2Health: How to take care of yourself.

Humor Is an Online Activist’s Best Defense

By March, the backlash to Invisible Children’s "Kony 2012" video, already the most viral piece of content in the history of the internet, was in full swing.

A number of think pieces had led the way, questioning the motives of so-called low-commitment ‘clicktivists’; the viability of assisting a military and government with a questionable human rights record of its own; and the value of capturing Joseph Kony, a man who by most accounts is greatly diminished in his power and almost surely no longer in Uganda. Jason Russell’s public breakdown a few days later eroded even more of the sympathy for Invisible Children and its mission.

Clearly, if the Kony 2012 campaign was to somehow maintain its considerable momentum, Invisible Children would have to abdicate the role of middle man.

Around this time, Josh Begley, James Borda and I were sitting in Clay Shirky’s “Political Uses of Social Media” class at New York University, attempting to unpack Kony 2012 as a piece of media, an online phenomenon, and an international activist campaign. James had a thought: “If this many people are willing to put up money just to raise awareness of Kony, why not use that money to hire Blackwater to capture him?”

As Professor Shirky told Wired, a hush fell over the room. Why not take the idea a step farther, I asked, and build a crowdfunding platform that would allow users to directly fund private militia intervention in military conflicts?

In order to answer that question, we decided to actually build Kickstriker, a satirical crowdfunding platform for military and intelligence missions. As we brainstormed, we thought about the unique form of privilege that invites Americans to intervene in conflicts overseas, the increasing privatization of warfare, and our own proclivity as technologists to buy into techno-utopianism—the belief that every problem can be solved through the creative application of technology.

Our primary goal was to raise these issues in a way that forced viewers to interrogate their own biases. We figured that dark humor would be a useful way to communicate these ideas to a group of people outside of our immediate circle.

Josh and I designed and built the Kickstriker website over the course of a week. We decided to mimic the visual language of the Kickstarter website as closely as possible, without using any of their actual code—Kickstarter had become so successful that by merely borrowing that site’s layout and aping its logo, we could effectively communicate the idea of crowdsourcing without having to explain it. This raised a number of legal questions, though, especially after we decided to skewer a few other organizations and private companies, including the Heritage Foundation, Invisible Children and Academi, the security contracting company that became notorious under its former name, Blackwater.

Before attending graduate school, I worked for a number of years as a digital rights activist, often informally advising artists on how to take advantage of “fair use,” a carve-out of copyright law that allows for the re-use of copyrighted material without permission from the rights holder.

We believed our site stood a very good chance of being interpreted as fair use by a court because its purpose was to criticize and comment on those aforementioned organizations. We also knew that fair use had never stopped rights holders from filing takedown notices and sending out subpoenas simply to silence their critics. Almost certain that our site would receive a bogus takedown notice—a kind of legal bullying that forces a web host to remove the content in question—we worked to create a mirror of Kickstriker on servers operated by NYU.

We launched Kickstriker on the night of Thursday, May 3. We sent it to Professor Shirky first, and he immediately tweeted it to his 200,000 followers, netting us an audience immediately. We also sent the site to a few tech publications, hoping that one or two might see fit to shoot a link our way. That Friday, Spencer Ackerman at Wired published a feature on Kickstriker, pulling in a much larger audience.

Two weeks after launching, the site has been viewed by 14,000 people in 110 countries, and has been written about in at least four languages. It's even been endorsed by the likes of Arianna Huffington and science fiction author Bruce Sterling. While we’ve yet to see much discussion online about the implications that crowdfunding might have for military conflicts, we remain hopeful that Kickstriker will help encourage just such a conversation.   

Curiously, we’ve yet to receive a single takedown notice or even an informal nastygram from any of the organizations we targeted with our parody. At this point, the “they just haven’t seen it yet” explanation seems unlikely. Rather, it seems like something else is preventing these organizations from taking action.

A few weeks after our Kony 2012 discussion, Professor Shirky brought Andy Bichlbaum in to speak to our class. Bichlbaum is best known for his work in The Yes Men, a band of brand-jacking political pranksters about whom two documentary films have been made.

Following a string of performance art pieces in which the Yes Men successfully impersonated representatives from various organizations and companies in order to deliver pointed political critiques of their policies, Bichlbaum and his partners in crime founded Yes Labs in the hopes of providing an incubator for similar activities. When asked by a member of our class why the Yes Men had never been sued, Bichlbaum replied, “We’ve never been sued because suing people isn’t funny.”

Humor, in Bichlbaum’s view, provides a kind of shield when speaking truth to power—one that prevents the target of the joke from suppressing the critique, lest he or she appear to not possess a sense of humor. I’d like to think that Kickstriker benefited from this same principle, one that allows three graduate students to play a practical joke on some extremely powerful, if largely unfunny, institutions. 

Photo courtesy of Kickstriker

Pet Diaries: The Joint-Custody Dog Who Taught Me to Move On

Introducing Pet Diaries: Life lessons we learned from our pets. This five-part series explores the ways pets have a positive impact on our lives. It's brought to you in partnership with Purina ONE® beyOnd®. Check out more stories at GOOD Pets.

When Kevin and I broke up nine years ago, we sold the Eames couch we bought together from a vintage shop in San Francisco. We couldn't agree on who would get custody, so selling it and splitting the $1400 seemed like the best way to keep things fair. My half would go toward the security deposit on a new apartment. I was moving out.

More difficult to divvy up was Chauncy, the 5-year-old bulldog mix Kevin and I had adopted together. But we did our best to split the dog down the middle, too. I found a new place right across the street. It was the best apartment I had seen, and hey, I liked the neighborhood, I told everyone. But really, I liked that Chauncy wouldn’t need to adjust to new sidewalks and parks and neighbors, and he’d be close to Kevin, too. I gave Kevin a spare set of my keys. He would come over every afternoon to walk Chauncy, and take him in when I was out of town.

Kevin and I started dating in college, then built a happy life together in San Francisco. On my 21^st birthday, Kevin arranged to fly in a little puppy from an Alabama farm. We met him at the airport and named him after a member of an R&B group. Then, we moved to New York, and everything unraveled. We fought about spending too much money and not enough time together. Couples therapy failed to save the relationship. We thought we could stay best friends or, at least, close ones. Sharing Chauncy would help maintain the bond.

Most people thought our dog agreement was unusual. My therapist told me I was replicating the joint custody my parents had of me after their divorce. We thought it was weird, too, but Kevin and I were proud of ourselves for making the effort. And at first, it was really nice. I liked being able to make small talk with Kevin, and having my afternoons uninterrupted for writing at home. I also, I admit, liked vaguely keeping tabs on my ex. This mostly involved inferring details from his brief appearances in my life. How had his clothes changed—was he dressed up to go on a date? Did he seem tired from going out? Did he seem busier than me? Was he more successful at dating than I was? Was he lonely, too?

Sometimes, Kevin would text me on a Sunday at noon, asking if I wouldn't mind walking Chauncy that day. I would spend the whole day crying, assuming he was with a new girl. Once, at a party, a strange redheaded girl told me she knew my dog, which was a polite way of saying she had been seeing my ex. Whenever I heard Kevin was dating someone new—and there seemed to be a lot of them, girls whose names I’d never learn—I'd begin to rethink our arrangement. I’d practice the speech in my head. I’d tell him he simply couldn't come over every day anymore.

But while I was sometimes miserable, I knew that Chauncy was thriving. He had two owners who adored him. He never saw the inside of a kennel. Kevin had a car, and would drive him to far-off dog parks or whisk him to the country for the weekend. It seemed important for Chauncy to keep a link to Kevin. The arrangement stayed.

But my own link to Kevin was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain. I started avoiding him, both socially and inside my own apartment. I skipped parties. I headed to the gym or out to lunch when he was due to come over.  He had a serious girlfriend now, I heard, an art dealer. Every time I imagined her playing in the park with my dog, I felt like giving Chauncy a bath and washing her influence off.

Eventually, Kevin found out that his apartment—the one we once lived in together—was getting refurbished, and no leases would be renewed. He began scouting dog-friendly apartments across town. He could still have Chauncy for a week here or there, but the days of daily apartment visits were over. While he was feeding Chauncy one afternoon, I asked him how the house hunt was going. He said he found a railroad apartment in Greenpoint.

"Isn't that an awkward layout for a roommate?"

"Oh," he said, "I'm not moving in with a roommate, I'm moving in with Elaine."

I realized then that I wasn’t sharing Chauncy just with Kevin, but with the whole life Kevin was building apart from my own. I had to accept that by committing to joint custody, I would need to get used to another girl cuddling with my dog. It had been years since we broke up—Kevin wasn’t even my most recent boyfriend anymore!—and yet I had never fully accepted it. 

It’s funny—all those years of seeing each other every day didn’t make us better friends. Instead, it kept us in a kind of perpetual state of breaking up. Only when Kevin stopped turning up in my apartment each afternoon was I able to understand that putting someone else’s needs first—the dog’s—required me to more closely monitor my own needs, too. Chauncy still got ridiculously excited every time he reunited with Kevin. I didn’t need to do the same.

Recently, Kevin and I took Chauncy to the vet. There in the waiting room, we exhausted all talk of how the dog had been doing. I realized we had almost nothing more to say to one other. The silence came as a relief. Finally, Chauncy was the last bond between us. We took Chauncy in together, made sure he was doing ok, then went our separate ways.

Humor Is an Online Activist’s Best Defense

By March, the backlash to Invisible Children’s "Kony 2012" video, already the most viral piece of content in the history of the internet, was in full swing.

A number of think pieces had led the way, questioning the motives of so-called low-commitment ‘clicktivists’; the viability of assisting a military and government with a questionable human rights record of its own; and the value of capturing Joseph Kony, a man who by most accounts is greatly diminished in his power and almost surely no longer in Uganda. Jason Russell’s public breakdown a few days later eroded even more of the sympathy for Invisible Children and its mission.

Clearly, if the Kony 2012 campaign was to somehow maintain its considerable momentum, Invisible Children would have to abdicate the role of middle man.

Around this time, Josh Begley, James Borda and I were sitting in Clay Shirky’s “Political Uses of Social Media” class at New York University, attempting to unpack Kony 2012 as a piece of media, an online phenomenon, and an international activist campaign. James had a thought: “If this many people are willing to put up money just to raise awareness of Kony, why not use that money to hire Blackwater to capture him?”

As Professor Shirky told Wired, a hush fell over the room. Why not take the idea a step farther, I asked, and build a crowdfunding platform that would allow users to directly fund private militia intervention in military conflicts?

