“A Better High-School Reading List” 

JM sent me this article from the National Review… and I thought it was great.

“In their enthusiasm for children to read the classics,” say the editors, “school curricula often kill love of literature in students by requiring them to read difficult books without considering readability or purpose.” The article then goes on to make 9 suggestions “to better prepare students for a life of great books.”

The suggestions include:

* The Sun Also Rises instead of The Great Gatsby

* All the King’s Men instead of Ethan Frome

* Salem’s Lot instead of Dracula

* Benito Cereno instead of Moby Dick

* A Tale of Two Cities instead of David Copperfield

Click here to read the entire list, and the very good arguments for making these changes.

Bits and Pieces 

Inflation: What the latest numbers mean to you 

You have probably heard the Republicans criticizing the Biden administration for goosing up inflation. And you may not know if it’s true. Or, if it is true, how it happened – and, most importantly, what it means to you.

It actually means many things, and we’ll be talking about some of them in future blog posts. But for now, you should understand one very simple thing. America’s benchmark inflation index grew by about 6.2% for the 12-month period ending in October. And, unfortunately for savers, bank accounts paid practically zero interest this year. So though you may have the same number of dollars in your account as you had last year, the purchasing power of those dollars – i.e., what you can buy with them – has diminished at that same 6.2% rate.

But… the art market is surging! 

However, if you own fine art, you’ve been the beneficiary of inflation. Not just monetary inflation, but a surge of demand among the ultra-wealthy that has sent the fine art market soaring. Click here.

Interesting Fact 

I was surprised to learn that many of my favorite Christmas songs – pop standards from the 1920s to the mid-1960s that are included in what is now known as “The Great American Songbook” – were written by Jewish songwriters.

Some examples:

* “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” and “A Holly, Jolly Christmas” by Johnny Marks

* “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire” by Mel Torme

* “Let It Snow” by Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne

* “Silver Bells” by Ray Evans and Jay Livingston

And, of course…

* “White Christmas” by Irving Berlin

When Customer Complaints Were Taken Less Seriously 

America’s sue-everyone-for-anything culture was in its infancy in 1974, when a sports fan wrote the management of the Cleveland Stadium to complain about a dangerous new audience “pastime.”

Gentlemen:

I am one of your season ticket holders who attends or tries to attend every game. It appears that one of the pastimes of several fans has become the sailing of paper airplanes generally made out of the game program. As you know, there is the risk of serious eye injury and perhaps an ear injury as a result of such airplanes. I am sure that this has been called to your attention and that several of your ushers and policemen witnessed the same.

Please be advised that since you are in a position to control or terminate such action on the part of fans, I will hold you responsible for any injury sustained by any person in my party attending one of your sporting events. It is hoped that this disrespectful and possibly dangerous activity will be terminated.

Very truly yours,

Dale O. Cox

Days later, Mr. Cox received the following letter in response:

(Source: Letters of Note)

Good (but Not Great) News

On October 7, I wrote about Julius Jones, an innocent man on Oklahoma’s death row. Jones was scheduled to be executed on November 18. But last week, thanks to the intervention of The Innocence Project, Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt commuted Jones’s sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

I’m very happy that Oklahoma will not be executing Julius – but I also know that life in prison for a crime he didn’t commit is not a satisfactory solution.

If you’d like to pass along this news, you can do so here Twitter and here Instagram.

Meanwhile, South Korea is jumping on the “metaverse” bandwagon 

The South Korean capital city is promoting itself as a digital city. The working title: “Metaverse Seoul.”

The goal is to “enable seamless interaction of citizens with the state.”

Among the planned features: digital cultural events, digital tourist sites, and digital avatars to handle (real or digital) official municipal complaints.

The city has invested 3.9 billion South Korean won (about 3.3 million US dollars) in the 10-year project.

Click here.

What’s with Beeple? 

Mike Winkelmann, the digital artist better known as Beeple, was on Jimmy Fallon recently, talking about how he went from selling work for $100 to becoming one of the richest living artists in less than one year by selling his NFTs.

Watch the clip here.

Russell Brand talks about his purple belt 

I know Russell Brand first as a comedian with a cool and quirky sense of humor, then as a surprisingly good actor, and recently as a social commentator – a dangerous thing to do, considering his other professions.

But I was surprised to learn that he is also a practitioner of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ), something I’ve been doing as a sport and exercise for the past 25 years.

 What distinguished BJJ from many other martial arts was, until recently, the ranking system. You could not buy or practice your way into a belt promotion. You received one only after proving yourself in competition with others in your rank.

Here’s Brand, explaining, quite movingly, what his purple belt means to him.

Speaking of wrestling… 

Steve Ludwin, rocker, influencer, and world-famous expert in rejuvenation through snake venom injections, sent me this note:

Mark – I know you like wrestling. This was yesterday after my 55th birthday and I am very sore today.

Here he is, “wrestling” with one of his snakes to Shane MacGowan’s “The Snake With the Eyes of Garnet”…

3 Words I’m Trying to Work Into My Conversations 

* Ineffable – from the Latin for “unutterable” – means incapable of being expressed in words. Example: “The beauty of a sunset is ineffable.” The word can also refer to something too taboo to be mentioned. (At one time, “ineffables” was a jocular euphemism for “trousers.”)

* A batten is a strip of wood nailed across parallel boards to hold them together. Thus, the nautical term “batten down the hatches” means to cover the hatches with a tarp and nail it down with battens to make it secure.

* Untoward (“not” + “toward”) means not having the inclination to or for something; unruly; difficult to manage. Example: “His untoward behavior forced the professor to banish him from her class.”

Two Poems About War… and Death 

 Ah! Here’s something!

A response to the November 13 issue, where I talked about how much I liked Alan Ginsberg’s poem Howl, and how it had a powerful effect on me when I first read it in my late teens.

The email is from AS, a fellow writer:

I’m embarrassed to say I’ve never read Ginsberg. But from the small sample in your blog today, I think one would need to take Prozac prior to reading his works. In my darkest days, the things I wrote would be seen as comedy compared to him.

Hmm. I know AS. In his lightest days, his view of the world is 10 shades darker than Howl.

