Author Archives: Kathleen Fox

It’s time for my annual rant about the increasingly outrageous expansion of what used to be “Christmas” into a two-month extravaganza of over-eating, over-scheduling, and over-spending called “the holiday season.” Let’s focus for just a moment on holiday stress.

If I see one more article about coping with the stress of the holidays, I just may scream. Not, you understand, that I am stressed or anything. I will admit to being profoundly irritated, though. It just doesn’t seem reasonable to complain about holiday stress when so much of it is self-inflicted.

My own suggestion to reduce stress is to employ, early and often, one short word. No, not that word. Admittedly, it may have its place—such as when it’s 11:47 p.m. on Christmas Eve and you are attempting to put together something that the directions blithely assure you can be assembled “in 15 minutes with a few simple tools,” and you’ve been working on it for three hours and you have several small parts left over. In such a situation, feel free to use whatever words come to mind, as often and as emphatically as seems appropriate.

And no, although it certainly can be useful, “no” isn’t the word I’m suggesting, either. The word I recommend using lavishly at this time of year is “why.”

“I have to bake six dozen cookies for the cookie exchange at work.” Why?

“It’s the weekend after Thanksgiving; we have to put up the outside Christmas lights.” Why?

“The Christmas letter has to go out by December 15.” Why?

“I have to get gifts for all 47 people in the extended family.” Why?

“I don’t care what the in-laws want; we have to get together with the whole family on Christmas morning.” Why?

I’m certainly not suggesting you should turn into a Grinch and skip Christmas altogether. It can be a wonderful time of sharing traditions with the people you care about most. Just stop and think about why you do the things you do this time of year. Consider whether the activities are enjoyable, whether they are important to someone in your family, or whether they matter enough to you to be worth doing at all.

If writing a Christmas letter or sending out cards to a long list of relatives and friends is fun and helps you keep in touch with people, then fine. If it’s a hassle and you hate it, why not skip it? You can keep in touch just as well with a spring letter or a summer one—or better yet, emails and notes throughout the year.

If you truly love baking Christmas cookies and want to have dozens of them, that’s great. But if you make them because you assume you should, or you know you’re going to eat too many of them and hate yourself for it, or you end up throwing half of them away because they get stale—then in the name of Saint Nicholas, Rudolph, and all the elves, why do them at all?

By all means, participate in the events and traditions you enjoy this time of year. But before you commit yourself unthinkingly to a list of seasonal shoulds, stop and ask one small question. “Why do this?”

If the answer is, “Because I want to,” then go for it. Have a wonderful time—and a Merry Christmas.

According to that wise philosopher Kermit the Frog, “It’s not easy being green.”

Kermit didn’t know the half of it. The difficulties of being a green frog are nothing compared to the challenges of being a “green” human being.

You may or may not recycle. You may or may not use energy-efficient light bulbs or buy organic produce. You may or may not believe global warming to be a problem. But I would be willing to bet Al Gore’s electric bill that you would agree with the statement, “We need to use our planet’s resources wisely.”

One way to do that is through “green” buying. Unfortunately, this is not as simple as you might think.

The other day I got a catalog in the mail—printed, of course, on recycled paper. This company advocates “less wasteful consumption.” They sell all sorts of conservation-minded stuff like solar panels, battery chargers, energy-efficient light bulbs, and composting commodes. I’m sure a lot of their products are quite useful and genuinely “green.”

Then there are the more dubious things. Like the clothes and household stuff made from organic cotton and bamboo. True, the flannel bathrobe made from organic cotton costs $89, plus shipping, as opposed to the $19 you might spend for a flannel bathrobe at Wal-Mart. But you can feel so much more virtuous when you wrap up in the organic one. Never mind that both the garments are imported from China, traveling halfway around the world via ships and trains and trucks that use lots of good old-fashioned fossil fuels.

Or you can order fire-starters to use in your energy-saving wood stove. These are made from recycled church candles. You can be green and ecumenical at the same time, since the starters are 30% Lutheran, 30% Catholic, and 40% other denominations. Of course, you could eliminate the cost of hauling candle stubs back and forth if you just stopped in at a local church and asked them to save their used candles for you.

Then there are the decorative composting containers, designed to fit under your sink or sit with eco-pride on your kitchen counter and hold up to a week’s worth of scraps. They range in price from $17 to $42, plus shipping. A recycled ice cream bucket or yogurt container would serve the purpose just as well—but where’s the green glamour in that?

