We’ve got the sun for a time and you’re all cold
February 8th, 2007 by tree
It was 66 here yesterday. The mountains of snow are slowly pressing down into water, water everywhere.
My new white car is black with street gunk.
I have been doing layout day and night. I’m on the last book for the spring. I updated our catalog and web site. I also did an inventory of the books on the shelf. And the intern is busy twice a week logging in the new queries. I made six trips to the dumpster with rejected stuff from the last two years. It felt good to get rid of it all.
We have a nephew, and just about no one in the family likes his evangelical mother. She’s awful. Today we got a fundraising letter from the nephew. He’s eighteen and going to graduate this spring, and he wants to go on a journey of understanding to Israel. He went a couple of years ago. Now he’s asking us for money to help fund the trip. We’re supposed to write a check to his tiny fundamentalist school, not to him, so as to be able to deduct it from our taxes. On the one hand, I like this boy and think he really was unfortunate in the parent lottery. But I don’t want to fund his creepy school or his trip that, as he assures us in his note, “God wants me to go [on].” My suggestion is to give him an early graduation check and tell him to apply it to Israel if he wants to. We’re funding our own daughter’s journey of culture to Spain in May, and I didn’t ask anyone else for money. It’s so weird. Why doesn’t he just get a part time job?
If you read my blog a year ago, you’d remember that it’s Fred’s birthday on the 8th. He must be 52 now. He was the guy who dated a fourteen year old. Back in 1981 or so. It was one of the best times of my life, regardless of the law. The timestamp on my blog is wrong.
Your idea of an early graduation gift is an excellent one, but be sure you don’t give more money at the time he actually graduates. One should never give money to causes one doesn’t believe in or political groups that one opposes.
66′ …..I hope you went out and soaked some rays.
i love tossing out old useless crap. that’s my favortie part of the classified files we have to read about the special ed kids. after 5 years, we got to throw out stuff. for some reason it makes me feel greatm like i got a lot done.
you know, i get letters from other people all the time asking for money for stuff. I don’t like to send people money, especially people i’m related to (that’s like buying booze for a drunk). if it means that much to someone, i’m of the stingy mind that they should get a job and pay for it themselves. i can’t help it, but i do try to overcome this urge at times. when i was 15 my mom marched me up to a place in town and got me a job and that was that. my parents never gave me money beyond buying my basic needs. if i had wanted a trip, i know what my mom would say “you have a job”
one woman i work with pisses me off to no end. She pays $34,000 a year to send ONE of her kids to this elite private high school and then has the balls to send out a note about how everyone in the school is going to china in march and how she can’t afford to send her daughter and can we please help with donations. my enitre BS degree cost $15,000. i didn’t say anything to her, but i tossed her letter in the trash. $34,000 should get you a trip to China.
the eldest son of my boss is studying to be an opera singer and won a chance to go to austria and study with a famous tenor for 3 months. he needed money for the trip and his mom too had the great idea of writing a letter. i was going to give him money, then i saw his mom’s new kelly green jag and tossed his letter out.
I know that not everyone is a guilt monger or a scam artist, but it’s hard to separate the wheat from the chaff at times.
I refused to solicate friends/relatives when LP was younger and his school demanded we sell magazines. I hate crap like that. I detest fundraisers. I just wrote a check instead.
I wouldn’t give money to send any fundie right winger on a journey of understanding or whatever, whether we was related to me or not.
Tree if his weird mother calls and rudely demands an answer, tell her “I didn’t think you’d accept money from a Liberal leftwing Atheist.”
heehee
. . . or if you really don’t like the mother and don’t care about your family reputation, you can claim to be a Wiccan who contributes to Iranian student on their hajj.
And accept my sincere and intense envy of the 66 degree temps!
R
hee hee! Send him some food stamps and a map to his nearest ghetto/barrio. That would put him on a road to serious understandin’!
I’m finishing up a new book, “When Religious People Fall In Love.” It starts slow, but ends very, very hot. Religious people take awhile to gain flexibility…
Well, we sent him the letter. I thought it was tactful. I did tell him that “all of life is a journey of understanding.” We’ll see what the backlash might be. Mr. Tree was with his brother (the father) and of course didn’t take the opportunity to talk about it with him. I asked him to lay the groundwork, but he didn’t feel like it was the right time. Hmmm.