No New Things Book

You can check this book out of the library. I recommend this 30-Day Guide because it’s simple to use. Though it might not be easy it will likely be rewarding to complete the Challenge.

Ashlee Piper starts off the book with a history of the dawn of the marketing and advertising era to sell products. Like cigarettes that languished in sales. Until a clever advertisement in the 1920s to women calling cigarettes “Torches of Freedom.” Women marching in the streets would stop and light up the cigarettes called “Torches of Freedom.”

No kidding.

One issue I take with No New Things (it is likely accurate though) is that some people tally up that they saved $6,000 per month on purchases they didn’t make. How could someone have that kind of cash to drop on products to begin with?

Oh–the second issue I have is Piper’s reliance on thrifting and buying secondhand clothing. Most people are okay with wearing items that other people wore. Some of us prefer new.

All in all I recommend this book to anyone seeking to restore peace of mind to how we feel about ourselves. Piper alludes to how Influencers peddle products. How we could feel unworthy and less than so buy what’s being sold in an effort to feel better.

It’s really possible to stop impulse shopping. I call curating a wardrobe “collecting” items not shopping for them. I recommend giving thoughtful consideration to your style via the Three Word Method or a dive into Project 333.

September is here soon. Going back to school or getting into the groove at work again doesn’t have to require buying a truckload of new outfits.

What I’m interested in and think everyone should copy from No New Things is to have fun doing things with friends that don’t involve trips to shopping malls to buy stuff. Why not take a walk on a boardwalk if you live near a beach? Take a walk in a local park like Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. While there go to the Japanese Tea Garden.

By the way I think the end of summer is the ideal time to do spring cleaning. My credo is the “one thing in – one thing out” ethic.

The true Torch of Freedom today is the ability to Just Say No to endless retail therapy that doesn’t really make us feel better.

Everything Beautiful Book

I checked the book above out of the library. The copyright date is 2022.

To encourage followers to buy the book I will quote from it:

“We want to keep hold because beauty is so often a porch light in the darkness.”

The author ends the book by talking about a new beauty that we define for ourselves. It is a form of self-care. We’re no longer trying to fit into the standard mold of beauty that those in power with authority have dictated to us as being the only form.

To end the book Ella Frances Sanders tells us:
“The new beauty is radical because it allows us to love ourselves in spite of being told not to.”

Shame thrives in secrecy, silence, and judgment. What if each us could stand in the truth that we’re beautiful precisely because of our imperfections?

What if our greatest struggle was the very thing that is beautiful because we emerge wiser, stronger, and more capable of loving ourselves afterward?

We Found Love Song by Song

After reading hard-hitting non-fiction I’ve turned to bubblegum books like We Found Love: Song by Song by Annie Zaleski.

It features love songs from 1936 to 2019 from Fred Astaire’s “The Way You Look Tonight” to Harry Styles “Adore You.”

With anecdotes of how the tunes were ccreated.

The 1992 Cure song “Friday I’m in Love” has been one of my favorite songs of theirs.

You can check this book out of the library for a fun short read in a couple of days.

In 1966 the Monkees’ “I’m a Believer” featured this band that was originally a set of characters in The Monkees’ TV show that I loved to watch as a kid.

In 1965 Sonny and Cher were famous with “I Got You Babe.” The section on this song detailed that Cher would be thrown out of restaurants back then because of the clothes she wore.

The 1986 Peter Gabriel song “In Your Eyes” is featured here.

I liked the Jeffrey Gaines “In Your Eyes” better. The singer performed at BB King’s pre-Covid before that music-and-food venue shut down.

Have you ever loved your outfit more than the guy who took you on a date to a nightclub who you were seeing not dating?

Not every song talked about in We Found Love narrates a rosy romance. A list of such songs includes Blondie’s “One Way or Another” which is about a stalker actually.

Spring is here. April is the month of Sprouting Grass Moon in the lunar calendar.

Time I say for casting aside the acrimony against each other. Time for using our voices to take a stand against injustice of course.

Yet more than this spring should be a time of yes rebirth and rejuvenation.

Reprising the parts of our lives that we loved that have fallen away. Rejoicing in the person we were meant to be.

Love Wins. That’s all there is to it.

The Nutmeg’s Curse

It’s funny or maybe not how a common pantry staple like a bottle of nutmeg was once a resource the Dutch East India Company harvested with slave labor in the global south in the eighteenth century.

I won’t tolerate capitalist racism like that and which is still going on in Asia and elsewhere. I will tell you to check out of the library or even buy and read The Nutmeg’s Curse by Amital Ghosh. The Brooklyn author exposes the biggest culprit of climate change as gas-guzzling U.S. military machines.

