CHEAPSKATE GUIDE – TIPS FOR SURVIVING HOLIDAYS IN HARD TIMES
By Miriam Raftery December 1, 2008 Holiday season can be a major budget-buster. Short of morphing into Ebenezeer Scrooge and avoiding gift-giving or merrymaking, how can you survive the season without spending more than you can afford? Here are a few tips: DECORATE ON A DIME: Avoid spending money on wreaths, centerpieces or artificial garlands. Instead, snip greenery from your own backyard. Pyracantha branches festooned with bright red berries make striking focal points on tables or in vases. Juniper boughs can substitute for pine or cedar boughs, or ask at a local Christmas tree lot; many will give away trimmed-off tree limbs. Dress up boughs with ribbons, glitter, or spare ornaments. SAVE MONEY ON WRAPPING: Gift bags are the green alternatives to costly rolls of wrapping paper that wind up tossed in the trash. Shop early at dollar stores, where you can find even jumbo sized bags for a buck apiece, far less than in gift shops or card shops. Other cheap alternatives: use stamps to print colorful designs on plain rolls of brown or manila paper. You can also use fabric scraps, aluminum foil, tinted cellophane or even the comic pages from the newspaper to wrap packages. My Mom, an artist, enjoys painting plain white gift boxes that stores give out, or using gold fabric paint to dress up scenes printed on gift boxes purchased at discount stores. TRIM THE TREE WITH OLD-FASHIONED TREATMENTS: Use a needle and thread to string popcorn and uncooked cranberries into festive garlands. Bake gingerbread cookies with a hole at the tops for hanging on the tree. Be creative! We’ve hung carved wooden birds, miniature stockings, cut-outs from past holiday cards, and framed children’s photos, along with home-made ornaments crafted by the kids. GET CREATIVE WITH GIFT-GIVING: If necessary, limit the number of recipients; chances are other adults on your list may be relieved to avoid the expense of exchanging gifts this year. Home-made handicrafts, baked goods, or fruits from your yard have special meaning without breaking the bank. Offer a gift of services: mow your elderly neighbor’s lawn or offer to babysit for young parents on your list. Find fun stocking stuffers for the kids without setting foot in malls. When our son was little, we once found an entire shoebox of baseball cards for our son at a cost of just two dollars. Our daughter loved glitzy costume jewelry and ornate boxes, all discovered at yard sales in our area. Relatives love photos of the kids or grandkids; buy frames at garage sales for pennies and paint if needed. ENTERTAIN FOR LESS: Revive the potluck custom; it’s fun and keeps expenses minimal. Bake from scratch instead of bringing in fancy fare. Instead of serving wine to party guests, offer a champagne punch or sangria as elegant yet less costly alternatives. Have a mid-afternoon open house instead of an evening party; serve appetizers and desserts instead of a main course. Invite guests to bring a white elephant for an offbeat gift exchange. GIVE TO THOSE LESS FORTUNATE: Remember the holiday spirit! Even if you have little money to spare, chances are you can still help people in need. Battered women’s shelters welcome used books, clothes, and travel-sized toiletries, such as those shampoos and soaps that hotels give out free to guests. Homeless shelters can use extra blankets. Local drives to help needy families usually request food, books and toys, but teens in needy families are often overlooked. Gift certificates are greatly appreciated. After the holidays, donate items such as extra clothes, duplicate items, or new gifts you simply don’t need or want to charity .
