Against the Wind

In Biloxi with limited internet access, I’ve tried following some news online and some stocks. I almost wish I’d not done that. I left with 5% trailing stops on all my positions, and BHO no more than scolded us in the SOTU than the bottom fell out of the stock exchange. Some analyst said it was because the iPad presentation was so disappointing. Sell on news, buy on rumor is the old saw for playing the market. I’m nowhere that I’m going to get any worthwhile rumors, so I have to do the best I can on my own intuition and hunches.

I still want an iPad, or something similar to allow me to see video clips and such without having to futz through the wait with my old desktop. Watching television content online seems like a marriage made in heaven to me. I’d pay for a couple channels. But only a couple.

So the disappointment of the iPad doesn’t seem like the cause of market decline nearly as much as the fact that POTUS is gunning for financial institutions, while Fanny and Freddy continue in their profligate ways as wards of the state with no repercussions. POTUS also puts his arrogance on display, swinging at the Supremes, inviting congressional legislation while the justices are sitting there with congress lined up behind them. How classless and clueless is this Chicago pol? There seems to be no bottom to his inane incivility.

I’ve filled my time this week with a vacation close to home. Sara who I play bridge with online about four times a week, came with her husband and her friends to a timeshare in Biloxi. I was lucky enough to be invited, so here I am. There’s a regional bridge tournament here, so I got to play a bit in that, walk on the beach and make some stops at some local restaurants, quilt shops and cultural attractions.

By far my favorite from today was the Walter Anderson Museum of Art in Ocean Springs. Ocean Springs is a beautiful little coastal town, and I wouldn’t object to living there a bit! I should buy a small house near the beach, live there but leave the for rent sign up? I could lease it out by the week for vacationers.

This poor computer is trying to find photos I stored on my camera. Anyway, I may have an example of Walter Anderson’s art for viewing. Walter Anderson is a native son, from a reasonably affluent New Orleans family born in 1921. He was clearly artistic as a child, trained in art, and went about making money from his art with little pottery pieces he and his brother made to sell. That business managed to survive the depression, but Walter, trying to follow his muse, ended up physically ill with malaria, dengue fever and finally a deep depression which sent him so far into mental debility that he spent a time in a sanatorium. He was truly the tormented artist. But he got commissions to paint the inside of the Ocean Springs community center and the auditorium of the local high school in murals. Other buildings in Ocean Springs have his work faded on the exterior as well. He was tortured as vanGogh, prolific as Picasso, and lived as something of an eccentric on Horn Island, a barrier island off the coast of Ocean Springs. His paintings belong in the same artistic pantheon as major impressionistic artists. He’s a voice from the wilderness, and magnificent.

Sigh… I’ve given up on attaching the photo from my phone. I’ve no interest in messing about with it more.

Maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to post this blog.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 29th, 2010 at 11:58 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.