Geezing

A humorist once wrote that the word was first used by Chaucer who said that (of some obscure Danish king) "he geezeth", which meant he was dishing out stupid and unwanted advice and annoying eveyone. Thus older people often are called "geezers" and this book (given anonymously to me by some family member whom I will deal with later) shares some hilarious ways we geezers can get even with the young whippersnappers who call us that.

For example one chapter is called "How to mess with the minds of younger people" and offers tips like a) ask the same questions and tell the same stories and anecdotes over and over again, or b) pretend to fall asleep in mid-sentence and watch their reaction.

The reason the author makes the title a question is that geezing is not for everyone. Here are some qualifying test questions:
1. can you engineer every conversation into a description of your last surgery?
2. can you nap three times each day and still fall asleep during dinner?
3. can you get up three or four times a night to go to the bathroom and still keep awake after breakfast until your morning nap?
4. can you get good fragments of conversations by reading lips and body language?

Another venue is to capitalize on the infamous memory loss that is associated with old age by using it to free yourself from the humdrum obligations of people who actually DO remember what they promise to do. Say you'll of course be happy to go to a Tupperware party and then go golfing instead. Oops! I forgot! Or when you see yourself getting into a rant and about to put your foot in your mouth just stop mid-sentence and claim you forgot what you were about to say. They you can pretend to remember and go off in a completely different direction avoiding the faux pas.

People ask "when will I know I am old enough to geeze?" and the author has a perfect answer; when the government names things after you. However since this requires two additional ingredients beyond age namely, fame and wealth this makes it hard to qualify. To dodge this pitfall just name things after yourself. By yourself. For example the corridor to the bathroom in our home is tasefully called the Batchelder Hallway. Soon you can graduate to whole buildings and even mountain ranges.

Like most books, the back cover is filled with praise: "I'm buying this book to help support his wife Robyn. She deserves it after all she's had to put up with while being married to him all these years." And "My hope is that if enough of us buy this book he will retire and quit writing this drivel."

It's a smallish paperback from Apricot Press whose motto reads "Working hard to get big enough for the government to bail us out". My kind of book.

The Medicare Paperwork Avalanche

Those of us fortunate enough to be in Medicare have for the last several months been assaulted with reams and pounds of paperwork all of which is intended to explain our choices for the open enrollment period that happens each year. This is the time when the health care companies can change their plans, moving drugs here and there on the price ladder, adding deductibles, increasing premiums, and so forth.

They get to do this only once a year and they have to stick with the changes for the next 12 months. So we get the same window to review what changes there are and if we need to move to a different plan.

Frankly, you would have to be an idiot savant who specializes in bureaucratic double-speak in order to plow through all the mailings and come up with any clear idea of what the heck it is all about. I mean it's almost impossible. It is so overwhelming that I cannot escape the suspicion that it is almost intentional. Yes, I know, dark isn't it? But don't you also suspect they want us to just give up and stay in the plan you're already in? You know, the one that doubled the cost of your most expensive (and necessary) brand med and hiked the premium at the same time the revealing of which is buried on page 1,985 of the material you just tossed into the garbage?

But there is hope. HICAP, the independent volunteer agency that counsels seniors (it stands for Health Insurance Counseling and Advocacy Program), has experts trained to understand all the gobblegook in most towns here and what's more, you can get this valuable advice free.

Sally and I did that today, with a remarkable advisor named Marcia Smith in Mt. Shasta. I learned that my drug plan was okay as is, I'm going to cap out at the $2,800 "donut" hole come October of next year but if I can get my doctor to switch my Lipitor to a generic I might avoid the limit. I hope I can ___ if you hit the donut you pay full price for your drugs and Lipitor is around $400 a month.

But Sally hit the jackpot; Marcia found her a better plan with Humana that will save us almost $700 a year and she will never even get close to the donut.

Worth a call, people. Deadline for open enrollment is Dec. 31 so there are only a few days left. Marcia's phone is 926-148 and tell her we sent you.

The Carbon Bathtub

This is the illustration on page 26 of December's National Geographic. It accompanies a short 3 page article and I am taking excerpts from it for this post. I doubt anyone can read the notes on the graphic so here is the story:

Almost twice as much CO2 (9.1 billion metric tons per year) is being poured into the tub (atmosphere) than the drain can let out (5 billion) so the level in the tub is rising. The "drain" is where the CO2 naturally goes.....absorbed by plants (30%) and oceans (25%). 45% as you see is unaccounted for, the amount that is building up in the atmosphere.

The focus of the story is a concern by an MIT professor: the public seems convinced if we slow down the growth of emissions we'll solve the problem. CO2 currently measures 350 ppm (parts per million) in the atmosphere and growing at the rate of 2 or 3 ppm per year. Even if we somehow stop the increase, stop the invisible hand that keeps opening the tap more and more, the tub is going to overflow because more is flowing in than draining out even if we quit opening the tap more each year.

The oldest air bubbles in Antarctic ice samples show that the atmosphere has not had this much CO2 for at least 800,000 years and probably a million. Before the Industrial Revolution (roughly at the time of America's independence in 1775) CO2 levels stood at 271 ppm using the same ice cores, so CO2 levels have increased 42% in 234 years, about 2 ppm per year. To cap the level at 450 ppm, a level most scientists consider dangerously high, we would have to cut emissions by roughly 80% by 2050.

Once again the source of confusion, not cutting the RATE of increase, cutting the flow from the tap by 80%. THAT is the challenge; getting the public and the politicians to realize how dramatic that is.

For the full story go to http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/big-idea/05/carbon-bath. There is even an interactive site where you can play around with the effects of different emissions at ngm.com/bigideas.

Holiday Homecoming Concert

Celebrate the season with a mid-winter musical interlude with the “Holiday Homecoming” concert on Sunday, December 27th at 3:00 pm, at the Yreka Community Theater, presented by the Red Scarf Society for the Performing Arts. Three talented musicians are returning to Yreka to perform a varied repertory of wonderful selections. A champagne reception to follow.

Performing will be two favorite sons, Yreka born Kevin McKee on the trumpet and honorary Yrekan, Jacek Mysinski on the piano. Former Yrekan and talented soprano, Karen Berryhill Barrett, will be lending her voice to the occasion.

Tickets are $20 each for adults and $5 each for students. They can be purchased at Nature’s Kitchen, Yreka Chamber of Commerce, Surroundings, Village Books in Mt. Shasta and Scott Valley Drug. For further information call 842-4656.

Comfort Food

Winter is the perfect time for this kind of food and in fact we own a crock pot for this purpose . . . something is leaking that mom's-cooking aroma into the house all day long. There are endless choices but my call (after mac and cheese) is a chicken pot pie.

Which is of course bad for you in multiple ways ___ the pastry crust alone is probably illegal in some countries ___ but anything that tastes this good just defies the definition of 'bad'.

I mean look at England where the idea started. Their meat pies are world-renown and for good reason. When the weather is cold and drippy who wants avocado and sprouts in a sandwich? Or in a salad for that matter. Give me a break.

You can even buy microwavable pot pies in the grocery for as little as a buck. Now, in these hard times shouldn't we perhaps cut a little slack with the nutrition obsession thing? I mean, where can you get a hot meal with meat, veggies, cereal grains, and gravy of uncertain origin for a measly buck?

And even more importantly, factor in how neat it smells and feels on a cold winter day! Yes, my loyal readers, Swanson should rank right up there with Pasteur and Edison, for we have at last a portable, affordable tummy-warmer to ward off the uncertainties and chill of winter days. Not to mention the uncertain economy.

(Chicken soup is good, too. Costco makes it out of their unsold rotisserie chicken for $9 something a quart (maybe more, not sure). It'll feed you for a week.)

Posted by a hopelessly lazy cook.

Bestseller; The Ghost Map

I remember book reports. We all dreaded them. The teacher would sweep her gaze across the room and you would immediately need to tie your shoelaces. Having to give one at the time felt like a worse alternative to detention because you'd be on stage, in front of all your snickering classmates. Worse, you had to follow some arcane who, what, where, why format the teacher had devised which was truly to be feared because you hated the book and skimmed it to get the five main points or whatever they were, covered.

Not to worry, this one will be disorganized and scattered. You may finish up not even knowing what the book is about. My revenge on high school English.

I enjoy history and non-fiction and especially the type that blends them with fiction. A novelist takes a few liberties with the gaps between known things and weaves a captivating story. For me, this genre is more attractive than fiction because nobody had to make it up, it really happened. Like they say, truth really is more facinating than fiction. And sometimes stranger, too.

The Ghost Map is about the cholera epidemic that swept the Soho district of London in September of 1854. Johnson describes slum life with vivid details of daily life such as an entire class of people who acted as a very effective recycling organism for the polluted city: toshers who combed the banks of the Thames for rags and scraps of wood; the night-soil men who cleaned out cesspools; the pure collectors who gathered animal dung; the bone-pickers who collected all manner of them. Mud larks were young toshers, often the tosher's children, and to better find the flotsam at low tide they would hold lanterns under their upheld cloaks making them seem like floating ghosts on the mudflats of the river. Details like that.