In order to answer that question, we decided to actually build Kickstriker, a satirical crowdfunding platform for military and intelligence missions. As we brainstormed, we thought about the unique form of privilege that invites Americans to intervene in conflicts overseas, the increasing privatization of warfare, and our own proclivity as technologists to buy into techno-utopianism—the belief that every problem can be solved through the creative application of technology.

Our primary goal was to raise these issues in a way that forced viewers to interrogate their own biases. We figured that dark humor would be a useful way to communicate these ideas to a group of people outside of our immediate circle.

Josh and I designed and built the Kickstriker website over the course of a week. We decided to mimic the visual language of the Kickstarter website as closely as possible, without using any of their actual code—Kickstarter had become so successful that by merely borrowing that site’s layout and aping its logo, we could effectively communicate the idea of crowdsourcing without having to explain it. This raised a number of legal questions, though, especially after we decided to skewer a few other organizations and private companies, including the Heritage Foundation, Invisible Children and Academi, the security contracting company that became notorious under its former name, Blackwater.

Before attending graduate school, I worked for a number of years as a digital rights activist, often informally advising artists on how to take advantage of “fair use,” a carve-out of copyright law that allows for the re-use of copyrighted material without permission from the rights holder.

We believed our site stood a very good chance of being interpreted as fair use by a court because its purpose was to criticize and comment on those aforementioned organizations. We also knew that fair use had never stopped rights holders from filing takedown notices and sending out subpoenas simply to silence their critics. Almost certain that our site would receive a bogus takedown notice—a kind of legal bullying that forces a web host to remove the content in question—we worked to create a mirror of Kickstriker on servers operated by NYU.

We launched Kickstriker on the night of Thursday, May 3. We sent it to Professor Shirky first, and he immediately tweeted it to his 200,000 followers, netting us an audience immediately. We also sent the site to a few tech publications, hoping that one or two might see fit to shoot a link our way. That Friday, Spencer Ackerman at Wired published a feature on Kickstriker, pulling in a much larger audience.

Two weeks after launching, the site has been viewed by 14,000 people in 110 countries, and has been written about in at least four languages. It's even been endorsed by the likes of Arianna Huffington and science fiction author Bruce Sterling. While we’ve yet to see much discussion online about the implications that crowdfunding might have for military conflicts, we remain hopeful that Kickstriker will help encourage just such a conversation.   

Curiously, we’ve yet to receive a single takedown notice or even an informal nastygram from any of the organizations we targeted with our parody. At this point, the “they just haven’t seen it yet” explanation seems unlikely. Rather, it seems like something else is preventing these organizations from taking action.

A few weeks after our Kony 2012 discussion, Professor Shirky brought Andy Bichlbaum in to speak to our class. Bichlbaum is best known for his work in The Yes Men, a band of brand-jacking political pranksters about whom two documentary films have been made.

Following a string of performance art pieces in which the Yes Men successfully impersonated representatives from various organizations and companies in order to deliver pointed political critiques of their policies, Bichlbaum and his partners in crime founded Yes Labs in the hopes of providing an incubator for similar activities. When asked by a member of our class why the Yes Men had never been sued, Bichlbaum replied, “We’ve never been sued because suing people isn’t funny.”

Humor, in Bichlbaum’s view, provides a kind of shield when speaking truth to power—one that prevents the target of the joke from suppressing the critique, lest he or she appear to not possess a sense of humor. I’d like to think that Kickstriker benefited from this same principle, one that allows three graduate students to play a practical joke on some extremely powerful, if largely unfunny, institutions. 

Photo courtesy of Kickstriker

Pet Diaries: The Joint-Custody Dog Who Taught Me to Move On

Introducing Pet Diaries: Life lessons we learned from our pets. This five-part series explores the ways pets have a positive impact on our lives. It's brought to you in partnership with Purina ONE® beyOnd®. Check out more stories at GOOD Pets.

When Kevin and I broke up nine years ago, we sold the Eames couch we bought together from a vintage shop in San Francisco. We couldn't agree on who would get custody, so selling it and splitting the $1400 seemed like the best way to keep things fair. My half would go toward the security deposit on a new apartment. I was moving out.

More difficult to divvy up was Chauncy, the 5-year-old bulldog mix Kevin and I had adopted together. But we did our best to split the dog down the middle, too. I found a new place right across the street. It was the best apartment I had seen, and hey, I liked the neighborhood, I told everyone. But really, I liked that Chauncy wouldn’t need to adjust to new sidewalks and parks and neighbors, and he’d be close to Kevin, too. I gave Kevin a spare set of my keys. He would come over every afternoon to walk Chauncy, and take him in when I was out of town.

Kevin and I started dating in college, then built a happy life together in San Francisco. On my 21^st birthday, Kevin arranged to fly in a little puppy from an Alabama farm. We met him at the airport and named him after a member of an R&B group. Then, we moved to New York, and everything unraveled. We fought about spending too much money and not enough time together. Couples therapy failed to save the relationship. We thought we could stay best friends or, at least, close ones. Sharing Chauncy would help maintain the bond.

Most people thought our dog agreement was unusual. My therapist told me I was replicating the joint custody my parents had of me after their divorce. We thought it was weird, too, but Kevin and I were proud of ourselves for making the effort. And at first, it was really nice. I liked being able to make small talk with Kevin, and having my afternoons uninterrupted for writing at home. I also, I admit, liked vaguely keeping tabs on my ex. This mostly involved inferring details from his brief appearances in my life. How had his clothes changed—was he dressed up to go on a date? Did he seem tired from going out? Did he seem busier than me? Was he more successful at dating than I was? Was he lonely, too?

Sometimes, Kevin would text me on a Sunday at noon, asking if I wouldn't mind walking Chauncy that day. I would spend the whole day crying, assuming he was with a new girl. Once, at a party, a strange redheaded girl told me she knew my dog, which was a polite way of saying she had been seeing my ex. Whenever I heard Kevin was dating someone new—and there seemed to be a lot of them, girls whose names I’d never learn—I'd begin to rethink our arrangement. I’d practice the speech in my head. I’d tell him he simply couldn't come over every day anymore.

But while I was sometimes miserable, I knew that Chauncy was thriving. He had two owners who adored him. He never saw the inside of a kennel. Kevin had a car, and would drive him to far-off dog parks or whisk him to the country for the weekend. It seemed important for Chauncy to keep a link to Kevin. The arrangement stayed.

But my own link to Kevin was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain. I started avoiding him, both socially and inside my own apartment. I skipped parties. I headed to the gym or out to lunch when he was due to come over.  He had a serious girlfriend now, I heard, an art dealer. Every time I imagined her playing in the park with my dog, I felt like giving Chauncy a bath and washing her influence off.

Eventually, Kevin found out that his apartment—the one we once lived in together—was getting refurbished, and no leases would be renewed. He began scouting dog-friendly apartments across town. He could still have Chauncy for a week here or there, but the days of daily apartment visits were over. While he was feeding Chauncy one afternoon, I asked him how the house hunt was going. He said he found a railroad apartment in Greenpoint.

"Isn't that an awkward layout for a roommate?"

"Oh," he said, "I'm not moving in with a roommate, I'm moving in with Elaine."

I realized then that I wasn’t sharing Chauncy just with Kevin, but with the whole life Kevin was building apart from my own. I had to accept that by committing to joint custody, I would need to get used to another girl cuddling with my dog. It had been years since we broke up—Kevin wasn’t even my most recent boyfriend anymore!—and yet I had never fully accepted it. 

It’s funny—all those years of seeing each other every day didn’t make us better friends. Instead, it kept us in a kind of perpetual state of breaking up. Only when Kevin stopped turning up in my apartment each afternoon was I able to understand that putting someone else’s needs first—the dog’s—required me to more closely monitor my own needs, too. Chauncy still got ridiculously excited every time he reunited with Kevin. I didn’t need to do the same.

Recently, Kevin and I took Chauncy to the vet. There in the waiting room, we exhausted all talk of how the dog had been doing. I realized we had almost nothing more to say to one other. The silence came as a relief. Finally, Chauncy was the last bond between us. We took Chauncy in together, made sure he was doing ok, then went our separate ways.

Facebook Doesn’t Need Your Money; Invest in Africa Instead

Today, Facebook will launch the largest initial public offering in history. Over the course of a few minutes, an eager public will invest $16 billion in Facebook’s 3,000-odd employees. Here in Nairobi, Kenya, where I live, the eye-popping figures produce passive astonishment: A single company will absorb the rough equivalent of half a year’s GDP for Kenya’s 40 million citizens.

Facebook will invest some of its windfall to create growth for its shareholders. But will the investment be productive? Facebook is being forced public by SEC regulations and the desire of some early investors to cash out; founder Mark Zuckerberg has made clear his company doesn’t need the cash. As such, financing growth for Facebook probably means investing in some combination of server racks in Oregon, lobbyists in Washington, and ergonomic keyboards, massage tables, and sushi in the California headquarters.

That contrasts greatly with the landscape in east Africa. As a financial adviser and consultant to small and medium-sized companies in the region, I meet daily with companies that can offer investors attractive returns—and provide market-based solutions to problems in sectors from energy to horticulture. We’re currently supporting a network of health care providers who will offer ordinary Kenyans low-cost, high-quality outpatient care. Most of the other companies we work with have revenue models that are simpler and, perhaps, lower risk than Facebook’s. Yet they can’t raise capital.

Investments in emerging markets like Kenya don’t get funding largely because our capital markets are weak. Entrepreneurs here have little access to the global pool of money—the investors of Silicon Valley or Wall Street, nor the amateur day traders flipping stocks over lunch. Local money tends to chase mega-malls and the slipshod apartment complexes you see rising in cities across the continent.

But those weak markets are the same reason investments in Africa offer such good returns. Companies often can’t finance the second-generation, highly productive investments they need. Imagine a clinic operating without an ultrasound machine, or a barley farm operating without a tractor. The fruit couldn’t be hanging lower. The first ultrasound and the first tractor are astronomically more productive investments than the furniture in the Facebook lobby.

Investing billions in assets that are not highly productive is normal—proof of human progress to be proud of. But it’s hard to make a productive investment in a capital-saturated economy. Financial markets learned this in 2008, when reality bit a generation of investors who binged on unwanted housing in the absence of better ideas. Facebook’s gaudy IPO reinforces this basic problem: The rich world is capital-saturated while the poor world has very little physical capital per member of the labor force.

So why isn’t the world investing in Africa? Part of the answer is that it is. The surprise of the last decade is how much opportunity there has been to invest in Africa, and how well Africa has weathered the recent financial storm. With growth rates around 5 percent annually, Kenya’s economy is expanding significantly faster than Western economies. Last year, private equity investors raised more than $600 million to invest in East Africa’s growth.

