Band Review: Leona Lewis

Leona Lewis is a British pop and R&B singer who won the third season of The X Factor. I first learned of her while I was focusing on black women for the songs of the day.

http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2015/07/musical-black-girls.html

I used "I Am" by Lewis, but I knew I wanted to listen more. Starting this week, the first thing I found was that I love "Bleeding Love" even more than "I Am". (And also that she has a pretty good Christmas album, which is nice this time of year.)

Known for her four-octave range, Lewis has a beautiful voice and can do a lot with it. The advantage to this is obvious. There is a downside as well, in that sometimes she does too much, possibly simply because she can. (Mariah Carey has the same problem.)

Some songs feel a little crowded, especially on the Hurt EP. However, even with the song I like least, "Fire Under My Feet", I know she is doing it well and accomplished what she was going for. (This song frequently draws comparisons to Adele, whom I also don't enjoy.)

There is a lot to enjoy here. I Am and Spirit are especially strong albums, and on Christmas, With Love not only is "One More Sleep" a song that I can listen to again and again, but "Your Hallelujah" is beautiful and haunting.

Lots to listen to here.

http://leonalewismusic.com/

https://www.facebook.com/leonalewis?fref=ts

https://www.youtube.com/user/leonalewisVEVO

https://twitter.com/leonalewis

Band Review: Anthony Hamilton

Anthony Hamilton was recommended by Twitter's Blackamazon, and this was a good week to get to him for reasons that I will get to next week. For now, on with the review.

Hamilton's R&B career goes back to 1995, but I feel like there has been a perpetual improvement. I like 2008's The Point Of It All, but 2011's Back to Love is even cooler and funkier. Collaborating with Babyface was effective, but was only a factor for one of the albums.

(I am also really enjoying 2014's Home For The Holidays, but that may be getting a seasonal boost.)

That's not to discount the earlier works, but my favorites have tended to be within the last decade, including "Magnolia's Room" from 2007. I think the upward trajectory shows maturation and an increasing comfort.

Other recommended tracks include "Praying For You/Superman", "Cool", and "Woo", and "More Than Enough".

Songs can work for dancing, but may work better for more private activities. This music is meant for grooving.

http://www.anthonyhamilton.com/

https://www.facebook.com/AnthonyHamiltonMusic

https://www.youtube.com/user/anthonyhamiltonVEVO

https://twitter.com/hamiltonanthony

Income inequality

I feel drawn toward a lot of heavier topics that I don't actually want to get into at this time, so I am going to try to hit this one thing today and then lighten up a little.

Let's start with Mark Zuckerberg, who recently announced that he was giving away 99% of his fortune ($45 billion) to charity.

There have been many takes on this, some pretty uncharitable and some more forbearing. Here is just one:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/08/upshot/why-its-too-soon-to-sour-on-the-zuckerberg-charity-plan.html

My initial reaction was first to assume they were setting up a foundation as opposed to actually giving money away now. I was a little surprised that it was an LLC instead of a a 501(c)3 or something like that, but my main thought was that it is more trickling down. We can choose to put some money here, and here, but there are no floodgates. A lot of money goes to consultants, and a lot of people who could really be helped will never even be considered for it.

That's not to say that he will do no good at all. Zuckerberg says he has learned from his Newark mistakes, which may be true, but it doesn't do nearly as much good as living in a more equal society would, where one percent of a fortune is still not thousands of times more than other people can even come up with.

Holding on to that thought, let's now look at the concept of a basic annual income. The idea has been around for a while, but it was actually tried once in Dauphin, Manitoba.

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/12/23/mincome-in-dauphin-manitoba_n_6335682.html?utm_hp_ref=canada-business&utm_hp_ref=canada-business

To implement a basic annual income you determine a living wage, and people who make less than that are given the difference. That sounds ridiculous - if you just give people money for living won't they quit working - but the experiments that have been conducted have not shown that. Some young people reduced their workloads to attend school. Some couples had one partner work less to spend more time with the children or to take care of senior family members. Generally people continued with their normal jobs, and without raises being given everyone lived better.

It still sounds weird. I would say that I like the minimum wage concept better, because that's still assuming a full work week, but there are two problems with that: hours are subject to manipulation by employers, and even talks of a $15 minimum wage aren't really looking at a living wage. Full time at $15 an hour is $31200 annually. That's not really that much. The amount where additional income stops adding to happiness is around $70-75K annually. The room for improvement available to someone on today's minimum wage is astronomical.

