Is Intelligent Conversation Dead?

I put a post up on my Facebook page the other day and I received several comments telling me they love to engage in intelligent conversation! One friend, Deborah Roberts posted, "I totally rock on a stimulating convo. I find it completely absorbing to find a conversationalist who keeps my interest piqued and my brain engaged. Talk with me about my favorite things and we could go for days. …"

Another person Shared my post and wrote, "But its so rare. We have gotten to the point that if we dont agree then we cant be friends. Its BS"

To which the person who Shared it, replied, "True Buck, plus it is harder all the time to find an intelligent conversationist."

I replied, "It's too bad you guys feel that way because I get into intelligent conversations all the time and they can last for hours! I met a friend on Facebook and one day we talked on FaceTime for six hours and the time flew by. The very next day we talked for four hours! We talk on FaceTime all the time. Whenever I talk to a friend from the past we can talk for hours and the time flies by! I'm convinced you get out of anything what you put into it. It's all about your attitude. I run into people all the time who want to talk to me and we can talk for 15, 20 minutes or longer before they have to go. I had this conversation with my acupuncturist last week, and he didn't want to leave. He had patients to go to, but he said, "It's you Mike, people are interested in what you have to say and they want to share what they have to say. You're willing to listen and its conversations like this that makes you fun to be around." It was spontaneous and I'll see him again on Monday and we won't want to end our conversation again. Just sayin'!"

The interesting thing about these two who were putting down my post was their grammar and spelling was terrible. I am sure they did not think of thing about what they were writing!

Here is my post:

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My contention is that anyone will get back what he or she puts in to something. I can tell you story after story after story about how I get into live, telephone, Facebook, FaceTime and Skype conversations that can last for hours.

My first FaceTime intelligent conversation was with a woman I had never met, Laurie Thiboutot and I chatted for six hours the first day and had another intelligent conversation for four hours the second day. Her husband, Peter came by several times and introduced himself and got so enticed by all the time Laurie was having fun on FaceTime and all of the other activities she was doing with Facebook, he decided to join himself. Now, they are both on Facebook and I FaceTime with him as well! I have never met either one of them and we carry on great, intelligent conversations!

If you read my last post when I talked about my Uncle Bob and how he liked to tell stories you know whenever he would tell stories, I got a few of mine in as well.

I believe I got my storytelling abilities from both sides of my family. The Smith side came from Bob, his uncles and father, and I would have loved to have heard my maternal great-grandfather, William Young tell stories. Unfortunately, he died three years after I was born. There are some incredible stories from him my uncles have told me about how he used to tell living through and after the Great Depression.

Here is a photograph of him in his liquor store that was adjacent to his barbershop which had a back room and high-stakes poker games took place after hours and the windows were covered with black sheets so no one could see the games that involved high stakes as deeds to farms. Grandpa Young took home several of those deeds and gave one to each of his children. That is how my maternal grandmother, Erma got the farm Uncle Bob owns now!

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My Patrick side of the family had great uncle Stanley. He used to tell me incredibly detailed stories about how he accumulated farms during the Great Depression and never admitted to it, but he was also a great beneficiary of the Great Depression because he knew how to play the system.

Here is a wonderful photograph of my paternal grandfather, Benjamin (far right) going from right to left in the lower row were my great-grandmother, Mabel, then my great-grandfather Thomas and lastly, Stanley. The back row from right to left are Hazel, Mabel, then Florence and Alice. The children are all in birth order.

 

This is a very large photograph. If you decide to enlarge it, be prepared to wait a while because of its size:

My grandfather, Ben was killed by lightning in 1942. He was only thirty-seven years old! My great Uncle Stanley used to tell me incredibly detailed stories. His goal was to live to be one hundred. He reached that goal and three weeks later passed away. He had reached his goal and it was if it was time for him to join the rest of his family.

I can only guess he got his storytelling abilities from his father, Charles! I wish I could have listened to stories my grandfather Ben would have had. I'm sure great-grandfather Tom would have been quite a storyteller in his day as well.

