PUBLISHER Ginnie Roeglin
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FRONTend
from the publisher’s desk
Ginnie Roeglin
THOSE OF US in rainy Seattle and the cold, snowy parts
of the country are finally beginning to see some welcome
signs of spring! It is time to prepare our gardens and yards
and look forward to summer fun. For those of you with a
green thumb, you’ll find lots of great gardening items and
tips, outdoor furniture, pots, sprinkler systems, hoses and
plants in the Home & Garden section of this issue and in
your local warehouse this month. Since I do not have
much of a green thumb, I may look into enlisting the services of a garden coach to spruce up my yard this year.
You can read more about this growing new field (no pun
intended) starting on page 29.
The holidays of Passover and Easter are just around the corner, with Passover beginning on March 29 and Easter on April 4. If Costco’s superb Australian lamb is on your
holiday menu, you may want to check out our guest chef’s tips for lamb chops, or try the
recipe for leg of lamb or Irish stew on pages 43 and 45.
It is American Express Reward time at Costco! If you have Costco’s True Earnings® Card from American Express, your annual reward coupon was included on the last page of
your February credit-card statement. Our co-branded reward card is free for Costco members and pays a reward of 1 percent of your purchases at Costco and other stores, 2 percent
on travel purchases such as airfare, hotels and rental cars, and 3 percent at restaurants and
on gasoline purchases (up to $3,000, then 1 percent thereafter). You can earn even more by
upgrading your membership to Executive Membership and receive an additional rebate of
up to 2 percent on most of your Costco purchases, up to $500. Rebates can be used to purchase your favorite items in the warehouses. You can read more about this card and the
generous ways some of our members have spent their rewards on page 62.
Speaking of generosity, thanks to members and employees who donated to the Red
Cross to help the devastated people of Haiti (page 47). Thanks to you, we collectively
raised more than $6 million in donations!
Happy spring from all of us at Costco! C
Ginnie Roeglin is Senior Vice
President, E-Commerce and
Publishing, and Publisher of
The Costco Connection.
from the editor’s desk
LAST MONTH IN our Debate section we asked “Is
civility dead?” The overwhelming response from readers
was: It’s not dead, but it’s definitely headed in that direction. Letter writers, members interviewed in our warehouse and the two experts who tackled this question
mostly focused on the issues of manners, etiquette and
politeness in public and at home.
But the consequences of a decline in civility can
run much deeper than the daily annoyances we face
from loud cellphone users and the like. The clue to
the importance of civility lies in the origin of the word
itself: It comes from the same root as “civilization” and “civilized.” These words and
concepts are directly opposed to “barbarism” and “barbarian.”
Without civility, a peaceful society is not really feasible, let alone a democratic soci-
ety. Inherent in the concepts of both civility and democracy is a belief (and the discipline
to act upon it) that restraint of our impulses is important, not just for us, but for our fel-
low citizens. Restraint generally involves sacrifice—holding our tongue, refusing to
respond violently to the violent, listening when we could be expounding.
Civility requires that we step away from our personal preferences and our immediate
gratification and step toward the greater good. Civil behavior also implies a respect for
others, whether we know them or not, like them or not, agree with them or not.
These twin aspects of restraint and respect are the behaviors on which we perhaps
should focus if we want to turn the civility needle back from where so many believe it is
now pointing. Cellphones are here to stay (at least for the foreseeable future); some drivers
will continue to act like idiots; people will always disagree with one another. It is up to each
of us to meet the barbarians, not at the gate, but on our own civil turf. C
David W. Fuller is Assistant
Vice President, Publishing, and
Editor of The Costco Connection.
