IMPACT (Inspiration Meets Positive Action and Creative Thinking)

Making an impact in the world today seems too big a task at times – but as we watch the world economy go pear-shaped, it is important that we think of small ways in which we can make the world – or at least, our little corner of it – a better place. Small towns like mine are seeing a lot of new people desperately trying to find a lifestyle they can afford. Rents and houses are cheaper in the country, and if you live in a good growing area, fresh food is abundant and low priced when in season.

Working at a charity shop, I see many of these new people looking for cheap clothes and furniture. They often ask me where they can go in town to find other charity shops, government services and the best places for groceries and so on. I have been wondering what we can do to make the move easier for them, and to make them feel part of the community, apart from selling them cheap goods.

Years ago, I read about `welcome wagons’ in suburbs, when the new neighbours would arrive on the doorstep with some baked goods, lots of smiles and a map to the local services in the area. I don’t know if communities still do this – perhaps the intense mobility of our society makes it redundant. But I liked the idea of the map, and thought that maybe we could offer our customers something similar.

I drew up the map today – a very simple one, with the major streets marked out, and places of interest, such as other charity shops, a place where you can buy second hand white goods, the free library and so on, marked on it. These are the places people are looking for when they ask directions in the shop. I plan to have the map photocopied at the library and place the copies on the counter.

When we moved in here, the lady across the street came over and welcomed us. It wasn’t exactly the Welcome Wagon of old, but it made us feel at home and like we had already made a friend. Such simple kindnesses make this town a pleasure to live in – volunteering to help in the community was something I had never tried before, but now I love it. I enjoy dressing up the shop for Halloween and other celebrations, putting goods aside for those who have requested something (and enjoying their happy response when I surprise them with it) and generally getting to know some of the gallant, brave and beautiful people here.

When the task of making the world a better place looks overwhelming, start with a small thing – it soon mushrooms and you find yourself able to help in many ways. My friends in Soul Food are wonderful people who spend a lot of time nurturing the creativity in others, and making everyone feel special. The web is a wonderful way to connect with people in this way. You can find sites that offer ways of helping people in poor countries, just with a daily click, forums where you can share your expertise and advice, sites where you can take surveys and donate your earnings to charity, and sites like Squidoo where you can set up a website on something that interests you, and donate the earnings from your page views.

My hero, Mother Teresa, did not worry about changing the world. She set about changing what was right in front of her, in Calcutta. She said “There are no great things, only small things with great love.” She also said, “Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.” Yes, let us begin.

Let’s get down to the nitty gritty – where can you get free Christmas stuff on the web? I’ve put my daughters onto the printer manufacturer’s websites. It doesn’t matter what printer you have, all the nig companies have websites with fabulous free printis on them.

Canon Print Park have some fabulous Halloween decorations on the site right now. There’s a Halloween tree, a witch’s hat and broom and lots of oher stuff to print out. The costume maskes are just brilliant. The Christmas pages are lush as well, I really like the wreath and advent calendar.

There’s Halloween stuff at Epson too, but I really loved these Mardi Gras masks – and this Christmas Themes project has some great stuff.

The Hewlett Packard site has lots of licensed projects – right now Kung Fu Panda is king of the printies. and these projects look like a lot of fun. This Day of the Dead Party Kit looks spectacular, and so do these gorgeous Christmas ornaments.. HP has some good recycling projects as well.

Keep an eye on these sites, they have stuff for every occasion.

When I said we were Dickensian about Christmas, that definitely includes the food! Christmas Eve dinner is an extended family affair, with everyone bringing something for the table, so that no one host has to bear the whole cost. Being Australians, it is always outdoors and there is always a BBQ being fired up. We leave the chop and sausage buring to the menfolk – they do love it so!

With everyone contributing, the cost is kept down, but when it comes to preparation, some things are best left to the experts. Lana’s potato salad, Mags’ rum truffles and my old fashioned figgy pudding are never interfered with. One year, when Mags and her family couldn’t attend, I tried my hand at rum truffles. The groans of disappointment were stifled to spare my feelings, but I still heard them. Never again. From now on, if the cook isn’t present, we go without the dish.

Like presents, we do some planning ahead, by buying and storing pickled, canned and packaged items when they are on special throughout the year. Some of our family have joined those Christmas schmes where you pay a small installment through the year and receive cartons of food and presents at Christmas. They swear by them, even though it seems to me that you end up paying more. But the girls say it is worth it because they don’t have to face the expense of buying Christmas food at the last minute.

