Posts
I got my first live exposure to Maine humor god, Bob Marley, last night, at Merrill Auditorium. Marley, back in his home state for the fifth year in a row, headlining over the holidays, sold out all seven of his shows. Showcasing his Maine-derived humor, which relies heavily on nods to a certain caricature of Mainers and their idiosyncratic way of life, Marley had the audience in the palm in his hand for his hour-long performance. George Hamm, a talented performer in his own right, warmed up the audience, but it was clearly Marley they came to see.
That Marley is able to sell out the Merrill’s 2,000 seats, not once, not twice, but for four nights, including both performances New Year’s Eve, is truly amazing. I don’t know if there is another Maine performer who could pull this off. Even more incredulous is that Maine has never been a place known for comedy and where you’d be hard-pressed to name more than a handful of venues that book comedy of any type.
Lest you think that Marley is just a local yokel, or regional phenomenom, think again. He’s performed on Letterman, Leno, as well as Late Night with Conan O’Brien. In addition, he regularly performs at comedy meccas like Hollywood’s Laugh Factory, Caesar’s Palace in Vegas, as well as other clubs of national renown, such as The Improve in Washington, DC. Not bad for a guy from Portland who believed in himself, when many others surely encouraged him to get a “real job.” I mean, he’s got his own kiosk, at the Maine Mall, for Chrissakes.
Some of his routine relies on physical comedy, particular mannerisms and facial contortions that can best be called Maine hick chic. While Marley now resides in LA (that’s Los Angeles, not Lewiston-Auburn, for the locals) where he’s lived since ’95, he hasn’t lost his knack to know what people, places and Pine State reference points to mine, such as the Cumblin' Faya (that’s Cumberland Fair, to you flatlanders), bean suppers and restaurants like the Village Café and Captain Newicks. The Merrill shows were the fifth year in a row that he’s come back to Maine and headlined over the holidays.
It appears that Marley has become a Maine treasure, much like Stephen King. I’m sure he’ll be selling out shows in Maine as long as he cares to come back to his home state.
Monday, January 01, 2007
Sunday, December 31, 2006
A New Year's Dawning
With the dawn of a new year, many Americans traditionally resolve to make changes in their lives, whether it be losing weight and getting in shape, vowing to complete that novel sitting in their desk drawer, or to live a life infused with more meaning.While it would be great if all of us who are still seeking self-actualization could muster the momentum to move forward and maintain it say, on July 1st, the New Year makes for a laudable line of demarcation.
Taking stock of where we are and where we’d like to go isn’t a bad thing. Granted, there’s an entire industry that makes a living on this one day, but that doesn’t denigrate the value of using today to make small, positive changes heading into 2007.
While I have my own small changes I hope to make and yes, one of them is to lose some weight, via my new exercise program, here are some New Year’s resolutions I’d like to see Americans adopt, nationally. Granted, I can’t force these on anyone, as substantive change must be driven by personal motivations, rather than guilt. However, each one of my suggestions has solid evidence to support their consideration.
Getting the hell out of Iraq
The U.S. death toll sits precariously close to 3,000, with December being the deadliest month yet, for U.S. troops. After significant discussion, from a cross-section of U.S. leaders, with a combined experience that demands attention, George W. Bush still seems intent on doing things his own way. With his dubious track record and history of failure, “staying the course” seems like a ready made disaster for the U.S. military.
Americans need to muster the national will to demand we bring our troops home, now—rather than later! Our nation mobilized the political will in the past, forcing leaders, against their failed judgements, to leave Vietnam. We need that same effort now, as our current delusional president seems to lack the ability to read the writing—he’s now talking about a “sustained surge,” whatever the hell that oxymoron means.
A National Alternative Energy Policy
All one has to do is look at our December record temperatures, here in the Northeast, to know we’ve done some serious damage environmentally. As a nation, we had an opportunity, back in the 1970s, with oil embargoes and gas lines, to make substantive changes in the way we travel, heat our homes and produce electricity. Instead, like the proverbial ostrich, we placed our heads in the sands of denial and now, 30 years later, we have our backs against the wall.
With Al Gore’s movie, An Inconvient Truth, showing us where we need to go in formulating a national energy policy, the time is now to push for alternative energy, while there is still a smidgen of hope that we might be able to halt this march towards energy perdition. A call for a Manhatten Project for alternative energy should be the perogative of every one of the candidates running for office in 2008. For an idea of what this might look like, check out this site for Edwin Black's latest book, Internal Combustion.
