Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Closing out 2008

Sunset behind the Georgia Mountains

This is my last post for 2008.

It’s going to be good to have this year over and done with. I hope 2009 will be better for us all. It doesn’t have to be an overly prosperous year, but for my chance of retiring sometime in this century, I hope we don’t lose any more ground on the economic front. I’d like to see world peace, but will be satisfied to see a little less war. I’d like to take more time off, but with a large construction project looming on the horizon, I hope to make the best of the times I do get away. And that’s what I’m doing now, lounging around in the Georgia Mountains, taking time to hike and sleep and read and journal… I’m staying at Amicalola Falls State Park. I was here once before—this is where you start your hike to Springer Mountain, to being the Appalachian Trail. I’ll have write about that some time, but not today.

The sky has been clear and this is a joy. In the first three weeks of December, we’d received less than 8 hours of sunlight in West Michigan. I can use sunlight. As any reader of this blog knows, I like watching the sky. . Last night I sat savoring the sunset, enjoying the red band that lingered along a distant ridge long after the sun had disappeared. Above the ridge appeared a pencil thin crescent moon. Above that was Venus. At six this morning, I looked out the window and back into the west. The winter constellations were already setting, reminding me that every season comes to an end. Orion was no longer visible and his faithful dog, Canis Major, was slowly dropping behind the ridge. A bit higher were the Gemini twins. I pulled back the curtains and laid in bed watching the stars fade and light return to the ridges to the west.

Back in 2007, when I turned 50 (I still can’t believe I’m that old), I wrote my life goals. Here, at the end of another year, it’s a good time to review them.

To leave the path a little better than I found it.

To never be so busy that I not appreciate a sunset or sunrise, or stand in awe and watch a thunderstorm, or to be amazed at a snowfall, or to value the serenity of a fire.

To savor good food, drink and entertainment, but all in moderation knowing that both hoarding and indulging cheapens the experience.

To treat everyone as valuable and as a special gift from God

To be thankful for what I have, for those who have helped me along the way, and for the Creator.

Enjoy New Year’s Eve (but don’t enjoy it too much)! May we all find happiness and contentment in 2009.
Sage, watching the sunset from the porch at Amicalola Falls Lodge.

Saturday, December 27, 2008

Buckskin Gulch: A farewell hike


The author at the White House trailhead, October 2003.

I sleep in the bed of my truck at the White House trailhead above the Paria River. The air is crisp and the stars are bright, filling the desert sky. Sleeping off the ground, I get cold and wish I’d slept out on the ground where my lightweight bag would have kept me warmer. I tumble and roll, falling asleep only to wake again and see that the stars have moved ever so slightly west. It's an uneasy night and it isn’t till it's nearly morning that I finally get some sleep. I stay in my bag until the sun’s rays break over the sage covered hills to the east. Knowing it would soon warm up, I get out of my bag, put together my stove and put on a pot of water for coffee. Then I wake up Ben and Pete. Pete slept on the ground, between our trucks, and Ben is the back of his truck. Both are slow getting up, but excited when I mentioned coffee. We have breakfast—coffee, oatmeal and fruit—sitting on the tail of my truck. Afterwards, Pete and I throw our packs into the back of Ben’s truck and pile inside the cab. I lock my truck and leave it behind, as we head east toward Kanab, the way we’d driven in the evening before. About five miles east, we leave the pavement, turning south on House Rock Valley Road, a road scraped through slickrock and sand and parallels a unique rock formation known as “the Cockscomb.” The going is slow and bumpy and it takes us nearly half an hour to reach Wire Pass Trailhead, just a mile north of the Arizona border. We shoulder our packs; Ben locks his truck, and we walk toward the rising sun.


Photo of debris from a flash flood in Wire Pass Canyon.
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I’d been to Wire Pass Trailhead once before, several years earlier, for a day hike into an area known as “The Wave.” The Wave is just a few acres in size, but geologically unlike anything I’d ever seen. The multi-colored sandstone with wavy pastel bands looks like some multi-flavored brand of ice cream. The area is fragile area and access is restricted, with only ten permits issued per day. Hiking the Wave is best done in winter, as the route runs along the top of exposed slickrock. This area bakes in the summer. Even today, in late October, it would be a warm hike. But today, instead of hiking south toward The Wave, we followed a wash eastward and soon pass the sign marking Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness Area. A half mile later, the wash drops steeply over dry falls, transforming the dry stream bed into a tight slot canyon carved into the rock. We twist through the winding the canyon, walking under logs jammed into the rocks high over our head, a reminder that this isn’t a place to be in a flash flood. After a half mile or so of twisting through this narrow canyon, we came to Buckskin Gulch. Petroglyphs, left behind by Anasazi’s, greeted us at the confluence of the two dry streams.
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Sage points out petroglyphs in Buckskin Gulch
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Although I was the one who’d brought Ben and Pete together, I find myself wanting to hike alone as we followed the canyon downstream. Buckskin Gulch is one of the premier slot canyons on the Colorado Plateau and is top on my list of things I wanted to do before moving and this is likely to be my last long canyon hike as a resident of Utah.. I walk mostly in silence, spending much of my time looking up at the walls of the canyon carved through the rock, but my mind is torn as I internally wrestled with the future.

Further down the canyon, the rock becomes mostly layers of red Navajo Sandstone. The canyon is deeper and at places you could touch both walls with outstretched arms, and in other places the canyon is significantly wider, but everywhere the walls are steeps. We stop for lunch at a wide sunny spot in the canyon, where the rough Middle Trail comes down off the north wall of the canyon. In the twelve miles, from the confluence of Wire Pass Canyon to its confluence with the Paria River, this is only one place where you can exit the canyon, and it’s a steep rugged trail that’s not recommended. Our boots are still dry; there’s been no water in the canyon up to this point. We joke around as we eat crackers and peanut butter and cheese. I pull out one of my apples and my knife and cut it into quarters and dig out the core. I eat half the apple and give a quarter to Pete and Ben. Afterwards, I lean back against my pack and bask in the sun. The canyon, when it narrows and blocks the sunlight, is quite cool. I fall asleep, enjoying the warmth.

Shortly after lunch we encounter the first difficult section of the canyon. As the walls move closer in, the canyon floor is nothing but deep mud, which sticks to our shoes. In places, the ground gives way and we find ourselves struggling through calf-deep mud. Overhead, there are places a hundred feet above us where logs have been lodged during a flash flood. This is dangerous country if there is rain upstream, but the weather forecast when we left called for clear skies. Throughout the afternoon, the trail alternates between nice easy sections of dry trail and short sections of wading through mud and water. We keep pressing forward. Night comes early in the canyon and we’ve taken our time to explore and to nap. It’s getting dark when we get to the boulder jam about a mile north of the confluence. We take our time, picking our way down through the rocks, passing packs down to those below. Once over the obstacle, we hike fast to a campsite at the confluence. I wash the mud off my legs and change into sandals. Walking out into the middle of the shallow Paria, a Paiute word that means “the water taste salty,” I fill my water bottles and collect enough water in a pan to fix dinner. The water may not be the best tasting, but after treating it, it’ll have to do.

We fix dinner in the dark, tuna and noodles, and go to bed shortly afterwards. Sleeping on the ground, I’m not nearly as cold as the night before. Canyons are eerie at night, the red rock are now gray and cast weird shadows upon the ground. Lying in my bag, I watch the stars for a few minutes, then quickly fall to sleep and don’t wake till light has returned to the canyon. I’m up first in the morning and put on water for coffee and oatmeal. By the time the others are up, I’ve rolled my bag and bivy sack and have eaten breakfast. I take the potty bag and head up onto a bench, under some cottonwood trees, where I take a morning dump. In the Paria, like many of the popular canyons on the Colorado Plateau, when you obtain your permit, they give you sacks to use to carry your solid waste out of the canyon. These sacks have chemicals to keep the shit from stinking. I tie the sealed bag to the outside of my pack. Watching me, the conversation turns to potty humor. Pete, who’d never hiked before, can’t imagine going in a bag and hauling it out with him and vows that he’s going to wait for the privy back at the trailhead, seven miles away. He didn’t make it.
Pete looking at Slide Rock Arch

Shortly after breakfast, we pull on our wet boots and shoulder our packs, and set off upriver on the Paria. A few hundred yards north of the confluence where we camped, we pass Slide Rock Arch, a well known landmark. The further we hike, the canyon becomes wider and its wall lower. Again, I find myself often walking alone, lost in my thoughts. Crossing over high bench, above the river, I peel the leaves from the branch of a sage. Crushing the leaves between my fingers, I raise my hand to my noise and smell. I love this country.


We reach my truck at White House Trailhead a little before noon. Dropping my packs in the back, we all climb in the cab for the ride back to Wire Pass, where we pick up Ben’s truck. Then we caravan to Kanab, where we have a late lunch/early dinner at Nedras Too (yes, that’s its name), pigging out on their famous homemade salsa and looking at the photos of actors who’d eaten there in the olden days when many western films were made in the area. Once we finished eating, we head back to Cedar, arriving at home at dark. Two weeks later, I accepted a position in Michigan and began making plans to move across country, leaving the canyons and sage behind.


