A Dose of Manners

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5x5CVOlKWdQ Manners can be like a disease, it can take over your mind. Once you get them, it's hard to get rid of them, they just take over. Manners are like tenderness and kindness. Try a little.

Today is Labor Day. Down here in Key West, it's obvious this Labor Day is different. Sure the retail stores are open just like on every holiday. Living in a tourist town we cater to tourists, but we realize the rest of the country has caught up with us. After the summer of hurricanes, Dennis, Katrina and then Wilma, we got pretty wiped out. Since it was a mandatory evacuation, the service industry packed up their meager belongings and hightailed it to safe ground. Because the island was hit hard, more than half of it flooded, a lot of businesses were closed down for a long time. The service industry went to work up North and realized that they didn't have to work three jobs to afford crappy housing and bad schools with little or no health care. Wow, what a revolution.

I'm thinking the island could be a model for the rest of country and come back fighting armed with integrity. We still need to clean up and maybe even start over. Our school system is bust. We pay our teachers a LOT of money, I know because I asked, but they aren't teaching our children what they need to know because they are too busy teaching them how to score well on FCAT. Also, from the teacher's accounts, the students arrive ill prepared to do their job, which is learning. They're too busy socializing with technology and made stupid by it. Remember when we got calculators and were allowed to use them in school, the wise thinking it would encourage us to become math wizards...it didn't quite work out like that. I am embarrassed to say I can barely remember how to do division! We need to take back our children, teach them manners and with that respect and teach them to become productive human beings. The rest will follow!

Key West is an amazing town. We still believe in one human family and rally when that notion becomes obscured by hooligans. We have a manageable community, but we have big city problems. Unfortunately there is a lot of nepotism here. The community is crying for well educated and experienced leaders, but then when we hire them all we do is complain and make their lives miserable while they try to clean up the mess. We need to put our false pride away and help. The first way is with respect. Let's respect everyone trying to do a job and help them out by making it easier for them, not harder and let's teach our children respect and manners. To treat others as you would like to be treated.

Be nice today and make a difference.
Got a problem with manners, tell me about it: amandapipersmith@aol.com