Author: JenniferFitz

Google-Share Drama, Episode 2

Here’s a link to the very helpful info Entropy recommended at Melissa Wiley’s site.  Some good ideas (in addition to what Julie & Sarah mentioned bleg combox.)  Hey and wow, another great blog to read while I’m at it.  Yay.

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What’s the big deal about the Google change?  Here’s what I wrote in Melissa’s combox when I thanked her for the info:

Thank you for posting this!  I’m feeling the pain of not being able to share posts anymore.  I don’t like to do my topic-sharing on the social networks, because most of what I read and write about on the internet is politics and religion, two topics that don’t mesh well with my very diverse real-life set of friends. So I keep FB and the like purely cocktail-party talk, and if people want to know more about what I think, they can click on my website link.

I don’t have a double life on the internet anymore than I do in real life.  But I do try (no seriously, I do try) not to be a jerk and a bore.  My real-life friends are very kind, considerate people who make a point of not ramming some topic down my throat that I don’t care to debate.  I try to return the favor.  My friends on Facebook are real people I know in real life, people I respect and whose company I enjoy.   The link to this blog is on my facebook profile — if anyone wants to know what I think about death or taxes, they can click.  But they don’t have to.  I like it that way.

I debated whether maybe Google+ should be more like this blog and less like Facebook, and therefore, hey, yeah, fill it with links about politics and religion, why not?  But I don’t like that solution, for the same reason I don’t like (and therefore don’t do) flooding FB with Fr. L and Darwin and all the team.

And don’t tell me that Google+ promises to keep all my circles separate blah blah blah. I’ll believe it when I see it.  The general rule on the internet is that even when I try not to bore people by linking stuff in places it doesn’t belong, some clever inventor decides to combine it all anyway.  Also, I’m not looking for a new hobby.  So building up a thousand separate “circles” isn’t on my list.  If I do Google+ (and I suppose I probably will), you’ll all be in one very large circle.  Feels like a giant Girl Scout Camp ice-breaker activity.

Property Taxes, Vacation, & Friendship with the 1%

We sneaked away this weekend for a last-minute beach retreat, courtesy of the 1%.  Ridiculously luxurious surroundings, a feast for the armchair architect, but eventually I kept thinking the place needed an overhaul from Extreme Makeover, Monastery Edition — too much rich food begins to wear.  (All the same: Lovely weekend and we are very grateful to our patron.)

But here’s what I want:  Property tax reform that protects middle-class vacation retreats. My arguments:

1. There’s a legitimate need for retreat.  To withdraw to some quiet, natural place and just be very quiet.  It would seem self-indulgent except that even the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal  agree.

2. For married people with children, a house or cabin or apartment with amenities for children seems appropriate.

3.  In much of the world, there is a real shortage of monasteries set up for the drooling / yelling / jumping-on-the-bed set.

4.  But it’s not so hard to find a nice quiet place near a good Catholic parish church.

5. Somebody’s got to own the house.

But here is what is happening in my state: 

1. Ordinary families with normal middle-class incomes purchase land in some remote, unpopular, but peaceful location.

2. They erect a frugal structure suitable for family retreats.

3. For a while, family, friends, and guests (including complete strangers on tight budgets looking for a rental cheaper than a hotel), get to enjoy the retreat.

4. Then the area becomes popular, rich people buy up neighboring properties (no complaints there, rich people need retreats too), and land values rise.

5. So what?  You still have your humble little family cabin.

6. Until property taxes are raised to reflect the increase of land values.

7. And your family has to sell the retreat.  Because the taxes are so ridiculously high.  The buyer bulldozes your cabin and builds a beautiful, tasteful, mini-mansion that rents for more than anyone you know can afford.

8.  And then you don’t have anywhere to go.

9.  And you know that if you buy a little retreat somewhere else, the same thing will happen again.

I guess one could argue that if you take the windfall from selling the place then you’re so much happier with all that cash from your investment.  Except that a) you weren’t trying to invest for cash, you just wanted a family vacation cabin b) my experience is that the finances don’t end up working that well.  The general consensus is that the family well-being was greater when the family had the cabin.

I’m not sure how you do this in a way that protects the family cabin without also making it easy for land magnates to hoard vast stretches for future development and not pay taxes on their accumulation.  But that’s what I want.

Marx Brothers Update

The inimitable Dan Castell sends in an update:

(1)

I have amended the blurb to include a few lines, as follows:

In this light-hearted short story, Groucho and Chico Marx are on a desperate search for God when they run into a pack of joke-starved comedians led by W.C. Fields. And it happens like this:

A portly soul steps forth from the mist.

Groucho does a double-take at the soul, then reaches out to shake hands.  “You’re…you’re W.C. Fields.  Mr. Fields, you’re one of my heroes.”

“Mine too,” says Fields in his trademark twang.  “Take pride in your good taste, son.  Now go away—you bother me.”

