Five adults and a large TV camera on a tripod in a 10×12′ kitchen was nothing short of cozy. Scrambling eggs and making breakfast while said camera (off tripod) and cameraman followed us around the kitchen was strange and amusing, but I have to say the most anxiety-inducing aspect to this whole experience came a few weeks later when we got the call notifying us the story, San Francisco on Track to Become Zero Waste City, would be airing that very afternoon. We wondered if our reflections about how simple and normal it is to participate in the city’s municipal composting program would make the final cut.

Well over an hour of filming was edited to 55 seconds (far more than we ever imagined) of airtime and soundbites. My line about putting Qtips* in the compost and Sven’s comment about his inability to toss an apple core in the trash when there’s no compost bin in sight have generated some awesome conversations both on- and offline. What was it about these two nuggets of  revealing insight? They show how awareness and shifts in thinking can impact reflexive behaviors and habits.

Adhering to San Francisco’s Mandatory Recycling and Composting Ordinance has enabled us to reduce our landfill-destined waste to almost none. It’s affected our choices of what we buy (nearly all purchases are daily essentials) and how we buy it (with no or as little packaging as possible). This was most clearly illustrated in the lingering shot our compost/recycling/trash zone received.

Allow me to make introductions: Compost, the most frequently used and emptied receptacle, is on the left. The recycling container is the largest bin in the system. San Francisco’s single stream recycling allows us to collect all paper, glass, metal, and approved plastics in one container. Trash is often a landfill-destined crunchy plastic bag that’s attached to the side of the recycling container with a binder clip. The day the NewsHour crew came to visit, the trash bag was a Newman’s Own pretzel bag. Other weeks it might be a cereal box insert or a paper bag that a loaf of freshly-baked bread came in. It can take us two weeks or more to fill the “trash.” The milk cartons and takeout container have been rinsed and are waiting their turn to be filled with compostables. The lower shelf holds a ceramic planter that we use for collecting wine corks and spent batteries (mostly batteries from client’s homes that I empty from my work bag). These can be recycled at the local grocery co-op, a destination one or the other of us visits each week. And finally, the multi-purpose dishpan is where future trash and compost bags reside until called for duty. When needed, the very same dishpan is used for hand washing delicates or large stacks of dishes. Everything pictured above is a reuse of items we each purchased or acquired at least ten years ago and used for other other purposes.

Establishing a kitchen compost/recycling/trash zone is different for each and every household. Assessing available space and how you move through it, your aesthetics, lifestyle, and what your municipality requires all contribute to the choices to be made. It took us a few tries, over a couple of years, to perfect this setup. Lidless receptacles eliminate extra steps and effort, but they are not for everyone. We realize going lidless is a luxury in a pet- and toddler-free household. Because we regularly cook from scratch, food scraps add up quickly and force us to empty the compost bin a couple times a week. As such, even after a couple of days, the compost doesn’t smell. When there’s a risk that it might, a little sprinkle of baking soda will neutralize the possibility. During these winter months, orange and lemon peels do the trick!

Since the NewsHour story aired, Sven and I have found ourselves talking trash with friends and colleagues on the sidewalk, at parties, and in restaurants and stores. Some have come to us with composting and disposal confessions, while others have declared new shopping and disposal aspirations: several people will stop buying trash bags and others declared have a personal challenge to reduce their actual trash to match ours.

We knew compost was nutrient-rich, but what a surprise to discover that talking about it could nourish our community and beyond in so many ways.

*Next time, I’ll be sure to say “cotton swab.”

Credits: Screenshots (three color photos) ©PBS Newshour.

I’m terribly allergic to cats, so I cannot take credit for having a feline who enjoys some 100% recycled post-consumer paper content in her life. If I could claim to have any influence on a cat, I suppose that introducing it to sustainable paper would be an excellent, albeit unusual, place to start.

Obviously, Stretchy the cat had good taste. She chose the pages that were about the magnificent Christmas shoe tree that stands on of her back porch this time of year.

Stretchy lived downstairs and was one of my landlady’s two kooky felines. (All cats are kooky, right?) I learned that Stretchy liked eating paper during the same conversation in which said landlady asked me for a new printout of the blog post for her archive. I never thought to ask how selective she was and if bank statements, greeting cards, or gas bills were ever victims of her nibbling ways. Did she liked the taste of photographs or the glue of postage stamps, too? Maybe she had a thing for little shoes, and she pined (tee hee) for the return of the holidays when the collection would come out for her to admire. Maybe she tried on the shoes when no one was looking to see what all the fuss was about.