Each of these was very specialized and many spent their entire lives in the trade. And it was a trade; each recovered item was resold; the rags went to rag collectors who turned them into paper and felt; the sewage went in barrels on carts to farmers outside the city as fertilizer; the bones went to rendering plants where they were boiled down to make glue and other products; animal dung went to the tanners who had soaked hides in lime to get rid of the hair and the manure neutralized the solution so the hides could be worked into leather.

The author points out that there were not industrial districts then, all these noxious practices were side by side with tenements, shops, and restaurants which gave the slum areas legendary smells. But grim as this was it allowed the city to function. Without these people London would have drowned in its own waste. And that becomes the central theme of the story.

Johnson tells it from the perspective of an epidemiologist; someone who traces the spread of disease. He recounts how two residents of the Golden Square area in the Soho, John Snow and Reverend Whitehead, independently ran down where the cholera came from. In the process Johnson depicts the struggle they endured trying to disprove majority opinion which held that "miasma" or foul odors transmitted disease. Not airborne contagion as we now think of it but if there is stench, the air is full of disease. The toshers and night-soil men became one of rebuttals for the miasmists in fact because they rarely caught cholera despite spending their lives breathing foul air.

Water for city dwellers came from shallow wells which were scattered about the city. Homes in that era did not have plumbed water and waste was either tossed into the street or collected in horrid pits in the basement of many tenements called cesspools. The entire epidemic came from a well pump on Broad Street which had been contaminated by a cracked cesspool just under three feet away.

(Background note; city health officials finally installed sewers after recognizing what evil cesspools posed. These dumped directly into the Thames, doubling the pollution even further when water closets were invented and distributed. Since many water companies pumped drinking water from the river this just made the threat of contagion worse. Johnson notes how similar this was to the bright idea officials in the 1500's had to stop the plague; they thought dogs and cats carried it so all the animals in the entire city were ordered destroyed. They of course were the main predators of rats which carried the disease in their fleas.)

Proving the microbe was waterborne was the task and Snow finally persuaded the officials to remove the Broad Street pump handle thus ending the crisis. It is as much a story of overcoming public opinion as it is remarkable medical sleuthing and if you visit London today you can find the John Snow Pub just a few yards away from the site of the pump on (now) Broadwick Street in Golden Square.

There, you see what happens when you don't follow the book report format? If I hadn't run out of coffee you could have read the book itself by now.

"Stak Blocks"; From Bio-Waste to Building Material

Two inventors in Goleta (outside Santa Barbara, California) are developing what sounds like one of those too-good-to-be-true concepts in eco-friendly building materials; Lego-like blocks of rice straw. The company, Oryzatech (oryza is Greek for rice straw) is a start-up, struggling to raise funds for mass production of the product which presently costs too much . .. about $30 per block.

California grows a lot of rice but the silica-rich straw (about a ton and a half of it for each ton of rice grown) is considered a waste product; too hard to gather for composting and not suited for animal feed, farmers burn thousands of acres of it each year, creating dangerous air pollution in the Sacramento Valley and other rice-growing regions of the state.

But, compressed into molds at 300 degrees and mixed with a formaldehyde-free glue the waste product becomes an ideal building block material for housing construction. Rice straw blocks have many advantages over stud wall framing; as tested by Cal Poly the 12" thick blocks have 3 times the insulation value of a 2 x 6 stud wall, are fire and sound proof, and much faster to assemble.

As you can see in the picture above they stack and interlock just like Lego blocks (each is 12" thick, 12" wide, and 24" long which makes them very easy to use) and threaded rebar rods anchor them in place from the top plate (wood member on top of walls that rafters and trusses rest on) down to the foundation for seismic strength. Wood framing is used for windows and doors but the blocks themselves are as workable as wood; sheetrock can be directly attached for example so new construction tools and methods do not need to be developed in order to use the product.

On the ecology side of things the material is almost carbon-neutral, coming as it does from sustainable, organic rice crops. This means it will likely qualify for LEED points (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, the green building rating system that certifies buildings as responsible, green construction). This may lead to tax credits or other monetary incentives for builders, I'm not sure as I have not researched this yet.

And one final, sensible note; the product can (and should) be manufactured on or near the rice farms themselves, right at the source. Production is scalable, big factories operate just as a garage-size one does, so any farmer could also become a producer, using his main crop waste as an added income stream.

For more information go to www.oryzatech.com. They're looking for investors!
They are stacked

Village Green Motel in Cottage Grove, OR

Many of us do the Seattle run and the 9 to 10 hour drive can be hard. We fell into this place on our way home on one of those tiring drives and feel it is worth a recommend.

Ask for the Escape Package. Depending on availability you get dinner for two, a bottle of wine, and a garden suite with a fireplace, microwave, and refrig for. Hold your breath. 89 bucks. But WAIT, it gets better! Weekdays it can get as low as $69!

Too good to be true you ask? No, it really is there. For example, I had filet mignon with baked potato and veggies while Sally had a 12 oz. prime rib. Along with a bottle of their (private label) chardonnay. The creme brule was extra but the coffe was included.

800-343-7666 will get you there. About 3-1/2 hours north and five south from Seattle. They have golf, gardening, and fly fishing packages, too.

Callahan's is Back!

After three + years of work, Callahan's Siskiyou Lodge (www.callahanslodge.com) has risen from the ashes of the September 2006 fire that destroyed the landmark hotel which opened its doors in 1947. It is bigger than before, more modern and has a dramatic "lodge" look to it. There is a great restaurant again which serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner Friday through Monday.

Sixteen of the 19 rooms have wood burning fireplaces and all have jacuzzi jet tubs, right in the room along with refrigerators, flat screen HDTV, and wireless internet access. Breakfast is included in all accommodations and reservations are strongly recommended by calling 800-286-0507 or emailing them at info@callahanslodge.com.

The lodge property is located at the Ashland Ski Resort exit on Interstate 5 at the very top of the Siskiyou Summit making it the perfect stopover for a Medford shopping run or a weekend skiing getaway. The Pacific Crest Trail is only 1/4 mile from the lodge, and Ashland is only 8 miles further (and all downhill!).

Note; this is not a paid testimonial. I have yet to eat or stay at this facility and they have not compenstated me for this article in any way.

Apples and Oranges

Sally didn't like this title but I did because it comes in two layers. When people say you can't compare two things because they are different, like apples and oranges. But you also remember scenes from the Great Depression like this one that show unemployed people selling apples. And you see them again today, in The Other Great Depression, selling sacks of oranges from their vans and trucks.
Same suffering, different fruit.

Tax Credit Benefit Extended

(courtesy of Ben Copeland, The Mortgage Center, Yreka)

Homebuyer Tax Credit Update!

On November 6, 2009, President Obama signed a bill to extend the tax credit for first-time homebuyers (FTHBs) through June 30, 2010. The bill also opens up opportunities for others who are not buying a home for the first time.

To learn what the new tax credit means to you and your clients, take a look at the concise overview below.

In addition, we’ve put together a script featuring wording you can cut and paste as needed to beat out your competition by connecting with clients who may be able to benefit from the new plan details!

View the Tax Credit Script Now!

TAX CREDIT OVERVIEW

Who Gets What?

First-Time Homebuyers (FTHBs): First-time homebuyers (that is, people who have not owned a home within the last three years) may be eligible for the tax credit. The credit for FTHBs is 10% of the purchase price of the home, with a maximum available credit of $8,000

Single taxpayers and married couples filing a joint return may qualify for the full tax credit amount.

Current Owners: The tax credit program now gives those who already own a residence some additional reasons to move to a new home. This incentive comes in the form of a tax credit of up to $6,500 for qualified purchasers who have owned and occupied a primary residence for a period of five consecutive years during the last eight years.

Single taxpayers and married couples filing a joint return may qualify for the full tax credit amount.


What are the New Deadlines?

In order to qualify for the credit, all contracts need to be in effect no later than April 30, 2010 and close no later than June 30, 2010.

What are the Income Caps?

The amount of income someone can earn and qualify for the full amount of the credit has been increased.

Single tax filers who earn up to $125,000 are eligible for the total credit amount. Those who earn more than this cap can receive a partial credit. However, single filers who earn $145,000 and above are ineligible

Joint filers who earn up to $225,000 are eligible for the total credit amount. Those who earn more than this cap can receive a partial credit. However, joint filers who earn $245,000 and above are ineligible.

What is the Maximum Purchase Price?

Qualifying buyers may purchase a property with a maximum sale price of $800,000.

What is a Tax Credit?

A tax credit is a direct reduction in tax liability owed by an individual to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). In the event no taxes are owed, the IRS will issue a check for the amount of the tax credit an individual is owed. Unlike the tax credit that existed in 2008, this credit does not require repayment unless the home, at any time in the first 36 months of ownership, is no longer an individual’s primary residence.

