Coming Up For Air And Not Starbucks

Sigh, I have to rant. I had NPR on and came up for air from the novel plot summary I’m working on to hear a segment about the closure of a few Starbucks and a resulting public outcry. I happened to hear a woman from ‘rural Iowa’ who stated that she drove 1.5 hours to visit Starbucks and did so ‘for its consistency’. YIKES!!! Not only is she putting a LOT of carbon into the air in her quest for a consistent cup of coffee (she can’t make consistent coffee?) but that ‘I want it to be always the same’ attitude terrifies me. Is that what we are becoming? A nation of McDonaldites? Let’s go to Paris and have our coffee at Starbucks and dinner at Micky D’s? Ignore that new, locally owned, coffee shop on the corner, it might not taste like Starbucks? I know this isn’t everyone, but it seems an indication of an increasing national fear of ‘anything other’. That’s a disturbing attitude since our planet seems to be shrinking every day. Where does this tendency to withdraw into the safe confines of the ‘familiar’ come from? And what is it doing to us as a nation?