Month: November 2018

By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Activism, Consumer Issues, Corporate Social Responsibility, Eco-friendly, Frugality/Frugal Fun, Green Business, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, People Helping People, poverty, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , ,

Guest Post by Wayne Stevenson Thomas, in San Antonio, Texas

[Editor’s note: We stayed with Wayne on our first trip to San Antonio many years ago, and have stayed in contact. I am always looking for examples of for-profit businesses that serve a greater good. If you’ve got an example and would like to guest-blog, please write to me through this site.]

Thrift Shop Interior
Thrift Shop Interior

Cliff Morgan was an executive at the local St. Vincent de Paul. They had a big operation of recycling the items they couldn’t sell or give to the poor. But he and the St. Vincent board found that the not-for-profit model didn’t allow him the flexibility he needed to operate. (Something about how all contracts or agreements had to go to the board as well as any expenditures above a fairly low number.)

So St. Vincent decided to spin off the operation into a for-profit, which Cliff owns. SA3 Community Recycling serves three communities of interest: Nonprofits who receive donations they cannot use, nonprofits who need items, and citizens (as represented by our governmental organizations).

He collects unneeded items from providing nonprofits. He pays them for clothing, shoes and bundled cardboard, generating a small revenue stream for them while allowing them to concentrate on their mission, rather than on disposing or selling unwanted material.

He contacts receiver nonprofits to provide them exactly the items they need from the stream of items he receives from the provider nonprofits. He provides exactly what they need. For instance, Dress for Success might need 5 size 16 Women’s business suits. SA3 would pull exactly that out of their stream and no more.

For the citizens as a whole, he contracts with governmental organizations to keep items out of the landfill. For instance he accepts cathode ray tube TVs from the providing nonprofits and disassembles them. He does the same with other electronics (if he doesn’t have another nonprofit that can use them.)

He generates income (as I understand it) by selling the clothing and cardboard for a bit more than he pays for it, and by selling the metal and other material captured from the electronics. He pays his staff, who do the pick-ups and supervise the volunteers who help sort the items that come through the door.

Among the nonprofits he provides with items from his stream are: Habitat for Humanity (building material), the Diaper Bank (loose and packaged diapers), Dress for Success, Spare Parts (an arts nonprofit that provides used and repurposed items to local art educators) and Samministries (household items for families leaving shelters). He also provides items as needed to several St. Vincent operations in South Texas. I believe he sincerely wants to recycle as much as he can within the community (and have connected him with several other receiver organizations).

Wayne Stevenson Thomas is a former volunteer and assistant manager at Jefferson Thrift Store in San Antonio.

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By Posted on Posted in Eco-friendly, Frugality/Frugal Fun, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, Innovation, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I read Seth Godin’s daily blog almost daily but I missed this one from a couple of days ago. I think he’s absolutely right. Kids need time in nature, to daydream, to make friends, and do things that don’t involve a screen.

And they need to develop independence. It’s a myth that you can protect your kid from all bad or even uncomfortable things. And some discomfort is necessary to growth. Otherwise, when they do hit a challenge, they are completely unable to cope. I believe in parenting that presents gradual increases in challenges. That doesn’t mean forcing kids to do things where they have zero interest or skill, but helping them find the places where growth is exciting, and helping them get through the uncomfortable incidents in their lives–but not by attempting to seal them off in a vacuum tube somewhere.

Then there’s the effect on our biology. I know from paying careful attention to my own body that I’m most comfortable if my on-screen shifts are an hour or less. Research confirms that prolonged computer use creates health problems (one of 369,000,000 results for “health effects of computer use”, BTW).

Electronic babysitters are not really new, just intensified. In my day, many of my peers were shuttled off to the family television, nicknamed, for good reason, the “boob tube.” Mainstream TV in the 1960s, and especially kid programming in the pre-Sesame Street, pre-Mr. Rogers days, sabotaged intelligence and reinforced a culture of violence. Even the years-later and scrupulously politically correct Barney  worked really hard to dumb things down, and that was public TV–while Sesame Street, although a terrific show, changed our thought patterns and shortened our attention spans by chopping up several stories into little pieces and scattering them throughout the show.

