The Dispatch - Home

Urban Farming = Extra Income

2010-12-07T18:50:00Z

By Colleen Rothe

I’m watching the greenery flourish all around my neighborhood, my family members’ neighborhoods, next to the industrial complexes, every possible spot where some agriculture can be plopped in – it’s turning into impromptu farmland every where.

Considering that so much of our farmland has been lost in the last generation to strip malls and McMansion subdivisions, this trend can make a heart leap with delight.

Considering the rise in the need for fresh fruits and vegetables in our lives that aren’t covered in pesticides, this ups the ante for commercial organic farmers – they have grassroots competition now. The law of supply and demand gets kicked into high gear and, at least in my community, the price of organics is starting to come down.

I admit being tempted by this urban farming trend and without much nudging took the plunge as well.

Our new home was devoid of agriculture, save some heirloom potato plants that had been choked by invasive weeds, and a few fruit trees that are also in need of maintenance and tender loving care. But now it has not only the potatoes, but also strawberries, herbs, blueberry bush and a mini orchard well on its way to being healthy again. Soon to come, we’ll be planting our own grapes for making wine as well as hops for beer. We’re also looking at next spring to put in a more traditional vegetable garden and working up that space now. We’d also like to get some chickens for eggs – but that’s down the road.

What also is down the road is that the excesses from our harvests can turn into a little cash. You may want to consider the same. After you’ve fed your own family and bestowed little baskets of berries, or a bundle of squashes and tomatoes on your neighbors – you can look to generating a little urban farmer economy.

Partnering with another urban farming friend or neighbor can make a booth at a flea market or farmer’s market (normally a booth rental isn’t more than $20, which can easily be made back), or you can pitch up a road-side stand on a road leading to a “family destination.” Just be sure to know what the rules are in the city or county where you are at before you put up your “Fresh Vegetables” sign.

At our roadside vegetable stand, we even let the kids make lemonade and baked goods to sell. They earned $35 – which seemed like a gold mine to them and they weren’t bored in the least. Nor did they deter customers that were thrilled to see youth doing something productive. What I’m saying is you can make it a family affair.

Love this idea, but aren’t prepared yet? Take advantage of fruit trees that your neighbors don’t harvest. Ask them to pick the cherries, peaches, apples, plums, etc. Offer to divvy up some of the profit to them. One older gentleman on our block was just happy that the items won’t go to waste. Don’t forget that there is also foraging that can be done. The fall mushroom season is coming up and in other varieties in the spring. Just hide your location of the morels and Chanterelles – otherwise your “mushroom farm” might be harvested before you get there.

Learn to can your fruits and vegetables. Make canned tomato and spaghetti sauces, even pickle the cucumbers. Canned homemade Salsa is a big favorite, always. Then you can sell your wares during the Christmas Craft fair time frame. Canned produce is a great gift and people pay a good price to obtain. I contend they tell little fibs that they did it themselves. But the cash is in your wallet, who cares what they say?

Regardless, your property can produce money for you – more than just a tax deduction. I’ll keep you posted as we move into the urban brewer and winemaker. What urban farming can you do to line your pockets with a little more cash?

Condo Fever

2010-11-04T18:16:00Z

By Gene Ayres,
Your Consumer Curmudgeon

One of my all-time favorite mystery writers, and an acknowledged inspiration for my own later mystery writing, was the late John D. MacDonald, whose Florida-based Travis McGee series featured a laid back tough guy with a tender heart who lived on a houseboat and fought to the end for truth, justice, and the American Way. One of my favorite of MacDonald's novels, however, was no mystery at all, but a turbid, prescient thriller titled Condominium, published in 1977.

This book, while fiction, is, like so much fiction, much closer to the truth about how things are than you'll get watching, say, Fox News, or reading the Wall Street Journal. It's about a group of people foolish enough to have bought into a shiny-looking new condominium (itself a new concept at the time) facing a sparkly white Florida beach on the Gulf of Mexico, with a hurricane bearing down at, well, hurricane speed. Those residents foolish enough to stay in place (as so many did in Galveston, for example, in 1909) are doomed: not so much because the corrupt local government is clueless about how to protect them, but because the crooks who built the condos cut every corner they could, with soon-to-be lethal results.

In this novel, MacDonald brilliantly details just the way developers and their political enablers have been scamming homebuyers since, well, there were developers. Having building inspectors, contractors, and so on, in their back pockets doesn't hurt either, of course.

Welcome to the post-bubble world of condominiums 2010, when developers can hardly give them away any more, and for very good reason: they are literally mockups passing for buildings, as is surfacing in more and more cases throughout the country, with potentially lethal results such as John D. MacDonald only began to imagine. True, we won't have to worry too much about hurricanes for a while here in the Northwest, at least not until global warming really gets going. But how about, um, earthquakes, or the occasional rainfall (hello?), not to mention efficiency and energy concerns?

Granted there are always honorable and conscientious builders (look for the Energy Star rating on the whole building, for the good ones). But in general, shoddy construction is the name of the game in the development business. And if this isn't bad enough, more recently there has been an even more egregious version spreading throughout the country in the form of so-called “condominium conversions.” These are cheaply built apartment houses given a new coat of paint and a few bits of building bling, and resold as “new” condos. The biggest offenders in this scheme, not surprisingly, have been large corporations based in faraway cities that swoop into town, sweep up crumbling rental properties, wave a quick cosmetic wand over them, sell them to unsuspecting buyers with splashy marketing, then skip town.

The nightmares for unsuspecting buyers resulting from falling for this kind of scam are monumental, and never-ending. Many buyers and owners associations have resorted to the courts to try to get restitution, to little avail. Large corporations have deep pockets—not for making repairs or amends, but for making sure your case is tied up in court for years, even decades, and while they are penurious to the extreme about making repairs or amends, they are more than happy to spend millions on top lawyers to keep you from getting the thousands you'll need to fix the pile of junk they sold you disguised as a home.

If you have had the misfortune of buying into a condominium, my sympathies. If you are considering doing so, may I recommend that, whatever you are being told, turn heel and run: to the nearest rental office. Rentals are now, without question, the way to go. Save that down payment for something you really need, like future medical care! But if you decide to take the plunge anyway, given the now temptingly low prices, good luck. You'll need it. That and a good credit line for all those dues increases, assessments, and legal fees you'll be facing.

Gene Ayres is a career writer, author and freelance journalist. His newest book is “Inside the New China: an Ethnographic Memoir.” He can also be found at: www.geneayres.org.

Flu Vaccine: A Waste All Around

2010-10-28T18:11:00Z

By Colleen Rothe

Wastefulness is not cheap. Especially when you’re an American taxpayer.

On July 9 the government let everyone know that $260 million dollars of flu vaccine was expiring and would have to be “trashed.” Forty million doses of flu vaccine were just chucked into a super red medical waste bin outside the Center for Disease Control (alright that last bit is fictitious, but it was disposed of – incineration according to the USDA).

How in the world do we find ourselves with 40 million doses of vaccine that no one wants? Although this year has seen the highest rate of waste in the seasonal flu vaccines, it’s a repeating thing. And when our government purchases vaccine for the purpose of protecting its population and it gets thrown out, guess who foots the bill ultimately? You’re right: you and me.

The reason for the waste is because many – including professional and highly regarded medical personnel – believe it’s ineffective. So how did we get here?

Let’s go back to April last year, when the swine flu scare was hitting teenagers particularly hard. As a parent of one of those teenagers, I know how distressing it was. My then, 13-year-old son had it and was sick for just over two weeks. But it seriously was just a bad cold-flu combination. Nothing life threatening.

For the CDC, they determined that it was difficult to predict how deadly the swine flu might be or how easily it might spread. Federal health officials pushed five vaccine manufacturers to produce a vaccine as quickly as possible and a lot of it. The high quantity, government officials explain, is because many experts (the same ones now that are really shrugging their shoulders as to the vaccine’s effectiveness) thought most people would need two doses for it to work.