A Government of the People, By the People and For the People
While most of my Democratic friends will continue to deny it, the Democrats are not the answer for America. We need a true third party in this country in the worst possible way. Both parties currently represent the interests of the elite one percent, to the peril of the remaining 99 percent of us. I know that it won’t happen in 2008, leaving us saddled with the sorriest of choices, if the current field of candidates is an indication—I’m frightened to see what other candidates throw their hats into the ring in the next 18 months, or so. Americans need to begin thinking about true political reform, if we have any hopes of truly turning things around.
With the recent passing of former president Ford, I’ve been reminded that America has faced other periods of weak and scandalous behavior at the highest levels and men have come along to restore dignity to the Office of President. While Ford wasn’t charismatic, or possessing a Hollywood persona, he did have a quiet humility and resolve that America needed in the post-Nixon era of the 1970s. Better yet, wouldn’t it be refreshing to have a real, live, breathing first lady again? Not some drugged-out zombie, like the current one, Laura Bush. Seeing some of the old news footage of Betty Ford’s speeches, particularly in light of the historical context, only highlights what a breath of fresh air (as well as controversial figure) she was, back in 1974.
Instant Runoff Voting is my hope for the future. It probably won’t make any headway this year, or even next, but possibly, by 2012, we could have some meaningful voting reform that would energize and make viable, third party participation in the electoral process.
Well, those are a few of my national prescriptions for 2007. Here’s wishing all my readers a healthy, prosperous and personally fulfilling New Year!
Friday, December 29, 2006
Ford: A model worth reconsidering
In death, life tends to get sanitized and ordinary people suddenly become heroic. When famous people die, lives get airbrushed and calling cards get hijacked by flights of exaggeration.
Once more, a former president has passed on to wherever it is we go, when we die. I never thought of President Ford as a historically significant president, although in fact, when he succeeded Spiro Agnew, who had resigned due to allegations of tax evasion and money laundering, he became the first Vice President appointed under the provisions of the 25th amendment. Less than one year later, on August 9, 1974, Ford became the first person to assume the office, having not been elected to the position.
As a 12-year-old at the time, and beginning to pay as much attention to politics as a politically precocious pre-teenager might, I recall the mid-70s as a time when the country seemed to be in a state of upheaval.
Three years before (I was in third grade), I remember Nixon imposing wage and price controls, a move that was extraordinary during peacetime. With inflation raging at the time, my father’s uncharacteristically patient explanation of Nixon’s actions stuck with me. With a paper route at the time and a nine-year-old’s understanding of the relation between prices and wages, the significance of inflation was easier to understand than one might imagine to a youngster.
While my parents weren’t huge Nixon supporters, his resignation took on an air of significance in 1974, as we learned the news from our nightly guest, Walter Cronkite. None of my family and for that matter, most Americans, knew much about Gerald Ford.
We knew he’d been a football player. Like most men his age, he’d served during WWII. As a member of the Congress, from a blue-collar state like Michigan, Ford had the kind of credentials that got you respected in a working-class home like mine and a mill town like Lisbon Falls.
One of Ford’s traits is that he was a likeable person and didn’t have a lot of enemies. Surprisingly, Lyndon Johnson didn’t like Ford, primarily because the practical Midwesterner didn’t like Johnson’s Great Society policies and was openly critical of them, as unneeded, or wasteful.
Apparently, Johnson, known for his salty speech, said that Ford “…couldn’t fart and chew gum at the same time.” The press, in an effort to sanitize the expression changed it to “chew gum and walk..,” which stuck.
During his tenure as president, this former college football star, who played for two undefeated Michigan Wolverine teams, in 1932 and 1933 and was voted team MVP in 1934, became known as a klutz. Ford actually was offered an opportunity to play professional football, but turned it down. [During this time in the U.S., playing professional sports was far from the lucrative, “sure-thing” that it’s become today] Instead, he went to Yale, to coach football and for the opportunity to attend law school.
As for the klutz part, there were several examples that later got amplified. On a visit to Austria, Ford tripped down the steps of Air Force One — to the chuckles and clicks of a press corps. Some posit that, in the aftermath of Watergate, the press was no longer interested in protecting the image of the president. The media seemed to compensate for its prior restraint by going overboard in their relentless spotlighting of each one of Ford’s subsequent missteps. He fell down on skis. He bumped his head while getting off a helicopter. His stray golf balls became the stuff of legend.
"It's not hard to find Jerry Ford on a golf course," quipped Bob Hope. "You just follow the wounded."
