A Big Door Slides Open - Unexpectedly

Lately, my son has been closing the door to his room when he’s inside. Part of it is for increased solitude and privacy, a chance to make his room an oasis for himself. In the last couple weeks, it’s also been to keep all the AC captured in his room

 

I certainly respect the need for ‘sanctuary.’ He’s that kind of kid. Heck, I’m still  that kind of kid. So, it’s been on my mind, as he approaches his twelfth birthday, that some doors are closing on an interpersonal level as well… that the physical door corresponds to an emotional door.

This last weekend, we spent most of the day at Oaks Park, a Portland institution. And the site of the company picnic. We all went. The kids love the rides and, this year, they’re both big/old enough to ride virtually all the rides on their own. For the first time ever, brother and sister used the buddy system to spend most of the afternoon prowling the park’s midway, making their own decisions about rides, then checking in to share their adventures. In this case, a door is opened: one of independence and freedom for the children; one of relaxed vigilance and a chance to be a ‘couple’ again for the parents. So far, a door hasn’t shut – the kids like it just as much when we join them as when they go unescorted. They like the ability to do either.

For a variety of reasons, we arranged to have family/school friends meet us at Oaks Park after the company picnic had finished. Our friends have two daughters: one is R’s age and is R’s classmate at Access (I’ll call her K); the other is M’s age and is M’s classmate at Access (I’ll call her E). So, the four schoolmates – three girls and one boy – stayed the evening with the other parents while C and I fulfilled another social obligation.

The kids were all so excited to be with each other, they ran off to have fun without even telling C and I goodbye. Hmmm… is that a door closing, or a door opening? I’m not sure which. Maybe both.

The plan was for us to pick up our kids at 10 o’clock at Oaks Park. We called for a status about 9:30, concerned that our obligation was running late. The parents at Oaks Park said not to rush. See, the kids had chosen go roller skating at the huge skating rink under the massive Wurlitzer organ. They’d be there until the rink closed at 10:30.  For sure.

We had extra time. Hadn’t expected that…

With a sigh of relief, we asked how our children were behaving. They’d only been at the Park since eleven that morning; meltdowns wouldn’t have been out of the question, afterall. The report back was glowing, with the following bits of interesting information:

• M was doing just fine. No issues at all.
• R was being a fine host and a gentle leader. He had even coaxed K and E to ride some rides they normally wouldn’t even consider. They were trusting of his leadership and he was handling it well.
• R and K paired up for all the rides all evening, as did M and E. On this evening, the bond of age similarity trumped the sibling bond.
• At the moment we were talking to the other parents, R and K were skating the couples skate, hand-in-hand.
  
  Wait…..    what? Say that again.

Seems that everyone was skating just fine, getting along wonderfully. Then it was time for a couples-only skate. Someone suggested that R and K could skate it together. The first reaction, apparently, was ‘Eww!” followed almost immediately by “okay.” And off they went.

Even as I’m being told about this, a ‘highlight reel’ of mental snapshots from R’s life is flashing across the inside of my skull, from birth to now. I get to the end of the highlight reel, and my brain inserts a new (conjured-up) mental image of my tall, slim blonde son skating hand-in-hand, a little awkwardly, with a tall, slim blonde girl.

And I feel like a door has opened. I could prophesy a whole future of cool images in which my son is participating in a meaningful way in society. As he holds a girl’s hand for the first time, some people (his Mom?) might see him slipping away.  I guess, in some ways, he is indeed. Me? I see him taking a step toward his future, toward knowing himself. And I was comforted by the thought. I saw the opening of a massive, blimp-hanger sized door, bathing him with the sunshine of his future.

We talked a little about that night, R and I. He was a little more talkative than normal, but not a huge change. I didn’t press; nor did I let on exactly how much I already knew. No sense putting undue attention on this and causing R to slam that door closed.

And there’s no sense in making a big deal out of this. Not to mix my metaphors, but this little milestone was like a moonshot. What I mean is, we put men on the Moon to prove we could. Then we stopped. We haven’t repeated the feat for 30+ years. Only now, after some time has passed, are we planning a return to the Moon.

For R, skating with a girl at Oaks Park certainly is a milestone, but he’s eleven. Girls are unlikely to become a habit until sometime later. He probably won’t try to repeat that same achievement for some time. Right now, i’ts a ‘been there, done that’. Like going to the Moon. Nevertheless, he went ‘way out there’ and he survived. Enjoyed it a little, even.

You know, I really, REALLY like the person my son is becoming.

I Guess we DO Have an Aura!

…scientists in Japan employed extraordinarily sensitive cameras capable of detecting single photons. Five healthy male volunteers in their 20s were placed bare-chested in front of the cameras in complete darkness in light-tight rooms for 20 minutes every three hours from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. for three days.

The researchers found the body glow rose and fell over the day, with its lowest point at 10 a.m. and its peak at 4 p.m., dropping gradually after that. These findings suggest there is light emission linked to our body clocks, most likely due to how our metabolic rhythms fluctuate over the course of the day.

