When Is a Lecture Not Like a Lecture?

A book of reflections on the Legacy of Randy Pausch

When it’s not from your Mum or Dad.

When it's not from your boss.

When it's not from a disapproving relative or friend.

When you are listening to it out of your own free will.

When you are on the delivering end of it rather than the receiving. 

When you are paying for it with unused 529 money.

When it's not in a classroom or lecture hall. 

When you can listen to it or watch it in your pajamas. 

When there are no homework assignments or grades linked to it.

When it's not a deal-breaker for your career.

When it includes eye candy.

When it doesn't make you fill a scratch pad with doodles,or set off your yawn reflex. 

When it’s Show and Tell, not Drone Zone.

When you stumble upon it on You Tube.

When it's on the History Channel.

When it's a TED Lecture.

When it's that riveting most famous lecture of all time "The Last Lecture" by Randy Pausch, delivered shortly after he was told he had terminal pancreatic cancer and had less than a year to live.

When it's the timeless  "I Have a Dream" by Martin Luther King.

When it's a lecture on Happiness by Dan Gilbert. (Surprise - you might be just as happy a year after becoming disabled as you would be a year after winning the lottery) 

Whatever your reason to find some lectures more interesting or pleasurable than others...

If you are a history buff  - with time, money and passion on your side... the Teaching Company's history courses are for you.

Curious?

My brother-in-law Jim, who majored in history, doctored in history and has an encyclopedic knowledge of history can be your guide.

Jim regularly writes up synopses and reviews of historical courses for the Teaching Company.

He has offered to let me publish some of these on my blog.

Coming soon...Jim's synopses of the best historical course ware offered by the Teaching Company. 

Don't miss it.

Glossary and links:

529 plans: Tax-sheltered plans in which you can save money for college education. While this is targeted for parents to save money for their child's college education, anyone can save money in a 529 plan for anyone else.  Grandparents can save money for their grandchild's higher education, relatives can save for their nieces and nephews; the custodian has complete control of the plan and can change the beneficiary (to himself or herself, even) at any point of time.  You can read more about 529 plans here.

You Tube:  That Google owned website you probably spend too much time on. 

The History Channel: Now called History, a TV Channel belonging to A&E, a feast for history buffs.

TED: a non-profit which brings together the best minds in different fields to deliver short talks every year.  If you have not discovered TED, you should do so now.  Here's the link.

The Last Lecture:  A Must-Watch. Here's the You Tube link.

Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech:  Here's the link on American Rhetoric, a source for other great speeches that have entered the history books.

Dan Gilbert on Happiness at the TED symposium: Here's the link.

The Great Courses by the Teaching Company: Here's the link.

P.S. The Last Lecture is also available in book form. Here's the link:

P.S. 2:  The highlight of my week was attending Xactly Comp Cloud.  As you know, I implement Xactly Commission Software for Solutions PI.  Solutions PI was a sponsor of the Comp Cloud event and had a booth.  As a team-member of Solutions PI, I was privileged to attend some fantastic presentations (you can call them speeches or lectures, just as well) including Forecasting Commission Expenses and 5 Implementation Must Haves for Managing the Challenges of Global Comp. The event also included an inspiring presentation "Unlock the Potential Within" by Mt. Everest climber Sharon Wood on what it took her to get to the peak. If you are involved in Sales Compensation or Commissions Administration, you should make it a point to attend Xactly Comp Cloud when it rolls around next year.

Lessons From My Personal Heroes

Akhil Uday at 22

Do your problems and challenges seem insurmountable to you?

Are you coping with a major life blow or blows suffered at the hands of another person or caused by unforeseen events?(Thwarted in your dreams to marry, have a child,  get somewhere in life; or devastated and let down by your misplaced faith in someone)

Did you lose everything as a result of the housing bubble or a relationship gone bad and now face the prospect of having to build yourself up again from scratch?

Are you battling a debilitating personal illness, problem, habit or weakness - a disability, body issues, personality issues, mental illness, or addictions like smoking, drinking, drugs or gambling?

Have you lost your career to changes in technology and off-shoring and now have to go back to basics to re-skill yourself?

Are you intimidated by the challenges of rejoining the workforce after a break of many years – and scared of all the catching up you have to do?

Are you overwhelmed dealing with a problem child, a marriage gone sour, or interpersonal family problems?

Are these challenges looming so large as to cast a huge shadow over your life?

