I, for one, will saunter into slumberland tonight and sleep ever so soundly, like many ofmy students are apt to do during one of my riveting lessons on essential versus nonessential present participial phrases.

On what or whom should praise be showered, you inquire, for this gift, this magnanimous ticket into the Super Bowl of snoozing?  Starbucks reopened today, “pledging faultless coffee,” after closing most of its U.S. stores yesterday for three hours to retrain its employees. The promise posted in stores:“Your drink should be perfect, every time. If not, let us know and we’ll make it right.”  

Can I hear an Alleluia? Are you doing the happy dance now that you’ve been relieved of the burden of lousy lattes, feeble frappucchinos, and meager macchiatos? Well, CEO Howard Schultz hopes so. He closed about 7,000 U.S. stores to train 135,000 baristas. Frankly, considering a venti-almost-anything-with-a-pedigree costs close to what I pay for a pound of Community Coffee, I’d say it ought to be darn near perfect.  Not that Mr. Schultz asked me, mind you.    

 But really, considering the original Starbucks [extra credit if you know the origin of the name without using Google!]opened in 1971, the brain child of an English teacher, a history teacher, and a writer, I’m appalled at the language liberties of this company. Can you say, “misnomer”? A “tall” in Starbucks land is short. A “grande”? Not so much. It’s medium. And a “venti”? Well, it’s defined as the Roman gods of the winds or a network storage system that permanently stores data blocks. Oh, it can also mean “twenty” in Italian. All three seem totally unrelated. Unless those Roman gods are blowing smoke.

Raise your hand when you finally figured out that a barista was not a cute chick who hung around bars in the French Quarter. And if you have any doubt baristas are serious, check out their magazine here. When there’s a website elucidating the eight-step process of ordering coffee, baristas need Graduate School.  My first few trips alone into a Starbucks were nightmares. I’d frantically call my daughters (whichever one answered first, I’m sure, used the name of the other in vain), “Quick, I’m only three people away from the cashier. What do I drink?” What humiliation is heaped upon those who lack uber ordering savvy and have to follow the person with the double tall nonfat sugar-free flat latte.

According to the latest Starbucks Company Factsheet, there are 7,087 company stores, 4,081 licensed stores, and 43 international stores. I can only wonder what Herman Melville’s thinking.

““Beauty has no obvious use, but civilization can’t do without it.” Freud

Hmmm. No one examining American society from the outside would buy into beauty not having an obvious use.We’ve sacrificed time, money, and even lives on the altar of the beautiful. The message for most is: ugly is ugly.

Cosmetic surgery, injections to suck out or plump up have almost become a rite of passage. Not so many years ago, one of my students received new and improved breasts for her 16^th birthday.  A few times during class I had to remind her to stop looking at them. What I didn’t say was everyone else was staring at them enough. But what used to be procedures no one would dare admit to undergoing are now grocery store chatter.

We’ve fixed noses, breast, lips, chins, thighs, tummies, tushies, cheekbones, eyelids—if there’s a body part, there’s a treatment.

What is it inside of us that refuses to like what’s outside of us? If we could see our souls when we looked in the mirror, would we want to or be as anxious to radically alter them as well?

Of all the mind types, yours is the most idealistic. 

You tend to think wild, amazing thoughts. Your dreams and fantasies are intense.Your thoughts are creative, inventive, and without boundaries. You tend to spend a lot of time thinking of fictional people and places – or a very different life for yourself. 

Take the What Color is Your Mind quiz.