The government placed three orders last year for a combined total of nearly 200 million doses – an unprecedented amount and almost double the amount of vaccine produced in recent years for seasonal flu. About 162 million doses were meant for the general public. Another 36 million included doses for the military and other countries.

But demand never took off, for several reasons:

-Swine flu turned out not to be as deadly as was first feared. About 12,000 deaths have been attributed to it – or roughly only one-third of the estimated annual deaths from seasonal flu.

-Tests of the vaccine soon showed only one dose was enough to protect most people.

-Much of the vaccine was not ready until late 2009, after the largest wave of swine flu illnesses passed.

-People were losing their health benefits due to job loss and demand for the flu vaccine also went down. Hard to worry about if you’re vaccinated when you need to figure out how to put food on the table.

So back in October and November 2009, people waited in lines like it was an amusement park roller coaster to receive a swine flu vaccination. By the New Year, local health departments were trying gimmicks to get anyone at all to come in for a shot. In fact, here in Western Washington, a highly attended air show had a booth where folks could get FREE flu shots.

The announcement on July 9 wasn’t a wow-we-didn’t-realize-it moment for the American government. Officials have known for months that they were looking at a huge surplus. According to an Associated Press calculation based on federal purchasing information, the dollar value of the 40 million expired doses is about $261 million. The government didn't release an official figure, but many experts in the vaccine business believe the AP estimate was nearly correct.

America wasn’t the only one duped by the initial ferocity of the swine flu. Europe also has found themselves with millions of unused doses; some pundits have attacked the World Health Organization, which declared swine flu a global epidemic, or pandemic. When you investigate the advisers that provide counsel to the WHO, you find links back to the pharmaceutical industry all over the place. As a taxpayer, are you ticked yet?

The government, especially after the Sept. 11 attacks and Hurricane Katrina, seem really poised to over respond to any and all public threats. In such a risk-adverse environment, you will constantly have high anxiety raised over possible threats – not just during potential pandemics like the swine flu, but any type of widespread public threat. It’s easy to see why money might be wasted. But can the waste be minimized? That’s the $260 million question.

But when it comes to the flu, the numbers are against such a $260 million over run. The death toll from influenza epidemics is much smaller than the number killed annually by chronic illnesses like heart disease, cancer, stroke and diabetes. Couple that with most doctors not really thinking that flu vaccines are necessary unless you are an “at-risk” patient, meaning you already have a long-term condition or are in a demographic highly effected (like for swine flu it was teenagers and young adults).

I interviewed several physicians – they all think that a flu shot is highly overrated and wasteful. None of them wanted to be quoted, because such opinions are frowned upon by government-supported medical communities. However, these medical professionals said they would like to see such medical energies put into other areas, like mental health or universal healthcare (both those suggestions were their words, not mine). The issue with the ineffectiveness comes from the fact that by the time the vaccine is produced, the strain of the virus has mutated and the vaccine for say 2008 seasonal flu is no longer effective come January 2009. Rinse. Repeat.

Additionally, there are so many side effects, especially with doses produced in an accelerated manner. Anyone with severe allergies to chicken eggs or who have already had other reactions to vaccines is asked not to take the vaccine. But the development of Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS), an auto-immune disorder that affects the nervous system and can be fatal, by those who have had the flu shot has been very high with seasonal flu vaccines in particular. The swine flu vaccine isn’t an exception.

Why such a high rate of side-effects? Try to find out what’s in a vaccine; it’s not an easy thing. But most include this, among other ingredients: egg proteins, including avian contaminant viruses, gelatin, polysorbate 80, formaldehyde (a known carcinogen), detergent (including Triton X100), sucrose, resin, gentamycin, and mercury. I encourage readers to watch this for a humorous view on this vaccine that we spend millions on in taxpayers’ money annually:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcT7CvACs

So what about next year? This upcoming flu vaccination campaign will see the swine flu vaccine combined with two seasonal strains into one single dose, according to the USDA. The federal government has ordered 170 million doses. Or about $1.5 billion dollars. Once again, when you don’t like how your federal tax dollars are being spent – the people holding the purse strings should hear our voices. Not sure who you need to talk to? Look here: http://www.congress.org/

Between the wastes of money, it’s ineffectiveness, the potential side effects, etc; I think I might be with Lewis Black and sticking to Nyquil:

http://comedians.jokes.com/lewis-black/videos/lewis-black---flu-shots /

How about you? Do you think the flu vaccine is worth the tax money?

Green Tea is Golden

2010-10-27T23:01:00Z

By Gene Ayres,
Your Consumer Curmudgeon

Now that the sun is out, occasionally, and you have time on your hands, and your health to consider, when better to sit out in the shade and sip a nice cold iced tea? Better yet, make that green tea. OK, so it may not have that edge that black tea gives you. So what? What better time to be mellow, knowing you’re savoring one of nature's finest products? The secret ingredient that makes green tea so great is a powerful nutrient called epigallocatechin gallate, or EGCG. If an excitingly difficult to pronounce acronym like EGCG isn't enough, here are ten more reasons to drink this stuff, courtesy of healthy cooking guru Michelle Schoffro:

Green tea beats liposuction any day. That cool egg stuff actually helps your body to burn away fat. Even while resting in the shade!

Better yet, green tea especially goes after belly fat. Researchers at Tufts University found that EGCG triggers fat-burning mechanisms in the genes of the abdomen. This can increase weight loss by up to 77 percent!
Green tea helps maintain stable energy levels by balancing your blood sugar. It does so by enhancing the capability of insulin to prevent rapid changes in blood sugar leading to fatigue, irritability, and cravings for unhealthy foods.
Green tea may even help prevent, or treat lung cancer. An April 2010 study in Cancer Prevention Research, found that EGCG will actually suppress lung cancer cell growth.
This tasty miracle drug can also help fight or inhibit cancers of the colon.
Closer to home for this writer, EGCG also works to stop prostate cancer in its tracks. In a March 2010 study in Cancer Science, EGCG was found to actually cause prostate cancer cells to commit suicide! If only this worked on—never mind.
Moving on to yet more miracles, EGCG can help prevent aging from skin damage and wrinkles. Sure beats Botox. And it is 200 times more powerful than vitamin E at destroying skin-damaging free radicals. Free radicals, you may recall, can interact with healthy cells in the body to cause damage, so in this case, less is definitely better.
But wait! There's more: EGCG also contains another potent antioxidant that also kills free radicals, in case any got away the first time. So it works on a lot more than just skin cells. Free radicals are those little pests that cause so many chronic illnesses such as arthritis, diabetes, and cancer.
If that isn't enough for you, hey, it even tastes good, without having to be pumped full of sugar and other crap like so many so-called medicines. If you think it's too mild for your buzzing taste buds, there are many ways to drink this beverage. Such as iced, as I mentioned, or hot, in the early morning or evening. It's also good, like most teas, with lemon, and maybe a spot of honey.
And finally, no worries. It has way less caffeine than coffee or black tea.

Michelle Schoffro Cook, RNCP, ROHP, DAc, DNM, is a best-selling and six-time book author and doctor of natural medicine, whose works include: The Life Force Diet, The Ultimate pH Solution, and The 4-Week Ultimate Body Detox Plan. Learn more at: www.TheLifeForceDiet.com.

Gene Ayres is a career writer, author and freelance journalist. His newest book is “Inside the New China: an Ethnographic Memoir.” He can also be found at: www.geneayres.org.

A Bazillion Uses for Baking Soda

2010-10-25T17:29:00Z

By Gene Ayres,
Your Consumer Curmudgeon

I know, I know. By posting another positive review you're going to think I'm going soft, that I've run out of things to grouse about. Wrong. There are never enough problems to complain about in the consumer world, given we must now purchase pretty much everything there is that keeps us alive in our world except the air and water, and the corporate powers are working, as we speak, on how to corner the market for those as well.

Meanwhile, on this day of fizzes and fizzles, here's something to truly celebrate: a chemical that is practically limitless in its uses and value, and it's dirt cheap (at least so far). It's called 'baking soda' and you may have heard of it. In fact, if you don't already have a box or three laying around I'd be very surprised, because we all know it's a great deodorant for the fridge and also very useful for baking cakes, muffins, and pretty much everything else we bake, as well as cleaning toilets.

