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As Yard Sales Boom in Hard Times, Sentiment Is First Thing to Go
Patricia Leigh Brown, New York Times
MANTECA, Calif. — As the classified ads put it, everything must go. Socks. Christmas ornaments. Microwave ovens. Three-year-old Marita Duarte’s tricycle was sold by her mother, Beatriz, to a stranger for $3 even as her daughter was riding it.

On Mission Ridge Drive and other avenues, lanes and ways in this formerly booming community, even birthday celebrations must go. “It was no money, no birthday,” said Ms. Duarte, who lost her job as a floral designer two months ago. The family commemorated Marita’s third birthday without presents last week, the occasion marked by a small cake with Cinderella on the vanilla frosting. They will move into a rental apartment next month.

An eternity ago, people in this city in northern San Joaquin County braved four-hour round-trip commutes to the San Francisco Bay Area for a toehold on the dream. Today, Manteca’s lawns and driveways are storefronts of the new garage-sale economy — the telltale yellow signs plastered in the rear windows of parked cars Friday through Sunday directing traffic to yet another sale, yet another family.

... The sales are part of the once-underground “thrift economy,” as a team of Brigham Young University sociologists have called it, which includes thrift stores, pawn shops and so-called recessionistas name-brand shopping at Goodwill.
(24 October 2008)

Moms are taking back the holidays by taking on consumerism
Natalie Singer, Seattle Times
Starting with homemade costumes and healthier treats for Halloween, a group of moms is banding together to transform holiday rituals — casting off the stuff and bringing back the meaning.

... It was a radical idea, to reinvent America's most beloved and exploited rituals. To transform them into more healthful, environmentally responsible and meaningful events. But it wasn't something foreign to Colwell-Lipson, who grew up middle-class in Arizona making her own costumes and watching her mother create modern art from common junk.

She began shopping the idea to friends and local businesses. Right away, they bit. Whole Foods asked for her input on a healthful Halloween campaign. Overlake Hospital Medical Center created its own program. That crafty mother, with a public-relations background, helped stir up some publicity, and e-mails began coming in from around the country. "The first thing I said to her was, 'You're going to be on Oprah,' " says mom Lynn Colwell.
(26 October 2008)

Profile: Majora Carter - nonprofit Sustainable South Bronx
Adam Aston, Business Week
Urban crime, poverty, and joblessness are surprisingly intertwined with environmental degradation. The challenges they share are widespread—and stubborn. Yet in the U.S., public authorities and nonprofit agencies typically tackle each malady separately, and with only limited success. More police might help dampen crime, but that doesn't help solve unemployment. And boosting welfare payments for the jobless cannot do much to fix pollution hot spots. Majora Carter decided to tackle all of these challenges at once.

Her panacea? Home-grown green jobs and eco-companies. Her holistic approach has fundamentally altered the way planners think about regenerating impoverished, environmentally blighted cities here and abroad. In 2005, the MacArthur Foundation recognized Carter's work for "profoundly transforming the quality of life for South Bronx residents" by awarding her one of its "genius" grants...

...With a small grant, Carter set up a training program for local residents, including many ex-convicts and others with dim employment hopes. The Bronx Environmental Stewardship Training (BEST) program puts those chosen though a multi-month training program. BEST trainees learn speacialized eco-skills, such as green-roof installation and maintenance, urban forestry, brown-field cleanup and, more recently, how to retrofit buildings to boost their efficiency. Think: window caulking and insulation. The workers are also given guidance in life skills, such as punctuality, effective communication, how to handle disagreement, and even clothing. "Many of these men have grown up with no reference in their lives for how to behave in a formal job situation," says Carter...
(27 October 2008)