Little Brother

This is my "little" brother Gare. He came around when I was 15 months old and I daresay we spent most of our childhood trying to outshine the other. Probably some of our most tenuous moments:

• I pushed his baby buggy down a flight of stairs. Somehow he stayed in and was unhurt.
• While my dad built our house, we lived in a 3 bedroom apt. My mom was a practical soul. One bedroom was for her and Daddy. One room was for Gary and me. One room was for the toys. She chose for the toy room she could lock, for when we misbehaved and didn't deserve to play with all that toy largesse. She could also hide the mess in there. Gary reformed in his tidiness habits. Alas, I'm still only halfway to tidy. I used to make Gary laugh at night, me in the bed, he in the crib. When my dad would come in after numerous warnings, I would say Gary was the one laughing and keeping me awake. I would cry. My dad wasn't fooled. Once we got a spanking with his bedroom slipper. Once was all it took.
• At 8, Gary was bigger than me. He got in a shocking amount of deep doo doo when my mom and dad circled the yard in the pickup and saw he and his friends had tied me to a tree and were smacking me with rubber tipped darts from their dart guns.
• At 16, Gary tried to hold back the smirks when his "can't do anything wrong" big sis got drunk on cherry vodka and coca cola and wouldn't tell the local gendarmes her name at the local pokey. I just gave the names of every other girl I knew. Eventually, they found the right household in the next little town and my mortified father came and got me. From dusk to dawn the next day, stopping to upchuck periodically, I mowed the yard, washed the windows, washed every vehicle and waxed it (Gary personally supervised my efforts on his car) and learned a hard lesson. Drink, maybe. Get drunk, you'll regret it.
• At 19, Gary discovered that a sister who had her own apartment and made a huge sum of money (it must have been all of $12,000 in a single year) was a good relative to cultivate. My apartment became the center of the concert universe in Mpls and we caught a buncha good music together. I was well-heeled enough to send him to Mexico for his college graduation.
• Distance makes the heart grow fonder, or so I tried to prove when I moved 1200 miles away. I was wrong. My heart is fond, but the time we've spent apart as adults is way too much when you consider how much we mean to each other.
• This last decade +... I saw him through divorce, he saw me through mine. We talked it out when our "adult" kids got scary. He was last in FLA in November 2006. That's him at Frenchy's above. We had a great football and beach day.
• I don't get to Minnesota much. It's far, it's cold and I'm usually broke.
• Gare arrives again LATER TODAY!! He's bringing his SO, Denise. I hope she's worthy.

I CAN'T WAIT!!!

My mistake... it doesn't come any better than THIS

- Amazing videos are here

A while back I posted a phenomenal version of "Stand by Me" that combined the skills of U2 and the Boss. While searching my favorites for it, I came across THIS version, by talented videographer, David Johnson. Enjoy a trip around the world, or a little reminiscing walk down the streets of N'awlins with this uplifting video.

quid

For Debby

The Gift of Defining the Small Moment

If you see past the moments that
Poets describe with rapture.
If you miss the nuance…...

Then perhaps you are speeding instead
Of traveling through life.
For what would be the point of

Not recognizing the irony,
Ignoring the beauty,
Being unable
To define the rare times
When the small moment is larger than life?

When the details will be forever
Captured by the camera
Of your mind’s eye.
Memories locked, complete
With smell and texture.

A treasure to be drawn out of time
And forever made yours in its capture
And its ethereal existence in your mind.

Can you see how exquisite it is
To be able to revisit that one moment in time
When the world stopped turning, when,
After its passage, nothing was quite the same?

You needn’t write of the moment
As poets do,
You needn’t tell others of its existence.
They have their small treasures – moments of their own.


The gift of recognition is yours alone
Moments in your life, kept deliciously
Within your reach – to be drawn out and on
When you need the magic.


~quidrock 2003

2 PEOPLE FROM DIFFERENT PLANETS

THE PREZ SAYS:





We cannot "govern out of anger".

MINNESOTA'S MOST NOTORIOUS WOMAN SAYS:





“I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back. Thomas Jefferson told us ‘having a revolution every now and then is a good thing,’ and the people – we the people – are going to have to fight back hard if we’re not going to lose our country."

Michelle Bachmann...She's the queen of the wingnuts.

Loan Sharks and Outsourcing

Y'know, with all the outrage seething over bonus and incentive payments, its hard to get a grip on what is happening to middle Americans.

