That person is getting ice cream . . .

. . . Should I get ice-cream too?

I'm sitting at the ice-cream (and coffee) café. This afternoon I helped Mz put plastic over her big window (to cut down on drafts)––the earliest I've ever plasticized for winter. 

We are colder, earlier, than usual––in the high 40ºs this week.

But not too cold for ice cream.
However, no, I'm going to pass. I already have coffee with sugar and half-and-half.
At home I drink coffee with 2% milk because I don't like it so creamy (weird but true); when I'm out in the afternoon, however, this is a treat--and it's pretty much ice cream.

Also, this place makes "artisinal" ice cream, which tends to be over-flavored. Sea Salt Vanilla? That's just plain, salty ice cream.

Oh! Now I look closer, I see they have white licorice today--that's a favorite of mine.
Hm.

No, I think I'd rather go home and have cheesy pasta for dinner.
It's the season for hot comfort food.

Best Outcomes, I: Fall on Your Sword

A Facebook friend just posted about the Kavanaugh appointment to the Supreme Court, and a (male) friend asked her what the best outcome would have been.

I commented:

"What I would have admired most would have been if K had withdrawn. A compassionate and honorable person (even if he was not guilty!) could have used the situation to make amends by not accepting the nomination.

"He could have said something like,
'In recognition of the unconscionable number of women and girls (and boys and men) who have suffered like CBF has, and because I believe it does not serve the Court and the country to have such politicized appointments, I will not accept this nomination.'"

While I'm wary of grandstanding, in this time of #metoo (yes, OF COURSE me, too! I can't think of a woman who doesn't have some icky sexual story to tell--and of course many men do too), in this mess, I could stand a little noble, old-fashioned falling-on-my-sword/buck stops here for the greater good. 

But these guys!

They don't show any compassion---even if they are wrongly accused, couldn't they say, "You know, so many people get a shitty deal, I am so sorry for that, and my experience of being wrongly accused has opened my eyes to what they might feel like ALL THE TIME"?

I haven't followed all that closely. Has some guy said this and I've missed it?

Best Outcomes, II: Doing Better

This morning I finished a little article for the quarterly newsletter. I write or heavily edit about half the newsletter.
My boss intends these articles to be puff pieces, and he started the newsletter to bring in cash donations. 
I think he thinks I whip the articles out, but I am not that sort--I always research the topics.

The one I finished this morning was supposed to be about how wonderful it is that the store employs lots of older workers. But when I looked more closely into the situation, ... well, it's not that wonderful. 
The store pays the least it can legally get away with and that is not anywhere near providing the justice and dignity the mission statement talks about. 

I talked to my coworkers, and most (all?) of them rely on some sort of government assistance, including what used to be called food stamps. (I rely on money I inherited from the sale of my father's house.)

Basically, the store is taking advantage of poor, old people who can't find other employment. The work is physically heavy, too, and I  can see that a lot of my coworkers are in pain. Same as when I worked in the nursing home--a lot of my coworkers were wounded, but worked anyway because they had no options.

Along with the article, which I kept mild, I sent a stronger note saying I believe the store should consider if this is how they want it to be. Even though the store can't afford it today, I wrote, we could aim to do better:
personally, I would want the store to work toward paying a living wage, based on the cost of living.
We are a couple dollars (per hour) short of that.

I know, because I asked, that my boss doesn't even know what I'm paid per hour. ($10.25, same as all my coworkers--the legal minimum in this city.)

I have largely stopped saying "we" when I talk about some aspects of the store.
I am not included in the decision making, such as it is, and I don't stand behind a lot of our policies. No one even seems to be asking if they are in line with our mission, which often they are not.
Our mission says we will provide dignity and relieve suffering, AND THE ROOTS OF SUFFERING.

We (I count myself in here) do directly relieve some immediate suffering, for sure---but not necessarily in a dignified way: 
we regularly put out free food, for instance, but for lack of space and tables, sometimes (often) we put it on the floor.
That is not dignified, but everyone's so used to it, no one even says anything.

To change that, we'd have to do some strategic planning--it wouldn't be that easy to reconfigure the space, but it could be done.

It could be done.

Here's the happy thing:
I have calmed down and am not all in a twist about things changing right now.

The store operates more by oversight than intention, and while that's a problem, what is done with lack of will can more easily be righted that what is done with ill will.

I hope I am helping by simply pointing out, Hey, we could do better. We want to do better! 
How could we?

Yes. That's my question. How could we do better? Wishing alone is not the answer.

And now I'm going home to pasta!
Yay!
Even though I've written about serious matters here, I am in a good mood--there has never been a time in history when people weren't creating a mess for ourselves and someone, somewhere was asking, "How could we do better?"