[NHCOLL-L:5120] Re: Seasons greetings

[CAHawks at aol.com]

Wonderful, as always!  
 
 
In a message dated 12/8/2010 12:15:23 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,  
simmons.johne at gmail.com writes:

Our 21st  parody since 1989...


A Visit from  the Loan Officer (2010) 
On the night  before Xmas, throughout the museum
‘Twas totally quiet, a damn  mausoleum;
The offices empty, except for our claimants,
All because,  gosh, we were late on some payments.
(OK, so we’d stretched when we took  that last loan,
But it was so easy! Just pick up the phone,
And voila! A  mortgage so big and so splendid,
More money than any trustee  comprehended.
It bought us a curvy new Gehry addition
The pinnacle of  our director’s ambition.
But now, stroke of midnight, the loan had come  due,
And I knew that our mortgage wouldn’t pass peer review.
Hark! There  was Loan Santa, cigar in hand,
Over the rooftop, preparing to  land.
Skidding across our titanium curves,
I heard him cry out with  great gusto and verve:
“Now Buffet! Now Volker! Now Merrill and  Lehman!
Come on Fannie Mae! On Greenspan, and Krugman!”
Out he leapt,  landing square on his Pucci-clad feet
“Hallo,” He called out “I’ve come  straight from Wall Street!”
“Fear not!” he continued, “I’ll not let you  default,”
And plunged down the vent with a grand somersault.
Scrambling  inside I found him in collections,
Tallying objects, noting his  selections.
The fluid collections provoked an epiphany:
“These could  hasten your early return to liquidity!”
He poo pooed taxidermy; the  conclusion was tacit:
Preserved with arsenic they were—toxic assets.
The  fossils were tagged for early foreclosure
“We’ll sell them,” he cried,  never losing composure.
“In China I know that they’ll fetch quite a  penny,
So don’t ask which ones, just ask me ‘how many?’”
He explained  that auctioning New Guinea weaponry
Would help to defray that negative  equity.
He enthused over panthers whose shipment was pending:
“Now  that’s what I call predatory lending!”
He gathered our registrars, deployed  in swarms,
And put them to work auto-signing his forms.
“I know” he  observed, “You’re all working part time”
“You should have been leery of  that term ‘sub-prime.’
Curators linked arms, defending the vault.
“Oh  really,” he sneered, “would you rather default?”
I cried that his moves  were moral abrogation
“Nonsense,” he demurred, “financial  innovation.”
“Would you rather have squatters lay claim to your  foyer?
Be sued by your broker, not to mention your lawyer?”
And opined,  packing specimens into his crate
“You should have avoided ‘adjustable  rate’”
When the shelves were all bare, file cabinets empty,
The museum  pillaged from attic to entry,
He brushed himself off and leapt onto his  sled
Checked the straps, grabbing one last axe head.
Looking me in the  eye he sagely concluded
“Its your lust for grand space that left you  denuded”
I heard him cry out, fleeing into the night:
“Here’s my advice  to all--next time rent it outright!”

--Elizabeth Merritt, Sally  Shelton and John Simmons wish that your 
holidays will never be  sub-prime. 
_http://futureofmuseums.blogspot.com_ 
(http://futureofmuseums.blogspot.com/) 






Catharine Hawks
Conservator
2419 Barbour Road
Falls Church  VA 22043-3026 USA
t/f 703.876.9272
mobile  703.200.4370
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