The Wonder Of Small Gifts

Small gifts at this time of giving transform into something special that does not happen at any other holiday season.  When everyone is giving and thinking of their love ones, themselves, and especially people in need whom they may not know personally, small gifts seamlessly collect together gaining force and purpose.  We know because we see so many others giving that our small gift will not remain small and incidental.  The collective effort to help others is wonderful.  Far more than the snow and decorations, it is the beauty of the holiday season.

Every gift you give is good.  There are no poor choices when helping others.  And there seems to be an added pleasure in giving to causes you have supported in previous years.  Everyone smiles when they see a loyal friend return again with a gift.

And as the season of giving comes to a close and a new year begins, consider adding new causes to your giving list.  A new cause need not be costly to be a rewarding addition to your life.  The paradox of giving is that the giver is the first to be rewarded and for whom the gift lasts the longest.  Charles Marlin

Did You Feed The Black Swan?

Settling down for a pleasant winter evening read of a good article on modern risk management techniques is good only when the article is as well written as Nick Rockel’s “Greed, Fear & Forecasting Doom,” in the November 2009 issue of Institutional Investor.  I know it is well written because I dashed through it like a child born with skates in a land of frozen lakes.  I learned what I knew before.  Watch out for cracks and weakened ice.

There is no denying that risk management experts and practitioners are a sophisticated lot, erudite and confident.  They are accustomed to being richly rewarded for their services, but then their ancestors were of the same expectation.  Their family tree is large and fruity with examples of rain makers, patent medicine men, purveyors of saintly relics, alchemists, blood letters, high priests, and families born to rule.  The problem is that no one in that family tree ever got it right just as their descendents got nothing right in last fall’s crash.

Last fall’s crash was a dramatic set of price changes that eluded standard risk models, what Yale’s Frank Fabozzi calls “fat tails.”  Others call them black swans.  Some say they are a once in two life times occurrence, and others say they happen every couple of years.

Who is a person to believe if the experts are in guerrilla action against each other?  You should follow the advice your mother gave you when you went off to college.  If you don’t understand the game and the players keep changing the rules, put your pants on and go home even if you have to walk the whole way.  Your mother was a smart woman.

The next morning you may wake up tired and in serious need of a shower and fresh clothes, but the important aspect to note is that you are ready for another day at the office.  Your work may not be brilliant but it earns you a paycheck, and no one accosts you in the hall demanding proof that what you do has ever proven useful.  Charles Marlin

A Hungarian Romance

Kati Marton, author and journalist, has written a likeable book, Enemies Of The People: My Family’s Journey To America.  It is likeable as the romance of Endre and Ilona Marton, Budapest residents during a very dark period.  It is likeable as cold war history of Hungary.  It is likeable as a spy thriller with an unusual twist.  It is likeable as a family history rediscovered from the most evil of sources.  It is likeable as a personal narrative of a woman who reconstructs her childhood.  It is likeable as a story of the Americanization of a proud Hungarian family.

The Martons began life under the oppression of the dying Austro-Hungarian Empire, survived youthful resistance to the Nazis, only to find themselves raising a young family under the crushing control of Stalinism.  They became the two goats among sheep as the last independent journalists behind the Iron Curtain until they were arrested and imprisoned.  Their crimes were that they worked as correspondents for the Associated Press and United Press and they were friendly to the American Legation in Budapest as well as many other Westerners.  Their two young daughters witnessed the arrest first of their father and then a short time later of their mother.

Despite the imprisonment and punishment the parents received following the failure of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 they survived to reunite their family.  They were released only because the Hungarian government and their Soviet managers wanted the advantages of trade and travel with the West.  They were finally expendable for a price.

The story continues during the years of Americanization for parents and children.  Putting the whole story together was possible only because the files of the AVO, the Hungarian secret police, and the FBI files were turned over to the author.  She found secrets aplenty but never shame or dishonor.  She was most fortunate of daughters and researchers.  Charles Marlin

Rosenquist Kitsch

It’s a Rosenquist, but not a billboard.  Or a collage.  Or a print.  Or a painting.  It’s a biography, well sort of.  James Rosenquist with the help of David Dalton wrote a jumpy, gossipy Painting Below Zero: Notes On A Life In Art.  The title is remarkably forthright.  There are stories from North Dakota, from New York, and from Aripeka, Florida.  There are sign painter friends, a sanitized list of romances, and then his important art world friends and associates.  In between all of this he justifies his images, art, and art making.  The man put his name on it, so why not?

