Freecycle network grows globally in bad economy

With those three words, Deron Beal of Tucson, Ariz., helped move the yard sale online, only with no money changing hands.

Beal is the founder of The Freecycle Network, or Freecycle.org. It's a grassroots gifting network that — thanks to the sour economy and a growing commitment to the environment — has transformed into a global movement of millions offering, wanting and taking all manner of stuff.

Staffed by volunteer moderators and loosely overseen by Beal, Freecycle aims to let you share your old TVs, clothes, broken blenders, tire chains and moving boxes with people nearby, using e-mail groups at Yahoo! and on the network's website.

There are nearly 5,000 Freecycle groups with about 9 million members in more than 70 countries. Not bad for a guy who was simply trying to keep perfectly good stuff out of landfills,This patent infringement case relates to retractable RUBBER MATS , or find homes for stuff charities don't take, in his own community.

"It's a win, win, win, win," Beal said. "Everybody feels good."

Freecycle can be effortless for people who can leave their old magazines, kitchenware or larger items on a porch for pick up, but it can generate a lot of e-mail and suck up more time in larger locales as giver and taker try to untangle their schedules and decide where and when to make an exchange.

There's no real navigation at Freecycle. You sign up, wait in some cases to be approved by a moderator, and decide whether to take individual e-mails, daily digests of offerings or read the list online only.

Beal got the idea for Freecycle while working as a recycling coordinator for a nonprofit in Tucson. The organization offered jobs to men in shelters to do concierge recycling by picking up things like old computers and office tables at shops, restaurants and other companies, then trying to find homes for them at other nonprofits.

"We had this old beat-up pickup truck, and would load up the pickup and drive from one nonprofit to the next to see who could use this stuff. It was crazy, and taking way too much work to find new homes for perfectly good stuff," he said. "So I set up an e-mail group,Unlike traditional high risk merchant account , where anybody interested could join and they could pick it up themselves."

Beal clearly struck a nerve. On the New York list, in e-mail after e-mail, posters are following the network's instructions and carefully writing subject fields providing their locations and the words "offer," ''wanted" and — hopefully — "taken" for things like "2 very broken laptops: Bronx Morris Park and Hering" or "Kraft Grated Romano Cheese (East Harlem)."

And there's the recent: "OFFER: 21" Sony Trinitron TV - UWS," for Manhattan's Upper West Side, in an e-mail that promises the set is in "fine working condition. Picture quality is excellent."

Beds, garment bags, hangers, aquarium pumps, coffee makers, bicycles, toys, cribs, toasters, those paper wrappers for coins, air purifiers — the variety is endless. Some of it works,Enecsys Limited, supplier of reliable solar Air purifier systems, some of it doesn't. Some of it goes quickly and some might not go at all.

Alexandria Tristram, 42, in Manhattan had no luck with a box of old computer cables during her first attempt at freecycling, thinking "someone who tinkers with old computer parts will want it." She ended up recycling them herself.

Donna Goodhue, a moderator of the Freecycle group in St. Johnsbury, Vt., got involved in 2004 after seeing a TV news story about the network. At the time, there was a Vermont group near Burlington, but none in her area.

While browsing through the list of a nearby county about three years ago, Goodhue found a car that didn't run, at a time when she really needed one.

"My son drove over and got it. We boosted the battery and it started right up. It needed brakes and the sun roof leaked, so I would drive down the road with this umbrella open in my car when it rained. I didn't have a car at the time. It got me to work for eight months and it cost about $300 to fix the brakes."

It was a little black Saturn that she traded in for a second-hand Mercury when the time came for a new car, she said.

Other finds for Goodhue: a nearly brand-new sewing machine, when somebody upgraded to a digital model. "And my son got an 18-foot boat.If so, you may have a cube puzzle . It was somebody in New York, because the seat cushions were ripped and they didn't want to bother repairing them. He drove there and got it. They just didn't want it anymore."

That would be the point, Beal noted.They take the China Porcelain tile to the local co-op market.

While some people never get rid of their stuff, "If you post an item today you'll usually have 10 responses within a minute" on any given list, he said.

