: kale. It’s delicious and nutritious and retains much of its weedy “I will grow anywhere” roots, which increases your chance of success.

2. Pay attention to soil quality

If you want a good crop, you need good soil. This was something I had absolutely no understanding of when I first entered into gardening. I thought dirt was dirt. However, unless you are particularly blessed, the soil where you want to plant your garden is probably lacking. Grab a handful of soil and make a ball in your fist. Then press your thumb into that ball. Does it fall apart into a lovely mound of humus? You have won the soil lottery. Did it stay in a ball? You’ve got too much clay. Did it never make a ball in the first place? You’ve got too much sand. You need to fix your soil. How do you do that? You:

3. Read a lot

My advice is to find your local gardening guru and read their book. In the Portland area, that guy is Steve Solomon and I recommend Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades, as well as his other books. In it, you will learn that living in Portland, you will most likely never produce an abundant eggplant crop. But he does point you in the right direction (kale! Among other things.) You can stick with just one book, or you can dip your nose into any of the following recommendations.

If you’ve ignored advice point number one and are growing more than one thing, I recommend One Magic Square by Lolo Houbein. She emphasizes you start small, with one four-foot-by-four-foot square, but she has many “recipes” for squares that provide a complete salad. If you are looking to survive, Steve Solomon’s Gardening When it Counts is an excellent book, because its focus is on spending as little money as possible when gardening. I believe in a closed loop system so I recommend The Sustainable Garden for beginners (if you follow this plan you will be not following my advice about starting small) and How to Grow More Vegetables for the next year. Both are by John Jeavons. For those interested in growing food for survival, Carol Deppe’s The Resilient Gardener focuses on five crops: beans, corn, squash, potatoes and ducks. She’s a wealth of information and full of good advice. Ideally you could start with one crop and add a new one each year.

4. Pay more for high quality materials.

Buy your tools from local toolmakers (if they exist, and if they are quality) and your seed from small local seed houses, not the big box home improvement centers. Local seed houses (if they exist in your area) will have seed that fits your climate better than others. I buy from Nichol’s Garden Nursery, Territorial Seed, Carol Deppe’s Fertile Valley Seed (tiny seed breeder and producer) and Bountiful Gardens (not local, but full of heirloom, open pollinated seed).

If you are buying your soil or buying amendments, buy it from your local garden center, not your local big box home improvement center. Seek out your local Master Gardeners for advice about supplies. They usually have hot lines you can call with questions.

5. Remember that if you have success, you will have to eat all that produce.

The lesson I learn every year is that I’ve got to deal with what I grow. Last year it was the 35 heads of lettuce that all matured and were ready for eating at the same time. I ate a lot of salads over two weeks, gave a lot away, and let much too much bolt. Bear in mind that the produce you grow will most likely have to go through a bit of processing to look like the produce you buy at the market. The kale grown in your yard will not be rinsed of all dirt and bugs and bound in a neat twist tie. You get to do that. There are days when buying the same item at the store seems much, much easier than walking into the backyard to harvest. In addition, some things always want to ripen at the most inconvenient times. I would love for tomatoes to peak in early August, as that is the time I could best process them, but here, if they ripen at all, it is in the thick of September, which is a crazy busy time for me. I haven’t processed tomatoes in several years for just that reason. So I minimize my tomato efforts and maximize my kale, collard and beet efforts, all of which can sit happily waiting for me to get around to them. Which brings me back to my original point:

6. Start small.

If you don’t over-plant, you won’t get overwhelmed which means you won’t be overburdened at the end of the season, allowing you to expand (or maintain) your gardening empire next year.

Happy dirt!

