They recently opened an outpost across the street from the original location, Indigo Bath. We dropped by to replenish our soap stock and take some pictures a few weeks back; the new space is needed, as they outgrew Indigo Traders quite some time ago.

For what it’s worth, I would post some pictures of Indigo Traders too, but there was quite a crowd, and I am not too happy with any of the pictures I took there.

This olive lavender soap is my favorite ever; the scent is wonderful and clean, and the olive oil makes it very soothing and moisturizing.

Turkish bath towels…certainly not what you get at Macy’s. They come in a rainbow of colors, dry super fast, and as Samir told us, need less washing than their “standard” towel counterparts because they are not damp all the time.

Indigo Traders (and Indigo Bath) are both full of beautiful displays of the products for sale. There’s a lot of attention to color and texture, especially in the displays of soaps. Even when I don’t necessarily need anything, I love stopping in and gawking. Trust me, it’s fun.

Info:
7881 SW Capitol Hwy
Portland, OR 97219
503.780.2422 | website

Now, if he would just win the presidency again.

I love intelligent people who can write clearly and accessibly, with a huge dose of brilliance thrown in for added value.

The first thing I started thinking about is the obvious: what am I going to eat? My grocery budget is pretty small most of the time, in large part because I eat out pretty frequently. Clearly, that is not going to work next week.

Not being able to use my existing food reserves is interesting too. I found myself wondering whether it would be ok to use small amounts of condiments that I already have, since they’re not something that need to be purchased too often. Or should I charge myself .02 for using a clove of garlic? How about siriracha sauce? I am solving this dilemma in my mind by starting out with a $1 deduction from my budget for seasonings. Down to $20. Ouch.

How about meals with others? A significant number of my evening meals are eaten with my boyfriend, and sometimes in the course of going about our daily lives, we get free food. I picture myself freeloading on cake and crackers on Sunday at Quaker meeting, and wonder if that might help me make it all the way to the end of the challenge. I think about opportunities to get free food and wish that it were a First Thursday week. I ask my boss to stop me if he sees me dumpster diving for food at any point.

Mid-afternoon, I realized I had a bagel (36 cents) and cream cheese (20 cents) in the fridge at work that would go to waste if I didn’t eat them today, before the challenge started. I ate them.

Chris is resigned to a week of ramen and PB&J. I’m concerned about nutrition. Tomorrow, I’ll be figuring out what I will buy to make it through the week.

The challenge hasn’t even started, and all I can think about is food.

WAL-MART: The High Cost of Low Price takes you behind the glitz and into the real lives of workers and their families, business owners and their communities, in an extraordinary journey that will challenge the way you think, feel… and shop.

Review from Salon

What makes the movie so powerful is the totality of the portrait, both in its details and its sweep. Most of these people are entirely unexceptional Americans from the working class or lower-middle class, believers in flag and country and God and capitalism, not left-wing activists or academics with some theoretical critique. Most of them believed in Wal-Mart, too, and were genuinely horrified to learn that its low prices depended on enforced poverty, whether theirs or somebody else’s.

To find a screening near you, visit the movie’s screenings website. Better yet, sign up to host a screening, find out why your college isn’t hosting one (yes, I mean you, Willamette and Pacific students/staff!), and get involved in getting the word out. Portland-area organizations have many screenings planned, and I definitely plan to attend.

Other sites to check out
Walmart Movie Blog
Watch the Trailer
Walmart Movie Flickr Site
Walmart Hunkers Down After Bad Publicity
Official Response to Movie
Walmart’s Press Release regarding employee benefits
Walmart’s actual policy regarding employee benefits

This year, I threw my metaphorical hat in the ring. It was an interesting experience; I think that a lot of my classmates imagine me as on the verge of coming out in the first place, and for some of the younger classes, there’s an odd sense of prejudice that I picked up on, one that I’m not accustomed to encountering among my peers. It was a good to have this time of silent solidarity. I am so used to being among tolerant, justice-oriented people that it always stuns me to find bigotry in places where it shouldn’t be.

Perhaps the most significant element I noticed was in power differentials. As a white heterosexual American, I am part of the loud majority, the unquestioned assumption. People in power don’t have to worry about inclusive language, because language generally supports their power. Any destabilization of language, such as, for example, using “partner” instead of husband/wife or girlfriend/boyfriend, meets resistance from people who at some level recognize this as questioning whether their dominant view of culture and society is indeed correct.

The potential to destabilize the language which serves the hegemonic purposes of dominant culture is one that GLBT activists have very effectively used in the US. I’m not saying that our society has achieved equality, or indeed even come near it, but subversive use of language has opened up new and more tolerant discursive spaces and advocated for inclusion rather than exclusion of marginalized groups.

I have been wrestling with the various theories that I’ve studied over the past few years. Marxist, feminist, structuralist, post-structuralist, queer, psychoanalytic, post-colonial, African American, gender, relativism, the list is practically endless. I think I was so attracted to theory in the first place because I look out, see a world that is unjust, and I want answers. I want to know what someone who cares should do. These theories have their strengths and their weaknesses, most notably among them exclusivism and a certain amoralism.

By exclusivism, I mean both that critical theories tend to be buried in language, rhetorical tropes, and arcane academic arguments, and also that many are quite limited in focus, advocating for one issue at the expense of others. The way that this plays out is that we must now identify ourselves with a string of epithets, each attempting to counterbalance the weaknesses of the last. I am, for example, a post-feminist Marxist postructuralist new historicist episcopalian environmentalist, ad infinitum. I could easily spend the rest of my life teasing out exactly where on the radar of thought I should be located. Many do.

But this ignores two important ideas: one is that if we do spend all of our time merely theorizing our position, we become somewhat ethically or morally bankrupt, and the other is that theories divorced from life are useless at best and destructive at worst.

What seems to me to be missing is the sort of praxis, the cycle of action and reflection, that social justice advocates. Theories, rather than demanding action, seem to demand an inward, nitpicky self-dissection, an endless production of new journal articles and debates, and all the while, suffering is increasing in the world. Do the issues of whether sex precedes gender or gender precedes sex, or the question of ethics in regard to cross-cultural medical treatment really contribute to a better world, or are they being used as forms of escapism and ignoring suffering?

Next time, whenever that is, I’ll be discussing the usefulness of a meta-critical approach to theories, that is, asking whether we can construct and implement a justice-oriented criterion for looking at theories, at world views, at religions, etc., and draw on the knowledge of these various positions to effect social change. How do we, for example, go about drawing on the experiences of GLBT activists in the US and see their place within a larger system of injustice–one that oppressesses people who often have no voice to speak for themselves?