Chevy Chase, at the time, a member of SNL’s cast, lampooned Ford as the president who couldn't stay on his feet. In Time Magazine, Chase explained his technique:
"Ford is so inept that the quickest laugh is the cheapest laugh, and the cheapest is the physical joke." Part of the problem may have been that Ford really did stumble more than most people do: A nagging knee injury, acquired during his football years, possibly contributed to his imbalance.
Looking back, given the perspective of history and time, Ford being seen as a bungler is rather ironic, given that he may have been the most athletic of any recent president and jabs at his intelligence seem unwarranted, given our current intellectually-challenged inhabitant of the oval office. The shots at him over his supposed clumsiness apparently bothered him. In his memoir, “A Time to Heal,” he had this to say about the constant scrutiny his gaffes received.
“Every time I stumbled or bumped my head or fell in the snow, reporters zeroed in on that to the exclusion of everything else," he complained. "The news coverage was harmful, but even more damaging was the fact that Johnny Carson and Chevy Chase used my missteps for their jobs. Their antics — and I'll admit that I laughed at them myself — helped create the public perception of me as a stumbler. And that wasn't funny.”
As they say, hindsight is 50-50 and in retrospect, Ford would be a welcome change in this time of ratcheted rhetoric and hyperbolic huffing and puffing.
At the time, I wasn’t aware of how unkind the media can be to public figures. The same press that took great pleasure in amplifying each and every misstep of Ford, during his presidential tenure, now lionizes him, in typical post-mortem fashion. How ironic.
Ford’s presidency was an important one, for a country torn by the war in Vietnam, buffeted by an economy ravaged by inflation and reeling from political scandal (back before that sort of thing became Washington’s modus operandi).
With his unassuming manner and simple Midwestern humility, he helped restore some dignity to the office he held, ever so briefly.
Ford was a moderate Republican in the truest sense, back when such a designation didn’t seem like an oxymoron—a man given more to compromise, bipartisanship and the spirit of cooperation that seems archaic, only 30 years later.
Interestingly, in a 2004 interview with the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward, whose details had been embargoed, Ford stated that he disagreed with the justifications for the Iraq War and indicated that he would not have gone to war had he been president.
In 2001, Ford broke with conservative members of the Republican party by stating that gay couples “ought to be treated equally. Period.”
He became the highest ranking Republican to embrace full equality for gay couples. Certainly a far cry from the dominant ideology of most ranking Republicans, today.
In reflecting back on his life and his presidency, one wonders just what kind of role Ford would be allowed today, in a party of ideological hacks, kool-aid drinkers and moral miscreants.
Once more, a former president has passed on to wherever it is we go, when we die. I never thought of President Ford as a historically significant president, although in fact, when he succeeded Spiro Agnew, who had resigned due to allegations of tax evasion and money laundering, he became the first Vice President appointed under the provisions of the 25th amendment. Less than one year later, on August 9, 1974, Ford became the first person to assume the office, having not been elected to the position.
As a 12-year-old at the time, and beginning to pay as much attention to politics as a politically precocious pre-teenager might, I recall the mid-70s as a time when the country seemed to be in a state of upheaval.
Three years before (I was in third grade), I remember Nixon imposing wage and price controls, a move that was extraordinary during peacetime. With inflation raging at the time, my father’s uncharacteristically patient explanation of Nixon’s actions stuck with me. With a paper route at the time and a nine-year-old’s understanding of the relation between prices and wages, the significance of inflation was easier to understand than one might imagine to a youngster.
While my parents weren’t huge Nixon supporters, his resignation took on an air of significance in 1974, as we learned the news from our nightly guest, Walter Cronkite. None of my family and for that matter, most Americans, knew much about Gerald Ford.
We knew he’d been a football player. Like most men his age, he’d served during WWII. As a member of the Congress, from a blue-collar state like Michigan, Ford had the kind of credentials that got you respected in a working-class home like mine and a mill town like Lisbon Falls.
One of Ford’s traits is that he was a likeable person and didn’t have a lot of enemies. Surprisingly, Lyndon Johnson didn’t like Ford, primarily because the practical Midwesterner didn’t like Johnson’s Great Society policies and was openly critical of them, as unneeded, or wasteful.
Apparently, Johnson, known for his salty speech, said that Ford “…couldn’t fart and chew gum at the same time.” The press, in an effort to sanitize the expression changed it to “chew gum and walk..,” which stuck.
During his tenure as president, this former college football star, who played for two undefeated Michigan Wolverine teams, in 1932 and 1933 and was voted team MVP in 1934, became known as a klutz. Ford actually was offered an opportunity to play professional football, but turned it down. [During this time in the U.S., playing professional sports was far from the lucrative, “sure-thing” that it’s become today] Instead, he went to Yale, to coach football and for the opportunity to attend law school.
