The Daughter has a very strong sense of fairness and justice.
My wife, when some bit of my loose change would fall on the floor, would claim it as her own, if I didn’t pick it up in time, and put it in her change jar. It was this little game of hers and I didn’t much mind, though it’s not as though she needed the money; she now makes more than I do.
I would start getting a bit irritated, though, when I’d leave change on the table or the bed or my dresser, usually in order to take it out of one pair of pants, before putting it into another. Somehow, this was the game taken too far, and I said as much. Not only was it boring, but it also made being home a bit less of the sanctuary I wanted it to be.
The practice stopped, though, only when, at some point a few months ago, the Daughter was staying a couple of nights at her maternal grandparents’ house. She told them that Mama was always stealing from Papa (her current terms of endearment for us). My wife’s mother then relayed this message to her daughter. The Wife realized that, perhaps, she was not offering HER daughter the best role model, even in jest.
The Daughter has a very strong sense of fairness and justice, and by her taking the situation to a higher court, this worked out well for me also.
The $25.00 outlay has gained $6.96 in interest, currently at 0.63%, and is now worth a whopping $31.96.
Your name hereOur family – mostly I – is cleaning out our attic, and that fact MAY become the source of several blog posts. I have noted that it has become a bit of a sore point. We all have stuff up there, but I have items that are relegated there because there’s no room on floors one and two, according to the powers that be. So I have two bookcases, with books, that I would be inclined to access, e.g.
When we decided to get the attic insulated, it took THREE years. Moving all the stuff to half of the attic, then have it insulated. Then paint it, which I would have skipped. And for a brief time – maybe six weeks, the attic was again a usable space. But then time to insulate the other half, so everything’s then in the OTHER half of the room. And this took the contractor FOREVER to do, until I got…rather grumpy about it, let’s say. Room gets insulated; floor, which was weakened, was repaired; room (again, I believe unnecessarily), was painted.
NOW, finally I could put things from one side of the attic into the other, rather than have everything packed to the ceiling on one side, where I can’t access/find anything. Some of the clutter are old bills and the like, which I WOULD have gotten to a couple years ago, if that had been possible.
One box, I quickly determine was receipts of The Wife’s, all from 2004, the year the Daughter was born. One thing I DID take out was a $50 savings bond. Hmm, I wonder what it’s worth. I go to the TreasuryDirect calculator, and discover that a $50 savings bond purchased in April 2004 doesn’t mature until April 2034. The $25.00 outlay has gained $6.96 in interest, currently at 0.63%, and is now worth a whopping $31.96.
I then remember that I have a about two dozen $100 savings bonds, purchased for $50 each, from the mid-1990s, and I should check their value.
The first one, purchased 01/1993, has gained $89.56 in interest, is still gaining at 4.00%, and is now worth $139.56, more than face value. Cool.
The first ones I got in the next two years are worth somewhat less: the one I purchased 02/1994 has $57.56 in interest, still at 4.00%, for $107.56. 01/1995 has $53.72 in interest, at 4.00%, for $103.72.
But then it drops off badly. My 01/1996 purchase $50.00 has made $50.00 in interest, but is getting only 0.59% interest now. And the last one I bought, in 08/1997 has garnered only $36.20 in interest, and is receiving only 0.63%.
So if I were to have to cash them in, I’d start with the 1996 issue, then 1997, 1995, 1994, and keep those 1993 bonds for last. Savings bonds don’t seem to be the golden value they used to be.
I ALWAYS remember that I have other people’s stuff. Other people aren’t nearly as locked in about these things as I am.
I was sitting in our home office the other day, trying to figure out what I might write about, when I saw it: a paperback copy of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon. Someone – I remember who – lent it to me three or four or five years ago. She figured since I used to work at a comic book store, and used to read comic books, I would enjoy it. She gave me the book to read, and I got to about page 59, but never got any further, and never got back to it.
Now I have this book that I haven’t read and have had in my possession way too long. I feel that I OUGHT to read it before I return it.
There is this coffee table version of a book called Baseball by Ken Burns that came with 10 VCR tapes. A guy I knew at the YMCA, Lou, offered to lend them all to me, and I had them for a couple of years. The big problems here were these: 1) My VCR player ceased working, and in fact started eating tapes, so I didn’t want to ruin HIS tapes. I got a NEW VCR/DVD combo player, but for some reason, I couldn’t get the VCR part to work correctly. 2) My local Y closed, and I didn’t know how to get hold of Lou. Fortunately, he joined another Y, in north Albany, I tracked him down and returned the videos, unwatched. But he told me I could KEEP the book, so I did. Haven’t read it, but have picked out sections to peruse, now and then.
I ALWAYS remember that I have other people’s stuff. Other people aren’t nearly as locked in about these things as I am.
My position about lending things, whether it be money or objects, is this: I don’t expect to EVER get it back. I’m quite OK with this. I’d much rather lend cash than something with emotional value. That way, I’m not so bummed out if it’s lost to me forever.