Baking soda, or sodium bicarbonate, is a miracle substance that helps regulate the pH—balance not only in your body, but also in numerous other chemical reactions that affect us daily. By regulating the pH it in effect makes sure that whatever it interacts with will be neither too acidic nor too alkaline. In other words, it keeps things balanced, which is never a bad thing. It also has the ability of preventing the pH from changing, a process called 'buffering,' or acting as a buffer, thus serving as a neutralizer. That's how it neutralizes bad smells, keeps baking powder from taking over the world, makes cool fuzz out of vinegar that also cleans your pipes, boosts detergents, and so on.

Courtesy of Arm&Hammer.com and fellow blogger Melissa Breyer (Care2) here is a list of 51 wonderful uses for baking soda:

Personal Care

Make Toothpaste A paste made from baking soda and a 3 percent hydrogen peroxide solution can be used as an alternative to commercial non-fluoride toothpastes. (Or here’s a formula for a minty version.) You can also just dip your toothbrush with toothpaste into baking soda for an extra boost.
Freshen Your Mouth Put one teaspoon in half a glass of water, swish, spit and rinse. Odors are neutralized, not just covered up.
Soak Oral Appliance Soak oral appliances, like retainers, mouthpieces, and dentures, in a solution of 2 teaspoons baking soda dissolved in a glass or small bowl of warm water. The baking soda loosens food particles and neutralizes odors to keep appliances fresh. You can also brush appliances clean using baking soda.
Use as a Facial Scrub and Body Exfoliant Give yourself an invigorating facial and body scrub. Make a paste of 3 parts baking soda to 1 part water. Rub in a gentle circular motion to exfoliate the skin. Rinse clean. This is gentle enough for daily use. (For a stronger exfoliant, try one of these great 5 Homemade Sugar Scrubs.)
Skip Harsh Deodorant Pat baking soda onto your underarms to neutralize body odor.
Use as an Antacid Baking soda is a safe and effective antacid to relieve heartburn, sour stomach and/or acid indigestion. Refer to baking soda package for instructions.
Treat Insect Bites & Itchy Skin For insect bites, make a paste out of baking soda and water, and apply as a salve onto affected skin. To ease the itch, shake some baking soda into your hand and rub it into damp skin after bath or shower. For specific tips on bee stings, see Bee Stings: Prevention and Treatment.
Make a Hand Cleanser and Softener Skip harsh soaps and gently scrub away ground-in dirt and neutralize odors on hands with a paste of 3 parts baking soda to 1 part water, or 3 parts baking soda to gentle liquid hand soap. Then rinse clean. You can try this honey and cornmeal scrub for hands too.
Help Your Hair Vinegar is amazing for your hair, but baking soda has its place in the shower too. Sprinkle a small amount of baking soda into your palm along with your favorite shampoo. Shampoo as usual and rinse thoroughly–baking soda helps remove the residue that styling products leave behind so your hair is cleaner and more manageable.
Clean Brushes and Combs For lustrous hair with more shine, keep brushes and combs clean. Remove natural oil build-up and hair product residue by soaking combs and brushes in a solution of 1 teaspoon of baking soda in a small basin of warm water. Rinse and allow to dry.
Make a Bath Soak Add 1/2 cup of baking soda to your bath to neutralize acids on the skin and help wash away oil and perspiration, it also makes your skin feel very soft. Epsom salts are pretty miraculous for the bath too, read about the health benefits of Epsom salt baths.
Soothe Your Feet Dissolve 3 tablespoons of baking soda in a tub of warm water and soak feet. Gently scrub. You can also make a spa soak for your feet.

Cleaning

Make a Surface Soft Scrub For safe, effective cleaning of bathroom tubs, tile and sinks–even fiberglass and glossy tiles–sprinkle baking soda lightly on a clean damp sponge and scrub as usual. Rinse thoroughly and wipe dry. For extra cleaning power, make a paste with baking soda, course salt and liquid dish soap—let it sit then scour off.
Hand Wash Dishes, Pots & Pans Add 2 heaping tablespoons baking soda (along with your regular dish detergent) to the dishwater to help cut grease and foods left on dishes, pots and pans. For cooked-on foods, let them soak in the baking soda and detergent with water first, then use dry baking soda on a clean damp sponge or cloth as a scratchless scouring powder. Using a dishwasher? Try these energy saving tips.
Freshen Sponges Soak stale-smelling sponges in a strong baking soda solution to get rid of the mess (4 tablespoons of baking soda dissolved in 1 quart of warm water). For more thorough disinfecting, use the microwave.
Clean the Microwave Baking soda on a clean damp sponge cleans gently inside and outside the microwave and never leaves a harsh chemical smell. Rinse well with water.
Polish Silver Flatware Use a baking soda paste made with 3 parts baking soda to 1 part water. Rub onto the silver with a clean cloth or sponge. Rinse thoroughly and dry for shining sterling and silver-plate serving pieces.
Clean Coffee and Tea Pots Remove coffee and tea stains and eliminate bitter off-tastes by washing mugs and coffee makers in a solution of 1/4 cup baking soda in 1 quart of warm water. For stubborn stains, try soaking overnight in the baking soda solution and detergent or scrubbing with baking soda on a clean damp sponge.
Clean the Oven Sprinkle baking soda onto the bottom of the oven. Spray with water to dampen the baking soda. Let sit overnight. In the morning, scrub, scoop the baking soda and grime out with a sponge, or vacuum, and rinse.
Clean Floors Remove dirt and grime (without unwanted scratch marks) from no wax and tile floors using 1/2 cup baking soda in a bucket of warm water–mop and rinse clean for a sparkling floor. For scuffmarks, use baking soda on a clean damp sponge, then rinse. Read Natural Floor Cleaning for more tips on avoiding toxic floor cleaners.
Clean Furniture You can make a homemade lemon furniture polish, or you can clean and remove marks (even crayon) from walls and painted furniture by applying baking soda to a damp sponge and rubbing lightly. Wipe off with a clean, dry cloth.
Clean Shower Curtains Clean and deodorize your vinyl shower curtain by sprinkling baking soda directly on a clean damp sponge or brush. Scrub the shower curtain and rinse clean. Hang it up to dry.
Boost Your Liquid Laundry Detergent Give your laundry a boost by adding ½ cup of baking soda to your laundry to make liquid detergent work harder. A better balance of pH in the wash gets clothes cleaner, fresher, and brighter.
Gently Clean Baby Clothes Baby skin requires the most gentle of cleansers, which are increasingly available, but odor and stain fighters are often harsh. For tough stains add 1/2 cup of baking soda to your liquid laundry detergent, or a 1/2 cup in the rinse cycle for deodorization.
Clean Cloth Diapers Dissolve ½ cup of baking soda in 2 quarts of water and soak diapers thoroughly.
Clean and Freshen Sports Gear Use a baking soda solution (4 tablespoons Baking soda in 1 quart warm water) to clean and deodorize smelly sports equipment. Sprinkle baking soda into golf bags and gym bags to deodorize, clean golf irons (without scratching them!) with a baking soda paste (3 parts Baking soda to 1 part water) and a brush. Rinse thoroughly.
Remove Oil and Grease Stains Use Baking soda to clean up light-duty oil and grease spills on your garage floor or in your driveway. Sprinkle baking soda on the spot and scrub with a wet brush.
Clean Batteries Baking soda can be used to neutralize battery acid corrosion on cars, mowers, etc. because it's a mild alkali. Be sure to disconnect the battery terminals before cleaning. Make a paste of 3 parts baking soda to 1 part water; apply with a damp cloth to scrub corrosion from the battery terminal. After cleaning and re-connecting the terminals, wipe them with petroleum jelly to prevent future corrosion. Please be careful when working around a battery–they contain a strong acid.
Clean Cars Use baking soda to clean your car lights, chrome, windows, tires, vinyl seats and floor mats without worrying about unwanted scratch marks. Use a baking soda solution of 1/4 cup baking soda in 1 quart of warm water. Apply with a sponge or soft cloth to remove road grime, tree sap, bugs, and tar. For stubborn stains use baking soda sprinkled on a damp sponge or soft brush. Here’s how Sustainable Dave washes his car.

