There is a story told about a man who opened a restaurant that he operated for 50 years. At the grand opening of his restaurant in 1957, he had taken the first dollar he received at the business and placed it in a frame, for which he paid ten cents. Fifty years later when he sold the restaurant, he said to the new owner, “Do you see that dollar in the ten cent frame? That ten cent frame is now worth a dollar, and that dollar is now worth ten cents.” He was almost right. According to the Inflation Calculator what cost $1.00 in 1957 would cost $7.34 in 2007. That means that what cost $1.00 today could have been purchased for about 14 cents in 1957. That is what inflation can do to the purchasing power of a dollar.
We all have been reading about the Europeans flocking to the United States in great numbers to shop. There is a reason for that. The dollar has grown weaker, and the euro has grown stronger. One euro spent in the United States now buys about $1.48 compared with just $1.00 in 2002. Imagine how much more you would be worth today if you had converted your dollars into euros five years ago.
In 1941 the Consumer Price Index (CPI) was virtually unchanged from what it was in 1800. During World War II, a loaf of bread cost 15 cents, a new car less than $1,000 and an average house, about $5,000. Now in the 21st century, bread, cars, houses and just about everything else costs a great deal more money. From the mid- to the late-1970s, inflation surged into double digit levels. At one point around 1980, I was drawing 14% interest on my savings at a bank. The only problem was that was the year in which inflation was running at 13.58%. I remember at that time reading an article about a young married couple driving an old car who decided to save enough money to pay cash for a new car. They put away a $100 a month for that purpose only to discover at the end of the first year that inflation had driven up the price of the car they wanted by $1800 over that of the previous year.
QUESTIONS: How is inflation affecting your standard of living right now? What measures are you taking to deal with the effects of inflation on your present lifestyle?
Video 1. The Inevitable Collapse of the Dollar
Video 2. It is November, 2007 and the dollar is slipping away as the world's reserve currency.
Video 3. The Big Money Scam: The Fed and Inflation
It has been said that one person’s trash is often another person’s treasure. Nowhere has that been more evident than in a recent story about a woman in Manhattan who picked up a painting sticking out of a dumpster only to discover later that she had found a valuable work of art. She said that although she didn’t know much about modern art at that time, she knew that the painting had power. It turned out that the brightly colored painting was an abstract masterpiece titled “Tres Personajes” painted in 1970 by Rufino Tamayo, who became known not only as one of Mexico's greatest painters but also as one of modern art's major international masters.
The woman who found the painting spent the past four years gathering information about the painting. Finally, she discovered that it was a missing masterpiece stolen in 1989 from a man who had paid $55,000 for it.
One can see the influences of Braque, Picasso, Expressionism, and Abstraction in Tamayo’s paintings. They are delicate in design with warm coloration and symbolic in their presentation of a haunting world that is somewhere between the animal and the human. His paintings also show pre-Columbian influences and native, ancient art forms in their references to a religion invested with gods having both human and animal characteristics.
Tamayo has been honored with many prestigious awards, and his work is frequently exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the world as well as in many important private and public collections.
Last Tuesday night the painting was auctioned off at an art sale for over a million dollars. The woman who found it received a $15,000 reward and an undisclosed amount as a finder’s fee for finding the painting and turning it in.
Two years ago on this date of November 20th, I placed two posts on my new blog titled “Whit’s Whittlings.” I knew very little about blogging but chose Blogstream because it seemed to have more of a community spirit than the others I investigated. Somewhat warily, I posted these two efforts at writing:
Who Got the Bill?
In the recent Hurricane Katrina disaster, the poor (Ninth Ward in New Orleans) got the misery; the rich (Halliburton, Fluor, Bechtel, and Carnival Cruises) got the money; and guess who got the bill? Not the wealthy 1% of taxpayers who have received over $850 billion in tax relief since 2001; not Carnival Cruises,which for tax purposes is incorporated in Panama, allowing it to pay a mere three million dollars in income tax on a pretax income of nearly two billion dollars last year. If your guess is middle-class taxpayers, their children, and grandchildren--congratulations, you have an excellent memory.
