Personal essays
Tuning in to the messages you should hear
Ice cream
Kim and I started and ended our honeymoon at the Ben & Jerries factory.
It’s kind of how we each knew we’d chosen well.
We were on our way to Montreal and Quebec but it was much cheaper to fly into Vermont and drive up and so we did.
We took a tour the first time we visited and bought some reusable string shopping bags the second time that I still use thirty years later. We ate ice cream both times.
When we told them we were on our honeymoon they gave us one scoop for free. The next week they remembered us and gave us another one for free.
At the time Ben and Jerry were still running the company. You could feel their spirit and influence.
Though the company has changed a lot over the years, I was happy to read this response from the company after a pro-union vote at this location, “We look forward to a sweet collaborative future.”
Wow. None of the union busting rhetoric or tactics we’ve seen from Amazon or Starbucks.
The Slate article reported, “During the organizing campaign, no workers were fired for supporting the union. The company issued no Chicken Little predictions of imminent doom, no threats of closure or moving operations overseas (or worse, to New Hampshire). No sudden raises for union opponents, no newly stringent managers, no firing union supporters for clocking in 90 seconds late. Instead, true to its reputation, the company was simply … chill.”
Such good news and I almost missed it.
The news that fits
I cancelled the paper and got rid of cable soon after Kim died. The news was like OG doomscrolling and it wasn’t good for me.
It’s like a song I remember from my youth by the great Shel Silverstein.
The song was called “Wreck of Old ‘49” and here’s the entire song.
“Well, I’ll sing you a song ‘bout the old Forty Nine, The fastest engine on the Santa Fe line On the fourteenth of April, she made a desperate dash”
Actually, let me interrupt here. You can feel the tension building. It’s a train song with the word “wreck” right there in the title. Like “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”
We’re told the train is the fastest engine. Uh oh, that speed thing is going to be a problem.
The fourteenth of April is such a specific date. There must be a reason we remember the exact date. And on that date the train made a desperate dash.
Here’s the rest of the song:
“And she got there on time and she did not crash.”
The song ends there because there isn’t anything more to say.
We skip through good news and focus on bad, flashier news.
It means we get a skewed view of the world.
Why isn’t more attention paid to the Ben & Jerry’s successful unionization and the UPS drivers getting their raise and a commitment for air conditioned trucks?
I’m not saying that we should ignore the awful things happening around us - but it’s overwhelming if we only pay attention to the bad news.
We should note the rising temperatures and the unbearable heat. But when the temperatures drop we should spend time outside reminding ourselves of the parts of the planet we want to protect.
Anything can be
There’s a stop light at the end of my street and it’s always red.
The cross street is a more important road and the stop light doesn’t turn green for us until a car is detected.
If I’m driving my car I sit at a red light and wait for it to turn green. If I’m biking I often look both ways and continue through as if it’s a stop sign.
It could be my memory of the Shel Silverstein poem about the people who stand at a red light for their entire lives waiting for it to change. Or it might be his poem that tells us that the world is full of red lights and people telling us to obey them.
There are people actively engaged in making the lights turn green for shorter and shorter periods of time.
I was driving to the airport a month ago at 430 in the morning and came to a red light and stopped. The guy behind me almost drove right through me.
He veered around me and zoomed through the red light. Slowed a bit at the next red light and proceeded through it as well.
I then sat at the red light waiting. Another car came up beside me. Stopped. And continued through the red light. Stopped. And continued through the next red light.
When the lights are green for short periods of time and some red lights seem to be on for no reason, people start to ignore all red lights.
Silverstein tells us to go ahead and listen to the mustn’ts, the don’t, the shouldn’ts, the impossibles, the won’ts.
You can’t have an ice cream now. You shouldn’t go back you were just there. You can’t quit your job. You’re too old to learn something new. No one should read that book.
Silverstein says listen to all of that.
“Then listen close to me – Anything can happen, child, ANYTHING can be.”
Essay from Dim Sum Thinking Newsletter 175. Read the rest of the Newsletter or subscribe