The little shoes are epic and their numbers vast. When Sven and I were in Germany this fall, we brought home what we thought would be a nice addition to the holiday collection. A kitchenware vendor at the Volksfest in his hometown managed to find a little shoe cookie cutter in his collection of small useful objects. We delivered the shoe, a little high heeled number upon our return, and have since found out that it was put to use – for making holiday cookies! Obviously, it was a very multi-functional gift filled with lots of creative potential. I wonder if it may eventually hang out with its footwear friends.

Wishing you a festive and delicious solstice and holiday season.

This post is dedicated to Stretchy Gordon.

In short: it just doesn’t make sense for universities to invest in a system that will leave their students no livable planet to use their degrees on, or for pension funds to invest in corporations that will ruin the world we plan to retire in. The one thing we know the fossil fuel industry cares about is money. Universities, pension funds, and churches invest a lot of it. If we start with these local institutions and hit the industry where it hurts — their bottom line — we can get their attention and force them to change. This was a key part of how the world ended the apartheid system in South Africa, and we hope it can have the same effect on the climate crisis.

from http://math.350.org/

Let me start by saying that the quote above is as far as I’ll go with regard to the examination of the oil industry and climate change. Plenty of people can, have, and will speak about these topics in ways that far exceed my ability and desire to do so. For instance, there’s my partner, Sven, who reported on a lunchtime interview with Bill McKibben as I snapped away with my cameras to document the event. This is about something more: it’s about taking action in alignment with our values.

While it was an honor to meet the man who by way of a personal experiment in his book, “The Age of Missing Information,” deepened my passion to turn off the television more than twenty years ago, it was during his standing room only appearance an hour or so later at the San Francisco Green Festival that sent me back to a formative moment of my college years. Towards the end talk, he passionately uttered some combination of the words quoted above, and “divestment” offered the deepest resonance. At that very moment, I hankered to get home and dig through my photo archive.

The first time I heard the word “divestment” was April 1985. I was inching towards the close of my freshman year at Rutgers University while simultaneously stepping towards my first political protest and rally. I had read snippets in the Daily Targum, the university’s newspaper, about students camping outside the student center and going on hunger strikes, but I really had no idea why. I was young, naive and unworldly, having nary a clue about apartheid and states of emergency in a land so far away. But there I was, camera in hand observing and documenting at the edge of the crowd, determined to stretch my nascent journalist eye and bring back something for my college’s newspaper.

On April 23rd, I returned armed with an access-granting press pass in hand and a nearly front row position with which to photograph the Rev. Jesse Jackson as he spoke to a crowd of thousands – both students and faculty – amassed before him.

Something bad was happening and things had to change. I remember feeling it was all bigger than any of us and beyond my ability to affect an outcome I didn’t fully understand. As it turned out, these voices mattered and collectively, it had an impact. Rutgers became one of many universities nationwide to divest funds from businesses associated with South Africa. Apartheid ended in 1994.

And now we have a call to divest from the oil industry, to take control of what’s happening on and to our planet for generations to come. University students are heeding the call and taking the lead. And in light of the tragic and senseless shooting in Newtown, CT, there are reports about the California State Teachers’ Retirement System’s (CalSTRS) owning a percentage of the company that manufactures weapons like the one used to commit the heinous crime. And then there’s California’s Prop 37, the fight for the right to know what’s in our food and a call for labeling of GMOs.

With any and all of these issues, it comes down this: choice and civic engagement. With the dollars in our pockets, under mattresses, in bank accounts and the stock market, we all have a choice when it comes to how and where we decide to spend and invest them. While it’s true that large acts of divestment have greater and more noticeable impacts, we cannot ignore that our small actions do matter and they do add up. They ripple outward and create conversations with our families, friends, neighbors, grocery store clerks, farmers, taxi drivers, financial advisors and our representatives in government. Conversation leads to action and fighting for what we believe is fair and just.

Look back at successful movements – civil rights, anti-apartheid, the early environmental victories – and you’ll see that three things are needed to make change at the scale we need today.

First, we need a Big Idea of how things could be better – a morally compelling, ecologically sustainable and socially just idea that will not just make things a little better for a few, but a lot better for everyone. Millions around the world already have that idea: an economy based on the needs of people and the planet, not corporate profit.

Second, we need a commitment to work together. In history’s most transformative social movements, people didn’t say “I will perfect my individual daily choices,” but “We will work together until the problem is solved.” Today, it’s easier than ever to work together, online and off.