So, is there a “war on women” when women at war are being raped?
I’ve been thinking about the rights of women a LOT lately. There are so many examples of what’s wrong – and to be sure a couple that are right – that it’s overwhelmed me. (And it’s taken at least a couple of weeks to write this piece.)
In New York State, “The Women’s Equality Agenda will safeguard women’s health, extend protections against sexual harassment in the workplace, help to achieve pay equity, and increase protections against discrimination in employment, housing, credit, and lending.” Sounds wonderful, of course. The big hangup for some is over abortion rights, a huge issue.
But I think the conversation about whether there is a “war on women” had been framed too much on abortion and birth control – sometimes reframed by the talking heads, to be sure.
Though there does seem to be a sexual component in all of this. In his review about Fiona Apple’s song Criminal, MDS writes: “Let’s just admit something upfront right now: as a society, we are all pretty much terrified of girls and young women having sex. Terrified. Been that way since the beginning of time, I guess. Which is why for a while there we bottled up virginity in exchange for land before the wedding ceremony. Chastity belts and dowries are mostly archaic things that no society really trades in anymore, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t figured out new ways of badly dealing with girls and young women and their sex-having. We slut-shame. A lot.”
So, is there a “war on women” when women at war are being raped? Recently, and I’m quoting Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) here: “The Senate Armed Services Committee held its first full hearing on sexual assault in the military in a decade. Of the twenty witnesses, only two were there as victim advocates. The other 18 were representing the top ranks of the military and uniformly opposed our efforts to reform the military justice system.”
Meanwhile, Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) suggested that the “hormone level created by nature” was to blame for rapes in the military and that all pregnant servicewomen should be investigated to make sure their condition was the result of consensual sex.
Former baseball star Jose Canseco’s defense of a rape allegation against him is that he doesn’t HAVE to rape to get women to bed, showing his sheer ignorance. Then he makes his situation worse by going on Twitter and attacks his accuser by name.
What caught my attention more recently was comedian Patton Oswalt’s reversal about rape as a source of humor. “I was secure in thinking my point of view was right. That ‘rape culture’ was an illusion, that the examples of comedians telling ‘rape jokes’ in which the victim was the punchline were exceptions that proved the rule. I’ve never wanted to rape anyone. No one I know has ever expressed a desire to rape anyone. My viewpoint must be right. Right?” It’s long (addresses two other topics) and rambling, but makes an interesting point.
A report on working moms came out. It showed that 40% of the households have moms that are either sole breadwinners or making more than their husbands; BTW, that latter category would include MY household. The men at FOX News were so histrionic: “Society dissolv[ing] around us,” said Lou Dobbs. A sign of “something going terribly wrong in American society,” said Juan Williams. Erick Erickson chimed in and said having moms as breadwinners were against “biology” and said people who defend moms are “anti-science.”
Happily, they got slammed by their female colleagues on FOX, including Megan Kelly. This particular article also disses some of the MSNBC women for not calling to task the men on their network, notably Chris Matthews, over the stupid, hateful things THEY have said. Don’t know if it’s Rachel Maddow’s job to do so, but I agree that Matthews, for one, has made vile, sexist comments, especially about Hillary Clinton.
I haven’t even scratched the surface: e.g., Texas governor Rick Perry recently vetoed an equal pay bill. Instead, I’ll hang on my great hope from the words of Jean Luc Picard himself, Patrick Stewart, which you should just watch. He speaks, among other things, about the role men must play in curbing violence against women.
I think the Tea Party and the ACLU (or other odd bedfellows of your choice) should get together and think of some strategy to address this issue. It may have to be outrageous.
Folks in America like to think that our elected officials are beholden to Us, The People. We have spirited elections, and if we don’t like Candidate X, we can vote for Candidate Y. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside just thinking about it.
The answer, my friend, is money. Money in politics. The ‘Revolving Door’ lobbyists have helped create the corporate betrayal of America. Check out The Center for Responsive Politics’ Open Secret website. So that is how one could have an anonymous! member of Congress slip something into a bill that protects the corporations.
None of this is news, exactly – see the FDR quote – but seems to have become both more pervasive and more perverse. So what are we going to do about it? I was watching this TED talk on Arthur’s blog, and it got me to think that there are many people on the political left and the political right who have a common agenda: a sense of fairness. Money trumps fairness, inherently.
I think the Tea Party and the ACLU (or other odd bedfellows of your choice) should get together and think of some strategy to address this issue. It may have to be outrageous.
Let’s face it: governments chug along doing the things they do, often in a self-serving manner, until the people get a bit uppity and sit at a lunch counter where they are unwelcome or refuse to sit in the back of the bus. Not sure what action it is should be yet, but as they say, it could be epic…
As my friend, Dan wrote, in response to the post cited above: “No corporation… has any right to enforce anything. If our government leaders give them that kind of power then we the people have every right to defy their bogus powers…” *** “For someone the right wing press likes to call a socialist,” Obama’s regressive record makes Nixon look like Che.
