Tag: National Good Templar

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Gratitudes 2018, Day 36

After stuffing over 150 newsletters into envelopes this evening, I decided to write a Newsletter Edition of gratitudes tonight:

  1. Microsoft Publisher. “Start with two columns. You want to add a picture? Click this button, move it here, resize it, drag it over here. Want to change articles? Drag the old one to the side of the screen for possible later use, then copy and paste the new one in its place.” Every other month, create the same basic template and start all over again. Suck it, printing press!

  2. Mom’s industrial-sized double-sided color copier. Prints out lots of copies a minute on 11×17 paper so we can do all of the printing and production at home. Suck it, Kinkos!

  3. Mom’s paper folder. There was a time where we made two folds by hand: two sheets of 11×17 paper in half to make an eight-page 8.5×11 newsletter, then fold it in half again (originally into thirds) for stuffing into envelopes. If that first fold wasn’t exact, you could end up with some really crinkled paper. You say there’s a machine that’ll make a perfect first fold for us? Suck it, folding paper by hand! Well, I guess we still have to make the second fold ourselves… dang it!

  4. Self-sealing envelopes. Sure, you could lick over 150 envelopes every other month, but these envelopes have a sticky strip so you can just press the flap down to seal it. Suck it, dry tongues with paper cuts on them!

  5. Our little white plastic basket. Instead of just throwing the envelopes into a gigantic, disorganized pile, we can stack them nicely in this basket, then easily flip through them to make sure we printed the right number and all the envelopes have stamps. Suck it… eh, I think I’m out of things to be hostile towards. I’m just really grateful we have so many tools to make producing and mailing these newsletters faster and easier every year.

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What a nice backhanded compliment!

You may need to settle down with a bowl of popcorn for this blog entry. Hell, I might want to grab some popcorn for this. Depending on how deep I got into the back story, this could take a while. Before we begin, I should introduce you to and/or refresh your memory about a few things.

First off, the National Good Templar (NGT). It’s a national newsletter that gets distributed to all U.S. members (and a few overseas) of IOGT, officially known as the International Organization of Good Templars. Please, please, please note that we have no relationship to the Knights Templar: we’re not religiously affiliated; our major goal is to practice and promote the non-use of drugs and alcohol; it began in Utica, NY in 1851, so no raping, burning and pillaging throughout Europe during the Crusades that I know of.

The previous editor of the NGT was charging an exorbitant amount of money for each issue last year (her own fee plus costs for another company to do the printing, mailing, etc.). For an organization that’s nationwide, we’re pretty small—we can’t support going into the hole $12,000 in one year. Borrowing money from China is not an option. Thus, I decided to throw my hat into the ring: I submitted a bit that was significantly less expensive. (The previous editor sent out a bid of her own several days later that compared the two. It turned out that the totals were really close when she priced mine at eight issues and hers at six.)

I was given the job to produce six issues this year, but I was making a few changes: I’d be using 20-pound paper instead of 80-pound (thinner and lighter) and printing it via my mother’s copier/printer (it’s not professional-grade, but it could eat your personal printer and still have room in the paper tray). I was sending them in envelopes instead of folding them over and putting little sticky tabs on the edges (another reason why we don’t need the 80-pound paper). I also included a section on Page 1 to notify people that after 72 years, they could finally receive their copy of the NGT via email (a .pdf file will look cleaner, smoother, it’ll be in color… all sorts of benefits).

This second part, which is probably a refresher for most of you, is about backhanded compliments. They sound nice, but there’s a hidden layer of insult behind it. Example: “You’re pretty cute for a fat girl.” Yes, he said you’re cute. He also said you’re fat. He might be thinking, “If your face was on a skinny girl, it’d give me nightmares and I’d wake up in a cold sweat, needing something to drink because I threw up a little in my mouth.” But since you’re fat, you’re pretty cute. Backhanded compliment.

With that out of the way, time to bust out the popcorn and see how the story unfolds. Continue reading “What a nice backhanded compliment!”

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