MarkFord.net
The open-for-inspection half-way home for my writing…
Emily Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for death”
Emily Dickinson might be America’s greatest poet. Even better than Walt Whitman or E.A. Poe. At the very least, she is America’s best Metaphysical poet. If you’ve never heard one of her poems recited, this will be a treat. Click here.
The COVID Response: What We Got Wrong
Have Your Ears Been Ringing?
For as long as the COVID vaccines have been available, the CDC has received some complaints about ear-related problems. In a recent study, researchers reviewed 500 cases of screened patients and found that 61 of them (14.5 %) had reported one or more ear or hearing-related symptoms within four weeks of vaccination. That included 21 (5.0 %) with hearing loss, 26 (6.2 %) with tinnitus, 33 (7.9 %) with dizziness, and 19 (4.5 %) with vertigo.
From JT, a copywriter, re the availability of my books:
“Hi Mark and team. I loved Great Leads and recently started poking around at your other books. Wondering how I can get a copy of Words That Work: 117 Ways to Speak More Powerfully.
“Thanks for your help.”
My Response: Most of my books are available on Amazon. (Go to “My Books” on the MarkFord.net website for a complete list.) If you’d like a copy of any of them that are not available on Amazon (including Words That Work, Making the Most of Your Time, and Wealth Building for Freelancers):
* Send a check for $10 (for each book) to cover shipping and postage.
* Make the check payable to Cap & Bells Press, LLC. (No cash, please.)
* Include your name and mailing address and mail it to:
Cap & Bells Press
Attn: GKoo
235 NE 4th Ave., Suite 101
Delray Beach, FL 33483
From BJ re my review in the May 30 issue of Orson Welles’s production of The Trial:
“After reading your review, I watched it. I’m a fan of Welles but had never seen this movie. I agree with you. It was so good in so many ways.”
From AS re my comments in the June 2 issue about companies selling “shares” of museum-quality art:
“The art deal for fractionalized ownership sounds more like ‘fictionalized” ownership.”
The USA is where?
Another amusing video clip of “Ask college students basic questions to see how dumb they are.” In this case, about basic geography.
Click here.
Selling Condos and Jets and Picassos
Selling luxury condominiums and townhouses at Rancho Santana was slowing down because prices were going up. A luxury three-bedroom, three-bath condo that sold for $350,000 10 years ago is selling for more than twice that today. There are still some buyers out there willing to pay $700,000+ for luxury condos, so we may build another group of them next year. But the hot market is for units that cost considerably less.
We realized this about six months ago. And after some research and discussion, decided to sell our three/three units at the price the market wanted. We did it by turning them into three-month timeshares at $250,000.
Of course, you can’t call them timeshares these days. That old phrase has a slightly tarnished reputation. Instead, we’re using the current nomenclature: fractional ownership.
Fractional ownership is a sales strategy that is also being used for expensive assets like boats and planes. And six years ago, I noticed that a company called Masterworks was selling fractional ownerships in a market I would have never imagined: museum-quality art. So, you can’t afford a $10 million Andy Warhol or a $20 million Matisse? No problem. Masterworks will sell you a piece of one of them for 10% or even 5% of the estimated value.
I thought the idea was clever. And I was tempted to try it. But since fractional ownership of art was a new industry, I decided to resist the temptation. To wait and see.
Meanwhile, other fractional ownership companies have entered the fine art market. One that sent me a promotion last week – Freeport – offered shares of works by some artists I love, including a Matisse.
After five years of following this corner of the fine art market, I am pretty sure it is legitimate. (I haven’t heard or seen anything to the contrary.) And since these companies buy mostly pieces by well-established masters, the outlook for future appreciation on one’s shares is very good. (The market for fine art is very much like the market for any collectible. The rarer the piece is, the more valuable it is. Investors that focus on the top tranches do better than those that buy secondary pieces, even if they are done by top masters.) And, in fact, Masterworks’ five-year published track record has been impressive.
So, once again, I find myself tempted. But I went to bed last night wondering why I’m still hesitant. When I awoke this morning, I realized why.
If I invest in one of these works of art – something I would really, really like to own – it would become a de facto line on an impersonal balance sheet, rather than a cherished piece I could look at every day.
In fact, it’s quite possible that after I bought a share of the piece I loved, I’d never see it again. It would likely be stored in some anonymous vault leased by Masterworks or Freeport. Or, worse, end up hanging on a wall of one of their company managers!
Hmm. I have an idea. The way Masterworks and Freeport work is by fractionalizing the ownership of a fine art piece into hundreds of shares. But it might be possible to do the same thing on a smaller scale, like we’re doing with the Rancho Santana timeshares. You organize a limited partnership to buy a million-dollar painting for $80,000 per share… and all of the members get to enjoy it personally for, maybe, one month a year.
What do you think?
Click here to find out more about buying art on a fractional basis.
And click here to see a pitch by our Sales VP on why you should buy a timeshare at Ranch0 Santana.
Justice in Trudeau’s Canada Is Simple – It’s Either Black or White
The US justice system has a concept called “extenuating circumstances.”
Extenuating circumstances are mitigating facts or details that are important for fully understanding the circumstances that may have contributed to a criminal action. Thus, if the person that bumped into you and knocked you down turns out to be blind, it might change your (or a jury’s) opinion about the severity of their action.
