Finance
The Frugal Traveler's Card
Q: I'm traveling to Europe in a few weeks to watch some actual football and drink table wine that's better than most $100 bottles here. Trouble is, the banks will kill me anytime I buy something with their foreign exchange fee.
Is there a way I can make purchases abroad that will minimise my foreign exchange and annual fee loss?
Cheers, Nigel
A: Glad you are taking a vacation from puritan America, though you spell like a Brit. But don't forget one very American card when you go.
First, let's put to bed the idea of using your debit card in the old country.
Yes, there are banks that offer debit cards with no ATM fees. Or, they reimburse them. Coming to mind is Schwab, who makes that offer when you hold your investments there. Chase as well; however, you need to be at minimum a Sapphire client, meaning $75k or more assets with Jamie Dimon.
But more importantly: We've been over this before. Why are you using your debit card at all? To summarize my repeated refrains: Fraud is much easier to fight with credit. Distance is added between your assets and payment method. Disputed purchases are much easier to recoup. Points. Flyer miles.
So we need a credit card. But which?
Card offers cater toward frequent travelers, so there's no shortage of options. American Express typically has the best service, and Chase has similar luxury cards with slightly more bang for your accumulated points. But these will cost at least $95 a year, with the most rewarding (Platinum and Reserve) at upwards of $500.
We're not here to spend more than these FX exchanges will cost. We're here to spend nothing.
And the only major card--the only--on the market with no FX fee and no annual fee is the Bank of America Travel Rewards card.
It won't wow you in the rewards department, to be sure. But you are looking for a card for the express purpose of using abroad, retiring when you return, and re-employing on the next voyage.
Better yet, it's Visa--and Amex is still slightly behind Visa's popularity on the Continent.
If you must use cash, one of the banking accounts I mentioned above could indeed help. You might even pay a monthly fee to upgrade an account to get the no-ATM no-FX fee benefit, and come out on top.
But purchases mit Kreditkarte? Bank of America Travel Rewards is fantastisch.
Ghostwriting
Dear Name,
When Alexander the Great finally conquered the last known peoples resisting his empire, he wept. There were no more nations to defeat or lands to annex. He mourned this loss. What Alexander really loved most was not the glory, but the competition, the battle itself.
With his final victory, he forever lost the thrill that drive gave him.
Just a few weeks ago, you made your own final gift--the final, $400,000 gift of your generous $2.4 million pledge to our school. We are delighted to honor you by emblazoning your name on the façade of our majestic athletic center. We just as proudly commemorate your family in the athletic hallway. Trophies and medals shimmer next to their names. Basketball, baseball, wrestling, tennis. Catherine, Rosario, Maddalena, Josephine Claire. The list goes on.
Thank you--and for all of our community, I say it again--thank you for the immense generosity you have shown us. I have known you for a while now. So I know that, for you, glory and honors are only ancillary rewards. Like Alexander, what gives you the greatest pleasure is the act itself, the giving. True, this may be the last gift of your pledge. Yet because of what drives you to give, no one need weep. The leader of Ancient Greece had the sands of the known world to confine him. Our community has no such limits.
Again, thank you for all you continue to do. Now that you've returned for Father's Day, I will look forward to some more butter pecan ice cream together.
Gratefully,
President
(Michael Augsberger)
Film
See full archive at https://catholicfilmcritics.com/michael-augsberger-reviews
A masterful elegy for a marriage
by Michael Augsberger - originally published 14 Dec 2019
What God has joined, let no man put asunder. I learned in my upbringing and believe today that two bodies become one, one body and one life, in marriage. And so it takes that kind of divine effort, herculean and otherworldly, for its participants to tear apart a life so joined. Formidable too is depicting that deconstruction as flawlessly as Noah Baumbach has here. He has created a masterful elegy for Nicole and Charlie's love story that includes as much joy and pain as their marriage did.
Where did it even go wrong? Neither can begin to articulate it at first. We open to the best love-story montage since Up, in which we hear the tender essays they've written each other at the behest of their marriage counselor. It's only for our ears, however. When Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) simply won't read hers aloud, as was the deal, it's the beginning of many agreements that retroactively become mere discussions, and the first indication that she may be the driving force behind the separation.