A shadow you feel hopeless to shake off.

Miring you in depression.  Anger. Sadness. Bitterness. Hopelessness. Or Resentment.

How do you take control?

How do you keep self-pity and negativity from getting the better of you?

I would like to share a few stories with you.

Stories of how some friends and relatives have dealt with events much worse than any described in this article.

Events which are unspeakably painful even to think about...

Yet, instead of seeing anger, sadness, bitterness, hopelessness, or resentment...

I have observed courage, fortitude, optimism, cheerfulness, faith and purposefulness in the people who are going through them.

Their example of courage and faith in action gives me immense hope that as vulnerable as we are, we are equipped as human beings to deal with and rise above the most devastating tragedies in our lives.

I feel privileged that these courageous folks are in my life.

I think of them as my personal heroes and I have asked for their permission to share their stories of courage with you.

I hope their stories will help you find the strength to deal with your own personal cross, however heavy it is for you.

Meet Uday and Nithya, my personal heroes from Bangalore

Akhil Uday’s story is a story of a typical Indian boy growing up in a strong and loving family.

Nithya and Uday met at MAA (an agency at which I also worked), fell deeply in love with each other, and got married.

Akhil Uday was their first born.

Nithya and Uday doted on both their children, Akhil and Arpita.

Uday recalls crying when he dropped Akhil off on his first day at Kindergarten at Frank Anthony’s Public School and Nithya recalls not knowing who she needed to comfort more –  the crying boy or the crying father.

After his matriculation, Akhil went on to NJC for his pre-university and then to Christ College for his graduate studies.

He entered the workforce with Kotak and then moved on to Chesapeake Group, whose offices were located on one of the top floors of 7-storied Carlton Towers, a commercial building on Old Airport Road in Bangalore, India.

Akhil was really excited about his future in Chesapeake and looked forward to the day when he could “buy Dad a BMW”, as he was often known to say to Uday.

He had big dreams. Cars were a passion, and Lamborghini’s and Ferraris figured in those dreams.

His sister Arpita figured as well.  Akhil hoped to be able to move to the US and then get Arpita, his special needs sister, over to the US where there would be many more resources available for her.

Chesapeake Group, a company based in New York, seemed like the perfect launching pad for those dreams.

The company offered corporate development and financial advisory services to select industries.  Their scope of services included Mergers and Acquisitions, Private Placements, IPOs and Underwritings, Strategic Sales and Divestitures, Leveraged and Management Buyouts, Strategic Business Planning, Repositioning and Restructuring and Joint Ventures.

Akhil, who was working towards an MBA, was excited to be joining the Bangalore operations of Chesapeake, then under the capable and experienced chief Siddhartha Padam.

A bright future awaited Padam, Akhil and the rest of Chesapeake’s enthusiastic Bangalore team.

Feb 23, 2010 – The Day That Would Change Uday and Nithya’s Life Forever

Feb 23, 2010 started out as any other day.

Akhil, who phoned his dad at least once a day from office, usually after lunch with a “Hmmm….what’s up”, called earlier than usual that day.

You see, Uday had started a blog to get a new marketing company going, and Akhil had some ideas on how to improve the blog.

Hence the morning call.

Uday did not know it was to be the last time he would hear his son’s voice.

At 4 p.m. a devastating fire broke out at Carlton Towers.

It started on the lower floors and moved rapidly upwards, engulfing the building in thick black smoke.

The Chesapeake team located on one of the upper floors, were trapped.

The corridors were so thick with smoke, they could not get to the elevator or the stairs.

Akhil called the Fire Brigade.

But when the Fire Brigade did not come fast enough, the situation began to look hopeless.

The ensuing sequence of events cannot be known with any precision.

What we do know is that when Uday received the news of the fire, he immediately set out in his car to get to Carlton Towers.

The traffic made it impossible for him to reach the building.

While he was trying to get through the snarled traffic, he received a call from one of Akhil’s friends who informed him that the injured were being shifted to Manipal Hospital.

On hearing this, Uday immediately re-routed to Manipal Hospital.

When he got there, he tried to track down his son, starting with the Casualty Department (what the Emergency Department is called in India); when he had no luck with them, he began calling the operators on the other floors of the hospital to find out if anyone had any news about his son.  

While he was still in the process of doing this, he received a call on his mobile asking him if he knew an Akhil Uday.

Uday said “Yes, I am his Dad.”

