?`s and ANNEswers

Ten minutes to write. Less time to read.

Paying for Free

Posted on March 12, 2005

Once upon a time a clever marketer I’ll call Marty came up with the idea that credit cards could offer free points or free airline miles or money back as a way of enticing people like you and me to apply for his particular card. I never met Marty personally, but his plan has certainly taken hold. The only problem is that free isn’t really free.

If I redeem umpteen thousand points for a round-trip airline ticket to Cleveland, somebody has to pay for it. The same goes for the fuschia-colored Cuisinart mega-mixer. Or the your-best-night’s-sleep-ever mattress with matching box spring.

However, Marty isn’t a philanthropist. He doesn’t want to purchase those tickets out of his own pocket and wait until I need to visit Cleveland. Nor does he want to stockpile multi-colored mixers or mattresses. At the same time, consumers seem to love the idea that they’re getting something for nothing.

So Marty hides the costs of the free gifts in a variety of ways. He recoups some money as part of an increase in annual membership fees. He recoups some more in the fees he charges retail merchants who accept his credit card.

On April 1, MasterCard and Visa will start charging merchants more to accept cards that offer “free” incentives than they will charge a merchant to accept a plain old, common card. And what will the merchants most likely do? I predict they will raise their prices accordingly and pass on a little piece of that free airline ticket to Cleveland to every customer. So it seems to me that the word ‘free’ really means “an undetermined cost that is kept a closely guarded secret as it is passed, like a hot potato, from person to person to person.”

Sort of takes the fun out of fuschia.

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Still Stretching

Posted on March 11, 2005

On February 16, I wrote a mini-essay about the values of stretching. I’d rediscovered a book entitled simply Stretching by Bob Anderson, and I’d begun to follow his advice. It’s now three weeks down the road, and here’s what I’ve learned.

Stretching is a good thing. It is easy on the body; yet it has health benefits too. Stretching makes one more flexible at the very least and, at the very most, makes one more able to compete in other realms. Like tennis or basketball or skiing.

Someone once said that if you do something faithfully for twenty-one days it becomes a part of you. It’s been the rare physical thing for which I’ve had a twenty-one day commitment, but stretching qualifies. (I did have a three-year love affair with inline skating once, but that ended badly with a broken leg!).

To date, I’ve grown in flexibility so that I can sit cross-legged once again. I can bend over easily and touch my toes too. And when I do the various stretches first thing in the morning, I feel more limber for the entire day.

Author Anderson also has a section on how to stretch so that one can eventually do the splits. It’s not that I have a burning desire to do them, but it might be interesting to see how long it would take before I could. It would probably take more than another twenty-one days.

In fact, it would probably be quite a stretch at that.

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Daydreams

Posted on March 9, 2005

Every now and then, particularly when I’m driving, my mind wanders. It sees something or hears something that triggers memories from the past or launches a daydream about tomorrow. I bet your mind does the same thing.

Yesterday I was driving to the pharmacy and the bank, having navigated the same road hundreds of times before. So while my hands on the steering wheel and my feet on the clutch and gas pedal were doing their automatic thing, my mind was doing its automatic thing too.

From nowhere, I thought about the movie “Witness for the Prosecution” with Charles Laughton and Marlene Dietrich. Probably most people alive today don’t even remember this film, much less its stars. But it was, as still is, a four-star courtroom drama with a twist. I urge anybody to find and rent it.

Then I thought about a high school friend’s birthday, which occurred on March 1; and I chastised myself for not acknowledging it either with a card or, less informally, with an email. Rosemary and I were joined at the hip in high school, and it wasn’t just because she was the only person shorter than I. We both looked dumpy in the de rigeur Catholic school uniform too

At last I reached my destination on autopilot and went to make my bank deposit. It reminded me of the time my ex-husband and I were liquidating our assets because we were splitting up. I had gone to our bank to cash in the savings bonds that Uncle Sam had sent us every month that he (my ex, not Uncle Sam) was in the military. I never did get the hang of being an Army wife.

I made my deposit and got back in my car. Turned on the radio just in time to hear the announcer harp about today’s teenagers. Ah, today’s teenagers . . . what would I do if I were seventeen now?

Off my mind went in search of the idyllic answer to that question. But just then reality checked in and reminded me that being seventeen is often more like a nightmare. I immediately snapped out of it and began watching traffic with renewed attention.

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Tenants

Posted on March 8, 2005

My main squeeze, Earl, has owned a variety of rental properties through the years. And he’s learned a thing or two about managing them. So if there is anybody out there thinking of becoming a landlord, listen up!

