Recycling Service Expands in Lake Shastina

Last month I wrote about this start-up company and they have just now provided this map of their expanded pickup route. The starting date for the added roads (Muskrat, Fisher, Jackrabbit, & Elk Trail) is next Monday, April 5 and to participate just put any plastics and aluminum into a black trash bag by the side of the street. Plastic beverage bottles with "CRV" on the label are not only accepted but desirable to Way Out for recycling value.(They cannot take glass or newspapers yet but if enough of us begin using this service this might change.)

If you live on any one of the several courts that branch off the yellowed roadways shown above you might call the LSPOA office at 938-3281 to ask if it is okay to leave your bag(s) on the side of the main road.

One of the (several) nice things about this service is that you don't have to separate the different plastics nor drive them to town. Time is money as they say and it's great now to NOT have six or seven boxes in your garage for the different numbers. If you look on each plastic container there will be the recycling triangle icon with a number in it and WayOut takes them all.

To save those flimsy vegetable bags and white plastic grocery bags (both #2) try this: cut a 2" hole in the side of a plastic milk jug (also #2) and push the bags inside. You can jam a great number of bags in there and since it's all #2, you just leave of the milk jug in the black trash bag instead of 3 cubic feet of uncompressed plastic bags. You will be able to get a lot more in this way.

If you have questions call Jason Robinson at 938-9967 or email him at wayoutrecycling@yahoo.com.

Late development: Jason reports that response has been so strong that he is willing to come to any address to make a pick up. So if you do not live on the map route above don't dispair, just call or email him with your address and they will come right to your home.

Due to so many calls they are even considering a glass pickup once a month but they do not yet have a trailer to haul with (although he said that is coming soon) and if anyone here in Lake Shastina who owns a trailer is willing to let them use theirs for a month or two they will add glass to the program.

Again, call Jason at 938-9967. Let's all get on board with this neat program!

More Recycling News

As some of you know a start-up company is now servicing Lake Shastina with free pickup for plastic and aluminum. There is a story in the Siskiyou Daily News about them (http://www.siskiyoudaily.com/news/business/x1176897000/New-company-offers-recycling-service-to-residents). Way Out Recycling apparently enters Shastina at Tony Lema, proceeding to Lake Shore then left to Palmer and exiting up Muskrat and Antelope. I wrote them to confirm this route but the point is we need to participate to encourage the enterprise. Leave a trash bag by the street with all your plastics (numbers one thru 7) each first and third Monday in the am and they will pick up.
Tip; plastic milk jugs are #2 and so are those flimsy vegetable tear-offs you get at Ray's & Raley's so cut a hole in an empty milk jug and stuff the bags in. You can jam a lot of them in there and it all goes to the same place. Better than the landfill.

Be Advised

Actually, pleading (the search word I used to find this image on Google) does not apply here. The topic I'm trying to address is how to avoid a nervous breakdown when trying to buy an REO or short sale home. Begging does not work in this environment. Hopless submissiveness is better but I couldn't find a picture of that.

The problem is that the pricing on these homes is so low that buyers become much more compliant and far less demanding than in a normal purchase where the buyer is dealing with a real person who may actually live in the home. It's the idea that there probably are other buyers lined up for this bargain and if you don't agree to the seller's demands and way of doing business the seller will just drop you and go on to the next buyer.

For example the seller bank chooses the escrow company. To most buyers, this seems innocent enough but it ends up costing you the buyer not only extra time but more money as well. Buyers have the right to choose their own and normally it is a local one but these big banks are powerful and when you try to exercise that right and keep the escrow local they just refuse and threaten to go on to the next buyer. Don't quote me on this but most of us out here in real estate land suspect collusion and so do the lawyers so a law got passed requiring seller banks to provide a form stating that you have this right. All they had to do was to take a small step sideways (offering to pay the title insurance) and it bypasses the law very neatly.

So here you come, the thirsty buyer looking for a real deal. The price is fantastic so what do the terms matter? Here is where the rubber meets the road. Suddenly a 30 day escrow becomes a six month nightmare. Oops, the closing costs are more than expected (most of these banks won't even SIGN a purchase offer, they will only sign when the deal is in escrow . . . way too late to ask questions.)

So, beware. Expect much more paperwork. More delays. More games. There is a price for the steal you thought you had.

