Lucile, Deception Pass WA
photo: markk
Thursday, July 4, 2013
Amigos
If there was one thing Sandra knew well, it was hair. She knew hair from root to split end. In beauty school, she had learned the shape of the human head and how the best thing to do when trimming its hair was to section the skull into eighths. Her long nails shone red as she held her soft hands in front of her to demonstrate on an imaginary client. Her gold rings glinted. When she tired of hair-cutting techniques, she waved her hands quickly and her fingers sparked through the thick night like fireworks.
Sandra, like other girls who hung out where we sat on Havana’s waist-high seawall malecón where it hit Paseo, wore fashionable clothes of the barely there variety: diminutive shorts with interlocking C’s on back pockets, glittery heels, bras that peeked from tops, halters leaving midriffs bare. She dyed her own long, straight hair blue-black and lined her lips with the same dark pencil that she used around her eyes because shops hadn’t carried red in months. Her plastic nails were thick and whispery along the tips; she grabbed my forearm as we crossed the street on our way to the bathroom at a nearby gas station, dodging the cars that sped around the curve at Paseo. We went the long way to avoid the police who hung in the shadows on the intersection’s traffic island, keeping an eye on the strip. “The cars here, they’ll hit you. And if it’s him”—Sandra flicked her chin and pulled her hand down to mime a beard, the universal gesture for Fidel Castro—“they won’t stop. They’ll run you over and keep on going.”
There were clubs and bars at the hotels that hulked over the crossroads—the mod Riviera, the shimmery Meliá Cohiba, the Jazz Café—but since few locals could afford drinks there, the tourists who wanted to meet real Cubanos hung out by the sea. Everyone, Cuban and foreign, loved the malecón, to sit facing the ocean and Miami and feel the spray on bare shins, or to turn toward the city and watch old cars roar slowly by, or, after a long night at the bars, to see the brightening sky pull itself away from the the sea. On nights when there was no moon, you could nod approvingly at the fish that men in mesh tank tops caught on sheer line stretched from coils on the sidewalk. On hot days, you watched kids who leapt from the wall into high tide, their arms pinwheeling past the rocks that cragged up from the ocean.
Sandra, like other girls who hung out where we sat on Havana’s waist-high seawall malecón where it hit Paseo, wore fashionable clothes of the barely there variety: diminutive shorts with interlocking C’s on back pockets, glittery heels, bras that peeked from tops, halters leaving midriffs bare. She dyed her own long, straight hair blue-black and lined her lips with the same dark pencil that she used around her eyes because shops hadn’t carried red in months. Her plastic nails were thick and whispery along the tips; she grabbed my forearm as we crossed the street on our way to the bathroom at a nearby gas station, dodging the cars that sped around the curve at Paseo. We went the long way to avoid the police who hung in the shadows on the intersection’s traffic island, keeping an eye on the strip. “The cars here, they’ll hit you. And if it’s him”—Sandra flicked her chin and pulled her hand down to mime a beard, the universal gesture for Fidel Castro—“they won’t stop. They’ll run you over and keep on going.”There were clubs and bars at the hotels that hulked over the crossroads—the mod Riviera, the shimmery Meliá Cohiba, the Jazz Café—but since few locals could afford drinks there, the tourists who wanted to meet real Cubanos hung out by the sea. Everyone, Cuban and foreign, loved the malecón, to sit facing the ocean and Miami and feel the spray on bare shins, or to turn toward the city and watch old cars roar slowly by, or, after a long night at the bars, to see the brightening sky pull itself away from the the sea. On nights when there was no moon, you could nod approvingly at the fish that men in mesh tank tops caught on sheer line stretched from coils on the sidewalk. On hot days, you watched kids who leapt from the wall into high tide, their arms pinwheeling past the rocks that cragged up from the ocean.
So young men toted bongo drums and guitars, imitating the Buena Vista Social Club for a few dollars’ tip. Gentlemen in frayed straw fedoras asked tourists to pick up an extra beer at the gas station kiosk. Tired-looking women in Lycra shorts sang out the names of cones of roasted peanuts, cucuruchos de maní, and popcorn, rositas de maíz. Nonchalant girls cocked hips at the foreign men who walked past. Sandra had been taught the art of artifice to serve the Cuban revolution through its beauty parlors, but she’d given up on hair. By the time she was twenty-one, she’d been working as a prostitute for around five years. The dates changed every time I asked her. Either way, she made about three times in one night what she’d have been paid monthly at any of the government-owned salons.(...)