Green buying can even extend into the afterlife. You can return the remains of your beloved pet to the earth in an eco-friendly manner with a bamboo pet coffin. Not just any bamboo, either. No, these are made from “fair-trade-certified bamboo”—a variety, by the way, that pandas do not eat. They are hand-woven in a small family-run factory in—guess where? China.

If you chose a less ostentatious but no less eco-friendly way to return your pet’s remains to the earth, you could just bury it in the back yard in a cardboard box. With the $350, plus shipping, you would save by not buying the bamboo pet casket, you could donate a lot of food to your local animal shelter.

My favorite item in the whole catalog, however, is the “Ellie Pooh” brand paper. You can get a narrow notebook, perfect for your to-do lists, for only $9, plus $6 shipping. The same price gets you a cube of 100 4-inch-square sheets in a cute little cardboard box.

That seems expensive, you think? Ah, but this isn’t ordinary paper. This is made—without bleach or acid—from 25% recycled paper and 75% elephant dung. Organic, of course, and no doubt gathered by hand. When you think of the labor involved just in collecting the raw materials, not to mention the processing, the prices seem quite reasonable for such a unique end product.

Too bad the “Ellie Pooh” company doesn’t make stationery, but maybe people were reluctant to lick the envelopes. Of course, you could just make your to-do lists on the back of recycled junk mail envelopes, but then you’d miss out on the self-satisfaction of having helped the elephants of Sri Lanka.

If you think it’s important to use the Earth’s resources well, you could certainly order products like this from catalogs like this. Or you might try a different approach—not as eco-trendy, perhaps, but at least as eco-friendly. It’s simple—stop and think before you buy. Don’t assume that buzzwords like “organic” or “green” or “recycled” automatically add up to wise purchasing.

Think before you spend. Otherwise the only “green” in your purchases might be the color of the money that gets recycled out of your pocket and into someone else’s.

Customer service is not necessarily about efficiency. It is not necessarily even about getting a problem solved—although that certainly is a nice bonus when it happens.

Customer service is about treating the customer like a person.

First case in point: Two young clerks, on different days, at the same store. Both of them were undeniably competent. They rang up my purchases and processed my debit card with quick efficiency that got me through the checkout line with commendable promptness. Yet I wouldn’t give either of them a passing grade in customer service.

The young woman said all the things she was probably supposed to say—hello and did you find everything and please sign here—but with no more courtesy than a robot would have shown. Her only sign of humanity was her response when I asked her if she had already put the receipt into the bag with my purchases. Her “yes” was impatient, with a touch of eye-rolling “duh—of course.” Not being her mother, I didn’t appreciate her tone.

The young man, a few days later, simply didn’t talk to me at all. No greeting, no acknowledgement, not a word until he printed out the credit slip and said, “I need you to sign this,” with utter disinterest. I was tempted to sign my name “Darth Vader” just to see if he would notice.

Second case in point: An equally young clerk at a different store, who said “hello” and “did you find everything” as if he meant them, who looked up a missing price with a “no problem” attitude, and who joked about having only 17 minutes left on his shift—“16 and a half, now.” We were both smiling as I left.

Third case in point: I called an airline to find out whether they had any sort of emergency fare that might help out one of my friends who needed to get home after having a vacation interrupted by emergency surgery. I was, of course, answered by an automated system. Holding firmly onto my patience by its back hair, I made my way dutifully through the menu of choices until eventually I was connected to a living, breathing human being. No, she told me, there was no such fare.

It wasn’t the answer I wanted, though it was the answer I expected. What I didn’t expect was her warmth. “I’m so sorry,” she said, sounding as if she meant it. “We probably should have that type of fare, but we don’t. I’m really sorry I can’t help you.”

By the time we ended our brief conversation she was passing along her best wishes—sincere ones, I am convinced—for my friend’s swift recovery. Even though she couldn’t do anything to solve my problem, she responded to me as one human being to another. I felt treated with consideration and respect, so I hung up the phone with a positive impression of the airline in spite of the negative answer.

Of course, I don’t expect to exchange life stories or meaningful conversations on a customer service phone or in the supermarket checkout line. I understand that greeting customers must become formulaic, routine, and largely mindless: “How are you today?” and “Did you find everything you needed?” and even the dreadfully clichéd, “Have a nice day.”

