Saturday's Symphony (featuring Sandhill Cranes)

 

I hear the first Sandhill Cranes as we got out of the car at Kiwanis Youth Conservation Grounds situated on the ridge on the west side of Big Marsh Lake.  It’s about an hour before sunset and the light is already soft.  The fall colors, brilliant a week ago, are now fading.  Most of the orange and yellow leaves are gone, we're left with those that rusty brown, but in the soft light they’re lovely.  We walk along the bank, scouting out photo angles while swatting mosquitoes.  It may be October and it’s getting cooler, but there are still a few hardy ones out for blood.   In an old tree in the distance, in the middle of the marshy lake, a pair of bald eagles is perched.  I wish I’d brought a longer lens and a tripod!  A few Sandhills Cranes come overhead, heading for a spot out in the middle of the marsh.  Flying, they keep their legs stretched out behind them, but when they arrive at their nesting spot, they drop their tail and feet downwards, which causes a quick reduction in altitude.  As they fly and even after they land, they make a guttural sound.  The birds pair up as a couple and together they sing; the female issuing two calls to the male’s one.   There are things that tend to remain the same across the animal kingdom.

Click to enlarge:  Bald Eagles in the bottom right

A few more birds fly in, I hear the horn on a train making its way up from Battle Creek on the old Grand Trunk Western Line, a part of Canadian National’s tracks that run from Ontario to Chicago.  At each of the rural crossings, the locomotive gives off a lonesome cry until it fades in the background as heads toward Lansing.  To the north of us, on a farm, a steam tractor is being displayed and on occasion we hear the steam whistle adding its sound to the symphony.  The Canadian Geese, with their honking, often drown out the cries of the Sandhills early in the concert, but as more Sandhills come in, from all directions, the geese take to skies and head elsewhere.  Six Tundra Swans fly in and land, then swim along the water, moving away from the mass of cranes.  They’re making a stop from their breeding grounds in the Arctic down to the  Atlantic Coast.  As the light fades, more and more birds arrive.  Blackbirds by the hundreds also take to the sky, their chirps barely heard over the Sandhill Cranes.  In pairs and triplets, in groups of a half a dozen to a dozen or more, the Sandhill Cranes continue to arrive.  After the sun drops beyond the horizon, they come even faster and at a greater number.  At times, a hundred or more birds are flying and landing where hundreds, maybe already a few thousand, have already landed.  Their cries fill the air as the evening symphony rises to a crescendo.   

  

As we leave in the dark, the birds are still singing.  The symphony season will run another week or so, when the birds will continue their migration south.

Big Marsh Lake just before sunset

Sandhill Cranes arriving from area corn fields

More Cranes:  These birds may look small but each one has a wingspan of 5 feet or so

Two Books on Investing

Larry Light, Taming the Beast: Wall Street’s Imperfect Answers to Making Money (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2011)

G. Timothy Haight, Stephen O. Morrell, and Glenn E. Ross, How to Select Investment Managers & Evaluate Performance: A Guide for Pension Funds, Endowments, Foundations and Trusts (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2007), 260 pages including an index

I am not a professional investor, but I do read a book or two year on investing primarily because I sit on two boards that manage portfolios and also hope that one day I will be able to retire.  Larry Light, in the first book, does a wonderful job explaining the various investment strategies, while providing strengths, weaknesses and limitations for each. Light begins each chapter (every chapter looks at new strategy) with a brief biography of a leading proponent or the founder of the strategy and then he goes into detail (in a non-technical manner) as to how such tactics are designed to work. In the twelve chapters, he covers value and growth investing, indexes, bonds, real estate, international, alternatives, asset allocation, short selling, hedge funds and behaviorism. Although Light never suggests that one is strategy is always better than another, he does tend to favor the idea of value investing (while acknowledging that at certain times in a market cycle, growth stocks out-perform value). He seems to be enamored with Benjamin Graham, who developed a process of evaluating investments in the depths of the great depression. Warren Buffett is perhaps Graham’s best known disciple. Light also appears to be interested in behaviorism, especially since markets are not rational, but tend to reflect the emotions of investors.  Over all, Light suggests that investors be aware of the opportunities and the pit-falls of various types of investing and to be well diversified. 

Taming the Beast is well written.  It is easily read, which is rare in genre that is often overly complicated. Light shows that there is no magic or science in making money through investments. It’s more of an art that requires the investor to be aware of what’s happening, but also to be leery of emotional pulls and irrational actions. No theory can cover the vast options available today for investors. On a personal level, I found it useful how he points out flaws in the “Efficient Market Hypothesis” (which assumes people will act rationally) and the Monte Carlo theory (a computer generated graph of the impact a portfolio might experience in various market scenarios). One of the strengths of this book is that it was published after the 2008-9 market failures and he is able to draw upon that period as he evaluates various asset classifications and investing styles. I recommend this book both for individuals looking to understand the often overly complicated world of investing and to others who sit on boards that must evaluate the investment advice given to them by investment consultants and stock brokers. 

