Stuff I Wonder About

• Before there was coffee, how (why?) did people get out of bed in the morning?
• How can a person living alone, who has mandated low-flow toilets, takes one shower a day, runs the dishwasher twice a week, does two, maybe three, loads of laundry a week USE 506 GALLONS OF WATER PER DAY? Doesn't that seem truly excessive? My lawn isn't that green!
• I wonder if vitamin supplements really do any good... and how would we know? I know when Advil or prescription medications work by their effects on symptoms. What's the clue with vitamins? I take them, sure... but when do we know they're working?
• I wonder if, in my own lifetime, there will EVER be a Monday that I'm not on a diet. There hasn't been one yet... so I'm just wondering.
  
• I wonder how posting on the internet and text messaging are going to impact the English language. Wl r grndkds all typ lk ths? Wut r u waring tdy? Kill me now.
  
• A peasant living in the 12th century could have been transported to the 14th or even 18th century and not noticed much difference at all in his daily life. My parents, born in the first decade of the 20th century, would stand befuddled today at our world, recognizing little. I wonder what my grandkids' grandkids will see.
• With the perspective of time and as the consequences of policies and actions and inactions have become evident, I wonder how history in 150 years will judge the presidencies of Carter, Clinton and G.W. Bush (and the men themselves).
  
• I wonder how the effects on the children of career moms will be weighed in 100 years or so. I was a career mom, and a single one for many years, and I probably did everything wrong there was to do....but my sons have the most amazingly successful lives and stable families. I suspect there's no one formula for getting it right, but I wonder what the consequences will be of this watershed societal change.
  
• I wonder if this summer, between camps and crafts and classes and meets and parties, and when every programmed activity that can possibly be scheduled has been fulfilled... if one kid, somewhere, will be able to lie on warm grass and watch billowing clouds form pictures then drift away on the breeze... if one kid will be able to throw a peanut butter sandwich in a bag and take off on his bike to spend the day exploring a nearby lake.... if playing outside after dark is still possible, and still as sweet as it once was....if any kid will have the luxury of being bored, then know the satisfaction of chasing away that boredom with creative play that doesn't require batteries or a keyboard. I wonder if that kind of summer childhood still exists.
  
• After paying out over two billion dollars in damages to abuse victims, all of which money comes ultimately from ordinary parishioners, and after assessing the devastation this one scandal has caused in the American Catholic church, I wonder if there's been any impact at all in Rome. There are new policies in place to prevent this from happening again, but ironically many of those policies affect parish volunteers the most. As far as I know, there have been only a few minor changes in the fundamental structure that is surely to blame. I wonder how the Church will have changed in 300 years...and for this one I'd willingly come back for another trip around the block.
  
• I wonder if the creative directors of marketing campaigns currently running at top speed to produce idiotic "green" action plans realize how ridiculous they sound? I'd wager that anyone who was alive and nearing adulthood in the 1970's, and everyone born after, is already a conservationist in daily life, making those "green" choices that a responsible citizen would. But, does anyone seriously think an individual "living green" is going to critically impact the climate of an entire planet? I wonder if this isn't just one more way we can "feel good" about our life, even though there's nothing substantial behind the action? One more way that flash has trumped substance in American culture, one more item we're being SOLD. And I wonder if in 200 years sociologists will conclude that MARKETING was the single biggest influence of the 20th and 21st centuries.
  
• Now that I've spent an hour and a half reading through the blogosphere and writing this, I wonder if Mr. Coffee has kept my second cuppa coffee hot. I hp so. Hv a nc dy.