“Sir, can you please come down to the basement,” the voice at the end of the line said to him.

On reaching the basement, Uday realized he was in the mortuary and that’s when the truth struck him – he had lost his son.

At 22, Akhil Uday, Uday and Nithya’s son was no more.

How does one cope with a tragedy like this?

Losing a young child in such a devastating way?

Can one ever come to terms with it or ever recover from it?

You can find out by reading the blog Uday started within 24 hours of Akhil’s death.

Here’s why it’s so inspiring...

Because anger, bitterness, resentment and self-absorption are nowhere to be found in it.

Instead, it is about thinking the right things and doing the right things every step of the way, in spite of a devastating loss.

Rather than retreating into a private world of self-pity and grief and anger, Uday and Nithya made the brave decision to band with the other impacted families (9 people died in all and a total of 70 were injured) to make sure that Carlton Towers would never happen again.

Together, this brave group of grieving families is addressing the factors that led to this completely avoidable tragedy.

There were many factors in play...

The fire alarm only went off for 5 minutes, so the occupants of the building were unaware of how serious the fire was.

The building did not have fire extinguishers on every floor.

There were no signs posted for fire escapes.

There was no water connection to the sprinklers.

The fire escape doors between floors were locked.

And the fire department took a whole hour to get to the scene.

You can find out more about all the things that went wrong that could have been avoided by viewing this You Tube video interview with one of the survivors.

For becoming activists so as to create positive change, sharing their journey of coping and finding meaning in the avoidable death of their son with us, and not letting anger, bitterness and negativity take hold of them, Uday and Nithya are my personal heroes.

I hope you will be inspired by their story to deal with your current struggles and burdens in a positive life-affirming way.

P.S. Beyond Carlton is on Facebook.  Here is the link, if you want to read more about what the group is doing and if you want to add your voice or resources to their cause. 

Recent picture of the sky taken by Uday from his car window with his IPhone

P.S. 2: You can also read Uday’s blog at this link.

P.S 3: I would like to thank Nithya and Uday for letting me share their story with you.

Mmm....Mmm...Good!

How is a good speech like Indian curry? 

It’s got spice.

By Minoo Jha, CTM

Adlibmaster, 2004 –2005

Indian curry may be too oily, too hot, too flavorful, too thick or too thin. But NEVER DULL !!!!!

Is there a lesson in there for speeches?

Yes.  That it’s probably better to be too silly, too dramatic, too shocking, or too funny in your speech than be dull.

 

Mirchi

But how do you liven up a speech?

Like you liven up an Indian curry – add some spice.

Here are 4 ways to spice up the opening of your speech.

Shock value                                                                   

Whatever the subject of your speech, try launching it with something that has shock value.  Let’s say you decide to give a speech about motherhood.  You could start the speech with “I’ve been quiet about this for a long while but it’s time to come out and tell you about the other woman in my husband’s life”.  Then you pause for a few seconds before you hold a framed picture of your baby girl up to the audience. 

You will probably have to pause again before continuing – to allow time for the relieved laughs from your audience to subside.        

 A joke

People love a good laugh.  So a joke is another way to bring a speech to life.   Just do a search on Google to find a joke suitable to the speech you are giving.  For instance, say you’ve decided to give a speech on taxes.  If you look up “tax jokes” on Google, you might come up with this nugget to kick off your speech:  “If a lawyer and an IRS agent were both drowning, and you could only save one of them, would you go to lunch or read the paper? “

A song

 Bay Leaf 

Who doesn’t love music?  So think about using music to bring your speech to life, by starting with a few lines of song. You could even venture to sing these lines yourself – even if you can’t keep a melody and a frog can sing better than you can.  Say you are giving a speech about your career, vocation or hobby.  You could sing a line or two of a song – causing open amusement or barely controlled amusement in your audience and then follow that by saying ” When I was young, I entertained the idea of pursuing music as a career (or hobby), but reactions like yours made me realize I should think again” and then continue with the rest of your speech.             

A prop

And finally, how about using a prop?  Try to find a prop that is central to the theme of your speech. Say you are giving a speech about Saving for Retirement.  You can hold up a three-legged stool to the audience and say “Once upon a time retirement savings was a 3 legged-stool – one leg was your employer’s pension plan, the second leg was Social Security and the third leg was your personal savings.  In the last two decades unfortunately things have changed” You cut off one leg of the stool and say “gone the company pension”.      You cut off one more leg of the stool and say “gone the 100% dependability of Social Security –the fund may run out of money before it comes time for you to start receiving your benefits”.  Then you hold up what’s left of the stool – with just one leg and say “leaving you with just your personal savings” and you could then launch into the rest of your speech about the importance of building an adequate nest egg for retirement.  So whatever your speech, just try to think of some prop that would liven things up.  