My purpose is not to get too much into numbers; I just want to remind everyone how regressive the idea of trickle-down economics is. They don't even use that term anymore because it sounds so clearly lacking in what is needed, but there is still emphasis on job creators and there is still vilification of those using government benefits. "Poor people are lazy!" "I saw someone with a manicure using an Oregon Trail Card!"

It is worth saying over and over. A lot of working people are on food stamps. It's not the high life, and they're not quitting their jobs. Most poor people are working hard, and the reason they don't have a lot to show for it has a lot to do with the system being designed to consolidate wealth in the hands of those who already have it. It has gotten horribly out of balance.

The Dauphin experiment was 40 years ago, and a basic minimum income may not be the answer. We do need to get over assuming the worst of all of our fellow beings. I know there are examples out there that seem to confirm the worst, but there is a lot of good out there too. If we start thinking about how to make each other's lives easier, rather than being afraid someone will slack off or get ahead of us (or get ahead of us while slacking off!) I believe we will find a lot more good.

I imagine this sounds like I should be supporting Sanders, and I'm still not. It's not that he isn't better than any of the GOP front runners, though there were years when that wouldn't have been as glaringly true. I do see the importance of increasing economic equality, but I have questions about how much progress he could make, especially without him showing skills of diplomacy, which will matter in more ways than working with Congress, and I still think he does not grasp some of the issues that are less economic very well.

At this time, I am still supporting Clinton, who is not perfect, but at least as a woman she will understand some things that Sanders misses. Also, my family did better under her husband than we have with anyone else. I would like to feel like I was doing well again.

A little more on Black History Month 2015

There have been some people questioning Woodrow Wilson's legacy lately, which is a reasonable thing to do. There has also been some resistance because you can't judge people in history by present day standards, and then they drag in Jefferson and Washington having slaves.

I do see the point of reserving some judgment on historical figures because we are supposed to be more advanced now, though some people really make you wonder. It still doesn't necessarily apply to Wilson in the same way it applies to Washington and Jefferson. Washington and Jefferson probably were pretty much in line with the common thinking of their day; Wilson was setting things back.

Wilson took integrated government departments and started segregating them again. He applauded a racist film as "history written in lightning" - it wasn't history and as a professor he should have known better. He had to work at not knowing better. Wilson was behind his times.

Knowing that in the early days of the American colonies that Africans came as indentured servants who earned their freedom and got land and worshipped in integrated churches might be a reason to justify questioning Washington and Jefferson, but I am thinking of something else today.

In Philadelphia we toured Constitution Hall, but we also went through the Eastern State Penitentiary, an old prison. It was built on the "Pennsylvania system" or "separate system", kind of like prison-wide solitary confinement. That took me back to Port Arthur in Tasmania. My understanding was that they only followed the separate system for the first year of imprisonment and then the convict would be transferred into the general population. What I remember most clearly though was that many of the convicts developed mental illness from the solitary confinement, and it still has the worst psychic energy of the entire site. If you are going to be affected by bad vibes anywhere, it will be there.

At Eastern it was driven home more that this was really seen as a humane way of treating the prisoners. The people who planned it out had really good intentions, but it wasn't effective there either. You can cause a lot of damage without meaning it.

It makes me wonder. Before I learned about Wilson's racism I was inclined to think of him as trying to do good, with his participation in the talks after World War I and trying to set up the League of Nations at least showing an interest in world peace. Maybe he thought Birth of a Nation was just really well made and saw the potential of film for history. (No.)

The League of Nations fell apart and the way they resolved WWI really set the stage for WWII. That's not all on Wilson, but this was a man who was actively working to oppress a people that had already faced centuries of oppression. I'm sure he didn't think of himself as evil, but what he was doing was evil. How could that man be an effective force for peace?

I want to bring up two more things. One is a quote from W.E.B. DuBois' Niagra Movement speech from 1905:

"We are not more lawless than the white race, we are more often arrested, convicted, and mobbed."