Luckily, my mom believed in limiting TV. We were allowed two hours a day, after completing our homework, and nothing too violent. I am very grateful to her for this rule, and to my first grade teacher who recognized that Sally, Dick, and Jane bored me–I was reading at age three–and sat me down in the back of the room with a 4th-grade geography book. Under these two influences, I became an avid reader. From then on, any time I felt bored, I could escape into a book. I discovered a world of ideas (and their potential to create a more just, eco-friendly world) in biography, science, and “think” books…alternate worlds in science fiction…wonderful characters in literary fiction…deductive reasoning combining with intuitive leaps in detective novels. I always say I became a writer because I’m interested in everything–but being a reader created that interest. Oh, and I still find geography fascinating.

My interest in reading predates school. I still remember being frustrated because the New York Public Library wouldn’t let me get a library card until I could write my name, which only happened two or three years after I was reading. My mom had to use some of her precious allotment to keep me in reading material. Years later, when NYPL lifted the 6-books-at-a-time limit, my mom would take a shopping cart over to her branch, fill it up, read the books on her 3 hours of bus commuting per day, and trade them in two weeks later for another batch. I started tracking the number of books I’m reading a few years ago, and it’s ranged from 83 to 88 per year. This year, it will probably be more like 75, because an all-consuming family situation cut deeply into my reading time this fall. It’s at 71 as of today. And reading is eco-friendly and frugal (thank you, public libraries and friends with interesting books), too.

We read Charlotte’s Web to our daughter when she was four. At seven, it was the first full-length chapter book she read on her own. A few years later, she got to play Charlotte in a local theater production. In college, she did a long academic paper on  the deeper philosophical implications of

Thomas Edison took 10,000 steps to invent a lightbulb. Could your child be so patiently focused on a task?
Thomas Edison took 10,000 steps to invent a lightbulb. Could your child be so patiently focused on a task?

Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. Now she’s about to get a master’s degree in teaching adult literacy.

Today, at least, screen time is much more interactive. Instead of sitting passively, kids create scenarios and alternative endings, share their discoveries on social media, etc. But they do it in nanobits.

But in today’s electronic world, I worry about attention span, focus, creativity–and empathy; I see a rapidly growing culture of intolerance (125,000,000 results on Google for “social media bullying”). In a world with no attention span, how can we make the next lightbulb discovery? Edison himself described inventing the lightbulb as a 10,000-step process. Nanobits don’t lead down that torturous path. Reading, meanwhile, reinforces attention span, focus, and creativity. Whether it narrows or widens your horizons depends on what you choose to read.

And reading can also be interactive, because you create your own storylines and then read further to see if you’re right.

What if your kid has learning disabilities or other issues that make reading difficult? Try audiobooks, or make the time to read aloud, or bring the books down a couple of grade levels until your child is ready for more. Or substitute other equally creative activities, from one-sentence-per-person storytelling to counting how many ideas you can get on a stroll through a forest. Even kids who love to read can benefit by broadening their creative repertoire.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Business Ethics, Energy & Sustainability, General Commentary, Innovation, Technology, Transparency vs. Secrecy Tagged with , , , , , ,

Go watch this short clip from futurist Jamais Cascio in a Fast Company forum. It’s only 2 minutes and 22 seconds (once you get past the ad). Here’s an excerpt:

If you want to find out how to use a new emerging tool, don’t ask the people who invent it, because they have a very narrow view of what it’s supposed to be used for. The people who are hacking it–the people who use it for crime, who use it to have sex, who use it to do something fun or different–those are the people who are going to find out the little interesting variations.

This kind of thinking has been noticeably absent until fairly recently. Look at the early coverage of the Internet of Things, for instance. It’s all pretty rah-rah, this is great, and nobody was wondering about what to do if someone hacked your refrigerator and set all the food to spoil.

