Even better than recycling...

Lately, I have been seeing a ton of televisions offered "free" on Freecycle and the free section of Craigslist.  It baffles me that people never think of donating perfectly good working televisions & DVD players to their local children's hospital or nursing home.  When I mention this to folks - it's like a lightbulb goes off over their heads.  Recently, I splurged and got a new television - but my 19" CRT television still works perfectly well and doesn't have any bad spots (why should it since I have only watched movies on it and am hardly a couch potato).  I confess - with my recent convalescence, I just decided I wanted a bigger and more energy efficient TV that doesn't weigh so much.  And a DVI to stream Netflix.

Rather than Freecycle my television and old DVD players, I called the Children's Hospital Family home - turns out they do need a TV and DVD players.  The Oakland Children's Hospital also need lots of other stuff - things that I never thought of for crafts projects and such.

Here are a few things that tickled my fancy:

• Art and craft supplies 
• Beanie Babies 
• Crayons & Colored Pencils 
• Crossword Puzzle Books: for both kids and parents 
• Games: such as Monopoly, Clue, Scrabble, Battleship, Chutes and Ladders, Yahtzee, Life, chess, checkers, Boggle, Trouble, Connect Four and memory games 
• Hot Wheels Toys, Small Cars & Trucks 
• Journals, Blank Books, NotebooksMad Libs 
• Magazines: for all ages, including magazines in Spanish 
• Mini Needlepoint Kits
• Playing Cards: including UNO, Old Maid, Crazy Eights 
• Safety Scissors 
• Scrapbook Supplies
• Stationary Sets
  
• Stickers 
• Knitting Yarn & Knitting Needles: all sizes (Family Resource & Information Center) 
• Crochet Hooks: (Family Resource & Information Center)
• Booties: Knit or crochet baby booties (including preemie size)
• Favors: Make tray favors or origami for patient meal trays
• Sew: Sew a quilt or wheelchair backpack. Please use only new, not used fabric.

I think I am most likely to make up a bunch of twin size quilts with small pillows to send sick kids home with sweet dreams.  Last little girl who received a quilt I made said it was "magic" - a big red velvet heart with gold fringe on a field of 8" wide alternating green & white patterned and white bands.  I've been kind of thinking about making less pattern oriented quilts and using up some fabric - but using a simpler background to do some fun applique stuff - and maybe these kids can be my guinea pigs.  :)

I wonder how kids would love the little creatures that Hannah at Bittersweet makes, like the cute little froggy.

The Leather Question - Where Green & Vegan Butt Heads

Eddo's First Trip to The Wall

A dear friend & yoga instructor, Chris, gave me this fantastic vintage women's racing suit - it's about 35 years old, leather and has all the shoulder, back, hip and knee armor in it. It fits me perfectly - and, aside from a few high stress points where threads are occasionally going out (near the zipper bottom on the jacket front, first the left, then the right) and the failure of the pants zipper -- I imagine I'll be wearing this for a very long time.

As a vegan and as someone who tries to be "green", I do not buy new leather. The processing of leather is toxic -- cruel both to animals and to the people working in the industry. Regardless of what people may think, leather is not strictly a by-product of the meat industry.

However, as someone who believes in re-using and re-cycling, I don't think it makes sense to purge your wardrobe of every animal product. What good will that do? The animal has already suffered -- and truly, I cannot afford to buy a new motorcycle suit and it makes little sense to jettison 12 year old cashmere sweaters (it's all I can do to keep the moths off of them). I will continue to hang onto my old leather coats - and shoes - and wear them until they completely fall apart or I find a new homes for them with people who can give them better use.

How do you reconcile your concerns for animal with your concerns for the environment where they intersect and may conflict?

Computers & Recycling

Back in 1992 or 1991, I remember when a friend, who worked for Arthur Andersen at the time - walked me through the specifics of my first computer purchase. I was replacing a Sanyo MBC 1550 with two 5.25" floppy drives (all ROM memory) with a laptop. "80 Mb is all you'll need -- do you know how much typing you'll have to do to fill that up?"

That computer got me through the end of my senior year as an undergrad and through grad school. It was a black-and-white plasma screen (oooh!) and had Windows 3.1. I used Word Perfect 5.1 and PFS WindowWorks -- later acquired by Microsoft and turned into Excel and the basis for MS Office.

I now have a desktop machine with two external 400 Gb drives, two internal 400 Gb drives set up as a RAID array, an 80 Gb drive and a 200 Gb drive. That puts me at just over a Tb on my machine plus 800 Gb in the external drives... just like 1.88 Tb??

The 80 Gb drive was the original drive on this machine -- I put it together with my friend Bigox when I lived in SOMA in 2002... might be about time to replace my motherboard. I've been replacing fans with great frequency, it seems.

Fortunately, there's Green Citizen -- I can take all my computer junk to them and they'll recycle it. They take apart components that can be re-used and build new computers for school kids, and then break down the other stuff. There are a lot of items they'll take for free -- but you may have to pay a nominal fee (like fifty cents per pound) for other stuff.