I read Howl as a poem of celebration – even exaltation.

I don’t mean to sound like a total ass here, but this is what is so great about art. The same expression – whether it’s a film or a painting or a poem – can elicit such different responses.

What better way to spur a real conversation? I love it when this happens!

At the end of his email, AS then “recommends” two poems that he says I “would never read”:

* On the Wire by Robert Service

* I Have a Rendezvous With Death by Alan Seeger

In fact, I’ve already read or heard them read at least a dozen times. They were written long before I was born, but were very popular in the 1950s and throughout the Vietnam War years.

They share some similarities:

* They were both written during WWI.

* They are both about death – the death of the speaker.

* They both became part of the common culture, at the level of Rudyard Kipling’s If…

But one is much better than the other. And, no, it’s not a matter of opinion. I have it straight from… well, let’s just say, “I’m right.”

So that’s what today’s assignment will be. Read these two poems and let me know what you think.

I Have a Rendezvous With Death

By Alan Seeger 

I have a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade,
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
And apple-blossoms fill the air –
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.

It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land
And close my eyes and quench my breath –
It may be I shall pass him still.
I have a rendezvous with Death
On some scarred slope of battered hill,
When Spring comes round again this year
And the first meadow-flowers appear.

God knows ’twere better to be deep
Pillowed in silk and scented down,
Where love throbs out in blissful sleep,
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,
Where hushed awakenings are dear…
But I’ve a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.

Alan Seeger 

Alan Seeger was born in New York City in 1888 and died in 1916. He was killed in action in World War I during the Battle of the Somme, while serving in the French Foreign Legion. A statue representing him is on the monument in Paris that honors fallen Americans who volunteered for France during the war. Poems, a collection of his works, was published posthumously by Charles Scribner’s Sons.

On the Wire

By Robert William Service 

O God, take the sun from the sky!
It’s burning me, scorching me up.
God, can’t You hear my cry?
Water! A poor, little cup!
It’s laughing, the cursed sun!
See how it swells and swells
Fierce as a hundred hells!
God, will it never have done?
It’s searing the flesh on my bones;
It’s beating with hammers red
My eyeballs into my head;
It’s parching my very moans.
See! It’s the size of the sky,
And the sky is a torrent of fire,
Foaming on me as I lie

Here on the wire… the wire….

Of the thousands that wheeze and hum
Heedlessly over my head,
Why can’t a bullet come,
Pierce to my brain instead,
Blacken forever my brain,
Finish forever my pain?
Here in the hellish glare
Why must I suffer so?
Is it God doesn’t care?
Is it God doesn’t know?
Oh, to be killed outright,
Clean in the clash of the fight!
That is a golden death,
That is a boon; but this…
Drawing an anguished breath
Under a hot abyss,
Under a stooping sky
Of seething, sulphurous fire,

Scorching me up as I lie
Here on the wire… the wire….

Hasten, O God, Thy night!
Hide from my eyes the sight
Of the body I stare and see
Shattered so hideously.
I can’t believe that it’s mine.
My body was white and sweet,
Flawless and fair and fine,
Shapely from head to feet;
Oh no, I can never be
The thing of horror I see
Under the rifle fire,
Trussed on the wire… the wire….

Of night and of death I dream;
Night that will bring me peace,
Coolness and starry gleam,
Stillness and death’s release:
Ages and ages have passed,
Lo! it is night at last.
Night! but the guns roar out.
Night! but the hosts attack.
Red and yellow and black
Geysers of doom upspout.
Silver and green and red
Star-shells hover and spread.
Yonder off to the right
Fiercely kindles the fight;
Roaring near and more near,
Thundering now in my ear;
Close to me, close… Oh, hark!
Someone moans in the dark.
I hear, but I cannot see,
I hear as the rest retire,
Someone is caught like me,
Caught on the wire… the wire….

Again the shuddering dawn,
Weird and wicked and wan;
Again, and I’ve not yet gone.
The man whom I heard is dead.
Now I can understand:
A bullet hole in his head,
A pistol gripped in his hand.
Well, he knew what to do, –
Yes, and now I know too….

Hark the resentful guns!
Oh , how thankful am I
To think my beloved ones
Will never know how I die!
I’ve suffered more than my share;
I’m shattered beyond repair;
I’ve fought like a man the fight,
And now I demand the right
(God! how his fingers cling!)
To do without shame this thing.
Good! there’s a bullet still;
Now I’m ready to fire;
Blame me, God, if You will,
Here on the wire… the wire….

Robert William Service 

Robert Service, a British-Canadian of Scottish descent, was 40 when World War I broke out. He attempted to enlist, but was turned down. He briefly covered the war for the Toronto Star. He then worked as a stretcher bearer and ambulance driver with the American Red Cross “until his health broke.” Convalescing in Paris, he wrote a new book of mainly war poetry, Rhymes of a Red Cross Man. The book was dedicated to the memory of his brother, who had been killed in action in France. Service received three medals for his war service: the 1914–15 Star, the British War Medal, and the Victory Medal.

Bits and Pieces 

Okay, Just Between the Three of Us, I Was Disappointed… 

It’s happened again. I recently discovered that a rule of grammar I’ve been dutifully obeying all my life has been rescinded.

I’m talking about the usage of “between” and “among.” The rule, which I learned as a child from my mother, was espoused by Frank Vizetelly in the 1920 edition of A Desk-book of Errors in English: “Among may apply to any number,” he said, but “between applies to two only.”

For decades, I’ve been happily correcting others when they broke this rule. But just last week, I came across an updated entry about it in the Usage Notes section of the Merriam-Webster website.

In spoken English, Merriam-Webster’s editors tell us, the between/among tenet has been violated continually throughout the history of our language.

Okay. That, I can understand. The rabble have always had their ways with the language. What upset me was this: Two of the greatest lexicological luminaries – Samuel Johnson and Noah Webster – allowed for the fact that “between” is sometimes used for three and more.

You can read the entire between/among argument here.

Elon Musk, the Twitterverse, and the True Value of Tesla 

Earlier this month, Elon Musk went on Twitter and asked his followers if he should sell 10% of his stake in Tesla.