How Much are First-Time Homebuyers (FTHB) Eligible to Receive?

An eligible homebuyer may request from the IRS a tax credit of up to $8,000 or 10% of the purchase price for a home. If the amount of the home purchased is $75,000, the maximum amount the credit can be is $7,500. If the amount of the home purchased is $100,000, the amount of the credit may not exceed $8,000.

Who is Eligible fort FTHB Tax Credit?

Anyone who has not owned a primary residence in the previous 36 months, prior to closing and the transfer of title, is eligible.

This applies both to single taxpayers and married couples. In the case where there is a married couple, if either spouse has owned a primary residence in the last 36 months, neither would qualify. In the case where an individual has owned property that has not been a primary residence, such as a second home or investment property, that individual would be eligible.

As mentioned above, the tax credit has been expanded so that existing homeowners who have owned and occupied a primary residence for a period of five consecutive years during the last eight years are now eligible for a tax credit of up to $6,500.

How Much are Current Home Owners Eligible to Receive?

The tax credit program includes a tax credit of up to $6,500 for qualified purchasers who have owned and occupied a primary residence for a period of five consecutive years during the last eight years.

Can Homebuyers Claim the Tax Credit in Advance of Purchasing a Property?

No. The IRS has recently begun prosecuting people who have claimed credits where a purchase had not taken place.

Can a Taxpayer Claim a Credit if the Property is Purchased from a Seller with Seller Financing and the Seller Retains Title to the Property?

Yes. In situations where the buyer purchases the property, even though the seller retains legal title, the taxpayer may file for the credit. Some examples of this would include a land contract or a contract for deed.

According to the IRS, factors that would demonstrate the ownership of the property would include:

1. Right of possession,
2. Right to obtain legal title upon full payment of the purchase price,
3. Right to construct improvements,
4. Obligation to pay property taxes,
5. Risk of loss,
6. Responsibility to insure the property, and
7. Duty to maintain the property.

Are There Other Restrictions to Taking the FTHB Credit?

Yes. According to the IRS, if any of the following describe a homebuyer’s situation, a credit would not be due:

They buy the home from a close relative. This includes a spouse, parent, grandparent, child or grandchild. (Please see the question below for details regarding purchases from “step-relatives.”)
They do not use the home as your principal residence.
They sell their home before the end of the year.
They are a nonresident alien.
They are, or were, eligible to claim the District of Columbia first-time homebuyer credit for any taxable year. (This does not apply for a home purchased in 2009.)
Their home financing comes from tax-exempt mortgage revenue bonds. (This does not apply for a home purchased in 2009.)
They owned a principal residence at any time during the three years prior to the date of purchase of your new home. For example, if you bought a home on July 1, 2008, you cannot take the credit for that home if you owned, or had an ownership interest in, another principal residence at any time from July 2, 2005, through July 1, 2008.


Can Homebuyers Purchase a Home from a Step-Relative and Still be Eligible for the Credit?

Yes. As long as the person they buy the home from is not a direct blood relative, the purchase would be allowed.

If a Parent (Who Will Not Live In The Property) Cosigns for a Mortgage, Will Their Child Still be Eligible for the Credit?

Yes, provided that the child meets the other requirements for the tax credit.

Auto Dealerships vs Joe's Garage

If any reader has an opinion on this I'd like to hear it. The question is this: should you take your car to an OEM dealer or use a generic repair shop? There must be good reasons for each but we own a Hyundai and there is no dealer this side of Medford so for us anyway the question is very relevant.

Despite assertions to the contrary I have trouble imagining a small shop that works on all makes and models having factory training for my car. In fact, cars seem to be getting impossibly complex and it seems almost necessary to specialize in a brand. Perhaps independent shops can do better with older models rather than new? After all even I could change the spark plugs on a 235 Chevy in-line 6 but when I need to change them on my Hyundai it will cost $128. Good grief I told the guy but he said that on todays cars you have to remove most everything on top of the engine just to get to them. The truth is I can look into my engine compartment and I can't even SEE the spark plugs.

And then there is the issue of parts. We've had regular oil changes done by local shops but even that simple job had a problem. Seems the OEM oil filter comes with two "O" rings and either was installed wrong or they used an after-market filter that only came with one "O" ring. Not a serious problem, just an irritating drip. But it wasn't until we took it to the Hyundai dealer in Medford that we learned why.

There is of course a cost difference, too. Our latest service, the 30,000 mile one, caught my breath at $458. Especially when I learned that a local shop could have done it for about half. But would it be the same, do you think? Would they get the wrong oil filter, or miss checking a sensor, or not have the manual or software for the service thereby making their version of it priced about right?

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for keeping business in town. And if I had a Ford or Chevy or Dodge I wouldn't be writing this. So back to the top, is there a difference?

Giggling on the Social Network With My Strawberry, Tongue in Cheek

This could also be considered twitting, skooching, inkling or any of a remarkably long list of silly "noun-verbs" that seem to appear without warning or reason, or even any particular need. We are being urged to 'connect' with each other whether we really want to or not because somebody out there thinks this is good for us and evidently we should be grateful and get busy.

Well, I'm out. Please don't ask me to tweet, schmeet, or otherwise bother your pleasant day. If I want to socialize I'll walk across the street and say hi. Or I'll call you. Or visit you with any number of other archaic social contact methods like writing a letter. Who wrote this script anyway?

The more observant reader will notice that blogging is a form of social networking and that I appear to be contradicting myself, however this is not technically so. You see, true networking is two-way communication. You write something and get an answer from somebody, somewhere. Letters sent in the blind so to speak; you don't address a particular person.

This blog is like that but with a singular exception. Nobody ever writes back in the form of comments and thus I am not social networking here and am free to make fun.

We go to real estate classes all the time in order to stay up with current developments and a recurring theme in all these classes is to get onboard the social networking train if you want to be successful. Tweet. Zing. Bleep. Whatever. Try to be "social" in the hopes that somebody out there with nothing else to fill their day will connect with you and buy a home.

Please.

Doing real estate for us anyway doesn't work like that. How people find you on the web means you need a website, sure. But once they connect with us we go to the hands-on mode right away. I'm a big believer in good first impressions when I meet someone....eye contact, firm shake, listening a lot. Chirping on the internet just doesn't come close to doing this.

Whoa the marketing gurus say, DID YOU KNOW THAT 87% OF ALL BUYERS SEARCH THE INTERNET FIRST ? ? Well, okay. That's fine. What's that got to do with frittering? WELL GOOD HEAVENS, YOU'RE NOT OUT THERE ! ! Uh huh, well I'm not convinced a buyer is surfing around for an agent. He or she is looking for a home. That's why most buyers call the listing agent first, the guy or gal who has that home advertised on the internet.

So we are fans of the tried and true Word Of Mouth method. Do a good job. Communicate with your clients. Treat everybody the way you would like to be treated. You can spend all the keyboard hours you want but nothing works as well as WOM.

Raking Pine Needles and Other Obsessions

It's that time of year again and piles of black trash bags full of pine needles are lining the streets. Personally I don't favor raking. First of all it's work ___ physical effort which I oppose on principle. Then there is the overwhelming likelihood that another storm is right on the heels of this one which will dump as much or probably even more needles. This is one of the corrolaries of Murphy's Law, a related topic which I will not go into here for lack of room. Whole books have been written about this bundle of natural laws which are so germane to our everyday lives.

Finally, with the above two predispositions in mind, it is extremely comfortable to believe that pine needles SHOULD carpet the ground. They were here well before Lake Shastina was and what harm did they do then, hmmm?

Well, some skeptics would say, they pose a fire hazard to homes and bare dirt is much safer. To this blatantly sensible argument I say, humbug. Wildfires are nature's way of cleaning out the underbrush and frankly, some yards around here are pretty trashy and need clearing out.

Of course I rake the lawn. I mean, if one didn't do that we'd look like savages. What self-respecting homeowner has a brown yard? Besides, removing those needles allows the grass to grow more aggressively which in turn requires mowing which I do just to illustrate that I'm not completely against physical work.

Despite all of this rationality, Sally thinks I suffer from another sort of obsessive behavior other than the clean-yard variety. On occasion (and this is not every trip, no sireee) when I'm out and about I will load up the car with garbage cans' full of grass clippings or sawdust. These go onto large piles in our side yard next to an equally impressive mound of composted (meaning odorless) horse manure.

I try and try to explain the concept of stockpiling but Sally isn't buying any of it. The idea of course is that these organic materials are components of a healthy vegetable garden. And when you do the lasagna thing of layering stuff like this, you feed them onto the basic bed each season and avoid rototilling.

On top of all this flawless logic we hope to develop an area next to the existing garden for berries and perhaps fruit trees next year. Where, I ask Sally, could we possibly find time to go fetch such demanding quantities of these ingredients when the pressing task of planting is upon us?

