Avondale writer Patti Ghettzi bursts our bubble with an article recently published in Mother Nature Network, titled “My Year of Shopping Locally”.  In her email to DM she notes “I don’t name the businesses, because I wrote it for a national audience, but it’s pretty obvious whom I’m talking about.”

In the article, Ghettzi recaps the times in the past year when she vowed to “buy local” and ended up disappointed.  Reasons for disappointment ranged from having a bad experience with a shopkeeper to being unable to find items in stock, or just unwilling to pay more for something she could find for less online.

But before we local-devotees jump down Ghettzi’s throat with cries of cherry-picking and not looking at the bigger picture, I think we should first consider the value of such an article.  With its near cult-like status, it’s admittedly pretty easy for advocates to live comfortably inside the local movement vilifying all things big-box and tongue-kissing anything that’s displayed in the quaint corner store.

Of course, life, love and community are never that simple.

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