Essay: In praise of Darlene

I watched the television show Roseanne for a few seasons and enjoyed it for its irreverent humor and the fact that the cast of characters didn’t have entirely new outfits every single episode. (The regular appearance of wardrobe items made the show more “real” to me than non-décor “décor” or the factory Rosanne worked in.) I have not seen the show since the early 90s, but the other day I was thinking about Darlene and how much she meant to me as an adolescent.
Becky, the Connor family’s older daughter, was the girl I knew I was supposed to be. Becky spent hours on her hair, fashion and makeup and did what she could to fit in with the popular people and to get boys to like her. She was “typical American girl” right down to the –y ending of her name, so popular with girls in the 80s.
Darlene was just Darlene. Not only did she sport that out-of-fashion first name, she was a tomboy, flopped onto the couch in her jeans and lacked any accessories or hairstyles to perk up her personality. Darlene really just wanted to be Darlene. She was flip and funny and found most of the things her sister did ridiculous. I will forget Darlene asking Becky about kissing.
“Why do you have your mouth open?” Darlene asked in response to Becky’s illustrative pose.
“So he can put his tongue in my mouth,” Becky replied to Darlene’s disgust. As someone who at that point had never been kissed, I related to her reaction.
Though Darlene’s life appealed to me, I followed the Becky path by reading Teen Magazines for several years of my adolescence. I stopped when I realized that every other month I was treated to an article describing how to give myself a manicure. I did my best to make myself attractive, though I always felt—much like Becky—that I never had quite the right clothing. My name even ended with the appropriate –y ending. I wasn’t overtly trying to fit in and run with the popular people, but I certainly didn’t want to stray far enough from the norm to draw attention to myself as being weird.
Adolescent culture promotes conformity so strongly—in your own crowd, at the very least, and ideally the greater group. I had many examples from television of how I should act and the message was generally the same: do what you can to fit in; boys won’t like you if you are too different. But there were beacons of hope scattered here and there on the landscape. Darlene was one.
To this day I have incredibly warm feelings for Sara Gilbert, perking up whenever she appears on screen. Like many people, I got through adolescence as best I could. Under my thin adolescent veneer of self-confidence I looked everywhere for examples of how to be. I got lessons from the usual: friends, family, teachers, books. It was nice, every once in a while, to see examples in the media of who I might be.
Postscript. My time watching Roseanne was short, lasting only a few years until I got my first job or possibly my first boyfriend. But the show was on for quite some time and I have no idea how Darlene turned out. Did she stay cool? I hope so, but I’m not willing to watch the entire series to find out.

Essay: Nerdfighters!

Matt and I are Nerdfighters, and we were with our people for a few hours on Sunday. Nerdfighters are fans of John and Hank Green, two brothers who post video logs weekly on their YouTube channel. If I posted a regular video log people would have exciting insights to my laundry processes and the fact that I go through long stages of avoiding housework. But John Green is a writer of young adult books and Hank Green—among other things—plays guitar and writes funny songs and so their video posts are fun and funny and they have tons of fans.
The Vlogbrothers (it seems odd to call them the Green Brothers) are unapologetically smart and embrace their intelligence in a way I don’t often see on the Internet. Their full-on embrace of all their nerdy passions attract other nerds. There’s a vocabulary all its own (Nerdfighters, Nerdfiteria, French the Llama, etc.) and a hand signal and t-shirts and challenges to do good things in the world. John Green’s book tour (with special guest Hank Green) was our first chance to see other Nerdfighters. I had been warned by a friend who saw an earlier show in Virginia that the audience consisted of people much younger than themselves and indeed the majority of our audience looked to be in high school and the rest looked to be in college. The other people were the parents of the high schoolers and a smattering of people like Matt and myself, “actual adult” Nerdfighters.
The show was a mish-mash: a visit from a sock puppet voiced by Hank, a section from John Green’s new book, Hank playing a few songs. After his second song, an audience member yelled “encore” and Hank nicely explained that he was just getting started and that the encore would come at the end of the show. John Green talked about how he came to write his latest book, emphasizing that we have a limited amount of time on earth and using it to follow the lives and romances of the cast members of the Jersey Shore might not be the best use of that limited time.
In some ways it was not at all like a book reading or a concert. During one song Hank stopped abruptly, apologized and explained about the “panic bubble” that sometimes emerges when he plays live for people. There was also a question and answer session where the brother still talking when the time ran out was given a slight shock, something the audience found hilarious
The people attending? Nerds. I just watched a video of the encore song and someone observed that Nerdfighters have something of a “look.” They weren’t sure what it was, but there was one. I would have to agree. People had clearly dressed up for the show, but in a way that struck me as vaguely Canadian in that if the outfit was fun, the colors were off. Or perhaps the colors were great, but the hair was greasy, and not in a “hip” greasy way. I eavesdropped on conversations and found them significantly nerdy. And everyone was so nice. The lines were long and people just patiently waited to get to whatever they were getting to. No one danced during the songs until the very end when someone yelled, “Can we dance?” loud enough so Hank could hear it. Hank gave his blessing and people leaped to their feet. Did you miss that? The audience was so polite that they waited for permission to dance at their own concert.
I watched people throughout the show. There was a skinny high-school looking guy with a haircut and clothes-matching ability that pointed toward a possible homosexual identity. He stood to the side of the theater and danced with himself during every song. There was a somewhat large girl so overcome by the final song she squealed and danced to the front of the venue, her curly hair streaming behind her, tamed by a shiny scarf. There was the girl behind me who was a fan of John Green’s book Paper Towns and knew every word to every song. There was the woman in the front row who happily held the video camera for the final number and then patiently waited for someone to collect it. There were the four girls, spotty and a bit awkward wearing jeans and red shirts emblazoned with John Green’s face on a pizza.
I’ve had enough years to enjoy what makes me nerdy and embrace it rather than wishing I was cooler. But during my years in high school and college I would have loved to have a worldwide group of fellow Nerds to hang with, even if our hanging was mostly virtual. Thank you Vlogbrothers for making nerdy fun.

