by Marty Coleman | Mar 6, 2010 | Eric Hoffer |
Don’t forget to enter the ‘Guest Blog’ contest from Friday. Look at the napkin drawing from last Friday, decide what would make a good quote to go along with it, then send the quote and a short commentary to me, either by posting it on the blog itself or emailing me at napkindad@martycoleman.com. I will post the napkin again next Friday with the new quote inside and the commentary below, with a link to your blog, email, FB or whatever you have!
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Here is a vintage napkin from way back when, probably 1999 or so.
There are some emotions and feelings I have a hard time recognizing when I feel them. Loneliness is one of those. It hasn’t been until recent years that I knew that was the word that I would use to describe how I felt sometimes. It’s odd realizing you aren’t really even sure you know when it is you are feeling something. Has that happened to you?
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by Marty Coleman | Mar 5, 2010 | Series |
Hello everyone,
Here is your chance to be the first ‘guest blogger’ on the The Napkin Dad!
Here is the idea, come up with a good quote for this drawing, either your own, or someone else’s and write a short commentary (2-3 paragraphs) about the quote.
Post the quote and commentary below or send both to me (napkindad@martycoleman.com) and I will chose from among the best. I will then write the quote in the thought bubble and repost it with the commentary within the week. You will get credit of course, with a link to your blog or whatever you have online. I will add in a short bio about you if you supply it.
Sound like fun? Well, what are you waiting for?
I got the idea from watching a video yesterday about an advertising guy who grew tired of his great ideas being shot down by committee. He decided to do something on his own, with his own money, just for fun and to be creative. Check out Mindful Mimi’s video of the story of what he did. It was an obvious ‘aha’ moment for me, the possibility for my napkins being immediate.
The other connection is my love of the cartoon caption page of The New Yorker. They publish a cartoon with no caption and ask the readers to submit their caption ideas. Then they publish their top three. It’s always fun to think up ideas and to see what others come up with.
Drawing and commentary © Marty Coleman
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by Marty Coleman | Mar 4, 2010 | Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbach, Texas, Waco |
Hello again NapkinDaddians, I am in Waco still, making things run smooth for my daughter as she recovers from a bad back.
This almost looks like a Christmas type napkin, with all the boxes, but it’s apropos anytime of the year. Take it from someone who knows, having a lot of stuff isn’t any more satisfying than having a little bit of stuff. There are conveniences and luxuries and sweets momentary satisfactions indeed that come with having nice stuff. But look at any child who goes out into the world starting out and see if the ones that have everything handed to them are any more satisfied with life than those who go the more usual route of having to start anew as an adult, with just a little.
All four of my daughters are in that situation now. Small apartments and old houses, going to college or starting over, borrowed furniture, thrift store bargains, iffy appliances. They are making their way in the world and I am excited for them. It’s fun to build up a life with old or new stuff, and I am all for it. I am a believer in stuff. But I am not a believer in stuff giving me satisfaction in the long view. My best satisfaction comes from relationships, from helping, from creating. It comes from using stuff to further love and further good. That is when stuff satisfies.
Drawing and commentary © Marty Coleman
“To be satisfied with little is hard, to be satisfied with a lot is impossible.” – Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbach, 1830-1916, Austrian author and Countess
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by Marty Coleman | Mar 3, 2010 | James Baldwin, Texas, Waco |
Hola travelers! The Napkin Dad is on the road in Waco, Texas taking care of my daughter after her back went out. I thought I would take the opportunity to photograph (with my iPhone) the napkins in the situation I find myself in. This was taken at ‘Common Grounds’ a college coffee house near the Baylor University campus.
One of the things people forget is that treating other people well while treating your children badly is not very effective. They can’t just watch you as a witness, they need to see, feel and hear your direct care and love for them. Of course they do if you are a good parent, but even good parents have to make choices in response to childrens’ behavior and attitudes.
Are you the adult? Then prove to them you are one by responding as you would like them to respond to their children when it is their turn. There is no better and more effective way of paying it forward to the world than that.