There you have it……4 ways to spice up your speech and make it .......Mmmmm.....Mmmmmm.....good! 

Note:  This article originally appeared in a newsletter of Adlibmasters, a Toastmasters Club in South San Jose. I wrote it after completing the CTM (Competent Toastmaster) program. To qualify for the CTM, you have to complete 10 different speeches.  You can read about the 10 speeches here.  If you would like to know more about Toastmasters or Adlibmasters, just click on the links.

Note 2:  The most interesting thing I learned from my Toastmasters experience is that you can deliver a good speech even when you are extremely nervous.  In spite of nerves, I was able to complete all 10 CTM speeches and also enter 2 speech contests, winning one and taking second place in the other.  I touch upon my International Contest win in my post "How I Lost A Thousand Dollars on Donuts".

Note 3:  Speaking of spices and cooking, interestingly the best cooks in my family are men.  Numero Uno: My brother David, who has always been able to turn out a feast at a moment's notice. I think this is related to him being one of the greatest hosts you can ever meet. Hmmm....this gives me food for thought on another post....the link between hospitality and great cooking.

*Thanks to Tanita for taking most of the pics for this article.  This article was written in 2006 so the pictures are from that time.

Financial Piece of Mind (Part Deux)

9 foolish Stock-Picking Mistakes (And How You Can Avoid Them) continued...

Foolish Mistake #5: Mistaking the cheese for the enchilada

If you bought Allied Domecq* (see Part 1 of this post) because they owned Baskin Robbins...

Or Cisco because of Webex (instead of their switches and routers).

Or Schering-Plough because of Coppertone and Dr. Scholls (instead of Claritin).

You are confusing the cheese for the enchilada.

It’s tempting to buy a company for some business that you like.

(Back in the day, you might have picked up Sara Lee for its Coach handbags, for instance).

But unless the business is material to the company’s bottom line, the decision makes no sense.

It's the enchilada you should be interested in, not the cheese. Remember that.

Foolish Mistake #6:  Being an idiot about dividends

During the housing bubble, banks such as Indy Mac Bank were a shareholder’s delight, paying out increasingly hefty dividends.

No one stopped to question the underlying fundamentals.

Indy Mac’s shareholders (hope you were not one of them) paid the ultimate price for that mistake.

Because when Indy Mac collapsed and became an FDIC statistic, you would have lost every last cent of your investment.

Stories such as the Indy Mac story offer a clear lesson.

Dividends can sometimes be red flags rather than signs of a healthy company.

An average dividend paid by a company with an unbroken track-record of dividends is preferable to a dividend from a new kid on the block, or a dividend from a company capitalizing on a short term and cyclical trend.

Foolish Mistake #7: Believing in the Next Big Thing

Netscape investors found it in 1995, Palm investors found it in 2000, Research in Motion investors found it in the early years of the last decade.

The Next Big Thing.

In reality, there’s no way of knowing if something is the Next Big Thing.

Or how long it will remain the Next Big Thing.

So while there’s no harm in grabbing a few shares to catch the wave of the current market darling or darlings (Apple, Netflix, Salesforce or VMWare, anyone)...

Be prudent and do not bet the farm on it.

Foolish Mistake #8:  Letting Your Portfolio Go to the Dogs

Blame it on biology.

The negative effect of losses has a higher impact on our emotions than the positive effect of gains.

(That is we feel more upset at losing a few dollars than we feel happy at winning the lottery).

Which is why it’s so difficult for us to sell a losing stock.

You can read Jason Zweig’s book, ‘Your Money And Your Brain’ for the illuminating science behind it.

But then, after that, you need to toughen up and let go.

Of all those dogs!

(You know the ones I am talking about - the losers you are hoping will rebound to the price you paid for them).

If you persist in letting biology get the better of you, your portfolio could eventually contain a bunch of dogs.

You might as well go into the kennel business.

Foolish Mistake #9: Becoming a slave to “What If?”

Investors often become hopeless prognosticators.

Dogged by all permutations of “what if?”

