Also, please please please check out arts and crafts shows, holiday bazaars, and the Saturday Market. If you look at the bulletin boards around your neighborhood, you're almost certain to find notices of such. The artisans selling their products are as small and local as it gets and we need your patronage to keep going. Thanks!

1) Cheers to Charlie...Donations to local nonprofits can indeed make great gifts. Many nonprofits have trinkets that you can actually put under your tree/ fireplace/ candles/ table/ bed/ arm. WWeek also has goodies for givers to 55 nonprofits: http://giveguide.oaktree.com/Donate.aspx. Each of those nonprofits is also a local jobs driver.

Get goodies and create jobs: give to nonprofits.

2) And for our non-non-profit shopping, let's make a big effort to shop with locally owned businesses. New Seasons, Rejuvenation, Powell's, et al., shared a study that local money spent circulates in the local community like a factor of four over non-local businesses.

Get richer: shop local.

Retailers Blasted?

Capitalism and Corporations are the major problem with America today. We should be celebrating their downfall and defeat. I am pleasantly surprised that retailers are being blasted. I am hoping, meditating and chanting that Obama will tear down these Corps and distribute this money to the PEOPLE! Power to the People.

Small collectives, growing, sharing and bartering are the long term solutions we need. Mother Earth has been raped by capitalism / consumerism for too long.

First, being negative doesn't help. Many of your columns are gripes. Let's focus on WHAT WE WANT. Focusing on what we don't want, brings us more of it.

Second, I live in Bend, and work in Sunriver. I just drove my ancient 1994 Saturn 2WD sedan there on the ice on Saturday, no problem. I drove to the top of Aubrey Butte on the black ice to visit a friend. Again, no problem.

Chains work better than snow tires. Period. Just go 25mph, and give yourself 4-6x your normal distances for stopping and starting.

Everybody stay positive, feel good, and forecast those vibes, and we can all make it through this mess, together.

Come on (normal) Spring! Come on Obama! THERE IS HOPE!

PS- Buying local really does make sense. Support your local massage therapist!

Evan Smith, AAS, LMT

I'm on board with Family Guy. Less consumerism, less environmental destruction. Score one for Mother Earth.

I think I know the source of our "chaos" when it snows. It's our frequent inability to simply enjoy life on life's terms. We want to be in control of every aspect of our lives, even when nature gives us a timeout. It just doesn't work.

I too came from the snow belt (upstate NY), and a foot or two of snow rarely slowed us down; but when we had a REAL blizzard, and ended up with 3 or 4 or more feet of snow (that's when you can't open the door on your house, and to leave you need to jump out a window!), people just accepted the situation and canceled everything. We played scrabble, had cocoa, and watched the icicles get longer and longer. In other words, we relaxed.

We all would do well to accept the things we cannot change; find the courage to change the things we can; and develop the wisdom to know the difference.

I didn't make it to work today, but I have a warm beverage and a purring cat on my lap. It doesn't get any better.

Family Guy: Capitalism and Corporations are the major problem with America today. We should be celebrating their downfall and defeat. JK: Lets also celebrate those few countries that have successfully driven out the corporations and capitalists:

Cuba and North Korea.

Which one would you like to live in? Last I heard they were eating rats in NK, perhaps that is the future you want. Myself, I am quite happy to have the world’s highest standard of living while being exploited.

Family Guy: Small collectives, growing, sharing and bartering are the long term solutions we need. Mother Earth has been raped by capitalism / consumerism for too long. JK: How do small collectives build light rail vehicles, computer chips, buses and solar panels? Or are you assuming that we will have no mass transit and live like they did in the 1800's?

Thanks JK

Oh good, Kaarlock is back masquerading as "fred". But as for this stuff about snow and shopping, well, Jack Bogdanski is all over this at his blog, with denunciations of the benighted fools who want to encourage people not to buy stuff with excessive packaging, not to mention serial attacks on the folks concerned about the potential for trouble when small kids, school buses, and ice roads conspire. But since Bogdanski has banned me from his site, well, I'm mentioning it here :-)

Thanks to Chris Lowe for his commentary in this thread. Bubonic plague is 100% natural indeed. The comments from "Family Guy" are reminiscent of the sort of romantic stuff I heard espoused one morning last week on a KBOO call-in show, when the caller and host were reassuring one another that all non-white people are superb stewards of the Earth, unlike those awful white people. I think they would have had a cameo by Jean Jacques Rousseau, but ran out of time.

Great idea Sargent and thank you for the link.

joel dan walls Oh good, Kaarlock is back masquerading as "fred JK: Thanks for welcoming me back. Why do you say "masquerading" when I used my normal JK?

Thanks JK

Posted by: joel dan walls | Dec 15, 2008 5:09:47 PM

Thanks to Chris Lowe for his commentary in this thread. Bubonic plague is 100% natural

The plague is, but the battery farm conditions you have to put humans in to get infected with it and the concomitant lifestyle that doesn't pay attention to the environment isn't.

But it's totally relevant to the discussion. It was after European populations survived the plague that you had a population that could exist in those conditions and the population growth took off. Since there were more people than work, the rise of commodity economies began with tobacco, chocolate, coffee and tea. The surplus population became employed in the procuring, selling and consuming of commodities for its own sake. Interesting that all those commodities stimulate activity (read work) and decrease appetite.