My final grabbing line is that the car always smells like pine needles.

The Other Two Buck Chuck

Trader Joes in Redding had this label over their $1.99/lb hamburger. Get it? Two dollars per pound = two bucks for ground chuck. These people are good.

Regular Trader Joe shoppers know that "Two Buck Chuck" is the Charles Shaw wine which they sell for $1.99 so this play on words is cute and fits right in with the whole store's theme.

This is not a place one goes to for dish soap ___ I tried just to be sure and no luck. Nor mundane margarines. It's more a shopping experience where there is huge selection of good stuff at good prices. Popular lines and each pricing, not per pound.

I inquired if Weed was in their expansion plans but the manager just chuckled. Maybe he thought I meant the product.

Bom Jesus, the "Diamond Ship"

(Excerpted from the October '09 National Geographic.)

This is a story that I will remember for a very long time. Five hundred years ago wealthy Portuguese merchants were outfitting ships to sail on a fifteen month voyage to the East Indies on the route pioneered by Vasco De Gama in 1497. The riches sought were spices and the monies to pay for them included Spanish excelentes and portugueses, with the coat of arms of King Joao III. But also there were copper ingots, a staggering 22 tons of them, in the shape of a half-cannon ball with the trident hallmark of Anton Fugger, one of Renaissance Europe's wealthiest financiers.

Fast forward to April of last year at one of the world's most jealously guarded diamond mines on the coast of Namibia, De Beer's Sperrgebiet ("forbidden zone" in German). A mine engineer finds one of the ingots and immediately halts operations around the cordoned-off find.

Which is no small thing because this riverbed site contains one of the most intense concentrations of high grade diamonds in the world. Washed down to the Atlantic from sites as far as 1,700 miles inland by the Orange River, only the hardest, best quality diamonds make it to this spot, some weighing hundreds of carats. The strong northerly current scattered this lode for miles northward along the coase of Namibia.

Only a few Portuguese East Indiamen or "naus" have been professionally excavated by archaeologists. Most have been plundered by treasure hunters so this is an extra-ordinary find but very difficult to research. In November of 1755 a massive earthquake and tsunami washed the Casa da India, the vast Lisbon archive of maps, shipping records, and charts into the Tagus River.

Without these printed records the researchers had to work backward from clues found on the wreck and one of the most helpful was the rare portugueses of King Joao III. They were minted only from 1525 to 1538 then recalled, melted down, and never re-issued. Their presence onboard along with the copper ingots indicated the vessel was on its outward passage to India rather than returning during this 13 year window.

Eventually researchers learned that the Bom Jesus was brand new and owned by the king himself when it departed Lisbon on 7 March 1533 with 300 souls on board. Reconstructing the story from surviving snippets of information about the fleet historians learned that it was struck and scattered by a huge storm just before the eastward turn around the Cape of Good Hope. Breaking up and drifting north the Bom Jesus eventually grounded 150 yards offshore just 16 miles north of the Orange River.

No one knows what happened to the survivors, if there were any. Local experts say the storms are sometimes so severe that getting ashore is impossible. Yet there are calm days too, and it's possible especially since no human remains were found at the site, that much or even most of the crew made it. If so they must have been desolated by the grim desert environment and the knowledge that rescue was never going to come. Still, the area was visited seasonally by the hunter gatherers we now call Bushmen and they may have helped those who lived through the wreck. But the story ends there. No trace of them remains in the written record.

The exquisite irony of the fabulously wealthy ship owned by a king crashing on a famously rich diamond mine is not lost on the projects researchers. The tale is compelling and a gold-framed window on the past.

100% Chance of Rain

Don't you love it? "100% CHANCE"?? I mean, 100% is a done deal isn't it? THERE WILL BE RAIN. This is now on my favorite oxymoron list, right up there with political decency, civil war, and all that.

But speaking of weather, there is a great weather website that has no ads, it's the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration and the adress is www.wrh.noaa.gov. You can put in any location but you can also bookmark our area so that when you want a week's forecast, you get it right away. There is probably a way to put this on your desktop too, but I haven't got that far yet.

There are a great many features in this site, such as forecast discussion which is the meteorologist's narrative of what is coming our way. The text has special terms in boldface which means you can click on them and get a definition. "Trough" for example means an elongated low pressure area not associated with a circulating low pressure system which typically brings a "front", another definition.

We find this site particularly helpful with winter coming on because we can enter a destination or waypoint and see what we're getting into. Then we cross-check www.dot.ca.gov/dist2 which is Siskiyou County to get the Cal Trans road conditions.

This site gives not only chain requirements but you can also view the roadway from their remote cameras which is very helpful if you are headed to Medford and going over the Siskiyous because there is a camera at Hilt and one at the summit.

Of course all of us in Lake Shastina also benefit from "The Wall". This is an orographic (look that one up) 'curtain' which forms at the upper end of the Sacramento River canyon roughly between Mt. Shasta and Weed. I checked the precip records once and this is how I recall them: Dunsmuir had 54+ inches, Mt. Shasta 36", Weed 26, and Shastina 16. The moisture fell to the ground as it rose up the canyon.

As residents of the Shasta Valley know, one can clearly see a weather wall to our south when a storm is in progress . . . it may be raining or snowing like crazy in Weed and points south while we might experience wind and partly cloudy skies.

This is one of the biggest reasons we moved here. After 33+ years in Mt. Shasta we got REAL tired of drifted snow so deep we could not even get to work some days. We found the almost-snowless conditions of Lake Shastina particularly appealing after shoveling our roof in 2001 for the third consecutive year.

So yes, we had a 50-year snow storm a couple years ago of a foot or so but I'll take the wind any day.

Heliostats and Other Solar Stuff

(Excerpts from "Plugging Into The Sun", Sept. National Geographic)

120 quadrillion watts of sunlight are constantly hitting the Earth, that is 6,000 times what we use and it eclipses (excuse the pun) the power generation potential of all other renewable energy sources like wind, hydro, tidal, and geothermal. For perspective, we generated 19,000 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2006. One terawatt-hour = 1,000 gigawatt-hours = 1 billion kilowatt-hours and one kilowatt-hour keeps a 100 watt light bulb glowing for 10 hours. 975,000 terawatt-hours could be generated using just the renewable energy worldwide, 51 times what actually we use.

Because of this government subsidies for solar power are very high, especially in Europe which leads the world in solar technology. This is especially true in Spain where, outside Seville Abendoa Solar's PS10 vast array of mirrors aim sunlight at a "power tower" to make steam for the generating plant's turbine.

Solar One near Las Vegas uses a similar approach for what engineers call solar thermal generation (versus photo-voltaic panels or PV for short). Long rows of curved mirrors called parabolic troughs focus the sun's heat on an oil-filled pipe that runs the length of each row. The hot oil is then run through a heat exchanger to again turn water into steam for the turbine.

Andasol 1 & 2, another Spanish solar installation on the plains of Andalusia use molten salt to store some of the heat generated during the daytime in order to continue boiling water for up to 7-1/2 hours after the sun goes down.

Germany is pioneering an economic incentive called a "feed-in tariff" to drive solar energy research. Anybody who installs a photo-voltaic system on their home can sell their surplus energy to the grid for a guaranteed above-market price for 20 years. That comes out to about an 8% return on investment.

At the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems outside Freiburg the next generation of PV research uses Fresnel lenses (like the ones used in lighthouses) to concentrate sunlight 500 times, raising the efficiency of a standard PV panel as high as 23%.

Solar panels are getting thinner and even bendable, allowing their use on more and more structural shapes. PV is less efficient than solar thermal though (the record panel so far converts sunlight at 40.8% capacity and it costs $10,000; average PV efficiency runs 10% to 20%), and storage has been a problem. Germany and Alabama however have been using compressed air for decades to store surplus daytime energy by pumping it into underground caverns and releasing it at night to spin the turbines.

PV has two big advantages over thermal solar energy; it can be placed at the point of use eliminating costly transmission facilities and it has no moving parts, just solar photons knocking electrons off of silicon atoms and generating a current. So if efficiency can be raised and effective storage designed PV might win out. One line of research is aiming for liquid PV if you can imagine . . . paint your house with it and switch on the power.

And MIT researcher Daniel Nocera has discovered a cheap, self-renewing catalyst which splits water into hydrogen and oxygen which are then stored in a fuel cell for nighttime use. According to Nocera the PV panels on your home's roof which power your home during the day generate enough surplus energy to drive this system with enough left over to sell on the grid. He claims your home can become a power plant on its own.

Market Signals...Bidding Wars Again?

Recently we are noticing an interesting shadow of the 2005 bubble that we saw here in Lake Shastina. Those four years ago had bidding wars over asking-priced properties and buyers were lined up with offers, some all cash and with no or few contingencies.

