ThingsPondered

I was induced to enter the Exeter Commons strip mall complex today for the first time because we received coupons in the mail and a friend hipped me to this being the official “Opening Day.”

I navigated the new traffic lights, roads, signs, and parking lot.   The store’s exterior perked me up:  large concrete red-painted  spheres  rest along the front sidewalk – a creative way to block terrorists from driving into the walls.  But it is highly visually pleasing and could be lovely to sit on.

I visited this morning – a drizzly Sunday at 9 AM (way before church services are done for most in this traditional God-fearing Lutheran county)- and was delighted by the low number of shoppers (although there are a disproportionate number of crying toddlers.)  A greeter offered me a map of the store.   Btw, this is a young person greeter – not elderly or infirm.

It is heart-warming that a plethora of bright-eyed perky sales associates of all ages stop to ask ”Do you need help finding something?”   They are a garden full of smiles.  Also, I had a lovely chat with the Pharmacy employees about transferring a prescription.

The store’s layout seems very similar to that of the Target on the western side of the county.  That makes shopping easier.   However, it seems to have brighter lighting – a good thing in my opinion. 

I had the flyer of coupons – mostly for groceries, so I proceeded to that wall.  I was amazed.  The local equivalent – Walmart – does not have a grocery section with perishable foods – so I was “gaga.”  Furthermore, Walmart’s  foods are not higher end. My taste in home design and aesthetics is more of the Target sensibility than Walmart.   

BIG BONUS right now – there are Store Opening Specials this week – so I bought items which were at reduced prices and used a coupon on top of that.  In theory, I saved $11.

My suggestion:    Go this week, if no other time, to take advantage of the opening week specials.

All this hullabaloo over dead Michael Jackson!  I think there is a clash between reality versus “hero-fication” of the artist.   The USA is feeling the need for a hero right now, and posthumous production insures that the object of worship won’t do anything embarrassing or unworthy of the honor.

Michael contributed to the pop music scene.  He had some good tunes.  And, yes, he composed or contributed to the composition of some of them.  His team produced some good music videos.  And, yes again, Michael actively contributed to the creative process for some.

Michael’s personal life is rather well-known.  He was not perfect.  And, his life was darker than a “run of the mill not-perfect.”  Some would say he was dangerously mentally ill: especially his attitude towards children.

When honoring someone for career achievement, should personal life have a bearing?  You decide.

In my book, whether or not personal life is considered, Michael Jackson was not so exemplary or artistically creative to deserve the huge accolades some are bestowing.  MANY other musicians and performers are more worthy of honor.

An eastern suburb of Reading, PA has joined the local communities sponsoring farmers’ markets.  As I did not think it would be operating on the 4th of July, I wandered over the next Saturday to see if it, indeed, exists.  Yes, Virginia, there is an outdoor farm market in Exeter Township!

On the approach towards the parking lot of Boscov’s, a retailer renowned for civic-minded activities, I spied five tent tops in a far corner.  These were the little ten by ten feet jobs that families use at soccer games or the beach.  In addition, there were two folding tables without covering and one food vendor with the classic beach umbrella arrangement over the cart.

This modest start is exactly how the West Reading market began.  It is almost as if a few brave vendors must test the waters, to the benefit of others who will jump in once the consumer interest has been proven.   Happily, several of the tents offered exactly what I wanted and expected: locally grown produce.  One stand had cabbages larger than bowling balls and a commodity new to me - golden beets.  Others had garden plants or homemade catsup and preserves.  I found the preserves to be costly.  Am I willing to pay $6 for a large jar of homemade jam?   I think it will need to be one of my favorite fruits for that sort of sum to leave my wallet. The classic hot dog vendor - well, what can be said, other than seize the opportunity to feed the masses of shoppers.

I was a little disappointed to see that one of the tables was for some sort of eco-vitamin-snake oil-wonder drink.  That does not match the spirit of the endeavor, in my humble opinion.   Nonetheless, if you live nearby and need some fresh produce for the weekend, this market is worth a look.

I live in a strange place: Berks County in southeastern Pennsylvania.  Why strange?  Strange because it has changed so rapidly over the last 25 years.  When I first regularly spent time here starting in the 1970’s, it consisted of a city (county seat) at its center and then a few villages sprinkled throughout the rest of its diamond-shaped boundary ( yes – this is the county of John Updike’s Rabbit series.)  Everything else was farmland.  Active farmland.

This agrarian county was so peaceful and wholesome that it was pretty BORING to the high school youth, who frequently moved away the first chance they got.  But then they somehow wandered back to raise their families.  It was very common to drive past miles and miles of cornfields to get to anywhere.  But things started changing, slowly, and initially on a small scale.