It seems to be the nature of the beast that if something will go wrong it will go wrong on a Saturday night or a holiday weekend just as Earl and I are stepping out to some dinner party or family gathering. The phone rings. It is the tenant in apartment #3F. Her key has broken off in her lock and she doesn’t know what to do. Or it’s the tenant in apartment 205 whose air conditioner is on the fritz and it’s over ninety-five degrees.

Rule Number One regarding tenants is that you can expect them to require attention at the most inopportune time. And you’d better be ready to respond.

Rule Number Two is that tenants don’t have the same agenda as you do. Even if they pay their rent on time every month, it’s about maximizing what they get for their dollars. As a landlord, it’s about keeping them happy without spending more than is necessary. For instance, in one of Earl’s properties, he installed a free washer and dryer for his tenants. He even pays the water bill.

Earl’s agenda in providing this service is to keep his tenants happy and staying put. He reasons that if they get an added perk, like free laundry, they will be less likely to move. Because when they move, it costs him money. The tenants’ agenda, however, is to assume that free laundry is a given and that they are entitled to it. Just as they feel they are entitled to two parking spaces per unit when their leases say they are entitled to one. It’s a push me/pull you scenario.

Conscientious landlords seek to improve their properties; conscientious tenants work to help them. But most tenants simply take the improvements as entitlements and may or may not keep them up.

So Rule Number Three, and maybe this is really the most important rule, is that landlords had better be savvy about the properties they purchase in the first place because that can make all the difference in their profitability. It also makes it worth the hassle when the telephone rings just as we’re going to dinner any Saturday night.

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Martha

Posted on March 7, 2005

Three days ago, Martha Stewart was released from the women’s prison in Alderson, West Virginia, after having served five months. She has another five to go in at-home surveillance, which means she wears an electronic anklet monitor that records where she goes and what she does. In essence, Martha is under house arrest but with various provisions that enable her to go beyond her flowerbeds and privacy fences and return to the business world.

I’ve read that Martha has returned a changed woman to her $16 million home in Katonah, New York. Which, by the way, she arrived by private plane in the middle of the night. I’ve read she has a new commitment to the plight of her fellow inmates and she wants to share this newly found viewpoint with the rest of us. I understand the word on the street is that Martha is returning in full force. That her company’s stock, which has suffered of late, is once again a good buy.

Personally, I never particularly liked Martha’s style. She seemed condescending at best and overbearing at the very least. Her idea of decorations for any particular holiday dinner couldn’t possibly be relevant to families who were struggling to put dinner on the table in the first place.

But I have grown to respect Martha Stewart during her past five months in prison. Not once did we hear a whimper or a whine from the Domestic Diva. Not once did we learn that she expected special favors or linen with dinner. Rather, she took it on the chin; in fact, she went to prison before she actually had to report, perhaps in the spirit of getting it over and moving on. This is more than I can say for others executives in the same legal position.

So if Martha decides to discuss her time behind bars, I’m willing to listen. As long as she doesn’t say it was a “good thing.” And if she really takes up the plight of imprisoned women, I’m willing to cut her even more slack. In fact, I might even decide to shop at K-Mart.

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Slump

Posted on March 6, 2005

I’m in a slump regarding my interest in piano. It’s been three years since I began to take weekly lessons. It’s been two years since I bought my own Kawai grand piano; which cost more than the car I drive. It’s been one year since I began using the particular music book, trying to master each lesson while all the time wondering what I am doing here?

Perhaps my malaise is about “never.” I’ll never play Carnegie Hall; in fact, I’ll probably never play for anyone beyond my immediate family. I’ll never have the dexterity or music sense that might have been mine, had I started lessons fifty years ago. I’ll never play by ear.

None of this is new information, but this week – in spite of how far I’ve actually come – it seems heavy, like I don’t want to carry it around any more. I think perhaps I’m regressing to age ten.

So now I’m ten and I’ve taken piano for three years and I want to spend the practice time playing baseball instead. My Mother will probably throw a fit, but I’m going to try and quit piano anyway. I approach her one night after supper, when she’s through with the dishes and working on her next afghan. It’s a dingy color, if you ask me, so she’ll probably be ready to talk.

I tell her how I don’t want to take piano lessons any more, that I think baseball is more important. I want to be outside with my pals. It isn’t something I’ve thought out very well, but it comes from the heart. She listens, but keeps on crocheting. Says nothing. Waits.

“Can I quit?” I finally ask, holding my breath for the verdict.

Then, suddenly, I’m myself again. I see that if she had granted my wish I would now be wishing that I hadn’t quit piano lessons. My baseball days would be over, except for an occasional armchair view of a televised game. But learning to play piano, even at this late date, is something I can actively enjoy for the rest of my life. I guess once in a while the student just needs a break and it might not coincide with the school’s spring break or Christmas holidays.

