Posting fool alert

So, my About editor lives in Geneva now. Big change from Slavic Village.

Wasn’t really a question as to why: in less than a year, her house in  Cleve was broken into four times. Her car got it once. Oh, and one time when she went to the bathroom someone walked in and stole her laptop.

Lovely.

Two years ago, while we met in person at Heck’s (Best. Burgers. Evah.) she told me that Slavic Village was a wonderful place to live and relatively crime free. She stands by this statement being true when freshly minted from her lips. Not too much, now.

So her home is pretty cool – a neat 1870’s brick building where allegedly the founder of Oldsmobile, Mr. RJ (or some such initials) Olds, spent his early boyhood. It has a neat screened in porch and loads of character.  Oh, and no crime out there in the eastern sticks.

But I went to Geneva on the Lake, one of my favorite haunts, and lots of Mom and Pop fun places are gone for good. Hard to tell without paying close attention; it’s basically all boarded-up for winter. Some boards won’t be coming off, though.

Jimmy Stewart’s comment in “The Philadelphia Story” sprung to mind,  his sarcastic “The prettiest sight in this fine pretty world is the privileged class enjoying its privileges.”  So, conversely, is the ugliest site in the world what happens when the priviliged class no longer has any money to burn?

Hardly. Maybe for now, though, it’s a sad sight and one to which we’re unused to viewing up close. 

My editor believes we’ve turned a corner with Obama (a fine man, but no miracle worker, so sayeth I as always). 

She made a fabulous lunch and we went over our big plans for the CIFF this year. I’m attending some weekend film forums at CSU that correlate to the festival events and praying to get tickets to the closing night film, starring Rachel Weisz. Paul Ruffalo and Adrian Brody, the name of which escapes me at the moment.  No volunteering this year, because it really made for a long ten days.  Just director interviews, film reviews (which I will post links to as always) and a film slam piece.  Maybe an interview with Bill Guentzler, if we can get him to stand still long enough.

Best time of the year ever.

And now, some questions to ponder

We have time, don’t we? While we watch the world as we’ve known it slowly fade off, with the country shedding jobs at nearly 700,000 a month, some of you must have some time on your hands. If not now, perhaps eventually. Good a time as any to check the contents of your souls while answering these questions:

1. Did you approve of the Iraq war when it started, even knowing, as everyone knew, that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11?

2. Did you simply swallow, unquestioningly, the official list of events as they happened that day, despite myriad holes that did not and could never add up, like where was Norad and why did they not follow stated protocols – amongst many other problematic issues?

3.  Did you pay attention to the fact George W. Bush had the worst job creation record, officially, since Herbert Hoover, as of 2004, and what that would mean for our economy?

4. Did it cross your mind that huge deficits were unsustainable over any length of time, let alone nearly a decade? And that never, in the history of America, were taxes lowered at the same time one war was underway – let alone two?

5. Did you buy one of those cheesy metallic ribbons for our troops, but fail to bat an eye as these young adults were returned to combat duty, over and over, some without much leave time at all?  Did you know that allegedly more troops commit suicide right now than are killed in combat?

6. Did you look at all the pictures of Abu Ghraib?  The really horrid, awful torture pictures made available on the Internet and elsewhere? 

7. If so, did you say anything about them? Do anything?  Feel much remorse and sorrow for what our country was becoming and how your own actions or inactions helped along the spread of evil?

7.5. Did you speak out, protest, write any letters to your Senators, Congressmen, State Reps, Governors….anyone….over any of these matters?

8.  When new shopping centers started popping up everywhere, and there was a new Chipotle, Wal-Mart, another ubiquitous Olive Garden or Lowe’s, did you stop to think how these stores would be sustained with so much overlap? And why we were destroying the land to build new plazas when old shopping plazas had plenty of empty rental units?

9.  Do you still think people who don’t have jobs right now just don’t want to work, or do you realize how bleak things really are?  During the Depression, it was still a widely accepted myth that people were just “lazy” and unwilling to do the work that was available.  I hear it, still, around here.

10. If you answered yes to more than two of the above, how you doing with that whole looking in the mirror and sleeping at night jazz? 

We really do reap what we sow in this world, and it appears the US has a bumper crop coming in. No matter on what side you fell…you will share in the harvest. But it’s always nice, while there’s some breathing time, to ascertain what kind of evil comes about when otherwise good men and women do nothing to stop it.

