Spreading joy without waste
A couple of weeks before Christmas and I’m still wrestling with the gift list and how to get everything where it’s meant to go with a minimum of shipping and without contributing to our unconscionable after-holiday waste stream.
I’ve tried buying small gifts during the year and stashing them but they’re rarely found until after the New Year, if ever. One year I made gift donations to charities in the name of my relatives-no shopping, no wrapping, no shipping. But while adults may appreciate the seedling oak planted in their name by Tree People, children want something to look at under the tree and to unwrap on Christmas morning.
One of the problems with portions of the family living in two different states is that gift giving involves many phone calls, a great deal of coordination and shipping. Last year, even consolidating packages with my Montana daughter, I spent more on UPS than the combined total cost of the gifts.
Making the drive for the Thanksgiving holiday, I manage to bring one gift for my daughter (unwrapped), a ceramic bowl made by a local potter. I also pack up two other gifts from a local kitchen store that mysteriously disappear en route. Searches of the car, my luggage, a call to the hotel where I stay overnight, yield nothing. The gifts may reappear next year sometime. Or not.
The teenage boy would be happy with a gift card for a music CD (I don’t do electronics) or from the online retailer of Wranglers, Western shirts, hats and boots. But I discover he has already chosen these with his mom, who has ordered the items to be shipped. Now what?
Books. At least in my family, books are always the best, and the safest, choice. They are rarely discarded; more likely they’re loaned out and change hands many times before being donated to the library’s annual book sale. Nothing added to the waste stream.
The 7-year-old granddaughter is reading well and wants books, which should make my life much easier. Her 10-year-old cousin is in her first year of reading chapter books and loaned me her current favorite, “Hachiko Waits” by Leslea Newman. The paperback was published in 2004 by Scholastics Inc., and is based on a true story about a Japanese dog that waits every day for his master to return home on the 3 o’clock train from the university where he teaches. One day the professor doesn’t return but the dog refuses to leave without him. The stationmaster and a young boy befriend the dog . . .
Now, we all know Amazon is the easy way to do these things, but I like to support independent bookstores, fast becoming an endangered species. And since I’m trying to avoid shipping, I try Diesel when I’m in Malibu. Good grief, I feel like an idiot combing the children’s section for a book I know I’ll recognize but whose title I can’t remember. It’s definitely not there.
I sheepishly admit I’ve forgotten the name of the book, the author’s name, everything. Miraculously, given only my oneline synopsis, the store’s computer spits out a possible title, “Hachiko Waits.” Bingo!
Problem is Diesel doesn’t have it in stock, in either the Malibu or the Brentwood store. They offer to order it, but I’m leaving to return to Montana the next day. I buy several other books while I’m waiting, but realize I’ll have to find Hachiko when I get home. Diesel’s counterpart in Bozeman is The Country Bookshelf and it is there I finally purchase the book and, that’s right, have to ship it to California. Oh, well.
Anyway, my favorite place to discover new books is listening to TV interviews with the authors on Charlie Rose or Book Notes, which tell me more than the usual book reviews.
Some gift suggestions, only a partial list of books, not all new, that I found this year and that made a strong impression on my aging brain. In the interest of full disclosure I have not finished reading all of them; some still wait on my shelves.
Fiction: “The Story of Edgar Sawtelle,” an epic debut novel by David Wroblewski set in rural Wisconsin, it includes the least sentimental but most compelling writing about dogs; “Ford County” a collection of short stories by John Grisham; “What the Dog Saw,” 19 stories written originally for The New Yorker by Malcolm Gladwell; “The Lacuna” by Barbara Kingsolver.
Non-fiction: “The Limits of Power, The End of American Exceptionalism” by Andrew J. Bacevich; “Too Big to Fail” by Andrew Ross Sorkin; “Googled” by Ken Auletta; “Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis” by Al Gore; “Superfreakenomics” by Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt; “Hot, Flat, and Crowded; Why We Need a Green Revolution – And How It Can Renew America” Release 2.0 (updated and expanded from the 2008 international best-seller) by Thomas L. Friedman.
Read, loan, exchange, enjoy and, ultimately, donate. And spread joy this Christmas.