Monday, January 31, 2011

Getting Fleeced

There will be no photo here even though it was a beautiful Sunday afternoon on January 9th. I had been promised, by mailed invitation and 2 follow-up phone calls, two tickets to Orlando, Florida, or maybe an SUV, all for just showing up at a timeshare presentation. So off I went to the Tradewinds Motel in Rockland at precisely 1:45 pm. I was there on time and in place, and I wish I hadn't been.

I was ushered into a large room where a woman came and began speaking with me about travel plans, showed me the timeshare space in the Motel, and talked about divorce, a subject about which I am still not entirely rational. After agreeing to take what I thought was information about their offer, and signing many pieces of paper, I left. I had no tickets to Orlando, nor a car.

ON getting home, I put the packet of papers on the pile with the tax stuff and the refinancing material from my other mortgage. It was a large pile, not entirely well-organized. I then went off to a ski weekend in New Hampshire with some women friends, came home, shovelled snow, and then went off to Boston to see friends. On Sunday, January 23, I was going through the pile of papers, and found the Tradewinds stuff. Oops.

I started going through the papers to see what it was all about, found a paper that said, ' sign here if you don't want us to resell your personal information.' I decided that I really did need to look at the stuff if they had a 'do not sell form', and started looking through it for something that looked like a description that I could understand. I found one form with a Notice To The Purchaser at the bottom. It said,
" Buyer's right to cancel: You may cancel this contract within ten calendar days following the date of execution of this contract or the receipt of the public offering statement of Tradewinds on the Bay Vacation Club, whichever is later."

I rustled through all the papers and found no "Public Offering Statement," and thought I was home free. I wrote out a letter asking to cancel the contract on the basis of not having found a Public Offering Statement, and packed up all the paperwork I could find, and shipped it back to Tradwinds. They received it on January 26th.

On January 27th, I got a call from Stephen Cobb at Tradewinds. He tried to talk me out of rescinding the contract, but I wouldn't budge. He made a phone appointment with me for 10am the following morning, with Joseph Hart(?), who was not so amenable. He accused me of lying, of being foolish, and of looking really stupid in a court of law. He was yelling by the time I gave up and asked him what to do to get rid of the property. He sent me to a man called Edward Magee at Resort Solutions in Williamsburg, Virginia. Edward offered to sell my property for a $199 fee and no closing costs. I said I had to think about it. By then, I was completely confused about what I had done, or not done, and very confused about what to do next.

I went to the Consumer Protection site on the web and found Maine's consumer mediation site. I filled out forms; they returned with an email asking for more information, and I responded with what I had. I still am confused, but now am quite angry. When I looked at my credit card statement today, I discovered that not only had they taken their money from my credit card on January 20th, but this Sunday, on January 30, they had again tried to get my deposit from my credit card, and then tried to rescind that transaction.

I remain confused as I still don't have any record of what I signed, having sent all the paperwork back to them. Nor do I know what may or may not happen next. I filed the complaint with the consumer mediation service. We shall see what happens next.

Monday, January 17, 2011

Glory Snow

It snowed gloriously last week. I enjoyed this first 'snow day' in a year enormously. Then for this Martin Luther King weekend, I went off to Waterville Valley in New Hampshire with a bunch of women for a winter ski weekend.
It may seem a bit off, to go off with some women friends for an MLK weekend, particularly to New Hampshire where the weekend is called 'Civil Rights' weekend, and especially after the events in Tucson on the prior weekend. But I am neither unhappy nor feeling guilty about it.
I am not unhappy because the joy I felt in finding my ski legs again, is not to be replaced. I have not skied for over 10 years, and I was a bit worried about skiing downhill. The possibilities of breaking things is higher than in CrossCountry(I felt), and I could ski right out the door on XC skiis. But it IS like riding a bicycle; I put on my newish XC skiis and glided right on down to the Village Market in Waterville Valley. It felt terribly good, and was a great workout!

I skied the next day, too, with the women I was staying with and we covered a series of trails. The snow was as perfect as it gets for XC skiing - on two inches of fresh powder on slightly packed trails. Glorious!

Not the sands of Tucson - which was on everyone's mind still.

I cannot understand the inability of us as a people to do something about the availability of multiple shot weaponry, whether we talk about automatics, semiautomatics, or multi-bulleted magazines. When my ex-husband took a stand in Congress against semi-automatic weapons, and then was defeated in his reelection, some hunter friends who understood the problem created a bumper-sticker, " Real Vermonters Only Need One Shot."