Still true, and some people are only starting to believe it because of video footage, but it has been true all along. More interesting is that if you look at the rest of the speech, they are asking for suffrage and education for everyone.

http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/niagara-movement-speech/

It is worth reading the full speech, but now I want to go back a few decades before that, with this summary of Reconstruction from Albion W. Tourgee:

"[They] instituted a public school system in a realm where public schools had been unknown. They opened the ballot box and the jury box to thousands of White men who had been barred from them by a lack of earthly possessions. They introduced home rule in the South. They abolished the whipping post, the branding iron, the stock and other barbarous forms of punishment which had up to that time prevailed. They reduced capital felonies from about twenty to two or three. In an age of extravagance they were extravagant in the sums appropriated for public works. In all that time no man's rights of person were invaded under forms of law."

That benefited everyone, including the poor whites. In fact, these projects disproportionately helped the poor whites, because they were able to keep using them when Jim Crow pushed the African Americans out.

Then they needed to do it all over again, and they kept doing it. There are still people fighting it, once more rolling back voting rights, pulling money away from schools, and everything that has been done before.

There are a lot of things that could be said that would be relevant, but I'm just going to go back to DuBois' speech, because this is important, and it's true.

"Either the United States will destroy ignorance or ignorance will destroy the United States."

Black History Month 2015

I keep thinking that in conjunction with last week there are some current events that I should address, but those posts would be really long. I did just finish my reading this weekend, so let's go there.

I have mentioned already how the writing has thrown off my reading schedules, so I just finished my Native American Heritage 2014 media in August, start this reading shortly after that, am starting Native American Heritage 2015 reading this week, and I should start the 2016 Black History reading about a month after that. Squishing everything so close together may give me some added perspective. Mainly, it's been kind of heavy.

At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance - A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power, by Danielle L McGuire

This is a really important reminder of a few things. One is the way that women so frequently do the work, and then the men become the stars. Rosa Parks was working for equality and Civil Rights for years before her arrest, and women were on the front lines of the organizing all along, but we remember the men's names. Even as the boycott was being organized, Parks was already being converted into a symbol, not a breathing, living, and also smart, committed, determined human being.

The other thing that becomes clear is that even though white men sexually assaulting black women was all too common, the arguments against integration and equality kept coming back to the danger to pure white women from black men. It's always been a lie, and it's a lie that degrades everyone.

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

This is fiction, but it's fiction by an anthropologist, and based on some real events, so it captures some things. It can be jarring when it switches between the lush poetry of Janey's awakening as a young woman to the dialect captured in the towns and camps, but there is a lot to be learned about life and about being a woman here.

Black Panther: The Complete Collection, by Christopher Priest and others

T'Challa is an important character historically, and there is a movie in the works, so it seemed like a good time to read it. I wanted to like it, but it felt like a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. It seemed like things were starting to get interesting toward the end, like maybe I would have been happier finding volume 2, but ultimately it felt like they were too self-conscious about doing an important black hero to let him really be human and live. I couldn't relate. To be fair, superhero comics seem to be my least favorite comics.

The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010, by Lucille Clifton

I tend to have low expectations for free verse, but I found hers really engaging and moving. I felt like I wanted to know more about her, to know if the things it felt like she was saying were really part of her life. What I could find about her does play out. I appreciate the way she can fluidly move between classical references and things very earthy and modern.

Breaking Chains: Slavery on Trial in the Oregon Territory, by Gregory R Nokes

I found the writing style off-putting at times - especially the foreword  - but as a lifelong Oregon resident, and a University of Oregon graduate, information on the local history made a lawsuit that would have been interesting on its own even more fascinating. As much of Oregon's racist past is not well-known, and this is a book of relatively easy length and reading level, I think it fills an important spot.

Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America (2007 edition), by Lerone Bennett Jr

Everyone should read this book. It gives important information and context to all of US history, therefore an understanding of where we are now, and is often beautifully written.

Perhaps the most important lesson, and it fits in well with At the Dark End of the Street, is that there is so much that history forgets. Yes, there was a Civil Rights movement in the 1960s that drew popular attention, but there was activism before that, from anti-slavery activism from before the United States even existed to Rosa Parks' work before she stepped on the bus. There have always been people who try to abolish rights - rights that were once accepted as no big deal - and there have always been people fighting back, often at great personal cost.

It's not over.

Band Review: Eye on Attraction

The first thing I saw about Eye on Attraction was that they listed Coheed and Cambria as an influence, which I didn't really hear. As that was expanded to include other bands, like Circa Survive and Rush, and an affiliation with progressive rock, then it made more sense. I can certainly see that on their 2012 album, The Factory.

