Clouds

I think of them drifting by, sometimes blocking the sun which has now moved from summer to fall. When we arrived at the boat for the summer, I thought I would use the opportunity to write about our boating life.


http://lacunaemusing.blogspot.com/2008/07/living-on-boat.html http://lacunaemusing.blogspot.com/2008/08/lake-years.html

I made a start but failed to get to the main part of the story. Where does the time go? It seems to accelerate as one gets older, each day a smaller percentage of one’s total lifetime and therefore the illusion of it passing more quickly.

I look forward to returning home but in between we’ve scheduled a trip to the Southwest, to visit friends in Santa Fe, Sedona, and Las Vegas. So for a while I’ll be offline and will have to wait until sometime later in the fall to continue the boating narrative.

We will be in Santa Fe on Oct. 5, exactly 44 years to the day after I started my first job in publishing. On that clear fall day I arrived so early at 111 Fifth Avenue that I found the building still closed. I walked around the neighborhood nervously waiting to get to my desk. Here’s the connection to Santa Fe: When I arrived I was assigned to someone who had printing and production experience – Jim -- as my liberal arts background sadly lacked any technical expertise. Jim and I became friends and in fact I lived with him for a while in the East Village after my divorce in the late 1960’s. Jim lives in Santa Fe now and it was at his urging that we decided to visit. Although we haven’t seen each other in many years, we’ve stayed in touch and now we’ll celebrate our 44th “anniversary” in his beautiful city!

So we leave this spot, pictured below, and these pages will be silent for a while.




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Rest in Peace, Howard

My friend Howard died.
http://lacunaemusing.blogspot.com/2008/09/howard.html.

Since I wrote that piece, Howard was transferred to a hospice. I had one last conversation with him while he was there. He said he had little pain and the hospice staff was wonderful. His son had a birthday party for him, his 62nd, and he was very moved by the many friends and relatives who were able to attend. We said our goodbyes and I was so stunned by this dreamlike exchange, I asked to call again. I called at the appointed time but his phone was on do-not-disturb. I called again in a few days but was told to contact his family. And that is when I learned what I was afraid to hear. My good friend had passed.

His son will be establishing a web site and a charitable foundation for his father. His many sculptures will be on display and when on line, I’ll communicate the web address.

Rest in peace, Howard, I’ll miss you so.

"What Years of Neglect and Lack of National Policy is Creating"

Although this was intended to be more of a personal journal, the recent political scene and financial crisis have interceded, and I’ve been somewhat consumed by these events. Their tentacles wrap around one’s personal life. It is hard not to obsess over our country’s future, and the world our children and grandchildren will inherit. Although I have referenced other writers and their opinions in these pages, most are my own.

But sometimes you come across something that just says it exactly as it must be said. In these rare cases it is best simply to pass it on and that is what I am doing here. I’ve mentioned “Trader Mark” before, a young man who is running a “virtual” mutual fund in the hope of starting his own. He provides a running commentary on the logic behind his trades and the portfolio and he usually intersperses those with social and economic commentary as, in the long run, these things are all related.

Here are links to two recent articles which says it better than I ever could – how the rest of the world sees our economic struggles and how utterly beholden we have become to economies we used to consider third world. The subtitle of the first says it all: “What Years of Neglect and Lack of National Policy is Creating.”

Interesting Reactions Worldwide - What Years of Neglect and Lack of National Policy is Creating
http://www.fundmymutualfund.com/2008/09/interesting-reactions-worldwide-what.html
Views of the U.S. from Abroad
http://www.fundmymutualfund.com/2008/09/views-of-us-from-abroad.html

Political Cynicism

Here is one way to define the concept. Lead our country to the brink of economic disaster. Have the very administration which brought us there propose an emergency $700 billion “fix” to provide liquidity so our economic circulatory system does not seize up, the plan proposed by the Secretary of the Treasury and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, with our President finally making a speech to the nation in which he warns of the dire consequences of congress not acting immediately. Congressional hearings immediately ensue, with the Democratic majority buying into the need for action. Both sides of the isle agree to the basic principles, including oversight protection, and we are told a deal is imminent. But wait, the Republican presidential candidate returns to Washington, on his white horse, his pearl handle pistol at his side and suddenly there is no agreement. A dangerous game of chicken unfolds: “If the Democrats and the President want the plan, let them pass it” the Republican choir sings. Heads we win, tails you lose. America or politics first?

PS Washington Mutual was just closed by the US Government, the largest failure of a US bank.

