Walk to defeat ALS and Folkies For Eric

No one knows me long before I start sharing music with them.
Music is a driving force in my life. And musicians are special people to me.
I've had the great joy of knowing Eric Lowen, of Lowen and Navarro, as singer and songwriter with a gift of storytelling without being maudlin.
You might know his big hit, "We Belong." As in Pat Benetar, 'fess up, children of Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
Eric lives with ALS, a degenerative disease that steals your mobility inch by inch.
ALS is an evil existance, and I for one will not stand idly by and let it continue without research and support for the folks and families dealing with it.
So I'm walking Sept 12 in honor of Eric and his light with the Rocky Mountain Capter of the ALS Association.
Thier slogan is walk because you can. I'm walking because I cannot NOT do it.

http://walks.alscolorado.org/index.php?s=42&group_id=41

and www.lownav.com

Getting Frugal

So the time has come for me to get serious about grocery prices.
List? Helps.
Coupons? Not so much, as I rarely use name brand. I need a Sunflower Market 20c off a pound of almonds or some such.
So, I'm designing a price book.
Basically, a price book lists an item, say, tofu, and the price at each store.
A page (and the template I'm using is 3x5: index card sized) has the item at the top, rows for the stores (four in my situation for now) that list the size, cost, and unit price.
like this:

Denver Tofu

Vitamin Cottage 1 lb 2.09
Sunflower --not available
Whole Foods/ Louisiana Pearl--1 lb 1.99
WF /HR 1 lb 2.09
King Soopers 1 lb 1.99

This allows a shopper to know straightaway where the deal is...and if you should pass in a given store.
I will also place a note on travel time. All trips cost the same on the train/bus, but the time involved can be diverse.

Anyone using a price book?


My template idea was taken from Dollar Stretcher:
http://www.stretcher.com/stories/09/09apr06j.cfm

Pete Seeger should be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize

And it was my metalhead son who sent me the petition.
Here's the link:
http://www.petitionthem.com/default.asp?sect=detail&pet=3774
So why do I think Seeger should be honored so?
His work with social justice, environmental causes and his spreading of peace through his music for so many years.
And let's not forget how he handled McCarthy's witch hunts.

Well, Feb. 21 is this blog's new year

Or, I fail at posting weekly.
I've had my son here for several weeks and have been out of pocket. Even took my second week of vacation to hang out with him
Having a late-teen son is a blizzard of think-on-your-feet choices.
He wants a purple stripe in his hair? OK. All of it? Not so OK.
He has the stripe. Looks good.
Luckily my years of communist hippie vegetarian indoctrination ...er... modeling healthy food choices.. have paid off with a son who eats salads at all meals and has no great desire for large amounts of meat.
He goes through yogurt, however.

More importantly, he's mentally creating his life beyond living with parents.
He's delaying secondary education. He wants to work in the music industry as a tech and eventually be a sound engineer. His big dream right now is running a recording studio/distribution network for bands who don't want to go the A&R / big label route.

I discovered what it is like to simply consult and have little control over the decisions made.
This is my time for letting go of the child I bore and accept the almost adult I raised.

Thanks, Kiddo, for reminding me that choices have size.

Made it through the gift season

December holds four birthdays, Chanukkah, Yule/Solstice and the big giftmas.
I survived and managed to gift everyone who needed one.
Planting trees was big this year through www.mokugift.com.
One recipient was so happy they planted 10 more as a gift to the planet.

My not-so-inner-hippy was pleased.

I was choosing between a floral arrangement (very planet unfriendly- roses from where?) and this. I decided the recipients were either savvy enough or had their own inner-hippy ready to be channeled, or simply were not wanting things to care for, store and keep up with.

For the physical gifts, such as for my young nieces, Sweetie and Kiddo, I used 6 square feet of wrapping, half of that reused.
I don't have to seek out that one different roll of paper this year.
I actually have too much paper at once.
I see drawer/shelf lining in my future.

John Lennon and life examined

I've said on boards that I had my last hamburger when John Lennon was alive. I don't remember the exact date I put the cow = sentient life equation together, so in the sadness of memory today, I also thank Lennon for pushing people to look at why they do things the way they do...and offering options. It pushed me to look at what I thought was basic, eating, and make it a statement of my own beliefs.
I try not to push it on others. I will answer questions, share recipes and hints.
I do think that the reliance on animals for food has gotten out of hand.
Who orders a 3.5 oz steak at a restaurant?

But Lennon was an icon for me. I had a brother old enough to remember the Beatles clearly, and a stepmother with the full catalog. For a young teen, his words and stances were heady stuff.
It's trite, perhaps, but we can give peace chance, because punative invasion sure isn't working out.
I probably would not have read Mao without Lennon, although I had read Marx by then. And I'm slogging through Trotsky now. Ugh.
I was intensely interested in Utopian ideals and communities, and reading the dry formulas they sprang from was eye opening.
I also give his soul mate, Yoko kudos for forcing her concept of art on the mass public.
She might sound somewhat like a tortured goat, but you have to ask WHY people would express themselves this way.

Ono chose a companion for Lennon while they were separated in the 1970s. May Pang is now peddling a book about John's "Lost Weekend" and her relationship with him.
I can't even begin to understand how one woman could "choose" the woman her husband was to have an affair with..and I can't comprehend why a man would go along with it.
But I can wonder how on earth that other woman can trade on a dead man so many years later.

What I'd like to see is more musicians and artists with a holy anger like Lennon's making a mark.
So, no choice to balance but some homework:
Who has that sacred rage that you love? Franti? RATM? Dead Prez?
Who is speaking truth to power in an obseved way that makes even the pop world take note?

Continuing car free and food issues

Looks like the old dependable car is in need of far more repair than it is worth.

So the Sweetie and I will continue with being car free for a while longer.
I last wrote about groceries, and my interim fix is to grab a bag of groceries when convenient, or if I'm out and about with a wheeled friend.
Cat food and litter are definitely "borrowed transport" items.

Living in a 'burb, I have a lot of grocery choices: two traditional store, one of which is remotely affordable, two natural foods stores in the neighboring 'burb, but the travel time gets really long, so I hit Vitamin Cottage when I'm in that area. Whole Paycheck is out of my league for a good while.
Walking in Downtown Denver, where homeless and high rent flats rub shoulders, I noticed there are no real grocery stores, or even the stripped down market concept aside from a couple foodie-porn places.

So what if I lived there? Would I have to trek out to a grocery close to the rail line (Broadway and Alameda) ?
Would I have to pay the $10 home delivery charge for Shop at Home?

I ran a cross an abstract for a study on food outlets near high schools in the United States:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B73H6-4RM89B2-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=0b42c33bad3b6abb5216c74cbf6a0b4f

which basically says that lower income and non white majority schools have more junk nearby, negating school food policies.
What that also says is that lower income areas have less healthy options.

Or how about we feed our people before we buy bullets?
http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/2603625/24917372

Look in any trash bin outside and marvel at the food we waste.