Archive - Sep 23, 2008
The Long Blue Tail – St. Louis
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 09/23/2008 - 21:11William Least Heat-Moon starts off Blue Highways talking about February 17th, “a day of canceled expectations”. It was the day that he learned that his job teaching college English was coming to an end. A month later, he set out on the road, using the Interstate to put distance between him and his experiences in Columbia, MO. Perhaps I should stop and spend a little time in Columbia. I don’t believe I’ve ever been there.
I believe that the closest I got to Columbia was in 2000 when I flew into Kansas City, and then drove west to the Association of Internet Researchers conference in Lawrence, KS. September, 2000. I was still working full time for a large hedge fund. Kim and I were finalizing the details for our nuptials to take place in November. I don’t remember much about Kansas City, other than getting in the car and driving.
I don’t know if Least Heat-Moon spent much time in St. Louis, but I chose the city as my the first stop of my virtual trip. There are a lot of good websites to help find places to explore in a city, and I started with Yelp. Yelp describes itself as a “fun and easy way to find, review and talk about what's great (and not so great) in your world.” Their tagline is “Real People. Real Reviews”. It is the sort of site that I would expect travel writers to use as a resource.
At the top of the list was their write-up about Crown Candy Kitchen. Crown Candy Kitchen at 1401 St. Louis Avenue has been “A St. Louis Tradition since 1913”. The review that caught my attention simply said, “I had a butterscotch malt and it was awesome.” Another person pointed to pictures of Crown Candy Kitchen on Flickr. Roadfood, a site that Kim likes to check had a similar review.
From there, I checked Placeblogger. The idea of Placeblogger is to provide a good listing of citizen media on a hyperlocal scale. I read through several listings for St. Louis, but many links were dead, or not really relevant. Then, I stumbled across a very interesting link.
The Old North St. Louis Restoration Group Blog “chronicles the dramatic transformation under way in the neighborhood of Old North St. Louis.” Last Saturday was a day of hope and a new challenge.
Four blocks south of Crown Candy Kitchen, the Old North St. Louis Restoration Group was having Rehabbers and Developers Fair. A block or so away in the other direction, the vacant, yet historic Fourth Baptist Church was destroyed by fire.
Another blog post led me to the North City Farmers’ Market. The farmer’s market is in its second year. It has a recipe of the week, when I visited the website, it was for collard greens. The website also describes how they accept Food Stamps.
I checked the list of vendors, which included The Burning Kumquat, “a low-impact, intensive garden on the campus of Washington University in St. Louis” and New Roots Urban Farm. They say, “On the most local level, we think each block or each neighborhood should have a localized food system that they create to meet their community food needs.” They are a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm.
With that, my virtual visit to North St. Louis comes to an end. I didn’t visit the Gateway Arch, the Budweiser World Headquarters, the St. Louis Cardinals, the St. Louis Zoo, or the Missouri Botanical Garden. I’m sure all of them would be interesting, but I felt that this small visit to North St. Louis was more in keeping with Blue Highways and the other great travel writing I love so much.
From here, I’ll try to wander in a pattern that somewhat follows the Blue Highways. I might backtrack to Columbia, or stop down in Lebanon, MO, pass through Mark Twain National Forest, or just head straight on over to Grayville, IL, depending on what I can find for good websites and stories along the way.
If you stumble across this story and you have some suggestions, be sure to let me know.
The Long Blue Tail
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 09/23/2008 - 15:36“Beware thoughts that come in the night.” That admonition starts off William Least Heat-Moon’s book, Blue Highways. He wrote those words a little over a quarter of a century ago as he set up on a 13,000 mile journey across America after separating from his wife and losing his job. I read Blue Highways years ago. It, together with Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, On The Road with Charles Kurault, and Then Came Bronson, weave together into a dream I’ve had of going on the road myself, in finding out a little bit more about me, about the people around me, and maybe, just maybe, being able to say a word here or there that might help someone.
Ten years ago, my first marriage ended, yet unlike the great travelers I so admired, I had kids to be concerned about. It is hard to hit the road with an eight year old and a five year old. So I stuck it out at my job for another few years. I remarried and we had a daughter of our own.
My second wife and I met online and as I look back over the past ten years, while I haven’t had the opportunity to write the next great American Travelogue, I have traveled extensively online. I sit in a small office in a rented house just outside of New Haven, CT reading what people around the country write, writing my own blog posts and doing consulting here and there.
At night, I toss and turn, looking for that path which will set things right. I continue to dream of travels, but Fiona is now turning seven and my responsibilities keep me tied to this town. Then, one night, came one of those ideas that Least Heat-Moon warns about, The Long Blue Trail. I could trace Least Heat-Moon’s travels, perhaps mix in a little Kerouac, Pirzig, Kurault and others into a journey into cyberspace.
