Staying one step ahead of the moneychangers.

May 16th, 2010 · Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett · Business, Economy, Ethics No comments

Last week Congress quit listening to the bleating of big banks long enough to vote for limiting the fees businesses pay whenever you use your debit card.

That’s good (and overdue) news. Debit-card charges are just one form of double-dipping that hurts consumers and the businesses who accept them.

Think about it, here’s how it used to work:

1. Get paycheck.

2. Walk or drive to bank, deposit check with the help of a teller who makes a modest but livable wage.

3. Write paper checks to buy stuff and pay bills. Pay small fee for the account, or no fee if the balance is sufficiently large.

4. Merchants who accept those checks then go to their banks and make deposits, again with a real, live teller who gets paid an hourly wage.

Now, it works like this:

1. Get a paycheck.

2. Deposit it through an ATM or by direct-deposit. (Goodbye tellers ; bank saves money. )

3. Pay bills online. (Notice that there are larger lags when your money has gone from you through the bank to a creditor, Can you say “float period?” Bank makes money.)

4. Buy stuff with credit or debit cards. (You pay a fee; merchant pays a fee and bank makes money. Let’s not even try to untangle the ways the timing of a bank’s processing of deposits can cost you a small fortune in overdraft fees.)

And, a crucial final step:

5. Fall for marketing campaigns that claim online bill-pay and ATMs are huge timesavers.

What’s a consumer to do?

One thought: Consider paying cash for one or two purchases a week that you normally do by debit card. Multiply that by a zillion and we’ll have sent a message to the moneychangers. They’ll circle back and find another trick, but for a week or two we’ll have ‘em running scared.

A century of high kicks.

May 14th, 2010 · Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett · Art, Death No comments

The last of the Ziegfeld Girls has passed away, and the world is a lesser place.

According to The New York Times, Doris Eaton Travis died at age 106, the last of the famed and comely (36-26-38) performers hired in the early 1900s for the famous Broadway troupe.

She was part of a famous stage family, the Seven Little Eatons, and began dancing in public at age 5. The obit in the NYT by Douglas Martin is a minor masterpiece of factual yet gentlemanly reporting:

“Doris began as a chorus girl and understudy to the show’s star. In 1919, she wore a red costume and played the paprika part in the salad dance. ”

“While appearing in the show she fell in love with the songwriter Nacio Herb Brown…Mrs. Travis’s relationship with Mr. Brown lasted intermittently for eight years but never led to marriage. Mr. Brown himself married five other women all told, divorcing all of them.”

“..Arthur Murray hired her to teach ballroom dancing in Manhattan. She taught 70 hours a week until moving to Michigan to start the new franchise.One student was …Paul Travis, who made a fortune by inventing a door jamb for cars. She and Mr. Travis married and later moved to Norman, Okla., where they bred quarter horses.”

And, my favorite, the ending to the story of the last Ziegfeld Girl:

“A little more than two weeks ago Mrs. Travis returned to Broadway to appear again at the annual Easter Bonnet Competition held by Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, this time at the Minskoff Theater. She did a few kicks, apologizing that she no longer performed cartwheels.”

77 Words: “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot

May 13th, 2010 · Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett · 77 Words, Authors, Books, Race & Class, Science One comment

“The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot (Crown, 2010) -

Cells from Henrietta Lacks, a cancer patient in the 1950s, started something that seems more magical than scientific. Johns Hopkins doctors who took the cells from Lacks, a poor African American farmer, never imagined creating HeLa – the “immortal” cells grown in culture that live on and save lives around the world. This is tireless, deep reporting sensitively done and written with unusual clarity. The very talented Skloot erases the line between lab and humanity with inspiring deftness.
(For more “77 Words: Tiny Book Reviews, click here.)

IKEA washcloths have little loops so you can hang them up. Brilliant.

May 10th, 2010 · Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett · Business, Shopping & Necessities No comments

I’ve written about the IKEA experience before, but I continue to be amazed at the scale and cheerfulness of the place.

It is still like crossing a big country covered in forests of brightly colored plastic storage bins and coffee tables made of blond wood. Every item sold in the place has a name, presumably in Swedish, a language which seems a lot like English only with more consonants per word and a sound like a sneeze thrown in here and there.

There are people wandering around Portland’s IKEA who I’m pretty sure went in during the holidays of December 2008 and never left. They’ve existed entirely on Swedish meatballs and lingonberry juice since then. And they still don’t know how to put together an entertainment center.

