Millennials...

                                        I talked to one of my ultra conservative, trickle down economics, white lives matters- acquaintances, today... To be fair, he calls me reality challenged, socialist sympathizing, big business crushing, tree hugging, and race baiting.

                                        Our conversations are... energized, I guess.

                                          

                                               I am not liberal. I don't want to be a liberal. I have spent almost my entire  adult life defending capitalism, military necessity and blue law style values. I want so much to be a right wing, party line ballot checking, loyal elephant...

                                                         

                                                            But I'm not...

           

                                                        I'm against abortion.

                         I can't understand how one day the media is claiming a separate murder charge each, for a woman and her unborn child, but has absolutely no issue with unborn children of all stages of development before birth, being systematically killed... I can't get how they arbitrarily draw and erase that line, only to create and move the same line, again and again...

                                           That said, I don't think the answer to this dark tragedy is in our legal system. I think it can only be functionally addressed by a change of heart, changes in our own personal, family,social and societal hearts. If that deep seated heart condition was truly addressed, no man made law would ever be necessary... 

                             If people feel free to flaunt Gods Law, I'm not thinking that following mans law will be their major priority. And if man made law is placed above the respect of God, if our nation follows because we voted it, not because He Ordained it, I'm thinking we would be setting ourselves up for a terrible judgement, either way...

                                                              So, I pray...

                                                    Not for laws, but hearts.

                

                                                 I guess that makes me a liberal...

                                  I always supported tax cuts for businesses that created jobs for our community. It seemed like basic common sense and could only bring good...

                                        I grew up in a mill town, surrounded by mill towns. My mother walked down two streets to go to work in our little local factory. Jobs were everywhere, and most people had no  need for a high school diploma to be hired; the local economy thrived, and small businesses crammed our tiny Main Street, in the town I went to school...

                                      Bigger, better paying global firms employed many more, in the outlying, bordering communities... Then it began to happen...

                                    One by one, they all started leaving. Fathers of friends were layed off, and the time between a new job and the old one progressively grew, as salaries and benifits inversely dropped.

                               Soon, our rivers were polluted, and the fish inedible...

                                   Now, wells and drinking water are contaminated from these same factories and companies that drained our resources, destroyed our economies by downsizing to the point of ludicrousity and moving to any place that could give half a percent better profit by paying employees less and not enforcing environmental standards.

                                   I am told we drove the industry out due to our oppressive ecological concerns. Dozens of local communities need to truck in bottled water, but we were to " strict"?

                                                   I think businesses should pay a living wage for most all jobs, and that corporations should not be able to destroy our natural resources. I think joining a local economy should be akin to marriage; there should be a long term commitment for the betterment of each other...

                                            But I'm silly. I have unrealistic expectations.

                                                  My values are un-economical...

                  

                                                  I guess that makes me a liberal...

                                     What started this present run-on diatribe, was the workmate who I was conversing with earlier, explaining to me how a presenter of a safety conference that he'd went to, somehow proved that millennials reported more injuries than baby boomers.

                                                      Say that three times, fast...

                              Baby boomers "worked thru the pain" and had less work related injuries, this presenter said. She had all the statistics...

                                       This fellow I'm talking to is a little younger than my half century and is bright as a whip. He loves numbers that prove his point.

                                                   We're a lot alike, in that...

                                      Liking numbers, that is. He is much smarter than me.

                           But I'm a bit more white haired and longer in the tooth than him; I understand that numbers are important, but knowing how to read the numbers is paramount; that presentation can often skewe the results and dictate their outcome...

                                More often than not, there is an agenda behind all the numbers...

                          I forgot... Conspiracy Theorist. He also calls me a Conspiracy Theorist...

                                   I have seen the majority of men I worked with, these last thirty years, suck it up and keep on trucking. I have seen broken bones taped until they got home and gashes super glued shut. I have watched guys who need the paycheck keep going with a hernia they obtained on the job not report it, for fear of being fired or demoted. I have watched these same guys tossed into the proverbial garbage, as the companies they bled for relocated to a " more receptive" workforce...

                                                Most of these millennials have too...

                                    Most of them, first hand witnessed the same things I saw on the shop floor, except they saw it from the view of a child, watching their fathers come thru the door broken and bandaged, trying to get by one more day. They not only witnessed their dads and moms unceremoniously being  layed off, they watched all those things that happen behind the " numbers".

                                             They saw the jumps from closing factories to closing factories, and personally paid the price of having fathers putting all they had into their jobs because they had to...

                                            Because that is what that job cost to have...

                                     Maybe millenials do approach work differently.

                                 Maybe they know that that fifty year job, then retirement, is just an old folk tale these days, and that work is really only work, in the end...

                                       That no matter how much you make for a corporation , they will eventually move a thousand miles away for someone else willing to work for a pittance less...

                                       Maybe the " millennials " are smarter than all of us battered and bruised old geezers...

                                                              I hope so...

                                        

                                             I hope none of our kids ever have to be afraid of losing their jobs because they don't want to trade their long term health for a paycheck...