Sometimes it’s hard to discern who’s selling sex and who’s just trying to wear as little fabric as possible in Havana’s oppressive heat. The mainstays of jinetera fashion—miniskirts, transparent fabrics, cleavage- and shoulder-baring tops—appear on most women, including foreigners, who feel freer to be sexy in permissive Cuba than at home. At clubs, I saw foreign women with bikini-strap marks sunburned around their necks look left, right, then pull their necklines down before dancing with slim Cuban men in tight jeans and big silver belt buckles. These women lapped up the sensual aura, as if just breathing would send tiny cells of sexy through their bodies, the infusion pushing and pulling hips back and forth, transforming walks into sashays, planting dry one-liners in mouths.
Sandra had long since mastered these feminine tricks. Everything about her physical appearance was calibrated to entice: the tops that looked almost about to slip off, the hair that twisted around her neck, her long, soft, red nails. I had just five years on Sandra, but I felt large, clumsy, and dusty around her in my flats and loose dresses. I was a tattered stuffed animal next to her as we sat, the second time we met, in the backseat of a cab that took us from the malecón out to her house.
by Julia Cooke, VQR | Read more:
Sandra had long since mastered these feminine tricks. Everything about her physical appearance was calibrated to entice: the tops that looked almost about to slip off, the hair that twisted around her neck, her long, soft, red nails. I had just five years on Sandra, but I felt large, clumsy, and dusty around her in my flats and loose dresses. I was a tattered stuffed animal next to her as we sat, the second time we met, in the backseat of a cab that took us from the malecón out to her house.
by Julia Cooke, VQR | Read more:
Image: Jason Florio
Wednesday, July 3, 2013
Your Student Loan Isn’t Really a Loan
At a time when overall student debt approaches $1 trillion, the facts reveal that student loans aren’t loans, not in the traditional sense. They exhibit none of the qualities of modern consumer financial instruments, and are often sold under false pretenses, with the promise of a lifelong benefit that never materializes. We need to change how these loans work and have a broader conversation about what we should be doing — including bankruptcy and refinancing — to help future generations obtain a quality, affordable education, which is critical to our economic future.
The roughly two-thirds of U.S. students who take out loans to finance their college education can end up in a situation most resembling the historical concept of indenture. In medieval times, peasants would sign deeds to work land, which would then get cut in a jagged line (looking like teeth, or “dentures”). Each party would get half, and rejoining them would prove the authenticity of the contract. Colonial indentures would trade years of labor for the opportunity of transportation to the New World. The indentured could not alter the terms of the contract, no matter their circumstances. One way or another, the debt would get paid.
This is basically how student loans work. A college student might remember freshman orientation, when an instructor told them to look to their left and right, explaining, “One of you won’t graduate.” But student loans aren’t extinguished for those who don’t finish college; instead, the debt becomes a burdensome reminder of this early mistake in life. This is also true for students snookered into matriculating at sketchy for-profit colleges, which offer almost no marketable skills or career preparedness to justify the cost. And it further describes recent college graduates who, through an accident of timing, entered the real world during the Great Recession and its aftermath, finding it difficult to obtain work in their field of study.
Due to these combined factors, delinquency rates for student loans – unlike auto, credit card or even mortgage debt – have risen the past two years, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. But student debt is something you carry for the rest of your life. It’s nearly impossible to refinance student loans, despite the current low-rate environment, primarily because of the high credit risk and lack of collateral. And unlike most other loans, you cannot get rid of student debt through bankruptcy.
This happened almost by accident. Before 1976, student debt was treated the same as any other in the bankruptcy process. Amid rising default rates – yes, even back then – Congress got it in its head that people were ripping off the government for a free education and then shedding the loans (a couple of well-placed stories about doctors declaring bankruptcy after graduating from medical school added to the panic). In an effort to stop this, Congress passed a law permitting students only to discharge loans in bankruptcy five years after origination, unless they demonstrated undue hardship.
In 1990 the five-year rule was extended to seven years, and then in 1998 Congress dropped that requirement altogether, making undue hardship the only way to discharge student loans in bankruptcy. And undue hardship is a very large chore to prove, according to Bob Lawless, law professor at the University of Illinois. “The courts require proof of an inability to get by without a modification,” Lawless told Salon. “They’re reluctant to allow a discharge if someone just has a lower-paying job and can’t afford the payment.” So the bankruptcy law has become harsher at the same time that college tuition has ballooned, increasing demand for student loans. As then-law professor Elizabeth Warren said in 2007, “Why should students who are trying to finance an education be treated more harshly than someone … who racked up tens of thousands of dollars gambling?”