Medical Care Disaster in Mt. Shasta

We learned Thursday in a phone call that Mercy Care Center, one of the finest nursing care facilities in Northern California, is closing its doors. Sally's mother has resided there for some time and was the reason we got the call, the announcement will appear for the general public in next week's papers.

The Care Center is a unit of Mercy Medical Center, the hospital in Mt. Shasta which has been subsidizing the Care Center to the tune of nearly a million dollars each year for the past several years according to Morris Eagleman, Vice President of Patient Care Services whom we met with yesterday for guidance. He explained that it had come down to a choice of closing the Care Center or the hospital itself and there was broad agreement in higher management that the hospital served a wider and more immediate need in the community.

Nonetheless it was a wrenchingly painful decision he said. There are 46 patients in the Care Center each of whom requires round-the-clock professional care unobtainable in a home setting. But the unforgiving realities of our depressed economy had finally reached the point where the facility was unsustainable ___ expenses were outstripping income at the rate of a million dollars a year and it was weakening the hospital next door.

The care center employs around 60 people and their departure will be a severe blow as well and to the entire county because many live and shop in other towns besides Mt. Shasta. Then there will be a major impact on the local businesses which provide services and supplies to the Care Center, jobs may be lost in that area as well. The overall economic impact of this closure is staggering.

But for all concerned the very hardest part of the entire tragedy are the effects of the closure on the 46 patients and this was painfully evident to each of the staff whom we have come to know over the years. There were hugs and tears everywhere when we went there after our visit with Eagleman. None of the patients will be thrown out onto the street Eagleman made quite clear, nor dumped on their families. Rather the facility will strive over the coming months to place them in other care centers.

The unfortunate part however is that nursing homes are closing all over California for the same exact reasons and the task of placing a resident will be a challenge. Since there are so few in this rural end of the state the likelihood is that the patients will end up in urban areas far away from their families and loved ones.

While moving to a new rest home will be hard enough for these residents (Sally's mom is 100 and practically bedridden for example) many depend on family visits to keep up their spirits and reason for living at all. We heard one heart-breaking story where the husband lives on his own but the wife in the Care Center because she has so many medical problems the man was simply physically unable to care for her. But the real twist is that she absolutely will not eat anything unless he is there with her at each meal. Right now he is next door in an apartment but what will happen when his wife is hundreds of miles away?

This entire scenario is sad beyond words and there is little I can do here to fully describe it's impact on people. I encourage you all to write your elected officials and try to head off this closure which will cause so much misery to those least able to defend themselves . . . the 46 elderly patients of Mercy Care Center.

Jim Nielsen, our state assemblyman; 530-223-6300 (Redding office) or email: assemblymember.nielsen@assembly.ca.gov

Sam Aanestad, state senator; 530-225-3142 (Redding office) or email: senator.aanestad@sen.ca.gov

Arnold Schwarzenegger, our governor; 916-445-2841 or email: governor@governor.ca.gov

Wally Herger, our congressional representative; 530-223-5898 (Redding office), no email shown.

Diane Feinstein, our senator in Congress; 202-224-3841 or email senator@feinstein.senate.gov

Barbara Boxer, our other senator in Congress; 202-456-1111 or email webform: boxer.senate.gov/contact (not sure about this)

New Lender Guidelines !

(NOTE: This is a spoof written by a frustrated mortgage broker, it is NOT factual.)

> *All borrower's birth certificates will be required with pictures taken in the hospital with medical staff. Birth certificate with a live home delivery will not be eligible for first time home buyers.
> *Marriage certificate with bridal dress will be required if both husband and wife are required to qualify for the loan.
> *GFE will not require signature but will require blood sampling from a recognized institution within three days of application.
> *DNA testing will be performed at closing to avoid any arm-length transactions. Loan funding will be contingent upon satisfactory receipt of DNA results.
> *Verification of Deposit will be acceptable only if bank representative is present at closing.
> *Copy of pay stubs and W-2s will be acceptable through IRS only with a wax sealed envelope mailed directly to lender.
> *Seven witnesses from neighborhood will be required as proof of primary residence if borrower owns more than one property.
> *All appraisers will be required to use a mask and ear plugs at time of inspection, to avoid any personal influence by the borrower for the appraised value.
> *In order to correctly calculate DTI and true house ratio a list of grocery items, monthly usage, and brand names will be required with receipts and projected 12 month consumption chart.
> *Closing will not occur without loan officer presence at settlement and loan officer picture will be taken at the closing in a mug shot format with loan number. Picture should meet standard guideline of 2x2 inch in color format with one facing and one side view.
> *Loan officer picture will be attached to the deed and note and will be made available for general public and security agencies in case borrower defaults on loan.

