That hissing sound is not flatulence. It’s the sound of your billfold or purse deflating as middle income Americans are called upon to bailout an ailing Financial Industry.
Generally speaking, I’ve backed President Bush on the hard decisions he’s made during his years in our nation’s highest office. However, I’m not so sure this bailout mess is the best option. I listened to the Presidential Address last night (24-September) and came away with less understanding as to what caused the market failure than I had going into the President’s speech.
If we Republicans have a fault, it’s a failure to do unto the Democrats as they do unto us. While, the root cause of the financial fiasco, as agreed upon by every commentator I’ve read, was formed during the Clinton administration, our modest President did not go there last night. He missed a great opportunity to explain to John Q. Public how the arm-twisting of the Clinton administration forced lenders to take huge risks, often making loans and mortgages available to entities unable to repay. As long as housing prices kept rising, the bad loans were not seen as bad, as a foreclosure could result in a property eventually bringing more than the initial amount of the loan.
Ronald Reagan once said that the nine most terrifying words in the English language are, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”
I’m confident the latest governmental “fix” will bite the average taxpayer not only in the billfold but elsewhere, too.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Browns In Town
For some reason, parents assume their children will grow up to be perfect in every respect, regardless of the gene pool from which they came. Some of the worst parents have the best children, and some of the best parents produce offspring which give rise to speculation the mother really was abducted and impregnated by an alien. Though it may sound a little crass, even somewhat fatalistic, having children is a crapshoot.
The biggest problem parents face in raising children falls within the category I call “handling expectations.” Too their credit, most parents do a pretty decent job in getting their children from the cradle to college without killing them somewhere along the way. Children are born with a limited lifetime warranty, which is invalidated within hours of birth or shortly after the child realizes his or her world has suddenly and, unbeknownst to him or her at the moment, forever changed.
Unfortunately, new parents can’t simply return the “merchandise,” because it doesn’t fit, isn’t the right color, doesn’t look like the picture in the catalog, or doesn’t work properly. And, since infanticide is a criminal act, parents are stuck with a product they are often ill-equipped to operate.
It’s a good thing God made grandparents, especially grandmothers. Children need grandparents, preferably two sets of them. Grandparents, having survived rearing their own children, are endowed with a special wisdom, which can be most helpful to a child’s parents, especially during the early years of child-rearing when parenting skills are in the developmental stage.
My sister, Sarah, who has often stated, “I have raised two of the most ungrateful children, God ever let breathe,” will become a grandmother around April 10, 2009, or else “in the fullness of time.”
Oh, her son and daughter are not as ungrateful as she would have one believe. In fact she may have set her expectations of them too high. Even if she were the perfect mother, her children had a less than perfect father, and she’d be the first to so attest.
Sarah’s son, Brett, and his wife, Kathy, are expecting their first child. Presently, the parents-to-be are residents of Pearl, Mississippi. Brett is employed by Affiliated Computer Services and Kathy is in her final year of Medical School at the University of Mississippi. Together, the two have a bright financial future.
Brett and Kathy were in Pontotoc over the weekend to share their good news and sonogram prints of the “child within” with family and friends.
Sarah viewed the reason for their visit somewhat differently, “Brett only came home to get his birthday present.”
While, it’s true Brett’s birthday was this past week, and he doesn’t come back very frequently to see his mother, it’s not like he and Kathy live just across the Pontotoc County line.
It’s a three-hour drive for them, and my advice to Sarah is, “Cut him some slack, Sis.”
That which will be most interesting to me, should I live long enough for it all to play out, will be to find out if an imperfect son can sire a perfect grandchild.
The biggest problem parents face in raising children falls within the category I call “handling expectations.” Too their credit, most parents do a pretty decent job in getting their children from the cradle to college without killing them somewhere along the way. Children are born with a limited lifetime warranty, which is invalidated within hours of birth or shortly after the child realizes his or her world has suddenly and, unbeknownst to him or her at the moment, forever changed.