On the other hand, we are not past the sense that charity is the best way to send money to Africa. Aid-oriented grants and micro-loans are the world’s conventional offer to African entrepreneurs, and they are literally not taking care of business. The “middle market” in many emerging economies generates most new jobs, yet these small and mid-size enterprises are too big for the lauded microfinance revolution, and too small for traditional banks chasing real estate projects. The companies I work with don’t need $300—they need $300,000.

Another obstacle are continual fears about “risk”— a word often applied to earnest African businesses, but not to JP Morgan. A man I know has built a brand manufacturing lotions and cosmetics from local aloe vera plants, but because he’s based in the much-maligned Democratic Republic of Congo, it’s all but impossible for him to break through to investors and grow. Even companies in east Africa’s comparatively advanced tech scene have a hard time raising smaller amounts of capital. But they deserve the chance to be productive—remember, it only took $18,000 in capital to start Facebook.

Theory tells us capital should flow from capital-saturated countries to poor countries, where it will do more. My hope for the ever-flatter future is that people in rich countries begin to see that the companies who will best use their investment are not listed in New York. Maybe there’s a social network for that. 

Illustration by Dylan C. Lathrop

Facebook Doesn’t Need Your Money; Invest in Africa Instead

Today, Facebook will launch the largest initial public offering in history. Over the course of a few minutes, an eager public will invest $16 billion in Facebook’s 3,000-odd employees. Here in Nairobi, Kenya, where I live, the eye-popping figures produce passive astonishment: A single company will absorb the rough equivalent of half a year’s GDP for Kenya’s 40 million citizens.

Facebook will invest some of its windfall to create growth for its shareholders. But will the investment be productive? Facebook is being forced public by SEC regulations and the desire of some early investors to cash out; founder Mark Zuckerberg has made clear his company doesn’t need the cash. As such, financing growth for Facebook probably means investing in some combination of server racks in Oregon, lobbyists in Washington, and ergonomic keyboards, massage tables, and sushi in the California headquarters.

That contrasts greatly with the landscape in east Africa. As a financial adviser and consultant to small and medium-sized companies in the region, I meet daily with companies that can offer investors attractive returns—and provide market-based solutions to problems in sectors from energy to horticulture. We’re currently supporting a network of health care providers who will offer ordinary Kenyans low-cost, high-quality outpatient care. Most of the other companies we work with have revenue models that are simpler and, perhaps, lower risk than Facebook’s. Yet they can’t raise capital.

Investments in emerging markets like Kenya don’t get funding largely because our capital markets are weak. Entrepreneurs here have little access to the global pool of money—the investors of Silicon Valley or Wall Street, nor the amateur day traders flipping stocks over lunch. Local money tends to chase mega-malls and the slipshod apartment complexes you see rising in cities across the continent.

But those weak markets are the same reason investments in Africa offer such good returns. Companies often can’t finance the second-generation, highly productive investments they need. Imagine a clinic operating without an ultrasound machine, or a barley farm operating without a tractor. The fruit couldn’t be hanging lower. The first ultrasound and the first tractor are astronomically more productive investments than the furniture in the Facebook lobby.

Investing billions in assets that are not highly productive is normal—proof of human progress to be proud of. But it’s hard to make a productive investment in a capital-saturated economy. Financial markets learned this in 2008, when reality bit a generation of investors who binged on unwanted housing in the absence of better ideas. Facebook’s gaudy IPO reinforces this basic problem: The rich world is capital-saturated while the poor world has very little physical capital per member of the labor force.

So why isn’t the world investing in Africa? Part of the answer is that it is. The surprise of the last decade is how much opportunity there has been to invest in Africa, and how well Africa has weathered the recent financial storm. With growth rates around 5 percent annually, Kenya’s economy is expanding significantly faster than Western economies. Last year, private equity investors raised more than $600 million to invest in East Africa’s growth.

On the other hand, we are not past the sense that charity is the best way to send money to Africa. Aid-oriented grants and micro-loans are the world’s conventional offer to African entrepreneurs, and they are literally not taking care of business. The “middle market” in many emerging economies generates most new jobs, yet these small and mid-size enterprises are too big for the lauded microfinance revolution, and too small for traditional banks chasing real estate projects. The companies I work with don’t need $300—they need $300,000.

Another obstacle are continual fears about “risk”— a word often applied to earnest African businesses, but not to JP Morgan. A man I know has built a brand manufacturing lotions and cosmetics from local aloe vera plants, but because he’s based in the much-maligned Democratic Republic of Congo, it’s all but impossible for him to break through to investors and grow. Even companies in east Africa’s comparatively advanced tech scene have a hard time raising smaller amounts of capital. But they deserve the chance to be productive—remember, it only took $18,000 in capital to start Facebook.

Theory tells us capital should flow from capital-saturated countries to poor countries, where it will do more. My hope for the ever-flatter future is that people in rich countries begin to see that the companies who will best use their investment are not listed in New York. Maybe there’s a social network for that. 

Illustration by Dylan C. Lathrop

The Free Resource that Can Help You Cope With Anything

By Wendy Aron

When I had my comic memoir published by an award-winning independent press in 2008, I thought it would be the pinnacle of my professional writing career. But after my publisher went bankrupt one year later, taking with him most of my dreams, that celebratory moment turned into one of despair.

Standing in our basement, looking at the five big crates of unsold books we were left with after the experience, my husband wondered aloud what we were going to do with them. I said to him: “We can always make a bonfire and toast marshmallows.” Suddenly, the tension seemed to lift.

I firmly believe my ability to find the humor in upsetting circumstances like this one has helped me to rebound from innumerable setbacks. Humor is, in fact, a free resource that has greater rejuvenative powers than anything we might be tempted to buy to cheer us up. For depressed people in particular, laughter is at once a defense against a seemingly indefensible world and a safety valve.

The therapeutic value of laughter has been recognized for centuries, but it was first popularized in the United States in the 1970s, when author Norman Cousins recounted his experience overcoming a painful case of arthritis by watching funny television programs like “Candid Camera” and Marx Brothers movies. In his book about the experience, “Anatomy of an Illness,” Cousins reported that ten minutes of laughter provided him with two hours of anesthetic-free pain relief.

Today, humor therapy is a recognized discipline in the field of psychology, and many practitioners offer advice on how best to incorporate laughter into our lives when we are going through difficult times. But we don’t even have to turn to professionals for guidance on this matter—we are surrounded by free humor everyday. Not only in the typical entertainment fare, but in small moments—walking with a friend who makes us laugh, observing a child’s innocence, or a pet’s curiosity. Humor is everywhere. We just have to train ourselves to be open to it.

I once interviewed a clinical psychologist and humor therapist for an article I was writing on counseling couples going through home renovation projects—a very stressful circumstance indeed. He offered tips on dealing with the experience, which I think can be applied to many others stressors we face in life.

One of his main suggestions was to work with a partner or a friend as a stress buster—someone with whom to share everything absurd or silly that happened during the course of a day’s frazzling events. He also suggested keeping a written log of these moments and sharing them with their stress buddies at the end of each week. The positive affect on overall outlook, he said, is tremendous.

Another tip he offered the couples he counseled was to always keep a humorous moment from their lives in their memory to access when they were under a great deal of pressure. Just the simple act of remembering something that made them laugh or smile did wonders to relieve stress in the present moment, he said.

I have since followed this psychologist’s advice, and it has helped. Now, my stress-busting partner is either my husband or a close childhood friend. And whenever I am in a trying situation, I remember the time I was driving with my mother on a highway lost and she screamed: “Can’t you ask someone for directions?” (I remind you, we were on a highway!).

I believe laughter is a critical component of a life well-lived and is the main reason why couples and friends form and stay in relationships. It can do wonders for everyone, in any circumstance. Even for those of us who have seen their hopes of being a best-selling author dashed.

Photo by orangeacid

Why Killing Your Lawn Is a Good Idea—And How to Do It

Why do we love our lawns when they don’t love us back? We pay a gardener or mow every week. We weed, edge, and blow. We aerate and add chemicals that pollute our waterways. And still, our lawns need more—often a lot more.

What’s more, a tremendous amount potable water is used to irrigate our landscapes. And because grass and the soil under it are often severely compacted, many lawns act like a paved surface that water just runs off. Even under the best conditions, our lawns' root systems are very shallow. Plants with deeper root systems allow for healthier soil. The healthier our soil, the more water it can absorb, so there's less runoff.

I used to love my lawn. It was so perfect: a thick soft carpet for my kids and puppy to romp around on, surrounded by a white picket fence. Then I found out the dirty truth about lawns. And the simple fact was that my children and dog spent most of their time in the flower beds anyway. So I did it: I killed my lawn.

Here are a few different ways to do the job. (If you're a renter, you might check with your landlord first, of course.)

Sweat it out

Solarizing works best in the late spring and summer. It's easy, although it is slightly unattractive for a short while.

1. Cut your lawn very short.

2. Water thoroughly.

3. Cover with plastic sheeting. Stake or weigh down with bricks or stones.

4. Wait 6 weeks for the sun to do the dirty work.

Cover it up

Sheet mulching is a great way to go if you have small children, and it’s fairly cheap and easy.

1. Cover your lawn with about six layers of cardboard or newspaper.

2. Add 4-6 inches of mulch on top. Many municipalities offer mulch for free, or a local arborist can deliver some (usually) for free as well.

3. Water.

4. Wait 2 months. Then you can dig through and plant whatever you like, cardboard and all.

Dig it

With good old-fashioned elbow grease, you can simply dig up your lawn. Grass grows from the stems, so you must get out the entire plant and root system. This takes a long time and can often remove too much top soil, but it’s okay for small areas. Just make sure you don't rototill. Not only will that disturb the soil life, it'll also plant more grass.

Pickle it!

Some folks swear by chemicals. I’m not a big fan. We’re trying to build healthy soil, so why drench your garden in something toxic? But if spraying seems like the only option for you, try vinegar. (Not effective on Bermuda grass.)

1. Saturate the grass with vinegar (this works best on hot days)

2. Avoid spraying plants you want to keep.

3. Wait 2-4 days. Then dig up.

What should I plant instead?

Now’s your chance to have the landscape of your dreams. So how about that veggie garden you’ve always wanted? You can also choose one big flower bed of native plants.  Or if it just seems too drastic to kill your entire lawn, consider just shrinking it a bit.

What about artificial turf?

