Monday Moment - Treating Myself to a Times

Yesterday I treated myself to a Sunday New York Times. Now that doesn’t sound like much of a treat – unless you’ve read a Sunday Times lately. What a window on the world!

There’s a window on a world I don’t know – the Chanel platform pump priced at $975. The ad only showed one and used the singular as I just did – but surely you get two shoes for that price? Especially since the design was so unusual that you’d surely wear them only ever so occasionally.

There’s a window on films and plays that makes what is offered at my local Cineplex (to which I hardly ever get anyway) look paltry and pathetic in comparison. And the window on New York Society – well there’s another world I will never know. And I put the book review section aside so I can’t yet imagine all the windows that might open up for me!

I confess that I skimmed, rather than read, the greater number of articles in the Times. But two articles really caught my attention – start to finish.

The first was about bicycling in Paris – and tapped into a belief that people will make healthy and positive environmental choices when it is easy to do so. The city of Paris has contracted with an independent supplier who has established bicycle rental kiosks all over the city – and especially close to Metro stops. Folks can subscribe to unlimited half-hour trips which allows most commuters to get to their destination and turn in the bike at the conveniently located kiosk nearby – all for about $50 a year. And people do use the bikes! A lot! You can rent the bikes by the day or by the hour too, but for commuting they have various subscription plans that make it easy and enjoyable to use bikes instead of cars. Brilliant!

Naturally there are some kinks. Traffic is too congested in parts of Paris to ride safely on a bike, and helmets are not yet required. But what a terrific notion – to make it easy to get exercise and reduce emissions! Seems like it could be a window of opportunity!

The second article had to do with a public health doctor attempting to convince the 96% of the citizens of an African country that they should use soap when washing their hands. Since I spend a fair amount of effort teaching benefits of handwashing to child care staff, kids, and anyone I can – I was fascinated with her approach. She found that just telling people that their hands carried germs wasn’t enough to change their behavior. So she went to Madison Avenue to find out how the marketers convince us to use toothpaste twice a day, use deodorant, and spray Febreze on our upholstery to finish a room cleaning ritual. All these are habits that advertising has helped shape in us – like washing our hands with soap.

Seems like the advertising folks know what they’re doing. After their campaign – which included making bathroom activity seem gross and disgusting – there has been a significant gain in washing hands with soap. Now that we know how to do it in Africa, maybe we can learn how to do it here too. Check out my favorite hand-washing website www.henrythehand.com for some tips on how to avoid infecting others and yourself with unwashed hands!

All that interesting information – and a lot more – just from treating myself to a New York Times. I recommend it! Oh and by the way – I haven’t finished the crossword yet, but I plan to tonight!

May you enjoy whatever treat you’d most like this week!

Sally