If international thrillers catch your eye and you like a book that keeps you on the edge of your seat, you’ll find Robert Wilson’s You Will Never Find Me a great thriller for August reading. Wilson wrote A Small Death In Lisbon and the Javier Falcon series set in Seville, Spain. He understands complex characters, violence and criminal psychology. He thrusts his heroes into investigations of unthinkable and brutal crimes that stretch their skills, intellectual capabilities and their psyches. Yet Wilson takes them into deeper and darker waters and always demands more from them and the reader. He breathes life into flawed human beings and places them in situations where they face their demons and confront their own shortcomings. You Will Never Find Me travels between London and Madrid and the worlds of Russian oligarchs, finance, murder and kidnapping. It also explores the nexus of Latino and European international drug and sex trafficking. Our heroes are Mercy Danquah, a Ghanian-British Detective-Inspector and kidnap specialist with the Metropolitan Police, and her ex-husband Charlie Boxer, an Afghan war veteran and kidnap specialist. They find themselves forced to do some serious home cooking. Their rebellious teenage daughter Amy runs away after erasing traces of her DNA. She leaves a challenge to her parents with a note that says, “You will never find me.” Boxer begins the search for Amy in Madrid, while back home Mercy tries to find the kidnapped son of a Russian oligarch. She discovers everything about the case leads to intrigue with the Russians and the murder of a diplomat. In Madrid, Boxer brushes up against a psychopathic Mexican drug lord with connections to a British father-and-son drug syndicate. The violence finds its way back to Britain and Wilson keeps you worrying and guessing about what comes next. AND HERE’S ANOTHER GOOD BOOK:THE VACATIONERS AND ANOTHER: MY BRILLIANT FRIEND
All posts by Barbara Nevins Taylor
Find A Good Book To Read
I read My Brilliant Friend obsessively and found myself taken over completely by the lives and the characters Elena Ferrante created. This book will keep you reading and yearning for more.
Ferrante tells the story of friendship, love, competition, family and striving amid the casual violence of a working class neighborhood in Naples, Italy. Here, people roll with their emotions first and think later. Passion rules.
Although the locale may feel exotic, the story of the relationships seemed familiar to me. I grew up in Queens, New York.
In Ferrante’s neighborhood, it all starts young. Parents, kids, neighbors, shopkeepers all yell. They hit. They hate. They sometimes get over it and they love.
Grudges and family feuds count and go on and on in this closed world where everyone falls into an assigned role with the expectation that they and their children will continue in the same way, in the same place, forever.
The book follows Elena Greco and her friend Leila, or Lina, Cerrullo as they try to figure out life and where they fit. Ferrante uses Elena’s voice and writes frankly about her childhood exploration, her intellectual and sexual confusion and her steady quest to pull herself out of the neighborhood and to transform into something more.
Elena questions herself constantly about her worth. She measures herself and her intelligence and her dogged pursuit of knowledge against Leila’s recklessness and her intuitive and keen mind.
Leila leaves school after the fifth grade, yet continues to study even though she gets caught up by her family’s demands and an ill-suited marriage at fifteen.
The push and pull between the two young women and their friends drives the story and you cheer and despair for everyone.
The first book hooked me, and I plowed right into the second: The Story of a New Name, and then the third, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay.
I’m waiting to get back into it all in when the fourth and final installment comes out at the end of August.
In the meantime, here’s another good book to read in August.
Good August Reading
The Vacationers by Emma Straub reads like the perfect beach book. I spotted a woman on the A Train reading the paperback standing up as she balanced and swayed against the center pole. She never looked up from the pages. So that tells you something right there.
Straub crams family drama, teen sexuality, a millennial’s emotional and financial struggle, and a gay couple’s quest to build a family into one very readable book.
She plops you into the middle of a New York family in turmoil during their two-week vacation on the island of Mallorca off the coast of Spain. Mom, a self-centered food writer named Franny, planned the trip to celebrate her wedding anniversary with Jim. But he did something awful before the vacation and everything between them feels tense and angry.
Sylvia, their daughter, is just out of high school and will go off to college in the fall. The summer gives her a chance to explore her feelings about her family and her sexuality. Her brother Bobby shows up with his older girlfriend Carmen from Miami. And that creates another layer of tension because the family doesn’t like Carmen and the parents disapprove of Bobby’s career choice as a gym trainer.