Forget the bonuses...the companies that have received TARP or other Federal funds to keep going have determined how to make that profit in January-February that will insure their stock prices rise. They're going to exact their profits from anyone who still has a job, anyone who hasn't claimed bankruptcy

I started to pay off all my credit cards last October. Oh, I'd messed around with it before, but never really seriously. I'm a credit kind of gal, much to my detriment. Then, I got hit with a serious illness in November and didn't recover until January. I was luckier than most, because I had a healthcare Flexible Spending Account at work. My company is not so savvy with these, most companies have a debit card attached to the FSA, so the employee does not have to front the money. With co-payments, testing, a a whole plethora of prescriptions, I got pretty well into my credit cards and had to wait nearly 50 days to be reimbursed. At the same time, my son lost his job, and suddenly my salary that is comfortable for one had to be stretched for 2.

Nonetheless, I made big payments on all my cards. Hundreds of dollars. I was pretty pleased that a lot of my balance was at special offer rates... 3.99% and 4.99%, and my regular rate on my cards was 13.99-16.99%.

Here's what's happened to me in the last month. I paid a thousand down on a card that had a $1,000 of free credit. I was going to close the other accounts while paying them down and keep
this line of $2,000 and growing open for emergencies. My card company immediately lowered my line by $1,800 and raised the interest to 27%.

When I called, I learned that it was because I made a telephone payment on another card in December (when money was tight, I had to wait for payday) at 1:00 a.m. on the 20th. The payment was due on the 19th. That's right, I was one hour late.

At the same time, I paid $1,500 on another card when a friend I had loaned money to finally found another job and paid me back. That was the whole balance, and I closed the account. I found out about my 1/2 hour payment sin, with some difficulty, from the rep who answered my questions. I'm not sure if he was in Bangalore or Mumbai. He did tell me it was obvious that I'd taken a balance transfer to pay off the $1,500, thus increasing my credit "sins".

I opened envelopes for my other two cards, and sure enough, the special offer and the regular rates had disappeared. I am now at 27% on all my cards. This happened when the Fed Funds rate for the banks I'm with slipped to o.oo%-0.025%. Thus, the banks are taking the entire sum as profit. They need it. They lent $400,000 to some guy who didn't have a job so that he could buy a 4 bedroom house that he planned to flip. The house is now worth $250,000. So they should make up the loss by exacting their pound of flesh from me.

There is some legislation that passed that limits the right of banks to do this loan sharking kinda thing (that's right, Bank of America IS really Joe Pesci in Goodfellas)... it takes effect in 2010. In the meantime, they're all going to make as much money as they can. There is a credit card bill of rights hanging out in Congress. It didn't pass last year, when Bush threatened to veto it. No doubt it will take a lot of time this year while we grill the Treasury and that poor guy who is the CEO of AIG on WHEN they notified each other of the bonuses. Meanwhile, at 27%, it'll probably take me 6 years to pay off these balances. So I'll find another strategy and then cut up all the cards.


Here's a great article that's similar from BlueDog of the Daily Kos:


BoA still outsourcing jobs

by Bluedoc
Sun Mar 22, 2009 at 09:11:24 AM PDT

One of my friends has been a mid-level manager at BoA for several years. She was let go last week with severance pay.

Half of her customer service department was outsourced to India causing further unemployment here at home. This is not the first batch of job losses and outsourcing from BoA.
Those CEOs are going to get their money one way or the other...or maybe any way they can.

Bluedoc's diary :: ::
What better way to "handle" customer service than have someone from a different country deal with your "complaints" if you have one of the credit cards or loans with high interest rates, high fees, and "fine-print rules" that may cause your account to become unmanageable.

In another conversation yesterday with a small business owner who has always managed her business and personal income frugally, she related the following story to me:

After many years she finally agreed to open a credit card for business use to establish credit because she had recently acquired business property and was advised that to establish a credit history she needed to start using cards.

She called in to ask a question about her new card. Within a few days, she received a second card from BoA with a different account number. She decided to use the 1st card for larger business purchases and the 2nd card for smaller business purchases.

She paid off the 2nd card in full each month, but allowed the card used for larger items to carry a balance until she received payments from her clients. She always made at least the minimum payment but usually sent in the entire amount when her clients paid for their orders.

Last week she received her statement and noticed that the interest rate on the first card had been raised to a much higher rate. She called to inquire since she had never been late on a payment, had always sent in the minimum payment (usually more), and never let the card carry a balance over two or three months. She was informed that she no longer qualified for the lower rate. The representative she talked to was very rude and made many unfounded statements regarding her credit.