For my first effort, I received one comment - a very negative one - from a Bush supporter. It was filled with such vitriol that I was in shock when I deleted it.
My second effort of the day was the following one:
Fool Me Once
An old Chinese proverb says, "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me."
But what if you should fool me thrice? What would that signify? I have been deceived by my government twice in the last forty years as to the casus belli, or the reasons justifying entering the conflict with both North Vietnam and the second war with Iraq.
The Americans entered the war with North Vietnam after reports circulated that North Vietnamese PT boats made an unprovoked attack on a U.S. ship in the Tonkin Gulf. These reports were based on accounts issued by U.S. government officials and propagated by the media . In the beginning, I supported this war. Later, it was determined that the reports were fabricated to justify increased American involvement in the conflict between North and South Vietnam. The result was that the United States had over 58,000 service personnel killed, over 153,000 wounded, and over 150 billion dollars spent on the war. My government deceived me. I was fooled once. Shame on my government.
The Americans went to war with Iraq in 2003 because Iraq had "weapons of mass destruction." At first, I supported this war. What? No WMD were found, you say. Intelligence agencies had informed President Bush before the invasion of Iraq that his case for war based on the presence of WMD was weak, but this warning was ignored.
Just recently, the Downing Street "Memo" indicated that President Bush, who had repeatedly assured the American people that he would not invade Iraq unless it was totally justified, had already made a decision to attack Iraq at least eight months before the actual war began. Intelligence reports were "fixed" to justify the invasion. The result to date has been that nearly 2100 service personnel have been killed, over 15,000 wounded, and by the end of 2005 or before, nearly 300 billion dollars will have been spent on the war. My government deceived me once again. I was fooled twice.
We are now down to shame on me and my unquestioning patriotic tendencies. But what might it indicate if I allow my government to fool me thrice? It could be that I either suffer from a lack of intellectual acuity, or with apologies to Santayana, that I suffer from some kind of learning disability that makes it impossible for me to remember the past, so I am condemned to repeat it. Since I don't suffer from a known learning disability, the answer must be, "Fool me thrice, shame on my stupidity."
But the next time the United States proposes to send its brave young men and women to fight on distant shores, and Congress, without a free and open debate regarding the rationale for the war, is allowed to surrender to the President its Constitutional power to declare war, then the nation itself must share a part of that stupidity.
Next, there is North Korea? Iran? Syria? Cuba?
This post produced one comment from another blogger named verbosa, a 30-year-old female resident of Massachusetts. I was encouraged by the positive comment.
I continued writing, receiving only between one and four comments for each post until I posted this topic on December 10, 2005. Suddenly, I was inundated with 24 comments.
The Politicization Of the Deity
Many Christians in the United States claim that the United States is a Christian nation, established upon Christian principles; they further suggest that God prefers Christians to those who practice other religions, to those who have no religion at all, and to those who do not practice their spirituality in an organized institution. I present here some private reflections on these assertions.
The late Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackman in 1992 ruled in Lee v. Weisman that “a government cannot be premised on the belief that all persons are created equal when it asserts that God prefers some.”
As a nation, we are spending too much time arguing about the Ten Commandments and not enough time enforcing the provisions of the Ten Amendments (Bill of Rights).
As an American, I would rather live in a democracy under the Ten Amendments than in a theocracy under the Ten Commandments.
I would prefer to live with the legacy of the Enlightenment than with the heritage of the Inquisition.
Those individuals who favor more government involvement in religion got a preview of what the United States would look like in the Terri Schiavo political circus in Florida. If you liked what you witnessed, you will seek even greater government intrusion into religious expression in the United States.
Tom DeLay claimed that God had brought the Schiavo case to the nation’s attention “to make Americans more aware of attacks against the conservative movement.” This politicization of the Deity favoring conservative Republicans was downright sacrilegious. God thus became just another political hack, thereby losing the supernatural mystery and divinity that should define the boundary between religion and politics.