 G. Timothy Haight, Stephen O. Morrell, and Glenn Ross, How to Select Investment Managers & Evaluate Performance: A Guide for Pension Funds, Endowments, and Trust contains a wealth of information for those who sit on the boards of foundations.   As with Light’s work, this book covers the basics of investment strategy, however, this books goes into much greater detail.  To fully appreciate this work requires more of an understanding of mathematics that I continue to possess thirty years after college.  Generally the formulas are not complicated for one security, but when you started grouping securities together into a portfolio it becomes complicated.  Evaluating portfolios require the ability to pull data from numerous sources and to run complex equations, something that’s really only manageable with computers.  Such work is not generally done by individuals within a foundation board, but is supplied by the professionals who manage the funds.  However, it is helpful for board members to understand how returns are measured (dollar weighted” verses “time weighted”) and risk evaluated (“standard deviation,” and “regression analysis,” etc).  A basic knowledge into how such evaluations are made will allow board members to better understand what fund managers (or managers of fund managers) are saying when they present such data.  

Haight, Morrell and Ross provide a more detailed treatment of how hedge funds and private equity funds (which are designed for use by “accredited investors”) operate.   However, even here such tactics are beyond the scope of the book and they only scratch the surface. The book also has several helpful chapters (which are not as technical as the rest of the book) on the make-up of an investment committee, the construction of an investment policy statement, the search process for an investment manager and how investment committee meetings should be conducted.  I did feel that the last chapter on committee meetings was fairly broad and therefore not as helpful.  However, as each foundation has different needs, I’m not sure how they could have improved the chapter (unless they provided me with an answer of how to better organize one of the meetings I regularly attend, but the book wasn’t written just for me).

I recommend Light’s book for anyone new into the investment arena.   It is easily read and he provides useful information that will help an individual investor or a member of an investment committee know what managers are talking about when they discuss various strategies.  Haight, Morrell and Ross’s book is a useful sourcebook.  I see it being a long-term resource book (or a college textbook) that can be pulled off the shelf when one wants to delve deeper.   Unfortunately, the work of Haight and colleagues came out before the 2008-9 market crash and does not have the insight gained from the market chaos of that period.

Disclaimer:  The publisher of Taming the Beast provided me a copy of the book for review, but I was under no obligations as what to say.  The executive director for one of the foundations asked that I read the second book and to make a recommendation.  

"When the Heart Waits" (A Book Review"

Sue Monk Kidd, When the Heart Waits: Spiritual Direction for Life’s Sacred Questions (New York: HarperOne  1990, 2006), 226 pages, notes and a study guide

I've always thought of Sue Monk Kidd as a novelist, even though I was only somewhat familiar with her work.  When I came across this book on spirituality, I was intrigued.   I picked the book up last Spring thinking I would read it during my Sabbatical travels, but at the last minute decided to leave it behind.  It was the book to read after I returned!

Sue writes about what she calls her “winter of discontent.  Others may refer to it as a “mid-life crisis.”  At the beginning of the book, life seems to have lost its meaning for her.  Not knowing what to do or where to turn, she takes a long winter afternoon walk (taking a walk as such a time resonates well with me).  During her walk, she discovers a cocoon, which she becomes the glue for her story as she brings home the stick holding the cocoon and watches and waits until the butterfly appears.  Along the way, she learns a lot about waiting and challenges our society’s demand for immediate results.   Throughout her book, she draws upon natural science (as she links her story into the story of the cocoon), the Bible and the spiritual knowledge from the “great cloud of witnesses” who have gone before us, folk tales and down-home stories.

Some quotes:

Waiting and grace:  “Nor does it mean that the deliberate process of waiting produces grace.  But waiting does provide the time and space necessary for grace to happen.”  (13)

Thoreau:  “Nothing can be more useful to a man than a determination not to be hurried.” (19)

“Creativity flourishes not in certainty but in questions.  Growth germinates not in tent dwellings but in upheaval.  Yet the seduction is always security rather than venturing, instant knowing rather than deliberate waiting.”  (25)

On Weddings:  “Walking an aisle can be a marvelous thing, as long as we acknowledge that the aisle doesn’t end at the altar but goes on winding through life.”  (26)

“One of the mistakes Christians are fond of making is trying to be more spiritual than God.”  -Archbishop William Temple (27)

"I heard Marion Woodman, an expert in addictive behaviors, put it like this: The natural gradient in us is toward growth.  Whatever we use repeatedly and compulsively to stop that growth is our particular addiction.”  (30-31)