That being said, I prefer their 2014 EP, Staircases. It is shorter, both in track length and number of tracks, and I feel like the brevity forced a focus that increased the power of the punch. Staircases really strikes the target.

That's not to discount The Factory, which does have good playing and an interesting scope. My favorite track there is probably "16 Queens", but the music is overall solid. It also feels like it wanders, whereas Staircases is more concise. It still seems fair to say that Eye on Attraction is growing in strength.

The Scranton, Pennsylvania quartet is taking some time off from their heavy playing schedule to work on a new EP, and I think that's good news.

http://www.eyeonattraction.com

http://eyeonattraction.bandcamp.com/

https://www.facebook.com/eyeonattraction

https://www.youtube.com/user/EyeOnAttractionTV

https://twitter.com/eyeonattraction

Band Review: Mr. Toxic

Mr. Toxic has really good beats, but I found myself kind of hating the music anyway because of the content.

Although his bio information refers to a good and bad side, the bad side was really nasty and more prevalent, making listening unpleasant and uncomfortable. The low point was "Adults Only", but "Four Hundred And Three" and other tracks whose titles I will not type felt similarly dirty. "Laying Down Memories" felt like it was going somewhere better, but then dialogue was added in that brought it back down again.

Mr. Toxic does list the Insane Clown Posse and the Juggalo's as influences, and I feel like this kind of makes everything make sense.

https://www.reverbnation.com/therealtoxic

https://www.facebook.com/pages/page/444324018955440

https://www.youtube.com/user/Toxitizen/featured

https://twitter.com/therealtoxic

Power and privilege

One thing about my refinance issues is that if I didn't need to refinance - meaning if I wasn't having financial issues - it wouldn't have been a problem. The fee for the appraisal wouldn't have put me in the hole, and the necessary work would have been done, so I could still have gotten that reduced interest rate and have some breathing room every month. The more you need money, the more obstacles there are to getting it.

Rather than exploring that theme further, I am going to tell two more stories.

One is about my first job after college. I actually started there about a month after my mission, and we liked each other. I went back there and worked on school breaks, and they made me an offer right after graduation. I thought things were looking really good. They turned bad really quickly after that.

Suddenly the work started drying up, and hours started being cut. It got so bad that I actually took some temp jobs during this time and they did not interfere with my scheduled hours. A lot of people left. I was staying available but also looking for other work. Then, one evening as I was leaving the office, the owner said we would need to talk about lowering my pay since I was working on a different project now. She didn't even call me into her office for an actual discussion, it was "Next time we'll talk about paying you less!" I said let's not worry about that and I would look for another job.

The part that really surprised me was that as I got downtown she called on my cell phone and said she wanted to make sure about the conversation we'd had. Had I quit? I guess I had. I didn't realize until later that the whole purpose of that conversation was to be able to deny my unemployment claim. Fortunately, the reason business had been drying up was she was turning down previous clients. I ended up temping at one of the former clients for something they tried to hire her for. That temp company kept me going for the next year.

I am sure there was some perfectly logical reason for her turning down work and pushing out people she had once really wanted as employees. In retrospect I probably should have just said "okay" and stepped up my job search, or perhaps swore at her to see if that got me fired. I don't know. I was young and naive, and she knew a lot more about working the system.

At least there were still jobs out there when that happened. I wasn't so lucky the next time.

I have written about the other situation before. We were going to Australia. We were going to be gone for a month. I had some vacation stored up, and then I think there would have been a week and a half unpaid. I asked what I needed to do to get that arranged, and corporate kept saying they would get back to me, then not getting back, until the week we were leaving, when they said it was my manager's decision and he decided not to let me go on the trip. They were researching if they had to keep my job for me, which is fine but it was not the question that I asked or the question they told me they were looking up.

Looking back I can see some things differently. There was a goal on the part of the manager not to take me back to teach me a lesson, but I don't think that was corporate's goal. I think corporate just wanted to pay me less, and having me re-apply for my job would facilitate that. The mandatory pay cuts that went through the group after that seem to back that up.

Again, this counted as me quitting. It had not been my intention to quit at all, but that's how it turned out, and once again I was ineligible for unemployment. 

It didn't matter in either case that I was a really good employee, always taking on new responsibilities, accommodating the needs of other employees and the employer, and that I kept things running smoothly. This is important, because I thought that meant something, and even though that other job had kind of shown me that it wasn't true, I thought it was an exception.