Fake grass is, well, fake. And it’s not a very green choice. It may be made of recycled materials and doesn’t require water to grow, but these surfaces get very hot (adding to the urban heat island effect) and often require water to cool them. As stewards of our environment, we want to choose landscapes that conserve water and promote healthy soil. Choose a grass native to your area or another turf alternative instead, like yarrow.

Having a grassy field around your home seems harmless. But a 1,000-square-foot lawn with a typical irrigation system will use 25,000 gallons of water a year. Replace it with low-water plants, and you’re down to 6,000 gallons.

If you're in Los Angeles and want more information on how to make your home more sustainable, check out TreePeople's Green City Fair this weekend. The event will include workshops on energy efficiency, fruit tree grafting, and how to do something useful with that little strip of grass between the sidewalk and the curb.

Photo via (cc) Flickr user Daniel C. Blume

Why Killing Your Lawn Is a Good Idea—And How to Do It

Why do we love our lawns when they don’t love us back? We pay a gardener or mow every week. We weed, edge, and blow. We aerate and add chemicals that pollute our waterways. And still, our lawns need more—often a lot more.

What’s more, a tremendous amount potable water is used to irrigate our landscapes. And because grass and the soil under it are often severely compacted, many lawns act like a paved surface that water just runs off. Even under the best conditions, our lawns' root systems are very shallow. Plants with deeper root systems allow for healthier soil. The healthier our soil, the more water it can absorb, so there's less runoff.

I used to love my lawn. It was so perfect: a thick soft carpet for my kids and puppy to romp around on, surrounded by a white picket fence. Then I found out the dirty truth about lawns. And the simple fact was that my children and dog spent most of their time in the flower beds anyway. So I did it: I killed my lawn.

Here are a few different ways to do the job. (If you're a renter, you might check with your landlord first, of course.)

Sweat it out

Solarizing works best in the late spring and summer. It's easy, although it is slightly unattractive for a short while.

1. Cut your lawn very short.

2. Water thoroughly.

3. Cover with plastic sheeting. Stake or weigh down with bricks or stones.

4. Wait 6 weeks for the sun to do the dirty work.

Cover it up

Sheet mulching is a great way to go if you have small children, and it’s fairly cheap and easy.

1. Cover your lawn with about six layers of cardboard or newspaper.

2. Add 4-6 inches of mulch on top. Many municipalities offer mulch for free, or a local arborist can deliver some (usually) for free as well.

3. Water.

4. Wait 2 months. Then you can dig through and plant whatever you like, cardboard and all.

Dig it

With good old-fashioned elbow grease, you can simply dig up your lawn. Grass grows from the stems, so you must get out the entire plant and root system. This takes a long time and can often remove too much top soil, but it’s okay for small areas. Just make sure you don't rototill. Not only will that disturb the soil life, it'll also plant more grass.

Pickle it!

Some folks swear by chemicals. I’m not a big fan. We’re trying to build healthy soil, so why drench your garden in something toxic? But if spraying seems like the only option for you, try vinegar. (Not effective on Bermuda grass.)

1. Saturate the grass with vinegar (this works best on hot days)

2. Avoid spraying plants you want to keep.

3. Wait 2-4 days. Then dig up.

What should I plant instead?

Now’s your chance to have the landscape of your dreams. So how about that veggie garden you’ve always wanted? You can also choose one big flower bed of native plants.  Or if it just seems too drastic to kill your entire lawn, consider just shrinking it a bit.

What about artificial turf?

Fake grass is, well, fake. And it’s not a very green choice. It may be made of recycled materials and doesn’t require water to grow, but these surfaces get very hot (adding to the urban heat island effect) and often require water to cool them. As stewards of our environment, we want to choose landscapes that conserve water and promote healthy soil. Choose a grass native to your area or another turf alternative instead, like yarrow.

Having a grassy field around your home seems harmless. But a 1,000-square-foot lawn with a typical irrigation system will use 25,000 gallons of water a year. Replace it with low-water plants, and you’re down to 6,000 gallons.

If you're in Los Angeles and want more information on how to make your home more sustainable, check out TreePeople's Green City Fair this weekend. The event will include workshops on energy efficiency, fruit tree grafting, and how to do something useful with that little strip of grass between the sidewalk and the curb.

Photo via (cc) Flickr user Daniel C. Blume

Clearing the Clutter in Your Mind

I am going through this absolutely agonizingly delicious process, right now, of clearing out and re-organizing my office. Impatient sigh. Taking each book from the shelf, holding it in my hand, and deciding — do I want this thing? Will I read it again? Did I ever read it? Am I keeping it because it was a gift? Should I donate it? The whole process makes me lightheaded and queasy. I am working with an organizer, and it still smarts.

That is, until one shelf is done. And then, another. And then, a whole mess of oxygen and space and light are freed up. Instead of feeling congested and pressed when I sit at my desk, I feel happy. And free. And when someone asks me for a book, I can race to the shelf and pick it up, knowing just where it is. Oh, what a feeling. No more agonizing over which pile it lives behind! I am like a gazelle when I reach for a book — no, more like a bird of prey, swooping down from a mountain, targeting my kill.

My poetry is back. I am myself again. And all I did was handle my own backlog of clutter and chaos. And I did it right on schedule. It is spring right now, after all.

Time for a little spring cleaning, anyone?

Clutter and chaos happen anywhere and everywhere in a human life.
Refrigerators.
Desks.
Kitchens.
Bathrooms.
Underwear drawers.
You name it.

But guess where we can create the most enormously ginormous backlog of garbage?

In our minds. Yah. Really. No kidding. See, your mind is not a refrigerator. When you leave something in the fridge, and come back and get it the next day, it is still fresh and fabulous. Your mind is not like that.

If you have a communication you need to make, and you do not make it, it not only clogs up the works inside your head, but it begins to rot and fester and infect other thoughts.

When your husband forgot to pick up the dry cleaning for the 17,000th time, and you hold in your frustration, you add to the interior clutter. When your boss yells at you for no reason, and it is just not the right time to argue back or defend yourself, you toss more garbage on your inner heap. When you get stuck in traffic and miss the opening act of the concert, or burn dinner, or forget your laptop for an important presentation, you just keep stacking up heaps and heaps of garbage, inside your own mind.
Sometimes it can be historical garbage — like, your first boyfriend broke your heart, so you bring your broken heart to every relationship. Sometimes it’s not even your garbage — you inherited your mom’s garbage about money because she was poor when she was a little kid.

And in our culture, we do not really get taught good ways of managing our garbage.
When people get too overloaded with unexpressed thoughts and feelings, we explode with anger. Or worse, we turn the anger in on ourselves.

But what if there was a way to do mental spring cleaning? Just like I did with my bookshelf? What if there was a way to dump all of that accumulated crap from years of unspoken communications — clean your own clock and fly free like a bird — just as I did, with my spring-cleaned office?

There is a special exercise that I teach, both in my book, “Mama Gena’s School of Womanly Arts” and in my seminars. It is one of the most popular and practical of all the tools in the great lexicon of the Womanly Arts toolbox. I would not start my day without it. If I don’t dump my crap, it could accumulate. And when it accumulates, my enjoyment of everything diminishes. Why? Well, think about it — you can’t enjoy, or even see, your clothes when they are jammed and stuffed in your closet. It is the same thing with your feelings. If you are stuffed with unprocessed, plugged-up emotions, from a day before, or a lifetime before, you can’t contact your own private truth. And life gets decidedly less fun. You start making decisions out of fear, rather than joy. You do what other people want for you, because you can’t find your own voice. Your voice is so deeply buried underneath a lifetime of crap. You are reactive, not proactive. Frustration is your middle name. Confusion is your first name. And your last name is Bleh. There are options and solutions all around you, but you can’t see any of them.

Constipation of the soul is not a pleasant sensation. Especially for you — you who have so much promise; you who have so much potential; you who have a heart filled with gorgeous, raw desire. So, I am going to give you the down-low on this little exercise, right here, right now, so you can do some spring cleaning that will lighten up every aspect of your surging, pounding, pulsing thoughts, so you can begin to really really fly in the direction of your deepest truth.

Here’s how it works. You can do this exercise alone or to a wall, but it is best done with a partner. You both first agree to keep what is said in the exercise confidential, so that you can be free in revealing your charge. Then, if you’re doing this exercise in person, sit facing each other, either at a café or some private place. You can also do this exercise over the phone. One of you asks the other the same question, over and over in an expressionless tone, for 10-15 minutes. The other answers. Then you switch. For example:

Person 1: What do you have on “desire”?
Person 2: I have no idea what I desire.
Person 1: Thank you. What do you have on “desire”?
Person 2: I remember when I was three, and I desired a ribbon for my hair and my mother criticized me.
Person 1: Thank you. What do you have on “desire”?
Person 2: I want a chocolate-covered pretzel right now.
Person 1: Thank you. …

… And so on. Then you switch. The result of this practice is you, uncluttered. You, unplugged. You, unfettered. You, the gazelle. You, the swooping bird. You. Pure, wild, savage, wonderful, irreplaceable you.

Photo credit: Roman Tanglao

Are Electronic Cigarettes Safe?

You may have heard of the electronic cigarette, also known as the e-cigarette or the healthy cigarette. It is basically a device that looks like a cigarette and allows you to inhale and exhale actual smoke, without all the toxic effects associated with smoking. In areas that have imposed a smoking ban, such as offices and restaurants for instance, it is possible to smoke an electronic cigarette, because there are also no associated risks with secondary smoking. So how does this work?

How Does the Electronic Cigarette Work?
Electronic cigarettes look like real cigarettes. They are slightly heavier, because they are made from metal. Best of all, they have a small tip at the end with a red led light, which makes them look as if they are actually burning when you take a drag. The electronic cigarette has cartridges that are put into the filter area and these release the smoke, which also has some nicotine in it. The cartridges can be purchased in different strengths. Very often, people use electronic cigarettes to help them stop smoking. We will look into how this works later. The device is charged up through your computer via a USB port that is included in the snazzy box you normally get with your electronic cigarette. In the box, you will be able to keep your cigarette, but also the electronic cigarette refills, making it look as if you are actually carrying ten cigarettes.

Using the Electronic Cigarette to Stop Smoking
Many people use electronic cigarettes to stop smoking. Because the electronic cigarette refills contain nicotine, the receptors in the brain are kept quiet in the same way as other nicotine replacement therapy does. However, because a smoker can also hold the cigarette between their fingers and actually take draws, it is felt that these work better than other therapies because a large part of nicotine addiction is a psychological rather than physical addiction.

