The green thing

Excellent post! Everybody needs to read that one!

to that. Thanks.

I do remember and participated in most of that even as a youngster. It all rings true.

I'm in the elevator business. A few years back I had an elevator in a health club shutdown for repairs. The members at the club all complained. After all, they now had to walk a single flight of stairs to the second floor track that overlooked the exercise floor to jog on the rubber padded running surface.

Are you saying that your elevator doesn't go to the top floor?

I saw an article recently about reusable canvas grocery bags spreading harmful germs including Staph. Not the main point of the post, but that's my two cents.

At work, we're not allowed to put our lunch in the refrigerator if it's in a brown bag or a thermal lunch box or a grocery bag.

There were an outbreak of something nasty and the Health Dept said that many of containers have sat on the floor of buses, floors of elevators, floors of restaurants etc and picked up germs.

We have to remove our food from the outer container before placing in the refrigerator.

You know, the guys that say they are into sports - but only on a five-ounce bike with the thinnest tyres, skimpiest clothes (and overflowing beer-belly, like mine...), and they of course refuse to drive on the bike lanes.

Now I'm just your average dude, driving a 4x4 SUV, going to the bakery to get some bread for the family.I don't care what they think, because none of them will EVER manage to drive up my alley on their machines, and only one of us will give some leeway to other users of the road. Nope - won't be the guys that are "doing their exercise".

Now I have nothing against sports. I do aqua-biking, and that's more sweating that anything THEY'll ever get to do. And if I ever want to get on a bike, it'll probably be an ATV - what we call a VTT here in France. It's heavy, large-tired, it's got plenty of appropriate gears for driving up the hills. It's got a wide and comfy saddle, therefore preventing me from walking with padded pants - oops, Sir - I believe you have a gastric problem there... Nope, just came here by bike, is all...

And I won't mind driving where bikes are supposed to be - on the BIKE's PATH !!! And not five of them abreast, taking all the width of the mountain road, and giving hell to anyone who would dare complaining about their lack of manners.

Ah, but then again, I'm from the old school, from when we didn't have the green thing... Darn, sometimes I miss that time - and I'm afraid I'm not the only one in this crowd.

Did I say "Fear" ? Nah - In fact, I'm Most Happy to be in that crowd, in good company

I shows how narrow minded some people are.

In this particular building the track is the top and 2nd floor ... and that is all the elevator goes to. The track is the only thing on the 2nd floor. A real waste of money, energy, resources, etc. A true example of NON-green.

Re-read it. SLOWLY this time...

Duh!

Bear want cookie?

bear likes cookie ... yum!

http://www.verybestbaking.com/recipes/27940/One-Big-Cookie/d...

Thanks for the cookie. It looks pretty dang good. Now I have to get up and go raid the pantry to find something good (sweet)to munch on!

One big cookie! I had a small cookie tonight

Back to the green thing (not that I'm into it), my Jetta TDI gets far better mileage than my Honda CB350 for some reason. I'd say almost close to double.

Couldn't have said it better.

The clerk might be right to a degree, if you think about it.

Would it be a doctorate, or an MBA ?

The person seemed healthy enough, so there should be no need for a doctor-ate

Good one.

The clerk might be right, but only in the sense that as a society many practices were harmful. By "to a degree" I simply meant that I didn't necessarily agree with his blanket assessment that "THEY" didn't care. The old lady might have cared. Maybe many did, but there may have been many who didn't. I tend to think they just didn't think about it, didn't understand the impact, or they didn't have the technology to do it better. Maybe it was thought it wasn't harmful. I think I read or saw somewhere a reference to belief that at one time we thought the oceans were so vast we would have little impact on them. Of course, there were a lot fewer of us.

This story is also about the differing frames of reference. In "his day" (the clerk that is) everything came in disposable packaging for "convenience." The senior, and I'm one, didn't grow up in, or live in for that matter, a disposable society. We fixed things that were broke rather than throw them away. Walking, and bicycling were legitimate modes of transportation rather than forms of exercise. Items were made of wood and metal rather than plastic. You talked to a butcher at the local food store who cut your meat as you directed and then wrapped it in paper rather than buying prepackaged meats wrapped in plastic film on disposable trays.

Groceries were put into paper sacks by "Bag Boys" and the sacks were reused to wrap everything from compostable trash to presents and packages for mailing. If any of you are able to remember what was Dustin Hoffman's breakthrough file The Graduate, you may remember a very predictive line in which Dustin's character Benjamin Braddock was told "The future is in plastics." This was 1967 and we were well on our way to becoming a disposable nation.

Now, I'm not saying we need to go back over 40 years, but we need to keep the frame of reference of where each person in Flaco's story is.

I must agree about everything that was said about being green back then. But one thing we did that wasn't good back then was the burn our garbage. We had incernerators in our back yards. Anyone remember those?

People back then sprayed chemicals like crazy on crops, and used x-rays to buy footwear, and didn't manage soil erosion so we had the black dust storms in the mid-west.

They didn't have choices back then, one wonders how they would have chosen had they been given these choices.

Simply superb! I'll pass that one along to everyone I know!

Thanks.
Fred

Not just this story, but EVERYONE's frame of reference is limited to his own lifespan. And not your entire life-span, only that which you can remember.

And That's the problem with a lot of things. Nobody knows history, so it's bound to be repeated. That's why people build in flood plains....how many times have you heard somebody on the news say "I've never seen a flood like this before." ?
Well, rivers flood. So do areas lower than sea-level. That's why the nearby land is so fertile. Volcano's erupt, regardless of which millionaire built a recording studio nearby.
And, unfortunately the danger-prone areas are not as valuable for housing, and the land is relatively cheap. That's why most of the so-called "victims" are from the lower economic strata.

It won't fix all of society's ills, but if more people simply understood history........

Thank you. We also had a lot less trash overall because we did not buy what we did not need and what we did buy would last for years because it would be fixed, not replaced.

How many here at one time or another had new soles put on old shoes because you couldn't afford new ones or wanted to save the planet?

No, I did it because they were the most comfy shoes I had ever bought. I have a few Merrell's that are crap by comparison! Ahh, the good old days when things weren't made in China...

Crap, I remember most of those so that makes me an old geezer??

I had them re-soled twice 'cause I liked them so much.

When I was a kid, you know back in the day when we all were polluters and energy wasters. Women used to actually wash poopie diapers, and also use rubber pants.

Today's energy saving society put all the diaper services out of business and are polluting our earth with crap filled disposable diapers that will be around for a long long time, probably out lasting the baby.

I apologize for my inconsiderate generation.