The Week of my Birthday

At sundown tonight, the week of my birthday is over. My seven days of extra slack, undue deference, and undeserved favor will be over. Tomorrow morning I will be a normal, everyday, run of the mill 65 year old. Later in the week there will be tests and doctor’s appointments where I will discover what—if anything—is wrong with my heart. After that I will return to being the loud mouthed, opinionated, sarcastic crank I’ve always been…I hope.

Here’s the girl who made my week so very special. She’s been the brain to my brawn for almost 40 years now. Her presence in my life has softened my roughest edges, and brought out the very best in me. It has so often been her wise second thoughts that have managed to redeem my ill-conceived first thoughts. It has been her calm cool head that has tempered my hot headed overreactions. Her grace and elegance have rubbed off on me enough to make me mostly presentable in mixed company for the better part of four decades. 

This picture  reminds me of an old expression that I truly hate…behind every successful man is a good woman. That’s the biggest load of crap I’ve ever heard. Although she might be behind me in this sunset-kissed photograph, she has been by my side in every good thing I’ve ever managed to accomplish. The only time she’s ever behind me is when we are shopping…’cause she walks so blasted slow. But she’s no quiet little woman toiling in the shadows. I hate that idea. Half the time I’ve followed her lead. No…she’s my full and equal life partner, and I would be lost without her.

Our Trip to Cozumel…Part I

The American Airlines jet pulled away from the terminal at 7:05 in the morning destined for Dallas, Texas. I had managed to wedge myself into the middle seat of row 25, while Pam sat in her cramped middle seat on row 33. This was just one of the many new twists in air travel I was about to learn flying for the first time since COVID—when flying in “basic economy” being married does not guarantee you a seat next to your beloved. The second twist made itself known a few minutes later when the pilot came on the intercom with news that the flight path was being changed for unknown reasons and there would be a delay while everything got sorted out. And hour and twenty minutes later while still motionless on the tarmac at RIC, the pilot announced that we were free to proceed and that he would do his best to make up for lost time while aloft. Unfortunately for the bewildered couple from Short Pump, the delay cost us any chance of making our connecting flight into Cozumel. By the time we landed in Mexico, my body had to be painfully unfolded like a rusty pocket knife. A fellow passenger informed me that AA had refitted their planes a while back to make them even less comfortable for normal sized humans. Sweet.

Perhaps United Airlines would be an improvement, I thought as we settled in for our return flight from Cozumel six days later. For starters, our jet was an Airbus and gone were the pigmy seats. I had the legroom of old and was sitting on the aisle along side Pam. All would be well. Alas, a series of unfortunate circumstances conspired against us, turning what was supposed to be a 7 hour trip into a 14 and a half hour odyssey. My back of the envelope calculations inform me that on our two voyages to Cozumel and back we spent a total of 10 hours and fifteen minutes in the air and another 13 hours being buffeted about from one interminable line to another trying to make sense of a steady stream of screens, flashing lights, an impossible to understand signs pointing us forward, backwards and sideways. In the midst of one particularly Byzantine cattle call Pam says to me, “Question: would you rather fly to Cozumel or drive up 95 to Maine?” We smiled at each other. 

But, how was the actual trip, you ask?

Wonderful.

Whenever you travel somewhere then get home and start looking at all the pictures you took, you realize that photography is very hit and miss. Pictures distill your memories into frozen, one-dimensional images which you are glad to have but just don’t quite communicate what you were hoping to capture. So the best you can do is pick out the best of the lot and offer context which is what I will now attempt to do.

For most of our time at The Occidental this was our vantage point—the dwindling beach on the Caribbean Sea, the body of water that separates Cozumel Island from the mainland of Mexico and the Yucatán Peninsula. By the time we left some of the palm trees were holding on for dear life as the rough seas battered them relentlessly the last two days.

While most of the guests preferred the pool that was just beyond the stone wall behind us, we loved our spot just feet from the crashing waves. The place had a magnetic pull on us all week.

The resort seemed to have been cut very delicately out of the jungle. Each walkway was surrounded on all sides by thick vegetation including this bunch of bananas we passed under on our way to breakfast every morning.

Pam and I discovered that we very much like the all-inclusive concept whereby you can eat and drink anything your heart desires, anytime you want. This is especially nice when the view from your table looks like this…

Another advantage to resort living is the fact that every single time you leave your room in the morning, you return to a beautifully clean and freshly made bed. If only the help around here was as efficient.