Franny’s best friend Charles arranged the rental of the beautiful house and he and his husband Lawrence share it with the family. They also share a secret between them that could turn out well, but makes them anxious and keeps them slightly apart from the others.
You bounce along with the drama and feel happy and sad with everyone and get to enjoy the local color of the Balearic island. In the end the book feels like a fable about family life and you close it with a smile.
And here’s another good book to read in August.
Student Loan Servicer Overcharges
by Alyssa Andrews
My student loans will kick in six months after I graduate in December 2015 and I don’t look forward to the payments. I think I know what I will have to shell out every month and that will give me some feeling of control. But what if the student loan servicer overcharges and I have to pay more than what’s already calculated?
Discover Bank and its student loan affiliates, the Student Loan Corporation and Discover Products, Inc. allegedly misled people on their statements and overcharged more than 100,000 borrowers, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).
The CFPB found that Discover Bank companies overstated the minimum amounts people owed, failed to give people critical information they needed to file income tax returns, and then harassed borrowers to collect money.
The CFPB ordered the company to pay a $2.5 million penalty and repay borrowers $16 million. Again, no one goes to prison here, but at least those who borrowed and found themselves caught in this financial morass will get some compensation.
Problems began to occur for borrowers in 2010 after Discover bought about 800,000 student loans from Citibank.
The CFPB says, “Discover failed at providing the most basic functions of adequate student loan servicing for a portion of the loans that were transferred from Citibank.”
In addition to the monetary penalties, Discover now must clean up its act and send accurate statements that represent the precise amount people owe. The CFPB also ordered the companies to stop making collection phone calls before 8 a.m. or after 9 p.m.
We haven’t see the details of how people will get the refunds, but you can expect to hear from the company. If you don’t, contact the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Tranquility
by Barbara Nevins Taylor
We heard the trickle, the splash, the play of water almost everywhere in the Alhambra complex high on a hill above Granada in southern Spain. It calmed. It soothed. It cooled the hot, high desert air and encouraged us to linger where we found ponds and fountains and little hideaways of tranquility.
It’s easy to feel like a dreamer in a Medieval paradise when you explore the Alhambra gardens and palaces. You do begin to wonder, though, what the Nasrids, who built it, thought when they created a world onto itself filled with beauty and everything they seemed to need.
Did they ever feel peaceful here?
Spain’s last Muslim rulers, lived in fraught times. They faced challenges to their religious and secular power from rivals within the walls and from the Spanish monarchs beyond.
Generations of Christian kings, eager to claim territory and converts, slowly but surely conquered strongholds first established by Muslims in the 9th Century. Their advance sent believers, from other parts of Andalusia, running south and west toward the Nasrids and Granada.
From 1231 to 1491, the Nasrids built a self-sustaining town within the walls of the fortress and housed their military contingent of as many of 40,000 to keep the Spanish at bay.
And most remarkably, they designed a series of architecturally sophisticated, elegant palaces where they governed, lived and worshiped.
Their rooms and gardens surround courtyards filled with long narrow pools of running water, and sometimes graceful fountains.
Slender columns frame porticos that lead to the labyrinthian rooms elaborately decorated with intricate carving and tile work.
The cool, shaded interior spaces still offer relief from the region’s blazing sun and in some rooms windows set high in the vaulted ceilings allow a soft light to trickle in.
But the use of water and how the Nasrids brought the precious commodity up the hill fascinated us.
They harnessed water from the Darro River, led it through a canal to the Generalife section of the complex where they farmed and raised their cattle, and pumped the water through another canal to the higher level of the Alhambra where they used and stored it.
Wherever water ran, even in pools and fountains, it also irrigated and that’s true even today.
Our short video postcards feature two fountains in the Generalife area. We enjoyed the tranquility and hope you do, too.
How Do You Choose Home Health Agencies
We rarely think about these things in advance and who can blame us? So when a crisis occurs in our lives and we need to get a home health aide for a parent, relative, friend, or even ourselves, we tend to scramble in the dark.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) took a giant step forward for us and made it easy to answer the question: How do you choose home health agencies when you need someone to assist at home?
CMS created a user friendly online tool that digs deep into the resources in your state and zip code.
I entered my zip code to test it and to compare three services that I might use. I had used two of them already, on separate occasions for relatives. The CMS results surprised me. They’ll help me make my choice the next time that I need help for myself or someone else.
