The Gamble Life

Crayon Rocks Rock!

I LOVE these crayons!  With a five year old obviously I already have a collection of crayons, but in the years since Gus was born I've learned a lot.  Including what regular crayons are made out of (paraffin, usually made from coal or petroleum), which is not something I want Abe taking a test taste out of.  So I started looking around for something else. 

Crayon Rocks are made out of soy wax and while I still don't want Abe eating them, I wasn't that worried when he snuck a bite out of green today.  We tried them out for the first time today and Abe isn't ready for drawing yet...he's still in the "what does that taste like?" phase, but I did some drawing with them and WOW.  These are amazing.  The soy wax is so soft, the color just comes right off onto the paper.  I can tell that these crayons are going to be so much more fun for a kid to color with.  And, they aren't going to break.  Gus would get really upset when his crayons broke and he hated having to tear the paper when the crayon wore down. 

Best of all though, these are going to be so easy for a little kid to grip and draw with.  They are really and truly a great product.  If you have little kids I hope you'll give them a try.  Yes, they are more expensive, but good art supplies always are, and I think they are worth it.  My only complaint is that they come packaged in plastic and there is just no reason why they couldn't come in a cotton bag (instead of polyester) or a cardboard box (instead of a cardboard and plastic box).  I'm sending the company a message about their packaging and who knows, maybe they'll change it. 

I'm so glad I bought these--I can't wait until Abe is ready to start drawing!

Confessions of an Eco-Sinner

Confessions of an Eco-Sinner: Tracking Down the Sources of My Stuff by Fred Pearce

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars

Fred Pearce chooses some of the "things" in his life and tracks down their source, exploring the people and places affected for him to get his stuff. It's truly fascinating to learn where things from gold to shrimp to cotton come from and what it takes to get them to us. It's also truly horrifying, for the most part.

I don't know anyone who is willing to trade someone else's misery or destroyed land for the ability to buy food or clothes cheap ... but it seems that is what most of us are doing. It isn't quite that simple, of course, but my first reaction is along the lines of "Oh my god, I can never buy anything again." Interestingly, that is not the message the author is trying to communicate and is not the message many of the workers in foreign countries (like Bangladesh) would want us to hear. But even though making $1 sewing jeans is an improvement over making 50 cents a day farming for shrimp (which also harms the environment) doesn't mean to me that it's okay for me to buy $20 jeans and feel good about it.

A wonderful friend of mine from law school, one of the most consistent and ethical people I've ever known did not buy any new products that were made outside of the US. (She did allow herself to buy them used.) For her, workers were the priority and she was not going to contribute her money towards the poor working conditions and pay of anyone.

This book is great for going behind the store, the marketing, the assumptions, and showing (at least in these specific instances) where this stuff actually comes from and what it's costs are. I think it's a great read because it's so hard to figure this stuff out on your own. The global market is complicated, trade routes are convoluted and sometimes hidden, green-washing is rampant, cost does matter, it can be tempting to make like an ostrich and say "I can't figure it out!"

Hiding isn't going to fix anything, and it won't make me less culpable or guilty if I end up spending my money on things I wish I hadn't. I am a long, long way from perfect (just ask my husband) but I'm hoping this book and it's information will help me get a little further on the path I'm trying to follow.

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500 Handmade Books

500 Handmade Books: A Celebration of Contemporary Book Forms by Lark Books

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is an absolutely beautiful book. I just wish it were larger and contained more pictures of each of the books. If you love books and bookmaking then this is a must-see. Several of the books are personally inspiring to me and my bookmaking plans are back at the front of the line.

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Review: Pig Candy by Lise Funderburg

Pig Candy: Taking My Father South, Taking My Father Home--A Memoir by Lise Funderburg

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is an absolutely beautiful book. Lise Funderburg writes a memoir covering the years her father is ill and dying and manages to make every word feel completely real, completely true. It's incredibly moving and not one bit manipulative.

