I went over to Holiday in St. Elmo today and did the first of my holiday shopping. The weather was a little dreary (it drizzled on and off and was cold), but that’s generally what Southern winters are about, so I suppose in a perverse sort of way, it put me in the holiday spirit. The shopping was wonderful. Lots of local artists were braving the chill to display their wares, and the shops were open and serving snacks and hot cider. If you didn’t make it down today, be sure to stop by at some point this season — the artisan tents will be gone, but you can still find great hand-made gifts in the stores (Umbra Essences has a fine selection of creations, large and small, from an impressive variety of very talented craftspeople!).
The crowd was lovely, too. I saw a lot of people I know — apparently today, this was the place in Chattanooga to see and be seen! And as far as I know, not a single person was trampled or shot. I came home with a pretty good haul for my first day of shopping, and it was all hand-made by local people.
I didn’t shop today (I raked the yard instead), but I do have a bit of holiday shopping to get done in the next few weeks. My goal this year, more than in any previous year, is to buy local — from stores that are run by my neighbors, or at least stuff that was made here in the US. I’ve been trying to do some planning this evening and here are a few interesting tidbits I’ve found while researching the possibilities…
Give the gift of bees at Heifer, International (here’s a nice story about how things sometimes work out well).
7 online wish lists to help you this holiday season
34 great gifts you can make yourself
Want to find the perfect t-shirt for someone? Try the teenormous search engine.
Great sites for feel-good holiday gifts
Esquire’s Worst Gifts on Earth
Serious List of Holiday Online Coupons & Sales
And here are a few individual items I’ve run across that are either cool or creepy: plastic doodad, anti-theft lunch bag, spice jar measuring spoons, I love these t-shirts, freehands gadget gloves, dismember me plush zombie, death and taxes poster, The Best of Instructables, Volume 1, scabs bandages, fetus cookie cutter, Belkin RockStar, burning cross, wad of gum refrigerator magnets, ABC gingerbread cookie cutters, Free to Be…You and Me 35th Anniversary Edition, colour-in wallpaper
I read this a couple of days ago at Joe. My. God., and it’s been running through my head ever since. It’s from E. B. White.
There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born threre, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size, its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter — the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something….Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness, natives give it solidity and continuity, but the settlers give it passion.
Speaking of the City, an Ikea store just opened in Red Hook (amid some controversy), and to ease concerns about traffic congestion in the area, Ikea is offering free public transportation to and from the store. Eager consumers are already planning Ikea Hacks to take advantage of the company’s ground-breaking strategy.
But enough of the city and on to other random matters:
- The Eagles went and sold their souls to their corporate masters and Chris the wandering geneticist totally busts them for it. Nicely done.
- After jumping all over Michelle Obama’s patriotism will the right wing give John McCain a free pass? — or will they at least finally lay off the stupid non-story of what Michelle said?
- So, Charlie “Manhunt” Crist, caved in to the wishes of the Wonder Twins, McCain and Bush, and now thinks that we should drill for oil off the coast of Florida. But has he thought of the damage this could do to Florida’s tourist industry? For new leases that won’t start producing meaningful oil for 20-30 years? Maybe we should be truly innovative and think beyond politics: Here’s a funny thing. While the Republicans are arguing that drilling every square inch of America will cut fuel costs, study after study has shown that the effect will be both minimal and several years down the road. On the other hand, just dropping from 65 to 55 will net most cars a 10% savings in fuel costs. That’s far more than we’ll get by turning Florida into the Tar Sands State.
Plus, Joe Biden rocks. UDPATE: or for instant savings, close the Enron loophole! - Al Franken wants “to invest in America again.”
- I saw a lot of MSNBC’s hagiography (update: see Hitchens) after Tim Russert died, and while I understand that they were only trying to do right by the man after losing one of their own, it also made me a bit uncomfortable to listen to them go on and on about the greatness of Russert in what continues to be a field of failure — and as great a man as he was, it was a failure that Russert shared.
- I remember when my father would not pay more than 19¢ a pound for bananas. Those days are clearly over, never to return, and what’s more, the banana as we now know it may soon go extinct.
- Joe Lance is chasing down a story about voting and privacy that was prompted by a card he received in the mail.
- And finally, there’s lots more from the Tennessee blogosphere: Carole Borges wonders who we can trust in the medical field anymore, Tiny Cat finds something that’s just plain weird, and much, much more!
I was going to post about trains tomorrow, on Mother’s Day, because my mother was one of the biggest fans of trains. She journeyed across America and back numerous times on the train, enjoyed the gorgeous ride across Canada, rode the Orient Express, and had adventures on many other trains in Europe, Asia, North America and Austraila.
