Social Needs

As what I think is a fairly normal person, I too have social needs that from time to time need filled.  I get a lot of that done when I sing with the Barbershop Chorus but there is also a few times when I just feel the need to get out and meet with people.   Today we went to mail some packages at the Post Office and met a nice young lady with two small children.  Doing my best imitation of Grandpa, I talked to the kids and on the way out of the Post Office the mother stopped to talk with Barb and I.  She had been a substitute teacher at Tecumseh North Elementary and she and Barb had a lot of friends in common.  It was nice to stop and talk to her for a few moments.  Made me wish we had offered to take them to lunch.

If I was to try to aim this Post to a topic, I guess it would be how people feed their social needs?  With the kids here while their bathroom gets remodeled,  there is a lot of social interaction with them.  With the Christmas season here, there will be family gatherings to go to.   What do you do to fill that need?   I am sure there are many of you that feel Church is a good place to go and meet people. 

Moving on to the next topic,  I am always amazed at the news does its best to dramatize topics way above their real importance.  Turn that around and I ask why some events don't get more attention.  There are more young people killed on the streets of Chicago and Detroit on a weekend than most of the rest of the US combined.  Let one young white girl in rural Oklahoma die and it gets 15 minutes of airtime. 

This morning Barb and I talked about how many people in the USA don't feel empowered to participate in the climb of the ladder in a career that pays a living wage.  I read that a lot of employers have taken to hiring older workers who have lost their jobs to replace the kids that would have taken these starter jobs.   I can relate to that when I went back to school in the fall of 1970 and my job at Safeway bagging groceries was filled by an laid off Engineer at Boeing.  Being the kind of guy I was, I worked at a Salvage a couple of days a week to make do.  Our needs were not that great and I did know how to work.    I didn't ever go back to Safeway so I don't know how that guy fared.  Most of the Boeing jobs were transferred to Seattle so I guess that guy either moved or stayed at a fairly minimal job. 

I hope you all can join in the discussion od how we can get our country back on track.  For those young people, there were a lot of worse times in the 60's and it is possible to put it all together.  It takes a lot of smart people willing to work on our problems and not run around playing gotcha.

MUD