happy halloween!

Have a Happy Halloween everyone! Today I'll be running around visiting customers in my Alice in Wonderland costume (that I bought years ago at an Alice in Wonderland specialty shop in Carmel).

I spent the day yesterday at the 5th Annual Brass Tax Halloween Sunrise Renegade party. It is hands down my favorite party of the year here in San Francisco. Most people roll to the party after being out all night; eyes red, makeup smeared, costumes disheveled and dirty. I took a saner approach and skipped all the other Saturday night revelry, slept for a few hours, got up at 3:30 AM, took a shower, carefully tied on a crisp white apron and headed down to the water to greet the morning and dance in the dirt to nasty beats with all the cracked out freaks in SF. This year's party was a bit mad; there were a rediculous number of people there (word of mouth is a powerful force in this town), but it was every bit as fun as the four previous.

Some Kodak moments...

whole night in whole foods

Because they are my biggest customer and I love them, I spent five hours last night at Whole Foods in helping in the process of installing all new fixtures in their Whole Body department. Northern California is the most lucrative Whole Foods region and they've decide it's time to upscale. This is a multi-day process involving taking every single product and tag off the shelves, packing it all into boxes, ripping up the existing fixtures and replacing them with new, shiny, more expensive and upscale ones, then putting all the product back in a new schema. This is no small undertaking, and they solicit the help of any willing sales reps to make things move along as quickly as possible.

My first instructions from the high-strung team leader were: "Take these products off the metro, put them in a tote and label them "NOT IN THE PLANO"." I see.

After a bit of jargon demystification, I determined that a metro is a rolling shelving unit, a tote is a plastic box, and a plano (or planogram) is is essentially a blueprint. I spent the next three hours packing yoga mats, DVDs, baby socks, body scrubbers, cosmetic bags, shampoo, soap, tea, incense, candles and transporting them to the back store room. Since I've been packing boxes since I was old enough to grasp small objects, I actually found the task enjoyable.

Present were about a half dozen sales reps, most of whom are hardcore career salespeople, or 'brokers,' who rep up to 40 different lines of product at a time. Some got competitive. One woman ran off when I started helping her pack the incense, accusing me of usurping her assigned task. I didn't realize there was a protocol; I just thought we were supposed to pack everything and figured I might as well make it as fun as possible by working with others. I guess I have a lot to learn.

Usually when I go to visit my Whole Foods accounts, I make a bee-line for the World of Good kiosk, straighten it up, talk to the buyer and then breeze out to the next store. I don't shop at Whole Foods (aka, "Whole Paycheck") so I am really rather unfamiliar with their product. My lord, not only has Whole Foods invented their own language, but they've spawned an entirely new generation of marketing as well. Selling a lifestyle of health, conscious consumption and cuteness has earned the retail giant a distinguished spot among the country's strongest brands.

What a learning experience. Retail is much more fun than high tech. Pass the Lumia Lavender Love Soy Candles.

Ooh, just a postscript. I picked up the latest album from my favorite singing/songwriting goddess, Fiona Apple. I've been waiting for 6 years for her to jar loose with more talent since her last album entitled "When The Pawn..." (full title: "When the Pawn Hits The Conflicts He Thinks Like A King What He Knows Throws The Blows When He Goes To The Fight And He'll Win The Whole Thing 'Fore He Enters The Ring There's No Body To Batter When Your Mind Is Your Might So When You Go Solo, You Hold Your Own Hand And Remember That Depth Is The Greatest Of Heights And If You Know Where You Stand, Then You Know Where To Land And If You Fall It Won't Matter, Cuz You'll Know That You're Right") and by god, it was worth the wait.

to whom it may concern

Blog writing is a strange thing. You're writing for an audience, but you really have no idea who your audience is. Aside from a few friends who leave comments or are otherwise demonstrative of their blog-following, I lack solid metrics indicating whether anyone, other than the blog bombers, is even out there. For me, the blog has become more of an exercise in writing (when I have time to actually think things through) or more recently, just a way to record events I want to remember later; sort of a faster alternative to a journal.