Finally, we need all of us who share that Big Idea to get active. We need to move from a place of shared concern, frustration and fear to a place of engaged citizen action. That’s how we build the power to make real change.

- Annie Leonard, The Story of Change

originally posted on Daily Kos

]]> http://liberatedspaces.wordpress.com/2012/12/19/musings-on-divestment-past-present-and-future/feed/ 4 liberatedspaces Autosave-File vom d-lab2/3 der AgfaPhoto GmbH 1985divest_f18sm 1985divest_f19sm 1985divest_jackson2_f08sm 1985divest_jackson1_f19Asm changedconditions http://liberatedspaces.wordpress.com/2012/11/25/finally-i-can-see-what-i-like-on-facebook/ http://liberatedspaces.wordpress.com/2012/11/25/finally-i-can-see-what-i-like-on-facebook/#comments Sun, 25 Nov 2012 19:10:28 +0000 deb http://liberatedspaces.wordpress.com/?p=4380 ]]> This post may be a bit out of the norm for my blog, but it feels necessary. If you’re a reader who is gleefully facebook-free, this will probably bore you to pieces. I’ll be back to my more typical musings shortly!

If you’re a facebook user like me, I’m certain you’ll agree that the unpredictable and ever-changing algorithms and other under the hood shenanigans by the folks over there have led to nothing short of frustration. I use facebook as a research and communication tool for both my business and personal life. I follow a plethora of companies, nonprofits, fellow bloggers, and many other entities from whom I learn and get turned on to information that deepens my civic, intellectual, and social involvement.

Pages I’ve “liked” stopped appearing in my newsfeed long ago. New “likes” seldom showed up. After some searching online for answers, I dabbled my way to this conclusion: organizing the pages I “like” brought them into my newsfeed!

For the sake of your sanity and my own, I wish to share my initial process which may very well be obsolete in a week or two if facebook launches another upgrade or algorithm. In the short term, at least, I’m happy. Maybe you will be, too.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Go to your home page. Click on your “Likes” (located just below your header image and “Activity Log”) and scroll down the page a ways past “Favorites” until you reach the “Likes” box. At the very top of the section, you’ll see a horizontal list of the years you’ve been on facebook. Clicking on each of those numbers reveals a list of pages you’ve “liked” that particular year.

Start with the current year and follow these steps for each page that appears in your list:

• Hover your cursor over the page until a box of information about that page appears. Then hover your cursor over “Liked” to reveal a menu of four options. (I’ll only address two of these options since I haven’t touched the others.)

• If you wish to “unlike” a page, click “Unlike.”

• If you wish to continue to “Like” the page, you’ll want to “Add to Interest Lists”(instructions to follow). As it seems to be in facebooklandia, pages need to be placed in a list so you can see them. This is especially true of the pages whose posts you seldom if ever comment on or “like.”

You can create just one list and put everything in it, but you can take a more intentional approach and make lists for the different topics you enjoy reading about. Think of “Interest Lists” as categories, folders, or piles. Every page you want to see in your feed needs to be placed in at least one list. Avoid over-categorizing by keeping each list broad yet focused. (For example, all media outlets you follow – be they newspapers, radio shows, internet only venues, etc. – can be placed in a list called “news” or “media”.)

Here’s how you can add a page to an “Interest List”…

1 – Hover over page name

2 – Hover over “Liked” button

3 – Scroll to “Add to Interest List”

4 – Add to one of your lists or add a “New List”

When you add a “New List,” you’ll be prompted to name your list, and then to indicate from one of three choices who can see your list: the public, your friends, or just you. Here’s what a sample of the New List page looks like:

Creating a “New List” called news

The benefit of lists is tremendous. Now, instead of going through my entire newsfeed to find posts from my favorite food-related sites, or search/click on each of them individually, I can simply scroll down the sidebar on my homepage, and under “Interests,” select “food.” And at the touch of a button, a stream of deliciousness appears!

Remember how I mentioned page “Likes” were grouped by year? You can take control of your “Likes” by purging (“unliking”) and organizing your pages year by year. In other words, organize one year a day for a week. Or, you if you’re on a roll, turn on some music and do it all in one sitting! As you’d do with any pile, drawer, or closet carve out a little bit of time to keep your newsfeed fresh and relevant. When you’re done, I think you’ll like your feed a whole lot more!

