I fear that we are all heavy laden this Christmastide...and not with gifts. These last several years have been wearing and painful and depressing, with not much sunshine left in our hearts, and the stretch beginning in mid-summer and ending we-have-no-clue-when has been particularly difficult in so many ways.

In my three score and nearly ten on this planet, I cannot recollect anything like it, except in hearing the stories my parents told about the roaring twenties and the massive depression which followed...until the start of World War II.

And yet....and yet, we soldier on, keeping hid the pain and fear in our hearts, whilst we wonder what's next, as we wander.

Christmas, that's what. And it really isn't about the presents and the parties, nice though they may be. It's about an unmarried couple going home and having a baby in the most humble of circumstances - an event that changed the world, an event well worthy of a lifetime of reflection.

That's what I'm going to concentrate on this Christmastide - thinking about the simplest and most powerful story on which my faith is based and is the core belief for a world-wide community of faith, in its multitude of patterns. (You may celebrate another story, but no doubt we still have much in common in terms of the people we are trying to become as we trudge on down life's path.

On Christmas Eve, the choir of King's College at Cambridge University in Cambridge England will present their "Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols."** This year, they will premiere a new carol by D Muldowney, with words by Bertold Brecht. Here is the first verse, as translated by M. Hamburger:

The night when she first gave birth

Had been cold. But in later years

She quite forgot

The frost in the dingy beams and the smoking stove

And the spasms of the afterbirth at dawn.

But above all she forgot the bitter shame

Common among the poor

Of having no privacy.

That was why in later years it became a holiday for all.

Not quite the scene we celebrate in our songs and stories and perhaps a bit hard to accept, but worth full consideration.

This year, my presents are fewer and more modest, and most of my gift budget is going to two local charities which house and feed the homeless. In these days and times, that seems right - to participate in efforts in our community to help others.

It's not bad to go back to the basics; it's positively invigorating. We won't get through these troubles alone, so keep your various communities close, and we'll get through them together, somehow.

In spite of all, a happy Christmas to you and yours...and a productive 2009.

Cheers!

**You can probably find it on a public radio station near you or on the BBC's Radio 4 web-site, beginning at 10:00 am, Eastern Standard Time or 3:00 pm in London.

Thanksgiving 2008

This year, I expect that many of us look down the road to Thanksgiving with a somewhat baleful expression.  It has been a year unlike any other I can remember, and to concentrate on this seasonal event takes a good deal of concentration:  the election, the state of our country's financial system, the widely varying price of oil, the inflation which we see in the daily costs of our lives, and the fear that our very personal fiscal underpinnings are far weaker than we ever would have thought - well, it really is enough to drive a person crazy.

I thought that getting myself into a thankful attitude might be a little tricky, until I saw Islay the black scotty jump up on the sofa, find her way next to K's lap, lie down, and put her head on top of K's thigh.  It was an off-pawed gesture, perfectly natural, but the result was that Thanksgiving took on new meaning in an instant.

For the last couple of years, both these creatures have, in their own ways, been sanding down my rough spots after nearly half-a-century of living by myself.  Other scotties in previous years were wonderful companions but were less effective as teachers.

K has always had a clear idea of what matters in life, and while I am (and probably always will be) a work in progress, she has helped open my eyes in a number of important ways, even though I have refused to hand over the tv remote and will continue to do so.

This morning we drank coffee in the living room and watched the last great gathering of the Canada geese swimming in the last remnant of open water on the lake.  Most of them will be off to their southern migration soon, and we shall miss their honking enthusiasm.  Then a pileated woodpecker - one of the big ones - climbed up an oak tree no more than fifty feet away.  Winter is but a step away, yet there is still much to savor.

The larger issues remain, of course, but good people are going to do their best to resolve them, and I hope we shall be asked to participate in that process.  Notwithstanding those troubles, there is much for us to appreciate-that is,  if we can be "thinkful" about being thankful.

My Goodness....

My mother was always very proud of the first presidential ballot she cast in 1932 - for Norman Thomas, the Socialist candidate for President. The first election in which I participated was in 1960, and I cast my first vote for John F. Kennedy. As one result, one of my uncles stopped talking to me for several years, and given his political views, I did not consider that much of a loss.

A great many young people cast their first ballot yesterday, and it had an impact; they will never forget the experience and the result. Their children will grow appreciatively tired of the story but will remember it.