Friday, December 26, 2008

Spring Training: A book review along with some personal memories


I am currently in Georgia, on a ten day road trip, out of the snow and ice. Hopefully, I'll catch up on reading blogs while on "vacation." I have not been doing any serious reading this month, as I'd promised myself. Most of my reading has been humorous. Although this book isn't humorous like Bill Bryon or Carl Hiassen, it brought many smiles to my face. Just remember as you shovel snow or scrape ice, in another five or six weeks pitchers will be reporting to spring training! (Who needs ground hogs?)

William Zinsser, Spring Training (1989, reprinted 2003, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press), 207 pages plus 16 pages of prints.

I can’t believe I "found" this book without first knowing about it. Last month, in a going-out-of-business sale at our hamlet’s bookstore, this title caught my attention. I pulled it off the shelf and was surprised to see a “Pirate” sand sculpture on the cover and wondered, “Can this be about the Pittsburgh Pirates?” Then I turned it over to the back cover and read that not only was this about my team, the Pirates, but it was about their 1988 Spring Training. In 1988, I was a graduate student in Pittsburgh and was at Three River Stadium on opening day, to see Fred Roger’s throw out a “wild” first pitch. I chalk it up to providence in finding this book.

William Zinsser is a master storyteller. Years ago I read his book, On Writing Well. Spring Training is the second book of his that I’ve read. (Currently, I am almost finished with a third book of his, Writing About Your Life, which I’m sure I’ll review at a later date.) Zinsser prose, at places, is almost poetic. His writing is descriptive. But it’s not limited to what happens at the Pirate training camp in Bradenton, Florida. Zinsser tells the story of the six week of training in a way that connects us to the larger world of baseball, its history and the long up coming season. Although about baseball, this book you gain some understanding of what theologians refer to as “the communion of saints” within these pages.

Zinsser begins his book with a personal chapter on the “rites of spring,” where he talks about a previous trip to Florida to watch the Boston Red Sox’s train. In this chapter, we learn about the history of spring training as well as Zinsser’s interest in the game. Next, he talks about baseball’s historic tie to Florida. Then he goes into a chapter by chapter breakdown, reporting on the role of Syd Thrift, the Pirate Bible-quoting General Manager; Jim Leyland, the manager; the other coaches; the scouts and each of the positions on the field. Inserted into these descriptions is a visit to Edd Roush, who was the oldest living member of the Hall of Fame and a resident of Bradenton. Roush died a few days after Zinsser’s visit. In his epilogue, Zinsser tells of the first game of the season and how the Pirates, a young team, had their best beginning in decades. For the University of Pittsburgh Press edition, Zinsser has prepared a new “postlude,” where he tells about how the Pirates played well, but not good enough in 1988, how they lost over a hundred games in 1989, only to come back and win their divisions in 1990, 1991 and 1992.

Although this book is about baseball, one also learns about management techniques and educational philosophy. First of all, baseball is a negative game. A 300 hitter will be out twice as many times as they make it to the bases! Zinsser spends time talking to Leyland about what a team can learn from losing (which the Pirates did a lot of in 1986-1987). Spring training is a time to sharpening skills, for developing good habits and avoiding bad ones. The infield coach informs Zinsser that they don’t practice too long on one thing, for doing so risks the players becoming tired or bored and picking up bad habits (136).

This book was a pleasure to read. Memories of the Pirates in the late 80s flash back in my mind. I could hear the announcer roll out names of players approaching the plate: Rafael Belliard, Bobby Bonilla, Barry Bonds (he was a skinny 23 year old in these pre-steroid days), Sid Bream, R. J. Reynolds, Mike LaValliere and Andy VanSlyke. I recalled times of watching Doug Drakek and Bob Walk pitch. I remembered going to the ballpark on Wednesday Evening for “Buc Night.” You could sit in the cheap seats for a buck and we would ride the bus downtown and back for a buck and a quarter! It was good it was so cheap, it meant we had money for beer, which cost more than the ticket and bus ride! I remembered how, after I left Pittsburgh in the Spring of 1990, I came each year to meet up with friends, including Brent who is no longer with us, and cheered the Pirates on against the Reds (in 1990) and the Braves (in 1991 and 1992). These were optimistic times and each year I had a ticket to the World Series (the winners of each division presell tickets for the series). And I also remembered the disappointments as the Pirates lost the playoffs and failed to make it to the World Series. I’ve never been to a World Series game, but Zinsser’s reminded me of the times when I came close!

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Christmas Memories


Christmas is almost here and I am ready! I'll be off the next ten days and down South, but hopefully I can make a few posts. We've had a lot of snow this year-over 50 inches so far. I took the photo on the right, of Cedar Creek, two weeks ago. Today, I couldn't even get back to this site in my truck, I'd have to ski. The second photo is of this year's tree, taken from the east window in front of the house (the tree is next to the south window and you can see its refection off that glass).

Christmas is the season of pondering... "Mary treasured all these words and pondered them -n her heart," Luke writes in his Gospel. Below is a story of my pondering... Ya'll have a Merry Christmas.
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I never felt like our Christmas tree was the real thing growing up. Yeah, it was a live tree all right; we’d never go for the artificial variety, but it was a store bought tree. We always purchased ours from the Optimist Club, which was logical since they supported the local Little League baseball program.

On the night we were to put up the tree, we’d all wait patiently—well, not so patiently—for my Daddy to come home from work. When he arrived, we’d pile in the car and drive up to the Optimist lot on Oleander Drive. It was a makeshift operation. An amateur electrician strung wire from which hung bare light bulbs, illuminating the lot. Trees were laid up against wires run between poles. We’d go through the lot looking at 100s of them. None ever seem perfect, and it was hard to get all of us to agree. After 15 minutes of this fruitless exercise, my parents would assume authority and pick out a tree. Dad would take it over to the men who were standing around a barrel, warming their hands over the fire and chuckling as they observed families disputing over trees in the season of peace. He’d pay for the tree and tie it to the top of the car for the ride home.

In some ways, it’s odd that my dad purchased a tree instead of finding a place to cut one. He’s the type of man who never buys anything he can make, and that included our tree stand. Had the bomb dropped on our house, something kids worried about in the mid-60s, I’m sure Dad’s tree stand would have remained intact. I was in Junior High before I could pick it up. It was constructed from a 3 foot by 3 foot square piece of 3/8-inch plate steel with a five-inch steel tube welded to it. The trunk went into the tube and screws held the tree in place. This tree stand was so solid that the tree’s trunk would have broken before it would have toppled. As a child, I wondered why we didn’t have one of those flimsy stands like all other families. As an adult, after having had several trees fall over, I wish I had Dad’s old stand. It would survive kids, dogs, cats, and rowdy guests, all which have been known to topple my tree.

My grandparents still lived on the farm and they never had a store bought tree. Theirs was a real tree—an Eastern Cedar—thick and full and fragrant compared to the scrawny firs the Optimist Club imported from Canada. My mother, obviously trying to console us, said firs were better because you had more room between branches on which to hang ornaments. She was trying to convince herself, I’m sure, for she knew that a tree had to be picked out and cut by one’s own hands in order to be authentic.

Of all the trees I’ve seen in my life, the one that stands out as the ideal tree was the one my Grandmother and Grandfather F. had for Christmas 1966. It was a full, well shaped cedar my grandfather cut near the stream that ran behind his tobacco barn. Although I didn’t witness the harvesting of this tree, I imagine him to this day, sitting on top of his orange Allis Chambers tractor, with the tree tied behind the seat, hauling it back home. This tree took up a quarter of their living room and its scent permeated their home. Grandma decorated it simply with white lights, red bulbs and silver icicles. And, of course, there were presents for all us grandkids underneath.

That year, they gave me a Kodak Instamatic Camera, the kind that used the drop-in 126-film cartridges and those square disposable flashes that mounted on top. It was the closest thing to a foolproof camera ever built and I got good use out of it. It’d be nearly another decade and I’d be almost 20 before I replaced it with a 35 millimeter. My grandfather did not feel good that Christmas, but after some coaxing, I got him to come outside so I could take a picture of him and my grandmother in front of the house. Even though I lost this picture many years ago, I can still visualize the snapshot in my mind. Grandma and Granddad stood in front of their porch, by one of the large holly bushes that framed their steps. My slender grandmother, a bit taller than her husband, has her arm around him. They’re both smiling. Granddad sports his usual crew cut. In the picture, my grandparents are a bit off-center and crooked, for the camera wasn’t as foolproof as Kodak led everyone to believe. I didn’t have it level. But the image was sharp. It still is.

