The Unretired

Business Week magazine, in the December 15, 2008 issue (page 46), has an article on The Unretired. These are people who retired, but due to the economic downturn are now hurting financially, and in many cases going back to work.

A couple of quotes, just a few paragraphs apart, stood out to me:

These aren't just the spendthrifts or sloppy planners you would expect to run into trouble in retirement ... many are people who did everything they were supposed to do -- working for decades and regularly socking money away.

Peter Fay, like many of The Unretired, feels angry and betrayed. The 63-year-old built up a $1 million retirement account as an executive at companies including Chiquita Brands International and then at his own high-end flooring company in Scottsdale, Ariz. But with all his money in stocks, he's lost 50% of that this year, at the same time that his house has tumbled in value. He's drawing down his savings and applying for jobs at Lowe's, Home Depot, and Costco. "All the systems we grew up trusting during all those years of work -- you save your money, you trust in the government -- are no longer valid," he says.

Did you catch that? "all his money in stocks" This is doing "what they were supposed to do?" I know of NO reputable financial planner or advisor who would recommend a retiree (or near-retiree) have all his money in stocks, even in the heady days of the market of the last few years.

Quite the opposite. He (and/or his financial advisors) were apparently driven by pure greed. If history can't teach people that greed is ultimately bad for them, nothing will, I suppose.

Grammar

Grammar is important, but it's not the hallmark of great writing. Rather, it's a tool to help us express ourselves and understand others.
It's what separates "Let's eat children!" from "Let's eat, children!"

--Martha Brockenbrough
Errors that Aren't: 12 Grammar Rules You Can Toss Out the Window

Why they call us a "right-to-work" state

Section 12 of Article 15 of the Constitution of the State of Kansas:

Membership or nonmembership in labor organizations.
No person shall be denied the opportunity to obtain or retain employment because of membership or nonmembership in any labor organization, nor shall the state or any subdivision thereof, or any individual, corporation, or any kind of association enter into any agreement, written or oral, which excludes any person from employment or continuation of employment because of membership or nonmembership in any labor organization.

The cost of college sports

I'm all in favor of co-curricular activities. Students need to be involved in sports, or music, or drama, or other activities outside their area of study in order to be well-rounded. For some students, it is the co-curricular activities that keep them in school. But I think the sense of proportion goes right out the window when it comes to college sports, and in particular college football.

Here are some interesting numbers from the December 2008 / January 2009 issue of Fast Company magazine (page 48):

-- The college football economy is worth an estimated yearly $6,000,000,000. (Yes, that's six billion dollars!)
-- Ohio State University had the nation's largest athletic budget last year: $109,382,222. That's nearly $110,000 for each of it's 980 athletes. (Except that when I do the math, I get $111,614.51 per athlete!)
-- Fox paid $330,000,000 to air all Bowl Championship Series games except the Rose Bowl from 2007-2010.
-- WINS: Merchandise royalties for the University of Texas doubled to $8,000,000 after it won the 2006 national championship.
-- LOSSES: NBC Pays $9,000,000 per year for the broadcast rights to home games at Notre Dame, which went 3-9 last season. Ratings have dropped 47% since 2005.
-- New Orleans got an economic boost estimated at $400,000,000 from hosting last year's national championship.
-- The 619 schools competing in NCAA football in 2007 tallied total attendance of 48,751,861.
-- Last season's 32 bowl games collectively drew 1,700,000 fans. Another 129,000,000 households tuned in to TV broadcasts.
-- Average home-game attendance in 2007 at Texas A&M's Kyle field: 82,207.
Estimated population in 2007 of College Station, Texas, home to Texas A&M: 80,315.

The Poetry of Dorothea Mackellar

I'm not sure how it happened, but my Australian buddy and I got to talking about poetry the other day. He began quoting a poem he'd learned in school. It's called My Country, and was written by Dorothea Mackellar (1885-1968).

I just had to look her up, and what I found amazed me. Frankly, I'm not much into poetry. I've never really understood it, I guess. I'd rather read good prose anytime. But the poems I read from her were so moving, so touching ... it was obvious that she had worked hard to make sure every word was in just the right place to carry the exact shade of meaning she wanted. Her poems don't just paint pictures, they tug at my heart and pull me into her pictures.

I'll quote a couple of her shorter poems here, and if you want more I'll suggest The Official Dorothea Mackellar Site.

The Waiting Life
Since it befell, with work and strife
I had not time to live my life
I turned away from it until
Work should be done and strife be still.

