Better to Be Lucky Than Smart

My brother always says it's better to be lucky than smart. So my neighborhood dodged Irene's bullet last night. My building never lost power or water, which is good for me because the bathtub-full-of-water trick didn't work. I should have checked the plug, which apparently was designed only to stop the water from draining long enough to let someone take a bath. The tub was bone dry this morning.

Anyway, I took my copy of Barron's to the Tastee Diner this morning. (I had a pocket full of quarters in case the Washington Post's delivery person made it to my building; no surprises, she/he didn't.)

Barron's isn't something I normally read on my own, but I got a gift subscription from a friend with points of some kind. Anyway, I normally can't decipher my way past the front editorial, but this week's Streetwise piece by Jacqueline Doherty, "Prospering in a Weak Economy," contained some interesting perspective.

Citing analyst Craig Moffett of Bernstein Research and the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics, Doherty notes that unemployment is only 4% for Americans with college degrees and 14% for those with only high-school diplomas. Moffett concludes that 40% of Americans have no discretionary income.

What does this mean to Barron's readers? I.e., well-educated people with money to invest? There is growth in companies that provide services to below-poverty consumers.

"One area that's growing: those servicing cellphone subscribers below the poverty line who receive government subsidies," writes Doherty. "Moffett recommends MetroPCS Communications (PCS), which saw its shares tumble from north of 18 to a recent 10.67."

I interpret this as advising rich people how to further exploit the poor. Well, the poor don't have a lot of leverage, but they can learn the same lessons (even if they don't read Barron's.)

Not that anybody should take advice from me, especially when it comes to choosing between satellite TV service and "a third meal." But maybe there could be a way to turn the tables on the exploiters: save for shares in Disney instead of saving for a Disney vacation, or give up Happy Meals for a year to open an education Roth IRA with McDonald's shares (reinvesting the dividends, of course). In other words, invest in what you'd normally buy. The rich guys are.

(Disclosure: I own Ford's shares; and I've been a Ford-vehicle owner since 1982. Okay, so it's only three vehicles in 30 years, and it's only 200 shares. In me, Ford's may not have a frequent buyer, but it has long-term customer loyalty.)

I've known for awhile that my capital was worth more than my labor, even in a down economy (and a down market). The jobs that are gone are not coming back; employers have outsourced or automated them.

Back in the early 1980s, one of THE FUTURIST's authors wrote that we should all own robots not so they'll do our work for us, but so we can live off the income they generate when we sell or license them to do other people's work. Applying that same principle generally, I figured the only way to beat the rising costs of gasoline and health-insurance premiums was to own stock in energy and health companies (and since I'm not smart enough to pick those companies, I let the mutual-funds managers do that work).

This might be my most blindly ignorant blog ever. I am entirely too uninformed, lazy, and risk averse to write on this subject. I have no mortgage or college tuition to worry about, as most people do. Anyway, it just rankled me to see how already-rich people are being advised how to profit from the already-exploited.

Last piece of ignorant advice for anyone who can't start saving or investing. The trick my mom gave me before I had enough to even open an IRA was to pretend to save. She subtracted $20 from her checking account (every week? every month?) and recorded the amount in the back of her checkbook. The money was still in her account, but if she didn't see it she didn't spend it. Eventually she saved enough for whatever she needed it for.

I did the same and managed to get enough for an IRA. My arbitrary goal was to match my rent in monthly savings. I did it for about two years, and it got me enough to actually begin investing for real.

Not all the water is in the same bathtub. Thanks to inheriting my Dad's credit union account, some of my water is in a different, less-leaky tub than the stock market. So hopefully I'll never run completely dry--or get completely soaked.

Love, hosaa
A little smart, a little lucky.

Good morning, Apocalypse!

There's the old joke among survivalists in the woods: You don't need to outrun the bear. You just need to outrun your buddy.

I'm a little too late to outrun the hurricane heading our way in about 12 hours or so. I know I can get as far as Kalamazoo in a day with clear roads, but people who had the same idea would already be on the roads by now.

I've read the sites telling you what you should have on hand, what should be in your emergency kit. How to survive with no modern conveniences or public services for at least five days. My biggest problem will probably be water, not because I can't fill up some bottles and jugs in advance, but because I don't have bottles or jugs.

You see, I've been de-cluttering lately, and among the first things to get cleaned out were the two very dusty "go" bags of emergency provisions that I prepared in 2001. That wasn't because of 9/11 but because of the anthrax scare here that immediately followed. I thought I was preparing myself to flee through the woods.

Anyway, the batteries and protein bars all expired in 2002. The blue jeans don't fit anymore. The toiletries, well, truth be known, I no longer require all those packs of feminine hygiene products. (Yay, me!)

