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Showing posts from November, 2008

The End of the Carson Fruitcake Myth

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Grandmother Carson's Fruitcake For years my in-laws and my wife's other people have discussed in my presence their fond remembrances of a fruit cake made by Jennifer's mother's mother. I knew Grandmother Carson (or, as she is known in the family, GMC ). She was a strong, quiet woman, and an excellent cook. In the early years after Jennifer and I got married, we used to go down to Dothan , Alabama to visit GMC and have Thanksgiving there. Anyway, I never had GMC's fruitcake and all this talk about this fruitcake within my married extended family was as if they had all just eaten a piece last weekend. I accused both Jennifer and her mother recently of making the whole thing up. The damn cake never existed. So, Jennifer had her mother over here last weekend to make this mythical fruitcake. Now I know why they talked about this cake for two decades without having eaten it. It takes forever to make. There are so many ingredients but, essentially, there's no cake ab

A blossom from the Withered Tree

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The Withered Tree in the Court of the Fountain at Minas Tirith Over the past three weekends my daughter and I have watched the three extended versions of The Lord of the Rings movies . From beginning to end the single film runs about 11.5 hours, so it requires quite an investment in couch potato time. No problem for my daughter. She loves television and visual arts in general. Nor do I mind being entertained by Peter Jackson's rather apt interpretation of this Tolkien masterpiece. Seeing how important Tolkien is to me, I think watching these films once every couple of years is reasonable. The books are better though. I was introduced to Tolkien when I was 16 by a fellow high school student. I read the novels (including The Hobbit , the prequel written in the style of a children's story) eagerly. This was also about the same time I discovered Henry David Thoreau . So, all of this coalesced in my fervent young mind as an expanded way of looking at the world. My sense of wonder di

Eating Bambi and the Attack of the Heat Monster

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It was 16 degrees this morning. Cold for November. Perfect for venison though. We love to eat deer in various cuts, served in lions or stews. But, last year no one got us one and our freezer ran out before last spring. A neighbor shot one for us in the cold early this morning near our house. Sybil, an elderly lady of some spunk who lives infested with dogs about 1/4 of a mile away, called this morning. She got my wife. "Jennifer do you want this doe?" she shot out of the blue without bothering to say "hello." "Well, yes we do." Some good eating for later this winter. Very dry conditions. The humidity is usually between 25% and 30%. We haven't had rain in weeks (again). The drought drags on. What we have are arid conditions. Lots of bright sunny days. Few days with clouds. It almost to into the 80's in October several days and droppedinto the 40's at night under bright, starry skies. Today is a typical day for this fall. Another 40 degree diffe

Henceforth, I dub thee The Great Recession

On December 21, 2007, Diana Furchtgott-Roth , the former chief economist for the U.S. Department of Labor (2003-2005) wrote in The American : "On balance, it is not likely that the United States will experience a recession in 2008. Most economic forecasters expect growth to continue in the 2.5 percent range." No one knows. Today the Dow and the Transports both plunged through their October lows. According to Dow Theory (see Nov. 12 post) things are now likely to get much worse for the stock market. The Dow closed down 427 points to 7997.28. The Transportation Index fell an ominous 8% to 3141.52. I going to go out on a limb and say that this is no ordinary "recession". This is the beginning of The Great Recession. And we better hope it is nothing more. I googled "the great recession" and hardly anything comes up. Google thinks I mean "the Great Depression". No one seems to think this recession is particularly "great". But, really, don

The Intimate Fritz

I have read the writings of Fredrich Nietzsche since my college days. Like Tolkien and Thoreau , Nietzsche has been a lifelong pursuit. Today, I finished rereading (been doing a lot of rereading lately) Lesley Chamberlain’s excellent biography “ Nietzsche in Turin: An Intimate Biography .” I have several biographies on Fritz the human being, a few others on Fritz’s life as the great philosopher. It is sometimes impossible to separate the man from his writings, but there was a life being lived as the thoughts were being written. A great example is Nietzsche and his umbrellas. Chamberlain’s biography is the only one in my rather healthy Nietzsche collection that mentions this “intimate” detail. This short quote regards a young boy named Zuan who played pranks on Fritz: “Rain or shine, Nietzsche never went out without a red umbrella to shield his afflicted eyes from the light. Over the years other witnesses recalled a grey umbrella and a yellow one. Lou Salome remembered his putting a r

