Steve,

I am sorry about your grandfather's passing. The story about your dad explains a lot about you and your sense of humor though. He put the motion sensor in the casket! Humor certainly helps at times like these.

Until I read your story, I thought what we put in my grandpa's casket was possibly the most interesting thing anyone had ever been buried with. My grandpa lived for three years after my grandmother passed away and had taken to hanging out at this little general store and talking to the ladies that worked there a lot. As background, I should mention that this is in a little one-stoplight town in South Alabama. He would talk about his lady friends at the store to all of us and we were always afraid he was either A) bothering the poor ladies incessantly or B) possibly on the lookout for a girlfriend.

At the viewing before his funeral, I felt horrible and guilty that I had ever thought either A or B of my grandfather when I met one of these "ladies". She was a good 30+ years younger than him and viewed him as a grandfatherly type herself. She cried and cried as she told me how much everyone at the store loved him and they were always glad to see "Mr. Marvin". With her, she had brought a Coke in the bottle and a moonpie, taped together with a note. This was his favorite snack at the store and he had apparently requested that she bring it for him for the great journey some time previous. In the note, she said she was holding up her end of the bargain. :)

At the end of the viewing, I was concerned, because I did not want the Coke and moonpie to get lost in the shuffle...they were sitting up on a pedestal near the casket. I told my uncle I thought we should put them in the casket with grandpa, as he requested, so we did.

I am so grateful to that lady for bringing her gift...it gave me a happy thought of my grandpa and a good laugh in the midst of my sadness.

I wish you and your family good health and many more laughs from here on out...
Sonya

See . . . . this is my dream. That can just be a smartass and smartassedly raise issues . . . . and then truly smart people can come along and elevate the discussion like Melody and the rest of you always do.

You allow me to realize my dream. You all . . . . . complete me.

Steve

Steve.... You had us at ... hello. :-P

"smartassedly"? Is that a word? I hope you have a copy editor in real life :-))

Steve----sorry to hear about grandad, but amused as usual at the humor you can find in anything. =) There are a lot of people on this earth who'd think there's something wrong with that, but I say it's the only way to make it through life.

I love everyone's ideas about the Catholic communication network. Stories like these make me long for unlimited funds to go thru a master's program somewhere and do a study on "unique communication patterns of the Catholic grieving process." We all toil and sweat most days, trying to make people better communicators and no one is in more awe than ourselves when a system comes along that seems to efffortlessly and effectively move the information along like no Covey seminar or Six Sigma indoctrination ever could---wow!

I'll get to that Catholic grieving process master's thesis right after I go after my first master's wish----analyzing the UK/Irish pub as a hub of neighborhood communication and social bonding, compared to its soulless US counterpart, the franchised sportsbar. Anyhow, the 6 months of research in the Brit Isles would be fun!

Laurel

ps---see you in Chicago for "camp" next month, mr. C =)

Really sorry to here about Gramps passing, Steve.... I'm sure he was a fine man and laughed his ass off when he read your blog entry this week.

Did you inheret your twisted influence from him?!?!

Warmest regards from the not so cold Great White North,

Toby

DATE: 07/26/2005 01:84:2P PM
As Sonya said, my condolences on your loss, Steve.

But, in response to your comments about the Catholic Communication Network, isn't that just another name for "Sam the security guard," the rumor mill, employee grapevine, etc.?

DATE: 07/26/2005 02:81:8P PM
Baptists in small Alabama towns have a similar system to the Catholics. A person dies and the next thing you know, the entire town and extended family and friends from three states over bring food and show up for the services.

How come the "grapevine" gets it right in these sad situations (everyone shows up, food in hand, at the right time), but does not work as effectively in the corporate world (message gets distorted, no one gets the right information or knows where to be at what time)? That's the big mystery to me.

Sonya

DATE: 07/26/2005 19:64:5P PM
I think the grapevine gets in right with bad news because, frankly, it's more interesting.

It's also why if 3 conflicting rumors are floated on a similar subject (call them good news, neutral news, and bad news), people will latch on to the bad and repeat that one, even embellishing a bit for good measure. (i'm talking about business stuff, not necessarily personal tragedy). We think the good news is "spin" and the neutral news is unmemorable at best.

To a certain extent, we have been conditioned to react to strong stimuli. There is so much information fighting for our attention, the bad, the sad, and the ugly are just more likely to get through the filter.

The media news is a reflection (not, in my studied opinion, a cause) of this phenomemon. We claim we like, prefer, want, desire, the positive, good news, but we react to the bad. It motivates us to action. And add a bit of scandal (and lets fact it, people dying (or "cashed it in" I believe is the Crescenzo-ism du jour) is, among other things, scandalous. Did she suffer? What was the cause? I *told* him to stop smoking. I wonder if I am in the will. Will the ex show up at the funeral? Well, you get the idea.

Further cementing my reputation as one black hearted son of a gun, I remain,
Steve N

By the way, LOVED the story. Gotta love gallows humor. I had an (now "cashed in") uncle who had Down's Syndrome (and not a mild case. Couldnt talk, etc), and was in seriously declining health. One family visit, he decides to get out of bed and crawl, for some forever unknown reason, behind the dining room chairs during dinner. This of course led to speculation that he was stealth mode, or, as the Klingons would call it, cloaked. We are all going to hell.