It just seems to me that extending courtesy and warmth must make a sales clerk’s job much more enjoyable as well as pleasing the customers. It doesn’t take much, just a brief acknowledgment that there’s another human being on the other side of the counter.

There’s nothing wrong with clichéd conversation, especially if it’s offered with a genuine smile. Because there’s another cliché involved here. The one that says, “The customer isn’t an interruption of your job; the customer is your job.”

Have a nice day.

I didn’t follow any of my usual routes that morning when I went for my daily walk. Instead, for no particular reason, I headed in the opposite direction and circled through a less familiar neighborhood.

On my way back, I approached a house where an elderly man was standing out in the front yard. I said, “Good morning.”

He returned my greeting, then added almost brusquely, “Come here. I want to show you something.”

Now, following strange men into their back yards isn’t something a wise woman, alone in a neighborhood not her own, probably ought to do. But the man was elderly, there was nothing frightening in his manner, and whatever he wanted to show me seemed important. I went.

When we reached the back yard, he gestured and said, “See that tree?”

Behind the house stood a lovely old elm. The wide, low fork where its trunk divided into two spreading branches seemed just made to climb into. One sturdy branch was worn smooth, evidence that a swing had hung there for a long, long time. But the tree was badly damaged. A jagged split through the trunk exposed a long gash of raw wood, and the branch where children had swung drooped so low that the end of it brushed the grass.

“It was that wind storm the other night,” the man told me. “I’m just waiting for the tree guys to come take it down.”

He went on to tell me, in a few brief sentences, about the tree. How he and his wife had planted it almost 50 years ago when they bought the house. How it had grown to shade the back yard. How the kids had climbed it and swung from its branches and built tree houses in it. How the grandchildren had done the same. And how, ever since his wife had died last year, things just weren’t the same.

I listened, and I nodded, and I said almost nothing in response. There was nothing I needed to say. This man, in showing me his damaged tree, was expressing his love for his family and his grief over his losses. He needed a listener that morning—and I came along just at the right time, before the tree guys got there with their saws and chippers.

Maybe my choice of an unaccustomed route that morning was a coincidence. Maybe not. It didn’t really matter. What did matter was that he needed someone to talk to and that I was there to be that someone. I felt deeply honored to be trusted with that role.

I don’t know whether I believe in celestial angels as messengers or agents of God. I am sure I believe in earthly angels. We all can be angels for one another, sometimes in ways we don’t understand or even notice. I believe my listening presence that morning was a gift to this man. I know for sure that his sharing was a gift to me.

I just have one question. Which of us, on that particular morning, was the angel?

When it comes to good old-fashioned food preservation (i.e., canning), I am a newly-fledged “expert.” In other words, I’ve done it once. Well, twice, actually—one large batch of chokecherry jelly back in August, and one small batch of salsa this week. Every jar of which sealed properly, thank you very much.

The jelly, or at least the two jars I have personally consumed, was just right. The salsa is perhaps not outstanding, but is certainly acceptable. Or so I am informed by those who eat the stuff. Personally, I’ll stick with jelly.

These modest culinary successes please me greatly, but they are also slightly embarrassing. The embarrassment stems from the fact that for years I never even considered trying to make jelly or can anything. I thought it was too hard. It seemed to be one of those complicated, arcane processes that other people knew how to do but I would never be able to master, especially considering my less-than-stellar abilities in the kitchen.

This belief persisted despite—or possibly because of—all the times as I kid I watched my mother produce batches of jelly and jar after jar of pickles. Or possibly it was based on my experience as a bread baker. Today, I make genuinely excellent bread, but that was a hard-won skill. I remember too many loaves that turned out two inches high and impervious to the sharpest knife, because I used water that was too hot and killed the yeast. They weren’t exactly edible, but they would have made excellent paving material.

So I’ve always assumed canning would require many similar failures and a long apprenticeship. (Of course, there’s always the possibility that it does, and that what I’ve accomplished thus far has simply been beginner’s luck.)

In truth, though, the processes of canning and making jelly aren’t as complicated as I thought. Time-consuming, yes. Messy, absolutely. But not really that hard, particularly if you have a mentor available to answer questions and give helpful advice. (Thanks, Mother!) Once again, I’ve discovered that a new and seemingly mysterious project isn’t as difficult as it seems from the outside. It merely requires starting at the beginning and following the directions, one step at a time.

Salsa, anyone?