What are you even going to DO with all those gifts?!

This morning, I woke up at 6 am like a 4-year-old. I think Christmas is the one day a year you are allowed to act like a 4-year-old. I went outside on the lanai (my parents live in Florida, so I get to enjoy a warm holiday season free of snow-shoveling) and chatted with my mom for about an hour. We talked about how everyone working at stores and what not this year is saying "Merry Christmas" instead of the usual "Happy Holidays." My thought is that the companies must have done some sort of market research that showed most people would rather be wished a "Merry Christmas." Even those who don't celebrate Christmas must not mind when it is said. Maybe not all, but I would say most. I know plenty of non-Christians that celebrate Christmas. Christmas has become on a non-religious holiday over the years. I won't make any calls as to whether that is right or wrong. It is less about just Jesus' birthday in a religious sense, and is about more getting together as a family. Sadly, it has also become more about gift-giving and commercialization.

Christmas started taking on a new meaning for me when I was 13 years old. My grandma passed away five days before Christmas and my family spent the holiday season driving out to Michigan and going to her funeral. We tried to make the best of it, but Christmas was never the same after that. No one cared about their presents that year. And every year following, presents began to matter less and less. Christmas was about getting together as a family, eating food and making memories. It sounds cliche, but it's true. In fact, while that Christmas was a low point, it has gotten easier every year. The holiday has been cheerier, my sister and I have grown up more, and less presents have popped up under the tree, which I have enjoyed personally. Less presents means less stress each year.

This year I bought my parents one of these Soda Stream machines, so my mom doesn't have to run out and buy my dad Coke Zero all the time, and my dad will never run out, AND it's good for the environment ;) I got a couple other little things, like some LUSH products for my mom and sister, but that is about it.

[To be perfectly honest, I hadn't bought any presents until about a week ago, when my sister was talking about things she had bought my mom and dad. I told her I thought we weren't exchanging gifts--then I guess I felt a little guilty I hadn't gotten anything to give my parents. Furthermore, already she has found there were a couple things she got for them that they already have and she will have to return. See? Gift-giving and receiving is stressful.]

Anyway, this morning I came across a picture someone had posted online of their Christmas tree, surrounded by about 300 presents. Pretty much their entire living room floor was stacked with presents. The caption of the photo said this person’s parents “used to get just one or two presents on Christmas and they didn’t want the next generation to ever feel the same heartbreak on Christmas day.”

I just find it ironic when people “Thank God” for being so “blessed” with things. Being blessed isn’t about things. It’s about people. Remember The Gift of the Magi? In the end, both of the gifts that the man and woman get for each other are useless and serve no tangible material value, but they represent how much they love each other, and that is all that matters.

Giving a few gifts that you know will bring happiness to another person is one thing, filling a room with an excessive amount of material objects is unnecessary and in my opinion, really sad. To expect or even appreciate this kind of superficiality is sort of childish. Christmas should be about spending time with the people you love, not spending money on people you love to show them you love them. I feel grateful I have a family that realizes this.

Best wishes to you and yours this holiday season, including all the people who woke up to a boatload of gifts. I hope you’re all spending the day with good food, good fun, and most importantly, your family.

I’m off to watch A Christmas Story with mine. =)

Taxing tanning, just another example of how treatment is replacing prevention

Last week, I was bombarded by emails with special holiday discounts and offers from different tanning salons I have frequented over the past four years that somehow slip through the spam filter. Yesterday, I received an email from one of those places with the subject line. "Help Stop the Federal Tanning Tax BEFORE 12/24/09." REALLY? Oh, dear.

Now, I hadn't really heard too much about this tanning tax. But the long and short of it is that the new health care bill the Senate is futzing around with now includes a 5 percent tax on "indoor tanning services," instead of the previous tax on elective cosmetic procedures. (Still unclear to me is if "indoor tanning services" includes spray tans--or tanning/bronzing creams for that matter--as these are also methods of getting a tan indoors, however they are not skin cancer-causing.)

Now, in my opinion this tanning tax is a great idea. If we can't outlaw something that is clearly harmful, the next logical step is to tax it, to hopefully dissuade people from doing it. As an aside, if I had my way, there would be an even higher tax on cigarettes, I hate the stupid things. Frankly, I think it would be fantastic if cigarettes were outlawed, but I know this won't be happening anytime in my life. Also “personal freedoms, and blah blah blah,” etc. Whatever. It doesn't even bother me so much that people smoke—except my family and friends because they are important to me and I don't want them to die. What bothers me is that there's some corporate fat cat getting rich off of people’s addiction. And basically, that’s what tanning boils down to. It’s a business where people (like me) get addicted.