As in “what if I sell this loser and the stock takes off?”

Or “what if I take profits and then this stock doubles?”

Or “what if I don’t take some profits and capital gains taxes go up next year?”

Or “what if the market plunges and I am left holding a bag of worthless stocks”

Indeed, any of these scenarios can come to pass.

But does this mean you should continuously try to guess at what will happen and take some sort of action?

Maybe.

If you have a Crystal Ball that’s accurate.

Then it might be worth all the extra costs and taxes.

Otherwise, you are setting yourself up for a vicious cycle of shoulda, coulda, woulda, as in:

“I shoulda bought this stock earlier.”

“I coulda held on to that puppy a little longer.”

“I woulda been better off selling this x@%!Y at that time.”

This is however, better than the BIG COLOSSAL MISTAKE.  That happens when you successfully time the market several times in a row, become overconfident, place a large bet and get caught with your pants down.

Both these scenarios - the small regretful losses and lost opportunities - and the unconscionable loss are related to uncontrolled “What ifness”.

So that's what you really need to get under control if you want to have a long innings in the investing game.

Read my post Yoga for Investors for further help with banishing "What ifness" and more investing advice.

P.S. Thanks for reading. Wine and Spirits were the mainstays of Allied Domecq’s business at the time I bought their shares. Some of their well-known brands were Beefeater, Ballantine's, Teachers, Courvoisier, Canadian Club, Kahlúa Coffee, Malibu, Maker's Mark and Sauza. And they were No. 2 to only one other company - Diageo.

P.S. 2: Hope you enjoyed these 2 posts on stock-picking mistakes you should avoid.  Sooner or later you will discover that when it comes to investing, your biggest enemy is not Big Business, Big Brother, Beelzebub or Goldman Sachs. Your biggest enemy is yourself. 

P.S. 3:  I highly recommend meditation as a way to get a hold of yourself. It will not only make you a happier, healthier and more loving person, but it will also train you to become comfortable with just “being” and to deal with "what ifness" in all the areas of your life.

Financial Piece Of Mind

9 Foolish Notions I Had About Stocks

(and how you can avoid them)

1. Foolish Notion #1: Great products equal great stocks

I used to think if a company made a great product, it would ring up huge sales and net huge profits. What a quaint idea.  For a classic example (where experience put paid to that idea) consider Tivo. Tivo invented the DVR. Tivo’s DVR is the #1 DVR in the market. But has Tivo’s stock gone anywhere as a result of it?  Type the ticker into the search box at Yahoo Finance and see for yourself. 

 

Profits and consequently, stock price appreciation, have continuously eluded Tivo. 

Lesson to be learned:  Don’t equate a great product with a great stock buy. 

Whether the company is Tivo. 

Or Vonage (whose product I love and have enthused about in the post 4 decisions I wish I had made earlier).

Or Krispy Kreme. Even if you find their donuts irresistible, you may want to read my cautionary post How I Lost A Thousand Dollars on Donuts. Where I confess to foolishly trying to ape Warren Buffett and to one of my most painful and humiliating investing blunders. You don’t want to lose money that way.  And you don’t want to lose money by making the mistake of investing in wonderful products that do not have wonderful companies attached to them.

2. Foolish Notion #2: Conglomerates make good investments

I used to think if a company had its fingers in many pies – meaning it was a group of companies rather than a single company (usually referred to a conglomerate) – it was a superior investment to a company with just one line of business.  Bone-headed thinking! Not only are companies with widely different businesses daunting to manage (think of the Lilliputians trying to deal with Gulliver which explains Jack Black's appearance in this post), shady and shadow accounting is also a much higher risk with them. 

So if you are invested in one these conglomerate companies, I suggest you keep a close eye on them. And if they decide to break themselves up into different businesses each focused on its own area of strength, say a hallelujah!

It’s what shareholders of Fortune Brands are probably saying, now that Fortune Brands has decided to sell its Titliest golf balls business, its Moen faucets business, its Master Lock business, in fact all of its non-core businesses. Once the sales are complete, Fortune Brands (which will be renamed Beam) will be able to concentrate on just one business, its core business:  wine and spirits.

Lesson to be learned:  If you are tempted to invest in a conglomerate, whether United Technologies or GE or Fortune Brands, you should do so in the knowledge that you are being self-indulgent and that a company with a single line of business will usually fare better as an investment.  And don’t be surprised to find that sooner or later, the conglomerate itself will come to the same conclusion and move to sell or spin-off non-core businesses.