Well, the same is happening again but the price scale is reversed. Homes in the $100,000 to $150,000 price range are in the bulls-eye now. The asking prices are tens of thousands less than five years ago and buyers are bidding against each other to grab the deals (or steals if you want to be pickey).

Actually, it's more like a silent auction because the buyer and his or her agent do not know what the other bids (offers) are, the sellers agent is not supposed to reveal that. Instead you hear things like "have your buyer make the highest and best offer he or she can". That's a clue that there may be other offers on the table and that they might be strong ones.

So if you represent a buyer as we did in a recent deal you try to explain that this is not the typical slash and burn purchase procedure of making a low ball offer because many of these homes are now owned by banks and not only do banks not like to bargain, they have other buyers pounding on the table. In short, they don't NEED to bargain.

Quite the opposite, the seller is now the boss and not the panicky private seller who is facing a possible forclosure. This is where it's so reminiscent of 2005 when private sellers could command full asking price and even more. But REO's as bank-owned homes are called are in no danger of being foreclosed upon as some private sellers are today, in a sense they already have been. So the pressure on the seller is gone. The bank lists the home for what is owed on the loan or even less and lets buyers compete for the sweet deal that results.

But back to our buyer: all cash, 30 day escrow, no loan or any other contingencies. And what do we get back as a counter offer? Actually, better than we expected ..... the bank tried to shorten the inspection period to five days from the standard 17. That's it. And that's another signal. We had the best hand on the table. Once we agreed to those terms (actually, we countered 10 days just because LSPOA might not be able to get the homeowner packet out in 5, but the bank accepted that) the deal was struck. Once the bank signs our offer and their own counter we open escrow and the ten and 30 day clocks start.

It took some doing for our buyer to find a lender who could put together an FHA loan in 30 days though. Wait a minute you're saying, this was an all-cash deal, what loan? Well, it is a cash deal, the buyers family will step in and cash out the escrow and be repaid by the loan soon after. The buyer will then enter a private loan deal with the family on very favorable terms.

So there you have it. A nearly new 3b 2ba 1400 square foot home for under $130,000. A scary thing for pre-owned and even new specs but until this REO inventory comes down to the 6 month level here (it's 22+ months right now), this is how the market is working here.

Mt. Shasta Baritone Timothy Blevins Coming to Yreka Oct. 18th

There will be an afternoon of songs and duets when Baritone Timothy Robert Blevins comes to the Yreka Community Theater on Sunday, October 18th at 3:00 PM. The Red Scarf Society for the Performing Arts is sponsoring the program that will feature songs from Gershwin's Porgy and Bess and other popular opera selections. The former Mt. Shasta resident is a a graduate of The Julliard School and has appeared at some of the most prestigious opera houses in the world, including the prestigious Grand Théâtre de Genève, where he created ‘Miguel' in the world premiere of Tania Leon's new opera The Scourge of Hyacinths. His New York City Opera debut was as Crown in Porgy and Bess.

His ability to cross from one musical genre to another, has aided Blevins to work across the board in many aspects of the entertainment world. In 2004, Walt Disney released its newest animated film, “Home on the Range”, which featured Mr. Blevins as a singer in the soundtrack. In 2006, he sang for the soundtrack of yet another Walt Disney film called, “Enchanted” where he sings the step out role of the steel drum player.

The Lyric Opera of Chicago presented Timothy Blevins in the world premiere of Anthony Davis' new opera Amistad, singing the title role.

Additional operatic credits include his debut in the title role in Mozart's masterpiece Le Nozze di Figaro at Toledo Opera, and repeated for Virginia Opera; Escamillo in Carmen at Connecticut Opera, he joined Opera Ontario for their annual POPERA! (Popular operatic arias and ensembles in concert), and he recreated Crown for both Virginia Opera and Opera IllinoisMichigan Opera Theatre, Giovanni Paisiello's comic chamber opera The Maestro, a U.S. premiere at the Loyola Marymount University, Il barbiere di Siviglia with the Polish National Symphony Orchestra at Fort de France (Martinique), Porgy and Bess at the Pablo Casal's Festival in Puerto Rico, and as Ford in Verdi's Falstaff with ‘Luciano Pavarotti and Friends' at the Opera Company of Philadelphia.

On the concert stage he has appeared with the New York Ragtime Ensemble; with The Cedar Rapids Symphony Orchestra, the Berkshire Choral Institute (MA), the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra; he has presented solo recitals in New York at both the Weill Recital Hall (Carnegie Hall), and the 92nd Street Y; and has toured extensively as a soloist with the Boys' Choir of Harlem.

Timothy Blevins made his Broadway debut in 1993 as Sgt. John in Miss Saigon, a role he repeated in the long-running Stuttgart Production. Additional Off-Broadway and Broadway productions include Showboat, both Sweet Adeline and One Touch of Venus for the New York City Center's Encore Series, the new Disney production of King David for the re-opening of the New Amsterdam Theatre, and at Lincoln Center's Miller Theater he appeared as Husky Miller in the Goodspeed Opera House production of Carmen Jones. He has also made a guest appearance on “As the World Turns”.

Suzanne Vinnik will be joining Mr. Blevins on stage. Her musicality is unmistakable! By the time she was ten she earned the nickname ‘Las Vegas’ Littlest Diva’ where she performed at nearly every resort on the Las Vegas Strip.

During the 2009-2010 season Vinnik will premiere the role of Giselda in the first fully staged performance in North America of Montemezzi’s L’incantesimo at Pittsburgh Opera Theatre under the direction of Jonathan Eaton. She will also sing her first Musetta from Puccini’s La Boheme with Nevada Opera Theatre, and make her highly anticipated Carnegie Hall Debut in a solo recital in Weill Recital Hall featuring specially arranged music by Ricky Ian Gordon and world premieres of several Thomas Pasatieri works.

Carol Houston will be the accompanist.

Tickets are $20 for adults and $5 for students. They are available at Nature's Kitchen, Yreka Chamber of Commerce, Surroundings, Village Books in Mt. Shasta, Scott Valley Drug and Ashland Drug.

For further information call 842-4656.

"Paca Puckey"

We are trying “lasagna” gardening which is currently popular in gardening circles (see earlier article on the book) and since we own a Mantis cultivator we use horse manure mixed with sawdust and grass clippings to make each new bed. After some calling around I found a couple of sources of horse manure close to Lake Shastina: Lindy Foster on Solus Dr. (938-3330) and Lesa Mandts (459-1142 or see their website, www.paints.com).

Both are horse breeders and have copious amounts and Lindy said hers is composted because they keep it mounded up all the time so it’s crumbly and free of the infamous “horse apples” that otherwise have to be chopped up with a tiller. Both also do not charge for the product and even offer free loading into your truck.

Another fertilizer source is EBA Oaks Alpacas, the reason for the story's title. Alpacas are bred for their wool and the closest one is owned by Aase & Duane Frederick, called EBA Oaks Alpacas. They are holding an open house this weekend called National Alpaca Farm Days and are located off Schulmeyer Gulch Road just south of Yreka; 842-3504 at 6010 Little Creek Rd., Yreka.

They too offer free fertilizer and loading although the poop is different than horse manure. Aase explained that is in pellet form, similar in size to deer poop. She also said it is not as hot and can be spread on top of plants without danger of burning them. They provide most if not all of the fertilizer used in the Yreka Community Garden for these reasons.

So whether you garden the traditional way and rototill each season or you layer ingredients and let them rest year after year most ingredients are free locally and good soil amendment material. For more information contact the Master Gardener at OSU in Ashland 541-776-7371 or jcmga.sorec@oregonstate.edu.

What is Real Estate "Inventory"?

Some of us are hearing a few signs of economic recovery in the real estate market: pending and closed home sales are up, inventory of unsold homes on the decline, leading a few folks in our industry to predict higher home sales volume and home prices stabilizing over coming months.

But there also are some doubts: are some buyers (and some banks) waiting to put their properties on the market until things get better? Also, that alarming UNDER-employment report showing almost 20% of us are either out of work, had hours cut, or are working at parttime jobs because we can't find fulltime ones.

Inventory for a balanced market seems to be six months ___ all homes should expect to sell in six months. Our broker Charnna Gilmore explains how this is computed: take the closed sales for the past 12 months and divide it by 12 to see how many sold per month on average then divide that answer into the number that are for sale right now.

For example, there were 41 homes sold in Lake Shastina in the last 12 months which is an average of 3.42 per month. There are 75 homes for sale right now so when you divide you will see our inventory would last almost 22 months at this rate.

Put another way, to reach the ideal "balanced market" at the 3.42 rate there should be only 18 homes out there for sale. Or, from the other end of it, with 75 homes for sale, to reach a "balanced" state we'd have to be selling homes at the rate of 13 per month (75 divided by 6 months), roughly four times faster than they are selling now.

In 2005 when it was practically the reverse, a seller's market, there were 74 closed sales with around 50 homes for sale at any given time. 74 divided by 12 = 6.16 which when divided into the 50 homes for sale equals 8.3 months, a whopping difference.