Endnote: As I created this post and further explored the many mysterious buttons on facebook, I stumbled upon at least one other way to create “Interest Lists.” I encourage you to play and discover, too!

Most bags are easy to refuse, but this one certainly had its charm. There was the allure of the soft  blue recycled fabric, not to mention the colorful webbing of the handles (also made of recycled materials) that flirted with me and Sven when we first saw it. San Francisco’s Department of the Environment purchased 7,000 of these bags in a variety of colors for distribution for free free as part of the educational campaign for the City’s Checkout Bag Ordinance which went into effect on October 1.

The purpose of this legislation is to encourage customers to bring their own checkout bags, in order to reduce the impact of disposable bags to the City and the environment.

All businesses are now required to charge a minimum of 10 cents per new bag issued at checkout. By bringing or declining bags, customers can avoid the fees. Some establishments have been ahead of the “checkout bag” curve for years offering customers a refund for each receptacle brought and used. Creating a new habit of grabbing reusable bags whenever one leaves the house is still a stretch for many, but there are ways to make it easy while reducing clutter from the accumulation of disposable single-use bags.

But lets get back to the new bag. Technically, it was a swag bag containing organic, fair trade and biodynamic goodies from sponsors of the newly created Friends of SF Environment, the new nonprofit arm of the city agency. It was a benefit of membership that contained, shall we say, nice benefits.

When I went to introduce said bag to its siblings hanging on the back of the kitchen door, an idea washed over me. Wondering how many bags were in our collection, I gathered them up and lay them out for a group portrait. Twenty bags carpeted the floor. Only six had been purchased with intention, the oldest of which I’ve owned since the mid 1980s. The rest have come into our lives as gifts via friends, fundraising efforts we’ve supported, or events we’ve attended. As I put them away, I noticed two bags, camouflaged amidst the aprons. New tally: 22.

I’m a tad embarrassed now. While this struck me as an excessive number of singular pieces of schlepping apparatus, the truth of the matter is every one of them gets used. The old-timer, from a family farm in my hometown in NJ, is the designated collection receptacle for egg and plastic produce cartons to be recycled back to the farm from which we purchase a biweekly box of food. It gets filled again on pickup days. There are bags used when we travel – one ChicoBag for laundry collection and several thin cotton bags that hold small or delicate items in our luggage – and bags I use day-to-day for work and errands. There’s a small bag that lives on a doorknob, and its sole purpose is to hold reusable produce bags. But the most regularly used are for grocery and farmer’s market shopping. Plenty of spares are on hand when the workhorses are in the laundry for their twice-monthly washing. Yes, it’s imperative to wash reusuable bags as one would wash linens and clothes!

To keep the bag jamboree under control when moments of weakness arise, I have a practice of triaging the collection whenever a new one comes in. Bags we don’t use are donated to local nonprofits. For goodness sakes, a girl’s gotta manage her bag habits!

I’ve been contacted by…Rebuilding Together, the national organization that does Habitat for Humanity type rebuilds and remodels of both private homes and non-profit organization’s facilities.

I was a construction captain a few years ago on a fabulous remodel of the basement of the Larkin Street Youth Center and last year did assessments on two homes…

Apparently there are projects in communities all around the Bay Area, but if you’d like to team up with a corporate sponsor and do some great work while showing off your organizing skills and NAPO’s community spirit–please let me know asap.

Really? A unique opportunity to stretch one’s organizing muscles, volunteer for an awesome nonprofit and cause, AND be part of a team that positively impacts the lives of strangers? “Please do put me on the list! I’d love to help if the timing’s right,” I responded to my colleague, Victoria Roberts-Russell.

Two weeks later, another email landed in my inbox. This one contained descriptions of various projects that could benefit from the input of a professional organizers. I signed on, completed a project, and was hooked. When it was over, I wondered how we could get more organizers on board with this seemingly natural partnership and began conspiring with Victoria and our enthusiastic associates at RTSF.

“Organizers play a pivotal role on our bi-annual projects,” says RTSF’s Valerie Coleman. “Often times the critical repairs that a senior or disabled adult needs is not even accessible until ‘stuff’ has been cleared out. Or, perhaps an overworked and understaffed youth center is just focusing on how to run the best programs possible and to engage the most kids they can, which means that creating an organized, functioning space is just beyond their abilities. Whatever the situation, we greatly value the experience and perspectives that professional organizers bring to our projects. In the past, they have helped us determine scopes of work, whether clients are ready to let go, sourced donations and materials, led volunteers on a task and offered tremendous support to our clients, who are often overwhelmed and don’t know where to begin.”