Deodorizing

Deodorize Your Refrigerator Place an open box in the back of the fridge to neutralize odors.
Deodorize the Cutting Board Sprinkle the cutting board with baking soda, scrub, and rinse. For how to more thoroughly clean your cutting board, see How To Clean Your Cutting Boards.
Deodorize Trashcans Sprinkle baking soda on the bottom of your trashcan to keep stinky trash smells at bay.
Deodorize Recyclables Sprinkle baking soda on top as you add to the container. Also, clean your recyclable container periodically by sprinkling baking soda on a damp sponge. Wipe clean and rinse. Learn about how to recycle everything.
Deodorize Drains To deodorize your sink and tub drains, and keep lingering odors from resurfacing, pour 1/2 cup of baking soda down the drain while running warm tap water–it will neutralize both acid and basic odors for a fresh drain. (This a good way to dispose of baking soda that is being retired from your refrigerator.) Do you know what you’re not supposed to put down your drains?
Deodorize and Clean Dishwashers Use Baking soda to deodorize before you run the dishwasher and then as a gentle cleanser in the wash cycle.
Deodorize Garbage Disposals To deodorize your disposal, and keep lingering odors from resurfacing, pour baking soda down the drain while running warm tap water. Baking Soda will neutralize both acid and basic odors for a fresh drain.
Deodorize Lunch Boxes Between uses, place a spill-proof box of baking soda in everyone’s lunch box to absorb lingering odors. Read bout safe lunch boxes here.
Remove Odor From Carpets Liberally sprinkle baking soda on the carpet. Let set overnight, or as long as possible (the longer it sets the better it works). Sweep up the larger amounts of baking soda, and vacuum up the rest. (Note that your vacuum cleaner bag will get full and heavy.)
Remove Odor From Vacuum Cleaners By using the method above for carpets, you will also deodorize your vacuum cleaner.
Freshen Closets Place a box on the shelf to keep the closet smelling fresh.
Deodorizing Cars Odors settle into car upholstery and carpet, so each time you step in and sit down, they are released into the air all over again. Eliminate these odors by sprinkling baking soda directly on fabric car seats and carpets. Wait 15 minutes (or longer for strong odors) and vacuum up the baking soda.
Deodorize the Cat Box Cover the bottom of the pan with baking soda, and then fill as usual with litter. To freshen between changes, sprinkle baking soda on top of the litter after a thorough cleaning. You can also use green tea for this purpose!
Deodorize Pet Bedding Eliminate odors from your pets bedding by sprinkling liberally with baking soda, wait 15 minutes (or longer for stronger odors), then vacuum up.
Deodorize Sneakers Keep odors from spreading in smelly sneakers by shaking baking soda into them when not in use. Shake out before wearing. When they’re no longer wearable, make sure to donate your old sneakers.
Freshen Linens Add 1/2 cup of baking soda to the rinse cycle for fresher sheets and towels. You can also make homemade lavender linen water with this formula.
Deodorize Your Wash Gym clothes of other odoriferous clothing can be neutralized with a ½ cup of baking soda in the rinse cycle.
Freshen Stuffed Animals Keep favorite cuddly toys fresh with a dry shower of baking soda. Sprinkle baking soda on and let it sit for 15 minutes before brushing off.

Miscellaneous

Camping Cure-all Baking soda is a must-have for your next camping trip. It’s a dishwasher, pot scrubber, hand cleanser, deodorant, toothpaste, fire extinguisher and many other uses.
Extinguish Fires Baking soda can help in the initial handling of minor grease or electrical kitchen fires, because when baking soda is heated, it gives off carbon dioxide, which helps to smother the flames. For small cooking fires (frying pans, broilers, ovens, grills), turn off the gas or electricity if you can safely do so. Stand back and throw handfuls of baking soda at the base of the flame to help put out the fire–and call the Fire Department just to be safe. (And, you should have a fire extinguisher on hand anyway, here’s why.
Septic Care Regular use of baking soda in your drains can help keep your septic system flowing freely. 1 cup of baking soda per week will help maintain a favorable pH in your septic tank.
Fruit and Vegetable Scrub Baking soda is the food safe way to clean dirt and residue off fresh fruit and vegetables. Just sprinkle a little on a clean damp sponge, scrub and rinse. Here’s another way to clean your vegetables as well.

There. That should keep you busy for a while, and you'll still have change in your pocket.

Sources:

Care2.com

Arm and Hammer Inc.

Gene Ayres is a career writer, author and freelance journalist. His newest book is “Inside the New China: an Ethnographic Memoir.” He can also be found at: www.geneayres.org.

A new place to find coupons or find your customers

2010-10-21T19:52:00Z

By Colleen Rothe

If you live in Washington, Idaho, Nebraska, Illinois, Ohio, Tennessee, Pennsylvania or Alabama, there’s a new source for coupons. It should be coming in your mail box every six weeks. If for some reason it isn’t, you can go to myhometownvalues.com. Additionally, depending on your area, you can find coupons not available in the publication, but only online. Easily printed off and before you know it, you’ll have a 2 for 1 pizza deal.

Each and every time I get this magazine, I find huge deals and the best part about it is that nine times out of 10, I’m supporting a local business – not some multi-national corporation. Our family discovered new service providers in household repair, carpet cleaning, coffee shops, and a new favorite restaurant. The deals were better than what they advertised even in the local paper.

So I did some research to find out more about the folks that put out this coupon magazine. I found out they hire a lot of retirees – folks who have lived in the area of operation and know the businesses inside and out to help make the business owners target the folks they want and make the coupons worth a wait for the next edition by the residents or the area in which they publish.

I’ve never seen any Franklin Mint collector plates or other national stuff. This is strictly about the local businesses and economy. To confirm that I’ll never see that stuff, the folks who do the one for my neighborhood answered my call and said they only do local businesses – and they were pretty serious about it.

The part I like about it is that it comes in a magazine format as opposed to the loose Valpak envelope of coupons that is difficult, at times, to keep track of on a regular basis. I keep the Hometown Values magazine with the rest of my magazines for easy access. It can also be kept with the phonebook (read: ready when you want to order that pizza for delivery because you’re on deadline and don’t have time to cook dinner).

Bagging It

2010-09-09T21:55:00Z

By Gene Ayres,
Your Consumer Curmudgeon

Our latest Labor Day has come and gone, and instead of working, most of us go shopping these days. Which is harder and harder to do given that the one depends on the other. Labor Day is supposed to be a day for workers, and actually speaking, there aren’t all that many of those among us working any more, thanks to The Great Recession that shows no signs of going elsewhere (like hopefully Mars for a change). This situation has been a long time coming though, and instead of preparing for it by saving money for essentials like food and shelter, we spent it on ever larger, ever grander, costlier toys like Corvettes, game rooms, World of Warcraft, and the nearest casino. Funny thing: now that the piper is at the door, everybody goes into a panic and starts shouting, in vain: “Nobody’s home!”

However, for those of us who still insist on shopping (for example for food), we also need to amend our ways in that regard as well. Mexico City recently went bag-less, becoming the second major metropolis in the Western Hemisphere after San Francisco to pass new ordinances prohibiting businesses from giving out non-biodegradable plastic shopping bags. This will affect all stores, production facilities and service providers within the city.

This is good news, of course, since between 500 billion and one trillion plastic grocery bags are produced and used, then trashed worldwide every year. This comes to 1 million more bags out there every minute. And as recent news has revealed, these bags are the greatest form of litter on the globe’s oceans, according to the U.N. in a recent report noting that all this plastic in our seas is resulting in the estimated death of 100,000 whales, turtles, and other marine animals annually.

In the United State alone, 12 million barrels of oil are required to produce enough plastic bags to carry all that stuff we buy. Worse, 90 percent of the bags used in the United States are not recycled.