But it can't really be a journal, because then it would be full of personal musings, emotional outpourings and pseudo-adolescent fantasies. Despite the fact that I purposely made a cryptic URL for my blog so that no one could find me on Google, I've now been linked up through a few different sites and anyone who knows my last name, has a few minutes on their hands and is curious about me (for whatever reason) can stumble upon my little home here on the internet.

I could be mistaken for Miss Rodeo Nevada 1996, or more likely, a Stanford soccer player, but anyone who knows me at all can be sure they've hit upon the right Allison when they land here.

So, for better or worse, despite my usual open-book demeanor in person, I am more reluctant than some to discuss with whom I am currently exchanging bodily fluids. And I definitely don't get fan mail. Maybe it's time for a new approach?

Hurricane Stan pounded Guatemala and claimed the lives of hundreds. Among those most affected were a group of weaving artisans associated with Maya Traditions, an organization my company, World of Good, supports. My co-worker, Holly, was just down there a few weeks ago as part of her work for the World of Good Development Organization. (World of Good Inc. donates 10% of its profits towards World of Good Development Organization, the non-profit side of our business that is commited to building a stronger fair trade crafts movement in the United States, promoting clear transparent international standards for fair trade crafts, and investing in economic and social development projects in craft producer communities.)

The house Holly stayed in during her visit was destroyed. The school we helped build with last year's profits was damaged. Families lost children to the flooding river. The news was devastating to all of us. I suddenly felt very close to this group that had previously been a bit anonymous to me. In an attempt to bring some hope to their sometimes tenuous hold on life, we do our best to support them and assure a sustainable income. But sometimes Mother Nature has a mind of her own and no number of product orders can guarantee their survival. They will be ok. They will rebuild and carry on. In the meantime, we are supporting them in any way we can, if only to reassure them that our business relationship with them will resume once roads and other infrastructure has been restored. I feel a renewed sense of passion for what I do every day and a deep connectedness to the people who make the things we sell. Have I mentioned lately how much I love my job?

I'm exhausted. It's been a really emotionally taxing couple of weeks. I feel really lucky to be alive and to be living the life I do! And now, all I want to do is sleep. Some good news to report sometime soon, I am sure of it.

Mildred Oakley 12/02/1919 - 09/28/2005

Just a personal note today to honor the memory of my Grandma Mildred, who passed away from a major stroke on September 28. I saw her just about a month ago and she was looking and feeling good. We spoke on the phone a week before her death and she was coming around to the idea of moving up to the Bay Area to be closer to the rest of our family. Her death was not at all expected, and I've been grieving her deeply.

Grandma was born in 1919 in the dustbowl of Oklahoma. Her family basically lived the "Grapes of Wrath," moving to Southern California in search of work to survive the Great Depression. When her family relocated back to Oklahoma more than a decade later, she opted to stay put and, at the tender age of 19, married my grandfather Luther. With him she had two children (my mom and Uncle Frank, who lives here in the Bay Area) and lived in a track home in the then-newly established LA suburb of Sun Valley. Without a high school diploma, she landed a job as a catalog phone rep for Sears, where she worked for over 30 years.

After years in an unsatisfying marriage, she divorced Luther. In the early 60s, she remarried my step grandfather Jim, now the only living grandparent out of the five with which I was blessed at birth. Together they moved to California's Central Valley, where they lived in a ranch house on a 10-acre raisin grape farm that I've visited countless times since my early childhood. They lived there together until just recently when she moved into a nursing home after a series of small strokes.

We'd become close, my grandma and me, especially since my mother's death in 1998. It's inconceivable to me the pain of losing a child, and I think when my mom left, a piece of my grandma left with her. Through long conversations late into the night at the kitchen table, we grieved together and developed our own trust and deep bond. She had so many stories, so much wisdom to share. I loved her very much and will miss her sweetness, her wit, her no-nonsense honesty. Oh, and her lemon merengue pie.

Rest well grandma. You were loved.