Is Your House Made of Cards?

Corcoran.com lists a minuscule 267 new listings this week, the lowest number I have seen on the site. Corocoran defines a new listing as a property that has come on the market in the last seven days.
Usually, four to eight hundred apartments fall in that category. Sometimes, a new development lists each unit separately and creates an unwieldy amount of new listings.
Yes, the holidays may be responsible for the lack of new listings. But people are not putting their apartments on the market these days unless they have to sell.
The November housing report tells a tough story for home sellers in a season full of tough news on all fronts. Sales of existing homes declined 8.6% and the median price declined 13% from $208K last year to $181.3K.
The article identifies the peak of the market as July 2006 when the median price hit $230K. G and I sold our apartment in May 2005.
Every report about the national housing market must be asterisked for New York City residents. The decline is happening here; it's just not the avalanche it is elsewhere. Yet. Housing Predictor.com projects a 19.4% decline in Manhattan prices in 2009.
As a buyer on the sidelines, I take all the bad news reported as good news for me. Despite cheering with those in the grandstands, I see the prices going down as a necessary correction.
Many families have been burned in the housing build-up and crash, but prices could not continue to go higher and higher out of the reach of normal people. Million-dollar studios in Manhattan couldn't last forever. Eventually, someone must buy it as a place to live rather than an investment. Manhattan and the nation was playing a game of musical chairs. The music and all the house flipping stops and people must put their butts somewhere.

Eleven Tips for Sending Christmas Cards

I don't put up a Christmas tree, but I send Christmas cards.
That is, I mean to send Christmas cards. I miss a year here and there, but always with regret. Christmas cards are a tradition started by the first director of London's Victoria and Albert Museum in 1843. A jolly, ol' tradition, I fear it is dying.
Sending holiday cards has declined in the era of Facebook and e-cards. But there are good reasons to keep it alive. If you can't get the task done--it can be a big task--send New Year's cards.
Below are some helpful facts and advice about sending cards:
1. You find out who has moved without telling you.
Every year a few cards come back marked "not at this address." Some surprising, some not. Until Facebook and LinkedIn, if you lost touch with someone, you lost touch with them forever. Perhaps they wanted it that way, but don't let old friends get away that easily. Google them.
2. Don't send cards to people you see everyday.
The practice of sending cards to everyone you know bloats your list. Plus, it negates my number one reason for the card in the first place: to keep or strengthen a connection. Rule of thumb: if the intended lives in the same city, think twice. Exception: you have a cute dog, cat or kids and you send those photo cards.
3. Only buy full-price cards from the Humane Society, the Cancer Society or other charitable organization.
I bought adorable puppy cards this year and 10% of the cost goes to help animals.
4. Not feeling charitable? Buy cards on sale.
Full-priced Christmas cards are expense, closing in on two dollars a card for the nice ones. Add in the stamp and your valuable labor and you can run into some dough. But on the other hand, if it's expensive, it means you have a lot of friends.
5. Send cards to people you want to stay in touch with, but don't want as Facebook friends. Many relatives fall into this category. But send them to your (out-of-town) Facebook friends too.
6. Buy stamps online.
I only use a dozen or so stamps in the course of the year. Thank you, online bill paying. When I needed a hundred stamps fast, I learned how difficult it is to get the sticky buggers. The tiny post office I frequent removed their vending machines and the line that takes a half hour when three people are in it, snaked around the building.
Try to find a USPS truck these days. The problem with mobile post offices is they are mobile. And there is something quaintly old and new about buying stamps online.
7. Use return address stickers.
I am a traditionalist about handwriting the addresses. But this year, return address stickers saved me half the work. Next year, I may figure out how to run labels. If I use a handwriting font, my cards will have the same warm touch without my warm touch.
8. Don't over plan it; you will fail.
Every year, I consider making Christmas cards with a clever photo of G and me in some exotic place or with our animals on the front. The perfect photo never materializes and if you keep waiting, you'll be in the same boat as the Chicago Cubs. Don't hold the bar too high; you will fail.
9. Write a few personal lines in the card.
Some people gold-leaf stamp their names inside their cards or just dash your first name above some deep holiday sentiment. When I get those cards, I think, "that's it?" Why bother?" But I'm still glad they bothered; I feel just a little Charlie-Brownie.
I sometimes just dash first names above my deeply felt sentiment too, but it is usually necessary and I feel bad about it.
10. Don't feel bad about sending a family newsletter.
If a lot of stuff has happened and you only can word it in so many ways, by all means, write the family newsletter. I enjoy them, especially when they are more revealing then they should be. (I didn't know Susie had a drug problem, hmmm.) Before writing, read David Sedaris's Christmas story, "Seasons Greetings to Our Friends and Family."
11. To get into the Zen of it, sing "White Christmas" to yourself.
It'll feel less like a chore, I promise. Once I am on a roll, my personalized lines start getting pithy and I start making small philosophical statements to people I haven't seen in years that have no specific relevance to that person. This year I started wishing some of my recipients a prosperous New Year. Or a Berry Obama Christmas.

