Raise you hand if you remember “Share and Tell” from preschool. One of our annual benefactors – the Martinez Kiwanis club – has a fine adult variation where you can pay “Bragging bucks” to have the group’s attention for a few moments while you say something about you’re proud of or grateful for – like having lunch with your grand-daughter or taking a trip to see a son get married. Then the money goes into a pool with other fees from the meeting and a winning raffle ticket collects the lot!
That’s a pretty nice way to get people to pay attention.
Last time I was at the lunchtime meeting a older man stood up and used his time to say he was “Thankful for the way I had maintained such a positive attitude in representing the beavers.” He hadn’t started out in favor of them, he was from the east coast and knew a lot about the problems they could cause, but he was happy I persisted and had brought so many people to thinking my way.
I was too embarrassed to think much about it at the time, or ask his name afterwards, but every single person there is an important community leader in town in some way, so I knew it was a big deal. Harriet Burt echoed the sentiment as well, which was very rewarding, since I knew she started out on the “no beavers” side of the argument, and she is a former mayor and on the planning commission.
Which is as good as time as any to repeat the truism I have learned over the years. All the nicest people in Martinez are in Kiwanis. Everyone else is in Rotary.
Anyway, this is all preamble to MY SHARE AND TELL, because I spent Sunday trying out a new tool for editing the website. I thought I’d experiment with Ben’s page because I wanted it to look nice. Go peek at how it turned out. Each image or title should link to the page or interview in question. You can access this in the future through the ‘library’ drop down menu or the book in the sidebar.
Isn’t it lovely? I’m working on a new “Our Story” page as well but its still a work in progress. The tool is Elementor and I’m thinking all of our pages need updating. Too bad our website pit crew of exactly one needs more fingers. Maybe the first page of every menu bar?
In the meantime there’s one more Ben-terview I want to mention, this from Derek Jensen at resistance radio. I’m getting a little jaded as an audience but honestly, I thought these were the BEST question! This of course made Ben think more about his answers. Very curious and respectful about the beavers themselves, which I’m always a sucker for. It’s long but I think there are parts of it that are different from anything else you’ll hear.
And it’s all about beavers, need I say more?