John Gregori
Branch Manager

Out of Control

Like many Americans we applied for a modification to our home mortage. We originally had Countrywide but you know what happened to them, and the guy with all the gold chain and the tan who is basking somewhere warm on his multi-million dollar golden parachute. So B of A now holds our mortage and since we have a 7% loan we thought why not ask for a modification. Rates are down and we are hearing how all the banks are trying to help the struggling homeowner.

So we asked. Last September. Today we got a packet requiring everything but our DNA. Due by April 15. We applied six months ago and now have 3 weeks to comply. But wait, it gets better __ the next days mail brings an "escrow account notice" from the same friendly people in B of A's load modification department.

We did not have an escrow or impound account with our mortgage. Lenders sometimes require one (if you made a small down payment for example) so that the property taxes and home insurance bills can be taken car of by the bank in order that the lender is protected from liens on the home if these bills are not paid by the homeowner. Thus for the borrower who has an escrow account attached to his home loan, taxes and insurance are added onto the monthly mortgage payment.

B of A had apparently decided that by the mere act of asking for a loan modification, we were a bad credit risk and without telling us, created an escrow account all on their own. This sentence was buried in the notice: "BAC Home Loans Servicing, LP is required by law to inform you that this communication if from a debt collector." Huh? A collection agency is after us? Where did B of A go all of a sudden? No phone number is shown and the mailing address in Los Angeles is appended with "Remittance Processing" so don't bother writing a complaint to that post office box.

By asking for a better interest rate in other words that would lower our monthly payment, our mortgage bill will now be $300+ more each month until or unless they grant that lower rate and there is no assurance they will. Or that they will even respond before Christmas. And, if we did agree to all this and paid the $300 each month, can you imagine what it would take to get it refunded and back to us paying our own property taxes and insurance? Would we be alive to see it?

Big companies apparently get to make their own rules. Big drug makers, big health insurance conglomerates, big banks wield so much clout in our government that the rule of law doesn't mean much to them anymore. Last night on the evening news we learn that 16 million Americans are behind on their mortgages but only 168,000 have been given loan modifications to help them stay in their homes. If I remember right, the law requiring lenders to offer help has been on the books since last fall and now, six months later only 1% of those who need the help got it. This really sits well on top of that visual image of the lady who is the CEO of one of the major banks who answered a Congressman's question that her salary was $7 million.

Sunburn, Light Wallets, and Dietary Indiscretions

We took a couple days off and visited San Francisco, our favorite if-you-want-to-do-urban-do-this place. There's no way around it, The City is a bottomless well of things to do and beauty to enjoy. The fact that we both came home sunburnt, broke, and exhausted should say it all...the classic American vacation.

It was in the 70's so of course I burned. I'm Scotch-Irish you see, and where the freckles aren't, it's epidermal pastures. The air was typically opaque, with teeny-weeny droplets of moisture too small to be fog which basically magnified the sun. I looked like a tomato after the first day of hiking around Crissy Field just east of the Golden Gate Bridge and Fort Point. It used to be an Army airfield, a lifeboat station, and a base for several long distance record-setting flights.

Then OF COURSE one has to have oysters on the half-shell along with a bottle of wine. You must understand that dining out here is an investment not to be taken lightly. A hundred buckaroos buys a mediocre meal and tipping is well, an adventure. There must have been two dozen top-end restaurants of all stripes within blocks of our motel. Luckily we didn't have time for them all.

The room (Cow Hollow Inn) was $82. A pittance compared to $50 to see Tutankhamen at the de Young or $150 to tour Angel Island (parking, ferry, Segway tour). And Crissy Field was free.

