Book Review:

The name of the book is Imperial Life in the Emerald City : Inside Iraq’s Greenzone, by Rajiv Chandrasekaran. The book was published in 2006, and was a New York Times Book Review, Best Book of the year. The main focus of the book is the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) and the reconstruction of Iraq. As the Baghdad bureau chief for the Washington Post, Chandrasekaran has probably spent more time in U.S.-occupied Iraq than any other American journalist. The book is narrated from Chandrasekaran’s point of view, and it is an interesting one because Chandrasekaran has been in Iraq for such a long period of time, he is able to interact with the local Iraqis and gain their insight about the reconstruction.

While I did not feel like the book was intended to be political, it certainly did not paint a pretty picture of the current Bush administration. The book details life in the Greenzone, the safety zone within Baghdad that the US has made its headquarters. In particular, the book focuses on the reconstruction effort and those that we put in charge of various portions of the reconstruction.

Mr. Chandrasekaran makes it clear that the reconstruction effort would be challenging to begin with, but it became more difficult due to the decisions that were being made. From the authors point of view the single most important factor to getting a job with the CPA was your political standing. If you were a tried and true Republican, the job was yours, even if you had no idea what you were doing. A stand out example was the gentleman who was put in charge of the Iraqi stock market, with no experience.

The book also details some of the decisions that were made by Paul Bremer. Mr. Bremer had a tough job, and no one can or should argue that, but some of the decisions that were made would cost dearly. Decision’s like purging Iraqi government jobs of any former Bath party members, regardless of rank or standing. Decision’s like worrying about getting the stock market open, instead of focusing on the basics, Food, Water and Security. The author also talks about how Bremer had trouble getting the resources that he needed due to the in-fighting between the US State Department and the DoD.

All in all it was a pretty good book. It starts a little slow, but after about 30 pages, I had no trouble finishing it.  I do not think that the book is overly political, the author does take a few shots, but I feel that he is just pointing out the failings of the CPA.  When I finished the book I was shaking my head, not because it was a bed book, instead I was shaking my because of how embarrassing all of this is to the US.  Its a good read, and I would recommend it!

Ian

I knew I was not doing so great about posting, but WOW I am really behind. I looked today to see how far behind I was, and realized that I had not posted anything for 55 days. Whoops. Things have been busy, but not that busy. I need to get more posted up here, and will try to “Catch up” in the next couple of weeks. I should have written 22 posts by the end of May, and As it stands I have only written 11, So I am a little behind.

I am behind, but that also means that I have a few things that I have been thinking about writing, and just have not gotten to it. So….this week I am going to try get 3 posts up. One of which will be a book review, one will be a Genealogy type one, and who knows what else.

So sorry for the delay, But I promise I will get something up soon.

Check back soon.

Ian

If you spend any amount of time reading about personal finance on the internet, you will eventually find a common thread about what to do.

• First, stop the bleeding. This means stop using your credit cards.
• The second thing is to establish an emergency fund. Most places advocate an emergency fund of $500-$2000 dollars, with $1000 dollars being the most commonly recommended.

When I first read it, it did not make a whole lot of sense. The money that I was putting into the “Emergency Fund” could have been money that was going to reduce debt. Well now I see why it makes sense. Life Happens. Just when you think that you are about to get ahead, life happens. My emergency fund has been in place for well over 2 years now, and I have been making pretty good progress to getting my consumer debt (read everything but mortgage) paid off. I have been actively tracking my spending (I can tell you where almost every penny of my pay check goes), reducing my spending, paying more towards debt, and things were going pretty well. Then Life happened. Our freezer/fridge died on us last Friday. The good news is that the problem was fixable, and we did not have to purchase an entire new freezer/fridge that would have started around $1000.00 and gone up from there. The bad news is that while it did not cost $1000.00 or more, it did cost $250.00 and a half a day of work.

Since I am in my debt reduction mode, I have been putting all extra funds towards reducing my debt. As such, I do not have a lot of wiggle room, and I did not have the $250.00 dollars to spare to get the fridge fixed. Thankfully, I do have an emergency fund that had enough to cover the repair. If the emergency fund was not there I would have had to used a credit card to pay for it, and that just would have added to the debt load, and potentially made me feel worse. Because I did have the emergency fund, I was able to write a check for it, and it was all over. Sure my emergency fund is now $250.00 lower than it started out as, but I was able to pay for the repair without having to use a credit card, and I did not add any debt (stop the bleeding…).

So now that I have actually used the emergency fund, I understand the reason for it. It allows you to make sure that your “stop the bleeding” efforts do not get eroded by an instance where you needed money in an emergency. I think that it is a really good idea to have an emergency fund, and in fact I am now thinking about how I can increase the amount in mine.

End of the quarter Review :

Well 3 months have passed since the start of the year, which means that it is time to do an end of the quarter review. I am going to see how I am doing on the goals that I established at the start of the year.

