Gift Guide #3: Your Outdoorsy Sister Who Can Have a Gossipy Phone Chat While Running. (!)

bumping this comment reply because I thought it was very insightful – her thoughts on the anti-Amazon vs pro-Amazon argument that inevitably comes every year during the gift lists!
from Ruth, an Earth scientist:
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I have tried unsuccessfully to condense this. Please bear with me on the long comment ahead!! Here’s my reasoning about being a human on a warming planet:

1) Our lives are connected to a system that produces carbon emissions. You haven’t breathed a breath in your lifetime that wasn’t dependent on carbon emissions. You eating food contributes to warming, and so do your Amazon purchases, but so do your everyday purchases of everything. That’s why it’s so hard to “opt out,” and why we go down rabbit holes of: but what about AWS that owns all of the internet, or what about mining for lithium, or what about my beautiful leggings made of recycled water bottles and shipped to me in a satisfyingly brown paper package. (I too am human.)

2) Given that we are INSIDE that system/landscape, the collective goal is to create new systems, infrastructure, and solutions that aren’t part of this carbon trap in the first place.

3) There IS NO individual choice that you can make, or even choices over an entire lifetime, that will add up to this goal of a new system. Not even if you get all your friends and family and neighbors on board. If you got the entire world on board with boycotting Z company and Z company collapsed but nothing else changed about the global landscape, Z company would likely get replaced by Y company, with no guarantee of meaningful change by Y company.

4) So what can you do? You can put pressure on GOVERNMENTS AND COMPANIES to make meaningful STRUCTURAL CHANGE. Meaningful change in my book includes, A NEW ELECTRICAL GRID, CLOSED-LOOP REGIONAL MANUFACTURING, REGENERATIVE FARMING AS A PRIMARY FOOD SUPPLY. And yes, you can absolutely support that change by supporting companies already doing those things, IF you have the means to support. But that’s never going to sub in for system-level change from main players like national governments and global companies. And how do we get system-level change? Again, I think we get there by PRESSURE AIMED AT THE SYSTEM ITSELF, which is different from “individual actions that add up until we’re somewhere new.” (Examples: I can’t use high speed rail instead of driving or flying because no high speed rail exists where I live. State laws prevent my employer from installing more solar panels than they already have installed on our building, no joke. SpaceX morphs into Dark Twitter, not into Company That Does Better in Space Exploration.)

5) Your individual choices are personally meaningful, symbolic, and a tangible expression of your values. Your individual choices are ALMOST NEVER going to add up over your lifetime to some personal contribution to global warming. We are too small. Like, it’s not possible to sing loud enough that you can be heard 100 miles away? It’s not possible to make enough “bad choices” that you cross some threshold where you are personally responsible for even a tiny bit of the planet’s warming.

6) So let’s STOP SHAMING INDIVIDUALS as our “solution” to climate change! If you’re trapped in a system that you can’t solo-problem-solve your way out of, then please don’t waste your energy making other people feel stuck/frozen with shame because they are living in this same rigged system. Lets instead purposefully redirect our attention and emotional effort into demanding the structural changes described above, which none of us can magically bring about through individual actions or decisions.

7) What does this look like on the ground? If you WANT TO do a ‘carbon footprint’ style analysis of your individual actions, you would find that curtailing meat consumption and curtailing your purchasing of things (any things at all!) that were manufactured or grown across the world and then expedite-shipped to you, yes those are THE TOP TWO individual behavior modifications to make. But please consider treating this almost like spirituality, where it’s personally meaningful to you over your lifetime, but not something you should shame other people about if their decisions look different from yours. And then redirect that shouting/shaming energy to LEARNING about the state of SYSTEMS AND INFRASTRUCTURE in the region where you live, making decisions based on what you learn, and finding ways to contribute to local and regional politics or local corporate decision-making. That’s gonna get the ball rolling towards bigger change. Find out about the hydrogen fuel cell plant that’s coming to your area in 2024, then tell all your friends! Find out why that state law prevents your employer from installing more solar panels on your office building, then tell all your friends! Write to city council about creating programs that allow locally grown foods to appear in regular grocery stores in your small city, then ask all your friends if they’d consider writing letters!

I love this online community, and we are big, but we are also very small. Let’s commit to less shouting at others on the same team, more digging in about what we can do FROM HERE to get SOMEWHERE NEW. 


