Parking!

You can park for free at the old NuMinit Car Wash that's halfway down the block from our shop! Just tell the lot attendents, should they happen to be there, that you're shopping at World Next Door. They'll let up to 2 World Next Door customer vehicles park free at a time.

Because of the extra cost we've incurred to rent these spaces, we do ask that out of respect for us and for the Car Wash that you please pay their normal fee if you end up doing something other than shopping at World Next Door -- for instance, if you browse the shop for 3 minutes, and then go out to eat for 2 hours, it's best to go ahead and pay the $5 they ask to park there.

The NuMinit Car Wash is located on the 100 block of Market Street, in between our shop and Cheeburger Cheeburger. It's directly across the street from TGI Friday's.

Mero Jiwan Nepal Ma

Updates from E-Wray!

She's got a blog. Go to it, and read it, and try not to get too jealous that YOU'RE not volunteering in rural Nepal until July 2009.

http://ewray123.blogspot.com/

Here's a picture. Guess which person is named "Elizabeth."

And here she is with her host family:

We almost feel like we know a celebrity. Or, it's kind of like the feeling you get when you're into this really obscure band, and all of a sudden the band breaks into huge popularity, and then you can say, "I listened to them BEFORE they were cool," as if it somehow makes you cooler by association. We can say, "That's right, E-Wray worked part time with us over the summer as she was raising support to go to Nepal. In your face."

Not that E-Wray is the kind of person who would wish to be made much of. But we want to direct you, loyal blog readers, to her, so that she can direct you to the issues she's confronting in rural Nepal, which are a much bigger deal than any individual person, she or I or you or anyone.

As we wrote in our last email newsletter, E-Wray will be teaching English, health, life skills, hygiene, environmental sustainability, and more.

24:Redemption (yes, I watched TV)

I should begin with a confession: I am addicted to the TV show "24." Usually I resist such widely popular cultural phenomena (I still haven't read a Harry Potter book), but Jency had season 6 of 24 sent to us in our Netflix, and I found myself hooked from the first episode. We've since gone through seasons 1-3 on DVD.

Shocking, I know. But we've found it to be a nice escape from the stresses of day-to-day life. It's got lots of action, lots of political drama, and, believe it or not, lots of great thought-provoking ethical dilemmas. Plus each episode ends with a cliffhanger, and so you find yourself running to Blockbuster at 10:00 PM and spending five bucks that you didn't really need to spend, just so you can go to bed knowing how that little subplot gets resolved.

But enough justifying my addiction. Let's come to the point.

Last night Fox broadcast a 2-hour special "prequel" to the forthcoming 7th season (which will start in January of 2009). A couple years have passed since the end of the last season due to the Hollywood writers' strike, so you can imagine my excitement.

And, knowing that 24 is a popular entertainment program on a major media network, you can imagine my surprise when I saw that the episode is set in Africa (in a fictitious nation called Sangala), and that a central theme is the issue of child soldiers.

And you can imagine my further surprise when I found that the commercial breaks, mainly populated by expectable corporate giants like Hyundai and Sprint, were peppered with spots from Human Rights Watch and the UN showing statistics on things like child soldiers and malaria in Africa. Kiefer Sutherland, star and producer of 24, had an ad personally beseeching viewers to support anti-malarial measures like mosquito nets.

Could mainstream entertainment media have turned a corner?

Who knows. But it's good to see another example of Hollywood addressing important humanitarian crises that have been languishing unnoticed for decades. Here's my open request to Fox executives (not that they'll ever see this blog): partner with existing NGOs doing development work in Africa in order to leverage the potential impact of your 24 fan base. If enough Americans begin to care about what happens outside US borders, we can make a significant difference in the lives of Africans.

And thank you, Fox, for allowing your most popular program to be used as a platform to raise awareness.

Don't Forget the Little Guy

Yesterday (11/14/08) the Wall Street Journal published a front-page article headlined "Wal-Mart Defies Retail Slowdown."

Here is an excerpt:

"On Thursday, after a week of bad news from retailers such as Best Buy Co. and Starbucks Corp., Wal-Mart said earnings for the third quarter rose 9.8% while sales rose 7.5%. At stores open at least a year, sales rose 3%, twice as much as a year before, and far better than nearly every other U.S. retailer.
Behind the figures is a confluence of trends fueled by the downturn. As strapped consumers look for cheaper goods, and weaker retailers go out of business, Wal-Mart is using its unmatched economies of scale to drive down prices, undercut competitors and squeeze costs out of suppliers ever more dependent on the Bentonville, Ark., behemoth.
Indeed, the downturn is increasing Wal-Marts clout just as its dominance was being threatened by diminishing returns on its big-box expansion formula, more-selective consumers and a growing field of rivals. The company's size is now turning to its advantage: for every $1 spent in the last year on goods other than cars in the U.S., 8.2 cents went to a cashier at a Wal-Mart store or a Sam's Club, the company's membership warehouse chain, according to Michael Niemira, chief economist at the International Council of Shopping Centers."

This is not a post to complain about Wal-Mart, but rather one to encourage you reading this to try your best to continue supporting local businesses as we all try to navigate the uncertain economic future.

As consumers we have a tremendous amount of choice when deciding where to shop. How we make that decision as a society has a big impact on how our lives and cities look. I hope we all decide to enrich our lives and cities by directing our spending to local enterprise at a level sufficient to sustain local businesses through the current economic slump. Although there is a moderate 'premium' to buying local, I'm certain that, in the long run, the cost to our community of sustaining and maintaining a given local business is much, much lower than allowing it to fail and eventually start over.