In any event, all of this is just an excuse to post the photo I took today looking down on what had to be a half-acre of shopping carts. Even if every cart-pusher only buys a single 100-percent cotton pillowcase, IKEA will have a very good quarter.

Gathering of the Carts

Respecting the real Church.

May 10th, 2010 · Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett · Faith, Organized Religion No comments

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has done it again: Reminded us that there is more to a news story than its biggest, boldest headlines.

His column, “Who Can Mock this Church?” points out that there are two Catholic churches–”the old boys’ club of the Vatican and the grass-roots network of humble priests, nuns and laity…”

The Vatican–and plenty of laypeople–think that the members of the press are over-zealous in digging up dirt on the Church’s priestly scandals. That’s ridiculous. When I overheard someone at a dinner party bemoaning the “negative” nature of the news-gathering, I barely restrained myself from asking: “If your kid was involved, would you want the reporter to take it easy on the sexual-predator priest?”

But Kristof makes an important point when he adds that there is often “a liberal and secular snobbishness toward the church as a whole — and that is unfair.”

He’s absolutely right.

Indicting all clergy or the whole Roman Catholic Church does a disservice to the religious women and men who bring food, medical care, education and prayer to a world that needs all it can get.

Worse, such sweeping statements diminish the evil. The youngsters who suffered while in the care of priests were not victims of a faceless, impossible-to-control plague. They were preyed upon by men who could be counted, listed, and punished.

Lena Horne, artist and activist, (1917-2010)

May 10th, 2010 · Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett · Art, History, Race & Class No comments

Lena Horne was more than a singer; she transported her listeners in a way few artists do. She was more than someone who broke the popular-entertainment color barrier; she was an intelligent, beautiful and tireless treasure.  Her New York Times obituary doesn’t quite capture her spirit and sound, but this vintage video clip comes close.

Rest in Peace, Ms. Horne.

Relief.

May 7th, 2010 · Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett · Ruminations One comment

What I miss least: Having to play it cool or bluff my way through.

Proof:

–It really doesn’t matter that I can’t divide fractions.

–Running the quarter-mile in less than 60 seconds just one time was enough.

—The daily newspaper’s big front-page correction on my city council story is buried in a microfiche drawer in a basement. Far away.

–People forget bad perms.

–I never wonder if a man likes me.

These realizations, and easy access to Google, make me smart enough.

77 Words: “What I Loved,” by Siri Hustvedt

May 5th, 2010 · Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett · 77 Words, Authors, Books No comments

“What I Loved” by Siri Hustvedt (Picador, 2003) –

This is a brilliantly written story of a long friendship between two men, its immense rewards and unique pain. Hustvedt’s writing is like a hologram that allows depth perception to change with a flick of a page; no character is shortchanged, every exchange between characters is vital in its moment. The endless re-proving of an artist’s life is caught just so, and the toll taken by such a mercurial life forms the plot of this rich book.

For more “77 Words: Tiny Book Reviews,” click here.

A tale of motherly love. Co-starring a turtle.

May 3rd, 2010 · Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett · Animals, Heroes, Human nature 2 comments

Mother’s Day is coming. I know this because every retailer in sight is trying to cash in. My gym has a Workout With Mom! special. My email is full of mail-order offers for chocolates, flowers, perfume. The spa down the street is even giving discounts on eyebrow and lip waxes in preparation for the holiday, which seems really weird if you think about it too long, so don’t.

Yes, the crass commercialism is alive and well. But that doesn’t mean I disdain the whole notion of celebrating our mothers. In fact, I think the holiday ought to be expanded to include the entire month.

We should all start dinner each night with a favorite mother story. I’ll go first.

My own mother passed many years ago, but she would have appreciated the story I heard the other day, told by a single mom of my acquaintance. I’ll call her Nancy. This tale began a decade ago.

Remember those little dime-store turtles you could buy for a buck? You’d bring them home and they’d last a couple of weeks, then off to turtle paradise they’d go, usually via a one-way ticket on Toilet Airlines.

Well, Nancy’s boy wanted one of those little critters, and being a game sort of gal, she bought him one.

Weeks passed. The turtle thrived. Nancy cleaned the bowl.

Months passed. The turtle thrived. Nancy cleaned the bowl.

Years passed. The boy left for college and, yes, Nancy stayed behind and cleaned the turtle bowl.

