Thus far, in my life, I have never owned my own home except when I’ve lived in VW vans. It’s my own fault – mortgages were easy to come by several times in my life and I chose not to invest. This will sound funny, but the prices always seemed too high. In the early-1990s…
Category: America
My Last Oregon Garage Sale – God Willing
I used to love having garage sales. It was fun to let stuff go and meet who was taking it while making a little money at the same time. I think all of that changed when we moved to a small Oregon town with a depressed economy. Here, and probably in many other parts of…
Ramadan Mubarak & Ramadan Kareem & Random Musings
The world is filled with kind, peaceful, struggling-with-life-just-like-everyone Muslim people. From the bottom of my heart, I wish them Ramadan Mubarak and Ramadan Kareem. The month of Ramadan is much better understood in my country, the United States of America, than it has ever been before but still – the mistrust, misunderstanding, fear, and hatred…
Social Insecurity and the Unpleasant American Dream
I’m certain that I’m not alone. I have no retirement plan. There is no windfall waiting for me. No inheritance or IRA sits patiently waiting for my time of need. I have enough debt to keep me awake at night from time to time. No social safety net protects me or my family from a…
A Shameful Society
What kind of world do we live in when a slime ball like Bill O’Reilly not only doesn’t get fired for sexual harassment but also gets a huge payoff when the company he works for (FOX) realizes that people are upset that he got away with sexually harassing multiple women – who were also paid…
The Joy of an Ebay Auction
I’m watching an auction right now….it’s something I want, but don’t need yet, but will need eventually, so I’ve been watching a few auctions. Most of them have gone for way too much – this one though – the price is right – at the moment, but there are 27 minutes left, so that can…
The Looming Financial Crisis – Navient Student Loans
Here is what the base of the next big financial crisis will be…it will be students like me who borrowed $30k and then graduated at the start of the great recession – and then were encouraged to use forbearance on their student loans while they struggled to find their feet under them, start families, and…
The Regulated Society
I remember having a conversation with a ‘gun nut’ friend who insisted that she should be able to carry and shoot her gun anywhere she likes. I disagreed. I found it astounding that she couldn’t see that 1) her gun created a power inequality between her and anyone without a gun and 2) that unless…
The Internet Isn’t What We Thought It Would Be….
Back in the 1990’s I was an activist. Even while I was still in the Marine Corps, I was placing Greenpeace stickers on garbage cans in the barracks and trying hard to bring about little changes in consciousness – granted, it was probably the wrong place to do it and that might explain why I…
America – One Month in the USA – Bank Robbery, Prison, Squatting, Ambulances, and Dinosaurs
It’s been a month since we arrived in the USA – we haven’t seen a lot of the country, but we have seen a lot. We saw a bank robbery in Millbrae, California when we went to go meet my friend for dinner. Officers had the Bank of America surrounded and were using AR-15s and…