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a somewhat better way to loan money to friends
Monday, March 4 2024
The weather was a little cooler today than it had been yesterday, but signs of spring continued. I heard many geese flying unseen above the clouds, and at this time of year there would be no reason for them to be up there doing that unless they were migrating north. Later this evening when the dogs were out barking behind Crazy Dave's cottage, I shined a flashlight around and saw several moths flying around.
This afternoon both dogs enthusiastically came charging out of the laboratory with me in a way that suggested they wanted to go for a walk. So I took them out west of the Farm Road, but I was moving so slowly do to my obsessive destruction of gypsy moth (aka spongy moth) egg masses that they continued on without me, eventually having their own adventure and returning home well after I did.
Meanwhile, even from her workplace at the bookstore, Gretchen, as part of that new volunteering gig, continued to obsessively juggle the paperwork needed to get funding for women in need of abortions. The cashiering laptop at the bookstore didn't have Microsoft Word on it, so she couldn't figure out how to do several of the steps without involving me. She'd call me, tell me how to fill out some forms on her desktop, and then have me compose an email to send them somewhere. Her dedication seemed a little kooky to me, but she was finding it very (for lack of a better word) spiritually rewarding. Some of the women getting funding for otherwise unaffordable abortions were breaking down in tears. Also, Gretchen said, she was too busy to feel her usual background level of depression.
This evening Gretchen met with that pair of bakers she loves and had them fill out paperwork for a low-interest 36 month loan of $10,000 (from us) to help them get started at a brick & mortar location in New Paltz. Gretchen hasn't had much luck loaning money to friends. As far as I know, all of them still owe her all the money she has ever loaned them. This includes over $3000 to Powerful and several thousand to Light, the former prisoner permanently exiled from the United States after his release. At least in this case, the loan is a real business loan, so if it's not repaid when it comes due, we can declare it as a loss on our taxes. I should mention that I'd been against making this loan while I am still unemployed, but our financial situation is so stable and our expenditures so modest that we're still accumulating money, and there aren't many great things to do with it. So Gretchen figured she could use it to help support the local vegan food economy.
While that was happening, I took a nice hot bath and then did some more lighting work in the living room. There had been an outlet box hidden behind a painting of Charles Darwin high on the the wall above the west end of the couch, symmetrical with the box I'd installed a duplex receptacle in the other day above the east end of that couch. Today I removed the Darwin painting and installed a duplex receptacle in the west box. This allowed me to add another gooseneck lamp ending with a plug. There are now so many lights that come on when you flip a switch that it makes sense to put them all on a dimmer.
Some potential alligator habitat once climate change really gets going. This is a little west of the Farm Road about half way down its length. Click to enlarge.
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