A PERFECT STORM: THE CREDIT CRUNCH

If you have a catastrophe in your personal life, you can probably count your problems or causes on one hand. Illness, getting fired, divorce, moving, a death in the family.

Even a great natural disaster like a hurricane is a one-hander. High winds, storm surge, loss of electricity, property damage, evacuation.

You can handle one handers. Pick off the problems one by one and deal with each accordingly.

This credit crunch, on the other hand, is a real two-hander. Its reasons are systemic, interwoven, complex, and ever changing.

Check out this Powerpoint presentation , the guts of a speech I made in November, and think about it.

TheCreditCrunch.pps

WHEN MIGHT BECAME CAN

Written the morning after the election- November 2008

Some say that words are meaningless, that words are empty. The opposite is true. Perhaps it might seem today that words are meaning LESS, but words are everything, and mean everything, depending on who says them, how they are said, and how they are heard. I woke up this morning and I heard words sing. I heard words sing FREEDOM. Freedom is not freedumb. It is not free, nor is it dumb. Free COSTS. The cost is paid EVERY DAY. Dumb is not ignorant. Ignorant is knowing without thinking, and speaking without knowing. To be dumb is NOT to speak, to remain silent even if you know. Last night no one was dumb. I heard words sing RIGHT. America has stopped doing the "right" thing, and has done the RIGHT thing. It has traded the closed fist of self-RIGHTEOUS intolerance for the open hand of HOPE. It has traded the smugness of class thinking for an open-minded class on thinking. It has swapped stubbornly doing things for reasons shown to be wrong to reasoning what it should be doing. I heard words sing TRUTH. The world has become a place where nothing is but what is not. You see it everywhere. Truth lies, and only stands up if someone stands up for it. Last night a nation stood up. I heard words sing MIGHT. Not the might of the high and mighty, not the might which sneers that it is always right. The MIGHT which says: maybe....just maybe...together we CAN.

MY STEENS

The words I have said and written and wanted to say are ours and ours alone; too private to share, so I will say only this.

On that day 29 years ago, God was smiling on me when he brought me my best friend, my partner, my love, my strength, and my source: my wife Christina.

THE MOTHER SHIP

In celebration with love of the 75th birthday of my mother Jean Ann Van Kleek Pettigrew

Not only mother of three, and grandmother of eight but educator, mentor, organiser and most of all: creator, of words, of ideas, of enthusiasm

December 2, 2005

The mother ship sits at anchor for much of her life, While all around her preparations are made by those corsairs, those frigates, and those caravelles she has inspired: To leave her safe harbor and go to their Destiny. They know little of how she came there, Her keel hewn from solid oak from far off lands, Her sails tattered, scars of war with man and nature, Sparkling mornings in foreign ports - A proud launch from her own shipyard And the glint of an idea in a naval architect's mind. They know little of her captains, the cargo she has borne, The creaking of her timbers in fair sea and foul. They sail to their own fate, their design a part of her hidden knowledge, Their course, their stars, their destiny entwined with hers. And little do they realize that once they have safely left, She too will slip anchor and set her own course - Her job done, but her life far from over. She too will have her own story to tell Full of mountainous seas and shimmering lagoons, With howling gales bending her mast and zephyrs tickling her shrouds, With courses both charted and providential, And shanties to sing and oceans to cross. She too will sail to seas unknown and one day perhaps Return home to put down anchor. And in the twilight regale them with tales of a life worth living Which is hers to share - And theirs also... Forever the mother ship.

THE MIDLIFE CANOE CLUB

http://www.midlifecanoeclub.com/

In 1999 I took a trip along with my two closest friends and three other guys up to the Hudson Bay, flying in along with three canoes on a floatplane and paddling 150 miles downriver to the mouth of the North Knife River. An epic journey recounted on a website I did (click on the above link). Even almost ten years on, the memories are still vivid.