My granddad never raised another crop of tobacco. I don’t know for sure, but he may have never even driven his tractor again. Early that January, just before my tenth birthday, his heart gave out. Although I don't have the photo, I'm glad to have the memory.

For a more detailed story of that Christmas 1966, click here.

Saturday, December 20, 2008

Winter Storm Warnings

The storm Ed Abbey wrote about on Thursday arrived here early Friday morning. Instead of the ice that was being called for in Iowa, we got snow and lots of it. At 4 AM, the winds were blowing and we’d already received an inch or so of snow. By 6, the snow and blowing wind had filled in the sidewalks and driveway. It kept snowing hard. The snowplow didn’t arrive till 10 AM, at which time we had 6 or 8 inches. The snow kept coming and by the time it ended around 1 PM, the driveway had another 5 or 6 inches. In all, we received about a foot of snow, on top of the six inches we’d gotten a few days ago. And the weather gurus are calling for another 6-8 inches tonight and tomorrow morning. And more again on Tuesday…

During the storm I went out to shovel out a path around the doors so that the dog could go his business and a path to the driveway (gotta be nice to the paperboy and mail-lady). In the five minutes I was out in the blowing snow, my hat received this much snow. I decided I needed to take a picture of it. Notice too the snow streaking down between the hat and camera.

I went out and skied a bit later in the afternoon. As I'm heading South in a few days, I better enjoy the snow while we have it (but I don't have much time as I have lots to finish before I leave). How are your Christmas preparations comings?

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Christmas Tree 2008

In keeping with my Advent theme of “let this mortal flesh keep silence,” I’m not doing a real post here. I just wanted to let you all know I’m alive, so I thought I’d share a photograph of our Christmas tree, complete with my feather-bedding railroad and presents. By the way, for those of you who don’t know, Advent is the four weeks before Christmas. Traditionally it’s a time of waiting and preparing for the celebration of Christ’s birth, just as those before Christ waited for the Messiah. Unfortunately, Advent has become a time for mega-sales and busyness in preparation for holiday that it seems to be more about driving the retail section of our economy (and Chinese toy factories) than anything else. But I need not labor that point as I have much to do with my own busyness; besides, if I kept his up, I’ll begin to sound a lot like Scrooge. Now, if you’d like to see a real post and learn the story behind some of my favorite Christmas ornaments up close, check out this post from last year.

Saturday, December 13, 2008

'Tis the season to be busy...

My favorite Advent carol is “Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence.” It’s haunting! It almost seems prophetic, as I feel like that’s what this mortal is doing, “keeping silent.” Let me assure you, that’s not the case, but the past couple of weeks have been busy and they’ll probably stay that way until after Christmas. Instead of me doing a real post, I’m providing you two “youtube” links to two unique versions of this ancient chant. Enjoy.


Cynthian Clawson singing (outer space photos)

Helma Sawatzky (beautiful photos and lovely instrumental sections, but it cuts out after 3 minutes)

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By the way, have you noticed my new profile picture, one fitting for the winter season!

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I was out some this evening and wrote the following afterwards:

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A Winter's Night

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Even hidden behind clouds, the moon lightens the sky
and cast shadows of bare trees upon the snowy ground.
My steps crunch, as I walk through the woods,
listening to the winter wind whip through barren limbs,
drowning out the sound of pelting sleet,

a siren call to continue walking.

Tuesday, December 09, 2008

The Panic of 1907 (A book review) along with a segment of "In Other News"



Robert F. Bruner, Sean D. Carr, The Panic of 1907: Lessons Learned from the Market’s Perfect Storm (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2007), 258 pages, 8 pages of photos.

I’m not sure this is a book I should have read this fall. As the markets were tanking, reading about “the market’s perfect storm,” caused me to draw too many parallels to our current situation. In one instance, the book invaded my sleep and entered my dreams. That said, it is also enlightening to read such a book while the newscasters are talking about our troubled economy. I just don’t know what to make of the fact that this book was an early Christmas present from a financial advisor! Reading a book that begins with the suicide of a president of a bankrupt trust company, while listening to the financial news in the background, isn’t the sanest thing I’ve ever done.

Bruner and Carr, two professors at the University of Virginia, have written about an event that happened a century ago. Although often overlooked by historians who go for the more dramatic economic events (the Depression of 1893, the Crash of 1929, Sage’s investment blunders and so forth), the 1907 crash and panic in the financial sectors led to the creation of the Federal Reserve Bank and fundamental changes in the American economy. These changes were needed as the nation shifted from an agrarian to an industrial society.

The 1907 panic followed an aggressive period of growth for the American economy. Tied to this growth was also a period of consolation as smaller companies and factories joined together to form corporations which were financed by a handful of firms in New York City. In this setting a series of events took place that lead to the panic in the fall of 1907. Starting in 1906, stock prices began to decline. This created problems as much of cooperate financing had been backed by the value of corporate equity. Also challenging corporations at this time was an activist President (Teddy Roosevelt) who sought to regulate and even break up corporations that had monopolistic control on particular sectors of the economy. Another compounding problem was a devastating earthquake in San Francisco which impacted the insurance industry and creating a demand for capital for rebuilding. And then there were a few greedy players in New York, such as the Otto Heinze and Charles Morse. These are some of the ingredients for a “perfect storm” in the financial markets.

In addition to the greedy, there were also those who tried to save the day. The book almost deifies J. P. Morgan, who not only committed large sums of capital to help keep banks liquid, but also raised capital for troubled institutions. Enchanted with Morgan’s work ethic and desire for large orderly corporations that reduce the cost of production, they credit Morgan for helping to calm the crisis. One of the fascinating stories is how Morgan talked the newly formed U. S. Steel into buying Tennessee Coal and Iron (this is also how US Steel moved into Alabama and took over the Birmingham mills). According to the authors, USS was leery of buying TC&I as they already controlled 60% of the steel production and was fearful of an anti-trust lawsuit. Morgan wanting a buyer for TC&I as a way to raise cash and avoid a run on the trust company that held its securities. US Steel was rich in cash, so Morgan agreed to intercede with Roosevelt if USS brought the company at an inflated value.

A squeeze play is not just something in baseball or a move executed by an opportunist old man. One of the interesting stories in the book involved Otto Heinze’s squeeze play, an attempt to corner the copper market. Copper had been in high demand early in the century as electrical wiring was connecting the nation. Thinking there were lots of short-selling involved with United Copper stock and believing he had a significant enough position in the company to control the market, he sought to drive up the price, forcing those who had shorted the stock to settle up. If Heinze was correct in his interpretation, he would have benefitted at the expense of the short-sellers. But Heinze had misread the market and after a brief advance, the stock price collapsed, exposing Otto and his brother who had purchased additional stock on margin in their attempt to drive up the price. They both lost a fortune and brought about the demise of Otto’s brokerage house, Gross and Kleeberg and also the Otto Heinze & Company. This was followed by a collapse of the State Saving Bank in Butte, Montana, which was a correspondent bank for the Mercantile National Bank in New York. Augustus owned the Montana bank and was of Mercantile. This event set off a run on banks, and forced New York financiers to move around money an attempt to increase liquidity.

The Panic of 1907 is very readable and provides an understanding of the macro-events that led to the panic. He also compares what went wrong in 1907 and how it might happen again. The understatement of the book, when speaking of "system-like architecture" of the finanical markets, is: "New credit derivates and other exotic contracts might help to reduce risk, but they have never sustained a live test: No one knows whether they wil dampen or amplify a crisis." (174) I think we now know!!! The book also includes a helpful appendix that defines various terms that get thrown around a lot by the media and economists. If you’re interested in economics, I recommend this book, but to avoid spoiling the holidays, you might wait till the New Year! Follow my lead, I'm giving up serious books for the rest of the month.


In other news… Obama, American’s new Marlboro Man, is going to have to deal with a smoke-free White House. I was surprised to uncover that the White House became smoke free due to the efforts of Hillary Clinton. She was obviously attempting to break Bill’s affection for cigars.
-Nevada Jack reporting

Sunday, December 07, 2008

Remembering Pearl Harbor and my December reading list


The fire is burning and I sit in the recliner, trying to decide if I’m going to finish another memoir post or just take a nap. Instead, I surf through my favorite blogs and while reading Randall’s, am reminded that today is Pearl Harbor Day.
When I was back in North Carolina last month, I spent some time talking to my aunt (my mother’s older sister) and discovered new tidbits about my mother’s family. Aunt B told they learned about Pearl Harbor walking to church. They lived in rural Moore County and attended a Baptist church about a half mile from their home. They must have been going to an evening services. One of the houses they passed had a radio on and called them over to tell them that the American fleet had been attacked in Hawaii. My grandfather had recently completed training to become a welder and few weeks later, during their Christmas vacation, the family packed up and moved to Wilmington. There, my granddaddy went to work in the shipyard, building Liberty Ships. My grandmother worked in the cafeteria at the Wilmington Dry Docks, while my great-grandma took care of the kids (there were three of them) and also cooked for her family and a couple more families from Moore Country who’d moved with them to Wilmington. Gradually, as those families found a place to live and moved out, new families from Moore County, who were moving to Wilmington for the war jobs, would share their house. With all the adults working, they were able to save enough money to buy my granddaddy’s farm.

