Semi-sold; The Old Neighborhood; "evil ever-present and good exhaustible"

I semi-sold my house this afternoon. Semi-sold because it means that the existing loan stays in place, and the buyer agrees to make the payments from now own.

When I bought the house, I assumed the existing loan, as did the seller from the previous seller. It looks like the original mortgage was taken out in 1986.

If I understand it, there are legal differences between an assumption and agreeing to make the payments. And I certainly hope this will not come back to haunt me. Considering that it was the only offer available, I didn't have too much choice.

If everything works according to plan, I'm free of the loan principal and interest and taxes and insurance. And since I had everything turned off, I'm free of the expenses of phone, cable, power, gas and water and garbage collection.

When mother went into the hospital in late February, her house stood vacant for months. But most of the expenses continued, although I did have phone and cable service terminated. So a couple of thousand dollars were spent to maintain an empty house.

When I moved here in late August, then my house became vacant, but the expenses continued. So I've put out several more thousand dollars on another empty house.

Of course, there was the continuing problem of the house across the street which had the main house and two apartments in the back. The street frontage had been converted to all parking; from one side of the property to the other. I remember counting as many as eleven or twelve vehicles parked there. Just before I moved I'd reported the situation to the zoning authorities for the second time.

At the corner, the residents of a duplex were very openly operating a garage. There would be five or six cars in the street waiting to be serviced. This I reported to the zoning authorities on four occassions. About the only difference I noticed appeared to be less cars, but the servicing never stopped.

I was trying to remember an article I read in "The New Yorker" about the appeal of the books. Since I now have "The Complete New Yorker," it was fairly easy to find what I wanted. It's a piece from July 31, 2000, by Joan Acocella" called "Under the Spell - Harry Potter Explained."

"But her [Rowling] great glory, and the thing that may place her in the pantheon, is that she asks her preteen readers to face the hardest questions of life, and does not shy away from the possibility that the answers may be sad: that loss may be permanent, evil ever-present and good exhaustible."

Among the options offered for the search term "Harry Potter" was a cartoon, the abstract of which read," Dumbledore smiled, his eyes twinkling." When I clicked on the cartoon itself, instead of the obvious picture of a mother reading to a child, the drawing was of a girl reading to her parents in bed.

PAX!