In addition to having no escape from their loans, students must deal with aggressive creditors that can get to virtually any income source to secure payment – paychecks and tax refunds included. The Department of Education uses an “army of private debt collectors,” some of the most notorious financial operators out there, to intimidate and harass student borrowers. These collectors earned $1 billion in commissions from taxpayers in 2011. They get paid bonuses for extracting higher payments, and they can also rack up additional fees virtually endlessly. That’s because student debt has no statute of limitations on collectors, unlike most other forms of debt. The government can even collect student loan payments from Social Security checks, thanks to a 1996 law (this is not theoretical, as growing numbers of seniors are entering retirement with student debt).
So, through a series of bad laws, student debt has become an inescapable trap, a terrible burden on those whose higher education dreams don’t pan out, and a significant burden even on successful graduates. Loan debt now averages $26,000 per student, up 40 percent in seven years, with significant chunks owing $50,000 or $100,000. Princeton professor Jesse Rothsteinargued in a recent working paper that graduates burdened by debt will choose higher-paying jobs to pay off the loans, draining the talent pool for lower-paid, but critical, “public interest” job sectors like education, government or nonprofits. This further erodes the nation’s seed corn and funnels the best and brightest into the financial industry or other higher-paying power centers, reducing entrepreneurship in the bargain. Student debtors also put off major purchases like houses or cars, and the Federal Reserve believes this is having a serious negative effect on our economy.
How do we quit loading up 18-year-olds with a risky gamble that could impact the rest of their lives? It will take more than just a low interest rate, though a variable rate that changes over time (the House Republican plan) or one that isn’t capped (the Obama administration plan) will just make things worse. Obviously a lower rate translates into lower payments, but it’s time to dismantle the treatment afforded student loans, and to eliminate the extreme dependence on them.
by David Dayden, Salon | Read more:
Image: hxdbzxy via Shutterstock/Salon
I was a Manic Pixie Dream Girl
Writing about Doctor Who this week got me thinking about sexism in storytelling, and how we rely on lazy character creation in life just as we do in fiction. The Doctor has become the ultimate soulful brooding hero in need of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl to save him from the vortex of self-pity usually brought on by the death, disappearance or alternate-universe-abandonment of the last girl. We cannot have the Doctor brooding. A planet might explode somewhere, or he might decide to use his powers for evil, or his bow-tie might need adjusting. The companions of the past three years, since the most recent series reboot, have been the ultimate in lazy sexist tropification, any attempt at actually creating interesting female characters replaced by... That Girl. (...)
Manic Pixies, like other female archetypes, crop up in real life partly because fiction creates real life, particularly for those of us who grow up immersed in it. Women behave in ways that they find sanctioned in stories written by men who know better, and men and women seek out friends and partners who remind them of a girl they met in a book one day when they were young and longing.
For me, Manic Pixie Dream Girl was the story that fit. Of course, I didn't think of it in those terms; all I saw was that in the books and series I loved - mainly science fiction, comics and offbeat literature, not the mainstream films that would later make the MPDG trope famous - there were certain kinds of girl you could be, and if you weren't a busty bombshell, if you were maybe a bit weird and clever and brunette, there was another option.
And that's how I became a Manic Pixie Dream Girl. The basic physical and personality traits were already there, and some of it was doubtless honed by that learned girlish desire to please - because the posture does please people, particularly the kind of sad, bright, bookish young men who have often been my friends and lovers. I had the raw materials: I’m five feet nothing, petite and small-featured with skin the color of something left on the bottom of a pond for too long and messy hair that’s sometimes dyed a shocking shade of red or pink. At least, it was before I washed all the dye out last year, partly to stop soulful Zach-Braff-a-likes following me to the shops, and partly to stop myself getting smeary technicolour splotches all over the bathroom, as if a muppet had been horribly murdered. (...)
I’m fascinated by this character and what she means to people, because the experience of being her - of playing her - is so wildly different than it seems to appear from the outside. In recent weeks I’ve filled in the gaps of classic Manic Pixie Dream Girl films I hadn’t already sat through, and I’m struck by how many of them claim to be ironic re-imaginings of a character trope that they fail to actually interrogate in any way. Irony is, of course, the last vestige of modern crypto-misogyny: all those lazy stereotypes and hurtful put-downs are definitely a joke, right up until they aren’t, and clearly you need a man to tell you when and if you’re supposed to take sexism seriously.
by Laurie Penny, TNS | Read more:
Image: Zooey Deschanel, uncredited
The Rock ’n’ Roll Casualty Who Became a War Hero
I asked if he ever talked about it. Jason shook his head no. Did they find out anyway? “Always.”