Dear well intentioned “folks”

I am having the time of my life right now.

No need to worry or covertly call healthcare agencies

because I write glib comments. I have always been

glib. People who have always known me know this

is as certain as the earth revolving and the sun

shining tomorrow.

I have, for the first time in more than a few years,

a love who treats me like I make that sun come up

just for him every morning.  I have a nice place to live

and a family who keeps taking me out for my birthday.

I have my writing and a full schedule of events coming

up that annually bring me more joy than you can

imagine.

Please stop screwing up these things by reading

into things too much and sticking your noses where

they do not belong and can’t begin to understand:

my head!! Life is the best it has been in quite some time.

Thanks for caring – now kindly go mind your own concerns.

Much love… Anne

Total Economic Collapse? Maybe

A few words about the larger picture: our economy.  What we’re being told is a recession that is truly a depression is only a few slips away from being total economic collapse. Don’t believe me? Okay, then, consider this:  if OPEC moves away from the dollar as its oil currency of choice, moving toward the Euro as many economists predict will ultimately result from the lower stock market price of crude, our dollar will fall faster than Joan Rivers’ face without plastic surgery. 

 

Alternatively, if we reach or exceed a certain debt ceiling, Japan and/or China can do a massive dollar dump, refuse to continue to purchase our debt (they own over 60 percent of it) and call in their loans. Game over.

 

If neither of those two things happen, the dollar could slide all on its lonesome down the market, as it’s slowly doing right now. Eventual game over. Longer life support, but end result is the same.

 

And if none of those tickle your fancy, the stock market can continue on, unable to find a bottom, until our government announces total economic collapse. Would likely happen after a banking holiday, when the government discovers officially that the banks are insolvent, owing much more in liabilities than they have on the asset side of their ledgers.

 

But, hey – I’m just a Cassandra talking about really unlikely things, right?

 

Not if you read pages from the Austrian School of Economics Daily Reckoning or The Automatic Earth blog. They’ve been calling it for years. So has the head of the GAO, since 2006. But what is the GAO? Just the Government Accountability Office. They’ve been saying that debt like this is going to have catastrophic results.

 

For my part, after last year, I feel pretty free, in some weird ways. I’m no longer really scared of much in life. As always, I drive 80 down the freeway, still think money is the root of all evil, and no longer worry about answering to anyone but God – if he’s still listening.

 

This just in. . .

The man I’m currently seeing worships me like a goddess.

No – I’m not kidding. No hyperbole, either. He does. It’s a stunning change from what I’m used to in terms of relationships.

Let me tell you: if you walked around every day feeling like you were Gaia, Venus and Isis rolled into one, your mood would be a lot like mine – smiling all the time, floating around without much care, feeling about 20 feet tall.  You’d be composed of an alabaster outside with a molten lava core, too.

It’s amazing.  Think it’s made my hair much longer and curlier, my face softer, more womanly and yet youthful, and my green eyes bouncier.  Last night at Savannah, swear I caught a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror and it was positively something Botticelli would have created. I should have come with a half-shell accessory.

Wish it would last forever. Wish I could bottle it and sell it.  The dark circles under my eyes from the past months are starting to go away, replaced by a carefree dewy look.  All that, and he is the only man to kick my ass in Jeopardy.

Holy Hell. I ought to treat him like a God.

What a long, strange trip…

As Rochelle said: the very qualities that made me a quirky, eccentric, different human being converged to make me a very unworkable same over the past year. 

She considers it a breakdown.

 I am more wont to call it a breakthrough, or breakout, or break along, myself.  But whatever you call it, life has been weird since May. I believe the worst is over now. Or, rather, the worst of whats made available, knowledgewise, to standard issue humans.  As it should be.  But whatever comes after this life, well, might be much different for me than previously expected.

Okay, cryptic crap aside: I had serious troubles in December,  trying to get over the fact everything in my life was dropping like a row of dominoes. 

Bill now has Gab. Rightly so.

 I now have a space to live in my brother’s home. 

 Yes, the yeller. This may prove to be WORSE than a breakdown, living with him. Hopefully, it will not last long.  He was the only person going out on a limb to save me during what can only be called my self-destructive three month bender. 

So, yeah. There’s that.

 Weird, how things work out.

So, I’m still alive and will see 42 perhaps, this Sunday. Not because I was trying, really. More like the opposite. But what happens on earth has never really been that important to me, compared to what happens in our collective eternal afterlife.

