Bah! Humbug!

The morons on the local news had someone at the empty airport last night reporting on how busy it’s going to be, so it must be the official start of the holiday season. Three years ago I was tagged with a holiday meme by Elise. Here’s what I wrote then (with a few edits).

Name 3 people you absolutely miss right this moment that you haven’t seen in some time.
1) Two that matter most at Christmas are Mom and G’ma. Long departed; missed every day, especially this time of the year. (Add Dad since I first wrote this.)
2) No one else. I’d go see them.

Name 3 things you miss about home during the holidays (be it people, smells, foods, whatever).
1) I don’t do a Christmas tree and I miss having one, though not enough to buy and decorate the damn thing. I hate buying and decorating Christmas trees.
2) A real fire in the fireplace, not just fake logs and gas. This year I will have a real fire.
3) For some years I have visited my kids at Christmas and it’s terrific, especially with the spouses and kids. But it would be nice to have them all at my house one year. I’d get a Christmas tree.

Name 1 holiday memory that you have from childhood that you will never forget.
I can’t remember.

Name at least 1 favorite book or movie that always reminds you of the holidays.
O.Henry’s The Gift of the Magi, which I post on NewMexiKen each year in full. Elf is good. Bad Santa is a fun film, but not as a “Christmas” movie. Don’t make that mistake.

Name your top 3 4 favorite holiday songs that get you in the mood to celebrate.
1) “Jingle Bell Rock” performed by my granddaughter Kiley.
2) The Charlie Brown version of “O Tannebaum.”
3) The Drifters “White Christmas.”
4) The Stevie Nicks version of “Silent Night,” but that’s a whole different mood to celebrate.

If you could go anywhere other than home for the holidays, where would you choose to go and who would you want to bring along?
Bethlehem. I mean, why not? At least once. I’d take my children and their spouses and my grandchildren. And a few friends. London and Rome, too, on the way.

Or Kauai.

The Grinch or Rudolph?
Rudolph. He showed the other reindeer, the bastards.

Formal holiday dinner or casual get-together food?
Probably dinner on Thanksgiving (that is what Thanksgiving has become all about). With cranberries. Casual food on Christmas and New Year’s Day. As long as one of those meals includes the traditional lasagna.

And jelly doughnuts on Hanukkah, of course.

Name the best holiday gift you ever received and why.
What, and piss everyone else off. No way.

Describe the funniest holiday moment you’ve ever had.
I guess when Ken, the oldest, was about 19 months old. He got up earlier than his parents and undecorated the Christmas tree, taking every ornament off that he could reach and lining them all up in a nice row on the sofa.

Another one was when the kids were little and my mother visited just before Christmas to buy presents. When we suggested clothes and underwear and things, she said, “OK, but I’ll have to get them toys, too. I’m not going to be remembered as the underwear grandma.”

Name a holiday memory that truly warmed your heart.
I made my children a puppet theater one year. Nothing elaborate, but kind of cool. Their mom made them a passle of puppets, including ones that looked like each of the four of them.

Thinking about being Santa for all those years warms my heart pretty good.

Name your top 3 favorite TV specials that frequent the airwaves during the holiday season.
1) The Christmas Story. The kid will shoot his eye out.
2) A Charlie Brown Christmas.
3) A Christmas Carol. I prefer the George C. Scott version.

I own DVDs of all three.

Sledding, snowball fight, snow angels or building a snowman?
It’s been a long time; I’d like to build a snowman.

Eggnog, hot chocolate, or hot cider?
Hot cider.

Candy canes or fruit cake?
Fruit cake. I like fruit cake.

Favorite holiday cookie: frosted sugar cutout, gingerbread, date-nut, or other?
Frosted sugar cutout.

NewMexiKen believes it is much better to receive than to give, so I won’t pass this meme along to anyone. Everyone is welcome to give it a try and let us know how you do. Happy Holidays.

[I say Happy Holidays because there are in fact several holidays during the next few weeks.]

Cross Country Sweetie

Mack Near the FinishSecond-grader Mack, who’ll be eight in a few weeks, ran in the Regional Junior Olympics cross country meet Saturday morning against kids his age (born in 2000 or later) from Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia. Mack had been home from school two days during the week, sick with the flu, and unable to work out. The temperature was in the 30s.

Jill, Mack’s mom, sent this report on the 2K race:

[Mack] struggled during the race and ran about 25 seconds slower than last week, and both times I saw him on the course he just didn’t look himself. He just looked tired and like he couldn’t pick his feet up like normal. Usually I love to watch him run. But today I actually felt like hopping the rope and pulling him off the course. He did have a pretty good finish where he was seesawing with another boy on the way in and he beat him to the line.

Jill sent this report a little later:

I was looking at the race photos with Mack and showing him how he just didn’t look like he was having fun except when he was battling that kid at the end. Turns out that, as that kid passed him earlier in the race, [the kid] said, “See ya!” as he went by. So Mack came after him and found him and beat him by .25 second.

