As long as you don't choose,

everything is possible.

Jaco Van Dormael

from his film "Mr Nobody"

Artwork by

 Lorraine Blasor

NOV. 28 IS SMALL BUSINESS SATURDAY
SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL RETAILER

Photo courtesy of
Matilsha Marxuach

Cotton tote from
Concalma in Old San Juan

SAN JUAN -- Once again, it's that time of year. Shopping for
Christmas gifts is fun but large crowds and long lines at shopping
centers can easily dampen a person's enthusiasm. A better
alternative: check out the local retailers in  your neighborhood,
you might be surprised.

One good day to do this is tomorrow, Nov. 28, which is the day
when Small Business Saturday, launched in 2010, is celebrated
in the states. The date varies each year but it is always the Saturday
sandwiched between Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Although
the movement has yet to take off in Puerto Rico, some stores on
Loiza St. are planning to mark the date by rolling the red welcome
mat to the public.

Loiza St. has a nice lineup of small boutiques selling clothing,
accessories and jewelry.  They include Love is You  and Me (just
one block off Loiza St.on del Parque St.), Kamoli, Moni Coli and
Hecho A Mano. There is also Len.t.juela and Electroshock, thrift
stores that offer unique vintage clothing collections as well as the
unexpected finds that always thrill consumers.

Claudia is a tiny boutique on the corner of Loiza St. and Diez de
Andino that focuses on the home. It is chockfull of beautiful things.
In fact, it is pretty amazing how many objects are packed in this
long, narrow space: furnishings, lamps, accessories, decorative
details, everything carefully chosen to give the home that special
touch of luxury or whimsy.

On this Saturday when small businesses shine, don't forget the
small shops of old San Juan. They too are worth a visit.

At Concalma (207 Calle San Francisco) you will find colorful cotton
bags made by a woman's coop and sold at fair trade prices. The
bags are attractive, sturdy and feature a trademark striped shoulder
strap. Another small shop not to be missed is Luca at 255 Calle Cruz
Cruz. Everything in this intimate store celebrates the beauty of
design: Jewelry, clothing, unique items are beautifully displayed on
blonde wood shelves. Pure Soul at 258 Calle San Justo and nearby
Pure Soul Living are among the most attractive stores in old San
Juan. The former features fashions and accessories by local
designers while the latter is devoted to the home: you will feel like
Ali Baba entering a cave filled with treasure.

For a poetic gift visit The Poet's Passage at 203 Calle Cruz. Here
you will find white ceramic tiles quoting poems and insightful
maxims by Lady Lee Andrews, the author of several poetry
collections. The tiles come in different sizes and are the kind of
gift that touches the heart and mind.

Let's not forget the body. For that, stop by Marisel Herbal Bath
and Body at 306 Fortaleza St. and select from an assortment of
perfumed handmade soaps. They are made with simple, natural
ingredients like olive, palm and coconut oils, organic-fair trade
cocoa, shea butters and plants like lemon grass or different kinds
of mints.

Small businesses work hard to provide goods and services to the
public. They are an important part of the economy and supporting
them is a way of strengthening our neighborhoods. Small stores
add convenience to our lives and local color to our streets. This
Saturday, drop by your neighborhood retailers and see what they
have to offer: you might be surprised.

The soul should always 
stand ajar,
ready to welcome
 the ecstatic experience.

Emily Dickinson

    ☛ A SIMPLE TIP

 

Consider the humble cement block. This fundamental
yet common building material is not exclusive to construction.
In fact, as you can appreciate from the above picture, a cement
block can easily double as a planter. All that is needed is a coat of
bright paint to enhance its looks, then fill the hollow space inside
the block with soil and set the plant of your choice in place.

The small things of life were often
so much bigger than the great things…the trivial
pleasures like cooking, one's home,
little poems especially
sad ones, solitary walks, funny things seen
and overheard.

Barbara Pym

"Less than Angels"

   Copyright  ©2015 Lorraine Blasor all rights reserved☂

MERRY CHRISTMAS HO HO HO

Santa Alfie

Photography by Jack Bierschenk

There are many ways of giving.

Consider the gift of time. Say you were single and had
young friends with a child. As a Christmas present, you
might offer to take care of the kid or kids on a particular
evening so parents can go out for a night on the town. Write
down your gift proposal on best card stock paper and
wrap a pretty ribbon around it for maximum effect.

Food, especially sweets like cookies or a loaf of bread, makes
great gifts for young and old alike, more so if the goodies
are baked by you. An earthy soup presented in a tall glass
jar (you can find them at Marshall's for under $10) is sure
to be a welcome present for a workaholic friend, or working
couple. It can be stored in a fridge for a few days to be enjoyed
at the end of a long, post-holiday work day.  It will take
some of your precious time to confection these culinary
delights but think how much more meaningful is a gift
made with your own hands.