More than 3.5 million of them responded. And their answer was: “Yes! Sell!”

Elon did. And almost immediately, Tesla stock fell, wiping out nearly $235 billion from the value of the company.

It was, as Bill Bonner pointed out in his blog, the same company, the same products, the same earnings… customers, COVID… everything.

“So why,” he asked, “would a share be nearly 19% less valuable?”

My answer: It’s a form of magical thinking, the same sort of irrational logic I talked about in my November 8 essay on government spending.

Bill shows how this works: If you “add up all the money that was or has been invested with Edison, Ford, Rockefeller, Jobs or even Zuckerberg… and subtract the value of all goods and services rendered, the sum will be hugely positive.” But if you do the same for Elon’s projects, the result will be “a staggeringly negative number.” His businesses do not make money; they lose it. They destroy wealth; they don’t create it.

Elon Musk is the world’s richest man today, because, Bill says, “the Federal Reserve has falsified the value of capital… and rigged the auto market with carbon credits… [His] enrichment, in other words, parallels the growing wealth of the entire elite caste. It is not based on actual output – neither on sales nor on profits – but on fake money and fake interest rates.”

She Could Have Been Mine! 

I began my art collecting habit in 1985 when I wandered into an art gallery in Palm Springs, CA. The proprietor, Bernard Lewin, turned out to be one of the world’s most important collectors of Mexican art. He was an intelligent, articulate, and gentle man. For most of a week, I spent an hour or so a day with him, learning about Mexican modernists.

I ended up buying two pieces from him: a mixograph by Rufino Tamayo, and an oil painting by José Clemente Orozco. I could have bought a small oil painting by Frida Kahlo, but Mr. Lewin dissuaded me. “She’s getting a ride because she’s the wife of Diego Rivera,” he said. “If you’d like, I can show you something by him.”

Even back then, I couldn’t afford a Diego Rivera. But if I had stretched my budget, I could have bought that small painting by Frida Kahlo.

On November 16 at Sotheby’s in New York, Kahlo’s 1949 self-portrait – titled “Diego y yo” – sold for $34.9 million. The highest price ever paid for a piece of Latin American art, including works by Rivera himself!

See the painting here.

A New Brand; How Long Will It Last? 

On Christmas, Staples Center, home of the Los Angeles Lakers, will be getting a new name: the Crypto.com Arena.

The arena’s owner, AEG Worldwide, said it struck a 20-year naming rights agreement with Crypto.com. The company, which was founded in 2016, facilitates cryptocurrency trading. In addition, according to its website, it provides cryptocurrency-based credit cards and allows users to “borrow up to 10 times their capital to invest in digital currencies.”

Yes, you read that right. And, no, I don’t get it either.

Companies have long used stadium/arena branding deals as part of their PR efforts. These deals provide lucrative long-term income to the stadium/arena owners and teams and expose the companies’ brands to the public whenever the teams are covered by the media.

But it doesn’t always work out for them. During the late 1990s, several dot-coms that put their brands on stadiums didn’t make it. One of the most memorable: Enron Field, home of the Houston Astros.

Read about this latest rebranding here.

Readers Write… 

From AG, a friend and colleague, after reading my review of Steven Pinker’s “Rationality”… 

Mark,

I’m going to recommend a book that should end up on your all-time Top 10: Steven Pinker’s “Enlightenment Now.” The main thesis – that things are getting better for most people in most places in most ways – is not widely recognized.

Pinker – who is a libertarian-leaning Democrat – was savaged by the far-left for this book, because it undermines their most sacrosanct belief: that we live in a horrible world at a terrible time and only massive government social programs can begin to change that. That led Pinker to two retorts. The first is that if there’s one thing progressives can’t stand it’s progress. The other: It’s not pessimism that causes people to believe the world is getting steadily worse. It’s ignorance.

Thanks for the recommendation, AG. I’ve just ordered a copy!

The End of GE as We Know It 

GE surprised many on Wall Street with an announcement on November 9 that it is going to split itself into three separate publicly traded companies. One in aviation, another in healthcare, and the third in energy.

For anyone following GE for as long as I have, this is not a big surprise. The company has been struggling for decades with a messy, overburdened corporate structure and a mountain of debt.

The details, according to Forbes:

* GE Healthcare will become its own company in early 2023.

* GE Renewable Energy, GE Power, and GE Digital will be combined into a single business in early 2024.

* Once those carveouts are completed, all that will remain of GE will be its aviation division, which makes jet engines, avionics systems, and a range of other products for both commercial and military markets. Larry Culp, who has been CEO of GE since 2018, will remain at the helm of this division.

With the split, GE says it is on target to reduce its total debt by more than $75 billion by the end of the year.

I don’t see this as an isolated event in the landscape of big businesses. I expect to see many more.

Worth Quoting 

* “Even if it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, go on out and sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures; sweep streets like Handel and Beethoven composed music; sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

* “To the most trivial actions, attach the devotion and mindfulness of a hundred monks. To matters of life and death, attach a sense of humor.” – the Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi

* “Happiness does not come from doing easy work but from the afterglow of satisfaction that comes after the achievement of a difficult task that demanded our best.” – Theodore Isaac Rubin

3 Words I’m Trying to Work Into My Conversations 

* Shavetail is US Army slang for a newly commissioned officer. It comes from the practice of shaving the tails of young, newly broken pack mules to distinguish them from seasoned ones. A derogatory term, it can also refer to any inexperienced person. Example: “While you two shavetails were goofing around, I got the job done.”

* Toplofty – a humorous colloquialism that appeared in the first half of the 19th century – means haughty and arrogant. Example from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake: “… celescalating the himals and all, hierarchitectitiptitoploftical, with a burning bush abob off its baubletop…”

* Xenology is the scientific study of extraterrestrial life. It was derived from the Greek “xenos” (stranger, wanderer). Example: “His interest in xenology motivated him to start writing science fiction.”

My Old-World Perspective on Investing

I am a happy member of two discussion groups: The Mules, a book club, which meets monthly, and Whiskey Wednesdays, a sort of old-fashioned conversation salon, that meets weekly.

