When my partner Chip
bought the rope hammock for me, the double-trunk maple tree had a
tight canopy, creating deep shade that was many degrees cooler than
the surrounding sunlight. Over the years, some of the heavier
branches have become horizontal, with two of them positioned just
above my reclining body. Even those smaller branches at the top have
spread out to allow sunlight and heat into my space. It was time to
move.
Fortunately, the tree
had offspring, which has its own tight canopy, creating a dark
tunnel between the younger maple and the arborvitae. My rope hammock
was moved there just in time for the weekend heat wave, which I had
to escape because the window air conditioner won’t be installed
until the new living room window arrives.
I’ve been making my
house more energy efficient, one attic, two doors, one window at a
time — I don’t borrow money, just save up and do projects when I
have the cash. This lifelong dislike of borrowing is why the
seemingly inevitable economic crisis doesn’t scare me as much as it
would if I owed money. The only thing that worries me is the idea of
out-of-control property taxes, which were the norm the early years
of my mortgage when my family struggled to pay them.
We voters eventually
achieved some control by passing Proposition 2½ in 1980. But at a
recent Statehouse hearing on taxes, the House Revenue Chairman Jay
Kaufman (D-Lexington) said that maybe “it’s time to take a look at
Proposition 2½.” And this is why I don’t retire permanently to my
hammock: Eternal vigilance is the price of keeping my housing
affordable.
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Barbara's Hammock Grotto |
The heat wave sent me
to a weekend retirement, though, an escape from the ongoing drumbeat
of government-dysfunction news:
The IRS. Lois Lerner,
who oversaw the tax-exempt department that targeted conservative
groups, taking the Fifth at the Congressional hearing on the
Treasury Department’s inspector general audit of this targeting. New
report by same inspector general on IRS spending $50 million on 220
conferences for employees between 2010 and 2012, including $4
million for a conference at Anaheim that featured a $17,000 speaker
on “leadership through art.” The IRS will be adding employees to
oversee ObamaCare.
Massachusetts EBT cards
for dead people, or as Rob Eno at RedMassGroup was the first to call
it, “the rise of the Mass Zombies.” A report by state Auditor
Suzanne Bump found $18 million in suspicious welfare payments,
including $2.39 million sent to more than 1,160 recipients listed as
dead. It also seems that some beneficiaries may have sold their
electronic benefit cards, which is illegal; one person “lost” and
had to replace his card 127 times. No one in the Department of
Transitional Assistance, so-called, seemed to notice.
An earlier state
auditor, John Finnegan, once explained to me the problem with
audits: It takes awhile to do them, so when you release the results,
audited departments acknowledge the problem but say it was fixed
last month. When you check and find it wasn’t, the response is
sorry, misspoke, but it was fixed yesterday, and so on….
New Obama betrayal.
From a U.S. News & World Report last month: “the families of 17 SEAL
Team 6 commandos who were killed in an ambush in Afghanistan during
a helicopter flight to help Army Rangers pinned down by Taliban
gunmen accused the Obama administration of deliberately endangering
their loved ones for political ends.” They blamed a White House
decision to announce shortly after the killing of Osama bin Laden
that SEAL Team 6 was responsible for the raid. “In releasing their
identity, they put a target on their backs,” said Doug Hamburger,
whose son, Army Staff Sgt. Patrick Hamburger, served among the
helicopter’s crew.
Speaking of Islamic
extremists: Last week I attended the free screening of “Northeastern
Unbecoming” at Marblehead’s Temple Sinai. This documentary exposes
anti-semitism, anti-Israelism and radical Islamic activities at
Northeastern University. The documentary was produced by Americans
for Peace and Tolerance on Campus in response to complaints by
faculty and students. I was shocked. During my college experience,
anti-semitism was politically incorrect, though that phrase hadn’t
been invented yet; we Penn State freshmen were shown a film on the
Holocaust and told, “never again.” According to APT, what is
happening at Northeastern is happening on other campuses across the
country as part of a new politically correct support for radical
Islam.
From the ridiculous,
zombie welfare, to the horrible: betrayed Navy seals and campus
anti-semitism. What is happening here?
I was grateful for the
heat wave, driving me to my hammock to finish Brunonia Barry’s “The
Map of True Places” with its Salem-Marblehead setting; wonderful
read. But I needed total escape, so on Sunday I started Janet
Evanovich’s “Sizzling
Sixteen.”
I discovered her
Stephanie Plum series when my elderly mother moved into a nursing
home and I went to my hometown bookstore to find a book on dealing
with life’s difficult events. The clerk told me to read Evanovich
instead. Lesson learned, and my mother and I continued to laugh
together, despite the news of the world, for as long as she lived.
