The Best Things in life are free

Not much going on upstairs, but I can’t help noticing, though I try not to, that the economy seems to be…I don’t know…in some distress.  The rates of housing foreclosure have reached Great Depression proportions.  Carol saw a list of like 26 foreclosures right here in the Goleta area.

Americans are now spending more servicing debt, 13%, than they are on food, 12%, though I would expect that with continuing rises in the cost of gas, the food percent will catch up with the debt percent, though Americans may have to borrow more to be able to buy food, so that would mean an additional increase in debt servicing.

In one column again, I saw some financial expert saying that the reduction in consumer spending was endangering the whole economy, and that by not buying Americans were only bringing down further ruin upon their heads.

So it’s all our fault because we are not buying enough even though buying more would seem to mean going into deeper debt.  Oh, woe is me—torn between my selfish desire not to go into enormous debt and my patriotic duty to my country to spend as much as I possibly can with no thought of personal consequences.  Talk about self-sacrifice.  So buying an SUV I guess means one is a truly righteous and self-sacrificing American.  I find something confusing in this logic.

Two articles I have recently skimmed were titled in effect “Is the Next Big One Upon Us?”—the big one being of course the Great Depression.  If we don’t know history, I suppose we are doomed to repeat it.  But a little history also suggests that the conditions of the Great Depression simply to not apply to the current one.  In part because of the first Big One, we now have our money federally insured.  Even if the damn bank goes under, we will get our money.

So I thought till reading that of course the federal money backing the banks is not without limits.  The government sells bonds to back what’s in the banks; if they can’t sell the bonds or sell them fast enough, the government will actually print more money.  The idea of the government printing money just because it needs to print money freaks me out and puts me in mind of grainy footage of Germans after WWI pushing wheelbarrows full of the money necessary to buy one loaf of bread.

We of course can fill up our SUVs with the money necessary to buy gas to get the SUV to the bank.

Marx on money:

By possessing the property of buying everything, by possessing the property of appropriating all objects, money is thus the object of eminent possession. The universality of its property is the omnipotence of its being. It is therefore regarded as omnipotent. . . . Money is the procurer between man’s need and the object, between his life and his means of life. But that which mediates my life for me, also mediates the existence of other people for me. For me it is the other person.

Kleenex

If I were one of those Atlas Rockets and anxiety was missile fuel, I would be half way to the moon by now.  I seem to be in the middle of a flood of anxiety; it’s as if I have a black hole inside eating up my energy.

I have always been prone to the stuff.  It’s as if an alarm goes off and gets stuck.

Lately it may have been aggravated by my having terminated my 28 year relationship with my 85 year old therapist, and then calling later to see how she was doing to find out she had been in the hospital for two days because her heart was beating way, way too fast.

And last week a new quarter started and for some reason, even after 30 years of teaching, that still makes me a little anxious.

And add to that—tomorrow, April 10, is the one year anniversary of Joan’s death.

What a long year it has been.

A little while back Brother Dan was thinking about Joan.  He wrote:

Ok so into the Joan. Joan. Joan K. Tingle. JKT. She had a Kleenex in her hand, her right hand or her left hand, I can’t recall which. It doesn’t matter…. I can’t help thinking of her and her Kleenex.

Ah, yes…the Kleenex.  She always had some of it, mashed up in a little ball, somewhere on her person.  Sometimes, if she had a sleeve, a piece would be rolled up in that, like how sailors used to store their cigarettes in those t-shirts with no pockets.  Or if she was wearing a belt, a piece would be stuck behind that.  Or lacking any other place, it would be sort of behind the opening in her blouse at her neck, maybe tucked behind a bra strap, I guess.  And Brother Steve reported that later she kept the Kleenex in her hand and that trying to hold onto that while using her walker made the whole walker business precarious going.

And it is a sign perhaps of my distracted mood that while I can remember the Kleenex a-ok.  I mean I can see it behind her belt there, I can’t for the life of me remember her ever having blown her nose.  I can’t remember either the sight or the sound of it.  And I have tried to visualize it too.  I have looked at a picture of her to remember her nose better and we have Kleenex, so I looked at that, and I tried to visualize the two together.  But the life of me I can summon up no memory of an actual nose blowing. 

