Shamelessly swiped from Aunty Brat's Facebook page:
Checking out at the grocery store recently, the young cashier suggested I should bring my own grocery bags because plastic bags weren't good for the environment. I apologized and explained, "We didn't have this green thing back in my earlier days." The clerk responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations." She was right about one thing -- our generation didn't have the green thing in “Our” day. So what did we have back then…? After some reflection and soul-searching on "Our" day here's what I remembered we did have.... Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles repeatedly. So they really were recycled. But we didn't have the green thing back in our day. We walked up stairs, because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks. But she was right. We didn't have the green thing in our day. Back then, we washed the baby's diapers because we didn't have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts -- wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that young lady is right. We didn't have the green thing back in our day. Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house -- not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana. In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity. But she's right. We didn't have the green thing back then. We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull. But we didn't have the green thing back then. Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus, and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint. But isn't it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn't have the green thing back then? Please post this on your Facebook profile so another selfish old person who needs a lesson in conservation from a smarty-pants young person can add to this...
Of course, the answer is... we invented all that stuff because we wanted the convenience, because we knew what a PITA it really was to live like that, although now we view it through a rosy lens of nostalgia.
Me, I wonder if the younglings who grew up with all that convenience wouldn't just whinge their butts off if they actually had to live the way those of us of an age can remember. Might take care of unemployment... if the little peckerheads with $90K in student debt for their "Bachelor's of General Studies in Medieval French Literature" would at least work for minimum wage while gathering some truly useful skills and not just sit in a park somewhere and whine about how it's unfair that no one wants to pay them $85K a year to study old French writing. And that we taxpayers should just comp them that degree, and fund them via the NEA.
But - at least the cashier has a job. So I'll shut up and not pick on *her*...
Most of the people I know who try to live "green" either do so because they can't afford the alternative, or, at the opposite end, they are so comfortable they can take the time (and oft times added expense, depending on how you approach it) to do so... like the Volt and Prius drivers, and people who take their jute bags to shop for arugula at Whole Foods.
*ducking and running*
*hiding behind a berm*
*munching popcorn*
In other words the text is championing greenies while putting down consumerism which is essentially opposite to the portrayal.
I met FBL at a Lex Meet at Shakespeare's in San Dog last July.
Having been raised in the Bronx of the '50s and '60s, the clerks initial suggestion would have provoked the requisite, "How the "F" would you know, asshole?" response. Which is occasionly followed by the almost as requisite (time permitting) "Why don't you run and get your supervisor and tell him that there's someone up front waiting to talk to him."
Wait, what was this post about originally?
These days, everybody who goes to college seems to want to imitate the aristocrats of ages past, and study what seems cool to them, without reference to actually making a living.
I need to go over to the local Vo-Tech and check out their welding course.
JTG: yay for canned sardines and tuna the only fish most of us can afford.
The largest problem I have with a "green" lifestyle is the politics that seem to go with it. If you are living lightly in order to save money or to be a good steward, then great and my hat's off to you because we're singing off the same sheet music. If you are yearning to make other people go back to the days of no electricity, only local seasonal food without preservatives and greatly reduced access to modern medicine because you think you and your experts know how to "save the planet" with the power of the state, then you are a watermelon, not a conservationist. (Watermelon - green skin but Red to the core.)
Portland has a City government that has gone green-mad, and proposes to take over the Willamette River (a major river, Federally navigable by all) and project "green-ness" into the river's operation as to recreation.
I'm spending my own hard-earned cash to operate the business for now, I employ two people part-time, and I am preparing exhibits for boating/sporting trade shows.
We speak a foreign language, also: our motto is "Ut Redderet, nos regulam": "we pay, we rule". Motor boaters pay for everything in Oregon via their taxes and registration fees, the paddlers pay nothing, yet want to own the rivers.
Motor boating is going anti-Green and high-profile in Oregon, WillBoat is going to see to that.
What have YOU done to help defeat the Greens?
Of course, this all the while they are cutting our Troops to the bones, and ignoring the real needs of our Veterans and Wounded Warriors.
(This English Lit - and Criminology - grad, and Monty Python fan, is going back to my corner..)
Switched to PURPLE for all my emotive colour needs.
Cheers