Christmas means burial by catalog

It’s the time of year when retailers who lose money for ten months suddenly start to get profitable, and when, by the way, soup kitchens and other charities are in the most dire need for cash - which will start to come in starting in December (next year, make a mental note to contribute before Thanksgiving!). Our house is starting to get buried in an avalanche of unwanted catalogs, some from companies we’ve never heard of and never ordered from, others from companies we actually do order from, but not every three days.

Personally, I like the people who send out catalogs when they have a reason - like B&H, which appears to send two or three per year, or Digikey, which sends one per year. I loathe companies like Newport News, which appear to have dozens of names for reselling the same rubbish, and appear to believe that we have a bottomless recycling bin. I don’t think the mail carriers particularly like having to make multiple trips on their routes, one with the catalogs, and the other with actual mail. Our mailbox frankly is incapable of handling the holiday load.

This is why I was happy to find http://www.catalogchoice.org/ (NOT .com) — a web site set up by some environmental groups to help us cancel our catalog subscriptions without having to cut out and mail the back page of the catalog to each sender, which is rather time consuming. We took three days’ worth of catalogs and decided which ones we didn’t want. For my wife, that was 18 different catalogs; for me, it was three, two of which appear to have been related to my using FTD. Well, I won’t make that mistake again.

Unfortunately, it seems to take up to ten weeks for the mailers to stop sending catalogs, so we’ll have a glossy, full-color Christmas, but hopefully the new year will bring less four-color advertising delivered to the door. Personally, I can’t imagine that this policy of constantly sending catalogs to anyone and their dog pays off; and I did read, some time ago, that a few companies had actually looked through their mailing lists and struck off people who never ordered (and duplicates going to the same address) without any harm, and, indeed, a massive financial savings. Other companies automatically switch non-customers to a “now and then” catalog receipt category which also saves money, paper, and energy (moving thousands of catalogs across the country, then to recycling plants, then recycling them is not energy-free), while preventing toxic waste from being created.

Do yourself and everyone else a favor. Gather up the unwanted catalogs and instead of trashing or recycling them, put them into a pile, and once a week or so visit http://www.catalogchoice.org/ until you have no more unwanted advertising coming to your front door. Except, of course, from Bank of America. They’re incorrigible.

Ghosts of Newport

Despite the title, this is not a post about the Chrysler Newport.

An old friend (and soon-to-be owner of the toyoland.com site), John T. Brennan, has written an excellent book of Newport, Rhode Island history. While the focus is on, as the subtitle proclaims, “Spirits, Scoundrels, Legends, and Lore,” the book provides a large amount of background on Rhode Island, the Providence Plantations, and, of course, Newport itself.

If you ever go to Newport, one-time playground of the world’s wealthiest men, this book is almost essential; and even if you never plan to go, it’s interesting, well-written, and nicely illustrated. I was grabbed in the first chapter by the story of the Jailhouse Inn, a renovated colonial prison:

The Newport Jailhouse was not designed to be completely escape-proof. It was never considered particularly strong or secure. Especially early in Newport history, jail sentences were rare; colonists preferred public humiliation as punishment for crimes.

John is not just an old, old friend, or a lifetime denizen of Rhode Island (save for two mis-spent years in New Jersey). He is also a tour guide, actor, photographer, former caretaker of the mentally disabled, former car parts maker, and much more. Frankly, I’ve spent decades watching John and wondering when his unique talents and creativity would be put to good use, and it’s terrific to see his name finally appear on the cover of a book jacket - especially when the book is so well written. I was surprised myself to see just how good it was - and how good most of the photography was (though some photos are a bit muddy, which I believe is the publishers’ fault based on my experience with print).

I should also add that John is incredibly popular and probably has more friends than Allpar has regular forum posters, in an incredibly diverse set of groups. You can’t go anywhere with him unless you plan to spend half your time waiting while people say hello. None of this has ever gone to his head.

More to the point, John’s diverse background and travels with different groups of people - old sailors, actors, pub folk, historians, and others - have led him to have a rather well-rounded view of history and quite a diverse number of tales. I’m sure he also did considerable research, but then, he’s always been interested in Rhode Island history, and even when we were in college, I was fascinated by his stories of the little state.

It is, therefore, with some fervor that I recommend you visit your local book-sellers or the inevitable Amazon.com and pick up a copy of (here’s a clickable link!) Ghosts of Newport.

American shoes! (off topic)

This weekend, I went to replenish my supply of New Balance sneakers. I used to get whatever sneakers seemed cheap and decently made; then I refined the list by going with companies that pretended to have labor and environmental standards; then I switched to New Balance so my arches wouldn’t collapse and my back wouldn’t spasm, always wincing at the “Made in China” label that I really do try to avoid (usually without success - it seems like just yesterday Apple made computers in California and Ireland, but now, like everyone else, they switched everything to China, and that’s just one example.)

