Tag: questions

EARTH DAY Question

Not only are we going to be saving money during the heating and cooling seasons, but we are getting a federal tax refund that is over $1000 larger than it would have been had we not spent the few thousand dollars to insulate.

Far from my naivete on the first Earth Day 41 years ago, I realize that we have to make some substantial changes if we are going to keep old Mother Earth healthy. Sure there are the BIG issues of industrial pollution and the like to address. But I also find it necessary to look in the mirror to see what I’M doing.

By far, the most significant thing that we’ve done is getting our attic insulated. I should note that we were motivated in no small part by a tax advantage that was available in 2010 but unfortunately is no longer the case. Not only are we going to be saving money during the heating and cooling seasons, but we are getting a federal tax refund that is over $1000 larger than it would have been had we not spent the few thousand dollars to insulate.

We’re still doing the compost thing.

Living where we do, we can walk to the daughter’s school, the post office (which will probably close due to budget cuts), an Indian restaurant, a pizzeria, a pharmacy/drug store, a movie theater, and a supermarket. No small thing, I suppose. Other places are at a bikeable distance or on the bus line, and there are at least four bus routes within a block of my house.

So what are you doing, or want to be doing, to help on Earth Day?

 

The Money Issue QUESTION

I took out a credit card to transfer the charges from another credit card. The latter card is a zero interest card until February 2012, which will facilitate me paying it off without extra charges.

I love money. I hate money.

After my mom died, my sister came across some letters my mom wrote to no one in particular – they’d be journaling entries, I suppose, had she put them in a diary. One in particular from November 1995, was about how quickly my father was burning through their retirement savings. My mother was very thrifty, very good with money, but my father was…not, let’s just say.

When I graduated from college, I wasn’t making enough money to pay for my student loans right away, so it wasn’t until about five years after I graduated that I was able to secure a credit card. It was a Sears card, with which I bought a clock/radio for $12.95. I lived too much on my credit cards, especially when I was unemployed or a grad student.

But at the beginning of 2011, I had no credit card debt at all, due in no small part because I won some money on a TV game show a decade ago, and the much more disciplined attitude of my spouse. And now, I can’t STAND to have credit card debt.

It became clear that the money I spent around my mother’s funeral I would not be able to pay off in a month, so right away, I did something I almost never do; I took out a credit card to transfer the charges from another credit card. The latter card is a zero-interest card until February 2012, which will facilitate me paying it off without extra charges.

Now, while I’m pretty much off desiring STUFF, I still wish I had more money for EXPERIENCES – travel, specifically. We ARE taking a trip to Canada this year. But if I were less disciplined – and in my heart of hearts, I’m really not that disciplined, I just force myself to act as though I were – I’d be going to a lot more plays and concerts.

Oh, and I hate paying taxes, not just because I can’t get that favorable GE rate, but because I’m a 1040A or 1040EZ (i.e., simple) guy, but since I’ve gotten married, I have had to deal with additional schedules involving various deductions.

So what’s YOUR attitude towards money?

***
The original version of Money, by Barrett Strong, co-written by Berry Gordy, the very first Motown hit.

Roger Answers Your Questions, Rosey and Lisa


Rosey at Dung Hoe Gardening asked:
Do you feel like we as a country have to fight every war for everybody? It’s [a] sticky question.

Well, yes, it is. But the answer to the question is clearly no. I mean, the United States hasn’t gotten involved in the civil war in Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) yet, has it?

As a matter of policy, at least since Viet Nam, the position has generally been that the US engage in winnable wars, and only when they meet the nation’s strategic interests, whatever they may be at the moment. This has been boiled down to something called The Powell Doctrine, which “states that a list of questions all have to be answered affirmatively before military action is taken by the United States”:

1.Is a vital national security interest threatened?
2.Do we have a clear attainable objective?
3.Have the risks and costs been fully and frankly analyzed?
4.Have all other non-violent policy means been fully exhausted?
5.Is there a plausible exit strategy to avoid endless entanglement?
6.Have the consequences of our action been fully considered?
7.Is the action supported by the American people?
8.Do we have genuine broad international support?

