Catching Up...

The last few weeks went by in a whirlwind. During that period we took a two week cruise in the Baltic region, trans Atlantic flights to Holland and back, packing up from our summer on the boat, and then closing it up involving a myriad of operational chores best left unsaid and then driving the 1,250 miles home, 800 miles on the 2nd day -- made pleasurable by Stephen King's audio edition of On Writing read by the author himself -- arriving to assess all the work to be done in and around the house, particularly on the tropical overgrowth of landscaping, courtesy of the humid Florida summers.

The ports we visited deserve their own commentary and as I pull together photos another posting with a description of the ports will be forthcoming, but a few preliminary words on the cruise itself. We've taken many and of course beside the interesting ports, ship life and days at sea are high points to me. We try to confine our cruises to the "smaller" ships, in this case the MS Rotterdam. This particular ship accommodated "merely" 1,380 passengers on this trip, her displacement at 61,849 tons. We had been on this ship once before, almost ten years ago, through the Panama Canal. She is still an elegant ship, although refitting and updating will be needed soon.


Our cruise covered 2,998 miles (remarkable as I did not realize the region was so large). We arrived in Amsterdam after the fastest trans-Atlantic flight I've ever been on as the tail winds were over 100 miles per hour, only five hours from JFK. They served drinks and then dinner shortly after departing, turned off the lights for this "overnight" flight and it seemed as if only a half hour went by before they were turning on the lights for breakfast. At one point our air speed was 720 miles per hour. I felt like Chuck Yeager about to break the sound barrier. I hadn't flown KLM in some time, a very decent airline, but well worth the few dollars to upgrade to "economy comfort" seats.

We arrived in Amsterdam very early in the morning and had to wait several totally disorganized hours for the pre-arranged bus connection we had made through Holland America to finally depart for Rotterdam where our ship awaited. One would think that at least this part of the trip would be under control -- after all HA has done this before.

The cruise took us to Copenhagen, Warnamunde (Berlin's nearest port), Tallin, St. Petersburg, and Stockholm. We were supposed to go to Helsinki as well, but weather prevented the visit, for reasons I will explain when I write up our port visitations.

Embarking in Rotterdam, our ship life began by locating our cabin (mid ship, Ocean view), and as we live on a boat during the summer, we found it commodious by comparison --including several spacious closets and lots of drawer space!

There are so many things to do, even on a relatively small ship such as this, but our routine was to have a set dining time, a table with three other couples, nice people with whom we could exchange pleasantries about the trip, but politics and related topics were strictly off limits. After dinner most people went to the musical production shows but we discovered a great jazz trio in one of the lounges and became regulars there. Every evening they took requests from the great American songbook, the music we love so much.


The drummer (Seth) and the pianist (Jane) are a married couple who do gigs in Nantucket when they are not traveling on a cruise ship (the bass player was from Spain, hired by the ship, and fit right in). Jane is one of the best jazz pianists I've ever heard on a cruise ship and she plays requests from "lead sheets" or "fake books" which is the way I play, taking the melody line and the chords and improvising (although her skills are head and shoulders above mine). But she does all this from an iPod which has searchable PDFs of thousands of songs. I requested (among many others) the little-played "Cottage for Sale", a rendition we loved having been recorded years before by Julie London. To our amazement, Jane came up with the song immediately...

"A little dream in a castle
With every dream gone
It is lonely and silent
The shades are all drawn
And my heart is heavy
As we gaze upon
A cottage for sale

The lawn we were proud of
Is waving in hay
Our beautiful garden is
Withered away.
Where we planted roses
The weeds seem to say..
A cottage for sale"

Jane's style is so reminiscent of Bill Evans and Oscar Peterson. Her voicings are superb. In fact she played several Bill Evans pieces, including Waltz for Debby. These are not the kind of offerings one normally finds on a cruise ship. More information on Seth and Jane can be found here.