The first time was at Fort Benning in 1994, in the middle of the hell of basic training. The ex-cop recruits in boot camp with him said that prisoners had more freedom than they did. There were guys who faked suicide attempts to get out of basic. But Everman never had any doubts. “I was 100 percent,” he told me. “If I wasn’t, there was no way I’d get through it.”
He had three drill sergeants, two of whom were sadists. Thank God it was the easygoing one who saw it. He was reading a magazine, when he slowly looked up and stared at Everman. Then the sergeant walked over, pointing to a page in the magazine. “Is this you?” It was a photo of the biggest band in the world, Nirvana. Kurt Cobain had just killed himself, and this was a story about his suicide. Next to Cobain was the band’s onetime second guitarist. A guy with long, strawberry blond curls. “Is this you?”
Everman exhaled. “Yes, Drill Sergeant.”
And that was only half of it. Jason Everman has the unique distinction of being the guy who was kicked out of Nirvana and Soundgarden, two rock bands that would sell roughly 100 million records combined. At 26, he wasn’t just Pete Best, the guy the Beatles left behind. He was Pete Best twice.
Then again, he wasn’t remotely. What Everman did afterward put him far outside the category of rock’n’roll footnote. He became an elite member of the U.S. Army Special Forces, one of those bearded guys riding around on horseback in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban.
I’ve known Jason Everman since we played rock shows together nearly 25 years ago. What happened to him was almost inexplicable, a cruel combination of good luck, bad luck and the kind of disappointment that would have overwhelmed me even at my most brashly defiant. After having not seen him since the early ’90s, I ended up hanging out with him in his apartment in Brooklyn last summer. We had drinks, retraced steps. We once were in the same place in our lives. But mine had since quietly transitioned from rock to parenthood. My changes were glacial. His were violent.
None of it is easy for him to talk about. Jason is one of the most guarded people I have ever met. But when I pulled up to his remote A-frame cabin near Puget Sound last winter, there he was, a sturdy, tall figure in a Black Flag sweatshirt holding a glass of red wine. This was his private place, and he was letting me into it.
Books and action figures covered one wall. Guitars and drums were scattered on the floor. But the far wall almost looked like a memorial: medals, artifacts, war photos. I took it all in, asking about a hand-decorated gun on the fireplace. “That’s how the Taliban trick out their weapons,” he said. Then I picked up his Army helmet. It seemed heavy to me. “Dude, that’s light,” he said. “That’s state of the art.” It had his blood type still written on the side: O positive.
The first time was at Fort Benning in 1994, in the middle of the hell of basic training. The ex-cop recruits in boot camp with him said that prisoners had more freedom than they did. There were guys who faked suicide attempts to get out of basic. But Everman never had any doubts. “I was 100 percent,” he told me. “If I wasn’t, there was no way I’d get through it.”
He had three drill sergeants, two of whom were sadists. Thank God it was the easygoing one who saw it. He was reading a magazine, when he slowly looked up and stared at Everman. Then the sergeant walked over, pointing to a page in the magazine. “Is this you?” It was a photo of the biggest band in the world, Nirvana. Kurt Cobain had just killed himself, and this was a story about his suicide. Next to Cobain was the band’s onetime second guitarist. A guy with long, strawberry blond curls. “Is this you?”Everman exhaled. “Yes, Drill Sergeant.”
And that was only half of it. Jason Everman has the unique distinction of being the guy who was kicked out of Nirvana and Soundgarden, two rock bands that would sell roughly 100 million records combined. At 26, he wasn’t just Pete Best, the guy the Beatles left behind. He was Pete Best twice.
Then again, he wasn’t remotely. What Everman did afterward put him far outside the category of rock’n’roll footnote. He became an elite member of the U.S. Army Special Forces, one of those bearded guys riding around on horseback in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban.
I’ve known Jason Everman since we played rock shows together nearly 25 years ago. What happened to him was almost inexplicable, a cruel combination of good luck, bad luck and the kind of disappointment that would have overwhelmed me even at my most brashly defiant. After having not seen him since the early ’90s, I ended up hanging out with him in his apartment in Brooklyn last summer. We had drinks, retraced steps. We once were in the same place in our lives. But mine had since quietly transitioned from rock to parenthood. My changes were glacial. His were violent.