We woke up this morning, a little groggy, but with something of a sunrise streaming in through the windows. And we knew in our brains and in our hearts that something important happened in and to America yesterday.

It doesn't matter which side we were on - it really doesn't. What does matter is that we try to slip past the post-mortem clichés of election analysis and understand that a great many Americans stepped into the voting booth and voted for an African-American for the highest political office in our land.

There seemed to be few problems with the process of voting and counting; local governments were better prepared than they had been last time, and the only significant demonstrations were celebrations of joy in Chicago, New York, and in front of the White House in Washington. Joy and lots of tears because another glass ceiling had been broken.

America grew up yesterday. In the face of economic chaos, two unpopular wars, foreign relationships in tatters, civil rights diminished, and an increasing gulf between rich and poor, voters made a decision to vote for the man who happened not to be "white." For a great many of us, that choice could not have been easy, but the choice was made.

Politicians who routinely consider the the citizenry as "ill-informed," "stupid," or "inattentive" must now do a recalculation, as must countries which look at the United States as a monochrome monolith.

We are different today, perhaps better, but certainly different.

It's a start, and that's good enough for me.

The Old and The New

Last night K and I went to a piano recital by Marc-André Hamelin.  I go to a number of concerts and lug my large sack of musical ignorance to every one.  Last night's music began with Alban Berg, stopped for a time to visit Chopin, and ended with an astounding performance of the music of Charles-Valentin Alkan.

We had never heard the Alkan before - a piece which requires virtuosity in the extremely, and Mr Hamelin conquered it with none of the flamboyant gestures of some concert pianists and made it the highlight of all the recent musical performances I've attended over the last year or so.

Where had I been with regard to Alkan.  And then I thought about Alfred Sisley, the English impressionist painter.

Years ago, I had attended a Sisley exhibit at the Royal Academy in London.  Until that day, I had no idea of Sisley's role in that 19th century  movement, and - frankly - I was startled by the experience.  One purpose of the exhibit was to put Sisley back into the middle of Impressionism, and it succeeded, at least for me.  

Think of Alkan (1813-1888), Sisley (1839-1899), and toss in a long-term favorite of mine, Georges Seurat (1859-1891).

There they were at about the same time, working away, not well known, not selling much of their output, but deeply committed to their cause.

Here we are, a century and a half later, listening, seeing, and admiring what they produced.  I learned two things (at least) from all this - firstly, you have to make sure you continue to find the new, even if it's only new to you, and secondly, you should be willing to discover our own contemporary artists and composers with enough oomph so that whether their time comes now or not for another century and a half, they might believe that their commitment to their art will always have value.

Be open and show support.  Always helpful, no matter what the situation.

To Share Or Not To Share

Last week, Islay the Scotty and I were out on our ride-walk (I ride my geezer trike, and she trots alongside), and we ran into our neighbor out walking her beasties in the more traditional way.

She had just run into a couple of neighbors who, in the course of their conversation, discovered that their neighbor, once a Republican and morphed into a non-Republican. The neighbors were surprised and chose to pursue the matter - an unwise decision knowing my neighbor.

In summarizing this encounter nearly three weeks before the election, with heaven-knows-how-much-mud-yet-to-sling, my neighbor said,"You know, a lot of Republicans just don't like to share."

Now I know a great many extraordinarily generous Republicans, regardless of whatever other faults they might have, but I don't believe that she was necessarily talking about the sharing of money; instead, I think that she might have meant that they lack a generosity of spirit or of participating or collaborating.

But whatever she meant and whatever you might think of her observation, I was rather startled by it and will continue to think about for a long time after this particular election is over because the times in which we now find ourselves will require a much broader definition of generosity, and we shall all need to participate in helping each other through the difficulties which lie ahead for all of us, but more for some than for others.

What A Rotten Development This Is

For most of our lives, we've managed to ignore the fact that we live on a globe spinning in the infinity of space. The ground is what we care about...the firm, sometimes rocky, icy, muddy ground outside, along with the house to which we are tethered, our investments and retirement plans.

With the fiscal distress now travelling that globe of ours, nothing seems solid any more, and we shouldn't be surprised that neither candidate for President seems able to escape the bump and codswallop of politicalspeak to undertake an attempt at truth.