When I am away from everyday life while cruising, particularly the day to day gyrations of the market and politics and my beloved computer, reading becomes a pleasure, interrupted only by port visits, the obligatory meals, and jazz delights. The rest of the world goes by as contact is mostly limited to CNN International on board, a 4 page summary of the New York Times, and, of course, occasional, but very expensive and slow, Internet connections via satellite. Still, I tried to keep up with the baseball scores and the pennant races while on board, and the latest machinations of the approaching presidential election.

While away it seems that President Obama proposed a job-creation, infrastructure-fixing plan, with tax implications for the wealthy, one that was immediately shot down by the Republicans. How one can be so against a more progressive tax structure -- albeit with fixes of loopholes and some of the complexity along the way -- while 46 million Americans are living at the poverty level is beyond me. We had lunch with a woman one day who pontificated that half of Americans don't pay any taxes and that is why we should have a flat tax (very regressive in my mind). Hence, politics and the economy were off limits discussions (for me at least -- no sense on such a trip). However, on board I managed to see parts of the "Republican presidential debates" which were laughable as moderated by Fox, most candidates invoking God and the Constitution as their very own personal, exclusive allies.

So it was no wonder, off with the TV and on to some good reading. The first one I tackled, sort of an underground classic for which I thank my blogger friend, Emily, was J.L. Carr's A Month in the Country. This is written in the tradition of Thomas Hardy, a wonderful tale about a medieval mural of the apocalypse which was painted on the ceiling of a church in the countryside somewhere in England and whitewashed over. The man who is hired to restore the painting, in the process, resurrects his own soul in the bargain. He is separated from his wife, Vinny, and recovering from his experiences during WWI:"The marvelous thing was coming into this haven of calm water and, for a season, not having to worry my head with anything but uncovering their wall-painting for them. And, afterwards, perhaps I could make a new start, forget what the War and the rows with Vinny had done to me and begin where I'd left off. This is what I need, I thought -- a new start and, afterwards, maybe I won't be a casualty anymore. Well, we live by hope." It is a little gem of a redemptive novel.

From the sublime to the entertaining I picked up another Jonathan Tropper novel, This is Where I Leave You. Here is yet another clever novel by him, the focal point of which is our hero, Judd Foxman, sitting a seven day shiva with his dysfunctional family, as his marriage is falling apart. Tropper is known for his smart witty dialogue and this novel delivers. Although comic, Tropper is an observer of the manners and mores of modern times and I almost think of him as a Jane Austin type, delectable to read, with stinging observations. For example, this is his riotous description of sitting shiva (sat on chairs lower than their visitors) on one particular day: "The parade of weathered flesh continues. Sitting in our shiva chairs, we develop a sad infatuation with the bared legs of our visitors. Some of the men wear pants, and for that we are eternally grateful. But this being late August, we get our fair share of men in shorts, showing off pale, hairless legs with withered calves and thick, raised veins like earthworms trapped beneath their flesh who died burrowing their way out. The more genetically gifted men still show some musculature in the calf and thigh areas, but is more often than not marred by the surgical scars of multiple knee operations or heart bypasses that appropriated veins from the leg. And there's a special place in shiva hell reserved for men in sandals, their cracked, hardened toenails, dark with fungus, proudly on display. The women are more of a mixed bag. Some of them have managed to hold it together, but on others, skin hangs loosely off the bone, crinkled like cellophane, ankles disappear beneath mounds of flesh; and spider veins stretch out like bruises just below the skin. there really should be a dress code." A laugh a minute because it is so true.