Judy Darner from BofA mortgage services in Yreka who has been in the business a long, long time told Sally the other day that Shastina was the hardest hit community in the county, with more foreclosures and REO's (bank-owned, where the owner just gave the home back to the lender) than any other. Most everyone in the business agrees that this is because of over-speculation . . . many builders during the boom years put spec homes up and got caught when the economy collapsed last summer. Some had multiple loans due on vacant, unsold homes and many had to walk away from them.

A sad by-product of too many vacant homes is they sometimes get stripped or gutted by angry owners or even burglars. I showed one this week like that; carpet gone, kitchen cabinets, lighting fixtures, all appliances, and even the toilets ripped out. This one was also missing one entire side of the backyard cyclone fence, you could see where they had pulled out the posts, cement and all.

All of this of course has a depressing effect on the rental market as well. More homes are going into rental from owners worried about making the mortgage payments which in turn depresses the going rental rates because of the competition.

Lose, lose. Let's hope the small signs of improvement we see here and there continue and that next spring will bring steady recovery.

Trader Joe's Grocery Now in Redding

Some of you know about this grocery chain from other cities and it is now within driving range. Founded by Joe Coulombe in 1958 according to Wikipedia, Joe called his first one in Los Angeles "Pronto Market", a small convenience store but he soon realized that the 7-Eleven competition was too strong and morphed his concept into specialty foods and emphasized fresh goods, even at one point serving fresh deli sandwiches and freshly squeezed orange juice.

He reportedly thought up the idea after a Carribbean vacation and the first Trader Joe's with the South Seas motif opened in Pasadena in 1979. The chain has since grown to 528 branches in 24 states and Consumer Reports ranks it as the second best grocery store in America behind Wegman's. From 1990 to 2001 it increased the number of branches fivefold and profits tenfold. Pretty good performance for an industry with traditionally marginal profits.

Theo Albrecht, a German billionaire who owns the German supermarket chain Aldi, bought the company in 1979 and Joe retired in 1989.

So ! You can now get stuff like Two Buck Chuck's wine, the really decent California wine varieties for $1.99 a bottle. My friend Ted says when Charles Shaw divorced his wife she won all the profits from their vineyard so that's why he sells all his wines at cost.

And besides great choice one thing I noticed was each pricing as opposed to by the pound on much of their produce . . . bananas for example were 19 cents each, artichokes 49 cents, and so forth. Lots of organic and imported goods, too.

The Redding store is north of Sears off Hilltop before it crosses eye 5, next to the new Kohl's.

Lasagna Gardening & The Master Gardener

Some of you may watch the weather on channel 12 in Medford and will remember the segments the weather people do with Oregon State's Master Gardener. I called the number (541-776-7371) and since it was after their telephone hours of 10am-2pm, was given this email address: jcmga.sorec@oregonstate.edu. I did not get a name when they responded but the point is you can get really, really professional gardening advice and it's all free.

So while their instructors validated my sawdust, grass clippings, and horse manure amendments their soil and compost mentor advised against rototilling. And another person from a worm farm referred me to the book shown above which advocates layering materials rather than mixing them.

I just got the book (from Village Books in Mt. Shasta for $17.95) so I do not have content to report yet but from the introduction the author seems to have a great number of ideas apart from the layering concept . . . bordering a planted area with certain plants to ward off pests and other natural approaches to enhance the garden.

So having just bought a Mantis rototiller I'm of course a little reluctant to go this layering route fulltime. And in fact a little of each might be the answer, like mixing all the goods up in fall and layering over with grass clippings all winter to seep.

Anyway, more later when I finish the book.

The Almost-Too-Good-To-Be-True Bread Making Machine

I almost titled this "Real Estate and Baked Bread" because we are taught when showing a home that certain aromas trigger happy memories from childhood making buyers relax and more comfortable which is the state of mind a seller would like them to be in. There are many aromas that can be introduced when showing but the one at the head of the list is freshly-baked bread.

So when a good friend told us that she had baked her own bread with the help of a new device that did it all hands-off, we got motivated. She bought hers, a Panasonic model SD-YD250, after researching the different brands and ratings extensively online. Having never heard of these machines we were mildly surprised there were so many brands and models to choose from but we followed her advice and got one from Amazon.com for $129.99 with no sales tax and no shipping fee.

It's about the size of a countertop microwave oven and looks like this:



Anyway the big idea is that it does all the functions that you used to have to do by hand (which took so long that there wasn't any fun left)____ mixes the ingredients, kneads, bakes, and keeps warm. You can make different loaf sizes and lots of different kinds of bread, even pizza crust. By adding various things like walnuts or cranberries you can create different flavors, too.

But again, it truly is hands-free. Plop the ingredients inside, put the yeast in the small hopper on top and start. It took about five hours for Sally's first loaf of whole wheat honey bread but you can't imagine how wonderful the aromas were that floated around the house that day. And then of course what a thick, warm slice slathered in butter tasted like.

There are health benefits too, of course. Whole grains, no preservatives or artificial additives, and Sally estimated the ingredients cost less than 50 cents. If you are paying the typical $3 loaf price at the super this means you'd pay off this device's $130 cost with 52 loaves of far superior bread than the store-bought kind.

For a final clincher, one of our tenant-clients is a route sales manager for a major bread company and (you can see this coming, right?). Yes, he has one and loves it.

So attention sellers; if you're thinking of listing your home give this one a thought. And beyond the powerful effect it will have on buyers imagine programming the machine so you wake up to a freshly-baked loaf to enjoy with your morning coffee . . .

Cell Phone Tricks

From a shared email:

5 Things You Never Knew Your Cell Phone Could Do :

For all the folks with cell phones. (This should be printed and kept in your car, purse, and wallet. Good information to have with you.) There are a few things that can be done in emergencies.

FIRST :

The Emergency number worldwide for Mobile is 112. If you find yourself out of the coverage area of your mobile network and there is an emergency, dial 112 and the mobile will search any existing network to establish the emergency number for you and interestingly, this number can be dialed even if the keypad is locked. Try it!


SECOND : Locked your keys in the car?

Does your car have remote keyless entry? If you lock your keys in the car and the spare keys are at home, call someone at home on their cell phone from your cell phone. Hold your cell phone about a foot from your car door and have the person at your home press the unlock button on your key remote, holding it near the mobile phone on their end. Your car will unlock. Distance is no object. You could be hundreds of miles away, and if you can reach someone who has the other key remote for your car you can unlock the doors (or the trunk).


THIRD : Hidden Battery Power

Ifyour cell battery is very low you can activate a hidden battery reserve by pressing *3370#. Your cell phone will restart with this reserve and the instrument will show a 50% increase in battery power. This reserve will get recharged when you charge your cell phone the next time.


FOURTH : How to disable a STOLEN mobile phone

To check your Mobile phone's serial number, key in the following digits on your phone: *#06#. A 15-digit code will appear on the screen. This number is unique to your handset. Write it down and keep it somewhere safe. If your phone gets stolen, you can phone your service provider and give them this code. They will then be able to block your handset so even if the thief changes the SIM card, your phone will be totally useless. You probably won't get your phone back, but at least you know that whoever stole it can't use/sell it either. If everybody does this, there would be no point in people stealing mobile phones.


And Finally....


FIFTH : Free Directory Service for Cell Phones

Cell phone companies are charging $1.00 to $1.75 or more for 411 information calls so when you need to use the 411 information option, simply dial (800)FREE411, (800-373-3411) without incurring any charge at all. Program this into your cell phone.

Dual Agency

In real estate an agent can work for a buyer, a seller, or both, and the issue of what "agency" means sometimes confuses people. For example some home buyers believe they have to call the listing agent to make an offer but the fact is that any agent whose office belongs to the local Multiple Listing Service ("MLS") can make that offer for them.

The reason buyers seek listing agents seems to be that they believe that only the listing office can make purchase offers. But that is not factual. In truth, most offers are made by agents who do NOT represent the seller. In plain terms any agent can help a buyer make an offer on any home listed for sale on the local MLS. If the buyer thinks the listing agent may know more about the property than other agents and chooses that person for that reason then dual agency comes into play.

An agent who represents the seller (the listing agent) gets a call to make an offer from a buyer and dual agency clicks in. The agent must represent both buyer and seller to their mutual advantage. While this may seem contradictory it is both legal and ethical. A dual agent cannot disclose confidential information to either buyer or seller, despite being the agent for each. That agent in fact has a fiduciary duty (you have to be honest to the N'th degree) to both parties. It's actually much harder than being a single agent.

All this said, if you as a buyer feel the selling agent may know more about the home that's an opinion thing. Agents for buyers go a loooong way to make sure their buyers know all there is to know about their purchase. Think about it. A buyer's agent does not get paid until the escrow closes. It is in their clear interest to get everything out on the table for the escrow to close successfully. The client has to benefit for this to work.