The containers of water wouldn't have been fresh even if they hadn't cracked open and leaked. I'm not sure what I did with the Brita bottle. I never read the instructions anyway.

The transistor radio doesn't work. It wasn't just because the 9v batteries I tried to use were dead, but there was a wire loose.

I was trying to remember why I needed a radio anyway. Am I going to sit up all night with news announcers telling me I'm in a hurricane and I should take all necessary precautions? I live in an apartment building that is usually pretty security-conscious, so if they need to evacuate us, they'll notify us in the form of a very loud alarm bell. So I plan to sleep in my clothes, and maybe in my closet (away from my one big north-facing window). I think I'll be fine.

Since I was up early this morning and still wanted to scout around for at least a can opener (hee! The non-electric can opener disappeared several years ago when a neighbor wanted to borrow it; I said to keep it, I have an electric one). The Giant was open, of course, when I got there at 7:30 a.m. I got some fruit that wouldn't need refrigeration. I already have peanut butter.

I really don't plan to cook a Thanksgiving meal on votive candles, but I got an extra candle anyway for the light. All that they sold were those smelly ones, so I got a green one, fir-tree scented, which will no doubt send me out into the streets in search of fresh air as soon as the aroma clouds my thinking in this tiny apartment.

My neighbors are out jogging as usual, the earnest middle-aged ladies and their former-Marine drill sergeant coaches. Dogs are being walked. The hardware store was the only sign of panic, and the good men and women of Strosniders took it all in stride. Plenty of D cells, which I picked up for my old boom box. I couldn't find any new transistor radios to replace my broken one, so I snatched one of the Red Cross emergency crank-ups. Has lights and sirens, too, oh boy! I didn't know it was over a hundred bucks till I got to the cash register. Sigh.

It's sultry out, and the wind is picking up. The restaurants have not secured their outdoor tables and chairs, I suppose because they're expecting business as usual before the storm. It's Saturday. It's business.

I give the disaster-preparation award on our street to the Apple Store, boarded up but open for business.



As for the bear of the storm, well, I doubt I'd be able to outrun it, pudgy couch potato that I am. When Mom and I went to Alaska and were advised to make a lot of noise if we encountered a bear, I joked that I could go into the Gershwin songbook. Without water, I may have to sing for a sip.

There's a somebody I'm longing to see,
I hope that he turns out to be
Someone who'll watch over me....

Love, hosaa,
anticipating apocalypse

Artificial Reality

The 10-block walk from home to office leaves my head open to many random ideas and reflections, which I sometimes think (probably erroneously) would make good blog posts. One reason that I don't bore people with too many of these trivial thoughts is that I don't remember them.

Anyway, I did think briefly about the two paintings in the lobby of my apartment building. In their last round of redecoration, our building's owners made the lobby look like a bank, with plush settees and marble (maybe)-topped little tables underneath big oil (maybe) paintings of the sort you find advertised on late night TV, with starving artists' work at wholesale prices to meet your decorating needs.

The painting on the left is a still life of flowers, and it hangs above a faux (probably)-marble table with a bouquet of artificial flowers. The painting on the right is a similar still life, with flowers but featuring two large urns or vases; it hangs over a table with two large urns or vases.

So I left my lobby observing fake art of real flowers accompanied by fake flowers, along with fake art of real vases accompanied by real vases of questionable value (though reflecting a banker's taste for high-class stuff).

I think I would have felt more comfortable with this arrangement if the real fake vases were parked under the fake real flowers painting and the real fake flowers were parked under the fake real vases painting.

But then I would have had nothing to confuse myself with for the (real) 10-block walk to work.

love, hosaa
really real

eta, I would have taken pictures, but I forgot. ;-)

Rocked Ages

Back from Rock of Ages at the National Theatre, and what turns out to have been the second to last show of the current U.S. tour, starring Constantine Maroulis.

Footnote: Constantine from Season Four of American Idol was one I'd predicted would win and, that very week, was eliminated at number six. That was the year Carrie Underwood conquered the world.

I'm not going to try to review a show that is so outside of my genre, especially one that is closing in a few hours anyway, but as is my custom, I like to give my singular perspective as a member of the audience. (Hello from the balcony!)

Rock of Ages is loud, energetic, and entertaining. The fact that I came home with a headache I blame more on Metro, whose hot weekend delays left me without the opportunity to grab a burger before the show. But the rest of the audience was appropriately responsive, even if it was a Sunday matinee. (Edward Duke told me they were always the worst houses.)

Right off, one thing about the plot (and yes, it was cartoonish and breaking the fourth wall-ish like Spamalot) bugged the hell out of me, but through no fault of the show itself. It just so happens that I saw this show about reveling in the rocker lifestyle on the same weekend that singer Amy Winehouse was found dead at the age of 27. The addictions and seedy dissipation were comical in the show, but as a matter of fact it's just not something I can laugh at.