None of it is easy for him to talk about. Jason is one of the most guarded people I have ever met. But when I pulled up to his remote A-frame cabin near Puget Sound last winter, there he was, a sturdy, tall figure in a Black Flag sweatshirt holding a glass of red wine. This was his private place, and he was letting me into it.
Books and action figures covered one wall. Guitars and drums were scattered on the floor. But the far wall almost looked like a memorial: medals, artifacts, war photos. I took it all in, asking about a hand-decorated gun on the fireplace. “That’s how the Taliban trick out their weapons,” he said. Then I picked up his Army helmet. It seemed heavy to me. “Dude, that’s light,” he said. “That’s state of the art.” It had his blood type still written on the side: O positive.
by Clay Tarver, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Ian Tilton
Tuesday, July 2, 2013
Calculating Risks
“Have you ever had anybody break into your house, put tape around your head and hold a knife to your throat?” she said, sobbing. “I beg you: Don’t let another woman go through this.”
It was a Wednesday morning in May at the Asotin County Superior Courthouse, and the state was moving to release Hudon’s former captor. Monte Hoisington, 61, would soon leave the high-security compound where he’d lived for the previous 12 years among hundreds of the state’s most detested pariahs including sexual sadists and serial rapists like him and move to Spokane.
The presiding judge seemed reluctant (and said as much), but his job was to uphold the law and he couldn’t ignore the evidence: Three forensic psychologists had assessed Hoisington and concluded that by law, the thrice-convicted rapist no longer posed a threat to society.
For Hudon, hearing the judge read the expert testimony was troubling, and she wasn’t alone.
The process used to release civilly committed sex offenders is not without its critics. While the majority of committed sex offenders refuse to be treated, many decline on the advice of attorneys to even speak with clinicians, so as to avoid self-incrimination. As a result, when offenders petition for release, the evidence against them is often stale and outdated putting further pressure on prosecutors who must prove offenders suffer from mental abnormalities and can’t control their behavior.
“I think that’s essentially not a very scientific process, and one can’t confidently say that someone is cured or reformed as one does, for instance, if they were confined for tuberculosis or a communicable disease,” says Ronald Page, a clinical psychologist in Walla Walla who has diagnosed hundreds of sex predators throughout his career, including Hoisington. “There are laboratory tests to rule those [illnesses] out, and that simply doesn’t exist here.” (...)
The most widely used tool for measuring an adult male sex offender’s relative risk for recidivism in legal cases is a 10-item assessment known as a Static-99. It is based on statistical averages of sexual offender recidivism research. When assessing an offender, it considers, among other things, his age at release, any prior sexual offenses and whether or not his victims were strangers.
The Static-99 was revised and reissued as the Static-99R in 2009, after researchers pointed out that older sex offenders are at a lower risk to reoffend than younger offenders. In the updated assessment, age is weighted. Turning 60 trims three points from an offender’s score.
“One can talk about averages and about statistics with confidence as it applies to groups,” Page says. “But any individual can be an outlier within a population.”
Hoisington turned 60 three days after his 2010 annual review. These yearly reports are assembled by Department of Social and Health Services psychologists, tasked with evaluating a committed offender’s mental condition and ultimately determining whether or not he continues to qualify as a “sexually violent predator.” If an offender no longer meets the criteria of a so-called “SVP,” the court can can decide to release him into the community.
But residents at McNeil aren’t required to participate in interviews with forensic evaluators. “Therefore, any of the resulting diagnostic impressions are based solely on a review of records, which may be inaccurate, biased, or lacking sufficient detail or clarity to be helpful,” McNeil psychologist Dr. Daniel Yanisch explains in an email. “While it is generally helpful if a person interviews, it is not always required to be able to answer the forensic questions that the law is asking be reviewed.”
by Deanna Pan, PN Islander | Read more:
Image: uncredited
Adventures with “Free” Checking
[Warning: this post starts off with a long and self-indulgent complaint about my bank. Feel free to scroll down to the bit where I actually get to the point.]
On March 11 of this year, I borrowed $200 from Citibank. Four days later, on March 15, Thomson Reuters was kind enough to directly deposit a substantial paycheck into my account — one which was much, much larger than $200. And ever since then, I’ve been steadily paying back Citibank the money they so kindly lent me, at an interest rate of 13.25%. On April 25, I paid $11.52. On May 23, I paid $12.15. And on June 26, I paid $12.23. At this rate, I am informed on page 5 of my most recent statement, I will pay off the balance in about 18 months.
