Last week in The Advertiser, we reprinted a 40-year-old photo of retail buildings in Wolfville and the image took one of our gentle readers back in time.

Great-grandmother Joan Eaton called to reminisce about a Christmas when the proprietor of Porter's Grocery refused to sell her some turkey. Apparently, he felt she couldn't afford a whole bird, so he cut one in half and sold her that.

Can anyone imagine that happening today? With Christmas on the horizon, I can feel the shopping Mecca called New Minas getting busier by the day. As my friend Barb says, this season is like living in a pressure cooker of consumerism.

It's no accident that a Berkeley environmental activist turned filmmaker by the name of Annie Leonard launched her new 20-minute webflick called The Story of Stuff earlier this month. Leonard distills succinctly years of research and advocacy into an online documentary about what she calls the "materials economy."

According to her, the corporate giants conceived of our consumerist lifestyle after WWII to build on ramped-up wartime production. Today we buy and buy and only keep one per cent of all we purchase, all the while devaluing the planet. Check out her little film before you go Christmas shopping. I'm going to select presents from the World Vision catalogue.

MLA David Morse was quite taken, he told me, with a speech given by Lil MacPherson, one of the winners of a Maritime Business Ethics Award recently. Lil and her partner run the Wooden Monkey Restaurant in Halifax that features organic local food, fair trade coffee and sustainable fish. It avoids the industrial food system and attracted the Rolling Stones when they were in town.

Try doing something small

Lil told those at the awards dinner, "if everyone just looked at the effects of the product they are buying, it would make a big difference.... If you feel that you can't do something big in life, then do something small in a big way."

The New Minas branch of the Valley Credit Union practices that philosophy when it comes to banking services. The credit union aims to keep money in the community, and the staff work hard at good customer relations. Not too long ago village resident Russell Walsh wrote a poetic testimonial to his credit union.

Among the several verses, Walsh said, "The staff are oh-so-friendly, they greet you with a smile. It’s really nice to know that they go the extra mile." Consequently, a pleased staff presented Walsh with a Credit Union watch. What goes around comes around.

American customer service consultant Michael D. Brown, who has a new book out, believes the retail industry needs to re-evaluate its customer service strategies to lure shoppers to become a loyal customer who adding to their bottom line.

"Consumers often cite customer service over price when it comes to where they spend their money,” he contends. “Regardless if a retailer is a box store or a specialty shop, consumers want a hassle-free and positive service experience that will refresh their sense of shopping, even during the hectic season."

For New Minas shopper Carmen Hines, positive experience means not being charged the old Canadian price on U.S. magazines now that our dollar is worth more. She wanted to warn her fellow consumers to check out what area stores are charging since the rise of the loonie. And Hines described the frustration of trying to reach a human being to protest the pricing she saw in a local grocery store.

"I'm not a passive consumer any more," she told me, "and I always buy local." If we could shop intelligently and buy less, how much better off the planet will be.

Note: In last week's column I equated high tides and global warming. Dr. Liz Kosters tells me the tidal reach in the Minas Basin is still growing. She will bring her expertise to the Blomidon Naturalists' meeting Jan. 21. The topic is sediment in the Bay of Fundy, a look at results by different researchers on tidal currents and the challenges for tidal power development.