I agree with this doctor though, that a tax will do little to prevent people who are already regular tanners from keeping on tanning. If they have to spend 5 percent more, they will:

Dr. Robinson foresees the indoor-tanning tax dissuading first-time users and people considering “event tanning” before a prom or wedding. But she isn’t hopeful that the “twice-a-week tanner” will stop. “They are truly addicted to the feel-good tendencies from having a tan,” she said. “They will spend money on that, and not spend it on other things.”

Now, the whole tanning thing is a rough topic for me. I touched on this in a column I wrote a couple months back. It's rough, because probably six months ago, I was a self-proclaimed sun worshipper. Tanning itself made me feel good and being tan made me feel good. I hate being that flip-floppy person who thinks this way one day and that way the next (Example: the butter versus margarine debate.) But recently, I did a little cost-benefit analysis, and came to the conclusion that it's just a dumb move. My health won out. I haven’t been tanning since last February. But, I can without a doubt say that if this tax had come about 2 years ago, it wouldn’t have kept me from going to the tanning salon.

I guess what my opinion boils down to is this: The tanning tax won’t prevent most people from tanning, but really that’s not the government's intention anyway. The point is to increase federal revenue to support the proposed government-run health care system. A health care system that is currently crippled because people aren’t making the proper health decisions they should be making based on proven scientific knowledge that we have (case in point, tanning is cancer-causing) and people are requiring more health care (melanoma removal).

And around and around we go, I guess, with treatment trumping prevention. It's sad.

When parents try to be career advisors

This is my friend Mike's graduation invite. He's off into the real world now.


For the average freshman, sophomore, even junior in college, going home for Christmas break is relaxing. A full month off to mess around and do whatever (sleep, eat, sleep, repeat, etc.)

Everything changes senior year and in the 5-10 years after (or until you have children of your own and parents find a new place to focus their "advice-giving"). The average college student at this time returns home only to be bombarded by the inevitable question, which takes many different shapes and forms, but in my house it typically goes: "What the hell are you going to do with the rest of your life and why aren't you doing that RIGHT NOW?" This will without a doubt serve as the segue into what they truly intended to tell you, which is: "Well, this is what I think about the matter..."

I see this question/follow-up "advice" already causing some of my closest friends to tear out their hair. And I am going to surmise, based on the singular fact that I don't have ALL that many friends, that this is a conversation had, in whatever shape or form, by every parent with their early-20-something son or daughter. Right at Christmas time, right when all we want to do is eat snickerdoodles and watch Home Alone on the sofa with the dog (or cat).


Now, I don't really have any advice. Screw my advice, even if I did claim to have some. But, I can offer some words of comfort:

1. You're not alone.
For example, here's how a conversation might go down between my mother and I when it comes to my future. Note: this isn’t verbatim, but actually a conglomeration of separate nearly verbatim conversations she and I have had over the past couple months:

Me: I'm excited about my internship in January--it sounds like I will be doing a lot of hands-on work.
Mom: I still say you should have studied journalism, you were always such a good writer.
Me: Yeah. Wait, huh? Also, I mean, in PR all you do is write. Press releases, letters to editors, blogging...
Mom: OK, but when you start looking for a real job, you should really apply to federal jobs. usajobs.org! -- I'm telling you that's where the money AND the benefits are.
Me: OK so what happened to me being a journalist?
Mom: Well, I mean you should have studied journalism because you were just always a good writer, but if you want a job with great benefits you really should get a federal job.
Me: You aren’t making sense, mom.
Mom: Oh! What you should do is marry a man who works for the government.

I guess what I want you to get from this, other than my mom is a complete psycho (jokes, she’s actually a lovely, although illogical woman), is that you are not the only one frustrated and confused by all the “advice” from your family members. Just remember they truly do love you, and as much as they aren’t helping, they truly think that they are.


2. What "your future" comes down to is what you want to do and what you are capable of doing given you’re a) education/upbringing b) personal drive and passion and c) a little teensy bit of the freakin' economy. Which brings me to…

3. Don’t let the economy bring you down. Instead, let it bring you around. So maybe you can’t find a job or the college thing just ain’t working out and/or you can’t afford tuition payments, like this kid. Instead of trying to do things the old-fashioned way, step out of the box and just do something you’ve always wanted to do. A best friend of mine left for New Zealand a few weeks ago. He saved up money for a one-way plane ticket and is off living in Mount Maunganui. He’s already landed a job as a prep cook at a Mediterranean restaurant there and in his free time he’s taking a couple online classes toward his degree and then y’know…living life. Check out that link for some explanation—let’s just say he’s not worrying about having to shovel snow from his driveway.