One of the many topics we come back to on Wednesdays is the current state and future of technology. Last week, we talked about NFTs. SS, my partner in Ford Fine Art, was saying that someone approached her recently, offering to make NFTs out of some of my Central American collection.

If you haven’t heard of NFTs, you should know that they’ve become the thing futurists have been talking about almost non-stop for more than a year now. NFT stands for “non-fungible token.” Like cryptocurrencies, they are produced on the blockchain. Unlike cryptos, they are not used as currencies, but as digital assets. (I’ve mentioned them several times here on the blog.)

SS knows that NFTs have made their way into the art scene. And she’s heard the stories of overnight riches – including the one about the NFT by the artist known as Beeple that sold at Christie’s for $69.3 million on March 11. But she also knows my approach to buying art – which is skeptical and conservative. So on the one hand, she was tempted by this opportunity. But on the other hand, as she put it, “I don’t know shit about NFTs.”

NE, the youngest member of the group, thought it sounded like a great idea. But he sees things from a different perspective than the rest of us. He believes that there’s been a fundamental change in the way the world works. Something that has everything to do with the rapid movement towards the brave new world of the metaverse. “We are at a flexion point,” he said. “It’s like the transition from horse-drawn carriages to gas-powered automobiles. You have to see the writing on the wall. We are now with NFTs where we were with cryptocurrencies 10 years ago. Imagine if you could have invested in Bitcoin back then.”

This naturally led to a discussion about investing in general. And, although NE’s confidence in cryptocurrencies and NFTs could prove to be right, I wanted to explain my old-world perspective on investing to him…

Bits and Pieces 

Get Ready for – and Profit from – Higher Fuel Prices 

When it comes to large-scale and long-term investment trends, I pay attention to three colleagues I’ve been following for three decades: Bill Bonner, Tom Dyson, and Dan Denning.

One of their big bets is on gold. (Which I will be discussing in another blog post.) The other is about energy. And their bet is about profiting from rising fossil fuel prices.

In a recent missive from them, Dan pointed out that the increases we’ve seen during the pandemic are likely to continue even after the lockdown is old news. According to the US Energy Information Administration’s Winter Fuels Outlook,  we can expect to see the following increases this year:

* Heating Oil: up 43%

* Natural Gas: up 30%

* Propane: up 54%

* Electricity: up 6%

And if the winter is 10% colder, we could see these prices rise by another 50%.

Propane has seen the steepest increases. And according to Tom, it’s not due to current price action or even the supply squeeze. “It’s really a demand story,” he says. “And the demand is coming from places like India and China, where people use bottled gas to cook food on a daily basis.”

There are many ways to play this, but the one that Tom recommends is propane tanker stocks.

Beware of: Artists That Think and Talk 

A friend sent me an article about a group of up-and-coming collectors that “buy art about today’s most pressing issues.” One example was a pair of Mexican rich kids who are spending their daddy’s money on this stuff. “When you buy art, you make everything move,” they say. “You put your money in what you believe.”

My response: I don’t think artists should be allowed to do work on “pressing issues.” I don’t think they should necessarily be executed for doing so, but the threat of execution might help.

Artists – i.e., plastic artists – are, by definition, craftspeople that work in visual mediums. Their talent, if they have any, is in creating visual impressions.

They are ill-equipped to render their thinking about issues into art because they are generally untrained in thinking. To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, “An artist thinking is like a dog standing on its hind legs. It doesn’t do it well, but one is surprised it can do it at all.”

Speaking of art…

The 5 Most Expensive Mark Rothko Paintings Ever Sold 

I wasn’t all that into Mark Rothko until I knocked off one of his paintings to cover a TV in the swamp house, my family’s weekend getaway in my botanical garden. I selected Rothko to knock off because his work seemed so simple.

And it was. I finished the piece, about 6 feet by 4 feet, in less than four hours. Here it is, above the fireplace in the living room of the swamp house.

You can’t see it from this photo, but there are several blades of grass embedded in the layers of paint. The reason for that: I painted it outside, on the lawn.

I signed it Mark Rothko Ford.

It’s fooled only one person so far. Maybe it’s the grass. In any case, the biggest benefit I got from the experience, bigger even than saving a lot of money on real art, was that it made me appreciate how great Rothko was at what he did. The tones, the shades, the lack of visible brushstrokes.

If you see a Rothko in the right lighting, you will never forget it.

When I was a child, you could buy a Rothko for as little as $10,000. Today, his paintings are quite a bit more expensive. Here are five examples.

1. Untitled

This 1962 canvas sold at Christie’s in May 2014 for $66.2 million.

2. White Center

This 1950 canvas sold at Sotheby’s in May 2007 for $72.8 million.

3. Royal Red and Blue

This 1954 work sold in November 2012 at Sotheby’s for $75.1 million, doubling its pre-sale estimate of $35 million.

4. No. 10

This painting, done in 1958, sold at Christie’s in May 2015 for $81.9 million.

5. Orange, Red, Yellow

This one, done in 1961, sold at Christie’s for a whopping $86.9 million in May 2012, soaring past its $45 million high estimate.

Their Fair Share 

Biden wants the wealthy to pay “their fair share of taxes.” But by any sane standard, they already do. The top 1% in the US pay 40% of all income taxes.

You cannot expand wealth by redistributing it. Wealth will expand slowly if it is distributed naturally through free markets. It’s possible to speed that up, to some degree, from government action, but there is a limit.

The problem with Socialism is that sooner or later, you run out of other people’s money.

Why does no one ask the non-wealthy (and in particular the 30 million working-age men that are not working), to do their “fair share” of the work?

Norm Macdonald, RIP

Norm Macdonald died in September. You probably know that. He was best known as an anchor on SNL’s “Weekend Update” segment, from 1993 to 1998. But I thought he was at his best doing impromptu work, chatting casually with the hosts of nighttime interview shows.

Watch him here.

Literary Letters: Aldous Huxley on Getting Along When You Don’t Agree 

In this note to a colleague, written more than 60 years ago, Aldous Huxley explains what’s wrong with American culture today:

“Inhabitants of different and largely incommensurable worlds can live happily together – but only on condition that each recognizes the fact that the other’s world is different and has just as much right to exist and be lived in as his own.

