Sharing coffee - plus ideas and opinions
By Sidney B. Kurtz
Every Friday morning, about 20 senior citizens, all men, file into Room 203 of the Jewish Community Center in Cherry Hill and solemnly take their seats.
Carefully examining a bowl containing onion, raisin, plain and pumpernickel bagels, each selects one, deftly smears some cream cheese across its surface, helps himself to a cup of coffee, and then settles back, ready to get down to the day's business: how to deal with the problems of the world.
The topics the men tackle range from world politics to the quality of the bagels.
It might be stretching things a bit to call these men highbrow thinkers, but that doesn't in the least diminish the energy and serious deliberations that go into their decisions. After all, highbrows make mistakes, too.
Many of the men are old enough to have lived through the major events that shaped our world during the 20th century, including the Great Depression and four big wars.
As with any group airing pet peeves, things can get heated.
During the election campaign late last year, a right-wing member almost came to blows with some moderate thinkers who took issue with some of his statements, such as: "We didn't invade Iraq. We liberated it."
Of course, it works both ways. Some of the statements made by the more liberal thinkers didn't sit too well with the right-winger, either, such as the one reminding him that more than 2,000 soldiers have died and thousands have been wounded.
Invasion or liberation, the soldiers doing the fighting don't much care which name you give it. But we all agreed that now that we're there, right or wrong, we have to support our troops.
When things do get a little testy, Earl, our moderator, steps in to maintain decorum. Unlike the rest of us, Earl is not a retiree. He has been a tower of patience for the seven years or so that our group has met.
We are a think tank like no other. We are independent of government control and out of reach of any power politicians who might want to use our forum to blow their horns. We are beholden to nobody.
Our group is made up of former small-business owners - hardware, delicatessen and jewelry store owners among them - and ordinary working men such as shoe salesmen, electricians, a watchmaker, retail salesmen, and even a former bail bondsman.
(The bail bondsman tells stories that can make one's hair stand on end.)
We meet from 10 to 11 a.m., chipping in a couple of dollars a month for the bagels. Despite the name of the venue, we are not all Jewish. Those who wish to join our group may walk in. Membership in the community center is not required.
Our think tank's ideas about what our government should be doing and where we're heading come from the average person's point of view. It's a voice seldom heard on Capitol Hill.
Despite our occasional nose-to-nose clashes, we bring a breath of fresh air to political discourse, which during the recent election season was polluted by half-truths, exaggerations and out-of-context commercials that spewed from our TV sets.
We say what's on our minds without fear of losing the votes of those who might disagree.
With the election campaign a thing of the bitter past, the group, which has seen booms and busts as well as Democratic and Republican administrations, has turned its attention to other things - the growing economic and political power of China; the magnificent (if expensive) new Cherry Hill Public Library; and, very recently, two very diverse topics - the Danish cartoon controversy and life after the latest Medicaid reform.
On the new Medicaid rules, the feeling was that senior citizens are being shortchanged. We are supposedly the richest country in the world, we senior citizens contributed the money during our working lives, but we have to be broke before government will step in and help us. It is degrading.
Under the new rules, senior citizens will find it hard to qualify for assistance if they have given away assets to family or charities in the prior five years.
As for the cartoons that have offended many Muslims, we agreed that they were in bad taste.
Sidney B. Kurtz, a watchmaker and jeweler before retiring, is a writer and member of GoodTimers Senior Singles. He writes from Pennsauken.
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