Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Kentucky 4-H note card contest !

As reported by News-Democrat & Leader Online, the Kentucky 4-H organization is running a notecard contest with the winning cards available for purchase in April 2008. There are a number of different age categories and it will be interesting to see who wins...

... but I'm wondering why they don't have different art categories?

By having different art categories, they would have more entries to choose from and more ways for the kids to experience winning (which, I assume, is a big part of the motivation for the contest). If it is simply a way to raise funds... well, I'm very disappointed.

If anyone in Kentucky is reading this and would like to publicize their notecard, please email a digital photo of your submission to theshot [at] gmail [dot] com. (The email address is in a funny form so that computerized spammers will be less likely to find it.)

Best of luck to all the 4-H artists !

Dave Wheeler
Founder, Notewordy.com

P.S. Press release writing suggestion for Gary Michael Templeman, 4-H/Youth Development Extension Agent for Logan County... a web address or telephone number would be helpful as part of the press release. Saying "contact Logan County Cooperative Extension Service" does not give the general public enough information and you are losing out on a large chunk of your potential audience.

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Sympathy during tough times...

Over the past years, we have blogged about how to handle sympathy cards and helped people come up with the appropriate words to write on them. [How-to Sympathy cards here.]

Recently there was a short (but effective) article on lifehack.org about how to handle the "face-t0-face" part of offering sympathy.

When attending the funeral of someone we know, the thought of going up to express our condolences to the friends and relatives of the deceased can often fill us with apprehension - it’s not exactly the kind of experience we go through every day. However, with the right approach it can actually be a very
inwardly rewarding experience.

In [condensed] summary, this is what they had to say...
  • Say it with feeling.

  • Empathise.

  • Show up.

  • Talk about fond memories and good qualities .

  • Write a sympathy notecard.

  • Act from the heart.
Click here to read the full article !