According to CNN, other cities and countries are taking action as well. According to World Watch, China has adopted a strict limit to reduce litter and eliminate 40 billion bags. Cities like Mumbai, India outlawed the bags years ago, and cities in Australia, Italy, South Africa and Taiwan have imposed bans or surcharges. Ireland reported cutting use of the bags by 90 percent after imposing a fee on each one.

Paper or Plastic?

We’ve heard this meaningless question so many times it’s probably imprinted alongside your least favorite commercial jingle (mine is Winston tastes good etc.). In the simplest terms, paper means cutting trees, then processing wood into pulp in heavily polluting paper mills that turn rivers into poison and make the air in their usually rural districts all but unbreatheable (but hey, it always blows someplace else, right?). Plastic is a byproduct of non-renewable petroleum, created by massive input of energy, usually produced by burning coal. Unfortunately, coal is the single heaviest air polluter in the world. So what we’re really talking about, given this choice, is which is the lesser of two really big evils.

Yes, paper and plastic can be recycled, but at very high cost, both economically and environmentally. According to the U.S. EPA, manufacturing new plastic from recycled plastic requires two-thirds of the energy used in virgin plastic manufacturing. And there are also so-called biodegradable plastic bags coming composed of biopolymers like polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) and Polylactide (PLA) which will eventually (as opposed to never) degrade in compost and, after a few eons, in a landfill. According to a study by Franklin and Associates, plastic bags create fewer airborne emissions and require less energy during the life cycle than paper bags per 10,000 equivalent uses — plastic creates 9.1 cubic pounds of solid waste vs. 45.8 cubic pounds for paper; plastic creates 17.9 pounds of atmospheric emissions vs. 64.2 pounds for paper; plastic creates 1.8 pounds of waterborne waste vs. 31.2 pounds for paper. Plastic bags also require less energy to produce. All of which means plastic is better (especially when recycled), if you don’t mind further enriching Big Oil at the expense of, say, Mother Nature.

But the obvious real solution, and one my own household is struggling to transition to since our local town banned plastic, is simply to get a couple of reusable canvas bags. I’ve seen another possibly even better solution: a wicker laundry basket. Just throw it in your hopefully energy-efficient transit vehicle, transfer it to a shopping cart, throw everything in there, check out (have the “bagger” replace it all back in the basket, still in the cart, instead of ten plastic bags, thus saving his or herself a ton of work as well), roll the basket back to your vehicle, and roll away home.

I wish I’d thought of that years ago.

Sources: TreeHugger Aug 21, 2010 Melissa Breyer, Care2 Aug. 21, 2010

Gene Ayres is a career writer, author and freelance journalist. His newest book is “Inside the New China: an Ethnographic Memoir.” He can also be found at: www.geneayres.org.

Washing Your Hair Can Be Bad For It

2010-08-11T23:06:00Z

By Colleen Rothe

Many of us wash our hair every day. That’s supposed to be good, right?

Wrong.

Many of the “best selling” shampoos have some of the harshest detergents in them that are actually very hard on our hair. Don’t assume that the shampoo manufacturers really have your best interest at heart. They are out to make a buck.

Do you even know what is in your shampoo? Do you know what all those three-name chemicals are?

Time to get schooled:

After water, the next major ingredient in most shampoos is the stuff that “cleans” our hair, the detergent. The rest of the ingredients are typically dyes, fragrances, moisturizers and an extract or two. But these are washed away by the detergent when you rinse the shampoo out of your hair—which it says to do. Read the directions for use with me: Wet hair, lather into hair, rinse, and repeat.

Here are the six most used detergents found in shampoos, with their level of strength, from mild to harsh.

TEA or MEA Laureth Sulfate – gentle TEA or MEA Lauryl Sulfate – gentle Sodium Laureth Sulfate – mild Sodium Lauryl Sulfate – slightly less abrasive Ammonium Laureth Sulfate – abrasive Ammonium Lauryl Sulfate – very abrasive

Take a stroll down the shampoo aisle at your favorite grocery, drug or discount store. You can bet that a majority of them will have Ammonium Lauryl Sulfate, the harshest of the detergents found in shampoos. Although all of these detergents are FDA approved, the gentler detergents are a better choice for your hair and scalp. The gentlest ones are found in baby and children’s shampoos. They are fine for use for adults, but frequently experts contend you should use a shampoo (like once or twice a week) that contains the stronger detergent of Sodium Laureth Sulfate.

So now that you know what’s in shampoo, you can determine for yourself if that $3 an ounce shampoo at the salon is really worth it—especially if it contains a harsh abrasive like Ammonium Lauryl Sulfate, which some contend leads to increased allergy sensitivity, eye and scalp irritation, and generally unhealthy hair. But manufacturers use it because it lathers well and is cheap to use. Strangely enough, a 1996 report by the Journal of the American College of Toxicology contended that even Sodium Lauryl Sulfate (the recommended once/twice a week detergent) has a “degenerative effect on the cell membranes because of its protein denaturing properties.” Additionally, it reported that “high levels of skin penetration may occur at even low-use concentration.” Most alarming is that this chemical, according to the Journal, “is used around the world in clinical studies as a skin irritant.”

Other researchers have found that when these harsher chemicals were used in shampoos, they were a “marker” for the use of other undesirable ingredients, including formaldehyde-containing preservatives, which have another set of nastiness in the realm of causing harm to skin, eyes and overall health.

Additionally, anything with these chemicals in it cannot be certified as all natural or organic. So don’t be fooled.

So what’s a health conscience and budget savvy consumer to do? Stick with the gentler ingredients whenever possible and realize that no shampoo is really better than the other, if their ingredients are the same.

Shop and compare. If the grocery store brand is $.99 and the salon brand is $25, but the ingredients are the same, and they are the milder ingredients.... you do the math.

Surviving Your Fun in the Sun

2010-07-27T21:37:00Z

By Gene Ayres, Your Consumer Curmudgeon

Here's news: sunshine is good for you, in case you missed John Denver. It's the best way to get vitamin D, which is a wonder drug, supporting everything from cardiovascular health to low cholesterol levels, good muscle strength, optimal blood pressure, a healthy immune system, healthy kidney function. It even promotes healthy teeth. It also keeps your bones strong and healthy.

People who spend more time outdoors without getting sunburned, actually decrease their risk of developing melanoma. Studies have shown that safe sunlight exposure can protect us against sixteen different types of cancer, including breast, colon, endometrial, esophageal, ovarian, bladder, gallbladder, gastric, pancreatic, prostate, rectal, and renal cancers, as well as non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. But there are limits, and that's where sunscreens come in. Too many sunburns, baby, and that ain't good. One problem with too much sun is the risk of getting melanoma may increase in relationship to sunburn frequency and severity. Limiting sun exposure, wearing protective clothing, and using a 100% all-natural, non-chemical sunscreen can reduce the risks of skin cancer and other harmful effects of the sun.

We all know those UVA rays are harmful, hence sunscreen. But now for more bad news: sunscreens can be toxic. You need to avoid any sunscreens that contain any of the following for a simple reason: they are all toxic chemicals. And those chemicals, listed on most labels, include Para amino benzoic acid, Octyl salicyclate, Avobenzone, Oxybenzone, Cinoxate, Padimate O, Dioxybenzone, Phenylbenzimidazole, Homosalate, Sulisobenzone, Menthyl anthranilate, Rolamine alicyclate, and Octocrylene. You wouldn't want to eat this stuff. Don't put on your skin either.

Two of the above chemicals, Dioxybenzone and Oxybenzone, are among the worst generators of free radicals out there.

Now for that other bugaboo of outdoor life in the summer: bugs. You probably already know the most common ingredient in mosquito repellent is a chemical called DEET (N-diethyl-3-methylbenzamide), a pesticide invented by the US Army in 1946 for future jungle combat zones, and it is still widely used. According to the USDA, every summer almost one-third of the American population uses insect repellents, and DEET is used in hundreds of products, with concentrations of up to 100%. If your sunscreen or insect repellent contains DEET, Dioxybenzone, Oxybenzone, or any of the other chemicals listed above, you're better off staying indoors.