The article goes on to point out that the light being measured is VISIBLE light – in the spectrum that our eyes would see if it were bright enough. This is very different than infrared light, closely allied with the thermal heat our bodies generate.

Link to Article

Fly Repellent – Buddhist Style

This from LifeHacker.com – how to keep flies away chemical-free:

[link]

Baha’i Perspective

Stephen Phelps, who would probably declare his hometown as Tualatin,  and a one-time member of the staff at the Baha’i World Center in Haifa, has just written an amazing perspective piece detailing  a Baha’i view of evolution. It was published to the Baha’i newsletter, One Country, today (at least, as best as I can tell…)  

I love this quote, as Mr. Phelps sets up the scope of his discussion:

“These ideas prepare the ground for addressing a central issue that lies behind the debate about evolution, and that indeed extends to every front in the conflict between science and religion: how can the idea of an active Creator, who continually cares for and occasionally intervenes in His creation, be reconciled with the idea of a world whose workings can be traced in every detail to the operation of fixed mathematical laws?”

And, toward the end, Phelps give us this gem of a sentence:

“It does predict that, throughout the universe, and wherever conditions permit, life and consciousness will be emergent tendencies of matter.”

[link]

The Reverse Air Conditioner

Simple, recycled, nearly zero-cost. Yet amazingly effective at capturing passive solar heat.

Window frame, aluminum cans painted black, stacked like an array of chimneys. Convection pulls cool air in from below and ejects lots of hot air from the top. The author says 105 degrees, in fact, without having the prototype properly insulated or sealed. YIKES!

http://ecotechdaily.com/2009/07/01/free-heat-from-an-old-window-and-some-soda-cans/

Can A Recession RECEDE?

This from NPR’s Weekend Edition [link]:

At the beginning of 2009, many Americans feared an economic depression was at hand. In January alone, U.S. employers slashed nearly three-quarters of a million jobs.

Now, as the year's second half begins, most economists are saying the worst of the recession is over, and that slow growth will begin in the fall.

"The hemorrhaging has peaked," said Bernard Baumohl, chief global economist for the Economic Outlook Group, a forecasting firm. "We're on the other side of the recession now."

Baumohl believes the recession, which began in December 2007, may already have ended, and a feeble recovery begun.

Recall my post back in February [link] pointing ot the NY Fed’s recession forecasting model. Mr. Baumohl’s comments are in direct alignment with the NY Fed model.

Now, I’m not claiming any special knowledge about the economy. I’ve just been following the NY Fed model for the last six months, to learn from it. This has been intellectually fascinating, even as my estate has felt the sting of the market corrections.

I’ll continue to follow this. Look for further updates as the future unfolds.

Paper Avalanche, In The News

 

From the New York Times today:

June 29, 2009

Paper Avalanche Buries Plan to Stem Foreclosures

By PETER S. GOODMAN

LOS ANGELES — Somewhere on earth, there must be a more difficult task than this: persuading American mortgage companies to lower payments for homeowners who can no longer afford their loans. But as Karina Montenegro struggles to accomplish this feat for a troubled borrower, she strains to imagine a more futile pursuit.

Ms. Montenegro, an intern at a local company that seeks loan modifications, dials Washington Mutual to check on the status of an application for a homeowner whose income has plummeted. She endures a Muzak-scored purgatory while on hold. Syrupy-voiced customer service representatives chide her for landing in the wrong department. She learns that the documents her company sent in have simply vanished — for the third time since November.

“I don’t know what happened,” says a customer service officer who identifies himself as Chris. “I don’t know if there was a glitch in the system, whether it was transferred from one call center to the other.”

Think of the documents as being part of a pile massing inside the bank, Chris suggests. “This pile is not going to be moved forward at any point in time.”

Ms. Montenegro and her colleagues suffer these sorts of excruciating exchanges all day long. It is a potent indication of the difficulties afflicting the $75 billion taxpayer-financed program created by the Obama administration in an effort to avoid foreclosure for as many as four million distressed homeowners.

Under the plan, the government offers mortgage companies $1,000 for each loan they agree to modify, then another $1,000 a year for up to three years.

Hanging in the balance is more than the fate of individual homeowners. The administration portrays its mortgage program as a crucial piece of its broader effort to restore vigor to the economy. If the effort fails, foreclosures will continue to surge and home prices will probably keep falling, sowing fresh losses in the financial system and threatening to crimp credit anew for businesses and households.

Yet in the four months since the Treasury Department announced the program, millions of new homeowners have slipped into delinquency and foreclosure. For now, progress is constrained by the limited capacities of mortgage servicing companies, said Michael S. Barr, the assistant Treasury secretary for financial institutions. He offered the first signs of the administration’s impatience with the institutions that control home loans.

“They need to do a much better job on the basic management and operational side of their firms,” Mr. Barr said. “What we’ve been pushing the servicers to do is improve their infrastructure to make sure their call centers are doing a better job. The level of training is not there yet.”

The administration still does not know how many mortgages have been modified under the program. In a recent interview, Mr. Barr estimated the number at “over 50,000,” explaining that precise figures must wait for a soon-to-be-completed tracking system.

