How to Change One’s Mind, or Running Athwart of the Generation Gap

 (This is the blog I planned to post today. But first, I sent it to my writing friends for their opinions. I felt it had a crabby feel that didn’t fit the theme, “Sun Breaks.” After reading their comments, I knew I have a lot to learn about generational outlooks. Instead of hiding the blog away in a drawer, I’m going to post it, along with my friends’ opinions. I think you’ll enjoy the discussion, and if you have comments of your own, feel free to add them.)

***Crash course in Generational categories:
           Builders or Strivers - born before 1946
           Boomers or Baby Boomers - born between 1946 and 1964
           Generation X - born after 1964***

    Last night, a pert young waitress in one of the town’s nicer restaurants slid my plate in front of me. “Here you go, Sweetie,” she chirped.

    I felt like sitting her down for a lesson in basic respect. She meant to be friendly, but when did it become okay for young people to treat their elders with such flippant familiarity?

    In past generations, young people called most adults Mr. or Mrs., unless they were specifically invited to use a first name. Teachers or other professionals were always dignified by their title. A couple of years ago at Hank’s all-school reunion, he was thrilled to be seated next to his high-school principal.

    “Call me Leo,” said the ex-principal.

    Hank tried, but the word stuck in his throat. “I’m sorry, Mr. Blodgett,” he said. “I just can’t do it.”

    I know how Hank felt. But there’s no problem for many of today’s students.  Children commonly address adults by their first names. In some schools, even teachers are addressed this way. Most people of my generation feel that using titles of respect brings about feelings of respect. To us, using proper titles seems like common courtesy.
  
   When my mother resided in care centers in her later years, everyone from housekeepers to kitchen help to nursing assistants addressed the residents by their first names or by insincere terms of endearment. These people had built the nation, for goodness sake! They’d been business people, nurses, military personnel, parents...but in the minds of those who cared for them, old age seemed to have reduced them all to the level of small children.

    I think the next time a young person in a store or restaurant calls me “Honey” or. . .shudder
. . .”Sweetie,” I shall draw myself up tall, give her my best schoolteacher glare, and say, “My dear, I could be your grandmother. I’m also a customer. If you want my business again, please let your language show respect for your customers.”

Now, here’s what other people had to say.
From Carolyn (from the Silent or Builder Generation) :

    Right on, Joan! I absolutely abhor being called "Honey" or "Sweetie" by servers or anyone else I don't know. Even in the doctor's office everyone is called by first names--except the doctors, who expect to be addressed as "Doctor Jones."
     The dentist my parents went to in Marysville always addressed my father as "Dr. Manus" (Dad had a Ph.D) and my mother as "Mrs. Manus." He knew how much it meant to them to be treated courteously and respectfully, especially when they were very elderly. He instructed his staff to do the same. When I took Mom and Dad to the Navy base, Dad rated a salute and was respectfully addressed as Col. Manus. There is a lot to be said for addressing people with courtesy titles--and "sir" and "ma'am" are part of that.

From Marj (a Builder):

 The fruit of the Spirit is love and joy, and my desire is to show those characteristics to those I come in contact with. . .Young people who need to learn respect for elders (and I thoroughly agree with you on this) won't be reading this, and those who might will write it off as an old person's thing. It might have more value as a blog if you can approach the problem positively. Use it to comment on how we older people can respond to the young with love and kindness that will get their attention. I might have said to the young waitress, "I know you are trying to make me feel good with the word "Sweetie," but it really makes me feel a bit uncomfortable to be called that." I might add, "I may have a lot of years behind me, but I am still young at heart."

Here at the Lodge the caregivers, nurses, and all call me by my first name as they do everyone else. But I know by the way they say it and the way I am treated they respect me. They give me the feeling they would do anything they can for me. I have tried to show them respect and love, and they have responded positively.

From Diana (a Baby Boomer):

 I have a slightly different viewpoint. I think this is a generational issue, not an issue about respect. We in the Boomer generation, at least on the West Coast, grew up with the view that addressing someone by a first name showed a willingness to accept that person as a peer and not relegate them to the category of an old fogy. This no doubt came as part of the "don't trust anyone over 30" nonsense we were subjected to. My generation, and those that follow it, truly mean no disrespect by using first names. If you were to say, “My dear, I could be your grandmother. I’m also a customer. If you want my business again, please let your language show respect for your customers,” I seriously doubt the "dear" would have any idea what she said that you considered so disrespectful.

I do know that it is very important to address African Americans by their titles and surnames outside the context of close friendship. When Oprah happens to address an older African-American woman in the audience, she always learns the name and proper title ahead of time and uses it. This stems directly from periods in our nation’s history when grown men were called "boys" in contexts where their white contemporaries were not, and many whites addressed blacks by their first names as if they were still in servitude.

