Grendel

Five and a half years ago, near the corner of Broadway and Wellington, I heard a meow... a loud and plaintive meow from across the street. I crossed the street to investigate, and a dirty orange and white cat came up to me and rubbed up against my leg.

I took him home, intending to foster him long enough to find him a permanent home. To reinforce this idea, I named him Guest. One of my coworkers took him and renamed him Grendel, after the terrible monster from the epic of Beowulf. The name fit him; he was a rambunctious, in-your-face kind of cat who quite often, unfortunately, expressed his frustrations by spraying urine.



I was pleased that I had found someone who was tolerant of Grendel's idiosyncrasies, although I can't say the spraying didn't bother my coworker. He would tell me that Grendel was such a great cat... If only...

Today when I arrived at the office, I found an e-mail from Grendel's human waiting for me. He's moving to California this week, and his wife, being less tolerant of the spraying, wouldn't let Grendel come with. My coworker only had a couple days to find a new home for him -- would I mind taking him back?

So Grendel is once again... my Guest.

More words about buildings and food

There used to be a little crepe shop in my neighborhood called Cafe Dada. It was staffed by the people who owned it, and they took a lot of pride in what they did. When you told the woman who worked there that you liked the crepes, she just beamed. The decor was a bit spartan, but if they were truly Dadaists, that didn't necessarily mean anything.

Alas, the owners of Cafe Dada couldn't make it into a profitable enterprise, and they sold it. The new owners made some changes, but they also failed, and the restaurant closed. It reopened as Royal Cafe #2. I never tried it -- and never will, since the last time I went past it, it was closed. What a shame.

My neighbors had a Memorial Day Weekend cookout yesterday. I brought some hot dogs from Romanian Kosher Sausage Company (7200 N. Clark) and dolma from the Middle Eastern Bakery (1512 W. Foster).

At the party they had this beer from Pittsburgh called Iron City. When I asked my neighbor if it was any good, he said, "It's kind of like, you know... what's that beer?" Old Style? I suggested. "Yeah," he said, "like Old Style, but without the bitterness." I thought, what do you have left when you take the bitter out of Old Style? So I tried some. It's kind of like seltzer with a dash of ethanol, which isn't all bad; fizzy water can be refreshing on a hot day.

Finally, the title of this posting is a reference to a Talking Heads album. Not long ago, I found out that David Byrne, former lead singer of the Talking Heads, has a blog. In it, he talks about buildings and food and music and other cool stuff. Highly recommended.

Reasons to be hopeful?

A while back, I posted an entry about my friend who has a brain tumor. His treatments last fall were unsuccessful, and he had to have surgery again last month. Last night he left a message on my answering machine, and he sounds well. It was good to hear his voice.

I also wrote about the woman in my band who I'd normally share a music stand with. She has lymphoma. She was unable to play in Sunday's concert, but she was in the audience. As everyone was filing out of the auditorium, she and her husband came down to the stage and called out to me. It was the first time I'd seen her since I heard about her illness. She says she is recovering and hopes to be back for the fall concert.

Then there's the administrative assistant in my office who recently found out she had a liposarcoma, which is a very dangerous form of cancer. She had surgery last month. It went well, and she plans to return to work soon.

None of these are happy stories. Their outcomes are still in doubt. People fall ill, they seek treatment, there is improvement... and perhaps, they are restored to health. Let's hope.

The band's spring concert

I just got home from performing in my community band's spring concert. It was a good concert -- you should have been there, you the reader, whoever you are.

