Woolybuns

More On The Failed Bailout

Heh - I like Lou Dobbs.

Financial Fiasco

What I remember most vividly from my required economics 101 course in college has nothing to do with economics.  It was my classmate's reaction - utter astonishment - that I was happy about being pregnant.  She assumed I, like her, was a 19 year old unattached freshman, so my joy at being a 28 year old married  pregnant college student already mom to a 2 year old was as incomprehensible to her as economic theories are to me.  I passed the course with decent grades, but retention of material?  I remember the individual diapers more than I remember that information, perhaps because what ended up in the diapers smells less odious than what happens with economics.  So as we teeter on this tottering financial mess, I'm feeling that deep disquiet of uncertainty.  How worried should I be?  I personally have been not only responsible in my financial matters, but fiscally conservative, too (fiber purchases don't count - hey, quit laughing - really, they aren't part of my household finances).  My mortgage is not subprime.  I pay my bills.  I don't have a gazillion credit cards, just 2, one which is paid in full every month, one which has a very small balance so I keep getting all the extra coupons and other discounts.  Does that outweigh the interest accrual?  I dunno, I majored in English, not math. I also have real equity in my house, even in this time of collapsing housing prices. 

How did I get to this financially comfortable situation?  When I started life on my own, getting that first credit card was really hard.  Getting my first car loan independent of anyone else was difficult.  I had to open a credit union account because I had no established credit.  No bad credit, just no credit record.  I had to take tiny little baby steps to prove I could handle credit responsibly.  It became habit.  How long has it been since just barely adult people started getting handed credit cards and loans on silver platters?   Those quick and easy credit offers started while my children were small.  As my children grew into the economy, they became not individuals but objects of financial speculation.  Prey objects, actually, in the financial world.   How do these baby adults learn to deal responsibly with credit when it is so freely gifted?  Clearly, many don't. 

And WTF is the definition of usury anymore?  Predatory practices in the financial industry promised this collapse.  US Representative Jim Marshall (D, Georgia) wrote a commentary for CNN about why he voted for the bailout, even if it will cost him his seat in Congress.  He describes the panic effect: "When credit is quickly withdrawn, everyone in the business of lending panics. Credit becomes scarce and is not available at a reasonable interest rate."  Reasonable?  Interest rates for most people have not been reasonable in a very long time.  Legally, it's only usury if the rate exceeds that set by law.  But ethically?  Minimum payments should reduce the debt.  Yes, it's that simple.  If the interest rate prevents that, it's not a reasonable rate. 

Should that bailout bill have passed?  Marshall's argument for it - "Although the bill was imperfect and wildly unpopular, I believed that those of us in Congress needed to suck it up, vote for it and let the chips fall where they may" - is not entirely reassuring.  I guess the idea is any bailout, even imperfect and wildly unpopular, will quell the panic much like a tranquilizing drug.  But remember, drugs have unintended side effects which can be worse than the original affliction.  Perhaps handing out paper bags and leading deep breathing sessions on Wall Street would be more effective.  Or teaching them all how to knit or spin. 

I don't have answers.  I'm not sure anyone does, hence the unease we're all feeling.  I do think it's clear that putting everything in terms of big business and profit while sacrificing the individual is not in our national interest.  We were a much nicer country when we had a mom and pop culture.

Long Lost Treasure

After the last coupla sucky weeks, I had a trip to Maine sort of hanging over my head.  I usually love going, but this trip was about taking care of things.  My mother and her brother share her very old house.  While both of them are mentally all there, they are each frail, crooked, and in constant pain. My uncle appears destined to leave this earth one piece at a time.  He is a redneck Florida republican, she a feminist liberal democrat.  Certain many topics are best left undiscussed when both are present.  Mom's in Making Preparations mode.  She has nursed far too many people through their final illness, then had to deal with clearing their properties and is adamant she does not want her daughters stuck with that on her behalf.  She wants to move to a retirement community with assisted living and long term care facilities.  It is a painful process to watch, particularly as she disposes of her possessions.  She sold off a number of her antiques over the summer, including a dining room hutch which housed her favorite dishes, and I am the designated recipient of those dishes.  She needed me to pick them up.  I've been avoiding this trip because of the obvious implications.  Far easier to consider my own mortality than hers, especially as the specter of the Grim Reaper perches ever closer to other extended family members.  It seemed almost fitting that the weekend I could go involved complications here at home and a rare hurricane threatening to smack Maine.