Like I said earlier, I get my storytelling abilities from both sides of my family. I have tried to carry on a tradition I love to tell. As many of you know, I tell stories that can last for quite some time; just like this blog post!

I look forward to your comments.

Later,

Mike

Mike Caught A Big Fish!

Mike Smith caught himself one big halibut a few weeks ago! Now, according to a quick Google search of the worlds largest halibut ever caught, this 63 inch, approximately 130 pound halibut is a mere baby!

According to the Weekly World News newspaper on August 16, 2013 the world's largest halibut had to be towed in because the boat the Norwegian fishermen were fishing from was too small to handle the size of the fish!

 That halibut weighed in at 513 pounds, breaking the old record of 419 pounds!

Mike is an avid salmon fishermen and seldom do they fish for halibut.

Here is a picture of Mike's prize possession:

Click on the image to make it larger, as if you really want to!

To give you a little history on why I am posting this particular fish story is Mike is my cousin and makes his home with his wife and new baby girl in Anchorage, Alaska. Mike's given name is Michael Patrick Smith. He is the firstborn boy of Terry and Toni Smith, of Sterling, Alaska.

His father, Terry is three years older than me and gave Mike the fishing bug at an early age.

Between hunting pheasants every fall at the home farm my uncle Bob has kept in the family and turned it into a pheasant hunting, deer game preserve or fishing salmon and other game fish in Alaska, I do not know what they love more. I have a feeling it is whatever is in season is their favorite!

I am excited to see several of them at the annual Smith hunting trip in about a month. This photograph was taken several years ago and shows my uncles Terry, Bob, Bill and the youngest of the family, Tim. It is one of my favorite photographs:

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Terry and Tim will come down from Alaska and Bob will come up from Mississippi.  Bob has been working on the barn to restore it to its original 1901 condition and turning into a hunting lodge. He does not like it when I refer to it as a man cave, so I better call it a hunting lodge. There will be several more family members joining the hunt and lots of stories will be spread in the ten days they will be hunting.

As always, I look forward to your comments.

Later,

Mike

Happy Thanksgiving!

As we all know, Thanksgiving is a time to stop, reflect and give thanks for everything we have been given this last year. I cannot express the good things that happened to me this last year without stopping to take a moment and think about the things I have lost as well.

I have lost a couple good friends to the dreaded "C" word, cancer. It seems the more time goes on, the more we experience different forms of grief in our lives. We have all been there and we will all be there again when we need to mourn the loss of someone dear to us for any one of a number of reasons. As the saying goes, "Time marches on." How true that is! For instance, it is hard for me to believe my father has been gone for more than six years already. I miss him every day.

I have run into several people this year who ask what my dad is up to these days. When my reply is, "He died of mesothelioma July 23, 2006." The usual reaction is one of shock and wanting to know how we got his cancer. That happened several times in September when I was in Worthington for my fortieth high school class reunion and the annual Turkey Day celebration. It also happens when I go to Gopher basketball games and someone who knew him will ask me how he is doing. It happened the first game of the season as I ran into a newly retired man who played basketball for my dad in college.

I also found out one of my friends from Worthington lost his life, as did two extended family members.

That is enough of the sad news.

Some good things happened this year I would like to mention. The first, and biggest news I would like to share is my little brother; Chad got his Drum Wallet patented on April 2, 2013. That was exciting news and his prospects are growing exponentially as sales are picking up and the word is spreading worldwide about this exciting drum accessory. If you are interested in learning more about the Drum Wallet click here. If you cannot get there with that link, click on this site: thedrumwallet.com. If you are a regular reader of my site, you know I have written about Chad and the Drum Wallet before. I am his biggest fan and very proud big brother to see all of his hard work start to pay off in getting the patent approved. 

