One blog I don’t read as much as I should is Polygon, the Dancing Bear, being the episodic mus­ings of Lawrence Kestenbaum. Mr. Kestenbaum is county clerk for Washtenaw county, in which Ann Arbor is sit­u­ated. I remember seeing left-over Kestenbaum for Clerk lawn  signs when I first arrived in Ann Arbor. He is a first term county clerk, but seems to have raised him­self for the job. He breathes pol­i­tics and liquid election-juice runs in his veins. He writes inter­esting and illu­mi­nating blog posts. He writes well. During the last round of US leg­isla­tive elec­tions, his pos­i­tive assess­ments of the secu­rity and integrity of the local polling system did much to soothe my fear and loathing of the apparent dete­ri­o­ra­tion of American elec­toral mech­a­nisms. Recently he foren­si­cally reassem­bled the voter list for the Michigan rat­i­fi­ca­tion of the repeal of pro­hi­bi­tion, for fun. He also main­tains the Political Graveyard, and writes won­derful and encour­aging memos to his staff at the county clerks office. I would like to receive such memos, and so from now on I will assume that they were also intended for me. For example:

Today is the 198^th birthday of Abraham Lincoln. I’m guessing we’ll be hearing a lot more about him as we get closer to his 200^th.

Lincoln was a lawyer; since he trav­eled a great deal for his prac­tice, the county clerks and court clerks of Illinois (our long-ago pre­de­ces­sors) surely had a lot of con­tact with him during his career. From accounts of people who knew him, he didn’t look majestic or impres­sive. Elihu Washburne wrote:

No one who saw him can forget his per­sonal appear­ance at that time. Tall, angular and awk­ward, he had on a short-waisted, thin swallow-tail coat, a short vest of the same mate­rial, thin pan­taloons, scarcely coming to his ankles, a straw hat and a pair of bro­gans with woolen socks.

No doubt some of the court clerks he dealt with regarded him with pity or con­tempt. But this awk­ward and poorly dressed young man went on to become the greatest pres­i­dent in American history.

There’s no telling which of our cus­tomers might one day do great things. Indeed, some of them already have. Washtenaw County has more than its share of res­i­dents who have written novels, invented tools, dis­cov­ered med­i­cines, com­posed music, engi­neered bridges, or advanced human knowl­edge and progress in a myriad of ways.

And even if they haven’t become nation­ally promi­nent in their fields, a great many more are unsung heroes for their devo­tion to their fam­i­lies, for over­coming per­sonal hand­i­caps, for healing the sick, for fighting fires and crime, for fixing our great net­works of pipes and wires and roads, for ser­vice in our mil­i­tary, for helping make this a great community.

Sometimes we know our cus­tomers and the things they have helped make pos­sible through their lives and work. More often, we don’t know just how much someone has done. And they them­selves don’t know how much they will ulti­mately do for the country, for the com­mu­nity, even for us as individuals.

Treating each and every cus­tomer with cour­tesy and respect is a small but impor­tant way to show our appre­ci­a­tion for all those past and future contributions.

Let’s have a great week!

OK.