My favorite story about learning that Pearl Harbor had been attacked came from a man I knew in Utah. John was an eighteen year old sailor that fateful December morning. He was in the Philippines, assigned to a submarine tender. Although John didn’t like to talk much about his experiences in the war, he loved telling the story of how he learned that we were in war. Early that Sunday morning he was drunk and in a Manila Gin Mill. All of a sudden, the lights came up and there were Shore Patrol and Military Police, with their clubs swinging, waking up soldiers and sailors and ordering them to report immediately to their duty station. It was a hell-of-a-way to begin a war. There was a mechanical problem with John’s ship and they didn’t think it could run the blockade, so they kept them in the Philippines. The ship was made to look like it had been scuttled, but they keep the machine shop running, making tank parts for the army fighting on Bataan. After running out of materials, the sailors died their uniforms and were given a rifle. One Marine was placed with each group of sailors, who were sent to do rear guard duty. Before the surrender of Bataan, John and the rest of the sailors were transferred to Corregidor where they held out till they ran out of ammunition. Afterwards, they were Japanese POWs and forced to labor in coal mines under inhumane conditions. The mine John worked for was own by a company still in business (I think it was Hitachi). Needless to say, John did his best never to buy anything made in Japan. He died about a year before I left Utah.

On the economic front, our bookstore is closing. Seldom does a town of our size have a good bookstore, but for the past four years we’ve been blessed. The owner is a reader and has always had an interesting collection from which to choose. It’s going to be sad to see him go. I spent an hour in his store on Friday (his collection is over half way gone), and found four books I wanted (with a 40% discount, my wants go up). The book I am most excited about and put down all other books in order to read is William Zinsser’s Spring Training. Zinsser is the author of the classic, On Writing Well. I was pleasantly surprised to find that he’d written a book about baseball. I was even more pleasantly surprised to find out that it was about the Pittsburgh Pirates. And I was ecstatic to learn that it was about the 1988 Pirates in spring training! I was at Three Rivers Stadium for the Pirates' opening game that year. Now, how good is that! By the way, I have been reading way to many serious books lately (maybe I’ll get around to writing some reviews), but I've decided that for December I will mainly books that bring joy or make me laugh. When I work out, I’m listening to Skin Tight by Carl Hiaasen on my ipod. As for books you can hold, after I finish Spring Training, I plan to jump into Bill Bryson’s The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid.

Friday, December 05, 2008

The Blizzard of '66


Sorry, I’ve been busy this past week, with work demanding a lot and the holidays upon us. We’re having an extended period of snow (which makes me happy). Here is a memoir of me as a nine year old boy, inspired by photographs I came across last summer when visiting my parents. I apology that these black and white shots aren’t’ the best of quality, but they’re the only photos I found from this snow. The first photo shows Bubba (in front), my brother, Denise, Sage and (I think) Bubba and Denise’s older sister. The second photo is of my brother (on the left), Denise and me.

I fell in love with winter in the 3rd grade. January 1966 was a particular snowy year in Petersburg. In the middle of the month, there was a dusting snow for my birthday. But the real snow came at the end of the month, when the eastern seaboard closed down due to a massive blizzard. Richmond, just to our north, received over 40 inches of snow within the last few days of the month. Everything came to a stop and most important to those of us attending Walnut Hills Elementary School, we were given an extended winter break. It was like a second Christmas holiday. Every day we’d trek out, pushing through knee deep snow as we may our way through the alley behind our houses to the hill on the road between Bishop and Warren Street. There, we’d spend hours sledding, our run going crossing Warren Street and then through a path in the woods that headed toward Fort Hell. We’d then hike back up and do it again. This was a rather safe run as the street we sledded on was the edge of the development and few people drove up it when the weather was good. With the snow and ice, in the days before four wheel drive, it was nearly impossible for vehicles to make it up the hill. All the neighborhood kids convened at the hill. Most were older than us; my brother and I mostly hung out with Bubba and Denise, who lived next door. When fatigue overtook us, or our clothes became too cold and wet, we’d retreat back inside where mom would fix us hot chocolate or a bowl of snow cream as our gloves and coats dried over heat vents.



The family at the corner of the hill, whose boys were several years older and always taunting my friends and me, took it upon themselves to take a hose and spray the hill down with water at night. With fresh ice on the hill, it was a fast run and we were assured no cars would try to make it up the hill. They also scrounged up a metal oil drum with the top cut out in which they’d keep a fire going. As construction was beginning in the woods south of Warren Street, with streets being laid out and a few homes being built, there was plenty of scrap lumber available. Someone had even brought smudge pots, black metal cylinders that were used to mark hazards like the end of pavement in construction areas, and used these to provide a little light along light the sled hill at night. My brother, sister and I felt left out as our parents didn’t let us go out at night. But during the day, for the week we were out of school, we got to enjoy the hill as we shared our sled, which was one with metal runners and a wooden deck and a wooden slat that allowed you to twist the runners in an attempt to give the vehicle some maneuverability (which we needed as we made our way through the path and into the woods).

Of course, what was joyous for us wasn’t for our parents and other adults in the neighborhood. Many families were stuck. My father, unable to drive our newer car, was able to get around in our older and heavier Buick for which he had tire chains. Early in the storm Dad stopped by one of the fabricating plants he inspected and borrowed a few sheets of steel. Placing these in the trunk, over the back axle, he was able to go just about anywhere. But other families were not so lucky. We heard stories about families being stranded along I-95 and how farmers along the freeway took in families whose cars were in the ditch. But that didn’t affect us kids. We were happy; we were out of school for a week. However, I’m sure that by the time we returned, more than half the moms in Walnut Hills were on the verge of losing their sanity.

We only lived in Petersburg for three years; that next summer we moved back into North Carolina and near the ocean, where it seldom snowed. I’d be in my thirties before I saw another blizzard and every snow since has been measured against the one we experienced in ‘66.

For another story about living in Walnut Hills and our local Civil War site, "Fort Hell," click here.

Friday, November 28, 2008

Ron: Memories of a Mentor, Part 2

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. Eating with friends means that my refrigerator isn’t overloaded with turkey (some will say that one turkey in a house is enough anyway). But it was a good day and a friend did a great job smoking a turkey and his brother-in-law brought in a wonderful mini-keg of Stout from a local micro-brewery. This should be a new tradition as the Pilgrims loved their beer. Below is part two of my memories of working with Ron… Here you get to see a little different side of him. I still need to dig out some old photos.


Ron taught those of us on staff to make the best of any situation. We were a small staff; there were only five of us. Twice a year, Ron would pull us away for a three day retreat. This was a time for planning and training, and we worked hard. But Ron was never one to let hard work get in the way of having a good time. Often we’d hold these retreats in beach houses owned by one of our council board members. In addition to planning out our work, we’d fish and take turns preparing fancy seafood dinners. If the water was still warm, we’d swim and I remember one such occasion when we all, after having worked all day and relaxed with drinks and a big meal, played football in the surf after dark.

One fall morning we all meet one such beach house for one of these retreats. Ron unlocked the door and we began to barge in with boxes of food, cases of beer, bottles of booze and bags of chips, along with flip charts and calendars and other assorted accruements. We were all shocked as a barely dressed woman stepped out of the bathroom and squealed and ducked back in. Then, in the commotion, a young man appeared from the bedroom as the coed returned from the bathroom with a towel wrapped around her. She asked who we were. Ron told her and that he’d arranged with so and so to use the house for a few days. So and so turned out to be this girl’s father. Embarrassed and concerned her daddy might learn she’d taken a premature break from college in order to entertain her boyfriend, she asked for a few minutes to pack up. Ron was polite and said that we were all in need for some breakfast and that when we return, we’ll have forgotten what we’d seen. We left. An hour later we returned; the woman and her illicit boyfriend were gone. I’m sure when Ron dropped a thank you note to her Daddy, he omitted the fact that it had been our pleasure to meet his daughter.

Ron had a temper and never liked it when things didn’t go the way he’d plan. In one staff meeting, where he learned that several assignments had been dropped, Ron started cussing and fussing and marched us into his office. Ron’s desk was always immaculate and he started giving lecturing us on how to organize our mail so that everything got done. He had a three bin file on the edge of his desk. His goal was to never handle a piece of paper more than twice. When he opened his mail, if it could be handled immediately, he did so. If it was of top importance and wouldn’t take much time, it went into this top bin. Second bin was for things that weren’t critical and the bottom one was for things he wanted to look at but was not so important that the world would end if he didn’t get around to it. In his rant, Ron picked up the stack of papers in his top bin. On the bottom of this stack was a Hustler magazine and we all started to smirk. Ron’s face got redder and redder as we all broke out into laughter. Finally, before Ron blew a gasket, someone pointed to the magazine. Ron looked at the bottom of the pile and laughed. His lecture had come to an end as he made a quip about his priorities.

