Category: Culture

Young Entrepreneurs Unite!

Posted on by Suki

The Kids Craft Fair at the Boys and Girls Club

What if you could find a school that would teach your child applied creativity, organizational skills, project management, math, money skills, entrepreneurship, social skills, and marketing… all in three hours?

Look no further than the annual Kids Craft Fair at the Boys and Girls Club in downtown Santa Cruz the first Saturday of December. Each year this event draws kids from all over the county who make and sell holiday gifts and food.

And if you go as a shopper, don’t think of it as charity. These kids aren’t kidding when it comes to quality.

“All the bath products are great and really professionally packaged,” points out Rebbie Higgins, Operations Coordinator at the Club. “There are kids that make bath bombs, lip balms, soaps. They’re great for presents because they’re really attractive. The hand-dipped beeswax candles are gorgeous and make great gifts.”

“To be honest, things that look like they were made by a child generally don’t sell as well as things that look similar to what you might find at a adult craft fair,” says Heddi Craft, a local homeschool educator and crafter whose daughters have taken part for the last six years. “But there are people who will go around and buy something from every kid that’s there. It’s nice to see them support even the smallest kid.”

 

That entrepreneurial spirit

The approach to the fair varies from family to family, but most make it all about the kids’ entrepreneurial spirit. The parents invest in materials and act as support; the kids come up with the ideas, make the crafts, and sell them at the fair.

“I’ve talked with parents and they’ve had the conversation with the kids about, ‘you made the jewelry but you made me buy the beads, and you’re going to pay back for the beads’,” Higgins explains. “That’s an awesome opportunity for understanding how business works.”

Heddi Craft agrees, describing her daughters’ experience as “a mini-economy, complete with loans.”

“Molly has become much more aware of things like, how much am I spending on materials? How much do I have to set aside from this craft fair to have enough for next year? In the beginning I would front her the money, but she makes enough now to set aside money for the following year.”

Kids learn quickly that the successful sellers at the fair have created products that buyers would buy at stores—for higher prices.

“Some of the girls doing little embroidered Christmas tree ornaments—it’s stuff you would totally expect to drop twenty bucks on in one of the fancier artist shops in town!” Higgins says. “The prices are great, the kids know the value of their stuff.”

“All of Molly’s things have been very successful,” Craft says. “She makes Metal Clay jewelry, yarn dolls, things out of Sculpey and Fimo. She usually sells out by the end of the day. Erin found the most lucrative thing she did was last year when she sold sandwiches and lemonade. It’s kind of a captive audience. You have a whole roomful of people at an event that goes through lunch!”

 

Shop ‘til you drop

So if you’re planning to attend as a shopper, what might you find? For gifts, look for such items as beeswax candles, homemade soaps, bath bugs, potholders, decorative mason jars, handmade greeting cards, custom Lego sets, crystals, succulents in charming pots, seashell magnets, bookmarks, jewelry, sock snowmen, felt creatures, hand-sewn cloth bags, and wallets.

After that, you might get really hungry, so look out for the baked goods, peanut butter cups, hot chocolate, and coffee. (Sometimes there’s chili, too!)

Don’t go until you’ve checked out all the holiday decorations for sale, including cards, gift tags, ornaments, and wreaths.

 

Newly empowered kids

Amidst it all, be aware that you’ll be competing for the best stuff with the kids themselves, who, newly flush with their own earnings, like to support their fellow entrepreneurs.

“The most impressive thing is how empowered the kids feel,” Higgins says. “Usually you have to go and ask your mom and then she’s like, ‘no, you can’t have sugar.’ Unless the parents figure out something where they’re going to restrict the kids’ spending, it’s the kids’ money, they earned it!”

Craft points out that empowerment can turn into actual paying work. She knows of one child who went on to sell at professional craft fairs, and her daughter Molly received a custom order from a shopper who asked her to specially design a necklace for his wife.

The Boys and Girls Club celebrates its 50th anniversary next year. Higgins admits that no one is quite sure how long the craft fair has been going on, but lots of grown kids in town remember it fondly as the first place they learned the power of creativity.

 

The Kids Craft Fair

December 1, 2018 11:00 am–2:00 pm

Boys and Girls Club Downtown Clubhouse, 543 Center St., Santa Cruz

http://boysandgirlsclub.info/events/craftfair/

Note: This article is forthcoming in Growing Up in Santa Cruz

Living the California paradox

Posted on by Suki

The San Francisco Chronicle thinks I’m a paradox, but I think I’m just being sensible.

The Chronicle reported that California has a “split personality” when it comes to car buying habits. On the one hand, Californians are buying SUVs. On the other, Californians are buying electric and hybrid cars.

What Californians aren’t buying is old-fashioned, gas-powered passenger vehicles.

Excuse me, but I don’t see the paradox. Take my family, for instance.

Three years ago, we decided to shuck off the old paradigm—”his car” and “her car”—for a family-based car-buying approach. We wanted an electric car for in-town driving, and a gas car for long distance and for doing things like moving the kid into his college dorm. We leased a VW eGolf which had a range of 90 miles, and in three years, we only drove our van on longer trips.