If you look out the window and there’s snow on the ground, you can pretty safely assume it snowed last night, and if there is Kleenex, well there should be a nose blowing.  I can assume it happened.  But lacking a memory that’s all I can do.

 But that’s my mood lately—bits and pieces of this and that—all fragmented.

Zillowing

Brother Steve continues his investigation of property in South Carolina.  Emails have been aflying between Brother Steve, Brother Dave, and Nephew Brian on this matter.  I believe also that Brother Steve has been contacted by Cousins Beth, Jenny, and Lucy.  Brother Steve appreciates all the response he has received for his inquiry.

Carol too became involved.  This morning she located a house in Laurens.  So we sat in front of the computer and drooled a while over this house on Main Street in Laurens for 264K—four bedrooms and two baths.

laurens1 

A little landscape work still necessary.

laurens2

Lots of light! 

A home this size in SB—even with recent drop in property values—would be in the millions.

With very low, compared to CA, property tax of $795 per annum.

Brother Steve has been zillowing real estate in Anderson County.  Zillowing is like googling except zillow is a premier real estate site.  One can zillow the area of Laurens, SC, for example through this link.

The difference in property values might be explained in part by per capita income:

CA ranks 13 in income at: 22,711 per head.

SC ranks 37 at 18,795 per head.

A Loooong Week

A looooog week.  First week of classes again, this time for spring quarter 2008.

I truck into the first class dragging my computer, which weighs a ton, and all my other stuff in one of those airport bags on little wheels, and I am all ready to go when I see the place where the computer should go is there alright, but it’s a big box podium that is all locked up with a computer inside it, and of course I don’t have a key that fits.  I don’t see how I can get to the place to get a key and back and not lose at least ten minutes on the first day, and the room is jammed with crashers.  I need to take roll as soon as possible and see if I can get the class set.  So I wing it without my web page up on the screen as visual aide.

The second class is 15 minutes after the first class.  It’s in another room.  This time I am able to set up the computer, but I find more crashers, some people I have kicked out of the first class, and some people who have taken me for a previous class and have gone out of their way to take another class with me.  I call roll and it looks like there may be some empty spots for the crashers, but I really can’t tell because people come ambling in 20 minutes late because they got lost or went to the wrong room.  And I know additionally that two at least will not be there this first day because of airline screw-ups, one being stuck in that mess at Heathrow.  Oh, and another has had to go in for surgery on his shoulder.

 And then the second day of classes I go in the room with the computer all locked up in a box and I have a key now already to open it up.  I stand there trying to stick it in this way and that but it won’t go and I start to think I am going crazy.  So I rush over to the place where you get the keys and find out that sure enough, they have given me the wrong key.

And the crashers are still there.  Frequently crashers just go away the second day, but these people are persistent.  A couple of them are seniors, and if they don’t get this class out of the way this quarter, they will not be graduated on time or have to stick around till summer school to take it or something.

So I just give up.  That’s unusual for me.  So when I last checked—and I don’t know yet if this is an accurate count—I have 26 students in one class and 27 and another.  Sure, that’s only 3 over my limited.  But it does mean more work and when colleagues say things like, I let 28 in my class, I say don’t do that.  Because you are getting paid for 25 and that’s all, and additionally, the National Organization that pays attention to such things says no writing class should have more that 20 in it.

 I just gave up partly because the whole week I’ve had persistent intense anxiety because I terminated with my shrink, or she terminated with me, and when I called to say hello to her later in the week, I found out she had been in the hospital for two days over the weekend because of an irregular heartbeat.  Way too fast.

I am left with the sense that this whole first week has been pretty much a mess and completely out of my control.

Calling all relatives in SC

Brother Steve seeks info–in case you missed his comment on the previous entry:

I’m going to use Nick’s blog to see if I can get some info from Carolina cousins….what’s Williamstown like, in Anderson County? There’s a one bedroom house for rent there for $400 a month, says it’s walking distance to stores….I’m looking into getting the most out of a modest retirement income, and living in one of the most expensive places in the country doesn’t really make sense….how cheap can I live back home?

For more direct contact Brother Steve may be reached at:

sjt1@localnet.com

Brother Steve and Brother Dave have been carrying on an email conversation about the cost of living in different parts of the country.  We seem to agree that CA has the highest cost of living of all 50 states.