CMS used feedback from patient surveys and Medicare reporting data to create a star rating system based on how well organizations perform the basic tasks that we might need:
- How often the home health team began patients’ care in a timely manner.
- How often the home health team made sure that patients had received a flu shot for the current flu season.
- How often the home health team taught patients (or their family caregivers) about their prescribed drugs.
- How often home health patients got better at walking or moving around.
- How often home health patients got better at getting in and out of bed.
- How often home health patients had less pain when moving around.
- How often home health patients got better at bathing.
- How often home health patients’ breathing improved.
- How often home health patients had to be admitted to the hospital.
Based on the information, home healthcare services can earn up to 5 stars. And you get to look at the ratings for each area and see how many stars the service you considered earned.
Dr. Patrick Conway, Acting Principal Deputy Administrator for CMS said, “Adding star ratings to Home Health Compare is another step forward in our continuing efforts to empower consumers by providing more information to help them make health care decisions, while also encouraging providers to strive for higher levels of quality.”
We say, Way to go!
Scam Of The Summer
by Barbara Nevins Taylor
Willy Wong felt lucky. The day after he posted an ad online for his mobile home, he got a response from a potential buyer,
Cherry Wilson. In a chatty email, she said she was in the Army without access to phone service and asked a few questions about the condition of the vehicle. She also asked if Willy had a PayPal account.
She put the scam of the summer into play.
Cherry wrote that she wanted to buy the mobile home for her son and said, “I have a mover that will come for pickup once payment clears first.”
In the next email, she skipped other preliminaries, didn’t haggle and agreed to pay $16, 600.
“I was very excited to sell the mobile home for my asking price so quickly,” Willie remembered.
Then the 66-year-old retired postal worker began to receive emails with the PayPal logo. They announced that someone called Wayne Tiller had deposited $16,600 in Willy’s PayPal account. But he couldn’t claim the money quite yet.
To get the money, Willy would have to send $1500 via Western Union to cover the cost of transporting the motor home from Queens, New York, across the country to Tiller in Colorado. One of the emails had a moving ball on it that made action seem urgent.
Willy and his wife Angel imagined the $16,600 in their bank account, thought about a possible vacation and so many other things. They wanted to claim the money before the buyers changed their minds. “We didn’t have time to think,” Angel said.
The Wongs printed out the emails and took them to a Western Union store near where they live. “We thought we had to do this right away. We were really excited and happy and we thought someone at Western Union could tell us more., ” Angel recalled.
They showed the Western Union representative the emails and asked how they could get the $16,600. He shook his head and told them, “We don’t handle that kind of money, If you want to wire the $1,500, we can handle that.” But he said he had no clue how they would get the money from the buyer.
Willy and Angel looked at each other and left the store. “We’re not that stupid. We knew something was wrong,” Angel said. We wouldn’t send money until we were sure we had the big money in our account.”
So, deflated and confused, they drove home talking and thinking. They spread out all the emails on their kitchen table.
Willy remembered that he’d never given his full name or his PayPal account information. “How could the money be in my account?” he wondered.
Their 23-year-old son James looked over their shoulders and said impatiently, “This is fake. PayPal doesn’t send emails like this. They’d use your name. They wouldn’t say, “Hi.”
Willy Googled the “transport” company in Waverly, Iowa “The address had no house or building number. And he told his family, “There is no such address.”
Angel looked at him and sighed with disappointment. “James is right. It’s fake,”
Willy shot off an email to the so-called buyers and wrote, “We know what’s going on with you. Don’t send us anything anymore.”
The Wongs discovered the scam before they sent the money and consider themselves really fortunate.
The scam of the summer puts a new twist on a con game we have seen played over and over again in a number of variations.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) lumps the new and the old together and calls them “money transfer scams.”
Typically, you get an email or a phone call and someone tells you they will buy an item from you, but you have to send money first for shipping or taxes, or something that doesn’t make much sense. They might say:
- You won a prize but you have to pay taxes on it.
- A friend in trouble needs your help.
- You can get a loan, even with bad credit. But you must pay a small fee first.
- Your grandson or granddaughter needs money right away to get out of trouble.
A PayPal spokesman told ConsumerMojo.com, the company won’t comment about specific scams. But PayPal, he said, takes these frauds seriously and warns consumers to protect their accounts against what PayPal calls “spoofs.”