Unfortunately, new parents can’t simply return the “merchandise,” because it doesn’t fit, isn’t the right color, doesn’t look like the picture in the catalog, or doesn’t work properly. And, since infanticide is a criminal act, parents are stuck with a product they are often ill-equipped to operate.
It’s a good thing God made grandparents, especially grandmothers. Children need grandparents, preferably two sets of them. Grandparents, having survived rearing their own children, are endowed with a special wisdom, which can be most helpful to a child’s parents, especially during the early years of child-rearing when parenting skills are in the developmental stage.
My sister, Sarah, who has often stated, “I have raised two of the most ungrateful children, God ever let breathe,” will become a grandmother around April 10, 2009, or else “in the fullness of time.”
Oh, her son and daughter are not as ungrateful as she would have one believe. In fact she may have set her expectations of them too high. Even if she were the perfect mother, her children had a less than perfect father, and she’d be the first to so attest.
Sarah’s son, Brett, and his wife, Kathy, are expecting their first child. Presently, the parents-to-be are residents of Pearl, Mississippi. Brett is employed by Affiliated Computer Services and Kathy is in her final year of Medical School at the University of Mississippi. Together, the two have a bright financial future.
Brett and Kathy were in Pontotoc over the weekend to share their good news and sonogram prints of the “child within” with family and friends.
Sarah viewed the reason for their visit somewhat differently, “Brett only came home to get his birthday present.”
While, it’s true Brett’s birthday was this past week, and he doesn’t come back very frequently to see his mother, it’s not like he and Kathy live just across the Pontotoc County line.
It’s a three-hour drive for them, and my advice to Sarah is, “Cut him some slack, Sis.”
That which will be most interesting to me, should I live long enough for it all to play out, will be to find out if an imperfect son can sire a perfect grandchild.
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Well Worth The Trip
Barbara and I slipped away, recently, to enjoy something of a Nature walk. After parking our vehicle in a bottomland meadow, we made our way to a forested trail that meandered gently up a small hill. The canopy of half-century to century-old trees held undergrowth to a minimum. After hiking about a quarter of a mile, we came to an opening where hundreds of others had gathered under canopies both natural and manmade to celebrate a remarkable event, the fall migration of thousands of hummingbirds. We were at the Strawberry Plains Audobon Center near Holly Springs, Mississippi, to enjoy the annual Holly Springs Hummingbird Festival. Once the property of Ruth and Thomas Finley, their daughters willed the 2,500 acre estate to the Audubon Society which has transformed the land into a paradise for naturalists and lovers of Nature.
The presence of hummingbirds may be the most celebrated and visible manifestation of the work of the Audubon Society, but the abundance of native plants provide habitat for more than 200 species of birds (source http://www.msaudubon.org/hummingbird08.php) Additionally, there are more than fourteen miles of walking/ hiking trails at the Center.
Barbara and I only stayed a couple of hours, but could have stayed a full day had time permitted. We listened to Bob Sargent explain hummingbirds to an audience surrounding him as he held a hummingbird in his hand and interacted with the group. Nearby, others demonstrated how captured birds were weighed, measured, and banded, before being released. A few lucky bystanders were privileged to release the banded hummingbirds.
I could not interest Barbara in attending the lectures on bats, snakes and raptors, but she and I enjoyed visiting the booths of vendors, where we window-shopped Nature prints, paintings, and bird feeders. We did make our way into the Davis house, the Antebellum home restored by Margaret Finley Shackelford, where the first floor was partially opened to allow visitors to enjoy the view from the sun porch of scores of hummingbirds feeding in the flower garden and enjoying the sugar-water in a multiple feeders.
We plan to allow more time to enjoy next year’s Hummingbird Festival, and next year I’m sure we’ll have our grandchildren and our daughter and son-in-law with us.
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About Me
- Wayne Carter
- I'm a native of Pontotoc, MS, and graduated Pontotoc High School in 1960. I received a BS degree in Mathematics from The University of Mississippi in 1965. My wife Barbara and I have two children and five grandchildren and two great grandchildren. We make our home in Pontotoc.