Citibank, I hasten to add, is doing me a favor here: the standard interest rate on this kind of loan is significantly higher than what I’m paying, at 18.25%. Still, my behavior doesn’t make a huge amount of sense. I have many thousands of dollars in the bank, earning an interest rate of basically zero. In fact, I had many thousands of dollars in the bank on March 11, when I borrowed that two hundred bucks. So, what was I thinking? Why did I borrow the money in the first place, and why have I been so miserly in terms of paying it back? Do I want to maximize the amount of money that Citibank extracts from me in interest payments? It certainly seems that way.
The truth, of course, is more mundane: I had no idea that I borrowed $200 on March 11, and Citibank certainly never saw fit to inform me of the fact directly. Instead, they buried the details of the loan on page 5 of my (unopened) bank statement. Meanwhile, they quietly and automatically deducted those small minimum payments out of my checking account — payments which were small enough that I failed to notice them until this morning.
As for the $200 loan, well, it turns out that March 11 was a very busy day for my checking account. I deposited a small check for $17.75, I made two different ATM withdrawals, I automatically transferred $1,000 to an investment account, I paid my Amex bill, I made another automatic payment which goes out every week — and, on top of all that, a $250 check which I wrote on February 12 was finally cashed that day as well. All of which was enough to push me $112.56 into the red. Citibank then immediately took the opportunity to round that number up to the nearest $100 — because hey, why lend me $112.56 when you can lend me $200 instead — and automatically deposited that sum into my account, leaving me with an account balance, at the end of the day, of $87.44.
This is a yuppie overdraft: rather than charge me $35 a pop for overdrawing my account, Citibank just rounds any negative balance up to the nearest $100, and transfers that sum over from something wonderfully called a “Checking Plus” account. Which is what they call an overdraft line of credit. Naturally, when my paycheck arrived four days later, it went into my checking account, which is separate from my Checking Plus account . As a result, ever since then, I’ve had a steadily positive balance in my checking account which has been larger than the amount I owe on its overdraft facility. And ever since then, Citi has been quietly paying off the loan at a rate of $12 or so a month, in the hope that I would never notice it. After all, any sentient being, upon seeing this situation, would of course pay the entire loan off immediately.
When I discovered what had been going on, my first reaction was of course to just pay the loan off in full. But my second reaction was that I wanted to ensure that I didn’t end up in this situation again. So I phoned up Citibank. “I see that you’re automatically deducting the minimum payment from my checking account every month,” I said; “do you think I could switch that to the maximum payment, instead?” If I ever have a balance on my Checking Plus account, I would very much like that balance to be paid off in full.
You know the answer, of course: no, Citi couldn’t possibly do that. Automatic payments can only be for the minimum amount due, not for the full balance.
Citibank, I hasten to add, is doing me a favor here: the standard interest rate on this kind of loan is significantly higher than what I’m paying, at 18.25%. Still, my behavior doesn’t make a huge amount of sense. I have many thousands of dollars in the bank, earning an interest rate of basically zero. In fact, I had many thousands of dollars in the bank on March 11, when I borrowed that two hundred bucks. So, what was I thinking? Why did I borrow the money in the first place, and why have I been so miserly in terms of paying it back? Do I want to maximize the amount of money that Citibank extracts from me in interest payments? It certainly seems that way.
The truth, of course, is more mundane: I had no idea that I borrowed $200 on March 11, and Citibank certainly never saw fit to inform me of the fact directly. Instead, they buried the details of the loan on page 5 of my (unopened) bank statement. Meanwhile, they quietly and automatically deducted those small minimum payments out of my checking account — payments which were small enough that I failed to notice them until this morning.
As for the $200 loan, well, it turns out that March 11 was a very busy day for my checking account. I deposited a small check for $17.75, I made two different ATM withdrawals, I automatically transferred $1,000 to an investment account, I paid my Amex bill, I made another automatic payment which goes out every week — and, on top of all that, a $250 check which I wrote on February 12 was finally cashed that day as well. All of which was enough to push me $112.56 into the red. Citibank then immediately took the opportunity to round that number up to the nearest $100 — because hey, why lend me $112.56 when you can lend me $200 instead — and automatically deposited that sum into my account, leaving me with an account balance, at the end of the day, of $87.44.