Under Trudeau’s administration, Canada has taken this idea a big step farther. A new law requires that, in criminal cases, judges must consider the extenuating circumstances that “institutional racism” may have had on convicted criminals of color.
Here’s how it works: When White people and “people of color” commit the same crime – the exact same crime – and all the circumstances are the same, the judge is required to consider giving the person of color a more lenient sentence (more lenient than he would give the White person) because… well, because he or she is a “person of color.”
You can read about it here.
By the way, in researching this story, I didn’t think to find out what “person of color means” in terms of the new law. I’m guessing it would apply to Native Americans and perhaps to Hispanic people, but somehow not to Asians. Actually, maybe it does include Asians. They commit so few crimes, it almost doesn’t count.
In any case, I’ll track it down and get back to you.
The Earliest Christians Lived Where?
Two of the chief complaints coming from Woke universities across the globe are about the cruelty of colonialism and the arrogant tendency of colonialists – i.e., all White people – to “appropriate” the cultures of the populations they colonize.
This is why, it is said, White people shouldn’t be allowed to wear dreadlocks. Or why, when Number Three Son got married several years ago, two of his cousins objected to the “tequila donkey” we rented because it was wearing a sombrero.
In the clip below, you can see a group of college students arguing that Christianity itself was a blight on indigenous cultures because it was carried (in Bible form) from the all-White colonial powers and forced on the colonized people of power.
While there’s no doubt that Christian missionaries are, and have always been, all over the third world proselytizing and brandishing Bibles, White colonialists did not introduce Christianity to Africa. The Bible was a holy book in Africa before the continent was colonized, as this African student points out.
Click here.
More on Statins
I continue to research the effectiveness of statin drugs in reducing my chances of having another stroke. As I’ve mentioned previously, I haven’t found any data that supports the idea that taking statins will extend my life. And my cardiologist confirmed that this true. But he also said that statins would reduce the likelihood that I will spend my final time on earth paralyzed from a stroke.
I’m looking into it now. As part of this effort, I came across the following video by Dr. “Boz” (Annette Bosworth), an internal medicine specialist, that goes deeply into the relationship between arterial and cardiac disease and cholesterol. A lot of what she says was new information for me. I had to listen to it twice before it started to make sense. But it was worth the effort. Spend a half-hour with this video and you’ll know more about cholesterol than almost anyone you know. Possibly including your doctor!
Click here.
Holy Spider
Directed by Ali Abbasi
Starring Alice Rahimi, Diana Al Hussen, Soraya Helli, Mehdi Bajestani, and Zar Amir-Ebrahimi
In theaters (limited release): Oct. 28, 2022
Streaming: Feb. 21, 2023
In my youth, I believed that anyone that watched foreign films and said they enjoyed them was a liar and a phony. It wasn’t possible for me to imagine anyone getting pleasure out of the weirdly abstract and slow-moving Scandinavian films, the fetish for the quotidian that French filmmakers seemed to have, or the cheesy production values of 1980s Chinese films.
And because of that long-held belief, I would never boast about liking foreign films today, for fear of sounding like a snob. But in fact, given a choice of two recommended films, I would always prefer to watch the one made outside of Hollywood.
That’s why I watched Holy Spider. It’s about an Iranian journalist, a woman, who is assigned to cover the murder of a string of prostitutes in the Iranian holy city of Mashhad. Based on the true story of Saeed Hanaei, who killed 16 women from 2000 to 2001, the movie is unlike any Hollywood movie of the same type, offering less of one thing but more of another.
What Holy Spider won’t give you is the psychological horror of Silence of the Lambs or the gut-wrenching pace of Psycho. But in place of those titillations, it will give you an idea of what it’s like to live in Iran today. The day-to-day experience of the populace. The hold that Islamic fundamentalism has on the culture. The relationship between the sexes. And especially what it’s like to live and work there as a professional woman.
Critical Reception
Zar Amir-Ebrahimi won the Cannes Best Actress Award in 2022 – and though the film won several other awards (most of which I’ve never heard of), it wasn’t an overwhelming critical success.
* “[Holy Spider is] a tense, atmospheric piece of film-making, but it made me profoundly uncomfortable – and not, I should add, in a good way.” (Wendy Ide, Observer/UK)
* “As a concept, it’s urgent and timely, but the execution is so muddled that the movie feels entirely defanged.” (Alison Willmore, New York Magazine)
* “Holy Spider trickily manages to bridge the gap between social realism and exploitation cinema in a way that hints at how both are rooted in a similar place of gritty authenticity.” (Mark Hanson, Slant Magazine)
You can watch the trailer here.
“Some Monstrous Gullet Suffocating with Fury”
I came across this entry in Diaries of Note. It was written by Pierre Loti, a French naval officer, novelist, and diplomat. He wrote it in 1889 while on a diplomatic mission to Fez, Morocco. It’s the kind of journal entry I would like to be able to write every day. Alas, my life is too ordinary and my imagination is too mundane.
Click here.
I gave you a link to three life hacks in the May 2 issue. Click here for three more.
(I knew the second one, but neither of the others.)
From BI, re the P.S. in the May 30 issue:
“Loved the house of cards video!”
My Response: Thanks, BI. I can’t be sure how my journal piece will come off in each issue, so I try to put something in the P.S. that will at least amuse or delight.