Maybe it is simply too soon for an intense biography, and instead this will serve as a motivation and primer for future biographers.  He fully deserves the best of attention from those who can do the job.  For all those, and there are few not among them, who love the art and artists of his high years this will be light and pleasant reading.  As a consequence every reader will try harder with the next Rosenquists they see.

The black and white photographs are more tabloid than informative, but the thirty-two color pages are a delight.  The gatefold color pages of F-111 are a major plus for the book.  The dust jacket is not directly attributed to Rosenquist but I hope he did it because the front cover is a great artist’s portrait.  If there is an original it should be enshrined in the National Portrait Gallery or a temple of his choosing.  Charles Marlin

Malcolm Gladwell Incorporated

Malcolm Gladwell is a media empire.  If you don’t believe me, google the name and discover he takes up more space than Connecticut.  And has anyone noticed, the man does not have a decent photograph of himself?  Please, don’t break into a sweat if you are a fan as I am not disparaging him.  He ferrets out interesting topics, reads and investigates, and finally writes an essay worth your time to read.

He writes and writes, and fortunately for us he knows how to cull his own work so when a new collection like What The Dog Saw and other adventures comes out you know every essay is good.  My recommendation extends to Clarion Friends and to President Obama as well.  The President could learn a thing or two from this book, particularly Part Two: Theories, Predictions, And Diagnoses.

After reading his Outliers: The Story Of Success I recall writing something about it for Clarion Friends; however, if I did I must not have given him credit because I can’t find it.  To make amends I suggest you put both books on your Christmas wish list.  If Santa does not come through, take your indulgence in hand and buy them yourself.

Does anyone know what they pay him at the New Yorker?  He surely gets more money and benefits than a Congressional Representative.  Charles Marlin

A Little Pregnant And Slightly Obsessive

The readers who devoted a part of their younger years to Strunk & White will recognize in Stylized: A Slightly Obsessive History Of Strunk & White’s The Elements Of Style that Mark Garvey could have shortened his title by two words.  Even so it was fun to read and remember.

I began graduate study in Rhetoric And Public Address at Indiana University in 1959, so long ago that the study has a new name Rhetoric And Public Culture.  Perhaps it was sagacious of my university to tell me it was time to retire.  Back in 1959, Robert G. Gunderson, the professor I most wanted to impress, came bounding in to class waving this little book which he declared would “save your ass again and again.”  Whether I was green, dumb, awed, or all three, I thought the book was his special discovery.  I bought it and in my mind and conversation it was “Gunderson’s book.”

Degrees and career and the little book have come and gone.  The degrees are framed.  The career is a monthly retirement check.  The little book is lost.  Maybe I loaned it to someone.  Maybe I packed it in a box of books that were never unpacked.  At this moment I wish I had the little book in hand.

If you are part of a morning coffee group then you are repeating your stories far too often for others’ comfort.  Read Garvey’s story of Strunk & White’s friends and foes then and now, and you will have something new to talk about to your friends’ delight.  If you have biological heirs in academic training, give each a copy of William Strunk, Jr. and E. B. White, The Elements Of Style, Fourth Edition, forward by Roger Angell.  It comes in plain paperback as befitting a student and a fancy version.  Your heirs will eventually see you as wise.  If not, they are probably a lost cause.  Charles Marlin

Carnivorous Tudors

The Tudors were a family not disinclined to eat their own if threatened which made them both entertaining and engaging.  The current royals pale in comparison, perhaps because of all the German dilution.  Sadly we can only stand back and watch as the English pride in their royals wains.  Because of the dreary state of English affairs, Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall is a welcomed read.

Our hero in the novel is not Henry VIII or Anne Boleyn although she comes in a strong second, it is the down and dirty street fighter Thomas Cromwell who makes himself the consummate royal councilor.  Cromwell eventually learns how to take the sludge and emesis, the animal and human waste of the Thames and make a very saleable wine of it.  His trick of survival was to never drink more than a ceremonial sip while others indulged themselves.