Eight years after its arrival, the turtle showed no signs of heading to the great beyond. By turtle standards, it was quite a bit larger. It was time for a change.

A lesser woman would have introduced the turtle to the backyard or a nearby pond, but not Nancy. She did what a resourceful and brave mother always does. She found a way.

She loaded the turtle into a totebag, put on her darkest sunglasses and drove to the nearest Pets-R-Us. There she slipped into the row of aquariums, and after making sure no one was watching, she plopped her hard-shell roommate into a tank with its own kind.

Never one to take separations lightly, she returned the next week to assure herself that the relocation had gone well.  You don’t live with a turtle for nearly a decade without committing its features to memory, so she quickly found him among the others. He seemed happy.

Now, I ask you, would anyone but a mother do this? I think not.

When Mother’s Day arrives, I will be thinking of Nancy and the other mothers I’ve known. Heroes, all.

Food news: NY coffee-cup creator is gone; Mark Bittman launches blog

April 30th, 2010 · Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett · Death, Food No comments

The man who created one of New York’s most visible landmarks has passed on. Raise your coffee cup to Leslie Buck.

And, Food writer Mark Bittman has launched his new site. Check it out, here.

This is your ivy-covered brain on drugs.

April 29th, 2010 · Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett · Academia, Alcohol & Drugs, Ethics, Government No comments

Reed College in Portland has long enjoyed its reputation as a haven for the brainy, gifted and creative student. In recent years it’s also become a standout for the idiotic public state-of-denial exuded by its president and top brass who allowed a monster drug problem to take root on campus.

A couple of heroin overdoses didn’t rattle the top dogs as much as the feds stepping in with warnings that undercover cops will be milling about during a campus festival that historically has been a haven for drug sales and use. Now, at last, it looks like the college’s leadership might just have to grow some cojones.

From The New York Times:

“…Law enforcement officials raised an unusual theory of liability. Under a federal law intended to close crack houses, anyone who knowingly operates premises where drugs are used may be subject to serious criminal and civil penalties. Education lawyers, however, said they were unaware of that law’s ever being contemplated, let alone used, in the context of higher education.”

You can bet the “education lawyers” associated with Reed are now sweating the possibility of being the first case in which this “knowingly operates” clause is applied within academia.

The students, of course, will find an amusing, telegenic way to thumb their collective nose at the police presence on campus during the fair. They, at least, act in character, questioning authority. Maybe the leadership of their college will buck up and act in character too. Finally.

Don’t order a big box of checks.

April 28th, 2010 · Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett · Business, Tech No comments

The cellphone is going to replace cash, debit cards and checks.

Check out this piece in The New York Times that describes the technology already in use.

When you can pay your share of a dinner tab by bumping your cellphone against your buddy’s cellphone, you know it’s time to leave your big ol’ money-sucking bank in the past.

Arizona: Toughen up that immigrant law.

April 28th, 2010 · Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett · Ethics, Politics, Race & Class One comment

I was away last week, traveling the highways of the Southwest and the byways of the Northeast. Now I’ve come home to ponder the brilliance of the new immigrant law in Arizona.

It’s ingenious, really. It requires local cops to grab anyone who looks suspicious and demand proof of citizenship. Simple, but brilliant. The last time a state took this kind of well-thought out initiative was back in the day when public restrooms in the South were marked WHITE and COLORED.

All this whining about violating the Constitution is silly. That Constitution applies to REAL citizens, not people who sneak across the border determined to live debauched lives of mowing lawns, cleaning toilets, picking fruit or babysitting white kids. Surely any citizens detained by mistake will understand that it is all for their own safety and well-being.

And the claim that local police are not equipped to administer such a law is simply not true. Who better to pick out sneaky illegals than the armed guy or gal who already protects the streets terrorized by these roving, Spanish-speaking law breakers?

Instead of hissing our disapproval, we should be grateful that Arizona’s lawmakers are willing to live with the occasional delay when they call 911 after a rape, burglary or armed robbery. (We’ll be right with you ma’am, we just need to finish the paperwork on this Garcia fellow.)

The only reasonable criticism of this new law is that it doesn’t go far enough. Why not require all non-citizens to attach a badge of sorts on their clothes? Something easy to spot, like a star, maybe. In a bright color like yellow or pink. It’s not high-tech or expensive. Anyone, even someone who doesn’t speak English, can understand this requirement.