Ron should have been on Madison Avenue. Not only was he a good salesman, he was a master marketer. Even when we were doing things like raising money to pay off debt, Ron could come up with positive campaign slogans and materials that turned what many would have considered drudgery into an opportunity to celebrate. He always told his staff that when an event was over, it didn’t matter how good it was. What mattered was how people thought it went. If it was the greatest event in the world and only those who were there knew about it, it was a flop and then next time we’d have to work just as hard. However, even if the event was mediocre, but everyone thought it was great, then it was a success and the next time such an event would be even easier to promote. Ron encouraged us to learn the stories from scouts and leaders and to tell them in order to promote the program. Knowing I was interested in photography, Ron encouraged me to shoot photos whenever possible. With the scouting program financing my film and developing chemicals, I photographed everything. As I was working in rural areas with smaller newspapers, I often had full page spreads of my photographs showing scouts in action. Although at the time my writing was limited to an occasional press release, I’m sure Ron’s insistence on telling stories influenced my writing more than I could have imagined.

Perception was also important in how we did our jobs. Ron taught us that you always left your business card and even encouraged us to stop by places in which we knew someone wouldn’t be home or in the office. Leaving a business card was almost as good as making a face to face visit. It didn’t take as much time and it left the perception that we were hard at work (in truth, when you have hundreds of volunteers, such time saving techniques were necessary to help everyone feel connected and cared for. He told stories about dropping off his business cards in mail boxes in the middle of the night. I never did that, but I wouldn’t put it past Ron. In addition to dropping off business cards, Ron was always writing notes to people—both to volunteers as well as his professional staff. Whenever we did something well, he’d write us a note and encourage us to do likewise. To this day, I always care a few note cards in my folder, a habit I learned from Ron.

A few years ago, in writing about Roscoe (one of my scoutmasters), I told about a forest fire that forced the evacuation of our council’s camp during a camp-o-ree which involved all the council’s districts with over a thousand boys on site. After everyone had been safely evacuated, the staff all stayed behind. Ron went into town to get more water hoses so we could have hoses available at all the buildings. He came back, not only with water hoses, but with a cooler of beer and snacks. That night, the humidity rose, the wind died, and the fire laid down, burning in a bay (swamp) at the edge of camp, not too far from the camp office. We were told to watch the fire and to let the forest service know if it started to come out of the swamp. Rod got the bright idea to haul lawn chairs and the cooler up to the roof of the camp office. We took turns napping and watching the fire, while enjoying cold beer and chips. The next morning, as the wind picked up and humidity dropped, we worked liked crazy putting out spot fires and watering down buildings, but that night we made the best of the situation.

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Ron: memories of a mentor

Going home always seems to prime the pump when it comes to memories from the past. I’ve been working on several stories from my childhood and young adult years. This is my first installment of a series about working with Ron, a man who was my boss from February 1981 through February 1984. In addition to being my boss, Ron was also a mentor. Somewhere I have photos of Ron and of my scouting days and maybe I'll get around to copying them and including a few in this blog.

With our plates overloaded with barbeque, cole slaw, baked beans and hushpuppies, Ron and I went searching for empty seats at the makeshift tables that filled Clarkton’s tobacco warehouse. It was a month or so after market, but the sweet smell of Brightleaf Tobacco lingered. We nudged our way to a couple empty seats. Ron turned to the man and his wife sitting next to them and asked if these seats were available.

“Ya’ll good Democrats, aren’t you?” the man asked in a strong southern dialect.

“Hell yeah, wouldn’t vote no other way,” Ron shot back.

I about dropped my plate as I knew Ron had never voted for a Democrat in his life.

It was homecoming day for Jimmy Green, North Carolina’s Lieutenant Governor. Green had just been acquitted of some kind of corruption charge. I was a young district scout executive and since many of Green’s supporters were also scout volunteers, they’d arranged from him to give a sizable gift to our camp and I was there to be a part of presenting him a plaque in front of his friends and neighbors on this day of celebration. Ron was my boss, the council executive, and I had told him about the program and he asked if he could tag along. Waiting for the program to began, we ate our barbeque and drank glasses of ice tea. Ron, with his Mississippi accent, fit right in.

Ron was a salesman, and a good one. He’d recruited me to work for the Boy Scouts, taking a significant pay cut when I left the bakery. He was also a good teacher and mentor and to this day I am indebted to him. Under Ron’s tutelage, I learned to run successful fundraising campaigns which not only raised money, but empowered people to feel a part of the organization. Although on this day in Clarkton, we were honoring someone who’d given a large gift to the scouting program, Ron continually emphasized to his staff that we go after every gift, regardless of size. Emphasizing the importance of grass root gifts, Ron told and retold the story of Big Jim Folsom, a populist governor from Alabama in the mid-20th Century. Whenever Folsom spoke, he passed the hat and encouraged people to put in what they could. “Even if all you have is some change,” Folsom would quip, “that’s fine; every gift is important and we will use your gifts to fight for you.” Folsom’s advisors questioned this policy, reminding him he had plenty of fat-cats backing him and didn’t need to nickel and dime the poor folk, but Folsom knew better. “People make their commitment with money,” he told them, “and if they give me a quarter, I don’t have to worry when the next candidate who comes around seeking their support; they’ve already sealed their commitment to me.

The last time I saw Ron, I asked him about Folsom. We talked for a few minutes about the former governor. Ron, who had later in his career worked with many in Clinton's administration, told me that Bill Clinton could have learned from Folsom’s straightforward approach. According to Ron, Big Jim had once been caught going into a hotel room with a beautiful young woman who wasn’t his wife. He admitted to his constituents that he’d made a mistake, but went on to say that his opponents were out to get him and that girl had been the bait they’d used and anytime they use bait that appealing, they’re going to catch Big Jim.

"Ron," I said, “Monica wasn’t that good looking and furthermore, I don’t think Willie was set up.”

Ron laughed and told me another story. A rumor had circulated that Folsom was known to have cocktails with the Kennedy clan. “That’s a damn lie,” Folsom retorted. “Everyone knows I don’t drink cocktails, I drink my whiskey straight, just like you folks.”

Although Ron had learned the skills of motivating people from a populist governor who was also a racist, Ron worked hard to overcome the prejudices instilled in those of us who grew up in the South. That last day I’d spent with Ron, I reminded him of an incident that occurred one day, not long after I’d started working with the Boy Scouts. Ron and I made a call on a Baptist pastor in Evergreen, a small community in Columbus County which did not have a scout troop at this time. Several parents and kids in the community, most of whom were black, had requested that a unit be started. We just needed to find a chartering organization. We had pleasant chat with this pastor, but he insisted that although he’d love to see a scout program, his deacons would have a fit if black boys were running around in their church. I started to argue about this being an unchristian attitude, but Ron cut me off. He was nice and polite and told the pastor that if things changed, to contact us. We quickly left, but as we drove away, Ron muttered, “That lying son-of-a-bitch.” “Don’t you believe he really wanted the troop,” I asked. Ron said that he felt the pastor and the deacons were of the same mind. Then I asked why he didn’t want to confront the man and he said that there were no way we were going to change his mind while sitting in his study, that it was better to leave, letting him think better of us than we did of him.

Ron chuckled, as I recalled the incident that had happened nearly a quarter century earlier. He wasn’t doing very well, having had numerous surgeries and bouts of chemotherapy in an attempt to fight an aggressive brain cancer. His face was bloated from the drugs and he’d often forget what he was saying. I spent half a day with him while his wife ran errands. At about 11 AM, Ron insisted we have ice cream. An hour later, he decided we needed a sandwich and a beer. Ron was the only boss I had in my life that would treat his staff to drinks at lunch! We talked about working together in the early 80s and what had happened to the two of us since. Ron had risen in the scouting ranks to become the Scout Executive in Washington, DC, where he rubbed shoulders with many of these in government—Republicans and Democrats. He had done well, until his health forced to take a medical retirement, after which he moved back to Wilmington. Although we always exchanged Christmas cards, I had only seen him a couple of times in the 20 years since he’d been my boss. Ron talked about how he hoped to have a chance to write his memoirs before he died. That chance never came. In another two months, Ron would be dead.

Monday, November 24, 2008

Another week, another bailout and other news

We wake up this morning to find another huge amount of money going to shore up Citibank. 25 billion here, a 100 billion there, hundred of billions of guarantees elsewhere! Why do these crises always seem to occur and supposedly get resolved over the weekend? I remember from a history class of long ago that in the late 30s, Hitler did many of his actions, such as invading countries and breaking arm treaties, on Friday afternoon. He knew that by then, members of the English parliament would have all retreated to country houses. By the time they could reconvene and address the situation, they’d be reacting to “old news.” I know they are saying they need to have these bailouts in place before the markets open, but I wonder sometimes if it’s easier to pull the wool over our eyes on the weekend.