“Once the other’s right to live where he or she is temperamentally and, no doubt, physiologically predestined to live is recognized, there can be something very stimulating and liberating about the experience of being joined in a loving relationship with somebody whose universe is radically unlike one’s own. It becomes possible for each of the partners to enlarge his own private universe by taking his stand vicariously, through empathy and intelligence, within the other’s territory and trying to see what reality looks like from that other vantage point.

“But, alas, what is possible goes all too often unrealized and, instead of federating their two worlds, the temperamental aliens settle down to a cold war.”

Worth Quoting 

* “As we saw, presidents Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden were a godsend… if you wanted to bring America down a peg. Self-serving, stupid, and incompetent – history couldn’t have asked for more. In 1999, the US federal government owed only $5 trillion. Now, thanks to their efforts, it owes more than five times as much.” – Bill Bonner’s Diary

* “Your time is better spent championing good ideas than tearing down bad ones. The best thing that can happen to a bad idea is that it is forgotten. The best thing that can happen to a good idea is that it is shared. Feed the good ideas and let bad ideas die of starvation.” – James Clear

* “A writer lives in awe of words for they can be cruel or kind, and they can change their meanings right in front of you. They pick up flavors and odors like butter in a refrigerator.” – John Steinbeck

3 Words I’m Trying to Work Into My Conversations 

* To bumfuzzle is to confuse, perplex, or fluster. You may have heard your grandma or grandpa use it, especially if they are from below the Mason-Dixon Line.

* Amphibology is a phrase or sentence that is grammatically ambiguous – e.g., “She sees more of her children than her husband.”

* Bindlestiff is another word for a tramp.

Is Nike Tapping Into Our Hopes… or Our Fears? 

Take a look at this Nike commercial:

A colleague sent it in, saying:

The tone and content speaks directly to their key audience of children/ teens (and the parents of children and teens), but the message itself is that there is nothing to fear about failure. We all have imperfect moments – even embarrassing or physically painful – when we’re learning a new sport or activity.  And it’s our perspective in those moments that will dictate who goes on to become stronger,  develop their skill, and discover a love for the game… and who finds a shady seat in the stands.

Is this interesting to you? Or just me?

My response:

The commercial is well done. Cute. Correct. Inclusive. Nike is adjusting to the emerging American zeitgeist…

As a culture, we are rejecting meritocracy in favor of equity, so Nike has no choice but to adapt by celebrating mediocrity over excellence…

And that’s where we are heading – a country of smug and self-satisfied mediocrity.

Bits and Pieces 

Everything You Need to Know About Impressionism in 5 Minutes 

Most people that like modern art like Impressionist paintings. I wish that weren’t true. But it is.

Impressionism was an artistic movement that began in the 1860s in Paris. The Impressionists eschewed Realism, which depicted images more or less realistically, in favor of capturing a momentary impression.

Four of the best-known Impressionists were Sisley, Monet, Manet, and Renoir. They liked to paint outdoors, and made a fad of it. They called it painting en plein air.

I’m not a huge fan of Impressionism. When it’s good, it is reasonably good. But most of the time it’s not good. And when it’s not good, it is sentimental, gimmicky, and pandering.

There was, in France at the same time, a development in Modernism that I think is much better. It was Fauvism, led by André Derain.

Of course, the art world doesn’t care what I think. And neither should you. But you should care about knowing some of the basics of this movement if you want to have and voice an opinion on it. Here are a few things to get you started…

* Impasto – By using short, thick brushstrokes, the artist could create a visible 3-dimensional effect on the surface of the canvas.

* Broken Color Technique – It was believed that the artist could create a more vibrant visual effect by mixing colors optically, as the human eye does, rather than by physically blending the paint. It was done by making dots or scratches on the canvas.

* Number: 250 – The number of water lily pond paintings by Monet.

 * Year: 1824 – The year Monet painted “Impression, Sunrise,” from which the Impressionist movement was named.

 * Quote – “Impressionism: it is the birth of Light in painting.” (Robert Delaunay)

Fitness Trumps Slimness for Health and Longevity 

I was happy to hear about a just-released meta-study comparing the health benefits of diet/weight versus exercise/fitness. Fat people, the study concluded, are better off getting fit than losing weight.

Glenn Gaesser, a professor of exercise physiology at Arizona State University in Phoenix, and Siddhartha Angadi, a professor of education and kinesiology at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, reviewed more than 200 studies (involving tens of thousands of subjects) related to dieting, exercise, fitness, metabolic health, and longevity.

The results, they found, were not even close. “Compared head-to-head, the magnitude of benefit was far greater from improving fitness than from losing weight,” Dr. Gaesser said.

Specifically, their analysis showed that sedentary, obese people that improve their fitness can lower their risk of premature death by as much as 30% or more, even if their weight does not budge. On the other hand, they found that the health benefits of losing weight were inconsistent. Some studies showed that weight loss among obese people does not decrease mortality risks at all. And even those that showed a decrease, showed a decrease of about 16% or half of the results achieved by improving fitness.

Shel Silverstein: Much More Than I Knew 

I have always thought of Shel Silverstein as a cartoonist and author of children’s books. So, when I saw this photo of him last week, I was shocked:

Does that look like the face of the beloved creator of Don’t Bump the Glump!

It turns out that Silverstein was much more than a bestselling author of children’s books. He was also an essayist, a poet, a songwriter, and a playwright.

His songs have been recorded by the likes of Johnny Cash and The Irish Rovers. He won 2 Grammys and was nominated for a Golden Globe and an Academy Award.

Silverstein began drawing at age seven by tracing the cartoons of Al Capp. His first published drawings were in a student newspaper at Roosevelt University in Chicago, where he studied English. He spent time in the military, during which his cartoons were published in Pacific Stars and Stripes.

When he left the military, he returned to Chicago to study at the Art Institute, and began to submit cartoons to magazines while also selling hot dogs at Chicago ballparks. His cartoons appeared in Sports Illustrated, Look, and This Week.

He became well known in 1956 when “Take Ten,” the cartoon series he did for Pacific Stars and Stripes, was republished by Ballentine Books as Grab Your Socks! In 1967, his work began appearing regularly in Playboy, which sent him around the world to do an illustrated journal of his travels.

