Luck and life

So I'm feeling pretty good today. One of my wife's best friends, who lives down the street, just had her house saved from foreclosure, and I was heavily responsible. Our friend had been dealing with it for 14 months, and was actually expecting to have a sale date from the foreclosure proceedings any day now.

Well, I happened to catch about a minute of a news story about a workshop in which Wells Fargo had mortgage guys empowered to change loan terms to help people. The news said it was going for one more day (only 2 days total) and they would take walk-ins, and that further info could be found on the news channel's website. There was no real publicity for the event, and apparently few people knew about it.

I immediately told my wife to get in touch with our friend and make sure she knew about this. The website didn't have any info, though. Still, my wife called her and left a message, telling her to look into it.

It bugged me though, so I googled something like "Wells Fargo loan modification mortgage help Portland, OR" and finally found a pdf file from Wells Fargo that described the event. I also found an online news story from the Portland Tribune, which had some testimonials by people who had their houses saved. I sent both links to my wife for her to forward.

Then, I kept pestering my wife, who kept trying to get in touch with her friend.

Anyway, she had been out of town the evening before, and hadn't really checked her messages, so she didn't get the message late. Finally, she got the message in the early afternoon. Still, she was really skeptical, and thought it was just some kind of informational session--though I sent the newsstory specifically so she could see that people were actually on the ground changing mortgages. She realized she needed to go, confirmed they still were taking walk-ins, and dropped off her son at our house while she went.

She showed up that evening with a bottle of champagne and lots of tears. She had gotten her loan modification.

It's weird, how accidental it all was too. I was watching a K-State basketball game, and normally wouldn't even turn the channel, let alone to turn to the local news. But, we were expecting a snow storm to move in the following day, so I flipped over briefly to get the forecast, and it just happened to be the channel reporting on the workshop. It was such a chance thing.

Anyway, it felt really good to have played a part in her getting her house saved from foreclosure.

Writing a novel

So my professional academic prospects are pretty bleak given the state of field and lack of jobs available. So, in lieu of finishing my dissertation, I have, for better or ill, paused and begun working on a fantasy novel.

It's tough work to create something like that. I'm pretty good at world-building I think, but less so at coming up with a compelling story. A good fantasy novel needs both. Hopefully I'm up to the challenge. So far I've made it past the several stumbling blocks that have cropped up, namely with internal consistency, characterization of the protagonist, and certain plot points.

I think it will be a fun story all said and done, and I'm planning it as a series, probably a trilogy. Anyway, here's to a successful career detour.

Hypocrisy, thy name is Osteen

So the televangelist Joel Osteen says homosexuality is a sin according to the Bible.

Wonder what he has to say about greed. Pretty sure it says greed is a sin. Something about it being easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. So I guess you're hellbound asshole.

I don't actually believe there's a hell, so he wouldn't go there, but he does deserve to have something very bad happen to him. I fucking hate douchebags like him that pontificate and preach about being happy and loving, but when push comes to shove are just as full of hate as any other zealot.

Volunteering

So I started volunteering a couple months ago. I help teach English to seniors who are refugees or immigrants from East Africa, mainly Ethiopia, Somalia, and Eritria. It's immensely satisfying, hopefully helpful, and I'm very glad I started. The organization is the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization, and I volunteer at Africa House, one of its branches.

Volunteering is something that I've really always wanted to do, but never did for one reason or another. It wasn't something really done in the community where I'm from. People there have their own problems and mostly keep to their own. So community service was never really ingrained in me. I have always tried to donate to worthy causes when I had the money, but wasn't motivated enough to do the volunteering myself. I just barely started getting a glimpse of it a few years ago. We had a friend who volunteered with IRC (International Rescue Committee) which aids refugees. We started donating things like clothing and baby items and got to see a little bit of how this impacted a refugee family's life.

Anyway, I just wanted to post something quick for anyone who might someday look at this blog and was thinking of volunteering. Find a place and dive in. It's so worth it, so very needed, and the people will appreciate your efforts in any way you can help.

Chiles

Saw an advertisement at a farmer's market for "'pasilla' poblano" chiles. FYI, pasillas and poblanos are separate varieties. Pasilla (little raisin) is the mature form of the green chilaca (a long green chile similar to New Mexican pod type), while poblanos mature into "ancho" chiles.

While the color is similar in the dried form, it's a whole different enchilada. :)

Social Media

As an historian, it's easy to get lost in the past. We spend so much time reading about the past, writing about the past, and simply thinking about the past, that the present sometimes seems almost...I don't know...mundane I guess. And certainly too transient. Many of us look upon present trends and wonder if they will just be passing fads, relegated to the dustbin of history, a dustbin that we routinely spend time sifting through.

For me, this phenomenon takes the form of being hesitant to accept technology. While some of this is simply me lacking the time (or money) to spend learning new technologies, I think my greatest aversion to trying out new technologies is the unwillingness to let go of the past and dive in to the future.

In an effort to break out of this trap--and at the urging of my wife--I am trying to become more adept at using social media. I was very late to the MySpace party, as well as to Facebook. By now, I've long been using Facebook to keep in touch with old friends, but I only recently created accounts on LinkedIn and Twitter (I follow 6 people and have 1 follower!). Meanwhile, I've let this blog wither on the vine. Part of the problem is not really having a focus for the blog. When it's just my random thoughts, I find it hard to justify sharing them with the world. It seems pretty arrogant to think that anyone would, let alone should, care what I have to say. But I guess that's the world I'm living in now, and I need to get used to it.

In any case, although I have said this before and will probably say it again, I hope to revive my blog and actually use it. /crosses fingers

Arizona racism

If anyone was under the delusion that Arizona's anti-immigrant bill SB1070 was only after immigrants and not racist, look no further than the state's new law against Ethnic Studies. Mexican AMERICANS are the primary target. As if mainstream high school history wasn't "designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group," that is, whites.

So, their idea is that you won't know you're being oppressed unless your teacher tells you, even while passing a law that will encourage racial profiling. How stupid do they think people are?