Not that there is anything wrong with storebought gifts,
though in this day and age of conscientious consumerism
it would be well to discard anything that smacks as being
profligate or not environmentally friendly.

A comeback for turbans

Recycled goods offer nifty gift options and the store
Len.T.Juela is a good stop over for vintage clothing and accessories. Among the items that caught our attention were colorful turbans (prices range from $12 to $20)
designed by Tahira for her brand Designs LalaLala
and a black vintage leather bag with lucite handles ($35) propped on a back shelf of this delightful store off Loiza St. (come next February, Len.T.Juela is moving to a nearby larger space directly on Loiza St.).

The vintage jewelry section -- notice the way shop owner Valeria Bosch uses a lampshade too show off her selection of decorative pins -- also includes contemporary designs like the pretty hand painted shrink plastic pins, earrings and necklaces handmade 
by London artist Victorija featuring famous personalities like Coco
Chanel and Marilyn Monroe and cute animals, like cats and panda bears.

Handmade brooches by London artist Victorija

You can play with blocks at any age.

At Love Is You And Me (The Concept Store) on Parque St., owner Carolina Leonidas has an unerring knack for finding imaginative products that beguile the senses of sight and touch, like the Balancing (wooden) Blocks produced by the New York-based contemporary design studio of Fort Standard. These blocks ($52) come in white or in colors and are sure to turn any adult or child into an architect or sculptor. Puzzlehead, a ($45) toy by artist Richard McGuire, looks like great fun to play, and CubeBot ($20; $30) is an intriguing puzzle that starts off as a cube and ends with  "a playful personality."

Artist Richard McGuire's Puzzlehead
started out as a doodle.

Len.T.Juela #1820 Jefferson St.
Telephone: 787. 408. 7111   11 am to 6 pm

Love Is You And Me #110 Parque St.
Telephone: 787. 503. 3003   Tue-Sat 11 am to 7 pm

Artwork by Lorraine Blasor

Life begets life.
Energy creates energy.
It is by spending oneself
that one becomes rich.
Sarah Bernhardt

A SIMPLE TIP: A chopping block is probably one of the most
used items in a kitchen and the best way to disinfect it is simply
to use a lemon.

Rub the lemon across the block and let it sit for 10 minutes,
then wipe.

Photography by Juliette Blasor

And at night I love to listen to the stars.
It is like five hundred million
little bells.

"The Little Prince"
Antoine de Saint Exupery

Photography by Juliette Blasor

"You give but little when you give
of your possessions.
It is when you give of yourself
that you truly give."

Kahlil Gibran

©2013 Lorraine Blasor All Rights Reserved

Ï

I postpone death by living, by suffering
by error, by risking, by giving, by losing.

Anaïs Nin

© Denise Blasor 

BUY EVERYTHING DAYS


It's 35 days till Christmas
and the insanity is well
underway.                                                  

Vintage Thansgiving Greeting
from thegraphicsfairy.com

The insanity being the orgy
of buying that retailers in
general seek to ignite at this
time of year through a tsunami of ads
unleashed media wide: print,
tv, radio, the internet.

Every year the barrage of
ads seems to kick off earlier
and earlier, and the siren
call has but a single theme:
buy, Buy, BUY!
It's as if people had not
bought anything over the
previous 11 months,
and they needed to be
persuaded to experience
this great, incredible,
fantastic, unique,
marvelous opportunity to fill up their homes with all manner of merchandise, because this is after all Christmas and Christmas
is all about buying, isn't it?

The annual buying frenzy used to officially begin on the Friday
following Thanksgiving but this year retailers have decided
to jumpstart things a bit earlier by opening for business on
Thanksgiving itself.

Is nothing to be held sacred anymore? Must commerce trump
the very few remaining occasions to reunite with families and
friends in celebration of the communal bonds that help to hold
our stressful and fractured lives together?

These all too brief occasions are the few times in the year when
we can take a meaningful pause in our frenetic, hectic lives
and momentarily forget the rampant consumerism that seems to
define our lives.

These are times to treasure and enjoy the presence of family
members: talk to them, share stories, listen, partake, but also
notice our surroundings, take pleasure in the traditional
foods that complement the season, perhaps even shut down
Facebook and Twitter and unnecessary distractions that keep
us from concentrating on the people around us, the people we
love.

In the end, do we really need to go to a mall on Thanksgiving
Day to buy Christmas presents?

Photography by Denise Blasor

"The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence."