He wrote music and lyrics for Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show. He also composed original music for several films and played guitar, saxophone, piano, and trombone for those compositions. He cowrote Things Change with David Mamet. He also wrote stories for the TV project Free to Be…You and Me.

In an interview with Publisher’s Weekly, Silverstein said:

I think that if you’re a creative person, you should just go about your business, do your work, and not care about how it’s received. I never read reviews because if you believe the good ones, you have to believe the bad ones too. Not that I don’t care about success. I do, but only because it lets me do what I want…. People who say they create only for themselves and don’t care if they are published… I hate to hear talk like that. If it’s good, it’s too good not to share. That’s the way I feel about my work. So, I’ll keep on communicating, but only my way.

Here’s a friendlier photo of him:

He died in Key West in 1999, at the age of 68, from a heart attack.

Interesting Facts About Asia 

You’ve never been to Asia? Shame on you. And I bet you didn’t know that Asia is home to…

* The two most populous countries in the world (China and India), with a combined population of 2.8 billion. Third is the USA with a paltry 330 million.

* Four of the world’s nine nuclear powers: China, Pakistan, India, and North Korea.

* The world’s second- and third-largest economies: China and Japan.

* Almost all the largest Muslim countries, including Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Turkey, and Iran.

A Reader Asks: Is tequila all it’s cracked up to be? 

Hello Mark,

I am testing the world of tequila, mainly for where it stands in the area of health when it comes to spirits.  I finally realized about 5 years ago that the brown whiskies and beers, even though I liked them quite a bit, hurt me physically.  I have since been having only vodka and red wines.  I have known that tequila is reasonably good for you when it comes to alcohol, but I never really understood it.

I know you have a taste for tequila, so if you have any suggestions, it would be appreciated.

My reply:

I used to drink rum but it made me irritable. Tequila doesn’t have that effect on me. Also, it doesn’t give me a hangover… no matter how many shots I have on a given night. They say it’s the best for metabolic reasons. I’m not sure about that.

There are three basic types: blanco, reposado, and anejo. Blanco is clear and not aged… reposado is light golden and is aged up to a year… and anejo is golden brown and aged at least a year.

If you are mixing tequila with club soda or fruit juice, blanco is fine. If you want to drink it straight and savor it, the aged tequilas are usually better. You will get some of the variations you get with a good, smooth, aged whiskey.

For a tequila highball (usually made with club soda), I drink Casamigos Reposado. For tasting, my preference is for José Cuervo Reserva de la Familia.

Yes, that’s the same brand that produced rot-gut tequila back in the day. Now they are a big company and can afford to make what I think is one of the world’s best sipping tequilas.

The Benefits of Drinking 

Doc Eifrig, a friend and colleague, tells me that a drink or two of any alcoholic beverage has the following benefits:

* It provides high levels of an antioxidant called polyphenols, which lower your risk of heart disease and high cholesterol.

* It gives your immune system a boost.

* It activates the neurotransmitter gamma-aminobutyric acid, which is responsible for memory and nervous system function. This, according to two recent studies, could lower your risk of developing age-related cognitive decline – i.e.,  dementia or Alzheimer’s disease.

And if your drink of choice is, like mine, tequila, it  has the added benefit of being low in calories (80 per ounce).

3 Words I’m Trying to Work Into My Conversations 

* cattywampus refers to something that is in disarray, that is askew, or to something that isn’t directly across from something else. For example, a post office might be cattywampus to the library.

* tarradiddle is a petty lie or pretentious nonsense. A great example is that classic fisherman’s tale of “the fish that got away.”

* bumbershoot – a word that you may have heard in many a Disney film – is a humorous slang term for an umbrella.

Worth Quoting 

* “The longer I live, the more uninformed I feel. Only the young have an explanation for everything.” – Isabel Allende

* “When failure is reversible, act quickly. When failure is irreversible, think carefully.” – James Clear

* “Money is a singular thing. It ranks with love as man’s greatest source of joy.
And with death as his greatest source of anxiety.” – John Kenneth Galbraith

Bits and Pieces 

Diversity Quotas – Do Advocates Really Believe in Them? 

Wokeness: the pathology of believing one can be virtuous by advocating ideas one hasn’t thought about.

Example…

Diversity quotas: the policy of establishing institutional quota systems for groups based on race, ethnicity, or gender.

In this short video clip, college students are asked if they agree with the policy of using racial quota systems to achieve “representative” diversity in colleges, businesses, and other institutions. Without exception, they agree. Then they are asked another question, which lays bare the superficiality of their thinking and makes at least a few of them think about the question for the first time.

Smart Choices, Martha Stewart, and Computer Logic 

“Which car to buy?” “Which restaurant to eat at? “Which clothes to save and which to get rid of?”

“If I had a bit more time to research the alternatives and think about my choices, I could arrive at the best answer,” you might say. “Ain’t necessarily so,” according to Tom Griffiths, a computer logician.

In his TED Talk (below), Griffiths argues that many human problems – even mundane ones – are logically complex. Too complex to arrive at a “right” decision through research and hard thinking. To solve such problems, you must do what computers do, he says. And that means taking logical shortcuts.

One logical shortcut that works for quandaries like the three mentioned above is called the explore/exploit tradeoff. Griffiths explains it here…

By the way, recency of use, as Griffiths points out, is, in most cases, the most important criteria. I think it’s interesting that the two queens of domestic efficiency, Martha Stewart and Marie Kondo, include this as a key question.

Why Old Marketers Don’t Like New Ideas 

“The strategies that made you successful in the past will, at some point, reach their limit. Don’t let your previous choices set your future ceiling. The willingness to try new ideas allows you to keep advancing.”– James Clear

One of the many counterintuitive things I’ve learned in my business career is that senior marketing executives – who should be eager to keep up with and test new advertising trends – tend to be among the most resistant to them.

I believe there are two reasons for this.

1. Being competitive individuals, the best marketers like to promote and defend their own marketing ideas over those of others.
2. The insights and experiences they had early in their careers, which propelled them into senior positions, still feel valid to them, even in the face of contrary indications.