It snowed today and that makes me happy! It’s a big difference from a week ago when I was enjoying warm weather on the Carolina coast. The picture is of the new Johnny Mercer’s pier on Wrightsville Beach. The old Johnny Mercer’s Pier was like the Kure Beach one, with wooden pylons. Every time a storm came through, a bit more of the pier was washed away… This one is built of concrete and is said to be capable of handling a 200 mph hurricane. We'll see.

I woke at 1:27 AM this morning in the middle of a terrifying dream. Although I often dream and even write about them, and some of them are really weird, as a general rule they're not nightmares. This one was an exception. The dream started out pleasant enough. I was going home, but someone warned me of a voodoo threat for the bridges I'd have to cross. I laughed it off and headed toward my truck, when I found myself attacked by something I couldn't see but could feel it compress around me and I fell down screaming in pain and praying for deliverance. It took me while to get back to sleep. Any of you folks doing voodoo on me?

I’m working on some more memoirs that I hope to start postings by midweek. I’ll need to take a break away from any Thanksgiving preparations I have to make (dinner will be at someone else’s home, so I won’t have to worry about a turkey).

Friday, November 21, 2008

The Same River Twice (A Book Review)


Chris Offutt, The Same River Twice: A Memoir (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993), 188 pages.

About a quarter through the book, Offutt quotes Heraclitius, from ancient Greece, “You can’t step into the same river twice.” (54) Yet, metaphorically that’s what Offutt attempts to do, to step into the same river twice. This book tells of him leaving the security of home for a decade of wandering, and then finally settling down in his own home as with his wife who’s pregnant with his first born child. Again, there is stability in his life, yet the river remains, connecting him to the larger world. In telling his story, Offutt alternates between his wife’s pregnancy and his years on the loose.

Offutt begins his journey in his Kentucky home in the hills of Appalachia. He acknowledges that the popular view of Appalachia is less than flattering, “a land where every man is willing, at the drop of a proverbial overall strap, to shoot, fight, or f—k anything on hind legs. We’re men who buy half-pints of bootlegged liquor and throw the lids away in order to finish the whiskey in one laughing, brawling night, not carrying where we wake or how far from home…. The truth is a hair different,” he confesses. (19-20) Offutt’s first stop is New York City, a place he describes as having half the people being crazy and the rest being therapists. (36) While in the big city, Offutt, in good southerly fashion, defends a homeless woman that’s being harassed. After the incident, they get together and he discovers that she isn’t a she. He flees, and later hooks up with a black woman who serves as his mentor. In a way, this sounds tripe and a bit racist, a southern boy shocked at the big city and then learning the ways of the world from a black girl, but Offutt pulls it off well. Offutt describes sex using the analogy of sharpening a knife against a whetstone and as a baseball game. (And no, he doesn’t credit Meatloaf, whose song, "Paradise by the Dashboard Lights," also describes making love as stealing home in a baseball game.)

Offutt’s crisscrosses the country in this travels, stopping for a while in Minneapolis, Boston, and Flamingo, Florida. He does a stint with a circus travelling through the South. He notes that “Kentucky produced both Abe Lincoln and Jeff Davis.” And like his ancestors from the Civil War, Offutt see’s himself being loyal to no direction.” (109) Along the way, he identifies himself with Daniel Boone and Christopher Columbus, always striking out for what’s new, yet both whose lives ended up less that happy. It seems Offutt is following in their footstep. Each new location gives him opportunity for more adventures and misadventures: opportunities for drinking, drug use and experiencing life from the bottom of society. At one point, he notes that “like rotgut and rainfall,” he’d found his lowspot.” (160) He goes home for his brother’s wedding where he’s confronted for his lack of goals and finds himself feeling inferior, yet he also realizes that he’s the loved son and that his brother, by staying home and working hard, has been trying to earn the approval of the family. (120f)

Along the way, Offutt makes observations about life. He describes the human race as Icarus, “with melting wax and loss of altitude” (131) and the “underclass of evolution.” (133) His salvation comes from meeting Rita, his wife and the princess that helps him rise into respectability. With his wife’s prodding, he applies and accepted into the Iowa Writer’s School (obviously Offutt left out the schooling he’d picked up along the way as he’d quit school to go on the road). At the end of his book, like most new fathers, he’s excited and tells about it as if he’s the first to experience such joy, but also aware of the responsibility of he has and hoping to break his family’s mold of bad fathers.

I enjoyed this book. Although I’ve managed to avoid many of Offutt’s low spots, I found myself relating to the way Offutt explores what it means to become a man and a father and, as he travels around, he sees himself tied to the land and linked to history. I also agree with one of his mentors who remarked, “The West wasn’t tamed, it was corralled for slaughter.” (67) And finally, like Offutt, I want to hibernate in summer and get restless to strike out for new territories when the weather turns chilly. (54)
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Click here for more of Sage's book reviews.

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Update and a poem

I’m home. My flight home had been changed and I was going to be coming in on the late flight, so I was glad to take a bump in Atlanta and allow the airline to put me up and give me enough money for another trip… So I got home yesterday morning, flying back in to a landscape dusted with snow. What a change! Driving home from the airport, I listened to Stephen Cobert on NPR’s “Fresh Air.” Sunday, on Comedy Central, Cobert will present his “Christmas Special.” It sounds like a lot of fun. One of the songs played on Fresh Air was a parody of the commercialization of Christmas, sung by Cobert and Elvis Costello. I think I know what I’ll be doing Sunday evening.

Monday night, my last night in North Carolina, I spent some time thinking on the Kure Beach pier. When the moon rose a little at 9 PM, it was blood red and inspired this poem. I don't understand everything about blogger formating an why the second part is spaced differently than the rest!


Observing the Apocalypse from Kure Beach Pier

Gazing upon the firmaments from the end of the pier
I’m serenaded by waves lapping against the wooden pylons
and the sound of the wind whipping against my jacket
chilling the back of my neck and erasing my cares.
I see Orion, rise on his side, out of the sea,
as if pulled by his belt, one star at a time appearing
till the three stand on top of each other on the eastern horizon.
The Hunter’s club is raised, in his winter pursuit of the bull


And I saw a beast rising out of the sea…-Revelation 13:1
A woman behind me yells in Spanish
and her husband drops his rod and rushes to her side
to aid in her battle against the fish.
Her rod bent double.
he leans over the railing,
and hand over hand pulls in her line,
and the angry ray dancing on the end.
On the deck of the pier,
the fish, the son of the Leviathan,
lashes out at the gathering spectators,
whipping it’s tail around and exposing its lethal barbs
On that day the Lord with his cruel and great and strong sword will punish the Laviathan…
-Isaiah 27:1

I look back upon the firmaments and observe
to the north of Orion
a fiery red moon rises above the waters,
the waning gibbous lunar body
looks as if its a caldron of molten iron
slightly tipped, ready to pour it’s deadly contents upon the ocean,
In horror, I watch,
but too fascinating to run.
And even if I could, where would I go?


The sun shall be blackened and the moon to blood
Before that great and terrible day of the Lord.

-Joel 2:31

Mesmerized, I watch in awe
and a feeling of relief yet sadness,
as the moon rises higher,
its hue changing from red to yellow
and finally white. Once again, we’ve been spared the apocalypse.

Monday, November 17, 2008

Fishing off Harker's Island


This has been an emotional time at home, dealing with my mother and helping my grandmother pack up and move into an assisted living center. At the beginning of my trip, thanks to my aunt staying with Mom, I got to spend a few good days with my Dad up around Cape Lookout. This is the story of us trying to fish Thursday morning. Instead of fishing, we went to the North Carolina Maritime Museum in Beaufort. I didn’t take any photos while on the water on Thursday. (I never even took my camera out of the waterproof case). The picture of the sunset was taken from Harker’s Island later that day. The photo of my father fishing was taken on Friday. The seas had calmed, but the rain continued. I haven’t had internet access since early Friday morning. I’ll be returning back home tomorrow and will try to catch up with everyone by the weekend


The boat drops into the trough of a rolling wave, walls of water tower over our heads, obscuring everything and creating the feeling that we’re in a deep canyon. Then, we rise to the crest of a swell and see we were alone on the sea. It appears no one’s fishing at the jetty which juts out into the sea, west of the cape. With waves like these, there’d be no way to safely anchor off the rocks and any fishing in such rough water would require the finesse of a trapeze artist. We chicken out; Dad turns the boat around and we head back, surfing the crest of the waves and making good time with the wind to our back.