And here’s the beauty part: We already know it works.

77 Words: “The First Patient” by Michael Palmer

April 27th, 2010 · Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett · 77 Words, Authors, Books No comments

“The Second Opinion by Michael Palmer (St. Martin’s Press, 2009) –

Yes, a distracting thriller that doubles as a medical-terminology vocabulary builder! The prolific Palmer delivers another escapist doctor drama–with appealing characters in an enjoyably improbable plot. When arrogant, charismatic doc (and neglectful dad) Petros Sperelakis is injured in a hit-and-run, some of his offspring want to pull the plug, while physician-daughter Thera becomes a sturdy advocate. Her unwavering focus and photographic memory, courtesy of Asperger Syndrome, are crucial tools as she unravels the evil back story.

For more “77 Words: Tiny Book Reviews,” click here.

Let them eat baggage fees.

April 20th, 2010 · Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett · Business No comments

Everyone hates air travel. Tree hugger, teaparty dope, rich guy, poor chick. It’s the great equalizer. And, this business of making customers who already hate you fork over more money for baggage is the ultimate Let Them Eat Cake move of our time.

Now, almost as many people are mad at big banks. You can buy a pair of socks at the mall and the debit will be on your account before you get back to the car. But try to get someone on the phone to explain a late charge, and you will be in phone-tree hell long enough to throw in a load of wash and make a sandwich.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Consider: If I see a questionable or inacurate charge on my Visa account, I can go online and quickly  file a complaint with my credit union. They investigate, and while doing so, they do not debit my account for the amount in question. (Another reason to use credit unions. How many times do I need to tell you people this?)

So, here’s the new plan. Big banks, allow your customers to challenge any baggage fee charged to their credit card. Make it easy: no phone trees. Maybe just a text message? Then, take your time investigating it. Make those airlines wait. Make ‘em wait a loooong time.

77 Words: “The Swimming Pool” by Holly LeCraw

April 19th, 2010 · Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett · 77 Words, Authors, Books No comments

For more “77 words: Tiny book reviews,” click here.

“The Swimming Pool” by Holly LeCraw (Doubleday, 2009) – This debut is an intriguing hybrid: romance fiction, dash of mystery, literary craft. LeCraw seizes on ways guilt can coexist with love, sometimes choking out happiness, other times making joy more precious. No real humor or lightness here, yet the story of marriages changed by adultery and secrets is not ultimately dark. Its Cape Cod setting lured me at first, but in the end LeCraw’s sense of that place didn’t impress, while inner landscapes were vivid indeed.

(Editor’s note, 4/21: A friend emails to point out that this book is being marketed as “chick lit” and a beach-totebag book. By all means, throw it in a tote or backpack…but chick-lit it ain’t.)

A snapshot of us.

April 18th, 2010 · Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett · Heroes, History, Human nature, Politics, Race & Class, The Press One comment

Sometimes an hour with the newspaper is all I need to see the immense contradictions and ironies of this country. These New York Times pieces are a case in point.

A story by Katie Zernike ponders polling of resentful Tea Party supporters.  I am ashamed of these fellow citizens; their racism, their short-sighted, self-serving demands for a return to the so-called  “real America” — code for a class system that keeps them snug and well-fed while shutting others out:

“In the poll, Tea Party supporters …were almost unanimous in their dislike of President Obama. Overwhelmingly, they said he does not share the values most Americans live by and does not understand the needs and problems of people like them. They are significantly more likely than Republicans or the general public to say that too much attention has been made of the problems facing black people, and that the policies of the Obama administration favor blacks over whites and the poor over the rich or the middle class.”

Then I turned to the obit page and saw that another highly visible figure in the civil rights movement has died: Benjamin L. Hooks. age 85. Hooks, who headed the NAACP for many years, was a minister, businessman and the first African American to be named a judge in Tennessee’s criminal courts. He was also the first to be appointed to the Federal Communications Commission. Hooks struggled to keep issues of civil rights in the forefront when Americans began to take the gains of the 1960s for granted. He wasn’t the most compelling public voice in the movement, but to look at his life and work is to understand the crucial changes wrought by Americans who would no longer tolerate Jim Crow.

And, finally, a profile of Eddie Feibusch, the undisputed king of zippers, reminds me that this is also a land of opportunity, imagination and very good stories.