So what do we fall back on?

Well, we might start with each other and talk about how frightened we feel, how powerless we seem, how many there are occupying this boat heading for we know not what through very choppy waters. (I'm almost through with this metaphorical stuff, and I'm as glad as you are.)

I find nature consoling, and these days Islay the Scotty and I seem to be outside walking a bit more. Our new office location is close to White Bear Lake, and it's a pleasant stroll to the shore, past older homes and then back, pausing briefly at the Civil War Monument with its Union Soldier standing on top looking North.

On today's walk, we came upon a young maple, ablaze with color, and we stopped to admire Mother Nature's handiwork. This weekend, weather permitting, we shall be trying to reclaim a garden gone astray during the time when a bad hip kept my from doing much to maintain it.

This is a time for basics - contemplation, reflection, walks, working in the soil, admiring the journey through autumn, and a wee dram of decent whisky at the end of the day.

Like my parents and grandparents who survived the depression, we, too, will survive, and the best strategy seems to begin by getting a grip one one's self. Do that, and you can cope with the rest of it.

Mud, Mud, Inglorious Mud.....

Seven weeks to go in the Presidential campaign which resembles what some call "reality tv" far more than a campaign about differences in philosophy, values, goals, and that "vision" thing.

The first election I voted in was the Kennedy/Nixon battle in 1960. I read position papers, watched debates, talked extensively with my college mates, and voted for Kennedy. My mother was sympathetic - she'd voted for the socialist Norman Thomas in her first election in 1932; but I had an uncle who avoided me for a decade because of my vote.

In those days, we disagreed about matters of substance, not style. Oh, there was some concern about the flop sweat on Nixon's face during the first debate, but the black and white picture was so lousy, I expect a number of people never took note of it.

Jump forward to the present: Our discussion is about lipstick, bulldogs, pigs, and not much more profound than that. It's just a lot of mud-slinging, and it besmirches us all.

It appears we have become what we feared most - a people believing that life should be like a television program and note like the complicated, often subtle, screwed up mess it is most of the time around this globe of ours. Gray and grayer, not black and white.

Thrust, counter-thrust, throw the facts overboard, say anything to get the "edge,"win at all costs of truth, honesty, and what used to be the American way.

Thanks to the current administration, our constitution has been weakened, our faith in ourselves impaired, our trust diminished, our legislators incapable of working for the public good and finding ways to work together.

I've written this before, and damn, it fits again. Walt Kelly's Pogo once said, "We have met the enemy, and he is us."

Still true and oh, so sad. Seven weeks to pay attention, to read, to learn, and to discuss before casting the most important ballot of our lives.

This is a serious business, and we need to stop thinking and acting like twelve year olds and grow up - and that includes several of the candidates.

Or else....

Recycling

I'll confess that I just recent became a convert to recycling those damned plastic bags...don't know why it took me so long to get to it because I'd gotten pretty good with paper, cardboard, the right categories of plasticky things, and glass. I've never much liked plastic bags anyway, but the drudgery of collecting the newspaper bags and the shopping bags seemed more than I wanted to do.

And yes I have collected recyclable bags for the grocery stores, and they are quite useful when I remember to put them in the car. On the other hand, the carry bag I got from the Co-Op in Scotland which holds and keeps safe six wine bottles.

When I fall off my perch, I'd like my ashes to add to the earth in various locations in Minnesota, Scotland, and England. (Yes, I hear you thinking, "Well, finally he'll be of some use....")

Lee Hayes who sang with a wonderful folk group called "The Weavers" asked that his ashes be added to his compost heap, and I think that sounds appropriate and not very expensive.

But not for a while, I hope.

Out Of Gas

I just don't get it -  gas prices in the mid-three dollar range, and people driving pick-ups and SUVs are still driving like bats out of hell.  Maybe you can help me understand how the people who complain the most about the price of fuel seem to be the same ones burning it up at the fastest rate.

When I ordered my Prius hybrid four years ago, I got some kidding about waiting forty-nine weeks for it to arrive in my life.  Then I got more kidding about deviating from the great American commitment to burning petroleum and about the unlikelihood of my saving the planet with my environmentally friendly automobile.

And then the price of gas started to go up....and up.....and up.  The observations diminished, and at $3.50 or so a gallon for gas in these parts, I haven't heard anything for quite some time.