As for the klutz part, there were several examples that later got amplified. On a visit to Austria, Ford tripped down the steps of Air Force One — to the chuckles and clicks of a press corps. Some posit that, in the aftermath of Watergate, the press was no longer interested in protecting the image of the president. The media seemed to compensate for its prior restraint by going overboard in their relentless spotlighting of each one of Ford’s subsequent missteps. He fell down on skis. He bumped his head while getting off a helicopter. His stray golf balls became the stuff of legend.
"It's not hard to find Jerry Ford on a golf course," quipped Bob Hope. "You just follow the wounded."
Chevy Chase, at the time, a member of SNL’s cast, lampooned Ford as the president who couldn't stay on his feet. In Time Magazine, Chase explained his technique:
"Ford is so inept that the quickest laugh is the cheapest laugh, and the cheapest is the physical joke." Part of the problem may have been that Ford really did stumble more than most people do: A nagging knee injury, acquired during his football years, possibly contributed to his imbalance.
Looking back, given the perspective of history and time, Ford being seen as a bungler is rather ironic, given that he may have been the most athletic of any recent president and jabs at his intelligence seem unwarranted, given our current intellectually-challenged inhabitant of the oval office. The shots at him over his supposed clumsiness apparently bothered him. In his memoir, “A Time to Heal,” he had this to say about the constant scrutiny his gaffes received.
“Every time I stumbled or bumped my head or fell in the snow, reporters zeroed in on that to the exclusion of everything else," he complained. "The news coverage was harmful, but even more damaging was the fact that Johnny Carson and Chevy Chase used my missteps for their jobs. Their antics — and I'll admit that I laughed at them myself — helped create the public perception of me as a stumbler. And that wasn't funny.”
As they say, hindsight is 50-50 and in retrospect, Ford would be a welcome change in this time of ratcheted rhetoric and hyperbolic huffing and puffing.
At the time, I wasn’t aware of how unkind the media can be to public figures. The same press that took great pleasure in amplifying each and every misstep of Ford, during his presidential tenure, now lionizes him, in typical post-mortem fashion. How ironic.
Ford’s presidency was an important one, for a country torn by the war in Vietnam, buffeted by an economy ravaged by inflation and reeling from political scandal (back before that sort of thing became Washington’s modus operandi).
With his unassuming manner and simple Midwestern humility, he helped restore some dignity to the office he held, ever so briefly.
Ford was a moderate Republican in the truest sense, back when such a designation didn’t seem like an oxymoron—a man given more to compromise, bipartisanship and the spirit of cooperation that seems archaic, only 30 years later.
Interestingly, in a 2004 interview with the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward, whose details had been embargoed, Ford stated that he disagreed with the justifications for the Iraq War and indicated that he would not have gone to war had he been president.
In 2001, Ford broke with conservative members of the Republican party by stating that gay couples “ought to be treated equally. Period.”
He became the highest ranking Republican to embrace full equality for gay couples. Certainly a far cry from the dominant ideology of most ranking Republicans, today.
In reflecting back on his life and his presidency, one wonders just what kind of role Ford would be allowed today, in a party of ideological hacks, kool-aid drinkers and moral miscreants.
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
A Good Dose of Disinfectant
I was in a meeting a couple of weeks ago with a cross-section of the local business community. The topic pertained to a function of state government that was experiencing issues with funding, as well as effectiveness. With frankness and forthright conviction rarely uttered by politicians, this business leader said, “why don’t we just blow it up and start over.” With nods from around the room, it was obvious that this fellow had scored some points with his clarity.
In my opinion, part of government’s inefficiency stems from organizational dynamics and energies that aren’t readily manipulated. While much lip service gets paid to reform and redesigning bureaucratic structures, the size of the behemoth grows larger, as does the funding needed to perpetuate inefficiency. How is it that we define insanity?
Lately, I find myself coming face-to-face with information and inefficiencies that cry out for investigation, but there seems to be very little, if any of that being done in Maine at this time.
Last Wednesday, Lance Dutson of Maine Impact had an excellent opinion piece published at MaineToday.com, about media in Maine. He was addressing a previous column written by Jeannine Guttman, editor of Maine’s largest newspaper, about her column trumpeting her paper’s march forward into the land of blogging and social media. As happens regularly, Guttman missed the forest for the trees.