He also confirmed what James Wong told his parents. PayPal always sends emails that address you by your full name, or your company name. It never sends emails that say, “Hi,” or “Dear PayPal User.”
The spokesman offered a few suggestions for all PayPal users.
- ” If you believe you have received a fraudulent email, please forward the entire email <including the header information> to spoof@paypal.com. We investigate every spoof reported. Please note that the automatic response you get from us may not address you by name.”
- “Don’t share personal information via email: We will never ask you to enter your password or financial information in an email or send such information in an email. You should only share information about your account once you have logged in to www.paypal.com.”
- “Don’t download attachments: PayPal will never send you an attachment or software update to install on your computer.”
Angel and Willy Wong say they intend to take extra care when they do get a response from a legitimate buyer for their mobile home. Willy said, “They find so many ways to steal from you on the Internet. You have to be careful.”
Good Ideas to Help Baby Boomers From the White House Council on Aging
The White House Conference on Aging wrapped up its 2015 session and came up with good ideas to help Baby Boomers and our aging population stay healthy and engaged.
The conference, held once every ten years, tries to influence policy by articulating an agenda and by working with government agencies and outside groups to get its proposals adopted widely.
The 2015 strategy hits the mark and highlights the need to do more to promote exercise and continued physical and mental activity.
PHYSICAL ACTIVITY
In conjunction with the National Institutes of Health and other partners, it will launch Go4Life , an exercise and physical activity campaign for older adults.
And the U.S. Surgeon General and YMCAs across the country will partner in inter-generational physical activity events during the first week of August to promote opportunities for young and older Americans to get active together.
PREVENT SLIPS AND FALLS
It seems pretty obvious that we need to help each other prevent the slips and falls that break hips and cycle us into physical descent. One in three older adults gets hurt in a fall every year. And that’s why we welcome the idea of an education campaign to focus on preventable injuries.
TRAINING HEALTH PROFESSIONALS
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will offer a free on-line course that provides continuing education credits to physicians, nurses and other health professionals on making falls prevention a routine part of clinical care.
EXPAND GERIATRIC EDUCATION
The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) will award $35 million to health professionals for training programs to expand geriatric education.
IMPROVED NURSING HOME RULES
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services plans to require nursing homes to do more than warehouse people. It will update requirements for the first time in almost 25 years to improve care and safety.
HELP FOR WOMEN CAREGIVERS
This resonates with me in a big way. The Office of Women’s Health plans to develop training to help family caregivers maximize their own health and address specific care needs of persons with dementia.
BRAIN HEALTH
It seems like a small amount of money, but the Administration on Community Living will put $4 million into a Brain Health Awareness Campaign “to help older adults better understand changes that occur in the brain as people age and reduce the fear of discussing concerns with family members and clinicians.”
ALZHEIMER’S
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will update the National Plan to address Alzheimer’s Disease to set new priorities. This will include a new Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias training curriculum for health care workers in the hope that early detection can help.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will work with groups to get the word out about the preventive benefits that Medicare offers.
Medicare and End-of-Life Discussions
What’s the most difficult discussion you ever had? Maybe you haven’t had it yet, and maybe it was about how to treat your parents at the end of their lives.
I remember lunch with my dad and stepmother, in Atlanta, long ago. My husband Nick had just published A Necessary End, about taking care of his parents in their final years. And I asked my dad if he had made any plans. He wrinkled his nose, shook his head, ordered a glass of red wine and brushed me off.
But I persisted because my in-laws thought and planned ahead and consequently, doctors, hospitals and nursing homes followed their wishes. They made choices that people abided by and consequently Nick’s parents lived to the end with as much dignity as people could muster in bad circumstances.
My mother-in-law had thoughtfully written everything she wanted down on a yellow legal pad and she and Nick’s dad chose to have living wills that included “do not resuscitate” orders. That meant they did not want extreme measures taken should they begin to slip away.
If they hadn’t thought about this, life support and other measures may have prolonged their suffering and their lives artificially.
My dad had me to talk with. Nick’s parents had him, although they’d already made up their minds. My dad, shortly after our difficult conversation, did have a living will drawn up and so did my stepmom.
But some people find these tough conversations with family members too upsetting and some older people may not have the appropriate people to consult.
That’s why an item about Medicare and end-of-life discussions, buried in a CMS news release, comes as welcome news.
