Tag: Money

HARD-HEADED RESOLVE IN THIS MATTER OF DIVERSITY

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

As I said at the time …

May I plead for some hard-headed Friends in our midst? We’ve been blessed with many compassionate, sensitive, open-hearted individuals. (Not that we wouldn’t welcome many, many more to join in our circle.) But in our emotions and good intentions, we can also be easily swept up in more than we can handle as a faith community.

There are many reasons to value the Friend who asks the hard or even embarrassing question in the midst of our business discussions, even if we find ourselves momentarily annoyed. The one who keeps asking, How will we pay for this? Who will do it? What are the long-term consequences? Where’s the documentation? Sometimes it’s someone who sees needed repairs and sets about getting them done. The legal issues and nagging details, too. Often, it seems like throwing a wet blanket over our enthusiasm, but I’d rather have that happen before we set out on a venture than have us break down in discouragement when unexpected difficulties arise once the project is in motion or we find we lack the time and commitment to follow through.

For all of our talk of diversity, we do tend to be largely a self-selected group – like attracted to like – and this can leave us with some large gaps in our skills and outlooks. Any auto mechanics or accountants, for instance? Or, as the French novelist Andre Gide once asked, Where are the shoemakers and cobblers in the Society of Friends these days? Which is another way of saying, the people who help us keep our feet on the ground when we’re caught up in the Spirit.

WITHDRAWAL AND INTEREST

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

As I wrote at the time …

Remember when all the banks were centralizing? This was bad news for most cities, taking our money someplace else. You could see it in the way they put the screws to us. Overdrawn? Need to talk to a teller about your account? A safe deposit box? Here are our new fees, and they’re going up sharply. Pure economic theory pointing toward monoply. What happens as competition diminishes. Nobody’s explained why this had to happen. The legislators should have known better. They owned too many shares to be disinterested.

The insurance companies, too. When juries began handing out awards that few individuals could afford to pay, the insurance companies must have been gladdened, for it meant none of us could afford to be without their policies. Now, however, none of us can afford their policies, either. And they dare cry out for relief from a problem they encouraged for so long?

Where does that leave us? My auto insurance costs more than the car. Back in Maryland, a friend tried calling her company after it cancelled her auto policy when it refused her check and then, in cahoots with the state bureaucracy, she was being told to return her auto tags; the bastards at the insurance company were all snippy, even the operator; they wouldn’t even return the inquiries of her agent.

Just sign on the line. “But I refuse to swear or affirm. It’s against my religion. See Matthew.”

“Look, don’t make waves. Just sign it, OK?” So they want me to sign something that says I live up to my word, but for me to do that means I have to violate my principles.

My Bible has a story about Goliath …

INC. TO INCA

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

In a global economy, even a backwater town’s at risk.

To go from Inc. as in Incorporated to Big Inca is just a small leap in the miasma of international corporate espionage and conspiracy – especially when a frontline player has to run for his life.

Take it from Bill … in the mill.

Inca 1~*~

The novel is available here.

 

 

BEWARE OF BIG INCA

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The New World – North American and South – comes clashing in the down-at-the-heels mill town of yrubBury when Bill sets out on his first job out of college.

He could easily be a Pony Express rider venturing out onto the frontier – or a lonely station master, saddling the next horse and holding it ready.

This time the frontier has one foot in the past, a time of water power and European immigration of labor. And rather than the Great Plains, his route runs through urban blight.

As Bill discovers, history’s never finished. Especially when Big Inca starts lurking.

Inca 1~*~

 The novel is available here.

PRIVILEGE … OR RESPONSIBILITY?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 3 Comments

Having all of the presidential hopefuls at hand, as we in New Hampshire do during our unique primary season, comes at a price. Not just the traffic congestion as candidates race from one site to another or the advertising that clutters on the airwaves or the willingness to venture as outsiders into hotbeds of supporters. No, the more vigilant and responsible of us spend hours of personal time and gallons of fuel driving to scheduled events to meet the hopefuls in the flesh and see how they respond to public concerns. It often means arriving early to get a seat while knowing all too well the star of the show will arrive late, and not just by minutes.

And then, sometimes, you get there only to find the parking lot’s empty – the event just got cancelled. We could name names here but won’t.

Let me say, though, you get a much different view of them up-close and in-person than what you’d otherwise obtain. Especially when they’re off-camera and pulled away from the script.

PLAYING ALONG WITH TEMPTATION

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The race for New Hampshire’s First-in-the-Nation presidential primary, currently set for February 9, has barely entered its pregame activities and already our phone’s ringing. Not just the candidates, either, but the surveys, especially – rarely does a day go by without at least one.

OK, some of the surveys are no doubt fronts for candidates or campaigns, but the frequency of the bona fide pollsters is also troubling. Ideally, the statisticians are sampling a legitimate cross-section of likely voters or, in an era of unlisted cell phones, they’re turning to a very small fishbowl regardless of its ultimate match. I fear the later.