The San Diego Science Festival presents Small Wonders: a day of exploration into the world of nanotechnology and advanced materials for high school students
December 12 deadline for schools to apply You have heard about the Stone Age, the Iron Age and the Bronze Age. Now we are in the midst of a new technological revolution driven by nanotechnology and other material sciences, which will usher in a new age of Advanced Materials. On April 1, 175 high school students from all over San Diego County will have the opportunity to participate in a fun, interactive and eye-opening day as they learn about some of the exciting technologies that are driving this new technological age. We will explore ways of creating color with shapes, producing materials that will allow you to hang effortlessly from a ceiling like a gecko or repel water like a lotus leaf, image materials with dimensions 100,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair, take a virtual walk inside a molecule, view the world’s smallest motors and much, much more. While being dazzled, you will learn about fundamental new concepts like quantum confinement, super conductivity, photonic bandgap materials, shape memory alloys and block co-polymers. These new technologies will provide the basis for tomorrow’s jobs. Date,Time and Location: Wednesday, April 1st, 2009, 9:30AM-4:00PMPST, on the UC San Diego campus. Who should apply: This program is designed for high-school students. Science teachers should apply for groups of 25 students. Schools will be responsible for bus transportation; individual cars can not be accommodated. How to apply: The application deadline is December 12, 2008. All schools must submit a web-based application form to be considered. Click here to apply, or go to www.sdsciencefestival.com and click on the Small Wonders link located on the homepage. Questions? Contact Larry Bock at biobock@mac.com or Ruth Kiefer at rkiefer@mindspring.com. For more information, visit www.sdsciencefestival.com/htmls/getinvolved/smallwonders.htm
Editorial – Proposition 8: An Irrational Assault on Civil Liberties, the 1st Amendment, and Gays
By Joel A. Harrison Prop 8 Opponents at November 15th March. Photo credit: Rick Greenblatt. Updated December 4, 2008 — Though heterosexual, I was both saddened and angered at the passage of Prop 8. In California it takes a two-thirds majority to pass a tax law, i.e. the state taking personal material property from an individual; but it takes a mere majority to deprive someone of a civil liberty. Supporters of Prop 8 were angered by the State Supreme Courts “thwarting the will of the people” in overturning a previous anti-gay marriage proposition. In Federalist Paper 10, James Madison, considered the Father of Our Constitution and author of our Bill of Rights, writes that one of the key purposes of our Constitution was to [restrain the ability of] “a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse or passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens.” When all else fails, it is the role of our courts to protect the rights of individuals. The phrase “a wall of separation between church and state,” referring to the 1st Amendment, comes from a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptist Association in 1802. The Danbury Baptists were a religious minority in Connecticut who complained that in their state, the religious liberties they enjoyed were not seen as immutable rights, but as privileges granted by the legislature. Historically it was the Baptists, forerunners of today’s Evangelicals, who fought hardest for the 1st Amendment understanding the risks when the will and passions, the tyranny of the majority, can be entrenched in law. Many of the arguments of gay-marriage opponents are religious in nature. Nothing in the California court’s decision affects how religious groups treat marriage. Religious institutions are, and will always be free to choose whom they will and will not marry. In modern societies, marriage is both a religious sacrament and an institution recognized under civil law. Though they may overlap in appearance, they are quite separate. Without a marriage license, a marriage ceremony performed by a religious body is not recognized by the state. The reverse is also true: religious denominations are under no obligation to recognize a civil marriage performed by a justice of the peace (or a civil divorce). Many claim that legalization of gay marriages is a threat to the institution of marriage. Ask yourself these questions: If gay marriage is legalized, do I intend to abandon mine? If gay marriage is legalized and I am currently single, will I drop any future aspirations of getting married? Obviously, the answer to both is a resounding NO! In fact, according to a November 4, 2004 New York Times article “the lowest divorce rates are largely in the blue states: the Northeast and the upper Midwest. And the state with the lowest divorce rate was Massachusetts, home to same-sex marriage. Kentucky, Mississippi and Arkansas, for example, voted overwhelmingly for constitutional amendments to ban gay marriage. But they had three of the highest divorce rates in 2003, based on figures from the Census Bureau and the National Center for Health Statistics. In 2003, the rate in Massachusetts was 