This is a yuppie overdraft: rather than charge me $35 a pop for overdrawing my account, Citibank just rounds any negative balance up to the nearest $100, and transfers that sum over from something wonderfully called a “Checking Plus” account. Which is what they call an overdraft line of credit. Naturally, when my paycheck arrived four days later, it went into my checking account, which is separate from my Checking Plus account . As a result, ever since then, I’ve had a steadily positive balance in my checking account which has been larger than the amount I owe on its overdraft facility. And ever since then, Citi has been quietly paying off the loan at a rate of $12 or so a month, in the hope that I would never notice it. After all, any sentient being, upon seeing this situation, would of course pay the entire loan off immediately.
When I discovered what had been going on, my first reaction was of course to just pay the loan off in full. But my second reaction was that I wanted to ensure that I didn’t end up in this situation again. So I phoned up Citibank. “I see that you’re automatically deducting the minimum payment from my checking account every month,” I said; “do you think I could switch that to the maximum payment, instead?” If I ever have a balance on my Checking Plus account, I would very much like that balance to be paid off in full.
You know the answer, of course: no, Citi couldn’t possibly do that. Automatic payments can only be for the minimum amount due, not for the full balance.
by Felix Salmon, Reuters | Read more:
Image: Wikimedia
My Mother, Gardening
I wonder what my mother would wish to take with her on such a journey, a journey beyond time. Surely she would hope to leave behind the damaged lungs that are slowing her down in her eighties, though she has already lived so much longer than the Boy King, dead at nineteen. Without a doubt she would have her Scrabble board folded up and set beside her, the soft old cotton sock still filled with worn tiles, the little wooden racks on which she’d sorted and re-sorted so many letters, made so many words. Her tennis racquet, just in case strength and flexibility should be granted to her once again. Perhaps she would keep the autumn leaves that I ironed in grade school between sheets of waxed paper and cut into bookmarks; and the clove-studded oranges that I made with my Girl Scout troop, shrunken and fragrant as the aged, perfumed offerings surrounding Tut in his tomb.
And she’d want to take the flowers she had gloriously preserved all her life: the light blue salvia that she’d grown and hung to dry in pipe-cleanered bunches over the kitchen sink, the Queen Anne’s Lace that she’d collected on weekend walks in the country. She always saved the loveliest of the roses from gift bouquets, at Mother’s Day and birthdays, and sank them one by one into finely sifted sand. When she gently drew them out, the fragile blossoms would be perfectly fixed, hovering forever at the grayish edge of pink. Wonderful things. (...)
In Eden, it was God’s voice—“Where are you?” (Genesis 3:8)—that called Adam and Eve back to their bodies. They were not just deep in the garden, they suddenly realized with alarm, but intimate with it, their own delicate, fresh skin close to the plants and trees growing there, brushing directly against rough stems and leaves. “I heard the sound of you in the garden,” Adam tried, lamely, to explain, “and I was afraid, because I was naked.” In that place, no longer untouched by time, their human flesh was revealed among the blossoming trees as what it really was: a fragile servant of appetite; mortal, likely to be wounded. The garden, as well, was revealed as vulnerable to violation, unequal to its own promise. And yet, many generations later, Eden would still color the prophets’ imagining of release from exile: “my people Israel . . . shall rebuild the ruined cities and inhabit them . . . they shall make gardens and eat their fruit” (Amos 9:14). What lonely men those prophets must have remained! Wandering ministers of abandoned gardens, their fantasy of remaking the wounded world forever threaded with anger and doubt; layered over an unyielding assurance of abandonment.
by Joanne Jacobson, NER | Read more:
Image: Alleged location of the Garden of Eden, Wikimedia
Monday, July 1, 2013
In the Line of Wildfire
I roll out of my sleeping bag at 5 A.M., waking to the smell of dry grass and woodsmoke. I spent last night in the open, camped on rodeo grounds in the tiny Northern California town of Stonyford. Flames are visible on a ridge half a mile away. Time to go to work.
It’s July 12, 2012, and I’m about to be sent to my first forest fire of the season. I arrived yesterday to meet up with the Tahoe Hotshots, an elite group of wilderness fire-fighters based about 120 miles east of here, in a Sierra foothills town called Camptonville. The Tahoe team is part of a sprawling, multifaceted army: 177 federal, state, and county crews who must try and stop a fast-moving, 17,000-acre blaze before it spreads into Stonyford. Known as the Mill Fire, it was started on July 7 by lost hikers and raced east through the Coast Range and the Mendocino National Forest. Drought conditions and 60-mile-per-hour Pacific winds have fueled its advance; already, five buildings have burned on the edge of town.