Here's the program:

Semper Fidelis - John Philip Sousa
Raymond Overture - Ambrose Thomas, arr. T. Matsushiro
Piano Concerto in A Minor - Edvard Grieg
Benny Goodman, the King of Swing - medley arr. by Paul Murtha
Tico-Tico - Zequinha Abreu, arr. Naohiro Iwai

Intermission

March of the Belgian Parachutists - Pieter Leemans, arr. J.R. Bourgeois
In the Miller Mood - Glenn Miller medley arr. by Warren Baker
March, Op. 99 - Sergei Prokofiev
A Lincoln Portrait - Aaron Copland, arr. Walter Beeler
Finale, Symphony No. 5, Op. 47 - D. Shostakovich, arr. C.B. Richter
America the Beautiful - Samuel Augustus Ward, arr. Carmen Dragon
The Star Spangled Banner
Tico-Tico (again)

William Crowle was the piano soloist for Grieg's Piano Concerto in A Minor.

A Lincoln Portrait was narrated by Wayne Messmer, known to Chicagoans for his rendition of the national anthem at Cubs and Blackhawks games. Messmer also sang The Star Spangled Banner at the end of this concert.

It was a long enough program, but the band director had us play Tico-Tico again as an encore, just to prove to everyone that we still had some lip left after more than two hours of playing.

My apologies

Last week I seem to have been channeling Alan Greenspan. I'm not sure what I said, but it looks like it spooked the financial markets a bit. I regret the inconvenience.

Actually, I don't know why the CPI data came as such a surprise. Oil, gold, and copper prices have been soaring lately, and the dollar has been weakening (making imported goods more expensive).

A funny story about the CPI numbers... As reported by the Wall Street Journal, Treasury Secretary John Snow walked into a House committee hearing Wednesday, and the bartender said... Dammit -- wrong joke. No, seriously, Mr. Snow was all woo-hoo over wage increases:

Average hourly earnings are picking up. We learned from this month’s jobs report that average hourly earnings have risen 3.8% over the past 12 months — their largest increase in nearly five years.

Then Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), playing the straight (?!) man, asks:

Mr. Secretary, I agree with much of your statement, but I confess to some trouble with your citation of the rise in hourly wages. What’s the CPI increase over the past 12 months? Do you know?

With impeccable timing, Snow delivers the punch line:

Well, about 5, I think 5.1.

For the benefit of those who don't get the joke, let me explain in a way that is not at all funny. Let's say that in 2004 you made $1,000. And let's say you had a generic basket of goods that cost $1,000. In 2005, you earned $1,038, but your basket of goods cost $1,051. So that larger amount you earned in 2005 only buys 98.8% of that same basket. The 1.2% shortfall -- that's how much your income declined in real terms.

The yield curve is flat

Not long ago I threw a wet blanket on the rosy sentiments we've been hearing from economists by pointing out the very, very low personal savings rate. Now I've got some more bad news: the yield curve is flat, and for some debt instruments, it might even be slightly inverted.

Looking at the 6-month bill, the yield is 4.98%. Same as the 2-year note, and just 0.01% below the yield of the 3-year note. If you increase the maturity to 5 years, the yield only goes up to 5.03%. Even the 30-year bond is only a quarter of a point more. (Looking outside the U.S., the U.K. government bond yields are seriously inverted, with 3-year yields fully half a percentage point higher than you'd get with a 30-year maturity.)

I also checked CD rates at LaSalle Bank. The 30-month CD has a yield of 4.90%, but the 3-year certificate actually has a lower yield -- only 4.85%.

Normally, you'd expect rates to go up as you increase time to maturity. After all, if you expect rates to be relatively stable over time, you'd want to get a better return (the "liquidity premium") in exchange for letting the bank (or the Treasury) hold onto your money longer. But right now, people are paying a premium for longer-term debt. Why?

One possibility is a flight to quality in long-term debt; U.S. Treasury bonds are considered very safe and have very little maturity risk premium. But another possibility is that investors are pessimistic about the U.S. economy, despite all the upbeat talk. They expect short term rates to fall as the result of an imminent recession, and should this happen, the yield curve will right itself. This does not bode well for the economy. Recession = BAD.

It could also be that long-term debt turns out to be overpriced, especially as the Treasury churns out more of it to finance the deficit. In this case, long-term rates will go up, which could be a disaster to bond investors as the value of their bonds fall in inverse proportion to rising interest rates. It's not so good for the rest of us, either. Higher interests rates tend to suppress economic growth.