It didn't matter that in the second case it was the manager's own ego that made me a liability, or that the replacement he hired was completely unqualified which led to a heavy burden on the people left who were still good workers at the same time that the employees who were not such good workers started getting a lot worse, or that the downward spiral that was starting there led to business being lost. At that point, integrity was just going out the window, and so really it is not surprising that said manager started an affair with one of his employees, although there are a lot of dangerous places that can lead to. Ultimately, they were the ones with the power, so they were free to make a bad decision that hurt me.

Losing your job is never fun, but losing it two weeks before the economy collapses is worse. If they had told me that the job was lost when I first asked about it, I might have decided not to go on the trip, or I could have started my job search sooner, before the collapse. Maybe the collapse would have negated anything I did prior to leaving anyway, but it would have been nice to have the option.

Unsurprisingly, that financial collapse had a lot to do with people with money acting unethically. They could get away with it because they had money, and they did it because they wanted more money. It's never enough. They get so much they run out of things to buy so they stockpile more in the Cayman Islands, and it's still not enough.

By talking about my finances I know that I have opened myself up to criticism. I know because I hear how other people talk when we see stories about the poor. They shouldn't have gotten that degree; you don't make any money with that. They shouldn't have kids if they can't afford them. No one stops and thinks about the dreariness of a world where only the rich can have children (and pets), and where there are no adjunct professors, and no one ever evaluates any decision based on anything but self-interest.

There can be real consequences for talking too. The guy who was working two full-time jobs at two different Subways lost one of those jobs now, and he was by all accounts a good employee who loved his job.

So, I'll talk. It is deliberate that there are only pronouns and no names.

The last straw

Things have been really tight for over a year. Maybe it was inevitable that at some point there would be a break. It just seems ironic in my case that it was something that was supposed to help.

The mortgage payment is the biggest payment of course. They say if you can save 2% interest it is worth refinancing anyway, and I was there. Plus there were always a lot of ads and offers coming in. Refinancing seemed like a reasonable thing to do.

I went with Quicken loans. I would say that was my first mistake, only I really don't know that any of the other companies would have been better.

In retrospect, my first clue to the size of this business is the number of employees available at any time to help you unless it requires actual knowledge. You have a direct extension for your representative, but if they are not there press 0 for another rep; it does not matter. That might indicate a low level of specialization, but not nearly as much as how many times I needed to have the specialists call me.

For example, I currently have my homeowner's insurance going through my mortgage, which the mortgage companies seem to prefer, and it's convenient so I don't have a problem with it. They wanted a slightly higher level of coverage, which I didn't mind, but it led to me getting new quotes and changing companies. They swore this would not be a problem.

The insurance was going to switch over September 1st. The appraiser was coming August 31st. Getting the appraisal entered and finalizing the loan takes at least a couple of business days, so the original request for a quote on extending the coverage with the old company would have had no value whatsoever. I thought that made sense, but then I was requested to call someone, and this was the specialist who deals with difficulties, because I had refused to get a new quote. To his credit, he did understand exactly what was going on when I explained it to him, but it seems simple enough that my specialist not understanding it gave me grave concerns.

There were other things, like insisting on requesting forms from the IRS first, even though I had them, and then when their request is refused I need to call the IRS, get it sent to me, and forward it to the loan company. Ultimately a lot of their policies that are designed to make things "easier" for the customer fail. Something that I started in June and was supposed to take two weeks was going into September. I still might have stuck with it, except for the appraisal process.

The loan Quicken was offering me was an FHA loan. I had no idea how significant that was.

The Federal Housing Administration has much stricter requirements for a mortgage. I had one appraiser come out, and we talked about possible issues. One thing that he was concerned about is we have a converted garage.

The house was built in 1971, and we moved here in 1978. The garage was converted into a family room some time in between those two dates. I don't know if there was a permit obtained for that work - I doubt it - but whether you count that area as a garage or a room counts, and without the permit there is the potential that you either need to provide the permits or turn it back into a garage (which apparently would be easy to do, but I don't want to do that).

He said he would ask his company how she should report it, and we talked about three other things. There were a few spots where paint was showing, which is easily covered. There was one area where the dirt at the side of the house was too close to the wood line. That was easily raked away. Finally, there was a spot of dry rot on one fascial board on the gable.