Thus, they are prone to dismissing new ideas as fool’s gold – superficially glittering but fundamentally flawed ideas that are unlikely to work because they don’t fit into their understanding of how things should work, which is based on their 20- and 30-year-old brilliant ideas.

In a recent blog post, James Clear discusses this. New ideas are often dismissed as gimmicks and toys, he says. “The first telephone could only carry voices a mile or two. The leading telco of the time, Western Union, passed on acquiring the phone because they didn’t see how it could possibly be useful to businesses and railroads – their primary customers.”

In our industry – information publishing – social media platforms are evolving at a rapid pace. I can’t keep up with them, but I hope our senior marketers will. Doing so will require them to resist their prejudices and keep an open mind.

A few of us were talking about how quickly information publishing is changing. When we got into it more than 40 years ago, everything was paper and postage stamps. The internet changed all that around the turn of the century. At that time, we paid attention and transitioned into digital publishing. The result was massive growth over the following 20 years, from $100 million to over a billion.

But today the landscape for digital publishing is very different than it was 20, or even 10, years ago. Social media is the name of the game and we’ve not been quick and able adaptors.

Speaking of Counterintuitive… Have You Heard of the Birthday Paradox? 

There were 14 of us at the Cigar Club last Friday. I mentioned that I shared a birthday with one of them, Tony. I mentioned it because I thought it was unusual. Nanie didn’t think so. He said he’d read that any time you have 23 people assembled, there is a better than even chance that two of them will have the same birthday.

I rolled my eyes.

“It’s true,” Louis said. “It’s called the Birthday Paradox.”

I took a sip of my José Cuervo Reserva de la Familia. “Have you ever heard of the Cigar Club Paradox?” I said. “Whenever you have more than 12 people assembled, there is a good chance someone will try to bullshit you.”

It turns out, the Birthday Paradox is a real thing. The next day, I received the following from both Nanie and Louis: two charts that prove it – and below that, a video that explains it. (Hint: It’s not really a paradox.)

(A) Probability of two people not sharing a birthday

(B) Probability of two people sharing a birthday

Click here to watch the video.

Kicking the Social Media Habit 

TD, a friend and colleague, was heavily addicted to social media.

“It got to a point where I was checking my phone 100 times a day… and 95% of the time, I’m not using my phone for anything urgent or important. I just cycle through the same six or seven apps, checking for updates or messages. It’s a form of escapism from boredom and anxiety,” he said. “One consequence of this ‘checking’ compulsion is that I’ve wasted a lot of time hunched over a tiny screen for no reward.”

He implemented a 3-part solution:

1. He replaced his smartphone with a flip phone.
2. He limited his use of the internet to one hour a day.
3. He limited his reading to books and other paper products.

He’s been at this for two months, but admits, “Frankly, I haven’t made a lot of progress.”

I became aware of the problem of email when I first began to use it regularly about 20 years ago. I was writing a daily blog back then called Early to Rise. Among other topics, I wrote about personal productivity.

“It’s becoming clear to me,” I wrote, “that email is going to be a major problem for me unless I get control of it. I find myself opening my email first thing in the morning and then spending several hours on it, but without much to show for it when I’m done. I think that’s because two-thirds of the nearly 100 emails I get each day are either (a) unrelated to my goals (and therefore distracting), (b) related to my goals, but trivial, or (c) messages from others asking me for favors.

“I don’t consider myself to be a morning person, but I’ve found I have the best focus and energy in the first three hours of the day. If I devote those precious hours to email, I’m not only wasting my best hours, I’m putting myself in the unfortunate position of having to do my important work when I’m tired and unfocused.”

The solution, which I recommended to my readers, was to do the important work first and save the email for later. “Break the habit of looking at your email first thing in the morning. Try to put off your email for as long as you possibly can.”

That one trick was a game-changer for me in terms of personal productivity. In the 21 years since I put that rule into practice, I’ve done all sorts of things I would never have done otherwise, including writing and publishing more than two dozen books, producing two movies, developing a non-profit community development center in Nicaragua, developing a 25-acre palm tree botanical garden in Florida, and a current project – building a museum of Central American art.

Social media wasn’t a distraction 20 years ago, but it is now. And to deal with it, I’ve added social media to my don’t-do-in-the-morning list.

After my important work is completed (which is usually in the mid-to-late afternoon, I open my email and sort it by urgency: (1) do today, (2) do this week, and (3) do this month. I do not respond to – in fact, I delete – anything I don’t have to do. Then I deal with my “do today” email, allowing myself no more than 2 hours. If I get it done in less than 2 hours, I work on some of my “do this week” email.

By the time I’m finished with email, it’s usually close to dinner time. I’ve done several hours of important work, and I’ve done all the less-important-but-still-necessary business work that comes via email. I have, in effect, finished working for the day. I am sometimes tempted to go on social media then, but I don’t. I go home and do my best to be sociable.

After dinner, I usually grab a cognac and cigar and sit outside. I spend an hour or on what I call “brain games” – i.e., the NYT crossword puzzle, Sudoku, and various quizzes, the sort of quizzes I sometimes pass along to you.

After that, I hit social media. I have a half-dozen “News & Views” sites that I go to first. I make notes and save some of them for future use. Then I move on to various “Entertainment” sites. These include odd and indefensible rabbit holes such as Karens in the Wild, The Professor (an amazing B-ball player), videos of bungling criminals, etc. A half-hour of this sort of low-brow fun is more than enough. Then I reward myself by reading a good book or watching a good movie.

I can’t say this system will work for everyone, but it works for me. It works for me because it is designed around my nature. I am not good at NOT doing things that I like to do, but I’m quite good at doing things that I think are good for me. By giving myself permission to partake in social media, I don’t feel like I’m depriving myself. But by doing a range of more important things first, I don’t have to worry that I’m wasting too much of my time on junk.

3 Words I’m Trying to Work Into My Conversations 

 * zaftig (Yiddish): Referring to a woman – having a full rounded figure; pleasingly plump; Example: “The actress playing the lead role was a zaftig blonde.”

 * quinary: Of the fifth order of rank. Example: “She discusses other mixtures, including those of the secondary through quinary colors.”