Mack ran 10:27.73. That’s him in the photo as he was passing the “See ya!” kid (not shown). Mack passed eight kids on the way to find him.

The winner, from South Carolina, ran a phenomenal 7:59.89.

Things are really tough

How tough are they?

Well, for decades near the end of every college football game on television Chevrolet has honored the best player on each team with a donation of $1000 in the player’s name to the school’s scholarship fund.

Now the players have to give Chevrolet the $1000.

American Made

NewMexiKen has begun reading American-Made: The Enduring Legacy of the WPA: When FDR Put the Nation to Work by Nick Taylor. It seemed pertinent.

I am only 60 pages into this 530-page historical narrative, so this reaction is somewhat preliminary. Put another way, I haven’t even gotten through the 1932 election yet. That said, it’s proven quite good so far. The style is anecdotal-narrative, relatively fast-paced. And there are enough parallels to today to elevate your interest. For example, just today President-elect Obama called for a 2.5 million person jobs program.

I have noticed a few errors by Taylor — for example, saying FDR was 53 in 1932, when in fact he was 51. This is absolutely unimportant, but when I see these kind of things I do wonder if more significant details are carefully researched and described.

But, more importantly, the book is good enough that I wanted to mention it. And being reminded about MacArthur’s reaction to The Bonus March was enough to give me chills all over again.

November 22nd

Today is the birthday

… of Billie Jean King. She’s 65.

… of Steve Van Zandt. Little Steven, E Street Band member and Sopranos actor, is 58.

… of Jamie Lee Curtis. She’s 50.

… of Mariel Hemingway. She’s 47.

… of Boris Becker. He’s 41.

… of Scarlett Johansson. She’s 24.

Abigail Adams, America’s second first lady and the mother of the sixth president, was born on this date in 1744.

Songwriter Hoagy Carmichael was born on this date in 1899: “Stardust,” “Georgia on My Mind,” “Up The Lazy River,” “Heart and Soul.”

Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve (Colorado)

… was redisignated on this date in 2000, pending land acquisition. It had been a national monument since 1932. The land was acquired and Great Sand Dunes became America’s 57th national park in 2004.

In this high mountain valley are the tallest dunes in North America, flanked by some of the highest peaks in the Rocky Mountains. The park and preserve protects much of the Great Sand Dunes’ natural system, including alpine tundra and lakes, forests, streams, dunes, grasslands, and wetlands.

Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve

And National Parks Traveler tells us that Great Sand Dunes is one of the quietest places in the U.S.

The best thing I’ve read on the GM crisis

First some flavor:

Tom has been an employee of General Motors since he graduated from Evansville University in 1974. At the time, for a Midwestern kid from “stonecutter” Bedford, Indiana, it was kind of like going to work for Google today.

As you can imagine, Tom’s seen a lot happen in the energy and auto industries in the last 34 years, but before this year he never considered that his retirement, his health care, and indeed his professional future would be in such dramatic jeopardy. In fact, without ever changing careers, he once worked for the largest and arguably the most influential corporation in the world; now he’s getting these emails. He never dreamed that he’d need to be calling his congressmen to save the company to which he’s always been loyal, and upon which he and his family’s livelihood has depended. I can speak with such certainty about Tom’s past because I’ve known him for 27 of the 34 years he’s been with General Motors, and we’re very close.

Tom is my dad.

Go read it all — GM Goes Grassroots. A Son is Torn.

Seriously. Go read it.

How I thought I’d become a footnote to history

In 1976, the House of Representatives established a Select Committee on Assassinations to investigate the murders of President John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Among the things the Committee sought was a thorough examination of all the photographic evidence in the Kennedy murder. At that time it took a mainframe computer to do what probably could be done on a personal computer today — that is, scan, enhance and thoroughly analyze the images. The image enhancement would be done at the Aerospace Corporation in California. The agreement with the National Archives, which had custody of the Kennedy assassination evidence in Washington, stipulated that the photographic records must be in the custody of the Archives or an Archives employee at all times. For two days I was that employee.

The only copy of the photographs, film, x-rays, etc., was brought by courier to California and put in a safe within a secure area at the National Archives facility in Laguna Niguel, where I worked at the time. The image enhancement was being done in El Segundo near Los Angeles International Airport, some 60 miles away. Each day we opened the safe, verified that each item was present, put the briefcase and “suit” box (think of a four-inch high pizza box) into the trunk of a rented car and made the commute.

That first day (it was Easter week 1978) I followed the procedure carefully even taking the materials with me to lunch, thinking to myself “if the people around me only knew what I had.” It was fascinating to see the enhancements and hear the analysis of the few experts working on the project and sworn to secrecy (as was I). Late in the afternoon I packed everything back up, put it in the trunk, returned to the office and locked it all in the safe. I remember thinking on the way home, this stuff would be worth a million dollars or more on the black market. Am I being followed? Am I in danger?