The montage will be the most editing Baumbach does for the rest of the picture. There may not be a more real depiction of everyday life in any film ever, from the real way Charlie (Adam Driver) and Nicole talk to each other, to the naturalness of his lighting, to the way logistics affect them and the divorce proceedings, to Charlie's acting troupe's background conversations, to the new awkwardness felt in familiar situations. Scenes flow freely. Baumbach gives them the immediacy of theatre, but without so much self-reverence as to make scenes one long take. Characters will walk out of the shot, continue talking, come back. We are making sense of uncertainty like our couple is. And as for the dialogue—sanctus statim is another thing I learned in Catholic school. That translates, give it the Oscar now.
The couple embarks on the whole sad journey unwillingly. They are cordial, warm. No lawyers. They'll split custody of their grade-school-age son. She'll take him to Los Angeles to shoot her pilot, then bring him home back to New York afterward.
But once the lawyers start circling like vultures, the posturing begins. What once was agreed is now bargained for. Her attorney (Laura Dern) is part therapist, part saleswoman. Charlie's presides over a war room meant to keep their son in the five boroughs. None of the venom squares with their palpable care for each other; Nicole still orders off the menu for him, and he offers insight into her acting.
Slowly, reevaluations begin. Nicole was happy until she merely decided she wasn't, according to Charlie. Where were her objections when it mattered? In Nicole's mind, his ego swallowed and stifled her dreams. How could he have been so selfish? This is how they start to characterize each other's failings when reflecting on the previous ten years. You can decide to what extent their lawyers either poison their memories or elicit truth that can be known only upon introspection. As much as anything, Marriage Story centers on the narratives we cobble together to explain our pasts. Sometimes we don't know how we felt back then until we feel it now. And other times it's our memory that lies.
Part of the film's genius is how the director never takes sides. See how earnestly he presents both arguments, how he thoroughly understands them despite how gendered they are. We feel his betrayal and her withheld embrace. Women understand, and men are led to understand, Nicole when she mourns the shriveling of her career. Vice versa for Charlie's disappointments. There may not be a more demanding vocation than motherhood—why does she struggle to accept only that, she asks? She admires George Harrison's wife, his quiet advocate, then "can't even remember her name."
Charlie, in his estimation, has made his own sacrifices out of love for her. Starlets have thrown themselves at him since he's become a hot theatre director, but he loved only her throughout his virile youth. It's even clearer to us they are indeed a New York family. All this is, though, especially impressive on Nicole's side, since Baumbach is reaching across the aisle.
Los Angeles and New York serve as the battleground to great effect. All the talk of LA—you'll love the extra space—clearly emphasizes the restriction Nicole feels in New York, in her ex's shadow.
The small touches like that astound. Navigating the immediate aftermath of their separation, she calls him "the opposite of my fiancé." The lawyer's throw pillow reads "Eat, drink, remarry." (It reminded me of the real estate agent's billboard on I-95: "Don't get divorced—get a bigger house!") There's the PETA prophet hawking the subway who doesn't care you've just been outfoxed in family court. Baumbach knows his actors (especially Driver) and how to draw on their innate personalities for effect. What a triumphant reminder that you can still take a tragic subject and film it and write it with enough zest for us to enjoy ourselves along the way.
Is it all about the writing? Not even close. The script—fit for the stage and play-like in feel, though never unnatural—makes Marriage Story a sumptuous feast for actors. It was scarcely two days ago that I admired but still questioned Driver's contribution to a joyless work, The Report. Let it be known now: He may well win the Academy Award for this one.
Nominations are assured. In fact, it's feasible the film will win three acting Oscars. Scarlett Johansson tops her Match Point and Lost in Translation performances and has every route to the statuette that Driver does. To say Laura Dern takes over her scenes would not be just to Johansson—but her powerful lawyer evokes the rushes of emotion from Nicole that otherwise may have remained hidden. A confidant with a battle cry. Can Ray Liotta earn a nod for just two scenes? I doubt it, but he goes toe-to-toe with Dern in the courtroom and earns big laughs earlier.