Refugees flee their home countries because of the wars. Ninety-five percent are law-abiding citizens. The floods and wildfires that climate change cause are what uproot people to America as well.

I’ve been anti-war for decades. I frown on nationalism too.

The neoliberal political creed centers personal responsibility as the marker of economic security–when it’s systems and policies like neoliberalism that keep people in our place.

No–I’m not always Green and in light of the fact that capitalism is the cause of climate change.

A woman I helped out as a thank-you gift gave me a plastic bottle of strawberry poundcake foaming hand wash. I took the gift and will buy another bottle for myself as I’ve come to like it.

So–ease up on yourself when you order take-out in a plastic container. Recycle the container and be satisfied you’re done with it.

The greater harm is that hot plastic leaches chemicals into food. So–transfer the food to a dish when it arrives.

I’m all for giving a Thank You that delights the receiver.

Discovering a Better Life

The subtitle of the book above tells it all about the theme: How to Discover a Better Life. I submit that we can create improved health, wealth, and happiness for ourselves by engaging in a simple joy. This happy habit doesn’t cost $3,500 and can be had for a song throughout the year.

In synchronicity, I found the book The Art of Flaneuring: How to Wander with Intention and Discover a Better Life.

Italians in Italy take a passeggiata in the evening after dinner.

The author Erika Owen gets at the penchant for fashion flair on a jaunt thus: “The nightly passeggiata is seen as an opportunity to flaunt your best style. Locals dress up and, as they pass, gossip on what (or who) everyone is wearing.”

In an early chapter Owen quotes people on their walking habits and why they engage in flaneuring.

Per Justin:

“I like to think this parallels life. The struggle makes you appreciate the beauty.”

Like other flaneurs he was aware that the issues you face dissolve as you get in physical activity.

Owen attests that for women:

“It was a long fight to win our places on the sidewalk, one we’re still battling to this day.”

Owen tells readers to check out Jacqueline L. Scott’s blog Black Outdoors to read the post “A Black Flaneur in the ‘Hood.”

For the cost of a pair of walking shoes and the right athletic gear to flaneur in this hobby is a cheaper alternative to jet-setting.

Even rolling down the street in a wheelchair can be an act of flaneuring. Or rolling down the road in a park.

Airplane Mode

Everyone should read this book which exposes the racist colonial exploration roots of modern tourism.

I’ve had no interest at all in traveling to Asia or the Caribbean Islands or anywhere that local people live in poverty.

Nor do I like going to beaches–and Coney Island is a beach right in my hometown that is famous. Why would I go to Cambodia to fry on a beach when I don’t want to glisten in the sun in my own backyard.

Plus–hello–I’m a woman so traveling alone in another country is risky.

Airplane Mode was unsettling in its reality that American tourists are really only engaging in consumerism when they travel the globe and buy trinkets and souvenirs in India and Africa.

I would be interested in reading about the demographic composition of tourists: their source of income; their mindset; why they have the need to travel 12 hours on an airplane to bake on a beach in Bali.

Other countries build new hotels to keep up with the demand for tourists coming into their lands.

I just don’t get the love of beaches and cruises and the desire to see the Taj Mahal or Great Wall of China either

Nor do I have any interest whatsoever in traveling to Paris where it’s said they don’t like Americans as we won’t learn French.

There’s a better way of spending our extra money that I’m going to talk about in a coming blog entry.

It hinges on treasuring what we have and living a life we love. Without needing to go into debt to go on vacation to escape burnout or grind culture or other toxic trouble.

For one I think a person can find the job they love and remain employed at it. Not that the paycheck is always going to be great. Yet you can love your life right where you are.

Yes choosing carefully what we spend money on–and opting to forego the Cambodian Carnival Cruise in favor of fun right at home–could be the ticket to paradise.

The Power of Women’s Anger

I recommend everyone read this book not just women. Men who don’t want to reinforce misogyny by remaining silent when other men degrade women should read this.

The truth exposed in Rage Becomes Her–like the reality Kathleen Hanna expressed in Rebel Girl– is not invented fiction. Not should this treatment be tolerated in everyday life.

At the end of the book the author itemizes a list of things women can do to use our anger in constructive ways.

A Colorful Way of Living

I recommend that everyone buy and read the book above. I checked it out of the library and read it in 3 hours.

The cofounder of the Vera Bradley lifestyle brand wrote the guide. Round about 12 years ago I bought the Vera Bradley messenger bag seen in the second photo.