While many of Maine’s newspapers race to embrace the latest technological fad to stem the bleeding caused by tanking readership, the problem seems obvious to me. At the risk of being overly simplistic, here’s my prescription for Maine’s newspapers—give people something to read and they’ll read it. Better yet, get back to the practice of journalism and reporting on the news and some of the real issues in our state and stop pandering to the lowest common denominator (or the state’s power brokers).
As Dutson recognizes, the growth of new media has been driven by the clamor for journalism that seeks to hold leaders accountable, at all levels—local, state and national. Guttman thinks that merely assigning her staff the task of blogging will ultimately bridge the chasm caused by the public’s perception that newspapers no longer have any credibility. She couldn’t be any further from the truth.
As Dutson writes, “A legion of Press Herald bloggers will ultimately fail to produce results until the policies that cause the print media to come up so short are changed. A digital version of a sanitized press leaves the public in the exact same position as before, except for less paper to use in the fireplace.
There is a troubling diminution in Maine's traditional press for actual inquisitive reporting. Across the nation, blogs are filling this void. Maine's press corps seems to have abandoned the idea of probing into the subjects they cover, as if the concept of impartiality has paralyzed them.
The media, more so than government, sets the dialogue in a community. They provide the ultimate check and balance between the citizenry and its elected officials. When improprieties are ignored, the press becomes complicit.
The near-manic concern for decorum among Maine's traditional press has resulted in a disenfranchised public, cheated out of a thorough understanding of a reality the press has a responsibility to reveal.”
The issue couldn’t be clearer. We need at least one newspaper, or media source in this state that is willing to report the news and hold our elected officials accountable. I don’t see anything remotely close to that happening, other than at isolated outposts on the web.
With that being said, blogging remains the post-modern equivalent to the pamphleteers of the past, like Tom Paine, Voltaire and others, who were willing to shine the light of truth on the so-called leaders of their day.
As the late Louis Brandeis so concisely put it, “sunlight is the best disinfectant.” Maine (and many other places across our land) needs some disinfecting done in the worst possible way.
In my opinion, part of government’s inefficiency stems from organizational dynamics and energies that aren’t readily manipulated. While much lip service gets paid to reform and redesigning bureaucratic structures, the size of the behemoth grows larger, as does the funding needed to perpetuate inefficiency. How is it that we define insanity?
Lately, I find myself coming face-to-face with information and inefficiencies that cry out for investigation, but there seems to be very little, if any of that being done in Maine at this time.
Last Wednesday, Lance Dutson of Maine Impact had an excellent opinion piece published at MaineToday.com, about media in Maine. He was addressing a previous column written by Jeannine Guttman, editor of Maine’s largest newspaper, about her column trumpeting her paper’s march forward into the land of blogging and social media. As happens regularly, Guttman missed the forest for the trees.
While many of Maine’s newspapers race to embrace the latest technological fad to stem the bleeding caused by tanking readership, the problem seems obvious to me. At the risk of being overly simplistic, here’s my prescription for Maine’s newspapers—give people something to read and they’ll read it. Better yet, get back to the practice of journalism and reporting on the news and some of the real issues in our state and stop pandering to the lowest common denominator (or the state’s power brokers).
As Dutson recognizes, the growth of new media has been driven by the clamor for journalism that seeks to hold leaders accountable, at all levels—local, state and national. Guttman thinks that merely assigning her staff the task of blogging will ultimately bridge the chasm caused by the public’s perception that newspapers no longer have any credibility. She couldn’t be any further from the truth.
As Dutson writes, “A legion of Press Herald bloggers will ultimately fail to produce results until the policies that cause the print media to come up so short are changed. A digital version of a sanitized press leaves the public in the exact same position as before, except for less paper to use in the fireplace.
There is a troubling diminution in Maine's traditional press for actual inquisitive reporting. Across the nation, blogs are filling this void. Maine's press corps seems to have abandoned the idea of probing into the subjects they cover, as if the concept of impartiality has paralyzed them.
The media, more so than government, sets the dialogue in a community. They provide the ultimate check and balance between the citizenry and its elected officials. When improprieties are ignored, the press becomes complicit.
The near-manic concern for decorum among Maine's traditional press has resulted in a disenfranchised public, cheated out of a thorough understanding of a reality the press has a responsibility to reveal.”
The issue couldn’t be clearer. We need at least one newspaper, or media source in this state that is willing to report the news and hold our elected officials accountable. I don’t see anything remotely close to that happening, other than at isolated outposts on the web.