(And this isn’t even touching on labor stuff, which is a whole other novel of a comment that I’m less qualified to pontificate about.)”

Why is shipping for artifact uprising so expensive?

Just want to say that I know people are hating on amazon and I totally get it, BUT I just want to throw out there that Amazon is one way that small businesses are able to market and sell their products direct to consumer and a lot of small businesses choose to do this (if you ever watch Shark Tank- I know, also a bit problematic- you’ll hear that often a large chunk of small business sales are via Amazon.) Again, I get the avoidance, but I do order certain products via Amazon from time to time for this reason.

Sisters are the best to shop for! I usually go for knitwear, books or scents. This year we changed our gears and will enjoy a spa day together with brunch and quality time!

I love these gift guides! I too prefer not to shop on amazon… so I use these gift guides as inspiration and find versions of these ideas at my own local stores. You all are presumably adults and can also do the same – it’s not that hard, I promise :)

I love the gift guides per usual, and just want to say thank you to Joanna and the team. I love COJ and how you still post sincere and thoughtful posts while trying to make a profit to support your own small business. Thank you for all you do for us!

Thought someone might like to know about this source for super-awesome, gift caliber socks. Small business, made in US, and there are squirrel socks and pretzel socks and socks with dots, and little birds….
https://www.this-night.com/

FYI UnHide is owned by Ellen DeGeneres. As much as I like the one I have, I won’t be recommending it to others.

I adore these gift guides! Thank you for putting them together. It’s been so fun to check to see when the next one has been posted and then browse all the things! Such a joy to browse and I appreciate the hard work that goes into creating these. Great job!!

Here to echo the anti- Amazon comments!

Not only because I despise Amazon as a company (and the consumer culture it promotes) BUT because I look to blogs for special/ unique finds! I get plenty of ads for Amazon (not to mention Madewell, JCrew, Artifact Uprising, etc). I would like to see something new and special as a reader. Especially since this is a gift guide!

I imagine smaller/ more niche brands may not have affiliate link capabilities but I bet small businesses would pay for that kind of placement! I have a small biz and would be into it- and I imagine there are many small biz owners who feel the same.

I’m trying to order from SALT, but it’s not working. Do you think some of the items have sold out?

My comment is to check in on the team! How are you all doing? Are things going ok?
I’ve noticed in the last year a major uptick in posts going live without any links or without completing the sentence, and it’s not what I’ve come to expected from cupofjo! I think it would so cool if you shared about the new team these days and how everyone is getting used to the work and eachother.

I just want to say that the holidays can be hard, especially in a society that still relies on women to undertake a lot of the added holiday labor, especially around things like gift-giving. (And wrapping. And mailing. And writing thank-yous. Etc.) Not weighing in one way or the other re: Amazon except to say the pressure to shop “correctly” sometimes seems like just one more way we set up women to feel like they/we have individually failed. Hope we can give ourselves the gift of grace when we don’t do it all perfectly.

but i also want to say thank you and think you guys do great work!!!

I just this very week saw that big can of Spanish potato chips in a deli in my little town in the middle of England for £15.95 which I thought was outrageous but I’m definitely going to get them now – hopefully they still
have some!

I LOVE the tiles of these posts almost as much as the post themselves. It’s a peek into what you love and appreciate about your nearest and dearest. This one about your sister and kids (& last year’s about Gemma) are especially sweet. Xo

These comments about Amazon are PEAK internet discourse with people talking past one another. I really don’t think the anti-amazon comments are trying to judge people in rural areas. We are urging our favorite blog to be as ethically minded with gift guides as they are with everything else. Joanna lives in NYC, not hours from the nearest gift shop! Why are we not allowed to hold a thoughtful gift guide to a different standard than we hold Mimi while she’s cat food shopping or Naha while she’s trying to shop for bulk paper towels without a car? So many people are justifying their use of Amazon for shipping essentials (totally understandable! Prime shipping has legit changed lives by shipping medical supplies and modern essentials to remote areas for free) rather than for gift shopping. This is a gift guide aimed at non-essentials. And it’s for people who clearly have time to spare ordering holiday gifts before Thanksgiving! Free 2 day shipping is not needed in this context. at all. We can request non-amazon links for decorative blankets without suggesting that someone is a bad person for using Amazon to buy necessities that aren’t available to them.