DATE: 07/26/2005 21:41:5P PM
*grins* Humor is divine. What motive would the devil have for creating something that gives so much pleasure and perspective? Think about the platypus for a minute and then tell me God doesn't have a sense of humor. ;)

Sorry to hear about your Grandpa, Steve. I do think the motion sensor bit is pretty funny, though. :D I mean, if you've got to say goodbye, might as well do it with a smile on your face. :)

As for the network, I think that has more to do with the simplicity of the message than anything else. "Grandpa Crescenzo died Tuesday" is very easy to pass on. From there, everyone goes into their own coping mode: search for the obit and funeral notice. Send flowers. Bake casseroles. The basic news is passed around, and everyone left to fill in the rest of the pertinent facts with their own research. Much different than hearing that the company is planning a plant closing in Bakersville and a related expansion in Podunk, the ramifications of which are much harder to grok and generally won't be widely publicized until it's too late to show up at the right place with your metaphorical cassarole.

DATE: 07/26/2005 29:34:1P PM
"Metaphorical casserole" is the name of my next album.

Being raised Catholic, I've seen that network in action a hundred times or more, and it is awe-inspiring. I think a lot of the efficiency, though, is hard to replicate in an office environment -- it works because these people CARE. They want to hear the news, even if it's bad, and then they want to act on it, pass it around, make sure it gets out there for consumption, so that everyone can make it to the wake, funeral, burial, memorial and be with the other people who care.

It would follow (and I think it does, but you can go ahead and correct me from your more significant experience) that workplaces with the highest rate of employee involvement/satisfaction/investment/caring have more effective, efficient grapevines that will function similarly. Of course, they also don't have the communication problems that would lead them to hire your formidable talents in the first place, either, because see above.

And condolences, Steve.

DATE: 07/26/2005 31:61:1P PM
I work at a Catholic hospital and we still don't communicate well. So I don't know if it's the Catholicism that leads to the good communication. Perhaps the lesson here is that we should start having potlucks and drinks at our meetings and people will crawl out of the woodwork to hear the "news." Oh, and hire Mr. Crescenzo (senior) to bring his "whoop whoop" machine for a few yuks.

DATE: 07/27/2005 28:80:4P PM
If "smartassedly" isn't a word, it should be!

DATE: 07/27/2005 32:03:9P PM
Well, it is now. English is a living language, so if we all understand what it means (and I would argue that misinterpretation risk is low on this particular occasion) then yeah, why not?

Just yesterday I spent 10 minutes of my life that I will never get back explaining to my father what that little "i" in front of words meant (i.e. iPod). And even he would understand 'smartassedly' immediately. In fact, he might demonstrate it right away when discussing that little "i" - which for the record, he believes is a sign of dumbassedness.

SN

DATE: 07/27/2005 39:93:7P PM
What a great idea...I'm mailing my mother-in-law a job application to our internal comm department now. Our problems are over!

DATE: 07/27/2005 83:93:3A PM
I cannot take credit for the following comments. They were part of a discussion that was initiated by Steve's recent blog. I thought I would share. And, my sincerest condolences to you and yours Steve.

I think we need to clarify the purpose of our communications. The old model for communication theory was that of Sender -> Receiver -> Feedback. In this model, communication was what happened in the arrows of the diagram. This model is based on the sender being able to control what the receiver does, as measured by the feedback. I think this model lurks in the thoughts of many of those who want better communication, particularly here at ***. We want to be able to send messages, such that the receivers will act in the way that we have intended them to act. Those in the communication theory business refer to this as the command & control model. This model developed with the age of exploration, as a means of telling ships at sea which way to go. It has the legacy of imperialism written all over it. In today's society, this model is broken. No one willingly goes along with a command & control model, we can continue to try, but it will not work.

The models that I'm seeing talked about are not based on the sender/receiver model, but rather are referred to as the ritual model of communication. With the ritual models, the purpose of communication is not command/control, but rather the creation of community. The communicators job is to build reality through experiences that orient participants to their place in the created order. An example: the Catholic church and its former use of the Latin Mass. People did not have to know Latin to understand their place in the created order. They absorbed, what for many/most <?> were meaningless words, but found themselves part of a community of believers through the process. With this model, our task is not about creating control, but finding ways for people to have common experiences which then lead to community. The model here is not sending a message to a ship at sea, but rather sitting around a campfire together telling stories. Doing this makes the storyteller much more vulnerable that the person in the lighthouse. They sit at the fire as an equal, telling their story. Our job as communicators then becomes teaching people how to become storytellers, instead of a command/control orientation.

DATE: 07/28/2005 11:12:2P AM
Sarah wrote:
> workplaces with the highest rate of employee involvement/satisfaction/investment/caring have more effective, efficient grapevines <

I suggest that workplaces with the LOWEST rates will also have very effective and efficient grapevines. And I'll bet the ones in the middle have less effective grapevines.

DATE: 07/28/2005 02:81:6P PM
Tim wrote:
>I suggest that workplaces with the LOWEST rates will also have very effective and efficient grapevines. And I'll bet the ones in the middle have less effective grapevines. <

Necessity is the mother of invention!