I spray painted over the bare spots - which doesn't look great but technically meets the requirements. I raked back the dirt. I called for an estimate on replacing the barge rafter, and while it is a simple fix it is also time consuming. The contractor also told me it was unnecessary because it's not going to spread and in a few years when the roof is redone it will be replaced anyway.

Meanwhile, the first appraisal was never completed because they were being really difficult about the garage, and the appraiser withdrew his appraisal and told the loan company he couldn't do it lest I get stuck having to turn the family room back into a garage.

The loan company called a different appraisal company to set up an appointment with me, but didn't tell me. I got a call to schedule an appraisal and told them I had just had one done. That led to another call about why I wasn't cooperating. Once I knew that I needed a second appraisal I called that company back, but they couldn't schedule me until August 31st. (This is another example of how poor understanding and communication on the part of the loan company drew things out.)

The second appraiser didn't even notice the barge rafter, but he didn't like the way the dryer vented, and we needed to change it. We also needed to scrape, repaint, and clean the area of a board underneath the sliding door because there was some paint missing.

I was tempted to just spray paint that, but the explicit instructions made me think that wouldn't work. The dryer vent would require hiring someone, which I could not afford. (Also, it has literally never been a problem. We had it checked years ago and it's fine.)

The specific instructions also bother me coming from this guy who only knew about the half bath because I looked over his notes. He was so careless in his exploration of the house that he missed it. If we didn't need to hire someone for the vent, I probably would have dealt with the board, but with the two completely different outcomes it really made the FHA appraisal process seem like a joke.

Unfortunately, it's a joke that took three months of my time, and strung me along in stress and frustration. I believe the stricter guidelines are a response to the mortgage crisis, but that was caused by people taking loans for amounts they couldn't cover, not because when a house is 44 years old the paint might have worn off in a few spots.

The mental and emotional toll was bad, but I said it hurt me financially. That's not because I didn't get the new mortgage, but because I had to pay $125 for the appraisal. I gave them money that I couldn't afford to drag me through their idiotic appraisal process, and I have been financially behind ever since.

Again, that's not saying that there weren't any bad decisions on my part, but I'd like to refer back to this post:

http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2015/08/a-country-is-not-business.html

Let's just remember that Paul Allen defaulted on a loan because he didn't like the interest rate, which he did not like because he refused to secure the loan, and somehow mysteriously ended up owning the property anyway through undisclosed terms.

I wonder how stressful that was for him.

Mentally poor

I post a lot of poverty-related articles on Facebook, and there have been several that have talked about the mental burden of being poor. There are all of these calculations to make, and it wears you down. There are two stories I want to tell about that.

I referred to one of the stories before, but not the relevant part. You may remember a post from a few years ago about my various attempts to get on Jeopardy, and how I missed one tryout due to getting ill and ending up in the emergency room. I did not write about how I ended up there. It is embarrassing, but this post is embarrassing.

I am diabetic. Back when I was unemployed, keeping all of my medications paid for was hard, and at about the same time that I lost my health insurance my endocrinologist moved to New York, so I was back to my medical care going through the drop-in clinic.

They had some good doctors that I liked, and some horrible ones, but as we get close to this event I'd had a really horrible one. Her bedside manner was bad in general, but I was also behind on my diabetic eye exam (ophthalmologists are expensive out of pocket) and she berated me for that and indicated I had better have that done before I went in again. That mattered because it was getting close to the time when the doctor needed to approve extending the regular prescriptions.

I ran out of my medications, and I was trying to stall until I could make something happen, seeing if I could maybe get in at another doctor or something. I think that was when I found out how useless a lot of programs that are supposed to be helpful are. Anyway, it was lack of medication that sent me into the emergency room. The lack of $275 for an eye exam led to a $1200 emergency room bill, basically.

Fortunately, the ER doc renewed all my prescriptions, and it got me through a little longer.

The funny thing about that is almost immediately after it occurred to me to just call the drop-in clinic before going in and see who was on duty. I never had to see that doctor again, but when I was worrying so much about the eye exam I couldn't figure that out.

That's been a few years now, but I am still susceptible.

Things have gone from being tight financially to being really out of balance lately. I'm going to write about how that happened tomorrow, but for today, let me tell you something that just happened.

I had a bill that was due before the payday where I could pay it. This was stressful, but I thought I could at least schedule the payment through the web site as a show of good faith. The calls started coming after the deadline anyway, so there wasn't as much value in that plan as I'd hoped, but it actually became harmful.