Day two was Pt. Reyes National Seashore because the weather was even warmer and it did not seem like the kind of day you want to spend indoors in a museum. The park is huge and probably the reason we use words like "verdant" and "pastoral". Carnation's Contented Cows were all over and the vast open expanses reminded us of Scotland. The road wandered for miles over rolling pastures of ranches that dated back to the 1850's. Oddly, they were lettered __ the "M" Ranch came first on the way out and the last one we saw was the "B" Ranch. Not sure where "A" went and there were several letters missing in between, too. Probably off north or south of the road somewhere.

At the lighthouse gray whales were heading north and we saw one spouting. There is a no-way-in-heck 300 step stairway down to the actual lighthouse ( down, because the regular fog would have smothered it on the bluff top) and some younger sorts were scampering around down there. A few cardiac cases in the making were crawling back up.

We made the mistake (okay, it was my call. Sally wanted to go the way we'd come, over from 101) of returning via Highway 1 through Stinson Beach and Bolinas. Despite the torturous hairpin turns Sally had memorable views of the ocean and beaches. My memory of that span of course is a solid yellow line, no way could I take my eyes off the asphalt.

Next time we would stay over in Olema, the jump-off town on Highway 1. There were several cute b & b's and it would save a whole lot of driving.

We Need Some Carpenters

When he was trying to fix our health system LBJ once said that any jackass can kick down a barn but it takes carpenters to build one. Now here we are again, braying and kicking and no progress made. Party politics is to blame, the elected officials having long since lost sight of the ball . . . being responsible to those who voted for them.

The news reported that the machine of this country is the middle class ___ the small business owner, the factory worker, the office clerk ___ and that while their income had risen 20% over the past 10 years health insurance had gone up 133%. Housing costs, food, fuel, and a bunch of other necessities had also risen far more than income. The engine that drives our economy, people like you and me, is sinking.

AARP Editor Jim Toedtman remarked that "for today's legislators, short-term pain for future gain is a non-starter." He gives three reasons:

1. it's election year and all 435 House seats and 33 in the Senate are up for grabs. Everybody is about getting re-elected, not fixing the issues we all face.

2. polital payback; both parties are carrying grudges from when the other one held the majority. All this while US soldiers in Afganistan, Pakistan, and Iraq are giving up their lives; 14 million people need jobs, and 30 million Americans lack adequate health insurance.

3. special interest money; the big spenders are the health insurance industry, trial lawyers, and the food and beverage industry. These guys killed legislation which would have required employer-provided health insurance, limits on medical malpractice lawsuits, and a 3 cent per bottle tax on soft drinks to combat the national obesity crisis. Respectively.

Toedtman's bottom line: it's the house of politics that needs rebuilding. Bring on the carpenters, there's lots to do.

Food, Inc. ___ the movie

We rented this DVD from Netflix and it was an eye-popper. Engineering crops and animals which are processed in food "factories" according to the multi-national companies who control the market, feeds the world. "I've yet to hear why it's bad that we can raise more (chickens, beef, corn, etc.) faster, using less land, and do it cheaper" one spokesman said. As one farmer observed "If I can sell a hen in 47 days instead of 3 months it's more money in my pocket. That's a no-brainer."

Sounds really teriffic, like science has solved global population pressures on our food supply.

To accomplish this massive assembly line production however, requires centralized planning and control. Heavy and pervasive control. Cargill and a half dozen multi-nats own or control 80% of our farmland and the huge fast food chains are their biggest customer by a long stretch. Which is why we grow so much corn. The list of foods that contain corn or fructose is virtually the entire menu for all burger joints.

The fed has subsidized commodity crops (those that can be stored like corn & wheat) since the Depression, a fact that almost invented fast food. When you can buy a cheeseburger for less than a head of broccoli what does a budget dictate? The current epidemic of diabetes and overweight people in this country is directly related to the fact that food high in calories, salt, and fat is cheaper to buy and faster to get than fresh foods that cost more and take precious time to prepare but are better for your health.

The family farm has been on the skids for decades while this centralization was realizing its potential. Despite the recent interest in organic veggies, free-range chicken, and grass-fed beef, most Americans (and the entire world's poor) cannot afford this kind of healthy food and are forced to consume the unhealthy stuff churned out by these mega-farms.