Now I wouldn't want you to think that I'm not proud of my 45-49 miles a gallon; I am, to the point that when I drive out of the gas station have expended twenty-five bucks or so, I can't bear to look at what that black Toyota Tundra truck or the Lincoln Navigator or the Cadillac Escalade might be paying to fill up a tank.  If I were to look, I might smirk as I drove by, and Heaven knows what the result of that might be.

The other day I read that some auto dealers were refusing trade-ins of SUVs, because they seem to believe they won't be able to sell them.  Probably going to happen with other of the giant gas guzzlers with which we share the road.

I got a hybrid because it seemed to me that the price of fuel could only go up.  The weakening dollar, pressure from other industrializing countries, the sense that the supply of petroleum is finite, and the dissatisfaction with our profligate attitude about life in general were also much in my thoughts.

In our area, we have been reluctant to invest in mass transit, but we expand our roadways at the drop of the proverbial chapeau.  We buy big vehicles for security, in spite of accumulating evidence that they are less safe than normal size autos, and we buy them because, at heart, we love playing the game of displaying our success in our home(s), auto(s),  fashionable attire, and such.

In our current economic swoon, we could do worse than remember how our our parents and grandparents fought their way through the Great Depression.  We do have an opportunity to return to the basics now, and we probably should.  The invoice for the five year war is in the mail, and when it shows up, we had better have own priorities clearly understood.

I've Never Been In This Situation Before

Since August of 1993, my business has been located on the second floor of what used to be a movie theatre - Richard Arliss's and Ken Murray's autographs still can be seen on concrete pavers near the front door. It's been a good building for us....nice neighbors, in the center of town (meaning near coffee and cookies), and a great landlord. Even Islay the Scotty who works as our Director of Security knows the way from the parking lot to the office door without thinking.

On Monday night, everything changed. I got a call from the landlord's daughter (he being out of the country just now); she said that one corner of the building had begun to collapse, probably because of some earth moving in the adjacent lot as part of building a new restaurant. In addition, cracks had appeared in the west wall.

The city had evacuated the building, padlocked all the doors, and put barricades everywhere possible, awaiting the recommendations of an engineer. He started Tuesday morning, and the plan was agreed to yesterday, so as I write this, the company shoring up the building is at work. Later today, perhaps, we'll be told whether we shall be granted "access," which means get your stuff out of the building and find another location, or we'll be entitled to "occupancy,' which means we can resume business as we had been doing it.

No matter what the outcome, I have learned a lot these last two days. The good news is that we have backed up our accounting files off-site, and they are current. Because much of our work is of the custom variety, that is done by the baton maker with whom we work from his shop, so that part of the business is OK.

The bad news is that we can't get to our computers, the checkbook, and the credit card processing machine. When I saw the building I implemented a back-up plan that I probably should have developed years ago. I have our name on some nearby space, I've figured out what we need to do with our phone calls, incoming orders,and I've stopped the mail.

A decision I am still unsure of is that I described our situation at the top of the web-site's home page. I'm not sure customers need to know all this, but since we're hamstrung for a few days, I thought they were entitled to know that. We're still receiving orders, so maybe my decision has been OK.

What I do appreciate, more than I might ever have known is that as an internet business, I have always operated from multiple locations - my home, internet cafés in the United Kingdom, my iPhone, and so on.

So the business has always had some redundancy...but for the moment not quite as much as I might like.

So keep a couple of company checks at home, make sure you have back-ups somewhere other than your office, and - if you have a moment - wish us luck. Right now, we could use a little.

The Annual Report

Along with taxes and Spring, this is also the season for those dreaded annual reports for corporations in which we happen to own some stock.  They seem to arrive in bunches, and when a half a dozen are in the pile, I take my morning cup of coffee and work my way through them.

And every damn one of them makes me mad as hell.

I spend a few minutes looking at the corporate accomplishments and the concomitant back slapping that goes on and then move directly to the proxy statement where I study the corporate and board compensation.  That's where and when my early morning blood pressure readings jump up.  How can Marvin/Marvella R. Leader get by on the half million in salary and the seventeen million dollar annual bonus?  Similarly, how can  members of board who are employed at vast expense by other big companies manage on the quarter of a million they get in cash and stock options for attending board and committee meetings?