                                                    I guess that makes me a " liberal"...

                                                                  Go figure...

                                                   

Pooping in peace...

                                      I'll probably get bloody on this one...

            Not literally, of course, but figuratively; I'm going to end up on the wrong side from where most everyone I know and respect have landed, and likely will be relegated to that " crazy fringe" section on Facebook...

                                                            Again...

                                                    I've landed here before.

                           This time is a tad bit different. Hope upon hope and try upon try, I attempted to dodge this fray. I ducked, bobbed and weaved, to no avail.

                                                  But here I am and here it is....

                                 I remember being 4 or 5 years old and wanting to go to the men's room alone at Jamesways in Saratoga, and my mother throwing a panicked fit. She screamed stories of children being hurt by " bad men", sparing me the inappropriate details that I couldn't understand at the time. Never in my childhood was a public men's room ever remotely inferred to as a safe place. Always someone waited outside for us, listening for I didn't know what...

                                   I'm older today and sadly, have found myself stationed outside those doors as each of my three male children used public restrooms on the few occasions that I didn't accompany them inside.

                                       If you're a parent, I bet this sounds vaguely familiar to you...

                                             Women have always been smarter than men at bathroom safety. We men would laugh as ladies traveled en mass toward the bathroom and joked about how many women it took to flush a toilet. Never would we think of asking another man to accompany us to a urinal visit...

                                   

                                       96% of those who sexually assault children are male.

                                      

                         Until recently, all of them have been relegated to a men's room to do their business. If you do the math,  you will see a very disproportionate risk factor for victimization occurs in the place our young boys often go alone...

                                            Now, people with daughters are facing the same possibilities, with the same people, possibly using a toilet directly beside their child...

                           It is not so much the transgender person that terrifies them, but the predators that up until this point has been excluded by law, from the ladies room.

                                              Not knowing; having the fear...

                                           I understand their new found concern.

                            They are losing a reasonably safe area for their female children.

                                       

                                         It is a normal days worry for a father of boys...

                                

                   .

                                    If a child is lost, one of the best and safest pieces of advice is for them to find a woman with kids and ask for help. Women travel together and look out for each other and each others children as a matter of course; most moms I know instinctively feel safer leaving their kids with an acquaintance woman than an acquaintance man...

                                                              I know I do...

                              So this whole bathroom issue seems to break down into something much deeper than where some confused teen transgender boy needs to pee.

                                I find myself needing to step back from " the issue" today and instead, step closer to the real heart of this dilemma. I mess up on issues, most every single time, but if we talk about the emotions, emotions on either side of the aisles, I can do that...

                              If we talk about the confusion, feeling of disconnection and outright terror of a young and fragile transgender boy, not feeling safe and not being safe, using a public men's room, I can understand a little, why he might rather force himself to "hold it" than make himself a target for abuse. He not only must fear the "bad men", but the other ones, the average ones, that will at best make an inappropriate comment and at worst might physically harm him because he's a " fairy"...

           I do not understand how someone can identify as the opposite sex, but I do know that their lives would be unfathomly easier if it was a simple matter of changing their minds. For some reason, probably just as puzzling to themselves, as everyone else, it is not a simple choice, but an inescapable identity...

                            I know nothing about that, but I do know a little about powerlessness and the inability to choose differently, of my own willpower. I'm not comparing or classifying transgender as an addiction, but not being able to willfully change, when I want to, I certainly can relate to that...

                    I also understand a parents wish, a parents need, for privacy and safety of their daughters. I understand the anger of being forced to allow men into a place that they know deep in their hearts should be exclusive to a daughter or wives gender...

                      Maybe it's time to change our description of this into Bathroom Safety,  instead of a fight  over human plumbing...

                                Maybe expecting the same level of safety for our boys in the bathroom as the girls have been experiencing for over a century, might be reasonable?

                     Perhaps requiring single stall/ single occupant restrooms from corporations like Target and McDonalds might make all parents, children and transgender breath easier and feel safer?

                             Workplaces are mandated to provide safe facilities for their patrons and workers. It is law. Small businesses like Stewart's and Cumberland Farms already have single bathrooms for only one person and maybe a few family members. 

                            Corporations change their layouts all the time; it is not cost prohibitive. By providing a safe place for everyone to poop and pee, the legal savings themselves would probably absorb any cost. Finding a fair answer for everyone while making everyone feel safer is a win/win that can only make companies appearances better.

                              So, I'm not saying that everyone should pee defined by how God made their plumbing...

                                I'm not saying you should be able to pee next to another gender that might be made uncomfortable by your presence...

                                   Pretty much, I'm not supporting anybody's or any ideas agenda, and have probably managed to piss off most everybody who wants this to be about their particular religious right or left leaning political belief...

                                                              Sorry about that.

                                  I just want everyone to have a safe place to poop...

                                    The solution isn't rocket science or something that needs to squash anyone's religious belief or identity...

                                                       Can we agree on that ?