Amanda

So, this is the last Shopping Blog and I am actually very sad about it. Since the Holiday Season is pretty much here, I figure I will go along with American Commecialism and start helping people with gift ideas. The Personalized Gingerbread House is on the top 20 gifts on the Williams-Sonoma website.The Personalized GIngerbread House is a quaint gingerbread house. The all-natural traditional gingerbread is festooned with royal icing and old-fashioned candies like gumdrops and cinnamon sticks. And since all the fine details are applied by hand, no two homes are quite alike. For a sweet finishing touch, Williams-Sonoma will personalize it with a name of up to eight letters on a plaque above the door. The house is 8 3/4″ x 11″ x 9″ high. A Williams-Sonoma exclusive for only $56.00.

There is specific shipping when ordering the Personalized Gingerbread House, it cannot be gift wrapped and to ensure freshness, perishable items are shipped overnight from the supplier, and are not eligible for rush shipping. Please allow up to one week for delivery. So if you are looking to send an original gift to someone for the holidays, consider the Gingerbread house or go on Williams-Sonoma.com for other great gift ideas!

Well… where should I begin? First Walmart in the VA is very different from Walmart in NY, my sister was with me on this fieldwork experience and she was in slight horror. She was quite surprised to see how much Walmart offered in VA. Our trip to Walmart was on Friday November 14, 2008 it was about 2:00 when my sister and I arrived and the weather wasn’t that nice, it was overcast and misting out about 60 degrees or so. Ok so I am going to make my first comments about the parking lot. It is almost as hectic as driving on I95 south bound from D.C. You get stuck waiting behind some car that is waiting like 5 minutes for another car to pull out of a spot. But of course that spot is one of the closest ones to the store. The parking lot is huge, but I noticed people would rather waste 5 or 10 minutes looking for a closer spot rather than parking a little farther away. But hey it was an icky day I guess they just didn’t want to take the chances of getting stuck walking in the rain. When you first walk in you are greeted very nicely by the people that stand at the door, you are also greeted by the sounds of Christmas music and decorations, and holiday sale sign, as my sister put it you enter this Walmart Holiday Twilight Zone, with bad florescent light and price signs everywhere. Everywhere you looked there was a roll back sign, and these signs work from what I saw. There was always a shopper checking out this awesomely priced product.  Something that I have always noticed at Walmart is there are always lines at check out, however the funny part is that have about 50 registers and only say 10 are open. I kept this in mind while I was walking around because some of the employees seemed to be walking around aimlessly. However I will say a good majority were re stocking the shelves or helping out customers with their questions.

Something else that I noticed is there are TVs placed at the registrars and all around the store that have commercials and ads being played constantly. These ads are all about the products that are sold in the store. I think is pretty smart, people may come in with a set list but they see the ad and then think ooo maybe I will go check that out. While walking through the stocked shelves and isles of Walmart I started to look around at my fellow shoppers, I saw that as shoppers we separate ourselves into female and male categories. In the food department, there were all different people there couples, single men, single women, mommy and her child, dad and the child, senior citizens, young adults you name it they were there shopping. However as you walked away from the food the crowds thinned, in the technology area (i.e. TV’s, video games, cameras etc.) you found a lot more kids and men. Men who are drooling over the 52″ flat screen and the little kids testing the video games that they want for Christmas. You continue on to toys and you find moms looking for the last minute birthday present for the party on the following day. There are grandparents looking for special gifts for their grandchildren. You continue on and see more women because you are going towards crafts and fabric, soon you reach linens and house hold necessities. Finally you start to see men, you are getting closer to the tools and paints and gun (a department that I did not enter, and for good reason). It’s almost like the men are hiding in their own world of where they pretend they are Mr. Fix It. Or their dreams of the things they want to build. In the middle of all of this is clothing for everyone. However, this was one of the emptier parts of the store for some reason. I do think its funny how this store contains well everything and as a whole the customers separate themselves and even better it’s really by sex.

So we know who shops at Walmart, everyone, and we know what Walmart provides, everything, but what are the people buying?  You have your shoppers with lists, these people are on a mission, generally you find them in the food aisles, and people were doing pretty good there were no extra odds and ends in there, just food for the family. It’s funny to watch someone go down an aisle and see a sign in the distance, they stop stand there looking at it, almost about to go over to the other part of the store, but then look down at their list and then continue with it. Honestly that is a lot of will power right there. However, then there are those shoppers that have the list and stick to it but of course just can’t resist the sale on the $5 DVDs or the new set of dishes that are on sale for $30.  Then there are people like me who have a list in their head or only need one thing…. never a good idea, because you end up roaming the store for a half hour or longer and buy so many things you absolutely don’t need. You also see the moms that are being pulled to the toy section by their kids and coaxed into buying the new Barbie with her dog Tanner (I had to make a comment on that). Honestly in stores such as Walmart or Target it is really not possible to go in there with a set list and only buy what is on the list, everything you need or want is really at your finger tips… and it is all reasonably priced, because hey it’s Walmart.