All I’m sayin’ is if things aren’t going peachy and job prospects are few by the time graduation rolls around, I’m not going to get stressed out. I’m going to get excited. It means I’ll have to get innovative. It means I might have to soul search a bit and take my own advice for a change instead of everyone else's. It means I might have found my use for all the graduation cash: a plane ticket out of this country for a little while.

Just don’t tell my mom.

The end of an era, sort of

I might venture to say the past week and a half, and by extension this entire semester, has been full of some of the "bests" I have ever had in college. Now, this is saying a lot, considering the end of the semester is always really stressful. But, I must say, I think mine went quite smoothly. It was jam-packed with final projects and exams and papers and little sleep, but I made it through. We always make it through. I took some awesome classes and learned a ton and was inspired by one in particular enough to pursue the area further in an independent study. The "best" part comes in with the quality time I spent with my friends. Let's face it, I burnt myself taking cinnamon buns out of the oven during a family breakfast we were making, and I am now sad because the 'scar' I thought I would have forever to remember the day is actually almost completely healed and gone--that's true friendship.

The saddest part about the end of this semester was making the decision not to return as an editor to The Eagle in the spring. It was a really hard decision. I know many others on staff share this same sentiment (especially our editor-in-chief aka my bestie/roomie, Jen Calantone): The Eagle is our baby. It's been the lifeblood of my college experience. It will continue to be even next semester, as I plan to still write the health column, which I am pumped about, as well as take photos as often as I possibly can. I learned so much working for a college newspaper. It hasn't made me necessarily want to go into journalism, however it has improved my writing and photography skills and taught me a lot about how journalists think and what they want to report on, which will prove incredibly important in the PR field. It has also showed me so much about teamwork. Every Sunday and Wednesday we all get together (play music and make loud, sometimes inappropriate comments)--and we collectively make a newspaper. There's been the wonderful days when I got to take pictures of presidential candidate Barack Obama at his Jan. 28 rally at AU when Senator Kennedy endorsed him...and there's the equally wonderful days when that man becomes President Obama. Then, there's the tragic days, like when we had to report on Senator Kennedy passing away on Aug. 26 of this year.

But despite having worked at a newspaper on arguably the most politically active campus in the country during one of the most politically exciting times in the history of this country, not every day was so thrilling. Some days, we'd realize the first sex column of the semester sparked the most popular debate and follow-up editorials and letters to the editor we saw all semester--and I personally would almost lose hope (although not really in the legitimacy of the publication, but more so in the future of this generation.) There's still the negative comments on stories about how writers are bad or stories are boring, or just the lack of comments on stories that are important. There's still the days you look around and think, does all this effort really mean anything to anyone?

By contrast, there are the days we have said, "If a news story happens on campus and The Eagle doesn't cover it, does it really happen?"

Well, it was interesting, because last Thursday when my class was presenting our research to AU's Music Program following a semester-long project, we starting talking about how to increase the awareness of musical performances on campus. A few people suggested they advertise more in The Eagle and maybe pitch ideas to The Scene section about feature stories, say if there was something special a particular musician had done or something. Our client looked dubious. "Does anyone really read The Eagle though? Who here reads The Eagle?" Nearly every person in the class raised their hand. Granted, we're all communication students, but still. It's the campus newspaper, it reports on issues relevant to the students on campus--of course students should want to read it. My point here is, what we do does matter. We create a dialogue. We report on what is important for a very specific, niche population at a university. We take improving our reporting very seriously. We on the photo team take improving our photos very seriously. The design team takes designing creative pages seriously. It's our job. And I loved every second of it and will miss it terribly.

But I think what I will miss most is the people, the co-workers who became my best friends. (I don't know if any of you will read this. I will probably find a way to bring it to your attention though, so you better read it!) I learned so much from all of you--technically speaking and in deeper, more intangible ways. Thank you.

Anyhow, before I go too overboard on the mushiness...this entry goes out to all my Eagle staffer friends, past and present, who hold a special place in my heart. I have one final message for all of you to keep in mind, whether it's a good day or a bad day or an in-between day:

When it's time to party, we will always party hard. Party hard.

More green gestures than green pastures in America

Not sure if an editor at The Washington Post screwed this up, or if it was the web team--I'm thinking web, because I just checked and there's no mistake in the print version--anyhow, this guy from Lancaster saw the pull quote and spoke up:

Lancaster Co., Pa.: I object to the statement, 'Green pastures we have in abundance in America.' I write for a farm newspaper. We don't have green pastures in abundance. That's nuts. We lose 2 acres of farm land EVERY MINUTE in the U.S. according to the American Farmland Trust. In six years, we lost an amount of farm land the size of Maryland. If that doesn't freak you out, consider that only 12 percent of the world's surface is farmable. We need all the farm land we can get.

So yes, environmental activism, of course. But I would not frame the debate that you should call your Congress person instead of buying "green" because every thing is fine with our land and pastures.

