December 13, 2009PowerPhrase: Landowner letter explains why beavers do not need pond permits

Filed under: The PowerPhrase of the Week by merylrunion |

Publishers weekly lists some pretty funny reasons why customers reject bookseller’s recommendations. But the most interesting post for me from a SpeakStrong perspective is tangential.

In a letter written to a Pennsylvania governing board, the land owner had been told he didn’t have a permit for the recent ponds built on his property. He wrote a hilarious letter about why the beavers, the pond engineers, didn’t need one.

I can imagine that the tempting response for the homeowner was one of anger. However, humor often takes the bite out of a conflict while hitting home.

Well, I also like this post, which illustrates how wrong our communication assumptions can be.

As a life-long Science Fiction and Fantasy fan, I always loved striking up conversations with my fellow nerds in the SF&F section of the bookshop where I worked. One day I began what I thought was an interesting discussion with a gent there, and recommended several things to him. After a moment he said “You know books that expand your mind, make you want to think, make you question the nature of humanity and wonder why and how we do the things we do? Yeah, I hate that s**t. Gimme something with dinosaurs or a war.”