One could argue that our incursion into Libya doesn’t meet #2; Afghanistan hasn’t met #5, and #8 re Iraq is dubious. Other standards may not have been met also.

More cynically, The Daily Show described our foreign policy decisions this way.

To this day, Bill Clinton regrets his “personal failure” to prevent the 1994 slaughter of 800,000 people. But would the American people have supported a war in a country where no visible bogeyman had been inbedded in their collective consciousness, merely to save the lives of people in a country no one could find on a map, or spell?

I suppose, Rosey, your question was prompted by the Libyan situation. The Republican position has been all over the place, with some who were pushing for a “no-fly zone” weeks ago – by ourselves? really? – still kvetching about Obama’s “inaction”. I tend to be in that fairly bipartisan camp who’s concerned that we’re fighting a war (again) without a Congressional declaration of war.

Also, I worry about “mission creep”. Initially, it was about protecting the rebels (whoever the heck they are) against the excesses of Khadafi Gadaffy Qadaffi the Libyan leader, however you spell his name. But, if it’s going well, hey, why don’t we try to take him out, like we tried 25 years ago?

So, why the US goes to war tends not to be very tidy anymore, if it ever was.
**
Lisa at peripheral perceptions wants needs to know:
My burning question is: Did you take that photo yourself or did you *pose that way for someone? 🙂

When I went down to Charlotte, NC last month to see my mother, I was tooling around on the household computer. There I came across a bunch of photos I’d never seen from Lydia and my trip there in the spring of 2009; we were there then for my niece’s high school graduation. One of them was this one:

I didn’t remember it, but, for sure, the niece took it, not me, and I’m guessing that I was doing it for some effect, but I’m just not positive.

Roger Answers Your Questions, Gordon, Tom, Demeur, and Uthaclena

When I’ve just written something difficult, the meme serves as a sort of intellectual “palate cleaners”, as it were.


Gordon of Blog This, Pal!, who had a birthday this month, the day before mine actually, asks:
With all the rampant de-funding that seems to be happening (NPR, Americorps), do you think it’s being done out of partisan motivations? Or simply (as I like to think of it) a case of relatively new legislators playing hack and slash without really considering the consequences?

Gordon, you attribute to these legislators a level of naivete that I just don’t find at all convincing. An opportunity to get rid of Planned Parenthood funding, for instance, is like a dream come true for the GOP, at least since 1994; maybe since 1973. Never mind the facts that 1) the funding, per the Hyde Amendment, cannot be used for abortions and 2) the services that are provided are often the only medical treatment some women get. I find it incredibly cynical that they want to, symbolically at least, support the unborn, while at the same time, imperil the born by cutting programs such as WIC (Women, Infants, Children.)

Getting rid of those damn liberals at NPR will be saving, at a cost, especially in some rural communities, of having any local radio at all. And speaking of NPR, it distresses me that a faux journalist with a microphone and video camera can help besmirch the network by clever editing, the same way Shirley Sherrod can be forced out of the Department of Agriculture based on the same clever manipulation.

Let’s be realistic, though: if cuts are to be made to the federal budget, it’ll have to come from somewhere. A good 88% of the budget has been deemed by pundits as non-discretionary. As much as I hate agreeing with columnist George Will, that’s nonsense. Most of the budget, save for payment on the debt, is discretionary; it may require Congressional action, but it’s not untouchable. But which jobs program is one to cut: a factory making weapons that the Department of Defense doesn’t even want, which employs a number of folks in the district of a powerful member of Congress, or Americorps, whose only native constituency are not-for-profits and some smaller governments?

There are choices as to what to “hack and slash”, and they seem to be quite targeted, while other programs, even within the 12% of the budget that everyone considers discretionary, have been considered off-limits by House GOP leaders.
***
Tom the Mayor, with whom I worked at FantaCo, wonders:
Do you think State budget cuts will affect your librarian job? How about your wife’s job? I know Medicaid cuts have already cost me one job and might cost me my present one.