Of Free TV and the Confederate Flag

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I think our new high definition antennae looks like something from a 1950’s sci- fi flick. So cool. We can get the Braves games on it out of Atlanta along with about 25 other channels when it faces south. If I turn it north (which I do by hand, who needs a rotary?) we get the Chattanooga stations, about a dozen or so more facing that way. We paid about $120 for the antennae. From now on the TV is free, though. Just as it was when I was a kid. We get ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, PBS and a bunch of minor free networks. What we don’t get are hundreds of channels...or a monthly bill. As I mentioned before, I only follow a few TV shows anyway. The Glass Teat is best kept on a short leash, else we be amused to death . Our teenage daughter thinks we are cave dwellers in a dark age. She knows no one besides herself who doesn ’t have pay TV. Tough. The retro-look of the antennae goes well with my Confederate flag for some reason. They are both symbols of defiance in their own ways. For the record, I fl

Things that make you go hmmm...

An amazing day on Wall Street. With volatility high, both the Dow and the Transports actually broke through their respective support levels to new lows around 1 p.m. Then things took a decisively bullish turn for the afternoon and the Dow shot up like a rocket from a intra-day low of 7965.42 to close at 8835.25. An astonishing 870 point rise in three hours! Ditto the Transports. From 3312.31 to 3692.57 after 1 p.m. Since yesterday's post concerned Dow Theory, I might point out that according to that theory market action is only valid at the close of the day . Action inside the day (or intra-day action) is meaningless. So the fact that the lows were broken before the dramatic rise means nothing in Dow Theory. Perhaps Jack Schannep is right after all. Happy days are here again?? For the time being, we have backed away from some seriously bad market technical indicators. The VIX remains very high, however, closing at 59.83. Which means more wild up and down swings are possible. All

We can't afford a tomorrow like today

Inadvertently, as luck would have it, I chose a historic time to start a blog. In coming years, perhaps, it is not the election of a black man as an American president that will seem "historic." It might well be the economy. The CEO of Merrill Lynch comparing 2008 with 1929 ? General Motors near bankruptcy ? Best Buy warning of " seismic " changes in consumer spending ? All this in the midst of an unprecedented credit crisis, in the midst of sharply rising unemployment , in the midst of radically lower commodity prices and general deflation . Never in my lifetime has so much so bad amassed so suddenly. I am smart enough to know that NO ONE KNOWS what the stock market will do. No one. But, I have my favorites in terms of ways of looking at things. My favorite economic prognostication flavor is known as Dow Theory . As of today two particulars of Dow Theory are prominently in play. First, in a declining market the most recent lowest lows at the market close for the D

"Thank you, Mr. President-Elect"

Obama held his first press conference today. It was outstanding. Certainly commendable to history. I was particularly impressed with how he "passed" on the follow-up question concerning if he'd learned anything that "gave him pause" during initial high-level security briefings. I was impressed when he described himself as a "mutt" and when he responded to an apparently French reporter as Obama walked off mic at the end with a " bon jour ." It is (potentially) a new world order conducted in a very "presidential" fashion. What most impressed me were the people standing behind Obama at the conference. The List... Standing Order From Right to Left: William Daley - Chairman of the Midwest, JP Morgan Chase; Former Secretary, U.S. Dept of Commerce, 1997-2000 Robert Reich - University of California, Berkeley; Former Secretary, U.S. Dept of Labor, 1993-1997 Penny Pritzker - CEO, Classic Residence by Hyatt Roger Ferguson - President and CEO

Reading, Proust (Again)

A few nights ago I finished re-reading Marcel Proust's lengthy novel In Search of Lost Time . I am a rather obsessive person and that comes in handy when it comes to Proust. The novel, depending on which translation you read, is well over 3,000 pages long (the edition I just finished was over 3,500 pages). There is a joke about the work that describes it as thousands of pages in which virtually nothing happens. True enough, it can be a tedious read at times. There is one section, for example, that runs on for roughly 250 pages detailing the happenings at a single afternoon party among aristocrats in late 19 th century French society. It is actually quite funny, but you can understand why some readers find it so laborious. In fact, most people who attempt to read Proust the first time fail miserably to make it through more than the first few pages. His sentences seem perpetual. His thought process is winding and twisting and seems to go nowhere at all - or, perhaps more accurately,