Half saint, half sinner my whole life, I’ve spent lots of time trying to figure out where I’d land in the hereafter. 

Perhaps I was not as alone wondering that as previously thought.  Nevertheless, I’m no closer to knowing than I was a year ago.  But I made some really good friends in some really strange places over the past three months, and since people are my species, I’ve grown to love these folks muchly. Don’t judge until you’ve walked a few feet in another’s moccasins, right?

The film festival begins March 19. I’m actively and excitedly preparing. If my brain and heart are much changed since covering it last year, it must be muscle memory that propels me along, as I am as happy as ever, today, to be writing for About.com and cover events as they unfold at Tower City’s CIFF.

Amidst a sea of loss and coming off a truly horrible, wonderous year, my spirit is sparked by reading the huge film guide like I do every year since I was seven and prayed for someone with a car to drive me to the far-off, exotic sounding Cedar Lee for the festival.

Ohio’s got a lot of interesting film offerings, including one about a nun murdered in the Amazon and another on the state of family farming in our state.  I circled a whole bunch of movies and then copied them to another guide that will be dropped off at my brother’s neighbor’s house. He’s a film buff and new friend. We’re set to watch “Choke” together tonight.

My media pass is en route via the USPS, I’m planning on sweet-talking someone into tickets for the Opening Night Gala, and life does indeed go on, as perfectly imperfect as ever.

Not just statistics

One in ten homes is behind in mortgage payments. While a fair portion of these represent people whose homes are “underwater” and who have chosen to walk away, with the financial ability to rent or buy cheaper, others are like me. Many, many others who are said to be one paycheck away from destitution  are losing that paycheck as I type.

I was, by all measurable standards, part of the middle class. The lower middle class, yes, but the middle class – with healthcare coverage, an option to have a 401 (K), a decent job and all that means.

Looking around, it’s the lack of decent-paying jobs that’s most troubling.  In order to increase globalization “parity” the top wage countries must come down in wages to meet the pay scale of the other rising countries. Which is why you saw Republicans playing hardball with the UAW — they will not say what they know: to “compete” on an international stage our wages must drop.  Problem is, our COLA is not dropping. Instead, what we’re likely to see from the 700 billion dollar bailout and all the other bailouts that are forthcoming in 2009 is inflation, rather than a drop in prices. Inflation comes as a result of more paper money being printed. So the cost of goods and services will likely RISE.

Goodbye, middle class.

There are times I think our oligarchy would love to see us all starving in the streets. It makes their riches somehow richer. How else to explain a ruling class that helped create this mortgage mess and enriched itself on the profits?  Like nobody could see this as the end result. Right.

Fortunately, for now I have a safe, softer place to land (more on that later). But what of the other 1 out of 10 homes? These aren’t just numbers, just as housing is more than sticks and nails. These are LIVES being destroyed as people run out of jobs and options.  I’ve scattered ten years worth of accumulated living to four winds: three places to store them – perhaps not long term, depending on whether or not I find a job – and some of it coming with me as I enter the next phase of my life.

Do you have any idea what it means to pack up and toss ten years of your life, or the desperation that must set in when you realize you could wind up on the streets, living in your car or worse?

And what of that federal bank bailout money? Has one cent of it gone to help the people who so desperately need help – the homeowners who are losing their homes, security and everything they ever tried to build for themselves?

Don’t think so.

Please, this holiday season, forego Walmart and give money to your local foodbank. They are all low on food and funds right now.  If you are still living somewhere secure and safe, think of the million or so people newly out of work, and those who fell off the unemployment rolls already. Take care of each other. We’re all we have.

Moving, Part II

Never thought I was much of a consumer, but packing has disabused me of this notion: so much stuff, and so little space to put it in.  Ten years is a long time to accumulate stuff, and I’m no different than anyone else in this regard.  It’s depressing and bittersweet, going through the memories of ten years, knowing that I’m leaving behind a lot of beloved people and things.  I wonder if I will ever manage to come back here, even when my parents pass. It might still be unaffordable. I may still not have a job.  But for the grace of others, we would be homeless. That’s…scary as hell, and pretty common right now. I’m trying not to think about that too much, but it pops in, unbidden.

It’s hard to prepare myself to say goodbye to Marlon. Seems like yesterday when we got him from the APL,  and it was in 2000.  He had a little trouble adjusting at first, and we thought he was deathly ill from his symptoms. Turns out it was nothing, and I often thought it might have been his nervous system, trying to figure out and deliver what these new humans expected of him.