But my favorite part of the proxy statement is the resolutions submitted by the company and by a small cadre of angry and frustrated shareholders.  I have no problem enabling the board types to fly and eat first class for another term, but I have a special and growing sympathy for those who want board members to be elected every year, who yearn for an advisory vote to be taken on executive compensation, who believe that the chair of the board should be a non-executive of the enterprise, and similar ideas which will not be supported by the huge pension and investment funds who seem to own most of the stock.

The most recent trick is to persuade you that to save the environment, you should get your annual report and proxy statement online, and I say to hell with that!  

The only day of the year a company is "mine" is the day of the annual meeting, and the rest of the year it belongs to all its corporate leaders struggling check to check, dividend to dividend, and option to option.  I want that information printed and mailed to me so that I can write exclamatory comments in the margins and eventually use the report to start a fire in the fireplace next autumn, so I can make my big black x in the boxes next to the shareholder proposals that will never succeed but serve as the only way to send a message, however modest, to  management.

And while I'm at it, do you think corporations will ever issue a press release with quotes from the senior Poobah which sound as though they came from a living, breathing member of our species?  Here's a sample based on my experience:  "Acme Widget is pleased to welcome Hartley Farquhar as our new chief executive officer.  He is uniquely qualified by his training and experience, and his broad perspective will enable Acme to negotiate these troubled times successfully."

Wouldn't you love reading something like, "Acme Widget is amazed and delighted that it was able to snag Hartley Farquhar from its bitter rival to replace its hard-living former chief executive officer who wanted to spend more time with his family, but the treatment center to which he has been committed does not allow that for at least six weeks.  Maybe Hartley will get us back on an even keel so that we can achieve the earnings we should have had every year since 2004."

Just once I'd like to read something like that...just once.

Wouldn't you?

A Departure in the Family

A member of the family departed yesterday - not of my own family but of our office family.

I had been present at the moment of death, in the company of an expert named Susan. When it was over, I looked around and realized that life had not paused, not even for a moment, at The Apple Store.

After years of faithful service, the heart of my iMac G5, the logic board, gave up the ghost, and as it was only marginally more expensive to buy a newer model, with sadness, I bought one and drove home with the new one in a box on the back seat and the old one, screen up, in the trunk, the remains covered with a blanket.

I really liked that computer...big screen with all the hardware located behind the screen so there was lots of space on the desk for my horizontal filing, and every morning when I walked into the office, I found just looking at that machine gave me pleasure. And then there was the work we did together - managing the web-site, improving product images before uploading them, thousands of emails in and out, screeds by the dozen, telephone calls via Skype, all the great desktop widgets keeping track of the weather in various places, the number of days before the next trip to Scotland, the ups and downs of the market...so many happy memories, even when it had to be adjusted to cope with some visual problems of mine before and after retinal surgery last summer....until the machine refused to boot up. The spinning wheel of the Mac would never stop spinning. Off to the Apple store and the terminal diagnosis (literally).

Last night I took the new one upstairs with some reluctance, unpacked it, set it up, and used Apple's Time Machine to make it exactly like the one standing forlornly in the front hall, waiting to be recycled or sold for parts. I was glad when the screen showed up, and everything looked familiar.

But in my heart of hearts, I knew that although the new one was faster, could leap tall mountains of data with ease, and might replace its predecessor in my heart, it would take time for the memories of the G5 to fade away.

There are those who believe that technology dominates our lives too much and erodes the importance of personal relationships, and I suppose that that view is more widely shared than you and I might think. So it's essential that we put the computer into sleep mode and engage the world directly and not via some sort of screen.

Take a walk, invite somebody over for tea, call up an old friend, argue with a relative about politics, watch the sun rise or set or the light of the moon on the new fallen snow.

While I have never fallen in love with an object (as one of the characters in "Boston Legal" has this season), I really enjoyed my late, great computer; it made me feel as I did decades ago when I owned an Austin Healey sports car. I had hair then, and tooling around in that machine was as much fun as exploring the world of the internet. I still miss that car, along with my first shortwave radio, my first KLH stereo, my first TV, and that Mac Classic with 64k of RAM (all I'd ever need).

Guess I'd better get in touch with the people at "Boston Legal," after I pay a proper farewell to the G5.

But then, maybe I just have. Goodbye, friend. Thanks for all you did.