• 52 posts on itowler.com : So far this year there have been 14 weeks (if you count this week) and I will have posted 10 of 14 weeks so….I am a little behind, but I am on track for doing better than I did last year. So on this point I am going to say that I am making pretty good progress. In the future I do see these posts dealing more and more with the family tree.

• iTowler.com Goes Drupal 6.0 : Drupal 6.1 has been released, so everything is heading in the right direction for this step, but I do not think that this will happen until the end of third quarter, or maybe even sometime in the fourth quarter of the year.

• Read 8 books : I am on track for with this goal for the year. I have already finished 2 books, which is what I need to read each quarter. I do not know what I am going to read next, but I guess that means that I have to go to the library. Among other things, School has been keeping me busy, so I have not had as much time to read as I wanted to.

• Reach a weight of 170 or lower : I have not made any progress on this goal at all. I plan on getting back to the gym in April so that should help. In addition Roller Hockey season starts at the end of April. So even though I have not started on this goal, I still think that it is within reach. That being said 170 is still a pretty strong goal, so I need to get started on this.

• Expand the family tree to include 2,650 people : If I were to average the number of people I need to add to meet my 2650 goal, I would need to average a little less than 4 people per day, or 336 people added per quarter. As of 31 March 2008, there are 1520 people in the family tree, so a net gain of 214 people for the quarter, which means that I am behind. I only added 64% of the people that I needed to for this quarter. So….I have some work to do. That being said, I have a plan to meet that goal. One of the things that is slowing me down with this goal, is that I do not want to add people without adding a source for that person, so that really means that I am adding 4 people per day with a source, which is a little more challenging. None the less, the 2650 people will happen.

• Pay off my Debt : This year I filed my tax returns very early, and I have already received my refund. I used my refund to help pay down debt. This is a pretty big departure from years past, where I have used my refund to buy myself a “treat”. Instead, this year I used about 98% of my refund to pay off debt, the other 2% was used to buy a textbook for school. As such, I have reduced my debt by about 30% from the Jan 1 amount. I plan on using the “Economic Stimulus” package money to pay down more of the debt, and I have looked at a few other options for increasing my income as well. Things are looking to be on track for this goal.

• Stop Drinking COKE/Soda : As I predicted, this is one of the hardest goals on the list, and I am not doing very well at meeting this goal at all. I am going to start fresh on April 1, I will buy no more Coke or Soda.

Overall I think that I am doing OK with my goals, not great, but OK. I still think that they all can be reached by the years end. I am just going to have to work harder on making some of them a priority.

Till next time. Ian

Last week I talked about VINE, a research tool for those doing research in Indiana. In the post I mentioned that I had found several Towler Obituaries and a few Hoffman’s. Using the information that I gathered in VINE, I sent away for copies of each of the obituaries. One of the Obituaries that I sent for was the Obit of Mrs. Mary Hoffman.

The Hoffman’s are a brickwall (Brickwall in genealogy is a term meant to describe a person or event that you can not get around and is blocking further research) of sorts in my Family tree. I know that my paternal great grandfather married two Hoffman’s and they appear to be sisters, but I can not prove that just yet. Of the two sisters, I am most familiar with the facts of Maggie C Hoffman. I know that Maggie’s Parents were Fredrick and Mary Hoffman. I also knew that Fredrick and Mary were from Germany, based on US Census records. Beyond that I did not know very much.

So when I found a obituary in VINE for a Mary Hoffman, I was cautiously optimistic. When I actually received a copy of the Obit I was very excited. The obituary was printed in the Greensburg Standard (a weekly Newspaper) on Friday, April 10, 1903 and found on page 8. You can see a small version of the Obit on below and to the left.

The obituary was packed with info that I did not have before. Some of the most notable new pieces of information are:

• An exact Birth date of 25 July 1837, Born in Germany

• A calculated immigration year into the United States of about 1854

• A year of Marriage of 1859 in Cincinnati

• A death date for Fredrick Hoffman of 20 Feb 1889

• She raised a large family of 10 children

Before I had this article I had always assumed that Mary and Fredrick were married before they came to the United States. I can not explain why I assumed that, but based on the obituary they most likely were each single when they immigrated. The obituary also gives me some clues about where to look next. I will need to do some work on trying to find some sort of documentation of Fredrick and Mary’s marriage.One of the things that I was hoping for in the obituary that I did not get is Mary’s maiden name. Based on family stories, I am told that it might be Wolf/Wolfe but I have not documentation for that. I also would like to know where, at what port, did Mary enter the United States. By knowing the port of entry, I might be able to discover more about Mary’s parents and family.

All in all the Obituary of Mary Hoffman has proven to be a great find. This has served as a reminder that you need to be open to all sorts of records. As you can see, a well written obituary can be a very valuable source of information. While obits can be a great source of information, you must remember that obits are usually written by family members at or near the time of death, and are not necessarily fact checked, so they can be full of mis-information.

Thanks to VINE I was also able several obituaries that have helped me start to get past a long standing brickwall. This particular group of obituaries that I found are fairly interesting, and I will be sharing some more of them in the future, including the obituary for Mary’s husband, Fredrick.

Ian