Over the next few years we slowly but surely recruited more of our colleagues to join us on this annual collaboration. Then came one fine evening in February 2012 at the RTSF office where we had a record number of organizers in attendance to learn about upcoming projects…

Eight professional organizers (the seven pictured above, plus myself) sat around the large table with RTSF staff members Valerie Coleman, Jen Garber and Jonathan Rossall. We were also joined by representatives from the Mental Health Association’s Peer Responders Program. This meeting was the beginning of the deployment of nine professional organizers who would cumulatively contribute nearly 275 hours of pro bono services to three non-profit facilities and three residential clients before, during, and after National Rebuilding Day. (Two projects were cancelled in advance of Rebuilding Day, and organizers assigned to those projects were re-deployed!)

When professional organizers join their clients, skilled tradespersons, and corporate and community volunteers, “the power of we” can take on unique dimensions. Here’s what the organizers’ contributions to this years’ projects looked like.

Margie Lehnen-Holtz and Emily Vander Tuin at Mr. and Mrs. A’s home
Mr. and Mrs. A have done their best to maintain their home of 40 years, but it’s become harder to keep up with as they are no longer physically capable of doing it themselves. They have accumulated quite a bit of stuff that they needed help removing. Below, Margie and Emily work with Mrs. A to sort and remove unwanted items from the overstuffed garage.

Amanda Kovattana at Ms. G’s home
Ms. G is an elderly widow for whom maintaining her home became very difficult after her husband passed on. For the first few years after her loss, grief made it hard for her to let go of possessions which accumulated throughout the home. Enter Amanda who worked closely with Ms. G to clear the kitchen to make way for necessary upgrades in this room. Items being kept had to be temporarily stored in the living room until Rebuilding Day work was complete.

Erin Becker and Courtney King at Holy Ghost Service Center
At Holy Ghost Service Center, the program administrators share their home with ten formerly homeless men, all who pitch in and help with household chores, and also prepare and serve food to the homeless several times per week. On Rebuilding Day, Erin worked with the team’s volunteer carpenter, residents, and fellow organizer, Courtney, to clear and organize the basement by removing unneeded items, building and installing shelving, and moving items onto shelving.

Victoria Roberts-Russell, Kathy Waddill and Sandy Trout at Beacon Center
The OMI/Excelsior Beacon Center is dedicated to improving the lives of low-income families by providing educational, recreational and support services for free to the community.

Victoria, Kathy, and Sandy quickly changed gears when their previous project – a residential client who was a hoarder – was postponed. On Rebuilding Day, they collectively re-configured the staff’s administrative office to optimize the work space, triaged and organized the program’s multi-purpose room, and triaged a storage room (and hallway) that had become less than functional.

Looking at what we all did makes me giddy inside, and then I think about how much more we can do in the future. The possibilities make me giddier.

o~O~o~O~o~O~o~O~o~O~o

This post has been registered for participation in Blog Action Day 2012.

Cross-posted at Rebuilding Together

All photos by Debra Baida / Liberated Spaces

The interconnectedness of the seemingly disparate parts that make up workable and efficient systems is among the many features I love about the organizing process. It takes you places, it helps you discover things, and it lets you improvise along the way. There are no “rights” or “wrongs” but what works for you, the individual. The process can be overwhelming and a complete diversion that ends in a larger sense of disarray than you could ever have imagined. I’ve been there. Who knew that giving laundry day a lift would provide one such voyage.

I had gotten tired of temporarily removing clothes from hangers already in use in order to hang items to dry on the shower rod in the bathroom. The time had come for a dedicated fleet of laundry hangers, and this little project added a spring in my step. Finally, I had a reason to purchase cardboard hangers! Yes, you read that right. Cardboard hangers. Ever since reading about Ditto Hangers earlier this year and then sitting down to chat with the company’s awesome founder/CEO, Gary Barker, in their Oakland, CA headquarters, I’ve been quietly singing the praises of this product.