Yet we so often see unintended consequences, not only in the ability of evildoers to exploit those weaknesses, but also in not thinking through all the ramifications of a new technology. For instance, those who developed fossil fuels never thought about health effects from pollution, or catastrophic climate effects from increasing CO2 levels, or about how a society built around the idea of mass private vehicle ownership and a network of roads that go everywhere would be different (better in some ways, worse in others). The people who developed the very exciting 3D printing world probably didn’t think about the consequences of being able to build weapons that don’t show up on X-ray scans, using a device you can have in your own home. People running massive charity programs may not have considered the impact of subsidizing goods on the local, indigenous producers who are essential to a thriving local economy.

This is a good time to remind ourselves of the Precautionary Principle (scroll to page 10 when you open the link): if there’s a chance that major harm will come from an action, choose not to perform that action.

Europe has widely adopted the Precautionary Principle; the US has been lagging behind even under more forward-thinking administrations, and the current administration is actively hostile to the environment.

With an even more reactionary, pro-pollution president about to take over in Brazil, one who has pledged to turn over the Amazon rainforest to industry regardless of the consequences,

Brazil's magnificent Amazon rainforest (courtesy NPR)
Brazil’s lush, multispecies rainforest sequesters enormous amounts of carbon–and is at risk of being bulldozed for short-term private gain (courtesy NPR)

the Precautionary Principle (which Brazil followed for about the past 15 years) is about to be thrown out. The consequences, though, aren’t limited to Brazil. The above link documents the extreme negative effects this will have on the climate issue worldwide.

One difference with the unintended consequences Jamais Cascio discusses: the consequences won’t be unintended. They are deliberate. This new leader simply doesn’t care. And he’s not likely to listen to activists in the US or even governments in the EU. But he will have to listen if the people of Brazil turn out in huge and constant demonstrations demanding climate justice and rainforest preservation. I wish them luck; we’ll all need it.

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By Posted on Posted in Democracy, Diversity, Ethics in Government, language, Politics, Shel's Personal Life, Transparency vs. Secrecy, Uncategorized Tagged with , , ,

Let’s start with the last few days:

Now, a little history recap:

Two years ago, possibly the most corrupt, venal, and dishonest presidential candidate ever nominated by a major party managed to come up with an apparent majority in the Electoral College.

Forbes leads 13mm Google results on DT bullying (screenshot)
Forbes leads 13 million Google results on DT bullying (screenshot)

Why do I say “:apparent majority”? We knew immediately, in November, 2016, that a lot of funny business went on; Green Party candidate Jill Stein filed for a recount in three key states (we still don’t know why key elements within the Democratic Party supported the Republican efforts to block these recounts, only one of which was carried out). We know now that at least one foreign government was actively interfering in the election. To me, this means the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania is not there legitimately.

Immediately on taking office, this man began actively suppressing human rights, starting with the first Muslim entry ban; I’m proud that I was one of hundreds of thousands of protestors who fought that attempt, which we overturned).

The past 21 months have been a barrage of broken promises, broken treaties and international agreements…sabotaging the environment, education, and the safety net…diverting billions in tax breaks to those who are already among the wealthiest people and corporations in history, while slashing funds to human services…inciting violence against his opponents…attacking people of color, women, disabled people, the press, his critics, and others…tearing immigrant children from their families and imprisoning them, and failing to keep good records of what kids they stole from whom…threatening the citizenship of children born in the US…appointing a proven liar and probable multiple sexual predator to the Supreme Court…blaming others every time something goes wrong (which is frequent)…appointing corrupt Cabinet members who snack at the public trough while making no pretense of actually carrying out their departmental mandates–it’s far too long a list to fully document here; it would go on for hundreds of pages. I am more ashamed of this administration than of any previous one. Being an American is embarrassing these days.

It is time for this disgraceful man to leave office–preferably in handcuffs. It is time for his enablers in Congress to step down and apologize to the American people. It is well-past time. We have at least two paths to get him out: impeachment and the 25th Amendment *removal for incompetence).

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