I will quote from the book in this review:

“Look for ways to put beauty where it doesn’t exist,” Vera would say.

“That very colorful way of thinking evolved into one of Vera Bradley’s driving principles–We create beautiful solutions.”

What beautiful solutions–to living our lives; to how we connect with each other; to what we think and feel–can we design and refine?

Creating memorable experiences like the Vera Bradley team does is the second way to craft happiness.

How about for a dinner party use cloth napkins and a ceramic pitcher? Change the tablecloth and use a different centerpiece each season.

Little touches can make a big difference.

There’s beauty everywhere if we open our eyes to see it.

Today more than ever in America it’s time to do what I coined: Take a B.I.T.E. out of life–to express Beauty Individuality Truth and Empathy.

A colorful way of living is the best way of living if you ask me. Accepting and embracing all colors and creeds of everyone living on earth.

The cofounders of Vera Bradley had an Aha moment about designing colorful bags after a layover in an airport when they rued the drab neutral colors of the luggage women carried.

Vera Bradley was Barbara Bradley’s fashion model mother.

With $500 in seed money they built a brand worth half a billion today.

Per Barbara Bradley everyone should Be Nice. If being nice is good enough for her I’ll take this from other people too.

We should not be afraid to show our True Colors. We can do this in style with a Vera Bradley handbag.

Cheers! to living colorful and loving colorful and laughing colorful.

Getting Loud

This week I read in one day the Drew Afualo memoir and manifesto Loud: Accept Nothing Less than the Life You Deserve. The Samoan American young woman has 9 million followers. She created a career for herself as a content creator whose platform is centered on kicking the asses of misogynist men. Afualo has received death threats for speaking out against the patriarchy.

Since she has 9 million followers perhaps some of you follow Drew. I’m all too familiar with being the victim of anonymous venom in the comments section of online articles.

No—I don’t identify as Queer or Asexual. I don’t like those terms. It’s because in fact if you’re not heterosexual and not caught up in relationships with men who abuse you you’re not queer at all. You’re the normal one. In a society where it’s the misogynist men labeling females as freaks of nature for not having sex on the third date and not submitting to their abuse in the patriarchy.

The attorney I employ first used the word I took up to describe my M.O.: Unusual. I prefer calling how I operate Unusual not Queer as I do not want to be identified by my gender or sexual orientation.

In my email signature I won’t use personal pronouns. Instead I use specific nouns and list in my signature Christina Bruni (Chris/Christina). I have no idea what others reading my emails think of this. It’s a f*ck-you that might not be subtle in not using gender to refer to who I am.

I’m no fan in dwelling on gender and sexual orientation. Too often doing so reinforces the focus on parts of our identity that a person like me doesn’t want to be the first or prime thing others notice about us.

Only how we look gets us judged. My intent in using my given names in my email signature was because I want others to view me through the lens of my personality not through my plumbing down below.

Yet how you and I look is the first thing others notice about us. An impression is formed of us within 7 seconds. No kidding.

In coming blog entries I’ll do my part along with Drew Afualo to dismantle the expectations women have of ourselves to please men.

Real Self-Care

I checked this new book out of the library. The subtitle is Crystals, Cleanses, and Bubble Baths Not Included.

I’m not a fan of social media so don’t follow influencers on Instagram. As well I haven’t been a fan of traditional self-care that is touted like cleanses and bubble baths.

My only self-care I’ve persisted in engaging in is going out socially with friends and eating healthful food and engaging in some kind of exercise.

If I remember right the self-care industry is a billion-dollar business.

Who can afford to buy products marketed as wellness tools. These products don’t instill actual health over our lifetimes.

What I think that the MD author doesn’t connect is the dot dot dots that are connected: If self-care products gave us optimal health why are women getting cancer heart disease and diabetes routinely in America today?

The promise of a product to make us feel better is an empty promise.

Far better to cook yourself a healthful meal from a recipe to share with friends at your dining table. Sharing a meal promotes health and wellbeing.

Nobody’s making a quick buck when you do that. There’s no money to be made in capitalist America when each of us is inherently well and doesn’t need fixing.

I say: buy a new shirt or blouse to feel good. Old-fashioned fashion therapy is one kind of self-care as recommended in the Allison Bornstein guide Wear It Well that I reviewed here.

The fall is coming in two weeks. The time to edit our closets and bring the fall clothes front and center on the rod is here.

Does the saying “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” apply here. Likely likely the rod to hell is hung with failed purchases.

In a coming blog entry I will talk about the wonder of editing our wardrobes.

“In with the new out with the old!” Why wait until New Year’s Eve to celebrate.