Disclaimer: What do I know? I'm no economist, and I'm not a financial advisor, so you shouldn't be making your investment decisions based on what you read here.

Potato chip bags and McDonald's cups

Just some observations from the neighborhood "Clean and Green" event that took place this morning... The weather was cool and damp, and turnout was the worst I've ever seen it. I don't know if the weather is solely to blame; we've experienced worse in the past. We only had enough volunteers to pick up trash on a few blocks.

I was walking up Winthrop with one of my neighbors, and we came upon a four-plus-one that was being converted to condos. Work was in progress even as we watched, despite numerous stop work orders. That place is a disaster waiting to happen.

Walking up and down a single block, I picked up enough trash to fill an entire bag. In addition to the fast food packaging materials (cups, bags, etc.), there were lots of small potato chip bags, plastic gin bottles, and single-serving juice containers. All these little things, individually packaged... It seems wasteful, but this is what people buy.

Pigeons

Bushy tailed rats. Wait, no... That's what I said about squirrels. Rats with wings? It just doesn't sound as poetic.

Starting last summer, the pigeons have taken more and more interest in my back porch. Last week, my neighbors and I did our annual porch cleaning and washed off all the bird droppings. The very next day, I walked out onto the porch... and right into it. It looked like a pigeon had exploded in the night, covering the porch in feathers and droppings.

I immediately got on the internet to place an order for bird spikes from a company called deterapigeon ("the pigeon deterrent people (TM)"). They arrived from England yesterday (fancy imported bird spikes), and I put them up today.

One of the best things about the product was the instruction CD that came in the box. Not that it contained any profound revelations -- the spikes were easy to install. But there was one scene where the guy doing the demonstration was installing them on a ledge, and you could hardly hear him over the squawking of the birds. It was downright Hitchcockian... Well, maybe with better production values it would have been. Anyway, I was entertained.

Another fine day

I love the smell of apple blossoms.



That's all I have to say... for now.

A fine May Day in Chicago

It would have been interesting to go downtown today and take part in the immigrant rally. But I've got meetings I couldn't get out of. My act of defiance will have to be limited to blogging on company time.

The Chicago demonstration begins at Union Park, and the march to the lakefront will go past what remains of Haymarket Square (a mile east of Union Park). I'm sure May 1 was chosen to coincide with International Workers' Day; the proximity to where it all started, 120 years ago, might be just an interesting coincidence.

There has been some criticism that the protesters ought to be at work or in school rather than out in the streets. The same was said of the civil rights marches in the '60s. But social justice doesn't wait for the end of the shift or for the school bell.

Looking at events outside of Chicago, tens of thousands of workers prostested today in Asia, as reported by Reuters. In Indonesia, they protested new laws that make it more difficult for workers to organize. In the Philippines, they protested for higher wages and against Philippine President Arroyo, who has recently enacted draconian measures to quell dissent. In Cambodia, police used force to break up what observers described as a peaceful rally.

One of the Reuters articles quotes a Bangladeshi man who explains why he was out protesting:

"We are not working today in memory of those brethren killed by authorities in Chicago, USA in 1886, as they campaigned for an eight-hour working day," Moinuddin Khan Badal, a workers' leader told Reuters.

Unfortunately, if you asked Chicagoans about the significance of May 1 to Chicago, I would bet that at least two out of three would have no clue. In the U.S., Labor Day was moved by four months so that it now falls in September and no longer commemorates the Haymarket Riot.

[02 May 2006 07:00:00] Update: I wrote the above before the throngs assembled in Chicago's Grant Park. According to the reports I heard, it was a very orderly demonstration, which is remarkable considering that an estimated 400,000 were gathered. I've often written laments about how our government has curtailed our civil liberties in recent years. But when I see so many people free to assemble and to speak their minds, it gives me hope.