Against the Wind

What a wedding! A Trini drum corps, and dancing and drinking into the wee hours. Just a quick pic of Marianne and Barry on Pigeon Point Beach in Tobago. I didn’t take many photos, and none at the ceremony or celebration. By the time I got this photo of them, they were exhausted from trying to entertain the troops…. a select group of Marianne’s family and friends.

She’ll be back in the States in a little more than a week. He’ll go back to work and she can try to figure out the next big adventure. God Bless them both.

One more link… This is over long, but the trend to making obesity a disease, and overeating a sickness of some sort is well SICK! I’m a fatty boobalatty, and I’m fighting the battle of the bulge, but I am not sick because I’m fat. I’m damn healthy. My metabolism would be the pride of a nation in times of famine. Luckily we’ve not seen famine in my lifetime. Obesity is the product of genetic tendencies and choices about what to eat. Nothing more. It does not ask for a tax on soft drinks or a special class of people who deserve some sort of phony sympathy. Keep your platitudes and let me deal with my own problems, thank you.

As respects the fusalage in Gaza, Linda’s remark is in the vein of “same ol’, same ol’.” True, but guess I’m crazy. I’d like to see the war fought till there was a clear winner and loser and we could go on to other battles.

The wedding photo of the day… here I have one that is almost as good as the photographer’s photos. Tara and Marianne attend to the last details of getting the dress in order.

Proverbs 8:8 - 9 (More words from Wisdom, crying at the gates)

All the words of my mouth are with righteousness;
Nothing crooked or perverse is in them.
They are all plain to him who understands,
And right to those who find knowledge.

My Dear Sons,

We embark in the morrow to sail to the New World. I’m secreted in the bowels of the Mayflower with barrels of supplies for our journey, as the English would prefer to take me into custody again, and hang me. We are warned not to travel this late in the season, but we are at the end of our monies, and if we do not depart soon, I shall be discovered.

It’s a long and dangerous journey ahead, but with God’s blessing we shall prevail. We will first set about trading and making profit for the merchants who loaned money for our travels. Seven years of work we owe them, then our labors can be called our own. I heartily pray that before these seven years pass, you boys will have earned a passage and can come join us in the New World. Your mother and I shall miss you and your wives and children, and will work ceaselessly to see the day we are reunited.

The Speedwell is not seaworthy for the journey and is abandoned. We are 130 some odd passengers on the Mayflower, and I’ve paid the ship’s carpenter to construct a small area for your mother and brothers, Love and Wrestling so we may make the journey in some comfort. We have ammunition for hunting, a boat in sections we can use for fishing and sundry supplies of food and seed. We have tools to havest trees for our homes and buildings, and so with the grace of God we shall find new lives in this new land.

Love, and in fervent hopes of early reunion, Your Father, William Brewster

So, in the autumn of 1620 the Separitists set off. Their history is our history.

I found an interesting reference in the Atlantic to experiments in trading. So far this economic collapsing bubble has cost Linda’s son his construction job, and Cuz Sara her position with Morgan Stanley. Tomorrow, I suspect the news will be full of GM and terms of government backing. Meanwhile…. from Virgina Postrel in the Atlantic

For more than two decades, economists have been running versions of the same experiment. They take a bunch of volunteers, usually undergraduates but sometimes businesspeople or graduate students; divide them into experimental groups of roughly a dozen; give each person money and shares to trade with; and pay dividends of 24 cents at the end of each of 15 rounds, each lasting a few minutes. (Sometimes the 24 cents is a flat amount; more often there’s an equal chance of getting 0, 8, 28, or 60 cents, which averages out to 24 cents.) All participants are given the same information, but they can’t talk to one another and they interact only through their trading screens. Then the researchers watch what happens, repeating the same experiment with different small groups to get a larger picture.

The great thing about a laboratory experiment is that you can control the environment. Wall Street securities carry uncertainties—more, lately, than many people expected—but this experimental security is a sure thing. “The fundamental value is unambiguously defined,” says the economist Charles Noussair, a professor at Tilburg University, in the Netherlands, who has run many of these experiments. “It’s the expected value of the future dividend stream at any given time”: 15 times 24 cents, or $3.60 at the end of the first round; 14 times 24 cents, or $3.36 at the end of the second; $3.12 at the end of the third; and so on down to zero. Participants don’t even have to do the math. They can see the total expected dividends on their computer screens.

Here, finally, is a security with security—no doubt about its true value, no hidden risks, no crazy ups and downs, no bubbles and panics. The trading price should stick close to the expected value.

At least that’s what economists would have thought before Vernon Smith, who won a 2002 Nobel Prize for developing experimental economics, first ran the test in the mid-1980s. But that’s not what happens. Again and again, in experiment after experiment, the trading price runs up way above fundamental value. Then, as the 15th round nears, it crashes.

And last, the photo. Tania needed a couple goes at getting her hair and makeup done so she’d be ready for the wedding. This was a run the week before. Rather unlike the story of Ina May, who reportedly decided a couple hours before her wedding it was time to wash her hair. Mother was aghast at such nonchalance, but Ina May is still hard to knock off balance. Anyway, the second go at Bridal Do.

Linda told me to brace for an emotional roller coaster. And the voice of experience was right on target. I’ve already told some about the wedding, and it was a lovely affair. None of my odd reactions are in anyway the fault of my daughter or son-in-law, who both went out of their way to make the entire experience as pleasant a celebration for us all as could possibly happen.