I hope he is well taken care of in his new home, and have every reason to believe he will be.  No matter what, it’s better than the alternative.  My views on everything are radically shifting as the earth shifts beneath our feet: this country of prosperity and consumerism is no more.  I will never again feel a sense of safety, of not knowing what it feels like when the rug is pulled out from under your feet.  I will never again be carefree, or think of money as “only money.”  Not that the opposite will hold: a grasping, greedy capitalist I will never become.  But somewhere between that and the naive, carefree, optimistic me of the past is likely where I’ll eventually land.

If you want to really start worrying, read www.dailyreckoning.com.  Sift through its archives — the worst of our economic woes is yet to arrive, and it’s going to be very ugly.  That, coupled with the promise of peak oil, promises to forever change life as we have always known it.

Welcome to the Brave New World,  brought to you by Republicans, for the wealthy and built on the backs of the broken middle class.  Don’t say you weren’t warned.

Moving

Packing up to move all alone is a daunting task. We’ve given away Snowy and Echo (fortunately to the same household, so they can remain together) and Bunny.  We now have to place Marlon – whom shelters say is unadoptable and should be put down. I can’t do that. It looks like Marlon will have a happy ending with a friend of mine from the Intertubes as of this weekend. I pray.

So, the Republican neighbor has put a bid on my house  – lowball, capitalization on someone else’s misery, dontcha know – but it could be worse. It could still go to foreclosure, if the lender doesn’t allow the short sale.  At this point, I’m rather beyond caring. I’ve lost over $20,000 in real equity in the house, and perhaps another $10-15 thousand it would have sold for in the artificially inflated market of 2005. And all because I listened to my dad, rather than my instincts.  That’s a lesson learned.

So many people have lost their jobs and houses. It’s so sad to have seen this coming and be able to  do nothing about it, this economy built on tons of paper that’s all coming crashing down around us.  Nothing but illusion – no manufacturing base.  What happens to a consumer-driven economy when people can no longer afford to consume? When their two biggest assets – house and 401K – aren’t worth what they paid into them?

We’re all finding out, and we’re nowhere near the bottom, yet. I wonder if in six months my neighbor will still be able to afford his house, let alone mine. I hear people say Obama is the answer, and to that I say – he is just a man, not a miracle worker.  With the gutting of the economy, the robbery of the treasury by the Bush administration, the offshoring of jobs. . .it will take a miracle to right the ship that is America.  This is not your grandparents’ Depression. It’s going to be far worse, due to globalization.  May God (or whatever you believe in) protect us all.

So, where to from here, you might wonder?  I’m not certain. Just know that I’m on my way to a new and different life after a decade of false security.  And whether you know it or not, so are you.

Take care on your path.

And speaking of brothers…

Do people ever really hear how they treat other people? My brother yells at my parents, constantly. I mean YELLS. He screams, belittles, intimidates, swears and practically threatens them. How does he live with himself? Why doesn’t some guilt mechanism come into play, whereby he realizes how horrible a douchebag he is and feels sorry for his behavior?  Who does he think he is?  Is it (as I suspect) his internal misery mechanism that kicks-in and makes him lash out at other people?

The other night, Bean and I tried to figure out what he’s all about.  She finds it fascinating, in a sickening sort of way, the psychology behind the actions. Would that I hadn’t been subjected to similar treatment for 40 years, I guess I’d find it interesting, too.

What I find most curious, though, is his wife.  Not just the fact he has one (and he yells at her just the same way) but that she stuck around! All the others split. Years later, I’d run into them at a bar or shopping or whatever, and they’d tell me how much they still loved. . .ME.  But that they hated my brother, and oh, by the way, was he still treating our parents like dirt?

This wife I’ve never gotten to know. He learned to keep us separated, and by now has filled her head with enough junk about me that she likely thinks I’m Satan incarnate.  Wanted to eliminate the chance that she might, in the end, still want to remain close to me while leaving him, like the others did.  Whatever. She has to live with him. Outwardly, she seems normal and nice enough. But something must be seriously wrong with her to stay with someone who treats her like garbage.  Seriously wrong.

Better her than me, though.  As for my parents,  I don’t know what to say. They put up with it for all these years – no way his tirades will stop now. He’s not self-aware enough to change who he is and how he behaves.  Not sure he’s even self-aware enough to care.