The Present Indicative, 25 November 2025
My Current Mood: Gathering Around the Bird
“For in Truth the Turkey is in Comparison a much more respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America.” Benjamin Franklin to his daughter, Sarah Bache, January 1784
It’s Thanksgiving Week in America. I spent the weekend preparing the house (and family) for more family. No one wants to work the three days before travel, invasion, diplomacy, and gluttony. So instead of what you’ve come to expect, I’m providing my thanks for your time engaging Indicate Marketing with something more colorful. A bird of a different feather.
Ara macao
When I began this intellectual exercise I did not want to parrot what others have parroted from other parrots. Slop on the AI and it’s difficult to pierce the social white noise with what’s original. Every typed newsletter comes from me. Every produced podcast comes from me. I have not used AI for anything thus far under the banner of Indicate Marketing, and as God (or whatever) as my witness, I shall reward your time with humanity. Content will be built by humans for humans. And should there come a day when robots will make the lift lighter, they will be employed on the back end in robotic capacities, leaving us humans to think loftier thoughts.
Trochilus polytmus
Time is never on our side. It’s very easy to flit here and there, collecting what you can, burning calories along the way. Actions speak louder than words, but actions without purpose? Our mission is to show what great narratives accomplish for your products and services. As long as I keep that in mind, then I’ll never miss the mark (hamartia) providing catharsis for your business purification (Thank you, Aristotle).
Cyanocitta cristata
If the parrot talks too much, and the hummingbird flies too much, then what bird should we pattern ourselves after? The intelligent, imitative, innovative, self-starting, bad-tempered blue jay. Native to North America, they compete with squirrels for every acorn, and when provided an opportunity to collaborate, create new types of birds. The grue jay!?! Seriously!?!
Mark Twain shared an anecdote about blue jays in A Tramp Abroad, his best-selling book from its first edition in 1880 until his death thirty years later:
There’s more to a blue-jay than any other creature. He has got more moods, and more different kinds of feelings than other creature; and mind you, whatever a blue-jay feels, he can put into language. And no mere commonplace language, either, but rattling, out-and-out book-talk…
May Indicate Marketing be your blue jay of business. We’ve already got the color.
In Other News…
Everything about Thanksgiving is made up. Marketing to reinforce the American myth. The truth is out there, and so much more interesting. For your edutainment please consider:
“The Plymouth Hero You Should Really Be Thankful for This Thanksgiving,” by John Hanc
A relation or iournall of the beginning and proceedings of the English plantation setled at Plimoth in New England, by certaine English aduenturers both merchants and others… by William Bradford
“Unsullied by Falsehood: Ben Franklin and the Turkey,” by Emily Sneff
All birds in this post were painted by me. A man’s gotta have his hobbies.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Alex Effgen