CURSING AIN'T THE HALF OF IT

MAY I HAVE HALF A WORD PLEASE? There has been a furore about the overuse of the F word on the airwaves....how it has devalued our language and our morals and deadened our senses. Words are indeed powerful. They evoke an automatic response from our consciousness. In a sense, they do our thinking for us. They are contextual, however, and if used too much, either lose their meaning entirely or indeed mean exactly the opposite of their intention. Consider the epithet F****** A. It no doubt used to be an insult; now it is more an expression of surprise. Why not use a half-word instead? A half-word will not explain anything for us; it will force us to think to understand. Of course it will be a euphemism for its full partner, but it will require active participation for comprehension and will stop us cheapening our language with all-purpose potty words that, in fact, may mean anything or nothing at all. Take the half-word IT, for example. No prizes for guessing its full partner. But use it for a while, and you will quickly find just how confused our language can become when overuse turns into saturation, and where context then becomes everything. IT has amazing properties to transform itself. For example, someone who knows his IT is seen as smart; someone who knows IT, dumb. Both good IT and bad IT can be good, usually when followed by the word man, as in: This is good IT, man, or this is BAAD IT, man. You can either take a IT, or have a IT, or just plain IT, and it all means the same thing. Being IT hot is good, being a hot IT is seen as selfish and egotistical. Being full of IT, or a IT head is also bad, but if you have your IT together that is good. If you don't give a IT it is also bad, whereas saying he gives a IT means in fact he doesn't. And so on and so on. By stripping away the full word you will make people think about what you are saying, and make you think twice before you say it. And if someone should ask you what you are doing, just say you are using half-words, and if they ask you what the other half of IT is, just look at them and respond quietly: "What you should tell yourself the next time you mindlessly say IT: SH....

POPS

My Dad died on December 19, 1988. That night I tried to book a flight to return to the US on both PANAM and TWA, but was wait-listed on both flights. Subsequently, I took an Air India flight the following morning. The PANAM flight was the Lockerbie flight, blown out of the air by Libyan agents.

The shock of a death, even one which was the end of a long and painful process of deterioration, took about six years to bubble up to the surface, and erupted in a very painful period of introspection and doubt when I was stricken with glandular fever.

I wrote this poem shortly thereafter.

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL IDEA

The most beautiful idea on the face of the earth is the idea the child has that his father knows everything. Jack Kerouac The Town and the City

Memories beat inside a hollow chest

As I awaken to a sledgehammer of sorrow

I hear you say:

The best of thoughts are tears

When words will soothe tomorrow

I feel the circle close

As your lifewill's slowly broken

You're gone

And now it's me who knows

The truth of what you've spoken

Father, further will I try to band

That ring each has of winning

But sometimes

An end must be at hand

To realise a beginning.

-----------------------

To my Dad.

With love.

November 1994

THROW AWAY THE CLICHES-Wimbledon 2008

Throw away the clichés. They were all there in the pot, bubbling up to the surface as the match slowly came to the boil.

The irresistable force meets the unyielding object. The hearts of two lions. Overcoming the odds. Backs to the wall. Pretender to the throne. The reigning monarch. Grace under pressure. Mano a mano. Blow for blow. Substance not form. Triumph of the will.

Throw away all the superlatives as well. Wow. Unbelievable. Stunning. Excellent. Perfect. Amazing. Phenomenal. Wondrous. Inspiring. Shocking. Poetic. Elemental. Courageous. Agonizing. Ecstatic. Triumphant. Disastrous. Titanic. Legendary. Epic. Heroic.

Throw away the past and the footsteps of those who came before and the echoes of the cheers for former champions and classic struggles.

Throw away the razzmatazz, the media hype, the baubles, the gold cup and the filthy lucre, the outfits and the logos and the food stalls and the champagne bar and the debenture holders.

Throw away the elements: the natural--rain, the swirling wind, the pigeon who chose the ancient stadium and the most excruciating moments to frolic, the advancing gloom...and the manmade: the flashbulbs, the mobile phones, the c'mons, the gasps, the chants, the guttural cheers.