If you look at British population figures from the 16th century, only about 20% of the new population is engaged in traditional work. The big new class is shopkeepers. The change from everyone having an identity tied to what they do for a local economy morphed into nameless faces filling up cities, trying to overlay their activities onto some kind of framework that would give their lives meaning. The British empire developed to secure the commodity routes, which itself, through wars, gave the surplus population meaning to their existence. But, of course, it's just a circle jerk, and 400 years later you have consumer xmas.

That's my take.

The change from everyone having an identity tied to what they do for a local economy morphed into nameless faces filling up cities, trying to overlay their activities onto some kind of framework that would give their lives meaning.

Another way of putting this is that back in the good old days your occupation totally defined and limited you socially. The assumption is that the toil of peasants is more rewarding than that of industrial workers and that the former are less “faceless.” Thus Zarathustra’s message might be expressed in a paraphrase of Richard II’s message to the revolting peasants of 1381: “Villeins ye aren’t but villeins ye SHOULD be.”

Personally, I’m don’t prefer a return to serfdom. My sense is that Zarathustra probably wouldn’t change his place with a 14th century peasant either. Factory workers of subsequent times were not necessarily unlinked to their local economy, and at least the industrial revolution led to increased goods and leisure time—through which individuals could increasingly define themselves beyond their jobs.

Today, a large proportion of the population does participate in the local economy as producers (they always have as consumers) owing to the growth of the service sector.

Zarathustra’s notion that “the surplus population became employed in the procuring, selling and consuming of commodities for its own sake,” is silly. Commodities are procured and sold for the sake of the procurers and sellers and they are consumed for the sake of the consumers.

The expression the “surplus population” shares Family Guy’s disgusting misanthropy and deserves the same rebuke given to the protagonist of a famous work of fiction associated with the holiday Jeff Allworth’s post references:

“If man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered what the surplus is and where it is.”

If that isn't the case, why did all the things like tobacco, chocolate, tea and tobacco predate things like sugar and such. I would think your argument would have arbitrary commodities at least equal to or inferior in importance to life sustaining trade. The "corn laws" weren't repealed until the early 19th century. Ergo, the British empire was built on something that was arbitrarily defined.

Call me a communist, but I would prefer the life of a my 14th century ancestors, except they weren't peasants. They were engineers that worked for a Duke. The period immediately after the plague didn't suffer from either, hence my attribution to social ills to the later population boom.

I am appreciative to hear a strong counter-reply to something I considered obvious, though!

...disgusting misanthropy...

Oh, and if thinking that human life is not absolutely sacred, even if it means running every other mammalian species above shrews off the planet, then I plead guilty. It seems that anything less is labeled misanthropy. I might buy that if you could define "human" better than "I know it when I see it".

And for all those that say, "who cares about religion, that's only a political reality for a few", "sanctity of human life" is an example of a position where religion influences almost everyone's position on the issue and most people think as rationally about it as the religious right do on "their issues". It is the last great relgious dogma in politics.

If that isn't the case, why did all the things like tobacco, chocolate, tea and tobacco predate things like sugar and such. I would think your argument would have arbitrary commodities at least equal to or inferior in importance to life sustaining trade.

I'm not sure what you're asking but it seems you're defending your position (that commodities were traded for their own sake) by drawing a distinction between necessary goods and desirable (or "luxury") goods. That distinction has no relevance for an argument about the claim you made. Demand represents something the consumer wishes to do for his sake, not the commodity's sake. Suppliers trade to make money for their own sake. What could be plainer?

Did you have some other argument in mind that I may have missed?

Call me a communist, but I would prefer the life of a my 14th century ancestors, except they weren't peasants. They were engineers that worked for a Duke. The period immediately after the plague didn't suffer from either, hence my attribution to social ills to the later population boom.

Only a few of your numerous 14th century ancestors would have been engineers. The point I'm making is about the desirability of having your life defined by your job versus the opportunities for self-definition and, indeed, for recreation, provided in an industrial society. I am by no means arguing that the life of a factory worker in the earlier phases of industrialization was preferable to an agricultural or pastoral worker but only that having your life defined by your job isn't such a great thing for most people and that the standard of living has improved tremendously as a result of industrial production.

"sanctity of human life" is an example of a position where religion influences almost everyone's position on the issue and most people think as rationally about it as the religious right do on "their issues". It is the last great relgious dogma in politics.

First a comment: religion of one kind or another will always exist. Even when fundamental views spring from a philosophical point of view, if they are adopted en masse, they will have a religious character, with all the attendant moral consequences and irrationality.

Second, a question: What consequences does the notion that life is not sacred have for laws against murder or attitudes about genocide, not to mention for attitudes about the value of human suffering in general. Honestly, I used the Christmas Carol quote a little archly, expecting you to push back. I was most surprised to see you take an even more explicitly misanthropic position.

the notion that life is not sacred have...surprised to see you take an even more explicitly misanthropic position.

It's not that it isn't sacred, it's that it isn't unconditionally the most sacred.

You make my point though that not being rabidly for human life is defined as being against it. I don't regard it any less than you do, I just regard other things equally high.

You make my point though that not being rabidly for human life is defined as being against it. I don't regard it any less than you do, I just regard other things equally high.

<h2>"Rabidly"? I will say that indifference to human life is enough to constitute misanthropy and is the predicate of a great deal of cruelty in the world. Just saying. I'll also note that indifference to others' lives is far more common than indifference to one's own.</h2>