Hello all...and welcome. This is your place to put in your two cents on the issues you may consider important. We all have different opinions, and we all have different information available on those issues, and we'd like to get your input on the topics we intend to discuss.
So, feel free to vent...to discuss...or just to post your own opinion. We'll go from there! And, please: don't harass or put anyone else down if their opinion is different from yours. Personal attacks will not be tolerated, and will be deleted.
Now, let's discuss some issues!
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I hope we get good participation on here. I'm looking forward to getting other's input on some of these issues!
Okay Bruce tossed in "suburban culture" with the link so here I am.
Must be the day for this topic since I discussed it at work with my coworker and later in email with another friend.
Okay, culture is found in yogurt at the supermarket. Nobody has a clue how to act anymore. Overbuilding and overworked while trying to keep up with the neighbors. Yet these are the same cultural delete that will zip around your car in the slow lane and give you a gesture best left to bad movies and outtakes in bloopers of R-rated college movies. Not like the traffic was heading anywhere at mock speed they just couldn't handle the fact that my car was in front of theirs and I wasn't even on a cell phone!
*gasp*
Ya get the idea of my day :-)
Thanks for setting this up, Bruce.
I have to read and make comments on your draft, but I'm stalled by trying to work at my "day job" and edit/revise my own manuscript. I hope to get to yours by the end of the month, though.
I'll bookmark this site.
This is the ramble from the Fab Forties forum which prompted this discussion. I'm posting it here to see if I CAN post. If you are reading it, Yay! If it doesn't post, you'll never know.
Growing up, I had very indecisive parents, who looked at houses
periodically throughout my childhood, but never actually bought one
until I was thirteen. Growing up ih an apartment, you learn to juggle
space. It becomes second nature.
I live in a once rural area which has been overrun by McMansions in
the last few years. I look at these new neighbors on the other side of
my creek, and across the road, and I wonder if their children are not
missing something important by having spaces dedicated just to
watching TV, or playing, a space just for doing homework, etc. How do
children who each have their own bathroom learn to take turns? Just
one of the many thoughts I've had as I watch (and listen to) this
lifestyle where the only connection people have with the outdoors is
running gas powered yard care equipment, and spraying poisons on their
weeds.
Lydia & Jim...good to see you on here!
Lydia, I agree with your take on suburban culture. No one seems to display any sign of good manners anymore. And celphones? They only exacerbate the problem...
Jim, no hurry on the m/s. I'm getting ready to rewrite soon, and you won't even recognize the story when I'm done!
Nina...you got on!! Yayyyy!!! :)
So I'm going to try this again. Will it let me post? Only the shadow know for sure.
I think suburban culture is a symptom, not a cause. People think this is the American dream, without stopping to think if it's their dream. Bad road manners and selfishness do abound, but I think it is because people have lost sight of what is important. The act of having is not as important as the satisfaction received from having something. If you have too much, everything comes too easily. You are setting yourself up to never be able to be satisfied.
For example, we put in a central heat and air system last year. Before that, our downstairs was heated with wood. Each winter morning involved somebody going outside to bring in wood to stoke the stove. Pajamas and boots were a common fashion statement in our house. I never bothered with slippers, just hiking boots. Thing is, when you came back in, stoked the fire and settled down with coffee and the paper, it was an intense satisfaction. We were warm and dry, and winter was outside. The coffee was good, and the events of yesterday could be read at my own pace. I love newspapers.
I appreciate my "heat at the flick of a switch," but without my prior experience, I would just take it for granted. I'd probably read the paper, maybe gripe about the school reassignments, and never think about the fact that it's 21 degrees outside and I'm wearing a sweatshirt and pajama pants.
Life is not about having and getting, but being and becoming. if we could only focus on that more, maybe we could all share the world a little better. The ecological footprint of the "I have it all and still want more" lifestyle is unsustainable. We don't need it.
I agree, Nina. Life is so simple for most young people nowadays, they don't know what we went through to get the things we have. Or don't particularly care. It's hard to have any real sense of accomplishment when searching for something, when the television or the internet provide instant gratification at the click of a button (whether it be good or bad.)
My son is 25, and job-searching. He understands that he needs a job with benefits, partly because he has had colitis since he was 16, and knows the costs associated with its medical treatment. He also understands the need for a retirement plan. But he doesn't want to 'waste his time' by looking at jobs that aren't equal to his abilities. He's smart. He's skilled, but he's inexperienced. But he wants to start out at the top! Hellooooo?
I wish him well, but he's been out of work for 3 months now, and I'm at the end of my rope. (He worked part-time while going to Community College ~ not even an AS degree yet.) I want to charge him for room and board, but his mother says, "He can't afford it." So, get a job!!! ANY JOB, FOR NOW!!!
I worked as a laborer. I sold shoes. I delivered furniture. I was in the Navy as a radioman for 4 years. It all prepared me to be not just a carpenter supervisor, but the person I am. I'm afraid all he'll be is a guy who stayed at home for the first 30 years of his life.
Am I being unrealistic?
No, Bruce, you are not being unrealistic at all. Your experiences made you who you are. In the end, that is what counts, not what you have. I mean, you do want enough to live on, but you get the point.
My older daughter has a work study job at the library at Brandeis. She likes the job, but one of her biggest complaints is the student workers who always find something else to do when a customer needs help.
"Mom, nobody has a work ethic. I was raised to believe that if you have a job, you do it well."
I'm not sure how we instilled that in her, but it may be the woodstove, and the fact that we physically built our house, and just the way we do things. Both kids helped out when we had the coffeehouse, too, and got to know the teens that worked for us (the cool big kids). Something somewhere along the way sunk in.It's nice to know.
So I'm going to rebut my own comment. The world has changed. I used a laundromat until I got married. Most apartments now have what we would have considered luxuries, but they aren't affordable on a starting wage. It was also common for young people to forgo health insurance, but your son doesn't have that option.
When I was in my twenties (in the eighties), nearly everybody lived independently, no matter how broke we were. We drove old bombs, but we did it on our own, and worked on our cars together.
It's fun when everybody is living like that together. It was a party I'm glad I didn't miss, and I learned to appreciate things like insulation and a good roof. If it is the norm for young adults to live with their folks now, being broke probably is a drag, instead of just a stage of life.
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