I could find pictures, videos and blog posts, following, as closely as I can make out, Least Heat-Moon’s trip. I could include some Google Maps or other content to help tie it together in a mix of hyperlocal citizen media, placeblogging, and simple posts from regular people.
I would follow the Blue Highways of Cyberspace, not the Interstates. DailyKos and Huffington Post, these are cyberspace’s Interstates. Everyone goes there. You know what you get when you stop there. No, I’ll search out the websites with no page rank, the millions of bent and narrow rural American cyberroads.
There is where the Blue comes from. The Long Tail part comes from Chris Anderson where he talks about all those websites that aren’t on the A-List, that don’t have high page rankings, yet make up the majority of cyberspace.
William Least Heat-Moon hit the road in 1978 in a Ford Econoline van that he had outfitted for the trip. The book didn’t come out until 1982. Things are a little different these days and so I’m starting off my journey a little bit differently. I’m writing it as I go and posting it online. It may be harder to monetize this way. It may turn out to be another one of those grand adventures where I make it to the edge of the virtual town, and after a few posts, lose steam and abandon it. We shall see.
So, I’ll start off by posting it as entries on my blog, Orient Lodge. If I get past a few entries, it will become its own category, then its own website and we’ll see where it goes after that. Wish me luck.
Digging Deeper into the Bailout
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 09/23/2008 - 10:56(Originally published at Greater Democracy.)
Yesterday, a friend pointed me to Public Marketup, a website where citizens can read proposed legislation and add comments. It is a wonderful site, and currently has the Treasury Department’s proposal for ‘Authority to Buy Mortgage-Related Assets’ as well as Sen. Dodd’s proposal.
When I first started reading it, I added comments here and there about making reports available online. However, as I’ve thought more and more about it, I worry that no one really knows what they are talking about. What assets are being considered? How will the Treasury determine which assets get considered? To the extent that they are complicated derivative instruments, how will the Treasury determine an appropriate price?
Reading through the documents, I don’t find any real discussion of this. The Treasury Department of the bill says,
The Secretary is authorized to purchase, and to make and fund commitments to purchase, on such terms and conditions as determined by the Secretary, mortgage-related assets from any financial institution having its headquarters in the United States.
Are we talking about whole loans? Pools of mortgages? Tranches of collateralized mortgage obligations (CMOs)? The extremely complicated portions of CMOs called residuals that take financial wizards to analyze? Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs) that have mortgage related assets in their structure? Servicing Rights on securities?
How will these securities be priced, when purchased, on an ongoing basis and if every offered for sale? How will the determination be made about which company’s assets will be purchased? Will it be those companies most likely to fail? Will it those companies whose executives are close friends of people in the administration? Will it be fair?
How will these purchases really make the financial system more secure? The further the assets are from the homeowner, the less effect it will have on a home owner. If the underlying mortgages are bought, and home owners in danger of foreclosure were given better refinancing opportunities or opportunities for short sales, that would have a direct effect on the homeowners. However, it might accelerate the decline in housing prices, as people who otherwise cannot sell their houses are now given a chance, which might compound the situation. On the other hand, that might get us out of the housing bubble sooner.
The Dodd bill is much broader,
The Secretary is authorized to establish a program to purchase, and to make and fund commitments to purchase troubled assets from any financial institution, on such terms and conditions as are determined by the Secretary, and in accordance with policies and procedures developed by the Secretary.
It isn’t limited to mortgage related assets, nor must the financial institution have its headquarters in the United States. Yet other limitations are added instead.
The Secretary may not purchase, or make any commitment to purchase, any troubled asset unless the Secretary receives contingent shares in the financial institution from which such assets are to be purchased equal in value to the purchase price of the assets to be purchased.
This makes the valuation of these extremely difficult to evaluate securities all the more important.
The Dodd bill does move in the direction of seek explanation about why we are doing this in the first place:
Before establishing a program under this Act, the Secretary shall make a finding that such program is necessary to provide stability or preventing disruption to the financial markets or banking system; and to protect the taxpayer.
Although, even this seems a tad vague, and perhaps a little bit after the fact. Maybe this finding needs to be presented in testimony before any such bill is considered.
The Dodd bill also has language about ‘Assistance to homeowners and localities’ and ‘Minimizing foreclosures’, but it starts drifting into legalese beyond the scope of this article.
So, must we move now as the Federal Reserve Chairman and the Treasury Secretary are urging? What sort of movement is appropriate?
Perhaps, we must move now, but perhaps that movement is getting everyone to start reading proposed legislation and thinking much more about the economic issues our country faces. If we move now, slowly and deliberately, we can all learn, and perhaps not fall into the traps that got us into this mess in the first place, making decisions without understanding the full ramifications of them.
Recent ma.noglia bookmarks
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 09/23/2008 - 03:02Here are pages I've recently bookmarked with ma.gnolia:
