Consumer Advocates Warn Against Paystub Loans
NPR's Day To Day
December 18, 2006
by Charles Lane
Major tax preparation companies have rolled out a new holiday product: early tax-refund-anticipation loans. The loans are based solely on pay-stub information, and are being marketed as a way to get cash for holiday shopping. Consumer advocates say these loans are just another way to trap the nation's working poor into debt.
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Trash into Cash
NPR's Justice Talking
September 25, 2006
by Charles Lane
Since 1993 more than 6000 landfills in the US were forced to shutdown because of tighter environmental regulations. But to close a landfill the operators have to make sure no contaminates from decomposing garbage can leak into the groundwater. This can be an expensive project involving highly engineered covers and drainage systems. So the town of Riverhead, New York wanted to try another solution: digging up the town dump and selling what’s underneath.. It’s an unusual process called reclamation that turns trash into cash.
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The Italian Temper
Temperance, one of the five Hellenic virtues, one of the four Catholic virtues, and one of the five Buddhist precepts. It means to moderate, to grade highs and lows together in order to create evenness, unmodulated flatness.
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Detail of The Cardinal Virtues, Stanza della Segnatura (1511)
Mourning the Solider
Two radio stories were completed that look at the military funeral.
AARP's Prime Time Radio asked for a more generic look at a funeral’s elements, the history and tradition and emotional sentiment. Voice of America wanted a more global view, how the US fits in with other countries mourning soldiers.
It’s remarkable how many of the traditions are the same all over the world. Apparently modeled on the British, countries in Africa and Asia all fire over a casket draped in the flag. Boots are turned backwards. A token is given to the family, a flag or certificate or a piece of the uniform.
Also present in each country’s funeral is the insistence that the body has been cared for until the end. It’s a nonnegotiable, as if the entire event itself—the fanfare, the parading—was the proof that the solider was buried properly and intact. Like a piece of performance art that doubles as a seal of approval.
It is an interesting contradiction, not just in our time (“we go to war with the army we have,” ala Rumsfeld), but from the Vietnam War all the back to the days when Roman soldiers were sent to cleanse at Ostia before being allowed into the city. A solider seems to simultaneously be the defender of and a pariah of a citizenry that doesn’t know quite what to make of trained killers.
These soldiers are, by definition, disposable which makes the proof of their disposal a tragic irony: why are we celebrating a death we created? It’s unfortunate that this irony is all together lost in how these funerals are portrayed in the press by yours truly.
The Military Death
NPR had asked for an obituary on a Navy SEAL who died in Afghanistan two weeks ago.
In the West, death is usually an unpleasantness, an awkward timegap filled with either pain or often overwrought gestures in which hardly anyone knows the suitable thing to do. Our best intention is to cluster around the dead and position ourselves so as to mirror our relationship to the bereaved. Almost no where else in life do humans voluntarily categorize themselves so readily: I’m a friend and this is my proper role, I’m the cousin and this is my proper role.
That’s what happened at the funeral. The unstated focus was on the fiancée. Her eyes looked rubbed raw. Mourners floated around afraid to leave a permant impression. The officers in charge of services divided the mourners into two groups. Those presumably sanctioned by the family stood behind the parents under a canopy while the rest made a large crescent facing the fiancée on the other side of the casket. Having to look upon her was the price of admission.
The ceremony was succinct and efficient. The guns made everyone jump even though everyone knew it was coming.
The military funeral, of course, has an extra onus, an odd conundrum built within: they must show that the solider will be missed while at the same time claiming his life as expendable. The way this is done is through duty, like this from the bugler:
The military is probably right in that, any introspection only leads to doubts and worry and pain.
Online memorials are here and here.