3.  Foolish Notion #3: The Daughter Ship is Not As Good as The Mother Ship

Sometimes when a company owns more than one line of business, it will decide to spin off a secondary line of business to shareholders.  The spin off might be an automatic spin off. Or it can be one in which you as a shareholder, are asked to choose whether you want to continue to hold all your shares in the holding company, or to exchange some of them for shares in the company being spun off. 

What should you do? 

My advice (and I learned this through non-buyers remorse) would be to exercise the exchange option, even if you are nervous that the daughter ship may not do as well as the mother ship. 

A classic example is when McDonalds spun off Chipotle. Had you declined the offer to exchange some of your McDonalds shares for Chipotle shares, it would have been a serious mistake. Because  Chipotle has increased 12 fold since it was spun off from McDonalds. Whereas McDonalds, while being on a tear itself, has only doubled in price.

Lesson to be learned:  If you are given the option to exchange some of your shares for shares in a company being spun off, always always exercise the option, even if you are a Nervous Nellie about it. You should exchange a small percentage of the mother ship's shares if that's all the courage you can muster.

4. Foolish Notion #4: An Investment is Happily Ever After  

My post Yoga for Investors aptly sums up my philosophy about investments. I have developed a gritty Till Death Do Us Part determination when it comes to investing. However, I've learned that plans to stick with a stock for better or for worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health don't always pan out. Just as bonds sometimes get called away, I have discovered cherished stocks can also get snatched away from one's portfolio in the blink of an eye.  

How? How is when a company you are invested in gets taken private.

This is what happened to the shareholders of Neiman Marcus (Needless Markup, as my boss Judy used to wryly call it) - when it got taken private in 2005.

     And this is also what happened to the shareholders of Allied
     Domecq. 

Shareholders in Allied Domecq, the company that owned Baskin Robbins, Togos and Dunkin Donuts, were denied the privilege of baskin' in the sunshine of lifelong ownership.

Because Allied Domecq sold itself.

The Baskin Robbins (reason you might have bought Allied Domecq in the first place if you are like me) and Dunkin Donuts part of the business went to a clutch of private equity firms. 

The rest of the business (the bread and butter alcohol and spirits business) was sold to Pernod Ricard. 

And that’s how there was no Happily Ever After for Allied Domecq shareholders.

Lesson to be learned:  Don’t get too attached to the shares you buy. Private equity and other companies can snatch them away from you at a moment’s notice. Of course M&A doesn’t always result in a Where Did My Shares Go experience. Sometimes there’s the head-spinning (think Linda Blair in Exorcist head-spinning) Whip Lash experience, in which the original shares you bought are subjected to relentless M&A, so much so you get whip lash from keeping pace. For instance, you may start out by owning SBC shares, only to find out your SBC shares have become Comcast shares, only to find out your Comcast shares have become Cingular shares, only to find out your Cingular shares have been rechristened AT&T. This is the Whip Lash experience.  The Allied Domecq experience is different.  In the Allied Domecq scenario, you have to bid your shares goodbye as they vanish into some private equity portfolio or get swallowed up by a larger company in an all cash deal (as Skype was swallowed up by Microsoft recently).  Since both these scenarios happen quite frequently, my advice to you is to practice detachment from your shares from the get-go.  It will save you from heartbreak and acute SWS - Share Withdrawal Syndrome.

P.S. Thanks for reading this post. I know some of you thought I couldn’t spell when you read Financial Piece of Mind. If you delight in discovering typos, you might be a closet copywriter.   Back in the day when I was a copywriter, a big chunk of my time was spent proofing newsletters, brochures, annual reports and other literary works of capitalism for typos of this kind.

P.S. 2:  You also might be thinking I do not know how to count because I said 9 foolish notions about stocks but this post contains only 4.  I actually did have a list of 9, but decided to save the remaining 5 for the next post, on the grounds, too much of a good thing is bad (or too much of a bad thing is not good, in this case).

P.S. 3: The original culprit for my interest in stocks is Ajay Sachdev who is a guest poster on this blog.  After beating Velupillai Pottu at his own game at MAA (read his post A Short Stint in Advertising if you want to find out more), he went on to establish himself as a stockbroker. Barely understanding what I was doing, I bought my first stock through him.  Like Jacob with the angel, I have been wrestling the many-headed beast known as the stock market ever since.