CMS published a proposed rule involving payment to doctors. The new proposal would allow pay for doctors to discuss “advanced care planning” for seniors and other Medicare beneficiaries.
That’s an awfully polite way to say a doctor can talk with you about making plans for your end-of-life care.
CMS carefully says that the proposal follows the recommendations of the American Medical Association “to make advanced care planning services a separately payable service under Medicare.”
These aren’t “death panels,” but discussions everybody needs to have.
The plan will go into effect in the fall after a 60-day comment period.
Online Sites That Offer Quick Cash
If you wonder about the online sites that offer quick cash and make it seem so easy to get money, a recent Federal Trade Commission (FTC) settlement with questionable “lenders” pulls back the curtain on how they work.
The FTC sued Timothy A. Coppinger, Frampton T. Rowland III and their companies for allegedly swindling millions of dollars from people who gave their personal information to online sites that offer quick cash.
Many inquired about loans, but never actually applied for them. Yet they found money deposited in their accounts without their permission. That made them responsible for high interest payments and recurring finance charges.
HOW ONLINE SITES THAT OFFER QUICK CASH WORK
So here’s how it can happen. The sites that offer “fast cash,” ” fast installment loans,” “easy fast cash,” “bad credit fast cash loans,” and more don’t lend money.
The FTC describes these companies as “lead generators.” They pull you in and ask for all your personal financial information including your checking account number. These lead generators then bunch many people’s information together in a bundle and auction the bundle off to the highest bidder.
That’s where the shady lenders step in. They now have your information and can make loans whether or not you want them.
And you might want to take extra care when you give your information out even if you think you need money immediately.
In the recent settlement with the lenders, the FTC says after the companies deposited money in consumers’ accounts they withdrew recurring fees that didn’t go to pay down the principal owed.
FTC’s complaint says, “the defendants told consumers they had agreed to, and were obligated to pay for, the unauthorized “loans.” To support their claims, the defendants provided consumers with fake loan applications or other loan documents purportedly showing that consumers had authorized the loans. If consumers closed their bank accounts to stop the unauthorized debits, the defendants often sold the “loans” to debt buyers who then harassed consumers for payment.”
A federal judge in the Western District of Missouri approved a settlement with the lenders that does not send them to prison, but it does cancel consumers’ debts and bars the lenders from reporting the debts to credit reporting agencies and from future involvement in the lending business.
The settlement orders the defendants to repay about $54 million. At this point, the FTC doesn’t say how consumer’s will get their share of the repayment. Stayed tuned.
The defendants are Coppinger and his companies, CWB Services LLC, Orion Services LLC, Sandpoint Capital LLC, Sandpoint LLC, Basseterre Capital LLC, Basseterre Capital LLC, Namakan Capital LLC, and Namakan Capital LLC, and Rowland and his companies, Anasazi ervices LLC, Anasazi Group LLC, Vandelier Group LLC, St. Armands Group LLC,; Longboat Group LLC, doing business as Cutter Group, and Oread Group LLC, d/b/a Mass Street Group.
Living!
Ann McGovern is the first profile in our web video series called Living!
AND THIS IS WHY WE PROFILED ANN McGOVERN
We’ve met so many people whom some might call “older,” or “senior” who continue to work and play with great passion. They face life head on and discover new ways to build on what they’ve already accomplished.
Most of the people we’ll profile are over 80. The stories, mostly told in their own voices, reveal how they continue to pursue their passions, find new interests and do meaningful and often creative things. Consider them leaders in the field of living.
You may know Ann McGovern as the author of children’s books that have sold more than 30 million copies. Annie began as an editor for Golden Books, went on to edit for Scholastic and wrote wonderful books like “Stone Soup” and “Too Much Noise.”
She’s still writing, creating art, traveling and enjoying life to the fullest. Like the rest of us, she’s had her ups and downs. But her story is inspiring because she refuses to to be pulled down by the challenges that come her way. Anne is a breast cancer survivor.
Recently, doctors at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York successfully treated two brain tumors that threatened her life. But again, cancer and illness do not stop her.
Instead, she deals with the hurdles and moves on to enjoy what she loves. She’s a great example for the rest of us, especially those in the Baby Boom generation who will have an opportunity to be productive for a long time to come. To borrow from Elvis Presley, millions of us “Got a Lot O’ Livin’ To Do.”
