Anyone who reads this blog knows that although I love to sit and walk on the sand, I do not favor hiding my head in it. I want to be politically informed even when it is upsetting; however, it helps nobody, least of all me, if I let myself become unhealthily angry or fearful about it.Through the years, I have learned a few things to help me stay balanced when the world around me seems to be anything but. One is when I have an idea of what I should be doing, I need to do it. Avoiding it, trying not to do it, ends up leaving it to fester. Do it and get it over.
I try to then let go of results. Can I really change anything? I can only do what I believe will help. Whether that is going out in the neighborhood to talk about politics (the sheep and cows favor Obama, coyotes are undecided, squirrels definitely prefer McCain-- beats me why) or whether it's making sure wherever
I hear someone saying something untrue (in cyber or real time), that I voice what I believe. Do that but then accept I can only change me.When I begin to feel depressed by this whole situation, about my country, the world, I remind myself of the big picture. I remember how history has been full of such times-- times even worse. There are places in the world that have it worse right now. I remind myself, nothing, not me, not these political situations, none of it lasts forever. Good or bad times come and go. I have had to remind myself of that a lot these last eight years.
For me, nature is a great healer. I live on a farm with animals; so I do have a lot of opportunity to be outdoors and around nature. My cats provide great pleasure. A cat purring is so soothing, running my hand over their fur feel
s good. (a dog's pleasing nature, eager expressions, sharing of what I am feeling would be equally soothing but I don't have one right now) Just moving irrigation pipes is good exercise and is also satisfying as it nurtures the grass and the animals.In the last couple of weeks, I have been to the beach three times, which is unusual for me even though I live only 50 miles from it. Oceans are very healing. Sit on the sand, let it sift though my fingers, watch the birds, hear the waves crashing in, feel the sun on m
y shoulder, maybe have chowder for lunch.When we stopped at Boiler Bay Wayside, there was a gray whale in the inlet, not far offshore. It wasn't there long but to see it that close was wonderful. I felt a relationship to it that the distant spouts don't give. Was it migrating or one that lives around here year round? The animal kingdom keeps its secrets at least from me.
Relating this to my daughter, she told me of one of her own whale memories. She and her soon to be husband had taken a picnic lunch to the beach. Th
ey went down close to a cliff where not many were around. The whole time they were eating, a whale was feeding in the ocean below. It was close enough they could hear it breathing. When she told me I could almost feel I also heard it.Not everyone lives near the ocean, but most could go to a river, pond, creek or park. Sit on the grass. Touch a tree's bark. Spend some time staring at a tree until you begin to see its energy aura. All living things have an aura of energy and you can see it if you try. What a connection it gives us when we relate any other living thing on that level.
Ideally, anywhere there is water is best. If you have a nearby waterfall, get to it as they say at both the ocean and waterfalls ozone is higher in the air which has a soothing effect. Small fountains, the home kind that you can create or buy, with a recirculating stream of water, can be healthy physically and emotionally. I also like getting out that shell that when you put your ear to it, you hear the sound of the ocean only its really inside me as a reminder of the ocean when I can't be there but also from where I came.
So in the last couple of weeks, I have taken a couple of short hikes, one to a waterfall. I have sat on the sand.We took our canoe to the coast and paddled up an estua
ry where there were herons, cormorants, ducks and some birds that managed to fly off before leaving identification. The cormorant pretty much ignored the canoe. Probably sees a lot of them. Fortunately I had the telephoto and didn't have to disturb its concentration on finding a meal.
The reflections were wonderful and with little current in the stream, it made learning more about canoe handling easy. It seems simple. Put paddle in water and move it. Somehow or the other, it doesn't always work as you ex
pect and there is learning and experience involved.Yes, when I got home, the bad news was waiting but I was more able to deal with it.
(Photos from Boiler Bay, Ono Beach and Ono Beach Estuary. Waterfall pictures will come in a future blog.)
8 comments:
A beautiful sanity break, rain. There is definitely something about water that soothes and calms.
We all need those sanity breaks these days, I do the same things, and nature always has a way of soothing me more than any medication could ever do. The same is true for our dogs, they comfort me in ways only an animal lover can understand. Your photos are beautiful and offer a glimpse of the peace that is available to all of us in nature, in music, in friends, both two-legged and four.
Because water is a scarcity where I live it would take a trip by auto to reach one of the mountain lakes. Rivers? -as you know, they are usually dry washes. I do love the ocean and have been to, and flown over, both the Atlantic and the Pacific.
Since I am unable physically to sit by the water I closed my eyes and let my memory take me there. Your post calmed me, Rain. Thank you.
So very true Rain...Everything you said and advise. I too get nuts from all that is going on right now...And because I cannot go anywhere...I go right outside and visit all my BEAUTIFUL plants and Fkowers and The Bees and such....It renews me and reminds me that there are things larger than what we are dealing with right now. Larger, in that they have survived everrything---And at the same time, tiny thungs like The Bees, remind me that there is Grwat Life beyond the crises we are living through, right now!
Thank you for this beautiful post and thoss truly lovely pictures!
Great Article:
Roots of rotten mortgages
By Ralph R. Reiland
Monday, September 29, 2008
The roots of today's mortgage-based financial crisis can be traced back to the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), which Jimmy Carter signed in 1977. Seeking to address complaints from anti-poverty activists and housing advocates about banks allegedly discriminating against minority borrowers and "redlining" inner-city neighborhoods, the CRA decreed that banks had "an affirmative obligation" to meet the credit needs of victims of discrimination in borrowing.
To add a government stick to the process, the CRA decreed that federal banking regulators would consider how well banks were doing in meeting the goal of more multiculturalism in loaning when considering requests by banks to open new branches or to merge.
