Slow down

Speed is the greatest factor in modern life ~ Long Beach, CA, 1935

Last March we shared my late grandfather's reminiscences about growing up around the turn of the 20th century: Living, fast and slow.

This week has stirred similar thoughts, what with billboard pop ups on our TV's FIOS guide offering even faster broadband speeds, and the news that many national retailers and food chains like Wal-Mart, Kmart, Target, Macy's, Best Buy and Pizza Hut will be open today, ahead of tomorrow's Black Friday, requiring employees to leave their families on Thanksgiving Day to ring registers and reap profits.

Peggy Noonan of The Wall Street Journal, gets it right in Stay Home, America, excerpts below:

"You know where we're going, because you've seen the news stories about the big retailers that have decided to open on Thanksgiving evening, to cram a few extra hours in before the so-called Black Friday sales. About a million Wal-Mart workers will have to be in by 5 p.m. for a 6 p.m. opening, so I guess they'll have to eat quickly with family, then bolt. Kmart will open on Thanksgiving too, along with Target, Sears, Best Buy and Macy's, among others.

"The conversation has tended to revolve around the question of whether it's good for Americans to leave their gatherings to go buy things on Thanksgiving. In a societal sense, no—honor the day best you can and shop tomorrow. But that's not even the question. At least shoppers have a choice. They can decide whether or not they want to leave and go somewhere else. But the workers who are going to have to haul in to work the floor don't have a choice. They've been scheduled. They've got jobs they want to keep.

"It's not right. The idea that Thanksgiving doesn't demand special honor marks another erosion of tradition, of ceremony, of a national sense. And this country doesn't really need more erosion in those areas, does it?

"Black Friday—that creepy sales bacchanal in which the lost, the lonely, the stupid and the compulsive line up before midnight Friday to crash through the doors, trampling children and frightening clerks along the way—is bad enough, enough of a blight on the holiday.

"But Thanksgiving itself? It is the day the Pilgrims invented to thank God to live in such a place as this, the day Abe Lincoln formally put aside as a national time of gratitude for the sheer fact of our continuance. It's more important than anyone's bottom line. That's a hopelessly corny thing to say, isn't it? Too bad. It's true.

"Oh, I hope people don't go. I hope it's a big flop.

"Stay home, America."