Dear Reader,
I've always been fond of reading inspirational, day-by-day books, but I never read them as the author intended--one page, each day of the year. I usually read several pages at once, and then I might not pick up the book again until the following week. But the first date that I always look at is the one for May 26th, because that's the date of my birthday. I'm not superstitious, but for some reason in the back of my mind, I figure that if someone's desperately trying to get a message to me--pass on some words of wisdom I could benefit from--it would be the perfect day to get my attention. (Can't really say that I've run into anything too profound yet, but I'm still on the lookout.) Anyway, enough of my personal idiosyncrasies.
The book I'm currently reading is A Daily Dose of The American Dream by Alan C. Elliott. Each day there's a one-page story of success, triumph or inspiration. The page dated May 26, was about Kleenex Tissues. Did you know that they were originally intended to be used by women for wiping off their cold cream? But consumers started writing to the Kimberly-Clark company telling them that they were handy-dandy little things to use for blowing their noses. Of course the company couldn't take consumers at their word, and the people at Kimberly-Clark ignored them for a while. But finally, the marketing department conducted a "corporate study" and they found that the consumers did, in fact, know a thing or two and Kleenex tissues became disposable handkerchiefs.
The next page I went to--May 14th--was The Beginnings of EDS. When I read that Ross Perot visited seventy-nine companies before he made his first sale, I felt blessed. It took a lot of knocking on doors for me to get the book clubs started--I even kept a list that I used to refer to as "My Wall of Shame" and on it were listed all of the people that turned me down when I tried to tell them about my idea--but there wasn't anywhere near 79 on it. I'm resilient and persistent. People can tell me "No" and I'll keep on going if I believe in my idea, but I don't know if I could have listened to "No" seventy-nine times in a row.
I suspect that I would have folded at 45 or 50.
Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.
* Congratulations to Christiane P. and Lee R., the winners of a random book from my bookshelf.
Suzanne Beecher
[email protected]
- This month's Penguin Classics is To the Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf. I have a copy of the book to share with a lucky reader, so start reading and enter for your chance to win
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