Making choices

Eenie, meenie, miney, moe. One potato, two potato, three potato. You’re it. These are all childish ways to make a choice. Other ways to make a choice might be to check the knowledge or other attributes of the people who are wanting to be chosen. All of these methods have problems but using any of these methods may come closer to the truth than we could imagine.

There are examples where each of the different types of choosing have been used successfully. My recent award was a good example. Each group of the organization had the opportunity to choose a name. That chosen name was approved by all the other members of the organization. Each group had the opportunity to approve the chosen name, at this point the nominee was selected or rejected, to be sent to the larger group of all the chosen nominees from each organization. The board of the larger organization then has received many nominees to consider. Therefore one person is appointed from the many people who have been suggested. This way of choosing is a simple but safe method and in most cases is a better way of choosing than any of the others and that includes voting where everyone does not get a chance to express themselves.

When you talk about one being better than the rest you can’t help thinking about the animal world. Even something as common as most house dogs have their own way of choosing. Two dogs that are not familiar with each other are soon in a fight to see who is the strongest and the best. Even wild animals have their way of meeting each other with a snarl and sometimes a bite.

It’s odd to think that some trees, bushes and flowers also show their supremacy. People are planting new vegetation, but sometimes forget that certain plants may have danger in the type of soil, shade and crowding. In this situation there is no calling for what the other plants think of the abilities of any certain living crop, tree or living object. It’s fortunate that in spite of human beings poor knowledge of the needs of plants that there are so many still living that we call some of them weeds.

I don’t want to brag but it’s been hard not to show the results of one of the ways of choosing. Johannes Brann spent several hours with Sheryl Baer who is president of the Nevada AAUW and even more hours with me to get all the information needed so that those in the chapter have enough knowledge to choose wisely. You can imagine my surprise at their choice when there are many other members in the chapter.

As it is in many organizations the prize should go to Miss Baer and Johannes Brann for their work in getting enough information about people in the small branch of AAUW so it makes the smaller unit show that it is equal to the large ones. This was based upon the information found by these two people and the good work of the total membership.

I started out by saying I didn’t want to brag, but somehow any time you see me I’m carrying the Sunday, May 22, issue of The Nevada Daily Mail folded so that my picture is prominent. Some may think that I was bragging, but I was really trying to give credit where credit is due and let the people in Nevada know that we have an AAUW unit equal to any. The next time you need to make a choice remember the examples I mentioned.