DEET is so toxic it can melt plastic bags and fishing lines. According to Duke University Medical Center pharmacologist Mohamed Abou-Donia, who has been researching pesticides for three decades, prolonged exposure to DEET can impair cell function in the brain, and causes death and behavioral changes in rats with frequent or prolonged use. This is consistent with reports of symptoms after military use of DEET in the Persian Gulf War. Symptoms included loss of muscle control, memory, concentration and learning, and impaired motor skills. It causes memory loss, headaches, weakness, fatigue, muscle/joint pain, nausea, tremors and shortness of breath. Symptoms can appear months or even years after use.

While short-term exposure to DEET might not be harmful, Abou-Donia warns against ever using any product with more than a 30 percent concentration. Products you use on a daily basis, like deodorants, soaps, make-up and sunscreens (except natural sunscreens), when combined with DEET, create greater exposure than DEET alone. Medications, both prescription and over the counter, can also react with DEET and increase your risk of problems. According to alternative medicine advocate Dr. Joseph Mercola, one should never, ever use any DEET-containing product on infants, let alone yourself.

Now for the good news. Citronella, lemongrass oil, and peppermint oil have been proven to be effective bug deterrents for many years. Many people also swear by pure vanilla against mosquitoes. But vanilla combined with citronella, lemongrass oil, and peppermint oil is even better. During my 15 years living in Florida I made a simple solution of soy oil, eucalyptus and Oil of Citronella as a very effective insect repellent. Citronella has been around and in use since 1948 without reports of adverse side effects. Try it! You'll like it, it smells way better than RAID, and it works.

Sources:

Mercola.com

Duke University Department of Pharmacology

Mohamed Abou-Donia, PhD

Gene Ayres is a career writer, author and freelance journalist. His newest book is “Inside the New China: an Ethnographic Memoir.” He can also be found at: www.geneayres.org.

The Housing Pyramid Scheme: A Brief History

2010-07-23T23:20:00Z

By Gene Ayres,
Your Consumer Curmudgeon

We heard the propaganda for years: the best possible investment you can make is your home. Never mind that mortgages are skewed so that 90% of your payments for the first 20 years or so are for interest. Never mind that the term “affordable” was re-defined for the convenience of lenders and realtors only, as has been happening for the past two decades, so as to mean “every penny we can possibly squeeze out of you; whether or not you can feed your children or pay for college is your problem.”

For 99% of American history, housing was affordable, in the sense that land was cheap (or for American settlers in the West, or anyone with a gun willing to shoot a few Indians, it was free) and those with our famous “pioneer spirit” could use their two hands and build something habitable out of available materials.

Those beneficiaries of the good old days, when not only land was cheap but labor was free, thanks to a slave-based economy in the South, were accustomed to lavish living reminiscent of European Feudalism, and one family might live in a 50 room house, with additional housing (often little more than hovels) for the “help.”

Then came the Super Rich with the advent of the Industrial Age, for whom mansions that filled entire blocks in New York City weren't enough: they needed 100 room “cottages” in Newport for their summer parties, and later in the Hamptons, as well as a 2000 acre horse farm or two upstate, to keep the children busy. Those industrial barons couldn't get away with slave labor any more, or forcing the “help” to live in hovels, and so they had to provide adequate housing for their growing work force. Beginning with the Cadbury Company in England, housing became a provided benefit for many workers, much the way a 401K might be today. Of course, as with the mining companies (Tennessee Ernie's “Sixteen Tons” comes to mind), the company that owned the store continued to own the houses too, but at least the workers got to live in them. And those workers' houses (at least in the northern urban areas) were often 2000 square foot two-story Craftsmen or Queen Anne style cottages (in the real sense) with solid walls, foundations, full basement and attics, hardwood floors, and amenities such as crown moldings and tile baths; the kind of housing upwardly mobile young professionals of today can only dream of.

My own parents were married, as it happened, in 1929, just days before the market crashed. My father was lucky: he was literally the last man hired by AT&T (as a statistician) and his salary was $2000—per year. However, at that time, one of those nice two-story Queen Annes in the suburbs of New York, where we lived, could be bought for $2000: a year's wages. If you made a million, like the remaining Mellons or Vanderbilts still at large that year, you bought (or built) a million dollar house in Asheville. But if you only made $1000, or $2000, it was enough. It was the American Way.

By 1950, when I came along, my father's wages had increased substantially: to $25,000 a year. We needed more space, with three children in the house, and Dad bought a three-story brick Dutch colonial, with ½ acre of land for us to play in, close enough to the train station (Dad commuted to Manhattan by train and ferry in those days) for him to walk, although he and Mom did splurge on a car which they kept in the separate two-car garage (along with dad's sailboat—another story). Dad purchased that Dutch colonial house, on a lovely tree-lined street with many similar properties, for $25,000—again a year's salary. (Those cookie cutter subdivisions were just under way in Levittown and elsewhere for the next generation of workers.) I recently looked up our old house—still standing—in the New Jersey MLS and it had been reduced to “only” $895,000, from $1.2 million three years earlier.

Which brings me to those oncoming subdivisions and advent of suburban sprawl. Sam Levitt had a great idea: mass construction of cheap housing for all those postwar factory workers, at an “affordable” price of a year's wages. And it worked. They sold like hotcakes for $5 to $10K, and this remained the norm for the next decade or two, until the speculators arrived.

I'm not sure exactly when it began, but somewhere around the late 1970s, housing changed from a necessity to a commodity, and people began to buy and sell them quickly, making quick improvements (or later on, none whatsoever) and reselling them for a profit. The National Board of Realtors and their ilk, thrilled at this sudden new prospect of fast money, began to perpetrate possibly the biggest fraud of all time (given it's multi-trillion dollar consequences): that housing prices can only go up, forever and ever, and a cheaply built cookie cutter ranch house with paper walls and no insulation was suddenly “worth” $400,000. But the buyers were still making only $40,000.

In other words, it was a pyramid scheme, because had anyone stopped to think for even a brief moment, they would have realized this was impossible, and sooner or later the whole house of cards would have to collapse.

Interestingly, because of government intervention (when people with money scream loud enough politicians, surprise, surprise, tend to listen), the housing market did not collapse like it should have in a true free market economy. It bent, and has been rocked, but it has not collapsed. Now it is being propped up once again with tax breaks and so on, and as a result, housing is still vastly inflated, in terms of real value. Yet no one—no one at all other than yours truly—dares to say so: that the Emperor's new clothes are made of cellophane. And why is the truth that is so obvious, and about which the economists continue to scream falsehoods and hold their ears, still not being told? Money is still being made—at least in the boardrooms where the bailouts are divvied up.

Because the truth couldn't be more simple or more obvious: housing prices have outpaced real wages by such a huge degree, that no sub-prime mortgage schemes, zero down payments, or low interest rates are going to fix it, no matter how loudly the politicians, bankers, and realtors scream. The massive fraud that has been perpetrated on the workers and middle classes (we are the only ones whose housing costs went through the roof—do you think the rich were affected in the slightest?) continues unabated. The only question now is for how long it can continue.

Gene Ayres is a career writer, author and freelance journalist. His newest book is “Inside the New China: an Ethnographic Memoir.” He can also be found at: www.geneayres.org.

Doughnut Holes That Make Your Wallet Fat

2010-07-23T23:14:00Z

By Colleen Rothe

The next month will bring a little fat to the wallets of folks who are on Medicare. Starting June 15, the federal government began mailing out one-time, $250 rebate checks to beneficiaries who have hit the drug plan’s coverage gap, affectionately known ads the “doughnut hole.”

This payment is part of the new healthcare reform law and there is no mountain of federal paperwork to fill out in order to receive the rebate. The federal government said that checks will be mailed roughly every six weeks until the end of the year. The rebate is tax free.

