Travelogues and Starbucks

Feast or famine. That’s the way my social life goes. This week was the latter, having had only two thing on my day planner. One was my house cleaner who came to do her monthly magic, and two I went to a travelogue about river cruises in Europe, Asia and South America. Avalon, the company that owns the river ships, has eleven tours and when their very enthusiastic speaker was finished giving her talk even I---the non-traveler---wanted to sign up. They have two sizes of ships. The smaller size holds 126 passengers and the large one hold 160. I want to call them boats because they aren’t tall and stately like the ocean liners and they don’t have on-board entertainment. No pools. No floor shows but the speaker made a point of repeatedly telling everyone that all the beds face windows. (Does that mean passengers are the floor show for people on shore if they don’t close the curtains?). They gave us all a glossy, 260 page book outlining the details of all their tours, the rates and schematics of the ships plus gorgeous, scenic photos---costly, slick printing. I felt guilty taking one since I have no intentions of going on a cruise but they count on word-of-mouth advertising so caulk up this blog entry to me dispensing myself of my self-inflicted guilt.

If I was signing up for one of their tours it wouldn't be on the one the travel escort service that works out of my senior hall is setting up for 2017. They’re doing ‘Amsterdam to Amsterdam’ during tulip time which seems weird considering we have large tulip farms and a tulip festival within a 45 minute drive from my house. They draw in tour buses from all over The States and then some. Another tour  that Avalon offers would be more fascinating to me. It's on the Burmese river named Irrawaddy (see the photo above). Or their trip on the Yangtze River that takes you through China and Tibet. The day trips on land in China are ones my niece recently did and she couldn’t say enough good things about the country and travel there except for maybe the fact that she couldn’t get Wi-Fi in all of China. The Egypt’s Nile River tour would be awesome, too. I just wish I wouldn’t have to get on an airplane to do any of these trips. I’ve flown to Washington D.C., Denver and the Bahamas. I did not enjoy the experiences and that was long ago when airplane seats were bigger, the crazy people all took buses and the flight attendants were from the “coffee, tea or me” era of passenger service.

Speaking of crazy people, I cannot believe that a front-runner for the President of the United States is calling for a boycott of Starbucks because they are using a plain red cup for the holiday season! Not only that he’s talking about not renewing Starbucks leases in his Trump Towers all because some whack-a-do made a video that went viral claiming the all red cups are a war on Christmas. The topic was trending on Twitter and Facebook for several days and late night comedians were having a field day with the controversy. The political debating sites racked up pages of posts about Starbucks’ so-called war on Christmas and YouTube videos on the issue are exploding. Even Bristol Palin weighed in accusing liberals of trying to "make Christians look stupid.” Say what? What is stupid, Bristol, is calling for a boycott because of a plain red cup! I swear I’m going to be so jacked up on caffeine through the holidays that I’ll be talking a mile a minute; this topic made me so mad I vowed I’d stop at Starbucks every time I’m near one. If I was Starbucks, next year I’d use a plain white cup and put a box of color crayons by all their cash registers so people could make up their own designs of whatever won’t offend their tender sensibilities. 

Starbucks is one of the most socially responsible corporations on the face of the earth. They give their full AND part time employees health insurance and reimburse them for college tuition. They practice ethical sourcing for fair-trade coffee and have set up Farmer Support Centers in key coffee growing regions. This year they opened up five “military stores” (and have ten more planned) that are entirely staffed and run by veterans. And contrary to what the boycott rumor mill says, they don’t script their employees on what to say or not say to customers in the way of a holiday greeting other than to “make them feel welcome and glad they came.” Trump, who loves to wave a Bible at his rallies, ought to sit down and read it sometime. Starbucks does not deserve to be used as pandering bait to get votes. Rant off.

If this week was void of things to do then next week will more than make up for it. I have eight things penciled in on my day planer including a tour of the non-public areas of the airport. I’m looking forward to that tour although I’m kind of surprised the TSA allows people into the areas we’ll be going. I guess they don’t think a bunch of elderly widows from a senior hall could be terrorists. And that’s a good bet to take. The most militant thing I’m likely to do is to walk past the ill-informed sign holders in front of Starbucks and say, “Happy Holidays” just because I know it will annoy them.©

2015