In Ausralia, turkey isn’t as popular or essential as a large smoked ham. Because of the heat, we prefer lighter meals. But we do have roast chicken, lamb or pork as the main meal on Christmas day. It is quicker and easier to cook than a turkey, and can be cooked ahead and eaten cold if the weather is really steamy. Salads form the bulk of the vegetables, although roast potato and pumpkin are never refused for the main meal.

Those of use who grow vegetables always have something for the table on Christmas day. Even in colder climes, vegetables can be grown indoors in pots, or in a greenhouse, so it is worth considering wherever you are. We have grown vegetables on tiny balconies. I’m a strong believer in doing away with the water wasteful suburban lawn and replacing it with vegetable garden beds. These still require watering, of course, but it is less wasteful, and the rest of the garden should be planted with plants native to the area, so they can pretty much be ignored.

Once upon a time it was common for householders to grow their own vegetables, and contribute to their own table. My English grandmother regularly saved leftovers for the local pigman to feed to his pigs and those who contributed in this way always got a flitch of bacon for Christmas.

Today we can use vegetable waste for compost, recycle bottles to make our own ginger beer and lemonade, and jars to make our own preserves when there is a fruit glut. Country people in my area still do this – at the charity shop, we hand out clean used jars to those preserving their own fruits and vegetables.

Here are a couple of our Christmas recipes:

My Figgy Pudding

Ingredients:

2 cups chopped dried dates
2 cups chopped dried figs
Thinly pared rind of one large lemon and one large orange, plus the squeezed juices
A handful glace cherries
1 tablespoon mixed spice (not allspice)
2 cups self raising flour
3 eggs
1/2 cup treacle (molasses)
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup cream
1/2 cup melted butter.

Mix fruits, juices and peel with treacle and leave stand while you prepare the dry ingredients. Mix flour. mixed spice (as much as you want, I like lots!) and sugar in a bowl. Make a well in the center. Crack in the eggs, add cream and melted butter. Beat the ingredients in the center of the mixture, working in the flour, spice and sugar until it is well blended. Add the fruits and treacle and stir well together. You can add silver coins and charms at this stage.

Turn the mixture into a well greased pudding bowl, cover the dish with foil, and place in a steamer or large saucepan with water coming halfway up the side of the pudding bowl. Cover and steam for about 45 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the the pudding through the foil comes out clean. Serve with brandy custard or cream.

You can also bake this as a cake for about 45 minutes in a moderate oven. Make sure the cake dish is lined to prevent burning. I like to use a bundt ring cake pan so I can decorate the cake like a Christmas wreath.

“We wish you a merry Christmas,
We wish you a merry Christmas,
We wish you a merry Christmas,
And a happy New Year!”

Ginger Beer

First of all you have to create your ginger beer `plant’. Use a crockpot, jug or jar. Into it put one of those 15g packets of dried yeast, a teaspoon of sugar, a teaspoon of dried ginger powder and two cups water.

Keep it in a cupboard in the kitchen and every day for a week, feed the plant with 1 teaspoon sugar, and 1 teaspooon ginger.

At the end of the week, strain the mixture and put the liquid into a large clean new five litre plastic bucket. Dissolve three and a quarter cups of white sugar in five cups of boiling water and pour over the ginger liquid in the bucket. Add the juice of a large lemon. Add three litres of cold water and bottle. Store in a very cool place (we use under the house) like a cellar and leave for at least a week. You may get one or two explosions!

The strained leftover stuff from the plant can be divided in half, and used to start two new plants. Ginger beer is the perfect recycling drink!

Our family loves Christmas. We are positively Dickensian about it. Christmas Eve is our big get together, when we open the adult’s presents, and admire each other’s good taste (or sense of humour, as the present dictates) then scatter back to our homes so the grandchildren can wake up to the magic of Christmas morning and presents under the tree.

Sometimes distances can prevent the whole family coming together, and lately it’s been more the cost of petrol, but we still stay connected somehow, by phone or Internet. The bottom line with us is that it is about family and especially children. We will go to extraordinary lengths to make sure those parcels under the tree hold wonderful surprises.

This year, Ebay has been getting a workout. Our daughters have been amassing Ebay bargains for months now, and although one or two of them find it next to impossible to refrain from giving the present before Christmas (a family failing – you have it, you know they’ll love it – why wait?) there is still a great stash for Christmas morning. Most of it is second hand, but that won’t affect the response.

Another great source of presents has been thrift shopping. Dollar stores and charity shops are like flea markets used to be – you never know what you will find, and the prices are reasonable to dirt cheap. You have to know your charity shops – country shops are better than city shops these days, where some thrift shops have redefined themselves as up market `retro’ stores. Avoid them.