The Little Bummer Boy Gives It a Rest

The Little Drummer Boy is the Star Spangled Banner of Christmas songs.

Singers attempt this monotonous song at their own peril. Many a foolish pop star has taken on the challenge to prove the breadth of their talent. But like our national anthem, the song exposes the weakness of singers who dare to record it.

Below are the ridiculous lyrics to the first verse:

Come they told me, pa rum pum pum pum
A newborn king to see, pa rum pum pum pum
Our finest gifts we bring, pa rum pum pum pum,
Rum pum pum pum, rum pum pum pum
So to honor him, pa rum pum pum pum
When we come.

The song has no melodic highs or lows. Trying to sing "pa rum pum pum pum" in a sweet voice with a straight face is programming for failure.

Rosemary Clooney, Marlene Deitrich, Bob Seger, Whitney Houston, and Joan Jett are among the many who have recorded the song. Bing Crosby and David Bowie performed a duet version on the 1977 Bing Crosby Christmas Special. To me, their rendition made the statement:

"I, Bing Crosby, am the greatest singer of my generation. I anoint David Bowie as the greatest singer of his generation. I pass the baton with the most interesting version of the most boring song in the world. Future generations will look back at this and marvel at the talent around this piano."

I also dislike the 1968 stop-action tv show created around the song. The jerky movements of Aaron, the stiff clay doll who plays the lead, are like the awkward sounds of the song itself.

Yesterday, I heard the best version I have ever heard of The Little Drummer Boy. The soulful Lou Rawls is the only man who makes the "pa rum pum pum pums" sound fluid and unawkward. Perhaps if I had only heard Rawls' version, and not been scarred by previous versions, I might even like the song.

Good Samaritans Need Not Apply

Here's a Christmas story for you: the California Supreme Court in a boneheaded decision, ruled that a woman who became a paraplegic after a car accident could sue the friend who pulled her out of the car.

That is, Good Samaritan protection laws don't apply here because the assistance attempted was not medical assistance. The assistance may or may not have worsened the victim's injuries; the courts will determine that later.

Wouldn't you think a helper would be more liable attempting medical assistance than say, offering a blanket? Will the possibility of being sued make someone less apt to help a lost child in a mall, for example? That's not medical care. How many people will be injured or die because a potential Good Samaritan must weigh the risk of getting sued before offering a helping hand?

Remember the New Yorker who jumped off the subway platform to help a man who fell off the platform as he went into a seizure? With a train approaching, the hero pulled the man between the rails and covered his convulsing body with his own. Lying still between the tracks, both men escaped injury. But odds were against that happy ending.

I can see how someone trying to help might cause harm, but the law needs to protect people acting in good faith. This California ruling could potentially affect how people view their fellow man. Is a lawsuit as good as a winning lottery ticket? Is everyone looking for chance to win, including that bleeding woman on the side of the road?

The injured woman didn't care that the person who came to her rescue is a friend? Excuse me, was a friend. Who needs friends when millions of dollars are at stake?

Because it is Christmas, I choose to believe that people will aid someone in distress despite the backward effort of the California Supreme Court. But ask me again in January.

Amity Street, As Nice as it Sounds

Are Manhattan apartment prices coming down--finally? Asking prices seem noticeably lower in Manhattan and certain Brooklyn neighborhoods. Another fluke?

As evidence of the turning tide, check out my old Schermerhorn Street apartment, the price knocked down by $40K since I posted about it. An apartment in another favorite building I watch, 200 E 27th, has come down $20K.

Check out this co-op on Amity Street in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. The Bergen Street F stop is only four tree-lined blocks away. Granted the "F" in F train stands for "frustrating." But the F is the only game in town and it'll do.

The listing advertises 1000 sq feet of shared outdoor space. I wonder how many residents share the space. From the picture, the brick building looks small, so not that many?

The apartment, a duplex, is 900 square feet with a $599K asking price. That equals $921/sq ft--high for Brooklyn but the outdoor space trips that equation.

Newspapers: Evolution, Not Death

Start saying your goodbyes to print editions of newspapers. The Christian Science Monitor was the first to shut down its presses. Now the Detroit Free Press is considering scaling back home delivery to Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays only. The Tribune Company is filing for bankruptcy.