5.7 divorces per 1,000 married people, compared with 10.8 in Kentucky, 11.1 in Mississippi and 12.7 in Arkansas. The Barna Group, a California organization that studies evangelical Christian trends, has produced two studies about divorce that found that born-again Christians were just as likely to divorce as those who are not born-again Christians.” In a recent book by Jonathan Rausch,”Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America,” the author argues that pervasive separate-but-equal strategies weaken the institution of marriage more than marriage for all because of the inevitable appeal of “marriage-lite” [cohabitation] to heterosexual couples who might otherwise marry. Another argument used is that “traditional marriage” is for procreation. So what do we do with couples who don’t have children? Should a marriage license automatically convert to a domestic partnership/civil union license after, say, 5 years without children? And should senior citizens only be offered a domestic partnership/civil union license? Where do we draw the line? One of the key arguments against gay marriage is the claim of protecting children. Yet, there is no credible scientific evidence that children are harmed by growing up in a gay family. Gender identity does not stem from ones upbringing, though love, compassion, and acceptance certainly do. There are many thousands of children in this country living in single parent families, many of whom live in poverty; many thousands of other children living in extremely abusive two-parent heterosexual families; and many thousands more languishing in foster care. Surely, being raised by two loving committed gay parents is better than any of the above. Arkansas, a state with three times as many children who need homes as people willing to adopt or foster them just voted in a measure to prevent unmarried, cohabitating couples from adopting or fostering children. The ban affects all unmarried couples but was written with the intent of preventing gay couples from raising children in Arkansas. Some parents were afraid their children would be taught about gay marriage in our schools. Somehow this would undermine what they teach their children at home and through their respective “churches.” Yet we teach our children that polygamy exists in the world, that other religions exist, even the existence of atheism. Teaching that gay marriage exists is no more an endorsement than teaching about other religions or cultures. How much difference would there be teaching that domestic partnerships/civil unions exist between committed loving couples of the same gender? If people are so insecure in their personal faiths and lifestyles that they feel threatened by the teaching of the existence of other faiths and cultures, then perhaps we should ban from our history and civics courses all references to the diversity of religions and cultures in our world. That would certainly prepare our children for living in a pluralistic society and
EDITORIAL – CHANGE NEEDED IN INITIATIVE PROCESS AND VOTING HOURS
By Wren Osborn Early voting at the San Diego Registrar of Voters, where some people waited up to six hours in line. December 1, 2008 (El Cajon) — I cannot understand why it is so easy to change the California Constitution. “All it takes is an initiative with 50% of the vote plus one voter and voila a new amendment to the Constitution.” Yes, it takes 8% to qualify the proposition instead of the usual 5% but does that bring mature reflection to the process? “I would say not.” Especially since the process is now dominated by moneyed interests who hire paid signature gatherers — We’ve created a slam dunk process for those with money. And speaking of initiatives. How come we allow out of state money to fund a STATE initiative in a STATE election? — Isn’t this supposed to be a process for Californians to change California law for Californians? And then there are the rich seeking to line their pockets, i.e., Proposition 10, the T. Boone Pickens special; Proposition 7 may have had good intentions but why was a billionaire from Arizona funding it? Methinks there are some changes needed in the initiative process. Money controls all, subverting the original intent of the initiative process, which I thought was to allow citizens to go around legislative obstruction to get laws needed by the people. Fat chance of that happening today unless we limit the power that money wields in the initiative process. And while we’re at it let’s make some changes in our voting laws. We need to be able to vote on a nonworking day. Declare voting day a holiday or move it to Saturday or Sunday — Increase voting hours, do a better job of recruiting volunteers in order to have more polling places, encourage the suggestion from federal lawmakers to expand early voting or all of the above. No standing in line for hours to vote. No one turned away because the polling place can’t handle the crowd. I also like the idea of automatic, universal registration to vote. “It would be harder to purge voters.” It could encourage voting. Wren Osborn is an El Cajon resident. The opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of East County Magazine. If you would like to submit an editorial for consideration, please contact editor@eastcountymagazine.org.