Heading Into Darkness
I’ve never been one that was terribly afraid of the dark. As a young child I preferred to have the door cracked open, like most kids, but I also always wanted a glass of water before bedtime. That makes me think it had more to do with wanting some attention and assurance of connectivity than any particular fear of the loss of light. These days we sleep with blackout shades (which Kim sometimes supplements with a further eye mask) since there is more concern about the light than of the dark. No one in this household would suggest that any of us is afraid of the light, we are just sometimes annoyed by the light since it interferes with that little bit of added sleep. If I had my druthers, unless I lived in the far norther reaches where the midnight sun effect for six months of the year kept me from having at least 6-7 hours of relative darkness, I would allow myself to be awakened by the rising sun. It simply feels more natural to me.
This morning I woke up very early and even now, at 5:30am, it is still totally dark outside. I do not even see a patch of light to the East, and yet I know it is supposed to be a clear and sunny day, so I presume it will be dark for most of the time I am writing this. Let me review what is on my mind that would make me get up so early after only five hours of sleep, which is two hours less than optimal for me and a full hour less than my chosen minimum on most days. I actually have a lot on my mind so I think priorities matter.
The first thing I have done is to read the morning headlines and stories of most concern in the world. That is relevant because while I usually don’t dig in so early unless there is something breaking that bothers me. The Ukraine bothers me. Sure, it bothers me because we are supposed to go to Italy in three weeks and Italy is simply too damn close to Ukraine to NOT think about whether this is a contained Ukrainian crisis or the start of a European war that will, indeed, become another World War. That is not normally the assumption with a regional crisis, but then those rarely have a major super-power, one that my brain stem remembers being afraid of under my grade school desk. And there is good reason for that memory since it has been quite some time since anyone serious has rattled the nuclear cage at the world, and yet Vladimir Putin has now done just that. I thought we were done with that nightmare, but here we are again at a Ukrainian version of the Cuban Missile Crisis. No, there are no ICBM’s on board ships circling the Black Sea, but in today’s world of cyber-warfare, missiles on U2 photo stock is not really the operating necessity for such concern. Watching a waning and desperate world leader who’s 20-year reign, even in Uber-autocratic Russia, does not allow him the comfort of waging war without meaningful citizen protests in the streets of Moscow and St. Petersburg.
In addition to not wanting to be the stupid guy taking his wife behind potential enemy lines inadvertently, just to get some good local pasta, I am also watching the impact of this conflagration on energy costs. Just yesterday my copper guy called to hem and haw about getting the copper for the Hobbit House roof down from the L.A. fabricator at the cost of a $150 gas-guzzling special trip. I threw a $150 at the problem and it went away, but I haven’t been threatened with a gas embargo constraint since the Petrodollar days of 1974. Inflation per say doesn’t bother me, but seeing my fellow Californians revolt over gas prices in this car-culture area, despite the abundance of Tesla product on the road, is disconcerting. I don’t want to look at my portfolio and how it is being impacted by war threats, but I’m sure its happening there too.
What really worries me is the reaction of my fellow Americans around this crisis. We all know that politics is supposed to stop at the border when we are exposed to a national defense threat. But in the age of Trump and Tucker Carlson (and now Mike Pompeo…remember him lurking in the shadows waiting to pounce on a 2024 prize when the opportunity avails), we are no longer a fully united country. Yes, some Republicans are condemning Russian aggression. McCarthy and Cruz are out there saying its wrong, but neither of them can be counted as non-equivocators when the caca hits the fan. The darkness that lurks in the souls of the bloodless conservative right that wants to criticize our President as he very convincingly leads the EU, G-7 and NATO the way American leaders used to lead the free world used to be a fringe (yes, even FDR had his share of minority detractors in 1941), is very saddening. Party over country. Party over humanity. Party over all…or better stated…Uber Alles. That is a pitch darkness that wakes me much more than any rays of light.
But as the sun starts to peak its nose over my Eastern horizon, I also have a full day today with which to contend. Our friends from Sonoma are heading down for a weekend visit, their first in several years. He is mid-80’s now and appropriately COVID-cautious (he’s actually had the virus and overcome it once). We are anxious to spend a weekend with these dear friends. Before they arrive in the afternoon (I suspect they are overnighting around Santa Barbara and driving early enough to not hit the worst of the L.A. basin Friday traffic), I have a day of labor to get the front beam up over the cedar timber posts I installed yesterday. I have hired my Angel from Home Depot to assist so I have to go pick him up and get him started with some staining and toting because I have a 9am conference call.
I have a new expert witness assignment representing a wrongly-fired broker who seems to be the victim of a big bad broker-dealer who wanted an excuse to downstaff and chose to make accusations of investment advisory impropriety. I am all about protecting innocent investors from big bad brokers, but I am also very much about defending competent brokers from their big bad bosses who use expedients to solve budgetary problems. Even a broker can be the little guy getting crushed by the machine and this seems to be one of those cases. This kick-off meeting should not take too long and I’m hoping Angel can get a jump on the prep work before he and I have to wrangle that big bad beam on top of those eight-foot cedar posts
So, while I hope for the ability to get the front beam and roof finished, stabilized and ready for the copper tray being put around it, I also hope that my copper man can get the copper goods here from L.A. while my friends are also traveling in from L.A. All that going on while I save a broker from unjust treatment at the hands of an impersonal Wall Street. But that is all stuff that will happen in the light of this day. By the time I am finished and ready to receive my guests, Kyiv will be once again in darkness, except this time they may be heading into a darkness that may well darken all of our worlds in ways mankind should have by now found a way to avoid. Some days even when the sun also rises (thank you, Ernest), the darkness seeps into our lives prematurely, so I will continue to pray for our Ukrainian brothers. Unlike the weak-spined J.D. Vance, who can only see what he thinks will helps him get a Senatorial seat in Ohio, I do give a shit about what happens in Ukraine.