Cash for Clunkers or Money Out the Window?

This old wreck is what I thought they meant with this car program so it was a surprise when my friend Ted who works at a local automobile dealership described some of the vehicles they were taking in. You see he knows that I am waiting for the economy to get better so I can get a pickup truck. We used to have one, back when gas was reasonable and real estate was better. But like many folks we downsized and I'm still impatient that I can't get up into the woods and find those airplane wrecks.

Ted was saying that really well-cared for trucks and cars were turning up. He described one gorgeous-sounding 4x4 Ranger which was unsettling because it was so close to what I'm hoping to buy someday. I guess it's gas mileage was bad enough to earn $3,500 for the owner under the program towards a newer truck. It's good looks and excellent mechanical condition did not matter, which is bad enough.

But then he explained that they destroy the engine by pouring some super-bad stuff into the crankcase and then running the engine until it siezes up and thereby ruins itself, rendering the vehicle worthless. It's VIN number can never be used again which apparently is the point of the whole thing . . . delete the guzzlers and sell hybrids thus creating automotive jobs and stimulating consumer spending.

But good grief, and this is the old yankee in me, why pay me to destroy something that works just fine?!? Take the rusted Olds that smokes and gets 5 miles per gallon sure, but a nine year-old truck that's working just fine? Who thought up this dumb plan?

Readers, your input is welcome. Surely I'm missing the point here.

Saving Money in the Garden

This is a Mantis cultivator, the one you see on TV all the time churning up soil so fine it looks cosmetic. Well, for once the TV ads are true, We bought one at the Medford Grange and it works as advertised. This article is not a testimonial for Mantis, however but how a combination of things we are doing with our garden that are not only working well but saving us much of the money we had planned to spend on the garden in the first place.

First, we can get free horse manure which is great fertilizer. We don't have a horse but my daughter-in-law does so we filled her horse trailer with the stuff and Terry Brown at Terry's Nursery in Yreka says the older the better because the weed seeds get cooked out as the stuff ages and decomposes. It's pretty easy to find a horse owner in these parts and most would probably be very grateful to have you haul it away.

The next ingredient was going to be soil conditioner but I learned that Rich Linden at 523 Ski Village Drive in Mt. Shasta (926-3504) has a sawmill and he produces custom-sized lumber and large timbers for local people. He hauls a lot of sawdust and shavings to the dump every single week and he said he is delighted if people come by to pick them up and save him a trip. Bring your own garbage cans and trash bags.

Fine sawdust decomposes readily in the soils here and if the dirt is nutrient-poor like we have here in Lake Shastina and needing amendments such as soil conditioner, this is a free amendment that the Mantis can mix into the dirt along with the manure.

The cedar shavings Rich gives away can go between beds for walkways and they help repel bugs in the process. Cedar smells nice, too but is decay resistent so that's why you don't want to till it into the beds.

Finally we add grass clippings to the mix. We had our own pile to work from but it's not hard to talk a neighbor out of his collection. I even saw a small mountain of cuttings by Hoy Park that we may be able to borrow from, too.

The point is, make the mix 1/4 dirt, 1/4 manure, 1/4 sawdust, and 1/4 cut grass. When tilled several times and deeply the result is a fine, soft, and nutrient-rich soil ready to grow whatever you put in it. And all the ingredients are free for the hauling.

(By the way, I have to run over the beds several times with the Mantis in order to break down the manure clumps and mix everything up well enough and I have learned it is very helpful to have a friend spraying water behind the Mantis. An awful lot of dust is kicked up and that's not good for the air cleaner filter or for you. Be careful whom you ask to do this however, my darling wife got carried away with the hose more times than I could put off to inattention or carelessness.)

The last ingredient is going to be worms. We plan to buy the red wiggler variety the next time we go to the Farmers Market in Medford. It is going strong at this time of year and happens every Thursday on South Pacific Highway just south of the Harry and David mall. As long as we keep the beds wet over winter he little guys should thrive in this mixture and their castings are rich in nutrients which is the idea behind having worms in the first place.

This concoction is going to age over winter and when we plant in the spring I'll sprinkle ground up eggshells into the hole for each tomato, pepper, squash, and others that are subject to the blossom-end rot that got many of our plants this year.

If anyone would like to drop by and inspect our project please feel free. Our phone is 938-0385 and you are welcome to call ahead.

Mediation vs Binding Arbitration in Real Estate

Most real estate contracts contain clauses for these two procedures and while mediation is agreed to by all parties when they sign the contract, binding arbitration requires initialing. The why of that may be because they seem to be the same thing to some people, but they are very different. And while I have personally been through both activities as part of my own real estate transaction some years ago, once again I urge you to seek legal advice if you are considering either action.

Mediation is simply trying to talk your way through a disagreement with the aid of a a professional mediator. This is not between a buyer and a seller because each has an agent who negotiates for you in that arena. Rather, this is when you have a disagreement with your own broker over something and just can't work it out. So rather than hiring a lawyer and filing a lawsuit you sit face-to-face with an neutral third party to try and work through your disagreement(s). The mediator might be a retired judge or other professional and you pay for his or her services.

If this doesn't work and you have agreed in the contract to arbitration you are agreeing to obey the decision of the arbitrator and in the process, agreeing to give up two civil rights: trial by jury and the right to appeal. It is crucial that some one going into arbitration realize this ___ you can't hope a jury of your peers will decide the rights and wrongs, the arbitrator's decision is final and unappealable. This is why it must be separately intitialed on the contract, it's that important. In fact, if this clause is not initialed by both parties in the same way (both accept or both decline) the law says there is no contract.

Of course the idea is to avoid misunderstanding from the get-go and not have to go to either mediation or arbitration. This is partly why contracts are SO long and involved and, despite the work it takes, you should read every single line and ask all the questions that come to mind. That's what your Realtor is for. But once again if you are facing either of these actions and need legal advice, ask your lawyer.

CC&R Corner__September 2009

What Do You Mean My Dog Run Needs Pre-Approval?
by Will Bullington

As many of you know when you buy or rent a home in a planned unit development such as Lake Shastina there are certain rules that must be followed. These are the Covenants, conditions and Restrictions or the CC&R’s. The CC&Rs help maintain the high standards of our community. Property values statistically are higher and crime is lower in planned unit developments like Lake Shastina. Almost half the homes sold in Siskiyou County in 2006 were in Lake Shastina and over 260 homes were built here in the last few years. Everyone that buys a property agrees to these CC&Rs and any one that rents their home to another must:

1. Notify the Association in writing of the names of the tenants.
2. Give the tenants a copy of the CC&Rs.

Tenants are subject to the CC&Rs and may be evicted by the Governing Board and the cost of doing such paid by the owner of the property. Owners and tenants may be fined for violations of the CC&Rs by the Governing Board per its rules enforcement procedures.

The most important and critical role of our planned unit development is the Environmental Control Committee (ECC). Some homeowner associations call this an Architectural Control Committee. Both bodies must pre-approve improvements to properties throughout the development. This approval helps guarantee that the modifications meet the minimum construction standards of the CC&Rs, stay outside of setbacks and easements, don’t encroach into neighboring lots, and are aesthetically pleasing. Many cities control these same items through their ordinances.

The section of the CC&r states:


Section 5.1. Environmental Control Committee Approval of Improvements.

(a) Approval Generally. Before commencing construction or installation of any Improvement within the Properties, the Owner planning such Improvement must submit a request for approval to the Environmental Control Committee. The Owner's request shall include structural plans, specifications and plot plans satisfying the minimum requirements specified in the Architectural Rules (see Section 5.5 of this Declaration). Unless the Committee's approval of the proposal is first obtained, no work on the Improvement shall be undertaken. The Committee shall base its decision to approve, disapprove or conditionally approve the proposed Improvement on the criteria described in Section 5.5 of this Declaration.

(b) Definition of "Improvement". The term "Improvement" as used herein includes, without limitation, the construction, erection, or installation of any buildings, decks, fences, swimming pools, patios, driveways, ground-based satellite reception dishes, or any other structure of any kind. In addition, it also includes alteration by painting, roofing, siding, or remodeling of the exterior of any buildings or any other structure of any kind and the filling, grading, or excavation of any Lot or portion thereof.

(c) Modifications to Approved Plans Must Also Be Approved. Once a proposed work of Improvement has been duly approved by the Committee, no material modifications shall be made in the approved plans and specifications therefore and no subsequent alteration, relocation, addition or modification shall be made to the work of Improvement, as approved, without a separate submittal to, and review and approval by, the Committee. If the proposed modification will have, or is likely to have, a material affect on other aspects or components of the work, the Committee, in its discretion, may order the Owner and his or her contractors and agents to cease working not only on the modified component of the Improvement, but also on any other affected component.

