Butler has offered to help you with holiday shopping --- and some of you have requested that advisory service. It occurred to Butler that although people are as individual as snowflakes, there are a few common bonds. And so, because Butler would never reveal a client's name, it seems okay to share a few requests --- and Butler 's suggestions.
Request #1: This exec likes to run and garden and tends to like gifts with meaning. Now that I think about it, he would probably appreciate a charitable contribution made in his name…maybe I can give money to a charity that supports running programs for underprivileged children. Budget: $50 to $100.
Butler 's response:
Butler loves altruism --- and he also believes it should be sweetened with a material reward. So Butler proposes two gifts:
1) a donation to The Heifer Project --- a terrific cause that gives people in rural areas the kinds of animals that will help them be self-reliant. A "share" in a heifer costs $50. A rabbit is $60. Bet you that no one else gives him anything this thoughtful --- or novel.
2) something just for him, a reward for his altruism. He runs? Bet he'd be interested in Bill McKibben's great book about long-distance running, Long Distance: Testing the Limits of Body and Spirit in a Year of Living Strenuously. Or Bill Bryson's oh-so-funny A Walk in the Woods.
Request #2 This executive has a house in Sedona, Arizona and likes the kind of pottery and art indigenous to that area. She probably already owns a lot of that stuff because that's what she gives me as gifts. She also loves Paris and the French countryside. She has had a particularly rough year, so I was thinking something in the “peace, calm, zen” genre. Spa certificates are out; her boyfriend is a masseuse. Budget: $50.
Butler 's response: When they love France, we love them --- there's no end to great books and music set in France. Let's start with a book about the rich folk who more or less invented the Riviera --- and lured Hemingway and Fitzgerald and their ilk down to visit. That's Everybody Was So Young: Gerald and Sara Murphy, a Lost Generation Love Story. And then let's add some French music --- the soundtrack to a movie about a French boy's choir. The film is a big hit in France; it won't be arriving here until February or so. Which gives you a nice little story to tell. The CD: Les Choristes. Or you could give her the Essential Writings of Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist priest and philosopher who mostly lives in France.