Well, indirectly, yes. My job gets some state money, so that’s a possibility. But if the US Small Business Administration gets a 45% cut, as proposed in the Obama budget, that’d be even worse for the Small Business Development Centers, which do the hands-on counseling, and therefore, that’s not great for my colleagues and me if there are fewer centers and counselors. So it’s the federal budget I’m more worried about.

My wife’s job is with BOCES. If the district she works in decides to hire their own ESL teacher, my wife has been with BOCES longer, and with good evaluations, than any other ESL teacher in the area. So probably not.
***
Demeur, who I read regularly, relates:
Thomas, I feel for you I’m in the same boat that might sink any time now. I retrained for a different job only to have funding cut. I was lucky enough to get tied into a temp job with a government agency. I now hear that this program may be cut…

My question: Have you considered what you’d do if you had to change careers?

It’s difficult to think of my life as having a “career”. Besides being a librarian, the kind of jobs I’d like and for which I could make the case for which I’m currently qualified are writing, editing, customer service, retail sales, and some sort of instruction.
***
My good friend Uthaclena asked me – well it was more that he indicated that he didn’t understand me doing those meme things such as Sunday Stealing.

Well, here’s why I do them.

1. The process of answering predetermined questions I find as an interesting exercise for me. Moreover, I often find out things about me that I didn’t know before. It’s a controlled reveal.
2. Sometimes, when I need to write something that is difficult and/or time-consuming, it starts the writing juices going.
3. Related: when I’ve just written something difficult, the meme serves as a sort of intellectual “palate cleaners”, as it were.

And in writing this, I realize that I do pretty much the same thing at work.

We librarians generally take the next question in the queue. Sometimes, the query is a bear, requiring a certain learning curve before even attempting to respond to it. Occasionally, I get stuck, waiting for someone from a government agency or an association to call or write me back. While I’m waiting, I might take another question down the list that I know is answerable. Perhaps it’s Census data I know exists, or regulations for a type of business I’ve helped before, or a business list. After struggling with something difficult, I want a “win”, something I KNOW I can answer without great difficulty.

STUFF post

One sister is a recovering shopaholic – and annoying, in that way recovering addicts tend to be.


I have, over the past few years, been much less likely to get things than I used to be. Oh sure, I might buy a few DVDs or CDs per year, but it’s nothing like my heyday a couple of decades ago. This has been a function of several factors:

1. Stuff owns you. When you have stuff, you have to keep track of stuff, you have to dust stuff. The old cliche about the boat owner is true; the two happiest days of his/her life are the day getting the boat and the day selling it.

I used to live in apartments, which meant moving every few years. Schlepping the long white boxes of my comic books – which I’ve since sold – and the heavy boxes containing LPs – which I have not – got very old.

There was this older couple I once knew, and they had a rule: for every item that came into the house, an item of equal size had to go out. I admire their discipline because I’m pretty sure I could not do that.

There was this young woman on JEOPARDY! a few years ago who stunned Trebek when she talked about the fire at her dwelling and how liberating it was. I’m certainly in that mindset, but I sure understood the sentiment.

2. My family obviously has issues with stuff. When he died, my father had a couple of warehouses full of stuff he was (presumably) going to sell, but it was in such disarray, my family struggled for a couple of years to thin it out. My mother used to collect bells, but one day just decided that they were taking over the living room and dumped all but a handful. One sister is a recovering shopaholic – and annoying, in that way recovering addicts tend to be.

3. If I can’t use the stuff, then I don’t want the stuff. I actually like reference books because I access them regularly. But that pile of books I keep meaning to read is starting to get on my nerves. Of course, I love music, but it is probably the case that I could not play all I own if I played it 10 hours a day, every day for a year; if I’m not listening to it, do I need it?

What is your relationship with stuff? How do you limit how much stuff you have? Are some of your stuff in storage?

Social media & sharing icons powered by UltimatelySocial