With that being said, blogging remains the post-modern equivalent to the pamphleteers of the past, like Tom Paine, Voltaire and others, who were willing to shine the light of truth on the so-called leaders of their day.
As the late Louis Brandeis so concisely put it, “sunlight is the best disinfectant.” Maine (and many other places across our land) needs some disinfecting done in the worst possible way.
Friday, December 22, 2006
Another way to say it
I've become a fan of MySpace. For good, or for bad, I find the networking bumps I've gotten to be worth the time I've spent. While I find alot of absolute sh*t posted, overtly sexual content, as well as a dearth of meaningful banter, I've also found some absolute gems and interesting folks that I never would have known about, otherwise.
A case in point--Bobbi Buchanan and New Southerner, an online quarterly that seeks to highlight and show an appreciation for the values of the South.
Granted, I'm as Yankee as they come, at least in a geographical sense, but I've enjoyed my brief forays south of the Mason-Dixon, as well as having a propensity for southern cooking, particularly chicken fried steak, cheese grits, hush puppies and real southern BBQ.
Their most recent issue has an article worth reading, due to its pertinence to the holidays (ok, Christmas, damn it!) and for its offering of sensible alternatives to consumerism, all the while steering clear of being preachy.
So, if consumin' don't make you weak in the knees, then check out the article and get a few more ideas of how to celebrate, if not this year, then maybe next.
New Southerner Magazine
December 2006 - February 2007
ALTERNATIVES TO CONSUMERISM: Consumers find alternatives to overspending
BY BOBBI BUCHANAN
Toby Wilcher, of Berea, Ky., admits she's as guilty as the next person about getting swept up into the rampant consumerism of the holiday season.
This year, however, will be different. Wilcher's friends will get home-baked goods packed in one of the many baskets she has collected over the years.
A couple of single moms she knows will get free babysitting and maybe even a pedicure, with Wilcher herself providing the services.
Wilcher is among a growing group of Americans finding alternatives to needless spending. Her gifts are not likely to go unappreciated. In a national survey, 70 percent of Americans said they would welcome less emphasis on spending, according to New American Dream.
"One of the things that bugs me is that I feel like I get suckered into giving gifts to a lot of people" out of a sense of obligation, Wilcher said. At the risk of seeming "mean-spirited," she said, she came up with a new rule. "If I don't care enough to call you on your birthday, you are officially removed from my list!"
Those who remain may end up getting the gift of a donation on their behalf to a worth charity. Wilcher's church, Union Church in Berea, holds an annual alternative giving fair each year to support this concept.
Instead of another ugly tie or some unwanted household appliance, the recipient gets a card thanking him or her for the gift donated in his or her name.
Representatives of various nonprofit groups, such as Habitat for Humanity and Kentuckians For The Commonwealth, are on hand to help supporters complete the giving process.
"I like this concept," said Wilcher, who goes a step further by using it as a way to gently remind loved ones of the importance of social responsibility.
"I might choose an organization that would never even be considered by the recipient. The racist uncle who has screamed the loudest all year long about 'them damn Mexicans' might get a beautiful card in the mail thanking him for his donation to an immigrant relief organization with the verse from Exodus, chapter 22, verse 21: 'Do not mistreat an alien or oppress him, for you were aliens in Egypt.'"
A Homemade Christmas
Kelly Spitzer and her family are planning their first "homemade Christmas" this year. "We're all pretty crafty people," said Spitzer, who lives in Centralia, Wash.
She and her husband, Brian Percell, make everything from blankets to blackberry jam to hurricane lanterns. Her sister-in-law makes jewelry, her brother is a photographer and her father is "a fantastic chef," Spitzer said. "I think he's preparing a gourmet meal for us."
"We've all gotten tired of the consumer culture," Spitzer said. "We are not diehard anti-consumerists, but I do what I can to avoid the frenzy."
Gifts of Time
Stephanie Anagnoson has avoided consumerism both out of necessity, when she was too poor to buy much of anything, and now for personal reasons. A California-based freelance writer and editor, Anagnoson tries to make every purchase a conscious decision.
Like Wilcher, she has used prudence in culling her gift list over the years. Mutual agreements with family and friends to eliminate or minimize material gift giving have worked well, she said. Her family not only did away with holiday gift exchanges, they also stopped giving to one another on birthdays. "We were passing around the same $30 gift card every couple months," Anagnoson reasoned. "It got too obligatory and lost meaning for us."
Anagnoson and her spouse have found that simply spending time with friends is enough of a gift.
"Last year we had brunch at a restaurant on the 24th. It was enough to enjoy each other's company."