Who should I blame, if blame there must be?  Commercial lenders?  Definitely yes.  Those &*^$% money-grubbers kept supporting new strip malls or shopping centers when good commercial properties stood vacant.  The Chamber of Commerce?  Probably.  I served on a committee in the Chamber and could see that its vision of “good” or “progress” was and is to transform Berks County into a clone of King of Prussia, an upscale expensive highway-riddled fast-paced, did I say expensive?, sophisticated area in suburban Philadelphia.  The Chamber could not see the goodness that Berks County had, and so committed itself to throwing the baby out with the bathwater.  The then-and-future residents?  Yes.  They lusted after the lifestyle of the afore-mentioned Philadelphia suburbs.

Twenty-five years ago, one did not use the word “suburbs” for Berks County.  There was big-city Reading, and then there were Leesport and Kutztown and Mohnton and Shillington and Mt. Penn and Bernville and Birdsboro and Hamburg and Morgantown.  Each was separated from the other by fields and farms.  Manure was a springtime fragrance along our 2-lane roads.  However since that time, real estate developers (I forgot to also apportion blame to them) have persuaded families to transform their farms into housing tracts.  We now have the vinyl siding suburban houses and the *%^#^& townhouse/condo horror zones.  We now use the word “suburbs.”

We now have barely any farmland.  Instead, there are more malls, and parking lots.  There are national chain stores instead of the independent locally-owned bookstore, hardware store and fabric shops.  There are franchises of every fast- and medium-fast food chains.  And the highways – bleccch!  Lots of macadam covers former vegetation.  Fields and woods are becoming scarce.

Curiously, there is a new trendy activity that Berks County communities are racing to create.  Guess what?  They want Famers’ Markets!  We have always had a few small indoor halls which open one to three days per week for farmers and vendors to sell.  But to be truly au courant, a community must have an open air market with local, and even organic, produce.  Sort of like the roadside stands we used to have?  Strange, this Berks County.

the world who you are: 

just start talking.

Failure to Conjugate Third Person Singular

                    a/k/a

        Don’t say Don’t with he

Santa Maria, Madre de Dios!  There are many languages more

complicated

(MUCH more complicated)

than English. 

We are talking PRESENT tense – also not a huge

challenge.  In English, generally we use the same exact verb (action word

for you Wal-Mart devotees) with five of the six types of people groups. 

The is action word identical for: I, you –singular, we, you-plural, and

they.  Therefore, we need only learn one other form of the verb to

complete our vocabulary.  Why, then, do you insist on declaring to the

world that you are happily locked into the lower class?  

It seems to be a badge of honor to talk like a country-western song.  I

know you are not stupid people.  You have many skills, talents, and

bodies of knowledge.  You can run rings around so many of us with your

expertise in myriads of arenas. Yet, you persist in trashing English when

the solution is SO SIMPLE.  There is even a pattern:  often all that is

required is adding an “s” or an “es” to the verb used for the five other

pronouns.

Examples:  I do, you do, He does.

Therefore, when the word “not” is part of the sentence, we have: I don’t,

you don’t, he doesn’t.

Try it.  It is easy, truly.

I had the privilege to earn a graduate degree from Lehigh University in 1995.  The experience was so concurrently difficult and satisfying that it holds a place on my list of the top five events in my life.  As far as I am concerned, every dollar I gave Lehigh returned more than that in value.  To reiterate, it was an incredible learning experience.

When I attended Lehigh, the university seal was a football shape with a Latin motto.  As the following official webpage (http://www3.lehigh.edu/about/past/luseal.asp ) describes, it included “a sun over a book on which a heart is superimposed. These fit nicely with the university motto, taken from Francis Bacon, which surround them: ‘Homo minister et interpres naturae.’ Loosely translated, the motto means, ’Man, the servant and interpreter of nature.’ “  Also within the seal were the words “Lehigh University” and “Founded by Asa Packer 1865.”  The sun emitted copious rays of light and the football was surrounded by detailed edging.  Everything “Lehigh” had this seal: sweatshirts, lampshades, notebook covers, and the entire gamut of college bookstore products.  I own a short-sleeved T-shirt with this seal.  It is the emblem of my Lehigh.

However, in 1997 the University adopted a logo to serve as an additional visual emblem of the school.  Purportedly, it reproduces more easily in electronic media, thus meets a need.  However, I fear something more serious is afoot.  Just as fast food restaurants must continually research the pulse of consumers and adjust products and the presentations of those products, institutions of higher education are vendors which must adapt to the potential student market.  In its quest to recruit students, I fear that Lehigh University is abandoning appropriate tradition by employing a simplified graphic: a Happy Meal version of the elegant and historic seal.

Look through the university website.  Is the seal anywhere?  It is only on the above-mentioned link about history.  No longer are clothing, mugs, and memorabilia festooned with the pre-1997 seal, the only visual emblem at the time.  It has vanished.  As in the novel Fahrenheit 451, in which a fireman becomes someone who burns books rather than someone who extinguishes fires, history is being re-written.  Supposedly, the original seal will continue to be used on diplomas and important documents.  However, I ask why would a student who has known only the logo throughout his Lehigh career want the seal on his diploma? 