At the sea buoy marking Breakwater Point, he turns the boat 90 degrees into the channel. The inlet offers no protection. Instead of the long rolling waves of the open sea, we now have choppy ones foaming about the crest. Though violent, the water offers hope for fishing. In the distance I spot gulls and pelicans diving into the water where baitfish are jumping. Perhaps it’s a Bonita driving the smaller fish to the surface where they jump to escape the jaws of the larger fish. Life is precious at the bottom of the food chain. In an attempt to escape one threat, they expose themselves to the bills of awaiting birds. Dad maneuvers the boat toward the fish while I try my best to rig a line. By the time we get to the spot, the fish are gone and the birds have all settled down. We make a few casts, but the rain and wind are increasing. The few other boats fishing in what’s known as Lookout Bight are also heading in for safety and comfort and we do the same.

Dad is behind the wheel and I stand to the side of the console, holding on to the support for the canvas top that offers us little protection in the driving rain and splashing waves. I keep a lookout for the buoys that mark the maundering channel between Shackleford Banks and Cape Lookout. It’s a hard task for as we run, rain pellets my eyes. Sandbars cut across this channel, creating a maze to navigate. The boat pounds through the waves, splashing us with salt water. Rain and wind increase, dropping visibility further. The lighthouse, just a few miles away, can’t be seen but every 15 seconds we observe its faint light piercing the fog. Creating even more danger is the fact that we can’t see the next buoy and are soon in shallow water. Dad cuts the speed and turns on the depth finder. Luckily, the tide is high and rising. We move slowly off the bar as I continue to search for a buoy. When the rain lets up a bit, I spot a red one at 2 o’clock. We aim for it, keeping it to our starboard as we search of the next buoy, a green one, that’s to be on our port.

After we pass Catfish Point, we turn north, running through Barden’s Inlet with the wind to our back. Although it’s still hard to see buoys, rain drops are no longer painfully striking our eyes. We cross a few hundred yards in front of the lighthouse, its massive structure now visible, but looking ghost-like in the midst. We continue to follow the buoys pass Morgan Island and make the cut to Harker’s Island and into the safety of the break wall at Calico Jack’s. After securing the boat in the slip, we head to the bait shop for a cup of coffee and to talk with the staff and other returning fishermen about the weather. It doesn’t look like we’ll be doing any more fishing this day and it’s not even 10 A.M.

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Click here for a map of Cape Lookout National Seashore (go to the bottom to see where we were at).

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Click here for a story of surf fishing off Lookout in 2007

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Click here for a 2005 trip to Lookout along with pictures of horses on Shackleford Banks

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Photos to help you pass time...

I'm with my Dad on Harker's Island for three days/two nights. We came up here to fish and since we're only here two nights, are camping out at the only hotel on the island (instead of camping on the beach. Today, that turned out to be a good choice due to the weather, but I'll write more about that at a later time. These are pictures from yesterday's fishing off the jetty southwest of Cape Lookout.Fishing wasn't great... Below is a blowfish, you rub it's belly and it'll swell up like this! I caught two of them and a 16 inch puppy drum (the limit size is 18), so they all went back in.
Below is the moonrise, looking across Lookout, toward the lighthouse.We fished till after sunset and ran back through the channel after dark (It was a lot easier than today with high winds and waves and rain and nearly zero visibility. Needless to say, I don't have pictures from today's expedition!).
A final shot of the fading day.
I won't be able to catch up with everyone's blog till next week. Till then, ya'll be good, ya'll hear!

Monday, November 10, 2008

Unconventional Success: A Book Review


It's been a while since I've done a book review and this is a new genre for me to write a review. If you're not interested, skip down to my post about scooping poop at a dog show or the tribute I wrote for Eddie, a friend who recently passed away. Or you might want to go to the end of the review, where I talk about the political implications of his comments (in relation to Social Security). I'm at the airport while I edit this, waiting for the first leg of a light to take to the Old North State. Catch up with you all soon.

David F. Swensen, Unconventional Success: A Fundamental Approach to Personal Investment (New York: Free Press, 2005), 402 pages, numerous charts and graphs

I put off reviewing this book long enough. Sitting on a board for a private foundation, I have heard the name David Swensen mentioned over and over from our investment advisors. Swensen is the Chief Investment Officer for Yale University and has attracted the attention of the investment world for his stellar results in that position. His 2000 book, Pioneering Portfolio Management, is a classic guide for foundation portfolio management. When I learned that a revised version of Pioneering Portfolio Management was being written and scheduled to be released in early in 2009, I decided to read his book for personal investment that was published just three years ago. I started this book in mid-September, when things look shaky on the Dow but hadn’t yet gotten down-right depressing. As I read, the market started to react erratic and I, along with everyone else, saw investments drop like lead sinkers. I’ve wondered what Swensen would say about the current turmoil in the market, but I feel he would stand by much of what he’s written.

Unconventional Success is not an “investment how-to book.” There are no “stock tips” here, only warnings. There’s no discussion on building a portfolio or any of those silly charts as to what might happen if we place a hypothetical $100 a month into investments for 40 years. Instead, Swensen takes a more academic approach. The first two parts of the book (roughly the first half) deals with investment theory. Swensen covers asset allocation and market timing. This section was well written and explores the various options for investing and provides a good introduction into the various forms of securities available. Swensen, like most investment gurus, is in favor of well diversified portfolios, where each asset class is large enough to matter but small enough that it mitigates risk. He illustrates a well diversified portfolio with the following targets:

Domestic equity.................................30%
Foreign Developed equity ...............15%
Emerging Market equity................... 5%
Real Estate ........................................20%
U.S. Treasury Bonds........................15%
US TIPS.............................................15%

Swensen prefers bonds back by the federal government and stays away from corporate bonds and foreign debt. Corporate paper limits one’s potential gain. If interest rates fall, corporations can refinance, calling the higher interest bonds and reissuing lower interest bonds, if rates rise, you’re stuck with a lower interest rates. Foreign debt is often risky, especially in countries where the government is shaky. Swensen splits his fixed assets between regular treasury bonds and Tips (Inflation protected bonds). There are some REITS (real estate investment trusts) that he likes for real estate investment component, but he’s also critical of many of them due to their fee structures. He sees REITS as long-term investments (and certainly those who have invested in REITS several years ago will have to take a real long term outlook before they can recoup their investment).

Swensen also sees stocks as a long term investment, although he warns not to be too sentimental over particular companies that you want sell when you need to rebalance. He realizes that most individuals have a hard time investing in individual companies. Traditionally, the rule has been it takes at least 30 different stocks, diversified in various sectors of the economy, to reduce risk. Swensen suggests it may even require 50 different stocks and agrees that the average individual doesn’t have time to make such selections. The alternative, the Mutual Fund Industry, is also flawed and Swensen attacks the industry throughout this book. He’s especially hard on mutual funds that are publically held, seeing a conflict of interest between the fund’s shareholders and the fund’s investors. He examines the various fee structures for funds and is critical of the ways they’ve developed hidden fees to transfer value from the investor to the fund managers and owners. He explores taxes on mutual funds and how when someone else sells their portion of the fund, it creates tax liabilities for all the fund owners. In the whole mutual fund industry, he only identifies three funds favorably. TIAA-CREF (Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association and College Retirement Equities Fund) is a non-profit fund set up for educators. Swensen does admit a conflict of interest with his approval of TIAA-CREF (he’s on their board). He has mostly favorable things to say about Vanguard Funds (it's non-profit) and a Longleaf Partners, a small fund that's mostly closed to new investors. Over all, Swensen prefers index funds (lower fees and lower turn-over of stocks which means less taxes). He also suggests there are some benefits for ETFS (Exchange Traded Funds), but admits that there is already signs of companies marketing EFTS with unfair fee structures.

Swensen warns against the practice of active management funds which try to beat the market, acknowledging that for every win, someone has to lose. Instead of trying to beat the market, he advocates maintaining a close what on ones asset allocations and frequently rebalancing. Yale’s foundation rebalances daily (which he admits is not possible for the individual investor). If the equity market rises, they sell and move it into fixed income. If the markets are down, they bring more money into equities. Such a strategy has enabled Yale to comfortably out perform the market in the long run, while avoiding the extreme highs and lows.

This book has political implication. He suggests that schemes like privatizing social security would be a windfall for the mutual fund industry and would not serve the individual investor. This industry has already received a windfall in most companies shifting from a defined pension plan to a self-directed plan, such as with the 401/403 programs. As an investment guru, he is highly attuned to investment schemes where the fund’s interest is not always aligned with the investor (such as mutual fund companies wooing companies for 401 accounts). Furthermore, he’s also critical of companies like Morningstar, that’s supposed to provide non-biased ratings of funds but often fail to serve the public. (Although he doesn’t address this, this critique seems right on in our recent market turmoil, where bonds had high ratings but were stuffed with subprime mortgages).

I don’t recommend this book if you are looking to start investing. But if you want a deeper understanding of the investment industry, I would recommend this book. He seems to go overboard selling the idea that he mutual fund industry fails to serve the individual investor. Reading all the details of tax implications (which if you’re in an IRA or 401/403 you don’t have to worry about) and of fees (which gets us all), is tiring, but also enlightening. I look forward to reading his updated Pioneer Portfolio Management when it comes out in January.