My hands and head for use are free,
Nor does my own life worry me,
But docile as a spaniel waits
Until this present stress abates.

Tranquil it breathes, and waits, I know,
With all its joy contained. But oh
I hope when I have time to play
My life will not have run away!

This next one really surprised me at how much it touched my emotions.

An Old Song
The almond bloom is overpast, the apple blossoms blow.
I never loved but one man, and I never told him so.

My flowers will never come to fruit, but I have kept my pride -
A little, cold, and lonely thing, and I have naught beside.

The spring-wind caught my flowering dreams, they lightly blew away.
I never had but one true love, and he died yesterday.

If you have no time to read any more of her poetry, I hope you can at least read about "a sunburnt country" in My Country, which is probably her most famous poem.

Movie Review: Dancer, Texas Pop. 81

Dancer, Texas Pop. 81 (1998)

Written and Directed by Tim McCanlies

Rated PG

Starring: Breckin Meyer, Peter Facinelli, Ethan Embry and Eddie Mills

From the DVD Jacket:

"Keller (Breckin Meyer) has wanted to leave Dancer, Texas since he was a child. At 12 he enlisted his best friends, Squirrel (Ethan Embry), Terrell Lee (Peter Facinelli) and John (Eddie Mills) in a solemn oath that they would all ditch Dancer after high school graduation. But when the boys gather on graduation night, each finds his own reasons to reconsider their vow."

The entire movie takes place in a 48-hour span from the Saturday morning of graduation day until Monday morning when the bus leaves town. The setting is Dancer, a very small town in the middle of nowhere, west Texas. It's the largest graduating class in school history, four guys and one girl. As mentioned above, the four guys have made a "solemn oath" that on the Monday following graduation, they would catch the bus for Los Angeles to find their fortunes. They even bought their bus tickets two years earlier.

Keller has lived with his grandpa ever since his parents died. Grandpa isn't getting any younger. Though Keller's dream is to go to LA, perhaps Grandpa needs him more?

Squirrel and his dad "the drunk" live in a trailer house on the outskirts of Dancer. The trailer sits at a precarious tilt. Seems his dad was drunk when he parked it, and never got around to leveling it ... been that way for 12 years. Squirrel can't wait to get out of there, but things may have changed during the weekend?

John is a natural-born rancher. His dad is adamant that at age 18, a boy becomes a man and is on his own. Nothing is handed to him, and dad owes him nothing. He's probably not going to be at home in a city of 13 million, but there's nothing for him on the ranch in Dancer. Or is there?

Terrell Lee's family is in the oil business. His domineering mother is insistent that he's going to go into the oil business with his dad as an executive in a white shirt. He needs to get out of Dancer to see what else there is, but can he stand up to his mother?

As events unfold, the whole town is abuzz with wondering how many (if any) of the boys will actually board the bus come Monday morning. One man even "smells a betting opportunity" and immediately starts taking wagers.

Tim McCanlies develops characters in an amazing way. His knack for that is evident in another of my favorite movies, Secondhand Lions. The one complaint I've read about this movie in online reviews is that "nothing happens". Well, there isn't any gory death, no car chase, no sex. But perhaps "nothing happens" is the very point of the movie? If you grew up in a small town, or care about someone who did, this movie will resonate with you.

The things I read ...

I was studying a manual on SS7*, and came across the following:

If you are one of those people who say that you will call home and let the telephone ring twice when you get to your destination safely, note that you have no guarantee that the telephone will actually ring twice—or even ring at all. You might hear two rings, but that does not mean the called party will hear two, or even any, rings because their power ringing pattern might be in an off period.

This is because the ringtone you hear in your ear when you're calling someone is generated at your local exchange, and is almost certainly out of sequence from the ring generator (called the "power ringing") at the far exchange. The circuit to the phone you're calling isn't completed until (if) someone answers. It's hard to believe, but those few seconds of leaving the circuit free (or not even using it if nobody answers) add up over thousands and millions of calls. Ultimately, it means the phone companies have to build fewer circuits to carry the same number of calls.
None of this is terribly important anymore ... cellphones have made the incremental cost of long distance calls so low (or even free) that we don't hesitate to call across the country to tell loved ones we arrived safely.

*SS7 stands for "Signaling System 7", the system which handles the setup and teardown of circuits for telephone calls. SS7 makes such things as caller ID and cellphone roaming possible. It is a fascinating system. Well, OK ... it is to me.