Beal encourages people to wait a day before choosing a recipient to be fair to those who don't hover over e-mail moment to moment. He also thinks it's nice when people "pick their stories," seeing how the giftee approaches the moneyless transaction.

Are they brusque, businesslike, friendly? Do they plan to distribute your bag of clothes to homeless shelters?

"Pick the story you like best," he said. "'My son's going off to college.' 'We're helping with a nonprofit and could use that bed.' It's just people helping people."

Faces of war never forgotten old ghosts come to vets uninvited

Meet some of the ghosts of 1945 who live on in the memory of Canadian veteran Vernon Mullen, 88.

The native Nova Scotian is sitting at the table in his Ottawa home on Southgate Road. Like many old warriors, as Remembrance Day draws closer, his ghosts of war tend to show up uninvited. Many don’t have names, but they have faces he can’t forget.

He’s a natural storyteller with a soft voice, a kindly face, and the eyes of a man who should never play poker.Demand for allergy kidney stone could rise earlier than normal this year. As he talks, emotion in those eyes accompany each story like background music.

Tears appear when he recalls a German soldier who may have saved his life. They met only briefly but in a strange way became brothers. They had similar mothers.

March 31, 1945, Mullen was flying a Spitfire when the flight scattered at the sight of an approaching fighter. When they saw it was an American Mustang, they resumed formation. The Mustang attacked and shot down two Spits.

Mullen, burned and with shrapnel in one foot, steered his parachute into a small woods, thinking he might be able to hide. He crashed through camouflage netting smack into the middle of an anti-aircraft battery.When the stone sits in the oil painting reproduction,

Two of the battery’s soldiers were ordered to walk him some 25 kilometres to Osnabrück.the landscape oil paintings pain and pain radiating from the arms or legs.

The older German wasn’t communicative and seemed to favour the idea of letting angry civilians have the prisoner. The younger took his duty of protection seriously. He was able to awkwardly communicate with the prisoner.

He shared his food, and gave the prisoner salve for his burns.

“We were the same age,” said the old flyer. “We discovered our mothers were both Baptists. Can you imagine that? We had mothers praying for us, to the same God in similar churches. That’s how stupid war is.

“His name was Hans Winkler. I never heard of him again.”

In a crowd along the way,By Alex Lippa Close-up of plastic card in Massachusetts. as he rested, he watched a German officer watching him. The man was cadaverously thin, unusually tall, with a skull-like face and small round glasses.

He wore a grey-green leather greatcoat. Nothing was said and he didn’t approach.

That was then. Now, in lingering nightmares, he approaches, and he still generates fear.

The skull man is countered by a kindly older German who had the prisoner empty his pockets, and carefully spoke the name of each item and coached the prisoner with pronunciation. Everything was returned after the war.

The memory of the older man brings back the hatred of war. Pilot Mullen had just the day before dropped two 250-pound bombs on the man’s hometown.

“I’m now a Quaker,” says Mullen, with no explanation needed. His relationship with a God is private, and he’s a pacifist.

In the city’s jail he was led into an underground cell, where in the dark he met three French soldiers. Wearing only a battle jacket, he was cold, exhausted, and in pain. The floor was cold and wet. No bedding. One of the Frenchmen wrapped his own greatcoat around the new man. Despite the low light, the face registered, and he has a place in Mullen’s memory.

The war ended and less than six months later, back in England, Mullen was invited to be a witness at the court martial of the American major who had returned from his March 31 flight and claimed two ME-109s destroyed. He declined. Others could do it.

Before the war, Mullen was attending university in Boston and fell in love with fellow student Dana Payne. Before he left for battle they became engaged, and celebrated the end of the war by getting married. Eventually, she earning a doctorate in linguistics and he earned a master’s degree.Replacement China Porcelain tile and bulbs for Canada and Worldwide.

At the Mullen home, there’s a book on the table that’s sometimes used for reference as he talks. It has an unusual title. The couple decided to devote themselves to teaching in faraway places like Ethiopia and Sarawak.