I have also seen a steady rise in book sales of my book entitled "I Still Believe In Tomorrow" which is available on my website at patcom.com. FYI: they make great gifts for the upcoming holiday season if you happen to be interested. If you order them through me, I will make a personal signing to the intended recipient.

Some of you know of my Mom's brother Bob who is renovating the barn on the home place where mom and her nine siblings were raised. The barn was built in 1901 and for the last six years Bob has been commuting at least twice a year to do work on his man cave/hunting lodge to the point where now it is livable and every November he comes up from Louisiana and other family members come from as far away as Alaska to hunt pheasants and work on Bob's barn.

This year, he brought his wife, Linda and her grandson, Matt and his wife, Felicia. Whenever the barn is full of people, it is difficult to concentrate on any one conversation. However, Matt managed to read a good book in the middle of all the chaos with a conversation going on right behind him. Here is a picture of him focusing intently on his read:

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It was the first time in several years I have been able to make it up to the farm for a weekend of listening to stories and watching memories be made. It is always a great deal of fun listening to family members share memories of growing up in a different time when the barn was used for milking cows, feeding calves and housing horses. Of course, after a hunt, there are always stories of the day that sometimes are debated quite loudly about how someone actually shot or missed a coveted ringneck pheasant! Whenever I take someone with me who has never witnessed time at the Robert Michael Smith Private Game Preserve, they come away stunned and not quite sure of what just happened. However, they always want to go back another time. It is a unique experience!

I am very thankful to my uncle Bob for his commitment, and dogged determination to bring the barn back to life for its new purpose. It is truly a labor of love for him and we all appreciate it greatly! 

I am also thankful for my siblings, their children and my mom for the Thanksgiving celebration we will have tomorrow at Mom's house. All of my siblings will be there except for Tammy. Fortunately, she was just in town for a few days and got to spend a weekend in the barn.

Before I leave I want to share with you a joke I have had for many years and posted it on my Facebook page last year. I hope you enjoy the humor in my cartoon:

Who said turkeys are stupid?

I hope you all travel safely, eat too much good food, enjoy your company, get in at least one tryptophan induced nap and have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday.

As always, I look forward to your comments.

Later,

Mike

The End Of An Era

Imagine you are Karen Aho and you recently married Tom, the love of your life. You are having a conversation about having a family and he asks you how many children you would like to have? Would you say, "four, five, six, seven, — no, let's have fifteen, and twelve of them will be boys who love to play football"?

She goes on to say, "In fact, let's space them apart so we can go to a high school football game every fall Friday night for about a quarter of a century. Yes, let's do that!

"We'll name the Alpha male 'Steve' and have him so he can start playing in about 1989, and go to 'Seth' the Omega will finish in 2012. Yes, I like that!

"Twenty-four years of high school football games, Homecoming dances, parades, countless highs and many lows, winning seasons, losing seasons, even five of them good enough to go and play college football. That is how I want to spend about half of our married life. Yes, Tom, sign me up!"

Does that sound like something a Hollywood screen writer could come up with? I do not think so! But yet it happened in a small consolidated school in Central Minnesota at Dassel-Cokato High School. Read more about the Aho family and their amazing story by clicking here. That Yahoo! Sports article leads you to a good article from the Dassel•Cokato Herald Journal, which you may reach by clicking here. The family picture appears in both articles. The article shows the years the boys attended DCHS. Since I was there in 1989 and 1999, I wonder if Steve or Joel remember anything I said in my assembly?

It would not surprise me if they did remember something. Just today, I came across a woman who remembered my speech from a presentation at her company sixteen years ago!

It is a story of commitment, family, teamwork, mentoring, communication, love and so many more positive family values. This was a fun story to learn and write about. I first learned about the Aho family watching the news last night.

I laid awake thinking about the family and all the lives the boys experienced, including all the other sports they competed in and thought about just what I was going to write. Turns out, as I read what I have just written was not at all what I was going to write. I wonder how many writers experience that phenomena?

As always, I look forward to your comments.

Later,

Mike