The U.S. Forest Service, which usually runs the show when a big fire breaks out on federal land, has declared the Mill to be a national priority, and there are 1,500 wildland firefighters from around the West assembled to battle it. Some work on engine crews, manning the trucks that deliver water to the front lines. Others are smoke jumpers, who parachute straight into burning forests from cargo planes to stop small fires from growing. Some, like my group, are hotshots, backcountry firefighters who use chainsaws, Pulaskis, and rakes to cut firebreaks of bare earth around a blaze.
At the moment, though, all of us seem to be standing in the same line waiting for coffee and breakfast, which is being served at a mess tent staffed by high school students from inner-city Oakland. I work my way to the front, fill a Styrofoam cup, and head toward a set of rodeo bleachers to meet my boss, Rick Cowell, the 55-year-old superintendent of the Tahoe Hotshots.
“Dickman, you should have been here yesterday!” he says when he sees me. “We had a hell of a shift!”
Back before I had a desk job, I was a full-time hotshot. In 2006, I worked with the Tahoe crew, and this year Cowell agreed to let me rejoin. I arrived here too late for yesterday’s action, when the crew cut a line around a spot fire that started after an ember flew over a firebreak.
A six-foot, 170-pound man of Karuk Indian descent, Cowell has a broad chest, a beaked nose, and hands that feel like elephant hide. He’s fought nearly 800 blazes in his 36-year career, and his experience and leadership are a big part of why Tahoe is one of the best hotshot crews in the country.
Our job today is to cut and dig a line while engine crews hose down the fire, air tankers dump chemical retardant, and helicopters drop water from above. Once the Mill is surrounded by firebreaks and established logging roads, hotshots will intentionally burn brush and trees inside the perimeter, starving the fire of fuel. The stakes are high. If we succeed the flames stop. If we don’t, Stonyford, a town of about 150, and a forest the size of Boston will burn.
It’s July 12, 2012, and I’m about to be sent to my first forest fire of the season. I arrived yesterday to meet up with the Tahoe Hotshots, an elite group of wilderness fire-fighters based about 120 miles east of here, in a Sierra foothills town called Camptonville. The Tahoe team is part of a sprawling, multifaceted army: 177 federal, state, and county crews who must try and stop a fast-moving, 17,000-acre blaze before it spreads into Stonyford. Known as the Mill Fire, it was started on July 7 by lost hikers and raced east through the Coast Range and the Mendocino National Forest. Drought conditions and 60-mile-per-hour Pacific winds have fueled its advance; already, five buildings have burned on the edge of town.The U.S. Forest Service, which usually runs the show when a big fire breaks out on federal land, has declared the Mill to be a national priority, and there are 1,500 wildland firefighters from around the West assembled to battle it. Some work on engine crews, manning the trucks that deliver water to the front lines. Others are smoke jumpers, who parachute straight into burning forests from cargo planes to stop small fires from growing. Some, like my group, are hotshots, backcountry firefighters who use chainsaws, Pulaskis, and rakes to cut firebreaks of bare earth around a blaze.
At the moment, though, all of us seem to be standing in the same line waiting for coffee and breakfast, which is being served at a mess tent staffed by high school students from inner-city Oakland. I work my way to the front, fill a Styrofoam cup, and head toward a set of rodeo bleachers to meet my boss, Rick Cowell, the 55-year-old superintendent of the Tahoe Hotshots.
“Dickman, you should have been here yesterday!” he says when he sees me. “We had a hell of a shift!”
Back before I had a desk job, I was a full-time hotshot. In 2006, I worked with the Tahoe crew, and this year Cowell agreed to let me rejoin. I arrived here too late for yesterday’s action, when the crew cut a line around a spot fire that started after an ember flew over a firebreak.
A six-foot, 170-pound man of Karuk Indian descent, Cowell has a broad chest, a beaked nose, and hands that feel like elephant hide. He’s fought nearly 800 blazes in his 36-year career, and his experience and leadership are a big part of why Tahoe is one of the best hotshot crews in the country.
Our job today is to cut and dig a line while engine crews hose down the fire, air tankers dump chemical retardant, and helicopters drop water from above. Once the Mill is surrounded by firebreaks and established logging roads, hotshots will intentionally burn brush and trees inside the perimeter, starving the fire of fuel. The stakes are high. If we succeed the flames stop. If we don’t, Stonyford, a town of about 150, and a forest the size of Boston will burn.
by Kyle Dickman, Outside | Read more:
Photo: Kyle Dickman
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