Reprising Joyce Kilmer

                                             Medley

        A Homage to Trees in Poetry and Pictures

                            

                               by Cindy Pinkston

As I grew during childhood, many trees

living near my home were time-markers;

and now as an adult, they have not changed.

Trees are living calendars.

In winter many are bare, a medley of sticks.

Slowly, quietly, tiny buds blossom in spring.

Summer brings refreshing shade, varicolored

fruits and berries. In autumn, the trees are aflame.

I still remember crossing campus as the days

grew colder.  Carried along by a stronger breeze

the bronze, red, golden leaves of fall gave me

no small delight as we danced together.

All trees sing. Some audibly: pines that sigh,

the steady breath of the ancient redwoods.

Trees reach upwards : towards sun, sky,

the heavens. Trees worship.

P.S.: I would like to thank Cindy for contributing this piece on trees - both the poem and the photos.  In the SFO Bay Area, there is an organization called Canopy which promotes the planting of trees.  If you would like to know about what they are doing and what resources they offer for those who want to improve their neighborhoods, here's the link.   

P.S.2: Note: Yesterday, May 7, Microsoft, National Semiconductor, NVIDIA, REI, RHI, SanDisk and Yahoo joined forces with Canopy to plant more than 400 trees in a single day at Green Oaks and Cesar Chavez Academies on Ralmar Street in East Palo Alto – part of an initiative to plant more than 1,000 trees in the coming months. You can read more about it here.

A Post On Trees?

What's the common thread between Newton, the Buddha and Gilroy Gardens.
I discovered this when I asked myself the question of whether I should do a dedicated post on trees.

I knew non-tree lovers, if asked - either in dread of botanical boredom, or in fear of being subjected to environmental nutjobbism... would say an emphatic "No!".

But what if Isaac Newton were living?  Might he have responded:

 “You must, Minoo.

After all, were it not for me watching an apple fall from a tree and wondering why it didn’t go upwards or sideways... I might never have formulated the theory of gravity.

By all means, do a post on trees.”

And what if I asked the question of the Buddha?

Might he have found some divine means of revelation to convey these thoughts to me:

“Remember it was under a peepal* tree, Minoo, that I attained “bodhi” or enlightenment.

It was how that humble peepal tree in Bodh Gaya became the famed Bodhi Tree.

You will find it written in the sacred texts that I gazed at this Bodhi Tree for a whole week with utmost gratitude after I attained enlightenment.

So by all means, go ahead and pay homage to trees, ignoring the naysayers.

And on no account should you be like King Ashoka’s wife, who jealous of her husband’s homage to the Bodhi Tree, attempted to destroy it with mandu thorns.”

And if I asked C.S. Lewis (assuming I found a way to commune with him)?

Might he discourse with me on the Book of Genesis.

And the central place of the tree with the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden.

And might he also bring up the subject of Christmas trees with me.

After all, who can imagine Christmas without Christmas Trees?

And finally, what if I asked Axel Erlandson...?

...the 1940's tree genius whose "Circus Trees" were featured in Ripleys Believe It Or Not and Life Magazine back in the day.
Me thinks Erlandson would be thrilled to see a post on trees.

Meanwhile, file this information away about Erlandson's Circus Trees in your "100 Things To See Before I Die" folder...
They are on permanent display at Gilroy Gardens, which also happens to be one of the best SFO Bay Area Theme and Amusement Parks for kids 3-10 (as well as kids 50 plus).

You can learn more about Gilroy Gardens and Axel Erlandson’s Circus Trees here.

In Conclusion, Yes We Should and Will Have A Post On Trees

A post in poetry and pictures.

Put together by my neighbor Cindy.

Who it turns out, is just as handy with a camera as she is with a pen.

Look for it on Sunday.

*Peepal is Hindi for Fig

P.S. If you want to plan a visit to Bodh Gaya, India, where you can visit the Mahabodhi Temple and see the Bodhi Tree, here’s a link to information on TripAdvisor.

Also, if your trip to India includes Bangalore, and you need an “unhotel’ to stay in, you should check out Sundance Serviced Apartments which is run by my sister Chris and her hubby. Here’s a link to information about Sundance on TripAdvisor.

P.S. 2:  Do you have a hardwood tree in your backyard?  Want to make a terrific tire swing for your kids. Here's a link on how to create one (from Disney – who else). Tire swings are a common sight in India, especially in rural areas.