My final novel for the cruise was one I've been saving for years for the right moment, a mass market paperback edition, small and portable, although some 500 pages, so ideal for carrying on a trip -- Pat Conroy's The Lords of Discipline. I've read most of Conroy and when he writes autobiographical material, he is at his best. I'm sure many of the episodes he chronicles in this book, one about a boy coming of age in a military college in Charleston, SC, come right out of his own life experiences. It is powerful and fast-moving, a page turner, beautifully written, Conroy being one of our most lyrical writers today. It is about the true meaning of honor, a painful lesson our protagonist, Will McLean, learns in the real world. Will is not from the elite society of Charleston as are some of his classmates. He is on scholarship as the point guard on the basketball team, as was Conroy himself was when he went to school. Although Conroy's autobiographical My Losing Season primarily deals with that subject (basketball), well worth reading, this novel devotes only a dozen or so pages to the topic, but perhaps the most vivid, accurate ones I've ever read about playing the game. Still, it is the beauty of his writing that glued me to the pages of this novel: "The city of Charleston, in the green feathery modesty of its palms, in the certitude of its style, in the economy and stringency of its lines, and the serenity of its mansions South of Broad Street, is a feast for the human eye. But to me, Charleston is a dark city, a melancholy city, whose severe covenants and secrets are as powerful and beguiling as its elegance, whose demons dance their alley dances and compose their malign hymns to the far side of the moon I cannot see. I studied those demons closely once, and they helped kill off the boy in me."

Thanks to these three novels, the jazz trio, my ship time was spent in good company (and with Ann of course). Ann wrote a detailed email to her friends about our trip, describing each port, and I am going to draw heavily from her observations when I get around to editing and selecting photographs, as well as adding my own thoughts.

But I will say one thing as a teaser for a future piece. The high point was St. Petersburg where we hired a private guide for two ten hour days. One cannot tour Russia without a Visa or a registered travel guide (or one of the ship's bus tours, which we did not want to do). Our guide turned out to be as stunningly beautiful as she was knowledgeable, a graduate of St. Petersburg University, with a degree in Art History, and with excellent English skills. Each place of visit was accompanied by her knowledgeable narrative. It started with an early morning visit to the Peterhof Palace, with its lush gardens and magnificent furnishings, these two exterior photos hardly do it justice, but, as I said, this is merely foreshadowing of a more detailed account in a later entry.


















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The More Things Change….

Perhaps it is merely wishful thinking that certain values such as loyalty, conscientiousness and dedication can persevere. There is anecdotal evidence to the contrary in today’s world, perhaps exacerbated by the computer chip which has effected all forms of communication, even changing how we think and write (140 character tweets is the modern attention span LOL). No longer are there jobs that last for decades (when there are jobs at all) and popular culture has supplanted most of the fine arts. There is not even a pretense of courtesy or refinement and all one has to do is get on an airplane – as we are about to do -- to observe that point. So in this oasis we now call the modern world, I went back in time to get ready for an overseas trip. More on that trip when we return in a few weeks, during which time this blog will be silent.

My time travel took me to the barber shop I used to frequent when we lived in the Westport area. I went there for more than 30 years and my sons as well when they were children. I normally now buzz cut my own hair and as we live at our marina nearby Westport only in the summers, I see them but once a year, usually before a trip such as the upcoming one. Tommy has been the proprietor of Westport’s Compo Barber Shop since 1959. I always had my hair cut by his sidekick Felici who is from Italy and still speaks in a broken accent.

On Friday morning I walked into the shop. Tommy was sweeping the floor and Felici was getting ready for his next appointment, mine. How often does one embrace his barber? Hugging both Tommy and Felici seemed to be the appropriate thing to acknowledge my kaleidoscopic visit. It also was mutual acknowledgement that we are survivors, not only in the corporal sense, but as sojourners from another era.

Tommy proudly displays photographs from the Westport Historical Society in his shop as well as ones of himself cutting the hair of multiple generations of the same family. I looked up and down the Post Road where his shop has been all this time and noted that the neighboring stores are all different. The stores come and go but Compo Barber Shop has been a bulwark in the community. It is a throwback to small town America, one that Richard Russo often chronicles in his novels.

I obviously have some special feeling for the camaraderie between a barber and his customer, a unique male bonding that I’ve written about before, particularly as my childhood barber, Joe, literally became my Uncle Joe.