By the end of August, the program should produce 20,000 loan modifications a week, he said.

Tom Kelly, a spokesman for JPMorgan Chase, which now owns Washington Mutual, affirmed the administration’s criticism.

“We’ve done a lot,” he said, noting that the bank has added 950 loan counselors since the beginning of the year, bringing the total to 3,500. “But we’ve got a lot more to do.”

Two days in Los Angeles — where a loan modification company allowed a reporter to listen as its agents contacted mortgage servicers provided the firm not be named — starkly illustrated the problems.

The company charges homeowners $3,000, typically upfront, as it seeks to persuade lenders to rewrite loan documents so as to lower monthly payments. The company says it refunds the money when it fails to secure a modification.

For Ms. Montenegro, a college student at the University of Southern California, her summer job makes for fitting symmetry. In high school, she worked as a clerk at a Washington Mutual branch in Downey, Calif., which specialized in mortgages that invited customers to make such tiny payments that their balances increased.

Many homeowners did not understand the terms: Once they owed a lot more than their house was worth, their payments spiked. Now, that day has come, and Ms. Montenegro is working the other side. She calls WaMu, as the bank is known, trying to cut deals.

Among her clients is Vladimir Vishmid, who owes $490,000 on the mortgage for his three-bedroom home in the Sherman Oaks section of Los Angeles. Mr. Vishmid’s income as a self-employed computer engineer has plummeted, making it hard for him to make his $2,542 monthly payments. He is current on his loan, he says, but behind on his car insurance and utilities.

Software on Ms. Montenegro’s computer logs the details of the three applications her company has submitted for Mr. Vishmid. Chris, the WaMu representative, is telling her to send in No. 4.

“Personally, I’d submit a new file,” Chris counsels. “I’m telling you honestly, anything over 30 days is a new submission for us.”

For Ms. Montenegro, “honestly” is one of those words marinated in so much irony that her eyes roll. Two weeks earlier, she called the bank to check on the file and was told it was being reviewed. Now, it has disappeared.

“So, if I wouldn’t have called, we wouldn’t have known?” Ms. Montenegro scolds.

“It would have just sat in the queue and nothing would have happened,” Chris says. “I wish I had a better explanation.”

In the same office, Ms. Montenegro’s colleague, Sean Milotta, has run into a problem on a loan billed by American Home Mortgage Servicing. Though the borrower appears eligible for the Obama administration plan, the company refuses to take an application because the loan is owned by an investor who is unwilling to absorb a loss.

In another office down the hall, Ramin Lavi, 27, has picked up the file of Alice Descovich, who is seeking to shave down the $708,000 she owes on a mortgage serviced by WaMu for her home in Alameda, Calif. As the interest rates reset in coming months, it will become even harder for her to make the payments, which are now $4,400 a month.

A note in the system shows that the bank confirmed receiving documents on April 29 — pay stubs, tax returns, a letter disclosing her hardship, bank statements. Since then, the company has been waiting for WaMu to review the file.

But when Mr. Lavi calls, a representative coolly discloses that the application has been rejected because one document, a proof-of-insurance form, is missing. He must start over.

“The file had been submitted properly, and you didn’t put the pieces together,” Mr. Lavi says, his body quivering with anger. “I’m not going to stand in line again for another six months.”

He demands to speak to a supervisor, but the representative says none is free. He hangs up and redials, hoping to land in a different call center. Eventually, he reaches Chase’s executive offices, where Becky takes over the call.

“We’re not taking cases now,” she says calmly.

“Why was I transferred to you?” Mr. Lavi asks. Becky does not know. He implores her to keep the file open while he faxes in the lone missing document.

“Impossible,” she says, warning of “the sheer amount of papers coming in.”

Another agent, Lee Wasser, props his feet on an adjacent desk chair as he waits on hold for more than 20 minutes to speak with GMAC Mortgage.

His clients, Dean and Nancy Piercy, owe $380,000 on the loan for their home in Shasta Lake, Calif. A logger, Mr. Piercy has lost work hours, making it hard for them keep up with their $2,048 monthly payment — soon set to rise.

Mr. Wasser has already negotiated a solution: GMAC will accept only $270,000 in repayment, allowing the couple to get a fixed rate mortgage from another bank.

But that suddenly is in disarray. The Piercys have been making their payments, but GMAC has been putting their checks aside, holding the money as “loss mitigation fees,” until their application is completed. It has notified credit bureaus that their loan is more than 90 days delinquent, which has lowered their credit score, disqualifying them for the next mortgage.

Mr. Wasser reaches GMAC’s loss mitigation department. He asks for the delinquency to be removed from their status. But that must be handled by a different department: customer service. He is transferred there, where Jessica picks up the call.

“We are not going to amend,” she says, after a strained back and forth. If Mr. Wasser wants it otherwise, he will have to talk to loss mitigation.

“I just talked to them five minutes ago,” he tells Jessica.

“No, you didn’t.”

“Are you accusing me of lying?”

Mr. Wasser asks for Jessica’s employee identification number, but the line goes dead. Jessica has apparently hung up.