My rationale went like this: by trading out a handful of plastic hangers for their cardboard counterparts, I would achieve my mission with some happy benefits. You see, these cardboard hangers take up half the space of their plastic counterparts. (See the photo to the left that shows 10 cardboard hangers hanging next to five plastic hangers.) For someone like me who lives in a closet-deficient flat in an historic 1887 Victorian home, this was akin to hitting a spatial jackpot. With these sturdy yet svelte 100% recycled content hanging devices, my clothes would gain more breathing room, and they would no longer slide from their perch and onto the floor. I got to support one of my favorite companies (something I seldom say about companies in general) by purchasing a product that is truly sustainable and was designed and created for all the right reasons. But where does the fridge come in? Patience…

So all that shuffling of clothes in the closet led to the rediscovery of a tension rod that had been taken out of commission. I quickly realized it extended long enough to be installed perpendicular to the uppermost clothing rod. Within moments, the plastic hangers re-deployed for the laundry had home all their own!

Admiring my new creation and arrangement, I took a moment to step back and take in the closet as a whole. That’s when I noticed an underused void beneath a shelving unit that houses shoes. “Hmmm,” I thought, “This could be an excellent place for some of the wine bottles that have begun to outgrow their home in the kitchen.” Before I knew it, I was sorting bottles of wine. Fine wines with corks were moved to fill the void on the floor of the closet. It’s the darkest and coolest place in the apartment, so it made the most sense. Wines which will be used more quickly or have screw tops were queued on the lower shelf of the main pantry. Look at that: a completely empty shelf where the jumble of wines once resided. Not empty for long!

What happened next could seem like a mild nightmare to some, but the reality was this reorganization endeavor was taking place at 7am on a week day. Morning sunshine was the friend looking over my shoulder as I worked, lighting the way to a destination as of yet unknown. In my world, this was a lightly caffeinated dream!

Before I knew it, I was on the kitchen floor moving canned foods (of both the literal can and jarred varieties) from one shelf to another. Then it was time to shuffle baking dishes and serving platters, the rice cooker, and pitchers until done to near perfection. I hope you follow this: then the contents of the shelf below the shelf that once held the wines moved up to the former wine shelf. Batteries, tools, tapes and the like no longer required deep squatting to access them.

Back to standing, somehow my reflexes had me removing bottles of cooking oils and vinegars from the wall cupboard directly above the aforementioned shelves. Here was my opportunity to employ a new and smaller bamboo Lazy Susan that I’d been searching high and low for to replace its plastic counterpart in said cupboard. A little more tweaking and prioritizing of items, and then the kitchen was better than I ever thought it could become.

Wait! It was almost complete. There was now the issue of a decommissioned Lazy Susan. There was only one place – one last cupboard – in the entire house I could turn to: the refrigerator. The destination for my rotating friend was a lower shelf where infrequently used and often buried to the point of having to be dug out items dwelled. Among these were curry and miso paste, peanut butter and sauerkraut. The space in front of the Lazy Susan is deep enough to accommodate containers of foods with a limited shelf-life, like yogurts or leftovers, that I don’t want to be accidentally lost in the depths of the fridge. It’s easy enough to move a temporary item to spin my way to what’s behind it.

Suddenly, the sun was shining brighter on this dizzying turn of unexpected events. After an hour and a half, nary a lingering thing needed a home or a purpose. I could now go on with the day!

The first glance of a sponsor booth overwhelmed me – visually, physically, environmentally, and  any other appropriate word that ends in ly. And yes, the photos above highlight a certain company’s wares in the form of a classroom constructed with bleach and anti-bacterial wipes, complete with toilet brush desks! How many repetitions of “no, no, NO!” do you think were running through my brain? And no, they weren’t handing free wipes or bowl scrubbies to conference attendees.

Worry not! Cleaning supplies did abound from the company that provided each and every attendee with their very own 22oz bottle of a multi-purpose cleanser in the official conference swag bag. I’m curious to know how many people packed a bottle of the product in the photo to the left in their luggage for the flight home.

I was filled with immense repulsion and curiosity about the swag that lured my fella bloggers to the expo halls in droves. Recognizing this as an  opportunity to witness and experience the part of consumerism I regularly avoid, a conscious shift into observer mode took over. I needed something  to make this feature of the conference tolerable, and having a like-minded friend along for the self-guided swag tours was key.

There were booths bedecked with kid-centric icons and company reps dressed up in costumes ranging from the milkman to a banana to a Dr. Seuss character. The irony of an environmental icon handing out reusable plastic-based totes bedecked with his likeness was lost to many.

One could snack, sip and lip-smack their way through all the edibles. S’more-making stations in a faux-backyard environment in a hotel suite were ingenious and popular. Yogurt, juice smoothies, power bars, meat thingies, coffees, and more were available throughout the day. Aside from rescuing a piece of s’more-destined chocolate for a quick pick-me-up, I opted against all the edible samples as they produced one of my least favorite side-effects of these events: landfill-destined trash.

