Subtraction

When did I haul out an Alana Waterford Crystal glass last? h'mmmmmm.

I remember hearing this a very long time ago on a retreat, that life was never about addition but about subtraction: of excessive possessions, ill-serving character traits and defects, poor behaviours, resentments, anger, fear, ad infinitum and replacing them with non-material goodies like peace, serenity, service to others, kindness, etc. You catch the drift.

So a daughter of a dear friend, now passed, suggested, nay challenged, those of us willing to rid ourselves of 10 objects out of our lives for 100 days, thus divesting ourselves of a 1,000 bits of clutter in a very short space of time.

I've been doing this sporadically but today got down to business, the serious business of removal and donation to the less fortunate when appropriate.

I was in the appalling state of piling clean casserole ceramic dishes on the dining room table because there was no room for them in the cabinets due to an enormous collection of granny-china, crystal, silver casserole pieces - note the irony - crystal and silver butter and sugar containers not used since the marital home. I can't count the years back to that.

So armed with newspaper and plastic bags I started to wrap all this detritus, readying it for donation.

I did contemplate EBay, but wrapping, postage, treks of 20k to the post office had absolutely no appeal and my time is valuable.

I must take pictures of this daily subtraction, it hadn't crossed my mind in the past few weeks as I wrapped. A silver sugar bowl memory (my granny's best friend gave it to me as a wedding gift with it's own wee hanging spoon, pinkies high everyone!)raises the barest of nostalgia in me, and my slave children are no longer around to clean and polish this now ridiculous silver collection.

Tomorrow I tackle an enormous collection of candles and their holders.

And vases, have I mentioned vases?

Who's Yer Daddy?

It seems there is a new terrorist lurking to strike on the U.S. And this will be a devastation beyond any current threat calculations.

We're talking financial terrorism:

China's holdings of U.S. securities have increased from $300 billion in March 2004 to more than $900 billion in June 2007, the latest date for which data are available. Given America's $250 billion trade deficit with China over the past year and the steady stream of money pouring into the country from abroad, economists believe China probably holds nearly $1.2 trillion in U.S. securities today, mostly Treasuries and corporate bonds.

And that doesn't include the roughly $140 billion in U.S. securities held by Hong Kong.

And more:

Meanwhile, China, particularly through its central bank, has become the primary financier of America's budget deficit by using much of its trade surplus with the United States to purchase Treasury debt. At the end of fiscal 2007, China owned 21 percent of the U.S. publicly held debt that was owned by foreigners, and it was buying more than half of the new debt being issued by the federal government.

And more:

"What's most disturbing about the U.S. situation is that as America's debts rise higher and higher, the less influence the American government will have over the critical decisions" that will need to be made to address these imbalances," Mr. Tonelson said. "Those critical decisions will be made in Beijing, not in Washington, and they will be made to promote Chinese economic and national-security interests."

Read more of the same here.

With this kind of financial/debt imbalance U.S. autonomy is just about eroded.

We can all look forward to the new world power: The Empire of China.

Irony

With a hat-tip to BartCop for the cartoon.

Me and Mother (Big Corp. Father?) Church, Part 2

Sweet Jaybuzz, what gives here ?

As if there hasn't been enough scandals.

And this is a mighty serious business - retailing Christian tchotchkes pushes nearly 5 billion in annual sales.

Buy a crucifix and ward off the possibility that you too might wind up in a Chinese sweatshop making a Baby Jaybuzz?

With the current tanking of the U.S. economy, it might be a distinct possibility.

H'm.