According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, there are a total of four million Medicare beneficiaries who should receive this doughnut hole payment. In essence, these four million folks have been paying for their own prescriptions. The Medicare coverage gap is a point (the "hole") between two cash limits when an individual has to take full out-of-pocket responsibility for the cost of their prescription drugs. For example, depending on the plan itself, Medicare may pay/co-pay prescription drug charges until costs rise to this first pre-set limit, $2,830.

From that point on, the individual has to take over responsibility for their prescription drug payments. This will continue until the gap closes at the point when payments reach an upper limit, $4,550, when Medicare may then come into play again. Affordable Care Act initiatives aim to close this gap by 2020. The first move taken is a cash rebate scheme to cover some of these costs.

In addition, there are efforts to beef up efforts to prevent Medicare fraud and scams targeting check recipients (remember my post on the new scams to take advantage of the Affordable Care Act).

Help will continue next year when those on Medicare will receive a 50 percent discount on brand name drugs if they reach the doughnut hole. Savings will continue to increase over the years until the doughnut hole is closed in 2020.

Those who need more information can call 1-800-633-4227 or visit www.medicare.gov.

Hopefully, those currently receiving the benefit will live to see it.

Home Warranties: Not normally worth the paper they are written on

2010-07-16T18:02:00Z

By Colleen Rothe

If you recently bought a house or are looking to purchase a house, the trend right now is for your real estate agent or the seller to purchase a home warranty for the first year. It’s a nice little bonus, especially if you, like me, purchase a house that has some things that are within the limit of their lifespan, say, a water heater, furnace, or even the roof.

But what many homeowners still find out is that a warranty comes with a deductible and a list likely longer than your mortgage document of things that the warranty does NOT cover.

Let me give you a bit of back story. When we purchased our home (motivated by the new home buyer’s credit, but that’s another posting), we weren’t nervous about the aging kitchen appliances, water heater or furnace. Our real estate agent, a real stand-up guy, threw in a home warranty.

But on the first day that we stayed the night in the new place, the dishwasher wouldn’t put water through. Our lives are busy and we have a huge family. Hand washing dishes for a family of eight was going to be a huge undertaking each and every day. Also, I figured the age of the dishwasher made it not really economical to repair it, since newer models are more energy and water efficient. However, we had just bought the home. Buying a new dishwasher wasn’t in our budget. That’s when we remembered the home warranty. We checked the packet it came in. Sure enough, dishwasher problems were on the list to call them.

So we called. They couldn’t come out to take a look at it for an entire week. My husband thought that was a good response time. You can tell who ends up doing more dishes...I thought the response time was really poor. Also, I was informed that I had to pay a $60 deductible. I wasn’t happy about that, but then realized with any insurance you have to pay a deductible and as far as deductibles go, $60 wasn’t too harsh.

At any rate, the contract repair guy with our warranty company came out. He claimed that it was just blocked filters (the former owners had a huge dog)—however, cleaning the filters wasn’t covered. Fortunately for us, he was able to report something else, which he didn’t have to do. Had he not, I would have been responsible to pay for his full time, which would have cost me three times the deductible, or more, since what was wrong with the appliance wasn’t covered under the home warranty.

My experience made me start asking around. What I found out was many of my neighbors and friends were having the same experience. Things like parts for air conditioner units were covered under the policy, but the labor to install it was not. Or that the installation of a new roof was covered, but the tear off required to do it was not covered.

If you talk to the Better Business Bureau, they will tell you there is a long list of complaints about home warranties. Officials at the BBB advise consumers to read their home warranty policies before using them, so they don’t get blindsided. If you do, they said, you will find that most of the warranty insurance does not cover anything that was caused by “poor maintenance,” such as my clogged up filters in my new home’s dishwasher. And most won’t be as lucky as me to have a service guy who realizes the insurance company is taking the homeowner for a roller coaster ride in trying to figure out what is covered and what is not.

When I asked my neighbors and friends if they renewed their home warranty policy after the first year, none of them answered yes. I will likely not renew mine either because the story doesn’t end there. The next time I used the dishwasher, we sprung a leak—one that nearly covered my entire kitchen floor. We called the next day, it would be another week. The repairman is sitting in my kitchen right now, scratching his head as to how old the dishwasher even is. But it’s not operational at all because it’s leaking through the motor. My hubby and I are voting for a new dishwasher, but the installation would not be covered. I really like the repair guy—he’s a stand up dude—but I don’t really want him in my kitchen each week.

We didn’t have to pay for the home warranty, so it seemed like a great idea. I’ll have to let you know if any further issues arise. But my assessment right now is they are hardly worth the paper they are written on. Nice gesture by our realtor, but I’m sure he had no idea what a crapshoot it is with such an insurance program.

Cucumber Magic

2010-07-16T17:32:00Z

By Gene Ayres, Your Consumer Curmudgeon

At times, with all that is wrong with our world, not least of all from the consumer perspective, it's nice to stumble across something positive now and then. So this week, setting aside my curmudgeonly predilections, here is some good news:

Cucumbers are cool!

In fact, for most of my life I have regarded cucumbers with about as much enthusiasm as taking out the trash. Maybe mother says it's necessary to eat it, when it's lying there on the plate like a wilted decoration, or cluttering up an otherwise edible salad. But I never liked it very much, tasteless as it seemed to be.

Then I married a Chinese woman, from the Dongbei (northeastern) region of China, where cucumbers are a staple, and like it or not, I could no longer avoid them. Then I started to discover that, hey, maybe they weren't so bad.

But then I saw a piece in the New York Times which led to more and more articles on what a wonderful vegetable this really is, some of which blew me away. In short:

Cucumbers contain a cornucopia of vitamins, including most of the vitamins you need every day. Just one cucumber contains Vitamin B1, Vitamin B2, Vitamin B3, Vitamin B5, Vitamin B6, Folic Acid, Vitamin C, Calcium, Iron, Magnesium, Phosphorus, Potassium and Zinc.
Cucumbers work better than caffeine for a wake-up booster because they contain a solid shot of B vitamins and carbohydrates that can last for hours.
Cucumbers are a good cleaning tool! They can defog your bathroom mirror by rubbing a slice along the edge, which will eliminate the fog and for a bonus, give off a soothing, spa-like fragrance.
Green bathroom cleaner: clean your faucets, sinks or stainless steel with yet another slice of cucumber. Rub it in, and it will remove years of tarnish, give everything a bright new shine, won't leave streaks and is way better for your digits than, say, chlorine-laced Comet.
Going poolside: it's a cellulite management tool too! Rub a slice of cucumber on your “problem area” for a few minutes. Phytochemicals in the cucumber cause the collagen in your skin to tighten, firming up the outer layer and reducing the visibility of cellulite. Way cheaper than Botox, way healthier and safer. Works great on wrinkles too!!!
Hangovers: try eating some cucumber pieces before retiring and you will wake up a new person, no hangover and no headache. Cucumbers contain enough sugar, B vitamins and electrolytes to replace essential nutrients alcohol depletes from the body, thus curing both a hangover and headache!!
Got the munchies? Cucumbers have been a snack staple for centuries not only in Asia but also by European trappers, traders and explorers. Sure beats starvation.
Shoe polish. No kidding. It does that too. Rub a freshly cut cucumber over the shoe, its chemicals will provide a quick and durable shine that looks great and even repels water.
Jiffy lube: need to fix a squeaky wheel? You got it: cucumber slice to the rescue and no more squeak! The truth is revealed at last: the squeaky wheel does get the cucumber!
Need a quick massage but have no time (or maybe money)? Fear not. Cucumbers to the rescue once more. This time cut it up, boil it a few minutes, and it will release it's magic into the steam, providing you with a “soothing, relaxing aroma that has been shown to reduce stress in new mothers and college students during final exams.” Better than cool jazz.
Got alligator breath and a hot date? Fear not. Hold a cucumber slice onto the roof of your mouth with your tongue for 30 seconds and bingo. No more halitosis. Those same amazing phytochemcials can kill the bacteria in your mouth responsible for causing bad breath.
Gardening: cucumbers hate grubs! A few slices in a small pie tin and your garden will be free of pests all season long. The chemicals in the cucumber react with the aluminum to give off a scent undetectable to humans but that drives garden pests crazy and makes them flee the area. Who knew?
Taking a final and need to cross out that wrong answer? Guess what? Cucumbers are also cool erasers. Rub the outside, this time, onto the offending error and it's gone. Even removes graffiti and all those annoying crayon and marker markings on your walls, if you have kids lurking around.