We also hardly ever had to charge our car during the day.

It’s really not a paradox: when people actually consider their driving needs and habits, they respond to choices that fit those needs. And sometimes they change their habits.

Having a limited range electric vehicle changed my approach to driving. When we bought the car, we went to a PG&E plan that rewards nighttime use of electricity over daytime use. Our major concern was planning our driving so we didn’t have to recharge the car during the day. Also, we came to love the electric car so much, we started to plan our days so that our driving times wouldn’t overlap or we’d plan joint trips out in the car.

This summer we decided that the old van had done its service to the family, so we replaced it…with an SUV. Yes, the family that tries only to drive our electric car got an SUV. We did get the most fuel-efficient one on the market, but we recognize that we got this big car not for daily driving, but for specific functions: hauling a bike, moving a piece of furniture, or driving a bunch of people comfortably.

The lease on our eGolf came up, and because the available electric cars didn’t suit our needs (inexplicably, VW isn’t planning to put out the new eGolf until the end of the year), we got a plug-in hybrid. In the few months we’ve owned it, we’ve used the gas engine once.

I don’t call our family a paradox; I call us the new paradigm. Americans had a good, long love affair with the gas engine, and that’s coming to an end. We used to think of driving as entertainment, and that, too, is coming to an end. What starts in California almost always hits the rest of the country eventually, and I have no doubt that this wave will eventually make its way into the heartland as well.

Liar, liar, pants on fire!

Posted on by Suki

On my morning walk, it occurred to me to think about why we tell kids not to lie. I can’t imagine why this subject occurred to me!

Obviously, none of us wants our kid to be a liar. Imagine: If being a liar weren’t that big a deal, we’d be a lier. But we’ve even got a special spelling for it.

So what’s the big deal? Why not tell a fib every once in a while? Before I was a parent, I didn’t really give this much thought. But having watched two kids and countless students in action, I’ve come up with a few answers.

1. If you tell a lie you have to perpetuate a lie

So telling a lie is pretty easy, right? Your mom asks, “Did you break this plate?” and you say, “no.” End of lie. End of situation. However, lies require more effort than that. Although some lies happen and then sink back into oblivion, most lies take on a life of their own. Once you tell it, you have to prop it up. Lies don’t have their own legs. They don’t fend for themselves.

“It’s true that I had lunch on that plate, however….um…then my sister decided to play frisbee with the plate and it broke.”

2. Lies almost always start pulling in other people.

So you think your lie is just a little pale thing that’s going to fall on the ground and be quiet, but then it starts to peep. Lies need attention; they want to be fed. In order to keep your lie fed, you need to draw in your sister, your friend, (your lawyer), your other parent, or perhaps your dog.

“And then Fido came in and you know how he likes to play frisbee…”

3. Lies beget other lies.

Your little pale thing not only doesn’t fall on the ground and lie quietly. It starts to make other lies. You need to make up an alibi, so it turns out you were in the bathroom. You’ve had terrible diarrhea.

“Oh, no! Maybe I should call the doctor…”

And you start piling lies on top of that lie in order to subdue it.

4. Lies start to define you.

In order to perpetuate your original lie, you have feed your ill-begotten lies and soon you find yourself being Someone Who Lies. You may even convince yourself that you’re not lying. (Even adults do this. Even adults who may be seen as successful and may even reach the pinnacles of their professions.)

5. You can’t find happiness in lies.

You find yourself confessing. Maybe you or someone you’re involved with has been charged with a crime, and there’s this inexplicable relief in confessing the lie. Lies weigh a lot more than the truth. The truth is light and almost transparent. When you tell it, sometimes bad things happen. But you didn’t create the bad things. Lies, however, are this deep, dark, complex thing that you made, and they create their own darkness. They weigh you down. Someone offers you the lightness of truth, and…

6. Lies almost always get found out, one way or another.

You think you’ve “gotten away with something,” but the truth is that lies don’t let you get away. They tether you to the situation you originally tried to avoid so that you can’t move forward. Having chosen not to embrace the light and buoyancy of the truth, you are pulled down, down, down by the weight you’ve chosen to bear. You thought you were choosing freedom, but

Lies make you less free. They tie you down to an untruth that you have to continue to justify.

It’s true: we all lie sometimes. Sometimes a little lie makes a situation move on when really, it just has to move on. Sometimes a little lie is exactly what’s needed to finesse a situation.

But in general, truth really is the best policy. Facing our mistakes and our shortcomings makes us better people. It helps the people around us trust us and then they are more willing to expose their own mistakes and shortcomings. In other words,

when we lie less, other people around us lie less.

Being a parent is hard, but sometimes it’s the gift we need. I have the utmost respect for people who choose not to have children, but I wonder how they learn these lessons. I don’t know about you, but parenting has made me a much better person. I understand lying like I never did before.

I understand why lying doesn’t work

and I understand how to suss out a liar.