How Much Does it Cost?
Of course, you will want to know the electronic cigarette price. Needless to say, the electronic cigarette will always be cheaper than actually smoking. Prices vary on the exact brand that you want to purchase and where you are purchasing it from. There are a number of wholesale websites where you can get both the electronic cigarettes and the cartridges at significantly reduced prices. You do need to make sure that the electronic cigarette refills fit on your model of e-cigarette.

The highest cost generally is the cigarette itself, with the cartridges being reasonably cheap. One cartridge is the equivalent of around 100 cigarettes, so it easy to work out why it is much cheaper. If you are buying alternative electronic cigarette flavors, they tend to cost marginally more.

Are Electronic Cigarettes Safe?
The big question is, of course, whether the electronic cigarette is safe. The verdict is somewhat out on this one. It is absolutely agreed that the electronic cigarette is not harmful to other people in terms of secondary smoking. The main reason why you could consider that it isn’t safe is that you are still consuming a nicotine product. Also, if you use different electronic cigarette flavors, you may be subject to chemicals that are used to create the flavor. The most important thing is recognizing that you are still consuming nicotine and that this is an addiction that also needs to be resolved. Nicotine is both a stimulant and a relaxant and releases glucose and adrenaline. But, it is widely agreed that nicotine addiction is a psychological one and if the electronic cigarettes can help people overcome their cigarette addiction, the next step is very easy to overcome.

Makin’ It: Kira Eng-Wilmot, Tapestry Bather and Textile Conservator

Kira Eng-Wilmot is a textile conservator at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in New York City, where she cares for tapestries in the church's collection and private commissions. In her off-time, she makes delicious ice cream. Kira told us what it's like to give a 400-year-old tapestry a bath and why the basic tools of her trade are still a needle and thread.

Textile conservationist is pretty specific. What got you into this line of work?

"Textile conservator" was not my childhood dream job. However, clothes have been the one thing that I have been consistently interested in since childhood. I think for a long time my parents thought I was going to be a fashion designer. I was definitely the kid who played dress-up, and my mother taught me how to sew when I was in elementary school. I cultivated my adolescent mysterious weirdo persona by making/altering/wearing vintage clothes and reading lots of old fashion magazines. I had this vague idea of studying fashion academically, and the best way for me to do that was to combine classes in art history and costume design/theater. But I soon realized that I am not a theory person, nor do I have that true drive to create fashion. And I was really interested in fashion construction more than theater.

My costume design professor steered me toward the museum path and suggested that I volunteer in the costume collection at the Valentine Richmond History Center. That snowballed into a collections job where I realized that I really liked objects, the physicality of objects, and the stories they tell. But even then, I thought that meant I wanted to be a curator. I enrolled in the Fashion and Textiles Study Masters program at FIT, and quickly ditched any aspirations of being a curator. One of the core classes is an introduction to conservation, and it really just clicked. Science, sewing, handling and preserving objects all in one class and I was sold. Art, textile, and fashion history are definitely still important in my job.

How did you translate a specialized graduate degree to a real world paying job?

The best way to get a job in the field is definitely internships or apprenticeships, and most graduate programs have internship hours as part of their curriculum. I was luckily recommended to fill an internship at St. John during my first year at FIT, and I've been there since. Like many arts jobs, my position is grant-funded for specific projects. I am primarily there to finish the conservation and installation of the two sets of tapestries owned by the Cathedral. The lab takes on projects from other institutions and private clients, so I also get to work on non-tapestry projects.

What is an average day like?

Conservation emphasizes preservation at an object's current state, making it stable while creating visual continuity, and slowing the rate of deterioration. Every object that comes in gets a treatment proposal, which is an assessment, some testing, and recommendations. Cleaning is probably the most important thing we can do to improve an object's appearance and lifespan. We vacuum everything to remove as much surface soiling as possible and, depending on the object's construction, wet clean (basically give it a bath) or dry clean. It's amazing how much better an object feels and looks after wet cleaning – even water by itself pulls out so much acidic deterioration and particulate soiling. 

However, the bulk of our time is spent sewing­—using new stitches and support fabrics to provide stability and to improve the visual appearance by consolidating holes and worn areas. I get to see and touch and help preserve a lot of amazing objects on a regular basis, for example a beautiful Fortuny pleated silk dress, or a 17th-century tapestry, or pieces based on designs by modern artists like Calder and Lichtenstein. It is very rewarding to see a 16-foot tapestry finally installed in a space like the Cathedral after having spent months just focusing on the small and frustratingly damaged areas. That final moment puts it all into perspective.

How much of your work is devoted to church-related stuff? Is St. John strictly a religious organization?

My position covers probably 75 percent Cathedral objects, but that's only, like, 10 percent of what the lab does total. All of the Cathedral object projects are funded through grants, like the National Endowment for the Arts and Kress Foundation. The Textile Conservation Lab was started in the 1980s specifically to take care of the Cathedral's tapestries, but in order to be sustainable, it became a private lab and takes in projects from other places, which fund the salaries and day-to-day expenses. Let's just say it's a complicated logistical relationship. The Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine is an active Episcopal church, and I believe the seat of the New York diocese. The Bishop and Dean both live on the campus, and I frequently see clergy. So while we are technically a private lab, we are definitely part of the Cathedral community.

What are some of the specific pieces you're working on?

There are two major sets of tapestries owned by the Cathedral, the Life of Christ series and the Acts of the Apostles, as well as many smaller pieces. The emphasis for the past 30 years has been on the Life of Christ series. It is a set of 12 tapestries depicting major events in the life of Christ. They were commissioned and made in Italy in the mid-17th century by Cardinal Francesco Barberini, the nephew of Pope Urban VIII, for the family during the height of Barberini influence and power. They are a unique set for many reasons. They were made in Italy in the Barberini manufactory. (The family established their own workshop just to make tapestries for them and were at the time the only tapestry workshop in Italy.) I had the privilege of completing the conservation on two tapestries in the set, the Annunciation and the Baptism.

The Acts of the Apostles set is also an interesting set and is the next big Cathedral project. It is a set of 10 tapestries based on a copy of a set of cartoons made by Raphael for the Sistine Chapel. This particular set was woven in England. It has some difficult conservation issues, mainly that a previous treatment involved a heavy animal-based glue, which has discolored and hardened, so all of the glue has to be removed before it can even be wet cleaned. And then, once cleaned, they are in weak condition, so they are huge projects.  

Do you have to use antiquated methods to retain a textile's character? Or is new technology an asset? 

Textile conservation is a relatively new field, so processes and standards are ever changing. Technology plays a huge role in general, and professional development, reading, workshops, and cross-disciplinary discussions are important. But our lab is lower-tech; we don't do scientific analysis beyond basic microscopy, or fiber identification. The basic tools of the trade are still a needle and thread, but I still wouldn't call that antiquated. We are not spinning our own thread or forging needles, nor are we doing things exactly as the original weavers or historic restorers. We use commercially produced wools and cotton and sometimes silk threads for most things. While we do custom dye wool to match specific projects, we are using synthetic dyes, which produce reliable and reproducible results. Now, while there are some European labs that have completely automated wet cleaning setups, we do our wet cleaning the low-tech way with sponges, a surfactant, deionized water, person-power, and some specific cleaning on a suction table. I think we all wish that someone would design and build a new wash table for us with better drainage, but our system works effectively without a big fuss or high tech sprayers.  

Makin' It is the work of journalist Brady Welch and illustrator Skyler Swezy, the team behind YrDoingAGreatJob.com.

Makin’ It: Kira Eng-Wilmot, Tapestry Bather and Textile Conservator

Kira Eng-Wilmot is a textile conservator at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in New York City, where she cares for tapestries in the church's collection and private commissions. In her off-time, she makes delicious ice cream. Kira told us what it's like to give a 400-year-old tapestry a bath and why the basic tools of her trade are still a needle and thread.

Textile conservationist is pretty specific. What got you into this line of work?

"Textile conservator" was not my childhood dream job. However, clothes have been the one thing that I have been consistently interested in since childhood. I think for a long time my parents thought I was going to be a fashion designer. I was definitely the kid who played dress-up, and my mother taught me how to sew when I was in elementary school. I cultivated my adolescent mysterious weirdo persona by making/altering/wearing vintage clothes and reading lots of old fashion magazines. I had this vague idea of studying fashion academically, and the best way for me to do that was to combine classes in art history and costume design/theater. But I soon realized that I am not a theory person, nor do I have that true drive to create fashion. And I was really interested in fashion construction more than theater.

My costume design professor steered me toward the museum path and suggested that I volunteer in the costume collection at the Valentine Richmond History Center. That snowballed into a collections job where I realized that I really liked objects, the physicality of objects, and the stories they tell. But even then, I thought that meant I wanted to be a curator. I enrolled in the Fashion and Textiles Study Masters program at FIT, and quickly ditched any aspirations of being a curator. One of the core classes is an introduction to conservation, and it really just clicked. Science, sewing, handling and preserving objects all in one class and I was sold. Art, textile, and fashion history are definitely still important in my job.

How did you translate a specialized graduate degree to a real world paying job?

The best way to get a job in the field is definitely internships or apprenticeships, and most graduate programs have internship hours as part of their curriculum. I was luckily recommended to fill an internship at St. John during my first year at FIT, and I've been there since. Like many arts jobs, my position is grant-funded for specific projects. I am primarily there to finish the conservation and installation of the two sets of tapestries owned by the Cathedral. The lab takes on projects from other institutions and private clients, so I also get to work on non-tapestry projects.

What is an average day like?

Conservation emphasizes preservation at an object's current state, making it stable while creating visual continuity, and slowing the rate of deterioration. Every object that comes in gets a treatment proposal, which is an assessment, some testing, and recommendations. Cleaning is probably the most important thing we can do to improve an object's appearance and lifespan. We vacuum everything to remove as much surface soiling as possible and, depending on the object's construction, wet clean (basically give it a bath) or dry clean. It's amazing how much better an object feels and looks after wet cleaning – even water by itself pulls out so much acidic deterioration and particulate soiling. 

However, the bulk of our time is spent sewing­—using new stitches and support fabrics to provide stability and to improve the visual appearance by consolidating holes and worn areas. I get to see and touch and help preserve a lot of amazing objects on a regular basis, for example a beautiful Fortuny pleated silk dress, or a 17th-century tapestry, or pieces based on designs by modern artists like Calder and Lichtenstein. It is very rewarding to see a 16-foot tapestry finally installed in a space like the Cathedral after having spent months just focusing on the small and frustratingly damaged areas. That final moment puts it all into perspective.

How much of your work is devoted to church-related stuff? Is St. John strictly a religious organization?