Some of the Title/Surname use has turned a little topsy-turvy. You'll notice that in the court system, even the most disreputable defendant is referred to as Mr. or Ms. So-and-So. This is intended to maintain respect for someone who is innocent until proven guilty. At this time, however, it further establishes the younger generations' view that using a more familiar name or endearment conveys approval and respect instead of the opposite.

. . .Personally, I don't mind when a waitress or clerk calls me Sweetie--although, for a different reason, I would give a male clerk or waiter a dirty look if he called me that. Anyway, Sweetie is far better than some other things I've been called in my life, and I recognize that the intent is one of blessing, not disrespect.

From Cindi (also a Boomer):

I, too like to be respected in my profession. But I'd rather have my students' parents and my students honestly communicate and engage in conversation with me, than have them give me a proper title.

From Agnes (a Builder):
    As an "oldie," I confess that it doesn't bother me in the least to have someone call me "honey" or even "sweetie." It's done so often that it just runs off my back, and I think nothing of it. That's just the way some waitresses talk. When we were in the Philippines, parents of missionary kids told them to call us adults "aunt" or "uncle." So as a teacher there, I was "Aunt Atchie," and those kids now grown still call me that.

    So although . . . it's nice to be called a respectful name, I agree with Marj's and Diana's comments too. I think it really is a cultural, age-related matter.

From Marva (19 years old)
  I would never call an elder "Sweetie." I could never call my principal by his first name. Obviously my parents taught us to use respectful language to people who are older than us. 
  (I can vouch for Marva. She's my dear granddaughter.)
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So, here we have it. What do you think?

Our Salad-Bowl Nation

     I’m writing this while waiting for a friend in a Mt. Vernon public health clinic. I’m thinking how much I love this country of ours. I loved the way it was when I was young and most people lived in communities where everyone shared the same background and experiences. I love the way it is now, enriched by people from every nation under the sun.

    Mt. Vernon is a farming town with a large Hispanic population. Most came here originally to help grow and harvest the berries, corn, cucumbers and other crops that make this area one of the nation’s most bountiful food baskets. They’re on the way toward realizing the American dream for themselves, just as my ancestors did. But for now they need the extra help this clinic provides.

    The waiting room is filled mostly with people who have beautiful brown skin and dark eyes. The fluid cadences of their native languages flow around me. It makes me feel as if I’ve been dropped into another country, but it doesn’t seem strange to my younger friends. They have grown up with playmates and school friends of many national backgrounds.

    It’s still a marvel to me, all these colors, languages and cultures tossed together to make up this country called the United States of America. It’s the same way across the border in Canada. Sometimes the uniting doesn’t go smoothly. The good thing is we’re working at it. We’re hopeful about it. We appreciate the contributions immigrants bring to this country, even while we argue about who gets to come and how.

    It occurs to me that our country isn’t really about being a melting pot anymore. It’s more like a salad bowl. Salads are full of intriguing flavors, textures, contrasts--much more interesting than the bland blended flavors of something out of a “melting pot.”

    Don’t you agree?

 

 These people are just a few members of my own rainbow family. We are Norwegian, German, Chinese, English, Native Hawaiian, Cherokee, Native Alaskan, French, African American, Hispanic...and soon, a baby boy from Korea will join us.

Eternal Mounts

Along Washington's North Cascades Highway

I never see one of these mountain waterfalls without thinking of a story I heard years ago about Washington’s Cascade Mountains. A friend had been searching for an old mine he’d been told about when he stumbled across the rotted remains of a cabin. Nearby he spied a tunnel, like any other abandoned mine tunnel except for the twin watercourses plunging down the mountain on either side of the opening. 

Poking around, he found a few blacksmithing tools among the rotting logs. A rusted shovel leaned against the tunnel’s wall. As he prepared to leave, he noticed stones piled at the base of a sheer rock face as if someone had deliberately placed them there. Looking up, he saw these words painstakingly chiseled into the rock at about the height a person could reach if standing on the pile:

Eternal mounts, you have founts       

 Rolling down your rock-ribbed sides,

 Like one weeping in the keeping

 Of a watch that e'er abides.

Above the poem was etched the profile of the surrounding peaks.

I may never see that spot for myself, but whenever I gaze at one of our mountain waterfalls, I think of that unknown miner with a poet’s soul. I imagine him pecking away at the rock, leaving his words for someone to find, many years in the future.

   
My reality and his are starkly different, but streams continue to cascade down the sides of mountains. People still desire to leave behind something of themselves after they are gone. I feel connected.

Hidden Things

I almost stepped on this little treasure.

"And I will give you the treasures of darkness and hidden riches of secret places, that you may know that I, the Lord, which call you by your name, am the God of Israel" (Isaiah 45:3 NKJV).

