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.

Christmas 2007

As we look around us at the end of this year, one is tempted to succumb to a sense of bleakness - war, an unsettled economy, expensive energy, a divisive political life in our country, along with an endless presidential campaign, the increasing impact of changes in our global climate, religious fanaticism, corporate greed, our inability to deal effectively with hurricane, fire, earthquake, and flood, not to mention our national and personal debts.

Beyond all this, we appear to be a country more intrigued with the contemporary equivalent of the "bread and circuses" of Roman times - reality tv, sports, and retail therapy - than with our political life, with the values we want to convey to those walking behind us, and with finding a sense of hope out of the contemporary chaos. That's a complicated sentence, and I apologize for it, but these are complicated times.

Yet there is much in the streams of our lives to value and be grateful for - people and institutions who sustain the people around them in so many ways, those who contribute to the mitigation of catastrophe, those who pause long enough in the tempest of daily life to say, "Thank you," and the adventurous souls who continue to to try to create a better future for all of us through their thought and imagination.

A few years ago, I found my interest in the Christmas of commercial world diminishing in a significant way, to the extent that even on my company's web-site, it is not often mentioned - we ship around the world, and there are so many different (and worthy) traditions out there, I thought it would be foolhardy to try to mention them all or to put one in front of another. So about all you find on our web-site is something about closing for our Christmas break, which is what it is.

What buying I do is done in the small town where I live and occasionally on-line. Nowadays my sisters and I exchange cookies, balsam wreaths, fruitcake, what our mother used to call tokens. How right she was. These are just modest indications of a valuable and loving relationship, and that is sufficient unto the day.

I have told you this story before, but in case you missed it.....Some years ago I was in Cambridge, England, for the annual Christmas Eve presentation of "A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols," from the Chapel of King's College Cambridge (more details about the radio broadcast below). A few days before the service, I ran into the Dean in the Chapel, and during our conversation I said I was surprised that the chapel looked as it did at other times of the year when I had visited - beyond the glories of the building's fabric and glass, there was no hint of the Christmas season - or put simply, what I had become accustomed to in my own country. He sought details, and I said that in the USA, churches are decorated with poinsettias, wreaths, pine trees, ribbons, and so on.

He looked at me kindly and said, "Here, we believe that Christmas is in the heart."

Although I felt about an inch tall after taking onboard what he'd said, I knew instantly, to the marrow of my bones, that he was right, and that one sentence has for many years kept me from toppling into the abyss, you know, the one where we mistake the giving of stuff for the gift of love. It was a great thing the Dean bestowed on me, and during every Christmastide since, I have been exceeding glad of it.

And so at this time I turn inward and try to contemplate anew the simple story which has been a part of my life since I can remember...about a man and his wife travelling home to be taxed, and the birth of a son whose life was to affect much of the world. The words and the music surrounding the story lift up my spirit and sustain me through all the distractions.

On Christmas Day morning, I pour myself a large cup of coffee, sit in my favorite chair, lift Islay the scotty up and put her on my lap. Then we look out to the lake and one of us remembers the Christmases past and feels sustained by memory, love, and the knowledge that if Christmas is not in the heart, it cannot truly be Christmas. The other keeps an eye out for squirrels with full knowledge that any chase will be futile, no matter what. Both perspectives are appropriate and worthy.

To you and yours, Islay and I wish you a happy and contented season celebration of your choice.

Nick Nash