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Makeover

Posted on March 5, 2005

You’ve seen the ugly swan become a gorgeous contestant on TV. You’ve seen similar miracles with single rooms and whole houses too. It’s enough to make one believe in Cinderella and her fairy godmother.

This week I started my own version of a makeover, although it will never turn into a television program. Why? Because it’s not drastic enough. It doesn’t amount to cosmetic surgery on a body or a building. It doesn’t cost thousands of dollars either. And it probably will go unnoticed by my friends and family.

What I did was go to Walgreen’s and buy some new make-up.

Now that might not meet your criteria for a makeover, but it certainly meets mine. That’s because I’m a rather low-maintenance person when it comes to this kind of stuff, and the cosmetic aisle in any store confuses me with it myriad names of products and companies. Names like lip gloss, lip shine, eye shadow, eye liner, and eye lash extender. Names like Almay, Maybelline, and Cover Girl. What’s the difference?

It also makes me wonder if the females spokespersons whose faces are frequently flashed all over the packaging have had major makeovers themselves. I’d like to think not, but the cynic in me argues against it.

What prompted this current makeover was that my old bottle of foundation was cakey. My eye lash thickener (See, I’m not even sure of the right words) had dried up, even after I put a few drops of water into the applicator; and my eyebrow pencil, which I actually use sometimes for outlining my lips, had become a short stump with nothing left to sharpen.

This happens every six months or so, and I take myself to Walgreen’s knowing I will leave there with new cosmetics but with no new insight on how to apply them. I’ll simply muddle through, and it makes me wonder if those contestants on the big TV shows do the same thing when the cameras are turned off.

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Spring

Posted on March 4, 2005

Every time I write about the pending emergence of Spring, it goes underground. Case in point: a few weeks back I wrote about the subtle nuances I saw during a lull in early February, a lull where geese flourished and flowers began to emerge.

Since then, winter has returned with a vengeance in the form of gray skies, dropping temperatures, regular snow showers, and enormous heating bills. I try to keep a happy face, but inside I’m wondering when it will be over. Anymore I hesitate to predict.

Instead, I’m searching for ways to lessen my discontent at the lingering clime. I tell myself I can complete additional indoor projects before the weather propels me outside to the lawn and flower beds. I can finish the photo album of our recent trip through the Panama Canal. I can work on my current afghan. I can read and write more.

But I cannot stretch my legs and arms in the direct rays of the sun. I cannot have the satisfaction of cutting my own tulips for my own vases, and I cannot smile at the green grass spread in front of me like a plush carpet.

March indeed came in like a lion this year; whether she goes out like the familiar lamb remains to be seen. I for one want her to go out like a trembling, fearful, acquiescing animal of any species just as long as she takes winter with her.

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New Approach

Posted on March 3, 2005

In recent days, I’ve stumbled across a couple commentaries by other writers and they have given me food for growth.

One short essay suggested that we close our eyes for a couple minutes and imagine that we are one with the universe. (I understand that conservatives might not get this.) Then, while we are bonding with everything, we should ask the universe to help us solve some specific problem. The logic behind this is that since we are one with the universe, the universe is obligated to help us as a way of helping itself.

I’m not sure I believe any of this, but nonetheless I asked for help on a particular writing project. Then I let it go. Forgot about it and moved on. Lo and behold, a couple days later I came up with a solution to the writing problem I had.

This doesn’t mean the “universe” will do the work, but what I hope happened is that the energies of the universe focused on me for a moment or two and enabled me to come to the solution that works best. Now it ‘s up to me to implement it. And, in doing so, maybe I’m making the universe a better place.

I know it sounds hokey. At the same time, what have I got to lose by trying the solution that came to me through this approach?

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Chinatown

Posted on March 2, 2005

Years ago there was a movie called “Chinatown” which featured Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway. On the surface, it was a murder mystery; but underneath it was about power and who exerts it. Water and its uses formed the basis for the story.

Today I find myself involved in a true-to-life Chinatown situation.

Where I live, all the residents are on wells and septic systems. It’s been this way since the area was developed. But now, the local township board wants to introduce city water. It sounds like a good thing, except that many of the residents on my road are happy with the status quo and unhappy with the approximately eight thousand dollars per household it would take to bring city water into our faucets. To quote Shakespeare, “therein lies the rub.” The township board, which we elected to represent our interests, has publicly claimed it can decide what to do regardless of a vote it held on the issue.

The long-story-short is that there are pros and cons to bringing city water to our neighborhood. And no matter which way the decision goes there are bound to be dissatisfied residents. But, for me, the crux of the matter is that the board claims the power to make the decision to impose what amounts to an eight thousand-dollar levy per property without considering the true wishes of the residents.

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