apple juice

I just found The Story of Stuff via an article at the New York Times.

The video is a cheerful but brutal assessment of how much Americans waste…

“Cheerful, but brutal” is a perfect description for this video.

I’m too much of a sucker. Technology “stuff” is a major impediment to being more environmentally friendly. It just never stops.

Why do I feel a twinge of sadness and longing as the Airbus A320 painted with the colors of Delta Airlines announces its presence in my airspace, the tailfin painted with the greek symbol meaning “change”?

I think it’s in the blood of the Minnesotan.

I have no reason to love Northwest Airlines, nor reason to mourn its demise. My experiences in flying different airlines have shown them all to be roughly the same. (Though, as it turns out, Delta serves peanuts on their flights, allergies be damned.)

Why do Minnesotans cluck in digust at the sound of “Macy’s” or “Marshall Fields” while longing for the chance to once again walk through the revolving doors of Dayton’s. Aren’t we looking for the same sales on the same jeans?

It seems to me that we are a bit lost in the stateless and shifting world of multinational organizations. Who are you if you fly Delta Airlines? Who are you if you shop at Target, or Wal-mart?

Instead, why don’t we identify with our place? Your neighborhood, your park, your book store, your coffee shop?

These are places that will reward you with an investment of your time. The proprietor of my coffee shop knows the sound of my car and has a drink ready for me when I walk in.

Find what makes your place special, and make a little nest around that stuff. Like your wacky neighbor, a quirky restaurant, or the hardware store that lets you walk your dog inside for a treat.

this is why I love my job. I get to promote things like this:

“to compose, and to compose successfully in the 21st century, you have to not only excel at verbal expression and written expression, but you also have to excel in the use and manipulation of images.”

taken on the north side of our house.

In short: we are being brainwashed with fear and it makes us worry that everything we do as parents may be putting our kids in danger. That’s why we judge other parents so harshly, and why we keep our kids cloistered like Rapunzel. Don’t get me wrong. As founder of the Free-Range Kids movement—a group of people who believe in giving kids more freedom and responsibility—my philosophy is not to throw kids out of the car (sorely tempting though that may be at times). But Free-Range parents do believe that kids are more capable and competent than we give them credit for. And that, after teaching them basic safety, they need some freedom to develop as smart, happy, responsible humans. Not crazy freedom. Just the kind of freedom we had, back when parenting decisions were not the stuff of national news.

from: Time to Stop Judging Other Mothers and Ourselves by the author of Free Range Kids

As far as I’m concerned the only people who get to judge my parenting are my parents… and my kids, when they are 18.

Welcome to my new feature. Picture of the Day. I will guarantee right now that I won’t update every day. But I’ll do my best. I guarantee it.

. . . raising children in the United States now isn’t more dangerous than it was when today’s generation of parents were young. And back then, it was reasonably safe, too. So why does shooing the kids outside and telling them to have fun and be home by dark seem irresponsible to so many middle-class parents today?

from Stop worrying about your children!

It seems to me that parents these days are worried about things they shouldn’t be, and not worried enough about the things they should.

I remember growing up with basically a home range. This amounted to the distance I could cover on my bike and still be home by dark. As I remember it, I would regularly bike to my baseball games, bike and walk to school, bike to friends houses, the mall, the library, etc. Granted we lived in the suburbs, but still. That was a lot of busy roads and what amounted to basically a 10 square mile area.