While this tiny little patio might not look like much, it came with the advantage of jungle-insured privacy and a near constant delightful breeze…

On one of the rare occasions when we managed to pull ourselves away from the beach, there was a rented Jeep involved. With it we decided to explore the east side of the Island where there exists no electricity and no indoor plumbing, but lots of great shacks serving adult beverages and native cuisine, not to mention breathtaking scenery of rocky beaches. They were right about the shacks and the breathtaking scenery…

This blog has gotten a bit long, so I will wrap it up here and finish the rest of the story another time. Bottom line is that we had a great time just being together in a beautiful place with nothing to do.

Ashamed

Its been less than 24 hours since the school shooting in Nashville. There aren’t enough facts to make definitive and informed statements. We don’t know what was in the mind of the shooter yet. We don’t know very much about the victims. We see snippets of information, some family photographs. More will be known by the end of this day, still more by the end of the week. I have no profound insights to add. My thoughts on the subject at present are driven by emotion. I would rather wait until more is known before commenting, when the blood isn’t running so hot.

But there’s this…

Pay particular attention to the fine print at the bottom of this ghastly map. This is the United States of America in the first 86 days of this year. I would think that this map would be an abomination if it was for the last five years. But this is us…in less than three months.

Maybe the only other place on the planet that can compete with us at the moment would be Ukraine. This is what American Exceptionalism has come to mean for many people around the world. We’re the place where mentally disturbed people armed to the teeth with powerful weapons walk into schools and start killing kids. This is our unique story. There isn’t another civilized nation on Earth with numbers like this…

This chart includes only shootings where at least 6 are killed and covers the twenty years between 1999 and 2019.

Whenever something like this happens I hear people say, “There are no words…” Although, I understand what they are trying to say, I disagree with the sentiment. Actually, there are lots of words. Words like, ashamed, furious, sad, horrified, failure.

But right now? Mostly…ashamed.

Lucy To The Rescue

Lucy is 8 years old now, but she still loves to catch the frisbee from me out in the back yard. I’ve thrown it to her so many times every throw is pretty much perfect, just like she likes it, up high coming in from right to left at a 45 degree angle. She always times her leap so she can catch it as far from the ground as her springy back legs will launch her. It is a very graceful thing to behold. But…she’s 8 years old now. A few days ago she leapt athletically into the air, grabbed hold of the frisbee tight in her teeth, but landed awkwardly. When running back to me she stopped half way and let the frisbee drop to the ground, signaling that she was through. Later that evening she developed a noticeable limp. She has been limping ever since. I have felt every inch of the leg from her paw pads to her shoulder and she never winces, never offers any protest, and yet I have to carry her down the stairs, the limp getting worse almost each day. My worthless vet can’t see her until this coming Tuesday, although I am on the cancellation list. 

Then this afternoon we began to notice an improvement in her limp, not as pronounced as before. Unfortunately she has developed a very rare case of diarrhea. Poor girl had an even more rare inside accident, thankfully on one of the cheap rugs, while Pam and I were working at Hope Thrift. Lucy is a dog who rarely gets sick with anything. Compared to Molly, she’s Super Dog. And yet, 5 days before we are scheduled to fly to Cozumel she has the runs.

…Oh…and our Refrigerator is busted again. New ones cost north of $2000, I’m told.

So Pam and I settled down tonight after dinner and watched the American movie adaptation of the Swedish novel, A Man Called Ove. We both read the book while we were in Maine, then watched the Swedish movie made a couple years ago a while back. We were worried when we heard that Hollywood was doing an Americanized version of the book, even with Tom Hanks playing the lead. We weren’t sure he was right for the part. Once again, Tom Hanks proved me wrong. He was great, the movie was wonderful. We both loved it. Do yourself a favor and get yourself a copy of the book first, then watch the movie. You’ll be glad you did.

Of course in the last fifteen minutes of the film, Otto has several heart-related health scares, exactly the kind of thing I didn’t need to watch. I kept telling myself that the character of Otto is a much older man than I am, so its apples and oranges. Then towards the end, the screen fills with a shot of his tombstone and I see “Otto Anderson 1955-2022”. Two years older than me. HA!!

