"We are BETTER than you" . . .

                                                                      SNOB

                                                      

   . . . Or, more IMPORTANT, or SMARTER, or WEALTHIER, or . . .   The  implications are always the same --- something like: "  We are more God-Blessed, than you" or, "We are more entitled . . ." or other insults intended to "put you in your place" (and it is not where WE are).  Words like snob and  elitist describe such rude and disrespectful behavior.  For many humans,  such is an all too common 'put down' whether due to gender, race, national origin, socio-economic, religious, political, occupational, etc. factors.  Has it ever happened to you ? 

   Here is a kind of litmus test: Do we speak  to, acknowledge, converse with  persons  in service professions such as (but not a full listing) service persons such as restaurant wait-staff, check-out people and baggers at the grocery, house-keeping staff in places such as hotels and schools, sanitation workers.  Such people often seem to 'blend into the wood-work'.

    In the 1970's, Haverford College President  John Coleman took a short sabbatical during which he worked in a succession of 'blue collar' jobs.  He wrote  Blue Collar Journal telling about his experiences in three jobs.  The last one was as a sanitation worker in College Park , Maryland.  He wrote of picking up garbage  while people were  going about life's routines and never "seeing" or acknowledging him and the suburbanite who  castigated him for  refusing to move her trash  can filled with cinderblocks.

   Recently after we checked in to a facility for a vacation, my wife was making adjustments to our unit door with a cloth towel.  When a couple in the adjoining  room were exiting their room, she greeted them  with a sincere "Hello" only to be met with a  supercilious sneer and no words.  Somewhat like what the old timers called 'looking down your nose' at someone . Perhaps they assumed that she was part of the housekeeping staff and thereby unworthy of a courteous reply.

   Her reaction was to be amazed, shocked and somewhat incredulous by such blatant rudeness.  How would you have responded?

         Satchel

  

HOW DO "THEY" DO "THAT" ?

 

                                                        "MUSE, SAY SOMETHING'

     The They are my younger brother and Sean Dietrich (aka Sean of the South).  Both are writers --columnists -- who have been doing That for many days, weeks, years.  I.e., turning out daily and/or weekly columns.  WHERE do they (as well as all the other bloggers, columnists, scribblers, journalist such as the woman in Kansas who sends me her weekly blog) find the ideas, topics upon which to expound, asks he who often finds the "let's write about ________" bank overdrawn.

   And, I must confess, that I have on occasion accused my brother of kissing the Blarney Stone. The 'gift of gab' comes readily and easily for him. And, reading Sean's posts and occasionally listening to his podcasts,  I suspect the same of him. 

   And, it is mostly pretty good stuff with a 'point'.  Unlike what his Preaching Professor at Duke Divinity School told a long-ago fraternity brother who had just completed a course assignment : "Bob, you say nothing very well".  Have you ever heard the dismissive term "That's bunk" or "bunkum" ?  It's a reference to a Congressional filibuster speech long ago by a North Carolina Congressman extolling ad nauseam the virtues of his home county, Buncombe. One source said that Bunkum has been American slang for "nonsense" for almost two  centuries.

   Like some of my sermon re-runs from another life, occasionally one of my brother's  columns has a slight whiff of prior use. Usually their compositions tell stories (not to be equated with lies).   Ernest Hemingway was asked long after  his literary success why he continued to write.  He answered something to the effect that he knew a lot of good stories and wanted to tell them.  About a 180* distance from what a prominent minister told me about his need for a vacation: "I had reached the point where  I had nothing to say and no great desire to say it."

   I tell myself that the primary reason the muse is often quiet is because I have professional responsibilities that preclude the leisure that seems to be my prerequisite for creativity.  Still, staring at a daily dead-line reminds me of the preacher struggling  on Saturday night to have a sermon topic who opens his Sacred Scripture and pleads, "Say something  "

   Do you have any topic suggestions to pass along . . whether it's something that matters or it's just a story?

     Satchel