So imagine my absolute sheer delight to be reunited with a long lost treasure from my childhood.  It is a  simple thing, a decorated round metal tray, possibly stained, definitely aged not gracefully.  I don't even remember all the details surrounding my first acquisition of this tray.  The memory: an older neighbor apparently enjoyed my company when I was just a wee thing.  She had two hobbies that fascinated me: growing rhubarb for jams and pies, and hand stamping designs on metal trays.  At one point, she worked on a tray while I watched.  I don't know if that was a one time event or if I repeatedly pestered her.  I believe I must have prattled on and on (does that surprise any of you?) while she worked, checking out her tools and exclaiming over the faces that appeared in her designs.  I was happy just watching the process unfold in front of me.  I vaguely remember feeling a bit sad when she turned it over to add her name and the year she made it.  1961.  I was all of 7 years old.  Turns out she wasn't quite done: she returned to the front of the tray to add one last little detail not in her other trays.  My initials!   Including the the T that stood for Ticklepicture because I was such a ham about getting my picture taken back then.  And then she put the tray in my hands and said "it's for you."   Instant treasure.  And as life unfolded, I lost track of that tray, but never forgot it, nor the woman who made it.  Often over these years, I've wandered what happened to it, afraid it ended up in some trash heap. On  Sunday,  that little bit of my childhood found it's way back into my hands.  I'm still grinning about it. 

Foibles

Isn't that a great word?  It just sounds fun to me.  Good thing cause I seem to abound with them, and get a lot of laughs because of them.  Like yesterday.  There I am at the old barn gathering everything for the move and meeting the new barn owner for the first time and wanting to look like I know what I'm doing.  Not a big deal but ya know.  Just don't want to look stupid.  I'm in a peculiar place with horse experience.  My education suggests I should Know A Lot about horses.  I majored in horse management for my first college degree (a junior college degree - it would have been an associates but I dropped statistics before it dropped me).  But as soon as I graduated, I found myself without a horse for the next 25 years.  Irony - there's another good word.  Lots of things changed over those intervening years, plus you just don't retain what you don't practice, ya know?  So here I am with a degree, and a fancy young horse in need of basic training.  Easy to end up looking foolish, so I try not to.  Enter those foibles.  I brought a root beer to the barn for my own thirst slaking.  I opened it and had a few sips, then closed it up tight, left it in the car while I got things packed and CC loaded - albeit reluctantly - on the trailer.  My barn buddy Crystal, owner of CC's paddock buddy Reba, got in the car with me and we prepared to follow the horse trailer.  As we waited for the trailer to get under way, I opened that root beer.  Now you all know where this is going, right?  Yeah.  That bottle obviously got all shook up along  the way.  There I was in the driver's seat, door closed, car carpeting all around me.  And the bottle spewing forth it's contents.  Options: let it spray the carpet or suck it up and let it get me.  I'm much more easily cleaned up than my car's carpeting so I just sat there, root beer froth flowing all over my lap, down all through my crotch.  Nice.  I arrived at the new barn with sopping wet, sticky jeans and underpants. 

Do you think that was enough?  No.

As I led CC to her new stall, we rounded the corner into the barn.  Now anyone who knows horses knows the potential for snorty surprises is always high, especially so in new circumstances.  CC got her front feet into the new barn and jumped.  She landed with one of those front feet firmly planted in place.  Right on the heel of my left sneaker.  I was pinned.  Couldn't move that foot at all.  Not the position you want to be in when the horse is snorty and excited.  Only one thing to do.  Pull my foot - fast - out of the sneaker.  So if being a soppy mess wasn't enough to impress the new barn owner, I also arrived at CC's stall wearing only one sneaker. 

Only one thing to do with that set of circumstances.  Laugh. 

Phew! That Mess Is Dealt With

I moved CC today.  The move was supposed to happen on Friday, but, like so much in my life these days, things weren't up to me.  But this last minute change in plans actually worked out better for me.  For one thing,  CC is out of that awful environment and I can relax about her circumstances.  At least to the extent that I am comfortable the new place will be so much better.  Certainly CC and her buddy Reba, the mare she's been sharing paddock space with who also moved to the same new barn today, seem quite comfortable in the new place.  All that good hay they got the minute they got there did the trick.  Along with enough good quality, clean bedding that didn't choke us from too much dust.  And then they got to go out to their new paddock.  Still no grass to graze on, but the new barn manager understands the importance of good quality hay in the paddock.  I'll be away this weekend but by the time I get back, she should be settled enough and have enough good food in her belly that I can start working her again.  There is no indoor arena at this barn, but they do have a nice big round pen which will be safer for our first under saddle experience together.  And the barn itself is airy, clean and pretty dust free.  The property butts up against a state park, with direct access to all those trails.  Can't wait to get her under saddle!

