Sunday, August 02, 2020

Cultural Differences

A couple differences in culture notice in recent days:
  1. Eli Saslow has been doing a series of portraits in the Post of people as they endure the pandemic.  He writes them as a monologue, using short sentences which gives a sense of the tension the person is feeling.  These days I sometimes pass on long pieces in the Post or Times, but Saslow's I read.  Today the subject was an educator--superintendent and principal--in an Arizona district dealing with the governnor's mandate to open school in person by the end of the month.  His wife is a teacher--young kids--and is quoted as saying the kids hug her several times each day. That seems strange to me: I can't remember ever having hugged a teacher, or been hugged, or even seeing a teacher hug a student. I'm not sure whether it's the difference between 1940's and 2020 or between Latinos in Arizona and WASP's in New York.
  2. Back when toilet paper was vanishing off the store's shelves Safeway must have made a deal for toilet paper originally made for Latin American countries.  Now it's on sale.  Being cheap, we bought a couple of package.  It's good TP, not premium, but good.  The interesting thing is the perforations are a bit closer together than in US paper. I don't see that's a problem; over time the small difference would make a big difference in the volume used. 

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