People in rural places need to be able to hunt, often to feed their families. People in suburban and urban areas are only shooting other people. So why should we provide them with easy access to semi-automatic weapons? It is something that I will never understand, and I used to be a member of the NRA as a Girl Scout camper!

Unlike the shooter in Tucson, us women this MLK weekend thought a lot about staying in the present, and living life to the fullest - for ourselves so that we may serve others. Feeling the glory of great snow under skiis replenished my soul this weekend, and I do not think Martin Luther King would begrudge me that pleasure every now and then, when the snow is glorious.

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Home again!


I made it home to Maine yesterday, after 3 whole weeks away and who knows how many miles travelled by air, sea and car.It was worth every sun-poisoned blister, and every penny. But what did I learn? It was after all, a Semester at Sea voyage sponsored by the University of Virginia.

I learned that I could live in a tiny space for 3 weeks as long as I could get out of it during the day; I learned how to live with a 90-year old in that same space - albeit a very spry and "with-it" 90 year old. And I learned a great deal about the places we went, and I met a goodly number of new friends, some from Maine in the Road/Scholar program of Elderhostel, lots from California, one in the same position as I am vis a vis dating again at 60,from Oklahoma, and one, a British Ambassador to Unesco.

The stated goals of Unesco, the Paris base of the UN, are called the Millenium Goals, the education portion of which intends to raise literacy standards in the under-developed world. At each stop along our way through Meso-america, we were treated most proudly to a discussion of the literacy levels of Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama. At least it was usually given proudly. There were some differences though that reflect each country's approach to its minorities, usually the Maya.

Mayan history is a proud one; they were after all the dominant culture in southern Maxico, the Yucatan, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, and their cities were larger than Paris before 1500. They had calendars and science, religion and trade. But they shrank dramatically just before the Conquistadors arrived, and no one is sure why or how. The Conquistadors finished them off. It is interesting to speculate whether the disintegration and disappearance of multitudes of Native American communities in New England at the same time, is related.

Today, however, the Maya are the dominant sub-culture in all of the Meso-american countries except for Panama,and they hold onto - or try to - their own traditions and culture. Guatemala approaches them quite differently than the other countries do. In all the other countries, there is required school attendance through the equivalent of our 8th or 9th grades. Literacy rates are fairly high and improving because of that. In Guatemala, the Maya are forgiven for not going to school if they wish. They are allowed to apprentice their children to the trades of their fathers and mothers, and you will see children doing all kinds of things with their father or mother. Often it is selling crafts.

Their crafts are by far the most dramatic and well-done. Their fabrics are more diverse, their patterns more dramatic, and their colors are unbelievably vivid.
Possibly that is because the cocchineal bug, which produces the red dye that is used throughout the world, and was the cause of many a battle between Spain and England, lives there in Meso-america. It is a whole interesting story in itself, the story of the search for the red color that the Conquistadors found and sent back to Europe as treasure. Another time.

I do not mean to suggest that education is not necessary. The Maya that I bought things from were generally very literate, as wellas bi-lingual, and Spanish Guatemalans can be accused of being paternalistic in some sense. But it was an interesting divergence in social pattern, with unique consequences. And it does reflect how deeply the Millenium Goals are affecting development there. My conclusion is that while NYC's UN is mostly the theatre of the big powers, even the G-20, that for the smaller, less developed countries, the efforts of Unesco in Paris remain significant and are the theatre where their voices can most easily be heard. After you subtract the 20 economically large countries of the world, you are still left with 172 (I think). So sticking with Unesco seems to me to be a good thing for the US to do. I hope we do.

The other Unesco presence in Meso-america are the World Heritage sites, protecting in general Mayan ruins: Chitzen Itsa, Coba, Tulum, El Cedral, Quirigua, and in Nicaragua, Viejo Leon, which is not Mayan. Viejo Leon is a ruin of one of the earliest Spanish towns, built on top of a Mayan town and destroyed soon after its building by a huge earthquake. It is located in the shadow of several volcanoes, on the banks of Lake Managua, and is protected in its half-uncovered state by Unesco's World Heritage site program. New Leon is nearby, but Unesco's protection has made Old Leon into a lovely park.

I really did learn a lot, saw a lot, heard a lot and will continue to sort through memories and dig out the good stuff for story-telling. In the meantime, I've got to make some chowder again, before the next snow storm comes!