So after I settled in the chair we covered the checklist of typical barbershop banter: our respective health, how the “kids” are doing, the weather and the recently departed storm, Irene, what the country coming to, the tragic shape of the economy, and the sadness I feel having seen my publishing business in town finally come to an end. With my now perfect haircut I went to the cash register to pay but they would not accept payment. I protested, but understood that some things are more important than money. Just seeing me was enough for them and that feeling was reciprocated as I said “see you next year,” and hopefully the next, and many more after that.
Photograph courtesy of WestportNow.Com

The Day After

The last couple entries were written awaiting Hurricane Irene, or Tropical Storm Irene by the time she went by us, slightly to the west. There were days of preparation at our marina and preparing our boat, tying redundant lines, striping anything that can fly in a high wind, and preparing the boat for rough seas as our stern is to the south facing the mouth of the Norwalk River, a long fetch. The worst case scenario we learned from Hurricane Gloria in 1985. Although our boat (a smaller one than we now have) was further up the river at a different marina, the southeast wind brought high waves into the river and although our boat did fine on its own, another boat broke loose in that marina and its bow pulpit impaled our stateroom, resulting in fiberglass and water damage.

Our present boat is more than a boat; it is our summer home and we have no other place to go. Luckily, we were able to get a hotel room not far from where our boat is docked so we were hoping we would have easy access when trying to return after the hurricane, even if power is lost and street lights are not working.

The greatest danger beside the wave and wind action is the tidal surge and South Norwalk is vulnerable to extremely high tides. Wisely, when our marina was rebuilt by our boat club, the main pilings took this into account. They are tall, made of cement, and the floating docks were designed to stay on those pilings even in the most extreme conditions. And they were extreme as Irene came blasting up the river near an astronomical high tide. Still, the floating docks were only three feet from the top by the time the water receded.

Nonetheless, we returned to our boat this morning with some trepidation. Did all our lines hold and did any of the horizontal rain and saltwater spindrift breach our hatches and windows? It was with a sigh of relief when we entered the boat and realized that except for some seepage under the door, the boat was in good shape. It took us most of the day putting back everything we had stowed or secured. Although all dock and spring lines were tied tightly with redundancy, it is amazing how much they stretched in the heaving seas. In the placid morning light of this day after they lay limply. Also one of the chocks that hold lines on the starboard side of the cover board had popped three of its four screws, a testament to the constant chaffing of the lines. The ‘Swept Away’ was stern to heavy seas for several hours accounting for this slight damage. Had the chock not held, the lines would have cut into the teak cover boards.

The day after a hurricane or tropical storm --- and we have been in several – always seems to be the opposite side of the same coin, as beautiful as the prior day was treacherous. The photograph below shows damage at a neighbor’s dock, but a crystal blue sky with unlimited visibility. In the background one can see Peach Island, one in the Norwalk Islands and beyond that, some eight miles away, the Northport stacks on Long Island further to the south. Goodbye, Irene, goodbye indeed.

Hurricane Irene and Jonathan Tropper

We are hunkered down in a hotel awaiting Hurricane Irene, our boat secured to the best of our ability. So we wait, with our flashlights (as power will inevitably be lost) and enough bread, and peanut butter and jelly to outlast the storm. The storm surge will be the key to our boat’s survival, a sickening feeling having to wait out the next two days and hoping we can return to find minimal damage when the storm finally passes. Meanwhile, it is time to complete an entry concerning Jonathan Tropper which I had started to write before Irene dictated the turmoil of preparing for the storm.

I’m becoming a Jonathan Tropper admirer, a clever and talented writer, with a unique voice, who may deserve to join the company of some of my favorite contemporary American novelists, Richard Russo, Anne Tyler, Russell Banks, Richard Ford, John Irving, E.L. Doctorow, Pat Conroy, and Jonathan Franzen, Ever since John Updike died and as Philip Roth ages, I worry about their understudies, who might fill the shoes of authors dedicated to the craft of writing and the chronicling of American life and The Dream.

