Starbucks’s Red Cup Heresy or Not The Onion, Part the One Thousand

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My friend Carrie linked to a response to the right-wing freak-out over the fact that Starbucks — on November 8 — is serving coffee in red cups.

Response?  To WHAT?  My first thought, of course, was that it was The Onion, but that bastion of journalistic acumen just can’t keep up.  Turns out, yes, the right wing is freaking out in early November that … honestly, I don’t know what.  Since I don’t spend much time on right-wing freak-out sites, I Googled “starbucks red cup” and got this:

Image: snip from Google news that reads "In the news: Why Some Christians Are Upset at Starbucks' New Holiday Cups. TIME‎ - 7 hours ago. The new cup, which is shades of red with the Starbucks logo, showed ... Starbucks REMOVED CHRISTMAS from their cups because they hate ... Christian evangelists claim Starbucks fanned 'war on Christmas' with minimalist holiday red coffee cups. New York Daily News‎ - 18 hours ago. Some Christians Are Extremely Unhappy About Starbucks' New Holiday Cups. Huffington Post‎ - 7 hours ago. More news for starbucks red cup."

Seriously?  SERIOUSLY?  It’s a “war on Christmas” when we are merely festive, instead of universally Christian?  When a random company celebrates with a color traditionally ASSOCIATED with Christmas, while not — six weeks before the date arbitrarily selected by early Christians to celebrate the birth of their savior — adding verbiage that highlights one holiday among the many that its customers celebrate?  Or did I miss the Rosh Hashanah cups and the Eid al Fitr cups and the Diwali cups and the Chinese New Year cups and the Flying Spaghetti Monster cups?

I’m not Christian, but it seems to me that Pastor Emily Heath gets it right:

Maybe this is the year that we can shift our priorities away from what doesn’t matter to what matters more than we know. Maybe this year we can set our sights a little higher than changing red cups, and instead try to change the world. And maybe this year we can stop yelling at others to “Keep Christ in Christmas” and instead focus on being Christlike ourselves.

So, here’s a suggestion of how to start: buy someone a coffee. In one of those red cups. Seriously, you will not go to hell for going to Starbucks this Christmas. But if you look closely enough, you just might find Jesus in the guy behind you in line. Because Christ is already at Starbucks, just as Christ is everywhere.

I don’t need his name on a paper cup to tell me that.

Hey!  It’s November 8!  Where’s my Montana Day cup?  Starbucks must hate the mountain west!  Outrage!

Remembering my Dad on what would have been his 80th birthday

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Damn, I miss him.  He would have been a glorious 80-year-old.  This from our travels in China in 1983.

Image: White man in suit reading wall posters in Chinese.

No, THIS is ironic.

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For all you Alanis Morissette fans who were left sort of confused about what is or is not ironic, THIS is ironic.

Image: Sign showing photo of red fox with this text: "Wildlife: For many years, a troop of foxes made their den on this prairie. Coyotes have been seen here occasionally, along with rabbits, field mice, and a myriad of insects. Look closely among the grasses! Look up, too, as many birds visit and nest here."

This is a new sign posted on the greenway that runs along the street across from our house, intended, I guess, to make us feel like we’re in the middle of the prairie rather than in a glorified median strip.  Yes, foxes “made” their home there, but the past tense is appropriate because THE CITY PLOWED THEIR DENS UNDER TO CREATE THE NEW, IMPROVED “PARK.”   Here is a photo of the foxes who MADE their home across the street from us before the city undertook to formalize the area as an official piece of prairie.  If you look closely in the first photo, you can see that the mother fox is nursing her kits.

Image: red fox standing on a small rise, wooden fence in the background.

Image: mother fox and kit playing on the grass with a house in the background.

I miss seeing the foxes trotting along our street, or sneaking through our fence when I open the back door.  In addition, since the Ironic Plowing Under, the rabbit population of the neighborhood has exploded, causing our retrievers to think they really are retrievers as they light off across the lawn in pursuit of a retreating bunny.

The Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame announces the Inductee Class of 2016: Laura Hershey

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Our dear — sadly late — friend Laura Hershey is being inducted into the Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame.

Laura Ann Hershey – Internationally recognized writer, activist and advocate for the disabled community who challenged and changed the public’s perception of disability – Littleton, CO. Consultant to Denver metro cities and entities assisting with ADA implementation. President’s Award recipient in 1988 for her efforts nationally, including pressuring the Social Security Administration to allow disabled people to work, and lobbying to increase visibility of LGBT people with disabilities, to improve Medicaid services and to promote the rights of home care workers.

This fills my heart with joy at the choice, and sadness that she left us way too soon, both because I loved hanging out with her and because she wrote things like this:

Telling

What you risk telling your story:

You will bore them.
Your voice will break, your ink
spill and stain your coat.
No one will understand, their eyes
become fences.
You will park yourself forever
on the outside, your differentness once
and for all revealed, dangerous.
The names you give to yourself
will become epithets.