A good "CRA rating" was earned by way of increasing loans in poor neighborhoods. Conversely, lenders with low ratings could be fined.
The Fed, for instance, warned banks that failure to comply with government guidelines regarding the delivery of "equal credit" could subject them to "civil liability for actual or punitive damages in individual or class actions, with liability for punitive damages being as much as $10,000 in individual actions and the lesser of $500,000 or 1 percent of the creditor's net worth in class actions."
However well-intentioned in terms of delivering "economic justice," this push for more government-directed social engineering produced a widespread weakening of long-established industry standards for credit worthiness.
Led by Congressional Democrats, this policy of replacing private and decentralized decision-making with a system of centrally-delivered rewards and punishments was basically a one-party effort. Republicans, it seems, were more aware of the unintended consequences that flow from government interference in the market.
As Investor's Business Daily recently put it, succinctly and correctly: "Over the past 30 years, Democrats, along with a handful of Republicans, have demonized lenders as racist and passed regulation after regulation pressuring them to make more loans to unqualified borrowers in the name of diversity."
The march toward the eventual financial meltdown picked up speed during the Clinton administration via an increased lowering of loan standards in order to expand minority borrowing.
The result was widely praised. "It's one of the hidden success stories of the Clinton era," wrote Ronald Brownstein in May 1999 in the Los Angeles Times. "In the great housing boom of the 1990s, black and Latino homeownership has surged to the highest level ever recorded. The number of African-Americans owning their own homes is now increasing nearly three times as fast as the number of whites; the number of Latino homeowners is growing nearly five times as fast as that of whites."
In 2000, Howard Husock reported in City Journal that the "Clinton Treasury Department's 1995 regulations made getting a satisfactory CRA rating much harder. There would be no more A's for effort. Only results -- specific loans, specific levels of service -- would count."
The "specific levels of service" referred to how well banks were responding to complaints, including complaints from advocacy groups that were in the business of complaining.
"By intervening -- even just threatening to intervene -- in the CRA review process, left-wing nonprofit groups have been able to gain control over eye-popping pools of bank capital, which they in turn parcel out to individual low-income mortgage seekers," reported Husock. "A radical group called ACORN Housing has a $760 million commitment from The Bank of New York."
In addition to setting the stage for giving money for mortgage payouts to ACORN and other lending amateurs, CRA authorized those organizations to collect fees from the banks for their "marketing" of loans.
"The Senate Banking Committee has estimated that, as a result of CRA, $9.5 billion so far has gone to pay for services and salaries of the nonprofit groups involved," reported Husock.
There's big money, in short, in "nonprofit" activism -- and upward mobility. A guy carries a sign advocating "Change" in front of a bank and the government turns him into a salaried protester, credit analyst and dispenser of mortgage money.
"The changes came as radical 'housing rights' groups led by ACORN lobbied for such loans," reports Investor's Business Daily, regarding the Clinton era. "ACORN at the time was represented by a young public-interest lawyer in Chicago by the name of Barack Obama."
Ralph R. Reiland is an associate professor of economics at Robert Morris University and a local restaurateur. He can be reached at rrreiland@aol.com.
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/mostread/s_590330.html
I have seen quite a few articles like that one, Liz. The thing is if the only problem is bad mortgages, then there is a real product and a bailout won't be so bad in terms of real costs to potentially taxpayers. What is unknown right now is to what level this bank crises is actually about bundling those mortgages and something referred to as derivatives, where banks sell and resell something that may not have anywhere near the value of from what it began.
Also, the bank crises is about bad mortgages but some of them were because the people foolishly signed up at high interest rates (as much as 11%) told they could refinance. We all saw the ads on tv during those years where you can get into this house for )% down. You spend your first years supposedly working up some equity through what you pay and the home gaining in value. Funny thing happened though when those homes didn't gain in value and actually lost when the bubble went pop.
The people could have walked away from those homes (also some who were encouraged to refinance to pay for vacations, pay off their credit cards, and are learning the same thing if they didn't lock in a long term loan at a lower rate of interest that they actually could afford. I know some who refinanced regularly and those who were wise with what they got, might have come out okay, but some were eventually paying on a home that wasn't worth what the mortgage and if it was variable interest, it was soon too expensive to afford even if they'd lived in it many years.
During much of the Bush administration, the only real growth area was in building houses but some were for those who should not have been buying a house but thought they finally had a chance to buy into something that would help them get ahead.
I think there's plenty to go around for blame with the buy now and pay later mentality that seems to permeate so much of this country.
Then we have what Congress (including both presidential candidates) just did by voting for this bailout with a typical Senate mishmash of earmarks and Christmas ornaments for everybody that has nothing to do with the bill. This is what most ordinary people hate about how Congress does business.
Both presidential candidates claim we have to stop such practices, clean up these bills, cut wasteful spending-- but they both forgot it and in the supposed crisis (which may be real but came when it would be most crises to these elected officials), they voted for it. I wish all of them had taken a deep breath and thought about what they were voting yes on. I am proud of our Democratic Senator from Oregon-- Ron Wyden-- that he and a few others voted no anyway. Good for them.
Yes, I get it, we may have a very serious problem, but have they had time to evaluate what it is or even if this will really fix it? And what about for once voting for something that doesn't give rum manufacturers in Puerto Rico (just one example) some break that had nothing to do with the problem at hand. grrrrrrrr
Also in looking at the mortgage mess alone, there is plenty to point fingers at John McCain also-- McCain's Frannie and Freddie connections in Mother Jones.
Dang...ur hott for 60.
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