So, I naturally thought of my mother when I came upon this post by Kvatch about how we need to refocus on rail here in the US. It’s an argument people have been making for years (though much to my mother’s frustration, it’s mostly fallen on deaf ears as Americans have continued their long-term romance with automobiles), but I think we might finally be at a pivot point when it comes to trains.
The days following the attack on the World Trade Center demonstrated how vulnerable we are when our airlines can’t fly. And recent chaos at our airports has shown that it doesn’t take a major disaster to effectively shut down air travel. We not only need a good backup transportation option for when air travel is disrupted, but we also need to seriously consider the environmental impact of flying and consider alternatives whenever possible. Trains fill both these needs.
I recently attended an information session about a Maglev train route that might eventually run from Savannah, Georgia to Chicago, Illinois (which would stop in Chattanooga), and the benefits are numerous. Maglev trains are quiet, efficient, very clean, and they can carry freight — and especially when you factor in the typical delays involved in flying (like baggage check, endless waits at security checkpoints and required early arrivals), they can be just as fast as flights on many popular commuter routes. Americans are way behind Asia and Europe in developing high-speed train technology and routes, but now that gas prices have us looking for alternatives to riding all alone in gas-guzzling SUVs, we might see some progress toward the planning and implementing of some high-speed train routes.
As I said, I was planning on posting about all this tomorrow, but via mindful mission, I just discovered that today is National Train Day. Why May 10th? Because “on May 10, 1869, in Promontory Summit, Utah, the ‘golden spike’ was driven into the final tie that joined 1,776 miles of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railways, ceremonially creating the nation’s first transcontinental railroad.”
So, happy train day, kids! Get your Choo-Choo on! 
I’ve got some links lying around in my rss reader. Some of them are a little dated (going back a week or so), but they’re all worth sharing.
- Looking for a way to beat higher grocery prices? Ever considered Community-Supported Agriculture? There are quite a few CSA Farms in Tennessee. Surely, we’ve all had enough of the failed global food system.
- Here’s a great interview with Rachel Maddow, #50 on the Telegraph’s 50 most influential US political pundits list (and, of course, my favorite pundit).
- And once again — and I can’t believe there is anyone left who is still willing to peddle this crap (but unfortunately, the group includes the idiots and misogynists currently running the show in DC) — the evidence continues to show that abstinence-only education DOESN’T WORK:
Programs teaching U.S. schoolchildren to abstain from sex have not cut teen pregnancies or sexually transmitted diseases or delayed the age at which sex begins. [...] Vast sums of federal monies continue to be directed toward these programs. And, in fact, there is evidence to suggest that some of these programs are even harmful and have negative consequences by not providing adequate information for those teens who do become sexually active.
Come on, all you people who wish we had better shopping options in Chattanooga! You want a Trader Joe’s? Costco? Whole Foods? Then get on the horn to your representatives and get the laws changed in Tennessee so that these stores will be motived to do business here (yeah, I know I’ve been on this hobby horse before, but it bears repeating!)! Adam Groves has info about the bill, and Joe Lance responds to the retailers and suggests you contact your legislators!
The Story of Stuff is a video that lasts for about 20 minutes. If you can find the time, it’s an interesting presentation, and will definitely give you something to think about, especially at this hyper-consumption-oriented time of year.
Just in time for Christmas, my favorite little car has hopped across the pond!
I went to Atlanta with a friend today to do some shopping (Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s and Costco! Yippie!)* and we shopped so efficiently that we thought that we’d be able to get back home early. Then we got stuck behind this. Being on I-75N was like hanging out in the parking lot outside the mall in the week before Christmas. But we managed to get off the interstate and drive past the snarl on surface streets, so we didn’t have to wait until the lanes were clear to get home. And just as we were pulling into Chattanooga, we heard on the radio that they’d just opened up one lane to traffic.
But it’s been another beautiful, t-shirt-&-shorts kind of day, so I can’t complain too much — especially since my friend so skillfully navigated us around the traffic snarl, saving us from an extra hour of just sitting out on I-75.
*Dear Tennessee: think of all the tax revenue that’s lost to the state every time I have to drive down to Georgia to shop (today’s total was $9.11, and that was at Georgia’s much lower rates), simply because puritanical states like Tennessee won’t allow the sale of wine in grocery stores, making the state much less attractive to some very cool stores that happen devote a substantial amount of real estate to their wine selections. It’s an incoherent and uncivilized law, and should be changed ASAP!