“There is more to life than increasing its speed.” –Gandhi (31)

"The pain won’t kill you,” he said, “but running from it might.”  -a counselor (40)

“But the question here is whether we’ve been so busy saving souls that we’ve neglected the unfolding of the God-image within them.”  (49)

“Accomplishments and achievements are well and god, but they need to flow out of a healthy motivation.  Otherwise, when they cease we experience an empty darkness.” (62)

Kierkegaard:  “courage isn’t the absence of despair and fear but the capacity to move ahead in spite of them.” (72)

“Jung once pointed out that religion can easily become a defense against an experience of God.”  (90)

“security was a denial of life.”  -A preacher  (109)

“There should always be more waiting than striving in a Christian’s prayer.”  Evelyn Underhill (123)

“The assumption of spirituality is that always God is doing something before I know it.  So the task is not to get God to do something I think needs to be done, but to become aware of what God is doing so that I can respond to it and participate and take delight in it.”  -Eugene Peterson (129)

“our stories are the best ‘bread’ we can offer one another…”  (154)

“The past is a great place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.”  John Claypool in a sermon (192)

Art Prize 2011

Click on photos to enlarge

We have had a two week string of beautiful weather here in West Michigan.  Mostly sunny skies and no precipitation has allowed me to do a river trip, get out in the woods hiking, bicycling to work and in general have enjoyed the fall in ways that is not normally possible in a place that has more cloudy days than Seattle…  That’s came to an end last night as you may have seen in the American League Championship Game, which was rain delayed.  Those drops from the sky were tears as I can’t stand the Rangers almost as much as I can’t stand the Yankees.  I supposed having the Tigers beat the Yankees is just a taste of heaven, having them beat the Yankees and Rangers back-to-back would be heaven…

Last Friday I spent the day in Grand Rapids, taking in the sights at Art Prize 2011.  This is a unique art exhibit (it’s huge with over a 1000 pieces on display).  Art Prize is unique in that it doesn’t use “professional art judges.”  Instead, viewers determine the winners.  Viewers vote on their top ten, then there is a run-off as they vote on their top choice.  

In walking around the exhibits along both sides of the Grand River, I noticed a few themes.  Religious art is very popular, along with art from junk (recycled art).   Those pieces receiving top votes were often religious, had ties to West Michigan (like a statue of President Ford) and were large.   The dress for the day seemed to include either a Detroit Tiger’s t-shirt or hat…

Although I thought this year's winning piece was beautiful, I think the artist's piece from last year was better.  I couldn't help but wonder if her subject matter helped win her votes in Michigan's Bible Belt.  She's started this mosaic for a church in California but the construction was put on hold and so she entered it into Artprize. Both of her pieces are beautiful; however, they were both in a room with too much south-facing light for the displace of art (the intense sunlight creates the shadows in my photos).

For my posts on last year's Art Prize, click here and here.

Finally, walking across the Grand River, I couldn't help but be envious of the guy in the river with his fly rod, fishing for spawning salmon.  As I have been gone all summer and was too busy to fish in the spring, I don't even have a Michigan fishing license!  At the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum, a host site for many art exhibits, there were carved bears in the fountain (title, "Grizzlies on the Ford).  I couldn't help to wonder if there wasn't a political meaning behind these bears since, from what I recall, the stock market was rather "bearish" during Ford's tenure as President.

Musings while driving through the swampland in the southwestern part of the county…

From today's canoe trip on the Thornapple

A thin blanket of fog hangs low the marsh.  Drying cattails, grasses and reeds ascend through the mist.  Along the edges, above the grass and reeds, the swamp sumac is now fiery red.  Up on the banks the maples and the birches are yellow.  The massive oaks, the last turn, show a hint of red.  There’s no breeze and the sky is clear.  There are fewer birds now, but the mosquitoes are still active.  Slowly the sun rises from behind the hardwoods, casting long shadows and burning away the fog and revealing the dark still water.   It’s going to be a warm one for October, especially this far north.  But such unseasonable weather will not last.  Soon, leaves will blanket the ground and swirl on the open water, the shadows will lengthen and remain long throughout the day, and a film of ice will form on the edge of the swamp.  Then, one can get a whiff of wood smoke, as I’ll be curled up in front of a fire, snoozing with a book on a chest and a cup of tea by the hearth.    It’ll be good, for all creation needs rest.

I wrote the above piece several days ago and am just getting around to blogging.  Yesterday, I spent the day at Art Prize in Grand Rapids and hope to blog about it soon.  Today, it was a canoe trip down the Thornapple with two friends (I soloed in a canoe, they were each in a kayak).  We paused for lunch at a local bar at Middleville, where we had to portage over the dam.  Enjoy the photos...  AND WHAT ABOUT THOSE TIGERS!