For a story like this, rooted in ordinary life, the only way to get the big picture right is to let the small logistical pieces add up. You only know what those are from experience. That makes Baumbach's work a spellbinding personal essay, every bit a hearty memorial as it is a lament. He has been among the acting troupe watching the imperiled airliner try to land, and has been Charlie trying to land it intact.
Failing that miracle, it's time to save what can be saved. Somewhere innocents perish and nations crumble, and yet seeing this couple at their finest we are left savoring their joy and wondering how anything could be more tragic than the death of a life together.
4 of 4
Sport
A School's History in Pictures and Stories
Narrative
Home Marathon: Notre Dame Magazine's 2016 Essay Prize
I was lounging in a bathtub when the police called. Despite the messy relationship between flip-phones and water, I managed to answer.
“Would you like to come down to the barracks?” the state trooper asked.
You don’t hide from the police, especially if you have something to hide. Good liars don’t feel the tremors, the sweat, the Sherman McCoy panic, the overall social ineptitude that plague me in these situations. That evening, as the trooper led me downstairs to the interrogation room, I struggled even to walk. I could go to jail. They say the steep downhill stages deep into a marathon burn your quads to ash. Descending those stairs felt like my 26th mile. Almost to the inch, it was.
Past the transparent bulletproof barrier that separates Pennsylvania’s finest from their waiting room, overflowing folders sat atop office furniture scattered amid a finished basement. The surroundings befit the alleged crime — ragtag but mysteriously so. The officer sat down at his desk calmly. This was a summit, not an ambush. “Why don’t you just tell me your story?”
“Sir,” I started, averting my eyes, as I do when toiling to formulate sentences, “I was running a marathon.” He did not do a double-take, nor narrow his gaze, nor ask the obvious: “What, here? Out there?”
It was early in January. The exact day, one circled in my planner for so long, somehow escapes my memory now. Little else does. The snow we’d received so far that winter had melted; Chester County’s mushroom farms and manicured lawns oscillate each winter between Christmas-card scenes and amber grass. The mere mention of snow would have repelled any real marathon organizer. I’d seen the other end of the spectrum. During the previous summer, my friend trained for the Chicago Marathon — the 2007 edition, the infamous 88-degree meltdown that was canceled midrace — and inspired me, in a one-upmanship sort of way, to try a marathon myself. I was an unaccomplished runner. I had never done more than five miles. But Google gave me a 16-week regimen for beginners, and my day arrived.
“Sir,” I told him, “no one knew I was running a marathon. You’re the first to know.” What a statement, yet he still betrayed no suspicion. I wanted to prove to myself that I could run it, of course. All first-timers want that. But I wanted more. Above all I yearned to have the humility not to brag about my feat. Do not announce it with trumpets as the hypocrites do. They have already received their reward. I wouldn’t tell a soul. I hadn’t throughout my training.
This clearly ruled out a major organized race. That would draw attention. Ticker tape, NBC10 crews, water stations. Energy packs. Fans lining the streets. Support. My marathon lacked all these. So on a map around my house I plotted 26.2 miles, notes in an ode to suburban Philadelphia and a hymn to self-reliance. At the finish line lived my boyhood love and close friend, whom I’d asked to drive me home, though she did not know why. The rolling hills would wind me through my upbringing, past heartbreaks on Little League diamonds and rejections at dances and first jobs and football glories and school recess courtyards, and atop the final climb I would fall to my knees, kiss Chester County and know that I could do anything.
“There’s my itinerary, officer,” I said, handing him a receipt-sized list of back roads. Ink ran; the paper spent the marathon in my pocket. Right Baltimore Pike, where Washington and Jefferson, the stories went, rode past the Red Rose Inn. Right 896. That was seven miles uphill straight into 30-mile-per-hour northwesterlies. Saliva froze on my cheeks.
Left Flint Hill Road. I trained during the semester in the slush at Notre Dame. Midwestern hills are speedbumps. Heartbreak Hill in Boston, known for ending the dreams of many marathoners, climbs 91 feet. Flint Hill, my marathon’s toughest, climbs 263 feet. The average grade: 5.4 percent. It’s almost twice as steep.