Our youngest daughter has been scouring Ebay for Toy Story merchandise. Their son has fallen in love with Woody, Buzz and the gang and can’t get enough. But she despaired of finding Woody and Buzz dolls that she could afford until she went into a thrift shop recently and found a stack of Toy Story dolls in excellent condition – for three dollars each.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that the kids don’t get anything new. This is where lay-by is handy – the time honoured ruse of paying off a new toy and collecting it from the store on Christmas Eve means the kids can have at least one brand new toy every year. The girls shop for clothes this way as well, laying by the new season’s children’s clothes as they come into the store – by the time they are paid off, it is time to wear them.

The one thing nobody does in this family is flash the plastic. Credit cards are strictly forbidden, even when we were foolish enough to have them, because all the bills come in in January. It really spoils New Year to be faced with immediate debts, especially as January has no less than seven birthdays (maybe more, I’ve lost count and will have to recheck my calendar). Facing the New Year without Christmas debts means you have a chance to make new goals and keep them. Anything you can do, even if it means second hand presents, to avoid that is worth it.

Besides, there are the January sales, when you can pick up fabulous Christmas decorations and presents for half price or less. Paying off Christmas debts means you can’t take advantage of that. In a sense, we plan for celebrations all year, buying something when we can afford it, at the sales, or on Ebay, or at the thrift shops and putting it away for Christmas, birthdays or anniversaries. My English grandmother, who was extraordinarily lucky at bingo, used to put her prizes away for gift giving – good quality stuff too. But that’s only worth trying if you never lose.

After all this bargain hunting, there are the handmade options. One of our daughters makes the most gorgeous gift baskets. Another is a fine computer artist and makes her own cards and gifts. I love art and crafts of all kinds and every year try to think up something new. One year it was origami boxes (made from beautiful scrapbooking paper) filled with pot pourri and other little items, another year I bought up second hand Barbie dolls in good condition and dressed them to look like my granddaughters’ favourite stars. When one of the granddaughters became enthusiastic about learning to juggle, I looked up instructions for making felt juggling balls on the Internet, and made a bag to carry them in. It was one of her favourite presents.

The one thing you must do with hand made presents is practice the `giveaway’ principle. Never ask about it, or fret about it, or expect to see it on display. This is the essence of `giveaway’. What you give is the love and the time, expecting nothing in return. This to me is also the essence of art in the 21st Century.

Finally, like hyacinths for the soul, we give at least one gift to someone we don’t know and will never meet. You can buy a goat or a chicken for a village, place a present under a tree in your local superstore, or make a donation to your favourite charity. The holiday season is about giving, and remembering that you are part of the world community, whether you celebrate Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hannukah or dance in a circle at Stonehenge.

Our Christmas boxes are quite full now. We have earmarked the recipients and have a few things in reserve for unexpected guests, or new people who may come into the family. But right up until Christmas comes, we will be looking, making and planning. With such a big family, we’ll need a lot of food, but that needn’t break the bank either, and I’ll be discussing that in the next post.

I’ll be happy to hear your own comments and solutions.

I have moved this old blog to WordPress to take it in a new direction. When IMPACT began it was with the idea of artists and creative people sharing their work without borders or profit. I have been doing that – along with many others – writing commercially less and less, and posting my art freely on the web. But times have changed dramatically since then. I started IMPACT in the wake of Katrina, hoping to help foster a kinder, less greedy and materialistic philosophy in the west.

Now the greed and self interest that drove me to suggest artists freely share their hopeful visions has come home to roost in a global financial meltdown that will probably do more to change thinking about self promotion and self aggrandisment than I ever could. IMPACT will continue to suggest ways of building a better world through links and ways of giving, but now is the time to get practical and bring back common sense.

There are ways to live more frugally, and with a stronger community conscience. I grew up with many of them in the aftermath of a terrible world war, I practiced many of them when raising my children. You can be as creative with food, money ad resources as you can be with art materials – you can even be frugal with those, and still create things of beauty. Some of the greatest artists had to recycle their canvasses and skimp on paint.

Christmas is coming up and maybe you think it won’t be very merry without lots of money to spend. So I’m going to be posting some ideas for holiday celebrations and present giving created with love rather than credit cards. I work in a charity thrift shop and the joy I often see in the eyes of people who find something they really wanted at a price they can afford convinces me that you don’t have to be rich – just willing to open up and enjoy what the universe does offer you. No, it can’t grant every wish for a mansion on the Cote d’Azure, but it can give you happiness. You just have to be willing to be happy.