Consider that one out of every four 65-year-old Americans is likely to live past 90, according to the Social Security Administration, and most 65-year-old men will live until 83 and women until 85.
We can all use inspiration and Living! and Ann McGovern offers remarkable insight into what makes a wonderful life.
Give us recommendation for another video profile of a person whose life inspires others.
YOU MAY ALSO LIKE NEW LOVE AFTER 60
Flamingo Guitar Maker Francisco Manuel Diaz
We had come to Granada to visit the Alhambra, the fairytale palace, fortress and gardens created by the Muslims who ruled Andalusia from the 9th century until 1491 when Ferdinand and Isabella defeated them.
The next day we began to explore the rest of the city, which sits under the Sierra Nevada’s snow-capped peaks.
We wandered down the steep hill from the Alhambra and the hotel where we stayed and found ourselves on Cuesta de Gomérez. Midway down the narrow street we heard the sound of flamenco guitar music and saw the sign and captured this video postcard.
Through the doorway, we saw a man in deep concentration sawing a piece of wood. He looked up and nodded.
We learned that we had stepped into the workshop of Francisco Manuel Diaz, a master flamenco guitar maker and a renowned guitar player.
Aficionados use the term “luthier,” someone who makes or repairs stringed instruments, to describe Francisco Manuel Diaz. But guitar and flamenco experts consider him so much more.
The 73-year-old was born in Granada and studied with master guitar makers Eduardo Ferrer and Manuel de la Chica. He also made a mark playing flamenco guitar and traveled extensively to perform in festivals and clubs.
Those in the know prize the guitars he builds and praise his deep knowledge of the craft and attention to musical and aesthetic details.
An online seller of one of his guitars described, “a very rich old flamenco sound, which is difficult to find in most modern guitars.”
We talked with the master briefly about how the ban on ivory affects string instrument makers. He told us he never uses ivory. “Only bone,” he said.
We shot our video postcard in Granada with an iPhone 5s.
READ MORE ONLINE TICKETS FOR TRAINS IN SPAIN
Military Members Get Interest Rate Help
New York State took an important step to help protect military members from outrageously high interest loans whether or not they are permanent residents of New York State. And it’s about time military members get interest rate help.
Since 2006, a loophole in New York law allowed lenders to make loans with interest rates as high as 36 percent to military members, even though the state caps interest rates, for everyone else, at between 16 to 25 percent depending upon the circumstances.
This essentially gave permission for lenders to set up shop near military bases to make payday and other kinds of loans. One company, Omni Military Lending, near Fort Drum in upstate Evans Mills, New York, had legally been making loans at interest rates of 36 percent, according to Governor Andrew Cuomo’s office.
The company and others fell under the so-called Fort Drum Loophole, which allowed them to take advantage just because someone serving in the military listed a permanent address outside of New York State.
That changed with an executive order issued by Governor Andrew Cuomo on July 6, 2015. “Jacking up the interest rates on loans made to military service members to make a greater profit is simply unacceptable, and it will not be tolerated in the State of New York. This action will help protect military service members and their families from predatory lending, and companies should know that we will not hesitate to crack down on bad actors,” Governor Cuomo said in a news release.
Omni Military Lending will apparently continue in business but will fall under the regulation of the New York State Department of Financial Services.
Governor Cuomo’s office also plans to continue to crack down on illegal online lending by military lenders. The state has taken aggressive action to try to rein in online payday loans, and online loans to military members.
Gay Pride And the New Normal
“It’s normal now. We’re all normal,” 37-year-old Tom Parker said. Parker and his boyfriend stood side-by-side, across from the Stonewall Inn. They smiled, cheered and basked in gay pride and the new normal as a float with a huge wedding cake and two men dancing on top lingered in front of the historic bar during the annual New York City Gay Pride parade.
“I skipped some of the Pride parades in the past. But this year I thought it was important to be here after the Supreme Court decision,” the New Yorker said.
Hundreds of thousands who felt the same way turned out despite the drizzle that slowly turned to a soft sunny afternoon. Many we talked with described the June 26th Supreme Court decision that declared gay marriage a constitutional right as an important cultural shift.
They praised the decision and those we talked with told us they thought that it will improve their lives and the lives of lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender people all across America.
“It made me feel like it was a big change. Finally everyone’s on the same page and we feel accepted,” Katia Vaira told ConsumerMojo.