He asked her why she had never had a credit card prior to several years ago even though she had been eligible for credit since 1984. She explained that she believed in paying as you go and had never wanted to use credit cards because she believes in living within her means. He told her that her credit record must mean that she had filed bankruptcy at some point because there was no other logical explanation for her credit history. She was floored. She has never filed bankruptcy.
He also stated that she must have paid off her 2nd account by transferring a balance since she had paid off a sum of about $4000 at one time. She told him that since she still had a balance of a few dollars on that account there was no way it could possibly be a balance-transfer and leave a small amount on the card. She had not done a balance-transfer but this young fellow was very argumentative.

She asked him if the interest rate on the 2nd card was still at the original low rate or if it had also been increased. He put her on hold to look, then came back to tell her he had closed that account because she was eligible for only one account. She told him that she had not opened this second account...the bank had opened it and sent her the 2nd unsolicited card.

The representative told her that there was no way to lower the interest rate on the 1st card back to the original rate. She had missed no payments and always paid on time. Nothing had changed on her end, yet the interest rate was raised to a much higher level and her FICA score is affected by the bank closing the second account that she did not open by her own accord.

She kept asking to speak to his supervisor but he refused to let her talk to anyone else.
She said that it has been a nightmare dealing with the bank regarding these credit cards. Without the cards, her ability to pay her business loans depends entirely on her customers being able to pay her on time.

The economic crunch is much more dependent on the banks and the credit card industry than anyone is yet acknowledging. If the banks continue to charge loan shark interest rates and treat people in a way reminiscent of the mob loan-shark days our economy is going to continue to grind to a halt.

The CEOs riding this mechanical horse don't realize that it is time for an "oil change". They are not maintaining the economic engine with their self-serving practices.


So, am I angry about AIG? You bet. I have, however, been around corporate life for a long while, and really, nothing surprises me. Am I OUTRAGED about my own financial situation? Yes, that makes me outraged. There's a difference. And, its personal.

In case you missed it.....

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Bruce Springsteen - Working on a Dream
comedycentral.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Important Things w/ Demetri Martin Political Humor

The Boss on Jon Stewart....March 19, 2009

It doesn't come much better than this.

Pardon My Interruption

Flamenco at the Columbia last week.... at dinner with friends.

Although I'd weaned myself from constant online focus after the Inauguration, I still found myself spending too much of my free time online. I decided to take a two week break (that morphed into three) and do more of the "things I do" in the evening and on the weekends, instead of spending so much time online. Thus, the blog, and the attention I've paid to others' blogs, has seemingly waned.

I'm back online and thank everyone who wrote to me to "check in" while I was conducting my own little social experiment. I think I can handle my online life again, and not let it invade all of my personal space, going forward.

I'll catch up on/with all of you!



quid

6 YEARS LATER

A full 6 years into the war in Iraq....


I go back to a poem I wrote, in Triolet form, at the outset:

Fires of Outrage

Fires of outrage
Kindled in the shadow of apathy
Of those who stand idly by, watching as the world tips, then tumbles.

Fires of outrage
Self-inflicted despair dancing with irony
Cursing ourselves for seeking hope; a thing of the past.

Fires of outrage
Kindled in the shadow of apathy.

Profiling

Here are 20 questions I took from a post from an old Pearlsoup friend - they will seemingly give you all the "profiling" you need about me! Try it!

20. "What's Your Sign?"
Here’s an old pickup line… it’s Cancer. I don’t resemble the normal Cancer characteristics in the least.

19. Eye Color?
I characterize them as green, but they’re bluish if I wear blue and grayish if I wear black. Kinda changeable.

18. Favorite Type of Music?
I have some real mix in the music I like – I have always been big on folk music, but enjoy R & B, country, jazz, some forms of rock. With classical or instrumental, I really only have overwhelming feelings for guitar – especially Spanish or latin. I have a tendency to be drawn more to female artists than male, and the true key to my musical tastes are the lyrics. I admire songwriters with strong lyrical themes. The kind of songs that could be poetry.

17. Favorite Gemstone?
Emeralds, silly. Are there others?

16. Pet Peeves?

I don't know that I get "peeved" at very much any more. Some stupid things that happen in politics, perhaps; details already contained in earlier and no doubt, later entries in this blog.

