Tag Archives: Rules

Freedom Cafe–Where Everyone Sets their Own Rules!!

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This wonderful Twitter essay by Libby Jones was sent to me by my friend Ken Salzmann.

Welcome to the Freedom Cafe! We trust you to make your own choices if you want to wear a face mask. And, in the same spirit of individual liberty, we allow our staff to make their own choices about the safety procedures they prefer to follow as they prepare and serve your food.

We encourage employees to wash their hands after using the bathroom, but understand that some people may be allergic to certain soaps or may simply prefer not to wash their hands. It is not our place to tell them what to do.

We understand that you may be used to chicken that has been cooked to 165 degrees. We do have to respect that some of our cooks may have seen a meme or a YouTube video saying that 100 degrees is sufficient, and we do not want to encroach on their beliefs.

Some of our cooks may prefer to use the same utensils for multiple ingredients, including ingredients some customers may be allergic to. That is a cook’s right to do so.

Some servers may wish to touch your food as they serve it. There is no reason that a healthy person with clean hands can’t touch your food. We will take their word for it that they are healthy and clean.

Water temperature and detergent are highly personal choices, and we allow our dishwashing team to decide how they’d prefer to wash the silverware you will put in your mouth.

Some of you may get sick, but almost everyone survives food poisoning. We think you’ll agree that it’s a small price to pay for the sweet freedom of no one ever being told what to do – and especially not for the silly reason of keeping strangers healthy.

HERE is her original Twitter thread.

Home Rule

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Home Rule

The laws of society, made by such a complicated process, are ones that we seldom set about trying to change.  We follow some laws and break others. We pay our taxes and do not steal or litter, but we speed now and then, smoke a little pot in the wrong place, as decreed by state law, and sometimes stray onto private land.  These are small departures from the law which, not taken to excess, hurt no one including ourselves.

The bigger consideration for me is the rules I set for myself.  I often over-complicate my life by the intricacies of these rules.  Whether they are set up  because of the expectations of others or myself is something I’ve been examining at great length lately.  Why, when I entertain, is it so important to me to create a complicated meal worthy of company?  Why must I fuss over the table setting, the music, getting the house just right?  I know in the back of my mind that such things do not matter as much to those invited as they do to me, and yet I feel driven to stage the occasion, to create a memorable event–a happening of sorts.

This is a rule I somehow made for myself long ago and I can’t break the habit.  This is a need for me that over-complicates life and makes me less willing to entertain since to do so demands so much time.  Am I capable of slapping a pot of chili on the table along with a stack of bowls and some spoons and letting others help themselves?  Can I point at the fridge and ask them to choose their pleasure? Use paper napkins and mismatched glasses? Put a bottle of salad dressing or ketchup on the table rather than putting them into a bowl?  Would doing so detract from the pleasure of guests?  Would it even detract from my own?

I fuss and fuss with everything.  My art pieces are added to and subtracted from for weeks or months before I finally make a decision, choosing from thousands of objects stowed away in compartmentalized drawers.  Perhaps this is why I love traveling and making art with what I find around me.  Given fewer choices, I fuss less.  I long for a simpler life, yet seem unable to break the rules I set for myself long ago.

My newest fantasy is to stage a huge garage sale and to sell off jewelry, clothes, excess art objects stowed under beds and in closets and even, I admit, behind a painting in my seldom-used fireplace. Then I could stow the rest of my personal objects in my studio and take off for a year, living simply from a suitcase with a few clothes and a few tools and art supplies and my computer.

Where would I go and in these new places, would it be easier to break the rules, to stay simple and to concentrate on what is most important?  I’ve actually done this five times in my life, and every time I’ve ended up filling my life up fuller:  more things, more obligations, more expectations of doing it all.  Will I ever accomplish my goal of breaking these rules or will it have to be that final move that accomplishes what I’ve never managed to maintain in life–taking away all my distractions, until there remains only me?  And then, inevitably, taking away even me.

The Prompt: Breaking the Rules–Think about the last time you broke a rule (a big one, not just ripping the tags off your pillows). Were you burned, or did things turn out for the best?