Fortune for naught, in the face of tragedy

Last week, a locally important two-lane highway was closed for several hours, due to a two-car collision which killed an 86 year old woman. It caused a lot of congestion, being the only east-west highway in the area.

Apparently, the accident occurred when the driver of a west-bound SUV inexplicably crossed the center line and smashed head-on into a minivan. The elderly victim was a passenger in the van; she was not wearing a seat belt.

The driver apparently at fault, according to Forbes magazine, is the seventh richest woman in the world, a former corporate president and a noted philanthropist.

One hears this story and must invariably reflect on the nature of our existence, on how the tiny choices we make can have enormous consequences, of how little importance so much of what we measure counts when facing mortality.

Had whatever caused the millionaire to swerve across the road - a moment's distraction, a moment's inattention, an error in judgement that on another occasion might have been of seemingly no consequence - not occurred, a tragedy would have been averted, the lives forever changed would have continued unchanged instead., enduring senses of loss and guilt would never have been engendered.

A moment's pause to fasten her seatbelt may well have saved the elderly victim. Who was she? The mother of the driver? The grandmother? Almost certainly somebody important to him or her, for they were all assembled to attend a wedding. One suspects the driver of that minivan will forever regret not having required that special passenger to buckle up.

What of the driver who crossed the line? Most of us would probably envy her riches - the seventh wealthiest woman in the world! - but all those riches will do nothing to extinguish the sense of guilt that momentary mistake must surely have engendered within her.

In the end, we are frail beings; in the end,  we are all slaves to the caprice of chance, and we live, feel and die as the frail beings we are. Our material possessions are of little effect in comparison.

Good for the body, good for the planet

After I got the job driving a school bus and decided I liked it, I moved to be closer to work. Now, if I drive to work, I've got about a 7.1 mile round trip by car ... and since we get an enormous (unpaid!) break in the middle of the day, it's a round trip I usually make twice a day.

But I don't drive my commute; I bike it. Granted, the bike route saves about two miles on the round trip, since I can take a short cut that's not available to drivers. Thanks to that short cut, the elapsed time is about the same. But still, it saves 14 miles of driving every day I hop on the bike.

More to the point, biking puts me in better shape. Which is not an inconsiderable benefit, considering that I'm in training for yet another Grand Canyon hike. (see my other blog, ketches, yaks and hawks.)

But it also saves on gasoline. Assuming I bike both my commutes, morning and afternoon, every day of the week, I'm saving about 70 miles of driving. Which for me, would be about three gallons each week, which is three gallons of irreplaceable gasoline which isn't being pumped out of the ground, and three gallons of gasoline which isn't ending up as greenhouse gas emissions. Not a large amount in the scheme of things, but every bit saved really does help.

It also means I'm saving about ten dollars each week. Which isn't bad news for somebody who is still adjusting to being seriously underemployed.

So it's a win-win-win solution. I commend it to everybody who can find a way to get to work on a bike

A little act to save jobs

More and more stores around here have installed self checkout counters. On the surface, that seems sort of interesting, an attractive and maybe even intriguing use of technology.

But don't use them.

Think about it. What's going on here? Go into a store with self checkout counters, and what else do you notice? Fewer cashiers. Which is to say, fewer employees. Which is to say, people who used to have jobs as cashiers, don't.

What you don't see are lower prices. The prices are the same whether you use self checkout or go to a cashier. The prices are the same whether you're in a renovated store with self checkout counters, or in one of the same company's older stores which don't yet have them.

So ask yourself: In whose interest is self checkout? Obviously not the employee's; more machines and fewer humans mean more people struggling to find jobs, more people desperate to make ends meet, more misery in the midst of a terrible recession which has brought unemployment and underemployment to millions. It's not in the customer's interest either. Do you get a price break when you use self checkout? No - any money saved goes to the corporation. Do you get a person on the spot who can quickly resolve any glitch that develops during checkout? No - you have to wait until some employee notices. Is it faster? Doesn't seem so, from what I can see - fairly often, in fact, I see customers confused by the process, or stumbling over one sort of problem or another. So who benefits? The store, only the store. And they don't pass their benefits back to either the consumer or the employee.

On the other hand, if you go to a cash register operated by an employee, you're doing your part to keep that person employed. You're doing your part to tell the management that they need to continue employing cashiers. You're even doing a little to combat this terrible recession. And you aren't paying a penny more than you would if you were in the other line.

Send a signal to the corporations. Do what you can to keep people employed. What goes around comes around ....