The second morning we began the inventory. Everything was there, of course. Except — EXCEPT! — on one x-ray, right in the middle of the damaged part of President Kennedy’s skull, there was a bubble. I didn’t remember any damage to any of the x-rays. Now it looked as if this one x-ray had been too close to heat and the image had been burned. How did this happen? Where had I put the box that this could have happened? Was the computer console in the lab too hot? Was there a problem with the exhaust in the rental car that the trunk floor got excessively hot? My god, somehow I’ve damged the only copy of a piece of evidence in the most important murder of the 20th century. My boss was visibly shaken. I was hyper-ventilating. My career is over. I’m a footnote in the Kennedy conspiracy books.

There was nothing to do but put the briefcase and box in the car (inside with me this time) and make the drive to El Segundo. It was a lonely 90 minutes. Once there I trudged in and immediately confessed my crime.

“Oh, that. Some doctor got it too close to a lamp years ago.”

[The photographic and forensic experts I talked to were convinced the photographic evidence at least was consistent with one shooter — Oswald. As a reward for my participation in this project I was later permitted to see some other the other evidence including Oswald’s clothing (blood stained) and his Mannlicher-Carcano rifle.]

Coleman Hawkins, Father of the Tenor Sax

… was born on this date in 1904.

As writer Len Weinstock noted,

Hawkins himself didn’t think there was anything outstanding about his Body and Soul saying “it was nothing special, just an encore I use in the clubs to get off the stand. I thought nothing of it and didn’t even bother to listen to it afterwards”. But the solo, two choruses of beautifully conceived and perfecly balanced improvisation, caused an immediate sensation with musicians and the public. It is still the standard to which tenorists aspire. A parallel can be drawn between Hawkins’ Body and Soul and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Both were brief, lucid, eloquent and timeless masterpieces, yet tossed off by their authors as mere ephemera.

Lincoln well knew what he had done at Gettysburg, but it’s a nice analogy even so.

Hawkins died in 1969.

A Letter to Mrs. Bixby

Executive Mansion,
Washington, Nov. 21, 1864

Dear Madam, –I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts, that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.

I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.

I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours, to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom. Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,

A. Lincoln.

[As it turns out, this letter, made even more famous when read in the film Saving Private Ryan, may have been written by John Hay, Lincoln’s secretary. Further, only two of Mrs. Bixby’s five sons had died in battle. One was honorably discharged, one was dishonorably discharged, and another deserted or died in a prison camp. Not that losing three sons in whatever way isn’t horrible enough.]

In My Beautiful Balloon

Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent, the marquis d’ Arlandes, flew in a untethered hot air balloon over Paris for 20 minutes on this date in 1783. The balloon was made of silk and paper and was constructed by Jacques Étienne and Joseph-Michel Montgolfier, who first took notice that smoke (i.e., hot air) would cause a bag to rise. The Montgolfiers experimented with paper bags before sending a balloon aloft with a sheep, a rooster and a duck (September 19, 1783). De Rozier went up in a tethered balloon on October 15.

But 225 years ago today, November 21, 1783, is the date man first flew, untethered to the earth.

The winds have welcomed you with softness,
The sun has blessed you with his warm hands
You have flown so high and so free,
That God has joined you in laughter,
And set you gently again,
Into the loving arms of mother earth.

The Balloonists Prayer

We’re in unchartered water folks

The S&P 500 index fell by more than six percent Wednesday and Thursday. The last time it fell more than six percent on two consecutive days was July 20 and 21, 1933.

Eighteen trillion dollars of wealth has been lost in global equities in only seven weeks.

This week Citigroup’s already depressed shares have lost half their value, and shares of Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase are down 30 percent.

Target shares have lost more than half their value since Lehman failed, and that is much better than many of its competitors have done. Shares in Macy’s, Sears, Saks, Nordstrom, AnnTaylor and Dillard’s are down more than 70 percent as this holiday season approaches.

In late October, the Federal Reserve board staff concluded that the unemployment rate was likely to rise as high as 6.5 percent by the end of this year. A few days later, the Labor Department reported it was already there, with two months left to go.

P.S. As I’ve noted, I am a disaster junkie. I am also an obsessive — I wouldn’t have been doing a blog like this for more than five years if I weren’t. That said, I’m not trying to scare you any more than you might already be about the economy. I just find it fascinating in a train wreck kind of way.

Worst Crash Since Great Depression

With today’s big losses, the S&P 500 has dropped 51.9% since the Bull Market peak 58 weeks ago.

The 1929 crash was 47.9%.

The 1973-1974 oil crisis crash was 48.2%.

The 2000-2002 dot com crash was 49.1%.

Ultimately, after some recovery in 1930, the 1929-1932 Depression crash bottomed after two years, three months, down 89.2%.

Calculated Risk updated the chart.