“But Mr. Fields.  I learned everything I know about comedy watching you.  You made me what I am today.”

“That’s the most revolting testimonial I’ve ever heard,” says Fields.  “I plead not guilty on all counts.  Who are you, anyway, my indefatigable carbuncle?”

“Don’t you remember me?  I’m Groucho Marx.”

“Marx…Marx?”  Fields scratches the back of his neck with his bamboo cane.  “Oh yes, I recall that catastrophic encounter.  You muffed that scrub grounder during the ‘08 World Series.  You cost Ed ‘Two Toes’ Jones his shut out.  Your team lost the game and I lost fifty dollars.  Fortunately, I deducted it as educational expenses.”

“Educational expenses?”

“Yes, I learned never to bet on a game until you know the final outcome.”

11-year-old boys at my house swear by this guy.  I’d describe Castell’s genre as sort of like the Hitchhiker’s Guide, only it’s the Marx Brothers wandering Heaven, and replace the existential theme with laugh-out-loud one-liners.  Or think Monty Python, only toned down to purely mild-PG.  (And no, I still don’t own a Kindle, and I haven’t seen this exact story.  Have seen his other work and enjoyed it.)

The update continues:

(2)

It is also about to being joined by its cousin, “The Marx Brothers Meet the Doctors of Death,” whenever the e-gods deign to inflict it upon an innocent and unsuspecting blogosphere (in other words, when it works its way through the Amazon’s mysterious innards to go live).

(3)

Likewise, over in Barnes and Noble land with both stories, where they tell me they will be available in “24-72 hours”, which actually makes the cable guys look like Mr. Monk in the matter of appointment keeping.

And don’t fret yourself: I’ll be glad to send follow-up when that watershed moment arrives.

I’ll let you know when he lets me know.

Modesty & Sexism

In the combox at Ashely McGuire’s “Case for a Catholic Dress Code”, a reader argues that such dress codes are sexist — what with all the talk being about short skirts and cleavage.

So let’s clear something up: Men should not wear tight, skimpy clothing to Mass.  Here’s a picture tutorial to assist.

1. Skirt meet knees, knees meet skirt:

Yes.
No.

 

2. Cover the shoulders.

Yes.
No.

3. No cleavage.

Yes.
No.

4. Tailored yes, tight no:

Yes.
No.

 

 

Artwork:

Irish men in kilts: By Informatique (Flickr) (http://flickr.com/photos/infomatique/179122558/) [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons
Islanders in grass skirts:  Taken in 1914 by Augustin Erdland and uploaded by Rémih ([1]) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Apostle Peter: 13 century Greek icon painter (The Dumbarton Oaks Museum, Washington D.C., USA) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Toga Party: Lithiumoxide at English Wikipedia [GFDL, CC-BY-SA-3.0 or CC BY-SA 2.5-2.0-1.0], via Wikimedia Commons
BeeGees: By Atco Records. (eBay itemphoto frontphoto back) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Eric Claption: CC 3.0 via Wikimedia https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Clapton.jpg

Moliere: By Eustache Lorsay [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Medieval Men in Tights: By Meister des Jouvenel des Ursins [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Kindle for les francophiles . . .

A little franglais for you, hehe.

H/T to David Gaughran for pointing out Amazon now has a Kindle store in France, *and* french language titles available in the US.  (A couple weeks old now, but maybe you missed it too.)   A quick search at the US store for kindle books “en francais”, and wow, piles of interesting stuff.  Lot of classics in the public domain available for free.

This one totally has my name on it: Le Docteur Omega (Aventures fantastiques de trois Français dans la Planète Mars)  Circa 1906, it’s like a source document for Dr. Boli & the Young Chesterton Series both.

I like paper.  Strongly prefer it.  But between the cost of print books and the space constraints for storing them, plus Gibert Joseph has yet to open an outlet in my corner of the backwoods, getting what I want to read is not so easy.  I might have to take this up with Mr. Claus.

3 Quick Takes: Rosary, College, Good things to read.

I could never be coordinated enough produce seven on a Friday.  But here’s three:

1) If you ever wondered how someone like me ended up in the Legion of Mary, yeah, it’s about how you’d think.  Don’t be fooled by that lovely little picture Sarah R. stuck up, I pray nothing but plastic these days.  Unblessed at that, which horrifies the gallant rosary-maker I thanked the other week, but I tell you right now there is a rosary permanently stuck in the track of the seat of my truck.  Yes.  With the cheerios crumbs and the hardened mass you secretly hope is just gum, but maybe it isn’t.  It’s all I can do to pray the thing; keeping it from falling out of my pocket and into the netherworld where no blessed objects belong is beyond my  ability.

2) I don’t care what the nice guy at the Newman Society says, $20,000 a year for college tuition is not “affordable”.  Put me firmly in the camp with Msgr. Pope, on the question of “Are We Unjust to Require College Degrees As Often As We Do?” Yes.  We are unjust.  It is a mockery to post “degree required” positions for jobs that don’t pay enough to cover the cost of student loans.