* gigil: A Filipino word describing that sudden urge to pinch or squeeze an unbearably cute object or a person. Example: “The baby was so adorable I had the gigil to squeeze its cheeks.”

Worth Quoting: Obituaries 

 Obituary notices are not usually a source of great fun…

“If one should not speak ill of the recently dead, unless they were utter monsters such as Pol Pot,” said Theodore Dalrymple, writing in Taki’s Magazine, “one should not speak facetiously of them, either.”

The temptation is nevertheless great…

“You should never say anything bad about the dead, only good,” said Bette Davis upon learning of Joan Crawford’s death. “Joan Crawford is dead. Good.”

How to Find Years of Enjoyment in a Moldy, 50-Cent, Garage-Sale Book 

I have this beautiful old book. It is hardbound, 500 pages thick, and has the potential to provide me with hundreds or even thousands of hours of learning and pleasure.

Titled Spanish – A Basic Course, and published in 1971, this is not the kind of textbook you are likely to find in bookstores today. It is too old-fashioned, too academic. I bought it at a flea market. It was sitting in a box full of books that looked as though they had been packed at least 20 years ago.

There is something sad about an old, discarded book. You look at it and think about all the time its author and publisher spent producing it. All those hours of careful thinking and critical revisions and the selection of typefaces and fonts and illustrations. If this particular book has been neglected and unread, what about all its siblings, all the other copies that were printed with such hope and good intentions? Are they also collecting dust? Have they too been disconnected from their purpose?

A book is a physical thing, but it serves as a link between two intellectual processes. On the one side is the thinking, planning, and care that goes into creating it. On the other side is the learning and imagining that takes place when it is read. A book that is not being read breaks that link. Every book that was made with effort and care deserves at least one comprehending mind to keep the link alive and justify its original purpose.

When I buy an old, obscure book like my Spanish textbook, I have the good feeling that I am rescuing something valuable from oblivion. But simply buying it and bringing it home is not enough. Left unread, rescued books are still orphans, transported from one miserable orphanage to a slightly better one. When I put Spanish – A Basic Courseon my bookshelf, I could almost hear it whispering to me: “Bring me back to life!”

And I did.

I don’t have a natural talent for learning languages. But I managed to learn French pretty well many years ago by immersing myself in a French-speaking environment for six weeks while I was training to be a Peace Corps volunteer in the French-speaking African country of Chad. I supplemented that “forced practice” by studying another beautiful old textbook.

Like my Spanish book, it had been written, used, and remaindered decades before I found it – and it was the perfect formal companion to the relatively relaxed learning experiences I was having during my training.

I don’t remember the names of the authors of that French textbook, but I am grateful to them and their publisher every time I go to France. Since the book was paperbound and almost 30 years old when I started using it, it didn’t survive my two-year stint in Chad. But I like to think I gave it one more chance to be what it was meant to be – like Rocky Balboa coming back for one more super fight – before it disintegrated.

This Spanish text is hardbound and a bit younger, so is likely to live as long as I do. And although it modestly describes its purpose as “to give the beginning student of Spanish a useful and working knowledge of the language,” it is clearly capable of doing much more. It is, in fact, an entire world of Spanish that could easily keep me enthralled and connected to its authors – Judith Noble, Elizabeth Fouad, and Jaime Lacasa (all of Iowa State University) – for a very long time.

The page before the cover page, for example, has occupied my imagination for several very satisfactory moments on several occasions. In the upper center of the page is the title.

Beneath that, there’s a box, stamped in ink, with the following warning:

Miami-Dade Community College Honor Court

Any unlawful sale or purchase of this book is prohibited. Violators will be prosecuted by the Honor Court or College Discipline Committee.

Below this, there’s a series of little boxes: “Bought By” and “Sold By.” In the first “Sold By” box, there is a signature in blue (looks like Elisa Albe) and some numbers (62875 and 00390). Elisa Albe, I am thinking, was either the librarian for Miami-Dade Community College or an officer of its Honor Court. I haven’t any idea what those numbers mean, but I wonder about them. And this Honor Court – what did it have to do with Spanish textbooks?

The next section of the book, spread over 20 pages, has about 50 photographs of life in Spain and Latin America. There are grainy images of peasants selling vegetables… vibrant shots of fishermen casting nets… romantic images of sombrero-ed sleepers under trees… full-color scenes of city streets… gloomy close-ups of wrinkled old men… and happy snapshots of beautiful young women.

There is something about these photographs – about the fact that they were taken more than 50 years ago and that the people in them are probably dead now – that makes me wistful. I like looking at them, though. And the more I look at them, the more mysterious and beautiful they seem. I have gazed at these pictures with satisfaction dozens of times, and yet I feel like I will be able to look at them with pleasure and wonder for the rest of my life.

The bulk of this hefty book is devoted to the teaching of Spanish. Each chapter begins with a dialog that contains both the vocabulary and the grammar that will be taught in the 20 or so pages that follow. The vocabulary is taught through the repeated use of the intended words in practice sentences and subsequent test questions. The grammar is taught traditionally, as if it were Latin, from which – of course – Spanish is derived. At the end of all the chapters is a list of irregular verbs, conjugated for quick reference, followed by a glossary and an index.

The text is set in an elegant typeface. I don’t recognize the font exactly, but it is round and balanced with serifs – like a Palatino or a well-fed Times Roman. And the size of the type makes for an accessible look and easy reading – attractive features for an aging language student like me.

This morning, sipping coffee, I sat on the porch and studied Chapter 23 – a lesson on the passive voice. Like English, Spanish permits its speaker to construct a sentence actively, such as “John ate the apple” (Juan como el manzana) or passively, such as “The apple was eaten by John” (El manzana fue comido por Juan).The information is neatly organized and explained. The instructions are clear. The pace is comfortable. The authors give me plenty of opportunity to review.

The more I read this book, the fonder I become of those three people who may no longer be living but whose hard work back in the 60s is still giving me instruction and pleasure today. I want to thank them for doing it.

Not all of our books can be as dear to us as this one is to me. But we should all have at least a handful of books that can be cherished as long as the binding holds.