Hope ?

I have been infuriated by the latest news about banks that received TARP money from the Bush administration. It seems the greedy, self aborbed executives at Citicorp and other companies still feel they deserve all the perks they got before the bailout. Citicorp has agreed to pay the New York Mets $20 million a year for 20 years for naming rights for the new Mets stadium. Wells Fargo had scheduled a twelve day trip to the Wynn Hotels in Las Vegas for execs and top producing employees. Citicorp is going ahead with the baseball thing but Wells Fargo felt pressured to cancel the Las Vegas trip.

I felt a little hopeful yesterday when I heard President Obama's speech about holding these companies accountable for the way taxpayer money is used. He is going to cap senior executive salaries at $500,000 for banks that receive substantial help. Sounds fair to me. But, evidently Wall Street thinks that capping salaries will create a brain drain from those companies that need leadership the most. On NPR a Wall Street compensation consultant said that more than a 1000 employees at Citicorp make more than half a million dollars a year ! Maybe one of the reason these institutions are failing is that they pay some employees too much money !

Yosemite Weekend

Jim and I spent a lovely four day weekend in Yosemite.Although there was snow on the ground, the temperatures were in the mid 60's- perfect hiking weather. Friday we hiked to Nevada Falls and then over to Mirror Lake. On Saturday we hiked to the top of Yosemite Falls and towards Yosemite Point. The trail was totally snowed over so we made our way the best we could. The highlight for me was a picnic on the Wawona Hotel lawn on our way home. The hotel is closed for the season so we were the only people there. It was really special sitting on a quilt I made sipping wine and eating cheese with my favorite man.

Yosemite Weekend

 

Top of Yosemite Falls.

 

Me !

 

Nevada Falls.

 

My feet in the icy waters above Yosemite Falls.

One Week

It has been a week since President Obama's inauguration. I have not been paying too much attention to the news this week because I have a fear that he may not be all I hope. But here is some good news from the Sierra Club Insider about Obama's first week as our 44th President.

Obamicon.Me

The Obamicon.Me website can be addictive.

Dream

The dream of my life
Is to lie down by a slow river
And stare at the light in the trees-
To learn something by being nothing
A little while but the rich
Lens of attention.

-excerpted from Mary Oliver's poem "Entering the Kingdom

God

I like this Alice Walker quote from one of my favorite books " The Color Purple":

"God is inside you and inside everybody else. You come into the world with God. But only them that search for it inside find it. And sometimes it just manifests itself even if you are not looking, or don't know what you looking for. Trouble do it for most folks, I think... Yeah, It. God ain't a he or a she, but a It."