Archive for August 26th, 2010

August 26th, 2010

2.50%

by Andrew

Today the yield on US Treasury 1-year bonds fell to 2.50%. Three months ago, it was above 3.25%. In April, it had actually peaked at 4%. A falling interest rate means that investors are worried about the long-term economic outlook of the United States. Many people have been arguing for months that we must begin reducing the deficit to improve investor confidence; it has gotten to the point where this is conventional wisdom. Except, that’s not why investors are saying they’re worried.

On August 1st, the Wall Street Journal ran this story about why investors were becoming worried. In short, a stalling economic recovery and fears about deflation. In other words, another Great Depression. The investors interviewed in this article were clear that they were only preparing for the worst and that it might not happen. However, today Bloomberg reported that capital spending declined in July. In addition, within the past month the Presidents of the St. Louis and Boston Federal Reserve Banks have both made it clear that they’re worried about deflation; the current inflation rate is only about 1%.

So how do you deal with a stalled economic recovery and potential deflation? read more »

CategoryCurrent Events | Comment2 Comments »

August 26th, 2010

“Hotlanta Report” by Nancye Tuttle

by DickH

Fellow blogger Nancye Tuttle just returned from Atlanta and posted the following report on her own blog, Nancye’s World, and has allowed us to repost it here:

I recently returned from Atlanta – or Hotlanta as my brother-in-law calls it. Indeed, it was hot and steamy there last week. But our recent spate of muggy, humid weather had prepared me for it, sort of. So I managed to get out and about, enjoying the culture there, if only for a few short days. Here’s a couple of quirky things I discovered that made the Atlanta suburbs distinctly different than our world up North.

First, they think I talk funny. “I can tell y’all are from somewhere that’s not here,” remarked one good ole boy, as I wandered around an antique emporium. Gee, I thought I sounded pretty normal, aside from my nasal Jersey “a” that I can’t get rid of no matter how long I live in New England.

Second, you can get iced tea anywhere, but forget iced coffee. “We don’t sell iced coffee,” said a pert waitress in a coffee shop on a hot Saturday morning. The signs said iced tea, though, in two versions, plain or sweet tea, another Southern tradition. But we told her it was pretty easy to make it – just put some ice cubes in a cup and pour the coffee and milk over them. Voila, iced coffee.

Third, biscuits are standard fare in the bread basket at restaurants, even national chains. And these biscuits are melt in your mouth good. Up here, we get rolls or ciabatta or baguette. Down South, it’s biscuits. And they’re to die for.

Fourth, here we have consignment shops, there they have antique malls, expansive emporiums, where dealers rent space and display their wares creatively with flair. And what stuff they had in these spaces. More proof that one person’s trash is another’s treasure. And, since I’m trying to downsize, I resisted temptation and said no to a few tempting items. Besides they wouldn’t have fit in my bag.

Fifth, The Atlantic Journal Constitution is a good read.

Sixth, groceries are much cheaper there than up here. Is it the fact that produce doesn’t have to be shipped so far? Not sure, but the prices were decidedly lower than our supermarket deals. And you can’t beat a Georgia peach. Delicious.

It was a nice trip, the people were friendly. But I was glad to be back North when my plane touched down at Logan. It’s here I feel comfortable and where I want to call home.

CategoryCulture | CommentNo Comments »

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August 26th, 2010

‘Body Heat’ by Jacquelyn Malone

by PaulM

One of our regular readers, writer and poet Jacquelyn Malone, shows up today as a contributor. Jackie is living in Lowell for the second time around; she was here during the high-tech boom of the late ’70s and into the ’80s. I was introduced to her work in the ’80s when I learned that she had been awarded a prestigious writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. To my knowledge, she is the only Lowell resident who has ever received one of these very competitive fellowships. Her work has been published widely. We’re happy that she’s back in the community, enjoying the “New Lowell.”–PM

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Body Heat

 

The Farm Beneath the Sand is called the Viking Pompeii.

                   —a New York Times article

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The climate hardened, and the Norse left

the forty rooms where, under one roof, the last

residue huddled — to conserve body heat. Then

for centuries the Farm Beneath the Sand lay buried

in a river of glacial grit.

                                    All waters run to Lethe,

the great stream that takes in farms, hopes, genes

in the same bed. Civilizations swirl in its eddies,

going — in the water’s turns — from conqueror to conquered

before they sink amid clay pots, a shred of cloth, the stone

marker no one left can read, animal bones, body lice — all

going down like the rumored feats of dragon prows

that cut the Arctic seas, like Atlantis, the Easter gods,

or the Library of Alexandria — memory of mankind — going

under, washed as clean of human dreams as time, as sand.

.

—Jacquelyn Malone (c) 2010

CategoryCulture, History, Lowell, Poetry | CommentNo Comments »

August 26th, 2010

Urban Living – August 2010

by DickH

Some random observations on life in the city of Lowell as Fall approaches . . .

Thursday is trash day in the Highlands. It used to be that early morning jogs turned into early morning sprints after coming face-to-tail with skunks foraging for food amongst the roadside Hefty bags. That all changed when the city switched to the cranberry-colored, lid-covered standard trash containers. I haven’t seen a single skunk this summer. It’s always fascinating to discover that kind of cause and effect relationship. A while back, Steve O’Connor commented that one reason we see so much wildlife like deer, possums, etc, wandering around the neighborhood these days is because dog leash laws are more strictly enforced. In years past with more dogs on the loose, wildlife was chased deeper into the woods.