You can Google this topic endlessly but here are a few popular sources: The New York Times Care2.com Digg.com Herbsygoy.com Vegetarianhealth.com Goherbalremedies.com Nileguide.com

Gene Ayres is a career writer, author and freelance journalist. His newest book is “Inside the New China: an Ethnographic Memoir.” He can also be found at: www.geneayres.org.

Going Green (Again)

2010-07-13T00:16:00Z

By Gene Ayres, Your Consumer Curmudgeon

A lot of this is not new, but the very fact that all of us need further reminding prompts me to post more suggestions for going green, before it's gone.

Here in Seattle there was a concerted attempt last year to ban plastic shopping bags. It's like convincing Louisiana wildcatters to find another line of work: this did not go down well, and the effort was dropped. In our household, we've made a compromise of sorts: we bring home food in plastic bags (we actually have canvas bags but always forget them!) but then we recycle them. My wife has even taken to bringing plastic bags back to the supermarkets to use again, which invariably throws the cashier into a tailspin of dismay and confusion. You want me to do what? Just put it in this clean old bag, rather than those six new ones, my wife tries to explain, in her halting English. Oh well.

The new mantra “buy local” is rapidly becoming an old refrain. No doubt it rings somewhat hollow in Omaha and places where “buying local” means choosing from 27 varieties of corn. But you have to do what you can, and here in the Northwest, there's no excuse because local produce includes everything from salmon to succotash, and most of it is far better than what comes trucking in from Peoria (no offense to Peoria).

My wife has another trick up her sleeve: borrow somebody's Costco or Sam's Club card (card pooling, anyone?) and stock up on bulk items. They even have a limited selection of organics there, these days. Sam's and Costco don't like this, of course, preferring everyone to pay their $50 annual membership fees. But if you do price checking, as I have, those superstores make their money the old fashioned way: selling the same stuff you buy elsewhere for the same prices, apart from bulk discounts for food. So if you spend an extra $50 for that card, there is absolutely no advantage to shopping there.

Greening at Home:

It has become increasingly important to stem the onslaught of so-called “exotic” species of plants (and animals, especially fish as well), which once released into the environment, like Kudzo in the Southeast and melaleuca in Florida, can wreak havoc. Remember those African killer bees? They may not be as bad as we feared, but they are still out there. Much worse are those South American fire ants ravaging Florida, where I used to live.

If you have a yard, xeriscape. It will save your water bill, as well as the alarmingly decreasing global fresh water supply. There is no excuse for using potable water to water your lawn. If you must have a lawn, use “gray water” (from toilets, laundry and kitchen).

It will also help to get a free home energy audit from your utility company. They can provide excellent advice on how to better insulate, seal leaks, and lower your utility bills.

We rarely use our dryer any more, even in Seattle, because line-drying works surprisingly well. And to avoid 3rd World appearances, we do it in the bathroom, which also works very well.

Another benefit of growing your own garden, if you have space, is you get to share with your friends. This is a great way to build a sense of community.

Greening your office:

Here's a tip I'd never have thought of, although I did try to do something along these lines recently while printing a poster: switch your computer default font to Arial. This can save up to 30% of your ink supply when you print.

When you finally do run out, refill your ink cartridges, or buy refills. According to the Environmental Working Group there are 375 million used up cartridges being disposed of in the U.S. each year.

Not only should you buy recycled paper, you should always recycle it again. Paper has numerous life cycles, from fine to newsprint, and ultimately can be used in such products as drywall (better than that toxic Chinese stuff!).

Sources:

50 Ways To Help

www.econesting.com (Ronnie Fink)

Ronnie has contributed to numerous books about green home design, DIY, children, and humor. Ronnie lives the Hudson Valley of New York with her family.

Gene Ayres is a career writer, author and freelance journalist. His newest book is “Inside the New China: an Ethnographic Memoir.” He can also be found at: www.geneayres.org.

Buy Computer Memory Now

2010-07-02T19:26:00Z

By Colleen Rothe

There are some good deals to be had during this New Depression. One thing that’s been priced out of most people’s tolerable price range is computer memory. Not so much any more. But when the economy turns up, the price will go up again.

Because consumers like you and I stopped buying stuff (mostly because we lost our jobs and had no money to spend), this has created an oversupply of chips by the major producers. Chips are the major components in the memory devices that make your computer zoom-zoom.

Some computer manufacturing CEOs are boo-hooing that they have to practically give it away. I’m not inclined to hand them a tissue, but rather will use the opportunity to grab up some cheap computer memory right now, since it’s running at about a 75 percent savings from its previously high cost. So if you’re seeing your computer chug with the demands of today’s software and games, it is likely cheaper to buy more memory (RAM) then to buy a new computer.

But before you gobble up that RAM to get your computer running faster, be sure that you know about the current standard. Because you don’t want to buy memory that won’t work in your machine. Same rules apply whether you’re using a MAC or PC.

Yes, there are different types of RAM. The current standard is DDR3. If your machine is really ancient (which could mean only 5 years ago) and has DDR2 RAM, you shouldn’t purchase the current standard of DDR3.

The easiest way to inspect the RAM currently in your machine is to check the label for its size. For instance, it may read 512 MB with its spec, say DDR2, and also with a specific speed, say 1066. The label may read: 512MBDDR21066. So you would be safe to buy 1GB stick, as long as they are also DDR2-1066.

Here’s the next potential catch. It’s called a motherboard. There may be a limitation on the size of each individual RAM stick and on the total amount of RAM you can install. So you best dig out the manual for your motherboard to find out what those limits are. If you can’t find the manual, most manufacturers have good online documentation, so you could go to their website and search for your motherboard’s model. If the motherboard has an open RAM slot on the machine, you can simply add the RAM to your existing system. The logic then follows that if you currently have 1GB of RAM and you purchase uber cheap right now 2GB of RAM, and add that new purchase to the existing RAM, you’ll end up with a total of 3GB and you have a new zoom-zoom computer. However, if there are no free RAM slots on the motherboard, you’ll have to replace what is there with what you purchased—so you put the new shiny 2GB in place of where the 1GB is. You’ll still have more memory and better performance, and it’s still a savings and cheaper than buying a new PC all together.

One last gotcha. You’ll need to know if your system is 32-bit or 64-bit. Again, that lovely user’s manual comes in handy. A 32-bit system maxes out at 3 GB of RAM, so there’s no benefit to upgrading beyond that limit. The 64-bit system can use much more RAM. But again, you’ll have to consult your motherboard’s manual to find out what the limitations are.

There is an advantage for DELL machines, as well. Every Dell computer includes a “service tag.” It is clearly labeled on the machine. Entering this service tag at support.dell.com will take you straight to the page for your machine, complete with links to the owner’s manual, upgrade guides, etc.

When I bought my first computer, the going rate for RAM was $1 per MB. So when I bought a stick of 256 MB for $220, I thought I was getting a screaming deal. Today, I can get about 1GB for $30.

A good place to shop that I would recommend is newegg.com. They have never done me wrong and I’ve been doing this computer build/buy thing for nearly a decade. However, I still comparison shop. You can check out bestbuy.com or www.ewiz.com. If one place is offering a single 2GB stick of DDR2-1066 RAM and another place has a better price on a pair of 1GB DDR2-1066, that’s not really a better deal—especially if you have space constraints on your motherboard.

If you find you really do have to get a new PC, it’s a good idea to make sure that you get a motherboard that has upgrade space.

Until then, buy RAM to your hearts content. Just make sure that you’re buying apples and apples and not apples and oranges. You want the same kind of specification to match what you already have.

Happy computer boosting.