I recall once asking my maternal grandmother, then in her 90s, what was the best invention in her lifetime – and her response was "windshield wipers".
I’m sitting in a neighborhood coffee shop (1 of perhaps 20 within 2 miles of our home) thinking how recently the event of spending time, working, networking in a coffee shop came into my life and how prevalent it is now. I don’t recall ever engaging in coffee shop hang-outs in Grand Rapids, so it was following our move in 1990 in Traverse City that these small retailers of caffeine and relative quiet became walking (and sometimes driving) destinations for me. I love the rules, even when they vary a little from spot to spot. Todays I’ve chosen as it’s largely a working place and when you run into someone you know the interaction is kept short and sweet. There is another where you pull up a chair and join in at any table in site. If I travel out of the neighborhood I have the advantage of likely anonymity, however, when I’ve done this there seems little advantage over my office at home, short of not being surrounded by piles of stuff I need to clean up.
Coffee shops certainly are not the best invention in my lifetime (I wonder what is?) but I appreciate them just the same. The change in our culture, whatever it means, that allows me to sit here on a sunny Saturday afternoon and write and work and listen to the music until it’s time to move on.
Again today, my list of complaints is exceeded only by my list of blessings.