If in the past you have stumbled over the large cast of Tudor characters, the author has come to your aid by providing lists of characters and the family shrubbery of the Tudors.  Even so it is a hopeless task to try to understand how the English run a government.  Based on how they function at home it must have taken divine intervention for them to clutch their first colony let alone something approaching an empire.

  This leads to my theory on the nurturing of Shakespeare, yet another reason to enjoy reading about Thomas Cromwell and associates.  It was the fractious, bloody, in-your-face people with a language held together by thievery and the unwashed of street and tavern that brewed the right amount of vitamins, minerals, proteins, and hormones to give William Shakespeare the superior edge on stage.

For the main characters of the novel there are Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII as you would expect.  Then there are the queens Thomas Wolsey, Katherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, and Thomas More.  It is any wonder that by the end of the book, two had a forced exit with more to follow.  Peace and tranquility require one and only one queen.  Charles Marlin and John Hink

Roadkill Deviled Egg Plate

The World Funky Deviled Egg Plate 2010 Competition entry # 10 from Rita May Raintree.

Resolution on Jefferson and Butler Counties

       Whereas, The Bridge Builders Community Foundation Operating Protocol Section 2.1 Vision Statement reads By unifying the Community Foundations serving Clarion, Forest, Venango and other counties the Bridge Builders Community Foundations will provide an effective way of serving donors and communities by creating and growing endowments that serve the needs in our service area;

       Whereas, The Bridge Builders Community Foundations have demonstrated intention to organize Penn Jefferson Community Foundation as an affiliate serving Jefferson County; and

       Whereas, Contiguous Butler County is without community foundation services; now, therefore, be it

       Resolved, That the Bridge Builders Community Foundations webside http://bridgebuilderscommunityfoundations.com/ include a separate page devoted to the new affiliate in Jefferson County once it is organized; and

       Resolved, That the Bridge Builders Community Foundation website http://bridgebuilderscommunityfoundations.com/ include a separate page offering community foundation services to Butler County; and

       Resolved, That each affiliate of Bridge Builders Community Foundations shall in turn serve as custodian of endowment funds created in Butler County until a Butler County affiliate is organized.

CCCF Hears Reports And Elects Board Members

The Board of Directors of the Clarion County Community Foundation met Wednesday, November 18, 2009, to hear reports and conduct business.

The first report was on Clarion Friends and the continuing problem with our PayPal account.  A donor can not access our PayPal account to make a donation and the Board can not obtain a satisfactory explanation.  The second report was by Vice President Janice Horn on what has recently transpired at BBCF Trustees meetings.  The third report was by our Treasurer Jerry Belloit on the Managed Investment Accounts.

Our Executive Director Steve Kosak gave a short review of the Wealth Transfer Symposium sponsored by BBCF at Seneca Hills Bible Conference on Friday, November 13, 2009.  He anticipates holding follow-up meetings on creating a legacy society for each affiliate as well as a data base for an annual appeal and other mailings.

The Board reviewed the recently approved BBCF Protocol on Grant Decisions.  The Protocol outlines how in a timely fashion decisions by fund committees can be passed on to an affiliate board of directors and then on to the board of trustees to take final action on the fund committees recommendations.

The Board approved a resolution to be passed on to the BBCF Trustees on promoting the organization of community foundation affiliate in Jefferson County, as well as extending endowment fund services to Butler County.  The resolution is important enough that it will be posted in its entirety after this posting.

The final action of the meeting was the election of three new Directors, Anne Day of Clarion, Barry McCauliff of Shippenville, and Matt Best of Shippenville.  There remains two open positions on the Board and if anyone is interested they may contact any Board member or the Board President Charles Marlin at (814) 797-2233.

Board members are divided into three classes that expire sequentially.  If elected a Board member may serve two consecutive terms for a total of six years.  Those members of the 13 March 2010 class are Nancy Ambrose, Anne Day, Janice Horn, William Rupert, and Jane Schautz.  Those members of the 13 March 2011 class are Clara Belloit, Jerry Belloit, Charles Marlin, Barry McCauliff, and Rhonda McMillen-Toth.  Those members of the 13 March 2012 class are Matt Best, William Hearst, and Randy Vossburg.  Charles Marlin