Benjamin Franklin, after the vote was taken at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia said, “Well, gentlemen, you have a Republic, if you can keep it.” The best way to keep it is to maintain the wall of separation between church and state that the founders of our nation gave us.
Soon after that post, my comments fell off again until I did a post on funny blog titles on Blogstream on January 14, 2006, almost two months from the date I started blogging. For my efforts, I received 54 comments. From that date on, I continued to receive comments in the double digits on most of my posts. At last, I had arrived on Blogstream.
I occasionally encounter bloggers new to Blogstream who become discouraged because they get few if any comments when they first start posting. It takes time and effort to become known on Blogstream. If you read the blogs of others and make thoughtful comments about their posts, your comments eventually will attract other bloggers to your blog.
The other day I was reading a newspaper supplement called “The Mini Page,” which is targeted mainly to kids and their families. When I noted that the title of the article was “The Art of Quilting” and then saw a picture of a quilt with a double wedding ring pattern, it reminded me that about 20 years ago, an aunt of mine hand stitched a quilt with a double wedding ring pattern for my wife and me . I paid her the princely sum of $125 for it. Today, in New York, it would command a handsome price, but we would never sell it. It serves as a bed cover for our king-sized bed in the master bedroom.
When I was growing up, my mother had some quilting parties at our house. At a "snitch and stitch" quilting party, some of the women in the neighborhood would get together and have fun while quilting. Each of the participants was expected to bring a supply of the different kinds of fabric that would be incorporated into the design of the quilt. There are usually three layers in a quilt - the top which is decorated with various designs of fabric, a back, and a filling to give body and warmth to the quilt; but summer quilts sometimes are made without the insulation for warmth. The layers are then either tied or sewn together. Making a quilt would sometimes take hundreds of hours, but a well-made quilt might last for generations.
Back in the days before women started working outside the home, quilting played an important role in the maintenance of a household as well as providing a social outlet for the distaff side. Many houses were not heated at night, and the quilts helped to keep the family members warm while sleeping. Often the mothers wanted to create something not only useful but also beautiful. That is how quilting became an art. In fact, one now can find quilts displayed in art galleries and museums.
In reading the article, I learned that quilts tell stories by means of symbols. In the double wedding ring pattern that we have, for example, the rings stand for two people joined together in marriage. Sometimes a quilter might use fabrics saved from special occasions to sew into the quilt - wedding clothes; a favorite dress; a child’s first outfit; or perhaps even a scrap of the favorite drapes saved for that purpose.
Quilts sewn by machine can be purchased for under $150 today, but those that are hand-sewn are much more expensive. If one is looking just for warmth, perhaps a simple blanket or two will suffice; but for an individual who looks beyond the utilitarian purpose of a covering for a bed, a quilt often satisfies the aesthetic sense as well.
Do you have one or more quilts in your family? Do you have any interesting stories to share about quilts and quilting?
I read a comic strip recently about a man, his wife, and two of her girlfriends who were watching a sad movie on television. Soon the ladies were gushing tears and the husband laughed at them for crying. Then he got up suddenly and said, “Excuse me, ladies. I have to use the bathroom.” In the last comic strip panel, he was in the bathroom and we can hear emanating from that room the sound of “Sob, sob, sob.”
What makes people cry when they watch a sad movie? Have you ever felt that the moviemakers were playing with your emotions and for that reason refused to cry? Recent studies have revealed that women are four times as likely as men to cry when they watch a sad movie. Perhaps that is because it is considered an unacceptable weakness by some men for a man to gush tears the way that women do.
What are some of the movies that caused you to cry? What in the movie made you feel the need to cry? Were they happy tears or sad tears? What emotions were you feeling at the time? What was the one scene that suddenly caused you to gush tears? Have you ever cried later when you thought about the movie?
Many Blogstream members are there
already! Quotes from members: "It's like blog lite!" -- "I like the instant
gratification!" -- "Stop spectating, get in the game!"
If you have not joined in, you are really missing out!