In this verse of Scripture, Isaiah foretells what God plans to do through Cyrus, a future king of Persia, who would rescue the nation of Israel from her enemies. To me, this verse has an additional meaning: God wants us to be aware of the treasures, the hidden riches, he has scattered all around us. He has given them as another way of teaching us who he is. He knows that learning to notice and ponder things that most people bypass can add richness to our lives.

In one of my recent Sun Breaks posts, I told about hiking to Boardman Lake in the Cascade Mountains with Hank and daughter Lenora. To reach the trailhead, we drove on a former logging road for about five miles up a mountainside. In dry weather, the narrow road is dusty and potholed. Trees arch thickly overhead. Not much grows beneath them, except in ravines where light filters through. In some places, branches sweep close to the edge of the road, hiding whatever lurks behind.

As we jounced along, we focused mostly on dodging the next pothole. Then, on the uphill side, I caught a glint of water reflecting through a screen of evergreen branches.

"Hank, stop!" I said. "There's something interesting there. Can you back up?"

He did as I asked, stopping at a wide spot in the road. Grabbing my camera, I leaped out of the van and bent down to peer under the branches. "Oh, wow! Look at this!" I called.

While Hank stayed with the van, Lenora followed me over the edge of the graveled road. Although the footing was precarious, I slid down to stand on one of two squared off logs the early road builders had laid several feet apart in a narrow ravine as foundation for the logging road. They had placed thick timbers crosswise on that foundation, and built the roadbed on top of this crude but effective culvert.

One of the foundation timbers and the hidden glade

The waterfall and pool

When our eyes adjusted to the shadows, we gazed across a placid pool where a little waterfall trickled over moss-covered cliffs before its water funneled through the culvert and dashed down the mountainside. The glade was a picture-perfect Pacific Northwest version of one of those postcard spots in Hawaii, and a lovely example of the delights that await those who take the time to seek out and appreciate God's hidden treasures, wherever He has stashed them for us.

Are you Fiercely Frugal?

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I'm posting this note from my friend Diana Savage, whose Fiercely Frugal blog is not only full of great money-saving ideas but is also fun to read. Hope you'll follow her links to see what it's all about and to possibly glean a few creative ideas to adapt to your own projects. 

Dear Frugal Friends,

My friend Joan helped me get back to posting ideas on the Fiercely Frugal blog. (It’s been a hectic spring and summer.) She supplied information and a photo for a clever way to make painting more enjoyable. See her suggestion for a “No Cost Paint Container” at http://savagesisters.wordpress.com/category/resourceful-recycling.  (If you prefer to visit www.SavageSisters.net, you’ll find the post in the Resourceful Recycling category.) You’ll also find a link to Joan’s own blog with her delightfully descriptive writing about the Pacific Northwest, travel, and more.

Yours for frugal solutions,

Diana
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Cooling off at Boardman Lake

A few weeks ago, daughter Lenora took a late summer break from Arizona’s heat to luxuriate in northwest Washington’s green coolness. We decided to drive to the Robe valley, where as a little girl she’d spent many happy days at her grandparents' former home. While there, we hiked to Boardman Lake, off the Mountain Loop Highway, to see if the huckleberries were ripe. We stopped first at little Evans Lake to picnic. Here’s Lenora enjoying the scenery.

The mile-long trail to Boardman Lake is well-used. The footing is tricky, and steeper than we remembered. (Of course, Hank and I are not as young as the first time we hiked the trail.)

Here is a denizen of the woods enjoying a beam of sunlight.

Lenora reached the lake long before we did, but we made it.

We met people who’d camped at primitive sites on the far side of the outlet, on the hill behind Lenora. To get there they scrambled across a jumble of logs. We saw some plunge into the lake’s cold waters to swim.


 

The berries were scarce this year, but as we headed back to the trail, we each picked a handful of blue huckleberries and carried them home in a plastic bag. Mmm! Huckleberry hotcakes next morning to remind us of a special afternoon in the mountains!

How We Have Changed!

Some members of the Granite Falls High School class of 1954: l. to. r., Clyde (Squeak) Scofield, Darlene Jones Johnson, Harriet Olson Duncan, Mabel Murphy Bennett, Walt Burrus, Nancy ScherrerTellesbo, Morrie Running, Mickie Giroux Erickson, Greta Bryan Running, Joan Rawlins Husby, Leslie Scherrer, Dave Bogart (Photo by Mabel Bennett)

Here we are at age six, with our teacher Miss Anderson. When we graduated from Granite Falls High School in 1954, there were 24 of us, of whom 22 are still living. Twelve of us met at our last bi-monthly classmates' luncheon. Match the photos to see what a difference fifty-six years makes!

Mabel Murphy, l.; Harriet Olsen, r.

Dave Bogart

Les Scherrer

Nancy Scherrer

Joan Rawlins, Greta Bryan

Mickie Giroux, Darlene Jones

Squeak Scofield

Morris Running