My position covers probably 75 percent Cathedral objects, but that's only, like, 10 percent of what the lab does total. All of the Cathedral object projects are funded through grants, like the National Endowment for the Arts and Kress Foundation. The Textile Conservation Lab was started in the 1980s specifically to take care of the Cathedral's tapestries, but in order to be sustainable, it became a private lab and takes in projects from other places, which fund the salaries and day-to-day expenses. Let's just say it's a complicated logistical relationship. The Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine is an active Episcopal church, and I believe the seat of the New York diocese. The Bishop and Dean both live on the campus, and I frequently see clergy. So while we are technically a private lab, we are definitely part of the Cathedral community.

What are some of the specific pieces you're working on?

There are two major sets of tapestries owned by the Cathedral, the Life of Christ series and the Acts of the Apostles, as well as many smaller pieces. The emphasis for the past 30 years has been on the Life of Christ series. It is a set of 12 tapestries depicting major events in the life of Christ. They were commissioned and made in Italy in the mid-17th century by Cardinal Francesco Barberini, the nephew of Pope Urban VIII, for the family during the height of Barberini influence and power. They are a unique set for many reasons. They were made in Italy in the Barberini manufactory. (The family established their own workshop just to make tapestries for them and were at the time the only tapestry workshop in Italy.) I had the privilege of completing the conservation on two tapestries in the set, the Annunciation and the Baptism.

The Acts of the Apostles set is also an interesting set and is the next big Cathedral project. It is a set of 10 tapestries based on a copy of a set of cartoons made by Raphael for the Sistine Chapel. This particular set was woven in England. It has some difficult conservation issues, mainly that a previous treatment involved a heavy animal-based glue, which has discolored and hardened, so all of the glue has to be removed before it can even be wet cleaned. And then, once cleaned, they are in weak condition, so they are huge projects.  

Do you have to use antiquated methods to retain a textile's character? Or is new technology an asset? 

Textile conservation is a relatively new field, so processes and standards are ever changing. Technology plays a huge role in general, and professional development, reading, workshops, and cross-disciplinary discussions are important. But our lab is lower-tech; we don't do scientific analysis beyond basic microscopy, or fiber identification. The basic tools of the trade are still a needle and thread, but I still wouldn't call that antiquated. We are not spinning our own thread or forging needles, nor are we doing things exactly as the original weavers or historic restorers. We use commercially produced wools and cotton and sometimes silk threads for most things. While we do custom dye wool to match specific projects, we are using synthetic dyes, which produce reliable and reproducible results. Now, while there are some European labs that have completely automated wet cleaning setups, we do our wet cleaning the low-tech way with sponges, a surfactant, deionized water, person-power, and some specific cleaning on a suction table. I think we all wish that someone would design and build a new wash table for us with better drainage, but our system works effectively without a big fuss or high tech sprayers.  

Makin' It is the work of journalist Brady Welch and illustrator Skyler Swezy, the team behind YrDoingAGreatJob.com.

How to be a Manifesting Maven

We are always manifesting. Each thought we have creates an energy flow within and around our physical being. This energy attracts its likeness. So if you’re thinking, “I suck,” then your energy kinda, well, sucks–and you attract sucky experiences.

The opposite experience occurs when you think high-level thoughts like, “I rock!” When you think and feel, “I rock,” you exude an energy of confidence and in turn attract great experiences into your life. Each thought you have informs your energy, and your energy manifests into your experiences. Your thoughts and energy create your reality.

Manifesting Mishaps
Manifestation has become a buzzword lately. Though it’s totally awesome that the Law of Attraction is now trendy, it also can be a bit misleading for folks who are unwilling to do the heavy lifting. If you truly want to use your energetic power to manifest greatness, you must clear all that blocks you from believing in your greatness.

“A Course in Miracles” teaches that on some level, you’ve asked for everything that happens in your life. Your intentions create your reality. There’s no need to beat yourself up: simply recognizing how your low-level thoughts negatively affect your life is the first powerful step toward changing your experiences. Begin your manifesting process by getting honest about how your low-level thoughts, energy and feelings of disbelief block you from receiving what you desire. Once you get clear about the blocks, you can begin to clean them up to clear space for positive manifestations to occur.

Many people, when trying to manifest, focus too much on the outside form rather than the internal condition. From A Course in Miracles’ perspective, what’s important is our internal experience: whether we choose to experience love or fear. When we commit to our internal experience of love, we begin to attract more love. Many people approach manifestation from a place of “How can I get something to feel better?” Instead, the focus should be: “How can I feel better and therefore be an energetic match for attracting more greatness into my life?” The emphasis must be placed on healing the internal condition, not getting a hot new car or boyfriend.

The Five Principles for Manifesting Your Desires
Below are my five key principles for genuine manifesting. When practicing these steps, make sure to stay committed to the goal of feeling good first and attracting stuff second. Continue to remind yourself that when you feel good you energetically attract goodness into your life. When your primary function is to be happy, then whatever comes to you is irrelevant. Happiness is your true manifestation.

Principle One: Clear Space
Before you begin the manifestation process you must take the necessary time to release all your disbelief in your power to be happy. One of the best ways to clear the blocks of disbelief is to pray for release. Begin a daily prayer practice of asking the Universe to set you free from all the limiting beliefs that block you from believing in your greatness. Stay open for signs from the Universe and show up for the assignments that are brought to you. Universal assignments come in many forms. Maybe you’re guided to the relationship that brings up all your shit so that you have to finally heal your fear. Or maybe you lose your job so that you can learn the lessons of self-reliance and strengthen your self-love. Trust that these assignments, however tough at times, are incredible opportunities for you to clean your energy and clear space to call in what you desire.

Your job in this step is to pray for guidance to clear all that blocks you from believing in your greatness. Then allow the Universe to help guide you to whatever assignments you need to aid in the healing process. Show up for the assignments and trust that the more you clean your thoughts and energy, the more positive experiences you will attract into your life.

Principle Two: Get Clear
Clarity is king when it comes to manifesting your desires. You must have clear intentions for what you want to call in–otherwise you can manifest a lot of what you don’t want. Focus on what you desire and then make a list of all that goes along with it. If you’re getting clear about the job you want, make a list of all the things about the job that make you happy: the office, the people, the salary, etc. Be unapologetic about what you want. This list helps you clarify your intentions and access a vibrant mental picture of what you desire.

The most important part of this step is to clarify how you want to feel. When you get clear on how you want to feel, you can begin to access that feeling. That feeling is what makes the manifestation come into form. You can write a thousand lists and make a million vision boards, but if you don’t clearly feel what you want to experience, it will never truly manifest into form.

Principle Three: Think It, Feel It, Believe It!
Now let’s put these steps together. Take your clear intention and spend time every day sitting in the feeling of what it is that you desire. You might access the feeling through meditation and visioning exercises. Or call on the feeling when you’re in nature or doing a form of exercise you love. Let the thought inform the feeling and let the feeling take over your energy. The more you feel the feeling of what you desire, the more you believe it is on the way. From a metaphysical perspective, if you believe it then it is already here. So make time for contemplating, thinking, feeling and believing.

Principle Four: Chill!
The next step is crucial to the manifestation process. In order to truly manifest your desires into form, you gotta chill out! A Course in Miracles teaches: “Those who are certain of the outcome can afford to wait and wait without anxiety.” Take this message with you and allow your faithfulness to guide you into the belief that what you desire is on the way. Also trust that the Universe has a much better plan than you do. Though you are clear about what you want, you cannot control the timing or the form in which it comes. Stay calm, relax and trust that the Universe has your back!

Principle Five: Know the Universe Has Your Back
When you’re in the know you’re deliberate about what you want. When you’re in the know you no longer vibrate energy of fear or disbelief. You just know. As your disbelief wilts away, wanting is replaced by knowing. Getting into the know happens naturally. When you diligently practice steps one through four, you will clean house, get clear and feel happier. This process is healing and powerful, and it leads to a deep inner knowing that you are right where you need to be. Accepting your greatness in this moment, right now, is what manifests more greatness. Being in the know helps you accept that you already are living in your desired manifestation. When you feel it, you live it–regardless of what is happening on the outside. In time, the Universe catches up with your energy and your desires come into form. This process of allowing the manifestation to follow your internal faith is the true process of co-creation.

Stay Committed to Happiness
Stay committed to this five-step process and trust that you’re exactly where you need to be. Is your main desire to feel good? Trust you will be given everything you need to create that feeling. Know that feeling good is the true manifestation–and everything else is the icing on the already delicious cake!

Do you want to deepen your understanding of the manifestation process? Join Gabrielle Bernstein on April 27 in NYC and Livestream video for my awesome Manifest Your Desires lecture. Get the details: http://gabbyb.tv/manifest-your-desires-lecture

Photo credit: Walt Jabsco

B Corps Go Global: Sistema B Certifies South American Social Enterprise

Last fall, a small group of social entrepreneurs from South America met to discuss how to foster more social enterprise in the region and create more bang for the buck at existing enterprise. The result was Sistema B, the first effort to adapt the American system of B Corporations—which ease operations for companies that combine profit and social good—to a foreign setting.

“We want to build a global movement,” says Juan Pablo Larenas, co-founder of Sistema B. “We already started in Argentina, Chile and Colombia. We also have a plan to start this year in Brazil… we see huge momentum.”

The 521 certified B Corporations in the United States are for-profit companies that agree to blend social, environmental, and community impact into their business models, and to consider those factors along with earnings in company strategy decisions. The idea came out of the B Lab in 2006, and the group slowly built membership and tested evaluation methods. Last year, the concept attracted national attention when states including New York and California legally recognized certified B Corps as a different kind of company.

"We were researching different experiences related social enterprise all over world, and we found out about the experience of B Corporations in the U.S.," Larenas says, "so we took a plane and decided to go meet the co-founders of B Lab."

Early as it might seem for a young idea to be expanding, there is demand for export. Larenas hopes to certify 500 Latin American B Corporations—or as they’re called in Spanish, Empresas B—in three years. "[Latin American] society is a little bit tired of the role companies play, which is all about growth and products," he says. Many Empresas B already operate in South America; according to Larenas, they just don’t know they meet the standard. They need a framework, an umbrella to leverage their existing social and environmental work, and a trusted certification to separate the real thing from greenwashing.

Sistema B, which launched in February, eventually will cover Chile, Argentina, Colombia, and Brazil—one of the world’s most important growing economies. So far, there are just two certified Empresas B: Triciclos, a Chilean recycling consultant, and Ouro Verde, which makes food products from an Amazonian nut. Larenas’ own company, Late!—which sells bottled water and uses 100 percent of the profits to fund programs for kids in poverty—is undergoing certification.