That doesn’t stop me from being me. Why I feel totally incompetent in social settings is irrelevant. I do. I had to fight that sensation all the way through. Some of my friends helped me in ways small and large, and I hope I managed to avoid embarassing the kids. That was my entire goal, and I do think I brought that off. Thankfully, Pat got me out to buy the dress. It seems that my dress was adequate. It was tough not to be the crone slightly resentful that the show wasn’t about me. I couldn’t have outshone the bride if I wanted to. I shone exactly enough to not be too out of place.

An event, a series of events like the last week where I feel like the mother of the bride is “supposed” to play more than a bit part, leaves some sense of doing it all wrong when you are barely playing a bit part. I had no energy for more than what I did. I have no idea what would have made me feel right in that respect!

In the final analysis, I love these kids as I love life itself. When Tania welled up, my eyes tested the limits of the waterproofing of the mascara. As the officiant mentioned that in their lives together they would face absurdity as well as tragedy, their journey would be their story. As she’s mentioning absurdity, a bicycle parade with loud whooping music rolled by on Esplanade right on cue.

Waiting for the guests to gather. Photo by Carlo.

Carlo left to Seattle yesterday, and the party is over. Now it’s time to finish my quilt top and leave things ready for Tara to meet my classes at Nunez. I need to get a test written today.

The Press, the Economy

I have no idea what is going on in the credit markets nor the economy. I’m on the same roller coaster there as the rest of you are. I’m not hurting. I’ll miss no meals. So I read what I can to try to make sense of it.

I’m not even sure what this is about, but it reinforces my sense that we’re sold a bill of goods. The press wants us to panic and vote as they would prefer. A lot is going on that we don’t hear about. Is it because no one can explaing it so we can understand? I really don’t know. Why can’t we have a better press corp?

Powerline points out that much of the predicted market panic just hasn’t happened.

A great deal of nonsense has been written about credit default swaps and their role in the recent financial crises, mostly by journalists

Amidst all the blathering nonsense from the ignorant about the role of credit default swaps in the financial crisis is today’s news about the huge Lehman Bros. debt issues covered by CDS contracts. When Lehman filed for bankruptcy on September 15, sparking the crisis, payment obligations from sellers of protection to buyers of protection were triggered. There was a certain amount of weeping and gnashing of teeth about the impact of this credit event and a fear that a cascade of interlocking failures of CDS protection SELLERS would trigger a catastrophic financial meltdown.

It didn’t happen. And there is very important reason why…

Maybe this will make sense to you? I really don’t understand the terms. I do understand that the press is selling panic. That’s what they do. Scream for attention.

Wisdom from Solomon

The Folly of Indolence

Go to the ant, you sluggard!
Consider her ways and be wise,
Which, having no captain,
Overseer or ruler,
Provides her supplies in the summer,
And gathers her food in the harvest.
How long will you slumber, O sluggard?

When will you rise from your sleep?
A little sleep, a little slumber,
A little folding of the hands to sleep—
So shall your poverty come on you like a prowler,
And your need like an armed man.

Proverbs 6: 6 - 11

Did I mention we had a wedding? We did. Tania and Bartley–Tartley 2008. The bride cried, she danced she socialized. The guests came from all over the country as well as from one of the Carribean islands. Tania’s friends included Tina from before grade school, to her coworkers in the television industry in NYC. Bartley had friends from as many phases of his life as well. I’m informed that in the grand scheme of things it was a smallish wedding. I think the caterer charged for 100 guests including 10 band members.

Tania knew it was a destination wedding and she wanted to provide plenty of activities as well as plenty of time for the guests to go explore the french quarter. So besides the wedding I’ve attended two dinners with Mr. and Mrs. Mulligan, a family gathering for all the immediate siblings in town and available to attend, a wine and cheese party on the roof at the Frenchman hotel just outside the French Quarter, a manicure, pedicure for the bride and sisters, including my fourth daughter, Kate, a gathering yesterday morning at Cafe du Monde as a send off for those who were still in town and cared to gather. By the time I drove home last night I was exhausted. And I’ve not done nearly as much as Marianne, Tara, or Kate, and nothing even slightly touching the amount of effort Tania put into it.

It was a grand success, many, enough people said that it was the best wedding party they’d ever attended for me to believe that it was indeed up among the great parties.

The wedding itself was held in a home just off Esplanade Avenue, though the address puts it on Esplanade. The Benachi House provides a beautiful setting. Tania decorated the house with paper lanterns and luminaries. Quentin managed to be the boy on duty and sent one of them up in flames.. no damage. The tables were decorated with little arrangements of roses in sundry vases and containers. The cupcake tree was topped with a little wedding cake that they cut…the gazebo and the chairs in the front yard were moved around to the back by the guests mostly for seating around the area where people danced.

So the wedding itself the cermony, the trip through the hallway to the back shaking hands and going heading to the buffet, music by her uncle, toasts to the bride and groom, time to eat and mingle, dancing to a New Orleans Brass Band, cake cutting and second lining to the pinata bashing, and the 11 pm’ish exit of the guests with a shower of white sparklers.

The bride wore a gown of ivory, a beautiful a-line style, with a drop fitted lace bodice, and a long row of buttons down the back. She had a flower of feathers in her up swept do. The groom came well dressed as well, though who noticed? A good time was had by all!