Not that I have any particular problem with Chinese people, because I don’t. I find China to be an interesting, enigmatic nation, with good and bad qualities. Like most Americans, I’ve mentally disconnected today’s China from the one we indirectly fought in Vietnam, and the one which is still doing rather nasty things to Tibet. I don’t know of any purely good national policies, though I’ll admit part of that is ignorance. Still, I’d prefer to support countries that provide meaningful civil rights to their citizens, and don’t turn their country into a toxic cesspool.

This time, I was pleasantly surprised to see that a number of New Balance shoes are made in the United States. Whether this has always been true or not I don’t know, but it seems new to me. They have five factories in the US, some of which produce shoes mainly of imported materials, and some of which use at least 70% American goods. Each shoe comes with a tag explaining what “Made in America” means in lawyer-speak.

The American-made shoes were $6 more than the imported ones. That’s about 10% higher, and I happily paid the price. It does make one wonder exactly how much is saved by exporting so much to China, when all is said and done. Is New Balance subsidizing American manufacturing, or is there really not such a huge pricing difference? When I was in retail I learned that the actual cost of production was often minimal compared with distribution, packaging, and markup. Doubling labor cost doesn’t mean doubling the price; it could mean a trivial increase.

Regardless, now I can have my healthy spine and arches, and American-made shoes as well. The lesson: just like the commercial used to tell us to “look for the union label,” we should be looking for the American (or Canadian or Mexican) label. Sometimes there actually are options.

Community in need

It’s that time of year again, when Broadway Community, which provides emergency food, shelter, and clothing to those in need while working on long-term healing of the body, mind, and soul, runs out of money. Summer is rough for some nonprofits, and for “BCI,” summer can be very rough as donors are often on vacation and it’s a dead time between grants.

BCI does an amazing job with their money; they get masses of food donations and training services from the community, and work on entrepreneurship and job training with a small number of clients who (in some cases) give up drugs or alcohol to turn their lives around. For these people, who faced a life of living on the street, BCI is Heaven-sent; a simple job in the service industry paying enough for a tiny apartment and regular meals may not seem like much to many of us, but to some BCI clients, it’s a whole new way of life.

Many other clients are not quite so badly off, and don’t need the training and support; they just need a temporarily food (and sometimes shelter) supply while they get their lives on track. To quote the Executive Director, Eleanor Donaldson, “Would you believe that in the past year, two accountants, two nurses, three musicians, an architect, a model, a computer technician, a grant-writer, a psychologist, an administrator, and two teachers have come to Broadway Community because they were homeless or in great distress? It has shocked me to see the number of professional people who have had things in their lives that have started a domino effect that leaves them with no resources for basic needs. For all of these people except one, drugs were not involved. An unexpected life-threatening medical condition, an accident, fraud, divorce, abuse, a spouse’s death, caring for elderly parents, another rent raise, a job layoff, … they found themselves in a desparate situation where they never thought they would be.”

BCI works to increase their clients’ sense of personal responsibility, not to diminish it, as some welfare programs can. BCI also works to educate their clients on proper nutrition, the energy they need for a healthy life - in spirit and in body - because what you eat influences how you feel and think. The chef, who voluntarily left a life as a well paid professional to work long hours for meager pay at BCI, makes sure of that, and this is one of the rare places where the homeless aren’t given corned beef hash and macaroni and cheese as staples; instead, they frequently get vegeterian meals, interspersed with chicken, beef, and even bison, depending on what local restaurants donate. But it’s always cooked with an eye towards helping people get onto their feet, long term.

This is my appeal to you - to visit the donation page at BCI and open your wallet, at least a little. I’ll match the first $500 in donations from Allpar through September 1, 2007.

Thank you.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hello Allpar Weblog readers! I just wanted to take the opportunity to wish those of us in the US a happy Thanksgiving, and to everyone else a happy Thursday :)

I know I’ve got a lot, large and small, to be thankful for, starting with my wonderful Wife, a roof over my head, a job, health….and of course Allpar and the wonderful folks in all the forums I frequent.

Cheers!

Visit from a Blackhawk

So, as you may or may not know, my wife has a crocheting business, and we spend many spring and fall weekends at shows. Yesterday was one of them, and the highlight was this Blackhawk helicopter that did a flyover and then landed in the clearing right behind us. Definitely ‘hang on to your tent’ time!

After taking what seemed to be an eternity to spin the rotors down (during which we received our first clue that our canopy is ill equipped for such winds, and that we really need to upgrade), I was able to get some good shots of it, it’s truly an amazing piece of machinery.

I’m afraid of heights, so I’ll take the middle seat, thanks…

I believe it shook up more dust on lift off than when it landed, if possible. They may have been my sun-addled brain fooling me, though.

And so ends Show and Tell for a Monday morning :)