Essay: Both names, please.

Think back to the last time you introduced yourself, either in person or on the phone. Did you say, “Hello, nice to meet you, my name is [first name] [last name.]” Or did you perhaps say, “Hello, nice to meet you, my name is [first name.]”

My guess, based on my experiences of late, is that you only introduced yourself with your first name. And I’m writing five hundred words about how I think you should also include your last name in that introduction. Here’s why.

I am paid to be an office manager which means I’m the person most likely to answer the phone at my job. Because I work in a school, a lot of the phone calls I answer are parents calling for a variety of reasons: child is sick, child is leaving with someone different today, child is coming in late, child forgot lunch, you get the picture. Inevitably, when I answer, I hear, “Hello, this is Sara.” Or “Hi, Patricia, this is Bill.” And while I reply with a cheery hello, I’m mentally flipping through my Rolodex to figure out which Sara or Bill this is. Most of the time I can identify the caller by the end of the phone call, either because they give me identifying information (Ah! Sara the mother of Sam! Bill the father of Jacob!) or I eventually recognize their voice. Every once in a while I have to ask, “I’m sorry, but which Sara am I talking to?” It’s quite embarrassing and it would save me the trouble of asking or scanning that mental Rolodex if they would just add one more word: their last name.

It makes a difference in person, too, for that same reason. I had a woman volunteer to do lunch duty in September and unfortunately I had not quite learned her name. I regretfully asked, and she told me her first name. It didn’t ring any bells and I searched our parent database, but she was not there. The next day I made a note of which child she brought in to school and cross referenced her and it turns out that the name she told me was her nickname and I only had her formal name in the database. A last name would have cleared up the confusion immediately.

Once upon a time, some curmudgeonly commentator pointed out the lack of last names a few years ago and I took note that I was following the general trend. I do my best to buck the trend, though sometimes it’s awkward as in the following scenario:

New person: “Hi, my name is Mark, nice to meet you.”

Me: “Good to meet you Mark, My name is Patricia Collins.”

And then I feel like the weird one for using two names. But it’s for a cause I believe in, so I persist.

Why do we do it? My theory is that it is part of the general tromping toward informality we’ve been moving to ever since those darn baby boomers decided they didn’t like all those bourgeois trappings, man. No one my age has EVER referred to me as Ms. Collins, because said baby boomers have pretty much verbally beaten that out of us, “Don’t call me Ms. Parker, call me Ann! When I hear Ms. Parker, I start looking around for some old lady.” A socialite once commented that now that people don’t ever call her Mrs. Socialite, she never gets the shared intimacy of saying, “Oh, just call me [first name].” And I couldn’t agree more.

Since we are not referring to each other as Mrs., Mr., and Ms. So-and-so, let’s at least give ourselves the knowledge of each other’s last name. By letting others in on your last name, you are inviting them to join your circle, and giving them valuable information they won’t have to awkwardly ask for later.

Join me in using both names today!