Captain’s Log - Words are your Wand

This may be way too big and important an idea to launch in the brief amount of time I’ve left for myself to jot a little ditty for page 2, but we’ll get started thinking on this and can always pick it up later if it turns out I don’t do a good job of clearing my thoughts. 

A great man once said, “Words Matter.” 

I forget who — Rush Limbaugh or Mark Twain or Joe Dahl. You know the type. 

Louie Armstrong said, “You can say anything you want on the trombone, but you gotta be careful with words.” 

I feel sort of drenched in words lately. Not unreasonable for what we’re doing with the papers, the magazine, and putting together a company. 

Some people deal in cars, some in cattle, some in guns. Around here, we deal in words. Even my license plate, DCLARIT, is devoted to the idea of using words and using them well. I get asked often if I’m an accountant, and what that really means on my truck. 

Originally, I picked it out of a Leonard Cohen song, that great master of words himself. But what it really means is what you do when you get ready to create. 

You declare your intentions. In the beginning, there was the word. 

Lately, I’ve been working with my dad on a book. He’s been writing for several years, stories about all the horses he’s owned in a life of ranching and horse trading. We’re going through them all and editing now, spending time with each story, each horse, each other. It’s so fun and meaningful, and he understands so vividly how just the right word matters as the tale unfolds. Not unlike the way each piece of equipment — the reins, the bridle, the way you sit on a horse — matters in his world.

At the shop, we’re also working on writing a company “Playbook” to coalesce and instruct our team on all that we do. In the olden days, we called this Standard Operating Procedures, but now we affectionately refer to it as the “If I Get Hit by a Bus” book. It’s a way to get all the little details of everything we do each day, out of my brain and onto the page, where it will help the team we’ve built be able to continue to build this airplane as we continue learning to fly it. 

And the way we do that is with words. We figure out how to put words to all the ideas, and that’s where the magic really happens. 

So, while we bathe ourselves in our craft, finding just the right words for you, we’ll always be right here…

…Keeping you Posted.

Rach