Her family history is so interesting, so historical due to their race and the fact that her father grew up Georgia, and at the same time so unique because of the personality of her father. I'm a little embarrassed to admit that reading her descriptions of the Jim Crow environment her father grew up in (and her grandfather practiced medicine in) was educational for me. I just didn't realize what that was like, or how pervasive it was.

At it's heart though, this is a story about Lise Funderburg and her relationship with her father, who was an extremely difficult person, to put it mildly. But despite all his overbearing and unfair ways I grew to love him through her book. I think it will help me with my own difficult relatives.

I really recommend this book; I hope everyone reads it. I'm excited to read her other books.

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Dinosaur Hunter

Our own T-Rex model, put together just yesterday morning:

We've been reading chapter books lately, and just finished a fantastic one called Finding the First T. Rex, about Barnum Brown's finding the first Tyrannosaures Rex skeleton.  We already love dinosaurs around here (Which makes me so happy!  I loved dinosaurs as a kid, and still feel a little bit sad they aren't still alive.), but this book made hunting for the dinosaurs skeletons seem really accessible. 

Of course we need to hunt for our own dinosaur bones!  So I also got this book which is aimed at an older child (probably age 9 or 10) who would read the book and do the activities more independently.  However, it works pretty well for a younger kid with help. 

We have plans to do several more of the activities (actually I think my son wants to do all 25 of them) but we started with doing a site survey and dig.

He is sure that with enough digging he will discover that a dinosaur bone is hidden in that big rock we found.  We had so much fun with this:  reading, making plans, gathering our tools, scouting a good location, digging.  It was great.  This is my absolute favorite kind of activity to do with my kids:  something based in the real, something elaborate but not difficult, something exciting, something educational, something fun.

And I'm hoping I'll get to do it again in another five years with this little one!

Book Review: Apples and Oranges

Apples and Oranges: My Brother and Me, Lost and Found by Marie Brenner

 

My review

  rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is one of those books I picked up off the "new books" shelves at the library because I liked the cover.  It's a memoir, sort of, more of an exploration of the author's relationship with her brother taken through his cancer, her career, their family history, and his apple orchards. 

It took awhile for me to get into the book, but once I did I quite enjoyed it.  The writing has a stream of consciousness style to it, although since she is a journalist I'm sure it's all very intentional and edited. 

Even though the story has quite sad parts and even though you see them coming (early in the book she says "I could never have written this book while my brother was alive.") I found the book to be optimistic and hopeful.  I don't have siblings, but I do have difficult relatives (who doesn't) and this book is a wonderful reminder to try and understand and accept those difficult people in our lives, to try and bridge the gaps between us and them, so that we can enjoy all the good things they bring to our lives.  

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Review: Plastic Bag Dryer

I remember that my Abuelita washed and reused everything:  tinfoil, plastic ziplock bags, even the flimsy plastic produce bags from the grocery store.  When I was a child I thought it was all kind of silly, something left over from living through the Depression.  Now, I feel differently, have for quite a while actually.  Why throw something away just because you can?  Besides, we may be entering our own depression these days and a little extra frugality never hurt anyone.

 

And when it comes to plastic I want to get the absolute most use out of every piece that I am responsible for.  I actually bought this plastic bag dryer over ten years ago back when I was in law school.  I've been washing and reusing my tinfoil and ziplock bags ever since. 

 

I'll never forget being at a gathering of friends and noticing that one of the women there had on a dress from the same catalog and I mentioned how much I enjoyed that catalog and that I had just bought the bag dryer and she said something along the lines of "you are a sucker."  I've really never liked her much after that.  And I couldn't disagree with her more.  I love this little bag dryer--it's ingenious and takes up almost no room.  My son even uses it as a toy when it's not in use doing this:

 

I'm not ready to give up all plastic (but I wish I was!), and ziplock bags are really incredibly useful for a number of things.  They are also really quite sturdy and can be washed and reused many, many, many times.  So just because you can buy another box and treat them like trash, doesn't mean you have to.