Given how many adults are parents, it makes me wonder why they can’t suss out a liar, too. I fear for their children.

On the other side of the free range

Posted on by Suki

The last time I wrote about helicopter parenting was 2009. At that point, my kids were 10 and 6, a prime age when our culture is telling us to fear “stranger danger” and other harm that could come to our kids if we allow them the simple freedoms kids used to have.

Click on this handy chart from the CDC to find out the risks to your child’s life. Please notice that “stranger danger” doesn’t make the grade, as far as the CDC is concerned, of things you should worry about.

And I thought it was bad in those good ol’ days.

The New York Times reports that mothers (though, perhaps predictably, not fathers) are being charged with crimes and referred to Child Protective Services for leaving their children in perfectly safe situations that others deem “unsafe.”

Remember:

All research on childhood independence shows that hovering over children and never allowing them time to be alone is bad for them.

All research on childhood safety shows that “stranger danger” is so far down the list of risks for children (and so unpredictable) that acting to prevent it doesn’t actually prevent it.

Our free-range days

My kids are now 19 and almost 16. I allowed them a “free range childhood.” Amongst the “horrible” things I allowed:

  • walking to friends’ houses alone on our street
  • walking in the state park near our home alone
  • playing with friends on the street or in the park
  • riding the bus alone or in pairs
  • going into stores alone
  • waiting for me in the public library
My children loved to go on walks on our street. Shockingly, I allowed them to do it….though I did wish they would wear shoes!

Amongst the horrible things that have happened to them:

  • figuring out how to negotiate with typical adults
  • figuring out what to do when they missed a bus
  • learning to interact with other children naturally
  • learning how to manage money
  • and yes, making sure to keep their bodies and emotions safe from predatory humans

I realize that something truly horrible could have happened to them. But something truly horrible is so unusual and so random, it just as likely could have happened when they were with me.

The guilt monster

But I will admit, as the moms in the Times article explain, that guilt was a constant presence in my subconscious and conscious mind when they were out. I remember one time standing at the kitchen sink watching my younger child go out our front gate, having declared that they were going for a walk. I imagined the headlines: “Local parenting writer’s child abducted while walking alone.”

Bad Mommy!

For those of you with younger children now, the only advice is to keep these basic facts in mind. And if anyone questions you, please feel free to quote me:

  1. Choose your partner well, and the danger of physical violence against your child by an adult will be negligible
  2. Instead of worrying about stranger danger, get your baby vaccinated for diseases which they are more likely to die of
  3. Feed your child healthy food, including dairy without hormones, vegetables without excessive pesticides, and meat without unnecessary antibiotics
  4. Buy a safe car, and drive safely, and don’t look at your phone while driving
  5. Teach them safety skills, then…
  6. Set them free.

I can’t tell you how to avoid the guilt. That is a battle each one of us has to wage on her own.

The benefits of being small

Posted on by Suki

I moved to Santa Cruz from San Francisco. I had always wanted to live in San Francisco, and I loved it, but my future husband was a Santa Cruzan to the core. So I packed up my piano, guitars, and the wool sweaters I’d never use again and moved down to a foggy beach town which, as far as I was concerned, was in the middle of nowhere.

How Maker Faire can you get? An outsize pun-ridden interactive, um, art piece!

I knew that Santa Cruz had some things San Francisco didn’t, such as swimmable beaches, redwood forests, and chai*, but I didn’t appreciate that its very smallness would offer other advantages. (*At the time, you couldn’t get a decent cup o’ chai outsides of a few Indian restaurants anywhere but Santa Cruz. As far as I know, India Joze in Santa Cruz started the American “Chai Latte” revolution.)

We went to Santa Cruz’s Mini Maker Faire today and I was hit with something I’ve known for a while: The advantages of small town living are sometimes less obvious than a towering redwood tree. Although parking was nearly as difficult as the big one in San Mateo, this really was a “mini.” Walking into the Visual and Performing Arts complex at Cabrillo College, we were faced with a smattering of food trucks and a few fun exhibits like the “Unnecessarily High 5” pictured at the right.

Then we saw some vendors of various hand-made tschaschkes, the Ham radio guys, and a sign that said “Bronze Pour, 11am.”

Bronze Pour? We had to check that one out.

Unlike the big SF Maker Faire, which by necessity is comprised of mobile exhibits, the local one got full use of the VAPA complex. And use it they did. We got to see a bronze pour and hear an explanation of how it’s done. (See video below.) We got to do screen printing and computer programming. If we’d had little kids, we would have had ample opportunities for face-painting, craft-making, and dancing—all without the crowds and sometimes hours-long waits of the bigger fairs.

After 22 years, I have ceased thinking I’ll ever live in San Francisco again. And I’ve started enjoying my adopted hometown more than ever. So here’s a Necessarily High 5 for a little place that, I’ve learned, is Somewhere because it takes itself seriously. Our Maker Faire may not have had a mobile flame thrower, and we only spotted one guy wearing a utility kilt, but I’ll take a bronze pour and hanging out with our Ham radio guys as a pretty fine substitute.

 

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