The ever-rising cost of newsprint, the logistics of delivering papers fast and fresh, the clunkiness of broadsheet and tabloids, and the need to save trees have been industry hurdles for years. When the Internet became a part of our collective lives, pundits predicted the demise of newspapers.

But objectors cited practical objections: how else will I read the news on the train? Can I fit a PC it in my briefcase? Can I read it in the bathroom? These points silenced the doomsayers for awhile. Sure, there was a little drop off in readership, a little slip in advertising. But the answers to the big three questions remained No.

Today, ten years after the Internet entered our lives, the PC has given way to the laptop. The laptop is giving way to SmartPhones. SmartPhones, I predict will be the true demise of printed newspapers. Like Green Eggs and Ham, you can read them on the train, you can take them on a plane, and you can bring them in the can.

The nation's newspapers large and small, will live online and we will still call them newspapers. To me, nytimes.com is still The New York Times. (But should I still italicize it?) While the online version of your local newspaper has more bells and whistles than the easier-to-fold-than-a-map-but-just-barely variety, society will lose something when newspaper presses shut down.

As always, Jon Stewart of The Daily Show put it best.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Clusterf#@k to the Poor House - Final Edition Edition

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

Think about what will go away: the tradition of saving special editions of the newspaper, like when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, when Kennedy was assassinated or when Barack Obama was elected president. People won't bother to print these pages out and save them for their grandchildren or sell them on ebay.

How will kidnappers proved a hostage is still alive, unless the victim can hold up a copy of today's newspaper? Do people still line bird cages? Will we miss the black ink on our hands?

Baltimore Babes in Artland

Looking for a way to spend some time without spending any dough? Feeling a lack of cultcha while missin' the moohla?

If you wind up in Baltimore, check out the Baltimore Museum of Art on the edge of the Johns Hopkins University campus.

The current featured exhibition, Franz West's "To Build a House, You Have to Start with the Roof," takes advantage of the "please touch" school of art. Or rather, please touch some of the art.

The interactive gallery in the exhibit features a silver wall with scattered magnetic word strips in Courier Type. Yes, giant-size magnetic poetry. We created clever phrases by either busting up, or admiring then busting up, phrases and sentences left by museum-goers gone by. I decided to be impressed only if West invented Magnetic Poetry himself.

Alas, a cursory Google search shows that West was not the inventor.

The real draw for me was the museum's Matisse and Warhol collections. The BMA benefited from a couple of hometown gals, the wealthy Cone Sisters. Around the turn of the last century, sisters Claribel and Etta hung out with Gertrude Stein and collected the art of Matisse, Gauguin, Picasso and others.

The Sisters Cone counted Henri Matisse among their friends and they amassed the world's largest collection of Matisse's work. The last surviving sister donated their art collecction to the museum in 1949. Without the sisters' work, Baltimore's museum would be a lightweight.

Seeing the local Cone collection was redemptive since G and I made an abortive trip to the Matisse Museum in Nice. We braved the local bus without a map only to be told by the bus driver at the end of the line, "Fermer, fermer!" One of the ten words in my french vocabulary, fermer means closed.

A case of tired museum feet prevented me from backtracking to find the Warhols that I missed. I did the next best thing; I bought a $10 print of a Warhol print from the Rorschach series.

Bernie Madoff Misplaces Billions

The breadth of 50-year wall street veteran Bernard Madoff's purported fraud astounds me. The bust is particularly shocking because of the timing, just days after the astounding arrest of Illinois Gov Blago and the revelation of his astonishing crimes.

I naively didn't believe that white-collar crime is committed on such a grand scale. But two schemin' hot shots got nabbed in the same week.

The Wall Street Journal quotes an FBI agent describing the fraud:

"[Madoff] deceived investors by operating a securities business in which he traded and lost investor money, and then paid certain investors purported returns on investment with the principal received from other, different investors, which resulted in losses of approximately billions of dollars."

Isn't "billions of dollars" an approximate amount in itself? When you modify the phrase "billions of dollars" with "approximately," what are you really saying? Is it just easy for Americans to think in terms of billions after the Wall Street bailout and the Detroit fiasco?

The automakers' request for $35 billion hardly phased me after the phrase "$700 billion" bounced around the media for months. A compromise of $14 billion sounds downright stingy in that context.

Dumbing Down for Dummies

Amazon lists 711 titles in the "Dummies" series. The top-selling title for dummies is "Spanish for Dummies." Then Piano, Italian and Home Maintenance.

I have long resented the "Dummies" Series. The first one, 1991's "DOS for Dummies," was brilliant because DOS was arcane and no regular person understood it. So you weren't really a dummy if you bought the book.

But IDG books took the idea too far. Once IDG moved on from the initial concept, it ceased to be cute. Why does one need to call themselves a dummy just because he or she is learning a subject from scratch?