"I'm not totally anti-gift. I just think the holiday season has turned into the buying season."
Trash to Treasure
Mary Alberico, of Lebanon Junction, Ky., finds herself in the same predicament every holiday season — broke. But that hasn't stopped her from giving beautiful, meaningful gifts.
One year, Alberico corralled her two young grandchildren out onto the back porch and had them dip their hands and feet in paint and imprint them onto dish towels.
The simple gift brought tears to her daughter-in-law's eyes on Christmas day."
It was so easy — and cheap," said Alberico, who also has sewn handbags, children's hats and clothes to give as gifts.
Alberico's knack for salvage art is another way she avoids spending. She makes miniature Christmas trees with old garland and wire coat hangers, ornaments from burnt out light bulbs, dolls from worn socks and colorful flowers from plastic bottles.
Not only are her crafts much cheaper, but she finds making them much more satisfying than venturing out to overcrowded stores this time of year. "It's like therapy for me," she said. "And everyone seems to like what they get."
Saving a Buck Year-Round
Charles "Butch" Keeney, of Clarksville, Ind., will do just about anything to avoid spending a hard-earned buck — not only around the holidays, but all year long.
Keeney, who works for a car parts manufacturer, has discovered a simple way to beat the high cost of automotive maintenance and repair. His low-cost alternative involves two steps: 1) Buy the part used; and 2) Fix it yourself.
Even people with little mechanical know-how could save money doing some of the work themselves, according to Keeney, who often consults automotive manuals. Rather than buy the manuals, however, Keeney checks them out from the local library.
Married with three children, Keeney has taken has taken on automotive work to earn extra cash. About three months ago, he discovered a treasure trove of bargains at a place called Pull-A-Part, a do-it-yourself used auto parts store. Customers remove the parts they want from cars in a lot located behind the store.
On a recent Sunday afternoon, Keeney's garage sounded like a muffler shop as he and his brothers worked on a pickup truck they plan to sell.
"Today we got this muffler and tailpipe, like new, for $15," Keeney bragged. He estimates the parts would have cost $75 new, plus labor for installation. "Now you're talking something like $125."
Keeney said he's visited Pull-A-Part nearly every weekend since hearing about it on a TV commercial.
Inspired by his frugal nature, Keeney's family practices thriftiness in other ways. Sometimes they arrive late enough at the car races to get in free. They don't have cable television, and when household maintenance is needed, Keeney tries to take care of it himself. He and his brothers recently put a new roof on his house, saving several hundred dollars in labor costs.
Bobbi Buchanan is editor of New Southerner; David Buchanan contributed information for this article.
A case in point--Bobbi Buchanan and New Southerner, an online quarterly that seeks to highlight and show an appreciation for the values of the South.
Granted, I'm as Yankee as they come, at least in a geographical sense, but I've enjoyed my brief forays south of the Mason-Dixon, as well as having a propensity for southern cooking, particularly chicken fried steak, cheese grits, hush puppies and real southern BBQ.
Their most recent issue has an article worth reading, due to its pertinence to the holidays (ok, Christmas, damn it!) and for its offering of sensible alternatives to consumerism, all the while steering clear of being preachy.
So, if consumin' don't make you weak in the knees, then check out the article and get a few more ideas of how to celebrate, if not this year, then maybe next.
New Southerner Magazine
December 2006 - February 2007
ALTERNATIVES TO CONSUMERISM: Consumers find alternatives to overspending
BY BOBBI BUCHANAN
Toby Wilcher, of Berea, Ky., admits she's as guilty as the next person about getting swept up into the rampant consumerism of the holiday season.
This year, however, will be different. Wilcher's friends will get home-baked goods packed in one of the many baskets she has collected over the years.
A couple of single moms she knows will get free babysitting and maybe even a pedicure, with Wilcher herself providing the services.
Wilcher is among a growing group of Americans finding alternatives to needless spending. Her gifts are not likely to go unappreciated. In a national survey, 70 percent of Americans said they would welcome less emphasis on spending, according to New American Dream.
"One of the things that bugs me is that I feel like I get suckered into giving gifts to a lot of people" out of a sense of obligation, Wilcher said. At the risk of seeming "mean-spirited," she said, she came up with a new rule. "If I don't care enough to call you on your birthday, you are officially removed from my list!"
Those who remain may end up getting the gift of a donation on their behalf to a worth charity. Wilcher's church, Union Church in Berea, holds an annual alternative giving fair each year to support this concept.
Instead of another ugly tie or some unwanted household appliance, the recipient gets a card thanking him or her for the gift donated in his or her name.