Sunday, November 09, 2008

A Day in the Dalits Caste, or why I should receive the father-of-the-year award and other stuff


It’s snowing and I’m happy. Adding to my glee is a fire burning in the fireplace, the first of the season. Listening to the crackling and hissing of the flames makes me happy. There’s a puzzle on the coffee table for when I need to mindlessly pass the time and it makes me happy. Even the Steeler’s loss can’t dampen my spirit.

Can you believe how gas prices have dropped? The photo was taken on Thursday and it has dropped a few cents more since then! I just hope that because the price drops, we won’t forget our need to reduce consumption and become energy independent.

Let me tell you about my weekend…

I spent yesterday cleaning up poop! My daughter’s 4-H club, as a fund raiser, had poop and piss patrol at a large dog show in a nearby city. The club made good money and this is the only fundraiser they do during the year, but 10 hours of cleaning up after dogs and hauling bags of excrement to the dumpster was humbling and enough to make me cherish my day job. An, coming home last night, I’ve never enjoyed a shower so much! This was my first dog show; I wasn’t quite prepared. I’ve come to the conclusion that there are dog people and dog-show people and, to two borrow from Kipling, “never shall the twain meet.” Dog-show people are weird. They dress in a mishmash of tacky sport coats and faux-leather shoes, looking like salesmen at a Vegas convention or actors trying out for the lead in “The Music Man.” They store their dog treats in their mouth and then feed them to their canine while running, with their arm holding the leash up high, like the British hold teacups. Their dogs get to spend hours on a table in a head harness while groomers comb and blow dry their hair. Racism still exists in the dog world; the dog show may be the only place apartheid is tolerated in the 21st Century. Mixed breeds and mutts are not allowed on the premises.

Now that I’ve offended just about everyone, I will admit that I had a good time. Actually, cleaning poop made the day bearable as I couldn’t have imagined sitting in the stands, watching dogs be shown in the rings for 9 straight hours. I did see a lot of neat breeds. But most importantly, my daughter seemed pleased that I was willing to go and help, especially with the really messy ones. (For such a small butt, it amazes me how much a Doberman Pincher with diarrhea can put out, but that’s probably more than you want to know!)

How did you spend your weekend? Did anyone else get down and dirty?

I’m off to North Carolina on Tuesday, to check up on my mom and grandma and the Blues (the fish, not the music). I’ll try to check in occasionally. Be good now, ya’ll hear!

Friday, November 07, 2008

A Lament for a Sheepherder


I digitally copied the photo of Eddie from a print I took in the mid-90s. I took the second photo of sheep on Cedar Mountain in the summer of 2007.
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I got word two weeks ago that Eddie died. I liked Eddie and had over the past few years heard he’d been slipping. When I left Utah nearly five years ago, his hearing was fading and he was having a harder time getting around. He’d just sold his herd, but was still helping the man who brought his sheep. He no longer went up on the mountain or out into the desert every day, but he was still making the trek two or three times a week. I last saw him two years ago. Then, his eyes were going; macular degeneration, I think. He was no longer able to drive. About a year ago I heard he was in a nursing home. Age and illness had robbed this man of the things he enjoyed, running up and down the mountain in all kinds of weather and basking in the beauty of God’s creation. Now, he’s at rest.
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Eddie proudly proclaimed to everyone that he was a sheepherder, even though for him it was business. He hired a herder to stay with the sheep, a man who lived in a sheep wagon and who generally liked being along. Occasionally his herder would come to town for supplies and drink, and after a few days of the latter, he’d go back up on the mountain or out in the Nevada desert, where he’d dry out while tending the sheep, protecting them from predators, and hauling drinking water. Eddie made almost daily trips to check on his herder and the herd, bringing in groceries and feed for the horses and helping him haul water for the sheep. I think he had around 1600 ewes in his herd, which considering that most ewes have twins, equals a lot of lambs. When that many animals are away from a watering hole, a lot of water has to haul. Such a herd also required a large number of rams, along with horses and dogs to help with the work. At night, Eddie did the books and dealt with government leases. Although Eddie was one of the largest landowners around, he still leased land for grazing, especially for winter pasture in eastern Nevada.
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Eddie lived by the rotation of the earth. In the summer, the ewes and lambs would feast on the grass in the high mountains plateaus. Late summer or early fall, the lambs were culled from the ewes and rounded up to be trucked to market. It was always a guess as to how long to wait. The longer the lambs ate the mountain grass, the heavier they were and the more profit they’d bring. But there was always the risk of early snows trapping the herd and he’d have to haul in feed, which would eat up any profit he might have made. And then there was the year of the fire. With much of his range burned, the lambs had to be sold off early, when they were a good 20 pounds light. On another occasion, he told about an early snow. The lambs had already been sold, but the ewes were still on the mountain. The snow was so deep, his truck got stuck and he had to spend a day walking out, while his herder stayed with the herd which was nearly immobilized by deep snow. Getting back to town, he hired a bulldozer to come and clear a path so the sheep could make it down the mountain. In the fall, as the aspen turn bright yellow, he’d ride a horse, trailing the sheep down the mountain and around the south end of town, using a 100 year old livestock trail. As the days shortened, he and the herder would move the sheep from one alfalfa field to another, where the sheep would eat the remains left from the harvest as they moved toward their winter pasture in Nevada. By December, the sheep were roaming around the deserts of eastern Nevada, between Caliente and Pioche, where they ate sage and what grass was left from the summer. If there was snow on the ground, it was easy work for the herders for the sheep could also eat snow for moisture. But if there was no snow, Eddie and his herd would have to drive the old tank trunk to the warm springs at Panaca or another spring on the west side of his property, where they would fill it up and haul the water back to the sheep.

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At the end of winter, Eddie’s sheep got to ride in trucks back east to the lambing barns near Kanarraville. The sheep would first be sheared, usually by men from Australia and New Zealand, who sheared the herds in the American West from late February through April, then returned home, shearing sheep Down Under in their spring which is our fall. Lambing came after shearing (there’s less problems with birthing when the ewe is sheared). For a few weeks, Eddie would hire a host of people to help him by serving as mid-wives to the ewes. Then, as the weather warmed and the snows retreated on the mountain, they’d moved the herd up to the mountain, where the cycle would repeat itself.
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“How are we today,” Eddie would ask with a big grin, whenever he greeted anyone. He was always cheerful even though he’d known his share of heartache. His wife, the love of his life, had died of cancer a few years before I met him. In his living room was a photograph of a large aspen tree. When the tree was small, Eddie had carved a heart and added his name along with the names of his wife and daughter. Carving on aspens was common among sheepherders. Eddie had forgotten about this tree, but as it grew so did the carving and one day a hunter came upon it. He photographed the tree and gave it to Eddie as thanks for allowing him to hunt. Eddie was pleased.
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Eddie also loved his daughter and doted on her and made sure she was well cared for. She was a few years older than me and mentally challenged. Although I never asked, I couldn’t help but wonder if his wife’s cancer and his daughter’s limited mental capacity had anything to do with those blinding predawn sunrises from the west that Eddie and his wife experienced back in the early 50s. Above ground nuclear testing was common in that decade and although the government assured them they were safe and there was nothing to worry about from the white ash sometimes fell afterwards, we now know otherwise.
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I am thankful for the few times I took Eddie up on his invitations to take a day off and ride with him. We’d head out early. Sometimes we stop for breakfast or coffee. In his truck, he’d have some groceries and a few tools to repair fences or gates, maybe a salt block or two. Depending on where the herd was located, we’d drive an hour or two, all the while Eddie telling stories about his dad and about the sheep business and about how lazy the cattlemen could be (there is little love between sheepherders and cattlemen, a feud that goes back into the 19th Century). Lunch was always at the sheepherder’s wagon. In the winter, we’d all go inside to get out of the cold and wind. The smells were enchanting. Pinion burned in the stove as coffee perked. Mutton was always served. Some days we’d eat it with potatoes and carrots, other days we’d have it in a sandwich, the bread lathered with mayonnaise and cheese. We’d wash it all down with coffee.
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Some afternoons we’d scout out the next spot for the camp. Others, we’d take the tank truck out for water. As we drove around, Eddie would show me how he cared for the land. He’d show me where he had been working to stop erosion and to restore the grass that use to be more abundant. Over-herding animals in the first half of the 20th Century had taken its toll. When Eddie got into the business, he decided to run half as many sheep on the land as his dad and the previous tenants. His decision was slowly paying dividends and he was proud of his work and of his land. After he’d do the chores for the day, as the sun was dropping in the sky, we’d head back toward town.
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“When I was in my 20s and just starting out, I was told by another herder that sheepherding was a young man’s business,” Eddie confided in me one day. “Now I believe him.” And now Eddie can relax and let the Good Shepherd take over.