Someone we know could lose her home of 68 years. We can help prevent that.

Photo copyright Aji, 2018; all rights reserved.

[Here's the tl;dr: Cherie and her family (snackdoodle, for those of you at the GOS) are going to lose their family home of 68 years if we don't step up and help them get around the hurdles the mortgage crisis put into place. Donate via GoFundMe here, or by PayPal at cclark1 [at] cox [dot] net. Match our current $50 contribution if you can.]

It's gray and windy here; the mercury has dropped significantly from this morning. The aspens are shedding their leaves in advance of the freezing rain and snow forecast for tonight and tomorrow.

"Winter is coming" may be the motto of House Stark, but here, it's a truth of the season, too.

Winter is coming to Nebraska, too, and soon: It's a place susceptible to extreme weather year-round, but cold wintry rains are forecast for the weekend and much of next week. The first snow cannot be far behind.

It's not a time for anyone to lose a home. It's especially not a time for a 74-year-old woman and her disabled son (he has a severe seizure disorder and has survived two heart attacks) to lose their family home of sixty-eight years. The circumstances are made all the more obscene because it's not their fault, but the system doesn't care: They are victims of the criminal enterprise known as the subprime mortgage scheme, and the holders of the note on their house are not the ones with whom they entered any agreement. But as we know all too well from having lost everything ourselves eight years (nine winters) ago, such institutions treat rules as suggestions and laws as mosquitoes, to be swatted away as nothing more than a temporary inconvenience.

And too often, they're enabled by an apathetic and dysfunctional justice system.

That's where Cherie and her family find themselves now: at the crossroads of apathy and greed, where absolutely no one in the system is invested in helping them stay in their home, because it's more profitable to "people who matter" to make sure they don't.

Those of you with ties to the GOS may know Cherie as snackdoodle. On Saturday, she wrote a diary there detailing the desperate straits in which she and hers now find themselves. Time is of the essence, and there's not much of that left. They have only days to raise the funds for a retainer for a qualified lawyer who will pursue their case in federal court and make one last-ditch, pull-out-all-the-stops effort to save the home that has been her family's since 1950.

Cherie's Saturday diary got some traction for a day or so. Weekends are notoriously hard for fundraising; everyone's busy with everything they could do during the workweek. But since then, donations have dropped off precipitously, and she and her family are fast running out of time. They've managed to raise $1,200 so far, but they need to raise $6,000 — $5K for the lawyer's retainer and an additional cushion for incidentals such as filing fees, etc. Now, yes, it's true that, should they prevail in federal court, they may very well need a lot of help getting on their feet with regard to a new payment plan, but that's neither surprising nor disqualifying. We're supposed to be here to help each other. Wings and I know that as well as anyone; after eight winters virtually homeless, in conditions most people cannot even fathom in a place where extremes of weather and climate are the norm, it was the generosity of friends and strangers alike, added to every penny we scrimped and save to earn and hang onto, that enabled us to build the small, solid, warm, safe house in which we will spend this winter, secure against the elements.

If people can do that, they can do anything. Saving Cherie's house should be easily done, provided we can get enough people of good will and generosity to lend a hand.

We took some funds from our last sale and kicked them in over the weekend. We made another sale last night, and we're taking fifty dollars from it and throwing it in the kitty as soon as I get this posted. If 99 more people gave the same amount, we'd have the total covered with a fraction to spare. I know a lot of folks can't give fifty. But some can, and some can give $100, and some can give even more than that. One hundred donors of varying amounts, and we can make short work of the balance. We could do it today, if we can get this in front of the right people, and if there's the will to do it.

Wings and I are blessed. Whatever else we face (and right now, with my health issues, to call it "significant" is to understate the matter by an order of magnitude or so), we at least have a roof over our heads — a real roof, a real home, warmth and safety and security in the face of the storm that is now only hours distant. Cherie and her family need that same sense of security.

Even if you can't donate, please share the link to her GoFundMe page. But if you can, please do. If you can match our $50, please do that; if you can go us one (or a lot) better, please, please do so. We are mindful of our great good fortune now, and we want to pay some of that forward by helping Cherie and her family keep their lifelong home. Again, here's the GoFundMe page. If you prefer PayPal, here's the e-mail address to use: cclark1 [at] cox [dot] net. And if you want to send a check, message me and I'll get you an address.

Winter is coming. No one should have to face it by losing their home. The way the system is set up, we can't save everybody, although I sorely wish we could. But we can save the one's we know about, and we know about Cherie and her family. Let's keep them home.



All content, including photos and text, are copyright Aji, 2018; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.