Representatives of various nonprofit groups, such as Habitat for Humanity and Kentuckians For The Commonwealth, are on hand to help supporters complete the giving process.
"I like this concept," said Wilcher, who goes a step further by using it as a way to gently remind loved ones of the importance of social responsibility.
"I might choose an organization that would never even be considered by the recipient. The racist uncle who has screamed the loudest all year long about 'them damn Mexicans' might get a beautiful card in the mail thanking him for his donation to an immigrant relief organization with the verse from Exodus, chapter 22, verse 21: 'Do not mistreat an alien or oppress him, for you were aliens in Egypt.'"
A Homemade Christmas
Kelly Spitzer and her family are planning their first "homemade Christmas" this year. "We're all pretty crafty people," said Spitzer, who lives in Centralia, Wash.
She and her husband, Brian Percell, make everything from blankets to blackberry jam to hurricane lanterns. Her sister-in-law makes jewelry, her brother is a photographer and her father is "a fantastic chef," Spitzer said. "I think he's preparing a gourmet meal for us."
"We've all gotten tired of the consumer culture," Spitzer said. "We are not diehard anti-consumerists, but I do what I can to avoid the frenzy."
Gifts of Time
Stephanie Anagnoson has avoided consumerism both out of necessity, when she was too poor to buy much of anything, and now for personal reasons. A California-based freelance writer and editor, Anagnoson tries to make every purchase a conscious decision.
Like Wilcher, she has used prudence in culling her gift list over the years. Mutual agreements with family and friends to eliminate or minimize material gift giving have worked well, she said. Her family not only did away with holiday gift exchanges, they also stopped giving to one another on birthdays. "We were passing around the same $30 gift card every couple months," Anagnoson reasoned. "It got too obligatory and lost meaning for us."
Anagnoson and her spouse have found that simply spending time with friends is enough of a gift.
"Last year we had brunch at a restaurant on the 24th. It was enough to enjoy each other's company."
"I'm not totally anti-gift. I just think the holiday season has turned into the buying season."
Trash to Treasure
Mary Alberico, of Lebanon Junction, Ky., finds herself in the same predicament every holiday season — broke. But that hasn't stopped her from giving beautiful, meaningful gifts.
One year, Alberico corralled her two young grandchildren out onto the back porch and had them dip their hands and feet in paint and imprint them onto dish towels.
The simple gift brought tears to her daughter-in-law's eyes on Christmas day."
It was so easy — and cheap," said Alberico, who also has sewn handbags, children's hats and clothes to give as gifts.
Alberico's knack for salvage art is another way she avoids spending. She makes miniature Christmas trees with old garland and wire coat hangers, ornaments from burnt out light bulbs, dolls from worn socks and colorful flowers from plastic bottles.
Not only are her crafts much cheaper, but she finds making them much more satisfying than venturing out to overcrowded stores this time of year. "It's like therapy for me," she said. "And everyone seems to like what they get."
Saving a Buck Year-Round
Charles "Butch" Keeney, of Clarksville, Ind., will do just about anything to avoid spending a hard-earned buck — not only around the holidays, but all year long.
Keeney, who works for a car parts manufacturer, has discovered a simple way to beat the high cost of automotive maintenance and repair. His low-cost alternative involves two steps: 1) Buy the part used; and 2) Fix it yourself.
Even people with little mechanical know-how could save money doing some of the work themselves, according to Keeney, who often consults automotive manuals. Rather than buy the manuals, however, Keeney checks them out from the local library.
Married with three children, Keeney has taken has taken on automotive work to earn extra cash. About three months ago, he discovered a treasure trove of bargains at a place called Pull-A-Part, a do-it-yourself used auto parts store. Customers remove the parts they want from cars in a lot located behind the store.
On a recent Sunday afternoon, Keeney's garage sounded like a muffler shop as he and his brothers worked on a pickup truck they plan to sell.
"Today we got this muffler and tailpipe, like new, for $15," Keeney bragged. He estimates the parts would have cost $75 new, plus labor for installation. "Now you're talking something like $125."
Keeney said he's visited Pull-A-Part nearly every weekend since hearing about it on a TV commercial.
Inspired by his frugal nature, Keeney's family practices thriftiness in other ways. Sometimes they arrive late enough at the car races to get in free. They don't have cable television, and when household maintenance is needed, Keeney tries to take care of it himself. He and his brothers recently put a new roof on his house, saving several hundred dollars in labor costs.
Bobbi Buchanan is editor of New Southerner; David Buchanan contributed information for this article.
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