This week we discussed the books The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don’t Need by Juliet B. Schor. Since I was sick on Monday and could not attend class I will talk about the things that I noticed in the first three chapters. On the first page of the first chapter immediately the saying “Keeping up with the Joneses” is brought up. However as Schor states the culture of spending has intensified, that in the older days our neighbors are the ones who set the standards. However today our neighbors are no longer the focus, who cares what restaurants they go to and where they shop. Our comparisons are no longer made in regards to people in our own general earnings category. Instead we make comparisons to reference groups, people’s incomes who are four or five times higher than ours.  In the end of chapter one Schor states “Surveys show that many believe materialism is running the country, perverting our values and damaging our children.” This is something that comes up in the later chapters. In chapter two it starts off talking about what makes us consume? It’s the exposure to the possessions and lifestyle of a reference group. Something that caught my attention was the reference to Pierre Bourdieu and cultural capital. People from families rich in cultural capital assimilate knowledge of what is good and bad. This is something that shows up today, the rich because of the money they have can travel, become culture, they buy top of the line things and all of it is in good taste. Something that also caught my interest was the determining that items carry different levels of status. In chapter three is says that items that are hidden and not seen have a low status such as your furnace and example Schor uses, however you make up and clothes all have a high status because they are seen daily. It is all about visible status, an example used was Tommy Hilfiger and that if he makes a shirt and puts a logo on one and nothing on the other, and the logo shirt will sell. It’s crazy how our minds work when shopping.

On Wednesday we talked about the rest of the book. We started talking about how we don’t need a lot of the things we have. However, society has made us to believe we need these things to keep up with the Joneses or just keeping up with progress. However it s not like we walk around everyday thinking I need this I need that it is a subconscious thought of the whole keeping up. We then continued to talk about competition; parents are using their kids to compete with other families by buying them gifts. Parents are the agents of materialism the way they act teaches kids their priorities.  They also put their kids in a variety of activities so that they never are really home; parents do this because they don’t want their kids to fail because if your kids fail you fail as a parent.  However, today the idea of success is warped. We then talked about gifting, specifically self gifting and retail therapy that shopping makes one feel better. However with this shopping comes some guilt. The other gifting we talked about was conspicuous gifting, where a friend that has a lot of money buys you something just because they can. The other problem with gifting in a relationship the woman will want diamonds because she is worth it, however when she doesn’t get the diamonds herself worth goes down. It’s weird how what we own and have establishes our self worth. From this we touched on second hand, because we buy so much we create clutter in our lives, is a material overload and just need to get rid of it, in yard sales, being it to good will, eBay all different ways. Near the end of the class we talked about downshifters, and that it’s a voluntary or involuntary life change. You take a job that actually makes a difference such as pro-bono or PR work and you end up making maybe $20,000 less. You have to learn to adjust your lifestyle so you can live comfortably. We talked about if any of us have downshifted but it was hard as college students to answer that because some of us still are relying on mom and dad. The last thing we talked about was in the epilogue Schor gave some recommendations to fix our problems: Understand advertising, listen to consumer organizations as much as the manufacturer, promote savings and have courses in high school that teach balancing a check book, life skills and spending, that the government should have smaller home pay less taxes then the bigger homes, she says get rid of corporate tax credits for advertising and lastly get organized.

As it was said in class on Wednesday it is hard as a college student to downshift, but as the years go by I have found myself doing it, especially now as I think back and compare high school to college. I am a materialistic person and I will admit it, I like nice new things. However this is something that I have learned from my parents, they didn’t have everything I have when they were my age, so my mom and dad made it so that because they didn’t my sisters and I should. Also my dad is defiantly making up for not having things when he was a kid. All my life, I was taught it was OK to buy things, unlike my sisters however I have learned to look at price tags. My parents have shown me that it’s OK to spend your money, but in high school I wasn’t spending my money I was spending theirs. Now that I am 21 I am really no longer spending their money they provide me tuition, housing and food but everything else is on me now. Even though I was brought up spending and then all of a sudden I hit an age where it is not ok. My dad will question me why I bought something and I just tell him it’s not your money I am spending dad, usually it gets him off my back. But he has a point why am I spending, and I think well dad you buys lots of things… the only difference he has a steady income and knows that’s its fine, unlike me. I spend $200 I will be paying it off for at least a month and a half. So now when I shop I pick something up, and say oh I want this, I do stand there and think do I need this, seriously Amanda do you? Sometimes my desire beats out my common sense but because my income is only from babysitting no set hours, I have to start cutting back which will be good for me because I am going into the profession of teaching.