Actually I’m getting better. I still worry, but less and less each day. So many of you have offered kind words and wise advice. One of the things that has helped honestly is Lucy coming up lame. Its amazing how your outlook changes when you find someone else to care for and worry about. Watching my sweet girl limp around the house has helped take my mind off my own problems. Funny how that works…thinking about the problems of others helps you forget yours. There’s probably a lesson there.

Fighting Off Depression

You have no right to depression. It seems a self-indulgent luxury inappropriate to the circumstances, a reaction born of weakness and self pity. And yet when you wake at 1:00 in the morning with heartburn, you feel its weight like a flak jacket draped over your shoulders. You spend the morning slouching around your office waiting for an opportunity to go home and escape interaction with anyone. You’re already tired of talking about it. But these are the very best people in your life. You should want to be there. But you would rather be anywhere else.

You go home and sit at the desk in your library and try to get busy with preparations for the week, but your ability to concentrate enough energy for the task fails you. You think you feel the slightest of flutters, maybe a skipped beat. But it was probably your over sensitive imagination.

You try hard not to overreact. You keep reminding yourself that nothing is ever as bad as it first appears to be. A couple of banks fail. The details are sketchy and convoluted. But the episode takes away a measure of your confidence.

Its been a long time since you have worried about your heart. After the surgery twenty years ago, you eventually taught yourself to ignore every little flutter. The worry was killing you. But you got over it in time, and now the worry is back with a vengeance, like it never left.

The weight of your work has become oppressive. The thought enters your mind that you might be done. Maybe 41 years is all you have to give to your work. But the time isn’t right. Didn’t you always plan on staying at it a couple more years until your Social Security mandated full retirement age of 66 years and 8 months? Didn’t you tell yourself that you needed 18 more months of growth, 18 more months of throwing money at your investments? No, you’re not done. It was just a random thought that came into your mind as you sat on the edge of your bed in the darkness at 1:00 in the morning fighting off heartburn. Mustn’t overreact.

You remind yourself of how many times you have fought through darkness before. There have been hard times far worse than this and you found a way to pull through. You have always been able to pull from some hidden strength reserve in a crisis. Your faith has sustained you through much worse, and this is no different. Only, you were a younger man then. Maybe your reserves have limits. Maybe toughness and endurance have a shelf life, a use-by date.

It doesn’t matter. You won’t quit. You never have quit. You will see it through. You will keep grinding until 66 and 8, probably longer because that’s what you do. Its who you are.

But you’re going to have to find a way to make it through without letting the anxiety and fear kill you first. Where have these new emotions come from anyway? What have you ever had to be afraid of? Nothing, that’s what. Fear was for the weak-willed and faithless, a dangerous emotion for a businessman to indulge. You have more money than ever. You are more financially secure than you have ever been. Why has worry suddenly overtaken you?

The last thing you need at this moment is the news that a former President is to be arrested in New York City this week. But when you give in just for a minute to depression its where your eyes go, to the gaudy headline with his black and white photograph staring back at you. As he tries to rouse his rabble on Twitter your mind wanders to 2024, trying to imagine just how humiliating that election will turn out to be. You cannot imagine a Joe Biden—two years older—campaigning in anything besides a walker with the Presidential Seal attached to the front. You wonder if he will bow out and what chance in hell Kamala Harris will have. Then you try to imagine a Republican challenger and your troubled heart sinks further into the murkiness of the unknown. When you read the Elon Musk Tweet about the former President winning in a landslide if he gets arrested, you hope that this isn’t one of his moments of brilliance.

So, you must fight back. You have to find a way to fight off this anxiety and fear. You must find a way to bring back confidence and optimism. Step One will involve a benign word from your cardiologist after a month of tests. Step Two might be some sanity to return to the financial markets. Step Three would include some time away to a tropical location with the love of your life.

But, there’s always the chance that none of these three are in the cards. Maybe something is wrong with the heart. Maybe chaos is the new normal in financial markets. Maybe you’ll have to cancel the trip to Cozumel.

If so…you will find a way to grind through.

My New Thing

No. This is not some new age three dimensional tattoo, and no, this isn’t the latest trend in body piercing. This is a heart monitor that I will be wearing for the next two weeks. I am assured that it is the newest, most advanced version of this technology, which I am sure to be reminded of when I get the bill. 

