I bought a Pontiac [Vibe] that's really a Toyota [Matrix/Corolla] and so was assembled in California for a Japanese company (the Pontiac guy gave me a better price). I grew up with Toyotas and, although we don't need to buy them often, we'll buy them again.

All the clothes I can afford are made overseas. I'm hard to fit, anyway, so I'm learning to sew, but the fabric I buy is almost always made overseas, too. My back yard just isn't big enough for a cotton crop . . .

We [my family] tend to drive cars until they drop (150,000 miles is a minimum expectation), wear clothes until they're rags (my dad literally has shirts that are older than I am), I've never been into designer or "logo" clothes and I have no problem buying secondhand. My father worked for a major oil company and had issues with its environmental impact and with the way it treated workers in overseas branches, but he felt he was lucky to still have a job after the market bottomed out in the Eighties. He wasn't an executive; he worked like a mule and didn't get rich, but it let him get a house in a neighborhood that didn't have gang problems and put us through college. He would have preferred to be a teacher but he tried that and couldn't feed us. What was he going to do?

My boss treats me like an indentured servant and I'm looking for something better. I have to base part of the search on ethics or I'll be just as miserable at the next job as I am at this one, but I also have to find something that does right by me financially.