The Long Road Out

Thanks to The Atlantic for this month's " Failed State of America " article by staff writer George Packer. Of course Packer writes what we've all felt, and particularly brings alive the peculiar institution of the executive branch as it's now displayed for the world to gawk at. There will never be enough time, nor ink, to outline the gutless self-interest of Kushner and Trump and the boys and girls who surround them. I can't add much--but I would like to offer a further point of emphasis to this very satisfying description of the United States of America, and how we got from our last dying gasp of decency (9/11) to our current post-mortem, made real by the ambulances rushing to the mass graves. Had Packer asked my editorial advice (he didn't need it and my comments wouldn't improve what he actually wrote!) I might have mentioned not just the executive branch, since we’re all poisoned from that source. I would have summarized the failed st...

Wells Fargo, the bank with all the office space and ugly logo, failed to develop a loan processing system in time to allow any of its small business customers to apply for the Payroll Protection Plan authorized by the Small Business Administration (SBA).  Now, like every other major bank, it's been sued for prioritizing PPP applications to favor the applications with the largest fees (or worse). Double whammy--they didn't get organized in time to participate, and they're still getting sued for doing it wrong. Sympathy for an archaic dinosaur aside, these failures will bankrupt many Wells Fargo customers and result in immediate layoffs that were avoided by customers of many small local banks and other processors. Here's what Wells Fargo has to say about their failure: “We at Wells Fargo screwed up and made things worse for you than they already were. No other financial institution screwed this up as badly as we did, and we grovel with apology.  Because we screwed ...

Kindness Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness. How you ride and ride thinking the bus will never stop, the passengers eating maize and chicken will stare out the window forever. Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness, you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho lies dead by the side of the road. You must see how this could be you, how he too was someone who journeyed through the night with plans and the simple breath that kept him alive. Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.  You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth. Then it is only kindness that makes sense ...

Death is nothing at all, I have only slipped into the next room I am I and you are you Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. Call me by my old familiar name, Speak to me in the easy way which you always used Put no difference in your tone, Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. Let my name be ever the household world that it always was, Let it be spoken without effect, without the trace of shadow on it. Life means all that it ever meant. It it the same as it ever was, there is unbroken continuity. Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, Just around the corner. All is well.  ―  Henry Scott Holland

There’s a snow removal company in Truckee, California that has a monopoly. Elements it’s called. We’ve had 5+ feet of snow here in three days and it’s still snowing.    For two 26 hour periods in there, we've been snowed in--it's very comfortable in our house, and we have lots of food, and Netflix, and all the rest.  And, we're trying to quarantine in the belief that somehow we're helping hold back the worst of Coronavirus. Who needs self-regulation when you're actually help prisoner in your house (not entirely true--we've climbed out on snowshoes and cross country skis).  Having snow up to the top of your garage door actually has a calming effect--your choices are eliminated.  So, you get the picture: a service provider with terribly low standards of customer care, failing again during this current storm. Elements sent out a message yesterday that should be a reminder to all of us about how to care for your neighbors in times of anxiety, troubl...

You'll probably generally agree with my list, if you also agree that American Sniper  doesn't have a single original thought or line, and is a mediocre hackneyed love story...and a mediocre hackneyed war movie. My rankings (in descending order) of David Foster's Best Films of 2014 are: Force Majeure --fun acting around an important and critical topic that allowed for hours and hours of thoughtful conversations Mommy --Canadian entry to the Oscars, the best three-lead acting of any film of the year, taking Maggie Gyllenhaal one step further--or one kilometer further Ida --now THIS is a war film--two women jointly rediscover their past, and make morally defensible decisions once they understand  Boyhood-- talk about getting lucky on a long term project...could you select a better group to watch grow up together? Calvary --Dostoyevsky and Camus dealt with inescapable guilt when you're on the fringes of society.   This film, and Brendan Gleeson, looks straight i...

I've now got about 10 flights on United since their new 2020 Mileage Plus program. Eight of those have been purchased business class tickets. Here's the shock--under the new scoring system, I'm less than a tenth of the way toward 1K status (I've been 1K or Platinum for the last eight years. I'm might not make gold this year). There are about a million posts complaining about the new system which rewards nothing except dollars spent. Google to experience the anger. You'll also see a lot of "winners vs losers" analyses which try to game whether you should add a connection to a Singapore flight on a partner airline. United has now added an hour to your flight booking time...for each leg. For a 1K traveler, that's 54 hours of your life, every year, sucked away from you. Please be careful.  Mileage Plus may cost you a spouse or a friend or the ability to have conversations with other humans while you click away on your calculator. Here's the o...