Your happiness will be called
bravery, denial.
Your sadness will justify their pity.
Your fear will magnify their fears.
Everything you say will prove something about
their god, or their economic system.
Your feelings, that change day
to day, kaleidoscopic,
will freeze in place,
brand you forever,
justify anything they decide to do
with you.

Those with power can afford
to tell their story
or not.

Those without power
risk everything to tell their story
and must.

Someone, somewhere
will hear your story and decide to fight,
to live and refuse compromise.
Someone else will tell
her own story,
risking everything.

Interesting note:  I went to look for this on the internet and discovered that it was made part of “Rise Up O Flame: A Ferguson Worship Toolkit for UUs.”

Miss you, Laura, and so glad you are being recognized for your contributions to our wonderful state.

So this is a thing in southern Virginia

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Image: Virginia license plate with coiled snake and the words "Don't Tread on Me."

Which makes me laugh my behind off because back in the day – and maybe still today – the thing we were supposed to fear from gun registration is that when the commies took over, they’d know where all the gun-toting patriots were.  Now the bozos have all self-identified and registered their sorry behinds with the DMV, making it especially easy for the commies.

AAaaahahahahahahhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa…snort!

Our officehood. #potd

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CREEC’s office is in a very hopping neighborhood, full of galleries, head shops, tattoo parlors, restaurants, etc.  I loved this sign from a door a few blocks up.  Thinking of painting it on the wall of our conference room.

Image: Store window with painted text that reads, "No lowballers; no drunks; no crybabies or crying babies; no credit; no drama; no hangin' out; no soliciting."

I loved the multi-eyed beast painted on this store window, and didn’t notice until I looked at the photo on my laptop that, with the reflection, it appears to be my own head.

Image: painting on store window of goat-like creature with multiple eyes who appears superimposed on a reflection of the photographer's body.

This one is self explanatory.

Image: a utility box with graffiti that reads, "Duh."

Saying/thinking

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Dramatic re-enactment of an actual phone call with a business that will remain anonymous.

Image: Sketch of a woman on the phone with a speech bubble that reads, in small type, “I just wanted to let you know about what you would need to do to you know provide interpreters because well you know how we attorneys are I don’t want to sound confrontational or anything but just to let you know that as a technical matter your office is a place of public accommodation and for that reason is required by the ADA to provide effective communication and we’d be happy to provide a list of interpreter agencies and oh thank you so much for working with us on this we really really appreciate it . . . .”  while her thought bubble reads, in large, all-caps type, “OH FOR CRYING OUT LOUD THE ADA WAS PASSED 25 YEARS AGO AND YOU CAN’T FIGURE OUT THAT YOU NEED TO HIRE INTERPRETERS?!?!”

 

 

3 reflections of the Mayan Theater. #potd

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I had to go back to the office for a bit this evening.  As I was walking out, I noticed the reflection of the Mayan Theater sign in windows of the empty building across the street, then — below — on a car as I walked away down the street.

Alabama WTF?

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First Alabama passed a law requiring a driver’s license or similar state-issued ID to vote.  Then they closed all but four DMVs in the state, and all of the DMVs in majority African-American counties.  Sounds bad.  It’s worse than that.

The whole process disproportionately disenfranchises African-Americans, rural voters of all races (who are generally more distant from DMVs), poor people of all races (who may not have the means to take time off work and travel across the state), and people with disabilities (who also may not have the ability to travel long distances, in public or borrowed transportation, to get a license).  It’s racist and it ultimately limits the franchise to middle-class urban and suburban non-disabled folks of any race.

But wait! There’s more!

[T]he agency says by next March there may only be four driver’s license offices open in the state.

“Well unfortunately what citizens you know could expect is longer lines, or often times scheduling way in advance to get an opportunity, and probably the worst is some have to travel a significant distance to be able to get that driver’s license serviced,” Spencer Collier, Alabama Law Enforcement Agency Secretary said.

The focus has naturally been on the effect this has on voting, without stopping to think about the effect this has on DRIVING.  That’s right, that privilege the state grants you to get behind the wheel of a vehicle and do things like drive to your job, drive the equipment you might need to be able to drive to DO your job, drive to hospitals and doctors’ offices, drive to the grocery store, and of course drive down the highway with the radio up and the windows down trying to forget that YOU LIVE IN THE MOST BACKWARD STATE IN THE NATION.

The economic impact of the inability to drive is huge, and will now fall disproportionately on African-Americans, and people of any race who are disabled and/or poor and/or live in rural areas.

Not just Mississippi Goddam, but Alabama WTF?

Source: Alabama DMV closings draw call for federal voting rights probe | MSNBC