The Scraps Reassembly Trust

As of a few weeks ago, I am a trustee of the Scraps Reassembly Trust. Trustee is both a very grown-up sort of thing to be, and one that isn't on the standard "things that you will do/have happen at some point," good, bad, or indifferent: people expect, sooner or later, to graduate from one or more schools, to get jobs, to lose people we care about, to fall in love, to deal with landlords and/or mortgages, to have bank accounts. This isn't even the standard "I'm in a lawyer's office and it's not a crisis": I did that some while back, making a will. Many people will tell you that everyone should make a will; nobody will tell you that everyone should become a trustee. (It isn't a strenuous thing to do, at least not in this case: someone else made most of the phone calls, though when we finally got to the lawyer's office, we pointed out a detail of how we wanted the trust to work; the lawyer pulled out a boilerplate paragraph and instructed his secretary to type it; and when he handed copies around to us, I looked at it and pointed out where she'd dropped a line. My fellow trustee, pnh, noted that this is what I do for a living. [Not so much these days, but I have a lot of proofreading experience, including fairly recently.] As we walked out, the friend who was acting as "grantor" said "Congratulations, Mr. and Mrs. Trustee." Then we got to do similar things a few days later, at a bank, bearing signed originals of the trust paperwork.

This is a "supplemental needs trust" to pay some expenses for our friend Soren de Selby, a.k.a. Scraps, a.k.a. baldanders, who had a stroke last year. (The money was donated by a large number of his friends.) Our job as trustees is to look at possible expenditures, confirm that they are appropriate, and spend the money, while it lasts.

We also have the ability to deposit money in the trust's bank account, in case of any future fund-raising. There are no plans for such, and this post is not intended as a solicitation; it's partly because I want to talk a little about becoming a trustee, and partly to update those of you who know Soren. Patrick has set up a paypal account (as soren.trust@gmail.com), which will be able to take donations, should anyone feel inclined. In the course of that, I had a brief, friendly telephone call with him a couple of days ago, one of the very few things that we really couldn't do by email, namely sharing the password. I'll post an update when Patrick confirms that the paypal is working properly; he'll also be posting to Making Light. (If by some odd chance you both want to donate and don't want to or can't use paypal, ping me, or Patrick if you prefer: it's a bank account, we can deposit checks.)

(Expository lump: Scraps had been working as a freelance copyeditor. It's not an especially well-paying gig, and comes with no health insurance or other benefits. Fortunately, "medicaid is pending" was sufficient to get necessary treatment at the time, and the coverage has now gone from pending to approved, so at least basic medical stuff will be paid for. Scraps is doing much better than he was a few months ago, but there's still a ways to go on the road to recovery.)

[personal to grantor: I have left your name out of this in case you preferred that, but would be happy to put it in.]
[posted to LJ and DW, by hand]

The Scraps Reassembly Trust

As of a few weeks ago, I am a trustee of the Scraps Reassembly Trust. Trustee is both a very grown-up sort of thing to be, and one that isn't on the standard "things that you will do/have happen at some point," good, bad, or indifferent: people expect, sooner or later, to graduate from one or more schools, to get jobs, to lose people we care about, to fall in love, to deal with landlords and/or mortgages, to have bank accounts. This isn't even the standard "I'm in a lawyer's office and it's not a crisis": I did that some while back, making a will. Many people will tell you that everyone should make a will; nobody will tell you that everyone should become a trustee. (It isn't a strenuous thing to do, at least not in this case: someone else made most of the phone calls, though when we finally got to the lawyer's office, we pointed out a detail of how we wanted the trust to work; the lawyer pulled out a boilerplate paragraph and instructed his secretary to type it; and when he handed copies around to us, I looked at it and pointed out where she'd dropped a line. My fellow trustee, pnh, noted that this is what I do for a living. [Not so much these days, but I have a lot of proofreading experience, including fairly recently.] As we walked out, the friend who was acting as "grantor" said "Congratulations, Mr. and Mrs. Trustee." Then we got to do similar things a few days later, at a bank, bearing signed originals of the trust paperwork.

This is a "supplemental needs trust" to pay some expenses for our friend Soren de Selby, a.k.a. Scraps, a.k.a. baldanders, who had a stroke last year. (The money was donated by a large number of his friends.) Our job as trustees is to look at possible expenditures, confirm that they are appropriate, and spend the money, while it lasts.

We also have the ability to deposit money in the trust's bank account, in case of any future fund-raising. There are no plans for such, and this post is not intended as a solicitation; it's partly because I want to talk a little about becoming a trustee, and partly to update those of you who know Soren. Patrick has set up a paypal account (as soren.trust@gmail.com), which will be able to take donations, should anyone feel inclined. In the course of that, I had a brief, friendly telephone call with him a couple of days ago, one of the very few things that we really couldn't do by email, namely sharing the password. I'll post an update when Patrick confirms that the paypal is working properly; he'll also be posting to Making Light. (If by some odd chance you both want to donate and don't want to or can't use paypal, ping me, or Patrick if you prefer: it's a bank account, we can deposit checks.)

(Expository lump: Scraps had been working as a freelance copyeditor. It's not an especially well-paying gig, and comes with no health insurance or other benefits. Fortunately, "medicaid is pending" was sufficient to get necessary treatment at the time, and the coverage has now gone from pending to approved, so at least basic medical stuff will be paid for. Scraps is doing much better than he was a few months ago, but there's still a ways to go on the road to recovery.)

[posted to LJ and DW, by hand]

dye: color effects

These are the garments I dyed this past weekend. I didn't get a good photo of the shirt as shirt, but what I have is enough to show the contrast between the cotton exercise top and the silk shirt. Same dyes, same dye lot, different fabrics. I didn't fiddle with color on these photos at all. The silk shirt really is purple and green, and the cotton bra really is blue and green, with much less contrast.