I had just finished Russell Bank’s The Reserve, a beautifully written novel but humorless and needed a “pick me up” so I returned to Tropper, having liked his Everything Changes, and was curious whether one of his earlier ones would measure up. I chose The Book of Joe with some hesitancy as it seemed to have all its cultural references to the 1980s, where part of the novel is set, the main characters being in high school and juxtaposed to the same ones today. This is my younger son’s generation, not mine. I’m closer to Updike and Roth’s age, no doubt one of the reasons their writing so resonates with me.

But Tropper deals with such universal truths they transcend generational provincialism, certainly the mark of a good writer. My high school years of the 1950s had the same raw pulsating teenage angst, sexual urgency, and social vulnerability, the very ones portrayed by Tropper at Bush Falls High, their Cougar basketball players revered, and everyone else in a subordinate role. Teenagers can be the most sadistic humans on the face of the earth, something Tropper well understands.

Events concerning my 50th high school reunion brought home the fact that the caste system had hardly changed. It was amazing to me that the long bridge of 50 years hardly mattered. It was back to the clickish high school years as if no time had passed at all.

And Tropper poignantly captures this feeling in The Book of Joe, using Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward Angel experience as a very loose outline. Wolfe’s novel outraged the residents of Asheville and had Wolfe returned (actually, there is a fictionalized version of his return written by Asheville native and playwright Sandra Mason which we saw several years ago in Asheville), he, too, would have been vilified as is Tropper’s Joe Goffman who leaves the small fictional town of Bush Falls, CT, somewhere north of New Haven. He writes a novel about the town and it becomes a sensational best-seller, thanks in part to his agent. He tells all in thinly veiled fiction, even his most private sexual fantasies concerning his best friend’s mother. He finally returns 17 years later as his father has had a stroke and he now has to confront his family and former friends and high school hell raisers, the love of his life, and even the mother about whom he had fantasized.

Tropper writes terrifically believable dialogue and it is not surprising that he is also a screenwriter and a couple of his novels are in the process of being adapted for the screen. The Book of Joe is a fast read, poignantly tragicomic. Sometimes his writing reminds me of Joseph Heller’s special gift for ironic humor.

I was surprised by how engaged I was in the world of this thirty-something protagonist, a world more inhabited by my sons, but universal truths never change.

Goodbye, Irene, Goodbye

The irony hasn’t escaped us. One of the reasons we live on a boat on the Norwalk River (CT) during the summer is to leave the oppressive weather in Florida, including its hurricanes. So, when Irene was said to be a direct threat to Florida last weekend, I authorized our house minder to put up the remainder of our shutters and to secure the house for possible hurricane conditions. No sooner than they were up, the National Weather Service revised its path projections and over the last few days these has evolved into nearly a direct hit where we have our boat docked. This is not the first time a storm diverted from our house to the vicinity of our boat, the last one being Floyd. I could become paranoid about being a hurricane magnet.

While we have been able to stay on our boat past storms, this one seems to be more ominous, especially with the added tidal surge while there is an astronomical high tide. So we’ll be moving off the boat Saturday and going to a hotel on high ground, securing our “summer home” to the best of our ability with additional lines and fenders and stripping all canvas.

We’ve had a few calls from friends in Florida, joking (to the point of uncontrolled laughter) that we should return where it is safe from hurricanes. There is some truth in this as Floridians are better prepared, but the suggestion borders on a little Schadenfreude, not intentional I know. One even suggested I take the boat out of the harbor and anchor it off one of the Norwalk Islands, to her mind a simple solution to tying it up so compulsively. Ha. I can imagine explaining that to the insurance company.

So, preparing for the worse, and hoping for the best, and also hoping our hotel (only ten minutes from the boat and 90 feet above sea level) doesn’t lose power, but we’re ready for that too, totting flashlights, batteries, and books.

Good luck to all in what might be the worst hurricane I’ve been in since Wilma (in Florida) and Carol (in Sag Harbor when I was a kid). As lovely and as calm as the eyes of those storms were, I need see no more.

What To Do?

