vital ones,

While November gives us many reasons to give thanks, my word of the month is "Resilience."  I give great thanks for the ability to cope with stress and adversity, to “bounce back” as some say, and to appreciate lives of restored well-being.  

On the personal front, our family was hit last week with a stomach flu that caused our daughter to vomit for the first time in her twenty months, and also led me to the dread basin head first, for the first time in years.  No fun at all.  And yet, when all the mess comes out, we feel so much better, and maybe a little more attentive to those things that will keep our immune system healthy, such as yoga, hydration, sleep or better food choices.

The same is true with our national political system.  Every election season, we test the immune system of our democracy.  Will big money, voter suppression or voter fraud upend our carefully crafted system?  This year, we appear to have weathered the electoral season without needing to learn any “chad-like” words or appeal to the Supreme Court.  But will we speedily address the inconsistencies and vulnerabilities?  We shall see….

On the weather front, what an awful mess Superstorm Sandy has made of so many lives, with so much history and property and possessions irretrievably lost.  And still people suffer!  --So grateful for Mayor Bloomberg for calling it as he saw it: a result of global warming, and in so doing, reviving what many consider to be the most vital (and least discussed) question of our age: What can we do to slow, arrest, and reverse the trend that is leading to more and greater devastation?   It’s not a partisan issue, People! It’s a global issue, affecting all life.  Let’s get resilient on a global scale!

At vital hemp, we believe the worldwide cultivation and use of industrial hemp will address the needs of our world by reducing greenhouse gasses (hemp makes great tree-free paper and building materials); reducing the need for fossil fuels (hemp can replace petroleum-based plastics); and providing textiles that perform better than cotton, require much less water, and use no pesticides.  
We love to team up with others who share a global mission and so are happy to announce a couple of events coming up in the next few days:

Thursday, November 15, Over40Females, a NYC-based networking group with a new branch in LA will be holding their launch party in the vital hemp store, complete with goodies and a fashion show.  So if you’re over40 and female, come by.  Here’s the link:

http://www.over40females.com/event/los-angeles-ca/los-angeles-launch-party-w-fashion-show

This weekend (Nov 17-18), we welcome the Green Festival to Los Angeles.  The SF Green Festival is where it all began for me personally, back in 2002…a place where I felt at home among the owners of green business, and decided to commit to building the dream of a hempy world.

So if you have a dream and want to discover others who may share it; or if you just want to see the green manifestations of others’ dreams; or if you just want to do some cool, eco-friendly holiday shopping… come to the LA Green festival this weekend! You’ll be really glad you did.  It’s one festival where you don’t just feel the resilience of people, you see it in what they’re doing to benefit others and heal the planet.

We’ll have a booth there, and if you bring a page or image of this newsletter (say on your hemp-bioplastic covered smartphone), we’ll give you 11% off anything you may buy from us.   Here’s the link:

http://www.greenfestivals.org/la/updates/
 

That’s all for now.

Many thanks to each of you for being vital.  And if you’re in another part of the country or world, feel free to check out our e-commerce site, where we feature everything we have in the store, including some sweet men’s hoodies and unisex scarves…just in time for the weather.  

Hempy Holidays!

Ron Alcalay
hemperdasher

~satisfy your hemptations~
  vitalhemp.com
  store and wholesale: (310) 450.2260