These days I mostly try not to write. My life is so full of work and family and weeding. But every now and then, my brain starts to itch and the only way to scratch that itch is writing. This is where you will find my most recent scratchings.
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Priorities, Compromise and The Privilege of Doing Good
Thursday’s post on Fair Trade was a soap box, no two ways around it. This whole Quiet Riot is going to involve a lot of soap boxing. Worse, because we are (most of us) inescapably consumers, a lot of living more responsibly involves spending more money. Let me assure you, as a born cheap-skate, it seriously disturbs my soul to be up here, looking down beneficently at my gathered crowd, telling you all to go out and spend more money. A woman commented on the Bank Transfer post the other day wondering how to choose priorities from the endlessly long…
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Fair Trade is Fair
For some reason fair trade has always been the ugly step-sister of the glamorous organic movement. My Man and I have noticed that people are a lot more likely to care about the environment than human rights. It seems so backwards, but I think it’s precisely because we are humans ourselves. We can maintain an emotional distance from clear-cuts and pesticides, but millions of people, even children, across the globe working in slave-like conditions in order to provide us our high standard of living? It’s uncomfortable. The purpose of fair trade is pretty self-explanatory: a fair wage to farmers and…
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Stretch Marks
It’s 8 o’clock in the morning. I’m sitting here with a cup of coffee, quiet in a sleeping house, writing. A few short month ago, I would have killed to get my little guy to sleep past 6:45 on a regular basis. Now he sleeps until 7 or 7:30 reliably, occasionally even later. Am I busy praising the stars and relishing my newfound extra sleep and more frequent mornings alone? No. This morning I didn’t get myself up till 7:30 and didn’t get myself coffeed till almost 8, so I’m busy wishing he’d sleep till goddamn 8:45. And take a nap…
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Bank Transfer Day
I am sorry not to have written about this sooner, Bank Transfer Day is just two days off, November 5th. The idea is to close your account with Big Evil Bank and move your money (meager though it may be) to a local credit union. There are 37,000 “likes” on the Facebook Page, and I read somewhere that 68,000 are planning to switch. I heard on the news yesterday that both Bank of America and Wells Fargo have withdrawn their threat of monthly debit card fees, which apparently is what started all this. Although it’s undoubtedly exciting that the People…
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What to Feed Kids When You Really Need Them to Eat
Yes, Halloween yesterday. Giant candy binge, pre-bedtime. Brilliant. Whoever thought of including the under 5 set in this scheme should be spanked. What was I doing yesterday afternoon to prepare for a fun holiday? Putting the last touches on cute hand-sewn costumes? Nope, I had intelligently finished our giant rolling ice cream truck and two matching kiddie-aprons (4yo’s idea) in the morning, and spent that last hour preparing a fortifying feast of macaroni and cheeseandfishandpeas. Because if my angels are going to gorge on sugar, pure and unadulterated, by god they are at least going to start with a belly…
calamity jane 