Some Elephants Are More Impressive Than Others

Shirley and Jenny, featured yesterday on Sandy's blog, land squarely in the embraceable box.  Shirley and Jenny were two circus elephants who formed a mother daughter type bond when life first brought them together.  They were then separated for roughly 20 years, each suffering assorted indignities and hardships in life's hurricanes.   Their reunion at a sanctuary is impressive and will make many of you cry.
Another elephant just seems to land herself in what a dog deposits in the back yard.  That makes me laugh.

Make 'Em Think They're Dying

That's often the secret to getting a reluctant orchid to bloom.  One of the orchids I bought over a year ago is a new to me type, Miltonia Bluntii.  It obviously needs a different watering schedule than most of my other orchids, because the new leaf growth came in all wrinkly and sort of shriveled, an orchid's thirsty gasp, and a signal to the plant's inner psyche, I guess, to try to save the species by putting out bloom before dying.  So about the time I noticed the shrively gasp, I also spotted three buds in pretty good development.  Sometimes the orchids do that.  They throw out buds that get almost to flower stage before you notice them.  Sneaky little devils.  And this is what Miltonia Bluntii looks like as a flower:

Some Of It Was Great Fun, Some Of It Sucked

My weekend.  The two sucky parts: 1) I lost a very promising rabbit after trying everything I could to save her.   Tears shed.  Probably seems pretty silly to some of you, but when I get attached, I get very attached and if I ever get to the point where a rabbit's death doesn't kick in the gut, then it's time for me to get out of raising rabbits.  2) Just 5 days after paying my horse board through mid-October, I find out from another boarder that the barn manager has decided to give up the barn.  The barn manager didn't have the courtesy to tell me, and still hasn't.  I have no reason to doubt the information, and am not really totally surprised.  There have been issues at the barn, quality of care issues.  I'm not highly demanding, I just expect people to follow through on what's been said.  Barn manager showed me decent quality hay, but that only lasted for the 15 or so bales I saw.  I expected CC's stall to be clean and not reek of urine.  Cleaning her stall is not my job.  I'm paying for full board, after all, a sum greater than my car payment.  In spite of that, I have been cleaning stalls and not just my own. I'm happy to help out when needed, but when I can't be there, the job should still be done.  I also expected CC to maintain weight and condition.  Those are not unreasonable expectations.  After my motorcycle weekend which kept me away from the barn, I found out those expectations were not being met at all, so of course discussed it with the barn manager.  She agreed to get better hay, and clean stalls more thoroughly.  I paid the board a few days early so she could get some better hay.  She bought 12 bales.  That's it.  It's already gone.  I'm disgusted and pissed.  All day Saturday, I alternated taking care of the rabbit with searching a gazillion barn possibilities.   First thing Sunday morning, I looked at a barn about 10 miles away.  Holy cow!  I love the place, if first impressions are any good.  I do know that the place must be well maintained on a daily basis because I talked with the owner Saturday evening and saw the place at 9 am Sunday.  As clean and sweet smelling as the place was, no way she did that in a hurry.  The horses already living there all look terrific.  Big bonus: there are lots of trails easily accessible from this barn, as well as a town maintained public riding arena about a 5 minute ride away.  I must be an eternal optimist because the place excites me.  Now I just have to work out the finances with the current place because I shouldn't have to forfeit half a month's board because she decided to not live up to her responsibilities.

The fun parts of the weekend started on Friday with a friend and I taking a fibery field trip to one of my  favorite places: Still River Mill where the folks are always working hard, but still cheerful and helpful.  They've been extra busy this year expanding t he mill.  New equipment, new building structures, wonderful plans, same high quality fiber processing.  And yes, of course I dropped off fiber.  I've got 3 lots of cormo/angora to be blended and spun, 2 of them lace weight, one worsted weight, for me to dye.  The lace weight will be mostly for sale, but I might keep the worsted weight for a sweater for me.  Not sure yet.  The other fiber I left is black alpaca to be blended with black which in reality is pewter grey angora for roving.   Most of that will be for sale, too, I think. 

