As of right now, we've officially moved our blog from http://blog.vg-r.com to our main site at http://www.vg-r.com. If you'd be so kind, please update your bookmarks. Thanks!
We started renting a space for World Fare at 37 N. Main St. in Three Rivers, Michigan, nearly five years ago and we've long dreamed about the possibilities for the second floor above the store. The idea of living above the store is very appealing and fits in well with our long-term plans--both as a couple and as the directors of *culture is not optional.
We were finally able to purchase the building on land contract in January 2007 (a process we highly recommend) and we recently secured funding through a state matching grant/bank loan. So, with fear and trembling, we've begun the renovation process to turn the second floor from a space unusable for anything but storage to a living space.
To begin, we needed to clear out all of World Fare's stuff from the storage space on the second floor (which filled the back room in the 'before' picture below). We moved everything to a newly cleared and cleaned space in the basement.
Then we needed to tear out three strange walls in the middle of the space to open up the back of the building into one large area that will be used for a kitchen, living room and dining room. The standard before and after shots are below; if you'd like to see more photos of the process, check out our photo set on Flickr.
Before:
After:
We hope to document this process as we go with writing, photos and drawings, so you should hear more from us soon!
This morning, my Dad sent me a story from the Detroit News about the American Axle strike that's been on for over 12 weeks now in Three Rivers, Michigan, a town that's near and dear to our whole family. My grandparents bought a cottage there in the 1970s, though the strike won't much affect vacationers, unless it's in the form of having fewer Main Street shops to visit on a rainy day. For those who call Three Rivers home on a year-round, work-a-day basis, however, the strike is having a widespread affect, which the Detroit News article demonstrates well. Rob and I helped start a fair trade store in downtown Three Rivers in 2003 and it's still alive, though certainly feeling the pinch of the strike along with other downtown merchants who have been giving vast amounts of their own time, creativity and money toward revitalization of the historic district and beyond.
I've heard several people criticizing the strikers, saying that in the end, they'll all lose their jobs and that they're being greedy as the highest paid employees in the area. But Rob and I are still left with the question: why should a company that is consistently turning a profit (even in a flailing automotive industry) be allowed to cut its manufacturing employees' pay in half? Are the CEOs, who could certainly thrive on half their salary more than an hourly worker could, willing to make the same sacrifice if such budget cuts are indeed necessary? Twelve weeks of $200/week strike pay and standing at the plant's entrances in all kinds of weather doesn't look like greed to me. It looks like a desperate attempt not to allow corporate executives to send us back to the early days of the Industrial Revolution.
A friend sent me a link to a wonderful article on Slate.com about back yards and children's play equipment. It made me think again about how my best memories of being outdoors as a kid are connected to nature: falling asleep in the grass on a hot day under towering oak trees, burying "treasure" in a back corner of the yard and digging it up the next summer, planting carrots with my dad, climbing trees, exploring my friend's farm to make sod houses or vegetable soup. Of course, I also remember learning how to do the monkey bars on the swingset and playing in the sandbox--both of which my dad built himself out of wood (in contrast to the garish "safe" plastic that so many playthings are made out of today). Here's a lovely quote from Michael Pollan, with some of the text from Tom Vanderbilt's column to give it context:
In his book Second Nature, Michael Pollan writes touchingly about a hedge of lilac and forsythia at his childhood home on Long Island, N.Y. To the adult eye, the hedges were simply flush against the fence. But he had his own secret garden, a space between the hedge and the fence. "To a four-year-old, though, the space made by the vaulting branches of a forsythia is as grand as the inside of a cathedral, and there is room enough for a world between a lilac and a wall."
"There is room enough for a world between a lilac and a wall." Beautiful, both as a turn of phrase and as a practice.
Well, I just finished our taxes and we ended up owing money--which is always a bummer. But it's been even more difficult to pay taxes in good conscience over the last several years, with a war costs climbing to over $1 trillion (for a war whose legitimacy I've always challenged), the federal government bailing out a bank at the center of the subprime mortgage imbroglio, federal employees using government money to buy lingerie and iPods, and an Administration using the resources of the Justice Department to solidify unprecedented power under the Executive branch. And that's just the stuff I heard about this week!
I'd prefer it--and would have less of a problem paying taxes--if my money were going toward things like affordable, clean mass transit systems and health care for all U.S. citizens. Or toward alleviating poverty and hunger in our country and around the world. Or toward sustainable energy. Or toward beautiful public spaces. And the list could go on ...
A couple of sites have really been making me (and others) laugh lately, both related to ridiculously awful photos of food. So here they are, just for fun... One is a slide show of old Weight Watchers recipe cards. The other is the Gallery of Regrettable Food, where I've particularly enjoyed the commentary on Patty Cake, Patty Cake, Baker's SHAME.
Such laughter has been welcome in the middle of some overwhelming months of intense, but good work, including our efforts to publish a new road map on faith and food as a follow up to Do Justice. I suppose both of the examples above would indicate how not to be faithful with food...but certainly how to be faithful with a scanner, a little HTML and a sense of humor.