The piece by Ralph Blumenthal describes the indefatigable 86-year-old:

“He sold a zipper for Margaret Truman’s wedding gown when Miss Truman, the president’s daughter, married Clifton Daniel in 1956, he is proud to say. He sold zippers to Nike for Tiger Woods and Roger Federer. And a prison in North Carolina called for a zipper for Bernard L. Madoff. Why? He doesn’t know.

New York City’s garment industry once had lots of zipper shops, some bigger than his, Mr. Feibusch says. But little by little they relocated, to China, India, Costa Rica. Then came the Sept. 11 attacks. ‘They couldn’t get their goods in,’ he said. “That was the end of the business.’

But not for Mr. Feibusch, a prewar refugee from Vienna who overcame not just the Nazis but also Velcro…”

Meth trash? That goes in the blue bin, right?

April 15th, 2010 · Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett · Alcohol & Drugs, Ruminations No comments

We’re always a little behind the curve when it comes to controlling dangerous-stuff-while-driving behavior.

We wait until a lot of cars blow up (Corvair, Pinto) or take off on their own (Toyota) or roll over (early SUVs) before we regulate ‘em. We get all pissy toward people (Ralph Nader in the ’60s) who try to help us stay safe (seat belts).

We’re weak-kneed when it comes to regulating things that any fool can see are dangerous, such as texting and talking on cells while driving. Some states with new laws against the latter are just handing out warnings to folks who work out of their cars, like on-the-road salespeople. Oh, please. Unless you’re a mobile day-trader, there is no job that won’t allow you to pull over for 4 minutes and make a call.

Now, according to Susan Saulny in  The New York Times, there’s a lot of meth cooking going on in back seats. Of moving cars.

What better way to stay under the radar, so to speak? You buy such small amounts of pseudoephedrine that no alarms go off at the store, and you cook it in the car, where nosy neighbors don’t get suspicious and turn you in. As long as you keep within the speed limits, wear your seatbelts and are not on the phone, the stretched-too-thin cops might miss the fact that you and your smurfer buddies are making–and indulging–in product. And then tossing the resulting trash out the window.

That meth-littering is the main point of the NYT story. And my only hope is that here in the Pacific Northwest, at least, people will nip this activity in the bud.  In this part of the world we are on trash like, well, flies on trash.

In Portland especially, we sort it. Boy, do we sort it. Our coffee grounds are composting before we set the mug down; our old tires are sneakers. I bought a sun hat the other day thinking it was straw. Wrong, it was made of recycled phone books. People here are terrified of losing daily newspapers, not because they read ‘em, but because they can be turned into bricks and then sports stadiums. (I made that last thing up, but it’s almost the truth.)

If there’s a new kind of trash in town, we’ll find a way to spin it into something else. And, in a couple of years, we’ll have a law on the books that forbids cooking in the back seat. Of course, by then it will have moved to light-rail cars.

Why computer chips will not replace the human brain just yet.

April 13th, 2010 · Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett · Food, Human nature, Tech No comments

Conscious thoughts upon dropping a hot microwave pizza on the floor, pepperoni side down:

Shit I’m starving that thing cost almost six bucks I should have said no when I saw the price ring up but the grocery cashier was already close to tears because the woman ahead of me had $40 in food stamps and $62 in groceries and had to put stuff back while her kid watched I shouldn’t be eating this crap if I flip it over fast maybe some of the sauce will still be on the crust when did I last wash this floor will the tomato sauce come out of my t-shirt I’m not even sure what pepperoni is could any of that ant-killing stuff I sprayed last week still be on the floor if I get sick I can say it’s from the goat cheese we had last night I’ll run cold water on the shirt as soon as I finish eating

Elapsed time: 4 seconds.

77 words: “Gone to Soldiers” by Marge Piercy

April 13th, 2010 · Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett · 77 Words, Authors, Books No comments

For more “77 words: Tiny book reviews,” click here.

“Gone to Soldiers” by Marge Piercy (Ballantine, 1987) – I missed this oldie until finding it (used) at Powell’s; happily it stood the test of time. The prolific Piercy wrote her heart out, tracing 10-or-so interconnected Jewish lives during WWII. Think Herman Wouk with more–and more believable—women; fewer clichés, good plot, pitch-perfect period detail. Piercy doesn’t tell a tale of wartime, she takes you right to the dinner table, the code-breaker’s desk, the resistance camp in rural France. Dig it up for beach luxuriating.