 

 

Labels: eco, plastic, review

Book Review: A Slave No More

A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom by David W. Blight

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars

 

I heard an interview of David Blight on Fresh Air and knew right away that I had to read this book.  These two narratives are amazing.  Each man was a slave who escaped to freedom during the civil war and then later wrote the story of his escape.  And each story was protected, but hidden, for almost a hundred years so that they are now available to us completely unaltered from their original writing (which wouldn't be the case if they'd been published at the time of their writing).

It goes without saying that slavery was and is a horrible, evil institution with lasting ramifications that is (and should be) a permanent stain on our country.  But I imagine that most people who aren't Black probably haven't really thought about what slavery was.

Reading this book, which begins with Blight's excellent description of the overall times and history and which weaves in parts of Wallace Turnage's and John Washington's narratives and ends with the narratives themselves, really made me stop and think about slavery.  Just one example:  I think all of us know that slave owners raped their slaves and that children resulted from these rapes.  And these children were themselves slaves.  But how many of us have stopped to really think about what this means?

Fathers enslaved their own children.  Their own children!  Sold them, separated them from their mothers, beat them, killed them.  Their own children.

I don't know if slavery made slave owners inhuman or if the inhuman chose to own slaves.  Whichever, one remarkable thing is proven true by these two narratives:  not even slavery could rob these men of their incredible dignity, their strength, or their determination to be free, no matter what it took.  And what is true of these two men is undoubtedly true for the many millions of slaves who were prevented from writing their stories for us. 

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Labels: books

Review: Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping

Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping by Judith Levine

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars

 

I have an online group of friends and every so often some of us will have a "no spend" month during which we set limits on our individual spending and then report back to each other how we're doing.  We started after one of us read about The Compact and got inspired.  This month is a no-spend month and I joined in.  It's a good challenge for me because October has one of my son's birthdays, Halloween, and this year a vacation to Texas to visit family and go to my 20th high school reunion.

Judith Levine, along with her partner, takes this basic idea and extends it to a full year.  Not Buying It is her record of that year and also her ruminations on consumerism, the economy, the government, and the future.

I enjoyed the book.  It wasn't too heavy but wasn't frivolous either.  She draws interesting and important connections between Americans as consumers (instead of citizens) and the decreasing common-space goods and entertainments that we have (such as libraries, public schools, funding for the arts).

Unlike some, Levine doesn't imagine a world in which we no longer consume beyond our absolute necessities.  Instead she looks at how disparate distribution of wealth, a consumerist culture (intentionally created by the government and companies according to The Story of Stuff), and an economy reliant on evermore consuming lead to an increasing dissatisfaction with life and more and more spending as a way to try and increase that satisfaction.  In other words, she puts forth some ideas for balancing things so we can have fulfilling lives and so can other people and we can still have a new sweater once in awhile.

After reading about her year I feel encouraged and optimistic about my ability to control my spending so that I can focus my time and energies on the things most important to me.  I don't want shopping to be a past-time in and of itself, for me or for my kids (I don't have to worry about my husband--he hates to shop).  But I also don't want to live the life of an ascetic to be a good person.  Which is good, because I could never pull it off.

 

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Labels: books, money, review

Review: Limbo: A Memoir

Limbo: A Memoir by A. Manette Ansay

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars

I've read a lot of memoirs and most of them I really disliked. Often I feel that they are over-the-top stories of abuse or neglect and if they are in fact close to what actually happened then it is just too depressing to want to read about. I always also wonder if the bad things that happen are given so much more importance and play in a memoir that it does a disservice to the memoirist's real history.

Limbo is not like this. I really enjoyed Ansay's book in which she weaves together bits of her childhood, early adulthood, her father's early adulthood, and her mysterious illness. She uses repetition in a really effective back and forth way that mimics how often issues in life reoccur. And she is neither self-pitying nor self-aggrandizing.

In fact, I enjoyed her writing so much that I've added her novel "Vinegar Hill" to my to-read list.

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Labels: books, review