I am not a marketing expert.  If the pundits feel that they can reach today’s eligible prospects only through use of a trendy logo, then so be it.  However, when an august research university agrees to reduce ALL of its visual symbols to something akin to a Nike ™ swoosh (which I imagine will need to changed frequently to follow the market), then someone has gotten it very wrong.

I say use the simple logo on the web pages and a few recruiting pamphlets, but also include the Lehigh University seal.  Continue to proudly employ the seal on banners, stationery, university publications and documents.  In the bookstore, offer garments and products with choices in both designs.  Coca-Cola admitted its error when it tried to replace traditional Coke with a new version.  Likewise, Lehigh University must offer the new and classic versions of the seal-logo in documents, clothing and merchandise.  It is bad enough to lose the team name of Engineers to the Mountain Hawk, but to lose the “football and Latin” seal is too much to bear.

If you would like to make your thoughts known to the university, the appropriate contact is:  Fred McGrail, Vice President for Communications, fjm208@Lehigh.edu.

I really don’t care whether and when the U.S. government announces that the country is in a recession or a depression (although I doubt we will have a declaration of depression – what a downer.  Can you imagine what the emotion-driven stock market’s reaction would be?)  Folk signs of our recession have been clear for over a year.  All the while that Dubya’s toadies were denying it, we common folk in service and retail businesses knew it was here.

I remember reading a Wall Street Journal article about broom sales.  It proposed that declines in broom sales indicated tough economic times.  As the households of the rank and file feel the pinch, one of the money-saving decisions is to “make do” with the old broom instead of splurging on a new one.  Other industries show this making do with what we have: carpet cleaning and plastic surgery.  Both of these have experienced less activity over the last two years.  Many of us knew in which direction the country  was heading.

Saving versus spending.  I am not an economist.  Therefore, it baffles me that we citizens are urged to spend money that we do not have.  A less drastic, yet equally mystifying, notion is that we are encouraged to spend what money we DO have.  Why isn’t saving for retirement, for long-term care, for a rainy day, a good thing?  It sounds good to me.  Actually, it sounds downright mature and responsible.  I guess I will never understand.  Nonetheless, a depression will be a very personal challenge.

My grandparents and parents survived the one in the 1930’s.  I know intellectually that I can, too. But the practical aspects are utterly scary. 

“Does the C in YMCA stand for chocolate?” asked one of my before-school care charges, obviously hoping that my answer would be “yes.”

Why is chocolate so magical?  Why does it conjure up images of comfort, caring and indulgence? There is no denying that in the United States, if not the world, it holds the status of a reward.  Chocolate producers obviously capitalize on this attitude in their marketing.  However, even without marketing, I believe that it would nonetheless be regarded as special enough for children and adults to clamor for it.

In the past, I did not crave chocolate.  No, my favorite sweets (and I DO have a sweet tooth) were desserts using any red fruits.  I could rather easily walk by a plate of chocolates.  But then, I worked for a supervisor who adored fine European chocolate.  Occasionally he would bring in a morsel from Belgium or environs to attempt to convert me to his tastes.  Aah, to my detriment, it worked.  I am now a chocoholic.

It is not the cocoa or cacao alone.  Heavens no!  Have you ever had a spoonful of unsweetened cocoa mix?  Blecch.  Now, add sweetener.  Not good enough for me.  It is not the sugar which redeems the cocoa.  No, it is the butterfat.  When one combines the cocoa with sugar and the glorious dairy fat, then the result is a sweet for the gods. Thus, until the candy makers tap the raspberry and butterfat lover’s niche, I guess I will settle for chocolate.

Would you like to know how relaxed and slow-moving life in the USA was for your grandparents or great-grandparents?  Why not travel back in time?  Marty McFly did it (backwards and forwards) in the Back to the Future movies.  Unfortunately, maybe we won’t live to enjoy that sort of technology.  However, despair not.   Even if you weren’t alive in 1958, it really is not at all difficult to get a sense of it.   Just consult a catalog from The Vermont Country Store .

The catalogue includes fashions such as Tangee and Tabu make-up from way back when.  There are even hair curlers, dusters, pettipants, granny panties, and portable hair dryers with the plastic-bag-type bonnet.  For the men, Bay Rum cologne is offered.

Within housewares and other supplies one can purchase the reusable douche/enema bag (a familiar sight half a century ago.)  Chenille and rib-cord corduroy bedspreads, flour-sack towels, manual typewriters, cloth handkerchiefs, and oilcloth kitchen appliance covers are some of the other treasures still made.

In foods, once again you can purchase and enjoy a bottle of cod liver oil, movie house Crows gumdrops, or Chiclets gum.

Please know that I mean absolutely no mockery or ridicule for this “Voice of the Mountains®“ family-owned establishment.  The store sells up-to-date products such as Pilates balls and Neti pots.  However, its vast array of older products is its jewel.  The Vermont Country Store is obviously meeting needs.  The bonus is that in doing so, it is providing a valuable lesson in anthropology for today’s young students and a nostalgic look back for the old gomers.