As many who have followed our story know, we've been dealing with excessive credit card debt for most of our marriage. I accrued most of it in late high school and early college, when, for reasons unknown to me then, I was offered amounts of credit I was certainly not qualified to receive or to manage.
When we started *culture is not optional and, later, World Fare, we entered into an uncertain financial existence that often saw us barely able to pay bills. Through all of this, credit card accounts were a constant financial and emotional drain. We were managing to pay the minimum amount due on all six accounts we had at the time, only to see our balances decrease by a few dollars every billing cycle due to exorbidant interest rates and fees. So, while we hadn't actually used a credit card in almost five years, we were still attempting to pay off this mountain of debt that never seemed to erode at all.
Some day I might write a book about all of the smarmy practices of credit card companies, but I'll just quickly note here that they have no interest in high-risk consumers paying off their loans and build their business practices around abusing these customers. While I'm completely willing to take responsibility for my debt (and it is mostly mine ... Kirstin has been very gracious in this regard), at a certain point repayment becomes punitive. For example, if I add up the payments we've made to all of our accounts over the last seven years, we've more than paid off, with fair interest, our original borrowed amount. At this point, we're simply paying off interest and fees that piled up over the years.
Anyway, a little over a year and a half ago, we reached a point where we weren't able to pay our credit card bills anymore. We simply weren't making enough money and quickly got so far behind that regular employment became a necessity. Amazingly, the perfect job landed in our laps in the form of the Student Activities Office at Calvin College.
Since taking the Calvin job, our primary financial goal has been to pay off this credit card debt. Last year, we managed to pay off nearly a third of the total and we've gotten the remainder into accounts with 5% or 0% interest--meaning we're no longer paying any more than we rightfully should. While we're excited about making progress toward debt-free living, it is pretty annoying to be spending so much money (and it really is a lot) to profit an industry that, ultimately, provides only convenience. I sincerely look forward to spending this money in ways that actually make the world a beter place.
And now we're receiving more offers than ever for credit. In fact, we received an offer today that was completely unbelievable: $1,000 to $3,000 over 2 years at 96% interest rate. Ninety-six percent. So, were we to borrow $1,000, we'd end up paying $2,279.52 over two years. I'm not sure what qualifies as predatory lending anymore ...
Here's a piece I recently wrote for Uncompressed, a student publication published by the Student Activities Office at Calvin College. I'm beginning to organize my thoughts on how social conditions affect art, specifically music and its ability to be a medium of import in broader culture.
Click below to read the article and, if you've got a minute, I'd love to hear your feedback.
Continue reading Rock rebellion.
Rob and I have noticed that two particular words do not appear in the Microsoft Word dictionary, hence the squiggly red spellcheck line every time we type them:
- worldview
- commodified
Interesting. Perhaps I should see if the program rejects the term "open source" as well...
so Rob and I have been trying to joing the ranks of daily bicycylists, which has been delightfully rewarding and challenging. our commute to work is about 5.5 miles each way and just hilly enough to feel like decent exercise.
we've found Trek's Navigator 100 to be a great choice for this type of riding, with sturdy and versatile racks for carrying up to 50 lbs. worth of laptops, groceries, books, potluck dishes, etc. we ride on the street to protect walking pedestrians, but also to hopefully make the streets a safer place for cyclists to be by encouraging cars to be aware of us (though I wouldn't go so far as the cyclist I saw the other day cutting in front of a car in the left turn lane at a red light).
one of my particular issues has been attempting to bike in professional clothing, particularly skirts. obviously some skirts won't be practical for biking (if they're too narrow and inflexible that I can't even get my leg over the bike, for example). but in more bike-progressive places, women find ways to maintain their fashion aesthetic while honoring their desire to cultivate the earth and their neighborhoods. now I wouldn't necessarily call myself a fashion diva (though a diva in another context, for sure), but this site was helpful. and here's a quote from a blog I found in my research that makes me want to live in Copenhagen:
"Social Documentary in High Heels", is one way this blog has been described. It's about bicycle culture in Copenhagen, Denmark. 35% of the population - 550,000 people - ride their bike to work or school each day. Bicycles are such an integral part of our culture and there are many aesthetic aspects on the streets at any given moment.
and here's some advice that delights me: "Be smart. Be aware. Be stylish. Stay awkward."
yes, stay awkward. you already look kind of dorky in your helmet, but awkward is necessarily 'in' in the biking world. I'm already making plans to sew some triangular 'earmuffs' that will velcro into my helmet as a means of preventing my ears from aching on cold morning rides.
and yet another step--or should I say: ride--in the right direction for me will hopefully be biodegradable vegetable-based bike chain oil. may seem a bit obsessive, but in the effort to move away from fossil fuels as a means of getting around in a more sustainble way, it doesn't really make sense to slather my chain in a petroleum product.
I must confess that biking introduces a new category of consumerism with all of the gadgets that are available, but if I'm going to drool over something I don't have, might as well be fenders...
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