An amazing story I cannot recall if I have shared

Jo is a friend of mine and she wrote about what happened to her at the movies over the holiday last year. With Harry Potter now in the theater and the Thanksgiving holiday near, I just share this story with you as a warning to all people - be careful what you ask for at the movie theater...

I am not sure if she will keep her blog up forever, so in addition to posting the link, I also want to cut and paste the story into this post so that I can have it forever (I hope you do not mind Jo!)

Thursday, January 8, 2009

The Rest of the World Must Be Right Some of the Time

My mother was a very strong, brilliant, opinionated person. Often, when she would get on a soapbox about something, she would say to herself (and me), "But the rest of the world must be right some of the time." I never thought she really believed that. I still think she thought she was right all of the time and rest of the world was wrong. But don't we all think that? Why would we continue to stand by a thought or deed if we thought we were wrong? Of course we think we are right or we would change what we think.

I had an experience Christmas Eve of which I can't let go and I keep asking myself and those unfortunate enough to have to listen to me if the rest of the world is right this time and if not, what can I (and we all) do to avoid situations like this. So maybe if I put it out here in blogsville I can let go of it and quit annoying my family and friends with this story.

My family went to the movies on Christmas Eve. We rarely go the movies as a family and I had great hopes of it being a special family time. We could talk about the movie and what fun we had over hot cocoa and it would become a Christmas Eve tradition. Okay, I have a very low bar for meaningful family experience.

As we were getting our popcorn, the young woman serving us was quite grumpy. Not overtly rude, it was just clear she did not want to be there. As she gave me my drink I smiled and said, very sincerely, "Thanks for working on Christmas Eve, we appreciate you being here so we can have a family outing." I try, during the Christmas season or when I shop late at night, to express appreciation to retailers and service people because I've been in their shoes and know it is no fun.

Well, she just looked at me, which is fine, but the young man beside her snottily said, "It's Hanukah, too, you know." Now I don't know if he was Jewish or if he was missing some important tribal gathering to get paid minimum wage at the movie theater, but I took a deep breath, decided his motives didn't matter and said, again very sincerely, "You're right. I'm sorry I didn't mention that. Thank you for working during Hanukah."

Now during the exchange I had been handed all my movie snacks. One of which was a pickle juice pop. For those of you unfamiliar with this delicacy, it is what the name implies, frozen pickle juice in a little plastic cup to be eaten like ice cream. Yummmmmm! I asked for a spoon. They had no spoons. I looked at the cup and once again very nicely and sincerely said, "Oh, well, maybe you should have told me that before I paid for it. How do I eat it?"

A third young person working behind the counter turned around, looked me straight in the eye, and said, "Suck On It!"

My question to you, gentle readers, is "What should my response have been?" Do we live in a world where teenagers who are being paid to do a job should be allowed to treat paying customers like this? Was my mistake trying to be overly nice in the first place? What can we, as a society, do to reintroduce civility and manners into our little corners of the world?

This is not a rhetorical question. I truly am asking you what I should have done. I won't bother you with what I did, it wasn't particularly interesting or effective. Please let me know your thoughts in case, heaven forbid, I should be presented with a simular dilemma again. Let me know if this was, indeed, one of the times when the rest of the world was right.

Stretch,
Jo

Posted by Jo at 9:25 AM

National Day of Listening

For the past few years I have been participating in the National Day of Listening (I mentioned this last year on this blog).  This is a wonderful time for my family to get in a recorded form some stories about our lives so that they may be preserved for family down the road.  While most of our conversations at this point are not as reflective or deep as those compiled in the book Listening is an Act of Love (which is excellent by the way), they are conversations I cherish.

So if you have just a bit of time this Thanksgiving holiday, and you are like me and tired of making crafts, watching football, overeating and participating in some sort of group exercise in order to justify the overeating, then join many others and listen to the stories of your loved ones.

How to Lose the Clean Energy Race, Visualized

 

 

Sent to you by Jason via Google Reader:

 

 

How to Lose the Clean Energy Race, Visualized

via GOOD by Ben Jervey on 11/22/10

Third Way, the "leading moderate think tank of the progressive movement," has released a bunch of interesting clean energy-related graphics over the past month or so. They've been piling up in my tabs, and they're probably best digested together. So take a look.

All graphics are from the Third Way report, Creating a Clean Energy Century. Click on the photos to see them in the Third Way flickr lightbox.

Betting On Clean Energy:

Notice that of the $21.1 billion of U.S. investment, only $2.5 billion is public money. And, as the Third Way caption notes, while "our investment has actually declined in recent years, China is going 'all-in.'"

Top Countries in Clean Energy Investment:

The United States ranks seventh in terms of clean energy investment as a percentage of GDP. Again, China is eating our lunch.

U.S. DOE Energy Research and Development Spending

 

Spending on efficiency is lower than it was 30 years ago, and we're spending less than a third on "renewable" energy R and D than we were then.

R and D Spending in Energy, Health, and Defense

 

Perhaps the most appalling chart of them all. For the past twenty years, our spending on defense and health research and development have ballooned, yet energy—in all its forms—has, well, you can see for yourself. We just don't care about energy innovation as much as we do about beefing up our defense systems to (at least in part) protect those cherished, dwindling pockets of fossil fuels in volatile areas around the world.

The whole Third Way report is well worth checking out.

 

 

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