Wednesday, March 16, 2005

Heather sends along this note.... Mom sells monster....

Mom Uses eBay To Sell Monster Under Child's Bed - Bidders Asked To Remove Monster From Girl's Room

PHILADELPHIA -- One of the duties of a parent is to make sure the monster under their child's bed is held at bay -- even when the monster
exists solely in that child's imagination. One local parent had a high-tech solution to the problem -- she has put the monster up for auction on eBay. Kathleen Tait had her daughter draw the monster under her bed and is selling the image on the online auction site, WCAU-TV in Philadelphia
reported. Tait's daughter said the monster would make her room a mess. Kathleen Tait said the whole thing began months ago, when her daughter
would wake up, afraid that the monster would get her and her toys. "To this day, I sleep with her," Tait said. "I lay down with her until she falls asleep."

Tait tried several ways to bait the monster, including peanut butter and jelly. Then, she hit upon eBay. Those who bid on the monster are asked to take it out of Tait's daughter's room. It is hoped that by selling the monster, it will be gone for good. There are five days left on the auction, and the bidding early Tuesday evening was $2.25. "People can sell pretzels, so why not a monster?" Tait said.

Clipping of the Day

Clipping of the Day
Grinding the Faces of the Poor
From the New York Herald (New York, New York), 16 March 1870, page 5

Slow Progress of the Pension Payments--A System of Extortions that Aggregates Handsomely for the Pension Agents and Robs the Poor Widows.

Payment of pensions to widows of soldiers killed during the war, begun on the 4th instant in a basement room of the Custom House, is still daily continued under the direction of General Lawrence, Pension Agent. Thus far about 2,500 have been paid from the list of 6,000 whom General Lawrence has to pay. . . At the present rate of progress it will take about two weeks longer to get through the list. Too frequent description has been given in the Herald of the poverty-stricken appearance of the widows and mothers who put in their semi-annual appearance here for the pensions allowed them by the government on account of husbands and sons killed in the late war to render further description necessary. Wretchedness and poverty in their most pitiful phases stare one in the face, and stony hard is the heart that is not moved at the spectacle.

Paying these pensioners is not to be characterized as an act of humanity by the government. It is an act of duty, and most pitiful is the amount paid. And this is not all. The most unjust extortions, though made legal by Congressional enactment, accompany the payment. Every widow has to pay seventy cents, or rather this sum is deducted from the amount due her before she can get her pension. In the first place, twenty-five cents are exacted for making out the papers, and then fifteen cents each for three oaths respectively of two witnesses, and the one to whom the pension is to be paid. One woman came there yesterday from Forty-second street. She was told that she must bring two witnesses to swear that she has not remarried since her husband's death, on whose account the pension was claimed. It was a new arrangement, and the first she had heard of it. The result was that she had to hunt up her witnesses and pay two car fares each for them, besides her own riding, altogether putting her to an outlay of $1.12 before she got her pension. . .