Its almost that time of the year, the one day of the year it is OK to eat until the buttons on your pants pop. Personally Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays, not only because it is right by my birthday but because it is usually the best meal of the year. I look forward to my mothers cooking every November, everything she makes is made to perfection, hopefully one day I will be able to make a Thanksgiving meal as amazing as hers. However, I have been able to master is the Taub Thanksgiving Apple Pie. My father every year is in charge of making the apple pies, I have become his right hand in this, and luckily I have mastered it. However, when my dad and I peel the apples he is able to use a regular peeler and peel the entire apple with out stopping, I on the other hand am getting better but I just can’t do it. I was looking for a solution to this on the Williams-Sonoma website and came across the Apple Peeler-Corer.

This is a product that I could really use. For only $28.00 you can double your peeling time and save yourself from loosing good apple by cutting around the core. Even in today’s high-tech world Williams-Sonoma opts to use this the old – fashioned tool to peel apples. It’s great for peeling pears and potatoes, too. A suction base grips your counter top. The tool is made of sturdy, enameled cast steel with a stainless-steel shaft and prong. 5 1/2″ high, 12 1/2″ long overall. I am going to have to convince my mom to get me one of these so I can finally keep up with my dad on Thanksgiving!

On Monday we talked about chapters 5 and 6, and the three different open spaces, flood plains, steep slopes and the wetlands. Wetlands are cheap to build on, it is cheap land and they developed new techniques to fill in the wetlands. The people who had problems with this were the Hunters and Gamers, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Engineers, they argued that wetlands were productive they catch off and store runoff. It supports wildlife, acted as a nutrient trap. Estuaries are also extremely important for the salt water environment. Building over wetlands is not the most efficient things to do, when it rains it generally floods such as L.A. On Long Island there is a movement to deal with the wetlands to protect ducks because it is a stop on their migration paths. During this time flood plain maps had not been built, so people were continuing to get their waterfront homes. Hills as we have all seen in California, not the best idea, landslides occur all the time; the worst part is realtors are not obligated to tell their buyers. Builders were claiming landslides as acts of god; however the courts started to rule that it is humans pushing limits. We quickly touched on Ian McHarg, protect humans from nature and nature from humans. Last thing we talked about on Monday was Blue-Green Developments. Manmade lakes that take the storm drains and run off. Lake Barcroft is the example used, however the lake has shrunk and some of the houses are no longer on the water. Silt form the erosion filled in and cuts off the sun that kills the plants that cuts off the oxygen that kills the fish eventually killing this small ecosystem.  Fish and Wildlife service was working in rural areas publishing on suburbia and urban spaces, preserve animals everywhere not just in parks and wetlands.

On Wednesday we talked about the last chapter and the conclusions. Land is not an endless resource; it’s not a commodity you can just exploit. We mentioned the National Environmental Policy Act of the 1960s and 70s; it focused on protection and restoring environmental quality. This act creates a council to promote new land use of the United States.  In Hawaii they regulated the land keeping it natural so when tourists come they can enjoy the natural scenery. Other states such as Maine, Vermont and California also got involved in regulating the land. We talked about lassie-fair economics and William Blackstone, who was a British legalist who write down English common law, dictating the law of private property which is a sacred right no one can trample on. The land use movement shows up in the book and that is was successful on the state level however not on the local or federal level, and in the end eventually fell apart because of the economy during the 70s. In the conclusion Rome restates the major ways to address contradictions of suburban development; he said organized opposition, legal action and government regulation. Lastly we talked about Woodland in Houston Texas and that is was the only plan to get off the ground. However it took a lot of time and money due to the amount of people that need to hire to think about the land that is being worked with before you build on it.

I was absolutely amazed by how beautiful the Woodlands were. I have never heard or seen anything like it until this class. To think that a community was built but none of the wildlife and environment was destroyed and something that boggles my mind even more is that there could be so many more communities out there like the Woodlands. Instead we decided to build over flood plains and wetlands and on hills, each development being damaged during storms, and the government continuing to pay for it. I understand that these developments are expensive to create however, to think the nation could use all that money that is used to pay for houses that slide down hills or float away when the Mississippi over flows or another hurricane rolls in, and put the money towards developing environmentally friendly communities. While we are at it, these homes should use solar power to help with our energy crisis; we might as well as kill two birds with one stone.  For a country filled with scientist and geologists and ecologists and biologists and the list goes on you would think we could figure out a more efficient way to live our lives.