Everyone should thrift

I'm not usually one to tell people that you should go out and spend your money, but hey, when you do, visit thrift stores. I have been having an increasingly good time finding stuff from craft magazines from 1972 to bolts of fabric to really trendy clothes. Plus, if you are charity-minded, go to your favorite charity's shop and presto! You've made a donation. So stop the mindless retail crap and buy second-hand. Way more fun than the mall!

Why being poor prevents you from saving money

Here is a special conundrum that is relevant to lower-income city dwellers. Because such people lack the means of making major purchases, we/they get stuck in a cycle of paying more than necessary for many things. For example, obesity is rampant in inner cities. This is because supermarkets stay away from these places, and convenience stores open up instead. In my neighbourhood, near the university, the nearest Superstore (the cheapest supermarket) is a good hour away by transit, and it's extremely difficult to lug all those groceries home. Urban dwellers who are poorer than me are stuck buying potato chips and pop for their calories, even though a potato cooked at home is cheaper and more nutritious.

Additionally, I have noticed that a sewing machine will save your financial life. You can fix things, you can recycle things to make new things, you can make brand new things, you can even make things to sell or fix things for other people for a price. But who can afford a sewing machine? I was lucky enough to get one as an engagement gift (apparently people give engagement gifts!) so this is how I know such things. It is not as difficult to operate as it looks, and it's loads of fun. But someone who has to literally count every dime is unlikely to be able to shell out the cash for one, even second hand.

I think these situations are unfair, although I do not know what to do about them.

I also want to add that the Safeways closest the university, as well as close to the Downtown Eastside, are way the hell more expensive that the Safeway across the street from me at Broadway and MacDonald, a ritzier area. The DTES ones actually increase their prices on Welfare Wednesday. This is just evil.

right...

So the other day I was feeling sorry for myself because I really wanted a peppermint latte from a certain multinational coffee company, but did not have the money for the endeavor. Then I remembered that the Good Book says "give us today our daily bread" and not "give us today our daily latte". So....I guess I'm not entitled.

Book Review

Book Review: Take This Bread: a Radical Conversion by Sara Miles
Balantine Books, 2007

For anyone who is associated with a mainline church and feels that the church is sometimes, er, slow to respond to the needs of social justice (usually due to the long process of forming committees and subcommittees and meeting and voting and so on), drop everything and read this book. It is a strange tale about a an atheist lesbian cook mother latin-American-war-reporter who, for no particular reason, stops into a church one morning, takes communion, and is profoundly touched. She keeps attending, eventually forming a food bank that becomes an extension of the communion she takes. She doesn't glamourize the whole food bank thing, so if you decide to follow suit, don't expect choirs of angels to swoop out of the sky singing your praises (something I learned the hard way when I started to become involved with social justice). But it is a great read and I can almost guarantee that you will love it.

You'll laugh. You'll cry. You'll open a food bank.

Erin

Hankies

How come you can't find hankies anywhere anymore? Some of us don't want to be pitching thousands of kleenexes when we can just throw something into the laundry. There was a time when hankies were enviro-fashionable, just like those reusable shopping bags today. Which, of course, are much different than any other bag you have lying around.

The Global Village or the Global City or whatever it is these days

So the big news from environmentalism is to eat local. I support that, at least in theory. Here are some imported products that I don't know how to survive without:

1. Tea.
2. Coffee.
3. Sugar. Just try preserving all those local fruits without it.
4. Chocolate.
5. Bananas.
6. Cashews. Nuts save my life, I am sure of it. It is hard to find a good, healthy gluten-free snack without nuts, and I can't eat almonds all the time.
7. Canned tuna (product of Thailand). Canned tuna makes up a third of the trifecta of student protein sources: the other two are eggs and peanut butter.
8. Rice. The fact that Canada has the world's best wheat doesn't help me any when I am allergic to wheat.
9. Olive oil.
10. Spices. I love Indian food so most of my spices are, not surprisingly, from India.
11. Legumes. Legumes are very Diet For a Small Planet, but I'm pretty sure they have to travel a long way. I've never heard of the great lentil farms of the Okanagan. However, it is still more effecient to eat imported pulses than to feed those same pulses to local cows and then eat the cows.

Welcome

Hi all. This is my inaugural post of my new blog. I hope that this will be an enlightening and helpful endeavor.

My fiance and I have been looking for a place for the past little while. We are having a really hard time. No one seems to want to rent to a couple of students, and there seem to be plenty of potential tenants to choose from.

So it's easy to feel sorry for ourselves. However, at the same time, we currently have roofs over our heads, when there are plenty of homeless people in the area. They must be freezing. It is snowing outside and there are so many people huddled on the street. On Saturday, when I participated in the Neighbourhood Homeless Outreach Ministry walk, we found eight people in a ritzy part of town. And these were just the people we found! We hardly ever run into any women, so I don't know where they are hiding.

Anyway, I thought I would take this moment of reflection to ask everyone to please volunteer, donate, interact with, and pray for the homeless this winter.

Peace, Erin