Marianne Moore 

BUY NOTHING DAY at La Chiwinha

© La Chiwinha

As thousands of consumers hit the malls on Nov. 29,
Black Friday, consider participating in the counterrevolution:
Buy Nothing Day.

This international protest against unfettered consumerism kicked
off in Canada in 1992 and has spread to more than 65 countries.
The idea behind it, according to its supporters, is "not to change
habits for one day but to make a lasting lifestyle commitment to
consume less and produce less waste."

In response to this call for responsible consumerism, La Chiwinha
invites consumers to participate in a barter event to be held at the
store on Nov. 29. The activity begins at 2 p.m. and runs through
5 p.m.

"Bring food, toys, wisdom, clothing, accessories, services and
art to barter or exchange freely with other participants," reads
the store's invitation. Other objects that you might consider
bringing are books, tools, jewelry, and homemade goods.

La Chiwinha is a popular store that sells a wide range of
goods at fair trade prices, including organic foodstuffs,
accessories, beauty and home products. It also runs a small
café that serves delicious lunches and desserts made by some
of San Juan's top chefs.

In keeping with the spirit of the day, the store will not be
selling anything on Nov. 29; instead, it will barter 6 oz and
12 oz mugs for new and different mugs that you might
bring along.

Consumers who plan to attend should keep some of these
rules in mind: bring things that you no longer use but that are
still in good condition; no money will be exchanged; you can
barter as many items as you want.

Last but not least the owners of the store offered this advice:
"Take this opportunity to meet new people and of course….
have a good time."

LA CHIWINHA
1054 Calle González, Rio Piedras
787.925.0707

Photography by Denise Blasor

If you ask me what I came to do in this world,
I, an artist, will answer you:
I am here to live out loud.

Emile Zola

Copyright © 2013 by Lorraine Blasor All Rights Reserved ☀

CHRISTMAS 2010: The Flipside of Buying

Artwork by Lorraine Blasor

MAKE SOMETHING CHRISTMAS

Buy Nothing Day is a revolutionary concept.

Launched in September 1992 by Vancouver artist Ted Dave, it is "a day for society to examine the issue of over consumption." The date was subsequently changed to the Friday after American Thanksgiving, also known as Black Friday for being one of the heaviest shopping days in the U.S., and to Saturday, for the international celebration.

Some brave souls are now proposing to up the ante with Buy Nothing Christmas. This is even more subversive for it goes against the grain of this most popular and festive occasion, a holiday most Americans grow up to cherish because it is part of their childhood memories and the nation's collective social history.

Clearly, however, consumerism has reached a dangerous peak of feverishness as exemplified a couple of years ago by the the distressing news of hordes of buyers stampeding through the doors of a Wal-Mart store in order to be the first ones to grab items for sale at big markdowns on Black Friday. The outcome: one person dead and at least three patrons injured. When did shopping become this brutal?

It would be disingenuous to believe that appeals to "unshop" can turn the tide of mass consumerism that is sweeping the entire globe and is now coming up against the harsh realities of a planet in serious trouble. According to the World Wildlife Fund, our Ecological Footprint, i.e. our use of the planet's resources, "now exceeds the Earth's ability to produce renewable resources and absorb CO2…We now use the resources of 1.5 Earths every year….By the late 2030s humanity will need the capacity of two Earths." 

Going back to Buy Nothing Christmas. Perhaps a different approach is in order. Instead of Buy Nothing, how about its flip side: Make Something Christmas. In other words, make gifts yourself instead of buying them.

If your talent is cooking, bake cookies or cakes or, if you are really good in the kitchen, consider giving your friends a master class on how to prepare a few special dishes. If you have a knack for carpentry, offer to build a bookshelf or fix something broken down. Or maybe your friends are a couple with children. Your gift: an offer to babysit the kids so mom and dad can enjoy a night out on the town. 

There are so many things one can do or make that fit the description of a fine gift, things that don't require money, only a little spare time and goodwill. Make Something Christmas seems like a good way to celebrate Christmas which, of course, should essentially be a celebration of love, family and friends.

"I do not know what I want, and perhaps I shall never know, but my only wish from every star will always be another star." Truman Capote

A SIMPLE TIP When doctors prescribe more than one medicine, ask them to write a prescription for each one on separate forms instead of listing them all on a single form. This way, in the event you are unable to fill the prescription in its entirety at one pharmacy (either because it does not carry the medicine or lacks the generic or brand-name equivalent ), you can take the separate prescription for the missing medicine to another pharmacy. Pharmacies only accept original prescriptions, never copies.

Photograph by Denise Blasor

"I only owned enough to half fill a suitcase." Charles Bukowski (from his novel "Factotum")