Did anyone else notice the messages urging us gals
to stay youthful and to ponder our perspectives on aging?

How about the commonality shared by
a computer technology company and a liqueur company?

There was so much to see that I’m glad I wasn’t tempted to sit down for my once every five years manicure. Besides, there was a handy press-on nail kit in the swag bag! Hot pink or glitterized plastic nails anyone? Depending on how you chose to curate your swag, the themes and combinations were endless.

Toothpaste, books, “personal massagers,” t-shirts, battery-powered candles, home and office organizing tools of the physical and virtual variety, gratitude journals, lip balms, reusable bags (only one US-made of 100% cotton) and more were offered and passed to attendees like candy at Halloween. I’ll admit that the sight of one particular (and very unexpected) vendor made me squeal with glee: a maker of homeopathic remedies. I was dancing inside when the company rep handed me a box each of arnica gel and an anti-flu remedy. Yippee. That exchange alone made the journey into swagville kind of worth it. Okay, so yeah, I can see the lure of any given expo if more of the vendors were on my wavelength and in alignment with my values.

Now remember, this was a conference for bloggers, and one of my Bay Area blogging friends, Beth Terry, was worth the visit to the expo where she signed and sold her fabulous book, Plastic-Free: How I Kicked the Plastic Habit and How You Can Too. Here’s Beth and one of my new blogger friends at the signing…

This particular post seems as good a place as any to mention my plastic-free tip that Beth included in her book. The sidebar on page 304 reads, “Just say no to freebies at expos and conferences. You’ll be amazed at how much less plastic waste (and otherwise) comes into your home, and how much lighter your luggage will be!”

So what was the most perfect “swag” that came home with me? Small enough to fit into my back pocket and destined for the recycle bin when I’m finished with them is the stack of business cards from the wide array of bloggers I met over the course of three days. These are women from as far afield as Rio de Janiero and Zimbabwe, to as near as across the bay or the Upper West Side of Manhattan. These are women who are survivors of trauma such as postpartum psychosis, the loss of a child, and the shooting rampage in Tucson. These are women who are exploring identity, racial, political and social justice issues, and women who are simply blogging for the love of it. The conversations we shared, the cards we exchanged, and now the friendships we are forming are the greatest takeaways of all.

cross-posted at Daily Kos

But here’s a first for me: while leaving the Mission Community Market last night, I got side-tracked not by produce, but by a towel. Make that a tea towel. Sven and I simultaneously noticed a whimsical print of an owl as we passed by a vendor’s table. We moved in its direction and were instantly engaged in an amusing exchange with the owl’s creator, Cristina.

While we were talking and admiring her graphic handiwork, my attention was drawn to and riveted by another towel that spoke to my organizer spirit and my creative soul. Inked within Liberated Spaces green-colored rectangles were the bold phrases, mantras, and commands “DESIGN ADVICE,” “GET RID OF CRAP,” “BUY THINGS YOU’LL LOVE FOREVER,” “MAKE STUFF.” I could have bought it on the spot, but I simply admired and walked away having been assured that she was there each week if I changed my mind. I jokingly remarked I could be back in a couple of minutes.

As we walked away, Sven and I talked towel. (How often does that happen aside from couples registering at a department store for their wedding registry?) Yeah, I really really liked it. Did I need a $10 towel? No. He offered to buy it for me. I declined. I/we don’t need another kitchen towel. We have plenty and they fill their allotted space in a kitchen drawer alongside the napkins. But oooh, the messages and the design are awesome. It’s okay to think about it for a while. He assured me that if I really wanted it, I could come back another Thursday. I countered with concern that it could have been the only green one on unbleached cotton and she may not have it again. There’s nothing like mulling something over, going back to get it, and finding that the chance had already passed. This exchange took us no more than half a block when we stopped walking and simply stood on the sidewalk to continue the towel debate.

The $10 that I purposefully left the house with was down to $6.25. I spent $3.75 on literal handfuls of organic fingerling potatoes and dry farmed Early Girl tomatoes. The towel was beyond my means of the moment. Again, Sven said he’d buy it for me. But I don’t need it. I mean, gosh, it’s so beautiful and I won’t want to use it. Okay, but what if we split the cost, I offered, leaning towards the side of acquisition and staying within my market outing budget. No, no, he said, he’d just buy it. More resistance and pondering and rationalizations. As artists ourselves, supporting another local artist is something we value. The towel is a piece of art, something that would (and already does) bring joy. As a piece of art, it was reasonably priced.