Our official trash containers sure do stink. Everything I put in mine is encased in a plastic trash bag and I’ve never known one of the bags to break. Certainly the bags tend to emit a foul odor from decaying food waste after a few days, but I don’t understand why the rigid plastic barrel absorbs and retains these odors so much. I suppose I could always wash it out. While we’re on the topic of trash disposal, last week’s recycling newsletter had some good advice about shredded paper – it’s OK to place it inside a clear plastic bag and to place that inside the recycling bin.

This morning was the first day this summer I wore my reflective vest while running. Ever since Memorial Day it’s been light enough to dispense with that piece of safety gear, but between dawn coming later and almost no moon, it was still very dark during the 5 am hour today. If you’ve resolved to get out early and walk or jog, you should really pick up one of these vests. There aren’t many drivers on the road but those who are at that time of the morning aren’t expecting any people on the road, either, so you need to give yourself an edge. You can find these vests at places like Work-n-Gear for less than $10; you don’t need the $40+ cycling models from LL Bean.

Since my jogging route takes me along a big stretch of Stevens Street, I got a close-up view (and feel) for the sidewalks that became a controversial issue at Tuesday’s city council meeting. (See posts on Left in Lowell and Gerry Nutter’s Lowell for the details). The sidewalks are a bit bumpy, but no more so than any other sidewalk in the city that is more than 10 years old. As I’ve said repeatedly, the biggest hazard about the sidewalks on Stevens Street are the residents who park their vehicles on them, forcing walkers into the street and those who don’t shovel snow from the sidewalk in the wintertime.

Thanks to Matt Donahue for contributing his essay on his struggle to dispense with his car and to all who commented on it. I hope Matt sends us more content in the future. If anyone else feels the urge to share an essay, a photo or anything else digital with our readers, just send it to me by email and I’ll post it. I can’t see totally giving up my car, but since reading Matt’s piece, I’ve been more diligent about finding ways to cut back on its use. I did cut back on the use of a gasoline powered lawn mower this summer by purchasing an old fashioned reel-bladed push mower. It cuts the grass with no more effort than my old powered mower and the silence is delightful. Pretty soon the leaves will be falling though and the power mower will have to come out of retirement. That’s it for today – be sure to enjoy your morning commutes this week: school starts next Tuesday and the roads will be clogged with school buses.

CategoryLowell | CommentNo Comments »

August 26th, 2010

August 24, 2010– Sister Annette, the Russians and the Mulligan Twins by Jack Neary

by Tony

The entry below is being cross posted from Jack Neary’s own blog, Shards.

I’m always hearing stories about how the nuns messed up the lives of so many of my Lapsed Catholic friends. (Yes, Catholics can be friends with Lapsed Catholics. All a Catholic has to do to maintain the friendship is to nod and laugh when the Lapsed Catholic tells him how much the religion messed the LC up. When the C laughs, then the LC thinks the C is an LC and everybody is happy. One thing the C should never, ever do is try to explain to the LC why he, the C, is still a C. That’s just asking for trouble. Because all the C is doing, really, is triggering the GUILT the LC has been harboring since he turned LC. And once the GUILT is triggered, the friendship between the C and the LC is endangered, because dredging up that GUILT is just not the friendly thing to do. The C rarely intends to trigger the GUILT but…that’s the way it is with GUILT. It kind of sideswipes you like a neglectful Nissan driver in a slippery parking lot.)

Anyway, I never had any real trouble with nuns. Well, one, maybe. Sister Annette. I’m not changing her name because there’s no way she’s still alive and if she is she deserves to be really, really old. She was my second grade teacher and, I swear to God, she had us thinking the Russians were out in the cloak room ready to pounce on us if we so much as sneezed during Arithmetic. Yeah. Russians. Russians were very big back in those days if you wanted to scare the crap out of kids. And Sister Annette knew what she was doing when it came to kid crap scaring. I remember back then that I was afraid of Protestants (that’s just a level of paranoia I do not want to examine right now), but not nearly as afraid as I was of the Russians. Back then, our only option when it came to escaping the Russians was to “duck and cover.” Or, in the case of those of us in the Sacred Heart School, to move single file down the stairs to the basement where the Russians, we understood, couldn’t get to us. Sister Margaret Claire in the first grade and Sister Perpetua in the third grade never mentioned the Russians. Perhaps that’s because they were older and Russians to them still lived under Tzars and hadn’t procured the hydrogen bomb. But Annette–she knew Russians, and she knew that if she wanted something out of us, all she had to do was invoke the imminence of World War Three and we would comply. Another thing about Annette that bugged me was that, one time, she heard somebody talking in the boys’ room. This was strictly forbidden. I have no idea how talking might have negatively affected urinating, but she seemed to believe it would and banned chatter from the lav. Anyway, she heard talking one day (I guess she was just outside the boys’ room door, listening), and when we filed out of the lavatory, she lined us up against the blackboard and demanded to know who was the chatterbox. Nobody owned up. We all knew that whoever owned up was going to be fed to the Russians. read more »

CategoryUncategorized | Comment3 Comments »