In the event that it comes to the knowledge and attention of the Association, its Environmental Control Committee, or the agents or employees of either, that a work of Improvement, or any modification thereof, is proceeding without proper approval, the Association shall be entitled to exercise the enforcement remedies specified in this Declaration including, without limitation, ordering an immediate cessation and abatement of all aspects of the work of Improvement until such time as proper architectural review and approval is obtained.

The process is really painless. You may view all the CC&Rs and look for applications under “information” at our website: www.lakeshastina.com. You can print or scan the application and mail or e-mail them to our offices. Landscaping in your own yard (within your property pins) does not need ECC approval. Any landscaping done outside towards the road right-away must have the approval of the ECC and the public works department (because they might just snow plow your landscaping lights and rocks into your yard). They also have active and future utilities in these areas: gutters, drainage, curb and sidewalk, etc.

As always if you have any questions please call me at 938-3281 extension 101 and I will be glad to meet with you at our offices or your home to help you with the process.

With over 1,100 homes we have a very active ECC of five dedicated volunteers that represent all of you in maintaining high property values and they should be thanked for their excellent work.

St. Kilda

St. Kilda is a group of rocky islands west of Scotland in the Outer Hebrides, the westernmost part of the British Isles. The main one is Hirta and this is a photo of Village Bay where the small population lived. The island has been inhabited since about 2000 BC. Vikings may have settled there later although not permanently.

The island group is on the receiving end of the North Atlantic weather systems which makes landing on the islands dangerous, especially in winter. The highest recorded wind speed (198 mph) in Britan was recorded here. The only visitors were trawlermen seeking refuge from storms in this small bay. Life was primitive to say the least and the people were subsistence farmers / hunters for centuries in near total isolation from the outside world. None could read or write and the only spoken language was Gaelic. Most, adults and children, were barefoot and hygiene was poor.

The isolation defines this story. The people were crofters for the past 600 years, paying rent to MacLeod of MacLeod, the laird (chief) of the Scottish clan that owned the islands. They harvested the abundant nesting sea birds for their feathers and oil which they traded to the owner for the rent he charged them. The meat they salted for eating during winter when boats could not land to bring supplies.

This went on for generations. The small families all lived in one tiny area of the gale-blown isle (Hirta) called Village Bay. With a population never more than 200 souls everyone knew everyone else and they depended on eachother almost to the extent of being a single organism.

Then religion arrived. In the late 1600's Scotland was in the throes of a religious upheaval. Fundamental protestantism spread to Hirta and was embraced to the extent that productivity suffered. Subsistence living leaves no room for days off work but church services changed that and life became even harder. To make up for the hours lost in church, families worked into the early morning hours plucking the birds and preparing the oil before retiring. The stone hut in the foreground of the photo is a "cleit", the sod-roofed shelter St. Kildans used to dry the turf they used for fires and to dry the bird meat they used for food.

Then came the tourists. Brits by now had heard about the 'primitives' on this forgotten isle and they became curiosities. Soon the islanders were selling blown puffin eggs and the knitting they did during the dark winter months.

Enter money.

The islanders had for generations depended on eacth other. Every morning for example the men would meet in the street and decide what to do that day. (They were a talkative folk and the meeting sometimes lasted all day, with no action coming from it at all). There was no "boss", pure democracy ruled.

The seabird slaughter was always shared .... the elderly who could not climb the cliffs to catch the birds still got an equal share. Feathers and oil were for barter, to pay the annual rent to the owner of the isle.

But the population (rarely over 150) began to decline and reached a critical mass when there were not enough young men to harvest the birds. More and more the young men were supporting the older parents and some began to leave in search of a better life. As a result, fewer children were born each year and tetanus killed many. Working age men died too on the cliffs and from the boats, and the elderly and infirm suffered even more.

So in August of 1930 the Scottish government evacuated the entire village to the mainland where, unused to working for money, unaccustomed to living apart in different villages (with the man gone all day), and surrounded by English, not Gaelic-speaking strangers, the 36 survivors from Hirta struggled to make sense of it all.

Their (government) homes were better than the "black houses" on Hirta certainly. For the first time St. Kildans had running water, toilets, electricity, and dependable heat. But much of this went unappreciated by the islanders so drear was their longing for the simple island life.

All efforts before the evacuation to enable them to survive proved fruitless due to the intransient attitudes subsistence living had created. For example the little farming that was done was communal. Each family had several 3 by 25 foot strips of land to cultivate. Not very efficient in the unforgiving climate and soil conditions of Hirta, Stac Lee, and the other rocky prominences.

Even the Soay sheep, wild since time immemorial were "herded" by dogs who had their teeth filed or pulled to prevent damage when they finally grabbed their prey. Many sheep simply jumped off the cliffs to avoid brutal capture. Yet, when evacuation loomed most owners drowned their dogs rather than have them put to sleep humanely such was their limited willingness to accept new things. According to Tom Steel author of "The Life and Death of St. Kilda" (and producer of the BBC documentary "A Far Better Place"), this parochial mentality may explain the islander's sudden willingness to take the strict religion of the time so much to heart.

But cragsmen though they were, reality won out. Feathers became obsolete when cotton took over pillows. Gannet oil lost out to petroleum. Subsistance died and a money economy became the way of the world. A few McDonalds and Gilleses lived on but when this book was published (1988), most native St. Kildans were gone.

Google it. There is a big heart-felt story here.

B24 Genealogy Update....Thornburg Family Found

This is the man. Our instructor-pilot. One of four who bailed out and survived the crash on 12 June 1943 just west of Truck Village. Jennifer Bryan from the Genealogy Society of Siskiyou County actually ran down a cousin of Lt. Douglas Thornburg and she connected me with Elizabeth Thornburg of Santa Ana, CA. Elizabeth not only had this photo but a full story of his last flight, which follows:


At 7pm on the evening of July 3, 1943, B-24 #42-7011 took off from Salinas Army Air Field on a night time navigation training mission over the Pacific Ocean. A few hours into the flight, the crew discovered the plane was using fuel at an excessive rate, and turned immediately for the coast. About an hour west of Point Conception, one engine quit. Pilot "Skip" Johnson told the crew to be ready at any time to bail out, but to wait for his order.

As they sighted the light beacons at Point Conception, a second engine quit, and the bomber went into a steep dive. Navigator Peter Dannhardt and bombardier Robert Prosser panicked and exited the plane through the front landing gear doors. Johnson and co-pilot George White were able to pull the plane out of the dive and limp to Santa Barbara on two engines. At 2am on July 4, Johnson gave the bailout order and then it was discovered that Dannhardt and Prosser were missing.

All eight crew members who bailed out over land survived. #42-7011 crashed in the mountains ten miles north of Santa Barbara. Several B-24's were sent out from Salinas to look for the two missing crew members. One of them was B-24 #42-7160.

In addition to its normal ten man crew were pilot Douglas Thornburg and navigator Justin Marshall. Thornburg was in command. On the foggy morning of July 5, 1943, they were flying an east-to-west zigzag pattern over the ocean between Santa Barbara and Point Concpetion.

Another bomber reported spotting a life raft near San Miguel Island, so the crew of #42-7160 decided to go in for a closer look. They were last seen headed west, descending below the fog layer at 500 feet. At about 8am they slammed into 800 foot tall Green Mountain on San Miguel Island at full speed.

Two parachutes washed up on a beach west of Santa Barbara, but Dannhardt and Prosser were never found, and were presumed drowned. The surviving crew of #42-7011 swore their fuel system and radios had been sabotaged,but the Army Air Force accident report concluded the pilot and flight engineer had not set the fuel mixture correctly on the bomber's engines.

The wreck of #42-7160 was discovered on San Miguel Island by a sheepherder named Robert Brooks on March 19,1944. The Navy removed the remains of the crew. In 1954, hikers on the island found additional human remains near the wreck and reported this to the Air Force.

A Coast Guard cutter was dispatched from Long Beach, and en route to the island, it struck the civilian sailboat Aloha, killing two passengers. After this final incident, the Navy began using San Miguel Island for bombing practice, and blew up 20(% ?) of the wreck of #42-7160. Pieces remain there to this day.
Thank you so much Elizabeth. I hope one day you can visit our display at the museum. I will print out this photo and get it framed. And the poem which was written for his parents and reads:

TRIBUTE TO DOUGLAS THORNBURG
Just feel proud, dear mother heart,
Your precious son, a glorious part
Has taken in this world wide fray
To free all lands from Axis sway;
The silver wings that bore him hence
While you each day endured suspense,
Flashed through the sky on duty bent
The job to do with full intent;
And though his ship may missing be,
Perhaps on land, perhaps on sea,
At conflict's end your gallant son
May come again when war is won;
But should there be a different story,
Just know he flashed his way to glory.
-Gertrude J. Hager
Written for Mr. And Mrs Hix Thornburg of Casa Grande whose son Douglas is reported missing.

Our hope is that we can complete the crew roster history and find the stories of the other crewmembers of tail number 42-7219. "Our own B24". To rest in obscurity is not an option, for me anyway.

Bruce Batchelder