3-12-11 Saturday

MY FREE RAMBLING THOUGHTS


My friend, Cecelia Billie, passed peacefully today with many of her family in the room. She had been on life support for about 3 weeks and in the hospital about 6 weeks. This is a hard time for the family and all who knew her. Her 4 children, her sister, her brother, her husband and several nieces and nephews were there. The txt messages from the younger ones were touching. As one nephew put it, ‘the room where Auntie was is full of love.’ I got many texts and a phone call about an hour after her passing. I was a big part of the kids growing up and still considered part of the family.

Tonight is our discussion group. I read the five articles and really tried to understand how the banks and lending organizations work in an international market. After the first paragraph or so of each article it just became blah, blah, blah. I just don’t get it. When I was on the rez I understood that many of my Native friends were the bank to their relatives—especially on pay day. The lent money was never repaid with money…it is just what you did for your family. You have it, they don’t…so share. I was always very careful if I lent money. I only had three times that I wasn’t repaid. I’m still pissed at myself for giving away the money. I am not of that culture and do not abide by their practice of non-repayment. I must have lent money over 100 times, so it isn’t a bad record. The articles reminded me when many countries borrow money from other countries that cultures vary. If one country borrows money from another and then goes belly up what happens? Most of the time they repay their own citizens and forget about the other countries. Sometimes other countries step in and help repay the debt to the lending countries. My dad was very frugal. So was my mom. I learned their lessons well. My brother didn’t. We have totally different views of money. I could not live his way, and he certainly couldn’t live my way. It seems that the world markets live like my brother.

Bob, my traveling buddy, called today and said there was no room at the inn. Our trip to Hadrian’s Wall is off. His friend in Germany has checked lots of tourist companies and it turns out that trips to Hardiran’s Wall during the spring have to be made months or a year in advance. It turns out this is a big tourist attraction for Europeans and Brits. Bob was pretty depressed, but now we are talking about doing a river trip down the Colorado. I know those reservations have to be made at least a year in advance for the long trips, so I told him I would check out if there were any ‘last minute’ room for us. Bob is now stuck again in that he was planning on meeting Focus in Rome for a three week trip through Italy at the end of our trip to Normandy. Now he is working on getting to Rome at a reasonable rate. Again, the height of tourist time. And if he can’t jump in with the group from Denver, he may have to buy a one-way ticket to Rome to meet the group. He was already set to fly back with them. I know he will work it out and am glad I didn’t join him on the Italy extension of our now defunct trip. I did come close to joining him back in October, but decided I would not as Ethiopia is in October. Two trips in one year is a lot and the England-France trip would have been much cheaper, since we weren’t staying at high end hotels and not taking any ‘tours’ while we were there. As I told Bob, my travel is based on my philosophy that ‘if it happens, it is meant to happen; if not there is a reason.’

The 2010 census figures are out. Flag’s population grew by 25% during the last decade…including me. We now have 65,870 people within the city limits. I wonder what the city will be doing with this huge increase in population in terms of taxing. In the world view, we are still considered a town as we need 100,000 to be a city. Of course, AZ seldom takes a world view so in AZ we are considered a city. I can’t imagine Flag with 100,000 people and certainly don’t want to even try. I am sure that our much higher population will have more businesses looking at our mountain town. Then they will look at our weather, our snow, and our cost of living for their employees and just keep looking. As long as our city government sees our cost of living as a problem that has no solutions, we will have a long time before we reach the ‘city’ category. Working class families usually can’t afford to buy a house and finding a good rental is not that easy either. We are not, nor ever have been, an inexpensive place to live.

Our discussion group went very late. All other parts of post will return tomorrow.

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