Happy Holidays

We had a lovely Thanksgiving day dinner with the Mapes clan. We really have so much to be thankful for: our families, our friends, our home, the absence of want. Life is so good...

Yesterday we celebrated Buy Nothing Day by, well, buying nothing. We've been celebrating Buy Nothing Day on November 28th for many years now. Although it certainly isn't the enitre solution, in a small way it represents hope for a change from our consumeristic society. I don't want to live (or raise a child) in a world where shoppers trample store employees to death trying to beat each other to "deals" on cheap material crap. Beyond the lack of humanity evidenced by unfortunate incidences like that one, consumerism is not sustainable, and indeed will kill all of us and our planet if we don't start thinking CLEARLY about what we really need and recognizing what is truly important.

On that note, I reccommend watching this video, "The Story of Stuff":
I hope that by being concious of the impacts of our actions we can eventually build a better world. That would really be something to be thankful for.