Of course, the secret they can’t possibly know until they have a child of their own is that what they see as your ‘sacrifice’ or the ‘burden’ they are for you is so trivial compared to the complete and utter privilege it is to be granted the gift of loving someone so completely. They don’t yet know that good parents would rather take care of their children than do anything else in their life. Nothing else has the meaning, the value, the fulfillment of that.
“Children have never been very good at listening to their elders. But they have never failed to imitate them.” – James Baldwin
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by Marty Coleman | Mar 2, 2010 | Bertrand Russell |
What do you think about Gossip?
Drawing by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily
“No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.” – Bertrand Russell
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by Marty Coleman | Mar 1, 2010 | Christianity - 2011-2013, Thornton Wilder |
Here is a little story about eavesdropping and the consequences it engendered.
My daughter loves to evaluate events she has been in, for example a choir show or cheerleading competition in high school. Afterwards we would sit around, maybe at a restaurant, and go over each and every routine we saw, telling her what we thought of them, good and bad. It’s a way for her to figure out her place in the world, to be reassured that she, and the group, did ok, maybe even great. She likes evaluating and critiquing, it helps her make sense of what she went through.
We were doing just that this past weekend after her performance in her College’s annual big singing and dancing extravaganza. Eighteen groups performed over 4 hours. Eight of them were to be chosen to move on and perform next fall at another big event. It is a very intense competition.
We were at Denny’s around midnight going over each group’s performance, giving our opinions of everything from the sets to the dancing, music choices, solo performers, etc. We were laughing about some of them, saying how impressed we were with others. Some were good, some great, some terrible, and we were saying so. We all had different opinions. I liked some that the others thought were terrible. It was interesting comparing notes.
While we were in the middle of this discussion a woman from the table next to us got up and came over to us. She looked angry and said in a pretty huffy manner, ‘Could you please stop talking about these performances. I have friends in that show and you are personally attacking them. I am very offended and I would like you to stop.’ She then went back to her table and sat down. She stared at us. I was facing her and stared back. She had a friend facing away from us who never talked or showed her face.
My ire was up a bit and I responded by saying ‘We will say whatever we want, wherever we want’. She responded ‘You are offensive to me, what you said was a personal attack on a friend of mine.’ Our daughter’s friend had her head on the table by then, our daughter was looking uncomfortable and my wife I knew was wondering where I was headed. I told the woman, ‘what we were doing was not a personal attack, but an honest critique of a performance, our comments were restricted to how they did on stage and we said nothing about them personally.’
She then said ‘You know, we are Christian in this place and you shouldn’t talk like that. You should just say ‘I liked this, I didn’t like that’ and move on.’ Anyone who knows me knows that if someone plays the ‘Christian’ card without knowing what they are talking about (in my opinion obviously) is going to get a response from me. I said ‘Being Christian does not mean you are not allowed to critique and evaluate performances’. It went on for a few more minutes and then we let it go. We continued our critique, albeit in lower voices.
The rest of the evening was taken up with discussing this woman’s comments, her intrusion into our conversation, her eavesdropping in the first place. We were in turn defensive, offended, understanding, compassionate, angry, self-righteous and in hysterics over it.
After we got home, my wife and I discussed our feelings about it. While she was proud of my measured response we also both felt that we perhaps could have said things differently to the woman. Her belligerence at the beginning led the way to my response but we wondered if I couldn’t have gone in a different direction with it.
We could have been more sympathetic to the possibility that the other woman in the booth had been in the show and was really hurt by our comments. We could have been less confrontational back to the woman. In the end I don’t feel bad about my response but I do want to always be able to evaluate honestly who I am and what I do, for my sake, for the sake of the people I interact with and for the sake of my daughters and the example I set for them.
What ideas do you have for how I could have responded, or how you would have?
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman
“There’s nothing like eavesdropping to show you that the world outside your head is different from the world inside your head.” – Thornton Wilder, 1897-1975, American playwright
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