It can get very unhealthy, too. There have been several e-coli outbreaks which have caused widespread hospitalizations and even deaths. So strong is the meat industry's grip on the federal regulators however that the FDA was stopped in court __ that's right, they were sued __ from shutting down meat plants with records of repeated contamination problems. One victim's family campaigned to overthrow this ruling with a law (Kevin's Law, after her dead six year old) which has been stalled by the meat industry lobby for almost a decade after the child's death from e-coli poisoning.

Tyson is one of the big four meat giants and they control poultry farmers with contracts that dictate how the hens are raised (huge sheds with no light which makes them more docile). If a farmer tries to open the sheds to the sunlight his contract is cancelled. Tyson threatened all the farmers visited by the film crew with this consequence if they allowed the cameramen inside the sheds.

The FDA is charged with regulating our food supply for our public health but many of its leaders come from the industries it is supposed to govern. The classic fox guarding the hen house story. And so strong is the agricultural lobby there is little hope this will change.

Instead the producers suggest, it can change from the bottom up, pointing to what happened to the tobacco giants who wielded the same power. Enough doctors and public health advocates pestered Congress long enough to effect change. So in this instance the producers hope that the general public will get educated about what damage the factory foods are doing to our health and start buying the grass-fed, free-range, and organic alternates. If enough of us do this over time while also avoiding fast food, WE become the major consumers, not the golden arches.

This means reading labels, using farmers markets, buying meat and veggies that are grown locally not shipped in from Iowa. Pay a little more for fresh and grass-fed meats (corn-fed beef was hundreds of times more likely to contain e-coli) and protect your family's health.

Note; I should have taken notes but the story was too good to pause. There is much more to learn from it and it connects very well with Michael Pollan's (very short) paperback, Food Rules. And by the way we are not vegan or food purists in any way. Although we have a big garden and bought a (open range) beef half we still buy and eat pizza, chicken pot pie, and sometimes even visit the local Burger King.

Computer Whining Rights

We recently purchased two new Compaq PC's loaded with the new, improved Windows 7. We thought, great! Newer is better! And to be fair W7 does have some cute features. But we had forgotten the lessons we failed to learn when we upgraded to the newer versions of Internet Explorer.

We had moved from IE 6 to 7 without too much trauma, just a hiccup here and there and this I think was the planting of the evil seed of confidence. Then came IE 8. Some gurgling now, indigestion even, because some of the programs we use had not been tested on IE 7 and they suffered something like organ rejection.

Bruised and a little worse for the (enormous) time spent / wasted, we still managed to get through it and return to an acceptable level of functionality.

IE 8 should have been the Grim Teacher. But when our 10 year old PC's began squeaking and groaning we thought well, new towers, new operating system, new Microsoft Office 2007, new email system (Outlook instead of Express). . . we need to get some speed and efficiency implants.

We even realized some savings when the tech who spent the day transferring our files and configuring the new devices, suggested a service pack that would allow us to scan pages directly into pdf, thus avoiding the need to buy Adobe Acrobat ($299).
So far so good.

Leaving the warm, comfy XP operating system did not seem hard to us at this juncture. How much different could Windows 7 be anyway? And as I said, it isn't that different. Better in many ways in fact than XP.

But the other programs we depend on did not concur. Quicken for one. We had the 2008 version which immediately locked up the report printing function when it saw W7. It's a little beyond impossible to do real estate, property management, and manage your own personal finances without printing. Intuit charges $24.99 for support calls so we chose the free online chat solution. I use "free" and "solution" advisedly though because the experience took over four hours and somewhere in the process we completely misplaced our entire property management account.

This happened I think because when you do live chat you must be exceedingly clear with questions and the answers must be carefully constructed to insure that you do not skip any steps in the solution. However this chat worker was not the sharpest knife in the kitchen in terms of his command of English and making the situation worse he was working perhaps a dozen other callers along with me. Can you imagine jumping back and forth between 12 different technical conversations all day long? No wonder his answers were brief and short on detail.

He said he would give us a free 2009 version of Quicken which would work fine with Windows 7 but when I followed his directions and downloaded the file it said it had to uninstall the earlier version in order to install itself. That's where that business acount went sideways I think. We back up Quicken online plus we have an external hard drive which backs up both our PC's so it's really not "lost". It's just that we have to hire a tech to come out here and find it.

So I'm not whining. Not really. We have faster PC's and we can do pdf. files now after all and we hope to find that Quicken account sometime before the end of the month.