If I were a Tweeter I'd be retweeting these two links. I've mentioned Barry Ritholtz's The Big Picture blog before. He has a measured view of the markets, and politics, not a raving bull or bear. And I've also mentioned John Hussman's Monday morning entries published in The Hussman Funds site. He has been criticized as a "Permabear" which is unfair as he looks at long economic cycles and he has been spot on long-term. His analysis can be technical and hard to follow for us lacking a PhD in economics, but well worth reading.

The recent gyrations of the market, Dow up 400, down 500, up 200, down whatever seems to signal that we are in uncharted economic and investing waters. The Fed's zero interest rates feed the fire of uncertainty. No longer is there the opportunity of having a "balanced" investment portfolio of stocks and bonds as the latter yields nothing. In fact the zero yield is adding fuel to the gold market as there is no longer an alternative cost (loss of interest) holding the yellow metal.

Hussman's recent write up makes two interesting points and then his very long piece elaborates: The reason we are facing a renewed economic downturn is that our policy makers never addressed the essential economic problem, which was, and remains, the need for debt restructuring. There are two one-way lanes on the road to ruin, and these - in endless variation - are unfortunately the only ones on the present policy map:

1) Policies aimed at distorting the financial markets by suffocating the yield on lower-risk investments, in an attempt to drive investors to accept risks that they would otherwise shun;

2) Policies aimed at defending bondholders and lenders who made bad loans, which they now seek to have bailed out at public expense.

Ritzholz writes a "slightly" lighter piece, with a list, A Decade of Punditocracy, Pathetic Edition. It shows how some policy makers and prognosticators drive with a rosy rear view mirror. I love the first on the list, George W. Bush, June 17, 2002: “Now, we’ve got a problem here in America that we have to address. Too many American families, too many minorities do not own a home. [...] Freddie Mac will launch 25 initiatives to eliminate homeownership barriers.”

So what is one to do? I still believe that well chosen dividend stocks held through thick and thin is part of the answer. This week's Barron's gives some valuable information on this topic, citing S&P's Howard Silverblatt's screen: Silverblatt has provided a substantial list of companies as a starting point for dividend investing. It's not a buy list but a screened set of stocks meeting certain criteria. It's available at www.marketattributes.standardandpoors.com. At the site, click S&P 500 Monthly Performance Data and then Dividend Starting File, at the bottom of the menu. Again, it's merely an interesting place to start.

Chances are that AAA firms such as Johnson & Johnson, Exxon, and Microsoft will survive, no matter what the economy might do, and one is paid to wait. Balance that with some Treasury Inflation Protected securities, and perhaps gold, and even cash, and wait out the market turmoil (it may be a very long wait). The key is to buy any of these on weakness and make the mix appropriate for one's own investment needs and risk tolerance.

Fed Speaks

The Federal Reserve’s press release covering its recent meeting begins “Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in June indicates that economic growth so far this year has been considerably slower than the Committee had expected. Indicators suggest a deterioration in overall labor market conditions in recent months, and the unemployment rate has moved up.” Later, it continues, “the Committee now expects a somewhat slower pace of recovery over coming quarters than it did at the time of the previous meeting and anticipates that the unemployment rate will decline only gradually toward levels that the Committee judges to be consistent with its dual mandate. Moreover, downside risks to the economic outlook have increased.”

Its main action point is that the nation’s economy is “likely to warrant exceptionally low levels for the federal funds rate at least through mid-2013.” Talk about telegraphing what it probably already knows: the economy seems to be slipping into recession once again and the Fed is helpless, meaning continued high unemployment, no remedies for the real estate market and homeowners with mortgages under water, and continued low returns on any savings. And these conditions are not temporary: they are expected to last two years (and unless Congress ever learns to function again, they will last much longer). Imagine, three year Treasury notes (no longer AAA which is another farce from S&P, the folks who brought us triple A-rated collateralized debt obligations) now yield less than a half a percent!

Where this is all likely to end is anyone’s guess, including the learned economists at the Fed. The volatile markets are reflecting that uncertainty. Buying dividend paying stocks may the best option for income, but any severe recession could leave those stocks vulnerable, jeopardizing the return of capital. That seems where the Fed is leading the individual investor.