Last night, I had one of those rare, amazing flashbacks to those moments of pure joy that those of us who are, well, mature usually only remember from our childhoods. Last night our little town of Groton, Mass., continued its year-long 350th birthday celebration with a concert and fireworks on the town field. Since it’s only about a half-mile from our house, my husband and I walked down the old railroad track that has been converted to a walking/biking trail to the field. As the sun set, the kids ran, jumped, and spun to the music–it didn’t seem to matter whether it was the symphonic music from the orchestra, or the canned pop tunes they played during breaks. The energy they gave off was the same wild over-excitement that I’m sure kept them up past their bedtimes after they got home.

Then, of course, there were the fireworks, and while Groton is no Boston, to me the display rivaled anything those on the Esplanade experienced the night before. I found myself laughing, yelling, oohing and ahing like I was four again.

But the best part was walking back down the rail trail, now pitch-black under a new moon. As soon as we got beyond the lights of the parking lot, a darkness so complete you could taste it surrounded us. Then the fireflies began to flicker, dart, and spark the darkness in the bushes, the treetops, and over our heads, lighting our way down the path like sparks from the world’s biggest bonfire. Even my very pragmatic husband was awed by the sight. I think it was so intense because we weren’t expecting it–this light show came out of nowhere, delighting us when all we were looking forward to was a dark trudge through the humid night air.

If you could have bottled our experience last night, which I can’t sufficiently put into words, it would have been priceless. It made the night something I’ll never forget. To make this post even mildly related to meetings, I’ll ask: What can you do to bring those unexpected moments of joy to your meetings and events? How can you surprise them with something completely different than what they think is going to happen? Shake them out of their been-there, done-that with something out of the blue that is so delightful it turns them into kids again?

I remember posting about the Hampton (Va.) CVB’s Meeting Planners Sound Off contest, but I forgot to check in to see who won for having the most bizarre meeting experience.

Fortunately, my colleague, Dave Kovaleski, remembered. Here’s a snip from his article:

You can’t make this stuff up: Michael Tyron, an independent meeting planner from Edmonton, Alberta, was running a meeting for the Edmonton Police Service at which a woman complained to police that a man was following her. It turned out that the man was trying to recover his wallet, which the woman had stolen from him as part of a pickpocketing scam she worked with her daughter…

Then there was the story, told by Mark Singer, president of Advocates of Virginia, a Richmond-based event management company, of an audience that was moved to tears. During a conference for hospice workers and caregivers, Singer arranged for a state trooper to speak about safety. During a demonstration on the use of pepper spray, the officer dispensed an empty container toward the ceiling. Suddenly, the crowd was hacking and wheezing — but not from the pepper spray dispenser, which was indeed empty. In the kitchen, someone had just spilled a 10-pound container of black pepper in front of an air duct, which sucked the pepper into the meeting room.

The CVB is running it again (yes, you win neato prizes for having the best entries), so go on over to the site to check out how to enter. And here’s hoping you don’t have any pickpockets or pepper spray in your immediate future!

Remember these low-flow flush cards I wrote about a year or so ago? The problem, as probably most hoteliers could attest to, was that Clayton, Mo.’s Clayton on the Park hotel guests weren’t flushing, um, sufficiently. So they created the above card, and the number of times engineers were called to deal with potty problems plunged (sorry!) by more than three-quarters.

This morning, I received this update from general manager Micarl Hill: “Well it’s been 1 year now and we are amazed…..76% less plunging to do! Our guests are happier, our desk agents are taking less calls and our engineering staff is way happier! Also our guests think the card is pretty darn funny adding to our contemporary out-of-the-box style.”

One might say, if one were feeling as snarky as I am this morning, that they’re feeling flush with success.

A few months back, I posted about volunteerism, and why more meetings don’t try to include some elements of service projects into their meetings.

And now, lo and behold, check out what the Professional Convention Management Association has cooked up: A “Service in Sync” Community Service Day. According to the press release, on Nov. 2, “16 PCMA chapters located in cities and regions across North America will organize a variety of “hands on” community service initiatives to give back to their local communities” as part of PCMA’s Network for the Needy program. Very cool, guys.

If you want to know more, Sarah Corradino or give her a call at 312-423-7232.

Today is Independence day here in the U.S., a day where we celebrate our establishment as a free nation. It is difficult, even for one day, for our country to set aside our differences to rejoice in what binds us together as a nation. Liberals and conservatives are at each other’s throats, and I expect the divisions to worsen in the coming days. We still haven’t figured out how to meld our increasingly multicultural country into a working whole. Racism, sexism, ageism, and all the other isms still roam our streets and tear up lives. We still allow those with money and power to wield their influence over those less fortunate.

Yet I’m proud to be an American. Proud to live in a country where we can bicker, snipe, and sneer loudly; where we can still criticize our government without fear of reprisal; where we can, if we stop bickering, sniping, and sneering for a few minutes, actually hear what the people think–all the people, not just those in power. Yes, our way of life is messy. It can be loud. It definitely can be frustrating. But at its heart, it also, I believe, stays true to the wise words of our founding fathers:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. –That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

These guys knew of what they spoke. The real message America sends to the rest of the world is not about McDonalds, or TV and movies, or a culture of excess. It’s that governments are accountable to the people, not the other way around, and that when a government forgets that, the people have a right to bring it down and set up a new one that will be accountable to them. No one is so rich, so powerful, so omnipotent that a determined group of people can’t make change happen. Our forebears did it, with some help from our friends (even back in 1776, our nascent country understood that it was fighting to become one self-governing piece of an interdependent whole). But freedom is never free–you have to want it bad enough to bear the unspeakable costs.

The other day, an online discussion group was talking about what they think defines patriotism. For me, it’s loving your country so much that you’d be willing to die for it. It’s not forgetting that bad things can happen in your own backyard, and that you have to be willing to do whatever it takes to keep your land, your people, and your ideology safe. But it’s also respecting the many cultures, subcultures, species, environment, systems of thought, politics–all the physical, spiritual, and ideological things that make your country the unique place it is–the place that’s worth fighting for. Even the parts we don’t personally like or agree with, because without the warts, we’d be a different frog altogether.

Another important piece of being a patriot, to me, is ensuring that you keep working toward “liberty and justice for all.” For me, “all” doesn’t just mean “all Americans,” and independence doesn’t mean solitude–hand in hand with independence are responsibility and accountability as independent nations who inhabit the same planet, whose actions and inactions have a profound impact on the rest of our global network. Within our own country are worlds of differences, and within our world, universes of differences. But liberty and justice for all is something I think we can all agree with as a worthy pursuit of a true patriot, whatever country you reside in. When all people are free and treated justly, all our nations are freer and more just.

So wherever you live, please join me in a round of applause for all who cherish freedom, manifested in both small ways and large. Please join me in celebrating not only our independence as individuals and nations, but even more so our interconnectedness with and responsibility to each other. In the midst of all the flag-waving and fireworks, let’s remember just what it is all the bunting is about. And if you disagree with me, let’s talk about it. That’s the beauty of America, all these disparate voices coming together to make a song. That’s the beauty of humanity, all these disparate voices coming together to make a symphony.

Happy Independence day.