I know, I know, it's supposed to be ironic, but it's just dumb. And dumb is the American way. Read Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, by Richard Hofstadter and you'll know we've been proud to call ourselves dumb for a long time. This Washington Post article calls it anti-rationalism.

Now other books are taking on the same dummy tone. And not just the copycat "Idiots' Guides." I just bought The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging. The first sentence reads, "Like moving into a new home, starting a blog is like an adventure." Unless "like moving into a new home" will ignite a light bulb in my head about blogs, the authors should lose the folksy tone.

I don't need an "aw c'mon" approach to a new skill; I just need an easy-to-read manual. I don't want analogies that don't explain any of the concepts in the books. Save that for Garrison Keillor. Folksy doesn't clarify--have you heard Keillor's explanation of String Theory?

After irrelevant analogies, I hate analogies that are hammered into the ground. If the HuffPost Blogging book had gone on about drapes and moving vans, I would have thrown the book out the window.

Here's a great short interview about the origin of the "Dummies Series" at wambooli.com.

The Amazing Race Finale

Did anyone notice Toni and Dallas missing from the finish line? Were they detained in Russia because they lost their passports? I wanted to see the Starr and Dallas reunion after Starr won the million dollars.
From the beginning of the episode, it is obvious that Nick and Starr will take home the big prize. Ken and Tina are the only team that might give Nick and Starr a run for their money.
"For those who think we're going to be chicken feed for Nick and Starr and Ken and Tina, I think they are severely mistaken," said Dan, falsely emboldened by a couple of Cinderella finishes. But Dan and Andrew acknowledge all along they are competing against superior teams and are indulging in a mandatory pep talk for the camera.

Portland, Oregon
The three remaining teams fly 5,000 miles to Portland, Oregon, their final destination. Everyone gets on the same flight. "The Moscow miracle brought us here. This is the Stanley Cup, the World Series, the Super Bowl all rolled into one," says Dan as they board. Team Dandrew has provided some of the best quotes.
Ken comments that "Nick and Starr have a horseshoe stuck in their rear end."
In Portland, the racers taxi to Tilikum an outdoor retreat center, where they face a Detour: High and Dry or Low and Wet. In High and Dry, teams climb 30 feet up a tree, walk across a 40-foot log and leap through the air to grab 1/2 of the next clue. Dan and Andrew better stay away from this one.
No one chooses Low and Wet where they would have walked 850 feet on floating log bridges to their clue waiting across the water. I guess everyone got wet enough during the race.
Tina announces 30 feet in the air that she is scared of heights. Ken is annoyed at her hesitation. Dan and Andrew are still stuck in a cab. One good thing about traveling in America, Andrew is able to borrow the cab driver's cell phone and gets directions.
Next, teams travel by taxi to The Bridge of the Gods, and ride 2000 feet on a Zip Line to an island below. "Love you, you look like Peter Pan," Starr shouts to Nick as he zips down.

Where in the World . . . ?
The last task in each race always involves recall of the events of the entire trip. Teams must answer one question from each of the ten legs of the race. This is where college boys Dan and Andrew have a prayer, but ultimately, they don't reach this task in time to be competitive.
Nick/Starr and Ken/Tina choose a game board with ten game pieces, each representing a leg of the race. Working in numerical order, the teams remove the game piece revealing a symbol underneath looking for route info, detour, pit stop, or roadblock of that leg. Teammates race together into a field of 150 clue boxes and hunt for the picture corresponding to the symbol.
Tina likens the task to a game of Concentration. Concentration levels are not high at this point in the race, after so many miles.

At Last, The End
I am rooting for Ken and Tina now because Nick and Starr are so predictable and Dan and Andrew are so far-fetched. And I'm tired of Nick and Starr's fatigues.
The racers now head downtown to the Portland Building. They search for a green dinosaur across the street in The Standard Building. Ken and Tina's cab passes Nick and Starr. Both drivers are into playing the game. Nick and Starr's cab returns the favor.
Teams walk to the Alder Street cart pod and search among the international food carts for the one from Russia. Teams then must figure out where the "magic in the hole" is. The magic turns out to be Voodoo Doughnut, clearly a popular Portland landmark. Everyone on the street seems to know it.
"Thank God that guy likes doughnuts!" Starr exclaims.
As expected, the race to the finish is a two-team race. Ken and Tina pull up second, but Ken has the moment of the night, when he pulls their wedding rings out of his pocket and asks for reconciliation.

Chimpanzees at Tchimpounga Sanctuary

A Day in the Life: Chimpanzees at Tchimpounga Sanctuary from The Jane Goodall Institute on Vimeo.