Re Amazon. I do most of my grocery shopping at Aldi, here in the UK. And I use real shops as much as possible. But, oddly enough, my local excellent bookshop (and also a local W H Smith) did not have the Patricia Highsmith novel I wanted. Amazon did. No brainer. And my daughter wants DVDs for Christmas. Can’t even think where I would buy them locally. Amazon had them. I’m all for real shops but sometimes the online wins out. On the other hand, A Libris is a wonderful secondhand online bookshop that is worth using. And some bookshops that I would like to use are in London or down in the West Country. But their online shops are available. We have to be pragmatic as well as ethical because nothing in life is that straightforward outside of our heads.

Just tried ordering SALT (several times) and the website simply won’t allow me to put it into my cart. Is it possible I’m doing something wrong, or is the site just overrun? I’d really like to try this!

I’m an Earth scientist and can weigh in professionally re Amazon, Amazon-type companies, and climate change. I sort of wonder whether it’s worth it, and whether I’d be shouting into a void of people who have made up their minds in one way or another. I don’t want to create a long comment thread that goes nowhere. Would folks be interested in my input as a reply to this comment, or should I leave well enough alone?

Another rural reader. About 10 years ago, when my husband finished grad school, we moved to a small town in fly over state for the only tenure track job offer he got at a small liberal arts college. We live in the county seat of 10,000 people 45 minutes from anything bigger in any direction. There are 4 traffic lights in our county; 2 of the adjacent counties do not have any.

We have a bodega, a super Walmart (grocery and big box), and a mom and pop butcher/deli store with limited produce. Half of the businesses in town let you keep a tab and pay at the end of the month. I buy my meat and eggs directly from a rancher…like out of the trunk of his truck when he comes to town once a month.

Ten years ago, the ethnic groceries available were Pace salsa, chow mein noodles in a can and frozen egg rolls. Walmart has started offering a few more items, but on the whole offerings are very limited and subject to sudden discontinuation. Specialty spices and baking items are few and far between; to get to any sort of ethnic market is an hour to 90 minutes drive each way.

In our particular rural area, no matter what expedited shipping you pay for, everything save FedEx overnight has its last leg by USPS, which adds an extra 2-3 days minimum. Amazon items are more reliably delivered. I have also had several instances of Target items arriving damaged or opened and having to make a special trip to the city to deal with returns, whereas our mom and pop hardware can take Amazon returns.

It was not only Amazon that pushed out independent stores. Big box stores did it first. But there is also a whole world of items that were never available locally even at the height of independent stores.

Thriftbooks.com is a great resource for anyone looking to buy “not Amazon” books!
Now to slide into the Amazon debate: My driving is medically restricted and I am unable to do any shopping in person without help from someone else. I am also lower income and most of the links here would be a special treat for me.
Years ago Elsie Larson from A Beautiful Mess posted a wonderful round up of children’s clothing and toys from Amazon. I was a new Amazon user at the time and didn’t know that I could buy so many beautiful, more affordable items for my babies from Amazon. I will always be so grateful to her for those links because it opened up a whole new world for me.
My BFF shares her Prime account with me, and the free shipping is amazing (we also love the streaming options). Their returns policy is the most hassle free of any online shopping I have ever experienced which matters a lot to me since almost all of my shopping is done online.
I am a Red Card member with Target which is also a great online option. And I have a Walmart membership which allows me unlimited grocery shopping delivered to my front door and pays for itself very quickly.
Anyway! Amazon is a life saver in our house and a real need. I would be fine if CoJ decided to stop posting gift links to them because I know how to google options. But it’s nice to see new Amazon options that I didn’t know about before.

My husband recently ordered a part from Amazon for a product we own because the shipping from that company was so high and shipping from Amazon Prime was free. I shop small businesses whenever I can because it keeps the money in the community.

The Unhide blankets are truly the best! I bought one for my husband two Christmases ago. My 6 year old keeps stealing it to keep in his bed. So cozy!

I hesitate to wander into the Amazon debate, but just a tip(as I live in the country and our local options were not destroyed by Amazon, it’s just cow pastures…) : You can select an AmazonSmile Charity from an extensive list they provide, so that a % goes to that charity. So when I do shop there, for whatever reason, I know I am helping someone else a bit. Several of the local pet rescue shelters here, and other organizations, use Amazon wish lists that we can purchase and have things sent to them. And THANK YOU to the person who linked Birdling bags, now I have another rabbit hole to explore!