Sunday, after I looked at the barn, it was fair time.  One of the spinning guilds I belong to meets at several of the country fairs, so we have fiber departments and spinning bees.  At Sunday's fair, a friend proudly showed me the sweater she made from yarn she spun of fiber from me, some of the Shrimply Delicious.  Heh - I'm a proud "grandma,"  so of course I also took a close up of the sweater.   After we all got to wander the fair and treat ourselves to our favorite fair foods (mine is Italian sausage, followed by a hot fudge sundae), we settled in with our spinning wheels for our spinning bee.  Twist of Fate Spinnery very generously donates the fiber for the spinning bee.  Very nice folks at this fiber mill, also, with the same high quality mill equipment.  They specialize in natural color fibers.  How lucky am I to be so close to two fiber mills?  Very lucky indeed.  Oh, yeah, back to the bee.  This year, our task was to spin for consistency.  As a spinner, I prefer this task to spinning for length, kind of a quality vs quantity thing.  There are some very talented spinners in the group, so I was quite surprised and flattered to end up with the trophy and blue ribbon.   Don't worry.  I won't let it go to my head.  I still got to be my own pack horse (or is mule more appropriate?)
 

A Good Sign, Sadly

I've never agreed with John McCain's ideology but I used to at least appreciate his personality, his integrity.  So I just read Richard Cohen's op-ed piece in the Washington Post with an equal mix of glad and sad.  Cohen has long been an admirer of McCain's, and began by explaining "what impressed (him) most about McCain" in the past.  Then he wrote:

   

"McCain has soiled all that. His opportunistic and irresponsible choice of Sarah Palin as his political heir -- the person in whose hands he would leave the country -- is a form of personal treason, a betrayal of all he once stood for. Palin, no matter what her other attributes, is shockingly unprepared to become president. McCain knows that. He means to win, which is all right; he means to win at all costs, which is not."

I am quite happy about this op-ed piece because to read of Cohen's "conversion" is reassuring.  Perhaps enough people will acknowledge the lies and perversion tactics of the GOP and just say no.  Perhaps I can hope the method of mean won't prevail this November after all.  But still, it's sad to witness McCain's leap to lie-ability.  I'd like to believe integrity still exists.  I'd like to believe in the over all goodness of human beings.  Our political process makes that increasingly difficult.

And now, because I'd rather leave you laughing, read what else Cohen has to say.

I Traded Soft Fibery Goodness

for hard, unforgiving paved parking lot and pouring rain alternating with ugly hotnhumid this weekend.  And loved every second of it.  Well, not so much the moment where I ended up smacked forehead first into the pavement while the rest of me sprawled rather inelegantly and bruised over the handlebars of a Kawasaki Eliminator.  Thanks to a full face helmet, though, my head is fine, didn't even get more than a hint of headache.  One of the bruises on my lower leg - well.  It rivals the best that CC has inflicted.  So what the heck was I doing that ended me up in such a heap?  Taking the MSF Basic Rider Course.  Starting Thursday night and continuing through late Sunday afternoon, it was all motorcycles.  We started with 3 hours of classroom instruction, quite handy when you know pretty much nuthin' about bikes.  Early Saturday morning had me not only sitting on afore mentioned Eliminator but starting it up, acronyms like FINE-C, T-ClOCS, and SEE firmly stamped into my brain.  Somewhere in the first hour and a half of that start, I crashed.  Shook up the instructor more than I did myself.  Heh.  Keep 'em guessing, right?  I got back on the bike as soon as he'd let me, probably before he was comfortable with it.  We spent about 4 hours Saturday morning learning the basics and how not to do what I'd just done.  Saturday afternoon had us back in the classroom, ending with a test.  I aced it - 100%.  Yay, me!  Sunday morning started with rain right from the early second I got up to get animal chores done before class.  We rode anyway cause there was no lightening and we're not sissies.  Ha!  I did end up with pruny fingers, and jeans that weighed an extra ton with all the water, but bike and I were buddies through it all: swerves, weaves, back to back u-turns, sudden stops, and obstacles.  Then it was moment of truth time.  After lunch, after the rain cleared to leave behind all that sweaty, oppressive humidity and we still had to wear the wet jeans, leather boots, full finger gloves, long sleeves and helmets. It was time for the final evaluation.  We lined up.  Certain events would qualify as automatic failure.  Like crashing.  Judging by the faces around me, I know I wasn't the only one sweating for reasons beyond air conditions.  We rode our tests one by one, each of us watching the others, our mistakes fully visible.  Mine even fully audible, though I wasn't the only one to utter loudly something along the lines of "oh, crap."  Finally, we lined up to wait for our results.  Yay me, again.  I passed.  Not the best, but not the worst, either.  I did think of you folks during all this and made someone take a picture of me.  You think your neighbors think fiber blogger photography is strange, try explaining it to a bunch of guys getting all manly with motorcycles.