The music is of my generation, my age, though it's not my music. Set in the Reagan era, ROA seemed more like the 1960s nostalgia version of Rock, with scruffy hippy stylings for most of the rockers. Glitter made its way into the rock aesthetic, as did boy-band sell-out. In the eighties, what did I listen to? After a year of grad school and NPR, I mainly switched to all jazz and classical. I knew who Madonna and Michael Jackson were, but that was about it.

What surprised me about this show was that even I recognized a few of the tunes: I thought using "covers" was taboo for Broadway musicals, even if they are about rock of a certain vintage. The one that of course stuck out the most for me was "I Want to Know What Love Is," which was a duet on Clay Aiken's 2006 album, A Thousand Different Ways.

So we're left with a Broadway show about rock, and how is rock used in this context? When rock was born, it was used as a medium of protest. In the ROA plot, protest is used to save the rock lifestyle on seedy Sunset Boulevard from a fate worse than stripper clubs: strip mall development.

Well, whatever dude. I didn't buy it. This isn't John Lennon's protest or Dylan's.

Still, the good natured plot brought happy endings to the ridiculous but lovable characters. What the protests really were protecting were the right to keep dreaming your dreams: "Don't Stop Believing." I just wish that message were enough. Unfortunately, as attested by Amy Winehouse's death (and name any other horrific tragedy of our time, manmade and otherwise) we need something worth believing in, too.

love, hosaa
rocking out in her own contrarian way

The Plot(s) at Ford's

Back from a very interesting mini-symposium at Ford's Theatre, "Lincoln Assassination Conspiracies." Tonight's event was apparently part of a series sponsored by the Spy Museum.

The three speakers were:

Michael W. Kauffman, author of American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies.

H. Donald Winkler, author of Lincoln and Booth: More Light on the Conspiracy.

Frank J. Williams, retired chief justice of the Supreme Court of Rhode Island and author of several books on Lincoln, including an anthology of essays, Judging Lincoln.

Since I am not well versed in this subject--Civil War espionage generally and the life of John Wilkes Booth specifically--all of it was new and interesting. I thought Winkler in particular made a compelling case for the role of the Confederate government in setting the mechanisms in motion that led to April 14, 1865, assassination of Lincoln.

He also said that the revelations leading to some of his conclusions are of relatively recent origins, emerging from groundbreaking scholarship in the 1980s. The point was that we will always keep learning new things, though we may never attain all the answers to our questions. (Why did Booth only have a single-shot pistol and a dagger that night? How did he know Lincoln would be virtually unguarded? And why was Lincoln virtually unguarded?)

What was interesting to me was that the theater was about 85% full (at least the orchestra section) for a weeknight lecture. The knowledgeable and appreciative audience of history buffs flashed pictures all evening, and at the end several stood to ask questions. And they sometimes even left the guest experts stumped for an answer.

I don't know, it's a bit comforting I guess. The present is confusing. The future is confusing. The past is still confusing, too. Our ongoing need for answers drives the quest for questions. Asking is therefore more important than answering.

Love, hosaa
wondering

Leadership, Legacies, and Shakespeare

The books on leadership will tell you that the best time to think about your legacy is at the beginning of your tenure at the top. Another good time is right before you squander it with misbehavior, but that's not my subject today.

I was recently asked to take the reins of a small, venerable little organization, whose dedicated membership had dwindled to a handful of enthusiasts: The Shakespeare Readers.

Begun in the 1980s by a pastor as an activity for his intellectually hungry congregation, the group met twice a month in the church basement to read one entire Shakespeare play aloud. As this very informal group evolved and changed leadership in the 1990s, the "rules" and "privileges" of membership clarified.

When the pastor handed the leadership over to the next volunteers, the group named itself "The Washington Shakespeare Reading Group" (WSRG), a schedule of readings was circulated, a formula was created for assigning parts to give equal numbers of lines to all who chose to attend, and ads were placed in the local newspapers to boost membership. (That's about when I joined the group. I made the T-shirts.)




For about a dozen years, that's how things were done. Membership grew, peaked, and began dwindling. Life happens, as does death. Leadership passed to the next volunteer, but the legacy of the incumbent could not be conveyed. For whatever reason, the church could no longer provide the free, comfortable basement classroom as a space for the Shakespeare fans, most of whom now were not also members of the congregation. There was no longer a relationship to build on.

The new leader also wanted to introduce changes to the formula: Rather than being assigned parts in each scene, readers would take lines in turn as the play moved around the table. She was then advised by the incumbent, who wanted to protect her own legacy, to come up with another name for the group.

