Toasted

I. Toast

My favorite thing about house sitting in this neighborhood is... weekend Toast Bar! at a nearby coffee shop.
I'm sitting here with my laptop right now.
Some girls in line are wearing shorts, but it's only 50ºF (10 C) and rainy.

The barista cuts slices off your choice of loaves from a good bakery; you toast it yourself and choose toppings, including hard-boiled egg, avocado, and homemade jam and nut butters. 

Seven dollars.
That's either a great deal (artisinal nut butters!), or, as my coworkers would mostly think, a total scam. I can just hear Mr Linens. "Seven dollars for toast? And you have to make it yourself? What kind of bullshit is that?"

II. Safe

I don't feel any differently about Big Boss, but I'm glad that because of the break-in at the store he and I had to collaborate together yesterday, putting together a Facebook post about the theft.

We worked together as well as ever.
I've noticed before that people who don't care much about individuals can be good managers, (if they're fair minded), because they don't get very emotionally involved. 

My sister was an excellent manager. She told me she didn't care about people's feelings, she just wanted them to do a good job, so she worked to create circumstances that helped them do that. If that meant listening to them talk about their personal lives sometimes, she was willing to do that.

I'd be a bad manager--I'm too swayed by emotion and my personal preference for one person over another.

I'm glad I've kept some distance from the thrift store's management––resigning from the store committee, for instance. It would be awkward to disentangle myself now, when things have gotten complicated.
Can it be . . . I've actually learned from my past mistakes?
Yes!
Hey, good going, Fresca! Very grown up of me.

I'd said I'd like to see the video of the thieves rolling the safe out of the store on an office chair. Well, I got to: 
it's online, in a TV news report.
You can see some of the store in action too--Big Boss is filmed with the BOOK's in the background--and it cracks me up that the sneaky character on Art Sparker's sign [in gold frame] figures prominently at one point:

No sneaks disturbed the books. 
All that was taken was the safe with the cash––about three thousand dollars. We're such a nickle-and-dime operation, that's a lot for us. On Facebook we posted a link to where people can donate to help recoup the loss. I'll be curious to see how that goes. 

III. Late
As usual, I'm not hearing any abstract analysis of the break-in at the store.
Every discussion I heard of the theft was about the thieves as individuals--including a couple volunteers saying, "If only those guys were as motivated to do something positive."

I'm like, "The poor preying on the poor is a characteristic of late-stage capitalism." *
I guess of all capitalism, really.

I never hear this mentioned at the store, but Frederic Ozanam, the 19th cent. founder of SVDP, called for systemic change--change the system that creates poverty and keeps people poor.

In the words of St. Vincent de Paul, “There is no charity that is not accompanied by justice.”

Not that I'm going to get involved in working for systemic change [committee work!]––I do best one-on-one. 
That may be a Band-Aid approach, but a Band-Aid is a good thing for a person with a cut.

Obviously people have individual responsibility for their actions, but it helps, I think, not to assume that the person who needs a Band-Aid is a stupid klutz but to consider the possibility that the machine that cut them is poorly designed.

Along those lines, I'm eager to see photographer Chris Arnade's book Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America.  
From the Guardian article, "Our forgotten towns: struggle, resilience, love and respect in 'back-row America": 

"Chris Arnade lays bare what life is like for America’s marginalized poor – and exposes the broken social systems that have betrayed them."

(I cropped this photo so the faces show better on this small format. It's  in Ohio, but it looks exactly like Duluth, MN.)
____________________________

*What is "late-stage capitalism" anyway, and why did that label come to my mind?
According to the article on the personal-finance site The Balance,
"Late Stage Capitalism, ...Why the Term Is Trending"

"Late stage capitalism is a popular phrase that targets the inequities of modern-day capitalism. It describes the hypocrisy and absurdities of capitalism as it digs its own grave.
Social media website Reddit describes it as 'the horrible things capitalism forces people to do to survive.'
.

[The term] spotlights the immorality of corporations using social issues to advance their brand. An example is Budweiser spending $5 [million] to advertise how it donated $100,000 to [canned] clean water.
Another example is Starbucks' #racetogether campaign.

In the same vein, it highlights how the middle class is largely oblivious to the struggles of the poor."

The Balance is pro-capitalism and the rest of the article argues that the solution is not socialism, as people who use the term "late-stage capitalism" tend to believe, but for the government to replace the eroded protections of the free-market economy, and for the government to create and protect equity for all, which capitalism doesn't do.

Well, that would be nice, wouldn't it?

When I say "late-stage", though, I'm not thinking socialism would be a solution. I'm a little wary of that--what I'm thinking is that it's possible something worse could arise. Fascism, etc.
I hope not! This is not a prediction, just a fear––but, sadly, a reasonable one, don't you think?

I hear that fear reflected in casual chat sometimes. 
The other day at the store, someone was saying that if things get bad, they're going to hang out with old people, because old people know how to do things by hand, like cook and sew. 

Heck, yeah. We could even toast bread with only fire and a stick.