Cristina’s eyes met ours as we wended our way back to her table, and three faces were smiling. Yes, we’d like to purchase the towel. I conceded and accepted it as a gift. I walked home with this silky soft cotton towel in my hand.

What do you think? It’s pretty nice, huh? It looks great on the kitchen table, which to this day is my most amazing return on investment. This $5 purchase at a sidewalk sale in 1994 filled a need in my then uber-minimalist San Francisco studio apartment. To this day, it continues to be admired by all who see it. And now this towel. I’m going to admire it for a while and hang it in a place of honor in my office for others to admire it, too. In fact, I’m kinda hankering to use it. But just not yet…

For towel inspiration or your own spur of the moment acquisition, theheated.com

Yep, that’s right. Twenty years ago marked the beginning of my residency as a San Franciscan and a Californian. When people ask what brought me here, I usually respond with one word – Amtrak. It’s true, but that’s not what they expect.

I boarded the train in New York’s Penn Station on a Tuesday evening. Three days later, I arrived at my destination. The decision to take the train was simple: I was stepping into a dream and the unknown. A flight could get me there in six hours, or I could feel and witness the expanse of physical space between “home” and what would become “home.”

Saying good-bye to family and friends was one of the hardest things I’d ever done, but their support and my strong inner compass led me to the land of fog and what I most looked forward to most – escaping the heat and humidity. I was ready for year-round autumn-like coolness and sweater weather…just like today!

A friend who saw me off gave me a very special handmade gift: a journal for my journey. A piece of cardboard backing with unlined white pages bound by a piece of cotton string is all it took. Assorted drawings and photos related to our shared experiences are sprinkled within, and the volume came wrapped in an envelope tied up with string from a favorite (no longer in existence) bookstore. Upon arrival in SF, my ticket stubs decorated the front of the envelope, and I stored the cards and well wishes that came my way inside.

And yes, I’ve kept it and will continue to keep this in my box of memories. A transcontinental move is a momentous happening, and this little bundle is a document of the biggest life transition I’ve yet to undertake. It’s a sweet little time capsule.

I sat down with the journal on Sunday with my ritual morning cup of tea. I laughed when I read my notes about the relative quiet of nighttime on the train being occasionally punctuated by music leaked from a stranger’s Walkman. While I remember traveling with a large backpack filled with several days worth of necessities, I was reminded that I carried a cloth shoulder bag filled with food – fruit, peanut butter, and bottled water. It seems my seatmate had the same idea and he and I had quite a feast and shared our home-packed goodies. Back then, it was unusual to see someone carrying their own water, even if it was a large plastic bottle or two of Evian. My how times have changed. To this very day, I still use that cloth bag for groceries! It was purchased from a family farm in the town where I grew up.

Reflecting on that handful of days on the rails provided chuckles and introspection. I met and talked with a lot of strangers, read Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal Dreams, and watched the landscape change from industrial to farmland and everything in between. I saw my people-focused and observational inclinations in my younger self. It’s good to know some things don’t change. They only get better!

A week or so before moving, I triaged, packed and shipped five boxes of my most important and useful belongings for starting a new life to my great aunt’s house. She, at a mere 89-years-old, was to be my first west coast roommate, but only until I found roommates closer my age. I perused ads in the newspaper on a daily basis, and I moved six weeks later. (Now that I think about it, this was my second to last pre-internet and pre-craigslist move!)

The boxes were stacked where she asked the UPS delivery man to place them – at the front of the garage. What did I need to have with and around me as tokens of comfort, reminder, and importance in a state of uncertainty and transition? It turns out books, a handful of photographs, and a favorite blanket were among my noted possessions. I spread these things around my temporary room the day after a good night of sleep.

Tonight, my sweetie and I will be dining in a favorite restaurant a few blocks down the street from where I unpacked those first boxes and realized my dream had come true. I’ll have just spent the day unpacking the boxes of a client who is a brand new east coast arrival. I’ll be blissfully tired and hungry.

And to quote some of my favorite lyrics by Woodie Guthrie, whose birthday was July 14, the day I left for the west coast:

I’d like to rest my heavy head tonight
On a bed of California stars
I’d like to lay my weary bones tonight
On a bed of California stars

When I crawl into bed and rest my head tonight, that very blanket (in the photo above) will warm me. It’s going to be a typical chilly San Francisco summer night.

* In homage to The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper Lonely Hearts Club Band!