Sistema B plans to work out a licensing agreement with B Labs to adapt the group's proprietary certification and evaluation metrics to each country more specifically and permanently. "We’ll create a process for folks to get certified from any country," says Jay Coen Gilbert, co-founder of B Lab. Once more than five or 10 companies in a given country want to be certified, B Lab’s pro bono lawyers will dive into local laws to find out how best to tweak corporate registration. Sistema B will handle South American modifications. Other groups have already been in touch from Korea and France, Gilbert says.

"Everybody wants a tribe," Gilbert theorizes. "This is that tribe." The initiation rites are evaluation and certification—proving your authentic social impact chops, not just paying a membership fee or signing a values statement.

B Corporation certification has proven popular for U.S. businesses seeking a credible commitment to social impact. In South America, Larenas expects the certification of a growing community to improve access to capital and increase the ability of social enterprise to scale thanks to a supportive ecosystem.

Larenas has met with senior government officials in Chile to seek early commitments to incorporate Empresas B into the nation's legal system, following the policy trend in U.S. states. He envisions sub-categories of Empresas B that acknowledge different social benefits than the U.S. certification. "Economic inclusion is quite important here, for instance," he says, touting businesses that create products for underprivileged residents. 

Larenas is so confident the idea will catch on that he’s already planning a trip for September to bring the first 20 Empresas B to the United States for meetings with potential funders—even if he’s not yet sure which companies will get a seat on the plane.

Image courtesy of Sistema B

B Corps Go Global: Sistema B Certifies South American Social Enterprise

Last fall, a small group of social entrepreneurs from South America met to discuss how to foster more social enterprise in the region and create more bang for the buck at existing enterprise. The result was Sistema B, the first effort to adapt the American system of B Corporations—which ease operations for companies that combine profit and social good—to a foreign setting.

“We want to build a global movement,” says Juan Pablo Larenas, co-founder of Sistema B. “We already started in Argentina, Chile and Colombia. We also have a plan to start this year in Brazil… we see huge momentum.”

The 521 certified B Corporations in the United States are for-profit companies that agree to blend social, environmental, and community impact into their business models, and to consider those factors along with earnings in company strategy decisions. The idea came out of the B Lab in 2006, and the group slowly built membership and tested evaluation methods. Last year, the concept attracted national attention when states including New York and California legally recognized certified B Corps as a different kind of company.

"We were researching different experiences related social enterprise all over world, and we found out about the experience of B Corporations in the U.S.," Larenas says, "so we took a plane and decided to go meet the co-founders of B Lab."

Early as it might seem for a young idea to be expanding, there is demand for export. Larenas hopes to certify 500 Latin American B Corporations—or as they’re called in Spanish, Empresas B—in three years. "[Latin American] society is a little bit tired of the role companies play, which is all about growth and products," he says. Many Empresas B already operate in South America; according to Larenas, they just don’t know they meet the standard. They need a framework, an umbrella to leverage their existing social and environmental work, and a trusted certification to separate the real thing from greenwashing.

Sistema B, which launched in February, eventually will cover Chile, Argentina, Colombia, and Brazil—one of the world’s most important growing economies. So far, there are just two certified Empresas B: Triciclos, a Chilean recycling consultant, and Ouro Verde, which makes food products from an Amazonian nut. Larenas’ own company, Late!—which sells bottled water and uses 100 percent of the profits to fund programs for kids in poverty—is undergoing certification.

Sistema B plans to work out a licensing agreement with B Labs to adapt the group's proprietary certification and evaluation metrics to each country more specifically and permanently. "We’ll create a process for folks to get certified from any country," says Jay Coen Gilbert, co-founder of B Lab. Once more than five or 10 companies in a given country want to be certified, B Lab’s pro bono lawyers will dive into local laws to find out how best to tweak corporate registration. Sistema B will handle South American modifications. Other groups have already been in touch from Korea and France, Gilbert says.

"Everybody wants a tribe," Gilbert theorizes. "This is that tribe." The initiation rites are evaluation and certification—proving your authentic social impact chops, not just paying a membership fee or signing a values statement.

B Corporation certification has proven popular for U.S. businesses seeking a credible commitment to social impact. In South America, Larenas expects the certification of a growing community to improve access to capital and increase the ability of social enterprise to scale thanks to a supportive ecosystem.

Larenas has met with senior government officials in Chile to seek early commitments to incorporate Empresas B into the nation's legal system, following the policy trend in U.S. states. He envisions sub-categories of Empresas B that acknowledge different social benefits than the U.S. certification. "Economic inclusion is quite important here, for instance," he says, touting businesses that create products for underprivileged residents. 

Larenas is so confident the idea will catch on that he’s already planning a trip for September to bring the first 20 Empresas B to the United States for meetings with potential funders—even if he’s not yet sure which companies will get a seat on the plane.

Image courtesy of Sistema B

Do Weight Loss Pills Work?

Everyone knows that dieting rarely ever works unless you are determined to stick to a healthy eating and exercise plan. Boredom often sets in, and this leads to us slowly backing out of our fitness goals. Exercising can eat up too much of our time, and we end up letting our weight loss goals fall by the wayside. Many of us instead turn to diet pills and other over the counter remedies for weight loss; but do weight loss pills work? This desperation has made this a multi-billion dollar industry in America and it is only expected to increase.

Weight Loss Pills
The size of the diet pill industry should not come as a surprise, given the many commercials and other advertising media that tout diet pills as a miracle replacement for good eating and exercise. The idea of weight loss in a pill is idyllic. New products are introduced every single day; however, there is only a handful that have actually been approved by the FDA. Before you purchase any old brand it is important to know which ones will actually work as guaranteed and which ones are safe for your body.

It is no surprise that many of the products available over the counter are not only not effective but can cause many health problems as well. Anything that promises results quickly should be considered unsafe and ineffective. Losing weight too rapidly is never a safe alternative to natural weight loss.

Health Hazard
Not all diet pills are created equally. There are some that are not hazardous to your health and do actually deliver what they have promised. Some will boost the metabolism and aid in weight loss whilst others will stop your body from absorbing as much fat. You simply have to research which ones are the best. Weight loss pills should not be something you try just to see if they will work. It is important to know what you are putting in your body.

One of the best ways to tell if something is safe is if all of the ingredients are natural. If you choose a supplement that is made mostly of herbs and other extracts, the chances are that this is a much safer alternative than choosing something that is full of manmade ingredients. Some of the manmade ingredients can be quite hazardous to your health and can cause permanent, irreversible damage.

No Effort Usually Equals No Results
We have all been subject to the late night infomercials that showcase weight loss pills that require no effort on your part to lose weight. This should be your first inclination that something about the product is unsafe. These commercials boast that the products help fight against weight gain, and that you will not have to watch what you eat or how much you exercise. No diet is effective without the proper nutrition and exercise routine and this should always be kept in mind.

Buy Your Future: Wealth Club’s Best Investment Strategies

Here’s a riddle. What’s better than one dollar? If you said feline patty-cake, you’d technically be right. But the answer I was looking for was two dollars.

Growing your money is part of growing up. Appropriate investing is a powerful tool that can help you set goals and create the comfort and security necessary to hit those life milestones—buying a home, having a family, taking a kick-ass trip to Central America.

It’s natural to be a little reluctant to invest; just three years ago we saw the scariest market plunge in a generation. But since that time, the major stock indices have regained most, if not all, of that value. In no way am I predicting that things will continue to rise uninterrupted, but over the long term, the market’s general tendency is to rise, not fall.

Before I can set you loose on the markets, I need to be sure you’re secure for the short term. Build four to six months of living expenses into a run-of-the-mill savings account, the simplest, safest place you can keep your money. Even though today’s savings account interest rates are pretty low—in some places less than 1 percent—it’s still preferable to shoeboxing it. Why? Security. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation will protect your deposits (not to be confused with stocks and bonds that will be discussed later) up to $250,000 per person per institution.

Once you’re comfortable with your emergency fund, it’s time to start thinking about investing. The first step is to open a brokerage account. This should cost you absolutely nothing and can be done without ever interacting with a single human being, although I don’t suggest this approach. Virtually every person I’ve ever talked to on the phone about my money (banks, creditors, the IRS, etc.) has been attentive and helpful. Don’t be afraid of them.

Start with the financial institutions you already use. Chances are they have a brokerage arm. However, don’t be surprised if you hit some brick walls at smaller institutions: You may be forced to keep a minimum balance, restricted from investing in certain things, or you may have to pay a high price per trade—the actual buying and selling of an investment. If any of these are the case, look the many discount brokerages, such as TD AmeriTrade, Optionshouse or Scottrade. Frankly, they’re all pretty much the same, and you’re less likely to encounter the aforementioned walls.

With a brokerage account, you’ll be able to buy and sell various types of securities, a broad term referring to different financial instruments you can purchase. The two main categories are debt and equity. Both are issued to raise money from investors like you: Debt is exactly what it sounds like—you’ve lent somebody money, and they owe it back to you, with interest. Equity refers to actual ownership that you have in something. For example, if you were to have a mortgage on a house, you might be asked how much equity you have in it. Translation: how much of your house do you own versus the bank?

Debt securities are called “bonds.” Bond issuers find investors who pay them on the promise that over an agreed-upon time period, the issuer will pay back the face value of the bond and a set interest rate. Bond issuers are generally governments (national, state, and local) and companies. Their creditworthiness is ascertained through a rating agency such as Standard & Poor’s or Moody’s. The highest rating, AAA, indicates low default risk and comes with a lower interest rate. 

Equity securities are called stock, which means ownership. When you own 100 shares of XYZ, Inc., you own a small piece of the company; at times, this ownership allows you to vote on the direction of the company. Each stock is listed on a stock exchange, and the price of any given stock—and thus your personal wealth—can change daily depending on what’s happening in the market: When a company’s prospects are bright, there’s an influx of people wanting to buy a piece of it, and thus the bid price increases. When things look hairier, a current stockholder may need to reduce their ask price to get someone else to buy it, and the price falls. When everything’s looking hairy and everybody’s reducing their ask price at the same time, that’s called a crash. It happens.

Bonds or stocks? It’s an age-old debate, but it depends on what you’re looking for. Bonds are more secure than stocks. If things go south at a company, they are legally required to pay their debts to bondholders before stockholders see any money—holders of common stock run the risk of being left with nothing if a company goes under. Bonds also offer a much steadier stream of income, which may be attractive for people who need cash flow, such as retirees. Stock values can be more volatile, but the potential return on stock,  especially over the long term, can be very high—in 2004, one share of Apple Inc. cost about $10; today, it’s more than $600.