3) I am having massive fun today hitting the “share” button in Google reader.  I made a little sidebar here on the blog that shows my favorite google-read posts.  If you are like me and never, ever, actually visit your favorite blogs (because you read everything in RSS), but weirdly you want to know what things other people wrote that I think are worth reading, I think the link to my Google Reader Shared Posts page is here. Which in theory you could subscribe to.  I have to test and see if that works.  (Update: Yes!  It works!)

Vocation and Education

Glad I clicked on this article by Elizabeth Scalia at First Things.  (I almost never click on anything that doesn’t arrive whole and entire in my feed reader.  This one was worth it.)  She writes:

A sense of calling is an idea to which our children often lack an introduction. We tell students they can plot their futures based on test scores measuring information regurgitation; we have no means of measuring their imaginations or their dreams, yet is from these that their deepest and truest longings—and thus their vocations, the things they were born to do—are discovered.

Last year I tried discussing vocations with the fifth graders.  I began by asking, “What are you good at?  What do you love to do?”

My own children have a clear sense of these things by late-elementary school.  They know what they like — military history for that one, emergency medicine for the other.  Even younger, they know what they are like.  This one reads massive quanitities of everything, writes satire, and loves hard manual labor; that one has a talent for teaching and connecting with small children; this one wants to know how it works and then make her own; that one feels everything very, very deeply.

Those were the types of answers I expected from my 5th graders.  Instead, they produced a list of academic subjects and school sports.  They were a room full of people who like math and play soccer.  Very few had a hobby other than an organized sport or club; even fewer had an interest in a field of study beyond whatever passes for “social studies” or “language arts”. The idea that you might, say, love poetry and have developed a taste for this or that type of poem? Nope.

Their worlds, it seemed, were so narrow. No room in the schedule for finding out who they were and what they loved.

Sometimes I feel like the music instructor pushing the talented kid to attend a thousand workshops and camps, when I take parents aside and tell them that this son or daughter has a talent for theology, and needs to be given more instruction, above and beyond the regular parish offerings.

I tell my DRE that if we don’t offer a serious high school religious ed program, we are like a school praying for more pre-med students, but never offering high school biology.  Do we really want more priests and religious?  We have to give our students a chance to discover the depth and riches of an adult faith.  And then, if they are called, to fall in love.

 

The Marx Brothers Meet W.C. Fields

Dan Castell’s first Marx Brothers short story is up at Amazon, “The Marx Brothers Meet W.C. Fields”.

I haven’t read it yet. Just e-mailed Mr. Castell to tell him to fix the Kindle preview so you can see an excerpt of the dialog. Because I have seen drafts of some of the other episodes in the series, and yes, hilarious.  Mr. Boy approves.

And more living wage: Chocolate

From The Anchoress.  Go read.

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Where does the money come from to pay a living wage for workers?  It comes from your profits.  In order to pay your workers enough, you must give them some of that money you wanted to keep for yourself.

–> For this reason, there is not an obligation to pay your workers out of your own need.  “Need” as in need.  But if your company is reporting profits?  If you are taking home more income than you need to meet your basic needs?  [Hint: Your needs are about the same as all the other human beings.]  All your workers need to be paid their entire wage.  That is, no less than the amount necessary to live. You get to take home extra money after you have paid all your bills.

Profits are not evil.  Profits are good and necessary.  Profits are desirable.  Profits are what you use to invest, to grow your business, to produce more wealth.  But if your profit depends on taking advantage of the misery of others in order to cheat them of their daily bread that you might live in greater luxury?  Then you are a) not a successful businessperson, and b) evil.

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I don’t usually go in for bizarre economic regulations and all that.  But this is in area where responsibility rests with employers.  A boycott is good, but ultimately consumers are not auditors.  There is a legitimate role for government oversight if employers are habitually abusing employees.   But I’d rather see good third-party auditing instead.  For all the shenanigans of accounting firms, at least when one goes bonkers, it can fall apart and be gone — not so easy to dissolve a government agency.

Auditing wages is something accountants could do and do well.  You can count on an accountant to look straight at you and say, “No, actually your kid doesn’t need dance lessons.” Accountants don’t fall for lines about cultural integrity and hermeneutics of inadequacy and blah blah blah.  We say things like, “Oh, guests are coming over.  Guess we ought to turn the heat on then, people expect to take their coat off indoors, don’t they?”  And then we turn the heat back down soon as those luxury-wallowing parasites get out the door.  No, accountants will not make you overpay your workers, you can be sure of that.

‘Till now we’ve wondered how we could possibly simplify the tax code, what with all the accountants that would be out of work.  But look!  Problem solved!  Free them all up to audit something useful for a change.  Then write just the bare minimum of a law needed to bring the facts about hiring practices to the light of day.