Nearby, Tracy Thompson from the Bronx took photos with her phone and said, “This all means a lot to gay people. People died, committed suicide because they weren’t accepted. And now people aren’t against us.”
Hours earlier at the Stonewall Inn, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo married David Contreras Turley and Peter Thiede. Thiede, 35, works as an analyst for UBS. Turley, 36, works for the Human Rights Campaign and participated in the 2011 coalition that fought to make gay marriage legal in New York.
“Suddenly, there was a thunderbolt and everything changed,” Brian Herrin said as he and his husband Shannon Rednour stood on the corner of Grove Street.
The 47-year-olds married n New Jersey when it became legal two years ago. Brian’s a V.P. of finance at a software company and Shannon works as a digital producer. They first married in San Francisco in 2004 when then-Mayor Gavin Newsome declared gay marriage legal, but their marriage was annulled after the California Supreme Court voided gay marriages.
After 22 years together, they now feel safe. Shannon’s family lives in Arkansas, and Brian’s lives in Kansas. Both states failed to accept gay marriages and they worried about visiting. Shannon said, “Now we can go to Arkansas and we’re still married.
“And that means if something happens, I can go to the emergency room and see him and help him” Brian said.
That’s ordinary, normal stuff for married couples. And that’s why the Supreme Court ruling means so much. Just ordinary stuff.
Why Your Credit Report May Not Be Available Online
updated September 11, 2017
by Barbara Nevins Taylor
Getting a free credit report online is easy, unless a security alert gets triggered by you or someone else. And the Equifax breach adds up to a giant security alert trigger for more than 143 million of us.
When a security alert gets flagged for any reason, you may have to jump through hoops to see your report. We originally reported this story before the Equifax data hack that compromised Social Security numbers, drivers licenses and other personal information. We have the latest about what you should do about the Equifax data breach here.
In general, this story explains why your credit report may not be available online.
TransUnion Chief Operating Officer David Emery says, “95 percent of those who try the online system have no problem. We send out 20 million credit reports a year.”
Yet there are circumstances when you can’t get instant information from the online system. We discovered the problem that some encounter when our intern Paul, who asked us not to use his real name, logged on to AnnualCreditReport.com for the first time. Paul recently graduated from college and moved from his small-town college community to New York City to go to graduate school. He wanted to make sure that information on his credit report is accurate and that no one had stolen his identity. 
Paul followed the online prompts. He entered his name, Social Security number and address, but then was told he couldn’t get his credit report online. So he tried the AnnualCreditReport.com’s 800 number and the automated system wasn’t helpful either. He was impatient and selected Equifax, another credit reporting bureau, through annualcreditreport. He received the same screen message.
Continue → Or go to page 1 2 3 Read: How to Improve Your Credit
Finis Jhung Gives A Tip For Good Posture
Finis Jhung, one of the world’s leading ballet teachers, offers an easy tip that you can put into practice to improve your posture. You can do this standing up or sitting down. 77-year-old Finis demonstrates it while he sits. You’ll find the full story about Finis here.
“If I had one tip to give you about posture, it has to do with your head, because you must remember that your brain is in your head, so it is very important. Yet with most people the head is falling.
“What I teach my beginners is: ‘Lace your fingers and put your fingers on the back of your head.
When you do that you push your head forwards. If you push back into your hands, with your elbows back and you are trying to keep your chest up and stand up as erect as possible.
‘If you keep pushing forward and back you will feel the muscles between your shoulder blades and up the back of the neck. So this is the first way you can learn to balance your head, where it needs to be.’ The other thing I always tell my students, I say, ‘If you pick up your ears and pull your ears up, you are lifting your head up out of your body; lift your ears up and back above your shoulder.
‘So if you always think, keep your ears up and back so you never drop your ears, because again, as soon as your head pitches forward, then you are starting to strain your neck, you are starting to lapse in your chest, you are starting to cave in on yourself.'”
REACH FOR THE CEILING
“So up here, you know, I am going to say, ‘Ears back above your shoulders, and then you have a sense of energy, that if you think that you are always pushing up to the ceiling through your head, you are reaching for the ceiling, through the top of your head. So you are always trying to stay as tall as you can, so you try to keep your eyes and you ears far away from the floor.'”
Finis also believes we all need to stretch. “I stretch all parts of my body everyday,” he said.
Continue →for more and a demonstration of Finis Jhung’s Kitchen Sink Stretch.