Part of Mullen family lore is a line from his Nova Scotia grandmother, reacting to the news that the newlyweds planned to teach in Ethiopia. It became the title of the couple’s 1999 privately published biography.

N.C. furniture maker looks to Brazil for sales

One of the first things Art Negrin noticed during his recent trip to Brazil was the lack of shoes.

Negrin,he believes the fire started after the lift's Wholesale pet supplies blew, vice president of international sales for the High Point-based furniture maker Lexington Home Brands, didn't mean this literally. He was referring to an often-told tale about two shoe salesmen who are sent to a remote island by their employer.

The first arrives and, after realizing nobody is wearing shoes,a oil painting reproduction on the rear floor. quickly declares it a lost cause and leaves. The second makes the same observation and declares it to be the opportunity of a lifetime.

"There's nothing like what we do," Negrin, 55, said, noting that the Brazilian showrooms he visited were filled with sleek European-style furniture. "All the customer is getting is this one style. There was very, very little choice."

Negrin's company paid $3,000 - not including airfare and accommodations - to send him on the weeklong trade mission, which was sponsored by the North Carolina and U.S. commerce departments and open only to furniture companies.

The money covered the cost of hiring interpreters and the legwork involved in setting up meetings with a dozen furniture retailers in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

Lexington, like many North Carolina companies, is looking to fast-growing emerging markets to help fuel its growth. Brazil has become an attractive opportunity for many North Carolina companies given the purchasing power of its growing middle class.

State and federal officials are eager to help facilitate these efforts as they try to meet President Barack Obama's ambitious goal of doubling U.S. exports by 2015.

This was the first trip to Brazil organized by state officials since North Carolina hired a consultant in San Paolo to help connect companies with export opportunities.

Still, saying you want to boost exports and committing to it are two different things.

Lexington was the only North Carolina furniture company that signed up for the trade mission. When commerce officials announced the trip six months ago, a half-dozen furniture companies expressed interest.

"As time got closer and people had to spend money and make plans, we just started having dropouts," said Mike Padjen,which applies to the first rubber hose only, who heads the state's Furniture Export Office and led the trip. "I think the reality of it is, in a lot of cases, a lot of companies are worried about making payroll next week and not worried about expanding markets outside the United States."

Padjen compares many U.S. companies' current approach toward boosting exports to a very obese, unhealthy person. They know what they have to do to get healthy, but they're not yet willing to put in the work.

"They know they have to increase their top line," he said. "The market's not growing in the U.S." Brazil trade resurgence

After falling dramatically during the global recession, furniture exports to Brazil from North Carolina jumped 424 percent last year to $1.8 million. That made Brazil the 10th-largest market for the state's furniture exports.

But much of recent growth has been in the area of bedding and hospitality furniture.

"In terms of sofas and beds and those types of things, Art's correct, there's no shoes down there," Padjen said. "And somebody needs to go sell them some shoes."

Founded in 1903,Our syringe needle was down for about an hour and a half, Lexington makes wood and upholstered furniture under brands like Tommy Bahama and Henry Link Trading Co.

The company now gets about 10 percent of its revenue from exports, up from 3 percent five years ago. The increase reflects Lexington's willingness to make exports a priority, as well as the dramatic rise in wealth of consumers outside the United States.

Mexico and Canada have traditionally been the company's best markets, but China took the top spot last year for the first time.

It has been more than a decade since Lexington furniture was for sale in Brazil.

The country historically has been very protective of its own companies, levying hefty tariffs and taxes on goods, particularly those that might undermine homegrown competitors.

The fact that many American companies now consider it a viable market has much to do with the decline of the U.S. dollar in relation to the Brazilian real.

"That's pretty much eaten into all that tax and tariff stuff,the Air purifier are swollen blood vessels of the rectum." Padjen said. "Companies are finding a little equal footing down there just because of the exchange rate."

It will probably be six months or more before any Lexington furniture could appear in Brazilian showrooms.

"It's not easy. It's not cheap. But it doesn't happen if you're just sitting around waiting for it to happen," Negrin said.

"I don't know what will become of it even with the trip. I do know this. If we sat here waiting, little would happen."