It’s also raising the temptation of playing with the game itself. Say, with four registered voters in our family, we decide to tell everyone this week we’re backing X, and thus inflating that hopeful’s ratings, only to totally ignore X a week later. You can imagine how the pundits would react to the fluctuating numbers.

~*~

My larger concern has to do with leaving room for the process to actually occur without all of the Big Media tampering. Let the candidates meet the public without having hundreds of reporters tagging along – especially the intrusive television cameras and sound bites. Yes, I want a few journalists to be there for the unscripted moment that can enliven or derail a campaign – I just want the general public to be there as active participants rather than merely as an entertainer’s backdrop. That is, the journalists should be invisible rather than part of the celebrity-style entourage.

~*~

Well, one thing we do know. All of this is about to speed up. And how!

REVIVING THE FAVORITE SON OPTION

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 4 Comments

Looking at the lack of traction of any of the candidates in the Republican presidential field, maybe it’s time to suggest returning to a once common strategy, one known as the Favorite Son – or, on today’s scene, Favorite Daughter.

Here’s where the large states like New York or Ohio could wield their clout, throwing their primary election weight behind a candidate from their state who would then negotiate at the national convention. Well, we do have Pataki and Kasich as a fit. Add Rick Santorum, Pennsylvania, and Chris Christy, New Jersey.

Florida becomes more of a problem, split between Bush and Rubio. As for Texas, still Rick Perry?

Could be interesting, if they can muscle their delegations. But California keeps drawing a blank for me. Keep wondering who I’m missing.

Well, why wouldn’t conservatives want to return to the past? Seems a rational option at the moment.

TWO ENDS OF THE SAME BUMPER

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 3 Comments

At the left side of the bumper was the sticker
SUPPORT OUR TROOPS.

On the right side
TAX IT ALL

presumably as a protest.

I doubt the driver made the connection – and these two are closely related – that the overwhelming preponderance of federal debt and tax money goes to the military for current and past expenditures. I just wish those who support the first connect it to the second. That awareness would cut through a lot of political rhetoric and posturing and maybe lead to some real reductions.

Think it will ever happen?

REGARDING THE LATEST GREEK TRAGEDY

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 3 Comments

Vanity Fair magazine’s October 2010 article, Beware of Greeks Bearing Bonds, by Michael Lewis may still be the best perspective we have on the events finally crashing along the sunny Aegean and sending shock waves through the rest of the continent.

Events? Do we call them economic? Financial? Political? Social? Moral? Cataclysmic? Truly tragic, as in “taking on the gods and bearing the consequences”?

The Greeks aren’t alone in trying to make sense of money issues. Apart from monetary policy itself – a highly esoteric field – any discussion of money soon wades into emotionally laden assumptions regarding wealth, possessions, time, labor, even food or family or religion. These are the grist of my ongoing Talking Money series at Chicken Farmer I Still Love You. I hope you join in — the category can be found under the Contents tab.

One of the easily overlooked realities about money is that it is essentially an elaborate IOU – one that allows us to store excess productivity or labor over time and space. Eventually, though, any promises come due, and you better have something that will back the debt up. That’s as true for nations that print the bills or banks that move them about as it is for individuals. And that’s what we’re seeing in Greece.

As I write this, I have no way of anticipating what will play out. The lack of a single nation to enforce the necessary regulations that would back the euro had me skeptical of its success from the very beginning, though I’ve long admitted to being a neo-Luddite. Still, the history of state-issued currencies in the United States in the aftermath of the Revolutionary War illustrates the pitfalls of currency that is insufficiently backed up. Prudent Pennsylvania proved to be the big exception to the trend and maintained its value.

We watch the present drama, then, hoping the action remains confined to the stage in the amphitheater. There are no guarantees – no double your money back – for anyone as the plot thickens.

Any predictions? Or counsel? We’re all eyes and ears.

CHECKOUT EXPRESSION

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 3 Comments

The supermarket checkout express lane can trigger some hot buttons for me.

One, of course, is the customer who plops 15 or 20 items on the conveyor belt when there’s a state 12 Items max limit. The poor clerk’s not going to bounce them. It’s simply the rudeness to the rest of us that bugs me.

Another is the use of credit cards, when permitted. It slows everything down.

The other day, though, there was a geezer who cut in front of a girl with a shopping cart. She was, from appearances, a quiet teen.

“Excuse me,” I said, “There’s a girl in front of you.”

“I can’t hear you,” he replied.

So I repeated the situation.

“Mind your own business,” he retorted.

We were all shocked.

“You can go in front of me,” she finally said.

Any suggestions for how to handle this?

He’s an embarrassment to all geezers, am I not mistaken?

I’m still miffed. Whatever happened to manners?