Mike Tidwell: Sorry. Did I write "pastures"? I meant green "gestures" are what we have in abundance in America. Instead we need green "statutes."

Anyway, I agree. There are very few green pastures left in America, unfortunately.

The day after this Outlook column came out, I had to write a letter to my senators and congressman urging them to take action with regards to Copenhagen. I am registered to vote in Florida, so I wrote to Rep. Vern Buchanan, and Senators Bill Nelson and George Lemieux. As you may have heard, Florida is in the greatest danger with regards to rising sea levels, probably more than any other state. I had never written a letter to Congress or a senator, so at first I was like, "Huh? I don't know how to do that." So, I lucked out when I stumbled on Mike Tidwell's column in the Sunday Post.

I came up with this letter, I'd encourage you to steal it in full (if you are from Florida) or in parts, and replace the names with your senator or representative. Send it in, give them a call, have a voice.

Dear _____,

Tomorrow, President Obama will take a trip to Copenhagen for what will hopefully prove to be a monumental summit on climate change. It is my hope that he will take a strong stance on the issue. But, Americans and citizens of the world need our Senate and Congress to step forward and back up his promises to enact policies that will cut our greenhouse gas emissions.

Here is my question, _____: what are you doing to support changes that will prevent Florida from being engulfed by the ocean?

If sea levels rise just one meter, the entire coast of Florida, from Jacksonville to Horseshoe Beach, will be covered in water. This includes nearly every major city in Florida from Tampa to Miami. Millions of people will be displaced from their homes. Once great cities will literally become cities for the ocean’s creatures. And of course, this effect would not be limited to Florida. The Atlantic and Pacific Oceans would engulf Boston, San Francisco, New York, and hundreds of other cities. And that is just here in the United States.

The good news is of course that we can stop this from happening. If we can stabilize the atmosphere at 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide, we can prevent the glacial melting that would inevitably bring about the end of life as we know it. How do we do this? We use the power of the government, which must take a strong, unwavering, and permanent stance on ending the burning of fossil fuels. Whatever it is that President Obama does or says at Copenhagen, none of it will matter if the Senate/House does not support a carbon-cap bill that mandates a limit of 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere.

Pockets of individuals scattered across the country can do their part to use energy-saving light bulbs or put solar panels on their roof—but no significant change is going to come out of this green movement unless the government is supporting the changes: offering rebates to those that use energy-efficient products like hybrid vehicles, enacting more strict carbon-cap legislation, mandating more energy-efficient measures be taken in buildings and homes, and funding renewable energy research and development.

_____, I am still young, but one day I hope to have a family of my own. Yet the thought of bringing more people into a world that is literally falling apart and into a society that is bringing about its own demise, is terrifying. We know what is happening, we can see the erratic weather patterns, intensifying hurricanes and flooding, and rising sea levels, and we know what needs to be done to prevent further damage.

I urge you, _____, to do your part in ensuring future generations have a stable planet to live in.

Strengthening the Farmer-Consumer Relationship

For my Visual Strategies in PR class, we were asked to choose a nonprofit organization that was holding an event in the future and design a Save-the-date card, a poster, and a brochure to promote it. I decided to tweak the assignment a bit, and my professor gave me the OK.

I had this idea in my mind of a large-scale farmer's market where sustainable agriculture was promoted and farmers were able to essentially "sell themselves" and the idea of local farming to their potential customers. The Green Festival was similar to this, only that was much broader, had more speakers and seemed almost more exclusive in my mind—like a place where only those who were really into ecofriendly products and ideas would go. I wanted something that people just walking along the National Mall in D.C. could see, walk through, and then get information. I wanted average people that shop at grocery stores to get engaged in a conversation with a farmer or a rancher. The thing was, nothing like this really has ever existed, at least not to my knowledge. So I just made it up. I decided I would have the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition be the sponsor of the event. I designed the save-the-date and the poster, and around when I was finishing up the poster, the real essence of the event blossomed in my mind, which was great because I needed that blossom to happen in order to make the brochure work.

Anyhow, here is the brochure that came out of my inspiration. Even though it's not for a real event, that sort of doesn't matter, because this brochure is more concept-focused than event-focused. I hope it informs or inspires you or makes you think, or even changes your actions.



On a somewhat related note, the exhaustion I was feeling while finishing up this semester is being completely overshadowed this week after being asked to join the communications team at Food and Water Watch next month. Their mission is 100% in line with everything I care about, including the aforementioned local agriculture stuff. So I will definitely keep this blog updated on the things I get to do at that internship. In the meantime, if I hooked you at all with my brochure, check out their site and find out more about how local food from small farms is the healthier, safer, and more ecofriendly food to eat.