15. Favorite Flowering Plants?
Stargazer lilies, although all lilies are enchanting. Lilacs and tulips – I miss them in Florida. The absolutely gorgeous hibiscus you find here (and for which I have too much of a black thumb to grow.) A favorite task is arranging a mixed bouquet.

14. Favorite Books and Authors (Fiction)?
My friend Darla first gave me the idea of this list; I share 2books with her (first 2 on the list)

The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien
Exodus by Leon Uris
Possession by A. S. Byatt
Watership Down by Richard Adams
The Collector by John Fowles
Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn

13. Hobbies?
Reading, writing, the internet, films, watching sports, especially football, travel.

12. Favorite Television Programs?
So many. From the past: Hill Street Blues, Cheers, Homicide, Life on the Street, Sex and the City. From the present: Law & Order, whatever the version, Top Chef, The Menatalist, Without a Trace, Damages, NCIS, The Amazing Race.

And football. College and NFL, of course.

11. Favorite Museums?
The Metropolitan Museum of Art – NYC, the Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian, the Vincent Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, The Ringling Brothers complex in Sarasota, including the beautiful Asolo Theater, and, although I haven’t seen it yet (but I will) I know the Football Hall of Fame in Canton would be right up there.

10. Favorite U.S. State?
I love it, I hate it. It’s complex. Florida.

9. Earliest Actual Memory?
I have a frightening memory of being around 4 on a Saturday night (Gunsmoke was on) and in my jammies when a bullet came through the open window of our apartment and embedded itself in the living room wall. It is as though it happened yesterday. May I say that I did not grow up in a hotbed of crime, but rather in a little Italian sector of a small town in northern Minnesota. Whoda thunkit?

8. First Presidential Election?

I was one of those 6 people who voted for George McGovern and campaigned ceaselessly for him in 1972. I do remember elections as far back as the Kennedy-Nixon debates in 1960, however.

7. Earliest Interaction with Computers
This is too funny for words. As a college freshman in 1972, I took an engineering Fortran class. I used the school's keypunch machine to create my programs on card decks. The decks were run in a shared computer facility that belonged to the college. I wrote 12 programs. At the start of the semester, it took 1-2 hours of turnaround time to get the output. By the end of the semester, when everyone was trying to get all their programs done, it took 2 days to turn around Program 12. My kids don’t believe this story, can’t imagine it.

6. Favorite Public Vices?
There is very little left!! In my youth, they included beer and dancing to country music. Now, I’m stuck with just displaying my addiction to coffee in public places.
I’m particularly stuck on a good cry at a particularly poignant film in a crowded theater, and have been known to, shall we say, overreact, to a bad call by the referee at a football game.

5. Favorite Restaurant?
My brother is coming for a week late in March. We have to hit the Columbia, the best Cuban restaurant in town, but if I had to choose it will also include the Sea Porch Café at the Don Cesar for its incomparable setting on the Gulf of Mexico, Charlie’s, the best steakhouse in Tampa or anywhere (and so elegant), or my favorite place for Thai – Sukothai. Out of town? I’m crazy about The Blue Willow Inn near Atlanta. Day to day? You can’t beat Panera Bread, Crispers, and Sweet Tomatoes for everyday food in this town.

4. Education?
I have my Bachelor’ s Degree in business from the University of North Dakota and have dabbled in a variety of ongoing courses at the University of South Florida. I’d like to take a couple of online HR courses through Cornell this year. They are the best in the business.

3. Political Affiliation?
I'm an independent voter. It’s difficult to not call me a liberal or a Democrat in these last 8 years, because I have been so profoundly opposed to the last administration. I grew up in a Democratic, pro-union family, so I guess the lean is that way.

2. Religious Affiliation?
I have none. I was raised in both Lutheran and Serbian Orthodox churches, for contrast, and chose to be baptized Orthodox as a teen. I spent much of my adult life in Catholic and Epicsopal churches. I find more time in touch with my higher power when I meditate than when I participate with others in a scheduled religious service.

1. Marital/Relationship Status?

I was married once, for 26 years. Our divorce was civil and we remain friends. I have been single for nearly 5 years. I am content with my independence. I believe that I will want to be in a committed relationship sometime again in my life, and to live with my partner, but I am unafraid to continue to live on my own, should I never meet the right person. I love someone, but accept that we probably won’t marry or live together, and while that gives me some sadness, I feel so good about myself and my life, that the form of coupling that I may or may not have again really doesn’t bother. Or do I just not admit it?