Ruthie Makes the Big Time! (and other things I'm thankful for this Thanksgiving)

Happy belated Thanksgiving everyone! On this the first official day of the holiday season, I am privileged to report that Mom was featured in the Sunday Oakland Press on the 21st. A rather nice photo of her alongside Lourdes hefe Sr. Frances Mary Kernasovich, which I have posted to the right. I was completely unaware of this until one of the nurses informed me of it on Tuesday. Fortunately, I do take the Oakland Press (as you all could see from my November 9th posting in which I included my letter to the editor which they published on November 3rd.) So I was able to resurrect the Sunday issue and scan it and provide the article in its entirety on the email link that lead you to this posting. Mom is not mentioned in any of the rest of the article but it’s still worth reading for how highly placed Lourdes is among Michigan’s nursing homes.

Leaving Michigan 2010!

No, this isn’t about me pulling up stakes and moving back to sunny California. Not that it would do any good. California’s in worse shape than Michigan. No, this is my annual "leaves" shot of the autumn harvest here at 3535 in Michigan, or more accurately my annual project dispatching of all these piles. As I tell my friends in L.A. every year at this time, "you’ll never see this in Southern California!" Behind the large pile I’m standing next to, there are some twenty more just like it.

Beethoven's Progeny

Piano day again but I’m going to do a little change of pace here and talk about something that’s only tangentially related to piano. I’ve discovered e-readers and, though, I haven’t yet had the pleasure of using one, Kindle, by far the top-rated reader, just announced about a week ago that their latest and greatest, the Kindle 3, has been dropped in price from $189 to $139. I’ve not yet joined the 21st century as far as HDTV goes, or the iPod, or data phones, or texting. (I’ll never do texting! I see no need for iPods, and I have no desire to do Internet on my phone.) But I think I’ll probably soon be joining the Kindle Kraze!

John Lennon's Piano

Okay, it’s not really John Lennon’s piano in the photo at the right. It’s not even a copy of John Lennon’s piano. But last month, October 9th, would have been Lennon’s 70th birthday and, in honor of that, Steinway is offering an exact commemorative replica of the Steinway grand piano that he gave Yoko for her 38th birthday in 1971. That’s the piano on your right and Steinway is selling it again.

It’s been a while since I’ve laid out any piano musings. But Thursday is usually the day for it, (though this will probably be published Friday since it’s already 11:30 p.m.) Today was my 123rd lesson and the beginning of our annual intense marathon holiday push to learn one carol a week to give a family concert on Christmas Day.

More On Finance (plus George on podcast)

Today I bit the bullet and subscribed to 3 months of FastTrack. I’m hoping that I can spend the next three months completing at least a preliminary learning curve and backtesting some of the simpler strategies so that I can then start doing some real trades. First, I have to complete my little mini-course on finance so that I can describe in more detail last month’s FastTrack seminar in Auburn Hills. But tonight I am officially a FastTrack user.

A Terrible Way To Govern

29 million Democrats! That is the official number that the three networks all reported last week. That is the official number of Democrats who stayed home one week ago today and did not vote. You’ll recall that I ended last Monday’s posting with the rejoinder, "if the polls are right and the Democrats do lose, they’ll have nobody to blame but themselves." Well, the polls all said that so many Democrats were so discouraged that a record number would not bother. The Republicans were very much counting on this. On this one point anyway, the polls were absolutely correct with but one proviso – as if anyone thought this was possible, their estimate was actually way under!

Government Belongs To Those Who Show Up

Tomorrow we go vote in what everyone is calling "the most historic election of our time." The only problem with this pronouncement is that I cannot recall any election in my 39 odd years of voting that was not called "the most historic election of our time." This, of course implies that, if things go the way the prognosticators want them to, then big sweeping change is heading our way. But, in truth, this is very rarely the case. The reality is - governing is hard! Whoever gets in, that is any newcomers (as the veterans already know it), will be smacked with this from their first day in office.