Right 841. This was to be my Champs-Élysées, three miles of a triumphant march into the finish. But I was sputtering, bobbing, jogging slower than I normally could walk. When would this incline relent? Why must there be another after it? You wanted to do this yourself, and that means you don’t have anyone handing you water or food. Not even Olympians do that.
At some moment on 841 I didn’t care — though I knew I would immensely later — that I could throw away four months’ preparation by stopping. I might have had more energy left. Maybe the cold and the terrain defeated me. I don’t think so, though. I searched for humility, and it was pride that defeated me. I crawled to a walk. It is one of the grandest failures of my life. Being incapable could be forgiven, but quitting could not. I had wanted to say I could do anything I worked toward. I was wrong because I would surrender. I had no discipline. I was a waste, a waste who had eschewed others’ help.
Now I desperately needed it. The finish at Sarah’s house sat two miles away. My legs were crippled by three-and-a-half hours outside, 25 degrees and falling. It would be dark in an hour. No cars were passing by. Sweaty clothes — my unraveling 1993 Phillies sweatshirt and Notre Dame shorts. I knocked on every door I found, a new one every eighth of a mile. No one is home at 4 on a weekday afternoon. I’m going to freeze alive out here. And soon I won’t even be able to walk.
“You didn’t bring your cell phone,” the trooper said. “She’d have picked you up in five minutes.”
“That would have been preparing for failure.”
Another house — this one with a driveway steeper than Flint Hill. An open garage! “That meant someone would definitely be home,” I told him. Knock. I called out for help. Nothing. I entered the garage. The door to the inside was closed. My numb hand could not feel it. Just get to a phone. Locked.
“The girl said you tried to break in.”
“I rattled the doorknob.”
There, on the garage floor. How to transport the bike back in Sarah’s Civic? How to pedal the bike? I wasn’t thinking. It was survival mode. I’d bring it back right away. I took it and breezed down the driveway and could see myself warming up in no time. Then I tried to pedal.
My legs were useless. I couldn’t propel the bike 10 feet forward. Couldn’t carry it back up that mountainous driveway. Off to the side of 841 South it went. Panicking, fighting to stay upright with every step, I searched for another house.
Instead, a minivan! It stopped, and a woman my mother’s age lowered the window. “Please, can you help me? Can I use your phone?”
“Is that your bike on the road?” she asked.
“No, it’s not.”
“Did you take it from —”
“I was trying to get —”
She was already raising the window. “I’m sorry I can’t help you,” she said frantically and sped off.
Finally, another quarter-mile later, an elderly couple took me in and let me call Sarah, who drove me home. On the way I saw the policeman at the open garage. Now we were sitting in the barracks.
“Well, I want you to know I believe you,” he said. “I’ll talk to the family in that house and see if they won’t press charges.”
A few hours passed, waiting for arrest or absolution. That night, the flip-phone rang again. They did not wish to press charges and ruin a college kid’s life. So I picked up an apple pie from Acme and thanked the elderly Good Samaritans for saving me from frostbite. Then I stopped at the other family’s home. I knocked, and this time the door opened.
“My daughter was home earlier,” the mother said. She couldn’t have been more welcoming. She showed me pictures; her daughter was pretty. “She even recognized you from church.”
“Why didn’t she answer?”
“I was the driver in that car. She called, and I came straight home. You looked like a crazed drug addict. You were foaming at the mouth.”
I could only laugh. “I’d just run 24 miles, I guess.”
She thought a second more about that encounter. “You always hear about people who won’t help others,” she said. “You think of the stories when a Good Samaritan tries to help and it backfires, some killer tricks them. You just never know who’s out there now.” She was tearing up. “I always said I wouldn’t be that person. I’d never turn someone away. And then today you were there. I’m so sorry.”
Michael Augsberger’s essay won first place in this magazine’s 2015 Young Alumni Essay Contest. The author still lives near Philadelphia and is an aspiring financial adviser at J.P. Morgan. He coaches tennis at his high school alma mater, Salesianum. He can be reached at michael.augsberger@gmail.com and his work can be read at maugsberger.blogspot.com.
Read the original here: http://magazine.nd.edu/news/63103/
No comments:
Post a Comment