In reality, however, the answer to the question at the beginning of the previous paragraph is "neither." It would be silly to think we could choose one or two securities that we believed would get anywhere close to maximizing our potential return. In other words, you want to own a variety of securities, what the fat cats up on Wall Street call "diversification." By diversifying your portfolio, your average returns will be higher because your overall risk is alleviated, as capital gains on some securities will negate capital losses on others. 

Up until the 21st century, the way you and I could most easily and cost-effectively spread out our investments was with a mutual fund, a basket of investments made up of many stocks and bonds. There’s generally a common thread to the investments in a given mutual fund: emerging markets companies, or maybe companies in the energy sector. Fund managers pool all the money from their investors, and trade the individual instruments inside the fund in order to increase the value of the basket. Unlike the stocks and bonds contained within, mutual funds aren’t traded on an exchange. Instead, their Net Asset Value is recalculated once a day, based on how the prices of the items in the basket changed. Many people think the only way to own mutual funds is in an IRA, but that’s not the case. In that brokerage account you just opened, you’re more than welcome to buy shares of a mutual fund.

Mutual funds are a nice diversification strategy, but they can be expensive. Unfortunately, there’s no way to avoid the cost of having someone sit in an office investing a big pool of your money. The expense ratio of a mutual fund is the main metric to assess its costs. Stay away from any fund with an expense ratio above 1 percent; I’d even like to see that closer to .7 percent.

There is, however, a cheaper solution: Fast forward to 2012 and the rise in popularity of the Exchange Traded Fund, or ETF. ETFs are similar to mutual funds in that they’re a basket of assets which may include stocks, bonds, currencies, commodities, etc. The main difference is that instead of their price being their NAV, they trade on exchanges like stocks. ETFs are attractive because they provide the same diversification as a mutual fund but are generally much cheaper. It’s not uncommon for EFTs to have expense ratios under .25 percent. You may not get as wide a variety of funds that exist in the mutual fund world, but I think that has more to do with their relative youth on the financial stage, as opposed to a structural limitation.

I personally don’t own any ETFs yet, just a few shares of stock in my current company and the mutual funds in my retirement account. But I’m certain that when I am in a position to expand my investment horizon, ETFs are the first place I’m going to look. 

Buy Your Future: Wealth Club’s Best Investment Strategies

Here’s a riddle. What’s better than one dollar? If you said feline patty-cake, you’d technically be right. But the answer I was looking for was two dollars.

Growing your money is part of growing up. Appropriate investing is a powerful tool that can help you set goals and create the comfort and security necessary to hit those life milestones—buying a home, having a family, taking a kick-ass trip to Central America.

It’s natural to be a little reluctant to invest; just three years ago we saw the scariest market plunge in a generation. But since that time, the major stock indices have regained most, if not all, of that value. In no way am I predicting that things will continue to rise uninterrupted, but over the long term, the market’s general tendency is to rise, not fall.

Before I can set you loose on the markets, I need to be sure you’re secure for the short term. Build four to six months of living expenses into a run-of-the-mill savings account, the simplest, safest place you can keep your money. Even though today’s savings account interest rates are pretty low—in some places less than 1 percent—it’s still preferable to shoeboxing it. Why? Security. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation will protect your deposits (not to be confused with stocks and bonds that will be discussed later) up to $250,000 per person per institution.

Once you’re comfortable with your emergency fund, it’s time to start thinking about investing. The first step is to open a brokerage account. This should cost you absolutely nothing and can be done without ever interacting with a single human being, although I don’t suggest this approach. Virtually every person I’ve ever talked to on the phone about my money (banks, creditors, the IRS, etc.) has been attentive and helpful. Don’t be afraid of them.

Start with the financial institutions you already use. Chances are they have a brokerage arm. However, don’t be surprised if you hit some brick walls at smaller institutions: You may be forced to keep a minimum balance, restricted from investing in certain things, or you may have to pay a high price per trade—the actual buying and selling of an investment. If any of these are the case, look the many discount brokerages, such as TD AmeriTrade, Optionshouse or Scottrade. Frankly, they’re all pretty much the same, and you’re less likely to encounter the aforementioned walls.

With a brokerage account, you’ll be able to buy and sell various types of securities, a broad term referring to different financial instruments you can purchase. The two main categories are debt and equity. Both are issued to raise money from investors like you: Debt is exactly what it sounds like—you’ve lent somebody money, and they owe it back to you, with interest. Equity refers to actual ownership that you have in something. For example, if you were to have a mortgage on a house, you might be asked how much equity you have in it. Translation: how much of your house do you own versus the bank?

Debt securities are called “bonds.” Bond issuers find investors who pay them on the promise that over an agreed-upon time period, the issuer will pay back the face value of the bond and a set interest rate. Bond issuers are generally governments (national, state, and local) and companies. Their creditworthiness is ascertained through a rating agency such as Standard & Poor’s or Moody’s. The highest rating, AAA, indicates low default risk and comes with a lower interest rate. 

Equity securities are called stock, which means ownership. When you own 100 shares of XYZ, Inc., you own a small piece of the company; at times, this ownership allows you to vote on the direction of the company. Each stock is listed on a stock exchange, and the price of any given stock—and thus your personal wealth—can change daily depending on what’s happening in the market: When a company’s prospects are bright, there’s an influx of people wanting to buy a piece of it, and thus the bid price increases. When things look hairier, a current stockholder may need to reduce their ask price to get someone else to buy it, and the price falls. When everything’s looking hairy and everybody’s reducing their ask price at the same time, that’s called a crash. It happens.

Bonds or stocks? It’s an age-old debate, but it depends on what you’re looking for. Bonds are more secure than stocks. If things go south at a company, they are legally required to pay their debts to bondholders before stockholders see any money—holders of common stock run the risk of being left with nothing if a company goes under. Bonds also offer a much steadier stream of income, which may be attractive for people who need cash flow, such as retirees. Stock values can be more volatile, but the potential return on stock,  especially over the long term, can be very high—in 2004, one share of Apple Inc. cost about $10; today, it’s more than $600.

In reality, however, the answer to the question at the beginning of the previous paragraph is "neither." It would be silly to think we could choose one or two securities that we believed would get anywhere close to maximizing our potential return. In other words, you want to own a variety of securities, what the fat cats up on Wall Street call "diversification." By diversifying your portfolio, your average returns will be higher because your overall risk is alleviated, as capital gains on some securities will negate capital losses on others. 

Up until the 21st century, the way you and I could most easily and cost-effectively spread out our investments was with a mutual fund, a basket of investments made up of many stocks and bonds. There’s generally a common thread to the investments in a given mutual fund: emerging markets companies, or maybe companies in the energy sector. Fund managers pool all the money from their investors, and trade the individual instruments inside the fund in order to increase the value of the basket. Unlike the stocks and bonds contained within, mutual funds aren’t traded on an exchange. Instead, their Net Asset Value is recalculated once a day, based on how the prices of the items in the basket changed. Many people think the only way to own mutual funds is in an IRA, but that’s not the case. In that brokerage account you just opened, you’re more than welcome to buy shares of a mutual fund.

Mutual funds are a nice diversification strategy, but they can be expensive. Unfortunately, there’s no way to avoid the cost of having someone sit in an office investing a big pool of your money. The expense ratio of a mutual fund is the main metric to assess its costs. Stay away from any fund with an expense ratio above 1 percent; I’d even like to see that closer to .7 percent.

There is, however, a cheaper solution: Fast forward to 2012 and the rise in popularity of the Exchange Traded Fund, or ETF. ETFs are similar to mutual funds in that they’re a basket of assets which may include stocks, bonds, currencies, commodities, etc. The main difference is that instead of their price being their NAV, they trade on exchanges like stocks. ETFs are attractive because they provide the same diversification as a mutual fund but are generally much cheaper. It’s not uncommon for EFTs to have expense ratios under .25 percent. You may not get as wide a variety of funds that exist in the mutual fund world, but I think that has more to do with their relative youth on the financial stage, as opposed to a structural limitation.

I personally don’t own any ETFs yet, just a few shares of stock in my current company and the mutual funds in my retirement account. But I’m certain that when I am in a position to expand my investment horizon, ETFs are the first place I’m going to look. 

If You Build Bike Lanes, They Will Ride

Science has verified something that may appear obvious at first glance: The direct connection between the presence of bike lanes and the number of bike commuters. The more infrastructure exists to encourage biking, the more people bike—and the more society reaps the public health, energy, and lifestyle benefits that come with an increasing share of people-powered transportation.

Beyond the availability of bike friendly-infrastructure, other hypotheses explain why people bike more or less—whether a city is wet or dry, hot or cold, has high gas prices, is densely constructed or sprawling, is populated with young or old people. All of these variables play some role in motivating people to get on two wheels, but until now, we didn’t have a good sense of which was the most important.

A new study [PDF] of 90 of the 100 largest cities in the U.S. helps answer the question of what makes a city bicycle-friendly—and it turns out that the most important factor affecting the number of cyclists is the prevalence of bike paths.

That makes sense to me: When I lived in Washington, D.C. last year, I rode my bike to work and nearly everywhere else, despite the city’s crushing summer humidity and chilly winters. Now that I’ve moved to Los Angeles, which boasts temperate weather basically every day, I barely ride at all—the absence of road shoulders, much less real cycle paths, makes bike commuting here a rather dicey prospect.

Indeed, depending on how you judge what makes a city best for cycling, it’s often the colder ones that win out: Frozen Minneapolis is one of the best biking cities, thanks to well-built infrastructure and a bike share system.  Rainy Portland continues to have the largest percentage of its population commuting by bike, a fact that should continue to shame city managers whose polities stay pleasant all year round.

Still, Portland’s 4.2 percent of commuters biking is nothing compared to Copenhagen’s 37 percent. Reaching that level of bicycle penetration in American cities would have numerous positive effects for society, and judging by this study, demands increased investment in the bike lanes that will bring cyclists out in droves.

It’s also an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone: It turns out that building bike lanes actually employs more people than projects like road resurfacing, since it is labor-intensive, not machine-reliant, business. In cities where NIMBY activists and budget cuts are raising the political cost of laying bike lanes, the employment argument is a powerful case for additional investment. on top of all the other benefits that come with bike commuting. Less traffic for folks who stay in fossil fuel vehicles is part of the argument, too.

With this research in hand, the prescription for cities is clear: Want bikes? Build lanes.

Photo via (cc) Flickr user Paul Krueger