The deposit came in, and because that payment was already schedules I looked for it to be withdrawn. It wasn't. I thought it might take 24 hours. My paychecks come in on Fridays, so there is always a weekend there, but Monday it still hadn't gone through, and I started panicking about it. The web site did not show any scheduled payments, and I was worried, and so I just set up a payment right then.

Well, a day or two after that the previously scheduled payment hit my account. There was no longer enough money to cover it, so that led to a $30 overdraft fee. I hadn't been expecting that. A $20 check I mailed for something else hit, and then there wasn't enough money for that, leading to my second $30 overdraft fee. I could have found better uses for that $60.

Once that had happened it occurred to me that what I should have done is called and asked about the scheduled payment. Do you see that? When will it be withdrawn? That would have been smart. I am usually smart, but when you put financial stress and worry and all of the associated guilt and shame together, it gets harder. It being harder then makes those types of circumstances come up more.

Band Review: Buffy Sainte-Marie

My introduction to Buffy Sainte-Marie came through Sesame Street, like it did for a lot of people in my generation.

My primary memory is of a fascination with the mouth bow that she played, and it is only one of many instruments that she plays, but it was one that I had never seen before, or since really. (I believe my love for the steel drum comes from Sesame Street too.)

Listening to her again after all these years, the first thing that struck me was the unique timbre of Buffy's voice. It was familiar, but something I had forgotten. Then, as I continued to listen, it was the overwhelming variety of the music.

Many of the songs have a folk music/protest song feeling, and that makes sense for someone who has always been an activist. There are also songs that sound country, and songs that sound rock, and an amazing amount of variety. Some songs seem to reference the Middle Ages. The variety should make sense given the longevity of her career, but the variety was already there at a time when the career had been much shorter.

I have to go back to Sesame Street, because that's where I started. I looked up some old clips, and there were some of regular performances, which is more what I remember, but there are also clips of her with her son Cody, and of Buffy turning bath time and swimming into songs. Even the most basic activities can be set to music that incorporates the activity, because the music is so much a part of her.

Everything else comes from having the music be so strongly a part of her that it flows through everything around her, or from her recognizing the music around her so well that it goes inside.

That's what I will remember now.

http://buffysainte-marie.com/

https://www.facebook.com/buffysaintemarie

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFxF-IhTPVIzZ5qo_pZUcZw

https://twitter.com/buffystemarie

Band Review: Eion Willoughby

I often do something a little offbeat on Thanksgiving because I am concerned that with the holiday not many people will read it, and that seems unfair to the artist.

This year it was a relief, because I really hated this music, and I feel bad posting about it.

I do admit that listening to Soundcloud instead of watching the videos was a lot less annoying. That is not a reflection on Willoughby's appearance, because many of the videos don't even focus on him that much. The issue was more the apparent carelessness in the making and the utter lack of craft, giving the impression that everyone involved was so sure that they were wonderful that there was no need for effort.

Merely having it playing in the background did not have as bad an effect, though I did have the volume a bit lower than usual.

The songs done with Kendra are a little less annoying, so collaboration can have a positive effect, but I just don't care anymore. I will still post one of the videos as a song of the day next month, because this review did happen. He did follow me on Twitter. But then it's over.

Mainly it feels like a reminder that electronica has similar accessibility to hip hop, where a lot of people can do it, and so many people who aren't really that good at it still produce a lot of material.

https://soundcloud.com/eionofficial

http://www.eionofficial.com/

https://www.facebook.com/eionofficial?_rdr=p

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkcOMoMUZbJyDAsTVQZKZ5Q?app=desktop

https://twitter.com/EionOfficial

So wrong

Not that long ago a politician was sounding absolutely ridiculous in his efforts to not admit to actually being wrong, as opposed to having merely misspoken or been fooled with a trick question, or anything other than legitimately having said something stupid and terrible.

(Doesn't really narrow it down much, does it?)

I remember thinking how important it is to be able to admit being wrong. It allows so much stupidity to be avoided, and that's not just by eliminating the absurd attempts at saving face. When you own mistakes you are able to learn from them better. You become less careless about future mistakes because you remember having to correct.

I was never a big liar before, but it was having to confess a lie that really set me against it. It just wasn't worth it.

(Though learning that you don't have to tell someone something that is none of their business can also make honesty easier.)