"Shakespeare Readers" was born, and the process of finding free, comfortable space and a universally agreeable monthly day and time for the readings became a challenge. Montgomery County libraries wanted money for their spaces, but D.C. libraries welcomed the group for free on Sundays until municipal funding ran dry. Then the American University library offered space, and the Readers could read again.




I tell this tale because this spring, as the youngest still-somewhat-actively participating Reader, I was handed an envelope of contact information (i.e., mailing addresses and telephone numbers) for all individuals who had attended the Shakespeare readings since the days of the pastor and his basement congregations. The resigning leader wanted to spend more time with her grandchildren.

It is a coincidence that this "greatness" was thrust upon me at about the same time I became the editor of THE FUTURIST. So I needed to apply some of the lessons of leadership I'd already begun absorbing.

The leader's legacy matters to the members as much as to the individual who is stepping aside. What matters most to this group are the relationships it established with each other and with hosting organizations, such as the churches and libraries. And one of the most important relationships was with our local royalty, the Shakespeare Theatre Company, which grew from a personal connection established early on by the WSRG leader and allowed our group to attend invited dress rehearsals. This would be our most significant (but unadvertised) membership benefit.

Another lesson is to embrace new ways of doing things, even if they're a bit outside of one's comfort zone. Advertising in local newspapers or library bulletin boards just wasn't going to cut it. I found MeetUp and quite a few local Shakespeare fans who were as eager for intellectual stimulation and the opportunity to use their voices as the pastor's congregation was a quarter-century ago. I was told by several of these "Shakespeare Explorers" that they would have joined our group many years ago if they knew we existed, but we couldn't be found on the Internet. So that will have to change.

While I was congratulating myself on finding a new source of members (and new opportunities for Shakespeare-related activities), the WSRG leader gave me a call to express concern for our group's integrity. I knew she meant her legacy. Did what she had built up and leave behind matter to anyone but herself? Of course it did. I reassured her that I was not leaving our Readers behind, and that I was not preparing a merger with this new group.

With the support of two previous Reader leaders, and the influx of new ideas and energy from the Explorers, I think I have a pretty good head-start on a legacy. Shakespeare inspires us both to use our voices and to listen to each other. Leaders need to do both--often at the same time.

Wishing Us Love

Back from I Wish You Love at the Kennedy Center, which plays for just one more night. I find I dislike Saturday night crowds, but I enjoyed participating in the rousing and well-deserved standing ovation for the small but gifted ensemble portraying Nat King Cole, two of his bandsmen--his "people"--and the characters behind the scenes of Cole's late 1950s television series.



Dennis W. Spears portrayed Cole, and if there were a dictionary entry for the term "shit-eating grin," you would find an image of Spears as Nat "King" Cole preparing his face and demeanor for the viewers out there in TV-land. An array of studio monitors orbiting the set depicted the show in a remembered black-and-white reality distinctly different from the live, full-bodied presence on the stage. In the breaks during the show, the monitors silently offered the program sponsors' black-and-white (rather, all-white) view of the American consumer.

For the honor of being rich in white America, Cole had to be the package of an acceptable black man, and this meant jumping through a series of fiery hoops, including playing a tour date in Alabama in 1957. He and his people were attacked not just by the KKK but also by the police. Upon returning to the studio and encountering the demand of the sponsors to segregate his own band, Cole finally refused. On his last aired program (in this fictional account, which I can only speculate is based on truth), Cole displays a sign he picked up from his travel South: "We Serve Coloreds ... Take Out Only."

Battles fought decades ago are still being fought, not just by one group of people robbed of its dignity, but also by others. The day after the anniversary of Edward Duke's birthday, he is much on my mind. He died in 1994 when it was almost impossible for an openly gay actor to get work as a leading man.

Before he came out of the closet, Rupert Everett got a lot of the roles that Edward would have been up for, I think. (The role that made him famous was the one most stereotypically gay, as Julia Roberts's confidante in My Best Friend's Wedding.)

Most of the bullying and hatred aimed at people like Clay Aiken may be because he wasn't open and (in my opinion) didn't conform to the stereotypes that straight America wanted. If you're queer, you should act queer, like those gays on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Entertain us with your swishy nonchalance, and don't confuse us by acting--you know--normal.

I always hated that show, and now I sort of understand why. Not for any "shit-eating-grin" behaviors depicted by the individuals participating in it, but for the attitude of my friends who loved the show so much. Why would they love those gays and not Clay? And why would my family love seeing Edward do his "Jeeves" tales but not want to hear one word about his "unhealthy lifestyle"?

I want everyone to be happy. I want the world to be beautiful. I want to wish it love, too.

love, hosaa
wishing for love