There are two ironies at play here. First, this happens a mere 17 days before my 65th birthday, as if to remind me of my mortality. Second, all of this treatment and its resulting costs come a mere 15 days before I am covered by Medicare, as if to remind me that timing is everything. The last two weeks of my Anthem coverage will feature me meeting my $5000 annual deductible—just in time for the coverage to end without any of this costing those guys a penny!

Without going into any of the boring and inappropriate details, suffice it to say that while running five miles on March the 9th I was blindsided by a sudden and unwelcome pounding of my heart accompanied by the mother of all dizzy spells, which resulted in me on all fours on a sidewalk in Wellesley. Luckily I was only .7 miles from home, so I walked home and made a call to my old cardiologist from my heart surgery days from 20 years ago to see if I could set an appointment. The friendly receptionist informed me that my cardiologist retired over 5 years ago, which tells you just how faithful I have been to my every other year echocardiogram regime. Be that as it may, I was able to secure the appointment at a competing practice with the intervention of an emergency room doctor friend of mine, who wanted to know why I hadn't immediately gone to an emergency room or at least called 911. My answer was something along the lines of…Because that would have been the wise and prudent thing to do, and I always prefer the stupid and sketchy approach to medical surprises.

So, for the next two weeks I will wear this device, schedule a stress test, echocardiogram, and blood work, then come back to see the doctor on April 12th to find out what’s happening. In the meantime, while he approved of our trip to Cozumel, he forbade me from any running for the next 30 days. I fully expect to put on ten pounds while waiting for this odious edict to be lifted.

The beating of one’s heart is something that you are seldom aware of. Its like breathing. Back when I had that heart operation years ago it took me then longest time to get over obsessing over my heart. Every little cough or flutter would result in rising anxiety. But eventually I got over it and went back to being blissfully unaware of the functionality of my heart. Right up until March the 9th at 2:47 in the afternoon. Now, unfortunately I am right back where I was mentally 20 years ago. Every beat, every rhythm, every hiccup is magnified beyond recognition. But, I will get over this just like I did before.

But if I look ten pounds heavier the next time you see me, no wisecracks please!

Beyond Angry

First Republic Bank Executives Sold $12 Million in Stock in Months Before Crash

This was the Wall Street Journal headline that greeted me this morning at 6 am. Although I wasn’t in the least bit surprised, this sort of thing still has the ability to send me into a spittle spewing rage. We see a photograph of some kid from the projects looting a case of beer during a riot and we clutch our pearls while decrying the death of culture, while the grand theft of these bankers gets relegated to a judgement free article in a business newspaper…while I sit here seething.

Nearly every executive at First Republic Bank sold off large blocks of their own bank’s stock in the first three months of this year, just weeks before that stock got destroyed by events of the past week. Unless you believe that this group of incompetents are just lucky investors, you must come to the undeniable conclusion that they acted on information in their possession that was unknown to the general public. This is known as insider trading, and it is illegal and if convicted of it, you go to jail. Just ask Martha Stewart. Don’t hold your breath waiting for the likes of James Herbert II, Robert Thornton, or David Lichtman to do any hard time. They all have expensive lawyers.

I have been a beneficiary of living in a capitalistic country all my life. Although no economic system is perfect, and capitalism certainly has flaws and weaknesses, it has been responsible for more human flourishing and wealth creation than any economic system ever devised by mankind. But, capitalism is only as good as the ethics of those who participate in it. I am in a business which requires me to act as a fiduciary, in other words, I must always act in my client’s best interest and never my own. If it is discovered by regulators that I have been lining my pockets at my client’s expense, I lose everything. I am exposed to various audits more than once a year to insure my compliance. So are banks. And yet, this sort of thing keeps happening. Either the bankers are smarter than their regulators, or the regulators are incompetent or on the take. I say this  not out of animus, but rather the fact that some of the banks that are in the most trouble at the moment had just recently received clean bills of health by these alleged regulators. This marks the third banking crisis this country has endured in the past 40 years. The lessons of the past keep getting forgotten, and each time, the government has to swoop in bail them out. Moral hazard, anyone?

My Dad used to say that “character is destiny”. At the end of the day, no matter what economic system you operate in, success and flourishing only happen when human beings operate as fiduciaries. As simple as it might sound, “Do unto others as you would have them do onto you” is called the Golden Rule for a reason. It is the basis of every successful financial interaction. When we forget this and act out of self-interest like these despicable executives at the First Republic Bank, everything goes to hell in a hurry.