This “fundamental” is whining…

After Senator McCain declared the fundamentals of the economy were strong last week, he first defended his comment by saying that by “fundamentals” he meant us workers (first time I’ve been referred to as a “fundamental” – sort of makes me feel important) and then, finally, after the heavens opened up and Bernanke and Paulson rained down reality on the economic picture he not only conceded that a crisis had begun, but he also said the following at the Green Bay Chamber of Commerce: “We've heard a lot of words from Senator Obama over the course of this campaign…But maybe just this once he could spare us the lectures, and admit to his own poor judgment in contributing to these problems. The crisis on Wall Street started in the Washington culture of lobbying and influence peddling, and he was right square in the middle of it."

Huh? The political rhetoric from both sides has sometimes made me sick, enough to make me wish that Michael Bloomberg was running on a third party ticket, but McCain’s claim is so egregious I just can’t be silent.

To blame Obama while McCain has been in Congress for 26 years and was one of five United States Senators comprising the so-called "Keating Five" scandal during the 1980s http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keating_Five is just plain unconscionable. He was also the former chairman and a present member of the United States Senate Committee on Commerce (although this committee does not have responsibility for the financial services industry) and until just last week has been an staunch advocate of deregulating financial markets, particularly supporting Senator Phil Gramm’s bill in 1999 which deregulated some restrictions on the financial services sector. Gramm has become a lead economic advisor for McCain’s presidential run, the same person who called us “fundamentals” a bunch of whiners, and the only economic problem we have is a “mental recession” (which he naturally blamed on the media, a favorite tactic McCain et al are using). In 1999 Obama was in the Illinois Senate and a Senior Lecturer teaching constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School (as an aside, read the interesting article on his teaching years from yesterday’s New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/magazine/21obama-t.html).

So how exactly is Obama responsible for the present economic crisis?

And the presidency goes to….

Why bother having elections? Seems like we could have a version of the Academy Awards decide the winner – the party which takes the most Oscars wins the election! This way we can recognize what has become central to the election process: mass media persuasion. No longer will we have to bother with the real issues, which have become subordinated to personality and presentation.

“And the Oscar for the best sound bite goes to…”

As Main Street’s political belief is manipulated by the images created by Madison Avenue types, let the big award of the evening go to the slickest national convention, with the supporting awards going to the best TV ads that pander to the emotional issues du jour. Special categories can go to the bloggers and the most forwarded email. As a bonus evening of entertainment before the awards, let MSNBC square off against FOX News with Jerry Springer as the moderator – the candidates themselves would not even be needed!

The electorate’s decision now resembles a consumer decision, not decided on the merits of the “product” but instead on brand image, carefully manipulated by focus groups and emotional advertising. It seems that the entire process has gotten out of hand. How about banning political advertising (and thereby also saving $millions) and solely determine national elections by a series of debates?

That Infamous Day

9/11. It has been seven years but it seems like yesterday. We all remember where we were at that moment. The only comparable moment in my life is where I was when President Kennedy was assassinated.

On Sept. 11, 2001 we were on our boat in Norwalk, Ct., a clear somewhat breezy day with a deep blue sky. We had the TV on and, in complete disbelief, the tragedy unfolded before us all.

Although some fifty miles away, we could see the smoke drifting south from the Twin Towers. To this day I still feel that sense of incredulity. Did this really happen here? My son, Jonathan, had been interviewed only a couple of weeks before by Cantor Fitzgerald, on the 102nd floor of One WTC. They lost 685 employees on that fateful day. Jonathan had taken another job. Is it merely coincidence and accident that governs life’s outcomes? Or Shakespeare’s more cynical line from King Lear: “As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods. They kill us for their sport.”

My older son is the poet of our family and this is what he wrote on that very day. One line in particular resonates: “If Hell opened up, and swallowed my life, it could not compete with what witnessed, I.” May we never forget:

9/11/2001
By Chris Hagelstein

Terrorist troops and bodies strewn
in Twin Tower screams, destruction loomed.
News stations on a journalistic mission
under our Flag's lost transmission:
America's Death.

Judgement of Religious Decree
driving Boeing bombs with air fuel
circulating vultures from above the sea,
smashing their prey
on this plain sun-filled day.

Television digital debris rained on video,
Looping the same sequence of carnage.
The surgery of media controlled the flow
but the State of Blood remained unknown.

Prayers beneath each citizen’s eyes
were blessed wells now, for those who died.
No ceremony or speech could render a conclusion:
Those wired images played seemed like an illusion.

An Eye of some god was seeing us All
for each one's Blindness, was another’s Call,
and in the skies above Manhattan, masked in smoke
exhumed old gods of hatred and hope.

If Hell opened up, and swallowed my life,
It could not compete with what witnessed, I:
Buildings falling and heroes crushed:
As day burned to night
and life --- to dust.

Still, yet, in my hearts dismay,
Born here, I stand, no less bleeding
than those who survived this day:
For America is my body and my sea
executed on the stage of history.