Ran into this while showing bank-owned homes to a buyer yesterday. It’s at the front door. She said it was a curse on the house.
She said “I know how to remove the curse,” to which I replied “So do I. Tear off the paper.”
And she said, “Well it’s a bit more complicated than that.”
Maybe so. Too bad for the seller.
Happy Indpendence Day 2008!
The Fourth of July is always a large celebration in Redding. This year it is decidedly low-key because of all the forest fire activity going on. They canceled the big fireworks show, for instance. That’s usually a big deal around here, but the cancellation seems totally appropriate given the fire situation. Anyway, when morning arrived it was so lovely outside, we rode our bikes on the River Trail and I took a few photos. We didn’t have to drive a hundred miles, and our fun was all human-powered. That’s what I love about Redding, all this beauty, all inside the city limits. Click here to see my photos. Meanwhile, we are barbecuing burgers with family for the rest of the day. Happy Independence Day to you!
Smoky days
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Lightning caused fires fill our skies with smoke this week. One observation is that every piece of property has the same view -none. Smoke, the great equalizer! In fact it’s getting to be downright unhealthy (hack, cough). I was showing property to a couple from Florida and they said it looked like L.A. Oh, the unkindest cut…. anyway I hear it may rain in a few days, and that would be welcome. The photo below is of the County Administrative Building in the haze, sporting a wan orange disk of a sun, that would otherwise be blinding. I took some scary photos of the Motion fire above Shasta Dam. Take a look. Photos at http://www.RedHotHomes.info/Gallery/Fire2008/
Fire is a fact of life (and death) in the Northstate. Be safe.
Saturday is Farmer’s Market Day
Breakfast for 10,000
We attend the Annual Pancake breakfast in Roaring Gulch (Redding) 2008
I don’t know of any other town that does this. Really fun!
We ate our pancakes while sitting across from Shasta Voice’s Mary Machado and her husband. Really interesting conversation from these civic movers and shakers.
It was a really hot day, but we dressed western, minus the hats.
Ugly dogs spotted on Sundial Bridge
Governator comes to town
Arnold Schwarznegger blew into town last week to let us all know that there are budget cuts coming to Cally-fornia. There emerged a rather amusing story of one of our city fathers at the meeting asking Arnold a question out of left field as to why he doesn’t support our right to own 50 caliber weaponry. Welcome to Redding Arnold! Anyway, the gist of the speech centered on a probable 10% cut to everything that the state funds. Sounds fair enough. Across the board. Everybody takes a hit.
Except.
Later that evening, after Arnold blew out again, we attended the Soup Supper of the local League of Women Voters. The speaker was Muffy Berryhill of the Shasta First 5 organization. This group is funded by the apparently never-declining cigarette tax. While they don’t fund pre-natal and early childhood programs directly, their purpose is to help organize and offer resources to those organizations in town that serve the very young. There is much more at their website: http://www.first5shasta.org/ She had some statistical data that was disturbing.
There are 10,441 children in Shasta County (2006 data)
4,340 (40%) live in single parent homes versus 24% statewide.
33% live in poverty, as defined as annual income of $20K or less for a family of 4.
My personal view is that, after national defense, ordinary government serves no higher purpose than overseeing the care of the helpless. The mentally ill, indigent elderly, and very young children. Our state taxes-and-spends loads of money. We can cut budgets across the board. It sounds fair enough, but I wonder. When we cut the programs that serve children, and specifically brain development, won’t we pay dearly for that later, when they grow to become (hopefully) productive citizens? Is that a budget expense, or really an investment?
Right now, Muffy says that children in our county born testing positive for Meth is down to about 5 or 6 a month. I don’t find that hard to believe. Plus other drugs and alcohol, probably. So lets say 50-60 children a year. How is that okay under ANY circumstances in our civilization? We pay now or we pay later.
Amazing Medical Services in Redding
My knee is sore, so my doc sent me over to MD Imaging for an MRI. It really hits home how well equipped the Redding area is in terms of Medical Services. It’s a very well run operation. Laying on my back, inside this giant loud donut, emitting a really powerful magnetic field, it’s easy to imagine that the iron in your blood lining up in a pattern like iron filings clinging to a magnet. The want to know if you have any metal plates, pins, or metal slivers in you. One can imagine metal particles bursting out of your body and attaching to the magnetic donut. It makes you think hard, laying there completely still, like they ask. I used to do some hobby welding, and there was much metal involved, not always where you expected it. However, I emerged from the donut, none the worse for wear, so apparently I’m non-ferrous throughout.
For a small town we have world-class medical services. In the lobby of MD Imaging, they have a display with medical tools of the trade from years gone by. Scary stuff! it makes you appreciate our current high level of technology all the more. Or, will the giant magnetic donut be the scary display in some future medical office lobby? Anyway, if you simply must be in need of medical care, you can do much worse than my town, with our 2 hospitals and teeming professionals all over the place.
And then there were 3……..
Two Redding area Title and Escrow companies have shut their doors. Alliance Title closed shop statewide, and Chicago Title closed their Redding doors as well. Their respective escrows are being handled by one or another of the 3 remaining companies: Fidelity, First American, or Placer. 
Having 5 competing companies in our market was probably too many anyway, but less choice is never better for the consumer. All those admin and clerical worker folks are out of work now, including the woman I wrote about in my previous post, who fought back tears while helping me as her assistant had been laid off. Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee. I hope they can all be absorbed back into the local job market, but it must be very difficult for lots of good people. The Redding real estate market can be very cyclical, but I can’t remember losing title companies in the last downturn. 
