Giving gifts this year was a difficult proposition for me. How do I simultaneously honor my commitments to Corporate Disobedience and my desire to give tribute to those who are closest to me? I'm sure there are as many ways as there are people in this forum. I'd like to share my method:

I became enrapt with the PCI and its notions of sustainability, awareness of Peak Oil, and relocalization only recently, and most of my friends and family members had no idea that I started a Post Carbon Outpost in upstate NY. So the first thing I did was to share with them the passion I feel for my new endeavor. I didn't try to persuade them, or scare them, or even ask for their graces. I just explained that I haven't felt so motivated to action since, well, hmmmm... I guess I never felt so motivated to action! I then explained to them, if they didn't already know, the concepts of self-sufficiency in the context of resource depletion and the effects of continuing on with the status quo. Again, no prosthelitizing, just emitting my worldview.

Then, I sprung my challenge to them as my gift: What could I do for them in the next year that would help them in their efforts to relocalize? For my sister, my suggestion was natural: she and her partner have a huge organic garden and I suggested that I could spend a whole day weeding/tilling/harvesting for them, so they could enjoy a day off and go hiking, kayaking, or stay home and read. For my parents, I suggested that I could prepare them a home-cooked vegetarian meal with locally-grown (my sister's garden or mine?) produce and use traditional means as much as possible. For my nieces in Ithaca and the SF Bay Area, I might see about donating to their local PC Outpost and introducing each to their local Outpost and the PC Institute. My other niece is considering a career as an urban planner, so I could consider getting her involved with PCI and also support her by giving a publication on planning from the bookstore, or get her involved in Peak Oil awareness at Bryn Mawr where she is enrolled.

Other friends and family members may be more challenging, but once I let them know I won't be buying them metal and plastic crap made 8000 miles away by children in a sweatshop, and shipped here on subsidized cheap oil, to be distributed by a transnational chain store that is eroding the fabric of their community, they may come around to accepting and even appreciating what I want to do for them, rather than what I might have given them in the "olden times," when I was sleepwalking into the future.

What shape would/do your gifts take on?

Peace,
Jim Zack, Sustainable Saratoga Springs