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.

The Dad Joke Creation Committee

A couple of days ago I called a meeting of the Dad Joke Creation Committee at my house. After three years of churning them out, the cupboard is a bit bare. So we gathered around the table and started throwing out ideas. Here’s how it went…

Me: How about this? What do you call a herd of sheep falling down a hill?

Member A: ….a Baaaavalanche?

Member B: …no. A Lambslide.

Member C:…I’m gonna have to insist on knowing the number of sheep who fell. I’m counting on it.

Me: None of ewe are making any sense.

Member C: Its a bad joke…but I guess its better than mutton.

Member A: For one thing, the joke isn’t very believable. Sounds like somebody spinning a good yarn.

Member B: This is shear madness.

Member C: You mean shear maaaadness.

Me: Wool you guys fleece put a sock in it now?

Member A: Getting back to this hill…was it a sheep decline?

Member B: I just hope they all had their last Wool and Testament made out before anything baaaaad happened.

Member C: I heard that over twenty of them died. It was a terrible scene at the bottom of that hill. The clean up crew took them away in a special vehicle.

Me: What special vehicle?

Members A, B, and C: A Ewe Haul

Me: This joke will have ram-ifications.

Member A: Yes, making jokes at those poor sheep’s expense is a slippery slope.

Member C: No kidding. Especially since the rumor is that at the bottom of that hill there was a shear cliff.

Yeah, I’d say it was a very productive meeting!

Inertia and Body Odor

I have a difficult relationship with CVS Pharmacy. I have been filling my prescriptions there since before I can remember. At first it was because it was so convenient to my office. But over the last couple of years the place has gone downhill in practically every way. Its gotten junky, they’ve started bombarding me with texts, and the decidedly unhelpful crew that man the pharmacy have taken on the vibe of the bar scene in Star Wars. And yet, I still shop there, for the same reason that I still bank at Wells Fargo…inertia.

There might be no other force in the universe with greater influence over our day to day lives than inertia. Poorly run enterprises count on its power to keep them in business. Am I tired of the manifest incompetence of Wells Fargo, not to mention their admitted malfeasance? Of course I am. But the very thought of shutting down all three of our checking accounts there, re-establishing a whole host of auto-deposits and debits gives me migraines. Am I unhappy with the service and cleanliness of CVS? Of course I am. But, going to the giant hassle of calling the doctor’s offices and changing pharmacies feels like a gigantic chore…and they are right across the street. So in both cases I put up with a lot of unpleasantness in exchange for convenience.

So yesterday at CVS I experienced a new low. I was there around 4:30 in the afternoon to pick up two prescriptions and various toiletries. I knew full well that 4:30 in the afternoon was a horrible time to pick up prescriptions at CVS, so that’s on me. I found the toiletries without incident, then made my way to the back of the store where the Pharmacy is located expecting a serpentine line waiting on the one forlorn and irritable clerk. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised to see that I was the only customer.

Over the past couple of years CVS has taken to hiring an assortment of tattooed, body-pierced, wool cap-in the middle of summer-wearing folks to man the registers. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, I suppose. Its just a marked change from the mostly young and energetic people I’ve become used to. The new people hardly ever make eye contact with you and when they do it is to communicate epic levels of boredom and constitutional disenchantment. But, I put up with it because…well, that inertia thing. So when I see the woman with the thick wool sack covering her entire head at the register I stroll up to tell her my last name and birthdate. I am, after all, a seasoned veteran and know the drill. But when I leaned in to pass on this information my momentum was abruptly stopped in its tracks.

People…as someone who has done his share of hard manual labor around other men, and as someone who has a lifetime of experience inside male locker rooms, I know a thing or two about body odor. But nothing I have ever encountered prepared me for the stench that greeted me at the CVS pharmacy counter. I was so stunned by the smell that I literally stepped back from the counter. A younger version of me would probably have blurted out, “Whoa!! Who died??” The mature, grown up version of me simply withdrew myself to a safe distance while wool cap girl entered my data. But, there was a problem. She couldn’t spell my name and asked for a clarification in a beautiful middle eastern accent. I cautiously leaned in to say, “D-U-N-N”. It was excruciating. When she disappeared around the corner to fetch my medicines I glanced at her co-workers across the way and one of them caught my eye and shrugged her shoulders at me as if to say, “You think you’ve got troubles? Try working with her all day.” Although this woman smelled like a cross between George Kennedy in Cool Hand Luke and the janitor at a Turkish bathhouse, she was efficient and friendly.

As I was driving home I started to wonder about her. Is she even aware that she smells? Is it a cultural thing with people from the Middle East? Maybe for them, I smell bad. My morning routine involves the generous application of a wide variety of distinct smells, from my shampoo to my body wash, deodorant and aftershave. Maybe when someone from Egypt encounters me I smell like some kind of rancid walking fruit salad. Its all what you’re accustomed to, I suppose. 

Maybe next time I’ll use the drive thru.