Anyway, I was thinking that maybe I should set an example and have a blog post admitting something I was wrong about, but I couldn't come up with anything good. Many things where I have been wrong or stupid about things have already been blogged about extensively.

Some things that I still have trouble with relate to a lack of patience with annoying people. It is possible to write really interesting and humorous things about how some people test my patience, but that seems more likely to get mean-spirited than make a good case. And I can just say sometimes I have really mean thoughts about people - in fact, I just did - but I don't think it helps anything.

However, I have been thinking about poverty issues a lot, along with my own financial issues. Some of the experiences that I have affect a lot of people, and maybe there are things to say. There are some taboos on talking about money openly, and also, I get really defensive about it. I certainly have made some financial mistakes. In that way it could accomplish similar purposes.

I had been thinking about writing about that this week, but it seemed like a bad lead-in to Thanksgiving. So, I believe I will be doing that next week.

If something else comes up, that may not work out, but still, be willing to admit when you are wrong. It takes a heavy weight off. Yes, try to understand things and make good choices so that you are not wrong all the time, but when it happens, embrace it.

Even if you're a politician? ESPECIALLY if you're a politician.

The stuff that is not writing

An amazing and horrible thing happened today.

Yesterday I wrote that I had submitted a new version of the Family Blood screenplay. While I had updated some information, one of my goals for today was to look at other submitted projects and see what I can do better with my own descriptions and information.

That may still be a good idea, but the urgency has been deflated a bit because the screenplay has already been rejected.

I'm not going to lie; my first reaction was to just sob for a few minutes. I really thought I had a shot, and that this particular shot would be my last chance of finishing the year in a fiscally sound place. In that way it was a big blow, and it coming within 24 hours felt really harsh.

However, once the sobs died down, I have to admit that's the first time I have gotten any response other than a notification that the 40-day review period has expired, indicating that this submission has at least been taken more seriously. I don't know if they automatically take a deeper look at second versions, or if it was because I added the image, or because I mentioned it being tied to a book series but then they saw that it is not a heavy-selling book series. It's just one more step, I guess.

Amazon has been helpful and frustrating lately. I added reviews to all five of my books on Goodreads. I followed the prompt to add a review to Cara on Amazon, and it allowed me to fill in some parts then rejected it because I might be biased.

However, when I was looking at adding excerpts on Goodreads, I see that previews are available via Amazon, which can be helpful. I still think adding a few paragraphs to the page itself that don't require any clicking or windows opening is a good idea, and will be getting those added tonight.

I guess there's always next year.

Apologies to G T Denny

Some time ago I was mystified by a television commercial for a book that appeared to be self-published.

http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2012/04/cynical-look-at-shameless-self.html

In addition, I noticed that the author seemed to have posted four out of the five reviews that were there at the time, one of them being remarkably incoherent for an author.

I suppose I was a little judgmental, but now I have to back off, because tonight I am going to be posting reviews on Goodreads and Amazon for all five of my books. (Still no plans for a TV commercial.)

I will only post one review each, as myself, and I will specify that I am the author. I may even write that this feels weird because I am the author, though if I put that in each review it will get a little repetitive. It does feel weird. It just also feels necessary.

I would see the prompt to post a review on both sites frequently, but it didn't feel right. Writing a book is not the same as reading it, though you do get very familiar with the content.

I do like them. I feel they are good, but then if I give a good review is it arrogant?

Also, I hardly ever give five stars, I don't think I should give myself five stars, but then does that look like I don't have confidence in my work? Because four stars from me is pretty good. I think four stars is about right.

(It's just that they are fiction, and not trying to be anything other than a good story, so that's not "It was amazing"; that's "I really liked it".)

It's also weird to put a date on when I read them, though I am going with the publication date for the books published this year, and when I was looking over the proofs for the books I published last year. This will at least up my book count for the year, which is nice.

Or maybe I should just put the publication date for all of them so it doesn't look like I read the sequel before the original. I wrote them in the order they happened, to the extent that they did happen.

I'll try and get excerpts up for each book too, but that may not happen tonight.

What I can tell you happened today is that now that there is a Family Blood novel trilogy, I revised the Family Blood screenplay and reloaded it:

https://studios.amazon.com/projects/21022

I write better now than I did in 2013. (I should. I've been doing it a lot.)

So now it's like the movie is based on the book, but the book was based on the movie first. See. It's all weird!

And please, please, please, if you have read any of my books, please post reviews for them. It makes a difference. Thank you!