Throw away the preconceptions and prognostications, the bookies' odds, the statistics, the analysis, the technique, the coaches and trainers and commentators and hangers-on.

Throw away the pomp and the circumstance, the royal box, the scoreboard, the electronic challenges, the ivy, the manicured lawns surrounded by concrete and glass, the walkways and signs and queues and carparks, the practice courts and crowds and umbrellas and ponchos.

Throw away the hopes of a resurgent sporting nation, the red and yellow patriotic flags and painted faces of exuberance and passion versus the understated neutrality of restraint and discretion.

Throw away the close-knit coterie of supporters, the family ties of uncles and aunts and mothers and fathers in awe of their creation.

Throw away the strokes of genius. The magic of invention. The angles and contortions, the power and the glory and the wonder of it all.

Throw it all away, and what are you left with?

For one brief moment in the stretch of time which stretches to an infinity beyond our comprehension, those who were fortunate enough to witness it saw a brief glimpse of sporting perfection, the battle for survival stripped down to its most raw and bare and beautiful. This is what it must be like to see inside the mind of God.

I know, and for the rest of my time on this planet I have the good fortune to be among those very lucky few who have the honour and the privilege to be able to utter these three precious words:

I was there.

Wimbledon Men's Final July 2008

INNER PEACE

For those who are unable to choose.

There's a place at the center that everyone knows 

At the end of a valley where no one else goes 

Where the rage of the battle meets the eye of the storm 

Where the sole thing that matters is substance not form

 It's a place where the heart and the mind mold as one 

Where deep thoughts and deep feelings wage a battle hard won 

O'er frustration and anger and things left undone 

And the failures of self from which no one can run 

 And in order to reach there and to pick up the fight 

And to win, not for victory, but for that which is right 

One must follow a path which is narrow and straight

 And not waver, nor falter, nor tarry, nor wait 

And ignoring confusion and man's misguided pride

 Take the only course open, and that is: 

DECIDE.

30 March 1994 

Kew, England

THE CORRIDORS OF YOUR LIFE

This was written for one of my closest friends:

Down the corridor of your mind are many doors 

Who knows what lies behind them?

 Life makes you choose.

 In youth, hungry to win, afraid to lose 

Not wanting to disappoint, and eager to please 

You open them with ease. 

 Some bring you failure, or its twin, success 

Some seem a certainty, others a guess 

You find many unimportant 

Or only means to ends 

Behind some lie enemies, 

A precious few hide friends. 

 The trip down this corridor is a test 

To prove to yourself you have what it takes

 Focusing on your goal, ignoring the rest 

Savouring your victories, exposing mistakes 

You press on to be best. 

 At some point down this corridor, far from the start 

When you least expect 

A new door opens to a journey apart 

You meet someone and suddenly connect 

And are led down the corridor of the heart. 

 This new corridor is different though, 

Its journey lifelong 

Behind each door lessons are learned 

New emotions you couldn’t know 

Right and wrong the hard way earned 

Daily paid as feelings grow. 

These emotions conflict as inside you change 

You feel joy and doubt, 

Contentment and pain, 

The bitterness of loss and the sweetness of gain 

As solutions somehow work themselves out 

 In this corridor decisions count 

Both when taken and later 

As consequences mount

There are no victories, no defeats 

No false starts, no repeats 

Only the experience of life made greater.

 In this corridor you go forward and remember back

 Old scars heal When new feelings take their place

 Showing little behind a public face 

While inside you alone can know 

That like your inner thoughts, each scar is real. 

 The corridor of the heart leads to love

 But there is a price to be paid 

For its end is the sum of all decisions made 

Of the anger you have felt

Or the hurt you’ve been dealt 

Of all words good and bad you’ve said. 

But whatever the price this corridor exacts 

Through what is in your grasp

 Or beyond your control 

Without the sum of all its acts 

Your human life would not be whole

 For the corridor of the heart leads to your soul. 

Kew, England 

March 1998