SOMETHING BREWING AT STARBUCKS & IT'S MORE THAN COFFEE

I don't know of any research on the matter of Starbucks conversations, but here's one coffee-drinker's observations. In addition to the busy, in-and-out patrons, there are usually little clusters of locals lingering here. They're not between business appointments and they're not clutching a handful of kids between gulps. Simply engaged in the lost are of conversation.

Three categories, usually: Teens, widows, widowers.

Teens are ectoplasm in the flesh. Happy, carefree, giggling flesh. They arrive in little bursts of laughing conversation, cheerily ride the wave between tweets, then drift out to whatever unknown places from which they appeared. They are today's principle of Connectivity at its chirpiest.

Widows tend to greet, meet and tweet, but by touch and smile. Old friends or neighbors who can share a few memories, exchange a few sighs, swap a few pictures of the grandkids. They gave birth to children, nourished their lives, supported their husbands, held down jobs, and helped make their corner of America a flourishing one. Now, tempered by age, they're usually a soft-spoken cluster whose busy earlier lives had allowed little time like this to tarry around coffee cups. Now they have more of that time, but perhaps less to do with it.

Then there are the widowers. The old guys, the retired guys, guys who probably go back a good many years. Maybe they went to school together, worked at the same job, served in the same military, or knew the same circle of friends of which they are the few survivors. When you look at them across the room, you think of the accumulated years, experiences, talents, and energies that were once theirs. Some of it recalled here in grousing and regretting. Yet much of it remembered even more sweetly than it was originally lived.

But wait a minute...! Suddenly you notice something. You too are a part of this, a part of them, a part of the America which now lives longer than any previous generation. You too are among those who have outlived so many of their friends and most of their expectations. A fact to be celebrated? Maybe. To be shared? Absolutely. To be noted by those teens? Lets hope so...

...as we have another round of coffee.