About the Columnist:
L. (Leigh) Arthalia Cravin was born in Texas and spent her youth in rural Anderson, Navarro, and Wheeler counties. She graduated from A. M. Story High School in Palestine, Texas in 1965 and received a BA from Texas Southern University in 1968. She was an exchange student to the University of Wisconsin in 1967. She received a Masters of Social Work and Juris Doctor from the University of Michigan.
Her professional endeavors include two clerkships at the Michigan and Colorado Courts of Appeals, former Assistant U. S. Attorney for the District of Colorado, former Assistant Attorney General for the Government of the Virgin Islands, and numerous other experiences, including, extensive volunteerism to non-profit and historic preservation organizations. She was admitted to the practice of law in Colorado in 1975. Her practice is in the area of Elder Law, Wills, Trusts and Estates, and Probate law.
She began writing at age 12 and has pursued her “first love” ever since. Her writings reflect a wide range of experiences derived from “jumping into life” in all its fullness; socially, politically, philanthropically, and religiously. She is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists and writes a weekly online column, “Wednesday Wisdom” at www.blackamarillo.com.
She has been a born again Christian since 1981. She believes that life should reflect perennial optimism: “In the end, the true legacy of a hopeful life is this: “I did all that I could to try to make this world a better place.”
For anyone who has been on Mars over the past several months, there is a problem with what folks are calling “sub prime” mortgages. No one has bothered to explain some of the details of the problem so I will explain the basics of mortgages. The word mortgage has been around since the 1300 and is rooted in Old English and Latin. The root word “mort” means “dead” in Latin, and the word “gage” means a security or pledge. (The word probably means that if you buy a house you will owe on it until you die.) Nowadays the term mortgage refers to the legal document that evidences a pledge of a house or other real estate as security for the repayment of a loan. When a persons buys a car, there is no mortgage given, instead if the car is financed the car is pledged as collateral until it is paid. The person or company that finances the car evidences the collateral by placing a lien on the car title. When a person buys a house, he or she signs a “deed of trust” which means that the deed is placed in trust with a “public trustee” who can foreclose on the house if the monthly payments are not paid. What is often misleading about the phrase, “I bought a house,” is that unless the person paid the entire purchase price in cash, they have not bought anything. Instead, they have signed mortgage papers that allow them to make monthly payments on the house and to enjoy the full and exclusive use of the house, including the right to any monetary increase in the value of the house—called equity.
Dear Friends, usually when we want something badly enough or for nothing, We tend to break one or all of the rules in which God intended us to live by.For example, Buying something wholesale but not from the store it was sold to. Getting that DVD Player that is dusty from someone else home. Or Buying from your Neighborhood Booster, the latest fashions now playing in Your local mall.
